retrospec | (no subject)

Meet Berry. Berry's something called a Pokémon, which seems to be shorthand for "we needed something to call our rpg monster friends that sounds a little less like we're going to take up a sword and hack them down for experience and quest fulfillment." He's a Sneasel. I don't know why he's called a Sneasel. I guess Sneacat was already taken. He loves snow, attention, and eating all of my food.

At the passing suggestion of a friend of mine (hi Dave) and with the help of my impulse control, I decided to spend a semester in college learning sign language to see if that was something I could teach my trusted magical creatures. Berry here was my prime test subject because of a distinct presence of hands and because he's a nosy jerk that reads my texts. He definitely has the intelligence for something like that, or so I thought, anyway. Even without any help, he's pretty good at expressing himself. They all are.

Anyway, the answer is yes. He can absolutely learn whatever he wants. The problem is that all he wants to learn is more creative ways to demand that I feed him. I'm not sure what I expected from the magical cat weasel.

The real punchline is that I learned that there are magical people that can just read these guys' thoughts and memories. All that work, just to find out some guy that was in my world once can just peek into their head like it's google. Unfortunately, I'm not one of those people, and sign language is actually pretty neat to learn. I'd have to take way more classes to make learning it into anything worthwhile, though, and I'm already regretting the price of college tuition.

I've been thinking about regrets a lot lately. I regret getting spray paint on my favorite shoes. I regret that time in fourth grade when I underestimated high tide and lost my backpack. I regret not sharing masterpieces from regretsy with more people before their site went down. I regret going out to the frozen north like anything good ever happens in cold places like that, and I definitely regret buying nyquil instead of dayquil.

I can think of dozens of others, but hey, let's level the playing field here. I'd like to hear about other people's regrets here on the internet, where hundreds can hear. Maybe we can all appreciate our collective errors together.

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[ WHAT.

... I mean she's driving, so she doesn't respond before she's pulled up into the driveway and now makes her way to the door, heads on in, shuts it behind her and calls out to the manor at large ]

I'm back!

[There's a brief pause, but he does eventually call back down-]

Welcome back!

[Before slinking back into the room and sitting back on the spare bed inside. In hindsight, it might have been better to slide in through a first floor window. He's not liking the idea of those stairs right now.]

[ . . . Oh, he's not coming.

. . .

Well, then time to go up and see him, but, ]

You're not too ill to move, are you?!

I had to get here somehow. Maybe I just like it up here.

[Which... Isn't a lie, for the most part; he's been stubbornly working his way through most of the day, but that doesn't necessarily mean that he should be. What he probably should be doing is lying in a bed and sleeping for the discernible future, but instead he sits straight and pulls his coat over himself, like it just isn't all that bad.

The icy blue marks that vaguely resemble the fractals of snowflakes have spread across a good portion of him are much more of an indicator of how bad things are anyway; although they started on his shoulder, they've since moved all over his left arm, near his heart, and are even starting to creep up on his cheek.]

You have a key, don't you? If I've forgotten to give you one, I need to get you one.

[ It's entirely possible that it slipped her mind. Either way, she gets up closer to Silver and makes to get neat him. Still... she sees the glowing snowflakes. She's... not even sure what-

She makes to roll up his sleeve, her eyes widening when she sees it on his neck and cheek and - yeah. ]

I wonder what a good color for a key to your place would be. Purple?

[That doesn't seem very creative. He doesn't think to suggest anything else, however. Elda's checking out the obvious, and he pulls his arm back and works it out of his coat to show Elda. The less she's touching it, the better, and he looks away as he speaks.]

It's a gift from Magatus. One of the locals said it's a curse.

[Magatus. Not the Frozen North or any other nickname. There's not much to his tone, but he doesn't seem particularly flippant or dismissive about it. On the other hand, a glowly magic curse should probably warrant significantly more alarm than he's giving it, not impassive acceptance and a moment to rub his eyes.]

[ Oh balls she's really forgotten? She starts to say something else until her eyes widen at both "curse" and a better look at it?! Her hands pull forward, stop short, and then pull back before, ]

Holy crap Silver, you got cursed?!

Yeah. It's a pain, but it'll pass eventually.

[Probably. Maybe? He's not exactly an expert in supernatural curses.]

Relax. It's not the plague.

- It's a supernatural curse?!

[ But it's... okay, she crosses her arms and scoots back a little, huffing! But she does want to dote more on him or force him into bed but she won't. For now. A little. ]