2019-07-11 - Ladies On The Water

Contrary to whatever first impressions Isabella Reede might make on anyone, it's actually a rare thing for the scholar-at-large to entertain anyone in the modernized houseboat that her father owns. And what might even be doubly surprising to everyone else who knows her, it is Dr. Vivian Glass, newcomer to Gray Harbor, who she elects to take out to one of her favorite spots along the coast - something she hasn't done since Byron and her twin brother in summers over a decade past.

After the punctual, glamorous psychiatrist announces herself at her threshold, it doesn't take long for the Surprise to take to the sapphirine waters of the Pacific, its wake hugging close to the curving shore; with the blazing sun high above their heads, gentle waves and the fresh air touched with a hint of salt and brine, it's a perfect day to be out on a boat. The first leg of the journey finds the two women seated on the top deck, where the vessel's main controls are, light chatter nearly swallowed by the whipping wind as the Surprise cuts through the ocean like a gleaming white blade. In half an hour, Vivian would be able to see it - the pale line of Isabella's favorite cove, pebbly sand giving way to expansive green hills and the distant roofs of country houses.

Here, the skies are clear, and there is blue for miles; beautiful and endless, eternity rendered in Summer's palette.

Once the boat is anchored, they move to the front deck of the houseboat and its array of rattan recliners, fastened down onto the planks, and situated around a small table where Isabella has set a three tiered tea tray laden with small, delicate pastries and macarons from Patisserie Vydal and small tea sandwiches that she assembled herself. It's overall simple fare - mint, cucumber and cream cheese, ham mousse, curried egg. By her own admission, Isabella likes sweets only sparingly, but the array before them is acknowledgment enough that her guest might like them.

The tea is perfectly steeped and there's a few kinds, cold-brewed or hot in anticipation of her guest's preferences. All those years in Oxford have the profound effect in the American-born academic to give this celebrated English tradition its due....with, of course, her own twist.

Refreshments poured and laid out, the green-eyed brunette lies on her recliner, as content as a cat, her sunkissed complexion glinting faintly with the sheen of ocean-friendly sunscreen, as always conscientious of marine conservation efforts, long limbs draped indolently upon it. Her Ralph Lauren aviators are perched on her nose; her bikini is a modest affair, a two piece-suit dyed a pale blue to match the skies above them. She has a glass of cold-brewed iced tea in her hand.

"How are you liking Gray Harbor?" she asks her guest, eyes shifting to look over at her. "I know you only arrived just recently, but Byron never really told me just how recent."

Red. Red is a bold color, and it seems as though red is the color of the suit that Vivian has decided on for this adventure, a pair of white strap sandals and a large floppy hat that is paired with large sunglasses. It's all very 1940s LA in a way, even the suit seems to harken back towards bygone years with a decidedly modern twist to it. The sugary sweet treats are eaten sparingly, but it doesn't seem like that is because she doesn't like sweets. Instead she just opts to eat little, but drink more of whatever is on offer.

"I'm liking it, so far. For a small town with all the uniqueness that it seems to offer." Vivian's response is careful, amused really, as she glances over towards Isabella, "A few months past, no more, which I think means that I've barely scratched the surface on the oddities of the town itself. Lots left to explore and experience."

There's an admiring and somewhat envious glance at Vivian's sense of style - the academic has a fondness for classic looks, expected from someone who has made a career out of studying history, but she is not as tall or as fair-haired as the psychiatrist. Blondes have more fun for a reason, or so the old saying goes. "What Gray Harbor lacks in opportunities, it makes up for in mysteries," Isabella remarks, though her contralto's inflection carries with it a hint of resignation, a tired sort of amusement hidden by the sunglasses shielding her eyes from the glare above. "Though between you and me, I hope that the novelty wears off sooner rather than later and you can return to Los Angeles with Byron in tow. When we were younger, the two of us were determined to leave this city - most of his ideas were simply too big for it, whereas I just wanted to be elsewhere."

She takes a sip through her straw.

"I'm glad you do like it though, it's not without its charms." She gestures vaguely to the scenery around them. "And its secrets are always a draw for those who are curious - they tend to cost, though. Sometimes they can be terribly expensive."

"Byron won't ever leave for good." Vivian decides after a little while, shaking her head, "He was in LA for college, he thrived there, he networked. Which evidently he always does...But I don't think he'll ever leave for good, if he could have....he would have." There is a small frown for that before she reaches for one of the small sandwiches, turning it over quietly in her hand as she examines it.

"I'll do what I can to protect him from the secrets. But it's not a power I have to take him away from here, and I've already told him that I'm not leaving yet either. He tried to get me to already." Vivian glances up and over towards Isabella, offering her a faint smile, "I get this feeling that once you step foot here, you are bound here in a way that is unbreakable."

Byron won't ever leave for good.

Something inside her twists painfully at hearing that, watching the other woman's delicate profile and the quiet way that she holds her sandwich. Amidst blue skies and a distant green backdrop, the crimson of her suit, the entire tableau Vivian presents would be idyllic were it not for the soft, but guarded expression upon her. For a while, Isabella says nothing - those eyes miss nothing, and in that window of precious seconds, she lets the rest of the world fall away, leaving her fair-haired guest as her sole point of crystal focus.

She doesn't want to assume, but inwardly, she can make a few guesses - a woman who looks out of place in such a small town, but who won't compromise her own identity just to fit in. A woman who probably misses a bigger life in the major city she just left, whatever family and friends she has, to follow someone who she loves enough to deem him worth the journey. After all, why else is she here, if not for that?

But the ache is there, subtly writ on an elegant face. There is almost something about the blonde that makes her seem lonely.

"He told me he had to return," Isabella offers, her voice a gentle, but straightforward thing. "I think if he felt like he had a choice, he wouldn't be here. He'd rather be out there, I think, with you." Her smile lifts a touch from the corners of her mouth, a mirror of her guest's faint smile. "The Byron I know wouldn't elect to stay here...there was just too much about this place that hurt him, but with you being a psychiatrist, I'm not going to lie, Doctor Glass...some part of me hopes that you'll break him out of whatever makes him think that. The fact that he's asked you to already does reflect how much he cares about you. If anything ever happened to you, he probably wouldn't forgive himself."

She exhales a breath and rolls her head back against her recliner, tilting her gaze upwards to the sky. "He was always like that," she remarks, her tone almost absent. "I've never known him not to invest himself beyond his own limits into something he deems worthwhile...so when he fails, he takes it hard. After running into him the first time, I wondered if that had changed." After a moment, she laughs. "I think he might've actually gotten worse, on that end."

"He might rather be out there, but whatever it was that he felt drew him back isn't going to just...stop." Vivian shakes her head a bit, taking a careful bite from the sandwich and chewing it while she thinks about her response for a little while. Eventually she tries to explain her observations, "Everyone I've spoken with that has left has returned, people who have ranged far and wide, been to places that were better. More. Different. But they all came back. Family obligations, home sickness, ran out of money...I don't think the reasons why matter. Everyone seems to come back eventually. So even if he left again, something else would pull him back. Something here has a hold on people, the secrets are maybe just too much of a mystery for people to ignore. I don't know. I just feel that even me...." She glances over towards Isabella at that, "Even I feel the pull to stay here. Perhaps it has to do with that...shine."

The last bite of the sandwich is tucked into her mouth and she brushes her hands off, then a few crumbs are brushed from her bare stomach before she leans her head back. It's hard to tell if her eyes are closed behind the sunglasses, but there is a very good bet that they are closed. "Vivian, please. I think that we've gone beyond Doctor Glass, don't you?"

For an outsider, Vivian's astute observations mirror much of her own lamentations about Gray Harbor, though Isabella falls silent for a long time when she expresses them. Slender fingers lift, as absent a gesture as her earlier tone of voice, playing with the moonstone pendant that she almost always seems to have on her person - even in a swimsuit and sunning under the glare of the afternoon. Even with so much light, it remains cold to the touch and she rolls her thumb absently on its colorful surface - her very own shard of the Aurora Borealis, worn close to her heart always.

"I told him once that I don't believe in a destiny I didn't create for myself," she tells her. "If it's true and that this place does have that strange, dark power over its children, I'm not about to intensify it by fueling that belief. But..." And here, she flashes Vivian a grin, as irrepressible, in the end, as the rest of her. "...I've always been stubborn, and half the time to my detriment."

Her smile fades. "Don't fall for it, Vivian," she tells her softly, using her given name, and addressing her last comments about the shine. "Please."

With her guest leaning back, she does the same. "Isabella, then." She hooks her pinky into her frames, to peer her green, gold-flecked eyes over at her guest, her old mischief returning. "It's nice to meet you at last, Vivian." The last carrying the full brunt of her teasing, never one to shy away from it, no matter how early in her acquaintanceship with someone.

"Don't fall for the shine?" Vivian wonders, glancing over at Isabella with an amused laugh, "I don't know how to fall or not fall for it...My experience is so very limited that I couldn't begin to even know what I was seeing and experiencing yet."

There is a moment before she sits herself up just a little more, a hand reaching up to adjust her hat, "Byron says that everyone that can shine can do things. I never knew there was anything like that in this world before coming here, and I'm out of my depth in dealing with any of it. But I'm learning, and I'm willing to listen to all words of caution."

"Not the shine, but the draw," Isabella replies. "The pull even outsiders feel when they step foot in here, breathe its air, and fall in line with its routines. I don't think that's caused wholly by the shine, or Glimmer...that's what we townies call it." She hesitates - she's too expressive to hide it, but whatever she deigns to say next, she changes her mind.

Instead: "It depends on each person," she confirms. "My mother tells me her children were born with an enormous potential for it, but I stopped embracing it a long time ago. It's dangerous to do so, even moreso if you use it constantly, and like I said before, it costs - sometimes egregiously. Anyway, all of that is overrated." She waves a hand to the side, as if she's able to dismiss the phenomenon physically with a batting of her fingers. "I don't know what happened in the last ten years, but the population is saturated with it when I came back - it was shocking, really. And it probably doesn't help its strangeness any when so many gather here. I think we could stand to have more people like you - someone with enough detachment from all of this who could function like a lightning rod and just ground those afflicted to the here and now."

"Until I fall to the draw." Vivian points out, ever practical maybe. "I don't think I'm perfect or immune to such things, but I'm grounded, certainly. I can rationalize a lot, I can detach myself. I've gone to school long enough that I know how to compartmentalize on a professional level, for lack of any other way to say it. But I don't think that I'm immune entirely to succumbing to things, I wish that I were."

It's almost a sad frown, but it vanishes quickly as Vivian nods, "I've heard that things are worse right now, that more things are happening than ever before. And what is happening seems darker, consistently darker than it had been in the past." She turns herself around on her chair so that she can face Isabella, settling her elbows on her knees, "Whatever is causing it, I'd like answers. This is my weakness, Isabella. I poke, prod, and pry at things until I've an answer."

"Nothing's ever guaranteed," Isabella agrees. "But I have more faith in you in keeping your head on your shoulders than most. It must be that learned ability to compartmentalize - I remember Byron telling me how surprised he was that you were taking all of this weirdness so well. So here's hoping." She lifts her hand, crossing her index and middle fingers together, flashing Vivian a wink from over the tops of her sunglasses.

She shifts on her own seat, to set her glass of iced tea aside so she could slip long legs over the edge of her recliner. It brings her to face Vivian with her old Hollywood glamour in direct view, but also so she could help herself to a couple of the tea sandwiches and a macaron or two - she hasn't had anything to eat yet. "I don't think either of us would spend so many years in school obtaining our fancy degrees if we weren't drawn to the quest for answers in some way," she says, subtle mirth gleaming within half-visible emerald eyes. "Human beings are often driven by the need to know, it's just that some of us dig deeper than most. I've spent a good portion of my life attempting to recover the unrecoverable, while you've spent your career exploring a mastery over the most complex aspects that make up a person's sense of self. I know some part of you can't help it - I'm the same way. After all, despite all my bellyaching, I'm still in it."

She takes a bite of her sandwich, and doesn't continue until she's finished a few swallows. "It's just that I think that there'll be a point where we'll have to decide whether going forward's worth it. Though if we can find a way to stop...whatever the hell this is, it would certainly make our lives easier. And then maybe all of us can toss away the shackles that are trying to keep us here forever."

"I'm dealing with all the weirdness well because the rational part of my brain is telling me that freaking out, losing my cool....none of that is going to serve a purpose. I'm not going to say that there aren't moments where I start questioning everything that I've experienced, but I'm focusing on the rational parts. The puzzles, the desire for an answer. I realize this is very, very real. Despite how crazy it sounds." Vivian's hands spread outwards just a little before she reaches for one of the macarons, "That dig, it is what keeps me going too."

Agreement on purpose clear, or at least on the drive, Vivian seems willing to lapse into comfortable silence to enjoy the sun, and when more things got brought up, the quiet conversation of it before the inevitable time to head back came.