Far above the rainy weather / And for the first time she feels just fine

[intellectualrapist]

It felt like summer. A cool breeze tempered the warmth and carried with it the scent of the ocean from faraway, wild flowers mixing with the salt to create something nostalgic. Blue skies stretched out beyond the horizon in every direction with fluffy white clouds occasional drifting by. It felt like summer and the sky above certainly looked it.

But it stopped there, like an abandoned jigsaw puzzle. The rest of the world was a white that seemed to simply fade into nothing. It didn't give the impression of being endless so much as unfinished. One could follow the breeze to find where a beach might have gone and find Erika sitting among the empty space. She wore a simple white dress, not a trace of ribbon or lace, made of light fabric perfect for a day in the sun.

The only other detail written in was a bit of sand covering her feet. It looked like she had patted it down over them herself.

"I had everything planned out except for the beginning," she explained without being prompted, looking out where the ocean might have been. "Your game should start somewhere that you associate with the board itself and with yourself. But everything I associate with me belongs to someone else. Having chess pieces is nice but a little useless without the board."

She gestured down at her feet and wiggled her toes under the sand to move it slightly. "But I remember doing this when I was a child. I had to find the perfect spot for it, though. If it was too wet, it felt grimy, but dry sand wouldn't pack well. It's really warm. I did that before stepping in to look for seashells. Of course, I only would keep large, whole ones. The ones that were hardest to find."

i run all my terrible decisions through farrah because she always says yes

[tweedleprick]

Adam is no stranger to strange shit happening. The government of the United Kingdom does well enough to keep him on his feet. Just last week he had to figure out a way to explain why the junior minister was literally kicking a fish. Government is a motor-run spew of weird shit, and honestly if there ever had been as good a story as the MP found dead while cross-dressing during a session of auto-asphyxiation with an orange slice in his mouth (look it up) he would have stayed in journalism. He's perfectly aware that weird shit just happens. He just wasn't expecting this kind of weird shit to happen.

Not outside of a television, anyway.

So he's standing in not-quite-London-as-he-remembers. Definitely not-as-he-remembers.

"Well, I think I can safely say that this is fucking weird."

There are just some days where he wishes he could find the energy to have a complete catastrophic meltdown the way Fergus can. It could be useful. Like right now. But no.