REGRET IS COLD.

independent & private dual muse blog for Fern and ‘Floe’ Mertens from Pendleton Ward's 'Adventure Time’. flexible canon; various other open-ended AUs & media are taken as inspiration & verses!

RULES . CARRD .

untagged queue posting ; always accepting memes regardless of date ; on semi-hiatus !

asks ;; 0  drafts ;; 1

quick tags ;; MEMES . HEADCANONS . MUN ART . AESTHETICS . PROMO .

          “Ain’t no one gonna guess what I’m going as tomorrow night :)”

Whatever Bad Thing Alice had expected to happen Does Not. Instead, the stranger just stops. Stares. She stares back. Silence sits between them, statue still and frosted with her shaky-shivery breath. Alice cocks her head, eyes tracing the sad wispy something in front of her. The viciously unpleasant bite of toothy cold fades to the background and her Self-Preservation slips out the back of her head and slaps against the ground. Slithers somewhere else, somewhere it can’t remind her that the stranger has a knife and the skill to use it.

Holes fill the cloth dangling from their little body and Alice can’t help but wince. “Aren’t you cold?” She asks. Ice blooms from their feet, and her fingers prickle and crawl with the need to touch. And also cold. And numb. It’s probably for the best she keeps her hands to herself.

In fact, she starts picking through the front pocket of her overalls, reaching deep, deep down to see if maybe she’d managed to stash a blanket in here. A book flops out. An unlit candle. A string of beads. A pair of mittens (she sets those aside) and Oh, yes! A blanket! She grins up at her unwitting host, holding up one finger to request a minute to pick herself up.

It takes more than a minute. More like three or four, but she gets herself up onto her feet and thrusts the blanket out towards him, expression expectant. “Here!” Take it, take it! “A gift from your new friend Alice.”

     Alice’s question falls on deaf ears, the room’s lack of a comforting fire answering her all the same. Whisper soft breathing, he stood like an apparition before her yet felt the most grounded in the situation; if anything, he was amused by this in some confused and curious way. Floe had decided they were funny sitting there, lost. Smelled different.

     The stranger curiously fumbles around more, Floe remaining deathly still as they watched one another. New things appeared now, untouched things, her movements were cataloged closely - the book immediately grabs their attention, its relatively pristine condition fascinating - yet things kept coming. A candle - unfamiliar, ignored. Beads - colorful, intriguing, could be useful. Mittens - unnecessary, not for him. A blanket - no comments - he makes no move to help her to her feet despite recognizing that she was struggling, thinks briefly that anyone with this much trouble standing would die within seconds outside. Grim. Didn’t want that responsibility.

     Her excitement registers a few seconds late, confusion at the offer fading only slightly as he finally FINALLY recognizes what’s going on here. The unfamiliar material is taken in silence initially, prosthetics gingerly holding it; he nearly forgot about the knife in his hand, pocketing it to finally touch what Alice had offered. If his body were capable of generating recognizable heat, he might’ve understood this was just a misplaced attempt at offering warmth. Unfortunately, he was an idiot. It takes Floe a bit to form words, voice struggling from lack of use - it comes out hushed and flat.

        “ MONSTER RIDING ISN’T EXACTLY A COMMONPLACE PRACTICE, ” She says tentatively, “ Hunting is probably the go-to method for handling monsters, and I guess … I see why some parts of the world need to use it. Before I left home, I just thought hunting was pretty inhumane. And hunters themselves, well, heh — ” Mari gives a nervous chuckle. “ THAT’S another story … ”

       “ My point is, most communities that use monster riding usually keep to themselves. We haven’t really become open to the concept of crossing traditions until recently. So in a way, ol’ Chief GARA’S kind of progressive in that sense. It was his idea to invite hunters to the last RATHALOS FESTIVAL. That’s not to say you can just go anywhere on the island. TheFORBIDDEN GROUNDS are called that for a reason, and you can’t just stumble on the island guardian’s old territory without permission. ”

          “Weird.” Fingers tap together, the gears turning in his head over this information. So, if he’d been somewhere else, he likely would’ve stumbled across hunters? With the way Mari danced around the thought, that definitely alighted some level of concern - would they have taken one look at him and assumed the worst? He was just going to consider himself lucky and leave it at that.