[Seasonal Event] This mess I've made

RORY

He wasn't proud of how they had left Wessex during the night, and even though his facial expressions were washed out—like the rest of him, drained of color and exuberance—it was clear on his face. It was the ghost of a self-conscious grimace. He had looked for her, but he hadn't wanted to shout in the pressing dark, and it had.. it had seemed urgent. They had rushed, young and heedless and drunk on it, and they didn't deserve the amount of luck they had had in staying alive.

His breath caught in his throat when she launched into her tale. He was so sure they had closed the door properly.. but perhaps the monsters had hands—

and the rocking chair had moved

—he was moving gently, back and forth, listening to the peculiar not-quite-sound it made. Like everything else, it had been sound-checked and sound-proofed before Long Night.

He couldn't imagine what it was like, to find the monsters in your house. To have failed and face death. He felt nauseous just imagining what it would've been like. Heart pounding. Mouth dry. Seeing furniture move without anyone there to move it. Nails—so that was how they had come loose, all of them? But nothing else was broken...

.. because she had asked them to fix it. He was .. touched, that she would think of such a thing—that she'd ask for such a thing, even if it was just as leverage against the monsters. He blinked rapidly a few times, his hands twisting in his lap.

The monsters had been in his house.

The monsters had touched his rocking chair.

He felt, briefly, oddly violated, as if something indecent had taken place—something filthy, something dirty, and he frowned as he stopped his rocking.

"The Spark Bird," he echoed, swallowing. The steam wafting from whatever it was she'd put together was mouth-watering. "I.. really don't know what possessed us to ride out. And I looked for you, I did, but..." He shrugged vaguely. It was such a strange blur to think back on. "It ended up being me, Amalia, Jigano, and some woman called Edy. Big floofy hair, fire hands?" Maybe Wessex knew who it was. "Turns out something had destroyed the top beam of the perch. On paper, it looked simple—get it down, remove the useless bit of it, hoist it up and secure it again. In reality..."

Briefly, he glanced aside, away from the flames. They roared in his memory anyway, coming towards his face. "Something evil got into our minds," he went on, quietly. "Poisoning our thoughts. Such distrust and suspicion, such anger... Edy threw fire at me-" His pale, cold hand touched the almost-healed scars. "-and Jigano bit me. I tried to hit Amalia when she tried to help me. She had those red antlers, if you've seen them? I think they helped keep the evil at bay. I don't really remember much. I think Edy pulled the beam down, we removed the broken bit, and hauled it back up again. That's.. that's when..."

Something had happened; his memory was hazy from pain and fear and the specific sort of strain intense agony puts you under. They had dropped the antlers, somehow. And it had been so, so bad...

"Edy must've done something to Amalia, for she just collapsed. I was mad again at the time, so Jigano practically tackled me with the antler, and by the time I was sane again, Edy had already carried Amalia off. She took her to the Rathskeller, where Vai managed to fix her. So, yeah. Jigano and I finished up at the perch. Then.. the Spark Bird arrived."

He spread his hands in a helpless gesture, shrugging slightly, before clasping them again and putting them between his trembling knees.

It had been one strange Long Night indeed.

"And.. thanks, for asking them to fix my house. So, uh.. what's your plan, monster whisperer?"

as if you were on fire from within,
the moon lives in the lining of your skin.