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Elara found her attention falling back to Ingrid and fully engaged in the conversation back and forth, nodding and smiling here and there. The fashionable femme had a sort of high-aire to her that Eel was entirely unused to, but it was fun in a way to be around someone with such an ego and the wherewithal to reign it in. Someone who also seemed deserving of a good deal of that ego. Elara found herself drawn into the gravitas of the designer. She found herself nodding perhaps a little too vigorously at being given "A ride" with Ingrid- something to think about later.



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She also found herself getting caught up in what she could even do with her hair at this point. She preferred it shorter, easy to manage and style, even easier to just sweep back behind her on those rare occasions she exercised. What would a salon change at this point; did hair stylists do things besides trim and, like, shape? Elara usually just trimmed her own hair at home. Too much potential dysphoria to talk to other people, given that she did very little voice training. Still, new Earth, new vibes, perhaps. If she went with Ingrid to the salon, maybe...



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"Ah-" Her friendquaintance sped off in the shimmering car, in the wrong direction no less. Other caravanners seemed quite impatient by this point, and Eel continued her ascent of the mountains. Easy come Ingrid, easy go it seemed. And yet, Elara still thought she hard that chiming. It became somewhat faint, but as a cloud of dust puffed well behind the traveling party, the sound got closer. Then closer still. Eel thought she saw a flat pathway of shimmering prisma. "Is she a damn ghost?" Had Elara been talking to a dead person this whole time or something?



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The new, larger and more concentrated cloud of dust did nothing to disperse her outlandish suspicions, but did reveal a new shape within the tumult- a tall, broad-shouldered fellow with a sword in one hand and his other arm covering his mouth, coughing up a storm as he was showered in particulate dirt. His exclaimed expletives rang down the pathway of the mountain, and he turned to the caravan as if realizing he was no longer hidden, even though Elara had barely seen him over there. Had he not been coughing and making so much noise, she probably would have missed him up there.



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"Ah wells, weird weather aint stopping me. Oy, travelers, this here's a waylay! Gimme yer food!" He stomped out of his hiding spot and toward the group, brandishing his weapon and doing his best to clear his lungs while looking tough. Ingrid was still nowhere to be seen, presumably having driven off the cliff edge or, more likely, just left entirely.



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"Damn, I really wanted that ride." Elara contained her disappointment best as she could and brandished her own weapon, which was just a mean-ass glare. Nobody else would see it, but inflicting Anathema on this bandit meant he would regard her visage as one of a gaunt face, skin greyed and peeling to reveal a bare cervid skull and antlers, eye sockets sunken to reveal pale, slightly glowing orbs, and teeth jagged as if filed or chipped on bone. A face hungry for something far worse than flesh. He seemed stricken, and halted in place just in front of her.



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"If you leave, I'll just give you some food." Eels gathered some of her traveling rations and threw them towards the man, who didn't even bend over to grab them, eyes still fixated on Eel's face. From afar, it might look like he still had fight in him.



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Used Anathema - Enemy is Guilt Ridden

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Continuing in her scan, Elara was sure she could hear some kind of shuffling, but that was probably the people behind her in the caravan, right? It suddenly dawned on the woman how ill-defended this caravan was, her being at the front and entirely unprepared to defend the back of the cart and the traveling party there. Let alone that Elara simply was not a fighter to begin with. A rock tumbled from far up the cliff face, too high to have been knocked loose by anyone. "Mmm." Elara mused aloud, a grumble to break the silence. Silence? She turned to see that the rest of the caravan was stopped behind her, all surveying in their own way, taking a small breather. Elara turned back and kept glaring at the hillside, still feeling as though she were being watched.



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Another member of the group had started to speak, the quiet utterance of a syllable cut short by a new sound besides wind and pine. An odd chiming filled the air as if moving in from someplace distant, like a crystal glass of too many dimensions being played. Something like how Elara imagined an otherworldly angelic choir, or...



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"Prismatic car?" The convertible very comfortably passed Eel and the caravan at large, swinging in a mild u-turn to face her at an angle. Though the car settled immediately and didn't seem to hum like a thing with an engine would, the wisps of floating red hair took it's time to fall into place, and Elara found herself smiling a little. It was a weird coincidence to meet Ingrid in this way, but a very welcome one.



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"Oh gods, likewise!" She managed a small bit of excitement in her tone and moved towards the door. "Yeah. I'm doing... okay, considering-" Elara gestured to nothing and everything. "-and you look flawless and wonderful, as always." Eel recognized that Miss Karina had fallen into a different language for the most part, and found it to be quite pleasant. "I like your new wheels, too. Perfect for seeing the sights I reckon."



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As if on cue, something caught Elara's sight. Not a car swinging in from her peripheral this time, but a humanoid silhouette, moving forward along the lower canyon area and settling behind cover once again. It was starting to flatten out on that side the higher the caravan got, and the tree cover was growing more dense. Eel had been so focused on Ingrid, but now she was squinting a little, staring off into space seemingly. She turned her attention back to her acquaintance- or friend? No, probably still an acquaintance at this point, but Eel could dream. "I'm supposed to accompany these folks to a little town a few miles more ahead, if you want to tag along. You could tell me about what you've been up to?" Elara hefted her pack and made clear she was ready to walk alongside the vehicle if Ingrid didn't invite her to sit shotgun.

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The prospect of a mischievous deity with a penchant for death felt like something out of a novel Elara might have scanned and put back, a fun idea in premise but ultimately uninteresting for her general palate, but here it was apparently reality. Some sketchy alien having hit her with lightning, killing her and taking her to purgatory and speaking through blue prompts... it was frustrating, at best. Eels didn't feel like chiming into the conversation by this point, still emotionally trying to wrestle with just having died, and thankfully the rest of the group was carrying on just fine. Eel didn't even want to consider what dying here would mean.


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Feeling mostly content to listen for now, Elara gathered herself and kept to the periphery of the group, well out of Junk's general stench and Gleeford's... just being. If Eel was going to position near anyone it would be Miss Karina, but she seemed like someone who had a very strong sense of personal space, and Eel didn't want to agitate it. So she listened, nodded, stretched and went back to huddling her arms against her for any semblance of warmth she could gather, but the cool air against her still too-damp clothes was making Elara miserable.


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Still, it didn't quite compare to the misery she felt inside. It was dramatic to even think for her, but this surreal rapture of self from thunderstorm to this city of insane dimension, it felt all too much. She stared off into space, her shivering stopping for a moment. Eels wondered where Wendy might be. Tears almost came to her eyes again, but a yell caught her off guard, brought her back to reality. She sniffled.



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"The fuck?" Jog what? Gleeford hadn't passed near enough Elara to move the air nearby or create a draft, but still she smelled the cigarette as he scurried away, vaguely reminding Eel of a cockroach. She looked behind her to see the other man still plodding, and was grateful in that moment that he seemed to have no sense of self-preservation. Better him than her. Elara readied her shoddy polka-dot spotted umbrella anyways, not entirely wanting to outlive this scenario but still more worried about what failing this game entailed. She heard the grumbling from wherever Gleeford had come, and was certain it didn't sound like one of the other 'contestants'. All the more reason to leave and find those beacons. She navigated the destroyed city street, trailing Gleeford and anxiously searching for the objective.



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"The celosia shed ev'rywhere." Elara had no idea what 'celosia' was, but the puzzled look on her face prompted Arkin to point, and sure enough there were a few plants of the same kind in multiple colors. One in particular was larger than the rest, green foliage with a deep red with pinkish overtone plumage to it, and a couple of stalks had withered a little. "Trim the dead 'uns too." Eel went to her arrangement of tools and grabbed a little hand broom by the screen door and set to work. She was careful to pick the fallen flowering from the dirt around it, opting to sweep the rest into a little hand-pan, then clipped at the empty stalks, nearest to the base as she could.



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It was nice to be busy, here. This place was peaceful in it's way, a nice ocean breeze wafting in and occasionally stirring the room, the radio near Arkin playing some sort of music. The radio was clearly playing a recording of some kind, meaning Arkin had his own curated music collection (or perhaps owned only one, which is why he never changed the music the entire time Elara was here.) She was reminded of home, naturally. Sitting on the couch with the dog curled up on and over her lap, Tanq being entirely too large to be a 'lap dog' but still embodying the spirit of one. Wendy would be nearby strumming on something and humming melody, occasionally stopping to write as she practiced. Sometimes Wendy would be in her office, and Elara would bring her notebook there and sit in the doorway, just to listen to her play while Eel wrote. It would have been nice to hear Wendy play while Eels worked a garden for them. She felt a bit of wet at her cheeks where tears had streaked.



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"Mmm, thinkin' agin." Elara sniffled a little and straightened a little to shuffle the plant remains to a composting can outside, passing briefly inside. She looked to Arkin and wiped at her face sheepishly.



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"There's a lot to think about." Arkin nodded, but didn't comment further for a bit, and Eel decided to finish what she was doing. Outside the door though she heard "Always is."


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Elara finished the rest of the patio, checking the lemon sapling for any new wayward branches, but it seemed to be sorted. All of the plants looked a bit better than last time, or at least that's what Elara assumed it meant when some of them had been yellowed before, and were green and full now. It had been rewarding work before to care for the plants, but coming back to the same and finding improvements was... well it was a different kind of success. It didn't fill that pit in Elara's chest that had been there for months now, well before Earth-chan's rapture, but it was a nice change from constant ennui. Elara kept working through some more tears.

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"The hells is all this?" Elara had just wanted a nice little getaway from the monster fighting and the nonsense, and had spent the better part of her morning reading a scavenged book she'd thought to grab during her brief time in New York. She'd sat fully clothed with a little bit of sunblock on, that little bit of extra zinc-y white left on her nose not as some kind of statement of style but fully forgotten by the time she'd finished her exposed hands and ankles. She had new shoes finally, her old ones taken from the old world having gained an odd sort of mildew smell from all the gross places Eel had been so far, but also just from being apocalypse'd in a thunderstorm.



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So now here, just a bit away under the shade of a tree (and a beach umbrella), not on the sand but close enough to it to feel some of that residual heat, Elara was frustrated to find more Earth-chan shenanigans taking over her little getaway. Snow and ice seemed to cut across the landscape, creating a harsh contrast in biome, and in spite of the still-warm ground she sat on felt a cool winter's air blow past her.



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Elara glanced around, expecting an attack or something suddenly dangerous, but could notice only a few newly apparated penguins milling about and a bunch of bunches in various wrapping and sizes falling from the sky. Then she got the mission briefing in that usual blue window. She begrudgingly accepted. Eel spotted another human shape in the distance apparently picking up the presents, not one of the local creatures as far as she could tell, and not a penguin either. She packed up her book into a small pack and opted to leave her shoulder-slung travel back empty of the beach set she'd brought; it was free anyways, and this would leave more room for presents.



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"Howdy!" The woman called out a little wary, moving towards the stranger who was probably on the same job as her. Unless there were folks out here trying to steal the presents? Elara spent a few good seconds pondering what it could mean to steal from Earth during this facsimile of a holiday, but opted against it, still continuing to close the distance to the other person. Eel had already seen how problematic it could be to do anything even remotely against the cruel deity's wishes. She got within a reasonable speaking range, a few presents already placed into her beach-bag, with a few letters to 'Santa' she'd found as well.

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Earlier today if you'd asked Elara whether she would be hiking through a somewhat-treacherous mountain pass in the Sierra Nevadas, laden with a backpack of carried supplies for the day, she'd have said "no, I don't even like hiking." Yet here she was, travel pack slung over both shoulders and securely tied around her front with a handy quick-release, huffing through each breath and sweating despite the cool and misty air. It was foggy today, the wind still whipping up something of a constant breeze yet not dispersing the vapor that hung in the air. The visibility wasn't 'what they wanted' as the caravan master had said, but these supplies 'aint gonna run themselves.'



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Eel of course wasn't suddenly taking on the role of some kind of traveler; no, the former writer was still just taking stock of what was left of the post Earth-chan world, picking up jobs where she could since she had yet to find anyone even printing books, let alone interested in buying her old novelizations. Maybe if she could find copies of the series somewhere she could recreate them and preserve them, but alas, she had yet to find any such bookstore carrying the C-list woman's works. So everything being what it is she'd taken this job, one of the few that seemed within her level and capabilities to do. Shame the path had to have so damned much uphill trekking, but she needed the exercise anyways if she was going to survive Earthpocalypse.



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Elara thankfully had been assured that the hardest part of the job would be the day's travel itself to an outpost on some mid-mountain plateau; apparently it was a prime location for a specific kind of ore that Eel hadn't remembered the name of, and so naturally a town had sprung up around a mining operation there. The little hamlet of Danno's Peak was a name she remembered, and the sooner they got there, the better. But...



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"...the hells is that?" Even stoically walking, her lungs and calves screaming at her, Elara was an observant person, often out of curiosity but usually out of anxiety. Here and there along the entirety of the trail so far she'd caught things in her peripheral, at first just colors that seemed out of place against the mostly gray-rock and occasional shrubbish tree sprouting from the canyon walls, but now full-on movement of some kind, too large for something so quickly hidden. There were rocks here a person could reasonably hide behind, and she had to wondere if travelers were ever waylaid by bandits or a sordid sort here. It would be difficult terrain to defend in.

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"Lost..." Elara had left early to ensure she could if nothing else be on time, but found herself using some of the extra allotment to sight-see a little. The countryside here was gorgeous, packed with hills and moody forests alike, though she'd expected it to be more wet in general. A bit of rain would have been nice. Instead she had no real excuse for getting as off the path as she had, given that this whole gamified system had a mini-map with markers to tell her exactly where to go. No, Eel had just been plain distracted by the scenery, and once by a pair of song thrush. The sight had made her a little homesick.



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It was a nice late morning by all counts, and by the little clock on her interface that she would anxiously pull up whenever she felt like she was going to be late again. Normally she'd take her own time, but this mission she'd accepted for some much needed experience. Granted, the briefing had been kind of vague; Elara wasn't even sure what kind of experience there was to be gained by 'touching grass'. She wandered down a winding forest path and out into open fields, again. She appreciated the clouds, she took a deep breath of a kind winter's breeze, then braved the open ground towards a silhouette crouched nearby.



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Elara found herself uncertain as to whether she should call out, feeling anxious to break the general silence of nature, but not wanting to sneak up on another person. She settled for somewhere between and called out a probably too-quiet greeting of "Hi there." Eel wasn't sure if she'd been heard but continued moving up regardless, her eyes catching a swarm of movement further away, which put her in mind again of this new Earth that had monsters and such roaming it. "Hmm." She hummed nothing in particular to herself before giving a "Howdy", now at a more reasonable distance to be heard, noting the phone in the other person's hand; Elara didn't even realize phones still worked, and was kicking herself internally for not having grabbed her own that night before she was ceremoniously apocalypsed.



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"I think we're working together today, though I'm not really sure on what..." Elara shuffled awkwardly in place, eyes moving between the group of what seemed to be living gelatin and Lottie before settling a gaze on the other woman. "Elara, or Eel if it's easier." She pulled a hand from the pocket of a deep forest-green fur-lined coat and offered it in greeting, giving a weak smile. Meeting new people always made her a little nervous, but hopefully having a commonly-agreed upon goal would smooth things out.


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"Apologies if I was late, I got a little lost." She continued shuffling, conspicuously shifting weight from one foot to another, noticeably admiring Lottie's styling while doing her best not to compare it to Eel's lack of fashion sense.

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