aim your arrow

“Surely, she was too young to have so many ghosts.” ― Cassandra Clare Briar Carnahan. Starlight. Twenty-nine years old. A water-attuned castaway.

[briarcarnahan]

aureliemarchand​:

Time: Late morning Location: Aurélie’s Hill and the pond below Status: Closed with @briarcarnahan​

In her defense: she was behaving. For once. After waking with a throbbing headache, Aurélie had risen slowly, drinking at the apparently medicinal plant water Joaquin had left her despite its lukewarm temperature. Washing herself with a bit of water, too, hoping it will heal whatever ails her this morning. Once the pain has eased to a dull throb, she emerges outside with a sigh. The sun is higher in the sky than it typically is upon her first exit from the house. A morning wasted.

Despite that state of mind, Aurélie makes no moves to descend down the hill. She’s simply going to sit and soak up some sun. Perhaps read one of the books that still fill her house. That is, until she hears yelling in the direction of the pond. It’s the quickest she’s moved in days, standing upright with thoughts of that horrid creature from the jungle in mind. 

But it isn’t that. No, it’s simply a young girl (though appearances are deceiving on the age front) being yelled at by this barrel-armed thing of a man. “Hello!” Aurélie calls, trying to derail the purple-faced fellow’s attention to no avail. He goes on and on, ranting and raving, and finally, Aurélie’s had enough. A small wave of water is smacked upward from the pond and, unfortunately, it collides with both parties. She winces before calling to the girl: “I am sorry! That was not meant for you! Are you well?”

Seeing the anger ripple across his face strikes a chord of worry in her, but Briar tilts her chin up and meets his gaze. She isn’t afraid of him, no matter how much he towers over her. No matter how easy it would be to squish her like a bug. “You were left in the jungle too long on your own, weren’t you? You’ve got the madness in you,” she declares mid-rant, interrupting his spiel about the others in her group. The grimace on his face twists further, but he stays still, lips curling in a sneer.

It’s his friend who steps forward and shoves her. The blow of his heavy hands on his shoulder makes her yelp in surprise. Briar yanks herself away, rubbing what will be a growing bruise on her shoulder. Before he can move again, the water near them is moving. It rises, a wave growing from nothing. She looks to her hands, surprised. The cold splashes over her head, and she spits out a mouthful of pond water, disgusted. “I’m fine, it was just... gross," she says, swiping a hand across her mouth. The men splutter, the taller one stomping away with a grunt of frustration, and the one who shoved her remaining.

He flicks his head, and the water rises off his skin like smoke, leaving his clothes and hair to slowly dry. Fire attuned, she thinks, taking a step away, eyes flashing to his hands. “Bitch,” he calls to the woman, still drying the water from his skin, clothes, and hair, his ruddy face growing redder with his irritation. His attention swivels between them, but settles on the woman standing on the hill. “Is that the best you can do? Toss a couple drops of water? You’re really going to defend this Castaway over someone from the island? You don’t know if they’ll bring the ghosts upon us again.”

Briar smothers a snort, but not successfully as his gaze shoots to her. Again her chin lifts, and again she swallows back worry to replace it with steel. “Do you islanders think we talk to ghosts in our spare time?”

[briarcarnahan]

madibyrd​:

— ✿ ❀ ✿ —

Madi reached up to nervously run her fingers through her hair but stopped at the very last moment – if this poison spreads through touch, touching even more parts of her body would absolutely not be the best idea. Her hands stopped there, awkwardly hanging in the air for a couple of moments, before she twitched her fingers and quickly put her hands down. “Yeah, uh… the fast talking is just—it’s just me. Talking. Didn’t realize it was that fast.” Most of the time people didn’t comment on her speed, hey commented on just how much she talked or how she babbled.

The woman reached for Madi’s hand and Madi provided it, eagerly waiting for the diagnosis, a rush of relief hitting her when the woman deemed there was no need to chop her fingers off. That was good, that was very much preferable. She took a couple of steps up to the closest tree and rested one hand against it, letting her weight lean against it as she listened to the woman talk about the other flower that provided the poison and how to apply it. A couple of hours of window wasn’t really the best, but the woman sounded like she saw it not so far away, so she could totally do it. She could find it, make the antidote and not die. Maybe get some blue fingers, but that could even be a stylistic choice. And blue fingers were much more preferred than being dead.

“Yes, little way up, yellow thorns, gotta make it fast before the poison stars showing symptoms,” Madi nodded along, trying to summarize the bulk of it, only to realize that the woman was already walking away from. “Hey, no, sorry, hello! Would you mind—” she cried after her and Madi took off – or would have, if from the corner of her eyes she didn’t catch the burn marks on the tree right on the spot where her palm rested against it. Was that there before and she didn’t notice? She rubbed her palm without even realizing it, noticing the extreme amount of heat coming from it, but it must have just been because she was resting her hand against it. Some kind of weird heat magic of the island.

Madi shook her head, trying to get her mind back to the important stuff, like not letting herself die, and by that time the woman – Briar, as she introduced herself –, was back by her side, saying she would help her. “It’s nice to meet you – really, really nice. I’m Madi. I—thank you for helping with this. You said that way, right?” she said, pointing towards the direction Briar indicated before and the two of them started making their way over there.

“Sorry if I dragged you away from anything important, by the way. Didn’t really think getting poisoned and almost dying would be part of today’s schedule. I guess I just—I have to be more careful in the future. I’m so used to plants not trying to kill me if I touch them back home, it didn’t even occur to me for a moment that things are different here, that it was a possibility. Wouldn’t even have realized something was wrong if you didn’t see me and didn’t recognize the plant.” Madi was keeping herself calm through the talking, through the mindless rambling. She was in other life threatening situations before, and this even had a clear cut solution. Something that was really near, there was no reason to panic. Nope, she was gonna be fine. This would be just another wacky adventure on the island that she could learn from – don’t touch strange flowers or any other plant you don’t recognize to be safe.

She did feel… really hot, though. Burning up hot. She raised her palms in front of her, turning her hands back and forth to see if she saw any kind of swelling or redness. Her eyes was fine too, no tears yet. Or any dizziness. “How fast do these signs show up, by the way?” she asked carefully. Was it possible her skin felt so hot because she was already getting feverish? That had to be the reason for it, right?

✫   ・゜・。   ✫  

“It is fast,” she says, blunt, but softens it after a beat with: “I was just wondering. People like fast talkers, it fills the silence.” She enjoys listening more than speaking herself, and the woman would have less of a chance to be nervous if she was talking away. Or less chance of Briar making her nervous by saying the wrong thing. There’s a reason she left this to Fi, who had a way with words that Briar didn’t.

Fi wouldn’t have walked away, either, which is the thing to stop Briar in her tracks before she gets more than a few steps away. She grimaces, irritated with herself, both for succumbing to Fi’s pleading face and to the little, nagging voice in her head pointing out how foolish it is to leave in the first place. “It’d be stupid to make you wander when I know where it is. Vaguely.” Which is a great deal better than not knowing at all.

She shrugs her shoulders, trying for casual, walking with Madi into the jungle. “It likes shadows and damp places. We’ll find it near a stream. I can feel one over there.” Briar points again, though to an outsider it’s simply at a thicket and some trees. “This way. Watch your step, and try not to exert yourself too much,” she warns, watching her out of the corner of her eyes as they walk. “I wasn’t doing anything. Just... walking. Watching the clouds. Do they always look like this?” Stormy, and dark, and only peeks of blue rather than the wide open sky people once promised her.

Briar sighs. “It’s not your fault. This place has a way of luring people in, and it takes a while to learn the difference between deadly and... not deadly. Don’t pick up any rogue flowers without asking though, at least not so near the jungle,” she advises.

“You’re not going to die yet. We have a little while. You’ll know when the symptoms start, they tend to come one after another. If you feel faint, tell me so we can stop a moment.” Briar falters at the question, rubbing the back of her head. “I don’t know how fast the symptoms show up. I’m not... This isn’t...” She clears her throat, annoyed with herself. “I mean, I’m not the one who usually handles this. She--Fi-- Someone else does. I only know because we lost someone to it.”

Her eyes narrow. “Are you alright? You look strange.” Silly question, the woman is poisoned, and Briar dismisses it for a moment, watching the woman study her hands. Perhaps the symptoms were starting early - she doesn’t know what else the woman would be trying to find. “Your hands look like hands, if you were wondering,” she comments dryly, shaking her head.

They reach an incline, one that requires a little bit of climbing, but she can hear the trickle of water. Briar climbs down to the first ledge, and offers Madi a hand to help her down rather than risk getting dirty on her cut. She knows that much about wounds, at least. The ground shifts under Briar’s feet, and she finds her footing without much difficulty, well-used to traversing the jungle. “Try not to fall and die. It’s very like this place to let us get close and yank it away, but I’d prefer not to give it a higher death count than it has,” she advises, looking down to the bottom where the pull of water was strongest. “Think the stream is over here.”

[briarcarnahan]

conorxoblivion​:

“Record can have multiple meanings. One is written information and then eventually they made things that holds music. Same thing where it stores information, but that information is music,” Conor explained. “They just made it even smaller than what I remember,” she added. She sat down next to the woman and smiled. She hadn’t met this woman before and Conor could only imagine a couple of possibilities for someone on the island who didn’t know what a CD or record was. One possibility was that she was older than the existence of records, but even then she would have at least learned about their existence through other survivors. The other possibility was that she was born on the island or at least very young when she came to the island and didn’t know of the existence of this kind of technology. Conor refused to believe that there was another person on the island with the same…affliction as herself. 

“It’s hard to explain. I don’t even understand it all myself,” Conor said. She took the disc into her hand after the other woman fiddled with it. She furrowed her brow and took the little box into her hands. It seemed to run on batteries, something she learned about during her time on the island. “Don’t worry. It won’t explode,” she said in a confident tone, although she also hoped it wouldn’t explode. She hit the on button and opened the compartment to put the CD in. Conor waited as the CD loaded and then she adjusted the volume and hit play. Soon, it began to play a gentle tune and a guitar came in along and drums with other instruments Conor couldn’t identify. She missed music and it was hard to come by on the island. There were some musicians, including one who landed with their instrument, and some who learned to make their own. But, anything with electricity would eventually die and become useless until they figured out how to make a more reliable way to generate electricity.

✫   ・゜・。   ✫

“Sounds confusing. Why do they have so many words that mean other things?” she asks, running a finger over the box. It’s cool to the touch, perhaps colder to someone who wasn’t water attuned like her. Short of this, she couldn’t tell anyone a thing about it. Her head shakes. “You don’t have to explaining anything else, I think I’ve got it. And if I don’t... Well, I’ve never needed this knowledge before now, right?”

Briar leans forward, eyes zeroed in on the box in the woman’s hands at the promise of no explosion. When she opens the box and slides the disc in, Briar is holding her breath, and only lets out a gusty exhale when a soft noise fills the air. “It’s music,” she murmurs, unable to identify what made such strange noises, only that it made a sweet sound. “Do you recognize it? The, uh, music? I’ve only heard a few of the...” She doesn’t remember the word for a moment, and there’s a long pause before she says, “The songs. I’ve only heard one or two. I don’t know if those were real songs, either.”

She almost leaves it there, eyes sliding from the box to the flames, letting the music wash over her skin. People have sung before; she has vague memories of lullabies, and the sound of voices from the others as they sing under their breath about something from their world. Maybe a tune or two from a flute Faolan carved. But nothing like this. “This isn’t your box, is it?” she wonders aloud as several moments of silence pass, eyes darting from the woman to the box, contemplating how hard it would be to take it and run. How frowned upon, too. She continues with bluntness: “If not, do you think they’ll miss it?”

[briarcarnahan]

sagetomashardy​:

===***===

“Oh, sorry, yeah – a heavy duty tool is –” For a moment Tomas almost jokingly says you’re looking at one, but he manages not to. “Like, an implement you’d use for building, like if you use a knife to cut something, that’s a tool, right? So a heavy-duty one would be a really big knife, meant for really big work. A normal knife can cut saplings and bamboo, but we’d need a really huge knife with a serrated edge to cut down full-grown trees. That would be a heavy-duty knife, and then it would be called a saw.”

Tomas isn’t too sure where the sweet spot in talking to Briar is, exactly; he has experience teaching grade-school daughters, and he has experience lecturing college students, and nothing much in-between. 

“There’s others who were born here,” he answers her question. “Not a lot. People mostly manage to avoid having babies on the island.” Or, of course, they don’t make it, because childbirth is horrendously more complicated than Tomas had been prepared for and they haven’t had any ob-gyns wash up, so, yeah. “I’m sure you’ll meet them, soon enough. You can see what all you’ve got in common.” Probably not a whole shit-ton. Tomas feels suddenly very sad for this poor girl, born on the move to parents she can’t remember, and he makes a note to himself to tell his wife one more time what an incredible mother she is.

Even if Briar’s rambling thoughts on killing as a necessity, a mercy, bring him up short. Has Libby had to do that? The girl says she hasn’t done any killing herself, but has she – “Did you see that happen, sweetie?” Tomas asks. No use just thinking on it when he could ask her. “Have you seen somebody being killed as a mercy?”

She’s heard of him, at least (which fills Tomas with a sense of really quite unearned accomplishment, but whatever, he’ll take it) and says, “Neither of us knew. We only just found out when you guys came out of the jungle. It’s unfortunate, yeah, but–”

Briar’s cutting him off, telling him her name and asking if he means to take Libby away, and Tomas manages not to laugh because she won’t know that he’s laughing at the thought that he even could accomplish that. “Briar,” he says, “no, honey, no, I’m not gonna take Libby away. She needs you guys and you need her, right? We’re all gonna be living here now, together, it’ll be fine. Eat your peanuts.” He edges closer, spying some scratches on her arm, and points at them. “Can I look at those? I’m sort of a … I take care of people when they’re hurt.” 

✫ ・゜・。 ✫

“Oh, I guess Kiska has a lot of tools then. Maybe not heavy. Maybe a medium.” Perhaps Kiska has a heavy duty tool, too, because Briar has certainly seen a blade or two on her.

The question of heavy duty tools is left behind, her brows pinching together in thought as they discuss others on the island. Others like her. Her eyes remain on his face, intent on reading the expressions on his face with little luck. “It’s smart to avoid kids, they are too much trouble,” she says, too used to the words to find a bite in them anymore. Her gaze darts around, looking for a telltale flash of red, and lands on Tomas, eyes narrowing in warning. “Don’t tell Libby I said that, she doesn’t like it when people do.” 

Briar wonders if she’ll have anything in common with the others at all, but decides it isn’t really worth the effort of worrying about it. No, the only thing that matters is prodding their brains for the answers Libby and the others can’t give. “I’ll find them,” and she doesn’t mean for it to come out like a vow, but it does.

Sweetie. She’s already so still, but she freezes at the word. Sweetie, like she’s something precious. It doesn’t make her think of Libby, and her expression twists into a pained grimace and back to blank. “Not in person. Two people walking into the jungle, and only one returns. No comment on searching for the one left behind. We try not to talk about it.” And she’s encouraged it, too, though she grits her teeth to hold the words back. Whatever happened to her father, whatever he chose, it was a mercy.

Briar exhales silently, drawing her hands into her lap. “Good, I wouldn’t let her go without a fight.” And she doesn’t mean for it to sound like a threat either, but it leaks into her words, worry and fear wrapped around her throat like vines, leaving her voice tight.

The scratches on her arm haven’t bothered her, she barely recalls where she got them, and her head shakes mutely, holding her arm out automatically, responding to the authority in his voice. “Are you a...” She rolls through the possibilities in her head, head tilting. “Doctor?”

[briarcarnahan]

Besides escaping from the island, what is the one thing you most want to do right now? No matter how absurd or impossible it seems.

“What makes you think I want to escape in the island? This is my home. I might want to see whatever is beyond the horizon, but stay there? No.” As for what she wants to do more than anything, Briar doesn’t think about it long. The instinctive answer is on the tip of her lips, waiting to spill out: find Fi. But saying it runs the risk of taunting the island into the wrong answer. She purses her lips, thinking of another answer less marred in pain. “I’d like to see what the bottom of the ocean looks like. Not to touch it, just to see it.”

[briarcarnahan]

libbyblum​:

“This is a building,” Libby replies patiently. “Homes tend to be – well the rooms tend to be smaller, and… actually, guess it depends how rich you are.” She snorts a laugh but gets back on track. “Yeah, this is a building. And I don’t think the Leander can float anymore. You remember the shape of the things Faolan used to make? The Leander should be that shape, but it looks to me like something happened to it, so it’s not. Wouldn’t do too well on the water, I don’t think. Um  – yeah, I think people can get inside.” She knows it for a fact, but that’s not a conversation to be had with the child. “We can go check it out sometime, if you want.” We, said pointedly. The kid shouldn’t go alone.

“Hey,” Libby soothes as Briar frets, looking for the life of her like a deer about to bolt. She gives a small chuck of the girl’s chin despite her taller height and then nods sincerely. “I wouldn’t lie to you, kiddo. I’m very sure. If anyone wants to take me away from you, they’ll have to take me kicking and screaming. And then I’d bite them, so they probably wouldn’t manage it anyway.” Her smile is rueful, humorous, trying to lighten things. “‘Kay?” Maybe not the most soothing, actually, but she’s trying to speak Briar’s language here. Nothing and no one will part them again. Not if Libby has a say in it.

But it’s not just about this part of the island. Libby realizes that belatedly and with a sigh as it clicks. “Ah.” She swallows hard, looking toward the trees for a moment as she bides her words. Eventually, Libby leans her elbows on her knees, chin on her hands as she looks at Briar seriously. “Bee, look at me.” She makes sure their gazes are locked before going on – saying what she suspects Briar needs to hear. What she might’ve needed to hear many years ago. She’ll never know that.

“You remember when you came back and I made you promise me you’d stay? Was I hurting you by doing that?” The answer is no, or at least she hopes it is. Libby doesn’t wait to hear it aloud. “You didn’t hurt people by wanting them to stick around. You didn’t burden them. Sometimes they didn’t have a choice, honey. Fiona –” She lets that thought drift off, just shaking her head. “That didn’t mean she didn’t love you or that you hurt her. The jungle took her away and we both know the jungle doesn’t care how much you love someone. You didn’t do that to her. Okay?” After waiting for an affirmative, Libby pulls Briar down with an arm around her shoulders to press a kiss to the girl’s hair. Then she looses her grip and sits back, wanting to hear about the interview.

“Got it. So they’ve got some standard repertoire.” She sighs, though the offer of the banana is one she accepts with a small smile. “Nah, you’re right. It doesn’t matter. They asked me those things, yeah, but also some other random things. Why we call this place the Labyrinth, how many of us there are… just little details. Y’know.” Those were logistics, as are the questions that Libby needs to ask, but she settles on something a little more raw first: “Bee, do you like it out here? I know it’s weird, but is it better or worse than in the jungle? You can tell me.”

✫ ・゜・。 ✫ 

“You’d think they’ve been here long enough to make the Leander float-worthy again if they have all the time to make this,” she says with a gesture around them. Someone clear put time into creating this; she can’t really imagine the logistics of making it. “I want to check it out.” It’s said without question, only a pause afterwards as she awaits the inevitable protective commentary. When it follows, she isn’t surprised, managing a short snort and an even shorter nod, knowing better than to argue. And not wanting to in the first place. “I thought you’d say something like that. Don’t trust its sturdiness?”

The hey elicits no response, her eyes focused on a point over Libby’s shoulder without quite seeing, not wanting to meet her eyes. But the touch to her chin is a request she can’t deny. “Okay,” she says quietly. If nothing else, no one can go far; there’s only a few places they can go where she can’t follow.

She doesn’t even realize her eyes drift somewhere else until Libby calls her. Blinking, she meets her gaze, and her fidgeting fingers stop. Then her breath, too, as the question hits her altogether, and she breaks her gaze away. “I don’t know.” And it’s said with a somberness and uncertainty she can’t hide. “No?” It’s a question. Briar groans, turning away, unable to meet Libby’s eyes anymore, trying to find her words. She tugs on the ends of her hair for a moment before shaking her head, because what she thinks and what she feels are a conflict she can’t fix today. “No, you’re right, this is where I need to be. We’re a team.”

Her lips thin, more as it turns to Fiona, but she only nods rather than voice the disbelief. The terrible, lingering worry. If she holds onto Libby’s words hard enough, maybe she can make them real. “I know,” she says, sighing, and she’s relieved when Libby tugs her close, when she has an excuse to drop her eyes to the ground. She’s warm for the moments Libby holds her, for the gentle kiss against the top of her head, but Libby loosens her hold, and Briar feels a cold even her new jacket can’t warm.

She prefers the chatter about interviews. Mechanically chewing on her banana, she contemplates her question. “Nothing is trying to kill us,” she says simply, because the answer is anything but. Then, because she’s worried Libby enough for one days, she offers her a half smile. “I’ll get used to it. It’s just different than I expected. The people are weird, and that’s saying something with who we know.”

Briar pauses, finishing off her banana and licking her fingers, frowning some. “I’ve seen the way people look at us. I bet if we walk out of here, most of them are looking. Afraid we’re stealing, or something.” And she doesn’t know how groups work, exactly, but she fears Libby becoming the target of the weird people living on the beach. “Is that... something we should worry about?”

[briarcarnahan]

conorxoblivion​:

While everyone else gathered around The Pit, getting ready for some fun evening festivities, Conor found it to be a good time to go off on her own and walk around. She was a social being and loved to be around people, but when everyone was around The Pit at sunset, she liked to spend that time by herself. As the sun set and the only light was going to be the fire, Conor found her way back to The Pit so she didn’t risk getting lost in the jungle. To be fair though, usually the moon provided some nice strong light to be able to see. Unfortunately, it was a new moon and it wouldn’t be of any help now. 

Conor noticed another woman, someone she recognized as a member of the group that they deemed the Castaways, was toying around with a piece of technology. It was a smaller box with rounded edges and another little compartment with a little round piece of metal. It must have been one of those “boom boxes” one of the other survivors told her about. She focused her gaze on the woman with the boom box when she asked her a question. 

“I’ve only heard about these and I think I saw another one with something called a ‘tape.’ It was bigger than this one,” she said, unsure of whether or not ‘tape’ was the right word since the word tape had a different meaning to her. “The little glass thing,” she said (not knowing what it was really made up) as she pointed to the disc, “is like a record.” Conor didn’t know a better word for it, but it was smaller than a record that she knew. “It plays music in the machine. At least I assume it does. I’ve only seen another one where a smaller box played music in a bigger box.” Conor got closer to the woman and looked down at the text on it. “‘Viva La Vida.’“ She furrowed her eyebrows. “‘Coldplay.’” She didn’t know who that was at all or what it was. She wasn’t even sure if that was the musical artist or not. Maybe the artist was “Viva La Vida.”

✫   ・゜・。   ✫

“A... record. Isn’t that for writing? Or... keeping track of things? I don’t remember what Emilia calls it. Like a book,” she suggests, frowning, fiddling with a little round bump on it. Spinning it all the one direction did nothing, and no strength let her push it further; spinning it to the other side was the same. Briar scoots over automatically, making room for the woman to come closer if she wishes. It’s hard to battle against the instinct to allow others closer; the others from the Labyrinth didn’t shy away from sharing, but she isn’t sure how the water flows here.

Her eyes light up and a smile crosses her lips, pleased to understand one thing about this. “I know that one. Music. Faolan - my friend, once - he used to make these... he said it was a flute? When you blew into it, it made noise. This does that?” Once, Briar recalls Libby mentioning something along these lines. “Do you think it works?” she asks, dubious, eyeing the letters on the disc. Record. Thing. It looks gibberish - and it sounds like it, too. “Coldplay? Viva La Vida? Are you sure you can read? That doesn’t sound right. But I don’t know enough about this to argue,” she admits, shaking her head.

Briar holds it carefully; her fingers into the little hole on the disc. It doesn’t cut her finger off as she anticipates, but merely hangs there. She spins it absently, only halting when the object shifts on her lap and threatens to fall. One hand clutches it, wary of letting her treasure disappear. “So if it plays music... can we put it back in?” she says, voice lowering. “And it’ll do something? Are we sure it doesn’t, like...” She shifts the disc to another hand and makes a popping noise with her lips and freehand. “Explode?” 

[briarcarnahan]

@kiskasokolov​

If curiosity truly killed the cat, well—the cat forgot to use her claws. Kiska has seven; steel and ornate, almost as untouched by age or the elements as she is. Back in The Labyrinth, they studded her small frame; blades canted at her hips, holstered to her thigh, the rest sheathed in the remains of her beloved chest rig. But present company requires a more… subtle approach. The sole knife on show is her largest, and sunlight bounces from its surface back in Briar’s face as she approaches.

“If you fell and cut yourself on that right here,” she points first to the jagged edge of metal, and then taps her own leg, mid-thigh. “You’d bleed out in minutes.” It’s a fact; any scolding bullshit falls firmly under Libby’s scope. Instead, she stares down the man scowling at Briar until he shuffles off. Kiska tsks. “And all over that pretty new jacket of yours too.” Still, she joins Briar a breath later. The plane whines under their shared weight; it sends up a chorus of disgruntled murmurs from the locals nearby. Kiska’s hair is a dark banner in the wind that reveals her smirk one moment and conceals it in the next. She’s inherited new threads of her own; a man’s jacket with too many pockets to be considered fashionable. The sleeves are folded neatly to her wrists, the corded muscles of her torso and the curve of her bare breasts visible from where it’s unzipped. Kiska offers a hand, palm-up to Briar for balance. 

“I was seeing how the better half live.” She looks out across the water to where the ship casts long shadows across the waves. “Remember what I told you about Charles Manson?” Now she singles a figure out; the one they call ‘The First’. “Keep your head on straight, malen'kiy zayka.” 

✫ ・゜・。 ✫

Briar closes one eye, ducking her head to avoid the beam of light Kiska shines in her face. “And when I inevitably fall, someone will take mercy on me and toss me into the sea. Then I’ll be healed - or shark food. The Labyrinth picks,” she replies. Still, she shuffles a little further from the metal and the death sentence it promises, asking idly, “Will you stitch up my wounds if I fall, Kiska? On my jacket, if not my flesh?”

No one seems inclined to argue with them. Not yet, at least, when Kiska is standing above them, a smirk on her lips and her dark hair streaming. None of them have forgotten the knife - and Briar hasn’t forgotten how swiftly she can remove it. “Have you shown them any neat tricks, yet?” Next to Kiska, she feels grubby, and clumsy, balancing on the plane through luck rather than skill. She takes the hand without question, finding her footing before she releases it, trusting in the safety Kiska’s presence promises. “I don’t think they’ll enjoy it as I do. Look at them, how wary they are. It’s weird; I’m not sure I like it.”

And they are. None of them hold their gaze, but the weight of their eyes can’t be ignored. She tries still. “Better half? Them? You can’t bring up Charles and call this half better. Or... do you not trust him?” Her gaze follows Kiska’s to the tall blonde man who spares them no attention in his discussion with the animated man Briar vaguely remembers from her interview. Thinking of it makes her nose itch, a sneeze waiting to happen. “What do you think of them, then? The folk here? The others seem to like them.” She trusts Kiska’s opinion; it’s second only to Libby.

She frowns, nodding some at the request. Head straight or not, though, she can’t control what the others do. And the lingering stares she can’t quite ignore spring to mind, as a set flash once more to Kiska and then away, as if unsure of what to say or how to say it. “Did they ask you questions, too? When we got here? It seems weird. What will they do if our answer doesn’t fit? Cast us into the sea? Banish us to the jungle?”

[briarcarnahan]

@libbyblum​

Hard to keep a poker face when speaking of the dead. Especially this name that Briar so rarely says. And maybe Fi isn’t dead, but somehow, that seems less than ideal. That poor, bright-eyed thing left to wander… Libby pushes that image back and puts on a smile. “Sort of like that. Planes fly through using engines – like what I described in the cars, that makes them run on the roads? But… bigger.” How to say it simply? She doubts Briar will be piloting any time soon, so she leaves it there, patting the girl’s knee after the fact. Any mention of Fi isn’t an easy one. She knows that.

“I know,” Libby assures again at Briar’s assertion. As if she hadn’t been the one Briar had clung to upon her return from those weeks apart. As if they hadn’t slept holding hands for nights afterwards. But the kid deserves some semblance of independence, and so Libby looks into those determined brown eyes and nods. “It’s overwhelming. For me, too, so you’re not alone there.” She says, looking up at the sky. Thirty years shrouded in green. What a difference a day makes…

“What?” Libby scoffs momentarily, but then forces herself to ease. Briar doesn’t know any better. “No, kid, we can’t have you sleep on that thing. You’re right: it’s wobbly. So we’ll get you a rightful house. Have you seen any of them?” Well, she’s about to, as Libby hoists her up and ushers Briar toward the warehouse. 

“Yup, that’s right,” she beams at the mention of sharing, remembering teaching Briar that skill like it was yesterday. Time flies. “Not so far off from us that way, huh?” And then that beam softens as Briar touches the coat with wonder. “All yours.” She reassures, watching Briar clutch the thing close, feral and possessive and – well, a girl made by the jungle. Out of reflex, her fingers reach forward, pushing that same dark strand of hair away from Bee’s face. “Go ahead.” She urges again.

The smile that stretches Libby’s lips is all the wider once the too-big jacket drapes over Briar’s frame. “It is! I’m glad I found it,” she begins, and is going to go on, but then Briar begins with the lip-biting and an earnestness creeps into her tone and Libby halts her sentence. When Bee starts looking like that, it’s best to stop – don’t want to scare her off. The eventual question earns a sigh and she reaches forward, putting her hands on the girl’s upper arms. It’s not your responsibility to hold my hand, Briar had scolded, but Libby knows that’s far from the truth. 

“No. No, we’re not all going our separate ways. Some people might wander a bit – like Kiska, who I’m sure is already going into the jungle to see if they really mean that rule about not wandering. But we’re sticking around. Promise. I’ll see to it myself. And you,” she pinches at Briar’s arms playfully through the new fabric. “Are sticking with me. ‘Cause you promised me you wouldn’t wander again and I’m still holding you to it, jungle or no jungle. ‘Kay?” She stands upright then begins rifling through the food. “You hungry?” Libby questions, but doesn’t really give Briar the time to turn down the offer as she peels a banana and hands it over. “What was your interview like, Bee? What’d they ask?”

✫ ・゜・。 ✫

Bemused at the prospect of flying objects, Briar asks no more on it. Planes are a great deal more insane than imagining a car lugging passengers across a road. In fact, she says nothing more at all as Libby brings her to the warehouse, still processing everything Libby has said thus far.

Her brows are furrowing, only easing as they reach the warehouse and she can truly see. "Is this a building, or a home? I'd say this is a far cry from us. Or..." Not us. The frown returns. "Not me. I can't even tell you what it is without asking." Walls have been more Libby's world than Briar's. She forces herself not to frown. To not give Libby more things to worry about when it comes to her. "It looks more interesting than the boat, though. The... Leander...? Do you think they let people on it? I've only ever seen the tiny ones. The one Faolan used to make and send it down the streams. Is it true that huge thing floats?"

The jacket is a gift. Hers. Yet it feels strange thr longer she wears it, as if a little voice is chiding her for wasting resources. She holds the sleeves tighter, silencing it. Her head tilts; she forgot how much shorter Libby was, her eyes drifting down to connect with hers. "You're sure?" She repeats, aiming for dubious and ending up with worried. This part of the Labyrinth is too empty already without some of the others to fill the spaces. "Kiska will come back. She always does. I think she likes us, in some true Kiska fashion." She's never given Briar any reasons to doubt her, at least.

Nor has Libby. And yet doubt persists, dancing on a line Briar can't ignore, louder than Libby's promise. "We don't really need each other here. Not like we did in there, at least," she says, looking towards the jungle, hidden behind the walls holding this building aloft. Still a magnet for her. "We can't force people to stay. I won't force you to stay," she corrects, crossing her arms, chin dipping to her chest. While Libby touches her now, it's not her hands or her soft voice Briar hears, but the echo of someone else. Her fingers tighten, nails digging into skin. "I've already asked people to do that once. Multiple people. It seems to hurt them, in the end." Faolan. Fi. William Percy. Will she add Libby to the list eventually?

She nods, mechanically accepting, grimacing at the question. "Asked what I knew before this. Forgot the rest of you have a before, remembering it or not. Whether I've killed anyone." This brings her to a pause, toying with the banana before she pulls it in half automatically, offering Libby a chunk. It's only after she takes a bite of her own and chews it that she continues, as though the question of death doesn't linger. "What I regret, what I achieved. I didn't think those things mattered. Any of them. Did they ask you about it, too?"

[briarcarnahan]

sagetomashardy​:

===***===

“Buildings can be stuffy. We tend to build them here so there’s enough air inside. We don’t have much in the way of heavy-duty tools, anyhow.” The girl keeps on speculating, which Tomas likes; she’s got the sort of mind that processes and then projects, it seems. Which probably was a huge function of survival out in the – the Labyrinth, Libby and her people call it. With that kind of ominous moniker it makes sense that they’re all so on edge. 

“We can find enough room for you all to live comfortably, however you like it best, don’t worry about that,” Tomas says, although really the girl doesn’t seem like she’s much worried. Living in the moment, this one. She waggles her way out of the tree crevice and Tomas gets a better look at her: with those big dark unblinking eyes she reminds him a little of Emre, although her brand of watchfulness is much different than his. Feral, where Emre is wire-tense. 

She leans up against the tree too and Tomas shifts himself slightly to face her better, taking a handful of peanuts out of one of his habitual pouches and starting to crack the shells open. “You were born here?” he repeats, trying not to sound too incredulous. It’s not like that’s unheard of, he’s delivered island babies himself, but in the Labyrinth? That’s an entirely more distressing prospect. 

“You’re twenty-nine, then,” he says, not because it’s terribly important but just to orient himself and Libby within the arc of this girl’s lifespan. “And no, I’m not the First. That’s the tall blond guy you probably met after you came out of the jung–the Labyrinth.” Holding out some of the shelled peanuts to her, Tomas eats some as well, continuing, “I’m Tomas, and yeah, I run the farm, although it belongs to everybody, not me. And I’m … I’m Libby’s husband. We got here at the same time, just … separate.” The thought of it makes his head whirl again and Tomas staves it off, asking, “What’s your name, kiddo?”

✫ ・゜・。 ✫

Briar puzzles over the word, and then shakes her head when no answer comes to mind. "What's a heavy duty tool?" She wonders. "I'll grow to like, uh, buildings. Libby won't let us sleep outside for too long, I think. If she can, she'll construct a building single-handedly. Or your people will, if only to stop the wandering."

She tenses at the question, sinking a little further back into the tree. "So I'm told. My mother and father were here for a while, I think." Another person is jogging further ahead, and she waits for them to disappear before speaking. "Are there others? Born here? Raised her? I haven't really met anyone. All of them are like you. Born elsewhere, stuck here."

It takes her a moment to count the years. A beat, and then she nods a little hesitantly. Some years blend too much to tell the difference. "Ugh, him? I didn't like his questions. It's none of his business if I've killed someone. It happens here, sometimes it's a mercy someone needs." It can mean the difference between one more ghost floating in the jungle, or not. "Not that I've had to do it." Not directly, at least, though the thought offers no mercy to her. She takes some of the peanuts with some surprise and a nod in thanks. But she no more holds them than he explains who he is, and she freezes, staring at him with furrowing brows. "You're Tomas." She's dubious, but then she recalls Libby, off to the farm more often than not. Her brows shoot up. "You're Libby's... husband. You've been here this whole time? That's... unfortunate, no wonder she hasn't talked about you. Did she know?" Is this why Libby has been distant, busy? Not just with the First, but with him?

"Briar. I'm Briar," she answers. "Are you taking Libby back then? Is she... part of your group? Libby can't leave. We need her." I need her, but it goes unspoken anywhere except her eyes.

[briarcarnahan]

no-gambit​:

❦

Magnolia tilted her head as she regarded the new one’s disorientation—and disgust? Maybe sun stroke had caught her hard and fast already without the dark canopy overhead to shield her. “Are you alright?”

When the woman turned around, she couldn’t help but stare. There was something about this young stranger, and Magnolia considered her young with certainty, that struck a chord in her. She had some echo in her eyes that snared her attention. Her quip about names made No snort. It was like the Plane People all over again, odd island semantics at play. “What’s your name, then? So you don’t have to be ‘jungle folk’ or whatever else has been cooked up.” Watching her play in the mud, because there really was no other word for it, was a bit surreal.

“I haven’t met every newcomer yet, but the ones I do know I can remember the names of,” she supplied and stuffed her hands in her jacket pockets. It was a strange question unto itself. “I’ve had plenty of practice. I’m assuming you’re not used to this many people, though.”

The girl’s snark startled a chuckle out of Magnolia. At least this odd conversation was chasing away the numbness from before. “Fair point. Matthew isn’t the most welcoming given his everything. All of us are on the same island, though, we’re all equally islanders. Even you. Even me, and I’m old.” Looking back to her, she tugged her hat off to brush stray hair that had escaped its plait behind her ears. “Most won’t welcome questions,” she added, almost about to say that she was among those that didn’t. “Do you have many? Questions, that is.”

✫ ・゜・。 ✫   

Briar rubs her forehead with two fingers. “I’m fine. I mistook you for somebody else - something else, that is. Definitely not sure I’m cut out for how much sunlight everyone on the beach gets.” If she’s thinking the ocean is speaking to her, now rather than any other time she’s begged it for answers, then she’s spent too much time out here. Then again, maybe this woman has, too, what with the staring. Briar shifts, frowning. “I’m Briar. What’s yours? I’d prefer not calling you an islander, either. It sounds...” Weird. Unusual. Like this place is more their home than hers. She isn’t sure, and shrugs as an answer.

“I don’t think I’ve met this many people in my life.” Briar brushes her hands off, walking closer to the woman. “Nor so many, uh... “ This time the pause is more confusion, running over the foreign feeling word in her head, lips moving slightly as she puzzles over which one fits. Shelters? Houses? Homes? Her lips thin. “Buildings, I guess. They don’t really look like how I imagined those, though. Very... threadbare.” Less beautiful than Libby and the others described them, at least. She can make something herself with enough time and materials.

The woman laughs, and it’s a warm enough sound, reminiscent of Libby really, that lets her shoulders soften a touch. “It’s certainly too confusing when you reference me and my family. Some of us have been on the island a long while, and some their entire lives,” she explains, shrugging again, because she isn’t quite sure what to say or how to say it. She misses the others; they don’t require knowing anything more than what she does.

It’s almost a relief when No asks a question once more; for all her complaints of curiosity, Briar isn’t sure how else to interact with these people. “Too many to put into words. You said you were old?” she asks, brows raising. “Then you already have a home? Is it like this... covering here, or like the boat?” She indicates a shelter near them, held up by a stick and thin blanket, then to the point of a ship the others call the Leander.

[briarcarnahan]

madibyrd​:

— ✿ ❀ ✿ —

The flower really was beautiful and after a moment of thought, Madi plucked one of the flowers off of the plant - it would be nice to brighten up her day. Maybe somebody else’s, she wasn’t sure. She could feel a thorn scrape over her skin and a small sting, but Madi was used to this kind of “pain”, she barely even registered it.

Instead, her focus shifted to the woman asking her who she was talking to. “Oh, sorry, I wasn’t– I wasn’t talking to– it was–” but she got it herself, too, and said something about every group having somebody like this and then that was it. An awkward silence that Madi felt like stretched on for way too long and she didn’t really know what to say. Was her talking to a flower a bad thing in the woman’s eyes or good? What did that comment really meant?

She assumed it must have been bad, considering the woman then turned to leave - only to stop right in the middle of the sentence as she really took the flower in and then suddenly the flower was knocked out of Madi’s hands and her eyes went wide and grew big. “Wha–?”

Oh. It was poisonous. Great. Amazing. Cool. Just what she needed. The first pretty, new flower she found was poisonous. She completely missed the frosty water magic the woman did, instead kept looking at the little prick of blood that was coming out of the end of her fingers that she barely even registered until now. Now, however, she was way too painfully aware of it.

“Cut– cut my fingers off?” she repeated as she took the canteen and poured the rest of the water in it over her bleeding finger and the rest of her hands. “Is that the only solution? Just how poisonous is this thing? Is it instant effects? I’m feeling just fine right now. Does it just cause illness? Am I gonna get really high fever and hallucinate and stuff? Or… you know, is it worse? Like, a lot worse? Please tell me it isn’t a lot worse, I don’t want to go because I touched a flower, that feels way too stupid considering to where we are right now. Oh, yeah, if it wasn’t obvious, I did get cut. No thorn stuck or anything, but see, there’s some blood. Is there anything I could do to– you know, fix it? I really hope hat if you know this flower, you also know the solution to it.”

She was trying not to panic, this wasn’t that bad. It wouldn’t be. She was feeling just fine, it meant there would be a fix to this, right? Maybe the woman already had it on her and it could all be solved in the matter of minutes.

✫ ・゜・。 ✫ 

If she knew the woman would launch into babbling the moment Briar spoke, she wouldn’t have knocked it out of her hand so swiftly. Or, a grudging part of her admits, she would have, but maybe with a touch more words than the ones she used. Briar squints at her, using the side of her shoe to push fresh sand over the muddied water. Not likely poisonous anymore, but one could never tell. “Is the fast talking normal for you?” she questions, eyeing the woman’s face.

Briar shakes her head. “Let me see,“ she says, wiggling her hand out for the woman’s. Impatiently, however, she ends up trying to snag it anyway, dark eyes probing the scrape. “It doesn’t look like there’s a thorn in there, so I think we can spare ourselves a butchering. Probably for the best, I haven’t got an axe anymore.” She imagines her father has it, somewhere in the depths of the jungle. In his gut, or still buried in the tree trunk where she left it, she has no idea.

“She said...” Briar trails off, blowing out a breath that musses with her hair as she releases her grip on the woman. What did Fi say, once upon a time, when the only discussion to be had in the dead of night was silly things like flowers? “There’s another flower like that.” Her eyes close, fingers pressing against her temple as she thinks, head tilting side to side. They snap open as she remembers. “Different colored petals. Yellow thorns. The, uh, roots. If we mash that and put it on your hand with some water for a couple days, it should clear up. Your hand might get dyed blue, but that’s normal. Yeah, that’s it.”

Where is it though? “Not instant, no. You have a couple hours, it’s a slow moving poison, but you’ll need to stay hydrated and not panic. Unless you want it to spread to the rest of your limbs.” She regrets the careless words the moment she says them, clearing her throat as she tries to channel Fi. Or Libby. Someone who is a little less brisk. “High fever, babbling, dizziness. Your hands start to turn red and swell. Your eyes tear up. It’s a strange sort of poison. Not exactly useful for anything other than annoying someone to death.” Nope, not what they would say. What would Libby do? What would Fi do?

“You won’t find any of those flowers here. They like the shade of the jungle and a little rain. Go that way, it’ll show up, I saw some on the way in.” How long ago was that now? A few sunsets? She frowns, debating if she should leave her to it. But thoughts of what Fi would do circle around in her head and she stops before she leaves, somewhat rocking on her feet as her body fights the two different motions of staying and going. She gestures to the jungle, taking a few steps towards it. “Yeah, alright, I guess I can show you. Faster, and kinder, than letting you wander. I’m Briar, by the way.”

[briarcarnahan]

when: mid-afternoon where: the car (narrator: it was a plane). @kiskasokolov​

For such a loyal group, Briar can’t find a single member of the others. Castaways, people call them, which isn’t really a term she understands but draws scoffs from some of the others. Maybe it’s an insult? She resolves to ask someone whenever she finds them, assuming the lot of them haven’t turned into a speck of dust on the wind. Climbing a tree is out - all of them are too far from anything important. But this?

“Hey, you can’t touch that,” someone tells her gruffly as she grabs one of the broken pieces of metal sticking out of the car. The plane, she corrects mentally, ignoring the person as she yanks herself up the side of the plane. “You’re going to fall,” they continue, but she ignores them, making her way up to the top of the broken plane piece until she’s settled on the top. It groans under her weight, but she ignores it. “I’ve been climbing trees since I was small,” she retorts.

It’s a great deal more difficult to maintain her balance on this hunk of metal than it is to stand on a tree branch. She grits her teeth though, arms out to maintain her balance as she shifts her gaze over the beach in search of someone familiar.

The wind is bracing, and she finds her feet slipping bit by bit as her dark hair flies into her face, but she yanks it out of the way as she spots a dark haired woman in the distance. Younger than her in looks, sure, but certainly older than her in most other ways. “Kiska!” she yells, waving one hand, windmilling as the wind gusts. “Where have you been? I’ve been looking everywhere for you.” Someone shoots her a look. Disapproving, maybe, but her response is little more than “No, not you, who are you?” before she’s waving her arm again.

[briarcarnahan]

sagetomashardy​:

===***===

“Those are the people who love them. Although the way people around here talk to goats, I can see why you’d be confused.” Tomas makes an agreeing sound when Briar asks what’s up with the goats, throwing his hands up. “Exactly! I don’t know what the big deal is, but people are obsessed with the goats. I mean, they’re nice enough, but the eyes are kind of creepy, huh?” Tomas idly skritched his fingers through his beard. “They’re sometimes food, but we keep them around mostly for milk. That must be why people get attached.”

The girl doesn’t seem to think much of the farm, but at least she works her way around to sorting out why their larger population would need it and Tomas hums in approval. “That’s right,” he says. “We still have people who do foraging, fishing and hunting, all of that, but for proper food security we need a centralized place for production. And that’s the farm. You’re gonna get used to it in no time.”

Castaways doesn’t seem to strike any sort of chord for the girl, and Tomas reassesses quickly as she talks about her various places of shelter. “Right,” he says, half to himself as he recalls what Libby had said while they were heading into the Leander, that she hadn’t been indoors in years. “You’re not accustomed to buildings, are you? Well, then, since I’m an old hand at living in buildings, take it from me – they’ve got old tree stumps beat. Easy. You’ll see, once we’ve found you a place to stay.”

His mention of blankets has her peering out at him curiously, and Tomas turns to look at her; a winsome but wary little face, curtained by curving waves of jet-black hair. “You’d have to get way way beyond these trees to reach anywhere that money’s important,” Tomas says. “Across the wide water. How long have you been here? On the island?” That she’s unclear on money, where it exists and its uses. She must have come here very young. 

The thought does cross Tomas’ mind that Libby knows this girl, and perhaps a lot of that time has been shared, her growing up. But it’s a thought that’s a little too painful to face on his own, so he keeps it to himself.

✫ ・゜・。 ✫

“This is the only goat I’ve seen. I think.” An abrupt pause follows, and then she continues on with a vigorous nod. “Yes, definitely the only one. Think I would notice more. I suppose the food source would make them important to you all, it’s just...” She doesn’t finish, but the word creepy hangs in the air. Still, if she’s to have a reliable source of food, she’ll take the creepy goat. No more letting people go hungry, or no more foraging for something in the wilds and getting lost forever.

She tilts her head. “Hm, well I’ve certainly seen buildings now that I’m here, but I can’t say I’ve been inside them. Wouldn’t it be stuffy? Not that this tree is much better.” Her words end in a mutter as she tilts her head. The confined space makes it impossible to look around much, even if she finds it a great deal less stressful looking than a building with it’s easily collapsible looking walls. “I’m sure the others will make something once they’ve found their footing and then Libby will stuff everyone inside. She likes to keep people close. I bet they could use blankets for that, too.”

As she speaks, Briar makes her way out of the tree, craning her neck until it gives a satisfactory crack. “Huh, good to know. I haven’t got any money,” she declares, less annoyed with this prospect now that she doesn’t need it. Slanting a look in his direction, she leans her back against the side of the tree. “I’ve always been on the island. They said I was born... “ Who said it? Kimiko, she thinks, brows furrowing as she rubs her forehead. “End of the year 1991? Thereabouts. I think the others keep more track of it than I do.” Why should she, after all, when it’s hardly different than any other day? Short of the people who look at her with strange expressions.

Briar squints at him. “How long have you been here? A while, if you’re so familiar with the farm I guess. Is it yours? Are you the First? I’ve heard the term a lot. It’s weird, too.”

[briarcarnahan]

petrabright​:

thursday, january 7th, 2021 ; late afternoon. → somewhere in the jungle. close for: briar carnahan.

Petra doesn’t think much about the noises that she can hear as she comes into consciousness. The chirps come in bursts, bringing a small smile to her lips. The birds were calling to one another, sounds Petra has never heard before, but they sounded nice. Her body feels heavy, but she doesn’t think much of it. With her eyes still closed, she rolls her head back which causes a headache to feel as if it were splitting her skull, and Petra can’t help but release a small groan.  With eyes fluttering open, the sun beams into her sights and craning her neck to one side, Petra is then able to look up, only to see that her parachute is completely caught and tangled in the thick branches of trees, leaving her suspended in mid-air and that’s when the panic begins to settle in, awakening her more.  It’s the discomfort in her chest, the feeling in her brain when she’s had  excess caffeine … then it sets in deeper. She can also feel the hissing pain of scratches across the soft skin of her face and arms. The cold wind makes the scratches feel raw and the sunlight has them grow bright. Petra suddenly feels as if her skin were some sort of bill board advertising her vulnerabilities.

Alone, scared, hurting, and caught in a tree, Petra calls out for dear life. ❛ Help! ❜ … and only hears her plea echoing back at her.

The worst ideas quickly begin to settling into her already shocked and panicked mind. What if she’s stuck of her for days? What if there was no one for hundreds of miles? What if there was no one here at all?

❛ Help! Someone, please! ❜ Each cry becomes more strained than the last as she begins to struggle against her restraints, kicking and flailing her limbs around. ❛ Someone, for the love of God, please help me! ❜

✫   ・゜・。   ✫ 

Strictly speaking, she’s not supposed to be in here. Not only do people who call this island Meridium frown upon it, but she imagines the others will set her onto a log and lecture her on the dangers whenever she makes her way back to the beach. But she’s comfortable in the jungle, trailing her fingers over the familiar trees and landmarks, even in this corner she’s never once touched.

A cry shatters the serenity. “Who’s there?” she calls, drawing a hand back from the trunk of a tree, wariness in her voice. She’s not afraid of the jungle, but she’s certainly wary of who - or sometimes what - might be creeping in it.

Another cry, and her heart skips a beat. It sounds terribly, beautifully familiar. Heart squeezing in her chest, Briar follows the sound. “Fi?” she murmurs, looking around, searching for a flash of blonde among the trees. For the voice to call again and lead her home. It doesn’t; the jungle is painfully quiet.

A branch rustles above, and the cry reaches her ears once more. Someone’s strained voice fighting, struggling, flailing, and she can only picture Fi’s kind face, entrapped in some creature of the Labyrinth’s making, screaming for help. Screaming, perhaps, for Briar herself. This thought alone prompts her into running as the cry continues again, winding deeper and deeper into the jungle, only loosely watching her path.

“Fi! Where are you?” Where... where... Something falls from above, clattering at her feet. Briar jolts back, staring at it, and then her head shoots up again, heart in her throat and smile on her face.

It’s not Fi.

She chokes, swallowing hard. Tries to focus on the matter at hand. On the person struggling and fighting for help who isn’t Fi, who Briar would gladly leave in the trees if it meant Fi would walk out of the bushes. “What--” She stops, clearing her throat. “How did you get here? Hold on.” She looks around before reaching for one of the lower branches of the tree, yanking herself onto the first one. “Stop wiggling before you break... whatever the hell that is.”

[briarcarnahan]

libbyblum​:

Libby squints at the comment about cars. Given all the wreckage that seems to be around this end of the island, it’s not out of the question, the thought of a mangled car on the beach. But she’s been up and down this shore and hasn’t seen – “Oh! You mean that big metal thing near the water? That’s not a car,” Libby laughs, but it’s goodnatured, not condescending. “That’s a plane. They’re like… the cars of the sky. They’re not what’s on the roads. And yeah, in comparison, they’re huge. I didn’t really tell you about those because, well… guess they never came up.” Thirty years of conversation and they never covered planes. Libby will give her teaching skills the benefit of the doubt here – there were plenty of things to be taught.

Briar’s comment about the sky earns a hum of understanding from Libby, though her green-eyed gaze lingers on the kid’s anxious hands in the sand. All tell-tale signs of being overwhelmed for Briar. And who could blame her? In an attempt at soothing, Libby pushes a stray lock of dark hair behind the girl’s ear, lips pursing. “I’m sorry I wasn’t with you,” she says genuinely. Her distraction from Briar had been unexpected to say the least, and though she certainly doesn’t regret spending the time with Tomas, she does feel a pang of guilt. She and Briar rarely sleep far apart from one another – or at least they hadn’t in the jungle.

(Except, of course, for those few weeks they don’t speak of anymore.)

“We can get you a window of your own, I’m sure, but I can think of a few to show you next time it rains.” Her nod is sincere though she barks a laugh at the threat of frozen feet. “Atta girl,” she grins, draping an affectionate arm over Briar’s shoulders despite her own diminutive height and the scolding about the tree. 

“I know they don’t. Water and trees – there’s plenty of that to go around. We’ll find you somewhere that doesn’t have too much sky.” Nearness to the farm won’t do, then, as much as it would reassure Libby to know that Briar would be close to so many resources. Though God knows the kid would try to squirrel them all away… it’d been Libby who taught her that sort of self-preservation. She’s not sorry for it. 

“No more moving  – it’s a crazy concept, isn’t it?” Libby leans against the kid as they contemplate, though the mention of alcohol makes her laugh. “Yeah, no, I can’t say I’m especially enjoying it. But I’d just told some pretty shitty news to the lady who gave it to me so I felt a little too bad to refuse. Don’t get into that habit,” she warns before taking another bracing sip of the alcohol again, sticking her tongue out against the burn. Once that’s reeled back in, Libby nods with sincerity. “Good. We can handle some weird looks, can’t we? But if it gets worse, let me know – oh!”

Libby stands upright then, offering the younger woman a hand to join. “I’ve got something for you.” She grins proudly, hoisting Briar up then nodding in the direction in the farm for her to follow. As they meander up that path, Libby points out buildings. “That’s the warehouse – in late morning, apparently you can stop in to get some food. Whatever you want. And it happens every day, so you don’t need to worry about stocking things away, alright? It’ll always be there for you to take from.” 

They duck into the aforementioned building, where Libby herself has done some squirreling – she ducks into a dry corner behind some sacks of God knows what and emerges proudly wielding a blue raincoat. “Isn’t this perfect? I know you mentioned my parka being too hot sometimes, and this – well it’s lighter, see? And it’s your size, maybe a little too big, but it’ll do.” Libby holds out the offering to her pseudo-daughter. “I think it’ll suit you, Bee, and it’ll keep you really dry. No cold clothes. Seriously. Go ahead, try it on.”

✫ ・゜・。 ✫   

“What, they aren’t cars?” she demands, abandoning all pretext of sitting calmly, twisting in the sand to face Libby with a look of shock on her face. It’s hard to keep a straight, unconcerned face when someones says fantastical things. “The way Fi used to make things fly? You’re telling me they took that hunk of... of metal or whatever it is... and they managed to make it fly? Holding people? In the sky?” Each word tastes more foreign than the last. Cars already sound impossible, let alone flying machines. She flops back down again, rubbing her forehead; the idea sounds so ludicrous she doesn’t even flinch at the mention of Fi, a first in a long time.

“It’s not your responsibility to hold my hand,” she tells her, a little grumpily, though she tries to keep it out of her voice. It’s not Libby’s fault that the beach comes with a strange, sick feeling. “This place makes me feel I wandered away from the camp for the first time all over again. Not... that time, but the very first time.” A child, stepping too far into a direction on her own. Not lost for long before someone yanks her to safety, but left along long enough to feel as though she’d never find another person again.

The island doesn’t scare her on its own. But she can’t help thinking one day she’ll be the last one walking among it. Everyone else came from somewhere, and maybe the island will spit them out where they last were, but where did it send her?

She shakes her head briskly. “Do they have some around here? Or... the car-- the plane-- that thing had something like that on it. Maybe I’ll sleep in that next. Someone said it’s wobbly, though,” she comments, leaning into Libby, the tension easing from her shoulders at the familiarity. Tension returns slowly as a thought occurs, but she no more opens her lips before Libby is moving, tugging her along from their spot on the jungle edge to a well-traveled path along the farm. While Libby seems to be in her element, moving with certainty, Briar finds her head spinning, looking this way and that, nodding along with each of Libby’s words without processing them until the two reach a warehouse.

“Oh, so they can share,” she notes, following Libby into the building, arms crossing as she rubs her elbows. She pokes around as Libby disappears again, though she’s only snagged a single apple when she reappears again brandishing a raincoat. Briar sets the apple down, reaching for the raincoat and running her hand down the front of it. “This is mine? I can just... have it?” she asks with some wonder, scrunching the material in her hands and holding it close to her chest, as if daring someone to snatch it away. The castaways try, she knows, to give her something of her own, but necessity doesn’t always allow it. But this is hers.

She pulls it on over her thin shirt. It is a little big on her, but she’ll take it over the weight and heat of Libby’s parka. “It’s perfect,” she says, a thumb tracing over the seam of the material. She chews at her lip, letting the sleeves fall over her hands until only the tips of her fingers are exposed to the air. “Hey, Libby... are we all going our separate ways now? I thought, you know, we were just waiting to build something together.” But she’s barely seen some of the others. Libby, too, has been absent, off with the dark haired man who had snared her attention from their arrival.

[briarcarnahan]

madibyrd​:

[ @briarcarnahan​ ]

It’s been over two months now that Madi arrived to the island and still she was finding new aspects of the island. Granted, she wasn’t the big explorer type, she was happy to stick to her routine and what she knew, so maybe if she looked around a bit more thoroughly, she would have found more things sooner, but then it would have taken the joy of stumbling over something new away from her.

It was only drizzling now, which given how much it rained since the new year kicked in, it was a nice change in pace, so she decided to go on at least a small walk. Bundled up into her sweater (she was trying to perserve the jacket and not wear it as much in the rain), she was strolling by the different shelters and huts when she randomly spotted a flower she’s never seen before.

Madi’s curiousity took the best of her, of course she had to head over to it and check it out. It wasn’t anything she’s seen before - mix of pink and purple petals with green streaks running through it, and surpriringly its leafs were yellow. Little dirty, but it was absolutely yellow.

Madi carefully reached down, her fingers first running along the weirdly colored leaf, and then over the petals. “Hey there. You waited for the rain, didn’t you? You don’t like that chilly, sunny weather, so you just hid away until all this water started falling from the sky and showed up just so we can have a little beauty among the clouded days. I’ve never seen anything like you before, you know.”

✫ ・゜・。 ✫   

Libby tells her to stay away from the jungle. Not in those exact words, she thinks, but in close enough one’s that Briar toes the line of it. It’s hard to stay clear of the only thing she’s ever known - and worse, still, putting her back to a place which held more loved ones than even this beach. Her arms are crossed over her chest as she walks back and forth on the edge of the jungle line under guise of investigating the shelters.

Someone else walks nearby, and her head lifts, frowning at the dark haired woman who was speaking. “Who are you talking to? There’s no one else here,” she states, baffled, arms still crossed as she creeps closer. “Oh. A plant. I guess there’s someone in every group who has a fascination with them.” Her voice has gone flat, fingers clenched around her elbows. Stay, or go? “Well, I’ll just leave you to your-- Wait, where did you get that?”

The flower looks vaguely familiar. Her brows crease for a second before coming closer and smacking it out of the woman’s wrist with the flat of her hand. “You can’t just pick up random flowers! That one - especially that one - is not a friend.” When was the last time she had even seen one? Certainly not since she left the safety of the jungle - and even longer before then as their group steered clear of rainy meadows where the flower grew.

Briar yanks out her canteen, popping the lid and dumping the water onto her hands. Vigorously she scrubs them and then dumps the water cupped in her hands onto the ground, using her attunement to creep over the flower and encase it in an icy layer. Now if anyone wants to pick it up, they can take the bit of frost. She moves to step on it and crush it, but then sighs and thrusts the canteen at the woman instead. “Here, use this. Did it cut you at all? Got a thorn stuck in you? Anything? Congratulations, we won’t have to cut off your finger hopefully.”