ohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh!!!!!!!!!!!

what a plot twist!!! my heart was thumping painfully fast there at the end!!! only four more CBers left!

dun dun duuuuuh 

RIP Tenney! I loved doing all of your outfit descriptions. I tried to make your portrait as black and white as possible, apologies that there's still some color. 

@Amarillis, don't worry, this lodge isn't slated to finish until the 22nd! You won't miss the end :) 

OH WOW! What an exciting part! RIP, Tenny! I am being very suspicious right now, but so is Sterling...

This is so good! 

“You?” Sterling asked, voice pained. 

“No, wait,” Wildsong shouted, jumping back from Tenney’s body like it was on fire. “It’s not what it looks like, I promise! I can explain.”

Sterling shook their head and took a few stumbling steps backwards, and from the fear etched onto faer face Wildsong realized that they were afraid that Wildsong was going to kill them. Because fae thought that Wildsong was the murderer. 

“I’m not the murderer,” Wildsong said, knowing perfectly well that that’s exactly what the murderer would say in this position. 

“I don’t believe you,” Sterling said softly, turning to run away. And Wildsong stood there, a mere few feet from the dead body of someone who used to be her friend, because chasing after Sterling would probably be the worst move in this situation. This was all wrong.

From the look of things, Tenney had been poisoned and only made it as far as the beach before collapsing and dying. Why she was headed for the beach in the first place, Wildsong had no idea. 

Wildsong took a few deep breaths. She could fix this. It wasn’t her, and people would have to believe her, even if that means she tells them what she was doing all day. Besides, it’s not like she wanted to work with the murderer, she was being threatened! 

Yes, this situation was still salvageable. She took one step forward, determined to clear up the situation, but as soon as she moved the entire world seemed to tilt by a few degrees. She blinked once, hard, trying to clear the sudden fuzziness engulfing her mind, but it was no use. It was suddenly very hard to stand up. 

Through the spinning and dizziness, Wildsong felt her hands burning. With shaky vision, Wildsong looked down and saw that her fingers were coated with a thin sheen of something green. But only in the places where she had made skin-to-skin contact with Tenney, when she rolled her over to see what was wrong with her. 

Her last thought was recalling that one time when she was much younger when she was at the amphibian exhibit at the zoo, and the zookeeper was telling her about the poison dart frog and how just touching it once could kill you.

<><><>

It was their first double-funeral. There were four people left on the entire island, three of them guests and one host. Here were the thoughts going through their minds:

One of the guests was feeling unbelievably sad, but in a way that was not quite genuine. Almost like they wanted to be so overwhelmingly sorrowful about Tenney and Wildsong’s death that there was no room to consider the fact that, at best, they had one or two more days to live. But they couldn’t (wouldn’t) consider that at all, so instead they cried and hid their anxiety behind the tears. 

Another one of the guests was feeling less resigned and more angry; angry at themself for deciding to come here, angry at Storm for letting it all happen, and most importantly, angry at one of the two people mourning right beside them, the one who brought their numbers down from eleven to three. 

The third guest (who was, of course, the murderer) was feeling a potent mix of relief and anticipation. Because Wildsong had died by accident, that was one less kill and one less day spent here. It was almost over, and then they could go free at last. 

The host was feeling elated at the double-death and had to focus quite a bit to keep that particular emotion off of her face. Her mouth moved to form meaningless words of pity, saying goodbye to people that she had doomed to death. Maybe she was feeling guilt, somewhere deep inside. Maybe not.

<><><>

After the funeral, if anyone had bothered to happen upon the stone with the star on it and had known to look under it, they would’ve found the space completely empty. 

After the funeral, if anyone had gone up to Storm’s room, they would’ve found her tearing up her room, prying up floorboards in a rage, looking desperately for something that wasn’t there. 

~~~

Dead: 8 (Reuby Moonnight, Darkvine, Hawkstar, Writing_in_the_dark, Amarillis, Periwinkle, Tenebrous, Wildsong)

Alive: 3 (Pangolin, Echo, Sterling)

~~~

Just to let everyone know, there will only be eight days in this lodge, so that means that there’s only one more day! Before the final day starts you’ll get an extra part (Storm background, mayhaps), and so far the final part is around six parts. 

Lovely part. Very interesting and you made me almost cry! and you had to end there. so mean

RIP Wildsong! Next part out tomm :)

Once upon a time, there was a girl born in a world that despised her.

It wasn’t apparent at first, not really. She was born in that time when hours-long trips were taken in carriages instead of cars and news traveled from person to person instead of from a television screen. Her parents were regular enough; her mother had a soft voice and kind eyes and would braid the girl’s brown hair with nimble fingers. Her father would come back from days hunting in the woods with handfuls of wildflowers for her. She had a name, but not one that matters anymore.

It was a simple life in a simple village where days melted into each other under the heat of the sun. The repetitiveness was comforting in a sense, and the girl grew into somewhat of a young woman with sharp gray eyes and her mother’s smile. She had friends, superfluous ones, but she enjoyed laughing and talking about things no deeper than the weather and what their favorite foods were. 

Yes, a simple, easy life. She was perfectly normal, bar the strangely colored eyes. Except for the fact that when she entered her second decade of life, nothing about her appearance changed. It became apparent, after a little bit, that she was not aging in the way that humans are supposed to. It’s like someone had hit pause at some point, and although she was existing, she wasn’t growing older. 

It wasn’t very long at all before the people that she had thought of as friends sent whispers of witchcraft rippling through their small community. Before long, there were heated cries from the townspeople that she should be executed as a heretic. Her own parents couldn’t bear to look her in the eyes anymore, but her father, a truly sentimental man at heart and someone who held no small part in the local government, managed to coerce the public into exiling her instead. 

The girl didn’t know where this curse had come from; perhaps she had angered a god in her past life and they had done this to her in retaliation? She knew, deep down, that there was something like magic running through her veins, but she didn’t quite know how to use it yet. At least that she could ignore, unlike her more visible strangeness. 

In no time at all, the girl’s hands were tied behind her back with thick rope and she was being loaded into a sailboat that took her out, out, out into the wide ocean. All the way out to a small island with a lighthouse perched on it, the light drawing the boat to its shore like a moth to a flame. They removed the restraints and pushed her onto the shore, unloading huge vats of kerosene and some provisions. ‘Don’t let the light die’ is what they told her as they left. 

She stood there on the shore, waves lapping over her feet, tasting salt from the ocean (or maybe her tears, she couldn't be sure). It was beginning to rain. She retreated inside to the lighthouse, which was barren except for a lone rickety bed and a somewhat sturdy desk. She sat on the bed, mattress creaking under each movement, and stayed there until the storm stopped. 

Somehow, miraculously, she began to create a routine for herself. Wake up, eat, tend to the light. She found out that she could create things with magic after three weeks alone on the island, when she was missing her mom’s cinnamon rolls and one appeared in front of her out of thin air. She only used it a little at first, making small treats and little trinkets which she stored in the room on top of the light, where she stayed most of the time. Sometimes, if the weather was tame enough, she’d go on walks around the island and on the beach to find shells and sea glass for decoration. During these walks, she thought about death and whether or not she’d ever be able to feel the bite of his scythe. 

Eventually, she got strong enough to create furniture, which slowly but surely began to populate the empty floors. She made a little nook for herself at the very top of the lighthouse, filling it with things that she created in those in-between moments during the day. (One morning she woke up in a cold sweat to discover a fascinating book with a skull pressed on the cover. Perhaps she conjured it in her sleep?). It took her three days to make that chandelier from the rope that was once around her wrists, the sea glass she had found, and a piece of driftwood, and it was crooked and strange-looking but it was also hers and she was proud of it.

One day, she was sitting on a chair on one of the middle floors, head resting on her hand, peering out the window. It was raining, as it often did, and the droplets patterned the glass in a way that reminded her of the stained glass in her old church. Lightning flashed somewhere distant; the wrath of some raging god. That was the moment that she decided that she needed a name, a new one on her own terms and not the one that connected her to the outer world. 

She decided that calling herself Storm would be fitting. 

Once upon a time, there was a girl named Storm who made a home for herself out of an empty shell of a place with nothing but her own two hands and the magic within them.

~~~

This does not entirely cover Storm’s backstory or provide her motivation for beginning the lodge, but it gives some insight into her character. Hopefully this also makes Storm's age field make more sense. Hope you liked it! The final day will start the day after tomorrow.