wizardseason | Wizard's House

Wizard's House

"Hey"

The Wizard greets the evil-allured knights the same way every night, with the same word, while casually sitting on the steps of the porch outside of her little home. The building looks handmade, like it was built by people who cared about the place they were going to live. Surrounding it on all sides are fields as far as the eye can see. Vegetables of all kinds, with fruit trees and bushes placed throughout the landscape. Closer to the home are bigger trees, willows and others, providing shade from the strange three suns above. Wherever this is, it isn't the world that the knights know.

Plunged into the ground a mere few feet away from the steps leading up to the home is a handwritten sign that states the following:

Knight Rules:
- Tell others if you want
- You can't reveal others
- The world ends this year

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Haizea asks for bacon and eggs and, true to her word, a plate of bacon and eggs slides across the counter on its own.

Gyre gets his pick of the food laying around.

Matilda gets a similar self-sliding plate but hers has a little bit of everything, a small serving of each breakfast food. Most importantly: Sunny side up eggs.

And then, of course.

There's Garrot.

As he approaches the Wizard, she lets his screaming moment pass but she mutes him the moment the word 'platter' leaves his lips. She isn't going to let him keep screaming, this is hardly the place for it. But she's not going to leave him unanswered. She's also not going to leave him feeling like his tirade had any effect on her at all.

"Would that make you happy?" She offers, knowing full well that he can't respond. "We both know it wouldn't."

And she deliberately waits thirty more seconds to unmute him, but she doesn't give even the slightest indication that she'd done so.

Haizea picks up a slice of bacon and chomps down on it. Crunchy, just the way she likes it.

“Damn Garrot, muted again?” she says around her mouthful, then gestures at the Wizard with a second piece of bacon. “Why don’t you make him a pancake that looks like your head instead? Bet your magic could whip up something like that.” Or could it? The Wizard’s sheer power and reality bending abilities are a given, but how much fine control does she have?

Oh good, Garrot's making a scene. He winces a little as the other starts screaming, only letting out a held breath when he's finally silenced.

At least the rest of the room is looking that way? It gives him the chance to get up finally, sneaking over to the counter to steal a raw egg. Which he'll just toss into his mouth whole while he watches this work itself out. The egg is crunched one (1) time before he swallows. Gross!

Matilda's actually too busy smiling at her plate to pay too much attention to Garrot's yelling. She trusts the Wizard not to hurt him, just make him quiet, which honestly, is kindof nice once and a while.

Unfortunately, that leaves her open to look up and watch Gyre put a fucking egg in his mouth, which means her breakfast is falling out of her mouth instead of being chewed.

Garrot can't tell the Wizard that the only thing that'd make him happy would be breaking her goddamn neck. He wants to shout and grumble and throw a tantrum but it's really hard to keep that motivation when you can't be fucking heard. It's basically his own personal HELL! So he simply rolls his eyes at Haizea's snark and watches Gyre slink off to the counter. Then there's the crunch of eggshells, and Matilda has stopped dead in her tracks. Garrot, eager to investigate and give the Wizard the cold shoulder, walks over. And it's at this moment that the mute seems to wear off.

"What, you've never seen someone eat a raw egg before?" How has Matilda never seen this? It's in so many movie workout montages! So he grabs an egg but instead cracks it over his mouth and the yolk and slime fall right into his mouth. Munch chomp. Almost like he's done this before. But then he faces the rest of the kitchen, eggshells still in his hands. "I mean, you can get salmonella so you really shouldn't eat a raw egg at all, Matilda." Garrot will be fine because he's a doctor and this is all a dream.

The Wizard's got a wild bunch this year, four totally different eggs sitting around her here in the kitchen. She answers Haizea's request by spinning a finger gently over the cooktop. A squirt-bottle filled with pancake batter starts floating above the surface and it uh... it goes to town on making a little wizard face on the cooktop. It looks pretty good!

Gyre, meanwhile, gets an extra egg rolled over to him. Eat up, carnivore! Matilda's meal doesn't stop smiling.

"Those eggs are safe, you could eat them all." A beat, then: "I won't let any of you die to an egg."

Huh, look at that, pancake art! She wonders if the Wizard is good at art naturally or if it’s because of the magic.

“Safe or not,” she says, making a bit of a face, “I bet they taste better cooked!” To illustrate her point, she cuts up a chunk of her eggs, which are fried, and chomps down. “Yep, pretty dang good.”

Watching Garrot eat a raw egg didn’t kill her appetite, but if Gyre eats another one whole that just might. Why these men so nasty.

Oh my god, he was trying to eat privately!! He doesn't eat eggs in front of these people for this exact reason!! He knows he's fucked the second Matilda looks at him, and then Garrot has to make it a whole thing. He sets his attention on the new egg he's being offered, picking it up and turning it over in his hand.

"If you say so," he mutters to Haizea, watching her eat a tragically cooked egg. It's not for him, and yes, unfortunately for her, he is going to eat his egg whole and raw because that's the way eggs are supposed to be eaten. His eyes shift over the lot of them as he does it before he settles his focus on the Wizard. He doesn't need his tastes criticized!!

"Why are you making food in a dream anyway?"

Matilda’s watching Garrot like she’s witnessing a deadly accident in slow motion. Her entire face falls into complete despair, her cheeks flush, there might even be tears welling—- she pulls her goggles down over her eyes and begins scarfing the smiley face breakfast aggressively. Can’t focus on gross egg eating if she’s busy eating her own cooked eggs!

Garrot just stares in awe as Matilda's face falls and she starts eating... because Gyre ate an entire raw egg. Maybe she realized how hungry she was? Either way...

"Oh, is that what we're doing?" Garrot's glance slides to Gyre, and suddenly he's smirking, and hey look, the doctor also pops a raw egg into his mouth, and monch cronch. See? He can be cool!

"Sho, shiddy Wizerr-" Chomp chew. How did Gyre do this in one bite? "Is it nighttime, or is that just stormclouds?" Why is it even raining if she can magic her weird crops? Also, this egg is like eating a dollar burger with the paper wrap still on.

Garrot keeps chewing. No point in the eggshells cutting his throat!

"It's raining, food helps knights bond." She answers, keeping her soft smirk on her face as she watches the raw egg shenanigans unfold. Good thing Haizea and Matilda are eating the cooked eggs, otherwise they'd go to waste. After a few moments, all the sound from the cooktop ceases and the room is left only with the ceaseless sound of the rain outside.

Which should answer Garrot's question. It's just a storm.

"I won't be cooking tomorrow night, we'll be outside again."

Haizea continues to make a face at Garrot and Gyre, but especially at Garrot because she can just feel how performative his whole egg eating is. Gyre at least didn’t make a big deal about it! She shoots a conspiratory glance towards Matilda and shrugs with a sigh. At least the two of them aren’t comitting food crimes!

“I wonder if I could make the rain stop?” she muses, but doesn’t actually try. It’s kind of nice to hear the rain outside and she’s still got bacon to eat. She’s unsure how much headway she’ll make on the eggs for a while.

She perks up a bit when the Wizard says they’ll be outside tomorrow, she’s lowkey been thinking about the lake Gyre took a dip in last time. The desire to swim in it is STRONG.

Edited 2019-04-20 02:52 (UTC)

Gyre swallows his egg in one bite again, watching Garrot with this irritated expression that gets more and more concerned the more he seems to struggle with it.

"Don't hurt yourself," he says eventually, slowly raising an eyebrow. "Didn't you just say that's bad for you?" Why did this dumb doctor throw another egg in his mouth? What was the point of that! Garrot is a true enigma honestly that he will never understand. Instead, he glances towards the wizard at Haizea's question. He's curious if knight powers work here too!

Matilda keeps her head down and her vision rose-tinted as she scarfs the smiling face down, refusing to look up at Garrot, though the crunch sounds are ripping her very dignified heart apart. The wizard's suggestion that there's no cooking tomorrow makes her pause though, and she peeks up, pouting.

"We could still eat tomorrow. A picnic?"

"I'm fine! Just being thorough." Garrot nods at Gyre, before finally swallowing the egg. The tiny little eggshell pieces go down like sand. One chomp really was the best approach. "Besides, the eggs can't kill us, and we're asleep." He brings a hand to stroke at his beard and glances around the room at the others.

"Nothing we do in this world seems to matter." Garrot breathes out through his nose. He'd woken up just fine yesterday, even though the contents of his discussion with the Wizard were incredibly troubling. "But we're still here, when we could be having a picnic on the beach!" He'll see your idea, Matilda, but Garrot is yes-and-ing it.

As tantalizing as the riddles of this cosmic struggle are, he'd rather distract the others from the Wizard so she can't get her fucking hooks in as easily. If they take her too seriously, some of them might be trying to end the world in a few days.

The Wizard watches Garrot and Gyre's shenanigans out of the corner of her eye, deciding to only address it when he's taken hold of Matilda's idea. But she can't leave Haizea's comment unaddressed, so:

"If you could change the weather here, you'd be stronger than me." She offers, knowing full well that Haizea can't even make a single drop of rain stop here. Her magic has no power here.

"We aren't going to the beach, tomorrow. We're going to where it started forty years ago. It's not a good spot for a picnic."

She raises an eyebrow at that. “Well, now I gotta try it, don’t I?” she says, contrarily, and thinks very hard about the rain stopping, When she’d practiced before, the rain had always stopped within a minute of her telling it to, but the rain outside today does not let up. Eventually, she sighs.

“She’s right, I can’t stop the rain at all,” Haizea sounds a little disappointed. Just when she’s starting to get used to cool powers!

When the Wizard speaks of tomorrow’s plans, though, she doesn’t say anything. She’s more bummed that there won’t be a chance to swim than she is interested in history.

He watches Haizea closely as she tries to change the weather, glancing occasionally out the window until she finally gives up. He tilts his head curiously, and his eyes snap to the wizard when she says they're going to go back to the beginning.

"Why can't you change the weather here?" he asks as he sits at the table finally. "Are we going to be dreaming when we go there?"

"I can teleport here." Matilda interjects, peeking up at the others to make sure no ones's shoving sausage up their nose or something equally horrifying like that. It might sound like a brag if she didn't sound so weirdly unsure of herself. She pauses to politely dab at her mouth with a napkin.

"If it's not the beach... what kind of place are we going to? Is it dangerous?"

The fact that some powers work here while others don't is interesting. Haizea can't control the weather, but Matilda can teleport. As much as Garrot wants to summon a clone, he does not want to run the risk of it saying something stupid here. Plus, there really doesn't seem to be enough room for two of him.

"But didn't this all start at Harsen Island?" Garrot sounds skeptical of this little field trip. He wants to buy into it because everything started on the Island, so whatever she wants to show them they can see when they're awake. So it's a waste of time, and good for the fate of the world. But she's been at this for forty years, she knows how to manipulate people.

"So tonight's a meal, tomorrow's the date, and then you start tricking people into wanting to fuck over the world." He's sure there's something to learn there, something about the center of the planet being alive and her relationship with the Protector. But he doesn't trust her one bit to be the narrator on that story.

It's a good thing she won't be the narrator then, huh Garrot?

"I can stop the rain if you'd prefer." She offers to Haizea, curious if she'll take the offer. Either way, there are other questions on the table that she has to address.

"You'll be dreaming, it would be dangerous if you weren't." She leans back against the far counter, letting the last foods float to various plates to refill what had been eaten. She doesn't start cooking any more.

"This year might be different." She offers in contrast to Garrot's accusation, but he'd also asked if this all started here and: "It started here, so it ends here."

"Nah, don't stop it, I like the rain. Just wanted to see if you were right or not 'bout my powers," she shrugs. She's a little irritated, honestly, but she keeps her cool.

When the Wizard starts talking about this year being different, and making insinuations about the end, though, her irritation becomes harder to conceal.

"What if we refuse to go?" She wants this year to be normal, she doesn't want to think about a beginning or an end.

Gyre is watching the wizard pretty closely as she answers each question in turn. He wants to pick out every detail that he can, his eyes narrowing in thought. He wants more information. He wants to go to this place she's talking about now, and he begins to open his mouth to say just that.

Instead, there's Haizea and his attention snaps to her, his nose wrinkling in distaste.

"Why would you refuse?"

"Because this is how it starts." If Garrot's words could cut, those would be like a bonesaw. As fun as eating a raw egg has been, the conversation has gotten serious and so he does the same. He needs to remind them all why they're here.

"She gets us to trust her with, I guess, some crazy stories about the world." He shrugs, and decides to be polite. "Maybe they're true. And maybe she's rewriting history, showing us what she wants us to know so then we sympathize and she can get us to destroy the world."

The Wizard has stated her motives clearly enough over the years, and they'd be idiots not to see everything she does in light of that. That said... "If the Protector was doing this it'd be fine. Then we could just ask you what he's lying about." The paradox is that she might lie about his truths, but. Baby steps.

This is a familiar debate. The Wizard knights, throughout the years, frequently had disagreements like this one. One after another, year after year, one would argue for and one would argue against. Rarely, they would both agree, but she wasn't typically lucky enough to have same-minded knights on her side.

"You're giving me too much credit." She offers after a moment, turning her just-barely-there smirk towards Garrot. He's making some particularly wild assumptions here and she wants to go on the record with one of the most true truths there was.

"I'm a terrible liar."

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