Once Upon a Time: Sleeping Beauty

[Fractured]

Let's consider the nature of the bus-stop. It is an in-between place; it is almost never a destination in and of itself. It is a place of journeys began or incomplete, but never finished. Some of them provide a modicum of shelter from the wind, snow, or rain. Perhaps it is a bench, offering a brief respite to the weary. Others provide only the sign, their letters and numbers and colors a code to travelers who know the way; indecipherable nonsense to those that don't.

There is a man sitting at one of these bench-stops now. It sits outside Mercy General Hospital in the city of Sacramento. He hides his face in his hands, but he cannot hide his sobbing, his body grasping for breath in great, terrible heaves and wails. He is not alone. The heavens cry with him, light but steady, as a chorus supports the actor. The rain pours over his gray, thinning hair; down his hands, which lack both the wrinkles of age and the roughness of the laborer. The rain and tears drop together onto his well-tailored black raincoat, where they slick and streak down to stain his fine, black leather shoes. He cares not for them, nor the lack of shelter. He cares not for the busses that go by, aggravated drivers leaving the man to his miseries, here in this in-between, this place that is not a place at all. We might leave him here, too, for all he cares, but...

Once upon a Time, this bus-stop and the miserable man who sat there mattered. Mattered to those Others that live everyday in-between. Mattered to the Lost of this city.

*

Let's get to it! Please describe how your toon came to be at the hospital today in your intro post.

[Irea Dimelo]

The trouble with buying a used car, especially within the budget of minimum wage, was that it that it wasn't guaranteed to work, and even worse, there was no guarantee that it would ever be fixed. Thus, Irea Dimelo once again found her comings and going's were dependent on the whims of another. Her movements were now forced to follow predictable routes, her chosen chariot arriving at predictable times, and she had to wait in predictable, specified places if she wanted to travel more than a few miles away from her home. It was the nightmarish web of organized mass transit that she found herself trapped in, and aside from the slim canister of mace that she carried, there was only one way to defeat the dangers of her mode of travel, and that was to find a way to take other routes. Transit hubs all over the city connected the bus routes to one another, and thus there were some roads were several routes ran in the same directions at similar times, and if Irea could only learn the routes well, than perhaps she could learn to disappear even into something as constant as the net of Mass Transit.

On this particularly rainy day, the Moonborn found herself climbing off of what she dubbed the 'Hospital Bus', only a half mile away from the route that would take her home. She held a black umbrella in her slim hands, wishing that she had remembered to bring coat so that it could fight off the cold instead of her Dollar Tree uniform. The rain beat a constant tattoo against her meager shelter, and she shivered, mourning the loss of her brave VW bug when she pulled abreast of a man sobbing harder than the skies themselves. She stopped suddenly and pivoted to face him, her dark eyes studying the Man of Sorrows and the looming Hospital behind him. Wordlessly, she moved by his side and held her umbrella so that it shielded both of them from the torrential downpour.

[SrsBsns]

Damon glared up at the sky like it was a friend who had betrayed him. He had shown up early this morning to visit his landlady and oh my lords and ladies she would not stop talking. All he wanted to do was pay his respects, drop the flowers off for her and check in so she knew he was feeding her cockatiels. What he got was hours of talking that he couldn't get out of gracefully as she went on about her children and grand children and how they never visited and how they thought she was too old to live in the apartment and rent rooms out to people. On and on and on.

Well, if he was going to be honest to himself, he could have escaped gracefully. But she was so lonely, it was almost enough to make you cry. But karma decided that rewarding him means making it rain out of season, on his free day, when he doesn't have any umbrella. Between buying a shitty $50 umbrella at the gift shop or a copy of the newspaper, Damon opted for the newspaper. After buying it, he was just in time to see the bus drive up to the stop. Sadly, the newsprint did not offer him much protection running across the parking lot to the stop. He lets out a sigh and strangles the vulgarities in his throat because other people were there. No one needed to hear him swear.

"It's what?" He asks, unfolding the paper above his head to catch the worst of the rain. "Another half an hour before the next bus gets here?"

[Mary Lee]

Just another day in the life of Mary so-called Lee. She dug around her ratty apartment for an appropriate outfit only to find unexpected weather afoot - this was easily enough dealt with by spending another hour digging around. So much stuff; so little money. Locating appropriately stylish and matching coat and umbrella, she wandered off into the wide world. As she didn't have anybody lining up to do her favors (for now), the bus would have to suffice for her daily travel needs. She, of course, had all the time in the world to navigate the routes, having no job, but the inconvenience never-the-less annoyed her. Sad, impotent annoyance at yet another of life's travesties lurked in her brain today, and her toes were moister than they needed to be due to considerations of style. I really should get some waterproof shoes that match this coat, I think. Oh well, squish squish squish.

Surprisingly, she had healthcare. It seemed the world wanted her to, so why should I fight it? After all, it's not like there's anybody who needs it more than me that I can just give it to.

Floating about her daily business with her typical veneer of class hiding a ...tapestry of quiet desperation, she found herself waiting at the bus stop with a handful of other Lost souls, and he looks so upset, I better talk to him. "Hi there." Her face is calm, polite, not intrusive; she makes just enough contact to establish a precedent for more.

[Fractured]

The man doesn't notice Irea's presence, or umbrella, at first, but after several moments he lowers his hands to look up, revealing a face that might be handsome and distinguished, but only serve to mock his distress further. He stares at the Moonborn dully for a moment, but past her, as though she is as insubstantial as a ghost. He mouths a 'thank you' that his voice has not the strength to carry. His head swivels over to see Mary, then Abigail, his tears still running a torrent down the wrinkles in his face. He looks surprised for a moment, as though the group had been there the whole time and he had only just noticed. Finally he looks toward Damon and shakes his head. "What? Oh. I don't...I don't know..." His lip trembles, mumbling "the doctors don't know...the doctors don't know." He is suddenly standing up as if pulled by a magnet over his head, and he is tall, and he is angry, as he points an accusing finger at the hospital, his voice becoming a banshee's shriek, "THEY DON'T KNOW AND THEY'RE GOING TO KILL HER!" With that, he crumples back into his seat, crying, his face in his hands, whimpering that, "they don't know and they don't care and tomorrow, they're going to kill her, they're going to kill my baby..."

[Irea Dimelo]

Irea jumped back when the man stood and thundered his rebellion and sorrow at the Hospital, but she didn't reach for her purse, or the weapon inside it. She knew of grief and pain, she knew how they raged the fiercest of Winter's storms and how they slumbered beneath the surface, just like a bear-trap hidden by a fresh snowfall. The Darkling glanced at the other Lost standing nearby, her dark eyes glittering in the shade of her umbrella and her gaze briefly met Abigail's before she stepped back towards the man, carefully laying a hand on his shoulder.

"Will you tell us about her?" she implored simply.

OOC

What would the Harvesting roll be, in this case?

[Fractured]

Interacting with the King of Pain

Composure + Empathy is appropriate for Harvesting. His despair is so poignant that I will give you a +3 bonus to Harvesting attempts.

However, If more than 1 Lost attempts to harvest from this man at this time, there is a -1 to every person's attempt after the first, and this penalty applies even to the first person, as per the Core pg89. So if Irea and Abigail both try, the penalty is -1 to each's roll. If Damon gets in on the action, its -2 to everybody's roll. And if Mary wants some, too, its -3 to everyone's roll.

However, if you want him to tell you more, that roll is Presence + Empathy.

[SrsBsns]

No harvesting from Damon

Sadness always tastes so bitter and Damon's mouth puckers slightly at the memory of the last time he tasted it. He was not hard up enough to be willing to feed on it right now. Instead of feeding on the distraught man, Damon squats down so he can look up to him and catch some protection from the rain with the umbrella. "Why would they want to kill her?"

  Pres+Emp 1 success

Date		Action		Roll		Result
2011-09-12 14:04:28		Damon rolls 2 to Pre + Untrained Empathy (10 Again)		3, 10, 1		1 success