singillatim | this place wants us dead

Entry tags:

this place wants us dead

Who: Francis Crozier & Open to All
What: Captain Crozier comes to town
When: Early days of November
Where: About town, along the outskirts

Content Warnings: Potential mentions of lead poisoning and scurvy, cannibalism, starvation, violence, body horror, murder, alcoholism. Just #Franklin Expedition Things

I. Along the Main Road - Crozier Comes to Town

Crozier's breath rattles around his caribou-lined hood, the steady sound of crunching ice and rocks underfoot familiar music to his steady trudging. How many miles are behind him now? How many miles has he apparently forgotten? Even now the lead must still swim in his nerves and veins; how else could he explain the sudden appearance of trees and an entire North American-style village? Surely he's hallucinating now.

A pale ghost in Netsilik furs, Crozier holds fast to his ice knife in his only remaining hand and begins to explore the buildings. What he's searching for he doesn't know -- a sign of human life? Something to eat, a place to stay? Something to wake him from this nightmare?

II. The Church -- Uncovering the Graves

Milton couldn't be more different than King William Land, his home by accident and then by choice. Things grow in this place, there are pockets of warmth, hills and caves and homes to hide. The ice isn't all-consuming, looming and screaming and groaning as it shifts and moves and destroys.

But he feels the breath of something Wild and Divine on his neck. Something lives in the darkness of the trees and speaks through the pops and hisses of the Aurora. Are their souls at stake in this place too?

Crozier touches the amulet sewn into the space above his heart as he wanders the churchyard. As he looks for the names of the dead of Milton he idly recites the names of his own dead. They're with him even now, even dragged away as he is from their bones and makeshift memorials of scattered papers and silverware.

III. The Basin -- Ice Fishing

There's so much plenty here, an embarrassment of riches to be found in the wilderness and little town. Once he's found a place to live he sets about making himself useful; they should be gathering fresh meat while they're in between storms.

There's no seal to be found, but apparently there's a decent spot for ice fishing nearby, and so off Crozier goes to bore a hole and try his hand at catching some food.

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Kate tries to go at least once at week to the church, even if she's not really entirely sure what day it is. The routine is comforting, and it's nice to have something familiar in an incredibly unfamiliar world. It's the furs that catch her attention, and she thinks it's someone else entirely walking amongst the graves of the church yard.

Her face brightens, and she's wandering over towards the man. Methuselah often returns to the wilds after the feasts, it's not typical of him to stay in town.

"Methuselah, you're back early? But I thou—" She stops suddenly when she's close enough, catching sight of his face. An older man, but younger than Methuselah. Embarrassment creeps into her expression as she steps back a half-step.

"Oh. Sorry, I— I thought you were someone else. The... furs."

One of the houses that Crozier will find is a small cabin with the lights on and smoke issuing from a metal chimney. Not terribly notable in and of itself, but there is a carefully hand-lettered sign on the front porch railing that reads:

HARRY D.S. GOODSIR SURGEON

From outside, one can see activity within: Harry Goodsir, going about his business in his little home.

Little has taken up many responsibilities since his arrival in Milton a few months ago. He patrols, and guards, and routinely checks in on others. He protects the people of this town in the ways that he can — quietly, not raising any public alarm about the fiendish Hickey, no; he keeps that information tucked within his own heart, a secret he shares with Goodsir. But he keeps a close eye on the situation, one of many tasks that occupy his time.

This current task is an equally undesirable one, but necessary. Many of the dead that were found in this town had to be buried in cold, ice-chipped soil — and several bodies couldn't be buried too deeply. There is a concern that the elements may uncover some of them, a particularly strong wind, a blizzard. So he makes his rounds to the church some days, to check in on things there.

He isn't used to bumping into others out here, where things are so quiet, and still. (But never quite as still as out on the ice. Compared to there, this place is alive, perhaps a strange thought to any others. To Little, nothing can ever compare to that vast abyss of white.)

He's crouching over a mildly fresh grave, one gloved hand gingerly pressing flat upon the earth, making sure it's still compact, and the corpse beneath isn't seeping through. He doesn't yet see the man drifting through the graveyard like a spectre, although perhaps Little seems like one of his own — as still and quiet as he remains. He wouldn't immediately recognise the man even if he were to lift his head and spot him across the distance, not in those furs. Alternatively, Edward still wears his uniformed greatcoat and officer's cap, and although he's cleaned up his appearance a bit, he's left his sideburns long, for warmth.

After a long moment, he finally moves to stand, very slow. And he's staring down at the grave with solemness, quietly breathing in the frigid air. No matter how much death he's known, it catches hold of his heart.

There is someone wandering the backyard.

Living in the town's church had some benefits, if Knives chose to ignore the irony of it considering the narrative of his life. The biggest one was the distance between the building and the more populated areas of Milton. He was still coming around to being so close to others, humans especially.

He can't really complain, not anymore.

Dressed in outerwear fit for the bitter cold and snow, Knives is outside with an axe in hand and a slowly growing pile of chopped wood behind the church. He only stops to watch the form of what he wishes was a ghost haunting the graveyard here. Perhaps he could call out and interrupt whatever this is, but for the moment he'll simply observe.

Crozier isn't so stunned by the sudden appearance of a young woman in the churchyard that he can't appreciate the humor in being called 'Methuselah'.

Methuselah though! Is he that old? Maybe he has more grays in his beard than he initially realized. It's been some time since he's seen his own reflection.

"No harm done," he tells her gently, raising up both arms - one gloved hand and one seemingly empty as it flops about - in a gesture of peace. "Are there others who wear furs like me? Do they speak Inuktitut?"

Trapping's bloody hard. At the least, it's a lot harder than Hickey's realized. For all his big talk about opening his doors up to everyone, for all the helpful image he's trying to cultivate, the fact of the matter is that he's averaging one rabbit every three days at best. He's learning, of course. When he first arrived, it was one rabbit a week. But he knows that he's got to get better. And, there are still some days when he walks home with nothing—case in point, today.

It's easy to ignore Hickey at first glance, to mistake him from someone else. He's gone native, as it were, shedding his wools and greatcoat for a water-resistant parka, proper hiking boots, all the clothes of the modern era and none of the 1840s that he arrived in. But as he trudges back to his house, he spots someone fishing. A man, bundled up in furs. Someone who looks native—or at least, who looks like he knows what he's doing.

"Oi!" Hickey calls out, absolutely scaring away any fish that might be there. "Oi, over there, how d'you do that?"

"Goodsir."

It can't be a coincidence, this name in this place, and it terrifies him. He stares at the lettering until his vision begins to tunnel, his pulse rising and rising until it's outright racing, his breath coming in shorter and shorter bursts until he feel like he can't breathe at all.

He grips the rail and holds on to keep from outright keeling over on the spot.

"John Cowie," he says to himself, stepping through the uneven rows. "Thomas Plater. George Thompson. John Stri...Stickland." Stickland, not Strickland. Damn. "William Orren. Billy."

He sees movement out of the corner of his eye and pauses, a long plume of hot breath crystalizing in the air as he stares.

It's a ghost. An honest-to-god ghost.

Some of these graves are freshly dug. It must have been difficult work, trying to pick through the snow and ice and permafrost to even cover them a few inches. Crozier crouches down to inspect the work, curious, when he feels a pair of eyes watching him.

There's more life in this place than he initially expected.

He rises and turns, raising his hand in greeting at the man with the axe.

She is very sorry! She didn't mean to be rude and insinuate he's like... super old...! Nor does she mean to stare a tiny bit when she realises he appears to be missing a hand.

"Inuk..titut...?" She shakes her head, she doesn't even recognise the language. "Everyone I've met here only speaks English? And Methuselah's the only person I've seen wear furs, but he's the only person we've met who's actually from here."

Although, now she's curious, considering. He doesn't sound like he's from this world, but she could be wrong.

"Are... you from here?"

There's a man in the furs at the church. Edward, who's taken to climbing the rooftops of Milton, drops down to perch onto a gargoyle that overlooks the cemetery and watches the new fellow for a moment. He seems...sad, he thinks. Like a wandering ghost, tracing over the names of the dead.

He waits until the man is directly underneath him. Then, in a voice that Crozier may well recognize as that of a Welshman: "Are you looking for someone amongst these graves, mate?"

The human - man - turns in greeting and there is a brief moment of deliberation as Knives studies the stranger. He rests the head of the axe against the tree stump used for chopping wood, thin wisps of steam curling around his head as he breathes out.

"If you are looking for someone, you won't find them here."

He rumbles, the silence of snow carrying his voice over the headstones. Vash had told him about the ones buried here, the graves he dug for the town natives.

Goodsir hears something without and goes to the window; looking out, he sees a man in furs leaning on his porch rail, in obvious distress. He throws his coat on and hurries outside.

"Sir—you—please, come inside. What's happened?"

He doesn't recognise Crozier at all, but he does recognise the style of the furs. An Inuk parka. His heart leaps in his chest.

And Crozier absolutely does ignore this stranger, hoping that instead he's trying to call out to the man currently ice-dancing all over the lake as though the world were his stage. Which it probably is, who is he to judge? Whatever makes a person happy, he just wishes he kept to the edge of the ice so as not to disturb the bloody fish.

He grunts a little and pulls up his line.

Aaaaand there's a man up on the roof. He raises his head, squinting at the glare of the sun hitting the bright-white snow. Crozier's instinct is to believe that he's up there fixing the roof or something equally as practical.

"Wouldn't that be something?" he calls back, Irish accent thick. "No, just curious."

Most of the stores are pretty much empty by now, their contents either used or moved somewhere else, but Levi still goes through them when he's out on patrol. A respite from the wind, at the very least, and sometimes the worst of the cold. The boy in the oversized coat with the rifle on his back happens to be in the next store that Crozier explores, going up at down the aisles. He pauses as the other man enters, looking towards him but not saying anything yet.

It takes Little a few long seconds to realise he isn't alone. The awareness comes uncomfortably — the pinprick sensation of eyes upon him, and he's looking up all of a sudden, head lifted and dark gaze flitting around so briefly before he finds a lone figure standing there, facing him.

The initial reaction is unpleasant, and he can't suppress a kneejerk flinch as his hand moves up to the strap of his shotgun, not sliding it from his shoulder just yet, but... readying himself. He can't stop his heart from giving an odd, anxious flop, like he's an animal being hunted by something.

The figure wears.... furs, like Silence and her people had, and he gasps quietly, eyes widening. Is it... her? Here? He supposes it could be; it's feasible she make an appearance just as the men could. So Edward takes a step forward, but carefully. A hand lifts as he calls across the distance —

"Lady Silence?"

"Unless they're dead," he replies, somewhat light despite his own despondency and the macabre feeling of the graveyard. "I was merely wandering this way. It's a surprise to see how many lie here."

It's good to just get out of the wind for a moment. He stomps his feet on the worn, wooden planks and starts to walk through this mostly-abandoned shop, completely bewildered by the sight of shelves and...commerce?

Here?

He pauses at the end of an aisle and very slowly nods towards the young man in the heavy coat.

"Pardon me," he says cautiously, very aware that there's a rifle strapped to his back. "I hope I wasn't intruding."

He turns to face Crozier "Oh, no, I was just looking around. Were you, um, looking for something?"

He thinks he doesn't recognize this guy, but there were a lot of people he barely saw in town.

He has no idea what's happening to him, but his best guess is some sort of attack. He clings as best he can before he hears Harry Goodsir's gentle voice calling to him -- and naturally it only gets far, far worse.

Crozier doubles over with a soft wheeze. "Can't...I can't..."

Methuselah is most definitely not an Inuk name. If he's disappointed he doesn't show it, the softest of soft smiles on his face as he shakes his head.

"No, no, I'm from further north."

He's sure that sounds absurd to her ear, but this is practically a tropical paradise compared to the frozen seas of the Arctic Circle.

The young woman's answers only raise more questions. "I gather you're not from this village either. Just one person, you say? Where is he now?"

The constant nightmares and melancholy daydreams of tearful, bitter reunions hadn't prepared him for the ghost to speak, let alone call Silna's moniker.

That voice -- the same as the last word ever spoken to him by one of his men. Less rough, less haggard and exhausted, but still his, his own first lieutenant, the man adorned with chains who'd been the last to die in his arms.

Legs too weak to walk, he raises his hand in return. "Edward."

Is that you, Edward Little? Is it truly you?

"... I— I thought this was the north—? They call this place the the Northern Territories." Whatever that's supposed to mean. Northern Canada is about as close as anyone can pin down a location, but nothing much more than that.

She shakes her head at the question.

"No, I'm from Arcadia Bay. It's in Oregon, it's by the sea. I ended up here a couple of months ago, now." As for where Methuselah is now, there's a little frown. It's hard to say, really. She gestures, with one hand, vaguely to the opposite direction of town.

"Out there, somewhere. He says he doesn't belong in the town. He's a nomad. He only comes to help prepare for the feasts. He knows when more people are coming, somehow."

It's difficult to differentiate man or woman in the thick furs of Silence's people. This could be another one of them, not her, but she's who Little thinks to first. Perhaps with an odd lift of his heart — how strange to think that he would find her appearance here comforting, but.... she would be a familiarity in so much that is so unfamiliar. Any face that he'd known would be.

He isn't prepared for the one this actually is.

He hears his name and for a long moment, Edward only stares across the distance of frosted graveyard. This is not the mute Silence, but a man. Who—?

Then he's coming closer, though slowly and carefully, and it's as he's drawing nearer that he can finally see the eyes, the face.

He freezes as though caught in something's web. Feels his arm loosening the strap of his gun, slowly letting it fall to the earth.

"Captain?" Every instinct is to go to this figure that has Crozier's face, though Edward restrains himself for those few lingering moments, waiting on an affirmation, some kind of affirmation. He can hardly breathe.

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this place wants us dead

ii the church

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II. The Church

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