(It is not one of the pretty buildings in Cellar Door. It looked like it might have once been a warehouse for fabrics and dies. The floor is covered in splotches of stained color. It wasn't a huge space, but it was a good space. The foundation seemed sturdy. Jennifer didn't have a knack for building, but she had grown up poor in farm country Minnesota, so she did know a thing or two about solid foundations. She knew when houses started to sag and sink and she knew when windows needed to be replaced or covered so as to keep pests and weather out.
This place wasn't bad. It was just filthy and filled with heaps of metal and debris. It looked like someone might have once held some sort of ritual because there were a lot of dusty candles too. Even the air felt dusty. Jennifer stood alone in this graveyard of a building, listening to the rats scuttling around, listening to the pipes creaking. There was a narrow set of stairs in the back, and when she went up them, she discovered what must have once been someone's studio apartment.
There was a kitchen with a fridge filled with maggots. Rats sat bundled in the sink and she gently picked one up, kissing the back of its head before simply carrying it around with her. Other rats started to follow her, intrigued and captivated by the new Lady of the Place. Her owl omen, Lilith, fluttered above in the rafters, occasionally hooting ominously at the rats as if to threaten them from getting too cozy with Jennifer. Lilith could be as jealous as Jennifer, after all.
There was a rotten mattress on a collapsed wooden headframe. Barely any furniture. She stopped at a massive spring line window that stared out onto the streets. Most of the glass had survived the years of abandonment, but there was one panel that had broken that was exactly level with her eyes. She stared out of it, listless, watching the streets. She doesn't expect to see a boy looking back at her. She doesn't feel like he's real, honestly, too lost in her own thoughts to see the flesh and blood right before her very eyes. It was probably for the best. If she had, she might have decided he'd make a good, quick snack.
She stares from the depleted building, no doubt looking more like a haunting ghost in its window than a teenage girl who was Going Through It.
She even glides away from the window rather than walk, and the rats follow her.
A moment later, if the boy was still around, he would no doubt hear a massive crashing sound followed by the sound of something heavy and wooden splintering apart.
In the lower portion of the building, Jennifer was snapping apart massive hunks of wood while her small rat army gathered up around her to watch. There was no way a girl her size could break wood so dense without even breaking a sweat, but there was a bit of heavy breathing. She wasn't as strong as she could be and it was intense labor, but this place was perfect, she had decided. It needed to be hers.
The trick was just clearing it up first. She doesn't move like a teenage girl cleaning up. There's something feral in the way that she hunkers down on all fours to root through the debris, not seeming to care if nails poked into her skin and tore away flesh. She didn't care that she had sizable splinters sticking out of her arm. She just moved, worked.)
Closed to Peter Graham (Cw: cutting of skin/splinters/nails in skin)
This place wasn't bad. It was just filthy and filled with heaps of metal and debris. It looked like someone might have once held some sort of ritual because there were a lot of dusty candles too. Even the air felt dusty. Jennifer stood alone in this graveyard of a building, listening to the rats scuttling around, listening to the pipes creaking. There was a narrow set of stairs in the back, and when she went up them, she discovered what must have once been someone's studio apartment.
There was a kitchen with a fridge filled with maggots. Rats sat bundled in the sink and she gently picked one up, kissing the back of its head before simply carrying it around with her. Other rats started to follow her, intrigued and captivated by the new Lady of the Place. Her owl omen, Lilith, fluttered above in the rafters, occasionally hooting ominously at the rats as if to threaten them from getting too cozy with Jennifer. Lilith could be as jealous as Jennifer, after all.
There was a rotten mattress on a collapsed wooden headframe. Barely any furniture. She stopped at a massive spring line window that stared out onto the streets. Most of the glass had survived the years of abandonment, but there was one panel that had broken that was exactly level with her eyes. She stared out of it, listless, watching the streets. She doesn't expect to see a boy looking back at her. She doesn't feel like he's real, honestly, too lost in her own thoughts to see the flesh and blood right before her very eyes. It was probably for the best. If she had, she might have decided he'd make a good, quick snack.
She stares from the depleted building, no doubt looking more like a haunting ghost in its window than a teenage girl who was Going Through It.
She even glides away from the window rather than walk, and the rats follow her.
A moment later, if the boy was still around, he would no doubt hear a massive crashing sound followed by the sound of something heavy and wooden splintering apart.
In the lower portion of the building, Jennifer was snapping apart massive hunks of wood while her small rat army gathered up around her to watch. There was no way a girl her size could break wood so dense without even breaking a sweat, but there was a bit of heavy breathing. She wasn't as strong as she could be and it was intense labor, but this place was perfect, she had decided. It needed to be hers.
The trick was just clearing it up first. She doesn't move like a teenage girl cleaning up. There's something feral in the way that she hunkers down on all fours to root through the debris, not seeming to care if nails poked into her skin and tore away flesh. She didn't care that she had sizable splinters sticking out of her arm. She just moved, worked.)