“Call me when they bury bodies underwater
It’s blue light over murder for me
Crumble like a temple, built from future daughters
To wasteland when the oceans recede”
Sleep Token – Atlantic
There’s a light on in one of the windows, and for some reason that’s the first thing I noticed. Not the church standing in the middle of the water, the houses that have been slowly swallowed up around it or even the boat sitting beside a dock that doesn’t look like it’s seen much use in a while. It’s that one window, glowing away as though somebody might still be home. Considering the state of everything else, I’m not entirely sure whether that’s comforting or a very good reason to turn around and leave. Of course, I decided to stay.
That’s how this second trip through Salem started, with (Milk Motion)’s The Drowned Village giving me an entire place to explore and a history I’m free to imagine for myself. Abandoned places have always fascinated me, especially when so much of what used to make them recognizable is still standing. You can see where people lived, where they might have gathered and the details that suggest there was once a perfectly ordinary life happening here. The water has taken over much of the village, but it hasn’t erased everything, and somehow that makes the place feel more unsettling than if there were nothing left.
When I first saw The Drowned Village, I could already imagine several directions to take it. Marie Lauridsen has created this wonderfully weathered environment with stone buildings, wooden docks, partially submerged houses, dead trees and a church tower that rises above everything else. There are enough details throughout the build that you can spend quite a while exploring without running out of things to look at. The boat beside the dock, the uneven rooftops and the vegetation creeping over the buildings all help give the impression that this place has been sitting here for a long time, waiting for somebody to remember it exists.
One of the things I appreciated about (Milk Motion)’s The Drowned Village was the freedom to shape the atmosphere around it. The backdrop ends at the treeline, so the sky was mine to choose. I went with a dark, star-filled night and an enormous moon rising behind us, giving the village a colder, more haunting presence without changing what Marie created. The moon draws your eye toward us, while the church tower remains visible across the water and the warm glow from the house on the left offers a quieter contrast. It’s the same village, but the way it’s photographed changes how you experience it.
Somewhere in the middle of working on the scene, I started thinking about Sleep Token and Atlantic. It wasn’t just the water that brought the song to mind, although having an entire village sitting beneath it certainly didn’t hurt. There’s a sadness running through Atlantic that feels almost overwhelming at times, and the way the music builds from something quiet and vulnerable into something much heavier has always been part of what makes it so effective. It doesn’t sound like a song trying to frighten you. It sounds like somebody carrying more than they know what to do with, and that felt much closer to what I wanted from this photo than reaching for something obviously Halloween-themed.
I don’t think every Halloween photo needs to be frightening anyway. Sometimes the more interesting stories are the ones that make you uncomfortable without ever explaining why. A flooded village is unsettling enough on its own, but start thinking about the people who once lived there and it becomes something else entirely. Somebody used to open those shutters in the morning, walk down to the dock and go about a day that probably didn’t seem particularly remarkable at the time. The church wasn’t always surrounded by water, and those houses weren’t built with the expectation that they’d eventually be sitting in it. It’s the ordinary history behind a place like this that makes its abandonment feel so strange, even when that history is something we’re imagining.
Naturally, I wasn’t going to leave Mackenzie out of this one, and once we decided to put both of us into the village, the direction of the photo started changing. Rather than making us two people who had wandered into an abandoned place, we wanted to look as though we might belong there. Maybe we lived here before the water arrived, or perhaps we’ve come back after years away. There’s also the possibility that we’re the reason nobody else seems to be around anymore, which is considerably less reassuring. I’m happy leaving enough room for people to come up with their own explanation.
Getting that feeling right meant changing quite a bit about our usual appearances, especially Mackenzie’s. DeeTaleZ had the Nyx Skin in Ghost available at Salem, and it ended up being exactly the foundation I wanted for her. The pale complexion gives her an almost porcelain appearance, especially against the darker surroundings, without completely taking away the features that make her recognizable. I like that balance because even when we’re doing something more unusual, I still want her to look like Mackenzie. She’s not supposed to be an entirely different character we’ve invented for the evening, even if she does look like she might have been wandering around this village for considerably longer than either of us should have been alive.
Steffi Villota has given Nyx quite a bit of flexibility through its brow options and additional makeup details, but for this particular look, it was the ghostly complexion that mattered most. Against the night sky and the darker buildings, her skin almost seems to catch whatever light is available. It also gave us a good foundation for the Just Magnetized Insomnia EVO X makeup in Rotten v3, another Salem release. The darker treatment around her eyes adds a tired, slightly haunted quality that works especially well here. She doesn’t look like somebody who’s trying to be scary. She looks like somebody who might have a story she’s not particularly interested in telling. And then we added blood, because looking like we’d been dead for a while evidently wasn’t quite enough.
DeeTaleZ’s YumYum Blood Drop was another Salem release that found its way into the photo, and we ended up using it on both of us. It’s a small detail, but it does quite a bit of work. Without it, we could almost pass for a strangely dressed couple standing in front of an abandoned village. Add those drops of blood and the entire impression changes. I like that it connects our appearances without making us identical, and there’s just enough there to suggest something happened without turning the photo into a bloody Halloween spectacle.
I’m sure somebody will look at us and immediately think vampires, and that’s perfectly fine. I can see it too. But I don’t necessarily want to decide that’s what we are. The photo becomes more interesting when it leaves you to make that connection yourself, and I think that suits (Milk Motion)’s build better than spelling out a supernatural explanation.
The other major part of Mackenzie’s look came from DEAD DOLL, with Kiddo Oh’s Fiona Dress in Antique Gold. Seeing it against the finished scene, I couldn’t have asked for a better color. The rich, rust-gold fabric is one of the few warm tones in the photo, drawing your eye to her against the dark water and weathered stone. Its lace detailing, fitted shape and longer sleeves have an elegance that works beautifully with the age of the village. Going with black might have made the scene darker, but it would have lost the contrast that makes her stand out here.
The dress also has an old-fashioned quality that works with the setting without turning it into a costume. It looks like something she could genuinely be wearing in this world we’ve created, even if that world happens to be mostly underwater. The darker lace and detailing keep it from feeling too bright, while the color gives the photo a warmth that would otherwise be missing. Against the ghostly skin and darker makeup, it helps make Mackenzie the focal point without taking attention away from the village itself.
I went in a similar direction with my own clothing, pulling out the Deadwool Spade Suit in Heritage. Its darker, textured tailoring sits comfortably beside Mackenzie’s antique gold without competing with it, and together the outfits feel as though they belong to the same story rather than being matching costumes. I used VELOUR in the much paler SCREAM tone for my head and body, along with the same DeeTaleZ blood detail around my mouth. Against the moonlit village, the two of us look a little too composed for people who have supposedly wandered into a place like this by accident.
The pose came from Secret Poses’ Eternity Surrender, a new release at Anthem, and I think it helps sell the idea that whatever is happening here, we’re part of it together. There’s a familiarity in the way we’re standing, with my arm around Mackenzie and our hands meeting in front of us, that makes the scene feel less like two strangers exploring somewhere dangerous. We look comfortable, perhaps a little too comfortable considering our surroundings. Instead of trying to escape, we’re standing there as though this is exactly where we’re supposed to be, which adds another layer to the story without requiring either of us to do anything dramatic.
Mackenzie also photographed her own version of the scene, and I like how differently the village feels when you get closer. In my photo, the setting stretches out behind us, with the church and the surrounding buildings disappearing into the darkness. In hers, most of that falls away. We’re standing together in front of one of the old houses, with its weathered stonework, overgrown walls and that warm light coming from the upstairs window. The closer view gives you a better look at the details in our appearances, especially the contrast between her pale skin and the antique gold dress, but it also makes the scene feel more personal. Instead of two people standing in front of a drowned village, we almost look like we’re standing outside our own home.
And I think that’s where the two photos start telling slightly different parts of the same story. Mine gives you the scale of what has happened to this place, while hers brings it down to the people who might have lived through it. Neither of us looks surprised by our surroundings, and the closer you get, the less we seem like visitors. I like that the photographs can suggest those things without either one needing to explain them.
It’s also where Atlantic comes back into the story for me. Sleep Token doesn’t give the song an easy emotional resolution, and I don’t think this photo needs one either. There’s a sense of being overwhelmed by things you can’t change, of carrying memories and experiences that don’t disappear simply because time has passed. The water in the village becomes a way of thinking about that, not because the song is literally about a flooded town, but because the idea of losing a place while still carrying everything it meant feels appropriate here. The wider photo holds the weight of that loss, while Mackenzie’s brings it closer to the people who might still be carrying it.
The village itself gives us plenty to work with, even without deciding what happened. The church is still standing, the dock hasn’t completely disappeared and the houses remain recognizable despite the water surrounding them. (Milk Motion) hasn’t built a scene that feels entirely destroyed. It feels suspended somewhere between what it used to be and whatever might come next, which is a much more interesting place to leave it.
That’s something I appreciate about creators who make these kinds of environments for Second Life. They don’t necessarily get to control what we do with their work once it’s in our hands, and sometimes the direction we take it probably isn’t what they originally imagined. (Milk Motion) created the village, DeeTaleZ and Just Magnetized helped give Mackenzie and me the appearance we needed to belong there, and DEAD DOLL provided the clothing that made her feel like part of the world rather than somebody standing in front of it. None of those creations needs the others to be worthwhile, but together they gave me the opportunity to tell a story I wouldn’t have been able to tell with any one of them alone.
It’s also a good reminder of why I enjoy covering events like Salem. This is only my second official post for Prism Events, and it’s already taken me in a completely different direction from the first. With Willow by Taylor Swift, Mackenzie and I were surrounded by candles, magic and a room that felt like somewhere she belonged. That photo had a warmth to it, even with all the witchy details. This one is darker, quieter and a little harder to explain, which is exactly why I wanted to do it.
Salem is open through October 31, and there’s still plenty of time to explore the Macabre Market and see what the creators have brought along for Halloween. I’ve already found enough inspiration for two very different photos, and I’m not finished yet. If there’s one thing I’ve learned after all these years, it’s that giving me a strange environment and a few interesting things to work with is usually enough to keep me occupied for quite a while.
I keep coming back to that illuminated window, though. The moon might be the first thing that catches your eye in my photo, but the longer I look at it, the more that modest glow from the house seems to matter. It’s the one detail that makes the village feel like it hasn’t entirely given up on being somebody’s home. The water can cover the roads, the buildings can slowly disappear and the lives that once filled them can become stories nobody remembers, but that light is still there.
Maybe somebody’s waiting for us. Or maybe we never really left. Either way, I’m happy leaving that part of the story unanswered. You’ll find the full credits below, until next time…
“I woke up surrounded, eyes like frozen planets
Just orbiting the vacuum I am
They talk me through the damage, consequence
And how it’s a pain they know they don’t understand”
Sleep Token – Atlantic
Credits:
~Scene~
Backdrop: (Milk Motion) The drowned village ~ Marie Lauridsen ~ NEW @ Salem (Oct 1-Oct 31)
Pose: SP – Eternity Surrender ~ SweetDaniellee Resident ~ NEW @ Anthem (Oct 3-Oct 30)
~Her~
Head: LeLutka EvoX AVALON 4.0 ~ Jaden Nova
Hair: DOUX – Lionness Hairstyle ~ Dam1710 Resident
Body: [LEGACY] [BODY] (f) Perky Edition (1.7.1) ~ MeshBody Resident
Head Skin: DeeTaleZ Skin Nyx for LELEVOX /brows/ Ghost ~ Steffi Villota ~ NEW @ Salem (Oct 1-Oct 31)
Eyes: Avi-Glam. Ritual Eyes – Pack 1 ~ Eye Daddy ~ NEW @ Satan Inc (Oct 5-Nov 1)
Eye Makeup: Just Magnetized – Insomnia EVO X. – 100% – Rotten ‘v3 ~ Madam Baby ~ NOW @ Salem (Oct 1-Oct 31)
Skin: VELOUR: UNREAL Skin for Legacy (SLIM/GHOST) ~ Kiria Mama
Blood: DeeTaleZ MU YumYum Blood Drop EVOX ~ Steffi Villota ~ NOW @ Salem (Oct 1-Oct 31)
Dress: DEAD DOLL – Fiona Dress – Antique Gold (Legacy) ~ Kiddo Oh ~ NEW @ Salem (Oct 1-Oct 31)
Shoes: tres beau. devotion heels ~ Lory Grau ~ NEW @ Satan Inc (Oct 5-Nov 1)
Anklet: tres beau. devotion anklet rosary ~ Lory Grau ~ NEW @ Satan Inc (Oct 5-Nov 1)
~Him~
Head: LeLUTKA.Head.NOA.4.0 ~ Jaden Nova
Head Applier: VELOUR: NICOLAS FANTASY for Evo X (SCREAM) ~ Kiria Mama
Hair: [MFCNT] THOR Bun – Grooming Hair – LeBarbier Alpha
Hairbase: LeLUTKA.EvoX.Hairbase.092 (BOM) ~ Jaden Nova (Comes with the LeLUTKA NOA Head)
Eyes: [ContraptioN] Depthglass Eye ~ Walton Wainwright
Eye Base: Avi-Glam. Occult Eyes – BoM – 37 ~ Eye Daddy
Ears: ^^Swallow^^ Gauged S Ears ~ Luciayes Magic
Beard: [MFCNT] Ducky Skunk Beard & Stache – LeBarbier Alpha
Beard Layer: PHYSIQUE X – Logan Facial Hair (v1) Tintable ~ PhysiqueX Resident
Body: [LEGACY] Athletic Edition (1.7.1) ~ MeshBody Resident
Skin: VELOUR: PICASSO HOMME Skin for Legacy (FIT/SCREAM) Picasso Neck ~ Kiria Mama
Blood: DeeTaleZ MU YumYum Blood Drop EVOX ~ Steffi Villota ~ NOW @ Salem (Oct 1-Oct 31)
Suit Coat/Shirt: [Deadwool] Spade Suit Jacket (Heritage) ~ Masa Plympton
Pants: [Deadwool] Spade Suit Trousers (Heritage) ~ Masa Plympton
Earrings: = DAE = SXD1 ~ Naomi Darkheart
Rings/Bracelets: *RE* Atreides Bracelet & Rings ~ Crashnoww Resident
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