Not a participant--but I've been rereading this and I forgot how absolutely wonderful it is.

Hello! Salutations! Greetings! Happy flying (pigs)~ *oink oink*

We're BACK! Ready to write! (ish) Ready to murder! (definitely) We hope you're ready to read. Please add conspiracy theories, writing exerpts, utter nonsense, anything else you want! (no ghosts please, however). You're welcome to comment even if you're not a direct participant—we want your input!

Jynx (imma keep calling you Jynx because that's who you signed up as, but if you want a different name let me know), thank you so much for your entry! Loved the ending~

Reuby, likewise—thanks for doing it!

Scuttles, it's nice to hear that :D and we hope you keep enjoying it!

Artemis, yayyyy Discworld lol. Thanks for still reading this mess... this one's not as funny, I think... 

Now, because I have used way too many exclamation points for a Monday morning and am not feeling particularly creative, have our newest exerpt! (rather short, unfortunately, but oh well—)

._.

Hey diddle diddle

The cat and the fiddle

Jynx went over

The wall

The little dog laughed

To see such a fall

But nobody saw

At all

For a while, nobody notices anything. Hex finds all but two people: she’s missing only Periwinkle and, strangely enough, Jynx. The others are helping her search as well, laughing and joking and racing to find the missing.

Of the two, Jynx is found first.

Amethyst happens along the body. She rounds the corner of a bush, peering curiously into each small crevice she thinks someone could have hidden in before progressing. There is no one hiding in any of the crevices she checks, but she keeps on looking because you never know, do you, and anyway, maybe she’ll find a gnome instead. She likes gnomes. 

But the body she encounters is no jolly red-and-green clay figure with a bushy beard. No, the person she finds is unmistakably human, lying sprawled at a sickening angle on the floor, and she does the insensible thing—she screams.

High pitched and terror filled, she goes on and on and on like a broken wind-up toy: “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”

She’s still screaming by the time more CBers (everyone except Peri) appear, panting and out of breath to huddle around Jynx’s body.

“Is she…” Reuby asks the sensible thing.

“Dead?” Artemis finishes. “It looks that way… But…”

Amethyst understands what Artemis means. Jynx was so full of life and energy and high-fashion New York arrogance just minutes ago. Bouncing around with her barely-concealed light-blue city vibes—she was so vibrant, so full of life. But now, her perfectly gelled spiky hair and piercing ice-blue eyes are limp and faded. Her skin, already milky, is now the palest white.

So dead.

“What should we do? With… it?” Poinsettia asks vaguely, gesturing at the body that is no longer a her but an it. “Should we… bury it?”

“We don’t have a shovel,” Sterling argues pragmatically.

“But what else could we do with it?”

“...not bury it,” Reuby suggests helpfully.

“What about burial at sea? It could drift forever and ever.” Darkling adds wistfully, glancing at the burbling stream winding off in the distance.

They don’t bury it. Instead, the CBers roll the body to the edge of the wall and push it over. With a couple of unsettling thumps, it disappears from view. Out of sight, out of mind, perhaps.

There are a couple moments of silence. Or, rather, half silence. Amethyst coughs. Darkvine exhales. Poinsettia exhales loudly. Darkling whistles a tune which could perhaps be called mournful, or possibly grand. Finally, Artemis breaks the not-quite-silence:

“Ok, I don’t know about you all, but I’m going crazy just standing around here.”

“We could stand around over there.” Poinsettia notes. No one laughs, at least not audibly.

“Not funny. What was that?” Writing_in_the_dark exclaims.

“Maybe she fell?” No one quite knows who says that last statement because the clearing goes quickly from not-quite-silence-but-something-like-it to definitely-not-silence-because-people-are-screaming-their-opinions. It’s not-quite-quiet. In fact, it’s quite-loud.

“I saw Reuby run towards the wall.”

“Hex seems awfully cheery.”

“IT HAS TO BE DARKLING!” (that one is yelled in a suspiciously Darkling-sounding voice.)

“Sterling is so shady…” Sterling adjusts their hat self-consciously and mutters something about sunburns.

“I was with Amethyst the whole time!”

“Jynx faked their death!”

Finally, this quite-loud-not-silence is cut short by a soft voice and two starry eyes. 

“What’s going on?”

Seventeen suspicious eyes dart towards her (the eighteenth, of course, stays trained on Darkvine. You never know with witches). Periwinkle shies backwards. 

“Where... I mean… Where’s Jynx?” She asks quietly, as if afraid of the answer. Several voices chorus, cut short by a dark voice from a gray-cloaked figure. 

“She fell.” Artemis glances around fiercely with anciently young eyes, as if to dare others to contradict her. No one does. Amethyst coughs. 

“...fell?” Peri asks hesitantly. “From where?”

Artemis points up. 

._.

Signed,

*coughing fit* sorry I've been feeling down all week~

The Pigeon

HI Y'ALL WE'RE BACK (for approximately a day before we fade back into oblivion, oops—) *happy kazoo noises*

We've both been super busy lately and it's been harder to meet up but we have a few parts planned that should last at least a week or two. I swear we haven't forgotten about this!! (probably) As it's been so long, if there's stuff like names or pronouns you'd like us to change please just let us know :D

With that out of the way, we hope you enjoy this part! A bit shorter than usual, but we can't all be tall...

._.

Artemis points up. There’s a beat of silence. “Nice weather, we’re having, isn’t it?” she asks lamely. Nobody responds, all standing in shell-shocked in silence for another moment before Darkvine and Hex snap into action.

“Storytime!” Darkvine yells at the top of her lungs, breaking the awkward pause with all the ferocity of a brave chainsaw-wielding explorer conquering the vast vines of the jungle—so is the silence shattered with her words. However this metaphor—or simile, as the case may be—might not be entirely appropriate, as many of the vines in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were in fact hanging, which made the brave explorer who is also unfortunately too short to hack them in an appropriately stoic manner curse under their breath in the same exasperated frustration Darkvine must be feeling with the apathy of her party.

“A story sounds good,” Peri remarks cautiously. “It might lighten the mood a bit…”

That might be the understatement of the century, if anyone is keeping track (the last formal records burned down with the Library of Alexandria many years back). But nobody is, so it doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t matter, but it multiplies  itself by the speed of light squared and then it energizes—that is, everyone in the nearby vicinity does as they set about getting ready for storytime.

They sit down against the wall. Poinsettia, Gloomy, Writing, and Peri all huddle together near a log, while Amethyst, Sterling, Artemis, and Darkling sat farther apart in ones and twos, leaning back against the wall. Darkvine and Hex stand in front of them, plotting.

Not that it is immediately obvious that they were plotting anything—Darkvine is adept at the art of planning world domination while carrying out seemingly mundane tasks such as washing dishes, and Hex is unfortunately too tired too be chaotic.

Stealing a book from Peri’s overwhelming collection, they get ready to tell the story. Hex flips to the first page and beings, embellishing the story just slightly.

“Twas a dark and stormy night, and mama duck was indisposed with a head cold…” 

._.

Dead: Jynx

Alive: Amethyst, Poinsettia, Darkling, Sterling, Reuby Moonnight, Writing_in_the_dark, Periwinkle, Artemis, Darkvine, Hex

._.

Best,

The Pigeon (is that like a pig crossed with a tachyon? hm very physics maybe I can travel faster than light ahhh tachyons we love tachyons)