What's this? What's this? There's weird shit everywhere | Day Four, Morning [OPEN]

[justbeclaws]

No one not intimately familiar with the library would notice, but there have been some rearrangements of furniture in one particular out-of-the-way corner. Said corner, and the burnished oak desk inside it, are screened from the stacks even more than they already were, inaccessible to anyone unwilling to climb over some extremely uncomfortable-looking chairs.

Or crawl under them, of course.

Her den arranged to her immediate satisfaction, the typewriter makes her way forth in search of something less immediately satisfying: the lay of the land. She wants to know where things are, including people (and people who are also things). And who knows, perhaps there will be information hidden somewhere about the house and its Keeper, secrets not even Mason knows.

It seems right to her that a moderately stealthy expedition (there's no reason to be stealthy, particularly, but she doesn't really trust anything around her) should take place in the morning. Whether or not she's right about this remains to be seen.

Comments

[Lounge]

[justbeclaws]

Upon entering the lounge, a part of her relaxes that she had not realized was tense. The library is where she belongs, her place, but this room - the soft whispers of the trees, the indeterminate lighting, the stars in the "sky" above put her at her ease.

The cushions also look incredibly comfortable...and in some cases, bounceable. She takes a running leap onto a particularly springy-looking one with a squeak of delight.

So much for stealth.

[aw yiss]

[bloodand]

She's stealthy enough, or maybe it's just that the music covers her approach. In either case, the couch next to the record player filling the air with melody?

It's kind of already occupied. The young man sprawled out across it isn't terribly large, so he hadn't been visible from behind. Indeed, half-buried in pillows, he's not particularly visible from the front either.

The pounce of someone else gets his attention, though, and unfortunately sends most of those pillows scattering to the floor. He's winded for a moment, then immediately shoves at the new arrival, his expression still more shocked than annoyed. "Get off!"

Re: [aw yiss]

[justbeclaws]

There was not supposed to be a person there! People are hardly bounceable at all. She gets tipped off the couch without much protest, although she carries more of the pillows with her. So she gets a soft landing eventually, at least.

"Sorrrry!" she says. "I didn't see mew therre!"

[bloodand]

People are not bounceable, especially not mostly wooden people. He sits up, still obviously annoyed in spite of her apology. A couple of the thinner strands of wire that serve as his hair catch in the upholstery, but he doesn't seem to notice.

"What are you doing here?" It's more of a demand than a question as he looks her over, not really finding anything familiar (except, maybe passingly, the keyboards on her ribs).

[justbeclaws]

"Expurrrring," she says, looking him over right back. He looks not unlike her, clearly another object, though she can't tell what. Maybe his spinning eyes have something to do with it...

She hasn't yet gotten in the habit of looking for people's other selves, so she doesn't notice the record player.

"Do you want to help?"

[Hearth Room]

[justbeclaws]

This room gets the Full Sneak Treatment, although there's no really unobtrusive way to descend a long flight of stairs. Still, she can't help feeling that anything so deep within the house must be important and thus deserving of great care. So she tiptoes down the steps, into...a room that ought to be an anticlimax. It isn't grand, or even comically huge; there are no implements of torture, no tomes of forbidden power, no heaps of gold and jewels. It isn't an anticlimax, all the same.

"Hello?" she calls quietly, feeling a hush settle over her. This is someone's Place, and it isn't hers. "Is anypawdy herre?"

[fireband]

A figure startles at the front of the hearth, kneeling in front of the flames, their body cloaked in a thick red blanket with their head covered, as if by a hood. They're just placing another log in the fire as she calls out.

He glances back at her just long enough to reveal a flash of bright orange eyes, hissing with surprise as he pulls away. He immediately puts his back to the walls, bundling the cloth up around him defensively.

[justbeclaws]

Her first instinct is to hiss back and crouch to defend herself. She regrets it almost immediately. Whoever this is, they're more scared of her than she is of them. Probably. She's not scared, just duly cautious.

"Hey," she says quietly, backing away to give them some space. "Sorrrry about that. You starrtled me. Arre you okay? Can I help? ...Do you talk?" It seems a fair question. Most non-people-shaped things, herself included, seem to talk, so why not the reverse?

[fireband]

The fire in the hearth flares more brightly, the flames suddenly growing in size and intensity. The man beside it holds his stance, for the moment, pulling down the hood of the blanket to show his face.

"I didn't think anyone was here," he says roughly. "I'll go."

[justbeclaws]

She...she knows that face. Doesn't she? She remembers that face, only it was different - more like hers, less unearthly glow. And it was smiling. But she does know it, she can't be wrong this time - can she? Those horns...

"I - I know you," she says. "Frrom somewherre else. Don't I?"

Maybe she's just going crazy, seeing familiarity everywhere. But she couldn't live with not asking.

[Dining Hall]

[justbeclaws]

She pads curiously into the Dining Hall...and stops in her tracks, staring at the immense furnishings. If the Keeper typed on her (which she knows they did), this size couldn't have been normal for them...could it?

"Well now, this is just rridiculous," she says, dinging again.

[fuzzyduck]

The Dog Girl is in the Dining Hall for entirely different reasons. She's hungry, goddammit, and she feels uncomfortable with the idea of simply going out and... hunting. She's a person, right?

She can probably use her claws to climb the furniture - or maybe even jump that high, though that might require her to-- who or what the hell is that? Certainly doesn't look like anyone who should be in here.

Even if she realises she might want to make an effort not to be hostile to strangers by default, the girl is already growling quietly at her.

[justbeclaws]

A growl behind her makes her spin round, automatically registering it as a threat, maybe one of those too-lifelike murals...But no, it's just another person about her size. A dog person. She isn't sure she likes dog people, especially not ones who are growling at her.

She snarls right back, a sound she would be hard-pressed to duplicate in type, so she hopes it's never called for.

whoops i don't have an icon for this yet

[fuzzyduck]

If the other one had responded differently, maybe the Dog would have backed down, or even offered a more casual greeting. Who knows?

But as it stands, her attitude is reaffirmed. Her shoulders tense up and she takes a step forward, growling at the intruder. The urge to pounce bubbles up to the surface of her skin, barely held back.

cats and dogs NOT (yet) LIVING TOGETHER

[justbeclaws]

It belatedly occurs to the typewriter that, while she wants to fight this person who keeps threatening her, she doesn't exactly know how, and this dog person probably does. This could end badly.

Still, no way of getting out of it now. She puts her hands on her hips and tries not to feel so small. "What do you want?"

[automobile_enthusiast]

"You can say that again." His voice comes from above her, low and sounding more than a little disgruntled. "I never thought it'd become such an excursion just to get from slagging food." And if he sounds annoyed, well, he is-- he hasn't been able to shake a strange unease at the mere concept of eating, solid food, three times a day, despite the fact that he's sure he's dined with the Keeper before.

Positive. Really. He had to have-- didn't he?

The fair servant is perched on the seat of one of the massive chairs, peering down with bright black-and-red optics. At his feet is a heap of-- linen? It looks like nothing so much as a blanket, although an astute eye would note that the linen blanket matches the dressing on the table in color and texture.

[justbeclaws]

"Therre is food up therre, though?" she asks. If there isn't...she'll probably climb it anyway, to prove a point, but it won't be nearly as satisfying.

She waves, as well. "Hello! I've neverr seen you beforre. I'm a typewrriterr."

[automobile_enthusiast]

He laughs, and salutes her jauntily. "A feast, my dear, fit for our Master but left to us, eir poor servants-- presuming we can get up to it, that is." He turns enough to glance up at the surface of the table, several feet yet above his head even from his spot on the chair.

Kneeling at the very edge of the seat, he peers down at her. "A typewriter, are you? You don't look much like one."

[justbeclaws]

"Well, you don't look much like a whateverr," she replies, looking the chair and table over carefully. It's an elaborately-carved set of furniture, so if she climbs up the curved table leg there, and then gets a foothold there, and then...

She takes a running jump, springing up onto the table leg where it curves almost flat, and uses the momentum to launch herself at the chair. It...almost works; she ends up clinging precariously to the chair leg, unable to shift her weight without falling.

"A little help herre?" Her one free hand flails helplessly above the edge of the seat.

[crabhammer]

There's a crab monster slowly descending one of the legs of the table, his four sharp-ended legs wrapped around it – he's about eight feet across, but in relation to the disproportionately large dining room furniture he looks like merely a largish white beetle.

A largish white beetle with an oversized bread roll grasped in his claws, that is.

Getting up, it's turning out, was easier than coming down, especially with something in his claws, and his already inelegant descent fails when, about ten feet off the ground, one of his legs slips – he loses his grip of both the table leg and the bread roll and falls the rest of the distance with a clacking screeching sound.

When he starts to pick himself up off the floor, he's a boy rather than a crab monster, and he has no two-foot bread roll, because it is rolling to a halt at the typewriter's feet.

[justbeclaws]

That answers the question of whether or not there's food on the table! Though she won't, she thinks, be getting up the way he did. It doesn't seem to have worked out well for him. But if he's picking himself up, he's probably okay.

She picks up the roll in both arms and carries it over to him. "Thrree out of ten," she informs him, "but eight forr sound effects."

[crabhammer]

"Fuck," he mutters, brushing crumbs out of the carapace joints on his lower arms. He doesn't notice her approach until she's literally handing him the bread roll.

He looks up at her, squinting suspiciously, but reaches to snatch it back from her anyway.

"Hey screw you," he says, "I'd like to see you do a better job."

better late than never (nefur?)

[armedanddangerous]

Fifteen feet above her head, Squawky Man can't hear the typewriter or her dinging because he's too busy eating the food that's been so conveniently provided for them. And by "eating" I mean "tearing it to pieces and throwing the greater portion on the ground", because in no universe are birds neat eaters, especially changeling birds who were never human in the first place. From her vantage point, the typewriter should be able to see scraps of bread and vegetables falling haphazardly from the ceiling in what's effectively an edible interior rainstorm.

if aaaaaaall the raindrops were lemon drops and gumdrops~

[justbeclaws]

"Even morre rridiculous!" she says, this time with some glee. She hurries to take up a position underneath a chair close to the center of the foodshower, from which shelter she darts out to catch anything that doesn't look too particularly chewed on.

"Hey!" she shouts, after a few rounds of this. "Arre you going to add some meat to the menu some time soon? It's good furr yourr muscles!" Also she kind of hates most of these vegetables.

[armedanddangerous]

The foodstorm halts, and a minute later a red crested head peeks over the edge of the table. It's not really possible for birds to scowl, but if they could, he would be. He fluffs his feathers, clacks his beak, then says sourly, "Depends. What's in it for me?"