2020-03-25 - We're Going to Try Science^H^H^H^H^H^HMagic

As Fall was slow to arrive, so Spring is slow to take hold. It's chilly even into midmorning, but at least it's not precipitating. August is in his private greenhouse at the back of the property, where he's told Thoma to bring Itzhak and Niall when they arrive. Right now, he's just tidying up, moving a few specimens around. The most notable item is a small shrub of some sort which has been trained into the shape of an elaborate cage. There's a large glass jar on the counter next to him, with a few chunks of what look like bark from a tree (some type of conifer to the practiced eye) contained inside it. This is a more homely structure than the big greenhouses out front, a little place for August to experiment in private.

Niall is dressed in his west coast hipster garb rather than his park ranger getup. Cuffed blue jeans, Blundstones, plaid shirt, wool had pulled down over his ears. If he wasn't most definitely a Kiwi, he'd be a full on walking cliche. He makes his way over the damp earth towards the greenhouse and then inside. "So this is the Little Shop of Horrors, ay? Does that make you Seymour?"

A lot of experiments have gone down in this greenhouse. Itzhak is always up for one more. He shows up with his cherry-red violin case slung over his back and a pink deli box in one hand. "Brought knish." His relationship with Minerva may be distilled awkward, but her parents are still happy to provide him Jewish delicacies. Niall, he doesn't know, and he eyes him, down, then up, in a narrow looking-over.

August glances up from repotting a Christmas cactus. "I sure as hell hope not," he says on a wry smile. He finishes up, tugs off his gloves. "Sure as hell almost turned into that Over There. Thanks for stopping by."

He gives Itzhak an up-nod at his arrival, turns it into a nod at Niall. "This is Niall. He's like you." And of course, given they can see the Glimmer in one another, the rest of that meaning is maybe self-explanatory. "He went with Enzo and I that first time we ran into the, ah, local populace." August's super nice term for the arbivorous, asshole gnomes.

"Hiya," says Niall with an upnod and an offered gloved hand towards Itzhak. "What, are you a Kiwi too?" He grins wryly, knowing very well that's not what August meant. "And yip. I was on the first gnome adventure. Though I've heard through the grapevine that there've been others. I keep expecting to open my cabin door and find one of 'em with a scroll and a quest."

"Nah, I'm an apple," Itzhak says, clasping Niall's hand. That accent of his can't be anything other than New York. "'m Rosencrantz. Itzhak." It's pronounced like 'yit-zohk'. "How's by ya. You, uh, didn't agree to knock up any gnomes, did you?" He's still stiff, but Niall is so gosh-darn friendly.

August grimaces at the idea of the gnomes showing up on anyone's doorstep, nods at what Itzhak's just said. "You don't want a quest from them. We got the easy end of the bargain."

He glances between the two, eyes the box from the bakery. He's tempted, because he's starving, but there's a reason he didn't eat anything this morning. He sets a hand on the glass jar. "Figured we could have a look at these. And if you haven't done much with reading," he aims that at Niall, "my experience says it's a good idea to have someone there."

"An apple?" Niall smiles an eye-crinkling smile that gets broader when Itzhak talks more and he puts it together. "Ah, a big apple. Gotcha. And nah, nah, never on the first date." Wink. And then he's eyeing August's jar. "Reading, like..?" he twiddles his fingers to indicate psychometry. "What's this, then?"

Itzhak snorts, laughing despite the tough-guy attitude. "Yeah, well, you're a wise man. Also a wise guy." He sets the box down, unslings his fiddle case, unlatches it. "Lemme get ready," he says to August, "what are those anyway that we're readin'?" That August is reading, anyway.

August tilts his head at Niall, considering him a moment. The sense that it's not just his eyes he's using is palpable, particularly to Niall. "Hm, maybe you can't do that yet." He unscrews the lid of the jar and pulls out a chunk. "There's three kinds of...whatever you want to call it. Talent, Song, Gift, Art. There's the one you two," he gestures at Itzhak and Niall in turn, "have strongest. There's the one I have strongest, which lets me break and fix things." An over simplification, if ever there was one. "And the third one is more," he taps his head, then his heart, "emotion and thought. All three of them let us sense...things, to a certain degree, on stuff. The mind Art, it lets us read emotions and thoughts. Events, even, if you're strong enough." He raises his eyebrows to see if Niall follows, or if Itzhak has anything to add. "Gonna read," he taps the bark, "this. It's what happened to the graft I put in the Veil forest a few weeks back."

"I've heard. Everyone describes it slightly differently. But the basic gist is the same. I haven't played with it much m'self, except when I was in a bind. And I find it wasn't as strong out in the woods as it is in the town proper. Once I was real deep in the park and I couldn't get it to work at all." Niall leans over and examines the jar, then lifts a brow at August. "So what're you hoping to learn from this reading?" He glances over at Itzhak, checking for cues that this might be dangerous or risky.

Nobody needs superpowers to see that Itzhak knows this is risky. He's rosining up his bow, frowning. "You sure you wanna do this?" He glances at August, then at Niall as if asking for support. "How much does it really matter?"

August nods at Niall. "It was real quiet for me, in Hoh, for a long time. Eventually popped back up, but nowhere near as strong as it's been here." Or in Bosnia, but that's another story. "Part of why none of us have the same terms or ideas about it, I think, is because we can't seem to record anything about it. Even our memories aren't guaranteed to stick." He grimaces, shakes his head. That's another topic.

He turns the piece of bark and wood over in his hands. It's branch-like, but not really a branch, anymore. "I want to know what the hell happened. Because..." He pauses, sighs. "It was like this had spread. Remember how the chalk marks were all over the trees? This," he holds up the piece of graft, "were all over the ones the gnome took us too. It was poisoning them. We got them straightened out," after getting our asses beat down, "and I gathered these up so we could dispose of them. But it occurred to me, maybe we should look at them first." Another nod, this time at Itzhak. "I think we need to know what I did, if we can find out. If only so we don't do it again." He raises his eyebrows. Who can argue with this logic? (Aside from Itzhak who can argue with anything, and Alexander who would say no on principle.)

"Mhmm, yes I've heard stories. What does it mean when you can't trust your own memories, ay?" Niall straightens up and folds his arms around his chest. "It's a bit like an ecosystem, innit? You can't really predict what will happen when you introduce a foreign organism. You can easily upset the balance. I mean, that happens in the real world. But in Fucky McNophysics Land? Who the hell knows? It could've been the chalk that did it for all we know, and not the graft. What seems innocuous to us could have unintended consequences."

"Yeah." Itzhak leaps on this angle. "Why don't we just NOT do it again. No need to figure out why." Sounds fake even to himself, though, and he knows damn well August won't agree with him. He scowls sudden and fierce at August, that enormous beak of a nose he's got crinkling up. "...Fuck's sake. Fine. But don't come crying to me."

"Exactly." August points the graft at Niall, then says to Itzhak, "We don't know what 'it' is. What if 'it' is 'going over there at all'? Though, we do know it was the graft in this case, since the trees told us." He pauses, frowns, then says, "I'll explain that later. They had faces and could talk. So...they were ents, I guess." Ents, dryads, sylvans. The Veil was here to make it all true and worse.

Smiling at Itzhak, he says, "I won't," lets out a long, slow breath. He starts turning the bark over in his hands, running his fingers along the ridges and turns, over the wood. Shaping first; his strongest, and accordingly he's thorough. What he sees makes him frown. "It's not really...Sitka spruce anymore. It is a little, but, the Veil changed it." Movement next, or matter and energy as he tends to call them. That makes him blink. "...actually I think it...is the Veil? It's like this is part of the Veil, now." Like the things they bring back, which never actually seem like normal things, despite looking that way. He looks askance at Itzhak to see what he makes of that.

"Of course the trees literally told you. Of course." Niall watches what August is doing, with raw curiosity, despite the danger. "So...anything that stays in there for too long becomes part of it after a time? Except people, yes? I've heard of people emerging after a long while and they're still..." he doesn't finish that thought.

Itzhak has arranged his bow and violin so he can snatch them up. His long inked fingers hover over the open violin case, over the instrument, as if considering doing it right now. His eyes are on August. "Well, you wanted a graft, right?" he murmurs, his tone gone from aggravated to a kind of wary fascination. "Them Veil trees fed what you grafted, pumped 'em full of themselves. Like...I dunno, like mosquitos carrying malaria." He looks at Niall. "Still what? Still themselves? Are they?"

"Are they," August echoes, his tone and gaze distracted and absent. "I've been wondering that, about people. The plants we planted in the Park all died. Lack of sun and water. Except, people have survived there. So, how? And why couldn't the plants join with the Veil the way the graft did? If the trees," his eyes flit to Itzhak for a half second, "in the Veil did this to the graft, why didn't soil do it to those plants?" He looks away again. "Though, the point of a graft is to join, and we know those things from FCN work that way. They're intent based. Maybe that applies here too? So maybe people stay themselves if they intend to." He shrugs, shakes his head. So many possibilities.

Finally, psychometry. Things proceed as they have been at first. But a few seconds into it, August's fingers slow to a stop. He goes perfectly, unnaturally still. He's not even breathing. A few seconds of this, then he blinks, swallows, and his eyes roll back. The piece of the graft falls from his hands as he starts to crumple in a heap.

"I still think we're trying to apply physics and biology to something we have no reason to believe functions based on rules. Or at least ones we can comprehend. Or ones that remain static. It doesn't seem like a good idea to..." and then August is going still. "Shit. That's not supposed to happen, is it?" And the crumpling? Really not supposed to happen. He moves forward to try and catch August before he hits the floor like a sack of potatoes.

"There's rules," Itzhak tells Niall, but falls quiet as he hears August's Song. He watches him intently, wound tight, ready to move. Which turns out to be good, because when August begins to collapse Itzhak lunges to catch him. "Oof, Jesus you're heavy," he grunts, wrapping long arms around the man's barrel chest. Niall's help is welcome to steady them both.

The good news is, August is breathing just fine. There's a sense of a minor injury to their shaping Art; something in one eye, but nothing beyond that. On the other hand, his mind is out like a light, like he's in the middle of the deepest REM sleep of his life. And boy, he sure is a buck eighty-five of (figuratively) dead weight.

And that piece of graft sits there, innocent and beckoning, on the floor of the greenhouse. Niall might not be able to get much from it, but Itzhak, maybe...

"Shit, shit. Ooof." Niall helps lower anyone who wants or needs to get down to the floor. "If there're rules, what do those rules say about what just happened to him? Do we get him to hospital?" He reaches out to try and check August's pulse, to check his breathing, his eye movement.

Itzhak mutters something, English and Yiddish smeared together, as he and Niall get August lowered to the floor. Luckily August keeps it swept. One of those huge long-fingered hands of his is spread on August's chest, feeling his breath and his heartbeat. "If he doesn't wake up soon we'll get someone to come help. But a lot of this stuff is like a sprain or something, you know?" His tone is low and urgent, even as he's telling Niall it's probably okay. "Nothin' you can really do, doctors just tell you to keep off it for six weeks. Roen? Roen." He pats August's cheek firmly.

Then, because nobody ever introduced him to a bad idea he didn't like, he glances at the chunks of plant matter, and he reaches for them, not with his body but with his Song.

"So this is normal? To get this...whiplash when you try to read something?" That's not really in Niall's superpower warehouse except to a very tiny degree. He continues to check vitals, nostrils flaring in concern. But then Itzhak is reaching for the very same bit of Cursed Bark. "You sure that's a good idea?" That's really the wrong question. The question he should be asking is 'are you going to do it anyway?'

One eye looks and acts perfectly normal; reactive to light, if slightly dilated. The other, though, clearly has some subjunctival hemorraghing in it, as the sclera's gone red. It's a bit of a sight to see. He doesn't wake up from this checking. His pulse is a steady 60ish. About what Niall might expect if he got knocked upside the head, minus any actual head injury. No reaction to the cheek patting, but he's not cold or clammy either.

The graft chunk trembles, almost obstinate, before it flies into Itzhak's hand. The moving Art tells him one thing: this is part of the Veil. Not that the Veil changed it, or infected it, but joined it. He could be holding something from the Other Side, if August hadn't told him otherwise.

But the mind Art...

There's a sense of standing under a dangerous overhang, ice and snow threatening an avalanche. He has only half a second to realize it's in motion before it hits him: every single emotion felt in a forest thousands of years old. At once, like a lightning rod to his mind.

Just like August, Itzhak freezes in place. His eyes widen, going blank and mad, pupils expanding--and then there's an earthquake. Pots and trays start rattling, first. Then bags of mulch and soil slump over, as the ground shudders. And then things really get rocking and rolling, the floor of the greenhouse leaping like a colt, panes of glass shattering under pressure.

It's not a natural earthquake. It's Itzhak's Song, like Niall's, the ability to influence the physical world. And it might be a wee titch out of control.

Shit shit shit. Niall grabs hold of the table, looks around, looks at the distant Itzhak. And then, he does the only thing he can think of - he reaches out to try and smack that bit of bark free from the man's hand. It's the only thing he can think to do in this situation. He's a newbie when it comes to the world of the strange. Most of what he knows is academic - not practical. But he knows enough to know: bark bad. No touchie.

The sudden destruction raining down--glass, trays, floor--has August stirring, but not quite waking up. The barest hint of the mind Art flickers in him, reaching out to grab at Itzhak and Niall in a request of 'what's going on where am I what happened'.

Itzhak's connection is busy. Thousands of years are going by, compressed into a crackling chaos of static. It lasts only another moment until Niall smacks his hand. The bark crumbles free. Then the earthquake settles, things losing kinetic energy and falling still. Itzhak stares at Niall, through him really, his chest heaving, his expression stunned. Tears run down his face.

Then, slowly, like he's not sure he remembers how, he moves. He blinks at Niall, then looks down at August. He pats at him, but he doesn't have words. Instead he signs something: long time.

"Jesus," mutters Niall, relief flooding his face after the quake stops. He then reaches out for Itzhak's arm, to try and guide him to the floor to sit for a minute. Even if there are bits of glass. Even if it's cold. Get down low before he passes out, and he has to try and catch someone else. Then, only after things have calmed does his lift expressive eyebrows at both of them. "Gentlemen. I think what we have learned here is: don't try to read fucking trees. Especially Veil ones."

August groans, opens his eyes. The one with the red would have made a nice effect back at Halloween. He squints at the sight of the signing, closes his eyes again. "Fuck," he murmurs. That might be about what they both just experienced, or it might be about the greenhouse. (Or both.) "Yeah," he says, voice hoarse.

Outside they can hear someone approaching. "August! Did you feel that?" It's Thoma, the middle-aged woman who oversees the shop interior. "I swear the subduction zone is going to go any day now! Mark my words." She's not quite to the door, but they can hear her easily through the broken glass.

Itzhak allows Niall to do this, sitting as if the broken glass doesn't bother him. In fact, it doesn't. He wearily thumbs-up at Niall, like, you got it buddy, no more reading fucking trees. Thoma's voice floats in, and Itzhak's eyebrows float up. He grins, crookedly, exhaustedly. Good old Thoma.

Unless he's stopped, Niall is doing the whole vitals check on Itzhak too. Checking his eyes, checking his pulse. His medical knowledge is limited to advanced first aid, but it's enough to see if there's any imminent danger. Which means he gets on the ground too, bits of glass snapping underfoot. "Oh we felt it," he calls out, "Everyone's all right in here, more or less. But there's some broken glass. People in subduction zones probably shouldn't build glass houses. Green or otherwise."

August levers himself up on his elbows, rubs at his normal-colored eye. He's careful to keep them shut, so Thoma can't see if she looks in. "We're fine, Thoma. But...do me a favor. Get the plans out, so I can order the replacement panes. And tell Cy we need the tarps."

"Oh if only," Thoma replies to Niall, clearly agreeing but also resigned to the nature of her employer. "But that's just how it is." She peers in through a broken pane, sighs. "Ooof. What a mess. Will do. And I'll have Ully bring the shop vac."

August makes a low sound of thanks-and-approval, sighs. Once Thoma's left, he says, "Sorry about that. I hadn't expected...well. Definitely not that." But he also hadn't expected arbivorous gnomes, so really, what could they expect? 'Anything' seemed to be the only answer.

Itzhak growls as Niall vital-checks him, narrowing his eyes at him, but his heart isn't in it. Niall gets to check him over, though he jerks his head away if there's any eyelid peeling. Then he puts his hand on Niall's shoulder, eyebrows tilting up in silent thanks. Suddenly words happen: "Hell of a first date, right?" Smirk. He starts to clamber to his feet, groaning. "Fuck. Roen, I'll fix it."

"Thanks guys. That was a real corker. Exploding glass. Earthquakes. Great party. Next time, booze, yeah?" Niall gets to his feet and reaches a hand down to help pull him up if needed. "Aw yih. Gotta keep it exciting around Gray Harbor though, right? I'm guessing neither of you got anything from that except a near-aneurysm?" He picks a bit of glass off his arm.

August can't make himself move. Not yet. His brain feels like it's ten sizes too big for his head, his left eye is throbbing, his mind Art is sore, in some way. Lying here amidst glass and wood and dirt sounds a-okay to him. He reaches out, grips Itzhak's ankle. "Don't worry about it," he says, voice low. "It was my idea." He almost manages a smile.

Niall's hand up is appreciated, and August even dredges up a laugh. "Yeah. Beers all around." He stands there a bit, bracing himself on the (mostly still stable) center table, stares at the jar. "Well. These are getting burned," he says. "Beach bonfire." He shakes his head. "Let's go sit, have some cider."