a better sort of ant

[dated to last Monday]

She'd begun to notice that something was wrong on that first Tuesday, though at the time she hadn't known what. Running a cafe, even one like a cat cafe that doesn't necessarily encourage exactly the same traffic as an Ahab's might, there's a rhythm. There are regulars; some of whom never stay to play with the cats -- though often smile and wave at them through the window -- and some who always do. There are ebbs and flows in the day.

Something had been off. She'd been late, so at first she'd thought it was her, but it had continued throughout the day, some faces Blue expected to see not showing up. 

The next day she'd arrived to a frantic barista and a completely missing shipment of supplies, and after four times trying to get someone on the phone, a very harried sounding support worker insisted it was there, that it had been labeled delivered, though they admitted no photo had been sent. They confirmed that they saw the truck's GPS at her location, though, and then, bewildered and frankly sounding extremely tired, said that they didn't see any trace of the truck going anywhere after that. Blue had thanked them, walked down the long alley that the delivery trucks usually came down to see if maybe the truck had broken down, and there it was. The back was open, her delivery was on a dolly, but no one was anywhere to be seen. Nothing was wrong with the truck, as far as she could see.  It was as if the courier had simply disappeared mid-taking the supplies out of the truck. 

It was a familiar, and totally unfamiliar feeling, that presence of everything except a person who was supposed to be there, and it twisted sickly in Blue's stomach. She called the vendor back to let them know the driver was MIA and wheeled the large dolly of supplies back to Un Chat Gris herself. 

Blue texted Kat with a something's going on. ...be careful? and then, for good measure, sent a group text to everyone at the Archives, Nova, Aggie, and Darlington: the people closest to her that she thought would also maybe have some insight or might need to have a head's up.
Hear anything about people missing?
As it turned out, she didn't have to. By that night, reports of missing people, cars left abandoned and stoves left on, posts abandoned, were on the news. 

The next few days are a blur. She comes to work every day, determined -- but fewer and fewer people -- at least, fewer Darrow natives -- come in. By the end of the week, she's almost expecting ashes falling from the sky and sirens, but this is no demonic dimension here to confront her with her fears: at least, not in that way. When others do come in, their conversations invariably turn to what's happening. Rumors that the Mayor is already gone, that most of City Hall is gone, that the few people making statements are the only ones left there. To deliveries that hadn't come at all, to shops that simply haven't reopened. To what happens if people can't get food. A slow, sort of uncomfortable dread settles, and with it, a strange resignation to something no one can define. 

On Sunday, she comes in -- as she has every day -- and realizes that she's made a critical mistake. The rest of her -- quite small -- staff have come in every day when they've supposed to, and today she was scheduled for the second shift so she hadn't even thought about it. But Lilly isn't here. The store is empty, dark, locked up still. She unlocks everything, turns on the light, hurries back to the cats who all immediately yowl and cry at her for the food and attention they were supposed to get hours ago. 

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," she exclaims, and lets them all out into the main room because why not, why bother separating food from toys and from potential clients' food when there's no one in the city? She scoops up food and water bowls, cleans and refills them as the cats run back and forth demandingly, curling around her legs, jumping up with claws pressed in just enough to say hello it's been HOURS. She shouldn't abandon the front, but -- does it matter? Blue cleans and refills litter, murmuring apologies the whole while, and sanitizes, and washes her hands and the kitchen and gets coffee started because by god if someone wants coffee and cats she's going to have coffee and cats. 

And then Blue looks over at the cats, exploring, not used to this unusual quiet and this setup she's rigged so she can see everything from the counter. She tries not to think about what happened to Lilly, or the rest of the city, what might still happen to any of them, what happens when they run out of catfood here or when the produce starts going bad in the grocery stores. She walks into the playroom and looks at the cats that are all suddenly solely her job to make sure are okay, for as long as this goes on, and their curious, nonplussed faces. 

It's a head bump from Emma Goldmewn (one of the fixtures of the cafe; a stocky, choosy cinnamon tabby who, in being passed over for cuter, sweeter adoptees, has become a bit of a matriarch to the Chat Gris colony, especially to the newer cats) that really undoes Blue, and she sits down on the floor, running her hands through her hair. "Oh, Emma," she says, "I don't know how to do this." 


[OOC: Find Blue at any point of this! If you want to catch her earlier in the disappearance process or she texted your pup and you'd like to reply, that's fine! If responding to the end: your pup should be able to see her, sitting on the floor surrounded by cats, through the window, but you could miss the playroom window if you weren't looking or were coming from the other direction. The lights are on and the open sign's ...open.]

starts Oct 25th, after returning from this encounter in East Hallow

It's evening by the time Blue gets home from East Hallow and the decidedly terrible idea that had turned out to be. It's still prickling down her skin and twisting at her lungs, the way the ghosts had mobbed her, the eerie feeling of being unwanted or watched and the dizzy nausea of having her power drained. Blue can't quite separate or tell where one ends or begins.

Please, please, listen to me.

She's held it together pretty well since leaving, or she thought she had, but as she gets to the door she realizes she's been gripping her keys, clenched like a weapon between her fingers, so hard her hand's shaking.

Get out, now.

She takes a breath, trying to shake the voices of the dead from her, trying to be normal as she double-times it up the stairs and to the apartment door.

"Kat? I'm home." Even to her it sounds a little wobbly.

[dated to early march]

Somehow, Blue has become the one who introduces new Magicians to Cabeswater. The intermediary, or the ambassador.

(The Virgil, for a minute, she thinks, and it's amusing even if it's not quite accurate.)

She wonders what the others would think of that, but it doesn't matter, really. There's a purity to Darlington's excitement about being here, a hope to what they might be able to discover, that reminds her of being seventeen and breathing in these woods for the first time. Only she also knows it differently than she could then. This version of Cabeswater is part of her in a way that one wasn't, and maybe she's more herself, too, she has a sort of kinship to the trees that she didn't understand back then; a better sense of the power under the land.

She can feel it, a little bit, as she leads Darlington through the fringes of Darrow forest back towards where the trees rise, inexplicably more ancient and tall, sentinels. There's no visible line that demarcates Cabeswater, but the trees change and so does the feeling of them. Virginia pines stretch up, up, up, aspen whispers, oaks that the Northeast-feeling coast doesn't offer. The path becomes rockier and redder. There's a suggestion of creatures out of view, always just out of view.

This early in the spring, too, only the evergreens should have their leaves, but in Cabeswater it's comfortable. Sun streams through canopy, blossoms are beginning to bud on trees. She expects redbud, so it's there, the pink flowers her childhood heralds of spring before the leaves even show.

"This is Cabeswater," she says, arms wrapped around Gansey's books, and takes a deep breath.
Then, because the trees are always listening, she adds, "Hoc est Darlington."

She glances at him and says with a small smile, "The trees speak Latin. They'll understand, whether they speak to you or not, but I thought I'd be polite."

Blue has never been much for birthday parties. This year, thinking about who she'd even invite if she had one just seems like a recipe for throwing a notebook at the wall or crying in the kitchen, but it also seems like a year to celebrate making it through -- for Kat, too, honestly. With a few weeks left before school starts, weather muggy but getting cooler and breezy, it seems like a good time to just relax.

She'd texted Kat as the birthday girl, i have decreed that we're treating ourselves with a picture of a couple bottles of rose she'd then brought home, and every intent to order absolute trash food and the most ridiculous that Filmfix has to offer and get cuddles.

She glances up to see the SUV coming toward her in a flash of silver, and the horn blares, and then everything goes into slow, strange focus.

It's not exactly her life flashing before her eyes. There have certainly been other moments that were a little more like that in Blue's 21 years of existence. It's more like an outside-herself, extended this is going to be bad in the milliseconds of time between the horn filling her ears, the squeal of brakes, and the crunch of metal on metal.

She lays on the pavement for a moment, letting the breath back into her lungs, and then it registers that the guy is actually yelling at her, yelling at her for hitting her, and Blue scrambles up in the middle of the intersection to flick him off with both hands, screaming, "I had the right of way and it's a zebra crossing, asshole," while blood streams down her arms and soaks through her jeans. He's yelling back about having a green light. None of it makes any sense.

Then, down the street, there's another screech of wheels and a smash, and they all shut up, unsettled and not sure what's going on. The sound of car horns makes her stomach drop, unmoored as though she's gone flying again.

Blue yanks her bike free in favor of keeping moving rather than letting herself process how sick she feels. Its rear tire is hopelessly bent out of shape, like a balloon someone had just let sit. She shakes off the offers of help and people touching her. She just needs to get someplace quiet and closer and safe.

That turns out to be Tris's place. She feels stupid, but apparently bloody and walking a crushed bike is weird enough to let in the apartment, and she knocks on the door with the side of her hand and leans her forehead against it.

The air feels heavy as Blue opens her eyes. Slow, heavy, weighed-down like this mugginess that the air hasn't cut through, the sort of summer heat that lulls you to sleep and coerces you to come out only at night. She'd been dreaming of flying, or maybe not flying, just seeing a million places far away. Reaching, up up up with limbs that seek sunlight and intertwining, part of something big, breathing out-in with life, spanning --

A shrill chirrup that is not a cat's cry breaks the silence and Blue starts awake.

Next to her head, a tiny green bird barely taller than her thumb inspects her critically from the top of the lamp, chirrups again and flies off into --

the canopy?

She sits up, putting her hands behind her on the bed. Where a decorative garland of fabric leaves usually hangs across the corner of the room, there's a tree branch: Persephone sits there calmly as though she is quite accustomed to trees showing up in her room. That branch leads to a bigger branch, which traces the length of the room; vines trail in from the window and leaves cover the ceiling and much of the floor. Brilliant tropical flowers have burst into bloom.

She'd seen a weird vine trying to work its way in at the kitchen window the other day, and an even stranger beetle -- pretty enough that she'd captured it in a mason jar and taken it outside -- too, since then, but --

She sits there in awe for a moment. If she'd been told in this moment that she'd been granted Ronan's ability to dream something into reality, she might have believed it, though Blue thinks practically, and nonsensically, that she'd have certainly dreamed herself proper field clothes instead of a t-shirt and pajama shorts. What if she gets bitten by something?

Then she takes a picture with her phone, which is still sitting perfectly safely on the night stand, because of course she does, and sends it: tell me you see all this too, before getting up to pad across slightly condensation-heavy wood flooring and see if Kat's woken up to this in her bedroom.

Blue wakes, and isn't sure what it is, at first, that has woken her. Her mind puts together the sounds slowly. Hywel is so often a collection of sounds: laughter, music from another room, the creak of old metal, the rustle of animals. Right now it's quiet.

No: her sock is wet. She blinks, and realizes it's Copper's nose. She's whining, a little, nosing at Blue's foot.

Blue blinks, lifting her head from her arm. She's not entirely sure when she fell asleep last night, but whenever it was it was unexpectedly enough that she hadn't changed into pajamas to do it, or closed the door. It's the sort of sleep that feels like she was dragged kicking into it and it wasn't keen to let her go, but it had no dreams, or rest to it.

"Hey, girl," she says sleepily, pushing herself up on her elbows and looking around. "What's up?" It's not entirely common for Copper to come wake her up; not, at least, without Adam in her wake. There's a tension to her, even as she starts wagging her tail at Blue's voice. Her speckled ears flicker back and she picks up her feet and puts them down as though she would jump up, but she's too aware that's not good dog behavior.

It could just be hunger, impatience. But why would she come to Blue to go out or be fed? It twists a strange knot into Blue's stomach, and she swings her legs over the edge of the bed, rubbing her eyes. Copper huffs softly, encouraging or urgent, and turns back toward the door, running out to the hallway and back to Blue. Blue frowns, trying to listen as she follows her, but the house is silent as though asking her to answer her own question.

"Did your boy forget to feed you, Cops," she asks with an unsteady tone of nonchalance, reaching to ruffle the dog's ears. He's always with her; it's as unsettling as seeing Chainsaw without Ronan or Tris without her tattoos. Maybe Ronan got him out of the house somewhere, or he got Ronan out of the house - both of them need it. Maybe he was called urgently into work. There could be an absolutely normal explanation. "Hey, Adam," she calls, "come get your dog."

There's no answer. ( cut for length )

Blue slides down onto the floor and sits there for a long time staring at her contacts list. The rats' wheel squeaks in their cage. At some point, Copper sighs and leans into Blue's side and she wraps her arms around the dog. "It's okay," she says to her, distantly. "It's gonna be okay."

It's not okay. She's the only one in Hywel, she's going to be here by herself for who knows how long and she suddenly can't stand it. She wants to cry, only she doesn't quite know how. She wants to break something.

She can't even call Gansey because he might never wake up.

She stares at her contacts list. Over half of her favorites are only there because she can't bear to delete them. Ellie she's not talking to really. Tris it seems like it might be a lot, all at once...

Biffy...Biffy might not be up, but he might be, and he'll at least have tea. Impulsively, she hits the call button.

[Backdated to 11/11]

Blue's sitting on her bed staring at her phone.

It's been a week and a half, now, since the Purge. In her memory, half of the night is a blur, half of it horrible, vivid moments she can't shake from her head. Watching Alec struggling to breathe under Magnus' hands with them both trying desperately to turn it back; the way the ground had opened up, the demons and the violence on the ground. She can barely remember making her way from the city to Harley and Effy's, or that she'd stopped in Cabeswater, but the 10 seconds she thought that the way she was going to die on Purge night was by Ellie shooting her seem like an hour. For some reason, remembering the solid, empty dead bodies of that night always takes her to sitting between the mirrors in the attic holding Persephone in her arms, and she's been doing her best to not think about it. To instead think of the cats, the coffee, the next thing she has to do.

There's another body those casualties of Purge Night recall her to. It's been five days now since they defeated -- since Gansey defeated the Unmaker. Lying there, blue-lipped and unGansey, still and horrible. Since Noah had torn off his necklace, since she and Ronan and Adam had sat around him and reached to Cabeswater to plead no, you can't, take what you need from us. Without a thought for what that might mean or who it could affect.

Since she'd reached, treelike into Cabeswater and soaked up that power so opposite to her own, reflecting outward, and kissed it back into Gansey's lips, desperate and hopeful. Hoping, hoping that it this wasn't like the first time some version of her had kissed Gansey.

It's been enough time to relive it, enough time to not think about it, enough time to justify it and that panic as understandable. Enough time to think about what she might have given up besides, apparently, allowing Noah solidity, or boosting Magnus' powers.

She should have wanted to run to Ellie. She has, so often, felt so comfortable just driving around with her or flopping on the couch until she wants to talk about what's in her mind. But she's finding that every time she's too busy to warrant texting her, or calling, she's relieved, instead of annoyed. It's been a week since they almost died together, and despite being on edge that something will happen to her and Blue won't know, despite how nauseous she feels over her own thoughts, she doesn't want to see Ellie.

She stares at her phone. And then she texts her. Hey. Can we talk about stuff? In person.

When she wakes up, the world is covered in snow.

Blue slides out of bed carefully, so as not to wake Ellie where they've been tangled together on her full size bed. She sleeps less, but Ellie sleeps less well, and she doesn't want to wake her if she doesn't have to. Instead she goes to the window and has a moment of childlike wonder, looking at the whole world turned white. It's quiet, snow falling steadily in big icy flakes, and outside the drifts are still crystalline and undisturbed.

Even though she's gotten used to it being colder here, and the mountains did get snow in and around Henrietta, they didn't have heavy snowfalls in the valley often. To have two snowstorms in one winter -- even, or maybe especially, a winter that wasn't that cold -- feels a little strangely magical.

After a little bit of watching, she pads out into the quiet early morning of Hywel and to the kitchen to make some tea. It's chilly in the old warehouse, and she wraps her hands around the mug as it steeps, peering over the lip of the cup impatiently.