i need not be flattered that you've never been here before

[returnvoid]

After he'd taken leave of the room-- he can do that, how different-- he takes to wandering. Never too far from the shadows, where the pitch of his coat blends in more than with the golden of the hallways. But he is somewhere new, and coherent, and feels more substantial than he has in a long time, so after the shock had settled of course the curiosity took hold. Doors take a little bit of work, now that he's found he can interact with physical matter, but after one or two hopefully unwitnessed, embarrassing attempts he manages well enough to peek into the rooms he comes across.

That's about as much as he does, really. He's mostly just cataloging what there is to see here, but there isn't anything in specific he's looking for as he wanders. So he's content to simply do that much, at least until he comes across the music room.

Funny how such a shadowy figure can practically light up at the sight of something. Before he realizes it he's rushing in and flitting quickly over to one of the pianos. There's so much in the room they can't possibly all be that well-maintained or tuned, but none of it could be worse than whatever water damage and blunt force trauma happened upon the instruments that used to fall into the Underground, surely? The door's left open behind him, out of oversight, but he doesn't pay it any mind as he settles down on the bench.

He warms up slowly. Scales and runs to test himself first, see if his motor memory still serves. Then, when that's judged satisfactory, soft, lilting, maybe even somewhat eerie simple melodies, all atmosphere and percussive rhythm.

Eventually, he sits back. Hums a little. Eyes the other pianos in the room. Gestures, curtly, tightly, with his hands.

And more hands form out of nothing to array themselves out around him. They hover there, briefly, before floating over to the other pianos in the room, a pair each.

Then he lets his focus spread, just a bit, glancing over at the other pianos, before seguing into something a... bit more involved.

Comments

[dustless]

Hard, but not hard enough to resist their DETERMINATION.

"Dunno what you're saying, sorry," they say, holding on and sort of vibrating in place. He doesn't seem to be refusing--and who cares about fixing the piano up, it'll be fine!

They just so love it when monsters get to see the sky. They tug a little more, beckoning with their free hand. Come onnn.

[returnvoid]

He lets out a sound that might be a laugh-- it's breathless and static threads through it, but he attempts to smile reassuringly down anyway. "❄︎☟︎✌︎❄︎ ✋︎💧︎ ✌︎☹︎☹︎ ☼︎✋︎☝︎☟︎❄︎📬︎ 💣︎⚐︎💧︎❄︎ 🚩☜︎⚐︎🚩☹︎☜︎ 👎︎⚐︎ ☠︎⚐︎❄︎📬︎" he says.

But it's so nice, an instrument like that should be properly taken care of... Gaster gets to his feet and more glides away from the piano than properly steps away from it when they tug. They are certainly eager, and far be it for him to quash that, especially when the situation feels so terribly nostalgic.

(A different hand on his, but still.)

He nods along. All right, all right.

[dustless]

(As much as Frisk enjoys music, they don't know much about the proper upkeep of many instruments yet.)

"Let's go!" they say again, and drag him along.

They think the castle might be trying to help them, 'cause it takes a lot less time than it usually does for the clouds to part within and without, sunlight streaming in through glassless windows.

They're enthusiastic enough that they kick open the door to the gardens, and some of it splinters, but that's fine, the doors don't really do anything anyway. And then they let go, waving at the trees and grass and flowers grandly. "Look!" Frisk is looking at his face more than at everything they're trying to show.

[returnvoid]

He's very light, it turns out. Very easy to drag along, which is exactly what happens, one awkwardly tall skeleton being led around by a child half his height, if that.

The light streaming through the windows reminds him of another hallway in the Underground, one of the few places to get natural light. Gold flowers and windows and walkways, the associations come to mind unbidden and he has to blink back some of the worse ones, focusing elsewhere. Asgore's Judgment Hall has seen hope, too.

(Light, though...)

He doesn't react to their kicking open the door, outside of the line of his mouth going thin in bemusement, but as soon as he's pulled through and let go-

"📬📬📬⚐︎☟📬"

he stumbles a little, ungracefully, before catching himself in a flutter of wisp and shadow. That's. That's right. Not-the-Underground and light implies... How silly of him. Just because he'd been limited to watching the Underground—and only the Underground—for so long doesn't imply that he should forget something so basic.

It's warm, is the first thing he notices while staring up at the sun. Warm in a different way from the oppressive heat of what he remembers of Hotland.

...This was what he'd wanted. For everyone in the Underground, for his...— for Sans and Papyrus, because even after the CORE a more comfortable cage was still a cage. Driven himself into the ground for this, and...

Gaster blinks his eyesockets shut, reopening them once he's turned his head to look back down at the child, hands folded tightly behind him and expression somewhere between wistful and awed. It takes him a moment to cast for the right pattern of nonsense sounds to would make his speech intelligible to others, but.

"'...Look?' I am looking," he begins, slowly. The corner of his mouth curves up in a lopsided smile. "What am I supposed to be looking at?"

[dustless]

They almost tell him to cover his eyes instead of looking up, but--he's a skeleton. Skeletons don't have eyes that'll water (from that, anyway) or burn out.

Frisk watches him, and they listen to the gentle breeze rustling some of the treetops. It's a lot to take in, isn't it? Not at all like Asgore's garden, or the wilds of Snowdin, or the fields of wild(?) Echo Flowers in Waterfall.

...He can speak the way they can, and that's a surprise. Frisk blinks at him a few times before jumping and throwing their arms out again, though a little more upward this time. They look like they've been plucked from the middle of a jumping-jack.

"Everything! 'Cause it's pretty! And it's cool! And it's different! And there's probably stuff you want to look at, right? And-and-and food--and ingredients to look for."

[returnvoid]

"Whah- One thing at... a time, child." He can, but doesn't often employ it. Speaking this way isn't really taxing or difficult, but it does take some amount of effort, especially when it all sounds like gibberish to him. Whatever the nature of the magical interference surrounding his communication—font skeleton morphological quirk, where magic affected the perception of their words by others—it could be, well, cheated. Akin to a cipher, but that only means there's a certain pattern of sound that translates back through the filter understandable to those who weren't accustomed to his speech. Not all monsters he worked with ever learned hands, and it wasn't as if he'd always have an interpreter on hand.

It still was painstaking work, figuring out what mapped to what by trial and error. He's fairly sure he'd insulted Sans more than once by accident during that period.

...Ah, he'd gotten distracted.

"If you left me... to look at everything I wanted to, I fear we would never leave here," he says, leaning over to not quite tower so much over them. "Better to stay focused. Ingredients?"

[dustless]

Frisk would think that was cool if he explained it. They sort of realize it's an effort, but he can go back to signing whenever he wants, so they don't call him out on it.

"I don't have anything else to do," they counter, standing on their tip-toes. "But...'kay. There's tomatoes! Somewhere. We can start walking and probably find them by accident."

[returnvoid]

It makes for practice and readjustment with an audience who probably isn't going to laugh too much at him for messing anything up (namely: Sans, among others). Isolation makes one's communication skills rusty, it turns out, but he can't expect everyone to understand signing, so he'll make the effort now when it isn't so critical.

"We do have an agenda, do we not? But of course this place would be that way. I suppose there's nothing to do for it." He sighs a little, wispy and stuttering, but it's half hearted. "The scenic route it is, then. I take it you like this area?"

[dustless]

"Yeah! Actually lived out here for a while. I had a hammock."

They miss that hammock, really. But nobody was supposed to know where they were living, and Sans and Toriel found it. A shadow falls over their face. Not an option anymore.

"...You should try to find a place to live, too. A room or something like that."

[returnvoid]

"...out in the open, all alone?" Too much exposure is something that fleshier monsters have to concern themselves with, he knows. Humans... should not be all that different, should they? Much less the more obvious problem of a child being left to their own devices, but then again, a human in the Underground probably... grew used to that.

"It must have been quite the adventure." A slight inclination of a nod, before he continues, expression leveling out, "That might be a good idea, but I am... not all too sure how necessary that may be."

[dustless]

"...not really. It was in some bushes." And the gardens kept warm enough. Alone--well, they could go find their friends and found family if they wanted to.

Frisk carefully brushes past some gardenia flowers, stark white in comparison to the rest of the gardens. "No? Why not? 'S usually good to have somewhere...for...you. For yourself."

[returnvoid]

"...I will take your word for it," he says, with another short, diplomatic nod. "It must have served you well enough."

Gaster brushes past the flowers too, though his hand lingers on one of them for a moment longer before he follows. "In truth... because I come and go often, and do not know how long this will last. It seems a little... hasty to start planning for permanence, truly."

[dustless]

Frisk stops in the middle of their stride, very nearly tripping over themselves. He has a point, is the thing. That other Gaster was only here for...couple weeks, they think. They think they probably woulda forgotten him if not for the babies from the lab.

They spy a raspberry bush from the corner of their eye and reach over to absently pluck a few.

"...I guess. Should still think about it, I think."

[returnvoid]

He makes as if to steady them out of reflex, but they catch themselves on their own. He can't be sure what they're thinking or what prompted the stumble, but he can make a guess of sorts when their next reply comes out muted in comparison to their excitement over the garden.

No love lost between them and whatever other Gaster they were thinking of, was there? And here he was supposed to be forgettable. ...his voice catches.

...I will think on it, he agrees via sign, before peering over at the berries. Perhaps we should have brought a basket.

[dustless]

(Well. That one was okay. They just didn't get to know him, and then they learned about all of what S-4-Papyrus went through.)

Frisk nods. "Good."

Oh. He has a good point, there. They glance down at themselves. "...can put stuff in my pocket. And carry it."

slowly gets back to everything in the last month, feel free to disregard

[returnvoid]

Would that not make a mess? he demurs, glancing over. You do not have to ruin your clothing on my behalf. Wear and tear from the environs is one thing. Having sticky juice sopping around inside a pocket is another.

He reaches out to pluck a few berries from the bush as well, cradling the fruits in the distal portion of his hands thoughtfully. The phalanges are thin, but they'll hold the berries where his palms won't. Of course, this limits his hands, so...

He clears his throat a little (how? skeletons don't even have larynxes), then murmurs, softer than before, "We should be able to carry enough by hand, most likely... Unless there was something other than just the tomatoes you wanted? In addition to these, I mean."

np!

[dustless]

"Yeah, but I know how to wash my clothes." In the fountains and streams if they can't manage to find one of the few rooms with actual plumbing.

They pop the berries into their mouth. "Just the pot--tomatoes. These're just a snack, not ingredients for anything. Not right now." Maybe they could try to figure out raspberry pie some other time.