imaginarylogs | prelude {{ Log 01.

Island Prelude ; Log 01

Life's a beach—

You wake up on the beach.

Okay, scratch that: you wake up on a beach. Some beach, somewhere. You don't know where it is, much less why you're there. You can feel the warm sun and a light breeze on your skin, along with the insidious prickle of sand worming its way into your fantasy Nikes. You have no memory of being here — but then again, you might not have any memory of being anywhere else.

At least you're not alone. There are other people scattered along this beach, toes trailing in the surf as they brush sand out of their shirts or shake seaweed from their weapons. Each and every one of them has an unremovable bracer locked around their wrist. Maybe you should get up. Lend a helping hand, or ask for one. Maybe somebody else knows more about the situation than you do. Maybe somebody else knows where that music is coming from. Is there a beach party going on?

—& then you d̵̡̪̻̿̽͒i̸̟͓͍͌̾͐ë̸͖͇̪́̔͊.

There's only so far you get before noticing that something's wrong, though. Even if you've got no memories but your name, something in you knows that trees aren't supposed to look like that. They're not supposed to be so . . . low-res. Right?

But these trees, not to put too fine a point on it, kind of suck. Some of them, anyway. Every few trees has one patch that flickers in and out of existence like an old neon sign. Every couple rocks seems to have spasmed and frozen up in one large pixel blob. If you touch these glitched spaces, nothing happens to you, but it certainly doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel like you're touching anything at all.

Looking back to the space you woke up, you might notice a pattern. The section of beach strewn with newly-conscious amnesiacs is exceptionally glitchy. There are a couple small patches of sky that seem to just be missing. And out at sea? There's way more of them out there.

If you're a strong swimmer, you might try swimming out toward the horizon. There's only so far you can go, though. After about half a mile, you hit some kind of resistance and blip back onto the beach. Watch the sea long enough, and you might see some boats making the same mistake — although they just end up closer to shore rather than beached, fortunately for them. Boats are expensive, and the barrier, whatever it is, seems to be doing its best not to damage them.

(Jaws Theme)

Walking up the beach towards the source of the music, you start to feel a little bit watched. Turn, and there's no one there. Just a quaint thatch-roofed vending machine with a strange cat face on the plate. Innocuous, though, and certainly nothing to worry about. So you keep going.

Except then you feel it again. And if you manage to pause in time, you'll hear this shuffling sound, like wood dragging through sand. Turn again, and the vending machine is right behind you. Like, right behind you. There's no way it moved fast enough to close that distance, and yet.

There are some options here. You can run — but it'll catch up. You can try to fight it — but you'll just hurt your hand (or other appendage). You can try to reason with it — but it's unrelenting. What it wants, as you'll soon discover, is to yeet a small bottle of dark, thick liquid at your face. It's also very insistent that you drink it. If you don't, it'll just fling another one at you, and keep flinging them, until you're crushed to death by vials or drink one, whichever comes first.

Everyone gets this treatment. The vending machine is never in two places at once, but its ubiquity might make it seems as though it is. When one inevitably breaks down and drinks the Kool-aid, it tastes just awful, but at least it's over and done with now. Surely this will never come up again.

This sparks joy

If you follow the music for long enough, you'll find yourself in easily one of the busiest places on the Island. The marketplace that spreads out before you is known as the Boardwalk, a fact that's easy to discover from any of the friendly locals. For most of you, these will be the first people you've encountered who didn't wash up on the beach alongside you. They're very fuzzy faces, too. The Animalians, a menagerie of anthropomorphic animals, almost all speak Common and seem pretty unfazed by the cluster of bewildered strangers. After all, new faces mean new customers!

There are a truly ridiculous number of things for sale on the Boardwalk. The predominant one is food, of course, and the smells hanging over the canvas tents and open-air stalls are positively mouth-watering. There are a wide variety of foods represented here. Maybe one or two of them will strike you as familiar, or trigger a memory? Pretty much all of them are delicious, though, so there's nothing to lose by digging in. Other goods include clothing, weaponry, art, and jewelry in a variety of styles. If you're lucky, you might find a tent that sells beautiful locally-made instruments — a Bard's dream!

Lack of coinage won't be too much of a handicap here. Barter is welcome, and should you not have enough to barter with, most sellers are happy to trade goods for services. It's highly likely that a newcomer or two will be found up to their elbows in dishes by the end of the night, or doing similar odd jobs for vendors.

Still, no one gets through an excursion to the Boardwalk without being swept into at least one dance. It comes out of nowhere: an Animalian's paw or claw on your elbow, a gentle nudge at the small of your back, and you're swept toward the gazebo, the source of the music that's been swelling all day and into the evening. It's joyous and captivating, the Animalians' love of dance infectious. Even buzzkills might be tempted to softshoe just a little.

What's this? What's this?

The Island seems to be sprouting miscellanea. Extremely distinctive weaponry stuck up a tree, books half-buried in sand or earth, clothing neatly folded or possibly being worn by an animal, or Animalian . . . At some point, it just becomes chaos. There's a great deal to recover, or to steal if that's more your bag. On the other hand, you might choose to be helpful and match belongings with their owners. You never know: a found item might help someone find the memory that goes along with it.

Just west of the Boardwalk, there's something else that might be familiar. At the center of a saltwater lake, easy to get to by rowboat, is a miniature island and swim-up bar. Each place is adorned by a menu listing strange and deja vu-inducing items, from nanchos to decaf espresso paradox. Some are helpful. Some are harmful. Some are just weird? He'll make you anything on the menu, but nothing more. Strangely, should you be overcome by the urge to ask the chef for something special and unique, he will gravely extend one of his tentacles and place a single, smooth, heart-shaped stone in your palm. The squid does not speak Common, but you understand an IOU when you're delicately, slimily handed one.

There's so much to explore here that, by the end of the day when you stumble back to the cabanas and attempt to sort out where you're going to collapse for the night, you haven't covered more than a sliver of it. There's tomorrow and the days after for looking around more, for stumbling across more of your belongings (or other people's), for discovering ruins and murals and memories. No matter how much time you take to fuss over sleeping arrangements, everyone ends up more or less in the same place: an open-air cabana, with the breeze blowing over them through the night and into the morning.

Everyone dreams — peacefully — of the moon.

OOC

Welcome, everyone, to the first Island log, our Prelude! While we will not be taking RNG requests during this log, we encourage you to stretch out, explore the space, and get your ~~sea~~ island legs. For questions pertaining to this log, go here. For general questions, head to the FAQ. For more places to explore in this first log, check out the Setting and NPC pages.

NAVIGATION ⯈

code bases by tricklet

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[She's not sorry.

She blinks up at him, all wide-eyed innocence. It might be convincing if he couldn't feel the undercurrent of satisfaction in her emotions as he tugs her more flush to him.

She sways with him, though, squeezing his hand a little tighter.] No fair? Fluffy cake seems pretty fair to me!

[This is just mean.]

You know what I mean!

[Squawk. That's a squawk, that's the sound he made. Hideous. Undignified. Awful.]

[He blows on her hair piqueishly, making it fluff up.]

You're no fair. [The pout isn't very convincing when he squeezes her hand back.]

[She beams at him again, which is also not fair but it's not on purpose this time. He's just cute! He's cute and it makes her smile!] Aww, come on! You said you wanted to dance too much!

[So it's fine if she's a little too much, obviously.]

I do! But.

[What is he even saying. There is no but. His posture relaxes all of a sudden, chin coming to rest on her shoulder with a soft sigh of resignation.]

Eh. [Eh.] Okay, I changed my mind, do whatever you want. I trust you. Dance me to pieces.

[I trust you.

She trusts him, too. That must be where this strange force came from, this magic that allows her to feel him. Maybe not in a literal sense, but— she wouldn't let most people know her like that. Not when the thought fills her with such instinctive revulsion.

She trusts him. Even when it's scary, she trusts him.

She tips her head as he tucks himself against her shoulder, looking at his too-close face with sudden wonder as a total non-sequitur clicks into place in her memories.] Mista.

Your name is Mista, right?

[There's this . . . wave. It hits her and passes through him, not just heavy but powerful, coming from the depths of the ocean. He closes his eyes against it, just for a moment, but it's still there. It's always there.]

[This is something he's good at, he realizes. Being trustworthy. Not just to her, but this is . . . for her, it's special. She trusts him with things she doesn't want anyone to know.]

[His heart does some kind of crazy acrobatics in his chest.] Yeah, [he hums, chest vibrating against her back as he talks.] That's me. I'm Mista. And you . . .

[This feeling of reaching out with hands he doesn't have to take hers, holding on, never letting go. Somewhere in time, he explains something to her, careful slow patient even as something howls in the world around them, something that means them harm, means her harm. Making sure she understands. That she understands. That Sayori understands.]

Sayori. [This is Sayori. She's part of his heart, huh?]

[The faint rumble of his voice in his chest is soothing; she feels it the same way she feels the drums of the music in her feet. It's a nice harmony. It's familiar.

She's already pretty thrilled that she got it right — that she actually remembered something concrete and important. Then, past a dark cloud of something she can't entirely grasp yet, a cloud through which she reaches for him anyway, he says her name too.

She lights up, bright and beaming as she squeezes his hand with the rush of joy. Her other hand lifts and alights on the side of his head — like she was going for his hair, but his hat is in the way.] Yeah, you got it! Good job!

[He lights up at the praise, squeezing her hand back around a pulse of joy at pleasing her. When she reaches for his head, he can't help but laugh around this weird memory-upon-layers-of-memory of her running her fingers through his hair.]

You can take it off. I'll just put it in my pocket for now.

[Leaning his cheek against the top of her head, he holds his hand out for her to deposit his hat into.]

You like my hair. I remember that, too. I don't remember shit but I remember your name and that, isn't that crazy?

[She laughs as he drapes even more onto her. There's a funny beat of hesitation as she grips the hat. Nothing bad, but she realizes — this hat is pretty important to him. Yeah, she remembers that.

So she's careful with it, and careful not to catch his hair as she slides it off his head and then slips it into his waiting hand. There's a thoughtful noise, somewhat exaggerated.] Hmmmm.

Maybe a little. But I think it makes sense if I touched your hair a lot!

[Which she goes to do again, and quickly concludes:] Yeah. It's really nice. It's all springy!

[She's sweet. This strikes him, although he isn't sure exactly why. She's sweet and she's thoughtful. He puts his hat in his pocket and then, quick as anything, melts under her touch, arms coming to loop around her waist. They were dancing, he's pretty sure, but they're not really dancing anymore. Hugging. This is hugging.]

Heh. Springy?

[Man, what does he do with that? It's a compliment, he thinks, or at least she likes it, so he should say thank you, but . . . well, nobody's called his hair springy before.]

[Except for Sayori, before. Probably.]

Yours is fluffy. [He knows because he has his face in it.]

[It's hugging. Maybe swaying a little? But it's mostly hugging. She's not mad about it.]

Yeah! [And she demonstrates this by tugging gently at one of the curls with finger and thumb; very gently, just enough to pull it straight. So that when she lets it go, it bounces back into shape. Thus:] Springy!

[Hers is not springy. It has a little wave at the ends, but spring it does not. Fluffy is pretty accurate, though. The familiarity of his face buried in her hair elicits another laugh, something she knows he must've done a lot.] Mine gets all crazy when I sleep on it. Normally I use strawberry shampoo, but it probably smells like the beach right now, huh?

[Sand. Surf. Probably some sweat. Very castaway chic.]

[Well, she's right. It is springy. Scientifically proven. Blowing on a wisp of her hair, he watches it fluff up in the wind and then descend into a slightly fluffier puff than previously.]

Yeah, right now it does. Strawberry shampoo is cute, though. Mine just smells like soap.

[Mista do you use body soap on your hair? Mista??]

[Wait.] Soap?

[He can't see her perplexed expression, on account of having his face buried in her hair, but her head does tilt slightly as if she's trying to look at him anyway.]

Like...just soap soap?

prelude {{ Log 01.

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