[Wendigo-go] cry like guns across the water

[underpinnings]

WHO: Owen Prichard
WHERE: 6I Village - Inn and surrounding area
WHEN: July 27-31
OPEN TO: Aragorn, Bucky Barnes, Rose Hathaway, Peeta Mellark
WARNINGS: Horror/Violence, possible injuries and descriptions -- CHARACTER DEATH IN FINAL THREAD

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It made sense for the storms to disturb local wildlife, for the tremors to send it down from the mountains to collide with what they already knew. It didn't make sense for it to look like fog lights in shadow, a creature of borrowed parts in a shroud like smoke and dead skin.

Somehow, for all the lost lore of his lifetime, Owen doesn't need the nickname explained to him. It should be a word near devoid of meaning, for something so devoid of a foothold in reality. Until there were multiple sightings, until they had the physical evidence of mutilated prey, the bright-eyed predators chased away from corpses on the plains. Until the sightings grew closer and closer to home.

Funny, how creatures dragging that filament skin could get under his. It helps that the village has been picking him apart at the seams since he arrived, letting people in, making him something like amenable to Kero's raspy, whistling calls.

Kero's ugly; the Wendigo he spots shredding one of Kero's bretheren by the lake is terrifying. When Kero darts back among the houses, Owen isn't far behind, and it's something of that terror--and some of those people he's met--that spur him back to the main village with his heart pounding in his ears. When he sees that kid with the crow, meandering back with another load of peaches, there's no time for niceties--there's barely time to catch his breath.

Pulling the load from the kid's hands, to loud protest, Owen drops the bucket to the ground. "Get Mark," he tells him, knowing that much about the huffy stranger. "Get who you can to the Inn, those creatures are getting closer."

"Half the village is already at the fucking inn," Kira--the acerbic kid tackling survival in the wilderness in flip flops is Kira--says. "Or did you miss the annual earthquake on your nature quest?"

Owen kicks the bucket away when Kira dips to reach it. "So go back to the inn," he grinds out, sucking air through his teeth to catch his breath. "And get us started on the plan to deal with this. I don't know if the thing saw me, and it seems to favor gutting its victims, if you're not very attached to your own intestines." Maybe it's the shove he gives the kid, maybe it's that bitchy is his first language, but Kira seems to rile himself like Owen's cat waking up before it wants to, angry little noise in the back of his throat and all.

"What the fuck are you going to do," Kira asks, slipping out of his shoes and taking them in-hand for the long jog over the river.

"Get the stragglers," Owen answers, Kira marking the first. "Engage if it gets too close."

And, he realizes later, as he circles the edges of the village back to his house, put Kero and Nim in the cellar. Christ fucking help him--help them all--he's checking on the cat.

Comments

[underpinnings]

The dead are the only one's safe; the look Owen casts back over his shoulder isn't entirely uncaring, but it is thin-lipped with his lack of protest. They need to examine the body, and they have reason to do it sooner than later, from what he's heard--but a fight wastes as much time as her demand.

Looking to Bucky--and just standing next to him--there's still a charge to the air in proximity. A slight buzz at the back of Owen's teeth. "Keep an eye on it," he suggests, thinking it better than Bucky touching anyone, even Peeta, right now.

"Everyone says the last one disappeared, after they killed it." Turning back to Rose and Aragorn, he starts pulling his sleeves up as he returns. Moving Peeta isn't a bad idea: if he doesn't want the entire village to see him, a jacket isn't as effective as putting him inside. "We can put him in the clinic, shouldn't take long with three of us."

[onen_i_estel]

Aragorn had placed himself a fair distance away, between the two bodies and a few feet back some. He decided to wait rather than retreat to the woods where he'd been staying ever since arriving. Going back will happen later once Peeta's body is dealt with and the corpse of the creature was looked over, as well as a decision made on how to dispose of it. Had it been out in the forest, he would advise leaving it, but that was not the case.

He says nothing, yet he shifts the bow on his back so it doesn't slip and walks in after Owen. "I can carry him," Aragorn states, more because three people trying to transport one body seems awkward and slow, at best. He had the height and strength to do it.

Moving to the other side of Peeta from where he was last, Aragorn knelt again and carefully lift and began the walk to the building he knew to be a healing house.