2020-06-30 - The Problem with Modr

Eleanor has sent an invitation out to Alexander Clayton, her fellow Gray Harbor conspiracy theorist but, more importantly, a private detective who specializes in the weird. She's baked some chocolate chip cookies (or maybe August did), and made a pitcher of lemonade, which are set on the dining table along with plates, napkins, and glasses. She's clearly playing hostess and nervous about discussing the situation that has brought them together.

The coffee shop owner is in khaki shorts and a pale rose-colored peasant blouse, her feet bare on the hardwood floors, and her hair bound into a thick, loose braid. The windows are all covered, and the house is still mostly devoid of reflective surfaces, something she's lived with most of her life.

August left the cookies to Eleanor, instead beginning some early dinner prep in the form of chopping veggies (for a bolognese sauce to put in lasagna) and supervising the baking ('They get flat and kinda brown if you soften or melt the butter, which is fine if that's what you want'). He's in post-work-shower loungewear: a dark red, slub tee, dark gray commuter pants, a black hoodie, and some black, indoor slippers. He's calm in contrast to her nervousness, with an underlying edge of tension. Ruiz and Isabella's disappearances, no matter that they've resolved, have left him on high alert.

Alexander is reluctant to leave Isabella's side. On the other hand, Eleanor is a friend, too. So he shows up, scruffy and battered and underslept, but some essential spark that had been missing (or, perhaps, was instead fanned to an inferno) has returned to him. He's never calm, of course, and he enters the house like a man expecting an ambush. "Hey." He doesn't really look at August, his shoulders hunched as he prowls around a bit, staring impolitely at things.

Eleanor is one of the people who understands Alexander. She's not too unlike him in many ways, although her social skills might be a tiny bit more polished....in the other direction of being a total fucking dorkapotamous nerdball in public. Weirdos on the opposite ends of the spectrum, who nonetheless get to that position for the same reason.

"Alexander, thank you so much for coming, I really appreciate it," she says, letting the man in with a smile and closing the door behind him. The house is nice, but some bits and pieces have slowly started to be packed up in preparation for moving to August's cabin more permanently, and possibly renting out the Spruce House on Air BnB. "There are cookies and lemonade if you'd like some."

"Hey," August says, watching Alexander come in, checking for signs of...well, improvement might be asking for a lot. Less-bad, maybe. He seems satisfied with what he sees, finishes slicing up an orange bell pepper and starts stowing the prep bowls in the fridge. "How's Isabella doing? You two need anything?" This is one of those perfunctory questions August likes to ask before he inevitably gives someone things, regardless of their actual answer. Even now a box lurks on the cornter of the counter, piled high with fruits and veggies. Chances Alexander is leaving with it: high.

Once he's got the bowls in the fridge he settles at the table, not yet reaching for the cookies and lemonade. Guests first.

Alexander gives Eleanor a fleeting smile at the thanks, then shrugs. "I like to help." His hands are bandaged across the knuckles and various scrapes, but otherwise he looks reasonably healthy as he sidles up to where the cookies and lemonade are, and pours himself a drink. "Thanks." A glance over to August. "I broke my furniture," he admits, after a moment. "But I can fix it. Isabella is bruised and tired, but not seriously injured. She's sleeping."

Eleanor pours lemonade for August and herself as well. The cookies are good old-fashioned Nestle tollhouse from the recipe on the package of chocolate chips. They rarely disappoint. "I'm glad to hear Isabella is ok and back home safe. We were all so worried."

She moves to settle at the table and claim a cookie for herself. She pauses a long moment, looking to August, before turning her gaze to Clayton. "I don't know if I ever told you about what happened to me when I was a kid, twelve or so, in my parents' old house on Elm."

August nods at Alexander, expression sympathetic. It's not like and Itzhak had wanted to boot Alexander right back out of the Veil all of ten minutes after crossing. "Glad to hear that. If it'd been me, with Ellie missing, way more than furniture woulda been busted." Also since he can cross on his own there's a good chance he'd have just run off looking for her, alone, like a total idiot, but no need to dwell on that one. "If you need any help with it, let me know. I mean," he flxes a hand, "mundane help."

He leans back in his chair, has a sip of lemonade when Eleanor's joined them. He's watching her, now, waiting to see how this recitation goes.

Alexander just shrugs to August, ducking his head as if ashamed, and scuffing the floor with the toe of his boot. He takes a sip of lemonade, then turns his eyes towards Eleanor. There's a shake of his head. "No. You never did. I would like to know," he adds, as if that's not blindingly obvious by the focus of his dark eyes on her, now.

"My best friend Addie and I were playing in the basement. It was cooler down there in the summer so we would play down there. There was just some storage items, one lightbub, the washer and dryer, usual stuff. But there was also a card table and folding chairs we could sit at for tea parties and the like. There was an off-limits area too, near the furnace, with items from a previous owner, and one day we explored. Old furniture under tarps, and an old floor length mirror. We had flashlights and the bravery of stupid kids."

She swallows hard and sips her lemonade to buy herself a moment, her hands starting to shake a bit. "Something reached out of the mirror and pulled us through it, to the other side of the Veil. Into a forest where all the trees and plants were dead, and it was windy and raining and dark, and lightning was everywhere, blasting across a dark sky. And we weren't alone."

August reaches out to takes one of Eleanor's hands, folding it into his and gripping gently. He smiles warm, wordless encouragement to her, flicks a glance at Alexander to gauge his impression.

Alexander perches on an open chair, his free fingers beating restlessly against his knees as he listens. A brief nod for the exploration - of course they explored - then a grimace at what happened. It actually seems to focus and steady him, hearing these words. His head comes up and shoulders straighten out of their slouch. "I take it that what was with you was not friendly."

Eleanor shakes her head at Alexander's question, and looks momentarily comforted at August holding her hand. With the other she picks up a nearby folder and sets it in front of Alexander. Inside are some drawings. Nothing super fancy, but Eleanor can draw serviceably. There are depictions of the dead forest, some done more recently after seeing the edges of that wood in the mindscape she shared with August. The depiction of the creature she met there is pretty accurate, and the sheer terror of it can be felt in the strokes of pencil on paper.

It is part man, part beast, part living tree itself. The body looks to be that of a gigantic elk or moose or some other member of the Cervidae family, perhaps an ancient line. But then things change. Spikes run down its back, looking like tree branches, and two sets of arms come out from above where the front shoulders would be, one set man-sized, and one shriveled and gnarled into claws. The chest is black as night, but two bright points of light gleam from it, eyes? Above it, a human-like torso, neither rightside up or upside down, and where arms (or maybe legs) would be sticking up into the air, and branchy antlers. It's horrific to look at. It looks mythic. Slavic or Nordic maybe. Norse? Jotunn?

"It picked Addie up, she shined brightly, like August, with the shaping art, and she screamed. It poured something into her throat from where I think it's mouth must have been."

August glances over the drawings with an air of someone who's seen them before. He gives the depiction of the creature in question a 'if I ever meet you in person I'm tearing you apart first, asking questions second' look; mouth flat, expression grim and resolute.

Alexander leans forward to look at the places, and the monster. His eyes linger on the twisted creature, nodding to himself. "I haven't seen anything like this before," he says, quietly. "I imagine most people who do see it don't get to tell anyone about it." His gaze flicks up to her, again. "What happened then?" He knows it's not good; his expression is grim. But he asks anyway.

"It wanted our help. Her help. I barely had any shine back then, but Addie, it wanted to keep her there. But I grabbed her and we ran. On the way it gored me on those antlers, which is why August and I had some really interesting 'getting to know you' moments, both from his tattoos and how he appears in the kythe."

She grimaces and swallows. "It threw me off though, and Addie and I got back to the door that was the mirror. We dove out, and I shattered the mirror. I was bleeding, Addie seemed fine but...she died less than a year later. She turned mean, cruel even, and suddenly they discovered she had stage four Lymphoma. And that was that. I haven't had a mirror in my home since, and mostly I keep reflective surfaces covered up when I can."

She pokes at a cookie worriedly. "Then, on the anniversary of the town founding, Addie's ghost came to me in the bathroom mirror at the cabin. She told me that she couldn't move on, because that thing still needs help. She's stuck, until I can help it. So we need to figure out where it's forest is in the Veil, figure out what it needs. I think it was dying, sick, like it's forest. I am thinking it needs help healing the land. But it's all a guess."

August's mouth twitches in a near smile as Eleanor lets slip the bit about antlers and how it made things...interesting, for them. It's short lived; by the end of her explanation, he's back to that stony resolve. He clearly has some ideas on what help he'd like to give the creature, 'fucking the hell off' right at the top of the list. He drinks lemonade instead of saying that, even though one needn't have any mind Song to know he's thinking it. Then he clears his throat, and says, "I figure it's part of Firefly, but the question is, where. Adjacent to the saw mill? Near some kind of business that poisoned the land?"

"Funny fucking way of asking for help," Alexander mutters, and runs a hand through his disheveled hair. He sighs. "So. It's infected with some sort of bad shit, which it can pass on via vomiting into its victim, but it's actually looking for help. Maybe...trying to drain its own infected wounds into others?" He tilts his head to one side, glances at August, since the other man is a better healer than he is, and smiles, briefly, at the look on the other man's face. "Are you sure you wanna help it? If we figure out how to kill it, the probably will probably be equally resolved."

"Addie gave me the impression, killing it wouldn't set her free. And I need to help my friend. This thing it, it might not be bad at all, just desperately ill. It may have been trying anything it could at that time to save its little piece of the Veil. I'd like to try to help it. I think I will sleep better that way," Eleanor admits. "Do you think you can do some research? And Isabella maybe can help when she's fully better. I know she was exploring over there some."

August bobs his eyebrows at Alexander, gives him a bitter smile. He's not one to want to solve Veil problems by killing them, it's true, but this is different. It's Eleanor. (Though he'd make exceptions for a few people, at this point. The Veil is burning through its social currency with him at an alarming rate.)

He sighs, nods when Eleanor mention Addie's ghost. "Yeah, killing it might...not let her move on." He wrinkles his nose. "I'm not wild about helping it," he admits to Alexander, "given what it did to her friend. But we know now that what we do over there, effects all of over there. Killing it might fuck things up in ways we can't expect. Healing it, that might at least...unfuck some things."

"Assuming that's actually the ghost of your friend, and not just the equivalent of an anglerfish's lure, trying to get you back within its range," Alexander points out, flatly. His eyes flash with sudden, dangerous fury at the idea of bringing Isabella in, and the hand on the glass of lemonade tightens. But he takes a breath, managing to not lash out. Instead, he closes his eyes and breathes a few times, before nodding. "But if that's how you want to handle it, that's what we'll do. I can look into things, and I can ask Isabella." He opens his eyes again. "Do you have any other information about it? A name? I'd agree that it'd be associated with Firefly...but if it's near the mill, I don't know if I can help you. There are a lot of angry shattered souls there."

Ellie shakes her head. "What little I found, which was only recently, admittedly, might point to it being Swedish? Ancient from that? A Jotunn, possibly? I am hoping August and I can go back into the mindscape and see if we can learn anything on the dead side of the volcano in his brain." Yeah that makes sense to no one who doesn't understand glimmer crap. She squeezes August's hand.

Thinking back to Eleanor's description, August asks, "Do you know who owned that previous house before your parents? Maybe that mirror wasn't just, you know...an accident. Maybe it was something someone had been using to cross over." He stops as soon as he's said that, frowning. "I wonder if that's something that can happen. If we use the movement Art to cross over a lot at the same point, does that do something?" He thinks about it another few seconds, shakes his head. No need for tangents.

"It it's Scandinavian, maybe there were Scandinavian immigrants working around here who brought it with them, after a fashion. If the Veil's," he glances at Alexander, "psychomorphic, like you said, it could be they sort of...made it exist here."

"There were a lot of Eastern European immigrants in this area - I would be surprised if there weren't some Nordic area ones, as well. And we know items can be enchanted with abilities. Maybe that one had the ability to open a portal." Alexander hums. "If you can describe it in as much detail as possible, I and Isabella could also try and track that down. If she had it in her hands, I bet Isabella could tell you a bit about the era and history of it. Archaeologist, after all." He smiles a bit, warming to the idea. "And I could focus on trying to narrow down rumors or sightings of this thing in the area, see if we can narrow down anything about it? I can't...I don't have the ability to open doors, so I can't do primary research alone, but I'll do what I can on this side."

"All definite possibilities. I can look into some town genealogies and at the ownership history of the old house. Maybe if we got access to it, we could open a door there and cross over. Maybe the mirror was just....right, a secondary means to cross for someone who couldn't make a door on their own." Eleanor shakes her head in regards to the mirror. "I can maybe draw it from memory, it was thrown into the trash after it was shattered. My parents thought that was what made the wounds on my back."

"Right," August says, nodding at Alexander. "Hell, even if the mirror's gone, maybe that basement still has something in it you could read for some information." He pulls a face. "I mean, assuming the current owners are," he coughs, "okay with that." He has to allow that they might be put out by total strangers asking to check out their basement. He would be, after all.

"I can," he says, of door opening. "So if you'd rather not only rely on Isabella for that, I'm happy to lend my services. I just need to hunt around for a way back out once we're over; I can't punch on through like Itzhak."

Alexander nods to Eleanor. "If you could, and send it to Isabella, I think it'd help. She might at least be able to identify the style and era from a drawing." He glances at her sketches. "Your drawings are good." He considers. "And getting access to the house shouldn't be a problem. I'm sure the owners will suddenly remember that they forgot to pick up some vitally important ingredients from the store, and will be happy to stay away for a while." He says it all completely deadpan.

"I....I can make doors in and out now," Eleanor admits quietly. She hasn't said much about how much her power has increased recently, but there it is. She barks out a laugh at Alexander's idea. It's good to be friends with a powerful mentalist when you need to poke around somewhere. "I will do that. And thank you again, Alexander. Your help with this is really appreciated. Is there anything I owe you for it? I can pay your normal research rates."

August almost chokes on his lemonade when Alexander indicates his solution for getting into the house in question. He stops just short of giving him a stern look. It's not the worst use of the mind Art, as these things go, not by a long shot. (Also it's for Eleanor so he can selfishly give it a pass.)

He blinks at Eleanor, surprised. "Really?" He squeezes her hand. "We should practice that some, so it's easy for you to do it any time you need to." Like when they need to run for their lives, which comes up with irritating frequency these days.

Alexander has very little pride when it comes to paying work, and it's not - in his estimation - a matter of life and death, so he nods at the offer of payment. "Standard rates are fine." He gives August a sidelong look. "Would you rather we hit them on the head?" His attention shifts back to Eleanor, and he frowns. "Be careful. Practice, yes. But be careful and don't go over alone. If you two are going to practice, maybe try it around City Hall. It seems mostly safe there."

"Oh I'm much too paranoid to go over there alone. Not on purpose. Not much I can do when I get pulled into Dreams but thankfully I've only been alone in a few of those lately." Eleanor smiles. "City Hall, right, we can practice over there. I'll drop a check by for you at the end of the week if that's ok?"

"No," August says, plainly wounded at the suggestion. "I was just thinking, you know..." Asking? Ha. He sighs, shoulders sagging. "Fine. You're right. It's less painful all around."

He nods in agreement. "City Hall, Downtown, those seem less bad." He grimaces. "Not the Park." Because fuck that fucking carousel, also those huge caterpillars and the centipedes and who knows what else. He doesn't say 'not the forest' even though he and Itzhak and Niall have all gone traipsing around in there willy-nilly. No need to tell either person here about that, either.

Alexander clears his throat. "Cash. Please. If you can. I don't do much banking." He doesn't say that's how they track you, but well, his expression says it pretty well, even without words. He takes another drink of the lemonade. He nods, briefly, to August. "Not the Park," he agrees, voice dry. "And if you need someone to come along...I may not be of much use, but I don't mind trying to help."

"Cash is not a problem, and we'll definitely avoid the park. Nothing good seems to happen there. Nothing." Eleanor grumps at that. "And sure, I'll drop you a text if need be, Alexander. Please, take some cookies home to Isabella?"

August rolls his eyes dramatically. "Not much use," he mutters, and nibbles on a cookie, gestures at the box. "Cookies, and some stuff to cook with. So you can, you know, cook for her." Like guys do when their ladies are recooperating from the sorts of shit only this town can come up with. "Summer and late spring stuff--sweet onions, cherries, cilantro, peas, fiddleheads, artichokes. And a turkey." Frozen, he means, surrounded by freeze packs so it won't thaw.

Alexander nods to Eleanor in relief. "Thank you. I'm sure she'll like them." He finishes off his lemonade, and moves to rinse it out before putting it neatly away in the sink. August's gift gets a startled look, then a slow smile. "...thank you. I appreciate that. I will try not to make matters worse by burning the house down. Which I hardly ever do, anymore." And with that, he gathers up the various things, and lets himself out. No 'goodbye' as usual.