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Look-See ventured back just in time from her impromptu hunt. Her stomach was protruding a bit. Listening in on the last declaration she cast her vote with the mob, "As The Sun Burns"

((museum day, out for most of today))

Watch was growing frustrated. This was clearly not his place. Being a character was difficult and more stressful than he had imagined. Everyone was poking him and accusing him for who knows what, and he couldn't even truly defend himself without seeming guilty. He sighed heavily, addressing the brightly colored doe, Optimist.

"I am not ignoring anyone, I am trying to diffuse the riddle we have been given. Why would a story teller such as Merry Wanderer say something so out of place if it was not important?" He stopped a moment, lest his frustrations seep through, "A story teller does not give useless information. To them, everything has meaning. I would know, I have been gathering and sharing stories longer than some of you have been alive. All I am trying to say is that I believe that we should look more closely at those who have been killed."

To Sleepless and Bitter End, he deplored, "Forgive me, I was attempting to lighten the mood of such a dark game, but it would obviously seem that my sense of humor has gone unappreciated here. I will refrain from doing it agian. I did not vote for her to be spiteful, but because felt I had no solid reason to vote for anyone else at the time. Evidence had only just started building against The Once and Future King. I have explained this multiple times now." He said with a look to Doubleback.

"And to you I ask, what questions have I dodged? Please, bring them to light and I will happily answer them all. I have asked this same question to the few who have voted me for that reason, and yet no one has answered."

He stopped and caught his breath. He could have handled that better, he knew, but his patience had grown thinner with his age. Raising his head, he cast his vote.

"I don't suppose anyone else will back me on my vote, but I name Fire Made Flesh. He is tied to the night time kills, Watch the Skies by voting against her and Snake Flower by harassing her in the first round. He has also been exceedingly quiet. True, he seems incredibly obvious but to me, I feel like it is a trap, and thus my vote."

((OOC: OMGDIES. X.X Seriously though, if you are talking to Watch, quote me. I am at work 80% of the day and only get a short time to post, hence why all of his reactions are all here. Sorry! > <; ))

Fortunately, As the Sun Burn's words only made optimist "Somehow," Optimist said, shaking her head. "I don't think Merry Wanderer's rather morbid descriptions mean anything other than, well, he has fun coming up with them! I don't think they give hints, and I don't see a riddle."

She paused. "Maybe I'm just not seeing things but I honestly don't know what you're talking about. When you were pressured further about your reasons for voting for Watch the Skies, you simply said what's done is done," which wasn't a reason at all. It was stupid to ignore the past in this game: that was the only place they could get information. She shrugged. "Both Kiss of Death and I mentioned this at the beginning of the day, before you mentioned anything about Snake Flower, and you ignored it summarily." That was what had annoyed her, and had in all honesty been a large part of her vote - refusing to participate in the game was just frustrating.

She turned to Apathy and nodded. "I won't fault you for your vote," she said. "I mean, I'd have done that too, maybe! I think Doubleback in particular was a bad choice because the day hadn't even been half over at that point - I find it difficult to fault people before they have opportunity to talk, and Doubleback's activity in the past indicated that we could expect the same today."

The buck finally spoke! What was even more surprising was the stuff he just said. There was something different about him this time. He was just not randomly choosing kin to vote against. She took in a huge breath before speaking again. "Call me crazy, but after hearing that, I'd like to change my vote to Fire Made Flesh." She looked at Watch that she almost voted twice on. "I hope that you could explain your reason for choosing scaly over there further to me." There was a lot of questions she could ask him if both survived the night.

The chatter of the previous day had been so confusingly over his head that Wolf Dream had given up and found a nook in between two tree roots in which to sleep. After all, the hunting was only imaginary, and he was certainly in no real danger amidst such a large group of kin. He curled up and drifted off to the sound of the other kin arguing, their voices fading into the background of his mind --

His body is scaffolded by air-filled bones, hollow pins branch out from his skin to form feathers. A fish moves in the water beneath him and in a flash it is in his sharp beak, sliding down his long throat. His thin legs wade through the water silently, leaving no ripples. And yet he is hunted. The sharp snap of a stick alerts him, he raises his wings to fly away -- but is caught, neck snapped between teeth, dragged back to ground, trampled with sharp hooves --

He wakes back to his own body with a start, heart beating double-time as he scrambles to his feet. He is not sure how much time has passed, or who has been eliminated from the game. He isn't aware how much the talk of the rest of the players has seeped into his mind while he slept, directing his subconscious. To him, of course, the dream was real -- a trip into the body of another creature, the world seen through different eyes. The memory of pain still haunts him and he knows (or thinks he knows) what the dream was telling him. He looks around the clearing for the buck with the dead crane flung across his back. "As the Sun Burns," he calls out, eyes still cloudy with half-sleep and haunted by his dream. "Today I vote for you."

Optimist took a breath, too excited by what'd transpired the previous day to even mind the day's usual gory message. But the moment she opened her mouth to speak someone else spoke first. "What?" she asked, although she'd been preparing to say something along the same lines as Wolf Dream. "Um..."

"Did you enjoy your nap?" she said hesitantly, not sure if what she'd heard had been right. "Um..."

She nodded at Giveforward, though. "I think that just tells us we need to work harder on looking for predators." Then Optimist paused, and she opened her mouth for what she'd really been about to say. "I'm not sure what Wolf Dream is thinking - it's a good vote, I'd say, but I'm not sure what it means." Maybe he knew things? Still..."That brings me to the point I was about to make, though! Yesterday, as we're all aware, the vote counts were tied near the end, thanks to Apathy's vote." She nodded at the doe in question, an uncharacteristic serious expression forming on her face. "But As the Sun Burns speaking up caused Kiss of Death to quickly backtrack on her vote for him, and switch to his preferred target instead."

She cocked her head at the doe in question. "I-I'm sorry - you're really nice, but if we look at your actions...it looks a lot like you were trying to force the daily kill to be Sun Sinks Down, even though you changed your vote to Fire Made Flesh. There was no way he'd actually be killed at that point, right? But to vote for Sun Sinks Down would've drawn attention to you as someone who was taking advantage of the tie to become the deciding vote. So you picked him instead. But then, only seconds later, you turned to As the Sun Burns and asked him to explain the reason for which he was voting for Fire Made Flesh further."

Optimist paused to let that sink into the group. "I-I'm really sorry, but it looks to me like you're just trying to hide something - I think you and As the Sun Burns are both on the predator team, and you were just trying to hide by voting for him initially. After all, why would you vote for someone and ask for a reason to vote for that person in the same breath? It's silly that you'd go from nearly voting for As the Sun Burns to following his footsteps without even understanding them in the next breath." It just didn't make sense. Someone who sought reasons for voting from other people would never just vote without purpose, and yet that was exactly what Kiss of Death's last minute votes had looked like.

There wasn't a lot that kin could do to convince Optimist to vote for someone other than Kiss of Death at this point, but she'd let the doe talk first.

The dragon was doing a poor job keeping up with the developing game, it moved so rapidly during the "daytime" portion and then upon waking from "night", the aged buck found it difficult to quickly absorb the overnight "death" and move on. Flesh was used to doing things alone, on his terms, on his time- all the time in the world, actually. It was an adjustment to have to work on someone else's schedule, and Flesh was adjusting poorly.

He was saved from having to speak simply to develop his own thoughts by Optimist's long-winded explanation. At face value it all made sense, but Flesh was not so ready to blindly follow. He stretched out his neck and shook his head to loosen his muscles, and perhaps to shake loose some sort of defining piece of evidence previously unnoticed.

Another death that seemed designed to confuse.

As Optimist laid out her thoughts, Peep couldn't help but nod along. It made sense. She had nothing to add yet but simply stood quietly to the side, her mind a whirl of thoughts and her gaze occasionally wandering over to Fire Made Flesh as she wondered what his scales would feel like.

Wolf Dream’s scramble out of sleep and subsequent vote was strange but Kiss of Death and As the Sun Burns still had the highest suspicion in her mind. She would wait, she decided, to see what they would say.