TIMING: Prior to blackout LOCATION: Playground PARTIES: Cairn Woods (@cairnivore) and Eden Lu (@enthrallinglyeden) SUMMARY: Cairn and Eden meet unexpectedly at a nighttime playground but their initial caution fades once they recognize each other from the library.
Cairn stood at the edge of the playground, gravel shifting beneath her boots as she stepped onto the bark mulch. She’d seen it once during the day. Bright and noisy, overrun with motion. Children climbing, falling, shrieking. It was a sensory nightmare for her. They were a swarm of wildish things and for a moment Cairn wondered if that had been her. She no longer had anyone to ask. It had looked chaotic then, but now, under a weak and flickering street lamp, the place felt like something else entirely. The swings creaked without anyone touching them, moving just enough but Cairn felt no wind.
She drifted closer, studying the way the structures stood. They weren’t built to defend or conceal. They were open. Exposed. Maybe that was the point. Cairn reached out and touched the chain of a swing, fingers brushing cold metal, and then she heard it, soft footsteps behind her. Not hurried. Not cautious, either. Just... steady. Not unlike hers. She didn’t tense. She turned slowly, hand still resting on the chain. Her eyes found the figure behind her, half-lit by the failing lamp, features unclear but their presence was undeniable. She didn’t speak.
Not yet.
—
Despite the perils of some of his previous late night walks in town, Eden clearly never learnt his lesson. He couldn’t help that nighttime was when all of his thoughts started screaming in his head, and he couldn’t help that long walks illuminated by moonlight were what put him at ease. Maybe it was a force of habit from all of the times he’d sneak out back home. Not that the streets of Shanghai were ever remotely deserted, but at least he could move freely with fewer eyes on him.
The thought of his blackmailer watching him briefly crossed his mind. After all, wouldn’t it be best for them to strike while he was alone? But Eden had been alone so many times since coming to Wicked’s Rest — more often than not, he was alone. If they wanted to come for him, surely they would’ve done so already. No, there was self-preservation and then there was paranoia, and he did not want to live his life in constant fear.
The walk tonight was good, definitely well-needed if he wanted any chance of going to bed with a lighter conscience. The familiar playground that marked the start of his street came into view, and Eden quietly hummed in satisfaction. He always cut through the playground as a shortcut back home. Who would let their children out to play at this hour anyways? Absorbed in his thoughts, he didn’t notice the shadowy figure until he was just a few feet away from it. Eden froze, blinking as if it’d help him better analyze the individual in the dark. “Hello?”
—
A voice broke the stillness with a greeting. That alone made Cairn pause. Nothing that hunts, nothing that moves in shadow, greets. Not like that. It was a small detail, but enough to keep her wary. She didn’t respond immediately. Instead, she studied the shape emerging from the dark, weighing the meaning behind the voice. Finally, her words came low and steady, “Not many wander here when the world’s quiet. You’re not afraid of the dark?” Her eyes stayed steady in the dim light, calm and unreadable, but her words carried the weight of someone who’s lived long enough to know the quiet dangers that lurk beneath the surface.
In the woods, Cairn reminded herself, things didn’t speak with human mouths. If a voice came from shadow, it was always a trap, an unnatural warning sign. But here, in places where people so easily and frequently existed, danger wore many masks. Sometimes it spoke softly, disguised as normal. It wasn’t so easily seen, not like the clear growl of a predator or the snap of a twig underfoot.
She scanned for more than just the shape, any sign of movement, any shift in the air. Her mind raced through every lesson learned in the wild. Watch for what’s missing as much as what’s present, listen for the silence between sounds, question the calm. Because even when something greets you, it might still be waiting to strike.
—
There was a beat of silence as Eden sized up the individual. He didn’t dare get any closer when he was still unsure of who — or what — it was. The flickering street lamp seemingly illuminated the silhouette of a human, but he knew better than anyone that a human exterior could very well be hiding something sinister.
“Not so much the dark itself but rather what hides within it,” he replied when the other spoke, keeping his voice steady so that the other wouldn’t sense his growing trepidation. “Though I could ask you the same thing. I walk this route at this hour pretty frequently, yet we’ve never crossed paths before,” he said, not necessarily in an accusatory way but with an air of curiosity. The last thing he wanted to do was provoke them.
Eden surveyed his dimly lit surroundings. While he wanted to limit as much further interaction with the individual as possible, his path home was just behind them on the other side of the playground. With a sigh, he raised his empty hands as a sign of goodwill, though he tensed every muscle in his body in preparation for things to go awry. “Look, I mean no harm. I’m just on my way…” Eden stopped himself before saying home. He did not need the stranger to know that this was his neighbourhood.
“I’m…just going to be on my way now, but it requires me to go in this direction, so if you’ll excuse me,” he finally said. Taking a step closer to the individual and the path behind them, Eden was well aware that the streetlamp over his head now illuminated him fully for the other to see.
—
The voice was steady, but Cairn could hear the careful control threaded through it. Not fear, exactly, just tension, coiled and quiet. She knew the sound. Had heard it in deer just before they bolted. Started to notice it in people, too, right before they lied. But something else in his voice pulled at her. A faint thread of memory, not the words, but the tone. It scratched at her mind like a branch against bark. And when he stepped under the streetlight, she saw him. The light cut across his face, and her weight shifted. Recognition settled. “Library.”
Her voice wasn’t accusatory, just measured. That memory had held, him guiding her fingers over strange keys, the blinking screen, his voice careful but not condescending. She’d watched him then, too. People often underestimated how much she remembered. Cairn glanced past him, to the metal sprawl behind her. The structure always looked stranger at night, skeletal and still.
“Do you know what this is for?” she asked, not looking at him now. “This place. I see children on it sometimes. Screaming like they’re being chased. Then they laugh.” Her eyes slid back to him, steady. He knew how to speak to the machines. He must know this too.
—
The individual would be able to put a face to the name as soon as he stepped into the light. Eden was prepared to make a run for it if the situation called for it, but it didn’t feel right to do so off the bat. Running would likely draw more suspicion to him, alerting the other of his desire to flee, so he forced himself to stand in the light until the other finally seemed unbothered by his presence.
What he didn’t expect was for the other person to utter a single yet familiar word. “Library?” Eden repeated back curiously, now squinting in the voice’s direction as his eyes slowly adapted to the dark. He could finally make out the shorter individual in front of him, standing firm in her stance with a neutral expression. In any other situation, Eden would’ve taken it as the other person sizing him up, ready to strike. But recognition dawned on him as he scanned her features, staring back at the same intrigued that looked up at him in the library last week.
“Ah, it’s you,” Eden said, his voice softening now that the stranger’s identity was revealed. If anything, it probably would’ve been more difficult for him not to remember the particularly odd aura that she seemed to emit. He had noticed it from the moment they first interacted at the library, her delayed, stoic reactions leaving him somewhat uneasy at first. Eden had eventually learned to settle into the silence though, realizing that it wasn’t so much quiet judgement as it was the act of absorbing. Absorbing her surroundings, absorbing his words, and absorbing the technology in front of her.
“This?” He asked, unclenching the fist that he hadn’t noticed he had clenched in the first place. Though this person was still largely a stranger to him, knowing that they had already spent that hour together in the library did wonders in calming his paranoia. “This is a playground. It’s where children come to let out their energy and have fun. Their screams are ones of joy, which is why they laugh after,” Eden said as he slowly approached the structure behind her, fingers running over the cold metal. “I believe this is called a jungle gym, then that over there is a slide. You’re standing next to the swing set. Do…you not have playgrounds back home?”
—
Her gaze followed the line of his hand as he moved toward the metal frame, naming the pieces like they were creatures in a book. Jungle gym. Slide. Swings. Words she didn’t have until now. But still, none of them told her why. “I’ve never seen them used the same way twice. Sometimes they chase each other. Sometimes they climb. Sometimes they scream.”
Her eyes flicked from the swing chains to him again. “No, I’ve never seen anything like this before.” She didn’t move toward the playground, didn’t mirror his gesture or relax into the names. She only watched. Let him say what he knew. Let herself decide what to do with it. Cairn could recall her own moments of exploration in the woods: climbing trees, scaling boulders. Sometimes those efforts were met with a smile. Other times, a harsh look that meant come down now—a warning not to attract attention.
Cairn had stopped chasing smiles not too long after. The dangers of it all meant there was never time to explore for the sake of it. Have fun? Let out energy? That was strange to her. Every action had a reason. A purpose. A way to survive. She stepped forward, fingers curling around the swing chain. Then she sat, just as she’d seen others do. The chain rattled, and the seat sank slightly beneath her. Her boots dangled, the tips just able to drag through the sand. She looked to Eden. Silently wondering if he knew what to do.
“They pump their legs,” she said after a beat, almost to herself. “Back and forward. Like they’re trying to escape the ground. Sometimes an adult pushes them back as they swing back.”
–
“Well that’s the thing with children, right? You give them something to play with and they’ll find ten other ways to have fun.” Some days the children would giggle to themselves while hiding under the slides, other days they would shriek with glee as they chased each other up the jungle gym. Eden walked by this playground so frequently that these sights felt familiar to him now, as if he was trying to make up for missing out on these simple pleasures in his childhood.
He was a bit surprised that the other woman had never seen something so common, though he figured he wasn’t exactly one to talk. The last playground he had actually been this close to was when he was only around five or six years old, before his mother pulled him out of grade school in favour of a private tutor instead. Eden’s gaze stayed fixated on the jungle gym in front of him. His dignity was not going to allow him to climb the apparatus as a grown man, but for a moment, he wondered if he’d be able to do it. What would it feel like to do something when there was finally no one telling him no?
When he turned his attention back to the woman, she had situated herself on one of the swings. “Yeah, back and forth. The more you pump your legs, the higher you should go,” Eden said as he took a step towards her, waiting for her to heed his instructions and get moving — but she didn’t move, instead just sitting there as if waiting for something. “Are…you scared?” Perhaps she was scared of heights?
Then his eyes fell to her feet and the way her toes barely made a dent in the sand, and he realized what the issue was. “Oh. I guess that’s where the adult you mentioned comes in.” In truth, he had no desire to push another grown adult on a swing set in the dead of night, but she looked at the playground with such genuine curiosity that it tugged at something in his heart. At least he wasn’t the only adult still learning things every day. “I can, uh, give you a starting push if you’d like?” Eden offered hesitantly.
—
Cairn’s eyes lingered on the faint indentations in the sand beneath her boots—a groove carved by countless feet dragging and pushing off over time. She thought of the children she’d watched, some pumped their legs with determined focus, others leaning back into the sky as if chasing something just beyond reach. Childhood had never been a time for play. It was survival, sharpened and relentless. Every moment held purpose. You learned how to move quietly, how to read the wind, how to avoid the teeth lurking just beyond sight.
But here, away from the woods and their harsh truths, she saw something else. Structures not built to teach skill or caution, but to invite freedom, to create joy. The jungle gym, the slide, the swings… they weren’t tools for endurance or defense. Not quite. They were… for fun. For release. For feeling weightless, even if only for a moment. The idea was foreign and fragile in her mind, like a leaf being carried in the breeze, that she couldn’t quite catch. And yet, as Cairn sat there, gripping the chains and feeling the worn sand beneath her boots, something in her stirred. There was a quiet longing to understand this strange language of childhood she’d missed.
If she adjusted herself, she realized, her feet could push off easily from the worn sand, building momentum on her own. But Eden’s offer hung in the air. It was a quiet gesture, hesitant but genuine. He had shown her the language of computers… maybe he could help her learn this language of childhood she never had the chance to speak. She shifted slightly, meeting his eyes with a calm nod. “Alright,” she said softly. “A push then.”
Cairn’s hands gripped the chains a little tighter as she prepared to lean back into motion, placing her trust in him once again.
___
The other nodded in his direction, and Eden wordlessly stepped behind the swingset. Although he had been the one to seemingly offer his expertise, this was going to be a new experience for both of them. He had never pushed anyone on a swing before, but if it was something that parents could do with their children, it surely wouldn’t require too much skill or strategy.
Taking the way she gripped the chains as a signal that she was ready, Eden placed a gentle but firm hand on each of her shoulders. “Okay, hold on tight,” he said as one last warning before giving a forceful push. He couldn’t help but grimace at the sound of the chains squeaking against the bar. Muffled by the giggles of children during the day, it felt particularly loud when it was cutting through the peaceful silence of the dead of night.
However, any negative feelings were quickly replaced by fascination as he watched the woman swing back and forth. Though she wasn’t going as high as the children he’d seen in the daytime, she was getting a fair amount of airtime thanks to his starting push. “Yeah, just pump your legs harder if you want to go higher,” he instructed, the slightest hint of a smile tugging at his lips. Humans may never get to fully experience the thrill of free flying, but Eden figured that this was a good, simple start.
He instinctively held out an arm as she started to slow, ready to brace her in case something went awry. “How was that?” He asked when she finally came to a full stop, though he was unable to make out her expression from where he stood behind the swingset.
—
The first push startled her more than she’d expected, the sudden surge forward, the creak of the chains, the way the earth fell away beneath her boots. Her grip tightened, but she didn’t cry out. Cairn leaned into the motion instead, letting the swing carry her. The night air brushed cool against her face, strands of hair lifting with the breeze. Back and forth, higher each time, her stomach dipping in a way that reminded her of climbing too far up a pine and leaning out to see the world below.
She remembered her pama’s voice then, laughing low as they urged her to keep climbing, small hands clutching bark until her palms were raw. Sometimes they’d turn it into a game. Who could reach the furthest branch, who could balance longer before jumping down. She had lost so many of those games, but the feeling of the fall, the sharp wind, the reckless freedom of it… it had always made her laugh. Almost, almost, she felt that again now.
Her boots skimmed the sand with a hiss as the swing slowed, the chain rattling until the motion gave out. Cairn let the silence linger before glancing over her shoulder, expression unreadable but eyes bright with some unspoken spark. “It’s… strange,” she said finally, voice quiet but even. “Like being carried, but not by something alive.”
Cairn slipped off the seat and steadied herself, brushing sand from her boots. For a moment she simply stood there, looking at him, then at the empty swing beside her. Her hand brushed the chain lightly before she stepped aside, leaving it free. “Your turn,” she offered, tone flat but not unkind. An invitation, small and almost awkward, but genuine.
—
He wasn’t quite sure what to make of the initial silence. Had she hated it? Eden met her gaze expecting a sour expression of some sort. Instead, there was no real discernible emotion, but he swore he saw the slightest glint in her eye as she spoke. “Oh…I’ve never heard it put that way before,” he said, brows knitting in contemplation. Humans had such creative ways of putting things sometimes. “But I like it,” he said with a look of understanding. “Carried by an invisible force. Perhaps that’s why children take such a liking to it. Freedom, yet safety.”
She lingered by the swingset, and Eden figured he’d give her a second to collect herself before parting ways. He did not expect the invitation that came next, though it somehow felt more like a statement than a question. “Oh, there’s no need for that,” he said with a practiced smile — the polite grin he’d given so many times when brushing something off. It was late, and he was an adult. Surely the woman was kidding.
However, even in the dark of night, Eden could feel the sincerity in the other’s offer. Even though this was only his second time interacting with her, he got the sense that she wasn’t one to throw her words around carelessly. The invitation hadn’t been a joke to her, rather, a reciprocation of goodwill. “Actually…sure. I will take your offer,” he finally said with a nod, the thought of experiencing human ‘flight’ appealing to him.
Eden prided himself in being graceful. A playground was clearly not meant for that, and he tightly grasped the chains as he wobbled on the plastic seat. “Tiny, tiny seats…” he muttered under his breath as he dug his heels into the sand for balance. Hopefully his companion hadn’t caught any of that. “Okay, I’m ready.”
—
Cairn stepped behind him the way he had for her, fingers brushing the cold chain for balance as she studied the small, plastic seat and the way he tried to steady himself. She placed her hands on his back, not hesitant, but careful. A measured pressure. She didn’t push immediately. She waited for the weight in the chains, for the subtle lean that signaled he was braced. Then she pushed, steady and even. The swing lurched forward, the chains’ groan breaking the silence in the playground.
As he began to move, Cairn watched the arc, watched how the air caught him the same way it had caught her. Strange, how something so simple could lift a person. No skill required. No survival instinct. Just motion. She pushed again, gentler this time, letting the rhythm build on its own. His dark shape swung against the pale glow of the streetlight, moving in and out of its reach.
Cairn’s thoughts drifted, not away from the moment, but deeper into it. A memory of her pama tossing her into a low patch of leaves, the brief weightlessness before she hit the ground laughing. A memory she hadn’t visited in years, cracked and distant, but warm. The silhouette in front of her rose and fell in a slow, steady arc. And for a moment, just a moment, Cairn let herself stand in the quiet, her hands falling away from the swing as its momentum carried on without her. She recognized the sensation not by name but by memory, the same soft lightness she once knew only in her pama’s presence.
—
Eden flinched ever so slightly at the hand on his back — not that the touch was unwelcomed, he just wasn’t used to such gentle contact. But reminding himself of the trust that she had put in him, he was able to take a deep breath and relax his shoulders. The squeak of the chains echoed through the empty playground, and Eden’s feet left the sand.
It took a few swings to gain any real momentum, but he was soon going high enough, fast enough, that the feeling of weightlessness was starting to settle in his gut. The wind stung his cheeks every time he cut forward through the air, and for a moment, it felt no different from flying. Eden closed his eyes for the next forward lunge. His human hands were still grasping the chains, but he imagined his outstretched wings in their place. What he would do to fly freely again.
Had anything stopped him in the first place? His mother at one point, yes, but it was his own fear that was stifling him in Wicked’s Rest. Eden thought of going to the highest, most isolated point in The Pines and jumping off of the cliff, letting his wings catch him as they’d done so many times before. He’d always thought of the risk, because what if someone did just happen to catch him? There was too much to consider, but for now, the swingset would do. Eden finally allowed himself to grin, his feet scraping the passing sand as he soared once more.
