Your New Life

[mayorityvote]

Another New Life

You wake up to the sound of surf, much, much closer than you've ever heard it unless you moseyed down to Puffin Pier back in the old days. What old days...? Why, the days when you had a body, of course. The memories are probably coming back by now, jumbled along with everything else you lost. What a wake-up call.

But at least the ocean is real, unlike your dubiously fragmented remembrances. This little island out in the middle of nowhere sports a crude sign reading DUCK DAMNED ISLAND that seems like it's really railing against whatever fate you've been left to. There are little seashells and sparkling fragments amongst the sand to the left of your face. If you look further, to the left and right, it seems you're not the only one who's woken up here; it's considerably less cushy than your last wakeup, but maybe that's not a bad thing.

Here, you're free, albeit... kind of incorporeal, as you'll soon find out. The island is covered in pretty little trees that don't quite form a forest, bowed over the really beautiful sandy beach that is way prettier than the one on the mainland. One, slightly rickety treehouse -- bare of anything, because incorporeal ghosts don't need furniture, of course -- peeks out from between the leaves. This is, apparently, your home away from home now.

Finally, there's a small bay-like area on the island that leads you to a strange-looking storm drain, marked with a symbol that's not-quite-an-apple. Stepping in will wash you alllllll the way back up to Puffin Pier, right where the sewers normally let out.

Oh, and once you step onto the mainland? You're now a duck. What kind of quacking afterlife is this.

((OOC: the tldr; about death is here!))

Main NavWeek Two

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Comments

[collisionheart]

[ They’re yelling about clothes. Amy does the next logical thing and drops the fish to wiggle out of her sweater and hold it out for the nearest puffin??? PUFFINS PLEASE ]

[mayorityvote]

[........ The standing puffin does an impressive leap forward and starts wriggling itself into the sweater. It is now a bird with a sweater, and Amy is not. The puffin seems inordinately pleased with itself.

It struts around the ledge, seemingly showing off to all the thirty-odd some other puffins all around. There's more zippercalls and growling bird noises that come from both the cliff and seemingly deeper within it, or maybe that's the echo off the pier. There are a lot of puffins in the audience now.

The standing puffin, henceforth sweater puffin, struts back into its burrow and comes out with something glinting wrapped in more journal paper. Equivalent exchange is real.

Two neighbors, two presents! Presents! Presents!

Perhaps you should look more closely?]

[collisionheart]

[ Amy very bravely braves pitter-patter approaching the glinting journal paper. She keeps eyeing the puffins for permission and waiting to get squawked at, but if it seems allowed, she’ll try to take it! ]

[mayorityvote]

[The puffin chucks the paper-wrapped package in the air at the same time that Amy moves to take it, and so -- perhaps thanks to the nature of her luck, or maybe she's having good luck for once?? -- the whole thing loosens and drops down onto the ledge with a clatter. At least it didn't fall off the cliff...!

Instead, the strange little device rolls over the paper a few times, a light blinking on it -- there's a singular BEBEEEEEEP and then a mechanical voice says: RECALIBRATING............ PLEASE STAND BY. SCANNING EXTANT TEXT.

A little laser light beams over the paper, and the mechanical voice continues reading out the following..... in quacks:

Chronicle LXXII.A

I’ve still not been able to directly observe the transference of souls, but the movements of magic in the soil and around the animals of the community – and particularly the avian species – seem to bear out my hypothesis so far. The next step will be to create a way to listen in on the communications of those species; are there those of them that have more sophisticated systems of communication than we might suspect, only in bird language? I cannot speak to the villagers about this; they would think it the ramblings of a senile old man, though they trust me on most other things. Perhaps it is indeed the mad scientist in me, or perhaps it is the sane scientist that conceals his findings in times like these.

Chronicle LXXII.F

The trials for creating the bird translator are going well, though the materials are hard to come by out here – it chagrins me to say that it cannot be created entirely with magic nor with the usual fruits of the harvest, but must also rely on modern technology (or as modern as we get out here). The next step will be calibrating the device: the best way to optimize a language device, magical or technological, has always been to have it record and interact with actual conversation, so I think a trip down to the pier is in order...

Once this exchange is complete, and they've gotten ahold of all their goodies, the puffins waddle back into their burrows and continue chattering to themselves -- or perhaps it's just that you can no longer understand them, because the device has stopped translating puffinspeak. Maybe it's time to use it for other things.]