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

[fika]

"Mm, sounds like a full house," Five comments, absently, his own eyes on the lantern he's elected to follow the instruction of care-taking for.

Phone calls have a different sort of reaction now, don't they? Five certainly still flinched, still ripped the receiver the few times it had rang since that day.

"Your room's fine," Jesus, Henry, he wasn't Klaus to misinterpret that invitation. Garages tended to have less heat, and there was something to be said about preferring to chase the small comfort of heat before pitching himself out back into the storm. "I'll see you in a bit."

And, true to that statement, a bit equates to several minutes. He's careful not to push his powers to the point of limited use - several quick jumps take less energy than long ones, so he relies on cover and a winter coat for the quick trip over.

It was a relief to think on it more methodically. Like he was finally finding his proverbial sea-legs within the limitations of this far flung New England fishing town. He's going to have to carry that certainty on for a few more hours still.

He will pop into the bedroom with that same, distinct sound, a blink out of space and time. His sides still ache, sharply so, and he looks like he's missing several hours of sleep, but he isn't missing any limbs, or bleeding out, so this is progress.

The first thing he'll say when he lays eyes on the other man is - "Henry. You doing alright?" Given the several days that happened, the plan that Raylan and Malcolm implied on, and who knows what else, it felt like a reasonable question to ask since the last time they saw each other.

[thering]

Doc took one of the smaller rooms. It is mostly neat, with a few bottles of moonshine on and under the side table, and he has replaced the contents of the wardrobe with his own clothes. But he has had to rummage through a bag to get his first aid kits out, so there is a small pile of scattered library books and spare bundles of clean clothes lying on top of his open bag in the corner.

"Well." He doesn't even know where to start. The museum, and Negan? Or that argument with John Constantine over said museum excursion, perhaps? His relationships with his flatmates that are starting to strain under sleep deprivation, his museum expedition, Raylan's bridge, Malcolm getting buried alive in the clinic? Or how about Neal Caffrey lying downstairs on the couch bleeding out from some kind of animal attack even though he hasn't seen a single animal around these parts?

"...I'll be fine after a couple drinks." Doc forces the most unconvincing smile he has managed to date before gesturing to the lone chair in the room. Of course he can sit on the bed, if he likes.

"I see you aren't taking my advice to take things a little easy and rest up for a few days." Even though the snowstorm is a perfect excuse to be putting one's feet up and doing nothing but getting some rest. What else is new? Doc is too tired to be angry about people ignoring his well-meant advice.

[fika]

At first glance, the room looks well-lived in. A necessity, in this town, near as much as the healthy helping of coping mechanisms stacked on the side table. A familiar sight, and a familiar sentiment. Five can relate.

He looks carefully at Doc, has to do a double take from that inherent expectation of a brushed-off answer, because the other man seems to relive what looks to be like the longest hours to date, and that's saying something. To that point, Five should feel bad for being here. He does, riding that wave of guilt felt bone-deep from the night before, a conversation exchanged between brothers, of fears and an inability to assuage them.

Five chooses the chair, and crosses one bony ankle over the other with a bitten down wince, and snorts at that answer instead. He doesn't think he needs to call Doc out on his bullshit - they'd be here all day with the exchanged accusations. "Yeah."

He doesn't have enough shame to look sufficiently humbled at his inability to follow a doctor's orders though. Sighing, he reaches for the journal in his pocket, and the old photo folded between its pages. "I have to do something, Doc."

"And, before you even say it, yes. It's probably a bad idea. Yeah, it's probably not going to end too well for me," he unravels the photograph. On it, a group of people stand in front of a cabin, surrounded by trees and donning distinct, 60s fashion. He hands it over to Doc, for a look. It is labelled Lodge, 1964. "And - for all that this is worth - I'm sorry that I need to be dumping this on you." But I trust you remains unvoiced and he instead chooses to focus on what this could be: an information exchange. "But I found that photo in 785 Hill Lane. This is the closest thing to a time lead I have to date."

"Time travel is a crap shot. It's 'descending blindly into the depths of the freezing water and reappearing as an acorn'," his frown deepens and try as he might, it's a comparison that will never leave him, too loud and too relevant and he knows that. "But it's the best chance I got."

[thering]

Well. They say good things come in threes. He should have known to expect this. Plucking the photo from Five's fingers wordlessly, Doc turns it around the right way up and studies it. The cabin doesn't look familiar, nor has he seen anything called 'Lodge'.

"Judging from the attire and the leaves on them trees you could guess at a season, put you within a few months range." Doc would have guessed spring. He folds the photo back along its crease lines and offers it back.

"I think it should go without saying that the most important question of all is what you want me to do if you don't come back. If this house was already here you will need to leave me a sign. But what are you hoping to find in 1964? These people? What do you think they would know?"

[fika]

Maybe bad things do too.

"Everything in the house was left stuck in the 60s," he remarks, nodding in agreement as he tucks the photograph back into the inner pocket, proverbial lifeline he intends on clinging to. "Not that there was much left to begin with, but it's the biggest link I have to a defined time period."

Doc is asking the right questions, of course. It's satisfying, in a way. "There's a lot of ifs here. If I got my calculations right. If I can even do it, with whatever limits have a hold on me here. If things go even remotely to plan, then I'll make sure you know. A note, or something." It's a stream of consciousness now, a sort of thought-turning spill, as he is so often prone to falling into. "If they're there? Yeah, I sure as hell am planning on having a little chat. Something happened, obviously. Between the very normal pictures of a goddamn cottage weekend and the creepily picture perfect 90's we seem to be in now."

During his explanation, Five's lifted himself off the chair, and turned to pacing around the small room. It isn't a long route, several steps left before turning right on his heels and back, but it's a habit, turned pages of equations flipped through his fingers as he does so.

"It - feels like we're on the brink of something. Like everything that's happening is out of our control, and it's only going to get worse from here. You can't tell me that you don't think the same," it's a guess, at that. But he can't be the only one thinking this.

"Time changes everything." Anyone particularly perceptive will note the tinge of desperation hidden beneath the false bravado. But this too was inevitable, perhaps. "But I'm coming back. Whatever happens, I'm coming back."

[thering]

Five understandably has a very dependent and, if Doc may say so, unhealthy relationship with time. It is not something that merely passes him by the same way it does for everyone else. Beyond getting his temporal bearings and showing up where someone else is expecting him to, time doesn't mean anything for Doc the way it means something to Number Five.

"You think people thirty-something years ago will have answers about the here and now?" Doc asks as gently as he can manage, lingering outside Five's pacing route, trying not to undermine or derail that train of thought. "You know, most people couldn't tell you what's going to happen thirty minutes from now."

He knows there is no talking Five out of this, so it is not his intention to discourage him. Merely to consider the possibility that this might be a fruitless endeavour. They could just be people who have no idea what Five is talking about, where he is from, and he would just be branded a raving lunatic. The risks are truly too great to be embarking on this.

"There are a lot of ifs, as you say. If you do not return, you ought to consider your last words for Mister Klaus. Or write them down." He isn't sure if Five has told Klaus anything about this plan, but he suspects he hasn't.

[fika]

Doc has it nailed in one. Five's obsession with time, with its significance, with its reach and malleability is not a healthy one; very seldom obsessions are. It is, simply put, something that borders so close to addiction it may as well be one.

I've seen that look in the eyes of people who don't know who they are without their next high, Klaus had told him once, standing in the hall of their childhood home with the frantic hope of preventing the apocalypse - of saving the world, and his family - fading quickly from Five's view, a glass eye thinly shattered.

"No one is insignificant," he mutters, a phrase pulled from memory and experience. "People don't know it, but every choice means something greater than them. I don't need them to tell me what's going to happen, just what has."

He stops his circling. He knows that Doc isn't outrightly dissuading him. He knows that and maybe that's why he stops and listens.

But in his own careful way, Doc calls attention to what this is - a hail-mary, batshit plan that's held together by nothing but Five's goddamn insistence. By anger, and by trying to outsmart an entity no one can see or know. And in that, maybe Five wasn't as clear-sighted as he thought, still chasing a high that he shouldn't.

Five isn't a stranger to operating on little to nothing. But this was even less than what he had in the apocalypse and even he knows that. And then, Doc hits him with the one thing he was hoping he could avoid.

A poor choice of conversation partners, if that was the case.

He leans his hands on the window sill, back turned and staring out into the snow storm that's howling outside. Uncomfortably bright white and almost impossible to see through. There's a symbolic metaphor in there somewhere, if you squint.

Head tipped forward until there's a distinct thunk against the cold glass. "Shit."

"This place is getting to him," is the quiet, venomous admittance. To his brother, as if it hasn't already twisted every part of Five's being around its fucking finger, too. "And I know a big part of that is my fault. If I could go back and change that, I would."

"And I don't know how to fix that, so I thought the next best thing is fighting against Mathias' secrets. It's messing with everyone." A slow pivot on his heel, to cast Doc an appraising glance.

"Don't you want to know why we're stuck here?"

[thering]

"Five," Doc says quietly, taking a couple of steps closer now that he's no longer pacing. "This place is getting to everyone. We're just better at acting like it isn't getting to us as much as it's getting to the others."

He knows Five doesn't like to be talked at like a kid, so Doc opts to sigh and casually sit on the edge of his bed, looking like he's just had enough of today already and feels done with everything even though he's only sitting so that Five doesn't have to keep looking up at him to make eye contact.

"I thought about it, when I first came here. Maybe someone wants to kill us, or eat us. Use us for some ritual or spell, harvest our kidneys, or maybe this is some kind of biblical rapture. Hell maybe someone's just messing with us. I don't know. Either way, none of those reasons sound like they were made by someone who can be reasoned with." Doc shrugs without breaking eye contact, blinking slowly, clenching his jaw. Five might get to hear wilder theories from 1964. He might not.

"Knowing if any one of those hypotheses are right, or if it's something else entirely - what would it change? We're still stuck here. It's still blowing one hell of a snowstorm outside. And there are still people in this house right now who need medication I cannot provide even if I had everything in this town at my disposal. What I want to know is how to get them all back home, in one piece. I want you," with his elbows resting on his knees he raises a finger and lets his arm fall part way, stopping just short of pointing, no doubt a bad habit he has picked up from Raylan.

"And your brother to get home in one piece. If you think 1964 can tell you what you need to know then by all means, go. I will not waste my breath telling you not to follow your heart. But know that you carry your brother's heart with you wherever you may go. And if you don't know where and when the 'here and now' is, I don't know how you're supposed to come back and return it to him."

[fika]

That's it, isn't it? But it's Klaus, proving time and time again things about himself that Five knew since they were kids. Klaus, who always cared a little bit more than the others. Sensitive in ways that made it all that easier to unravel into a mess, and all the blunts at the dinner table to drown his ghosts away. It shouldn't be a surprise then, that Mathias' effect on him was this insidious. And that others, whose hearts were more firmly in their chests instead of on their sleeves, were better at hiding it. Five certainly was. Clearly, Doc too.

This was frustrating in too many ways. That Doc pulled the one card that would clothesline Five to take pause.

His back leaning against the chilled glass now, the bite seeping through the fabric of his sweater and numbing the ache just a fraction, as his fingers curl white-knuckled against the jutting sill.

"I'm - getting really tired of not knowing who the hell we should be fighting," he tries not to note how Doc looks exhausted, perched on the corner of the bed. But its impossible not to, and add that on to his tab of guilt. "What's the alternative? Waiting it out until things get worse?"

"Ugh, I don't know, Henry —" hand rubbing the back of his neck, scowl quickly twisting his mouth. "Knowing something is better than knowing nothing—" the word drops off at the end, and his head snaps up, looking as though Doc just slapped him. For all intents and purposes, he might as well have. There isn't a lot that leaves Five speechless, jaw snapping shut with a deft clip of teeth and eyes owlishly wide.

He's fucking right. He doesn't know the here and now, and there's that sinking fucking feeling in his chest. For all the quantum states, even if he could isolate the one singular instance of time and space from which he's making the jump, there's no guarantee that the same time and space would remain continuous through the jump. It was a gaping flaw in all of this calculations.

And he thinks of this because he can do so in solid terms. He can't do that with the comment on Klaus. Maybe there's a part of him that thinks Klaus would be better off without the chaos that Five brings. But he doesn't voice that here, now, between them.

His head falls back, and he stares at a point in the ceiling, because he doesn't like looking at the cutting perception of Doc's stare. "Well...The probability is low."

"Ah shit. Shit," his nose wrinkles, hand messing up his hair. "You're really fucking annoying sometimes, do you know that?" This lacks any actual heat behind it. Any sting. It's you're right, without the actual admittance of it because Five's pride smarts something fierce.

[thering]

If it's of any consolation, it's not because of Five that Doc is exhausted. He doesn't even know himself what's keeping him going; sheer stubbornness mixed in with some willpower perhaps. But he is getting more and more irritable, a little sluggish with his movements, and if he collapses one morning he would probably sleep the whole day through and then some.

"Well I do try my best," Doc says, deadpan, straightening up a bit from where he had been leaning forward with his elbows atop his thighs, enough to run his palm down the length of his thigh and rest it on his knee.

"For what it's worth I do agree. It is always better to be knowing something, and we cannot simply sit around and wait for the situation to deteriorate." They're already hunkered down with what limited supplies they could get from the store and the restaurant to hopefully last them a few days, or who knows how long this storm is going to last. Not everyone managed to stock up. What are they to do, drain their supplies while the storm passes? And then what? At this point they are starting to actually live here, in this town, in their respective houses. They have daily routines. It is a dangerous sort of complacency to be settling into.

"But maybe there is something to be learnt from the here and now first. Have you spoken with everyone? Made a list of everything everyone has been able to find out, see if there are pieces of the puzzle that can be assembled? I would imagine that exhausting all your options here might be more helpful to us all than you going alone to 1964."

[fika]

Seems like an aversion to sleeping as they should was a common, running trend here in Mathias. Were Five a better friend, he might even offer some unsolicited advice on getting some rest. But he isn't.

A snort, jaw clenched and working as the gears turn in that brain of his. Did he really get this wrong?

Shit, he's so sure that this is the right thread to follow - because that's whaat he's always done. Perhaps relied on an ability that was only half-baked, even before he got here. Maybe, his appetite was bigger the bite and for all his purported smarts, he doesn't quite learn because a part of him wants this to be the solution.

Because it would be in his hands then. His to succeed or fail at.

But are the risks too great? He already doesn't know where and when this is, as Doc astutely pointed out. He's risking getting stuck in a 1964 without a breadcrumb trail back, and for what? A 25% or less chance?

(Better than no chance, is the petty thought.)

"Maybe," he concedes. Complacency was a dangerous thing though, and he hoped to ensure a lack of it, acting in extremes as he always had. "Maybe the more information, the better."

He heaves another long suffered sigh, coughs the last of it as his ribs constrict. How many more weeks of this?

Hands on his hips, and he stares at the notebook he had set aside on the chair at one point or the next, quiet for a long time. "...You said there were more people here. Need any supplies?"

He is, after all, not limited to the same spatial confines most people are. It isn't a direct answer to saying he won't do it. But this - this broke away some thread of madness that's festered too long, like riding out the last waves of a bad high.

[thering]

There's a look of concern that fleetingly ghosts over Doc's face at Five's cough. A blink and you'll miss it kind of furrowing of the eyebrows and tension in his jaw. There isn't much he can do beyond imploring that Five get some rest, but he has already done that, to limited effect. The last thing he wants to do is push his luck and turn people frustrated by his 'incessant nagging' away to brave dealing with their injuries on their own.

"We should be alright for three days. Bandages are running low though. I've put a pillowcase through boiled water, just in case, but it's not ideal." They are the kind of people who can make whatever work, who won't ask for more than what life has given them, who can make things happen out of what little they can scrounge together, but Doc had considered braving the snowstorm for another first aid kit from the General Store. He doubts anyone will have gone there in this weather.

"If you want to stay for some food, we have enough for you. I hope you know this door is always open." They might be somewhere sometime in New England but they take their hospitality with them wherever they go. And should the shit hit the fan in the most spectacular ways, Doc would never say 'I told you so' even if he might think it. He would only ask what they can do about it, how to fix it, how to move forward.

[fika]

It isn't Doc's fault most of the town residents - injury-prone as they all seem to be - have absolutely zero capacity to listen to a professional medic's advice. You can bring a horse to water, as they say...

Given the abhorrent weather, walking out of here can go two ways - Five will return to the sleeping Klaus, and take the time to review everything he has until he finally rests, shocking everyone who knows him (including himself), or he will go to the house on Hill Lane, and jump to 1964. But, with every word spoken the latter seems all the more unlikely to happen at this very instance, evident in the drop of his shoulders.

"Well, let me know if that doesn't turn out to be the case. It's easier for me to get things than you right now," not meant to be an offensive statement. Its simply true. Unless, of course, Doc wanted to hitch a ride along with him for essentials.

He scratches at the back of his head again, never knowing quite what to say at Doc's hospitality. "I — appreciated that." (If you listen closely, you might hear dial-up modem tones). "Hey do you have any brews against nightmares, or something?" A clarifying beat: "I'm not asking for me."

[thering]

Nope. He is too old to be getting flung here and there with Five's 'special technique'. He would rather walk even if the temperature is below freezing.

"I would not ask you to make a special trip there but should you be in the store today and the first aid kit is available, I would appreciate you taking it with you. There is no hurry bringing it here." They technically lose a kit if it is still there tomorrow, since it would not replenish. Having two available is always better than one.

At the mention of nightmares, Doc gets up and moves to the wardrobe which he has rebranded as his own, pulling open the bottom drawer and retrieving two vials. "I do not have a specific cure, but I did find these lavender tinctures from the botanical store. While I cannot testify to how old they are, the smell is still well preserved. It is said that a drop or two in a pillow will aid a more restful sleep."

Doc does not ask why or for whom or what. He simply hands them over. Whatever Malcolm is dealing with cannot be solved by tinctures, but Doc has set aside enough for him that he can be giving away the rest.

"Give them a try. See how you go."