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 rarely thought about her Shadowhunter marks. Over the course of the last few weeks they had become natural for her to wear and she sometimes forgot that they were there until she needed them. It wasn't second nature to her like it was to Izzy, Alec and Jace.

Her attention turned towards the drying paper, her expression thoughtful before turning back to Jude again. He seemed nice enough and Clary figured she'd get an ax-murder vibe if he was really going to do anything strange. She wasn't defenseless but she didn't have her Stele or her sword and she was used to accidentally running head first into a dangerous situation.

At least her father wasn't here.

"Sure." Water sounded good considering how hot it was outside. "You think there is a place that I can get some paper?" To be able to sketch again, even if it's just a little, would be magical for Clary. Maybe they could do this D&D style and trade or something. Not that Clary had that many useful skills growing up in the concrete wilds of Brooklyn.

Jude doesn't know why he's always so softly surprised by the demand for paper. He'd started making it at a single request, and really, for himself--but it disappeared off the shelves at the inn, and he got requests from plenty of people he's met. Maybe if the three he has in mind don't take too much work, he'll keep making journals out of what he can find for binding.

The observers, whatever people call them, are something he tries not to think about. Taking control of one small supply has helped. "I make it for everyone," he says, in case that wasn't clear. Holding the door another moment until she could slip inside, he leaves it to open and close on the breeze, heading deeper into the house.

Before he hunts a mug for the tap, he takes a moment to stir the pot again. The water is slowly boiling off the sludge of broken down plants and sheets, until he can spread layers of it on the screens from collapsed houses. "I've got some here, and when you run out, I leave it at the Inn's storage when I finish a batch."

Paper was something special. Not what it was but what you could do with it. It was the only medium that Clary felt like she could use to communicate without fail or misinterpretation. She didn't think she was as skilled as her mother but it was something she loved. It was a shred of normalcy that had stay with her through the upheaval of her life and the introduction into the Shadowhunters life. Having a way to draw while she was here made the village appear a little more bearable. Like Salem with the sun shining.

She stepped behind Jude while her eyes mapped out his home. It was like a few of the other houses she's seen though it wasn't broken down and there were small pieces that told her that someone lived here. The biggest indication had been the paper but there were other things too. Inside felt normal.

Clary peeked into the pot and winkled her nose at the sight of the sludgy pieces. That was paper. She told herself before turning to look back at Jude. "Really? That's awesome." Wait. "Is there anything to write with at the Inn? I haven't actually looked." She'd been more enthralled by this new world.

As far as he knew, writing utensils were personal items, except for what chalk they had on the board. His own pencils were taken from the piles of supplies after the earthquake, donated by someone who had little use for them. A friend of Credence, he thinks, one of the people who had been hovering when they returned.

The colored pencils he doesn't think he can part with, but he has a few graphite. "You gotta sharpen them with knives," he warns, "but I can give you one for now. Sometimes items appear, I got some clothes in a box, but nothing to write with."

Filling the glass while she pokes around, he turns and holds it out. "I've seen people use sticks, just carve up the tip and use some grit from a fireplace."

Clary noticeably brightened when he mentioned that he had a pencil that she could use. There was no way that she'd be able to hide her excitement. "Really? I can do that." She paused. "Sharpen it. I was an art student. Am-" She corrected herself. "...an art student." Not that she could technically continue being a student here but after everything that's happened she never once stopped thinking of herself as an artist.

"I can repay you." She paused. "Some how." Clary tried to think of a way that she could repay him but the only thing that came to mind would be drawing something and she didn't think he'd want that. "I'll think of something or maybe I can help you here." It would take a lot of instruction but Clary thought she could do it.

She took a sip of the water before speaking again. "Thank you." She thought about using ash as a writing source. "Ashe is very close to graphite." It would be softer than most pencils but she could probably make that work too.

"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.

"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."

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.

"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."

She watched Jude sit and kept her gaze on him as she spoke. "Then you can draw me." It wouldn't change his subject for long but it was something that she could offer that didn't involve upsetting random strangers. She didn't mind being drawn, she didn't even have to see the outcome.

Clary was entirely the sort of person who would draw someone without their consent and then hide the drawing afterwards. Not for fear of reprimand but because it would be how she saw that person which could sometimes be embarrassing. "Unless you don't want too." She didn't think she was a particularly interesting subject.

"I've been to upstate New York and a handful of other weird places." Clary had no idea what to call an alternate timeline where your dad wasn't a crazy mass murder and there wasn't any magic. "A friend of my mom's would take us camping sometimes. It was always too quite. Do you like it better that way?" She took a seat next to him, resting her hands on either side of her hips. "Quiet, I mean."

"I'll keep it in mind," he answers with a shrug. Plenty of people at school modeled for class, and if she's from a similar background, he doesn't take it like any kind of demand. He'd like better to render her hair in color, he thinks, but with his limited supplies, there's no telling what he'll manage.

Looking around at his landscapes, there's plenty of skill in them--but they're born out of necessity. "I didn't draw a lot from life, back home. I thought--my friend and I would make comic books or something. Seems silly to keep at it out here, though, with so much else to do."

He doesn't think the paper would hold up well, either.

"Nowhere's really quiet enough, I guess. We had earthquakes the other week, but--yeah, I'd rather be here than Manhattan."

The offer was there and Clary didn't think that she'd have a reason to retract it. Jude was nice and not at all creepy despite having a map on his wall; which was traditionally a serial killer thing. Here it at least made sense.

She walked over to where he was sitting and took a seat at his side, her fingers curled over the side of the bench while a bright smile pulled across her lips. "Wait really? I was drawing a comic with my best friend. I couldn't write it. Simon said that everything I came up with sounded too cheesy. That or it referenced Star Wars and I think he got tired of it." She laughed, knowing that Simon had only been teasing her at the time.

Clary's head tilted to the side, a short huff of hair slipping from her lungs. She really didn't know if she could sleep in all this quiet but she also didn't want to put her problems on someone she just met. Everyone probably had problems here.

Having her sit where he sleeps shouldn't bother him, so he covers any sign with a shrug and looks out at the room again. He invited her in; he invited her to look at the drawings. That's more personal than her ass on his blanket. People should be comfortable where he lives. That should be a thing to strive for.

Growing up in the trailer, he hadn't exactly invited kids over. Whenever breaks came up for school, he wasn't the one offering up his place off-campus to stay. Charlie would have been glad to meet someone who wasn't Parker, but Jude couldn't imagine anyone else seeing that town.

"I couldn't write mine either. Left on my own I'd just draw whatever I felt like and nothing would go anywhere. Sometimes other people have better ideas."

Clary had been too swept up in Jude's artwork to realize that this was also his bedroom. The blanket that was draped across the seat should have been a clue but she was a little to excited to notice. She hadn't thought she'd met someone here that was familiar with drawing, let alone drawing a comic for a friend. The conversation was so normal which was strange considering where they were currently stuck.

It was nice.

She smiled at Jude, holding back a laugh as fond memories were coaxed to the forefront of her mind. "I think so too. I'd say we should draw something like that here but with no one to write it we might just end up going in circles." She was kidding but it was a fun thought to entertain.

"Do you know what you and your friends comic was about? Simon's story was a little like a D&D campaign. I liked drawing the battle scenes but I wasn't so sure why they were fighting." She didn't always ready the text and when she was inking everything she was to focused on getting it perfect to actually read the story that Simon had written.

His project with Parker isn't something Jude often talked about, even when pieces of it had hung on the walls of both their bedrooms growing up, and eventually taken over his dorm in Pittsburgh. Most people back home didn't want to know, and school was--well, bringing up work usually just prompted comparisons to someone else's, and an excuse to bust out a portfolio.

It hadn't been as tedious as it maybe should have: Jude's favorite thing about school had been seeing other people's work. Teachers, upperclassman galleries, a classmate's sketchbook--there hadn't been access to anything like it at home. He'd been alone, even with Parker to paint scenes and make requests. It wasn't the same as seeing what Parker saw. It wasn't the same as getting that view into what a person could project onto the world with their hands.

He'd also gotten a lot fewer sideways glances at school, when the subject of his work came to light. "It was about the end of the world, I guess. Like, demons living over our shoulders, what they'd look like. Not like drawing trees."

Clary only showed off her work when prompted too. She did like seeing other peoples work, but her reaction and level of excitement varied from person to person. Being stuck in the middle of who-knows-where with no way to get back made her more interested in Jude's work; more than she might have been back home.

Like a man dying of thrust in the dessert, Clary was grasping for similarities.

"That sounds pretty cool." However, her experience with demons sent a shiver down her spine. "Okay, weird question but there are no demons looking over our shoulders here… right." He was probably going to look at her as if she was crazy.

Before his expression could change, she held up her palms in a defensive gesture. "Not saying it is possible or anything but I did just appear through a fountain which is like the start of a really strange hero's tale type of thing and I wouldn't put it past this place." She wasn't particularly interested in another journey, there were things she had to do back home.

The question makes his blood run cold: in a direct way, he isn't sure why. Or--she shouldn't be able to ask something that direct, even with what he said about the comic. That was just fiction, as far as anyone was concerned. Only he and Parker knew it was anything else, and even they didn't really talk about it.

Parker saw things. Jude just believed him.

Nobody had to know if any of the things in his sketchbook were more than his imagination. If he blinked things out of existence, if the world smelled rotten sometimes. It's happened less since he arrived here, not more, and he doesn't know what that means because he's not going to think about it. Looking at Clary from the side, leaned elbows to knees, all he can do is shrug: "If it's some kind of hero thing, nobody's gotten very far on that," he says. "Nobody's even figured out why we're really here, or how to get out. Some people don't even seem to care if we do."

He wouldn't put himself in that group, but he doubts his ability to contribute enough that he's left it to others, and stuck to making paper.

A year ago Clary would had said that there were no such thing as demons. Now she knew better. She had fought against vampires and werewolves and a whole manner of creatures that she had thought to be bed time stories. If someone said that it existed, she was likely to believe it.

She exhaled when he didn't answer the demon question. There might be something here, lurking in the shadows. "Well, not everyone is cut out to be a hero." Clary didn't think that she was a hero. "Yeah, I've heard that but also that no one knows why we're here." It was a bit of a frightening thought.

She gave Jude a small smile. "I think it'll work itself out before everyone here though." Her attention pulled back to his drawings. "Right. The plants." She stood back up while diverting the topic back to an earlier subject. "You were going to tell me what I need to look for so that I can help with the paper process. You'll have to show me because I don't know the names of any plants." That aren't common flowers you'd find in a flower shop.

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

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