2019-07-12 - Iris and Cider Bottles

Isolde had, as per her usual lately, been working on the Lavender Farm all day. As if working out in the sun for 8+ hours wasn't enough, after she had cleaned up she took to the street to properly enjoy the nice summer evening. Her hair was down, a little damp from her shower and falling almost to her waist. She's clad in a simple pair of dark jeans and a white tank top with a ragged and worn looking flannel that she never seemed to go anywhere without. Humming quietly as she makes her way down the street with no particular destination in mind.

The light lingers long here in the PNW. Although it's sunset, there will be quite enough light to see by for another hour at least. Itzhak's taking advantage of it to mow the tiny postage-stamp lawn of 15 Elm. He's a tall, rough-looking dude. So was the husband of the woman who actually owns the house, but that guy's been gone for a year or more. Itzhak's cut from the same cloth, at first glance at least; he's doing yardwork, though, which sets him apart from the ex-husband immediately. WVRRRRRMMM goes the lawnmower.

Isolde normally doesn't pay too much attention to the neighbors. A little wave or a smile if someone greets her, but she's a cautious sort of person and, much like her housemate, is a little distrustful. However, she stops in her tracks when she sees Itzhak. It was the man from the house! With the lights! Clearly forces were at work because she was looking for him and here he was! How fortunate. She waits for him to turn around with the lawnmower so he can see her waving to him. "Hello again!" She calls over the sound of the mower. This was certainly a good thing.

Itzhak doesn't seem like a guy who first lit up Murray House, then ripped a hole in it to smash the awful dead thing that came crawling down the stairs. Not physically. At the moment he mostly seems like some down-on-his-luck loser hired off Craigslist to mow the lawn.

But oh, how his glimmer shines! Like dazzling noon sunlight glinting on the waves of the Pacific.

When he turns the mower and spots Isolde waving at him and calling, his eyebrows pop up. He holds up a hand to indicate he's almost done, plows through the last few feet of grass, then kills the motor. Wiping his face off with a handkerchief, he comes over. "Hey. Uhh. I didn't get your name."

Isolde is a patient sort, waiting for him to finish, studying him as he does. He certainly is very glittery. More glittery than most people she's seen. She has many questions for him. A bright smile is given to him, contrasting just a little with those wild blue eyes and the intense curiosity lingering in them. "You can call me Izzy. I've been looking for you. And you were right next door the whole time!" Seemingly at least. For today. She tugged a little bit at a strand of her hair as she considered him. "Who are you? Are you feeling better?" Remembering that he had looked a little sick or something after the ordeal.

Itzhak stuffs a corner of the hanky into his back pocket, leaving some of it hanging for easy access. "Izzy, huh? That's kinda like my name. I'm Itzhak. Got the I, the Z, people sometimes call me Izzy, but that's wrong..." he trails off. He's rambling. "Anyway, uh, that's me, Itzhak. Hi. I...guess I'm feeling better?" Itzhak hazards it, not exactly sure what she means. "You're looking for me?"

"Izzy and Izzy! Sounds like a TV show." Isolde mused. "Itzhak is a neat name. Lots of potential for nicknames too." Though she doesn't list off any of these potential names. "Good. That house is a bad thing. You don't want to be sick or anything." She confirmed with a light frown but then brightened up again. "Yes. I had questions. I wanted to know how you did the things." Looking around briefly to make sure there was no one that could overhear. "With the lights and the hole..." No beating around the bush here. And she's also clearly a few pennies short of a dollar.

"Thaaanks." Itzhak almost upticks the end of the word like a question. "It's Hebrew. Original form of Isaac." He says that like he's said it a lot. "Yeah, uh, listen, you wanna come in? Or something? I don't wanna talk about it out here in front of God and everybody."

Isolde tilts her head up to look at the sky, then towards Alexanders house. Then finally back to Itzahk. "Inside is probably good." She agreed. "Lead the way!" There was a beat of pause, peering at him as if she wanted to ask something else. But then made some kind of judgement call with herself and just shook her head and would follow him inside.

Itzhak looks back, eyebrows tilted upwards. Then jerks his head towards the house. "C'mon."

He wheels the mower back into the garage, hits close on the garage door and ducks back out before it can close completely. He waves Isolde over to a path that leads behind the house and to a walk-out basement door. Inside, it's a small one-bedroom apartment, with brick walls and surprisingly big windows onto the tiny backyard. Very little in the way of stuff, like he's not planning on staying here long. There's a big terrarium, though, with a lot of fake plants and branches and things, housing a very large lizard.

"Siddown," Itzhak says absently, himself going to the kitchen sink to run cold water and wash his face.

Isolde's eyes wander curiously as Itzhak leads her around back and into the little apartment. Peering at the backyard view. But then she notes the terrarium and she's moving over to that. "Hello there." She murmurs softly to the lizard, eyes wide with a bit of awe. "You are very big." Looking over to Itzhak. "Does he have a name?...or she?" Peeking back at the terrarium. She had stuffed her hands into the pockets of her flannel so she wouldn't touch anything.

Finally, Isolde pulls herself away from the terrarium and finds a seat. "Thank you for talking to me." Because Isolde knew that not everyone wanted to talk. Especially about these kinds of things.

The lizard cocks its head and flickers out a brilliant blue tongue, curious about the motion outside its habitat. "That's Iris," Itzhak says, mopping off his face. "She's a blue-tongue skink. Say hi, Iris." Iris doesn't do anything. "That's my girl. You want something to drink, Izzy?"

He glances over his shoulder, eyebrows up in a way that gives him a mournful expression. "Yeah, well, don't thank me. I got my own reasons."

"Iris. Hello Iris." Smiling a bit again as she studied the lizard. "She's very pretty." Looking back over at him there's a bit of a wry smile. "Of course. Nothing is for free." Shifting and tucking her legs up under herself on the couch. "You can ask questions first if you want."

Itzhak pulls a couple of bottles of apple cider out of the fridge. He flumps on the dilapidated couch and offers one to Izzy. "Nah. You go first. I kinda don't know what I don't know. So, why you lookin' for me?"

Isolde accepts the apple cider, examining the bottle curiously before opening it up. "Thank you." To the drink, taking a careful sip. "Mm! That's good." Another sip and then tugged at her hair a little to refocus. "I've seen things. I can do a little of things...but I haven't seen someone do that. What you did. Making the house light up. Blowing the hole in the floor...I want to learn how to do that."

Itzhak takes a healthy swig, throat working as he swallows. Close up, he smells like fresh cut grass, summer warmth, and sweat. "Yeah, well, you're outta luck, because I don't know how I did that. The light I've done before, but not an entire house. The moving stuff..." he shrugs. "I've done that before too, but really not like that. I got here and I can do the same things, but more."

"So it just happened. Maybe fueled by instinct?" Isolde pondered that for a moment. "I would like to know how to move things. Or turn lights on. It seems...useful." She decided finally. "My friend is helping me learn a bit about the things I can do now." Tapping her temple once with her pointer finger. "I can only do little things. Sense emotions mostly." She offered up. "How do you focus?"

"It started when...uh, when I was in a real bad situation. Then suddenly I could do it." Itzhak hedges around what exactly his bad situation was. "Focus? I kinda think about music. How it'd sound if it was a movie and there was a soundtrack for what I'm doing, kind of? Except, different. Ehh, I can't explain it." He looks at Izzy, thoughtful. "I think of machines sometimes, too. Physics. Potential energy. What do you do?"

Isolde looks curious as Itzhak explains. Surely she wants to ask about the bad situation. But she doesn't. Because she understands about not wanting to talk about certain things. Especially to a stranger. "That sounds kind of fun." A little giggle. "Like a movie in your head..."

She lifts her shoulders in a light shrug. "I'm working on it. We had that very bad storm...that's when it started. Luigi was scared and I could feel it." A beat of pause. "Luigi is a bird." Like it needed clarified. "I was scared too. It was a very bad storm with bad things. I have only tried it a few times and only with Alexander." Isolde admitted. "I just focus on him and on wanting to know how he's feeling. Or him to know something. It doesn't always work. There are beter ways probably. To focus."

Itzhak studies Isolde as she talks. She talks a lot more like a little kid than the grown woman his own age she obviously is. "Maybe there's better," he says, "but it don't matter. What matters is what works for you, right?" He leans forward. "You know, I don't always seem like it, but I'm autistic. Are you?" That would explain it, if she's on the spectrum.

Isolde thought about that for a moment and then nodded, smiling again. "That's true. As long as it works." Tilting her head, looking a little curious. "No...don't think so. Could be?" She was toying with a bit of her flannel now. "There have been lots of bad things, and lots of drugs. And more bad things." She offered up. Not even asking why he was asking, or seeming to take any kind of offense. "Like. I had a bad dream last night about that house." her nose wrinkled. "So I counted frogs until I could fall asleep again. Because frogs are good things." She also very obviously seems to place things in two categories - bad things and good things.

"Frogs are really good things," Itzhak agrees, without even a hint of irony. He just skips over the drugs and the bad things. Why upset both of them? "I had pet frogs before. They're a lot of fun to watch."

But the dream...that he can't skip. "Had a dream about that house, too," he says, quieter. "A real bad dream."

"You did? Fun! Alexander and I are going to the forest sometime soon. After I'm done at the farm some day. So we can find the tree frogs and watch them. We can't bring them home though. Luigi would eat them." Isolde shakes her head and smiled. Though the smile faltered and her expression grew serious when he says he had a dream too.

"What did you see, Itzhak?"

Itzhak rubs a hand over his stubbly face. He gets up, restless. "I saw him. The dead thing. When he was alive, and he talked to me. He..." Itzhak swallows and folds his long, lean arms. "Well, he killed his wife and little girl. He told me that since I came into his house and hurt him and took his kid, it's war between us." That makes his hazel eyes go flinty and distant. "We didn't take his kid. She wasn't his. But hurt him? Hell yeah, I hurt him. And I'll hurt him again."

Isolde listens closely, watching him get up. "So he is the bad thing. He turned into a bad thing..." Shaking her head and taking another sip of her cider before setting the bottle down. "I am going to burn the house down. Easton is going to help me." She looked up to him. "You can help too. We need to stop it from doing more bad things. And him."

Itzhak doesn't even think about it or hesitate or anything. He nods, his expression fierce. "Good. I'll help." Picking up his cider bottle, he drains it in a few long swallows. He takes a breath, licks his lips. "I'll show ya something else I can do." Then he tosses the bottle into the air.

It hovers there. Itzhak's humming under his breath, his eyes on the bottle. Slowly it begins to spin, first horizontal, then vertical, then forming a blurring sphere. A few drops of cider flick out. The bottle flies up--then drops neatly into Itzhak's outstretched hand.

Isolde's phone chimes but she ignores it for the moment when Itzhak says he's going to show her something. Those bright blue eyes go wide as the the empty cider bottle is caught by nothing in midair and starts spinning. Fascination written all over her features and she even gives a round of applause when Itzahk catches the bottle. "That was so cool! Can you show me how to do that? Do you just...do it?" She looks extremely tempted to try, but is fairly certain it would just end with a bottle falling on the floor and potentially breaking.

Instead she opts to check her phone real quck since she doesn't get many messages. There's a few moments of texting and her brow furrowing. The phone gets put away and she focuses up on Itzahk again. "A lady, Minerva, knows about the house. She says people have tried to burn it down before and it didn't work. I think we should still try. But she wants to get people together...she has some ideas too about how to fix it."

Itzhak grins, quick and brilliant, at Isolde and sketches her a little stage bow. "I mean, I can try to show you. I kinda just do it, yeah." Rather than sit back down, he remains standing, fidgeting with the bottle. "Minerva? I know her. She's a really sweet lady."

Isolde stood up too. "You do? I haven't met her. The meeting may be good..." But she really wanted to burn that house down. She probably still would try and drag him and Easton with her to do it. "We will see." Clapping her hands together. "For now, I would like to see this again...try it. Do you always do the music or the cars to focus? I heard you humming...what sort of movie soundtrack were you thinking about for the bottle? Something actiony?" So many questions. So little time.

"More kinda," Itzhak half hums, half syllable-sings, something lively, an Irish-sounding jig. He lightly slaps his thigh to the beat. As he does, the bottle shivers in his hand. "Like that, it's called Cape Breton style." He sets the bottle down on the table. "Hang on, let's try something." And he's striding across the room to get and open up a fiddle case.

Isolde nods her head a little to the beat, grinning a touch. "I like that tune." Looking over towards the fiddle case as it was opened. Clapping her hands together when he started playing. Rocking on her heels a little. "Good dancing music." She could just about envision people doing a riverdance sort of thing to the tune. Humming along with it herself. Music was always a good thing.

"I dunno if this'll work for you." Itzhak gets the fiddle out, working on tuning it swiftly. "It can't hurt to try, right? If it works, that's something you can use." He sets the fiddle under his chin and hikes his eyebrows at Izzy. "I'll play, and you just...listen. Listen and think about doing what you can do." When he plays, though, it's not the lively jig. It's something slower, sweeter.

"If it works, it works." Isolde agreed, watching him a moment and then looking over to the bottle. Her eyes close as he starts to play this tune. Trying to empty her mind and just let the music wash over her. Swaying just a touch, focusing her mind on the bottle. Picturing it and then trying to picture it lifting up off the table. She tried hard to hang on to that picture as her eyes opened and landed on the actual bottle. And there was a wiggle! She could feel the slight shift. Like her mind was reaching out to the bottle, but instead of trying to figure something out about it, she was trying to move it.

There was another little wiggle. "I did it!" She was grinning brightly, looking over towards Itzhak. "Thank you!" It wasn't much at all, but it was something. And it meant that there was room to learn.

Itzhak almost squeaks the bow across the strings, he's so thrilled when the bottle wriggles. "Aww, hell yeah, look at that!" He plays an excited little run. "You can do it!"

Isolde rocks on her heels a bit when he plays the faster little tune. "Just takes practice!" She wiggled a little and then leaned down to peer at the bottle again. "I moved you." She murmured, touching it lightly. Then looking over to Itzhak. "I will have to practice more. How long have you played the fiddle?" Moving closer to inspect his fiddle.