Tend Towards

[W] Aftermath #44

Prompts:

The Way They Are: Lover of Trees and Animals, Keeper of the Graves / Nothing they do makes sense, but things always go their way.

The Way They Talk: Often misquotes Common Sayings.

The Things They Love: Religiously adheres to the lessons we learned from Mean Girls (2004).

Their Darkest Secret: It's, well, a secret.

What They Look Like: Ghostly pale, perpetually tired, but still completely irresistible.

Wildcard: Loves the Modern Rebels. 

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The sleet had made her travels a little more difficult than she had anticipated. The grey flow of mud and and ice was churning through her wheels and her journey had come to a disappointing halt. 

Briefly, she considered to just give up, to go back to the Eradian outpost and just make something up about the man from the volcano. 

Of course, that was in direct conflict with her journalistic pride, and her sense for the utter truth convinced her to take her recorder and notebook, rainjacket and gumboots, and walk the rest of the way through the sludge.

She hoped she'd get a raise for this. The downpour had almost immediately soaked through her, and she knew her notebook would be ruined. Her boots filled up with the icy mud and squelched with every step she took - that is, if she wasn't slipping or being knocked down by the sheer flow of filthy mass.

Allissa clung to the trees as she slowly, steadily made her way up the mountainside. Even if it killed her, she was going to conduct this interview. It was a funny thought, and she would have laughed if her bones weren't freezing, to think that she might have appeared on the news as one of the many articles she had written.

Not that anybody would particularly find her body for months - if they ever found it - until the rains stopped and the ice melted in late summer. As it was, Spring was already quite severe and she'd probably just be buried deep beneath the mud for the rest of her existence, like the dinosaurs. 

At least nobody would have to dig her grave. 

The higher up the mountain she got, the easier travel became. The mud thinned to a constant stream of water, already the rocks were washed clean of any loose soil and ash, and the freezing torrent barely splashed higher than her boots. 

By the time she reached the plateau, she had risen above the rain and was standing in actual sunlight - cold and crisp sunlight - but sunlight nonetheless. 

While fighting the forces of nature, she didn't particularly have the time to focus on how exhausted she was, but when her body rested just for a moment, the fatigue overwhelmed her and her muscles cried out in agony. She really hoped she wouldn't get frostbite. 

She collected herself and tried to get her bearings. If she wasn't mistaken, the cabin should be just along the ridge, and she set out to follow the natural curve of the mountain.

The man was waiting for her. He was sat in a chair and staring out at the clouds below. The sun caught his green eyes and lit his brown hair in way that made him seem like a god of Olympus, but his form was hunched and dirty, and Allissa briefly wondered which of them looked worse. 

"Hello!" she called out to him, and he turned to her, a bright beaming smile on his face. 

He took in her haggard state, and quickly ushered her into the cabin. "Thought you'd come by car," he muttered as he handed her a blanket and guided her towards the fireplace. "Would have been so much simpler."