InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "As what? Your chaperone?"

Laura Moon (spitandviolets) wrote in mirage_rpg,
@ 2009-01-24 23:41:00

Entry tags:

arrival, complete, day 30, l lawliet, laura moon

Who: Laura and L
What: Arrival
When: Day 30, Sunset
Where: Forest's edge
Rating: PG-13 for adult implications in Laura's past
Status: Complete

Death hurt Laura. She was not talking about the act of dying; that had actually been exceptionally easy. Really, one moment her head had been in Robbie's lap, it occurred to her that oh my God, I'm going to die, and the whole nasty ordeal was over. She didn't even remember going to the hospital, though she knew that she did not die at the scene of the crash. She had waited, for some strange reason, until Wednesday morning. So, a more accurate statement would be that undeath hurt Laura. There was a constant, parching thirst in every cell of her body; there was a complete absence of heat in her frame. She had been such a warm person in life that she would murder for even a fraction of it. In a way, she had murdered for it. Blood, hitting her icy flesh, imbued her with a bit of warmth until it went cold. And in death she had learned that people were so easy to kill once you weren't so prejudiced about the whole thing. It was like they were taunting her as she was able to feel the blood pumping through the veins of the living. There was also the matter of decomposing. While she was not exactly dead, she was certainly not alive, and her body was subject to the laws of nature that affected any body. The maggots in her lungs created a nasty cough, and she felt things moving deep inside her now and then. Really, the whole mess was quite disgusting, and it was almost painful - if she could feel pain.

Death was not as painful as drinking from Urd's Spring had been. The Norns had given her the water than nourished the tree of life, and she honestly thought that she was dying again. It had frozen her insides cold, and it felt like liquid ice, if one could imagine that as anything other than water. Though she had thought it impossible, she had blacked out. When she had awoken, though, the side effects were remarkable. While the water had not restored her life, it had restored her death. Months had been shaved off of her decomposition and decay. For the first few hours, she had possessed breath, blood, and warmth. She was not alive, but she was less dead, and there was a certain mental clarity that had come to her. She knew where she must go, what she must do, and she left Ash Farm (as well as her poor Puppy, her only love) to fulfill her destiny.

Destiny, however, seemed to be wanting to throw another wrench in the works. As of late, Laura had taken to traveling under cover of the forest. While she looked, most times, like a sickly living person, she hated passing for alive. What she really wanted was to be alive. Her second largest desire was warmth, and she wasn't sure what she would do to find it. She had learned what being unfaithful to her husband could cause, but there wasn't much that could hurt her anymore. Karma was a bitch. The forest got denser as she traveled through it, which seemed odd to her as she should have been approaching a highway. She needed to hitchhike in order to get where she was going. An eerie feeling came over her as she walked. Faintly able to see the sky, she noted that it was getting lighter, not darker. Where was the storm that she had seen on the horizon? Why did it seem that the light was coming from the opposite direction? No stranger to strange events, she did her best to ignore these anomalies at first. The trees thinned, however, and she found that she was out of the forest much, much sooner than anticipated.

Before her, a ways off but easily visible, was a set of buildings that looked more at home in Indiana than West Virginia. This turn of events was wholly illogical. Why was there a log cabin? And why was it suddenly beautiful out? She thought she had been heading towards the eye of the storm, the site of the last battle. Where was this place? And if she had gotten turned around, where was her Puppy? Noticing that the sun was beating down on her from a low angle, warming the ice that was her flesh, she stepped back into the shade of the trees. Inconvenient. Laura preferred to avoid daylight almost entirely, and avoiding people was also a preference. She closed her eyes, reaching out, trying to sense what sort of population she was dealing with. Maybe this was one of those hippie communes from the sixties that had never gotten the memo that the Age of Aquarius was over. She felt them, and for a moment her ability to sense them was trying to sort itself out, but their lives washed over her, covered her like a blanket. Stuck between the proverbial rock and hard place, between being lost and being surrounded by an ocean of the living, was an ocean of sun, no matter how faint. Hopefully she'd have time to wait for darkness before deciding what to do. Lost in her thoughts, the typically alert Laura Moon was completely oblivious to the world around her. This was one of those moments when action was required, one of those places that she always hated to find herself.

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spitandviolets
2009-01-27 01:21 pm UTC (link)

Laura noticed the changing of the world much more now that she was dead. Though she couldn't feel warmth, she could feel humidity, she could feel rain, and she could feel the toll that they took on her body. It was, in fact, a little too warm for her liking. Decomposition would begin occurring at a faster pace in a few days, which wouldn't be pleasant. She could almost feel that wiggling sensation starting up again in the bottom of her left lung. This time, it seemed, there would be no easy out. She'd continue decaying until she couldn't even pass for human. Then she'd have to isolate herself, make like the zombies of old. Uck. Zombie. She hated that word. The connotation was mean, nasty. Zombies liked brains. Laura never wanted to eat anything ever again.

"Do you realize how illogical Earth really is?" she asked in that dull, flat tone. "If you think that Earth is, was, logical, you're probably better off wherever it is that we are now. Earth is full of random events controlled by constantly prying and poking hands. No one is safe from the pull of fate, no matter where they are living at the moment." Her hands slid up and down her arms, trying to force some friction warmth into her icy skin. The setting sun was reducing the temperature, which was good for her bodily state, but the mental toll that being cold all the time was taking was staggering. Some days it was all that she could think about.

If Laura had known that he was feeling comfortable with her, more comfortable than with most people, she probably would have laughed one of those rare, sparkling, tinkling laughs. They didn't come often anymore, but when they did they made her seem almost alive. She was deceased. How could anyone be safe around a walking, talking corpse with superhuman feats of speed and strength? Then again, he was safe. Laura wasn't the kind of person to let bad things happen to people 1) if they didn't deserve it and 2) if she could prevent it. While she wasn't as prejudiced about killing and death anymore, she also realized that life was precious. Truthfully, she just wished that they'd notice it. People spent so much time being dark and nasty to each other that they forgot to see the good things. Her Puppy, for example, had lost the light...and it was mostly her fault.

"West Virginia?" she breathed out, eyes turning away from him, searching the horizon. She looked confused for a moment and slumped over, a hand stroking her cheek. "I remember... something... A farm? And there were long dinners and lots of family." Pausing, Laura rubbed her temple for a moment. Images flooded her mind. "No, that wasn't me." Sitting up again, she looked over at the stranger who didn't seem so strange anymore. "I don't know what it's like to not know where you're from. I don't know what it's like to move around a lot, either. I lived my whole life in Eagle Point, Indiana. That's in the United States. It's a small place, and there aren't many people who know or care about it." For someone who was talking about the place from which they had come, there was an awful lack of affection or sentimentality. Her manner of speaking was like a laundry list, a distant and forgotten one. "The farthest I ever went was Anaheim, and that was only for a weekend convention." The faintest hint of a smile touched at her lips. "I was a travel agent, and I never went anywhere."

She was unphased by his deduction. "98% is pretty high," she acknowledged, giving a little nod of her head. "Isn't it possible that I just have nerve damage?" Laura wasn't in the habit of lying. There was no point anymore. Only The Living had secrets. The Dead had only truths. Still, she was enjoying his company on some level. He didn't have high expectations for social interaction, and she liked that. Interacting with people was hard. The fact that it was dark also helped; they usually got caught up on her appearance in the light. On her best days, Laura looked unwell.