Most assume a beautiful morning was exclusive to fine weather. Walker disagreed.
The rain fell in a sheet of soft thuds on the rickety metal roof of the Roy & Son convenience store, muffling the dull buzz of the neon OPEN sign. Walker Roy warmed his stiff fingers on a Styrofoam cup of black sludge he could only charitably call ‘coffee’ as he stared out the fogged windows into the pelting onslaught. He idly sipped the bitter, coagulating liquid in his hands as he eyed a suspicious looking stain above the sliding glass door every few minutes. If the dull, faintly tan spot grew any bigger this time, he’d have to get the roofers again, and Walker would be out fifty bucks. Not that the good-for-nothing bums found anything the last time he called.
The ragged treeline outside was illuminated briefly with a flash of indistinct lightning. A few plastic solar-powered toys Walker had tossed on the windowsill over the years rattled quietly as a peal of thunder cracked overhead and reverberated through the road-side clearing. The lights flickered at the disturbance; even the neon sign’s faithful drone cut out for a breadth of a second, and Walker, again, checked the stain above the entryway.
Nothing. At least, nothing Walker hadn’t already evaluated before.
He took a moment, in the peaceful quiet of the darkened shop, to simply take in the morning. He savored the smell of the steam wafting from his Styrofoam cup and the indescribable scent of rain and damp earth that hung in the air. He watched the rain blanket the entirety of his late father’s gas station and the woodland beyond in a cottony gray veil of streaming water.
The woods were weird when it rained. Nothing about them really changed with the presence of a storm; the trees were still tall, knotted pines with green needles and sap. The underbrush was still a bunch of thorny brambles and budding saplings with plenty of foliage to hide the tiny creatures crawling and scurrying among the shadows.
Still, there was something off about it. It’d taken Walker a while to pinpoint exactly what. If business hadn’t been a bit slow in the passing decade, he might never have puzzled at it long enough to come to any sort of conclusion. But, with the summer melting into a fall that withered into winter and thawed into spring and then drowned again in summer storms, Walker found himself quietly frozen; rooted to the spot behind his cash register like one of the spindly pines hovering a few feet from the lot. As the many faces of travelers and liars and trappers and beggars slowly melted and faded into one featureless Customer, Walker found himself alone more often than not; even among others. And when he was, he watched the forest. Listened to it, even when he wasn’t sure it wanted to be heard.
Even in the rain. Especially in the rain. No one wanted to walk to a near-dilapidated gas station convenience store while the sky was cracking open in heavy, bitter torrents. No one ever visited when the weather truly turned impressive.
Walker still wasn’t entirely sure, even now, but the most concrete thing he could identify was the noise. Or rather, the lack of noise in the forest. When large swaths of gray blocked out the sun and thunder rolled over the mountains, Walker could hear the rain on the roof, on the pavement outside. Walker could see the rain hit the leaves and needles on the outcropping fringe of foliage that crowded up near the store. He could even taste the sharp smell of pine and death and living things.
But it was quiet. The forest was quiet. Not the normal quiet, either, where the animals go silent and the woodland falls asleep. There was no patter of airborne droplets hitting crackling bark or brambles; of slick leaves slapping together. There was no creak of branches as Walker watched them whip around in the wind. There was a gaping hole where there should be mundane clatter. Instead, there was just silent motion as the wind and rain shook the trees. The silence ate at him, like the squat shadow of the soaking wooded valley leeched vitality out of whatever bordered it.
Walker checked above the door again. He blew gently on his steaming beverage, still not quite willing to sip it. Usually he had a doughnut with his coffee. It didn’t mask the taste of yesterday’s dregs, but made the event of consuming both items far more fun.
No change in the stain, the dully buzzing sign kept flashing, and the solar toys at his elbow stayed decidedly dormant. Walker, resigned to the lack of ready distractions, turned his gaze back to the window; to the suspended static of the buffeting world beyond it.
The lingering peace of the lazy morning was gone, just like his comfort in solitude that fled him so long ago. There was no one here but Walker and the wood. The trees didn’t sing to him in hushed whispers like they did in sunshine. It seemed like they, too, were holding their breath. What were they waiting for? Who was he supposed to notice?
Walker shook his head quietly snorting at a sentimental old man’s flights of fancy, checked the stain again, and started sorting lottery tickets at the register. Most of them were out of date. Walker didn’t receive enough foot traffic to make regular trips into town to refresh them. Most of what he could call his regulars were huntsmen, who spent their time in the woods and didn’t care for lotteries or tabloids. All they walked in for was gas, ice, and various tobacco products. Sometimes to chat while he rang them up, but never to read through Hollywood scandals or scratch off an excuse to drive all the way into town for a measly twenty bucks.
Walker didn’t even drive into town to stock his store; he had the Cunninghams' boy deliver groceries and the like for pocket change and free slush drinks. As the years wore on, Walker had found himself venturing outside less and less. Eventually he only left his father’s store to check the gas pumps and perform basic maintenance checks. He had a cot in the office for when it was too dark to safely trudge back to his cabin.
He checked the stain again. Was it getting bigger? It hadn’t seemed so mottled and fresh before; it appeared to have adopted a green tinge.
Thunder roiled above, the shock-wave powerful enough to rattle the toys on the window sill again, the lights and sign cutting out along with it. Walker waited for them to flicker back on; eyes never leaving the forest, hand clenched around his cup of frigid sludge. Turn on. Please, turn on.
The store remained dark, smothered in an unnatural hush.
You've been visited by the random OC question fairy! :D ~☆
List five random facts about your character! How are these facts relevant to them?
HSHSHDHFH!!!
Thank you for this I love talking about them. I’m going with the manuscript characters.
So, random facts about Willie:
1. She has to dip chicken nuggets in applesauce or she won’t eat them.
2. One of the only things she enjoyed in the lab was manipulating the fire into shapes of animals.
3. To avoid the looming shadows in her room at night, she would create colorful and loud stories in her mind.
4. She trusted Charlie first because he was honest and never once lied to her, even when he blatantly said he hated her.
5. She knew staying with the weird group of teenagers she met was a good idea because they treated her the same way that families treated each other in the movies, which is way better than anything her own had ever done.
So yeah :)) idk they’re all relevant in their own way but I have 0 explaining energy today so just interpret it as you will!
Approximately 133,000 words and 331 pages. I have a lot of editing and proofreading to do to get my wordcount down to a good number.
But first at least a three week break, and then I can start the monumental task of editing my manuscript and going slowly through it 3-4 times before handing it off to my critique partner.
And I’m going to continue working on the sequels, making the outlines as good as I possibly can.
So much work ahead of me, but I’m ready and willing.
Bradleigh Dailer should be trans for narrative reasons
Bradleigh Dailer bc that is the dumbest name ever pls change it (i won't*)
Vivien. because she is awesome
Vivien should be trans for narrative reasons
Just make a new character (boooooo)
Make a new character that's PRE transition so we can see the journey
Voting ended onJul 22
*If she were, her egg's cracked and said name is a fem version of her deadname for Family Reasons. I will not be overhauling the name but I may have her shorten it or pick a new one as a narrative arc, etc
Mural art (design??) for the Horrible Utilitarian Colonizer Society in my writing project. It's (unfortunately) too intricate to be a proper logo, but the symbolism present has heavy propaganda intent within the world itself, and the (relative) neatness of the drawing makes it Government-Commisioned Official Art. There is currently no specific message attached to this, just general wall decoration to boost citizen morale/nationalism.
May come back later with an updated version of this, there are some inconsistent elements in it that I don't like but don't have the skill yet to fix.
