sit yourself down, and meet the best inn keeper in town ( O P E N )

[checkingin]

Who: Everyone!
Where: The initial arrival rooms, the main lobby, all over the place.
When: February 3rd
What: Welcome, newbies.

ARRIVAL.

you wake up when you hit the floor in a dark room, and the air is knocked out of your lungs. the carpet is threadbare, worn with use, kind of dusty. and you're not the first person to endure this crash landing. nor will you be the last.

once your vision rights itself, you can see the well-lit hallway through the doorjam straight ahead of you. not to say there’s monsters in the shadows, but something propels you towards that door and out into the bright hallway beyond.

and once outside your room, you can hear it: the steady thrum of rain outside.

MAIN LOBBY.

there's a staircase at the end of the lengthy hallway you tumble out of. grab your suitcase and follow the dull green exit signs on the ceiling until you reach the disappointingly bland stairs that lead you down to the ornate old fashion hotel lobby.

to your left is a warmly crackling fireplace, to your right is a lobby desk. straight ahead are three large sets of doors, though only one of them is open to the public. and outside the few (curtained, permanently dark) windows is the continually steady hiss of rain.

welcome to the hotel.

FRONT DESK.

though there is a bell and a plaque designating the desk to be the main desk, the customer service desk, there are currently no staff members behind it. none shall answer your calls, either.

terribly sorry for the inconvenience.

SCREENING ROOM.

on a tall pull-down screen, a silent version of nosferatu will be playing on loop. at the back of the room, between the neat rows of fold out chairs, mounted on a wobbly table is the old timey projector, and mounted on the walls are some rather old speakers that warble out "terrifying" old timey music.

along the curtained windows is another long table, with a large bowl that looked like it once would have held popcorn. but is now unfortunately empty. same for the large hot drink dispensers labeled "hot chocolate" and "coffee".

OTHER.

the ballroom and breakfast hall are currently closed, grand doors locked.

there is no main door leading to the outside, good luck trying to find one.

the door to the courtyard is locked.

ROOMS.

you've a room key with your assigned room number on it. all the new guest residences will be located on floors one & two. while there is an open elevator in the main lobby, and the buttons light up inside, the doors will not close. all in all, you'd be better off taking the stairs.

while they're the same stairs you undoubtedly came down to get to the lobby, the door to the endless hall everyone woke up in will not reappear between the main floor and the subsequent residential halls.

there are twenty rooms per floor. feel free to get to know your surroundings; or your neighbors as they trickle in around you.

Comments

[kirking]

[So sorry, Emma, for the way that Kirk stares at her after he turns to look at her. His mouth even drops open like a dying fish gaping for air because that's his mom. Younger than he remembers her, and much more... well alive looking but then his last memories of his mom have more to do with a sickbed than with a vibrant, beautiful woman who did the best she could to hold her family together after her husband died and he did everything he could to rip it apart.

Well no. Sam played a good part in that too when he left but that's not the point. The point is that it's been years since his mom died and he misses her sometimes more than he can say.]

... Mom?

[sheriffing]

What?

[Seriously, what? She crashed into a creepy old hotel a little while ago, and now she can't help but wondering if the landing was a little hard on this guy. This is someone who clearly isn't Henry calling her the one title that means more to her than any other. And from what she can tell, he's totally sincere about it. The grown-man standing in front of her who might be about her age is actually wondering whether or not she's his mother.

Which, alright. The age thing isn't impossible where she comes from, but still.]

I'm sorry - no, I'm... my name's Emma. Emma Swan.

[The smiles gone, but the sympathy's still there. He might be insane, but he's also hurting. She feels like some of that might be her fault.]

[kirking]

[She looks so startled and confused that he believes her. His mom wouldn't try to pull a joke like that, he knows that. She might'ved locked him out of the house overnight before and threatened to take him to jail herself but she's never pretended not to know him.]

Shit. Sorry.

[Kirk rubs at his eyes, like he's expecting her to look different after he does. She doesn't, she still looks so much like his mother that it weirds him out.]

Sorry, you look a lot like her.

[sheriffing]

Like your mom.

[It's depressingly easy to see how little it helps when he rubs at his eyes, disappointment seeping in with an apology she didn't need. Being told she looks like someone's mom is weird, but she's pretty sure he's not saying it to freak her out. If she saw someone in here who looked like Mary Margaret, it'd throw her off, too.

She's just hoping this is an isolated incident.]

It's okay. As crappy as things are around here, I probably shouldn't even be surprised.

[Except how can she not be surprised at that? Emma still waves it off, watching him quietly for another second.]

Are you okay?

[kirking]

Huh?

[Nooope not going to start chatting about his dead mother. Not going to happen. Not with her strange doppleganger. So he forces a smile and goes back to struggling with the window.]

Yeah. I'm fine. I just want to get the hell out of here.

[sheriffing]

We all do. [But even Emma Swan can acknowledge - ] I'm sure the resemblance doesn't help.

[That's the closest she'll come to apologizing for her face, sorry Kirk.] Working on something?

[kirking]

[The glance he gives her with an arched eyebrow is all the recognition for her not-apology that he's going to concede to her right now. That's not really anything personal, Emma, doppleganger of his mom or not, he doesn't like to talk about his feelings and usually takes a lot of prodding to do it.

Bones is particularly good at it but he's not here right now and he's just met Emma, so.

Back to work.]

Not anything concrete. But then I've never met a window I couldn't break before.

[sheriffing]

[Good thing Emma doesn't know about all these feelings he's not going to talk about. She'd start thinking Jim is the kind of kid she could actually have.]

Neither have I, but they seem to be the only kind that exist here.

[Impenetrable everything. Whoever is running this place should stop kidnapping people and just start selling this crap, okay?]

[kirking]

[Switching to Jim Kirk would only be an upgrade. Clearly.

Kirk gives it one more go, one more hard push against the latch on the window and then fuck it. He gives up on this one.]

I'm not buying it. There was a way in here. There has to be a way out.

[sheriffing]

A way out isn't going to be an exit that leads outside, it's going to be a portal.

[They didn't come in through a door, alright? As far as Emma is concerned, they could've just crashed in through the ceiling.]

I could be wrong - but I think if it was as simple as finding the right door, we wouldn't be kept anywhere near it.

[kirking]

[Maybe they did just crash through the ceiling. If everyone here was from the same time, if they knew of the things he knew of, he'd be tempted to say that they were all beamed in here. And yes, he's dealt with time travel but he doesn't believe that a transporter can be used that way, to steal people from different times.

If it could, Scotty would be the one person who'd know about it.]

What do you mean, a portal? Like a wormhole?

[sheriffing]

Yeah, I guess.

[There are probably a few different versions of the same idea - getting pulled out of your world and dropped into another. Maybe it always works the same way, maybe it doesn't. The thing is, Emma's pretty sure they have to let go of the idea of walking out of here. It's going to take something more than that.]

There were ways to open them up where I'm from, it just usually took some kind of magic object to do it. And if there's one thing this place seems short on, it's magic.

[kirking]

[Well. At least now they've definitely solved the mystery of whether or not she could be his mother. Because his mom didn't believe in magic even a little bit. It's all science, Jimmy, that's what she always said. There is always, always a scientific explanation for everything. Just because we don't know it, doesn't make it magical.]

That's because magic doesn't exist. Sorry to burst your bubble.

[sheriffing]

Well, we're going to have to agree to disagree. I'm from a town full of fairytale characters, that's not debatable.

[Not to mention the magic that Emma should have, the kind that comes from true love and the hope that everyone will find their happily ever after. He can argue it, she'll just give him a roll of her eyes to match the sigh that comes from his certainty.

Seriously, they're stuck here and he wants to knock down that possibility the moment it's introduced?]

Different worlds, different rules. Get used to it.