The Wall {IC}

[inkdragon]

Anjali nodded a bit, closing the distance between herself and the two others. If she was going to be scared out of her mind in the woods with no idea how she got there and no concrete plan of getting home, she would much rather do it in a group than alone. And as far as she could tell, Felicia and the man were telling the truth, they were just as confused as she was. "Y-yeah. I'm Anjali. I woke up ten, maybe fifteen minutes ago, out in the forest. But I don't remember coming out here at all. I don't even know where 'here' is."

She looked over at the man, doing a double take at the gills? on his neck. Her hand came up instinctively to check her own, and she relaxed a bit when it found only smooth skin. At least her body was whole, if nothing else. Yet another tally mark under completely unexplainable weirdness for the day.

"You think we were... you think we were kidnapped?" It was the only thing that made sense, it was what she had initially thought, too, but at the same time it made no sense at all. Anjali's family wasn't poor, exactly, but they didn't have money for a ransom. And anyway, they weren't being held hostage anywhere, they had simply been left out in the middle of nowhere. This wasn't for money, so what was it for? Anjali didn't know the two others, but she couldn't see why anyone would bother kidnapping a random college student in the first place.

Her back to the fog, Anjali didn't immediately notice the change in the weather, though the chill in the air had her pulling her flannel shirt tighter around her shoulders. Maybe she would pull out the jacket she had been left in the strange bag. When thunder clapped, she flinched slightly, looking up at the darkening sky. They couldn't afford to be caught out in a storm and soaked through. If they didn't know where they were, they had no idea how cold the nights would get. Anjali bit her lip. They needed to find somewhere to take shelter, and fast. But surely her new companions would know that, she didn't need to start ordering them about. One of them would take the lead. Besides, Anjali hadn't seen anywhere they could wait the storm out, anyway.

@romamaro @jrusso20

 

[Faodaile]

"A test subject?" This thought had not even crossed Mira's mind before Dylan has spoken. Her thoughts reeled, but she still could not come up with any reasonable explanation as to why someone would be testing her. "I'm not sure if walking out in the middle of stream is a better option," she quipped back, clearly in some amount of pain with her adrenaline gone.

"You tasted the water?" She turned to face him a bit, her dark brows tugging together decisively. Her gaze was scanning his face, expression one of utter dumbfoundedess, when the call came from behind her. Mirabelle turned around on her heel, stiffening once more. It was not a particularly threatening voice, and the man in the distance did not look like he had a semi-automatic rifle or more knives on him to stab them with. Cautiously, Mirabelle moved forward; though allowed Dylan to take the lead on this one.

She was not exactly shy, but was also not very keen on getting stabbed if the man did have a hidden knife. Besides- her side was killing her. She glanced down at it, letting the pressure off some. It had not stopped bleeding, but the scarlet liquid had begun to coagulate a bit.

God- she probably needed a tetanus shot, too. What a day. Had it even been a day? No, surely only a few hours... She glanced up to the sky, but was met with only tree canopy and darkness once again.

She recalled a memory from when she had lived in England, when she was about seven- before her father had left for the war. She was climbing over a barbed wire fence with a young colleague of her grade school class when she sliced the inner side of her left palm open on the rust metal. The two had been too young to know what to do, and so they had ran back to Mira's home- her father, a medic, had torn up a dish towel and put pressure onto the wound until they got to the hospital. They had to give her a shot, he had said, so that the wound did not get colonized with tiny aliens looking to suck the life from her.

Bacteria. She knew now that they were called bacteria, and she may have gotten a bad infection without the shot. Was this a similar scenario? Mira looked down at her hand, now- all that was left from the event was a silvery scar. Perhaps it would have been useful if her father had stuck around long enough to teach her something about medicine, but he had left when she was eight. Running her thumb uneasily over the scar, she balled that hand into a fist- still using the other to clutch her bloodied side.

Her hair was filled with twigs and leaves like a birds nest might be from her snooze on the forest floor, and she was already badly dirtied and bloodied from her adventures to the stream. Perhaps she should have washed the wound out when she saw fresh water, but Dylan had been there- she blinked. Whatever came next, Mirabelle knew that she had to be cautious. She had to find a way to get something to pack the wound. Perhaps a jacket wasn't the worst idea in the world, but it was freezing out.

Undecided, she turned her attention back to the two ahead.

{ @Bee @TheGreenerGrey }

 

[romamaro]

Ally mirrored Felicia’s embarrassed smile. He only introduced himself when the other girl came over to avoid having to repeat himself. “I’m Ally,” he said. He looked off in the direction Anjali had indicated, face fixed into a frown. He didn’t notice the fog just yet, and turned back to look at the other two.

He shook his head. “The last thing I remember was going out for drinks with my friends. But it’s not really a weird thing for me to not remember much after that. I’m not good with drink,” he admitted. He watched Anjali’s eyes go to his neck, and her hand drift to hers. He quickly looked over her, and found nothing that looked off, so he looked to the floor with a slight sigh. If he couldn’t see anything, and she hadn’t mentioned anything about relating, or something, then he could guess that she was normal, just like Felicia. Why was he the only one that had been changed? Don’t get him wrong, he was glad that they were okay, but the Evil Genius theory got more full of holes with every second that passed.

When he looked back up, the fog was pretty obvious. His eyes widened. “Whoa, look at that,” he said, pointing past Anjali to the Silent Hillesque mist. Maybe it was the creepy connection he made, maybe it was just because it was getting colder, or maybe it was just basic survival instincts - it was probably a bit of them all - but he knew that they needed to find somewhere to camp out until whatever was starting was passed. It quickly became evident what that ‘whatever’ was; a storm, by the sound of the thunder. He shivered. He’d hated thunderstorms, ever since he was a little kid and one had plunged their street into darkness for a few days. He’d honestly rather die than stay out in one.

He wrung his hands together as he tried to still the shuddering in his legs. “We should find some sort of shelter,” he said quickly, looking from Felicia to Anjali. “I’ve not seen anything. I don’t think we should go into the trees, because lightning strikes trees, I think?” He babbled, his impending panic somewhat obvious.

@jrusso20 @inkdragon

 

[Rue]

She gave a smile to both Ally and Anjali and listened to their stories before giving her own. "I do believe we were kidnapped, I was last in New York, coming home from a study session. I turned down a dark corner, and the next thing I knew, I was here. It doesn't feel like a New York kind of forest, if that makes sense." She was rambling at this point, desperate for something to make sense before she heard Ally's observation.

The mist was rolling in fast, a storm seeming to come with it. The three of them needed to move and fast. Luckily, Felicia knew just where to go. "I woke up right next to a cave. We can use that to take shelter until the storm passes. Follow me!" She said, leading them both back around the lake.

She was thankful for making those X's on the ground, if she hadn't she might've gotten lost out in these woods. Her sense of direction was never good without landmarks. But she managed to get the trio into the cave system just in time. "Nothing left to do but wait out the storm, I guess." She said, putting on her jacket.

"Say, did either of you happen to have one of these blue stones in your packs?" She asked as she pulled out her own. "It's no stone I've ever seen before, and it feels important. If you two got one as well, then maybe we were all brought here for the same purpose."

@romamaro @inkdragon

 

[Faodaile]

Just as the three made it to the cave, the downpour began. It came all at once, like someone was dumping a giant bucket of water from the sky. Those in the forest are provided with a little coverage with the trees, though they will need to find shelter soon. Due to Felicia's fast thinking, the trio in the cave made it just in time; however, due to the cave's positioning and downwards slope, water from the outside has begun to trickle in a very slow and likely unnoticeable pace.

Wood is soaked, the ground is muddy and therefore slippery, and it is freezing cold outside. Seems like the scientist are testing them already.

{ @romamaro @TheGreenerGrey @jrusso20 @Bee @inkdragon }
{Just a lil' environment update for the fun of it!}​

 

[romamaro]

Ally's eyes widened. "Wait wait wait wait wait, you're from New York?" He asked, holding out one hand to tell her to stop. "I'm from Virginia! There's, like, three states between us!" He said, shaking his head in disbelief. The two of them had, somehow, come from two different areas some three hundred miles apart. All things considered, it didn't feel like a Charlottesville forest either, even though he actually had nothing to compare it to, having never been in a forest before. Could they possibly be somewhere in the middle? Pennsylvania, or Massachusetts?

His face visibly lit up when he heard where Felicia had woken up. "Great, great! Lead the way!" He said quickly, hearing another rumble of thunder somewhere off in the distance. As they ran, he started to count the seconds between the claps of thunder. It started off reasonable, and he could believe that they could make it in time, but the time between claps decreased he got steadily more anxious. He was thankful to see the cave, though it looked awfully dark from what he could see.

Just as the rain started, he had the thought to go back out and get some branches to make a fire, to heat them up and to give some better light, but the thought came way too late. Any branches that might have been good for burning would be thoroughly soaked now. "Jeez, that came down fast," he murmured, moving back up the cave to avoid getting wet. He raised an eyebrow at mention of the stone, and then gave a small gasp as he remembered. "Oh, yeah, I did!" He said.

He swung the bag off his back and set it to the side. He pulled the stone and his reading record out of his pocket, holding one in each hand. He shook his head. "I don't understand it. I've never see anything like it," he admitted. He sat the stone down on the ground and slid it towards Felicia. "Maybe if we put them together?" He offered, looking to Anjali for her to produce hers. His focus turned to the reading record, and he held it out. "You guys find anything you'd lost?" He asked. "I lost this a few months ago, and it was in this bag when I checked it," he said, flipping through it for any empty pages, though he already knew that there were none that were blank.

 

[inkdragon]

Anjali pulled the blue stone from her bag, setting it with the others. "What kind of stone glows like that?" she asked quietly. "It can't be anything natural." The rope, the jacket, the crackers, that all made sense, as much as any of the crazy situation made any sort of sense. But the stones served no apparent purpose, as far as she could tell.

The downpour was so hard Anjali could hardly see the forest through the rain. She pulled the jacket on, shivering with the cold. It didn't offer much warmth, to her disappointment, but it was better than not wearing it. Their hesitation meant they hadn't been able to gather wood, and anyway, they had no means of starting a fire. "This definitely isn't Boston," Anjali mumbled, mostly to herself. The words had a muted echo in the small cavern, nearly inaudible over the backdrop of pounding rain.

At Ally's question, Anjali looked up. "My Daddy's rosary," she answered, pulling it from under her shirt to show the group. "I hadn't seen it in years. He hasn't prayed since Mama died." Her face flushed as she spoke. She didn't know how the pair would react to the religious symbol. She didn't understand why people her age sometimes seemed to have such a strong negative reaction to faith. It was personal, after all. Anjali wasn't going to try and force religion on anyone, her faith was between her and God. But Ryann hated it, always got so tense and angry whenever it came up. Anjali had learned that some topics were best avoided. In this situation, though, it was probably best to get all available information out in the open. They couldn't keep secrets from each other if they wanted to figure out what was going on.

 

[TheGreenerGrey]

He had to admit, he laughed a little when he she quipped back at him. Made him feel less... terrified he supposed. "Hey, I'll have you know that walking in the middle of streams helps build relations. Especially when lost in the wilderness and you're trying to get someone's attention. Speaking of the stream, don't worry about the water, it's fiiiine. The human body is amazingly resilient, so that combined with the fact that I only had a little and spat it out means that nothing there could hurt me. Unless there's some sort of weird, never before seen bug in the water. Then I might be in trouble." He said with a grin before the shout was heard.

Turning his head, he noticed a guy behind them. He was immediately happy that there was another one. So much so that he must have moved toward the guy so fast he didn't notice passing the woman (who's name he really needed to learn). Jogging towards the other guy, he raises his hand in the air while wondering why his body was shaking and why he found it hard to do so.

"H-HEY!" He says, quickly dropping his arm as he lead the way towards the other guy. "Good to see it's not just us! Lemme guess, you woke up with no idea where you are as well? Probably had a backpack? Maybe something from your past?" He calls as he gets closer. "We should probably talk while moving. It's cold and the rain might be dangerous." He says cheerily, gesturing back towards the way they were walking as he neared the guy, not giving the man a moment to get a word in.

Pointing at himself and then the lady, he opens his mouth to speak. "I'm Dylan, don't know her name yet. We woke up here only a few hours ago. Some in better states than others." he pauses his incessant talking to gesture at the wounded girl. "Anyone, she reckons there might be some sort of civilisation. I'm coming with due to safety in numbers and the fact that it's pretty much the biggest dick move in the history of ever to just leave a wounded person to fend for themselves. If you wanna tag along, we should hurry. That storm gets closer by the second." He finishes, grinning at the guy with his hands on his hips. Hands that still trembled. He really wondered why that was.

 

[Tellural]

"So that's a yes to the English," Issac mumbled to himself as he watched one of the figures - the one whose voice he had heard earlier - turn toward him. A little further away than the one in the water, the other person had turned to face him as well, though they remained silent with a hand pressed to their side. The pair didn't look like hikers from what he could tell, not to mention the fact that one of them had been walking in the middle of the stream while wearing long pants. He couldn't imagine that the water was warm with how cool the air was, and the thought of having to walk around with sopping wet shoes and socks had a shiver running through him.

With his attention on the smaller figure in the distance rather than the one in the stream, Isaac missed the short blink as the person in the stream disappeared for a fraction of a second before reappearing slightly closer and mid way in a jog. Closer now, Issac could make out that the one currently approaching him was a man, looking to be around his own age or younger. He didn't look like a hiker or even someone that was out to take a stroll in the woods. None of this was looking good for his plan of being able to gain his bearings by asking where this place was.

After three failed attempts to get his attention Isaac remained quiet through the unrelenting babbling of the man who would later introduce himself as Dylan, his only visible reaction to the revelation that they all apparently woke to the same situation that he had being a raised eyebrow. The cheerfulness was strange, especially after Dylan had fully admitted to having no idea of what was going on or where they were, but it was better than being attacked he supposed. Isaac cleared his throat, taking a moment to gather his thoughts before he spoke only to be cut off by Dylan once again.

With Dylan having not specifically asked for his name Isaac elected not to give it for the time being or until he did ask, instead glancing between the two then back at the direction of the stream. Following the river to civilization was a good bet but some gut feeling told Isaac that no matter how far they walked they weren't going to find any. He'd spent well over an hour walking himself and hadn't seen any sign of even primitive human inhabitation. No felled trees or tire tracks that suggested a logging site, no curling columns of smoke that hinted at a settlement and a fire, no old fashioned snares or traps. Nothing.

"I haven't seen any signs of civilization," Isaac replied, leaving out his concerns about there not being any as he glanced between Dylan and the woman, who'd yet to move or say anything. Even from this distance she looked guarded, he really couldn't blame her. Instead of replying to Dylan's offer to come along Isaac started walking in the direction that the pair had been before he'd come along. "Unless we find some place dry in the next few minutes it's not going to matter how fast we can move." He noted as another clap of thunder sounded, much closer this time.

 

[Rue]

Felicia put her stone with the other two, watching for any sort of reaction to being near the counterparts. When nothing immediately jumped out at her, she began to ponder the days events to herself. She had almost missed Ally's question about finding things that they'd lost.

She pulled out the ruby pendant from her pants pocket and showed them. "My momma gave me this as a present when I moved out to go to college. I'd left it at home on accident the last time I visited, so to find it here... it's a little unsettling." She said, a frown on her face as she looked into the ruby. Were her parents ok? Did whoever kidnapped her have to break into their house to steal this? It all seemed so complicated.

She looked out at the rain, giving a sigh, she never liked rain, she preferred snow. It reminded her of her home country, perhaps it was her life in Russia that made her feel warmer than the others were apparently feeling. "I wonder if it was just us three, or if there are more people out there, getting wet in the rain. I hope they'll be ok."

 

[romamaro]

Ally listened to the two girls. "Maybe that's why we lost them. Maybe they got taken by whoever took us," he connected, placing the book down on the floor, but then immediately picking it back up. It didn't feel right for it to be on a filthy cave floor in the middle of who-knows-where. He sat it in his lap instead. The question was why their things were there, then; that's all this day had been, a whole lot of 'why's!

His eyes widened when Felicia wondered aloud about other people. "God, I really hope there isn't," he admitted. "I mean, having three people here was bad enough. And what's the chance they'll have found a cave to camp out in?" He shook his head, and then looked to the stones. What if that was why nothing was happening with them? Because they didn't have all of the stones they needed? He hoped it wasn't. He didn't want to think that there were any more people, somewhere out in the forest, getting soaked to the bone.

He looked again at the stones. The glow was a little brighter now that they were together, but that wasn't because anything mystical was happening. It was just multiple light sources together. He slipped his book into his back pocket and shuffled on his knees closer to the three stones. He picked up the one closest to him, not really minding if it was his or not; they all looked pretty much the same, anyway. He shook it next to his ear, but it didn't seem like there was anything loose inside, like a normal rock. He tapped it against the cave floor, but it seemed full, like a normal rock. It was just about as heavy as a normal rock. But it couldn't be a normal rock. It was glowing, and blue for Pete's sake!

He gave a frustrated groan, turning the stone in his hands. He didn't want to think about it anymore, he would only get angry. He put it back next to the others, and looked back out to the storm. He shuddered with every flash of lightning, flinched at every thunderclap, and he shuffled back into the cave to keep himself as far away from the mouth of the cave as he could manage without retreating into the dark.

 

[inkdragon]

Anjali shivered at the idea of being caught out in the downpour. "They'll get sick for sure," she murmured. "These jackets aren't meant for protection from this sort of rain."

She fiddled with the beads of the rosary, their simple feel soothing her even more than she would have expected. She didn't know where she was, no, but wherever it could be, she knew she wasn't alone. God was there with her. With everything going on, she was grateful for the physical reminder.

"What do you both do?" she asked into the silence. "I'm a student, pre-med. Just started my senior year." Maybe there was some sort of link between them that they hadn't yet realized. It certainly wasn't their location, apparently they had been scattered all across the country.

What she really wanted to know was how long they had been out. Obviously they had been taken a good ways away, at least some of them. Transportation alone would have taken hours, if not days. Had they been drugged? They must have, but her head didn't feel fuzzy at all. Why couldn't she remember anything?