Fandom Island and Town

Someone had put in an order for an arrangement of birds of paradise last week, which Keyleth was expecting in today.

The small flock of brightly colored tropical birds that greeted her when she came in, chirping merrily and swarming around her while some of them flew up to perch in her circlet's antlers, was not what she was expecting.

"This is not --" She sighed. "You're very pretty, please don't get me wrong, but -- you're not what I --"

How was she going to put this without possibly hurting the birds' feelings?

She had no idea. Which was why she was attempting to call the supplier back with a bunch of birds on her head, and a couple of handfuls of goodberries spread out across the counter for them to eat.

[OOC: Iiiiiiiiiiiiii'm still dead of last night's CR. Oh my god. Post is open, though!]

Today felt like a good day to do some magical training, maybe try and get the hang of a couple of more advanced spells she hadn't quite mastered yet. And Keyleth had thought about working on a particular spell that, if you spent eight hours casting it, would be able to enrich all the plant growth within half a mile for an entire year. That seemed useful, right?

But then again, while she was surrounded by plants, that might not be the best idea. Sure, maybe if she'd been out in the preserve or somewhere that was not a shop that happened to be her place of employment, it would have been worthwhile to try, but in here? With a spell that was frankly a little bit beyond her abilities just yet? She wasn't going to risk it.

So instead, while a few of the flowers hummed a relaxing soft jazz soundtrack in the background, she was trying to summon animals: frogs or lizards or owls, nothing too complicated. It wasn't going too well; they might appear every now and then, but they'd just poof right back out of existence again.

At least the background music was keeping her morale up.

"Aw. Thanks, you guys," Keyleth told the flowers. "You're gonna get such a nice treat when I take a break."

[OOC: Open! Work (and brain) related SP inevitably in effect for a while, though.]

There were adorable tiny black kittens everywhere. Every. Where. How was Keyleth supposed to concentrate under these circumstances?

Really, it was a good thing that working with plants didn't really require a whole lot of concentration or effort on her part, because she had to spend a decent amount of time making sure the cats clustered around her feet didn't get stepped on.

Maybe she shouldn't have spent an hour before her shift playing with them as a kitten? That could have waited until after work, probably. Anyway, she ended up druidcrafting them a bunch of catnip, so by a couple of hours into her work day Keyleth had small, drowsy kitten piles scattered around the shop.

. . . Okay, yeah, that was going to make it really hard to concentrate, because now they were just concentrated piles of sleepy and adorable. Oops.

[OOC: Post/shop open, of course!]

The flowers weren't singing today.

There was music, though it was in the general vein of 80s synth pop (not that Keyleth would recognize it as such), and it seemed to be coming from the alot placidly napping just outside. But the flowers weren't singing.

Swaying in time with the beat, and occasionally rustling their petals a bit, on the other hand . . .

"Aw, are you guys doing some kind of interpretive dance?"

Don't mind Keyleth; she'd likely spend the rest of the day absolutely enraptured by this. Or at least until the alot of 80s music woke up and decided it had someplace else to be.

[OOC: Open!]

Keyleth was particularly glad to be back at a flower shop that was back to normal today -- even if that definition of 'normal' entailed a flower chorus singing soothing melodies at her in four-part harmony. Maybe especially then.

She threw herself entirely into tending to the plants, spending a few extra moments talking to each one in turn, fussing a little bit extra over any of them that had any wilting leaves or bruised stems, using a little bit of magic here and there to encourage their growth and coax a few recalcitrant buds into blooming.

And if she spent a little bit of time in cat form, playing a game of pounce-and-chase with Tickles, she was pretty sure Peter wouldn't mind too much. It was therapeutic.

[OOC: Open shop, open post! Standard SP disclaimer, as always, applies.]

The rift that had temporarily swallowed Keyleth on her way to work today had dumped her in some weird place that might have been a version of Fandom, where she was part of a team of six people who had to fight their way through another team of six people, up to a car with a battering ram on it, and then escort that battering ram the rest of the way up the hill to the inside of a castle. Her attempts to keep the rest of the team alive probably would have gone better if they hadn't insisted on running off in five different directions at once and constantly forgetting about the payload, and, well . . .

Suffice to say they hadn't succeeded at getting the battering ram into the castle.

Keyleth was trying not to think too hard about why they had been trying to escort a battering ram into a castle.

But now she was at work, only the inside of the flower shop seemed to be the ruins of some old building that was being reclaimed by nature and was overgrown with moss and vines and flowering plants, with some sections of the floor flooded out. Also, the only way she could really get around appeared to be by climbing along a series of ledges and handholds that were conveniently painted white, because suddenly she had some ridiculous finger strength? And had to stop every now and then to collect some shiny little ancient coin or bauble? Or solve some kind of puzzle involving statues that had to be facing the right way, or things that had to be accomplished within a twenty-second time frame, or other things of that nature? Actually tending to and selling flowers didn't appear to be any kind of priority today, that was for sure.

Really, this entire week was probably best not thought about too hard.

[OOC: This may or may not be the story of my life as the constant de facto team healer in Overwatch. NOT THAT I'M BITTER. And then I took a detour into Uncharted (mostly 4/The Lost Legacy) territory. Anyway. Shop/post are open! Hope your platforming skills aren't rusty.]

Keyleth didn't like this place any more by this point in the week than she had on Monday morning, and she'd already burned half her Wild Shape abilities for the day just to get to work from the dorms today. But she'd wanted to make sure the plants were all right, which to her relief they seemed to be.

Didn't mean she wasn't going to talk to all of them again, though. That part was important, okay?

[OOC: The OCD is going to be busy screaming for a week. You know. Again. Post is open though!]

Keyleth was definitely ready for this week to be over. Even if the irradiated landscape hadn't been messing with her connection to nature magics, just the bleakness of everything was horribly upsetting.

The sorry state of the shop didn't make it any better, but she did her best to try and coax some life out of what few plants remained. She had to admit, though, the way some of them had mutated and adapted was actually really, really fascinating. So she'd probably be spending all her downtime today just kind of . . . nerding out about that.

It was better than getting all depressed about the island's current state of being, anyway.

[OOC: The OCD is dead of OH MY GOD NEW BEAU LORE DROP. Oh wait, that's just me. Anyway, shop/post open, definite SP disclaimer this week because ugh.]

Today just seemed like a day to do a little bit of tidying up around the shop. Keyleth couldn't say what had brought the impulse on, but she was keeping herself busy by sweeping up scattered potting soil, reorganizing everything in the cooler, and tidying the area around the register.

Tickles, perched atop a shelf, was supervising the whole process, of course, and Keyleth would stop to give him a pat every now and then.

When he deigned to let her, anyway.

[OOC: Shop and post open! Subject to SP per usual.]

So that had been an interesting last few days! A little bit weird and kind of scary, but it would have been a lie if Keyleth said she hadn't had any fun.

But she was back in Fandom now, and back to work which I totally haven't forgotten about the last couple of weeks really, and fascinated by the half dozen or so new plants she'd found on the counter this morning -- bioluminescent mushroom-tree bonsai, for lack of a better description.

"Oh, wow, you're so cool," she murmured, up close and examining one of them with a delighted expression on her face. "Where did you come from?"

The tiny mushroom trees didn't answer her. Neither did Tickles, who seemed to be just as fascinated but more inclined to give them a wider berth than Keyleth.

[OOC: Hi guess who was EMOTIONALLY DESTROYED by the last hour of Critical Role last night. God, what a wild ride of an episode. Anyway, post and shop open!]

 There didn't seem to be much of a holiday theme for anything going on at the shop this morning, Keyleth noticed when she came in . . . unless you counted the small planter on the counter that appeared to be full of celery ready for eating, or garnishes, or whatever else you could do with celery.

She was trying to work it into some floral arrangements, much to the consternation of Tickles, who kept circling around the vases and occasionally giving them the most perplexed look a little purring plant could give to anything or anyone.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, she wasn't particularly thrilled with any of her attempts either.

[OOC: Shop and post are open! The OCD is busy trying to figure out what the fuck even happened on CR last night. WHAT.

This morning had started out with Keyleth fielding a call from an upset customer with a completely unreasonable request -- someone who wanted a last-minute change to a custom-made arrangement that included rare flowers from one very specific dimension. She'd stumbled most of the way through that conversation before she managed to get frustrated enough to really put her foot in it, blurting out something about how if the customer knew anything at all about flowers, she'd know what an impossible thing she was expecting of them.

So now she had a row of small potted blossoms arranged on the front counter and was trying to get them to bloom with a little help from magic, while Tickles prowled along the counter and occasionally got in her way. "I think that could've gone better, don't you?"

Tickles didn't answer. Neither did the plants. Oh well.

[[Shop/post open!]]

Keyleth was a little bit sorry to not be in Iceland any more, to tell the truth, although she was a little bit less sorry about it when she came in to work and had Tickles immediately attach to her ankle.

"Awww, I missed you too," she said, crouching down to scoop up the kittenwillow and give him a nice enthusiastic snuggle, most of which he spent trying to climb up to her shoulder. And what was Keyleth going to do, discourage that? Hardly, so she had a plant-cat-thing purring up a storm and kneading against the side of her neck while she tended to the rest of the shop plants. "Oooh, if you're going to do that, can you -- I slept a little funny so there's kind of a knot right th -- yeah, yeah, that's it, thank you! Who's a good Tickles? That's right, you are!"

Safe to say she was going to be in a pretty jovial mood for her shift today.

 It might be worth noting that, had she actually delved deeper into the history of Valentine's Day, Keyleth might have been significantly less enthused about the holiday. But since what she did know consisted pretty much of the bits she'd gleaned in Magnus and Cara's class and also what she'd gotten some of the shop's callers to tell her, she was fairly into the whole idea. It was a holiday about showing the people you cared about that they were important to you, right? What wasn't to love?

She had a sheet of paper and a pen out and was scribbling down ideas for her own flower orders in between customers and phone calls; she also had a line of small flower pots, filled with different soil compositions, arranged on the counter as Tickles wound his way between them as if patrolling the area, and was using her magic to make flowers bloom in each one just to see what colors they'd turn out to be based on the components of each soil mixture. 

It was turning out to be a very fun, very engrossing way to pass the time. And hey, maybe it would come in handy next week too!

[OOC: Shop and post open! My cellular data connection has been bad this week, so please bear with my extra daytime SP, sorry.]