#ghosts of the grove

[luna-saguaro-photo]

Thinking of resurrecting this ghost photography series.

📸 @luna-saguaro-photo

[solmesia]

sex is nice and all but have you considered just laying there... holding your vampire lover... and talking about the first time you broke your oath...........

[starry-bi-sky]

Stuck in the middle of a forest made of

Flesh and bones and they're all scared of

A lost little boy who has lost his heart

Fear's not enough, they have to

Tear him apart —-------

There are two things Daniel Fenton knows that his family knows as well: 

He’s adopted.

He can’t remember anything else before that.  

‘Adoption’ is a loose term, implying that they went through the official legal processes and troubles of adopting a child into their home willingly, and with the full intention of doing so going into it. That is not what happened. What happened is that Jasmine Fenton found a half-dead child, in strange clothing, in the middle of the woods at her Aunt Alicia’s cabin, and then she went and got her parents. 

What happened is that a twelve year old Danny woke up in the same cabin, wearing clothes much too big on him that didn’t belong to him, and with very little memory of before that moment. He wakes up like a spring being set loose, sitting up so fast he scares the daylights out of Jasmine Fenton sitting next to him. He wakes up, reaching for his sleeve for something that isn’t there, and when it isn’t his mind stutters, like he’s tripped at the top of a steep hill. 

When they ask him for his name, he tells them, clearing muddled thoughts from his mind; Danny. He’s twelve.

(He thinks that’s his name, at least. It sounds right; it feels right. If he thinks really hard about it, he thinks he can remember someone calling him that, utter adoration in their voice. So it must be his name.) 

The Jasmine girl convinces her parents to take him home with them, and they give him the spare guest room upstairs. He has nothing to fill it with.

It’s… a strange experience, to go to a ‘new’ home when he doesn’t even remember his old one. 

The official adoption process… happens. He can’t say it’s easy, or difficult. He’s oblivious for the most of it, Jasmine intends on helping him settle in and Danny can’t say he enjoys the smothering. He learns that he is stubbornly self-independent, that’s one new thing he knows about himself. 

His adoption papers say ‘Daniel J. Fenton’. Danny remembers staring at the name ‘Daniel’ for a long, long moment, something curdling sour in his sternum. His name is Danny, that he knows. But it’s not Daniel. But he doesn’t know any other way of saying it, so he keeps his complaints to himself.

(Jack Fenton boisterously claps his hand on Danny’s shoulder and jerks him around, grinning wide as he welcomes him into the Fenton Family. Danny’s mind blanches at the touch on his shoulder, an instinct snapping like the maw of a snake, telling him to cut off the man’s fingers for daring to touch him.) 

(He keeps the thought to himself, tension rising up his shoulders the longer Jack Fenton’s heavy hand stays on him.) 

They found Danny in the summer. It’s a perfect coincidence, Maddie Fenton says before she goes back into her lab with Jack Fenton. She says it’s enough time to allow Danny to adjust; that they’ll enroll him into the school year in the fall. Then she stuffs a canister of ectoplasm onto the top shelf, and disappears like the ghosts she studies back down the stairs.  

(There’s something eerily familiar about the ectoplasm sitting in the fridge, something unsettlingly so. Danny knows what that stuff is, but he doesn’t know where. When the house is empty, he takes a can from the fridge and inspects it.)

Jazz wants him to leave the house. Danny doesn’t want to step foot outside of the FentonWorks building until he has something that quells the feeling of vulnerability he gets whenever he does. He tried to once, and he felt exposed. Unsafe. 

He turned back around and went inside.

—-------

Where do we go

When the river's running slow

Where do we run

When the cats kill one by one

—------

One day, when the house is empty — or, as empty as it can be; the Fenton parents down in the lab, and jazz out with friends. Danny is making a sandwich, and he caves into the urge to flip the knife in his hands between his fingers. A childish impulse, but one he falls for nonetheless. It comes to him easily, like second nature, in fact. The slip of the blade between his fingers is seamless, flowing with an ease like water running down the wall.  

He’s almost startled by it; his body holds memories that his mind does not. Muscles that know which way to move and twist, limbs that know how to hold and how to throw. He continues twirling it, fascinated, as if he were a scientist discovering a new species of animal. 

It’s not for a handful of minutes when a new thought hits him; an impulsive thought that pops in the back of his mind like a firecracker; Danny moves without thinking. 

He turns, and throws the knife. The pull of his shoulder, the flick of his elbow, is familiar like a hug. He knows when to let go, and the blade flies through the air in impressive speed, embedding itself into the wall with a hearty, loud thunk. Sinking into the drywall like butter. 

Danny stares at it in shock, he feels relieved — about what? — before he feels the guilt. He scrambles across the kitchen to pull it out, heart racing in his chest at being caught, and prays no one notices the hole it left behind. 

(He runs up the stairs before anyone can find him, food forgotten, and hides the knife beneath his mattress like a guilty murder weapon.)

After that, he leaves the house more. It’s more out of fear of being caught than the desire to leave. But Danny is quickly learning that among all things, he is someone who was dangerous, before he lost his memory. Even with his mind in fractures, he is still dangerous. 

He’s not sure how to feel about that — he thinks he should be scared. He feels a little proud, instead.

—------

Hazel beneath our claws

While we wait for cerulean to cry

Unsettled ticks run through time

Enough for the hunt to go awry

—-----

There’s another thing he learns about himself. That he knows about since he woke up. He knows that he left someone behind. He doesn’t know who, but he knows they must have been close; he’s always looking down and finding himself surprised when the only shadow he sees is his own. 

He thinks that he must have sung to them a lot; he finds himself humming familiar melodies when he’s lost in thought. Lullabies lingering at the tip of his tongue, an instinct to turn and sing them to someone beside him. He can’t remember the lyrics, but his mouth does, it tries to get him to say them when he’s not thinking. He can’t. 

Danny’s found himself humming under his breath more times than he can count, trying to recall whatever it is his mind is trying to claw forward. 

(“That’s a pretty song, Danny.” Jazz tells him at breakfast one day, Danny screws his mouth shut. He hadn’t realized he was humming. “What is it?”) 

(Something mean and possessive rears its head on instinct, uncoiling like a snake from its ball. His shoulders hunch defensively, he bites his cheek to prevent himself from baring his teeth. He doesn’t know what song it is, but it’s not for her. “I don’t know.”)  

He misses his person. Dearly. He knows, the longer he is without them, that they must have been close. Otherwise, he wouldn’t feel like he’s missing a chunk from himself. He wouldn’t be turning to someone who's not there; reaching for a hand that’s missing, birdsong on his tongue, a story to tell. 

A dream haunts him one night. Warm and familiar, he’s holding onto someone smaller than him, they’re tucked into his side like a puzzle piece. He’s humming one of his songs that is always playing in the back of his mind, an unfinished tale of a harpy and a hare. Danny can’t remember their face, not all of it. He remembers green eyes, hair dark like his own, skin brown like his. 

He loves them more than anything else in the world, a fact he knows down to his soul. He loves them so much it fills his heart with sunlight. Danny squeezes them tight, nuzzling into their hair; he makes them laugh. Then, he proudly boasts something. That when he takes something of their father’s, that his person — a sibling? That feels right — will be… the word fades from Danny’s mind before he can make sense of it. 

His person hugs him tight, his… brother? And their mother — a woman whose face he can’t remember either, but who he loves like a limb nonetheless — appears, smiling. Her hands reach for them both, voice calling them, ‘her sons’. There’s ticking in the distance, it sounds like the fastening of chains.

Danny wakes up cold, tears streaming down his face. The details of the dream already fading from his mind like the cold pull of a corpse.   

—-------

Harpy hare

Where have you buried all your children?

Tell me so I say

—-------

When school starts that Fall, Danny joins the sixth grade class, and quickly learns more things about himself. One of those things being that he’s smarter than the rest of his grade, whatever education he had before, it was better than the one he’s getting now. 

Everyone knows he’s adopted right off the bat. He tells them when the teacher forces himself to introduce himself, but it’s not like they needed him to tell them for them to know; he never existed in their little world before now, and the Fentons are pale as they come. Danny is not.

He befriends Sam Manson and Tucker Foley; they ask him about the scars fading up and down his arms, they ask him about the scar carved diagonal across his face.

Danny, as politely as he can, tells them he doesn’t remember. He thought kindness would come second nature to him, his dream burned into his mind where he hugged his brother so sweetly. Apparently, his sweetness is only second nature to people he considers his own. 

(It becomes even more apparent when Dash Baxter tries to bully him later that day, and Danny ruffles like an eagle threatened. His mind whispers, hissy and agitated, sinking like a shadow at his shoulder, several different ways Danny could kill him for talking to him like that, and fifteen more ways he could cripple him.)

(Danny ignores those thoughts, up until Dash Baxter tries to grab him. Then he breaks his nose on the wood of his desk. It’s easy how quickly the rest of his grade sinks him down to the status of social pariah.)

(At least Sam and Tucker still talk to him after that. When Danny goes to the principal’s office later, he wisely doesn’t mention the worse things he could’ve done than break Dash Baxter’s nose.)  

—--------------

It clicks and it clatters in corners and borders

And they will never

Hear me here listen to croons and a calling

I'll tell them all the

Story, the sun, and the swallow, her sorrow

Singing me the tale of the Harpy and the Hare

—-------

More dreams come, of course they do. Each one halfway to forgotten whenever he wakes up, ticking faint in his ears. He is many different ages. He is young, shorter than a table. He is older, holding onto his little brother. He is singing in almost every single one. He is singing to his brother. 

Danny can barely remember the lyrics, he’s begun leaving a journal by his bedside so that it’s the first thing he can write down when he wakes up. He’s a storyteller, he learns. He feels like a historian, trying to piece together a culture long dead and forgotten. 

His most vivid dream-like memory is not a happy one, and for once he’s almost relieved he barely recalls it. He is somewhere that isn’t home, but his mother and brother are there. He is dressed in black, blades keen in his hands. 

They are atop a moving train. They are fleeing something. His brother is struggling to keep up, he is small, and young. It’s beautifully sunny, they are somewhere green and lovely. 

It is a fast dream. 

His brother stumbles on something, and Danny, fast as a whip, snatches him by the back of his shirt and hoists him up to his feet before he can fall. “Watch your feet, habibi.” He murmurs low, a hand on his back. It’s hard to hear, there is wind in their ears.

His brother, face obscured in all but his eyes, which are green as emeralds, nods. 

The dream blurs, but Danny falls behind. His foot catches on air — impossible, it should’ve been, at least. He never trips. — and he lands against the roof with a thud and a grunt. His mother and brother stop, and turn for him. 

The train hits a turn before Danny can get up, and he shouldn’t have, something pulls on him, he swears, but he slips. He can’t find the purchase to pull himself up, cold fear hits him as his nails scrape against the metal. 

His mother and brother’s horrified faces are the last thing he sees before he disappears off the side of the train. 

(The ticking is at its loudest when he wakes up, pounding against his inner skull. He only manages to write down ‘train fall’ in his journal, before he’s flipping over to press his head into his pillow to get the pain to stop.) 

—---  

She can't keep them all safe

They will die and be afraid

Mother, tell me so I say

(Mother, tell me so I say)

—-------

When Danny is fourteen he is still humming songs he can’t remember, his mind still in a broken puzzle. But his room is now decorated with stars and plants in every corner. He has a guitar he keeps in the corner of his room, and he plays the lullabies in his head on the strings over and over again. 

The ectoplasm in the fridge still unsettles him, still reminds him of a past he can’t recall. The knife beneath his mattress has returned to the kitchen — he doesn’t need it. He found a box in the attic last year, it had his name on it, and inside he found familiar, strange clothes, and more weapons than he thought was possible to carry on one person. 

(Even without knowing that the Fentons prefer guns to blades, Danny knows, instinctively, that they were his weapons. He was — was? Is — a dangerous person. He takes the box down to his room to sort through. The weapons all fit into his callused hands almost perfectly — the grooves worn to fit his palm. They’re just a little small.) 

(He tentatively takes a small blade with him to school one day, and feels much more comfortable with it sheathed beneath his shirt. He’s kept it on him ever since, like he’s reunited a lost limb to himself.)   

Danny doesn’t have a name for his person, his little brother, nor does he have a name for his beloved mother. He’s haunted by dreams every few weeks, many of them repeating. He’s ingrained the words he can remember to memory, and the ones he doesn’t, he writes down in his journal. His little brother; Danny calls him a bird, he can’t figure out what kind. His little bird of some kind; when Danny takes something from their father — what, he can’t remember what — then his little brother will be a little bird. 

(He doesn’t have a name for his brother, yet, but he’s calling his birdie in his head. It’s better than nothing.)

—------

Seeker, do you ever come to wonder

If what you're looking for is within where you hold

Will you leave a trail for them to follow a path

You'll soon forget

Home

—---------

When he’s fourteen, Danny dies. It does nothing to fix his fractured memories, much to his consternation. It just confirms something he already knows; that he was someone dangerous, and that he still is. 

When the shock of death has worn off, Danny inspects his ghost in the metal reflection of the closest table. It’s blurry, hard to see, but shock green eyes pierce back at him, green like the portal. Lazarus, Danny’s mind whispers, and he blinks rapidly.

‘Lazarus,’ he mouths to himself. It’s familiar. Sam shows him with her phone what he looks like, joking that he looks like an assassin. Danny doesn’t think she’s that too far off. 

He doesn’t tell her that. He tucks the thought away with the rest of his secrets, and fiddles with the hood gathering at his neck, attached to a cape with torn edges swinging down to his ankles. He pulls it over his shock white hair. It shadows over his face impossibly so, until all you can see are his green-green eyes peering out like a wolf hiding in the brush.

He ends up calling himself Phantom. 

(Maybe now he can start putting lyrics to his lullabies; his memories may not have returned, locked away with the sound of a clock, but the dead can talk. One of them may just have answers.) 

----------

Home is where we are

Home is where you are

Home is where I am

-----------------

Dedicated to @gascansposts for being the one who introduced me to the band Yaelokre, and thus being the whole reason I was inspired to write this in the first place >:] Those lyrics at the line breaks are all from their album Hayfields.

[lilspacewolfie]

Lazy Sunday Gaming

Content: 639 words, Copia x gn!reader, soft and sleepy gaming session with Copia, cuddling and snuggling, short and sweet, I wrote this on my phone on a sunday morning when i was half asleep please enjoy <3

“Merda…”

Copia’s whispered, breathy swear pulls you from the cloud you’ve been floating on this morning as you feel his chest dip. His thumping heart, which has been lulling you into a peaceful half-slumber on this lazy Sunday morning, has picked up a little.

“Dead again?” You mutter, narrowly opening one eye to see that he has indeed died again. 

Copia makes a soft, irritated noise and shifts his left arm, which has been curved loosely around you, so he can still hold the controller to the console.

The two of you had woken up early that morning, which on a Sunday, waking up any time before nine am might as well be considered a sin. You’d gotten about as far as coffee in bed before ending up back in Copia’s loving embrace. 

“It’s… this is impossible, amore,” he mutters, hitting the reload button and feeling the way the huff he lets out sounds with your ear to his breast.

“I did warn you the first time you see the T-rex it’ll scare the shit out of you,” you mumbles, smiling to yourself. “It got me the first time. The music makes the reveal too, you know?” 

“Sì, you did say. I should understand what you meant. I’m sorry if I woke you,” Copia presses an apologetic kiss to the top of your head.

You giggle at that. He’d put on a brave face for it the first time the music started to kick in, but you know your Copia. Your soft, sensitive Copia. His voice sounds thick in his chest, his accent is more prominent when he's not fully switched on or used to speaking too much. You adore him and these private moments when it's just the two of you; when he’s just Copia and not Papa. 

The two of you readjust, rewinding your limbs together while you climb higher up his right side. You climb a bare thigh around him, humming at the sensation of the cotton burgundy sweats he favours, tucking your head into the crook of his neck. He’d showered before making you both coffee, but the pleasant musk of sleep hadn’t quite left him yet. He always smells heavenly, dare you say, even delectable. Who needs breakfast when you have him?

You start moving your fingers beneath his shirt again, scraping your nails lightly across the pudge of his belly and through the curls of hair that cover his soft skin. Copia hums, his belly twitching at your touch.

“How did you play this when you were so young?” He asks and you close your eyes again when he strokes a hand through your hair while the game reloads. His bare fingers and nails graze across your tender scalp, sending warm tingles down your spine. This is bliss. 

“I mean… I was five so I died a lot, if that helps. Tomb Raider is a classic, I’m surprised you’ve not played it.” When Copia makes one of his usual noises, the kind of sound when he doesn’t know what else to say, you can’t help but chuckle. 

You open your eyes again, tipping your chin up until your noise is nuzzled into the side of his jaw. You press a kiss to the curve of his jaw and he sighs, swapping hands so he can reach up and stroke your cheek.

“You got this baby,” you mumble encouragingly. “Remember, the Raptors and Rex aren’t real and they can't hurt you.” 

You splay your hand up higher beneath his shirt, dipping into the valleys of his chest. Copia chuckles, kisses your forehead and you feel his focus locking in on the game once more. His drive is always something you admire, his grit and determination, even in the face of something that unnerves him.

These are Sundays you love. With Copia and the Rex, too.

masterlist ⛧ Ao3

[burntsodas]

i drew bill!

first one in awhile so i can’t tell if it’s just me or if he looks wonky.

let me know!

🦇🦇🦇

[flagellant]

The more I think about Wildmender the more I grow invested in it. It's a fascinating interpretation of terra nil and solarpunk since so often the genre is fundamentally rooted in settler-colonialist philosophy, and even games which are intended to be the opposite of that--terra nil comes to mind as the obvious one--just end up actually revealing a different side of the factorio problem, because terra nil is an incredible impersonal restoration of ecological systems. Terra Nil acknowledges climate destruction on a global catastrophic scale and it accepts the responsibility to fix that, but it isn't shown as a human act, nor does it really allow itself the realism of just how terrifyingly impossible the task is to try and literally fix the entire world. Its game structure is supposed to be the anti-factorio but its puzzle structures focusing on efficiency and robotic engineering patterns of rewilding end up feeling more like a dialogue than an inversion. It's trying to say that the idea of humanity as fundamentally destructive is wrong while it doesn't actually ever address the human element.

And then there's fucking Wildmender. A game where you are a single human child in a world of endless wasteland and death, where the only other things are ghosts who remember a halcyon era and the hubris that ended it, wraiths which are consumed by their own greed and destruction of the land for their cursed immortality, and a couple god statues. The entire map is just ceaseless grief, filled with the literal dessicated remains of all the biodiversity that came before the countless disasters. And it's a big fucking map.

And then...the game gives you a shovel and a sickle and a mirror that shows the wraiths what twisted reflections they've become.

And the game says, "The entire world is waiting to be better, and the only way to do that is by doing it yourself, long and hard and hopeless as it seems."

I cannot emphasize enough how overwhelming the task you're handed. There is not a single speck of life left in the world. You are given a shovel and a water bottle and just...expected to do something about it. To look at the literal endless wastes and think you can heal it.

This is what Wildmender cherishes that Terra Nil denies: This is an impossible task for you alone. But it has to be done...and you can actually do it. The way you can turn sand into soil and dig irrigation channels is beautiful. Every single scrap of land that you reclaim is something you had to do on purpose. You had to do it yourself. You had to actively choose how to do it.

And the game makes the reward of even just getting a bit more water into the sand feel like victory. Your starting oasis turns from soil into lush and beautiful meadows--sure, technically instantaneously by doing magic on a specific type of plant. But it took me 4-5 hours before I got there. You have to travel so far into the desert to learn how to grow grass again, and then you realize that this endless hostile wasteland is a fraction of the map you're given. And you look at this sudden profusion of meadowy grassland surrounding your spring and despite how sudden it feels you remember how big the world is. You made more progress in a minute than you did in 5 hours and it's not even a speck on the map. How the fuck is this gonna happen?

And the answer is by accepting that it's going to take a long fucking time and a lot of hard work.

That's how it's gonna happen. Get to work.

[blood-grove]

MASTERLIST

Call of Duty

Kyle Gaz Garrick

unnatural bleeding — a mer!gn!reader x human!gaz | ongoing fic

werewolf bites — gaz trying to help you recover from a dog attack | ongoing fic

magical accidents — who were you to say no to your mage boyfriend innocent request for you to try a potion?

scar trails — you and your older brother try to survive the apocalypse and try and make a few friends..or enemies!

John Soap Mactavish

shapeshifter! child! reader & soap — a alt version of another random thing i wrote about a shapeshifter reader :3 tws in fic

the hunt — a medieval fantasy soap x male reader! | ongoing fic

solar and lunar marks — werecat reader and werewolf soap shenanigans w 141

Simon Ghost Riley

dog au! ghost & child reader — this one is so old!! + old dog au intro!

the devil comes in pairs — :3 fic i wrote based on a prompt! , cowboy au

animals grind there teeth at bars — fic idea :3 monster circus au?

mistaken sacrifice — turns out your loyal worshippers are batshit crazy but ghost seems alright maybe in need of saving.

John Price

dog au price & child reader — another oldie </3 + old dog intro

labs and speedsters — taking in a new stray cheetah shifter (you) riddled with anxiety and price sees to help you.

old man — random anxiety hole you've dug yourself into has you now overly worrying about growing. (me projecting)

Multi + Parings

adoption au dad! simon & soap + adopted reader (school fights)

shapeshifter reader + 141

avian/harpy ghost & soap + child naga reader - tws in fic

jungle book au - upcoming

Other

dog au art ! — ghost and soap , graves , price 1 , price 2 , graves 2 ,

König — dog au intro! (old)

i may give him this own section but for now im not rlly focused on him kinda...

a/n; will be making separate master list for when i write for my fandoms :3 this is my first masterlist so please excuse my inexperience...ALSO IM MY ASK R OPEN AND ANON ON PLS

[hikariwolf]

Cozy Grove fanart

[floral-grunge]

Gloomy Grove

[selenadrawsstuff]

“Jack walked all night with Zero, going deep into the woods.”

“He was most curious about the door with a pine tree symbol.”

[wallboys]

coming back from my 6 month asoiaf hiatus to say the vibes are telling me that mel won’t be the one to resurrect jon

[alphabetbill]

Macabre [ HEMLOCK GROVE ] - Chapter 5

~ description ~

A werewolf whose only skill is running from his fears, a half-upir with no idea of the true darkness lying inside of him, and a girl found alive in the woods months after her mysterious death.

Some secrets in Hemlock Grove should have just stayed buried. In a town that isn't so sleepy after all, monsters of all kinds are wide awake under the surface, crawling their way up.

~ warnings~

This story will contain mature and heavy themes that may involve potentially explicit content, gore and murder, talk of kidnapping and stalking victims, animal death, supernatural/paranormal/religious themes and trauma, any other themes not covered in the general description will probably be tagged here at the start of the chapters that other significant warnings apply to.

A list will be linked here upon completion and upload of each chapter:

Cicada and the Snake

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

c h a p t e r    f i v e .

Roman Godfrey

<<>>

ROMAN FINALLY UNDERSTOOD THAT JUDE WAS DEAD. It came like a pin drop, like a sudden realisation of something his brain had refused to let him acknowledge before now. It felt much like a sudden jolt, like the ceiling had fallen, like a sudden blow to the gut that ripped the air from his lungs like a parent snatching a toy from a misbehaving child. 

Staring down a tunnel of trees, he felt something shift in his chest, something that squirmed around, rotten and sickly. All of a sudden he didn't want to do this, but Peter was already out of the car and Roman wasn't about to pussy out and leave him to walk this trail alone.

As he got out of the car, lingering at the start of a dingy forest trail, it hit him in the face as though a wall of air had slammed up, begging him to stop, begging him not to go any further into the trees.

He had not been expecting the sadness that came with standing here in this moment, not the terror or the disgust. Somewhere along this trail, his best friend's body had been left to rot. It left him disturbingly interested in a single question- was she still alive when she reached that ditch?

He thought about the dreams, the woods, the torch, the deer. He wondered if she had felt like he did, trapped in place, surrounded by an unseen enemy, unable to run until it was too late. He wondered if it was quick.

He swallowed thickly and followed Peter like a lost dog into the night.

It was just like the dreams.

Pitch black on all sides with the occasional glimmer of town lights over far-off back fences. The reserve trail began on one side of town, and cut all the way through to the other, separating the trailer park from the rest of civilization with a good few hundred metres between, establishing a clear divide between those who belonged and those who didn't. The Godfrey Estate was on a hill, a spectator, floating above it all, removed from everything and always watching. 

The rhythm of the crickets was jangly and distorted as though they were screaming over the top of each other, like a broken record or a scratched CD. The moon was a claw in the sky and not enough light could tear through the foggy pine needle canopy, so they ended up walking in near-complete darkness.

Roman tried to ignore the ball of ice in his gut, the way his skin prickled every time Peter’s flashlight swept through the underbrush.

"So what are we looking for exactly?" he asked, trying to squash out the tremor in his voice.

"Not sure," Peter said again, the same answer he had given the past four times Roman had asked the question but forgot he asked it. "A clue, feeling, sign, scent. Anything that just feels off".

"I don't know about you but this whole thing feels off man," Roman answered as he rummaged through his coat pocket, "might wanna be more specific."

His fingers shook and he almost dropped the cigarette as he lifted it to his lips, fumbling to get the lighter working.

They found the ditch after about twenty minutes. The police tape was gone, but flowers remained there against a nearby tree with a score mark on it. The cheap fake ones that looked nice but meant nothing, not the real ones. Jude didn't even like flowers. They died every time she tried to grow them, she always thought they brought her bad luck. 

The two boys stood up on the ridge and looked down. 

"Fuck!" Roman cursed, stumbling back, his heart in his mouth.

He was staring at Jude's body. 

She was lying on her side, her auburn hair muddy and knotted. Those wide eyes stared back at him but saw nothing anymore, blood spilling, maggots worming through grey flesh. A jagged sob tore from his throat when it flashed into view. 

It vanished when he blinked his eyes open again. Like a glitch, a snag in the folds of reality, she was gone. 

He did not want to blink again.

"You okay?" Peter asked.

"You...you mean to tell me you didn't just fucking see that?" Roman paced, dragging a hand over his face. He sucked on the cigarette, his heartbeat skittering. He wanted out he wanted out. Away from that fucking ditch, away from where he would have to see. 

He felt sick, and his hand fell to his stomach as though to soothe himself. 

"What? See what?" Peter placed his hands on his shoulders as if to shake him out of it. 

"She was here she was-" he gulped. The ditch was still empty when he looked back down. "She was just lying there. For a second I swear to god I saw her."

"I've seen her before too. The first day you dropped me home I saw her sitting in your car," Peter told him. 

They looked at each other in silence.

The shared dreams and the shared visions. 

"Shee-it."

"Shee-it."

Roman and Peter exchanged a tense look before Peter dropped his gaze, searching the ground as though the answers would materialize in the dirt beneath his boots. He moved a few steps away from the ditch and crouched, combing his flashlight over the area, inspecting every twig, every scuff in the mud. Roman kept his distance, standing with his back to the ditch just in case he saw it again.

"The grass is flat right there," Peter said, rising from a crouched position. He jumped down into the ditch, the ridge at about knee height, and stepped up onto the other side where the grass blades were crumpled, crushed in a distinct line that led further into the trees. He gestured for Roman to follow, and he clenched his jaw, hesitating before hopping down and following Peter’s lead.

They didn't go very far along the path of flattened foliage, just far enough that they could still see the path behind them if they turned their flashlights back in that direction. The further they moved, the more far apart the trees seemed to be, the more darkness that swelled between them.

Eventually Peter smacked his flashlight as its beam began spluttering in a weak glow, before it died. 

“It’s dead,” he muttered, shaking it. 

Roman flicked his own flashlight off and back on, but it only gave a dim flash before it went dark too. Both of them stood frozen, his breathing shallow. "Oh you've got to be fucking kidding me," he cursed, anger coinciding with his growing fear.

He strained his eyes, peering into the darkness, but there was nothing—no movement, no sound, just the dense weight of shadows pressing in around them. 

He saw them, outlined only by the moon straggling through the canopy.

A line of deer. They stood silently and still in a small bit of clearing, staring out from between the trees with blank, glassy eyes. Five of them, their bodies rigid, all too aware of the two boys sharing their presence. Beside one of them, standing by a doe's legs was a smaller shape—a small fawn.

Roman took a step back, his heel crunching against a twig, and the animals darted off once again and back into the trees as though that moment of limbo, that moment in which the deer had seemed so grotesquely aware, had never occurred.

They made their way back to the walking trail and the flashlights stuttered to life again, neither of them in possession of the words to explain it as they walked back the way they came. Something in the air was telling them to leave, and for the first time in his life Roman was happy to listen.

When the two of them got back to the car, Jude was standing beside it.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

mmm. not sure how i feel about this one.

[personinthepalace]

Henry Lewis in The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin

[elliotstalksprite]

cooking up a great god grove oc.. they're a marigold :) more info abt them later when im done w their design. since already have story and character :))

[mariocki]

The Nesting (Massacre Mansion, 1981)

"It may come as a surprise to you that a physicist could even contemplate the existence of paranormal phenomena."

"But you admit to the possibility."

"I admit the possibility of the unknown. I admit that science is only beginning to understand its own discoveries. But I do not believe in evil spirits or painted phantoms in windows."

[hollow-knight-fights]

Hollow Knight Fight Round 1, Wave 5

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