angryhearts | to lose all my senses

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to lose all my senses —

THAT IS JUST SO TYPICALLY ME

It's not clear how many days it's been since you arrived in Wonderland. With it stuck in perpetual twilight, it could have been days, perhaps longer — everything starts to blur together, in this artificially joyful place. Maybe you've started to feel like you you're getting used to it, maybe not...

But eventually, something happens to break the monotony. Your ears begin to ring, and ring, and ring and then — stop. The lights become blinding, forcing you to squeeze your eyes shut and try to rub the afterimage of all that light from them — but when you open your eyes, you still can't see.

The staff don't understand when you ask them what's happened to you. "You've always been like this", they insist. They sign at you, or try to hand you papers written in braille — if you insist you've never signed in your life, or that you can't read braille, they laugh at your funny joke. You begin to wonder — have you always been this way? You were so sure... But everyone around you is equally sure of their truth, and their voices are so much louder.

As if that weren't enough, nothing in the hotel can be found in the same place twice. All the shops keep switching places, once you enter one area it's as though everything shifts in the minutes before you leave again. Getting back to your room is a struggle — where are the elevators? Finding food is nearly impossible — the Pig & Pepper was there, but now it's not. The staff are equally useless here — they have no idea what you mean about moving shops. Where would you want to move to when all your needs are accounted for right here?

What is going on?

SEE NO EVIL, HEAR NO EVIL — 5/11

The day starts like any other has in the Hotel — unsure if a new day has started at all. Perpetual twilight and lack of clocks makes it difficult to tell time here in the Hotel, but on this particular day, something breaks up the monotony. It begins slowly — or else it happens all at once. Over the course of the day, all Oysters find themselves losing a sense. Staff don't understand their complaints — you've always been like this, they say, gentle, as though to a person in the middle of a break with reality.

Losing your temper won't help, either. Oysters who shout and yell will find staff remaining frustrating calm and compassionate, insisting that they cannot fix what has always been and murmuring about Mad March before taking their leave. Physical aggression may result in a spike of fear, but staff will quickly make their exit and may avoid that Oyster for a while.

If that wasn't enough, nothing in the Hotel is staying put.

IT'S LIKE A MAZE IN HERE — 5/11

The interior of the Hotel has ceased to remain stationary. Beginning at the same time as the loss of senses, the establishments of the Hotel begin to jump around, never staying in the same place twice. An Oyster may have entered the Pool of Tears from the lobby, but exit it into the middle of the casino. The Pig & Pepper Buffet is never in the same place twice, and always seems to move right when Oysters desperately need a meal.

Even as the old shops move, new establishments seem to be being added, but they aren't easy to find — Oysters will see a new sign across the building from where they are, only to see it's moved again by the time they get there. If you take your eyes off an establishment as you head toward it, it disappears and reappears elsewhere. Making it to the new establishments will take some time and dedication (or perhaps plain stubbornness), but there are rewards in it for any Oyster that can manage the feat!

Back To Rights — 5/15

A few days after the effects of the event begin, they just as suddenly end. Sight, hearing, speech — they all return in a rush, possibly overwhelmingly so, and when one tries to make their way to a shop, it stays exactly where it was when they first saw it, and they exit the exact same place they entered. Staff will react much the same way as they did when they were questioned after the loss of senses — you've always been like this.

You made it through, Oysters. You've completed your first event in the Hotel.

We hope you enjoy this first event, Oysters! If you have any questions, please leave them on the first comment to this page. Happy playing!

PREMISE RULES FAQ TAKEN RESERVES APPLICATION MOD CONTACT HIATUS & DROPS WORLD INFO NPCS CALENDAR AC REWARDS

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Aziraphale knocks several things over as he goes to get the door, fumbling for his glasses as his vision's suddenly very blurry. He tries to miracle them into his possession, but then quickly remembers that he's incapable of doing so. Bollocks. "I'll be right there!" he exclaims, as he takes the time to pick everything up and put it back on his table.

He stubs his toe on the corner of a wall and yelps, bracing himself for a minute before he finally manages to get to the door, opening it. "Crowley? Hello, I'm afraid I'm having an off morning, could you help me find my glasses?"

He squints. "Crowley, are you alright?" When an angel going blind can tell you look a bit harried, you're definitely having a bad day.

Harried is a bit of an understatement; Crowley looks positively wrung out, and despite feeling the vibrations of Aziraphale approaching the door, he didn't calm down until he saw Aziraphale's face, squinting and puzzled, and oh no.

"They're messing with us, Aziraphale. Just like they did when we got here, cutting off our miracles and our - "

He stops, not even able to bring himself to say it. He'd had a complete fit about his clipped wings for a good three hours once he was tucked away in the privacy of his room.

"Anyway. You know how I can't really hear when I'm a snake? S'like that. You're losing something too, right?"

"Oh yes, that's right," he says, about the whole not hearing when he's a snake thing. He remembers that quite clearly. "Yes, I've lost my glasses," he says, because that's clearly the problem. "Have you seen them? Could you help me find them?"

In case Crowley can't hear him, he tries something halfway between signing and charades. He makes a gesture towards glasses, making circles around his eyes and looking rather like Luna Lovegood.

Aziraphale reaches for Crowley's hand and attempts to drag him into the room. He feels like he needs to be direct.

In any other circumstance, Crowley would be over the moon for Aziraphale to forcefully yank him into his bedroom. And he does stop to weigh his options about mentioning that he can read lips.

He decides that maybe, for now, he can keep that to himself.

"Sss'okay, Aziraphale," he says, and now that he can focus on calming Aziraphale's perpetual nervous energy, he can calm his own. "You can sign, or write letters in my palm. Are you going blind...?"

While wandering around looking for Aziraphale, he'd bumped into other guests, all with either a loss of hearing or loss of sight. It seemed if Aziraphale needed his glasses for anything besides looking smart, that his eyes were going.

Edited 2020-05-12 05:38 (UTC)

"No!" he exclaims quickly, looking at Crowley suddenly, but missing his eyes and looking somewhere near his hair which is now a big blur. Actually, everything's getting a little bit darker, and he draws nearer, squeezing Crowley's hand. He's scared.

"Maybe," he adds, a little more quietly. Even if Crowley couldn't read lips, he could read Aziraphale's body language. "Crowley, I... let's go."

He takes Crowley's palm and writes, "fix?"

Crowley feels it. The fear.

Not directly, no, yet another thing cut off to him. But the tremble in Aziraphale's hand, the way he doesn't say things - and why wouldn't he be? Aziraphale's passions revolve a lot around being able to see. Crowley's decidedly better off with this - of he's senses, he's most prepared to lose his hearing. There was, after all, no sound in the vacuum of space, and his hearing was extremely limited as a snake. He isn't afraid; he's livid.

Giving the angel's hand a reassuring squeeze, he shelters him under one dark wing.

"Let's take a walk, alright? Get used to to - all of this. Maybe find a place to calm down a bit."

Crowley shields Aziraphale under a wing and he feels immediately more comforted. Something about the gesture makes him feel the full breadth of six thousand years' of friendship and his hand stills, his whole body untenses, just the slightest.

"Alright," he says. "Find a place to calm down." It's getting darker and darker, and suddenly he can't see Crowley at all anymore.

He doesn't realize, until he feels tears on his face, that he's crying at all. "Oh," he says. "Sorry." He's no idea if any of this is permanent or not, if this place would just keep taking and taking from him until he was no more. It was a sad way to go, to slowly fade into nothing. But Crowley was here.

He stays close, like he never could before.

Crowley has seen Aziraphale upset before, even on the verge of crying when they'd argued at the bandstand. But he's never seen him shed actual tears. Crowley was always the one with the emotional outbursts, Aziraphale always more reserved with his stiff upper lip.

Crowley doesn't chastise him, doesn't even try to gentle him into stopping his tears. Rather, he gets his silk handkerchief, and holds it to Aziraphale's damp cheek.

"There now, angel. Just let it out - we'll put this right, I promise."

He can't see. He might not be able to read again, and he won't be able to restore a book anymore. He certainly won't be able to fly when his wings grow back.

"Yes, sorry," he says again, trying to calm himself down. He's being silly. They've made it through so much more -- they've made it through Armageddon! Here he is, crying over a bit of blindness.

He shakes his head and clears his throat. Taking Crowley's hand, he traces the word, 'fix' again, this time without a question mark.

"Don't go apologizing," Crowley says, dabbing his other cheek dry. "It's terrifying what they can get away with."

He gives Aziraphale's hand another squeeze. Crowley can manage to be the rock in their friendship for once in his overdramatic life.

He signs back fix, as if to affirm Aziraphale's statement.

"Ill tell you if anything looks suspicious, you tell me if anything sounds it, yeah? Work together, you and me, just like always."

"Yes, alright." He practices tugging to make sure that Crowley knows when to stop when he does, just so they don't run into any problems.

He also lifts his hand and starts to sign with one of them, very simple one-off words, just to practice. It's hard to do this without both his hands, but he also refuses to let go in the moment. He just doesn't feel safe.

He checks to make sure he has his key, and then he nods. They can proceed.

All things considered, their communication skills could probably use some work. But in Crowley being the eyes and Aziraphale being the ears, they're relatively seamless. And Crowley does not seem intent on surrendering Aziraphale's hand. The could communicate privately like that.

Forward, he signs onto the angel's palm. Slow. Table, left.

"The staff are conspicuously unhelpful about this, claiming we've always been this way. Obvious bollocks, I just watch you go blind."

Aziraphale frowns. No, things have not always been this way. Crowley has usually had good hearing, and Aziraphale is very adamant that he has always been able to read, in more languages than anyone else currently alive besides perhaps Crowley, who wouldn't admit to it anyway.

He follows along, gently letting himself be guided. He is a little bit glad it's not the other way around; he's sure he would've guided Crowley into a pole by now.

He holds out a hand to stop Crowley and signs. "Someone is coming. Footsteps."

Crowley pulls Aziraphale closer to his side with his wing. It may just be the bellboy, but Crowley has no idea what the staff are actually capable of, and he doesn't want either Aziraphale or himself to lose anything else.

"Just an employee," he murmurs aside to the angel, leading him through the perpetually changing hallways.

It's a good ten minutes until they finally make it to the elevator.

"Let's just hope this doesn't take us to another labyrinth. How you holding up, angel?"

"I'm alright," he says, though he sticks close. He doesn't want to take any chances. Aziraphale has always been that way, risk-averse except for the things he simply cannot ignore.

He supposes that this friendship is one of those things, and he's glad for it.

"I trust you know where we're going?" he asks, signing it very slowly in slightly broken sign language.

"Nope," says Crowley.

"We're sort of winging - er. Sort of playing things by ea- um. ...We're improvising."

He hits the button for the ground floor and lobby, and the doors shut and the elevator gives that dizzying lurch as they head down, down and -

It stops. Something shifts, and the doors open to an unfamiliar hallway.

"Well, that's unexpected."

"What was?" asks Aziraphale, who can't see that they're in a hallway that they shouldn't be in.

"Should we get back in the elevator, Crowley?" he asks, tugging him back and shrugging.

It's a good thing Crowley can read lips, because Aziraphale is not very good at this charades thing or this signing thing.

Crowley isn't looking at Aziraphale as he scours the strange hall so he doesn't hear or see his lips move.

Fortunately they're on the same page, and Crowley ushers him around to the elevator door.

"Let's get back on the-"

Crowley stares aghast at where elevator had been just a moment before , now replaced by a blank wall.

"Oh you have got to be kidding! It was right there!"

"Hm? What was?" He's a little alarmed at how frustrated Crowley is. He always knew the man was brash, but usually he was very prepared for it.

He tries to stay his hand on Crowley's arm, keep him calm.

He doesn't hear the elevator sounds anymore, so he draws in a sharp inhale of breath as he makes the realization. "We'll find another one," he says, making the sign for elevator and tugging Crowley off into another direction.

Crowley follows Aziraphale's lead for a moment only until he remembers he's the one with functioning eyes in all this and quickly guides the angel away from walking into a wall.

Taking a deep breath, Crowley scans the hallway. It's a dead end but he knows that isn't as permanent as he'd think, and instead turns around to see if a new sight greets them. Indeed it does - a door way leading to several flights of stairs going up.

Of course it would be stairs.

He turns once more to see if another way presents itself, but there's nothing. Just the stairs.

"Right, some steps, Aziraphale. We'll just take the whole thing slow, one at a time."

He gives his friend's hand an encouraging squeeze, leading him to the first step.

Aziraphale stumbles towards the stairs, and has trouble getting up them, tripping and falling into Crowley at one of the points.

"So sorry," he says, trying to back away from him. "Crowley, I don't think this walk is working." He sounds a little defeated; he just needs a little time. Usually it's spent alone, reading, sequestered away from the rest of the world. But they've taken that away from him.

"Are we almost at the top?"

Crowley holds Aziraphale steady on the landing, staring up several flights of stairs with no door out in sight.

"Uh."

There are bad ideas, and then there's Crowley's bad ideas - always seeming like perfectly good ideas right up until they bite him in the ass.

"It's a ways. Think you can get up on my back? I could try carrying you."

Aziraphale stops in his tracks. "Carry me?" he asks, incredulously, because Crowley is a twig of a demon and Aziraphale is not exactly light for a being made of exactly that.

"No - if we fall, we'll both tumble down and I can't heal either of us right now." He frowns uselessly. At least, he feels useless.

"Angel, it'll be fine. S'all about leverage is all. Seen a fireman talk about it."

Of course, Crowley had never had to actually expend real effort on anything before, but really, how hard could it be?

"And if I get tired we can just stop for a breather. C'mon, it'll be fine."

"What if we topple backwards?" he asks, looking behind him even though he can't see, and then remembering that he can't see and rolling his eyes at himself.

He sticks closely to Crowley, arm around him tight, pressed up against his side, obviously unwilling to move.

But then he moves forward and kicks the step, again, and realizes Crowley might have a point.

Looking at him with tight, pursed lips, he holds out his hands for a carry, finally acquiescing, though he's unhappy about it.

THAT IS JUST SO TYPICALLY ME

SEE NO EVIL, HEAR NO EVIL — 5/11

IT'S LIKE A MAZE IN HERE — 5/11

Back To Rights — 5/15

spa day spa day!

spa day is best day!

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