riverviewlogs | semi-closed catch-all;

Entry tags:

semi-closed catch-all;

who: Shai, Flint or Ellie.
what: general catch-all log for the month of May
where: All over the place.
warnings: none yet, will update as necessary.
notes: pm me if you want to do something/would like a starter, happy to whip one up. totally open to new/established cr with firefly/memoria stuff here too.

Shai;

[Shai can be found doing all manner of things. She works as an electrical engineer, so feel free to run into her at her place of work. Alternately, she can be found in the gym, jogging at four AM like a crazy person, showing off her extensive electrokinetic powers to crowds she can shock and awe, or hell, she will absolutely come up to you and say hi if you glance in her direction. Feel free to pick something and go from there.

She's also a consummate flirt, so feel free to run into her at a bar where she will definitely buy your character (man or woman) a drink and strike up a conversation in that context as well.]

Flint;

[Flint can usually be found in the library, or doing woodworking at a small shop he's taken out a rental on. Alternately, he hosts a weekly event at a set location near the woods where he teaches swordfighting and grappling! Talk to him about literature and he will be your friend forever.]

Ellie;

[Ellie has moved out of the communal housing complexes and into this awesome place. Existing CR is more than welcome to make house calls, she'll have contacted everyone she has a decent amount of positive CR with to let them know where she is now.

She can also be found in the park throwing around balls (want to get whacked in the head? this is your chance) and off in the woods practicing with archery and guns if you feel like stumbling across her there. She's also keen on monster fighting, exploring, and everything in between.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[He's not about to go round to her new place, even if he is on the receiving end of the address, but he keeps an eye out for her all the same.

It's in the middle of the memoria festival when he finally catches sight of her, back out in the woods practising with her bow and arrows. He has one of the lanterns dangling from his fingertips, a name written on the side in Cyrillic already, though he's not sure if he plans to actually float it.]

It's me.

[Low words to accompany his arrival, quiet as always, so as not to frighten her.]

[It's a festival for remembering the dead. They do this sort of thing back home sometimes, there's a date left over from the Before that people used to use - Memorial Day, it's May or some shit and it got co-opted to be about all the billions of people wiped out by the Infection. She always felt a little weird about that, you know? Growing up around people who'd seen it happen, who hadn't just grown up with that being their version of 'normal'.

She puts up lanterns for Henry, and Sam, and Tess. Frank too, though she never met him, and thinks Bill would have a fucking tantrum about it one way or another, but it seems like a nice thing to do for the guy that accidentally, inadvertently saved their lives at the cost of his own. She couldn't bring herself to put up one for Riley. That's hers. It's a different sort of hurt.

From there, it's just... practice. It's the only thing she really can do, and it's nice to hone a skill, to feel like maybe you can protect something the next time you have to.

She doesn't flinch when James calls out to her, she just lowers the bow. Her shoulders are straining and she's sweaty and dirty and gross, so she scrubs her forearm across her face as she turns to him.]

Hey.

[It's a reflexive statement, and her expression gentles immediately when she sees what he's carrying.]

You okay?

[It's good to see someone else still honing their skills here, too many people seem content to just enjoy the festivals and their jobs and their new friends. It bothers at him, itches at the back of his skull. This feels like the calm before the storm, lulling them into a false sense of security until they're weak and unprepared, until they can be destroyed easily.

He glances down at the lantern in his hand when he sees her eyes flick to it, awkwardly setting it down on the forest floor.]

Yeah.

[His eyes meet hers, understanding but muted in sympathy.]

I thought I'd see if you needed one.

[She has to have a lot of death in her past, that's not even a doubt. But now that he's here, he feels like maybe he's overstepped the mark in their tentative friendship.]

[It's a sweet thought. He always does that, shows it in unexpected ways. Ellie's smile is reflexive but entirely genuine.]

I put a few up already. Or is this for floating lanterns?

[She hasn't really... paid attention to the way the festival progresses, but she heard someone mentioning a floating bit later on. She's quiet a moment and then she nods to his.]

You want company?

Floating.

[He hasn't been hanging his, he feels like that's too much putting his past on display for anyone to see. At least floating them down the river, they're pretty much gone before anyone can peek, even if he has written in Cyrillic to make it harder for most people to read.]

I don't know if I'm going to send it off or not, someone just gave it to me and I figured I oughta write on it.

[Resource management. She starts collecting arrows while he talks. She's obviously been here a few times, there are pop-can targets set up, bits of caution tape tied around tree branches that she's then pinned to the trees itself. She wiggles one arrow loose from a knot in one tree and looks over her shoulder at him.]

Can't hurt, right? No one's going to know you set it off unless they're either standing right there or you tell them directly.

[A rueful little smile.]

It's kinda nice, you know? That anonymity.

[The dead all blend together after a while. She heard someone mention once the fact that no one's ever gone until their name is said for the last time. She hopes no one's left alive to say David's.]

[He's not sure that he agrees, but he understands where she's coming from, so he doesn't argue. He doesn't really reply at all, not to that, he just sets the lantern down and moves over to the trees and cans to examine where her arrows have hit and roughly how accurate she is over distance.]

Anonymity doesn't exist. Not really.

[Bucky hesitates, voice heavy.

He lays a gloved hand over one little notch in the tree.]

You better with a bow or with a gun?

[She didn't exist in a world with satellites and cellphones. Between Boston and Jackson, there were a million places she could have decided she didn't want to be Ellie anymore, and no one except Joel and Marlene would have known differently. Even here - to her, the network is just a neat trick. She hasn't put much thought into how it stacks up against keeping yourself neutral or apart from things. Why would she?

But she gives James a worried look when he says that. It's sort of a hard truth that she's suddenly forced to consider in a new light, and she doesn't argue. If she substitutes what people would do if they knew I was bitten with who she was back home, life would have gotten a lot scarier.

In some respects, she's lucky she could hide it at all.

So she just-- takes a deep breath, nods to him and then lets the subject change.]

Oh, uhhh-- I'm good with both, I guess. I like the bow more, though. Quieter.

[She doesn't often have the luxury of being able to sit somewhere stationary and pick people off who are looking for her after the first loud crack of a rifle. Silencers aren't as effective as people think they are, and don't exist in her time besides. Arrows, by contrast, are nearly silent. Easier to make, or re-use. She hates having to rely on ammunition when each bullet may be the last one you ever find for that pistol or rifle.]

[Bucky knows far too well that there's no such thing as anonymity no matter how good you are at hiding. If even one person knows who you are, you could be compromised even if it's years or even decades down the line. Eventually someone, somewhere, will find out about who you are and everything will fall apart.

He does his best to be anonymous here. Fake names, moving around, and a username that doesn't connect to him at all. But he knows it's a fragile peace, there are people who know him and could shatter it all if they chose to. It's out of his hands. She's young, maybe she doesn't understand that yet.]

But slower. Less deadly if they're wearing armour or a helmet. Don't neglect your guns, they're better in an environment like this.

[She laughs at that. Maybe it's a little bitter.]

Yeah. I guess they would be, huh.

[She has her small Beretta tucked in the waistband of her pants. She always has it on her, even when she's just out to have fun. No matter how long she's been here, she can't imagine a world where she doesn't have to carry one.]

People sure like killing each other. [She works her jaw off to one side, and then she glances up at him.] You think it'll always be like this?

Yeah.

[He could lie and tell her a happy fairytale about world peace, or the inherent goodness of humanity. But she's old enough, smart enough, and has seen enough that he's never going to disrespect her that way.]

People are violent, people are assholes. But there are also good people. That's what makes us human, there's never gonna be all good or all evil, but it means we'll never be free of it.

[That makes sense. It aligns with her own view of the world. For everyone like Sam, like Henry, like Winston, there's just as many Davids. It's easier to be evil in a hard world than it is to be decent. Joel... walks a line she's not sure she ever wants to cross.

But there's a part of her that knows and accepts that she'd do it if she had to.

(She beat a man to death with a machete once, she'd do that again in a heartbeat.)

Her fingers flex, she looks down at them. There's an imagined memory of blood, and she shrugs it away.]

I think you're a good person.

[You know. While they're on the topic.]

[It's something he came to terms with a long time ago. He stopped hoping for the world to be free of war and killing, he just started to hope that the few good people would be the ones in charge.

Even that rarely happens.

Bucky looks down at her with surprise, his expression softening for just a moment into wistful sadness.]

I'm not.

[It's not self-pitying, just a fact.]

But I'm trying to get better.

See, but that just proves my point. Assholes don't really give a fuck about being less of one, you know?

[But people can change. Joel's proof of that. Maybe she is too. Call it character growth, call it whatever you want.]

Anyway, you can't control what I think, so you're just going to deal with it.

[His lips twitch upwards just a little bit.]

I guess I will.

[It's nice to know, comforting almost, that someone else thinks he can be a good man.]

You'd get on well with someone else I know, he never backs down either.

Friend of yours?

[James doesn't talk about other people as if they're an actual fixture in his life, so this is Intriguing to her. Normally she wouldn't pry, but he's the one who brought it up so she thinks in this case at least it's somewhat permissible.]

[He did bring Steve up, so he doesn't tense up when Ellie asks, but he still shrugs. He's not sure what Steve is to him at the moment.]

Someone I failed to kill.

[Oooookay. Ellie gives him a bit of a Look, and fiddles with a spot on her plaid shirt that's worn and on the verge of fraying.]

So, a friend.

[Hey, humour.]

Anybody I've met?

I don't know, maybe.

[He is here, but he doesn't know if Ellie has met Steve.]

Tall, blond, blue eyes.

Doesn't ring a bell.

[Ellie sort of avoids people in general so that's really no surprise, but. She wishes she had something else to do with her hands, but she's running out of fiddling. Maybe she should make another lantern.]

But I'll keep an eye out, I guess. If he's good people.

He is.

[But this is getting a bit too much for him now, touching on Steve and the lanterns bringing up flashes of other people, so he takes a step back.]

I've gotta go.

[It's more warning than he usually gives, but he still doesn't wait for a reply before turning and abruptly starting to walk off.]

[She's used to it by now, so she just cups her hands around her mouth and calls after him,]

Look after yourself, you jerk!

[With all fondness, really.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

semi-closed catch-all;

for ellie;

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