Cursed Night Market

[pantheraliam]

Welcome

You’re not sure how you got here, but you don’t seem to mind. You feel a pervasive sense of calm with regard to your environment. You have entered what appears to be a night market. Perhaps the concept is familiar to you, or perhaps it isn’t. Colorful stalls, glowing with lantern light, line the path before you. You know what you need to do to return to where you came from. Investigate the various stalls - buy and sell what you have, until you’re able to purchase a path back. The merchants will take any currency that you have on hand. If you don’t have any, you will find some coins of an ambiguous nature in your pocket.

Rare Items

The first stall that you encounter boasts that you can buy and sell rare items. After trading a coin, the merchant hands you something - insists you take it. You don’t recognize the item, but the person behind you does. It is something extremely dear to them. If they check their person, they will find the item missing. If you attempt to return the item to them, you will find that you are unable to. Helpfully, the merchant offers that the person the item belongs to must tell the buyer a story about the item before it can be returned.

Fortunes

The second stall you encounter claims to buy and sell fortunes. Trading a coin, the merchant will relay to you a fortune, but, as you listen, you realize that it isn’t your fortune at all. With a cackle, the merchant explains that you must deliver the fortune with the person behind you. Neither of you can leave the booth until you have revealed to them their future.

Memories

The third stall you encounter claims to buy and sell memories. You can choose to sell the merchant a memory you would like to forget, or you can ask to buy someone else’s memory. Selling your memory will transfer it to the person behind you. In return, you will gain one of their memories. Buying a random memory will instead cause you to forget one of the people most important to you. In some instances, you might feel a great urgency to find someone, although you don't know who it is.

Dreams

The fourth stall you encounter claims to buy and sell dreams. Trading a coin at this stall will cause you and the person behind you to be transported into a shared dream. The dream may be about the highest point in your life or the lowest. It may also be about a close friend, there or gone. It may reveal your greatest desire or your greatest insecurity. Or any number of other things!

OOC notes

Suggestions on prompts: if you’re going to write one where someone will be seeing/receiving something from your character, it’s helpful to describe it in detail in the brackets in your TL. I know some of these prompts are probably a little confusing, but, I mean…it’s roleplay. Just fuck around. No one’s gonna police how you do things here.

Please feel free to top-level, tag in, and share this meme wherever you’d like - it is open to anyone. The four stalls mentioned are prompt suggestions, but you can go crazy and have any stall do basically anything you want. Please see/use subject line CWs. This musebox doesn’t have a dedicated rule list because it’s just for my personal shit, but please be kind, follow standard RP rules - just be nice! Do the right thing! If you have any questions, hit me up here.

code by Flyleaf ❖ inspired by event code by 10billionghosts ❖ background via unsplash

Comments

[placation]

Oh, you know...

[ Maruki makes a weighty hand gesture and laughs a bit. ]

On the one hand, we're both incredibly intelligent. If you consider yourself a strategist or a tactician, I wouldn't be surprised. On the other hand, apparently we both have a tendency to downplay our own feelings.

[ He drops his hands then and leans back against the couch with a little oof. ]

I don't suppose you frequently stop yourself from saying what you really feel to say what you think someone should hear instead, do you?

[thebomb]

[Well. He's never had it put quite so plainly before. In fact, after a moment's stunned silence:]

I can't say that I realized Eren had noticed...

[No one ever mentions it...]

It's been a necessity. [Excuse.] You could call me a strategist, I guess - people have. I'm the Commander of the Scout Regiment now. [Strange. Wrong. A mistake.]

So. [He looks down at the tissue in his hands, uselessly weighing it up and down.] A necessity. That's all.

[placation]

Of course. It's a necessity for me too.

[ Also an excuse. He recognizes it in both of them, but he'll let Armin have it. It's only recently that he's begun to face these truths about himself, he isn't about to force someone else to do the same. ]

I know that it's strange seeing ourselves through the lens of those who love us most. But you might be surprised by what he noticed about you.

[ Which, well. ]

I'm curious. How do you see him?

[thebomb]

[How does Armin see Eren Jaeger?

[It's an impossible question. How does someone describe what water tastes like when you're thirsty? Eren Jaeger is a natural consequence of being alive, as ubiquitous as breathing. He is not a monster, but he is a plague. He is a person. He is a child, and an orphan, and a wound. Up until the very last moment, he was hope. He was salvation. He was a victim; of the world, of himself - of Armin too.

[He is a storm trapped in a glass bottle, but the bottle never breaks - the world just gets sucked into its mouth.

[He is a captive. He was born too big for his body; grew tall, but never tall enough. Eren is the ache in Armin. Eren is the void. Eren is impossible, and perfect, and pitiful, and wretched.

[He is adored. He is mourned. He is hatred. He is love. He is war. He is Armin.

[Surely, some of this does not have to be explained. Anyone who meets Eren must, at even first glance, come to realize, somewhat. But Maruki can never understand. It doesn't matter what Armin says. It doesn't matter how well he knows Eren.

[Silent and useless, at a complete loss, Armin smiles down at his hands, teeth bared like an animal.]

Oh, he's...

Selfish. Reckless. He only sees what's in front of him, but he can't...

[Armin shrugs, but it's hard to pick his shoulders up.]

I...see him as the most remarkable person to have ever existed. [Does it sound fond, or bitter? He can't tell.

[Fond. Of course it's fond. Armin hears the sob trying to escape before he can force it fully back into his gut, but he tries. He twists the tissues in his hands; tears at them.]

He's my best friend. [The words all come out in a desperate puff of air, like someone's just pulled a gag out of his mouth. He chokes on it.] He's Eren. He's beautiful, and he's funny, and he's not--

[Armin bites off his tongue. He shakes his head.

[Not what? Not evil? Not terrible - not completely?

[Not gone?

[Not...]

Here...

That's...what I can't imagine.