Light of May ::: an original roleplay

Who: Ben and Jenny
Where: Scarlet Oak Elementary School
When: Noon

( Maybe there’s a secret call... )

WHO: Ben & Erika
WHERE: Erika's place
WHEN: Late afternoon

It had been another difficult day for Erika. When she'd woken up, the sun hadn't been shining. And then it had started to rain. The weather always messed with Erika's moods. Add to all that the situation at the high school hadn't been resolved, the store was dead, and she was having a bad hair day? ( It'd been hard to get out of bed. )

Who: Ben and Kendal
When: After school (around 4pm)
Where: Outside the Hathaway residence

Ben's cousin's reaction to his announcement that he'd gone on an impromptu date with a Hathaway had been hilarious. It had been like Ben had told him he was getting married - which considering how the date came out in the first place, was kind of appropriate. Later Ben realized that had been his first date since Amelia, and it had been with someone who was virtually himself only of the opposite sex. He wasn't sure he wanted to love and leave this one, even if he didn't really want to illude himself with long-term possibilities again either. Actually, Ben had sort of settled on best friends for life, maybe platonic soulmates or something. Melody had seemed as up for anything as he was, with about as many concerns as he had. They would get into all sorts of shenanigans, he just knew it.

Another difference was that for all the upper-middle class privilege he'd been born in he did not belong to a big name family who actually owned most of the town. Melody did. He had to admit he was curious, so the next logical step was to check out the Hathaway mansion when he had some free time. He had actually called his mother - who loved the Hathaways for how much business they gave her - and asked for the address, stating some bogus reason that didn't mention dating or women anywhere in it.

Once he had dropped his stuff of at home after school he got back into his car and drove to 3rd Street. She didn't live that far from him but her neighborhood was eons above his just by looking at it. Ben drove slowly up the street, parking across the street from Melody's house in order to not look conspicuous. Of course the fact that he then crossed the road and stared up at the huge house, pacing up and down its length and peeking to the sides, rendered his parking strategy useless.

Who: Melody and open!
When: Midday
Where: Streets of SO, near the high school scene

When Melody had woken up on Monday morning and heard about what was going on at SOHS, she'd had two immediate thoughts. The first was that this was probably only going to encourage her parents' argument in favor of private schools; the second was that she wanted to go down and help. She hadn't really been sure how, she'd just shown up, and run into a group of friends. One of which had gently pulled her aside and pointed out that maybe, just maybe, a crowd full of scared, traumatized family members wasn't the world's greatest place for a psychic amplifier. Just in case. Melody had conceded to this fact and retreated, but she never went far. Rather than abandon the idea altogether, she'd gone back home, grabbed a guitar case, and gone out again. That time she planted herself further down the street, in an area a lot of people had to cross to get to the school, put up a sign explaining her intentions, and started to busk. At the end of the day she used every last dime thrown into her guitar case to buy food or coffee or blankets or whatever it was that seemed to be in demand by the family members who refused to leave the school. She'd come back and done the same every day.

The music was always light. Nothing deep, nothing heavy, no depressing lyrical content. At the same time, nothing so flippantly cheerful or optimistic to be seen as insensitive. Sometimes people stopped and listened, sometimes people had requests. If people made requests, she filled them. That lead her into a rendition of American Pie, and the man who had asked her for it smiled and stayed a few verses. Then he threw a dollar in her guitar case and moved on.

It wasn't a bad way to spend the days.

WHO: Erika & Ben
WHERE: Lenore's
WHEN: After school/work

The Mudhouse was closer to Seeds of Beauty, but Lenore's was closer to the elementary school and Erika had been feeling rather gracious when it came to choosing a meeting place. Ben, of course, was a thing of her past (and he'd even been seeing someone of late, she was told, even if it didn't exactly work out) but it didn't change the fact that she'd dressed a little more carefully for work today. A fairly silky floral top was not her usual work attire, but she'd decided she wasn't going to be rushing into the greenhouse today. With that, she still looked fairly immaculate at the end of the day, though that didn't stop her from running upstairs and doing her hair and dashing on some lipstick. Of course, when Petunia heard her thoughts about meeting Ben, the goat was impossible to shake. Petunia, as Erika had come to understand, fancied the were-pommy quite a bit. Which was odd, but it was far from the oddest thing that Erika had ever had to put up with as far as Petunia went. She just seemed to be an unusual sort of animal/familiar as those went. At any rate, she let the goat into the back seat of her Prius and drove towards Lenore's to meet Ben.

( 'HEY BEN,' came the overly enthusiastic mental greeting. )

Who: Mason and Ben.
Where: Normandin territory.
When: Early evening.

( It was all very well and good saying they didn’t have a problem with weres but it usually came with the unspoken caveat that they remained in human form because that was what people were most comfortable with. A were was no less dangerous in human form, they still had advantages over humans whether or not they realised it for themselves. )

Who: Ben and Will
Where: Their home
When: Mid-morning

It was a marvelous Sunday morning, albeit a bit chilly and overcast. Ben had gotten up early, made breakfast for himself and his cousin and gone outside to enjoy some light internet browsing under the crisp fresh air, courtesy of wi-fi. Ben dug into the local news from when he'd been gone, finding everything from angels coming to earth to a new laser-tag place in town which he made a mental note to visit at some point. Will would probably like that. It wasn't too long before he started to realize he was no longer in Hawaii and he would need more than a t-shirt if he wanted to keep sitting outside like this. During his vacation Ben had gotten used to warm, sunny days from dusk until dawn and he had refused to acknowledge this was no longer the case back in Michigan. With a sigh Ben put his laptop on the side-table next to his chair and prepared to go inside and get himself a sweater when he smelled something. Something off. Something horrible, in fact, something that wouldn't have been so horrible if it hadn't been right in his backyard.

Darting his eyes from side to side Ben searched for the source of the smell until he found it. It was just standing there, looking at him defiantly like they liked to do, as if daring him to do something about this shameless invasion of private property, as though it said "What're you gonna do?" with its very eyes. With a look of disgust and anger Ben darted inside.

"Will! Wiiiiiiiiiill! There's a cat in the backyard. A cat. A fucking cat and it doesn't give a shit that I'm a dog. It's just sitting there and it's probably plotting something nefarious as we speak!"

Who: Autumn and Ben
Where: Autumn's house then the gala
When: 6:30pm

( Herein there is chocolate. Ah! )