GOT YOUR CLAWS IN ME | JOINING

[aureate]

[align=center][div style="width: 500px; text-align: justify; font-family: arial; font-size: 9.5pt; line-height: 1.4;letter-spacing:.1px"]BUT YOU CAN LEARN; YOU CAN FIGHT WITH A WILL TO SURVIVE OR YOU CAN FOLLOW ON THE PATH OF YOUR LIFEBLOOD, YOUR PEERS, AND YOUR LEADERS LIKE AN ANIMAL KEEPER — INFORMATION ————————
/ uh messy post but basically he's standing in front of the san creado sign edit because sup screwed up

There's a moment, just as Grim wakes up, where everything in the world was okay. The world is hazy and quiet, a dull dawn-grey sky and low-hanging fog. Peaceful, almost, if it weren't for the twigs pressing hard into his back and the dull, throbbing pains that radiate throughout his body. For a moment, he simply stays there, listening to the world waking up around him. It evokes nothing in him — no sense of peace or hope. So he gets up with a groan, a whimper, a wince, and walks. That's how it goes for weeks. Waking up from fever dreams and shivering in the morning, gritting his teeth at cold water on hot wounds. Life becomes a cycle — no, a spiral: on and on but always down, always worse, tensing and tightening hitting a new low each day.

What were you supposed to do when everything you cared about was gone? What's left of you when there's nothing left to look forward to, or care about, or love?

He doesn't have an answer for those questions, and some quiet part of his mind has become resigned to the fact that he never will. Instead of answers, he has an ache. Something that poisoned him in pieces, spread like tar through his veins with every heartbeat. (It could very well be infection — some of his injuries are hot to the touch and red, lines spreading away from them. He knows the symptoms.) It's not infection, it feels alive. He can feel something different, something new, and it wasn't just the changes to the life around him. His family was gone. Parents, family friends — Grim's entire life had been burned to the ground around him, and while he didn't have much, now he had nothing, and the world stopped making sense.

So he just walks. And walks. The long-sleeved gray shirt is a little too big on him, the sleeves having to be rolled righter before they would stay at his elbows and the collar low down his throat. It's scratchy, uncomfortable, but it hides most of his injuries — not the long, red scratches on his arms (he can still feel it, the impact of dull claws trying to tear him apart, get to his insides), or the now greenish bruises everywhere else. There are still tears in his jeans and leaves in his hair, but Grim finds himself at the edge of a town — thank God. He toys with the rosary he holds between his fingers as he stares at the sign with a hollow, clouded vacuity, dull green eyes barely focused enough to read the words. San Creado. Does anyone else live here? Probably. Even though something heavy seems to hang in the atmosphere. In a way, Grim can't help but be drawn to it.

After a second, he stuffs the rosary back into his pocket and tucks the metal tags back underneath his shirt and looks around with a wild sort of expression. One hand still lingers on his stomach, against the bandaged puncture marks there. Whoever these people were, he can simply hope that they don't make him keep walking.