waiting for the lights.

Carter had drank enough to actual laugh and shakily record Soren’s noisy singing. But certainly, not enough to ease the taste of guilt in the back of his throat. During the quiet times when he wasn’t chuckling or playfully making fun of somebody’s singing, he remembered. He’d think of all the toxicity in this city and the all too quick pointing of fingers. It was –… odd, attending a Halloween party at time like this.

Sensing a shift in the air next to him, Carter turned his head only to find Emme. To his surprise, it’s a little easier to offer a smile, a light chuckle following after; one that actually scrunched up the corners of his eyes. “What, this? It’s a lazy ass costume.” It was one of those that could easily be mistaken for a normal outfit. All he’d donned was a long jacket. It was vague enough that he often had to explain: sigh, I’m Officer K from Blade Runner.

“You look nice too. Though I already had a feeling that you’d be the Halloween type.” He nodded politely, gesturing to her costume with a tip of his empty cup. “I have been here the whole time. Supervising,” Carter joked, gesturing to another one of his singing friends.He’d sung along in the background sometimes too, though he’d shove his friends if they tried to tug him onto the stand.

Leaving his drink on the bar counter, both fatigue and melancholy coloured his sigh as his gaze drifted off to the crowd. “If only things felt this normal everyday, huh? I thought I’d be involved in a murder at like… my late thirties at the bare minimum.” They were still fairly young. The loud cheers and laughter from everyone else close to their age only reasserted that. ( Then again, Carter knew that he was one to muse more with a few drinks ).

The ease in his smile and laugh is refreshing, the way it shows in his eyes, real, something real. Maybe that’s ironic too, a girl lost in her own head so often to enjoy that. Her smile in response is still kind, natural, “A lazy costume is still a costume, no matter what,” her own isn’t entirely special, more makeup on her face and an outfit. The goal just to look a bit fairytale, don a simple outfit, and hope for the best, but knowing how to paint does give a skill already with knowing how to work makeup and color.

There’s a bitten back smile with his compliment, a thank you there in a smile, and also some lingering reaction with Carter. He is right that she enjoys Halloween, though only recently. She had to spend her twenties catching up on movies people watch in childhood, offer to babysit kids trick or treating once or twice so she actually knew what it was like. “Supervising isn’t joining a party, and you’re not a very good chaperon either if you’re already drinking,” she nods at his own cup as she rocks on her heels to keep herself moving. “I won’t make you sing, but I give no promises about dancing.”

There’s an unavoidable shift from the present to true reality, to what will lie beyond here in the morning; what’s lurking in a city that blocks the sunlight. A party isn’t truly right, but neither what’s happened outdoors, and she doesn’t truly feel guilty for finding life where she can, for always doing that, even if it’s odd now, even as she’ll have a bad taste in her mouth later, and not from the drinks.

It’s almost felt, the shift in his mood, and she peers at him with knitted eyebrows and pursed lips, she tries for some laugh, for some light, “Don’t tell me you had something like that planned out,” a pause as someone at a karaoke machine almost drowns her out with an off key high note, “This isn’t normal, Carter, for one, Halloween is annual, so that’s not daily normal. You’re at a party, and I don’t know if that’s daily for you either? Don’t wait for things to feel normal, save driving yourself that mad for your thirties instead of another murder case.” She’s trying, to keep it light, but there’s meaning there too.

There's a tremble in her hands she hides by them her fingers tightly within each other, one hand clutch and knotting with the other as she stands beside her car, or what used to be a car. There's no mourning for the money to fix it, because it's not worth it. The old thing was already something broken when she bought it, calling a number listed on a cardboard sign in passenger window. 

Her life with it began with it sitting in a junkyard of a lawn, and ended here, on fire and finally with more damage than she can afford to pay. She did enjoy it, as much as it lasted, named her car Eileen in honor of how many times it stopped on the side of the road. "Come On Eileen" playing on a loop in her head. 

The mourning, the shake of her hands is because of the meaning, that someone has noticed her from the murder scene, that she's known to people that would do this as a message. And if this is only a message, then real action isn't something she wants to imagine, but she does. And with an imagination of her own, a nature built on dreams isn't always in her favor.

In the end, she tries to focus her mind on ways to get home. If she has enough money for the bus. When there's a route that'll bring her back near Fairview. If someone will go with her, she doesn't think she needs it, but she doesn't want to be alone, even if she finds it selfish. In the end, she sits down in the carpark, crosslegged and staring up at her burnt car, a breath at the idea of a people that want to hurt another. In the end, her thoughts go to work and how she's going to carry everything to work.

It's only in her peripheral vision that she sees another, and then her demeanor changes quickly, and not out of hiding herself or her own exhaustion for what's happening in Fable City, but her own nature to give too much to strangers. She doesn't stand, but she does give Rashid her attention, recognizes him as someone from the meeting earlier in the month. It's soft the way she speaks to him, "Was yours?" She nods toward her own car, she knows the answer if he's standing here.

In one moment, the night had ended. As if on a timer, her energy from the evening gone within a moment once there was smoke and fear rising in the air, once someone else controlled the night, and with that, the people living in it. Two hours ago, she was having a good night, a drink in her and an easy laugh on her lips, bright smiles so easy to don, when now her head spins with some exhaustion of piecing together what's happened. 

A group of people hoping to silence another, her. Hoping to scare her. And it works. Her hands shake. And with some time to process the car, that she doesn't have enough to fix or replace it, her mind ventures when it can to live somewhere else without her really able to stop it. Her hands twitch at times as if she would rather be painting, where she's always gone when reality was too harsh for a girl with dreams living beneath the skin. 

A mind split on processing this, the Augury, how she's going to get home, get to work, and the other half somewhere deep within shades of pastels and ink, wanting to create beauty when the world tried it's hardest to try and prove to her there isn't anything beautiful within it when she still wants to prove it wrong. Even if she must create the beauty. For now, she's just tired and wants her mind to be anywhere but reality, even as it's stuck here, like tar and all there's to think about is ruin. That someone wants to ruin her and people she knows. That the pull in her gut that makes her feel as if she's sinking into the ground isn't her imagination.

Lost in her thoughts so well, she almost misses the comfortable face that may be a comfort only to her and those that know a stoic face is only a face. And when she sees Logan outside of Triton, she heads his way without thought, a protective figure by now. "I'm sorry, if yours —" she begins, but trails off, her gaze lingering towards the carpark. She apologizes and means it, when she had nothing to do with this, when it feels like it does, she knows not all of it is real. "There should be a bus that drives by here, if you need a way to get home too." Another pause, she can be lost in silence for so long, if she allows herself, but she doesn't know if she wants it here, "Is it bad to say, I'm glad you're here, not with what happened though —"

he’s already imagining this too much, enjoying this too much - adrenaline and hunger in his veins at the thought of woodlander parties with their food just all laid out - half of it goes to the trash anyways, soren figures, so really, emme and him would be doing them a favour. 

soren nods excitedly at emme’s words, already bouncing on the spot - he’s can’t sew for shit, but maybe he can scout the area while emme works on their disguises, make himself familiar with the woodlander paths and back alleys that tunnel back to their side of town, back home.

(they both know the woodlanders won’t follow them once they cross that border into a neighbourhood of cracked streets and smoke-filled air, every corner a new horror to their pristine dresses and suits that wouldn’t bother chasing a couple of stray kids into a part of town they so vehemently hate) 

(they probably aren’t doing wonders for their image, either, but soren couldn’t care less) 

“if we run fast enough, then they won’t be able to get a good look at us.” soren grins. “we wouldn’t want them to have too good of an idea on what to put on their wanted posters, am i right?” 

he lets out a bark of laughter at emme’s words, probably a little bit too loud - he sees a couple of other shoppers turn their head at him and all he does is smile in return before his eyes finds the girl before him again. 

“i’m gonna be ready for the apocalypse, emme, that’s the goal - what with everything going on, i wouldn’t be surprised if there’s news about an outbreak next.” he jokes. “besides, this is good practice. we’d last long, you and i, with our non-perishables and excellent scavenging abilities.” 

The brightness of her face grows with his without thought. The kind of subtle shift that happens in front of stranger and close friends alike, to want to give more than she can recieve, to want to come alive with another. 

She encourages Soren and all his flight sometimes without meaning to because she too latches onto the energy he brings with him, contagious. From their talk of life as a stray, from crashing so many parties not meant for them, as if pretending to wear masks, it might believed Emme would want to change her status, to live as a woodlander. And that's not right either.

Dreams don't live in wealth. She just wants enough to live comfortably, to afford therapy, to pay for a friend's meal every now and again, to not have to worry, to travel if she wanted. Not the pretentiousness, not the stiff features that laugh only when it's the right cue. She'd rather be full of poetry, than whatever a certain kind of wealth can feed into another. Both her and Soren walk to far into the clouds to think of things such as reputations. All her life, she’s had enough of an opinion of her stuffed down her throat, any one else’s thoughts on how she behaves, how she looks, isn’t anything she wants or cares for, no matter if it’s woodlander’s idea of her.

“I can’t say that we’ll be put on wanted posters for taking some leftovers, but if we do, do you think I’ll somehow get to be the one that draws them,” she laughs with him, “Need to make them flattering, at the least.”

She waits a moment before continuing, her feet restless, “Okay, so apocalypse-boy requests pasta and ramen? The lady may be making the last of the waffles now.”

Send “✉” for a text that WASN’T SENT.

[ text: mina h. 🌷 ] i know he was boyfriend[ text: mina h. 🌷 ] i know what the media will try to do[ text: mina h. 🌷 ] and i know what you’ll say too[ text: mina h. 🌷 ] but fuck all of that[ text: mina h. 🌷 ] you don’t have to go to a funeral just for attention to be on you, no matter who it’s for[ text: mina h. 🌷 ] it’s okay if you mourn alone or with me there with you[ text: mina h. 🌷 ] do you want me to go with you? 

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[ text: mina h. 🌷 ] please try to sleep [ text: mina h. 🌷 ] i’ll go upstairs to scare away the nightmares if they come to get you

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[ text: carter w.🐶 ] [ attached image of stray dog ][ text: carter w. 🐶 ] [ attached image of stray dog ] [ text: carter w. 🐶 ] [ attached image of stray dog ] [ text: carter w. 🐶 ] ei fomund you

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[ text: eden m. 🌹 ] h[ text: eden m. 🌹 ] hey!! so i’m going to be a bit late meeting you[ text: eden m. 🌹 ] but i do have coffee, remember what you said you liked! i’ll be there in a second

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[ text: eden m. 🌹 ] sometimes coworkers bring in muffins for work. i tried making some this time, and tried for how you seem to do it and these are new[ text: eden m. 🌹 ] whenare you supposed to know they’re done? [ text: eden m. 🌹 ] so i’m going to the store, do you wanna come? 

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I ONLY KNOW MEMES AND MASTERPIECES -  A BOY MEME

kid: you don't have a father