DECEMBER 2020 EVENT - PART 2

[robbies]

CHAPTER ONE, PART 2: AND ALL THROUGH THE HOUSE

A creature was stirring.

As Christmas grows closer, look up to the skies
Your city is in for a winter surprise
Come enter the village and see all the change
And come face-to-face with the hostile and strange
From iced-over ponds to the workshop's display
There's snowmen and reindeer to complete the holiday
And just when you think that you're safe and you're sound
You open your door and see what's to be found....

---

LET IT SNOW
(cw: sensations of drowning)

JINGLE BELLS
(cw: mind control)

UP ON THE HOUSETOP
(cw: death and decay, claustrophobia)

RUN, RUDOLPH, RUN
(cw: animal death and dismemberment, violence, death and decay, non-human cannibalism)

HAVE YOURSELF A MERRY LITTLE CHRISTMAS

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LET IT SNOW

CW: sensations of drowning

As the gala winds down and you leave town hall to head home, there’s a bite in the air, chillier than it was when you went in earlier that day. The night sky is blanketed by clouds, which only grow heavier as night wears on. By midnight, the first few flakes of snow have begun to fall… and fall, and fall. As night becomes day and the snow keeps coming down heavier than ever, it becomes clear that Santa Rosita is experiencing an unusual snowstorm—maybe the town will get that white Christmas after all! But as the day passes, the storm shows no sign of stopping… in fact, it’s only getting worse.

Over the next week and a half, a blizzard beats down upon the town. Its effects seem to vary by the hour: Though the snow never quite stops, there are times when it falls soft and fluffy, and there are times when it falls so heavily and the wind blows so fiercely that it’s impossible to see more than a few inches ahead of you. You’re welcome to pay visits to your neighbors, of course; they might need help digging out their sidewalks or hauling cords of firewood inside—especially when the electricity goes out. Hopefully you’re not caught out and about when the weather takes a turn for the worse again!

Even inside your houses, you aren’t safe from the blizzard. The first time you open your door on December 16th, feeling the blast of cold air coming from it, you think you know what’s coming. After all, you’ve certainly had enough experience with being sent to the Christmas village in the first half of the month! You sigh, resigning yourself to the long walk home… but as you pass through the door, everything changes in a way it didn’t before. Your brain doesn’t know which way is up as you find yourself underwater, breath expelling in a rush of bubbles as the shocking cold penetrates your body. Somehow you’ve come through the door and ended up beneath the lake’s surface—but the layer of ice above you has thinned and can be easily broken through to regain your feet and drag yourself out of the water to shore.

But you’d better be quick. Take too long and you might feel something grabbing at your heels, trying to pull you back underwater and further into the lake.

Here in the village, the conditions are always bad. Visibility is poor between the wind and the snow, heavy and cold and wet, and you’re soaked to the skin from your recent plunge. Thankfully, there are towels in the small building that was once the skate exchange station, and there are plenty of now-abandoned buildings around the village where you can hunker down and try to warm up before heading home. Maybe it would be a good idea to leave a spare change of clothes behind...

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JINGLE BELLS

CW: mind control

If ending up in the village is bad in the middle of the day, it's even worse at night.

Beyond the freezing winds and the ice you're liable to lose your footing as you pull yourself out of the lake, it's dark as can be out here. Don’t bother looking for a Christmas star to guide you home; out here and this close to the forests, the stars and moon are blotted out by thick clouds and the snow that falls in clumps. Unfortunately, as experience has taught you by now, this is a one-way trip and the only way out is forward.

Of course, this is easier said than done. With its empty buildings and desolate pathways, the Christmas village is a husk of its former self. The cute cobblestone thoroughfares and craft stations that were filled with screaming children only a few days ago are barren and frozen over, as if left to rot in the cold. The other little faux gingerbread and peppermint stick houses aren't much better. At some point on the first day of the blizzard, the power was knocked out, plunging the village into a blackout you now have to navigate if you want to get home. All of the windows are crusted with ice, dark and empty.

Save for one.

As you walk by one particular building, a faint yellow and red glow begins to glimmer from the storefront. One by one, the tiny cottages in the miniature village diorama begin to flicker to life, gears clicking as the mechanisms start powering up. On a miniature turntable hidden behind the display, a needle drops onto a record and a tinny version of Jingle Bells begins to play. A tiny train chugs around the tracks surrounding the diorama and a wax figure of Mrs. Claus in her chair with her candy cane knitting needles rocks back and forth, and it occurs to you just what you're looking at: Santa's Workshop. There can be no mistaking it. Even in the middle of the night, you know exactly where you are.

Don't you?

The light grows, illuminating the entire storefront and spilling out onto the street. You can see everything now. The little elf figure hammering at his workbench, the one next to him sawing at a board of wood, the two balancing on a seesaw as the toy train circles beneath them. Once you take notice of it, it's impossible to look away. The light pulls you in, glowing brighter yet turning darker. Slowly, it turns from angelic, warm gold to blood red.

As strange as this is, this is the best you've felt all week. A tipsy smile at your lips, you watch the light shift into a pretty shade of red as the snow continues to fall around you. In an abstract way, you know this isn't really where you're supposed to be, but it feels so good anyway. Your home (and not your home in Shadyside, your real home), all the bad stuff that worries you and stresses you out—it all dissolves into sugar.

Dreamily, you stare off into space as the song inside the store begins to warp and deepen. Gosh, you can't remember the last time you've felt this nice. You can't remember much of anything at all, like what you were doing earlier today or how you got here to begin with.

But you do know that it's Christmas. And if there's one place everyone should celebrate Christmas in, it's Santa Rosita. Your home.

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UP ON THE HOUSETOP

CW: death and decay, claustrophobia

It's true what they say about wintertime being the cruelest time. Even in Santa Rosita, that sentiment holds true in spite of the otherwise celebratory and comfy atmosphere throughout town. For every sweet smell trickling out of your and your neighbors' houses, a sharp and cold burst of wind follows. The weather is mostly manageable during the daytime hours, but at night it's a different story. The wind can be ferocious, whistling through the naked trees with enough force to send them swaying. If the cold doesn't keep you awake, the sound of branches tapping against your windows will.

When you wake up in the morning, you'll find a new friend waiting for you outside. Sitting in the front of your yard, positioned between the mailbox and the driveway, is a snowman. Its fingers are thin and twiggy, and the branches they're connected to are arched and spread like wings stripped to the bone. Compared to all the other snowmen you've likely passed by throughout Shadyside, there's nothing particularly unique about it, save for its lumpy build and featureless face.

The snowman is still there by the time you return from school or class. This time, however, it's invited another friend: another identical snowman, this one in a different spot in the yard.

So it goes for the next several days. Every time you enter your house or go to sleep, a new snowman is waiting for you in your yard. Their placement has no rhyme or reason: sometimes you'll find one in the back of the yard, other times in a corner off to the side. Sometimes they'll be spread out. Other times—usually when you turn around or go back inside the house—they'll be clustered together in a group, facing the front window.

Eventually, there gets to be so many of them that it becomes difficult to leave the house. Inevitably, whether it be blocking your car, the driveway, or even your front door, you'll wind up dismantling one sooner or later. And when you do, you'll find more than just snow spilling out onto your feet.

Staring back at you, whether from behind the layers of snow you've knocked off the head or up from the ground, is a Robbie, still dressed in their red and green elf uniform from the Christmas village. His—or her—glassy eyes are fixed in a thousand yard stare, mouth stretched in a grinning rictus on their blue face. Within each snowman is a similar one, all of them dressed the same, all of them very much dead, all of them smiling the same mindless smiles they had when they were alive.

With any luck, you’ll wind up taking the snowmen apart by hand instead of finding out the hard way by running one over with your car.

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RUN, RUDOLPH, RUN

CW: animal death and dismemberment, violence, death and decay, non-human cannibalism

Red and white is just as lovely a Christmas combination of colors as red and green, don’t you think? White snow and red pools spread all throughout the little village. Starting on December 16th, you might be first to notice some—or perhaps you’re the unlucky one that falls against a snowbank only to discover, once you put your hands down, that the fresh fallen snow is covering something. Something wet and meaty.

Another shows up the next day. And the next. And there’s not always enough snow to fully cover the carcasses that litter the village and its outskirts. Clustered by the reindeer racing courses children clapped and cheered for are what's left of the reindeer. They've been hunted, but not with knives or bows or guns. Chunks of flesh have been ripped off their bones and ribs are cracked where massive force has been applied, eyes white and milky—if they haven’t been plucked out. Some of the beasts are still alive and huddling in their stables, balking when the doors are open or bolting, as fast as their long strides can take them, out toward the Old Growth. Careful you don’t get in their way!

By the 18th, none of the reindeer are alive inside the stables. There aren’t enough corpses to account for the whole herd you’d seen before (bored and spoiled, wreaths around their necks). But if you follow the sounds of crunching, the wet and sticky humidity of breath, and the smell that rises up and above the dung and rot of desiccated corpses—

There, hunched over a kill, is a thing with just as many bones visible as mangy flesh upon its back. And when its head turns round, there are fangs in its mouth and claws on five-fingered paws, and both are stained deep scarlet—there are antlers bleached as white as snow—and its red eyes are socket-deep, dilated, and suddenly fixed on you.

Let’s hope you can run on ice and snow!

The creatures are looking for more food now that the reindeer have all been hunted down. Lingering in the village, slow and sluggish on all fours unless they rise to two broad feet and sniff the air, they are massive beasts. Not men, not deer, not Christmas cheer, that’s for darn sure. Unless a human happens by, they will stay in their place—the village, far from town square and blizzard-covered Main Street. If they catch sight of someone, they will pursue them with surprising speed to the ends of the earth-—or at least right up to your front door or until you manage to lose them. They’ll search long and hard, sniffing with their skeletal snouts on hand and far-too-human knee, before giving up and heading back toward their village home. Unless someone else crosses paths with them, that is.

The lights on homes and fires burning in hearths seem to deter them... unlike silver, salt, or sharpened knives (unless they are made of iron or steel), which just bring the deer rearing up onto their back legs to tower up and over you, antlers blotting out the wintry sun, ribs bulging beneath their thin and ripping skin. The cold doesn’t bother them despite their hunger—aren’t reindeer native to the arctic? Perhaps that explains why ice has no effect and they appear from the blizzard as if it was as harmless as a hearty breeze. All the speech you ever can hear is the hunting cry they make—the full body bellow of a thing in pain and rage and determined to survive at your expense.

Unless you can outrun them.

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HAVE YOURSELF A MERRY LITTLE CHRISTMAS

At midnight, December 25th, everything stops.

Peek out your window and there is only peaceful, picture-perfect snow. No blizzards and no blackouts. No stalking deer, no bodies and no snowmen, save the ones that the Anderson children put up on Midwich Street. The Christmas village is gone—no teleporting doors, no lights, no reindeer (at least that you can see or find)—as if it had never been there at all. Only lightly falling snow and cars in the driveway, families at home just as they ought to be—eating cookies, drinking milk, opening the presents spilling out from under the tree. Santa has been generous this year!

And don’t think he’s forgotten you, either!

For those of you who wrote Santa a letter, a box will be waiting on your front doorstep. Try as you might, you can’t find any footprints in the snow, and you certainly didn’t hear any knock on the door or ringing of the bell. It’s addressed specifically for you, along with a little note written in someone’s (very best attempt at) cursive:

I’m sorry if you got hurt
Please don’t be mad
Merry Christmas

P.S. I tried my best to get you what you asked for

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OOC INFO

Happy holidays and welcome to part two of our December event! As always, feel free to top-level for this event, tag around, or utilize our network and log communities for your snowy-spooky posts.

As with part one of the event, mod-controlled NPCs will not be available for this event. You are, however, free to use the Santa Rosita Police Department and Robbies as player-controlled NPCs if you feel they are appropriate for your threads. Need more information? Direct your attention over to our NPC page for the most up-to-date info on your fellow townspeople.

Regular teleporting to the village still happens; the lake is now just an added destination. If you still would like your character to appear in the village but wish to avoid the lake prompt, doors still will randomly teleport you to the village as they did in the first half of the month. Each prompt with peril only can result in death to your character if that is how you would prefer the thread to go. Remember: just because a monster is chasing you or you teleport into the lake doesn’t mean there isn’t a place around for them to hide and get warm! For this event we don’t want people to feel forced to kill their characters. Consider built-in survival options as a gift from mods to players this time... except for the monster in the lake.

Well, we wouldn't say monster, but you didn't think you were the only ones in town with a home, did you?

Whatever's living in the lake can be staggered and caught off-guard, so fighting back against it if it catches you is possible—possible, but not a good idea. You'll never get a thorough enough look to even know what it is you're fighting.

Characters who end up getting caught by it will only have one chance to fight it off long enough to escape and swim to safety. While you can technically stick around in the lake and attempt to search, you do so at your own peril. Staying for any longer than you have to or trying to seek whatever-it-is out will be a death sentence for your character. Please remember to report all deaths and crimes that would be worthy of Tranquilization on their appropriate page here.

Any questions can go in our FAQ thread below. Try to check and see if your question has already been answered on the plotting thread first here.

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Comments

[thevalley]

i. Let It Snow

(cw: near drowning)

[There's the sensation of falling and Ellie tries to reach out and steady herself but grasps only air. Then suddenly she's under frigid water and she can't tell which way is up. Thankfully, the light of the moon is just enough for her to orient herself and surface... up against ice.

Fuck. This is like being caught under the waves of the ocean outside of the aquarium...

She beats at it with a furious fist, beating until it's bruised and bloody until finally, as her vision starts to turn red, she breaks through to the surface.

Coughing and shaking, she crawls to the shore, vaguely taking in the remnants of what was the vibrant Christmas village. Fuck. It's cold. She'll die out here.

They'll die out here as her eyes move towards someone else who suffered the same miserable fate.]

Come on. We... we need to get warm. Start a fire.

[There's got to be something around here that would help with that.]

ii. Up on the Housetop

(cw: claustrophobia, molotovs, burns, ptsd, emetophobia)

[Fuck this.

It doesn't even snow this much in Jackson. So how the hell is it snowing like this here in California? Admittedly, fucked up hellscape California but still.

Ellie can't deal with being trapped. It makes her twitchy. She paces the house, picks at her nails, eats and sleeps less than usual. It's torture. And day by day, hour by hour, the snowmen start to appear. At first she ignores it, like it's a stupid prank. Then eventually, it's moved from stupid to deeply uncomfortable.

She can't take it anymore. Using one of her many molotovs that she's created over the past few weeks like a mad inventor, she lights it and then tosses it out into the crowd of snowmen in front of her door in an explosion of light.

No big deal, just like lighting up a bunch of clickers.

Then there's the smell of burning flesh and the as the flames die down, a pile of burnt Robbies in her front yard, still smiling like they never even felt pain or fear.]

Fuck! Oh god.

[Oh. God. Fuck. She didn't think they were people. But the Robbies don't seem to be people. They were people... Just like that woman in the aquarium... She had been...

Ellie turns and vomits what little she had eaten over the past few days into the snow before slumping against the door frame and trying to catch her breath.

She can't stop staring at face of the Robbie nearest to her. Half of it has been burnt away.

Maybe a passerby whom she just helped or just happens be around could snap her out of it.]

iii. Wildcard

[Feel free to PP me or hit me up on plurk at mythal and we can plot anything out!]

ii; I don't have a human icon that fits whoops

[ribticklers]

[Now, Sans knows human bodies don't turn to dust. He saw zombie kids in October and he knocked over a snowman in his own yard, too. But he's never seen them quite like this--flesh burned and scorched and smelling absolutely awful. The closest comparison he has is burned hair or burned fur, but this is so much worse.

He'd just been trying to walk to the grocery store.

He spots someone alive by the doorframe, looking--well, not great, but he can't blame them with all this on their lawn. He follows the woman's gaze and wow, okay, that one doesn't have half its face.]

Hey, uh, lookin' at that probably ain't gonna help you out.

[Sans is not the best at this, but he doesn't think he's wrong.]

lol legit

[thevalley]

[It's not really the damage that's getting to her. She's killed plenty of people that way before. People that she's pretty sure deserved it. And coming up to your door... it's just self defense.

But the Robbie's expression, it holds her gaze.]

It's like they weren't fucking scared.

[ribticklers]

[Sans focuses on the woman. The damage is definitely getting to him.] If they're the same as those real cheery guys who live here, I dunno if they can be. Or maybe their faces are just stuck like that. [Ha. Ha. But Sans's isn't stuck like that anymore, and actually he really doesn't like how much it moves on its own. Still, when a face is supposed to move, it is pretty weird to see it grinning about being dead.]

[thevalley]

Yeah. I dunno.

[She almost retches again but swallows it down. "They deserved it", she tells herself. "What else did they expect?"

It does nothing to calm her nerves.]

...Not being scared. Huh.

[ribticklers]

If you're gonna end up bein' used as a snowman, that's probably the better option, right? [There's no proof, of course, and it's really not that great an option anyway, but Sans doesn't know how to deal with this except through humor. The gagging sound the woman makes combined with everything else is easily enough to make his own stomach lurch treacherously, and he really doesn't want to have to deal with that right now. If he focuses on the abstract idea of snowmen, it's a little easier.] Some of 'em showed up on my lawn, too. No idea who's making the things.

[thevalley]

Or at least you better be warm-blooded.

[She can be funny. She was funny once. At least trying to be funny isn't barfing. She's doing great at that.]

They're doing it to mess with us, right?

[She gestures at the remains of the robbies on her front lawn.]

[ribticklers]

Dunno why else someone'd--actually, I don't really get why someone'd think this was a good idea at all. [This definitely isn't how you convince people to feel okay with the town you've dragged them to.] But that's still the reason that makes the most sense. Some sort of screwed up power thing. [Putting corpses in people's yards just because nobody can stop you. That's really messed up.]

[thevalley]

Pretty sure they did it because it's a fucking bad idea.

[She clenches and unclenches her fists. Her hands are shaking. Fuck, why do they always shake? Get a grip.]

Gotta be the guy in charge, right? The Mayor?

[It's so much easier to think about who set this up. Who put all of this in motion because that's who's really at fault, right?]

i; cw also drowning

[demonicmiracle]

[It's the 11th century all over again.

Admittedly, then he'd been very drunk on a boat, so toppling over the side into the freezing Norskehavet is only something he has himself to blame for. Stepping through the door into the grocery store only to find himself under the ice in a lake really isn't something he could've avoided.

For a second, his first thought is that this is really inconvenient, before he remembers that he really doesn't want to discover exactly how mortal he is, and then panic kicks in. Like the last time he did this, the cold water makes his limbs sluggish, his chest aching, but some buried deep survival instinct has him striking the ice until it breaks.

Something... grabs at him, it reminds him of a Hellhound sinking its teeth in. He kicks at it frantically, manages to shake it loose and haul himself up out of the water with trembling limbs. Spitting out curses in long dead languages. He hasn't even gotten himself to the shore yet when he hears Ellie, glancing over at her sharply.]

What the Hell is going on?

[Rationally, he knows she isn't likely to have answers. He just isn't feeling particularly rational right now.]

[thevalley]

I think... I think this used to be that stupid village we kept ending up in.

[She gestures to the abandoned buildings that sends water droplets flying everywhere. Her adrenaline is still pumping and she doesn't feel the cold yet. But she's smart enough to know she will soon. Ellie stands and winces. There's a gash in her ankle that she barely noticed.]

There was something in that lake.

[demonicmiracle]

[Crowley groans, briefly incapable of giving a reply because he's too busy coordinating all his goddamn limbs into getting himself to shore, stumbling a little on the snow towards Ellie. Fuck, she's so small. Is that a thing, with being cold? Or is it better to be small, something about surface area?

He's never had to worry about this shite before.]

It bit me. Wish I could bloody — [Bite back, except that's not the sort of thing to say in polite company. He makes an inarticulate noise of frustration, looking around with a shake of his head. His hair is plastered to his head, a few strands in his eyes that he doesn't have the energy to push away.] Moving's good, yeah? We ought to move.

[Better than standing around to see if whatever was in the lake is going to follow them out.]

[thevalley]

Kill it? I know. Best just avoid it for now.

[Whatever dark thoughts he was thinking, she was thinking the same, or darker.

Still, she nods.]

We need shelter. As fast as fucking possible.

[demonicmiracle]

[He makes a non-committal noise; this is the first time he's truly missed the shape of himself. It's always been regret at not being able to use miracles, to move through space, but he suddenly misses his teeth and claws and size. He doesn't want this useless human body that shivers and hurts.

Not productive thoughts, right now.]

Right. Shelter, fire. There ought to be buildings we can get into up that way. You good to walk?

[He can barely feel the pain from the bite, his limbs too cold to register pain, but that gash on Ellie's leg looks nasty. If she's good to go, though, he'll start heading to the closest building.]

[thevalley]

Yeah. It's nothing.

[It's probably not nothing. But she stumbled back to Jackson with a shattered arm and smashed up nose so her perspective is way out of whack. And she can just... force herself to move because she has to. Move or die.]

C'mon.

[demonicmiracle]

[If he were in better shape himself, he might offer an arm to support her, but he doubts she'd take it anyway.

Instead, he wraps his arms around himself, shoulders curled in, and walks as best he can. Keeping his jaw clenched aches, but it's worth it to stop his teeth from chattering.

Fortunately, even empty of people, there's still buildings around, and it doesn't take too long to reach one. Further along, he can see lights, but something about it sits wrong with him. One single spot of illumination in an abandoned town.]

S'a trap if I ever saw one. [With a nod towards Santa's workshop, before he turns to the nearest building, shoving at the door with his shoulder. It doesn't budge.] Fuck. Window?

[Ellie's small, maybe she can get in that way.]

[thevalley]

Yeah. But sometimes you have one option and it's the shitty option.

[So she prays there's something in one of the other shacks. With a limp she does her best to suppress, she follows him over to the closest one and, following the failure to open the door, slides her fingers underneath the window, trying to pull it open. She manages to get it away from the sill and nods at Crowley.]

Hey. Help with this.

ii cw: all that entails.

[feudalladyshandmaid]

[Even in the harsh snowfall, smoke travels a little ways before it's choked out, and the smell travels even further. On the harsh winds, it reaches even to the furthest streets.

Cassandra thought at first that she'd be running towards a house fire, following her nose as she had a hand raised to block the snow from her eyes. But the smell wasn't... right. Not like burning wood.

When she finds the source of the problem, it's... Well. By now, she's gruesomely aware of what hides inside the snowmen, but the sight is no less disturbing. Smoking remains, frozen in ice and rictus grins, littering the lawn.

The sight already has her gagging before the putrid stench hits. Her eyes snap to the woman slumped in her doorway.]

What happened?

[thevalley]

It's kinda fucking obvious?

[She doesn't mean to be a dick. But what is she supposed to say?

Instead, she just drops her face into her hands and tries to breath. They deserved it. They were stalking her house and they fucking deserved it. She was just trying to protect herself. She didn't know.]

Fuck.

[She doesn't even know what else to say.]

[feudalladyshandmaid]

It... [No, no. She's right. It's a stupid thing to ask.

The devastation is readily apparent, and the scene is not good at all.

There's so many of them. It's difficult to weave around the flaming corpses, but Cassandra manages. All to get a little closer to Ellie.]

...You said it. [What else should she say?] Hey, come on. Let's... go back inside. Get away from this.

i; let it snow; cw: near drowning

[monomachy]

[She'd only been trying to go to the grocery store to pick up a few essentials before the blizzard truly set in. But the moment she opens her door, instead of facing a wall of snowflakes, she's thrust into freezing cold water. On Themyscira, Diana was trained to react to almost any situation--but there are no ice-covered lakes on the island, which means she's caught completely off guard.

Luckily, her body moves for her, instinctively moving towards the dim light of the moon. But there's a sheet of ice between her and it, and she pounds against it with all her mortal strength; the skin of her knuckles cracks, her vision begins to blur, but with one last burst of adrenaline, the frozen surface gives way and she bursts out of the water, gulping down air as fast and deeply has her lungs will allow, trying not to swallow any more water as she does.

Only then does sensation come rushing back, and she works on dragging herself out of the freezing waters. At nearly the same moment she collapses on the ice, she hears someone doing the same thing not so far away--Ellie. Diana doesn't give her body time to rest (time to freeze), instead crawling on her hands and knees towards the nearest tree so she can hoist herself to her feet. There's a building not too far away--she recognizes it from when she went ice skating not too long ago, which means they're in the village just outside town. So not far, but far enough in this weather.]

There--let's go. [Her voice shakes along with her body, but the only thought running through her head is that she has to get Ellie inside somewhere, get her warm. She will not allow her to die out here.]

[thevalley]

Yeah.

[If Ellie feels fear, she doesn't show it. She pulls herself to her feet, barely a wince betraying the injury on her leg. Then she starts to haul towards the building like someone who's had to force themselves to stumble towards a goal with nothing but sheer willpower and the desire to survive pushing them forward.

It's almost mechanical.

However, she does glance back to make sure Diana is moving with her.]

drags self out of the holiday vacuum

[monomachy]

[Each step is a new torture. Diana doesn't exactly have a low threshold for pain; she's simply not used to feeling it. Being without her abilities was already taking a toll on her, and right now, she's frightfully aware of her mortality.

"Unsettling" doesn't even begin to cover it.

She lags just a step or two behind, eyes scanning the area around them for potential hazards or danger. Old habits die hard, after all. But there doesn't seem to be anything except frozen trees and shadows filling the space around them, and that's something Diana is grateful for. Unarmed and weakened, she isn't sure she could fight off another person, let alone a real threat.

The shack looms closer until it's finally right in front of them, and Diana doesn't hesitate before trying the handle. If there's something sinister in there, there's no question that she'll put herself in its way to give Ellie a chance to get away. But the building is blessedly empty, and she motions for Ellie to follow her.]

There's wood.

[Broken furniture, but close enough.]

SAME HAT

[thevalley]

[She gets what Diana means instantly, she looks around trying to find anything to start a fire with. But fuck, she's just so cold.

She wraps her arms tightly around herself as she tries to squint in the dark corners of the room to see if there's anything more.]

We just need metal. A flint.

[monomachy]

[She knows this isn't typically how mortals feel during the winter, but gods, she's freezing. Her fingers feel as if they've completely stopped working, and even opening the drawers of a wrecked cabinet has her fumbling. Sheer force of will is the only thing that keeps her moving, searching, though her movements are stiff and almost mechanical. She cannot let either of them die out here. She will not.

Eventually, her luck holds: in the back of a cabinet is a set of old ice skates, the blades rusted, but one should do. She has to use both hands to pick it up, and moves towards the center of the room. This isn't the most ideal location for a fire, but they don't have any other options. She sags to her knees, dropping the skate briefly so she can use both hands to try and tear a few pieces of rotted wood from a nearby chair. All they need is a small pile--just enough to catch, just to warm their hands.]

Any rocks?

[She isn't sure she can get up again to find one.]