Wyatt Cain (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hasaheart) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
taxonomites2011-12-10 10:24 am
hasaheart) wrote in taxonomites2011-12-10 10:24 am
[visual: Cain's place | location: Mick at the Hedge Maze] Two for One, experimental thingie
Under normal circumstances, Cain sleeps because he knows he needs it rather than out of enjoying it. Normally, he rises early and gets started on the new day. He knows he needs routine, and he takes comfort in the small things of everyday life. Getting the first pot of coffee for the day going while he grabs a shower, then a few yoga exercises aimed just as much at loosening his joints as to help him learn to relax. Then he has his coffee, checks the tablet, and from there on in, he takes the day as it comes.
But not this morning.
This morning, he wakes up feeling like he's been caught in a swarm of angry bees, stumbled out onto a busy road and been run over by something very big. Blinking his eyes open at the ceiling, it takes a moment for him to register where he is: it's his bedroom, his bed, but he couldn't feel more out of place. His skin itches from the top of his head to the base of his neck, the back of his skull burns where he's rested his head on the pillow, his lips taste like blood. His hands feel only marginally better, the skin stretched too taut, and raising them to have a look only confirms it. Hands swollen and red, knuckles covered in cracks as thin as hairs.
Another moment's spent convincing himself he isn't dreaming, then he crawls out of bed to the muted sounds of his body protesting the decision to move at all. His feet are covered in sores and blisters.
Reaching for the tablet, he selects the visual mode, as there's no way in damnation he's going to type with his hands. "What in the forgotten halls of Emerald City happened to me?"
~*~
Mick's awakening early afternoon on the same day comes with less calm and more panic. He scrambles, pushing against the confines of his freezer, momentarily confused. Then realization hits, and instead of trying to get out, his hands find his face in frantic pawing slaps that would probably be highly comical if there weren't for the stabbing, gnawing hunch in his gut that it wasn't all a dream.
Not ten minutes later he's running for the hedge maze, if possible in an even worse state of panic. Finding the crack in the ground still there doesn't help.
Bad things happen, that's just the way it is, but sometimes, all you want is to catch a break. Instead, you find yourself picking up the pieces.
He drags in the cool night air through his nose, on all fours by the gaping, jagged hole in the ground trying to hear something, anything at all. He smells blood on the air, and burning flesh, and all he can see is Glitch, falling into a fiery grave and suddenly the earth seems to move under him. He can't breathe. "Oh, God. Oh, God, no."
It's 2:33 PM on Wednesday, when Mick's citywide text message goes out. It says, in no uncertain terms: Glitch is dead. Hedge maze. I'm sorry.
[placeholder post for anything you want to happen during the week following the end of the fairy tale event, especially dealing with the fallout of Glitch's death. Visits, tablet convos, bumping into each other in town, anything goes. If you're unsure where to start, ping me at sakuraofrureo on AIM and we can work something out. Or just tag in, and see what happens.
Anyone and everyone who expressed wanting more cr with either of my characters, go ahead and tag.]
But not this morning.
This morning, he wakes up feeling like he's been caught in a swarm of angry bees, stumbled out onto a busy road and been run over by something very big. Blinking his eyes open at the ceiling, it takes a moment for him to register where he is: it's his bedroom, his bed, but he couldn't feel more out of place. His skin itches from the top of his head to the base of his neck, the back of his skull burns where he's rested his head on the pillow, his lips taste like blood. His hands feel only marginally better, the skin stretched too taut, and raising them to have a look only confirms it. Hands swollen and red, knuckles covered in cracks as thin as hairs.
Another moment's spent convincing himself he isn't dreaming, then he crawls out of bed to the muted sounds of his body protesting the decision to move at all. His feet are covered in sores and blisters.
Reaching for the tablet, he selects the visual mode, as there's no way in damnation he's going to type with his hands. "What in the forgotten halls of Emerald City happened to me?"
~*~
Mick's awakening early afternoon on the same day comes with less calm and more panic. He scrambles, pushing against the confines of his freezer, momentarily confused. Then realization hits, and instead of trying to get out, his hands find his face in frantic pawing slaps that would probably be highly comical if there weren't for the stabbing, gnawing hunch in his gut that it wasn't all a dream.
Not ten minutes later he's running for the hedge maze, if possible in an even worse state of panic. Finding the crack in the ground still there doesn't help.
Bad things happen, that's just the way it is, but sometimes, all you want is to catch a break. Instead, you find yourself picking up the pieces.
He drags in the cool night air through his nose, on all fours by the gaping, jagged hole in the ground trying to hear something, anything at all. He smells blood on the air, and burning flesh, and all he can see is Glitch, falling into a fiery grave and suddenly the earth seems to move under him. He can't breathe. "Oh, God. Oh, God, no."
It's 2:33 PM on Wednesday, when Mick's citywide text message goes out. It says, in no uncertain terms: Glitch is dead. Hedge maze. I'm sorry.
[placeholder post for anything you want to happen during the week following the end of the fairy tale event, especially dealing with the fallout of Glitch's death. Visits, tablet convos, bumping into each other in town, anything goes. If you're unsure where to start, ping me at sakuraofrureo on AIM and we can work something out. Or just tag in, and see what happens.
Anyone and everyone who expressed wanting more cr with either of my characters, go ahead and tag.]
[visual | locked]
Oh no.
Of course she'd reply, the one person whose opinion of him matters the most; the one he can't let himself take for granted, yet fears that's exactly what he's doing every single day she gets up to make coffee and he doesn't have to pretend he's slept through the night.
"I'm at the hedge maze," he tells her, head ducked in what looks and feels a lot like shame. "I didn't mean to get him killed, Beth, I swear."
[visual | locked]
That was the first thing Beth noticed. He wouldn't look at her. She hated that he thought that he should be ashamed, that he thought that she would think badly of him.
Because she never would.
"I know you didn't. You were glitched. Everything was different..." And she had been forced to sit there and just watch it, the only survivor in a sea of changed people. "I'm coming to you now."
[visual | locked]
"I'm at the hedge maze," he says, his voice barely there and only just holding up against the insistent winds whipping up the snow around him.
"Wait for me at the entrance."
[visual | locked]
She wouldn't let him drift away.
"I'm on my way now. Just... keep talking to me. Stay with me."