#twl starter

[memoriesoftomorrow]

Two steps forward, one step back. Her mind shifts, sending her tumbling from solid ground down and down and over into the darkness of her mind. The light shifts and she shifts with it, eyes going bright and then dark as she forgets where she is. When she is. 

Shia’s neck throbs, an unpleasant reminder of undead hands trying to choke the life out of her surrounded by dead souls and a screaming chasm. Her back aches, a new scar knitting itelf; sealing skin to skin with a ridge to remind her. 

One hand traces the ridges, reaching over her shoulder to her back. She can count the feathers, the lines inked in blood and pain across her back. They are a reminder, they are a totem, they are how she knows when she is. Without them she is lost to her mind and to the stream. 

The walls are closing around her even though there are no walls outside. The echoes whisper around her, a maelstrom of was, now, and to be capturing her in their web. She whimpers, legs giving out as her vision fills with dark streamers. 

She reaches again, fingers searching for the new wound, still fresh. Not yet healed. Finger nails rip into the crevice of skin destroying the healing her body had attempted. Blood flows warm and wet onto her fingers, and chases away the echoes. 

When she looks up, she realizes she isn’t alone. Fingers wet in crimson, eyes dark and too wide in her face she looks up. “The stream tried to ferry me away, but I have my own tricks you know.”

[charliexhall]

the familiar || charlie

Hope is a foolish thing to carry, taking up space on a utility belt crammed with devices meant for survival. But Charlie Hall still holds it like a torch alighting her chest with the fervor to continue pressing forward. As long as there isn’t a memory of her father and eldest brother with mangled faces and hollow eyes, there’s still hope.

There’s still something worth living for. And she wouldn’t rest until she found them. Safe. Alive. Warm.

But exhaustion claims all at some point, heavy at her eyelids and thighs burning from walking too many miles without a better break than five minutes to sip cautiously at a water bottle running low. There’s another in the backpack weighing down her shoulders, carrying not only clothing and granola bars, but death - a woman she called mother who greeted her wayward daughter with open arms meant to entrap for a mauling rather than a welcome home party.

They weren’t waiting for her. They weren’t safe, and calling the army or Red Cross searching for the youngest Hall. They were scattered, they were dead. They were monsters or missing. Fractured. There might be three left, or she’s the last of the Hall dynasty. And it’s a thought she couldn’t dwell on. It would suffocate her throat, plunge dangers into her chest and buckle her knees until her legs cried ‘no more’. It would kill her and the worst part is the awareness of it.

Maybe the hope is simply to keep her alive - selfish as she’s always been.

The air force base is an accident in her wanderings. She never knew of it before, like others might rattle off New Jersey facts with the military bases they’re hometown is close to. She’s never been one to retain that with any eagerness. She’s lost the naive impression that perhaps the government has sent the military out to protect their citizens. There hasn’t been a single spotting of tanks or the army in her travels, however solitary that may have been.

The wide fence is looming, looking more like a warning to keep out rather than to protect the ones inside. But as Charlie stares up at the expanse of the base before her, noting through the windswept strands of red hair that great lengths have been taken to barricade and fortify this space, she can only trust the one thing her gut screams at her.

It doesn’t look welcoming. But it look occupied.

[coldxeyes-blog1]

How on Earth did he get himself into these kinds of messes? The group was on the move and he made a small detour, thinking he'd just catch up with them in the stores. Call it a piss break or a fag break, butit all went tits up when that mouthbreather caught him with his pants down....

Caio’s entire body ached, well, okay so his torso ached, and his foot, but that’s what you get from climbing out a small bathroom window to escape a shitstorm of a brawl with supernaturals that could peel your flesh from your bones. Who wants that?

He hit the floor with a bit of a thud, and twisted his ankle on a less than graceful landing. His gun had fallen out of his pocket in his escape, and he already made his mind up, he’d have to go back for it later, no way was he going to just give up on a fully loaded weapon, that was way too precious.

Pushing himself up, he saw what looked like a hand coming towards him and batted it away, pulling his knife from his waistband only to see a slightly familiar face.

“Don’t I know you?”

He asked, putting the blade away and finally zipping up his fly, left open after that revenant disturbed him midstream.

“Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to help strangers with knives?”

[finedierum-blog]

one more SILENT check of ALL the THINGS she WISHED to take with her on her VENTURE to the ROOFTOP of the building she was now calling CAMP. her PISTOL tucked into the BACK of her pants, a buck knife SLIPPED into her boot, a STOLEN scarf and LEATHER gloves, HAND ROLLED cigarettes and a CHROME lighter in her POCKET. she just needed some FRESH air. MONTHS of being on her OWN and WANDERING aimlessly in the OPEN world only made the WALLS seem like they’d COLLAPSE on her at ANY moment -- STRANGER eyes WATCHING her every move DIDN’T help. 

SOFT feet strode through the DARK hallway to FOSTER the silence. MOST of the OTHERS had taken HAVEN in their ROOMS for the NIGHT. raegan, however, found PEACE in their ABSENCE and only tossed the OCCASIONAL glance over her should to PROVE to her PARANOIA that she WASN’T being followed UP the STAIRS to the ROOFTOP where her LEATHER clad back PRESSED against the ROUGH and FROZEN brick. 

HER boot KICKED against the wall for STABILITY and COMFORT while she PLACED a CIGARETTE between BURGUNDY lips, SHIELDING the flame with her HAND to light it. THICK smoke SWIRLED in the WIND and FLOATED away QUICKLY. she TILTED her head back, RESTING her LASHES together in CALM of the COLD. 

--- UNTIL she heard the ONLY door up here SHUT. 

she didn’t JUMP or STARTLE at the SOUND, she’d only PRESUME someone ELSE found just as much TRANQUILITY here as she did. “ sorry, i THOUGHT i was ALONE. “ she SAID the WIND in her SWEETEST voice.

[naecromantic]

It’s too fucking cold, and if there’s not much that bothers Niko that falls somewhere under his category of annoyances. Feet already punching through the growing drifts of snow, his gaze losing track of the other set of footprints that veer away from his. All of it is bad enough that he almost takes it personally, the bitter thought that somewhere there’s a man sipping wine and looking out over Venice beach, while he’s here freezing in the middle of an apocalyptic wasteland. It doesn’t occur to him that anything less might be true, because there’s never been a situation that Castor wasn’t in complete control of. Niko could never claim the same.

He laces fingers behind his head as he gets closer, and while the casual air isn’t entirely feigned, it’s just as much to prove to anyone who might have an eye on him that he isn’t walking to their doors with weapons at the ready. And if it lets the sharp chill just beneath his jacket, he gives up trying to tough it out. It’s a subtle shift, a slight surge of magic, and then the world looks hazier and he feels less.

There’s a low whistle as he gets closer to the doors, though the wind swallows the sound and maybe with it his attempt to draw attention. “Anyone alive in there?”

[jvstinames]

                                                                                 hush                                                                      sokay                                                                                                         im erewith you

Today was what Justin would consider to be a bad day, on multiple levels. It was a bad day because it was a bad week on the ass end of a bad month, only it almost seemed like normal because the good days were so few and far between now.

But it was also bad on a much more personal scale, one with criteria he couldn’t dictate. It was bad when he declared it bad. Particularly difficult to think. Impossible to focus. He had somewhere to be and something to find but kept forgetting as the point of it all dipped under the surface of a roiling sea of thoughts that meant nothing but were loud enough to matter. Justin sat on a bench--a bus station?--hoping to wait it out but God knew how long he was actually there. He came out of it in pockets, opened lips that felt drier and drier, and exhaled.

                                                                                                                     shht’so k ay                                                                                                                             mh ere honey                                                                                                                                don worry

“Stop,” Justin complained, hand rubbing at his forehead over his mangled fringe. He could barely hear himself over the noise, barely squeeze out words through the pin-sized hole in his psyche. He wished they’d just be murmurs again, out of the way, so he could remember what he was doing. What he was thinking, before. But the longer he allowed himself to sit, the more he felt the fatigue in his bones, built up from days of walking, some wasted, maybe all wasted. He couldn’t just keep walking much longer.

“Eli.” He spoke the name as it bobbed above the surf for just a second, Frowned deep into his hands, brow furrowed. He wouldn’t let it disappear again. “I know.”

[forgivememysalt-blog]

@delsinrhodes

Dresden is actually kind of disgusted.

The mansion they’ve taken shelter in is the definition of extra.

There’s absolutely no reason for the design and construction of a place like this except to flaunt your wealth, so Dresden feels justified in thinking that the people who built the opulent estate had to have been snobs. It doesn’t look or feel at all like a house; even the kitchen where she’d normally think a certain degree of resplendence and luxury is acceptable has her frowning. It doesn’t match the rest of the house -- it’s boring in comparison to all the pomp and flash of the surrounding structure. The place is just too much. Too flashy. 

Too pretentious.

There’s a table and chairs on an inaccessible ledge two stories in the air, for Christ’s sake.

Dresden stands beneath the ledge, neck craned and straining as she gazes up with mild horror on her face. What, she wonders, could possibly have been the thought behind putting a table and chairs in a place where no one would ever be able to use them? Screw pretentious, that was just dumb.

She mutters to herself under her breath, 

“ What the--? Fucking rich people... “

[theorxcle]

Since Nate had given her a gun to get used to, Naomi had barely held the thing. Its life with her was mostly spent sitting at the bottom of her bag, adding an extra weight to her shoulders. But the longer she’d spent thinking about how she could help the group, talking to others about her visions and what she could learn, she soon found herself sitting within the hospital cafeteria, gun out on the table in front of her. Her finger sat next to the trigger, spinning the piece of metal around in circles on top of the table, her head resting against her forearm at eye level with the weapon, frowning with concentration. 

She sits up when a voice calls out to her, looking over at new company with a half smile.

“I hate this thing.”