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Arrival

Lawr made no attempt to speak with the other man as they went on their way around the camp that would be their home for the time being. There was water and food and both supplies were in their hands, which was - to be frank - more than could be said for either on the island itself. He listened intently to the instructions they were given, and made sure to make sure that Butch listened too, but all the while he'd been paying most attention to Taym, staring in that serpentine way that he so often did. The false friendliness he'd maintained prior to their excursion was completely gone, after all, he had left Jan behind on the island with his more frivolous attire, here he was dressed clinically in simple, practical and blank whites.

As they arrived at their tent, Lawrence made no move to claim a bed, letting the other man satisfy whatever pretense of dominance he wished and hopefully to get it out of his system early. Lawr did not care where he slept, he would sleep on the sand itself if need be, regardless of its temperature.

Unfortunately, Taym dumping his bag did not seem to get anything out of his system, instead it tediously spurred him to further acts of metaphorical chest beating. He waved his hand in a vague gesture of dismissal. "Indulge in your vices." he said. "Perhaps the smoke will keep the insects away."

"Though I must point out that smoking does the opposite of clearing the air." He smiled, and it did not sit well on him. He had every intention of disposing of cigarette packs wherever and whenever he found them unguarded.

Turning his attention back to the other man from where it had shifted to the folds of the tent itself, he added. "But in all seriousness, treating me like a fellow hunter, given the context of the island itself, might as well be a threat. And if we are exchanging threats, unfortunately I decline to specify."

Lawr's expression did not so much as flicker as he eyed Taym. The use of that name once again, a name which he had disowned mildly irritated him insofar as it was possible to do so. However, he had given up correcting the other man on it's use, so he let it slide without comment.

"You do not have to worry about my levels of professionalism." he said simply, and turned towards checking his bag to make sure he had remembered the essentials. "And two months is only as long as you make it."

The first day in the desert was mercifully uneventful. Lawrence spent some time arranging his possessions and taking stock of the camp - exits and entrances, potential hiding places, and some of his time checking out the immediate surrounding desert. Travel took a great deal of effort when the sand absorbed almost all the traction his feet could gain upon it. His complexion was also a hindrance here in this hostile place, pale skin quickly tinged in red under the hot sun, even despite sunscreen.

In the afternoon he napped, and it was the dead sleep of those who do not fear never waking. He dreamed of moths, and woke smiling.

While they pursued their respective tasks, he said very little, keeping comments tightly refined to what had to be communicated. He nevertheless bordered on the polite, because he saw no reason why not to. He might even have genuinely been pleasant to the other hunter, but he had left it up to America and her choice meant that all he was doing was biding his time.

The next day he struck out further from camp, deciding that it was in his best interests to feel out the lay of the land and to see if there were any immediate dangers or landmarks on their doorstep. It went well, and before long he found himself back at camp, restocked his water supplies and once more headed out into the desert.

This time in the glare of the sun and the shifting and brisk winds, the dunes changed and he realized that despite his compass, he was lost.

There was no panic, no desperation or even despair. He checked his bearings once more and trying another direction, he walked on. He did not hope that his companion in this cruel place would come looking for him, he never expected such optimistic things, only the stupid or arrogant ones liked him or sought him out. Taym was perhaps arrogant in his lack of concern for the plight or others, but it was also a wily move on his part. He had not been stupid enough to trust Lawrence.

It was as it had always been, if he made his way back it would be entirely on the back of his own luck and fortune, not teamwork.

Quote:

7 - you get lost, your phone reception no longer works, you wander for hours and begin to hallucinate, roll 1d4 to determine what you see. After awhile you finally find your back to camp.
Quote:

1 - what you desire most at that moment
2 - your home
3 - something from your childhood
4 - someone you fear/dislike

The Door

By day three fear of boredom has largely displaced fear of his partner, and Taym has mowed through two and a half of the three books he brought and he's turned himself over almost entirely, in the downtime, to writing instead: composing pages of complicated acrostics, trying his ever-failing hand once again at the construction of elusive palindromes, creating islands of sparsely-written fiction with no relevance to any larger story, shredded or burned as soon as they're finished lest they give Lawrence some sort of fodder for mockery or unintentional insight.

He sometimes meticulously composes texts to Kostya, to Bix, to Peyton, to America, to queue them up only to delete them afterwards as too cranky, too mawkish, too insincere, too affectionate. He leaves one and one only, a picture attached, with the idea that maybe America will be impressed by him if she thinks him capable of hidden depths. Sometimes he remembers that he doesn't think he will ever go home (home in a sense), and the thought is strangely devoid of feeling.

He finds a standing cluster of stones, and there is nothing initially to suggest that it will in any way be an alleviation to his incessant boredom, but it is his job to investigate and so he does, and is rewarded--or not, and Fiona stirs uneasily--when he finds something decidedly more interesting than the usual: rocks, sand, dead animal.

He pauses, and for a moment he wonders whether it might be safer to push further alone. Fiona is notably absent, in the particular sort of restless absence that indicates that she does not know what to do or recommend. Lawrence shouldn't be far off.



And then he takes himself a distance away, and he lights a cigarette to wait. Heat trapped from the daytime still rises off the early-evening sand, and he's broken a sweat but it's only that--he feels no fear and no anxiety.

"Dunno yet. Possibly nothing," he said, after a brief lull during which he finished his cigarette. He dug a little pit in the sand and deposited it, burying it as he continued: "but just in case it wasn't nothing, I figured you ought to be here."

Misgivings rose: the first idle stirrings of anxiety, dispelled by a force of will as he jerked a "follow me" shoulder at Lawrence and led him to the door. With his cigarette gone he resorted instead to absently gnawing at a fingernail, his eyebrows lifted in a dry expression over it.

"You stumbled on anything about this in any of the notes?"

The Door

Lawrence doubted that it was nothing, from what he'd heard about the Sahara, it was heaving with life as far as monsters went, any human-like arrangement of stone rather than being a former settlement was probably more sinister. "Was likely a good idea." he offered eyeing the door itself.

He had read about lairs and hives, of places where horsemen like the one he'd run into lived and that was where his mind went initially. He did not mention this. "I'm not sure what it could be." he lied.

A moth, unseasonal and strange for the desert fluttered past and there was a strange twist in the Death hunter's gut.

Butch was excited. Lawrence smiled, that same stilted smile.

"Suppose we won't know unless we go in." he said, and moved to try and haul open the door with his good hand.