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 Posted: Thu Oct 06, 2016 10:52 pm
 Things were changing as Perigor got older. The world was changing, for one thing—there were more and more races, and more and more cultures all over. This was especially evident at the Academy—it seemed that every new race that popped up sent their children there. It was exciting to be a part of all of this, especially as a cache child. It seemed that fewer and fewer children these days came from the cache—he wondered if the cache was starting to run out. It was a chilling idea, although perhaps not so chilling now that there were more students around here. Asphodel Academy would always be open, would always have students, even if its original purpose had been completed. Those students would continue to hail from Arkham, Eldritch, or Enoch houses and continue to take a social studies class bloated with extra material that their forebears had never had to study.
That wasn’t the only thing that was changing, either. Peri’s friends were changing—Ustule was becoming more and more interested in geography and medical programs, Histeol spent time coming up with ideas for radio shows, Prometheus had a little brother! Everything was changing.
Peri was changing, too. He hadn’t gotten a good night’s sleep in months now. The first snowfall that year had brought on strange feelings in him, too. Feelings in the literal sense of sensations—he kept hearing shouts and screams from outside, but no one ever reacted. Sometimes his desk would start shaking or his pencils would crack, but when he picked them up to examine them, there was no sign of damage. No one ever noticed any of this. This lead Peri to a very simple conclusion: he was hallucinating. The screams, the shaking desk, the cracking pencils, all of these were hallucinations. It wasn’t that much of a leap—after all, he hadn’t been sleeping well, remember? No matter how tired he got, as soon as he laid his head down, his thoughts wrapped around him like a thick layer of wool. It was getting harder and harder to get through every day with that. He’d finally caved to his friends’ pressure and gone to the school nurse for some sleeping pills, but they didn’t do much good. Sure, he got sleep, but the feeling of being suffocated in wool intensified. He’d given up taking them a few weeks ago. They just weren’t worth it.
His schoolwork was getting steadily worse and worse, and it wasn’t the only thing. In the end, Perigor had to track down his friend Teo’s sister, Cal, in a courtyard at lunch one day. She could help him out with his latest problem.
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Posted: Thu Oct 06, 2016 10:53 pm
 Fall was over in all but calendar dates, and it was time for the campus to start coming alive with the sound of people discussing the upcoming Solstice celebration—as well as discussions about college. College was still two years away for Cal, but her mother wanted her to start making plans. Cal groaned whenever her mother brought the subject up, and countered with the arguments she had been unknowingly preparing for years:
One, I’ve got very good grades. I always have. My life skills, science, math, and social studies grades are excellent. Not actually a thing to worry about there.
Two, there aren’t that many electives at our school that will be useful for me to get into college. Herbalism and care of magical creatures, maybe, but I was going to take those classes anyway, Mom, like I do every year.
Three, I know what college I’m going to. No doubt about it. No, it’s not one of the ones in Cassiel’s Watch or the Winged Isle. It’s Leviathan. I’ve always wanted to go to Leviathan. I’ll get a degree in botany there. I’ll live there so that I can be close to classes. Yeah, no, Eidil’s going there, too, we’re going to get an apartment there. We’re already saving up.
Yes, Leviathan, Mom! Why wouldn’t it be? It’s one of the best colleges for the sciences in all of Below, it’s supported by the Academic Society of Asphodel, so I’m pretty much guaranteed to get in, even if my grades were bad, which, as previously established, they aren’t…
She’d had this conversation about twice already. Already, Teo was talking about “the warning signs” and threatening to leave the room when the subject came up. Cal was beginning to worry that Eidil was going to start doing the same thing as they chatted about it over lunch. Her fears were confirmed when Eidil said something about needing to ask a question on the homework and fled. Humph. Okay, then, Cal thought, I’m going to need a box of bat-shaped chocolates before the sun sets.
She was interrupted from her thoughts by the approach of a somewhat familiar sight. “Hey, Perigor, whassup?”
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Posted: Thu Oct 06, 2016 10:56 pm
Perigor hesitated. Callessa Elresienne was an imposing sight where her younger brother was not. Her eyes always seemed to be judging you, and with her large wings, she seemed taller than she already was (which was pretty  tall, mind you). She was like some avenging god come from above to…glare at you a lot. Or something. And considering what Perigor was about to discuss, he had no idea whether or not he was in for some white-hot Cal-style wrath. He’d heard a lot about Cal’s bad temper from her younger brother, and he did not want to be on her bad side. “Hey, Cal, nothin’ much,” he said after a moment of unintentional hesitation. Sleep, that was the thing. He just had to buy himself some sleep, and he’d be more alert. “So, uh, I’ve got a little somethin’ to talk to you, and I realize it’s really  awkward, so please bare with me and stuff.”
He took a deep breath. “So, like, when I was a little kid, I thought that I should have Pumpkas for pets. On account of I look like a pumpkin.” He gestured at himself in his orange and green glory. “So yeah, I’m sort of pumpkinoid, so I thought, hey, I need to surround myself with my people, because, y’know, pumpkin man. Only…” He took another deep breath. The confidence from the last one had already been spent. “Only I don’t think I can take care of my pumpkas. They’re sort of a hassle, and they’re…higher maintenance than I thought they would be. Since you’re the green queen of Asphodel, I thought I’d ask you if you could…y’know…take my pumpkas—I mean, if you could help me, uh, find them new homes? ‘Cause I really can’t take care of the little  s anymore,” he confessed. “They need new homes, somewhere away from me.”
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Posted: Thu Oct 06, 2016 10:58 pm
Cal wasn’t sure what she had expected when this conversation had begun, but it certainly wasn’t this. She’d known that her brother’s friend collected animals, although she hadn’t heard about the pumpkas before. All she’d ever heard about were the birds—apparently, Perigor was inordinately fond of the unholy terrors known as cockatriels, which was appropriate considering what an unholy terror he was. The pumpka thing was new, but it wasn’t all that surprising, come to think of it. He’d said he’d been little kid—probably a freshling. Freshlings tended to be more rash about this sort of thing, and “I look like them, so I need them” certainly sounded like freshling logic to her. I wasn’t like that, she thought smugly. I was always sensible and level-headed. (Her vast collection of fluffbugs would attest otherwise, but Cal was staunchly ignoring that at the moment.)
So when Perigor mentioned not being able to and not knowing how to take care of pumpkas, she assumed that he was asking her for advice. More or less the last thing she expected was to be asked if she could take the pumpkas off his hands. She opened her mouth to reply, then thought better of it. Her own mother bred and raised fennekits, one of the most insanely popular pets on the market. They were cute, they were fluffy, they were at least moderately intelligent, and they were affectionate as all get-out. Pretty much everyone wanted one at least once in their life, and pretty much everyone who wanted one was not prepared for the responsibility they took. They were demanding little sots, as anyone who had ever babysat them four times a week for ten years could attest. That’s why her mother also took in rescue fennekits, the ones who were strays or that no one else wanted. She would take care of them until she could find them new homes, and no matter how much she ranted about these people in private, to the soon-to-be former owners, she was gentle and offered reassurances.
It was time for Cal to do something she’d never expected to do in her life: she was going to have to channel her mother. “Recognizing that you can’t take care of them is very responsible, and while it’s sad that you can’t take care of them, you’re doing the right thing by finding them new homes. Er, by asking me for help in finding them new homes. I’ll do what I can, if you promise you’ll never take in another pet you can’t take care of again.” She took a deep breath. Acting like her mother was…weird. “So, how many pumpkas do you have?”
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Posted: Thu Oct 06, 2016 10:59 pm
Perigor had been expecting a lot more vitriol. Cal’s mother was kind and sweet, and her brother was, if anything, kinder and sweeter. They were gentle, handled people with care, and always thought about the feelings of others. These were traits he’d never really associated with the volatile Callessa. It would seem that there was more to the Fallen than met the eye…
His mind started to go off into all sorts of directions involving steel golems and alien wisps. He shook his head to bring himself back to the present. That was the trouble with sleep deprivation—it didn’t just make you feel numb and fuzzy and make you hallucinate. It also made your mind go off-track, sometimes quite badly. It was a real annoyance, if you asked Perigor, and that was a pretty mild way of describing it.
“I’ve got six pumpkas,” he said. “Trouble, Danger, Mischief, Uncertainty, Distress, and Rebellion. Distress and Rebellion look like your orange and black pumpkas,” he added, just in case that helped. It would be easiest for everyone if Cal just adopted them all, but in his experience, most people didn’t want two pets that were completely identical. It was only fair for him to warn her that two of his pumpkas would be repeats of hers. After all, she had been a lot nicer to him than he had expected. “They’re a little large for my room,” he added, looking away from Cal. “And they annoy my roommate a lot. They just do not respect their space. So yeah.”
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Posted: Thu Oct 06, 2016 11:01 pm
Callessa couldn’t help but whistle. Six pumpkas was a lot. She had three herself, but she lived on a farm. She knew some people had a lot of large pets, but generally speaking, having six medium-sized pets belonging to just one person in a two-person dorm would be overwhelming, especially considering that the way that events were run at the Academy, it was likely that his roommate had just as many of their own. Something had to give, and apparently it was Perigor’s collection. “Well, I think I can find space for most of them. Interesting naming theme, by the way.” She was no stranger to naming themes herself—she liked to name her pumpkas after species of squash and her fluffbugs after different words for bee. Eidil picked animal names for her pet bats. Honestly, Histeol was the only person Cal knew who didn’t have a specific theme for his pets’ names, and even he had a bit of a theme going on with his crocobees.
On the other hand, it sounded like the perfect theme for Perigor, especially considering that he supposedly named his birds after synonyms for fear. Dude was a bit of a nutter, honestly, but he was Histeol’s friend, so she couldn’t say a word against him. “I can’t take all of your pumpkas. Some of them will have to go to other homes. If you promise me that you’ll help me find new homes for them, and that you won’t make this mistake again, then I’ll help you find homes for them all.” Internally, Cal made a face. Her mother had a much more delicate way of extracting those promises and delivering those rebukes. She just couldn’t, for the life of her, remember what they were at the moment.
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Posted: Thu Oct 06, 2016 11:02 pm
Perigor nodded and raised his hand solemnly. “I promise that I will never again take an animal into my home if I cannot take care of them,” he said. “I also promise that I will not rest until I have found a home for my pumpkas.” That was a pretty easy promise to make, for obvious reasons. Perigor wasn’t going to get any rest with the pumpkas around for reasons that had been, he was sure, contributing to his sleeplessness. He would never be able to sleep with them still around, although he was beginning to develop the morbid feeling that he would never be able to sleep ever again.
Cal was satisfied with his promise, however, and they made arrangements for the drop-off of the pumpkas. Peri would take them over to Cal’s house on the weekend, and in the meantime, he would put up posters around school advertising the pumpkas for adoption. It sounded like a pretty handy arrangement, and indeed, by the time the weekend rolled around, Peri and Cal had both had contact from some hopefuls. It looked like things were going well.
Peri tied up the pumpkas with nets and attached the nets to pieces of string. He’d learned this trick from observing the way Cal tied up her own pumpkas. It was a handy trick to keep the floating gourds from flying away from him or from falling behind. Tied up this way, Peri took a long walk off of campus and out of town to the Elresienne farm. By the time he knocked at the door, pumpkas in hand, it was mid-morning.
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Posted: Thu Oct 06, 2016 11:03 pm
Cal was surprised. She hadn’t been expecting Perigor quite this early in the morning. She showed him in and offered him some late breakfast—leftover pancakes, still warm, with butter and maple syrup. He accepted and they sat down to discuss the pumpkas. “Teo’s out at the moment,” she started. It was generally a good idea to start a conversation with one of Teo’s friends by telling them where her brother was. He had a doctor’s appointment today to test him for various magical issues that came up. Basically, they wanted to see if he, like his adopted sister, was a battery. It would be a remarkable coincidence if he was, honestly.
Cal looked over the list Perigor provided of potential adoptors and nodded. “I got some of the same people,” she said. “Some of them have a good reputation.” She looked up at the pumpkas floating in the kitchen. If her mother had been home, they would have had to leave them outside—Elienne said that anything that screamed that loudly was not allowed in the house. Funny, since she always let Perigor in when he visited, and greeted him with open arms. “I’ll contact them tomorrow and Monday, see about delivering them soon. I don’t want them to get too attached to me or get into fights with my pumpkas.” She pulled one over to her, ignoring its shrieks, and looked it over. It had a good, clean look, with relatively few scratches and a bright flame. It was a healthy pumpka in good condition. There was nothing wrong with it except for terrible luck. That was the way of the world, sadly—good pets had to find new homes through no fault of their own. “Thank you for doing the right thing, Perigor,” she said softly. “Thank you so much.”
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Posted: Thu Oct 06, 2016 11:06 pm
Perigor was disappointed to find out that his Hallowed friend was out at the moment. He had been hoping that after taking care of the pumpka issue he could hang out with his friend. From the sounds of it, that was just not going to happen. On the other hand, if he went home now he could get some sleep…sleep at last…he could test out his hypothesis in a mercifully quiet dorm room. Yes, that sounded like a good idea. It sounded like a plan. He handed Cal the list of prospective adoptors and added his input. He’d heard of a few of them and met a few more. Word got around in a school who was to be trusted and who was to be avoided. If a person needed to avoid another person, chances were that animals and ambulatory plants would need to avoid them as well.
Perigor smiled around a mouthful of pancake and nodded. “No problem, Callessa,” he said. “Thanks for not biting my head off for letting this problem go on for so long. I know I should’ve found them homes earlier, but it’s…well, I wasn’t sure how to do it.” It had taken a long time for him to reach his breaking point, but reach his breaking point he had indeed. It was time for this to end, and it was going to end right now. “Thanks for your help, Cal,” he said. “I really appreciate it.” He put his dishes in the sink, waved Cal farewell and returned to campus with a spring in his step and a lightened heart.
His dorm room was quiet when he got back, but he still couldn’t sleep.The following pumpkas will be rehomed: I have not yet decided who the new owners will be. I will probably do a truncated sort of RP in which people adopt the pumpkas.
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Posted: Thu Oct 06, 2016 11:07 pm
Cal was sort of inclined to keep the green one, Danger, but she wasn’t going to keep any of them until she knew for certain which person wanted which one. In the meantime, she put them away in a shed with a treat of scented oil to keep them happy, and continued on her chores. She called a few of the prospective owners, arranged times to meet with them, and even got to introduce a few of them to the pumpkas that afternoon. By the end of the day, she’d managed to find new homes for one of the pumpkas. In all, she’d had an excellent day’s work here.
She hadn’t yet told her family about her project with Perigor. With her face flush with victory and so many people visiting the farm that afternoon, however, it was only a matter of time before the story had to come out. Cal outlined the story to her family over dinner, starting with Perigor’s approach and ending with the homing of one of the pumpkas. It seemed like a lot to unpack until she recited it. Once it had been said out loud, however, it seemed…well, it seemed so prosaic. It was a simple tale, a mundane happening in a mundane world. And yet, it made her mother smile.
“I’m so proud of you,” Elienne murmured. She’d reached out her hand across the table to wrap around cal’s. Elienne squeezed her daughter’s hand. “You’ve shown a lot of responsibility and a lot of compassion over the last few days—both for the plants and for another person.” Cal felt her heart glow at those words of praise and returned the hand squeeze. Now she had all the more reason for the happy smile across her face. How long has my mother’s approval mattered to me? she wondered. She didn’t know the answer to that.
Histeol was not sharing in their family’s victory, however. Instead, he was frowning at his bowl of rice. “What’s wrong?” Cal asked him.
Teo’s wing twitched. “It’s nothing,” he said shortly. “Only…why did you say he got rid of them?”
“He adopted them out,” Cal said primly, “because he couldn’t take care of them. They were also annoying his roommate.”
Teo pointed his face at her. “Perigor doesn’t have a roommate. He lives in a single.”
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