Infinityandmadness - No Mask? NO MASK!!

Reminder: you can't kill them in any way that matters.

With: Anyone Location: Near Fuel Stop Gas When: Early morning.

Opening the door to his house, he glanced around, taking stock of the area around the small little town. It wasn't too different from his own hometown. Smaller, sure. But, going by what he was told on the first day he arrived, despite his continued skepticism. He was sure if this were a normal town run by normal people, it would have been nice to spend on outdoor retreats. If you enjoyed a swampy environment. It was early. He couldn't really sleep in this strange place. Which was really interrupting his usual sleep routine. As Tali trailed behind him, he closed the door behind his son and began walking beside the other toward the more active part of the town.

Lifting his right hand up, he hissed under his breath, feeling the sting in his palm from his nails the night before. Tali looked over to Lainn and revealed what had happened, “Really? Wasn't too scary, was it?” Tali shook his head and said he had only been worried Lainn would hurt himself. Lainn turned toward the moving truck and opened up the back, “You think we packed the first aid kit near the front or the back?” Staring into the back of the truck, he frowned, not looking forward to going through items in it just to find anything like that. Not that it really mattered at all anyway, given their current situation. It couldn't all sit in there, anyway.

Lainn raised an eyebrow at her snort, before glancing away. That told him a little more that this place wasn't as panic-inducing as the people behaved on the first night. Granted, the freaks outside at night to be true in the case, whatever reason, Lainn had decided to play along. Giving Tali the same game plan in private. Though Tali was only just nine years old, he had been through plenty enough. Enough that he knew whatever the situation was in front of them, it would be dangerous to give into the childish part of him, now. Following in step with Lainn as they were walking. Lainn listened to the other, “Right. I got a little information on that when I got here.” Though, he did think about what she was elaborating on here.

At the question, he glanced back to Mira and nodded, listening as she explained the situation with juice and tea. Looking vaguely disgusted on hearing this, he clicked his tongue, “The milk tastes like cardboard…” He wondered how that could have even been possible. But, perhaps he was overthinking what he had learned before coming here. So, he really didn't know how to think, given what he currently knows of this place. Now, he was just concerned with why milk would taste like cardboard. Or if Mira was just playing up the whole act altogether. “But you have cows, so, that's something? Are you feeding them properly?” Should he have even been asking her that question? What made him think she was in control of any livestock? “I mean, are they being fed properly?”

When Mira continued, he nodded his head at her reasoning and continued walking toward the diner. Once inside and Mira had moved to rest on the counter to talk to Tali, Lainn sat back a little to one side, observing this interaction. Tali looked at the woman, now more at eye level with him, and gave a nod of his head toward Mira's words, understanding. He offered a nervous smile before turning his head toward Lainn, who offered an approving smile, “Just give him some time to figure you out.” Lainn echoed part of her prior statement back, nodding as he continued to watch Tali for another moment. When Mira went on to Lainn question of her medical experience, he listened attentively to her, “Ooo, a dropout. Thought about doing that a few times myself, in school.” He swallowed, stopping himself from thinking too far back into those years, “Had a lot going on at the time.”

As she prompted, he moved to hold his hands out for her to see more clearly, they had already been cleaned up pretty well this morning, “That would be unpleasant. I would like to keep my hands. Though, I would like to keep my mind, more. Good brains are a hard thing to come by, you know.” He partially joked, watching her closely as she was cleaning the deepened groves his nails had cut into the bottoms of his palms, “By the sounds of it, don't seem like anyone here just rolled in here on purpose.” He pointed out, then turned to look at Tali, who was sitting at the booth now, playing with some toys he had in his backpack. Lainn looked back toward Mira after a moment, “But, yeah, I guess we were just moving, which you can te-Ah-” He winced a bit as his palms stung with the medicine. Then continued the next second, “The moving truck is a dead giveaway. The Twilight Zone is probably what I'd call it, going by what I've been told so far.” Lainn pauses, looking from his palms to her, “Nah, just going to a different state, I had a new job opportunity waiting for me. Kinda a boring story, actually.” Tali looked over, looking uncertain before looking back to his toys again, Lainn continued, “What about you?”

she walked just ahead, the soft scuff of her boots against the pavement filling the quiet between them. her gaze flicked toward lainn’s son, tali, as he clutched his backpack straps, his eyes darting around like he was trying to catalog everything at once. there was a wariness there she recognized — a kid who’d learned too early to read the room, to stay close to the people who mattered. it made her chest ache, just a little. at lainn’s comment about infections and whatever this is, she snorted softly, her breath visible in the cool morning air. “weak minds don’t last long in a place like this,” she said, her voice low, more to herself than him. “but it’s not just infections you gotta watch out for. this town’s got a way of digging in, pulling at the edges of you until you start unraveling.” his dry response about teeth earned a faint smirk from her, and when he asked about tea and juice, she raised an eyebrow. “tea? sure, if you’re not picky. juice? you’re asking a lot from a place where the milk sometimes tastes like cardboard.” her tone was teasing, but there was a sharpness underneath — this wasn’t the kind of town where you could afford to be picky. not about anything. as they reached the diner, she held the door open, letting them step inside ahead of her. the smell of stale coffee and frying grease hit her immediately, and she relaxed, just a little. this place might not be much, but it was familiar now, and in a town like this, familiar was as close to comfort as you got. “new guy’s just what i call people i haven’t figured out yet,” she said, shrugging as she moved behind the counter. her dark eyes flicked to tali’s brief grin, and something about it softened her sharp edges. “lainn and tali, huh? well, nice to meet you. and tali,” she added, leaning forward slightly, her elbows resting on the counter as she looked at him, “if you ever feel like talking, i make a pretty good listener. no pressure, though.” she pulled a first aid kit from under the counter, plunking it down in front of lainn with a decisive thud. “first aid training?” she repeated, arching an eyebrow as she opened the kit. “let’s just say i spent a few years learning how to fix people up when they were too stubborn to admit they needed help. med school dropout,” she added casually, grabbing some antiseptic wipes and bandages. “but don’t worry, i know what i’m doing.” she gestured for his hand, her movements brisk but not unkind. “you’ll be good as new in no time, i promise. or, at the very least, you won’t have to worry about losing your hand to some weird infection from this town.” she started cleaning the wound, her hands steady as she worked. “so, lainn,” she said after a moment, her tone light but probing, “what’s your story? you don’t seem like the type to roll into a place like this by accident.” she glanced up at him, her eyes sharp and curious. “or maybe i’m wrong. maybe you’re just another lost soul who made a wrong turn and ended up in the twilight zone.”

Reaching out toward a plant, Lainn delicately brushed the tips of his fingers on his outstretched left hand against the stem, before moving it to glide along the leaves. Frowning a bit, he remembered what his classes told him about the type of tree in front of him. Before he plucks a leaf right off and moves to stand in on the quick succession of moves.

Glancing over, he could see his son, playing and brought the leaf up to his nose, sniffing it before absently twisting it between his fingers and turning to move away a bit, spotting someone a moment or so later. He quirked an eyebrow at the other's assumption that he was looking to hunt, taking note of it, he gave a nod of his head.

Lainn turned his head, keeping Tali in his view, who remained close to him still before saying, “Well, I don't really hunt.” Holding his hands out, he gives a lazy shrug at this, before continuing to toy with the leaf in his hands and going on, “Do you?” Lainn inquired before turning his head back away from the stranger, listening to Tali come closer as he explained the type of plant he was now holding. Lainn gave a nod of his head, commenting gently toward his son, “That's correct. It's a pretty cool find, Tali.”

As Tali grinned at Lainn's words, before he moved a little ways away once more, to look at more of the plants in the immediate area. Lainn looked toward the stranger again, then around the wooded area before them, “It's pretty, this place. This type of biome is great for all kinds of discovery. There's probably loads of strange bugs here.” Lainn commented offhandedly. He had always found swampland and the like to be almost mystical.

where: edge of the woods | when: day time | whom: open to all

Lucas crouches at the edge of the woods, examining what could be tracks. Or could be nothing. He hates how smart the creatures are. They could've left this behind just to toy with him.

He hears rustling from footsteps behind him, and he doesn't bother looking up.

"The hunting woods are six miles that way," he says, pointing his left hand. "Signs and caution tape everywhere. You can't miss them."

Lainn reached up to pull a box out, setting it off to one side as Tali was talking and trying to help, but the boxes were a little harder for him. So he defaulted to talking about some of his friends from school and the events they got up to, “Uuh huuuh. Really!? -You didn't!? That's gross Tali.” He commented, amused, however. Tali giggled, then tried to defend his part in the 'prank'. Lainn was sure that whatever friend had managed to eat a worm was going to be alright, though. Lainn looked over hearing a voice and nodded as he moved to grab another box, “Grrreaat.” He muttered distractedly as he dropped the heavy box to the ground and looked it over, finding what it was labeled on. Tali spoke up about it 'not being in that box'. He patted a hand to it and looked at the woman, “You heard right.” Eyeing her, he thought about, if anything he was told, was true. How important such a kit would be. Lainn stood then, “Why do you ask?”

She was done with work and on her way back to Colony House when she stopped by the rusty old gas stop to see if she could somehow oil up the chains of an overused bicycle. Nosy as she was though, she couldn't help but notice the man and the kid and wondered if maybe they could use some assistance. Montana hated offering, especially when exhausted from a days work which for her started much too early. "Hey, everything alright? I didn't mean to eavesdrop but, heard something about the first aid kit?"

bought this gem secondhand and can’t get over how stunning it is 🪐 reblog is okay, don’t repost/use

dark academia isn’t just for the humanities: i bring you STEM academia.

observatories. stargazing. biographies of scientists. filling the board end to end with equations. hand-drawn anatomical diagrams. the hazy euphoria after finally finishing an assignment. oppenheimer & frankenstein. the uniformity of a circuit board; the chaos of a programming window. ibm’s a boy and his atom. event horizon telescope’s black hole photo. the wonder of studying anatomy and knowing that’s happening within you. sketching organic compounds that may as well be sigils. studying latin for medical terminology. doing problem sets to classical music.

Avan Jogia as Ulysses Zane in ‘Now Apocalypse’ 1.02