[ Maybe he can't see, maybe he's just got his shit together, either way, he can't know nearly enough to be as scared as he should be. But she found herself anchoring to it, keeping a hold of the man's arm and taking an awful, musty breath. (Weird things about scents and memories, there's nothing calming about that breath at all.) ]
Sort of, [ she manages, forcedly matching his calm tone, but the words still tumble out a little too quickly. ] I don't know how, but— [ How she knows, how they're there, they can debate all that later. What's important now is getting out. ]
Back that way. The front door'll be boarded up. [ That she can say with certainty. They'd had to crawl in through the cellar window, after all. After a moment's steely hesitation, Beverly moves forward, tugging him along with into the oddly distended hallway. ]
[ Things seem to creep back into some spatial sort of sense by the time they pass the kitchen, but just as they do so, a girlish shriek pierces the creaky silence of the house, followed by a gaggle of boyish voices that are nearly covered up in turn by a shriek of Beverly's own as she just about jumps out of her skin, clamping down on her companion's arm. ]
[ But the seven children congregated in the kitchen seem far more preoccupied with the rats scuttling through the pantry cabinets than the two adults standing in the entryway. One of them—the tallest, the one that all eyes seem to leap to in this, their time of strife—stutters out firm reassurances as the rest of them quiver like startled fawns. Beverly, likewise, still looks wide of eye and drained of color, glancing back toward the man half as if to confirm he's actually seeing any of this, and half as if searching for a sliver of that reassurance the stammering boy seems to exude. Even if it's just... a memory, somehow, (her own memory, a spitting image of her youth with a head of fiery curls huddled there across the room, between a tubby boy and a twig wearing a striking pair of Coke-bottle specs), ]
We definitely need to get out of here— Do you think we could break a window?
[ Most of them will be boarded like the door, but there are none in the hall. There are a few through the kitchen though, and a few doors behind them. ]
boy I sure didn't mean to start this prompt so far back, pls forgiv a tag or two of pace futzing
Sort of, [ she manages, forcedly matching his calm tone, but the words still tumble out a little too quickly. ] I don't know how, but— [ How she knows, how they're there, they can debate all that later. What's important now is getting out. ]
Back that way. The front door'll be boarded up. [ That she can say with certainty. They'd had to crawl in through the cellar window, after all. After a moment's steely hesitation, Beverly moves forward, tugging him along with into the oddly distended hallway. ]
[ Things seem to creep back into some spatial sort of sense by the time they pass the kitchen, but just as they do so, a girlish shriek pierces the creaky silence of the house, followed by a gaggle of boyish voices that are nearly covered up in turn by a shriek of Beverly's own as she just about jumps out of her skin, clamping down on her companion's arm. ]
[ But the seven children congregated in the kitchen seem far more preoccupied with the rats scuttling through the pantry cabinets than the two adults standing in the entryway. One of them—the tallest, the one that all eyes seem to leap to in this, their time of strife—stutters out firm reassurances as the rest of them quiver like startled fawns. Beverly, likewise, still looks wide of eye and drained of color, glancing back toward the man half as if to confirm he's actually seeing any of this, and half as if searching for a sliver of that reassurance the stammering boy seems to exude. Even if it's just... a memory, somehow, (her own memory, a spitting image of her youth with a head of fiery curls huddled there across the room, between a tubby boy and a twig wearing a striking pair of Coke-bottle specs), ]
We definitely need to get out of here— Do you think we could break a window?
[ Most of them will be boarded like the door, but there are none in the hall. There are a few through the kitchen though, and a few doors behind them. ]