Repose

[Sam M]

How are your uglycute critters?

[Batfam+]

[After a few stops and starts.] I got discharged, I'm back, but I'm leaving in a couple days.

Hi. How is everyone?

[Public, anonymously]

Has anyone done the dream thing?

ETA: [Misha B]
[After talking with Damian. She sends him a screenshot of this and the following few comments.]

Who: Julia and Sam
What: Reunion!
Where: Lou's antique store
When: Nowish
Warnings/Rating: Beware Sam's language, as per usual.

It was finally starting to get dark later, and Sam was enjoying the last few weeks of early evening and more time outside. It was kinda weird, yeah? A year earlier, she'd been all about the summers and long days of sunshine, and now everything was kinda reversed. So, yeah, early nights were the thing now, and she could go wander when life was still a thing that bustled and bubbled on Repose's quaint sidewalks. And, yeah, yeah, so the quaint was all a facade, a fake overtop a bunch of complicated stuff that was SO beyond Sam's comprehension. But she still liked this stupid place, and she didn't need to like sit and try to understand that or anything.

Tonight, the wildchild in boho and with a hat perched atop finger-tousle blonde was wandering. She hopped on cracks and broke her moms' back, and Miss Mary Mack was all dressed in black, and Sam twirled like a dervish as she looked up at the moon against starry night.

It wasn't LATE LATE. The art shop was still open, and Sam would totes go annoy the fuck out of Cris once he put up the sign that indicated all whims for construction paper and glitter would need to wait until morning. But, for now, she was killing time and her feet led her to the antique store.

In she walked, and the old bell over the door jingled, and she yelled that was just her, so that Lou wouldn't come running from wherever he was. When no blond with curls and a frumpy cardigan showed his face, she wandered, huh? She kinda liked looking around the store; it inspired her. She wasn't inspired a lot recently. That was the one thing she HATED about this whole nighttime life in a small town, huh? Sam drew inspiration from LIFE, and lately life had been too quiet to really be called living. Her canvases were bare, and her paints were drying in their tubes, and she stopped in front of an old birdhouse and thought about the corpses of the birds that had lived within.

[It's on her way back into town after spending the days immediately after wiping out the electrical supply closest to the woods, in the palatial place in the Capital where the din is deadened just a little. She's in the back seat of the car, expensive and black and purring with luxury, swaddled in a coat that would buy her old neighborhood beer for a month. The phone is small and cheap. She picked it up at an unrecognizable big box store, one of many and she transferred the number over. Now, with the air changing outside from the milling traffic of the city to the road out of town, she rings.]

Ring

[On the outskirts of town - that which lies closest to the woods and if you own one of the fancy big houses, you're shit out of luck - there is a 'power-cut' starting at around midnight. All the power from the cables that cut across Repose and the wider open spaces are utterly dead for several hours and afterward even when the power-company pitches up to check what the issue is, if the power-company can make it to Repose at all, when the power comes back up it has a habit of fritzing out and sputtering every so often.]

Who: Julia L & Nishka Bariss
Where: The Cat, late evening.
Warnings: Nada.

The week was coming to its end. There would be a large, expensive car waiting at the edge of town tomorrow evening. Dusk would come and with it the car and back to a city that smoked Julia's senses ash-black and scorched white. The week was at a close and she left the sugar-pink trailer behind her and the quiet hush of the woods. Snap-black twigs under faded primrose sneakers that were older than cars and cities and suits that hung in climate-controlled closets, but had never been worn for longer than a summer in eight years. In the trailer was a blush-colored skirt and a cream sweater loose at the cuffs and tight at the throat and a pair of perfectly beige shoes with lipstick-red soles. There were a number of items of clothes tucked away in the wire-mesh cupboards that belonged to the city, and Julia wore one now. A cashmere coat in navy, and underneath she wore Walmart yellow and cream cardigan that dangled around the knees of worn denim.

If the week was going to end it was better to go out knowing something instead of nothing. She had hidden in the woods for a week until the clenched-fist feeling faded. She had hidden in the woods because she was hiding and once upon a time she hid from nothing, walked toward it open-armed. It was deliberate, the walk from the woods until the lights of the town were a fairy-net and then they were windows and doors and a late night in a place small enough people knew the gossip. Julia's smile was summer's last gleam as she caught the glimmer of music on a door's open-and-slam.

The familiar sensation wrapped a casual hand around her nerve-endings and squeezed but this late at night, the pressure was lesser. She had worse, and Julia walked through the door to the music and the tiny place full of people and lingered by the door for a full minute taking it in as she unbuttoned the coat, wraith-wild hair and a smile that turned up by degrees and the only flicker was the lights very briefly before they were consistent. Good. She just couldn't get good and drunk, the way she wished she could. Not without taking a black-out to a town that would notice.

She sat at the bar, where her elbows were jammed against her sides and she spread cashmere over her knee and put Walmart-yellow elbows on the bar-top, wrists twined in leather and ordered whatever was nearest and on tap.

[It was Saturday at 11am and the hot dog stand had just opened for business. Connie had been up in the morning baking fresh buns and now she was finishing up frying the first round of chips for customers. Winter wasn't as busy, but there were always bikers and truckers who stopped by for a snack. They'd walk up in big, poofy jackets and smile at the novelty of a fresh hot dog, the weird white haired girl behind the counter and a coffee for the road.

Connie had just finished handing over hot dogs to a hockey mom and her three hockey bound kids. The mom seemed relieved at the easy meal that pleased little kids and Connie could relate. When she was a kid trying to take care of Patrick, it was this shack that made everything easy. During the summer, an afternoon could be affordably planned and payed for with a pocket full of loose change, towels and sunscreen. In the winter? Crumpled up dollar bills from dad's dresser, warm-warm coats and sleds.

Connie waved at the small family, self-aware that the smile on her face was something real and wonderful. She liked working in her closet at the facility, but moving in with Adrian and getting this shack was the best thing she could have ever done. Connie went to the back of the shack and opened the door, taking in a deep breath of the fresh air before the next customer arrived.]

[Cat C.]

Well.

[Muerte]

Settled in?

[Public]

Did you move into a house with a bunch of old arcade cabinets in the basement? Are you clearing out your grandfather's collection of pong consoles for profit? Know a guy who knows a guy that wants to sell their old pinball machine? Let me know.

[Public]

Looks like I missed out on letters from the past.