At The Gates

Who: Gryff and Lizzie.
What: Gryffiths doesn't live here anymore.


( The gate at the end of the path to Haven was unlocked. )

Who: Gryffiths'. You've been warned.
What: 'Family' is a word applied often and without meaning.
Where: Gryff's office at Haven.
When: Recently.


Time and tide both passed, Haven remained solid as stone walls and oasis in London provided and by the time the blossom had patterned the cemetery grass with the spidery white spirals of delicate snowy drifts, walls had been scrubbed of blood and the place recovered enough of itself to resume sluggish heartbeat and rhythm, both. Another year go-round, another spring and he'd sat last year within the same room, the same spread of paperwork until the decade blurred back to watching the then-head of Haven do the same calculations, lost in the complexities of making a place pay for itself when it never did (echoes, echoes of Anna and of whomever had been before Anna, all the men and women who'd sat in the office and made paper-chains out of financial files that rarely added up to zero). Gryff sat in the old office, that which had been abandoned and even now had the faint air of disuse. The smell, perhaps; stale and dead paper, of damp in the walls that had not fully dried out and the thin crack beneath the window pane that shrieked whenever the wind caught up, that let in the thinnest tinge of spring air.

The same spread of manila folders and half-dry ballpoint pens scattered across the desk's surface, the same half-cooled cup of tea sat like an afterthought amidst all the destruction (the last the result of half-hearted trip to the small galley kitchen, relearning the route with the hesitancy reserved for things that must be re-established rather than begun from scratch). Nothing had changed. Everything had changed. With a head too full of Haven and its inhabitants, there was little room to spare (or so said head of Haven to himself, with the determination others might call 'stubbornness') for that other-family, those blood relations and links gone loose in a chain made long ago.

Or so it went. There was the journal, somewhere amid the rubble -- topside, rather than buried, he'd been at this long enough for chaos, but not long enough that he'd slept in the room rather than shutting the door of an evening and leaving what was leadership behind, a note written in to-the-point yet feminine-slanted hand. An adieu, as far as such things could be composed, from a sibling that had almost been rather than was. Gryff's sigh was the small, thin-winded thing of unconsciousness to even beginning it; the response to the knock (for it was a knock, bold, bad salute rather than timidity of request of entry) was the instinctual growl and knitting of eyebrows particular to being interrupted, regardless of having set down the work at hand, albeit briefly.

Who: Sachiel (hymnalize) & Elizabeth Gryffiths (outofboundaries); special guest appearance by Saul Cain's (byliner) near-corpse.
What: Bailing folks out.
When: Sometime during day two (Feb 10) of London falling down around everyone's ears.
Where: The Metropolitan. Eventually Haven.
Warnings: Nothing to speak of.

( If this was magic, then she didn’t want it. )

Who: Everyone at Haven and incomers
What: Backdated -- Days Two and Three (February 10 & 11) at Haven: all people using it as a refuge in the plot, all resolutions and wrap-ups can go here!
Where: Haven

When it turns to the second day of the madness, when the night has long since fled and left Haven still wreathed in nightmare and shadow and demons are the stench of sulphur and the flicker of flame beyond the graveyard -- Haven girds itself for all its lack of wards, for all its failure to hold together and endure. They have a healer -- one broken, one who does not go willingly but in dazed, dragged-to-heel need, they have the clarity of two or three (far beyond nightmares, these folk, too abjured by all they’ve seen to find the vivid imaginings a scope too far) to link them together. The church herself holds fast, is steadfast stone bones for all the disease and calamity that wreaks itself out within her until she is shattered glass and blind eyes, the wreckage of a structure built so solidly, it seems impossible to take her down completely.

And within? As the day elides into the next, as the hallowed madness shrieks itself on, inside is triage and emergency only, the war-wounded alongside those locked inside themselves, unable to bear what has been fear and fancy only made flesh.

WHO: Wren Shelley, ghosts of London's past, and YOU
WHERE: Wren's head/Various locations around London
WHEN: Past midnight, in between Day 1 and 2.
WHAT: Wren's powers go haywire. During the middle of this
RATING: R for potential violence/bloody occult activities.

( 'We deserve to be remembered.' )

Who: Saul Cain (byliner) & Elizabeth Gryffiths (outofboundaries)
What: Drinks and information.
When: The first week of November, shortly after Elizabeth's encounter in the Dreaming.
Where: Saul's favorite watering hole, where all the lovely questionable reporters go to get soused.
Warnings/Notes: Incomplete log; shall be finished via comments. Lots of crudeness, surprise.

( Amidst them all, of course is a corner dedicated to Saul Cain. )

Who: Elizabeth Gryffiths (outofboundaries) & Stella Chu (willnotyield)
What: Mundane meets magic. Again. More specifically, dreams get invaded.
When: Backdated to Halloween weekend.
Where: The Dreaming.
Warnings: TBA, I suppose.

( Dreams were another thing altogether. )

Who: Elizabeth Gryffiths (outofboundaries) [OPEN]
What: Mundane meets magic.
When: 4/21; fallout from Vauxhall.
Where: Not overly far from the middle of the mess.
Warnings: None.

( She wasn't entirely sure what had happened. )