The rules had changed, and she no longer knew how to play the game. Not the game of life, not the game of living, but the game of survival. There were people she had been, there was who she had become, and there was who she would be after – but all those women were defined by her own innate ability to survive. What was she without that? A dead girl walking?
She had spent the last few days in bed – better that than dead. In bed, she could see the world through the lens of her grandfather’s old abandoned Super 8. Outside her window it was grainy, the lens was unfocused. She could hear the laughter outside her room, her grandmother was still alive. Maybe her father was too. She was seventeen, or she was someone else. She wanted to go back to the times that were, and the times that had never been.
But Aida wasn’t in her bed. She was on her front steps, watching the town go by. It was quiet now – understandably. People were scared, she should have been too. Maybe she was. Her cigarette burned close to her fingers, she stared at it until a piece of ash fell on her knee and she put it out on the old white wood beside her. She looked tired. No sleep would do that to a person. Dark circles padded hazy eyes and made her cheeks look hollow.
She hadn’t called in sick, but then, she hadn’t gone to work either. She wondered if someone had opened it for her, or if Common Grounds remained unopened. Empty. All the lights turned off.
“Whatever,” Aida spoke to herself, a hand running over her face. They felt more callous than usual. Dryer. She was too cold to feel this warm.
She heard steps coming up the walk, she didn’t look up.
“No offense, but I can’t deal with fucking people today.”
He mostly got up early out of the habit of doing so for a morning run and coffee on the return trip. The past couple days had not fallen to that tradition. Instead, he’d sufficed with not-as-nice coffee, and then tea when he had gotten tired of trying to make decent coffee.
So, that morning, he followed his typical routine. Go for a run. He’d skipped too many days following the whole... mess of that party. He decided to take a slower pace that day, and well, at some point the run had turned into more of a jog, and then a walk. He couldn’t help but feel a certain sense of paranoia as he made his way into town. He couldn’t help but wrinkle his nose as he passed by bits of forest that were close to some of the areas that had burned. It had been days since the fire, but he could still catch the occasional sent of ash on wind that brushed through the forest.
But, he still found himself making his way towards the coffee shop - unsure of whether or not it would be open. On his way into town, many of the shops windows had remained dark and void of customers and employees. He vaguely wondered just how many deaths had affected the infrastructure of the small community. The town held an unsettling quite to it. He wouldn’t be surprised if the coffee shop was closed as well. No Aida fumbling with keys to open up the shop - usually late.
As he rounded the corner, he found his suspicions on the right path. Closed, empty. He stood there for a few moments, before turning to go back the way he came. But, as he took a step forward to retreat down the streets, Chaucer decided to stray from his usual path, and instead, started to aimlessly wander the streets in town, all sense of purpose to the morning ‘stroll’ more or less cast aside.
Soon enough he was in some of the surrounding residential areas. More or less quiet, no body seemed to be in a morning rush to get to work. Somehow he knew that the deaths had reached farther than just the witch community in Birchwood. He soon found himself in front of Aida’s home, with the owner in question sitting on her front porch. He hadn’t seen her since the... The night. Without much of a thought about it, he turned up the walkway, and sat himself down on the stairs, a short distance from Aida, taking her words into account, but not really wanting to pay them much mind. To be quite frank, he was more or less on the same page. Keeping his hands tucked into the pockets of his sweatshirt, he sat, quietly for a moment.
“Missed my coffee this morning,” he said absently, the words falling flat. He hadn’t done much talking the past few days, and it somewhat showed. He sighed, tipping his head to rest against the banister. It was a few moments before he really said anything else. “How are you,” he asked, turning slightly.
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