Light of May ::: an original roleplay

WHO. Matilda & Luke (NPC)
WHERE. Her hotel room
WHEN. Morning
WARNINGS. Briefest of mentions of self harm

( Little pig, little pig. Won’t you let me in? )

camilla solo

tori solo

Who: Gerlinde
When: Late Afternoon
Where: Gerlinde's townhouse

( He was perfect. )

Who: Jason and John Cantley (NPC).
Where: The Cantley household, Harlow, England.
When: Saturday 3rd February 2001. A little after 1am.

When the door slammed it shook the whole house. Outside in the hall a picture frame rattled against the wall. Jason wasn’t asleep anyway and even if he had been that would have woken him long before the loud shout of his name up the stairs, a slurred boom of a voice that filled the whole house and probably bled through the walls to those of the neighbours. For several long seconds Jason sat there, still fully dressed with no intention of changing into anything else any time soon, waiting to hear what John Cantley would say or do next.

A fist hit the wall. Another shout, this one laden with fractured and improvised curses that made little sense but that didn’t detract from the intention behind them. John Cantley was angry, it didn’t even matter why, and he wanted everyone to know about it. He wanted his son to know about it. Wanted his son to come downstairs and face it. Feel it.

All too well Jason remembered sitting in that hospital under the glaring lights, holding his tongue while the nurses and the doctors examined him and gave him knowing looks, powerless to do anything against a man who denied any involvement in his son’s so-called accident. With stark clarity Jason remembered the agony of the fractured jaw, the dislocated shoulder, how he’d tried so hard to keep from sounding any pain when they’d wrenched the joint back into place. He’d bitten his tongue so hard he’d tasted blood but hadn’t said a word otherwise. A combination of fear and resignation had kept him quiet then, he hadn’t wanted to make things worse. ( As if they could get any worse. )

Who: Harrison.
Where: Harrison’s apartment.
When: Friday October 16th 2009. Very early morning, around 3am.

To say that Harrison was having trouble sleeping with all of this going on would have been an understatement. Ever since everyone had -- so it seemed -- gotten their memories back after the collapse of whatever magic had removed them in the first place he had been unable to sit still long enough to rest, let alone sleep. It wasn’t that he’d tried, he had of course, but when his mind was going a mile a minute over all the possibilities it wasn’t something he was able to achieve and so he’d taken to being an almost constant presence on his part of the site. The questions were flooding in after he’d made it known that something out of the ordinary had happened, that he’d not only been witness to it but actually felt it himself, and people were fascinated enough that a lot of them entered into hours-long conversations with him via the forums.

With his empty coffee cup in hand -- not quite empty, in all honesty, and he was careful not to accidentally tip the dregs onto the floor as he carried it -- he made his way from the lounge area towards the adjacent kitchen, swiping his other hand over his face as he went. It was as he was trying to get a crick out of his neck that he caught sight of something lying on the mat on the inside of the front door, something that must have come through recently but without making too much in the way of noise. He would have heard it otherwise. Wouldn’t he?

Stretching out he set the mug down on the edge of the counter just inside the kitchen and then approached the envelope that had come through his letterbox. It was cautiously but curiously that he did so, dark eyes lifting to the door itself periodically as if he expected someone on the other side to knock at any moment. ( They didn’t. )

Who: Esmeralda and handful of NPCs
Where: Glen Cove, New York
when: Mid-May 2009
Warnings: Magical violence, racism.

( Hell was not full of fire, nor ice like some theorized. )

Jenny Solo

kahlan solo

Jaladhi Solo

For a potential solo

Who: Linnea and various NPCs
Where: Niemi household
When: Late morning

( It could be a hard thing, to realize that you did not honestly believe you deserved a normal, loving relationship. )

Who: Nico.
Where: A hotel in town.
When: Morning.

It was like something clicked in his brain, a release under a sudden pressure, and it was as simple as being asleep one moment and awake the next. Air caught in his throat as he pushed up reflexively beneath the sheets and blankets of a bed that was not his own, a fact he knew immediately and did not particularly care for, and his dark keen eyes scanned the room. The shades were drawn but not securely covered, on the wrong side of the room from where they normally were. The furniture was not that which had picked out for him. Items were missing, nowhere to be seen. The scent was all wrong. Something was missing.

Someone was missing.

Nico removed himself from the bed with light easy movements, pushing his dishevelled hair from his face with steady hands as he studied his surroundings quickly but with a small, simmering sense of disquiet. This was not his room. When he glanced past the shades to the world beyond he was too high up to be in the house that he belonged in. This was wrong. All wrong.

There were his clothes, draped over the back of an armchair that he did not recognise beyond the faintest recollection that told him he must have consciously entered the room and as he stood gazing at it scraps and shards of memory came back to him: fear and panic and confusion, leaving the house without a word, coming here to this hotel, buying a phone. That phone was on the desk against the wall, connected to the wall by a cable obviously meant to charge the battery.

Nico shook his head, turning his eyes from it and looking around the room again. This made no sense. This wasn’t where he was supposed to be. Was it?

His hands found their way to his head, either side, his fingers burying in his thick hair as his eyes closed and he tried to put the pieces together but they wouldn’t fit, misshapen sections of mismatched puzzles that had no business going together. Nico didn’t know what he was doing here, where to go or what to do, whether the phone needed to be destroyed or if he should keep it. Was he sorry he was alone or quietly glad?

With a strangled sound of frustration in the base of his throat he moved to the door leading into the bathroom and shut it behind him, breathing with increasing speed in his building confusion and distress as he stepped into the shower, of all places, and turned on the water. That made no sense either, he hadn’t paused to take off the shorts he had worn to bed, but the water that streamed down from the shower head and run through his hair and over his skin helped to shut out some of the questions that were filling his skull and threatening to either deafen him or just drive him mad.

It was a temporary solution though, a Band-Aid on a bullet wound, and there was only one thing Nico could think to do, something he went on to do as reflexively as someone might perform a basic task, something they had done hundreds or thousands of times before.

Without letting himself pause to think about it first he took a deep breath and opened his mind to reach out for that of another. Whatever was going on he couldn’t do it alone.

Who: Marco
When: Night
Where: Marco's Apartment

( Today had been full of so many sins. )

Who: Kristen
Where: Nikita's house
When: Morning

( There was something important about the cross. )

Who: Charlene
Where: Lake Erie
When: Mid-morning
Notes: "Italicized speech" is... mermaid language. NPC death. Mermaid eating habits.

( She had eaten human before - it was not going to kill her. )

It had been two days since Janine Matthews woke up with no clear memory of what had brought her to Scarlet Oak. No, she woke with just a sense of comfort and belonging, as though she was right where she was meant to be. On the second day of not having clear memories, she'd had a business name and time written down on her calendar and, assuming she was meant to start work there, dressed for success. What had been intended as an interview became her first day of work, as those at Mickleson and Long, Inc. also assumed she was their new hire. It was quite fortunate, indeed, for Jani, though she likely would have done quite well in the interview, had she had one.

The work was similar enough to what she'd done for years in Denver, so she settled in comfortably that first day. And now she was on her second day of work, organizing the space she had to work in to be far more efficient than her predecessor had it. Being an efficient individual, it was quite frustrating dealing with the disorder, but she knew that within a day or two she would have things organized to her standards.

Although she was unaware of it, the best part of these past few days was the fact that she had not been plagued with thoughts of Benjamin, of what she'd had with him, what they'd wanted, or what had been ripped from them with one sloppy mistake in their affair. The spell that had taken over the town had given her precisely what she'd come to Scarlet Oak for in the first place: a fresh start.

WHO. Matilda & Luke (NPC)
WHERE. Cheap motel outside of Scarlet Oak
WHEN. Evening
WARNINGS. Mentions of self-harm

( I am what I was born to be, but you are whatever I’ve made you into. )

Who: Lazarus (and an NPC).
Where: An abandoned house on the outskirts of town.
When: Very early morning, around 1am.
Warnings: 100% NC-17. HEAVY depiction of graphic violence, assault/rape (trigger warnings), and bloodshed. Definitely NSFW, and if you’re really not okay with torture/sadistic narrative this is not the solo for you.

( The girl was still crying. )

Who: Harrison.
Where: The Court; his new apartment.
When: October 10th 2009. Evening.

Making a mental note to himself to send a text to his mother, at least, as soon as he had everything urgent squared away Harrison shrugged the big bag back onto his shoulder properly and used his heel to kick the door shut behind him, hearing the jamb catch with a resounding click. Glancing back over his shoulder he saw the lock and the chain he could slide across if needs be, all things his mother would want to know about because she had always been a worrier, constantly checking up on him or asking this or that about his welfare or state of being, whether it be at college or while he was on the road travelling to what might very well end up being his new permanent residence. For now it was long-term enough that he had thought it responsible -- and therefore the right choice -- to secure an apartment and actually have a lease and a rent agreement with a landlord instead of a grumpy questionable guy behind a desk in an office at the end of a row of rooms that had likely seen all kinds of unseemly activities over the years.

The smell was better here, if nothing else. Okay it was a little stuffy, it needed airing out, but he could get started on that tomorrow when he didn’t have boxes and bags littered all over the place and an excited kind of energy that went hand in hand with being in a new place with so much to learn and discover.

Reminding himself to thank his parents once again for ensuring the apartment had the basics in terms of furniture like a couch and a bed he dumped the bag from his shoulder down onto the latter and drew his cell phone from his pocket so he could send that message. Lighting up the screen of his phone Harrison saw the emails and IMs waiting there from the site and a few forums he was a member of, queries and suggestions and challenges to theories. The usual. When he’d told his readers he was up and moving to Scarlet Oak, at least for the foreseeable future, they’d sent him a veritable flood of requests and ideas, things he should look into firsthand now that he was going to be on the ground and right in the thick of it.

( Harrison didn’t know where to start. )