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ph_logs2025-05-21 07:05 pm
pumpkinhollow) wrote in ph_logs2025-05-21 07:05 pm
Entry tags:
May Event - All Too Familiar
May Event - All Too Familiar
Content Warnings: Walking dead, character deaths, potential for gore | Special Thanks to Meghan and Kalineh
It was a fine spring day when mysterious letters began cropping up all over Pumpkin Hollow. Letters whose apparent senders do not remember writing them, whose recipients or discoverers were harmed by reading them. Eventually these mysteries, though still unsolved, come to a quiet halt as stealthily as they began, but not before a mail carrier in a cowboy hat trots out to Elsie’s tree with a letter in hand, unmarked aside from being addressed to her.
Elsie,
River la Croix has been hiding something in her forge for a while now. It is called the Book of the Dead. In its pages are hundreds of spells from across time and space with the power to give life to those no longer with us.
Your father is doing his best to revive your mother. But this island’s barrier is blocking his will, resisting his magic. I can no longer watch you suffer in solitude when a solution exists. All you have to do is decipher the text, and its powers are yours. Your mother will be returned to you.
River does not want to part with it. She will become suspicious of you if you ask, and it will become harder to acquire it. You will have to take it without her notice by levitating it out of her forge. She, like many others, is fearful of the Book’s power. This fear isn’t entirely unwarranted for them, but for you, your connection to the Feywilds’ magic will be enough to grant you access to that otherworldly power.
Good luck, and all my love to your dear mother when she returns.
Fond regards,
A friend
Could this be it? Could this be the miracle she's been waiting for? Hope swells painfully in her chest as she clutches the note close. She mustn't celebrate too early. She still needs to get the book. At least her mysterious friend has already told her where to find it. Her jaw sets in a look of determination, and she speeds away into the dusk.
It doesn't take long to reach the forge. River has defended it well, but Elsie slips into her own shadow and sneaks beneath the door without so much as a whisper of sound. Only her hand extends from the puddle of shadow on the floor inside, like a disembodied arm hovering before the flames. Mustering her will, she reaches out to the ancient book and commands the winds to lift it. Sweat beads her shadowy brow while she concentrates, the flames flicker and dance around the slowly levitating book. Just a little more, a little more… There!
It's heavy in her hand, and remarkably cool to the touch despite having been pulled from the fire. She retracts her arm and the book back into her shadow and slips out the way she came. Her heart thumps in her chest as she races back to the safety of her tree. To her mother, who will soon be able to wrap flesh and blood arms around her like she once did. All that's left now is to read. Her friends have been teaching her how. Her mother will be so proud of her.
Carefully now, she opens the book, feeling her skin crawl as a sudden unease grips her very core. No, she will not be deterred. The language is unlike any she's ever seen. The letters, if indeed they can be called that, feel jagged and painful to her mind. Still, she will Not Give Up. She screws her eyes shut, thinks of her mother, and holds tight to her desperate hope to be reunited.
When her eyes reopen to behold the page before her, understanding strikes like lightning. Suddenly, she knows she can speak the words. As they escape her mouth, an unknown magic swells into the space around her, then beyond her. The ground shakes. The air turns foul. And as the trinkets in Elsie’s tree chime together in the unsettling breeze, ringing out with notes more sour than usual, it quickly becomes clear that the advice she received was not from any friend.
The forms of people begin to pry themselves loose from the ground all over town, as if emerging from water, leaving the ground unbroken as they lift themselves out of the ground. They bear horrid injuries, shambling along grotesquely, telling a story of death. However, these are not skeletons from the graveyard, housing the souls of long-dead locals. These are things of flesh and blood, however exposed they might be, wearing newer faces.
Much newer.
Since the barrier went up, many people have died, only to have their bodies vanish and replaced by a new one. Those bodies now walk the town, seeking to unleash a wrath brought on by the corrupted magic of the Necronomicon. Anyone who has died inside the barrier will have a violent, undead copy of themself representing each death wandering the island looking to increase their ranks. Which means that there will be many, many, many Yoricks.
Destroyed copies will remain destroyed for the standard overnight period of any other person. But there are too many of them to defeat this way, and their destruction is impermanent. Thankfully, help is on the way!
In the midst of the undead and their attack on the citizens of Pumpkin Hollow, tiny glimmers of hope appear in the form of folded paper birds. The little gold birds flit from fighter to fighter, small whispers promising that if enough enemies can be felled then the High Priestess can intervene. The necessary number is unknown, but if a bird alights upon someone, they will feel their weariness vanish for a short time, and perhaps, should she feel like it, they may receive a temporary boon to use against the undead.
Eventually the High Priestess will show herself, making good on the promises of the little birds. With a smile, her magic will wrap around the remaining undead, returning them to the unseen graves and binding them into Death once more, leaving the living to pick up the pieces.
She gleefully rips open that letter, hoping it's another message from her father. It isn't and, at first, she's crushed. But only until she starts to actually read it.
Elsie,
River la Croix has been hiding something in her forge for a while now. It is called the Book of the Dead. In its pages are hundreds of spells from across time and space with the power to give life to those no longer with us.
Your father is doing his best to revive your mother. But this island’s barrier is blocking his will, resisting his magic. I can no longer watch you suffer in solitude when a solution exists. All you have to do is decipher the text, and its powers are yours. Your mother will be returned to you.
River does not want to part with it. She will become suspicious of you if you ask, and it will become harder to acquire it. You will have to take it without her notice by levitating it out of her forge. She, like many others, is fearful of the Book’s power. This fear isn’t entirely unwarranted for them, but for you, your connection to the Feywilds’ magic will be enough to grant you access to that otherworldly power.
Good luck, and all my love to your dear mother when she returns.
Fond regards,
A friend
Could this be it? Could this be the miracle she's been waiting for? Hope swells painfully in her chest as she clutches the note close. She mustn't celebrate too early. She still needs to get the book. At least her mysterious friend has already told her where to find it. Her jaw sets in a look of determination, and she speeds away into the dusk.
It doesn't take long to reach the forge. River has defended it well, but Elsie slips into her own shadow and sneaks beneath the door without so much as a whisper of sound. Only her hand extends from the puddle of shadow on the floor inside, like a disembodied arm hovering before the flames. Mustering her will, she reaches out to the ancient book and commands the winds to lift it. Sweat beads her shadowy brow while she concentrates, the flames flicker and dance around the slowly levitating book. Just a little more, a little more… There!
It's heavy in her hand, and remarkably cool to the touch despite having been pulled from the fire. She retracts her arm and the book back into her shadow and slips out the way she came. Her heart thumps in her chest as she races back to the safety of her tree. To her mother, who will soon be able to wrap flesh and blood arms around her like she once did. All that's left now is to read. Her friends have been teaching her how. Her mother will be so proud of her.
Carefully now, she opens the book, feeling her skin crawl as a sudden unease grips her very core. No, she will not be deterred. The language is unlike any she's ever seen. The letters, if indeed they can be called that, feel jagged and painful to her mind. Still, she will Not Give Up. She screws her eyes shut, thinks of her mother, and holds tight to her desperate hope to be reunited.
When her eyes reopen to behold the page before her, understanding strikes like lightning. Suddenly, she knows she can speak the words. As they escape her mouth, an unknown magic swells into the space around her, then beyond her. The ground shakes. The air turns foul. And as the trinkets in Elsie’s tree chime together in the unsettling breeze, ringing out with notes more sour than usual, it quickly becomes clear that the advice she received was not from any friend.
The forms of people begin to pry themselves loose from the ground all over town, as if emerging from water, leaving the ground unbroken as they lift themselves out of the ground. They bear horrid injuries, shambling along grotesquely, telling a story of death. However, these are not skeletons from the graveyard, housing the souls of long-dead locals. These are things of flesh and blood, however exposed they might be, wearing newer faces.
Much newer.
Since the barrier went up, many people have died, only to have their bodies vanish and replaced by a new one. Those bodies now walk the town, seeking to unleash a wrath brought on by the corrupted magic of the Necronomicon. Anyone who has died inside the barrier will have a violent, undead copy of themself representing each death wandering the island looking to increase their ranks. Which means that there will be many, many, many Yoricks.
Destroyed copies will remain destroyed for the standard overnight period of any other person. But there are too many of them to defeat this way, and their destruction is impermanent. Thankfully, help is on the way!
In the midst of the undead and their attack on the citizens of Pumpkin Hollow, tiny glimmers of hope appear in the form of folded paper birds. The little gold birds flit from fighter to fighter, small whispers promising that if enough enemies can be felled then the High Priestess can intervene. The necessary number is unknown, but if a bird alights upon someone, they will feel their weariness vanish for a short time, and perhaps, should she feel like it, they may receive a temporary boon to use against the undead.
Eventually the High Priestess will show herself, making good on the promises of the little birds. With a smile, her magic will wrap around the remaining undead, returning them to the unseen graves and binding them into Death once more, leaving the living to pick up the pieces.
no subject
Carolina doesn't protest. She stares at the insignia pair on the woman's collar with remote interest until the two shapes blur together into one shiny mass. They're ancient, outdated symbols no longer in military rotation, but nevertheless impressive. A piece of history. Had she a little more bandwidth, she might have recited a lesson from her school days; of the Battle of Kapyong and Old Baldy; of Korean Soviet-made infantry and M1 Garands stripped of their cosmoline.
They saved old histories for the children; an age they could be readily forgotten and replaced.
"I've had worse," She says unconvincingly. Perhaps because she sounds so tired. Had she always felt this tired? Or has the opportunity to finally sit down rendered her so?
"A tight wrap and I'll be fine."
Carolina sits, doubly weighted and stares down at her firearm. She doesn't want to let it go. High alert. Steps around the corner. Not their corner, but a corner. Danger everywhere. Can't rest. Not for a second. Hollow eyes shine in a dark place she can't see. She's certain.
no subject
"I'm sure you have, but unless you're interested in experiencing worse today, you need to let me do my job."
She takes one of Carolina's arms by the wrist and elbow and examines her wounds with the clinical eye of a nurse, brow furrowed with study. Nasty, nasty things—not the worst she's ever seen, either, of course, but bad enough. She grabs a cloth and soaks it in a bowl of saline she has on hand, and starts to clean the nail tracks. No point in bothering with the 'this might sting a bit' with this one, she thinks, tough as she's making herself out to be.
"I see that allowing women into combat roles hasn't made for any less bull-headed soldiers," she comments almost idly, as she dabs away. A guess, but one she doubts is off the mark—she knows a soldier when she sees one. "I suppose we have always been a stubborn breed."
no subject
She can't argue with that.
Relenting then, Carolina sets her rifle down. Rests palms-down on her knees and goes limp under the nurse's scrutinizing eye, the way a child might immobilize herself in preparation for a shot. Abiding, but in no way pleased about it. Saline hits her skin, cold and cruel. Swells into the makeshift gutters down her arms. Old blood comes away in pink washes. Her lip curls, but otherwise she makes no noise.
"No. In fact, we're worse. We care too much, probably."
Pain radiates hotly from her arms, dull ache goaded to sharpness by saline and handling. Blood has never particularly bothered her. It borders on mundane; a pilot's kerosene. Therefore, her scratches and blood-soaked clothes aren't remarkable. The bite-mark, however...
A wrongness that cannot be ignored.
Continuing, so as to distract herself, "Men treat these things like a game. Like fun. That's why they die."
no subject
"I dare say you're right about that. If it isn't themselves it's someone else."
She has great respect for the Colonels and Generals that keep the army running, but at the 4077 they've seen more than their share of those whose use of their rank leaves a lot to be desired. Those who treat the fighting like a game they're trying to win, a record to beat.
Every now and then she cleans or swaps the cloth out for a fresh one, making sure to get every inch of the open wounds cleaned out. The bite wound continues to be of particular concern and she spends a while examining it, debating if it needs stitching or if simply bandaging will do.
"I made the mistake of entertaining one such man who had his rank busted down so many times they started calling him 'yo-yo'." She shakes her head with a scoff. "He thought that was funny."
no subject
Carolina sniffs. Her obliques ache with the effort. "He thought that was funny? I would have been furious. He sounds like he didn't care about the rank at all."
Men rarely do. They care too much or too little with no in-between. The men who care too much— men like the Counselor and Chairman, who build themselves up on stilts— suffer long and terrible falls from grace. They want everything and leave with nothing.
Other men— her father— care too much about the wrong things. About lost things, and lose themselves within them.
The men who don't care (far outnumbering the men who do)— like York— have nothing and die as nothing.
"Why go through the effort of earning it again knowing you'll lose it?" She adds. Maybe there is no reason. They don't care much for that, either.
A pause, deliberating what to share and what to keep close.
"...I had one of those. If he followed orders as efficiently as he followed me around, things might not have ended so poorly for him." Never mind the fact that said orders were fatally flawed to begin with, on both sides. "He was the rare kind that preferred to talk through every conflict. It was exhausting. Exhausting because he could be so convincing. I hated him for that."
no subject
"Ah, I know that type. My unit's best surgeons are also the mouthiest men I've ever met. I've rarely known peace and quiet in the OR. But sometimes it works even on me."
Hawkeye and BJ have grown on her over the months, Hawkeye particularly, but there's still times their jokes and commentary make her wish their surgical masks did as good a job shutting them up as they did maintaining the sterile field.
No stitches, she thinks. If this woman plans to continue being as active as she has thus far they likely won't do much except get pulled out again. Better to bandage tight and check again after the crisis is over—if she can get her to stop again long enough for that.
"I honestly couldn't say why Scully thought so little of his rank. Or— no, if anything I think his own rank was the only one he respected. As far as he was concerned me being a Major meant about as much as pinning the maple leaf on a child, as if I hadn't earned my commission same as any man."
no subject
"Do any of us really know peace and quiet? I always thought it was like the tooth fairy. Something you tell your kids to make them behave. Shut up while we pull your teeth out and maybe you'll get five bucks."
Fight this battle, and another and another and another, and once the war's done you'll be kicking up your feet for good, we promise. Another never stopped, they'd simply turned their distrust inward. She'd never needed peace and quiet, anyway. Turned her nose up to it.
"I hated that. Why give a kid five bucks for losing a tooth? Everyone loses their teeth. You don't need to be congratulated on something everyone does."
Okay, maybe she's in a bad mood; all this talk about what she hates. What she really hates is that she's still in this seat. That her palms and fingers are without the cool press of gun-steel; her brow without its fresh sheen of sweat.
Carolina opens her mouth to ask what the hold-up is, 'are you just going look, or are you going to do something?', then shuts it. No reason to bitch at a poor woman who's only trying to do her job. Who talks now of egregious lapses in respect, despite having earned it.
She tchs tongue against teeth.
"You probably worked twice as hard to get there, and they'd be none the wiser."
no subject
"Oh, well, my father never saw the point in anything like that," Margaret says, finally letting Carolina's arm go to grab the bandages. She starts wrapping them around as she continues talking. "I earned all my allowance through hard work, which is how it should be. It teaches you the value of getting things done."
Such is the perspective drilled into her by her American military father from the early half of the 20th century. Good old American values: pull yourself up by your bootstraps and figure it out yourself.
"Which is exactly why I did have the gumption to put in the extra work to get where I did. And why once I'm back at it I'll go as far in the army as they'll let a woman go." She pulls the roll of bandaging a little tighter as she goes, keeping an eye for constricted circulation as she does. "I assume in your day that's quite a lot further than in mine."
no subject
Carolina half-hums, half-grimaces her sympathy, broken skin screaming in protest at being bound. She looks away, like that'll do anything. It doesn't. Pain rolls under her subcutaneous tissue; in the fissures made by CT's claws and teeth. Should have grabbed your knife. Another mistake.
Margaret's voice beckons her out from fortified self-admonishment.
"Yeah. They did us a real favor," She says, voice licked with sarcasm. "Here we are, getting it done. Just like they wanted. If we're lucky, maybe we'll get a pat on the back. Wouldn't that be nice."
What would her father think of the ridiculous slasher her life has become? The idea of him acknowledging her time wasted embarrasses her, which collapses in on itself into anger.
Her bite wound oozes.
"All the way to the top. It's rare— men like to keep those spots for themselves— but it happens. I was a Commanding Officer. I led and my squad listened." Until they didn't.
"You never fought?"
no subject
Margaret notes the sarcastic bite, but doesn't comment on it—she's perfectly used to ignoring the absence of her own father's direct approval, thank you very much.
"Never. I've been out to Aid Stations near the front lines, once or twice, and sometimes the hospital gets laid into by a sniper or shelling, but we don't fight." She ties off the bandages on that first arm and takes the other, grabbing a fresh cloth to clean those wounds with straightforward efficiency. "I'm head nurse of the 4077 MASH unit. I command a whole field hospital full of nurses. Either they listen, or they learn to."
It's rare for one of her nurses to be truly insubordinate, but it also used to be rare for them to see her as anything but a hardass with no warmth in her heart. Things have been improving on that front, somewhat.
"Which branch?" she asks.
no subject
“Marines, then Special Operations.” The latter admission scores some tender spot inside of her to bleeding; the moment you look down and find yourself on the wrong of two sides long after the dust has settled. Her brow twitches.
“What a waste. You think they’d have wanted all the help they could get. If someone’s got hands, if they can see, they can shoot. No use being picky.” The UNSC sure wasn’t— to a fault. “You screw yourself over, that way.”
Carolina tips her chin back, regarding the woman’s stature, then at the clean work done to her arm. “You look like you could throw a good punch. What’s your name?”
no subject
"Major Margaret Houlihan." Wring the cloth, re-wet with saline, finish cleaning the last few scratches. "I'm Army, born and raised. They always need soldiers, yes, but they also need medical staff. Any army is only ever as good as its doctors and nurses."
That's how she sees it. If you don't have good doctors and nurses to patch up the injured, then eventually you're going to run out of soldiers to do the fighting. The amount of young men who've come through the 4077 more than once...
"But I will say I do have a solid right hook." She sets the cloth aside and grabs more bandaging. "And your name?"
no subject
Carolina hums a low tone of agreement.
Her father had been right about one thing; when faced with extinction, every alternative is preferable. Destroy natural healing processes if need be. Drain and replace the blood until you can no longer confidently say what's yours. Lost appendages are treated with the tact and urgency of common cold, and she'd largely been thankful for this.
"You'd be surprised what our medics can do. Blood transfusions, limb replacement, organ transferring. We flash clone them. The blood's made especially to clot. They say an officer sat for five minutes is twenty five of his unit dead, and it's true. Everything they do, they do to get us back into the field."
Seated and yielding to bandages, saline and patience couldn't be further from UNSC standard, which feels suddenly barbaric after she's said them aloud.
"Actually, maybe you'd be horrified."
Yeah, horrified is a better word.
Cloth bandage winds round and round. She's glad to see the bite mark covered. "Carolina."
no subject
Margaret scoffs. "MASH units aren't all that different, dear. We patch them up and ship them back out in as little time as possible. It's an assembly line. They call it meatball surgery—or, well, that's what Hawkeye calls it."
None of which makes horrified the wrong word, exactly, but— "I'm sure the men we have to let lose limbs because saving them would take too long would appreciate a timely replacement."
If war is going to continue being a meat grinder, feeding endless soldiers into its maw only for medics to have to patch the mince meat back up and get them out there quicker than they can blink, then at least it sounds like the future has better tools for the job.
Carolina, hm? Idly she wonders what earned her that nickname (because surely it must be a military nickname), but she doesn't ask.