[Silver]

Despite the ground being coated with varying levels of snow and ice, the air is clear and still. There are no puffy clouds in the bright blue sky. It has been this way for a long time, as anyone who had been wandering around might notice. The eerie stillness of the farm and it's surroundings seemed so permanent, so unchanging. That is, until...

A sprinkling of sparkling snow burst through the air, emanating from somewhere deep in the frozen forest. The glittering snowflakes look less like snow and more like shards of glass falling through the air. They came so quickly and so concentrated that it must not be real - except that it was. The phenomenon gets more and more intense toward the mirror lake. Perhaps a curious traveler might want to find out why.

Walking through the mirror forest one might see, among the thickening snow in the air, a floating fish. It swims through the air as effortlessly as it would through water. Doing a double take would be pointless, for it is only a brief occurrence. More and more of these unnaturally floating koi, from as small as a pea to as large as a human, swim by as the mirror lake draws near.

Perched at the edge of the lake is an elegant statue of a long dragon. It is coiled along a bamboo fishing net. The statue and the pole it holds are utterly free of the snow falling all around it. A sign rests against its feet, written in ancient looking writing. Though it was surely not here earlier...

Please return my friends.
You may be rewarded.
- Lucky

Well, now you have a fishing net, and those friends he's talking about... they must be those fish, right? Can you even catch them? Well, there's only one way to find out!


❄ Posts in this thread are worth double points until midnight on the 14th. You may continue to use this thread after the 14th, but posts made after the deadline are no longer worth double.
❄ You may use the same character from your regular Winter Wonderland thread or new ones.
❄ You may interact with other players if you would like. If you really do or don't want to interact, leave a note for other players to see.

[crow]

((currently just intending to play alone P: ))

It was kind of a weird night to be sneaking out. Mostly because it was the dead of winter, and what kind of fool would be caught dead sneaking out in this kind of weather? Kip's type of fool, that was what.

Kip wasn't a smart kid and he knew it, but hey, you only lived once, right? And sometimes it just... sucked to be at home, for all kinds of reasons. If you were lucky it was because you were bored out of your mind and dying for something to do.

[Bonus Thread 1]

[crow]

And if you weren't, well... Better get out that much quicker then. And he knew how to be quiet, how to wait until everyone else was asleep--- really asleep too, and not just pretending, because he knew the difference. You had to listen for it in the way they breathed.

He knew where all the creaky floorboards were, where the uneven gaps in the stairs were, how to shimmy down the rain gutter drain from his window if that's what it came down to.

[Bonus Thread 2]

[crow]

He didn't do well in school but he knew all kinds of things like that. Knew how to climb a tree too, any tree, used to take bets or a bit of change from the other boys in school to climb to the top of the tree. It was a good gig until they realized they couldn't find one he couldn't climb, and stopped paying.

As for what kind of night it was tonight... There'd been yelling, and nothing had happened, but the threat of it loomed over him and left him feeling restless.

[Bonus Thread 3]

[crow]

He had to go out. The thought of it wouldn't leave his mind. He didn't care if he froze out there. He just had to get the nerves out, run around somewhere where he could holler, and work off the excess. And then he'd be okay.

At least he had the luxury of leaving by the door this time. He could've done the drain, but it wouldn't have been too nice when it was this cold. His fingers would have gone numb before he'd even gotten all the way down.

[Bonus Thread 4]

[crow]

After he was clear of the house, he grinned, reveling in the sound of the snow crunching under his boots. It was always nice, that feeling of heading away from home, towards some kind of grand adventure.

In truth it probably wouldn't be very grand, or even much of an adventure, but it was the promise of the thing that made it special. Outside the house he could do anything he wanted, and be anyone. It was like a kind of magic all of its own.

[Bonus Thread 5]

[crow]

For a moment he considered going out to explore alone, but he thought better of it. A few houses down, he scaled the tall iron gate, and from there he shimmied his way up an old tree. He didn't even have to think about it. In the dark, blind maybe, he would know this tree forwards and backwards. He'd climbed it so many times he'd memorized the layout of the branches and maybe even the grooves in the bark.

He got up to a broad branch, then scooted down the length of it until he reached one of the windows on the second storey. Then he reached out and knocked.

[Bonus Thread 6]

[crow]

It was a light tap, but he could hear the sound of movement from within not long after. A face materialized out of the darkness of the room. Kip's grin widened as Milo blinked sleepily at him, still rubbing at one eye with a fist.

Come outside with me. Kip made signs with his hand, a secret code that they'd invented when they were younger, and the problem of Kip scaling trees to get up to see Milo had first presented itself.

[Bonus Thread 7]

[crow]

Talking was hard to do through the window, and Milo got in trouble so easily, so Kip had to be quiet no matter what... But they'd needed a way to convey signals, even simple ones, so this had been their answer.

Milo blinked again. He had seen the signs, and he knew what they meant--- of course he did, they'd been using them so long! And Kip always asked the same thing, pretty much--- but the questioning look he gave Kip was too easy to read. It was cold outside. Did Kip lose his marbles or something?

[Bonus Thread 8]

[crow]

Kip shrugged. The charm of these old friendships was that you didn't have to explain too much. Milo would know by that shrug that Kip had just been bored and looking for something to do, and this idea seemed as good a one as any, so he decided to go for it. Which Milo might read further into and guess that something had happened at home, but they were pretty good about not asking each other for details they might not want to give.

[Bonus Thread 9]

[crow]

Milo sighed, and Kip could see him shaking his head, but Kip knew from the set of Milo's mouth that he was at least considering it. Kip waggled his eyebrows invitingly at him, and saw the beginnings of a smile playing over Milo's features. Great. That sealed the deal then, didn't it? They were going.

I'll wait for you. Come down, he signed, and scrambled down the tree as fast as he could without making too much noise. He didn't see Milo's response, but Kip was confident that he was coming.

[Bonus Thread 10]

[crow]

It just took him longer, because he had to wake up properly and get dressed... Not to mention, he had to sneak out too, and having to be that quiet always slowed you down.

Kip counted snowflakes while he waited. One, two... It wasn't snowing very hard today, fortunately. Even Kip might not have come out if it had been a storm or something. He was foolhardy, but there was a limit, and Kip didn't really have a death wish or anything.

[Bonus Thread 11]

[crow]

After all, who would look out for Milo if he kicked the bucket?

Eventually motion at the periphery of Kip's vision caught his attention. Milo peered out the door, swathed in a massive puffy jacket and a thick scarf. It made Kip's ratty coat and threadbare mittens look even worse in comparison, but then, Kip didn't take as badly to the cold. Milo wasn't hardy, and hadn't grown up that way, so he needed all the insulation he could get, probably.

"Come on," said Kip, grabbing Milo by the wrist and dragging him out.

[Bonus Thread 12]

[crow]

Together they eased the door closed behind them, and that was as long as Kip was willing to wait before dragging Milo further out.

"Hey," said Milo, voice muffled through the scarf. His glasses were fogging over. He was still warm from bed and his steps were slow, stumbling. He had none of that hard restless edge that Kip seemed to carry with him. "What's the hurry?"

"Let's go, let's go let's go let's gooooo," said Kip. "We haven't got all night, right? Let's go as far as we can get, and see what we can see. Maybe we'll see elves tonight."

[Bonus Thread 13]

[crow]

"The woods again, huh?" said Milo. They both knew the path that Kip was leading them down, the one that went into a bit of backwood between the suburb-y bits and the bits that were more like farms proper.

There was a creek that ran through it, and sometimes when they were lucky--- or maybe not so lucky--- they might see a coyote passing through. It wasn't very big, but it was still wild, and no one had quite managed to endeavor to turn it into something else, like another house or a park or maybe a parking lot.

[Bonus Thread 14]