chaos walking

Elias had always been restless at night, never one to settle down and sleep for too many hours. Besides that fact that he was used to keeping such late nights, he always just… had to move. Stillness meant thinking, and thinking meant lingering on long-ago pasts and distant, now non-existent futures. There was no use thinking about what could have been, only what is. His mother would’ve shuddered at the thought. A chuckle sprung past his lips at the idea, just as a waft of nicotine overtook the man’s senses. For a moment, he had to glance down to check his own hand, to make sure he hadn’t forgotten to extinguish a cigarette of his own. But no, there was someone else here. Eyeing the other curiously, the man found his brow lifting involuntarily. He saw the bottle first. Jameson? Then, he heard the other speak. A woman. Ah, accented speech. Explains the whiskey, he supposed.

“Uh, nope, but I guess I could say the same to you. Can’t sleep?”

She’s late, of course she’s late. Kara has always hated tardiness both in herself and others - it annoys her to no end, to the point of cancelling plans on whoever’s making her wait depending on her mood. Still, she rushes into the bar, pushing through the crowd and glancing around almost frantically in search of her boss. “Hey,” she tugs at a man’s jacket. “Have you seen a-” Found her. Without much of an explanation, Kara walks away from the man and towards the familiar face.

The beach is dark save for the moonlight as Kara sits with her feet in the sand and a cigarette in hand. She’s been staring at the waves coming and going for so long that the cigarette in her hand is almost gone and she’s barely touched it. Three in the morning and this is the only place she can be where she feels like she can actually breathe. It’s funny how the loveliest of places can be the loneliest. 

Head tilts to the side in a curious angle as she spots a figure walking a bit ahead, bringing her cigarette to her lips only to realize there’s nothing left of it as she buries it in the sand and reaches for the bottle of Jameson instead, taking a swig.  ‘I thought I was the only weirdo who’d be here this late.” She says loud enough to get their attention over the sound of the waves.

Status: open / Location: anywhere in Mystic / Time: anytime / @mysticstarters

There was a reason Amber walked everywhere. It wasn’t that she enjoyed the fresh air or even the daily exercise. It was for the simple fact that her car was an old jalopy. That day it came down in buckets, a flood of near biblical measure coming down the roads in front of her apartment. And Amber had errands to run. Fuck. The old Toyota started without a problem (she should have known…) and as though it was an omen, broke down halfway between her apartment and the radio station. Amber managed to pull over to the side of the road and the car stuttered pathetically to a halt. It gurgled for another minute before finally going kaput.A few attempts to reignite the engine were unsuccessful and Amber resigned to the fact that she wasn’t going another mile. She knew what her only option was. And still she stayed inside the car, reasoning with herself. If she only waited a few minutes… Amber could barely see outside the windshield, colors and shapes blurry through the rain. Fuck. Fuck. Another car passed. Then another. Potential help: gone. Finally, Amber conquered her weaker self, wrapped her semi-waterproof coat around her and stepped out into the wild spring weather, waving at cars that passed. When one stopped, Amber leaned into the window. “You going downtown? AJ’s maybe?”

Of course, Kara thought, that it’d be sunny all day while she was inside the clinic working but the second she set foot outside, the world would come crashing down. There’s a deep frown on her face the entire time as she drives; she’s certainly not a fan of the rain or its sound, which is precisely why the music is turned up so loud she can barely hear what’s going on outside. She doesn’t like the quiet - it often means she has to be alone with her own thoughts, her own feelings and those are both things she doesn’t wish to pay attention to.