𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒔𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒉 𝒅𝒂𝒚

[ethereal .]

𝐋𝐈𝐋𝐈𝐀𝐍𝐀 𝐍𝐀𝐕𝐀𝐑𝐑𝐎
the stranger ✰ loc; the woods ✰ tagged; joel ✰ mentioned; none

'bad things come in threes' has almost always been a superstition that lilian believed in, because more often than not it's actually been true. lately though, it seems like bad things..people..things..come in waves. when everything started it soon became clear that this life would never be one that she became accustomed with. at least not easily. time and time again, day after day, she's hit by the wave. it never fails to grab her by her core and chill to the bone.

before, it was incredibly easy to get lost in the darkness outside and in her own mind. all it took was rough fingers swiping over her once carefully placed tattoos to remind her of that. a difficult time that she almost refused to look back on, but that never worked out very well. at least now she had another person to suffer through the times with..for now. not a single day was ever guaranteed, but there's no doubt they've gotten out of sticky situations together that would have gone differently if they'd been alone. whether she admitted it or not, she and joel worked well together. having another person around kept her from slipping back to that dark place.

the only darkness it seemed she couldn't escape was that of the night. they always took watch in turns, but it felt like no matter what she did she always ended up staring out in the distance all throughout the night. sleep was not something she enjoyed considering she was always met with nightmares that were more or less a reality. what she did enjoy was watching the sky shift colors from black to navy blue, and then eventually a grey blue color. a tell tale sign that they had made it through another night. a win in her books.

this also meant the she no longer had to sit around, so another win. every morning she would get hit with an adrenaline rush that got her through the day. usually from thinking of what to expect or thinking of the events that happened on previous days. nothing like envisioning your past near death experiences to wake you up. it was joel's own rustling around that made her get moving so they could start their day. lifting her backpack up off her feet and slinging it over her shoulders. she didn't dare look through was little provisions she had left because it would only create a pit in her stomach that would leave her nauseous for days. then again, maybe she should. it would prevent her from eating one of her last cereal bars.

dark eyes glanced over and up at the man beside her as his words travelled to her ears. to head east or to go back the way they came. slow, calculated breaths made her chest rise as fall as she thought for a few quiet seconds, shaking her head once. "we already know what's back there, and we know what's here.." her words trickled off for a moment before she brought her eyes back up to his. decision making was the hard part. if they chose wrong they could be dead by this time tomorrow. "i say..we use the shack as the middle point. head east, the same distance as town is from here. if we don't find anything we can come back here and try our luck in the other direction tomorrow."

[8_Stars_8]

𝑪𝑯𝑨𝑹𝑳𝑶𝑻𝑻𝑬 𝑮𝑹𝑨𝒀 𝑲𝑰𝑵𝑮
☀ ── we're happy, free, confused, and lonely at the same time
| tags: heather | location: roof of king house | word count: 398 |

although charlotte was usually very lax about any form of schedule, her morning routine never varied. wake up at four AM, brew a cup of coffee with a splash of milk, climb up onto the roof (thermos with coffee in hand, of course), and watch the sunrise. lottie liked to view this as a form of controlled chaos.

suffice to say, this morning wasn't an exception. after waking and making her coffee, charlotte set outside. she wore a simple flannel and jeans, and opted out of wearing shoes this morning. when she does choose to wear shoes, she usually goes for comfort over style - be that boots or tennis shoes. the tired wood of the porch ached under her footfall, comparatively, the grass that shone with morning dew hugged her feet. char waltzed over to the usual spot where she scaled the house. the wood siding was worn down to an ineffectual ladder, each log acting as a rung, from years of climbing by lottie. she followed this trail she made over the years, and hoisted herself up onto the roof. everything was a bit slippery from morning dew, yet charlotte found this made things all the more exhilirating. the roof creaked under her body weight, but it would hold. char laid down on the roof, which was at a gentle incline. she peered over the treetops, just beginning to see the sun poking through.

charlotte laid this way for a while. she sipped her coffee from the thermos and watched as the minutes flew by and the sun crept up the sky. she hardly noticed the rustlings of wakefulness beneath her, and the subsequent greeting of her friend, heather. she props herself up on her elbows so she can meet heather's gaze. "you know the way up." she said simply. the first couple of times heather had climbed up here, charlotte felt inclined to assist her, but now the ascension of the house became a rite of passage, or a judgement on who could enter her safe space. lottie knew heather could do it on her own, she had seen her do it countless times before. but that didn't mean that she was going to let her off the hook and make it easier for her. after all, charlotte had to get up here without aid, so why should she help someone else intrude in her space?

[brunchman2000]

▓▓▓▓▓▓▓━━━━━━━━ 𝐞𝐯𝐚𝐧 𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐱𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 ━━━━ he/him - nineteen - link; ✶ ━━━━━━━━━
━━━━━━━━▓▓▓▓▓▓▓ 𝚝𝚊𝚐𝚐𝚒𝚗𝚐; harlow • 𝚕𝚘𝚌𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗; king house attic • 𝚖𝚎𝚗𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗𝚜; mars, harlow, annie, dawson

indentthe only sound that filled the air was the furious scribbling of pen on paper as evan wrote. he'd covered a few pages now, mostly about how much he hated his life. as much as everyone told him to stop being negative, he couldn't help it. the most he could do was lessen his snarky remarks out loud and write them out instead. so that's what he did.
indenteventually, his hand started cramping up and he lost his focus, the passion of what he was writing gone just as quickly as it came. he let out a sigh through his nose, feeling slightly irritated as he shook his hand in an effort to relax it again. he glanced out the window too and noticed mars waving at him from her place on the lawn outside. he couldn't help but smile slightly as he waved back, his heart giving a little flutter that made him want to cringe. he was feeling things toward her that he didn't know how to deal with; things that he wouldn't even write in his journal. he just tried his best to shove them to the side and pretend that they didn't exist.
indenthe was snapped out of his thoughts at the sound of the floorboards creaking, making his head whip around to the latch at the opposite side of the room. he watched as his cousin, harlow, came up into the attic, taking a glance around at the small, stuffy space with a look of slight disapproval.
indenthe could almost guess what harlow would say before it was out of his mouth; something that would sound kind and considerate to others but sounded like a personal attack to evan. "well I like it up here because no one bothers me, most of the time..." evan replied smoothly with the slightest hint of sarcasm in his tone.
indenthe supposed that out of all of his family, harlow wasn't the worst that could have interrupted his peace and quiet. he was really glad it wasn't his mother who would try to coddle him or dawson, who'd follow him like a shadow. while he wasn't particularly close to harlow, he didn't seem like a bad person. that didn't stop evan from throwing the same barbed remarks at him, though.

[HauntedMansion]

Aunt Della Graham

She/her - loc: Graham family kitchen - tags: none - mentions: Lawrence Graham

Finishing off the last of her coffee in one final swig, Della brought her attention back to the notepad she held in her dominant hand, pondering any other task she could add to this atrocious repair list. Originally, the prospect of being able to build literally anything during the apocalypse had been exciting, right up until she realized that most dystopian movies had only ever offered glorified crap compared to reality. Unlike most movies, they were all stuck here in the forest, with no time to sneak away to raid abandoned junkyards or convenient stores.
At least in any of those generic zombie thrillers, people fought back. But here, now, they could only be prisoners to whatever was lurking beyond the trees. She unconsciously scowled at the thought, though she let it dissolve with a long sigh, grabbing the pen she had tucked away behind her ear to scribble something down. It always felt like whatever ended up on this list was just as tired of her trying to fix it as she was.

Her left hand didn’t let her forget about the empty coffee mug she was still holding for very long. Her muscles quivered within the binds of her cast, as twinging pain instantly began to grip at her wrist, threatening to crawl further along her fingers if she didn’t let off the pressure. She slammed the mug down in annoyance, completely forgetting the warnings her injured hand had been trying to give her in the first place. She let out a sharp yelp in surprise, retracting her hand back to be coddled in any attempt to lessen the dulling pain.
She would’ve hit the table again in retaliation, but took time to actually consider her injury before opting to kick one of the table legs instead. Satisfied in her attempt at payback, she slumped in her chair, running her fingers along the messy ink that coated the cast encasing her left wrist. It was only a sprain, and even though she wouldn’t need it for very long, it still ended up looking like the back alley of a tattoo parlor. For falling from the halfway point of the house, a sprained wrist was pretty lucky in her book. At least it was funny to see her brother’s reaction in comparison, who was pretty used to a couple of close calls by now. Though he didn’t find it nearly as funny as she did.