ioduanlogs | For to see Mad Tom of Bedlam, ten thousand miles I'd travel...

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For to see Mad Tom of Bedlam, ten thousand miles I'd travel...

Characters: Alice Liddell and You!
Date: Throughout October
Location: Aifaran
Situation: Alice's adventures in Aifaran
Warnings/Rating: Mentions of murder in the Spirit Scalpers prompt.

Dreaming Sickness [Early October - Open]

The Dreaming Sickness was a problem for many indeed. But for Alice, who'd spent nearly half her life inside her own head…?

She felt right at home.

It had initially been a surprise, of course - but however much trouble Alice had adapting to a more modern lifestyle, she had no such issues drifting in and out of her dreamscapes. It was almost second nature now, and at least it wasn't preceded by the blinding whiteness and migraines so many of her other hallucinations were. It was almost… pleasant.

Without question she hopped onto the oversized mushroom which launched her a good twenty feet in the air, and she glided daintily down onto the ledge of a building where she continued her commute to work, fragments of her Wonderland springing up around her as she went.

Commerce Affinity - Spirit Scalpers [Open]
It had been hard to find even one candle for the Night Parade - all of the stalls Alice had visited had run out hours ago, and people were packing up their things and clearing the streets. She really shouldn't have left it this late, but she had been wallowing in indecision for the past two weeks.

One part of her was skeptical of the whole affair - Alice didn't believe in ghosts. Not the kind that were being presented as so matter-of-fact at least. But this was Aifaran and stranger things happened every day - for Alice doubt was much easier than the dread of her family being among the Night Parade, and if they now hated her, for she still felt she carried part of the blame for the fire.

Bumby may have set it to cover his crime, but Alice had seen it, heard Lizzy cry out, and just thought it all a bad dream until she smelled the smoke and by then it was too late.

More horrifying to her than that was the fear the candle would draw the ghost of Bumby to her. He'd died by her hand after all.

When she bought the last candle off a dodgy, back alley peddler, she felt as though she really should have known it would be fake. The price was too exorbitant, the peddler too convenient. The flame had burned a brilliant blue with the Igheeri had lit it, likely having coated the wick in some chemical.

Alice stared forlornly at the normal orange flame, before blowing it out. The streets were deserted and it was well past dark - the parade would be starting soon and from what she heard, one did not want to get caught up in whatever marched through the streets.

It seemed she'd have to wait until next year to find out for herself if it was at all true.

Out and About [Open]

It was an odd feeling for Alice to have a purse full of money all to herself. While she'd had wages at Houndsditch, Priss's extortion and the funds for her 'treatment' under Bumby meant hardly any was left over for her. And she hadn't been working at the opera house long enough to enjoy her independence.

She was hardly affluent in Aifaran either, but she had some clothes that weren't second-hand - a tidy black dress and apron and sensible black shoes - and with food and shelter largely taken care of, she had some excess income of her very own.

She browsed the stalls, her frugal instincts preventing her from buying up every glittering bauble that caught her eye. She was no magpie after all. But she stopped in her tracks when she saw something that was quite a marvel - an electric keyboard.

"I've never seen a piano so small," she remarked, bending to inspect it closer. "Does it even work?"

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What's a squid to do with some free money? Why, go shopping, of course! Mostly for some clothes. Kai had the distinct impression that being fresh here was a lot different than back home in Inkopolis. The only solution to that was to sample the local fashions.

A question from the next stall over caught her attention, and she turned to look. "Aw, yeah, it's a keyboard!" she said gleefully. "Like Nautilus has in Ink Theory!" Saying that out loud sent a wave of homesickness through her. She had some of their songs with her on her phone, but it wasn't the same.

Alice blinked, momentarily taken aback. Was... was this sassy little child also some manner of aquatic creature? She looked like something that lived at Barrel Bottom. But this wasn't a dream.

Was it?

The last few weeks, what was real and what wasn't was becoming less and less certain.

Still, she recovered splendidly from the initial surprise.

"It is, indeed, a keyboard," she agreed. "But where's the rest of it? I'm no artificer but I'm fairly certain the keys are supposed to be attached to wires in a large body so the sound..."

She gesticulated, as if that could sum up the entire theory of sound in one motion. "...Resonates?"

"Yeah," Kai said, and took a closer look. "I don't see a plug or anything. Maybe it's the kind with batteries?" Not totally unheard of, but not what she'd have expected. "And it doesn't look like the kind you can wear like a guitar, either. What're those called again? Keytars?"

The concept of a grand piano, or even an upright, was foreign to her, because she didn't listen to that kind of music. If she saw a picture, she'd probably get it, but the two of them were on completely different wavelengths.

Alice's expression couldn't be any more bewildered. Batteries were massive things and she'd never seen a piano that needed to be hooked up to one. Keytar. A portmanteau of keyboard and a guitar?

"Wouldn't that be an accordion?"

They weren't just on different wavelengths, they were on different planets entirely. Fortunately, Alice was experienced enough with Aifaran that she was able to recognize that she didn't have the whole picture.

"...Is this some sort of electric device then? Like the yimo?"

Kai looked at her when she said 'accordion', a little boggled. "What? No! How is that like a guitar at all?" Accordions sounded weird, and that was the kind of stuff she didn't listen to anyway. 'Cause it sounded weird.

At the next question, the Inkling nodded. "Yep. The yimo doesn't take double-As, though." And she grinned at her own joke, showing her squidlike teeth. "It's kinda like my own phone that way. But this looks small enough to only be battery-operated."

The teeth would have been a bit unsettling had this conversation been occurring in the middle of the marketplace back home. But Aifaran was full of fantastic sights and people that Alice could only dream of. A child who was also some manner of ...octopus? Squid? Alice wasn't sure what the difference was.

"That's quite remarkable," she mused. Technology really must progress so rapidly from her time on.

"Did you want to buy it?"

If it really was a little piano, Alice wouldn't mind trying to recall her lessons. But she had no intention in standing in someone else's way - this child seemed more keen and knowledgeable of it anyhow.

(If you want to ask, Alice, Kai will explain the differences between cephalopods in great detail. Great. Detail.)

"Nah, it's all yours. I'm not musical at all, I broke my friend's guitar the last time I tried." That had been a disaster. Don't ask her to sing, either.

"I'm just super jazzed to see something like it here! Maybe I can find some new bands to follow, 'cause even though I can't play, I love music, heh." Kai fished her smartphone out of her pocket. "If you want, I can play some for you so you can see how it sounds. Maybe you could try playing some with that keyboard!"

Alice looked like she'd perked up a little - she definitely seemed intrigued by the flat rectangle from her pocket. She couldn't fathom how such a tiny thing could play music - even her music box once upon a time was twice this things size and all it could manage was a tinny little lullaby.

"I could - I'm better at playing by ear than reading music. Or I was. I don't know now-"

"Are you gonna buy it or not?" demanded the merchant with growing impatience.

"Yes, please," Alice replied, a bit breathless as she fished out the string of coins, handing them over. She'd never had money of her own like this, and getting to buy something absolutely, utterly frivolous that she just *wanted* was a bit of an experience.

She took the keyboard, holding it like it were some precious possession.

"I'd love to hear your music. I can ... try to follow."

While her nan had remarked that Alice had the potential to be the next Gilbert or Sullivan, she'd been six at the time, and she hadn't touched a piano since the fire. She was, probably, more than a little rusty.

Edited (html fail) 2018-10-28 22:10 (UTC)

Kai was thrilled that not only could someone play music around here, they were also interested in the stuff she'd brought from home. It'd been a stroke of luck that her phone had been with her when she'd come here. (Well, not really. She tended to have it on her at all times.)

"Okay," she said, scrolling through her music. "This one's pretty fresh! And it kind of...helped me out a lot when I was fighting." The Squid Sisters singing to distract DJ Octavio had helped her get those Rainmaker hits in.

"Check it," she said, and hit play.

Alice was taken aback by the utterly alien sound of 21st century music. It was absolutely like nothing she had ever heard.

Well, actually it only sounded like a lot of noise at first. But only at first.

Alice had a good ear for rhythm and melody, and while she doubted she could replicate it on a piano - even a small electric one - she found herself tapping her foot in time to the beat.

"It's very interesting - is it a sort of war ballad? I've read about those, how a long time ago, bards would get whole armies riled up with their music."

"It's more of a traditional song, but made really fresh," Kai said. "It's just so catchy that it distracted the guy I was fighting. So I guess that could be a sort of war ballad." Then she laughed. "I bet Callie and Marie would be interested to hear that! I don't think any of us ever thought about it that way. Music is kind of a big thing in our culture."

There had been three songs - the one Callie sang as a concert while she was brainwashed, the song Marie sang while trying to break her cousin of the brainwashing, and the song they sang together, helping Kai get the final hit in.

Alice was certainly intrigued. An entire culture of singing cephalopods? It really was like being back at Barrel Bottom trying to get a script from a cantankerous octopus that stank of a distillery and halitosis.

"...Out of curiosity, is hide-and-seek also a large part of your culture? Only that I met an octopus who was rather fond of it."

Kai tilted her head, thinking about it. "We can hide in our ink, but we usually do that during Turf War games. I haven't done hide-and-seek since I was little." A little Inkling, more squid than humanoid. She didn't particularly want to go back to those days, since she'd been feverishly waiting to reach latency so she could play Turf War.

At least she smelled better than that one octopus?

"Turf war...?" Alice repeated, as the merchant finished wrapping the keyboard up. She took the parcel, tucking it under one arm and thanked him as politely as she could without sounding too distracted.

"I take it that it's nothing like an actual gang fight," she said. She'd seen those, especially around the docks when Splatter and his gang got riled. There was always a body count when the coppers came to clean up the aftermath.

"More like play-fighting, right?" She added hopefully.

Trahearne was one of the few people out on the streets so dangerously close to the start of the Night Parade, carrying a white spirit lantern that gave off a steady warm light, dimming Trahearne's own natural purple glow by a few degrees.

Out of all the things that frightened Trahearne, the idea of being visited by ghosts hadn't bothered him one bit. He'd met lingering ghosts before, most of them prevented from moving onto the Mists by the interference of magic, but he also had his personal reasons for being so interested in this tradition. He was rather hoping that any spirits that came to visit him would be arriving as friends, but it was also tempting to linger outside and watch the spectacle, assuming those ghosts weren't shy. No one else seemed all that willing to watch, so perhaps they were.

Trahearne paused when he saw the girl standing down the street from him, holding his lantern up a bit higher. "Hello there! I take it you're not a spirit that decided to start the parade early?" She did seem awfully solid to be a ghost, but looks could be deceiving.

Alice might have been a ghost. Her sickly pallor and drab attire with only the violent green green of her eyes for a splash of colour certainly made it look like she wasn't among the living. If she believed in such things, she might have even questioned whether or not she was some wayward spirit.

"No, nothing like that," Alice said, stowing the counterfeit candle in her apron pocket. "I left things a little late is all."

Alice's dejected frown turned to mild intrigue.

"You're a plant," she blurted.

Trahearne stepped in closer, to a comfortable distance for conversation. Thanks to the spirit lantern, it was now much easier for him to see that Alice was flesh and blood, and it was a little bit of a relief. That meant he still had time to go indoors and prepare for incorporeal visitors.

"Yes, I am a plant, but I'm also a sylvari if you want to be precise. My name is Trahearne." He offered her a short bow, just because it seemed like the thing to do. The way she dressed wouldn't have been out of place among the humans of his world, and the familiarity was almost comforting.

"Are you heading in for the night? I believe the local ghosts will start making their appearances soon."

"Sylva is the Latin word for 'wood'," Alice said, as though she were reciting a lesson.

She did, however, curtsy in response. She recalled the garden in her dreams, and it always paid to be polite to flowers.

"Alice Liddell. It's nice to meet you, Trahearne."

She cast a glance over her shoulder at the deserted streets, and shrugged. Alice feared a great many things, but not ghosts. She wasn't even sure if she believed in ghosts.

"There's still time. I thought I might enjoy the peace and quiet a little longer."

Yuuko has by now gotten rather used to the odd dream incursions that tend to float around this place, and takes it in stride. She takes a seat on one of the mushrooms and has a small siesta from running errands, tamping some tobacco into her pipe and lighting it introspectively.

Alice may be surprised to see a tall, rather gothic woman wreathed in smoke comfortably seated on one of the mushrooms, but then again, it may just fit right in with the imagery of Wonderland.

Edited 2018-10-20 12:34 (UTC)

Alice blinked, rather taken aback. While Khu Ioduan was full of strange and unusual people, Yuuko looked like someone Alice could easily concoct in her mindscape. Tall, elegant, the sort of clothing Alice secretly wished she could afford.

"You're not the Queen," Alice remarked, because Yuuko did resemble some aspect of the Queen of Hearts, albeit distinctly lacking the tentacles. "Are you one of Caterpillar's friends? ...Or are you real?"

Edited (phone autocorrect can eat my booty) 2018-10-28 21:20 (UTC)

There is a long, introspective puff on the pipe.

"Hmmm. Well, I have not been accused of being a Queen, so no. I don't recall any Caterpillars recently, so I guess I must have to be real."

The smile she offers Alice is possibly not terribly reassuring, but she is being quite honest with her answers, and she is intrigued by the young lady's visions. Her head tilts, a long sweep of hair emphasizing the movement as she looks at Alice thoughtfully.

"And you? Are you real?"

Yato likes browsing the shops too, always on the hunt for good luck charms (though he is now particularly wary of those crafted by Erol'ans) and other luck-enhancing goodies. But he overhears Alice's remark about the keyboard.

"It might," he said, coming closer. "But usually those kind need to plug into a wall-socket, or run on batteries. This one's small enough it might be batteries," he added.

"I imagine batteries here must be much smaller than the ones I've seen," she said, gesturing at about half her height to indicate the size of them.

"But I've never imagined a piano to need such a thing.

She pinched the bridge of her nose and shook her head. "Things must be very different in the future."

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For to see Mad Tom of Bedlam, ten thousand miles I'd travel...

Out and About

Re: Out and About

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this is totally not an excuse to play Splatoon 2 music

there is no need for an excuse to play splatoon music.

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Spirit Scalpers

Re: Spirit Scalpers

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Dreaming Sickness

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Out & About

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