[ BRIGID ]
If I stayed cooped up in that apartment any longer, I was going to start pulling my fur out.
We'd gone out maybe three times since we moved in. I had unpacked (and subsequently) washed everything before finally folding it and putting it away: Shirts, pants, underwear, you name it. If I had it, it was folded. Then the fuckin' rain came.
'April showers, ' the cow at the coffee shop had said, referencing the sheets of rain that fell outside. I questioned, albeit to myself, her basis of what a shower was because the torrential downpour that had started falling from the sky that morning was everything but a 'shower'.
Eligh and I sat at the small table by the big window as the rain started to increase in intensity. We'd checked the forecast that morning. 'Rain in the afternoon,' it had said. Okay, yeah, sure. No biggie. We had or thought we had, the entire morning to hang out before Eligh started his job in full the next day.
I shit you not; the rain started to fall shortly after 9am. It began as a trickle at first, and we thought a little bit of moisture wasn't going to hurt anybeast. We'd be back home, safe and dry, long before the main event started.
As I said, we'd stopped at the coffee joint, aptly named 'Toh's Beans', after the proprietor of the business. Eligh thought the name had been adorable and had me take a picture of him pointing at the sign the first time we saw it. Personally, it was just Okay as far as coffee shop names went.
The rush of excitement I'd felt that morning washed down the sewer drain, probably ending up with George Denbrough's boat somewhere. The rain came down not as a trickle at first but as a straight-up gusher like somebeast had sliced the sky's jugular vein length-wise. Everything had been soaked in the blink of an eye, setting the mood for the weeks to come.
Yes. Weeks.
I can't remember how the bird on the Weather Channel described it, but a tropical weather system had somehow met a slow-moving ridge of low pressure. It'd caused the goddamn moisture to stall out over the northeast, basically. I'd heard of widespread flooding in the lower elevations, along with a few deaths here and there.
Needless to say, I was pissed.
It wasn't the sort of rain one could walk briskly in with an umbrella either, oh no. This was just non-stop torrential downpours and heavy wind. You'd have to be a fuckin' moron to go out in it for anything but an emergency(And even then, if your life weren't at risk, I'd still second-guess it...)
Two. Goddamned. Weeks. Later.
Eligh went to work, and I hammered away at my television show backlog. Namely American Horror Story, but I mixed some older sitcoms in like I Love Lucy and Welcome Back Kotter when night fell and brought with it the sadness.
Not that I was depressed or anything, but as the sun went down and the moon came up, dragging bedtime ever closer, I would often feel a sense of, I don't know what you might call it, dread, perhaps? Like anxiety without the anxious feeling, really hard to describe. Either way, I can't sleep with it and the only way to quiet it was to put on an old show like this and turn the TV down low enough that it could just barely be heard.
Eligh had nagged me for reading so many horror novels, citing it was having some effect on my brain. I respectfully disagreed by flipping him the bird and burying my snout in whatever Stephen King novel I'd been reading at the time. Or was it Dean Koontz? Hunter Shea? I don't fucking remember.
As I said, it had been two goddamn weeks of non-stop rain.
April showers my freckled ass! I never bothered to look at the final rain measurements, but I figured it was higher than the IQ of that woman at the coffee shop that morning.
Anyway. When the sun burned a hole through the clouds that glorious early May day and cast its beautiful, golden rays down upon the mountainside, I was ecstatic. I bounced out of bed, my hair a wiry, knotted, oily mess from not being washed in over a week. I'd just been keeping it up in a bun or a quick and dirty ponytail most of the time. Who was going to see me besides my big, dumb gay roommate?
Eligh had already gone to work by the time I awoke to the sun's first rays. Hitting my eyes and burning away the night's sleep in a single heartbeat.
I'd taken a quick shower, hastily dried myself off, and then made a mad dash back to my room for clean clothes. I slipped on some athletic underwear, then the first sports bra I could get my claws on. Those were then covered up with a simple t-shirt, a yellow-black plaid button-up shirt, and a pair of denim shorts.
The world outside was going to be a soggy, water-laden mess of mud and overflowing bodies of water, but dammit, I was going to get out and explore!
As I made final preparations in the kitchen, the sky outside rapidly cleared of the gloomy grey sleeve it had worn for far too long, replacing it with the bluest, clearest sky I had ever seen.
Freedom under that bright blue sky was calling my name, and I didn't want to spend another minute in this prison.
Stepping outside, I dug my phone out of my back pocket and checked my messages.
ELIGH: Look outside!!!
It was the very first one. A picture of the view of the town from his office accompanied the text. It showed Main Street at the very end of the line, along with the red water tower that, from where Brigid stood currently loomed overhead, was a weird blur of pixels in the photo.
I took a quick selfie of myself, my back facing down the road headed opposite the direction of Town Hall. In it, I gave the Peace sign, closed one eye, and allowed my tongue to loll out the side of my maw.
ME: Fuggin' pumped to do some walking!
I sent the text and slipped the phone back into my pocket before turning on my heel. My destination: The Brickhedge Greenway!
I had discovered the ten-mile-long greenway the other night in the same way I imagined most beasts discovered the town it was named for by simply being bored and looking at the satellite imagery on Google Maps. I only happened across it because I wanted to get a feel of the layout of town for when I did finally get to explore it once this biblical rain finally decided to move out.
The Greenway was cleverly designed. It stretched northward in a U-shape that looped back around to Main Street on the opposite end of town, coming out beside Town Hall. There were branching paths that bled out of the main trail that acted as shortcuts back to town should someone need to abandon their venture quickly.
But should you stick to the trail, you eventually find yourself on the opposite side of 'The Knot': A lump of a hill that, when viewed from afar, looked like a cartoonish bump on the head that was the greater mountain.
I couldn't find any photos, but evidently, there is an overlook on the opposite side with a charming view of the land below. I wasn't sure I'd make it all the way out there today, with the weather damage and the path likely being flooded still, but I thought I'd still scope things out anyway.
As I walked at a brisk pace down the sidewalk, I was greeted by smiling faces of all kinds. Avians, reptiles, rodents, even an Isopod! He ran the barber shop to boot! I HAD to make it a point to introduce myself to him eventually.
The beasts I had waved, smiled and nodded to along the way all returned the gestures in kind, which was much nicer than the glares I'd received those first few days. I guess either they were finally beginning to accept me, or they were just overjoyed with the weather.
As I stepped off the sidewalk, following a muddy road lined with gravel up to the starting point of the Greenway, I read several signs that had been erected alongside the path. They all appeared to be handcrafted, just like the big sign along the highway. They were pretty much what all one expected at these things.
Stuff like the history of or the founding of the Greenway. Who the various sights along the way were dedicated to, and what sort of wildlife one might expect to find.
But the most intriguing one was the "Beware of Monsters!" sign that stood at the main entrance. Now, I'd known ahead of time that monsters were common in these parts. The further you got away from major cities, the more common they became. But to finally see a sign warning of such things was exciting.
And now I bet you're probably thinking, "Monsters, really?"
Yeah. Really.
The common monsters like a Slime or a Molebit aren't really a threat in this day and age, but running into a Slime or some other minor monster while on a peaceful walk through a beast-made trail wasn't uncommon in 2024, so one must always come prepared and either A) Have learned some basic fighting skills with their fists or an Aether weapon or B) Practiced in magic.
Now I bet you're going, "Magic too? Jumping the shark already."
We live in a weird fucking world, and magic is no more out of the ordinary than a big fucking gun or long-ass sword at someone's hip while browsing the seafood selection at your local Whole Foods. I'm sure you understand to some degree, eh?
Anyway. I've stood here long enough; I wanted to see what this trail was like, and nothing, not even the threat of monsters, was going to stop me!
Ten feet in, the path was closed. It was chained off with a big red Stop sign hanging from it.
"Closed due to weather-related damage!"
Fuck. Me.
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