dog days are only starting

[quinientos]

WHO: Vasquez
WHERE: South Village, River
WHEN: February 7
OPEN TO: All!
WARNINGS: n/a

---

If anyone had seen Vasquez when he'd been a wolf, it's only poetic justice that all of this is happening to him now.

Where before, he'd been the one to roam wild, not he's the one running. He'd opened the box in the north village, but almost instantly, the dog had been spooked by the kirin and had taken off, running and yipping (and probably terrified down to his little bones). He'd had a terrible moment of debating whether he should go after it before deciding that there were too many cruel things living in the shadows and no animal should be left to that.

Of course, what he didn't count on was how much of a fool he was going to look chasing after it, whistling after an animal that didn't even have a name. It's a good looking animal, one that he's seen herd sheep before, but running away like this means now Vasquez is the shepherd. He's already run back to the south village from the north and he looks it, panting and coughing (he really wants a smoke, too, but it's not the time).

He sees his chance when the animal is lapping up water at the stream. Chest heaving, he begins to creep up on it, ready to take his chance. He hunches over and tries to get all six-foot-four of him as close to the ground as he can, advancing until he's nearly on his knees. He readies himself, like a coil, and waits to spring forward.

Of course, his little dog decides he's all done with drinking, bounding away with a yip, right as Vasquez goes face-down into the stream, muttering and cursing. Sitting back, he swipes at his face and spits to the side, cursing in Spanish as he glares at the dog.

"You know, I could feed you to the kirin," he warns, even as the animal comes licking his cheek, like he's rubbing Vasquez's face in his idiocy. "Or the boar. Or any of the other animals."

Comments

[poaceae]

Now he frowns. 19th century is a calendar thing? He’s never heard of it, but he does know that people used to count years. 1879 sounds like a lot of years to keep track of.

"Oh. Nobody really keeps time like that..." Not for at least a thousand years.

"You must be from before the Mushroom War."

[quinientos]

That just sounds like everyone did a lot of drugs, but it's at least a word he knows and war, that's something he also can work with, so he nods. "Sure, yes. Maybe it was before the mushrooms went to war and made a candy kingdom."

Honestly, with the future being so strange, he's not going to rule any of it out. For all he knows, yes, that could absolutely be happening at some point. "What is the mushroom war?" he asks, just in case he should be worrying.

[poaceae]

Fern just blinks at that interpretation. He guesses it makes sense that Vasquez wouldn't know about a war that hasn't happen for him yet. Time travel is weird.

"I don't know a lot about it. Just that almost all the humans died and they blew a big hole in the ground or something. That was more than a thousand years ago. My friend Marceline talks about it sometimes."

[quinientos]

He doesn't remember anything like that, but he has seen how people are much too eager to blow things up, so he doesn't doubt it. So maybe this kingdom is a future he doesn't know about and this grass-child-man is what they're all like.

"You must feel very strange and out of place," he admits. "I know I do. For me, there's no old West. For you, there's no...candy?" He guesses, hoping he got that right.

[poaceae]

"It's weird being around so many humans," he admits. "And people keep giving me weird looks when I ask about wizards." Which is dumb, because there are clearly wizards here. One person even healed him for a while when he got out of the fountain half-frozen.

[quinientos]

That part, he at least understands. Then again, he's got enough superstition running through his family and blood that of course it makes sense. Whether you call them wizards or shamans or magic men, Vasquez knows they're there.

"Why is that the strange thing? I mean, you're covered in things, that's weirder for me, but everyone knows there are people with power out there, connections to deeper things."

[poaceae]

"Hey, it was just the one mushroom..." He's not covered. He does probably have more random seeds stuck in his hair, though, and when he doesn't move around enough things tend to plant themselves in it.

"I don't get it either. If somebody brought us all here it has to have been a wizard, right? Or a whole cabal of them, all working together."

[quinientos]

He's not wrong about that. "Or we all got knocked in the head very hard. You don't have to be a wizard to get someone unconscious." He could offer to show him, but it would feel very wrong, seeing as he only turns to violence of that kind to defend himself.

Then again, many of the things he's seen here seem more mystical. The gifts he can't explain, some of the stranger things. He can't rule out wizards.

[poaceae]

Fern considers that possibility.

"True... Half the time it was a wizard knocking people out and kidnapping them back in Ooo. Mostly princesses, though."