Re: (After)life: Nel L & Lear L
The denim of his jacket rustled loudly against the shell of his sensitive ears and yet the sound still found a way to be washed out in a slew of thoughts. It'd been like that since first he'd come to this place, though he really couldn't have pinpointed why. It didn't seem like anything special, not compared to anywhere else he'd been at least. It was just another small town, one of the hundreds he'd passed through in his life. None of them were any ever different either. They all had the same shitty food, the same shitty motels, and the same shitty, though less shitty than the other two places, bars. This one, he figured, got a few bonus points because it had woods.
It was on the second night he'd wandered out of those woods, content to find something to wet his whistle, when first a breeze rolled over his nose. A lifetime of senses sharp to the level of paranoid saw him sniff at it. He was certain, like every other time, there would be nothing on it. There would be no scent of endless meadows, of no scent of faces he'd be content to see never again. It would be the same as a thousand and one other breezes he'd smelled and, in it, he'd find what little modicum of peace he afforded himself in the decades since he'd left that cursed place.
But then he blinked, pulling a second, longer, scent in and holding it against the flat of his tongue to try and taste it. Another blink as his upper lip curled reflexively. It was the only response he had to the feeling that dropped somewhere in his stomach and, for a moment, Fen thought he might well be going some form of mad. Even if he wasn't, what he tasted there told him an impossible thing...
...because if there was one thing that one eye'd, bastard, with his stupid, pointy white beard, had taught Fen? It was that hope was a fucking trap.
Still, a third sniff, and he'd find his legs moving. There was a new swing to his gait, a prowl of sorts, as he began to hunt the source. Each step only drew the certainty that he was going insane. The only other option was that something existed that smelled just like the way he remembered both his siblings, or Uncle Ozzie had finally tracked him down and this was some kind of trap. Either way, Fen would rid it from the world so he didn't ever have to get surprised by it again and then go get a drink and call it a good day.
Nix that. If it was the asshole, and Fen got to fulfill his promise to himself, it'd be a fucking great day.
He had to wonder though, how long had it been since he'd seen them? Lifetimes felt like a good unit to measure it by, as he knew for certain there were lives far shorter than at least the decades that had passed. Was it possible he was just remembering wrong? Was it possible he was slipping into another one of those periods where he felt the gnawing pang of a hunger he no longer gave a name? If that was the case it was time to fuck off to the woods and just not come out for awhile.
Either way, until he had an answer for certain as to the source, nothing else really mattered, and it'd be that which drew him to that door. It would be that which laid his hand upon it and pushed it open. He wouldn't knock nor wait to be invited, having long ago foregone such habits in lieu of doing whatever he wanted.
The drop of boots on the floor was heavy and, if no one here knew better, it could have been argued Fen might have even been able to pass at the owner. A flicker of brown eyes turned gold, another sniff at the air, and he settled on the sight to see just what he'd interrupted. Another pull of air across his tongue, tasting the room right down to the rather pleasant lingering of smoke and sex that clung to the various people his nose told him he knew.
And not for a minute was Fen about to let himself believe it and so he just stood there.
"Someone just looking around." His voice was a rose bush mixed with a pine tree, thick, coated in a thick sap of an accent, and prickled with thorns. He give this another minute before he made a decision about how he was going to act — the first time he'd done that in longer than he could remember.