2020-03-22 - Heirlooms
Margaret sends a box of Thomas's things to his heir. Isabella happens to be there when Hyacinth does a little residue-reading.
IC Date: 2020-03-22
OOC Date: 2019-10-29
Location: Hyacinth's Office
Related Scenes: None
Plot: None
Scene Number: 4349
It has taken some time, but - little by little over the past day or two - a few boxes of things that belonged to Thomas have been trickling into Hyacinth's keeping. Margaret's personal secretary has them delivered to Hyacinth's office, mainly, and almost all of them have been boring things: his clothes, some personal records (birth certificate, passport, et cetera), whatever he might have had in his medicine cabinet at Margaret's, nothing worth much of anything. And all of it has been scrubbed clean. That is to say, there's not a memory to be read from any of it. No one is exactly sure just what abilities Margaret possesses, but 'cleaning emotional imprints' must be one of them, 'cause those things have been squeaky clean.
Today's box is at least marginally more interesting. There are some photo albums that belonged to Thomas - happier times, mostly, pictures of wee Hyacinth and her siblings, his own children, his brothers and sisters when they were younger, even a couple of photos of his parents - and his yearbooks from school, even some of his old schoolwork from when he was a child. There's been enough time since the box arrived that Hyacinth and Isabella - who just happens to be here at the moment - have been able to open it and get their bearings in terms of the box's contents, but they haven't had a chance to dig through the specifics.
So where to start? Photos? Yearbooks? Old schoolwork? Pick your poison.
<FS3> Hyacinth rolls Mental (7 7 7 5 5 4 4 4 3 2 2) vs Things Margaret couldn't cleanse (a NPC)'s 6 (8 7 7 5 5 4 4 2)
<FS3> DRAW! (Rolled by: KarmaBum)
She always gravitates towards history first. In many ways, archaeology is so tied to it because it is in essence the study of the people that came before, and how they lived; much of those principles color her interactions with others. She had simply happened to be in the Historical Society's offices when the next box from Margaret's personal assistant had arrived, and true to her promise to her Addington friend and reinstated heiress, Isabella lends her assistance with the objects.
The box opened, she pores quietly through the yearbooks in an attempt to get to know the man who spent half a century bonded with an ancestor of Alexander's, looking through mentions of him through the indexes; what clubs was he involved in, his interests, girlfriends, boyfriends...friends, in general? She leaves the photographs with Hyacinth as these are very personal effects, and she's loath to impose herself on them unless her friend gives her express permission. "The pictures of your parents might have more impressions," she offers. "Especially after....the Summer." She wasn't the only one who had lost one, after all - Erin and Hyacinth did also.
<FS3> Hyacinth rolls composure (8 8 7 7 5 2 2 1) vs Feelings are Gross (a NPC)'s 4 (8 4 4 2 2 1)
<FS3> Crushing Victory for hyacinth. (Rolled by: Hyacinth)
Hyacinth is not enjoying being primary beneficiary of her Grandfather's things... but she is enjoying being CEO of the Sawmill. Things in her office are neatly separated into things for that, things pertaining to current zoning cases to review, a box of Thomas Addington's belongings du jour, and most importantly pinned to her board: the ongoing petition for the abolishing of lawn gnomes in Gray Harbor.
Gnomes man.
To suggest Hyacinth Addington is a control freak suggests one has not been paying attention because this is not new news. Things go where they go, everything is clean and neat and even her office plant is growing entirely symmetrical or else. Isabella is a welcome addition to the office as she's not using the chill weather as some barbaric excuse to wear lumberjack flannel. Her recent memories of her family are fueled with disappointment and questions about motives that span a lifetime, but anger aside she did love her father and grandfather and they were good to her even if they used their lives to display some abysmal behaviour.
She starts with the old photos, not that she imagines there would be any transference from the event to the photo of the event. That makes as much sense to expect as watching a cowboy movie and expecting to smell the dust in one's living room. Still, she's nostalgic taking the time to put sticky notes in the album to catalog events and make annotations of who the people are. Looking up to Isabella she considers this and there's a small frown as her memory is brought back to a picture of her grandfather there in the picture with the son he killed and it brings a few feelings up which are banished in this mascara in the middle of her work day. She muses flipping the page, "Could be right. He might not want to look either." Manicured hand is splayed on the book and for a minute her eyes close and then reopen to see what there is to see leaving room for Isabella if she cares to. They are a tad past secrets at this point and are well aware of history here.
Photos are so easy to cleanse. They pass through Hyacinth's hands without so much as a tremor of feeling. No feelings that originate from the photographs, at least. Whatever they might evoke from Hyacinth herself... well, that's on her. This while Isabella is learning that Thomas Addington was active in sports and things when he was a kid, that he seemed to have an active social life - but there's a glossiness to it, most of the photos that have him (or Margaret) in them being staged for the yearbook. Addingtons had a reputation to uphold, after all, even in the 40s and 50s, when all these yearbooks came into play.
Turning a page, on the back of the 'Most Likely to...' section of the yearbook, Isabella finds something different, though. An old piece of note paper with childish drawings and handwriting on it. In the center is a nest of trees and the brightly-colored word "carousel." It's a map, with "hall of records" in gray to the east of the carousel, an arrow to a ??? in red with the word "NOISES" written there to the south of the carousel. Southwest from the central carousel, there's a child's rendition of a castle with a pond and a tree and pink hearts and the word "THE HOUSE" in gold. North of that, taking up the entire northwestern corner of the page, scribbles of gray and the words "All Dark." Just below that, north of the carousel, there are some waves and the words "can't go this way." East of that, northeast of the carousel, there's a road with a scribble through it and the words "MONSTERS HERE" with an arrow to the road. And then there's the "SAWMILL" in orange letters in the northeastern corner of the map, even a silver-colored blade with red on the jagged edges.
https://imgur.com/VJQS8Ns.jpg <-- larger version
"Your grandfather was an active child, he was in a lot of sports teams," Isabella muses, her fingers delicately touching the pages of the first yearbook that she finds and finding his name on the pages referenced in the index. There is plenty of him and Margaret, and she shows Hyacinth one of them as she peruses the other books. The fact that they look staged is not entirely unexpected, given the pull of the family in the town - reputations are still everything to the wealthy, especially in a place that they control. Setting that yearbook down, she starts with another, and another, until she gets to Thomas' senior year where the relevant Most Likely section would be - what did his classmates think of him, back then?
Before she can unravel a facet of that mystery, though, she finds the map - it looks drawn by a child, but perfectly preserved. Paying careful attention to how stiff the paper is due to age, she gently lays it on a flat surface and smoothes it out. "Hyacinth, look at this. I think your grandfather was quite an explorer, back in the day. Or at least...interested enough in his town to do this." She reaches for her smartphone and takes a picture of the map. "He knew about the Hall of Records when he was this young? That's the Archivist's domain. Would explain why it managed to send us a....tour guide...so quickly, the last time we were close to the pond. I assume that's what he meant by can't go this way." Along with the blue wavy letters.
...is it Thomas' map though? Or Margaret's? She attempts to look for an artist's signature.
"Anything from the photographs?" Reading is Hyacinth's and Alexander's purview and while she's not wholly ill-equipped in that area, that unfortunate incident of accidentally reading her mother's murder has given her a particularly adamant distaste for psychometry. Besides, she's nowhere near as practiced or powerful as her companion there.
Hyacinth really does find feelings inconvenient to focusing or getting anything done. Still, she is human whether she likes it or not. Her fingers brush over the album and pauses to turn her attention to Isabella and the paper, "Hmmm no. Nothing yet, but there never really is. The photos weren't physically a part of the event, they just covey an impression." Looking to the curiosity her head tilts. She reviews the cryptic message and the crude crayon map.
"Terrible colour placement. Composition isn't terrible." Because this is what is important most. Her eyes scan the page and she wonders, "Well, you think it's a drawing of the other side, or you to think there was just a neighborhood that wore their pants way too high and too short?" She circles the spot that reads: Monsters Here. "With how though Margaret generally is I'm wondering if this is meant for us to find, if she doesn't care, or if she feels this is information we obviously already have?" Because nothing is accidental. Her eyes find the molding edge at the ceiling of her office. "We should go speak with the Archivist and see if they have an insight for us. Let's see what else we have here." She absolutely does try to rewalk the emotional path on the map and lay a different set of eyes on it without taking it from Isabella's hands.
She looks up while she is doing this to try and replay as much as she can on the ceiling as it goes trying to use her head as a through-put. It might be a white square of light on the ceiling sort of morning though. Coffee exists for this reason.
<FS3> Hyacinth rolls Mental (8 7 7 7 6 5 3 3 1 1 1) vs Old Map (a NPC)'s 4 (8 7 5 5 4 1)
<FS3> Crushing Victory for Hyacinth. (Rolled by: KarmaBum)
Isabella will find no signature. Whoever drew the map wasn't really in the business of adding a maker's mark. But Hyacinth's little trip down memory lane yields a splash of something that either got left behind intentionally (if her theory about Margaret is correct) or was too firmly embedded in memory for Margaret to erase. It starts out as a little inkling - a feeling of nervousness and delight, like that feeling of sneaking downstairs very early on Christmas morning to see what Santa brought, shhhh so no parents get woken up and ruin the magic...
...and she is the person creeping on small feet. She can feel the still, dull air of the Veil breathing through her lungs, rushed and nervous. The scratch of a pencil on the little map sounds very loud in her ears for a moment, and the powdery feeling of pencil lead on her fingers. Her lungs burn like she's been running, trying to grasp that lifeless air from the other side and use it to catch her breath. "Just write 'monsters,'" she hears briefly, the voice of a child? It's hard to be sure if that's a boy's voice of a girl's voice. A possessiveness threads through her memories, and she hunches her shoulders over the map. "Quit being so bossy," she hears herself answer in a child's voice, and scratches 'MONSTERS HERE' with an arrow onto the map. Color must have come later.
As the memory fades, she can hear her companion complaining, "But where's the pond? This doesn't make any sense. Look here, the pond should be right over there. Come on, let's track back to The House," the capital letters come through, even in the memory, "and see if that takes us..."
Then Hyacinth is herself again, staring at the ceiling with a photo album next to her. The box is mostly empty now, though there's still what looks like an overnight toiletries bag, a vacuum-sealed bag full of Thomas's ties, and a black lacquered box that (when opened) is full of cuff links. Expensive ones.
"I wonder if this was the map of the other side as they know it, or what they explored as children," Isabella replies to Hyacinth. She falls quiet once the other woman gets her fingers on the map, however, to let her do her work and transforms herself into a human projector. Green and gold eyes look up at the ceiling when the memories are projected there.
"....this was Margaret's map," she concludes. "Which makes sense, I think she was the mover between the two of them, wasn't she?" How could she forget? She was so bright, she felt her eyes nearly burn out from her skull. "Monsters, huh...I wonder what the two of them encountered across..."
Plenty of this resonates with her own experiences as a child, exploring the other side with her twin. But there had been no map, only the wonder of discovery. Mention of the missing pond, however, draws down her brows in a quiet furrow. "Did it move, or...?" She wonders if she'll have to go back, if that's the case - determine whether the pond should actually be where it is. "But I thought..." Or did she? "I wonder where they were when they started drawing this." Maybe they just couldn't see it?
As she leaves the map with Hyacinth, she reaches into the box to pull out a bag of Thomas' ties, and a collection of very expensive cufflinks. She examines this lacquered box with quiet interest. "He had so many," she tells Hyacinth when she opens it and looks through its contents.
Hyacinth just stares. you do well enough you learn something. You do too well and overshoot your mark? It's hard to just stop on a dime. You're in for the whole ride and the walk back can be long. She blinks a few times and lets her eyes adjust as if her head were the projector.
Her hang lifts as fingertips press down. "Let's... safe the ties and see if Enzo wants them. The cufflinks and tie bard we should keep separate." She points, "There." Looking back up to Isabella she sighs, "I think we're going to have to figure this out and... if we want to live here in Gray Harbor we're going to need a new solution."Her attention moves to the rest of the room studying it and back, "Okay do we want to go see the Archivist or do we want to not go without their boyfriend because we may have to bribe Byron into going."
"To ask the Archivist where Thomas ended up?" Isabella wonders. "We can try, and we should probably bring Byron if that's the case." She keeps examining the black lacquered box and the cuff links, to see it there's any hidden compartments, or any unusual symbols and things embossed in them - it's a long shot, but she tries. If she doesn't find anything, she'll pass these off to Hyacinth to read, if she wants.
Beneath all Thomas's cufflinks, replacing the lining in the bottom of the box - which is itself a pretty bauble - there's a monogrammed handkerchief. It's slightly stained with age, wrinkled from having been in that box for a number of years, with "T.A." in light green embroidery in the corner. There's some value in those cufflinks, proper stones in a few of them.
Nothing else in the boxes, though.
A small smile warms her face at the mention of bringing Byron. "The Archivist might miss their Sweet Baboo?" Considering this all she muses quietly, "Not a bad plan. Might want to bring an opener in case someone decides to...detain us longer than our Franklin Covey allows for." She picks up the handkerchief, running her thumb over the fabric. The collection of cufflinks are set aside. Reasonably she'll talk with Enzo offering him a part of that. She can distribute things later. For now? Now there's a lot to consider. "He's had a bit going on. Let's see if he's in any place to go." While she wants what she wants she is, at the end of the day, aware that a human resource has limits before the elasticity of a soul gives out. Looking up she blinks and says in earnest, "Thank you. For ...this." She doesn't do feelings generally. They're messy and inefficient, but it doesn't mean she lacks them. Sadly, but being human has its nuisance.
Her thumb touches the aging fabric of the handkerchief, and the memory jumps out at Hyacinth. It's a clear one, crisp and recent. It's a wonder that Margaret didn't notice this one.
Or maybe it was just beyond her to hide. Regardless.
She is back in that gray place, where there's no concept of time or place or weather or anything but the endlessness of time forever. "It never lead anywhere before," she can hear herself saying - in her grandfather's voice, slightly peevish, definitely inebriated. Everything swims in her vision and she sways slightly. In her peripheral, she's dimly aware of the bright lights of the carousel behind her - but not the real carousel, this is the one on the other side, with its madcap animals. Ahead of her, she can see a shimmer as of water, and little fishes swimming-swimming-swimming up out of what looks like a gray, terrible pond - then splashing back down into the surface. They do this endlessly.
Margaret's voice answers. "Well, it clearly leads somewhere now. That's the pond right there. But look." She turns, pointing her aged finger off to the left. "The House is completely gone. What have these little bastards done." Hyacinth watches Margaret start stomping off toward the direction she pointed, mumbling to herself about how they'll never find the hospital at this rate, meddling kids, surely they're to blame.
Reluctantly, Hyacinth-as-Thomas starts swaying along in her wake, heading off toward the unknown direction where the House used to be.
Then Hyacinth is Hyacinth again, and the vision is over. The box is empty. That is all there was to see, learn, discover.
"I can be the opener," Isabella tells Hyacinth with a small smile. "I tend to rely on others to do that, I don't use unless I have to, but in this instance, I have no objections. I did promise to assist you, after all." She hands the entire box over to Hyacinth, sliding her hands in her pockets. Keen eyes watch the reinstated Addington heiress as she runs her fingers over the fabric. "Is there anything...?"
Her thanks earns her companion a nod, and a palpable and visible softening of her features. "You're welcome. Anytime, and I mean that," she tells the other woman quietly.
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