2019-07-15 - The Perfect Gift

Eleanor isn’t on the clock today, but she’s at Espresso Yourself doing some accounting. She’s settled at one of the small tables by the open front doors, where the sunlight washes in along with what little breeze makes it. It’s warm, it’s humid, and she’s combating all of that with an iced coffee. She’s tapping away on a laptop, wearing her glasses today as a concession to the ick factor of the sticky day. She’s in jeans and a white blouse with embroidered details at the hem and ends of the wide sleeves.

It's a work day for August, so he's wearing jeans and work boots as usual. The heat's forced him into a t-shirt, so he's settled for a Linnaeus Flower Clock shirt in white. He comes into Espresso Yourself and doesn't need to look about long to spot Eleanor, moves to her table as casually as he can manage. It's been a hell of a few days, and he looks like he could use a few extra nights sleep.

"Hey," he says, once he's a bit closer. He even manages to dredge up a tired smile.

Ellie looks up from her work at the address, and looks surprised to see August there. And momentarily panicked as she fumbles her glasses off. “Roen,” she greets with a broad smile. You’d think she’d use his first name now that they’ve agreed to go on a date. “Can I get you a drink?” she offers, because it’s her first instinct.

August's smile grows a bit at the fumbling, and he politely looks aside while Eleanor gets herself sorted.

"I'll grab one in a second, but thanks. Don't mind supporting a local business." His expression takes on an almost teasing note for a half second. Then he glances at her paperwork, back to her, and sobers. "Am I interrupting? Because I've got something for you, but, I can come by some other time if you're busy."

“Oh please interrupt. I hate working on the employee schedules,” Eleanor admits with a sheepish smile. “Something for me?” she looks surprised at that and gestures for him to sit. “You didn’t have to do that.” Her cheeks color ever so slightly, and Della and Kerry behind the counter exchange an amused look and some eyebrow waggles. They’ve never seen the boss all flustered like this.

August clears his throat, almost looks a little embarrassed. "It's nothing fancy," he admits, takes a seat. Aware of the attention of Eleanor's employees, he positions himself so his back is to them, blocking their view of what he pulls from his pocket as he sits. It's a Ziploc bag, inside which is another sandwich bag wrapped around a small stick covered in blood.

He lowers his voice. "There was something on the beach yesterday evening. And it wasn't a wolverine, a bear, nothing I could recognize. It, ah, felt," he gives her a significant Look when he says this, "unnatural." He slides the bag across at her so she can take a closer look.

Eleanor listens attentively, and her eyes widen with at the sight of the bag and its contents. Her brows go up and her lips twitch in a smile. “August Roen, you give the best presents. Tell me everything you remember,” she urges. She slides the bag over to herself, not opening it, but looking at it through the plastic first.

For a moment some of August's good humor returns. Sly, he says, "And here they say women prefer chocolates and flowers," bobs his eyebrows. The mood fades again as he recalls the previous night. He leans back in his chair.

"It attacked a kid and his dog. Kid was in shock but not injured. Dog... didn't make it." He grimaces, sparing her the details. "I'm not sure I can properly describe it. Kind of wonder if it wasn't camouflaged or...something like that. Dark fur, maybe, seven to eight feet tall. Tough, and fast. I broke at least a couple bones, and Rosencrantz nailed it with a boulder, and it took off." He rubs at his eyes. Just replaying the event for Eleanor is making him tired.

Eleanor frowns, looking especially sad about the dog. “Seven or eight feet tall? Jesus. They’re sending some big ones lately. Why is it always the kids they target?” She sighs and taps the ziplock bag a few times with a fingernail. “What is this from, specifically?” The idea of a camouflaged giant bad thing has her concerned.

"Should be its blood, from when Rosecrans hit it with the boulder. Might be some of the dog's too. Any idea if we can use this somehow? Maybe have a zoologist look at it, or..." God help him, he's going to say it. "...a ritual?" August pretends he doesn't feel totally crazy saying that, mostly succeedes. He's a trained scientist, and if not for all the things that happened in Bosnia which he's never been able to explain, he'd have long since convinced himself he was imagining it. But he knows it's real, had known for over twenty years. It drove him to live and work as far from anyone else as he could reasonably justify for ten years. And anyways, it's no crazier than anything else that's happened to him lately.

He frowns at something she says. "'They'? You mean this isn't just a case of wildlife getting influenced by..." He gestures, indicating, 'all of this'.

“I have a friend in town, well more of an associate,” she’s not even sure Alexander has friends, “who investigates a lot of these things as well. He’s especially knowing of the things that can, you know, kill us. I have some other data I was researching for him. I’ll bring it all and see what he makes of it.” Ellie puts the bag away into her laptop case, zippering the pocket closed. “As for influence or other, it could be both. I think some things here get corrupted by things over there. But there are also things that try to cross over where it’s thin. Kind of like how we can stumble into the Dream ourselves.”

It's clear from the uncertain look in August's eyes that Eleanor is, in fact, moving into territory he's not familiar with, or at least that he's never had a vocabulary for. He nods in regard to her associate. "I know a whole lot less about any of this than you, so, please feel free to do with it what you need to. We can show you where we saw it, if that'll help. Maybe there's more it left that I didn't notice."

He sits back in his chair. For a second he seems on the verge of launching into eleventy thousand questions, but then he gets up. "Let me get myself some coffee," he saids, and heads for the counter.

Eleanor watches him walk away, as do a few other patrons, because come on. She props her chin in her hand a little wistfully before realizing what she’s doing, courtesy of the giggle of Kerry behind the counter.

Della, the day manager, steps up to take August’s order with a grin. “I’m pretty sure the boss would shoot me if I charge you, so what can we get you, Mister Roen?”

August arches an eyebrow at Kerry, transfers that look to Della when she explains his money's no good, at least not for the cash register. He flicks his eyes back towards Eleanor without actually looking at her, sighs. He halfs turns so Eleanor can see him take out a five and a couple of ones and stuff them into the tip jar with a smug 'I still win' smile. Then he turns back to Della and says, "Grande cappuccino, and uh," he leans over to peer at the pastry case, "one of the butter scones."

Eleanor looks amused at his excessive tip, and mouths, ‘touche’ at him with a grin. His order is put together quickly amid the counter staff getting a look from the boss. They stop the teasing and get back to work.

Ellie sips her iced coffee and closes the laptop, slowly sliding her glasses back on because she can’t see very well without them. Normally she wears her contacts but that felt like a bad idea on such a sticky day.

August watches all of this with thinly veiled amusement. He accepts his coffee and scone with a nod and a thank you, returns to the table with Eleanor. "Alright. I'm gonna take you up on this 'don't let me do my work' offer." He sips from the cappuccino, sits back in his chair. "What...or, maybe, where is 'over there'. And when you said dream it sounded like you didn't just mean," he shrugs, "a dream." He raises his eyebrows.

“No, not just a dream, though they send us nightmares sometimes too,” Eleanor explains quietly. “Care to walk and talk? Not sure chatting about this here is a good idea. I’m not sure talking about them attracts their attention but, if it does, I’d rather not infest my shop.” She gets up, shoulders her bag, and takes her to go cup in hand, waiting for him at the door.

"Nightmares," August says, and looks away. For a second he looks as tired as he did when he first came in, though that stops the second she talks about her shop being infested. Non-plussed, he gets up, bringing his coffee and scone with. "Ah, sure," he says, plainly confused, even a little concerned. For all the world it hadn't occurred to him that random monsters in the dark and haunted houses that sent you nightmares wasn't the worst it could be.

At least it’s a pleasant day, humidity aside. Eleanor strolls out of the strip mall’s lot and onto a sidewalk to breathe in the summer air. “That’s better. I don’t know if it’s just paranoia or not, but I dislike talking about these things in enclosed spaces.”

She glances over at him and her smile goes wan. “I’ll tell you about my first experience with the Dream, and hopefully it explains things.” Her tone says that what she is going to tell him won’t be pleasant.

August surveys her as they walk, growing more concerned by the second. Not that he wasn't already concerned, but he's rapidly becoming aware that everything is a good deal more than he'd imagined (and seeing as his first real memory of involvement with all of this had been on the other side of the Atlanic, he can imagine quite a lot). He forces himself to eat his scone, if only so he's not having this much coffee on an empty stomach. (Also Cy has told him on more than one occasion that he gets bitchy when his blood sugar's low.)

He licks his lips, nods. "Okay."

Eleanor takes in a deep breath to steady herself, as this is the sort of crazy talk that sends most men running in the other direction. She internally braces herself for the cancellation of their date, and forges ahead, because she’d rather he be forewarned.

“I was born here, and I’d always sensed things a little weird here and there, but I think all kids do, no matter where they are and whether or not they glimmer. Children are just more open to seeing, hearing, smelling things we as adults get distracted from noticing. I had a best friend, Addie. We went to grade school together and entered middle school in the same class, because our last names were both in the Ls.” She sips her coffee and smiles tightly.

“Addie was kind and sweet and generous and the best friend I could have ever asked for. We’d been living in an apartment building, but when I was twelve, we moved into a house on Spruce. Our first real home. There was room for me, and for my soon to arrive baby brother. It wasn’t the biggest house, but it had two stories and a basement and attic. The basement was about ten degrees cooler in the summer, so Addie and I would sometimes sneak down there to play cards or barbies or whatever.”

August gives Eleanor sidelong glances between sips from his coffee and bites from his scone. She mentions a basement, and he has to swallow against a sudden wave of nausea. (Don't think of that basement, where you were buried and the trees with the bleeding skull flowers grew, don't, don't, don't.) He nods for her to continue.

Eleanor’s eyes go distant, like she is back in that cool, dim basement for a moment, so long ago. “There was just one bare bulb in the main area, where the washer and dryer were, and where we had stored our Christmas decorations and such. Mom had put a little card table down there with some folding chairs, and we sat at that and talked about boys and school and all the things young girls talk about.”

Her brows knit then, as one arm wraps around her midsection, almost protectively. “There were other parts of the basement we didn’t go into though. It was like we knew they were off somehow. An old room had the big old gas furnace and some things a previous owner had left: furniture covered up with drop clothes, cardboard boxes. And one day, we decided to investigate. We had a couple of flashlights and more bravery than we should have as we opened that door.”

She pauses at a little mini park with a couple of benches, and heads in there, settling down with a hand in her lap and the other on her coffee, making room for him beside her. “Addie pulled a cloth off one piece of furniture. It was a mirror, one of those big floor length ones, ornate and with a dark wood frame with scrollwork and etching and acanthus leaves. We could tell it was really old, the glass had those black edges from the silver nitrate and copper sulfate coatings oxidizing over the decades.” She shudders.

“We were posing in front of it, jostling for who was in front, when something reached out of the glass and pulled us in. Pulled us through, to the Dream,” Ellie says quietly, her skin going a shade paler. Any more and she’ll glow in the dark.

August sits next to her, leaves a polite distance between them in that middle ground of 'I'm not presuming but I'm not holding you at arm's length'. He finishes his scone, since his stomach's settled a fraction, has more coffee. "The...Dream," he says, emphasizing it like she's been doing. He looks around surreptitiously before asking, "It's--what, another world?"

“It’s different for everyone I think. Addie and I were in a forest. Woods. Dark and raining and lightning blasting across the sky. All the trees were dead, all the bushes were withered and the animals were just piled of bones. Addie, she was strong, her Glimmer, much stronger than I am. More like you,” Eleanor whispers, not for fear that anyone may overhear, but because her throat is too tight to speak louder.

“The thing there, it was a dying thing, I think it might once have been something beautiful. But now it was twisted and horrible. It was huge, and had hands and four legs with hooves, and arms that turned into antlers like the branches of a tree, and spikes along it’s back. It wanted to keep her, keep Addie, and make her fix his woods, forever and ever. She refused.”

The hand holding the coffee cup trembles slightly, and she sets the cup down beside her so as not to spill its contents. “It lifted her up and poured something from it’s...I don’t even know if it was a mouth, into hers. A dark, tar-like fluid that made her scream and gurgle. I grabbed her leg and pulled her away from it and set the thing’s leg on fire. It dropped her and we ran, ran back the way we came. The door appeared again, and we dove through it, out the other side of the mirror. Addie was still screaming. And I used the flashlight on the floor to smash the mirror glass. And then it was over. Or I thought it was.”

August watches Eleanor, a sort of sympathetic calm coming over him. "Jesus," he says. Now everything in the Murray house makes more--well, not sense, but this does put it into perspective. "Sounds more like a nightmare than a dream." He narrows his eyes. He picks up on that not being the end of her tale, and says, "So--things that happen to you there, they matter out here?"

Eleanor nods. “I think so, though I have no way to prove it. Addie had been healthy, kind, sweet, like I said. Within months of the incident, she became mean, cruel even. She hurt animals, she burned things. And then they discovered she was full of cancer. Lymphoma. Stage 4. It was eating away at her, withering her on the inside, just like that place,” she murmurs. “She died a year to the day we were taken.”

She doesn’t look at August, she’s afraid to see the judgement in his eyes. The way she saw it in her parents, who of course didn’t believe they’d been yanked through a mirror to another world, which poisoned Addie in body and soul. “That was when I started my research.”

August ducks his head a moment. "Damn," he says, runs a hand over his face. He murmurs, "And here I thought that nightmare was bad." He takes in a deep breath, lets it out slow. He regards her for a handful of seconds, long face drawn and sad. "I'm sorry, Eleanor, that...had to be an awful thing to go through. Especially at that age, when no one believes you about any damned thing." He fingers his coffee cup, eyes fixing on a random point on the bench. "Makes me wonder about some of the stuff I used to hear and see down in the tunnels. Maybe I wasn't just making it up." He has a drink, looks at her again. "Research to figure out what it was? So you could stop it?"

Eleanor nods slowly. “To find a way to fight it, maybe to close those doorways for good, and to help people affected by it,” she says, reclaiming her coffee cup and sipping from it. “I don’t have any mirrors in my place larger than a deck of cards. And even then, sometimes I can see those woods behind me in the reflections.” She looks over at him. “What you saw was probably real, something from the Dream, something that came through the Veil. Or you might have crossed into the Dream yourself. Your Glimmer is so strong, you don’t need to sleep to cross, like Addie didn’t.”

August grunts at the comment about mirrors. "Yeah I still can't go anywhere near a fucking hospital." He seems to regret saying it the second he has, hides behind a drink of coffee for a couple of seconds. When he's done pretending he didn't say anything, he frowns and looks her over. "I guess you're not as," he discards about five words before coming to, "obvious, as Rosencranz. Hell he's like a lighthouse. Is that what you mean?"

Eleanor nods. “You shine bright. I’m a lot dimmer. So I make up for that with finding the answers for people like you, August.” She cocks her head at the mention of the hospital, but she doesn’t push. “You’ve heard my story, I’ll be here to listen to yours when you’re ready,” she says quietly, reaching one hand to cover one of his lightly in solidarity.

"Make up for it?" August gives her a consternated look, softens it with a sigh. "There's nothing to make up for. We all work with what we've got. The fact that you've dedicated yourself to making sure that doesn't happen to someone else is plenty on its own." He huffs a humorless laugh. "Would have been a lot easier in..." His voice fades, and he bites his lip, glances down at her hand on his.

"It, ah...there's a lot to it. And I went through a whole bunch of therapy once the military discharged me, but I couldn't talk to any of the counselors about," he makes a face, "any of this." There's also the distinct impression he's not entirely ready to. He settles for, "It turns out that being able to tell when people are injured is a really bad thing to be able to do in a war zone. Especially when you're in a city actively under siege, and assigned to guard hospitals." His eyes meet hers again, and he smiles, rueful. This is, apparently, the short version.

“That has to be terrible. There’s no way to turn it off if you need to? To not sense the injuries?” A new subject for her research perhaps, how to control that Glimmer. Eleanor removes her hand, blushing a little.

August looks away when she removes her hand, rubs the back of his neck. Somewhat embarrassed, he says, "There is, just, nineteen year old me had no idea. Wasn't until after," the pause is just a little too long to indicate he's not avoiding something, "I was injured that I realized that was possible. But then," he leans back on the bench, raises an eyebrow at Eleanor, "feels like I'm not listening to people who need help. Bugs the shit out of me." He smirks, drinks the last of his coffee.

Eleanor smiles a little at the explanation. “So I’m not the only one with a penchant for wanting to help others? Nice to know.” Her lips quirk and she pushes her glasses up higher on her nose with a finger. “I wish I’d known you when you were younger. Maybe I could have helped.”

"You're being real generous to teenaged me, there's no guarnatee I'd have listened," August says, wry. "I could be a recalcitrant little prick." He studies her a time, seems to realize he's doing it and clears his throat. "It took a while to get it all under control. I ran off and joined the Forestry Service, got away from cities and people. That helped a lot. But then I drove through here. And I hired those two kids." Another heavy breath out. "I guess it's all downhill from here."

He's quiet a time, eyes wandering over the park, picking out details (they should really have planted these trees farther apart, they're competing). Eventually he looks at her again. "So you think we can find this thing? Send it packing?" He points at her. "Do not go for a walk on the beach right now after sunset by yourself."

“I admittedly don’t get out a whole lot. That incident when I was a kid left scars that aren’t visible. Asking you out was kind of a big thing for me,” Eleanor admits with an embarrassed expression. “Don’t...don’t feel obligated to stick to that either. I would totally understand if you didn’t want to.”

August gives Eleanor a truly confounded look, like she's just asked him which he would like more: World Peace or a bag of fresh kettlecorn from the boardwalk. (Kettlecorn, obviously--neither will last but the kettlecorn tastes good). "Wouldn't want to?" he says. He sounds as perplexed as he looks. "I can't think of a single reason you've given me to not want to. Hell," he gestures at her, "you actually have an idea about what all of this is, and, you agreed to help me find some random thing based on a blood-covered stick I randomly gave you."

He pauses to think over how that sounds, then clarifies, "What I mean is, the fact that you've got some things that've happened to you, and that you're wound up in weird shit, isn't a problem for me. For one thing, that'd be," he laughs, "hilariously hypocritical of me, I mean, considering. For another," he rests on arm on the back of the bench, props his head in his hand, "getting asked out is kind of nice. Don't think I'm letting you off that easy."

Eleanor is blushing again, her cheeks turning scarlet. “Well then, thank you, for not running screaming for the hills. I’ll try not to freak you out too often with tales of the weird, unless they’re timely warnings,” she promises.

"I'm not going to offer up the challenge of you trying to freak me out, but, I also don't mind you talking about it." August shrugs. "It's a thing you're doing, that's okay to talk about. I'll tell you if something's too much." He does that thing again, where he starts to say something, then seems to change his mind. "I should get going. Got a couple of appointments to get to." He sits up. "So when do we want to do this boardwalk?"

“How does Friday sound for you? I don’t have to cover any shifts at the shop that day,” Eleanor notes, rising and gathering her cup and bag. “But I should get back there now to finish up their schedules.” She smiles warmly.

"Friday works," August says, with the air of a man who will make it work, one way or another. He gets up to walk her back to the shop. "You want me to meet you there, or one of us picks one another up?"

"Why don't you pick me up at the shop, and we'll go from there?" Eleanor asks with a smile. And with that, the stroll to the cafe resumes.