Light of May ::: an original roleplay

Who: Sam and August.
Where: The Summers home; Sam’s room.
When: Late morning.

Sam had missed dinner the previous evening. The smells had permeated the house and at least one voice had called up the stairs to tell him the food was ready but he had stayed in his room. With his eyes glued to the window he had spent a great deal of the night not sleeping but watching. Waiting. Breathing shallow and chest tight with a fearful kind of anxiety that had followed him all the way home from the edge of the woods that marked the limit of the Summers Pack territory after he had wandered out there with some misplaced sense of curiosity driving him. Unnerved as he was, so very deeply and completely, Sam had been afraid to leave his room, a place that had become familiar and therefore safe. It still caught him off guard to have furniture and a door he could open and close as and when he chose but more than one member of this family who had allowed him into their home had told him it was his space. He could keep it as long as he wanted or needed it. Sam had grown strangely attached to it.

That was dangerous. Alien. Wrong. It frightened him. For as long as he could remember nothing had been his, not truly. Even things that were given to him did not belong to him, he was permitted to retain them by those better and stronger than he was himself. That was how it worked. That had been Sam’s way of life for so many years that anything else was just bewildering to him, foreign and confusing to the point that it scared him. It was likely it would never stop feeling that way, that he would never be able to move past what had been so forcefully imprinted and impressed upon him, and had he been aware enough to recognise that for himself Sam might have found that disappointing, perhaps even frustrating. As it was he couldn’t see it, couldn’t stand on the outside looking in at himself, seeing what others saw. Even after the brief respite from that life only a short number of days ago Sam couldn’t see himself the way others did. Maybe that was for the best.

When breakfast time came someone called up the stairs again, much as they had the night before. More smells had drifted through the house, warm and comforting and appetising. Just like the night before Sam had stayed in his room. The return of the sun’s light had made him feel a little bolder, at least, in that he had moved from the bed and settled himself in the deep recess of the window’s ledge. He hadn’t brought a cushion or a pillow but he needed neither. Instead he had taken the book from the nightstand and folded himself into the space with the novel open against his legs. At least an hour had passed without him reading more than a few lines of the text, his eyes once again fixing on some unseen point outside, through the glass of the window and beyond the trees. The longer he stared the more Sam felt convinced he could feel eyes staring back at him.

Who: Sam and Jo.
Where: The Summers House.
When: Early morning.

The DVD player had long since switched itself off and the TV showed nothing but a quiet field of desaturated static, casting a pale light across the room in the early morning before the sun had even risen all the way above the horizon. On the coffee table in front of the couch were various snacks, a couple of glasses and a few soda cans, remnants of a night spent indulging in entertainment and various foods that had little in the way of nutritional value. The remote had fallen on the floor at some point. The cases for the movies they had watched were stacked haphazardly down in front of the entertainment unit, the last one they’d been watching before sleep had taken them both still popped open and left sitting at a strange angle atop all the others.

When consciousness started to return it was with a quiet wash of confusion that it did so, the feeling that something about where he was wasn’t right, and it was that creeping doubt that had him opening his eyes and blinking to try and clear the sleep from them, moving to lift one arm to try and dispel the grogginess before he realised he wasn’t alone. At some point during the night his companion had slouched against him completely and they had fallen asleep that way. With a single glance Sam knew it was Jo, her short hair was a little ruffled but unmistakable and her scent was so unique and so familiar that he would know it anywhere.

For several seconds he remained exactly where he was, trying to figure out what was wrong because something was. His other arm was free, he realised, and it was that he lifted to swipe at his face but he stopped halfway. There were scars on his arm. What he could see of the other one had the same sorts of scars. Abruptly and without warning Sam’s mind’s eye was filled with sharp teeth and snapping jaws, the echoes of snarls and howls rolled hauntingly in his ears. Mountains, trees, blood and balled fists, raucous laughter and cruel jeering. Sam’s breath caught harshly in his throat and fear struck him with the force of a freight train.

This was wrong. ( All wrong. )

Who: Sam and Jo.
Where: The Summers’ House.
When: Morning.

At some point during the night one of the pillows had ended up on top of Sam’s head and it tumbled off with a light thump after slipping from the bed altogether and hitting the floor. The sound was enough to pull him all the way out of his slumber with a quiet groan, the arm that had draped over the edge of the mattress rising up to swipe at his face in an attempt to rid himself of the grogginess. It lingered for a couple more minutes as he went through the process of extricating himself from the bed completely and digging clothes out of drawers and the closet. It was warm enough in the house that a simple pair of pants and a plain t-shirt would be enough for him to wander around in until he had to go somewhere else though as he finished pulling the shirt on over his head he couldn’t for the life of him think about anywhere he needed to be. Maybe he would just stay inside then, or head out into the garden. It looked crisp and cool outside, the view from the window showed him that much, and there was a novel sitting on the nightstand with a marker sticking out roughly halfway through the pages. If nothing else came along that sounded like a good enough plan to him.

Without bothering to pull on any socks or footwear he padded out of his room barefoot, making his way down the stairs to the kitchen. His stomach was growling quietly and would only gain more volume as time ticked along so breakfast seemed like the best course of action. With the ease of someone familiar with his surroundings he gathered items from the cupboards and the refrigerator without needing to pause to think about where they were, hearing someone else venturing down from upstairs as he worked out exactly what he wanted to eat.

“Morning,” he said to the new arrival, turning his head to look at Jo as she crossed the threshold. His nose had already told him who was coming. For a second that had struck him as odd before he simply accepted it and carried on with that knowledge. “Want some breakfast?” he asked her with a smile on his face, indicating the various bits and pieces he’d gathered together to satisfy any hungry stomach.

Who: Sam and Farren.
Where: A grocery store.
When: Mid-afternoon.

If it had been up to him Sam wouldn’t have gone along on the trip to the store. As it was for such a through-and-through Omega as Sam nothing at all was up to him, not in his mind. Choices and decisions were things more dominant people made, his place in the world was to do as he was told and even if something was presented to him as a question it was still interpreted in his mind as a command. When Farren had mentioned the store and him going along Sam had taken it as an order for him to accompany her and so he had nodded his head quietly and meekly and followed her lead as an Omega was meant to do.

There was a part of Sam that had hoped he might feel a little better if he got out of the house and away from the tight pressing feeling of being watched. He was wrong. All the way across the parking lot and into the store itself he had felt that weight on him that made him feel like there were eyes on him and even when they had a cart and were making their way slowly and steadily around the place, navigating the aisles aimlessly and with no real order in mind he couldn’t help but look around to find that keen gaze. The fact that he couldn’t see anyone watching him and couldn’t smell anyone either didn’t help him to relax in the least and he was so distracted by his nervous search for an unknown threat that he bumped into the edge of the cart because he wasn’t watching where he was going.

Sam tensed further then and flinched back, hearing the items in the cart jostle and rattle. Farren was one of those in the pack around whom he still wasn’t sure how to behave and Sam felt his throat dry up even as he tried to apologise. “I-I’m sorry.” It wasn’t even that he was embarrassed, that was never the case for him, it was always more fear-driven, much closer to shame than anything else.

Who: Sam.
Where: Summers territory; the woods behind the house.
When: Early evening.

Curiosity was a dangerous thing, contagious and unstoppable, it flowed and it spread and if left unchecked it could lead to dark places. Sam had learned that early in life but the wolf in him was so conscious, so strong at the fore at all times, that that curiosity never really went away, not fully, never permanently. It pulled him out of his comfort zone and into the unknown. Time and time again it drew him from the places he knew were safest and out into the world where anything could happen. Like this morning.

The house was the safest place for him, increasingly familiar and comforting because of that fact, but there was something out there. Something he knew he should fear. Something he needed to identify because uncertainty was the worst thing to feel and if he knew what he was supposed to be afraid of maybe that would make things easier. Sam was probably lying to himself on that front but he was so good at that, convincing himself of things most others would deny outright. It was one of the reasons he had become an Omega so completely, in every way a person could embody such a thing.

His paws covered the ground easily at a gentle, cautious lope, taking him closer to the edge of the Summer’s Pack’s territory where he had told himself he would stop, and stop he did, standing on the proverbial line between one patch of line and the next, picking out the scents of wolves he knew and others he didn’t. There was another pack nearby, he knew that, had come to learn that very quickly after being brought to the house and encouraged to explore. But there was something else, something that he knew deep down in the pit of his being, something that had a cold creeping sense of dread and icy fear rising from within. It laced down the length of his spine as he stood there, staring with alert golden eyes into the shadows that clung to the trees and bushes and ground in the early evening, day losing its grip to the approaching dusk, the sun setting below the horizon.

Sam didn’t notice any of that, too caught up in that scent -- those scents, he realised with a shudder of approaching panic -- to take it in. Instead he stood there staring into the distance, ears twitching and pivoting on top of his wolfen head as he finally took his gaze from that fixed point dead ahead, scanning the surrounding area. Left, right, and then each again, checking each of the compass points in between. Nothing. Nothing to see or hear.

That didn’t mean there hadn’t been anything there, though. Sam knew that as certainly as he knew his own name. That cold sense of dread was rising ever higher until he couldn’t stand it any longer and with a wave of nausea sweeping and rolling like a lazy wave through his stomach he moved, suddenly swinging his agile body around and turning himself back towards the house.

When he moved back for its welcome familiarity and sense of comfort and safety it was no longer at an easy lope that he did so. Sam ran, as hard and fast as he could..

Who: Sam and Jo.
Where: The Summers House; the backyard.
When: Late morning.

The book had come to rest against his legs after he had realised how terrible it would be for it to slip from his grasp and fall from his perch. It was while he had been silently marvelling at how quickly things like climbing trees came back to the forefront of the mind even after years of no practise that it had started to dangle a little too low for his liking. It was like riding a bike, he had found himself thinking, muscle memory never really faded in the way other types of memories might, and when he had got it in his mind to make his way up the branches to the cluster several feet up over his head where the shade and shelter of the leaves might provide some semblance of safety and reassurance he had been surprised by how easily he had managed the task of climbing. He hadn’t done it in years, so long ago now that he barely remembered it at all. On at least one occasion he had gone up a tree only to be forced down out of it and not long after he’d broken his arm in two places he had stopped altogether. There was always that concern that something like that would happen again but as nervous as he was lately he hadn’t seen a threat yet.

Only felt it.

Up in the tree Sam could see a lot more of the surrounding area than he would have been able to from the ground. With the leaves and branches around him he had a kind of cover that he wouldn’t have had down on the ground. Already he felt a little more relaxed and on top of that the simple -- almost child-like -- thrill of being up a tree was helping to chase away some of that anxiety. Having the book with him just made things better, not that he had done any reading yet. Sam was too busy looking around from where he had come to settle himself amongst a cluster of closely-knitted branches that made a fairly comfortable and sturdy sort of seat. If anything moved in the trees nearby he would be able to see it much faster than he would have from down low, on the ground, and though the smells were a little harder to pick up from a greater height the sounds carried further. It was a good place to be.

Who: Sam.
Where: The Summers House; the backyard.
When: Late afternoon.

Reading in the garden had become one of Sam’s favourite things to do, tucked onto one of the steps leading down from the porch to the yard itself, his back rested against the railing. It might not have been comfortable for most people but Sam was self-aware enough to understand he wasn’t most people, and he didn’t have the same gauge on comfort as most people. What he found acceptable others would not and what others expected he would never even dream of for himself. It was just one more of those things that he might have found sad if he had realised what it really said about him but instead he just accepted it as the way things were. There was no need to change it and no drive to do so on his part. Why would there be?

So he sat in his spot, turning the page where the book was rested gently against his legs, bent upwards towards his chest as they were, his eyes down on the words laid out before him, the story unravelling. It was a fiction, one of the ones that had been recommended to him by any one of the pack, a respectable pile that he was working his way through fairly quickly. With very few other hobbies to occupy his time Sam spent most of his time reading, it had gotten to the point where he was rarely seen around the house without a book in his hands, and any period of quiet was spent settling himself down somewhere and cracking it open to read on from where he had gotten up to.

It was just starting to get dark, dusk was on its way, but there was enough natural light left in the day that he didn’t have to worry about going inside yet. Dinner would be a way off and Sam never liked to be the first to the table anyway, he always waited to be invited to any meal as was natural to him, as was right. There was plenty of time left to read, uninterrupted, minding his own business.

That was, at least, until something made the hairs on the back of his neck rise. Slowly but surely. His skin tingled, like a cold creeping over him, and his mind stopped processing what the words on the page meant. Blinking once, Sam lifted his gaze from the book, slowly, cautiously, like an animal not wanting to make a sudden move and startle a predator. Swallowing against his suddenly dry throat he turned his head, warily, fear starting to creep up from the pit of his stomach, to look towards the trees at the end of the garden.

Nothing. No watching eyes, no flash of fur as something darted away. Yet the feeling persisted, not fading away as he had thought it might, working its way deeper now, beneath the surface. Sam swallowed again, his eyes carefully scanning the trees, looking for something he could feel but not see. There was something there, he was sure of it. Something still and quiet. Something dangerous.

Maybe it was time to go back inside. With trembling fingers Sam tucked the loaned bookmark back between the pages and closed it, holding it tightly in his grasp, fighting off the urge to hug it against his chest as he rose from his seat, backing gingerly up the steps to the porch. It felt important not to turn his back on the yard and the trees beyond it. There was something out there that might be waiting for that very opportunity and Sam didn’t want to give it to them. Only when he backed up to the house to the point that his shoulders brushed the wall did he do so, ducking back inside the door and closing it behind him.

Even when he was inside, behind that barrier keeping the outside world at bay, Sam kept on looking out to the trees. There was something out there. Watching. Waiting. Just because he couldn’t see it, that didn’t mean it wasn’t there.

Who: Sam and Gavin.
Where: The streets of Scarlet Oak, away from the school.
When: Mid-morning.

There had been a lot of activity at the house early that morning, a lot of rushing feet and raised voices, hurried preparations and slamming doors. Sam had watched and listened, seen people racing about and done his part by staying out of the way. That was for the best. It always was. It didn’t directly involve him and so he had stayed quiet, sat back, kept his distance from the action so he wouldn’t cause trouble and watched them all rush out of the house. Something was happening at the high school, that much he had picked up, as was his way. Quiet and distant though he might be Sam was anything but unobservant and he had recognised what was happening as everyone moved about with such tense excitement. Something had happened at the school and it seemed like it might be good news.

That was good. People would be happier again, maybe. It still didn’t have much to do with him but the Summers were nice people and they deserved to be happy and to have good things happen to them.

The house had seemed so big and empty without everyone else in it that Sam had gotten it in his mind to go out but after dressing himself and making sure the door was locked behind him and the key he had been given was tucked securely in the very deepest part of his pocket he wondered why he had decided to do this. Outside was very large, it was a lot of unmapped territory, and it was only ever going to make him nervous. It had, like so many of the things that crossed his mind, been a stupid idea, and with every minute that passed he only become more and more convinced of that. With every step he took he grew increasingly certain that something was wrong.

Sam stopped in his tracks, turning on the spot, looking around. The back of his neck had felt strange. Prickly, almost. Like the hairs had been standing up. The wolf in him recognised it for what it was and grew agitated, making him shuffle his weight from one foot to the other as he looked around, trying to find those eyes he had felt watching him.

As engrossed as he was in trying to find those eyes he didn’t notice the other were coming for him until it was too late.

WHO | Farren & Open to any of the Summers pack
WHERE | Packlands
WHEN | Evening/Night

( Farren spent hours in her wolf form, sprinting through the trees and large rocks just to expel the energy that filled her veins. )

Who: Sam and Jo.
Where: The Summers House.
When: Early afternoon.

Sam had never gotten in the habit of locking his door. It had never been something that was allowed in Montana, if his door was going to be locked it would be locked for him, and from the outside. Never from within. There were never any locks on the inside of the doors to the rooms in which he slept in Montana. It was something of an alien concept to him, locking a door behind him, and even when he used the bathroom in the Summers house he had to pause once he was inside and remind himself to do so. With his bedroom, though, it was another matter. There was a lock on the inside of the door, he had noticed it not long after he had been shown to the room for the first time but not once had he touched it. There had been times in the middle of the night when he had thought about it but a tight and knotted sense of anxiety had settled in so quickly in the wake of such thoughts that he had dismissed them almost immediately. Locking his door was bad. Wrong. He wasn’t supposed to do that.

So it was that the door was unlocked, even when he went through the process of changing from the clothes he wore for bed. It was early afternoon, a little past lunch he suspected from the scents drifting up from the first floor of the house, and he’d overslept. That made him feel uneasy as well, just one more thing that wouldn’t have been permitted with his birth pack. Some mornings they would jump up and down on the floor above where he slept to wake him with the thumping and rattling and the shower of dust that would rain down from the ceiling of the basement. Those had been the gentler awakenings, the ones in which the pack had kept their distance. Not all mornings had been like that.

Sam’s night had been a rough one and the tangled sheets on the bed were evidence enough of that, twisted and rumpled from the kind of motions one might associate with nightmares. He’d had them, he knew, he’d woken with a tight fear in his chest and a sense of dread that had, at one point, chased him right out of the bed and into the corner of the room, watching the door in the dark, waiting for danger to storm right through it. He’d fallen asleep that way for a while, only crawling back into the bed when he’d dozed off sitting upright and startled himself awake when he almost lost his balance. The rest of the night had passed just as fitfully and all through the morning he’d tried to catch up on lost sleep only to be denied the rest that would have kept him from feeling as groggy and disoriented as he did then.

For some reason he couldn’t figure out which way his shirt was supposed to go. Standing in the middle of the room at the foot of the unmade bed with his pants pulled on and fastened and his upper torso uncharacteristically bare he struggled to solve the unexpected puzzle he held in his hands. Was it inside out? Twisted? His brain was so fogged up that he couldn’t tell, so clouded by the lack of sleep that he didn’t hear footsteps approaching his room from outside in the hall.

For a thing. JUST IN CASE.

Who: Sam, and some of the Evans Pack (NPCs).
Where: The Evans Pack home, Montana.
When: October 18th 2008. After midnight.

They came back well after midnight, stirring him from sleep and turning his gaze towards the stairs leading up from the basement. Their voices were loud, rowdy, their laughter sharp and as he sat in the quiet he realised he could smell something. Alcohol. They had been drinking. Sam twisted on the mattress on the floor and watched the door, saw the silhouettes of their feet as they passed it by. Passed him by. Sam held his breath, waiting. Hoping.

“Sammy!”

That held breath caught in his throat and he shrunk against the wall, dropping his gaze from the door immediately, knowing what that call meant. The wolf inside him was torn, pulled in two directions, wanting to obey but understanding what was coming. It wanted to obey but instinct told it to stay away from danger. Wolves didn’t readily run towards things that would hurt them but he still felt that pull, that desire to do as he was told and he had heard his name called that way enough times by now to know that he was being told to come upstairs.

“Sam.” There was less humour in the voice now, more impatience. Some of the laughter had faded from the first floor of the house. Sam heard footsteps overhead, saw a silhouette of a pair of legs appear at the top of the stairs. ( Frozen in place now by the fear of what was coming he stared at those shadowy shapes, his stomach turning and twisting and knotting in on itself in dread. )

Who: Sam and Jo.
Where: SOHS.
When: Early evening, after this.

The house had been empty by the time he’d made his way back there and he’d made sure to change back to human form before heading inside the house again. Someone had left a blanket on the back porch for him and he’d used it to make his way up to his room to get dressed, wasting as little time as possible. It wasn’t until he was about to leave the house that he realised something. People used keys to lock houses, didn’t they? Sam didn’t have keys to the Summers house. If he left then the house would be empty and unlocked and that didn’t seem secure. That didn’t seem right.

It was as he was worrying about this, turning a little on the spot as he tried to puzzle out a solution, that he saw the bowl and inside it a scrap of paper serving as a note. On top of the note was a metal key and a plastic keyring attached with the house’s address upon it. The note read: To lock the house, in case you feel like taking a walk. Sam wasn’t sure whose handwriting it was or the paper carried the scent of so many members of the Summers family that it was impossible to pin it down that way. Someone had had enough foresight to leave a key for him though, and after only a few moments of hesitation he scooped it out of the bowl and put it to use, tucking it deep, deep down into the very bottom of his pocket afterwards so that he wouldn’t lose it. Several times as he made his way from the house to the school where the Summers pack had congregated he checked it was still there, settling his hand against the small bulge in his pocket or digging his hand inside to feel the shape of the key, the slightest bite of its metal teeth, the smoothness of the plastic of the labelled keyring.

Sam was a little short of breath when he reached the school and for a moment when he got there he lost it altogether. There were so many people and as he stood there taking it all in he doubted himself, doubted the urgency with which he had come here. Was it really so important to tell someone he’d seen another wolf? That other wolf hadn’t attacked, hadn’t crossed the invisible line into Summers territory. Maybe he shouldn’t have come.

There were just so many people, more than Sam had had to deal with in a while. Standing there with one hand pushed deep into his pocket and his other nervously wringing around the length of scarf hanging from around his neck Sam strongly considered turning around on the spot and heading back to the house.

Who: Sam and Cat.
Where: The edge of Summers territory, in the woods.
When: Late afternoon.

Weather had never been an issue for Sam. Rain, snow, hail, the pack in Montana had gone out in all conditions and they had forced him along with them. As Omega he was to do as he was told by anyone and everyone and he had done so, in later years too cowed and blinded by fear to do anything else. Omegas obeyed. It was as simple as that.

It was so different here, almost as if the Summers didn’t know what Omega meant. Or maybe it wasn’t that, maybe it was something else entirely. Sam was still struggling to even begin to wrap his mind around it, it filled him with a strange kind of anxiety to try and so he didn’t allow himself to do that. In the end that only perpetuated the vicious cycle, Sam’s confusion reared up in full force all over again when any one of them did something even remotely kind or generous. Mrs. Summers had set his breakfast in front of him that morning and thrown his world into a kind of bewildered turmoil all over again despite the fact that she had done that exact same thing every morning since August had brought him back to the house. None of it made any sense to Sam. Not a bit.

Being a wolf always made sense though. It was simple, clear-cut, everything was black and white and there were rules and boundaries. It was easy. Back in Montana Sam had spent a fair amount of his time as a wolf, it had felt safer to him than his human form, and though his white pelt bore subtle signs of skin-deep scars that would never truly fade it had always been that way. Though it was against his nature, his very existence as an Omega, to defend himself, knowing that he could was reassuring. Only once had he made the mistake of turning those teeth of his on a more dominant member of the pack back in Montana. Every time they had gone back up to that site in the mountains Sam had been able to scent the place where he had made that mistake, where they had left him bleeding in the snow to wake half-frozen and alone, forced to limp and stumble his way back to the house. He had been sick for more than a week after that, coughing and aching and feverish, struggling to breathe, shaking so hard that he thought he would shake himself to pieces. Not once had he asked any of them for help. Sam had known better than that by then.

Sam didn’t think the Summers were like that and somewhere deep down he knew that his confusion surrounding that fact was wrong somehow, backwards in a way that should have made him sad. They let him go out on his own, didn’t make him ask for permission even though he had done so out of habit and would probably continue to do so for a long time to come. When he had felt the grass beneath his paws all those confusions and troubles had been left behind with his clothes on the porch, abandoned like his human form for something so much simpler and purer. As he had reached the trees he had paused and glanced back. Mrs. Summers had been on the porch, picking up the clothes he had left there, folding them as she did so, lifting her gaze towards him with a smile before turning to go back into the house.

That had been almost an hour ago. Sam’s exploration had taken him at a slow and curious pace through the trees, sniffing here and snuffling there, investigating the mouths of warrens and holes nestled in the roots of trees where small animals had made their homes. His investigations would have continued in that vein well into the evening if a scent that didn’t belong hadn’t reached him, accompanied by an ice cold flash of fear through his belly.

Sam’s head lifted from the base of the tree he had been sniffing around and his ears rocked fully forward, twitching like his nose as he tried to pinpoint the direction in which the other wolf would appear from. Without even realising he had reached the edge of Summers territory. He didn’t recognise the scent of the other wolf but that didn’t mean anything. The Montana pack could have grown since he left. That fear twisted and knotted in his stomach, tightening uncomfortably, lowering him warily to the ground with his bright eyes fixed on the point where he was certain the other wolf would appear any moment now.

WHO | Farren & Sam
WHERE | Summers' home
WHEN | early afternoon

( Come give me a hand in the zombie apocalypse and I'll make you lunch. )

Who: Sam and Jo.
Where: Summer's house.
When: Early afternoon.

It was fascinating the way the water struck the window and formed into little rivers, the individual beads coming together in the middle to form small streams that streaked downward to pool on the windowsill before slipping over the edge and out of sight. Sam had lost track of just how much time he'd spent standing here watching them, leaning lightly against the kitchen counter not far from the sink overlooking the garden. Just watching the rain. It had been pouring down all day and he'd spent a good half an hour before leaving his room doing this very same thing, just watching it strike the glass and slip away from sight, losing all force as it trickled down the side of the house and to the ground below to soak into the soil. It was watering the various plants in the yard now, he'd realised, the grass too, and beyond the rear of the back garden the trees were being thoroughly soaked. They wouldn't mind though, they would enjoy it. Plants like rain a lot more than animals did.

They also weren't scared by storms. The first rumble of thunder had made Sam think of a wolf's growl and he'd tensed and looked all around him for the source of the threatening sound. The first real crack had almost sent him scrambling underneath the nearest bit of furniture. If it hadn't been for Mrs. Summers' reassurance that it was just a storm, totally harmless, he might have hidden himself away somewhere and stayed there. As it was when the lightning began to flash he'd needed a second round of reassurance. Mrs. Summers had made him a sandwich he had yet to eat in order to help put him at ease, reminding him all the while that it was just weather, perfectly natural, just two fronts coming together in the sky to make all that light and sound.

Sam still tensed whenever the thunder clapped, he still shied away a little when the lightning flashed, but for the most part he was too captivated by the rain and its movement down the kitchen window to really take much notice of it anymore.

Who: Sam and Julian.
Where: The Summers house; the back yard.
When: Mid-afternoon.

( Sam had never gone to school, he wasn’t entirely sure what a school book looked like and what made it so different from other books but he had come to realise that those ones tended to carry heavier scents than the others. )

Who: Sam and Lotti. (With Mrs. Summers, NPC’d)
Where: Summers’ residence // the woods.
When: Afternoon.

( Come with me and we will run away )

Who: Sam and Simon.
Where: A random street not far from the Summers’ house.
When: Late morning.

( Turning probably wasn’t the best idea, he realised too late, especially not when he was so close to the entrance of a shop of some kind, and especially not when someone was stepping out of that door onto the street. )

Who: Sam.
Where: The Summers home; Sam’s room.
When: Late morning.

( Sam had never had a room this big to himself before. )