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 Posted: Tue Aug 11, 2015 7:31 pm
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 ┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓A Shot In The DarkJuly 3rd, 2015┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
While she might not be the most computer-savvy person in the world, she was still perfectly capable of doing a good ol' fashioned google search. Fortunately the Lab seemed to have a website, saving her the trouble of trying to weed out the actual information from fake and the usual weirdness that one found on the internet.
She had started her search after she had gotten back from the tea party, settling herself down on her couch with a bowl of cereal and a glass of juice, eating while she idly read through the website. She had planned to only skim through the information before getting on with everything else she had to do that day, a momentary distraction to fill her morning.
Her cereal grew soggy as it sat uneaten in her bowl, the juice gone unpleasantly lukewarm in the glass, forgotten by her elbow. The sun had long since crept past it's high point in the day, sending long shadows stretching across the floor of her apartment through the windows. She had thoroughly read through everything the website had to offer, the links found on it looked through with equal scrutiny. And once that had been done, she went back to her original search, clicking on any websites that looked to have any promising information as well.
The sky had begun to grow dark when she found herself on the one section of the website that had given her any sort of pause. The flashing cursor seemed to taunt her, a quiet voice in the back of her mind saying "coward, coward, coward," as she hesitated, fingers poised over the keyboard.
But slowly each empty field was filled in, each question thoroughly read, thoroughly answered, a knot of....tension? Anxiety? Excitement? Growing in the pit of her stomach.
And finally she had reached the end of the page, the cursor hovering over the 'submit' button. She looked around the apartment, as if expecting someone to pop out at her and tell her to stop, but there was no one there, the flowers, bobbing slightly in the breeze from the AC, the only other living thing in the apartment with her.
With a sigh she clicked the button, turning the tablet off before she could second-guess herself.
After all, signing up couldn't hurt, and what were the odds that someone who barely knew anything about the program would be chosen anyway? |
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Posted: Tue Aug 11, 2015 7:32 pm
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┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓A Mysterious Package Filled With Mysterious ThingsAugust 10th, 2015┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
All thoughts of the Lab had been pushed to the back of her mind for the next couple of weeks, however, as life decided to dump everything on her all at once. She had picked up a few new clients to train, had found a new dojo in town that she could train at, and had to pick up some extra shifts at the gym to cover for sick coworkers.
Fortunately enough she wasn't forced to change her daily routine more than necessary, only needing to wake up an extra half-hour to compensate for the extra work and activities. Her mornings usually began with a short bit of yoga and meditation, followed by a run that could last from anywhere between half an hour to two, depending on her schedule for the day.
Usually when she made it back she would take a quick shower and head back out the door to get to work, but today seemed to be going a little bit differently. A large box was blocking her path to get into the apartment, and though it was clearly labeled for her, she couldn't for the life of her begin to guess at what it was. She knew she hadn't ordered anything online lately, usually she heard from her father if he was going to send her anything...
Regardless of where it came from it got scooped up and brought inside, deposited without ceremony next to a small table bearing an odd assortment of crystals and rocks, and forgotten about until she got home that evening.
The box was torn into without a care for saving the packaging after she had a moment to relax and rest, her nose wrinkling slightly when she saw the contents. A briefcase? What use would she have for a briefcase, especially a metal one? Oh well, maybe she had gotten sent the wrong thing? She should probably send it back, briefcases usually held important things that would be a pain to lose.
But there wasn't anything wrong with taking a little peek, was there?
Looking around with a somewhat guilty expression, she undid the latches that held the case closed and slowly opened the lid, frowning more when she saw what was inside. Not the usual papers and files one would expect, instead there were two bottles. One was empty, round, almost plain save for a decorative top and a scrap of cloth. The other was even more so, closed only with a cork. But there was something inside of that one.
With careful fingers, Nell pried the bottle from it's foam casing, holding it up to the light to get a good look at what was inside. A single stone, rather plain and unassuming save for a small hole that ran through the center. Her confusion turned into one of slight surprise as she recognized what it was. A hag stone! She used to search in the creeks for one for hours when she was a kid, though without much luck most of the time all things considered.
The bottle was given a slight shake to align the hole in the stone with the side of the bottle as she held it up to her eye, squinting slightly as she looked through it, just as she had done when she was younger.
The color drained from her face after a moment, her eyes widening as she slowly pulled the jar from her eye in a daze. Her gaze eventually flickered down to the briefcase still in her lap, putting the jar back into it's slot in the foam with shaking fingers. She noticed the papers tucked into the lining of the lid, taking them out and scanning the text as she chewed on her lower lip. It was a good thing that she had put the bottle back, for if she hadn't she would have surely dropped it.
Quote: Greetings, Nell!
Let me be the first to congratulate you on becoming a Guardian! My name is Zeke, and I am one of the staff members here at Lab 305. Out of numerous applications to our program, we felt that you were best fitted to become the newest addition to our family! So welcome and congratulations!
In this briefcase you will find your Soul Glass, Fel Essence, and a couple of documents - one of which needs your signature and must be returned to the Lab with your Glass and Essence upon your capture of a soul. The other is a list of contact information of every Guardian and Raevan pairing in the Lab. I've taken the liberty of highlighting the names of staff for you, but you will find us at the top of the first sheet!
I know this must be rather surprising for you, so before I go any further let me just state that if you have any questions at any time, please feel free to call, text, or email me and I will be more than happy to provide answers or guidance in general. That being said, let's get on with the show!
As I wrote above, you will find your Soul Glass and Fel Essence inside the briefcase. You are the Guardian to the Cursed Hag Stone Essence, which has already been written down on the legal documents you will have to date and sign. Your Soul Glass is that big glass and metal contraption to the left of your Essence Jar, and will be the thing you need to use in order to help us make your future Raevan. Please take note of the cloth between the metal and glass parts as it is important. Souls have colors and the cloth acts as a limiter and something of a fail-safe so that the bottle will not suck up just anything around it. As yours is brown, it will only activate around things (be they animal, plant, mineral, metal, etc) that fit that color.
When you capture a soul, the glass bulb will appear to have a smoke-like gas inside of it. When this happens simply return the filled Glass, the Essence, your signed documents, and the case to the Lab. There is a business card tucked in alongside this note for our carrier service. Contact them when you are ready to return your items and they will pick them up from your home. As soon as we get them back we will begin the process of making them into your Raevan!
Whew! I hope I covered everything well enough in this note as far as what you need to do now that you are a Guardian! If not, and as before, please do not hesitate to get in contact with me. My phone is always on and I'm always happy to talk with members of the Lab family!
Hope to hear from you soon and congratulations again!
Sincerely,
Zeke Farris
All traces of her worry disappeared as she read over the letter, her frown turning into a smile, which further grew into a grin so wide it seemed like it would split her face in two. She set the briefcase down on the couch next to her, making sure that it wasn't in danger of falling off before jumping in the air with a cheer, dancing around the apartment while waving the papers over her head.
That surprise briefly drove out the image of what she had seen through the stone moments before. Dark, indistinct figures stood around her, eyeless holes in their heads staring at her unblinkingly, seeming for all the world that they were waiting for her to turn her back on them. |
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Posted: Thu Aug 13, 2015 1:50 pm
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┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓Brown.August 13th, 2015┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
After her initial burst of excitement (which, to be fair, lasted for the rest of the day), she actually sat down and considered her options. Obviously she would have to do some rearranging to fit another person in her place, she didn't think they (or she!) would appreciate sharing a room. She would have to take some time off of work to get them situated, would have to figure out how to take care of one of these Raevans...
Of course, that all came second to her first stumbling block. The soul bottle was held loosely in her hands as she sat at the kitchen table, the seemingly innocuous object causing a frown to appear on her face. The thought of obtaining a soul in the first place was a bit unsettling, but also trying to figure out what soul to capture was another thing entirely.
Brown. The letter said that the bottle would only capture souls the same color as the cloth attached to it. She could assume that the soul color was connected to the actual color of the creature, so....brown.
Brown wasn't necessarily the first color she would have gone for, especially considering the rather dull greyish brown of the essence, but she supposed the people at the Lab knew what they were doing. The cloth, all things considered, wasn't ugly necessarily, a pattern of dark lines across it gave it a rather scale-y and almost rough looking texture, and the color itself wasn't bad, per se...
But one look at Nell and how she chose to adorn herself made it obvious that she was not one for neutral and dull colors, as most of the things she wore and had were highly saturated and bright. But...well. She could manage something brown.
With a sigh she absently rolled the soul glass around in her hands, moving from the question of what to how. She sighed again, letting her head fall down to the table with a solid 'thunk'. Maybe she should find someone to ask for help with this. |
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Posted: Sat Aug 15, 2015 5:46 pm
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┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓Cursed.August 15th, 2015┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
The essence was treated with significantly more caution than the soul bottle. Though she couldn't quite remember the specifics of what she had seen that first time she peered through the stone, there was a feeling of unease that filled her every time she held the jar it was in. She had left it in the briefcase for a few days while she carried the soul bottle around, hoping to be struck by inspiration when she was out and about. But as her mind remained blank as to any possibilities for what to chose she decided to turn to the essence to see if it would bring up any ideas.
The briefcase sat in front of her on the coffee table for a good half an hour before she worked up the nerve to open it, mentally chiding herself for being this afraid of a rock of all things. She had almost convinced herself that she had simply been imagining things that first time, an easy thing to do as time passed without any other weird things popping up. With a determined sigh she reached out, opening the briefcase quickly before she could lose her nerve, and plucked the bottle out of the protective foam.
It was simply a rock in a glass bottle, all things considered, a hole worn through it slightly off center. There was nothing particularly outstanding about the rock aside from that, it was a mottled brownish-grey nearly the same tone as the fabric on the soul bottle, it wasn't particularly large nor polished, and it did nothing extraordinary the longer she stared at it.
Nevertheless, the papers had said that it was cursed, and though she was sure they wouldn't send out anything too dangerous to people it still wasn't a comforting thing to consider. Cursed. How was it cursed? Would it affect her at all, or was she fine if it was kept in the bottle? And was what she saw that time a fluke or her imagination? Only one way to tell, she supposed. So, with only a brief moment of hesitation, she rotated the bottle around and held it up to her eye, slowly looking around the room to see if anything was different.
There was nothing out of the ordinary that she saw, which drew a sigh of relief from her, and her anxiously-tensed muscles began to relax slightly. And then she heard it. It wasn't loud, it wasn't threatening, it was simply a quiet whispering noise that she usually would ignore if she heard it anywhere else. But she was alone, the TV wasn't turned on, and the walls of her apartment were too thick to let much noise from her neighbors leak through.
She spun around, the stone momentarily forgotten in her hand as she looked wide-eyed over her shoulder at what could possibly be causing it. Nothing.
And the whispers died away.
With her heart pounding in her chest she hurriedly put the stone back in the briefcase, closing it as quickly as she could and pushing it to the other side of the table, just to be safe.
She found things to keep herself busy the rest of the night, and by the time she went to bed she had almost put the incident out of her mind.
As she drifted off to sleep, though, she heard a brief, murmuring whisper again, and she spent the rest of the night with blankets pulled over her head. |
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Posted: Sun Aug 16, 2015 9:54 am
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┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓Crazy. I'm going crazy.August 16th, 2015┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
She walked out from behind the curtain, taking her place center stage as she awaited her cue. The blazing lights kept her from seeing the crowd as anything but a dark shape, which did much to quell her nerves. The conductor raised his baton, the orchestra preparing themselves to play as she slowly moved into her pose, awaiting those first few notes to begin.
They never came.
Rather than music, the sounds of creaking wood and tortured metal filled the theater as the lights blossomed on stage. The conductor’s baton was moving smoothly through the air, the members of the orchestra had begun playing their instruments, but she could not hear the music. The shadowy figures in the audience began leaning towards one another, mouths moving with silent murmurs as they stared at her, waiting for her to finally begin.
She could only stand frozen in place as she stared in horror at the small rivulets of water that had begun running down the aisles under the feet of the audience. None of them seemed to notice. The wood of the doors began bowing inwards, the sound of splintering wood as loud as a gunshot as more water began to seep through the growing splits and cracks in it. The audience began to laugh as she remained still, eyes widening in horror as the small trickles turned into rivers, until the whole theater was covered in a thin layer of water that began pouring into the orchestra pit, ignored by the orchestra and conductor who had begun to give her confused looks.
The audience began to laugh, the sound of bubbling water coming out of their mouths rather than sounds of mirth. The water began to rise. The ominous crackings from the doors grew louder until they split apart entirely, letting in the torrent of water that had been straining to get in.
Her mouth opened to scream as the wave swept over the unnoticing audience, bearing down on the stage, about to sweep her up and smash her to pieces….
Nell awoke with a start, her breathing labored and her skin covered in a thin layer of cold sweat. With a groan she pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes, forcing herself to slow her breathing and calm down. This was the third night in a row she had been woken up by nightmares, and it was beginning to take its toll on her. Rather than attempt to go back to sleep as she had tried to do before, though, she pushed herself out of bed and stumbled into the kitchen, finding the coffee maker and can of coffee by feel more than anything else. A quick glance out the window showed that the sky had barely begun to lighten, dawn wasn’t going to be coming for a short while yet.
She found her eyes unfocusing as she stared out at the beach from the window, feeling her exhaustion trying to pull her back to bed as she waited for the coffee to finish brewing. With a quick shake of her head she slapped herself on the cheeks a few times, hurrying around the apartment to turn the lights on in an attempt to help keep her awake. No rest would be found if she fell back asleep, only the nightmares awaited her there. She hesitated as she teached for the switch on one of the lamps, squinting as she peered at the last shadowy corner of the room. She had thought...no. No, there wasn’t anyone standing there, she must still be shaken up from the nightmare. But as the lamp was turned on and she turned to go back to the kitchen, she could have sworn that she saw an indistinct form standing there, just a glimpse from her peripheral vision that was gone in the blink of an eye.
With another firm shake of her head she turned back around, looking intently at the space and breathing a sigh of relief when she saw nothing.
She nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard something from the kitchen, a panicked yelp escaping from her mouth as she whirled around once more. It had sounded exactly like a whisper, too indistinct to pick out any words, but loud enough to make itself be heard.
Upon further inspection it proved to be the coffee maker percolating.
”Nell,” she said to herself as she paced over to the kitchen, grabbing a mug from one of the cabinets. ”You are going out of your god damned mind.” She poured herself a cup of the coffee, trying to ignore how her hands shook as she drank. |
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Posted: Thu Aug 20, 2015 5:15 pm
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┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓Will Sleep Ever Come?August 18th, 2015┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
A line of people stretched in front of her, all standing the same way. Their postures were stiff, their arms straight at their sides, their heads bowed, looking down at holes dug in the ground in front of them. She took a step forward, intent on seeing what they were looking at in the holes when they began to move. One by one their heads snapped up, looking directly after her, the movement rippling down the line as far as the eye could see. One by one a hand raised, pointing a finger at her, and one by one their mouths opened into a silent wail.
Not quite silent. From their mouths came a crackling roar that jerked her awake, her eyes straining to see anything in the dark room and her heart pounding in her chest. A glance out the window showed that the sun wasn’t even close to rising, though by now she would be more surprised if she was actually able to sleep until her alarm went off. With a groan she rubbed at her eyes, drawing her knees up to her chest so she could rest her forehead on them. Though it had only been barely over a week since the rather ominous sounding essence came into her possession, it’s mark on her could clearly be seen.
Dark, bruise-like circles had appeared under her eyes, which seemed sunken in and dull in comparison to how they usually were. Her energy level was nowhere near what it usually was, and she was drinking coffee almost constantly to keep herself from falling asleep while working. It had gotten to the point that her coworkers and clients were starting to notice and express concern, but even her best attempts to brush it off weren’t very convincing. She would have to do something soon, that was for sure, she wasn’t sure how much longer she could keep going on a few hours of extremely unrestful sleep a night before it finally caught up to her in a bad way.
But nothing could feasibly be done about it at three in the morning, so with another sigh she collapsed back onto the bed and tried to get some more sleep.
It predictably didn’t work, and after another couple of hours of tossing and turning she finally dragged herself out of bed and out the door. Usually her morning runs did much to clear her mind and wake her up, but today it only made her feel more out of sorts. Her limbs didn’t seem to respond to her brain as they should, her movements were slow and sluggish, and even though the hag stone had been left at her apartment, she was still seeing things.
Interspersed among the sparse morning crowd were dark figures that seemed to be made entirely of shadows, with bright pinpoints of light for eyes that followed her unblinkingly. The sound of the wind rushing past her ears was filled with a quiet murmuring, too low to make out any particular words. And despite the rising warmth of the summer day, Nell felt a chill run down her spine that didn’t quite leave until she ran back home.
It took her until she was getting ready for work to remember that there was an easy way to figure out exactly what was going on and if she was able to do anything about it. Though she was hesitant to approach the briefcase again, she managed to fish out the paperwork from it quickly enough, and spent the next few minutes rifling through the stack until she found what she was looking for.
A list of names and phone numbers stared up at her from the paper, the first few highlighted. She chewed on her lip as she compared the name on the letter to the name on the list, tracing her finger across the page to the number that was attached to it. The number was slowly punched into her phone, but she sat staring at the screen until it shut itself off. |
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Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2015 5:55 pm
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┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓A bit mistaken...August 20th-21st, 2015┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
She was put much at ease after speaking to Zeke, and she returned home with a spring in her step. And while she still jumped at shadows and sudden movements in her peripheral vision, she was able to brush them off as her imagination, as none of the shadowy figures she had been used to seeing appeared. She had even gotten to the point of humming while she was straightening up the apartment, something she rarely did even when not being plagued by a mysterious cursed rock. The night passed without incident, and her mood picked up accordingly.
For once this week she didn’t even feel any trepidation about going to bed either, practically diving into it and burrowing beneath the blankets. Tonight, she told herself, tonight she would sleep well and put this behind her.
Fear. Terror. Running. A chase. Running, running, running. No sights, no sounds, just fear, that and the knowledge that there was something after her. Her heart pounded in her chest, her breath burned in her throat, her muscles screamed in protest, but every shred of her being made her keep going.
She somehow found the breath in her to scream as the ground fell out from under her feet and she was falling, unable to see anything but somehow sensing that the bottom was swiftly approaching. She fell and fell and fell and….
A strangled yell ripped its way from her throat as she woke up, though it died in her throat when her eyes snapped open and saw them. Rather than hiding in her periphery and in shadows, she found her bed ringed with dozens of figures, looming over her bed, staring down at her with empty eyes, speaking to each other in unintelligible tones. The scream that tore itself from her throat was much louder than the first, and any thoughts she had of this being over were chased out of her mind by fear.
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She huddled in a chair that she had shoved into a corner, eyes wide and bloodshot as she stared at the empty apartment, her knees pulled close to her chest, her arms wrapped firmly around them. She nearly jumped out of her seat at every sudden sound and movement, though she was reluctant to get out of the chair to get a close look at anything. All of the lights had been turned on in the apartment, though it wasn’t nearly enough for her liking. And there she stayed until the sun rose, filling the room with warm sunlight.
Usually that sight made the worries of the night fade away, but today it only seemed to emphasize the shadows and made the terrors of the night that much more frightening. |
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Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2015 5:56 pm
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┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓Up In a FlashAugust 22, 2015┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
Her legs were burning, aching from being overused. The ground was hard, packed earth that sent a jolt up her spine every time her feet hit the ground, her battered, aching feet that felt as if they were going to fall apart at any moment. But still she kept on running at a breakneck speed, risking a glance over her shoulder as she did so. They were still coming, a dark shape on the horizon that blotted out the land and the sky. And they were getting closer. Still too far away to see any individual shapes, they appeared as a massive black cloud that grew slowly, their pace never faltering, their attention never wavering.
Their steps were in unison, clashing against the ground in great shocks of noise that chased after her, spurring another burst of speed from her tired, spent legs. But on and on they came, never getting any further, always creeping closer. The sounds of their steps grew closer, louder, louder, loud-
Nell sat up with a strangled gasp, struggling to unwind the sheets from herself as she lunged out of bed towards the bathroom. The noises in her dream had been thunder, she dimly realized as she splashed cold water on her face to shock herself awake. Just thunder. A glance at the clock made her wish that she hadn’t looked, not bothering to get past the ‘4’ that flashed annoyingly. She glanced back towards her bedroom, wondering if she should even bother trying to go back to sleep at this point. But if she did she was likely just to have another nightmare, which rather defeated the point of trying to rest as they usually made her more tired than anything.
So with a begrudging sigh she stripped out of her pajamas and into a pair of shorts and a tank top, jamming her feet into her running shoes and grabbing a small backpack from the hook by the door as she left the apartment. She had mostly grabbed it because her wallet was still in it from earlier, and she was hoping to grab a cup of coffee on her way back to wake her up further, but she realized belatedly as she swung it on her back that it still had the soul bottle in it from when she went out the other day as well. Oh well, she didn’t feel like turning back and wasn’t expecting to do much than jog, it’d be fine.
Her original plan was to go run along the beach until the sun had properly come up, but a glance towards the water showed a line of dark clouds along the horizon, lit up intermittently with lightning. The source of the thunder noises, it seemed. With a sigh she turned the other way, jogging down the sidewalk until she found her backup plan. The nearby park was her other favorite place to run in the morning, as it was full of winding tree-lined paths and gentle hills that added a bit more of a workout than a flat path would have.
Of course, she had never gone through it in the dark when she had been deprived of a good night’s sleep for a couple of weeks and was hallucinating creepy, shadowy figures in her peripheral vision. By the time she had gotten started on her usual trail she wasn’t quite jogging at that point. She was flat out running. She forced herself to remain looking straight ahead, trying to ignore the subtle whisperings in her ear and the grasping hands that reached for her from every pool of shadows.
Her luck was even worse than she had thought, for the storm she had seen earlier apparently wasn’t being blown out to sea like she had been hoping, and was instead rolling quickly towards her. The wind had picked up significantly, tree branches swaying furiously and catching at her hair and clothes, adding an unsettling layer of realism to the intangible visions she had been having. She felt like her heart was going to pound out of her chest as her run turned into a dead sprint, remembering that there was a clearing up ahead that would at least get her out of the tangle of branches and leaves that seemed to be trying to hold on to her and draw her into the shadows.
A clearing ahead there was, a wave of relief washing over her as she turned a bend and saw the trail lead out of the trees and into several small hills that dotted the park. Better. Much better. She was so glad for the open space that she didn’t mind the rain that had slowly begun to fall, even as it began to get heavier. The next part of her run was much more calm (though she still jumped at every flash of lightning and rumble of thunder), but the rain was beginning to fall harder and harder, eventually becoming too much for even her to bear.
She knew that she was too far away from the road to find any of the sheltered bus stops, and all of the benches and other seating areas that she could reasonably get to quickly were all out in the open. A quick pause to get her bearings and look for any potential shelter turned up nothing at first, but the next flash of lightning illuminated the silhouette of a giant, old tree that crowned one of the nearby hills. Good enough. By the time she was able to make it up the hill to the tree the rain could conservatively be called a ‘torrential downpour’, and she was hardly able to see a few feet in front of her. The tree had, thankfully, very dense foliage, and little of the rain managed to drip down on her once she had ducked under its branches and collapsed by the trunk.
Her eyes closed with a sigh as she tried to wipe the water from her face, shifting around to try and get a bit more comfortable. From the look of things she might be here for a while. Drawing her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around them, she peered out at the falling rain in front of her, the sound of the falling water and the rustling of the branches above her lulling her into a sort of quasi-sleep.
It was weird, she thought fuzzily, but a good chunk of the fear that had been an undercurrent to her life over the past couple of weeks seemed to have gone for now, as if it was washed away by the rain. Wouldn’t that be nice if she could go back to her normal life again… And with that positive thought lingering in her mind she fell asleep, head pillowed on her knees as she leaned back against the large oak tree she was taking shelter under.
Unfortunately life seemed to be conspiring against her, for her sleep did not last long. She woke up with a shriek of panic and fear as light momentarily turned the world into a stark monochromatic picture, bright enough even to pierce through her closed eyelids. But that was second only to the sound. A roar louder than anything she had ever heard shook her to her core, making her teeth rattle in her head and her ears ring. On pure instinct alone she leapt to her feet, bolting out back into the rain and down the hill until she came to her senses again.
She had to blink several times to clear her vision, and everything still sounded muffled past the irritating high-pitched hum in her ears, but she was eventually able to see what happened to her shelter. Lightning apparently had struck the tree, for a dark jagged scar ran down the center of the tree’s trunk, the charred wood still smoldering and smoking in some areas despite the rain. With a curse she realized that she had left her backpack under the tree, and after a moment of hesitation she raced back up the hill, snatching it up as quickly as possible before running back down the hill again.
She didn’t stop at the bottom of the hill, and instead kept running until she reached her apartment once more. The backpack was hung back up on the hook she had grabbed it from, her shoes discarded by the door to keep from tracking too much water through the place, peeling her soaked clothes off and dropping them into the sink before climbing into the shower.
It was then that she noticed the cuts and blisters all along her arms and back. |
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Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2015 5:57 pm
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┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓What's this?August 22, 2015┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
The doctor explained that she had likely been struck by lightning, not directly, but some of it had jumped from the tree through her and into the ground. The cuts were from the tree’s bark, having been almost exploded from the tree when the sap underneath had been heated almost instantly to above-boiling temperatures from the lightning strike. Getting all of those splinters out had been a task that took much longer than she would have liked.
Most worrying, though, was the root-like network of reddened, blistered skin that ran down her side and one arm. A side-effect of the lightning, she had been told, and a rather cool looking one at that. But to her it boded at something much more unpleasant, even though the doctor assured her that she most likely didn’t have to worry about more than some muscle soreness for the next few days. Sometimes some effects could show up later, but the doctor told her that since it wasn’t a direct strike her chances of any future problems were lessened. She was sent home with a prescription for antibiotics and a reminder to call should anything else come up, and by the time she made it back to her apartment it was all she could do to make it to her bed before she passed out.
She woke up the next morning, having slept through her alarm, several calls and texts, and someone knocking on her door (who had slipped a note under the door), but she woke up feeling actually rested, and, even better, didn’t remember having any dreams, good or bad. She bustled about the apartment, tidying things up and cleaning up the mess of dirt and debris she had tracked through the place the other night, grabbing her shoes, still damp clothes, and backpack and taking them to the washing machine in the hopes of getting those cleaned as well.
It wasn’t until she was checking the pockets of the backpack for anything that would get ruined in the wash that she noticed that there was something rather large in it. It took her a second to remember that the soul glass had been inside, and she took it out with a wince, expecting it to at least be cracked, if not broken. Surprisingly enough, though, it seemed to have survived the night with nothing more than a fine layer of dirt and grime over it. With a relieved sigh she took it over to the sink once the washing machine was started and ran it under the water, gently scrubbing at it with her fingers to clean it off.
But it wasn’t getting any cleaner. Liberal amounts of dish soap weren’t doing the job either, and with a huff she held it up to her face to see what, exactly, had gotten on it. Another wave of panic rolled over her when it seemed as if something had gotten inside the glass, dirty rainwater, surely, from the way it swirled around the glass, but it didn’t seem any heavier for being filled of water, and it didn’t move like water much either, it seemed to be more like smoke than anything…
Realization slowly dawned on her, a smile growing on her face with it. This must be a soul! She had captured a soul! Not on purpose, sure, but she was sure there were others that were accidental, too. With a shrill giggle of delight she hopped around the apartment, leaping over bits of furniture as she searched for the briefcase the essence and soul glass came in so she could send them back to the lab as quickly as possible.
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Posted: Wed Sep 02, 2015 7:15 am
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┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓Relief.August 24, 2015┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
She felt as if she was walking around on her toes the next couple of days. Though the bottles with the essence and soul had been mailed back to the Lab with all of the appropriate paperwork filled out, part of her was still convinced that the effects of the stone would still linger with her. But her apartment was full of a seemingly cavernous silence, sunlight streamed through the windows, chasing away the (completely ordinary) shadows, and for the first time since she received the package from the Lab, it felt like she was truly alone in her apartment.
She had taken a few days off from work, giving her enough time to rest and relax and catch up on her sleep, as well as actually giving her time to process what had happened in the past few weeks. It had seemed like a whirlwind had passed through her life, and it took her until now to realize that her life was soon going to have someone else in it. The thought was...frightening, to be honest. She had been by herself ever since she moved out from home, and hadn't even begun to think about starting a family of her own.
It wasn't that she didn't want a family, far from it, but various reasons had kept her from considering it for quite some time. She had considered adoption, but figured that being by herself was not the best way to go about that, until she at least got herself a bit more settled in her life. But now she was going to be responsible for something else aside from herself and the occasional plant. The suddenness of it was a bit unsettling, but the more she thought about it, the more excited she became.
She had seen a few of the Raevans at the tea party, though, and knew from a bit of research that it wasn't going to be like raising a baby, but...still. Was she capable of taking care of someone else? Sure, she could keep herself alive well enough, but would she be able to do the same to someone else? Especially when she assumed there would be special needs that they would need when they arrived.
Well. It was a bit too late now to start second guessing herself. She didn't know how long it would take for her Raevan to be...born? Created? Made? It could be a few days, it could be months, but she would have to make sure that there was a space ready for them when they got here. Unfortunately, there was only the one room (hers) aside from the main area, and she couldn't expect them to just live on the couch when they first got home, that wouldn't be very welcoming at all. If she had enough time she could theoretically have a new room built, but that would take a while and not something she was willing to risk with an unknown time frame.
With a sigh she looked around the apartment, trying to see what could be done with what she had, her eyes eventually alighted on the loft space above the kitchen. True, it was now being used for storage, but it was a decent enough size (bigger than her room, to be honest), and while the ceiling there was a bit low, she figured that it was a private enough space that it would suffice for a bedroom.
Now the only question was what to do with all of the stuff up there. |
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Posted: Sat Sep 19, 2015 8:24 pm
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┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓Death of a GiantSeptmber 19th, 2015┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
It had been a couple of weeks since she had mailed the briefcase with the soul and essence back to the Lab, and though her schedule had slowly returned to normal, she still felt like there was something that she was missing. The absence of the paranoia and fear she had felt from the essence was certainly noticed, though she didn't quite think that 'missing' was how she would describe her feelings about it being gone. No, it was something a bit more subtle than that, and it took her a few days of contemplation to figure out what, exactly, was causing this feeling. It wasn't until she was checking the maze of healing blisters and scars along her arm that she realized what it was. The tree. Surely even if it would have survived the lightning strike, it wouldn't have after having it's soul removed.
She felt a twinge of guilt and shame when she thought about how she hadn't even been back to look at the tree since that night, and had been, in fact, avoiding that park entirely. She knew nothing was going to happen if she did go there, but she had the unsettling feeling that the moment she stepped foot in the park everyone would know that she was the one to blame for what had happened to the tree. Stupid, she knew, but rational thoughts seemed to do little to stop the stab of fear she felt whenever she passed the park.
But she would have to face that fear eventually, however small it was. Being afraid to go to a park was no way to live life. And so she resolved to go see the spot the tree had been on her next day off.
Of course, it wasn't as easy as that, she found ways to delay leaving, dishes were found that needed to be washed, clothes were found that needed folding, dust was found that needed to be swept. It wasn't until noon that she ran out of things that she could distract herself and reluctantly walked out the door.
The park looked much different in the bright afternoon sunlight, the shifting shadows and mysterious noises that were present at night during the storm were gone, and all that was left was the cheery sound of birds and chattering people. Taking a deep breath to steel her nerves she set forward on the path that would eventually take her to the hill that was once crowned by a giant oak tree.
The length of the twisting path didn't help much with her nerves, as it left her with more time to think about what she might find when she turned that last corner before the hill. She found herself slowing to a stop when she approached that last turn, steeling her nerves and hunching her shoulders before striding purposefully around the bend.
The tree was still there ringed by bright yellow caution tape that kept anyone from getting to close. A thick stripe of blackened, charred wood ran down the center, nearly splitting the trunk in half, and the whole thing was crowned by a tangle of dry branches and browning, dying leaves. Her breath caught in her throat as she watched a wave of leaves drift slowly to the ground with the breeze, and her feet slowly carried her from the path and up the hill. It wasn't until she had reached the caution tape that she realized where she had gone, and, much to her surprise, it only took a moment of thought for her to make up her mind about what to do.
A quick glance around showed that there weren't many people around, and none that were paying attention to the tree, so she ducked quickly under the caution tape and took a few steps forward until she was right next to the trunk. She hesitantly flattened her palms against the rough bark of the tree, leaning her forehead against it a moment later.
"I'm sorry," she muttered, feeling a pang of sorrow at the sight of such a magnificent being meeting its end in such an undignified way. "I promise that this won't go to waste." Giving the tree a final, fond pat, she stepped back and turned to duck back under the caution tape once more. Before she left, though, she ducked down to grab a couple of the tree's fallen branches before hurrying back to her apartment.
After doing a quick once-over to make sure no bugs hitchhiked along, she took them up to the now-cleared out loft and hung them from one of the hooks that had been set into the wall. |
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