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Prompt 10: There are few traces of any human life in the strange village; personal affects are hard to find but--strangely--there is a pack of cards in plain sight atop a table. There doesn't appear to be anything remarkable about them; they have a simple design on the back and though there are no numbers, there are designs to indicate the identity of the card. It seems like a standard deck of playing cards--except, the joker card looks strangely like the monster lurking in the forest. There is something strangely hypnotic about the card, and if you stare at it for too long when you look up again you may see the creature standing before you. By the time you blink he's gone, but a sense of unease lingers in the room afterwards.
Cinta has since parlayed into some kind of routine days after settling into the village. First, after realizing that she could sleep with some relative ease into the night, she would do just that. Despite her anxious mannerisms, she at least was thankful that she could sleep relatively soundly at night even at the edge of proverbial peril.
Moreover, Cinta and her steadfast cousin Safiya has since taken it upon themselves to gather resources- namely foodstuff. On good days, they were able to purloin some fruit that didn’t seem like it was going to give them a terrible bout of food poisoning, but one ultimately never knew what could happen. After all, there was once a moment where her paranoia was breaking records, but despite that episode, she would rather keep on eating seemingly edible fruit than to try, goodness forbid, mystery meat. It was bad enough that she was relatively aware of the dangers of consuming contaminated food… so at the very least, if she had a choice, she would rather not risk it. And, on less than good days, they would be left relatively hungry. Still, they weren’t starving and haven’t fallen extremely ill, so to her, it was the equivalent of ‘no news = good news.’
And so, one day, she had taken upon herself to examine several abandoned residences. By now, and thanks to Safiya’s encouragement, Cinta has fashioned herself as a (temporary) home breaker and food burglar. Cinta assured herself that no one else outside the perimeter would know and acknowledge her transgressions, and since then, she has mentally drafted an outline on just how to outline her case. Whether that would hold up in interrogations or not remains up in the air. She rather keep this secret to herself, preferably.
After going through a couple of homes, Cinta figured that she could momentarily rest in one of the vacant rooms. Unfortunately, finding one without a broken or unstable sitting surface proved difficult, but she wasn’t quick to give up. Eventually, she came across a fairly sparse room with a couple of dining room chairs and a small round table. Sitting on top of it was a small glass vase with some dead flowers and an untidy set of cards spread out. Cinta lifted a brow upon seeing this strange arrangement. Yet, what bothered her was just how untidy the spread of cards was.
‘How could anyone abandon it like that? Everything else seemed orderly except for that. How strange…’ she thought. Strange indeed, but that didn’t stop Cinta’s curiosity from bubbling over. Plus, she finally found a chair to use, so that’s welcome.
Cinta carefully examined each card and felt slightly disappointed. They appeared rather normal- nothing out of the ordinary. It was a downer to her considering that presently, she was trapped in a seemingly abandoned village that refused to allow its captives to escape and a distinctly monstrous creature haunted the place.
“Hah… shouldn’t have expected much more than that,” she remarked out loud. She tried shuffling the deck, but her attempt was clumsy as a couple of cards slipped out of her deck. “Oh, my bad…”
The first card she lifted was a simple numbered face card. The second one was that of a joker, and, well, it looked vaguely familiar. Not vaguely… but
extremely familiar. Cinta’s eyes widened and gulped.
‘Oh, isn’t that… the monstrous beast…’ Cinta thought to herself as she examined the card thoroughly. She couldn’t believe it. The render was highly similar to the beast she could recall. And, it felt familiar, too. She instinctively shuddered and sighed.
In the back of her mind, she tried reassuring herself.
‘It’s okay, Cinta, you’ve been doing okay so far... how much more could go wrong-’Feeling like she couldn’t stand looking at its visage any longer, she craned her head up. She stifled a scream.
What appeared in front of her was the visage of said beast looking over her. And, it vanished immediately after she blinked once, twice, and a few times over. She couldn’t believe what she saw, and it took much for her to swallow her fear. Forgetting to tidy up the deck, she dropped the card, gathered herself together, and bolted out of the room and out of the house.
“I… I think I better go look for Safiya now…” Cinta immediately concluded to herself.
The Space Cauldron
I would like to claim
cat-shaped earrings for
Fringilla
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