westwhere | ᶾ 001 ; open } { when are you gonna come down?

Entry tags:

ᶾ 001 ; open } { when are you gonna come down?

WHO: Allison Hargreeves + YOU
WHEN: July 1-14
WHERE: Traveling around
WHAT: An arrival + some monthly shenanigans.
WARNINGS: N/A but will edit if that changes

july 1st - an arrival (ota)

Allison Hargreeves is having a very challenging day. Nothing is going as it's supposed to, and she's a little peeved about it.

Not that she should be surprised at this point, that Five trying to time travel them somewhere landed them somewhere else. But she's not thrilled by the idea of being alone again, having to start over again, having to find her siblings again. All she had wanted was to get home to her daughter. And now, after the explanation she was given by Kasra, Claire seems even further away.

Still, she plays with the small bit of quartz she was given as she makes her way through the crowd, intending to make the best of a bad situation. If Reginald Hargreeves taught them anything, it was how to survive. She hangs Luther's locket around her neck, tucks Claire's photo carefully into the middle of From Earth to Moon, and begins wandering through the caravan to see who she can meet and what she can find.

If you happen to cross her path, she'll greet you with a smile, taking the time to introduce herself.

"Allison." She smiles. "Have you been here long?"

july 6-7 - a ghostly interlude (ota)

Allison's never tried to rumor a ghost. She's never really had the opportunity. Ghosts were usually Klaus's department, so she doesn't even know if it would have worked. Right now, though, she wishes she had a bit more than fact.

One night, she stumbles away from a pair of soldiers, starting to come to ahead. As a result, she loses track of her footing in the dark. She forgets where the edges of the cliffs are, only wanting to stay clear of the spectral trouble and finds her way to the precipice of a ravine instead. She feels her balance slip, arms waving in the darkness (Five is going to kill her if she dies like this), but before she can tip over the edge, she feels a presence at her back.

Wide wings stretch out behind her, a physical form forcing her back onto the path. She turns once she settles on her feet again, safe and sound on the ground, and looks back at the tar-covered creature that's become increasingly familiar.

She meets it's eyes, before nodding in acknowledgement. "Thank you."

The harpy doesn't acknowledge her one way or another, before it flies off to do whatever it is it does.

Sometime later, it also might drop off a dead animal for her to eat, almost like a cat leaving their owner a present. Allison, though, is convinced that it believes she can't take care of herself.

(It might be right.)

july 10th - the thing you want most (ota)

The person Allison had wanted to see, more than anyone in the world, was Claire.

Even when she was trapped in 1961, building a life for herself with Ray, Claire never strayed far from her thoughts. She never thought she would have something so tethering beyond her siblings, something that draws her back, no matter how far she wanders or how into herself she gets, but she finds herself, as the caravan moves along, coming back to the photo that she arrived with. She can't help but feel herself wanting to apologize for failing her, even though this particular stop isn't her fault.

She hadn't intended to study the tar so closely. It just keeps coming up, over and over again. The same substance appeared in the temple where she arrived and the hands of the ghost general, and now it seems to be everywhere. Part of her should know better, should be able to see the trap, but she misses her daughter so much she never stands a chance.

She sees Claire's face everywhere she goes, and by the time Claire becomes a fully formed tar construct, Allison is lost, hook, line and sinker. Claire extends a hand to her, luring her further out into the canyon to search for something she can't put a name to.

Part of her knows it's not real. But she can't find it in her heart to say no.

Threaded | Flat

He's with the horses when he hears her approach. They're biddable animals, but he has a feeling that the undead disquiet them just as they do him, so when the gelding he's brushing gets nervous twitches in his ears and turns his head, Eleven turns with him.

But the stranger is alive, near as he can tell, and he offers her a relieved smile in turn as he pats a soothing hand along the horse's flank.

"Eleven," he answers with a nod, though her question throws him for a moment. He doesn't recognize her as one of theirs, but he can't be sure how much that means. "Ah, with the caravan? Only a few days.."

Five hated everything about their caravan. There were too many people, the method of transportation did nothing for how miserable he felt, and his patience for eerily ominous scenery was stretched thin. Nobody had to tell him of all people not to trust anyone, but he used the excuse to hang back and only keep an eye on who he needed to. Which mainly meant Vanya, though he was barely talking to her either after how the siege went down. He didn't really know what to say.

As soon as they stopped and he saw the opportunity, he broke away to get some air with some vague excuse that he was going to scout ahead. His impulse was to be gone in a flash before anyone else could notice. -- It was halfway to the cliffside that he lingered long enough to catch a glimpse of someone in the middle of the crowd that immediately halted him in his tracks.

Allison?

He had a faint memory of the last time he saw her. Logically, he knew it was most likely a hallucination brought on by extreme stress during the attacks, but the image of her lifeless corpse was too scorched in his mind to erase. Now she looked alive and well, and he thought he might have seen her smiling.

How was she here, of all places? Even though he had been convinced that he would find the rest of his siblings, it never once occurred to him that they would find him first.

By the time he comes up behind her he's able to put on a reasonably calm front. He can't totally ignore the part of him that expects her to vanish in thin air the moment he clears his throat, but he works up the nerve anyway. Head held high with his hands in his pockets, as if he's been expecting her miraculous reappearance any day now.

"I guess I can't say anything about keeping us waiting."

As it happens, the person Allison stumbled upon is Catra. Who is mostly obscured by the large cloak she's wearing to disguise her cat features. However, she will still stand out by the fact that she's currently engaged in an argument with her donkey. Who is standing still and refusing to budge, no matter how much Catra pulls the leash she has it on.

"Oh come on, you stupid animal! Move!"

But then her ears tell her someone's talking to her, and could they not? She's about to snap a reply, but -- wait. This is someone new, someone she hasn't seen before.

The thing is, Catra could use some real allies here. So she decides to play nice (well, nice for Catra), in case this stranger is someone she can manipulate into working for her. She turns toward the stranger and snorts. "Way longer than I ever wanted to. You're new, huh?"

Flickered violence is the beast in motion. At night, only the white of its teeth glisten-blinds, and the sullen silence of Bichen's pallor, the blade drawn and searching the red-rained horizon. Lan Wangji moves unmoored, unbidden, before he can stray into uncertainty, half slipping in the blood-slick that coats the cliff's mouth. The woman sits too close. The animal descends upon her. And he knows well, too well, that if the winged creature grasps its prey from behind, it will either surge with it into the skies, unfettered, or plunge the woman into the abyss.

These things have never assaulted victims of such stature before, and she, nameless but coaxed out of balance, a woman grown. Distantly, Lan Wangji remembers to loathe the sketch of bodies before they fall, lines breaking, geometries cored of their purpose. Now, the creature draws on her back — she will collapse, she will fracture, she will be mourned —

...only, the woman is relinquished, the fluid, viscous nest of the beast's claws and wings and beak withdrawing once she is set straight on trustworthy ground. After (a heartbeat, whole), Lan Wangji swings down on the creature, and Bichen barely grazes the tips of its retracting claws. Thrown after the animal, the sword hardly pretends to give chase; only seconds before momentum yields, gravity conquers, and the blade swoons back down in his hand with the dull, aching resonance of failure. A shudder booms and bursts within him, cripples his posture: blood, streaming; no, anger. He wipes the sword on the flat of his palm, thin red line giving Bichen her honourary feeding, payment for unsheathing the blade without giving her compensation.

Above, the fleeing creature is a long-winged spatter of shifting, tremulous flesh. Beyond, the thrumming, empty chatter of the deadened army, a landscape of dark against the blood-rained white of Lan Wangji's silks. Nearby, the woman, spared against the odds of the encounter.

He thinks, this moment was only water, and she must be as spume, drifting and shallow and at the mercy of powers beyond her, and Lan Wangji should reach for her now, reach and reassure her, and offer what little is theirs yet to give, the blankets, the wine, the congee —

And instead, he turns his sword on her, a polite hand's distance from her chest. "Our enemy was your benefactor."

She must know the implications. Must understand.

While she hadn't been near enough to catch sight of Allison's close call and subsequent rescue, she was close enough to see the harpy drop a snack off for her later on in the evening. From her clothing alone Lily got the sense that the woman wasn't a traveler who'd come with Mazyar's company, and the curious appearance of a helpful harpy made her keen to find out more.

With two cups of freshly transfigured tea in hand, she approached the woman, peering down at the harpy's gift before looking at the stranger with a tentative smile on her face. "They certainly seem to like you. Tea?"

Lily couldn't speak for everyone, but a nice cup had become rather vital at the end of another day on the road (or any day, really).

You know those days where you're like, 'this might as well happen. Adult life is already so god damn weird'? Except instead of being a day it's felt more like her entire life after waking up on that ship.

It's been her and Five-- and, admittedly, everyone else they've befriended (for a given value of what Five considers 'befriending'), so Vanya hasn't felt lonely, exactly. She's been improving on her control over her powers in little ways, small things that she hopes will go a long way eventually. But of the siblings it's just been her and Five and she loves Five, really! But she can't help but wish the others were around, especially Allison. She can't quite picture Allison living at the farmhouse they created, but Allison's been in and out of worse situations and it'd be kind of funny trying to see her clean after the goat or tend to the chickens.

Sometimes her longing and daydreams are strong enough that she can almost see her sister coming towards her through the people--

Wait.

Wait.

"Allison!?"

Threaded | Flat

Arrival

july 1st

1.

ghostly interlude

a ghostly interlude

Arrival!! comes in 15 min late w/starbucks,,,