Stronger With Those Daddy Issues

[missrecalled_mods]

Waking to bird song isn't exactly shocking in Auradon, but it seems... louder than usual on the first morning of the event. And there is a reason for that. Auradon has been visited by a rather large flock of Golden pheasants. An odd flock as experienced birders might notice there are only the brightly coloured males in evidence. But there isn't much time to think about that because with them comes... a complication.

Now this is Auradon, of course, so the only mess the birds are dropping are bright colourful feathers. But the feathers, like the flowers last month randomly trigger a memory. Once again the memory shows in 3D, looking the most solid to the one who touched the feather - and unwittingly contributed the memory. No one can interact with it, and no matter how solid it looks, the figures and places and things in the memory can be walked through with ease. Well, physical ease, anyway. The memory, once again, will not be from the perspective of the one it belongs to; they and their companion or companions will be observing from a third party perspective, thus allowing a person to see their own face in the memories without the aid of a mirror.

The memories this time are memories of fathers and paternal figures. Generally good memories. After all, this is Auradon.

If one interacts closely with the birds or their feathers they might also have strong vivid dreams of their paternal figure. Again, genrally happy dreams given this is Auradon. While the birds will fly away after two weeks, and the feathers will lose their power to share memories at the same time, for every day spent handling the birds or feathers during the event, the character might have up to that many day of intense dreams after.

Comments

Golden Memories - OTA

[hotheadwarmheart]

So... there were birds now. Far to many of the same kind of birds to be anything other than some sort of magical shenanigans going on. Still, they weren't literally coming out of the woodwork like the flowers had been, so they were at least somewhat easier to avoid.

Their feathers, however, were not. They were pretty and colorful, sure, but that didn't mean anyone wanted to be forever brushing them off their chair, picking them out of their laundry, or sweeping the floor clear of them. Lea did opt to keep a few of them; assuming they stuck around after the birds themselves left, there were a few things he wanted to try with them. But for the most part, they were just a minor nuisance, much like the their owners.

Somehow though, he wasn't entirely surprised when picking a feather out of the visor of a random suit of armor in the hallway resulted in the scene suddenly shifting. To a backroom workshop that- if not nearly as familiar as his old home- he still remembered well.

**********************************

"This is actually pretty cool," the twelve year old Lea of memory said, watching his father retrieve a clay crucible of molten metal from the workshop's small furnace with a pair of tongs.

"No actually it's very hot," his father- a man whose reddish hair was beginning to show the first traces of gray, but whose neatly trimmed moustache was as vibrant as ever- said, grinning when young Lea rolled his eyes at the joke, "so be careful. You got your gloves and safety goggles?"

"Yep," the tween said, pulling his goggles down into place from where they'd been partly hidden by his spikey hair and retrieving his protective gloves from the nearby table before putting them on. "What do you want me to do?"

"See that vial of blue powder there on the desk?" his father said, indicating a rack of what looked like sealed glass test tubes full of colored glitter with a nod of his own goggled head.

"This one?", Lea said selecting a vial whose contents were pale blue. Despite his father calling it a powder, a closer look would reveal the contents to be closer to fine sand, and the grains didn't just glitter, but gave off gleams of their own light. "What is it?"

"Powdered frost shards," Lea's father said, taking the crucible over to a worktable but not setting it down onto the rack meant for it just yet. A mold for what looked like a bracelet sat open on the table. "We're making a Blizzard Armlet. So do you know why I asked for your help with it?"

"Because any metal you're adding frost shard to is gonna cool off really quickly," little Lea said, bringing over the vial. "So you really need two people: one to add the powdered magicite to the metal, and the other one to poor the metal into the mold before it get too stiff."

"Got it in one," his father said with a smile. "I see you've been doing your homework."

"Not willingly, but yeah," little Lea said before taking the cap off of the vial and setting it aside. "I'm guessing you want me to pour the shard powder in?"

His father nodded. "Pour it in gradually," he said. "That's the secret to a well-made accessory; you need to give the magic time to permeate the metal."

Little Lea nodded and carefully began to pour the contents of the vial into the crucible of molten metal as his father instructed. At first, nothing seemed to happen aside from the grains of crystal melting away almost instantly. But after a moment, the metal in the crucible changed color from the red hot molten metal it had been to something that looked akin to mercury; still molten but taking on a lovely silvery color.

As soon as little Lea had poured the last of the contents into the crucible and moved his hand, his father carefully tipped the contents of the crucible into the waiting mold. Only when that was done and the mold set did his father put the crucible on its stand to cool and set down his tongs. "Now we just need to wait for it too cool and harden enough for me to put the details and the setting in," he said. Then turning to little Lea, he smiled. "Thanks, by the way. We make a good team."

Little Lea chuckled and made some sort of comment about 'helping the elderly' as the memory faded, adult Lea focusing on the sight of his father's smile until the last.

*******************************************

"Yeah...", he muttered once the last of the memory had faded, leaving him once more in the hallway. "A pretty good team..."

Re: Golden Memories - OTA

[gregorydeegan]

"That's your old man? I like him," Greg said with an easy smile. "He missed a few opportunities for good puns in there, but anyone can learn that with time." He pushed off the wall he had been leaning on and offered a hand, having no clue the other redhead had cause to know his face, though not with his hair and eye colour. He could have been Gar's identical twin. Or Gar with hair dye, contact lenses, and a noticeable lack of animal themed clothing. "I'm Greg, by the way."

[hotheadwarmheart]

Lea almost did a double-take when he saw the young man's face. He knew that face. Well, kinda. The question was, relative, alternate universe double, or both? It was a mark of how crazy his life was that none of these options would be too surprising.

Well there was one way to find out, he supposed. "Yeah," he said. "That was my dad. And he was a good guy. Tended to save most of the dad jokes for when we weren't handling molten metal though."

"My name's Lea. And this might come off as a weird question, but you don't know someone named Gar, do you? Pretty sure it's short for Garfield."

[gregorydeegan]

"There are jokes that don't class as dad jokes?" He asked with a laugh. At the question his grin grew. "Gar? That name sounds kinda fishy. Asking is a bit out of left field, I think," he added. Then shrugged. "When it comes to people with fish names, I usually check in with my brother's cat. Spark pretty much only remembers names that sound delicious or punny. Or alliterative. Like grinning Greg, dour Dominic, Lovely Luna..."

[hotheadwarmheart]

"Yeah sorry," he said. "It's just that before I was here, I was traveling on a weird inter-world train, and there was a guy named Gar there who looked a heck of a lot like you, just with different colored hair and eyes. Come to think of it, your brother's cat was there too, unless there's another talking orange cat named Spark running around."

It all seemed like a bit too much of a coincidence, honestly. Wait.... could it be...? "Say, does your brother's cat have any kind of unusual abilities? Other than being able to talk and consume enough fish to feed a small army, I mean."

[gregorydeegan]

"He could for all I know. My brother lives to be mysterious and some of that rubs off on Spark. Som of what rubs off on him from Spark, however, is fur. Sounds like Spark, fur sure, though."

[hotheadwarmheart]

"Heh, well that's kinda true for anyone with a cat," Lea said. "I wonder though..." He considered for a moment, then opted to let it drop. They had no way of confirming his suspicions either way.

"Is everyone in your family into making bad puns? Or is that just you and Spark?"

[gregorydeegan]

"And my father. We both learned from him. Dominic and mom both do it somtimes too... but rarely intentionally."

[hotheadwarmheart]

"A family tradition of bad puns," Lea said. "Well, I guess there's worse things to carry on. I've kinda gotten into accessory making myself, though not really cause my dad did it. It just kinda worked out that way."

[gregorydeegan]

"Accessory making? Like what, you make people help commit crimes?" he quipped.

Look, he spends a lot of times with the sherif these days.

[hotheadwarmheart]

"What? No," Lea said with a chuckle. "I'm talking about the kind of accessories you wear. Jewelry, belts, hairclips, stuff like that. The ones I make usually have magical properties, but they don't have to. My dad made and sold both kinds."

[gregorydeegan]

"So once you get a shop set up you'll need a barker? Someone to belt out your sales? Someone people trust so when he says things, they can say "'E rings true"?"

[hotheadwarmheart]

"Don't figure I'll be here long enough to set up a shop," Lea said. "Though I do want to build a proper forge, if we find someplace that had the materials."

[gregorydeegan]

"And if you can't forage for the forge we can make fakes, a forged forge as it were." Not all of that was strictly punning, but he was here for all sorts of wordplay.

[hotheadwarmheart]

"Well I'm not sure how you'd forge a forge in that sense, but if you figure it out let me know," Lea said, amused. "It'd have to be done without magic though; if I want to potentially use it to make magical objects, it can't have any residual magic in the construction that might cause a problem."

[gregorydeegan]

"Magic, folded paper, clay and paint.." he grinned. "It just has to be an image if it is a forgeary. Get the picture?"

[hotheadwarmheart]

It took him a moment to get that one, but when he did it got an eyeroll. "Right... forging," he said, "Yeah I get it. Don't think that'll be very helpful though, sadly. Not for anything besides a prank anyway."

[gregorydeegan]

"Or a good joke," he said with a grin. "I'm not exactly the useful brother."

[hotheadwarmheart]

"Don't sell yourself short," he said. "I'm sure you can be super useful. Juuuust maybe not with forge building."

[gregorydeegan]

"Oh I'm tall enough. And not for sale. But I'm just the healing brother with an axe to shred... Not all that useful unless things have already gone south."

[hotheadwarmheart]

"Dude, healing magic is super useful," he said. "And one of the hardest kinds to learn, at least when it comes to high-level stuff. I've only managed a basic Cure spell on that front myself. If you're looking to expand your options a bit though, I could try and teach you some fire magic."

[gregorydeegan]

"I'm not an Elemental Mage, and I'm not a good enough student to pick up a whole second discipline. I've been studying white magic since I was tiny. So unless you mean white fire, I'm probably not going to be any good at anything you have to teach. Trust me, my mom would love it if I could pick up another speciality, but those of us who can learn more than one and do any good with them are rare. It's part of why she's an arch mage, because she can tap into lots of different specialties. Dominic's working on it, but he spends most of his time studying and scrying. I'm too lazy."

[hotheadwarmheart]

Lea considered a moment. "I know there's some light-based attack spells," he said. "But they tend to be really powerful and pretty advanced; nothing I'd be qualified to teach, even if I knew them, which I don't."

"But I didn't mean you had to become an expert at it or anything. Just that it's good to round out your options a little. That's why I started learning some different kinds of spells besides just fire. So far I've learned basic wind and ice spells on top, plus the Cure spell I mentioned before. Ice was the hardest of the three to learn, cause it's pretty much the opposite of what I'm aspected to. Well, I guess the direct opposite would be water, but there's not a lot of combat-oriented water magic where I'm from; I really only know one guy who specializes in it."

[gregorydeegan]

"Oh, Light is part of being a White Mage. I have that down fairly well," he said, puffing up a bit.