#wtrhstarter

[joehardydetective-blog]

[ Friend Request ]

Joe audibly cheered at his newly-achieved place on the Aggregation leader board, forgetting that he was in a public library. The new versus mode on his favorite puzzle app had lately been taking up all of Joe’s time and phone battery. It was a distraction, from many things. And a fun one at that.

He went to play another round to secure his position, only to get an alert that his phone was dying. “Shoot...” Joe muttered. He rose up out of his seat and started looking around for someone who had a phone out. “Excuse me, do you have a phone charger I could borrow?”

[charthornton-blog]

Entering restaurant/bar, Charlotte was relieved to have made it on time to her first shift at Ace of Clubs, the popular bar in town. It was still pretty empty when she arrived, but soon enough she turned around and met the eyes of a new, unfamiliar face...

[sonny-wuz-here-blog]

(walking around the corner, books, measuring instruments, and what appears to be a telescope in his arms)

Oh didn’t see you there! Don’t mind me just trying to follow a star pattern that apparently DOESN’T EXIST. Sorry yelling is unnecessary, unless you suddenly turned purple which in that case is totally understandable. But as you can see... (points to self) not purple.

[justgeorgefayne-blog]

Run in the snow.

[has been running in the snow for a while now. sees someone she knows and waves]

Hey! How are you? What are you doing out in this?

[dave-gregory-blog]

where i come from, only the horses run;

Dave pulled into the driveway of the riding academy, the electronic gate shut firmly in front of the red truck. He rolled the window down far enough to press the entry code in, which had been sent to him a few days earlier, with instructions to not share the code, and that it would be changed on a weekly basis. Despite being a small town, certain citizens of River Heights had the money to buy privacy. He flicked the butt of his cigarette down at the ground and sighed. It had been a long, weird day. The last thing he wanted was to interact with the wealthy equestrians of River Heights, but it was his job now.

He parked in the “employee” section of the paved lot- so different from the red dirt of the ranch- and swung the door open, enough that he could hook his spurs onto his boots and fasten the buckles tight. He didn’t actually know if these horses were spur trained, but the spurs were familiar, comfortable. They put him in the mood to ride, to work with the one thing he found normal: horses.

Once inside the stables, he found the first horse he was supposed to start working with, a tall, solidly built red horse with a long stripe down it’s face. Jupiter, the stall sign read, which was echoed on the monogrammed leather halter. He chuckled to himself, despite his sour mood. Out West, the boys would’ve died laughing at a shiny leather halter, let alone a personalized one. The horse was different too, taller and more refined than the stock horses he was used to. He clipped a lead rope to the halter and took the horses to the grooming stall down the aisle. The notes on Jupiter had said the horse had an issue with spooking, an issue he had dealt with quite a bit with trail horses. 

While he was brushing the horse, he heard footsteps come down the concrete aisle. 

[alexei-markovic-blog1]

curiosity { open }

Alexei couldn’t get used to the way the other regulars raised their mugs and greeted him when he walked into Mabel Rose’s diner every morning. As if they weren’t sitting around that counter a year ago, whispering and glancing over their shoulders and feeling good about themselves. He’d waited over three decades for his name to be cleared and for everyone to know it. He’d obsessively fantasized about people coming up to him and saying “Sorry I was a sanctimonious ass. I acted like a mindless sheep and made a damaging snap judgment. I hope you can forgive me.” But instead, they tried to act like they had collective amnesia. Alexei was prepared to handle shamefaced apologies; he wasn’t sure how to react to pretensions that nothing had happened. It was a little uncomfortable, and a lot unsatisfying.

But just now, he had far more interesting things to expend energy thinking about. Pleased to find his favorite booth unoccupied, he sat and removed his profusely colorful scarf and gloves. With great care, he took an old leather journal out of his bag and flipped it open. The battered blue book had been dropped off at the store with a heap of other things on consignment. Its brittle pages were dated between 1886 and 1899, and the story they contained was fascinating, but incomplete. For the hundredth time, Alexei ran a finger along the place where ten pages had been cut out. He never could resist a mystery.

[justgeorgefayne-blog]

The Worst Luck | Open

Things were not all sunshine and roses in the Fayne world. Just when they had started to get pretty good, she had been unceremoniously let go of her internship. And she absolutely hated it. All of that hard work that she had put in to getting the internship and now they were saying that they couldn’t keep her around. Not even when she wasn’t even getting paid. How much sense did that make? There had been big plans for her, and now they were all on the wayside. George wasn’t having the best Christmas, but she was hoping that her luck was going to change for the better sometime soon. There wasn’t a whole lot for her to do but hope. Well that and try to put her resume back out there to find another one. There was no real other Institute like the Technology of Tomorrow one though. Sigh.

Since she had noticed that there were a lot of new people showing up, George had started making a chart of all the people that Nancy had told her about. She couldn’t keep all of these new people straight what so ever. She was just putting the last name into the phone when she headed downstairs to head out. Time to go meet up with Bess and bake some cookies, or whatever else she had in mind. As she was on her way to the door, her mother stopped her.  This was not a conversation that she wanted to have, but her mother was worried about her.

“How’s the job hunting going?”

“I don’t know, Mom. It’s not really going.”

“I’m sorry, I just don’t want something half way decent. I want something amazing.”

“I know, honey. But you might have to settle for something - “

“I am not going to settle, Mom.”

“Can I do anything to help?”

“No, you’ve helped enough.”

“One day you’re going to have to actually ask someone for help and stop doing things on your own.”

“Maybe but it won’t be this day. I’m fine. I can do it on my own.”

“Can you stop pushing people - “

But it was too late. George was already opening the door and heading out. Great. One more person that she had made upset. She hadn’t meant to do it, but this was her life. She got into her car and started to head down to Bess. Going through town, she heard a pop and then her car started to shake. Oh no. No no no. Pulling over the car, George got out and realized that she had a flat tire.

“This is just typical.” She leaned over and kicked the thing, resulting in a hard thump of her foot. Ow. George cried out and whimpered. Her luck was actually the worst.

[nedwinnickerson]

cramming | open

It wasn’t that he purposefully put of studying for his last final, it was just that he figured it was going to be the easiest out of all of them. There wasn’t a huge rush and need to study a ton. He opened his textbook again for the first time in weeks then realized his mistake. He figured it was going to be easy, but as he looked over it, he realized he forgot most of it.

Ned headed down to the library that night, to go and try and focus on his work, or at least find another book to help him work on his subject more. Ned set his backpack down on a chair and began to wander through the shelves of the non-fiction books, looking for something to help him. 

He searched through the books and backed up to get a wider look at the selection. That’s when he bumped into someone he didn’t see at first. “Sorry,” He said quickly turning to face them.