Participants:
| Scene Title | Mirrors Elsewhere |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Threads of time are converging, for those who can see them, bearing a blade. Some others are left guessing, with goggles. |
| Date | October 7, 2010 |
This is a detour that Sable's taking, today, even though it's to her own home at Gun Hill. Normally she'd just make straight for Roosevelt Island after work, a habit reinforced by occasion as today is Ms. Trafford's combination birthday and baby shower. But it is, in fact, because of the occasion that Sable has to cut back. She's got stuff to pick up from her room.
It is really, more than anything, her attendance at the event that prevented her from really going through with what she had in mind today. Earlier this afternoon, during her lunch break, Sable spent a fruitless half hour just sitting on a granite guard post, eyes closed, concentrating furiously on a variety of destructive, dangerous and generally really bad ideas which, with all the force she could muster, she intended on doing if Tamara didn't show up and prevent it. An idea like this had been rolling around in her crazy little head for some time, but only today, of all days, did she clarify it enough to try it.
After half an hour, and no show, Sable started to cruise for expensive cars to smash the windshields of. She kept an eye out for cops, to make sure her vandalism would be witnessed. She contemplated finding something to chuck through a few storefront windows, really fuck things up. But she didn't follow through. She just doesn't have time to push this experiment to its extreme. Grumpy at her failure, and weirdly a little resentful at Tamara for not meeting her half way in what Sable thought of as a rather brilliant way to 'hack' the blonde's ability, the yellow eyed woman made her way home and…
Here she is. Back at Gun Hill. Up the front steps she tromps, her only current intention on getting up to retrieve the gifts she's purchased, then to bother Quinn for a ride. There is some lingering regret, not about not smashing windows per se, but about potentially ruining the experiment by lacking the guts to really go through with it.
The rhythmic clatter of canid claws on hardwood is quite familiar to the tenants of Gun Hill; by now most of the building's young dogs can likely be identified by pawfall alone. This particular unhurried, almost dignified tread is Misty's normal mode, and it's that pale female who pads around the corner to intercept Sable in the building's front hall, tail feathering the air in soundless greeting. That she's trailing a leash on the floor is only mildly unusual; Tamara's more apt to unclip it than just let it fall, but — well, the girl isn't exactly prone to keeping a good hold of her dog.
She does, however, shortly appear as well, following in Misty's wake. At a glance, it's a fair guess that Tamara wore the same scarlet cardigan and dark blue jeans yesterday; the cardigan at least has that rumpled slept-in look. Her shoes tap more quietly on the floors than the dog's claws, the girl shaking blonde hair back from her face to better consider Sable. "Whatever it is, I didn't do it," Tamara proclaims, words only making it halfway to levity under the weight of fatigue which darkly circles her eyes.
Sable regards the oncoming canine with initial skepticism. She doesn't have instant warm fuzzies towards animals, not because she doesn't like them, but because she's considers them beings with emotional states and intentions and complexities that demand genuine consideration and response, rather than just 'dawww puppy!!!'. "Where's yer-" she begins, about to inquire after Misty's lost human. But there she is, the woman herself. She's late. Plus also in the wrong place.
The yellow eyed girl stoops and scratches Misty between the ears, gaze lifting to Tamara, a slanted smile on her lips. "No, gal, y' didn't. Nor did I, which I figure mebbe has somethin' t' do with it. 'n' y' likely f'rgot, eh, what it is y' didn't do, 'n' I didn't do. Which, like… is a bitch since now I dunno whether 'r not y' knew at first t' f'rget, 'r never knew at all." The fact that Sable feels confident in her ability to understand Tamara's seeming-nonsense is reflected in her own production of seeming-nonsense. Attempting to engage on the same level of discourse.
Misty is content to look right back at Sable, ears pricked forward when words are addressed to her, until the girl succumbs to scratching her head. Toll paid in full, she turns her head to regard Tamara — who for her part seems entirely unaware of the dog's attention. "It's all fair then," the girl decides, head bobbing once in a solemn nod. She moves the necessary two steps forward for her to also reach Misty's head, petting the dog briefly before sliding her fingers around to unclip the leash from her collar.
"Everyone's equal. Even you," Tamara informs Misty, ruffling the fur between her ears, before a casual flick of her hand sends the dog padding back down the hall. The blonde follows more slowly, coiling the leash into neat loops. "We'll walk up with you," she adds, glancing back towards Sable; it's not a question, and it might not be just an offer.
"If you say so, hon," Sable says, grinning and rolling her shoulders. She saunters towards the stairs, trust that Tamara will be keeping pace. Step by step she starts her ascent. Five floors, the first being the one they're already on, meaning four flights of stairs. Good exercise.
"What's it feel like, I'm wonderin'," Sable inquires, glancing over at Tamara as they rise, their potential energy gathering with each rise of a leg, each push upwards, "all this time travel bullshit? From yer angle, what's it feel like? Do y' notice? Y' know 'bout th' cranes, eh?" She gives a small sniff, "got one delivered t' me, now. Caused somethin' 'f a fuckin' stir with my nearest 'n' dearest…"
Misty takes the stairs pretty much at a run, feeling no need to dawdle at the humans' pace. She pauses only long enough at each landing to ensure they aren't getting off — and if there's a moment's further hesitation on the dog's part when they reach the fourth floor landing, it's understandable.
"The sword makes little white birds," Tamara agrees as they ascend through the stairwell, one tread at a time. "The boy and the mirror helped. You don't like it?" she asks; conversationally, without any suggestion that her feelings might be injured by any answer Sable gives. The subject of time travel seems to slide past the young woman, unremarked-upon; maybe she doesn't notice, or maybe she's gambling on that particular question staying disappeared.
"What I like 'r don't like don't much matter, eh? I'm called t' do what I gotta, 'n' I will. Time 'n' space hinge on what I do… I'll do what it takes. Won't be hard. Most folks get all worried 'n' ruffled, but they don't get it like I do. There's nothin' y' c'n do that can't be done. There's no where y' c'n be that ain't where yer meant t' be."
And no such luck, Tamara. Sable's is an insistent, sharp curiosity when it has found a target, her distractibility being only one side of the coin that comes from the inadequate term 'attention deficit'. It's more 'attention imbalance', the work of a wild spender who has no idea how to keep a sensible budget with regards to their dopamine.
"But I asked y' how it felt f'r you, hon. What it feels like, seein' 'n' knowin' th' world as y' do. Is it like th' ground b'neath yer feet ain't steady 'r, like, what?"
Blue eyes glance sidelong to the musician, fingertips trailing along the wall as one quick step puts Tamara just that much ahead of the younger girl. "There wasn't ground," the seeress replies, not quite over her shoulder. "Only water pretending it's solid."
Pushing off from the wall, she darts up the remaining flight of stairs, opening the fifth-floor door for both Misty and Sable to pass through.
"Ain't that just ice?" Sable says, with a sort of half-humor. She huffs up the last few stairs at increased pace and tips her newsies cap, donned once more now that the chill of autumn is settling in, to Tamara as the door is opened for her. "Much obliged…" Though as soon as she's through the door, she extends an arm and presses against the door, her closeness to the hinge demanding somewhat more energy from her to keep it open as she immediately tries to return the favor, keeping the door open for Tamara from the other side.
"Question, hon. And answer well, 'cause y' may keep me from poor decisions if y' cooperate proper-like. Say I wanted t' see y', mebbe on some sorta short notice, but, like, yer sorta hard t' reach sometimes. Howsit I c'n, like, purposefully figure out how t' let y' know I'm lookin' f'r y'? 'cause I figure there's gotta be some way I c'n, I dunno… give you a sign in what y' recall, eh? Like, what if I tell, y' each time y' show after I was thinkin' 'bout wantin' y' t' show, like, what if I tell y'… uh…" she's losing track of what she's trying to say, what she means by this, "I dunno. Feels like there's gotta be a way, is all."
Tamara offers a smile as she steps into the hall just far enough that Sable can close the door; it folds into a frown as the younger girl speaks. She muses over the question, pulling her lower lip between her teeth and contemplating the opposite wall while Misty regards both humans from where she loiters nearby. After a long silence, her gaze slides back over to Sable, the blonde exhaling. "Nothing was always. Sometimes the mirror was elsewhere. Sometimes it forgets." Qualifiers given, she makes her way over towards the musician's apartment, Misty padding at her side.
Presumably the actual answer will yet follow.
"Well, 'course. Nothin's decided 'til its decided," Sable says, like, duh, you don't have to explain the obvious to her. She saunters over to her door, festooned as it is with a variety of signs, declarations of her status and services provided as self-styled Sage of Gun Hill. The door is never locked, at least never from the outside, and very rarely from the inside as well. Sable opens the door and flips the sign on the knob over, which before read 'The Sage is OUT' and now reads 'The Sage is IN'.
There might be some added weight to the sign's message when Tamara walks into the younger girl's apartment, stopping square in the middle of the room. Blue eyes sweep down one wall, across the expanse of floor, and then up the other side, contemplatively considering her surroundings; they drift back to the closet, which the seeress approaches without any apparent realization that the appropriate procedure would be to ask may I.
She does at least gesture Misty to stay back, while rummaging through its disorganized depths, somehow managing to not scatter tousled clothes out into the living room in the process. "Here you go," Tamara finally says, poking her head around the edge of the door and extending a hand to Sable. In it are a pair of goggles rescued from out-of-sight chaos, holographed reptilian eyes seeming to wink at the musician. A beat later, the seeress' attention swivels back to the closet with a musing purse of her lips. She leans forward to drag something else out the hard way, by a long shoulder-strap — a gym bag which didn't originally belong to its current keeper, now plopped limply down over Tamara's feet. "Were you done with it?"
The dark, intelligent, doomed eyes of Jimi Hendrix regard Tamara as she approaches the closet door on which his icon is hung. He makes no protest as she pushes him aside and enters the space he's guarding. What will be, will be, as with him, as with her. Sable draws from the directness of Tamara's motion no omens besides the usual. This is the line the blonde is making pains to follow. Sable will follow along. She peeks into the closet, not often opened or visited, save when she has to push her dirty clothes in there as a way of making her place readily 'presentable'.
The goggles, when proffered, are viewed with surprise. She'd almost forgotten about those! Sable reaches out and takes them, smiling a bit wryly as her weird eyes find their weird eyes. A glance up at Tamara- "Huh? Uh, yeah, yeah. Meant t' return that," sorta kinda, maybe she never really thought about it but… "y'all bring that back or whatever…" her gaze turns down the goggles again, the flicks up once more. "What 'm I s'pposed t' do with these, eh?"
"I will," Tamara assures the younger girl, picking the bag up to duck head and shoulder through the loop of the carrying strap. She smiles, ruefully crooked, at Sable's bewildered confusion, taking a moment to slide the coils of Misty's leash off her arm into a shoulder of the gym bag. Much more convenient that way. "The mirror gave them back to you," the blonde says, taking a step away from the closet; aborting her motion before a second can ensue, turning back to politely close the door. And then to look at Sable, a crease cutting across her brow. "What goes around came around, you see? But only on important days. It's not a fair trade for little things, the lizard's worth more than that."
For all that Sable prides herself on 'getting' Tamara, she's kind of at sea as to what Tamara's talking about right now. That the goggles and their appearance have any bearing on Sable's previous question does not occur to her. She's been cast into reminiscence by the peer of lizard eyes. The feeling of powered snow beneath an ill-fitting boot, the taste of musty fur, the feelings of… well, Sable isn't even going there.
She arches a brow at Tamara. "Sorry, hon, but y' lost me. Important days like what?"
Tamara sighs when it becomes clear Sable doesn't follow her intent — which is right about the time she starts talking. Tamara looks away, up towards the join of wall and ceiling, frown creasing deeper in futile pursuit of threads which slip ever further into the past. "Like… like…" Her shoulders fall, the hand that isn't resting on the gym bag at her side burying itself in Misty's fur. Looking towards Sable, the girl offers an apologetic smile and a hapless shrug.
Her feet drift towards the door, of course bringing Tamara along with them; and the little dog too, tik-tak of nails a widely spaced staccato. At the door, the girl pauses as if a thought abruptly struck — perhaps it did. "It would be your answer, or is, or —" Breaking off, she rubs at tired eyes, then waves a hand in dismissal of language and its vagaries.
"Answer?" Sable echoes, tellingly, as it is simply a repetition, not an understanding. It doesn't click. But give her a moment. Answer to what? Sable is an intuitive thinker, not much of an analyst, and also rather stunningly narcissistic. All roads lead back to her or her obsessions. The very universe acts about her (when it's not purposefully ignoring her, which is itself a kind of attention). And today, the obsession has been with figuring out how to hack Tamara's ability. How to set up the SeerSignal.
But it doesn't click right here and now.
It'll occur to her a little later, perhaps. When she has time to puzzle over it. The very puzzling, in fact, the very intention to find Tamara and ask her just what she meant, may itself be the revelation she needs. The seed is planted, the pieces are in place. Things will work their way to where they are meant to be. A pair of goggles is becoming a link between two women.
And a knife is coasting through time, towards its target.