2020-08-29 - A Ghost at the Water's Edge

Star studded skies.

Ravn finds himself musing that some day, sometime in the future, he might find himself sitting in a similar fashion, beneath a night sky on a summer evening, but back home in his native country. Maybe on the lawn beneath the house, by the duck pond, under the weeping willow. He used to like sitting there, sheltered from sight by the massive tree trunk and the hanging foliage. There is a small bench there and he might be sitting on it with someone -- his mind is a bit fuzzy on who a someone might be. For now he or she -- or maybe even they -- is just a vague outline of presence to his mind's eye. He might be telling them about that time he went wandering in the US, and ended up in a small town on the Washington Coast.

This undefined other person might ask, If you had to pick one thing that described Gray Harbor..?

And he'd reply, Star studded skies.

The copper blond Dane is sitting on one of the many rocky outcroppings along the beach, not too far from the piers and for that matter, the bar he works at. He's looking at the bonfires; they're pretty from a distance. He overheard a couple of patrons at the Twofer talk about ghosts walking along the edge of the water earlier and -- well, it's just such a perfect excuse. When his shift ended he wandered out here, on the rocks, to watch for ghosts. Definitely not to look at the bonfires and the skies without mixing in with the tourists and the yachters and the townsfolk. It's all very romantic -- summer night, fires, blinking stars overhead. Not his scene.

But the skies he'll remember. No ghosts have wandered past wringing their hands sadly, picking seaweed out of their wet hair, or whatever one might expect a ghost to do in the surf. Just the moon sailing like a ghostly galleon across a sea studded with stars, and in the distance, someone's car pumping out the untz untz untz that passes for music in some circles.

Not my circles.

Maybe the presence that he's picturing himself telling about Pacific North-West summer nights like this one is one of the ghosts of his home. It probably is. He did talk to them a lot, before he left.

That'd be more my circle.

Two people stop by the beach not too far from where he's sitting. Lovers, who strip their clothes and run into the waves together, hand in hand, laughing. He can't see them very well in the dark but from the outlines of their bodies, they were young.

It's not like you're one step from the grave yourself, the logical part of his mind points out.

Not like I'd have done that at eighteen either, he murmurs back at it.

True enough, it cedes and shuts up, letting him listen to the sound of laughter and splashing in the distance.

It's a beautiful night. If Gray Harbor has anything down pat, it's that certain gloomy but rugged beauty of the northern forests. Endless conifers. The national park alone is probably bigger than Zealand. Everything is big in this country. Big, ancient, untamed, and wild. Star studded skies.

Work hard, play hard. Or rather, work hard, head out to play and find the festival crowd not quite the flavor one was hoping for.

Dr. Olivia Kincaid, the GHPD's Crim Psych, abandons a drink at one of the outdoor firepits at the Twofer and strolls down the beach past not one but two enormous bonfires. They are far enough apart that two entirely different musical acts don't compete with each other enough to be bothersome. People dance. They drink, they flirt, they do crazy things intoxicated people do on the beach.

Olivia slips out of her sandals and lets them both dangle from a fingertip as she walks along the waterline, putting more and more space between herself and the assorted gatherings. The stars really are the real show, should anyone poke their heads out of their self-contained boxes to take a look. The incoming waves romance the moon as if the gravitational draw were a seductive invitation. She wears a summer dress that's low-cut below her throat but somehow not extensively suggestive. The skirt parts above her left knee as the sea breeze teases it around her legs. Neither show of skin is even close to the shocking, youthful displays of short-shorts and bikini tops. No. Olivia looks positively staid as she wanders along the wet sand, waves sliding up the shore to kiss at her bare, sandy feet now and again.

Eventually the rocky outcroppings begin to rise up more and more frequently. She doesn't immediately catch sight of Ravn; she wasn't really looking for anyone this far down the beach. She stops with her back to Gray Harbor and gazes up at the spectacular night sky for a long while.

You grow up in Gray Harbor and then leave for a decade and a half and you forget how vivid it can be, how much less light pollution there is in the small town, how inviting yet threatening the sea can be with its rhythms, its ebbs and flows. Mesmerizing. The blonde woman's mind skips, too. It skips to years in Seattle. To an entirely different police force. To personal relationships that are in the past. Old promises and the resolutions of youth.

Tucking a flyaway strand of loose blonde hair behind one ear, she backs up -- without turning around to watch where she's going -- until her bare feet encounter dry sand. There she drops her sandals heedlessly and sinks to a seat in the sand, careless of how the sand will immediately cling to the material of her dress. She sits there and draws up her knees loosely with her arms, bare toes wriggling into the sand as she searches the sky, revisits the past, and considers what the future may hold. Two double Scotches help in some ways and hinder in others. She's not nearly so eye-catching as youthful skinny-dipping lovers, but she does leave herself startlingly vulnerable to an approach from the land-side of the beach.

The darkness, the stars, the skipping path of the moonlight across the rolling water, and the bonfires down the beach that -- from this distance -- could be Viking ceremonies throwing sparks up into the night: it all sets a certain ambiance that suits the woman in the maroon dress.

And there, at last, is one of the ghosts that the rumour mill amongst the Twofer's patrons were so busy talking about. A small shape on the beach, a dark silhouette in a dress that looks slightly old fashioned. Ravn would be the first to admit that he is by no means an expert on women's fashion -- but the bikini tops and bermuda shorts ensembles worn by the majority of the kids on the beach this night, combined with the darkness and the distance, makes him think middle of the previous century. She settles on the dry sand, just out of reach of the waves lapping against the shore, and he thinks, she's still waiting for the sea to return him to her.

It's just a guess. The copper blond's chosen academic field brims with tales of this nature; archetypes become archetypes because they do indeed make for good story telling. People grow up steeped in the tropes of their culture. Sometimes, when death catches them unawares or indeed, they decide to not depart when they should, those same people continue to obey their culture's demands of story. Ravn wonders how many ghostly widows wander these shores, waiting for someone who never came back, someone whose body was never found. He thinks of Erin Addington's sadness when she talked of her uncle's demise, and of Alexander Clayton standing here on the beach, talking about a time long ago, when there were so many corpses floating in the bay that some mistook them for shoals of large fish.

Maybe that's who she's waiting for. Someone who was in fact not a fish. Someone who did not come home that day.

People who see ghosts sometimes declare themselves to be mediums and psychics and make a big deal out of it; or they become ghost hunters with their own podcast and self published ghost hunting guide books. A lot of them see nothing at all but simply wish that they did, and subsequently convince themselves that the fluttering of a shadow was indeed the gauzy cape of some white lady haunt. Sometimes it's best to just keep quiet about it because there's always the nagging fear of ending up on a hefty daily dose of pharmaceuticals. And some people just -- fail to see the difference. Ravn stands and wanders slowly down towards the beach, hands in pockets, casual. Sometimes, a ghost wants to tell its story. And if it does, shame on the folklorist who doesn't offer to listen.

He walks near-silently across the sand. Some people are like that -- they don't sneak as such, but not attracting much attention is so ingrained in them that at times they do appear to be all but functionally invisible. Many a dorm mate, fellow student, and later on, student has startled in surprise at suddenly discovering Ravn Abildgaard sitting or standing next to them. He sometimes pointedly reminds himself to make the little noises, to avoid the embarrassment of people yelping out loud and attracting even more unwanted attention.

Up closer it becomes obvious to him that he was mistaken about the time period; the blond woman sitting in the sand is not a remnant of the 1950s. He does not know enough about dresses and the cuts and fabrics of dresses to place her accurately on a sartorial timeline.

Sand makes noise, tiny sea shells crackle as they're crushed under booted feet, and natives and long-term residents of Gray Harbor tend to be on semi-permanent high alert. The Dane assumes that the ghostly woman is aware of his presence when he quietly says, "Do you want to talk about it?"

To be clear, the dress is not so much old-fashioned as it is bohemian, revealing a vee of skin from her throat to the hollow of her chest, and one smooth knee halfway up her thigh with random flutters from the playful ocean breeze on this fine, August evening. That is until she turns toward the sea. Then, of course, it has been established that she settles carelessly into the dry sand not so far away from where the waves stretch up the shore and leave their salty kisses behind along with a token of kelp here, a line of foam there, and a perfect sand dollar down that way.

As she sits, her skirt slides back enough to bare her knees which she draws loosely up toward her chest with looping arms. Olivia allows the night take her wherever it wishes. She has no keel, no sails, no smooth hull to be drawn out over the path the moon has left for her on the water; but her thoughts are sails full of what the night buffets her way. No doldrums here. There is a reason ships are attributed with the feminine identity. A ship? A ghost? Certainly with hair a hue that suggests the moon is the source of its color while the wind plays through it, the woman allowing it to tease across her face -- trying to keep it held away from her face where she sits, without a barrette or some sort of clip would be a fruitless battle .... certainly she could be an apparition. There is a haunted element to this woman who isn't yet aware she's being observed, a certain relaxing of her shoulders, a comfort to the collected curve of her body, the wriggling of her toes into the sand. There are other ways to be bare than being without clothing, and she's chosen to reward the spectacular display of the moon and stars with a bare glimpse of what lies beneath, ghostly enough. Were he to ask her, ironically, she would admit to being present for the strange ceremony involving the ghosts and the fiery wreaths not so many nights ago along this very beach.

Waiting? Pursuing? Inviting? Searching? Whatever it is the woman is about, it is meant for the night sky and the rolling, lovelorn sea, with bonfires sacrificing sparks and smoke to the night along with the revelry of those down the way. The moonlit game or Ravn's archetype application, either suits both the woman and the setting. She simply is not a party to it. Not yet.

His footfalls are quiet, hushed in the sand, and naturally stealthy. But this woman has layers of awareness, be they banal, borne of professional expertise, or Glimmer-honed. Ravn is not entirely mistaken. Olivia could have fit in any number of eras. As could the dress. Something ... shells beneath boots, the shifting echoes of sound, the sheer sense of his mind via her Gift ... something turns her head in his direction, her ear toward him, her pale gaze closer to him but not on his person just yet. Her Mental energy flickers tangibly across what bits of his skin are bare with the stimulus-response rise of tiny hairs, the almost-snap of static electricity that breezes over him. Anyone with the Gift would taste its flavor, even ephemeral as it is.

Do you want to talk about it?

In profile he can see her lips part and a hint of a smile curve to accompany the breathy shiver that is almost laughter, warm rather than scoffing. "I'm usually the one asking that question, you should know. I can't remember the last time someone asked it of me with any sort of sincerity." She pauses, unwraps one of her hands from her loose grasp of her knees and pats lightly at the sand beside her in what seems to be an invitation just as those striking glacier-blue eyes flicker to the man, over him, head to feet and back again, settling upon his eyes. "Do you consider yourself a man prone to risk for the sake of curiosity? I might be convinced to play tonight." There's a challenge in the playful words, the pseudo-introduction. Casinos aren't the only place to gamble.

Subtle touches of energy, like a cat's whiskers brushing across Ravn's face -- the only part of his body where his skin is in fact exposed. A heartbeat of hesitation, and then the realisation that was indeed all it was; a touching, much like a cat sniffing at something new. He lets it brush over him because this, at least, seems to be a common first glance phenomenon among the living residents of Gray Harbor -- so indeed, why not also among the town's many dead. One must after all assume that they were the former, before they became the latter.

Outlined against the sea and the moon, the tall, copper blond could certainly pass for a priest dressing casual; the warm reflections of the bonfire lights in his hair and carefully groomed chin scruff certainly supports the Hollywood archetype of someone named Father Paddy O'Reilly or similar, walking the beach looking for lost souls; only the white collar is missing -- and while his quiet voice is certainly possessed of an accent, it sounds actually European, as opposed to Hollywood Irish. A risk taker? Enough to settle on the sand as invited, at least, but not enough to look the woman in the eyes; his blue-grey gaze roams the waves and the night sky.

Don't look a ghost or faerie in the eyes. It gives them power over you, and not all are friendly.

"I'm told that I get reckless," the not-a-priest-archetype replies and arranges his limbs in a position not unlike hers, knees drawn up and one resting atop them, chin resting in turn upon the arm. "But I've also been told on occasion that I can be a good listener at times. If you want to talk about him, I'll give it a shot."

He nods towards the ocean and the waves and the stars that would reflect in the water like a myriad of tiny lights, were the waves but calm enough. A lone cloud wafts across the night sky and darkens the moon for a moment. Anyone else walking past, higher up on the beach, perhaps having sampled the Twofer's spirits a little too generously, might easily find himself wondering out of the two, who is the ghost, indeed. They both might be.

When he sits beside Olivia, Ravn will notice some disconcerting details. For a ghost, the touch of body heat from her shoulder nearest his is surprising. Then there is the scent. Something mingling with the briny sea air that could be anywhere between rose and geranium, with a fair hint of scotch on her breath (but not so much to suggest she's drunk). And woman. Beneath it all there's a breath of feminine to wrap it all up in a very unwraithlike bow. But then Ravn is intent on having his ghostly interaction this evening. Certainly he can logic away the scent, the warmth, the flicker of a strand of blonde hair that blows against the side of his face with a buffet of breeze that abruptly changes direction again thereafter.

Sometime between when her gaze turns to him and he sits down, Olivia's attention slides back to the crashing surf. It, of course, would be fitting for them each to think of the other as potentially a ghost. An ironic yet fitting mutual assumption. The setting is certainly right for it. But if she thinks he is a phantom, the doctor doesn't indicate as much in her affect. "Reckless," she echoes his word with some consideration in her tone. "We may just get along, you and I." The words are wry. There has not even been an exchange of names, much less the suggestion that they will ever meet again. She could, of course, simply mean in the here and now. Is he a priest? Don't doubt she's filtering the visual and audible details through her scotch-infused mind this very moment.

If you want to talk about him.

There is a fleeting and mellifluous suggestion of a laugh that is gone quickly, neither bitter nor comical in flavor in response to his offer. "Why do you suspect there is a 'him'?" After the laughter, as she speaks, Olivia casts a sidelong, further measuring look at Ravn without turning her head. The skirt of her dress flutters around her thighs, her modesty intact. More visual gathering of details, of hints, of potential. She takes in all that dark clothing. How fully covered the man is on a warm, August night. On the beach no less. The accent isn't hard to miss. Nor is the man's apparent age and his physical appearance, such as it is.

It might seem strange that the woman isn't fearful in the dark on a beach so recently occupied by a party of ghosts (certainly there's a collective noun for ghosts) of a strange man who has come up on her from behind. If anything, it's as though she was waiting for him, for an appointment made weeks ago for just this conversation. And he was late. "You must tell me how you intuit I am feeling about this 'him', then I will answer a question of yours." Oh-ho. So she has rules for this bit of verbal gambling. Olivia Elisabeth Kincaid, Ph.D. is presumptuous this evening.

The man in black sits quite still for a moment. Then a sheepish smile finds his face and he looks down on the sand, trailing a finger through it to create a little pattern. "Well, this is not at all embarrassing. I thought --"

Yes, tell some stranger on the beach you thought she was a ghost, why don't you. That's going to go over well.

Ravn takes a deep breath. This is Gray Harbor. Bizarre is par for the course in Gray Harbor. Shifting his position a little he murmurs, "I thought you were -- someone still waiting for somebody else out there. Someone who didn't come back. That you might have been waiting -- for a while."

Say, seventy years or so. Nothing much. Just twice as long as I've been alive, and then some.

Then he seems to find his centre a little and leans back on the hand that still rests on the sand behind him. "It's always about the one who did not come back. And since women sailors are a fairly recent affair, it is almost inevitably a 'he'. Your sailor, whaler, or whatever he was. Except that now that I am sitting next to you, I am starting to feel fairly certain that you are in fact very much alive, from this age and time, and I am making a horrible fool out of myself. I honestly thought you were a ghost of some kind, miss. Gray Harbor seems to be full of them."

And then you go say it anyway. Because why just embarrass yourself a little when you can establish as fact that you're a full time whack job. Walking up to people and letting them think you a complete loon, that's your thing, isn't it?

His stillness tells as much as his words or actions speak to his state of mind, his intent, his thoughts. Thus, Olivia unwraps her arms from around her knees and mirrors Ravn, partly, settling both hands flat behind her in the sand so she can lean back as well, perhaps simply to continue to gather visual evidence: such proximity to a stranger requires some observation in lieu of blind trust. This is how she is able to watch the birth and evolution of that sheepish smile, a faint smile drifting across her own lips in response. What he thought --

With her head turned toward him, she lowers her chin just slightly toward her shoulder, pale blue eyes keen, aware. He takes a breath, shifts his position. Someone waiting? The Captain's lady, awaiting a glimpse of his sails on the horizon, returning home after a long separation. The story tells itself when the imagination is applied. Traditional gender roles. Hearts separated and then reunited.

"In some way, sir, you are correct. The roles are simply reversed. I am the one who did the leaving." Olivia thinks on that a moment, and then amends, "-- who does the leaving. Perhaps it is becoming something of a pattern. But in at least one case, I returned. I'm sitting here on this beach in Gray Harbor, after all." She thinks about it. "It's a place you miss," Gray Harbor. "-- even when you are sure there are other places you would rather be." Olivia's pale gaze flickers over the coppery hair of the stranger who sits beside her in the sand. The curve of his ear. The line of his profile. "But it's a strange sort of longing. The sort you only fully realize when you return." To Gray Harbor.

"Darkness. Death. Ghosts. Violent antagonists. Inconceivable events. All of it. Isn't that strange? But look out there," Here Olivia turns her head back toward the sea, the moonlight, the glittering field of stars scattered like diamonds across the night sky. "It's poetry on a galactic scale." She lifts her left hand to point to a spot in the sky, leaning back just on her right palm now. "That cluster there? It promises excitement. And there?" Olivia's fingertip slides to point toward another portion of the sky. "Belonging." Another spot. "Purpose." Almost directly above their heads, her chin tipped up as she gazes in that direction, her blonde hair cascading down between her shoulder blades against the fabric of her dress. "The story itself, the poetry, the song."

Her words are low, hushed, as if she'd just revealed a secret of great magnitude, or as if she were bespelled by her own words. "As for you, sir, at the very least, you are a follower of stories, or more, you could be an accused romantic, given what you imagined when you saw me here. But do not worry. I won't share your secret." Slowly, with a mysterious smile, Olivia drops her hand and her gaze, presses her left palm back behind her in the sand once more, turning to look at the stranger with the intriguing accent and equally intriguing imagination.

"But you're not from here." The statement isn't so much of a gamble from a woman of her age who spent eighteen years in the small town before leaving for college and a career away from Gray Harbor. "It's your turn. What are you waiting for? When will he or she return?" Is she mocking his presumptuous or romantic notion? Given her initial challenge, at the very least she's demanding his contribution to the 'game'. She adds in postscript, "I am alive for the time being. I'm sorry to disappoint." By implication and some omission, she agrees that Gray Harbor is -- at certain points -- ghost-ridden.

"I've missed Gray Harbor all my life and three weeks ago I did not even know it existed," Ravn agrees, confirming that he is indeed very much a newcomer to town (and, from his lack of visible disappointment, a newcomer who is not about to bemoan the fact that the other person present does indeed have a pulse). "In some ways it reminds me of my own country. Not so much the town itself -- but the woods and the bay, and the stars. Different constellations, I suppose, but I was never good at reading those anyway. I know how to pick out Ursa Major and the Belt of Orion, and -- that's it."

Somebody tosses a large log on one of the bonfires further down the beach and a flurry of sparkles rise high into the night air, calling forth a chorus of oohs and aahs and watch outs from the people around it. Then someone with a steel string guitar begins to play and people settle in to listen and sing along. It's barely a murmur at this distance but at least Ravn easily identifies the opening chords to Big Yellow Taxi. Some songs never die -- they just fade off the top charts and into the cultural heritage instead. Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got til its gone.

The foreigner looks out at the sea and offers a slight smile. "She died three years ago -- but not at sea. She rammed a tree doing a hundred and twenty after a drunken argument. I don't expect her to be coming back. If she does, though, I don't think it will be very romantic. We were about to break up." There is a wistfulness to his voice; the kind of regret that inevitably is birthed when someone dies young or unexpectedly (or both). So much that was not said and done, that you were going to say and do when their life abruptly was cut short. A candle was blown out much too soon.

Then the stranger looks at his conversation partner at last, grey eyes with a hint of steel not hesitating to acquaint themselves now that it is indeed established that she is not some lingering sea spirit, hoping to lure an unsuspecting wanderer to a watery grave or, to go with another Scandinavian ghost archetype, launch herself onto his back and refuse to let go until he's carried her to hallowed ground. "I'm great with first impressions," he murmurs with a small, somewhat sheepish smile. "So now that I have established myself as some strange loon who goes ghost watching on the beach -- hello, my name is Ravn Abildgaard. I'm pretty harmless as Danish loons go. Does that mean it is my turn to ask a question? Then I think I will play it quite safe and ask what you actually were hoping to find on this beach alone at night, perhaps -- seeing as that it was indeed not a lost husband or lover."

Ravn has missed Gray Harbor all his life. Olivia watches him and measures those words before nodding with two slight dips of her chin in the moonlit darkness. "That, I believe. But where did you spend all that time missing what you didn't know you missed?" She's breaking her own rules there. Asking another question. Trying to pin down that accent. The question is: what will the polite, foreign gentleman let her get away with? It's been established that he's game. Just how hard does he play? The flash of challenge behind her eyes is almost impossible to see in the darkness, though the faint, brief arch of her brow is visible if one is watching for it. Then Ravn refers to his country. The inquiry stretches, complexifies as she learns it's somewhere far enough away that the night sky is different. As for the stars? "I know a few." Constellations. "But I've always enjoyed finding my own truths and stories in the stars," says the woman who believes that a person creates their own experience of the world they navigate. Olivia Kincaid, Ph.D? She doesn't miss the impact the lyrics down the beach have on the stranger sitting beside her, joining in her self-described game.

The quiet stretches out, with Olivia neither in any rush to fill it, nor seeming discomfited in any way. Nine times out of ten, the patience leads to something that might not have presented itself otherwise. Ravn wears that faraway smile as he looks out toward the rolling surf and the waves beyond; she watches him as he speaks. She died three years ago. There is no gasp or 'I'm so sorry' murmured low under her breath as she hears how the woman on his mind lost her life. There is simply that perceptive gaze, a trifle softer in the darkness after two doubles back at the Twofer. Aside from the faint scent of scotch flavoring her words here and there, she doesn't act inebriated. She's not clumsy, her words aren't slurred, and her affect isn't impulsive in any discernible way. Someone who has met her in another setting, in the day, when she's wrapped up in the identity she wears might notice a difference if they'd known her awhile. Maybe.

The woman who died so violently died on the cusp of a separating of ways. There are many directions that story could go, and it might be, as Olivia looks back out to the sea, herself, that she's imagining a few of them. Instead of sympathy, Olivia offers in a quiet, lovely, matter-of-fact voice, "If you lost her, odds are you'll see her here if you plan to settle yourself here for any significant amount of time." And she can't -- she won't -- make any promises that it will be a pleasant 'reunion' if or when it happens. "What was her name?" Before they've been introduced, Olivia has the audacity to ask the name of Ravn's lost lover.

The music down the beach finishes telling the Harborites and associated revelers that they've paved paradise for the worst of reasons and transitions to a Tesla song, Games People Play.

All the games people play now, every night every day now
Never meaning what they say now, never saying what they mean
While they while away the hours in their ivory towers
Till they're covered up with flowers in the back of a black limousine

Either the melody is familiar to the doctor, or the strains of the lyrics sing their way to her ears. Either way, there's irony to her pleasant smile. His turn toward her draws her face toward his in order to search the steely grey of his eyes (in the darkness). If only she knew about the Scandinavian ghost archetype. It would be an anecdote worthy of sharing a drink over. But no, for now, this spot in the sand will do. She wiggles her toes in that sand as the moment stretches out. "Are you?" she answers to what may be a self-deprecating statement about his ability to make a first impression. "I think you've done a rather superlative job with this one." She pauses, lets the words fall, then adds with a curving of her lips, "Memorable." Still no names. Maybe it's part of the game.

"Oh no," she disagrees. "You haven't been in Gray Harbor long then. You'll learn soon enough that you'll have to work much harder than this if you're attempting to promote a reputation of loon, harmless or not." Denmark! It's like finding a perfect shell on the beach, the piece of information. Is it his turn? "You definitely have won yourself a turn." The name fills her pale gaze with a glimmer of interest. She echoes it slowly, careful of the sounds, the placement of consonants and vowels and the roll over her tongue. "Ravn Abildgaard from Denmark." 'Round' without the d. "The name sounds as though it should come with a title. Duke? Marquis? Earl?" Her smile is playful. The whole interaction (along with the Scotch) has triggered a more overt caprice from the woman who tends toward the more subtle, the more self-possessed in her life. "Olivia Kincaid, but not 'miss' or 'missus'," she answers with a sparkle in her eyes. "I'm pleased to meet you, Danish dreamer."

What was she hoping to find on this beach, alone, at night?

Her look turns weighted. Certainly he doesn't mean it to sound like 'what's a girl like you doing in a place like this'. But given the parameters of her own game, the question is valid and perhaps even required in one manner or another. "How shall I choose which answer to give you? There are so many." She looks Ravn in the eye as she confides, "Most people prefer there to be a singular, pat answer. It's almost never that way. At least not for me. Not when the question is a real question."

Olivia shifts, she moves. Is she going to get up and walk away? No. She moves her body a bit away from him, only to turn her knees to the side toward him, to rest her left hip in the sand and her left hand pressed to the sand still. Her right hand brushes the fabric of the dress the parts halfway up her thigh, removing some sand from her fingertips. "If we weren't playing, I would simply say I was escaping a crowd --" She lifts that hand from atop her knee to gesture back over her right shoulder back toward the bonfires, music, and bar beyond. "-- that was slightly disappointing tonight. But I will be the first to readily admit that I can at times have nigh-impossible expectations of other people."

She pauses there, searches his gaze for his reaction to her words, then continues, in full respect for the game. "But you're a man seeing ghosts and remembering tragedies. I think you deserve more." Her palm settles back atop her bare knee. "I'd say I was hoping to escape some memories tonight. My own schism was much more recent, and I suspect more acrimonious." Though she's not entirely sure of that fact, given what he's said. "And clarity. Professionally, I am certain of who I am and my purpose. And, I'm quite good at it." Candor. "Personally? I'm searching for ways to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past." Her gaze dips to the man's nearer hand as she considers her rather blunt expose of her own head space, then she looks up again at the man.

The rhythmic, atonal music of the surf crashes closer and more real than the music down the beach and the sparks spiraling up into the night from the fires. "Are you planning to try again? To find someone who doesn't fly away at the top end of the speedometer with a mind full of endings?" She's not pulling any punches. (Nor does it seem as though she is hitting on the man whose name she learned only a few sentences earlier.)

"Here is indeed to hoping that we are not reunited. Such a reunion should be a tragic bittersweet affair but what I really would want to do would be to yell at her about being a bloody selfish idiot. Not only did she get herself killed, she might easily have hit somebody else instead of that tree." There are definitely a few things to unpack when it comes to the man's feelings on this issue. Anger. Loss. Survivor's guilt. "Her name was Benedikte." The name is pronounced in four syllables; be. neh. dick. teh. Ravn shakes his head, dismissing a mental image. "It wouldn't really be her, though, would it? If Gray Harbor does -- what Grey Harbor does -- would it not be some phantasm, some apparition, conjured out of my own mind to haunt me with old regrets and missed opportunities? I doubt that the actual spirit of Benedikte would return from wherever people actually end up -- if anywhere at all, she'd be far too proud to admit to making a mistake." He's not a believer to any great extent, it seems.

And then, a question that surprises the copper blond far more than inquiries about his lost fiancee. To ask a man what causes him to travel, what made him leave his home and wander the western hemisphere at random for three years owning nothing more than he can carry -- that inquiry is not foreign or unexpected. But that other one is not one he's heard in a long time --

-- Allow me to introduce --

-- and he quickly grabs for the straw in the well that allows him to dodge the inquiry: "Oh -- no. We don't have any of those titles in Denmark, they're British or French. We've got a handful of barons and counts, and of course there is the royal house. I am not a royalist, I should add. Good to meet you and fail to impress you, Olivia Kincaid, no miss or missus. My name translates to 'the orchard of apples'."

Ravn leans back on his hands, watching the ocean. For a while there is silence, broken only by the lapping of waves against the shore, and when he does speak, his voice is still quiet. "Clarity. Not a bad thing to look for. I used to think I had found it. But then I got kicked out of a truck in Main Street here and I am getting ever more confused. I think that what I am actually here to do is... people. Just not sure what to do about them because I am neither a priest nor a psychic, and I cannot protect anyone against the evil of Gray Harbor. All I know is that I feel like I was meant to be here all along and I've been quite tardy in getting my backside here. There ought to be some kind of instruction manual for these things."

"I don't know," he replies at length to the second question of a game that he can't quite recall consenting to play but indeed, why not. "I am -- not looking. I don't think I will go looking. But I guess you never know what the future holds until it becomes the past so I guess I'm not ruling anything out, either. I have a bit of a track record of being declared my gay friend by women, though, not that I really mind."

The Dane straightens up a little and fixes his grey eyes on the woman next to him again. "I guess that means it's my turn. What's your -- thing? Everyone I meet in town who has this feeling about them turn out to have some kind of... ability. I know a man who can shoot lightning from his fingertips. One who can read the history of an object and its owner just by touching it. One who reads minds and speaks any language he hears. What do you do?"

Just what sort of reunion would it be anyway? Genuine or some sort of projection of his psyche? Here, Olivia pauses and thinks, a bit pensive for a handful of moments. "I'm not so sure I would quickly jump to that conclusion." That it wouldn't really be her. "I think there is something in the ....power here," It doesn't look as though 'power' is Olivia's favorite choice for this context, but getting her thought across is more important in the moment. "-- that can do both. Thoughts and memories, fears and wishes can and are used. But, more than once, the ... apparitions I have seen have had more than a taste of the person, themself. I'll grant you that mine have been individuals who lived here in Gray Harbor, but I don't think that power is limited by much. That doesn't mean I don't believe many of the incarnations that are conjured are imposters and intended to cause pain or distress."

Olivia pauses, takes a slow breath and exhales a quiet sigh. "I know that's not helpful. And probably you could find a dozen other, differing beliefs about that topic alone by this time tomorrow. So take it as you choose, Ravn." She takes a moment before slowly saying the name. And it doesn't seem so much to be because she's concerned about the pronunciation as that it has an interesting feel, speaking it. In short, the doctor of psychology is saying, 'yes, it could be Benedikte'. Somewhere in what he says there's another marker to collect, another detail to gather like a puzzle piece. Too proud to admit to making a mistake.

There is some part of Olivia that has actively given up gathering the broad spectrum of information she would typically gather in the pursuit of tonight's iteration the game. Then there is the influence of alcohol that is subtle but present. Add the distractions of revelry down the beach, and the sea herself. The moonlit darkness has painted the man next to her in subtle watercolor, creating the need to stand back in the figurative sense, rather than lean in, to see what can be seen. But there's too much to what she is and how good she is at it for her to miss the surprise she glimpses. The certain look in those eyes -- eyes that are grey in the darkness, only now and then catching sparks from the bonfires down the beach to her right, or the light of the moon when he looks just that direction a bit -- that look is tallied somewhere. Follow up questions queue in her brain. But either Olivia decides to leave the man his clearly sidestepped secret, or she is more interested in the rest of what he has to say.

"What is a royalist?" Something important enough for him to claim not to be one. Her laughter warms her throat briefly once more. Not impress her? "Are you so very disappointed not to be considered crazy? You underestimate, I think, the levels of 'crazy' I encounter on a daily basis." She lifts the hand that was resting on her knee to pat-pat his nearer forearm before returning it to settle once more. It's not so patronizing a statement or action as it could be. At all. Then she corrects the name. "Olivia is sufficient. After all, I've called you by your first name. All things being equal ..." She lets the statement hang, given the clear intent of it. The orchard of apples. She tucks that little detail away for later.

He speaks of clarity. "So it was your arrival here -- in Gray Harbor -- that you believe reconstructed your understanding of clarity. Would you say your entire philosophy has changed because of the --" She lifts that same hand to circle it lazily in the air to indicate Gray Harbor at large. "-- setting and its peculiarities? I suppose that's not surprising. But there are all sorts of clarity. And I'd like to think that there is at least a good handful that isn't hinged upon the power and happenings here."

What he thinks he's here to do. "You feel meant to be here, but you're still not certain what role you're meant to play. That certainly is a conundrum." She could sound mocking; but again, she doesn't at all. It's a strange sort of conversation to have, unless one is in Gray Harbor. Then it could almost be termed pragmatic. An instruction manual. Olivia's smile returns, lingers. "Mmhm."

He doesn' t intend to look for another woman (or man); nor is he closing that door. "Whyever would the women you know consider you gay?" It doesn't sound at all as though she has a problem with being gay itself. It's more of a different read that she had. "Either you spend time around a curious sort of woman, my own perception is quite off, or you simply don't demonstrate the suggestions of general interest heterosexual men tend to show." Here, Olivia considers Ravn's expression, his posture, his body language with a briefly sharp sort of inventory. It has a particularly thorough feel to it. "I hadn't really considered it." A woman sitting with a man of approximately the same age having a conversation on the beach on a lovely August evening, and she hadn't made any assumptions about that particular preference? Either Olivia is lying, or she's being incredibly blunt. "Do you perpetuate that perception, or do you simply not care?" He doesn't mind, he says. But her question digs a bit deeper.

It's his turn. What's her thing? The smile that drifted returns to reside mostly behind those expressive, pale, blue eyes. He relays just how familiar he's gotten with quite a few residents in his short presence in town. "I have a thing, but it can be intrusive. Would you like a demonstration or is your curiosity more academic?"

"A royalist is someone who thinks royalty is still important," Ravn explains, realising that the term may in fact not make a lot of sense in a country that literally fought a revolution to get rid of that kind of nonsense. "It's usually some belief that being a monarchy is a cultural heritage and that it 'sells' the country internationally. If you ask me, though, it's just a way to spend money that could do a lot more good elsewhere. Keeping up appearances and some sort of fairytale country facade. It's all very silly -- a bit like the British and their endless Windsor drama."

Drawing his knees up to rest his chin upon them, the Dane looks at the waves. His mood seems to be of a whimsical nature; thoughts wandering and yet returning to the beach and the night every so often, in the fashion of someone who is prone to thinking a lot about -- things. All the things. "I don't know that I've found clarity. But I think my purpose here is to be here. To remind some people that life is not all misery. That life goes on. That we connect with each other. On some small level, maybe, just being that bloke you can always go have a beer with. It's not very ambitious of me, I know, but then, I'm not a very ambitious person."

A chuckle escapes him on the subject of special gay friends, though. "I suppose I perpetuate the idea by not caring. I doubt most people -- of either orientation -- care. But there is a certain kind of woman who does tend to assume that if you don't try to flirt with them you must be batting for the other team. It's honestly not something I think about a whole lot. A bit more after I took up work here at the Twofer, maybe, since a lot of people do in fact go to a bar in order to get hit on. Bennie doesn't pay me extra to pinch tourist butts though, so I shan't." Ravn turns his gaze away from the sea and back to the woman and arches one blond eyebrow with a small chuckle. "Practical demonstration? I suppose that depends. If you're going to show me that you can do fancy magic tricks, by all means, show me. It your trick involves punching someone in the face, my interest is entirely academic in nature."

Ravn is not a royalist. He's an everyman who feels a calling to remind folks that life is not merely misery and pain. Here: have a pint and a Dane! A Dane who doesn't care what sexual or asexual reputation he has. He's an interesting man, Ravn. Olivia's brows tip upward when he mentions not pinching butts. Oh, there might have been some mildly scandalous comment there that she refrained from making.

"First things first. I assume, given the range of experts you have encountered in your short time here, that you have been told that the more frequently and the more emphatically you use your Gifts, the more likely you are to be pursued and likely harmed or worse by the entities who make Gray Harbor the dark place it is, yes?"

Ravn nods and returns his gaze to the sea; the moonlight playing in the waves is almost hypnotically beautiful. "I've been warned, yes. I am honestly not very good at these things anyhow, compared to most people I've met here, so I suppose that on some level I expect to fly under the radar a lot. I just move small things a little. Some people here read minds or move things that are fifty metres away and out of sight. I did have a couple of -- unusual experiences already, though. Gray Harbor's very unique brand of story telling."

He chuckles softly. "Turns out I make a decent Ichabod Crane. Or a decent tuna. Either way, the experience was certainly interesting."

"I suggest instead of comparing your expertise to those who have spent years here, that you consider your abilities in relation to the time you have been here. I truly believe one can hone abilities if one begins with them. Depending on your desire to do so, of course." Olivia shifts in the sand again, rolling up from her hip to her knees and settling there facing him, settling low and relaxed, both palms atop knees, one against skin and the other atop maroon fabric. Sand clings to her dress, especially at her hip for the time being.

Her gaze skims over him, seated there with his chin on a knee, long legs drawn up. In a bar with a drink in her hand, the look might be considered suggestive or predatory. In the moonlight on the beach with the topic of discussion between them, it is entirely assessing. "You have it. There's no denying that fact." He might as well have a virus, the way she says that. "For me? It manifests both visually and tactilely. Imagine the waves off a hot road far in the distance on a terrifically sweltering day. What I see is something like those waves, but with a flicker of sparks, like static electricity." She considers him, gives him some time to consider that.

"I would wager --" Because risks, games, and gambling are a significant part of her personal identity. "-- that if I had a different flavor of Gift it would look or feel different to me. It might even be that someone with similar aspects of the Gift perceives it in entirely different ways. Like I imagine a dozen people probably hear the same piece of music a dozen different ways." Again a pause for his reaction, perhaps for questions or thoughts.

"To me, it's an awareness. A pull. Probably why I noticed you down here to begin with." Ravn glances up towards the outcropping where he was sitting earlier, watching the sea. "Sometimes it's as if I'm walking along and something literally drags me off course. At other times it's just a sensation, a bit like walking past a furnace. As if something close by is very hot and you probably should watch where you put your hands now, that kind of feeling. I've heard it described in many ways though -- shine, sparkle, light, glimmer, and indeed, song."

"I know a bloke who tells me that for him it's like listening to music -- and he does indeed sing or hum or tap a rhythm when he does something with it. Sitting next to him is definitely like sitting next to a furnace." He straightens up a bit. "Fellow wants to show me a few tricks but they come with the same warning as you just gave me: Don't overdo this. Something will notice, and you're not going to like it when it does. But he also stresses that it's important to know what you can do when the manure inevitably does hit that fan. Because it will. And then the only person who's going to get you through it is, well, you. Can't appeal to these things for mercy." He shakes his head, moonlight glinting in hair that's probably kind of red-golden in daylight; not quite ginger, but still too red to be blond.

It's always compelling hearing how Glimmer manifests for individuals (at least it is for Olivia). Ravn describes the pull that draws him and she thinks of sirens and their song luring sailors to their deaths. "So you find yourself drawn inexorably to any person who has the Gift? That may become inconvenient in Gray Harbor." She softens the observation with moonlit warmth in her pale blue eyes. "Music. That's one I haven't heard before. I'd like to meet that man." A pull and heat. Ravn has already received the specific warning about drawing attention; Olivia nods once, glad this new acquaintance has learned caution along with that gravitational-personal pull.

No appealing for mercy? "I've heard from friends that there are sometimes offers: a release from suffering for the price of producing others as victims. It's horrifying, I think. Both the thought of sacrificing someone else like some sort of Aztec ritual, and the idea that the pain inflicted, whether physical or psychological, could be so severe that it could make a person consider doing so in the first place." The warmth ebbs in her gaze. "I find that I get too angry to feel frightened. Or at least more angry than fearful. But I'm only a few months back. And I'm finding that the memories return at a fickle pace. I had forgotten so much. I'm sure there were instances ..." Her gaze slides past Ravn's shoulder to the middle distance.

"You asked what I could do. Do you want a description or a demonstration, Ravn?" It's an out. Bright as the summer sun. Safe and analytical.

"Drawn toward in a manner of wanting to know who they are and what it is they do, yes." Ravn for some reason seems to feel the need to clarify. "Not drawn to as in, invade their privacy or stalk their homes. Just, find out who they are." And then a small smile flits across his mouth. "You can't miss that man, if you do see him. Tall, dark-haired bloke with a violin. Fantastic player, bit of a local celebrity I'm starting to think. That said, he certainly deserves the reputation."

The blonde woman's words about sacrifice, however, wipes the smile off the Dane's face much in the fashion of sunlight fleeing before thunder. He shakes his head before brushing his hair out of his eyes. "No. Definitely not an option. I'm not prone to getting angry easily, but that would probably make me want to punch faces. I don't make a habit of shoving somebody else into the fire in my place. I can handle being afraid but I couldn't live with the guilt of making someone else suffer for me to get away."

"I think I'm going to stick with, if you plan to punch me in the face I'll take the description. In part because of the whole 'don't get noticed' thing. I don't want to ask you to do something that might potentially place you in danger." He smiles and adds, "Which is not to say that I'm not shamelessly curious and wanting to see what it is that you actually do."

Ironically, Olivia's path has crossed Itzhak's a time or two since she returned to Gray Harbor at the beginning of June. There simply have not been introductions or direct conversation. As for the clarification, Olivia's focus sharpens and she murmurs a sound that suggests at least some understanding. "Forgive me if this bruises your ego, Ravn, but you simply do not seem to be the stalker 'type'." Ironically, Olivia has interviewed that 'type' at length over the course of her career thusfar. Not that Ravn would know as much just yet. "I'll keep an eye out. If he lives in Gray Harbor, the odds are good that we'll meet sooner or later," she murmurs wryly. "Especially if he is a performer."

The criminal (forensic) psychologist remains there, kneeling in the sand facing Ravn, watching him as he speaks about fear and guilt and violence. Very interesting. In some other setting, fingers might be steepled, at least figuratively.

"Although I can invoke violence, it would not come in the form of any part of my body slamming into yours." If it occurs to Olivia that the words could be misconstrued, her expression doesn't indicate it to be so. He doesn't want her to place herself in danger. "There is always danger," she answers. "It's the nature of living here and possessing the Gifts we possess. If you decide you want a demonstration, I will utilize a subtle level of application. My opinion is that education does counterbalance the need to be safe. But I will not foist it upon you, and I cannot promise it will not be disconcerting."

His double negative draws an amused smile to match the glimmer of her eyes in the night's darkness. "It's really not one particular thing. How about some choices, hmm? Think of your mind as a location and my mind as another. I can invite you in, or I can take you elsewhere. We can have a conversation in your native tongue -- which I do not speak -- or I can paint this beach differently than you see it, now. I can provide you with your ghost, in a manner of speaking, or I can meddle with your senses or your motives." She pauses, watches the Dane for a time, letting that all seep in. "That's a start. And I will have a care not to cause you harm or leave any lasting effects aside from the memory of it, unless you would like that removed as well." Trust. He'll have to trust her, it seems. Does he? He doesn't really know her at all.

Ravn's grey eyes widen as he takes in all of this information. This is, after all, quite a bit more than someone saying, 'by the way, I can do hand stands' or 'I make a mean chili, I'll have you know'. If he catches the unintentional innuendo about bodies slamming together, at least he doesn't give any outwards indication.

"I very much don't think I care to have a heart to heart with a dead woman," the Dane murmurs at length. "Is this what you do -- illusions? Affecting the mind? Allow me to ask just one question -- don't you ever get tempted to abuse that? If you can meddle with my senses and my motives, are you not ever tempted to -- rearrange people a little? I know I would be. It's probably a good thing that I have no talent whatsoever in such matters that I know of. I would definitely use that sort of power to make people leave me alone at times, the temptation would be far too great to resist."

And then he looks at her, curiosity overcoming common sense. "Show me -- something beautiful. Something about this place that isn't a tragedy."

Something about this late August night invoked a strange sort of untested trust, an untested candor, a meeting of strangers that tangled into a game turned to something more than the sum of its parts. Olivia takes in Ravn's reaction without much of her own. She's waiting now. She's made a sweeping offer, but it really is for Ravn to choose. What is he willing to risk? How much does he dare? What do you do when all your interaction with someone is based on a brief exchange and a large proportion of simple intuition. Olivia wasn't insincere when she offered up her game. Though to say she expected it to take this turn is an unlikely truth.

He narrows down the list. "Although I choose to avoid the word 'illusions', I'd say you are very apt in choosing to attach it to the mind. But then, most anything is, wouldn't you say?" Just one question. "The temptation isn't as great as you would think. There is always the threat of the most dire of consequences. And were I to constantly meddle uninvited in the psyches of friends or strangers, what could I trust to be real, truly real anymore?" She considers it longer. "I don't have a god-complex. I'm not someone who feels compelled to control things. I'm a student of the mind, and a true scientist does the most she can to avoid impacting the outcome of her experiments." Those words are completely serious. She searches Ravn's eyes to see if he comprehends what she is trying to tell him. Then, and only then, does she add, "It is a tool, a weapon, and sometimes it can factor into a game. But I'm too aware of my own precarious place in reality to spend much time amending it for the sake of a thrill or some other silly purpose."

Show me something beautiful. It's so open-ended.

It starts out as if she made it all up. She watches him from where she is kneeling in the sand. Slowly, she lifts the right hand from her bare knee and catches at his left hand, should he not object. Her hand is soft, warm, sandy. Slowly, she laces her fingers with his, twines them and presses her palm to his, all while holding his blue eyes that look grey tonight with her blue eyes that look like moonlight. How is something so simple so strangely intimate? Olivia takes a slow breath and exhales even more slowly. And it's with that exhalation that a tingling spreads from his hand up his arm over his body, a stirring of the tiniest of hairs, a stirring of awareness. This spreads over his body then seems to resolve, as if their collective energy has come to some sort of equilibrium. It's as though that static electricity she described sensing has been brought to his attention.

The doctor waits; she's so very patient. Once he's settled into it, once he's become accustomed to it, she's there to see again, and her eyes are something more. The moon reflects there so much more largely, so brightly. It draws him in if he lets it.

With the moon in her eyes, the sun rises past Gray Harbor in the east. It shifts across the heavens as if a day were speeding past. They're still somehow seated in the sand. The moon is still in her eyes.

He blinks.

They are simultaneously where they began and also in the water as if seated in a boat that floated a foot or so beneath the rolling sea. The water is neither warm nor cold. It just is. A nineteenth century schooner cuts through the sea no more than fifty yards away. Close enough to hear the sailors calling to one another, raucous laughter, commands, the sound of the wind in the rigging, the great vessel creaking. It's a spectacular ship. As the sun slows its fall toward the western horizon it sails away on the wind, its sails turning color with the sky.

That's when Ravn hears the song. Low tones, sub-bass all the way up to an eerie high note. A responding song, this one stuttering near the top end of the song. He's hearing whales. A pod of humpbacks that crest the water with an explosive exhalation of breath from their blow-holes, one by one, all five of them, one small, helped to the surface by its mother.

They all dive together, but now the sound of their song is in his mind. He can understand them. Together, they sing. Dive. Rise. Breathe. And in those ancient songs is an almost unbearable beauty. Secrets of the seas, of existence. The pod crests the waves twice more to be seen. But the feeling of connection remains throughout that span of time.

On the last dive, the song begins to fade and the sun disappears on the horizon, leaving the sky brushed with bright swathes of light in shades of orange and pink and purple. Stars start to come out. Upon his next breath and they are seated just as they have been this whole time, hands linked, fingers twined. He comes to the realization that they are inhaling and exhaling together without an effort to do so. The night returns until it is not that night, but this night again. Bonfires burn in the distance past where Olivia is kneeling. People laugh, music plays, the sounds of Gray Harbor settle back to what they were before.

She watches him still and the moon grows smaller and smaller until it's hardly a speck of light reflected in her eyes. She waits. Patient. So very patient. He knows he can pull his hand free when he chooses to do so. Olivia does not speak a single word.

For some time there is just the silence of the surf, a rythmic noise that seems to cancel out and render inaudible the other noises of the beach -- the untz untz untz of that bloody car radio in the distance, the laughter of the people still seated or walking around the bonfires, and the rustling of the wind in the trees.

Eventually, Ravn half-turns to face the Bay again, withdrawing his gloved hands to wrap them around his knees and resting his chin atop them. Quietly he says, "I asked for something beautiful... And you certainly delivered. We have porpoises in my country, quite a lot of them. I used to watch them in the fjord close to where I lived as a kid, playing and hunting. Like tiny orcas. So -- carefree. And so curious -- they'll come right up to you in the water if they feel like it, and you can almost reach out and touch them. Sometimes, if they're feeling curious enough, you can, and you just stand there wondering who exactly is the tourist and who is the animal. I've never seen humpbacks before. I saw spermacets and grey whales and right whales when I went sailing in Greenland once. But not humpbacks."

He shakes his head lightly, forcing himself back to this reality, the one that has catamarans and yachts rather than clipper ships and schooners. Fiberglass instead of wood.

"Of all the things I've seen people do with these abilities, this is the one time I've truly felt I was seeing real magic. You realise you could probably do amazing things with this. Give people... something better. Hope? A lot of people here seem so -- bleak. Like they just cling to life but expect to end up food for the Veil soon. With a gift like this you could -- I don't know, show them how beautiful it can be too?"

Olivia untwines her fingers from Ravn's easily and readily when he falls free of her glimmer enough to withdraw. With the slightest zap of electricity he feels himself break free of the last of her psychic hold, and the world -- this reality -- continues to resolve itself, impinge on the senses, reassert the place, the time, the simultaneous less-than and more-than to where it was not so long ago. She was kneeling facing Ravn for that 'demonstration', and Olivia remains there, still and watchful, perhaps a bit curious about how the man will react. She's had some hints in the way he's spoken about Gray Harbor and what's he's felt and learned here, but playing about with someone's mind is never a sure thing. It's likely his cooperation, his invitation gave it more depth than it might otherwise have had.

He seems to lay a positive verdict on what she chose to show him. Though it leads him into his own memory rather than questions or commentary about the experience. The psychologist learns something from him, picks up another puzzle piece to add to her cache. "I think I would love to become acquainted with a porpoise like that. They're breathtaking moments, connecting with creatures of such ... intelligence; they seem to have a sort of wisdom that runs still and deep. It sounds as though your memory is a fond one." He speaks of his experiences with whales of different species. "Humpbacks migrate along this coast. There are certain times of year when you can go out to certain points and watch them for hours." Invitation or information?

She watches as he drags himself free of the 18th century, a sense of warmth, of a smile touching at her blue, moonlit eyes. "You've been told that the Gift is not constant, I hope. That there are times when it is powerful and other times when nothing comes at all from your efforts? That experience could have gone many directions."

Of all the things I've seen people do ...

"It wasn't magic any more than the other things you've seen. What was magic was that you felt beauty in it. And that's the danger, it's the lesson, Ravn. When They come to you --" For him. "-- they will have powers orders of magnitude beyond anything I might do or try to do. They try to use that sense of otherwhere to trap you, to eat your fear, to force you into a corner where you only see one door: the one they want you to see. Try, if you can, when that happens, to remember that there is more than one reality. Yes, they can harm or kill you. But in addition to fighting back, as your musical friend told you, you have more choices than they would like you to see. And on the majority of occasions, there has been some puzzle piece that undoes it all. It's sometimes a matter of finding that piece to unravel it all."

She could do amazing things with her glimmer. "It's not a scale where my efforts would do anything but swiftly bring about my own, likely very unpleasant, demise, Ravn. Don't forget about the drawing of attention, the inherent curse that is the other side of the Gift's coin." She tips her head faintly to one side. "Do you think I live in that reality? That my life is somehow different?" She shakes her head slowly. "I don't. It's not." The woman pushes her hands into the sand and rises up to stand there after scooping up her sandals. With one hand she does her best to dust the sand off her dress, simply ignoring the way the breeze teases strands of light blonde hair across her face now and again. "Thank you," she finally says. "For vastly improving my evening. You were my captain tonight." Since that was his tale in the beginning. Her smile is rueful. The analogy really doesn't work except for the compliment beneath it.

"No, thank you." The tone is heartfelt as Ravn remains sitting, watching the ocean -- possibly for those elusive humpback whales. "I made a fool out of myself thinking you were a ghost, and you rewarded me with a beautiful dream and a warning about its seductive nature. I appreciate your kindness and your candour, Olivia Kincaid, no miss or missus."

He looks up and the expression on his face is -- unguarded, is a good word for it. Speculative. Thoughtful. "I wish I could give you something back for this. I do realise that it's a honey trap. That it is the Veil's way of making us want to use these abilities and condemn ourselves by doing so. Sometimes, it is very tempting to be a fly. Sometimes... I could find myself wondering if there is a dream that's beautiful enough to make the sacrifice worth it. And I suppose that that is the true danger of it all. It is tempting. Everyone has made choices and decisions that maybe they shouldn't have, choices that the dreams may offer to undo."

Then the Dane stands and mimics Olivia's attempts to rid himself of the sand that does indeed seem to get everywhere. "If you're prone to beach walks maybe I'll see you around another evening when the sky is clear and the stars are out. I live on one of those." He points towards the marina and the many sail boats, yachts and catamarans at pier, and adds with a small crooked smile, "Actually I should say, I am tolerated on one of those because unlike my cat, I have opposable thumbs and the ability to open a can of tuna."

Olivia isn't going to argue against him being a fool for a second time. He knows her stance. "You won your moments. Whether you cheated or not, I don't think I care just now." Her expression is a mingling of too many things to tease out just one. But the larger portion of it is positive. "Olivia will suffice. If you call me 'Doctor' in a casual setting, I will be disappointed." No, they never did exchange occupations or numbers. Interesting. There's something about Ravn -- an apartness that keeps Olivia from pressing him for contact information. Perhaps it's his story of his past combined with his solitary visit to the beach.

"I do not give gifts with the expectation of receiving them in return. But I would very much enjoy learning what sort of gift a Dane named Ravn might give." He speaks of the lure of Glimmer and she listens. Oh how good she is at listening. It invites more words, more thoughts, confidences. Here, standing now, he gets a glimpse of some of the more typical Olivia. A smiling Olivia. A keen-eyed gaze. A woman not immune to the beauty of a late, August night on the beach with bonfires down the way. He finishes speaking and she simply replies, "It sounds like you are finding your way through it to some logical conclusions."

He lives on a boat. Olivia turns and gazes toward the pier. "Of course you do." Because the man is apparently incessantly interesting. "I run most weekend mornings along this stretch of the beach. So either some evening or by daylight when I'm far more sweaty." He has a cat. Puzzle piece. "Olivia Kincaid. If you wish to find me sooner than serendipity chooses, you can reach me at the Police Department. Maybe we'll cross paths again and you'll introduce me to your musical friend. Or perhaps next time, we'll play again and you'll show me a thing or two." She turns to walk up toward the parking lot, their paths diverging. "Try not to die, will you? I enjoy your company. For a not-gay, cat-owning, boat-living ghost-hunting porpoise-befriending Dane, you're not so bad."