[closed]

[northcliffpass]

WHO: Farogil, Colin, ???
WHAT: something wicked this way comes
WHEN: two different evenings in late September
WHERE: in their respective homes
NOTES: warning for spoops

The air grows cold.

------

Faro is sitting at home, finishing his dinner, when he breathes and exhales mist. The room looks the same as it did before, but any lit flames no longer emanate warmth, and there's a feeling of indescribable wrongness that permeates everything.

Colin, several nights later, is drawing water from the creek. The evening is appropriately chill for late September in the mountains, but what doesn't track is how all the birds and insects have suddenly fallen silent, and how a light sheen of ice has formed on the water.

------

There is no one else around, and in fact, it's difficult not to feel as though no one else has ever been here, that one is completely alone in the world.

Comments

[sampler]

Anxiety isn't new to Farogil. But it's never hit so suddenly, never been so heavy, never included a chill in the air and frost from his breath. He stirs the last of his stew... perhaps those mushrooms he bought were bad?

[northcliffpass]

The room goes colder, unbearably so. It's not until Faro looks up from his meal that he will see the translucent figure standing in the center of the room, human-shaped but with no discernible face, hovering there silently.

[sampler]

Can't be the mushrooms that's making him so cold. He's been eating at the little side table in the back room of his shop rather than taking his meals upstairs, so when he looks up it's towards the hearth to check if his cooking fire's gone out and-

He gasps, shuddering in fear as he reels back against the wall away from the spirit. There's a door to his left, he could flee through his storefront. But he's frozen, staring back at the being, with wide-eyes.

With a tiny, cautious voice, he asks, "...Nelda?"

[northcliffpass]

The figure gives no answer, still and cold as a stone. Then, compelled by some invisible stimulus, it glides forward towards Faro, straight through the table and through him, out through the wall behind him.

For the brief second of contact, the world turns so cold that Faro feels frozen, a flash of a thought or an image intruding into his mind that's so hopeless, so terrifying that it's impossible to grasp. Whatever it is-- and it was something, though he can't know what-- it's very, very bad.

But now it's gone, and the room feels normal again.