[Seasonal Event] This mess I've made

RORY

Rory had been—somewhat—warned of the fact that all his floorboards were loose.

Knowing that did not make the fact any less bizarre, and he had had other, more immediate concerns to take care of when the sun had finally risen and he had abandoned the partially-wrecked Settlement with his heart beating in his throat. Going on foot was slow, but the horses had, of course, abandoned the little town. Not much food there. Too much noise. Too much otherness.

But finally he had come back to his farm, finding it mostly intact. He had found the living house in the suspect condition Wessex had warned him of, the dogs hungry and happy but otherwise alright. A quick peek in the barn showed that not much had happened there. There were no signs of the Luxere, as they had left halfway through, but there was something else: fresh horse tracks.

Rory wasn't in a position to go hunt down his stray ponies in the forest, nor was he in a position to fix his floorboards, really. Between Vervain and Isla most of his injuries had been healed, but it was not complete: his shoulders still ached, his face still marred by the burns he had suffered at Edy's hands. So he had fed the dogs and then just looked sort of sadly at the floor, before spending more or less the entire day going over the goats and Bakshi and then turning them out in the pen. In an agonizingly slow process he had put hay in for them in the pen, and left some outside, if his ponies decided to come back and look for food.

And then just waiting.

He wasn't rewarded on the first day, so eventually, as the shadows lengthened and the darkness grew compact, he retreated into the house.

It was a mess he did not want to touch. It was a task he did not want to begin. Feeling like a ghost in his own home he drifted into his bedroom, sitting on the bed and feeling sorry for himself.

Until Vaya gave her warning bark and a fist knocked on his door. Rory felt nothing: he toyed with the idea of ignoring it. Of sitting there upon his bed until his blood froze.

It was very cold inside. He hadn't made a fire.

With a sigh he finally moved himself off the bed, and cautiously stepped over the loose floorboards to the door. Feeling like being murdered wouldn't be too bad he simply opened it, and found

Wessex

He looked blankly at her for a moment, then he said: "Oh."

He looked blankly at her for a moment longer. "Hello."

Looking lost, he drifted back and to the side, allowing her to step into the house if she so wished.

as if you were on fire from within,
the moon lives in the lining of your skin.