2022-03-25 - Tricksy Things, These Locks

3 Oak Avenue.

The day might be overcast, as is oftentimes the case during early spring, but the yard is bustling with summertime humdrum -- in some cases, literally. Ariadne was charmed upon arrival by a friendly bumblebee, black and yellow fuzz and all, bumbling its way onto her arm momentarily. After gently goosing the confused little creature onto a nearby happily-blooming bush, she'd knocked on the front door. Not goulash with her this time, but an assortment of pastries from the shop. They're a day old anyways and in the honesty of fresh goods, went home with her earlier as part of the established case of 'Ariadne's still working at moving into that place on Sycamore, she must be fed'.

"Brought some munchies. There's a brownie or two, one lemon poppy seed muffin, a Rice Krispie square, and..." Her eyes rise to Ravn's face. "A cheese Danish. For the cheesy Danish." Beam. "Look, it sounded better in my head and that's mine anyways, you can't have it." The cardboard box is set on the kitchen table and the barista in her plum-purple hoodie and black yoga pants, wide-cuffed over jogging sneakers, once more looks around the place. "This stuff is just all so...cool and eclectic. Kind of can't wait for the clock to go off again."

Since it's a hamster which goes 'pleepchoo' and not your standard cuckoo-bird.

Her attention returns to Ravn while she fusses with her ponytail. "But yes. You doing okay?" First things first: check in on friend. Then learn to pick locks.

"Oh, you'll like the clock," Ravn murmurs and thinks of Aidan's recent change to the hamster. "In fact -- give him a few minutes."

He guides the barista into the open kitchen and living room area overlooked by said cuckoo clock and its mechanical hamster and the mechanical speed impediment. There's coffee on the pot -- a good blend at that, judging from the alluring odours that waft about -- and the place still has that definitely not at all casual feeling of everything here would be dismissed as ugly or even junk on its own, but come together it creates a laid back, comfortable whole that some interior designers might struggle very hard to achieve with fancier materials.

The Dane heads for a cupboard and takes out two mugs -- one his usual black 'wears black, drinks coffee, avoids people' mug and the other sporting a bright sunflower and the words No Rainy Days. "I'm a sucker for a brownie, not going to lie. And I feel like this is where I insert the obligatory lecture on the fact that there is no such thing as 'a Danish'. What you call a Danish doesn't even exist in Danish food culture. The closest thing we have is a pastry which we call Viennese bread. And if you were to go to Vienna, they'd look at you very oddly and ask if you mean Apfelstrudel because the Viennese bakers who introduced it to Denmark did so in the 1700s and fashions have definitely changed back home a few times since."

Great. Just what everyone needed, a lesson on the history of Danishes.

"Applfel...strudel." Nearly got it, but not quite. Ariadne's partially seated herself on the table rather than a chair right off the bat, her hands lazily slung in her hoodie pockets. She laughs at the continued trend of general cross-country confusion about pastry origins and nods. "Sharing ideas is caring. Makes sense that time would've changed what makes a Danish a 'Danish' or whatever it truly is. It's okay. I still forgive you goofballs over there for claiming to have created the hot dog."

She watches the delightfully-scented coffee pour as she adds, "What more American thing that processed, stuffed meat tubes, right?" They've had this discussion briefly before, at the welcoming BBQ hosted at the Broadleaf. It's still a hilarious concept to the barista. "Brownie's all yours then. It'll go great with the coffee. What's the bean blend?"

And, yes, there's a bit of a challenging enjoyment to the redhead's smile. Regale her about this bean blend, she who habitates a coffee shop on the regular and whose parents own a grinding company in Seattle.

"Jamaican Blue, from Harrods'. My aunt sent it from her last trip to London. She's firmly convinced that no one on this side of the Atlantic is capable of producing anything but horrific instant coffee." Ravn probably has half a dozen aunts all of whom would share this sentiment.

He offers the sunflower mug to Ariadne before settling on one of the armchairs around the coffee table in front of the fireplace. "Hot dogs, however, is an issue I will fight you on. Americans did not invent sausages, nor sausages in a bun. If by some random stroke of fate we ever end up in Europe at the same time, I will drag you to both a Copenhagen sausage stand and to Germany which is sausage paradise."

"Ooooooh, we fancy." Ariadne's not entirely funning. She has a vague memory of these beans being mentioned before: sought after for a lack of bitterness, with a profile similar to Kona and the species out of Indonesia. Musing to herself about potentially weird (and semi-useless) pockets of mental memory dedicated to these things, she still accepts the mug gratefully. She's still lingering in the kitchen when Ravn retorts about the hot dogs.

Her laughter isn't overly loud as she shakes her head, then smirking. "I said hot dogs. I did not say sausages. I'm fully aware of how good bratwurst is, thank-you-very-much. Is there any creamer in the fridge?" Someone still isn't a fan of straight black coffee even if the Dane is.

"Cream, and milk, and coffee creamer in powder form." Ravn gets back up; somehow, he'd pegged Ariadne for another purist. "Which do you prefer?" He throws another glance at the mugs. "We verra fancy, and I have a mind to tell my aunt some day where the beans for this blend comes from. Protip: It's not her side of the Atlantic. And I'm almost positive that people with brown skin touched them. Also, they grow wild and animals may have peed on the bush."

Horror, woe.

He rummages through the fridge and the cupboard, managing to produce all three options for coffee dilution as well as sugar -- white in a sugar bowl, and cane sugar on sticks, melting when the stick is stirred in the hot beverage. On the whole, the cupboards here give very mixed signals; high end luxury food items next to Seven-Eleven type brands of cheap snack foods and everyday items.

"Your aunt sounds like a charmer."

By how coolly the barista deadpans this, she approves about...zero percent of this aunt's particular mindset. Making her mouth un-pinch, she then collects up the cream as well as plain white sugar. Not too much of either goes into the coffee, given she recognizes the quality against the usual reasoning of her additions: to cut bitterness. This cut, she sips and deems it perfect. Refrigerated items get put away, cupboard-living items to their places, and she then rejoins Ravn over by the fireplace with its accompanying coffee table.

"Ooh." Appreciation for the cooshy-ness of the armchair is in this sound. She then crosses knees to let one foot lazily swing, like the tail of a cat, and slouches enough to indicate comfort in her surroundings. Another sip of coffee. "You never did tell me how you were," the redhead notes with a glance over at Ravn not necessarily expectant, but curious in the way of a friend.

"It is very rude of the world to have moved on since 1970." Ravn chuckles wryly. "I do come from a segment that has some rather strong opinions on society and how things ought to work. Strong, and somewhat dated." Another reason he enjoys Aidan Kinney's rather unique take on interior design, maybe. His aunt(s) would likely refuse to set foot in a secondhand shop unless it called itself at the very least an antiques boutique.

He settles properly and curls long, gloved fingers around the coffee mug. "Well, you know how this town is, or you're learning. There's always some bushfire that needs putting out. I don't presently have anything in a sling or under a bandage -- that's a good start, I figure. Life in Gray Harbor is a continued toeing the line -- any number of lines -- to keep everything balanced."

Ariadne nods at his report. "Vague, yes, but I follow," she replies, then smiling. "It's nice to have some down-time. I hope I'm not taking too much of it as is. It's one of those things where given I work in the public sector? I get needing time to one's self."

Sighing across the rising steam of her drink, she sips again and then blinks. "Oh geez, pfft. I brought pastries and leave them in the kitchen. One sec." Setting her coffee aside on the table, she rises to fetch the cardboard pastry box in question. Returning, the trove is set upon the small table opened with lid tucked turtled to the bottom. "La voila: zee brownie for you, sir." A gesture notes the brownie. The Danish is, of course, all hers -- yoink. Sitting down again, the barista nibbles on it happily.

"I'll let you know if I decide to start charging." Ravn offers a crooked grin; he has had plenty time to himself over the years, and he enjoys company -- as long as there is not too much of it at once.

He reaches for the brownie and, true to his habit, picks a piece off. No food is simply consumed; it must be dissected and toyed with, and taken apart to its most base components. He drives Vyvyan Vydal crazy this way. He probably drove half a dozen nannies crazy this way as a kid too, and don't get started on his fiancée. "So, picking locks or pockets -- same deal. You need three things to do either."

A gloved finger goes up (with a bit of brownie on the tip): "One, technical know-how. Know how a mechanical lock looks on the inside, know what the usual objects in a pocket are."

Another joins it. "Two, misdirection. You need a distraction, so no one notices you doing what you're doing, whether it's because they're looking the other way or you're smart enough to pick locks when no one is around to see."

And a grin. "And three, brass balls. Because sometimes, it goes wrong, and that's when you need to lie, bluff, charm or otherwise talk yourself out of a situation."

No dissection of Danish for the barista. She'd gone light on breakfast today knowing there'd be the pastry later. It'll be gone shortly and enjoyed along with sips of the coffee between bites. Her smile melts away in lieu of attentive focus; behold, the keen look of the scientist, one immediately filled with tabulation and calculation alike.

The rules are laid down. She laughs.

"Well, I'll have you know, I've got three in spades." Deliberately ridiculous eyebrow waggle. More seriously, she adds, "But one, I'm screwed on. Knowing what the inside of a lock looks like is not something filed away in the brainmeats. Distraction would come from the environment or a peep, I follow you on that one. I'm assuming you have a lock with some interior view? Or halved or something?"

"I do," Ravn confirms. I picked up a simple mechanical lock from a locksmith on Spruce on my way back -- Leon Gyre, good man in a tight spot, also one of us. And let me tell you this right away: Modern locks are not your friend. A Yale, even a mechanical one, takes a lot of hard work, if it's possible at all. Electronic locks, obviously not something you can open with a bobby pin, either."

He reaches for a small box sitting on the coffee table and procures -- a bobby pin. "Now, there are obviously better suited tools for this. But you'd have to carry them -- and police officers do know what a lock pick looks like. You likely won't get to carry them into a Dream either, whereas some variant on the theme of knitting needle to hair pin tends to be around if you look hard enough. This little sucker is your friend."

Ariadne hasn't heard the name of this particular individual and, apparently, fellow grifter/thief/classification, but she nods. A frown at the idea and realization to follow of modern locks being a total pain in the ass. Of course. She'd been envisioning deadbolt-locks a la Sherlock Holmes. There's a wry disappointment over her face at herself, there and gone, while Ravn reaches to procure his tool.

A bobby pin.

It makes Ariadne grin despite herself and then censor the expression, wanting to pay attention. "Ah-hah," she then says. "You manipulate the aspects of the Dream by wearing something which has a generally limited intent of use and thus, it remains available in another manner of use in turn. Duuuuude. Clever as fuck," she lauds.

"That's the trick in a hell of a lot of situations created by the Them," Ravn notes. "Think outside the box. They don't understand us, they don't understand how our minds work. Very often, a location will be like a movie set. You walk into, say, the dressing room of a lounge singer in some noir flick, you know that there are going to be certain things -- because they belong. The dolorphages or whatever creature inspired this dream don't know what it all means -- they just plucked the images from your mind. There are powder puffs and bobby pins and perfume bottles because that's what's supposed to be on the dresser table in some lounge singer's dressing room."

He toys with the bobby pin a moment, and then nibbles a small piece of brownie. "So basically -- yeah. Look around hard enough, there'll be something. It doesn't always work -- sometimes, the Dream is too smart, it sees what you're doing. But most of the time? Yeah. If it ought to be there, it's probably there."

"Interesting," murmurs the redhead. Sitting in thoughtful silence for a minute, her regard upon the fireplace, she's clearly meandering through ideas and concepts, potentialities. It's obvious enough too how easy it would be for her to simply shut out her attention on anything beyond this and be lost for a time to it.

"So you can, somehow, sometimes, shift the odds in your favor by being someone who's imaginative. Since the Dream is plucking info from your own brain. That's...nice and probably a double-edged sword sometimes too. Being anal-retentive about details might bite you in the ass by enabling something awful as well. Hmm. But hey, yeah, bobby pins, they translate across time periods well enough," she says, returning to the previous point. "Are you talking, like, I should start stashing one away in the back of my ponytail or something out of habit?"

"Maybe," Ravn notes, and the spark of amusement in his eye hints that he approves of the reading between the lines there. "You tend to get pulled into dreams in period costume a lot. Or in whatever you think you ought to be wearing, or whatever you were wearing. So if you want to increase the odds of having a booby pin available, make it an integral part of yourself to always wear one -- to the point you'd feel weird not having one."

He taps his sleeve -- and on closer inspection, the fabric does seem a little bulky around his lower arm. "I always -- always -- carry my lock picks on me. Sometimes, I get to keep them. Sometimes I don't. But half the time isn't bad, you know?"

Another sip of coffee. "And that brings me back to what we were talking about the other day, about skeletons and lawns. If I ever get flagged down for a random search, some police officer is going to take me in because no one carries a set of lock picks like that without having some kind of intent. But the police who matters -- the Chief, a few others -- know me, they know what I can do, and they know why I carry them. At worst, I get to spend a night in the drunk tank."

There's a subtle lift of the redhead's chin at the sparkle. Corners of her lips lift faintly. Good -- they are on the same wavelength after all. She sips and then considers his sleeve when it's indicated. Indeed, there's some volume there she hadn't noticed before. Her eyes rise back to Ravn's face. A soft sound of acknowledgment at what's hidden away there and, eventually, a little laugh at the idea of getting away with it.

"Could be worse," she agrees. "The drunk tank doesn't sound too terrible. Lucky you, being in with the Chief of Police. Good lord, Ravn. Potential." Combining a small tilt of her head and lift of brows. "I'm glad you're on our side. So...bobby pin somehow. Hmm. I'll have to think about that one. I don't exactly want to roll over on it in the middle of the night." But that's a consideration for later. "Does a bobby pin work at all on the modern locks? Or am I just screwed without the lock pick kit?"

"Basically, screwed. Even with the kit. If it's a complex lock like a Yale or an electronic, just -- smash a window or find another house to break into." Ravn's tone stays matter-of-factly. "Most burglaries aren't actually done through a door. That's another factor to consider -- opening a lock can be difficult. A window latch, on the other hand, is a very simple mechanism, and one that you can see. Remember floating sea shells? Twisting a latch is not much harder. It's light weight, and it's right there, you can see it so you don't need to try to visualise or rely on spatial feel."

He ponders a moment. "Outside of the whole moving thing, the majority of burglaries happen through windows that were left not properly closed, or through breaking and entering -- which is largely a matter of finding access at a time no one's around to hear you smash a window, and an angle a security camera does not see."

Ariadne's rosebud lips wrinkle. Damn. So much for the bobby pin being the ultimate tool -- time and human ingenuity sometimes ruins such fun.

Recrossing her legs now that her Danish pastry is devoured, shockingly free of crumbs upon her person (one of her lesser known skills, avoiding crumbs), she sighs through her nose and listens. Lightly-knitted brows indicate great consideration still.

"Windows. Latches, that makes sense, yeah. You can see them," she echoes. "But then again, many of the latest alarms cover windows. And motion detection." She gives Ravn a dubious look now. "How in the fuck is anyone expected to break in with cameras and motion detection? That seems like a fool's errand."

"Point three: Brass balls." Ravn cracks a lopsided smile. "Know your mark, know how long you have between the alarm and the cops turning up, know what to go for once you're inside. But, you're not studying to become a professional burglar. This is more of a mind set issue than it's practical knowledge. Know what you're doing -- think outside the box -- and when shit inevitably goes pear-shaped, get creative, or get the hell out."

He reaches for the box again, and pulls out -- a padlock. This particular specimen has had its casing removed, making it easy to see the gears inside. "Most of these are complicated enough that you might as well just use a good wire cutter. But it'll still work for showing how the gears work."

Fiddly is a good descriptor here. Rows of mechanical teeth, each with its own set of little protrusions, move and when they all fall into matching slots on the gear inside, the bolt is released and can be opened. It's simple enough mechanically speaking. The trick, as evident from the way Ravn holds the padlock, is to move all those little gears independently, unseen, through a tiny opening. Maybe this takes some practice.

Not studying to become a professional burglar. Truer words have never been spoken. Ariadne laughs and tosses her head a little to acknowledge it. When the bisected padlock is revealed, she sits up in the chair, obviously interested. When was the last time someone just sawed a padlock delicately and deliberately in half for its inner workings?

She sets aside the mug of coffee and reaches out her hand to see about taking it, the better to begin fiddling with the rotation of the gears and teeth by fingernail alone. "I can...sort of see where the bobby pin would work? You're supposed to...move...those...vertical pillars around?" she hazards, probably trying to scrounge up some memory of an episode of Myth Busters or maybe something read years ago in a book.

"Exactly. Think of it as a three-dimensional puzzle. The stick chess game from Star Trek. Each little piece needs to move to a specific position. The more you have, the harder it gets to not disturb the rest while you move the last. Start deep, work your way out. I'm sure you can see why a Yale, with its six or seven key pins, is nearly impossible to do in anything resembling a decent time frame." Ravn chuckles and lets Ariadne have the padlock -- and the bobby pin.

"A lot of this is pure practise and technique. Always go for the simplest solution. If you have a padlock, a bobby pin, and a wire cutter, use the bloody wire cutter. If you have a window you need to get through and discretion does not matter? Smash the damned thing. Do you follow? Never make anything more complicated than it has to be."

Ah, bobby pin, yes. Glancing up, Ariadne takes the tool -- hair-piece -- and then listens yet again. She considers the number of key pins in this padlock and then extrapolates. Yikes. No kidding. Not enough time if one's fumbling.

"Right. Never overcomplicate it. I was going to ask what's the point of learning to pick the lock in the first place then, if the wire cutters are an easier option, but that then makes me think about having no wire cutters. Or no way to use the wire cutters. Use all the tools in the box." Another nod and she then turns the padlock looking face-on, squinting. In goes the bobby pin through the key hole, bent-side first. She starts trying to fiddle and appears to be simply observing how things move -- how they feel as her fingertips adjust and react to the subtle vibrations of contact.

"How long did it take you to get good at this?" The way the word is accentuated lets Ravn decide what qualifies as 'good.'

"Well," Ravn admits, and looks almost sheepish. "I had a lot of time as a kid, being sent to my room or hiding in there. And some friends who were a real bad influence."

He reaches out and, very carefully, adjusts her grip slightly. "Easy does it -- don't break the pin, or it'll be stuck in the hole, and you're done for the day. And yes -- all the tools in the box. That's the key to almost everything in this fucked up town -- all the tools in the box. I find that as long as I stick to the three rules, I almost always manage to get out more or less in one piece. Know your task, create the space you need to carry it out, balls of brass when rule number two fails. I mean, those are good rules for a lot of things that have nothing to do with breaking and entering, too."

Pausing, the barista glances up again. Since being a kid. Decades. Ugh. She's certainly the Padawan here.

When Ravn reaches, she holds still and allows him to manipulate her grip appropriately. A pause, to memorize kinesthetically what just occurred, and she then continues fiddling, listening nonetheless. "That's a good point, actually. The rules applying to everything in technicality." Shucking her sneakers, she then brings her knees up and all but huddles into the corner of the armchair. Her socks are teal with pink-and-cream Pop Tarts on them for patterning and they half-tuck away beneath her as she frowns down at the padlock.

Gentle twist-wiggle...wiggle...damnit, stupid key pin.

"So is it, with the modern tech like motion detectors and stuff, that's just not worth it to try burglary anymore?" she asks, idly curious.

"Well." Ravn makes a face; a bit of embarrassment perhaps because he is in fact largely a law abiding citizen, and he does not take a whole lot of pride in the fact that he was once young and rebellious and gullible. "That's rule one -- know the mark. Cameras, motion detectors, alarms all matter very little if you can smash a window, go in and pick up the thing you want, and be halfway to the next town before the police gets to the scene. They also don't work very well if someone knocks out the power. Surveillance cameras are useless if someone has access to the computer the footage is on -- and most computers are on the internet these days. But for your common everyday I need money now because Big Guido will break my kneecaps if I don't pay up kind of burglar? Let's just say there's probably a reason that trick thieves and armed robberies are becoming increasingly common. In that way, technology is kind of good and kind of bad."

"Hmm, no kidding," the barista agrees in a half-distracted under-breath. She makes a moue at the padlock as she gets another pin into place, but continues having trouble with the next. "You'd have to evolve with the times in order to keep beating the tech...or, yeah, change your approach. Armed robbery and all. I wonder though...see, it makes me think of the car tech these days. You can zap about any car with enough electricity and the interior computer fritzes out."

A glance up and droll smirk. "But if you have a gear shift? Doors which require keys and not key fobs? Your car -- well, more likely truck -- is practically Fort Knox. Nobody teaches anybody to hotwire cars anymore. Now, do I know how to do this? No. Do I let my mind wander around sometimes? Yes."

Such possibilities.

"I suppose that as a Scandinavian I have to say that driving stick is easy because in Scandinavia, that's the normal. You pay extra to get automatic, so most people don't." Ravn can't help a chuckle -- an apologetic one because he's very well aware that, well, actually, no one likes the well, actually guy. "But yeah. There's always the human factor, though. Cameras, electronic locks, none of it will save you from human error. You'd be surprised how often private residences either don't have the proper surveillance equipment, or they have dummies, or what they have isn't working. Even when it's all in working order, nothing stops dear old Aunt Jill from trusting those two nice young men who say they're here from the church and can they come in a moment, please."

He shakes his head. "And of course, high level security is for people who think they have something to protect. A regular residence on the not so great side of town won't have that kind of security. It won't have valuable jewellery lying about either, but if you're desperate for money or patient enough to hit up a number of smaller gigs instead of one big one, there'll still be a couple of phones, a laptop or two, a couple of TVs, maybe some ready cash."

A smile makes it onto the man's lip as he watches Ariadne try to tease the padlock into submission. "Anyhow, I'm not a thief these days and you're not opting to become one. Do you remember how you told the sea shell to move and it did? Now, you can see the pins -- you could ask them to move in a similar fashion."

It takes Ariadne a moment to realize that her assumption about tech advancement in cars has been derailed. She pauses, bobby pin still inserted and in argument with the key pin, and then can't help but need to put a hand to cover part of her mouth, part of her cheek. "Ohmyfuckinggod," she mutters under her breath and laughs, nodding in recognition of her error. Well done, American.

"Right, right," she still adds as she fully reappears again. "Less security, less value, but easier pickings." Back she goes to fussing with the bobby pin. Not paying overmuch attention to the Dane's expression, it means his smile takes her off-guard when she glances up. His suggestion is entirely valid and yet so new that it takes a moment for the barista to grasp what he's saying. Use wha --

"Oh." A surprised blink down at the interior of the padlock still denying her manipulations with the bobby pin. "Holy shit, that's right. Uh." Flustered enough to need to shift around in the chair until she's upright rather than slouched into the side-crevice, she then frowns down at the key pin denying her completion of the locking mechanism. Move.

It does, wiggle-fidgeting into place. A little inhale and with teeth set to her bottom lip, she angles the bobby pin. Click. "Eee!" The opened (and open-faced) lock is displayed towards Ravn while Ariadne beams.

"Voila," Ravn murmurs with a smile. "Now, this is obviously not as easy when you can't see the pieces. You need to work your spatial awareness to do that -- a lot. But the principle applies to any mechanism, if you can see it, or feel it. Locks are difficult. Latches, window mechanisms -- rarely are."

He looks up and catches Ariadne's gaze. "Do you understand what I am telling you? In every covert task, the trick is your mind. Believe that it is possible. Find the easiest way to do it. Pull the pin in the grenade rather than throwing the tank. If the lock on the door is electronic, open the mechanism on the inside of the window that you shouldn't be able to get to. Or flip the power switch that you're not supposed to be able to get to, either."

So very pleased, almost that she might purr, Ariadne turns the lock back towards herself to reevaluate what its interior looks like. Ravn has a point. Spatial awareness -- that ability to envision what the interior of an object looks like, or one's surroundings, without being present within it or otherwise able to clearly see. When she too looks up, she locks gazes with him. Very blue, those eyes, a bit like the underlining of the clouds at dusk.

A nod. "I get it. It's no longer out of reach, it's...telling myself I can do it and then doing it. That it is. That it can be." Her lips lift at the corners into a smile still covert, sly somehow. "It really is Mage Hand," she muses," -- limitations and all. Makes me wonder about where the inspiration came from..." Lowering mascara-darkened lashes, she looks down at the lock and then removes the bobby pin without breaking it. Lifting her palm, she then squints at the hair piece lying upon it.

Move.

And look it fly, THWIP, into the fireplace. "...uh." Whoops. "...you...didn't need that one back...right?"

Ravn laughs. "Believe me, for a short-haired, straight bloke who's never done drag, I own a surprising amount of bobby pins. And yeah. It is. Moving is a combination of telekinesis and spatial awareness, and being full of tricks. There are a lot of other things that can be done with all of this -- obviously. I can't tell you much, though, because I am only figuring it out myself. We can practise together, if you want. I have every intention of pestering the skilled movers, until they share all their dark and dirty secrets."

Pause. "Well, most of them. Given Rosencrantz is one of our best movers, maybe not all of them. I'm not sure I'm old enough for that."

A degree of slump comes to Ariadne's shoulders. Okay, whew, there are more bobby pins. A bit amused at herself as to the amount she cares about losing Ravn's bobby pins (given the hair pieces are a dime a dozen, nearly literally), the barista then leans to swap the opened, open-faced padlock on the coffee table for her mug o'brew. It's gone more towards tepid, but not worth a microwaving just yet. She settles back into the corner of the chair again and retucks her feet beneath herself for the warmth.

Snort-laughing into her mug, she then shakes her head. "Maybe not with Rosencrantz then," comes the agreement more out of tease than knowledge. "I'd love to practice together, Ravn, yes. You know more than I do and once you're done pestering, you'll know even more. I want to know the limits. What if any rules of physics still apply. Scientist," she shrugs, unashamed of it. "If I get to bend the rules? How far can I bend them before they break -- and I'll tell you...I'm terribly imaginative. Mage Hand? The shit I used to get up to with Mage Hand back when I had a tabletop group in college..."

Again, that smile, the one meant to court the prince of foxes. Ariadne then sips at her coffee with mock daintiness. Beware, beware.

"I'm not a scientist," Ravn agrees and toys with his own coffee mug, long since emptied because while he may scoff at the habits of his peers, he's still enough of a European snob that he can't quite process the concepts of Jamaican Blue and microwaving in the same sentence. "But I am an academic, and I think I am almost as curious as you are. That's part of why I stay here, after all -- not only is folklore being applied in a very literal fashion everywhere around me, I am trying work out the rules for the application. I have to understand how it all works. And if I can't? I have to at least leave some notes for the next researcher, save them some time."

He pulls his own legs up under himself, sitting less elegantly but quite more comfortably. "I'm not used to studying with others. I don't mind changing my habits, but I feel that I should at least mention it. I went through college and university alike, doing my very hardest to avoid group collaborations. I don't -- compete. And in most study groups, there is always competition -- who does the actual work, and who gets the credit for doing it, and why is Pete always trying to get into Jane's pants. I'm a very solitary nature."

A gloved hand goes up, deflecting the inevitable statement of disbelief. "I know, I know. I know everybody, I talk to everybody. But I don't work closely with everybody. So if we're doing this, you probably will have to kick my ass now and then, remind me that it's a team effort."

A good thing Ravn raises his hand. It absolutely forestalls the words collecting on Ariadne's tongue. Solitary? And with the amount of talking he does at the coffee shop, at least from what the barista has observed? Her nod acknowledges his deflection.

"Well, it is a team effort. You're the one who offered to work together," she notes not unkindly. "And yeah, no notes get kept to one side if it's a team effort. If it's a competition of any kind, it's against the Veil and the bullshit it tries to pull on us all. The idea of trying to be one step ahead and if not that, prepared, at least. We're all going to bring something different to the board and get answers, one way or another." Unfolding her legs, the barista then gets to her feet. "I'm going to go nuke this real quick, you want anything while I'm in there?"

Nuking Jamaican Blue. A picture of the cup in the microwave for his aunt, maybe. Ravn does a double take and then laughs quietly at himself. It's coffee. Coffee is nice, sure, but, it's just bloody coffee. Hasn't even gone through some unfortunate weasel.

"I'm good," he says. And then, mercifully, he is saved by the bell.

Or, well, the hamster. "Pleepchoo!" it declares on the hour -- and emerges from its hiding place in the old cuckoo clock. It's got a little bandit's mask on, and a small plastic cutlass. Both look a little weird, coupled with the flower print shirt but what can you do when you're a mechanical hamster in the house of Aidan Kinney.

By the subtle turn of Ariadne's head, as if she were a bird of prey better zeroing in on movement, Ravn's double-take was caught. It, in turn, takes a moment to compute: ohhhhhhhh, yes, fancy coffee. Smirking to herself, the barista continues on.

"Alright, nothing for you," she confirms of the reply. The microwave is just engaging when the cuckoo clock goes off. There's the sound, not long after 'PLEEPCHOO', of surprised appreciation. "Holy shit, I was right, I did see a hamster!" Her voice wends from out of sight and then comes the laughter. Leaning against the counter briefly, the cackling continues until the microwave beeps its finished cycle.

"That's charming as hell." The comment floats in ahead of Ariadne as she and her microwaved (SACRILEGE) coffee return to the armchair she'd claimed earlier. "Bonus points for the rapier. Clashes beautifully with the Hawaiian shirt."

"It's a hamster," Ravn confirms, laughing softly. "And I swear that its wardrobe expands on a daily basis. I have no idea who would probably come up with the idea of replacing the cuckoo in a cuckoo clock with a mechanical hamster, but there you go. Trust Aidan to find it and get it to work."

He has no comment on the coffee. None whatsoever. Very pointed silence. No need to underline even more how much he sometimes feels like an inbred relic.

"Aidan has one of the other gifts that come with this place: He fixes things. Hand him some broken old gadget, he'll fiddle with it for a few, and it'll be as good as new. He doesn't even need to know how it worked to make it work again. It's another of those science-defying mind traps: Make himself believe he can fix the thing, whatever the thing is, in spite of knowing that you have to understand what it is before you can fix it."

"I readily admit that I'm jealous of this ability. Believe you can fix it and it's fixed? That's...dude." Shaking her head in appreciative disbelief, Ariadne leans out from the armchair to set down her steaming coffee after taking a long sip of it. It warms her stomach as it trickles down and she leans back into the corner of the chair again after bringing up her feet. There's a lazy almost-comfort to her posture now, as if she were past some of the major speedbumps of coming to terms with things like...moving seashells and simply believing you can fix a toaster to positive results.

"Well, next time, maybe the hamster should have some wonderful plate mail armor on while holding the newspaper or something," she then opines with a glance over at the silent cuckoo clock. "What's the most complicated thing Aiden's ever fixed then? Just out of idle curiosity. I don't know that I'd want to see about reaching out when pipes leak at the new place, but something like...my microwave suddenly on the fritz."

Ravn ponders. He fishes another bobby pin out from somewhere -- a sleeve, probably, who doesn't keep bobby pins in their sleeves? -- and toys with it, letting it dance across his gloved knuckles. How much of that is using his moving ability to keep it going, and how much is sheer manual dexterity? Odds are that even he can't answer that. It's dawned on him now and then that he shouldn't be able to do it that easily with gloves on.

"I'm actually not sure," the Dane muses. "I mean -- lots of lamps, tables, chairs, hell, sofas. It wouldn't surprise me if his ancient museum piece of a van keeps going because he asks it very nicely to. A lot of this seems to have to do with ability to wrap your mind around things we shouldn't be able to do but we can do anyway."

He scratches his chin with a finger -- not the hand that the bobby pin is dancing on, at least -- and thinks. "I remember somebody telling me that the local pawn broker made a fortune this way. That her gig was finding valuable but very broken things, and well, fixing them up."

It wouldn't be a far stretch to say that, just briefly, the redhead looks the part of a cat. She's caught easily by the dull sheen of light off the moving bobby pin which dances across the grifter's gloved hands with an appreciable dexterity of motion. The mild dissonance, gloves verses movement ability, sensitivity of touch verses the unthinking fidget -- it crosses her mind, there and gone and filed away for subconscious rumination.

"That'd be a damn good way to make some easy money." The corner of her mouth twitches in and out of a faint, wry smile. She wants to say something about 'cheating', but is it really cheating...? Here, in Grey Harbor?

Regardless: move, she tells the bobby pin flipping across Ravn's knuckles. It jumps like a startled grasshopper from his digits suddenly, THWIP! Ariadne makes no point whatsoever to hide that she's done this; her rosebud lips draw together against a smile which gleams in her eyes instead.

Teach the Padawan to move things, she's going to want to test it...

Ravn can't help laugh. And then the pin stalls.

Hangs there. In the air. Trying to go this way, trying to go that way, because two people are telling it where to go -- and it's not the same direction.

Pulllllllllll.

In the end, Ravn lets it go and chuckles. "So, I suppose this is where I should give the speech on deep sea catfish. You're a marine biologist -- you know the ones, the ones with the lamp? Using power is a bit like that. It usually works fine but sometimes, just sometimes, it attracts attention. I have to remind myself of it a lot -- since it's never been much of an issue until I came here. Back home, the Veil wasn't thin enough for it to matter. Here? Something really may come calling if you shine enough light at it. So use it when you need to -- but don't use it because it's easier than picking up the teaspoon by hand."

"...man, it fucking would be like that," grumbles the barista. She'd let go of her fledgling attempt to manipulate the bobby pin after realizing the counter-pulling of Ravn's own manipulation in turn. Where'd the bobby pin go? Nobody knows. Oh well, Ravn said he had a bajillion. Still, Ariadne can't help but roll her eyes to one side and fret the inside of her cheek.

"Of course there's a drawback. Why did I ever think otherwise. I gotcha, use it sparingly. No flinging spoons suddenly at people who order like assholes at the shop," she then confirms of his warning. "Also, let's talk goliath grouper if you want deep sea fish which come up and nab you. Ugh." Little shiver. "Bold as brass and with a mouth that big? Fucking terrifying. Anyways, yes, deep sea catfish, don't put out the bait or the lure. I follow."

"The things that are attracted by the light aren't always bad," Ravn intones. "Just, they're the ones we tend to notice."

He throws a glance to the side, at nothing in particular, perhaps down Memory Lane. "I had a conversation with Una about that the other day, actually. That maybe we only notice the bad ones. I think I said, we notice the dolorphages because they feed on bad emotions. You wake up screaming with five new stab wounds, that's something you won't forget right away. But what if there are things that feed on nice emotions too? You dream about someone you're fond of, you have a very good time with him or her, and you wake up sticky -- you don't file that away as being visited by monsters, do you? It was just a nice, wet dream."

"You attract giant cuttlefish with light," the barista drolly notes. Terrifying beaked creatures, those things.

Ravn then goes on to make a perfectly valid point. Ariadne nods agreement midway through and is in the middle of formulating her own thoughts on how statistical outliers tend to influence human decisions quite heavily -- survival mechanisms and all -- when the Dane is blunt per his usual standards.

An obvious snort-laugh before she presses knuckles to her lips against further laughter. Her face still crumples up into giggling despite the attempt. "Can't...say that I've ever woken up....sticky," she replies after emerging from behind her fist. "But you're not wrong. Those don't get filed away as nightmares. They get filed away as needing to wash the sheets again."

Really, she shouldn't have this mildly-puckish smile on her lips. She does regardless as she gives the Dane a perfectly level look. Perfectly level. Ignore that twinkling of further repressed amusement.

The worst part of this? The Dane genuinely seems entirely oblivious. Maybe this is not such an unusual conversation in his native language? More likely, he's missing some of the very subtle tones and not realising how blunt he comes across. Maybe the euphemism that comes to him naturally would be lost in translation (plastering the ceiling, what?).

He does dust a little pink at least. "I didn't mean to -- well, I was just trying to make a point that nice dreams might just as well be inspired by things over there. Sometimes, you have a very vivid but nice dream, and can you say for sure it's not? You can if you dreamt you were at the beach and you wake up with sand in your hair. But if you dream something that doesn't leave marks, so to speak? I could dream of eating a fantastic dinner and I'd wake up thinking that dream was so nice I think I'm going to skip breakfast today -- but I wouldn't realise that I'm not hungry because I did in fact spend all night eating."

"I absolutely understand what you meant." By Ariadne's cast of smile now, it's an honest reply backed by good manners. "Outlier bad dreams are freaky, too vivid, and yeah, I bet those Veil bastards enjoy 'em like oyster crackers. The good ones? Maybe something else with a little more tact appreciates them like licking the whipped cream off a milkshake." She shrugs -- unrepentantly. They're discussing food, right?

"I mean...there are these other types of Veil critters then? The ones which like the good dreams more...?" She's curious as hell at this point.

"Er. Yes." Ravn manages to not cough. It's something. So's the mental picture Ariadne painted, and he has to wonder if she even realises. Then he wonders if he's been single for too long. Then he wonders if he's just seeing things that were by no means intended, and decides that the proper choice of action here is to just keep his mouth shut. A second or three too long, perhaps, enough that anyone observant will probably realise he went through that thought process. Sometimes, the grifter is just not sharp enough.

"Right. Yes. We don't actually know. We know there are evil things -- the dolorphages. And we know there are things that seem to be fulfilling some kind of function but they aren't necessarily evil -- or good, for that matter. Bureaucrats, would be a better term. The Exorcist works in the Haunted Department. She looks after, well, ghosts. Somebody's got to. But whether there are joyphages? I bloody well hope so. And I wish they'd make more of an effort."

Perhaps the Dane has seen enough of his guest's expressions to recognize the warm shadow of what's lurking beneath the curiously-innocent composure: cat what got the cream. Still, it's there and gone, as quick as a summer cloud's cover on a breezy day. Look at her: un-besmirched as the dawn.

"More joyphages yesterday," she agrees. "More of those things. Do you think...maybe they can be encouraged somehow? But what do you mean bureaucrats...? There's a Haunted Department? Someone who corrals the ghosts around here? Like, this is a human being or...?"

"My guess is former human being, but it's speculation." Ravn sighs with relief; ghosts and monsters, safe territory. His sudden craving for whipped cream, not quite as safe. Ariadne's expression is gone too soon for him to make out what it is exactly -- is she joking with him, or feeling uncomfortable?

Better play it safe. The last thing he wants is to make her think twice about coming over alone another time. It wouldn't be the first time in his life someone has looked at 6'3 of sharp cheekbones and fast talk and reached the entirely wrong conclusion.

"We don't actually know for certain. It's a working theory though -- the bureaucrats on the Other Side were human, once. They certainly aren't now. Some think that if you die over there, that's what you become, a cog in the Veil bureaucracy. If that's true you also lose a substantial part of memory, because even when they are well intentioned, they are alien. The Revisionist wrecked lives all over town because she thought we wanted more interesting lives."

"...wait, you're talking..."

Ariadne pauses, gathering her thoughts. She seems to be entirely focused on this new concept now rather than lingering on the idea of whipped cream. For the moment.

"Somebody with a strong personality dies over there and they're left behind. Maybe they're powerful enough to take on some power in turn -- enough to influence over here from over there." Her lips thin. "Holy shit. Do you mean this Revisionist...overwrote reality? Like, Scarlet Witch levels of rewriting reality?" Trust her to make a pop culture connection, what with 'Mage Hand' and all.

Geek meet geek. "Yeah, exactly. I told you how I was a Swedish celebrity chef for a while? That was her, giving us more interesting lives. Rosencrantz, a Russian spy. A girl down the street here, age twenty-two, had twelve children, by two husbands. And so on. Our lives were rewritten as if someone had overdosed badly on daytime soap operas. Exactly like the Scarlet Witch retconning reality. And it stuck. I only got out of it because I actively managed to convince her to turn me into a secret lobster fighting ring manager instead -- which I still am. Eventually, most of it faded -- but not all. There are a lot of places around town that are named something different than they used to be, people who are still being looked at weird." Ravn nods. "It's important to not underestimate these people. Entities. Bureaucrats."

Also doesn't hurt to not talk more about applications of whipped cream.

"Whaaaaaaaaaat the fuuuuuuuuck." The drawl is brimming with censure and horror both. Ariadne's brows quirk mightily as her mouth pulls to one side openly.

"No. No. That does not happen again. No. I won't stand for that bullshit. She keeps her fingers out of my pies and my life or I go into the Veil and we discuss." Big words from the Padawan, but she seems to mean them by the set of her jaw. Still, the seriousness doesn't linger overlong, mostly because some of the tale shared was farcical. "...god, I'd forgotten about the lobster fighting ring. Seriously."

Laughing half behind her hand, Ariadne sighs and then considers her coffee while her chin is rested on her palm. "...is there any whipped cream in the fridge? I mentioned it and now I want some on my coffee, it's weird how that works."

Ravn steps on his own foot with the other while pretending to change his position. It's a small movement, but painful enough to help him keep his focus. Yes. Whipped cream. It's a perfectly natural thing to consume, and particularly in coffee, and bloody hell, he's going to be thinking about this for a while now, just because she had to go and make a joke out of it, and then it got embarrassing, and if there's one thing anxiety does great at, it's play 'things you did wrong' in full technicolor all night.

"There's probably a can of the industrial stuff," he says. There probably is. Aidan has a sweet tooth and a metabolism that burns through calories like a moon rocket burns through fuel to achieve escape velocity. "And I wish I could forget about the lobster fighting ring. I'll take you. Just so you can laugh and cringe and eat lobster with the rest of us."

Admittedly, the barista looks intrigued at the categorization of the whipped cream as 'the industrial stuff'. Her lips purl into one of those not-quite-smiles as she glances towards the kitchen and then back at Ravn.

"I dunno that I'd be eating the lobsters, but for the absolutely ridiculous claim of 'yes, this one time I went to a lobster fighting ring'? Yeah, worth it. I'll tag along, you let me know when. Back in two shakes," she then says as she uncurls her legs from being tucked beneath herself. Into the kitchen she goes and returns after the sound of fridge rifling can be heard. There's a can in her hand of what appears to be aerosolized whipped cream.

"Heavy cream," she notes as she pufts an entire surface-covering of it into her coffee. Somewhere, Ravn's aunt is having heart palpitations and claiming it's a hot flash while wondering who's walking over her coffee-hoity-toity grave. "The good stuff. We use something similar at the café. High quality stuff, of course." She then sips experimentally at her coffee and nods, expression going softer. "That'll do. Eat more of your brownie, dude." A gesture at the picked-over pastry. "Don't make me tell Una you're snobbing my brownies," she grins.

"I'm snobbing the whipped cream too," Ravn admits, with a laugh. "I am enough of a snob to think that whipped cream is something you make, by whipping cream. But I am also aware that this is a battle I lost the instant I set foot in Germany or the USA. Industrial stuff. Canned. You know."

He looks at the brownie. "And sadly, this is where magic fails me. I can open locks with my mind and make pigs fly, but I can't make myself just eat like a normal person. For what it's worth? I do enjoy it, I just take -- a very long time. I think I developed a bit of an eating disorder as a kid, largely to annoy my parents. To be fair, I did a lot of things in my life just to annoy my parents."

"I do know." An extension of finger towards the canned whipped cream in question, source of so many calories for Aidan who subsists on sugary rocket fuel. Ariande sips again from her floated coffee and her grin fades into something decidedly more empathetic. Her lips thin and plush again as she makes them relax.

A soft sound and she wiggles her toes beneath her own legs to keep blood moving in them. "I guess...I'm going to be that person who gently makes a note about 'normal' being overrated and that there's really not a true standard, even if people want to be pernicious assholes about it. You take your time, I was teasing. You're also not abnormal in wanting to annoy your parents. I liked to have my headphones on when they thought they were telling me something important now or then -- or lied about what I was doing on the computer so I could play more World of Warcraft when I should have been writing a report." She shrugs.

"Ah, the old I Am Studying Mum Look These Are Words In English game," Ravn murmurs with the air of beatific reminiscence. "No, mum, don't read them, I'm totally not cybering on Skype with some girl in Minnesota who thinks I am a seven foot alien with horns and a goat tail."

He shakes his head. "I was definitely one of those. The guy with the big mouth and all the sass online, sitting alone in his room at night playing games because virtual people have that one great thing about them -- you can drop link if they're assholes, and there's nothing they can do about it. It can come back to get you, too -- I actually got pulled into a The Sims game here, not so long ago. Which sounds fairly harmless, until you remember where a Sim keeps his fishing rod."

"Whaaaaaaat."

Ariadne immediately turns her head without losing eye contact with the Dane, her smile having returned with a dubious cast. "No freakin' way. The Veil decided to twist up a Sims reality? Good lord. No. No, thank you, that's...a bit too...Matrix for me, god, no." A finger shake to accent her point. "I might accept..."

A beat.

"Yeah, fuck you, general reality of Grey Harbor, not feeding you ideas. I've played tabletop before. You don't tip off the GM," she grumbles, sipping her coffee again.

"It was weird. I'm not going to lie, it was weird. It seemed pretty funny at first, and then you remember that half the fun of that game is to kill Sims in creative ways. And the weird social interactions. And getting cornered by Nina Caliente whose entire function in The Sims 2 at least is to be a sex maniac gold digger." Ravn winces at the memory. "Una Irving was there as well. And Kailey Holt and Maya -- whose last name I seem to have failed to pick up. So there's Una and me both desperately trying to dodge the NPCs while Kailey and Maya get it on upstairs in full pixel glory."

He pokes the opened padlock. "I was in another game style dream once -- we were very obviously a D&D party. I was the rogue. Nearly bloody well died because we were underwater and the only way to find out if we could breathe outside our tiny and fast depleting air bubble was to, well, go outside it. Which I did -- and that was the exact moment my legs turned to stone."

"Hmm. Priorities." Of hiding from Nina Caliente or full pixel glory? Both? Either. Ariadne doesn't expound more, inclined to let her host finish his thought while she sips at her coffee again. There's a mental note to take Sam for a run after this. It's been a calorie-rific afternoon thus far, between pastries and finding weapons-grade intensity whipped cream to top her drink.

She does wince, however, at the unfortunate timing of being a landlubber with cemented boots. "That's...pretty fucking terrifying," comes the murmur, a deep divot between her brows.

"It was. I'm not going to pretend otherwise." Ravn nods and grimaces lightly. "But that's how all of this works -- most of the time it's interesting and exciting, and then it hits you hard sometimes that injury sustained is real."

He should know. He's got the stab wounds and the kelp burn scars to prove it. The latter should prove interesting to a marine biologist for sure.

"I don't think anyone wants to be reminded of their mortality. After the Dream with you and Una, when she was Zorro, and when I fell off that horse, that was..."

Ariadne shakes her head and tick-ticks her fingernails off the coffee mug in a quick little rattle of sound. "That was scary. I've only just come to terms with that happening. The whole...Mage Hand bit is still so new, I feel like I need to pinch myself." A point at Ravn in friendly warning echoing an old car commercial, of all things: "No pinch." More seriously, she continues, "And sand in my bed...from the whole pirate Dream. That's...that's really the freakiest part, the carry-over. Like, okay, sand from the tropics in my bed. How the fuck, y'know? Breaking more laws of physics there. Do...I mean, if the wounds are bad, do they still scar? Or only in the Dreams?"

Ravn glances at Ariadne while a few thoughts go through his mind. Then he reaches down and rolls up the sleeve on his left arm, up to the elbow. About halfways from the wrist to that elbow is a long, white line in a slight indent. something with a sharp blade once bit into that arm and bit deep. "The injuries stay. And they scar. Provided that you survive them."

He looks down at his arm. "This is a meat cleaver -- I think I told about you the crazy guy who sculpted in flesh? I would not have survived this if not for Seth Monaghan being there, and Alexander Clayton being able to instruct Seth on how to use his healing powers."

Sleeve goes back down. "I've got a couple of others. Hell, I still have a few burn scars on my legs from getting stuck in kelp -- which is really something given that in the Dream where I sustained them, I didn't even have legs due to being a merman. Tuna man. Whatever."

Seeing the cogs turning behind Ravn's eyes, the redhead is quiet in turn, patient, waiting for him come to his decision. It does make her wonder what he's considering in light of the question she'd asked. Ah-hah. She extrapolates at the speed of neural fluency even as he's folding back a sleeve to reveal...a wince-worthy scar of great length along his arm.

Survive them. Ariadne nods, yes, she remembers being told about this insane individual. It's when the Dane says 'kelp' that the woman literally sits up taller in her armchair in surprise.

"Tuna man. Kelp? Kelp burns...? I can't think of any species around here that would cause..." the marine biologist, predictably curious, peters off. "Wait." She stops herself. "In a Dream. God. That's fucked up." Her own free hand has drifted down to unconsciously touch at her ankle beneath the colorful sock fabric, as if some old pain there had been summoned like a ghost.

"Giant sea kelp. It burned like poison ivy. I have the scars on my feet still -- just a few. I spoke to a doctor who said they will fade with time, and told me to not run around the woods in shorts." Ravn offers a wry smile. "I have other scars as well but in truth, the worst were not inflicted by Dreams. Those were flesh and blood people, with firearms. People don't always have the excuse of being a pain eating demon, some of them are just dicks."

He shakes his head. "I'm not trying to scare you. Or impress you with my macho scars, for that matter. I find that visuals help. Whenever I have to explain these things -- make the pig fly, show the scars. People will think you're trying to be allegorical otherwise, and I'm really not."

A glance flicks towards the motion at Ariadne's ankle, but Ravn does not ask; this town is full of people with scars, and he tends to find it impolite to try to pressure someone into talking about things they don't really want to talk about or aren't ready to talk about. "Some people take these things like their life is at an end, that everything here is awful. It isn't. And some people take it like it's all just one big adventure where no one really gets hurt. It isn't. I admire the enthusiasm of people like Dr Brennon, ready to go claw to claw with anything that dares tell her 'no', but I also think that Dr Brennon is going to find out some day that there's always someone or something with a meaner temper and bigger claws."

Dreams. Such fuckers, Ariadne thinks to herself, as she contemplates the transmutation of an impossible wound to a plausible one via humanity's propensity to need to explain in rational terms.

Did she just call herself out? The barista sips at her coffee and ignores her inner musings. Rude, inner musings.

"There's always a bigger fish, it's true," she nods. "Except for whale sharks. But they're nice, so, there's that." Trust the marine biologist to be a smart-ass about it. If she's realized she's touched at her ankle, it doesn't occur to her and the moment passes. Whatever's hidden under the sock must be relegated to future discussion. "I also know you're supporting a point, not being a show-off. I've heard a few different logics to scars. That they're proof of failure -- should've ducked, etcetera. But they're also proof of strength, victory, being faster, more hardy, whatever it is. Survival. So, if you've got scars? You won. It's just that plain and simple in my book and in Momma Nature's rules in turn."

Her smile is mild but true. "Thank god for power in numbers. I have the feeling that the Veil's going to have to get used to us pretty soon here." A lift of her coffee cup in salute.