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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Athena goes to her own prepared cup, smiling a little when she sees it. God, she got so lucky, meeting Raylan when she got here. She mixes it up, looking over at Jeff and Raylan. Standing side by side, they’re so different. And also not. It’s confusing.

A fresh wave of "WHAT THE FUCK" hits Jeff as he enters the kitchen and comes face to face with his own, well, face again. But it's quick, a reflexive jolt as his brain tries to process something uncanny, before it remembers: that's right, Raylan looks like you. It's gonna take some getting used to.

He wonders if it's the same for Raylan, and his poker face is just a lot better than Jeff's-- wait, he doesn't need to speculate on that. Of course he has a better poker face than Jeff, it's like the lowest bar there is.

Still, even if he's visibly startled for a moment, it passes quick enough, and Jeff tries to play it cool and casual with a smile.

"Thanks, man. Seriously. For everything." He pours a cup, then looks at Raylan for a beat, seeming to study him, before-- well. Remember that hug that was on the horizon?

"Can I give you a hug?"

Here it comes.

The Marshal had practice not looking things he wasn't sure about in the eye, metaphorically or otherwise. His best thinking was done at the end of the day, sat out on a porch, taking in the air and whatever drink was in his hand. Jeff, for now, had been relegated to the 'For later consideration'. Until he opened his mouth.

Raylan didn't have any practice at this and the handle he thought he had on it slipped out of his grasp like a wet bar of soap. Jeff was almost painfully easy to read, mainly because Raylan knew how it felt to wear those faces. He'd seen what Jeff looked like properly happy to, to contrast this. In hindsight, it really did feel a little unfair to him.

Of course, anything Raylan might have been thinking about answering with was derailed and set on fire as Jeff asks for that hug. Raylan's head retracted a fraction in genuine surprise, brow furrowing as he glanced at Athena, half expecting her to crack into laughter - some big joke being played, Jeff would pull off the mask and it would be.. anyone else that didn't look like Raylan before Mathis got to it's redecoration of his face.

But she didn't. And he.. wasn't.

"I'm sorry?" Surely he'd heard that wrong. His first internal question was Why followed swiftly by but what if we explode.

Athena ducks her head a little, biting her lip to keep from laughing out loud at the look on Raylan's face. And not for the reasons he would expect. She sets her mug aside and goes over to Raylan, giving him her own hug.

"I will be the affection and gratitude translator."

Meanwhile, as far as Jeff's concerned, that single verification poke had been enough confirmation that they can touch freely without exploding. So when Athena does the honors of hugging the confused man, Jeff sets his own mug aside and joins the fray.

Prepare for a three-way hug with two bards.

"Just-- thanks for looking out for her." What little he's learned from Athena is freaky enough. This place is evil, it's ominous, it's fucked with the Gift and sent something after her already. And he can only imagine how much worse off she'd be, without Raylan.

The teenage cannonball had already bullied her way into whenever rights to a hug from Raylan if she needed it; what she'd already suffered, what he was sure she would end up suffering the longer she was here. What they would all suffer here.

So Athena was accepted under his arm without complaint but it would be a lie to say there wasn't some fraction of panic in his eyes, mouth starting to half work in protest as Jeff comes over and wraps around him too. The automated system inside his brain made room for him, his off hand coming out and around to encircle the lean frame - his lean frame - ohmygodisthiswhatitsliketogivemeahug raced through his head as he stammered.

"Oh. Um." Athena was right. He needed a translator.

"What kinda decent soul leaves a kid out there to deal with it alone. Or you, you big fuckin' goof," he managed with a rough tightness to his voice. "Can't do that." He didn't know what to do with all this gratitude. He'd always been shit answering 'thank you's.

Athena shifts so she can hug Jeff a little too, even though it bends her arm at a weird angle. It's as much for her as it is for him.

"I feel you should both know this, right here, is the weirdest shit that I have ever experienced in my life."

Okay, yeah, it's really fucking weird to wrap his arms around... his own body... but at least Athena taking up 1/3 of the hug cuts the weirdness a little. Just enough that it's not a total existential mindfuck.

But hey. At least they don't explode.

"A lot of people..." he starts, but decides to leave it at that. Everyone in this weird group hug knows that a lot of people aren't so decent. Too many will look the other way when they see a kid out on her own, do their best to avoid looking right at her, try their best to push any thoughts or speculation about her circumstances out of their minds.

Then he clears his throat and pulls back out of the hug, laughing a little, in that kind of breathless, holy-shit-what-did-I-just-experience way.

"Okay, yeah, this is pretty fucking weird." Wry smile lingering on his face, he ducks his head a little. "Ah... Thanks for indulging my weird shit." ANYWAY: "Back to coffee!"

And just like that, the frantic, Jeff energy is back, as he makes a beeline back for his cup.

After more than two seconds, Raylan was already getting internally antsy. He didn't want to know how you people smelled, as nice as you are, and there's an audible 'Thank god' as Jeff breaks away, giving Raylan the room to break away from Athena. A hippie he was not.

Most people were terrible but every once and a while you'd find a diamond in the rough.

"Coffee.. Right. We probably need more of that actually. An' firewood. If'n you'll excuse me." Tipping his hat at it's brim, Raylan set the cup down and left as smoothly as he could but if he were being honest, he was more than a little overwhelmed. It had already been a busy morning and too long inside with all of it felt suffocating. He was sure they'd understand. Or chalk it up to his being weird, but with as smooth as he felt his exit towards and out the back door was, he'd take it.

Athena bites her lip, hiding her smile until Raylan is gone, even though his back was turned. She still didn't want to rub his awkwardness in.

In a stage whisper, she says to Jeff, "He's not very huggy."

He grins back at her over his coffee and 'whispers' back: "You know, I'm starting to get that impression..."

Then, he takes a sip, thinking for a moment before he starts with an ever-so-subtle, "So..."

There'a A LOT she needs to catch him up on.

So.

God.

Where to even start.

She'd sort of hoped that Raylan would take the whole thing off her plate, but he'd deserved the hugs, even if he fled afterward like a cat falling into a full bathtub.

Athena sets her hot chocolate on the table and then pulls herself up to sit on its edge before taking up her drink again. "So. First thing, one of the weirdest things to get used to? Nobody here other than you and me knows anything about the Gift. And I don't mean in a 'they don't understand it' way, I mean in a it doesn't exist for them way."

Jeff pulls a face, clearly trying to work that out in his head. People coming from, what, worlds without the Gift? No concept of magic? Everyone's just a blank?

Or maybe they know it, but they don't... know it, coexisting in ignorance, like the way it used to be in the old days.

"Okay..." He nods, repeating it like he's convincing himself. "Okay. I can... deal with that."

"If you say so." She gives a little sideways smile. "I don't know if I'm dealing with it, still."

She stares down into her cup for a moment. "People are from whole different worlds, here. Like... Again I'm not being figurative, Jeff, they're from whole different versions of earth. Some of them have a lot of the same history for some-fucking-reason but other than that? Totally different."

Oddly, that's easier to accept. Different worlds, as a concept, he can get that. Between Raylan, and Kirigan... They clearly don't come from the same place as him and Athena.

It's the lack of the Gift he can't really wrap his head around.

"That... kind of makes sense. Can you imagine if me and Raylan came from the same place? My parents would have sooo many questions to answer..." He smiles briefly, trying to keep it light, before the expression fades.

"I guess it's, like, a butterfly effect thing..." He makes another face as he considers it, then takes a drink of coffee. "And I mean, all of this?" He gestures around them. "It's... It doesn't feel..."

It doesn't feel like they're home, as it is. Not with the way the Gift's all scrambled.

"Yeah," she says softly. "Yeah, I feel it too."

She shivers. "There's... fuck there's so much. I don't even know where to start. Did Raylan tell you anything?"

He glances down at his coffee, grimacing a little, before he looks at Athena and answers: "He told me you blew the windows out of a house."

It's a gentle comment, totally without judgment, but he can't keep the concern out of his voice.

"It's like the frequency's gone all scrambled. Right?"

She hunches up a little, nodding miserably. "Yeah. I did. I was trying to move a cup, Jeff."

She bites her lip. "Yeah, it's like things are... fuzzy. And I thought if I tried hard enough I could punch through or something, but it just...."

He nods, because he gets it. He'd have tried the same thing, when he was Athena's age, always pushing at the boundaries of what he could achieve with the Gift. Roadblocks were meant to be plowed through.

"And the... thing that started following you... When did that start?"

She'd mentioned some tunnels, but he can't help but wonder if the blow up was the real catalyst. If somebody poking around too hard at the Gift, reaching out loudly and riding a powerful melody, caught something's attention.

"Last week. ...Or yesterday, depending how you look at it. There are these tunnels that run all over under town, except they're all blocked off by gates after a little while? So I thought, maybe whoever's doing this uses them at night. So I camped out next to one of the gates."

She doesn't meet his eyes. "I know it was stupid, I just, I couldn't just hang out waiting for answers. So I stayed down there, and after a while it felt like something was just. Watching me. Like it could have done whatever it wanted and I wouldn't have been able to stop it."

Athena shivers. "It got worse and worse and then somehow I fell asleep. I had this... dream, about three guys dragging another one through the tunnels. An earthquake woke me up, and I got the fuck out. I told Raylan and Tim I would stay here instead of..."

She bites the corner of her lip for a moment. She can tell him about the whole transient thing later. "Anyway, I stayed here that night, but I woke up back in the tunnels when the earthquake was happening. It kept repeating like that, for everyone. I don't know how many times. And every night I would dream something different about that... whatever in the tunnels, hunting me. The feeling would go away when I woke up but then. After like. Three days? It stopped going away. It just felt like something was there all the time."

Edited 2021-05-31 19:19 (UTC)

Something watching, something there, all the time. You can't see it, but you can feel it. You know it's with you, like a shadow, like an extension, like it's tethered...

(I'm your biggest fan.)

Jeff leans back against the counter, trying not to let it show, just how sick he feels at what Athena's telling him. He breathes, slowly, evenly, calmly, and just tries to listen. This is her story, not his, and it's entirely possible that whatever entity's on her back isn't the same as the thing he'd lived with all those years ago.

Of course, it's entirely possible it could be something worse.

"You're not stupid for wanting to do something about this," he says, his voice still soft, still gentle. It takes some effort to keep any panic from ebbing into his voice, but the last thing he wants is to freak Athena out any further, not while she's still dealing with some fresh hell trauma that went down both a week and a day ago, apparently.

Fucking Groundhog Day...

"Do you... still feel it?"

She relaxes slowly as he talks, applying herself to the hot chocolate again. Her aunt always gives her clarity. Jeff, though, can always calm her down.

"No," she says, voice soft. "I woke up this morning and it was like it just vanished. Which... is kind of creepy too. Why would it just disappear?"

He furrows his brows, thinking on that development. At least it's some small relief, that she doesn't feel the... whatever-it-is now, hasn't felt it all day. Maybe it was tied to whatever it was that was causing the... earthquake-time-loop bullshit? Hell, maybe it was the cause somehow.

"Maybe it's... kind of..." He wrinkles his nose in thought. If it's a demon-- and that's a big, nebulous if-- Jeff's hardly a fucking expert on the things. Nobody is, really. It's just speculation and theories, a tiny handful of survivors, and the scattered bodies of the ones who never made it. He knew his demon, but Ziggy was a sample size of one.

"Maybe it's... anchored to the tunnels. You know? Like there's something in there that it's tied to. So it can't get to you, it can't reach you without some fucking... spooky, spiritual doorway down there."

He sighs, making a face. "Sorry. I'm no good at all the smart guy theory bullshit." It's untrue, at least where the Gift's concerned. But given that there's no way of knowing if this does have anything to do with the Gift... He feels downright useless. "But you'll tell me, okay? If you ever feel it again, if you ever think it might be-- I just. Don't keep it to yourself, even if you think I'll be mad or disappointed-- I promise I won't. Please, Athena."

Edited 2021-05-31 21:57 (UTC)

She nods silently, unnerved but still calmer than she was. It's the please that sends another little knot of anxiety winding in her gut.

"I will. I promise."

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