ringing in the new year

[beastkeeper]

For the most part, the beginning of every new year on the block is the same. There's the party, held down in the common room (barely distinguishable from the lobby, but hey, who cares), and the reminders that go up in the week prior, telling people to bring food to share (not that everyone does — the witch provides more than enough, anyhow). There are, of course, smaller parties, held in the apartments upstairs or on the grounds, and the combinations of creatures always rotates (more or less), but the overall air remains the same. The end of one year and the ushering in of another is cause to celebrate.

Comments

[flutterings]

I think this place would do that to anyone.

[ this place had changed them all. old isn't the world darla wants for it, not really, but it suits as well as anything. she feels...stretched thin, like she's been here a thousand years instead of just one. ancient and stagnant, those are the things she feels most acutely. ]

It is.

[ which is why darla is here, perched high and away. the singing and requests for her presence had gotten to be too much. ]

[hardened]

[ Neither of them know it, but the stagnancy of this place — it's a feeling Jackson knows. It's a feeling he knows and it's something Darla doesn't share with him, at least not verbally, and maybe that's better for the both of them. There's no guarantee that Jackson would understand anyway, phrased into something so concrete and quantifiable like words.

He tips his head, the green of his eyes quietly searching her face. It's not a hunt or an active excavation; Jackson works more quietly than that, the small things he's learned to lean on rather than the root of words alone.

Eventually: ]

Are you alright, Darla?

[flutterings]

[ what a loaded question. darla hesitates, pulling the thick folds of her sweater tighter around her body, as if to protect against his scrutiny.

alright. yes and no. darla doesn't know how to answer. ]

Sometimes.

[ when she's away and alone and not looking at fragments of people's childhoods. perhaps then, she is alright. ]