Once more, with feeling

1

Everything changed when Nea Karlsson came to town.

Or rather- came to the campfire. It was the same difference as far as Meg was concerned.

The careful team dynamics that their little group of tortured souls had cultivated over what could only be described as a millenia were suddenly flipped around, overturned and disturbed.

When it happened, the stretch of time that signified the breaks between trials was slightly longer than usual, enough that the more paranoid members of their little quartet would notice. Dwight stiffened ever so slightly, craning his head left and right in an odd mix of confusion and the ever-elusive hope. After a few seconds, Jake had noticed too, though was more concerned about the way Dwight seemed to be expecting something awful rather than counting the seconds between one hell and the next.

"Dwight." The saboteur spoke up, filling the otherwise mildly comfortable silence with his low voice. "Is something... the matter?" Dwight's head snapped back to Jake, through his fingers seemed to have a mind of their own, twitching uncertainty and rapping on the surrounding logs. The leader shook his head tensely in response.

"No... no." He mumbled, still feeling pinned under Jake's inquisitive gaze despite the period they had spent together. Dwight shifted his hands together, wringing them in his lap to try and ease out some of the lingering tension. "It's just... Well- not to jinx us- but shouldn't a trial have started by now?" The tremor in his voice could not be hidden, and rightly so. The Entity being up to funny business was no good, particularly when the last time it had happened the invisible Wraith and the terrifying malformed Hillbilly found their way into the trials. He looked away, almost expecting the cold ache of a trial to start.

Meg yawned and stretched, startling the poor leader from his stiff position. "Well," She got out, making sure to take up as much space between the boundary and the campfire as humanly possible, "Maybe it's not entirely a bad thing, for once." She wrapped an arm around Claudette, who up until then was wholeheartedly focused on meticulously sorting out what little supplies they had. "I mean look at me, I'm not complaining." She rested her chin on the smaller woman's head, sighing contentedly.

Claudette resolutely ignored her, taking the opportunity to sort as much stuff as possible. In a plane of existence where object permanence was as fiddly as a dice roll, it paid to have all the tools you owned in check. She hummed noncommittally, and tossed Jake a spare bolt that had found its way into a medkit.

Jake caught it with ease, and began turning it over in his palm thoughtfully. "I can only hope it isn't another killer..." He dropped it into a dusty toolbox with a slight clang. "But then again- we seem to be in quite a fuss over a late trial." It was funny how the simplest things would throw them off their game, Jake mused. But perhaps this is why the Entity did it.

Claudette spoke up, now piling the medkits into a neat and accessible stack near one of the bigger logs. "It would be about time for another one, don't you think?" Her words were quite soft, but held an underlying fear to them, and shook slghtly. "After all, we had these periods between The Trapper and The Wraith, as well as between The Wraith and The Hillbilly." She paused partially for dramatic effect, and in part also to the thought of yet another killer to document, record and learn about. "Wouldn't we be overdue for another one of Them?"

Jake and Dwight nodded, but before Dwight could reply, an icy feeling spread through his core, making him tense and ready to spring. It seemed like their luck would only take them so far, and the Entity would always be hungry for another bite so long as they were still breathing. He heard Claudette sigh as well, resigned to another trial. Jake made no noise, but Dwight could feel the disappointed air radiating off of him. Maybe they had been stupid for hoping that something would change, but they had hoped for it anyway.

Meg, however, cracked open one eye, confused at the hissy sounds her teammates were making. She let out her own disappointed noise as her personal pillow (Claudette) shifted her off, standing up and at the ready. "Wha- why are you guys standing up?" Meg half-whined, making grabby hands toward Claudette's ankles. "I was just... guys?" Her eyes opened fully as she saw them looking down at her confusedly. Claudette was holding one of the better medkits, and Jake was holding himself stiffly with a toolbox. Dwight's brows were furrowed, and he tightly clutched a repair toolbox. Claudette bent down, and pressed the back of her hand to Meg's cheek as if taking her temperature.

"You don't feel it?" Claudette questioned, voice soft and low. "A trial. It's about to start. We probably only have a few seconds left- are you sure you don't feel anything?" Meg could only shake her head, stunned. Claudette's dark eyes were full of worry, and she hastily kept checking over Meg to make sure she wasn't about to die some kind of horrifying Entity-related death. Had the Entity... forgotten her? The assumption wasn't entirely logical, but at that moment in time, suddenly something that had always been the same, despite the new killers and the unfamiliar maps, was changed. Meg had never thought she'd be so anxious about not going into trial, but at this moment she wished for nothing else in the whole world.

She stood and wrapped Claudette in a swift, uncomfortable hug. Meg exhaled and squeezed her eyes shut, just this once hoping to whatever sadistic god was out there that she would go into trial. She couldn't bare the thought of losing another family, another set of people to the cruel circumstances she always seemed to find herself in. It just wasn't fair, plain and simple.

Unfortunately, it seemed time and time again that the Entity would disappoint. When Meg opened her eyes once more, she found herself staring wistfully at her empty palms, and let her arms drop to her sides limply. There was no harrowing boom, and no sense of her inevitable doom swept through her. Her skin did not prickle with her sixth sense, and her heart did not race in time with that of a murderer.

Truthfully, there seemed to be nothing but silence.