Day 4
Current tally: 11/20 8♢
Jokers: 1/2
Roll: 4
Cards: 5♣ 🃟 Q♡ 6♠ Q♠
5♣
I took to the woods feeling lighter this morning, humming a tune — it felt right when the forest took harmonies. A chorus winding between the branches. I followed the sound to a murky, pond with several white robes floating on the surface, like lily pads poised neatly on sinuous scum and algae.
The song was louder there, and the absent melody, nonsense notes — they took shape into something familiar. A marching song. A memory surfaced, dreamlike, of teach this song to a young man — a child, really, face covered in pimples and fear. A memory of cold that catches at the seams. The stamp of boots that calm the mind. A metronome. A meditation.
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🃟
For a moment, I lost my way. And while, by its nature, my work involves straying from the path, delving into darkness so I might leave a clearing in my wake, I've rarely felt
lost.
But there was something up ahead, a wild sound, like a tree of jaws screeching, but heard from underwater. A thick, viscous, profoundly organic scream.
Behind me, that thrum of the metronome continued, a staccato ghostly choir, and the faint scent of horseradish caught on the breeze. Even as the scent turned my stomach, I felt myself reach for that steady rhythm, that placid heartbeat, sure where I was unsteady, calm where I was panicked — but something louder inside me strained to flee. Summoned and stalked, I stumbled in the brush, nettles and thickets snagging my clothing and stinging my skin. The drumbeat grew louder. My skin sprouted boils.
And then I saw her once more: the old woman in mourning clothes, hunched over at the crossroads, carefully stacking her stones. She turned to me, gave me a weak smile, and said "what a shame. You were so young." She turned away, shaking her head.
"I'm not dead!" I shouted.
She turned back to me slowly, placing a last precarious stone. "Oh?" she said, "then
run."
And I ran.
You have drawn a joker. When you draw the second joker, you're lost.
Q♡
Controlled burns are common in these woods, but there hadn't been one scheduled for today. Unless I lost track of the days? I've been doing that more and more… No, this fire was too unnatural. It burned like vengeance. It chased and flanked, lapped at me like the tide does a ship. The trees seemed to whistle and scream at the violence of it — my skin caught and burned like the fat of a candle, and the scent reminds me of family meals, holy offerings and dying soldiers.
I watched the smoke rise lazily from me, and saw a horned figure staring back at me from within a plume.
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6♠
My gait turned leisurely as I continued towards the ravine. A shout came from below — I dismissed it at first as a raven or lynx, but on its fourth call it became clear it was a man, desperate for aid. I picked my way down the ravine, and saw his shape pinned beneath a fallen oak. I continued my descent, trying to devise a plan to rescue to the poor soul, but when I arrived, I found only a rotted log and a human skull covered in moss. It have a neat bullet wound in the back, and a large portion of the front was missing. I saw on the log to catch my breath, and noted the ravine was about 12ft deep. A grave twice dug.
I stared at the skull a while, questioning, hoping it would condemn or absolve me. It offered no insight, but I left feeling resolves anyway: I was never that good of a shot.
Q♠
The silt turned to mud, then to a brackish slurry, then to a flood — suddenly the ground beneath me fell away and I was knocked into those inky waters. It stung my eyes to look, but through the murk I could still see the distorted flames blazing in the distance. I was carried away, tossed in an impossible riptide, until my boot caught on some protruding root, holding fast as the water level climbed back my chest, to my neck, and I was completely subsumed. For some reason, I had expected quiet, once I was fully emerged, suspended, tethered and floating, in those depths. But the water held a cacophony of gunshots, growling machinery, and whispered prayers. I do not wish to dwell on these moments, but instead of what occurred next.
Darkness finally took me. When I awoke, I was naked, curled in the mud. I felt that I had undergone some irrevocable change, like the sever of a limb, and yet I felt strong.
Without my clothing, I felt the wind acutely on my skin, and I knew its direction and strength as well as I know the flagstone path to our home.
I moved through the woods easily.
I arrived home quickly.
Dinner was waiting.
Search your deck for a joker and move it to the top of your deck.