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 Posted: Sat May 01, 2010 11:20 am
Who: Vivi, Shepard, and Doucette
Where: Gambino
When: Late afternoon extending into evening
Weather: Unseasonably cool and stormy
* * * * *
She was cold.
The trees above her offered no protection from the rain, the water rolling off the wide, flat leaves and tumbling through the air to land on her, flattening her hair against her scalp and face and chest. There was so much rain, so much water, and Vivi curled around the stag's head for warmth -- warmth, which he was quickly losing. The stag lay on its folded legs, his large head in her lap, his warm breath shuddering shallowly from his nostrils. His warm eyes had closed, that honey-colored gleam from within flickering like a candle. Flickering, fading. Vivi closed her eyes and pressed her cheek into the stag's antlers. It wouldn't be so long now.
She was shivering against the rain, her dress soaked and clinging fast to her skin. Her legs were pressed fast into the mud, and the mud seemed to climb her, seemed to spread its fingers slowly up her dress. There was mud on the stag, on the brilliant warm white of his matted coat. Her fingers were slow and cumbersome as she tried to wipe it off, but no matter how she tried, the mud just mixed in further. But she didn't stop. She stroked the stag's mud-stained muzzle and listened to his breath in time with her shivering.
Her body was telling her that it was time to go. The sky boomed with thunder, and the landscape was colorless and grey with the rain. The soul bottle was the only thing that glowed in the darkness, a brilliant gold and white fog slowly filling its triumphant belly. She was cold. The stag was becoming colder.
"I will not leave you," she whispered against the stag's forehead. Not yet.
Not yet.
*
"You're going on your vial playdate, yeh?" Shepard sounded amused, and he looked up at her from where he was wiping down tables at the opposite corner of the bakery. Vivi packed a smallish blueberry-lemon tart into a white cardboard box, sealing the lid with a snip of tape and then tying a long piece of twine to secure it all in place.
"I am rather excited," Vivi sang, double-knotting the twine. "Doe is so lovely, is she not? And the Liquid Aurora Borealis... it shall be truly lovely, I am sure. "
"I'm sure," echoed Shepard. He straightened, watching Vivi as she made sure to put her soul bottle and vial-holding cigar holder into her purse. He shook his head with a snort, mental images of the two women cooing liberally over vials flitting through his head. They should just have a joint vial-shower or something and get it over with. "What, are you guys hoping your vials might... roll around together?"
"Yes, we have already resolved to put Baby Raevan Einstein music in the background and everything," Vivi said with a brilliant smile, buttoning her cardigan and sweeping her purse off the table. She checked herself briefly in the mirror, straightening her dress hem and her headband, and then gathered her purse and tart. "Au reviour, cheri. I shall be back for a late supper."
"Have fun fawning. Give the ankle-biters a good scratch for me."
Vivi headed out with a laugh, the sound mixing with the happy chiming of the bells on Vermillion's door.
It wasn't long until she began to seriously reconsider her choice in wardrobe for the day. A dress and a cardigan had been quite ample inside Vermillion, but the sick grey-green of the skies and the salty wind from the sea soon crept into her skin. It was well into spring, she protested mentally, there was no reason for such weather! Still, the wind picked up and the clouds above heaved threateningly, and as the ferry approached Doucette's tiny island, sprinkles had already begun to fall from the sky.
Doucette had warned Vivi that the island was quite unoccupied and that it might be a little difficult to see her home through the dense foliage that crept near the sand. From the ferry dock, Vivi began quite confidently in one direction, but Doucette's warnings soon proved themselves correct. Squinting in the falling darkness, Vivi couldn't make out a single house hiding amongst the trees.
Maybe she had gone in the wrong direction? Was it right from the docks, or left? Vivi was almost certain that it had been right, but perhaps she might just make certain before continuing on into the trees... She set down her tart box and fumbled through her purse for the directions.
Merde, why was it that things always seemed to disappear in purses? Vivi huffed, pulling out her soul bottle to gain better access into the purse, rooting around for the little notebook that had the directions printed inside it. She placed the bottle on the ground beside the box, and continued her search -- ah! There it was! Now, let's see... yes, right was indeed the correct direction. She simply hadn't gone far enough yet from the docks.
Vivi nodded to herself, and bent to collect the tart box and soul bottle.
She blinked.
The tart box was there, but the soul bottle...
Adrenaline pumped through her veins and her heart leapt gracelessly into her throat. Where had it gone? Had it rolled off? She spun in a quick circle, scanning the ground around her. She lifted the tart box -- as if the bottle could burrow, honestly -- and then looked up. A gasp escaped her lips. Her chest felt tight.
There, a few feet in front of her, was the stag. It shone in the darkness, its glossy coat reflecting all possible light, its warm golden antlers bright. Dangling from its mouth was the soul bottle, swaying just barely in the soft breeze. The stag watched her without moving for a long moment, and then the powerful muscles of its shoulders shifted, and it turned away. With unfathomable, sudden quickness, it leapt into the forest and was gone.
"Wait!" Vivi cried, starting after the creature. She ran, first tripping over her heels in the sand and then hurling them impatiently off, dashing into the treeline. She could see it, but barely, a white beacon descending into the depths of the forest. She steeled herself against the cold and against the debris her feet were slamming against as she ran.
She was going to catch the stag.
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Posted: Sun May 02, 2010 10:50 pm
Doucette had turned on every light in the house and the very few that lit up on the outside. She knew all too well that getting to her home was difficult enough in the day time, but with the way the weather was turning she was growing worried that a guide would be needed for the poor French woman. The worry mounted as the first few raindrops fell large and heavy on her windows and wide blue eyes peered around the curtains and into the dark stretch of sand before her home and just barely visible through the trees the lapping of the ocean on the shore.
The red head wrung her hands over the sink and the sound of Gabby whining behind her (the poor girl didn't like storms) felt oddly similar to the sound she wanted to make as well. She should have met the woman at the docks. Why didn't she even think about that? Giving directions had been the extent of her generosity and now it seemed that generosity was low on the list of true helpfulness.
At ten minutes past their agreed meeting time (which had good structure due to the ferry's time table) she threw on her coat and an extra layer against the rain. Not even bothering to lock the front door, Doucette hurried out along the coast until she reached the docks. The new pick up of the storm was delaying their departure but it would only be a matter of minutes before the heaved off again.
The captain looked startled when Doucette came up to him trying to catch her breath. Yea, he said, the dark haired woman had been one of the few to come over on the last round and she'd taken off in the right direction. If she hadn't made it, and Doucette hadn't passed her, then she must have taken a wrong turn somewhere on the beach.
Doucette looked ghostly in one of the flashes of lightning and the captain was sorry to leave her in that state, but he needed to get his boat back to port before the winds really picked up.
In a move of quick thinking that wasn't usually part of the Irish woman's make-up, she phoned Vermillion, a panicked noise escaping her lips as she heard Shepard's voice on the other end. Details were given. The area around the island wasn't so much dangerous, but getting caught out there in a storm was going to be bad news for Vivi and so Doucette prayed that Shepard was willing to catch the ferry that would be returning to port here to ride out the storm.
She felt infinitely better when he agreed and Doe begged the captain to radio the other boat and ask it to wait for the Aussie to show before pushing off. She promised he would come soon and she could only hope he wasn't going to dawdle...
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Posted: Sun May 02, 2010 11:24 pm
Wait!
It wasn't even a noise now, just a desperate thought that rang in Vivi's head, sure as her thudding heartbeat. She could hardly even feel her feet anymore now as she splashed through mud, snapping twigs with her weight as she went. Her hair was slick across her face, and Vivi's hands brushed wildly against it, tearing her bangs away to keep her vision clear.
She could hear hoofbeats, hoofbeats over the raindrops that had begun to fall, over the shrieking song of the wind. She knew that they were in her head more than in her ears, and she could hear other things, too: the barking of ravenous dogs, the firing of guns into the air. To run like this, until your lungs ached and your feet were numb, this is what the nightmares had meant to show her. The feeling of being hunted. The endless nightmare the stag's life must have been.
Wait!
"You -- you don't have to --" Vivi's voice was not her own, punctuated with gasps as she ran ran ran ran toward that ever-distant beacon of white. If she squinted, she could see the soul bottle bumping along its side.
You don't have to keep running.
*
Shepard hung up the phone with a feeling of unease that started in his stomach and twisted around his throat. Dawdling was something he wasn't about to do, instead grabbing his jacket from a waiting peg and calling something indistinct out to Granny Maplethorpe. He thought the words 'Vivi' and 'I'll call you' were in his message somewhere. He couldn't be sure. He was finding it hard to think over the anxious tones of Doe's voice that were repeating in his mind.
His feet slapped flat-footed on the wet ground as he sprinted to the ferry. The running made him feel a little better, the feeling of moving forward, of doing something calming his mind a little. But on the ferry, there was nowhere to run, and so Shepard merely gripped the railing with both hands and thought annoyed thoughts about Vivi and her stupid capability to get lost in the worst possible times. The sky above crackled with lightening.
She'll be in the woods, Shepard thought to himself, watching the island crawl closer at a maddeningly slow pace. She'll have seen something just 'gorgeous' or 'lovely' and she'll be in there just ... doing whatever she does, and she won't even know why I'm there or why I'm bloody pissed.
It made sense. It might have made sense. Shepard wasn't particularly sure. But the ferry finally docked, and Shepard bounded out the second he was able, his pace quick the second his feet hit solid ground. Doucette wasn't hard to spot, even in the growing darkness, and Shepard quickly approached her, his brow knitted in worry and vexation.
"Blast and ******** hell, no sign of her yet? No calling, nothing? I am implanting a GPS device on her when we find her. Triangulating her position at all damn times." Shepard seethed. He drew in a long breath through his teeth, closing his eyes to calm himself. "Thanks for the call. You -- you're good, yeh?"
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Posted: Sun May 02, 2010 11:42 pm
While she waited for the ferry, Doucette dashed back to her home with hope in her heart that Vivi had simply lost her way but had been drawn in by the house lights like a moth to the flame. Only in this case, the flame would be preferable to being lost in the woods with a storm coming. For a moment she stood dripping in the doorway, the dogs staring up at her with reproach. They did not like getting wet.
"Vivi," Doucette breathed before she was off again, the door slamming behind her as she raced back towards the port. The sight of the ferry pulling in relaxed her if only for a second. Doucette was not strong. Doucette couldn't do this alone.
Shepard's appearance was a blessing for her mind. She knew he could be counted on in a way she couldn't. He could help her find their friend, hopefully before it was too late.
Stop that. Doucette's eyes were wide and a little wild, the rain soaking her face and her bangs seeming to weep. It was impossible to tell if she was crying, but it was obvious that she was shaking with the way her hands kept clutching at things for support.
There's nothing out there. She's just lost. Lost because Doucette didn't think to be a better host for her island and just show Vivi the way to her front door. There was no reason for this panic, no real sign that there was some sort of danger, but Vivi's absence in the past thirty minutes were wrecking havoc on her reasoning center.
"Shepard," she said suddenly to his question, though it had hung in the air for almost a minute without response. "It's my fault." Doe looked as though she might shatter or feint for a brief moment, hands clinging to the hem of her jacket till the knuckles turned white.
But the fragile look lasted but a moment. This wasn't her time to fall apart. "Let's find her," the red head said resolutely, turning and taking off in the direction the ferry captain had promised the dark woman had gone.
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Posted: Mon May 03, 2010 12:10 am
You don't have to keep running.
Her lungs were going to explode. Her brain had stopped spinning and had begun to tell her things with tight-lipped fury, ordering her to stop, or to slow down, or to just give up. Doucette had to be worried about her, her brain was pleading, and just what part of uncatchable was Vivi not understanding? A twinge of guilt shuddered through her body, slowing her limbs for the briefest of moments.
...had she stumbled, or had the stag? Vivi's eyes strained in the darkness to find the creature. Was... the stag bigger now than it had been before? Closer? Was she gaining? Her jaw set, and she took a breath, and she silenced the voice of guilt and reason in her brain.
"You don't have to do this!" she cried out, her voice ripping through rain and darkness. Her body might not be able to catch the stag, she reasoned, but her voice might.
Ahead of her, the stag began to slow.
*
"It's not your fault." Shepard's voice was firm as he jogged beside Doucette, his eyes scanning the shoreline and then the treeline as they went. That fragile look, brief as it may have been, had seared itself into his memory, and he wanted to go back and erase it, to do something that might have ensured that look would never surface on the redhead's features again. He reached out, touching Doucette lightly on the shoulder. "She just... goes sometimes."
Not really. Never when expected. The lie hitched a little in Shepard's throat.
"It's not your fault." he reiterated, the muscles in his jaw twitching. They walked swiftly, their pace slowed by the wet sand and the wind. He stared at the treeline and looked for motion, anything that might signal the presence of his lost friend.
Later, Shepard would wonder how he saw it, how it had stood out so strongly to him from where it was. But, casting his eyes down momentarily from the treeline, he saw it -- or rather, them, Vivi's high heels, stuck in the sand at odd angles from where they had been tossed off. Not far from them, he could make out the little cardboard box wrapped in twine, soaked and sad-looking as it was.
"There--" he said shortly, his breath catching in his throat as he approached the shoes, his mind sputtering with worry. No... shoes? She hadn't -- was she running -- running away...?
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Posted: Mon May 03, 2010 9:16 pm
The red head gave Shepard a hard look, lips pressed into a thin line and brows furrowing at the middle. Perhaps she didn't know Vivi as well as the Aussie did, but from what she knew of the French woman, her word was good as kept. Wandering off when there was already a date at hand didn't fit her profile that well. But Doe knew that the Aussie was just trying to help and so she refrained from retorting.
Hadn't Vivi been so deliriously excited the other day when she found out that the two of them were going to take this journey together? Doucette didn't believe that Vivi would have abandoned their date only a few feet from her home, especially on an island that offered rather little in terms of distractions. Add the budding storm to the list and Doucette found it far more likely that something had happened, and not that the woman had simply left.
Once Shepard noticed the shoes though, a sob was caught in her throat. Surely there were no murderers on her island that would kidnap Vivi!?
"Shepard," Doucette whimpered, reaching out and grabbing his arm with pale fingers that shook from the cold and the fear. The rain was like ice, but so too was the blood in her veins. "What does it mean?"
Blue eyes scanned the line of trees, hoping for some kind of hint. Why would she take her shoes off to go into the forest? Surely she would be more worried about the protection of her feet than this? And it left them with fewer clues. Foot prints were washed away in the wind and the rain in a matter of moments, and with the thick underbrush of the wooded floor, tracking her felt like a mounting impossible task.
"Which way do we start?"
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Posted: Mon May 03, 2010 10:03 pm
She wasn't sure what she saw when the stag stumbled. The incomprehensible grace of its running, the pristine beauty of the rhythm of its legs, seemed like an endless, tireless cycle. It was simply unfathomable, that the stag should even have the slightest misstep. But there, in front of her eyes, the stag stumbled, staggered, its legs becoming confused at the broken cycle of moving. Vivi almost couldn't bear to watch it.
She leapt over a fallen trunk and landed awkwardly, thudding down on her knees for the briefest of seconds before getting back up and running again. In the circus, she had trained daily, for hours upon hours, through pain and physical limit. She tried to make herself believe that this was the same. All she had to do was push through, and she would be fine, and safe, and through with this. Her feet throbbed. Her lungs gasped to keep up. Her hands had begun to shake.
And yet she didn't want the stag to fall.
Drop the bottle, part of her screamed. Drop the bottle and run away!
But the stag wasn't listening. The bottle thumped against its wide muscular flank. And when it fell, his graceful legs finally giving out, his body rolling in the mud from momentum, the bottle remained. With all the stag's will, it had not let it go.
Vivi let out a strangled wail. She ran with abandon, her legs picking up speed at the sight of her proverbial finish line. Her throat was constricting over the choke of sorrow. She hadn't expected it to feel this way.
She had caught the stag.
*
Shepard's hand unconsciously moved to cover Doe's on his arm, but he said nothing, his mouth clamped in a thin line of concern. Rain formed trails along the worried lines of his face, matting his hair against his forehead. He squinted, looking from the shoes to the trees and the silent sand in between. What... did the shoes mean? Why would Vivi have left them there? Scenarios, Shep, come up with something! Simplest explanations.
Scenario 1) Vivi took her shoes off to stroll on the beach before going to Doe's, and then got lost. No, strike that. It hadn't been warm enough to indulge with a beach walk, and Vivi had dropped the damn tart as well. And ten million beach-walks wouldn't have stood between her and the Liquid Aurora Borealis.
Scenario 2) Vivi had been kidnapped or -- or something, and lost her shoes in the struggle. Shepard's jaw tightened, and his eyes clouded in a grim expression. That -- that wasn't ******** it, either. Vivi was strong, and would have started kicking, screaming, and punching. No way the shoes would be that close to the tart box. And the tart box looked like it had been just set down, not flung away. And... ******** it, no, it just wasn't that. Shepard blankly refused to even entertain the idea. It would go down as Scenario 2 million until further investigation.
Scenario 3) Vivi had taken the shoes off herself and gone into the forest for ... another reason. Some other reason.
"Okay, alright. She lost the shoes here," Shepard muttered, starting in toward the trees, his shoulders straight and tense. "And we could've seen her on the beach anywhere, and someone else would have on the boardwalk or closer to your house. So she went into the woods f'some damn... "
His voice trailed off as a sudden memory jolted through his mind: a too-early breakfast, a disheveled Vivi, and talk of an unfindable stag. A stag that they had decided to wait for. A stag that would certainly show himself at the worst possible time, blast the ******** thing!
"Goddamn it." Shepard growled, plunging into the forest with a quickened pace, whipping his head back and forth as he went, searching. Anything would work, any corroboration of his theory, any sign of Vivi, of the stag, of anything at all. He whirled around to face Doucette. "I think she went in here after a bloody soul!"
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Posted: Mon May 03, 2010 10:20 pm
Doucette watched Shepard with concern dancing in her eyes. She knew he was thinking about the possibilities and she didn't want to interrupt. Her own guesses were floundering about in her mind and none of them made any sense. She didn't know of the stag, of Vivi's deterioration at the hands of the soul bottle's obsession. There was no reasonable answer in her mind. Aliens couldn't be responsible, that was just silly to think about. Beach walks, kidnapping, animal attack, every new turn of conclusion in her thoughts was struck down by rationale.
One minute she was shifting from foot to foot with every new possibility, a visual representation of her mental exercise. The next Shepard was darting into the forest and she was shocked into stillness. A soul?
It took her a moment to figure out how to move her legs, to chase after Shepard though she'd no doubt have trouble keeping up if he was going to put on his full speed. In good shape she was, yes, but able to go up against a man pumped full of adrenalin? Hardly.
"There's nothing out here to catch!" Doucette yelled back in confusion, racking her brain for any possible animal that would match the golden prongs upon the soul cloth. And it didn't answer why Vivi would disappear in such a manner, so suddenly and in the middle of the storm. Surely if she had seen something that would be good for a soul she would have come to the house and told Doe about it and the two could have gone out after the soul together once the rain had passed.
Especially now that Doucette had successfully gotten the jellyfish soul into her bottle, she had wanted to tell Vivi all about it; how it had taken so long but how perfect it had been to find an animal which was so simplistic, so far from murder. What kind of soul was Vivi chasing now that had overridden her mind so thoroughly that it was making her reckless?
Doe batted at the branches as they tore at her hair, the wet leaves smacking against her cheeks. There's nothing to catch, she thought to herself, worrying anew that there might be something seriously wrong with the situation.
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Posted: Mon May 03, 2010 11:13 pm
Vivi felt nauseous as she slowed her pace, heaving breaths to fill her lungs, her heart thudding achingly in her chest. She tripped over her feet, now unaccustomed to walking, making her way unsteadily to the large fallen body of the stag. It -- he -- looked up at her with dark mirrored eyes, and his body shook with flimsy breath. She fell onto her knees beside his head and touched his muzzle with one pale hand. The soul bottle string was still firmly clamped in his jaws, and the soul bottle, mud-covered and streaked with debris as it was, lay not far beyond. Vivi touched the bottle, and the stag jerked his head weakly away from her.
She nodded. "I understand," she said.
The forest seemed much quieter now, just the crisp echoed sound of rain falling against foliage. Everything living had crawled into its nest or burrow for safety. Vivi breathed, and listened to the stag breathe, and numbly stroked his muzzle. He turned his head back toward her, resting upon her knees. There was nothing else to do.
"Let me..." she said very softly in her native tongue, her voice drained but yet round and rich when not hesitating over unfamiliar languages. "Let me tell you a story."
The stag blinked slowly, wearily.
"Very soon from now, you will sleep. You will go from here and rest for a time in a place that will be comfortable and warm and safe. It will be nighttime for you then, a sweet and restful night. You will not need to work, to help, nor to run. Never to run." Vivi whispered. "Then, while you sleep, there will be a dawn. A wonderful, colorful dawn, one that will make you think of... hope, and rebirth, and happiness. You will be together with it, you and the dawn. And afterward you will wake again."
She leaned forward over the stag's head and kissed him gently on the forehead. "And I will be there when you wake again. You will be strong, and new. You will have your chance again to be happy. I will do whatever I can for you. I will not leave you."
The stag's eyes looked up at her, dark and liquid and bottomless. The light was fading, but Vivi thought, prayed, that she saw inside them a distant glow of hope. She crumpled around him, her arms around his neck.
She was weeping. She was cold.
*
"There's this stupid -- stupid damn stag that's following her around--" Shepard condensed the story and condensed the amount of curses he wanted to include in it as he raced through the forest without any particular knowledge of what he was doing or where he was going. All he knew was that he would eventually see something that would lead him and Doucette to Vivi, and he had a hunch that thing would be in the shape of a rather large stag. "We knew it'd be showing itself soon, and I'm bloody guessing it decided now was as good a time as any, the ******** thing."
He ran both his hands through his matted hair, his gaze desperate as he paced, unsure of his direction. He continued into the forest, checking to make sure that Doucette was behind him, cursing liberally in his head. It was stupid, all of it -- the Raevans, the soul bottle, the stag, the fact that Doucette and Vivi had to be a part of any of it, especially this stupid part.
GPS devices. Ankle trackers. That was what he was going to do to Vivi after this, goddamn it.
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Posted: Mon May 03, 2010 11:47 pm
In the single most ungraceful moment between trying to keep up with Shepard mentally as well as physically, Doucette found herself tripping on one of the tree roots and was quite quickly face first in the twigs and the mud. Perfect. Timing.
Pushing herself up and brushing what little she could out of her hair and off her clothes she took a tentative step forward. "Shepard..." she called out weakly, hoping he might still hear her over the roar of the rain as it pelted against leaves and bark. The step proved painful, and the red head winced as she realized it was surely twisted and likely swelling as she stood there.
Gaze swept the area, praying that Shepard would realize she wasn't behind him any longer and turn back for her. Another part hoped he would keep going. Doe was out of the running, literally. She couldn't be any more help, so Shepard might as well continue on alone. It was in this moment, scanning the trees and figuring out how best to make it home that she saw the blur of white that seemed to glow with the misting rain and flashes of lightning.
"Shepard!" she yelled, at the top of her voice now, sure it would cause her throat to ache the next day. But that was Vivi, she knew Vivi was there.
Despite the ankle Doucette began hacking through the woods, her weight sagging against trees where she could take a minute to suck in a breath and then use the trunk as momentum to keep moving. "Vivi, Vivi," Doe called over and over again, finally breaking into their small clearing and tumbling to her knees at Vivi's side, grabbing for her wrist.
"We were so scared."
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Posted: Tue May 04, 2010 9:43 pm
For some moments previous, Vivi's gaze had been dull and glassy, nearly as distant and cold as the stag's own. She could feel the stag's magnificence wither away, his regal presence recede into the soul bottle. His golden horns still glimmered faintly in farewell, and Vivi could not rid herself of the conviction that the stag was going to disappear entirely soon, his corporeal body merely... fade away from the earth.
She looked at the soul bottle, now filled with all the stag's essence and majesty. She herself felt empty and far away, deaf and dumb, and very, very cold. She cradled the bottle in both of her hands, carefully as her numb fingers could. There was no danger to it now. Now it was hers to protect.
And then, suddenly, Doucette crashed beside her, her hand clasped to Vivi's wrist. The touch -- the living touch -- snapped the Frenchwoman back to her senses, her silent mind flooding quickly with the reality of her situation: The stag was dead. She was in the middle of the woods. And she had frightened poor Doucette and forced her to go out into the storm. She looked at the other through her clumped lashes, blinking once, twice, and then threw her arms around the redhead.
"Doucette!" she cried guiltily. "Cheri, I am so sorry. How can you forgive me? I came -- for the stag, he stole my soul bottle and ran away! I am fine. Please do not worry. I would never have frightened you so!"
"I knew it." Shepard was running toward them, his face white and bloodless as he looked at the two disheveled women and the remains of the stag. He was holding Vivi's shoes and the soggy, dirty lump of her purse in one arm, things she now realized she must have lost along the way. She gasped as she saw him, pulling back and staring in open-mouthed amazement.
"Shepard!?" Vivi looked from him to Doucette anxiously, the full gravity of the situation descending on her. Embarrassment, a look seldom felt and even more rarely expressed, awoke itself inside her. A flush of guilt colored her cold and colorless face.
"Yes, Shepard." the Aussie bit in return as he approached them. His gaze lingered Vivi and Doucette as he bent over them, allowing the concern to filter through the anger in his eyes, but he could not seem to hold his gaze away from the body of the stag. He would look away, but then felt compelled to glance up at him again. He could not find the fury in himself to hate this creature now dead.
Anger, he decided, could come later. "Are you two hurt anywhere? Are you alright?"
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Posted: Tue May 04, 2010 10:46 pm
Doucette's lower lip trembled from the cold and the fear and the happiness. It was no longer an ability of hers to keep from crying and she quickly threw her arms around Vivi as the French woman hugged her. Pale face was pressed into the dark, wet locks of her friend and she clung like a frightened child until Shepard finally arrived and she disengaged from the woman.
"We were so scared," she said like a broken tape recorder. It was clear that the Irish woman didn't really know how to deal with such emergencies, or any emergencies at all. Though she'd let got of the full-body-binding hug, her fingers were back around Vivi's wrists as if to keep the woman there, to refuse to let her disappear again.
As Shepard bent over the two of them she gave Vivi a wide-eyed, far off look. "I called Shepard." Miss Obvious.
Turning her head she watched Shepard. He had to know what to do. She was as lost mentally as Vivi had been physically, and now the two women were soaking up the rain and mud with apparently little complaint. "The stag?" Lashes fluttered as she realized the white blur she'd seen through the trees was actually a real creature, slumped next to Vivi and quite clearly dead. Doucette would have yelped if she had the energy. Instead she looked at the bottle in Vivi's hands and nodded a bit. A smile too, was out of the question, but she thought Vivi did a good job all the same. If only you'd asked me for help.
Reaching up, Doucette picked at the twigs in her hair and rubbed at the dirt on her cheeks before picking herself up with an unsteady wobble. "I'm ok. Can you help Vivi? My house isn't far, we should get out of the rain."
For a moment the red head looked around, squinting as she tried to figure out which direction was going to be the best, but she honestly didn't know the area out in the forest that well. When she at last figured out the direction of the ocean she knew she could find her way back along the beach with no problem. "This way." Doucette gave a wave over her shoulder and started off. The general shock kept her from noticing her ankle at first, but after only a few steps it crumpled under her and she fell to her knees with a soft curse.
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Posted: Wed May 05, 2010 8:34 pm
Vivi watched Doe as she lifted herself shakily, both her palms out in case the other might sink back down again. Her heart ached looking at the woman, the chill and fear written clearly on her pale freckled face. Vivi's brows came together in an expression of remorse as she looked back down at the stag one last time, and then Shepard stepped in, trying to force her gaze away.
"C'mon, y'idiot, c'mon," he murmured as he moved to help Vivi up, his hands under her arms as she rose from the ground. For a moment, she did not move, her eyes locked on what she could see of the stag's still face, and Shepard made a motion as if to carry her. Snapping back to herself, Vivi waved him away, peeling her hair back from her forehead and quickly removing her shoes and purse from Shepard's grasp.
"Mon ami, mais qu'est-ce que j'ai fais?" she said miserably, shaking her head. "I am fine. I am -- so sorry."
"English if you want me to understand, Vivi." Shepard replied, his hands hovering over her shoulders as she took her first few steps. "You gonna start keeping score over who helps who and who does stupid s**t now? Because if you do, I don't want to see my bill. You barefoot? Let me see."
"No, no. I am well. I want to walk. To clear my head. We shall look at my poor feet when we arrive at Doucette's home." Vivi looked with concerned fondness at the redhead, who was now a few steps away from them, getting her bearings back to lead them to her home. She ambled after her, a little shaky herself, and Shepard lingered for a moment, turning to look at the stag at his feet.
"You made the right choice." he told it, his voice quiet but not quite soft. His rough hands grazed over a faded golden antler. The stag seemed to be descending into the mud, as if the earth was reclaiming it. Shepard let out a breath and turned away to follow Vivi and Doucette, his eyes dark and distant. "... but a damn stupid way of making it."
Vivi and Shepard were both watching as the Irishwoman fell down, her ankle giving way and forcing her fall. There was no doubt about the cause -- it was an ugly fall, the ankle twisting awkwardly beneath her weight. Immediately, the two pushed forward, but Shepard, in better shape as he was, bounded in front of Vivi with a curse.
"Doucette, are you well? Did you trip?" Vivi asked, touching Doucette's arm gently.
"Bloody hell, that wasn't very graceful now, was it?" The Aussie added, quirking a brow at the fallen redhead. He ducked to be at her level. "Can you walk? -- no, forget it. Not gonna be waved off again. You're gettin' a free ride whether your ankle's rooted or not. C'mere." He turned and knelt, offering his back to Doucette. "You be the general and point me in the right direction. Not taking no for an answer."
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Posted: Mon May 10, 2010 4:57 am
Listening to the two actually brought a smile to her lips, though it was faint and only managed to tickle the corners of her mouth, but it was something refreshing compared with the agonizing feeling of not knowing just what was going on or how to fix it. Now it was fixed and there was a lightness in her heart once more. That lightness would be happier out of the rain but the drops continued in a steady stream, their area lighting up from time to time with every flash of lightning that made the woman's skin crawl.
It wasn't that Doucette was afraid of storms, she even enjoyed opening her window some nights and letting the sounds lull her to sleep, but there was something about being out in the storm that put it in a whole new perspective of unpleasantness. Thank god it wasn't actually night time yet or they'd be right ******** mind had been drifting somewhere between a fuzzy bathrobe and a hot cup of scaldy when she'd taken her tumble. It was somewhat of a shock to her. Of course she knew she'd hurt her ankle when she'd fallen and that it would really smart at future time, but between that point and now it had been in the far distance as just a hazy thought behind the mission.
Doe winced as she reached down and felt around on the inside of her already ruined boots. She even took a moment to be grateful they were an older, less likely to be mourned pair. But more than that, her ankle was definitely going to be out of commission for longer than she'd like to admit and Shepard's and Vivi's voices noticing her stumble were not what she wanted to hear.
"I'm fine," she replied to Vivi, putting her hand out onto the closest tree as if she were going to use it to haul herself to her feet at any moment. Maybe turn yourself into a monkey and swing yourself home she scolded herself. But Vivi needed more help than she did surely. "You guys can go on ahead. The beach is easy to find if you listen then take a left when you get our of the trees. You can see my house lit up." Her voice sounded shakey but it was obvious she was attempting to hold it all in.
And then suddenly Shepard was in front of her and she was staring in horror at the expanse of his back being offered to her. Nonononononono her mind hyperventilated, though outwardly she continued to stare in a mini stage of shock. "No really, Icandoit," Doucette said with a sort of pathetic squeaking voice. There were many, many, many cons to clambering onto the man's back and the most prominent was that she hadn't worked off all the yummy tarts the two of them had stuffed her with at Vermillion!
He's going to think you're heavy, the voice said in a scathing tone, making the color drain from the woman's face. She always had too little or too much color it seemed. Never was Doucette the proper shade around these two.
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Posted: Mon May 10, 2010 6:47 pm
"Cheri, you cannot truly believe that we would leave you here," Vivi said, a mild, rueful amusement mixing with worry in her tone. "I'm afraid that you must take the Shepard at his value; he truly does not take no fo---"
"-- alright, y'bloody goat, have it your own way." Shepard interjected impatiently, turning around and hefting Doucette off the ground in the rather quick, fluid motion of a man perhaps more used to hauling massive bags of flour and unwieldy pieces of furniture than blanched, gaping young Irishwomen. Still, his grip on her was gentle, careful despite the suddenness of movement, and her weight in his arms didn't seem to phase the Aussie in the slightest. Her wet curls clung a little to the stubble on his jaw, tickling him slightly; he craned his neck in an effort to dislodge them. "We can argue about it when we're warm and dry again, how about that? You can put your arm around my neck and tell me where to go -- or you can flail about a bit. Yer choice."
"... ah, I perhaps should have warned you that he might resolve to such action," Vivi sighed without requisite feeling, a fragile sort of smile lifting only one side of her lips. From her purse, she had removed her vial, the soft pink glowing of the light bright in the contrast of the storm's darkness. The cool feeling of refreshed calm stole upon the Frenchwoman as she held the vial out, illuminating the ground before herself and Doe and Shepard, making sure that no further spills would be taken. She looked over her shoulder only once more as they went. There was no call to whisper further goodbyes. The stag was with her now, in the bottle, resting.
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