BONFIRE LIGHTS IN THE MIRROR OF SKY.

[wastemods]

WHO: Everyone in game.
WHAT: Our first event log!
WHERE: Anywhere in the world core.
WHEN: After the storms begin.
NOTES: Expect surreal horror and possible violence. Please use common sense when warning for other content.

Photo by drainrat

PREVIOUSLY, ON THE WASTEYARD.

The world remains divided into a land where either a hazy sun shines muted light above or a full moon casts silvery shadows below. They hang fixed, as if nailed in place, more like theatrical props than far-off heavenly bodies. And you can still see only one of them, depending on which side you arrived.

Meanwhile, the storm rages.

On both sides of the world, the rain starts and doesn't stop. The temperature drops, transforming torrential rain into icy snow. Gusts of wind become gales and spin detritus into shrapnel, man-made disasters turned natural. Shadows spin wildly—almost comically—in cyclones, before bursting into nothingness; if you aren't careful, the winds will snatch you, too. Out here, the only protection you might have is cooperating with each other.

Indoors, it's certainly warmer, but that just means water doesn't freeze. Buildings flood with chilly water that rises no matter how many stairs you climb. Architecture groans under the pressure of earthquakes, sending more water cascading through the ceiling before it disappears into cracks below. Is anywhere safe?

Well, yes. One place, splintered into many. The mirrors in ash-gray frames stand sentinel, scattered throughout the world. They emit warm light from the other side; sunlight spills moonside and moonlight reflects sunside. Water impossibly flows around and away from them, leaving behind untouched earth that stays still and silent. Standing in front of them gives you a respite, a tiny bubble of safety to wait out the worst.

INTO THE LABYRINTH.

Once you plunge indoors—unless you're really that determined to take your chances in the storm—you'll find every building with electricity experiencing a brownout. The overhead lights flicker and radios crackle with static, warbling broken news reports and tunes. They eavesdrop on strings of Morse code and private confessions on ham radio. If it's ever been broadcast on the airwaves, public or personal, you might hear it if you tune to the right station; you might even hear yourself, replaying a conversation you've had or will have. And sometimes the audio seems pointed, preternaturally so, as if tuned to your own thoughts and words.

Meanwhile, the waters continue to rise. The halls stretch long, seemingly infinite and twisted into knots. In some of them, no matter how far you walk, it seems like you never get any closer to the end; in others, you hit one dead end and can't stop hitting dead ends, no matter how many times you retrace your steps. None of that's unusual.

But if you delve deep into dark enough recesses (whether accidentally or intentionally), the world calms. The water recedes. Mirrors materialize in the dead ends, scratching out an "X" in the frame before your eyes. If you touch one, the glass falls away in ribbons, flowing like quicksilver and fleeing farther into the darkness. It reveals a hole on the other side, so deep a black it looks flat. Wherever it goes, it's so dark you can't see the other side.

And that's when you hear a sound like someone inhaling and then exhaling, steadily breathing around you. No...you feel it. A presence that has no form no matter how hard you look, but follows you in creaks and groans. It feels like being stalked by a monster in a maze.

Running from it only intensifies the feeling. Attacking makes it even worse. Calm acceptance is the only way to lessen or even neutralize it, but that's something you'll have to discover for yourself. In the end, there's no way to defeat it. You have to trust your instincts and believe it's there, despite the fact that you can't see or touch it.

CHANGING SIDES.

Elsewhere, it starts as a smell.

As the ground shudders and cracks, the stench of rot comes from the fissures. Mirrors and windows melt off walls, and a strong sense of vertigo comes and goes, like cresting waves. Looking out a window shows buildings and bridges breaking off of the labyrinth and drifting—or plummeting—away. They dissolve into nothingness as they vanish into the abyss, like they were bathed in acid. The already fragile world is falling apart.

It comes with a pervasive sense of wrongness, perhaps ironic in a world where everything is already wrong. But that's when it happens: You look up and realize you're no longer where you started. The sun or the moon, whichever you expected, is no longer in the sky. Instead, on the horizon lies its opposite.

It's a phenomenon unique to areas with high concentrations of ash mirrors and hallways, particularly when there's someone else on the other side. Sometimes the instability flips your positions, so one of you is now in the dimension where the other previously stood, while other times it drags you both together into the light of the sun or moon. It's like you resonate, magnets attracting or repelling each other in little pockets of peace.

THE LOCKED ROOM.

Amidst the chaos, as the world shifts and there's no telling where or when you are, you slip through a crack. Or maybe you're a weirdo who climbed through the hole left behind a mirror.

In either case, the fissure is both literal and metaphorical, influenced by the unstable world and your actions. Maybe you step through a door, crawl through a crevice, close your eyes, or do something else to take you between here and there. Whatever the case, you find yourself in a room unlike any others you've seen in this distorted world. Well...once you look closer, anyway. On the surface, it may just be another kitchen, ballroom, or cellar.

But in these rooms, it doesn't matter which side of the divide you were on. Not only because you can't see whatever lights the sky, but because they lie between dimensions. There are no windows and no doors; you'll only find walls the same mottled gray as everything else in this place. Attacking them gets you nowhere. Any damage is there and gone, like the erased moments between flashes of a strobe light. There is no easy way out.

But there is a mirror. Hairline cracks run through its surface, shattering a single reflection into multitudes. Set in an ash-gray frame like so many others, it's left somewhere in the room, whether hanging on a wall, haphazard on the floor, or leaning against some furniture. It emanates the skin-prickling sensation of being watched. Turning away doesn't help; you can feel it gazing at your back.

The haunted feeling only subsides when you stare back. And you should stare back, because these mirrors are your escape route. Staring into them will reveal someone on the other side with the same predicament. Surprisingly, you can hear each other when you speak. It even comes translated if you don't speak the same language, although your mouths still sync to your native tongues. It's like a poorly dubbed movie.

Touching the mirror gives you the impression it's somehow leeching off you, trying to fill those cracks. Try to pull your hand away and you'll find it's a little difficult, like unsticking your tongue from a cold pole. Moreover, you'll feel a compulsion to tell the truth, to do something real.

THE GREAT ESCAPE.

For those of you left behind where the sun and moon still shine, keep an eye on your own mirrors, especially broken ones that seem to be influenced by something invisible. They display a room that most decidedly isn't your own, acting more like a window than a mirror. And whoever's inside, trapped, might call on you for help. You won't be able to hear them, though, so how are you with body language?

Meanwhile, for escapees...

No matter how you escape the rooms, you might notice something a little strange once you get back to the labyrinth. Well, stranger. For a brief window of time (one that grows longer with each room you escape), you'll discover the sun and moon occupy the same sky. The area you've entered is a temporary nexus of sorts, one that fuses the dimensions into something that almost seems stable.

It feels right, but the world isn't strong enough to hold itself together for long.

( COMPANION OOC POST )

NAVIGATION.

PREMISE
RULES
FAQ
ACTIVITY
APPLICATIONS

TAKEN
HIATUSES & DROPS
CANON UPDATES
REWARDS
TPC CLAIMS

WORLD
EXPLORATION
DEVICES
QUESTS
INFORMATION

CALENDAR
SUGGESTIONS
MOD CONTACT
SETTING INBOX
CODEBOOK

Comments

william | westworld | ota

[omniavincit]

i. i am silver and exact | maze

The wind's shrieking is unreal. Buildings bend like trees, the ground rumbles like a belly-laugh, and William's sense of reality turns inside out so many times that for an insane moment he stops and wonders: fuck, where did I park. He loses his coat—it flaps off like some newly liberated bird—and staggers through the first door he can wrench open.

He breathes out. The lights are dim—maybe they're failing. Water sloshes in from somewhere, soaks his boots before receding. He hurries into the hallway.

There's piano music playing in the distance, static-distorted but implacable. No matter how far he walks, no matter where he turns, it neither fades nor grows louder. It just persists, an endless loop. It's not until he starts to hum along that he finds the first radio—his hand brushing against it. As though it'd been there all along.

BUTTON UP YOUR OVERCOAT, it counsels upon being picked up. WHEN THE WIND IS FREE

“Thanks,” he mutters, teeth chattering. The room he's in—looks like a train platform, sans tracks, sans train, sans old gum and the smell of urine. He props himself against an inexplicable turnstile and frowns at the radio in his hand. “Billy,” it singsongs, and he drops it. He knows that voice, her voice, the early-morning roughness to it.

The radio spits out a few sparks—as though clearing its throat—and continues: “Billy boy, you never sleep this late.”

“Fuck me,” William says, at the same time his own voice issues from the radio, younger, to his ears. Blearily playful. “Stop, I hate...shit, what time is it?”

Her laugh spills out of the radio. William drops to the floor, twists the dial. Hits the off switch. "Negative," the radio snaps. "Negative," another chimes in. "Negative, the pattern is full."

Feel free to come across this mess now or later, when he's set one radio atop the turnstile, scrounged up two others, and—actively shivering—stares intently at them. He may not even turn at the sound of someone else approaching, or may greet them with a “shhh!”


ii. i have no preconceptions | bad luck

He lands on a trampoline.

It's broken.

William can't muster a sound, let alone an intelligible word. Something—his body—makes a popping noise and pain streaks down his shoulder. He opens his eyes—it hadn't mattered before, in the dark—to snow swirling around him. With a long, miserable groan he shifts to his side, and as though lying in wait, the trampoline jerks beneath him, collapsing with a rusty screech. He slides off into the street, gets unsteadily to his feet.

His boot's untied.

His shoulder's dislocated. He spent the past who-knows-how-long hurtling through blackness, first struggling, then yelling, the just wishing for it to end. He's said fuck so many times it doesn't seem worth saying again.

And William gingerly lowers himself to a seat on the edge of the trampoline, one of the shadows moves.


iii. whatever i see i swallow immediately | mirrors

a. 1st attempt

He remembers it—feels it, sometimes, like the ache of a past injury. “Unsettling” he'd call it—not necessarily a bad thing. His skin had crawled as he stared into the void behind the mirror; his nerves had felt, finally, like he had a use for them. He's thought, over and over, about what would have happened. The noise he'd heard, the coin he'd thrown. The mirror sealing up the moment he looked away.

This time, he crawls in.

...and emerges in a lounge. The furniture is ornate and coated with ash. Empty candy dishes sit on tables made to support little else.

He feels it again.

Come across William: pressing a hand to the mirror, scraping the blunt edge of his knife the length of the wall, or, at some point, plucking a coin from one of the candy dishes and flipping it.

b. 4th-ish attempt

He doesn't bother with the furniture or the walls—any of the trappings. His hair's a soggy mess but he's outfitted himself with a puffy jacket with growling cartoon bear on it. One sleeve dangles empty at his side. William's gaze is fixed on the mirror as he moves it around, rotates it this way and that. You may get an inadvertent close-up of his face as he peers into it.

If he catches sight of someone else, he'll take a step back. “Hello. Hey.” He breaks into a small, private smile. Raises a hand in a not-quite-wave.

Tilt your own mirror just so and you may see—or think you see—his ring finger disappear, a ragged nub in its place.

iv. wildcard!

ii.

[itselbitch]

It's really not a pleasant sound, like the sound of a plastic bag straining from being torn or when a dumpster truck runs its compactor and an unfortunate piece of board moans in protest as it's crushed to pieces. The hairs raise sharply on the back of his neck, and he has to fight a shudder as he huffs out in discomfort, puff white breath clinging to the air as it floats off and away. He's turning his head before he thinks, trying to figure out where the sound originated. A dissonant screech slithers after. It's down the road to his right.

"Hello?" The shadows usually don't make fuss with the surroundings. It must be another person who's been stranded here too. "Is. Is someone over there?"

Eliot heads over, every other step clipped by the tap of his cane against the pavement. He raises his right hand, gesturing a few poppers to prepare a defense. Just in case.

"Are you hurt?"

[omniavincit]

He doesn't think about it. He doesn't hesitate. Fuck his bootlace, fuck both his boots, fuck every mirror in this place, he's on his feet again, crouched low. Knife in hand. The temperature plummets and the shadow seems to snag on the corner of his eye, taking shape. His breath feels sharp, feels like it could shatter.

He doesn't have time for a look around but he takes it anyway, a useless glimpse of black swirled with white. A jackal's ears elongating to the point of nightmare.

He runs toward the voice. It sounded human. He doesn't look back. He practically slams into the other man, knife perilously close and then restored to its sheath. Eliot registers first as a living, breathing body—William's good arm reaches for his shoulder, grips it. He steadies himself, speaks as soon as he's able.

"Run," he spits out. "Run for cover."

[itselbitch]

He's not entirely unaccustomed to being run into, man people have faked accidental run-ins at Brakebills to find a excuse to talk with him. This is very different from those situations though, relatively far deadlier even, given the blade that comes dangerously close to piercing his overcoat. He steps back half a step to keep himself steady when the hand flies out to grasp his shoulder. Caught between shock and confusion, his arms reach out to the man's sides to steady him further.

"What are you--" He notices the slack in the other shoulder, the way it hangs unnaturally, and Eliot's brow furrows.

"Oh, shit," he remarks softly to himself. "You're hurt. Can you move it? Is it dislocated?"

[omniavincit]

“It's fine.” It's clearly not. Comparatively, though: it's fine, and survivable is more syllables than he has to spare. The steadying touch he doesn't know what to do with—in the end, he treats it like a wall, a lamp post. Divorces it from the person in front of him. “C'mon.” His grip on Eliot tightens, turns to a shove—urgent, but not vicious.

William steals a glance over his working shoulder. He can't tell one from the next anymore. It's a restless mass of razor-sharp limbs. And yet: some part of him wants to gawk at the looming shapes, wants to pick out the mandibles.

If Eliot still doesn't move, he'll try to grab him by the arm, try to drag him if necessary. All in one breath: “Where'd you come from, is it still there?”

[itselbitch]

The dismissal and urgency to drag him away comes as familiar, and he's no less fond of the circumstances even with the distinct lack of god-magic as a threat. Not that the savage shadows about to follow their target toward him are anything to scoff at, but considering the amount of bullshit he and his friends have faced the last several years, this seems plausibly defendable, and Eliot's feeling a little brave today.

His arm curls around his new companion's good shoulder defensively as he tries to move Eliot away, holding him in place as Eliot shoves his cane against the man's chest. "Hold onto this for me, will you?"

Only when he's sure he's passed it along does he release his hold, arm slipping free as he steps gracefully aside so that the injured man can proceed.

"Go. I'll be right behind you," he assures, pausing to let the words be heard before he thrusts a hard pulse of kinetic energy toward the mob. Limbs flail and skitter, but the ghostly beasts remain as undeterred as always. While they begin to regroup, Eliot scans the environment quickly, adjusting his poppers to fit their surroundings as he charges electricity into a following attack.

[omniavincit]

William takes it—sort of, the thing pinned under his arm before he can register what it is. Lightning rips up the sky, and in the breath before the thunder comes he grips the cane. He doesn't go. A disbelieving laugh lodges in his chest, heavy. He says, “Is this a fucking decoration?”

Because if it's not, how can he leave? And how can he stay, knowing it's him the shadows are after?

He wipes the hair from his eyes and the world rumbles and the sky's like that black paper you'd scratch with a fingernail: a ribbon of colors underneath. It's like a girl he knew once, swinging her feet as she blazed with light. It hurts to watch, in a way he doesn't particularly care to understand.

They can't stand here, he reminds himself. “Save it,” he says, raising his voice to compete with the wind. The shadows knit themselves together, taking shape again. He turns but—again—doesn't run.

iiib

[swordliest]

He's not having the best day.

It's very much his own fault, but still. He's been in fights, probably several, he's soaked through to the bone, and he's just about had it with all the blasted, bloody, stupid rooms. This time it's a wine cellar, the kind built by people with money to spare, and he hates it.

By this point, he's figured out that the mirrors are the key, too. He's mostly just been breaking them. Incidentally, he does not wave back.

"Welcome back." Drawled sarcasm. He's getting the vibe that this guy has been through this particular wringer already, too. "You as sick of this shit as I am?"

[omniavincit]

William laughs. He can't help it—it's a little convulsive, by the time it winds down—he's not prepared for the sight of the stranger's lips moving independent of his words. Like a kung fu movie. “You,” he starts, lifting his hand to his own mouth by way of explanation, then shakes his head. “I'm sorry, I'm...it's been a long few weeks.” Or whatever. The longer he thinks about it, the less of a grip he has on it: the more time feels like a burden to bear.

He gives a lopsided shrug, his right arm not involved in the gesture, and a matching wan smile. In truth, he's not sick of it in the slightest—he's cold and his shoulder's started to throb, but with each room there's a renewed sense of possibility. Of getting closer to something. “I keep hoping the next one'll be a bathroom. I really would like a towel.”

Surrounding him is what looks like a garage: the floor oil-stained concrete, a scarred workbench in the corner. An unplugged fridge elsewhere. Strangely enough (or maybe the strange part is it scarcely registers as strange), no echo when he walks or talks.

[swordliest]

"Believe me," he answers, dry, mirroring (ha) the motion toward his face, "it never stops looking stupid. Even after you're used to it."

Because he is: used to it, that is. No one else here speaks his language, not anyone he's ever met, anyway, so he's seen it a few times by now. He'll take it, though, stupid as it is; it's better than writing on the mirrors, trying to read clipped messages quickly and backwards, and it's better than the radios, just voices with no facial cues or body language.

"Fire would be nice." He glares sideways, at a wall of wrapped bottlenecks. "Anything not so bloody cold."

He's tired. He's been going all morning (afternoon? day?), and it just feels like being stuck in a loop. He can't stop, though. Has to keep going. He should suggest the next step— break the mirror— but for a second he just... stands there, rubbing his eyes and shaking rainwater out of his hair. He's tired.

[omniavincit]

He runs a hand through his own (likewise wet) hair, sending it into further disarray. The other man's naked exhaustion opens up something similar in William, a bone-deep weariness he'd kept at bay. He looks politely away. There's a game, he's played it—if only. If only he smoked and had a lighter. If only his shoulder didn't hurt so much. If only there were books here, some trace of intention. If only he'd had another month with COST, maybe he'd have been ready for this.

It's a treacherous game.

“I think it gets warmer closer to the mirrors.” William brings his eyes back to the stranger's fractured face—his gaze is untroubled by pain or sleeplessness, bright and steady. He glances to the bench and after a moment's consideration grips the mirror, rolls it across the floor. He takes a seat in front of it and blinks, leans forward. For a second he thinks he's looking at another room entirely, then he realizes the light's the same—only the perspective's skewed.

“Wherever you are, they're definitely having a party upstairs.” Dry, voice too preoccupied to carry any real bitterness. He tips the mirror back and forth, peering into it. “What's your name?”

[swordliest]

He squares his shoulders a bit, reaching again for stoicism. (He gets maybe halfway there.) "Carver," a pause, considering, "Hawke."

The whole thing is important, surname and all, even (especially) with no one here to recognize it. Part of him still expects the recognition, and the volley of questions that usually follows it, but it's a part that's getting smaller and smaller every day.

"If they're anything how I think they are, then it's a shit party." He knocks his boots against the edge of one of the shelves to shake mud off the soles, ostensibly a show of disrespect to whoever's hypothetical house he's in, but he's watching the mirror more closely now, curious and wary. On his end, William messing around with it just looks bizarre. "What're you doing?"

[omniavincit]

William swings the mirror back to—Carver? Hawke? he sincerely can't tell which is the first name—in time for his introduction. His mouth and his words fall briefly into sync, and although William doesn't know the name, he recognizes the weight it's supposed to carry. He's seen it before—names meant to crush, to unfurl fear. Logan, tossing out his last name like a hundred-dollar tip.

All he can do is wonder.

“William,” he offers in return, with a smile that veers crooked. There's nothing in his name to live up to. As Carver rains mud down on the floor, the smile widens, though there's still something out of practice about it.

Then he returns to the mirror. “I'm not sure yet,” he says, a nagging thoughtfulness in his voice. “I see more than just you, I can see...” He frowns, rubs a hand against his lips. It's so dark, but he could swear it looked like a hole. “Can you move yours? Try it.”

[swordliest]

He glances briefly over his shoulder. "See what? The rest of some fop's collection?"

Sarcastic, and mostly rhetorical. His mirror is round and decorative, hanging on the wall. He taps it on one side to get it to swing one way, and then the other— and whatever he sees, something about it piques his interest. He reaches up to pluck it off its hanger so he can do the same thing, twist it around like a massive magnifying glass.

"Maker. Is there—" He really doesn't know what he's seeing. There, gone, and back again. A trick of the light? "Did something happen to your hand? Just now."

[omniavincit]

He's stopped moving the mirror, sits in a sharp forward slant. His face resting in his hand, his gaze craning toward the dark corners of Carver's room. Another time, watching the varying expressions steal over the other man's face as he shifts his own mirror around would be funny: William notes this abstractly.

He's to the point of asking Carver if he can't find a light—there must be something—when the question brings him up short. “No, it's—” It's his shoulder that he'd hurt. The words dry up in his throat. William sits up, curls both hands into fists, ignoring the twist of pain in his shoulder. “I don't feel anything,” he says—it comes out confessional, his voice wavering.

He adjusts the mirror so it's on Carver's face, so William can catch his unschooled reaction.

He lifts his left hand, palm toward the mirror. Takes a breath and does the same with his right.

[swordliest]

His reaction comes in pieces: guarded wariness, then confusion, then a bolt of shock that gets swallowed up by frustration.

"Well, it sure looks like something from where I'm standing." His voice is sharp-edged, aggression born out of uncertainty. He already didn't understand the magic of this place. He likes what's happening now even less. "Like an old wound, but just sometimes. As if that makes any sense." He holds his own hand up to demonstrate what he's seeing: the back of it to the mirror with his ring finger drawn in toward his palm.

It feels like there should be a pattern, a specific angle to tilt the mirror to get the effect, but there isn't— or at least not one he can figure out, for all that he keeps twisting it back and forth. "What's even the point of stupid magic like this?" This a muttered complaint, mostly to himself. "Just to scare us? Maker, I hate it here."

[omniavincit]

He shouldn't have looked. It's worse through Carver's eyes—seeing and not knowing, feeling only ever-widening dread. Like the resolve is slowly leaking from him.

Thank fuck he puts his hand up. William stares uncomprehending, then closes his eyes. Tight, his jaw clenching. “Yeah. That's...it was a wound.” He opens his eyes again. His shoulder has started to throb. He lets his other hand fall and sits there, a moment, off on another planet. It was sudden. What he remembers of that night is so small and insignificant: the exact shade of blue he wore, the sound—not of his finger being chewed off but of the spider matron's legs skittering across the floor.

“Not that old. We—they—we cheated time. To fix me up.” He sags a little at the shoulders, but doesn't move his hand. Thinks about it—thinks about it a few times, and when he does drop his hand it feels for some reason like pulling away. “Huh.” He eyes the mirror—the glass seems to have dulled. “I guess you can't fool everyone.”

Without thinking he's clasped his hands together, flexes his ring finger back and forth. Quietly, his gaze steady on Carver: “Do you want me to do you?”

[swordliest]

His hand snaps back from the frame of the mirror. He says, "No," with a thread of kneejerk panic, and then, firmly and more insistently, "No."

He doesn't know what William would see. From the story he just told, the closest analogue Carver can think of is the corruption: blackness spidering through his veins, stark beneath his skin. The Joining wiped away the visible marks, but that doesn't mean the effects aren't still there.

The mirror seeing that would be the best case scenario. Worst case— he doesn't know, and doesn't want to find out.

He sets it on the floor, more carefully than he might have any other time before this. Then he steps away, deeper into the room, and his hand goes to the side of his neck, an unconscious defensive motion. "I didn't— It was an accident. What I saw." It has the cadence of an apology. "I won't look anymore."

sometime between i and ii, near the dissolving mirror(s), as discussed-ish??

[wontgraham]

Will's been wandering alone for long enough that he's stopped being concerned about narrating things out loud. It's not a sign of losing his mind so much as it's a sign that he's clearly missing his dogs, and the ability to speak to them at length without expecting anything said to him in turn. It's light commentary that may or may not sound eerie out of context; 'If this place wants to welcome us, it should learn how to create wedges between us with a little more subtlety', or 'If the shadows aren't all dogs, how long until I'm being hunted down by a deer?', or even 'I'd kill someone for some spinach'. It's been a long several weeks of eating mostly prepackaged jerky, okay.

But any number of things might announce Will's arrival ahead of himself, broadcasted through the constantly-malfunctioning radio hung on one of his belt loops with a bit of twine he'd found in a medicine cabinet several left turns ago. (No medicine was in the cabinet, of course.)

Will's quiet when he finally turns a corner and sees someone else, though. Or he's quiet for the few moments it takes him to notice and be startled enough to hit the wall with an elbow as he takes a hasty step backwards. "Oh," he says helpfully, and then, "I'd started to think it made these mazes individually. One for each of us." It's...difficult to say if he sounds disappointed or relieved to have been wrong. Will's not so sure himself.

👍👍👍

[omniavincit]

William has his arms wrapped around himself and he's leaned in close to one of the radios surrounding him, eyes half closed. As though listening to a secret. “They say in this country,” the voice—pleasant, a rhythm to it like the sway of a covered wagon—in the radio intones, “the only people who survive are men of conviction.” He turns and looks, and there's a moment of absolute incomprehension—the moment you look up from a book, and reality swims and time hasn't yet slotted back in place. This is the first person he's seen.

William turns the radio down. Not off.

He squints into the flickering dark, cocks his head to the side. He feels stupidly unprepared, as though there's some protocol he's ignoring, a right thing to say. Slowly, he he raises his hands. “I don't have any spinach.” His voice is light, quizzical. Maybe a little awed.

[wontgraham]

The crackling voice in the radio makes Will think of sand and yellowed plants. It also reminds him he hasn't drank from his canteen in...some amount of time. His watch has been useless since he arrived, not that he's removed it.

Will touches the radio hanging at his waist at the stranger's words. "...I didn't hear you just now. On my radio." Since apparently this man heard him.

This isn't the first person Will's seen in the flesh, but considering it's only the second? He's looking a little awed himself, finally continuing to move further into the room. Closer to the other.

"...But then I guess you've got an advantage, with...four of them." He's got quite a collection gathered in front of him.

[omniavincit]

As the other man nears, it feels like everything gets louder—his approaching footsteps, the distant roar of water, William's own breathing. It's the radios, he realizes moments later. A hush has fallen over them. William lowers his hands, steps outside the loose ring of devices he's assembled. It looks insane, now that someone else is here to see it.

“That one just says 'I love you' over and over,” he says, by way of...explanation? Excuse? Either way, the radio he points out—a lunchbox-sized affair with only a few streaks of green paint left—doesn't oblige. “I didn't mean to eavesdrop.” Though of course he did, just not on Will in particular. “I was...it's not important.”

He looks down at his hand—dirty, more callused than he remembers—and wipes it on his pant leg before offering it. “Anyway. I'm William.” One of the radios rouses itself, begins to play softly.

[wontgraham]

Will wants to ask 'in whose voice?' and very nearly does; his face pinches with question and his mouth opens, but he cuts himself off with a different, branching curiosity for the rest of what this man says. And does. Will still hasn't met that many people in person so far, and each of them comes with their own peculiarities that are just as distracting as ever.

"You were just...listening. Waiting." Staying in one place, making temporary camp. How many times has Will done that between traveling on foot everywhere he can manage? Will looks at the offered hand for a moment like he doesn't process what it's for, and then he only looks surprised and a bit tired as he reaches his own hand out to take it. "—Will." A beat of hesitation over the similar name.

"You're the one who wrote on the ground. —With. With Ellie." Yeah, Will got that information from her at some point, evidently, and is now sharing it like that's a perfectly acceptable introductory fact. "Good thing this place didn't pick any more of us with the same name, or this might have gotten confusing." His humor - what's there of it - is far drier than any part of his clothing is, considering the snow and rain going on outside.

[omniavincit]

Here William is: skinny, wet hair plastered to his scalp. Knife at his hip. Not particularly striking, as specimens go. He watches the other man struggle with some impulse, some prohibition. Dwells a little in the might-have-been, rather than the now. Tries to hear the question that never takes shape.

Then Will puts words in his mouth. “That isn't what I was gonna say,” he says, mouth twisting as he turns to switch off the radios. One, two, three, four. He's precise about it; once it's done he doesn't spare them another glance. After the handshake he takes a step back, wraps his arms around himself. He studies Will, not doing much to mask it.

Maybe it's good to have a sharp division this early.

“That was me,” he confirms, rubbing at his jaw and glancing away. He doesn't like imagining her in this. Swallowed up by a maze. “She's...” He arches an eyebrow, something his mom used to say coming to him. The memory a stone skipped across universes. “She's a funny kid.”

He shrugs. “You can call me Louis if it makes things easier.” Silent s, offered with a ghost of a smile.

[wontgraham]

Will, for his part, is slightly less skinny and no less damp. His shoes stopped squelching with water about three passed mirrors ago, at least. Will's brows pinch in at the commentary. "I didn't mean you were going to tell me that," he says, with a stiffness born of never really getting that good at explaining this part of himself, because the explanations never get a reception worth trying hard for, "I mean that's what you were doing."

Will's own arms cross. Once it's done, Will couldn't say for certain if it's due to the chill or due to unconscious mirroring. He's learned not to ask that about himself anymore.

Will scoffs at the word choice for Ellie, though. That's a phrase he's heard before. "Even if she didn't come here that way, it's how she'd leave it." 'Funny'. The last thing Will feels like doing is laughing, and it looks like William's about the same.

Will gapes, surprised, at the offer. His frown returns, more confused than angry. "I'll stick with William. Barely feels like my name anymore, anyway, it's just what someone else wrote on a birth certificate." Will's been a Will for long enough that he can't even say for certainty who gave him the nickname first.

"Did you find them all here, or did you-- carry them in?" He's looking past William again, towards the little ritual circle of radios.