Log:Rainbows, Sparkles, and Trickery

Rainbows, Sparkles, and Trickery
"Humans live such short lives to begin with; why decrease yours?"
Participants Franklyn & November	14 August, 2017 Franklyn's just gone to sulk in the woods and take photographs -- that Instagram isn't going to update itself! -- but the little litterbug is nowhere near prepared to make a rainbow connection when she stumbles upon November basking in the mood light.
Location Lake Brunsett - By the Waterfall
The land near the waterfall is a lush one, fern fronds and tall water-grasses nodding their heads in time to the persistent, chilly breeze, dew misting heavily on the bowing tips of leaf and blade. The air itself is thick, humid, fresh, full of living green -- and the faintest scent of rot, this being a natural lake with natural creatures which, naturally, do occasionally die. Popular during the day, but not so much in the middle of the night when it's 59F/14C out and 90 humidity, there are several small clearings on the rocky path toward the falls, only 'tamed' by the hand of man as regards adding a bit of gravel here and there where the slope is too steep for hiking. Toward the end, closer to the falls, it is purely nature which creates spaces in which to sit, or think, which is proooobably because those are also places where you really want a poncho. The waterfall doesn't stop falling just because the sun goes down. It's beautiful, though -- even if the moon is no longer visible in the sky to silver it. The drumming thunder of thousands upon thousands upon millions of gallons of water pouring down onto unyielding stone is all but deafening; one could sneak an army up behind anyone here, with no one the wiser. It's beautiful, it's perilous, it's lush with life. But why is Franklyn here? The Mortal girl is traipsing wearily through the ferns - dressed in hiking boots (Timberland, of course), tall grey socks, khaki shorts which thankfully cover enough of her thighs to be actually sensible, and a layering of black tanktop, black n' grey plaid flannel, and a loose oversized drab olive army jacket which has... Probably never seen combat. Hair? Up in a bun. Sunglasses? Yes. Bag? Slung over a shoulder. She looks like a fucking hipster. Because Franky is a fucking hipster. First off, who smokes while they're on a hike? A woman who's positively sulking while they move, that's who - resting bitch face in full swing, as Franklyn observes the -beautiful- surroundings and... Haphazardly lifts a camera that's hung around her neck, so she can take a snap of some idyllic rocky outcrop and water and trees. Look how beautifully the shadow falls on the foreground foliage; While misty dew collects from the waterfall which rushes on behind... Ugh. Or not. Whatever. Who cares. Franklyn takes a drag of her cigarette, and sighs out the smoke. Some people genuinely do approve of nature, and genuinely do believe in its sanctity. Where do cigarette butts inevitably go? Onto the ground, into the lake, into the guts of animals. Slipping through the forest some distance ahead of Franklyn, November pauses to look back toward the sound of crunchy Timberland boots on the sand and gravel of the path. Unbeknownst to Franklyn, she is smiling. It is a slow smile, and it is not a friendly smile. It is the smile of the Trickster preparing to play. Soon enough, the path around Franklyn begins to take on subtly different forms than it used to, turns which she was certain would go left instead sending her off to the right, and, a short distance off the path, a small herd of queerly graceful white deer calmly feeds on the greenery, one head lifting to observe the mortal's passage with soft-dark eyes. Yeah, yeah -- and Franklyn is a teeny-tiny bit of a litter bug. It's not her fault! Okay, well actually it totally is. Standing there, smoking, Franklyn ties to take a long-exposure pic of her surroundings, then nods to herself. It will do. But 'it just doing' doesn't trigger any kind of satisfaction in poor Franky here. No. She lets the camera hang around her neck, turns, and begins ambling on -- puffing away, oblivious to any not-so-friendly smiling in forrest. Franklyn is staring at the woodland trail, grumbling under her breath as she goes right when she should have gone left-- Isn't that just /how it goes/ with Franklyn? Travelling on the wrong path, it's several moments before Franky looks up again, takes in her surroundings, and pauses: Woah. Those are /deer/. For a girl who spent like ten years in the city, watching pigeons fight rats over scraps of pizza? Looking at a small heard of deer is... Fucking -MAGICAL-. Franklyn stops, and stares, and gawks, and ogles, and just stays as still as she possibly can -- fingers twitching on the edge of her camera, because she is just too worried that her movements might startle them and-- oh... Oh what the hell. Slowly - so slowly - the camera is lifted and... Say cheese, deer! Right? So magical! Pity the camera can't see magic... None of the pictures Franklyn takes will look like what SHE saw. The deer flicks an ear, unalarmed, and a fluttery flight of moths with silver-white wings flits across the path as the stag dips his head to graze, their flight moving farther down the trail toward the waterfall. The mist beyond the moths seems more crystalline than ever, more beautiful, almost...unearthly. There's a hint of music in it, something wild, something fey, with a regularly irregular rhythm just made for dancing, though who can say just what the steps should be? Franklyn doesn't even have the wherewithal to check back on the DSLR's screen, to see what the lovely magical deer look like -- she's #livingforthemoment, damnit. She's /experiencing the world/. She's -present-. Zen. Remember? That's why Franklyn is here: to smoke cigarettes, take photos, and fucking relax. It's... Almost working? Jeez, she really needs a chaperone: because when Franklyn sees those moths? She literally goes: "Woooah!" in a hushed whisper, and without thinking begins to follow after them down the trail -- so curious, so keen, so... So... So suddenly aware, as she makes it down the trail, of the =otherworldliness= of it all. Aw hell no. Franklyn stops short on the trail, and there's a little frisson of Frightful Discontent which spikes through her -- whole body held tense and at an angle, like she was auditioning for a part in Cats or something. She looks left, she looks right, and... Tries to figure out where the fuck she is, and if anyone else is around her. Ya girl Franky is Spooked. The fact that Franklyn's sudden stop and tension immediately precedes soft -laughter- coming out of flipping -nowhere- likely isn't too terribly reassuring. On the other hand, if she truly IS inspecting her surroundings, she can see the true path through the misty, lingering power of the illusion cast over reality, and if she happens to know her own boot size and prints, her present location is awfully familiar: she's been going in circles, even though the illusory path says there's a turn in another direction. A soft and pearly luminescence begins to grow behind a smooth-topped stone, tendrils of light slowly spreading over the soil and limning the delicate traceries of water-nodding ferns nearby. It doesn't go far. That isn't why it is was brought into being. Why -was- it brought into existence..? SHE is why. Between one heartbeat and the next, wavering into view as if revealed by the calm movements of drifting smoke, a creature as crystalline and otherworldly as the music appears, perched on the stone in a thoroughly casual pose, one bare foot tucked beneath herself, the other leg dangling down to swing over the side. The light? Backlighting, of course. Vanity is vanity, and one simply MUST display one's beautiful colours if one is -made- of them. November's aurora slowly dips and swirls through a display of rainbow hues, echoing the streaks and whorls within the impossible frost-feathered smoothness of her icy flesh. She IS transparent, and the light picks that out very well. No navel, either, which Franklyn has seen before on a certain paintball park owner. Did we mention the floaty weightless queerly liquid hair..? Or perhaps the motes of diamond dust snowflakes drifting in the air in her vicinity, or the elusive glimpses of glimmering lights caught only in the tail of the eye, motion where no motion should be. What does this unearthly vision say, when it speaks? For of course it speaks, in lightly accented English with hints of Ireland in its inflected musicality. "You shouldn't litter, lovely. Or smoke. Humans live such short lives to begin with; why decrease yours?" So. That's disorienting -- peering through the Wyrd illusion that fog up Franky's brain-noggin, so she can sense the true path beneath the surface of where she was just going. Oh cripes, Franklyn - isn't this part of the warnings given?... Actually no. Nobody has ever warned Franklyn about mysterious trickster demi-gods lurking in the woods. Not specifically, at least. But Franklyn /has/ read a lot of faerie tales: she should know better than to go wandering in the woods by her lonesome, because beyond the banal world of social media and the grimy din of the city, there are still threats. The frisson of Frightful Discontent has not left the Mortal -- as that pearly luminescence starts to grow, the hair on her arms literally stands up, and she steps back a pace or two. Oh fuck. Oh /FUCK/. =FUUUCK=. Franklyn is stunned, when November comes into view. She =WAS= warned about entities like her: so perfect, so gentrified, so... So... So compelling to look at, so un-flippin-believable. It stuns her, STUNS her, and Franklyn is left just standing there, all slack jawed and dumbstruck and just =gawking= at the crystalline entity before her. If Franklyn hears November, it is unlikely she's actually comprehending the meaning behind those words. The only reply from the shell-shocked little Mortal is: "...!" Which is hardly a reply now, is it? But oh, oh those /feelings/ -- they waft off Franklyn like mist from the waterfall: fear, astonishment, weirdly twisted delight, wonderment, and wave after wave of... Strangely? Grim determination, like she was fighting off some inner futility. Woah. Is that =hope=? Clearly, the people teaching Franklyn the ins and outs of dealing with Faerie are slacking on the job. Cough cough. Count. November simply sits in place, bathing in the stunned mortal's emotions with half-lidded eyes (though what good transparent eyelids do her is debatable), chin lifting as easily as, you know, a regular mortal person's chin, and not a completely impossible movement made by a creature -ostensibly- made of -ice- which shouldn't, you know, be able to A) move and B) move with that much liquid grace. "Mmmmmmm." The hum is pleased, a cat with a great big dollop of cream, and the rainbow's colours brighten as she murmurs a warm and honest, "Thank you. That feels wonderful." The voice is subtly off, but recognisably November's when she muses aloud, "You can't have been ensorcelled long... Not and still react as you did at that noisy Collective." Her head tilts, inhuman eyes widening in interest and inquiry, expectation plain. She wants to know something, so oughtn't Franklyn provide the answer? There's nothing condescending about it, no airs of power, no domination. It's the most natural thing in the world: November wants, and others provide. Oh right, like some reasonable advice is something Franklyn would follow anyway -- the girl is stubborn, damnit! Which is probably why she isn't just... Immediately running away? Stubbornness and an ambition to just, well, see the story through until the very last line. Besides: what chance does she have, outrunning a being made of pure ice and refracted light and-- what the fuck is November, anyway? She's... Difficult. "What?!" Franklyn is having a little trouble controlling the volume of her voice, as she stands there all awkwardly posed and -gawking-. "Where, when-- why were you-- who..." Get it together, girl. Franklyn takes in a big lungful of breath, and raises a hand to the side of her head. No headache, only a little dizziness from being taken so back by this little slice of un-reality that sits before her. Why do rainbow ice people need to wear a bikini, for instance? "...How would you expect a person to react?..." Franklyn has found her voice, an she's speaking slowly - carefully - as she watches November. "...If not in the way I did, at Cat-Twenty-Two. Did I not perform to expectation?" Still. No answer - only questions. November swings her dangling foot, ice clicking when it strikes the stone behind it, but doesn't move. Likely a wise move (har har) on her part, too, given how much trouble Franklyn is having with her sitting -still-. Then again, maybe she's staying put because this way she has mood lighting. Vanity, thy name is she. Sidhe? Mildly disappointed by the lack of response, the rainbow's colours dim, fading back to her pre-curiosity level. Drifting on the wind, her hair, well, suffice it to say she chose that particular stone for a reason. She's sitting at precisely the right angle for the waterfall's attendant breezes to make that pin-straight, quasi-liquid quasi-solid mass of puddling, colour-flooded strands appear at their most deific and heroic. Thigh-length hair, it must be noted. "Your performance was amusing, and admittedly more pleasing to the ear than Count's, though seeing him strip in public has its merits." There's a pause, a thoughtful look, and a sweetly wicked, "Ask him about me. It won't be complimentary." An instant later, the light around -her- appears around Franklyn in a sudden flash, illusory glow briefly obscuring all sight of the Ancient -- and when it fades, all illusions fade with it, as does the Fairest herself, hidden, leaving the clearing precisely as it was: mundane, ordinary, filled with nature's thunder and night-mist. Look at her, Franklin - witness November, in all her backlit, wild-swept, perfectly posed glory. Look at the glint of her translucent skin, the flow of her hyper-chromatic liquid hair, the sheer /drama/ of it all. Has Franky ever even -imagined- something this glorious and perfected and mind bending? Not like /this/ exactly, no. So all Franklyn can do is stop and stare and wonder: eyes glazing over a little bit, as she tries to follow what November is saying and... And learn some things. Because this is a masterclass in posturing: Franky, as expressive as she is, will never compare to this. But a girl can dream, right? "Tha-ank, you?" Franklyn chimes - because really, if now isn't a time to be polite, when is? "I, I will ask-- wait, what's your nam--" BLINK. Before Franklyn can follow through with that, there is that =flash=, and the Mortal girl gasps: hands clutching to her chest as she stands in place and just stares and waits and fears and-- Then it is all over. And she has not been transported to an alien realm. No. Franklyn is standing alone, here, in the woods, by a waterfall. Blinking. But it doesn't last long: two gasps of misty air, then Franklyn is immediately turning tail and stalking through woods -- back down the trail, around the ridge, through the meadow, and towards home. Home, a bottle of bourbon, and possibly a Very Strongly Worded Phonecall.