Our Scene Guidelines (like we do)
1. I feel like post time limits in one-on-one scenes are ridiculous. Post when you have a post done.
2. There is very low physical risk in this scene. (I expect zero, but IDK, maybe you'll fall into a ravine?) I can't imagine how you would die in this scene, but even if you somehow find a way to do serious bodily harm, this scene is non-lethal.
3. This scene might cause some psychological trauma.
4. If there are any things you really don't want to see in a scene, you should maybe tell me. [I don't recall you having much for concerns in that regard, but it's been awhile.]
5. If you would remind me about Merits/Flaws, that would be awesome. [Again, it's been awhile.]
Alexander[The player doesn't have any particular squicks to avoid. Alexander has Concentration, Light Sleeper and Concentration.]
AlexanderTo the east of Denver lie miles and miles of uninspiring, unimpressive landscape where only an occasional road or town or farm breaks up the monotony. There isn’t usually much in that direction, beyond the long, open roads and scarce highway patrols that allow him to push his motorbike to its limits, that attracts Alexander too far in that direction. No, there are far more interesting places to go and to be and to explore.
The mountains bring foothills, and the two of them together bring canyons and peaks and forests and lakes and... And the wilderness. Not the tamed and captive and safe parks that the city contains, for those city dwellers who don’t believe in getting their SUV muddy or getting too close to nature (i.e., bugs). The wild. Nature spreading and growing and dying and decaying as it will. The Rangers are there to protect the land and its occupants from people, rather than the other way around.
But Alex isn’t any great stranger to being here. This may not be the Cascade range that he’d grown to know before his old life ended and the new one began, but it makes it all the more interesting having new places to explore. So here he is, very much off the beaten track somewhere in Reynolds Park. Well-worn walking boots sink into the soft earth, still wet from the regular rains that the changing seasons bring to the area. Mud streaks the bottom of his trousers. A rucksack hangs off his shoulders, containing the bulk of his cold and wet weather gear because, right now, it’s actually quite pleasant out. There’s a breeze but it’s otherwise warm, with the sun beating down from a blue sky dotted with the occasional high-altitude cloud.
Where he’s going? Nowhere in particular. That way. That looks interesting.
Alexander[Perr+Aware}
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )
Alexander[Per+Alert]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )
NightmareAlexander has grown accustomed to the sounds of these new mountains, and the forest he's walking through seems to have caught its breath. Birds are softer, there is the sound of fewer small feet in branches and in brush. The wind carries the scent of decay; not close to hand, not yet at least. And now Alexander begins to catch the feeling of magic, cold, dead magic. The imprint of fear, sharp and clawing at his stomach, as though whatever part of him can sense this would tear itself free of his body to run. And, overshadowed by that but not entirely hidden, there is a somewhat familiar sense of sunlight and oak and rich earth.
AlexanderAlexander shivers suddenly, unexpectedly, and skids and slips and slides to an abrupt halt. It’s almost as if someone had walked over his grave, only it’s not his. He doesn’t have one – not yet or that he knows of, at least – but there’s still that feeling of something having passed on. What happens to magic when it dies? Does it just fade away? Wait to be resurrected and reworked and reborn into something new? Or does it linger and slumber and see out eternity in stasis? Whatever it is, it’s possibly more that he’s starting to walk over the grave of something long dead.
And whatever it is, it’s out there somewhere. Something new (and old!) and strange, and something with a sense of the familiar but not yet clear enough to trigger any particular memory or reaction. There’s a fear pulling, tearing, bordering on the desperate to escape. It’s... a strange feeling, but a new one. As if the part of him that Awakened has a thing about graveyards and wants to steer well away.
But he’s dealt with the dead before. It hasn’t often been pleasant, but it has more often been rewarding. It’s also something that he’s wanted to learn more about. With the disappearance of Lucy and Alyssa, the number of people who he has to ask about that kind of thing has thinned out. And so it’s back to what works for him best: To do and to experience and to learn the hard, and sometimes painful, way. He holds still for a moment, one hand resting on the trunk of a tree as he freezes and tries to feel where this curious new thing is coming from. Before Alex heads off, though, he slips the bag off one shoulder so that he can dig around in one of the pockets for a mirror. He isn’t trying to see the other side of the Gauntlet – not yet, anyway – but he can at least see if his extra sense can focus on what’s going on and where it might be.
[Arete: sensing spirits, sensing decay. TN 4, -1 taking time, 2 succs to last the scene]
Dice: 1 d10 TN3 (8) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
NightmareAlexander can sense decay, off in the same direction from which he can smell it. He cannot see a ghost, but now he can hear crying. And the echoes of screams that do not fade away - terror and grief and rage commingled into one horrible scream that lingers in the memory of the shadows in another world not so far separated from his own.
AlexanderAlexander turns on the spot until he’s facing towards the smell of decay, the sense of things coming apart as the eternal wash of entropy grinds it to nothingness. He holds where he is, though, thinking. There are echoes in the wind now, screams and cries that weren’t there before he expanded his awareness beyond the merely physical. The screams mirror the sense of terror that the other, indefinable part of him fears. There’s something there and it’s something wrong and he really should be trying to get away from it before it notices that he’s there.
But amongst the fear and rage are... tears? Crying. Someone else, someone alone? There’s only the one voice crying buried in the screams. Alone, then. Alexander may not be the same as Lucy – there to guide the dead to their rest – but, then, he is what he is. And part of that is to try to help the weak and lonely and scared. Arionna had said that so many of them had hero complexes. Maybe that is what pushes him into walking towards whatever it is that so many things are screaming to run away from. Maybe it’s a desire – a need? – for that solo crying voice to stop feeling afraid and alone.
Whatever the reason, he moves towards it. He’s slow, though, and cautious. Because however stupid an idea it might turn out to be, especially given all the warnings Alyssa had tried to beat into him about spirits being dangerous, he isn’t inexperienced in approaching risk.
NightmareIt isn't far. It isn't hard to find.
Alexander crests a slight rise and finds himself overlooking the remains of a campsite. There is -or at least was- a tent. Its wreckage is a roughly ten foot long tangle of shredded fabric and broken poles. In the trees and brush that ring the clearing, little scraps of fabric, no few blood-soaked, flutter in the breeze like the frantic wing beats of a bird that cannot take flight.
The campfire shows signs of disturbance, charred bits of wood lying apart from the ashes. Tiny flames quickly spent on the rocks and bare earth that surrounded the fire.
To one side of the clearing, not far from the remains of the tent, lies a large, misshapen feline creature. It is perfectly still; and, remarkable considering that Alexander can hear the steady drone of insects nearby, the air around it is nearly so still as the creature. Nearby that, a heavy section of wood, just shy of being called a log. One end charred to ash, signs of flame down much of the length. All around that spot, disturbed earth.
And a bit farther out, half-shadowed by trees is a human figure. Live, judging by how the form is crouched up on a rock in a way that suggests balance. The cold, dead magic and the fear that seems to have settled under his skin now and the sunlight are all strongest in that direction. Alexander only met Skye the one time, and that not for long, but the person he sees through the trees could be Skye.
The sound of the scream echoes all around the clearing, but the sobbing too is in that same direction through the trees.
AlexanderAlexander halts as he gets his first look at the camp before slowly stepping up to stand on the crest of the rise, taking in the destruction below him. Just looking, whatever happened had to have been bad. The mass of tent, the blood, the ash. Add to that the relentless screaming from across the Gauntlet, the tension that has taken hold of his body, and that fearful pull to get away. He really shouldn’t be here.
Or maybe he should. The urge to leave is tempered and controlled by the crying voice and his need to know what had happened here. Seeing a crouching figure through the trees – possibly Skye, from what he remembered of the man the only time they met in, thinking about it, not entirely dissimilar circumstances – only bring more chaos to his thoughts. Thoughts which fly back to another forest, another spirit...
No, enough. Alexander clamps down on the wild chains of thought and reclaims the discipline that has served him before. The focus and concentration that brought him face to face with Victoria. The chaotic thoughts are still there, but separated by that frozen focus. He slowly walks down towards the camp, careful not to slip or fall and careful of what may come next. The path he takes is towards the crouching figure but it isn’t direct. He passes near the log, the cat, the upturned earth on the way so that he can try to piece together what might have happened here. He looks but doesn’t touch, all the while listening for movement nearby
Alexander halts just outside the clearing, looking around at what else might be there before he thinks about entering. Looking and listening for the source of the crying. He calls out to the figure, gently and quietly given the situation, “Skye? What happened?”
Nightmare[Go ahead and roll for me Perception + Investigation. (I'm going to assume that Alex has that. Enigmas/Alertness could also be substituted.)]
Alexander[Per+Inv]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )
Nightmare[Perception+Awareness - Do you know Alex is coming?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 8, 8, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 5 )
NightmareThere was quite the fight here. Someone fought. Hard. Pulled that branch from the fire and beat that feline thing with it until the great cat spilled not blood but decaying strips of cloth. Hit it so hard its head and part of one shoulder tore until only a few strips of hide hold the body in some semblance of shape. There are sigils of some kind on the rags and what Alexander thinks might be hieroglyphics. A few strips have been unfurled, perhaps by Skye.
The trail of the fighting leads toward where Skye is, brush broken here, blood spilled there. Singed twigs here, bits of fur and cotton there. Near the rock where Skye is perched, looking down into a ravine, there is more blood. So much blood it sprayed and soaked into the rock. There is more disturbed earth. Cotton rags and scraps of fur and a large glass eye.
There is a path of disturbed earth and brush to the ravine. And Skye, from up on the rock is looking down into it. Alexander though...Alexander can see what perhaps Skye has missed. There is another path, a much harder one to trace as it lacks the signs of struggle of the other, leading away.
Down in the ravine, pressed by sluggish waters against a muddy shoal on the opposite bank, is a tangled mess of a bear skin, cotton rags, and the body of a woman whom Alexander would guess to be older than twenty but younger than thirty-five. The spectral form of a woman with that same athletic form and long strawberry-blonde hair is standing in the ravine. Closer now, Alexander can tell that she is trying to get Skye's attention, screaming and crying.
Her voice sounds far away, hard to hear over her other echoing screams and the sound of sobbing that does not stop. Now though, closer, Alexander can make it out. The ghostly woman is begging Skye to save someone. But Skye is unmoved in a way that suggests he can see the body but not the ghost. His eyes though...his eyes are unfocused as though he is not really looking at the body below him at all.
"Something wrong," is all that Skye says at first. But then his attention comes back from wherever it was. "Ah." He can't seem to decide what to do here, with this moment. There is an uneasy pause. "I'm not sure about much more than that yet."
AlexanderAlexander is silent, beyond the noise of his boots on the ground, as he steps around the camp. There is a pattern in trail of destruction that he can pick out, but the thing that attracts his attention most is the cat. Initially he had thought it maybe a corruption of something natural – a wild cat twisted and deformed by whatever dead magic was nearby. Only maybe it was the magic that had created the thing, out of cloth and hide and... And that was something for later. Maybe he’d pick up one or two of the rags and show them to Kalen later.
The blood, though, wasn’t from the cat. It probably never had any blood inside it to spill, certainly not in such large quantities. Skye didn’t look – physically – in particularly bad shape. So there had been someone else here. Someone down... He closes his eyes for a moment. Had he been a religious man, there may have been a prayer for the woman. But such acts are meaningless to him, beyond the act of respect to the departed.
Alexander looks at Skye as his gives what little explanation as he has to offer, although it isn’t anything that Alex couldn’t have worked out on his own. Presumably Skye and his friend had been camping here when the cat had attacked them. Skye had managed to... maybe not kill – had the thing even been alive? – but certainly stop it. But not before the woman had been thrown into the ravine. Seconds pass as Alex debates what, how, to tell Skye. Would knowing that her ghost was there, desperate to talk to him help? It would help her, though, in her desperation to have someone saved.
“This will make sense in a minute,” he offers Skye gently. Then Alex turns back to the ravine and calls down to the woman, “He can’t hear you yet. Give me a minute to help him.” Alex turns back to Skye, stepping up to him so that he can see his own reflection in the other man’s eyes. He tells him, asks him, “trust me.” Then he pushes back at the universe again to let him see and hear his friend.
[Arete, giving Skye the ability to see and hear her. TN4, -1 for practiced. 3 succs to target Skye and have the effect last long enough for them to talk]
Dice: 1 d10 TN3 (10) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Alexander[Extending]
Dice: 1 d10 TN4 (4) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Nightmare[Oh. Damn. Things we were not hoping to look at with all our other effects running. Does this make us extra crazy?]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 9) ( success x 1 )
NightmareSkye blinks at Alexander, still a little distracted. Off balance. Not for the reason Alexander thinks, though that will become clear soon enough.
The woman stops screaming at Skye. Turns to Alexander, Alexander who can see her, and screams, "What are you waiting for, save her!"
There is a second where Skye realises what Alexander means to do and his eyes widen. But before Skye can quite wrap his mind around what is happening, it is done. He can see the woman, yes. She gets a glance from him before his eyes widen in horror. Not at the sight of the ghost herself, not for her terror or her pleading. But at the sight of the bear. At the sight of the world around them.
[Can you even understand what you see? Beyond that it is terrible?]
Dice: 6 d10 TN8 (5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )
AlexanderHaving pushed a deeper sense of the universe onto Skye, Alexander moves back to the edge of the ravine. Between the fear and the shouting, his explanation is rather more abrupt that it would have been in better circumstances. “Your friend’s spirit is down there and she has something to tell you.”
He turns back and yells down to the woman’s spirit. Again, somewhat less kindly than he normally would have, but hell... Nothing about this whole situation is either normal or feeling anything remotely right. “Save who? What the fuck happened here? Was there someone else here with you?”
It takes a moment for Alexander’s mind to put a few things together, but then his eyes turn to the other path nearby. “Where did she go?”
Alexander[Per+Alert]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 5, 6, 6) ( success x 2 )
Alexander[Per+Aware]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )
NightmareAlexander is faintly aware that the world around them, or the reflection of it, is shifting. It was subtle at first, gradual enough that it isn't until now he's really aware of it as it starts to happen faster. The shadows are deepening. Tree branches growing skeletal and menacing. Bushes are sprouting thorns. The reflection of the water is starting to stir restlessly.
The ghost seems, at first, to understand only that Alexander can hear her. She is, as no few of them are, only an echo of her last moments. Terror. Desperation. But there is a tiny flicker of understanding. For a second the water stills. For a second there is the sound of birds.
And she stops screaming. Only for a few precious seconds. And points in the direction of the trail that Alexander saw.
Skye is still mostly focused on the bear. Though he is, almost certainly, at least peripherally aware of what Alexander is doing.
AlexanderAlexander shivers, although it’s not down to the temperature. The shifting world, the ever-present tension hanging in the air, the question not so much of what happened here as why – and who... The world suddenly seems like a much darker and less hospitable place. Nature had never been kind, but the creeping changes seemed to be turning it... malicious.
There are blessed moments when whatever hangs over them clears, but they are only seconds. Are the changes going on around them because of her? Is her calm because of that fleeting moment without them? Or is Skye’s focus more on holding it all back than the simple, assumed reason that the death of the woman has left him shocked.
What the fuck is going on here...
The answers don’t seem to be forthcoming in the clearing. Maybe along that path, then? ‘She’ – whoever she is – went that way and would seem to need help. He looks down at the woman and nods before stepping towards the path. Arms up, ready to fend off an attacker, and with his heart in his throat, he moves forwards. Quietly, though. Carefully.
[Dex+Stealth]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 4) ( botch x 1 )
NightmareAlexander sneaks.
Well. More accurately, Alexander does not sneak. Reconciling the nightmarish landscape with the physical landscape is not easy.
He follows the trail and the direction of the trail. Reaches one of the main trails. There is no sign of the woman he is chasing now, not really. One might guess that she made it out? But for the lack of any sign of park officials or police approaching. Unless he passed them as he cut through the woods.
AlexanderAlexander gets to the end of the trail and there’s nothing. Nothing? The woman had been so adamant that someone needing saving had come this way, but there’s nothing here. He stands at the junction, turning to look each way with a hand on his forehead and confusion on his face. Maybe she had hidden somewhere, scared by his completely screwed up attempt to hide his presence from whatever nasty might have been lurking? Or had she passed and was already long gone?
He turns back to the path, looking for more clues about whether she had made it this far. Someone running away was pretty likely to have broken branches, kicked up mud, and generally left big obvious clues that they had been there.
[Per+Survival]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 6, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 4 )
NightmareFocusing on the physical world Alexander discovers two things:
First, the woman did make it so far as the main trail.
Second, she was, shortly before that point, joined by another person who crossed that last distance with her. Where they went after they reach that main trail though, Alexander cannot tell. Maybe if there was some sign that they had veered off of it, back into the woods. But there is not.
AlexanderHe spends seconds trying to work out where the footprints lead once they hit the main trail, but it’s just not possible to tell. The main trail seems to be a busy one and any individual tracks are lost amongst the dozens of vague prints in the hard, packed ground. So no clue, even, which way they headed.
He sighs, frustrated in his chase. There’s no clue as to whether the person meeting her had good or bad intentions, but he’d guess bad given the dead woman’s desperation for her to be saved. But perhaps there are other ways of working out where they went.
Alexander concentrates on that extra sense of awareness that waking up blesses their kind with. Maybe magic was involved in the disappearance somehow.
[Per+Aware]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (6, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
NightmareThere is no lingering sense of Resonance here. If there was magic here, it wasn't anything that left any trace.
Nightmare[Le pause. Alas.]
AlexanderAlexander is limited. His knowledge of magic isn’t enough to reach out and sense the patterns of life, or look back in time to watch what had happened. Chance could be manipulated to nudge a coin into sending him in the right direction. With more ability with Spirit, maybe he could have even spoken to the spirits of the forest to find them.
But he can’t. At least, not yet. Some time in the future, there is always the potential for those things to happen. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. Nothing is laid down and tied down by fate. For the moment, though, he’s at a figurative dead end. With no clue where the woman went Alexander turns back onto the small trail to find his way back to Skye and the spirit.
NightmareAlexander searched, but could find no sign that the woman had left the trail with her new companion anywhere but at one of the parking lots. There are a handful of cars in the lots, but whether one of those could be her car is difficult to guess.
As he approaches the ruined campsite, he can see that Skye has dropped down into the ravine, is near both the bear-thing and the body of the woman. He is speaking softly, presumably to the ghost. He seems...distant from the signs of violence so close at hand. Has he, like so many of them do, acclimated to these horrors? Perhaps.
"We should clean up this place," Skye says as he senses Alexander's approach. "And then get out of here. Quickly. It isn't safe to stay here." He could mean because of authorities and questions. But there is an underlying tension to his voice, a wariness to the way that his eyes flick into the woods at the sound of anything that could be approaching footsteps, that seems to indicate he is expecting a different kind of threat.
Alexander
She’s gone. This unknown woman who needed saving has vanished. Saving from what? From whatever had wrecked the campsite? That seemed to have been the cat and the bear, now... dead? How can they be dead if they were never alive? Broken, then. Stopped. Who had sent them, though? The owner of the second set of tracks that had been left along the trail? Had there been any sign of a fight where they had met, or had it seemed that they had met without incident?
There were many questions hanging over this camping trip of their, and no answers to be found standing where the trails meet. So Alexander returns. To check on Skye and his now-spiritual friend. To work out what the hell had happened.
Alexander stays silent when he returns, seeing Skye talking with the woman. He doesn’t know the woman, so it’s perhaps best to give them whatever time they want together before he intrudes. He thinks to go back to the cat, maybe take some of the sheets to show others later. Others who might have more of an idea what they mean and what they’re used for. But he’s noticed before he steps away again.
That something so violent and strange had happened would already have turned up Alex’s wariness a notch or two, but it had seemed like it was all over. Skye’s tension is contagious, though, and Alexander turns to scan the treeline and the parts of the paths that he can see.
He spares a glance for the two – the physical and the spiritual – in the ravine. “She’s gone. I’m sorry, I lost her tracks when she hit the main trail. There was someone with her, though.” The glance lingers on the bear skin and the body before returning to the trees.
“What the hell happened here?”
Nightmare
"Magic," Skye says. "But not like ours, quite. This was something else. Out here, that might be werewolves. Those...are generally not at all friendly and very dangerous. Also rarely alone, so if this was their doing, and they find us here, I doubt that will go at all well."
He rises from beside the body of the woman and the bear. "At least these look like animals that actually could have been here, if not in their condition. We should-" Should what? Burn the bodies? Hide them?
"What did you find?"
Alexander
Vampires, and now werewolves? Well, there had already been spirits and boatmen and Sendings and all sorts of other strangeness that, even just a year ago, would have seemed like it belonged in bad fantasy literature more than it would ever occur in reality. But then that just goes to show how fickle reality can be.
“Werewolves? Get bitten and you become one? Why would they be here? And...” His attention returns to the bear, with its spilled contents, at the bottom of the ravine. “If they’re that dangerous, why would they send these things?” He considers jumping down to take a closer look at the bear, but the remains of the cat by destroyed tent is much easier to get to.
“There’s a cat, back by the camp, with... I’d say its guts spread out, but it was stuffed with cloth. Whoever that other woman was, and whoever it was that joined her, they’ve both disappeared. I lost them when they hit the main trail, and it didn’t feel like they’d used magic to get away.” He considers for a moment that the magic that had happened here hadn’t been, quite, like their own. Would that have meant that the lingering resonance that their bending of reality leaves wouldn’t have been there? The sense of old magic lingered here, so perhaps it still would? Who knows?
Alexander’s attention returns to the tree line, scanning and listening for anything unpleasant approaching. If they are in more danger, finding a decent branch to swing probably isn’t a bad idea. “If we’re going to clear up here, I want to grab some of those bits of cloth to show some others.” His gaze swings back down into the ravine, but to the woman this time. “And I’m sorry. For what happened. I wish I had some advice for you about what comes next.”
SkyeSkye shakes his head a little. "I think it's their nature, just as magic is ours. I don't think that being bitten by a werewolf makes a werewolf thing is true. I know you can be bitten and not turn. But that is also true for vampires, and those can turn. In my experience though, and everything I've heard, the few of us who survive werewolf bites never turn.
"But there are more things under the heavens, no?" Skye sighs as he listens to Alexander speaking. The ghostly woman near him doesn't really seem to much notice them now.
"I don't know. This doesn't make any sense to me. Maybe there was something they wanted here. Maybe. I don't know though. I don't know much about them, but what I do know...it doesn't make sense with this. Except...there's something about this energy. It's like whatever took Claire. Twisted. Wrong.
"You find this in some of the places I've worked to reclaim. It's like a spiritual corruption. It twists everything around it. Maybe them too." He looks up at Alexander's apology, seeming more confused than anything. "About Claire? I haven't found her yet, but she's still alive. I can sense that much. All hope is not lost."
AlexanderMore things under the heavens... Alexander snorts, with what would pass for amusement in better circumstances, and mutters quietly, “no shit.”
“Maybe they wanted you. Or they wanted you gone, if they get territorial. Do you think this is related to Claire, then? If this all feels the same, then maybe it’s her that they wanted gone.” He shrugs, not really sure of any of this. It sometimes seems so easy for the others to dig up answers when the weirdness hits the fan. But is there really going to be much of a paper trail to find for dead animals stuffed with sheets? Hell, who knows?
“So were you here clearing up after Claire, or whatever it is using her? What’s it been doing out here? And who was she? The woman who’s missing.” Alexander nods his head towards the trail.
It takes a moment to realise that Skye’s confusion comes from thinking that Alex is still talking with him. Skye gets a glance before he looks back at the fading woman. “Sorry, I was talking to your friend there. I think I know where she’s headed to eventually, but I don’t know how she gets there. My knowledge of spirits is patchy at best.” His attention switches back to Skye again. “I’m glad she’s still alive, though. I don’t really know what happened to her – or to you – but maybe she can be helped in the same way?”
Skye"This is like what had Claire, I thought...I was looking for her. If this thing wanted me, I have no idea why it would attack these girls. Maybe those things were meant for me, but this was over before I got here. If these girls were like us, I see no sign of that. Nor of them being like werewolves. Maybe they knew to attack with fire but...it looks like they just fought. And hard.
"But if they were successful in killing these creatures, I suspect these creatures weren't meant to kill me." Successful, Skye says. As though there is not a ghost only feet from him and one girl missing. He seems disconnected from any emotions about either of them.
The ghostly woman looks up at Alexander. Slowly. She seems almost as disconnected from herself as Skye. And she is fading. More and more translucent. More and more a wisp of fog than a woman. But she smiles at Alexander. Just for a second.
"Claire isn't here. This is...similar. But different. I...maybe I will go back to California. I know some people there. I can get to some books. I've just been chasing anything that seemed like it might be her. Or out looking for it. I'm not sure that's really working. I'm just afraid if I leave she'll know. I don't want her to think I've abandoned her."
Skye rises, starts for the creature that hasn't been soaking in a bloody creek bed. He pauses as he draws closer to Alexander. And there is a second where he seems to really, properly register his existence. Not as some abstract thing. "She's not so trapped in her death now. She knows you went to help her friend. I think she just lets go." He reaches out, a little warily, to squeeze Alexander's shoulder. He isn't used to touching other people now. Isn't even used to talking to them, really.
And, whether or not Alexander lets him touch him, he adds, quietly. "As much as she can be saved, I think you've done it. But, if you want to, she might like it if you stay with her." He glances at the nearly faded ghost. "I don't think it will be very long now."
Alexander“You mean..?” Alex looks to Skye before closing and rubbing his eyes. “Sorry, I thought you were camping with her.” He lowers his hand and nods to the fading spirit below. “That’s why I thought she was trying to tell you something when I saw her shouting.” Alex shifts to the rock where Skye had been crouched, leaning against it.
“Maybe they just used whatever was to hand. If they had a campfire going, a flaming branch sounds like a good weapon to use.” Alex shrugs, offering the best theory he has. One person dead, another missing with an unknown third person. Success is debatable. “There was someone else out there, though. Maybe the plan was to kidnap one of them? I don’t suppose you can look back and see what went on..?” He’d seen Sera and Kalen both do similar, so it doesn’t seem like an unreasonable expectation. Hell, maybe one day he’d be the one looking.
“I don’t know how close you guys were, but maybe she’ll trust that you’ll come back for her? If going is your best chance to get her back... There are some other Awakened around Denver, you could try asking around before you go. Someone might be able to help. Ian?”
Alex doesn’t pull away from the touch, but doesn’t do anything to reinforce it. He simply takes the contact that is offered as comfort for his lack of education. He does nod, though, confirming that he’d heard Skye. He crouched by the edge of the ravine, giving the woman what little comfort he can. “I don’t even know her name,” he says without looking round. Then, quietly, he speaks to the ghost.
“Sleep well. You’ll be well cared for.”
SkyeSkye shakes his head. "No. I'm-" He makes a soft sound, more just tired than either bitter or amused. "Well...was is probably more the word now, a healer. I think I might qualify as more of a hermit, these days. Ghosts and mysteries and whatever kind of magic this is, get torn up when you find it, and I can help you." His eyes track to the ravine. The dead woman. "Hell, if you need it torn up when you find it, I can help you. But finding it...no. I'm sorry."
There is a silence after Ian's name. "No," Skye says quietly. "He's done enough. And I don't really know any of the others here. I assume they have their own problems, and don't need mine. It's alright. One way or another, I'll find her."
The woman looks up at Alexander. Then at where Skye is walking away. Back to Alexander. Meets his eyes with her hazy ones. After a moment she opens her mouth and her lips move, but even with his effect up, Alexander cannot really hear her. He thinks, maybe, that what she tried to say was 'thank you.'
Alexander[Per+Emp - what's going on with you?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 6, 6, 6, 9) ( success x 4 )
Skye[Skye is...broken might be the best term. He was, barely having survived, warm the night Alexander met him. He'd reached out to heal him the same way he'd reached out to kiss Ian's hand, easily and readily and with a kind of sense of connection. Whatever happened between then and today, that connection is shuttered now. This newer version of Skye could barely keep his hand on Alexander's shoulder for a few seconds and barely meets his eyes. Even this offer of help is barely there, not in his intentions or willingness to follow through, but that like everything else it seems practically mechanical. There was a moment where he was willing to reach out to Alexander, and judging by the ghost's changed demeanor and the way Skye was speaking to her when Alexander arrived (and the way she looked after him leaving) he did connect with her a little after all. But even when he mentions Claire, there's not much of anything in his voice. It's as though all the warmth and emotion have been either bled out or shut away.]
AlexanderAlex’s attention shifts to Skye for some moments, trying to get a better idea of the man. He’s been searching for months now for Claire, and whatever he’d been through in that hunt it something he could only guess at. But he’s different. They all change – it would be impossible not to be touched by what they see and do. But where Alex had finally started to see the wonder in this life, Skye seems to be pulling away from it all. Walking away.
Alex floats between wanting to stay with the woman until she completely fades and wanting to reach out to Skye, to try to give him some kind of connection to hang on to. He stays where he is, leaning on the rock, but turns to look at Skye as he walks away. “Wait. Please.” Whether he slows or stops, Alex continues. “Like you said, it won’t be long before she leaves completely. Her body might be beyond healing, but we can still help her spirit heal.” A glance back again. “Right?”
It may not be much of a connection to what Skye used to be, but it’s something.
SkyeSkye does stop. At first, that's all he does, stops and stills and waits. But after a few seconds he turns and comes back, so that he and Alexander and the fading ghostly presence have a moment together. The ghost is quiet because she's barely there, and Skye...well...much the same. But at least, for that last moment of hers, they are all present.
And then she is gone.
But Skye, leaning on a tree not far from Alexander, is a little bit more present. Present enough that he seems at a loss for what to say, now that he isn't mechanically moving on to the next thing.
AlexanderSkye stopping is something that Alex had hoped would happen, but hadn’t necessarily expected. That it had? Well...
The woman finally having passed on, Alex pushes up from the rock and walks towards Skye. “Did she ask you to climb down and talk to her while I was gone?” His tone is gently, quiet, but enough to be heard across the distance between them as he takes the first steps towards bridging the gap.
SkyeSkye shakes his head. "I was...examining her body. And the bear. I was talking to her because she was there."