sixthiterationlogs | 001 - Adding a bit more Flourish to it

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001 - Adding a bit more Flourish to it - [OPEN]

WHO: Clary Fray
WHERE: Fountain & Village & River
WHEN: August 1st to August 6th
OPEN TO: EVERYONE
WARNINGS: Drowning? (Note: Scrub color is black.)

Fountain: Arrival [Aug 1]

Clary inhaled, feeling a cool rush of water fill her lungs. Her chest burned while panic tightly constricted around her heart. She flailed wildly in the water, kicking her arms and legs out in a futile effort to swim. The water stung her eyes when she tried to open them. Clary had always hated opening her eyes underwater but she needed to see.

'I need to breathe! She thought, forcing herself to calm down enough to escape a rather pathetic watery death. After everything she's been through, she's not going to have 'death by water' on her tombstone. Clary saw a blurry smudge of light in the distance and swam towards it.

She broke the surface of the water, coughing and gasping for air. Bright orange hair plastered to her cheeks and neck as she made her way to the fountain's ledge.

It was only when she was pulling herself over the edge of the fountain that she felt the weight of the pack on her back. A groan of complaint vibrated through her torso, even as she managed to tumble herself and the backpack onto the pavement. Clary was laying on her back. The backpack was a surprisingly comfortable pillow though that might have just been in comparison to the water. The sun shined pleasantly in the sky, warming her limbs and face.

Clary decided that it wasn't worth getting up. She'd happily lay there until someone told her to move. Maybe she was in central park? That's the only place that she can think of with a fountain. Either way, Clary knew that someone would find her and she'd sort it out then.

Around the 6I Village [Aug 2-4]

Clary really didn't know what to think of this place. She had named the village Salem in her mind, the broken buildings and dreary feeling reminded her of a town where hundreds of girls burned at the stake. It probably wasn't the best name but the village was surprisingly less daunting with a name attached to it.

She wound her way through the houses, inspecting the ones that were broken and then knocking at the homes that looked like someone lived there. If no one replied, she'd peak inside to see what was there. Clary was naturally curious and not at all shy or hindered by the unknown. This wasn't nearly as scary as trying to get Simon out of the Hotel Dumort.

Clary would take the time to stop and stare at the houses or setting around her. She tried to figure out how she'd draw it: what colors she would use or how certain objects might appear out of focus. At the end of each day, she'd find herself at the inn, usually hungry and sitting at the bar like a ghost might come and take her order.

She was new at this whole survival thing and Brooklyn had pizza. She really missed pizza.

At the River [Aug 5]

Clary was both happy and sad to see Izzy in the village with her. She was happy to see her friend and to know that she wasn't alone but it also made her think about home. How was her mother doing? And Simon? What about Jace? She wondered if any of them missed her. She didn't particularly worry about Alec missing her; he was with Magnus and starting towards his happiness.

She missed her sketchbook. It gave her the ability to get all of her worries out of her head and onto a piece of paper. Without it, her thoughts jumbled together in a messy knot that she didn't know how to untangle. A groan pulled from Clary's lips as she took a seat near the water's edge. She watched the waves for a few seconds before pulling off her scrubs and jumping in.

Clary hadn't been in water since almost drowning in the fountain a few days before and as much as she wanted to avoid it, she felt gross. She had never gone this long without a shower. After drenching herself in water, she floated lazily on the surface of the river.

"This place feels too much like the Twilight Zone." She mumbled to no one in particular.

The Breach Between 6I and 7I: Small Earthquake [Aug 6]

Clary first heard about the mysterious second village at the inn, when she had eavesdropped on two people discussing their plans to cross the breach. She hadn't asked about it then but she couldn't stop thinking of the possibilities that lay on the other side of the ridge. Peeked by her curiosity and her ever-rampant thoughts, Clary decided to head to the breach to check it out for herself.

She wasn't completely unfamiliar with bouldering but the path was not as clear as she thought it would be. She took careful steps over small rocks and then slipping between larger boulders that stood like giants in the path.

Clary was halfway through the breach when the earth began to shake. She'd gotten used to the small tremors over the last few days but she hadn't been standing in a small crevasse in the ground back then. A surprised scream tore from her throat as she ran back the way she had come. Peddles and rocks loosened from above her, falling on her head like rain drops falling from the sky.

She ran out of the breach, stumbling to the ground as the earthquake ended. Clary's head was shaking as she tried to regain her balance. She tasted blood in her mouth and felt a soft sting along her cheek. If she had managed to get out of that with a bloody lip and a few thin cuts then she was happy.

"Okay. Maybe I won't go that way." Clary was talking to the rocks and seriously hoping that they could feel her displeasure.

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Clary didn't mind swimming in her underwear. It was the same as being in a bathing suit and as long as someone didn't watch her strip down it didn't feel any different or intimate. What struck her as odd was the fact that this guy was going to swim naked and decided the he needed to announce it. That felt excessive and for the first few seconds she couldn't find the voice to reply back to him.

When it was clear that he was going to strip down completely she turned away to avoid seeing Jax in all of his naked glory. She wasn't as comfortable with nudity as some were. Not to say she was a prude but walking around naked certainly destroyed the mystery of it.

"Thanks for the heads up." Her voice dripped with sarcasm. She'd wait to hear the sound of him getting into the water and then turn back around. At least that way she doesn't have to see what the cold does to his… yup, she's not even going to think about that. "For the record. I was here first." Clary had no interest in giving in to some self-important jerk. "Do you just strip down in front of everyone? What if I was under-aged? That's creepy." Considering how old he looked it was probably creepy given the age gap anyway. That was something else that Clary really didn't want to think about.

Clary gathered her hair in her palm and then twisted the bright orange strands to try to get as much water out of it as humanly possible. It would still drip down her back but it wouldn't soak her to the point that it was uncomfortable. When she released her hair, her bright green gaze focused back on Ravi.

"For the record. That is a really creepy and kind of awkward thing to say and we can just leave that thought process there." She was a lot more comfortable now that he wasn't staring either. "Let's just start over. I'm Clary. I'm also pretty sure I'd still eat talking food too." Living was more important than worrying about crying fruit though she was sure it might have caused a moral dilemma with Simon, who has been a vegetarian since he was young. It had mostly been due to food allergies but over time he had embraced it and found creative ways to protest animal cruelty.

Anyway, "What are you testing the water for?" She'd like to know since she was just swimming in it.

Clary blinked, her arms belatedly rising to return her friends hug. She didn't know that it had been four months since Izzy had seen anyone from home. Isabelle had been standing next to her when they woke up her mother. It had only been a few moments ago and now… now Clary had no idea where she was.

Silence stretched a bit before she untangled herself from the other Shadowhunter. She stayed close, keeping a hand on Izzy's shoulder to assure her that she was here with no intentions of suddenly vanishing. Clary didn't know how likely that was but it felt important. Bright green eyes studied Izzy, the confusion in her expression growing with each passing moment.

"Are you okay? What's happened? Where is…" She looked around again. "-everyone." A block of ice settled in her stomach as chills prickled uncomfortably at her skin.

"Sure," he says, lifting his head in a slow nod for the overflow of words. Stolid by nature, he tends to let others speak their fill, filtering out what he needs or wants to know from it and carrying on through the rest. As she spoke, he'd moved back over the stove, stirring the pot again.

"I guess, I could show you the plants that seem to work for it, if you wanted to gather more." That was really the thing that slowed him down, as he ran out of linens to tear up and boil. The recipe had to keep being adjusted for more plants, and then he had to go get enough of them to make it worth a day's work of boiling and drying.

Stepping back from the steam and flames, he wipes at his brow, lifting his hair up from his face. "You can just use the charcoal too," he adds, now that he knows she might be used to that kind of thing. "I always liked that better than graphite."

Clary was usually quick to say the first thing that came to mind. While others called it impulsive, she liked to think of the trait as charming. It was also one that she shared with her mother. This often lead to most of those rare mother/daughter fights that involved Clary storming out and heading to Simon's house. No fight was complete without someone slamming at least one door.

She eyed the plants that swirled in the pot. They didn't look like any plant that she's ever seen though Clary was only really familiar with basic groove trees since that's all that's in Central Park. "Yeah. If you can show me what they look like." Clary looked back up at him, taking another sip of the water he had handed her. She kept forgetting that she was holding it, her attention drawn to pretty much everything else in the room.

Her lips tugged into an excited smile. "Same. Charcoal is better for shading." She liked to use both graphite and charcoal together at times. Using a hard pencil to create rigid lines in between the soft rolling text of the charcoal. For a few seconds she studied Jude's features. They were softer than most guys she knew but in that sense they were a little more pleasant to look at. She slowly began to map how she would draw him in her head, his shadow would be darker than normal with the light coming from somewhere overhead.

It took her a moment to return back to the conversation. "You draw?"

"Yeah," he answers easily, though it comes with a skip-beat moment and question--does he show what he's done, does it matter one way or the other? His work is the only area he'd ever let anyone call him shy, but it's also the only thing of himself worth showing off. It always felt like a break in the wall of Jude Sullivan, to flip open the sketchbook and show the things in his head.

Thankfully, what he has to show off here are landscapes. "Here," he says, "if you want to see."

Walking toward the dining room, with its window bench where he's moved most of the bed things, he's managed to use recovered nails to pin the big sheets of raw paper up on the walls. There's a crude map in one corner, then just--trees, caves, collapsed houses. Thick shadows painting foreboding between thin trunks; lighter grey spaces for the mystery of dusk on the forest's edge. In another corner, there's a field in foggy, smudged lack of detail. That one isn't the canyon, just--trying to remember home before he arrived. "There are a lot of trees to sketch," he tells her wryly, like that's all there is to it.

It was easy for Clary to understand Jude's hesitance.

It was more than just a picture or whatever designation that society decided to give it. It was an expression of who someone was. Like a piece of your soul that was out there for the world to see. She has had many sketchbooks and out of all of them, there was always the one that she didn't share with others. It was as much as a sketchbook as it was a diary.

Her mother had once told her that only the brave could be artists.

Leaving her water on the counter, she followed him into the dining room. "This is amazing." Her voice was soft as if anything above a whisper might break the image that she was looking at now.

She took her time looking at his drawings, smiling when he mentioned the trees. She noticed an abundance of trees too. "You could always draw some of the people here."

Her eyes followed the lines that were naturally set in the handmade paper. Starting near the crude map, Clary let her gaze wander over the each piece of the image. She didn't know all of the area's in the town yet but she recognized the trees and houses. The drawing gave her the same feeling that she got walking through town. It was the feeling that made her compare the village to Salem or a ghost town struggling to rise above the eerie fog that surrounded it. She took a half step closer, pointing to the field. "This… is this here?" She asked as she turned to look back at Jude. She didn't remember this field and it was so unclear that it might be anywhere.

"Haven't seen anyone underaged yet so unless you're announcing that you are, I'm not really worried about it. Besides, it's just swimming and I'm in the water," Jax says, shrugging a little.

"It's not really going to matter that much in the grand scheme of things. Not like we're hooking up or anything. Worried about your precious virtue?"

She wasn't underaged but admitting that wasn't going to help her point.

Clary turned back around when she was sure that he was in the water, her palms rested on her hips while bright green eyes directed a sharp glare his way. "Hardly." Her skin was marked similarly to Isabelle's with dark runes painting ancient shapes into her otherwise pale flesh. Clary had less than the veteran Shadowhunter but she was slowly gaining more marks with each new adventure.

"That doesn't mean you have to make your need to strip my problem." This was definitely in the top ten stupidest things to argue about but Clary didn't care.

"It's not in an obvious place. It's possible to miss it." He had, until someone had pointed it out to him. "I don't know if it's to scale or anything, but at least it shows what someone's already located." Which at least saves some time, in addition to being a reference.

"No. I was just about to head to the inn." Nothing important then. "I can show you where that map is."

He gives her a curious look, mainly to figure out if she really means that question or whether she's just having him on. When it seems like she really means it, he figures that he ought to roll with it, remember that not everyone comes here knowing everything, no matter how much Ravi would appreciate the instant download.

"Ravi," he introduces himself in turn, giving her a warm smile. "I'm testing the water to see which sources are healing," he says. "Like the way the fountain heals people on arrival or the spring heals people slowly," he shares. "That sort of thing."

"Nice tats," Jax says, ignoring her comment on his need to strip and focusing, instead, on the strange runes coloring her skin. He's seen them before, on Isabelle, and they seem like a strange and unique form of tattoo; clearly someone's been to the same artist.

"I'm going to make a shot in the dark here but are you from New York? I've seen that art before on someone. She's from New York."

Clary's lips twisted into a frown. "Shouldn't something that important be in an obvious place?" Erik was slowly defying Clary's expectations. He looked as if he wanted nothing to do with people but then invited to help her. He said that there was information about this village but not in an obvious place. This definitely felt like she sucked into the Twilight Zone.

She'd be careful but she did need more answers. "Sure. Lead the way." Clary wanted to see this map and possibly make plans to construct a better one. She wasn't a cartographer but she was an artist.

"So." She began as they walked. "You do anything fun here or is it dreary all the time?"

Clary blink and her expression blanked. "Healing water?" No one had told her about that. She had been at full health before her arrival and while Izzy said that there was a spring, she assumed at the other Shadowhunter went there for her hair and not for some magical healing properties. Thinking back to the way that Isabelle talked about it, it did make some sort of sense, and the longer that Clary thought about it the less weird it sounded.

"I did not know that." In case he was wondering why she had grown very quiet all of a sudden. "Ever think that maybe the well and the spring have the same source?" She pointed in the direction of the waterfall. "I don’t think that this does."

It was just because the source for the fountain and spring most likely came from underground, which meant that it could come from anywhere. The river came from the waterfall. Though, no one should ask the girl who spent her whole life in New York about water.

Not that Ravi was asking for her opinion but he got it nonetheless. "How do you test that anyway?"

Clary exhaled before replying to his question. "Yeah. Brooklyn." She paused, eyeing him skeptically. "Do I get a name to go along with those rippling pectorals or do I need to ask Izzy?" This was someone that Isabelle probably knew and in the back of her mind, Clary realized that she should be nicer. Except that, she didn’t want to be. Something about him bothered her.

It was probably his introduction.

Isabelle hadn’t told him about being a Shadowhunter. Clary didn’t know if there was a need for secrecy here it wasn’t just her secret to tell. She would have to talk to Izzy about it later or risk pissing off the only person in the village she knew.

"There's a lot to pay attention to around there." It's also possible that she's seen it and just didn't know what it was.

He steps out onto the porch and pulls the door closed behind him to head down the path in the direction of the inn.

"That depends on your definition of fun." There's no radio, or TV, so it's obviously limited, but they manage. "It's not all work all the time though, at least."

"Okay." She admitted with a shrug, following him from the front porch. "But I was asking you which means that I want to know based off your definition of fun." Not that she thought that this guy could have fun but her intent in the question had been to see if he was really uptight as he seemed.

Turned out that the answer to that was Yes.

"Like, going on walks: yes? no?" She walked at his side, her attention more on Erik than what was around them. "Nothing weird out there like mummies or zombies?"

"People-watching is a little different when there are only like, fifty people," he answers, shrugging. Sometimes he did try to sketch people, but he kept that in his pad, tucked away. Bodhi hadn't seemed thrilled to find himself on the page, even when Jude explained it was just his unusual clothing that caught his eye. "And the people aren't really the mystery, here."

People are a mystery everywhere, to him: if he couldn't figure them out after twenty years in Hollow Creek, he isn't going to crack it out here.

Tracking her through the room, Jude watches her finish at the picture of home, lifting a finger to it. He hadn't realized how it might stand out, the fields here full of crops and sunshine. "No," he admits, shaking his head. "That's--what I remember, before I got here. That's a field from home."

Every day, he gets closer and closer to the breach. He circles it, wary, similar not to a predator but instead prey. He looks not because he wants to attack it or explore, but because he finds it unsettling.

An entire village, apparently abandoned. Apparently rich with things the other does not. Not exactly a utopia, either, but Credence is still convinced it's a trick of some sort. Everything is, every little kindness the villagers are given turns into ash. It's a matter of time.

So he walks, and he stares, and sometimes he thinks and sometimes he doesn't. As he approaches it, he notices someone disappear into the small crevasse--only for the ground to rumble and for Credence to momentarily tense, crying out in fear and shrinking as small as he could as a knee-jerk reaction to it. The three days spent in a cave in peppers his mind, and he's learned to fear even the faintest of shaking in the ground.

When he looks up from his hunched up position, the girl is there again. Closer, with honeyed red hair stark against pale face. The red on her lip, too--

--he gasps, concerned, moving towards her, his normal self kicking in.

"Miss! Are you hurt? You're bleeding."

"I'm going for a walk right now." If that's an answer. "It's one of the few methods I've found of filling spare time." Since they don't have a lot of options. He could probably find something else if he really wanted, but so far he hasn't been inclined to do so.

"No one has reported seeing anything like a mummy or a zombie. Although there are sometimes new discoveries, and there's a lot of ground that hasn't been covered yet, so who knows what's really possible."

Clary's lips twisted into an expression that looked like a slanted faced emoji. "That's true but imagine people from different worlds and times. There are probably more different people here than in New York." That was definitely not true but Clary hasn't met everyone and she's imaging Fey or other races being brought here too. She didn't even consider that it might just humans and now Shadowhunters that have swam up through the fountain.

"I like it." She looked back at him with a small smile. "Your home." She would want to draw her home too and the people that she missed there. Anything to keep a small piece of them with her now.

"What is your home like? I'm from New York." She paused. "Brooklyn, specifically. I don't know if you've been to the concrete jungle or not but it's always loud and busy." Clary got the sinking feeling that this little village was going to be too quiet.

A few different thoughts skittered through Clary's mind when she heard the unfamiliar voice. The first was, 'what blood?' which made her lick her lips and think, 'blood tastes really coppery and kind of gross'. The final thought was something along the lines of 'who is this?'

It was then that Clary finally looked at Credence. He appeared rather skittish, polite but also a little withdrawn. Maybe she was imagining it? Clary tried to picture how she would have drawn him in her mind. It was always easier when she did that but for the moment, nothing inspirational came to her. He'd be in sharp focus, that much she knew, and it would be a drawing of his whole body but the rest of the page would be blank. Maybe his shadow but nothing else.

Clary blinked at him before realizing that she should really say something.

"Yeah, I've had worse." She shaken but Clary rolled with the punches as they came at her regularly. "You okay? You weren't near the rocks were you?"

That really didn't count as an answer but Clary wasn't in the mood to argue with someone who looked about as set in their ways as the Trix rabbit. She sighed softly and continued padding along beside Erik, her bright vibrant green eyes focusing on random objects that she hadn't remembered seeing during her first few passes around the village.

"Okay." She spoke in a decisive stubborn tone, "So they might be out there but you don't know. It doesn't sound like you're very surprised by it." She wondered if anything surprised this guy. "What is here? Like, flesh eating something or another… is that why the town is so empty?"

Clary had a lot more questions but Erik seemed like the one-question-a-time kind of guy.

"They are different," he agrees, lowering himself into the bench along the window. "What I mean is, they notice. They might not take kindly to it." In a park or behind a cafe window, you could be anonymous, tracking the shapes of people, learning how they take up space, how clothes fit them. "It isn't personal to you or me, but it can be to them."

When he tries to think about it the other way, Jude doesn't like the idea of being drawn either. Being noticed at all is unsettling.

"I'm from Pennsylvania, in the mountains. Went to school in Pittsburgh before this. My friends dragged me to New York for a weekend, and yeah, it was pretty loud. This place is more like where I grew up, if--missing some things. Like electricity."

Honestly, Isabelle's pretty sure she could kiss Clary right now, she's so happy to see her friend. She also feels like she could cry a little bit, but that's even less likely to happen. Instead she holds on tight, fingers tangling briefly in Clary's bright, damp hair, like she's afraid the other girl might disappear if she lets go. After a moment, she pulls back, but her hands still stay on Clary's shoulders, dropping down to grip her arms.

"I can't believe you're here," Isabelle says, dark eyes meeting the other girl's vibrant green ones. "But of course you are, who else would manage to find their way here but you--"

She stops, brow creasing faintly. Something's not right. Clary's reaction is-- off. "Clary, I haven't seen you in months. This village-- I've been stuck here."

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001 - Adding a bit more Flourish to it - [OPEN]

at the river

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The Breach;

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The Breach;

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