zerohallows

[zerohallows]

[zerohallows]

“When the day is over, let it go. Don’t dwell on what you could’ve or should’ve done. Tomorrow is another day and another chance.”

— Mandy Hale

[zerohallows]

I talk to you in my mind.

All the time

all the time

all the time

all the time

[zerohallows]

I have this shirt and this has happened at least 6 times

[zerohallows]

ELLIOT FLETCHER as SAM JORDAN in Y: THE LAST MAN (2021)

[zerohallows]

A goat in the middle of downtown really wasn't the strangest thing Zero had ever seen, that bar was pretty high given Swynlake.

Edgar looked to be equally placid about the matter, mirroring Zero's pause as he regarded the scene from the sidewalk, the scruffy little Jack Russell only canting his head as he sat watching the strange man complain about the runaway animal.

He enjoyed the occasional squirrel chase like any dog but animals larger than himself? Zero wasn't too eager to go bothering them. Plus the bleating was a bit loud, his ears twitching at the sound when it erupted from the creature.

Zero was not an animal talent, his ability to communicate with animals centered entirely around moths and butterflies, or carrion creatures; so by no means something of the farmhouse goat variety. He couldn't exactly be too helpful in that.

He was still trying to figure out why it was a goat had just jumped out of the window of a truck.

But when said goat cake ambling over to take a swipe at the squeaking black tennis ball Edgar had carrying on the way home, perhaps an honest mistake on the goats part thinking it might have been food, the little dog yipped and darted around Zero fully expecting him to protect him from the attempts to steal his favorite toy.

"Hey, easy," Zero put out a hand when the goat spun around him and made another swipe, catching the nosy creature by the shoulder as Edgar fled over to hide himself under a nearby bush decorating the sidewalk path.

"Uh, your goat is trying to rob my dog," Zero pointed out to the guy, one hand still trying to redirect the animal away from trying to shove its head under the shrub.

Which, objectively, was funny; he just didn't want poor Edgar to get stepped on by the larger animal.

@chiefhugo-slade

whoa ho ho || Chief

[zerohallows]

There was that aspect as well; Zero's human life was just as much his life as his fairy life and he didn't draw a line between the two. He had always been respectful of how Hollows functioned, how other fairies went about their business because it ultimately was not his place to judge any of that and what worked for other people was fine for them. He didn't always agree with the way some things were done but what worked for him didn't work for everyone.

Could he potentially manage being a mentor and it not disrupt his life or put that demand on it where his human life was seen as less important? If he was going to it was going to have to be a little outside of the ordinary way of doing things.

And maybe that was selfish, and selfish was not something that fairies were necessarily supposed to be, but that line of thinking also came from a place that said that fairies were not supposed to be individuals or to aspire to anything outside of what their talent was useful for within the Hollow.

"Is it okay that they know I'm here? I mean, I don't care about that, no. But these other Hollows also think that I probably live in the Hollow, and they probably have very different expectations of what I am compared to what's actually the case." He knew Atta wasn't trying to cross any lines, she was following the sort of normal places that the Royal Talents did, the things that she was brought up to see as normality, and she was generally more reasonable than most people.

Zero liked her, he had grown to like her more as time had gone on and he'd spoken with her more often, but most of that had still been outside the constraints of her being a Royal Talent because he didn't look at her and see that first before he saw the person that stood in the role.

She hadn't done anything wrong, she was only doing what she assumed she was supposed to do. Just like he was supposed to, in theory, jump at the chance of having an apprentice. Although he didn't think many Decay talents were that enthusiastic about it; his own mentor hadn't been. But it might have been a mindset that came from the sort of solitary existence most Decay talents lived in even if they resided in a Hollow.

"I guess I really need to know what that means," he concluded, "because it was a very different situation when I had a mentor than the situation I live in. Maybe I can make it work, I make things work now being here when I need to be and during the night to look after the forest but I can't live in the Hollow. Technically I could work and go to school and live here, but I live with my boyfriend and I don't think he's going to appreciate me moving out for an entire year, or longer."

@princess-attaflutterwing

Obligations || Attero

[zerohallows]

NAME: Zero Hallows

ASSIGNED SIDNEYLAND: Pirates: Atlantis Island

JOB TITLE & ASSIGNMENT: Character Attendant to his Pirate Queen Rose, Captain of the Bloody Dragon

FAVORITE RIDE/ATTRACTION: Ruff to Fluff’s Stuffed Emporium

YEARS EMPLOYED AT SIDNEYLAND: 2 years

BIOGRAPHY:

CW: insects

Zero really was looking for the path of least resistance.

When his family moved to Florida because his parents, or two of them at least, landed jobs as entertainers at Sidneyland it seemed like a great idea to apply for the SCP. His end goal was to be an illustrator and where else but the Sidney art department was going to look so good on his college transcripts?

The downside to it being he had to work in the park, apparently.

He carefully avoided any opportunity at being a face character, although did debate how easy a nap standing around in one of Pokemon suits might have been. But, alas, he got kicked over to Pirate Land and ended up as an attendant to one of the pirate captains.

On the plus side Mal didn't seem to actually need him around much, and she's perfectly fine with giving him the occasional nudge when his narcolepsy hits a little too hard before he actually falls asleep. He looks the other way and makes excuses for her to slip off between shows to visit Snake Eyes and her girlfriend there.

They've got a pretty good working relationship, all in all.

Otherwise Zero spends most of his free time, when he's not in charge of keeping track of his little sister in the park, in The Enchanted Forest, not for the attractions; he just happens to like Ruff to Fluff’s Stuffed Emporium. He really likes all the moth Pokemon merch and the giant Snorlax plushie is a great nap spot. But the real draw is that his boyfriend is the manager. He can thank Sidneyland for that, probably; he wouldn't have met Greg if he didn't work in the park.

With his days spent following Mal around and his usual absence from the dorms until the late hours, he doesn't see much of his roommates and doesn't end up being part of the SCP chaos too often. Doesn't feel like he's missing much; he hears most of the stories sooner or later so he stays caught up.

Hears a lot of stories, actually; he's quite so when people are looking for someone to talk about their work woes with it's very often him.

He probably knows more about who is hooking up with who, who is arguing and what sort of trouble people have been up than he really wants to but, hey, at least he's good at keeping secrets and it does make the days a little more entertaining.

[zerohallows]

It wasn't too difficult to fathom fairies so entirely separate from life outside a Hallow; he'd come across that a few times traveling growing up and the Hollow they lived in briefly during his apprenticeship was so deep in the Black Forest it was a rare sight to see people in the area.

Ultimately the scarcity didn't stop them from destroying Hollow eventually, but old superstitions were sometimes very ugly things.

So far as he knew his once temporary home had relocated and the fairies within it had gone to whatever new hidden little spot even further away from outsiders, but Zero himself had always been around people. It had influenced a lot as he had grown up and it was hard for him to imagine only living in a Hollow.

"Must have been a different place then," he noted, but not without curiosity; he tried to imagine the other fairy navigating the world as it was, outside of Swynlake where fairies were accepted as part of the larger population. His family had done that practically his entire life but certainly not being known as fairies to anyone aside from those they trusted.

@lordmilori-ofnowhere

This Guy Bothering You? || Open

[zerohallows]

It was hit or miss if nature actually stayed outside or not, but at least in town most people didn't go around carrying on arguments with small furry animals. And if they did they were usually the type that could speak.

When the question turned his direction though Zero felt like he was sparing the hapless soul who had opted to get into a debate with the wildlife, at least for a moment. And he didn't really mind the question anyway.

"Mostly; it's hard to go to classes and work here if you're not here during the day." Sometimes there was a division there between fairies, or more specifically a division between the more traditional viewpoints in the Hollow and the more modern ones, but that had never really bothered Zero. "But you don't come to town very often, do you?"

It wasn't that he had a lack of respect for the Royal talents, quite the opposite really because he enjoyed talking with Atta and had never really had any issues with Queen Clarion, he just tended to address them the same as he would most anyone else unless they told him otherwise.

@lordmilori-ofnowhere

This Guy Bothering You? || Open

[zerohallows]

"Don't think you're going to make much progress there," Zero pointed out, much to the scowling of the stranger, but it didn't really bother him at all.

People didn't want to hear what they didn't want to hear, and if the person was standing there arguing with a rabbit they probably didn't want to hear anything at all. Sometimes gestures of help didn't always work out.

"The rabbit thinks you're an idiot," he added, to the person arguing with the animal, even though he had no idea if that was the case or not. "Gardens grow outside where rabbits live; you're just growing a grocery store at this point."

Zero shrugged, Edgar stretching with a yawn as the terrier followed along at his heels, both equally unconcerned.

"Not the best representation of town," he noted, since the Royal Talent didn't leave the Hollow often enough to see more of it. "It's not all like that." As a mostly town fairy himself he did feel the need to clarify that all the residents weren't...quite that unwelcoming.

@lordmilori-ofnowhere

This Guy Bothering You? || Open

[zerohallows]

Some things are universal regardless of species, one of those things was often how much people did not enjoy being told they needed help. He wasn't exactly surprised when the conversation tipped into a mild argument; although he did note know that the rabbit didn't look to be particularly impressed by the whole situation.

Not that he could understand what the creature was saying either, his ability to communicate was specifically with moths, butterflies, and carrion creatures.

"People can get a bit touchy about things," he observed, waiting before he voiced his opinion, because he didn't want to interrupt the conversation, even though an interruption didn't seem like the worst thing right then.

@lordmilori-ofnowhere

This Guy Bothering You? || Open

[zerohallows]

Zero stood there a moment.

He wasn't the most enthusiastic individual on a good day, but most people knew that, so likely didn't seem drastically out of character for him not to say anything at first. Because he didn't really know what to say just right off hand.

Very little of his life had ever been centered around Hollows, the past few years had been somewhat of a shift in that direction but he had never looked at it as something potentially permanent. It wasn't an uncommon mindset among those with his talent either; it was difficult for nocturnal fairies to adjust to the paces of a typical Hollow for the obvious reasons. And he had been very uncomfortable in some places because of more traditionalist views towards things like that.

Given how absent that problem had been in Enchantra it really had never crossed his mind that other traditional expectations were likely to catch up with him. So many of those expectations simply did not fit into his life; he didn't want to live in the Hollow full time, he had a partner that wasn't a fairy and had no intentions of that changing just because it could be seeing negatively that he was never going to have a Promise with another fairy. And there were a slew of other things, some of them drastically more personal, that hadn't come under scrutiny while he had been living in Swynlake so it had begun to feel like the norm that they simply wouldn't.

How was he supposed to do that so soon? He was aware that Decay Talents did not generally have quite as long a life span as most fairies but his own mentor had been well into middle age and really that was the only reference he had because he never met another Decay Talent. Abilities were taught along the way, fairy to fairy, quite unlike most young fairies learned in their groups of apprentices instead but Decay Talents or simply too rare for that to be the case. They didn't populate Hollows in the same numbers that other talents did.

"Heard about what?" Clearly that part was perplexing to him, because that was Ireland and the only even remote connection he had to a place like that was his mom's lineage, and she had cut ties with that before he had even been born. "How do they even know I exist?"

But it wasn't unusual, he was caught off guard by it because he wasn't expecting it, but it wasn't at all dissimilar to his own situation in the past; Decay Talents very often only stayed with their mentor during the course of their apprenticeship because, again, there was some superstition in the idea of more than one of them at a time being in a Hollow.

Which Zero had never believed, but on the other hand the last Hollow he had been in was the one with his mentor and that one had been burned down.

@princess-attaflutterwing

Obligations || Attero

[zerohallows]

Zero had been watching this interaction for a few minutes, largely because he and Edgar were out for a walk and he personally wasn't an Animal Talent so his communication abilities were limited almost entirely to moths, butterflies and the occasional other carrion creatures connected to his magic.

Watching the person trying to have an argument with a rabbit, as though reasoning with said rabbit about not bothering their plants actually was going to do anything, had been entertaining for a few minutes. Even Edgar was just sitting there, head tipped a bit, only watching because he wasn't really but for making a nuisance of himself at the time.

He was a little surprised though to see the other fairy, around the Hollow it wouldn't have been unusual, but in town? It was.

That actually was what had him sticking around, curiosity sparked just a little, but also he didn't want to see how this one played out.

@lordmilori-ofnowhere

This Guy Bothering You? || Open

[zerohallows]

"It's fine," Zero wasn't really bothered anyway, not by most things, and the Hollow was always busy so many things got misplaced in all that energy. It was part of the reason he wasn't exactly the type to live there much himself; there was a pace to his life that was comfortably less rushed and he enjoyed that far more than feeling like everything around him was charged with electric energy.

He saw the side effects of that at times in how some fairies didn't know how to catch their breath and take a break; it couldn't have been healthy. But there was a rapid pace in how so many simply existed; he didn't envy those who felt like it was a necessity.

Atta being one of them, although Zero never said as much. But a few words into the conversation and it was obvious the Princess' nerves were tangling themselves up again as she bounced from spot to spot in that conversation.

"Nothing that really kept me from anything else," he added, because it was technically true, there were things he needed to do but they didn't have a time frame exactly, and Atta was only going to work herself into more worry if he didn't remind her things were okay. He couldn't do much about how she felt she had to do a million things at one, but he could keep worrying she'd made things harder for him from being one of them.

"I'm fine, but thanks." Zero appreciated the gesture but most things in the Hollow ran a bit too sweet for his preferences. "Is everything okay?"

He had considered something might have been wrong in the forest, he did keep an eye on things from his side of it but there was always the possibility something unexpected might have happened. Some illness among the trees or damage that spread from people neglecting to be careful in Enchantra, although he hadn't ever been called to deal with something in the past it didn't mean it was impossible.

@princess-attaflutterwing

Obligations || Attero

[zerohallows]

[zerohallows]

"In that case I guess it depends on what she likes," Zero reasoned, since that was usually the way to navigate those situations. And James would know, he assumed, the same way he knew the sorts of things Greg preferred, and what sorts of things to avoid.

"What's her favorite flavor? If you start there they should narrow it down." Because that could be an entire range of things; some people like ridiculously sweet things, others didn't, some like natural flavors more than the sugary candy ones.

"If she likes a lot of different things then maybe you should do something like cookies or cupcakes so you can get different ones," he added; obviously he hadn't really intended on this being part of his day but since he was there he was trying to get marginally good advice at least.

@jameshawks

Sweet Treat {Open}