Once upon a time, in a land not so far away...
You wake to the feeling of being watched. Of a set of unfamiliar eyes, of warm breath on the back of your neck. A jolt back to the land of the living, and it's gone. No matter how quick you are, how sneaky, the source of the disruption has long since disappeared, so you have no choice but to try and ignore it. To continue on with your day and try to set that moment of strangeness aside.
You eat, drink, speak with others. Perhaps you explore a little. Whatever it is you choose to do for the day, that feeling from the morning won't return. And by the time the sun sets and the moon glows brightly above, you've likely set those moments of strangeness aside. It's not like it's anything new, after all.
It's the same again for the next few days. No better, no worse. Something best ignored, right?
A speck of blood on the doorframe. That wasn't there before, was it?
A snap of twigs in the distance. A crunch of leaves.
Claw marks gouged deeply into the door.
Into the wall above your bed.
Scraps of red fabric, turned darker with blood. Pieces of fur. Of flesh.
Do you run and hide? Do you fight? Whatever you choose, it's definitely time to make sure your body parts aren't scattered next...
...what a horribly big mouth you have.
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Since first waking up on the island, characters have been stuck with that feeling of being watched. It isn't a constant. Isn't more than a few seconds at a time, dotted throughout the day. Investigation has never turned up much, and there's never been any sightings of the cause of it all.
Until now.
Throughout the first half of the week, characters will find themselves suffering from that feeling of being watched on a far more constant basis. Rather than it being a one-off, few seconds occurrence each day, that feeling will last for minutes at a time, and on multiple occasions.
However, it isn't until the fifth day that they'll start stumbling across physical signs of their monitoring. There are claw marks on doors. Spots of blood on the paths outside. A crack of twigs in the forests, or the imprint of bloodied paws in the snow.
Ten days in and those signs start finding their way indoors. Wet footprints, tinged with red. Claw marks in the walls, the floor. Torn sheets and the smell of wet...something. Whatever it is that's been watching you, its finally decided to come and say hello.
Two weeks in and characters will begin to have sightings of the creature, its fur dark and its eyes a glowing yellow. At times it looks like a wolf, prowling in the distance. At other times, it's walking on its hind legs, almost human were it not for the muzzle full of gleaming sharp teeth. Get too close, and it slips away like a shadow, gone between one blink and the next. It decides when to reach out to characters, not the other way round.
It's after characters finally get a good look at the creature that it starts leaving...gifts. Characters will start to find familiar items from their home worlds amidst the mess. The remains of a childhood pet, perhaps. Photographs of loved ones, faces torn almost beyond recognition. It's only once it delivers its final gift that the creature retreats to the trees again: a blood-splattered item of clothing that clearly belongs to the person the character misses the most at the time, alive or dead.
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The more he thinks about it, the more he'd also like to shout at the sky.
His frustration is still clear as day when he speaks up again. ] We haven't even seen any natives! Unless you want to ask the lake monster! And we have been looking around.
[ He sighs. ] I don't even know which direction to start in. The only really... I guess obvious place is the castle in the lake, but we couldn't even reach that when there wasn't a lake monster.
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It's true. They haven't seen any natives so far. There's talk about a mysterious girl that spoke to some of the people who were there before about someone being there, but they never found that girl or anyone else. Sure, they haven't looked in every single corner of the island, particularly not where the climate is rougher, but after all this time... You'd think they would have found someone (or something) already.
As for the supplies and weapons, they have been doing pretty well, too. Things are not prepared to go on a trip, but then again... Is it really that wise, considering they are already more or less aware of their surroundings? The only out of the ordinary thing in the island (besides all that could be considered ~magical~) is that castle--
... And there is Lance. Saying the same thing that crosses his mind. Again. Keith looks at him, something a bit hard to read on his face, before he blinks and looks back at Shiro. When he speaks, his tone is a little calmer than before.]
Y-Yeah. What he said. [... All of it.]
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[Is he serious or just being his usual morbid self? Probably a bit of both.
He sighs at the explanation and finally drops himself on a chair, eyes falling on the tags in his hand and thinking about the boxes in the lake. Part of him wants to go see the shipwreck himself, but what's the point? He trusts Lance's and Keith's retelling and judgment of it. Didn't he learn anything from the clone fiasco? Reach out. Compromise. Trust the team with his weaknesses.]
You're right. Sorry. I need to remember you guys have already done most of the checking out and exploring. It's just very frustrating to stay here, unable to do anything. The lack of answers make me want to go out and re-check it all myself. [He looks up at them again, his precious little family, and he tells himself it could be worse. He could be here alone.] But if you two haven't found anything, then I won't either.
[Gotta give credit when credit is due. The frustration is getting on his nerves and default Shiro mode wants to stomp leadership all over, but he controls himself. They're in this together.]
Maybe we should take it easy for a few hours. Wait to see if someone answers, have some food. What do you say? If there's no new information from the replies, we can brainstorm something to try and reach that castle. If the monster appeared out of nothing one day, it can go away as easily, right?
[And even monsters sleep, he wants to believe.]
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Nope! Just big and scaly. Not so much with the talking. [ He doesn't know whether or not Shiro was kidding, but that's no reason not to answer the question. Meanwhile, he's really, really glad that Shiro isn't asking to go see the shipwreck. Mostly because... the whole experience was a little strange. What with diving a lot longer than normally possible. .... Than humanly possible.
Let's not dwell on that too much.
The tension in the room seems to dissipate somewhat the moment Shiro finally sits down. Lance moves to half lean against, half sit on the back of the couch. He nods at the apology. ] Yeah, I get that. This place is good at being frustrating.
[ The suggestion has him nodding again. ] Sure, sounds good to me. [ And then he looks at Keith, a nonverbal what about you? ] If you're saying we should take a chance on the lake monster though, that's a hard pass from me.
[ All in good humor, but... he likes living, okay? ]