Once upon a time, in a land not so far away...
You wake to the feeling of being watched. Of a set of unfamiliar eyes, of warm breath on the back of your neck. A jolt back to the land of the living, and it's gone. No matter how quick you are, how sneaky, the source of the disruption has long since disappeared, so you have no choice but to try and ignore it. To continue on with your day and try to set that moment of strangeness aside.
You eat, drink, speak with others. Perhaps you explore a little. Whatever it is you choose to do for the day, that feeling from the morning won't return. And by the time the sun sets and the moon glows brightly above, you've likely set those moments of strangeness aside. It's not like it's anything new, after all.
It's the same again for the next few days. No better, no worse. Something best ignored, right?
A speck of blood on the doorframe. That wasn't there before, was it?
A snap of twigs in the distance. A crunch of leaves.
Claw marks gouged deeply into the door.
Into the wall above your bed.
Scraps of red fabric, turned darker with blood. Pieces of fur. Of flesh.
Do you run and hide? Do you fight? Whatever you choose, it's definitely time to make sure your body parts aren't scattered next...
...what a horribly big mouth you have.
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Since first waking up on the island, characters have been stuck with that feeling of being watched. It isn't a constant. Isn't more than a few seconds at a time, dotted throughout the day. Investigation has never turned up much, and there's never been any sightings of the cause of it all.
Until now.
Throughout the first half of the week, characters will find themselves suffering from that feeling of being watched on a far more constant basis. Rather than it being a one-off, few seconds occurrence each day, that feeling will last for minutes at a time, and on multiple occasions.
However, it isn't until the fifth day that they'll start stumbling across physical signs of their monitoring. There are claw marks on doors. Spots of blood on the paths outside. A crack of twigs in the forests, or the imprint of bloodied paws in the snow.
Ten days in and those signs start finding their way indoors. Wet footprints, tinged with red. Claw marks in the walls, the floor. Torn sheets and the smell of wet...something. Whatever it is that's been watching you, its finally decided to come and say hello.
Two weeks in and characters will begin to have sightings of the creature, its fur dark and its eyes a glowing yellow. At times it looks like a wolf, prowling in the distance. At other times, it's walking on its hind legs, almost human were it not for the muzzle full of gleaming sharp teeth. Get too close, and it slips away like a shadow, gone between one blink and the next. It decides when to reach out to characters, not the other way round.
It's after characters finally get a good look at the creature that it starts leaving...gifts. Characters will start to find familiar items from their home worlds amidst the mess. The remains of a childhood pet, perhaps. Photographs of loved ones, faces torn almost beyond recognition. It's only once it delivers its final gift that the creature retreats to the trees again: a blood-splattered item of clothing that clearly belongs to the person the character misses the most at the time, alive or dead.
no subject
Words are pretty useless right now. Groot tips his little head all the way back and stares. His jaw drops and his eyes go wide, and he stares some more. He isn't sure what he's seeing right now, this isn't like one of his people. ]
I am Groot? [Who are you?]
[His head tips to the side as he observes the much taller creature, but the spell is broken when some kind of insect flying by catches his attention. His sightline drifts over toward it and he ends up running and hopping off toward it to try and catch and kill it. He stops short of his goal when he runs past the looming shadow the other tree causes, and slowly comes to a stop. His head turns, neck craning so he can get the whole view.
He can't remember whether or not he's waved yet, so he figures it's good manners to wave again.]
Groot. [he's just saying his name now. Being polite and introducing himself. Gamora would be so proud.]
no subject
Alec can't help himself. He puts one big hand against his chest.]
Alec.
[His first impulse is to sit, to try and get down to the creature's level before he realizes he could grow another body. Would that frighten the creature away? Assume it would..
He moves, surprisingly delicately, to sit. Up close he's a mass of moss and lichen and leaves, clearly a tree being with a few flowers poking out of his shoulder. He doesn't even notice. Instead he he just extends his fingers as they bury themselves in the soil.
Photosynthesis is a hell of a thing.]
...Hungry?
Do you eat like...like I do?
[Man he'd like to learn the kid's language. He's limited to "I am Groot" but there has to be a root structure to it. Perhaps at some point.]