036 » aftermath: the living

[villagemod]

WHO: Everyone.
WHERE: Eastern/Central Mathias.
WHEN: Day 036
WHAT: The living take care of the dead.
WARNINGS: Will update as necessary. PM this account to have a warning added!
NOTES: Plotting post over here! And a log for the dead.

DAY 036
NOT EVERYTHING BURIED
“Not everything buried is actually dead.
For many, the past is alive.”
— Louise Penny, Bury Your Dead
The dawn shines a new, horrible light upon a gruesome day. Those who escaped the wrath of the Hunt are left to tend to the dead, nine corpses of friends and family left surrounded by more blood than remains within them. The sight that greets each resident who finds one of these bodies is truly the stuff of nightmares, and even when the bodies have been dealt with, crimson snow and splattered floors will continue to remind them of these horrors until dealt with as well.

There is no fresh snowfall today to conceal or comfort those left behind. The gloomy grey of winter does not allow them to hide from this twisted reality that has become their lives, and Mathias will not hesitate to remind them who is in control.



NEW ARRIVAL
The newest arrival to Mathias will wake up on the beach near The Grey Gull. It's quite cold outside, but surely there's something to help warm them inside the restaurant. A nice tall glass of moonshine is just what the doctor ordered to help them through this nightmare.

THE EARTH SHAKES ONCE MORE
Late into the night, residents will be woken by a familiar rumbling in the earth. Arriving without warning just as it did before, the earthquake sets buildings shaking and sends furniture and loose items tumbling to the floor with crashes that echo in the dark.

The town settles once more after around a minute of consistently powerful tremors. There is no structural damage to be found in any buildings around Mathias.

---

CONDITIONS UPDATE

— THE WEATHER is fairly typical of a northern winter. The sky is almost always grey and the temperature is below freezing during the day and even colder at night). The sun sets early in the evening. Residents should bundle up when going outside and not venture too far into the dark night...

— THE FOG remains blocking the paths in the forest beginning a few dozen yards past the treeline, urging residents to stay huddled within the town proper, and it also now blocks the western section of town, beginning just past Hill Lane, before where residents know the chasm in the earth to be between Hill and Stine Road. Venturing into the fog is ill-advised.

— DISAPPEARANCES continue. Eliot Waugh has now vanished as well.

— THE GREY GULL now has a working bar! The selection is not quite what it once was.

---

OOC NOTES

— FOOD will be restocked in some fashion in the next log, don't worry. We aren't going full survival mode yet.

— REWARD REDEPEMPTION is on hold for this log. Sorry, friends! It'll be back next round.

— HOUSEKEEPING Please be sure to have a look at this post in regards to sanity loss from the Hunt and what is being done with the corpses of the Hunt's victims.

— MOD STATUS What will become a regular reminder that it's mostly just Amy steering this ship for now, so things will probably be pretty slow for a while. Apologies in advance, and please don't feel shy about pinging me if you're stuck waiting for something.

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Comments

[thering]

"Of course." He would do more than that. She can have one arm to lean on while the other wraps around her back, guiding her gently towards the stairs. He is mindful of letting her go ahead, supporting her on the slow, unsteady ascend until they make it to the top. On a different occasion he might have jokingly offered to take her clothes off for her too but he's not much in the mood today, lingering just outside the bathroom like an anxious old man with the burdens of the world's worries weighing down his shoulders.

"I'll leave you a change of clothes outside," he says quietly, not wanting her to feel uncomfortable with him hanging around there like he's waiting for the roof to collapse upon them any minute. Hopefully she wouldn't take a similar offence to one of his flannel button-up shirts to lounge around in for a while as her blatant distaste on her first visit when he offered her those pajamas. Somehow he doubts she is in a frame of mind to care so much for it, but the memory of her thinly-veiled scowl is seared into his mind. Whatever he could offer her would be oversized, but this house is now devoid of women's clothing. And the thought of going through the other men's clothing right now for something a little more fitting is too much for him to do.

[liliowy]

On a different occasion, she might not have minded. As it happens, neither of them are in the mood for anything but exhausted relief. The last remnants of adrenaline running cold.

Her arm threads through his, and her pride shares little offense in needing it. She might chastise herself for it later, but this lack of solitude is a comfort, and feels dangerously like safety.

She slides into the bathroom when they make their slow way up, feels him lingering just outside the door and when she swings it shut, she leaves a crack of it parted at the very end. "Stay and speak with me, will you? You look like you're seconds away from barreling through the first closed door you see."

She will appreciate the oversized flannel shirt more this time around. Or at the very least, she couldn't care less for the fashion choices Doc may make. She's eager to shed the clothes she's in, clinging uncomfortably to her skin. Stifling, as she slips the sweater over her head.

When she finally climbs into the tub, the water is warm, soothing the ache in her limbs as she draws her knees to her chest and is awkwardly caught in silence. She may have asked him for conversation, but what the fuck can she even say?

"I couldn't see what it was," is what she settles for, busying herself with the clean-smelling soap. "I felt it, when it got near. Saw what it could do, but it never took shape until the end."

[thering]

"O-oh. Sure. Of course. I'm just uh-... not wanting to be inappropriate," he assures her. As if that means anything right now after the day they have had. The flannel shirt can wait until he's heard her start to get out of the tub. His shadow wavers uncertainly while she climbs into the tub, and when the sound of the splashing stops, his shadow seems to settle down as well. He sits with a quiet little thud outside the bathroom, leaning his back against the bathroom door.

Resting his arms on his knees, Doc rubs his fingertips over his other hand's fingernails and breathes out a quiet little sigh. He isn't sure what to say. He didn't think she would want to talk about the attack, but since they are going there, he might as well open up alongside her. Brushing his hand down over his moustache and lips, he glances down the corridor to the wall and closes his eyes briefly.

"You saw it, in the end? What did it look like? How did you escape?"

feel free to handwave, as the other ones, as i shove myself back into your inbox!!

[liliowy]

"My virtue won't be offended," comes the dry retort.

Sliding into the warm water is a brief relief, cold fingers and toes stinging, body tensing rather than relaxing, grip skating along the edge of the tub with an exhaled hiss.

She won't admit it out loud, but him being outside is a false sort of comfort. With all her purported independence, there's something anchoring in not being alone after such a close call.

"It -" she shakes her head, even if he can't see it. "Fathomless." Is the only answer that she can manage, brows drawn in, as if she can't quite recall the blur of space that dug into another figure ahead of her. It's as though she can't comprehend it at all, and that in itself is terrifying. Infuriating, too.

"I portalled myself to the farthest edge of town. Any boundary beyond it was locked away from me," it is easier to talk about something she could do, rather than the shapeless beast. "Then I ran. Conserving chaos, or gathering it where I could. Any time it would come close, I would portal to the opposite end of this fucking place."

She shifts, water rippling as she drags her knees to her chest. "I got lucky. That's all." Lucky in how long her powers lasted, for all the difficulty of it now. Lucky in the Hunt having its fill, and she refuses to address the survivor's guilt, bubbling somewhere close.

The world is cruel. It always has been.

[thering]

Her voice is a little distorted, drifting in through the door. He turns his head as though he could hear her better, though his gaze remains far away, at a distant wall past the stairwell.

He had never really thought of her as a conduit of chaos but it sort of made sense. Chaos was maybe the only thing that made sense in the world - at least, the world he had come from. He's not sure lately with the facade and semblance of order what he's supposed to think of the 21st century.

"That's all life is. Luck." Maybe he thinks that as a gambling man, but he doesn't make a habit of willingly participating in games he knows for certain he cannot win. Time and chance is the more biblical phrasing, but what is time and chance if not luck?

"It is not as if you held the others hostage and robbed them of their luck to have made it back here. I am glad you survived." He can be happy she made it and devastated that people in this house did not. They are not mutually exclusive sentiments.