Sixth Iteration

ota - arrival
It starts with the fountain: the rush of water, the stab of cold, the urgency of movement. There's a strange tingling in the back of his mind, like trying to grasp at smoke as muscles seem to tap into some kind of familiarity with his movements. It's like they've done this before, but don't remember how, or when, or why.

He knows to swim up, towards the light. He knows to break the surface of the water.

Instead of blindly panicking at the burst of oxygen in his lungs, he instead treads the fountain, head turning this way and that, like he's trying to make sense of it all. But not in the rabid way most people coming through the fountain seem to go about things; instead, the proverbial smoke wafting from his ears indicates that he's trying to complete a puzzle without all of the pieces. They're just out of his reach, just beyond his fingertips. But he knows that they're there.

He hoists himself up over the lip of the fountain, swinging his legs over to plant his feet on the ground. Even that carries a familiar sensation he doesn't quite understand. He lets his legs do the walking with a mind of their own, and he travels the pathways with confidence and assuredness.

He might be seen in various parts of the village, staring at the sky or the trees or a bush, wandering near the riverside, loitering by the inn, contemplating how all of this feels like a homecoming when the only home he can assuredly remember is Seattle.

for liv - a few days after arrival
The memory loss begins to fade with each change in angle from the sun overhead, and though he spends his first few nights outside (thanks, Boy Scouts!), he eventually finds himself wandering towards the house he and Ravi had shared when he'd last been in the village. He can't believe he's back here, but damn if he isn't excited to see his best friend. (There is the lingering thought that Ravi might be gone, but he won't allow himself to entertain this fear for too long. He has to cling to some kind of hope).

He's not too far off from the cabin when he's struck with a deep hunger pang that seems to reverberate in his rib cage and down to his toes. Crap. He's going to need to find food. But not the normal kind of food he knows he can get at the house or the Inn. He needs a ... different kind of sustenance, one he'd only been starting to worry about when he was last here and the food at the feast tasted like ash in his mouth.

Unwilling to be around another living human being while in his current state, he decides to do what he'd done before: going all Elmer Fudd on the local wildlife, namely squirrels and rabbits. He has a better chance with the former than the latter, so at the sight of one, he lurks in a nearby bush, taking slow and quiet steps towards the unsuspecting creature.

When he's close enough, he pounces, but instead of catching the thing by the torso the way he'd anticipated, he only gets a handful of yanked-out tail fur. With a groan, he lets his forehead hit the ground beneath him, prostrate on his belly in his defeat.

for ravi - once fed
"Luuuuucy! I'm hoooome!" Major announces as he bursts through the door of the cabin he'd called home for some time however many months (years?) ago. He has no idea how long it's been since he'd last set foot in the village, or since he'd last seen "Imposter Ravi," but he knows that he's been gone. If he hadn't been, he wouldn't have come gasping through the fountain the way he had. There's a gnawing feeling in the pit of his stomach for how awful it probably was for Ravi, but he hopes he can make it up to him somehow. Maybe he can .. whittle him a figurine. Or .. learn how to knit and make him a new sweater vest.

"Ravi?" he calls out, quietly closing the door behind him as he walks further inside. It almost feels like trespassing, like a B&E, even though this was his home once, too. Things feel .. different enough to make him feel more like a stranger and less like a resident. "Ravi? You here, man?"

It happens without any sort of warning, suddenly and all at once. Major sees the fountain, makes the right to head towards the Inn, blinks, and --

She's there. In her apartment, the one she shares with Peyton. He can only see her profile, her eyes intently focused on finding something in the fridge - leftover brains, probably, he thinks to himself - and he feels like his heart may just burst out of his chest. He doesn't say anything, not wanting to ruin the chance to get to watch her like this, after going so many months without even a glimpse of her face.

But .. wait. Something's not right here. What happened to the village? Had it all been a weird hallucination? A waking dream? An overactive and out of control imagination? It had all felt so real, and even Ravi had been there.

As he takes another step forward, this time intent on breaking the silence, he blinks and the world around him has changed again, this one familiar in a much more disheartening way.

The fountain at his back, the wooden inn door in front of him. He sucks in a breath to try and steady himself, feeling as though the ground beneath his feet has been pulled out from under him like some cheap rug. He can't make sense of any of it, and it reminds him of how he felt when he first started to suspect the existence of zombies. He'd checked himself into a mental hospital back then, a residential facility. There's nothing like that here, he knows.

What's the next best thing? Shout about it.

"LIV?" he screams, whirling on his heel and glancing at everything around him. "LIV? WHERE ARE YOU?"

Major has no idea how it happens, but he wakes up to .. light. Not the normal sunlight, peeking thorugh the windows that he's gotten accustomed to, but the much more impressive and much more desired .. artificial light. As in ... light bulbs. As in .. Thomas Edison's greatest invention. And, whereas he might normally tuck back into sleep for a little while longer instead of dragging himself out of bed at the ass crack of dawn, his eyes spring open with confusion and excitement.

The stained-glass lamp that's sat at the side of his bed, unused and defunct, is miraculously on, and Major feels like he's having a stroke. Or in the middle of the best dream he's had in recent months. He reaches out to switch it off and, sure enough, it functions just as a normal lamp would. He flicks the thing on, off, on, off, on, off a number of times before it all finally sinks in.

"Oh my god!" he shouts, throwing himself from bed. "Holy shit. HOLY SHIT!" He leaves the light on and then bursts out of his room, racing towards Ravi's door, which he bangs his fists on like he's playing some weird bongo.

"RAVI! RAVI GET OUT HERE! RAVI! HOLY SHIT, RAVI! WE HAVE ELECTRICITY!"