You! Yes, You! Have you ever felt the joy of playing a classical "game" in the forest, like devout pelt tag, redlight-greenlight, hide & go seek, or Simon Says? Have you ever found that these are slightly hard to signal to a group, simply because of context?

I've been there. I've been there a lot. And so one day I said, "we ought to hold a get-together, specifically for the playing of games." And then I said "We ought to make it a semi-regular thing, too, so people don't have to be stuck at one time."

So, that's what we're going to do...At the

FOREST GAME GATHERING

When: Unknown

Who: Seed will act as Master of Ceremonies to direct and manage this whole thing for the week, to keep there from being mass chaos. His role is to signal for games unless someone else earns the right to signal a game, usually via victory.

It would be a great help if, when you join in, you post your deer's picto here. That way we can be sure to find you when hide-and-seeking or other games like that!


Where The gathering will meet by the side of the lake closest to the Twin Gods.


What: Playing games, of course! And for that, we turn to...

The Games

Devout Pelt Tag
Game Signal: Pawing at the Twin Gods Statue, then worshipping.
Game Progress: Signaler, henceforth "It," gets the devout pelt. All other deer run away. It chases after them and tries to cast the devout pelt spell on someone. If he does, the signaler ceases to be it, sneezes off the devout pelt, and gets a small head start on running away.

Today, in the rain, I got to witness the planting, or perhaps birth, of a little fawn, and kept him company for a little while... While I was sitting in the rain, I dashed a little something off. I wasn't there for terribly long: is it really appropriate to show something like this, to have written something like this? W-well, regardless!



((This has been another visit to Seed's Poetry Corner, A part of a complete literary diet. Specifically, this is about Moonsoverwater's character Baum.))

This is a gift for Auxentius, about The Emperor.



Want a gift poem? Request one!

[=#006400]
I awoke to the sensation of rain over my body, repetitive and rhythmic as the fingers of a piana player. The world felt weightless, fresh and clean. Perfect. I said my hellos to Virgil, drowsing in the rain, and went on to find Ourania by the playground rocks.

We played for a while, sloshing our hooves in the puddles that collected in the rainy rocks, butt-dancing in my preffered rock...The tall one, you know, with the ramp. It's a very good rock for bird-watching. Anyway, Ourania and I played like this for a while, before we decided to rest under the rock-ramp, out of the drenching rain. We were joined for a little while by the fawn Nayu, who I'd like to meet again: he fell asleep so quickly that I barely had time to learn his name.

The sound of the rain was so heavy, so lush, like a jungle of noise with its great canopy trees filtering out the light, its slick jungle underbrush of puddles and wet leaves and splashing noises of water-on-water. In that jungle lived so many strange and quiet sounds, the sort you hear best in the rain, like the croaking of frogs and the different raindrop beats. The song and the light together formed a lullabye, and drifted me off to sleep.


When I awoke, Ourania was heading near the ruins, and we stopped there for a while. It seemed Ourania was listening for something, but I couldn't tell what. I went back to sleep just after that...I wonder if she ever found it?

When I returned to conciousness, I heard Queze and Mystress off in the distance: I hadn't seen either of them in ages, and Queze's absence in particular was keenly felt. I rushed over to greet them: they, too, had gravitated to the rocks, and sitting with them (both were shocked to see me: perhaps my absence for much of this year was also keenly felt? Oh, I do kid myself...) We sat together in the rain, and I was hit by a sudden downpour of memories.

This is a little something I wrote when thinking back over the years to my very first friendship, and it stands in honor of that.



((This was another incredibly bromance-filled visit to Seed's Poetry Corner. This was also a gift poem for Pega, Request Yours Today!))

[=#357EC7]In a faraway world, there is a grand city. In that grand city, there is a series of rooms. Only two people, one a priest and one a doctor, have ever gone in and out of those rooms. The resident came in once, when he was an infant; the plan is, he will never leave.

His name is Taran. His veils are his sacred shields, covering him from head to foot. If anyone saw him, his guardians tell him, it would only bring misery. Even with the veils, only they are pure enough to look upon him. To step beyond the curtain guarding him from the world would only invite disaster. He knows this.

But here he is tonight, standing in a white room, silver in the moonlight. The torches are out, and the only windows, letting in streaks of moonlight, are on the other side of the curtain. In the darkness, only the little glowing beads on the edges of his robes provide him light.

On the curtain before him is the sacred crest of the grand city. On the other side is the world.

“Go,” he whispers to himself. “No force can stop you. Go.” He clutches the velvet curtain in both hands, willing it back with his shoulders and back, but finding his elbows, his weak hands, unable to finish the motion. He’s trembling. Strangely, he feels the azure eyes of the god of the city on him then, wide eyes, ashamed at what he was about to do, asking him if he was willing to risk all his happiness, all this peace, for those streets.

He wasn’t. He can’t. In the end, he’s just too frightened to be outside. The one little step just seems too long, and the thought of the noise of even a quiet city night makes him feel sick.
His veils rustle around him as his figure sinks into his robes and falls to his knees.

This is a gift for Quad, about Nekumbra of The Deadly Trio

I've been thinking that I want to give something back. I have that idea every now and again.
Now, I could do gift art, but that's a lot of hard work and wouldn't be that great. But everyone likes poems, right?

So I've decided to give gift-poems! Just ask for one here, with some info about your deer (whatever seems most important), and/or a link to your deer's bio, to give me something to work from. If Seed knows your deer well enough, I may make it a Seed's Corner poem, if I can think of what he'd think of. If you'd like me to try and make it a Seed's Corner poem, but he doesn't know your deer (or, at least not well enough to have an impression or experience to write about), then ask, and maybe we can arrange a meeting for them to get to know eachother.

I have no idea how long these may take, or how long these will be, so be patient!
Also, I have no set number of slots, but will occaisonally close orders when I feel I have a lot.
And one more thing...I'm more or less doing things in the order I find the words in.

Current To-Do List
Queze for Tera (this is my addition)
Terrant (my addition)
Walter for Verdalas (ditto)

Completed
To Be Nekumbra for Quad
The Deer Who Sleeps in Water for Pega
The Emperor of Night for Auxentius
This Honey-Furred Doe for Honeyfur
The Pirate's Heart for Beaumont13
In the Shadows and the Light for SnowSauria (at ALiceV's request, ridiculously late).

The subject came up in a conversation that a lot of my gestures can be mis-interpreted... And this is always the problem with a game like TEF, where gestures can mean a lot of things, and there's no course for immediate correction. Some things, of course, there's no helping... But if I give the wrong impression, that's no good, and should be corrected.

And, I figure, if someone misunderstands me in a way that's problematic, they're probably not going to say anything unless I ask, because we're kind of a paranoid community about that.

So I might as well ask the question in the title line, and see what I can do about the answer.

[=#357EC7]
In a faraway world, there is a grand city, and in that grand city, there is a series of rooms. The walls of the rooms are pale as frost and just as cold; the floors of the rooms are made of gleaming stone and, like the moon, glow where the sunlight hits them. The rooms contain a bathroom, a bedroom, a library, and a garden, and a large, empty room, cut in half by a row of curtains. Everything a person would need. This is good.

The person who lives in these rooms has never left them. The person who lives in these rooms has never dared. The person who lives in these rooms is forbidden to ever see walls that aren't of white stone.

Besides the garden, there is only one place where the floor glows from the light of the sun. It is a little window, by the side of the bed. The person who lives in these rooms loves that window, more than anything else in the world. Through that window, this person can see the movements of people, people who will never see him -- through that window, he can see the flight of birds, and hear the sounds of that grand city -- the children, sometimes laughing, sometimes crying; the old women, haggling out the price of turnips, too high this year; the vendors, singing out songs about how lovely coal is; the carts and the animals being led to slaughter and the loving and the fighting, the crimes and the small street-side miracles of ordinary lives.

Lives that this person will never touch. He raises a covered hand to touch the window. There is nothing about this person that isn't covered by layers of fabric. Only his eyes, blue like the sky he can see from his window, are unblocked.

His guardian, behind him, coughs gently, and the dream of the window fade away. He turns and does not smile. His guardian cannot bear to look at him too long. Not in the eyes.