Hello Again Stranger Who: Galen, Amina, Ty Where: Scarlet Oak High When: 5am ish What: Reunions and shock recovery?
Galen didn’t make it back to Ad Gustum, which was frankly one of the safest havens there was really, populated as it was by the undead and immortal clientele that it served, but Galen didn’t make it there. After the demon left Galen remembered getting back in his car and sitting in the driver’s seat shaking, with what emotion he could not know because the hot, invasive empathies of the demon kept pulsing through him in sudden unexpected bursts that made him double over, biting back barks of throaty, hysteric laughter. His bones sang with the touch of the monster at the crossroads and all he could think of was The Crossroads Blues and the sick nauseous uncertainty that he’d promised something out there that he might not have meant to. (It didn’t ask you for anything.) There is always a condition. Always. I owe something. (Who fucking says?) I don’t know. I don’t know.
Galen looked up and realized he was idling in the parking lot of Scarlet Oak High School. Beside him a woman and two children wrapped in refugee trademark blankets were shuffled toward the open doors of the school where Galen was certain a white mage or three was laying doing spell work to ward off the darkness in the night. He blinked, glanced at the car radio and the clock readout told him it was nearly 5AM and he was still covered in sulfuric smelling blood and he couldn’t remember having driven here, or thinking of driving here or…
RAP! RAP!
Galen jerked, then sighed in sharp relief when the face of the mother of two peered at him through the window of his Mustang. He killed the engine and opened the door to her inquiry of, “Are you alright?” followed immediately by a wave of horrified sympathy and worry and the cry of, “You’re bleeding! Oh my God! Jenny! Carl! Help me help him up!” The children were suddenly tugging him out of his car as well and awkwardly gripping his arm. The mother fussed and clucked and said things like, ”It’s going to be okay! You’re going to be okay!” (It was very dramtic.)
He tried to explain he wasn’t hurt, that the blood wasn’t his, but by the time his thoughts caught up with him he was inside the gymnasium sitting on a gurney in the makeshift medical tent under the basket ball hoop. Refugees and families and the scared were huddled at the far end of the gym in sleeping bags and camping gear, little pup tents and quilts and a miasma of fear. Too emotionally wrung out to wonder what the hell was going on with him, he just laid back on the gurney and closed his eyes.