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ph_logs2024-03-25 02:31 pm
crushed_pearls) wrote in ph_logs2024-03-25 02:31 pm
The Old Fashioned Is Commonly Held To Have Been Invented In 1880
Who: Erin Peters and YOU
What: Settling in, dealing with things, making friends
When: Late March
Where: Oak & Iron, the woods, around
Warnings: Discussion of death & the ethics of suicide, trauma, whatever you bring with you
Gallery Style | Oak & Iron
Oak & Iron undergoes a few renovations, just a couple days' worth, to expand the bar area and add labels in Braille (thanks Gerry). When they're done, Pumpkin Hollow has a new bartender, a winged lass in a blindfold wreathed in the scents of sex and gunpowder. She quickly picks up a reputation for almost prescient service; good suggestions for drinks, never leaving a glass empty long, and a firm hand for when you're cut off. Though every now and again there's an odd dance where someone isn't cut off and instead drinks enough to, not to put too fine a point on it, fucking die - except they don't die, and instead just get normal drunk.
A rather extensive cocktail menu manifests too (thanks Magne, with your working eyes). It's cut up into various flavors, with the ingredients clearly laid out (thanks Max Maximum, with your knowledge of food allergies), but at the tail end of the menu is a change in theme; two sections labeled by nation instead of flavor. The countries in question are Gallery, and Japan.
Gangster Style | The Woods
Here's the needle Erin has to thread: she can't overload herself socially, but she also can't listen to the urge to isolate. So one day she goes out into the woods just at the edge of town and digs a pair of graves in the soft soil, leaving the dirt in a huge pile off to the side. You might find her out here, just laying in one, trying to listen to the sounds of the forest, but if she knows you, well, you might have been invited. "Six feet deep, best rest you'll get."
Tourist Style | Wildcard
Come get your bird lady.
What: Settling in, dealing with things, making friends
When: Late March
Where: Oak & Iron, the woods, around
Warnings: Discussion of death & the ethics of suicide, trauma, whatever you bring with you
Gallery Style | Oak & Iron
Oak & Iron undergoes a few renovations, just a couple days' worth, to expand the bar area and add labels in Braille (thanks Gerry). When they're done, Pumpkin Hollow has a new bartender, a winged lass in a blindfold wreathed in the scents of sex and gunpowder. She quickly picks up a reputation for almost prescient service; good suggestions for drinks, never leaving a glass empty long, and a firm hand for when you're cut off. Though every now and again there's an odd dance where someone isn't cut off and instead drinks enough to, not to put too fine a point on it, fucking die - except they don't die, and instead just get normal drunk.
A rather extensive cocktail menu manifests too (thanks Magne, with your working eyes). It's cut up into various flavors, with the ingredients clearly laid out (thanks Max Maximum, with your knowledge of food allergies), but at the tail end of the menu is a change in theme; two sections labeled by nation instead of flavor. The countries in question are Gallery, and Japan.
Gangster Style | The Woods
Here's the needle Erin has to thread: she can't overload herself socially, but she also can't listen to the urge to isolate. So one day she goes out into the woods just at the edge of town and digs a pair of graves in the soft soil, leaving the dirt in a huge pile off to the side. You might find her out here, just laying in one, trying to listen to the sounds of the forest, but if she knows you, well, you might have been invited. "Six feet deep, best rest you'll get."
Tourist Style | Wildcard
Come get your bird lady.
Gangster Style
He's quiet, but not silent, until he stops walking to stare at the scene of two open graves--one occupied, given that he's close enough to see a pair of feet near the bottom. It's very strange, very confusing...and some deep-seated part of him is wildly fascinated.
I come to the forest to dig two graves. That's all. The reason?...
...it feels dark. Not in the grave, but elsewhere. Inside.
I'm teetering on the edge. I need something, something I can't have. The scales are imbalanced, but there's no peace this side of...
Understanding fills him as he moves closer, this time with certainty. He crouches at the edge of the occupied hole with a bright, gentle smile.
"Hello. Would it be all right if I joined you? Or is the other grave reserved for someone else?"
Damn OCs And Their One Liners
CW: medical torture/abuse, sibling death, non-graphic discussion of corpses in educational use
For a very long time, he engages in the exercise absolutely. Longer than he thought he could after the memories of Mr. Lyle had started coming back--stopping his heart and restarting it, killing him like he was some kind of machine they could tinker with. Longer than he thought he could after losing Kyle because of the Centre--longer than he was even able to slide into that mortuary drawer among the bodies in the dissection lab where he was teaching.
He spends about an hour in the earth--in the grave he couldn't give to his little brother, the grave that held too many people he'd come across far too soon. He breathes the earth, he listens to the way it dampens distant sound--at one point he even does open his eyes and smile at the sight of one such earthworm wriggling in the dirt beside his head, alongside a pillbug that had fallen in.
This is where I will be one day. His own thought, for a change. Not someone else's. Just like Kyle, and Miss Parker's mother...just like I thought my own parents were in for so long.
...but like most things that were his, he doesn't get to keep it. He can't help it, and the worst part is he doesn't regret it in moments like these. When he's needed.
So he can't just be himself for long...whoever that may be.
It's so much. It's too much. I want to run away, and I want to hold on.
...I want to sink into this. Specifically this. The cool dirt and the warm sun and the fresh smell of green, the musky smell of animals. It's so much, it's too much, and maybe a grave is big enough to hold all of it so I don't have to.
"It's enough to make you question if it's worth the trouble, sometimes--but you understand that if you're digging graves in the forest." Jarod observes aloud. "No matter the things you've done, it pays to get through the overwhelm. There is peace this side of the grave. You just have to find the familiar."
He pauses, smiling sadly to himself.
"Outside of the hole, I mean."
no subject
(Oh god damn it. This is why Sheogorath is a cat, we're a fucking cat girl.)
...One of the cool ones from the 80s though right?
(OBVIOUSLY BUT THAT'S BESIDE THE POINT)
Eventually it's the stranger that breaks the silence, but he doesn't get a reply straight away. Erin's turning something over in her head; eventually, though, she comes to a decision. She has to, really. Tayrey saw to it a long time ago.
"Before we get a real talk going this might be a good time for me to say that I've got the prison hooch version of involuntary empathic senses. Call your shot on that now, yeah?"
no subject
He realizes, in that moment, that this feels familiar. This adaptation--it's Rachel Newton all over again. The photographer, blinded by that bomber.
Jarod stretches a little and settles into his grave more comfortably, keeping his eyes shut to stay close to his new friend.
"It's okay." he assures her. "I've...got a similar gift, intellectually speaking. I can regulate myself so nothing takes you by surprise."
no subject
no subject
"My name is Jarod." he replies. "And I'm not afraid of anything you might get from me...there's always a chance you might know something about me I don't."
He huffs, and there's audible sorrow and frustration in his tone.
"A lot of people do...anyway. It's good to meet you, Erin."