revivalproject | And ate the fellow, raw

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And ate the fellow, raw

WHO: Claudia and 🥩you🥩
WHERE: Near the mine entrance, and near the fountain
WHAT: Claudia is always hungry
WHEN: After being freed from the Warrens
WARNINGS: Read this before tagging! Animal death right at the top.

a. outskirts
The stench of the carcass worsened as the blood cooled and congealed. It was already strange and sour, more than the usual earthy, gamy taste of a wild creature, tainted with fear and sick with watching fire rain from the sky. The thing had been thin and trembling, venturing at long last back to a familiar grazing ground only to find no safety there still. Claudia sat hunched on a felled log next to where it remained, its wild blood warming her through and staining her from chin to navel. Worse still, it was in her hair. Hair that had been growing increasingly untamed, difficult to control under the best conditions and with the help of expert hands, now subject to being torn through with a brittle stick as Claudia tried in vain to comb it. The struggle made it almost impossible to appreciate the hum and sing of nightlife around her, insects and frogs, or what sounded like them, darting through the underbrush, fat and unafraid after their predators were drained from the veins of this wood, flowing away from the volcano, and leaving the earth lush under the density of ash. It should have been a welcome song after being in the unnatural depths of those tunnels. And then there was the smell.

It hadn't taken Claudia long to return to the site of their burial, tiptoeing curiously around the mouth of that cave, sniffing the air for the fungal presence of the dancing mushrooms. The dark of it seemed to crouch threateningly in the moonlight now, and she had thrown a stone into that gaping maw, listening to it clatter down the tunnel until the sound had disturbed something above it. It made her stomach growl. Sniffing at it now, she wasn't sure how that was, and yet even with the taste still on her tongue she felt the hunger claw at her again. She brandished the stick she was trying to use as a comb at the carcass and admonished, "I don't even like you," like the rot and bones could do anything about it now. In response, a beetle came wiggling up through the slick of it, torn skin sliding off of its polished shell. Claudia bared her fangs, and turned her nose up to the wind again, searching for another warm body.

b. downtown
Without the glownies in their enclosure, the wind seemed to rattle the rafters and the straw on the ground looked one more night from blowing away. The flies didn't even remain, followed to wherever the herd had fled when abandoned, leaving only Claudia sitting on the fence where she could kick her legs and look mournfully into the empty sprawl. It wasn't even that she wanted the glownies to be there, for a fact; with no trace of them, she could only imagine the great mass of them all running together through the trees, and that was wonderful. And they weren't even that appetizing. But she was hungry, and one of those beasts would have at least come and eaten from her hand with its big, stupid eyes, completely unaware of its impending end. The other beasts around here weren't so easy to find out at night. Maybe, if she was lucky, she'd spy one wandering through he square, alone as most of them ever seemed to be, trusting the world to be so gentle with them even after it had spit fire at them.

She slipped from the fence and went skipping out into the fresh air, under the shimmer of the moon at its peak in the sky, and paused there to carefully fix her skirt and her hair, and tested a trembling pout before evaluating herself with a slightly unimpressed twist of her mouth. It was probably convincing enough for the meat. Now she just had to wait, turning her ear up to listen for any approach, like she wasn't in the centre of the city that should have been teeming like blood under the skin even at this hour of the night. Instead, it was like she was waiting for a lonely farmer to stumble out to the swamp to relieve himself.

There, a sound. Claudia glanced around herself to pluck up a stone torn loose from some damage to the building above, raising it over her head to drop unceremoniously to the road and let the sound of it ring through the dark streets. A beat later, she cried, "Oh, no," as miserable as she could manage. It took her another second to consider that she should maybe be on the ground for the most effective performance, and gingerly lowered herself, patting away the pebbles that might dig into her legs where she lounged.

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A little too fast, like she had to stop the awkward, crazy girl from chancing too close, Claudia held up her hands with a nervous laugh and said, "I can get up, up I get." When she did climb to her feet, it was with a shy look the girl's way as she spent maybe more time than she meant to checking her hair and fussing over her clothes, which she had to tell herself to stop letting be a distraction. She was supposed to be giving this girl a complex, not developing one.

"You didn't scare her, too, did you?" Claudia asked, trying to picture this friend of the girl's, and if that was a useful string to pull. To not look so intently interested, he glanced around again, this time like she was trying to see through the curtain of dark to the hotel or the diner, like that might tell her which would feel safer. "If there's ghosts..." she started, hands drawing up again like just the thought made her shiver, "They're definitely at the hotel. Hotels are an absolute rub for ghosts."

"Her? Who her?" Robin asks. And then she gets it. "Oh, no. Him. Not her. Though it could be a her. But it's not. This case my friend is definitely a him and I'm doing it again. I've got this whole flow of words in my head and they won't stop and I'm sorry. I get like that when I'm nervous."

Yeah, none of this was going well at all. Which made Robin even more flustered. Oops.

"Really? Uh, I've never seen a ghost before. I didn't know they were real. I'm really sorry your world has them."

With the girl falling over herself to try to explain, it took Claudia a moment to even discern what she was trying to say so many times, and then being struck by how wonderful it would be to call a boy her best friend. Imagine. Having a best friend at all was already fantastical. The girl's impossibly awkward rambling had Claudia starting to laugh again, smile wide and open this time, so earnest that maybe she was too young to realize how humiliating it was to say, "You talk a lot, huh?"

Right, she was supposed to be scared of the ghosts. She looked back toward the hotel, knitting her brow back int the worried knot to complain, "You're the one that said--So they are real?" How divine. Claudia had to work to keep that excitement off of her face, suddenly very aware that ghosts couldn't have been so outrageous. She was a dead girl without a soul. It must have gone somewhere. "What else?!" she demanded, which could have been the sound of panic in her voice.

Yeah, even for Robin it was pretty cool and quaint to call a guy her best friend. It was refreshing and he wasn't even the first one. Just the one that she had now. In fact, most of her friends were male. Was that maybe a little weird? Probably. Definitely. Okay, maybe she was too nervous around girls to have too many girl friends that weren't of a certain 'I don't give a fuck about social pressures and standings' attitudes.

"Yeah," she admits with a wince. "Sometimes my mouth just runs away with me and I don't know how to make it stop. No brakes to throw."

And that was going to get her in trouble. Perhaps it already was.

"No, you said they were. Or implied it. And I said they were in yours. But I don't think they're real here."

She hasn't seen a storm ghost yet. She doesn't know any better.

"Uh... mothcats?"

Okay, those weren't scary.

"They're cuddly and act like actual cats and they fly with these moth wings. They're sorta cute?"

Having never encountered such an argument that Claudia could not see was in any way some kind of cruel game like Lestat might play when she was asking too many questions, Claudia was struck still and entirely out of her own diversion. It couldn't be allowed to stand. "Something can't be real sometimes!" she replied, and it sounded so nonsensical out loud that she crossed her arms and puffed her cheeks with an irritated pout.

Why would it be a cruel game? Those would be, well, cruel. And sure, Robin could be cruel, downright savage in her take downs at times, she reserved those for the people she thought she knew. The people she thought she understood.

Claudia was, in this moment, just a scared young woman.

"I don't know. I mean, here we have dancing mushrooms and I saw a talking blue hedgehog around at one point. Those don't exist back in Indiana, so in that way it could be maybe real only sometimes. And if those are real only sometimes then ghosts could be sometimes real."

The girl was apparently undeterred by nonsense, and for all it had frustrated Claudia, it had her tongue still working tirelessly as ever. Claudia's arms remained crossed, and her pout held as the girl spoke, only her eyebrows creeping up out of their annoyed furrowed into disbelief. "They do exist, even if you don't see them! Lots of things exist that you've never seen in your whole life!" Claudia was very sure about. These animals were worse than she thought; their worlds shrank even more each time they turned their head. "I could tie a rock to you and throw you out in that lake over yonder, and I'd still believe you were down there for the fish to eat."

Well, now there's a whole point. Robin crosses her arms as tilts her head so she can think about it.

"One, on the matter of ghosts, like I said they're just not real where I am. Because if they were, trust me, Hawkins would have had them and I absolutely would have seen them. That's just how messed up where I'm from is. Two, that doesn't mean that ghosts aren't real where you're from, or here, I'm agreeing with you there. And three, I mean, you would know I was down there, but can we avoid that step? I've got trauma with lakes."

Don't do that to her. If you're going to kill her, then do it without lakes.

This was not a discussion of artistic speculation, so Claudia could not fathom why the girl was talking like it was, like reality depended on context. It was the confidence, or at least commitment that was really difficult to understand, and Claudia had to demand, "Are you some kind of lake monster professional?" To know ghosts weren't real and then believe that they might be would surely take someone who believed very strongly in the delusion of this profession.

"Nope. There's no lake monsters back home. Unless you count Nessie. I don't count Nessie. I'm pretty sure that was faked to drum up tourism."

Cynical? Totally. But also willing to accept she's not in Indiana anymore.

"Anyway, is there somewhere safe I can help you get to? I'm Robin by the way. I can't remember if I've told you my name yet."

That answer utterly failed to account for the confidence, only managed to include more. With wide eyes, Claudia could only mutter, "What...?" with no idea what a Nessie was, and was left unprepared to accept any further information, floundering as Robin changed the topic. A little breathlessly, she had to admit, "I don't...know," thinking she might actually run into Nessies and ghosts in any place, and not sure which she was most intrigued by. "I suppose I should go home..." sounded a little disappointing, and Claudia turned to look vaguely in that direction, fairly certain she knew the monsters there well enough.

Ah, that doesn't sound excited. At all.

"Alright. I can help you get there. But... But unless your parents are here and are enforcing a curfew or something, you know you can go around if you want? Like, enjoy the city. Ruined as it is. Get to know people?"

Getting to know people was what Claudia had been trying to do, after a fashion, and the reminder jogged her attention back to Robin properly, bright eyes on her in a deliberate, assessing pan, and lips parted like she had something on the tip of her tongue. The girl who did and didn't believe in ghosts and knew all of the monsters wanted Claudia to enjoy the freedom of a dark night. "Are they all like you?" Claudia pressed, with an expression like she did really try to hold back that unimpressed quirk of her brow. That would have been terribly rude, to acknowledge how uniquely strange Robin was.

No. Fucking. Way. Was that a looking her over? That can't have been a looking her over. There was no way she just got looked over by a girl. Wow that might be a literal first in her life. A good first. Wow. Just. No. Fucking. Way. Okay. Be cool Robin.

Robin has never been cool in her life.

She's not blushing, you're blushing.

Okay she's blushing too. Or maybe the only one blushing. Definitely the only one blushing. Oh god.

"N-no," she manages to squeak out because um what is confidence in this situation? Okay, control. "Definitely no. I've always been one of a kind."

Knowing that Robin was strange did not help Claudia anticipate what strange thing she was going to do next, and while her awkward blushing from the scrutiny wasn't unexpected, the fact that she seemed to be enjoying it definitely was. It took Claudia another baffled beat to realize she might have understood, in some way, not being entirely ashamed of being 'one of a kind'. It wasn't like she really wanted to be like any of these mortals. It was just terribly lonely. A best friend (a boy!) would have solved that neatly.

"I'm..." she breathed, glancing around again, feeling quite unprepared for the game she was meant to be playing against this opponent, and now if she even wanted to play at all. "I know how to get home. I'll be just fine."

"Alright," Robin says with a nod. Okay. She'll be fine. They'll be fine. But first...

"You need a walk home? You know, to feel safe?"

It was hard enough navigating this new world without a sanctuary to retreat to, where she knew she wouldn't be found in her vulnerable sleep, so Claudia quickly blurted, "My uncle will be wondering where I am. He'll have too many questions about you. It's better if he doesn't see you. It's not far, really." She was already backing away, hands up apologetically, then clutching at her clothes. "It was...nice to meet you," she added, because it sounded like a proper goodbye, though she wasn't sure how nice it was and would probably be puzzling that for some time.

"Okay," Robin says. That's... honestly not something she is all that shocked to hear. Sometimes that's just how things go she supposes.

"I don't think I caught your name. Is... it okay for me to ask? Before you go?"

For a moment, it looked like it might not have been okay, as Claudia gave an anxious glance around, looking reluctant to say and for a reasonable escape. Was that as risky as letting Robin know where she lived? A different kind of risk. The last mortal she thought she'd have any reason to be telling her name was Charlie.

In a small voice, she offered, "Claudia," and after a beat like she thought Robin might be struck down right then, she remembered to give a hurried, slightly clumsy curtsy. Before either of them could think much more about that embarrassing move, she was whirling away to escape with an awkward squeal, fleeing into the darkness between the impossibly tall buildings.

It's a pretty name. And Robin smiles, grateful for it. Even wants to say her own name, say that she could be reached on the network if she wanted to talk to a girl. And... Nope. She's just gone.

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And ate the fellow, raw

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