sixthiterationlogs | What is dead may never die [Event]

WHO: Margaery
WHERE: Outside the Inn
WHEN: 12/13
OPEN TO: All
WARNINGS: None
STATUS: Open

The snow melting was a blessed relief. Given how little experience she had with snow, travel from her home to the police station had been nothing short of difficult. The animals could at least graze more easily and the cold was at least partially alleviated. It was enough to prompt Margaery to stroll through the village and enjoy the changing weather. It wouldn't last for long, much to her chagrin.

As she approached the inn, her eyes fell towards the ground, struck by a sense of dread. There was something strange about the snow drift, now dwindling into a small mound. There was something wrong, yet she struggled to remember why this particular spot was so important. There was nothing there, nothing remarkable about the snow drift. Why should snow suddenly summon dread and a rising horror?

There is nothing there.

It hit her all at once as she stepped back. The creature. It had been placed there after the town meeting, to spare the rest from the potential smell of the decaying corpse, and buried in the snow to preserve it. Yet in the dwindling ice and frost, there was nothing there but the dead grass and the hardened ground. No sign of where it had gone, no tracks, no trail of blood. It was as if it never existed.

Sounding the alarm, she called everyone to the village. "Come quickly! The creature, it's disappeared!" There was no other word for it. It had simply vanished.

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Jo's not far from the door when she hears the yell, and she's out the door without her elk cloak even pulled on. There's only the black leather jacket from Giftmas on over her layer of winter clothes, but she doesn't care. It's not as important, even if the cold slams her like a wall, driving fingers through her clothes and into her skin. Every nerve-ending screaming to life under both dictates suddenly.

"What? You can't be --" but serious dies still in Jo's mouth. Nothing is in the snowbank now. Not especially a large, stinking, monster, frozen where they'd left it after carrying it all that distance. Which leaves Jo turning in several directions. No tracks and no drag marks, and she can't know. It digs up her spine, in the need to know exactly where her weapons are at this second. "No."

Not knowing whether it's been taken, or it somehow hadn't actually died and made off on its own while they were distracted.

Was that why they'd all been distracted with the presents for so long? So they wouldn't be looking while this happened?

Similar thoughts race through Margaery's head as she looks around for any sign of the creature. It was the second time now that they had been surprised by something pleasant, only to have something horrific happen in return. First Karen's death, now this? It was disconcerting to recognize how easily manipulated they had all been to let down their guard.

It was rapidly becoming clear that there was something behind all of this, someone playing a game with them as pawns and props. For whatever end, she couldn't say, only that she was truly unnerved by it all.

"Was it truly dead?" She asked, searching for the only logical explanation in a sea of madness.

Cougar's been keeping an eye on the creature through the night in case something (or someone) comes for it, but he still needs to go home and sleep. When he gets back and hears Margaery's call, he runs, clearing any obstacles in his way like he's back home and moving towards a target. When he comes to the main area, there's no more snow and there's no more creature. His eyes flick up to Margaery with worry and sharp alarm.

"Where?" he demands. "Where did it go? Who took it?" It couldn't have moved on its own, he remembers hauling it back. It's too heavy for just one person to take, which means someone must have come for it.

She looks back at him with surprise and evident frustration. Pulling her blue cloak tighter around her, she took a breath to calm herself and keep from snapping. The fact there were no tracks or drag marks, that this thing managed to simply disappear was more than unnerving. It wasn't Cougar's fault or anyone else's. They had to keep their calm.

"I don't know. I only just saw that it was gone."

He's been keeping an eye on the thing in the snow for days and he knows that Frank has been, too, trying to make sure they get all the answers they can. The idea that it's gone isn't just evidence of foul play, but it also means that maybe there was something on the body, like evidence, that they had missed. His frustration builds a little more and he curses under his breath in Spanish, a steady onslaught of anger. He knows it's not Margaery's fault, but they went so far and he worked so hard to get that creature back and now it's just gone. "Someone took it," he says. "It was dead, it couldn't move. Someone had to steal it."

Maybe the same someone who thrust that creature on them in the first place and took away the research they had found. Maybe they're not as alone as they think. "Did you see anyone?"

"Are you so certain of that?" She was risking his anger by challenging that assumption, but there was no evidence to indicate that it was the case. There were no drag marks, no displaced snow. It was as if he had vanished over night. He was real and then he was gone, just as it had been with the forest. "Strange things happen here. Is it hard to imagine that this might be another occurrence? That there could be something else to this place?"

She shook her head, "No, no one. Look at the ground, there is nothing either."

"I dragged it back, I needed help," Cougar promises, his eyes flashing with the argument that they're having. "If it was a person, it would have taken them a long time and we would have seen," he vows. "What else could have happened?" It can't just have vanished, so maybe...

"What about the ground?" he asks, suddenly. "We should look closer, maybe it dissolved, like the papers did. Maybe it's still here, just that they wanted to take it away from us like the papers suddenly vanished." While he's speaking more than usual, it's broken in half Spanish, half English, his rambling making it hard to understand.

"I don't think it is another person." Margaery murmured, in complete disbelief that they were even having this discussion. It shouldn't be possible that this thing disappeared, but after the woods had altered itself, there was no other explanation that could be reached.

She couldn't follow him, but the entire idea of this creature didn't make sense to her. The barriers in language made little difference in confusing her. "It's possible, but I think that it is more like that it disappeared. Things appear without our noticing, it seems this creature is the same."

That does beg the question of where things come from. After all, there are so many things that come from nowhere, maybe there's some kind of preparing area or waiting place where things sit and wait, just outside their sight. It's been so good to give things to him and the village as a whole, but what if it also takes them away so they can't have answers. They didn't even have the chance to see what they could find on the creature, not really.

His frustration is boiling, but he knows that it's not Margaery's fault. "Sorry," he gets out, more of a grunt than any kind of words. "I know it's not your fault."

She didn't take his irritation personally, feeling much the same. It was directed at this place and whatever was causing all of this. "It is well timed. First we had that feast and then Karen was killed." Which could have been an accident. She could have wandered too far away, if it wasn't for this. "Now the creature has disappeared after we have received gifts."

She looked at him uneasily, "Do you think they are trying to distract us?"

He doesn't know. If it is a distraction, then what's going to happen next? Is there going to be another attack or another storm or something else strange that they can't explain? Or will something good come, which is just a distraction too. "I still think it went because it had something important," he says, fixated on that idea that he can't exactly shake from his mind.

"Why else would it go?"

What is dead may never die [Event]

Jo Harvelle | OTA

Sorry about the lateness

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