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

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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.

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ elijah does remember who he's talking to, right? elena furrows her brows as she looks at him. it takes her a moment to understand what he's doing—finding claire has surprised her more than she'd like—and she watches as her own hand darts out to grip elijah's shoulder tightly. ]

I'm not staying here. If you go, I go.

[ just like the fog. elena has a feeling that he won't be going down there if she's in tow. ]

Elena, you're going to be able to see me. I'm not going to be out of your sight but one of us needs to stay up here so I can pass her body up to you.

( if he can even get to it. )

Us both going is going to make that impossible. Stay here. I'm not going to be going far.

You're not at your usual power level, Elijah. You said so yourself.

[ she's definitely not letting go of his shoulder. in fact, she pinches it tightly, uncaring if she actually does bruise him. ]

We need equipment—something!

[ really, bro. how is she going to pull up a dead body? have you seen her arms? ]

Elena.

( he looks at her and then sighs, rubbing at his forehead. )

There is no equipment.

( which just means — )

I don't think either of us should be going down there. ( if he's honest. )

I don't think she's alive.

[ she inhales deeply, disliking it. she looks down at the chasm and away from it quickly. now that he's said it, the word she feels has been hanging in the air as the unspoken elephant on this side of town, she now finds she doesn't want to look. ]

You're not going down there.

[ she doesn't want him to join claire in being dead. the dead-dead kind of dead.

she presses her hand to the base of her neck. ]

What do we do?

I don't know.

( he doesn't want to just leave her there but without equipment and the ability to get back up, he doesn't know what else to do.

elijah rubs his hands over his face and shakes his head. )

I think we might just have to...leave her there until we can find something that might allow us to get down there.

[ elena cards her hands roughly through her hair, disliking that idea completely. it makes her worried about what will happen, even though the worst thing that could possibly happen to claire has happened.

she's gone. not the type of gone she knows john had once been, but gone. this is the type of permanency that elena has quickly been forced to grow used to, and even though she's lost a handful of people by now, it still sucks and hurts every time it happens. ]

I don't want to leave her alone.

There's nothing we can do, Elena.

( if they can't get to her, they can't sit out here forever either. that wasn't going to be fair or comfortable for either of them.

he doesn't want to leave her alone either but he knows that there's nothing they can do. )

I'm sorry she's gone but there's nothing we can do.

[ all elena can think of is jenna. what had happened to her after elena had died? did anyone find her? did anyone find elena? although she tries to tear her gaze away from claire, she can't help but see her hair a little darker and dirtier, and her legs a little longer as she stares down and sees jenna. ]

How did she even get down there?

[ elena may turn her head to elijah, but her eyes are still on claire crumpled down in the chasm. ]

I don't know.

( but he's sure it has something to do with this place, with how it works, with how violent and volatile it is. claire's gone. he can only hope that she's back in her own world. )

Maybe she fell.

( he hadn't seen her in some time so he doesn't know how she'd come to be here and what happened to her from there. )

She'd have been all alone.

[ that makes elena feel uncomfortable. while she wouldn't want anyone here to have witnessed such a fall, she thinks it would've been lonely—and terrifying. death is something she thinks of too often to ignore how claire must've felt in her last moments. ]

I don't know if that's better. She would've been so scared.

[ despite being stubborn as shit, she would've been. they're all human—elijah included. ]

Elena, there's nothing we could have done. I know what you're thinking about but you need to stop. There is nothing you could have done. You couldn't predict this.

( and he doesn't want her to take this on. this was not her fault and he's not going to let her take it on. )

She might have been alone. She might have been scared. But we're here now and we can remember her for what we knew of her.

[ his words are comforting—and she ensures that she listens to them, feels them, even if she feels like every cell in her body wants her to embrace otherwise. she nods, wanting him to see her acceptance, even though she wants to argue with him.

again, she brushes her hand through her hair. she looks at him, brows pinched. ]

Do you think it was the fog?

It might have been. Or whatever chased you that one day. There's unfortunately no way to tell.

( he sighs, looking down at claire's body before he shakes his head. he reaches for elena's shoulder and tries to turn her away from looking at it. )

Come one, we should go back.

[ elena doesn't want to move, but she knows, rationally, that she can't help her. if she was to go down there to try and retrieve her, elena knows that she'd be joining her. the idea of dying again is frightening. she can only wish claire would forgive her for leaving her there.

she reluctantly stands and, without thinking, takes elijah's hand. ]

You're not allowed to go anywhere without me now.

[ they're in this together. if he goes, elena, despite having friends here, will really have no one from home... and she's a bit tired of being alone. ]

I won't.

( elijah knows that there might be instances where they are separated but he knows that this is important to her and he can vow to try to stay with her and let her know where he is at all times.

he gives her hand a squeeze and starts leading her away from the chasm. )

Do you want to walk or do you want to go back to the room?

[ she knows she's being needy, but elena thinks she can be as such. she thinks that if elijah wasn't so well put together, he'd be requesting the same. doesn't he, but in a different way? ]

I think a walk.

[ she nods, glancing at the ground. ]

This chasm is new. Maybe it'll... [ she sighs. ] It won't lead us anywhere, but we can hope.

I haven't given up on us getting home but I don't think this town is going to help us. I think it's going to be something one of us does.

( he just has no idea what that is. he's grown frustrated and weary over the last few months because he hasn't been able to figure any way out of this mess.

he's been stuck, stagnant. )

I don't know where the chasm came from but I have a feeling it won't remain there. Not long after this discovery.

Remember the crack in the ground? That disappeared after a couple of days.

[ she doesn't remove her hand from his. elena finds comfort in it, feeling grounded. elijah's going nowhere if his hand is in hers.

her brows furrow as she thinks it over. ]

And now the General Store's restocking again after it stopped. I wonder if they're connected.

I don't know. I don't think anyone knows. I've tried and tried to find some common thread but there's nothing. Nothing about this place makes sense.

( and it irritates him beyond belief. he wants to figure this place out but he's run into wall after wall.

the only thing that's kept him relatively grounded is her. )

I dislike that there's so few answers with this place.

That's not normal, is it?

[ she looks at him, brows slightly furrowed. he's lived more lives than the one she's still trying to get a handle of. while elijah was handling mathias pretty well, she had to wonder just how many towns and cities he went to that posed more questions than answers. ]

Before I knew about vampires in Mystic Falls, I just thought... you think it's a wolf attack or some really random murder. But now that I know... maybe Mathias has its own supernatural underbelly.

I don't know what this is.

( and that bothers him immensely. he should have some kind of answers by now but there's nothing. )

Everything I've considered has been proven wrong. This is something completely new.

Something new in a thousand years.

[ elena exhales a little heavily, shoulders slumping. she shakes her head incredulously. ]

Maybe the world wants to keep you on your toes, too. [ she steps into him, nudging his arm. it's not a comfort, she knows, but she wants him to know that she doesn't think any less of him for not knowing what's happening. ]

There are better ways to keep me on my toes.

( she alone was enough to keep him on his toes. they didn't need to add in some town that angered him and confused him at every step.

but, it's pointless to think about and complain about because he's here and he's not leaving just yet. he looks down at their hands and then up at her. )

Are you all right?

[ she inhales deeply and exhales loudly, feeling her shoulders move and none of the tension shift at all. she could lie, but she doesn't want to. ]

No.

[ with an unhappy press of her lips, she shakes her head and keeps her gaze straight ahead. ]

I will be, obviously. I have to be. It's just… a lot, seeing a dead body. You'd think I'd be used to it by now.

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