villagelogs | 059-061 » the place where you stop the story

Entry tags:

059-061 » the place where you stop the story

WHO: Everyone.
WHERE: Eastern/Central/Southern Mathias
WHEN: Day 059-061
WHAT: Time returns to "normal" and Mathias grants a reprieve.
WARNINGS: (PM this account to have a warning added!)
NOTES: Plotting post over here! The next log will be posted the weekend of ~~May 15th~~ May 22nd.

RECOMMENDED ♫ Nathan Johnson "Foul Play"

DAY 059-061
A BRIEF REPRIEVE
“There is no real ending. It’s just
the place where you stop the story.”
— Frank Herbert
Residents awake to a peaceful morning with the sun shining and earth remaining still. There is no unsettling shaking to rouse them at dawn, and time has continued moving onward as they slept. Whatever state they were in the night before, they remain that way now, for good or for bad.

On the surface, there seems to be little lasting effect on the tiny town from that strange series of days, save for the memories of any traumatic experiences residents may have faced — but there are always consequences within Mathias. The perpetrators of acts against the town are tormented by nightmares of those acts being used against them, and those who did not raise a hand to stop those acts of destruction may yet face consequences of their own. For now, however, the unwilling townspeople should do their best to rest and recover from the disturbing ordeals of late, for this reprieve from the madness shall surely be shortlived.

THE NEW ARRIVALS
The newest arrivals to Mathias will wake up on the beach near The Grey Gull. It's a bit chilly out with their wet clothes, but surely there's something to help warm them inside the restaurant. They may even find some alcohol within — and not just the cowboys' homemade moonshine.

CONDITIONS UPDATE

— THE HISTORY MUSEUM has not fared well with the return of "normal" time. The once esteemed wooden building is now a charred ruin, the recent fire leaving behind little of the contents within for study. The structure is unstable and it is not wise to venture into the ruins for long.

— THE WEATHER conditions remain fairly typical for early fall: warm days and cool nights. It feels almost like spring arriving except that there fewer red and orange leaves on the ground and more of them oddly returning to the trees and slowly fading to green. It's like watching one of those nature documentaries that have a timelapse of the seasons, only it's going in reverse.

— THE FOG has retreated from some areas!
— Residents may now wander the southern stretch of the forest surrounding Mathias Township — it is possible to leave the paths but potentially unwise to do so.
— The fog has also retreated farther into the western section of town, now stretching across town between Stine Road and Shelley Drive. This has revealed the Chasm in the earth that stretches from one side of town to the other between Stine and Hill Lane.
— Access to the northern section of the forest is still blocked beginning a few dozen yards past the treeline; this section of fog will urge residents to stay huddled within the town proper by inducing a physical reaction of panic and fear.

— DEATHS & DISAPPEARANCES continue! Max Guevara has vanished into the fog. Claire Novak's body can be spotted on Day 059 facedown at the bottom of the Chasm between Hill and Stine, near Phillips Drive; by the morning of Day 060, her body will be gone. (Attempts may be made to reach her body but will likely not end well for those involved. Such attempts should be reported under Exploration.)

— ALCOHOL is still in Mathias! Just barely. (Supply is running very low after recent town events.) 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 was also restocked with its lower-end offerings of a variety of alcohol types. (Alcohol does not replenish as food does.)

OOC NOTES

— PROJECT HELP Your mod needs help with some projects!

— FUTURE PLANNING If you haven't, please answer the questions here for future log planning. I will almost definitely need some of these answers for the log going up the weekend of May 15, so act quickly! Late submissions will not be considered for that log.

— UPDATES Don't forget to report updates as they come up! Changes to locations (like toppling a few bookshelves in the library), big plots you have coming up that will affect the game (parties, major property destruction, etc), or exciting discoveries that may tie into the game's mythology (even the things provided by the mod) are very helpful to have in one place so relevant page updates can be made.

— MOD STATUS The usual reminder that it's just Amy steering this ship, so things will are going to be pretty slow for a while. Apologies in advance, and please don't feel shy about pestering me if you're stuck waiting for something.

navigation | faq | locations | report updates

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[That was... Impressive as fuck and if he hadn't been in the middle of trying to get her to quit being all fighty, he would have stared longer. But there was no time for that with the way she came back at him.

Not trained like this, Raylan can only do his best - Blocking the chop and aiming to grab her leg, even if he has to step into the kick to do it. It left him a little twisted, but the best way it seemed to sort that out was back up and let his arms realign, hopefully pulling her with him and back off her feet.

It wasn't graceful or elegant, but then again, not much about Raylan was.]

[He grabs her leg, but she's very strong, and so she attempts to destabilize his footing by giving it a good yank back. But whether or not that trick works, he does manage to get her down... where she uses her new position on the ground to deliver a powerful kick towards his ankles. The fact that they're doing this rather close to a gaping chasm in the earth does not appear to scare her in the least.]

[ Had Tim been watching them for awhile?

Quite possibly.

Had he considered interfering before now? Nope. It was like being a referee at an ice hockey game. You just let the players hash it out until they hit the ice, and then step in. Actually Tim had been willing to just let them continue on with it but they were getting concerningly close to that chasm and ... yeah.

He jogged out of the shadows he'd been lurking within, dodging Raylan's falling body but then stepping over him and holding one hand out in her direction, the other towards Raylan. ]

[ Callisto earned a solid look from the young sniper. ENOUGH. Without taking his eyes off her face, he spoke to Raylan. ] What is it with you and leggy blondes?

[The yank worked more in her favor than his but he wasn't stupid enough to hold on while being pulled. For all the good it did him - her kick at his ankles had his already shit at traction cowboy boots sliding out from under him with an almost comical pinwheeling of his arms. He only barely missed hitting Tim as he rushed in but his brain didn't register it, too busy with him hitting the ground, hat rolling off to settle dangerously close to the chasms edge, saved by a mere half inch.

That didn't register either as he rolled himself back up to his feet, breathing only fractionally heavily as he kept himself ready for Callisto to wholeheartedly ignore Tim too.]

Talent. I didn't do anything to cause this that I'm aware of, didn't insult the goat she doesn't have or nothin'. she started it, [He said, just as evenly as he'd been speaking before all this happened, and he pointed at Callisto as he said it, eyebrows lifting with his emphasis.

Felt like he was telling Teacher and that this was the third grade or something.]

[Callisto is pretty terrible at recognizing positive emotions within herself, but by any objective measurement, she does like Tim well enough. Is that going to stop her from widening her sights and attempting to include him in this impromptu battle? Of course not. She's having a grand old time, thank you very much.]

Women are too death for him.

[She taunts, that vicious grin still on her face. The word she's looking for is too deadly, or maybe too scary, but she has an extremely limited vocabulary at the moment and she has to work with what she's been given. She knows they're talking about her too, even though she can't understand what they're saying, and that just makes the grin widen.

"You'll have to kill me to make me stop," she says in Greek, before going in for another charge - aiming for both of them, this time. Really, though, the situation isn't actually that dire; she has no serious investment in this fight, and so distracting her with something ~~shiny~~ interesting should work just as well.]

Working with a goddamn eighth grader. [ The younger marshal said with a long suffering glance sent Raylan's way. Then her movement caught his eye and Tim turned back towards her, shifting to keep himself between her and Raylan.

He's seen her flips and he's seen her knife work. It's not that he doesn't also have confidence in Raylan's ability to be a scrappy sonofabitch, but Tim would like to avoid the two of them doing damage to each other. Possibly damage that would knock them out of being there to deal with the next round of Mathias' shit. ]

You are not wrong. [ Tim lamented using his hands to point towards her and then a thumbs up for 'not wrong'. Trying to turn them so as to buy him time to keep talking to her with voice and hands. ] He [ Tim pointed back at Raylan ] has a weakness [ using hand gestures he's used in the past to indicate weakness ] for leggy [ yep, he was going to look like an absolute idiot just then, patting his legs ] blondes. [ This last bit came with a hand touch to his hair.

Last but most importantly. ]

He [ Raylan. ] is my friend. [ He puts his hands together, shaking them in friendship. ]

Edited 2021-05-14 23:25 (UTC)

I told her I didn't fight women. Or kill 'em if given the choice. Seems to have given her something to prove.

[His reasoning was given without his eyes being pulled off Callisto, form hunching a little as he expected her to skirt past or under Tim and come at him again.

Tim's comment got a sharp look and 'You're an asshole' was on the tip of his tongue but what Tim ended with knocked it off. Despite their entanglement, deep down, Raylan wasn't sure that was the case. But his insecurities was neither here nor there, not with Callisto on the other side of the current situation.]

I haven't hit her yet and I don't plan to but if she wants a wrestle enough to put down an idea, I'm willin'.

[Callisto can talk and fight at the same time, but she can't follow charades and fight at the same time - and so, though she's still circling the men like a hungry lioness, the bulk of her attention is very much on whatever Tim is trying to say. Unfortunately a lot of this is difficult to convey using hand gestures, but she mostly picks up on the basic meaning, if not all the nuances behind it. The "leggy blonde" bit gets a derisive snort, at least.]

"You're all weak and afraid," she says in Greek - pointing to the pit, putting on an exaggerated (and entirely feigned) expression of fear, and then snorting derisively again to show just what she thinks about it. "He thinks women are too weak to fight him, but he's afraid of that."

Perífovos.

[She reiterates, flicking a finger back and forth between the two of them, applying it to them both.]

Her every waking breath gives her something to prove. [ Tim said with a deep sigh. ] Why she deserves to be alive.

[ He listened to the Greek, particularly the word that she applied to both of them and set his hands on his hips with a sigh. ]

I doubt that was a compliment. [ Said with the air of a man who is used to slurs flying at his head. Tim took a thoughtful moment and then deliberately stepped out from between Callisto and Raylan. He walked over to the edge of the chasm to collect the hat before bad luck saw it going over the edge.

Brushing it off he walked back towards the other two. He was expecting that his movements would offer enough distraction to keep Callisto from jumping Raylan until Tim got a chance to 'talk' again. He handed the hat towards the cowboy then turned towards her. The expression on his face was the no nonsense one he'd used a time or two when out in the desert with over eager recruits.

His hands began to move.

He pointed at the chasm and then used the hand signal they had hit upon the other day for 'death'. Then he pointed between the pair of them and made a tussling motion, before bringing his hand up to his next to smack the underside of his chin.

Tim sighed and touched his finger to himself, then to his head then to both of them. Then he turned back towards the chasm and pointed at it again. Then back at them, reaching with his right hand to make a breaking motion of his left arm, quickly followed by the death hand gesture and then back to the chasm. Next the spinny finger followed by his fingers sinking into his curled hand with a turn and motion of his hand away from his ass.

His gestures became more animated as he went through the motions. Definitely scolding. Bringing his hand up to smack the side of his head, pointing at them again, he smacked his hands and then gestured at the chasm.

TL DR: You two go over that edge, you're dead. You want to fight because you're both frustrated. I understand. But if you two hurt or kill each other, the rest of us are in deep shit.

The enemy is that chasm, this town. Not each other. You hard heads.

Got somethin' to prove to someone, to everyone, [he muttered darkly. No, there was no fear in him. Exactly the opposite.

But someone with a cooler head had taken the reigns and while Raylan's eyes didn't move from Callisto, he took the hat without breaking that eye contact and slipped it on his head where it belonged.

Let Tim mime out his message. Raylan would restrain the urge to ask what the motions for shove it up your ass was.]

[Raylan's grumpiness only serves to amuse her - she mouths BOO in his direction, and at least that's pretty universal. But then Tim grabs her attention back, and she squints hard at him, watching as he acts out death and pain and danger and--]

No.

[She snaps, gritting her teeth and shaking her head hard.]

No, I not-- I don't--

[She does the signal for death, her hand movements jagged and sharp; just like that, her easy, loose amusement has evaporated. She follows it up with a feigned shrug of nonchalance.]

You understand? Yes? What is this?

[How does she tell him that she doesn't care about danger, about death, about any of it?]

[ The pair of them with their lack of concern for their own well being, were going to drive him into an early grave.

Tim rubbed at his eyes then began to sign again.

Towards himself, towards her and then he made a circle with his thumb above his chest over his sternum.

No don't worry he's not saying he loves you Callisto. He's saying he cares about her in danger and death. He makes the gesture again and points towards Raylan. He motions towards Raylan again, before drawing the hand back towards himself.

Raylan was his. ]

[Raylan shook his head and glanced down at the ground.]

There's death out in the houses and the streets and the field, we don't need the damned chasm for that. Let her die a couple times, see how flippant she is about it then.

[Turning around, Raylan walked over and snatched his jacket up out of the dirt and brushed it off before slinging it back over his shoulders.]

Claire Novak is sittin' at the bottom of that gap, Tim. You oughta know that.

[For the second time today, she considers diving headlong into the pit out of spite. Maybe she'd come back after. Maybe she wouldn't. Maybe she'd be pulled back down to Tartarus, and she could go back to coaxing Ares into helping her get at Xena.

Staring fixedly at Tim, she copies his gesture for caring, taps her chest, and shakes her head. She repeats the process over again, to drive home the point: she does not care about herself. Not one bit.

And then Raylan says Claire's name, and though she never met the woman herself, he'd already told her that that was who the dead body was. She waits, vaguely curious about what the reaction will be.]

[ Tim really did begin to wonder how he was going to look with grey hair.

The irony of the situation was not lost to him. Raylan and Callisto were two people carrying around a deep well of grief and a guilt complex that neither of them was ever going to wash off. No matter how many people they saved. Or how many times they died.

He had never met Claire Novak, so his response to her death was his response to the death of any innocent caught in the crossfire. A sense of regret that he could not have stopped their death, but it came from the place of the job and his identity as a lawman. Not a personal connection to the victim.

In this respect, at least in Kentucky, Raylan really was the heart of the office. He took a lot of the death they saw very personally indeed. ]

It's not your fault. [ He said with soft intensity towards Raylan. ] You keep trying to take that kind of credit, you are going to start wanting to jump in this chasm with Callisto.

[ As for Callisto. He simply turned back to her, looked at her for a long breath and then signed out simply. I care.

Then he started to walk. He went between them one last time but was aiming himself to get out of the way. A part of him hoped that maybe, just maybe they'd catch on to how much they had in common but maybe the best he could hope for was ... ]

If you two decide to get back to fussing, try to avoid falling in the damn ditch this time.

Correct, [Raylan replied in a steely voice.] It's not my fault.

[Pointing out fact did not mean he was taking responsibility for it. But adding to the bodies down there was not something he was looking to do. He was not going to eat his gun or pitch himself into the chasm, not without Mathis pushing him.

Raylan stayed where he was, eyes following Tim for a long moment before it settled back onto Callisto. He was curious what she'd do next, including and not limited to her coming after him again.]

[It is incredibly easy to goad Callisto into a fight, either purposefully or entirely by accident - but the happy flip side of that is that unless her target is Xena or someone connected to Xena, it's generally easy to distract her away from a fight, too. She's sinking into a deep funk, but she's not on the attack anymore.

"Your friend is a fool," she huffs to Raylan in Greek, trusting that her disparaging tone will carry over even though her words will be meaningless to him.]

[All he knew was that she was talking in reference to Tim and it wasn't a compliment but defending Tim's intelligence wasn't his place. Not when he couldn't be sure how intense said opinion had been.]

Callisto, we are not scared of death. He does death. I do death. These? [He ran his hand over the left side of his face, fingers tracing the faint latticework of scars where his skin had been torn from his face. ] Came from death. I have died twice - [That at least, was easy to mime. Two was two was two, right?] This is not about being scared.

You-[Gesture at her] Feed [Fingers to his mouth repeatedly.] Mathis. This place, Mathis [He said, stomping his foot.]

It's what Mathis wants.

How?

[She asks, fully interested, gesturing to the left side of her own face to indicate that she's asking about the scars.]

What death? Here?

Here. A- [He stopped, frowning slightly as he thought out how best to convey it all, pushing his hat back onto his head a little with his thumb.]

A monster- [He clawed his hands, a faux lunge towards her that was followed by him clawing his face and chest. His clamped fist came together and twisted apart 'flinging' to the side before dropping out of mime. Did that really need words to accompany it?]

Claire? This is her second time too. First time was the fog, [He pointed back towards the trees before casting his hands back and forth around in front of him - The Fog, not the trees - and finished it with a mime of choking himself.]

Mathis is death enough without us adding to it. [A finger bobbed between them and Raylan nodded at the gap before shaking his head.]

["I don't care," she says in Greek, as she moves to sit down on the ground at the pit's edge. "I'm death everywhere." But her tone is worn out rather than angry, and she punctuates the declaration with a heavy sigh.]

You want out?

[Out of the town, she means, which she hopes will come across.]

I want out.

[This isn't a promise to not fight Raylan, Tim, or anyone else - but it is an acknowledgement that they have at least one shared goal.]

[He couldn't quite tell what that sigh was for, what the underlying feeling behind it was.]

Yes. I want out.

[Walking over, Raylan sat down next to her, several arms lengths away.]

I've got a daughter waiting. [He mimed the action of holding and rocking a baby. Whether Callisto would tell him in kind why she wanted out, beyond the obvious, was up to be seen.] More death to deliver.

Death doesn't get us out, if that's what you're thinkin'. Punch our subway card 9 times, tenth death is free, [He joked largely to himself - there was no way to mime that idea out.]

Daughter?

[She echoes, miming the same rocking motion. It looks decidedly more unnatural and awkward when she does it. Reaching into her knife sheath, she pulls out a pencil, and a tatty scrap of paper that already has some scribbles on it. Finding an empty corner, she scratches out a little drawing of a stick figure family - two parents, and two children.]

This is daughter?

[She asks, gesturing to the family as a whole.]

Or this?

[She points to one of the small stick figures. In other words: is it the word for a family as a whole, or a child?]

That, [he said, nodding at the second one with a lift of his chin. His hands lifted and came together with about 20 inches in between.]

Baby woman. You know baby? [Pointing at her, he then pointed at his temple for 'know' and mimed the rocking motion again. Callisto was already doing remarkably well - he wasn't stupid enough to think that any of the words she'd picked up so far were from her home world.

It took a village, in this case.]

Edited 2021-05-15 22:17 (UTC)

[Well, she does now. She's not able to commit every word she learns immediately to memory, but a lot of them get repeated frequently, which helps.]

Mine.

[She says, circling her finger to encompass the entire drawn family again.]

Death.

Sweet! If that ever changes, please feel free to just nudge me, I'm always happy to adjust or clarif

same here!

Hello! Same as above, if I do anything that doesn't jive, let me know and I am happy to edit!

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject