fluxscape

Who: Adam and YOU!
What: Spending time at the park and doing some shopping
Where: Various places around Wechester City
When: 10/17
Warnings: None yet

A. Blossom, willow grow your leaves

Adam had been here for weeks already and he was no closer to figuring out a way home now than he'd been when he'd first gotten there. It was true that things weren't as bad as he'd expected them to be, but he was still far from home, with no answers, and everything was a mess.

Everything being a mess was part of why he was sat in the park, on the grass, flipping over tarot cards three at a time. Every time, he frowned at them, swept them back into the deck, and tried again. This wasn't like when he'd been connected with Cabeswater; he couldn't just ask a question and receive an answer from whatever had brought them here.

Taking a deep breath, he leaned back for a moment, squinting up at the sun. Things would have been easier with a ley line, but he didn't have that kind of luxury here. He didn't have many luxuries, period, except a roof over his head and friends. So really, nothing much had changed on that front.

Looking back down, he flipped three more cards, squinting at them.

B. 'Cos my soil dries round fractured seeds

There was a little store next to the hardware place where he worked that was stocking some nice autumn decorations. It had more than that, though, and even better it was inexpensive. He browsed the aisles with a basket in hand, picking up odds and ends. A welcome rug for the Barns. A few scented candles for his room. Some storage baskets that didn't fit in his shopping basket and had to be carried in his other hand. If he'd driven there he would have had to worry about only getting whatever could be stored on his motorcycle, but he'd walked, so it wasn't that big of a deal.

He stopped in front of the animal toys section, rearranging his basket before poking through toys. He didn't know if goats played with anything or if they just kind of headbutted things as their way of playing, and he wasn't about to try calling Ronan to ask him. Moving on, he found himself in a cramped book section, putting down all of his baskets so he could use both hands to poke through the books.

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Blue had been doing her best to wrap her head around the fact that they seemed to have all come from different points in time -- and while she wasn't sure exactly where in the timeline Adam seemed to be plucked from, she was sure that was different from the rest of them.

That seemed to be the trend, after all. Another thing added to the growing list of unsettling details about this little pocket dimension.

Blue took time to silently think over the question and chew over her hot dog before pulling her knees up to her chest and going over her final memories of home again. (And by now she'd done this countless times. Not only to Ronan and Gansey, but to herself as well in an effort to find some kind of answer.) "Gansey and I went to that party," She didn't want to linger too long on it, she and Adam hadn't left off on the best of terms regarding her going along with Gansey, "and I couldn't get a hold of anyone at home so we stopped by to see what was going on."

She paused long enough to exhale a sigh, resting her chin on her knees and staring off in the distance at nothing in particular. "We found Noah there, but he wasn't Noah. Something was wrong with him. Gansey and I tried to bring him back, but... " She shook her head, shrugged her shoulder, it was a painful memory to relive, and the more times that she did, the more she worried about Noah and the state of everything back home. "I don't know if it worked. He was gone and then I was here."

The party. Adam tried to fit that into his mental timeline of events, assuming he was thinking of the right one. That was...better than Gansey and Ronan, but still behind what he remembered. He didn't understand why this was happening. Or how.

Taking another bite of his hot dog, he gave himself some more time to think. There was a lot going through his mind, just like there had been every day since arriving here, and even before that. He just had to focus on one thing at a time, tackle one problem and go from there.

"Noah?" he asked after swallowing. Both Gansey and Ronan had mentioned that name, but Ronan hadn't explained. "Who's that?"

At Adam's question, Blue gave him A Look -- as far as she was concerned Adam was attempting to play a joke on her (a joke in very poor taste, but a joke nonetheless.). Something that didn't really seem in his character to do, but with everything else weird going on in Wechester (or was it Beachville? She can't keep up anymore.), the thought only stuck with her for a brief second before it flitted away.

"Noah." She repeated, as though it explained everything. "Czerny." Another single word in a tone that once again sounded like an explanation. "The ghost that lived at Monmouth with Gansey and Ronan, murdered by his best friend," Her voice tightened just a bit at the memory and she tried to focus on the better ones of Noah. "Really likes glitter."

She paused and gave Adam a suspicious sort of look. "Why are you acting weird?"

He was very confused. Had this place taken something from him? Not only did they all seem to be stuck at different points in time, but had Adam lost memories, too? It wouldn't entirely surprise him. If everyone else was missing something, he'd been wondering if he was, too. He didn't like it though. He didn't like things messing with his head.

"I'm not acting weird," he said. "And I'd think I would remember a ghost living at Monmouth." Was Blue acting weird? Or was this why Ronan had looked at him the way he had when Adam had asked him about Noah?

"Are you messing with me?" It didn't seem like a Blue thing to do, not about something like this, but he was hoping this was some elaborate prank that all three of them were in on, conspiring against Adam. It was better than the alternative that something had been taken from him.

Blue continued to just stare at Adam, studying his features in an attempt to try and find some inkling that all this was some big funny joke -- a twitching of his lips in a smile, some sort of levity and lightness in his eyes, even a wavering tone in his voice would have been helpful. But there was nothing, Adam was completely serious and confusion colored Blue's features the longer he spoke.

"What are you talking about?" Her tone was a little sharper than usual and her eyes narrowed at the other briefly. "How do you not remember? He was literally with us almost every day." Sort of. Some days Noah was more there than others, but for the sake of the argument, Blue didn't want to get into the semantics of Noah's thereness. "We went to his funeral and you guys have a whole school spirit day at Aglionby that he created." She paused to finish off her hot dog, crumpling the wrapper in her hand and putting it in her pocket until she could find a proper trashcan. "Quit it. This isn't funny."

None of that made things any clearer. Blue wasn't messing with him, he could tell that much. Which meant...he'd lost something, somehow. Or everyone knew something he didn't, somehow. He didn't know which it was and it made him feel unsettled that he, apparently, didn't know about an entire person, ghost or not.

"I'm not trying to be funny. I genuinely have no idea who Noah is." How did he not remember? No matter how hard he thought about it, he couldn't remember anybody else there with them. Nobody else living at Monmouth, no one else joining them on their adventures. He thought he remembered something about an Aglionby spirit day, though.

"I'm just- I'm really confused. Gansey and Ronan mentioned Noah, too, but I..." he spread his hand, the one not occupied with what remained of his hot dog. "Do you think this place took that from me?"

Her features quickly changed from mildly annoyed to genuinely concerned. A lot of things had been weird about this place -- the changing landscape, their sudden appearance, the multiple different timelines -- but the thought had never crossed her mind that whatever was controlling this place could be that sinister. Taking their memories, the only things they had left that tied them to their home worlds.

"I don't know." She paused, searching her own mind for memories that might be missing. Any sort of blank spot in the long timeline of events that she could point to and say 'something used to be here.'. It was silly sort of idea in theory, how would she have actually been able to tell if anything was gone? Adam hadn't realized he was missing anything until the it had been brought up.

"Who knows what this place can do. Maybe it's taken something from all of us, but you just figured it out sooner than everyone else." Blue pulled her knees into her chest, wrapping her arms around her legs. There was a slight sadness in her voice when she spoke again, staring off in the distance. How many of the same memories did they even share anymore? And without all those shared memories, was she even talking to the same Adam she knew back home? "I wish you remembered him. We all had a lot of fun."

He'd been the first to figure out a lot of things were weird here, first with Ronan, then with Gansey, now this. He wasn't proud of himself for figuring anything out. He was just sad they were all missing things to start with. Even him. He wondered if this was how Ronan had felt when Adam'd told him about them.

"Maybe that's what it really wants from us," he said after a moment, after he'd finished his hot dog. "Our memories." Maybe this place or whoever was controlling it got power from their memories. Who knew how it could get worse. Maybe it would keep taking from them.

"I wish I remembered him, too," he added, quieter.

OTA

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