villagelogs | 021-023 » the ghosts of fallen leaves

021-023 » the ghosts of fallen leaves

WHO: Everyone.
WHERE: Eastern/Central/Western Mathias.
WHEN: Days 021-023
WHAT: A cold storm approaches.
WARNINGS: Will update as necessary. PM this account to have a warning added!
NOTES: Plotting post over here!

RECOMMENDED ♫ Emily Kinney & Lauren Cohan "The Parting Glass"

DAYS 021-023
THE WORLD TURNS WHITE
“Are ye the ghosts of fallen leaves, O flakes of snow,
For which, through naked trees, the winds A-mourning go?”
— John Banister Tabb
The howling wind is what wakes the residents of Mathias each day now as the world turns slowly into a bleak stretch of white. Snow continues to fall in thick curtains of flakes that accumulate on trees and rooftops, swirling sideways in the gusts of wind that bow trees and whistle through any crack they can find. The drifts of snow grow taller against the buildings and the wind makes the already freezing temperatures feel bitterly cold.

By day 022, the far ends of streets begin to resemble the hazardous fog with how little becomes visible as the winds pick up. Buildings can still be discerned as dark shapes but the weather's warning becomes clear — a storm is coming. And by day 023, the storm arrives properly, the wind still screaming through the streets like a winter banshee announcing so many deaths to come. These conditions are far from hospitable and only the truly mad would be foolish enough to venture outside in weather such as this.

THE NEWLY ARRIVED
With an embrace of wintery white, Mathias offers a chilly welcome to its newest residents. They awake along the southern treeline bordering Mathias, near the small makeshift cemetery containing a handful of wooden markers erected without names or signifiers of those buried within. And not far from them is the schoolhouse, where in a snowdrift they will the frozen corpse of a young woman named Rey.

LIGHTS IN THE DARKNESS
“A lantern can give you light only when you light it”
— Munia Khan
When residents wake on the morning of day 021, they will find outside in the snow the abandoned lanterns of those shadowy spectres who have moved so silently through Mathias. Each nestled in a patch of frozen white outside their door, the lanterns are now cold to the touch, the half-burned candle within each one seeming to have been lit so very long ago. Inside the glass encasement is a small rolled piece of paper, upon which is written:

keep it lit
There is nothing more, and the prior owners of these lanterns will not return within these days.

There is one lantern waiting outside the building for each resident wherever they are sleeping — the exception for this is those who may have already claimed a lantern as their own. Removing a lantern from its resting place results in no apparent reaction, nor does lighting or not lighting it. However, whatever residents ultimately choose to do with these lanterns should be reported.

CONDITIONS UPDATE

— SNOW continues to fall, resulting over the three days in upwards of a foot of accumulation. The winds blow in gusts over 35 mph.

— VOICES are not openly haunting our residents, though they may still be occasionally encountered in the more heavily decayed buildings where some rooms seem to almost swallow whatever light tries to enter them.

— THE FOG has still receded from the town proper and much of the eastern and northern beach, with the path through the northern forest to the lighthouse still clear on day 021. On day 022, however, as the storm worsens, the fog returns to the paths in the forest, urging residents to stay huddled within the town proper or else.

— DISAPPEARANCES continue to plague the town. While Zed Martin has returned, Rey's corpse will be found in a snowdrift near the Schoolhouse; she disappeared on day 018.

— THE STRANGER is gone.

— THE SPECTRES are gone.

OOC UPDATES

— DISCOVERIES have been collected and collated for your review. Please note that this is OOC information only, put together for the purpose of helping you as players see connections and possibilities for CR and your own character's potential avenues of exploration and investigation. (If we are missing something, please report it so we can add it to the list.)

— AP REWARDS have a new option now — Ideas may be requested if you find yourself stuck. You may now claim up to 2 rewards per log: (1) idea and (1) other reward.

— SANITY may be regained in two ways: self-medication and treatment. In Mathias, this means such coping mechanisms as drinking or drugging oneself into a stupor that allows them to face their fears and issues, or talking to someone about those fears and issues. Since both of these will take some time, best get started. (A form will be added to the Sanity page.)

— REMINDERS — Don't forget about the bulletin board. Please continue reporting your updates to locations, plots, and discoveries. The map of Mathias has been added to the locations page for ease of reference. Make sure your character's sanity level is kept updated. Prospective players are still joining the TDM, so it's recommended to track new top-levels so you don't miss them.

navigation | faq | setting | mod contact

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It's been a rough few days and Malcolm is hunkered down at the house with the cowboys for the storm on day 23, but will receive any visitors that make it there.

Malcolm was hesitant to sleep that night. Apparently the previous night had seen him screaming Raylan's name and, with certain personal secrets seeing some air early the previous morning, he was loathe to put himself in a position where he might draw further attention to it.

However, getting less sleep than he already tended to would only make him a bigger burden on his roommates, who'd demonstrated a willingness to put up with a lot but Malcolm did not want to dump more on them just because he couldn't deal with his own feelings.

He crawled into bed. Nobody was in the post outside the door yet; they rarely arrived so early. But Doc had been there the previous night, which meant it would be Raylan.

Please don't let me scream his name, he murmured to himself as he hooked himself into his makeshift bungee restraints.

It took him time to drop off, as much as his mind was spinning. He heard footsteps move around at one point.

Nearly four hours later, he was attempting to lunge off the side of the bed, restraints keeping him from doing an ungraceful header to the floor.

The bridge across the gap. Raylan starts to cross. It's wobbly. 'It's all right,' he assures, continuing.

"RAYLAN, NO! COME BACK" He shouted it in his dream; he shouted it into the empty room.

The wind picks up. The bridge and its occupant tumble into the hole. He runs to the edge and looks down frantically. All he can see is tangled lumber way, way down below.

He lurched again in his bed. The hooks on one of the bungees strained.

"Raylan!" he called down into the abyss and into the empty air. "RAYLAN!" he screamed. Maybe he could hear him down there. Maybe he was still alive. "RAYLAN!"

He thrashed again towards the edge of the bed. The plastic hook gave away and he crashed to the floor with a loud bang.

Raylan had gone to his post late, up drinking with Doc and avoiding any thread of topic that would lead back to that morning. He'd done his very level best to move through the day without giving any indication as to what he'd heard, despite the fact that it gently gnawed on the back of his brain now that it was there. Idle hands were the Devil's tool or something like that, so Raylan had made sure he wasn't.

But that didn't stop his responsibility. Dozing lightly in the chair in his room, the first call of his name woke him as sharply as it had before, except this time, he was the one half running down the hall with his long stride. He burst into Malcolm's room and shut the door much more gently than he'd entered to mute as much of the sounds as could reasonably be muted. This was clearly a bad one.

"Hey, hey," he started as he slipped down onto his knees, grabbing one flailing arm in his right hand as his left slipped around Malcolm's face, his own weight shifting onto his hip so he could use it to help keep Malcolm pinned to the floor. "Malcolm, c'mon, it's alright, wake up," he said, shaking the smaller man with a firm intent.

It took a moment of thrashing before Malcolm’s eyes fluttered open and he looked up at Raylan with a vague confusion. The fingers of his unrestrained hand - the other was pinned awkwardly, still tangled in bungees - alit along his face like they were looking for something, then withdrew suddenly like they’d been burned.

“You’re actually here,” he breathed in realization. “I’m sorry,” he stammered, twisting, trying to figure out why his arm was stuck before he realized that it was still bound. “I...” He frowned, his face creased with distress because he couldn’t reach where he was hooked. His breathing got a little jagged with the early warning of a panic attack. “Can you get me out, please,” he said, trying to control his tone, but it wasn’t as calm as he wanted. He tugged at the bungee uselessly. “Get me out,” he repeated tightly.

He had told them early on he had to be able to release himself, but this was the first time he couldn’t.

Had it continued any longer, Raylan would have upped his tactics, but he was glad that he didn't have to. It wasn't easy to hear your own name screamed like that by anyone, much less with the raw terror with which Malcolm screamed it. Like he was screaming after someone he loved.

He didn't pull away or avert his eyes as his face was stroked, dark gaze scanning Malcolm's as his right, gripping hand loosened. It was the stress in Malcolm's voice, the underlying plea in the question that had Raylan reaching over to prop his weight on his elbow so he could free Malcolm's wrist and shift back and up onto his ass proper before he helped pull Malcolm up to a sitting position himself. Raylan pulled back a little but stayed close, hands hovering around Malcolm's elbows until he was sure it was okay to drape one over a raised knee, face full of attentive concern.

"You okay?" An inquisitive finger gestured at the wrist that had broken through the restraint before he gingerly grabbed it and turned it upside down to check for himself.

Malcolm’s breath was still rapid from the shot of adrenaline and fear but was starting to slow. He swallowed hard at the question. “It...” He forgot to breathe for a moment when Raylan took his wrist to inspect it, staring at where the contact warmed his skin before snapping out of it and lifting his gaze to Raylan’s face, swallowing again with an uncertain nod. “It’s a bit early to tell but I’m pretty sure nothing is broken.”

He glanced around.

“How did we get down here?” A beat and he looked at Raylan with faint alarm. “Did I hurt you?”

Edited 2020-12-23 01:31 (UTC)

Raylan nodded in return, running his thumb over where the cord must have broken, judging by the slight tear in Malcolm's skin and released his wrist back to him before propping his weight back onto his hand with a sigh.

"You must have busted the bunjee on that side. I found you on the floor, but no, I'm fine. You're gonna haveta work harder than that to hurt me, trust me," he offered with a tired smile that he turned into his lap. "We'll get you a new one later today. If it doesn't hurt now, I'm sure it's fine but have Doc look at it when he gets up anyway."

Raylan kept his eyes on Malcolm, the sound of his name being screamed over and over again.

"Can I ask you somethin'?"

Oh, that made sense. Malcolm nodded, looking at his wrist where the damage was done. Hurt. Oh. It kind of did. Physical pain had to bad to ease past the mental pain.

At Raylan’s question, though, a pit formed in his stomach and he lifted his eyes slowly to Raylan’s face.

“Sure,” he said in an unconvincing attempt at nonchalance.

"You were screamin' my name." Again. He wouldn't directly reference last night because he didn't want to make any of this worse. Even though part of him wanted to just lay back on the floor and invite Malcolm to join him. And he'd bet money that Malcolm would.

But that would be taking advantage of him and Raylan couldn't bring himself to do that.

"Wanna tell me what you were dreamin'?"

Day 23 - OTA as long as you're showing up at 1306 Philips Drive

Day 23 - Late night - closed to Raylan

Re: Day 23 - Late night - closed to Raylan

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Negan's showing up to party, apologies to everyone

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

AT SOME POINT IN THE EARLY EVENING PROBS

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject