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 Posted: Wed Sep 14, 2016 9:16 am
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Alois still wasn’t certain of this life. He thought he might hate his work now. In fact, he started to wonder if he hated his work when he started it. Ashdown held less appeal for him now that he spent so long under the whims of the Court, and he knew he never appreciated the town in the first place. Small wonder he remembered being incessantly grumpy, even with Schatzie at his side.
Schatzie, he thought to himself, turning over the dog’s old collar in his hands.
Maybe I should give up on the business. Find something else. Somewhere else. Ashdown… I don’t think it’s the right place for me. Not when I stepped into something that I have so little knowledge of. At the party, Zac said that people chose inaction because sometimes action causes more damage. I thought him silly at the time. But he spoke of things so far beyond my comprehension as a denizen of this world, and I had spent three-times-one-month under the care of Ezra. Maybe it speaks to my ease of learning, or chances at knowledge in such a place, but… Perhaps I wasn’t meant to be involved in all of this.
But I can’t untangle myself from it, not now. I drew myself from the wall of the Cave, and now I stare into the fire, blinding. It hurts terribly.
This isn’t such a simple path, is it?
With a sigh, Alois tossed the collar to the counter and, like ice, slid over the top of it. He executed a few strides for the door, where a small bell rang when he passed through the portal, and stood outside beneath the shallow awning. Rain poured in droves, leaving him homesick. He wondered, then, if he was truly in Regular Ashdown. But it must’ve been, for mists failed to strangle his vision here. After fighting his pocket, he drew out a cigarette and lit up for the smoothing of nerves.
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Posted: Thu Sep 15, 2016 7:15 am
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He heard the voice call from beyond the grey landscape and recognized it vaguely. Bony fingers tapped ash off his cigarette. Green eyes watched the sweeping fall, where a glow of ember soon faded into mud. Swept away, forgotten, nonexistent.
„It’s my bane,“ he confessed. „I must’f tried to quit sree times already. Life just enjoys piling s**t onto me, I guess. Not testing my stress levels so much as pushing zem overboard.“ Strange how running high chance of getting murdered will do that to a man. „I must be ze shittiest smoker, too. You would sink I’d stop just by virtue of being shitty at it. But…“ He shrugged, and gestured to the flimsy green awning over his workplace. „Here I am, nursing my vices and trying my damndest to catch a cold.“
He looked to her and her crooked umbrella, and watched where she stood apart from him. „What are you doing here?“
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Posted: Fri Sep 16, 2016 6:48 pm
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Alois halted at her sentence and regarded her suspiciously. „What’s your angle?“ He crossed to the long counter where he often conducted business and leaned against it, feet crossed at the ankles. Long bone-white arms braced against the formica surface. „Haf’ we ever had a positif’ interaction? I seem to only recall you yelling at me for all kinds of medical oversights. Or did you just need a proverbial dog to kick in your life?“
Alois looked to the wall of mounted heads where his sights settled on an old timberwolf. „I’m not glad I came back,“ he muttered under his breath. Looking to her, he continued. „I didn’t want to come back to zis. I’f changed, and Vale changed zis life. I don’t sink I can keep running zis place, frankly.“ He shrugged, rubbed his nose.
„Every time I mount a skin on a mold, it just reminds me of zose fetches. Taxidermy feels like it’s half a step away from what zose patrons did. Now not only is my life all ******** up, and my dog dead, but my career is heading for ze shitter too. Why come back at all?“
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Posted: Fri Sep 16, 2016 8:01 pm
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She peered over at his through her lashes. "An angle? Oh, please. I don't have to love you forever and ever mushy gushy to be glad you didn't die, Alois." Temperance looked down at her fingers: thin, pale. They always felt sticky. "Do you know how hard it is to stay alive? How the arteries interconnect and how fragile skin can be? And it's not just that, but the will-" Trailing off, she looked up again.
"She said it was about making you all stronger, strong enough. I dunno. Things can be fixed." The fetches, the trials, the long three months... "What was there if you had stayed, though?"
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Posted: Fri Sep 16, 2016 8:36 pm
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Alois flatted his lips together in a thin line. Inwardly he bit back curses, quips. „I’m aware of how frustrating human skin is to work wis’.“ As if on mention alone, his thumbs rubbed against their paired index fingers. „Sure, we’re fragile in ze context of our industrialized world, and probably just as fragile in ze context of zeir world. But I was never put in a situation where my physical self was in great jeopardy. Ze damage done wasn’t in a matter of scars.“
He sighed, his shoulders sank. „All I can guess is zat, if I had stayed, zen zat life would haf’ continued. I’d be wis’ a family I knew, compared wis’ a life where I haf’ no friends or family and my only companion is dead. I’d have a routine I recognized, duties I was used to but not so terribly tired of.
„I don’t know what she meant about making us all stronger. I don’t know who she is - Melany? Ze Spinel Lady? Ze one who practically masturbated herself when her pet broke my hand? It doesn’t matter.“ Alois waved the thought away. „Life here just doesn’t feel right anymore.“
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Posted: Sun Sep 18, 2016 6:04 pm
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She shrugged. "I'm only a nurse - that's not so strange, is it?" And well, she had to admit that going to other Ashdown and dragging out an emo boy was not a typical nurse duty. That part wasn't a nurse part, really. For all his doom and gloom, and shitty stitches (Temperance would smack a needle out of his hand if he ever did that again), she kind of, well, liked him.
"I don't understand you either, goth kid." He was insufferable, yet here she was. "Why do you need a new job - aren't you a taxidermist? Also," she said, crossing her arms. "-did my mask make it back?"
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