![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
comfortablyerectWHO: Tim Gutterson
WHERE: Canyon wall, the woods, House 52
WHEN: March 20th
OPEN TO: OTA
WARNINGS: Firefly stings, so accompanying paranoia and, in Tim's case, PTSD
STATUS: Open!
Canyon wall
Tim is not a mountain climber. Canyon climber?
Kentucky, the lands he's grown so used to, the place he undoubtedly calls home, is all rolling fields and farmland. They have their dips and their valleys and, in some places, climbing, rocking terrain, but nothing worthy of being called a mountain, and certainly nothing worth any sort of challenge. And Afghanistan had it's cliff sides, high places overlooking small villages, which is where Tim spent a bulk of his time at war, but that's not the same as a steep, vertical wall of hard rock.
Still. He's felt increasingly more trapped here as the days have ticked by, and he can only go so long without doing something about it. This, all in all, seems like a better option than trying to force his way back into the depths of the fountain. Always go up, forward, never back.
He's got no climbing gear to speak of, and this is probably an incredibly stupid attempt. But instead of approaching the wall directly, he chooses to give himself a leg up by scaling a nearby tree first, hoping to find better foot and hand holds higher up the wall. He begins shimmying up the tree, and has just grabbed onto the lowest viable branch when the first firefly comes around. He's seen them before now, of course, around the village and on his trek through the woods. It strikes him as odd, seeing as it's the middle of the day, and his experience with fireflies has always been at night, catching them in jars as a child.
This place is fucking weird. He hoists himself up onto the branch, and a few more fireflies come out, and then a handful more, and Tim's just beginning to think the word swarm when the first one stings him.
Fireflies don't sting, he thinks, just as a second one stings him, and then a whole bunch more come out of somewhere, nowhere, everywhere, and he literally bails out of the tree, landing and rolling like he's eighteen and in bootcamp again, as opposed to thirty and frequently waking up with a sore back. It's all muscle memory, though, and he sticks the landing wonderfully, knowing he's definitely going to feel it in his muscles the next morning.
House 52
It's nearly evening by the time Tim makes his way out of the woods, having to spend far too much time shaking off the fireflies and losing their trail before making it to the village. He feels warm all over, just a tiny bit dizzy, but he chalks it up to the physical exertion of sprinting through the woods to escape a swarm of fireflies.
This is not what he expected his life to be after the war but — here he is.
He moves through the village, the sun beginning to sink behind the trees, and the fireflies seem to be everywhere. More than usual? It seems like it. It seems like the blinking green insects are appearing more frequently, hovering particularly close to the fountain, their numbers actively growing with each step Tim takes. He has to be imagining it. There weren't this many a few days ago, and the weather hasn't changed enough to bring in more, he thinks. They certainly can't be growing in number that fast.
Something familiar has snaked into system, twisting around his very bones and taking root there. He recognizes it for what it is — paranoia, sharp and dark and and ever-growing, absolutely unshakable. This is how he was for months and months and months after coming back stateside. Feeling like the very walls in his home were watching him, feeling like every person who looked at him for a second too long was going to strike. Feeling trapped and suffocated with the ghosts of the lives he took infecting his dreams and his life and reminding him who he was, what he's done, every time he turned around.
This is just the beginning. He makes his way quickly through the village, avoiding the swarms of fireflies the best he can. But by the time he reaches his house, the fever has exhausted him, slowing him down enough that he sits on the porch steps, resting his head against the railing.
He's tired, but he can't close his eyes. Exhausted, but he won't sleep. Because his skin crawls like there's bugs beneath the surface, like his veins are full of gasoline and he's just lit a match. Because he's trapped here, and he'll never get out, and he's sure — so sure — that this is where he's going to die.
[ ooc: feel free to also find him in the woods, either before or after the firefly stings! ]
WHERE: Canyon wall, the woods, House 52
WHEN: March 20th
OPEN TO: OTA
WARNINGS: Firefly stings, so accompanying paranoia and, in Tim's case, PTSD
STATUS: Open!
Canyon wall
Tim is not a mountain climber. Canyon climber?
Kentucky, the lands he's grown so used to, the place he undoubtedly calls home, is all rolling fields and farmland. They have their dips and their valleys and, in some places, climbing, rocking terrain, but nothing worthy of being called a mountain, and certainly nothing worth any sort of challenge. And Afghanistan had it's cliff sides, high places overlooking small villages, which is where Tim spent a bulk of his time at war, but that's not the same as a steep, vertical wall of hard rock.
Still. He's felt increasingly more trapped here as the days have ticked by, and he can only go so long without doing something about it. This, all in all, seems like a better option than trying to force his way back into the depths of the fountain. Always go up, forward, never back.
He's got no climbing gear to speak of, and this is probably an incredibly stupid attempt. But instead of approaching the wall directly, he chooses to give himself a leg up by scaling a nearby tree first, hoping to find better foot and hand holds higher up the wall. He begins shimmying up the tree, and has just grabbed onto the lowest viable branch when the first firefly comes around. He's seen them before now, of course, around the village and on his trek through the woods. It strikes him as odd, seeing as it's the middle of the day, and his experience with fireflies has always been at night, catching them in jars as a child.
This place is fucking weird. He hoists himself up onto the branch, and a few more fireflies come out, and then a handful more, and Tim's just beginning to think the word swarm when the first one stings him.
Fireflies don't sting, he thinks, just as a second one stings him, and then a whole bunch more come out of somewhere, nowhere, everywhere, and he literally bails out of the tree, landing and rolling like he's eighteen and in bootcamp again, as opposed to thirty and frequently waking up with a sore back. It's all muscle memory, though, and he sticks the landing wonderfully, knowing he's definitely going to feel it in his muscles the next morning.
House 52
It's nearly evening by the time Tim makes his way out of the woods, having to spend far too much time shaking off the fireflies and losing their trail before making it to the village. He feels warm all over, just a tiny bit dizzy, but he chalks it up to the physical exertion of sprinting through the woods to escape a swarm of fireflies.
This is not what he expected his life to be after the war but — here he is.
He moves through the village, the sun beginning to sink behind the trees, and the fireflies seem to be everywhere. More than usual? It seems like it. It seems like the blinking green insects are appearing more frequently, hovering particularly close to the fountain, their numbers actively growing with each step Tim takes. He has to be imagining it. There weren't this many a few days ago, and the weather hasn't changed enough to bring in more, he thinks. They certainly can't be growing in number that fast.
Something familiar has snaked into system, twisting around his very bones and taking root there. He recognizes it for what it is — paranoia, sharp and dark and and ever-growing, absolutely unshakable. This is how he was for months and months and months after coming back stateside. Feeling like the very walls in his home were watching him, feeling like every person who looked at him for a second too long was going to strike. Feeling trapped and suffocated with the ghosts of the lives he took infecting his dreams and his life and reminding him who he was, what he's done, every time he turned around.
This is just the beginning. He makes his way quickly through the village, avoiding the swarms of fireflies the best he can. But by the time he reaches his house, the fever has exhausted him, slowing him down enough that he sits on the porch steps, resting his head against the railing.
He's tired, but he can't close his eyes. Exhausted, but he won't sleep. Because his skin crawls like there's bugs beneath the surface, like his veins are full of gasoline and he's just lit a match. Because he's trapped here, and he'll never get out, and he's sure — so sure — that this is where he's going to die.
[ ooc: feel free to also find him in the woods, either before or after the firefly stings! ]
