long ago forgotten bones

[reddosmod]

OCTOBER 2022 EVENT

Due to the cyclical nature of Trench, PROMPTS FROM LAST OCTOBER are available to be used this year as well! Please note you are using prompts from the previous event in your starters so that people are aware. IMAGE DESCRIPTORS IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE
Prompt One
[Image One: A creature forcibly consuming the soul of another person. ]
[Image Two: A red moon. ]

Prompt Two
[Image One: A fox max on a pile of books. ]
[Image Two: A person with sharp fins protruding from their back. ]

Prompt Three
[Image One: A broken clock. ]
[Image Two: An entrance to a rose maze. ]

[NAVIGATION]

Prompt 1 • Prompt 2 • Prompt 3 • Plotting • Newsletter

[JUMP TO COMMENTS]

SECOND DEATH

WHEN: October
WHERE: Throughout Trench
CONTENT WARNINGS: Memory loss, decaying creature, undead themes, possible death via being eaten.

---

There's something strange going on. Anyone who goes to visit the cemetery will find that there are holes dug throughout that weren't there before. Fresh graves, maybe? It seems like an awful lot and some of them are in front of graves that already existed. The coffins, if they're visible, still look closed, though. That's got to be a relief, right? Maybe there's just some kind of strange maintenance going on or a new ritual for the Black Parade this year. It wouldn't be the first time Trenchies did something strange like that.

Then Sleepers start to feel...off. It starts off with just being a little forgetful. Sleepers will find that maybe they have trouble recalling an important date or remembering to return a book they borrowed from a friend. Then it starts to be small moments in time or faces of people they knew once upon a time. The memories they lose become bigger, more important, and harder to ignore as time goes on. There's an agitation that comes with the loss, a sense that something isn't right, that they're not just losing memories, but full pieces of themselves. Our memories are what make us who we are, after all.

There are whispers through town of what might be responsible. A draugr the Trenchies will say when asked. It's spoken with fearful, hushed tones, like speaking the name could bring one into existence right there. These creatures can roam about unnoticed, sometimes even invisible, but they don't stay that way forever. The more a person forgets, the more visible the draugr becomes. They're feeding on those memories, absorbing them and creating a new life for themselves, stealing the history of the person they've targeted. The more visible they become, the more one might wish they'd stayed invisible: these creatures are unpleasant to look at, with dark black skin that's rotting off of bone. Muscle and tendons are visible against the skeleton, every bit a literal walking corpse. And they smell awful, reeking of decay, the odor becoming more prominent the more visible they become as well. It's enough to make someone sick.

The draugr has superhuman strength and is difficult to kill. It's intent is to eat away at all of a person's memories, weakening them, until they've finally forgotten so much that they may as well be in a coma. It's then that the draugr will begin to consume their target in full. Quite literally. They'll eat whoever they've latched on to, and as they devour the living person, their own body will begin to heal. It will bring them back to life and allow them a second chance at the world they feel was stolen from them.

Their souls are that of a human, but it doesn't seem like they're suffering from beasthood. There's no time to really figure it out, either. In order to save someone from the draugr (or save themselves), the draugr must be completely destroyed. It would be easier said than done if they weren't so strong and skilled at fighting. Chopping off the head and limbs is the easiest way to immobilize them, but they're quick, and it may be easiest to do so in a group fight. After the body has been dismembered, it has to be burned, and the fire must keep going until the draugr has been completely reduced to ash. Once this has been done, the person who was losing their memories must ingest a small amount of the ash. After that, their memories will be returned to them.

Information on how to kill the draugr and restore memories can be found in the Archives or told to a Sleeper by one of the locals. Apparently, this isn't the first time the draugr have plagued the city, and the Trenchies clearly don't think it will be the last.

[JUMP TO TOP] • [JUMP TO COMMENTS]

UNMASKED

WHEN: During the Black Parade
WHERE: Throughout Trench
CONTENT WARNINGS: Potential body horror, mind control, violence, blood ingestion.

---

Masks and face paint are meant to keep people safe, and most of the time, they absolutely will! The Black Parade is such a boisterous celebration, of course people will want to get involved again. Masking up didn't do anything last year, after all. And the parade was mostly a fun time, save for the usual weird happenings that come with being in Trench in the first place.

The masks are fun and who doesn't love face painting? For the most part, it's the same as last year: completely harmless. It's easy to want to play along. But this year, a few unlucky people might find that the masks they're wearing is a little too comfortable. It's almost like a second skin, even.

A minor Pthumerian has cursed random masks and face paints, turning the wearer into whatever design they may have donned. This can be small aesthetic changes, such gaining fox ears and a tail, or it can be something that completely warps the body, breaking bones, altering flesh, and slicing people open to make room for fins or extra limbs they were never meant to have. Once a person has started to merge with the mask, it's impossible to remove.

There are two ways to break the curse. One is to just wait it out. Maybe it's inconvenient, or maybe it's downright agonizing, but the curse only lasts for 72 hours before the wearers body will return to normal. If waiting isn't something they fancy, though, there is one way to lift the curse early: drinking virgin blood. It can't just be a single drop. A standard cup is required to get the curse to lift. Virgin blood is hard to come by, but luckily for everyone, there are fresh arrivals almost every month, and not everyone who's come in over the past year has given in to blood rituals, right?

Time to get hunting.

As a note: if your character has virgin blood, drinking their own will not work. Trench would never let anyone off that easy.

[JUMP TO TOP] • [JUMP TO COMMENTS]

LOST IN THE WOODS

WHEN: October
WHERE: Possibly Trenchwood
CONTENT WARNINGS: The feeling of being stalked, panic, paranoia

---

Waking up in the middle of the woods is probably never a good thing. On the plus side, there don't seem to be any beasts in the immediate area. If anything, the woods seem rather... calm. Sleepers will notice when they wake up that there is a piece of a broken object, though it's hard to tell quite what it would be used for. A clock, maybe, if the numbers had all been wiped off. Or possibly a compass, though it still doesn't quite look like most compasses that are available in Trench. This object can be found in their hand, on the ground near by, or even stuck in one of their pockets.

When the Sleeper decides to start moving, the broken piece will start to glow. It will be a dim glow at first, but it grows brighter as they start to move through the thick trees. It seems to be guiding them down some sort of path, growing brighter when they are going in the right direction, and dimmer the moment they take a step the wrong way. If Sleepers decide to ignore the directions of the object, they will find that they get horrifically lost in the woods, and that feeling of calm will quickly start to disappear. There will be a feeling of being stalked, as though something is hunting them, but the woods are too thick to figure out which direction an attack might come from.

Following the directions doesn't lead Sleepers towards an exit, though: it's leading them to the other pieces of the object. These objects can be broken into two, three, or even four pieces, and they will each glow brighter the closer that the Sleeper gets to becoming whole. The other pieces will be held by other Sleepers. When they find one another, the pieces will be blindingly bright, and once they are held up close to one another, they will bind together seamlessly and make the object whole once again.

It's clear now that it is a compass, with a dragon's head that spins to tell the Sleepers where to go. The blue gem in the center glows brightly at first, but begins to fade the longer the compass is used. Following the directions from the newly formed compass will quickly guide the Sleepers out of the woods together without meeting any dangers along the way. As soon as the Sleepers have stepped out of the woods, the blue gem will have gone out entirely. The compass can recharge, but it takes several days of rest before it can be used again.

These compasses will protect the group no matter where they go. They can think of a destination in order to be guided by the compass and it will be able to get them there on the fastest route possible. If they were to think abstractly, such as "I want to go somewhere new", it will be able to guide them to a new location that they've never been to before that it feels the person (or persons) may enjoy. Sleepers will have to decide who in the group gets to keep the compass. They can end up lost more than once which gives them more chances to get a compass of their own. Otherwise, the compasses can be shared, and groups who travel together will be kept just as safe as the person carrying the compass itself.

Currently the charge on the compass only lasts for a few miles, but it seems like the more it's used, the farther a person can go. Eventually it will be possible for the Sleepers to use these compasses to safely travel outside of the city limits, but it might take a few months before that becomes doable.

[JUMP TO TOP]

CODING

Comments

[stayscared]

[oh, look. that's the laugh mike couldn't seem to get out himself. it's a horrible sort of satisfaction - of recognition - of seeing it mirrored back at him when he takes another step back - a half formed impulse of a forgotten self moves the fingers at his temple to the weakest of 'thumbs up' gestures. good for you putting that out there. it is absolutely a mood.

the stranger (?) sounds very sure of this plan. will kill. will burn. (and in that order, too.) it makes more sense than the monster itself. burning it just to make sure. that it doesn't come back. that it---

???

---oh.

the comparison to a slap bracelet is not lost on the man who doesn't remember his own name - and he draws in a sudden gasp at the memory that shakes loose - not at the head as it detaches with accompanying ...sounds. those sounds are overlaid with a girl's laughter, the hazy recall of a bracelet slapping onto his own wrist (still very much intact when the bracelet landed) and the crumbling echo of gotcha dad that dissipates before its even fully formed.]

Gotcha...

[it's happened once before - the shift of reality, though he was in no state to recognize it for what it had been - a trick of the blood - but in this moment it might be precisely because he has forgotten so much of himself that he cannot and does not argue the reality of it.

the palpitation of the air to his right, and the small, spare end table that makes its presence known and offers up a bottle of bourbon as if it has always been there, out of the line of trouble. the wood is blackened, and the bottle gleams with a bloody handprint. he picks up the bottle without looking at the label, again as if he'd just expected it to be there, and douses the thing from the feet up, unaware that his cheeks are wet with tears that have already spilled.]

Now we burn it?

[the bottle's tossed aside as he reaches for that lighter again.]

[poorlittlesange]

[mike may not notice his tears, but jin guangyao does. there is too much to unpack in the momentary flash of shared, aching anguish that contorts his own features. that child's laughter wasn't his son's; a-song is still so young, too small even to play with the toy drum that jin ling had favoured, and jin guangyao will never see him again. and what sort of father is he to feel such wretched relief at that? (no, he knows exactly what kind of monster he is.)

he looks blankly from mike's face to the bottle as it is upturned over the draugr's body, bloody ichor still darkening the soil from the stump of its neck. jin guangyao takes a careful step around the blood so as not to soil his boots with it, fetches a cloth out of his qiankun bag, and wipes the rest of it off hensheng's blade. his jaw works for a moment as he finds his voice again.]

yes. [he says, then--and only then, once the flames have begun to consume the corpse, he looks to mike again.] when the body has burned, you must consume a portion of the ashes. otherwise, your memories will be lost forever.

[it's such a wretched thing to ask. maybe that's why he feels the need to apologize.] i am sorry.

looks up at my smalltext fail whoops

[stayscared]

[it does not smell better as it burns, but it's not exactly worse. small victories, i guess? a tiny victory that rings a bit hollow as mike watches it catch and consume, much in the way it had stolen from him, only faster. nothing changes yet but for the fire.

it's not lit, or even near enough, but the small end table melts into the soil, into a black sheen, moving and mixing with the blood and spiking the air with the smell of sour berries.

fire is supposed to be cleansing. nothing about this monster burns clean. it's noxious when it hits the air, even the noises it makes as it burns are somehow hideous - it's as if even on fire, the fuck you energy is strong.

mike resists the urge to kick at it, to throw himself atop the blaze and beat into its chest, he's frozen in place, watching something that gives him the strangest sense of ...well, it's not deja vu if you don't remember, is it? he pockets the lighter without thinking - and one hand absently wraps around the wrist of the other (gotcha daddy) - both coming to rest so close to his chest as if he might collapse inward on himself.

and then he hears the words.]

W-what?

[it's a soft ask, accompanied by a little blink, a shake of his head and another series of faces - surprise, annoyance, vague interest, disgust, disbelief, desperation.

No, no, no.

there's something beneath this, something that threatens to choke him with a sob, his face ashen, and the sensememory of ash on his fingertips.he rubs them together as if it might do ...something. it does not.]

How do you know it'll work?

[it's an even weaker ask. it's obvious he's given in - he'll do as asked. but there's the threat of a thought: what if this is just more punishment?]

[poorlittlesange]

i don't. but, [with unrelenting gentleness,] we have no choice.

[he knows a lot about the things one must do when one has no other choice. jin guangyao drags his eyes away from the wrecked expression on mike's face and looks instead back to the draugr corpse as it is consumed by the flames. the almost unbearable stink of it has been replaced by something sharply pungent, but he can't tell at a glance how long it will take for the remains to reduce further. likely longer than mike will be able to maintain the tattered shreds of his composure. jin guangyao doesn't know if a normal man can suffer a qi deviation in this place, but with the proof before his eyes that mike's mental state can warp the world around them, he would not like to find out.]

come, [he encourages him quietly, and reaches a hand out near his arm, not to touch, but to gesture him a few paces away from the smouldering remains, to find a patch of soft and untainted grass upwind of the smoke.] it will take some time for the body to burn, and the air is clearer over there. if mike-xiansheng would please sit, this one would like to help calm your mind.

[stayscared]

[we have no choice.

it chafes at him. he chafes at it. he does not know why. there's a raw nerve of anger that flares, and he directs that, too, away from this man and where it belongs(?): on the monster. when he tries to pick at it, he finds it a black hole. he's forgotten why he is angry.

how can he even be a person if there's so little left?

so he goes - he stumble-steps away from the worst bonfire ever and toward the grass that seems to belong to somewhere else entirely - but not without a last glare at the thing he would call a draugr if he knew to.

mike.

is that his name?

(he remembers xiansheng)

he doesn't sit so much as he crumples, sweat and fear and buried rage and spent adrenaline, all the marrow gone out of him like the tide. tries to push out the playful slapping sounds that layer themselves over the crackling flames.]

Mike-xiansheng sits, he shoots, aaaand a swing and a miss. That's all, folks.

Is that my name?

I ...should know my name. I should...

[he should know a lot of things. do a lot of things. mike enslin is a list of shoulds, of should haves, could haves, would haves. he uses his pointer finger like a metronome from one to the other in the air between them, as he looks up from the ground. ]

We know each other, you and me. (?)

[poorlittlesange]

[jin guangyao decides that it is better for both of them if mike does not see a comparatively large stringed instrument emerging from a comparatively small bag, even if the laws of physics have never applied to qiankun bags. while mike staggers forward and collapses into the grass under the weight of his own shattering mind, jin guangyao turns himself at such an angle that the bizarre sight of his guqin emerging out of thin air won't be quite so off-putting. an attempt is made, at any rate.

he folds himself neatly into a lotus position on the grass before mike and rests the guqin across his knees.] yes, xiansheng, [he says quietly when mike gestures between them. his smile is a gentle and reassuring thing, honed over many years to calm wild, erratic tempers, to be as soothing and reassuring as possible, as much for his own protection as for the benefit of others. he carefully begins to adjust the tuning pegs; the melodic twang of the strings possess no spiritual power yet.] we have met before. this one is called jin guangyao, and your name is mike enslin. you have tried rice beer before, though this one does not know whether you enjoyed it or not. [a wry twist to his smile; he's reaching for a shade of humour, something to ground mike in the least horrible of his feelings.

then he begins to play.] please close your eyes, xiansheng, and listen to the music. focus on your breath and empty your mind of thoughts. [easier said than done, of course, but the calming spiritual energy that suffuses the notes is real whether mike manages this or not. the song cannot excise pain, and it cannot change the past, but it brings peace and understanding, even regarding those things we can't bring ourselves to accept yet.]

[stayscared]

[mike has been as good at seeing uncomfortable truths as he has been at denying them - and seeing what he wants to (or sometimes doesn't want to) see. this itself might be more proof that the pthumerians have a sense of humor.

could the other man be lying? yeah, but why. he's too exhausted to be paranoid - and also too exhausted to do much but blink as out comes something a bit like the neck of a guitar, and out of ...well, maybe it had been there much like his end table. which he notes is gone now, and does not dwell on the where or the why. it's easier when you have few memories left to replay, and a mind that feels like a magic eight ball that's missing the juice.

reply hazy, a monster drank my memories

but it hadn't eaten him.

him who is 'mike enslin'.

he taps a finger into the air - the metronome finger, of former pumpkin curry fame - as he nods at the sound of that. yeah, yeah that sounds right.]

That's ...that's right. You couldn't know that if we hadn't...I mean, that's not something you just guess. It's too vague but also too specific. I did like it. I remember that, too.

[not the where (not here), not the when (before) and not with who, or the lack thereof. and the eight ball that is his mind is surprisingly easy to empty just now, even with the unwanted draugr barbecue - most of that's directed away from them. closing his eyes is also easier than he'd expected it to be. it doesn't feel like giving up, even though a part of him is aware it very well might be. it just feels like respite. and notes, sounding out of place not because of their own discordance, but because they might be the only thing not off kilter aside from jin guangyao's smile. his ass hit the ground moments ago, but he's only beginning to feel the tiniest bit grounded now.

he remembers to breathe, and listening is easy. oh, everything's still a mess, but there's a plan, and as distasteful as that plan is (ha again. got my memories but you didn't take my sense of humor, did you, you burning, bitey assclown? he feels as if he can and will manage it. and he isn't alone (?).]

[poorlittlesange]

[no, he is not alone.

jin guangyao manages a small laugh about the rice beer, just a barely there exhalation that turns up the corners of his mouth but doesn't break his focus as he directs his spiritual energy into the music.] this one is pleased to hear it, xiansheng, [he tells mike quietly as he plays, his fingers finding the familiar notation of the purification tone with ease, as though the muscle memory and calluses accrued through playing this music have both followed him from his world as well. it is gratifying to know that he can still be of value and of use, to this place and the people in it, if not to his father.

he pushes the shadow of jin guangshan from his mind. later. not now.

it's difficult to know how much time passes while he progresses through the song's stages and allows the cultivation method to do its work upon mike's mind. playing this particular purification tone to completion requires just over an hour, and though it demands less of his limited spiritual energy achieve relief for its intended subject than what he performed for nie mingjue (in a past, fraught life), his reserves are still finite. after a time, and a discreet glance towards where the fire has reduced the draugr to smouldering embers and ash, jin guangyao allows the notes to taper off into silence. like any good therapy, it cannot cure the heart of the pain of living, but its effects linger nonetheless.]

how do you feel? [he asks tentatively, his fingers grown still on the guqin strings.]

[stayscared]

[loaded question, but the simplest answer is best, probably. it's also the only one he can manage, a pause and a small glance toward the source of the ruinous smoke before blinking, settling his mouth into a resolute line, and giving a grim nod to the other.]

Like shit, but I'm not coming apart at the seams.

[it sounds melodramatic. he doesn't care so much about that. the missing parts are still missing, but the little that's left has compacted itself into a determined, pissed off little lump. he can stand without stumbling, and he does, waiting to see if his savior does, too.]

Here I'd thought music therapy was bullshit. Huh. Maybe I should have listened to whoever told me to go. [the spectre of a smile almost - but it doesn't reach his eyes. perhaps after this macabre farce is over (rules, why do these things have rules, why stand on ceremony and ritual if nothing else makes any sense?) he'll remember who'd suggested he go. his attention's on that pile of embers now, and he directs the finger of admonishment at it.] I bet you know. I bet you know everything.

[poorlittlesange]

[it does not sound melodramatic to jin guangyao, if his near-imperceptible nod of both understanding and relief are any indication. maybe he takes the words for the metaphor that they are; maybe he genuinely was afraid that he was about to witness mike enslin coming apart in front of him through the force of his own tortured mind and spirit. anything is possible in this place.

he dispels the guqin with a smooth hand gesture, and it disappears in front of him as though it was never there (magic? magic!). then he unfolds himself from the lotus position and rises to his feet to join mike in surveying the ashen remnants of the draugr they bested together.]

one of my sworn brothers shared with me his sect's cultivation method of using music to heal the mind and spirit, [he explains. he withdraws a small glass jar from the qiankun bag at his hip, then kneels down in the grass to brush a portion of the cooling ashes into the jar. he stoppers it, then rises again, and turns to offer it to mike.]

your memories. [he does not turn to leave, not yet, but he will not presume to bear witness to mike's recovering his memories, or recognizing how much of his pain was seen by jin guangyao.]

[stayscared]

[mike takes the jar with trepidation and wonder - the idea of all those stolen fragments of self, good and bad and mediocre and matterless could be flattened into a few pieces of ash (probably less corporeal once inside the thing, had they been digested? were memories become muscle or bone or were they elsewhere in the guts only to be shat out once the thing had been done with him and slipped its skin?) gives him pause when he's faced with it. such a small thing, the container he clutches to his chest.

magic is easier to believe (or overlook) with an empty mind - and perhaps once one's casually witnessed oneself conjure something out of the desolate, ashy, angry air what had been there had always been, what was gone had never been there's nowhere else but further down the rabbit hole.

it makes sense in an upside down kind of way. or perhaps it doesn't, really - he is too focused on the task at hand, too aggrieved to pick it apart when he'd rather pick the bones of his tormentor with a baleful, accusatory gaze. in an echo of the afterburn - what's left of the draugr seems to reignite for a fraction of a second - an image flaring under the reality.

one of my sworn brothers

(he remembers a brother. his brother? maybe.) the smile fades into an assessment, a nod, and though he thinks his mind and spirit are perhaps beyond healing - something has shifted enough, here.]

Thank you for...

[stitching what's left of him back together just enough to stand? he's gone wordless again, because what are words when one can neither remember them nor have any point of reference for this. it's a fever dream of epic proportions. it's a nightmare in the tango-light. it's a---

(whiskey tango foxtrot)

yeah. that's it. that's what he whispers, as he moves over to the blackening carcass.]

whiskey. tango. foxtrot.

[pick the bones? make that kick the bones. because he sharply does so - in a puff of stinking smoke, broken inky lumps clattering and rolling - his own stomach following along with that roll for reasons he can't yet name - before he upends the jar into his mouth.]

[poorlittlesange]

"Thank you for..."

[immediately jin guangyao holds up a hand to discourage mike from finishing that sentence, and whether he does so because of jin guangyao for for his own reasons, jin guangyao's relief is the same. while it is reassuring for him to know that he can still use musical cultivation to heal, rather than to harm or kill, it does not change how he has leveraged this gift in the past. that he has used it to cause suffering and, if necessary, knows he would do so again in the future.

he has only a moment to recognize what, exactly, mike is about to do as he approaches the bones. his eyes grow wide, and he steps forward, arm outstretched--]

mike-xiansheng, be careful--

[--but mike kicks the still smouldering bones away anyway, and uncorks the ashes, and downs them like that little jar contains the last drop of fresh water in trench. jin guangyao can only stand beside him, his dismay clear on his features, and watch as mike regains his memories. (he hopes. it would be a real kick in the teeth if they went through all of this for nothing.)]

[stayscared]

[thank you and goodnight is the last thing he's aware of thinking, as what's left of himself, anyway. it's the last coherent thought he has for the next few

m

o

m

e

uʇs

goodbye


ģ̴̛̟̙̪͓̙͈̗̭̦̈́̍͆̎͝ǫ̴̖̙̜̉õ̶͓̜̤̖̋͐̄̐̇͠ͅd̸̛͔̓ ̸͈̪͉́̈́͋̂̄͠g̶͙̘̦̬̯̙̈̔͊͗̑͑͌̾̓̕ǫ̴̺̯͖͓͙̰̘̹͖̑ḑ̶̭̮̹͇̺̦̣̥̔ͅ

a kick in the teeth is what the draugr has earned - so it's perhaps hilarious and drying, darkly funny that its jaw disconnects and crumbles when he strikes it - when the first in a series of memories strike him - a blunt force that knocks the breath, and he staggers where he stands as the tides roll in. a kick in the gut. a kick in the head. someone's kicked his feet out from under him and he's kneeling again in the ash. if there are cinders, they do not burn.

the sound of a laugh. a raised hand; a clasped hand - his own hands on fire, his own hands striking a match. a napkin. a shotglass. glass eyes and glass animal figures (giraffes). two very different boardwalks, and the familiar click of a tape recorder. click. red eye, red light.

red light.

that tango light (whiskey tango foxtrot) - the lighthouse. the light. the room. a series of rooms overlaid by rooms. hospital beds overlaid by fascimiles of the same, as memories overlap and everything's upside down again. a man screaming. the slap of a hand. the slap of a bracelet. click. clink.

click.

and it's (we've) only just begun.

those goddamned clacking claws and the rush of the water. the blush and bloom of mold on walls, of the sea's roar. a siren. the grown of a wolf. a wail. a girl's laughter. the high, sharp crack of a bat against a well struck ball. a dull thud of a flesh slamming into gravel. a disconnected phone. a woman's exasperated sigh. the lyrics to a song.

♪each journey lasts an age
and my throat feels dry
it must be the lesson
hidden deep inside
it must be the lesson
so roll the tide♪

for a moment he'd swear there was water in his lungs.

fuck the tide. oh, fuck the tide that brought him into this - he curses it with breaths that don't come, and with breaths that do - a vicious torrent of hot tears as he chokes out a name]

Katie.

[as he tries frantically in his delerium to gather up the remains of the draugr as if it were something dear - as if he could put it (and himself) back together again.

that terrible, stretched, everspanning moment finally ends. it ends as it began, the clackity clacking of clicks (and rewinds) reminiscent of crabs, and though he is not retching into his sleeve he is sobbing into it, a repetition of suggestions of phrases, of vocalizations that are more primal than anything else. on their heels:]

---too much.