This is radio nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?

[notathreat]

WHO: Ellie + OPEN (Grab me if you want a custom starter, even if they haven't interacted yet!)
WHERE: Dreamscape!
WHEN: September 22-25 2512
WHAT: Ellie's managed to keep y'all out of her head until now, but everything's got a breaking point.
NOTES OR WARNINGS: Violence, death, torture, body horror (zombie-type), violence towards a teenager.

Radio Nowhere

Comments

The Farmhouse (Closed to Joel)

[notathreat]

Joel comes to, standing at the upstairs window of a well-maintained farmhouse.

It's nearing sunset. The day is calm, the wind rustling through the long grass, bending tops heavy with seeds. It's late summer, but cool enough to be comfortable, the mountain air clear and sweet. There's a forest, running water nearby, and the sweep of the mountains is peaceful and vast.

There's a fence around the property below, high and well-maintained, something clearly built after the infection. A broad yard. Sheep bleat softly, from somewhere on the other side of the house. The soft cluck of chickens.

There is a broken-down tractor down in the yard amidst the long grass, made more visible by Joel's vantage point. Even from this distance, the young woman sitting there transfixed by the sunset is clearly Ellie. She has her face turned away from him.

Inside the room, he'll find it warm, almost homey. It's covered in paintings, sketches, projects. Some in progress, some pinned to the walls. Landscapes, portraits of a woman that's clearly Dina, but older, more composed.

In one of the drawings, she's cradling what looks like a small boy in her arms.

In another, there is a detailed drawing of a baby, nearly grown to toddlerhood. Chubby cheeks and pouty lips and huge dark eyes with long eyelashes. Ellie's handwriting, underneath.

My Little Potato

Downstairs, someone is humming. The distant clatter of dishes. It's peaceful, but everything about it feels muffled and far away. Real but not entirely connected.

charlie i love you but not enough to do prose ('anything for love' by meatloaf plays in the bg)

[texas]

（ home is a concept he ain't troubled himself about in more decades than he ever had one to start. it was almost tess, once. but even then — in a world where anyone can be torn from you at any time, it's a dangerous, dangerous thing to hitch your star to their shine.

his house in jackson was a place to hang his hat. he had books he read. he had a room where he could sink into the smell of sweet pine and wood dust — the way it always smells faintly burnt as you work it. the rough callouses on your hands that catch on the stray threads of old wool and tug. that was almost home, though it was always cold and loveless in those walls after he and ellie fell out.

but this place.

he smells the remnants of a hearty dinner. the clatter of what he knows instinctively to be dishes rather than something any amount more sinister. everything feels lived in, soft and warm and real. he sees ellie — who else but her? — silhouetted by sunset, and his fingers grip the windowsill as he looks at her, feeling the splinter of old paint beneath them. he doesn't know how long he watches her, only that it'll never be enough time. not really.

when he finally shifts away from the window, his attention drifts to the desk. he sifts through those drawings, and when he sees the one of the child he looks at it, silent, for a long, long time.

(he notices that one of the statues he carved, of an old cowboy on a bronco, is dusty on the top shelf of her cabinets, and something seizes like a suckerpunch in his chest.)

his fingers trace the writing he recognizes all too well as ellie's, and then he sets it back among the other pictures. it's a dream. it's gotta be. but he can't tell if it's something he's imagining based on the small fragments of what he'd hoped ellie might have one day, or if it's something of hers.

only one way to know for sure.

he heads downstairs slowly, one hand steady against the wall as he comes down the stairs. he finds dina in the kitchen and just... freezes a little, not quite sure what to say. if he ought to say anything. if she can even see him. ）

I've found your weakness

[notathreat]

[Music floats up as he makes his way down the stairs. Parts of them squeak, the old familiar friendly way that old houses do. There's a record player in the corner, playing something familiar, with Dina humming along. She pulls a dish out to dry, running a yellowed cloth across it, and gives him a half-smile.]

Hey, Joel.

[She nods out the window, toward where Ellie's seated on the tractor.]

They're right out there.

[Her heavy eyelashes and dark eyes mirror the features of the little boy in the drawing. She turns back to the sink, taking up humming again.]