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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"I didn't know you were here," she echoes. "I didn't know anyone who might know me was here." And something about putting that into words hits her in the gut. She realizes that, if one person who knows her is here, there might be others.
"I should--I should leave." She stumbles back, fear streaking across her face. She can't stay here, she can't let anyone get this kind, sad woman.
"I'm sorry," she says yet again. "I wish I could stay..."
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Some part of her is aware that her thoughts are growing frantic and not making sense anymore, but a much, much larger part of her doesn't care about anything but making sure Loki never, ever leaves her sight.
"Please, Loki, you can't leave," she says, almost begging.
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She's shaking a little, her brain starting to race at the idea of Odin, or her creatures coming after either of them. "I have to get away. I don't want her coming here, I don't want her finding you."
But she's not pulling away, can't quite make it happen. She wants to, she knows she should but...But this woman is so hard to walk away from.
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"I don't--" But even as Loki sounds unsure, she's stepping closer, moving to take Sigyn's hand into her own.
"All right" she says softly. "I'll stay."
Somehos it feels like a betrayal. Like hse's fucking up in a big way but she can't refuse her either. She cant' just walk away from all this, even though she feels liek ti migt be the best thing to do.
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"Thank you." She starts to lift Loki's hand to her lips, an old habit that apparently the years alone can't complete with, and then stops herself, not sure if it's okay to do now. Not even sure how to ask.
"Do you," she starts, and then stops herself from asking, straightening a little as she decides to go another way. "My name is Sigyn," she offers instead.
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Loki smiles, hesitant but still there all /the same. "Sigyn," she echoes, tasting the word on her tongue. It feels familiar, like something she's said a thousand times, except there's no memory behind it, no thoughts to accompany the name other than the ones she's forming at this moment.
"I suppose you already know who I am." There's guilt in her tone and she doesn't' meet tSigyn's eyes as she speaks. "I 'm sorry," she adds after a moment. "I--I don't remember much of anything. I couldn't keep what I had."
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"Why -- why couldn't you? If you want to talk about it," she adds quickly. "If you don't, we don't have to." Now now, anyway. Eventually she'll have to know, she has to know what happened, has to figure it out so that it can't happen again, but there's time for that. There has to be time for that now.
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"I was kept," she says. "Something happened, I don't remember what, but I was kept afterward. Dark, always in the dark, unless I was working. I had to work, had to make things, had to set plans in order, make sure the track was set and we could go into the stars."
"I wasn't allowed to keep much else," Loki continues. "I couldn't keep the things that would distract me. I had to work, I had to be efficient, had to make it worthwhile to keep me alive. And...and they were hungry anyway. The things, all the things that live inside, were so hungry. I couldn't tell them no, I didn't know how."
Her breathing is hard and she's curled in on herself, shaking a little as she speaks. "I didn't think anyone would listen, not her, not them, not anyone. It didn't matter if I couldn't remember my name, it mattered if I couldn't put plans together and I could. SHe made sure I could."
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She feels sick and she doesn't want to ask, but she's not sure she can think of anything else to do or say until she knows. "Do you know who -- who she was?"
She has a guess. God, she has a guess, and if it's right, Sigyn will find a way out of here and murder the fucking All-Mother with her own bare hands whether it will destroy their plans or not.
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She sucks in a breath between her teeth. "I can't remember. I can hear her voice though, always there, always there. Directions, instructions." her voice pitches differently, clearly mimicking someone else. "It doesn't have to be like this, you know. As soon as things are finished--It's going to be a glory."
Loki's hands have made her way into her hair, pulling hard at the strands as she bites down on her lip hard enough to bleed before she starts speaking again, this time sounding like herself once more. "I don't want to," she says. "I don't want to do it. Please, please don't make me do it!"
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Or it doesn't matter, because Loki is upset, fighting against ghosts or herself or whatever she thinks she's tearing at, and Sigyn steps forward, one hand cupping Loki's cheek, the other over one of Loki's hands, trying to get her to let go, to look at her, to calm down. Rage is still boiling in her chest, making her want to scream, to tear something to pieces, but this is more important, and she tries to push it down. "I won't, my love," she says, soothingly, her thumb carefully moving against Loki's cheek. It's more than she should let herself do, too close and she knows it, but she can't just step away and let Loki hurt. "Shh, no, it's all right. Nobody's going to make you do anything you don't want to. It's all right. I've got you."
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Her give out and she's on the floor, face pressed against the earth. She's not screaming anymore, she's not doing anything. She's stopped moving all-together, her mind shocked into a moment of silence with the impact.
She just lays there for a moment, breathing ragged nails digging into the ground as if she's trying to physically climb her way out of the darkness she's found herself in.