come_sailaway | [OPEN] September catch-all

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[OPEN] September catch-all

Who: Nimona and YOU!
What: Recovering and regressing (thanks to the flowers)
When: September
Where: All over the ship
Warnings: Game-typical angst; more warnings will be added if needed

(1) a feather on the air

Nimona doesn't spend much time as a human right after the big tournament. It still makes her itch. So there are a whole lotta pink animals flitting around the ship for a while -- a rat here, a bear there, a lizard sunning itself on a railing, a rabbit gnawing industriously on the nearest piece of wooden furniture. An enormous whale breaching off the starboard bow of the ship. Maybe an octopus sipping a milkshake by the pool, as it reads a library book with one tentacle and draws mustaches all over the pictures with another.

(And a horse probably thirty percent of the time. She's still gonna play that long game, even if she's pretty sure her cover got blown when she freaked out all over Edgar.)

(2) dreams are sweet until they're not

Within a week and a half, though, she's feeling okay enough to shift back to human for a while. She's got heists to commit, after all!

Well. "Heists." Going through the motions of paying for things kinda puts a damper on it. And honestly, her heart's not really into the attempt, anyway, as she sweeps an entire rack of personalized souvenir keychains into a sand bucket and slouches toward the side of the ship.

Threading her legs through the lower bar of the railing, she takes a seat, folds one arm over the top railing, and starts listlessly chucking the keychains into the ocean one by one. This isn't brooding. This is a good old-fashioned proper mope.

But hey, maybe you can get a keychain with your name on it if she doesn't empty the entire bucket first?

(3) i remember fields of flowers

And then the flowers start to sprout.

They're... actually kind of pretty? Not that Nimona would admit it, but seeing them unfold from the decks and the ceiling cheers her up a little. There's something about the tiny blue and purple ones in particular that she really likes -- enough to draw her closer one day while she's wandering around.

A little self-consciously, she leans in for a sniff.

And then, jolting back with a gasp, she vanishes in a rush of pink light that immediately darts out of view.

[Nimona's been hit by forget-me-nots! She's regressed to her earliest days of running wild in the forest, before she met any humans; she's more timid, will appear much younger if you spot her, and does not have a cynical bone in her body. Relevant (spoilery) scene from the movie is here.]

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The long-haired girl nods, still tentative, but gradually, a tiny smile begins to appear.

"Ylva," she repeats. "I'm Nimona."

She takes a small step forward. The human isn't running away! She's even positioning herself in a way that'd make it harder to run. That seems --

Oh, she almost doesn't want to hope, but it seems like a good thing.

Well, Nimona is better at speaking than Ylva was, when she was this size. That's something.

"Nimona," she repeats. "Did you just get here?" At this point she can only imagine that Nimona's been through the whole usual drill and then gone to hide in the flowers afterwards.

Nimona takes a second to parse that, then nods, quickly. "I did. Just."

She can't remember very much; only that she was in the forest, and then, mere moments ago, transported to the ship.

"Did you?"

"I've been here for... a while. A year. A little longer."

She shrugs vaguely. Time is not something she keeps close track of, and there's no seasons or anything here. It all sort of blends together for her. "Are you hungry?"

A year? But that isn't very long at all! Nimona's brow knits a little, puzzled, as she tilts her head.

...Maybe it's a long time for a human, though. Some creatures live such short lives that they hardly manage to see a season or two, let alone a full cycle.

All contemplation of this goes straight out the window as soon as Ylva asks her next question. Nimona brightens, nodding eagerly.

"Okay."

Ylva gets to her feet and offers Nimona her hand. "Do you like ice cream? There's a place here with more types of ice cream than I knew existed." This is, admittedly, not a high bar.

"Ice cream?" she echoes again. "...I don't know."

What's ice cream? It must be something cold, but something abundant, too, if there are so many different types. Which is funny, because the ship doesn't feel that cold!

She giggles a little bit at this thought, and readily takes Ylva's hand.

That Nimona does not know if she likes ice cream or not is not particularly surprising. Some places, it's rare and exciting and not just an everyday thing that anyone can have any time they want!

"It's really good," Ylva says. "Come on, it's this way." She pulls gently on Nimona's hand after a moment's pause to orient herself and the best path to Scoops.

"Okay!"

The human's being kind to her. The human's going to feed her and be friends with her! It's finally happening! And she gets to find out about ICE CREAM, too.

That is, truly, all it takes to earn Nimona's complete trust, and she goes where Ylva directs without the slightest hesitation or doubt. She's practically skipping, she's so happy.

Scoops is, for the sake of simplicity, not far. Ylva leads Nimona to a stool where she can see the expanse of colourful flavours, and lets go of her hand in order to go hunting for spoons.

"See one you want to try first?"

"Ummmmmm."

The indecisive noise trails on for a few more seconds as Nimona stares. Cautiously, she steps up to the freezer and presses both palms -- then her nose -- against the glass, unable to fathom all the desserts in front of her.

Ice cream's so sweet it even makes the cold air of the store smell sweet. And there are colors she's never seen in food before: pinks and greens and blues so vibrant they look like bird plumage, pristine white like frost. One vat, the bright green one, has little brown speckles in it, and even with all the sugary scents mixed together, she thinks that's where a familiar mint smell is coming from.

She taps her finger against the glass, rapid as a woodpecker, to indicate the mint chocolate chip ice cream, then looks up at Ylva hopefully.

"Oh, that's a good one."

A taste is a good place to start. Ylva takes a single spoon and digs it into the ice cream -- with some difficulty, since it's relatively hard -- and scoops up a nice big mouthful for Nimona. She presents the spoon with all the serious fanfare she can manage.

"Mint and chocolate."

Nimona accepts the spoon, equally solemn. After another sniff, she licks the ice cream -- and gasps, eyes enormous.

Ice cream is...

ICE CREAM IS AMAZING THIS IS THE BEST THING NIMONA'S EVER TASTED IN HER LIFE THIS IS --

She doesn't even think. In a rush of pink light, Nimona dissolves into a glowing streak that darts further down the line of vats, laughing, ready to shove the spoon into the next brightly-colored tub of ice cream the instant she reforms in human shape. It's only when the spoon's an inch away from plunging into the food that she realizes what she's done.

She freezes. Slowly, tensed by sudden fear, she looks back to Ylva.

Ylva is surprised, but only for about half a second before she breaks into a broad grin, with nothing but pure, honest delight on her face.

"Oh, what did you do?" She claps her hands together, resting her fingers against her mouth. "Is it just... can you just fly like that or... what else?" Ylva takes a breath, because she's losing track of her words in her excitement. "It's okay. Can you show me?"

It's too late. She sees the human's smile, her eagerness, but Nimona didn't mean to slip out of human shape like that, and what did you do sounds so close to the frightened noises other animals have made when they saw her change, and she's so embarrassed and afraid that she wants to shrink down into nothing --

The spoon clatters to the floor as Nimona dissolves again, the ribbon of light streaking out of Scoops at top speed and vanishing into the highest point of the Promenade's ceiling.

"Wait, no, I mean --"

Ylva stops, and takes a breath. This isn't going at all the way she wanted. She has almost no time, so she takes the first shape that comes to mind -- a bat -- and takes off for the ceiling in pursuit.

At first, it seems like Nimona may have escaped: there's no sign of the pink glimmer, no sparks refracting off steel and glass.

At first.

But there, in an alcove near the ceiling, a cat has tucked down as small as she can make herself. She tilts her head just the right (wrong?) way for a stray beam of light to catch her in the eyes; they glow, reflecting back a pale blue-green light for Ylva to track.

Ah, there.

Ylva flaps up and grabs at a ceiling beam with her little bat feet, comfortably hanging upside-down in a place where she can see into the alcove.

"Hi," she says. "You surprised me. I think you change shape a little differently from me, too."

The cat gasps. She shrinks back further, her eyes huge -- but within seconds, the shock transmutes to pure wonder as she stares at the little bat.

It takes no effort to shift a cat's vocal chords so it can speak in human language.

"You're like me," she breathes. Nimona risks padding closer to the alcove's edge; her smile emerges from hiding just as slowly, but shines as bright as the sun. "You're like me? Not human?"

"I'm not," Ylva says, "or at least... mostly not."

Not the exact same thing, but... a similar flavour. "Maybe a tiny bit human, but not enough to count much. I don't know if we're exactly the same but... we're at least really similar, I think."

She settles in, wrapping her wings around herself cosily. "I didn't mean to scare you off. I was... surprised, but in a good way."

Nimona can't help it: she looses a peal of laughter, as bright as her smile, and leaps off the edge of the alcove.

Before she's fallen more than a foot, she collapses back into that streak of pink light, instantly swirling and reforming into a bat just like Ylva. Still laughing, she loops around her. "You're like me!"

Seems like Ylva is more than forgiven for scaring Nimona away.

Ylva watches her dart around, delighted and fascinated. She drops from the ceiling, catching herself on the air to swing in circles as well.

"You never met anyone else who can shapeshift?"

"No! Just me!"

She turns a tight corkscrew around Ylva, beaming.

"Always just me." The smile loses a little of its footing, but soon enough, it's back. "Until now!"

"Well," Ylva says, firmly, "you're not alone anymore."

She swoops down lazily through the air, trusting Nimona to follow her.

Not alone anymore. Oh, this feeling is too big to contain in such a small body; laughing, Nimona stretches her wings, and keeps stretching them as they sprout feathers and she reforms as a hawk. Without hesitation, she traces the same path Ylva takes through the air.

She'll follow her new friend wherever she wants to go.

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[OPEN] September catch-all

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