Some Weather We're Having Here [GoblinFae]

[Cobalt]

Elhadron wasn't going to miss the sunset today, which was always a treat. He took his breakfast of bread and cheese outside to watch the sky dim from its usual searing-hot white down through orange and red and finally purple and blue. Lamps outside of shops came on, lighting the streets with wicks blazing yellow-white. It wasn't until the day had gone from mind-fryingly bright down to discernible zones of varying warmth and illumination that Elhadron realized that something was very wrong with the birds.

Common little house pests had retreated long before, and he could not remember having seen any at all. The wind had shifted and twisted and led them all away. Across the street a horse had been tethered and no longer seemed at all interested in charming food from weak-willed elves. Elhadron always ended up sharing, so to abandon such an easy mark... something was bothering her. He didn't like the way he could see the whites of her eyes, didn't like the marks her hooves made in the dust.

The people were all fine, of course. People always were, right up until they weren't.

He stood, and a broom two paces away fell to the dirt. It was in front of a lovely little flower shop. With a last concerned glance at the mare across the street, he propped the broom back up next to the doorframe and went in.

[GoblinFae]

Ladybird looked up in surprise, having not expected a customer so close to quitting time. She had been in the middle of re-potting one of her pot-bound orchids that she had been nursing for months when the figure darkened her door.

"One second!" she hurriedly called as dirt was hurriedly dusted off her hands and her hair was brushed out of her eyes. Behind her a tabby cat jumped up onto the counter even as she came around it to greet the unknown man.

"My apologies for the wait sir," she breathed, finally coming to stand in front of him. "How may I be of service to you today?"

[Cobalt]

A sir! Elhadron got a sir.

"Oh, good evening! You're fine, you're totally fine. I just walked in, only a moment ago."

How did she keep that cat from eating things? Or urinating on them. Or... sleeping on them? Elhadron was not actually an expert on cats but he had heard those were the things cats did.

"I, uh." He forced himself not to chew his lower lip because he was not a child and he was not indecisive. He just didn't know what was going on or what to do. Very different. Unfortunately while he was steeling his nerves against that particular fidget, his hand crept up to idly shift his hair back and forth. "I'm not actually sure yet. It's a bit strange outside. Are the evenings around here strange at all? I mean, would a..." He gestured at himself. "Would someone passing through think so. Because there aren't any birds."

Well that sounded utterly inane. Great work, Elhadron. Truly the prophet of the ages.

[GoblinFae]

Her brows crinkled and chewed on her lip as she tried to understand what the man was saying. "Strange? No, I don't think so. I mean I've lived here my whole life and while I've traveled I've always found home to be normal, relatively speaking. Do the birds not go to sleep where you're from, my friend?"

[Cobalt]

Right.

Daytime people.

"Never all of them," he said, his thoughts already wandering to explanations other than something even owls won't mess with and pretty much coming up only with something even owls won't mess with. "There are, um." He blinked a few times, pale grey lashes utterly incapable of sweeping away metaphysical vision obscuration. He scratched along the bridge of his nose, and then rubbed his finger and thumb together.

Then he looked at his hand.

"Mare across the street isn't... happy either. Look. I absolutely can leave if you would prefer that I do that but I think maybe--"

His sentence cut off as something heavy hit the street outside, heavy enough that Elhadron could hear it from inside. From her vantage point, Ladybird saw something long and glossy with entirely too many legs. Elhadron whirled to look out the window, but it was just dark enough outside that he couldn't see any heat through the glass. Looked like a big bug?

There were a few more thumps from above. Something was hitting the roof. The mare across the street began rearing and kicking the post to which she was tied. Small fuzzy things pattered to the earth in the street.

[GoblinFae]

Ladybird blinked, feeling startled by what she thought she had seen from the corner of her eye over the other person's shoulder. A shake of her head though brushed it off as nothing while she attempted to refocus her attention on what the man was saying. Surely it had all just been her imagination from too much work and a lack of sleep.

"Sounds like a storm?" she commented weakly, praying that it hallucinations due to exhaustion and not insanity that was causing her to observe such strange things at the given moment.

[Cobalt]

Elhadron gave the shop owner a critical look. A little on edge, but probably not lying? Not really. Just... mistaken.

"No..." he replied, turning back to look at the blank expanse that was the glass window. "No it does not."

He heard a few delicate impacts on the street outside, light and fragile. Probably birds. There was a larger crack, with the flexible resonance of wood and a hollow space. It had been struck by something harder.

Horse kicking a wall.

That had taken him way too long. He still wasn't totally awake yet, apparently. Obviously it was just a horse.

"I'm going to check on the--" His sentence cut off with his hand still on the door. Something had thudded against the bottom of it. They were coming closer now.

Then, as with so many ordinary deluges, the clouds opened up all at once. Creatures with fur and scales and skin of every time, creatures with wings both fleshy and feathered, creatures with fins, began thundering down from the sky. The inside of the shop boomed with their impact against the roof. Through the window Ladybird could see everything from little wisps of songbird to animals nearly the size of a cart.

"Can you see out?"

The mare across the street reared back, battering the wall and fence around her in earnest.

[GoblinFae]

Her brow furrowed and lips pursed at his words, not liking his tone at all. Surely it had to be a storm for what else could it be if not that. She shuddered at such an idea before her eyes caught the disturbing sight that the outdoors was quickly becoming.

"Kia mother of us all what is going on," Ladybird murmured fearfully under her breath as she moved closer to the shop window. "I see but I do not believe it," she replied shakily. "Perhaps it's best you stay a while friend, I do not think it wise to go out of doors at the present moment."