021-023 » the ghosts of fallen leaves

[villagemod]

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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Comments

[tinstar]

"Good to know that other people in this forsaken town can handle a pan and an oven. Sometimes I'm worried half of 'em are gonna starve or start tryin' to eat tree bark."

It felt almost normal in here somehow, though perhaps that was because he was walking in on the cooking instead of doing it himself. His house was lively, but only in short bursts at 3 AM that involved screaming and the sounds of terror.

Raylan did not ask before dragging over both the cups and popping his gift of a bottle open to pour them both two fingers. Why yes, he would be joining in morning drinking - he'd need it to withstand the cold outside when he trudged off to John's.

"Just make sure you answer any phone calls and don't throw open any windows if shit gets weird. Otherwise, these phones connect. Suppose I ougtha be usin' them to check up on people, but phone calls just ain't ever the same." Namely because he could pick up more information if he was there in person.

[cholesterol]

"Not make snowballs," he asks, his mouth dropping open. Eh? Eh? "I cooked for Sammy when we were kids," he admits, giving up a little more of himself. There's a reason he can cook and that reason is having to teach himself. After finding the bunker, after hanging his hat somewhere, he was able to better hone his cooking energy and talent. Most of the time when they were on the road, they ate out of diners or fast food establishments.

"I copied numbers down yesterday," he says, taking his mug back, but bringing it to the counter. "Haven't used any." He's used to cell phones. Landlines are something else. And it is one, small town. "Have yours," he says with a wry smile as he turns the bacon over.

Reaching under, he pulls another pan out, moving to the fridge. Grabbing the carton of eggs, he holds it out to Raylan. Yes, no? Does he want any?

[tinstar]

Raylan only barely stopped the roll of his eyes, lips curling in a passing smile of acknowledgement. "If we had time for all that, I'd join the Snow wars." But that kind of lightheartedness didn't have a lot of room here. That or Raylan's attitude had soured at the core earlier than he thought.

"You mentioned your brother at the record store. I'm guessin' you're the older brother." It wasn't really a question and was said with a friendly tilt of his lips. Family taking care of family. Something he normally liked to see, even if his own didn't follow it.

The smile quirked a little at the mention of having his house's number and Raylan bobbed his head before lifting his eyebrows in question at the eggs and bobbing his head in agreement again. "If you're offerin', sure. I cook for house most mornin's but today's was.. louder than normal so I ain't been hungry yet."

Amazing what the smell of bacon and the thought of a hot plate of food could do for that.

[cholesterol]

"Moonshine snowballs," he says, taking a moment to himself and letting himself imagine the burn. He shakes his head. It's a passing, flavorless thought. He leaves it unsaid that he would kick ass in a snowball fight.

Dean doesn't know what 'louder than normal' means. He imagines more than four people creating chaos in the kitchen. Out of context from this town, that's actually a thought that brings a smile to his face.

Dean pulls out a smaller pan, putting it on low heat. He moves to the fridge to pull out a container of eggs, cracking them into a glass. Three, that he using a spoon to stir up.

"I'm four years older," he says, confirming at least that. "You have any brothers? Sisters?"

Dean guesses not.

[tinstar]

A snowball fight would be a full out war if they got everyone involved and honestly, next batch of moonshine, it wasn't a bad idea. Raylan couldn't help but smirk crookedly at the passing far away look on Dean's face behind another sip of his spiked coffee.

The question made him chuckle bitterly. "Mm, no and the world's probably better for it. Arlo is what you might delicately call a drunken stubborn raging asshole. He's pushin' 75 and he's about half as feisty as he was when he was young. Still sittin' in Tramble, a state prison for his millionth count of aggravated assault and robbery."

What he didn't say is what Arlo was like in Raylan's youth or why he referred to all of his family by their government names instead of 'Mom' or 'Dad'. He'd tell if asked, using the same 'How's the weather there' tone, like it didn't really matter. Affably disconnected from the man that raised him. They could have been talking about anything. If they were talking about anything, they didn't have to talk about everything and enough balls could be kept in play to avoid telling the worst of it.

"Your brother do the same thing you and your Dad do, right? Y'all do it together, like a buddy cop team?" Family unity was nice, even if Raylan had never really had what people would call a 'healthy' one.

[cholesterol]

"Arlo sounds like a piece of work," he says, making the connection. Arlo. Raylan's father. They're one in the same. Arlo is doing time for assault and robbery. John Winchester never did a stint in prison, but he committed crimes, some against his son to teach him lessons. Dean has long forgiven his father for his sins, even got the chance to do with with Sam officially. But, Raylan sounds more at peace with it than Dean ever does when John is mentioned. Maybe it's being separated from it.

"Buddy-cops?" he asks, pouring in the eggs, picking a spatula, then. "Mom was the hunter. It ran in her family. When she died, Dad took up the cause and dragged us along. We lived out of motel rooms and family friends. Usually other hunters. One psychic. When he let me hunt with him, it was - not Rush Hour. And, by the time Sam was of age, he decided it wasn't for him. He got out, went to Stanford. I stayed back with dad," he starts, only telling a part of the story.

Raylan can probably connect some of the threads and infer what he couldn't. If asked, Dean would elaborate, too.

[tinstar]

"Mm," Raylan hummed. It was a way to agree and acknowledge without having to elaborate much more. 'A piece of work' was perhaps the kindest thing that could be said about him, if you weren't a lady getting fooled by the charm he passed down to his son.

Raylan nodded a little. He didn't really understand what it meant to be a hunter beyond going and killing bad things. And shit, he did that, though it was different 'bad things' but he got the sense that it wasn't nearly the same. 'Rush Hour' was a fairly good guess for how his brain had dressed up the idea of the job.

"Stanford, huh? Not too bad for livin' outta motel rooms. I take it Stanford didn't work out? Not that huntin' don't sound.. interesting, but I'm sure anything from Stanford leads to somethin' with a better pay." ..Did they get paid? The question occurred too late for him to ask without being awkward, and it didn't really matter - there were a million ways to hustle on the side and make a buck.

[cholesterol]

"He wanted law school. He's the smartest guy I know," he starts, pouring the beaten eggs into the pan and immediately using a wooden spatula to swirl them around. Hope you like your eggs scrambled, Ray.

"Our dad went missing. I came to Sam, teamed up to try and find him. We caught a case. He was done with it." He wanted to be. His eyes stay on the eggs in the pan as he continues to stir, fluffing them up. "But, his fiancee, Jessica. She was killed. Exactly like our mother. He went on the road with me, never looked back."

There were pit stops, years they spent away from one another, months, sometimes too. But, that's the dollar store version of the story. It's straight through.

[tinstar]

Raylan's eyebrows lifted again. Lawyers. He couldn't say much, holding his own Criminal Justice and Enforcement degree. They were important to the system, even if he didn't much care for being questioned by the DA.

But as Dean went on, his brow softened and pinched a little the other way. To say that was a hard go would be an understatement. To say he understood what that was like would be a lipservice lie.

Instead of condolences or sorries that did little to help the weight of people having passed, Raylan opted to go a different way after a few long moments of silence. "Did you guys ever find your Dad?"

[cholesterol]

"We caught up to him," he admits, not saying more. "Took us a year," he adds, thankful for him not expressing his condolences. "It was a trap," he shares. He keeps giving him small breadcrumbs, deciding in the moment which to share and which to keep back. If Raylan keeps asking, he'll tell him. Shit happens. But, he doesn't want to offer it all up unasked for.

Once the eggs have taken a beating, he scrapes them onto two plates, and likewise with the crispy bacon, taking them over to the table.

[tinstar]

"Findin' him was a trap?"

Being an investigator, Raylan can't help but learn what he could, what Dean was willing to tell him and while it gave structure and context to the man in front of him, it also gave him a lot of side information. Context to the creatures and life that he'd heard Claire tell when she was adorably drunk.

Harlan had no such excitements, no travels, no mystery and while Raylan does not think that it was Sunshine and rainbows, there must have been some good parts enough to even out at least a fraction of the bad. Having company, a brother, someone you knew wouldn't leave you must have been it's own comfort.

The speculation, Raylan keeps to himself.

[cholesterol]

"Both times." And they both involved demons. And death. And the last time involved being hit head on by another car and being run off the road. It was gruesome. He ended up in a coma and then his dad sold his soul for him. In exchange. Finding his dad sucked. But, there's a better story in it, reuniting because of a magic pearl. That was better. Or, did Raylan want to hear about Dean being sent back in time and meeting his dad when he was younger.

Twice.

He has a few of these stories.

[tinstar]

Unaware that Dean's life had been a very spectacular and special kind of shitshow, Raylan wasn't sure if Dean was light on details because it was a sensitive topic or what. But Dean hadn't shied away from sharing so far; Raylan hadn't seen the tension of shutting down on him yet though, so it was a half chance gamble.

"Wait, was he the one settin' the trap?" That was a possibility. A father running from his sons for.. whatever reason.

[cholesterol]

"No. Demons set the trap," he says, biting a mouthful of a bacon strip. He washing it down with the moonshine, stabbing into the eggs with his fork, taking one, two, three chunks. "Demons, they -- possess people. Demons came after us. Landed me in the hospital," he explains.

"I - almost didn't make it," he says, inhaling three bites of eggs.

[tinstar]

'Demons' earned a new and different pull of Raylan's expressive features. Yeah, sure, he'd heard John mention it. Or scream it into his face, whatever - Semantics, but it was interesting to see how much overlap these two worlds seemed to have.

"Shit. I've been in that kinda way a couple of times, but it's all be gunshot wounds. Expected, considerin'.. Somehow I don't think that's the first time someone's been put in a hospital for possession.. You can correct me if I'm wrong.. So you ever find him proper? No traps or bullshit?"