Light of May ::: an original roleplay

WHO: Julian and Jo
WHEN: Mid-day
WHERE: The Summers House

During the space of time where everyone's memories had been wiped, Julian had been taken to a time before any of the ugliness between him and his family had ever happened. He'd been the good son he'd always been; he'd even hugged his mother. Getting his memories back had been hard. For three days, he'd avoided any and all eye contact with his mother. He didn't hate her; but he couldn't help the words that came out of his mouth when they were talking. Well, when she was talking. Julian mostly yelled nowadays. The blank slate had given them the chance to see what life could be like if Julian wasn't so messed up...it had been beautiful. But they couldn't get back to that. Julian didn't know how. Julian didn't know if he could. There was too much hurt and no matter how much he tried to rationalize it wasn't her fault, all of his anger was directed at her.

( But life needed to go on. )

Who: Sam and Jo.
Where: The Summers House.
When: Early morning.

The DVD player had long since switched itself off and the TV showed nothing but a quiet field of desaturated static, casting a pale light across the room in the early morning before the sun had even risen all the way above the horizon. On the coffee table in front of the couch were various snacks, a couple of glasses and a few soda cans, remnants of a night spent indulging in entertainment and various foods that had little in the way of nutritional value. The remote had fallen on the floor at some point. The cases for the movies they had watched were stacked haphazardly down in front of the entertainment unit, the last one they’d been watching before sleep had taken them both still popped open and left sitting at a strange angle atop all the others.

When consciousness started to return it was with a quiet wash of confusion that it did so, the feeling that something about where he was wasn’t right, and it was that creeping doubt that had him opening his eyes and blinking to try and clear the sleep from them, moving to lift one arm to try and dispel the grogginess before he realised he wasn’t alone. At some point during the night his companion had slouched against him completely and they had fallen asleep that way. With a single glance Sam knew it was Jo, her short hair was a little ruffled but unmistakable and her scent was so unique and so familiar that he would know it anywhere.

For several seconds he remained exactly where he was, trying to figure out what was wrong because something was. His other arm was free, he realised, and it was that he lifted to swipe at his face but he stopped halfway. There were scars on his arm. What he could see of the other one had the same sorts of scars. Abruptly and without warning Sam’s mind’s eye was filled with sharp teeth and snapping jaws, the echoes of snarls and howls rolled hauntingly in his ears. Mountains, trees, blood and balled fists, raucous laughter and cruel jeering. Sam’s breath caught harshly in his throat and fear struck him with the force of a freight train.

This was wrong. ( All wrong. )

Who: Sam and Jo.
Where: The Summers’ House.
When: Morning.

At some point during the night one of the pillows had ended up on top of Sam’s head and it tumbled off with a light thump after slipping from the bed altogether and hitting the floor. The sound was enough to pull him all the way out of his slumber with a quiet groan, the arm that had draped over the edge of the mattress rising up to swipe at his face in an attempt to rid himself of the grogginess. It lingered for a couple more minutes as he went through the process of extricating himself from the bed completely and digging clothes out of drawers and the closet. It was warm enough in the house that a simple pair of pants and a plain t-shirt would be enough for him to wander around in until he had to go somewhere else though as he finished pulling the shirt on over his head he couldn’t for the life of him think about anywhere he needed to be. Maybe he would just stay inside then, or head out into the garden. It looked crisp and cool outside, the view from the window showed him that much, and there was a novel sitting on the nightstand with a marker sticking out roughly halfway through the pages. If nothing else came along that sounded like a good enough plan to him.

Without bothering to pull on any socks or footwear he padded out of his room barefoot, making his way down the stairs to the kitchen. His stomach was growling quietly and would only gain more volume as time ticked along so breakfast seemed like the best course of action. With the ease of someone familiar with his surroundings he gathered items from the cupboards and the refrigerator without needing to pause to think about where they were, hearing someone else venturing down from upstairs as he worked out exactly what he wanted to eat.

“Morning,” he said to the new arrival, turning his head to look at Jo as she crossed the threshold. His nose had already told him who was coming. For a second that had struck him as odd before he simply accepted it and carried on with that knowledge. “Want some breakfast?” he asked her with a smile on his face, indicating the various bits and pieces he’d gathered together to satisfy any hungry stomach.

Who: Sam and Jo.
Where: The Summers House; the backyard.
When: Late morning.

The book had come to rest against his legs after he had realised how terrible it would be for it to slip from his grasp and fall from his perch. It was while he had been silently marvelling at how quickly things like climbing trees came back to the forefront of the mind even after years of no practise that it had started to dangle a little too low for his liking. It was like riding a bike, he had found himself thinking, muscle memory never really faded in the way other types of memories might, and when he had got it in his mind to make his way up the branches to the cluster several feet up over his head where the shade and shelter of the leaves might provide some semblance of safety and reassurance he had been surprised by how easily he had managed the task of climbing. He hadn’t done it in years, so long ago now that he barely remembered it at all. On at least one occasion he had gone up a tree only to be forced down out of it and not long after he’d broken his arm in two places he had stopped altogether. There was always that concern that something like that would happen again but as nervous as he was lately he hadn’t seen a threat yet.

Only felt it.

Up in the tree Sam could see a lot more of the surrounding area than he would have been able to from the ground. With the leaves and branches around him he had a kind of cover that he wouldn’t have had down on the ground. Already he felt a little more relaxed and on top of that the simple -- almost child-like -- thrill of being up a tree was helping to chase away some of that anxiety. Having the book with him just made things better, not that he had done any reading yet. Sam was too busy looking around from where he had come to settle himself amongst a cluster of closely-knitted branches that made a fairly comfortable and sturdy sort of seat. If anything moved in the trees nearby he would be able to see it much faster than he would have from down low, on the ground, and though the smells were a little harder to pick up from a greater height the sounds carried further. It was a good place to be.

Who: Jo and open
When: At around 6:30
Where: The school

No one had any idea how pissed off Jo was that she had not been camping out at the school when the barrier had gone down. No one but Jo, that was. She had only recently been coming back home, needing to catch up on her school work before it became overwhelming. However, she had been sleeping near a landline every night and gotten Google alerts to actually display a sound if anything new came up. In short, she had been all set up.

The call had come into the landline at ass o'clock in the morning, and the second Jo had heard the jist of it she was up and with boots on, not bothering to change out of her pajamas. She had banged on every door on her way out, screaming the good news out loud, and then had taken the car she barely ever drove all the way to the school. Jo didn't think she had ever driven so fast in her life.

Upon arriving, Jo was unsurprised by the pandemonium. She spent a good ten minutes trying to angle through the crowd to get to the school, only to be told the people in there had already come out, and been sent to the field hospital set-up on the parking lot. Once Jo found that, she was promptly stopped by an officer of the law taller than her by a whole foot.

"No one's getting through, miss."

"Like fuck they aren't my family's over there!" Not to mention members of her pack, which was kind of the same thing.

"Miss, we need you to stay calm and wait." Jo stood there, staring at the guy for a second while an idea came to mind. Jaw set, she exhaled sharply.

"Fine." She really didn't want to do this, but fuck it. Jo returned to the car and took off her boots. Then her pants, then shirts. And then she locked her car. Nobody was the least bit interested in her or what she was doing, which was a blessing. Right then and there, she transformed, and the wolf picked up the pants and t-shirt. With the clothes clamped between her teeth, Jo took a running leap through the people and right between the police officer's legs. She rounded the tents, finding the main entrance, and dropped the clothes a little to the side. The police officer seemed to not have noticed, but other people had.

Fuck it, she thought. She wasn't here for them. She was here to pick up her siblings' scent and give them a humongous fucking hug. And so, Jo began sniffing.

Who: Jo Summers, Henry Westphal
Where: Ballard House
When: Early evening, October 4
Status: Complete


( The bamboo that bends is stronger than the oak that resists. ~Japanese Proverb )

WHO | Farren & Open to any of the Summers pack
WHERE | Packlands
WHEN | Evening/Night

( Farren spent hours in her wolf form, sprinting through the trees and large rocks just to expel the energy that filled her veins. )

Who: Sam and Jo.
Where: The Summers House.
When: Early afternoon.

Sam had never gotten in the habit of locking his door. It had never been something that was allowed in Montana, if his door was going to be locked it would be locked for him, and from the outside. Never from within. There were never any locks on the inside of the doors to the rooms in which he slept in Montana. It was something of an alien concept to him, locking a door behind him, and even when he used the bathroom in the Summers house he had to pause once he was inside and remind himself to do so. With his bedroom, though, it was another matter. There was a lock on the inside of the door, he had noticed it not long after he had been shown to the room for the first time but not once had he touched it. There had been times in the middle of the night when he had thought about it but a tight and knotted sense of anxiety had settled in so quickly in the wake of such thoughts that he had dismissed them almost immediately. Locking his door was bad. Wrong. He wasn’t supposed to do that.

So it was that the door was unlocked, even when he went through the process of changing from the clothes he wore for bed. It was early afternoon, a little past lunch he suspected from the scents drifting up from the first floor of the house, and he’d overslept. That made him feel uneasy as well, just one more thing that wouldn’t have been permitted with his birth pack. Some mornings they would jump up and down on the floor above where he slept to wake him with the thumping and rattling and the shower of dust that would rain down from the ceiling of the basement. Those had been the gentler awakenings, the ones in which the pack had kept their distance. Not all mornings had been like that.

Sam’s night had been a rough one and the tangled sheets on the bed were evidence enough of that, twisted and rumpled from the kind of motions one might associate with nightmares. He’d had them, he knew, he’d woken with a tight fear in his chest and a sense of dread that had, at one point, chased him right out of the bed and into the corner of the room, watching the door in the dark, waiting for danger to storm right through it. He’d fallen asleep that way for a while, only crawling back into the bed when he’d dozed off sitting upright and startled himself awake when he almost lost his balance. The rest of the night had passed just as fitfully and all through the morning he’d tried to catch up on lost sleep only to be denied the rest that would have kept him from feeling as groggy and disoriented as he did then.

For some reason he couldn’t figure out which way his shirt was supposed to go. Standing in the middle of the room at the foot of the unmade bed with his pants pulled on and fastened and his upper torso uncharacteristically bare he struggled to solve the unexpected puzzle he held in his hands. Was it inside out? Twisted? His brain was so fogged up that he couldn’t tell, so clouded by the lack of sleep that he didn’t hear footsteps approaching his room from outside in the hall.

Who: Jo, Drina and Marco
Where: Ballard House
When: Early morning

It used to be that the promise of an upcoming full moon was a happy, exciting time for Jo. It was like a homecoming, even if she had never really left home in the first place, because while she was never anyone but herself that was never quite so as when she was in wolf form, running with her people underneath the moonlight. Knowing that this full moon fundamental pieces of the pack would be missing broke her heart. It was going to feel lacking, incomplete, like the full moon was a ritual she would not be able to fulfil this time. Not to mention that just thinking of running under the moon without her brother and sister along made Jo feel sick.

She had not slept last night, and hardly so the past few. For all the strong face and helpful disposition that Jo tried to show others, she was very much on her last nerve at this point. Of course she kept on going because there was nothing else to do, but every once in a while she had had to stop herself and calm down before the tears came in full force. As quickly as it would come, it would go, and Jo would return to whatever was occupying her mind at the time. Right now she could only be thankful for the opportunity to help other weres at the William Ballard House; for Jo there was really no better way to heal herself than by helping others.

There was an edge in the air around her that made Jo's hairs stand in the back of her neck. Everyone was nervous, herself included. If she hadn't done a good enough job then these people wouldn't be safe, and neither would those they might encounter. Still, Jo could only trust herself to do her best to keep that from happening. Clipboard in hand, she assigned people to cages, making sure no one who had asked was left without one. It sounded rough, sure, but when Jo saw the relief in people's eyes she realized they, too, knew there wasn't a better option.

WHO | Jo & Farren, Open to anyone who’d be in the Summers’ house
WHERE | Summers’ House
WHEN | Night

( Farren Summers: the most mature of the Summers girls. Obviously.  )

Who: Amanda, Cameron and OPEN
When: Early afternoon
Where: Outside of SOHS

He had waited.

Cameron had given this little dome disaster at the high school days without making any official statement. Things like that he'd left to his father and the others. They thought he might be afraid or losing his backbone, but that wasn't it at all. No, Cameron had given them time because he didn't want to seem hasty. The last thing he needed to do was step up and say something only to have the barrier fall, the children tumble out unscathed and everyone look at him as though he was insane. No, he'd save that for the zealots who jumped on everything the second it happened instead of giving it time to boil and set. Now the people had seen that it was a problem and it wasn't going to just stop. This had happened because of the supernaturals. If a barrier that kept everyone out wasn't supernatural in origin... he'd be damned by one of those demons they kept screaming about.

"You know why it's happening!" Cameron had to raise his voice to be heard over the general din of voices from the crowd. One of his aides had gotten him a makeshift stand and he was up on it, the notes that had been written forgotten in front of him. Just looking at the school put a sick feeling in his stomach. How could they stand it? All of that magic. It was disgusting, it truly was, and he reached out to take Amanda's hand to reassure himself. That the magic wouldn't touch him. "It's because of them, these supernaturals who flaunt themselves and bring more and more of their magic into the world. What did they do not that long ago? Opened barriers that existed for a reason and released horrors that we still don't know the extent of. Horrors that likely-" He flung his other hand out and pointed to the school. "-caused that to happen to your children! Why do we still embrace them and turn to them for help when clearly they can do nothing? Letting them run free..." He shook his head, a rueful smile on his face. "Has it done any good for us?"

Who: Jo and Roxy
When: Early Morning
Where: SOHS Lawn

( If there was one thing that she hated more than doing nothing, it was feeling useless. )

WHO: Allegra & Jo
WHERE: SOHS grounds, where the Summers have set up camp
WHEN: Around noon

Despite all the forces in the world telling her not to, Allegra had gone ahead and reopened Many Paths. Not that it was ever really closed as her daughter Willow had been a much braver soul than she had and kept it open. Today, however, had Allegra worrying. No matter what, her daughters usually checked in. Be it a text or a call or something misplaced in the old house, something always alerted Allegra to the fact that they were alive and happy and well. She'd seen Willow, of course, and was glad she was at least aware of the whereabouts of one daughter. It was usually the other way around. Venus was more easily tracked-down than her wilder child, but things had been strange as of late and it seemed to be affecting her family dynamic as well. At any rate, the fact remained that she was worried about her younger daughter. She'd hoped (and it was kind of a sad hope, at that, considering the circumstances...) that Venus had simply gotten too involved in helping out the Trent's family. She knew that at least two of Trent's siblings were of high school age and trapped inside the gym with all the other children. It was something that deeply worried Allegra and she hoped it could be remedied soon, for the sake of universal balance. The scales were heavily off-kilter and she, for one, was concerned about the eventual ramifications.

( One could only hope things would settle down soon. )

Who: Sam and Jo.
Where: SOHS.
When: Early evening, after this.

The house had been empty by the time he’d made his way back there and he’d made sure to change back to human form before heading inside the house again. Someone had left a blanket on the back porch for him and he’d used it to make his way up to his room to get dressed, wasting as little time as possible. It wasn’t until he was about to leave the house that he realised something. People used keys to lock houses, didn’t they? Sam didn’t have keys to the Summers house. If he left then the house would be empty and unlocked and that didn’t seem secure. That didn’t seem right.

It was as he was worrying about this, turning a little on the spot as he tried to puzzle out a solution, that he saw the bowl and inside it a scrap of paper serving as a note. On top of the note was a metal key and a plastic keyring attached with the house’s address upon it. The note read: To lock the house, in case you feel like taking a walk. Sam wasn’t sure whose handwriting it was or the paper carried the scent of so many members of the Summers family that it was impossible to pin it down that way. Someone had had enough foresight to leave a key for him though, and after only a few moments of hesitation he scooped it out of the bowl and put it to use, tucking it deep, deep down into the very bottom of his pocket afterwards so that he wouldn’t lose it. Several times as he made his way from the house to the school where the Summers pack had congregated he checked it was still there, settling his hand against the small bulge in his pocket or digging his hand inside to feel the shape of the key, the slightest bite of its metal teeth, the smoothness of the plastic of the labelled keyring.

Sam was a little short of breath when he reached the school and for a moment when he got there he lost it altogether. There were so many people and as he stood there taking it all in he doubted himself, doubted the urgency with which he had come here. Was it really so important to tell someone he’d seen another wolf? That other wolf hadn’t attacked, hadn’t crossed the invisible line into Summers territory. Maybe he shouldn’t have come.

There were just so many people, more than Sam had had to deal with in a while. Standing there with one hand pushed deep into his pocket and his other nervously wringing around the length of scarf hanging from around his neck Sam strongly considered turning around on the spot and heading back to the house.

Who: Jo and Cloelia
Where: The packlands
When: Afternoon

( Though they seem to darken as I go )

Who: Jo and August (other Summers and Summers' close ones also welcome of course)
Where: At the high school
When: WAY PAST LOTTI AND KYLE'S BEDTIME

( Bring paper bags in case of hyperventilation )

Who: Sam and Jo.
Where: Summer's house.
When: Early afternoon.

It was fascinating the way the water struck the window and formed into little rivers, the individual beads coming together in the middle to form small streams that streaked downward to pool on the windowsill before slipping over the edge and out of sight. Sam had lost track of just how much time he'd spent standing here watching them, leaning lightly against the kitchen counter not far from the sink overlooking the garden. Just watching the rain. It had been pouring down all day and he'd spent a good half an hour before leaving his room doing this very same thing, just watching it strike the glass and slip away from sight, losing all force as it trickled down the side of the house and to the ground below to soak into the soil. It was watering the various plants in the yard now, he'd realised, the grass too, and beyond the rear of the back garden the trees were being thoroughly soaked. They wouldn't mind though, they would enjoy it. Plants like rain a lot more than animals did.

They also weren't scared by storms. The first rumble of thunder had made Sam think of a wolf's growl and he'd tensed and looked all around him for the source of the threatening sound. The first real crack had almost sent him scrambling underneath the nearest bit of furniture. If it hadn't been for Mrs. Summers' reassurance that it was just a storm, totally harmless, he might have hidden himself away somewhere and stayed there. As it was when the lightning began to flash he'd needed a second round of reassurance. Mrs. Summers had made him a sandwich he had yet to eat in order to help put him at ease, reminding him all the while that it was just weather, perfectly natural, just two fronts coming together in the sky to make all that light and sound.

Sam still tensed whenever the thunder clapped, he still shied away a little when the lightning flashed, but for the most part he was too captivated by the rain and its movement down the kitchen window to really take much notice of it anymore.

Who: Jo and Lotti
Where: The Summers residence
When: Late afternoon

Today had been a pretty full day for Jo, what with class and voluntary work afterwards. When she arrived home she was dragging her feet, and while her mother insisted everyone put their things away as soon as they got home to avoid clutter this time Jo just threw her messenger bag on the couch and threw herself on it right after. Immediately her stomach started grumbling violently and Jo decided to put off the passing out on the couch for a few minutes to raid the kitchen. Coming back to the living room Jo was carrying the biggest sandwich she could possibly eat without dislodging her jaw, and a glass of orange juice. Setting the food on the coffee table Jo pulled off her boots and turned the television on to watch a rerun of some sitcom.

It was then that Jo found it strange that she hadn't found anybody between the living room and the kitchen. "Helloooo?" She called, mouth full of food. "Anybody home?"

Who: Lotti, Jo, August, (and Open to all Summers/Pack members!) and later, Venus and Julian
When: early afternoon, around 2:30pm
Where: Summers' residence

( Really, there was very little way for Lotti to feel optimistic about becoming a cat overnight. )

Who: Jackson and Jo.
Where: The woods.
When: Late afternoon.

( A wolf was always aware, and Jackson was no exception. )