[OPEN] RV Park Party

[eirs]

WHO: Any and all OUTSIDER personnel that wants in and their respective campervan companions. Or maybe you wandered out away from your group and found this commune.
WHAT: The gang parking together at night to swap information about the things they've found in their investigations, night watches around a fire, ghost stories......? General tomfoolery in the desert where there's no one else for miles. Cooking their hunts in successes and mishaps?
WHERE: The Mojave Desert
WHEN: Mid to Late May
WARNINGS: Will be updated or tagged in the thread as needed!

Comments

[elfsufficient]

[ I just want you to know that I had to go on r/frieren to formulate this response ]

It's a spell. For creating butterflies made out of mana. It's one of the first ones I ever learned...

[ Before long, they begin to flutter up into the sky, before dissipating entirely. ]

Not all magic requires vocalization, where I'm from. In fact, most don't. You simply need control of your mana, the knowledge of the spell and its components... and the ability to properly visualize its effects.

[picky]

[ THANK YOU 🥺 I feel so spoiled...

Marcille watches the butterflies fade, searching the dark sky for any traces of them for a moment after. Then she looks back at Fern, lips raising in a smile. ]

Vocalizing or writing aside, it sounds like our versions of magic aren't actually too different. I've never tried to make a glowing familiar before, but I can summon balls of light with a spell. [ Marcille presses a finger to her chin and considers the blanket for a moment. ] I wonder if there's some way to channel them into shapes...

[ She shakes her head and looks back at Fern. ]

Anyway, I meant to answer before. My name is Marcille. What about yours?

[elfsufficient]

[ They've only just met, but there's something so incredibly familiar and comforting about this conversation, about magical musings, those idle thoughts of what can or can't be accomplished by one's own magic... It's certainly more familiar than most any other conversation she's had here thus far.

It's... nice. Already, Fern is glad that she approached Marcille. ]

My name is Fern... It's nice to meet you.

[ With a polite nod of her head. And, because she can't help her curiosity, she adds: ]

May I ask... are you an elf, Miss Marcille?

[picky]

[ Marcille feels the same way. It reminds her of how comforting it was to meet Irisveil when she'd first arrived. Magic was how she navigated the world—at least until she found Falin and Senshi.

No, don't think about that. She smiles wider, seemingly perking up. ]

I am! Are you one too?

[ Maybe Fern wearing her cloaking device. ]

[elfsufficient]

[ She's so expressive and perky...! Fern, for her part, shakes her head. ]

I'm a human. But Mistress Frieren, my teacher, is an elf. There are very few elves in our world, so it's a surprise to meet more here, even if we're from different places...

[picky]

There are?

[ She furrows her brows, but she's more dismayed than surprised by what Fern tells her. She leans back on her hands and sighs. ]

Actually, elves have a low birthrate where I come from, so the elf population is declining for us too. I wonder if other worlds besides ours have the same issue.

[ Food for thought. Maybe a planet with a big elf population might also have a solution... Either way, Marcille looks back at Fern and decides to change topics. ]

How old is your teacher?

[elfsufficient]

[ Ah... It's a difficult subject for Marcille too, it seems, and so Fern will refrain from mentioning her teacher's thoughts on the matter. Elves seem to be going extinct entirely, where Fern is from... On the subject of other worlds, however, she's reminded of the half-elven man she's met here, and wonders if the elves of other worlds have children with humans for a lack of their own kind...

As ever, she's happy to talk about her teacher instead. ]

She's never said the exact number. Honestly, I doubt she even remembers it. She's mentioned being over a thousand years old, though. [ A beat, as her features pull into a flat expression. ] Not that she really acts like it...

[picky]

[ Marcille's eyes go wide. Fern is looking flatly ahead, but Marcille seems absolutely dumbstruck down to her core. ]

She... She's over a thousand? [ Her brows knot. ] Elves where I'm from only live for about four hundred years. Are you sure she's not mixed blood somehow?

[elfsufficient]

[ She wouldn't necessarily know if Mistress Frieren has been lying about her blood, but she doesn't have any reason to do so, either, and Fern trusts her mentor more than anyone else. ]

I don't believe so. She's over a thousand, and she claims that she's young, for an elf. I've met two others, and I... I think they might have been alive ever since the dawn of time.

[ Like. Genuinely. ]

[picky]

A young elf, over a thousand...? The dawn of time? That's longer than any of our species used to live thousands of years ago...

[ Marcille trails off, bringing a hand over her mouth. Muffled: ]

I... I can't even imagine what that's like.