A/N: Basically this is a very lengthy study for one of my headcanons for the Happy Mask Salesman and how I roleplay him. It's a fairly strange and out-there headcanon.
To be lost is no one's favorite pastime, and for Kriem, it was a far too usual occurrence. It could never remember left or right, or where anything was. Getting lost between dimensions was the worst, though. That was how it ended up floating outside…whatever this place was. It'd been here plenty of times before, and always found it fascinating, but this time, it looked like this was where it'd be residing for a while.
"Don't dare return until you sort out those thoughts of yours!" The words of its parent echoed in its thoughts while it tried to observe the life in this new realm that would be home. There was, if it recalled, a race he found to be very promising, from what it could tell, they used magic, as its own people did, and they had masks, as it loved. But they looked so strange…it didn't have any masks that looked like that at all.
"You have to pick a place now," the voice of Kriem's home realm's leader echoed through the space between realms, and then it felt itself flung forward onto the plains. How fortunate no one was around to see this inhuman, unearthly form smack against the strange, green earth. 3 seconds in and it was already completely out of its element. The sights, the texture, the vibrations…all of it was so unusual. Bordering on overwhelming, really.
This was going to be home, though. That in mind, the creature picked itself, and a cherished mask, up off the ground. The mask evoked a frown, what had been a pleasant smile was now a warped scream, but still, it was part of home. The mask was to be cherished.
Then it heard, or felt, rather, the drums. Something was going down, something big, and it could not be seen, not like this, and so it scuttled off to hide in the dark and watch.
What it saw did not make any sense. The words were foreign, the movements erratic, and this magic just felt, and even tasted different than its own. It knew then that fitting in here was going to take more than a few day's observation.
—-
Months passed, and the creature was finally getting a handle on what this tribe did, and when they did it. Why was still lost on it, but it could at least play the part, if only it had skin like that, two limbs, and a face like that. It couldn't say the words, but it'd learned them. These people used "he" and "she" to refer to others of their kind, for example. Kriem liked how "he" sounded. He decided that would be how he would think of himself then. Still, he couldn't fit in looking like some twisted, goopy version of the plants, as he learned they were called.
Then it occurred to little Kriem. He didn't have a mask because he never made one, and making a mask…was easy. All he needed was one base, one soul and he could do it. Souls were easy enough, surely there'd be one of those strange four-limbed people that wasn't fit to survive…
The confusion and sorrow over the dead body the next day confused him. Was what he did wrong? He dared not speak up, but he still felt so lost in the reactions. Even blending in, this was going to be difficult.