2021-04-11 - The Warning

It's Spring, and along with Summer this is the shop's busiest time. People are coming in to buy replacement plants for the ones they let die in winter, or have been bitten by the Spring bug and become convinced they can Grow Things, or want to get in their Easter orders. Either way, there are a lot of people inside and out, going through the outdoor collection, pestering employees, and eyeing the allotments, getting onto a waiting list in case one opens up.

August is taking lunch in his private green house, which Thomasina points Ravn to when she sees him. (Oh yes, she knows Ravn isn't here to buy a lily for the holiday.) 'Lunch' in this case is a deli grinder, some BBQ chips, and a thermos of water. He's in work clothes, with a bit of dirt clinging to the cuffs of his denim, a YES concert T-shirt in pale gray, and a black and white plaid flannel over that. He looks a bit tired, which is no doubt why he's lunching out here and not in the office.

Ravn at least has the decency to look guilty when he doesn't convince anyone for even a second that he might be there for the plants. He even mumbles something about 'look, the hellebore is still alive' -- which, for him at least, is quite an achievement (and very likely, Kitty Pryde thinks it tastes awful). Nothing unusual about him as far as appearance is concerned; if the man owns clothes that aren't essentially black jeans, turtleneck and blazer under a leather jacket, he hides them well.

When he is indeed directed Augustwards ("sure it is, Abildgaard, sure it is") the Dane offers the other man a slightly apologetic look as he wanders up. "I probably shouldn't harrass you at work," he says by means of a hello. "Just, well, some things went down yesterday and I was kind of hoping to -- well, catch up. I actually meant to ask Eleanor but she was pretty busy when I poked my head into the coffee shop."

Your wife tells you everything, right? It's written on the man's face. And yet he pauses upon getting a second glance at the other man. "You all right? Looking a little travel worn there, Røn."

August glances up, smiles to see Ravn and not A Customer Who Couldn't Wait (read: wouldn't talk to anyone else). He tips his chin up to Thoma in a thank you, and she waves and flutters off, though not before tossing, "I'll get you another hellebore, Mr. Abildgaard," over her shoulder. August rolls his eyes and shuts the door after her. It's pleasant inside the green house, gently warm and humid.

"Yeah, ah, so I heard," he says on a grimace. Which is probably a 'yes, she sure does'. "Ellie had some rough nightmares, so neither of us got much sleep." He shrugs about that; what can they expect, really. He offers the bag of BBQ chips, has a sip from his thermos. "What all went down from your end?"

Ravn shoots one last glance at the door. "It is alive, damnit."

Then he wanders up and looks around, balancing on the heels of his feet. "Nothing terrible by local standards. The water receded -- and I will admit that for a moment I was thinking about Thailand and tsunamis but, none of the wildlife was acting odd so... They're all supposed to run for higher ground if the water is about to come right back at high speed, I think?"

The Dane shakes his head. "There was a wreck out there, visible with the water gone. Aidan Kinney and I decided to go out and have a look at it -- more so when for once, nothing seemed like an imminent threat. Beautiful old galleon -- though something tore right through her, a long time ago. Full of those crates -- you remember them, from the beach sometime back. The ones where Seth Monaghan found a bloody million bucks, something which he incidentally definitely does not want to talk about and he's been trying pretty hard to get rid of most of it too." He hitches a shoulder lightly. "Anyhow -- nothing threatening. Merpeople though -- pretty things. They seemed to think we were the monsters -- but Aidan had kind of fallen into chatting with them, when Eleanor turned up."

"No shame if it's not," August notes. "Even I lose some now and then." He flicks a guilty look at a pot in one corner, which has an ailing bonsai maple in it. "Sometimes that's just how it is." Of course, here's a man who can make it not be that way, which begs the question of why he might choose not to (apart from the most obvious one: he's been in enough Dreams already).

He frowns in response to 'a million bucks', seems to think better of asking. The frown deepens, though, at 'nothing threatening'. "Mmmm. Eleanor came across something really threatening, turns out." His eyebrows go up. "She said something about you had to keep a homeless guy from trying to attack them?" He's plainly of the opinion this was the best move possible; the last thing de la Vega needs is a homeless guy attacking mer-people and having who knows what happen right there on the beach.

"Oh, that's Denny," Ravn murmurs, knowing exactly of whom August speaks. "He's... He lives under the boardwalk with a couple of other guys. They came into the HOPE centre during that bloody fog, talking about seeing things out there and hearing voices. Denny -- thinks mermaids want to eat him. That they lie in wait in the surf to grab him. He hears them talking to him and calling to him. I am not entirely convinced it's Veil related as much as -- well, I'm no psychiatrist but I'd be guessing schizophrenia of some kind. Either way, he's pretty harmless -- if you're not a mermaid."

He nods lightly. "All I did was go back and tell him there were no mermaids out there or I'd obviously not have left other people with them. Then I took him for a cup of coffee. What did Eleanor find? Those kids did not look very frightening to me or I'd never have left Aidan with them -- not that I'm a scrapper but Aidan is... Eh, he'd probably let them eat him before he'd raise a hand against them, but if he ever decided to, they'd better be made of asbestos."

August winces. "Yeah, that sounds a bit more like mental illness than the Veil--though, the Veil would just make that worse, if he's got the Shine." He sighs for that, though chases it with a small sort of smile. "That's good work you and Ignacio are doing, with that place. Ought to help a lot."

He considers the topic of mer-people more seriously, though of course he and Ravn were turned into mer-people once, so that's hardly a surprise. "She said they talked about something they called 'The One Beneath'. Though, when she asked about C'thulu, they thought that was funny, and said it wasn't him. They looked around in the captain's cabin and found a box with an eye on it. Ellie tried getting it to open, hasn't been successful."

He has a drink of water, looks down at the work table. "When she used the mind Art on it, she said she saw something. Same thing as the dream I had the night the fog cleared up." He pauses there, flicks a glance at Ravn. "Did you have a dream or a nightmare? When the fog left?"

Ravn shakes his head. "No -- not as such. I mostly just... stopped being terrified. I spent most of that week just waiting for reality to collapse. It's possible that I had something but was so excited and exhausted that I didn't pay proper attention. Might be why Denny considers me his most trustworthy friend now -- we pretty much huddled in the old butcher shop together for a week."

The Dane glances around the greenhouse -- that poor little maple -- before looking back at the older man. "An eye. Illuminati, divine eye, or some other kind of symbolism? One Beneath... could mean a lot of different things. Can see why Cthulhu would come into it, merpeople and all. I am... honestly waiting for the manure to hit the fan, Røn. Did anyone tell you about our experience at the lumber mill yet? Everything just says... don't wear your good shirt, shit's about to start flying."

August grunts, nods in agreement with the notion of holding one's breath, waiting for the world to come screeching to a halt. "Yeah, I was feeling a bit like that. Then it just...went away." His expression turns distant. "I saw this shore, it was all black with sparks of light. And a big ocean storm rolling in, raining down fire. There were ships in the harbor, sinking, burning up."

He shudders a little, shakes his head. "Ellie said when she read the box, that's what she saw. So," he smiles, rueful, exhausted, "the shit is definitely about to his the fan." The smile fades. "Sawmill? You went over there? That place is fucking dangerous, please tell me you didn't cross Over."

"Didn't just cross over, we got yanked there right out of our beds. Me, Kinney, that quiet fellow Conner -- what is his last name anyway? -- de la Vega, Rosencrantz." Ravn makes a face. "Pretty damn bizarre dream, all in all. Group of teenage girls were summoning something -- that mer-elk thing people keep reporting? It burst out of the floor. But not until after Her Chain Smoking Majesty the Exorcist made an appearance to yell at us all about misplacing the Baxter souls."

He rubs his temple with a thumb. "And then the elk thing fell on de la Vega who fell on me, and uh. I woke up with a lot of interesting bruises. She was pretty angry -- the Exorcist, I mean. Scolded us like a group of naughty kids and told us pretty much that we were on our own with this now. And then the -- thing in the park. Another insane dream -- about the merry-go-round animals coming alive, and the missing Baxter souls lying around beneath it in the form of dismembered dolls. I've been trying to connect a lot of dots but there really aren't a lot of obvious lines beyond 'something is really about to screw with us'."

"Right, Itzhak told me about the Baxter kid, Grant, making a wish." August licks his lips, turning this all over in his head. "So, kid makes a wish to fix his family, and this is the result." He pauses there, half-shrugs. "I mean, it could just be coincidence. Maybe that fortune teller had nothing to do with it."

He gets up and moves to the bonsai, sighs. He runs a hand over it, not quite touching the top-most, withered leaves. They uncurl, filling out, growing green-red. The bark looks less desiccated and gray, taking on a rose-tinted black color. He studies the result, moves back to the table. "Maybe she didn't. And maybe I didn't just do that." Except, of course, for how he did.

"So, the elk-thing--I've seen it before. Except, it sounds like the one you saw was different. The one that attacked me was," he holds up his arms, "huge. Wanted to eat my Glimmer. Or take it. Or...something."

"No, same -- on both accounts." Ravn watches in fascination -- he's seen people work their shine a number of times, enough to be somewhat used to the idea, but there's floating a cup of coffee across the room and then there is restoring life. "Bax is exactly the kind of naive young protagonist with a heart of gold that Baba Yaga loves. Even if our Baba Yaga is a Veil construct, she shares the characteristics of the mythical figure, and he is the kind of hero in spite of himself that she'd help. She definitely is involved -- to the point where she made damn sure to be there and let him make that wish. Might even have inspired him to make it in the first place."

He reaches up to very tentatively touch a leaf with gloved fingers, careful not to crush it. "The elkfish eats the shine. Not sure why. Not sure it's a conscious thing -- might just be a manifestation of hunger. I saw it before -- in that god-awful dream where I was a teenage brat and Rosencrantz punched me in the face."

August makes a low sound, perhaps to both Baba picking Grant on purpose and to the elk-monster being 'around'. "Kind of wondering if that means the elk-thing is its own problem, or just," he waves a hand, "more fallout from her fucking around." He narrows his eyes. "And this 'One Beneath' business sounds like its own big fucking issue."

He turns, folds his arms, sets a hip against the table. "So, the sawmill--the souls are gone, and the Exorcist gave everyone a talking to, and the souls are all gathered up under the carousel." He shudders. "I hate that place. There were all these dolls that tried to chop us up. Me and Clayton and Isabella and Enzo and Anne." He stops there, still, looks at the ground. "Guess I need to reform that club, come to it."

"All we know for certain about the elkfish or hippocampus, or whatever we call it, is that it appears when strong shine is being used. And that in mythology, hippocampi serve as transportation to the bottom of the sea, and sometimes as psychopomps -- both of which ring a little uncomfortably well with the idea of some Great Old One in the ocean." Ravn cants his head slightly. "The dolls were still animate even if they were in pieces. If Bax somehow freed the souls in them -- or he just made it possible to move them, I can't say. There is a kid involved, some Baxter-Addington offspring, but I can't seem to find her anywhere."

He recognises Clayton's name of course -- and he's met the man's partner once. The other names are not familiar -- and he finds himself thinking of Watership Down and Cowslip's Warren; you don't ask 'where' or 'who'. People disappear in this town. Instead, he just asks, "What club was that, then?"

"Mmmm. Maybe that's your angle--the old woman didn't fix anything, just made it so we can. Or, well," August waves a hand unerringly in the direction of the sawmill in a manner only a Physicalist can manage, "they can. The Addingtons and Baxters." He wrinkles his nose. "Of course, when Baxters pass on, they take Glimmer with them. When Addingtons pass on, they can bring some back. So I'm...not sure what that means, if the Baxter souls get dealt with." He looks intensely uncomfortable, and no surprise, as the implication of 'losing all Glimmer' isn't a welcome one.

The hippocampus and the club are better topics, given that. "So maybe the hippocampus--or, whatever it is--is a...warning. Or a guide." He snorts. "Hell of a guide, one that wants to eat your Art." Scratching his beard, he says, "It was a club to explore the Other Side. Basically, those of us with the movement Art were trying to come up with a way to...map it, basically. Or at least get familiar with it so we could spread the information." He looks away. "Anne disappeared around when Patrick got shipped off to the Asylum. Isabella and Alexander are around but," he lifts a shoulder in a noncommittal manner. "Which leaves me--so I guess I need to get recruiting."

Ravn looks up sharply. "Dead Addingtons bring it back? That's a piece of the puzzle I've been missing. That explains a lot about why the hell these two families have not just -- settled their issues, generations ago. Why the Baxters haven't just left -- all of them, rather than just some of them. This is all about -- negotiating how much Glimmer there is in the area, in the very hard currency of dead bodies, isn't it? Want more, kill an Addington -- want less, off some Baxters. This explains Addingtons killing other Addingtons -- I've been breaking my brain on that one."

He taps his lip with a gloved finger, thinking. "This situation cannot be resolved. Destroy every Baxter in existence, and the next dead Addington will bring the shine right back. I am not arguing for murder as an option, obviously -- if anything, I am arguing that even making the attempt to end the Veil's influence that way is pointless. The game is rigged so that no matter what we do on this side, the Veil remains shattered here. I doubt that this is coincidental. I also suspect that the recent pile-on of Addington murders is exactly that -- Margaret or her handlers trying to make sure that there is simply too much Glimmer here for the amount of Baxters we could potentially use as a counter-measure."

Ravn runs a slender hand through his hair with a wry smile and then shakes his head. "Counter-measure. Talking about people's lives as counter-measures. Gray Harbor does a number on one's thinking sometimes. I sound like I'm one step short of suggesting ethnic cleansing."

He shakes his head, dismissing the uncomfortable concept of Baxtercide. "Glimmer is never going to disappear from the world. It was there before the Baxters and the Addingtons -- the folklore traditions and oral histories of the entire world say so. What might change is how it affects this place, where the Veil is so torn it's practically a joke. We might definitely lose some of the insane powers we seem to have. But it will never be gone. And on that note -- I am a piece of shit mover but if you're recruiting, I'll take a seat at that table."

"Does explain it, doesn't it?" August says, amused despite how tired the very thought of it all makes him. "Though," he holds up a hand, "that's not what the string of deaths was. That was Gohl acting out. Thomas had him under wraps for a spell, but he was losing his grip, and Margaret's 'solution'," he pulls a face, "was to lock her brother and Gohl up in the Asylum, so Gohl couldn't move on and shut anything off. When we cut him loose, we did that. So when Thomas disappeared..." He gestures vaguely, allowing the logic to flow. "But the deaths before that were't Margaret." He sighs, looks away. "Not those recent ones. Maybe...others. And definitely all the Baxters. They were killing them off before they knew how to close off Glimmer. As kids, as people who weren't initiated."

He drums his fingers on the table, nods in agreement to the rest. "Yeah--sure, they might be able to fuck with it, like damming a river or opening a lock, but it doesn't change the water's presence. It's still there. Now," he moves back to his lunch, has a drink of water, "we did come across some folks called 'Sources'. Supposedly, sources of Glimmer." He looks uncertain about this. "I'm not sure if they are that, or just particularly strong...focal points of it. You know? Like, a given lake's not the source of every river on a continent. Hell not even locally to itself. There's other lakes, other rivers."

Here he pauses, looks right at Ravn. It's a direct sort of look he doesn't give people often. "I want you to be sure about that. Because the more you fuck with this, the stronger you're going to get. Maybe not right away--it took me most of my life to get this strong. But I did. And you know what being stronger with the Art means."

"That's my take on it. The Veil is thinner than a spider's web here. We cross over all the time, whether we want to or not. The early Baxters and Addingtons caused that tear, but they did not cause the Veil. The lake and rivers analogy is sound. Also explains how come things here can affect things on the other side of the planet -- you throw a rock into a pond, there will be ripples. And then everything goes back to normal, except the pond now has another rock and the water table is a microfraction of a my taller. Some Danish guy is now a Swedish celebrity chef, and now then he turns out to actually be a Danish guy training lobsters. Nothing really changes. It makes little difference to the world at large whether I do a cooking reality TV show or breed combat crayfish." Ravn nods.

Then he straightens up a little and returns August's direct look with his own blue-grey ditto. "I'm not -- gifted," he says after a moment. "Not compared to what I've seen around here. Maybe that will change. Maybe it won't. When I went home this Christmas, I wanted to see if I'd feel different about this place while somewhere else. I didn't. On some level, coming back meant signing the contract with the Devil. I'll die here, or wander into the Veil and get lost for good like so many others. I have accepted this."

August pulls a face. "Honestly," he says between bites of his sandwich, "I don't know they tore it either. I suspect it's more likely the tear was natural. To the Veil, I mean. They just found it, pried it open wider. Same way white people came over and 'found' all this here, ripped the land apart to get at it." He bobs his eyebrows, but doesn't follow the analogy too far. Had the local tribes known about Glimmer and the thin veil long before Europeans showed up in their lands? Possibly. It mgiht be worth asking the tribes if they had records or oral histories of such things, yet the might not be forthcoming. (Really, no one could blame them for being unwilling to talk to white people about anything, much less the Veil.)

He surveys Ravn a time, eating his sandwich in silence. Eventually, he says, "Alright then. You've got enough to cross over--which is really all we need to get started. Maybe you'll learn a little more. Maybe not." He sounds like he's pretty sure it's the former, no matter what Ravn says. "But don't go assuming you'll die here or get lost. There's plenty that might happen from now to then." More than plenty, if recent events are any indication. (He doesn't say that, but it's there in his eyes.)

"Anyways." He taps the work table. "I want us to get a better idea of how the Veil around the city shifts, maybe, get some maps made that won't fall apart." He frowns. "We probably need to make them...artistic, somehow. Something that lets the real world think they're just fantasy or stories, so the Veil doesn't erase them."

"Town's got writers aplenty -- de Santos among them. Shouldn't be too difficult to dress this up like the PNW's version of Castle Rock, Maine. If we want to get very serious about it we should convince one or more of them to maybe low key publish some of the experiences people have had like fiction -- then there's precedence, and if it does not make the New York Times top fifty, all the better." Ravn nods his agreement; the Veil might actually be badgered into not editing such maps if they come across as clearly fictional in nature and hence do not give anything away to the uninitiated. "Not going to pretend I'm not curious. I've heard mention a couple of times of a kind of parallel town on the other side, but I have yet to go there. When I cross over it's into some dreamscape that has nothing to do with Gray Harbor at all, or it's one of those dreams where Gray Harbor does not change, but there's something here which does not belong."

He shrugs lightly. "I'm not worried about dying or getting lost. Those things happen, Røn. It's a more likely cause of death here than in say, Copenhagen -- but a man can get run over going for the Sunday paper and we haven't stopped living in cities because of that. Deciding to stay here just ups the statistical likeliness of one demise over the others but you're going to kick the bucket for some reason eventually no matter what. I think I'm just a little fatalistic about it -- at least my life here has some kind of meaning. It never really did elsewhere."

Mention of Ignacio has August's expression clearing. "Now there's an idea. Hell, you could make them," he waves a hand, "children's books. Comic books. That sort of thing." The kinds of books which are not regarded so critically, and thus might fly under even the Veil's radar.

Sandwich finished, August has a drink of water. The rest, that all gets a grunt. "A little fatalistic," he says, dry. "You know you're allowed to not have some great meaning or purpose in life, right? Just, existing, is enough. I promise you." Says the man who hid in the forest for a decade, so maybe his opinion is skewed. (Okay, it's definitely skewed.)

"That said. I'll take the help if you want to give it. Things are a bit weird over there, but it's useful to know the place, in case you wind up there." 'In you get Lost', he means but doesn't say.

"Of course I do. Try to convince me it's not my business? On some level I'm living the dream here -- I'm a folklorist in a reality that's shaped by narratives." Ravn offers a crooked grin at that. Then he sobers a bit and nods. "I know, Røn. It's just that I've spent thirty years not feeling like I really belonged anywhere or had much reason to be there. And then I come here where I do in fact have all the reason to be, and end up connecting with people like I've never done anything else in my life. It's not about a great meaning or purpose -- it's about feeling like a radish that's finally found the right soil to grow in."

Oh, Ravn. Don't even try gardening metaphors. And definitely not here.

August arches an eyebrow, echoes, "Radishes," his tone indulgent in the extreme. After letting Ravn marinade in it, he says, "Funny thing about radishes. They're real easy to sprout, but a bitch to grow so you have something you want to actually eat." After taking a second to consider that, he nods. "So, starting out with Glimmer, that can be easy. Don't use it much, They won't notice. Getting good at it, staying in one piece?" He sighs, shakes his head.

"That said." He has a bit of water, crumples up the paper sandwich wrapping and tosses it into a small compost bin in the corner, "No reason to not make sure the conditions are right so you don't get root maggots or rot through, or wind up a ghost pepper." He folds his arms. "So, Devlin and Conner, they both wound up with some...weird fruit and seeds. We're going to try planting them, see what happens." More botany experiments! Speaking of learning from your mistakes... "Maybe get a better idea of how...things from over there interact with over here. Sure, everything from over there is over there, but what about something from a different part of over there? So. I'll give you a trip report on that one, maybe we can make it the start of our...whatever. Journal. Book. Something."

Ravn looks interested even if he winces slightly at the idea of root maggots. "I don't use my power a lot -- definitely not compared to most people here, simply because even if I tried, I could not do the things people around here hold for perfectly normal. It won't matter -- if this plan of mine and de Santos' works, we'll get their attention not from Glimmer but from trying to change the narrative."

He smiles at the other man's promise of keeping him up to speed. "A lot of this is learning by doing, I feel. No one here can know everything -- because there is so much going on all the time, half of it has no sense or rhyme or discernible pattern, and most of the time we don't know that something is important until it's exploding in our faces. But I can try to keep track, establish patterns, learn the lingo. If there are things out there that are simply trying to communicate? It may take several lifetimes to break the code but somebody needs to take the first steps."

"Alexander said that once--that nothing pisses Them off more than good, honest, hard work. So, you know," August shrugs, face scrunching up a bit, "you add in any use of the Art and that'll get their attention, for sure." Which no doubt explains why they come after healers, but that's neither here nor there. (Or so August would like everyone to think, so they'd let him heal them.)

Another shrug, though this one is half-hearted. "It's not about knowing everything. No one can do that. But we should spread it around. Keep one another appraised of what we can. That'll never be everything--hell," he gestures out towards the shop, "I've got a business, in theory. I don't have space in here," he taps his head, "for that and everything there is to know about the Art. So." He nods smartly at Ravn. "That's your job. And maybe de Santos'. Not mine. I've got plants to grow."

"My job is to be the guy who tries to stay up to date on who's who and who needs what," Ravn says plainly. "It doesn't hurt that I'm a folklorist and maybe a little better qualified in some regards to analyse stories -- but once they catch on to that, stories will just stop following archetypal patterns. Connecting people -- that's the key, and that's what I am.... surprisingly good at it seems. Surprising myself most of all, maybe, since I have always viewed myself as that guy who just... exists, somewhere, on the fringes, unseen and more or less unnoticed. Transient. I think I may have to update my self image in this regard. Realised that night at the Pourhouse with the showtunes -- I knew everyone in the room. Not all of them well and close, but I knew who everyone was, and they know who I was. That's a pretty big change for a bloke who's used to thinking of himself as invisible."

August pulls out a bag of potting soil and a tray of peat pots. "This place'll do that to you. Kind of really what the Art is about, isn't it? Standing out. No one gets to hide." He grunts a laugh, takes a bag labeled Spanish Moss and begins drops tiny clumps into the bottoms of the pots. "Except from the rest of the world, that is." Next comes scoops of soil, about 2/3 full in each pot. He glances up at Ravn. "So. I've gotta get these going. You can stick around if you want, but I figure that's not your jam." He smiles, teasing and indulgent. "Unless you still feel like you owe me some petunias."

"Maybe I shouldn't invoke further debts by killing even more of your perfectly innocent plants." Ravn returns a lopsided grin of his own; that hellebore of his is the first plant he's ever managed to keep alive for more than a few days and he's not feeling very brave. Also, he can feel the stares of that entire shelf of petunias over there, all condemning him as the violent mass murderer that he is.

Instead, he glances at the pots and concludes, "I think we've more or less covered the important bit: The wreck, and the merpeople on it, is not a sign of something hostile -- at least not directly. They are dangerous -- but they are not openly aggressive, and they're as scared of us as we are of them. This is a pretty big deal because we've got issues aplenty at the moment that we need to address. Baba Yaga told me -- very soon. I'm mentally bracing for impact."