🌑︎ 🌑︎

[crittersheep]

WHO: all
WHERE: all
WHEN: Day 9, evening into night

[the sun goes down; the two moons rise.

it all looks...quite different. the laundromat lengthens and transforms the silhouette of Woolietown in the distance. the lighthouse beacon comes to life for the first time, throwing strong, brilliant light and stark shadows across the meadow and into the barns. the lazy river encircles the pasture in a glittering band, the bobbing shapes of the pool toys a little bit eerie until they drift into full view.

perhaps some of you are winding down. perhaps some of you are just gearing up for a wild adventure in the shadows. perhaps some of you, regardless of if you sleep or stay up, find your dreams and nightmares crawling out beyond the bounds of your own head tonight, drawing others in...

the night is full of possibilities.]

Comments

[endsjustified]

[the candle is high, new-lit and mostly unspent in its holder, but it won't last forever.

his room is somewhere behind him, he knows, though there is an itchy sense that he did come out here to retrieve something, or find someone. moving towards the left side of the hall takes him forward in the direction he's facing, further away from said room.

the picture in the frame comes into full view in the candlelight. it's a group portrait done in oils, the background colours heavy and sombre, though the artist did a good job picking life and brightness out of the subjects themselves. it's a human family of four, dressed in old-fashioned clothing that marks them as reasonably but not outlandishly wealthy: a stern father with rust-red hair, a dark-haired mother, a solemn boy of seven or eight, and a tiny fat baby asleep in the mother's arms.

Charon is pretty recognizable even as a youth, honestly. it's easy to see he takes after his father in looks and expression, though the grown man Perci knows has more of his mother around the bone structure and the shape of his eyes.]

[terraria]

( oh...

he inches closer, raising a tiny hand up to the portrait. charon. in that case...

these fears must be the ones of a child. he's never let on to be anything but an upright man...

that's what he would've thought years ago, anyway. now he can't help but be innately curious, because... as a lily, he knows this must be a nightmare. what's so scary in the dark?

he presses on. where is he supposed to be going? )

[endsjustified]

[most fearless men were not born so, and Charon is far from fearless, whatever impression he might give otherwise.

the itch in his mind grows once he moves past the first portrait, resolves into knowledge. Grandfather, the dream tells him. his room is at the edge of the mansion, and the library is at the centre. Grandfather Leon does not visit often, and when he does it is of marked importance in this child's-dream life.

it is a long way there -- the end of the hall, and then three turns -- but if he is clever and quick, then he may avoid the monster and make it.

he is passing more pictures of what must be relatives, men and women both, who trend to the fine-boned and serious-faced and green-eyed, with hair in every shade of red. every one seems a little wronger as he glimpses it in candlelight, a little more melted in their frame, the eyes giving way to hollow sockets...]

[terraria]

( that's -

oh. this foreign sensation in his little chest is warm...? something like... looking forward to someone's presence, but it's different. he's never felt that as a child. never understood it. is this the desire to see family?

it's too intense for him. his feet pick up speed. he needs to see "grandfather". at the first few portraits he dawdles, peering to see if there are any others of charon, but when there aren't, he picks up speed again... and the more distorted they become, the faster he goes.

he doesn't know how, but he knows that these things are wrong. and anything wrong, to a child's eye, is not good.

he stays near the walls and covers the flame of the candle with a hand to make sure his movement don't make the candle go out. )

[endsjustified]

[the rush of Perci's movement rustles the curtains, causes strange little eddies in the shadows. the further down the hall he goes, the more he is aware of a sense of strange perception trained on him. it's not something physical, exactly, not harmful or dangerous like the monster, but. weighted. like the people in those portraits mean something more than their individual selves, something that has put down roots through time and into him. not quite legacy, not quite destiny; putting a specific name to it is like catching smoke.

at this end of the hall is a closed door of warm wood with a bronzed knob. a plaque mounted upon it. he can read it clearly, for once:

History will make of you the villain.

blood has seeped from below it, staining the floorboards. it is only half-dry, and sticky.]