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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"Five hundred?" Doc sounds slightly incredulous. He hasn't met any seven year olds. He isn't sure they can even count to five hundred. He isn't sure he can count to five hundred himself, right now. He's had two glasses of whiskey and the only reason he can count to more than five is because he's spent years with his trusty six-shooters by his side.

He can't be sure that Negan isn't just making all this shit up but look, he can match numbers and colours just fine.

"Deal me in, sweetcheeks," he taunts, blowing smoke over his shoulder. "I'll go easy on you."

"Yeah, five hundred, comes after four. You can count that high, right?" Probably after they've had more whiskey, neither of them will be counting right at all, but that's just part of the fun, right?

He snorts as Doc gets seven cards and he gets seven cards. "Oh, will you now?"

You gonna go there, Doc? "We'll see about that. This ain't poker, you know."

And for all Doc knows, he's the Uno master.

"It comes after four hundred and ninety-nine you obstreperous moron." Doc plucks his cards off the table and fans them out, rubbing his thumb over the numbers even though he can't feel them beneath the smooth coating of the cards.

"I'm a professional gambler; I could win at any card game. I'll even let you start, as a gesture of good will." Before he wipes the floor with him.

"Oh, well, looks who's showing off their fancy education." He lets out a laugh as he looks over his own cards. So much better to focus on than anything they'd been talking about earlier... unless that thing happened to be sex.

"Oh, one more thing... you gotta yell out Uno when you're down to your last card if you wanna win." He throws his first card down - a red three.

"I think you're making this shit up as you go along," Doc mumbles with the cigarette still burning away between his lips, looking over the top of his cards with a raised eyebrow as he throws down a red seven. The matching numbers or colours and the action cards mostly make sense. There is little ambiguity in commands like Reverse or Skip or Draw Four. This is likely designed for more than two players and he can imagine things getting ugly when he starts blocking people seated adjacent to him from playing. But yelling anything other than expletives and having to count to 500 sounds a little less plausible to him.

At least Negan didn't try asking him to play strip Uno. Not that he has any burning desire for the moment to see Negan butt naked.

"Hey, I'm sure the rules are on the damn deck if you're so suspicious. If I said something about the loser has to give the winner a blowjob, you'd know I'm making shit up." Fortunately, the game isn't too hard to keep up with when you're half-way to drunk... but next time, maybe they ought to invite some more along for the ride.

Doc scoffs and laughs, not necessarily the first time he's laughed in the past few nights but it's not a sound often heard nonetheless. He could probably have anyone he wants in this town, for a blowjob or any other type of encounter, but it hasn't really been high on his list of things that need to get done and likely would never be. He would not stoop so low as to win a children's card game for a blowjob.

"Have you ever even given a blowjob before?" Doc asks with doubt in his narrowed eyes, turning to blow smoke over his shoulder before he plays another red card when it's back to being his turn.

"If I could be frank, you look like a biter."

Hey, he got a laugh. He's counting that a win, even if it comes with a side of jabbing right back. He looks up at Doc, meets his eyes at that question. His tongue darts out to wet his own lips, considering that.

Considering the fit he threw over the non-details he gave about his encounters with Klaus, he figures Doc doesn't actually want to know or not. "Who says I'm gonna be the loser here?"

A shrug of his shoulders. "I promise I wouldn't fucking bite though. It's not a goddamn Tootsie Pop and I got a little self-control."

"Well what makes you think I would be any good at giving a blowjob?" Doc could very well be a biter, himself. That would be unpleasant now, wouldn't it? And a perfectly good reason to want to throw his hand, if Negan felt so inclined.

"The very notion offends my most delicate sensibilities," he teases with a little smile as he takes one last puff of his cigarette, repurposing his empty glass as an ashtray. He will be needing another, unless he's going to start drinking out of the bottle.

Doc would eat cat food if everything else was depleted. Negan can be rest assured that the outlaw would know what to do with a dick in his mouth.

Oh, he has no doubt that Doc could be a biter, as many times as he's snapped at Negan. Not gonna make him throw his hand though, it's a risk he's willing to take.

"Oh, I'm so sorry if I offended your near virgin ears. Maybe I should've started off with a kiss, just to avoid scandalizing you." He laughs to himself as he adds another card to the discard stack.

"I wouldn't be terribly opposed to a kiss." He wasn't terribly opposed to a cuddle by the fireplace either, even though they've never talked about it since. That still doesn't make Doc one of his wives though.

"If you win I might give you one." There's a little bit more fun in a game with more stakes. And Doc doesn't take Mastercard, so there aren't many stakes to put on the line.

"Yeah?" That's maybe a little surprising, given the last time they were in the same vicinity of each other before Negan's rather-- untimely and gory deaths. But he gives an easy grin.

"Well, that's more incentive to kick your ass. Just don't sulk too much about it." He wouldn't mind another night like that again either... maybe less fire though. It still makes his stomach drop, makes him want to run and that's just the least goddamn manly thing he could think of to do in a situation like that.

Well. Standing there getting himself eviscerated wasn't really an option, either. Even if running hadn't changed the outcome there.

Doc throws down a most innocent Draw Two card, moving to get up to fetch himself another glass. He's still in his civilised gentleman state and isn't overly in a hurry to start drinking straight out the bottle.

While he's there he figures he might as well try to put the contents of his crate in the fridge. They might be here a while.

"Did you find anything to eat in here?" he asks, inspecting the makeup that greets him with a raised eyebrow. Lipstick, eyeliner, nail polish... are all these edible?

Draw Two, really? He glares after Doc as he goes to the kitchen before he rolls his eyes. "Well, considering I was gonna do a strictly liquid dinner tonight, figured I'd check in the morning."

He tilts his head, watching Doc. First, it's mostly an appreciative glance at certain assets, but then his attention is drawn towards the supplies in the fridge. "Is that fucking makeup?"

... He's pretty sure you wouldn't want to eat that shit. "Don't tell me we found somebody's goddamn beauty fridge and not a lick of food."

Doc retrieves a lipstick and untwists it. The bright redness of it has him recoiling a bit, and he tries to sniff it but it doesn't smell like anything.

"There is food," he confirms, screwing the lid back on and ducking his head a bit to peer deeper into the back of the fridge. "Food and also... 'Mabel-line'." But it's mostly uncooked so Doc puts the lipstick back and shuts the fridge door, returning to the table with his glass and setting it down next to the bottle of whiskey, pouring himself out two fingers.

"You seem to know what all that was for," Doc observes quietly.

"You know how many goddamn times my wife trapped me in a store while she browsed all that shit? Too many to count. Of course I know what it is." No, Doc, he doesn't wear it if that's what you're implying. He probably couldn't pull off red lipstick... maybe.

"You've never seen any of it before? You might be one of the luckiest bastards I know, if that's the case." He reaches for the bottle to refill his own glass.

He has spent hours watching different women beautify themselves in front of a dresser. They did not have lipstick that came in a plastic little tube in his time.

"I have. It all looked different." And he's never had the pleasure of being trapped in one of those big stores and asked his opinion about things he frankly has no expertise in. There aren't enough people in Purgatory to fill up a store of the scale and magnitude that Negan might be talking about.

"And we did not have refrigerators to store these things in." They had managed to make do without.

"I guess-- back when you're from, it would've." Hard to wrap his head around all this time mindfuck shit sometimes, but he's still hoping this guy is just a loon who gets off on pretending to be Doc Holliday or something.

Like King Ezekiel back home.

"The fridge is a new one to me. Lucille--" He didn't mean to say the name, but it's fucking out now so Negan just focuses on his goddamn cards and go on like it's nothing.

"She took over our bathroom, had a little vanity full of the shit where she'd sit and get ready every goddamn day. She didn't need even half the stuff she put on her face either." But when do women ever listen when it comes to shit like that?

And before things get too sappy or too depressing again-- "What, you wanna make this a real sleepover and do each other's nails? Could braid your hair..."

"I would rather the blowjob," Doc replies dryly. Although he is not opposed to having a hand in his hair while he is receiving said blowjob, or any other gifts below the belt.

"After a while your nice words are not enough, anyway. It's a ritual. Layers you wear to leave the house with confidence and feel better able to take on the day. Especially if you know it's not going to be a good day. When the medication feels worse than the illness itself."

Doc clears his throat and draws a card. He is all out of reds or ones.

"This isn't very seductive conversation. I was hoping you had something more substantive to charm my pants off," he laments quietly, giving Negan an opening to change the topic.

"All I have to do is threaten you with a little braiding to get you back on blowjobs?" He lets out a laugh. His attention is momentarily drawn away from the card game and he reaches for his glass to take a long drink from it.

Focusing on the warmth settling down in his belly is easier than that topic. "Oh, is seduction what you want, sweetheart?"

He puts his glass back down. "I'm not sure I've got the kinda cowboy charm you do, but I gotta say... you are distracting as hell sometimes. Nice eyes, nice mouth... definitely a nice ass. Hell, even that accent of yours is charming."

He gives a look. "How am I doing?"

Mostly he isn't so keen on what Negan might want to do with his luscious locks, if things are going to get a little more vicious than a bit of hairpulling.

"Well. You surely seem to know a way to a man's heart," Doc observes with just a tinge of a drawl. Or into his pants, as the case might be. Negan has plenty of charm; he just squanders it saying and doing stupid shit. To his defence, everyone else in the house gets along fine with him, or so it seems.

"I suppose you aren't too bad yourself." Although Doc can't say he's really been looking. Every time Negan catches him looking he might be glaring daggers or holding back an eyeroll. It's easy for things to get lost in the mixed messages.

"I appreciate having someone to smoke with, at least." Drinking with Raylan is not exactly the same.

"I don't do too bad, I've been told." Not if someone's type is loud asshole, at least... and people tend to dig that whole bad boy in a leather jacket aesthetic a hell of a lot.

"Oh, just not too bad, huh?" Considering Doc's general reaction to him, he can't say he was even expecting that much of a glowing review. He gives an easy grin.

"Yeah," he agrees, a little more genuine than he tends to be generally. "Same, Doc. You're not bad company at all."

He studies his cards a little more intensely than necessary, tossing one down to the pile as he suggests-- "You got anywhere else to be tonight? And no, I'm not about to bring up blowjobs or anything frisky."

... But not sleeping alone might be nice. He hasn't been sleeping much at all between the goddamn nightmares and expecting to wake up back in that fucking hellscape. Maybe some company will ease that up a little. Can't always go bug Klaus for it -- he doesn't want to give the wrong impression here.

"No." He would simply return to 1306, see if Malcolm needed the company for that night, or sit around with Raylan, or try to keep an eye on Neal to make sure he doesn't have a sudden compulsion to tear his clothes off and run naked down Phillips Drive. He would loathe to call it attention-seeking or thrill-seeking but Neal is definitely something-seeking and he isn't sure how to help, or if it is something that could even be fixed at all.

But the three of them have each other's backs, so. It would be remiss of him to leave Negan on his own, anyway, knowing that he's spending the night solo here.

"'tis a terrible, thankless burden, but I would stay, here, with you, even if you aren't offering to give me a blowjob for my efforts." Doc huffs a sigh as he leans over again to draw another card. They can't possibly have used up all the reds already, surely. The game's barely started.

There's not a way to fix much, it feels like. All they can do is try to keep each other going, keep their heads up above water. At least that part feels as familiar here as it does back home. There's a satisfied, maybe relieved smile when Doc agrees to stay.

"Well, don't say that. We don't know where tonight'll end up." Negan's planning on at least trying to steal that kiss, even if he doesn't win their little game.

"At least we got a nice bed to crash in for the night. I already checked."

Bold and presumptuous of him to assume that Doc would share a bed with him. At least this time he's not wrong.

"Big enough for two or am I going to end up on the floor?" Because this seems to be a bad habit that they're developing, where Doc lets Negan have the bed. It actually stems from an ingrained sense of being kind and courteous towards the older folks - not that Negan is that old, and technically Doc is older in the magnitude of generations - more so than any kind of attraction or masochism. Although Negan probably misattributes his intentions anyway.

"A nice bed and hot food is more than I can hope for." At least Negan had taken Doc somewhere nice. Unlike a certain Marshal who tried to make moves while they were trapped in the underground tunnels.

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