Event Log: Flu Season

[hadrielmods]

Who: All characters
What: The event log for the Flu Season event
Where: All over the city
When: March 20th-March 30th
Warnings: Gross sneezing, sick people, and paranoia

It starts with a cough, a sneeze, a sore throat - something small and simple, easily ignored. But then your symptoms get worse. It's probably been awhile since you've been sick, that sort of thing doesn't usually happen here. You might be able to raid the shops for some tissues and tea before it gets too bad, and hopefully you've got a friend to help out until you get better. Surely it'll be over soon, right?

Until the fever sets in, and you start to understand why your friend is really there. They don't want to take care of you. They want to make sure this is the last anyone will ever see of you. They want to learn all your secrets. They want to steal your most precious possession. You know they're plotting against you, you know they're keeping something from you. What will you do to find out what it is?

Then, as the sickness fades, you realize it was all in your mind. Let's hope you didn't do or say anything too awful. But that friend of yours... they seem to have picked up your cough. Maybe you should help them out?

► This log covers March 20th-March 30th.
► Feel free to make your own logs, as well
► Please tag headers of threads with content warnings where they apply
► Please put your character's name and open/closed in the subject line of your starters!
► If your paranoia ends in murder, please let us know here.

Comments

[abyssalarcana]

Well at least he doesn't look like she slapped him in the face, so that's good. Probably not some infernal spawn, though if his appearance relates in any way to actual age, maybe he just doesn't know.

"Thank you, yes, I would like one," she replies cautiously, still not completely convinced this isn't some devil sent to entrap, to spy on her, to discover her plans for this place and put and end to the Abyss' hold on this place before she can even manage to strengthen it. Slowly, she makes her way forward until she is within arm's reach of the bag and, while keeping an eye out for any wrong movement, bends down to take one.

Caedra isn't familiar with this style, hasn't seen a lozenge in a very long time - even in Hafeld, where she had been sick once or twice in that cold, damp city she wasn't acclimated to initially, she had made do with the local preference of mallow root and honey.

"They're better like this," she says as she sits down, back against the wall, and unwraps the thing before popping it in her mouth. Sucks on it for a bit. It's okay, better than nothing.

"So, Hayden-" her question is interrupted briefly by coughing, which she tries to cover with her arm. "Ugh... Where are you from?"

[demonsional]

Once Caedra has a cough drop and is sitting down, Hayden feels secure enough to sit down, too. He sits across from her against the shelves, though it's more of a nervous perch than a sitting position--or maybe he's just more comfortable that way because he's strange. Watching her unwrap the medicine, he carefully copies her, pulling it awkwardly out of the wrapper.

The wrapper disappears into a pocket and the treat inside into his teeth. The way his eyes light up, he has to agree--yes, it's better!--tough the effort it takes him to focus on not chomping down on it takes a lot of the young demon's focus.

"I'm...I'm from Hell. I'm from where demons are and dead people go."

[abyssalarcana]

Caedra had been watching him with curiosity already, sure, but that statement.

That statement.

She gives him a good look over and thinks about that because in her mind, that is not a thing that can be. He may as well have just said that devils are the revered children of the gods. Demons, to her, are not from the Hells, cannot be from there unless they are prisoners from the endless wars who have given up on ever returning home to the Abyss.

So she frowns as she makes sure she heard right, then cautiously asks, "Are you a demon or a devil?" She's not necessarily friends with many of her own kind either, the infighting is constant; but devils, with their regiments and tyranny, are among the most hated of enemies.

Perhaps one this young, though, can be raised and turned against its people.

[demonsional]

Whatever gravity his words had had, Hayden stays pretty oblivious to them. Or, at least, misunderstands. "I'm a demon," he tells her, his tone turning cautious. "Um, but that is, I'm not like..."

Hayden fumbles and stammers with his words, having a couple more starts before he settles on another explanation. "I was spawned in Hell but I was given a position in a less scary realm, so I was just...just a messenger!"

But it's clear that talking about his life before Hadriel has cranked up the minor paranoia he'd been suffering from before. Maybe that's easy to believe, however, being in a place surrounded by so many humans. "I haven't done anything!"

[abyssalarcana]

"I'm not accusing you, child, calm down." Of course he's done something, they all have, and surely she has done far more in her life that those poor fools call evil than this little thing has. She holds herself back as his anxiety shows again, because that nervousness, that begging, the fear of anyone greater than them, does trigger a deep instinct to just kill the pest and be over it.

It's easier to hold back when she's feeling like this, anyway. Hard to bother putting the energy into it.

Maybe he's just too young and too uninformed to really understand what has happened to him. Maybe he has lost memories of his true origins. Maybe he's lying. She sighs and tries once again. "What sort of demon are you, then? Why aren't you from the Abyss?" Can the Loumara be from the Hells? Perhaps that explains why their place of origin hasn't yet been discovered. The idea doesn't make an ounce of sense, but neither does what this child seems to be telling her.