run between the shadows // pafp

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    [fancypost=width:600px][align=justify][color=white]Yesterday the square had been beautiful; the beech trees at its edges ablaze with their autumn colours, the fountain in its centre sparkling in the sunlight, the cobblestones alive with footsteps and the cool air alive with voices and music. Today it was just as lovely, but all he could see was the shadows. They lurked under those bright beeches and they followed the people who came and went, dancing at their feet and pooling together like oil slicks.


    Cut that out, Will told himself, rubbing his eyes. The shadows were just shadows. He knew by now how it went; they wouldn't be here 'til tomorrow, and until then, there was no point in psyching himself out.


    Instead, he returned his attention to the small xylophone sitting on its stand in front of him. He was seated just in front of the fountain, leaning against its smooth-worn concrete, the place he had made his own for the last week or so. Taking a deep breath, he raised the mallets and began to play. Immediately the weight on his heart that had been sitting there since that morning, when he'd awoken gasping from a terrible nightmare, began to lift. A smile spread across his vulpine face- what had he ever had to worry about? The music ebbed and flowed with the footsteps of the people passing through the square, danced and glittered with the water flowing from the fountain, and rose and fell with the chilly breeze that swept over the cobblestones. It tapped into the streams of reality of this place, restoring the power that the nightmare had drained from him.


    Coins clattered into the case he'd left open in front of his instrument; Will didn't hear them. He was completely absorbed in his playing, effortless as it may have looked to passersby. After about five minutes, he leaned back, resting one arm against the cool surface of the fountain to catch his breath. The shadows had retreated; the sun seemed brighter, the air cleaner and fresher than before. It occurred to him that he'd be sad to leave this place; the energy flowed close to the surface here. That, and the hotel room he was staying in had a stand-up shower.


    He swept his hair back out of his face and started again.


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    (( So what's going on? Well, I don't want to give too much away- for the most part, you're going to be learning what's going on at the same rate as your character. What I can tell you is that your character is an ordinary human is about to get caught up in Will's very extraordinary problems. The setting is, for all intents and purposes, the real world; the plot is something like urban fantasy-horror; and that's all I'll reveal to you! There will be romance, but it will be a sub-plot and not the whole point of the thread. Your character can be male or female.


    What else? Our characters are currently in a small town in eastern France but will be going... well, all over the place! I don't use face claims, but here's my mental image of Will; he's 24 years old, about 5'8", average weight, shoulder-length blond hair, big brown eyes, fine features, likes to wear turtleneck sweaters, scarves and leather jackets.


    Please be a literate and at least semi-advanced roleplayer- as long as you can write posts around the same length as mine and your character is interesting, I'm good! I'm hoping for a long-term, in-depth, novel-style roleplay here, so please don't abandon it! At least three posts per week is the standard I follow and the standard I expect from my partners. That's all the guidelines I've got! Can't wait to get started. ))



    ETHEREAL .

    Sometimes Finn feels a sort of heavy homesickness in the pit of his stomach.


    The thing is, there isn't any home that he misses. It's... strange. It's just a feeling that's there, even when it doesn't have a right to be. It's confusing, he thinks. What does he miss? Well, he wouldn't ever know. He's never stayed enough to ever be able to miss anything.


    The square was a nice place to be, Finn thinks. Lively yet peaceful, it provided him a nice place to rest and settle his thoughts, providing him a place to write songs to sing to a loud auditorium of silence. It was pretty. Finn likes pretty things. But then again, he finds a sort of beauty in everything. A beauty in the shy smiles of people, in the rise and fall of leaves in trees like gentle waves, in the dark grays of clouds above. He finds a beauty in the soft plink of music drifting nearby, and he sighs in content, leaning back in the softness of the bench.


    It's nice, he thinks. The mallets against the keys are delicate, smooth, and with a practiced sort of technique. It reminds of his time playing the piano, when he focused on the sharpness and clarity of his playing and technique. He wasn't a good piano player, though. Nowhere even near it. Finn liked playing the piano, but he wasn't good at it. He never would be. Some things and some people just wouldn't ever mix, he realized. He was just one of the people in the category where most things wouldn't mix with him.


    But the beautiful notes of the xylophone ring through Finn's head in sharp echoes, and they continue doing so. It never leaves. So he opens his eyes back to the fall colors and shades dancing in the light of the square, remembering with a frown of where he is. It's pretty. But Finn feels a sort of wariness to it, even after all his years of becoming familiar to the scenery. He'd never get used to it. There was a sort of unease that always lingered with him as he walked the cobblestone roads, wandered the lively streets. The thing was, Finn didn't belong here. He never would. He was just an outsider who had come to blend in with the colors of the people who belonged, pushing through just barely through the different cultures, the beliefs, the languages.


    After moving over, Finn had studied a lot in the cultures and people of France. He practiced the language a lot to himself, in the quiet silence of the night in ratty hotels and scratchy bed sheets, where he would come to speak it with ease even despite the struggles and frustrations he had faced at the start of it all. Occasionally though, he'd become shy and hesitant upon stepping outside his boundaries and speaking to the locals, despite his constant practice and work. There was always a sort of subtle fear lurking beneath humans, frightened at the idea of mistakes and judgment. He wasn't an exception to that.


    The man abruptly stands up from his seat on the bench, running a calloused hand through the locks of his dark brown hair. Dyed before he came to France(it had been blond once), because Finn found a sort of boredom in normality. He looks towards the source of the music warily, sees a man who seems to be in his twenties, propped up against the stone of the fountain behind him. He sees the case of the instrument he plays nearby, opened widely to the warm air of the bustling square, and thinks it wouldn't hurt the other to earn some extra money, in exchange for granting Finn the pleasure of listening to his beautiful music. So he walks hesitantly up towards him, hands shaking in his pockets, suddenly nervous at the idea of standing in the center of the roads. No one spares him a second glance.


    Finn tosses a couple of coins down into the case, running his tongue along his bottom lip when the other doesn't seem to hear the clatter of it against the xylophone case. It wasn't much, and probably something Finn needed desperately, but he couldn't care less. There wasn't much left for him to do on his own, anyways. He watches as the man takes a break from his playing, his presence still gone unnoticed, and Finn debates on whether or not he should grab his attention. The war wages on for a few moments, part of him wanting to compliment the man, the other part of him not wanting to disturb him. Finn hurriedly makes a decision with some trouble before the other has the chance to continue his performance, feeling guilt for a moment in interrupting him.


    "Your playing is beautiful," he rushes out breathlessly, his voice a slur from his nerves. His accent is thicker and far more noticeable than what it normally would be, causing him to wince for a moment. Finn smiles at him softly. It looks more like grimace.


    ((aksdhadhs sorry for this terrible reply, dear ;u;))

    [center](c)trexgirl

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    [color=white]Will made a small noise of surprise when the stranger addressed him from above, and glanced up, leaning back against the fountain and allowing himself to relax. He wasn't irritated that he'd been interrupted- talking to people, despite being something he did far less often than playing music, was almost as refreshing.



    "Thanks," he said with a modest smile, feeling a distinct aura of awkward uncertainty radiating from the stranger. He was difficult to place; Will thought we was around his own age, but could have been older, and neither his features nor his accent gave any clue as to his origin. Normally Will was great with accents, but he'd spoken so quickly and nervously that he hadn't caught much of the nuance.


    "Where are you from?" he asked casually. "It's nice to hear someone else speaking English." His own accent was subtle; with a life of moving from place to place, the strong North Irish accent he'd had as a child had been smoothed out by numerous acquired dialects.


    "Oh, I'm Will, by the way," he added.
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    Nothing to be sorry for, your reply is great and the fancypost looks fine!

    The post was edited 2 times, last by shinylee ().



    ETHEREAL .

    An unfamiliar voice breaks Finn out of the mess that is his thoughts, looking up at the blond in front of him with a startled look to his caramel brown eyes. They flash uncertainly for another moment, but he looks relieved that the stranger doesn't seem to be annoyed by his sudden appearance. He smiles gratefully, shifting on his feet and glancing at the tattered black material of his shoes. Worn black vans that are probably almost two years old- something that was strangely out of place in this beautiful area. Finn likes to think he'd stand out and be out of place no matter where he went, though.


    The male seemed to be around Finn's age(not that the other could tell, because Finn looked a lot younger than he actually was... when he was younger, he used to look older), and looked to be only an inch or two short of his height too. Locks of blond hair dipped down to his shoulder, framing a fair and pleasant face. There was nothing about him that particularly caught Finn's attention, or at least not yet. Mainly because Finn didn't judge much from first appearances, and he liked digging keeping to find about personalities first before judging at all. Noticing the beauty of appearance came after acknowledging the beauty of personality first.


    The familiar language sends a wave of soothing nerves throughout Finn, and his eyes dart up to meet the other's own brown eyes in surprise. He smiles softly, and a sense of bitter familiarity dances over his face for a split second. It's refreshing, in the least, to hear someone speak English after so long of living around people who had be raised to know it as a foreign tongue. Even if it was laced with an unfamiliar accent, Finn feels a sense of happiness dance throughout his veins, laughing breathlessly, even despite the fact nothing particularly funny had been said.


    "Uh, my parents are from South Korean, but I was born in America," Finn responds to the question after a pause, and despite the stutter in his voice from awkward politeness, he seems to switch back to the language with a sense of ease and fluidity.


    Often times, people liked to assume things about Finn when they found out his origin. Considering how he dressed in all black and had a fashion sense that was rebellious American teenager-esque, they jumped to extreme conclusions more often than not. Sometimes they recoiled away, asking if he was like all of those teen actors they saw in American movies, who drank, did drugs, smoked, and had sex with faceless people they had met moments ago during a rowdy high school party with scandalous activities and underage drinking. In the end he would just smile and deny the almost accusing questions, ducking his head away from the burning, inquiring stares.


    What they would never know was how fifteen year old Finn was actually a lost and lonely boy who studied too much for tests he'd never be able to pass, preferring to stay inside instead and look up at the cracks in his bedroom ceiling as he lived, isolated from the rest of the world.


    "My parents moved around a lot, because they liked experiencing all the different cultures and stuff. I guess that's why I moved here... I probably took on their adventurous traits, you know? I've been living here for a couple of years now." Finn smiles awkwardly, and doesn't mention how he was actually quite the opposite of his parents, and his words were nothing but lies to keep the conversation going. He dropped out of school during his senior year, and moved to France to run away from all his failures and disappointments. "What about you?"


    "Will," the brunet repeats after the other's introduction, nodding slowly in response, brows furrowing(it was a habit built over the years). "Will. I'm Finn," he adds in after a moment, pursing his lips and nodding to Will with another sad attempt of smiling. "Finn Lee. A lot of people think my name is Finnley, but... Lee's actually my last name."


    ((aaaahhh i'm sorry for replying so late????? i thought i replied but apparently i didn't and i apologize greatly for the wait!))

    [center](c)trexgirl