gooseberryhigh | Peruvian Darkness Powder

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Peruvian Darkness Powder

PERUVIAN DARKNESS POWDER

Xavier Lewis gets a letter from a relative of theirs who has a mean sense of humor. When they open the envelope in the halls of the lodge, Peruvian Darkness Powder bursts out, blanketing the area in magical darkness! The inconvenience lasts an hour, and Lumos and Incendio don’t do anything to help.

Magdalen Gillis walks in with their friend, and grabs their friend’s hand so they don’t lose them… only to walk out and find they’re actually holding hands with Riley Stamper. How embarrassing.
Wyatt Winslow trips and crashes into Saira Raza in the darkness, and ends up banging their face against a wall and getting a bloody nose!
Joanna May is startled by Robin Youngblood who was creeping around in the darkness “singing” the Jaws theme.

HOW THIS WORKS

If you're looking to get hurt and go completely insane, have I got the place for you. New York's Hottest New Club is The Lodge But It's Dark For An Hour. Located in a giant magical log cabin in the woods of northern Utah, this place has everything: nosebleeds, darkness, gals being pals, 15-and-16-year-olds who haven't slept since last Thursday, my son and an intense feeling of dread for what the future holds. So come on down and grope around in the pitch while also possibly inhaling the same magical powder that's causing this predicament.

Lumos and Incendio do not work.

The fun begins roundabout lunchtime.

Have fun. Watch out for snakes.

» In the Halls of the Lodge: It dark.

» Elsewhere: Not so dark.

» OOC - Questions, comments, concerns!

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Playing around in pitch darkness is cool and all, but it's not really how you want to spend an entire hour. So, with effort, Xavier makes his way outside. Down the stairs. Into the grass. He plops down, cross-legged, and peeks into the trapped envelope, because Peruvian Darkness Powder wasn't the only thing inside.

Xavier pulls out a stack of bubble letters, all sooty and black. The kind a teacher might use to decorate third grade a classroom. Xavier lays them out in order in the grass in front of him:

L A S T I N G G O N A D C U R A T O R

He stares, baffled and blinking, then leans forward, resting his chin in the palm of his right hand, while reaching out to move letters around with his left.

There's no such thing as a slow day with Ravi's schedule, and less so when final exams are in a matter of weeks. Still, man cannot survive on the library alone, and also man should probably not try to blunder through inky blackness while carrying far too many books. Ravi is headed back to the cabin, with an ambitious stack of study materials in his arms, when he notices Xavier sitting on the grass.

"Zav?" Ravi slows down as he comes close enough to see what Xavier's fussing with. "Planning for a party?"

Xavier tilts his head back to peer up at Ravi, thoughtful expression cracking into a grin at the sight of him. "Hey! Party's inside, actually," he thrusts his thumb back toward the lodge. Event courtesy of Nisha Lewis. After a tick, he nods his head to indicate the books his roommate is carrying. "Betting you, uh, knew that, though, right?"

Zav returns his attention to the letters laid out in front of him. "This is, like, deffo more of a puzzle." He pauses to pat the grass beside him. "Wanna help?"

Ravi smiles. He really should be working on his paper for Hermeticism, but...

"As a prefect, it is my duty to help." He carefully sets all his books down on the grass and drops his bag beside the pile, before moving to sit next to Xavier. "Do we have a theme? Or at least a general expectation between 'heartfelt thank you note' or 'threatening ransom letter'?"

Zav clasps his hands together, extending his pointer fingers out like a gun as he gestures at the letters spread out on the ground. He's scrambled them a bit; pulled out the N's and the T's and set them above the rest, and the G he's pushed below everything else. It still says lastingonadcurator, but now it's got a sort of whimsical and bouncy feel to it.

"Probably somewhere in between?" He drawls as he tilts his head to the side. "Its a Nini Lewis production, so... Hard to say."

"Ah. Sisters." Ravi passes a hand over the letters, without touching any yet. Just trying to get a sense of the whole message. "There's no 'V', so it can't be your name mixed in here. Of course, it's possible that Nisha's chosen to call you by any number of flattering alternative appellations here..."

He won't make suggestions. Xavier would know better than him when it comes to sibling nicknames, anyway. Instead, Ravi points at the I-N-G. "The verb of this sentence, maybe? Or is it a red herring that she laid it out this way?"

Zav leans forward, gaze following the line of Ravi's pointing, and examines the I N and G. He tucks a flyaway wisp of hair back up into his bun as he considers this possibility. "It's a good starting point, at least," he says, glancing back at Ravi with a grin.

"The 'C' is probably the start of a word, too, I figure. Since there's no 'K.'" Zav adds, poking it with his index finger and sliding it up. "You like these kinda puzzles much?"

Ravi grins. "There's always something satisfying about untangling a problem, isn't there? Even if that problem is simply an anagram." Ravi rifles through his bag for a notebook and a fountain pen, and opens it up to a blank page. He writes a few common fragments: -ING, -ATOR, UN-, TRANS-, -TION, ANTI-, CON-.

"No 'E'. That should narrow things down, shouldn't it?" Ravi starts scribbling ideas. CARING, CARROT, COUNT, COLON, CONTROL... He rewrites the remaining letters underneath. Is that "grad"? Hmm.

It's another minute before Ravi has GRADUATING AS CONTROL written at the bottom of his page. "I feel... that is not correct."

Xavier watches over Ravi's shoulder with bright eyed interest, tilting his head to the side at the results. "Yeah, it's like, kind of something she'd say, but also nonsense." He pauses, a few seconds spent thinking things over, and then pops his lips. "But, I think you're onto something. It's gotta be about graduation or graduating."

He looks skyward, rearranging things in his head. "Conga...graduation...No, that's not right." Zav glances at Ravi's notebook, again. "Graduation...slont...crag?" 'Slont' is not a word, Xavier. But good try.

"Graduation... slog... crant?" This is steadily going downhill. Ravi starts over.

After a few minutes, the list looks even worse:

GRADUATING NO SCROTAL
GRADUATION GOALS CNTR
GRADUATING LAST CROON
GRADUATION LAG SCORN T?
ASTRAL DRUG CONTAGION
TACOS TURN ADORING GAL
CAUTION GANG LORD ARTS
DANGLING OUR CASTRATO

"I don't suppose," Ravi says hopefully, "there was a hint in that envelope?"

Xavier is just now realizing that he shares genetic material with someone who just has to be some kind of sadistic criminal mastermind. His sister is going to grow up to be that puppet guy from the Saw movies.

Clucking to himself, he grabs the envelope up, turns it upside down and gives it a good shake. A tiny, black powder-covered resealable baggy falls out. Xavier glances at Ravi, picks up the baggy and pulls out the contents. A tiny square of stationery, which he unfolds, and then reads aloud.

"Xavier, Glad felicitations on the coming convocation. Sent these two along in case I won't be able to make it to the festivities. Go ahead and hang them up. I fucking dare you." He pauses. "Best, Nisha."

Zav turns the paper over to see if there's anything else written on it. Nothing. "You know she wants to come here next year?" A huff of relief. "I am so glad I won't have to deal with that."

As the darkness clears somewhere on the second floor, there is a sole figure staggering in the false twilight. Face drawn and pale, she holds on to the wall to support her probably shattered bones. Her tie is askew. Her hair is a mess. She's seen the other side, and now it's time to go back there. She can't go on any farther and slides down the wall, coming to her final rest conveniently to one side of the hallway so no one steps on her.

When the lodge finally welcomes the sun again, Jade Otterwell's lifeless form is illuminated, sprawled out artfully.
One eye intermittently twitches open to see if anyone is paying attention. But she's dead.

Lucas observes Jade like a museumgoer considers a painting. Something's missing. He darts off, as fast as Lucas can dart, and comes back a few minutes later with a bouquet of three white lilies. Where did he get them? Azurcrest secret.

He steps up to Jade's totally lifeless corpse and wordlessly lays the flowers on her, then steps back and bows his head solomnly.

Back when Essie was starstruck by everything that Diego did, she resolved to learn how to play an instrument. Though Diego taught her how to pluck out some chords on the guitar, when she got her hands on a trumpet she knew that she had found something special: a portable big sister torture device. While music didn't turn out to be her calling, she has memorized certain classics.

'Taps' is one of them.

When the call goes out that a funeral is to be held for Jade, she is ready and she knows what she must do. (When did this call go out? Another Azurcrest secret.) Everyone, please take a moment of silence and... oh this song just kind of goes on and on, that's good enough.

Jeffy stands by Essie and Lucas, a hat held respectfully low, his head hanging down to his chest. He hadn't even seen the call, he was just drawn here by the energy that is three baby birds in one place, doing something that looked FUN!!!(???)

"She was too good for us," he shakes his head, playing the role of the respectful mourner, swiping a finger under his eye. "But at least now she's out of detention."

Edited 2017-06-07 15:42 (UTC)

Calvin is here because a good number of his social hours are spent around Azurcrests, even though the one he's usually trailing behind is currently furious with him. He stands beside Essie and/or Micah, and clasps his hands in front of him as he sighs at Jade's "dead" body. There are flowers. Essie brought out her trumpet.

"Jade always brought mild confusion and distress into our lives," he says, unable to sound quite as mournful as her fellow jays. He settles for a dry deadpan. "I never knew if what she was saying was true or not. Now that she's expired, I suppose I never will."

(Jade takes this moment to refrain from smiling triumphantly. Distress is all she's ever wanted. Her face remains lifeless. She hopes no one notices her hands adjusting to actually hold the flowers like a corpse would. For realism.)

Where the other Azurbaby birds go, Zachary usually follows. And now, he's here to pay his respects. He steps forward, head bowed as if in solemn prayer. Then, like a priest tending to his flock, he clears his throat and begins to recite the single most dramatic death poem he knows from memory. Oh Jade. Oh Jade, you shall be missed.

"How wonderful is Death, Death, and his brother Sleep! One, pale as yonder waning moon with lips of lurid blue. The other," He's getting louder. "Rosy as the morn. When throned on ocean’s wave it blushes o’er the world—"

This is from Percy Shelley's Queen Mab, and Zach's delivery gets more over the top with every passing word. By the end, he's chewing scenery, and the final line "— yet both so passing wonderful!" is punctuated with a shake of his fist. Don't they just all long for death, now that their beloved Jade is gone? He thinks probably they do.

After he's done, he lets his tribute hang in the air for about zero-point-two seconds, before stepping back with a beatific "Amen."

Edited (he's a man of the prom-cloth) 2017-06-07 16:25 (UTC)

Fortuitously, when Ari happened upon this scene, she was making her way back to the greenhouse from Mr. Hightower's office, and she has her most recent herbology project in her arms. The large, purple-leafed magical plant is hardly a funerary floral arrangement, but as she stops to listen to Zach's sermon she takes a handful of soil from the pot. A beat after his "amen", she tosses it on Jade's head. That's what you get for pretending to be dead, Jade.

Edited 2017-06-07 18:37 (UTC)

(The corpse may have snickered here but if you look again you will see the dirt very resolutely in place.
This is the most fun Jade's had in weeks.)

Micah, who'd quite somberly set up to record the funeral, including "Taps" and everyone's heartwrenching eulogies, switches to his regular camera now that they're officially burying Jade.

He kneels in front of all who've gathered around the deceased, and lifts his camera, the flash ready. "Say 'rest in peace'!"

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Peruvian Darkness Powder

Elsewhere

The Legend Continues (Open, Again)

Xavier & Ravi

Xavier & Ravi

Xavier & Ravi

Xavier & Ravi

Xavier & Ravi

Xavier & Ravi

Xavier & Ravi

Xavier & Ravi

Xavier & Ravi

Xavier & Ravi

Jade's Dead Now (after the Darkening)

Jade's Dead Now (after the Darkening)

Jade's Dead Now (after the Darkening)

Jade's Dead Now (after the Darkening)

Jade's Dead Now (after the Darkening)

Jade's Dead Now (after the Darkening)

Jade's Dead Now (after the Darkening)

Jade's Dead Now (after the Darkening)

Jade's Dead Now (after the Darkening)

Jade's Dead Now (after the Darkening)