2020-09-24 - Beauty in the Broken

The best thing about autumn nights is that they're not unpleasantly cold -- but the air is just crisp enough that the sky is completely clear and the moon is not at all veiled from sight over the bay. There's no humidity of the day still drifting upwards to form clouds -- just the stillness of the night and the silence of the stars. Those nights are beautiful, whether you're in the Pacific Northwest or in Denmark, and natives of either climate tends to be aware that the season for star gazing is drawing to an end. The two climates are surprisingly alike, given the distance between them.

This is probably why Ravn Abildgaard is lying flat on his back on the deck of the Vagabond. He has to sort of put his feet up on the seat opposite to do so, because there is not enough flat deck -- but a bit of pretzeling doesn't seem to phase him. It's a beautiful night. A small black cat sits at the sail boat's prow, licking her paw and inadvertedly playing guard dog to anyone trying to step on board.

"I don't suppose that offer is still open for random company?" Bennie's voice carries over from the dock, the blonde toting a flannel blanket draped over one arm and a bottle of wine gripped in the other. Much like the guard kitty, she looks skittish, like she might flee at any moment. There is a good chance she was standing there for a bit of time before even gathering the courage to approach and speak, bouncing on her toes with a nervousness that will not be contained. "You know, this was probably a bad idea. You look comfortable. I didn't mean to interrupt. Um..right." And then she's turning to leave.

"Goodness, no!" Ravn sits up, surprised -- he'd clearly not noticed the woman at all, that's how far away his thoughts were. "Come on out -- if you can get past my guard dragon. I suggest threatening to pet her."

He gets on his feet and makes his way to the prow in order to pull on the boat's mooring and bring her within easy stepping distance from the pier; Bennie is, after all, using her hands for blankets and bottle and may not feel like just leaping in the general direction of a surface that tends to move with the waves and the undertow. "It's a beautiful night. Definitely too good for sleeping. Though I think I might have been, at least I'm pretty certain that there are in fact no gremlins on board. Need a hand with either of those?"

"I think I can manage." Both getting onboard and getting past the kitty, Bennie's smile wobbles a little with only a moment more of hesitation before she steps on board, the footing easy to find in her sneakers. Still clinging to some idea of summer in a pair of cut off denim shorts, but she's wise enough to wear a long sleeved gauzy peasant shirt with colorful embroidery around the the collar and cuffs against the evening chill, even if she isn't still just covering up the fading scratching on her arm. Standing in front of him now, she bundles the blanket up to her chest but extends the bottle in his direction. "I bring an offering to the star gazing Gods."

Ravn accepts it with a lopsided smile. "Then comes the true question of importance here -- have those gods provided me with a cork opener? Let me go and find out. Make yourself a nest in the back meanwhile? It is getting nippy -- let me find a blanket as well."

He disappears below deck a moment, leaving the door open -- it's not many paces to the kitchenette. Nothing is many paces on the Vagabond -- she does not at all compare in comfort to some of those floating mansions further out on the pier and beyond. Catamarans with jacuzzis. House boats with four separate cabins and a shared dining room. People with too much money, spending them on boats that will sit in the marina for the majority of their existence because they are too luxurious to be properly sea-worthy.

Kitty Pryde, from her spot in the prow, ignores everything. Yes, somebody just stepped over her. If she doesn't acknowledge them, then surely they do not exist. As long as Bennie doesn't eat tuna, Bennie will be unharmed.

Bennie gives Miss Pryde her space today out of respect for invading her space. There is a vague nod as Ravn goes off in search of a proper implement to open the bottle, but even if he is unsuccessful there are always work arounds for a creative mind! With a little gnaw on her bottom lip, she shakes out the blue and red flannel number and shawls it around her shoulders, sneakers toed off before she curls up on a cushion with feet tucked up underneath her. "I couldn't sleep." She calls out, as if she needed some grand excuse to wander down to the pier tonight or as if he asked for an explanation. "And I'm pretty sure if I keep lurking around the bar when I'm not working, my soul will never leave the place and I'll become the sad old alcoholic ghost that haunts the place after she kicks off."

"Hey, then I'll keep you company on the night shifts," Ravn says with a chuckle as he emerges, triumphantly carrying a cork opener. "I mean, I've known worse ghosts than that. When I was a kid there was this girl who kept walking up and down the hall, crying. She scared the heck out of me until I realised that she didn't see me. I say was but I presume she's still there, crying her brave tears at night."

He settles next to Bennie, plopping down a wool blanket the colour of camel hair next to himself but not yet unfolding it. Two wine glasses carried by the stem between gloved fingers and a twist of the cork opener -- "Do you want to pour your libations to the gods of star gazing yourself, or shall I? Not spending every hour at the Twofer is probably healthy. I know the place is your baby, but even parents need a night out every now and then -- or so parents used to tell me. I like your baby very much, but I wouldn't want to be there all the time."

There is a little lift of her chin, indicating he can pour for her at will. Bennie's not one of those that gets annoyed at chivalry, or gets fussed about insisting she be allowed to do things for herself all the time. "She's not my baby." Bennie says quietly. "But she's certainly a limb I've spontaneously seemed to have grown I don't think I could live without. The Two If By Sea was someone else's dream. I'm just making sure it doesn't fade away. But you're right. Alexander is right. Everyone is right. I need to stop holding on with a steel grip, and remember I have my own life to lead." Her nose wrinkles, switching the subject back to ghosts out of sheer will and determination. "So you've always believed in the super natural?"

Ravn pours in both glasses; that he's got manual dexterity aplenty is the worst kept secret of Gray Harbor, and the glass that ends up offered to Bennie spins a few times on his palm first -- spilling not a drop. It's the sort of thing he does all the time, probably without even thinking much about it, when practising bartending. Some customers love it. A few tell him to stop showing off and serve the bloody drink. "I never met that somebody. From what everyone tells me, he was a great person to know. And keeping his baby alive seems a good way to honour his memory. But yes -- we have to go on living. It takes time to want to, I know that."

Ravn raises his glass slightly. "To those who are gone, and let's be thankful we got to know them. And then -- yes. The supernatural. Don't know that I thought of it as supernatural as a child. I see ghosts, sometimes. I learned to stop telling the grown-ups about them, for obvious reasons. I suppose that some of the things I was warned about here in Gray Harbor at first did not seem quite so strange to me as they could have. Because I knew that there are people who can bend the laws of physics a little, and because I know that there's a lot going on between here and there that we can't begin to understand. I'm just not used to those things being actively malicious the way they often seem to be, here."

Bennie murmurs an amused thanks after his second-nature antics, accepting the glass with a careful positioning of her fingers on the stem so as to not even brush his gloved fingers. "Easton. You can say his name, I won't burst into a fit of tears." Anymore! "And the fact that you know what it's like...well. It's a comfort. And oddly I realized, you not having known him? Is too." There is a minute little shiver, causing her to draw the blanket up higher around her shoulders. "To the Gone." She echoes his toast, then takes a sip of the wine, a spicy red called a Valpolicella.

She then seems to settle in, relaxing a bit from her previous skittishness. "Right? About the Grr? Sometimes I feel like we're all in some television show spin-off. Things constantly trying to eat us and a rag-tag band of strangers come together to fight the force of evil while learning to embrace their different natures. If we were in a Buffy episode, we are deffo over a Hellmouth. You said you were friends with Itzhak, right? Has he helped you understand your 'gift' anymore?"

Ravn looks a little sheepish at the inquiry about the New Yorker. "We talked about it. But we keep getting distracted. He's a bloody good violinist, and somehow, we always end up geeking out about string pieces. I don't really meet a lot of people who are that passionate about music. We will get to it -- I do realise just how bloody good he is at the moving thing, too. It's just... It's difficult to pin down -- something about remembering to live, remembering the things that make it all worthwhile? Watching someone play like that makes me want to fight the Hellmouth. I already dress like Angel, so I guess I'll be the one being sarcastic and grumpy in between sending smouldering looks at Buffy."

A small smile accompanies that last quip; odds are not in favour of Ravn really thinking he's a kindred spirit to a taciturn, ensouled vampire. He sips the Chilean wine. "I think people who knew Easton might be afraid that you'll break, yes. And if you're anything like me, then for some time they were right."

"Itzhak has the most beautiful soul I've ever seen, and it comes through his hands and into his violin. He played once at a funeral and not only wasn't there a dry eye in the place, but I think we all just felt so blessed to having had heard those notes played so sweet and heartbreaking. Just like when he was playing to the sea that night on the beach, you can't help but find the joy infectious." She considers her wine with serene smile of moments remembered before commenting, "I have yet to see you grumpy, or is that just my sparkling influence?" Bennie wonders aloud with a bit of a faux smug expression.

"Oh, I cracked alright. But I'm not going to break. I won't give Them that satisfaction. But - and I mean this in no disrespect to your chosen handwear - if people would stop treating me with kid gloves, that'd be super swell." Bennie gives a shrug, and her smile grows. "But all things in their own time."

"That's probably going to take some time. In part because they're treating themselves with kid gloves too." Ravn nods in the sympathetic yet matter of factly way of someone who's been there, done that, and cried into a lot of pillows about it before he put himself back together.

Then he shakes his head. "I do put on a show at the bar. I mean, that's what you pay me for -- put on my entertainer face, keep patrons happy. I can get angry. I just try not to, because it's usually pretty futile. I don't handle anger very well. I'm one of those people who internalise instead -- used to struggle pretty heavily with anxieties. Hell, this place.. The most frightening thing about Gray Harbor for me, honestly, it's not the monsters and the murders and the dreams. It's the way people here connect. It terrifies me and I'm absolutely in love with it at the same time."

There is a little nod given, accepting that in part it's because everyone else is still grieving too. He doesn't leave Bennie pensive for long as he talks about entertaining at the bar, the light returning to her face. "And you thought I'd get rid of you when the season was over." Her tongue clucks against her teeth in admonishment. "We're all family here, even if that means someone is the black sheep or the cousin twice removed you only see at holidays. I have some very dear friends I'd lay down my life for, and yet we don't keep up on the day to day lives of each other. I can see how that'd be terrifying though, especially when you realize you get used to it and can't see yourself living anywhere else when you wake up one day. Rolling stone like you is going to start gathering moss. So what helps? Your anxieties, I mean?"

"Where I'm from, the beach bars pretty much shut down at the end of the tourist season when Germany goes home. I wasn't expecting for the Twofer to be any different. I am starting to realise that while the bar makes money in the summer, though, it serves another, just as important function in winter -- as a place for people like us to connect." Ravn does not at all seem sorry about this development; strange as it might seem to people with higher career ambitions, he really does seem to enjoy his work. Even the mens' room.

He sips his wine and leans back a little, looking at the constellations overhead; western hemisphere and not so very different from what he'd be seeing back home -- and yet just a little different, just enough to remind him that he's on another continent. That he wandered halfway around the planet to get away from things back home. "I don't... object to the idea of gathering moss. I kind of like it. Just, for a long time in my life, it seemed like moss was something that happened to other people. Because it's so much easier to deal with people if you just -- don't. Don't commit to people or to places, just keep moving, don't let anything really matter. That's how I used to deal with it. If nothing really matters, then nothing can really upset you."

"And now I've got a boat, a cat, and people who remember my name tomorrow. It's kind of terrifying but it's also wonderful." Ravn turns his head to look at Bennie with one of those small, lopsided smiles. "I'm perfectly fine as long as no one is looking at me, noticing me much. I can put on a show at the bar or on a boardwalk because it's not me people see -- it's the bartender, the grifter. The act. But ask me to play the violin in front of an audience and I freeze -- because you can't perform without showing yourself -- your soul -- to the audience. That's the difference between Itzhak Rosencrantz and me. When too many people look at me at once, I freeze up, my hands start to shake, and I panic. I'm at my finest when I'm all by myself -- it's just a very lonely way to go through life." The smile turns a little wry; some admissions are more fun to make than others.

Another glance from grey eyes. "How do you cope? You're always sunshine and smiles and sweetness at the bar, and of course you are, because you have to be. But you're not always at the bar."

Oh right, they are supposed to be star gazing. Bennie's head tilts back, the bowl of the wine glass clutched to her chest by her palm. "That's precisely what the Twofer is. The tourist season is what pays the bills for the rest of the year, but it's really a place for the locals." Her smile sits easy on her lips as her eyes rove over the sky. "I was that way for a long time, a bit of a loner. I had some things I was dealing with, and convinced myself that anyone outside that was just slowing me down. A distraction. It was a hard lesson learned that you just can't do things alone, and now I have the best support system of friends a gal could ever hope for."

Her head lulls to the side as he turns to look at her, that smile staying enigmatically in place fed by his own. "It's okay for those things to stay private though, but I wouldn't say you're at your finest. But then again, if I'm not there in audience, what do know? I mean, it's just between me and my shower head or my steering wheel as to whether or not I can actually sing."

But then he asks her how she copes, and she carefully admits. "I was an addict. Heck, I am an addict, right? That never really goes away. But now I have friends, people I can talk to. Most of the sunshine used to be just chemical. And now it's just...me. Even though I know I use it to overcompensate sometimes."

Ravn shakes his head. "Not from what I've seen. We have to put on our happy face at the bar, after all, it's what patrons expect. And I have to say that of the places I've worked -- and by now there's been a fair number of those, bumming through Europe and whatnot -- the Twofer is a very easy place to wear that happy face. It's a good place. Sure, there's the occasional jerkass out-of-towner but Vic would probably quit if there wasn't someone to take her anger out on. I have yet to meet any genuinely unpleasant townsfolk."

"I've never done anything harder than the occasional pot. It's not an easy thing to admit, or get behind you. Not that I'm going to pretend I know very much about it." His gaze follows a cluster of stars the names of which could be Joe, Bob and Pete as far as Ravn is concerned but they're still pretty. "I read a study some years back that said, rich people drink a lot more than poor people, only that it's the poor people who die from alcohol-related health issues because the rich can afford to treat their addictions or at least the resulting conditions from them. Lots of alcohol, lots of opioids and sure, some people need a little nose candy to keep their edge, but it's not addiction, right?"

Ravn shakes his head lightly at himself. "Sorry. I guess I'm just trying to say well done. On realising that you had a problem, and on doing something about it."

Bennie gives a little laugh at all that, ducking her head away from the brilliant view and moving a strand of hair behind the shell of her ear sheepishly. "It wasn't anything like that. I mean any addiction is difficult, but my drug of choice was Adderall. I was working four jobs to make ends meet and pay off some pretty nasty people I thought my father owed a debt to. I used it to keep going, stay awake, get things done. I actually have ADHD which makes having needed to quit taking so much as an aspirin difficult, and I've felt this...fog ever since I did my Clayton flavored rehab. But the other day when we were talking down below? I could see things so clearly, my thoughts were coherent. What I mean is that I realized I might not need the drugs after all. I felt normal. I felt normal with you." She flicks a glance aside at him but then buries her nose in her wine glass.

"You don't come across as someone who's dealing with mind fog. I wouldn't have guessed it. But I am not very observant on things like that, I admit it." Ravn studies Bennie's face a moment, then shakes his head and swirls the wine glass, watching the red liquid for a moment. "I'm trying to imagine what it's like, having to deal with four jobs and debt collectors. I had a pretty sheltered life back home. And I think one of the things I learned about the world when I took off --" ran away "-- is that life punches people in the face a lot. That it's not fair, and that a lot of very good people end up dealing with a lot of things that they absolutely should not have to. While other people just breeze through and never really have to worry about anything."

Then he looks back at Bennie and asks, "I don't know much about ADHD -- it's the one that makes you think of so many things at once that it becomes difficult to concentrate on any one thing? There has to be something that can be done for that, something which doesn't require you to use narcotics or heavy medication. No one should have to feel like their thoughts are only coherent some of the time."

"Mmm, and I get distracted a lot. Start down one vein and end up on a completely other just because I saw something shiny." Bennie has no problem making fun of herself, but it's not entirely self-deprecating. Her lips worry against each other, drawing off the sweet and spicy taste of the Chilean wine from them. "I also seem to talk about myself a lot. Do you ever miss your family? Your home? Although I gotta admit, I hope the pull to go back isn't too strong, you'd leave a hole now if you left." Her hand dips aside with her glass, silently asking to be topped off from the bottle.

Ravn sits up to reach for the bottle and deploy refills. He shakes his head while doing so. "No, you don't. I always worry that people end up thinking all I do is talk about me."

He settles back down, wearing a small, slightly sheepish smile. "I don't. I really don't. I don't really feel I have any reason to go home at all. I probably will, some day. When the time comes to act adult and take responsibility. But some day is nowhere soon because Gray Harbor feels a lot more like home than home ever did. I don't have anyone waiting for me back home. Just obligations that I don't want. Here, I feel like it actually matters whether I get up in the morning."

With a small, wry smile he tacks on, "I spent some time in treatment for clinical depression and avoidance issues. Truth is, though, Gray Harbor has done more for me in a month than years of therapy did back home. Working at the Twofer, feeling like I have a place here, that anyone actually gives a damn. I mean, we barely know each other, but I still end up feeling more -- like things matter -- talking to you here, than I ever did paying certified people a small fortune to listen to me gripe."

Bennie's leg uncurls from the seat, bare toes reaching over to give his knee a playful little shove. "You do matter." And then she realizes her assumed error. "Oh shoot, sorry! No touchie! I really, really try to be mindful of that." Bad Bennie, no more wine for you. She looks like she's about to set aside her glass with just that notion but then decides it's better to have something in her hands to occupy them. Did she ever give back that coin the other day? No, no she did not. Maybe she's a klepto on top of everything else, or it just absently made its way into a dish with her keys at home

"Goodness, Bennie. I'm not going to jump overboard to get away." Ravn laughs softly. "I have a touch disorder. It means touching things with my hands is uncomfortable if I don't see it coming -- like someone shaking my hands, or picking up a fork, or bumping my hands against something. It doesn't mean I scream and run for the exit if someone accidentally brushes against me in the grocery store."

He pauses as some piece of trivia resurfaces in memory. "Wait. That's how Clayton is, isn't it? Someone told me that. Poor fellow. I promise, for me it's more a matter of not getting surprised by some texture I was not expecting, or a temperature that's different from what I thought I'd be feeling."

Bennie's smile blooms again, as if imagining just that: Ravn's wine glass being thrown in one direction and with a foot up in his seat, diving haphazardly overboard just to avoid her, as if the shock of cold water were preferable. "And Alexander is my absolutely very best friend, so you'd think I'd be used to personal boundaries but noooope." She gives a little noise of laughter, "So then yeah, I guess it's different between you two. He has trust issues mainly with himself, not to mention he can't help but accidentally read people somehow. And he got seriously messed up in the past. So that means if you know it's coming, like if I held up my hand like this?" She presents her palm like a cop directing traffic. "You could take off your glove and touch it, and you'd be okay?"

"Yes, that would be all right. I don't do any of the -- reading things. My brain just gets it wrong when what I am touching isn't what I expected to be touching. That feels a bit like, well, touching an electrical fence with wet hands." Ravn unbuttons the glove on his right hand and pulls it off with his left, then extends a slender hand, palm up. As hands go, it is fairly inconspicuous looking; a few calluses that may remind someone observant that he plays the violin. "See? It's just that it's really inconvenient to yelp randomly every five minutes and drop everything to stick my fingers in my mouth like a kid that just realised how mouse traps work."

"Clayton seems... Like a good bloke. And like someone who's been through a lot." The copper blond cants his head and picks up his wine glass again with his left hand; truly ambidextrous people are rare, but he's at least very good at using both equally. "I wonder, sometimes, if we have this -- shine thing because we are all a little broken. Or if we're a little broken because we have it."

"Of course you don't, it's not in your aura..." Bennie says of his abilities, slightly distracted by the sight of his hand, like it's some elusive unicorn she's come across in the wild. Tempted apparently, to feel those callouses for herself and test this theory that needs a conclusion that he won't jump or break if she touches him. She touches just their fingertips together at first, and then slides her hand until her fingers brush his palm and don't stop until they're like some flattened version of a yin and yang. Her hand is long and slender like her height. Forgetting now for a moment they're actually having a conversation amid this experiment.

"You see auras?" The Dane's tone is fascinated. "I'm tempted to ask -- although last time I asked, I ended up regretting it a bit. Turns out Gina at the Black Bear actually does know how to read her tarot cards and the reading she gave me after I pestered her long enough about it was not as flattering as it could have been. Which is probably why I am now designated Mr Arrogant over there. If she has to be nice about it."

Ravn neither twitches nor moves his hand away though a sharp eye will note that he does seem slightly tense in the fashion of someone who is not accustomed to the experience; it's not necessarily a bad experience. Nor does he seem to be in any hurry to pull his hand away.

"Gina has that effect on people. You know, I'm not sure if I see you differently than others do, or if you just see yourself that way." Because Bennie apparently doesn't share the same opinion on arrogance the same as she denies he's grumpy or snarky. Her fingers split into a comb, bifurcating his fingers with her own still singularly fascinated so she has yet to look back up at him but she wiggles closer to examine the juxtaposition of their hands. "It's really just the Shine. The way the Veil makes me see it. It's like in a swirl of colors around you, and I can tell with just a glance what a person is capable of. You have a faint blue, if you're wondering, without the dark edges of maliciousness."

"I like to think I'm not a particularly malicious person," Ravn murmurs with a small, lopsided smile. "To me, that feeling is more of a... presence. A heat. Some people make me feel like I need to step up to them, find out who they are. Hear their story. You feel like a furnace -- not in a dangerous or ominous fashion, but like a lot of power contained in a deceptively small frame. I can't tell what you do -- but I can tell that if you put your heart in it, you'll do very well at it. A lot of people here are like that, some more than others."

If there is still a newshound in Seattle and surroundings who cares what a supposed Swedish celebrity chef gets up to, maybe they will now be able to report that it seems to involve holding hands with his employer on a boat deck. Ravn doesn't appear to care. Maybe he figures he's yesterday's news. He remains sitting up, drawing one leg up under himself, looking quite content with the status quo.

"Do you ever feel like people's expectations of you do not actually match -- you?" A strange question, but he seems a tad intent about it. "I think the hardest part about being a grieving widower, so to speak, was the expectations. If I've acted a little -- awkward around you, that's why. I wanted to tell you that I know what it's like. But I didn't want to sound like I was the new guy in town, coming in from left field and making a move. Just that -- I think I get how you feel when you're eating vodka infused maraschinos."

"I'm a Healer." Benne says as her fingers finally relax into a curl around his. Turned sideways, she rests her wine wielding arm up on the railing, their conjoined hands resting in a more neutral position on his knee. "Strong yes, but there's a difference between capability and practice. There is a great deal about my 'gift'," The air quotes are obvious even if she doesn't make them with her fingers, "That I have to learn to utilize more comfortably. While I can mend bones, I can also break them. Clear a clogged artery better than a heart cath, but also cause an aneurysm. I'm trying to think of more creative ways to use my powers that aren't so...permanent. Like on McNotSoHot Serial Killer, what I did was..."

Her eyes suddenly go wide, and the thought of holding hands or answering his question about expectations and perceptions are dashed for the moment, as opportune this moment would be to talk about things. She's leaping up, her blanket shawl falling to a flannel puddle at her feet and her glass of wine sloshing wildly as she almost looses her grip on it. "We caught him!" She chirps excitedly, as if just remembering but having gotten wholly distracted by stars and starry eyes. "That's what I actually came here to tell you! We set a trap, and it worked! He's now safely - well, after he tried to kill himself and we put the kabash on that, and I used my juju on him, because no suicide by self-beheading was going to happen on our watch, he wasn't going to get away so easily! Shoot, what was I saying? Right! He's in custody! We did it!"

"Oh my goodness," Ravn murmurs in surprise. "But that's -- good lord, Bennie, that's good news."

He sits up too, and while he doesn't quite start shedding flannels and waving wine glasses, he is clearly thrilled to hear this fantastic development. Something in that statement tripped his attention up. "Wait, self-beheading? Is that even possible? Tell me what you did, tell me how you caught this bastard. And tell me, please, that he's going to go away for a very long time and we're bloody well done with him. Even the Aztec gods thought he was a pretty poor joke, imagine being so pathetic even a dead religion is laughing at you."

Bennie's high spirits reflect in his eyes and face as he watches her little victory dance. In the prow, even Kitty Pryde looks up -- and glares because heck, humans, be quiet, whom does a cat have to murder to get some sleep around here.

"Are you kidding me? That's great news!" And as he bids her to tell him all the details, Bennie folds her self excitedly right down in his lap. Personal bubble? What's that? He may want to rethink that whole jumping off the boat thing with a bubbling babbling blonde now invading. "So the idea was that we would stage a lecture - well, I say we, but I'm pretty sure I was blitzed out of my mind on Caterpillar hookah when the planning took place - so it was a lecture about ritual sacrifice in the past and present, to see if it would pique his interest and at least get him in audience. So we're all planted in the audience right?" She starts waving her arm again, realizing that the wine is getting towards dangerous sloshy level again, "Oops, sorry." Apologizing for that as she set sit aside and sweeps her hair behind her ear, but she's talking so fast she might not even realize she's made him her perch.

"Byron, Lilith, Alexander, August, Cecil - I don't know if you've met everyone yet. Shoot, am I forgetting someone? Anyway, so the professor who we let in on our little scheme starts on about Babylon and we see if we can notice the guy. And some of us do, and try to alert the others, only someone - I think August? Decides to text, and I had forgotten to turn the ringer off, and then there was a moth on the projector, and ...anyway, he gets spooked and starts to leave. Takes Cecil hostage. So I zap him with the sleepies, I think Alexander mind melded him, then Byron rushes in and tries to wrench the knife away - no wait, that was after he got sleepy and a dose of Clayton Xanax. So he gave up on Cecil and decided to make himself the sacrifice, Byron disarms him ..well, not his whole arm or anything, just the knife. I heal the guy with like...some serious sunshine so he doesn't die before the cops get there and bingo bango!"

Ravn opens his mouth. Then he shuts it. For a couple of seconds he resembles an indecisive goldfish. Then he seems to decide that this happened, and while he did certainly not expect it to happen, being turned into furniture is by far not the worst thing anyone's ever done to him -- and besides, what she is saying is a matter that he takes quite a bit of interest in. He listens carefully to the story without interrupting a single time, in the fashion of someone who is, or at least were, an academic, noting every detail and saving the questions for the end.

"I know -- most of those people, I think. Røn and Clayton I've met a number of times. I remember the pawn shop lady from my first day in town, telling me to get the heck out while I could -- and that I wouldn't. I know the other two frequent the bar but I'll admit that I can't quite put faces to the names. Either way, all of you are bloody heroes. Who was this professor you got involved?"

Because possibly, a professor able to lecture on sacrificial rites of old is someone Ravn wants to meet.

He backs up a moment though -- and rescues Bennie's wine glass, steadying it with his hand over hers. "I have to say though -- if I were a serial killer. Or anything along those lines. Gray Harbor is the last bloody place on the planet I'd want to be plying that trade. Imagine being him, all smug and on his power trip there in the auditorium -- and then, people with super powers piling up on him like schoolyard bullies. Like throwing a side of bacon into a vat full of sharks. I mean, for a moment you almost feel sorry for the bloke, at least until you remember the things he's done."

"I like the way you say his name," August's obviously, because then she goes on to try to say it the same way again as their little bout of the name game on the deck of the TiBS. "Row-eeeeen." But she gives up after a few tries. "But the concern is he still has one victim...alive or ...not. A hiker who was staying at the motel, so hopefully the cops will be able to get some information out of him. As you can imagine he wasn't very forthcoming with us. But hey. And that's sort of the concern, not that he came to Gray Harbor but that Gray Harbor just...finally got to him? Like, made him crack and become the serial killer so it's okay to feel a little sorry for him. We're not heroes though, we're just family taking care of their own. And, you know, the occasional bystander. Julia Winters, that was the professor's name. Very helpful to our cause." Bennie jumps around topics, throwing away a mindless 'thank you' as he steadies her hand.

And then there is a beat of silence. Two.

"I'm sitting in your lap, aren't I?"

"Er. Yes."

Awkward could not be much more awkward if it tried. Here Ravn was doing so fine at pretending this did not happen, and if it did happen, it surely was a perfectly normal thing. There are few situations that one cannot simply ignore until they stop being awkward. Except, apparently, when the other person involved points them out directly.

He shakes his head, holding on to his last thought (or rather, the one before this is very awkward). "No. The guy cracked years ago. He killed a man in Spokane. Beheaded him and wrote the name of a Sumerian underworld goddess on the wall in his blood. He just sped up after coming here. But he definitely cracked long before then. The Veil probably drew him because he cracked."

And for some reason for Bennie it's not awkward at all, but her smile turns more towards a wry grin. "I have that effect on people." And then working under the assumption his touch thing mainly has to deal with his hands she leans in and gives him an exuberant kiss on the cheek. "I'm a cow though, don't want your legs to fall asleep." She unfolds herself as if to slip away, a bare foot resting on the decking, "So if the Veil drew him because he was cracked...what does that say about us?"

"Honestly? That we have this gift because we are all a bit cracked. Or that we crack because we have it. Maybe the thing manifests in people based on some sort of criteria that you have to be a little... off centre, so to speak. A lot of us seem to have some kind of issues going on, whether it's PTSD or something else. But it all seems to be -- traumatic in some fashion." Ravn reaches up absentmindedly to touch his own cheek -- and then yelps and pulls his hand away. With a slightly wry grimace he mumbles, "Aaaand that is why I wear gloves. Forgot I haven't shaved within the last ten hours."

"It tickles." Bennie sort of commiserates with the the stubble thing, but that glint of amusement hasn't left her eyes as she tilts her glass of wine and drains the last of the spicy red from the bowl, setting it down delicately on a flat surface then makes a motion at it as if telling it to sit/stay. "Have you ever heard of a Japanese practice called Kintsugi? It's the art of repairing something that's been broken with fine gold. The art of celebrating the beauty in the broken by acknowledging it and embracing it rather than tossing it aside or trying to repair it so that the cracks are unnoticeable. But I'm also told that 'sugi' means to suck in Romanian. So take that for what you will."

"I think I have, actually -- the bowls?" Ravn frowns lightly. "Mundane clay bowls that are put back together with gold, letting the cracks form the pattern that they will? It makes sense as an analogy for some people here. That we are somehow cracked and damaged, but perhaps that's also what brings out qualities we wouldn't have had otherwise."

He reaches out to trail a fingertip -- very carefully! -- along the rim of Bennie's very obedient glass. "For what it's worth, suge means suck in Danish. I have... enjoyed tonight. I'm glad you came out. It's easier to -- well, have a proper conversation when there are not patrons demanding our attention every other minute. I wouldn't mind buying the next bottle of wine, so to speak."

"Look! Now I know Dutch!" Even if it's just one word, Bennie sees that as an accomplishment. Her smile softens as she drags her blanket back to her stomach, bunching it up in a wad instead of bothering to fold it up at the moment. "I'm glad too. And you are a very lovely bowl, Ravn Abildgaard. You want to slide on your glove and give me a hand out?"

Ravn can't help laugh as he does indeed pull his glove back on. "Danish! Good lord, you know a bit of Danish! Dutch is the bloody Netherlands." Of all the things Americans always, always troll Danes and Dutchmen alike about. And the Germans, because the German word for German is Deutsch, and seriously, Europeans need to start to invent new combinations of letters because they have clearly run out.

"Do I get to wear a sign at work, proclaiming me a lovely apprentice bowl?" He gets to his feet and helps his guest bundle up flannel and glasses, and indeed, avoid tripping on sleeping cats on their way up towards the prow and onwards to the pier itself. "I'll see you tomorrow? I think I signed on for the morning shift after the karaoke affair -- so maybe I'll see you before you see me, or anything, if it turns out to be a good evening."

"Right. Danish. Danish." Bennie repeats, not in self-admonishment, just correcting herself and committing the correction to memory. Stepping a little more sure-footed to the deck than how she stepped down before, she grins back to him. "I'm pretty sure there are a million better signs we could make for you. And then we'd have to explain the whole bowl thing to everyone, and that's just not a conversation I'm prepared to have." She starts padding off barefoot - having forgotten her sneakers but she looks like a gal who spends ninety percent of her time without footwear anyway. "See you then!" She calls back, an actual skip to her step as she rounds the pier.