inourhead | what in the longdark spitting-pit is that

This was a bad idea this was a bad idea this was a bad idea.

Holly runs as fast as she can but the demon's faster. She has no idea where Lightning's gotten to; maybe he found a tree to climb. She on the other hand has been diverted into a treeless hill and she's careening down a slope, trying very hard not to trip.

And the demon's gaining on her.

She's never seen anything like it and neither has Crystal; maybe Book knows what it is but Book's asleep. It's mostly mouth - it looks like a cross between a floorlength mirror of a mouth and a snake to propel the mouth along.

And Holly's not fast enough.

The mouth catches her.

But it doesn't hurt.

Where are we?

----

with Minus (kappa)

with Mark (kappa)

with Max (Benedict)

in Terraria (kappa)

with Emma (Marri)

with Erin (Rockeye)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

inourhead

"It closes, in a if-you-leave-the-door-locks-behind-you sense, but I've crashed in the office before overnight, nobody gave me any trouble. We can put a sign on the door, studying late, do not disturb."

From:

unblinkered

"Well! That, uh... solves that, until we can line up something more permanent." Max smiles.

"It doesn't solve that. Not yet. She's gonna have to eat, right? Who's buying her food?"

Max pats his wallet reflexively. He can afford it tonight, but... he doesn't want to set a precedent, since it'd be a strain to be the one buying her food on a regular basis...

"Well... see, the first time she got hungry, I started digging through my pockets for food, and she... that's when I discovered the magic thing, since she just took an apple core and turned it edible using a tiny chunk of... something that looked like a peanut. But... she did ask me for food, which implies that she couldn't just food-ify anything she wanted."

"So we learn her words for food, then ask how doing mweelsrow on food works. That sound right?" Trevor responds.

From:

inourhead

"Do you expect to be able to understand a technical explanation of magic...?" wonders Victoria. "No, no, it's worth a try - if I turned things into food, though, I'd want to be sure they were worthless. Maybe she can identify an apple core as trash it's okay to repurpose and is confused by everything else?"

From:

unblinkered

"I am literally an understanding-things professional," Trevor replies. "But I meant, yes, just asking if she needs specific things to turn into food, or if we can just grab a stack of unused flyers or something as long as we tell her it's okay."

From:

inourhead

"Right. Uh, Sohng mweelsrow food?"

"Pyay," corrects, presumably, Pyay. "Pyay muilsroo food. No-muilsroo food good, muilsroo food -" Noncommittal gesture. She digs around in the bag and comes up with what looks like a large crumb. "Food muilsroo?"

From:

unblinkered

"So... she's saying... mweelsrow- uh, mweelsrooow food... doesn't taste as good? I'm not sure what she's asking, though, and we still don't know if how good it is depends on what the... subject of the mweelsrooow is."

Pyay looks expectant. "Do either of you have... something to give her?"

From:

inourhead

"Uh - random junk, random junk -" Victoria rummages and eventually comes up with a broken coffee mug, in two pieces. She offers the pieces to Pyay.

Pyay, in several steps, turns one of the halves into a cracker and her original cracker into ceramic, breaks off two small pieces, puts one away, uses the other small piece to turn the second mug half into cracker, offers Victoria back the extra ceramic chunks, gives the mice one cracker-mug-half and bites into the other herself.

From:

unblinkered

Max breathes a sigh of relief. His two immediate practical problems have been solved. The next thing he needs to do is find out...

Well, the next thing he needs to do is mail in that Randi Prize application. Then, as regards finding things out... finding out how mweelsrow works, finding out what Kweengow is, finding out how people can move between Kweengow and Earth, finding out if there are other places, finding out how there are other places... he should start making a list.

Trevor, meanwhile, grabs a sizable stack of unused flyers for some theatrical performance from a nearby shelf. "We sleep, you muilsroo paper to food. Not good food, good food..." He peeks at Sohng's glossary. Is there anything in there that looks like it might be "money"...?

From:

inourhead

Apparently money has not yet been covered.

"Neeh - no good food," says Pyay, taking the flyers and flipping through them. "Mm -" She makes a small pinching gesture. "No good."

From:

unblinkered

Trevor groans. "No good? Gah, um... be right back." He leaves the room, presumably to find something usable as food.

Max looks over at the glossary- and indeed, nothing to do with money as far as he can tell. "Pyay- or, Song- in Kweengow, where food? People get food...?"

From:

inourhead

Sohng flips through the glossary. "Tree food," she eventually says, "rabbit food, uh..." Handwave, handwave. "Muilsroo food no good, no -" She makes a face, sticking out her tongue. "And, muilsroo bad, food bad, and -" She mimes sickness, clutching her abdomen. "Pyay good muilsroo, but, no muilsroo food good good."

From:

unblinkered

Max rubs his forehead. "So... we'll need to feed her actual food... and explain money to her, somehow, and... supermarkets? So she knows why getting food is difficult. How do you explain currency to someone who doesn't use it?"

From:

inourhead

"We don't know that she doesn't use it," Victoria points out. "We just don't know what she calls it, what it looks like, or the most accessible way to refer to it."

From:

unblinkered

Max nods. "Hm... still annoying to figure out, yes. We don't know what a typical transaction looks like, to draw a comparison to- I tried asking where she gets food, and... either she misunderstood, or money isn't typically used to buy food in Kweengow."

Trevor can be seen outside the window, retrieving something from his car.

From:

inourhead

"Or she doesn't know how to say 'buy', and-or she thought you were asking where besides magic food can come from and she's saying she'd eat a rabbit and fruit grows on trees."

From:

unblinkered

"Hm."

Max turns to Sohng. "Food- Kweengow- Earth, tree food, rabbit food... but... people get food..."

And then he remembers- she's seen him use money. The pet store, he bought mice. He points at her cage.

"Mice- I buy mice, I gave person 'money'-" He opens his wallet to show her- "-and person gave me mice. People buy food, person give people money, people give person food."

From:

inourhead

"Oh! Kuigao people buy food, yes. Money, suns."

From:

unblinkered

"Right, okay, so..."

...And he realizes that this hardly helps the situation- he can't say he doesn't have enough money to buy her food, and even if he could explain that he'd rather not strain his wallet by offering to feed her... he's not sure she'd be sympathetic, considering her state of emergency.

Trevor picks this moment to come in the door, bearing several items. Half of a cinderblock, a stick, a large pair of fuzzy dice, and... a pizza? No, a pizza box containing several pizzas worth of uneaten crusts.

"You don't eat the crusts? Isn't that a waste?"

Trevor glares at Max. "No. I don't usually eat the crusts."

From:

inourhead

Their extradimensional visitor investigates this largesse. She takes the cinderblock and the stick, seems bemused by the fuzzy dice, and peers into the pizza box and reaches for a crust but looks to Trevor as though for confirmation. "Food?"

From:

unblinkered

Trevor shrugs. "Food, yes. Not good food, but... more good than mweelsroo food?"

From:

inourhead

She deciphers this sentence, then says, "Yes. Water?"

From:

unblinkered

"Gah- uh, right." He grabs a large cup of soda from a nearby desk and finishes it off, then steps just outside the door to clean and refill it in the water fountain. He hands the cup of water to Sohng.

From:

inourhead

She takes it and pulls a little sponge out of her bag, dips it into the water, squeezes it until the small amount of water is evenly distributed in the sponge, then picks up a pizza crust and somewhat de-stales it by this mechanism. Munch munch.

"It kind of says something that she'd rather eat pizza crusts than do her thing to the cinder block," says Victoria. "Poor kid."

From:

unblinkered

"So... that ought to be enough food for one night, right? She's all set to stay here, once you've got to go home for the night?"

Max grabs his bag and zips it up impatiently- and then realizes he'd probably benefit from staying as long as the two linguists are here. He puts it down on a sofa on the other side of the room.