Owen Prichard (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
underpinnings) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
sixthiterationlogs2017-08-24 08:00 pm
underpinnings) wrote in sixthiterationlogs2017-08-24 08:00 pm
[OTA] in my right hand, there's the great unknown
WHO: Owen Prichard
WHERE: 6I Woods and river, 6I Inn, 7I Beach, others
WHEN: August 24 - 30
OPEN TO: OTA starters with caps
WARNINGS: Burn scar mentions, possible allusions to childhood abuse (blanket warning for the character and threads)
intro
It’s morning when Owen comes to in the water, swims for the pale yellow patch of sky, and pulls himself out of a fountain. Few and far between, it’s still deeper than any fountain he’s ever known, and the preoccupation with it is quickly replaced with preoccupation with: the trees, the morning sky, the gap between grinding cigarette butts under his foot in the Valley and — this.
Patting at his chest, he swipes the wide collar of a shirt wide over his shoulder, blindly checking himself as he stares wide-eyed and slack-jawed at the trees. Northern species, not even browning for autumn. Foot worn, patchy grass at his feet, a treeline broken in three directions. No tire tracks, no cigarette butts, no wrappers. He was on a street corner, getting ready to bail. Cloudy skies overhead, night painting the clouds purple against a setting sun. Now he’s in the woods, morning dew shining on the grass, starting to shiver in wet — something. Wet scrubs, he finds, looking down at his hands still searching for a jacket that isn’t there, pockets he doesn’t have. When he feels the back of his head for possible injury, even his fucking earrings are gone.
“Fucking shit,” he seethes, coughing once and looking over his shoulder. No one in view. The morning is a quiet one, no signs of who dragged him here, who tossed him in a fountain. Did Eddie sell him out? Is Eddie still in the fucking water?
Catching himself at the fountain’s edge, he searches the clear depths, finding only the shadows of its sides and central pillar.
Do most fountains even warrant pillars? It isn’t a helpful detail, but still — it feels off. As off as a pristine fountain in the woods, the area around it tread flat rather than manicured. If this is some kind of estate, it isn’t the best kept, but maybe it’s hard to find lawn guys you can count on to look away while you toss people into your water fixtures. Staring into his reflection, Owen grips tight to the edge of the fountain, trying to let the questions go until something clicks. His pale face stares back, silhouette against the sky, and he’s neatly distracted a second time when he looks down at his hands.
His arms are bare.
That stabs him in the gut worse than crawling out of the fountain, worse than not knowing where his clothes and wallet are. His left arm holds his attention a moment longer, and he realizes — the lines are too clean. Trisha finished inking those lines two days ago, petals and leaves unfurling around scar tissue, waiting for color, and he’d still been wearing the bandages last night. The skin should be tight and red, itchier than a rash, screaming at him for soaking in the water — but it’s just skin, black ink settled, irritation healed.
How long has he been out?
Owen’s reflection answers only one question: the weight on his back is attached to black straps, stood out against the white scrubs. Slinging one arm free, he lurches it onto the ground. The zipper sticks twice, struggles open on the third try, and he’s relieved to find dry clothes. A trail of water is harder to cover, and wherever he is, whenever it is — it’s colder than LA. Pulling a white shirt with sleeves free, he tugs the wet one over his head without a thought, covering himself rising to the top of his concerns. Overalls aren’t his first choice, but they’re dryer and sturdier than what he’s wearing, and he swaps them out with equal disregard, shoving the wet clothes into the pack and doing what he can to fit the wet boots as well, zipping the bag from both ends to secure the excess at the top.
Replacing the pack at his back, he examines the fountain one last time, confident he’s never seen it before in his life. What he needs is a vantage point, and one he won’t be spotted in from the trails. Following the shadows to turn himself north, he slips past the treeline on damp, bare feet.
i. arrival (OTA to 1 person)
The sturdy pine Owen climbs only puts him so far above the rest of the treeline, more a view of the gaps in the trees than what lies within them. Only one stands out: a two-story building, antiquated enough for the wooded area, but not quite the extravagant cabin he’d expect on any kind of estate. Maybe this is public land, then, and the fountain is just an odd fixture. Maybe rationalizing the fountain is less important than figuring out where he is.
From what he can observe, there are houses spreading out from the larger building. The trees spread out for miles in every direction, but instead of meeting the sky — a wall. Striped with wind-worn rock, the space is almost closed, save a waterfall further north, and a gap to the east.
Unless he intends to climb out, that’s the direction to head.
Getting back to the forest floor gains him some scrapes, snags several parts of his thin shirt, but it’s the kind of physical work that keeps him even. Reassures him that he’s awake and acting, that his body is in sound condition. Too sound, but he’s not thinking about that now: he’ll figure out the lost time when he settles the big question.
Is he safe.
As he skirts between houses — some in better condition than others, raising its own questions — he moves at a calm, even pace. Just a guy taking a shortcut, in brand new fucking overalls. Assuming this isn’t some Most Dangerous Game shit, if he doesn’t linger to peek in windows, he should pass for someone who’s meant to be here.
He’s been brought here: of course he’s meant to be here, in some capacity.
His trek east halts at the edge of a river, running south from the waterfall. As landmarks go it isn’t a bad one, and he follows the flow of water, looking for a fjord or bridge.
ii. the beach (OTA to 1 person)
The gap in the wall isn’t any way out, or any better clue to where he is, but it’s the thing his peers seem to know the least about. There’s some kind of map in the two-story building they call the Inn, a board full of notes on the landmarks and events. The other side is something new. Something he can’t read about from some missing person’s journal.
Setting out with dried boots and no immediate threat of being tossed in another body of water, he walks until there’s no further east to go, just a stretch of water on a beach wide enough to barely see its curve from the shore. He’s never stood on it before, and there are conflicting ideas of how much of a place this is.
Still, it looks an awful lot like the beaches upstate. The only evidence contrary is the slant of the sun over his shoulder, aiming toward the horizon opposite the water, rather than on it.
Eddie didn’t sell him out. Nobody tossed him in a fountain.
Making sense of this is going to be a big job, and for a moment: he forgets. He lets it go, doesn’t fetch the paper and pencil from his pack, doesn’t make notes about the shore. He toes his boots off and rolls up the ankles of his overalls, wading into the cold water, feeling the stones under his feet. He rolls the sleeve back enough to see the smooth lines of the tattoo on his arm, wondering how long it’s been. Wondering if someone’s fed Emrys.
Wondering how many emails his account has sent, deciding he’s been snuffed out. Wondering if anyone is dead for it.
Deep breath: sigh it out. Disappearing was always a possibility. Losing was always a possibility.
Collateral damage with either was a given. He’d set it up that way. All he can deal with is the here and now, and if he gets home to a few dead lieutenants, a few new heads on the ouroboros of the west coast’s trafficking rings — he isn’t going to cry over it.
But he does have to wonder about his cat, and how long before the lady in 4B picks him up and puts him in clothes. Another deep breath, he sighs that out too. For moments at a time, he’s just standing in a large lake, the waves lapping at his ankles. It’s colder water than he’s used to, but it’s clear, and the space is scenic, the kind of place he’d drive out to just to get away from it all.
It isn’t the first time he’s uprooted, with or without a choice. It won’t be the last.
Lifting his hands to his mouth, he cups one to the other, thumbs together. He sends a bird call out over the water, just to see what answers.
iii. the inn (OTA to 1 person)
There are two inns, far as he can tell: two of everything, but the buildings beyond the walls are empty, untouched by inhabitants or earthquakes. The first inn, though more disheveled of the two, is full of stuff.
The first room had a sheet on the nearest shelf to the door, names scribbled, faded with age. It made a kind of sense, signing out the pointy bits — for all they could be lost and traded away after leaving the room. At least they’d know where to start if anything goes missing. He scrawls a half-legible Prichard under the last name, marking down a few knives and an odd, mix-and-match hatchet. The machetes are tempting, but, not yet needing to strike the fear of god into anyone, and not having run into any brush he couldn’t pass, he’s leaving that for someone’s Jason costume.
The second room is a bit more interesting, a free-for-all of supplies, some hand-made, some the moth-eaten kind of robes at the back of a closed theater, or in granny’s attic. There’s information to be gleaned just from what is and isn’t available: no electronics, no firearms — Owen’s surprised when he gets down on his knees to dig at the lower shelves, and finds a collection of alcohol. Small bottles, but still, that should disappear in a place like this.
He puts the whiskey in his second bag, a garish thing with a red cross on it and basic medical supplies inside. A bottle of iodine next, a roll of duct tape.
He doesn’t even know where he’s going to take it all, yet, and before he tries to stuff the whole room in a pack, he stands up, dusts off, and decides to think it through.
Half an hour later finds him standing in the center of an open tarp, between the shelves of the small room, supplies grouped around his feet. “At least there’s no shortage of socks,” he comments, tossing a pepper-adorned pair on the pile.
iv. the inn roof (OTA to 1 person)
An empty room at the end of the hall had provided a place to shove his tarp-full of supplies for the evening, and window-access to a tree that could get him on the roof. The village has a skyline even shorter and shittier than Los Angeles, but rooftops are quiet, and it certainly has the city of angels beat for sunsets.
Nothing beats Hawaii for that, but the universe hadn’t seen fit to dump him back on the islands.
He’s crawled up with only a single pack: a journal, binoculars, whiskey, and one of the fur robes. Spreading it along the gentle slope, he sits cross-legged in a pair of real jeans, thermal undershirt keeping him covered and fighting the chill. Stuffed at the back of the journal is loose sheets of paper: meticulous recreations of the notes on the board, yesterday’s sanity-maintaining project, and he consults them one at a time in his lap, periodically tipping back a sip of whiskey from the bottle.
It isn’t home — or the campgrounds he escapes to — but he’s had worse evenings than a bottle of cheap booze and the fresh start of a case.
v. wildcard (OTA, any number, any prompt)
Choose your own adventure option: tag in with any prompt, anywhere in either canyon, if the other options are full or not grabbing you!
WHERE: 6I Woods and river, 6I Inn, 7I Beach, others
WHEN: August 24 - 30
OPEN TO: OTA starters with caps
WARNINGS: Burn scar mentions, possible allusions to childhood abuse (blanket warning for the character and threads)
intro
It’s morning when Owen comes to in the water, swims for the pale yellow patch of sky, and pulls himself out of a fountain. Few and far between, it’s still deeper than any fountain he’s ever known, and the preoccupation with it is quickly replaced with preoccupation with: the trees, the morning sky, the gap between grinding cigarette butts under his foot in the Valley and — this.
Patting at his chest, he swipes the wide collar of a shirt wide over his shoulder, blindly checking himself as he stares wide-eyed and slack-jawed at the trees. Northern species, not even browning for autumn. Foot worn, patchy grass at his feet, a treeline broken in three directions. No tire tracks, no cigarette butts, no wrappers. He was on a street corner, getting ready to bail. Cloudy skies overhead, night painting the clouds purple against a setting sun. Now he’s in the woods, morning dew shining on the grass, starting to shiver in wet — something. Wet scrubs, he finds, looking down at his hands still searching for a jacket that isn’t there, pockets he doesn’t have. When he feels the back of his head for possible injury, even his fucking earrings are gone.
“Fucking shit,” he seethes, coughing once and looking over his shoulder. No one in view. The morning is a quiet one, no signs of who dragged him here, who tossed him in a fountain. Did Eddie sell him out? Is Eddie still in the fucking water?
Catching himself at the fountain’s edge, he searches the clear depths, finding only the shadows of its sides and central pillar.
Do most fountains even warrant pillars? It isn’t a helpful detail, but still — it feels off. As off as a pristine fountain in the woods, the area around it tread flat rather than manicured. If this is some kind of estate, it isn’t the best kept, but maybe it’s hard to find lawn guys you can count on to look away while you toss people into your water fixtures. Staring into his reflection, Owen grips tight to the edge of the fountain, trying to let the questions go until something clicks. His pale face stares back, silhouette against the sky, and he’s neatly distracted a second time when he looks down at his hands.
His arms are bare.
That stabs him in the gut worse than crawling out of the fountain, worse than not knowing where his clothes and wallet are. His left arm holds his attention a moment longer, and he realizes — the lines are too clean. Trisha finished inking those lines two days ago, petals and leaves unfurling around scar tissue, waiting for color, and he’d still been wearing the bandages last night. The skin should be tight and red, itchier than a rash, screaming at him for soaking in the water — but it’s just skin, black ink settled, irritation healed.
How long has he been out?
Owen’s reflection answers only one question: the weight on his back is attached to black straps, stood out against the white scrubs. Slinging one arm free, he lurches it onto the ground. The zipper sticks twice, struggles open on the third try, and he’s relieved to find dry clothes. A trail of water is harder to cover, and wherever he is, whenever it is — it’s colder than LA. Pulling a white shirt with sleeves free, he tugs the wet one over his head without a thought, covering himself rising to the top of his concerns. Overalls aren’t his first choice, but they’re dryer and sturdier than what he’s wearing, and he swaps them out with equal disregard, shoving the wet clothes into the pack and doing what he can to fit the wet boots as well, zipping the bag from both ends to secure the excess at the top.
Replacing the pack at his back, he examines the fountain one last time, confident he’s never seen it before in his life. What he needs is a vantage point, and one he won’t be spotted in from the trails. Following the shadows to turn himself north, he slips past the treeline on damp, bare feet.
i. arrival (
The sturdy pine Owen climbs only puts him so far above the rest of the treeline, more a view of the gaps in the trees than what lies within them. Only one stands out: a two-story building, antiquated enough for the wooded area, but not quite the extravagant cabin he’d expect on any kind of estate. Maybe this is public land, then, and the fountain is just an odd fixture. Maybe rationalizing the fountain is less important than figuring out where he is.
From what he can observe, there are houses spreading out from the larger building. The trees spread out for miles in every direction, but instead of meeting the sky — a wall. Striped with wind-worn rock, the space is almost closed, save a waterfall further north, and a gap to the east.
Unless he intends to climb out, that’s the direction to head.
Getting back to the forest floor gains him some scrapes, snags several parts of his thin shirt, but it’s the kind of physical work that keeps him even. Reassures him that he’s awake and acting, that his body is in sound condition. Too sound, but he’s not thinking about that now: he’ll figure out the lost time when he settles the big question.
Is he safe.
As he skirts between houses — some in better condition than others, raising its own questions — he moves at a calm, even pace. Just a guy taking a shortcut, in brand new fucking overalls. Assuming this isn’t some Most Dangerous Game shit, if he doesn’t linger to peek in windows, he should pass for someone who’s meant to be here.
He’s been brought here: of course he’s meant to be here, in some capacity.
His trek east halts at the edge of a river, running south from the waterfall. As landmarks go it isn’t a bad one, and he follows the flow of water, looking for a fjord or bridge.
ii. the beach (
The gap in the wall isn’t any way out, or any better clue to where he is, but it’s the thing his peers seem to know the least about. There’s some kind of map in the two-story building they call the Inn, a board full of notes on the landmarks and events. The other side is something new. Something he can’t read about from some missing person’s journal.
Setting out with dried boots and no immediate threat of being tossed in another body of water, he walks until there’s no further east to go, just a stretch of water on a beach wide enough to barely see its curve from the shore. He’s never stood on it before, and there are conflicting ideas of how much of a place this is.
Still, it looks an awful lot like the beaches upstate. The only evidence contrary is the slant of the sun over his shoulder, aiming toward the horizon opposite the water, rather than on it.
Eddie didn’t sell him out. Nobody tossed him in a fountain.
Making sense of this is going to be a big job, and for a moment: he forgets. He lets it go, doesn’t fetch the paper and pencil from his pack, doesn’t make notes about the shore. He toes his boots off and rolls up the ankles of his overalls, wading into the cold water, feeling the stones under his feet. He rolls the sleeve back enough to see the smooth lines of the tattoo on his arm, wondering how long it’s been. Wondering if someone’s fed Emrys.
Wondering how many emails his account has sent, deciding he’s been snuffed out. Wondering if anyone is dead for it.
Deep breath: sigh it out. Disappearing was always a possibility. Losing was always a possibility.
Collateral damage with either was a given. He’d set it up that way. All he can deal with is the here and now, and if he gets home to a few dead lieutenants, a few new heads on the ouroboros of the west coast’s trafficking rings — he isn’t going to cry over it.
But he does have to wonder about his cat, and how long before the lady in 4B picks him up and puts him in clothes. Another deep breath, he sighs that out too. For moments at a time, he’s just standing in a large lake, the waves lapping at his ankles. It’s colder water than he’s used to, but it’s clear, and the space is scenic, the kind of place he’d drive out to just to get away from it all.
It isn’t the first time he’s uprooted, with or without a choice. It won’t be the last.
Lifting his hands to his mouth, he cups one to the other, thumbs together. He sends a bird call out over the water, just to see what answers.
iii. the inn (
There are two inns, far as he can tell: two of everything, but the buildings beyond the walls are empty, untouched by inhabitants or earthquakes. The first inn, though more disheveled of the two, is full of stuff.
The first room had a sheet on the nearest shelf to the door, names scribbled, faded with age. It made a kind of sense, signing out the pointy bits — for all they could be lost and traded away after leaving the room. At least they’d know where to start if anything goes missing. He scrawls a half-legible Prichard under the last name, marking down a few knives and an odd, mix-and-match hatchet. The machetes are tempting, but, not yet needing to strike the fear of god into anyone, and not having run into any brush he couldn’t pass, he’s leaving that for someone’s Jason costume.
The second room is a bit more interesting, a free-for-all of supplies, some hand-made, some the moth-eaten kind of robes at the back of a closed theater, or in granny’s attic. There’s information to be gleaned just from what is and isn’t available: no electronics, no firearms — Owen’s surprised when he gets down on his knees to dig at the lower shelves, and finds a collection of alcohol. Small bottles, but still, that should disappear in a place like this.
He puts the whiskey in his second bag, a garish thing with a red cross on it and basic medical supplies inside. A bottle of iodine next, a roll of duct tape.
He doesn’t even know where he’s going to take it all, yet, and before he tries to stuff the whole room in a pack, he stands up, dusts off, and decides to think it through.
Half an hour later finds him standing in the center of an open tarp, between the shelves of the small room, supplies grouped around his feet. “At least there’s no shortage of socks,” he comments, tossing a pepper-adorned pair on the pile.
iv. the inn roof (
An empty room at the end of the hall had provided a place to shove his tarp-full of supplies for the evening, and window-access to a tree that could get him on the roof. The village has a skyline even shorter and shittier than Los Angeles, but rooftops are quiet, and it certainly has the city of angels beat for sunsets.
Nothing beats Hawaii for that, but the universe hadn’t seen fit to dump him back on the islands.
He’s crawled up with only a single pack: a journal, binoculars, whiskey, and one of the fur robes. Spreading it along the gentle slope, he sits cross-legged in a pair of real jeans, thermal undershirt keeping him covered and fighting the chill. Stuffed at the back of the journal is loose sheets of paper: meticulous recreations of the notes on the board, yesterday’s sanity-maintaining project, and he consults them one at a time in his lap, periodically tipping back a sip of whiskey from the bottle.
It isn’t home — or the campgrounds he escapes to — but he’s had worse evenings than a bottle of cheap booze and the fresh start of a case.
v. wildcard (OTA, any number, any prompt)
Choose your own adventure option: tag in with any prompt, anywhere in either canyon, if the other options are full or not grabbing you!
no subject
"Back home I also get paid to do it," he adds, wry and tapping the capped bottle to his cheek, before thinking to pass it back over. "The reward isn't usually so personal," except for how it always is, with him.
Personally beneficial, maybe. "What about you, what are you bringing to the table?"
no subject
No harm in telling most of the truth then, to this police-officer-critical-thinker.
"Journalist. Visiting France, before this." Before the war happened. Before Aurora and him decided to actually do something instead of run home with their tails between their legs. "What year, for you, if I can ask?" The bottle slides over to him.
no subject
But everyone agrees: they're being watched.
Owen's spent enough time watching, he can accept that. Footage exists of most things people do in the cities, it's only the setting that makes it strange. This early in, drinking on a rooftop with a stranger, it doesn't feel like anything he cares if anyone sees. The question draws his attention, an element of their capture he's been fighting innate skepticism to keep an open mind about, at least until a credible reason comes along. "It's twenty-seventeen, summer, Los Angeles."
no subject
Or maybe he's just actually actively seeking to relax a little.
"The 40s. So are my friends, but there's quite a few of you from the future, hmmm? That a pattern of yours?"
no subject
He's had enough to lean elbow to knee into his hand, head tilted, looking sidelong at Luc as he tips back another drink. His accent is entirely to do with the alcohol, a calm coming over him that never quite exists without it, for all he's agreed that it isn't, shouldn't be a coping mechanism.
It can't always be meticulous journals or hunting drug kingpins, though. "Where were you, before you arrived," he asks, filling in Los Angeles on his own line.
no subject
Hmm. Not enough to go on. He takes a long swig, no longer paying attention to who's turn it is. He figures Owen'll just grab it.
He'd kill for some cards. "I was in France. A little town, Ville-Marie. Gorgeous view of a river. You?"
no subject
We: that's new. That's whiskey and sunset over summer trees. Owen doesn't involve people in his bullshit unless they deserve it, but something this big, with stakes so completely unknown--he can't be the only person trying.
What does he care about the safety of some stranger from 1940s France? Right now, all he cares about is someone to drink with, sounding ideas off each other so the impossible isn't impossible and alone. "On a corner in a shit part of a shit town, really. If not for all the glaring downsides, this would be a nice vacation."