Light of May ::: an original roleplay

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.