2019-12-14 - Fill Me In!

Its been a few days since the charity event. Abitha and Kyle had been in a fine rotation. It was understandable, Sparrow probably had a lot going on with getting the event wrapped, items passed out, whatnot. Even still, it was going to be her next shift back. She was going to be closing after relieving Kyle...

And when she came in, Abitha would be standing by the counter, tapping it agitatedly. Not two steps away, Kyle stands, bolt upright, hands at his sides, at attention like some pitiful soldier trying to show a drill sergeant nothing that would get him pushups. It was no secret Abitha terrified him, and no one really knew why he stayed. Still, he stands there, barely breathing, eyes front, million yard stare. Abitha leans on the counter, tapping away at it with a pen in an seriously unfocused state, expression somewhere halfway between impatient and emotional meltdown.

Finals week. In addition to handling the bulk of the administrative overhead for the charity event, Sparrow's been eyeball deep in finals. She probably should be spending her Friday night celebrating, rushing headlong into holiday break with some friends and bottle or two of tequila, but when one makes a habit of overdoing it, coming into work at a fairly quiet shop counts as a legitimate breather, and the redhead is no joke grateful for this entirely justifiable pause between school and socialization. Sorry, guys, gotta work!

"Aww," she croons, probably toward Kyle, as she heads in, backpack still slung over her shoulders. Today, she wears a black sweatshirt that reads GAME OVER CONTINUE? in a blocky white font with YES and NO on her right and left arms respectively over a white button-down shirt with cuffs folded up over the ends of the sweatshirt's sleeves. Jeans, worn black boots with aquamarine laces. It's a look. "She's legally not allowed to bite you while you're on the clock," she assures her terrified coworker. "That's why you gotta bolt fast as you can as soon as you clock out." That joke doesn't really get the delivery it deserves given the concerned look she angles toward Abitha. Who looks like she might actually bite someone today. "Uh. Everything alright?"

This was literally the thing she was waiting for and it isn't until Sparrow actually asks her a question that Abitha's eyes pop to her in sudden recognition. She straightens up, the simple white v-neck now visible, worn with simple light-colored jeans. She was actually wearing glasses today. Big ones. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, with the front bangs twisted and pinned up sloppily just to keep it out of her face. She doesnt talk to Sparrow immediately. Kyle had started to looked relieved, at the possibility his torture had come to an end and also someone was being somewhat nice to him...

"Kyle. I'm extending your shift." Abitha's tone brooked no arguement.
"Aww, but my friends and I are supposed to play Overwatch tonight." He begins to whine.
"No one will miss you." Abitha responds without even skipping a beat. She had been staring at Sparrow. She holds up a hand and crooks a finger at the red head. She didn't act like a boss with Sparrow. Ever. This was weird.

Abitha turns and leads the way into the back room, the work area where Abitha sometimes did soldering and hand repair of the old systems. But what she hadn't shown Sparrow before was the locked door that led up to her living space, where she'd lead her now.

Sparrow stares, wide-eyed, until Abitha's back is turned. Like maybe she had turned into some big scary predator overnight. Kyle, then, is flashed an apologetic look and offered an assurance of, "I'm sure it's nothing. We won't be long. You'll be tanking their rankings in no time." Affectionate, really, particularly when paired with the reassuring smile she offers him when she finally does as instructed and starts toward the back. Lead up to the loft, she teases, "If there's a pool of jello up here, I gotta tell ya that I only fight for charity, so unless you're dropping a couple grand for Make-a-Wish or something..."

Abitha glances back wide-eyed, the seriousness of her expression gone in the brief moment of panic remembering that whole thing. A hand is immediately clapped to her forehead, flashing through disgust and embarrassment as well.

"What? No! Ew! I mean.... Not Ew at you, just... No, not me." She has to take a breath, calm, center, "I need to talk to you about whatever the fuck went on that night!" The apartment was a weird, Seattle style mix of hipster, tidy, and gamer culture, a comfy looking place. She moves over to the kitchen first, rolling out the bottom drawer of the modern looking fridge. It was filled with hard ciders and sours, local stuff. She grabs herself a Whitewood and leaves it open, waving to Sparrow to pick one. She'd soon move to the big cushy sectional and flop into it, grabbing a bottle opener off the coffee table, one hiss-clink away from her first taste of the booze she'd otherwise avoided today.

"So like... Uh... You did something... And some girl said that was normal around here?" Mac looks supremely anxious as she breaches the subject.

"It's totally ew," Sparrow assures with a snort of laughter and an easy smile below a little scrunch of her nose. Whatever else she might have to say on the general ickiness of jello wrestling doesn't make it out, the what the fuck from Abitha sidelining her off into confusion. Which paints itself very plainly across her face as she slips her backpack off and leaves it near the stairs. With a contented, "Oh!" which distracts her from the strangeness at hand, she snags one of the sours and closes up the fridge, cracking it open before she settles down not too close to her boss while she's acting so very weird.

"I did... a lot of things?" the redhead counters, still not quite sure what they're talking about. "I've figured out that we're not talking about jello? But that really hasn't helped me narrow it down. What's going on?"

Abitha takes a fortifying pull from her cider before setting it down in a coaster the shape of a pixelated space invader. None of the coasters matched, but all seemed to be marked with gaming convention logos from up and down the coast.

"No.... Fine... Probably just easier to do this..." Abitha turns in her seat, drawing her legs up into a folded position beneath her. She takes a deep breath and attempts to calm her mind and center, shaking her hands and wrists out. She brings her hands together, palms pressed flat, fingers in a somewhat praying shape. Slowly, she begins to pull her hands apart, brows furrowed, concentrating. It would likely be very obvious to Sparrow what she was about to do as she began to glimmer.

And as her fingers part, small forks of electricity begin to crackle and spark between them. They were small things, but unmistakable. Abitha's eyes open again and she drops her hands to grab for her cider, quick to grab another drink. She's watching Sparrow with wide eyes, seeming way more afraid of the reaction she may get than someone should when they have zappy powers.

Sparrow, meanwhile, has barely tasted her beer after opening it, though the can makes for a mighty fine anchor as she stares at Abitha, black brows drawn down in a manner which very clearly states: yep, still confused. Until those very first sparks begin to flit between Mac's palms. That right there resolves it pretty clearly, features smoothing out and gaze sinking down. It takes her a few seconds, about the time required for that cider to see another swig, before she looks up again, shrugging one shoulder unevenly. "It wasn't anything like that?" she offers uncertainly. "I didn't hurt her. Or anyone. Just kinda... I dunno. Things weren't going well for me, so I nudged the odds in my favor a little." Whatever that means. Like it's no big deal. Nevermind that it's her turn to take a long pull from her beer. Extending a finger from her can to point at Abitha, she says, "Probably best not to do that much."

"Yeah, all super new information to me. Like, sometimes I can read stuff off people or things, which is totally weird, like a guy was attracted to me and I didn't know how to process that, but another guy had a super sweet memory on his headphones of relaxing with his buddies and playing games..." And it was clear Abitha was in full anxious rambling mode, which she catches by taking a heavy gulp of her drink. "Like... I don't know what I'm doing or why I'm like this and I thought I was a monster and now I'm just unloading on you... But apparently that girl Lyric said there are a ton of people like us in this town and I don't know how to process that..." Abitha still kind of had that wild-eyed quality to her, looking down at her bottle, trying to breath easy.

For as good as Sparrow is at talking, she certainly knows when to just shut up and listen. Now definitely seems to be one of those times, wide brown eyes kept on Mac as she lets all of those details out. "Alright," comes at the end, a placeholder to assure she's been heard even if it's gonna take a moment to process and figure out how to approach all of that. "First? My first experience was a couple years ago. Lived here all my life and kinda always knew it was weird, right? But it's only been the last couple of months that I'm really seeing how weird that is." She holds up two fingers, marking her second point even if she doesn't count it off. "That's because we live on a thin point between this world and another one, called the Veil, which kinda just... lays over top of this one. And sometimes we stumble across without knowing. And sometimes we get pulled somewhere even deeper when we sleep. But it's that proximity to somewhere else that lets us..." Her empty hand lifts, fingers given a little wiggle. "Wanna say you get used to it, but." No, you really, really don't.

Abitha gets that sort of blank, fugue style look as Sparrow drops the whole lot of crazy on her. Gulp. Slowly, her head begins lifting and lowering in a almost robotic imitation of a nod. Yup, this all made perfect sense. Except it didn't.

"But... My first...wasn't here. I was in Seattle..." She again scrunches her face, having to correct with a stranger amount of embarrassment, "First like... Power use... I guess. Whatever we wanna call it." She corrects quickly. She stares down into her bottle, deep in thought. "How do you know all that, anyways? And why isn't there people like, recruiting and filling people in? It was like all but one dude at that charity event that seemed like that had something weird about them."

Sparrow's shoulders go up high at the mention of Seattle, holding there for a couple of seconds. "First? It's definitely less common far from home. Harder, ya know? And it's not cuz the Veil itself is specific to here but because it's just closer here. Thin spot." Oh, how confident she sounds, like she actually knows what she's talking about, like this might all be entirely normal. She starts with, "Second," then takes a quick sip of her beer before going on. "I'm friends with a very knowledgeable warlock who filled in a lot of details I was missing." Pretty recently, too, but she leaves that part out. "Third? There's a paranormal society, but I haven't made it to a meeting yet, and I heard the last one went sorta batshit, so." Another shrug. "Pretty sure that the more attention is drawn to it, the more, uh. It notices?" Is that right? She squints a little like she's trying to puzzle it out, but she doesn't correct.

"God this is all so fucking weird." Another long draw from her bottle is taken. She leans her back into the couch, a little bit of tension going out of her as she has some information to parse, and really as she finds out there is some sort of united front. She looks a little guilty, "Sorry I keep like, rapid firing..." A finger nail taps on the glass of the bottle in thought, silent for a long moment before perking up, brows knitting as something occurs to her, "So you can go through to that other side... The Veil... By accident? Does it look kinda like this place but people get kinda blurry?"

"Yep!" Sparrow agrees all too cheerfully with those first words. It is decidedly the most succinct way to describe the Gray Harbor situation. The apology earns a shrug, an assurance of, "It's alright," so casually delivered that it might actually be convincing. Not simply a platitude. The lull in the conversation while Abitha thinks gives the redhead a moment to drink. And maybe to wonder if she's getting paid for this. Not that she others to ask. The question which eventually comes gets a wobble of her drink. "It definitely looks like this side, most of the time, but the ways it goes weird can vary wildly. I've heard a lot of superweird stuff. I've seen some superweird stuff. You won't always know you're in there until you notice the weird. But, mm. Fog, storms, weird weather? Can be a hint maybe?" She might be guessing.

"So basically we're weird, the town is weird, the Veil is weird, and there's a weird Voldemort thing going on that can make it more weird." Abitha attempts to sum up the key points in what is the most succinct and possibly flippant way she can manage, thinking the act of it would diminish the existential anxiety of the entire situation. Yeah, another draining gulp from her bottle displays it wasn't really working. The empty container is set down with a hollow plunk on the table, her legs shifting and drawing up, arms wrapping around her knees as she wonders, "So why do people live here? Why don't people just condemn the place and move away. Nuclear fallout wasteland or something."

Sparrow follows along for points one through three--everything's weird!--but gets a little bit lost when Voldemort makes a cameo, brows knitting. "Pretty sure there's no vindictive villain, but..." She huffs out a breath. "Sometimes? What's over there takes its influences from over here. Scariest dream-capital-dee that I've ever had? Fucking Pleasantville." It's a lie, but only a little one. Certainly, the scariest dream she's willing to casually share. She flicks a look to the empty cider set down on the table, her own beer still barely touched... and it doesn't look like she means to catch up. "Cuz this is home?" sounds like she might be genuinely perplexed by the questions. "Maybe you can just fuck off if you want, but this is where I grew up. It's where my family and friends are, and not all of them have these kinds of problems. If they don't glimmer?" She gives her empty hand a wiggle to indicate what that word means. "They're less likely to get hit by any of this weird, so." Shoulders lift and fall in a helpless sorta shrug. "I'd rather be here than anywhere else."

The looks the bottles receive is not missed. The chastising is not either. Abitha looks suitable chastised anyhow, eyes not meeting Sparrow's for the moment. "Yeah, guess that's fair." and actually a good reason. Not like Abitha had much family to think about, so it hadnt really occured to her. "Sorry. Making fun of all this is like... Being defensive. No clue how I'm supposed to handle it." She finally does look up at Sparrow, "How dangerous is it? Cause like... I remember the nightmares after the first time, but... Yaknow, it just made me feel like shit... I got over it..." She looks hopeful, like less than lethal hopeful.

"Yeah, it's alright," Sparrow murmurs in answer to the apology. "Was a shit way to say it," might qualify as her own. "It is definitely not an easy thing to adjust to, and. I mean. For as chill as I might sound now?" The way her lips press thin and wide, how she shakes her head? Yeah, no, she hasn't quite managed to maintain this level of comfort consistently. Not even close. "If you wanna hear about when shit first went sideways for me..." is an offer, carefully extended.

"It's, uhm. Pretty dangerous. Like get you hospitalized dangerous. Like the shit that happens over there, in the Veil and in Dreams? It's real. Not just headfuck real, but fuck you up real." With a little wobble of her barely touched beer, she goes on, "How to handle it, though? Asking someone you suspect knows something is definitely one hundred percent the right way." Can lifted, she takes a swig, toasting to Mac's deft handling of that particular aspect. "I can send you the information I've got as well as a few points of contact who might be a good bit better versed at all of this than I am. Mostly? Just... try not to do stuff when you don't need to? And, uh. Maybe learn from my lesson and don't do that shit in a room full of people. I mean, if you saw..." Shit.

Abitha blanks a little at the last bit. She had been listening intently and... Well she thought she had been clear with Sparrow. Only reason she was asking was because, "You lit up like a Christmas tree?" She asks both appropriately and inappropriately all rolled into one. "I mean... Well... I dunno, it's hard to describe, like... It's nothing I saw..." She gurrows her eyenrows as her green eyes slip back and forth over the tops of her knee, trying to put words to a memory, "It was like a light I felt in the back of my skull?" Her hand goes up and scritches in the middle of her bun-pulled hair.

"And I'll listen to anything... Unless you don't wanna. Like... I know some things can be painful." Hers certainly was.

"Yeah, I just..." Wasn't thinking about it? Have developed enough of a habit of nudging luck at whim that sometimes it just happens without a second taken to consider the consequences? Sparrow doesn't give any of that voice, waving it off. She takes another swig of her beer before setting it down, maintaining a forward lean with her elbows on her knees. "My first, uh. Glimmer? Was small, easy." Shrug. "But my first capital-dee-dream?" She draws a breath, slowing her thoughts down, gaze set nowhere in particular. "I watched my boyfriend be swallowed up by darkness and fall through the floor. When I woke up? I was sure he was gone. I dunno. I just. I knew." She flicks a look to Abitha at that. "I rushed to his room. We live together. And, uh. He wasn't there. If I'd been... I dunno. Smart? If I hadn't just woken up in a panic? Maybe I would've noticed his phone was there, charging. But I just..." She shakes her head, realizing that she's getting off track. "It was hours later that I found him in the basement. Same story. Fell through the floor into darkness, except. When I woke up? His kept going." And, from the weight of those words, it wasn't a pleasant experience.

Abitha listens in rapt attention, a grimace on her face in sympathy for Sparrow. It's all she can really do. There was still pain in that memory it seemed like, and honestly, dealing with pain, helping people emotionally, she pretty much knew she was the worst at it.

"It feels kind of empty..." She starts, trying to pick the right words to convey she wanted to comfort Sparrow, but Abitha was a serial overanalyze. "...for me to be like, 'Well at least your alive?'. I uh... haven't known you long, I know... know know know..." She trails off with a disgusted sigh, the repetition of words comically awkward, rolling her eyes as she tries to get the message out in a coherent manner, "I'm glad you're here, not assuming you're ok, but yeah... That." It occurs to her now to admit in a self deprecating tone, "I insult people for money online, I may be the worst emotional support... I don't even play support..."

Sparrow snorts a laugh at the 'at least you're alive' line. Whether it was meant as a joke or not, she plainly finds it amusing. Her head starts shaking not long after, her easy smile trying to offer reassurance while Abitha works through her awkwardness. "You're fine," she promises, and it sounds wholly sincere. "I'm not looking for support, Mac. That's not why I shared. Just... I dunno. Letting you know that you're not alone. Sharing some experience, yeah?" She sits up straighter only to sink back into her seat with a shrug. "I dunno. We get through it, right? Are you, uh... planning on... not sticking around, now that you know?"

The question has Abitha flopping her head back on the couch, letting out a sigh as her mind flips through scenarios, numbers. "So, self preservation tells me get the fuck out, right..." She was staring at the ceiling, then her eyes slowly drifted sideways to her streaming setup against the wall, then slowly around the loft apartment, "Part of me feels like I just started building myself a home of my own... Which was really tough, like... I never felt really rooted... And I'm making friends... " Her eyes flick to Sparrow briefly, maybe wondering, maybe just gauging reactions, before glancing downward, the shop in mind. "Also, I'd be flat broke. I put everything I had into capital for loans. I own the building, yaknow? Trying to sell my stock off... It's be a damn mess..." Another heavy sigh, more thoughtfulness. "I'm not gonna be all Spider Man, like I can do things so I should... But... I feel kinda connected to things here. Like I have to be part of it. Does that sound weird?"

Sparrow's smile quirks upward just a smidge at the mention of friends, reflexive enough that it doesn't seem to be intentional confirmation, like she means to answer anything. There's a good chance she hasn't even noticed it's a question. She's here, yeah? "No," comes easily for the readily identified question at the end. "Not at all. I mean, it would definitely be weird if you were gonna go all Friendly Neighborhood Vigilante, but." That's already been ruled out, right? "There are totally people within the legit criminal justice system who are weird like us. We can leave that shit to them." She flashes a quick grin. "Besides, the more you do things? The more things are likely to go bad weird. So." The maybe don't remains implied. "But yeah. I'm glad you're here. I like the shop. I like you. And, frankly--" She holds a high shrug for a couple seconds. "I like Gray Harbor. Kinda risk and reward, ya know? Yeah, it's all kinda weird and dangerous? But there are also amazing people and lots to do, and we're close to so much without the city lights blotting out the sky at night."

Abitha is very theatrically skeptical, squinting and turning her face as Sparrow mentions lots to do in an activities sense. Her eyes dart around her very nerdly-decorated home, the question of doubt on her face, but lets it pass non-verbally, smirking at the end. It covered over the pleased reaction to the tacit agreement they were friends. "Ok, well existential dread not really solved, but at least more informed... Uh... If you think there's anyone else I should talk to, I'll yaknow... Do that." Because taking to new people was definitely something Abitha went out of her way to do. She eyes Sparrow briefly again, get beer, deciding in the moment to act on new information, "If you don't wanna finish the beer, you don't have to, but um... If you did... I may have the beta version of the character creator for Cyberpunk 2077..." She ventures, at least some subtle connection to work. Yeah, that was the ticket.

Sparrow answers that look around at all the reasons to never leave the loft to remain entertained with a quick question of, "How do you feel about karaoke?" and a playful waggle of her brows. "And yeah, I'll send you some information. Later. When I'm at my laptop." Which, sure, is probably right over there in her backpack, but it seems a bit rude to whip it out for nonessential information sharing. It can wait. Cuz, "I'm sure I can find my way around to finishing my beer. How's it look? How much can you actually customize?"