undo this storm and wait.

[nightmarist]

WHO: Residents of the Meadows & OPEN to visitors
WHERE: The Meadows outside De Chima
WHEN: Throughout December
WHAT: Day-to-day encounters at the magical farm commune.
WARNINGS: Look to the subject headers.
NOTES: This is a mingle/catch-all log. Start your own threads! Tag around!

[The Meadows, being a place largely created from magic, has a subtle strangeness to it. From the outside, it could be taken for any old Appalachian farm: scattered barns and stables, a roomy wooden farmhouse, a 19th century stone chapel that some hoodlum graffitied. There's evidence that the farm is occupied by unsupervised teenagers, too, in the donut tracks that mar the grass and the remains of regular bonfires. As long as the monsters are out of sight, everything seems ordinary.

Once inside the farmhouse, however, the odd discrepancies become more apparent. The layout of the rooms doesn't quite match how the house appeared from the outside. There are windows where windows shouldn't be, stairways like vertical mazes to secluded rooms, and views from rooms that look into other worlds entirely. Half of the appliances work without any source of electricity, fresh coffee's always waiting in the pot without anyone having to brew it, and the refrigerator never seems to run out of leftover pizza. Things are simply wrong about the place, for all the cozy warmth of its design.]

Comments

ota meadows ppl.

[admemoriam]

[It happens late in the morning, just as the fog is lifting in the fields and bedroom doors are creaking open from a bad night's sleep. One moment there's silence, sleepy and warm, and the next -

The house shakes with the force of the wail, piercing and otherworldly, emanating from Noah's downstairs bedroom door. The clamor seems to pulse, knocking on walls and floors, quaking away from the epicenter and across rooms like a stampede. The television lights up with static, then blinks off. A window pane shatters, raining shards out into the front walk.

Noah can't find a place to hide. Everywhere is too open, too unsafe, too wrong. He's formless and unhinged, a cloud of pure, terrified energy, as he bounces from corner to corner, object to object. In the kitchen, the fridge flies open, spilling a box of takeout. The sink turns on, the dishwasher rumbles, a timer buzzes; cabinets swing back and forth, their contents pushed around desperately. Finally - finally - he comes to a stop on a high shelf, shivering in a saucepan. The ghostly wail has died down to a whimper, eerie and forlorn, echoing out across the disarray.

Something is horribly, disastrously wrong.]

[nightmarist]

[As soon as the shockwave hits, Ronan forgets his own troubles and goes surging through the house in search of Noah. He's difficult to find, bouncing from possession to possession like this, but in this state Ronan can feel energy more easily than he can interpret any other signal. He's only a split second behind Noah, a streaking ball of light that hovers to a stop over the saucepan where Noah settles.

He can't embrace Noah when neither of them have bodies, but he does the next best thing, shining brightly and pouring warm energy into him. They've done this before, this astral comforting, but Ronan's never been trapped this way before. He can't help being scared and he's sure that's not making matters better. But Noah at least isn't alone.]

[admemoriam]

[There's so little of Noah, it's easy to envelop him. He's a ragged, faded thought, cowering in the dark, and as Ronan tries to comfort him he only lets out another low, mournful cry.

They took my body! he wails through their link, desperately distraught. I don't want you to see.]

[nightmarist]

[I can't see anything, Ronan assures him, because he can't. He only feels, and right now what he feels is Noah's despair and the thinness of his energy. Ronan wraps himself around the pieces of Noah that he can find, holding him together, knotting Noah up with himself. Take what you need from me.]

Sad Adam, OTA

[hondoyota]

Adam couldn't feel anything.

He knew from the news that this was happening to everyone and that powers were haywire everywhere from what had happened to the Porter, but that didn't help fix the disoriented misery that he felt.

It was as though he'd suddenly been cut off from the world. He couldn't feel the miles-wide networks of magic and electricity that had kept him company since he'd arrived in this world. At first, all that feedback had been overwhelming. Over the months, he'd come to accept it as a part of him, an extension of himself. Losing it was like losing another one of his senses.

His deaf ear hadn't stopped ringing since it had happened, and he had a throbbing headache that pain relievers weren't helping. He'd electrocuted himself twice at work and had been sent home. For months, no form of energy had been able to hurt him. Now he had to re-learn that such things were dangerous.

Being trapped inside his own body made him feel lonely and isolated, and he was glad to find the house quiet and his boyfriends elsewhere. Adam curled up in a window seat larger and more isolated than his usual and stared disconsolately out the window.

[nightmarist]

Ronan is slow to locate Adam because Adam is - unusually, distressingly - difficult to find among the odd waves of magic and atmospheric interference moving through the Meadows today. He's normally the easiest thread for Ronan to follow, always a beacon in the fog. Now Adam's the opposite: a spot of darkness, a void.

Drifting over him as a dim spark, Ronan takes a moment to assess Adam. Though he has no body of his own, he can feel Adam's pain, physical and otherwise. There's a deep loneliness coming off of him that Ronan isn't sure how to fix. He nudges Adam's cheek, soft as dust, and grows a bit brighter, trying to warm him.

[hondoyota]

Adam startles at the touch, flinching away from it. For a moment, he doesn't recognize Ronan. All these past months he's recognized Ronan by his energy long before either of them actually enters a room. Now, without Ronan's body and without Adam's ability to sense energy, all he sees is the flickering spark.

"Ronan?" Wary, Adam withdraws a little, unnerved by how he can't be sure of what the spark is if he can't sense it. But he recognizes what Ronan usually looks like in his energy form, so he reaches out tentative fingers toward him.

[nightmarist]

It's me, Ronan confirms, just a thought in Adam's head, drifting in with a breath of an apology for startling him. He doesn't blame Adam for not recognizing him, but it hurts all the same. They're on opposite planes of existence now, Adam entirely in the physical and Ronan in the astral. He wishes he had lips to put to Adam's fingers. Instead he settles onto Adam's fingertips like a feather.

[disentombs]

Gansey too is being affected by the power issues with the Porter--randomly being teleported elsewhere in the United States while in the middle of making a latte is rather disturbing, but at least (so far) he's capable of remedying that quickly enough.

He's already changed out of his work uniform and in more casual clothes when he peeks around the corner and sees Adam on a ledge he usually doesn't find Adam in. How odd. Adam does look more pensive than usual.

"Hey," he says softly, sitting near Adam on the window seat.

[hondoyota]

Gansey's appearance is less startling than Ronan's had been. Adam had never been able to sense Gansey's presence the way he could sense Ronan or Noah, who were both creatures of energy. Gansey's magic was instantaneous, so Adam only ever felt it in sudden flashes, if at all.

"Hey," Adam says, reaching for Gansey. He needs comfort, and his time here, loved by his boyfriends, has made it easier to accept comfort and even to seek it. Hugging close to him, Adam settles his head on Gansey's shoulder.

[disentombs]

Gansey has little issue indulging Adam with affection, pulling him close with an arm around his shoulder.

Pressing a cheek against Adam's hair: "What's wrong?"

for gansey

[nightmarist]

[At some point in the night, Ronan had crept into Gansey's room to find him - thankfully - alone and still awake, tinkering with his cardboard models as usual. Ronan had pried him away from the art project and the two of them had found more creative ways to tire each other out. They'd fallen asleep, finally, sometime around dawn.

Ronan wakes abruptly, just a few hours later, after a dreamless sleep. He's as wide awake as if someone had shaken him, but the room is silent and Gansey's fast asleep beside him. There's no sign that anything's amiss. Still, a creeping sense of dread sends a chill down Ronan's spine. He glances at the nullifier cuff on his wrist, as if it could give him some reassurance that it's still functional. If he'd had a nightmare, though, wouldn't he know? He certainly wouldn't be moving if he'd brought it out.

Sitting up slowly in an effort to keep from disturbing Gansey, Ronan turns to climb out of bed. Something still feels wrong in a way he can't pinpoint. The air doesn't feel right. Or rather, he isn't feeling the air right. Or the bedsheets. Or the floor beneath his feet. Everything he's touching is rapidly becoming less solid.

With a rising sense of panic, Ronan whips a look over his shoulder, back to Gansey. Something's really wrong now. He can't ignore it.]

Gansey?

[Ronan's voice sounds far away even to his own ears.]

[disentombs]

[There are some aspects of their life here at the Meadows that is comfortingly similar to their life back at Monmouth Manufacturing--Ronan and Gansey inevitably not being able to sleep and turning to each other for company. Now though, they have other ways to help each other try and get to sleep.

He's in the middle of some of the most restful sleep he's gotten in a while, sprawled out, when Ronan's voice raises him out of unconsciousness. The urgency surprises him and his eyes open as he pushes himself up on his elbows. Rubbing his eyes, he grabs his glasses to look over where Ronan's shape seems to be.

Once his glasses are on, Gansey's eyebrows raise, seeing the cause for panic.]

Ronan? What--

[Gansey reaches out for him, hand passing right through.]

[nightmarist]

[Ronan scatters when Gansey attempts to touch him, as if he was made from sand and the disturbance has now destroyed his delicate form. His body breaks apart, clothes dropping away while the rest of him swirls through the air in a dusting of light. He's done this before, but never involuntarily, and Ronan frantically gathers his particles into a single flickering ball of energy.]

[disentombs]

[Sitting up entirely, watching Ronan burst into a million particles of light, his eyes widen--Ronan likely can hear his thoughts racing and his heartrate pick up.

As far as Gansey knows, the transformation into his energy form has always been voluntary for Ronan. That certainly doesn't seem to be the case here.

A hand extends towards the ball of energy.]

Ronan? What happened?

Backdated to 11/29--Magnus

[disentombs]

[If Gansey's being honest, he's a little keyed up about Magnus coming over to try and help him with sleeping. It's something that he's had an issue with for almost half of his life, and it's tied up with other issues he has--ones he's not eager for other people the realize he has. Hell, his anxiety issues are ones that only the Raven Boys seem to know about. Not even Blue, from her time point, knows about them yet.

It's all a little personal, but his curiosity about whether or not Magnus's powers may work on him outweighs his discomfort.

And so, he smiles easily when he opens his bedroom door, wearing flannel pants, a plain white tee, and his glasses. There are stacks of books everywhere, mostly around the periphery, and a few large bookshelves that almost make the back of his room look like a library. His room is spacious and appears to be a large room in the middle of a warehouse if not for the large, unmade bed in the middle of it. His desk sits in a corner with some unfinished cardboard buildings half painted and drying on top of it. The room smells vaguely of mint and laundry.]

Come in.

[fehus]

[it's a bit of an odd room; he's seen peeks before, mostly in passing by, but this is the first time he's been inside. it's much larger than he'd thought, lonelier with this wide open space all at the centre, but honestly -- the books grab his immediate attention. grey eyes flipping to the surrounding cases, his mouth drops open in an o]

Whoah. Building a new Alexandrian library in here, or what?

[Magnus, raised poor after the rupture in his family, raised by no one at all after the loss of the last of it, hasn't been in a privately owned space with so many books in it, not since his uncle's study. it's impressive, it's -- befitting. Gansey always seemed to know a little something about everything, really]

[disentombs]

[He laughs brightly at that.]

If only. I have a lot of extra time in my days.

[Something he does to pass the time when he can't sleep. He's read every single one.]

A few thousand years later and that's still one of the greatest tragedies in history in my opinion.

john murphy | ota

[rekt]

[A] my bf's head is falling apart (DEC. 1-10ish);

[ while the crew and whatever guests they happen to have are all chilling out somewhere around the house, murphy comes jogging through the upstairs halls, taking the stairs two by two on his way towards the living room, where he halts, still and somewhere wide-eyed in the doorway. ]

Guys? Problem? [ he starts, like he's not really sure what he's saying. this is a bizarre issue to have. ] I think K's having... some issues. With his skin staying attached to his skull. Help?

[ he's a little freaked right now. ]

[B] hair cut???;

[ at some point further into the week, while after kavinsky's been getting some regular healing (aka making out) with jesse pinkman, murphy occupies himself with puttering around the house, finding odd tasks to be bored with, rummaging around in places, moving stuff that doesn't need to be moved, or, like today, inspecting how long his shaggy hair has gotten, wild looking and all out of sorts. ]

Any of you know how to cut hair? [ murphy calls from the bathroom, sure at least one person is likely to hear him. ]

I mean actually know, not "one time I thought I could to be a hair dresser but the dolls I practiced on just look like wannabe horror movie villains".

[C] HOLY FUCKING OOPS, RADIATION (DEC 10-14);

[ murphy's standing out in one of the garden areas just outside the meadows, looking down at his feet. and the six foot radius of curled up, bubbling, and decaying. it looks almost scorched, and something in the air around him ripples, like looking at heat waves. murphy himself is fine, untouched, but looking shocked, and somewhat terrified. however, should anyone start to approach, he'll be abruptly holding up a hand to ward them off. ]

Stop. Don't come over here.

[ it hadn't been this bad the first few days. he'd see paint flake off railings or walls, left scorched, decaying hand prints on doors and banisters. watched a tree he leans against curl up and die. nothing like this, and the irradiated area around him is steadily growing. no matter how he concentrates, how he tries to reel it in (not that he put any actual practice into controlling it before this), it just keeps growing, as if in inverse to his efforts. it's crawling outward, and at this rate, could start to reach the meadows itself soon, this realization having murphy stumble a few steps back. he needs to get the hell out of here. ]

Go back to the house, go into town and away from here. Tell the others not to come back. [ whoever you are, he doesn't really care if you're one of the people who actually sleeps at the meadows, or just one of the eight million visitors. it's now up to you to make sure no one comes back here until it's safe. ] I'm freaking serious, go!

A

[hondoyota]

[Adam's been having a rough week, and between his own experiences and the news he's not exactly surprised to hear the particular horror that Murphy announces. With calm practicality, he gets up, goes to a drawer and digs through it, handing the results to Murphy.

It's a tube of superglue.]

[rekt]

[ he looks down at the glue, looks up at adam, squints his eyes and there's a moment where murphy's mentally putting this entire tub into adam's fluffy, charmingly ruffled hair. he's lucky he's ronan's butt buddy. ]

Blondie's got jokes today, that's great. Anyone around who actually gives a shit or do I need to handle this myself?

insert imagine dragons lyrics

[nightmarist]

[It may be Ronan's presence Murphy's sensing, but it isn't anything radiation can harm. The swell of energy coming off Murphy is in fact what drew Ronan here, a curious investigation of a phenomenon he could sense from miles away. That power is so strong that everything around it is dying. It's no wonder Murphy's afraid.

It's just me, Ronan speaks into Murphy's mind as he drifts closer, careless and lazy as a firefly. You're not about to blow up, are you? He doesn't know what to make of this rapidly increasing energy. It feels more like a bomb about to go off than a bomb that already has.]

https://youtu.be/e-zzXP7yXiM?t=33s

[rekt]

[ as murphy's jogging back towards the tree line, some fucking tinkerbell looking ball of light is chasing him, and he slows long enough to nearly trip over his feet when it talks to him in ronan's voice. or, talks in his head. ]

What the-- Lynch? [ either way, he's still moving, now just looking at ronan with brows drawn in. if he's already this close and not dying, that must mean firefly ronan is safe, right? who knows. ]

I don't know. I don't really make a habit of practicing turning into a bomb with this thing, kind of against my basic sensibilities. [ he doesn't like bombs, they're rude and make everything terrible, part of why he was ignoring this entire power set since he got it. ] You went to school, right? What happens when a lot of radiation builds up?

[ serious question, because he did not go to school. ]

A, but fast-forwarded!

[pillz]

[new news: kavinsky's head hurts now, but less than it was. he's terrified, but less than he had been. jesse pinkman's kiss had sealed it up proper, but the event itself, whatever psychic nonsense that seems to be sprawling across cities thanks to the porter fuckery, doesn't seem to be over. as a result, murphy opted wisely not to unbandage his head. you know. just in case humpety-dumpety really ends up falling apart at the seams again.

the boy rests against murphy now, his eyes half-closed under the edge of linen, the back of his hair strangely without the crust of product, resting against his arm even as his skinny back lays propped against murphy's leg.

it'd be cute were it not for the sporadic seeping from his head.]

Hey, [he says. it's the first thing he's said in awhile, his voice rusted almost sleepily.] Hey, babe. We ever talk about last will and testament and shit? ImPorts do that, you know. For if the cat lives ever run the fuck out.

[rekt]

[ there's a joke about murdering spouses for insurance pay outs in here somewhere that murphy just doesn't have the IC knowledge to make. instead, he snorts, fingers gently carding through the (for once) soft, pliable hair spilling over his arm, nails scraping lightly over kavinsky's scalp. delicate, like he's afraid pressing too hard on him anywhere might break him. ]

I was just assuming I get to inherit all your fortune, seeing as I've been the one willing to wear your blood all day.

[ despite much hand washing, there's still dried blood lingering under his fingernails, on his cheeks, speckled on his shirt. he hasn't really been willing to leave k's side long enough to shower since this whole thing started. hearing him talk like this hardly makes him any more willing, and despite what's dry in murphy's tone, it sets a nervous edge through him. ]

Save it for later. You're not dying. [ curling over him, murphy drops a kiss against kavinsky's hair, then his cheek, fond and somewhat protective. shut up, bitch, stop giving him anxiety. ]