#i put up my plan just for some neat creep factor but i'm more than fine with them moving on now!! hope this was okay lol

[townofcadence]

He's thinking about everything, mulling over the unsaid horror of the carnivorous houses, of how things are different from what he's used to, of the fact that screams in the woods are normal and there's zombies that he hadn't run into around. It's like--- he doesn't know. Some horror story? But one of those abstract ones where the symbolism is symbolism but also physical and trying to kill you, or one where the world turns to a nightmare version of itself. At least there still seemed to be things that were harmless and interesting, but..... there was still a hint of morbidity in it all, that was definitely familiar, yet foreign in the fact that here it was mundane. Except also it wasn't before? Based on what she'd said about changing. Maybe it wasn't a new new thing, or something that just happened, but it was new enough that someone still alive remembered how it used to be before. It's almost concerning how nonchalant it all seems to be for Thursday with that in mind, but he tucks that thought away for a later time.

"Ah... well....." He rubs his chin in thought. The first word he could think to describe his home was 'normal', but that hardly described anything when normal could vary drastically. The clearing ahead they were moving toward with a blue glow would hardly be considered normal at home, yet here it seemed something like that was so normal Thursday hadn't even blinked at heading that way. "It's.... definitely different from here? The houses are just structures and don't eat you. I guess there can be zombies, but they're not like--- well actually I don't know. There's different kinds, but most of them aren't like the movies, but I don't even know if that means anything here." He rubs at his neck with a small patter of a laugh.

"There are....trees? Mn-- trees that look less-- the woods are less haunted looking?" Artair kind of wants to facepalm, but it's hard to describe anything when he's unsure of the baseline. Did they have zombie movies? Were they like the ones at home? Would 'normal trees' just mean the ones in these woods, what he meant, or something else entirely, to someone from here? "There's.... a lot of people, and most people don't know about the horrors out there. It's mostly just--- movies and media for them. It's there, but like-- the less you know the safer you are, almost? Most things look a lot safer I guess. Not that they always are, of course. Also I think most of our plants don't really scream. There aren't bodies littered around covered in mushrooms or anything."

If he'd planned to clarify more, it leaves him as they finally enter the grove. Ahead, the blue glow is obvious. He can see a multitude of those bioluminescent mushroom blocks, like a graveyard in the copse. They all decorate the lawn, a miniature asphalt parking lot the size of maybe two vehicles. Said yard leads right up to a building with sliding glass doors that seem to open and close of their own volition in an endless cycle. A banner hangs along the front-facing wall, over where the name of the store might've been, announcing a Black Friday sale with an uncomfortable multitude of colors and a few smiley faces.

The graves look like they might've been those unfortunate enough to be crushed underfoot a while ago, in an effort to enter the building. Considering he'd heard stories that reflected that about his own world, it was his best assumption. But he's not sure if they're luckier than the ones who probably made it inside. Even without shining his flashlight into those sliding glass doors, when they open his vision is clear enough he can see blood and what might've been viscera or other things, dried and coated onto the walls so thick it looked black. Mold seemed to have taken root too, maybe from the humidity and coagulated wet providing a damp environment. He could see the way it covered everything from across the lot, patches of sickly green and fluorescent orange. The only remains of whoever or whatever had managed it's way inside and become the market's meal are covered now in a thicket of fuzz, and tendrils that almost remind him of a circuit board. Even so, there are still some vague shapes he can recognize almost all too well, even at a distance.

His stomach knots. It's not fresh, that's for sure, but he can only imagine what the prior discovery Thursday had implied must have been like, just seeing this. He wasn't sure he'd want to see something fresh if given the choice. His brain can supply more than enough of an image of something wet and splattered with viscera, from his own past experiences.

He shakes his head. It wasn't new blood or-- other things, like the rest of a body; that meant they needed to keep moving if they wanted to figure out the origin of the screams they had heard. He tries his best not to acknowledge what he sees inside that building-- Thursday probably already knew, if she was familiar with the area, but it wouldn't help them any if that wasn't true. And she'd already been reminded of what she'd seen at least once. The less gruesome recollections they shone their flashlights down on, the better.

"Color me curious," Artair asks, walking with her over the edge of the store's parking lot and back towards the forest. "How do you navigate this place without getting lost? It sees pretty expansive. Do you just have a bunch of landmarks you keep an eye on?" Where he lives, there's a giant forest around town, and when people left the trails, getting lost was easier than you'd think. Getting found was all the more difficult.

As it is, Thursday does chuckle a little bit. "It is all a bit unusual, isn't it? Truth is, we haven't studied all these things all that much. I mean, I personally am not a biologist and I don't think anybody else in the Office is either. I've come out and looked at all this stuff, but I don't know anything about taking samples and studying them under a microscope or anything like that. The way we learned about some of the buildings being carnivorous is, well... you know..." she explains by way of not explaining, instead using her eyes and the way they roll off to gaze in another direction to explain instead. Someone was eaten by one and we saw it happen.

She hurries to explain that lack of explanation, though: "It was one of the zombies around here that it happened to. That we saw it happen to. They stumbled on in there, the doors all shut, and when they opened back up later, it- you know, the zombie, it- well, it was just, it- well, it- Yeah, it wasn't a pretty picture." Thursday is hoping the grimace on her expression is enough to explain this time, because the remains of that zombie really was something right out of a horror movie, and even she doesn't want to describe it.

"But to your point, even though there are a lot of dangerous things around here, there are a lot of interesting things too! Even some of the screams in the woods are interesting, hahaha. Like, there's some little flowers out here that I like to call party screamers, because that's what they do - they scream, but they also shoot this like silly string stuff out if you step on them, ahahaha." Thursday laughs as she keeps her flashlight aimed at the ground, picking her way around all the forest debris here and there.

"What are things like where you're from, Artair?"