2020-03-12 - A Growing Coalition

The Gray Harbor Library is quiet - not surprising considering they're supposed to be, but perhaps not for long.

Somewhere at the back, the newly-minted Doctor Isabella Reede is hard at work, with historical texts piled up on the table and other records detailing navigational paths taken by some of the most frequently-sighted vessels at the harbor during the turn of the century. Her phone is on the table, with Alexander Clayton's image on the lock screen, situated on the couch with a cat on his lap and a bird on his shoulder. The last text active on the LCD screen is August Roen's, who had asked her where she was at present to have a conversation about the recent reports they had exchanged by e-mail; chances are, he'll be arriving to where she is, soon.

Her laptop is also out, and she's a mercilessly fast typist - her fingers fly over the keys and thankfully they are silent, otherwise the librarians would have kicked her out hours ago. With the days shifting towards the warmer months, her hair is gathered back up in its loose knot, secured there by a pen leaving dark wisps to frame her face. She's dressed in a long-sleeved shirt with lace cuffs pulled over a pair of jeans, the fabric dark enough to make the moonstone pendant she always wears gleam an iridescent blue. The dandelion charms on the silver bracelet clasped around her left wrist jingles now and then due to the movements of her hand.

August arrives presently, his scarred up leather workbag over one shoulder. He's been looking rough around the edges the last few days, but today some of that's let go. At least enough that he seems dressed for work (denim jeans, heavy hikers, black waffle Henley, squall jacket), and may have swung by there on his way here. He has a bottle of water with him for a change (an ancient, scarred, alluminum 'Hoh Rain Forest' piece in dark green), and settles in at the table with Isabella, smiling a greeting. "Well hello there, Doctor Reede." He pulls out his tablet and its keyboard, sets the bag aside. "How's it feel? Being official, and all."

Her head tilts upwards at August's approach, Isabella's studious face brightening into a more effulgent look. Shooting up on her feet almost immediately, her arms open up to a hug - but it's less due to his teasing remarks about her new title, and more regarding other bits of news she managed to receive even while she was in England. "Doctor Roen," she greets. "It feels great - I'm so happy...and relieved! I thought it was going to be an uphill fight, and I need to make revisions, of course, but I did well enough that they didn't hesitate at all. Took their sweet time deliberating, though. They kept me in the waiting room for the full half-hour. Must be because I'm American."

She will squeeze him, if allowed, before slowly releasing. "And you! Congratulations! Itzhak told everyone while I was across the pond. Apparently Ellie proposed? I have pictures."

August accepts the hug, laughs about them making her wait. "I think they just like to do that to be jerks, honestly." He returns the squeeze, sighs in a fond and exasperated way. "Yeah, it ah...wasn't exactly planned. But we decided to stick with it." He pulls back, explains, "Something weird happened at Hya's birthday party. Some sort of..." He squints, waves a hand, "Influence, maybe? Not a Dream, but..." He pauses, shrugs. "Anyways. She asked, I said yes...we decided, well, I was talking myself into it anyways. Why not stick with it. We'll just have a long engagement, while I sort out a ring and get my book done. So." He smiles, genuinely now, "Thank you." Which, of course, has him thinking of... "Are you and Alexander doing okay?"

With embraces and greetings finished, Isabella nudges a seat out for August before re-taking her own, giving the librarians on patrol a wary eye. Still she lowers her voice; considering the continued abysmal weather outside, the two of them are presently the only ones occupying the stacks other than the building's staff. "So you were pushed into it, but decided to..." There's a grin. "Well, I'm glad. I knew you were thinking about it anyway, and there's nothing wrong with a long engagement - it's not exactly something that ought to be rushed." She even eases her books aside to make room for his things - researchers need room to work. "When's the release date on your new book? Asking for a friend." Mischief colors her grin there.

The last query has that expression broadening and brightening. "Yeah, um...we were talking while I was in England, though he was strange about it at first. Distant. I think he might've been girding himself for if I decided not to come back. I flew back in the day before I was supposed to arrive, went to tell my father the news, then came to see him. Throughout all of this, I thought that....part of the reason why I told him in person was because I wanted to look him in the eye if he even so much as tried to send me back there, now that I had my doctorate. Wanted to see just how adamant he was that I had to leave." Fingers lift to absently toy with her dandelion bracelet.

"But he didn't. So we spent a lot of my homecoming....catching up." There's a wicked gleam in her eyes. "Had to draw a hot bath for his older bones the mid-morning after, but I think we're doing okay, all things considered. I don't think he'll get over what happened too easily and I'm sure we'll have to actually talk about it eventually, but for now...it means a lot. To hear him say he was happy I returned, and that he wasn't happy at all about the prospect of me ever leaving."

"Eh, it's not even done yet," August says of the book. "Maybe, half way to three fourths there. It's shorter, though. Ellie and I'll probably take a couple trips so I can flesh out the rest of it, maybe here in Spring. So, maybe summer for the proofs, fall for the publication." He nods in agreement. "Yeah, I don't want to hurry anything. Small wedding, probably up in Olympic somewhere, or in Seattle. We'll see." Not here, his expression says. Not. Here.

He listens to her description of how things unfolded between her and Alexander, relaxes visibly when she reveals the present state of affairs. "Well, that's good, at least." He grimaces. "It won't be a pretty conversation, but you don't have to have it immediately. It's okay to give the wounds time to shore up."

He leans back in his chair. "So. Wales. Crossed over and wound up in one of their deals, just like happened to us in Portland." An invitation to let him know how that went, if she's so inclined.

When he reveals that his wedding plans are inevitably going to be executed elsewhere, tension that Isabella isn't aware of carrying unwinds from her shoulders. "Thank god," she says with a laugh. "Yes, please. A certain degree of genre savvyness wouldn't go amiss." Especially considering what she had gone through on Valentine's Day. "Honestly whenever important dates come up I think we should all just leave town for them, regardless. Remind ourselves that the world is a beautiful place outside of the funhouse mirror we're presently living in."

She nods at the sound advice. "I'm not in any hurry," she confesses. "But it's nice to hear that he didn't want me to stay in England after all." He had been making himself miserable at the thought of it, and while she keeps that thought to herself, August would easily read it from her face.

When August brings up Wales, she groans. "We ended up in the Dream-version of Gresford in the twelfth century where the townsfolk have been unnaturally prolonging their lives by harvesting the youth and vitality of young, wayward travelers using the tall trees of the surrounding woods and sacrificing those bodies to some twisted forest god," she summarizes succinctly. "But you know as well as I that the only way out of a Dream is to find a way to end it while in it. Though if we can open Doorways into a Dream, now, I wonder if we can't figure out a way to do so in order to get out of it. I wondered the same to Anne, after the gravesite debacle, but she believes testing it is incredibly dangerous and that it might only open a Door to another Dream, deeper and deeper until finding a way out is impossible. Much like Inception, I thought. Ever seen it?"

August folds his hands. "Not that you probably haven't sorted this out, but he was just saying that, about you leaving, because he wants to think you not being here means you're safe. Also because he wants to believe it." He sighs, shaking his head, and looks away. "Thing is, plenty of us can tell him that's not true, and have. I imagine he even knows it. But that leaves him with accepting that you get to choose where to be, even if that's here with him, where there's danger." He shrugs, regards her again. "He's a hard case. Just be ready to yell at him any time he acts like a dumbass, puts forward stupid ideas like that which have no basis in reality." He delivers this advice with a simple frankness more appropriate to explaining why a brand of car sucks, or how to deal with a broken blender.

He mmmms, voice low, as she describes the Dream. "Ugly business," he murmurs. "Yeah, I have. And I think Anne's maybe on to something there. If we think about the Veil like the ocean, and Gray Harbor's kind of a really big, stable island, then those constructs of theirs are like...rafts, out in the deep water. If you hop off your raft before it gets to land, you're not necessarily going to find another island. You might just fucking drown."

Dreary weather might be the reason that Ruby's dressed in bright red. She also looks like she's a transplant from the 50's in the dress she's wearing and her hairdo. The woman is overly curious of the conversation that has been going on and she approaches with a bit of an apologetic smile, "I am sorry to interrupt the conversation. But do either of you happen to know a man by the name of Carver?" she asks them.

"I couldn't help but hear some of the conversation and wanted to come over." she tells them quietly.

"I'll never be safe my entire life, August," Isabella remarks, faintly aggrieved, though most definitely not at him - but at the entire situation and the seeming lack of recognition that she'll always been in danger on some level, and the only way to truly keep herself safe is to gain enough experience to combat the inevitability of a certain death as much as she can. Even without Them and her talents, it isn't as if her field is particularly safe; plenty can happen in a dive, especially the depths she tends to explore. "And I take it you're probably the first to note that to him, too," she says, a hint of a teasing note in her voice. "Thanks, August. You know him, though. He can be stubborn - but I think I can be happy knowing that he's glad that I came back. I'm certain other things feed into it, but as you said, and as I've already told him before...he got to choose me. Why can't I make a similar choice?"

She's about to continue on that vein when an unfamiliar face emerges from the stacks and approaches them. "....Alistair Carver?" she asks, like there's another Carver. "I knew of him, while he was in town." But there's a faint twist to her expression, suggestive that something else might've happened. "He was an acquaintance of a few friends of mine. Why do you ask?"

"Welcome to dating an obstinate man," August says, apologetic and amused. He might say more, but instead falls quiet as Ruby comes up, looking her over curiously, no doubt seeing what she sees in them: a lot of Glimmer. A whole lot. He looks askance at Isabella, then says, "Didn't really know him well, but I do owe him from a scrap several months ago." He tilts his head, considering her anew now that a specific name--and that specific name--has come out.

He snaps his fingers, points. "You run the comic shop. Right?"

"That one, yes." The Russian smiles to that. "I was working on a veil project with Mister Carver, but he seems to have vanished into thin air and we've not had any forward progress." she admits. "I'm Ruby Cavendish and I deal with the veil and it's research. I figured there were other like minded individuals around." she muses.

Then there's a smile to August, "Yes, I do. And you were Negan for our Halloween party." she nods to that.

"From what I heard, he's quite the Veil expert," Isabella tells Ruby, curiosity on her features. "What was the project?" Mention of the Veil and research towards that end has the archaeologist sliding a glance towards August. "Any specific expertise? Lore, terrain...fauna and flora?" She doesn't seem to be all that shy asking questions at least.

The comic shop? That piece of information is filed away also. "My name's Isabella Reede," she offers. "This is August Roen."

"I was," August confirms. He nods as Isabella introduces him, adding, "Pleased to meet you."

He frowns at the news of Carver vanishing. "Did he vanish, or, leave? Since, you know," he gestures, "people kind of do both, around here." He trades that sidelong glance, curious as to Ruby's experiences as well.

"The Asylum." Ruby tells Isabella. "It's a bit of a long term project, since that damn place moves around like fleas." she sighs. "And I have a lot of knowledge on the veil and research. I've never really tried to section off information until recently." she tells them. "It's nice to meet you, Isabella and August." she offers with a smile.

"And I'm sure he probably left, though he didn't really say anything to more than a few people." she frowns to that. "Not like we were close or anything. Just was looking forward to work with him." she states. "I know something changed with powers recently. We're still trying to figure out what exactly changed." she explains.

"Wait...the Asylum moves?" the archaeologist asks, clearly startled. "We...a few of us have tried to investigate it before, also. Did your research come up with anything else on it?"

After a pause, regarding Carver, "I think he vanished," Isabella tells both August and Ruby quietly.

She hesitates, before continuing, "A group and I attempted to investigate the site where Billy the Ghoul was buried, but something went wrong. The Door opened directly into a Dream - some sort of memorial with walls that extended for miles, containing names more numerous than what could have been collected from just this town over than the century this town has been around. The markings suggested that it was a shrine for The Lost. And I suppose the term could mean other things, but considering the fact that our names appeared on those walls the longer we stayed there, the more we faded away, and how our names vanished off the walls again after we got out, it's hard to think of it in any way other than the people who have disappeared. I found..." Her jaw sets. "I'm sorry, Miss Cavendish. But I found Alistair Carver's name on the wall. Along with a few other names of the missing."

August blinks at Ruby, briefly surprised to hear about the Asylum moving. Then, "...I think I remember Julia saying something about that. We were talking to her about it, at one point. She has a map, or...knows someone who does?" He frowns, unable to remember, shakes his head. He gives Isabella a rueful look. "Might explain why pinning it down is next to impossible."

He licks his lips at the description of what happened when they crossed over in the graveyard. "Fucking hell. I'm glad you guys are okay." He rubs at his eyes. "Well that's a shitty thing to taunt you with, for sure."

"It does, yes." Ruby states with a nod. "The place is rarely talked about on the other side as well. Due to a healthy dose of fear." she admits to them. "Here. Let me show you." she states as she pulls out a notebook from her satchel and her pen.

"The asylum can manifest in 13 different locations which all correspond to different places in the "real world". Incidentally, only eight of those locations have been found and mapped, and the only person to have ever done that is Doctor Marshall. He has never given a copy of this map to anybody else. The people who work at the hospital seem to always be able to find it regardless, most of them live on campus. So they never have to leave and find it again is what I'm guessing. I also know that the hospital moves "three on thirteen to the left, not the right" - i.e. if you were to put all 13 locations on a map, it would form a clock-pattern; from it's starting point, the hospital moves three spaces counter-clockwise every thirteen days." she draws that out on the paper.

"The trick, of course, is finding the starting point. The starting point changes every three "shifts" on the 13th day of the 3rd shift. I realize this sounds very complicated, but we'll map it out:" she motions to the paper as she draws.

Starting Point: A
13 Days Later: moves to B
13 Days Later: moves to C
13 days later: moves to D
13 days later: moves to a new starting point, and the cycle happens all over again.

Ruby seems enthralled in giving them the correct information on the movement. "No one knows all 13 locations. Sadly. And I've been trying to keep track of the ones that are known." she tells them quietly.

"I believe the reason for the place being rarely talked about is because there's something about the Asylum that alters memories in some way. I spoke to one of the patients who stayed there for a spell, and he described it as a kind of...." She gestures vaguely to the side. "Corrosive effect. We thought...or rather, some of us, we thought we would visit the facility, ourselves, but we're only vaguely certain that we did visit it, the details are....slippery. Like oil, or foggy like fog. Just gray areas in our minds that linger whenever we try to think about it and when we do try, it's--"

But then the redhead continues. Isabella is stunned and silent as she listens to Ruby share her findings about the Asylum, her heart quickening in her chest. August has worked closely enough with her to recognize the expression on the archaeologist's face.

"That makes sense," she says softly. It does?

There's a significant look directed her male companion's way, before she reaches into her satchel to pull out a magazine, hunting around it to find one of its sponsored ads - fashion magazines almost always have some kind of jewelry watch splash page, and she tears it out, the sound damning in the silent library. She reaches in for a sharpie and starts marking the blown-up image of the clockface.

"I don't know what memories I corroded trying to remember this," she tells them both quietly, brows furrowing. "But I believe in our last visit there, I found a clock marked like this." She shows them both. "I think it follows what Miss Cavendish has already discovered. And if Doctor Marshall was the only person who ever mapped eight of those points, it might explain why Alexander and I found a strange, black door in a hidden basement in Two If By Sea - the establishment his nephew now owns."

August leans in as Ruby and then Isabella share all of this, glancing between them. He frowns when Isabella talks about damaging some of her memories to recall that, but speaks no censure. He doesn't really radiate it either. Such is the price of knowing what's going on.

"So, it's on a set schedule, and it moves, maybe to keep anyone from being able to find out too much or pin it down. And of course," his nose wrinkles, "if we want to remember anything about it, we lose other things." He narrows his eyes. "Haven't we had doctors here turn out to be people who worked there? I seem to remember someone mentioning they knew someone who had."

He licks his lips about the door in the basement. "Please tell me you didn't try to open that and go through it just the two of you," he says.

Ruby gives a curious look to them when they mention memory loss in lieu of remembering the asylum, "That's new. I've not had an issue with it...but then again, it could have been a bit since I've visited things." she admits. Or maybe she just forgot that! Who knows?!

"Set schedule, every day for 13 days, then it starts over." she nods to that.

"I'd really like to find it, but I'm also not wanting to die anytime soon." she chuckles. "Maybe we could see about finding that map though." she taps her chin with her pen. Then she looks to Isabella, "What he said." she agrees with that.

"I spoke with her - the doctor who used to work there. She doesn't know anything useful," Isabella tells August. "But she's very aware of how thinking of that place corrodes memories and that's probably the reason why she doesn't want to think about it, so I can't say I blame her."

With both of her present companions turning their attentions to her and the secret basement, she smiles ruefully. "We didn't," she confirms easily enough. "Besides, only one person can open that door and that's the one with the key. But thank you for this, Miss Cavendish. I'll inform Doctor Marshall's nephew and brief Alexander on this, see what we can do and what else we can find out about it. But yeah, I agree, regarding that map - especially if you think Doctor Marshall had never given it to anyone. It might still be among his possessions and we can ask his nephew about that also. I'll take care of it."

She leans forward to pluck her wallet from her satchel, fishing out her University of Oxford calling card and hands it to Ruby. "All my contact information is in there," she tells her. "We have a small group that attempts to map out the Veil's reflection of this town and we've had a few discoveries already. Though I wouldn't recommend opening any Doorways while in the cemetery for a while. The last time we attempted it, we opened it directly into a Dream and we fell in some kind of trap that we almost didn't make it out from. Something went wrong, when we did, so we're going to test it, see if it's just that part of the cemetery that's affected by opening a Door in some other part of that area. Would you be interested in coming, if we went?"

August grunts in regards to the doctor. "Don't blame her, honestly." Even if it is inconvenient, like Eleanor said, the notion that August has to damage other parts of his mind off enough to put him off trying.

He gives Isabella a truly bland look at the mention of 'only the one with the key'. "You mean Easton?" He seems almost amused. "Look, just, if you guys do open the door...be careful. Please. We don't know what happened to us last time we went there. Just that we went. That's bad enough for a big group. If it's just the three of you..." He licks his lips, shakes his head, carefully says, "Don't wind up like Violet."

He adds to Isabella's offer, "And I'm always wanting to go over there for short jaunts, just to observe things. Happy to have you help with that."