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 Posted: Sat Apr 09, 2016 10:13 pm
The red leather case was empty now, the fliers gone. It was only the smell of that lingered (of smoke, of burnt sap) and the tips of Jeremiah's fingers feeling the residual tingle of magic that he had used. The fliers had smoldered in his hand and it was only after he gathered himself up, after he realized how well he had been played, that he realized the magic. The magic should have been warm, it was fire after all, but instead it had left the tips of his fingers cold and he rubbed them together to banish it. Certainly a better feeling to focus on than what it had felt like to have his hand caught by it. Jeremiah had not felt like that wild, angry youth that he had been in years. It had only taken something ancient moments to bring him right back to that. Everyone has your number, Jeremiah. You're much more like the rest than you think.The words were true and Jeremiah knew it. He did not like it. Quote: drabbling out those moments and thoughts before he lost his memory to wrap up his quest~
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Posted: Sun Apr 10, 2016 7:01 pm
It was still a steady drizzle, one that made Jeremiah's back ache something fierce. Between that and the chill along his spine, sour was not an appropriate description of his mood. Dark barely scratched the surface of it.
Yet it was his own fault.
I miss you all the time.
Sunny's parting words, the look on her face. The things she had said, the entire conversation and her behavior, suddenly made sense. Combined with the smoky figure and what it had spoken, Jeremiah was starting to feel as if he was part of something he had always been a part of.
To be walking a path he had already walked.
For him, there was no thought worse.
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Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2016 10:38 pm
Fifteen hundred years.
It had been sleeping for fifteen hundred years.
The thing that he had met, that he could not put into words or even properly visualize in his mind, had said it had just woken up. It had been sleeping all this time. There could not be a coincidence that around the same time it woke up that so many people had been pulled into other ashdown. That Adoelle, Michael, and Heliodora had found themselves part of the cage that was this place.
Jeremiah paused under an awning, letting out a ragged sigh and unclenched his fist (he had not realized it had done so, his knuckles gone white) before he was raking it through his wet hair to get the bangs out of his eyes.
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Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2016 10:39 pm
This was a lot to process, a lot to try and piece together. When he had brought the fliers to this place he had expected a vision. Not to actually meet something, not to make another deal.
Zac and Algie were both going to hit him but what the deal was, the rules of it, were likely to make it not as bad. Except that Jeremiah could not deal with it himself. Sunny’s face, the look on her face, the words she had spoken.
The things he had promised to her and now could not keep.
With the deal in place he was practically under a geas. Jeremiah had a suspicion that there was no leeway, there was no deciding that he suddenly could just change his mind. The blood that trickled down to his collar from the scratch that had appeared on his neck was a reminder.
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Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2016 10:39 pm
He would have to talk to Sunny.
There was no way around it but it was not a conversation he was looking forward to. Did she know it was coming? Had she known she was sending him to this place to meet something that would make it where he would never be able to do what he had said?
She had said he would be happy but he was not that now.
For all that he had come into this finding her to be annoying, frustrating, and otherwise bratty (never mind the otherness of her), he felt something for Sunny. It was something he could not place and somehow he wondered if it was because of Zac. That when he looked at Sunny he saw the same look on her face that he had seen on Zac that first time they had met.
Someone looking for someone who cared without needing anything in return.
It had to be a solitary, lonely existence to be the witch on the beach. The one whom you traded smokes to and would tell you your fortune. How many years had she been at it? How many years had it been that people would simply come to take something from her? Yes, they had given something in trade but still …
Jeremiah smoothed a hand across his face.
What had he traded away without realizing it until it was too late?
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Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2016 10:40 pm
Objectively he knew that this favor could be what would save his life. Yet would it really? Especially considering who the deal was with. Jeremiah did not know if it was a good thing that he had made a potentially life saving deal with something that was very likely to be The Enemy.
That knew him.
It was a sticking point with him that he was known to it or the very least he was known to it’s minion. The thing had even felt familiar, sounded familiar despite not being able to place it. That it had reminded him of his father, that hand that had stopped his evening feel like his father’s hands, did not help matters.
With it he had been a young man again.
Frustrated and fighting against someone who did not understand what his path was, who he was, and not approving of his friend. It was never just that simple but that was what he had felt at the time. What had made him turn around and punch.
Besides Algie’s voice in his head telling him that he should have punched much sooner.
Between the thing of smoke knowing him, the things that Sunny seemed to know (not just about him but everything), he was beginning to think that he was looking at this all wrong. That if he was to not be Sunny’s friend - to not see her beyond business - that he should look that direction.
Nothing was ever just as simple as they’re no good for you, dear boy.
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Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2016 10:42 pm
Jeremiah had started to move again through the dreary town landscape, feeling as if he found a direction to go with this investigation. Something to work with. He would have to work it out, find a way around what he was now bound by, but it was a start. The detective found himself down town, the department not that far away and city hall just right there.
Chilled and cold and his back hurting, his mind was weighing the options of going to Heliodora’s demesne to find a way out. The sooner he was outside of this place, the sooner he could make his plans and he could talk to people.
His eyes swept across the empty streets and stopped when he saw the flicker of something out of the corner of his eye. Jeremiah blinked, rubbed a hand across his eyes, and then looked again. He did not imagine it. There was a bit of the alley he was near that did not look the same as the rest. The ground was dry, the colors not quite matching everything around it.
Approaching it he thought, for a moment, he could hear the sounds of the town through it distant and muted.
He reached out with his hand first, felt an odd tingling behind his eyes and blinked rapidly as if that would clear it. The light rain was no longer falling on him, the odd silence of other ashdown was no longer all around him, and he was back in Ashdown.
Not that he noticed.
Not past the pain that blossomed in his head and brought him to his knees.
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