TEST DRIVE MEME: SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER

[ryslighelpers]

TDM: SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER

Welcome to the Ryslig Test Drive Meme! Below are a few prompts to get you started, but you may make up any prompt you desire! Please take a look at the navigation page for rules, setting information, and links to reserves and apps. Have fun!

SCENARIO ONE

You wake up on the beach thoroughly drenched, with your mouth full of sand. The salt water is making all the cuts and scrapes on your skin sting and the sand isn't helping. The air is slightly humid, ruining any feeling of refreshment you might have gotten from your dip in the ocean.

There are lights in the distance, but the unfriendly scent of gunpowder fills the air. If you're lucky, you're alone. If not - you might find yourself staring up into a pair of monstrous eyes or down the barrel of a local's shotgun.

SCENARIO TWO

So you've just arrived, and already some of the natives are trying to get on your good side with offers of food, shelter and other luxuries in return for hoping you don't eat them. They even have some helpful pamphlets to share with you. "How To Deal With Changes", "Alternatives to Human Flesh", "What to Expect When You're Expecting (to turn into a monster)" are all on the more informative end of the scale. There's even some detailing certain monsters, and the changes they go through. Some of these seem to have been passed down from one monster to the next.

Among these however, are some... not so helpful ones. "Bunnyipyips And You", "Axe Thief Axehounds," and "So you're becoming a Fur Bearing Trout" among others. Sometimes they have marks on them from previous readers saying they're lies, or pointing out good "jokes."

Then there are the people who aren't happy to see you at all. Glares and silent, judging stares if you're lucky, torches and pitchforks attempting to drive you out of the town if you're not. You may need a friend to help you.

SCENARIO THREE

"Seek us out," the voice whispers in your head, and before you have time to question it you've found yourself in someplace entirely alien.

Maybe it's the Fog God's ghostly town of Dyster, where exultant followers dance around bonfires and sing their praises to the skies above. Maybe it's the Fourth God's arcade, with small robots wheeling about amidst the lights and colors of old pinball machines.

Only one thing is certain: you are not alone, in this sacred place.

SCENARIO FOUR

The time has come and you've found yourself becoming a monster. Is the change instant, or gradual? Are you familiar enough with monsters to know what's happening, or is it a complete shock? Feel free to pick any monster type for this prompt, but note that you may not get the same one in game.

Comments

[pawntakesking]

He knew Sirius was dead in Draco's time, and so presumably in Harry's. He knew it, and had known it for almost two years at this point - and yet, in those two years, he must have allowed himself to forget it, because hearing the last of it, knowing what it means, still feels like a kick in the chest. He flinches slightly, and the edges of his ink-dark cloak tremble like smoke.

With an effort, he manages to school his features back into steadiness, and even twitches the corners of his mouth up in a tiny smile. "I suppose it could have been left in worse hands." Mine, for example. The thought isn't a new one, but the bitterness of it never fails to sting: the knowledge that the death of the Black line is on him, after all those centuries. "You don't mind cats, do you?"

They're getting close enough to Bavan, and to his café, for him to realise he hasn't actually asked.

[audax]

"I don't know if Teddy will take it up once he's old enough, but I've left everything to him. Andromeda's grandson, if Draco mentioned him?" Harry had done his best by his godchild, but he never really felt like he knew how to be a proper parent. Not yet. "I'm rather fond of him, even if he's in the stage where he's still perpetually a bit soggy and often sticky. I don't know how he does it, but I think he exudes jam."

Toddlers. What can you do, right?

"And I don't mind cats at all. Never really had a problem with any sort of animal; although I'm not overly fond of rats in large numbers."

[pawntakesking]

Regulus stops walking for a moment, looking at Harry fixedly and rather strangely. At last, quietly, he says "I'm not sure I even knew Andromeda had a child. Let alone a grandchild. I..." He frowns, passing a hand over his face, and looks away. "Draco and I didn't talk about it much. Not after I first arrived."

And now, he can't help but feel guilty for that. Perhaps it's a mark of how he's changed since arriving here, but he feels a deep and uncomfortable shame at the realisation that he never even wondered about Andromeda, in all of the introspection and all the consideration he's given to his life back home. When she was blasted off the tapestry, in a very real sense, she ceased to exist to him. That...

He still struggles with some of what he's been told is wrong. But that, now that he looks at it face-on, is definitely wrong.

[audax]

"Now you look like you need a cup of tea and to sit down. Why don't we talk about pointless things, like the weather and Quidditch, until we get to your place?" There's another gentle, not-quite there touch to Black's elbow. Would he hug Regulus if they were close friends? Or would he treat him the same? In any case, he's decided that they're family and there's no going back from that.

Harry Potter and The Snap Decision is the next book in the series.

"Without magic, there's no Quidditch here, I suppose. What do they play instead? Football? Or something new?"

[pawntakesking]

"Do you know, I'm not actually sure."

Regulus sounds surprised even as he says it, not having given it any thought up to right now - and that, in itself, is strange when he considers it. After all, Quidditch was always one of the few passions of his outside of books and politics. That he hasn't even thought of finding a replacement for it is... surprising, on reflection. Perhaps it says something about how he's changed, or about how this place has changed him. He files the thought away for future consideration, and for now, just shakes his head and tries to clear his thoughts.

At least this time when Harry touches his elbow, he doesn't flinch away as he did before.

"I suppose you could play something like Quidditch, though. There are no brooms, but there are plenty of monsters who can fly..."