059-061 » the place where you stop the story

[villagemod]

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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Comments

[bardish]

"Oh, um." Right. There's about twenty people here, give or take, and Jeff's a brand new face. Or, well, not a new face, considering Raylan and the whole... twin situation, but a new presence nonetheless. People are bound to be a little uneasy, especially if this place is as much of a mindfuck as he's been told.

"I'm Jeff." He offers another smile, a little more subdued this time-- friendly, but trying not to be too much about it. He gives a little wave. "Hi. I just got here. I mean, here, as in the town, not the store-- though I guess I just got here--" With a gesture at the shop around them. "--too!"

[abrightboy]

"Malcolm Bright," Malcolm reciprocates politely. He glances around. "This is. Um. One of your first stops? You're a lot more together than I was when I got here."

[bardish]

Jeff shakes his head, before admitting, "I got lucky. Found a familiar face while I was wandering around yesterday-- I mean, really familiar, like--" He gestures to his own face. "Looking in a mirror, only not."

Okay, so he just unintentionally quoted Face/Off. Jeff grimaces as he realizes it, then continues.

"Um. But anyway, Raylan helped me find someone from home."

If Jeff hadn't run into him, if he hadn't been reunited with Athena, and met Tim, and got himself a place to stay with friendly people, then he'd probably be a lot more of a nervous wreck by now. All things considered, it's like he got the training wheels version of Mathias.

[abrightboy]

“You’ve met Raylan...” but he pauses. Someone from home. He was drunk that night, but as much as Athena thought he wasn’t paying attention, he saw the pictures she tilted towards Raylan. “Are you Jeff?”

[bardish]

"Yeah! That's me," Jeff confirms, brightening at the question. "That Jeff. Athena's Jeff..." He frowns a little, in thought, and adds, "Okay, there's got to be a way of wording that which doesn't make me sound like a pet dog..."

[abrightboy]

“Athena must be glad you’re here,” Malcolm notes. “She’s been talking about you since she got here.”

He picks up a bottle and skims the back.

[bardish]

"She has been?" He smiles warmly-- fondly-- at that, before he's reminded why he's here and follows Malcolm's lead by picking up a familiar bottle. Pert Plus. Now there's a blast from the past.

(Wait a minute. Combined shampoo-conditioner? No thanks.)

"I um... I guess it's unavoidable. Considering." The elephant in the room. The cowboy hat wearing elephant. He puts the bottle back, scanning the shelves for a proper conditioner. "I'm glad she--"

What, he's glad that she's here? On some level, sure, just on the basis that she's familiar, and Gifted, and that's some comfort in a situation like this, but...

He's not happy she's here. And he'd rather sacrifice that familiarity if it meant she could be at home, safe, with her aunt and the childhood she's had to fight so hard for.

"I'm glad she's got so many people looking out for her." He offers Malcolm another quick smile as he picks up another bottle to inspect. "She said it was, like, an army. So you're...?" Part of Athena's Army? There's no way of saying that without sound TOTALLY corny, even by Jeff's standards, so he just lets the implication say it all, instead.

[abrightboy]

“I’m a friend of Raylan’s and if you’re friends with Raylan, you take on Raylan’s projects, even if said projects are openly hostile to you,” Malcolm explains.

[bardish]

Jeff scrunches up his nose sympathetically as Malcolm explains his connection to Athena.

"It, um... Sometimes it takes her a while to warm up to people. Especially men." He smiles ruefully, with none of his normal bright-eyed cheer. "The kid's had to keep her guard up for a long time."

He points at Malcolm with the bottle. "Though, dude, I really hope you never used the word 'project' within earshot! That's a surefire way to piss her off!" Judging by the lightness of his tone, he's just teasing the other man. He may not know him from anyone else here, but hey, he can assume the guy's got enough tact not to say something like that to Athena.

[abrightboy]

"I have not," Malcolm tells him, glancing up at him from under his brow. "But I'll keep it in my toolbelt, just in case I need it," he jokes. "We've... come to an understanding."

[bardish]

He laughs, slipping the backpack off his shoulder so he can shove the conditioner in. "Just give me a heads up before you do, so I can make sure I'm somewhere far away when you poke the teenage honey badger."

Look, he knows to fear the wrath of a teenage girl. He's taught them for fifteen years now. Hell, he lives with one.

"But an understanding's good. It's a start, right! Even a grudging ceasefire is better than nothing."

[abrightboy]

“She seems to have acknowledged that she perhaps was a little needlessly aggressive on our initial meeting,” Malcolm tells Jeff. “We’re working on it.”

[bardish]

"She admitted that?" Jeff's brows go up with a little laugh. "She must like you more than she lets on."

[abrightboy]

"Or she likes Raylan and I'm his friend," Malcolm points out. "Maybe she's making nice for him."

[bardish]

He tilts his head, as if considering the possibility, then shrugs a shoulder. "Maybe. But I'm an optimist."

Jeff hesitates for a moment, wondering if it's, like, his place to ask, then goes ahead with it: "So, did, uh, something happen to set you guys off on the wrong foot?"

[abrightboy]

“She was hiding under a table at a party so nobody would take her stolen liquor away from her and I tried to sit at the table,” Malcolm tells him. “Thinking it was empty.”

[bardish]

"Ohhhh... Well, I mean... That doesn't sound too bad..." Jeff says mildly, as if Malcolm needs the assurance. Though he could see how she'd be a... bit territorial in the moment. Scared and in survival mode, guarding her space, her things, especially surrounded by strange adults...

But he doesn't know Malcolm-- or his relationship with Athena-- well enough yet to go into all of that, so he tries to keep it light!

"I mean, unless you accidentally kicked her or something." But what if he did kick her? What then, Jeff? "Wait, you didn't kick her, did you?"

[abrightboy]

“I pulled out the chair and she pulled it back in. I asked her to come out from under the table and she called me a pedophile. But, like I said, we’ve reached an understanding since then,” Malcolm explains. “Is... is this one of your first stops?” he asks, gesturing to the salon they’re standing in.

[bardish]

Jeff winces. "Okay, definitely not an... ideal first meeting... Glad you guys have an understanding now."

As for the question, Jeff nods. "Oh! Yeah. Thought I'd go around and pick up the essentials today, you know, so I'm not, like, using all of Tim and Raylan's stuff." A beat, then he adds, "I guess it says something about me that I went for hair conditioner first... But what, I do not know."

[abrightboy]

“I provide Raylan’s ‘stuff’,” Malcolm admits. “I don’t know if Tim has his own or if he just uses what’s in the house. I stock all the showers in 1306 too. Though I think my sister went and chose some of her own. I did have cowboy chic in mind when I picked them.”

[bardish]

"Huh..." He makes a show of checking out Malcolm's hair, like he's totally assessing it, before nodding. "Okay, I can see you're the expert here," he says teasingly, a little grin on his face, before he gestures to the shelf. "So what if someone's looking to go a liiiittle less cowboy chic, but isn't ready to commit to the sister look?"

Hang on.

"Wait. Your sister's here, too? Shit, man..." There's an unspoken I'm sorry just on the tip of his tongue, but he holds it back, unsure if the sympathy would be welcome or if it's totally unnecessary. Jeff's not so sure how he'd feel if one of his brothers were here-- worried, sure, but they're adults, capable of looking after themselves. If he could swap one of them here and send Athena home, he probably would.

Fuck.

Does that make him an asshole?

[abrightboy]

Malcolm waves off the ‘shit, man…’ prelude to an apology if left unchecked.

“It’s like with you and Athena. I showed up here and then some weeks later, she showed up.”

He picks up a bottle and holds it out to Jeff.

“The one I get for the house is cedar spice. But if I were shopping for just me, I’d get this one.” The label says sandalwood and citrus.