[arrival] little wings of white flame; butterflies in my brain

[theintercessor]

WHO: Jude Sullivan
WHERE: Fountain, House 23, Schoolhouse
WHEN: June 7 + the night, day, and next day after.
OPEN TO: All
WARNINGS: Mentions of death, bodies, general horror genre stuff in the intro; insect hallucination in the final prompt. Please see his opt out in the comments of his profile.
STATUS: Open

---

There were men hanging in the trees.

It comes to him like a word he'd had sitting at the tip of his tongue, given up on, and suddenly found hours after needing. In the forest, between where he'd crashed the truck--

he'd crashed the truck--

Between where he'd crashed the truck, and the edges of the empty town. There had been something in the road, another memory lurking the tall grasses of his mind, where things disappear and ambush in the dark. Four legs, no face, no idea why it should have any kind of face. He'd swerved the truck for it, he'd gone down the slope, he'd hit a tree. He'd hit his fucking head and that's the only reason, that's why it's so hard to recall.

That's the only reason.

Jude lifts a hand to his head, rubbing away more of the dried, flaking blood from his brow. He's woken up twice on the outskirts of town, fog rolling down from the mountains, softening the edges of dark pines and soaking his hair and jacket. This time, he remembers the bodies: he'd stumbled out of the truck, and he'd been afraid of something behind him. He couldn't quite run, but he'd stumbled as quickly down the rest of the slope as he could, finding the old paths, the trail broken into long steps by thresholds of exposed root. His head had throbbed for every hard footfall, and he'd been focused on his footing, but they'd been there in the corner of his eyes. Silhouettes hanging by throats and wrists, twisting on ropes.

He turns away from the single wide trailer, the silence in the park heavier than the clouds over the mountains. Everywhere else he's looked has been empty, like his childhood home had uprooted into the hills and their fog.

"Dad," he calls, throat tightening, voice wobbling. He calls it again, stronger, calls Charlie when he thinks about it. His feet carry him back toward the trees, as afraid of what he might find in them as he is of what he might find in the trailer. It feels like the fog is in and outside him, like his voice can't carry, like his feet are too light and too heavy on the ground. "Charlie," he calls again, and for all that he lives across town, terror chokes the name from him: "Parker?"

In the hush that follows, the silence is its own answer. There's a prickle at the back of his neck, a solid weight growing behind him, and the fresh tattoo on his shoulder flares to a burning itch.

"Hey, Jude."

There's a striking pain to the back of his head before he can even turn toward the voice, driving him into the dark.


fountain

Jude learned at an early age to play his cards close to the vest, and that fear should be chief among them. If people thought you weren't afraid of anything, they wouldn't have anything to use against you. He'd taken every dare, stared down every asshole, pushed himself through every heart-pounding moment until he could stand on the other side of it, a little harder but alive.

The only one he couldn't shake, but had at least managed to hide, was the fear of water.

He's been in it plenty of times since the first and last time he drowned. He's jumped off old ropes into lakes, he's taken the dive off the quarry's edge. He's gone under and held his breath just to prove he can handle anything the other guy can, but he'd been in control every time. He'd chosen it.

He didn't choose to be drowned in the tub when he was eight, seeking some higher power, and he didn't choose to wake up in it now, the burn in his nose and throat something from a nightmare.

Fear isn't a good motivator, but it certainly prompts action, narrows everything away from how and when and why to kicking until he pushes against a hard surface, even if it just sends him into another at his back. The space explored that much, he kicks again, shoving himself between walls until he finds he can touch them with hands outstretched, guide himself up and out of the water with a splash and hacking, whooping series of coughs. He rolls over the edge, then several times on the ground for good measure. His body catalogs dry earth, hard stones, and short grass, and the discomfort at his back turns out to be a pack when he finds the wits to examine himself.

Not his clothes, not his bag. Kneeling, he's still choking when he rips open the zipper, leans to one side without getting a look at the contents when he vomits up water and bile. He doesn't know when he last ate, he can't seem to stay conscious enough to keep track of time.

It wasn't this bright when he blacked out. It wasn't this bright, and strange as it isn't to find himself in a wooded path, last he checked the town didn't have a fountain. Coughing into his elbow, he skirts his gaze over it, taking in the treeline, the branching paths, the overbearing sun. This isn't the first time he's blanked or blacked out, woken up somewhere different, but it's the first time he's woken up somewhere new.

Looking down at the pack, its contents don't appear to be anything he recognizes as his or immediately useful, and he pushes himself up to wander around the edge of the fountain. "Dad," he calls only once, weakly, before a new kind of fear sends him into the cover of the trees.


house 23

Skirting the back of several large buildings, Jude had approached the house from behind, as wary of its potential emptiness as he was of what he might find inside. The heat of the day had stuck his scrubs to his body, and he'd assumed that if nothing else, he might find water or shade inside. The house itself wasn't familiar, but the shape of it made sense--like one of the homes in the nicer part of town, red siding popping against the green-grey of the forest, ivory siding glowing in the sun.

He'd circled its foundation, checking the windows he could stand or climb to see into. Avoiding the porch, he'd circled back the other way until he was reasonably sure no one was inside, and entered through the back.

Rather than left for the day, the house seemed to have gone unused for some time--dust on the furniture, a broken window at the front, a water stain in the dining room he linked to the shingles he'd walked over in his investigation of the outside. A bad storm, before the heat. Summer storms, when he'd set out for Hollow Creek just before the end of his fall term.

Finding the linen closet near the bathroom, he'd dried himself off and wrung out his clothes before putting them back on. The damp helped with the heat, and when he'd used the mirror to check the cut on his head, he hadn't found so much as a bruise. Had he crashed the car? Had he woken up on the edge of town? Touching the place where the cut had been, he felt a thin line under the hair. Already scarred over--maybe he was remembering something out of order. Maybe he hadn't gone home at all.

The sun hadn't gone down by the time he exhausted exploration of the house and warily watching the world through its windows. He'd slept on the window-seat in the dining room, curling one finger into the curtain's edge to check again and again for activity in the large structures beyond the trees and across the path.

When he startles awake, rushing up out of a dream--long drive, wet winds, storms over the mountains and something sinister in the passenger seat he refused to look at--the sun is still up, or up again. Its light is softer for now, and when he checks beyond the curtain, someone is moving between the buildings. Curiosity needles caution with its claws, moving him slowly to the front of the house, then out the door.

Coming down the porch steps, he stares openly with both brows drawn and a frown, still struggling between the desire for answers and the desire to stay hidden. "Excuse me," he finally says, fingers curling into loose fists and waiting at his sides, "Are there--many people here?"

schoolhouse

A mysterious canyon. Magic fountains, strange weather, sudden gifts, being watched--maybe it's all in his head, or maybe it's where everyone disappeared to from the town. He hasn't met anyone he knows, though he's met people convincing enough to think this isn't the kind of hallucination he's going to blink away and never mention to anybody. They'd even shown him a board at the inn, next to map. Notes and drawings about the place, none of it in anything close to his handwriting.

None of it making any fucking sense, but maybe that was a sign too.

He'd been reunited with his pack, some kind of standard-issue fare to match the scrubs. A change of clothes had been welcome after sleeping in the first sun-dried pair, and while he'd been fed and given the walking tour, he'd woken up today still wondering: what now. Still wondering: what did I leave behind.

Across from the town hall he's settled in next to, there are the ruins of a building described as a schoolhouse. What had happened to it seemed a sore subject, and Jude wasn't one to press. He's one to examine, so today he's rolled up the legs of his overalls against the heat, made use of the cap in his bag, and wandered over to dig through the wreckage. It looks a little like the aftermath of a twister, but it must have been a strong, specific one--even most of the trees seem intact around it, and the skeleton of the building seems like it was once part of a sturdy structure.

Climbing into the base, he starts gathering planks and rooting around beneath them. Among the insects and salamanders hiding under their shade, he pockets crumbling bits of chalk, errant playing cards, chess pieces, dice. More game pieces than he'd expect for a school, but maybe in a place like this, entertaining children is as important as teaching them.

Not that he's seen anyone younger than himself since he got here.

When he starts finding books, they go into a couple of piles, the majority of which is kindling. Most of the ones not torn apart look like they were caught out in the rain, dried now by the heat but barely legible. Opening one, it must have retained some moisture beyond the others, because it seems to explode in his hands, a writhing pulp of--maggots.

"Fuck," he says sharply, dropping it at his feet and scrambling back, brushing frantically at his arms. There's a spike of anxiety, a moment of choking fear, and when he closes his eyes to endure it, he feels nothing at all. When he opens them, his arms are clean, and the book is open to flaking, water-pulped pages.

Taking a deep, easing breath, he kicks it toward the kindling pile and skirts a look back at the path, in case someone was watching.

[Feel free to tag in with the explicit starters or something in-between: Jude wandering the trees away from the fountain, casing the house, peeking out windows, etc.]

Comments

Schoolhouse

[thegreatexperiment]

Being human again meant re-adjusting to certain basic needs. The need to eat. To sleep. To breathe, even, although Sam had never really been the type of Kindred to give that up. But before, it had been ornamental, out of an old habit. Now it was a necessity. The problem with Sam being Sam, though, was that she had certain other needs. Ones a little bit more difficult to satisfy in her current situation.

Among those needs was a compulsion, buzzing back and forth between her brain and the tips of her fingers. She was desperate to find some paper and something to draw with. Anything, she didn't care. Pencil. Marker. Pen. Even crayons would be fine. Anything. But if she couldn't draw something soon, she knew exactly what was going to happen to her.

Her mind would catch up to her.

The last few weeks had been occupied adjusting to what was apparently going to be her life for the foreseeable future. And that was a lot to take in. She still wasn't completely ready to accept it. But now, at the very least, there'd settled over her something of an understanding. Every morning, she would wake up in this place. And every evening, she would fall asleep in it. With that settled, the guilt had slowly started to creep into the corners of her consciousness. She was here and her friends were back there and going to face the Predators without her. She couldn't accept that. Accepting it meant she'd abandoned them.

So she needed to occupy her time and her mind in anyway that forced her to think about something else. The old schoolhouse seemed like a good starting point. Except that as soon as she arrived, she was reminded of the night of the Rain. The place was a disaster. A fucking disaster.

Well. Maybe that was a blessing in disguise. Rooting around for paper would be an occupation in the extreme. But she'd only gotten started when she heard a distant fuck. Someone speaking her language. That was nice. She turned her face up, cupping one hand around her mouth. "Marco?" she called, hoping whoever it was knew how to play Marco Polo.

[theintercessor]

The voice pulls his gaze back around, checking the other side of the structure when the path proves clear. There's nothing prowling or scavenger about him in the moment--he's a deer with its head up, swiveling for danger, even if it's just the danger of another conversation about impossible things in an impossible place.

Impossible is a favorite word, back home. It's a moat people like to dig around change, around deserters. Charlie used it like an incantation, shutting down anything he didn't want to hear about. Jude's starting to understand the desire.

Silence serves him just as well, though. He kicks the book toward the kindling pile and picks up a plank, warped but not yet brittle from the elements. It trails almost to the ground in his hand, disturbing the grass in a snaking pattern at his side as he moves around a standing piece of what must have been a wall. Seeing a girl on the other side doesn't prompt him to drop it, but he hefts it more like a walking stick than a weapon. She looks more like a girl from school than anyone he'd have met in town, hair bleached and outfit comprised of the same things he'd crawled out of the fountain in.

Leaning onto the brace of the plank in his hand, he settles his other hand in the pocket at his hip, still assessing her from behind his dark bangs. "Are you looking for someone?"

[thegreatexperiment]

There was an odd sense of familiarity to the boy. Not in the recognition sort of way. She had no idea who the fuck he was or what the fuck he was doing. But...well. He had a look that she knew well. The sort of emo look of every guy she'd ever seen in one of her goth clubs. It was the hair, mostly. And while Sam knew it was wrong to judge someone by their hair, she herself longed for the day that someone noticed her first for anything other than her hair.

Seriously. Her eyes. Her tits. Her left elbow.

Anything.

But now wasn't exactly the time for introspection. She was crap at it anyway.

"Not exactly," she replied. American accent. Horrendously Midwestern, but that wasn't her fault. "Thought I was the only one looting today." The phrase was said with surprisingly little in the way of forced casual. Looting and rioting had become somewhat commonplace back home, in spite of the recent efforts to regroup and rebuild. It would probably stay that way for awhile. Until the government managed to find a way to get the Feds in.

A prospect that she anticipated with both hope and dread in turn.

[theintercessor]

Shrugging, Jude pulls his posture back to straight and waves the plank over the littered area in a have at it gesture. "It's mostly junk," he says, intending for the majority of his findings to wind up in his fireplace when the weather turns. "I don't think they really had school here, I keep finding bits of board games and moldy survival books."

To illustrate, he uses the plank to tip a pile of its fellows over, revealing a few more playing cards trapped in long grass, and the torn cover of a U.S. Army manual.

"Are you looking for anything specific?"

[thegreatexperiment]

Yeah. That was pretty much junk. But Sam knew a few kids back at school who would be able to turn it all into some kind of brilliant collage, commenting on the state of materialism in America.

Or something.

The thought gave her a brief smile, anyway. Before she sighed and shook her head, toeing the Army manual. "I was looking for paper," she said. "And something to write or draw with. But I feel like I'm gonna need a tetanus shot for just looking at this shit."

She had to worry about that now, didn't she? Disease and infection. Three years had definitely left her taking her good health for granted. Yet another fucking adjustment to make.

house 23

[repressings]

It's hot. It's too hot, and even with cooler clothes--vaguely cooler thanks to Kira, and no, he won't give up being covered head to toe--it's still scorching.

He much prefers the winter.

He supposes he shouldn't complain at all, he should be glad he's alive, glad the Obscurial is gone, glad he hasn't had another nightmare since moving back in with Mr. Graves--at least not one about him. He's still not okay, but Credence is pretty sure he'll never be okay. What's important is that he's a little bit better than yesterday, and the day before that he'd been a little bit better than the day before that, and it stretched on. That doesn't change the fact that it's so hot he's tempted to dunk himself in the waterfall and not come out until he has to figure out supper for his housemate.

He settles on taking one of the many rags and bringing it to the cool water of the fountain, stopping at the inn to poke his head in--it's almost normal, he's almost normal--and he's barely out of the door and passed a few houses when he hears it.

Excuse me, unfamiliar and strange, and when Credence looks up he finds a boy with almost the exact same posture as he does when he gets nervous: straight, hands curled to his side, and he asks where people are and Credence doesn't answer, not right away, not when he swears he sees himself for a few moments.

"I..." He swallows and tries again. "Not as many as you'd hope, are you--are you new here, sir?"

[theintercessor]

It feels less like being sized-up than having been sized-up and already dismissed, which makes a kind of sense from a guy that tall with a stare that long. Jude's hackles stay exactly where they were, because he's not done assessing the situation.

The boy doesn't appear much older than him, but he's a little bigger, same lack of a haircut getting in his eyes--but his clothes aren't scrubs, and don't look like they fit him besides. Maybe he found them, like the linens in the house. Maybe he took them off someone smaller. He's one of the first people Jude's seen, but the relief is tempered by having no context for it.

At the very least, he has to assume the guy doesn't want to downgrade to the shit he woke up in.

Stuffing his hands into the short pockets of his black pants, Jude shrugs. He can't hide being new and still get information--he probably can't hide being new period. "What does being new here mean," he asks. "What is here?"

[repressings]

"It's hard to miss face in a place this small," he murmurs, almost as if he's talking to himself, like he's making excuses for being so bold and asking a question as simple as you're new, aren't you?

It's unnecessary, and Credence frowns slightly, wondering if he should have just gone right to it. The newcomer is asking the question he'd been waiting for, anyway. He's still getting used to this whole conversation thing, let alone conversing with new people, but he'll get this done, get this man figured out, and then tell Mr. Graves and maybe Kira and Bodhi about the new man he met with floppy hair and a pointed nose. It will be a victory.

"We're not really sure, sir. I think we've just been calling it the village... Do you maybe want to get out of the sun? It's cooler, and I can answer anything you'd like."

[theintercessor]

"Show me what's in there," he says, pointing to the large building a short distance from the house he'd slept in. There's another across the path, next to a building that looks like a storm ripped it apart before the heat wave, but neither structure is as big as this.

They could go back to the house, of course, but he's cautious to invite anyone in. It's not like he owns it, and they might see fit to enforce that fact.

Without waiting for a reply, he walks toward the entrance. It probably isn't a very vital or satisfying question to have answered--but the more he hears I don't know the more his head spins, and the more his head spins the more his throat closes up, and he knows if he really pushes it something in his head is going to cut all his strings and drop him to the ground. If he can't cobble some control together, he can at least pretend by ordering someone with milder manners around.

fountain-ish but really in the trees after the fountain lmao

[fightsinheels]

Isabelle doesn't spend a lot of time in the woods, unless she's making her way to or from the hot spring or the waterfall. These days, she's not spending much time at the hot spring at all, finding it far too hot to deal with. It's a miracle she still does her daily workout with the heat that presses down on them. She's not used to it — her New York is a dark, starless sky, nighttime providing a brilliant break from any sort of heat.

She's sick and tired of the sun, and she's sick and tired of it being out all the time. It's too hot, too difficult to sleep because she feels like she's suffocating in the pressing heat. The light itself doesn't bother her so much — she's always been one to sleep through the morning, just from being out all night.

Right now, the trees provide some of the best shade there is in the village. It's too stuffy inside, and the river's been getting lower and lower on them. Definitely not a good sign. She doesn't know shit about what sort of plants are safe to eat, and she's not exactly in any position to hunt animals. Granted, there's a machete strapped to one hip with some rigged up holder made of curtain and cord, but she doesn't trust enough in her own skills to kill a wild animal with it. Not until she's gotten more used to not having her powers. Maybe she'd have the confidence if Alec or Jace were with her, somebody to back her up.

But she's alone. And she hates it.

Maybe shorts and a sports bra weren't the best things to wear into the woods, but it's too hot for anything else. She's gotten herself a nice collection of nicks and scratches on her pale skin from sticks and thorns she didn't quite manage to sidestep. She's stopped to examine one that's etched itself through one of the runes on her legs, and when she looks up, it's just in time to see a boy come around a sheet of bushes and trees.

"Hey," she calls, if only because he's unfamiliar, and looks a little bit scared out of his mind. "You lost?"

[theintercessor]

The trees aren't as familiar as they feel like they should be, tall pines and shading oaks over surprisingly dry brush. Sticks and ferns keep breaking under his feet, his boots hardly sink into the parched earth. It's the buildings that really disorient him--not so primitive that they'd be entirely out of place in his neck of the woods, but places he's never seen before.

He's crossing behind the largest one yet when the voice reaches him, and he makes for the nearest tree before stopping, putting it between himself and the--girl.

It isn't the lack of shirt that makes him stare, or the toned muscle he hasn't even seen on some of the dance students back home. It isn't the tattoos, or the machete--but the combination of all four, the first person he's seen some kind of five-foot amazon, greeting him like he's the idiot who went camping on the serial-killer infested mountain.

He only hesitates long enough close his eyes, take a deep breath, and look again in case the tattoos or the machete aren't really there. When the image sticks, he shakes out his dripping hair, steps one foot on the other to shuck of his waterlogged boots, and runs along the wall behind him until the trees open to a wide field.

Finding a worn path through what looks like designated, if scorched growing areas, he sets off again, fighting his wet clothes and the oppressive heat to make it across to another stand of trees.

[fightsinheels]

"Hey-- wait!"

He's running. It's appalling enough to her that she doesn't move to follow him right away. Never before in her life can she remember somebody actually running away from her. Not demons, not werewolves or vampires that have gone rouge. Even when they know they're in for a fight, they at least stay and try to win. Of course, they always lose. But at least they never run.

Heaving a sigh, she takes off after him, snatching his boots along the way when she passes by them. He'll want them later, she imagines, and with the way the trees like to change around them, they'll be a bitch to find if left there. She doesn't try to catch up to him — she thinks she could, even though he runs like he knows what he's doing. Scaring him isn't her goal here, and trying to catch him and physically stop him isn't going to help matters any. So instead, she matches his pace a safe distance behind him, gathering her voice so her shout will reach his ears.

"I'm not going to hurt you! I want to help."

[theintercessor]

Jude clears enough of the field to duck into a makeshift tent, tarps strung ground to tree to shade some kind of garden. It sways him to listen more than her words or slow approach do--gardening means something, he thinks. There are enough people to set this up, which means hearing her out might be more in his favor than hiding in the woods, trying to steal food from this area later.

That probably would find him on the other end of a machete, if holding still long enough for her to get close doesn't.

"If you want to help, stay the fuck back," he calls, moving to the tarp's edge to peer outside, finding her at a distance in the field he just crossed. Disappearing again, he scatters his gaze for a weapon, finding a short, compact shovel dug into the dry soil between the plants. Once he has the heft of it comfortable in his hands, he stalks out into view, handle in-hand and the tip just-tilted up from the ground. "Who are you?"

fountain

[onlyeverdoubted]

When Bodhi thinks back to his own adventure in the fountain, he tends to mostly feel silly. He's a little ashamed of the brief flash of exoneration he feels when a man emerges shaking and confused and clearly frightened. One of those little mental blips you know better than to share with anyone. He hasn't witnessed many arrivals--only the heat is tempting him close to the fountain, which he remains rather suspicious of. Could be most of them are like this, and in either case, his duty here is pretty clear.

He doesn't try to get close and does his best to keep his voice even despite having to be loud enough to be heard. He has a distinct advantage trying to be non-threatening. Being short and fine-boned has its advantage, though he does suddenly wish he'd given in to Kira's judgemental eye rolling and done something about the overlong beard. At least the spots where his undercut has grown out a bit just look a little silly. Shirtless in the heat may not be the best look, but at least it's clear he isn't armed. "Hello? You... You're not in danger." Probably, unless something else strange is about to happen, but that would be especially bad timing.

[theintercessor]

Hair still dripping into his face, Jude pushes a hand up against it, to shove it out of his eyes and wipe some of the water away. Getting a better look at the man doesn't make him feel any better--he looks kind of like the old mining photos back home, that rangy bird of prey look with his hair sticking out at the sides to break up the silhouette of his longer hair and beard. The same big, dark eyes that seemed to stay with you after you put the photo away, walked away from the wall at the diner or the memorial case at school.

There aren't any miners left at home: that always seemed married into every reason home sucked.

"Who the fuck are you," Jude asks, sniffing once before shaking his head against the water in his hair and on his face. He'll be the judge of any danger, and his gaze flicks between the man and the ground, looking for some kind of edge if it comes to a fight. Plenty of rocks within reach, and enough distance he thinks he can grab one before the guy makes it to him.

[onlyeverdoubted]

"I came out of the fountain, too." Technically that isn't really an answer to the question, but it's the important thing here. Introductions are a piece of awkwardness for later. "All of us did. There's a lot--there's more to it than that, but that's where to start?" Everything else made sense or didn't according to that central point. Come out of the fountain, enter the village. Bodhi's more willing than most to accept and embrace that approach, but he still thinks it's the most important beginning. "We should really put up a sign, actually..." He shrugs sheepishly, eyes down and twisting the end of his ponytail around his fingers. No, there's no good way to do this.

[theintercessor]

"Yeah," he says, voice a blunt object to beat the air with, keep the man at his distance. Until it cracks on the absurdity, "definitely, a sign." His eyes dart to the rocks again, the pack at the man's feet, the treeline behind him. Technically there's a treeline behind Jude as well, and he can retreat into it, doesn't have to get around this guy. Doesn't have to put him on the ground.

He doesn't want to, watching him twist that lank hair around a thin finger. The guy seems less like one to do harm than some kind of specter, or some kind of bait. The weakest on a totem pole sent out to put people off their guard, and Jude doesn't wish him ill but he isn't about to drop it.

"You come up out of that," he confirms, pointing at the fountain's gently rippling surface. "How? There were walls, it has a bottom."

House 23

[71st_victor]

It figures that in the middle of Johanna's walk to the waterfall that she gets someone wandering down the steps asking if there's many people here. She lets her gaze slide over him, arching a brow, and deciding that if this were actually the Games, she'd have him on the ground in the next minute. Still, that wouldn't exactly be any fun and they're not fighting in the Games, are they? She doesn't have to answer him, but she can practically hear Finnick in her head telling her to play nice.

Letting out an annoyed breath, she rests a hand on her hip, staring at the man. "What's your definition of many?" she says. "Sometimes, twenty-four people is just too goddamn much, other times, so's ten or six." Especially when you just want things to be over. Since he's asking this and she hasn't really seen him around, Johanna gets the idea she knows where he just came from.

"Let me guess, you swam out of a fountain today?"

[theintercessor]

"Yesterday," he corrects, as little as he can tell the passage of time from the sun in this place. He slept: it's yesterday.

Jude's used to being sized up, usually by people with a couple of weight classes on him and attitudes less aggrieved than hoping his silhouette correlates to his dick size, ready to bark at him all afternoon just in case it doesn't. He's had to bite a few just to show them how it's done, but he'd approached her, and this doesn't warrant more than crossing his arms and shrugging, hip canted opposite her own.

At least this one isn't running around with a machete.

"More than four, I don't know. Whatever number makes it seem like I didn't hit my head or win the worst possible vacation in a spam email."

[71st_victor]

She dismissively rolls her eyes, because she doesn't care when the kid got there. Honestly, she's not even sure she cares about why he's here, even, but 'play nice' keeps rattling around her brain. "I don't know, forty? Fifty? I don't really sit around and count people as they go," she says, but she does keep an eye on how many of them there are. She also keeps an eye on whether they're an ally or a threat and whether they can offer anything to her personally.

You have to look out for yourself first, right? "Why, you have ambitions for something that requires a certain amount of people?" she deadpans. "Really intense game of tug of war?"

[theintercessor]

"It's a fucking question." Jude doesn't have the guile to complicate his motives, or be the kind of person who answers questions with questions. People keep saying they've gone through the same thing he has, like you can tell a barking dog that you've met a stranger before and calm it down, but he keeps waiting for any of them to make sense.

For all the years it had taken for people back home to make sense, studied at a distance, tested up close. The idea of jumping new hoops with a new lot just has him back at campus orientation, bristling all over at his new peers until they'd proven harmless.

College had been a place to leave his roots behind and try something new, but he'd eventually chosen to be there. Didn't have to drown in his sleep to get there, either. "Do you know where anyone else is from," he asks, then clarifies before she can question that too: "if anyone's from Hollow Creek, old mining town? I hadn't found anyone before waking up here."

house 23

[powerunleashed]

Jean was busy trying to remember all the information Logan had crammed into her about edible plants and fire breaks and all the stuff she apparently needed to know to survive out here in the middle of nowhere that there was a clear delay between what the guy said and her brain processing it. She stopped for a moment and squinted her eyes against the harsh sunlight, trying to parse what he'd said.

"People here? Yeah, there's...four or five dozen, maybe? We haven't done a census or anything so I don't have an accurate headcount for you but I think we're looking at something between fifty and sixty."

[theintercessor]

She's slim, red hair grown out long enough he can't place her age--young in the face, but it was always the older girls back home who split the difference between Alanis Morissette waves and pixie bobs. Melissa's had grown down to her ass, and she'd had some spray she used, smelled a little like rubbing alcohol and made her dirty blonde hair look like a mermaid's.

He wonders what she's up to as much as he wonders where anyone is, and fifty isn't enough to fit the whole town here with the strangers he's already met, but he hadn't searched the entire town before waking up here. "Is there anyone here from Hollow Creek," he asks, "old mining town in Pennsylvania?"

[powerunleashed]

Jean thought for a moment, racking her brain for every name and place of origin that she'd heard tossed around in the village. Hollow Creek didn't ring a bell to her but he was from the northeast, at least, and so was she. It was a start.

"No, I don't know it and I haven't heard anyone else mention it. I'm from Syracuse," she offered. "But I went to boarding school downstate. We had some students from Pennsylvania but it was always either Philadelphia or Pittsburgh, never anywhere small."

[theintercessor]

That makes sense: nobody in Hollow Creek was sending their kids to boarding school. The people who had gotten wealthy enough off the mines had long moved on, had never really lived in the town to begin with. They flew in every once in awhile to tell the stragglers of their operations what a good job they were doing, or to negotiate the occasional strike with a round of pink slips.

He hardly even saw those types at school, either. There were better places to go when you and the state weren't paying for it.

It didn't mean no one was here, though, just meant they hadn't mentioned home, or hadn't mentioned it to her. "You know anyone goes by Charlie or Parker? Charlie's my dad, broader than me, sleeve tattoo looks like a bad Ghost Rider print?"