I saw Mommy kissing Samba-Claus (KISS BINGO EDITION) 💋🌿

[beleos]

QIASU (HIGHSTORM)

On December 15th, the marker of the latter half of Takiltu, Kenos comes together to celebrate unity and togetherness, to come together with friends and family, to be kind to others and share in one’s wealth - whether that comes in the form of knowledge, monetary gains, or the exchange of gifts and one’s time. This celebration is an amalgamation of many worlds’ winter festivals, and as such, is known in the two cities as the Year’s End Festival, or Qiasu as Highstorm calls it.

This part of Takiltu is when Highstorm truly starts to hit winter. Snow is a frequent occurrence, but it’s one that the city welcomes, since with the snow comes a few of the most beloved traditions of the city. By far the most popular is heading to Greenwood Yards. The gardens themselves may be either dormant or showing their simpler winter gardens, but you may have noticed an area by the bathhouses left in surprising amount of disrepair… This is because during the winter months, this area fills up with a natural outdoor hot spring! Take a swim under the moonlight, and even explore some of those ruined old manors, now with their first floors warmly flooded. It’s a tradition to bring in your favorite drinks and spend an evening sipping it in a parlor with friends, and to make new ones by sharing your drinks. Of course, do watch out for the ghosts. They’re mischievous more than malicious, but this is their favorite time of the year too!

You can also head to the Great Tree, which is decorated for the season with glittering glass orbs and is the current roost for the pale Moonbugs of Highstorm. Write a wish on a slip of paper and hold out your hands, and one of the Moonbugs will come sit within them. Whisper the wish to the Moonbug and it’ll take the paper and fly away to find someone to fulfill it. Of course, this also means that a Moonbug is likely to come find you! Besides it being good karma to fulfill the wish, you’ll be given a brief vision of the person whose wish you fulfilled and be blessed by the tree for the duration of the month depending upon your Aspect:

• Advocate: People are more likely to buy you meals/rounds and every recipe you make turns out perfectly.
• Exalt: Animals seem to think more kindly of you, and you'll find them much easier to befriend.
• Harbinger: You're given a more silver tongue as your arguments seem to be better at persuading people.
• Iconoclast: You won't be effected by cold weather in any way.
• Savant: You heal much more rapidly from any injury and are generally the very picture of health.
• Stargazer: Your indulgences (whatever they may be) are both easier to find and are of higher quality.

And of course, there’s one more well-known practice in Highstorm, though it’s more of a tradition of Kowloon’s… The Gävle family is a well-known family who has lived in Highstorm for a long time, and they brought a tradition of building a festive Yule goat made straw in the square outside of their businesses. However, it also happens to be outside of Yura Szczepanski’s home. He’ll never do it himself, of course, but if you manage to burn it down? He’ll reward you, obviously. It doesn’t make it any more legal, so those that try generally spend some time in a Highstorm jail, but it’s an enshrined enough practice at this point that not only has it burned down more often than it’s survived, but there’s even a betting pool in Kowloon for whether it survives or not.

Of course, if these traditions aren’t quite your vibe, you’ll also find the city just generally set up for a metropolitan winter. The Antiques & Baubles Market is rearranged to make room for a large ice-skating rink, Tasseography (the coffeeshop by the Tomes) has a seasonal special for a hot chocolate that will fortify you from the cold for a few hours (and make you fire resistant? Weird,), and the city also hosts a full-size gingerbread house that you can indeed take a bite from, to name a few things. Generally speaking, if it’s something you could do in a snowy city at home, you’ll probably find an equivalent somewhere in the city of moonlight.

Be warned, however, if you are visiting from out of town. Highstorm's reception seems just a touch bit chiller than the weather!

YEAR'S END FESTIVAL (SPRINGSTAR)

Springstar will never turn down a chance to celebrate, but eternally Highstorm’s opposite, this is the warmest time of year. With the sun always shining, some days can get near sweltering, but that just means you have a different set of traditions to have fun with it!

The ivy-like vines that decorated the city in the beginning of the month (November) are now in full bloom, and you’re now likely to learn why the Meri consider them sacred. Wherever the flowers bloom, they encourage feelings of warmth and slightly higher inclination for physical contact within those that encounter their magical pollen*. Holding hands with someone by the flowers will give you feelings of liveliness and happiness, and for a few hours, the positive traits of the person you’re holding hands with become more prominent in you and vice versa. These effects do linger a bit longer, since for a month, you’ll also find that being around this person also gives you both a little boost in energy. It’s very sweet! This also comes with a bit of a further game, if you’re at all a frequenter of Psychagogía...

Madame Dee’s hosts a very popular competition simply called Kiss Bingo. Approach the booth set-up outside the brothel and touch your Shard to a special card, and names will appear upon it. From there, the rules are simple. Just give that person a kiss! It can be on their hand, their lips, their [redacted], all of it counts, and once you do, a little kiss mark will mark their name out. Get a bingo, and you can pick from a variety of prizes such as a ticket for a week’s worth of visits at a local buffet, a shopping spree at a nearby store, or a box seat for a day at the Coliseum. Of course, if you’re really an overachiever, fill out the whole card to get multiple prizes. Madame Dee might just give you a job!

With the promise of home that the Meri deeply believe in, they have their own gifting tradition. The Shard-Bearers know best that it’s possible to receive gifts from the Timestream, and for Year’s End, it’s tradition for the Tribune to pull out all the stops. For a week of the Festival, the Tribune works just outside of Heliopolis, and with the help of priests from the Church of Helios, reaches into the Timestream to produce a gift for anyone that comes to ask. This year, however, he's asked Quetzalcoatl and Samba's elves to deliver gifts, but you might not get anything you asked for (or maybe you did!) but they're all gifts the timestream spit out!

On rainy days (or simply the unbearably hot ones), you can also go to Starlight Park, which offers a reprieve from the weather. Inside the dome, you’ll find a idyllic, snowy valley where you can partake in all the natural joys of winter. There’s (highly) competitive snowball fights, sledding, and skiing to partake in, though you might be cautioned away from one slope. Head down that course and about halfway down, you’ll be chased by… a yeti? Luckily it doesn’t seem to be able to harm you, but it’s still shockingly fast and will catch you no matter how quickly you ski. You can also spend a bit of money to rent a yurt along the river for a relaxing and exceptionally cozy glamping experience. Some Yurts are even adorned with the sacred vines. You know, for no reason.

You’ll also find the Meri heading away from the city of Springstar a bit to head down to some of the beaches that surround Springstar. Being an island within an Island (capital ‘I’ meaning the Kenos kind of island), Takiltu is the traditional start of Springstar’s summer season and all the fun that comes with that. The beaches are bustling, but the cool and crystal-clear waters of the ocean surrounding the city make it worthwhile. Surfing, diving, and sailing are popular activities, but just make sure to stay within sight of the shore. It doesn’t take too long to hit the end of the Island and sailing outside the magical barrier that keeps Springstar floating in Kenos’s starscape generally isn’t survivable.

Just be mindful, if you're trying to escape Highstorm's chill for some summer fun, as attitudes are shifting toward bearers in general, and it might not be as easy as it once was.

NOTES

Weather summary for the second 30 days of Takiltu (NOV & DEC):

• Highstorm is out of fall and into winter. While there are some milder days, snow (and heavy snow at that!) is getting more common.
• Springstar is hot and humid, and it's not uncommon for brief thunderstorms to roll through in the afternoon.

Notable city changes:

• Both cities have experienced changing attitudes toward shard-bearers. You will need to be mindful if you want to travel to a city that doesn't house your faction, as things might not be as easy when it comes to getting around.
• Springstar has had an increase in attacks toward it's citizens, and they are often fatal and destructive. Rumors travel among Springstar's seedier types that these are escaping from Ryad, and they aren't being reigned in. That always comes with a flicker of worry.

CODING

Comments

[tattooism]

[Link reacts defensively... But Kiritsubo does not look or sound at all as if she is attacking him, her expression open and merely curious, completely naked and unarmed. Why should she have to, after all? He can do that all on his own, it seems.]

It's normal enough.

[Sure. He turns away... but though the water ripples slightly behind him, though the last time he had been facing away from her slim, pale arms had elegantly, possessively wrapped around his shoulders and pulled him into her softness... Nothing happens. Yet.]

But in my experience... When the things people say just are not true at all... They do not pain one nearly as much as they seem to wound you.

[She sounds sympathetic, but not pitying, straddling that fine line.]

So what is it you need, I wonder... ?

[bakedapple]

[ The ripples expanding from behind his back make him glance down at the water's surface, but he doesn't turn back around. Her voice sounds so different now, compared to the way she spoke to him during the Oracle...

He's still holding the sake cup in his hands, above the water. Link feels a sudden urge to give it back to her and leave, but he doesn't want to turn around. ]

Why do you care? [ he asks, instead. his tone isn't confrontational, despite the question itself expressing some degree of resistance. ] You're just curious about me, aren't you. You think the way I feel is... interesting?

[tattooism]

Of course I am curious about you.

[She isn't about to say she isn't in an attempt to placate him. It would be a lie, for one, and though Kiritsubo was many things, she was not an outright liar. But the way he phrases it, just curious... That part is incorrect.

A dark-skinned hand, shaped differently than the pale one that had held him before, gently splays over the back of his shoulderblade, a light touch that is intimate, but not overtly sexual despite her nakedness.]

Despite how we met... Despite what I was willing to let you do... You surprised me.

[And when you could「see」all that she could... you treasured surprises.]

Is it strange, that I should have care for a man who treated me well... ?

[bakedapple]

[ The touch of a person's hand on his back makes him flinch, a reflexive reaction rooted in his discomfort with the topic of discussion. He doesn't know what to think of this woman, or what she wants (surely she must want something from him?), or what to say about any of it. She wants him to talk about himself, but Link struggles to open up even on good days, to trusted friends. These days are not good days, and Kiritsubo is not a trusted friend. ]

Caring and being curious... are different.

[ He murmurs. Not outright rejecting her, but being stuck on the issue of why. ]

...It didn't feel right to push you around. No man should treat a woman roughly, especially not at time like that. And a stranger, too...

[ His voice trails off into hesitation. Slowly, his head starts to turn, as if he may look over his shoulder at her, but then the rest of his body follows. ]

If I'd started to hurt you, I... probably wouldn't have been able to keep going.

[tattooism]

[He turns, and Kiritsubo does not shy away. Not from his gaze, or what he might be trying to find in hers, and not from the idea of being seen more fully, having come out of the water slightly to approach him from behind, steam and droplets rolling slow and glistening over heavy, honeyed curves. Over the same tattoos and glint of nipple ring he would recognize despite the different body.]

But you didn't. And you did.

[He did not hurt her. Despite the urges of the room to dominate, despite the superior position she had granted him, almost goading him into taking rather than sharing... He had shared. And he had kept going.]

So where are you now, Link?

[Had he given her his name? She knows it. She asks that, in the same genuinely open way that offered not a single hint of judgement no matter what the answer was. She did not mean "Zenith" or "Meridian", "Highstorm" or "Springstar"...]

I am here, curious and caring about the answer.

[bakedapple]

[ His eyes are unavoidably drawn towards her body when he finds her much closer than he'd thought when he turned around. Yes — her face and hair and eyes might be different, but those tattoos are impossible to forget. The sparkle of the piercing makes him think about pulling on it, about the way it felt and tasted against his tongue, and he forces himself to look her in the eyes again. ]

...I'm here, in Highstorm. With you. Aligned with the Zenith now...

[ he holds up his empty sake cup. ]

...drinking alcohol. I'm... nowhere. It doesn't matter. I don't know what else to say.

[tattooism]

[Kiritsubo does nothing to encourage his eyes to leave her breasts, no snap of her fingers or clearing of the throat. After all, he had taken such good care of them before, had he not? (If she had her way, he might again. Occasionally she did crave a more tender touch- she had moods.) But once he finds her eyes again...]

... That is fine.

[They reflect only him. Strangely, almost nothing of herself is there to see. They see only what is, with no bias or preconceptions. If she wished, though...]

Do you wish to know what I「see」in you, Link?

[She takes a sip from her glass, letting the flavor of the liquor linger on her tongue.]

I'm quite a decent fortune teller.

[bakedapple]

[ Link swallows, feeling relieved for her to have dropped the issue — at least, as far as he can tell. His situation is so complicated, and his feelings on it even moreso. It's always been difficult to explain himself — because he doesn't fully understand it either. If anyone ever encouraged him to express his feelings, they have long since left that dusty, dark room where all his memories of his old life were once kept. His father, his sister, friends, teachers... Was there once a time when Link was encouraged to talk about himself? To voice his doubts and regrets and fears?

If there was, those people are all dead. Long dead. Whispers in the back of his mind, present but as invisible as a breeze. ]

What you... see?

[ Fortune-teller...? He's never had his fortune told before. Whatever it is that would actually entail... ]

Like... seeing into the future? You can do that?

[tattooism]

I am no prophet.

[She says that firmly, first, unwilling to ever let someone believe that she could directly see events in the future in some sort of clear, sure way. Not just because it would be a lie, but because it was a responsibility she did not wish for. If she had ever wished for the sight she did have, she does not and has not ever said, but.]

But I can「see」the karma on your skin, the touch others have left upon you, and the powers that swirl around you.

[It could be frustratingly vague, mysterious, or even befuddling to someone unused to interpreting such signs, but she had centuries of experience. Even those could not prevent something from occasionally only making sense in retrospect, but...

It was something that could bring great comfort.

Or great anxiety.

The choice, therefore, whether to accept or not... it is his.]

[bakedapple]

[ There wasn't any particular answer he was expecting, but the answer that he does is tantalizingly cryptic.

The karma on his skin... that world, karma. He recently learned what it means. The concept does not exist in Hyrule, but it makes a surprising amount of sense. Or maybe, he just likes the idea. For someone like Link, who knows the kind of tribulations he's been through across multiple lifetimes but feels that he hasn't accomplished anything across all those centuries... the existence of karma is almost comforting.

He looks down at the water, considering. Then he holds the sake cup out to her again. ]

...Is it too much to ask to say yes, and want a refill? [ The question comes with a slight smile. For the first time, he's looking at Kiritsubo without any apprehension.

[tattooism]

[... Kiritsubo smirks.]

It's never too much to want another drink.

[Not to a youkai, anyway. Without any hesitation, she reaches over for the large bottle she had arrived with and brings it over to top off his glass with the clear liquor, idly lapping up a little bit of the sake that spills down the glass neck with her tongue when she tips the bottle back up, his glass once again full.

And once the bottle is set back down... she「looks」at him. He won't feel anything real or physical, but mentally... it might just seem different. Like she was looking at the whole of him, and seeing something that others just would not. Sensations and abstract symbols that crawl across his flesh and tell her-]

- How old are you, Link?

[bakedapple]

[ Link watches her pour the drink, and looks up just in time to watch her run her pink tongue up the neck of the bottle. Unavoidably, the image of her on her back, mouth slightly open, idly running her tongue along her upper lip in ecstasy, flashes into his mind again. ]

Uh... how old? [ He asks, cheeks pink and eyes averted, still trying to brush the distraction from his mind. The filled cup gives him an excuse to be silent for a moment to think; he brings it to his mouth and takes a small but drawn-out sip. ]

...I know this sounds strange, but it's hard to answer that question. I don't know the exact number, and even if I did, I guess it depends on what you mean...

[ He settles back against the same hunk of half-ruined stone that Kiritsubo first sat against, like he's sitting next to her on a park bench for a friendly talk. ]

Strictly speaking... I'm about 123 years old. That's how long ago I was born. But, I was asleep for a hundred years of that time, so maybe it's better to say I'm about 23 years old...

[ But it doesn't end there. After hesitating, ]

...I don't remember almost everything from before I woke up from that sleep, though. That was about five years ago, so... I guess, in a weird way, you can say that the old me is actually dead, and the current me has only been around for five years...

And then, there's all the... past lives. I don't think you'd normally count those, but... I remember a lot of them now. And if memories are what you're measuring by, then...

[ then he'd be much, much older than 123. ]

[tattooism]

[Does she know that the thought goes through his mind, a memory of the intimacy they had shared? Perhaps she had reveled in it far more than he, but... oh, her tongue still remembers the taste of him. His lips... the scent of their sex in the air... the sweat upon his skin... the lingering traces of his seed...

The bottle is nothing in comparison. How sad.]

It does not sound strange to me at all.

[Because she could「see」it on him, with those eyes that were blacker than the darkest black man could make. Layers upon layers of Time, the influence and stains of other Links upon his flesh like lingering handprints on his body. That she enjoys leisurely examining with her eyes as part of her fortune telling.]

Twenty three, then.

[He might have seem confused as to what number he should go with, but she decides for him quite easily, with no apparent need for debate. He was twenty-three years old. Past lives or not. Just how Kiyoami's descendant, the boy in which his soul was finally reborn, was still only fourteen years old, whether he had a centuries-old demon's soul inside him or not. If they had not been bound together by blood...

But it isn't quite blood she sees binding Link. The images are faint and abstract, that is why she never claimed to be a prophet, everything open to interpretation. Like how she murmurs next,]

Are the shackles heavy... ? The ones that bind you to that fate.

[bakedapple]

[ Twenty-three, then. She says it so simply, so definitively, that Link doesn't feel the slightest inkling to discuss further, much less argue. If that number is a satisfying answer to her question, then all the better. But rather than being relieved of that sense of loss that was evoked by her question, he feels it grip tight around him when she speaks again. ]

...Is that what you see, then. That's my fortune... shackles.

[ He asks softly, staying calm in the face of their emotional back and forth. Anxious one second, reminiscing on their lust the next, and now confronted with the core conflict that's tormented him for the past several months... How much of it can she see, with that strange power of hers?

With a sigh, he takes another sip from his cup. ]

I don't know. I've always known I was supposed to do important things... that's one of the first things I was told when I woke up from being asleep. And from what I've learned, I knew I had some kind of important destiny when I was a kid too. But I don't remember it feeling heavy. Not until recently.

[tattooism]

No.

[She corrects him gently but firmly, unwilling to allow her fortunes to be misinterpreted, even though there was room for interpretation in almost every step of her "gift". Her fingers trace through the air around him, moving very subtly... but it might look as if she is tracing some sort of bindings, ropes or chains in the air only she can see.]

They have hardened only recently. Fate can be a feathered touch or a ball and chain... and as your perception of it changes, so does its weight upon you.

[Perhaps it sounds like she is blaming him, just in the choice of words that seem to imply he is the one responsible for the weight, the shackles now haunting him. But in her tone and in her expression, there is not a single trace of judgement at all. Just evaluation. Just reporting what she is「seeing」on him, the possibility that his mind had changed when he came from Meridian to Zenith, that much like how hope had disappeared...]

The question becomes, then, once they begin to rub your wrists raw and bend your back... "Where is the key... ?"

[She reaches out for his arm, as if picking it up to show him where a manacle might be fastened.]

There are too many for me to guess, and so that is one you must decide for yourself. Not now, not here... But soon enough. I see a great chance looming in your future, an important decision you will have only moments to make... but it will affect the fates of many others, rippling out over Kenos.

[Her usual flirtatious, casual speech... is momentarily gone, replaced by the serious, mysterious words of an Oracle. But when the last syllable leaves her lips... the "trace" does, too, and she places a little kiss on the inside of his wrist instead as a parting before she looks back up at him, her smile almost bittersweet.]

- It is not what you wished to hear.

[Is it? It isn't an apology, but...]

[bakedapple]

[ Link does not flinch away when she reaches for his arm. He silently follows her lead, transferring his sake cup to his other hand, so that she may lift his wrist and continue her musings. His expression stays neutral, a carefully controlled and practiced affect of neutrality.

Even when she ends her reading with a kiss, that expression does not change. Instead, he stares at her. ]

...No. I guess it isn't.

[ He's sad to feel her warm fingers leave his skin. Now, there's nothing but the water around him, the ceramic in his hand, and the stone under his legs. ]

I'm not done, then.

[tattooism]

[Kiritsubo was neutral herself, despite her current status as a low-level Zenite. She required her powers and abilities back. And if she had to choose between those two... Well, rather, if the question was "wait for the world to change, however many hundreds of years that took", or "create a new one exactly for what she required"... She certainly doesn't have an issue with his expression, at any rate. The lack of judgement on her face and in her tone remains.]

No... You are not done.

[Something serious lingers over him- even someone without eyes like hers would surely be able to sense that much. But... she can detect the sadness in his body language when her fingers fall away from his wrist, and in response...]

You could choose to be, if you like.

[She reaches up to gently brush some of his golden hair from his face where it has begun to slick against skin in the heated steam of the hot spring. He could choose to lay down his weapons and give up. All of them had that luxury, but just because they had it... Kiritsubo smiles at him, soft and mysterious, with lips different from the ones she had spoken filthy words to him with in the Oracle trial, with a body different from the one she had "dominated" him with still exposed by how she stood up in the pool, leaning close as if completely unashamed of how water droplets coalesced and dripped down honey brown skin, dangling on the small hoop pieced through the dusky peak of a full breast.]

But... You do not strike me as the kind of man who gives up, Link. Even if it may take you time, or lives, or cycle after cycle...

[Her hand presses briefly to his cheek, tender enough, perhaps, to remind him of another's tenderness.]

I believe that you will find the right way for yourself.