- fakes a toss.

lettie points at olivia, the same way she does when one of her students correctly predicts the ending of their read aloud. ding, ding, ding, we have a winner! the town should put it below the welcome sign: a tidy slogan, stay long enough and you too can experience the horrors!

"Okay, listen — is there any stronger amphetamine than questionable morals?" Would she actually get with Shivers? Well… that was actually a little more up in the air than it probably should've been, but it still wasn't necessarily a yes! Nonetheless, did she believe in her own justification? Was there any stronger aphrodisiac (the word she was looking for) than questionable morals? You know… not really! As Lettie's journal came out to replace Shivers's trailblazing novel… It was funny. For all Lettie and Olivia had done together, for all they knew of the other, for all they had experienced together (see: literally the horrors), it still didn't feel right — being serious. Maybe it was just because she never wanted to jeopardize losing Lettie's laugh, never wanted to risk some kind of 'that was the last time I will ever hear her laugh and I didn't know it until it was too late' moment — the worst part about things coming to an end is that you so seldom know when that end will come. Perhaps she knew more than most about endings, being all but intertwined with the biggest ending of all, but it was the unspoken ones that were the ones worth fearing. The grand finale? No, not so much. A shut door? A 'talk to you later' that had expired over ten years ago? A friend going off to college and not coming back? Those quiet and uncertain ones. She couldn't predict those quiet and uncertain ones, couldn't see those — trying to prevent them, to get ahead of them, before they could happen? Trying to keep Lettie's laugh was the closest she could do. She wasn't fond of it, of taking the journal and letting her eyes trail over it for a moment, not yet digesting what she was skimming. But they had to do it, didn't they? To Olivia's immediate recollection, they were the only two with a decent amount of experience in that realm — for better or for worse, they were the best guys for the job! And, with or without Olivia, Lettie was gonna have to deal with that dream slash vision anyway! Yes, some companionship… you know what — yes, that was probably helpful! "What'd you get from it?" She asked, looking up to Lettie. "Besides an idea for a sick album cover." Then, her eyes and attention back to the journal… falling leaves, lightless skies, dark soil, cryptic words, the ring…

olivia is sort of familiar, but not enough to recognise by footstep or breathing or scent yet. for sure not enough to be confident reading her face, though saffron does not hesitate to stare. she doesn't remember ever having met a banshee before. if the pack ever had, the memory never stuck in her mind - never had reason to.

It was a bit funny.

"A terrible decision," Olivia joked in response. Perhaps she had not the most trustworthy person in the more typical sense — fun once took precedence over responsibility — but had she ever been the type of person to strand a friend, much less one who had proven himself as annoyingly caring as Xingyu had? She did not believe so! But how annoying it was! Time went on, fun became less fun and more forced, responsibility became more of a weight than an option, and she started putting in overtime in the 'denying the existence of personal problems' department. Because it was all very whatever. There was a problem that her friends were facing now, a problem Xingyu was facing, a problem she figured she could lend a hand to. The Hunger was right beside her, after all; the Hunger was clinging to her, after all. She stepped in Xingyu's cupped hands, placed her hands on top of the metal bar, and all but vaulted up. So skilled. She hoisted her own self back up to straddle the railing and held a hand out for Xingyu to take. "You're probably gonna have to take a running leap, but whenever you're ready!" A running leap… because it would be much easier to lift him up if she only had to do it for a couple seconds!

Damon just nodded and half-rolled his eyes, smiling, at the Satanist comment. Olivia was quick on her feet—always a step ahead of him. She could probably do his job, because that was eighty percent of clinical psychology. Here came another quip: arsenic as holiness. Damon said, with the demeanor of someone who’d thought about it, “Lose the battle, win the war. Or lose the host, rather.” His gaze grew unfocused, and he added: “You wonder if, for all its strengths, there’s not some—some giant weakness that the hunger’s hidden away. Like if in possessing people, it’s taking on some human vulnerability? I mean, if Jesus Christ could be killed—and if I, known Satanist, can even speak his name—maybe the arsenic could hurt the hunger.”

And thus, depth was brought to her joke! You never do know what folks will spin, do you? 'Lose the battle, win the war'… whatever that meant! "Y'know, we could just pour it into the water supply — kinda solve all the problems that way." If the entire population that could die a normal death was dead, then what would the Hunger do? It couldn't turn to Death to strike a deal because Magnolia Creek would largely be dead, sacrifices would be pretty pointless when the only options would be, like… vampires and werewolves and ghosts, all of which had essentially already been sacrificed to the Hunger in a different way! God, maybe she really was as smart as her test scores had once reflected! She supposed she had unknowingly answered the question Damon posed — if the Hunger had no one to feed on… what would it do? Certainly not the answer anyone wanted, certainly not the answer she would have intended to be her real one, but if no one even needed Magnolia Creek…

"If he'd just be a little more patient and a little more nosey, he'd probably have a ton to write about by now." The best way to ensure you have plenty of material for some wild book about Magnolia/Maggot Creek? Have a connection to the supernatural world. The second best way to ensure you have plenty of material? Know someone who has a connection to the supernatural world. The third best way? Insert yourself into it, even if they all seem a degree more than annoyed by your unnecessary presence — they're all bound to like you more if you insert yourself for real than if you insert yourself in a profitable piece of fiction (marketed as non-fiction)! Hell, Olivia fit that very first bill — Olivia was part of the supernatural world — and she still wouldn't have felt right doing anything akin to what Shivers had done! Much like she didn't want to waste her one (1) book of the year on his, she didn't want to waste any anger on him (especially when it wasn't her tragedy he was profiting off of, not really), but she was more than happy to classify herself as annoyed by him! "From the riots in the autobiography section or the ones of fans throwing themselves at him?" She placed a finger atop his dramatic author photo and shook her head. "But when he looks at you like that…" Sometimes Olivia could not tell where the bit ended and where she began — would she actually fuck Shivers? Or was she just letting the implication hang there for the hell of it? To provide another thing to distract from that whole 'as two seers, let's try to decode this dream you had together!' that they really needed to do…

"You're the one who said I'm your editor," Olivia said, raising her hands in defense. "I'm just saying — if you need an editor, you've also gotta need a muse. And that's way cooler." A world in which Alistair channeled his emotions into art and Olivia had the patience (and slash or the general vibes) to be a muse? There were alternate universes, and then there were universes that were simply inconceivable. Maybe it would've been a nice one — a nice little twist on who they were, on who they became — but could it be further from their reality? Probably. For as normal as Olivia attempted to keep her friendship with Alistair (pretending nothing had changed was far easier than having to acknowledge how none of it should have happened, how his mere presence was a sign that something was very wrong, how much things and people are able to change, et cetera), there were the occasional moments that forced that reminder — that reminder that, no, it wasn't normal and it wasn't the same. Before the void, before those years spent both everywhere and nowhere, she was positive Alistair would have picked up on the subtext of the comment — hell, even if it weren't for that aspect, she would have thought Alistair had remembered enough about her to… well, even if he hadn't picked up on the subtext, not directly deny it. Nonetheless, she wasn't exactly planning to harp on the subject of 'no, I'd destroy personal property too! I mean, maybe not for absolutely no reason, but there was reason there!' But perhaps it was enough to take her out of the moment, if just for a second… Assuming she would ever fail to swipe someone's gear, though? Now that was where she drew the line! "You think I'd swipe his gear?" she said, voice higher than usual in mock offense as her eyes drifted to the crowd to see if the cop was still there… then, with confirmation that he was not, she gave Alistair a playful whack and dropped her voice back. "I am offended that you think I'd fail! I was playing decoy for you —" — so to speak — " — don't know if you saw the cop back there." Was it possible the cop would've let it happen, wouldn't have cared enough to split it up (or would have felt some sting of sympathy for Alistair)? Sure, but it seemed power trips and quotas nearly always came before humanity. "Besides, I wasn't going for his camera." Like the perfect magician, she shook her sleeve and slid his wallet into her hand. "You wanna play decoy, we can always go for Shivers himself."

TIMESTAMP: july 26, 5pm. / LOCATION: the summer festival. / STATUS: open.

No matter how many years passed, no matter all of the things that happened and all of the things that did not happen, one thing constantly remained: Olivia's love of the Summer Festival. No matter how dark things were, how hard things were, there was that little spark of light that came around every July. Kids would run and laugh, couples would try to win prizes for each other, parents would tell their kids that they just weren't tall enough for the rollercoaster yet and take them over to the ferris wheel. Everything changed and everything stayed the same. Olivia supposed that, in a way, that included her. Everything seemed so much calmer at the festival, so properly paced that it almost went by in slow motion. When everything else was so urgent, so chaotic, organized chaos was nothing but organized. But the person who struck up conversation.. was she organized chaos or just chaos? Whichever it was, perhaps Olivia would have appreciated it if it weren't for looking at her and just thinking, 'Man, remember that time I killed what was basically your cousin? 'Cause I do! Sorry about that, that's something I'll never atone for!' Ha. So it was with nearly uncharacteristic hesitation that she engaged, that she shrugged her shoulders and nodded very tentatively. "I guess… so…" Loud shot. Matted fur. What were they talking about? Ferris wheels! "I mean… it's not like it'd, like… hurt."

lettie snorts, shaking her head slightly at her friend's comment. "it really would be a waste," she sighs, staring down at the dramatic cover which gives off the illusion of journalistic. the shop isn't quite as busy as usual, but there are still other visitors, and she's mindful of who might find the topic upsetting if they were to overhear them discussing it. she leans in towards olivia, voice low.

"Okay, that picture alone actually might change my mind." So dramatic, so established, so upstanding! There actually was a very good chance it would be quite an entertaining read in a 'this is absolutely ridiculous' kind of way! Even if everything he'd written, save for his presence, was completely accurate… He would be a literal self-insert. You know, no one ever said she had to buy it! The events of Halloween 1990 were… complicated, on some deeper level, for Olivia. She was not there. Objectively speaking, she was not there. Her whole 'involvement' in it was practically non-existent and very whatever. Her reaction in the weeks that followed? Okay, maybe she hadn't exactly been able to help it, but her mind had been so dramatic about it! Because she was not there, none of her loved oes died that night, et cetera et cetera et cetera! Objectively speaking, it was whatever. And yet there was still the briefest pang of guilt whenever it was brought up! But it was whatever! "If that man was there, he's gotten a lot of plastic surgery." Not that she had directly seen any of the people who hadn't died that night, but there had been enough glimpses to know that that man had not been there… which was what made the fact that he was signing books in Magnolia Creek — like, not even a book tour in some town or city where no one would know he wasn't there — even more amusing!

At Olivia’s comment about his “specialty”—and whether or not that was religious territory—Damon just shook his head slowly. “If you knew my involved and complicated backstory about religion… If we are to know each other, you cannot claim I’m even tangential to organized religion.” He grinned, all lightness. “I’m the only exorcist using the scientific method. When holy water can compete with trial and error—and that’s a low bar? You might see me change my tune.”

"Satanist then," Olivia stated as though she had just put the pieces of one of those aggravating 1,000 piece puzzles together (she seldom had the patience for even a 50 piece one). Of course, she had to wonder if absolutely anyone in the entire town — if not essentially the entire world — had a normal relationship with religion… but, yes, perhaps there was a difference between 'complicated' and 'involved and complicated'. "Hey, everything needs a pioneer — I'll even give you a hypothesis for you to work with: adding arsenic to water makes it holy." Man, rest in peace half of Magnolia Creek. "Thanks, my dad gave it to me!" If she knew Damon, here is where she would make a perfectly timed Daddy Issues(TM) joke… "Along with a couple complexes — but not an Electra one, thank god." Listen, sometimes you have to sacrifice the common courtesy of not immediately oversharing to commit to the bit! "Man, he got Bear and you got Damon? He older or younger?" Did Damon's parents get more or less creative with age? "Save someone's birthday party before?" He was gonna say that and not share how!? Not that she couldn't believe it… "Man, the three endings make the movie." Well, that and the singing telegram and the many one-liners that floated through Olivia's head day and night. "Which is the truth for you?" Sure, they had the one ending that said 'but this is what really happened,' but would they dare include two others if they expected the audience to take their word as gospel? "And that's not the one they went with?" Olivia responded, tone filled with absolute betrayal and disbelief! "God, maybe that guy would still have a career worth talking about if they had!" "Y'know, I'm thinkin' I'm just gonna turn this storm into a movie night." Now, had she been planning on renting both of them? Up until he'd seen her and initiated contact, the working thought was renting one of them and, ya know… just accidentally taking the other! "Any movie in any genre…" Well, probably one of the two that she had in her hands! "You know what — I don't know if they'd have this one in stock, but I think everyone has to watch Blood Diner just once in their life." Because it made no sense and it was beautiful!

✷  TIME 〳 july 30th, 7:06pm ✷  PLACE 〳magnolia college, football field ✷  FT. 〳 olivia herron @nevcrmourn

She hadn't been there long, but she had been there long enough for her thoughts to have drifted from the ring and its implications to… well, college. Of course, it didn't exactly take much time for her thoughts to drift from one thing to another — if she had any talent at all, it was in non-linear thinking — but this one… In a different life, Olivia had tried; in a different life, Olivia had gone to college; in a different life, Olivia had made something of herself. Her mom had always told her that she was more than capable of it, more than capable of becoming something great — but, more than that, more than capable of becoming the kind of person she wanted to be. More than capable of following her dreams, whatever they may be, and succeeding. She still told her that. After so many years of being told what her dreams were supposed to be, she just didn't know what they really were; after so many years of following someone else's, she didn't know how to find and follow her own. Maybe college would've opened that door — because she had also been more than capable of getting in. But maybe it wouldn't have. In any case, it was whatever. All of the passing thoughts left her mind when she heard Xingyu coming up — all those passing thoughts went right back to the ring. She hadn't been there on Halloween night, but she had felt it. She hadn't been there the night they truly translated the prophecy, but she had been told. Bad vibes all around. "Check back in an hour — maybe I'll have forgiven you by then." Obviously she did not actually care, just because she had a coworker who'd cover for her (as long as she did something for them) and a boss who didn't seem to care didn't mean everyone else did! "Yeah, well…" The pieces had to be put together and dozens of heads were certainly better than none! Or one ! Or a baker's dozen! — You know, just the more, the merrier. As he surveyed the gates for some form of an entrance, some way past the padlock, she placed a hand on his shoulder. "No clue." Oh, how he had lived through so much but was still thinking as if he had lived through nothing at all! "Put a hand out." For her to step on! "You hike me up, I'll pull you over."

👤 closed for olivia herron ,📍 twice-sold tales, 📆 july 24th, 3:11 pm @nevcrmourn

It hadn't seemed worth it, getting angry over the book Shivers had published. Annoyed? Sure. Amused by the audacity? Of course! But genuinely angry? Maybe it was because she wasn't a slayer. Maybe it was because she hadn't known any of the folks who had died that night very well. Maybe it was just because anger was a beast she didn't like carrying. Yes, she had felt them — she had felt every last Death, every last dying breath, all of the pain and anguish and sorrow; yes, it had certainly done something to the trajectory of her life; yes, it had certainly started her on a new path with new burdens entirely. But it was whatever. She hadn't been there, she hadn't really known anyone — a pebble in the shadow of the slayers' plights! All to say — just because she hadn't found it worth getting angry over didn't mean she wouldn't understand why some people would. Alistair, a man who had nearly given his life (…it was weird…) on that field, was certainly near the top of the 'yeah, it'd be wild if [x] wasn't angry' list, if not at the top of it! So it came as absolutely no surprise to see the man… taking charge of things, so to speak. And, quite frankly? Olivia was all for it. She was all for a good old-fashioned brawl, all for some punches getting thrown — all for everything! But her eyes landed on someone in a uniform she loathed more and more with each and every day… And there was that whole 'might be considered aggravated assault by a cop who has a quota to meet' thing… So she did the first thing she could think to: She turned to the nearest man, a camera in his hand (was he taking pictures of this? filming it, perhaps? she didn't really care!), and ignored the passing thought of 'it'd be so easy to use this altercation as a distraction to swipe and sell,' with all the subtlety of a hand grenade, simply whacked it out of his hands. 'Do you know much this cost?' — A fake apology with a fake smile, the promise to buy him a new one (ha!), reciting a 555 number that he didn't seem to catch onto, and crossing her fingers that he was some reporter from out of town… or something… Worst came to worst, she would just 'buy' him another. And then snaking through and up to Alistair, doing her damndest to prevent some lame and undeserved charge. "Editor? I couldn't at least be your muse?" She said once she figured they were out of direct ear shot, nodding towards the cop she figured they had narrowly escape. Then, dropping his arm, she turned to him. "Okay, do I really seem like the kind of person who would purposefully destroy someone's personal property?" For better or for worse, he had to still know her well enough to know the answer to that one…

⸻ @nevcrmourn. a closed starter. ⸻ creek video. ⸻ july 25, 5:15 pm.

Olivia had never cared much for ‘normalcy.’ What was the point of life — what was the point in living if you lived in monotony? Wake up at 7am, brush your teeth, slap together a perfectly Business Casual outfit, go to your 9-5, eat your dinner, go to sleep. Rinse and repeat and repeat and repeat.

𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐅𝐎𝐑: olivia – the crow @nevcrmourn 𝐋𝐎𝐂𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍: elderberry bakery, july 20th, 11 am

For all of the cons that accompanied Olivia's visions, at least she could say one thing about them: They were straightforward. She didn't need to decode anything — whoever she saw or heard or whatever was about to die. Sure, she didn't always see their face; sure, she didn't always see exactly how they were going to die, but there was never a question about why she was seeing them! (Well, with the exception of that one time that the vision and the wail did not tell of Death, but of Life… but whatever!)

— summer festival . july 26th , 9:00pm .

There was a bit of amusement to it all. Magnolia Creek was cracking — nothing was the same — but it seemed they'd all be aghast to acknowledge it! The Hunger whispered a bit louder every night, making deals with Death in the quiet darkness, Olivia paralyzed as she watched (and Olivia tethered to their Deal). But it was no matter! The town could be swallowed at any given moment, but what would they do if they couldn't have the fair? — and, quite frankly, thoughts akin to that ran through Olivia's mind without a shred of sarcasm. Because it was nice! Because it was normal! Because it was, above all else, fun! Senses attacked by colorful lights, the laughter of children, the sickly sweet smell of cotton candy (would one believe it? would one believe that it smelled like Death?) — overwhelmed, all consumed… Wow, did the sensory overload bring back memories! A lot of sneaking and a lot of swiping — a lot of saying 'let's cheat these games before they get the chance to cheat us!' and undoubtedly inconveniencing volunteers. A lot of smoke and mirrors — a lot of enlisting folks to go do [xyz] in return for a plush or snack or what-have-you of their own. She was pretty sure she still had a gigantic Scooby-Doo from the ring toss somewhere… Just as everything changes, everything stays the same. Ambling throughout the crowd, narrowly avoiding multiple sticky spills, her attention was turned from… wherever the hell it was (because, quite frankly, it was not on anything!) to what felt like a black cloud of absolute despair! Man, there was only one person she knew who could be such a black cloud of absolute despair in the midst of a festival! — and the voice sure was confirmation of that! "Sick rain cloud you've got over your head," she said, shuffling over to Malachi as the Collision Kid darted past. Oh, to be the Collision Kid again! "I guess someone's gotta bring everything down a little, huh?"