singillatim | [open] arrival

Entry tags:

[open] arrival

Who: Sameen Shaw & OTA
What: August 2024 TDM prompts, getting bearings
When: Mid- to late August
Where: Milton and the surrounding environs

arrival / you lying next to me TDM prompt

It doesn't make sense for this to be real, Shaw thinks, because reality rarely involves falling asleep in a New York City flophouse and waking up completely alone in the middle of nowhere - but it also doesn't make sense for it to be a simulation, because the simulations hadn't worked like this, either. That means that this is more confusing than unsettling - and all that confusion does is make her angry.

No enemies are in sight, which is a bust for her; it means she can't jump right into a shootout, take down some kidnapping bad guys, and get some answers. She does keep her handgun out and at the ready as she walks along, keeping up a brisk and steady pace in an attempt to ward off the chill that she can already feel seeping through her tight jeans and leather jacket. It just figures that this crap had to be pulled on her when she was woefully underdressed for winter weather - but she can at least count herself lucky that she'd passed out fully dressed. As much as this sucks, she knows it would be downright impossible if she were barefoot and wearing PJs.

Luckily, she spots the far-off lights of town in a matter of minutes, which spares her from having to cross her fingers and pick a random direction to walk in. She has no illusions that this place is going to be either safe or full of friendlies, but considering the lack of immediate options at her disposal, she can't afford to be picky. She'll sneak over and scope it out, do some recon, and get a feel for what's going on before she makes herself known. Whether she approaches as a civilian or as an agent going in guns a-blazing will depend on what she finds.

Or that's the plan, anyway. What actually happens is that she tromps across a small frozen pond that's been completely hidden by drifting snow, and the ice underfoot only makes itself known when it cracks unceremoniously under her feet, depositing her into two feet of slushy, marshy, freezing water.

Methuselah's feast TDM prompt

One way or another, Shaw will find her way to Milton. Maybe whoever helps her out of the water takes her there directly, or maybe they warm her up elsewhere and she makes her way to town on her own later. Either way, she eventually ends up in a free bed in the Community Hall, where she'll crash for ten or twelve hours straight.

Shaw herself isn't sure how long she sleeps, but it's comparatively warm, and there's no immediate, obvious danger, so she'd guess that it's a good long while before the smell of fish stew wakes her up. After that, barely a minute passes between her opening her eyes and dropping herself down into an empty chair at the feast table. Questions later. Sustenance first. She's halfway through with her bowl of stew and plate of grilled fish before she looks up for long enough to turn to one of her seatmates.

"So - where are we, and what's with the old guy?"

hot springs

Freezing cold water is fine for sponge baths and washing clothes, but for someone who just recently took an accidental bath in a pond and isn't looking to repeat the experience, the hot springs sound a lot more enticing. Shaw makes her way there a few days after her arrival, the blanket from her bed wrapped around her shoulders (she'll want a way to dry off and warm up before redressing, she figures). Once in the cave, she sets the blanket aside, the strips down bare and walks directly into the water, letting out a heavy, relieved sigh as she settles herself down on the rocky bottom and sinks in almost to her nose.

"That's more like it," she murmurs, more to herself than to anyone else that might be nearby. After a moment or two, though, she does glance over at her fellow bather. "Guessing the conditioner in town's all out, though."

[OOC: Feel free to reply with either prose or brackets; I'll match format!]

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

The Doctor's been staying close to Milton these last few days, though truth be told, he's always on the move. It's a long enough journey between Milton and Lakeside that his body won't tolerate going back and forth every few days like he'd vastly prefer to, but he's too stubborn not to stay on the move as much as he can. It doesn't matter that he's been here for months now, he'll continue to struggle with accepting the limitations of this body of his that's — for all intents and purposes — more human now than he'd care to admit out loud.

He's been busy recently investigating the earthquakes; having made rudimentary seismographs, he's been calculating the strength of the quakes, the distance between them, plotting the coordinates on maps he's made. Trying to find a pattern, anything that would connect to the ominous warning of, the grave is opening. He's near enough — jotting down notes to himself — that he hears a crack, an unmistakable sound that's become far too repetitive lately. He won't wait to hear someone call out for help, in case they're incapacitated, so he's on the move immediately, tucking his notes and his pencil hastily into his backpack and jogging towards the source.

"Hello! Hang on a moment, I'll have you out." He stops a few centimeters away, kneeling lower to the ground and feeling with his hands for the thickness and integrity of the ground beneath him, trying to judge just how close he can get to her himself. Under his breath, he mumbles, "Poor choice of words. As if you can hang on to anything at all right now, that's what's got you there in the first place. But!" His movements are hurried even as he chatters, and he quickly shrugs out of his warm, heavy coat. Just in case he gets wet himself, he wants something dry left for her, at least. Now he inches as close to the edge as he can get, holding both hands out, intending to grab her if she's able to reach back for him.

"Now there's something to hang onto," he smiles softly. Yes, even at a time like this.

Chloe doesn’t like hanging out at the hall very much - last time she’d been in here someone had pulled a gun on her - but her supernaturally enhanced stamina leaves her constantly hungry and she can't resist the siren call of free food.

She's on her second bowl of soup when the woman across from her speaks up.

“The town’s called Milton. Northern Canada somewhere. The old man says he’s a local. Doesn't live here in town, though, and won't give us his real name.”

“I don't know what that is,” Randvi answers mildly. “It's for bathing?”

Undressed in the water, she isn't as obviously displaced in time as she tends to be in her light armour and fox fur. However, healing scars mar the right side of her face, neck and shoulder, and a gauze bandage covers her right eye, even while bathing. A grey puppy hovers anxiously on the edge of the spring at her right side, visibly nervous about the water.

It's a good thing he's close enough to hear the cracking, because she doesn't scream: she goes down with nothing but a sharp intake of breath, followed by an involuntary gasp once she hits the shock of the water. The pond is, technically, plenty shallow enough to stand up in, and there's no sort of current to content with - but with her limbs immediately numb from the cold and the slick ice and snow giving her nothing to grab hold onto as she tries to pull herself up, she's struggling.

When she spots the guy jogging over, she tries to call out to him to warn him not to step on the ice, but the wind is still knocked out of her, and all she can manage is a gaspy little dhaaaah. Once he's closer, though - once he's talking to her, saying things that she can technically hear but nevertheless isn't really taking in at the moment - she's able to manage something more substantial.

"Careful," she gasps, though she does reach for his hands with both of hers, using them to pull herself out of the watery hole. "S-stand back, use a-- a branch-- if it starts t-to crack-- got it?"

Don't worry, Chloe, Shaw's gun is currently disassembled and drying under her bed. You're good.

She thinks this answer over as she chews, swallows... and then momentarily (momentarily) sets her fork down.

"You got any idea about the endgame here?"

"It's for keeping your hair moisturized," Shaw replies, though she's not looking at Randvi as she says it. She scoots a little closer to the edge of the pool, holding out her fingers for the puppy to sniff. "The minerals in hot springs dry out your hair and skin."

Ruby's pretty occupied with her own dish when Shaw speaks up. She raises up one finger to get her to wait as she stuffs her mouth one last time. A few moments of chewing and then swallowing later and the teenage girl looks over with a smile, and a little bit of uncertainty in her own tone.

"Uh- Well we're on Earth for one. In case you're from somewhere else." She had to clarify because she wasn't from there.

"Outside of that we're in a place called Milton in Canada. I have no idea where that is in reference to anywhere else around here though."

“Nothing concrete,” Chloe sighs. That would be too easy. “You heard that voice when you got grabbed up, yeah? That thing is the Darkwalker, and it and its fucked up little buddies over in Lakeside do not like us being here. I figure whatever brought us here did it because the Darkwalker can't just eat the world if there's outsiders here.”

Careful — ha. He considers the word insofar as being something uttered by her. Cataloging it as an adjective distantly known to him. This man has rarely (if ever) been careful a day in his life. Nor does he care to consider his own well-being or self-preservation. Carefulness is extended towards the safety of others, those around him.

"Noted, but trust me, we'll be fine, the pair of us. And I'll spare any unsuspecting branches from a duty they didn't ask for. That pond's no good for anyone or anything," he rambles, yes, but he's also staying right where he is, near her, to make sure she's steady.

"There's an unbelievably cozy, very dry and obnoxiously puffy coat with your name on it only ten paces away. You'll look dreadful in it, it's delightful. Almost there," he encourages. It's just another day ending in Y. He'd be more worried if he wasn't absolutely convinced — perhaps too smugly — they'll have this whole situation sorted in only another moment or two when they're on completely solid ground and she's in drier clothing.

Edited (wording~) 2024-09-04 04:13 (UTC)

Coat. Dry. Those are the words that reach her the best and hit her the hardest, and she makes a wild grab for it as she surges forward, stumbling as her legs threaten to buckle under her, the fabric of her jeans already starting to freeze stiff. She makes it seven paces, but makes up for the rest with a lunge, successfully snatching the coat and trying to pull it around herself.

Shaw has fewer compunctions about eating with her mouth full, so she doesn't bother to swallow her next one before saying, "I'm from New York". It's... mostly intelligible. Maybe less so for someone who has never heard of New York before.

She swallows, then continues.

"So, what, you're an alien? 'Cause you look pretty normal to me."

Edited (lol fuck you autocorrect, i didn't ask for your help) 2024-09-04 04:35 (UTC)

“I see.” Randvi still oils her braid when she can, so she hadn't noticed.

She makes a small gesture above the water and the puppy surges forward to sniff and lick the offered fingers.

“My name is Randvi, and this is Ulfrùn. If you have already met Diefenbaker, she's his daughter. She is training to help me travel more freely.”

"Mind you put the hood up, too!" He calls out to her, though in her understandable haste, she's put some swift distance between them. He's quick to jog over, the brief movement warming him up a little, though he'll need to put on the spare coat shortly. Every part of her must be absolutely freezing, though this coat is long and should go down past her knees. It's fluffy and thick, and when he gets close, he just naturally moves in to help zip it up, in case her hands are too stiff, though she's more than welcome to swat him away and he'll hardly mind.

In the early days here, he wasn't very good at all with being prepared like he is now. He never had to worry about being cold before, is the thing. He could withstand extreme temperatures on both ends, so it didn't occur to him he should pack mittens and scarves before he'd step out of his cabin. A few bad days taught him quickly.

"Oh, you are fortunate you got me, though, for survival buddy today of all days. Just think — a deer could have wandered over here instead and — though lovely — they're utterly useless." He starts to reach for his pack now, to gather those mittens and a scarf for her.

No swatting happens: her fingers are frozen stiff, and inside the coat, she's still shivering in her wet clothes. But the insulation helps, and crouching down on her haunches to give her legs a rest helps, and even though she should probably get more dry than this soon, she knows she's no longer at immediate risk of dying of hypothermia. Which means she can focus on more than just second-to-second survival, and get back to the broader picture.

"We were snowmobiling," she says - injecting just the right amount of fear into her voice, widening her eyes a little. "And the engine crapped out. My boyfriend, he, he's good with that stuff, so he s-stayed behind to work on it while I hiked out for help. I saw the lights... I thought, if there's a town over there, I could call someone--"

"Sounds like a load of crap to me," Shaw says heavily, with no real energy in her voice. "Folie à twenty, or however many people we got here."

Chloe snorts. “Well, if you know of something rational that could incapacitate an entire town with terror and then kill someone without ever touching them, I'm all ears.”

Scarf acquired, he wraps it around her; well, around the coat, which ends up looking a bit ridiculous, in his pursuit of trying to keep her warm. It will suffice for now, any little bit helps, right? The mittens are handed over next and he gives a little tug on the hood.

"Good news, you've just missed picture day for the town directory otherwise this would be a sight," he teases a little, as though this is all a normal conversation, as though she hasn't just offered some detail about what she'd been up to just before she was suddenly pulled into a world that's trapped her here. Right! Back on track, Doctor.

"I realize this must be incredibly disorienting, to say the least. I can't promise anything gets entirely better from here," he starts, in his sometimes blunt way, but then, just as quickly, "but you've got me. And there are others, of course, and you won't be alone." The duality of (a mad)man. Blunt and cheerful with hope at the same time, cluing in to the fear that seems to be in her eyes. "First, though, we need to get you inside. We're not terribly far from Milton, the town here. Bit of a trek and I can sling you over my shoulder if it comes to it, but we'll manage. You can tell me more about your boyfriend and this snowmobile excursion cut short. I've never had the pleasure of riding one, absolute pity." He pauses a moment, though he starts to walk, to lead. "A long walk to undertake on your own."

"A smart little girl," murmurs Shaw - allowing the licks without complaint, and wiggling her fingers to tickle the puppy under the chin. Almost as an afterthought, she adds, "I'm Shaw."

Sorry, Randvi. Dogs are always a bigger draw than people, at least at first.

"So, she's gonna become a sled dog or something?"

So it is a town, not a base (military or otherwise), unless it's a town sprung up around a base. The latter is a possibility she can't discard out of hand: some sort of official installation nearby is still the most straightforward explanation for how she could have ended up out here, whether by the hands of the government, the remains of either Decima or Vigilance, or some other unknown threat.

Keeping up the ruse of being an innocent civilian seems like the smartest choice for now.

Walking isn't going to be easy, but she's hoping to not have to be carried like a sack of potatoes unless she actually starts to pass out, and she's not at that point yet. Still shivering, legs still stiff and mostly numb, she starts to gamely trudge forward.

"I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't found me," she says - keeping up with the little quaver of fear, but infusing relief and gratitude into her tone now as well. "I'm fit, I hike, I do, y'know, pilates and spin classes. But we were so unprepared for this. So that's-- that's really Milton up there?"

The town name is unfamiliar, and gives her no actual clues to help her orient herself geographically, but that wouldn't be the case for someone who'd been tooling around the area on a snowmobile.

"I was hoping, but, you know, you see lights and it could be anything. Not everyone is friendly enough to let you hike up and use your phone. Or--"

She lets out a quiet, embarrassed-sounding chuckle.

"Or pull you out of a pond. I don't know how to thank you - you probably saved my life."

Edited 2024-09-04 13:51 (UTC)

"Terror could cause hallucinations," Shaw muses. She spears another bite of fish, considering it on her fork. "Or-- how much of this is stuff you actually experienced, and how much did you just hear about?"

See. This was Ruby's kind of people. She does blink with a little bit of surprise when she says New York.

"Oh! I have heard of that one. There's another guy around who's from there too." Look at her, paying a little bit of attention to things.

"Kind of, sort of I guess? I mean. I'm a human and all that. But I'm from a place called Remnant. I don't think it's anywhere near here." She says with a little bit of a shrug.

"The stars and moon are all wrong for one. But- Apparently that's a problem with this place in general."

“It's come three times since I've been here. Killed six people. I haven't seen anyone die directly because it like, taps into some primal part of you and makes you burrow from the terror, but I've seen the bodies. Not a mark on ‘em. Boat doc says they died from fear.”

And yeah, yeah she can see the 'not me though' coming, but it does it to everyone.

“It didn't come at Midsummer, but it influenced people. Made us do things. I did experience that one, but it's hard to talk about it.”

Ulfrùn is clearly relishing the attention, snuffling in delight. Randvi lives in a multi-wolf household so she's not always getting this much one-on-one attention.

“Shaw.” Another of those strange hissing names that the people of the future like so much. “Not a sled, just for me. I was blinded on one side in an accident and she helps me avoid low obstacles in unfamiliar places.”

"They looked pretty normal to me, too."

Not that she's any kind of astronomer. Later on, when it's fully dark out and she doesn't have hot food in front of her, she'll have to take a second look.

"So, uh--" She wipes fish juice off her mouth with the back of her hand, squinting slightly at Ruby. "You seem pretty calm about all of this."

Says the woman who's kept up the same quasi-monotone for this entire conversation. Stones and glass houses, Shaw.

He'll let her ramble if she needs to — God knows he doesn't mind chatter, he'd be a hypocrite if he did. Fine, fine. Sometimes he is a hypocrite, too. But no, this — this is interesting. Humans run the gamut when it comes to their spectrum of responses in what's objectively an unsettling situation. Fear can make someone act out of character. He doesn't know her at all, of course, but he's picked up an instinct over the years, a way of knowing without knowing.

Thing is, she fell through the ice and didn't panic, didn't cry out. Easy to attribute to shock, perhaps. It happened fast, the air stolen from her lungs in the cold. It wasn't particularly deep water, but there's something — something about that, along with the notes of fear in her voice. He has no real reason to outright doubt her, but some of it feels like she's trying to fit into it, like the fear about all this doesn't come natural, like she's trying to shrug on a coat that doesn't quite fit. He suspects — perhaps wrongly — that she's more adjusted to this type of displacement, that she's seen and done more than she wants to let on. He's been wrong before, though. He's curious, so he'll poke and prod with a figurative little stick while he shrugs on his spare coat, slings his pack onto his shoulders, and starts to lead her towards town. Walking backwards for now, so he can see her more clearly. Also because he's just that sort.

"Thank me? For what anyone would or should do? No, no, that's old hat," he waves a hand dismissively. "Unless you've got a pack of Jammie Dodgers in your pockets, oh those would be a treat — though, suppose they'd be mush now...never mind! I'm the Doctor, I'm here to help, you're alive, that's all the thanks I need," he rattles off in a flurry.

He turns to face forward now, talking over his shoulder to her. The mention of using a phone is interesting, and so — "How long have you been in the area? You must have been taking advantage of the resort cabins, eh? Just a bit back that way," he nods his head. "Serenity Point Resort they call it — funny name, isn't it? Where do you think they come up with these names? Whispering pines, whispering creeks, harmony lodge," he laughs softly. "It's a lovely area, though. Near enough to Milton, away from the bustle."

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 1 of 6

[open] arrival

you lying next to me

Feast

Hot springs

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject