val takes no prisoners. (perverse) wrote in thecellardoor, @ 2018-01-07 11:49:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! complete, ! open, black bellatrix, moon valkyrie |
who: Valkyrie & OPEN
when: Sunday
where: the forest, near the caves.
what: can't hide in the woods forever
Five days. It had been five days since Valkyrie had stepped through that apothecary's door in Tibet and had found herself on the other side of a floo. Or -- what she had assumed had been the door to an apothecary. It didn't take her but a moment, upon the sound of voices, find a corner to duck into. Her mind raced with possibilities. Had it been a trap? A joke? The ministry? She stayed pressed against the far side of the fireplace, straining to hear what she could of the conversation— of what she thought to be a conversation of familiar voices. She couldn’t properly tell whether she had been there for a handful of minutes or a couple of hours before she’d dared to sneak out of the building. It was a task she was miraculously adept at despite the weight of her belongings in the bag upon her back. She’d made it out and into the forest easily, tacking care to cover her tracks in the snow until she felt she was a safe enough distance that it didn’t matter. She’d climbed to the highest vantage point to look over the village, to study it. It was odd, to say the least. The small town looked so much like the mountain villages she’d encountered through the Alps, but somehow different. The buildings should be old, their design so very dated, but it was all newer than they had any right to be. There was something lurking just beyond it, hiding behind what they could see. It made Valkyrie uneasy, wary of the trick of the mind that had been played. It had been there she’d made camp for herself. Far enough away that she could watch it all, flip through the journals, try to find the seam that would unravel it all. There had been none, of course. No seam to pull at, no door to put her back in the apothecary as she’d supposed to have been. A charming notion, really, but not even her bag could sustain her for long. She’d taken to setting up traps, building a small fire to roast the rabbits she’d managed to acquire from them. Once or twice she’d even dared to enter the village, poking about in the grocer and what meager leavings were left on its shelves. The watch was an easy rhythm to learn, to work around. They all had their set courses and proper times to walk by. The illusion of safety. Aurors she didn’t recognize, a girl with brightly colored hair (that couldn’t possibly be Andromeda’s daughter, could it?), and the Potters. It figured they’d have their noses right in it. It wasn’t until she saw the impossible age of McGonagall and the boy who looked so much like Dumbledore that the statement by Mrs Malfoy truly rang home. From different times. The idea was one that spent the next collection of days rattling about in her head — the impossibility of it all. How was this anything other than a dream? A hallucination brought on by a trap she should have been smart enough to see? The more she learned about the village, the less it made sense, the more tilted and not right it became. That very thought had been in Valkyrie’s mind all morning as she walked her familiar path through the woods. It had swiftly become a bit routine - in the morning and in the afternoon before dusk - to check her traps. She’d already had herself a bit of a collection, but that certainly didn’t mean that she could be frivolous and waste a perfectly good trapping. She set her coffee mug down on a nearby log, still steaming against the winter air, as she came upon a broken one. She quietly cursed the way whatever had been through the funnel had been too big for the twine noose. A shame, really. It was as she’d knelt down to repair it that she heard it — footsteps. She could hear the snapping of the twigs and the crunch of the frost on the ground echo through the trees. Her hand went immediately to her wand, her bare hand pale white and angry red as her grip tightened, listening to the movements as they grew closer, ready to draw. |