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.

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Feeling that the conversation was over, Raylan shifted off the door frame and padded silently back towards his room to quietly shut his door, hoping that none of the sounds that came from it carried into Malcolm's room. Once he had the door firmly shut behind it, he could lean against it for a minute, eyes closed, as he reevaluated his situation.

"Shit," was the only thing he said, heavy and quiet before walking over and dropping himself back onto the bed. The only good thing about being up this early was that sometimes you could lay back down and reset the morning. And that's what Raylan was going to do.

“You’re never... intruding on my space,” Malcolm told him. “I’m going to go downstairs and make some coffee and do some yoga. If you’re not going to bed, you’re welcome to grab a cup of coffee and either try or make fun of yoga,” he joked weakly, but an attempt to lighten the mood was made.

For pyjamas, he’d scavenged track pants that were too long, the unsnapped lower legs flapping around his feet when he walked, and a t-shirt he designated for sleeping. It was a little loose fitting and also too long, the sleeves falling almost to his elbows and the hem just past the widest part of his hips. Clearly all the men of his build in town had been taller than five foot seven. The expensive bespoke suit he arrived in hung in his closet, cleaned the best he could by handwashing and air drying, as the only items of clothing that truly fit him so far.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed and pushed to his feet. He’d found a french press in the cupboards and that was how he made coffee in the mornings. It felt a tiny, tiny bit like home.

“I’ll get two cups down,” he said, glancing over.

"I'm- not doing yoga." No guarantees he will stay awake even with the coffee though. "But I will join you downstairs. Hope you won't mind if I end up getting some shut-eye on the couch though." He won't intend to but once he sits down or lies down he'll likely drop off. There'll be more light downstairs. It'll be warmer. He can hear Malcolm moving around. He'd prefer it.

"I will join you in a minute," he promises before Malcolm leaves the room. First Doc takes the slightest of detours to the master bedroom door. He grips the doorknob firmly and twists, other hand flat against the door's surface. He pushes it open, just slightly ajar, exactly the way it was before he closed it.

There. Raylan won't notice a thing.

Doc moves stealthily towards the stairs, then he makes his way down slowly and quietly, rubbing his face and taking a few seconds to put his poker face back on before greeting Malcolm with a small smile.

"We'll need to be a little quiet," he whispers. "I'll get the fire going."

The reopening of his door had Raylan turning on the bed to look that way and after a long second, he got back up and closed the door again, being as silent as he could to not draw any attention to it. It was thoughtful for Doc to try and reset everything, but Raylan was awake now and that required more walls then when he slept.

He wasn't ready to school himself down into his usual casual affability just yet.

Malcolm poured hot water into the press while Doc got the fire going, looking over at him as he replaced the kettle on the stove.

“You know, I thought you and Raylan were.... together. You seem really comfortable with each other in a fundamental way and sometimes I hear you leaving his room at, like, two in the morning,” he observed conversationally. “Plus you make a lot of innuendoes about it and he doesn’t react to them.”

"You what now?" Doc asks, head snapping back over his shoulder. It's impossible not to laugh about it, and he bites down on his bottom lip so that he's not loud enough to wake Raylan. Was it that thing he said, about not kissing and telling? He turns back to focus on his handiwork, moving the logs into a cone-like stack over the fire. Once he's confident the fire's going to keep on burning, he returns to Malcolm's side by the kitchen.

"We share a sense of humour." Actually they share a lot of things. He's found a kindred spirit in Raylan Givens and while Doc would never say that Raylan was anything other than a drinking buddy who offered him shelter from the cold one night and just let Doc overstay his welcome - aside from the other shit he says in his casual teasing and harmless flirting - Raylan is more than that. Wynonna's always trying to get Doc to talk. Sometimes Malcolm does that, too. But Raylan - he doesn't have to. He never has to.

"I hereby swear to you, Malcolm Bright, that I have never touched your man in any way you're thinking of." If anything, Doc's gotten much more handsy with Malcolm. "We're just drinking."

Malcolm huffed a laugh. “He’s hardly mine,” he pointed out. He was never going to be Malcolm’s either; he understood how reality worked. “Why did you walk all the way over to his bed before you came down? Just checking on him?”

Well. That doesn't stop Doc from thinking that way. Malcolm might not have made his intentions known, but now it's out in the open between the two of them. He's respected that since before he even pointed out that he was aware; Malcolm didn't need to keep it a secret. Not from Doc, anyway.

"You were calling out his name in your sleep. I took a quick peek to see he was still sleeping there and closed his door, in case he panicked and leapt out of bed. Just went and put it back open again, right where it was." He couldn't know for sure if something had genuinely happened to Raylan.

"No, but I heard..." He'd started to push the plunger down on the press but as his voice trailed off, he stilled, and the colour all but drained from his face. He looked up at the ceiling. "Oh my god, Raylan was up. He wasn't up that whole time, right? He just... heard you open the door or..." He looked at Doc. "He didn't hear us talking, right?" he implored, practically begging Doc to confirm it couldn't be true.

Edited 2020-12-22 09:32 (UTC)

"You heard... the door open?" Doc tries to fill in the blank. He's pretty sure it wasn't. He closed it and he had to reopen it himself. But he's not going to make Malcolm doubt his own senses, even if Raylan has told him that Malcolm's been seeing and hearing things more often these days.

"If he was up, why would he be sneaking around? We're all up. We weren't shouting anything from the rooftops. He's not the eavesdropping type and it's ass o'clock in the morning." Doc folds his arms and sighs, resting his weight back against the backrest of his barstool, rubbing half his face tiredly before managing a small, reassuring smile.

"Do not fret, Malcolm. If he heard anything you'll know it."

Oh, he would fret.

"I didn't hear the door, I heard footsteps in his room. I thought it was you, but if you didn't walk all the way over to the bed, then it was him... was he asleep when you peeked in? Do you think he was asleep?"

"Malcolm. You need to breathe." Especially if he's going to be fretting around a hot glass container of coffee.

"If he was in his room, he didn't hear you or me talking." Doc is maybe not understanding how confessing your thoughts to the person you happen to think a lot about is as big of a deal as Malcolm is making it. Especially given how much Malcolm likes to talk about all manner of things.

"Now you know how terribly useless he is at these things. You'll notice when he comes downstairs later if he's acting strange."

Malcolm nodded, considering that. "Okay. But. That's what I don't want, is the weirdness. The weirdness is the first step to it being easier to not talk to me ever anymore," Malcolm pointed out, gesturing for emphasis. "And then what?"

Doc cants his head to one side and his smile widens as he folds his arms over the countertop and leans in a little closer. "You're gonna make it weird, Malcolm, panicking and overthinking like this. He made you a promise, and he'll stick to it. Now you should know, with your-..." Doc lifts a hand and lets it fall somewhat limply.

"'Behaviouring'. He would be the kind of man who would shut anyone out. He doesn't want people climbing his walls. But there is no 'and then what' with him. He will talk to you, in his own time. And he won't leave you alone if he can help it."

His ‘behaviouring’ felt like it was short circuiting. He was definitely in the realm of a panic attack.

“But you don’t think he was awake before that, right?” Malcolm pressed in an almost theatrical whisper. He put his hands flat on the counter and squeezed his eyes shut, taking a deep breath that was, granted, a little shaky but did make it all the way in and all the way out. He attempted another. It went slightly better.

He opened his eyes and very studiously pushed the plunger the rest of the way down on the french press. He pushed the two coffee cups towards Doc without lifting them off the counter.

“Can you pour these, please?”

He didn’t trust hands that were shaky when he wasn’t freaking out not to get it all over the counter.

He glanced up at the ceiling.

“He probably didn’t hear, right?”

Okay, well, he doesn't think that Malcolm can really hear what he's saying. First thing's first - Doc's moving around the kitchen counter and taking care of the coffee before it can become an accident waiting to happen. He doesn't know how to respond in these kinds of situations beyond slapping Malcolm and telling him to pull his shit together. That kind of tactic might only work on Raylan.

Placing the empty coffee plunger into the sink, he reaches over to rest heavy, warm hands on Malcolm's shoulders.

"Malcolm," Doc says slowly, quietly. "Just breathe. Count - in through your nose - one, two, three, four. Out through your mouth - five, six, seven, eight. In... two... three... four. Out... six. Seven. Eight." He reaches up to cup Malcolm's jaw, brush his thumb over his cheek while he covertly feels for a racing pulse with his little finger.

"Focus on your breathing." His hand drops again to Malcolm's shoulder, trying to keep him steady, tethered, grounded.

Doc's voice and the grounding touch and the focus on his breathing brought him mostly back to the moment and out of his spiralling mind.

He closed his eyes for a second and took one more deep breath before opening them and scanning Doc's face, concerned he was an awful lot of trouble now. Maybe he was making him mad. But that wasn't what he saw there, with his behaviouring somewhat functional again.

"Times like this I'd about sell my soul for half a Xanax," he admitted with a huff of a self-conscious laugh.

If he could make Xanax he'd have already started throwing together an assembly line making it out of spare bedlinen and sanded down logs if he had to. As it is, all he has to offer is his patience, and forcing himself to talk a lot more than he usually does. So far it seems to be working, even if it's not as effective as popping a pill.

"All we have is yoga, and coffee. I suppose we will have to make do." In Doc's case, just coffee, but he'll probably end up dropping off asleep soon. He gestures towards the coffee now that he's feeling a little more reassured that Malcolm won't spill it everywhere, determined to be able to at least get through one cup together without incident.

Malcolm wrapped both of his hands around the cup to bring it to his mouth, partly for the warmth and partly because his less unsteady hand helped shore up the other one.

"The snow is falling harder," he said, glancing out the window. The previous day's incident, trapping him inside the clinic, was fresh enough that he had no intentions of going outside in even harsher winter weather if it could be avoided. "I hope we have enough firewood."

"That you won't be needing to sell your soul for." Raylan's gone and gotten some, kept them pretty stocked up while Doc almost cleared out the general store and the Grey Gull yesterday, topped up the food supply here and for a few other houses.

"I was planning on going out for a bit, a little later." The coffee is too hot to gulp down so he takes his time with it, holding the cup by its rim with one hand. He turns to watch the snow blowing around outside the window.

"Could fetch some more. We might have a few hours before the storm really hits."

“What?” Malcolm said, putting his cup down a little too hard. “No. No no. That’s a bad idea. Nobody should go out in this. It’s dangerous. Is it an emergency? No, don’t go.”

Doc wasn't expecting that reaction, although he supposed he should have anticipated it. He had only recently come home later than he should have, and refused to talk about the events that led to that predicament. And then, yesterday. Malcolm handled it well, all things considered. Doc wouldn't have. Being trapped, buried in the dark, not knowing if anyone was coming - he's been through a heap of shit but he can't go through that again.

"No, it is not an emergency. But it's just a bit of snow, Malcolm. I'll be fine." He sets his own cup of coffee down, concern in his eyes as he leans in a little closer.

"Did you... I mean. Are you okay? From yesterday?"

"...From yesterday? Oh. Well. They still didn't have any medication I need. I had time to really look," he explained. With the little penlight he keeps in his coat. He looked at Doc. That hadn't been what he meant. He pressed his lips together. "This is going to sound like... dumb hero worship or something. But. I knew you'd come. You and Raylan; I knew you'd look for me. And I was someplace that you'd check if you were looking for me. And that the entrance would be obviously blocked." He looked down into his coffee. "I knew eventually you'd come."

It's just the smallest, briefest of stutters, a blink and you'll miss the fact that Doc hesitated moment that came and went faster than the gust of howling wind rattling the window pane. He manages a half-smile. Forces it bigger, and nods. Finishing his coffee too quickly, he moves around Malcolm and sets it in the sink, running some water through it before busying his hands dumping out the coffee grinds and washing up.

"You got lucky." Doc glances over his shoulder at Malcolm. Smiles again, somehow, before returning to being hunched over the sink. "Real lucky." And they can't live their lives being around each other all the time, but they need some way of communicating when they're out. It was a luxury unheard of back in Doc's day but now that Wynonna's gotten him a smartphone, can reach him when he's miles and miles away, get him dropping everything and come running as soon as she calls, he misses having that technology. Misses her too, if he thinks about it too much.

He had thought people would come and find him too. Even though he was somewhere they would never think to look. He thought of a dozen things he would have said to Wyatt. A hundred different ways to apologise. And Kate. He had loved her so. Before he pushed her away so she couldn't leave him first. But nobody came. They... probably didn't even look.

Clenching his teeth and sighing through his nose, Doc slides his poker face back on, snatches up a tea towel and turns his back to the sink, perching against it while he dries his hands.

"We were worried about you. Maybe that should be our next project for the garage. Radios or... sommin'."

Malcolm watched Doc carefully as he moved around the kitchen.

"We might be able to fashion rudimentary radios," Malcolm told him. "I wonder what it would take; it's not complicated technology. We can look into it."

He paused and considered Doc a moment longer, even if his pokerface was back in place. That told Malcolm things too. He'd been nervous in the clinic when they were there. Looking at the ceiling. Edging towards the entrance. Malcolm had been in a state then but, in retrospect, he saw it. And Doc had been highly concerned about Raylan falling into the chasm, too. Specifically about him being trapped in the chasm.

"Are you claustrophobic?" he asked curiously. There was no bite at all to the inquiry; only a desire to understand Doc better. "Did something happen to you? A cave-in or a building collapse, maybe? Or... a fall into a well or a mineshaft?"

021-023 » the ghosts of fallen leaves

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