WEEK 03

[modmachine]

Preparation for the holidays continues at a steady - if slow - pace. Almost all traces of Halloween are gone by now, except for a few rotting pumpkins shoved into compost heaps, but with over a month until Christmas and the Day of Lights, nobody is yet in a hurry. Still, a few early holiday shoppers are out and about, usually in pairs if they aren't families with children, happily chattering about gift plans.

Weather forecast: The rain has passed, and days grow clear again for this week. Hex’s weather has been getting colder, and people are bundling up a bit more - even those who don’t need to, just in an effort to fit in. Hats and gloves are being prominently displayed in stores, even if they’re not strictly needed yet.

Moon phase: The moon is full on Monday the fourteenth, reaching peak fullness over the city at about 2AM. Afterwards, it begins to wane.

More employment: More decorations for the Day of Lights are going up, with some stronger-backed labor being recruited for the stockrooms in preparation for the incoming holiday rush. No one seems concerned about work history, a boon for people without a human paper trail. The park lights aren't finished yet, either, though things are on schedule to open next week.

Hitting the books: To prepare for the holidays, and raise funds for their community party, the library near the university is selling some of its used books. Most of them are fine, if an odd selection - you might find a cookbook, or you might find a book of poetry. There’s something weird about the books, though - a few of them smell faintly of mint. Watching over all of this is a sharp-eyed librarian. Don’t take a book without paying, or she’ll get up from her desk and try to block the door. She keeps having to chase away teenagers with dirty hands, too.

Bake sale: Some of the local schools are starting to take up donations for their holiday parties. One in particular in the residential district is holding a bake sale in front of the elementary school for an hour each day after classes let out. If you can fight through the sea of small children hoping someone will buy them something, you’ll find a variety of brownies, cookies, and tiny cakes. Many of them are lopsided, but a few look put together by expert hands. They cost more, of course, but it’s all for a good cause. A grouchy mother can be found near the cash box at all times, making sure no one steals the money.

Whoo are you?: Malin will notice that owls seem to be happening at her; they're hard to see, just shapes against the lesser-dark of the night sky, but they definitely seem to be watching her. They particularly seem to gather when she feeds. If she doesn't confront them, this will increase slowly but measurably throughout the week.

Time waits for no one: An old clock tower in the part of downtown leading into the Sixth has been restored to functionality... Mostly. The belltower stands empty, though there's a visible place where a bell should be hung, several stories above the floor. Ryoji might find the scene familiar. On Wednesday evening, there is some kind of reopening gathering at the church below it; the brief service and meet-and-greet is not particularly unusual, save that the young Acolyte handing out papers in the entry won't step into the congregation hall itself.

Like a dog with a bad...: In the Sixth, the construction is ongoing, still with the same handful of men, who rotate through almost like randomly generated NPCs. Lurking around outside is a thickly built man, who watches the whole goings-on with suspicion; strangely, he seems to be watching it mostly through the camera on his phone. On Friday morning, though it shouldn't be cold enough for frost, three of the strangely similar men slip on patches of ice and fall behind a half-finished wall... Where they vanish completely. They reappear after lunch, if it's even the same men, with no signs of injury. That afternoon, the man with his phone looks smug.

A touch of the season: And speaking of ice, passage into many of the city's Avernian Gates is blocked this week by a thick frost that seals the entries shut. An Unsettling Youth and his girlfriend can occasionally be seen investigating them; though they're constantly together, they don't seem much inclined to talk to each other. Occasionally, she'll drape her arm over his shoulders and giggle, while he looks confused; other times, she seems almost to shy away from him.

Comments

OTA

[crazycatvampire]

I. Hitting the Books

Corwin is all about cheap books. Books are a very safe (and fun!) way to learn about humanity and other things, so whenever there's a sale, he's right there. He even brings a shopping bag, one of the nice fabric ones, so he can fill it up with as many books as he can carry.

He offers the librarian smiles from behind his protective sunglasses and raspy apologies for his clumsiness when he knocks over a small stack of books, and promptly kneels to pick them up again. Any other people at the book sale get similar, or maybe a question: "What books are you looking for?"


II. Whoo are you? (kind of)

Every evening, just after sundown, Corwin sits out on his porch in the hopes that Malin will come visit. If she does, he'll let her in, or go for a walk with her if she wants, and if it's the day after the library book sale, he'll have a small stack of books for her if she wants any of them. He may or may not notice the owls...

He'll also have the same offer for her every evening she does visit: "Stay with me for the day, if you want. It's safer."


III. A touch of the season, etc

On his usual afternoon wanders through the city, Corwin can be found in the parks, by the college, wandering the shore, watching the construction workers or the clock tower waiting for a bell-- he does so love the sound of church bells-- but mostly he's confused by the frost. He doesn't notice the two young people, at first, but he does spend a goodly amount of time tapping on the ice, listening to the sound of each place, trying to find a way to crack through.

"Someone ought to call city maintenance," he muses, mostly to himself. "Places shouldn't be iced shut."

Re: OTA

[movingon]

She drops by - not every day, but every other day, not always in the evening, but at some point during the night. It all depends on how hungry she is and how well the night goes. She's been especially paranoid ever since he showed her the picture, and now with the owls...

Each time, she will come in quickly, fidgeting a bit, only slowly getting used to being inside a regular house again, not just like a thief in the night but invited, like someone coming over for fika. There's no coffee or cookies, obviously, but going by the feeling.

She turns down the books, explaining that she would have nowhere to put them. And for the first few night, she won't react to his offer of staying at all, unsure how she would properly react and unsure of his intentions, unsure if it would be safer or more dangerous than what she is doing now, and perhaps a bit lulled by the feeling of ...being human, that being in this house, strange as some of it is, has brought on.

Finally, she decides to confront him about it, and when he asks again, she replies:

"Why are you offering?"

[crazycatvampire]

It's often enough, considering he expected far fewer visits for all he waits for her for a little every night, that he starts to feel a little more positive about the idea that she might actually be a friend. Who else would put up with the way he makes them feel so much? Some nights, if it's later than others, he takes longer to get to the door, but then, surely he must be sleeping, right? (Only not at all. There is only one open room with a bed in it, and it is completely untouched. There's one bedroom in the far back with the door firmly shut, though, and who knows what's actually in there?)

The inside of the house is weirdly put together, anyway. The rooms look like they were put together out of used furniture and makeshift shelving (cinder blocks and boards, anyone?) but in such a way that they mimic something out of a magazine. Corwin, after all, isn't fully a person. Right now, he's just trying to look like he is. The odd effect is almost ruined, though, because most of it is either covered with books and magazines and open notebooks with Corwin's messy handwriting all over it... or bits and pieces of what are obviously experiments or lab equipment or both. It might convey the idea of a mad scientist, but always Corwin hurries to clear off places for Malin to sit, should she want to, and if she can't take the books, she's welcome to sit and read if she would rather do that than talk or listen to him ramble about those experiments. That, by the way, is where the alchemical compounds smell came from... he has a lot of that bubbling around in the kitchen and back den.

Lucky for her, too, the windows all have heavy curtains, so it's unlikely anyone will glimpse her through them.

When she finally addresses his offer, he blinks at her. "If people are taking pictures of you, they might want to hurt you," he says, earnestly. "I don't want you to be hurt." The phrase "you're my friend" wants to come out, but he's not quite bold enough to claim it to her face yet.

[movingon]

"I know ways to stay safe during the day."

That burn blood, and she's using so much discipline anyway these days... if she had a better place to sleep than a random patch of ground, she would probably have to feed less. Which in turn may attract less owls to her. Which in turn ...thinking about it, she's gotten a idea of what kind of lack of willpower the owls could possibly be looking for while she's feeding, and it's made her do her best to never get too hungry. What if they're just waiting for her to frenzy? It doesn't quite make sense, but it's the best guess that she has at the moment.

"And..." She's not sure how to say this. Uneasy feeling or not, she has come to quite like him, but she's not sure if that includes her trusting him enough to sleep around him.

[crazycatvampire]

He understands, he honestly does. It's common, after all, for people not to trust him. So he offers, "I work until afternoon, and then I'm out most of the rest of the day, watching people and running errands and things. I won't be here for most of the time you'd want to sleep. You can come in at dawn, I can put in a little cat door for your fox form since I'll be gone off to work before then, and I'll be home maybe two in the afternoon. That's a lot of sleep. Or I can just not come home until later, whenever you want me to."

He truly wants to help, can you tell, Malin?

[movingon]

"No, it's..."

He's her friend, and not human besides in a way that very likely rules out blood bonds - she is fairly sure that he doesn't even eat. And even if he was. She wouldn't want to lose a friend to that.

But as much as she finds herself trusting that he means well, at least right now, at least up until now, that doesn't have to mean much in the long run. She is fairly sure that Lars meant well, too, in a very roundabout way. And the Caitiff girl whom she stayed with for a few nights before he found her, who almost got them both killed by getting back in touch with her family that considered vampires something that needed to be put down.

And she doesn't know if she can and wants to explain just how vulnerable she is during the day. But then, she once read in a book that they had to read for class, sometimes it is more dangerous to leave your loved ones in the dark because they might cause harm by accident.

Does that apply to Corwin?

She curls up on her chair, her tail twitching nervously, and finally offers: "It's not about you." She doesn't want to think that he as a person is the problem here, especially with how... well, off-putting his aura is. He probably gets that enough. "It's just a huge risk to take."

[crazycatvampire]

"A risk for which one of us?" Corwin asks. He needs that clarification before he can know how to properly argue against it-- or if he even should. If staying with him is a risk to her, he certainly doesn't want her to take it if she doesn't have to. But he can't see how it possibly could be a risk for her, that's the whole point of the offer, because he can only see how it would be safer for her than staying out all day, alone.

[movingon]

"I would need a room that I can lock from the inside."

That's easier to state than to explain why, or why it is such a risk, but ...it's dangerous. It's foolish. But she feels like she owes him an answer. Wants to answer. And if she keeps it a bit vague, maybe it will not be that bad.

"I'm a lot more vulnerable during the day than during the night, so for anyone to know where I am during that time..." Anyone whose loyalty she hasn't made certain. Or anyone whose knowledge of her whereabouts she can't help, but that's still dangerous. Just something that she couldn't help for the longest time. "I haven't known you for very long, and I can't enforce your loyalty." At least she's fairly sure that he can't be blood bonded, and she very much wouldn't want to, either.

For more reasons than that she likes having him as this... friend? Maybe. But also because she still feels really uneasy about blood bonding in general.

[crazycatvampire]

That seems like a perfectly reasonable request when she doesn't know him that well and he has that aura of creepiness, and for all he knows vampires are really paranoid anyway, and all he wants is for her to be safe and comfortable anyway, so he nods. "The guest room does have a lock on it. Both bedrooms do, really, but I don't use that one much." He does in fact keep his personal bedroom locked, since... it's not really a "bedroom" per se. "I can give you the key, so you won't think I might use it or anyone else could get it."

[movingon]

Well, vampires are really paranoid anyway, especially when it comes to their havens, so Corwin's estimate is pretty well rounded, really.

"I can look at it."

She's still not sure, and honestly ...she trusts Corwin more than anyone else, though that really doesn't mean much. But she trusts him enough to at least consider this. Still, he's probably capable of breaking down the door, so at least for the first couple of nights, she might want to push something in front of it to secure it further.

"There is only one key?"

[crazycatvampire]

"That I know of." He pauses to think. "I'll have to find it. It's buried in a drawer in the kitchen, I think." He is, in fact, capable of breaking down the door-- but then he'd have to pay the landlord for it, and who would want to go through that kind of hassle? "Does that mean you'll stay?"

...days not nights lmao

[movingon]

"I'll look at the room first."

That is a 'most likely, yes', though. There are reasons for and reasons against it, and only some of them area rational. There is also the odd unrest that settles on her when she's around Corwin, the feeling of being on edge, and warring with it the feeling that he's ...a friend. Or something closer to it than she's known in a very long time, at least. What does being friends even entail?

I didn't even notice, haha XD

[crazycatvampire]

You're asking the wrong person, if you're asking. Corwin hasn't had many experiences with actual friends. But he's willing to give it a try. He picks himself up from his armchair, beckoning for her to follow him down the hall. "This way, this way, I'll show it to you."

It isn't far. Past the den, around the corner, and there's the single open bedroom right there, door ajar. This one looks a little nicer than the rest of the house, with an only slightly threadbare quilt on the bed and a dresser painted carefully white. It's as if he's kept it in constant readiness in the hopes of someday, maybe, having a guest for the night-and-or-day. There is a window, but like the rest its curtains are heavy and drawn tight against outsiders. The window, if peeked through, opens onto the tiny snow-dotted backyard, neatly fenced in and mostly bare except for a few more pieces of lab equipment and a picnic table.

III

[modmachine]

Well, he might not have noticed the two teenagers, but they've definitely noticed him. The girl is human, but the boy's unsettling eyes spark with recognition - and Corwin will be able to feel the spark in him, though his skin is sewn back together instead of rent. There's a trail of such stitches curling up along his jawline and over his cheek.

It's the girl who speaks up, though. "The city... They wouldn't do anything about this."

[crazycatvampire]

Corwin blinks, pauses, stares a little at the young man, then shakes himself and answers his friend. "Why not? It's making it so no one can use these. And it's strange, don't you think?" As strange as he is. And as the other one is.

Another Promethean... here. Had his maker known, when he sent him here...?

[modmachine]

She laughs a little nervously. "The city doesn't go in the Underworld, right?" She glances at the boy as though looking for confirmation.

"Right. They don't care about people like us." He looks over at Corwin, including him in the statement, though he seems unsure what to make of the other Promethean.

[crazycatvampire]

"Us?" Corwin looks first at the boy, then over at the girl. "All three of us?" Because he does need to know if it's safe to talk in front of said girl-- he doesn't want to hurt the other Promethean's relationship with her by sharing something she might not properly know.

[modmachine]

The boy seems to get it. "Her maybe a little more than us, but not by much."

[crazycatvampire]

Corwin relaxes, even smiles some, and offers her a little wave. "Hello, then. I'm Corwin. I'm not really a person yet, but I'm working on it. I had no idea I wasn't the only one." He knows they should keep their distance-- surely more of them in close contact would only magnify their problematic aura-- but he desperately wants someone who he can talk to who won't be afraid of him. "Have you lived here long?"

[modmachine]

"I'm Avere," the boy says, before glancing at his companion. "Or maybe was. This is Edda." She smiles a little sheepishly. "We've only been in the city a couple months. I'm... not much older than that, really."

He seems to not quite know what to do with being able to talk openly about his status.

[crazycatvampire]

"Hello, Edda, hello, Avere. I'm about a year old," Corwin says, warmly. "So not much older than you!" Ironic, maybe, given he looks quite a bit older, but oh well! "I'm really glad to have met you. Even if we probably shouldn't be together very much, I don't want to upset anyone." He pats his pockets until he finds his cell phone. "Do you have a phone number? Maybe I could call you sometime, or you could call me if you're ever in trouble and need help."

He is always eager for contact, and even more eager to help out if he needs to, perhaps to a creepy extent. After all, he's only just met the poor boy.

assumes phone number exchange happens here

[modmachine]

They both nod, Avere looking a little surprised still, Edda mostly awkward, and after a moment dig out their phones, which are pretty much appropriate looking for the late teens they are - smart phones, but not anything super high-end. Edda's has a case with a purple-and-black lace pattern.

"Same thing to you," Avere says. "If you need a hand, I mean. Edda's mostly useful when it comes to dead people, though." The girl flushes and fidgets with her phone.

[crazycatvampire]

Corwin puts their numbers into his phone, trades his over, then gives Edda a smile. "What is it that you do, Edda? If you don't mind sharing with me. If you do, that's fine, too." Though dead people... would that be some sort of necromancy? He only knows a handful of supernatural things, and some of them only vaguely, so he isn't sure if that's actually a thing.

[modmachine]

"...I put spirits to rest, mostly. Try to make things better so they can move on." She looks a little nervous to be talking about it with a stranger, but him being of a kind with Avere seems to reassure her, from the way she glances between them.

[crazycatvampire]

"Oh!" He blinks at her behind his sunglasses, expression going surprised and sober. "That sounds very important. I can only talk to them, I can't actually help them, unless talking helps. It must be very odd for you to be around people without spirits, mustn't it?" he guesses, sounding sympathetic. "I'll try not to stand too close."

Then, he turns back to the really important question: "Avere, is your maker still here, in the city? Or did yours leave you here, too?"