Who: Will -> Red Riding Hood What: First time through the door Where: Las Vegas -> Passages -> Fairy Tale Door When: Today Warnings/Rating: I don't think so?
It wasn't always a voice. Most of the time it was a heavy pressure in the back of his mind, one that made him feel irritable and angry. He suddenly wanted to be moving, searching for something, having a purpose. He wanted to hunt. It was the best way to describe the feeling deep in his chest. His fingers ached to hold something heavy, something that could hurt. Something that could kill. It was that thought that had him venturing out into the Las Vegas air, feet hitting pavement, trying to walk off those desires. As he walked, his thoughts turned in on himself again. He was the one that should be hurt. He was the one that deserved to die. No one that hurt a woman should be allowed to continue on.
With that thought clear in his head, he found himself standing outside a pawn shop, looking in the window. Laid out on a small section of display were a number of knives, all of them sharpened to a gleaming sheen. One especially, bone handle and thick blade, caught his eye, and he almost allowed his steps to take him inside. He turned before h is hand could push through the door, and forced his feet on a different path.
The hotel eventually rose up in front of him, old and battered. He hadn't planned for his walk to deliver him to the building, but whatever caused the pressure in his mind had also forced him to bring the heavy iron key that had arrived with the journal that was also in his pocket. He'd been trying to avoid the hotel, even though he knew that Evie had spent time there. She'd told him about it in those first weeks, laying in bed together. But he'd refused to see for himself because the angry pressure in his mind couldn't be anyone good. He felt like there was no other choice any more, though.
So he stepped inside.
It wasn't quite what he was expecting, dusty and dim, and he wandered the floors aimlessly, wondering what he was even doing there. About to give up and leave, one door finally caught his attention. It wasn't the same as the other around it, not a hotel door at all, but the sort of rough wood planks that would normally belong to a hand-built cottage in the middle of the woods, a heavy iron lock that appeared to be the match to the key that he'd pulled out of the pocket. Something about the door drew him forward, and the key slipped into the lock easily, turning with only a soft grind of metal on metal. Once it was unlocked, the door seemed to swing open almost on its own, revealing a single room with rough furnishings, a table, a shelf, a curtained bed. From the back of his mind came a sense of satisfaction mixed with disgust, and his feet stepped forward without barely a thought.
Her Grandmother's cabin had been almost as good as home at one point before that one day. She'd spent so much time there that it had become as familiar as her own small house, but she hadn't stepped foot in it since escaping the Wolf. Everything lay where it had sat those years ago, including the decayed dish of meat, the carafe lined with sticky dried scarlet. She'd hardened herself since that day, but the sight of that made her stomach turn.
Other than the gory reminders of the past, nothing remained for her at the cottage. She took stock of herself before stepping out the door: clothing she'd stolen from a woodsman at one point, altered to fit her smaller form; a hood to keep the rain off her face, lined in the same scarlet fabric as her long-ago cape.; heavy boots with thick socks to make sure her feet stayed warm and dry; an axe on her back and a knife on her belt, both sharpened to a deadly edge. Touching nothing in the cottage, she let herself outside, closing the door almost reverently behind herself, keeping the room a silent mausoleum for her Grandmother. Then, hood pulled up over copper hair, she set her footsteps to take her deeper into the woods, to hunt as she had for the past years. To find either man or beast that would dare to harm a young girl. Perhaps today would be the day she found her own Wolf and balance the scales for what he'd taken from her.