Log | July catch-all | OTA

[edalyn]

Who: Edalyn Clawthorne and maybe you?
When: Early - mid July
Where: Dogtown, the beach, headquarters, housing
Summary: TDM prompts + settling in! I'll probably add more prompts later in the month.
Warnings: scopophobia, thalassophobia, potential seagull harm

Birdswatching (scopophobia)

‘Eda’ and ‘volunteering for work’ rarely go together. But for the moment this is outweighed by her curiosity. She didn’t really get a chance to see the park before it was closed, and she’s itching to go in now that she’s been told not to.

She won’t do it, not immediately at least, and how obvious she’ll be about how much she wants to will depend on who’s with her.

But at the very least, she wants to poke around the outside, and keep an eye out for the supposed supernatural activity. If that happens to line up well enough with what she’s supposed to be doing, then that works out.

She isn’t enjoying the birds, though. Which is strange, honestly. She likes birds–her whole family does. And she isn’t normally prone to worrying too much about being watched. On the other hand, as someone who’s spent much of her life on the run, something about the feeling does strike a nerve.

She’s pacing anxiously, and every now and then talking to the little owl on her own shoulder. Said owl is also watching the native birds anxiously.

Current Events

While Eda doesn’t love the idea of mandatory socializing, she does like the beach. It’s an excuse to put on cute beach-wear and lounge around doing her best to relax. She isn’t entirely succeeding at that part, but it’s probably good for her to try. She’s even trying to socialize, and probably doing some flirting.


Riptide (thalassophobia)
Eda hasn’t gone surfing in… she’s not even sure how many years. But she remembers it being fun, and it ought to be easy-mode in the human realm. You didn’t even have to worry about avoiding the waves that would give you third degree burns! What could go wrong?

It takes her a little while to get the hang of it again, once she does she appears to be enjoying herself. At least, until she’s hit with a sudden wave. While it isn’t scalding, it does make her lose her footing on her board, and once she scrambles back onto it she realises she’s a whole lot further from the shore than makes logical sense. Great.

She could try and swim back, but she has to admit that looks exhausting… and she could fly back, but she really doubts the ADI would approve of that solution. For the moment, she glares pointedly at the ocean.


We Feast Upon the Flesh (potential seagull harm, but currently just scaring them)

Eda is quickly getting fed up with the seagulls that don’t want to let her or anyone else actually eat. It doesn’t take her long to start chasing them off. After all, that’s the helpful thing to do, right? That’s definitely why she’s doing it.

This excuse will slowly become less convincing, if anyone happens to be paying attention. It will likely become more apparent through the course of the day that she’s simply easily distracted by the desire to chase small, moving creatures. Her mannerisms grow less like a human trying to shoo them away and more like those of an animal that likes to chase birds. Maybe even wants to catch them.

And if the seagulls don’t enjoy it… well, maybe she’ll end up eating well despite the gulls stealing her barbecue. In one sense at any rate.

Nesting (early July)

Eda may not be happy about it, but she’s accepted the fact that she’s stuck here for now. And if she has to be stuck here, she might as well get comfortable. It appears she doesn’t have any roommates at the moment, and she’s using the opportunity to do some… decorating.

On more than one evening, she can be spotted, either through the door or the window, bringing sticks into her apartment. There seem to be quite a few of them. In fact, hypthetically, the goal happens to be somewhere around enough sticks to build a bird’s-nest big enough for a six-foot-something woman to sleep comfortably in. Of course, that might be an oddly specific goal for other people to guess.

And whoever moves in next may have to fight Eda for control of the living room.

Hitting the books (mid July)

Another facet of Eda accepting the fact she’s stuck here is that she’s decided to crack down on some research. There’s a few days where anyone entering the library will be met with an irritable, frustrated witch with a cup of unpleasantly strong coffee and a stack of books.

If she was younger, and the situation was less dire, she might be having fun. After all, she very much had a cryptid phase and some of the local legends are the kind of thing she would have eaten up as a kid. But she isn’t one and the situation is dire, so she’s mostly just increasingly irritated with the lack of more solid information.

Wildcard
Feel free to throw any ideas my way!

Comments

[edalyn]

"No," she says flatly. "If I wanted to set the place on fire I have much easier ways." Probably not the most comforting response she could give but well, she probably wasn't going for that.

"I'm decorating," she adds, though she doesn't elaborate beyond that. "It's all the rage on the boiling isles."

This is wildly untrue. Even at home she's a weird bird woman. But he doesn't need to know that.

[abrightboy]

“Boiling Isles? I’m not familiar with them. Is that where you’re from?” Malcolm asks, dropping his sticks in the pile.

[edalyn]

"Nah, it's just the dimension I get my interior design tips from," Eda says in an entirely deadpan tone. Technically that was actually sort of true about the human realm, but that was beside the point.

"Yes, I'm from the Boiling Isles. Are you from some version of here or...?" He looked human, but she was learning that didn't prove much around here.

[abrightboy]

"A version of here, yes. New York." He gestures to the sticks. "Do you have any more you need to bring up? I'm not doing anything else right now."

[edalyn]

It's interesting how biased this place seems towards people from the human realm, not that she has a particularly solid theory on why that is yet.

Eda looks the pile over for a moment and then shrugs. "I'm about half done, maybe a little more," she decides. After all, it's going to be a pretty big nest. "You can help if you're really that bored."

[abrightboy]

"I'm interested, more than bored," he tells her. "I like getting to know new people. Especially when they're from a place really different to where I'm from. Are... there any particular kind of sticks we're looking for?"

[edalyn]

"Well, I can't pretend I'm not interesting," Eda admits cheerfully and with absolutely no sarcasm.

"And... structurally sound?" She shrugs. She knows when she sees them, but she wasn't expecting to try and explain her standards to anyone else. Especially when they're only partly her standards.

[abrightboy]

"Structurally sound," Malcolm muses, glancing around once they step outside. "Where have you been gathering them?"

[edalyn]

"The trees on the grounds and around town... and outside the park. It'd be a lot easier if we weren't supposed to stay out of there," she grumbles the last bit. It might or might not be worth breaking the rules to her, but she can handle a monster or two. She's pretty certain. Can't be that much worse than the things in the other town, right?

[abrightboy]

“In my experience, things can always get worse in this place and it usually happens right after someone says it can’t,” Malcolm muses.

[edalyn]

"I can handle a few monsters... but I'll take your word for it." For the moment, anyway. It's more than likely she'll end up poking around everywhere she isn't supposed to sooner or later, but she'll admit there are probably better reasons than this.

For the moment, she decides to stick with seeing if there are trees left on the grounds that she hasn't raided yet or if she needs to venture further out again.

[abrightboy]

“Are we only looking for sticks that have fallen?” Malcolm asks, following her gaze with his own.

[edalyn]

"Or branches that have cracked or died," Eda says, and she'll just pick a direction she's pretty sure she hasn't explored thoroughly and start heading that way.

"Unless I can't find enough."

[abrightboy]

Malcolm glances at the trees they pass.

"Do we have equipment for cutting healthy branches out of trees?"

[edalyn]

Eda shrugs, since she hadn't gotten that far yet. "I have a knife." Which might work, and her hands, but even if she'd have a fairly easy time of it that would do more damage.

"Might have to find something better." Her default instinct is still to use magic, but this doesn't warrant burning her limited supply on.

[abrightboy]

"There's an equipment shop in town. We could rent a chainsaw," Malcolm tells her.

[edalyn]

"You can rent those? Nice." Eda seems to like the idea of having a chainsaw enough to imply that maybe you shouldn't, in fact, give this woman a chainsaw. But it's probably fine.

[abrightboy]

Malcolm gets excited by things that make people uncomfortable too. It's okay.

"You can. Do you think it would make this process faster?"

[edalyn]

"Yeah, I think it'd help." And normally she might just steal one if she'd thought of it, but if nothing else the ADI salary means more disposable income than she'd had lately. Might as well stay off the wanted posters until she finds a more interesting reason to get on them.

"So where is this place?" She's been poking around town, but this wasn't a store that caught her eye so far.

[abrightboy]

"I can show you," he tells her, turning to lead her into town. He glances over as they walk. "That coffee shop is good," he tells her as they pass it. "If you like coffee."

[edalyn]

Eda seems content to follow, for the moment. If she has to be here she might as well learn her way around.

"I like coffee alright... but I'm more interested in good bars." To be honest she's been drinking more coffee than alcohol lately, trying to keep herself focused while she studies this place. But that doesn't mean she's happy about it.

[abrightboy]

"My friend Jeff knew all of those when he was here," Malcolm tells her. "But I'm not much for them. Neal might know."

He did come home hung over and orgied out that one time.

"I could ask, if you want."

[edalyn]

"Nah, I'm sure I'll find 'em," Eda answers with a shrug.

"I think I met Jeff in Wolf town," Eda muses, or at least a Jeff, in a bar no less, and she hasn't seen the one she's thinking of around in a while.

"He's gone?" She sounds curious, partly because it's someone she met but mostly because she's heard about people just disappearing and she wants to know more about that. Although this could always be moved out or got himself eaten by something.

[abrightboy]

"He left," Malcolm tells her. "After Wolf Pen. He just. Left."

[edalyn]

"Hope that works out for him," Eda says. She hadn't exactly known the guy well, but she's curious how true all the warnings about trying to go other places in this world are.

"We're talking about the bard, right?"