Things That Go Bump In the Night

RP Date: 2026-10-05

Location: The Lake of Life

Participants: Hela, Morgane

Summary

Hela stakes out the lake at night hoping to feed on a new arrival's soul, but she encounters Morgane, who asks one too many questions. This culminates in Hela hitting Morgane with a shovel and accidentally revealing that neither woman is human. Realizing they now possess mutually dangerous secrets, the two form an uneasy pact. Before parting ways, Morgane warns Hela that she isn't the only danger that lurks about the lake after dark.

This archive was published after approval by all listed participants.

Roleplay

Hela was hungry. And that was a problem. She couldn't eat the contents of the long-forgotten tins in the abandoned homes, and she couldn't even partake in the village chef's local delicacy, rat stew. She had a particular diet... souls. Some of her kind could take a little; she, however, had never mastered limitation. She took it all. That meant certain death for whoever she fed from.
After yesterday's meeting, death was already on the cards for someone. So hunting one of the current residents while they were emotionally on high alert seemed foolish. So the best option was to hope someone would come out of the lake that night. With that foolish hope, the artist came down to the lake as night fell upon the village, a shovel in one hand that she left leaning against a nearby tree, and a lantern with a flickering flame in the other. Her coat wrapped tightly around her as she stood on the shoreline, glancing around the lake to ensure she was alone before settling in to watch the ripples in the purplish water under the low moonlight. "Come on," she muttered impatiently, as if will alone would make a head pop up from the surface, gasping for air. For now, there is no such luck.

Morgane had, some while ago, set up a stand to 'welcome,' if you will, the new arrivals in the Lake. The 'stand' consisted of a folding table she had found somewhere in the village and a matching chair. She spent some time at the stand daily, mostly because for her this was high cinema. She relished the moment a new arrival's head broke through the water's surface, gasping for air. She waved from the shore in earnest, a private delight coursing through her, as the person swam to shore, their expression rife with confusion. She enjoyed acting like the local charity queen, handing out towels, murmuring empathetically as the new arrival shivered in front of her and slowly came to the traumatic realization that they were not in proverbial Kansas anymore. It was all very fun, for Morgane. Today, however, she had other matters to attend to, and so she only returns lakeside toward the end of the day, to gather the towels in the event that the weather doesn't hold overnight. It is then that she sees Hela, whom she recognizes from the Town Hall, lurking by a tree. Well ... and how quickly a little curiosity flares to life inside her heart. She hides it so well, though. "Hello!" calls out Morgane in her swooning patrician voice as she treads closer in her green dress. Her gaze cuts toward the lake, but its surface is still. "Is someone drowning?" asks the fae.

Hela winces when she hears a voice from a direction she hadn't expected that night. "Shit," she mutters next. However, she snaps on a smile as warm as she can manage in her frustration and turns on her heel to face the other. "Hello." She tries to match the pep in her tone; it doesn't quite reach the same peak, but the effort is clear. "Morgane, isn't it?" She didn't know why she felt the need to question it. After all, an introduction just before pitching a village murder makes a name pretty memorable. "I am Emma." There you go, social etiquette of the day complete. "A glance to the lake and still no food surfacing "No. Seems quite lifeless tonight." Unfortunately. A thought briefly flitted through her head, though; perhaps she could just feed from Morgane. After all, it wouldn't be so suspicious if someone might attempt to kill this green-frocked woman after her pitch today, and she herself voted for it, so suspicion wouldn't easily be shone upon her. The thought remains, for now, just a thought, one she tries to push away with the logic that maybe this woman is the key to getting out of this cursed village and back to the one she calls home. She dismissively shakes her head before asking, "How do you think the meeting went?"

Morgane continues to approach and returns Hela's smile with one of her own, reading the other woman's friendliness as a sign that no one as in imminent danger in the lake. (Pity. Would have been interesting.) If no one's drowning, or spawned in the lake at all it seems, it is indeed quite curious that Hela is loitering about in this area, with a shovel of all things apparently. An exciting thought: perhaps she is looking to solo accomplish a human sacrifice. Women are always so ingenious, truly. What a fortuitous meeting, if that's what was happening. By now, Morgane has bridged the distance between them. She is careful to avoid the muddier parts of the lake shore. "Thank you for introducing yourself, Emma, I didn't catch your name yesterday," she says, appraising Hela's expression, that shake of the other woman's head. How quickly this Emma has asked about the town hall, thinks Morgane, and yet how odd her behavior in being here. "I think it went well enough considering the topic is very grim," she says with a dark smile. "We are all fairly desperate to leave here, aren't we." Her gaze dips to the shovel before settling on the other woman's eyes once more. "What are you doing?" she asks plainly.

Hela tilts her head in a thoughtful nod as she admits quite honestly "I think desperate times calls for desperate measures. The brunette then follows Morgane's gaze to the shovel, and she pauses. She can't explain the real reason. So she plucks what she hopes is the most logical, plausible lie she can concoct in the moment. "Potatoes." What? She needed to expand on that. Looking back at Morgane, as if this were entirely plausible, she explains, "I was about to start foraging for potatoes." ?at night?beside a lake?with a lantern and shovel. Really? That is what she came up with? Her expression flickers into a frown as even she knows her lie was, to be frank, fucking dreadful. She glances at the shovel, then back to Morgane, trying to find a way to rescue this situation. She is drawing a blank; there is nothing, or at least nothing better than potatoes.
To hell with it. She steps over to the tree, hand curling around the shovel handle as she admits, "I am not very good at this." The next movement is startlingly quick and even less thought out than her lie. The artist pivots, shovel now in hand, and swings the flat of it toward the side of Morgane's head with every intention of knocking her unconscious. If this went badly, she supposed there was always concussion. People misremembered things when they were concussed. Right?

Morgane holds Hela's gaze as the other woman boldly answers the pointed question levied to her with, "...Potatoes." Oh, it has to be a bold lie. A thrill courses through Morgane. Beautiful. Morgane smiles slowly, patronizingly at Hela. Like a Socratic method professor, one who knows that her pupil hasn't got it but wants to watch her thrash about, wrong answers only. Hela keeps talking, and Morgane lets her. It might be processed later, by Hela, that this situation should on the contrary absolutely terrify Morgane because Hela is acting unpredictably, suspiciously even (and consider the context ... they'd just had a town meeting about human sacrifice). Here she is, however, her smile unbreaking, that is, until Hela swings a steel shovel at her head. Record scratch: this is the part where shit goes off the rails. The shovel connects with the side of Morgane's head, snapping it sideways. "Ouch," says a non-unconscious Morgane, her face perpendicular, her smile gone as she gazes at Hela. Silver blood leaks into her hair, streaks her collarbone. With a terrible crack, she removes the bend from her neck and glares at Hela head on. Her eyes gleam with something old, something feral. Gone is the helpless blue blood. "You little bitch."

Hela instinctively steps back, dropping the lantern, which clatters on the floor as the other's head takes an angle it shouldn't. For a moment, genuine horror crosses her face. But then, she starts to take in the abnormalities. Silver blood? The woman simply putting her head back in place? Anger from the previously peppy woman? Her gaze darts toward the path leading away from the lake and to the village, measuring the distance. She could run for it. She probably should run. But perhaps she is a fool, for she does not. Instead, her eyes snap back to Morgane. "I am sorry," she says, no sincerity behind it. "I apparently have difficulty telling the difference between potatoes and heads." Her grip shifts on the shovel, knuckles white as her fingers tighten. Whatever the hell Morgane was, she was certainly no longer considered a potential dinner. Hela had survived long enough to know that eating strange things was generally a poor idea, and Morgane was now firmly in the strange category. She takes a second to consider leaving again but still doesn't. Instead, something changes in her. Her flesh slips away until there is, for the briefest flicker, leaving her rotten skeletal self visible, hollow-eyed, blackened, petrified heart behind a cage of bones. As quickly as she changed, she returned. The message is deliberate enough. You are not the only thing here pretending to be human.
She lifts her chin in a stubborn, defiant gesture, though she still keeps her distance, the shovel gripped, oil from the fallen lantern leaking out, flames dancing along the small trickle on the ground. She asks one question: "What the hell are you?"

Morgane wastes little time after insulting Hela in pressing at her hair, her dainty hand coming away stained with silvery blood. There was no doubt about what had happened. Her secret has leaked out, as it were. For Morgane the air feels charged, suddenly, and Hela's joke does little to lighten the mood. The fae's pretty mouth curls in a snarl, and she'd speak again, but at that moment the glamour around Hela falls away, revealing her to be something else than the mask she wore, something ancient herself, something rotted, ... something dangerous, maybe even to someone like Morgane. The message is received loud and clear. A moment of understanding hangs between them. Morgane straightens her posture, her smile returning. This time it looks deliberately unkind in how clearly forced it is. "What's happened to us now is called a prisoner's dilemma," she says, by way of answer. "I love these, personally." And for a moment, just a second, although perhaps it never happened at all, Hela might see a pair of luminous diaphanous wings just over Morgane's shoulder. For Morgane it's a thrill within her, being seen for the wild magic creature she is. Her eyes flash again. "We're just two nice human ladies trying to leave this awful place, aren't we?"

Hela narrows her eyes as she catches the brief shimmer of wings. "Fucking bug people." she mutters with a deliberance loud enough to be heard but quiet enough to plausibly deny. Of course she knows full well that is not what Morgane is, she just hopes it is insulting enough tk bruise the ego. However, she does not answer the topic at hand immediately; instead she starts to pace. She still grips the shovel in her hand. Morgane is right, irritatingly so. Hela knows what this is. Two people holding information that could ruin the other, each relying on the other's self-interest to keep their mouth shut. Her pacing stops; she looks squarely at Morgane, lips parted, ready to talk but then does not. Instead, she resumes pacing as if trying to figure out a few more moves ahead, anything that might give her an advantage. Alas, it seems they might both be firmly in check. Eventually, she exhales loudly. "Fine." Of course is is the female definition of fine?.where it is anything but. "We will both be perfectly normal and ordinary women."
She finally stops pacing properly, planting the end of the shovel against the ground and resting both hands across its handle in front of her. "Two things, one the stones?." A pause to ensure Morgane understood "You said yesterday that the stone circle might be capable of opening a way out of here. Is that true?" A brief pause before she adds the second into the mix "Two, you leave the lakeside at night. At night it is mine; in the day, your's. Deal?"

Morgane spares Hela a flinty eyed look, but her smile doesn't go anywhere. Hela could say what she liked, it doesn't change the circumstances. They are now outed to one another as potentially dangerous to the larger community, and who knows what the others might think, if they found out. Morgane knows that Hela is thinking the same thing. In contrast to Hela's nervous pacing, Morgane is calm. This is not her first rodeo, perhaps. Soon enough though Hela processes their current predicament, eventually coming to the view that they must trust one another for the time being, but only so far, because she immediately asks about the stones. Morgane's harsh smile softens and she lifts her eyebrows, the hint of the patrician woman she's been pretending to be coming back into her demeanor. "You just tried to feed on me, I think, and now you're acting like I'm untrustworthy. Racism against bug people," she doesn't leave Hela time to respond, but continues, "I suppose I do like a little bit of mischief, but it's true about the stones. Some have used them to travel." But was human sacrifice needed? Well, on that she didn't elaborate. She is a faerie after all. Her eyes flash. "Not me, though. They don't let me leave. This place is my solitary confinement."

Hela perhaps should have listened more carefully, for what she heard was that the stones were the way out of here, the way for her to get home. Which was not what Morgane actually said. She nodded though, accepting of this. Eyes quickly narrow at the next few words Morgane utters "Solitary confinement? You make it sound like this?" her hand motions towards the village "...is you jail cell." A quick shake of her head, she didn't want to know if it was. Stone circle, way home. Thats all she needed to be concerned with?.and food. A glance to the lake and back to Morgane. For the first time since the shovel connected with the other, some of the tension in her posture eases, not all, not even much of it but some. "I don't want to know your sob story Morgane. You do what you need to, I will do what I need to. A glance down to the fallen lantern and the think trail of flames from the spilled oil and with the toe of her boot, she kicked some dirt over it. "You never answered me about the lake, though." A glance to the other. "Nights are mine. Days are yours." Attention flickers up to the sky. "And it is nighttime now. So start walking."

Morgane can only offer Hela a low chuckle as the other woman wonders aloud whether Morgane is jailed in this place. If true that would raise other questions. By who, or what, for example. It's not for Morgane to say more at this time, nor does Hela press further. The fae has a natural poise about her circumstances, whatever they may be, and a shadow of something like amusement crosses her face as Hela refers to Morgane's potential predicament as a 'sob story' before bringing it all back to the mysterious purpose she has in lurking about the lake at night. They both know what that is, although Hela had carefully avoided Morgane's mention of it. Morgane watches the other woman smother the small fire they'd inadvertently started. They'd better be careful not to attract attention. They were in league together now, for better or worse. "Just so you know," says Morgane by way of parting words, "There is something in the lake that likewise comes out to feed sometimes at night. It moves very slowly, and if you run it attracts its attention." She bends in a curtsy. "See you in town, Emma."