#and now Owl will probably scream back at me /lh

[everestgale]

[Spoilers for @phantasmatoucan (mod Owl)'s "I love you, despite our flaws" comic. This is also their voice designs!]

Let's dance—

—until the end.

[Notes and an extra doodle are under the cut]

...I promise to you all, this was supposed to be a sweet doodle of them just dancing. But then I realized how similar the pose I chose was to the one in the Owl's comic... and so the second drawing was born-

Also, fun fact! These drawings were made with my non-dominant hand because my main wrist still kind of hurts. It took four hours to draw these because I had to draw all my lines so slowly with max stabilization on my brush. I honestly don't know how I got this done, I feel like I got possessed again /lh

Anyways, we need to break the dance curse with these two, so have this old doodle of them dancing that I made a few days ago (I drew this one with my dominant hand, this was before my wrist died):

They get to ACTUALLY dance. No beheading or injuries or anything. They get to dance!!! /lh

[theseasideskies]

why are we born to suffer

(Dedicated to @opal-owl-flight in all your hubris /lh)

This isn’t my best work, and didn’t come out exactly how I wanted, but I thought it was funny and wanted to get it out before the TS actually arrives at least. Megabird bless all our candles.

(Also for context, oracles are basically my lore explanation for beta-testers/teaser images. They get prophetic dreams and stuff)

The sun begins to crest over the horizon surrounding the Home island, the ocean waves subtle movement allowing the light to refract and reflect and give the illusion of a world of crystals. A few sky children are changing out of their clothes during their night runs, preparing to return to their own homes and allow those who walk in the day to take over.

And then a lone skykid crosses the door from the Vault, stopping to a halt and catching their breath. Slowly, people take notice of this person, and whispers spread amongst the crowd. A few children walk in from the other realm doors as well, but stop at the entrance as they notice the Vault child.

They seem exhausted, their light core flickering as they heave their chest to calm down. Their hair, normally clipped under a Vault headgear, is unkempt and sticking out wildly. The skykid carries a light staff, which glows a faint purple. The child clears their voice, and speaks up to the small crowd.

“Troupe Juggler is this week’s travelling spirit,” Notos says. And he honestly wished he was joking.

A beat passes through the crowd, a silent yet powerful shockwave as the children take a moment to process this announcement. In the next moment, a cacophony of voices rises all at once. The children who finished their night shift fell to the floor; hopefully in dramatics, though Notos understands their sentiment. A couple of the newer faces in the crowd are younger skykids, who are either confused or look on in terror. A few even run back into the realm doors, probably to carry the news forward.

“And how can you be so sure?!” a random voice pipes up from the other children, and Notos sighs.

“I’m an oracle. I have seen that this will come to pass.” the voice that asked the question groans loudly, and Notos hears another thump from where they stand. Yeah, that’s fair. He hears another voice from the crowd, a faint “yes” standing out from a sea of dismayed children. The oracle looks around for the source of this misplaced joy, and freezes.

It’s a sky child wearing a bird mask, and Notos knows who they are. Their name was Opal, he thinks.

“Hey you!” Notos walks towards Opal, the crowd parting to give way. “I remember you! You were going around the realms last week to beg for Juggler to return!” the noises of despair cease, and the crowd turns to face the child in question.

They look nervous, raising their hands defensively. “Hey hey now, that was all a joke. Many people before me have asked the Megabird to have Juggler take their turn.”

Notos bonks their head with his staff. “And yet you had to ask for Juggler right after the Crab Whisperer came back. Not to mention the new outfit the Prince had us craft for 200 candles.”

At the mention of the Crab Whisperer and the Prince’s outfit, a sense of dread spreads through the gathered children. The past few weeks had been absolute hell for everyone’s candle supply, old and young children alike. Notos even remembers a gaggle of younger skykids making the trip to visit Lamed to beg for a break in the travelling spirits, and all they got was a reminder that only the Megabird would decide that.

Notos thinks that Opal wearing a bird mask has a sense of irony, so he bonks their head again. The others in the crowd seem to have found themselves again, and collectively decided to close the distance between them and this child. “Look, I’m just as screwed by this spirit as everyone else! My candle supply is also empty right now! I think we should all just take a moment to breathe and we can all work together to-”

Notos sees the first skykid to pounce on Opal, and he backs off instantly. The rest of the crowd followed, letting out their frustrations on Opal. There’s screams of “bones” and “pancakes” from all the fighting, though Notos has absolutely no idea what that means.

Notos shakes his head as he turns to the Vault door. He’s reminded of a turn of phrase he’d heard from Lamed while he was under her study.

“If you knock on enough doors asking for trouble, eventually it will answer.”