{ open } all my troubles on a burning pile

[gleans]

Who: Galen Howard and YOU!
What: Wandering on the beach, smoking, throwing rocks!
When: Day 30, afternoon.
Where: The edge of the water, near houses 20, 9, and the lighthouse.

It's easy for Galen to feel like he's trapped in a movie, when he's alone. After arriving in a strange place, encountering all kinds of impossible things, and to top it all off, being told that he may end up going insane at the hands of a living nightmare, it's hard to feel like this is real life. But there's really a God here, there's really a sweet doctor who turns into an angry green monster, and he's really become good friends with a woman who works regularly with the supernatural. It's almost strange to think that just a few weeks ago, he was working early radio, spending long hours in writing sessions, going on dates with his non-traumatized boyfriend -- it all seems so damn normal, in comparison.

He doesn't like being alone, but sometimes he needs it. He isn't far, at least; Galen has nicked one of Jesse's remaining cigarettes and has wandered out to the beach, not too close to the lighthouse -- and not too close to the water's edge, either. After the boxes, he really doesn't trust this open expanse between land and God-knows-where, no matter how soothing and home-like it sounds.

Galen crouches, digging where the sand and the snow meet for a rock of the right size and shape. When he finds it, he rolls it over in his hand a few times, then winds back and throws it -- he freezes for a second, arm midair, one foot kicking slightly up off the sand, as he watches the rock go; it drops with a deep plunk several yards off-shore, swallowed by the roll of the waves. He repeats this action with another rock, cigarette pinched firmly between his lips, humming something unrecognizable quietly under his breath.

Comments

[laevisilaufeyson]

At times, when the heights grow tiresome and the warmth inside the lighthouse oppressive, Loki walks. It's an abhorrently human pastime, walking and thinking, as though one needs must facilitate the other, as though reminiscence is desirable and not merely the opening of a door onto a cruel and unpleasant landscape, as though there's enough ground on the Earth to walk to help one think all the things that need thinking, or so much as remember all the things held within an ancient head. As though he couldn't manage all of that just as well whilst standing in one place.

Still, he walks, and the chill in the salt air is in its own way comforting.

Generally, though, generally the paths he walks are empty, the open solitude of them a balm to a weary and irritable soul. Generally. Not today.

A suckling child sets his feet along the same path to the same sea and throws stones at that great, impassive beast, and Loki watches. Appropriate, maybe; allegorical, perhaps; a thousand years from now he could tell the tale of a lone young man building himself a sea wall stone by stone, throwing them with a curse into the face of an impassive enemy, up, up. And the sea wore it down, he'd say, because the sea always does. Time always does. Swallows even the young and invincible up and doesn't even have the decency to spit them out again.

There's a dismal thought. Loki slips down to the beach to scoop up a stone of his own, a large and heavy thing, and fling it out to sea. The splash should be satisfying. The boy's startlement might be more so.

[tooghoulforschool]

Fun Ghoul can be quiet when he wants to be. He's quieter than the other Joys around here by far. Hard not to be with the sound of the waves swallowing up footsteps in sand.

But sneaking up on a guy armed with rocks that already doesn't like you much? Not such a good plan. Even if he does have the advantage of looking like someone that could throw the guy off guard for a sec. He's not cruel, not unnecessarily so, and he alerts Galen of his presence when he gets about six feet away.

"You're doin' that all wrong, Howard." Hands up, moving cautious, he doesn't mean any harm.

[hark_and_hush]

Ruby doesn't make a habit of approaching men lately. It's not that she's scared of them. She's scared for them. It's the men in her life who seem to get hurt and why add to that? Other women seem to make safer friends. Still, there's something in that flirty demeanor she'd built up around herself that she misses.

Maybe she can start slow by just talking to more people. At least, that's what she tells herself when she notices Galen throwing rocks.

"Hi." She smiles at him.