2019-07-29 - Unbowed

Steelhead has picked up business in the past week or so...especially since bad luck has caused a run of minor disasters with the town's cars. Bad luck has also made it frustrating as hell for Itzhak to work on them, but really, 'frustrated as hell' is how he lives his life. Two vehicles, one a fancy duelly and one a more modest Subaru hatchback, sit in the dirt 'parking lot'.

Bay One is open to the pleasant warm, drizzly sunset. Itzhak's inside, standing on a ladder, messing with something on the ceiling. A heavy bag lies on the cracked concrete of the floor. Also, Lemondrop is out, slowly sifting herself around in a heap.

A second hatchback pulls up, this one running like a dream. Mostly because August just had it serviced, and the bad luck has left his car alone thus far. (After the fiasco which was his picnic date with Eleanor he's going to call it even.) He doesn't park among the cars being worked on, instead taking a spot a little further onto the grass.

He slips out; it's a jeans, boots, and t-shirt kind of day, but at least the shirt's a simple solid dark purple. "Hey," he says once he's closer. He gives Lemondrop a little mental hello, the slightest brush of a greeting, eyes Itzhak's workload. "It usually this crowded for you? You might need to hire someone."

Lemondrop lifts her head and about a foot of her neck, tongue going flicky. Her reptile mind replies, in its way, soft and brief. The soft scratch of her belly scales on concrete is just audible.

"I can do without ya sarcasm, Roen," Itzhak grumbles, not looking around. Oh, someone's in a good mood. He finishes wrenching on what he's embedded into the ceiling, which turns out to be a crossrail track, presumably for the heavy bag. Climbing down, he finally upnods to August. "...Was that sarcasm? I can't fuggin' tell anymore. Help me lift this, would you?"

August, on the other hand, is in a very good mood. He stuffs his hands in his pockets, grins with wry amusement. "I'm not actually sure," he says. Yes, his mood is too good, it's going to get him into trouble. "Yeah, sure." He moves to help Itzhak with the bag, peers up at the ceiling. "What's this for?"

Itzhak eyes August suspiciously as they haul the heavy bag into place. "'Kay, hold it right there--" he stretches up to clip it to the chain depending from the track. "Okay, got it." K-chk goes the chain as they let it take the bag's weight. Itzhak stands back from it, considering it with a critical eye, then nods and folds up the ladder. Rather than thank August or do anything gauche like that, he says to him, "What're you grinnin' about? You get laid?"

August sobers some, rolls his eyes at Itzhak. "What, I can't be in a good mood without getting laid? Please, I'm not twenty-five, I'm entirely capable of--" He gives up, waves a hand. "Whatever. No, Mr. Town Gossip, I didn't get laid." There's a word missing from the end of that sentence; it hangs in the air, but he pointedly doesn't say it.

Instead, he looks up at the bag they've hauled into place. "What's that for? You planning on doing some boxing training, something like that?"

Itzhak snorts. "I guess I deserved that, what with narcing out Figgy and Inch to you." He pushes the bag to see how it floats around on the rail. "Yeah. I gotta keep in practice hitting things. Don't get to start shit in this town nearly enough." He's joking...kind of. "And the gym in town is owned by the Kellys. Not real sure I wanna go visiting." That same word is missing: yet. For very different reasons. "Anyway, what's up?"

August grunts about the gym being owned by the Kellys. He knows as much about them as anyone else who's been in town for a few years does (that they roll with Felix) which is enough reason to not go there as far as he's concerned. But plenty of people swear by their various self defense classes, Eleanor included, and he's a fan of minding his own business when it comes to that sort of thing.

"Mostly just wanted to see how you're doing. You know, considering." He raises an eyebrow. 'Considering you went on some kind of journey in the Veil and came back with unicorn hair and way more powerful' his expression says.

Itzhak steadies the bag with one hand. He bows his head, thinking.

"I'm not gonna lie to you, Roen. I was pissed the hell off that nobody believed me." This...this is tough-guy talk for 'I was actually literally crying'. Itzhak sighs, and goes to crouch to pick up Lemondrop. "C'mon, baby girl--oof, ya heavy." He rises with loops of snake draping from his arms. Lemondrop tucks her head on his shoulder and flicks her tongue in his ear, making him squawk. "Augh, stoppit." She wraps around his hips and he has to grab her like she's pants that are falling down. The whole scene makes it obvious that having a 15-foot long snake has certain struggles. There's just so much of her, everywhere.

August sighs, nods. "Yeah. I'm sorry, if you felt like I didn't. I was just trying to keep the two of them from freaking out on us." Which totally utterly and completely didn't work, at all. Go team. "I did then and I still do believe you. And I think they will too. You know, once they've had some time to think about it, and talk with you about it some more." He hides an implicit suggestion that should happen in plain sight.

The sight of Itzhak's struggles with Lemondrop makes him laugh, which he tries to hide behind his hand. "Need some help there?"

Itzhak grunts, "Technically you're supposed to have one person per five feet of snake. I'm living dangerously. Sure, c'mere, just grab a hunk of her." He wasn't kidding. Lemondrop is heavy. She's room-temperature, not warm. Muscular, with a terrible strength in her, but she has no interest in using it on a human being. Instead she just looks around and flicks her tongue at August a lot ("He smell good?" Itzhak asks her, amused) and occasionally shoves her head under Itzhak's arm as if she wants to burrow.

Itzhak piles her into her enclosure with August's help. It's like wrestling the world's largest most passive-aggressive plate of spaghetti. Itzhak whoofs, once he's got her latched in. "Use some a that," he says, directing August to hand sanitizer mounted on the wall like in a doctor's office. He does it himself, absently. "I talked to Irvriya." Itzhak just picks up where he left off. "She said I oughta remember Igs went through something pretty nasty. Well, she didn't put it like that. But that's what she meant."

August oofs as he accepts a portion of Lemondrop and helps negotiate her ponderous, uncooperative body into the enclosure. "I guess you could use your power to lift her, but it might be risky. For her, I mean." Here he is, the guy who couldn't move a damned piece of glass the other day, suggesting Itzhak just float his python into place.

Scrubbing his hands with the hand sanitizer, he says, "Is that...Minerva?" and squints at the unfamiliar name. He doesn't wait for a confirmation, just nods in agreement. "He told me about it, and...look, it's his story to tell you, but I pointed out to him, he's never talked to you about that, and it's not fair for him to expect you to get where he's coming from like--" Like Itzhak's some kind of psychic.? Except he is. Okay, well. Speaking of phrasing August can't use anymore. "Like you have any way of knowing. For what it's worth, he seemed to get what I meant. So the next time you two talk, that might work out better."

"Minerva, yeah. That's her first name, Irvriya. She says nobody can pronounce it, but I can." Itzhak, damn him, follows right up on what August doesn't say, "What, like I can read his mind?" and snickers humorlessly. He waves August over to where he's actually set up a halfway nice sort of faux waiting room, on a big rug. There's a couple secondhand arm chairs and a slightly battered coffee table. "We both know we can't read nobody's mind, right? I tried. Only works when we're meeting in the middle. Kinda helps me sleep at night, to be honest. You want something to drink?" He sure is dancing around talking about this. But he's trying.

"I've never tried, but it's kinda like healing ourselves. It's always felt like something I couldn't do, like-- trying to flap my arms and fly." August pauses, frowns. "Come down to it... if you could lift something sturdy enough, and your own weight, could you fly?" He tilts his head, studies Itzhak like he's trying to imagine the specifics. A second later he gives up, waves a hand. "Anyways. Sure."

He moves to sit in one of the chairs. "Irvriya," he says, trying it on for size. His accent's off, but that's hardly a surprise. "Sounds a little like the languages they spoke in Bosnia." None of which he ever learned, much to his regret. He leans back in the chair, crosses his legs. As he usually does, he waits to see if Itzhak will circle back to the topic on his own. He knows better than to force it.

"If you kind of say it like an old Jew kvelling about something - that's being proud - it helps. Irvriya!" Itzhak demonstrates, complete with hand gesture swooping out from his chest. "Get the swing of it right. Yiddish is like that, got tempo."

Whether or not August wants a bottle of water, he's getting one, as Itzhak pulls one out of the minifridge and tosses it over. He's so restless, not settling to anything, tapping his own bottle of water against his palm. "Nah," he says, eventually. "He didn't tell me anything really. He said a couple kids we knew from the old neighborhood got killed. One, killed. One maybe killed, he doesn't know. That's it. I didn't want to push him on it. He's so fucking slippery, if he doesn't wanna tell you something, trying to make him is like trying to nail down a fish." Itzhak half-sits on the arm of one of the chairs. "He's always talked circles around me. I didn't wanna push him for his own safety." There's an ironic twist to his mouth. "I...have done a shit job being his friend, over on this coast. On the other coast, too, if we're being honest."

August listens to Itzhak say the name again. "My dad's family, some of his older relatives would talk like that. Sort of...a singing lilt to it." He thinks it over a bit more, tried again. "Irvriya." Well, closer. A shame he never learned Norwegian.

He catches the bottle without incident (by some small miracle), cracks the cap and has a sip. "Thanks. I'm sure at this point I don't need to tell you this, but it was bad, what happened to him over there." In the Veil, he means. "That's why he acted the way he did. Reacted, really." A sigh, then, "Look, you're both rebuilding your lives. You've both been through some shit the other doesn't know about. Try to have some patience with him, and yourself." A rueful smile. "Patience being one of your strong suits, and all."

Itzhak rubs patterns into the condensation on the bottle. "He was a good goddamn driver," he mutters. "We made a good team. Also, he'd put up with me. Guy's never lacked for friends, and here's me, just about the biggest prick I know. He never seemed to care that I'm a lousy fuckin' friend. So...yeah. It hurt, when he didn't wanna hear about the Veil. He always wanted to hear about things. Never occurred to me that was one thing he wouldn't."

He hesitates another long few moments, then lifts his eyes to August. "I been meaning to ask you. That hair she gave me. She gave it to me so I could make a bow with it."

August makes a low sound. "It was a long...long time, before I could talk to anyone I knew about Sarajevo." He sighs. "You almost don't want them to know, really. That way you can pretend like everything's okay. Like whatever it was didn't tear a big fucking hole in the person you used to be. Otherwise, you have to accept that you can't get everything, maybe even most, of what you used to have back." An absent shrug, then, "Just, try to remember that you're coming from radically different experiences that aren't going to match up. That doesn't mean either one is wrong. It just means none of this is cut and dried." His mouth twitches in faint amusement; no kidding it's not cut and dried. Yet some things bear repeating.

He shifts in the chair, his brows going up. "A bow, like for your violin?" Now he actually smiles. "You are going to tell me what happened over there, right? Because I'm kind of dying to know."

Itzhak pulls a little grimace. "Yeah. There's...a lot I can't talk about. You get it. Of course, you would. It's funny, isn't it, that you get to thinkin', Christ, if only I was the only person in the world who had to go through that. If only I had it worst. I could take it, if I was. If nobody else ever had to. So it really fucks you up when you hear from people you care about that you ain't."

He gusts a sigh and ruffles his curls, forward and back, making them stand up. Then, at August's vivid curiosity, he smiles back. "Oh hell yeah, I'm gonna tell you. Or, you know, I could show you. I showed Irvriya. I went to her so she could check me over, make sure everything I remember seemed okay. She said it was." His smile turns wry. "It felt the same letting her in as you. Maybe that's....just how I do it. Things might get awkward real fast if that's how it's going to be. Anyway! My bow. For my violin. That's how I got out of there, was music. Music seems to be how I do things. I had to imagine it then, without any instruments, but just think if I could play my fiddle with a unicorn-hair bow!"

August nods, sighs with mild regret. "Eh, how's that one story go? 'I've been down here before and I know the way out'?" He shrugs, but the potential melancholy gives way for a droll little smile. "Same as with me, huh?" There's a glint in his eyes, a guess he's making. He doesn't say it, though.

"Maybe that means you only do that kind of thing with certain people. Which isn't a bad idea anyways, considering." He can't help a small laugh, imagining the sheer level of awkward this could lead to. "Now you just have to make sure you really understand where you stand when them. There's worse things to need to know."

His eyes narrow as he considers the concept of using music (from an honest to God unicorn hair bow) to better direct the magic. "I mean, if nothing else, it'll look good." He scratches his beard. "What kind of wood do you need for a bow?"

Inevitably, Itzhak tinges red across the bridge of his big crooked nose. He flicks his fingers at August in a dismissive gesture, but he's kind of smirking.

"Brazilwood. The best kind comes from the heart of brazilwood, a piece big enough that the rings can lay right along the stick. That's called pernambucho, that type. It's incredibly goddamn expensive, because them trees, there just aren't many of 'em old enough to have that much heartwood. But." Itzhak spreads his hands at August. "I sorta thought, that's your bag, right? Maybe you could grow a tree? Maybe somehow between us we could make some other wood, or even carbon fiber, act like pernambuco?"

August responds to that dismissive gesture with a smirk of his own, though he lets the topic lie. For now. Now it's time to talk shop.

He toys with his water bottle, has a drink. "Yeah, that probably takes hundreds of years to get them to that stage, and they're losing those to deforestation left and right." He considers the thought of changing the nature of another wood instead, turns it over in his mind. "Maybe," he says, finally. "Carbo fiber might be harder for me, but another wood I might be able to do. Especially something related, or similar, that's easier to get--maybe, I don't know, pink ipê, or Massaranduba. I'd need a sample, just a little bit, of some pernambuco. Think we could find a piece? Nothing much, a little," he holds his fingers about two inches apart, "chunk would be fine. Maybe a music store would have some. Or if they have a bow made from it, I could have a look at it." Not as ideal as having a piece to refer to, but a possibility. "Growing a tree would take even me a while, but altering heartwood from something else could be faster." He gets up, starts walking around the rug. "We should find some things to practice on, maybe."

Itzhak springs to his feet, face alight. "We oughta be able to get our hands on a chunk of it, a trimming or something too small to use. You can change the physical properties of the wood? Oh man, OH MAN. ...We might have to go into Seattle, that's where the pro-level shops are, but hell, why not? I'll call around, see where we can handle a pernambucho bow, too." He starts pacing around, waving his hands as he talks. "I wish I could describe to you just how amazing one of those bows feels. Like driving a perfectly tuned high-performance car. Fuckin' glorious."

August considers the idea of changing the wood's actual properties. "I think I can," he says. His brow furrows. "But I'll need to try on a few other types, just to figure out the theory. And a trimming would be plenty." He's already working through the progression. Plenty of pine, madrone, fir, and spruce to test on. If he needs something closer, they can see about ordering a chunk of pink ipê. Enough for a bow shouldn't break the bank, once he has a method worked out.

He watches Itzhak get animated about this, smiles to see it. "I hope you know how to string it, because that's way out of my league." He scratches his beard. "Think it'll be different somehow? Or just a really amazing bow?" Of course, maybe it's enough to be a really amazing bow, made of hair from a unicorn in the Veil. Who cares if it's actually, functionally different.

"I don't!" Itzhak says. Exclaims, really. Exclaims in glee, grinning, wild-eyed. "I'm gonna LEARN. I mean, sure I could have a professional do it, but that ain't the point. The point is I make this. With my own hands. I know I can figure it out. I can step between worlds. I can handle making a bow." He strides over to the heavy bag and gives it a whack.

Such an unfamiliar expression on his face: optimism. A hunger for the future and for what he can do with it.

August can't help but feel some of that optimism. It's an infectious thing, and small wonder, given how little of it Itzhak's had in his life until, well, a couple days ago. "That sounds like we need to get you some practice material too. Plain old horse hair's probably not hard to get, especially if it's average quality so you don't need to worry about making mistakes while you learn." Something August can appreciate: undertaking a new project.

He moves to stand on the other side of the bag. "So. About what happened over there." He can't deny it, he's dying to know.

"I can even practice with nylon hair." Itzhak can't resist socking the heavy bag, he's so keyed up. The energy has to come out somehow. Whap! Whap! WhapwhapWHAP!

Dude's got a hell of a left jab.

He braces his hands against the bag, leans to the side so he can see August, grinning at him. "Her name's Zayith. That means olive in Hebrew. I fell over there on accident, right? And everything was...kind of the same, ish? Not exactly, but kinda close, but like it's two hundred years from now and the forest grew back. She was in a person shape, because these other guys stole her horn. So I told her I'd help her get it back if she helped me work some of this stuff out. We tracked 'em down, had a little tussle--" this is Itzhak-speak for 'fought like the championship was at stake', "got her her horn back. Meanwhile she put 'em in a vise and got them to agree not to hunt her people no mores. Look, just..."

Stepping around the bag, he holds his hands out to August in invitation. "Link up. I want to show you."

August watches Itzhak at the bag. He can't help but wonder if the fighting is a thing he chose to learn, or had to learn. "Might even make a few you can donate to the school, for little kids to learn with."

His expression shifts to one of intense focus as Itzhak starts giving details. Under any other circumstances, he'd be reluctant to share memories with someone, but his curiosity outweighs his hesitation. And hadn't he effectively done this when Itzhak had been struggling the other night? Not quite the same, no so explicitly, and yet.

He steps forward, tucking the water bottle under an arm and resting his hands lightly in Itzhak's. "Alright. Show me what you've got."

"That's how I learned in the first place. Through a program for at-risk kids. They paid for a violin, had volunteer instructors. Well, it didn't keep me outta prison, but it gave me something I could go back to once I was out." Itzhak wraps those long nimble calloused fingers around August's, smiling at him a little nervously. "Okay."

Suddenly he looks like an eager kid instead of an ex-con with a lot of rough years behind him.

He breathes out, closes his eyes. Then--it's no less intimate, but quicker, and more like jumping off a cliff into a clear turquoise sea.

The whole adventure spools out before August, in color more vibrant than real life. All five--no, six--no, seven!--senses are rainbows of sensation, overwhelming. He gets to witness the raccoon stealing Itzhak's bow (and Itzhak's enveloping fury and outrage over it), helping Zayith, falling a little in love with her at first sight. She was so proud and defiant and vulnerable and beautiful. Their raid on Kor's house, and the ensuing rumble where Itzhak flexed his powers, both the ones he knew and the ones that bloomed out of nowhere. The way he and Zayith got her horn back, and she changed into her true shape, and Itzhak fell more in love. Finally, how Zayith brought him to the thin point in the Veil, and how he struggled to grasp the way home...and how music brought him there.

He lingers over Zayith permitting him to cut some of her tail for his bow. Which unavoidably reminds him of how turned on he got riding her, which embarrasses him, knowing August is watching, but he doesn't put those memories away. He shows them on purpose, as if reassuring himself that they're nothing to be ashamed of.

Eventually, the memories settle down, and his clean, sharp kythe voice comes through. <<So that's it.>>

In truth, August doesn't mind the intimacy all that much, which is evident with how easily he accepts the plunge into the ocean of memories to find the right ones. He spent a decade hiding in the forest avoiding people. It was well past time he got over that.

August wanders through the memories as he would a house, with Itzhak pointing out important parts of various rooms and their contents. He'll glance into a nother room and wander in there instead, only for Itzhak to direct him back to the next thing he wants to show. He gradually assembles the overall thread of what happened; his presence on the link warms with a smile as he sees just how smitten with this unicorn Itzhak was. Well, and who can blame him? Not August. No note of teasing for Itzhak's obvious reaction to riding her, either, just a note of 'ah, young love'.

Once the memories settle August lingers like that, replaying what he's seen in his mind (and so in a way making them echo between the two of them, with a touch of his own perception). <<It looks like here. ...sort of. Only not. Like it's an echo, almost. The further away it gets, the less like the original it is.>> He's fascinated by the Veil and what he's seeing. <<It's wild.>> He doesn't mean 'crazy' or 'cool', which is clearer in the link than it would be if he said it out loud. He means it's a wilderness of sorts. Unbroken by man's machinations. Which also means it's as dangerous as it is beautiful, and explains why Itzhak, Ignacio, and Eleanor could have such different experiences in the same place. At least to August.

<<It's wild.>> Itzhak slowly opens his eyes, looking dazed and pleased. He studies him, then brings August's fingers to his lips to kiss them quick and delicate. Another surge of embarrassment happens in the kythe immediately and Itzhak lets him go. <<Uhh...sorry. Little impulsivity there.>> Whew he turns red. <<Anyway. >> His voice is so clear now, his kything comes almost as easy as thinking one's own thoughts.

<<It's wild, and it's beautiful, and yeah it's dangerous, and I know there's worse places than that. Way, way worse.>> Itzhak picks his water bottle back up to drink from it and try to cool his blush. Conveniently he can drink and talk at the same time. <<There's places there that people have made evil, just like here. But you get it, right? It's not a bad place just because it exists.>> His conviction rings down the link. This is why he lost his shit in front of everybody. He couldn't tolerate the beauty of his experience described as a lie by Ignacio and Finch.

August blinks at the kiss to his fingers. He goes very still, relaxes when Itzhak withdraws. Speaking of complicated. He takes a drink of water, turns his attention to something less complex, for example, <<No, it's not. Not any more bad than-->>

He thinks about it without meaning to; Mt. St. Helens, once a beautiful landscape, suddenly a place of smothering ash and mud, laid to waste by the simple course of nature. And in the aftermath, life struggling through again. Even though the scale of the destruction was unbelievable, there was no evil there, unlike

--land mines and snipers, tanks rumbling in the distance and shells screaming by overhead, someone screaming as--

August shoves that memory aside forcefully. No, if anything, the siege was no doubt exactly what the poisoned areas of the Veil are like. (This makes him wonder, what did the siege do to the Veil there? God, he hopes no one's fallen into it, it must be horrific.)

He shakes his head, drinks some water to clear his thoughts. <<It's just natural, for there to be dangerous shit. Our own world is dangerous. Hell, landslides kill people in the back country all the time.>> Yes. A safer kind of thing to think about. Avalanches.