Armageddon: Day Ten

[clockarmageddon.livejournal.com]

The Clock is just a hair before 8 when the eight chimes sound.

It's a bad one. Anything not secured is getting moved or coming down. Fortunately, after all the damage recently, most everything in the bar itself has been tied down or charmed. In the rooms upstairs, even heavier furniture like bed and bureaus are liable to be shifted by the shaking. Visible cracks appear in some of the inner walls as the support studs shift in opposition to each other. Even the support columns shift a couple of degrees under the force.

Outside, the other buildings also tremble. The greenhouse luckily escapes most of the force; however, the stables aren't so lucky. Tack and feeding buckets are thrown from the walls. The holder for the hay cracks and spills some of the contents across the floor. Several of the doors are shaken loose, releasing some of the horses out into the open, while others are merely spooked by the sudden tremors but have nowhere to go.

[ooc: See Lorna's backroom post regarding the stable repair, etc]

Comments

[deserved_it]

Bad time to be working in the stables.

As the last tremors die away, Eustace picks himself up off the floor, looking dazed, and looks around.

"--Bloody hell."

[street-sparrow.livejournal.com]

Gavroche was helping Ronan, inside the bar, but he comes outside after that just to check on things, and pales.

Then he's running for the stables.

[the_seafarer]

There's a chill in the air and the evenings are coming sooner now, and Caspian, riding alone on Kiseki, had been lost in his thoughts of summers past and ending and of the richness of fall. The steady clop-clop of Kiseki's hooves is muffled by damp soil, and it's as they swing along together, easy and familiar and in no rush to be anywhere that they feel the first tremors.

Kiseki halts, takes a step backwards, and his ears flick uncertainly. In the saddle, Caspian reaches a hand forward to lay on the brown neck, and frowns.

"Slow, now," he says, softly, but then the tremors worsen and the ground around them quakes and Kiseki bolts as the trees lining the path shake violently. It takes all of Caspian's horsemanship to stay in the saddle, and more to calm the gelding down again, but once the ground has stopped moving, Kiseki is still nervous and so is he. Urging the gelding on with voice and hands, they stretch out along the (thankfully) still ground and make for the stables and home.

What he sees when they return makes his stomach twist violently, and even the few seconds it takes to dismount and tie Kiseki to the post of the paddock seems like an eternity.