South

The southern part of the city has a chic family-oriented sort of charm to it. Here, small locally owned shops run rampant, neighbors often know each other by name, and the monthly socials are an event not to be missed. In the South, children can often be seen safely playing in the park or on sidewalks and in the weekends, families often take to the beach to enjoy the warm waters surrounding the city.

What You'll Find Here

Ascension Center of Equitation
Hyde Park
Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium
The Outskirts
The University of Sacrosanct

mouth is made of metal, pocket full of yellow; [open]


Posted on April 30, 2017 by kearn.
South Reopen Thread
it's a shallow little world


He hated the part of himself that led him back here, again and again, like a curb-dropped mongrel that kept sniffing its way home, too stupid to figure out it wasn't wanted. It was the only part of himself he couldn't choke out completely, reform into something useful.

And now he stood, hands in his pockets, snarling in his thoughts.

It looked innocuous enough: a street of shabby row houses, each hardly distinguishable from the next. But his parents had lived here, for a time, after they'd given him up. It had taken him years to track them down - not out of inability, but instead some mental wall he'd had no wish to dismantle. Whether it was fear, disinterest, or hurt that kept him from it he'd not been interested in deciphering.

Kearn hadn't started the day intending to finish here. He'd taken a job in the southern end of the city, fully planning on heading straight back for The Bricks. Instead, he took a bus south. Down and down as the shops grew sparse and the streets shifted to quiet poverty, and by the time he realized where he was headed he was too stubborn to turn back. Now, after he'd watched families return home and passersby butt out their cigarettes on the pavement of the corners, as his blood cooled ever further in his veins, he was ready to leave. Leave, not flee.

As he walked, chin tilted sharply down, Kearn froze each feeble thought before it could enter. He could not let a one of them gain a foothold; he couldn't bring this back to the harbor.

It was bad enough that he had to suffer the ignominy of taking the bus back northwest. But as he swept around the corner toward the stop, the hem of his second-best jacket flapping around his knees (the hunter they'd found had burned the sleeves of his best) he saw the 54 bus he needed taking off with a cough of black smoke. The next wouldn't be here for twenty minutes, and he cursed below his breath. It was cool for a late spring day; a wind gusted up and pushed past him roughly as he slid into the bus stop, slouching against the clear plastic. As he waited he sucked on his lower lip, teeth pressing down, letting loathing lap at him like the familiar companion it was.

When another approached - someone who should have made alarm bells sound, were he paying attention - he spared them little more than a cursory glance before shifting his gaze back out at the grey day, staring at nothing.




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