2020-11-05 - Temet Nosce

Fall is here, which is one of August's busier seasons. Between decorations for Halloween and Thanksgiving, Christmas prep, and everyone panicking to get some tree work done before the snow comes, they're usually booked solid.

He's managed to clear off his desk for today, though, and Thoma and Ully have things under control in the shop proper. So he's spending his free time in the private greenhouse on the back of the property, the one with the locked door. It's not locked, presently, and even standing cracked open to let some of that crisp air flow through the structure. Numerous seedlings are arrayed in front of him in little plantable seedling trays, and he's prepping much larger pots for them to go into, mixing potting soil with sand, lining the pots with Spanish moss, and so on. It's quiet, simple work, the sort of thing that helps him relax.

His leg's healed up, the only remaining damage a long, thin scar and an occasional ache to go with all the others. No limping about, then, and no more brace. He's in a black, waffle-knit Henley under a red, white, and black flannel, denim jeans stained with grass and dirt, and heavy hikers. It's pleasantly warm and humid in the greenhouse, in contrast to the sharp air the opened door lets in.

Tucked in that corner of the greenhouse -- that one, with the large, twisty trees and leafy vines, there's actually a... figure, seated, just in the midst of it. On the floor - or rather, very close to the floor: a pot has been upturned, some sort of coat folded atop of it to form a cushion to make a seat. She's dressed in dark greens and blacks, likely why she's gone unnoticed thusfar: a green-and-brown plaid shirt over a black tee over black mesh, a pair of dark skinny jeans and hiking boots, the purple hair in a braid, but half-hidden by the slouchy beanie she's got on. The weather is cold outside, after all!

Before August arrived, she was toying with a leaf tendril, her expression in its most neutral state, eyes half-lidded, thoughtful, nails lightly scratching that leaf - never more than grazing, never hurting, but the thumb flexes after each pass, as if considering it. But then there's August, and Gina seems perfectly content to simply watch him a while, quietly. He'll notice her eventually, she knows, when his attention wanders from his work. There's a quick smile, however, sharp and impish, before her expression smooths back to normal and she says in a mild voice, "So what're we planting today, anyway?" She asks, in the most conversational of tones. Hopefully-- before he fully acknowledges she's there.

August has been working in perfect silence the whole time. He's not someone who talks to himself to fill in a lack of conversation. (Though he does talk to animals, which anyone who's watched him at his cabin will know: there's always a conversation between him and the goat, geese, ducks, etc. Eleanor may or may not have posted numerous videos of this one her Friendzone.) Lost in thought and the sound of his own movements and the occasional sigh from the wind in the trees outside, he jerks in surprise when Gina speaks. He's used to being warned by people's shoes crunching on the gravel path outside long before they're near the greenhouse, much less in it.

Every plant in the greenhouse shifts, just a tad, at his reaction. They rustle, or shudder, like an animal might lay back its ears or raise its hackles. He recognizes her a second later, and the plants fall quiet. He sags against the table, straightens the pot he knocked over, scrapes the soil back into it. With a narrow-eyed, annoyed look, he says, "How long've you been sitting there, waiting to do that."

"Don't flatter yourself. I didn't know you'd show up her today." Gina says, with that slight, sly smirk, before she looks back towards the leaf she was caressing, giving it a final rub before she lets it go. "I just came to check out the plants. Plus, it's warm here." With a deep sigh, she rises to her feet, slowly, stretching backwards slightly, fingers lacing above her head, before she exhales and moves towards the table, strolling closer. The greenery probably clings to her: not out of affection, as they might August, but simply because she's been sitting long enough to have gotten a little tangled there.

She doesn't approach August, either. She just looks down at the table and the little seedlings, reaching with blue-nailed hands towards one of the seedlings, "So, what've you started planting?" She asks again, looking back up at August with that slight amusement. It's hard to tell if her amusement is due to having 'gotten' him, or for planting, or for-- well, who knows. It's Gina.

As Gina walks the plants slowly release her, leaving a few stray leaves in her hair. One in particular is a velvety, dark brown flower that smells sweet and dark, like chocolate.

"Mmmmmmhmmmm." August's sarcastic agreement is a low rumble in his chest. "Of course you didn't." He clearly doesn't buy her explanation, more because he wants to be contrary than for any real sense she's lying. He relaxes once the spilled pot is sorted out, glances up at Gina between tasks. "A few things."

He sets a gloved hand on the edge of a pot. "Violas." Now another. "Pansies." And another. "Poppy." He continues in this fashion for a few more: "Columbine, trilium, heuchera, yarrow." Most of the seedlings might look the same to the untrained eye, though some features stand out: the heuchera and viola seedlings have wide, broad leaflets, while the poppy seedlings look very generic and thin, the sort fo thing you'd hit with the Spectricide first chance, and the yarrow seedlings are pinnate in miniature form. "I could put them out now, but," he looks around them at the greenhouse, "this is safer, in case we get any freak weather." 'In case.' "Once the snow's melted in Spring I can put them out front, or in the shop for sale."

Gina doesn't seem to mind the leaves much. She doesn't even pluck them away, though her fingers do brush against them as she tucks some strands of hair back. Her dark eyes flick up to August's face at his doubtful commentary, and her grin is that Gina classic: ambiguously teasing or mocking, playful or sarcastic, impossible to tell. But her eyes travel down as she tilts her head to one side, following along with the explanations, "Two of those aren't poisonous. Soft of you." She remarks. Which is... such great information to have, Gina. So great. Her hand reaches for one of the heurchera seedlings, delicately tapping on one of its leave. "Unlucky little salad side, aren't you." She murmurs, before she looks back at August. "Yarrow's pretty fun, though. I used to make crowns of it after some story I read as a kid. One grows near my house."

August coughs a laugh at the 'poisonous' comment. "A lot of plants are poisonous, if I stuck to just the non-poisonous ones this would be a boring greenhouse." He continues with the potting, carefully making little hollows and tearing off the seedling pots and setting them into place. "Only for deer," he says of the heuchera. "Better to just plant red leaf lettuce if you want salad. These don't taste good, they're bitter." He makes the face of someone who's checked, because of course he has. "Anyways, the look nice, make a good shade filler."

He nods at her comment about the yarrow, jerks his chin at a set of pots with their small fans of tiny leaves. "Wound up with a whole set of colors this year. Dark purple, dark red, white, even a multicolor, dark purple with white variegation." He taps a pot of four little seedlings when he mentions that last variety. "Figure that has to be a sport of some kind. We'll see if I can get it to grow true." After a second, he asks, "What story?"

Gina continues fiddling with the small seedling, but she lets go without doing any permanent damage, "Greek myth. Found a book that yarrow was what made Achilles invulnerable, when I was a kid. So I used to go out to the tree and break as many branches and leaves as I could and hide them for when it was time to take a bath. Didn't work, obviously," Gina's tone is light as she tells the story, as if mentioning something sillier, like a bad haircut or an ugly picture she drew on a wall.

She strolls towards the pots with the tiny leaves, reaching to pick them up, lift and examine the color variations as she continues her story, "I tried all kinds of shit with yarrow for about a month. Baths, carvings, the crowns." She glances at August, that difficult-to-decipher smile still in place, "Had to go to the doctor because I used so much my skin became sensitive. Burned a little in the sun. Happens in some people, they said. Pretty shit rash. Moved on to something else after. Can't really remember all the specifics from back when I was that young. I only remember the rash 'cause it meant I missed the third grade picnic."

August makes a low sound. "Ah, right--Achillea. Something about, his soldiers were said to use it as a heal-all. Which tracks, it's got analgesic and antiulceric properties." In response to the story he laughs, soft and quiet, shakes his head. "Yeah that's the sort of thing we think when we're that age, isn't it?" His eyes go a little distant, yet he keeps potting without pause. "I had this journal I kept, about the weird shit I'd see. I swore up and down there was a crow that talked to me. I was determined to prove it. Never could, of course." And now, the reason for that is more obvious, yet if August could talk to a crow, who's to say Gina couldn't use Achillea to become her own Achilles? That was Glimmer for you.

His attention returns to Gina. "Third grade...picnic? That's a thing here?"

"Yeah. Third and fourth grade does a picnic. Actually a hike at the end of the year to do science shit, but it's all turned into a random picnic that happens once in a while." Gina explains with a small shrug. She leans against the wall, arms crossing over her chest lightly, "Smart of you to do the journal thing. Not enough people do it. It's useful though. Kept a lot most of my life. Funny thing when they don't agree with one another, but." Anotther shrug. He knows how it goes.

Her brow furrows when she looks at August again, "Why couldn't you prove it?" She asks, sounding... genuinely puzzled. "It wouldn't be easy, but it's possible. Even out there." A glance, over to the vast outside. "I talked to weird shit all the time."

August makes a face. "Figures," he mutters. No, he's not impressed that a chance to interest kids in science has morphed into an afternoon in the park in which they maybe discuss the park's history. Not one bit.

Does he take a second to bask in Gina's approval? Maybe. He doesn't let it show, however. "No one to really prove it to," he explains. "I'm the only one in my family with the Art, and none of my friends had it." He shrugs helplessly in a way all those with Glimmer know so well. Why try to convince anyone? "They all figured I was good at making up wild stories and sticking to them. The journal was my way of reminding myself I wasn't crazy."

He pauses in his planting, tracks where Gina is looking. He's seeing somewhere, somewhen else. "I mean, there are other people who Glimmer in Portland, but...it's a looser group. Now, I think that's because it's more dangerous down there. Uglier. So they're more insular, and I had so much else going on, I clashed with the more influential sorts. Didn't want to listen, just wanted to be heard." The curse of one's teen years.

"YOu find them everywhere. Not often, but you run across them sometimes. Dips, too. Always the worst when there's one out there. You never know if they'll close all of a sudden. But you're right, Portland's not that fun." Of course Gina's been. It's Gina. It's not that far, either. She continues to look out into...nothing in particular.

"My mother loved the stories I told. She thought I was a creepy but imaginative. Useful, too." Gina says, and her tone when discussing her mother is much as when she discussed Achilles, or picnics, or seedlings. And, just as easily, pauses slightly and changes tracks entirely, as suddenly as she came to this one. "I never really fucked with the other people in Low. Not much more than casual. Most of 'em were idiots running with their heads cut off, each one screaming louder than the other one." She smiles again, looking towards August, "Younger you was probably just like most of the ones way down. Screaming up from down in the Deep and Low, flailing around, splashing like a motherfucker." Clearly Gina is entertained, but it's a dark sort of entertainment. "Most people also didn't listen to me when I was younger. And I wasn't screaming. Sould've been their first warning."

August looks askance at Gina when she mentions her mom. His expression turns assessing for a half-second, the look of someone making note of something. He doesn't ask, though; he just nods in agreement. "I think my parents thought maybe I'd be a writer, go to college for that. Could do worse than use it for inspiration for some fiction, I guess. But," he winces, shakes his head. "PSAT scores were shit."

He tilts his head. "People in--Low?" He sounds uncertain. "That a place, or a term of art?" The bit about splashing like a motherfucker make him smile, even laugh. "Ah, I had no fucking idea what I was doing. I didn't know what it was, just that I could make animals feel things, and feel their reactions for what they were. I could open locked doors, I could throw things without holding 'em." Another of those shrugs for youthful exuberance in the face of the weird and utterly indescribable. He resumes potting. "And I'd come across things...monsters, trying to eat animals I'd never seen. Crows that could talk. People made out of rocks."

"The Deep and Low. What you call the Art." She doesn't make quote marks with her hands, but her tone is VERY clear they're present, and she doesn't find the word too apt. "Hum and a shiver, deep in your bones." A pause, before she...actually continues, clarifying, "It's like when you drop a stone in deep water, in the middle of a rainstorm. It's not the ripples, it's the way the rock falls. It's a song that always sounds like it's going low, and it's always a fall. Enough glitter blinds you, enough time in the Deep and Low drowns you. Most of us are still falling in a cloud of bubbles. They'll pop one day."

It's perhaps one of the longer speeches Gina's ever given, about the Glimmer and how it is for her. Perhaps that's why she shrugs, looks back towards the seedlings of yarrw, in different types.

"So how old were you when you manifested, anyway?" Gina asks, keeping her voice casual. "You had a journal, but you sounded like a dickhead, so probably young."

August tilts his head, pausing in the planting to consider the description. He nods after a bit. "I can see it," he says. It's not a straight agreement, but it's not a disagreement either. "Not sure I'm convinced we'll all go blind or drown--but it's likely." He's resigned in the same way he would be about an early frost, or a new variant on a disease wiping out a monocrop that everyone should've known better than to rely on. "That's the price of sticking around here. It is what it is." Says the man who just got married.

He starts swapping the completed pots out for empty ones. A new tray of seedlings comes from a rack behind him: young, tiny tree seedlings. Japanese and vine maple, horse chestnut, aspen. "Mmmm. At a guess, ten or so. Maybe earlier but I don't remember anything before that well." A glance up at Gina with that wry expression of 'can't remember it--surprise'. "That was just the," he taps his temple, "reading Art. Moving came later, when I got into High School. Shaping was..." He keeps working, but his voice fades a spell. Finally, after enough time has passed it'd be reasonable to wonder if he's going to say anything, "It was weaker, when I was young. I kind of wonder if it ever would've gotten strong at all, if it wasn't for Bosnia." Another quiet spell, shorter this time. Then, "You?"

Gina recognizes that resignation - she shares it, of course. Though hers has lost all edge of disappointment, now: it's an acceptance of fact, as neutral as flowers blooming or the tides coming in. She strolls back to her corner throne, tucked away in the greenery. "Don't really remember. My guess is three." Gina says this as if that is a perfectly reasonable thing. "I was kind of chubby as a kid. Never needed to walk to get what I wanted. But I learned better than that when I got older. By the time my parents divorced and I lived here, I had the basic rules down. Took me a little longer to get used to the power I had here, instead of out there. And there was those new wrinkles. Some kids wet the bed. I disappeared from it. Drove dad crazy, but I always turned back up eventually." That smile, that ambiguously mocking and teasing, sympathetic and scornful, hard to read smile that would make the Mona Lisa give two thumbs up, such a strong wall, keeping particulars tucked away so her voice carries no heaviness, just a sliver of knowing in the light, casual tone, as she sits back down in the seat. A hand reaches to curl a finger around a leaf again, her attention going to the plants around her. "I used to be able to do the plant thing, too. It was different, then. But I gave that away a long time ago. I don't remember why. But I was always a mover. A feeler, too- less strong. Got stronger. Nowadays, who knows. Power's rusty, since I retired them."

"Christ, disappearing out of bed as a kid--who didn't do that?" August's tone makes this an honest observation, if also one meant to be teasing or a shared joke. "I was sneaking out the window in the room I shared with my sisters pretty early." Is he saying her dad was lucky it was Glimmer and not Gina's own wild nature? Maybe. A little.

He half-shrugs at her giving the ability away. "I know a couple people who've lost and found bits and pieces of it over the years. Not much different than losing or learning any other ability, maybe--sometimes you just change." He grunts. "And given how tied this stuff seems to be to our own emotions, and what we're going through, well," he shakes his head, "maybe it's a bigger surprise some of us don't change more."

He flicks a glance at her, tracking her as she sits, then goes back to handling the saplings. "Might want to be careful with that, letting them get rusty. They change a lot, lately; could wind up with something changing out from under you."

"Lucky me, I didn't need windows." Gina remarks...possibly implying maybe all those times she slipped away? NOT entirely by accident, or due to her own wild nature. Poro Mr. Castro. One can only imagine how early his hair went gray. As for his talk of the future, "That really a problem?" Gina wonders, and her glance slides towards August, that hint of amusement in them, lips tilted in sharp cut that's almost a smile. "Ninety seven percent of people get by just fine without it. They make shit easier, but they aren't always necessary. People use the hum like a crutch. It only brings you more problems, in the end."

She raises her arms over her head, stretching, then glancing up - hands still up - to touch the higher leaves on the plants nearby. Gina seems to genuinely... well, not enjoy, but not mind being around the greenery. "You hit the nail on the head, though. If you know your own frequency, it's just having control over yourself. Worrying about keeping yourself in check, instead of directing how you Fall. Fucking around with all the "practice" bullshit is just like doing only a little bit of arsenic. You think you're smart because you build up a tolerance then you fuck around and get skin lesions and bladder cancer in the end." Her eyes slant down to look at August instead of the greenery, the smile still present. How much is provocation-- how much is sincere belief? Who can tell.

"Not knowing your own power is a problem," August clarifies. "It doesn't matter if you don't intend to use it, or need to. None of it's ever about need. But if people around us do, seems we're just as likely to wind up sucked in alongside them. So all not being familiar with your power does is ensure you'll have no way to defend yourself without putting you, and anyone you care about, at risk." He wrinkles his nose. "Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's anything other than a no-win scenario, but both sides of it aren't created equal." His mouth twists in a morbid smile. "Of course, maybe I'm just too comfortable with no-win scenarios."

He inspects the leaves of the aspen saplings, eyes narrowed. "Not a good analogy," he observes, tone absent. "The Art's not about being smart or gaining tolerance to something which otherwise kills you. It's about making two decisions. To go, or to stay, and if you stay," he straightens and looks at her directly, "how far in you want to wade." His eyebrows go up. "The only smart move is to leave, let it go to sleep inside you and move on with your life." He glances at the floor of the greenhouse. "Just...not everyone gets that choice."

A small, amused snort escapes Gina, "You think it's better out there? Having psychic powers but no memory of how any of this shit actually works-- or not believing it when you tell yourself?" Gina says, shaking her head. She leans against one of the trees - a small tree, a little too sturdy to be a sapling, not quite tall enough to be a tree. A skinny, top-heavy bush with dreams of future grandeur. It's perfect for lazily leaning on, without getting too comfortable. She doesn't mind meeting August's eyes, her own flat, contained. "You can't escape it, unless you go to somewhere absolutely dead. Away from people, abandoned-- and sometimes, not even then, December. A Mover would still be somebody who fucked shit up or was haunted by poltergeists, Feeler would still be somebody whose instinct is just a little too uncanny. You don't even remember why you shouldn't keep working at it, honing your little gift, flexing that edge it gives you outside. And then one day there's a disaster, or an accident, or you decide to play the tourist and poof," Gina shrugs, "You get to live a nightmare without knowing all the rules anymore. You know how hungry some of the things are, where it's not so cozy close." Her smile is humorless, but not unamused - "Nobody but the ones who are just blips on the radar get the choice to just walk. I'd say maybe a third of people thrown in get that choice, no question. Another third gets a fifty-fifty chance of living screwball lives out there with something always...off. The last third? They get a fifty-fifty chance of Option B or the scenario I just described."

August actually stops working on the saplings to listen to all of that, nodding. When she stops, he arches an eyebrow. "I went to school in Corvallis. And Seattle. Worked in Hoh Rain Forest for almost a decade. I know what it's like out there. Away from," he nods his head unerringly towards the Sawmill in the way of all movers, "a place like this, or Portland." He frowns a little. "I didn't forget how it works, though. I couldn't remember everything that happened, especially in Portland when I was a kid, but," he takes in a deep breath, lets it out, "I was never going to forget some things." Bosnia, carved into him, physically and magically. No, he won't ever forget that. "And it was always there. Always waiting. Like a...shotgun on the wall. Sure, it's unloaded and has a trigger lock. Doesn't change much--a gun's a gun. Even out on assignment in the woods, it was there." He laughs, dry and bitter. "More so, with shaping. I could feel the forest existing around me all the time."

He shakes his head. "The people with no power at all, they forget. So I can't tell my parents anything. My sisters, their spouses, my nieces--I have to give them the sanitized versions. Us?" He pulls a face. "It's more like being an addict, in a way. It's a constant thing in the back of your mind."

"So you know, then. There's no walking away from it. Not really. Not when you're anything above a blip." Gina reaffirms, with that half-smile that's not quite a smile. "You always know it's there. It'll drive you crazy, like an itch you can't scratch. It doesn't sleep. You can't move on from it. It follows you. You'll scratch it. You'll use it - eventually you forget why you shouldn't. Eventually. It gets a lot easier to forget, the more it happens, and a lot harder to forget completely. So yeah." Gina gets up, reaching back to collect the coat acting as a cushion, shaking out her coat. "Arsenic poisoning. Or alcohol or red meat, if you want the cute Portland version. Won't kill you. Might even make you healthier, for a while. Eat too much of it, trigger the right event, and there comes the heart attack."

Her glance towards August at the talk of his family lingers, for only a second, before she's back to shaking out the coat, trying to find the coat opening. "Yeah. My dad still thinks I'm a powder keg of turbulent emotions." She deadpans - is she for real? is she joking? She says it with such a straight, bland expression! "Since I was such a troublemaker as a kid."

"Oh, there's walking away," August says, folding his arms. "Staying away, that's another thing. And I think a person can do that too. If most of us don't, well." He shrugs--then points at Gina. "There's zero causal evidence for red meat and heart attacks. It's only correlative. I can correlate the name Gina with ambivalence, capriciousness, and cynicism in the face of existential dread in this town to the tune of 100 percent. But my sample size would be bad." He smiles a little.

He glances aside, maybe imagining young Gina the Powder Keg of Teen Angst and Rage. "I can see it. At least it's expected, right? You're young and wild, unpredictable." Sarcasm creeps into his voice. He knows well enough those sorts of descriptions are dismissive and demeaning. But they could be worse.

"I actually used to not get why people called me that." Gina admits, looking away as she focuses on tugging on the coat. "I think I'm pretty simple. Everyone else complicated everything, or were so dumb they couldn't believe what was right in front of them." What would August think, if he knew teenage Gina was actually capricious, wild, excitable and so much friendlier than her current incarnation? A brief few years between the wildly moody, quiet child and the nihilistic snark monster known today. "Just like I feel diners should be places you go to get good food, not get your ass kissed or force other people to be your tip-slaves and ignore themselves for your sake. Simple as fuck, but everybody else in the world seems to have these other bizarre ideas." Gina zips on the coat: August will recognize the coat. Tailored, wool, dark grey, a chain from the bottom pocket to the last button on the coat, the deep hood: in the dark, it will certainly look like a robe. He may also recognize the slight - very slight - note of resignation in her voice, beneath the sass: her tone follows in the same provoking note as everything else she's said, but maybe - perhaps - the latter is a bit closer to sincere than she'd like to let on.

Maybe she realizes this, because by the time she smooths out her coat, tugging the sleeves just so. "You know Rosencratz, right?" She asks, apropos of... nothing, perhaps?

"We don't feel that way when we're young, we feel normal. And even if we are, that's not wrong. We're young, teens aren't adults." August scratches at his beard, grimaces. "I'll never understand why everyone expects kids to be people they're not." He studies Gina a moment, and if her expression flirts with sincerity while never closing the deal, his is outright sympathy. So it is, for kids who grow up with strong Glimmer: your childhood isn't much of one.

Of Itzhak, August says, "Best man at my wedding," on a nod. "Good people. A lover and a fighter. Strong mover, like you." He pushes a pot holding a small Japanese maple towards her.

"Don't know. Probably why people keep thinking I've got a secret warm gooey center for humans, just because I don't murder cats." Gina says dryly. She frowns at the pot being offered to her, instead pulling out her phone - from the coat's pocket, apparently - and unlocking it to check any messages. "Not like me, that I can see. If he's active, he's probably stronger. I'm pretty rusty." And from Gina's tone, she's not exactly sad about it. Then again, going by the previous conversation - if one takes it as Gina being sincere, at least partially - she's not precisely eager to practice. "He's got at least a secondary." She says, sounding fairly positive of this. A roll of her eyes, before she sends off a quick text, tucking her phone away. "He's good, too. I didn't want to throw him across a room for over twenty minutes." Is... is that the metric Gina uses? Because she looks... thoughtful. Not even amused. Just...thoughtful. But that fades as her gaze flicks back to August, "I did hear the wedding thing happened." GASP! Is Gina paying attention to gossip about August? Awww...

Except the only thing that follows that is she reaches towards the potted japanese maple, "So what's this?"

August smirks a little at the notion of Gina not being like Itzhak despite also not wanting to jettison him from her presence. He lets that be his only comment. "Not that I would ever imply or even, suggest, that you intend to use your Art again, but," he raises his hands, "he's a good person to talk to. About that, and in general." He doesn't comment on Itzhak having a secondary, but maybe that alone is revealing. It's not that he's a good liar, it's just that he knows there's no point in answering. Itzhak will tell her himself, she just has to ask. (She won't, though, because she's Gina. She'll imply wanting to know, and Itzhak will get annoyed with her and bitch about it, while telling her. He can see it all so clearly.)

The tree, then. That's a question, and he'll answer it. "Acer palmatum. Amber ghost." He runs a finger along the leaves, which are already beginning to take on their tell-tale pale gold-green and rosy edged appearance. "They do well up here. Can keep it in a pot, inside or out, or plant it--whatever."

"It's not like I never use my abilities. I just don't run to use them like they're the only solution to every damn problem." Gina says in response to August's very pointed non-implication. "I still trip and Fall into Dreamland, just like everybody else. Just a shit ton less since I don't fuck with my powers at the same frequency a hormonal teen jerks themselves off." So dryly, if crudely, put. And there's a, if one will excuse the impression, finality to the response that implies she finds the comparison to be... ideal. "Retirement's been working for years now, so far. Drastically." She shrugs, holding the little pot of leaves as she starts heading towards the door. "I'll leave the cash up front. Later."

August laughs, soft and voiceless, at the description. "Eh that's about how some of us are, it's true." Us. Well he makes no attempt to excuse himself from this venerable crowd. Temet nosce, and all that. "And I'm sure it might not seem like it, but, I do admire your discipline in that regard. I'm even trying to find a little of my own." He seems like he might say why, decides not to. Instead, he nods, accepting her correction that she's not left her Glimmer for dead. She's just put it out to pasture. Doesn't mean she won't take it out for a walk now and then.

"Take care," he says as she heads out. Up front, she leaves her cash...and weirdly, a day or so later, it mysteriously reappears--the same set of bills--on the counter at the diner. (The Grizzly Den Diner.)