Participants:
| Scene Title | Tips and Tricks |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | A change meeting in the Children's Library leads to some good advice. |
| Date | November 8, 2018 |
The Children's Library is maybe not the most frequented place by people who, you know, don't have children, but hey. There are people who are young at heart, right? Sure, we'll go with that.
In any case, Jim is here, and he at least isn't getting too many askance looks, since he's actually partaking in children's literature. He's sitting on one of those little couches that's probably meant for three actual children, reading, of all things, The Hunger Games. Dystopian fiction in a literal dystopia? It might be a little bit on the nose, but then, this is the guy who wears superhero scrubs to work, so it's probably par for the course.
There's a light shuffle of movement behind Jim as a page can be heard being turned, "Ah ha.. found you." Though of the owner of that voice doesn't seem to direct that whisper at Jim though its coming from right behind him.
The pale woman known as Eve is flipping through a big book in her hands that reads: Myths Through The Ages. She's been doing her homework Trying to find connections where the shadows covered over the answers, she needed a light right now. The raven haired woman pushes up the spectacles on her face and she looks quite serious in her dark blue dress and boots, her messenger bag hangs limply on her shoulder.
It may not have been meant for him, but Jim turns to look anyway, the voice familiar, despite the fact that they haven't met that many times. When you meet someone who knows you — on some fundamental level, at least — and then spend an extremely traumatizing night in a house of mirrors with them, well, their voice is probably something you remember.
"Eve," he says as he turns around, pushing himself to his feet from the little mini couch and placing his finger to keep his page. Not folding it over, no. Never that. "Doing some research?" He glances to the book in question, a smile spreading on his face as he looks back to her with a little questioning tilt of his head.
"Jim! Brother Seer!" Eve slaps the book shut and goes in to hug Jim because yes while they haven't met that much going through a traumatic house of mirrors is a bonding experience and they also have other more cosmic? connections, Eve's smile widens at the look of Jim. "Well must study or we'll all dead!" A snort even though that statement is sorta, kinda totally true. The seer peers down at the book in Jim's hand and leans back, "Ah, a tragic story. Poor Katniss."
"Forced to put on a show for everyone.. Thrust into an unfamiliar world." The forced to put on a show for people is something the tall woman can relate too.
"I've known a lot of tragic characters in life, what about you? How are you?" The last bit punctuated as the conversation moves rather quickly from insights to Young Adult novels to how the man is doing. Eve looks not as rested as she should, the norm for her now.
Jim returns the hug without hesitation, and a little laugh escapes him, too, despite the truth in Eve's words. Better to laugh than some other things, right? "Better you than me," he says, though again, it doesn't sound totally serious.
He looks down at the book in his hand then, as well, and he nods once, his smile twisting a little bit wryly. "It is pretty tragic," he agrees. "I don't know why I like this stuff so much when the real world is tragic enough, but I really, really do."
He looks up to her again then, and there's another little chuckle at the quick change in topic, but it's not a derisive sort of laugh at all. "I'm okay," he says. "Staying away from mirrors, but luckily I don't usually spend that much time in front of them anyway. I just wake up like this." That is a joke, though, as he gestures up to his face. "How are you?" He asks, and while it's slight, there's a little shifting note in his voice. Maybe concern, possibly due to that aura of exhaustion around her.
"It's still an escape, we all need those." Eve had plenty and everyone knew that but she seemed to be trying to hang in the now more, coherency is important and something that was lost on Eve for a very long time, not that she's much better at it now but at least now she tries harder. And fails harder too.
"Oh oh, you must have met King Bey before!" Leaning in to speak quietly before she gets them kicked out of the space, brown eyes twinkle in mischief. "I heard she wakes up just like that as well," everyone knows King Bey and respects her, Eve was convinced she was SLC-E. Enthrallment, SHE WAS SURE. Shaking her head with a snicker she slips the large book into her bag and weighs Jim's question on the scales in her mind the platform sinks into a yawning abyss and that shakes Eve from that particular visualization. "I'm close to.. The answers whispering in the wind and a plan. To stop it all.. To stop.." All the destruction she saw coming, the death, "No more tragedy." This a promise more to herself than anyone else.
A light quirk at the sides of her mouth, "They say I overextend myself and I do but sometimes that's what it takes to crack those tough nuts! Right into pieces." Rubbing her hands together, she frowns and then looks Jim in the eyes, "Action or let it be, action or let it be. I am a meddler, I've accepted this."
"Mm. That's true." Jim tips his head to the the side, though, at the mention of King Bey, and his smile widens a little bit. "I bet," he agrees, tapping a finger absently against the spine of the book, almost random at first, but after a little while it starts to settle into an easy rhythm, though the sound is almost unnoticeable. It's just the tip of a finger on a book, after all, not a drum. He won't be the reason they're kicked out of the library, no sir.
That smile fades again when she goes on. Again, that concern, just a little more obvious than before. They don't know each other that well…but still, it's there, despite that. "All by yourself?" he asks, his tone a little more gentle. "Nothing wrong with action, but this is bigger than one person, Eve. You know that." She of all people — and he, too, even if he doesn't understand it. It's knowing, beyond understanding, deep in his bones.
"Never alone, ever." She promises or at least not too too often does the seer work totally alone, it's more fun to drag a friend along usually. Eve shakes her head back and forth sending tendrils of hair flying, "It's mondo Brother Seer, Mondoooo burger. Extra cheese and a side of a pile of onion rings with a large chocolate shake and it's going all to our asses." Smacking her own bottom with a loud smack, to which the librarian looks over and Eve wiggles her fingers sheepishly while making a shushing sound quitely.
"There are things.. I would ask your help on." Afraid to ask many of her fellow seers because of what the Entity did to her, "That presence.. The First of us.. It's coming and I'm not.." Eve doesn't know how to explain her feelings on the Entity, the complicated nature of them.
"I try my best to keep a lid on it, you know how it is. The echos from the actions that are going to be rippling around you. Pulling you in the tide." It's how it felt for her always, like she was being pulled into a current and floating down a stream. She could get lost and she did, many times. Her own finger draws a circle idly in the crook of her arm as she turns her gaze up towards the ceiling and the windows near it. "But Pandora's Box has been opened, will you help me make sure nothing absolutely terrible escapes?"
Jim's eyes glance briefly down at the smack, and he almost laughs, though manages to turn it into a half-cough, half-throat clearing at the glare form the librarian. He manages to school his expression into something more sober, and soon enough it's a real expression, and not just trying to cover up a laugh. It's not that easy to laugh at the subject at hand, even though sometimes it does a soul good to try. Whistling in the dark.
"Good," he says. "Don't." It's a little more forceful now, the admonition not to do it alone, even though she just said she wasn't going to. After it's out, he looks a little bit like he wishes he hadn't said it quite that way, but he also isn't about to examine the motivations. Instead, he latches onto her asking him to help. "I'll do what I can," he promises with a slow nod, before he glances around, and then, despite already speaking quietly, lowers his voice even further. "I'm lost, though. I've never been this lost before. It doesn't make sense. Nothing tracks. I can't…" He trails off with a little frustrated breath, reaching up to rake a hand back through his hair.
If Eve took offense to the tone it's not apparent from the weak smile on her face and another shake of her head, "I promise," and she's not crossing her fingers or toes this time! There's a moment of silence as she listens to Jim's own confusion, "I don't think we are seeing as we should be, it can manipulate, it can deceive. Even our sister Tam. If we look together maybe," though that sort of experiment wouldn't work. They would need Gilly and her best friend was weary of all of this with good reason, the last time Eve was augmented.. The woman shudders and clutches her messenger bag now heavy with the big book.
"You will come if I call? Or.. if you call.. I will come." A promise within a question for the man beside her. Eve looks tired still and she leans her head back against the bookcase behind her. "It's all so jumbled, not clicking. Almost clicking. Horsemen. War. Death. Change. Click.click.click. You hear it there, you hear it everywhere. If I can find Adam, maybe I can stop this." Reason with him? Whose to know.
"Mm." That makes sense, and there's another slow nod, still with that hint of frustration, though it's receding now, perhaps just because hearing that he's not the only one who's out of his depth is comforting, somehow. Of course, it doesn't really bode well for them.
His eyes find hers again, though, at the question-promise. "Yes," he says, still quiet, but steady. In contrast to her, he is very grounded — almost forcefully so, as though he's expending a huge amount of effort to remain in the here and now, despite that the real world doesn't do anything to help him piece together what he sees. In fact, quite the opposite. "I'll come." And that is a promise.
"I don't think you're going to get much from Adam," he continues after a minute. "I didn't know the guy like some people, but he doesn't really seem like the helpful type."
"I don't know about his help.. But I know the next step is face to face with him. I feel.. Connected to him." It's laughable given their names and the biblical history between their namesakes. Eve waves her hand, "He's tricky, slippery and he's killed me once and brought me back to life the next. We're complicated. I always get the sense that we've done this before, that he's in on a secret I'm just not remembering.." Brow furrowing Eve rubs at the bridge of her nose and pats her knees, "I set him free.. on accident. Ten faithful years ago.. He and a few others.. More than a few. All so dangerous, I've opened Pandora's Box with my friends before in the past."
It's why she knows what it means to let evil out, to let evil surround the world, "It engulfs the world and I'm just sitting in the branches, watching the whirlpool.. Well whirl." Eve looks sad at the memory, "If we had stayed out of it maybe a lot of this wouldn't have happened." Same going for now but what is the point that is no return.. "It's hard to know when you've gone too far. When it's too late, even when you know what's heading your way. It's so.. Blinding.. Nausea inducing."
The frown deepens a little bit at the thought of Eve meeting up with Adam. For various reasons. That meeting never turns out well, does it? "If he tries to give you an apple, just say no, okay?" Well, okay, technically it's the other way around, but who's counting? The joke falls flat in light of her next words, though. Thinking about being killed and brought back to life isn't something to make anyone happy.
"We can't really know," he finally says. "We can only do the best we can, I guess." Hindsight, 20/20, etc etc. "Sometimes I don't know if I want to do more, or just run like hell the other way and hope I can get enough ahead that it can't find me."
"I'm a banana kind of gal myself." Said without a thought, Eve waves her hand in front of her face. There's a frown on her face and she nods along, she too has wanted to run. "I've wanted too, sometimes I did." The pale woman shrugs her shoulders as she taps her temple, "But they don't stop, not for long. No no. No rest. No rest."
"Once I went to Mexico but then I ended up meeting an Otter, Otter Eyes. You might know him." She doesn't give his real name she's just.. talking. Eve grins over at Jim, "Even when it's all doom and gloom. Dark blue roses still bloom." A snicker at the rhyme as she tugs at a rogue string of hair. "Maybe one day it won't be so doom and gloom. Just sunshine and paradise."
“Good.” Jim smiles, too, and while there’s some amusement there, there’s also a little hint of relief. Not that he thinks Adam’s actually going to offer her an apple — but you never know. Probably shouldn’t tempt fate.
His head tips to the side, though, at the mention of Otter Eyes. There’s not any real recognition there, but he also doesn’t try to hard to figure out who it actually is, taking it instead at face value. “That’s true,” he says instead, of the flowers, and he has to laugh then. “Maybe,” he adds. “It’d be nice. Of course, if it’s going to happen, we have to build it, right?”
He glances down at his watch then, and his smile twists a little ruefully. “I should get to Elmhurst,” he admits, “or I’ll be late.” He doesn’t move immediately away, though — first, he adds, “Be careful, yeah? And let me know if you need anything.” He reaches into his pocket, pulling out a ‘card’ — which is really just a piece of cardstock with his name and number written on it — and hands it to her. When you moonlight as discreet medical assistance, it probably behooves you to have your number available.
Nabbing the card with pale fingers Eve grins over at Jim, "We will build it. Someday.. we will." She's sure of it, though she can't really say how she's so sure she doesn't see many futures like that but.. a girl can dream ironically enough. "Late? Pffft Brother Seer, the party doesn't start until we arrive." A cackle and Eve is clapping her hands together as she backs away slowly,
"I'll be careful just as you should be, if you need to find me.. whistle or look in the trees." You could find Eve in a number of places and a number of situations but connecting with people was what she was made for regardless of her head crazy.
"Remember to keep your shoelaces tied." Always with her helpful advice.
“You know, I think that’s probably true for you,” Jim says with a grin. “I’ll have to let my boss know there’s going to be a new order.” He nods, too, at the advice, glancing down at his shoes briefly. Just in case. Hey, it’s good to check. “Will do,” he promises, before he lifts a hand in farewell, taking a step backward himself before he turns, sticking his hands into his pockets as he starts toward the exit. There’s a little tune that follows him, a quiet, high-pitched whistle — maybe he’s practicing for when he needs to summon her.