April Showers

[JACK FRANCIS SHERWOOD]

Oh no, you're trapped! Whether you like the people you're with or not, you're stuck with them - and what little static-ridden updates of the weather report you can get, the storm shows no signs of receding just yet.

Feel free to reply to this thread as the general group roleplaying as you are all together. You're still able to reply to your other threads and you can start new threads to split off from the main group within this forum for the event. Just bear in mind that the event ends on 30 April, so while you can wrap up your threads after that, the forum will go back to normal then.

This group:

• Briar
• Seth
• Charley
• Matthew
• Pace
• Ridley
• Aria

[SETH NICHOLAS DREAMER]

Today had started out innocently enough. Curly woke up and somehow survived through another day of school. It was like school was becoming increasingly more boring day by day as the teachers drilled useless knowledge into his head. He would have much rather been outside, running through the streets of the town and trying to get into some form of mischief. But the Westfields insisted that he go to school and not skip out on it as often as he would have liked. Curly never really got to attached to one school, mainly because he assumed in a year or two he wouldn’t be there anymore and would be at some other place.

Finally the bell rang and in a flash Curly was dashing for his house. He had big plans for later in the day. He was going to meet Pace and Nibs out in the meadow in the woods. The three of them never really had plans of what they would do whenever they got to their meeting place, but it always turned out to be fun in the end. With the whole expanse of the woods around them, the limits were endless for what they could do. Curly considered trying to start a dirt war with Nibs. He milled around the house for a while before deciding he should set out for the meadow. He packed a bag full of snacks (mainly candy and cookies, but Vanessa insisted that he put some fruit and granola bars in there) and set out.

As Curly made his way towards the meeting place, he couldn’t help but notice that the sky was getting steadily darker. He vaguely remembered hearing something about a storm rolling in this evening. He didn’t mind though. It wasn’t like storms were scary to him; in fact he thought they were fun. Especially when the lightning flashed across the sky and made everything light up like it was daytime. So Curly progressed deeper and deeper into the forest, whistling a song to himself. All the while he was completely unaware of the looming danger that was rapidly approaching overhead.

Curly was the first in the meadow, a fact that he would have to make sure he rubbed in the face of Nibs and Pace. He put his bag on the ground and used it as a pillow as he waited. Curly closed his eyes but kept his ears perked for the sound of his approaching friends. It would be just like one of them to take advantage of him having his eyes closed. Curly’s thoughts got interrupted by the rain drops that began to fall on his head. He opened his eyes just as the torrent began. Curly leapt to his feet and began to run around the meadow, arms wide. He started doing little spins. He was never able to dance in the rain; usually he’d just get in trouble for getting wet. But this one couldn’t be avoided, and he was going to take advantage of it.

The extremely loud boom of thunder brought Curly crashing back to reality. He got a good look of the sky and felt like something bad was going to happen. The clouds were almost pitch black, much different than the light grey ones that were overhead when he first entered the forest. His head whipped around as he spun in a circle. “Shelter…shelter…SHELTER!” There was a tiny grove on the edge of the forest. It would offer some protection from the rain and wind, not a whole lot but it would do. He started to run for it, then backtracked and grabbed his bag before taking off again. Once inside the small haven he shook his head, trying to dislodge loose water. No doubt his hair was going to get extra curly after this. Curly opened his extremely damp bag and checked his supplies. Thankfully all the good stuff was preserved in a bag. “Yes! It all stayed dry.” He opened the bag and pulled out a cookie and began to munch on it. Nothing left to do now but wait until he could make a run for his house.

[CHARLEY ANNE WEISS]

Charley really liked living in Kansas. There weren't that many places that the girl enjoyed hanging out in, and the wilderness was definitely one of the exceptions, so the fact that she had somehow ended up smack dab in rural, relatively-small-town Kansas helped out a lot. There was a nice park that she liked to hang out in, and all these woods; she was just an outdoors person, let's face it, and here in the Midwest, there were plenty of outdoors, which meant that she had the right outlook on life. These woods, in particular, just on the outskirts of one of the residential areas of town, were usually one of the most relaxing places. She didn't even bring her brother and his friends here. She just simply came out here, by herself, to lie in the grass and breathe, whenever life got too hectic. Which was a lot, since pressure was something that Charley couldn't handle.

And, let's be honest: school was definitely the main source of all that pressure. Sure, there were some social things that weighed down on her, but by nature, Charley wasn't necessarily a social being. She had friends, and stuff, but she never really made a habit of getting herself into anything. She just didn't trust herself with anything yet. Sure, she was sixteen, sooner or later she was going to have to branch out beyond the group of seven boys that she hung out with, maybe even find a damn boyfriend, but she hadn't found it in her yet to try. Which was probably why she had skipped school today. She didn't really want to go around looking at the hot boys that she could never even think about asking out, or asking her out. She didn't want to deal with the plastic, blonde-headed bimbos telling her constantly that she wasn't doing herself justice. They were nice to her sometimes, but always in a sly way — that she was too pretty to be who she was. Her looks were wasted on her. And sometimes, they decided they were just going to get down in the mud and call her ugly. And that was when she socked it to them and got suspended.

Oh, well.

She had been here for a long time, now — since early this morning, when she'd told her parents that she was leaving for school before the sun came up to get some much needed tutoring. Well, yeah... that didn't happen, obviously, and so here she had come, to one of the meadows in many of the woods. She wasn't exactly in the meadow, though; rather, she had found a spot situated nicely outside the clearing, underneath the shade of the trees, and curled up there in the grass. She'd only stopped laying down in order to give herself time to eat the lunch that she had packed last night. It had, overall, been a good day, so far, and a quiet one, to boot. Soon enough, though, it came upon the time when school was getting out, and she felt a disturbance headed her way.

First, it was the pitter-patter of feet running into the clearing. That wasn't a problem; boys normally came here after school, the noise of them laughing and playing around didn't bother Charley's rest. But when the raindrops started slipping through the canopy of coniferous over her head, she found herself in quite a tight spot. She sat up, and looked over at the boy, who, at this point, was running around slightly stupidly in the rain. She watched him in amusement for a few seconds, and then changed her demeanor greatly when the huge clap of thunder rang out from above them. "Dammit," she muttered under her breath. She guessed that she probably should've checked the weather before coming to hang out over here; or maybe she was just unlucky, stuck in a stormy patch of trees with a slightly insane-looking boy, who looked like he was waiting for others.

Staying alone probably wasn't the best choice either, though, so as he started screaming out and searching frantically for shelter, Charley got up and brushed some of the nature off her jeans before starting to walk toward him. Her hair was, by now, getting soaked, since she hadn't worn a jacket today — it was, after all, almost summer — and she pushed some wet strands out of her face to see the boy scurrying away into a little grove on the edge of the woods. Charley's eyes narrowed, and she broke into a jog, peeking into the little grove. "I hope you've got room for more," she shrugged herself inward, basically inviting herself into his little haven; "because I'm coming in." She slid down to the ground and sat in the grass, looking over at the boy. "I guess I should introduce myself before I ask you for a cookie, huh?"

[SETH NICHOLAS DREAMER]

Curly stood for a while, watching as the storm pounded down outside. The meadow was getting fully saturated with water and some of it was starting to set on top of the ground. He continued eating his cookie as he began to wonder how long this particular storm was going to last. It seemed like a pretty severe one, so it could last for hours. At the prospect of being stuck in the woods overnight as a storm raged a wide smile appeared across Curly’s face. He knew he should probably be scared at the fact, but he thought it sounded like a great adventure. Maybe if Nibs and Pace showed up they could play hide and go seek or go on a ghost hunt.

He plopped down on the ground. It was slightly damp from the stray rain drops that managed to penetrate his little safety zone, but Curly didn’t care. After all, he was already completely soaked from playing in the rain. In hindsight it wasn’t the best idea since his underwear was going to cling to his body until he managed to get something dry. He finished off his cookie and wiped his hands free of the crumbs. Curly was starting to get bored just sitting around doing nothing. Being alone in the forest was definitely not as interesting as having company. Then someone could come up with a fun game to play to pass the time until the storm finished.

Curly reached for his bag to grab another treat when he was startled by a voice. It wasn’t one that he knew. It was a girl’s voice, and certainly not one of the ones he was used to being around. His eyes searched for the source before seeing a girl pop into his little grove. “I’m pretty sure there’s room. It’s a big space and is kind of dry. At least drier than out there. Even if there wasn’t room, we could make it. I don’t take up a lot of space. But it looks like we can hold a few more people too.” As if to show that it was true Curly picked up his bag of goodies and held it on his lap.

Curly took a moment to observe the girl. She looked somewhat familiar, but he didn’t know exactly who she was. She appeared to be his own age, so perhaps he saw her at school. He vaguely wondered why she was out in the forest now. What if she came to spy on him and his friends? His eyes widened at the prospect of having to share his treats with someone. Curly wrapped his arms around his bag and pulled it tight to his chest. His eyes peered just over the top of them, sizing up the girl.

Eventually that annoying little voice in his head prevailed. He sighed and released the death grip he had on his bag. “That would probably be a good idea. I should introduce myself since you aren’t supposed to take food from strangers. My name is Curly.” He still wasn’t sure if he could trust this girl, so in his mind it was much safer to give his nickname. It practically became his name anyway, so it wasn’t like he was completely lying. Curly dug into his pack and brought out the bag that held the cookies. He held it out for the girl to take one. “I have candy too. And some fruit and granola bars, but I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t want those.” Maybe he could chuck the fruit at something for a bit of fun. “What are you doing out in the woods anyway? Hey, wait a minute. Were you watching me? Is that how you knew I was in here?”

[CHARLEY ANNE WEISS]

Despite the fact that she wasn’t exactly a people person, Charley didn’t seem to have any concept of physical boundaries. That wasn’t to say that she would just lay all up on any boy who crossed her path — oh, no, that was way different. That was called being slutty, and that wasn’t Charley’s problem. She just had a hard time judging how much personal space she should give people, especially in slightly tight, mildly enclosed areas like the one she found herself in now. It came, she would guess, from the fact that despite their differences, she and her brother had always been very unafraid of getting into each other’s spaces, whether it was for affectionate purposes like a hug or a kiss on the cheek, or whether they were pissed and were getting ready to beat each other down.

So, when she sidled her way into the tiny grove that this poor — and probably lost — boy had stumbled into, she didn’t think twice about sitting right up next to him and holding out her hand, ‘asking’ — in her own, charming way — for one of those nice cookies she’d caught him stuffing his face with. Of course, she’d managed to be slightly polite first, of course. She offered him the option of learning her name, to which he responded in the affirmative; first, though, he gave her his, which was... endearing, to say the least. “Curly?” she repeated, “Like the stooge.” She nodded with a smile. Cute, she thought, taking the cookie and biting off a chunk of it. “I’m Charley,” she mumbled through chewing.

She finished off the cookie as Curly started going through the rest of his inventory, rattling down the list. She liked candy fine, but she wasn’t really interested in it right now, especially since chances were it had melted from the sheer humidity of this storm. The rain was pounding down on the trees above them, and Charley was thankful that this little grove was mostly free from the wetness. She liked rain — there were days when she would’ve given anything to just go out there and stand naked in the rain, as strange as that may have sounded — but this? Well, she wasn’t quite sure that she wanted to be a part of something like this torrential downpour.

Her ears perked up when Curly mentioned fruit, and she turned back to him, her thoughts more focused on the situation at hand now. She wasn’t exactly a fan of granola bars, but if he had fruit... “Do you maybe have an apple?” she asked, glancing down at his bag. She didn’t know why, but she adored apples. They were her favorite fruit, and they always served to calm her down when she was in a situation of high intensity, like this one was proving to be. A terrifying thunderstorm crashing just above her head didn’t help to relieve the stress like she’d planned for this trip to the woods to, but an apple might sedate her enough to keep her mind from racing until she finally got home. “I don’t why I love them, I just do,” she explained, feeling slightly embarrassed.

“Whoa, cool your jets, Larry Mo,” Charley said, holding up a hand as Curly started accusing her (indirectly) of spying on him. “Let’s stop and think that maybe you’re not the only one who likes to spend time out here. And also, why the hell would I be spying on you? I don’t even know you.” She crossed her arms, sliding away from him a little bit and giving him a once over. To be completely honest, he looked like a pretty okay kid, by all accounts. “I just heard your loud ass making noise and followed you to shelter,” she continued, clarifying as gently as she could, “Is there a problem with that?”

[SETH NICHOLAS DREAMER]

Curly’s face formed a slight scowl. “No, not Curly like the stooge. Curly like the hair.” He point briefly to the mop of hair sitting on his head before clutching his bag once again. He’d heard enough of the joke from his various foster siblings about how he unfortunately shared a nickname with one of the Three Stooges. He always had to inform them that it was just a nickname given to him because of his curly hair. At least that’s always why he assumed he got the name. Admittedly Curly wasn’t the brightest crayon in the box, coming in at a light green color, but he didn’t think that he was necessarily at stooge status. He raised an eyebrow at the girl’s name. “Charley? Isn’t that a boy’s name? I don’t think you’re a boy.”

Curly’s curiosity about Charley started to get the gears in his head rolling. Why was she here in the forest anyway? It wasn’t like the forest was specifically the territory of the gang, but it seemed weird for a girl to be out there all alone. He grabbed another cookie out of his bag and stuffed it into his mouth, trying to get another burst of sugar to possibly get his brain working a bit harder. If anything it would alleviate some of the boredom that was slowly setting in while he waited for the storm to let up. The peals of thunder were slowly starting to get closer, meaning that the storm would be over top of them soon. Hopefully it wouldn’t get too bad.

Man, this girl was just getting weirder and weirder. “You actually want an apple? It’s not like a candied apple or anything.” Curly opened his bag and fished out the piece of fruit and held it out for Charley. At least now it would look like he actually ate it and then Vanessa wouldn’t get on his case when he came home with a bag full of fruit and granola bars. “I don’t know why you love them either. The only fruit I like is grapes, and Vanessa didn’t give me any grapes. Oh, and watermelon. But that’s mainly because I get to spit the seeds out. Though I get in trouble for spitting the seeds at people.” Curly dove back into his bag, this time taking out a granola bar. He would have felt awkward if he stuffed another cookie or a piece of candy into his mouth, especially since Charley decided to go all healthy on him.

Curly shot Charley a dirty look. “I’m not like the Three Stooges, okay?!” He huffed and crossed his arms, looking even more like a child who was pouting. “Yeah, but it seems weird that you were out here all by yourself. Where are your friends? What were you doing? Oh my gosh, you’re not a witch, are you? Were you going to do some witchy magic? Maybe that’s why you were spying on me! You were seeing if I was going to be a good sacrifice for your witch stuff.” He knew it was absurd, but there was a possibility it could be true. Okay, there was no possibility, but Curly didn’t care. He had an active imagination. It was bound to get away from him every now and then.

His head tilted to one side like a dog that heard a strange noise and couldn’t quite figure out the source. “My ass wasn’t making noise. That would be weird if my ass could talk. But it wasn’t which is good.” He placed his bag on the ground and curled his knees up to his chest, wrapping his arms around them. “I guess it’s okay you joined me. To be honest I would have gotten really bored after a while. It sure beats talking to myself.” Curly looked up towards the sky. The rain was coming down harder now and more drops started to fall into the grove, though not even that they were going to get flooded out. “Okay, so you weren’t here to spy on me and my friends. So what were you doing out here then? Unless you really are a witch, in which case you should probably lie to me.”

[PACE AMORY NICHOLS]

Pace was not, by anyone's standards, reliable. He didn't even pretend to be reliable. Possibly his one redeeming factor in that respect was that he was indiscriminately unreliable to all, enemies and friends alike. But he was sometimes unreliable even to his friends, and one of the most frequent ways in which he was so, was in tardiness. It wasn't as if Pace had a very rigid schedule, without school or work. He sort of did what he wanted. But in doing so, he sometimes lost track of time, so even having agreed to meet with the gang around the meadow, it didn't do much good to have that set time. He realized only in walking past the high school (which he then associated with Curly and Nibs) that he was already about seven minutes late to meet them, and backtracked, breaking into a run once he was in the right direction. Though somehow he doubted his friends would hold it against him, having known him for a while now. He slowed down once he made it to the entrance of the woods.

He hadn't noticed the weather much on the way. He had felt the wind earlier, and had appreciated it. Not too cold, just a good heavy push to keep things from being one of those boring "light breeze" days. And of course, nothing had been exceptionally bright, so the sky must have been a bit clouded. But Pace simply hadn't thought of it. In fact, it wasn't until that loud cracking sound and the sudden soak of rain that he even thought that maybe it could storm. He picked up speed, breaking through the trees into the meadow and...was surprised to see that neither of his expected friends were there. "Nibs?" he called, looking around. "Curly?" He laughed as he added, somewhat giving up, "Easter bunny? Anyone?" The smug idea began to set in that perhaps he had been the earliest one for once, and that he would have to hold that over them, when he thought, Oh, right. Rain. That tended to ward off most people.

Finally, he looked over towards the edge of the meadow and saw distantly the figures of two people. "Hey!" He jogged over in that direction, towards the small grove where Curly and someone else, not Nibs, were taking shelter. "Lost track of time. I think it's gonna storm," he laughed, shaking out his hair to keep the drops out of his face. Kansas in April, big storms were no surprise. He didn't bother to apologize for being late. Again, it was typical behavior, and apparently he wasn't the only one, unless Nibs couldn't make it. Or had turned into a girl, but somehow he had always imagined Nibs as a girl a little differently. Less freckled, maybe. Possibly a little more exotic looking. He raised an eyebrow. "Who's this?" He didn't say it in a rude way, simply blunt. And why not? If she was going to get offended by straightforwardness, it was just as well, because she probably wouldn't get along well with Pace. Of course, he had asked Curly, rather than her, which some might find irksome, but Pace really couldn't be that bothered. His attention, in fact, fickle as it was, had already been diverted to Curly's sack, and the potential for food therein. He took a seat.

[CHARLEY ANNE WEISS]

Charley looked up, not amused, when Curly mentioned that her name was traditionally a boy’s name. “Look, dipweed,” she muttered, “My actual name’s Charlotte, I’m giving you the pleasure of calling me Charley, okay? Don’t push it.” The black-haired girl nibbled on her cookie some more, shooting a rather hostile glance at her... new friend, if she could call him that. For all intents and purposes, he seemed to just be rather strange, and Charley didn’t actually know if she should spend her time talking to him. Sure, the kids at school thought she was weird – well, had they met this wild child? He seemed absolutely insane, babbling on about his inner thoughts and going off on tangents that Charley had originally thought impossible for any human mind to wander onto. This situation suddenly seemed much more uncomfortable; the kid was lucky his cookies were so damn good.

But she was really craving an apple – something which he seemed to not understand. “I know it’s not a candied apple,” she mumbled in frustration, taking the apple and biting into it.

It was good, too. For some reason, Charley had always had a fascination with the fruits – they’d always seemed like they could just sedate her a little bit, calm her nerves for just a little while. And Lord knew she needed that right now, because Curly was driving her up a wall and making her nerves stand on end. Seriously, he was like giving her his whole life story – or at least the chapter on his experiences with various species of seeded plants – and they had just met, what, two minutes ago? Next thing you knew, he was going to be trying to get to second base or something, and Charley was not going to let that happen. Not in a million, bazillion years. And who the hell was Vanessa, anyway?

Charley’s jaw hung open when Curly started ranting about the possibility that she was a witch. She’d had her suspicions before, but this proved it – the kid was batshit insane, no doubt about it. She rolled her eyes, biting another chunk out of the apple while he speculated on what, exactly, her wicked plans for him were. Right, right, human sacrifice and everything – well, killing him seemed like a perfectly feasible plan at this moment, at least. The girl sighed heavily, quite obviously annoyed. “Yeah, man,” she replied simply, “Definitely named after the stooge.” She smirked, and bit into the fruit again.

After a while, Curly’s endless tangents about his ass making noise or her, perhaps, being some real life incarnation of the Wicked Witch of the West (which, by the way, the very idea that someone so fantastical could even be incarnated in real life was stupid – Elmira Gulch was a fictional woman, not the star of a biopic) grew tiring, and she eventually just laid back on the grass, twirling the apple core in her fingers until he finally reached the end of a breath. She would have to admit that, despite his major flaw – the fact that he talked too much, and about things that no one in the world probably cared about at all – he was endearing. Cute, even, in that boyish sort of way. But still annoying, above everything. “I was skipping school, Larry Mo,” she revealed to him, sticking to her nickname despite his protestations (she was a stubborn bitch, that was certain enough) and closing her eyes, just listening to the sounds of the rain.

As if having to share this space with Curly wasn’t enough, though, she heard the clatter of feet approaching their little den not moments later, and another – significantly more attractive – boy stumbled in, making excuses for his lateness (was there some sort of party going on she hadn’t heard about?) and cracking a not-so-funny joke about the raging storm above them. All of Charley’s thoughts about him possibly being attractive, though, were pushed to the side when he turned to Curly and asked who she was in probably the most apathetic way imaginable. She had been waved off as just another thing in the forest, then – well, if that’s the way you want to play, pretty boy.

“I’m a witch,” she grinned sarcastically, “I was going to strip Curly here naked and then sacrifice him to the gods, but you look like a much more strapping specimen, so if you wouldn’t mind taking a bite out of one of my poisonous apples…” she trailed off, raising an eyebrow and then falling back on the ground, worn out from all of the ridiculousness that was going on in her life right now. What the hell had she gotten herself into?

[SETH NICHOLAS DREAMER]

“Yeah, well, my actual name is Seth. I’m giving you the pleasure of calling me Curly. So, yeah.” Always the perfect picture of maturity, Curly stuck his tongue out at Charley. Personally he thought his retort was quite clever. She wasn’t the only one who went by a name that wasn’t her normal one. Curly couldn’t decide what he thought about this new girl. They didn’t get off on the best foot to begin with, so it could have been jading his view on her. She seemed to be feisty at the very least. He wondered if her hostility was meant to be sent towards him, or she was just reacting to the storm ruining what was going to be an otherwise good day spent in the forest.

Curly watched Charley with curiosity as she started to eat the apple. It seemed so foreign to him that someone would so willingly choose to eat fruit when there were much better and tastier things inside his bag. Soon guilt began to eat away at him. Curly dropped the half-eaten granola bar back into his bag and pulled out one of the bananas. “Now I won’t have to lie to Vanessa about eating the fruit. She usually checks what’s left so I just leave some of the fruit out here in the woods for the animals to eat.” He talked mostly to himself, but he realized that he probably sounded nuts to someone else.

He scowled at Charley. “Not. Like. The. Stooge! I told you, it’s because of my hair! At my second foster house I was the only one there at the time with curly hair and since there were a lot of us coming and going they didn’t bother to learn our real names so they just called me Curly and it stuck ever since then.” Curly clutched his bag next to him again and dropped his gaze down. He had no idea why he decided to spew out that little story, but it was out there anyway. “I wish I could skip school. I mean, I could, but I would get in trouble for it. School is just so boring.”

The sudden noise in the grove caused Curly to jump slightly and clutch his bag closer to his chest. It would just be his luck that a wild animal would show up here and try to maul him. It could at least wait until his friends showed up so that they could at least try to fight it off together or something. He relaxed and a giant smile crossed his face when he saw that it was Pace. “Pace!” He laughed with Pace’s little joke. “Really? I thought it was going to be an earthquake. Thank goodness it’s only going to get wet and not all shaky.” He let go of his backpack for once and chucked it towards Pace. The other boy would know exactly where to find the food. Curly was usually the one who brought food to their little get-togethers since Vanessa always wanted to make sure the ‘growing boys’ were well-fed.

Curly was about to give introductions whenever Charley explained what was going on. Clearly she was making fun of him for the whole witch comment. “Hey! I’m as strapping if not more so than Pace! I would make a good sacrifice” he said defensively. Curly actually wasn’t one hundred percent positive on the definition of strapping, but if Pace was, well then so was he. “Pace, this is Charley. It’s short for Charlotte, I already asked. Witchy, this is Pace.” See, she wasn’t the only one who could come up with nicknames that didn’t describe the other person at all. “She skipped school and was hiding in the woods and came over and found me when I ran into here. No Nibs yet.” Now that Pace was here, they could actually get to have a bit more fun. That is if Charley felt like she was able to keep up with the two of them.