Sixth Iteration Logs

<div class="postheader">WHO: (Who is making the post)
WHERE: (Where the post takes place)
WHEN: (When the post takes place)
OPEN TO: (Who the post is open to tags from -- Specific characters, all, none, etc.)
WARNINGS: (Please warn for adult content or anything triggering) <hr></div>
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ottimismo

WHO: Sonny Carisi
WHERE: The Fountain, the Inn, other places in the village
WHEN: September 4th
OPEN TO: OTA
WARNINGS: Sonny trying to drown himself, mentions of religion

Fountain

Sonny bounces back. He always bounces back. He did in high school, after years of relentless bullying, and in law school, when he thought the course load was going to be enough to kill him. He's bounced back from every single case he's ever had, even the toughest ones. Even the ones where the victim didn't make it. Coming back from a hard time has never been difficult for him. It's only ever taken some quality time with his siblings and his niece and a little bit of church.

Those are all things he doesn't have here. No sisters, no family. He has his little makeshift church, but it doesn't make much of a difference. It's been weeks since he's felt God in the village.

And now, Queenie's gone. He's spent the last two days searching high and low for her, but nobody else has seen her around, either. A lot of people have left lately, with no pattern or rhyme or reason. There's no telling who's next, or when it'll happen. if it will happen. They don't know how it happens, or if the people who leave are safe, if they go back home. There's too many questions and not enough answers and Sonny is so tired. He's never felt so tired in his life.

He wants to go back home. Back where things make sense, and he can connect the dots and solve the case and nobody is going to stumble upon any strange pods or discover weird rooms with blood vials.

Probably, anyway.

It's late in the afternoon now, and his feet hurt from trekking across the village looking for Queenie. It's hopeless, he decides as he sits on the edge of the fountain. She's gone from this God forsaken place, and he wants to be gone from it, too. The water ripples, showing him his wobbly reflection in its surface. This is where they all crawl out of, somehow, without fail. It's the only sure thing that happens in this place. Everyone comes out of the fountain. That never changes.

Sonny kicks off his boots, peels off his socks. He doesn't bother with anything else as he slips over the edge of the fountain, into the cool water. A single breath, and he slips beneath the surface, heading straight for the bottom.

Inn

There's no fire in the fireplace, but Sonny sits in front of it anyway, wrapped in a spare blanket from the storeroom. Since being dragged out of the fountain, he's eaten some food and dried off a bit, though his white scrubs are still damp and unchanged.

In retrospect, it was obviously a stupid idea. He's always encouraged victims to get help, find someone to talk to, be open about what they're feeling and going through. He never realized until now that he's terrible at taking his own advice.

He probably needs to apologize to some people. He needs to pray and get some sleep and figure out how he's going to pull himself back together.

For now, he sits, sipping on a cup of now luke-warm tea.

[ Stella will be pulling Sonny out of the fountain, but other than that, interaction is entirely open! Feel free to find him wandering the village before, or sitting at the fountain immediately after almost drowning himself, or chilling at the inn!

Also to be noted, Sonny has been pretty withdrawn and absent the last month or so. ]

posilutely

WHO: Queenie Goldstein
WHERE: Various; see below
WHEN: ditto
OPEN TO: 1 locked, 2 OTA
WARNINGS: n/a

House #7 - Mid-Late July - Locked to Sonny

It's the locket that confirms it.

When it had first turned up, Tina hadn't been sure if she wanted to trust it, but she'd taking to wearing it anyway. Just like she'd done at home, there wasn't hardly a time when it wasn't around her neck. Queenie's been wandering the village for a couple days now, and seeing it laying there on Tina's vanity table is like a punch right to the gut, her last bit of hope swept clean away in the matter of a moment.

And with Jacob apparently gone, too, it just makes a sad sort of sense, even if it makes her heart hurt to think about.

From the first time she'd felt that tingle of worry, Queenie's been telling herself it's probably better. If Tina's got out, if she's got home, it's gonna be better for them all -- It has to be, right? If anybody can figure out how to bust them out of this place, it's Teenie.

And if they've made her forget, well... maybe that's better too. She hated it here.

But telling herself these things just ain't the same as believing them, and sitting on the front steps of Sonny's house in her new dress, she can't keep herself from crying.

Behind House #17 - Mid-Late August - OTA (3 thread limit)

The funny thing about Tina being gone is that Queenie knows exactly what she'd say about it: That Queenie oughta stay busy and just get on with it. And sure, there's days when she just wants to fall right down onto the floor and stay there wallowing in how empty the house feels now, or how she accidentally made lunch for two, but that voice in the back of her head is awful quick to give her a kick in the pants, just like Teen herself would do.

Some days it's tough to find enough to fill the day, though, and she's been trying some things she probably would be better off to just let alone.

Today, it's splitting firewood. To say she's awful at it without wand would be the understatement of at least two centuries.

She got herself an axe from the inn, but she can't seem to hit the wood at the right angle or hard enough. She's pinged herself with bits of bark at least 20 times, and in the hour she's been out behind the house, she's got exactly 3 pieces of firewood to show for it, and one of them barely counts, if she's honest about it.

7I Shore - Mid-Late August - OTA (3 thread limit)

All of a sudden, they've got themselves an ocean, and all Queenie can do is stare at it.

The beach ain't much good for sunbathing with all its little pebbles, and it takes her a good fifteen minutes just to find a place to put her towel down. But it's the water that's the bigger problem, lapping softly at the shore like it couldn't just swallow her right up if it wanted.

Dressed in her cut-offs and sleeveless shirt, she wades in to her ankles but then just stands there, staring first at the wide, hazy horizon, and then down at the water swirling around her feet.

ottimismo

WHO: Sonny Carisi
WHERE: House 11
WHEN: Forward dated to after the peach tree is discovered (will update with specific date later maybe?)
OPEN TO: Kira Akiyama
WARNINGS: Sonny's slowly enveloping depression and discussion of it

It feels as if the sun is up far to early, but in reality, Sonny's just stayed in bed far too late. Not slept, necessarily, but lay on top a nest of covers watching the crack in the curtains grow brighter and brighter. The moments pass, and he could probably lay here all day long, stubble scratching his cheek and neck, messy hair flopped in front of his eyes. He could lay here all day and wouldn't care, and ultimately, that's what finally pulls him out of bed. He's not blind to the hole he seems to be slipping into. It's daunting to fight it, but he's still doing it.

His morning routine is many hours late, not to mention painstaking, but Sonny drags him through each step of it. Washing his face, getting his teeth as clean as he can, smoothing his hair back, shaving his face. He dresses in overalls because they're the only thing that's clean, and begins to make his way to the inn.

First, he has to round up something to eat, but then he'll go to the church to pray. Praying doesn't seem to make a difference these days either, but he's holding onto his faith like it's all he has, the only thing keeping him afloat.

Between a few houses, back behind the inn, movement catches his eye. A bungalow that was once unoccupied looks like it's being fixed up. Sonny can only assume somebody new has shown up and is figuring out how to get their feet back under them. He likes new people — to because he likes seeing other people trapped here, but because the new ones usually stay determined to get back home for a little while. They're not as jaded. Sonny's not sure when he became one of the jaded ones, but he certainly doesn't like it.

He's nearly to the porch when someone steps outside again, and Sonny finds that it's not someone new at all. He blinks, surprised. "Kira? What're you doing back here?"

theintercessor

WHO: Jude Sullivan
WHERE: The Church
WHEN: Early, July 18th
OPEN TO: Sonny Carisi
WARNINGS: Usual Jude warnings may apply: portrayals of epilepsy, mentions of horror tropes and religious iconography
STATUS: N/A

The house next to his isn't as dirty as some of the others, for all he hasn't been around to see anyone go in or out of it. If it has a purpose, no one's yet pointed it out, and after dragging more than a few items across the way from the storehouse, it doesn't seem like there's anyone dedicated to slapping wrists or enforcing any kind of ownership over the supplies. He's more surprised at how much he's found to scavenge out of damaged houses, linens and kitchen supplies, decent pieces of wood, a screen he'll need to make good on his promise of paper. He might go back for more, once the heat passes and he feels up for boiling that many plants and old books at a time.

It's a strange way to feel useful, but it seems like a need to be filled. He can't do shit about the electricity problem.

But maybe he can do something about his clothing problem, or the unbearable sun still drying up patches of the crop field. Peering in the windows first, the house is far from decrepit or damaged, and isn't even as dusty or undisturbed as the one across the way. It almost looks like someone wrapped it up for safekeeping, but hasn't yet returned. A disappearance? A lover's spat that got someone kicked out? He doesn't know, just that there are sheets being wasted on old furniture when they could be shielding food.

Looking both ways, the coast is clear when he slips inside. The heat has been good for clearing the paths when the sun rises above the trees, the only thing it manages to simmer behind for a few hours as it moves backwards across the sky.

Inside, the house is cleaner than his own, uncluttered by materials or pots full of soaking leaves and books. There's a cross hanging on one wall, the furniture fanning out from it like something out of a southern gothic horror movie, that pagan edge of twining sticks and twigs, the ghostly fit of sheets hanging in the too-still air.

It's a long moment before he can set his hands to the back of a sofa, tugging the sheet away from the polished wooden frame. It isn't quite reverence that stills or starts him: he needs to make this fast, the place kind of creeps him out.

posilutely

WHO: Queenie Goldstein
WHERE: The fountain
WHEN: About 8:00, June 8th
OPEN TO: ALL
STATUS: Closed to new threads
WARNING: The thread with Sonny will eventually be ADULT

For almost as far back as she can remember, Queenie Goldstein has been a voracious reader. She'd be the first to tell you she doesn't have a head for the books that would make her smart, but there's just about nothing she loves more than losing herself in a good story. At home, she nearly always has a novel or stack of magazines to hand, and the tales of exotic places and sweeping romance are always her favorite. There was one in particular she read about twenty times when she was in school, all about a witch and wizard falling in love amidst the glittering sands of the Sahara. At the time, tucked up in her chilly New England dorm room, it had all seemed so marvelously enticing.

Now, it's a little less so.

To say the days the past couple of weeks have been hot just wouldn't be near accurate enough. It's been about like jumping into a frying pan when you're out in the middle of the day. When you walk around town, you can see it on everybody's faces: They're all waiting for the break that comes at sunset. Except now, the sun isn't going down at all. It's just sitting there on the horizon, brooding behind the cliffs like an angry dog.

That morning, Queenie had woken to another box with her name on it, perched this time on her dresser like someone had stolen in during the night and left it while she was sleeping. Inside, she'd found a pack of needles and several spools of thread, and while a bolt of fabric would've been nice, she's not about to look this gift horse in the mouth. And yeah, she did feel a little guilty about going into one of the houses and pulling down all the curtains and cleaning out the linen closet, but there's nothing in the storeroom in the inn except for scarves and heavy blankets.

It's just past eight o'clock at night, and Queenie's sitting on the lip of the fountain they all came out of, a basket of supplies at her side, bare feet dangling in the cool water as she works on the sewing in her lap and sings softly to herself. There's still plenty of light to see by out here, and the house is too stuffy even with every window flung open. Earlier, she'd cut her pants off above the knee and hemmed the edges; back home they'd be scandalous, but here they're pure practicality. Soon, she'll have a linen shift to wear instead.

3ofswords

WHO: Kira Akiyama
WHERE: House 39; Riverbank, southeast bend
WHEN: June 5
OPEN TO: Credence + 2 at the house; 2 more at the river
WARNINGS: Edited as needed
STATUS: Open

( tl;dr )

at the house

Kira feeds the animals before he gets to work, bringing all of them out to the porch to sort through his materials. Aurora flops in her corner with one bowl of water, and Hoshi drags himself between the sun and another, until enough water has evaporated and the heat is enough that he nests himself down into the cool ceramic. It’s already hot--the sun doesn’t stay down long enough for it to cool one day to the next--but there’s as much shade on the porch as there is in the house, and what breeze comes through the canyon can actually be felt.

He settles his materials into a few piles: pulled and reclaimed shingles, some decidedly not from his own roof; stripped siding, old boards, and most important--nails. He’d settled into a long and silent fight with Casey over the ransacking of Ren’s old house, a fight Casey had won with his disappearance, leaving Kira to finish what he’d started. Leaving Kira with an understanding of the young man he’d only thought to have in his presence--when the world leaves you alone, sentimentality isn’t an option. Ren and Jyn had known that as well, though Jyn had seemed as unable to fully shake it as Kira is.

His hands are already blistered and he’s gone inside for more water before he’s even ready to head for the roof. He’d stripped more nails from the boards with a hammer from the cache at the inn, used his knife to hold them at the heads and hammer them closer to straight. It’s too hot for the work he means to do, but he can’t do it in the few hours of dark they’re getting, and he doesn’t know when the next freak storm is going to tear through. He’s not going to wait on someone to come along and do it for him--catch him fish, bring him wood; carry him back to the inn, take him away from the village when he’s sunk too deep in other people’s problems to see his own.

He’s not coming back. None of them are, and it’s time to stop needing them to.

Working against the heat, Kira carries his materials up to the attic in shifts, doing his best to splash water on his face and hydrate between. The only reason the space hasn’t become a very big, triangular oven is the ventilation of some very noticeable holes, sunlight streaming through to the rafters. It takes some trial and error to brace the boards on the sloping roof with his shoulder, the pockets of his overalls full of old nails, and hammer them into place, but he doesn’t think he’s doing too bad a job, balancing on the beams and boarding up the holes from the inside.

The only problem is how much hotter it gets as the sun rises, and the holes close. By the time he’s sitting half-out the small window, dragging his shingles out and flipping them onto the roof for the last steps, his arms are shaking and it’s more of a struggle than ever to catch his breath. When he tries to pull himself further out to follow the shingles up onto the roof, he wobbles enough to rethink finishing the project today. Instead, he slides his legs out to hang himself down, using the last of his strength to lower himself clumsily back to the porch.

Once there, he slides down on the steps, shoulder against the support beam, and keeps sliding. Down onto his side, then rolled onto his back, back on the porch and legs sprawled on the steps. At his far-flung hand, Hoshi lifts his head and sets to cawing in his small, croaking voice. Aurora shuffles up and he can feel her tongue scraping the side of his head as the bright world dims to black.

at the river

The sun has slipped close enough to the canyon walls that the shadows have lengthened, the world dimmed enough beneath the trees that Kira chances a walk. He’s still shaky, but his brush with heat sickness hasn’t eased his restlessness, his need to prove himself more than the soft civilian who gets pneumonia in a snowstorm and heat stroke in a drought, isn’t good for defending himself from even the fucking weather.

If anyone sees fit to chide him, at least he can say he stayed by plenty of water. Not that there’s as much to go around: the old edge of the river is cracked earth and smooth, exposed pebbles. It stinks, too--the fish left on the high banks aren’t very big, but they’ve been out long enough to go to rot.

Hoshi puts up enough fuss over the exposed treasures glinting under the faded light that Kira sets him down from his perch on his shoulder. His wing seems to have healed, and he has most of his feathers--but he still holds it stiff, and Kira isn’t sure it healed right. He might prove more than a quick rescue and release, no one to teach him to fly, not enough of the right feathers yet to start trying. The little bird picks at the stones, even a couple silver-scaled minnows, but eventually he finds something that captures Kira’s attention as well.

“What have you got there,” he asks, crouching gingerly at the new edge of the water, scooping the little crow back before even he can be swept away in its diminished currents. Moving aside the rest of the pebbles with his own hand, he picks up a dull metal arrowhead, antiquated in shape but so clean, he wonders if it came from the blacksmith up-stream.

[Kira has fainted from heat-sickness in the first prompt, but your character is welcome to come along at any point after he goes out on his porch and interrupt or help.]

zomboligist

WHO: Ravi Chakrabarti
WHERE: Inn, near the Kitchen
WHEN: June 3rd
OPEN TO: All! Mingle post!
WARNINGS: n/a
STATUS: Open

There's another one of those strange boxes sitting on the porch of their home when Ravi gets up to another scorching, awful day. He's not sure what switch they hit to get this sort of weather, but he wants them to take it back, seeing as he's been sweating so much that he has to do laundry practically every day to cope with the ridiculousness of it. He can't go shirtless because he has absolutely no will to show everyone the out of shape disappointment that it his torso.

He bends to pick up the box and bring it inside, but hisses when his fingers contact something frosty cold at the bottom of the box. Opening it in a hurry, his eyes widen and he tugs the box to his chest as best as he can, taking off in a completely ungraceful run, heading straight for the inn and shouting as he goes. "Ice cream!" he says, like the world's skeeviest ice cream truck on legs, luring children in after him. "Ice cream, there's ice cream, it's going to melt," he warns, because there are six tubs of it, but he fears that in this heat, it's not going to last very long at all. Scientifically, he knows that it's just going to be calories that generate heat, but science can go take a backseat.

He unloads the toppings and the various six flavours (ranging from vanilla to chocolate, cookie dough, mint chocolate chip, butter pecan, and even a treasured cherry garcia), the sprinkles and peanuts going with the caramel and hot fudge sauces. He could weep because there are even serving spades, bowls, and spoons. He knows he ought to be wary about food after the whole chocolate poisoning incident (if it really was the chocolate), but it's just so hot and he's just so hungry.

He'll chance it, because if he doesn't, he just gets some delicious flavoured ice cream soup soon.

3ofswords

WHO: Kira Akiyama
WHERE:
WHEN: May 1st, morning to afternoon
OPEN TO: Multi starter - Graves, Sonny, and 3 others
WARNINGS: Dealing with power loss, finally leaving the house after Obscurial Plot
STATUS: Open

( Graves Starter )

Inn (Limit 3)

There's nothing to do but keep calm, put some shoes on his feet, and test the absent feeling on someone who didn't just have a smoke monster burst from their being and destroy a building. Maybe the creature is simply excised, and he built his sense of Credence on its presence, he can't place him in the house without it. Perhaps Bodhi simply wasn't home, asleep in a chair at the inn, or out in the woods, or already tending the fields with a friend.

It can't all just be gone--muted as his powers have been, it's like waking up suddenly unable to see the color blue, unable to taste, a register of sound that was previously audible gone silent.

It's so silent. The walk to the inn is a tense affair, as if all the bird and insect song has died, warning of something worse in the trees. There's no one here. There's nothing guiding his feet but the choice to visit the inn, and that's as strange as the sense that he's the last person left alive. It's enough that he shoves bodily through the front door of the inn, rather than the kitchen door he tends to slip through, and calls out to the kitchens and pub, desperate to hear a voice, "Is anyone here?"

( Sonny starter )

[This is the first time Kira's really been out and about since the Obscurial Plot meeting and subsequent search, so feel free to tag in and discuss that or the lack of powers!]

mund

WHO: Percival Graves
WHERE: Town Hall
WHEN: Half an hour after the first sighting / hearing of the Obscurus
OPEN TO: OTA
WARNINGS: Mentions of violence, abuse, hate, etc
STATUS: Something like a mingling -- feel free to post OTAs of your own. If you need Graves to respond, just put his name in the header / or in bold somewhere in your comment!

( the ragged they come, and the ragged they kill. )

3ofswords

WHO: Kira
WHERE: Behind the Inn
WHEN: April 21st
OPEN TO: All, Spring Feast mingle post
WARNINGS: Please warn for content in comment headers for individual OTAs
STATUS: Open

He's hardly the first to arrive for a shift in the kitchens, but those ahead of him have sunk into the the search for the building's chairs and tables--the kitchen is open and empty, the tavern devoid even of stools. It's another wrench in the works, one of the smaller reasons for routine to fall apart to reactions, and Kira thinks they'll have a better time of solving it if someone gets the fire up in the stove and everyone eats first.

The damage assessment has people upstairs, people on the path wandered out of their homes. Kira hadn't come through his own dining room on the way out, so he can't say if he's missing furniture or not, and his growling stomach doesn't much care.

It's when he slips out the side door of the kitchen in search of fresh kindling that he finds it. Every missing table and chair standing in the grass, laden with platters of food, buckets of bottled drinks, carafes of what he finds to be coffee sending steam from their lids. There are pastries with the coffee, roasted fowl gleaming golden on the next table, between ham hocks shining with honeyed glaze, large fruits piled among wreaths of fresh flowers.

Dotting the tables are jars, more jars than they've had since he arrived, flickering with short candles. Garlands accent the tables, carry from them into the trees, a web of spring decoration with a feast at its center. Between the platters are smaller plates, small chocolates laid out under decorative drizzle.

"Hey!" he calls back through the door, blinking several times to make sure the sight doesn't shimmer away into the air. "I found the furniture, and I don't think we'll need to cook anything today."

ottimismo

WHO: Sonny Carisi
WHERE: The Inn, the Hospital, the Church
WHEN: April 10th
OPEN TO: OTA, with two closed starters!
WARNINGS: N/A
STATUS: Open!

Church

This morning, like all mornings, Sonny begins his day at the church.

He needs his faith like he needs air and water and shelter. Some days, he's sure it's the only thing that keeps him going. He's stuck in an impossible situation, one that has little rhyme or reason, one that makes very little sense. Sometimes he thinks that it's possible God can't even hear him here, but that's a thought he always dispels quickly. God has to hear him. God can always hear him. So every day, often more than once a day, he prays. In his head, out loud, with his hands clenched tight in front of him. He prays likes it's the last thing he's ever going to do.

This morning, like all mornings, Sonny is praying.

He's on his knees in the home he's turned into a church. It's nothing special — just a bunch of chairs and couches pushed into the living area, lined up and facing the far wall where a crudely made cross stands. It's not much, but it serves its purpose. It brings a sense of peace as Sonny folds his hands together, bows his head, and moves his lips soundlessly in a conversation with God.

Inn

That morning, after returning to his house, he finds a cardboard box on his front step. He's gotten one before, and it wasn't filled with anything bad. Though he knows some people aren't so lucky, and have received some not-so-good things in theirs. Even so, he's excited to tear the top off of this one and see what he's gotten this time, all hopeful gaze and bated breath.

He had not asked God for breakfast foods, but he's certainly not disappointed.

Instead of working in the silence of his home, as he did the last time he got a gift like this, he decides to take it all to the Inn and work in their kitchen. He's never much liked being alone anyway, and things are far more lively here. He gets to work immediately, cheerful despite lacking the usual music he enjoys cooking to. There's a mixed fruit bowl, and he picks out the strawberries and blueberries to make two different batches of fruit pancakes. He wishes he had a few more spices at his disposal to toss in, so he could make it closer to what he does back home. But beggars can't be choosers, and he's happy to have what he does.

Once it's finished, he gathers the pancakes and syrup and the rest of the fruit bowl onto a platter that he unearths from a cabinet in the kitchen, arranging it all nice and neat before carrying it into the main room.

"Who wants pancakes?"

( i will gather myself around my faith )
( for light does the darkness most fear )

lastofthekellys

WHO: Kate Kelly
WHERE: The Inn
WHEN: 10th April
OPEN TO: EVERYONE
WARNINGS: TBA as needed
STATUS: Open

Spring has arrived, warming the air and seemingly to banish all that dreadful, dangerous fog. Some part of Kate thinks that it should be autumn, but she's not in any of the Australian colonies and everything is backwards here. Backwards and strange and draining. The winter was hard for many, many reasons, and spring hasn't been off to a brilliant start with disappearances and biting insects. Not just disappearances, others have moved out of the Inn. Which she'd been expecting as the weather turned more habitable, but the combination with disappearances means Kate is feeling a little lost and uncertain.

At least she's patched things up with Benedict, thank God.

But as self-destructive as she can be (and has been, over winter, with the access to drink), Kate knows there are still things to be done. Today after the daily village lunch is cleared and the volunteers are cleaning the kitchen, she takes herself to the verandah at the front of the Inn with some sewing. For all the weather is warming and based off last year (oh God, oh God, has it been so close to a year?) it'll get hot even by her standards, clothes are wearing out. There's more farming to be done, more repairs and more building, and what they have will be wearing out.

Today, she has some of the rabbit leather and is stitching together simple fingerless gloves to help protect palms from rough work. She can make clothes themselves, as is evidenced by the fact that she sits there in a long brown skirt with a petticoat underneath and an undyed long-sleeved blouse with some simple embroidery, but those she has to be asked to make. The working gloves are a project she's assigned herself.

And, as is usual, as Kate works, she sings. Nothing more recent than 1883, and usually folk songs, traditional songs. Some sad, some sweet or sly, but all sung clearly and with the air of someone who is keeping herself occupied.

fantastic_kneads

WHO: Jacob Kowalski
WHERE: Inn / Around the Village
WHEN: March 22
OPEN TO: OTA!
WARNINGS: n/a
STATUS: Open

bugging out

Today's not really going so swell.

He'd started off with a pretty good day. The lineup had been around the block and he'd just hired the new kid, so he wasn't even run off his feet the way he'd been after the bakery really took off. In the middle of going to get more loaves of bread from the back, though, all of a sudden, it'd been like he got sucker punched and shoved down a giant well, water clouding up his lungs. He doesn't know why, but something about the whole thing felt familiar, like that wobbly feeling is something he ought to know about.

Near drowning, that's got a weird association to it too, but Jacob keeps thinking it ought to be ice and not water. Whatever's going on, he manages to clamber up top to a ridge, spitting and coughing up water before he realizes he's in a fountain, like the kind in Central Park. How'd he get to Central Park so quickly? How'd he get so wet? For that matter, where'd his clothes go? That tie had cost him a lot of money, now it's gone, replaced by clothes that make him look like he belongs in a mental institution.

"Aw, come on, not today," he says, barely keeping the complaint from his tone. He's got three big orders this afternoon, he's got prep to do for tomorrow morning, he's got...

He's got a group of weird little bugs staring at him when he doesn't exactly get out of the fountain. They're all grouped together, looking like little lights. The water sloshes around him from his less than graceful emergence over the top, now he's got an audience. Regardless of the bright things, he's gotta try and get back. Maybe if he goes back the way he came?

Only, as soon as he even tries, one of those bright little things zips forward, jamming itself against his wet clothes, which are the only thing that stop the little stinger from hitting him. Yelping with alarm, Jacob rolls himself over the top of the edge of the fountain, but the bugs don't stop then. Barely aware of the bag on his back, Jacob starts running as far as he can for the nearest building he sees, a big multi-story thing that looks like it belongs back in the old country (not that he remembers the old country). He h its the door with his shoulder, fumbling with the knob to get it open. "C'mon, c'mon, just open, would you, come on!" That's when he goes staggering inside, the low buzz of fireflies after him drowned out by the slamming door.

Pressed up against it, Jacob works to sling his wet backpack to his feet, breathing hard as he tries to figure out what the hell's going on and why he's being chased down by a load of bugs with a grudge. Awkwardly, he realizes that he ain't alone when he sees someone right there, so now he's dripping all over someone's floor and he looks like he escaped the asylum, and for some reason he can't place, this doesn't even feel like the weirdest thing that's ever happened to him.

"I'm dripping all over your floor," he says, words heavy with apology. "I swear, I'm not trying to ruin anything, but these things are after me," he insists, probably a little paranoid, but hey, are you paranoid if you're actually being chased?

foggy wandering

So, Jacob is trapped. That's not exactly something you wanna hear, especially not when you figure you've got a pretty good life going. He's trapped with swarming fireflies coming at him in a place that you can't get out of, but not only that, it's got all these faces he could swear he's seen before, but when he tries to remember, there's nothing. It's just a big blank canvas, waiting for a painter, and he's no good with art. Once he'd dried off, he made his way upstairs in the inn, picking himself a bed to sleep in while he gets his bearings.

Now, he's out in the soupy fog, feeling a little edge of panic. It's not like he was there for the years when they were using gas in the war, he got there too late, but this kind of cloud still makes him fumble, reaching for a gas mask that isn't there. He's got some comfort, knowing he can breathe easy, but it still makes things look like something out of a nightmare.

He feels like he's creeping around without permission, as if you need permission to be wandering around a little village like this. Every once in a while, he sees a little buzz of light and he tenses up, on guard, but they don't seem to care so long as he keeps doing circles of the main little fountain area, which he's been doing for a while, just trying to get this to all make sense in his head. He's so lost in his own head that when he turns to start the fourth loop around the place, he bumps right into someone, sending him staggering a few steps back.

"I'm having a rough day," he mutters, but he's contrite immediately, at fault. "I'm real sorry, I didn't look where I was going. You okay?" He might not have been barreling at anyone, but getting shoved isn't exactly high on the polite behavior scale.

posilutely

WHO: Queenie Goldstein
WHERE: Graves' House/Inn & Hot Springs
WHEN: 1 week after her arrival & March 22, evening
OPEN TO: Graves, Credence & All
WARNINGS: Half-naked witch? IDK
STATUS: Closed

( for graves & credence )

current: at the hot springs (ota)

The hot springs has, by far, been the flat-out, absolute best thing Queenie has discovered about this place. A chance encounter on the road a couple of weeks ago, a teenage girl with big, tired eyes and a towel looped over her arm, dark hair still pinned high on her head.

I don't want a scar, is what the girl had said when she'd pulled up her sleeve to show the ghostly web of lines tracing her skin. It's great for your hair, too.

Queenie's been slipping out into the forest every few days since.

The girl hadn't been wrong; curls once limp were now bright and bouncy again, and Queenie just felt better each time she took the time to go the springs. She could swear she had more energy than ever before, but even if she didn't, she thinks she'd go anyway. Sure, she's got a tub at home, but it's just not the same.

Today she's carried along a couple of bath towels and an empty teapot to fill with water to carry home. They're set neatly aside under the nearest tree, under a low branch draped with her coat and clothes, black cotton fluttering gently in the warm mist skating off the water. She's kept on her underthings -- She's not that bold, no matter what her sister might think -- but there's not all that much left to the imagination as she gratefully sinks in, all the way up to her shoulders.

thecatinahat

WHO: Cougar Alvarez
WHERE: Outside Bungalow #22
WHEN: Mid-day, March 17
OPEN TO: All!
WARNINGS: Discussion of animal butchery
STATUS: Open

Sometimes, Cougar really feels for his ancestors. He knows he's had rough situations before and has had to rough it, but that just means camping and surviving on minimal rations. Being in this place is a whole other game. It means building things from scratch and unearthing old skills he barely remembers. The chickens had been easy enough to build a coop for, but the rabbits had been a little harder. It's more than that, too. Keeping himself and his house fed means keeping the animals fed, which means long days, like he's gone back to his early days in Spec Ops, but this time, at least the only yelling that happens is by angry animals and not angry lieutenants.

Lately, he hasn't been able to do much hunting in the fog, which means he's turned to work closer to home. He'd managed to find several rabbits a few months back and has been treating them as best as he can, prodding and waiting for them to breed. He'd even brought them into the house, using the spare room, but now that the temperature seems to be stable, they're back outside.

That, and there are little ones.

"Aquí, pequeña madre," he says, leaning over to pet the mother for a job done well, offering out small pieces of foliage for the five little ones. He's not naming them and he's not raising them for pets, but right now, they are very small and very helpless and maybe Cougar has just a little bit of a soft spot for them, especially when they're this little, and this adorable.

Now, though, the trouble is that he's only built his hutch for four rabbits to grow and he has a fifth. He's sure he can convince someone to take it off his hands, but it will be hard to part with it, especially given that his future meal is very cute right now.

ex_assertiveness90

WHO: Stella Gibson
WHERE: The fountain/around the village, and Stella and Peggy's house
WHEN: Through March 17th
OPEN TO: OTA, with a closed thread for Peggy
WARNINGS: Stella's increasingly feverish and delusional. Will update if needed.
STATUS: Ongoing

the fountain ; ota

The little jaunt into the woods with Graves, while educational after a fashion, had only left Stella with more questions, a so far harmless sting from a firefly, and a good deal of concern. That one of their own appears to have gone missing is only the latest in a series of difficulties that have plagued them for months, and there's a certain degree of frustration that, for all her skills developed over more than a decade of detective work, she can't do anything about it. Every time she thinks she's getting somewhere, she runs into a dead end. It seems to be a theme, here.

Somewhere, in some distant part of the world, if he didn't bleed out on Slieve Dove, she thinks Paul Spector must be laughing at her.

She's been back from the woods for a few hours when she starts to notice something feels off. Not in the way that this entire place feels strange, but physically, a creeping feeling of being overheated and oversensitive, like even the light fabric of her cotton blouse and trousers is just slightly too much. It's got nothing to do with the weather, which is cold and damp and foggy, and Stella realizes that somewhere along the line she's taken ill. It doesn't as yet occur to her to connect what she's feeling with having been stung; she tries to push through it, stubbornly, as she would were she on an important investigation at home and unable to allow herself to take even a day away from her work. She's not often ill, and the discomfort of even a minor loss of control over her own body is acute.

Stella decides to attempt going for a walk to clear her head. For a little while it almost works, but the rising fever tires her quickly, and she has to sit down, easing herself carefully onto the edge of the fountain. She seems alert, mostly, but she's pale and unmistakably much warmer than normal were one to get close enough to her to notice.

the house ; for peggy

A day or so later, and Stella's fever is in full swing: she's pale, sweating, shaking with chills, and too exhausted to walk more than a few feet. She's been trying to drink water, but her appetite is gone; she's not sure she's even eaten since lunchtime the previous day.

She's seeing things: not full-blown hallucinations, but shadows from the corner of her peripheral vision that make her startle, sometimes reaching for the weight of a Glock 17 in a shoulder holster that's not there. Eventually she finds herself unable to do anything but sequester herself in her room, sitting on her bed with her back against the wall, shivering even with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders.

There's panic and fear clawing at her throat unbidden, the loss of control an awful violation, and it's all she can do to hold those feelings down with what little remains of her self-control, her composure torn to fine shreds of what it was only a matter of hours previous. Stella thinks of trying to tell someone what's going on, ask for help — from Peggy, perhaps, but right now the idea of trusting anyone even that much seems impossible. She's all too conscious of the fact that she's being watched, listened to, and who's to say anything she says or does won't go straight back to whoever's running this whole goddamned experiment?

She should run, really; she should fucking run before this gets any worse, but she's miserable and too exhausted to move. It doesn't even occur to her that she forgot to lock the bedroom door and anyone could come right in.

tsingtauense

WHO: Lily Evans Potter
WHERE: The Fountain + The Inn
WHEN: March 7th + 8th
OPEN TO: EVERYONE [Multithreads 4ever]
WARNINGS: she's ruffled
STATUS: UPDATE: added second prompt! So gonna close new tags for her immediate arrival [Fountain] (leaving that mental space a bit) and OPEN new tags for the next morning [Inn]!

( rolled a lucky pair of dice / ended up in paradise / landed on a snake's eyes, took a bite and ended up bleeding [FOUNTAIN] )

( the truth is, all those angels started acting the same [INN] )

posilutely

WHO: Queenie Goldstein
WHERE: Fountain and Inn kitchen
WHEN: 22 & 23 February
OPEN TO: Graves, Credence and YOU
WARNINGS: Potential spoilers for Fantastic Beasts
STATUS: Closed to new threads

fountain (for graves & credence);

As far as prime places to wake up out of a deep, snuggly sleep go, Queenie is pretty darned sure this one goes at the very bottom of her list. In the muddy mental place between sleeping and waking, when her body jolts sharply forward, upward, she thinks she's done a doozy and disapparated in her sleep. Just last week, there had been a story in the papers about a little old lady minding her sweet business in Queens who ended up in the middle of a No-Maj cheese factory. She'd accidentally fallen asleep with her wand her in her hand and sneezed. It happens, it really does.

And oh, Queenie's gone and added insult to injury and ended up smack in the middle of the ocean -- No, the Hudson -- and her wand isn't in her hand anymore. She's going to drown out here and Tina will be all alone, and gosh, she'll be so ashamed of Queenie she'll probably have to make something up about it. Trembling hand clutched bravely to her breast, my sister Queenie died battling a rabid fire crab. She saved three starving orphans and an 80-year-old nun.

Because the thing is... Queenie Goldstein never learned to swim.

When she sputters to the surface, she's gotten there by sheer instinct alone, her muscles flailing with rigid panic. She coughs, spitting up water and then gulping more down, arms frantically slapping before she sinks once again.

inn kitchen, the next day (ota);

Every inch of Queenie's body feels utterly worn out. The confusion of finding herself just about as far away from New York City as it's apparently possible to get is lingering, crouching at the back of her mind, but she guesses she oughta be grateful that she's too tired to do more than just shove it aside and get on with... well, whatever the heck this is.

Just now, breakfast.

Without a wand.

Hands on her hips, she's crouched down in front of one of the ranges, peering inside the heavy opened door at the neat pile of firewood inside. "Oh, applesauce," she mutters, and then puffs out a breath that stirs the short hair skimming her cheeks. She's never had to light a fire without magic before, not once.

3ofswords

WHO: Kira Akiyama
WHERE: The Fountain
WHEN: Sunset, January 17th
OPEN TO: All, come help him with his hand and drag his drunk ass back inside.
WARNINGS: Drinking, general disregard for not freezing to death.
STATUS: Open

They say people find themselves in adversity: Flor's tia would intone that God never gave a person more than they could handle, and he had aunts of his own who believed in karma. Hell was just a place to build it toward the next life, and you tried to earn a lesser sentence in the go around.

Kira has never been religious. There are times he wonders if his gifts are just inherited hysteria, if lithium would serve him as well as the wards his mother drew on the backs of his cards. There was a time when he'd hoped it was the case, that his dreams were just dreams, that there was a chemical to turn up or shut off and he could just--go to school, date a boy, see what kind of person he was without the gifts, the shop, the ugly destiny. At the low points, when the jaws of the world start to close in, and the fires of whatever lies behind or beneath the world start to lick his heels: he hopes he is just crazy.

A month in, he's back at the fountain, wondering what he can toss in to make that wish.

Stood at the edge, his left hand is stuffed in a glove, snow packed around the flesh. He'd been cooking when he quake hit--hadn't known to question why the cat had been growling under his bed in the morning, hadn't understood the ghosts of tremors his failing power had tried to grasp--and in his panic, he'd burned his hand. It was worse than most injuries he'd suffered in New York, and it had hurt for every moment that he'd held it useless to his chest, caught in the wave of fear and action from those around him; being shoved into the safety of a heavy table; waiting for the tremors to cease and the doorway to clear before he could wander out on shaking legs to shove his hand deep in the snow.

There were other things to deal with, and the fountain springs eternal. In his other hand swings the bottle of Grey Goose from Thor, found at the back of a cabinet and hidden away in his room, waiting for the right time. He'd started drinking it to numb the pain while waiting out the aftershocks, and he hasn't found a reason to stop.

A month in, no Ty crawled out of the fountain, healed and whole. He lifts the bottle on an arc and tilts his head on the hit.

A month in, no way out. Lift, tilt, sip.

A month in: a wendigo escaped to the trees, lights buzzing louder and brighter every day, and chatter calling this a second quake.

He tilts the bottle back, knowing the warmth in his chest is artificial, that he can't do this much longer in the freezing cold. He should chuck it into the depths and let that be his protest, and go warm his sorry ass by the fire, grateful that it's intact. Hand blistered and numb at his side, he watches the aurora-torn sunset reflect on the water, as picturesque a hell as anyone could create. "How bad did I fuck up to deserve this," he murmurs, bottle paused at his lips.

Inn option: characters may also find him warming up in the kitchen with the rest of his bottle, having found out that the water in the fountain doesn't do jack shit for wounds. It's a second degree burn from a hot food or water spill, over the side and back of his left hand, and he'll be alright if he keeps it cold and keeps it clean after it blisters off.

ottimismo

WHO: Sonny Carisi
WHERE: The Fountain, the Inn, House Number 7, House Number 24 (the Church-in-progress), and in-between
WHEN: January 17th
OPEN TO: Everyone!
WARNINGS: Religion? Will update as needed.
STATUS: Open!

( i will get down on my knees and i will pray )

Sixth Iteration

Logs

Entries tagged with l&o: sonny carisi

Credits & Style Info

[open] 004 † i cried out heaven save me, but i'm down to one last breath

Thank you for all the joy and pain; [1 Locked, 2 OTA]

House #7 - Mid-Late July - Locked to Sonny

Behind House #17 - Mid-Late August - OTA (3 thread limit)

7I Shore - Mid-Late August - OTA (3 thread limit)

[closed] smile, the worst is yet to come

[closed] what i need is a good defense

So get your hep boots on, and then you'll carry on [OTA]

[open] i'm caught in the cold; i'm caught in the hot

we all scream (but this time, for ice cream)

[OTA] sing that song to me, no reason to repent

obscurial event: town hall.

[Mingle OTA] Spring Feast

003 ✝ i won't be made useless, i won't be idle with despair

keeping idle hands busy

the road goes strange with faces new

My heart will lead me there soon [Locked & OTA]

(no subject)

hold on to me, 'cause i'm a little unsteady.

if they ask, why'd she go? you can say that life in eden changed [OTA]

You can try hard, don't mean a thing; [Arrival & OTA]

[ota] take your shoes off and throw them in the lake

002 ✝ in the end only kindness matters