nightlogs | welcome to the party, pal

[Monster girl. The one who said she was a monster that fought monsters. It gives him slight pause to see her. He'd already known that she had to be the one that had gotten him out because who else could've done it? She was there when he lost consciousness.]

[But there is also a knife to be concerned about. He scrambles for it, awkwardly manipulating it to cut a big enough hole to slip it inside with him. From there, it's a lot easier to use to cut the netting from his side of it.]

[When the hole is big enouugh he climbs to his feet and stumbles out. The stumble turns to his leg just folding under him. Even his hair is tired. He tries to reach it up towards the rung of a work table, but it just flops over before he can reach and goes limp. He retracts it, stumbles a few steps to press his back against a table leg, grasping the little blade in his hands.]

[Where is he even going to run to? They're just going to hunt him down. And even if he was able to, by some miracle, get his hand one of the (magic?) globes, what are the chances he can hunt down the kid and bring him along? He can't leave a kid behind with people that will force him to fight.]

[He clings had to the knife, holding it up despite its awkward size. Dan was right that it gives him some security. At least if someone tries to grab him he can hurt them.]

Oh, ha, yeah, big accident, right? Whoops, accidentally left me to get eaten.

[He shoots at Dan:]

Because there absolutely are carnivorous kids. The little kids with the pointy hats. I woke up to find out someone fed me to one and they were chewing on my head.

[That is freak behavior.]

And people don't - they don't believe me that someone fed me to them, like kids just randomly do that on their own. The big people back home used to have to teach their kids it was okay to eat us.

Well, it ain't okay to eat you. Not where I'm from, at least. And I'm a vegetarian. [Dan sits cross-legged, like Stacia, a few yards away from the net as he watches Branch work his way out. Even sitting, they both absolutely loom over Branch, but at least this demonstrates no immediate intent to capture or squish or eat him.] Converted to it a few years back.

[He fell off that wagon in the Wilderlands, but he figures that hardly counts. Turning down game meat would have been self-destructive and shortsighted.

He figures it's just pedantry to try and convince Branch that the elves aren't little carnivorous kids.]

And Stacia won't be feeding you to nobody neither. I'm sorry for the way your time here started. That sounds terrifying. No wonder you booby-trapped the place. [Dan looks around at the evidence of the chaos.] Look, I believe you that someone tried to feed you to a kid. I seen people do a lot of fucked up things and that might would be in line with some of them.

[Oh, there's an elf here who's in trooooooouble. Stacia breathes slowly, trying to keep her Rage dampened to reasonable levels that won't terrorize the guy further. She'll come back to the apology later, he's clearly not willing to hear it right now; not until his grievances are resolved.]

I'm not a vegetarian, but I'm strongly against eating anything smart enough to hold a conversation. We've got Jack, the guy that brought us here, working out which of the elves assaulted you. [A word she has chosen very deliberately, to show him how seriously they're taking this.] Because that's not acceptable behavior here, and we don't want it to happen again.

[Branch looks deeply confused at the fact he's receiving empathy. That people would say that eating him is wrong and believe him that something more nefarious might be afoot. That they'd try to find which Elf was guilty of chewing on him. That she'd call it "assault" instead of downplaying it.]

[That they'd want to prevent it from happening again.]

[Little by little, he lowers the knife just a tiny bit.]

They...they seem like kids. [They sure panic like them.] So it's really the fault of whoever told them it was okay to eat me.

I mean, kids don't just shove things in their mouths on their own. [A pause.] Troll kids don't anyway.

[He starts to wonder if the same goes for...for whatever the pointy-hat kids are. (Human kids?)]

[Being listened to is giving him room to process through the things he might have tried to reason through if he'd felt less panicked, a process started by Tim trying to get him to actually think.]

[Dan resists the urge to point out that lots of species will just randomly stick things in their mouths, and that that's why certain toys need to be baby-safe, because that, too, is aside from the point. The point is that Branch is already willing to extend grace to children he hasn't met.]

The elves...they sometimes need things explained to them a little heavyhandedly. We'll deal with the elf and make sure it know it ain't okay to eat no one.

[Dan opens his hands to show his palms, free of any weaponry.]

You look like you cut yourself up a bit. I'd like to offer to patch you up, but I understand that's asking a lot of trust from you, so in the alternative - can we get you some fresh ribbon and bandage for that injury on your leg?

Yeah, the elves are...

[It would be rude to say "about as sharp as a bowling ball", and she's not sure if this guy would know what she was referring to anyway. But the electrical outlets are suspiciously high up on the walls, and Stacia doesn't think it's just so the yeti have an easier time reaching them.]

...let's just say that they're as surprised by their own decision-making process as anyone.

[That's close to diplomatic, right?

Stacia raises her empty hands when Dan does, but since the guy knows she can have claws whenever she wants, she plants them palm down on the floor to either side of her, far enough away that she clearly isn't going for something in her pockets or anything behind her.]

I have everything I need in my supplies.

[He points. Everything got dropped in about the same place, both the supplies he already had from the first exchange, and the supplies he was being given. Two bags perfect for his size, probably taken from some Barbies.]

They said there were bandages in there. I told them to cut them down to my size.

Throw the bags near me.

[It won't take much for one of them to reach over and grab them and lightly toss them close to him.]

[If they really don't mean him harm, they'll just do what he says, and won't use it as an opportunity to come after him.]

[He's testing boundaries.]

[Dan stifles a snort at Stacia's description of the elves. It's not their fault they have brains the size of grapes.

Dan gets up slowly so as to not startle Branch, then grabs the bag and hacky-sack tosses it over. He doesn't approach. Pulling people out of their shell takes time, and Dan is a patient man. He sits back down.]

[Stacia doesn't move while Dan gets up and goes for the bag. Which means that she has to balance between "not moving" and "not sitting so still that it makes her seem like a predator ready to pounce". It's easier when she talks, but she also doesn't want the guy to think that she's trying to distract him from Dan. Valuable skill, that.]

[Branch slowly puts the knife down and crawls over to snag both bags and bring them closer. The one bag has the new supplies he asked for, the old one has some from the first drop, and some he collected on his own.]

[His eyes occasionally looking up from what he's doing to peer suspiciously at them, making sure they're not moving, he unties the ribbon and peels it away from his leg, wincing the entire time. The bandage underneath is completely soaked in blood. Then he unties the original bandage. It was a good bandage, tied well, it's just completely useless now.]

[As he gets to the layers closest to the skin, he can't help but let out an involuntary nngh and looks like he's close to passing out. It isn't the sight of the blood or anything, just the dizzying pain already hitting a body that is close to collapse.]

[But he manages to get it off. Sweating and looking like he's barely holding it together the entire time, he uses some of the little vial of water he was given and some tiny bits of gauze to clean it, then pulls out something odd - a little plastic stick piece from some kind of Lego kit covered in a sticky white substance. Branch had spotted and collected a rarity in the Pole - a spider web. Probably caused by some tiny hitchhiker that found its way there in some of the toy-making supplies brought from all over it. He slaps the web on the injury, then wraps and ties off a bandage.]

[It's well done. You don't live alone and forage in a forest full of predators without learning some self first aid. His lack of hesitancy - and knowing spider web as a home remedy - suggests a level of self-sufficiency.]

[When it's over, he cleans his hands off with more water and gauze and tosses it aside. He's sweating and even paler by then.]

[And he looks even more confused.]

I don't understand you. You don't have to engage in all this pretense, you know? With pretending to help me. I mean, I can't stop any of you from killing me.

[He shakes his head slowly.] That's just how it is with big people. At least back home.

You look a little different but you're still a lot like the Bergens.

[He's confused - and calm enough - to actually talk now.]

[He hasn't picked up the knife again.]

Edited 2023-09-01 00:29 (UTC)

[Dan's primary impulse is to try and get up to assist, but he's well aware that that won't be seen as anything but an attack, so he stays seated. His secondary impulse is to fidget, preferably with a cigarette, which is his go-to whenever he has to sit still longer than a few minutes, but that's both gauche at the Pole and would require him to reach into his pocket to retrieve something, and he knows better than to do that.

So he's quiet and mostly still as he watches Branch work, just occasionally softly flicking the aglet on one of his shoelaces to keep those perpetual jitters satisfied.]

Well, my answer to that is that we ain't in your home. We're all from different places, and we got to cooperate past our differences. I imagine you ain't met all the big folk there are, so you might could have gotten a, what's the term. Non-representative sample, what with them Bergens. [Dan isn't sure what a Bergen is. He glances at Stacia, curious if she knows.] Like you said, if we wanted to kill you, we could have might already, and we ain't.

[That seems more sensible than a platitude about how Branch could probably fight them off. There's no pretending there isn't a power imbalance.]

You look like you lost a lot of blood volume. I got some water, if you want me to slide you a glass. It'll help. I'll drink some first if you want to show it ain't poison.

[Stacia answers Dan's questioning glance with a shrug. She and the guy haven't had the chance to start trading vocabulary lessons yet; "Bergens" might just mean "big ones" or it might be what those people call themselves.

When Dan finishes making his offer to get water, she adds her own answer to the question.]

You're right. If this were a pretense, it would be exhausting. And, no offense, but there's no way you're calorically dense enough for me to put this much work into killing and eating you; even putting aside the whole I don't eat things smart enough to hold a conversation aside. Which takes some doing, that's a pretty big thing to put aside.

[She's trying to inject a little humor into the conversation. It usually works out well, so long as it hits rather than falling flat.]

[He huffs out a breath at "calorically dense" that almost is the ghost of a dark laugh. Almost.]

[Boy, but she does have a point, though. With how much trouble he's caused, if they intended harm they'd just come over and grab him or stomp on him.]

[Branch wipes the blood of his now-empty vial of water with a piece of gauze and rolls it over to Dan. It goes mostly in a straight line.]

You can fill that and roll it back.

[He doesn't demand Dan drink the water first.]

[He's quiet for a little bit, looking at them both as if trying to judge from their expressions if they're lying. But he thinks...maybe they really aren't.]

[And that means if they're trying to de-escalate things and come to some kind of understanding, they need to know why he flipped out.]

The Bergens are the big people back home and they did put a lot of work into eating us. They built a cage around the tree the village lived in and built their entire town around it.

They used to mostly come for us once a year on a holiday they called Trollstice. But sometimes in between. The adults built tunnels for us to escape through when I was a kid.

But they still looked for us. They dug up the tunnels as we were escaping, and kept looking for us even after we escaped. For twenty years. And almost killed the whole village when they found and caught us. They only stopped because our queen convinced them to finally stop hunting us.

That was a little over a year ago.

[They need to understand why he was scared. And why he might make demands. And why there are places he needs to be met halfway.]

[Dan pulls a small water bottle from his pocket - with all the layers he wears, he's always got plenty of supplies stashed in his jacket and hoodie and underlayers - and fills the vial. He rolls it back, then takes a drink of the remainder, even though Branch didn't ask for a demonstration.

He stays quiet during Branch's explanation, but he's listening and paying attention to how matter-of-fact Branch is being. That's how some people talk about horrible things that have happened to them. Just the facts.

He gives Stacia a smile. Her humor was well-calibrated for the scenario. Then he turns back to Branch.]

That sounds terrible. And recent. [Dan tucks his water bottle back into his jacket.] I'm sorry that happened to all of you. That won't be happening to you here.

[He glances again at Stacia, because Stacia knows the outline of why Dan is the way he is and what tragedies comprise his background.] There are other folks here who've been hunted down by folks meaning to wish them harm. Myself included. It's important to me that that sort of thing don't happen here.

[Stacia inhales deeply as the little guy begins his explanation, and breathes slowly through the rest of it. He doesn't need someone angry on his behalf right now, he needs someone who's listening to him.]

Yeah, what Dan said. This is normally the point in the conversation where I'd offer a hug, but... [She raise a hand and gestures, attempting to encompass the whole situation, from their physical difference to their significant size difference.] Yeah, I'd understand if you weren't up for anything that felt remotely like restraint.

[Branch is quiet for a little while, processing. He uses taking a drink of the water as an excuse to not talk.]

[Also he's really thirsty and dizzy.]

[He doesn't want a hug from a stranger, especially such a big stranger. But if she were his size...maybe.]

[In the face of such uncomprimising kindness, with people able to denounce what the Bergens did, his resolve and rebellion starts to finally break down.]

[He digs for one more rebuttal, one more attempt to catch them out as evil.]

That kid, why does he think he's going to be forced to fight? Is it true?

Which kid? There are a few of them here. I ain't met them all, but the ones I met are more keen on fighting than I'd like them to be. [Dan's trying to keep an eye on them all, but he doesn't like using the communicators and things are still a little chaotic. People have slipped under his radar.]

[Stacia muffles a laugh because this is serious, but:]

Yeah, no kids are going to be forced to fight. The first time I met Bunny, he told me that I should myself under his protection; regardless of the fact I can turn into a big scary monster or that I was almost legally an adult by human standards. It was really sweet, actually.

His name's Lucky. He reached out to me in secret to ask if he could go with me. He thought he was going to be forced to fight. I tried to take him with me.

[Which makes it abundantly clear why the Belief decided he would make for a good Guardian. Terrified, desperate, injured, and outmatched by people that were 30 times his size, he'd still tried to save a child he thought was being exploited.]

[A human child. A child big enough to be a threat, big enough to harm him if he decided to be as randomly cruel as any adult big person.]

[But...he believes them that they wouldn't make him fight. Why lie about it when it's something they'd be caught out over pretty immediately? If they were planning it, it feels more like they'd make excuses as to why it's okay. The kid probably has his reasons to assume the worst. Kids in terrifying situations often do and who knows what situation he came from.]

I think - I think I actually believe you.

[Even if the stupid Elf tried to eat him, even if an adult fed him to him, it was probably an isolated act. But that doesn't mean all the big people are okay with it. That they'll let it happen.]

[He suddenly buries his face in his hands to hide the complicated emotions that come next. The outpouring of grief that comes every time he becomes afraid like this because of what the fear is so intimately tied to. The tearful relief. The guilt over what he's done, including kidnapping Tim.]

[He doesn't sob and his shoulders don't shake but he clearly needs to work through it before actually facing them again.]

[Something else comes with the emotion, now that he's not dull with despair. Magical light starts to rise up his body and the more saturated colors follow after it. He's still a little duller than usual when it's finished, but it's nowhere near as bad.]

[He gasps his way through it all, then briefly knocks his forehead against his knees, as if having a little fit to exorcise the anxiety demons. Finally, arms wrapped around his knees, he raises his head to look at them.]

I want to talk to the Elf. I need to know if someone gave me to him.

[Dan gives Branch his space to fall apart and put himself back together. The trust they've been given is already so tentative; Dan's not about to do anything that could be seen as pushy.

He's had his meltdowns like this in the past. He's been lucky that it's almost always been in private, those times when it all hits at once, when there's just enough relief that the dam loses all its tension and breaks.]

We can make that happen. We can ask around and see if anyone else saw what happened when you were unconscious. [Dan gives a little nod.] You're looking a little better.

[Stacia tries not to fidget as the guy has a little breakdown. This is normally the part where gives someone a hug or a blanket or a snack or something, but she doesn't want to move suddenly while he's emotionally dealing with his shit.

Maybe they should find him a desk or something else heavy to hide under while he recalibrates; something the big people here can move aside.

Like I said, Jack's already talking to the elves. I think out of everyone here, he's probably got the best chance of getting information out of them. They don't exactly strike me as the stone-faced snitches get stitches type. Either the others in the know are going to rat out the responsible party, or the responsible party is going to start crying when Jack expresses disappointment in whoever did it.

[Case in point, they're joined by Jack, who walks up behind Stacia and Dan slowly, so Branch has plenty of time to see him.]

I found the guilty party. It was Bingle. [The Elf jingles up behind Jack and hides behind his leg, looking like he fully knows he's in trouble.]

[Jack crouches next to the other two humans there, so he's not towering.]

Bingle thought you were a toy. He and the other Elves are like little kids and I don't know about the kids of your species but human kids like to chew on things. We actually have to put age warnings on toys if they're choking hazards. The Elves are like that, too.

With the thinking you were a toy thing, it probably didn't help that I put you in the room of a dollhouse in the Infirmary. I was worried if I just left you on a bed on the ground you might get stepped on, or if I did it on a table or a ledge you might wake up and be too out of and fall off and get hurt.

Even despite that, Bingle [And here he turns and gives Bingle a stern look that makes the Elf cringe back slightly, not out of fear but out of shame] knows he's not allowed in the Infirmary without permission, but he saw me tuck you away through the doorway when we were fixing everyone up.

He thought I was playing with a cool toy so he decided to sneak in, in between between people checking on you, and take you for himself or at least play with you when no one was around.

[When Branch sees Jack walk up, Elf in tow, he doesn't go into a full panic again - Dan and Stacia have helped defuse that potential bomb - but he does dart around the chair table leg he was pressed against, limping around it to fearfully pear around it from the other side, just in case.]

[But what comes is a gentle explanation, not an attack, not an attempt to feed him to said Elf.]

So you're telling me he just decided to do it on his own. Nobody gave me to him?

[Branch sounds deeply skeptical but at Jack's gentle nod in response, he stands there, balancing on his good leg, clearly trying to work out if he believes him. Eventually, he sees enough of the genuinely contrite expression on the face of the Elf himself - someone small, like him, even if he's bigger in comparison - that he comes to a conclusion.]

[It's the one Poppy would've tried to lead him to at a time like this, even though hope is difficult and trust is even harder.]

[At the realization that maybe this hadn't needed to blow up as much as it had, he lightly knocks his forehead against the table leg and then slides to kneel there with his head against it.]

[He's completely spent at this point. He's exhausted by the situation and deeply exasperated with himself and his own clearly disastrous way of reacting to things, including putting someone in a cage.]

[He put someone his size. In a cage.]

[The situation could've not have gone any other way, given his paranoia. The inevitability of his reaction, how impossible it'd been to cut it off, how it really couldn't have happened any other way with a wake up like that, just makes him feel broken.]

So what now? [He still has his colors but his voice is flat.] Are you going to lock me up? The bergens do that if someone does something wrong. Do humans do that?

[His people don't. They don't have a jail. Their idea of justice is entirely reparations-based. If you've done something wrong, once the community calls it out as such, you fix it.]

I did that to someone else. I locked him up.

[It's very fortunate they don't plan to. Having that much control taken away, even for a relatively short time, would genuinely destroy the last shreds of any mental health he's clinging to right now.]

I don't lock people up. [Dan can't speak for the group, but there's a sternness in his voice that suggests that he's not about to let others lock people up either.] Ain't nothing you did worth depriving you your freedoms. Ain't much folks can do to merit that. I done enough jail time to know how worthless it is.

[Absent any other options, Dan will take imprisoning someone over killing them, but usually it doesn't come to that. Usually Dan's methods work.]

I reckon I'd like to ask you what you think Bingle ought to do to make this right. If you want my opinion, since Bingle didn't know no better, he ought to apologize and promise not to play with nothing again without checking that it ain't alive and willing. And then we can talk about whatever else might could help you feel safe here among all us giants. Do that feel fair?

I'll back Dan on this one. [Stacia jerks a thumb in Dan's direction and grins. It's a little toothy.] And I'm very good at getting other people to agree that doing things my way is less annoying than fighting with me about it. You were acting because you were scared, not because you were trying to be a jerk.

welcome to the party, pal

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cw: blood

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