thenearshore | [open mingle] close your eyes, feel the present

Who: Everyone! This is an open mingle log, so feel free to toplevel and thread between yourselves as much as possible.
When: October 27th
Where: Calico Cat Cafe, somewhere vague in Tokyo. An address was posted on the BBS a day prior.
What: Cat adoption day - come bring some (or a lot of) new friends home, take advantage of the no entry fee to spend a day hanging out with cats, or volunteer to help out the somewhat overloaded staff.

An adoption event needs no small venue, and Cat Cafe Calico provides that much, visible as soon as anyone walks in the front door, pane glass with a little bell to ensure no cats walk out undetected. The area is spacious and welcoming, warmly lit with smooth and modern decor, and of course, plenty of posts for the cats. The cafe area itself is on the lower floor, along with various stools, cushions and lounges for people to sit on and spend some time with the plentiful felines. Most of the adoption services have set up along one wall down here, but it's plenty easy to avoid them and just play around with the cats unless you intend to adopt. They've got plenty of waitstaff available, and the cafe is testing out some new and unusual styles and flavours of tea, coffee and milkshakes, as well as seasonal fruit based cakes and tarts. For those without as much of a sweet tooth, there's savoury snacks as well - or maybe you'd prefer to just buy some snacks for the cats, which is an option too.

Upstairs, there's also a video game area with plenty more seating and plenty more cats...though good luck getting them out of the way of the screens, or occasionally off the consoles themselves. Quite a few of the cats are lounging around by the large window, either between cushions or on an impressively-sized play frame, and some are even up near the roof on mounted walkways. There are no guarantees they won't drop onto the occasional passerby. The upstairs also houses a few enclosed areas for people to socialise with specific cats or groups of them to see which ones they get on with best.

Volunteers will be thanked profusely, and some of the staff may even approach visitors to ask if they might help, offering compensation of food and drink prices or similar. There's a lot of adoption paperwork to be done, and with the waitstaff run off their feet, there's few people left to supervise interactions between visitors and cats to make sure all's friendly. Of course, this is an excellent excuse to just surround oneself with any available cats and let others approach as they please.

There's a steady stream of kittens being let out into the mingling cats throughout the day, most of them kept to enclosed areas under staff supervision. Whenever more come out, it might be possible to catch some whispers from the waitstaff, as if surprised at something - listen closely enough, and it sounds like they're talking about an employee, one who they barely see and rarely talks, yet finishes work promptly and slips away before anyone notices except the cats, who all seem very comfortable around him...

Whatever the reason for being here, there's plenty of cats to go around, plenty of activity, and ample opportunity to take home a new friend! Or two. Or ten, if you can convince the staff you can handle it.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

At least I got that much right!

[ Shinki Problems. ]

Maybe it'll make more sense in time. Or maybe it's just something Heaven decides for each god - they've known some of these gods for a long time, through multiple incarnations.

Perhaps, I guess certain gods have things that they are known for by those that worship them, through stories and such. If people expect them to have certain animals or objects they will.

[Like everything else here Suzaku hopes it will make more sense in time.]

That was definitely the way it was for Sora and Roxas! Sora because he had no animals around his temple at all, and Roxas had so many.

[ She finds it easier to talk about them nowadays. ]

He had deer, and rabbits, and all kinds of small birds hanging around... that sort of thing. Prey animals he called them.

Prey animals make sense for a temple of a god of the hunt. Was Roxas your god? [She's been speaking in the past tense so he guesses he is one of the gods that had disappeared. Many people had warned him that gods disappeared often here.]

Yes, Roxas was my god.

[ She says it fondly, in reverie. ]

But Sora's temple was next door, so I knew it just as well as I knew Roxas's.

[ Same deal, past tense but fond. ]

[So they had both disappeared.] It sounds like you were good friends with them both.

Who is your god now?

They really were... [ Before, in the Far Shore, and even now as she thought about them. ]

Her name is Hajime. Her goddess name is Neith - Egyptian pantheon.

[ She smiles more sincerely now. ]

We were friends before they disappeared, so it was as a good a match as any I could think of.

[ Since she and Forrest talked it over and agreed not to. ]

That's good, I'm glad you found someone who you were already friends with.

[It probably made it easier. Suzaku had no idea how you would even go about finding a god to serve.]

Thanks. It's why I have sympathy for others who have to go through the same thing.

[ She sighs a little then. ]

It's more common than any of us would like to see happen. You spend weeks, months trying to form a bond with your god or goddess only to have them stripped away from you - a partner you can depend on in a fight as much as a friend.

I'm sorry it happened to you. [He's only been here a matter of days, has only just met Lady Grell and they are still only getting to know one another. But he can't imagine what it would be like to all of a sudden have her taken, to go from knowing her and working with her to her not even being here anymore, just gone from the heavens.]

Many people warned me such things happened when I arrived, it's worrying that it is so common.

I definitely wish it wasn't so common that people were warning you about it on your first day. It only has to happen once to impact a shinki. I don't know what it means that shinki survive here longer than gods do.

[ She gets contemplative again. ]

I heard once that gods can reincarnate only if they're popular enough with their followers, but I've never heard for sure if that's what causes gods to disappear and not return at all.

That is concerning. [And another thing to worry about. How does a god become popular? How do they remain so?]

It is strange though that more shinki survive than gods.

Right? You'd think that without memories, it would be much harder for shinki to find stable lives while bouncing between gods and fending off ayakashi and everything else.

[ It's one of the weirder peculiarities she's been hung up on. ]

Perhaps it is the lack of memories that make it easier. We have nothing to miss from before. This is all we know.

[ She nods. ]

It's almost like... after it happens once or twice, you just have to accept it as the new normal, even if it's not always been like that for other shinki and the old gods.

Maybe that's why it's harder on those of us who've been here long enough to remember things about our past too.

Perhaps. [He nodded and then blinked as his hand was swiped with a paw.] Ah. It seems they are unhappy at being ignored.

Aww, poor things. I suppose I should let you get back to them, and I'll see if anyone up front needs any help.

[ She waves down at the cat pawing for attention. ]

Bye bye! You be good now.

I'm sure I'll see you again soon, Kairi. [He smiled at her as she waved but his attention was soon commandeered by the kitten.]

[open mingle] close your eyes, feel the present

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