2019-08-04 - Replacement Meal for Info

Since their picnic food was partially sabotaged by ants, raccoons, sinkholes, and a thunderstorm, August has prepared a new meal and brought it for a nice, cozy dinner. Huckleberry barbecue duck (it's summer, the barbecue is how you don't heat up the cabin), saffron rice (because saffron), sourdoug bread (okay that he bought but it's a local bakery), roasted asparagus, and for dessert, lemon curd tartlets. It was just as hard to make as the last one, and he can't wait for this damned bad luck to be over.

He rings the doorbell, tugs absently at his shirt and tells himself to not fiddle. Dark blue Henley, black jeans, brown boots. If Itzhak sees him he'll ask why he's dressed up.

Eleanor has been up to her eyeballs in research, which is why she isn't vulturing at the coffee shop today. Fortunately, she trusts her management staff to keep things running like clockwork there. She's still in her glasses because of the backorder on her contacts, and she's in a pair of denim shorts with a cute pale yellow peasant blouse. The doorbell chime has her blinking up from her computer. No one ever visits her. Did she forget to pay a bill?

The redhead pads barefoot to peek out the sidelight windows beside the blue-painted door, and her entire face lights up at the sight of August. She unlocks the door (that is a LOT of locks) and swings it open. "August!" she greets with a beaming smile.

"Hey," August says, smiling to see the glasses remain. He lifts up the canvas bag. "Replacement meal, if you're interested. No worries if you're busy, I can just drop it off. I did want to run something by you though." He clears his throat. "Of the, uh, local fauna sort." He raises an eyebrow to indicate he's not talking about mundane fauna.

"You really are the master of bringing wonderful presents aren't you? Food and weird stuff to look into? My idea of a perfect day." Eleanor grins and waves him in, closing up behind him. She moves into the kitchen to get some plates and utensils and napkins, bringing them to her dining table. The open floorplan of the space makes it seem bright and airy, even if you can't actually see out any of the windows. The light comes in at least.

August dips his head in a mock bow. "I try," he says, smile turning coy for a half-second. He follows Eleanor in, re-acquainting himself with the layout. Everything is in Tupperware like before. It's duck instead of dove, but the sauce is the same one. He sets the containers out on the table. "Sorry for dropping by unannounced, but I wasn't sure I'd be able to finish cooking all of this until right before I came in, and then the shop was busy as hell today."

"Oh, I don't mind too much. It's not like I'm ever up to anything embarrassing at home," Eleanor quips with an amused grin. "You already know I like bad horror movies and conspiracy theories, pretty sure catching me dancing around the house to 80s hits wouldn't surprise you." She works on dishing out the food onto two plates. "This really smells amazing. I know you love what you do, but you may have missed your calling. A wild game restaurant would have been right up your alley."

"Flatterer," August says, fondly. "Everything I hear about the restaurant business is it's brutal. At least with plants it's pretty straight forward, and the glimmer helps in ways there i don't know it would with cooking." Except now she has him wondering about that. Could you use glimmer to improve a meal somehow? He'll have to think on it, his approach has always been more practical than that.

"Dancing around to 80s wouldn't be the least bit weird. Who doesn't dance to music they like." He rests his hands on the back of a chair. "So, the weird thing. Itzhak and I, and a few others, ran across...some kind of...creature, at gray pond."

"A creature? Is it the thing there have been rumors about floating around town?" She settles into a chair and digs into the food, making happy sounds of approval. "I was thinking we were going to have our very own Nessie or something."

August sits once Eleanor has, eating in smaller bites as he talks. "One of them. This wasn't the thing we saw on the beach. It was kind of like a, ah..." He gestures with his fork, "a sailfish, but with all these tentacles, and eyes, and it," he makes a face, like he knows how this is going to sound, "...talked to us."

And Eleanor, who has lived here all her life and seen a ton of weird shit, doesn't even look phased about this impossible chimeric creature talking to them. She gets up and retrieves a pitcher of lemonade from her fridge and brings them glasses. "What did it say?"

Reassured by Eleanor's blase reaction, August soldiers on. "Well, it turns out, it's two of them. A pair of...fish-thing brothers, but their minds were placed into one body by a sorceress when they pissed her off." It's like right out of an old wive's tale and August is recounting it with complete seriousness. This is his life now. "One of them's a bit, ah, volatile. The other one's personable. We got them to agree to not cross over into our world but being bound up like that's probably making them unstable, unpredictable. So we were thinking, maybe try to find the sorceress, convince her to split them back up." He raises his eyebrows at Eleanor.

"A sorceress? Hm," Ellie sips her lemonade and he can almost see her mentally flipping through the card catalog of weird that resides in her head. She gets up and beckons him to follow her. She heads down the hall into the third bedroom, the one that is her research room. She moves to one of her filing cabinets.

"There can be a witch or self-styled sorceress somewhere in the Veil. That sort of thing is what you can expect to find over there. Fantasy things, nightmare things. I think some of the old wives tales, legends, and fairy tales are based on Dream ventures or accidental Veil jaunts way back when the world was non-technical." She flips through the files and pulls one out.

"I have a few incidents reported of witch-like things. A neighbor's cat can talk, remains of a satanic ritual in the woods, but nothing concrete." She hands him the file, slim as it is. "If there is a wicked witch of the Veil or whatnot, she'd likely be in the deepest edges of the Firefly Forest, over on the Veil side. That's where reality starts to bend and shift, so that's where she'd have the most power. And she'd need it. Merging two beings into one body? That would really put a drain on the old magical batteries. It'd be a while before she got back to full power."

August follows Eleanor into the room, making no attempt to hide that he's surveying it now that he has a chance. He joins her at the filing cabinet, accepts the file with a murmured thanks and starts flipping through it. He frowns, nodding. "Suspect it's a little, ah, wilder over there too." He's thinking of what Eleanor went through, but not just that: there's also what Itzhak's shown him, and what they saw when they peered through a little window Itzhak opened out back of the garden shop. Sure, a witch might be able to survive out there just fine, but the lot of them?

On the other hand, all they wanted to do was ask her to undo the spell. So maybe it'd be okay, for the short time period that would take. Maybe. He pauses to skip a newspaper clipping, shuts the file again. "Mind if I take this, just so I can pinpoint some areas to look? I'll bring it back soon as I have a map marked up."

Ellie pushes her glasses up on her nose and blinks owlishly at him. "Oh, no go ahead. I have it all digitally on the computer too. Read me off the number and color next to the incidents will you?" Each one has a color name and a 3 digit number beside it. She moves over to the map of Gray Harbor with all it's pins and flags and strings.

"Ah, yeah." Papers shuffle as August arranges them so it's easy to get the color and number. "We've got...blue, 443. Magenta, 921. Green, 715. And...magenta again, 601." He closes the folder, approaches the map with its intricate representation of Gray Harbor's oddities. Tilting his head, he says, "I assume this is to help you look at it topographically? So you can see if incidents have some sort of pattern?"

Ellie finds the corresponding pins in the map and hrms. "Yep, most of the incident happen at the borders of the Firefly Forest. So I'm guessing that is definitely her home turf." She looks over to August. "You need to be really careful if you go in there, especially going in deep. The deeper you go, the stronger the things from over there are, August. And you may shine like a miniature sun, but you will feel like you're eclipsed that far in."

"I am not going by myself," August assures Eleanor. "At least four us, maybe more. Itzhak being one of them." Speaking of miniature suns, his expression says. "And we'll definitely be careful." He folds his arms, tilts his head. He leans a hip against her desk. "Eclipsed? So...weaker?"

"You're human. And you'll be in a place that isn't meant for human habitation. Off balance. I'm not sure if your connection to your Glimmer will be weaker or stronger, but you may attract attention. Dangerous attention from very powerful things who don't glimmer, they burn with the veil-stuff that grants us our parlor tricks." Ellie grimaces. "Or that's the theory at least. Almost all of my information is second hand."

August nods, taking all of that in with a thoughtful, distant look in his eyes. "This is part of why we need some of us to go in there. So we can get some first hand information for you." He bobs his eyebrows, reaches out to stroke her hair, resting his hand on her neck. "We're gonna be careful. I promise you that. I wouldn't do something like this if I wasn't worried about, ah, our friend the pond guy hurting someone who reacts wrong." Wrong in this istance means loudly, with a lot of yelling and screaming.

Ellie gives him a warmer smile and leans into the touch. "I won't tell you not to go. You're doing good work, trying to protect people. It's not unlike my brother being a Fireman. Except you know, fires generally aren't sentient evil and whatnot. Though I guess sometimes they might be, over there." She ponders that and slides an arm around his waist.

"Over there I guess anything like that's possible," August says. He's also wondering if sometimes fire on this side isn't sentient. Considering the things he's seen now...

Well, he's not going to say that. Hopefully it won't ever turn out to be true. Instead, he pulls Eleanor closer, rests his forehead on hers. "I appreciate it. I know it has to be hard, watching the rest of us use our power and hearing about us going over there. I mean, considering."

"Sometimes. Sometimes I'm just content to be the Oracle of the Bat Family." Comic book references? How deep does the nerdy go? Eleanor rests against him and seems content. "But I'm glad someone is doing things I can't quite bring myself to."

August is many things, but conversant in comic books isn't one of them. He gets the gist of what she means, though. "S'okay. Not everyone has to be out there, diving into the unknown headfirst armed with not much. Not everyone should be, really. We need people back here to anchor us, after all. Keep our heads straight. Someone to bring the stories back to." He dips his head and kisses her, brief and sweet. "How about the rest of our food, huh? Then we can," he shrugs, "go for a walk, or, be lazy and watch something on TV. Whatever." He strokes back a strand of her hair. "Or I can get out of your hair and let you get back to whatever you were doing." A rueful smile; he knows he shouldn't keep her from anything important, even though he wants to.

Ellie blushes at the kiss. "Food first. Then a walk sounds nice. I need some fresh air to work well anyway," And she really doesn't want him to go so soon.