bottlecaplogs | [OPEN] Dreams & Ghosts

Who: Mayaka & you !

What: 2 open prompts (reviewing dreams from last month + attempting to get over her fear of ghosts) and wildcard option

Where: Around Bottlecay Bay + Skull Town

When: Beginning of Feb

Warnings: none atm

a. dream review

Perhaps you're passing through the Archives, or the living hall in Skull Town when you spot a Sneasel sitting at a table furiously scrawling out various drawings on paper. Mayaka's gloves have been set aside neatly beside her for now, because she finds it easier to hold onto the charcoal pencils using her bare claws. She's experienced some weird dreams from last month. Though she doesn't remember the exact details, she's been dutifully drawing out the images that lingered in her mind upon waking up. Now, it's time to try to make sense of them. On the table you'll find the following drawings:

1. What appears to be a spaceship, though Mayaka's drawn it to look more like a truck with four wheels underneath.

2. A primordial-looking fish creature. She has given it a pair of cute, anime-sized eyes to make it look more approachable.

3. A black cat with an extra pair of eyes on its stomach. More cat-like than Mimikyu at this point.

4. The drawing she's currently working on, and struggling to capture. She's trying to remember what the alien beings in the final big nightmare looked like, though the large and erratic shapes on paper may not look recognisable to anyone. Mayaka is finding it difficult because she doesn't have an image in mind to associate with what she saw in the nightmare.

She's too caught up with this to notice if someone were to approach...

b. how to deal with ghosts

If you're wandering around Bottlecap Bay, you'll find Mayaka outside her house in the Lum Berry housing area, rooted on the spot.

Her attention is focused on a small clay sculpture she's placed in the garden of her front porch. It's a little handmade ghost figurine with a hairbow on its head. While it might look strangely cute, the more you look at it, the more you'll notice that it's two eyes seem to be gazing directly at you with an unblinking Stare™.

This is the ghost that's been chasing her in her dreams, but she's too scared to get rid of it! (Also, the fact that it was a gift to her from Catrina doesn't help!)

The Sneasel is shaking a little, and it's not from the cold weather. She's standing a safe distance away from the figurine, muttering to herself: "It's just a doll... it's just a dolll..."

(Dolls are creepy too, though??)

c. wildcard!
for any other threads or ideas that come up!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Bigby asked me about some movie he saw once, when I talked about it. Star Wars, I think?" She shrugs. Any and all Earth-folks here have a very bad baseline for how space travel (and living in space generally) seems to work, so she's already prepared to hear something wildly incorrect from Mayaka. "She ain't a fancy vessel, but I kept her runnin'. My pride and joy. Fanciest thing we had aboard was ADA, our navigation computer. She's kinda cold, but a real sweetheart when you get to know her."

Alongside other weird gadgets the ship's former owner left behind when the Captain's escape pod crushed him, like the acid-shooting cleaner unit named SAM.

"So, you're like an engineer?" Mayaka asks, genuinely curious.

"Did you have to go to school for this, or did you have a mentor?"

What is school like in space, anyway?

"Yep! Probably not the best there is - that'd probably be my girlfriend - but I'm pretty good. I know my nuts from my bolts, and my skip drives from my heating cores." And how to repair all of them, too! Parvati puffs her chest out with pride.

"My dad taught me everything I know. Got the job from him; before I worked on the ship, I maintained a cannery. That was his before it was mine."

The Sneasel grins as she hears her friend talk about the people dear to her. "Your dad's... This ship must be really special to you then," she says, finally understanding why it matters so much to the Tinkaton.

"Parvati-chan, this means you'll be my go-to if I ever need to build something!" Mayaka decides.

That's her job, after all. Oh, but--

"The ship belongs to my friend, actually. The cannery job is what I got from my dad." She chuckles. She worded that funny, easy mistake. "Not that the ship ain't special. The Captain got me out of a really bad place, wouldn't swap it for the world."

She pauses. "Do you have somethin' in mind?"

Mayaka takes a few seconds to think, stucking in the inside of her cheek as she does.

"Hm. Not right now. I'm not much of a builder. I'm more of a..."

She gestures to the papers in front of her, but doesn't fill in the blank. It still feels weird to call herself an artist, given how unsatisfied she is with her skill.

She glances down at the papers, clearly admiring the discipline and skill exhibited in each drawing. She's only good at technical blueprints, after all. She couldn't make that Shoka portrait look anywhere near as good. It's a learned skill, sure, but not one Parvati has the time or inclination to start learning when she's already preoccupied.

"Yeah, fair. That's why everyone leaves the building to me."

Parvati's so sure of herself and what she's good at, Mayaka thinks.

"... How did you know you wanted to become a builder, Parvati-chan? Weren't there times you were unsure if it was the right path for you?"

"Grew up watching my dad fixing things in his workshop when he wasn't at work. Took a liking to it, and had natural skill. He joked I got it from him."

Parvati smiles to herself fondly. "It just sort of worked out that way - and I was the most reliable successor he had for the job. ALways been good with my hands." Too good, given her affinity for getting into trouble with it. "Suppose I never really thought about it. There ain't much choice, where I'm from. I got real lucky."

"Would've it been different if you weren't naturally gifted in fixing stuff?"

Unlike Parvati, she wasn't born to parents that encouraged her interests. Mayaka's had to prove to them that her manga hobby wouldn't get in the way of her studies. She hasn't even gone to formal art lessons, and learned all she knows from guidebooks and copying her favourite manga. Sometimes, she doesn't know what's the point in trying when she knows she can't compare to those who are naturally talented in making manga.

"Even if you didn't have much choice, would you still have picked this, even if it was difficult?"

She shrugs. "Dunno. Maybe if I'd ended up with my mom instead I would've worked a desk job. She was in somethin' bureaucratic, always moving around the colony on company business."

Parvati can't imagine anything more unlike her, really. She's always been a doer, needing to keep her hands busy. She figured out how to pick locks for fun as a kid. "I don't know if I'd have had the option, living with her. Y'know?" She pauses. "Not that I ever met her neither."

"Maybe things would have been different, then?"

If Mayaka hadn't grown up with her aunt's collection of manga, she probably wouldn't have this burning passion to pursue a career as a manga artist either.

Whether this is mere happenstance, or part of a meticulously arranged fate, Mayaka knows that she has to make a choice in the end, on how seriously she wants to take herself. She's just... not ready to do that just yet, nor can she go with the flow like Parvati.

Perhaps she has a rigid view of how life has to be, because all the life she's known has been confined to tests, school admissions, and her parent's expectations. With all of those rules absent in Bottlecap Bay, Mayaka can't help but find herself at a loss. The one thing she can continue to do, is to draw.

Parvati doesn't even know if her mother is still alive, if she's being honest. It was just her and her dad. And there's little point in pondering the what-ifs relating to a parent she has never and probably will never meet. She folds her arms across her chest with a sigh. "Maybe. Don't see much reason to consider it when I'm happy as I am."

Her circumstances before ending up in the Bay were almost entirely luck, anyway. That ability to go with the flow is just what happens when you have to deal with a Captain who's constantly running to do the next exciting odd-job that pings their radar.

[OPEN] Dreams & Ghosts

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orz sleepy bread mixed up the words

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taking a hiatus ! we can wrap this or continue when im back (:

all right! let me know how you're feeling when you're back <3