villagelogs | 037-040 » the reason for time

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037-040 » the reason for time

WHO: Everyone.
WHERE: Eastern/Central Mathias
WHEN: Day 037-040
WHAT: The dead return and the living wake to changes within Mathias Township.
WARNINGS: Some explicit sexual content in threads. (PM this account to have a warning added!)
NOTES: Plotting post over here!

RECOMMENDED ♫ Kammarheit "Sleep after Toyle, Port after Stormie Seas"

DAY 037
THE DEAD RETURN
“The only reason for time is so that everything
doesn't happen at once.” —Albert Einstein
The dead return to Mathias forever changed by their experiences. Waking along the beach, near the tree line, or among the graves, they will find that their bodies are not as they remember them. They are whole again and not torn to shreds by the shadow creatures that cannot be described, but they are also not as they were before the Hunt. These residents will find, so strangely, that their bodies are in the physical state in which they first arrived in Mathias — any injuries or recovery they have made since their initial arrival no longer exists, as if their time in Mathias has simply been a horrible nightmare. Except they all now carry a last reminder of the Hunt with them: spiderweb-thin healed scars marking their injuries from the Hunt. Those who were injured by fire in the other realm also carry those burns with them.

The dead are not the only things that have returned to Mathias. Inexplicably, fall is back, with the temperature finally reaching above freezing and snow falling from trees to reveal beautiful autumnal colors. As the sun rises higher in the lightly cloudy sky and the day warms, the snow begins rapidly melting, puddles growing in the slowly revealed grass and little rivers forming in the streets. And with that snow comes the frozen blood from the deaths to the Hunt, tinting the street river on Phillips Drive a sickening shade of red.

Another oddity that residents will notice: houses with broken windows from the encounter with the fog on Day 015 have now been completely repaired, though any boards put in place are still there somehow. A small bit of good news, at least? And truly, how kind of Mathias to clean up its own mess.

Finally, alcohol is back. Enjoy in moderation, friends, for more will not be arriving the following morning.

THE NEW ARRIVALS
The newest arrivals to Mathias will wake up on the beach near The Grey Gull. It's quite chilly out with their wet clothes, but surely there's something to help warm them inside the restaurant. Indeed, their timing is perfect, for alcohol has finally returned to Mathias Township — and not just the cowboys' homemade moonshine.

DAY 038-039
THE CHANGE OF SEASON
The continued warm weather proves that the unseasonable shift of the previous day was not merely a fluke. Once again, the sun rises and brings with it a temperature that feels almost spring-like, save for the fact that each day there seem to be more and more leaves on the trees in hues of red and orange. For those who have been in Mathias for some time, this new type of weird may be almost normal at this point, but newer arrivals will likely find it quite odd.

The gently trickling river running along Phillips Drive is still somewhat pink in color as the snow continues to melt and refreeze each night. By Day 040, the bloody snow will finally be gone completely, though the relief will be... short-lived.

DAY 040
THE BLINDING WHITE
In the late morning of Day 040, when the sun is visible through patchy greyish clouds, the fog sweeps into town like a like a tidal wave. It moves in quickly and without warning, not from the waterfront but the forest, cascading through every street in a thick wave of white. Rather than a soft blanket enveloping the town, it is a heavy weight pressing down, blotting out the sky in a way that almost feels suffocating, for none can see further than their outstretch hand.

Those outside when it rolls in are left wandering blind, stumbling toward shelter as you're unable to even see your feet beneath you, let alone any obstacles in your path. Perhaps you call out for help, hoping for another voice to guide you toward shelter or simply another living soul. Or perhaps you were lucky enough to already be inside when the fog descended, quickly closing doors and windows to keep it from creeping in.

Unlike the last time the fog swept into the town, residents who encounter it are not immediately killed. Instead, they are simply disoriented, possibly losing their sense of time and place, and it is only after prolonged exposure that they will begin to feel off. A sense of being ill will cling to them if they are in the fog for too long, including dizziness, lightheadedness, or nausea — the time it takes to manifest varies from person to person, as does the duration it will last after leaving the fog.

By nightfall, the fog still has not dissipated.

CONDITIONS UPDATE

— THE WEATHER conditions are fairly typical for late fall: chilly "sweater weather" days and nights that can dip just below freezing. You don't want to be outside without a coat, but it won't kill anyone if they bundle up. Probably.

— 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 blocking these areas is ill-advised.

— DISAPPEARANCES continue. Castiel and Sam Winchester have vanished, and Dean Winchester has not returned with the others after his death during the Hunt.

— THE GRAVEYARD has now seen around a dozen burials, both below and above ground. With the weather warming, though, something may need to be done about the handful of temporary graves aboveground...

— ALCOHOL has returned to Mathias! A small stock of beer and cheap wine may be found at the General Store, and some homes may have a small store of alcohol in the fridge or pantry. The Grey Gull has also been restocked with its lower-end offerings of a variety of alcohol types. Alcohol does not replenish in the same way as food.

— THE GREY GULL has been cleaned up and stocked with moonshine. Along with the newly restocked usual offerings, the place almost seems like an actual bar again.

— THE GENERAL STORE is in a bit of a state following the brutal slaughter of two residents during the Hunt. Cleanup on aisle 3, anyone?

OOC NOTES

— FOOD is now being mysteriously restocked as per usual, including inside homes and at the General Store. Alcohol is not being restocked. Use those rationing skills, friends.

— REWARD REDEPEMPTION is back and will soon have a new option for anyone looking to spend big AP and learn a bit more of the lore of the town.

— MADNESSES due to the Hunt have been earned by Klaus Hargreeves, Ellie, and Malcolm Bright and may now be claimed. Players may also claim additional sanity loss from the aftermath of the Hunt; only losses from the Hunt itself have been deducted from totals thus far.

— SANITY REGAIN is now available! Players will submit a form with some details of the progress their character has made and the mod will review and decide on the numbers of points that will be regained.

— MOD STATUS The usual 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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"The fire? ...Raylan said something about ashes. Smelling like ashes." He frowned faintly and looked at Neal. "What happened?"

Neal slowed for a moment outside of the library, remembering these buildings framed in hideous molten flame. "We were in Mathias," he said. "But it wasn't Mathias. The air was red, and it was so quiet, even quieter than it is here."

He licked his lips, shook his head, and pushed the door of the library open. "It stayed that way for a while--the fog, the fog was gone. I went to the lighthouse."

He cut himself off. He didn't want to tell Malcolm about the cave. Not yet. He wasn't sure why. "This storm blew in, and lightning hit the buildings, and everything started to burn. But the fire--it... chased us. It burned against the wind."

He made his way straight to the section of the library he told himself he planned to stay away from, stopping when he spotted the stairs leading down into the dark. "You don't have to come with me."

He knew the words were pointless, but he felt the need to say them anyway.

Malcolm looked down the stairs, his heart pounding in his throat.

And he liked it.

"Why wouldn't I come?"

Neal recognized, on some level, that this was off. The two of them doing this, in the middle of the night, with no hesitation. He grabbed a lantern from nearby and lit it, wondering if it would go out at the bottom, wondering if they'd hear the voices that had drawn him in last time. He hoped they would.

He curled his shaking fingers around one of Malcolm's hands, the only precaution against separation, and started down the steps. The thought he didn't want to do this, the resistance to terror, started to dissolve as they went. Blessed adrenaline washed it from his system, leaving him feeling clean.

"How deep under do you think this thing is?"

Malcolm clasped his hand back. There was something exhilarating about the thrill of terror shooting through him as they descended.

"I think it's attached to the hole Doc and Raylan got stuck in. How deep was that?"

Neal shook his head. "Not sure--I guess we should start measuring depths, if we're going to map these properly."

He found the bottom of the stairs and held the lantern up higher, casting the light a little further down the tunnel. The open tunnel, without a trace of debris. The light catches against the curves of the spiral carvings in the wall.

Neal heads for them. "Spirals. It's always spirals. Too bad they're symbolically so broad."

"They're a game," Malcolm said. "It's just..." He stopped.

...burdening everyone with your inquisitive, persistent bullshit.

"It's just something we shouldn't put too much stock in," he finished quietly, looking around.

Neal paused, turning toward Malcolm with a frown. "You were going to say something else. It's just what?"

"Nothing," he said. "It's just guessing, isn't it? Nobody really knows. There's no... evidence. It's just talking." He looked around at the walls as they moved, barely even aware that he was still holding Neal's hand.

Neal stopped, frowning. That wasn't right. "Well... maybe, but that's how we develop theories. Tease things out. Talking about them. Guessing about them."

A noise back toward the entrance caught Neal's attention, and he froze, turning just enough to look at Malcolm, blue eyes huge. Instinct told him to run. After the last twenty-four hours, nothing else made sense. Of course, the only way to run was deeper underground.

The light would give them away, even if they ran. Neal blew it out.

Bucky wasn't out walking around Mathias as part of any Block Watch program that night. But he was feeling that the evening wasn't going to be a good one for him so he decided in order to stay awake, he needs to move. The library was a place he's gone to several times so he heads that way again, hoping to maybe find a specific book that had everything to do with meeting a mute that day.

Once inside, it doesn't take long for Bucky to hear the voices, as faint as they are, though in an empty building late in the evening, one could probably hear a pin drop. He moves towards the other side of the room to a doorway and a darkened staircase and from the top, he looks down to see the glow of the lantern. One voice he's able to recognize easily enough.

Honestly, what is it with this guy and the up or down extremes?

"Hey, Neal," Bucky simply calls out in a normal speaking voice, almost like he would if he was greeting the guy on the street. "What's up?"

Yes, that voice is roughly one story up from where both of them are standing.

Edited 2021-03-01 19:52 (UTC)

Malcolm gave Neal a light nudge with his elbow.

“Neal, I think that silhouette is a friend of yours. I could be wrong, but...”

"Bucky?" Neal moved out of the dark a little bit, into the twilight at the bottom of the stairs. There was really no mistaking that silhouette. He glanced Malcolm's way, still hanging on to him. "We were... going to check out the tunnel."

He takes a few more steps down. "Oh yeah? What's in the tunnel?"

It's hard to say if the other guy was the one who dragged Neal down there or if the two were equally foolish enough to decide to check out a dark tunnel late at night. Less than two days after being hunted and killed by something with teeth and claws.

But they were holding hands for safety. That was good, right?

At the question Malcolm glanced behind him, even though he couldn't see more than three inches in front of his face, even in the half light from the top of the stairs, then he looked up at Bucky.

"Oh. ...Tunnel stuff." He looked at Neal and then looked up again. "It felt... important."

"It did. It does."

He looked behind them, into the dark, feeling it pull at him with almost the same force that the voices did when he was here before. Not quite to the same level, no, but god he wanted to just turn around and start walking and not stop until something happened--

The way the two are acting is offputting, to say the least, and it sticks out that the odd behaviour, at least where Neal is concerned, is only getting worse. What he does know is that he's not letting either go into the tunnel. Not when it seems that there is an influence at play.

He takes another few steps down and levels a gaze at Neal. "I'm guessing Daisy doesn't know you're here."

Or anyone that knows the other guy.

"He doesn't need her permission," Malcolm says, then pauses, then looks at Neal. "Do you need her permission?" He looks up at the man, then looks at Neal. "Who is this?"

Neal winces, his attention effectively yanked back to Bucky at the mention of Daisy's name. "No, but..."

Daisy would knock him out and drag him up the stairs herself, or at least try to. The thought of her doing that when she's exhausted and weak as she is right now sends a twist of guilt through Neal that at least temporarily overpowers the rest of it, not unlike Malcolm's need to keep his promise to Doc about the museum. Neal closes his eyes, taking a deep breath. "This is Bucky. He's a friend."

All he needs to do is walk up the stairs. Just... hang on to Malcolm's hand so he doesn't go into the tunnel alone, walk up the stairs and out of the library. Neal closes his eyes. Why can't he just walk up the stairs?

The lantern slips out of his grip, and he flinches back in surprise as it hits the ground. He holds his hand up, staring at it as the fingers in that hand start to tremble too. He can feel his other hand shivering in Malcolm's hold. Neal squeezes his free hand into a fist. Breathe. Just-- (God the panic feels good.)

Neal forces himself to take a step toward Bucky, pulling Malcolm with him. "Malcolm, what would Raylan say if he saw us right now?"

Because maybe that will get things to click with Malcolm the way the mention of Daisy's name did for Neal.

Malcolm considers that.

"He probably wouldn't say anything," he admits. "Just... give us one of those smouldery disapproving looks." He looks at Neal as they move. "He didn't come home. He stayed across the street. He's not ready to be around so many people all at once. He's still processing."

It's not too hard to see something of himself in Neal right then. That feeling of being pulled towards doing something that one might not usually do if they were of sound mind. Maybe it was a curiosity for one man but the other -- that was an influence that was all too real for Bucky. Did he think that's what was happening here? He couldn't say for sure.

As they ascend up the stairs again, he steps towards the outer rail and lets them pass and when they do, Bucky moves in behind, making it all that much harder to change their mind.

He doesn't want to be walking up these stairs, and the instinct that Malcolm feels the same way on some level gets Neal to tighten his grip on the other man's hand. He looks back once, past Bucky, into the dark, but then his gaze falls to Bucky's face.

He turns and keeps climbing. "If we're going in, we should do it right. Make sure we're prepared."

Neal's trying to convince himself as much as Malcolm.

Malcolm sees what Bucky is doing, blocking the way back down. He looks at him, then looks at Neal. "More prepared? We had a lantern. We don't have weapons." Malcolm's eyes widen slightly. "Oh!" He pulls out his phone. "Look, we have a camera, even."

He looks at each, unafraid to make direct eye contact when each passes him and as they continue up to the main floor, he listens to them talk to each other. He's sure they'll try again and he'll quietly tell Daisy that when he sees her. The last thing she needs is more stress on top of the stress she's already dealing with, but she has to know.

Neal stares at the phone, then at Malcolm, finally letting go of the other man's hand as they reach the top of the stairs. "Did you have that with you when you got here? How does it still have a charge?"

That's the only thing that makes sense. He looks back again, past Bucky, down the stairs. He slows almost to a halt, then drags his eyes back front and forces himself to keep walking until they're out under Mathias's strange, starry sky.

He rubs his face, looking up at Bucky. "How did you know we were down there?"

Edited 2021-03-05 03:31 (UTC)

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