2020-03-27 - Seaside Sunset

The bitterness of winter is finally easing and the air is soft and palmy, down by the shore. The sailor's found himself a bench on the boardwalk, facing west, one foot propped up on the weathered wood of the railing. He's watching the sun go down and looking eminently contented, savoring one of those awful unfiltered cigarettes he smokes.

The weather is finally allowing August one of the things he likes most about living on the coast: a walk in the evening by the shore. He loves the smell of the water, having grown up by a river and worked most of his life next to the Sound. And now, he won't have to freeze his balls off to enjoy it.

Eleanor's still at the coffee shop, so he's wandering along solo, in a black hoodie, some tan cargo pants, and urban hikers. He spies Joe and angles that way, though doesn't pick up his pace, ambling along with a cup of chai from Espresso Yourself in hand. "Hey," he says once he's close enough. One of his eyes is hilariously bloodshot, and he has a few long, thin scratches around his chin and neck, like he did battle with a rose bush and lost.

The pilot slants an amused look at him, out of the corner of his eye, at first. He's only in t-shirt and jeans, and there's yet another bruise on his throat. "'lo there," he says, amiably. "You look like you spent a night sortin' wildcats. You all right?" he wonders. He scoots over in a way that's clearly meant to be inviting, nods at the space created, should August want to sit.

August chuckles under his breath; his features are drawn, and he looks exhausted. "If only," he says, murmuring a thanks as he takes the offered seat. He winces, shifts until he finds a comfortable way to sit. "Some plants in the zoo went berserk, started...attacking people. Bunch of thorny and spiny plants." He sighs. "Oregon grape...a black thorn...and a damned blackberry bush." He shakes his head. "And Itzhak and I blew my greenhouse to hell checking out something. So now that's two things we get to rebuild."

Yet for all that, his mood's not too bad. He glances at the bruise, mouth twitching in an almost-smile. He sips from his tea, looks askance at Joe. "How about yourself?"

Something about August's discomfort makes Joe's lips pinch, just a little, as if he were repressing a smile. "Damn," he says, with real sympathy. "This town....." He shakes his head, but this time, at least, there isn't that white-eyed panicky look he had in the bookstore.

"What was goin' on in the greenhouse, you didn't gag the mandrakes, Professor Sprout?" Yeah, he went there....and by the Cheshire Cat smirk, will have to be firmly discouraged from taking up residence there like a possum in a welcoming attic. "Me? I'm a'right," he says. "Glad winter's finally lettin' go. Not lookin' forward to really gettin' the Surprise ready for the sea again, but I've had three months of rest, it's time." Surely he doesn't mean he's leaving. At least one resident of the town would have kittens. Tattooed Mexican kittens.

"Yeah--never a dull fucking moment," August says around another drink of tea. He arches an eyebrow at the Harry Potter reference (oh yes, he's seen those movies, if not read the books; he has nieces, after all), laughs and smiles. "I wish it was anything like that." He pauses, mirth fading. "Some ah, experiments I was doing in the Veil--" He stops, frowns. "Not sure if I told you about those. Anyways," he waves a hand, "the short version is we came back with some specimens I'd tried grafting to a tree Over There. And..." He falls quiet, shakes his head. "Well. It kicks Itzhak and I in the head like a fucking horse." He taps his bloodshot eye. "But I got some valuable information out of it, maybe."

He arches an eyebrow, leans back a little. "Yeah? Town didn't sink its hooks all the way into you?" Another drink of tea.

That peels away a little of the languid air, the mention of experiments. Joe even sits up a little. "No," he says, as he politely flicks ash away, downwind. "No, you hadn't. Tell me more, if you don't mind. You can take things back and forth from here to there? Living things?"

A glance at the boats at anchor. "Oh, I'm stayin'. Just gettin' 'er ready so I can take her out for day trips, fishin', short expeditions. Sail her up to Seattle." He smiles to himself, lazily. "Nah, I ain't goin' anywhere, not long term."

August mmmms, nods at the revelation of Joe's boat plans. He looks out towards the boat dock; he's not seen the vessel, but is probably imagining, well, some sort of sailing yacht. "I bet that's a nice trip. I mean, if the weather's on your side."

He nods at the question. "Yeah, I can let myself in, too, but," a wry smile, "not back out. Need someone else for that, unless it's real thin. So," he shifts a bit, half-facing Joe, "I was trying to use a bit of botany to sort out more about the...nature of the Veil. Tried planting some things in the Park, tried a graft in Firefly Forest. The plants just died, but the graft..." He licks his lips. "I thought, at first, it had infected the Veil trees. Made them crazy and angry, they started attacking some beings that lived there." He shakes his head. "I think it's more like, they merged with the trees. Except, the trees, Over There, aren't just trees. They're an extension of the Veil." He thinks that over, having said it, nods to confirm he thinks that feels right. "So if we do something over there? We're effecting the whole Veil, itself." He stops there, lifting a brow to see if Joe follows, agrees, or something else entirely.

"I'm sure it is. Spring an' summer's way more the speed intended - I wasn't lyin' about wintering here from fatigue," he says, tapping ash against the side of the bench. Joe's also reoriented on August.....and it's worth noting, when he's discussing the experiments, the accent softens, the diction becomes far more precise. As if it were Scientist Brain that's sat up and taken notice....and is taking notes. His lips purse. "So what you're saying is....for all that what we see looks like discrete entities, when we're there, it's a unity of a kind. Like...." His gaze darts, looking for the right word. "Nothing's separate."

"Precisely." August toys with his cup of tea. "Or, at least those trees were. I'm sure it's not limited to them, though. Which..." He bites his lip. "Sometimes, when we bring things over? Weird shit happens. Maybe that's because we've basically turned the Over There inside out. Like pulling out its pockets. So it's leaking." He sighs, shakes his head. "I don't have enough of the movement Art to really look at that sort of thing solo, but maybe that's just as well. I'd get into a lot more fucking trouble then."

He laughs, rueful and sympathetic. "They call it the Pacific, but I feel like whoever picked that really visited at the wrong damned time." A little more tea, then, "What kind of fish do you catch out there? I do," he gestures east, "plenty of inland angling, but that's mostly trout, majority of it stocked."

"Like we're alien bodies causing an immune reaction?" He ventures the simile uncertainly, looking at the arborist with a furrow in his brow. "There's no way of keeping things completely separate, is there? How much of it....what do we know about the Dark Men? What they really are? Do they have a collective goal, beyond making us miserable so they can feed?"

A snort at that. "Amen. The Atlantic's a lot kinder, as is the gulf. Sea bass, snapper. Depends on the place and the day. I haven't tried off of California, truth be told. Lookin' forward to it."

August makes a low sound. "Maybe, yeah." He's quiet a time, eyes out on the beach. Presently he shakes his head. "No, I suspect not. I mean, maybe there is, for a while, but I suspect it just gets opened again. Like the Earth's crust--always shifting, some parts sealing, others coming open."

He sighs at the other questions. "I think the best way to think of Them is maybe like a black hole, in a way. They eat, they consume, and what they consume is our pain. And sort of like with a black hole, if you put other shit in the way, maybe that creates a buffer so you can get clear." He wrinkles his nose. "And like a black hole, they'll never stop eating. I suspect they're just a force of nature. There may be ways for us," a brief look at Joe to suggest he means those with Glimmer, "to steer clear, but I don't know that there's a way to get rid of Them, any more than you can get rid of tornadoes. Plenty of us plumbing that depth, not sure if anyone knows much, though." He shrugs.

"Oooh, I bet bass goes real nice under the broiler," he says, sounding thoughtful. "Maybe something chili and citrus on it, some herbs." He scratches his beard with his free hand, cuts Joe a look. "You get enough to bring back, I'm happy to trade. Have some elk, deer, geese, grouse, dove, rabbit..." A bob of his eyebrows suggesting there are other options, even.

"But there's sentience there, though, isn't there? Or beings that are, even if They're mostly manifestations of the universe's appetite for destruction." He snorts, runs his free hand through his hair - no trim since he first arrived, it's a far cry from that former crop. The arborist gets a rueful look. "I talked to Rosencrantz about it, once. Like....how do we really know this town is anything other than a feed lot for Them? A salt lick - call the Shining in, eat at your leisure." His gaze drops to the water again.

A little laugh, as if he were grateful for the change of topic....or the diversion. "Sure. I love game, far better than human raised meat. Bowhunted a lot as a kid and young man....I was actually out practicing when de la Vega got to me and I took that little unscheduled trip across the Veil."

"I'm not sure there is a sentience, honestly. Unless you want to think of, say, our immune systems as sentient." August doesn't sound like he thinks that's the worst idea, though. "Certainly there are those who work with Them, maybe even for Them. But, well, Itzhak, he calls them the Unshaped. I think that's important to remember. That's why I think of them like I do; maybe even considering them a disease works best. They effect us and how we feel, so ultimately how we behave and what we do. But they're not something we can really grasp." He snorts. "Hence their power. We're like our ancestors, before antibiotics and microscopes, groping around blind." Another wry glance, then he too is happy to set that aside.

"Same for me--though, rifles and shotguns, down in Mt. Hood State forest. One of my aunts taught me. She and her partner, they were up there living in an eighty-odd year old cabin." The brief, fond memory brings a smile, though it falters at that description. "I ah," he pointedly does not look at the bruise, "assume you two had a chance to discuss...that."

Joe finally stubs out the cigarette on the railing, vanishes the butt into a tin that serves as pocket ashtray, apparently. "That reminds me of a book I loved as a child - A Wind in the Door. There were manifestations of nothingness in that - unnamers. The Echthroi," he says, slowly. "I'd wondered. It's one thing to assign cogent malice to something that hurts you, but it's easy to anthropomorphize....and also so very dangerous."

He relaxes back on the bench, laces fingers over his belly, smiles over. "I can hunt with guns," he allows. "Jus' more used to bows. Maybe I can c'n convince you to take me out with you, nex' season." A nod for that query. "We did. It wasn't him. I'm Catholic enough not to blame a man for the actions of his possessing demon."

August points a finger at Joe. "Precisely. We might want Them to be something we can easily identify and go after, but we have to be careful about that. It lets us forget Their real power, which is in turning us against one another. And that just makes us easier prey." He finishes off his tea, tosses the cup into a nearby can marked for compost.

He grunts, coughs a laugh. "Not sure you need to be Catholic for that. But," he sobers some, "I'm glad to hear it. No one could blame you, if it was a problem. Even if it also wasn't his fault. But it'll help him, I think, that it's not."

But as to hunting, "I would be more than happy to take you with. Some friends and I, we hunt elk and deer together in the fall, split what we take since we almost always have at least two tags and no one of us is going through an entire damned elk and a deer in a year. Turkey's always gun, and I absolutely wouldn't mind the company when I go out for game birds locally." He gestures towards Firefly. "And Eurasian Collared Dove is an invasive, thus always in season here and in Idaho."

"Like one of my teachers used to say - don't anthropomorphize the spacecraft, they hate it when you do that," Joe's voice is dry. "It's easier to be....objective about forces and things when you don't assign motive. Like diseases. Like forces of nature."

A grin for that. "It does help, even if we just agreed They aren't demons. No. I....I've seen men taken out of themselves. I don't blame them. No more than I blame a man delirious with fever for inadvertantly striking someone trying to nurse him."

Not disposed to light up again. "It'd be a privilege. I've missed being able to hunt regularly. I love eating pigeon and dove - happy to help cull that population," he enthuses. "No boar or pig out here, is there?"

August snickers, nods. "Precisely. For us it's the plants and the trees. Though," his eyes glint a bit, "I kind of can't help it, what this the Art and all. Makes it a lot harder to not see them all as something...more." Pesky magic, making it harder to be objective in science.

He nods in agreement. "Right. Really, a delirium's probably the best way to think of it." He studies Joe a second, glances aside. "Hope this crazy damned place cuts him some slack."

Making a face, he admits, "Not much in Washington, unfortunately. There's some in Oregon, though a lot's on private land, so you have to work with the landowners, get yourself an in." He shrugs about that; if there is a man who's not going to network to get hunting access to wild pigs, it's August.

He shrugs, expansive, spreads long hands. "I mean, humans think in metaphors and symbols. We can't help it. It's just so long as you don't use it as a guide for behavior, for response....."

"I hope so, too," Joe's voice is gentle, the fondness all too apparent on the long face. Making no secret of it, not now. Then he scratches at his hairline. "Fair enough. I don't have my heart set on it. They just tend to be year round invasive's in the Southeast. I used to hunt 'em a lot in Texas and Florida and Georgia."

"We do, it's true." Though August has to wince and give Joe a sort of look, like he can't help himself, but won't openly say that. It's written plain on his face, though.

He doesn't press, on the topic of de la Vega, just dips his head in silent confirmation. Instead, "Most of the hogs in Oregon are escapees gone feral. I think we just haven't had them out here, on the West Coast, long enough to get them all over like I hear about back East." He raises his eyebrows. "How do you find them, taste wise? Can't say I've had any in recent memory, definitely not that I hunted myself."

"I like 'em, 'pendin' on how they prepared," he says, meditatively. "But then, 'gamey' is never a complaint from me. What about you?" Cocking an eye that way again. "If you kill a lot of dove, how do you prepare 'em?"

Then he's laughing, ruefully. "Man, you makin' me hungry. Hell, what'll you take in trade before I can get you some ocean fish?"

August scratches his beard, murmurs, "Hm, might have to ask around, see if anyone knows where we can find some in Washington."

Of the dove, he says, "Barbecue, for the most part. Poppers, or huckleberry sauce--I saw a prickly pear recipe I'd like to try but I'd need to get my hands on some prickly pear first. I also roast them sometimes, then use them in enchiladas, or an a la King style recipe." He shrugs that all aside. "Easy stuff. Right now?" He tilts his head, expression thoughtful, shrugs. "I could just give you some, honestly. My freezer's pretty full at the moment, I wouldn't mind making some space. But if you come by some nice fish, I wouldn't mind something new and interesting. Do you have a particular thing you've been missing?"

"Venison," Joe retorts, without hesitation. "If you're talking about game meat. I used to try and catch the season in Texas, but gen'rally I was either trainin' too hard or travellin'. Actually got to go in Russia, once. I had a buddy who was a hunter, and we managed to tack a little on to survival training." Another jolt of laughter. "Fish-wise? Not much. Nothin' tastes like the bream I used to catch and fry as a kid, but that was mostly bein' a kid, I think."

"Venison it is," August says with a nod. "I'll bring you some by next time I'm coming back from the cabin into town." He's about to say more, or maybe ask what bream are (he's not kidding when he says trout, and catfish, are all he really knows of fishing), when his phone pings in his pocket. "One moment here..." He pulls it out, eyeing a messages, swipes out a reply. "Looks like she's all done at work. Time to head home and make some dinner." He slides the phone back in his pocket, gets up, slowly and carefully. A good night for a long, hot bath. He stuffs his hands in his pockets. "Good to see you again. I'll be by with that venison in a day or so."