Winter's Crest Snow Day [GP]

[st_ockandbarrel]

The Inn was decorated in, if possible, an even more outlandish style than usual. Garlands of evergreens and bright berries competed with gold angels and cheerful small grinning creatures with pointed ears and shoes. A large fir tree had appeared seemingly from nowhere and was now draped with lights and hung with colored glass balls. At the top perched a figure in white robes with wings.

It was, Percy mused, probably for whatever the local holiday was, but it was also close enough to Winter's Crest decorations for him to feel a bit homesick for Whitestone. After all, it was only a year ago that he'd been able to celebrate Winter's Crest in his home city for the first time in years.

Something was still missing - or rather, many things were missing but one thing that he could solve for. Winter's Crest called for snow, and better snow in abundance. To solve for that last problem, he turned to a gnome of exceptional talent. While he didn't know how Sarenrae's power worked, he did have complete faith in her cleric. And thus, together, they concocted a plan: to turn the weather to a more appropriate clime.

The morning of December 20th dawned as it often did in this place - heavy with clouds that would burn off before noon. The clouds were important. They would make the spell casting easier, and Pike knew that she needed all the help she could get. Weather magic was not her forte. Like all clerics with powers as advanced as hers, she knew the right spell but when you had a druid around, there hadn't been much need for her to use it.

Dressed in a warm coat and a big floppy, knit cap, she sat on the ground with her legs crossed. Holding her holy symbol in both hands, she concentrated on the sky. As the Celestial incantation took root, golden rays of light encircled her and rose into the air. With each heartbeat, she could feel Sarenrae's power drawing warmth from the clouds above and into her body.

It took ten minutes to cast the spell and another twenty minutes for it to take effect. The spell would fade if she didn't maintain concentration all day, but it was a small price to pay.

And that's how, before the sun had completely finished rising, it was snowing on the Madonna Inn.

Comments

Coby - OTA

[st_rummer]

London in winter had been more cold and wet than snow swept, and Coby had spent two winters there longing for sun in a land where people dragged out jackets and complained of the cold when it dropped down to the 70s. He did not expect to wake up a winter wonderland in what was supposed to be SLO.

After a lazy morning, then breakfast and plenty of coffee by the cafe fireplace, he eventually found his way outside. A big, fluffy patch of snow, untrammeled by snowball fights was too much of a temptation to resist, and Coby crossed his arms over his chest, closed his eyes, and let himself fall backward into the snow. As the first tendrils of cold wet started to snake under his collar, he manifested his wings spreading them outward along the snow for what he hoped would make the coolest snow angel ever.

The ground was cold, though, and lying on his back where his wings were attached wasn't what anyone would call comfortable. Just one problem. Now he was here, he wasn't sure how to stand up again without fucking up his snowy masterpiece. "Hey!" he called out to the closest person and reaching up with one hand. "Little help?"

Re: Coby - OTA

[st_oneswidow]

"You fucking goof," Curnen laughed, but she did as bid, reaching out her small hands. His wings were so beautiful like that, so black against the snow. It made her smile. It made her ache.

Re: Coby - OTA

[st_rummer]

Coby took her hands, but instead of using the support to help pull himself up, he tugged her down with him into the snow. Fuck the snow angel. He could make another one.

Re: Coby - OTA

[st_oneswidow]

Curnen squealed as she lost her footing and went down on top of him. She batted his chest with her fists, even though she was laughing the whole while. "You fucking goof!"

Re: Coby - OTA

[st_rummer]

"You like this fucking goof," Coby reminded her, eyes crinkling and twinkling with silent laughter as he wrapped an arm around her waist to keep her close.

Re: Coby - OTA

[st_oneswidow]

"I love this fucking goof," Curnen corrected, giving in and kissing his cheek before snuggling against him.

Re: Coby - OTA

[st_rummer]

The snow was deep enough to provide a cushion, the weight of both of them on the wings not immediately uncomfortable, and the feathers provided some insulation from the cold, but it probably wouldn't last. "This fucking goof loves you too," Coby added. "How does the mountain girl feel about snow?"

Re: Coby - OTA

[st_oneswidow]

Curnen smiled. "I think it's kind of adorable y'all are makin' such a big deal out of it. We bake in the summer, snow dumps on us in the winter. It's all there."

Re: Coby - OTA

[st_rummer]

"Yeah, but you expect it to dump on you in the winter. In a California desert, not so much." Coby'd never had a white Christmas (or almost Christmas) growing up. "Besides, it's something different. Enjoy it while it lasts, right?"

Re: Coby - OTA

[st_rangepalette]

Lillith had been contemplating an illusion, a complex moving scene. She had never tried anything like it, and so she had been sketching parts in the snow with a stick.

It took a few moments for the voice to reach her ears. When it did, it took her another moment to locate the body it came from. She crossed over to where Coby lay on the ground with large feathery wings behind him.

Her head tilted first one way and then the other before she decided that no, he had not crushed a large bird. "You have wings," she observed. "Are you a celestial?"

Re: Coby - OTA

[st_rummer]

Coby hadn't spoken to Lilli since the day she showed up, but it was hard here not to see people in passing. She looked like she was doing okay. Better than some people at least, but hopefully the inn had been kinder to her than Jag, for example. First a warm smile for a pretty girl, then Coby's mouth was already shaping a 'no' before he stopped and considered, deciding on a more truthful, "I don't know what I am any more. Maybe it depends what you mean by celestial?"

Re: Coby - OTA

[st_rangepalette]

"A being from an outsider plane who is wholly good. Some are--" She nodded to him. "Winged like you. Angels and deva and solars. Others are beasts like unicorns." She offered a hand down to him and planted her feet firmly so she could help him up.

Re: Coby - OTA

[st_rummer]

"I'm no angel," Coby told her as he stood with her help, a hint of grin to himself for the anymore he didn't add out loud. An outsider plane, that would be heaven maybe? "And I was born on Earth. About three and a half, four hours drive..." he paused turning slightly to orient himself, "that way, I think. If there was still anything there.

"The wings are, uh, a more recent development."

Re: Coby - OTA

[st_rangepalette]

Lillith studied him still more curiously. He had not had wings when she met him, she did not think. "Is it a new spell? A transmutation spell? Why did you not tell me you could do magic?" The questions came rapidly, but there was no anger in them. Only curiosity and excitement. If he could make wings, he might not be bothered terribly by her true shape.

Re: Coby - OTA

[st_rummer]

"I can't." But at least she knew about magic enough not to be weirded out that she'd seen his wings. "I woke up with them one day a few... not quite a year ago, I think. Time's weird 'cause of coming here. A friend said she thought it was fae magic of some kind. It took me awhile to learn to hide them." With a thought, Coby caused the wings to fold in and shrink back down to his tattoo, shivering from the cold that might have been half in his head or might have been snow-dusted wings melding into his skin. There were no cuts or tears in his clothes to show where the wings had come through, another part of the magic involved Coby couldn't explain.

"Where I come from, most people don't know about magic, or people who aren't human or not entirely. Big, black wings would either be shrugged off as hallucination, or get me locked up and experimented on. It was learn to hide them, or never leave the flat again."

Re: Coby - OTA

[st_rangepalette]

This, Lillith understood only too well. She nodded her understanding and then reached over to brush away some snow his wings had left on his shoulder. "They are very beautiful." She wished to ask if he could fly with them, but it seemed disingenuous to do so without revealing herself.

She frowned down at the small pile of snow on her fingers. With a whisper of a cantrip, the snow melted to water and dripped away. It was meant to be safe here for her. Still, she did not like to show herself in public this way.

"I wish to show you something. Will you walk a short way with me?"

Re: Coby - OTA

[st_rummer]

Coby watched the little bit of magic melt the snow from her hand. So many people here with magic. It was cool. "All you had to do is ask. Lead the way, and you can show me whatever you want." He'd let her get a better look at the wings if she wanted, after she had a chance to show him whatever it was she had in mind.

Re: Coby - OTA

[st_illfleshandblood]

"Sure," Jackson agreed, before he realized what he was seeing. It hit him as he held his hand out to grab Coby's, and even as he reflexively helped him up, he was staring at the wings. The enormous black wings protruding from his back. Not that them being smaller would've made him gape any less. "What..."

Re: Coby - OTA

[st_rummer]

"You think your mind's blown, try waking up with the mother of all hangovers with these things sprouting out of your back. Now that sucked."

The wings snapped out, knocking off most of the clinging snow before Coby folded them down along his back.

Re: Coby - OTA

[st_illfleshandblood]

Jackson snapped out of it, and finally pulled his hand back, only to move around Coby and examine the wings. "You mean they're new?" He assumed the hangover Coby was referencing was. Those would be difficult to hide, after all.

Re: Coby - OTA

[st_rummer]

Coby frowned, taking a minute to figure out what Jackson meant, then shook his head. "Not new today. An April Fool's day surprise last year that I had to learn to live with. And to hide, before some asshole decided to go Alien Autopsy on me." He turned, so Jackson could get a good look at his back, and willed the wings to fold back into whatever non-physical space they existed in when they were simply a tattoo, now hidden by his clothes that were completely intact despite the wings that had been there seconds before.

Re: Coby - OTA

[st_illfleshandblood]

Jackson took an instinctive step back when the wings suddenly folded... into Coby's body? And now his clothes were whole, and... No, this made no sense. "And here I thought I'd found a fellow boring human," he muttered, poking at Coby's back, and then sliding a hand over the surface where the wings had disappeared. "More magic?"

Re: Coby - OTA

[st_rummer]

"Not mine. I don't have any." Magic, he meant. "Best anybody can tell, they were some fairy asshole's idea of a fun prank. Give the too human guy wings." If Jackson took that to mean Coby had been, nothing more than 'a fellow boring human', that was fine with him. He was human, or had been. These days he wasn't entirely sure. What he'd been before Coby didn't change the fact he was born human.

He let Jackson poke. Doctor-scientist type, he'd want to see things for himself, and at least Coby didn't think he'd take any experimentation to the dissection level. "I got a tattoo. Wings. Morning after the guy put the finishing touches on it, I woke up with real wings instead. Sometime when we're not standing in the damn snow, I'll show you how they go back and forth."

Re: Coby - OTA

[st_illfleshandblood]

"Some time I'm not blind drunk, too," Jackson requested, and brought his hand down, walking back around to face Coby. "I'd appreciate it." He frowned a little. "You know if we got any'a those around? Fairy assholes, I mean." He'd rather do without brand new appendages, himself, and forewarned was forearmed.

Re: Coby - OTA

[st_rummer]

"Not any I know of." Curnen wasn't an asshole, and Coby wasn't going to out her as Tufa to anybody with what that actually meant.

"Sometimes felt like you couldn't go one tube station over without running into one in London, and okay, that's probably exaggeration, but I never knew fairies were real until I got there, and met some. And those were just the ones who didn't bother hiding."