nightlogs | ❅ SHITTY LITTLE TOWN ❅ PART 2

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dan sagittarius

❅ SHITTY LITTLE TOWN ❅ PART 2

SHITTY LITTLE TOWN ❅ PART 2

There's an article in the local paper, but word travels through the town hours before the first newspaper hits a doorstep: a man went missing down the mine, and they couldn’t even retrieve his body for his wife to bury. The official story is that there was a freak cave-in while the night crew was working, that no amount of preparation or technology could have prevented the act of God that left one of the arterials from the main mining cavern obstructed. Given that it was the night crew, there was only one witness, and he was violating protocol and too far down another arterial to hear or see what happened; because Goluboy has a zero-tolerance policy for breaking protocols, he fired the surviving miner. Goluboy has informed the newspaper that there will be no further efforts to recover the body.

Thus, two events are happening in town this weekend: Ms. Cygne’s debut ball, and a protest against the mining conditions outside the mouth of the mines.

Out in the woods, the fog has been thick to the point where subsistence hunters can’t venture in more than a few yards, and there seem to be strange sounds, almost like music, soft tank drums and ringing, emanating from the murk. It almost feels like the menace of the woods is...encroaching.

PROMPTS

a) PROTEST OUTSIDE THE MINE

The rage at Goluboy has been a long time brewing, but the people who live in his apartments wisely don’t appear at the protest. Instead, it’s all about twenty people who have just managed to avoid being dependent on Goluboy’s grace who have shown up with posterboards and a loudspeaker, rallying during the miners’ workday. This was all coordinated the day before my word of mouth, and it isn’t particularly well organized; people frequently end up blocking the mining equipment, and the foreman shouts at them to stay away from dangerous areas with marginal success. The three people with loudspeakers end up talking over each other and the chants are piecemeal and overlapping; however, the fact that people are upset about the perceived lack of safety for the miners and particularly for the abandonment of the missing miner’s body. Bring Him Home is the main chant and the only one that seems to get any muscle to it. The fired miner seems to be the person leading the most vocal chants.

The administrative staff from MineCorp have been asked to come field complaints from the protesters, armed with nothing but some talking points from the MineCorp mission statement (something something synergized comparative advantage for diversified innovative solutions something something labor is our most precious resource yada yada). One scruffy man seems to have hijacked the protest with his loudspeaker and is rambling about the animal maulings in the woods. At some point, Goluboy arrives in his armored Ford F-250. He calls over his foreman and has an annoyed conversation, and then he gets out, bodyguard looming behind him, to talk to individuals, putting on an evidently forced smile with gritted teeth.

b) DEBUT BALL

Ms. Cygne’s debut ball at her mansion is the event of the year, with all the lavishness than this sort of town can muster; beautiful dresses, a chocolate fountain, gift bags with expensive accessories and bonbons, fine sparkling wines, and invitations embossed with gold leaf. Plenty of the little treats are the sort that were presumed extinct in this town; no one’s seen a pair of Gucci sunnies or eaten a Ghirardelli’s in years here.

Most of the festivities take place in the massive ballroom that anchors the mansion, and they spill out into the lawn, where Ms. Cygne has insisted on a sit-down dinner rather than a “ghastly” buffet. The lady of the hour is quite active, making sure to check in with every single person at least once to make sure she’s getting praised for her hosting skills and getting a good look at every youth who’s appeared. The youths themselves have been pressured, by family members, teachers or Ms. Cygne herself, to present themselves as elegantly and politely as possible, and to make a “good showing” at their first event as a notable, respectable young person who may be a contender for Ms. Cygne’s prestigious scholarship.

At the table, people rub elbows with people they may not necessarily speak to otherwise, all brought together by the commonality of being someone Ms. Cygne has deemed noteworthy. Almost nobody allows themselves to get too inebriated, but one woman has a bit too much champagne and begins to cry at the dinner table; her friend, another woman in her thirties, ushers her to the powder room, where she composes herself while everyone awkwardly changes the subject. A few people do mannered waltzes in the ballroom, and out on the lawn, people mingle and make toasts.

c) EXPLORE ELSEWHERE [Link]

OOC: Please feel free to thread with each other at any location in the town. Available NPCs are bolded. Please indicate in bold in your comment if you would like an NPC to tag in, or reach out to Em or Juliet specifically. We request that each player only request one NPC per character so we may respond quickly. Thank you!

KNOWN IC DETAILS

There is gossip around town that characters can be handwaved as knowing that might drive some questions about the town and npcs:

The spooky deaths in the woods that have been going on for ages.

Mining disasters like this have happened before, always before the announcement of a big new mining vein opening up.

Children who take Ms Cygne's scholarship never come back to the town, and their letters are very formulaic.

Goluboy's wife died under mysterious circumstances, his girlfriend went to jail for the murder, and he is about town courting again.

Cygne has a pond full of so many beautiful swans, aren't they lovely!

The curfew sure is heavily enforced. Is it because the sheriff knows something about the monsters in the woods and is withholding information?

OOC DETAILS
❅ Deja Vu: Characters may optionally start getting some very brief flashes of memory or deja vu but this will be brief, confusing, and alarming rather than revelatory and full memory regain will not be possible. Still, players can opt to have this cause a feeling of possible unease or un-rightness to the situation that can be used to drive characters to have questions or be suspicious enough to investigate areas and situations.

❅ Event Length: This part of the plot will involve an npcing stage. It will last approx. two weeks before the last part, part 3, though this end time may be shortened to match player pace if npc threads progress quickly.

❅ New Intros: If your character wasn't introed in part 1 you can handwave they've been there the whole time and just intro in part 2.

❅ New Characters: If you app a new character and want to intro them at this time, assume they arrived just in time at the location the plot takes place in to be caught up in the magic drawing everyone in. They would have gotten the Man in the Moon's spiel from the welcome page right before being magically sucked in.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It's risky to break curfew, but that's why Dan and Aster are on the roof of the library.

It's tall enough that they can easily duck away from being spotted, and also tall enough to see most of the town. Aster has his growlight that Dan has helped him rig up like a massive, portable flashlight, hooked into a rechargeable power tool battery. They haven't gotten to test it on one of the forest creatures yet, but he has a baseball bat and a pocket full of rocks that he has tested on them already.

They're watching for where the mist comes in first to go see if they can sequester one off to get a conversation going.

It's been a week of them farming and giving Dan time to get his strength back after his months on the street. Time enough to have looked up all the records of attacks, to discuss Lady's connections and theories, to worry about her tremendously. Not enough time to make any real progress, which gets on Aster's nerves.

"Awful clear tonight," he says, looking at the woods that rim the town. The sky is very bright with stars. "Isn't looking misty enough for them to come."

If the mist is what contains them, anyway.

"Great view of the stars, though."

Dan can tell Aster's feeling impatient, and it's not that Dan isn't, but he doesn't have any interest in getting grumpy over it. He sits on the edge of the roof, dangling his feet and watching for anyone down below who might spy him and Aster up there.

Aster's been turning from Dan's benefactor to his friend, and the way that Dan's life has improved has started to make Dan feel a tendril of anxiety taking root in him over it. He's started drinking himself to sleep again and spending whatever money he isn't saving for a car on cigarettes, and after healing for about a week, his knuckles have been ripped open again. He didn't have an explanation for why he was biting his fingers again when Aster last redid the bandages on his non-dominant hand.

"Wonder if we might could try and lure one out somehow. I got tracking and baiting skills I might could put to use."

"Well I'm not gonna complain about that," Aster agrees, pulling a strawberry out of his pack to pass the time nibbling on it. He offers Dan a peach and enjoys a moment to gaze at the stars before he returns his gaze to the borders of town, looking for mist that hasn't come.

"Reckon we could bait it with either of us," he says. "I wouldn't ask anyone else to take on that kind of danger. And I'd rather not do it myself, or ask you to do it, tell you the truth." He chews his strawberry thoughtfully. "But it's on the table."

The mist fails to appear, and Aster puts his open bag of fruit and chocolate between him and Dan. He's gotten the idea that Dan is used to gas station candy bars, and has gone against his best instincts to oversweeten this round and use less cocoa and more cocoa butter. Dan is always polite about the candy he tries. Aster wants to make something that's going to make Dan's day.

"How've you been sleeping?" he asks, because Dan already hasn't had a good answer for the way his knuckle wounds keep re-opening. "Room's staying warm enough for you?"

"I ain't opposed to being bait. It'd be exciting." He takes the peach and twists it open with his hands. He doesn't expect Aster to take him up on the offer, but Dan thinks it's worth a shot. The monsters tried to grab him once. They might well do so again.

"That fireplace is a marvel. I'm sleeping as good as I've ever done." That's his way of dancing around the fact that he isn't actually sleeping well, but it's a lie, too. His sleep was good for the first week with Aster, but it's been deteriorating since then, and now he wakes up four or five times a night in a cold sweat.

It's become a habit ever since he realized that Aster can see him from the greenhouse; Dan takes his shirt off and strips down to his boxers for his cigarette on the porch, and then he goes into the house and practices piano, dueting with whatever bottle of whiskey he pulled from the liquor cabinet until he starts to miss too many notes, and then he takes a bath and drinks himself to sleep in front of the crackling warmth of the fireplace.

He feels like he could commit to this routine forever, and he thinks it's about to end. He doesn't know why, but his body thinks it.

"Thanks," Dan says, taking the chocolate and, upon popping it into his mouth, groaning in delight. "That's the best one you done given me so far. I don't know how you do it."

"This whole thing is kind of exciting," Aster admits. "I'm not glad it's happening -" people are dying, and that isn't anything to be happy about - "but it isn't boring at all."

The lure of a mystery and something to do about it really invigorates him in the morning, it turns out, in a way that resisting the grinding persistence of Goluboy's intent to take his place from him and undo all the ways it's special isn't.

And now that he has Anna working the florist, and Dan helping out at the farm, he has more time for mystery, more time for painting and candy too, the passion projects he lets himself have a little of each day as an antidote to the crushing grind of resisting this town. He grins as Dan groans at the taste of the chocolate. Finally got him.

He must be doing a good job as a boss, for Dan to be so comfortable playing piano with his shirt off, sitting on the porch in his underwear and assuming he's not going to get bothered for it. If he pointed out that Dan doing these things catches his eye, it would be inappropriate, even if it would stop Dan doing these things - Aster's never had a crush on an employee and he's not sure how to handle it in a way that is ethical except to just not speak on it.

"I'll keep it up then. Make another batch tomorrow." He straightens up, distracted from his own ethical problems, renewing his search for mist.

"You? The kind of person who prefers adventure and intrigue? Heaven forfend." Dan laughs, swinging his feet. "I ain't happy at all that folks are dying, especially because it seems like they go real painful. But I finally got something to think about that ain't getting out of the rain or scavenging food, and ain't I lucky that it's something substantial and interesting."

He's been watching the way Aster watches him, and if the stakes weren't so high, he'd make the first move. He's ninety percent sure that Aster's attracted to him, but the uncertain ten percent is enough to keep Dan from being direct. It would be devastating to lose what he has now with Aster. He doesn't think it would break him, but maybe it would; maybe he's been made so brittle by life and the last few months especially that one good hard disappointment, one regression back to destitute poverty, would be enough to kill him.

So he doesn't address it with Aster. Instead he smudges some chocolate, on purpose, onto the corner of his mouth, hoping Aster will notice and smudge it away for him.

"I ain't keeping you up with my piano practice, am I?"

"Who would guess it?" Aster jokes. Not like he was willing to leave town for Costa Rica at a moment's notice soon as Dan floated it as a dream. He wonders, if they had been able to get out of town, if there weren't the power dynamic of employment between them -

- but there is, and there's no good that can come from going down that daydream, when Dan's means to make money and stay off the streets depends on Aster continuing to employ him, and Dan quitting out of discomfort, or indulging Aster's crush because he perceives his employment as riding on not offending Aster, are both interminable.

"You've -" Aster gestures to the corner of his mouth, a wiping motion, nodding to let Dan know he's got a smudge. He shakes his head. "It doesn't wake me up often enough, and it puts me right back to sleep when it does," he assures Dan, because that's more professional than admitting that he sometimes lies awake waiting for Dan to start playing. "It's nice that it's getting played again. You're good at it."

"Oh, sorry. Messy of me," Dan says, disappointed that Aster isn't going to take the opportunity to get closer and touch his face. That ten percent uncertainty remains. Dan knows he's not a catch. He's a drifter and an addict and an unwelcome guest in this town, and Aster has all the reason in the world to be disinterested in anything more than a friendship, if even that. When Aster admits the piano playing does wake him up, Dan feels that uncertainty grow.

"I'll try and keep it down after dark. I get a little lost in it sometimes. We had an upright at home, something my dad built." He licks the last of the chocolate off his fingers. "I got that expertise in mechanical and carpenter things from him. I fixed the water heater, by the way. Now it don't make that sound no more."

The water's been hot already, thankfully, but the burping and banging from the heater made Dan feel a little guilty taking baths at night. Not guilty enough to stop, but enough to feel bad.

"If I'm going to be bait, how are we going to go about this?"

"That kept me awake a lot more than the piano," Aster says, impressed. "Thanks."

He'd just been willing to live with that sound, but now that it's out of his life, he reflects that last night's sleep was unusually uninterrupted, and that's awfully nice.

"Well," Aster thinks, "When the mist comes, I reckon if I hung back with the light and you went on up ahead, they might think you don't have any backup and come out to meet you. Of course, then, if the light doesn't work on them, you'd better be ready to run like heck. Think that'll work?"

"De rien. I'm going to fix the cars next. Reckon some of their batteries ain't been warmed up in a while." Dan's trying not to talk too much about the projects he's been doing in the farmhouse late at night, because he wants the next time Aster walks in the place to feel different. He wants Aster to walk into the house and notice all the things that have been fixed and organized and cleaned instead of all the empty chairs and vacant beds. He wants something besides dead children to be at the front of Aster's mind.

So he's fixed the water heater and sorted away the clothing for donation and mended the garments that could be salvaged and kept. He's cleaned out freezer-burned meals and wilted greens from the fridge and moldy potatoes from the pantry. He's replaced every lightbulb and dusted every baseboard. He's realized that it doesn't matter how Aster feels about him, whether it's interest or not, he wants to do this for him.

"Yeah. I think I got legs on me now. Been eating and resting enough." He grins. "I don't know why, but I reckon I'll be good at this. Almost feels second nature."

"Maybe we could try making a run for the outside again," Aster suggests. Getting out, and getting help, is always a tactic on the table, as long as they have vehicles. "You sure you never done anything like this before?"

He asks it jokingly, but he's asking himself as much as Dan. This all feels very intuitive. It probably shouldn't. But Dan's as quick to make practical suggestions on this as he is.

He thinks about pointing out all the other things he's noticed Dan's done, the details of it, the way he expected Dan to toss everything into boxes and move it into town and be done with that, take direction around the farm, not appear to take real pride in making the house feel like it's a house again, instead of a dusty memorial. Like it matters to Dan that the work is done right. Like it matters to Dan that the work is done right for him.

He might be reading too much into it. He might be still feeling the way he felt earlier tonight, when he came in from the fields hungry and dirty and tired at the end of a long day, but on the porch looking through a clean window into a lit kitchen with the smell of something good already coming from inside, seeing Dan making vegetable stew in the kitchen, the impulse to keep on walking in and put his arms around Dan from behind to hug him at the stove was so strong and felt so unconscious that he had his hand on the door handle before he remembered he couldn't do that. That Dan was making the house a home because it was his job, and if that made Aster feel some kind of way, that was his business to handle.

He didn't come into the house for another twenty minutes, composing himself from the way that made him so sick with longing he almost couldn't contain it. Sad that for a moment everything had seemed so bright and warm and - and like he's been in a house since he got back in town, his house, but not until then in all he can remember has he felt like he was coming home.

Dan's not an antidote to being as alone in the world as he will be, no matter who he meets, for the rest of his life. Dan's an employee of his doing a job he hired him to do and doing it well, and Aster's got to honor that by doing his job as Dan's employer well back.

"Hey, uh, I just wanted to let you know, you're doing a great job. With the house." He thinks he's doing a good job of not sounding choked up about it. "I, uh. Probably should have already told you that."

"Nothing I can remember. I mean, I got into some scrapes doing migrant work, but the only mysteries there were if people were coming, where they were and what condition they'd be in." Dan stands up, walks further down the roof to be downwind of Aster, and pulls out another cigarette. He runs the filter around his lips before he lights up.

"You know, I usually work alone. I like folks, but I don't always cooperate well with everyone because folks are a little more cutthroat and ruthless than I have the stomach for." He takes a long drag. "But I like working with you. I reckon we have our hearts in the same place."

He sits on this end of the roof and dangles his feet, watching the street. He gives Aster a warm smile.

"I'm glad to hear it. A lot of love went into that place. Ain't no reason for me to change that." He can put love into this house because it feels just like picking up where people left off, or rather, were cruelly and violently interrupted. "And you trusted me with it. I take that serious."

The way Dan treats his cigarette is lost on Aster, scanning the forestline for mist, doing his best to focus.

"I reckon we do," he agrees, looking up in time to return the smile, briefer than Dan's, before he goes back to looking out at the still-clear forest. He sighs. "There ought to be love in it but I reckon all I can do with it going forward is turn it into rentals," he says ruefully. "Since Goluboy's buying off everyone who'd work for me. Wonder if that'd get him to lower the rent in town, if I started letting some rooms," he muses, "but Goluboy would probably just pay someone to play a long game and set the house on fire, to get me to sell. I doubt any of 'em would be willing to sleep on the streets around town long as you did to sell the story, so I guess I can only trust people with absolutely no other option." He tries to laugh at his own joke, and manages a small chuckle. "Not a lot of love in the old place's future."

But that's too sad to leave off on.

"Anyway I'm probably going to leave again if I ever get the legal things settled," he says, brushing that sadness off. "If I can ever be sure Goluboy won't just start bulldozing the land."

Dan turned his attention from the street to the stars for a moment, letting the cool night breeze tousle his hair and carry away the cigarette smoke. Aster's predicted future saddens him, and he can't really see much of a way out of it. He's already in over his head trying to make sense of leases and rentals and property rights.

It hits him hard, the idea of this family home being taken out of Aster's hands to be developed by "progress." He brings a knee up to his chest and wraps his arm around it as he sits, tapping ash away from the cigarette.

"Well, I'm good at reading folks' intentions, so maybe I can keep an eye out for renters for you. I don't want to be rooming with Goluboy's spies either." He sighs out smoke. "My home got took away when I was a teenager. It- it'd hurt my heart to see that happen with yours. I didn't never get over it all the way."

That's an understatement. He feels like that part of his life, that home, was a limb that was violently amputated, and now he's a cripple feeling phantom pains that never go away. That, he thinks, is what started him on the road to where he is now, restless and addicted and chewing his hands all the time, stressed and sad.

"I didn't know that," Aster says. But as he says it, it feels like he should have known that. "Or - are you sure you didn't mention it before?"

Because he realizes now that Dan says it, how much he took for granted that Dan can understand why the pressure on him to give up his place is so abominable.

"Either way, I'm sorry," he says, resisting the urge to reach out and take Dan's hand. "It's not the same, but you can always have a place in my house."

That's a bit of a big declaration to an employee and a renter, and Aster looks away into the woods blushing at having overplayed his hand, and there in the woods he finally sees -

"Look, east side." A tendril of mist is snaking down to the village. "Let's go."

"I might could have." But Dan knows he didn't. He doesn't bring this sort of thing up often, so it's easy for him to remember whom he's said what about his past to. "I appreciate the offer. You know, visiting you might could be enough to get me to come back to this town once I get out. Just to visit."

It's an idle promise, something Dan isn't considering seriously because he doesn't consider his future seriously, but if there's anything that'll bring him back to this town, it's Aster. Not even the promise of Aster's welcoming home, but Aster himself. Dan hasn't run into many people he wants to spend time with like this, even if it's just his boss - and what a strange situation, one where he likes and respects his boss instead of resenting the authority of their position.

He doesn't consider that Aster's being too forward. Dan's doing a good job and takes pride in his work. He's timely and professional. If Aster's hard up for reliable, trustworthy help, it stands to reason that he'd always keep a space on the metaphorical payroll for Dan. It doesn't mean that Aster wants anything more than the ability to retain an employee, he tells himself. It doesn't mean Aster's interested in more than this.

"I see it," Dan says, getting up and killing his cigarette. "Operation Bait is a go."

"Only on one condition," Aster says, impulsively, as they take the fire escape down to the car. "We cut and run if I make the call, you don't stick there as bait if it gets too risky."

Maybe that's paternalistic of him, but it needs to be said, if Dan is going to throw himself at danger, that Aster wants to have control of pulling Dan out of it. It feels sort of futile to demand. But still, he demands it.

Dan gives Aster a look that's between unimpressed and offended as they scramble down. "I ain't an idiot."

He considers that maybe he does, actually, resent Aster's position of authority in this moment. Maybe that same nature he's always had, at best fierce independent, at worst stubborn and senseless contrarianism, will come between them.

"My employment ain't conditional on me letting you call the shots in this, is it?" Dan tries not to sound adversarial as he asks that. He just wants to be clear on what he's gambling if he decides to listen to his instincts instead of Aster's.

"I didn't say you were an idiot. I -"

I said I'm scared. The words do not want to come out. But Dan's comment about his employment reminds him this isn't personal, this is a very conditional relationship based on how long Dan cares to work for him, and he's already left Dan behind in the woods because he panicked once. Dan can't have a ton of confidence in his decision making.

"Look, you may think I'm a coward, but I want us both to come out of this alive, and I'm going to have a view you won't from the back. If I see a noose closing and you're looking the other way, or - "

He struggles to think of another metaphor. Or if there's a target and you get blind to everything that isn't it sounds more patronizing.

"If I have to go home to that house and it's empty again, I'm - I'm going to have a bad day," he says, and it sounds so needy, jeeze. "Of course your employment ain't conditional," he finishes, thinking, Dan must have not heard him when he said there was always a place for Dan in his house, or ignored it because it was inappropriate. Probably for the best, honestly. It probably was inappropriate.

Dan hops down from the fire escape, wincing because his knees aren't twenty-five years old anymore, and meets Aster's explanation with a rueful sigh. "I didn't say you were a coward. I know you ain't."

He does. It doesn't matter that Aster bolted in the woods; somehow, Dan knows that there's plenty of blazing courage that was just momentarily eclipsed by the strangeness of their situation.

"I didn't mean- I just am really bad at taking orders. I don't like nobody telling me what to do."

It's not like his parents never gave him directions when he was little, but it was always in the context of allowing him to push back and ask questions. Every order his parents gave him made sense. The first time he ever encountered because I said so was when he was herded into a police cruiser at gunpoint, never to see his parents again. That's his blueprint for authority.

"I don't want that house empty neither, it's just- this is the best job I've had. And I've had a lot of jobs. I got a tendency to fuck things up when they start going well for me." He hopes he hasn't started that spiral by pushing back on Aster's concerns about his wellbeing. He sighs and puts his hands in his pockets. "I know you said there'll always be a place for me. Reckon I was just wondering if you were about to change your mind when you found out I was stubborn and do things my own way."

Aster's not sure why it's so important to him to push this point. He isn't even sure why Dan suddenly doesn't like taking orders, when Dan hasn't so much as raised a single objection to Aster directing him around the farm chores. He supposes they've never disagreed on an approach to a job - well, they are now. A little bit.

I got a tendency to fuck things up when they start going well for me. Aster wants to say that Dan hasn't fucked anything up at the farm at all, but he finally started noticing the quantity of wine bottles that are missing in a cellar that has been dusted for the first time in half a year. That opened his eyes up to the absence of left-behind whiskey, both of which he's ignored all this time because there's no good that could come of him opening a bottle.

But this isn't the time to bring that up, and Aster doesn't want to bring it up at all when it turns out Dan heard him, and didn't think it was inappropriate either.

"I just want to get through all this together. Get some good news back to Lady, that we've learned something and nobody's the worse off. Being bait lends itself to being worse off." He shrugs, awkward. "I just worry."

Dan stays where he is for a moment and listens as Aster receives his confession and explains himself, all the bullheadedness leaving him as he thinks of how alone Aster is, how much grief Aster has to carry, and how much vulnerability it must have taken to bring Dan into his life as he has for the last few weeks. How sad it would be to once again be alone.

Dan knows how that feels, and that's why he doesn't lend anyone his vulnerability. Somehow, Aster got ahold of it, and that rattles Dan deeply.

"Alright. I hear you." He walks over and gives Aster's upper arm a quick squeeze. "How about if either of us wants to call it, we agree we'll both call it? That way I can trust that you'll bail if I see you in danger, too."

He gets the car keys out and hops in. "I worry about you too, you know."

Aster pats Dan on the shoulder. "I can live with that," he says, sliding into the car, hearing Dan's concern.

"Well that's kind of you."

Aster doesn't want people to worry about him. And people, as a rule, don't. He's outspoken and confident and knows what ground is his to stand on. He doesn't make a lot of close connections. He's good at having very few people worry about him. It touches him that Dan does.

"I do my best to be a nice person," Dan says as he starts the car, smiling. He drives them to the edge of the woods, then parks and makes sure his firearm is all set to go.

"Alright, want me to just start walking in and you keep an eye on my six?" Dan lowers his voice and gets out of the car. "Do we got a signal for if we're going to call it?"

Aster hoists the growlight in one hand, the baseball bat in the other. "'Call it' is a signal," he says, following Dan into the mist.

Once they're inside the mist, the flora starts to shift as it was outside the town. Plants from different climates butt up against each other, and crows croak in the darkness.

"Don't go far," Aster murmurs, keeping his direct gaze on Dan, lest he disappear into the darkness, flicking to his peripheral vision, listening as the crows circle.

B: Breaking Curfew | Closed to Dan

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