Running

[rhiannon_lee]

Nighttime in Cottonwood Cove was a spectacle: a pale, pebble-strewn ground underfoot, ghostly Joshua trees twisting against a barren landscape, and a sky so black and velvety that Rhiannon longed to touch it. The moon hung low and full as she knocked at the front door of Cian’s little cottage, which had been built by a wealthy contractor as a getaway spot for his family during the construction of the Hoover Dam in the 1930s. With all that was temporary or mobile in this part of Clark County, Rhiannon appreciated the historical aspects of its framework, and how it lent a sense of time and place to an otherwise transient community.

The slayer’s dark hair was combed into a ponytail. After the sun went down, the desert temperature dropped sharply, and so she wore a loosely knit sweater over her tank top, jeans, and boots. A delicate crucifix glinted on her collarbone. She crossed her ankles and slipped her thumbs into her hip pockets as she waited for the Were to answer.

Comments

[rhiannon_lee]

Lovely sentiment, indeed. Shit aside, God, why had she said the rest of it out loud? It was this cavern, she decided, rubbing at her elbow with the hand that Cian didn’t hold. It was possible to feel that you weren’t real here, that the world had gone away. While he picked up a crystal and weighed it in his palm, Rhiannon softly touched her stomach and hoped to heaven she didn’t throw up. In the midst of that nervy near-catastrophe, she looked at the collection spread before them. Some she recognized as chips of turquoise, others as crystals of malachite, olivenite, and gypsum. Light glistened on a small piece of blue stone, which she picked up and held carefully between her thumb and forefinger. “Azurite. In ancient China, they thought this opened celestial gateways,” she said. “I know it as the rock I used to stare at for hours trying to reach a meditative state.”

A small smile at the confession.

Re: Running

[cian_oneill]

He chuckled, the confessions not surprising, but instead making him cast his eyes across the ledge until he found the crystal he was looking for. He picked it up, his other hand, still holding hers, lifting until he could slip the piece of turquoise into her palm, holding it there between their hands. "Might help."

Re: Running

[rhiannon_lee]

‘What about blind panic, have you got anything for that?’

Rhiannon squeezed his hand tight as the stone was transferred into her palm, and placed the dreaded azurite among the other of his treasures. “Thank you,” she said. It took some willpower to get calmly past the wave of anxiety that had threatened to swallow her, but she refused to cow to it, not when staying right there was the boldest thing she could remember doing in a long time.

She turned from the ledge and walked toward the opening of the cavern, not leaving but looking out at the flat valley.