Xacha

The Sunday Group - The Flicker Cases

"I'll take care of it, Kathy."

Around the corner comes Junia, with bits of her scraping the wall as she makes the turn. She gives the receptionist a smile that is probably intended to be reassuring and takes Anna by the arm. Anna finds herself pulled along in Junia's wake until a sudden turn brings them to a small breakroom.

"Here, take a second to pull yourself together. You can tell Ellie that I needed to consult with you about the latest alchemical journal."

She drops a magazine on the frisbee-sized breakroom table. Alkahest Monthly. The sober cover is ruined by a blurb that reads, "Which of the four types of philosopher stone are you? Take our quiz and find out!"

Junia sniffs. "It says I'm the vegetative stone. Really, I get out more than that. But sit, sit, take a breather. You ... uh ... you might want to leave that burrito in the fridge, though. Ellie and Emma have been working in the morgue all morning. That's not a place for food. Or a full stomach, really."

An Unseasonable Chill

Hattie Durlin

Henrietta "Hattie" Durlin

| Staying busy | Fading away| Dogs| People|

Well, I don't know, but I've been told,
You never slow down, you never grow old...

Physical Description: Hattie seems like a lot of woman in a small package. No more than 5'5", lean and lively, with skin that has refused to wrinkle but learned to crease. Her expression makes it clear that she has had enough nonsense for one lifetime. Her hair was fly-away black, now with some fly-away grey. It flutters everywhere as she moves around purposefully, never still for long.

Age: 62

Relationship with Hildon: Hattie was born and raised in Hildon, daughter of a long-haul truck driver and a long-suffering mother. She went to college to become a nurse but ended up with an MRS degree, married to a doctor. She moved down south, down to the big city, and worked as a nurse and a wife. She turned out to be better at the first than the second.

No one in Hildon is sure what happened, but one day Hattie came back. She was using her birth name instead of her married name and she had a strip of pale skin around her ring finger. She also must have had a wicked divorce settlement, because she bought the house she grew up in, renovated it and installed a kennel. She owns the surrounding bit of woods and keeps to herself.

Now she's something of a recluse. She's technically retired, but constitutionally incapable of relaxing. She volunteers at the Haggarty Clinic during the peak season. She breeds hunting dogs, harvests maple trees on her property, and sews clothing out of deerskin to sell on Etsy. She buys tanned deerskins from the reservation and has a cordial relationship with several members.

Occupation: Hattie is a nurse. She's a bit out of practice but she can still handle first aid and she keeps all her certifications up-to-date. Most of her money seems to come from her ex-husband; either from a divorce settlement or blackmail, the rumors disagree. She makes a bit through her hobbies, but most of that gets funneled into new hobbies.

Useful Supplies:

Dogs. She has just sold off her latest litter of pups, so she only has four full-grown Brittanys. Good all-around bird dogs.

Snowshoes, poles and other snowgear for harvesting maple sap.

Basic medical supplies

Backstory: Hattie lived in Hildon until she was 19, moved away, and moved back when she was 50. She was a nurse in a big city hospital for 20 years and saw some serious crap in her time. She soldiered through a marriage with an unfaithful husband for an equal amount of time before finally decided to quit both. Her father died in a truck roll-over. Hattie moved her mother into a retirement home near the city until she died as well.

The Sunday Group - The Flicker Cases

Also do people feel like a discord would be helpful for this RP? Im not super familiar with creating channels and such but I could give it a go if there is interest.

@Penny

I'm not sure. I don't think it's absolutely necessary, but it could be very helpful when we're doing the brainstorming to put all the clues together. I have a feeling that stage could be rapid-fire plotting.

The Sunday Group - The Flicker Cases

She dreamed of lights. Shimmering, glowing lights that never faded and never dimmed. They shown up from beneath the water, like a lighthouse in reverse, guiding her ever deeper. There were hints, down there, of a city. A city with spires that seemed to ripple as the water flowed through them. A city with streets that turned ever inwards.

A city with some serious electric bills ...

Junia stared at the ceiling. She needed less sleep these days, but what she got was infected by those images. They didn't bother her at all, and that fact bothered her. She should be worried. But there was nothing sinister about the dreams. They just were. The city felt like it had waited for eons, it could wait a few more.

Her bladder, however, was far less patient. She shoved the comforter aside, which earned her a displeased look from a cat, and forged her way to the bathroom. Her little duplex wasn't much, but some thoughtful soul had made sure it had a spacious bathroom with a full soaker tub. That - and its convenient location not far from the Sunday Group headquarters - more than made the rent worth it.

Morning ablutions taken care of, she wandered towards the kitchen, traveling only as fast as the cats around her ankles would allow.

"You two would get fed a lot faster if you stopped trying to trip mommy, you know."

Ellsie, as always, was imperious. She stayed just out of reach, her profile stately, as she loudly proclaimed her hunger. Dewey - dear sweet, stupid Dewey - tried to brush against her legs, tripped over his own paws, and tumbled onto his fuzzy behind. She'd found both as strays, and she was becoming increasingly convinced that Dewey was part ferret.

She fed them both from the same tuna can, then punched the button on the coffee maker. Breakfast would be miso soup again. Well, after she cleared the papers off the kitchen table. It was just a little too convenient sometimes. But the dashi was already bubbling before she even halfway finished sorting, and so it was breakfast in the living room again.

After that, it was time to face the mirror. The lines on her neck had gotten no darker, thank God. She'd spent a week with blurry vision when the nictitating membrane showed up, but that would still be better than explaining gill slits to the hairdresser.

Still, better to wear a light scarf. A dress, a cardigan, and the uniform was complete. She was almost close enough to work that she could walk, but her old Subaru still had boxes and boxes of paperwork that really did need to be accessioned. No reason for anymore delays. Time for work.

---

The building draped itself on the slope. It was made of the same yellow-ish brick as every other small office complex on this half of the city. Beside it was an old grocery store converted into a warehouse, and on the other side was an old warehouse converted into a food co-op. The circle of life.

Naturally, the parking lot was on the steepest part of the slope. There was a railing at the bottom in case of a failed parking brake. Thankfully the Subaru never budged. Once again she decided against unloading the boxes.

The sign out front listed a half-dozen organizations with well-meaning, nonsensical names. All of them were just slightly true. The "Council for Stress-Related Disorders" could certainly refer to the Sunday Group, given how many members developed PTSD. The "District Library Assistance Board" was her baby; grants went from the state to the local libraries through D-LAB. No one needed to know that the whole organization ran on a laptop in her office.

The trick to the office building was to think of it as a mushroom: the visible part was just for show. The real action was underground. Each floor looked like it was terraced onto the slope, but they actually ran back into the slope for more than twice their apparent length. Then they turned down, deep underneath the city. God only knew how deep, really, and She wasn't telling.

It was bigger than it ought to be, and older than it could possibly be, and stranger than anyone could imagine. It was the Sunday Group. And, eh, it was a job.