The Town: Life is Good

[Liou]

Still more cries of outrage, wrath and distress were heard over the din. The peaceful protest hadn't lasted very long. After Cori's revelations, Victoria had drifted closer to the ugly crumbled wreckage of the tower; from the mighty fire, only the eye remained by now - and that didn't count to her. She was preparing to turn away and head back towards the outer parts of town when Ene's voice roused her from her thoughts.

"You know, those rooms we found. People should probably know about those."

"The rooms." Victoria pondered the idea for a while, trying to come up with an interesting suggestion for Ene. "But why? What difference will it even make?" she asked simply, gazing at the rioters again. "Are we... just going to keep watching them fight and kill each other one by one? Haven't we made enough of a mess already? And then they'd realise that we started the fire! Why are we still here, what's the point now that we're dead?"

She would have wandered away if she hadn't felt so strongly tied to Ene.

"I thought that... dead people went off somewhere, wherever that might be, you know? Who'd want to stay in Melville forever anyway? I can't stay here forever, it was bad enough before! And that..." She bit her lip, remembering how Ene had reacted to Cori's story.

"But you haven't even met Ranumgen, Ene!" Victoria blurted out. "There's nothing like him, nothing impossible to him! Being with him, even just around him is like escaping to another world!" Her voice took on a kind of fervor as she described the deity, and she realised that she would most likely have joined that cult if given the chance. Why was it that the only time Cori had seemed to care for her, she had also advised her against following Ranumgen? Stupid, maddening Cori.

"And if we're not supposed to follow him after all, what else can we follow to get out of here? Do you have another way out? I thought I could take my revenge against that Sebastian and just... leave. What am I supposed to do now? I can't take revenge on the entire Council... couldn't even do anything against Kay."

She ran a hand through her hair, clenching her fingers and tugging at it roughly. "Yeah, fine, let's go and make people angrier, I mean... what else is there to do. Yeah."

Victoria started to walk straight towards the riot at a brisk pace. Something to her side caught her attention, a faint wisp of smoke trailing in midair. It seemed to be made of the same stuff of her ethereal body, but thicker, more concentrated. It seemed to be leaking from her chest. She averted her eyes from the source. The pain there had been numbed long ago.

"Hi," she shouted bitterly near the edge of the crowd, "if you could stop killing each other for a minute, would you mind listening to a thing that would make you want to kill each other more?"

She went past a bunch of other ghosts; their features seemed familiar, but she couldn't be bothered to put names on their faces right now. "I don't suppose you other dead people can talk to all those morons either, can you."

Then she spotted someone heading away. Someone you couldn't miss wherever he went, for he was often quite an esteemed guest. She started to follow in his direction while calling to Ene.

"Hey, Ene! Talking to the whole town on the radio, isn't this exactly what we need? If they could actually hear us, hah!"

SPOILER: Click to show

Hasty post, I will edit later if necessary, just yell.
Ghostvic had a wee breakdown, rants a bit at Huntress, stops ranting (but doesn't explicitly apologise, who'd you take her for), yells a bit, is going near Fraze, Mostly Harmless (flufflepuff) and RielCZ because yay for tagging all the people, and notices Thundy, the ghosts should follow him to Jensa's bathhouse!

[Huntress]

Things were... happening. In a way, they were happening exactly the way the Resistance had tried to achieve from the start - the public speaking up, unable to be silenced any longer. Except-

"Oh cripes, Jensa," Ene muttered, eyes widening. She'd known Jensa, the performer girl had been one of her more stable customers, she must've been loaded to the eyeballs with skills by now. Ene had seen her Resistance mates fall, but that was different, they'd all signed up for this and knew what could happen. Jensa... probably thought she knew what she was getting into, but had she really, when so much of the Council's action was slick and sneaky under the surface?

But then again, Ene reflected, how long would it take until the girl shows up again? The dead of Melville seemed to make for very restless ghosts.

Victoria's voice brought her back to the task at hand. "But why? What difference will it even make? Are we... just going to keep watching them fight and kill each other one by one? Haven't we made enough of a mess already? And then they'd realise that we started the fire! Why are we still here, what's the point now that we're dead?"

Ene listened to her rant about Ranumgen, about leaving, about the Council, and filed the former away for the moment while the latter was more important to address.

"Well, I know why I came back as a ghost," she said. "Unfinished business and all that. But my goal was always clear to me - make the Council responsible for its deeds, make the people see just how much they've been lied to and deceived and abused. Heck, if the people were okay with the Council even as they know all the facts, fine, but they should at the very least have the choice. I don't want the people killing each other any more than you do; the enemy are those select few up on that hill. The trick is convincing them who to direct their anger at, and masses are pretty hard to move in that regard.

"Or maybe it is revenge I'm after," she added thoughtfully, raking her hands through her hair. "Honestly I'm not sure. I figure that since I'm in no hurry either way, dead and all, I can just wait until I see how things work out. Ghosts move on when they're happy with things, and you obviously weren't, so there has to be something still keeping you here. Which is fine, really - what's your hurry? Right now, you'll be young and pretty forever."

"Um, are you ghosts too?" Ene turned around and brightened up at once. That hadn't taken long.

"Jensa, my girl, you're looking," she strode over and gave the recently-dead performer a quick hug, "well, about as healthy as can be expected under the circumstances. Props for the brave but stupid protest and what were you thinking, you idiot?"

Having thus cheerfully unloaded all possible emotions on Jensa to deal with, her attention snapped back to Victoria, who was trotting away after - the radio host?

Ene hiked up her dress and ran after Vic. This was perfect.

"Good thinking and you are amazing," she said matter-of-factly. "Could do with less cheek, but who am I to talk and the point remains. What was I saying?"

She fell into step as they moved away from the main streets and the riots. The streets were narrow and dark here, the sound of masses of people muffled and distant.

"Ah yeah, following Ranumgen. Following any sort of deity-like being is tricky business, because what they're good at is promises but following up on those is quite another matter. The ones who are best at giving you all the pretty words and the flashy promises tend to be worst at following up on them.

"You know, I joined a coven once as a teenager," she said after a brief moment with slight embarrassment. "Must've been what, 14, 15? It was the stupid sort, you know, black lace gloves and amulets and corsets and crystal balls and calling to the Great Old One for unveiling mysteries of the universe, with zero outcome, as you'd expect. We did things like sneaking out to dance naked at a cemetery at night, because somehow those sorts of things feel like just the right way to unveil all the answers when you put enough pretty words around them. Anyway, that was an altogether terrible idea, because midsummer nights are still pretty cold and the thing more or less fell apart after Amanda Pearson stepped on a hedgehog."

She stopped in front of the house Sampson and Reuben had just entered and weighed the situation. Contacting the living was always tricky business, but that didn't mean you should give up before trying.

"Point being," she said, casting a look around the empty street to make sure nobody living had seen their prey, "there was some annoying old biddy who'd seen us sneak out and told my parents, who didn't say much about it but took me to see grandpa, who said that if I wanted to meddle with powers and knowledge of the otherworld, I should at least be smart about it, and proceeded to teach me hm, about a third of everything he knew about potions and skills and all such, and let me force the rest out of him because gramps was not the type to make things easy for anyone. Anything that's worth having generally doesn't come easy."

Come to think of it, Amanda Pearson had married that rich guy who looked like a horse and had always acted a stuck-up snob about it. Prowling around the house, Ene wondered just how much you can do when haunting- um, communicating with the living. But for the time being, the radio guys were a more pressing matter.

"Anyone got a lipstick? Bathroom mirror messages are generally a safe bet."

SPOILER: Click to show

Ene laments Fraze's death in a halfhearted-ish manner because let's face it, we're all chumming up in the afterlife anyway - and Jensa indeed shows up again in five. She provides her view on Liou's question about the meaning of life death, namely that she's willing to wait until she has the answers.

Then she follows Victoria and Jensa (who is trailing along due to marriage-related godmoding permission) to track down Sampson and Reuben (Thundy) while taking a trip down memory lane because it's what Ene does when you give her nothing to do for five minutes.

[Gelquie]

((The execution deadline has been bumped up because I overshot. Sorry! It is now tomorrow at Noon PST, AKA 24 hours from now. Get your votes in (to me) before then!

Vote wisely, townies.))

[Fraze]

"Jensa, my girl, you're looking, well, about as healthy as can be expected under the circumstances. Props for the brave but stupid protest and what were you thinking, you idiot?"
It took Jensa a moment to realize who she was looking at. She had always considered Ene a friend, but had never seen her looking this...hot.

"When people say that, they usually follow it up with 'you could have been killed!' Except I guess this time that wouldn't work. I guess I always knew this could happen, and I thought it was worth the risk." She stopped to think for a moment. "I still do."

While the other ghosts became engrossed in their own conversation, Jensa floated around over the mob, observing the action. Was there anything she could still do at this point? She was a ghost, intangible and unnoticeable.

But then she realized: she was a performer.

She imagined getting ready for a show. Makeup, so that her face was clearly visible. Stretches and warm-up exercises to make her motions sleek and graceful. Vocal exercises so that she could be heard.

She saw a guard pressed against a wall, hidden behind a building. He jumped when he saw her - he saw her!

"It's OK, I'm not going to attack you," she said.

"This is all crazy!" the guard squeaked. Jensa noted that he looked very young.

"Are you scared?" Jensa asked.

"Bloody terrified," the guard said. "I took this job because it was good money. I need to support my parents and their cat and I really want to marry Ashley Warburton, not that I've asked her yet but I hope she'll say yes, but you need money for that, and I thought I would just walk around the wall all day but now I'm dealing with murders and I thought the other guards would be catching the murderers but they are the murderers and now everyone is blaming me for it and!" He stopped. Jensa thought at first that he needed to draw his breath, but then he continued. "And you're that woman. The one leading the protests. The one that was shot.

Jensa smiled. "Go that way." She jerked her head in the direction of a side road. "Head down Palmer road, then take a left onto McDaniels street. It's a straight shot to the southern quarter and there aren't many people." With a release of effort like relaxing a flexed muscle, she felt herself once again turn silent and invisible. The guard did as she said, but the expression on his face was one of Jensa's proudest moments as a performer.


The other ghosts were now moving away from the action. Jensa followed, hoping to learn more. Catching up, she realized they were following Sampson, which meant -

"Excuse me for a moment!" Jensa said to the other ghosts and went on ahead of them as quickly as she could.

She got to her small home. The message written to her by her parents was gone, maybe because she had already read it. She turned and looked at her masterpiece.

The conspiracy map…couldn't get her in trouble anymore, perhaps, but that didn't make it any less embarrassing. Well, concealing things was another skill of performers, wasn't it?

The magician's handkerchief over the egg. A veil formed over the web of conspiracies; indistinguishable from the off-white, slightly crackled paint of the surrounding wall, unless one was to touch it. Of course, the handkerchief had to be removed eventually to reveal the chick underneath, but Jensa hoped she could wait for that part until everyone had gone.

She finished just as Sampson opened the door - which, thankfully, she had left unlocked. She willed herself back to tangibility.

"Hello, Mr. Thorpe! And, um, Reuben, was it? Please make yourselves comfortable. There's some food in the pantry, I don't think I'll need it anymore. I don't really need anything here anymore, so use whatever you need. I didn't make the bed this morning, but you can use it. I'll, uh, maybe stay in the bathtub overnight. Excuse me a moment."

Heading back outside, she saw Ene and Victoria.

"Anyone got a lipstick? Bathroom mirror messages are generally a safe bet."
"There's one on the shelf above the bathroom sink," Jensa said. "Oh, and, uh, welcome to my home. Come in and make yourselves comfortable." She went back inside.

SPOILER: Click to show

Jensa tests out her ghosty powers and finds that she can make herself seen and heard. She follows the other ghosts, realizes they're going to her house, and hides the wall-o-conspiracies. She greets Sampson and Reuben (Thundy) when they get there, then goes outside to welcome Ene (Huntress) and Victoria (Liou), and suggests where Ene can find ghost writing implementsmakeup.

[Draco]

-Previous Night-

Quentin is taken aback a bit by the sudden voice he heard.

"Mr. Wall, you're speaking to me, said Quentin surprised."

He was excited to hear what he heard. It took him a few minutes to actually realize the Wall wasn't what had spoken, but a ghost nearby.

"Magic? Hmm, one of my theories I came across did mention magic, said Mr. Nook. And I have always wondered about what lies on the other side, and why something besides birds could't just fly over, said Quentin."

He looks up into the sky, then back at the old ghost.

"Wait, did you say you helped build this, asked Quentin a bit shocked."

---

-Next Morning, present-

The Wall worshipers were still spreading the word, the word of the Wall, of how the Council has failed them, how the guards were against them, how people needed to rise up against them and listen to the Wall. A few recent events and deaths only happened to help in these plans. They of course weren't going to ignore them, they were wrong, and they reminded everyone of it. They've actually managed to gain more members the past few nights.

SPOILER: Click to show

Quentin is shocked to hear The Wall speak, only to find out it was Old Ghost Guy (Fraze). He's interested in what he was speaking of.

---

The Wall Worshipers are taking the recent events as a way to recruit and grow in numbers. They continue to march around preaching.

[Lizica]

Sylvester Castell was having a...rough morning, to say the least.

He’d gotten less than four hours of sleep the night previous and had spent the wee hours of that morning on patrol trying not to show his unit captain that he was nodding off and also trying desperately not to allow his hands to freeze off. And then he’d been ushered to help with the burning clock tower, where he’d had to help firemen and firewomen and even a couple townspeople battle the blaze, but it was still to no avail. Also, in a downright lovely twist of fate, his lodging and the vast majority of his belongings in the barracks had been burned into oblivion. And then there had been a series of atrocities that he was still trying to wrap his mind around—also to little avail, because before he could react to his superiors, the crowd of townspeople was bursting forth at them, as if a dam had burst, and all of Melville was now flooded, leaving him flailing desperately in the waters.

And so it was that Sylvester Castell was not exactly pleased when Joan Wrigley, adorned in equal parts fuzzy bathrobe and smoky ash, appeared at his elbow and pulled his nightstick from his belt.

“Oh,” she said, suddenly realizing who he was. Her voice was raspy, cracked, exhausted, and not entirely stable-sounding. “Good morning, Mr. Castell, did you see the historic clock tower?”

“Uh. Miss Wrigley. This isn’t the time or the place—Can I have my nightstick back—”

Nearby, a townsperson was wrestling with a guard for his gun; Joan gripped her lousy, heavy, not-nearly-useful-enough fire extinguisher by the hose and swung it around at the two, knocking the gun into the air with a shriek of “MUSEUM!”

“Uh,” said Sylvester Castell.

“And the wooden tree sculpture just off of Equanimity Avenue?” Joan went on croakily, turning back to Sylvester. “It was constructed by local artisan Morty Truman seventy years ago in honor of an ancient live oak that had formerly been in Bright Fellowship Park, but was struck by lightning. I highly recommend seeing it in the autumn, as the live trees are in full transition colors, and there are some especially remarkable carvings engraved on the sculpture’s surface, and the woodwork is overall marvelous, and I might have some maps I can show you if you stop by the MTA later today—”

“I, uh,” Sylvester mustered, glancing from side to side in the midst of the melee. “...Wait, wasn’t that tree sculpture destroyed by an ant infestation two years ago?”

“Oh. Was it?” Joan said, but Sylvester noticed that her arms were trembling—whether from exhaustion or tourism was hard to tell. “Then maybe you should go visit the picnic area in the western district, at about eleven o’ clock relative to the Wall’s circle?” Joan went on. Behind her, Josh Frieden of Frieden’s Shoe Repair, black-eyed and bleeding, was engaged in old-fashioned fisticuffs with a guard, who lopsidedly sported his nightstick against him; Joan stuck out her foot and tripped the guard, still while talking to Sylvester Castell. “The fields there are absolutely stunning,” she said. “If you bring your picnic lunch to the crest of the hill at about two in the afternoon, you can eat just within the shadow of the Wall while the rest of the fields are bathed in sunlight—really exquisite.”

“I—Those fields were bulldozed a decade ago to make way for offices,” said Sylvester. “Miss Wrigley, are you, uh, feeling alright?”

“Oh, yes, of course, thank you!” A guard was aiming her gun at a townsperson, and Joan thwacked the weapon into the dirt with Sylvester’s nightstick and then dropped her way-too-heavy fire extinguisher onto it with a metallic crinkling. “I’m feeling just fine, Mr. Castell,” Joan went on, her voice rising tremulously. “Because there’s nothing to feel bad about, right, haha, I mean, this is still Melville, right, it’s not like the clock tower has been destroyed, or like entrepreneurs and innocents are being murdered, or like there’s any reason to be alarmed, or like it’s freezing cold, or like there’s a giant riot right in the middle of the Island, or like no one has gotten any proper sleep in days, right, I mean it’s not like anything’s wrong, I feel quite sprightly, actually, how about you?”

To accentuate her point, she smiled a rather wide-eyed, very unconvincing smile and further smashed the guard’s gun into the ground with her fire extinguisher’s cylinder.

She laughed, then. It turned into a sob.

And so it was that Sylvester Castell turned away from the rioting, put one hand on Joan Wrigley’s shoulder and the other onto his pilfered nightstick, and firmly, sternly managed to steer the travel agent through the melee and out, heading in the direction of the Melville Tourism Agency. He probably could use a good vacation, too.

SPOILER: Click to show

Lizica decides this is a good time to check in with that guard NPC Sylvester Castell again, because he's sure to be having a grand ol' time.

Sylvester runs into Joan in the riot, and she starts blathering to him about tourism as usual--except, she keeps talking about landmarks that no longer exist (while wielding her fire extinguisher and Sylvester's nightstick). Sylvester is a bit concerned about her, and he manages to steer her out of the riot.

[Tiger]

Aerona made it to the clock tower too late to help with the fire, and with only a little time to help the injured - all subtly, just a minute or two in the glow of the fish-carved lantern tied to the lampmaker's belt and suddenly aches felt less achy and gashes and gouges were bleeding and hurting less - before the shot rang out. She'd made it dangerously close to the crowd by then, helping a wounded man get to safety; already unnerved by the shouting of protests - though also unnerved by the rumors flying through the crowd about the guards, the guards attacking their community radio host, the guards dragging people off in the night, the guards making Inside the Wall unsafe the way the Outside was supposed to be. Except the Outside at least let you know what you were getting into - already unnerved by that, the gunfire made her flinch.

And then - shouting, fighting, stampeding, ghosts (she was reasonably sure it was ghosts and not super-powers by now, despite Quentin Nook's dual hypotheses) - the town could not stop escalating; every time Aerona was sure it had hit the peak of chaos...something like this happened.

A reminder of her Price flared in her mind, and with it came a subtle change in the temperature of her arms. She was a very valuable asset to some...people. Fish. Outside Things. Whichever. There was a lot of uncollected debt left to settle.

When a guard turned on her, gun not quite pointed at Aerona but definitely not near his holster, the lampmaker raised her hand and a flare of brilliant white-gold light flashed from her palm. The guard lurched back, blinded, and Aerona sprang toward him, wrenching the gun from his hand. She heard someone nearby shout angrily, and it sort of sounded like it was in her direction - she bolted for cover, eventually finding a momentarily safe place to huddle in an abandoned hall of the fresh ruins of the barracks.

SPOILER: Click to show

Aerona gets to the scene of the rioting. Riots are scary! Also she has the power to flash-blind, watch out >C After evading a guard, out lampmaker bravely runs away and takes (temporary, at least) shelter in a hall of the barracks.

[Mostly Harmless (flufflepuff)]

Jensa was giving a fairly rousing speech, Laurie decided, as she floated with Carlos by her side. She'd wanted to believe the universe around them ceased to exist as soon as she found him, but there was so much unrest and imbalance around the two that this no longer seemed possible.

And then a gunshot rang out and the leader of the peaceful protests no longer stood.

"Jensa!" Carlos cried out. Laurie was too stunned to say anything and continued to try and register what happened. Why would...?

A surge of righteous anger flushed her ashen spirit red, but Carlos calmed it temporarily if not immediately with a tendril of thought: What's to say we can't still be married? So telepathy worked even after death, and their dreams could still come true--that is, if their hometown didn't crumble in the process.

In the middle of her train of thought, Jensa was right next to them. Carlos must have carried Laurie right to her. "Um, are you ghosts too?" Jensa asked. "Oh, you found each other again!" She smiled broadly and her eyes pricked. "I'm glad."

In spite of seeing Jensa getting shot before her very eyes, Laurie smiled. Clearly she'd brought lasting peace to at least one. "Yes..." Laurie trailed, squeezing Jensa's hand. "In any case I'm glad to see you here--" A multitude of words began vying for escape at the top of Laurie's brain, but what actually came out was, "I'm not sure if ghostly yoga works out, but you're welcome to come by anytime for a lesson or a cup of tea. I really can't thank you enough for getting the protests started--I wasn't sure what to do and don't have any regrets." Laurie squeezed Carlos's hand for emphasis.

Laurie watched as Sampson failed to notice Carlos's offer for help. She couldn't blame him of course, what with all the rioting and failed attempts to set things right going on. "Don't worry dear," she consoled him. "For now, he's Mr. Toogood--too good and pure in his heart to hear us. He's focused on other people."

Another ghost with an understandably spiteful aura floated by, turning towards the three of them. "I don't suppose you other dead people can talk to all those morons either, can you."

Instead of retorting with some sort of witty comeback as Carlos surely would have, Laurie thought about this. Perhaps the ability she'd had of communicating with the dead was reversed once she'd died herself. "I can definitely try," Laurie told her, and floated to the mob of flailing limbs and thrown weapons. Her throat grew thistled as she recalled the cause and circumstance of her death, but for the sake of these people and her purpose, she had to try.

"Shhhh...." Laurie called out while circling them, her ashy form turning a pale blue, not unlike the flames from a stove. She poured out an aura of reflection, hoping they'd all stop and think. What do you think you're doing? You keep lowering yourselves to violence like this, nothing worthwhile will ever get done. I mean, look at me...

SPOILER: Click to show

Laurie is really really happy for a split second that Carlos(RielCZ) wants to marry her still and hopes it'll work now that both of them are dead.

She thanks Jensa (Fraze) for knocking some sense into Laurie a few rounds back, getting her to join in the protests, and invites her over for ghostly yoga and tea. YAY!

Victoria(Liou) floats by and suggests that the ghosts try to talk to the people so Laurie tries to test out her clairvoyance by aura (not telepathy, that only works with Carlos!) on the living. Let's see if it works, mmkay? <3

[Gelquie]

It was a chaotic scene, as the guards tried to keep down the rioting crowd while the crowd responded with their own attempts to fight the guards. Mostly, the crowd seemed to be trying to push them somewhere they didn’t know, although they hadn’t gone far yet, given the sheer number of guards on the scene to push back. The barracks, by this point, was a lost cause, with everyone’s mind now on the riot.

A woman had just returned to the scene. No one was sure where she had gone, or what she had been doing. On an ordinary day, it might have raised eyebrows, but no one thought on it for long. She was another member of the crowd, fighting back in her own special way before darting to safety in the ruins of the barracks.

Given the chaos of the scene and how the crowd pushed into every possible corner, she wasn’t hidden for long. Unfortunately for Aerona Tolbert, it was another guard who found her and the gun she had taken.

“Give me that,” the guard said gruffly as she pulled her up.

Aerona tried to resist, which only made the guard more desperate. He tried to rip it from her hands, and yanked at her clothing, enough that stuff from her pockets were falling out, and…

Clank clack

They both looked down in horror as they started at a second gun, now on the ground, one that must’ve been hidden in her clothes. The guard quickly turned back to her.

“Contraband,” he said in a low voice. “Were you the one who shot that woman and started this all? Were you?”

Aerona didn’t give a clear answer, and in fact seemed to be focusing on her power, intent on fighting back. The guard wasn’t going to give her a chance. The only person who would have a gun would be either a member of the guard… Or someone who was underhanded enough to acquire one.

Just like a member of the Resistance.

The guard knocked her down before she could finish the spell before managing to retrieve the guard gun and aiming it at Aerona. There was another crack through the air in the din of the crowd, and Aerona lay dead.

Content, the guard quickly walked away from the body. If anyone asked, he would simply explain, as he intended to explain to the guard captain. If the woman had shot Jensa, then he had just avenged the crowd. If she hadn’t shot Jensa…

Well, she had all signs of being Resistance, and thus deserved to be put down. Her death was just one more step to stopping them for good.

Aerona Tolbert was Resistance.

[Tiger]

It hurt, but only briefly. Not like the last time she’d been close to dying.

Aerona had been very young the first time she’d risked her life, the Good Life the Town gave her and her father. It had been a boilingly hot day, and Aerona, who couldn’t understand how her father tolerated the heat of the workshop and all its heat-emitting lights, had wandered away in a moment of brief inattentiveness from her father. It was just long enough for her to get to the River Abill. Just long enough for her to decide it was in fact so hot she ought to go for a swim.Just long enough for the current to grab her.

The river was deep, and strong, and dizzying - and just like now, she couldn’t tell which way was up or down and she couldn’t breath and she was...not floating, not something nearly so still and casual as that. Being whisked through the water - the air? the water? whichever - her feet weren’t on the ground and she was being brought or pushed somewhere.

Back then, she hadn’t been able to see, but she’d felt them - fish, a whole school of them, bumping against her arms and legs and back, brushing against her sides, tickling at her arms (...wait, tickling?) - and then one had spoken in a voice like the glow of her fathers’ lamps - ”We will grant you a wish, if you’ll pay a Price.”

She had agreed. Of course she had agreed, she’d been drowning - dying, both, whichever - and wished to get out of the river. The fish pushed her up and to shore, and she gasped in a breath of air instead of one last gulp of water.

The fish hadn’t left by the time she’d recovered some strength. In fact, one of them - or perhaps the same one, Aerona had never been quite sure - had said ”We’ve given you your wish. We saved your life. Now you must pay your Price.”

Nobody, not even the fish, had really explained Aerona’s Price, exactly. It was just...something she understood and comprehended right in that moment. There were creatures Outside who were dangerous. And there were some who were not. There were some that could tolerate the magic of the Wall, or simply shied away from it - and there were some who couldn’t, who were bothered by the constant emanations of power, but couldn’t stray far from it or they’d have to face the larger, stronger creatures the Wall did drive away. There were creatures like the invisible fish, who migrated through this river, who needed to migrate through this river. And there were creatures out there, somewhere, maybe not even very far away, who would live alongside and work with the humans - if they weren’t approached with guns and spears and aggressive magic.

The fish didn’t want anything of her now - she was a future investment at that point. But, in order for her to find the fish again should filling her Price require it, or if she needed another wish, they gave her one gift - debt-free. The ability to cast light from her hands. It was as if they knew.

It hadn’t been her crusade, not at first - little Aerona had no desire to go Outside, or help Outside creatures - but she didn’t want to get into trouble with her father, or the Council, for the fraternization, either. If she could pay her Price quietly, quickly, maybe nobody would ever know.

The trouble was, having her life saved was expensive. It was not one mission, but many. And there were only so many times Aerona could sneak into and out of places she wasn’t supposed to be inside or outside of, only so many Outside creatures she could see, only so many places she could light up - metaphorically - to stay ignorant for very long. The Council was lying, and hiding things, Aerona had figured that much out on her own. It left her profoundly uncomfortable - life was not as good as she’d been told. But there had to be a reason for it, right? The Council was trying to protect them.

Then, as magic-users sneaking back into the city often are, Aerona was noticed. Fortunately for her, it was not by the city guard, but a more...clandestine organization. It was them who had told her about the disappearances. The murders. The fact that the town wasn’t just being deceived, but oppressed.

Aerona was already being used and played by magical fish. The Walls crumble if she was going to put up with even worse from the Council. Her wishes from the school of fish changed - from occasional energy boosts and spells of invisibility to...more frequent spells of invisibility, but also to weapons, information she couldn’t find through other means, twice she’d dared a doppelganger, just to have an alibi. Her Price had been fattening up for a while now.

And apparently, even in death, that was enough to get somebody’s attention. The gliding stopped and the darkness faded. She was surrounded again, but it wasn’t fish this time. It was fireflies - that explained the tickling feeling, anyway. Always some sort of light for the lampmaker, apparently. Very funny.

Any wry humor was abruptly jolted out of the situation by the fireflies simultaneously going dark, and her dropping toward the ground. Her stomach still swooped - but it felt delayed, which made the feeling somehow worse.

There was no strike when she hit the ground, however - no shock to absorb. The fireflies slowly, lazily, started to blink on and off again, and the world came into focus. Her body was lying there - Aerona flinched back, and saw her hand - transparent. Heavily transparent. ...Oh dear.

This was going to be...interesting?

SPOILER: Click to show

Aerona backstory time yay! Aerona and the fish are based very, very loosely on “The Fisherman and His Wife”, a fairytale about a wish-granting fish and the dangers of wishing for too much. ...I didn’t follow it super-accurately, but hey \ o /

Anyway, Aerona’s price - first incurred when the school of fish save her from nearly drowning - involves helping the Outside deal with the obstruction that is Melville, with the hint of there possibly being some way the two groups can help each other someday. However, doing all the sneaky things that are required to help the Outside in a small, wall-surrounded town, Aerona discovered some of the Council’s less-than-pleasant doings, and later learned from the Resistance that people were kidnapped and killed by the Council as well.

Because her Price is still sort of outstanding, however, Aerona has returned to earth (or uh. Wherever this takes place) as a ghost. Surrounded by fireflies, because of course.

[Huntress]

"Nice place," Ene noted, sidling into Jensa's apartment and looking around curiously. You can tell a lot about people based on where they live, and Jensa's was a lot like going backstage.

She beelined for the bathroom, which was a nice enough bathroom, provided you didn't mind standing mostly sideways - most of it was taken up by a big bathtub. Strictly speaking, she could've stood halfway through a wall, but firstly, it just feels weird and secondly, Ene didn't particularly want to risk the possibility that the neighbors might somehow be able to see ghosts. If they wanted to keep Sampson and Reuben undiscovered, drawing the neighbors' attention to limbs waving through walls was probably not the way to go about it.

She concentrated all her focus into a white-hot beam in the center of her ghostly mind and uncapped a lipstick. Moving small objects wasn't difficult per se, just difficult compared to how easy it was for the living, much like learning to use your hands all over again and this was a very pink lipstick.

"Huh, I'd have thought she was an autumn," she said, tapping the lipstick against the mirror for maximum ghostly message inspiration, and stuck her head out of the bathroom. Somehow, it looked like Jensa had no trouble making herself visible and audible to the living. This'd make it easier, then.

Not wanting a perfectly good lipstick message to go to waste, she scrawled the first thing that came to mind on the bathroom mirror anyway, tossed the lipstick into the bathtub and leaned against the doorjamb.

"So here's the thing," she said drily. "The clock tower had some secret rooms underneath it-"

-how would she even explain that?

the cold, sterile hallways behind cold, sterile doors

the sharp clinical smell in the air - had it even been a smell, or was it more like a feeling?

the small windowless rooms with tiny businesslike desks with all those papers

and that one room with nothing but a chair in it

and what'd been on the floor of that room

and all those thousands of papers

she hadn't looked at them very closely, but a lot of them had been forms - and a lot of those forms had an entry titled LEVERAGE

which were filled with lines like children: Anna, age 4 and Jacob, age 7 and mother once punished for petty theft

and all rooms and hallways had been empty, but crisscrossed with memories of so many people's presence, fear, fear fear fear, despair, anguish, feeble hope, more fear, so much fear

-she tried her best to put all that into words, and couldn't help but feel that she wasn't very good at it.

"That's all burned now," she said quietly, after a pause. "It would never have become evidence - they would've done away with it as soon as anyone tried to get in. So you'll only ever have our word," she nodded at Victoria, "that it ever existed at all. And we're both dead."

SPOILER: Click to show

Ene finds out that Fraze can communicate with the living, but makes use of the bathroom mirror anyway because ghosts have standards to uphold. She tries her best to relay to Sampson and Reuben (Thundy) what was hidden under the clock tower, despite feeling like words can't really do it all justice and people will only ever have her and Liou's word for it.

SPOILER: Click to show

Ene has no idea why she did this, and neither do I, to be frank.

[Thorn]

Safe atop his perch of cracked stone and charred timber, Doormat had done his best to analyse the situation. But it wasn't easy, and he'd ended up as more of a passive observer in the end. He’d watched a man he didn’t recognise and the doctor he did remove Jensa’s body from the area. He’d spotted Agnes tending to somebody who had been wounded in the confrontation

(she’d always wanted to be a nurse, he recalled, so that was nice).

He hadn't seen Will or Jerry, so maybe they weren't there- which would be wonderful- but Gwen was right in the thick of it all, a terrifyingly uncharacteristic expression on her face as she stunned the previous owner of her baton with a practically-audible thwack.

(there was just so much noise-and-motion-and-violence going on, how was he supposed to find the shooter?)

And then, beyond the pair, a guard Doormat recognised with ease- Terrance Lagman, who had likely taught him more coin tricks and card games than he’d done actual work- moved out of the way as a chunk of stone was hurled in his direction. It landed on the foot of the man behind Terrance, the former then turning about and tackling the unfortunate guard with a somewhat undeserved shout of annoyance.

Doormat knew that he shouldn’t really just be standing here doing nothing. That wasn’t what good-upstanding-honest people did! But there were a lot of things happening at once, and she was dead and there had been so much blood and it stained the ground-and somebody had hurt her in the light of day- maybe the town really had gone mad, as Coriander had suggested? And…

...well, he was already dead…what could they do to him now? And Jensa was dead too. He couldn't obsess over that, he- Terrance. Was alive. And in trouble so yes he should help him no they couldn't hurt ghosts it was okay.

(he did his best not to think about the dancing-on-your-grave-cold-in-your-soul sensation that occurred every time somebody walked through his body, which caused him far more physical discomfort than his actual death ever had).

Ezekiel reached deep down into his soul- mimicking a long, slow breath to calm his thoughts- and searched for the kind of courage he’d managed to conjure that night. He’d been shaking a lot on his way to the shack, but somehow he’d pulled it together…rebuttoned his coat, smoothed some creases out of it, and given himself a pep talk- yeah, that had to be it! A pep talk of some kind! But what should he say...?

“You can’t die and also you are a wonderful human being,” he murmured, before climbing down to go to Terrance’s aid.

The older guard wasn’t having a lot of luck. He was of a stronger build than Doormat (which, to be fair, wasn’t hard), but his attacker had one of Terrance's arms pinned and was possibly-maybe aiming to bite his fingers off?

Eww!

Doormat shuddered as somebody’s flailing limb passed right through his head, then planted both feet firmly and attempted to seize hold of the finger-biting-fiend’s collar. When that didn’t work, he tried for the hair. The belt. At last, in desperation, he felt his hands brush against the back of this insane-biting-man’s shirt and wound his fingers into it, holding on for dear life and hauling backward for all he was worth.

(it would seem, however, that ultimately he was not worth very much at all).

He couldn’t pull the man away from Terrance- not even a tiny bit, not even force him off balance- but obviously he had at least made his presence known, for the man whipped around to stare right through Doormat, confusion knotting his brow as he realised that there was nobody there.

And then, just as Doormat started to back away from this confused-yet-angry-and-somewhat-bloodshot-glare, there was a ripple-of-a-lull throughout the crowd and the glaring-man relaxed his grip on Terrance, as a blue spectral figure swept into view.

“Sssh,” he heard her say, and something about this woman was so familiar…

And then he saw her face. That face, and that aura…everything fell into place.

“Scarf-lady!” Doormat exclaimed, watching wide-eyed as she exerted this…strange, and potent…influence over the violent living.

The glowing-blue-scarf-lady was passing near them now, and he finally realised with a pang of sadness that she herself was no longer living. She’d been so nice to him…she was being nice to all of these fighting people, she was a truly-honestly-actually-pure soul. Whatever had happened, she hadn’t deserved it- deserved it even less than Jensa probably, and Coriander Nix as well, and- well, he should say something to her, too. At least recognise what a good job she was doing, and what a good job she had done.

“Thank you!” he said, perhaps a little more loudly than intended.

SPOILER: Click to show

Internet decided to imitate a snail, just as I decided I should read most of my old posts to check for consistency. THIS WAS A LOT MORE DIFFICULT THAN IT NEEDED TO BE.

(It was also not meant to be a textwall, I'm really sorry...I only wanted a couple of paragraphs but then I felt it was too jumpy so here's some stuff)

Doormat watches The Scrac that Smiles Back and Pixie remove Jensa’s body from the area, from atop his hiding place vantage point, from which he also searches for potential perpetrators of that terrible murderous crime! He is unsuccessful in this regard, though he does notice a dude possibly trying to bite the fingers off a guard he more-or-less knows. 

He attempts to rescue said guard, when Mostly Harmless (flufflepuff) turns up and helps at least some of these people to chill out a bit. He calls her scarf-lady, and says thank-you, because Thorn writes incredibly articulate characters. Anyway yeah, I think that covers it. 

[Liou]

Ghosts move on when they're happy with things?
If Ene was correct, Victoria was going to be trapped in this dump for quite some time, growing less and less happy with every miserable thing that happened. Even though she knew she had nothing to exist for anymore and could not wait to disintegrate into nothingness, she put on a stiff smile for Ene and gravitated after her once again for more of her happy resistance adventures.

She wondered why there had been no naked dancing covens back when she was in high school, that was hardly fair. But the idea of the obnoxious old Amanda Pearson, who had hosted all those tedious dinner parties with unpalatable food, as a bumbling teenage wannabe cultist was quite entertaining.

Sampson Thorpe and his colleague reached a house in what she supposed was a discreet fashion - it's harder to tell how noticeable the living are when one has completely invisible for a while - and entered, welcomed by a vaguely familiar lady. A street artist, Victoria dimly remembered, who had spoken with Ene's older form at that first funeral. Perhaps she was offering the radio men a safe house. Victoria hovered outside the door, reluctant to follow them right in uninvited - even though she had floated through other people's houses before.

She was startled when the street artist lady turned to Ene and her and addressed them directly. She had clearly managed to speak to Thorpe as well, so Victoria had assumed that she was alive. Was she someone who could see ghosts, at last? Victoria entered hesitantly and took a closer look. No, she didn't seem opaque enough to be alive.

"Um, thanks for the welcome?" she replied, more in an attempt to be heard than out of genuine gratitude. "I can't tell who you can see and who can see you, but... you're in the same state as us, right? Sorry..."

The apartment was modest, but felt cozy to Victoria. Not unlike her own bedroom, actually. The policy at home had always been that she had to earn what she wanted to buy. She'd never got around to sprucing up the place.

She hovered awkwardly around the radio men while Ene went to the bathroom, waiting as she would wait for anyone gone to powder their nose. It was only when Ene returned that Victoria abruptly realised that they never needed the bathroom anymore. She almost asked Ene, but decided against such a silly question - Ene would probably laugh at her. She'd check out the bathroom later.

Then Ene started to talk about the underside of the clock tower and Jensa somehow translated to the radio men, who somehow seemed to understand. When she had followed Sampson, Victoria hadn't exactly thought of the consequences. To broadcast forbidden knowledge so directly... the very idea made her fear for her life, as if the Council could still do anything to affect her existence. Perhaps they could, who knew. She was convinced that Sampson Thorpe must have had a death wish or something. He did seem like a very desperate man at present. What if Ene's and her name - her parents' name - were mentioned in the process? What if someone made the connection with the fire?

Well, at this point, it wasn't like she had anything to lose.

So she added the "nurse" who used to work there "for emergencies", yet was never seen in the public areas, and brought a sickening metallic smell everewhere she went.

The people who were due to "come back up any day now, don't you worry" if their families were "good".

The classmate whose father worked at the clock tower, yet who had never invited them for parties on the roof, and who was respected even by the snootiest of brats.

The quiet, meek acquaintance "recovering from an illness" who had suffered a massive panic attack at the mere sight of an ornate mantelpiece clock fashioned in the shape of a tower, and no one would tell her why.

The time when Kay had visited in the dead of night and brought Victoria's father a sheaf of papers, which he had taken with trembling hands and cautiously burned.

The time when they had been invited to someone's leaving party at the clock tower, but Kay had given a very, very slight shake of her head from behind the others. The guest of honour had vanished shortly after the event, along with a few others.

The time when Victoria's father had been in a bit of a spat with a business rival, and a friend-of-a-friend had quietly offered to end it with "intel from down there".

The time when a new position only for the most trustworthy, promising young minds had been mentioned, and Kay had stepped roughly on her foot under the table.

She also remembered the corridors themselves and how she had kept her eyes firmly on Ene at all times, almost clinging to her, because Ene was her lifeline, the only one who could have led her in, and her only way of making it out safely and never having to return or lay her eyes upon that place ever again. She didn't mention that to the others, though.

Victoria abruptly returned to the reality of Jensa's apartment. She nodded, avoiding the others' eyes, excused herself, and went to the bathroom for a break. How could it be so tiring just to think about what had happened so long ago? She raised her eyebrows at Ene's lipstick doodle of a misshapen sock puppet and slumped into the bathtub. What wouldn't she give to be able to play with makeup or enjoy a hot bubble bath once again.

SPOILER: Click to show

GhostVic is confused by Fraze's ability to communicate with both the living and the dead, comes in, wonders why Huntress went to the bathroom now that she's a ghost, and spills a few more random clock tower-related things that may or may not interest Thundy.

[Thundy]

"Hello, Mr. Thorpe! And, um, Reuben, was it? Please make yourselves comfortable. There's some food in the pantry, I don't think I'll need it anymore. I don't really need anything here anymore, so use whatever you need. I didn't make the bed this morning, but you can use it. I'll, uh, maybe stay in the bathtub overnight. Excuse me a moment."

Reuben visibly jumped out of his chair and Sampson was startled.

"What on earth was what?" Reuben exclaimed.

"My guess would be that it was Jensa, the owner of this house," Sampson remarked. "Dead, yes, but still playing the role of a gracious host."

The two were silent for a while. Death had become a daily fact of life in these times, and paranormal happenings had become the norm. Amid of course all the deaths and late night interrogations, the riots, the burning of the clock tower, ghosts popping up all over the town, a giant flaming eye, also the walls themselves appeared to actually be alive, it was amazing that the town had held out for so long before the total collapse of order.

"Well, we've got to get on the air soon, but I have no idea what you should say. We've winged it before, but this is an entirely different animal." Reuben eventually said.

"Our number one job at this point is to keep people informed, so that they have a chance to avoid the violence and stay alive. The way I see it, it's bad news for everyone if either the Council or Resistance comes out on top. Both have it out for us. Both don't hesitate to gun people down in the streets. They are two sides of the same coin. Something entirely different will be needed, otherwise it's just the innocents who will suffer, as always. We are witnessing the bloody transition to a new equilibrium," Sampson said at length, leaning forward in his chair. "I'm just sorry that I had to drag you along with this mess."

Reuben waved him off. "I'd say that the whole town is dragged into this mess, it's bigger than all of us now. We did some bad stuff, we told some horrible lies, covered up things people ought to have known. The way I see it, we're putting this right, especially after the Council judged as "expendable" resources. I was at the execution too, I saw when Ms. Fauna got hanged, and she was one of the Council's own appointees. This is the correct course of action."

"You are right," Sampson said. "We need to tell the truth, while we still can. This could be my last broadcast."

"Well, if they come for us, whether they are Guards or Resistance, we'll go out swinging."

After a while several more ghostly actions occurred around the house, Jensa was relaying details from other ghosts about the extensive network of the Melville 'justice' system. The back and forth exchanges, using Jensa as a go between lasted several minutes. More details began to arise, the re-education programs, the various cover-ups, faked reports of economic output and food stores, silencing of dissidents, nepotism in the officer cadre of Guards. All in all, the two were getting plenty of damning material.

"Are you sure we can trust some of these ghosts? Sounds to me like some of them were in the Resistance." Reuben asked, still scribbling down some notes. "They started this after all. Won't this be encouraging them?"

"I'm pretty sure our dead friend won't mind if I paint both sides in an honest light. Look what happened to me, all those victims and their families,"  Sampson replied.  "Thank you Jensa and friends, you've been a real help."

He stood up and walked over to the telephone in Jensa's house, picking up the receiver.

"It's time?"  Reuben asked, handing Sampson the notepad.  Sampson only nodded and drew in a deep breath, before quickly dialling a long telephone number.  After the final digit, electrons whirred down the copper wire to the telephone exchange, and then out again to the radio station.  A backup generator snapped on, and a tape clicked as it began playing, overriding all the settings in the KMLV station.  The first signal was a coded tone, that switched on all the radios in the city, drawing power in the back districts from small battery sets in the radios themselves, designed for this purpose.  This was followed by a loud audio tone and a garbled, synthesised voice

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEP...BEEEEEEEEEEEEEP...BEEEEEEEEEEEEP
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOP
THIS IS THE MELVILLE EMERGENCY BROADCAST SYSTEM
THIS IS NOT A TEST
PLEASE STAY BY YOUR RADIO FOR OFFICIAL INSTRUCTIONS FROM THE COUNCIL
REMAIN INDOORS
DO NOT TAKE ANY UNNECESSARY RISKS
LIFE IS GOOD

Sampson held the phone in his hand, and began.

"Hello, citizens, this is Sampson Thorpe, and you are not tuned in to KMLV.  Instead, we are broadcasting from an undisclosed location.  Order has collapsed across the city.  The whereabouts of Council Chairman Mayhitch Frinkett and the other senior members of the Council are unknown.  The clock tower has been destroyed, and there have been several casualties in the island area.  There is currently a dangerous state of emergency near city hall, with opening rioting in the streets.

I would advise all citizens that they should take precautions, and avoid taking part in any violent confrontation with the city guards.  The guards are all not only armed, but will be panicking in this situation.  I know, because I was a guard myself, and I saw this happen in the western district during the riots there many years ago.  They will not hesitate to shoot, and the Council will not hesitate to order them to do so. 

But the fact of the matter is that life in this town has definitely stopped being good.  People starve to death while there is more than enough food to go around.  The Island bathes in the light of thousands of electric bulbs while the southern district wallows in darkness.  Stratified rationing.  Detention without trial.  The Council has done good things for us over the years, but now, what do we have to show for it?  A city now on fire, its citizens desperate for a change in the order.

Enter stage left,, the Resistance, while they would like to see a change in our governance, they wanted it to be like this, violent and bloody.  We see at once the brutal tactics we would see if they were in charge.  People being shot down in the street simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or knowing too much.  Does this sound familiar to you all?  Arguably with either the Council or the Resistance at the helm of the city, the only people who will suffer will be you.  You and your families, your friends, everyone will be affected by these events now transpiring.  

And that is why it up to you to change them.  We must all as a people reject this violent enforcement of our streets.  We must all reject summary executions, darkened interrogation rooms, forced shortages, and the stranglehold of secrecy under the banner of security.  We must all reject the coldblooded murder of children the assassination targets based merely on where you live.  The walls were built to keep us protected from the horrors of the outside, now I suspect they protect the outside from the horrors of us.  How else would we become all that is left?  The entire town must stand as one, neighbour to neighbour, and shows those who would dictate our lives, that we will not stand for it any more.  There is a better way for Melville, even if we don't know it yet.  We are no strangers to adversity.  Our forefathers survived the Great Fire, we have survived despite all the evil things the Council has done, and we will survive these riots.

The future is not in the hands of the Council or the Resistance, but yours.  You can do this, Melville, I believe that you can.  We can all do this together.  That's all for now, if we get the chance, we'll come back on the air, to keep you informed.  But sadly, I believe both factions in the town would now rather see me dead.  So I must end this broadcast with a potentially sombre fairly, in case the worst happens, it has been a pleasure talking to you all over the past few years.  Myself and my assistant here Reuben, would like to apologize whole heartedly for all the lies and deceit that the radio has been witness to at the hands of the Council.

You've been a wonderful audience, this is Sampson Thorpe, goodnight, Melville, goodnight."

SPOILER: Click to show

Sampson and Reuben contemplate their broadcast, receiving information through Fraze and Huntress from all of the other ghosts present at her house. He then goes on the air to tell everyone in town the truth, that neither the Council nor the Resistance will help them in the end, rather their own self determination.

[The Scrac that Smiles Back]

Sammy Ficcio sat in the parlor that connected the morgue and the crematory. In her lap she held her radio, clutching it tightly, waiting for news from the man she’d been named after. Beside her on a table sat a glass of apple juice, which she sipped from when Sampson Thorpe’s voice finally broke the silence.

At Gresher Glass Drale had finished boarding up the windows in the front. He was working on the back when he noticed a group of people on the other side of the river carrying pitchforks, torches, and other assorted equipment. They appeared to be heading to the area where the council members lived, and Drale realized with the fires and riots the guards were probably very busy elsewhere.

He hurried to a nearby bridge, leaving the Island and heading the mob off. He begged them to reconsider their actions, but his argument was weak and based on the paper-thin “Life is Good” they’d all had shoved down their throats their entire lives. They wouldn’t turn back, but they wouldn’t let Drale leave now either. Stuck in the mob he was herded to Uncle May’s house, being filled in on why this was the right thing to do.

They stood before the home, a palace by Melville standards, taking in the sight and the weight of what they were about to do. Drale wasn’t sure who threw the first explosive cocktail, but it hit with a crash and lit up the shadows. People threw more, and Drale found soon he’d been handed one too. He looked down at it in mild wonder. He thought of his grandfather, the former council member. He thought of his father, a shame he’d been bearing most of his life, all because his father had been in a protest. A protest that had lead to the Gresher family no longer being seen as such a prominent family. Not good enough, because of a protest. He lit the cocktail and threw it.

The mob moved on, marching on the next house. Drale contemplated life, comparing it to glass as usual.

There were times when glass was beyond normal repair. At these times you had to melt it down to make something that was good again.

SPOILER: Click to show

Sammy drinks apple juice while listening to the radio.
Don’t mind the mob setting fire to council members' houses.