2020-04-06 - Glasshouse

Cristobal has come by to check on his little plot of land, the raised beds having been built late last fall and into the winter and now he's been following the directions on how to prep the soil to start his little garden. But today, he's not alone. It took some finagling to get the wheelchair down here, but through perseverance and brute strength, Cristobal won out and managed to get the old woman down to see the future garden. "So over there, I'm going to plant the vegetables and peppers, but all this. All this will be filled with whatever kind of flowers you want. You name it."

The black woman with the ghost tight cropping of ghost white hair nods absently, her gnarled hands holding a bulb catalog idle in her lap. She has a wool blanket tucked around her legs against the Spring chill and she wears a slight bemused smile on her lips, "That's fine, Chil'." She says in a far away voice, as if she heard him but is just responding in general with her deep Louisiana accent. "Jus' fine."

There's been a noticeable change since critobal was last here: the private greenhouse in undergoing rennovations. Or maybe it's repairs. Several of the glass panes are out, and new ones are going in. August is in the process of putting in a new door; the old one sits off to the side, split like it was twisted until it cracked. He glances over his shoulder when he hears the voices, gives Cris an up-nod. He's in a green, black, and white flannel over a gray waffle-knight Henley and denim jeans, and his heavy hikers are muddy from work.

A few more seconds with his screwdriver, then he sets it aside and comes to join the pair. "How're you doing," he says to Cruz, the glances down at the woman in the wheelchair. "Pleased to meet you, ma'am."

Cristobal turns as he hears August approaching, giving him a crooked smile. "August. This is Miss Emeline Williams. My landlady. Miss Emeline this is August Roen, the proprietor of this fine establishment." The woman dips her head a little bit at the introduction, hardly distinguishable from the nods she was giving Cristobal earlier. Then her eyes go off into the distance to focus on nothing again.

Cristobal leans over the woman, "Miss Emeline, I'm going to put your music on now, alright. You sit here and imagine your flowers while I talk to my friend here." He lifts a pair of headphones from around her neck and settles them over her ears, toggling on the music from an iPod that's several versions outdated. Some Jazz notes drift out, and the woman's eyes seem to light up with some distant recognition and her smile grows a touch and it's then Cristobal feels she's content enough to leave her side for a moment.

His hand comes out to touch August's shoulder, taking a few steps away. "She'll be happy like that 'til the cows come home." A touch of Texas comes out in Cristobal's voice with the words. "So what happened there?" He asks of the Greenhouse.

Dipping his head to Emeline, August says, "Cruz here is too kind, but welcome Branch & Bole, Ms. Williams." Comprehension flits through his features, and he nods as Cris sets her up with some headphones and jazz.

He shoves his hands in his pockets, turns back towards the greenhouse. "Small...accident when we were reading something." He cuts a look at Cris which suggests he doesn't mean reading text. He sighs, shakes his head. "I'm just glad I thought to do it out here and not in the shop, we'd have fucking ruined the building." They're almost done with repairs to the exterior, which is the important part. Once the temperature and humidity are controlled again, he can worry about the racks and tables inside it.

After a quiet second, he says, "Turns out using the mind Art on a hybrid piece of something from over there was not a good idea."

"It's good to get her out." Cris explains of the woman, "Won't go in her own garden any more because her husband kicked the bucket out there, but she misses the flowers." His boot scuffs at a rock, eyes flitting back up as August explains the greenhouse situation. Gaze travels back in that direction, as if trying to gauge just what could have caused that much damage. "Hybrid piece? Afraid I'm not following. Remember your version of the Veil is pretty much brand spanking new to me." As if to imply he has one of his own.

August makes a low sound. "I was doing some experiments over there, kind of...poking at it, to get a better idea of its nature. And one thing I did was a graft. I took some Sitka spruce and grafted it to the closest looking thing I could find." He sighs, folds his arms. "That went great." His tone is dryer than Death Valley in summer. "it kind of...poisoned the trees. After we get them sorted, these pieces were left over, kind of like scabs. So I figured I'd examine it, using," he raises a hand and rubs his fingers together, to indicate Glimmer. Now he smiles, rueful. "Got my ass handed to me. Itzhak tried to too, lost hold of his movement Art, wound up busting up the greenhouse." He shrugs helplessly, like this is something he and Itzhak do on the regular: experiment with Glimmer, destroy buildings.

He tilts his head. "Your version," he echoes, inviting more description.

Cris pulls his lips into his mouth at the explanation, worrying them together as he sucks against the skin, finally releasing them with a little popping noise when he mentions Itzhak lost control. "Make an omelette you gotta break some eggs. Sorry about your huevos, my friend." But it seems construction is underway, repairs being made. Things can be fixed.

"More closely tied to religion, or mistaken for it. There is a little Cenote on my familia's land in Juarez. They thought it had healing powers, but it was probably just my abuela's..." His fingers imitate the same motion August made. "And the devil inside of me is just what you call move Art. Not a poltergeist, yeah?" He grins slightly, a note of self-deprecation to it.

August coughs a laugh when Cris says he's sorry for August's 'huevos'. "Thanks," he says, wry. The expression doesn't last; he sobers almost immediately. "That's about how Itzhak and I see it. We're not going to know what the fuck we're dealing with until we examine it, try some things out. That it's undiscovered country doesn't mean we shouldn't try, just means it's dangerous." He looks back at the partially-restored greenhouse. "And that we have to be careful."

He considers Cris' description, nods. "Sounds about right. I could see someone crossing Over There and thinking they were in a place where spirits dwell. Certainly it's fucking weird enough."

Cris gives an a little grunt, "Divine visions, my people called them. Not Dreams. Coming back wounded was like Stigmata." His eyes go out to the woods beyond the plots. "But this place, Gray Harbor, the pull is so much stronger than it was is Mexico." His head dips again, "I have my own reasons for wanting to explore this 'undiscovered country', and I'm ready to poke the bear. I just don't want to go in unprepared." This said to the tips of his cowboy boots rather than August himself.

August huffs a humorless laugh. "My parents just thought I had an overactive imagination," he says, grimly amused. "Makes sense, though--they have to explain it to themselves somehow. Why not religion? People are a lot less likely to question that."

He half turns and considers Cris a time. "You sure about that? Don't take this the wrong way--and I'm sure you know this already, but in case you don't--the more of this you do, the more They come for you and yours." He holds up a hand to forestall any arguing. "I'm not saying this to dissuade you. Just so it's clear. Using the Art turns Their eyes on you. There's no avoiding that." He pauses, waiting to see what Cris thinks of that.

Cris gives a little dip-nod of his head like Emeline, "I know." He says soberly. "They've already come for 'mine', and if I don't learn how to control this," He holds out his hands in front of him, examines the backs of them. "Then I'll be no use in protecting them, and finding the answers I need. I already know how to fight, I just have no idea how to control this weapon. It only seems to manifest with anger or stress, which is dangerous enough on its own when I go off half-cocked."

August nods, satisfied with that answer, at least to the extent Cris can give it. He moves to the plot, ostensibly inspecting it, shoving at a rock or a bit of dirt with a boot here and there. "Practice is the most important thing. Get used to using it when you're not upset. Stop associating it with those emotions. Then it gets easier to not use it when you're feeling that way," he meets Cris' eyes a second, "unless you need to."

He crouches down, runs his fingers over some seedlings. "You've got the movement Art, and a little drop of the other two. Not a lot, but they're there."

Cris' eyebrows lift up as August tells him he has all three within him, at least one of them is news to him because he knows about the spiritual Art, when he explains, "My abuela tried to bring out the 'Holy Mother' in me, like her, but I couldn't do more than ease a couple bruises, little cuts...the mind thing...is that why Joseph can..." He can't really find the words to describe it, but instead demonstrates with his hands, weaving the fingers together in some kind of connection.

August surveys Cris when he says that about Joe, a smile teasing at the corners of his lips. "Yeah, I'm about the same strength as him with that one." One of the seedlings is withered, no doubt from the persistently cold nights. August traces a leaf with his finger, and it perks up, leaves unfurling and turning a healthy green once more. "The Art comes and goes, and changes over time. Like anything else we can do, to be honest."

He stands up, moves back out of the plot. "The moving Art has a few interesting bits to it, most of which I can't even do. It lets you find things. Open the way over there and back." He raises his eyebrows, silently asking what all Cris has tried.

Cris doesn't blush at that bit of smile from August, unlike Joe and Itzhak his tinge of abashment manifests in a scrub at the back of his neck with his fingernails. At least he has the perked bit of seedling to focus his attention on. A shake of his head in the negative means not just that he hasn't found those parts about his Art but that he didn't even know they existed. "Shove things, move things. Shake them..." It's easy to see why their appearance is associated with anger and stress.

August chuckles under his breath. The neck-scratch is as good as a blush. "It's good. He needs people."

He listens to Cris' description of what he can do, grunts. "I wasn't able to find things or cross over until I came here," he says. "Used to be able to protect someone, that's gone I think. Or..." His eyes go unfocused, and there's a sense he's trying something, reaching for it--then draws back. He shakes his head. "Nah, it's different now."

He half turns and looks at Cris. "I guess that's something to work on. Got your keys on you?"

"Everyone needs people, in this town." Cris states flatly, clearly speaking from experience as a one-upon-a-time loner.

His eyes are studying August as he looks like he's trying to Warg like some failed Three-eyed Raven, and his head tilts curiously as the man states that his ability to protect people isn't gone, just changed, the latino desperately trying to keep up and glue all the fragments together into one cohesive picture.

When August asks if he has his keys, Cristobal starts fishing in the pocket of his jeans, though he throws a glance to the elderly woman he brought with her. "Yeah, but I can't just leave her here. So if you want to go for a joy ride...?" He offers the keys up to his dark blue classic car with a blind sort of trust.

"Especially in this town," August says on a grunt. He cuts a look over at Emeline, back to Cris. "No, not for a joy ride." He accepts the keys with a nod, looks them over like he's getting familiar with them.

Then he winds up and chucks them out into the grass at the edge of the green belt. "Alright. Easiest way to find something is to need to find it."

Cris realizes what August is doing a half of a second too late, lurching over but unable to stop the hurl of his keys. "What are you doing, bastardo loco!" Calling him a crazy bastard is just the beginning of litany of Spanish, complete with wild gesticulations that end with a back handed WHAP to the man's shoulder. "What do you mean find something. The easiest way to find something is to make the asshole who lost them go and fetch them. You go and find them!" Clearly he doesn't realize what August is getting at, because he's starting to stalk in that direction, muttering more insults in his native tongue.

August was expecting this reaction, and just smiles. He lets Cris get maybe a half-dozen steps before he halts him with his clothes. "Not like that," he calls. "Think about them. What they look like, what they feel like in your hand. How they sound when you pick them up."

Feels the jerk of his clothes clear as if a hand had managed to grab the fabric. No, not a hand, a steel cable he had reached the end of its slack at a full run. It startles him at first, and he spins around to glare at August, upper lip pulled crooked with a sneer. "How about I think about my fist in your face." It's a knee jerk reaction to being caught off-guard, but he quickly reins the burst of anger back in with a sharply drawn breath. After all, he asked August for help. He just wasn't expecting lesson number one would be now.

Fists curling down at his sides, he does as August instructs, needing to close his eyes to get a good mental image. Four keys. One to the garage apartment, one to the club, an ignition key and one for the trunk of his car. Each shape, each color of metal. Each link of the chain that a dumb keychain in the shape of Texas hangs off of, the words 'Don't Mess with Tejas' emblazoned on the front.

"You can think about that too." August sounds way too amiable for a guy who can't throw a punch to save his life. There's even a hint of a smile in his tone. "But after this. The next part is harder. While you're thinking about the keys--how they look, how they feel in your hand--start feeling out this space." He raises his hands. "Everything in it. Where it all is." He taps his temple. "Don't see it. Sense it, the same way you pull something to you. You don't need to see something to grab it with the Art. You don't need to see this space to know how it's laid out."

At this point Cristobal would just call August bat shit crazy, but even knowing what little he knows and seeing what little he's seen in relation to glimmer, and the Veil and Dreams, bat shit crazy no longer seems so crazy after all.

He gives a long exhale of breath, trying to pull his mind away from distractions and focus as August instructs. The grass, where the path cuts across, how the ground dips. He suddenly feels where a rock is instead of seeing it with his eyes, hidden in the grass, but that's not what he's looking. His keys. Can he feel where they are now? Where the don't belong in the physical landscape as well as his mental one of the land.

"Sometimes," August is saying, "I find something by just demanding I know where it is." His voice is a little closer now (though notably out of punching distance). "I need a tight association to do that, though. For things that aren't mine, I have to take in a space. Take in the item. Then feel around for it. Like looking for something you dropped on the floor in the dark." The items which are living don't stand out so well to Cris, but he knows their presence by the lack of other things, a sort of negative space. The way the grass moves to suggest an animal (a rabbit? a rat?) is moving through it. The dip of a branch which implies a bird is sitting there.

The shapes of the plots are more obvious; the way the dirt's been disturbed and shifted, the raised beds, the trellises. The shattered, personal greenhouse off to one side of that.

He can find a rock, he can sense the movements of animals in the world surrounding them, but what Cris can't find? His goddamn keys. The frustration is starting to show in the line of his brow, furrowing into rolls of peaks and valleys of irritation. "As much as I'm enjoying being one with my fucking surroundings, I'm beginning to think my keys fell through some void in the universe and are now driving some Alternate Reality Ford Fairlane."

"Take a breath," August says. "No one gets this shit right the first time. Or even the second, third, or fourth." He lets Cris feel around for another minute or so, long enough to really get a sense of this particular space. Then there's a pulse of something moving through the air, and Cris' keys thump against his chest.

"Just practice a bit. No too much, you don't want Them stopping in for a chat. Like right now--don't lean over to pick them up. Get a feel for them, right there, at your feet."

"I fucking hate you so much right now." Cristobal says with an amicable grin on his face as the keys he's been trying to 'feel' for suddenly thump into his chest and fall to the ground. The words are said with wry amusement and zero heat just in case August thinks he means to make good with that punching thing.

He cranes his head side to side, a popping sound coming from his neck as he tries to relax a bit before he tries again. Maybe it's because they're at his feet, maybe it's because he's pissed, but the keys make a jangle and then suddenly fly up into his waiting hand. "Fuck yeah, I got the fucking force! Suck on that, Luke Skywalker."

August coughs a laugh. "Something like that," he says, tone rueful. "I'd work on finding for a bit, before you try opening doors, only because..." He hesitates, like he's not sure what he wants to say, much less how to say it. Presently, he decides on, "There's a bit of finding involved, with the doors. And you have to be careful, because if you're too close to a place where They're milling around, they'll haul you into one of their prisons and feed on you for a while. On your pain." He makes a face. "Which makes practicing, learning it, difficult. Dangerous. Don't ever forget that." Some of the levity leaves his voice. "I'm not saying don't practice, because if you don't, you won't know how to control it, and you could easily kill someone in a bad situation. But you have to weigh the costs."

"So the classic 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' scenario. Gotta love those." Cristobal seems to contemplate that as he weighs the keys in his hand, keys he brought to him willfully, under his own control rather than just a result as a fit of anger or stress. That alone is enough to make him grin. "Right now, I'll just practice on the feeling these surroundings thing, before I even try to crack open a gateway to There. I'll save that for our next lesson." He gives August a bit of a wink to the assumption there will be a next time.

"Alright, I better get Miss Emeline back before she catches a chill in her bones, and I'll never hear the end of it. Uh...thanks, Roen."

"Yeah pretty much," August admits, kicking at a bit of crabgrass at his feet. "Like a lot of life, there's no real winning. Just survival. But," he smiles again, a feral edge creeping in, "some of us are pretty used to that." He bobs his eyebrows.

"That's the best way to start. Just...meditate on it. Get comfortable with it. Like when you buy a new car, you don't run off and challenge the first idiot you see to a race." He pauses, eyes Cris. "Well, maybe you do. But in this case, don't." No denial of a future lesson, or something like one, so that does seem to be on offer.

He up-nods. "Yeah, get your lady there back in a nice warm car. And you're welcome." A more genuine smile now, free of anything other than mild amusement.