Participants:
Also Featuring:
| Scene Title | Tastes Like Cherry |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | There's a witch in the woods and a woman who always seems to be on the precipice of becoming a feast for crows. |
| Date | July 3, 2021 |
Raystown-Juanita River
Western Foothills of the Appalachians
After the convoy stopped for the night under cover of a star filled night sky they all find some manner of sleep or restlessness save for the ones on watch.
Most of them anyway.
One of those restless souls wanders a nearby clearing dotted with dead blackened trees, twisted branches form crowns at the top. There is no sound of animals, only the rustle of the wind that caresses the earth and wraps it in its embrace. Eve Mas dances under the moonlight barefoot. Her movements aren't exactly graceful but they have a beauty to them. Arms flail, legs shake and hair flies into the wind. She sighs in bliss as she sways and closes her eyes, humming along to a silent song.
Extending her arms out to the sky and pulling as if she were yanking the very moon right out of it.
Slowly red mist begins to seep out from under her black dress until she is completely swallowed and all that is left is a hovering crimson cloud. In this state she thinks, ponders on her choices and what's to come next.
She misses home, sparing a thought for Gillian back home. Of Lynette and Otter Eyes, of her cousin the once time fairy made anew. "Soon." Eve's voice echoes outwards.
Gracie’s approach isn’t a stealthy one; that isn’t really her style. Her footsteps rustle the grass as she makes her way, stopping to admire as the mist wafts off Eve, and Eve becomes that mist. A look of fascination overcomes her, her mouth hooking up into a smile.
“Miss Mas?” In that simple greeting, she sounds so much like the Rue that the former seer knows. The one she gave a place to stay when she left her pack of Hounds; who lived above Cat’s Cradle, slinging drinks and dancing on the bar for tips.
"Cherrrrry."
The voice comes from within the cloud, distorted as if coming from beneath the sea. The sound reverberates through the clearing and around Gracie.
Flying up to a branch hanging not too far from the ground but in shambles still. The woman materializes laying on the dead branch that creaks, grinning with blood red eyes down at Gracie she rummages for something unseen and tosses two small objects onto the ground before her. "Cherry Cherry, Cherry."
The objects are a book of matches and a small hand rolled joint. Freshly rolled for this evening.
Eve clicks her own lighter and a joint in her mouth is lit, smoke begins to flow around her, mixing with the light red mist that comes off of her shoulders. Taking a look at the woman as she rights herself into a seated position. Puffing on the joint and letting the smoke billow out from her lungs, "You've got a habit of following witches into the wood." Those crimson eyes twinkle in the nightlight. Eve swings her legs before she swaps positions again, she seems to be particularly energized tonight.
Another puff from her joint and she grins while laying where her head hangs off the branch, upside down with dark hair swinging free.
Gracie holds still for a moment, almost too still, trying to interpret the statement about this apparent habit of hers. After a protracted second, she lifts her chin a fraction and eases. The smile spreads a little wider and she meanders to the tree, reaching up toward the branch and the tendrils of red mist that drift from Eve’s form.
“What’s that like?” she asks curiously. “Turning into a… A fog. Do you feel yourself get… like, thinner? Insubstantial?” It’s not quite unlike a child wanting to know why and how come about everything. She’s interested.
Gracie’s hazel eyes practically sparkle. “Can I touch your cloud?”
"Very floaty and light!" Eve answers readily and with a mischievous grin that twists when Gracie asks if touching is permitted. "Oh, Cherry Cherry. None of that, you might not like how it feels. I hear it's unpleasant!" she shimmies away and winks at her. Eve doesn't want to hurt the poor woman!
But maybe one day… the touch.
The pale skinned woman smokes her joint and eyes the woman she knows in another life and time, smoke and mist waft around her form and swirl before her face as she blows out a thick cloud of it. "How is your evening girl! What are you searching for?"
An eerie hum emits from Eve's throat and she sways in the tree, "Do Cherries dream while sleeping?"
“If I was put off by things that are unpleasant, I wouldn’t have been popping corks all over the Pelago,” Gracie jokes, reaching out with one hand, fingers shifting subtly in the air as she gets closer to that forbidden haze. She draws back again before she can be admonished for not listening to her elders.
“Cherries dream of grenadine sheep,” she quips to the question. (Grenadine is actually made from pomegranates, Gracie.) “I was hoping to find you, actually.” The humor fades a little. “Feeling a little homesick and I kind of wanted to see a familiar face.” Then she’s self-conscious and looking away, hand moving back to her side properly, where it pinches fabric together around the seam of her skirt, releases it, smooths it out, and repeats the process again.
“I used to listen to you sing.” Gracie’s smile is a sad one.
”Shh shh shh! Be quiet!”
“What?”
“Listen.”
“What?”
Ginger head tips toward the open window that overlooks the docks. “The Forthright’s back in port.”
“How can you tell?” The blonde gets up slowly and wanders to look out. It’s dark and difficult to see with just lantern lights and the moon glinting on the water. She pauses there and finally does what she was told to do and listens. “Oh shit, I can hear her,” she whispers.
Liza Messer folds her arms together and leans against the windowsill, a smile slowly spreading across her face. “Strumming my pain with his fingers,” she whisper-sings along with the faint voice drifting from the harbor.
Rue watches from her place on their cot, admiring the way her wife seems lit up in soft silver, like some kind of ethereal being come to this world just to grace her with her light and love.
“God, she sings so beautifully.” Liza turns her head to speak over her shoulder, but doesn’t tear her eyes away from the silhouette of the Forthright. “Wish we had her albums.”
“Well… Another version of you, I guess.” Gracie wraps her arms around herself, unsure if she’s trying to warm herself with her memories or ward off the chill that comes from them being past and not something she can experience in the present.
Or the future.
"Hmmm the old one, the Mad one." Eve smiles softly as she regards Gracie with interest, no matter the world the young red head was drawn to the witches. There's a moment of consideration, crimson eyes veiled by thick eyelashes, the smoke of Eve's own joint mingling with the wisps of red mist that waft off from her body. "Haha! I used to sing more, I used to shout to the heavens and wait for the answer. Tangle with the melodies and ride the wave of rhythm down, down, down." Eve misses those days, college and her youth. Jamming with friends, singing in bars. The Orchid Lounge. There's a brief thought of Angela and it makes the former seer sad.
Gracie feels something whenever she reaches a hand towards Eve and that mist, the pull of something. Eve knows herself and pulls more of the mist back within, she will not be blamed for hurting this world's Rue Lancaster.
"Home is where the heart is my dear," she takes another puff, wiggling her fingers in the air and staring at them now as if they are whispering a tale only to her ears. "Where is your heart my Cherry?"
Gracie smiles brighter for Eve’s nostalgia about how she used to sing. “I don’t think I’ve ever had that much passion about anything,” she says with a shake of her head. It’s a lie. Or at least one Eve perceives by virtue of her knowledge of the Rue Lancaster of her world. Given the profession of this one is a dancer, it’s not much of a grand jeté of logic to assume dancing is this one’s passion as well.
The question of her heart sees her smile turn rueful and she shakes her head. “My home is gone,” Gracie tells Eve in a voice that’s still warm and rich, despite the fact that the answer is one that must be sad. “Long gone.” If she suspects that she wasn’t literally being asked about home, she shows no indication.
"So is mine dearie, so is mine." Eve relates to the physical home being destroyed but her eyes narrow a bit and she smiles, "But you have not lost your heart have you? You have not lost the spirit within. There is a lesson to be learned in knowing yourself. In knowing your heart."
Eve stops and looks up to the sky, smoking s'more of her joint but it's nearing her end. That's okay, she has more. "Have you ever done something so terrible," she whispers, the change of subject swift as Eve's mood swings, "you never thought others would forgive you?"
Whatever has Eve's mind in this space, she's being earnest in this moment, "Have you ever done what you think is right, but the world is telling you it's wrong?" The former seer has been in a space since she's traveled here, taking Mad Eve's body as a gift laid out before her on an altar.
But the exchange still made her feel sick. She was a grave robber. Eve had become disruption on a cosmic level. Did the spirits whose bodies she steals know peace?
The smile tinges with sadness, but only some. “I’ve loved and I’ve left my heart in places I can’t return to.” Gracie lets out a quiet chuckle. “But yeah.” Her head bobs up and down with a nod. “I think everybody’s had that thought at least once in their lives, right? That they’ve done something so terrible because they thought it was right at the time? Or because they just needed to survive…”
It’s a rough world out here. “I’m a good listener, if you want to talk about it,” Gracie offers. A moment after, she lifts her chin. “Can I get a jay? I left mine in the van, but I’ll give you one back before we get on the road again tomorrow.”
A rummaging can be heard above Gracie's head and moments later two joints fall from the sky, "No need for reimbursement, Cherry." The weed fairy provides. "Oh dear, I've been toeing the line since I was a young one. Who’s to say how dark gray is or how light?" Another joint is lit by Eve herself and her gaze peers off into the distance.
There's an uptick of her eyebrows and the grave robber looks off to the side. "And why would I ask her such a thing?" Seemingly to the air. "Bah! That would scare the life out of her!" Eve pauses and sighs, throwing her free hand up and toking on her joint as hard as she can. The smoke from the cannabis intermingles with the wisps of blood red mists that waft off of her shoulder blades.
Those crimson eyes seem to pierce through Gracie's soul as Eve's gaze recenters on the ginger woman. "You know, Cherry. Everytime. I see your death in a vision. You show up shortly after! I'm not sure what exactly that means, but dearie, I must ask."
Leaning over the branch so that she can be seen clearly, "Who on earth would want you dead?"
It’s rainin’ joints! Gracie staggers a little as she steps one way and the other to catch the gifts from her fairy weedmother. “Thanks.” She tucks one into the pocket of her skirt and puts the other between her lips to light up. Breathing it in and holding it for a moment, smiles a little nervously to the question. Coughing quietly as she lets out the smoke, she lowers her gaze.
“I mean,” she wheezes faintly, then recovers properly, “anybody? I don’t know. God, probably.” Her chin dips toward her chest as she shakes her head. “You had a vision about me?” That’s the important issue here, and the seriousness of that is what brings her to lift her head, worry in her eyes. “I didn’t think you…” Again, she shakes her head. “So, what did you see?” If she was nervous before, it’s nothing compared to now.
"Ha! I don't think she would. Actually…" Eve looks sheepish, remembering what has happened to Non-Expressives more often than not when in the presence of Ninbanda.
"Oh, it's not like it used to be! Very different, very new, heh." Is that a confusing answer on whether or not Eve can see the future still? Yes and she likes it that way. Taking a deeper puff and eyeing the smoke as it leaves her nostrils in slow tuffs. "You were deader than me my first time dying. That's actually a lie, because I was blown up! Haha!" She clearly finds her own circumstances very entertaining, but could sense it might not be the same for Cherry here.
"Oh don't fret, dearie, we'll get to the bottom of it.
"I mean if the man with the eye patch was watching over you, that just doesn't bode well, but we can work with that. It's information! Moni always says it's great to have as much as we can before trying to solve the riddle. I tend to beat my head against the wall until I have a breakthrough, get it?"
Gracie’s brow furrows. She is either already too high or not high enough to keep up with Eve’s train of thought, but she does her best all the same. “Wait. Man with the eye patch?” She shakes her head. “You mean a—” Her mouth closes quickly and she briefly makes a face like she’s eaten something sour.
“You’ve seen someone try to… kill me?” Or succeed at it? Gracie puffs anxiously on her joint and watches Eve, head tilted curiously. “And you’ve seen it before?”
"Honey! Darling! Sweetie Pie! You are always running headfirst into the Reaper's nose. I can't really explain what it is with you and the Grim, but you like to orbit each other." The older woman runs a hand through her hair and frowns at the redhead. "I helped save you once, but now it seems like this might be a sign, a beacon." Eve grins widely and puffs from her joint again, smoke caressing her face and drifting down to Gracie's face, contact high weeeewooooo.
"Think hard, baby doll, why does death follow you like it does me? You're very cute! But there must be more, no?"
In this moment Eve is in the highest of mindsets and one February Lancaster has piqued her curiosity. From across the timelines.
"Did you make a deal with it, forget to pay your part of the deal? Why are they always coming for you?"
Gracie laughs nervously. She doesn’t like this notion of death just constantly nipping at her heels, but it doesn’t seem like she’s never thought about it before either. “I don’t know, Miss Mas. I don’t know why things just keep happening to me. Like I said, I feel like God has it in for me.”
Her joint is held out at her side, careful to keep it angled away from the fabric of her skirt and avoid any mishap. “Before everything went to shit, I tried to just live a quiet life. I kept my head down, I did my job, had my circle of friends, had my wife…”
Sprawled out on a teal sofa, she listens to the voice drifting from the speakers. A woman’s voice, singing a song of hope for the future. She’s not terribly into that notion — the present honestly isn’t so bad.
At her left, sitting on a white ottoman and not quite obscuring the wine stain on it, the blonde leans forward, her arms crossing at the wrist and resting against her legs. “Alaska,” she says flatly.
“It’ll be so cold,” the redhead whines, bringing the joint smoldering at her side up to her lips for a puff. She doesn’t move to pass it on. “Why not the Bahamas?”
The answer to that is a simple one. “Nobody has the money to go there.”
“Can we at least go skiing?” She sighs out a lungful of smoke. “I guess the aurora borealis might be pretty.”
The blonde can’t help but chuckle. “I remember when you couldn’t even pronounce borealis, let alone know what it was. You thought it was a tree.”
She makes a face. “I thought it was like arboreal. I feel like that’s a forgivable mistake.”
“Yeah, okay, sure.” The other woman stands, smoothing a hand over the front of her muted blue top. “It’ll be fun, though. Promise.” She cracks a grin and leans over the ginger woman on the couch.
Who blows a stream of smoke in her face, watching it waft up and around her. “We’ll see.” She rolls her eyes when the unblinking stare she’s been locked in doesn’t change. “You’re right,” she relents. “We always make our own fun.”
“That’s the spirit.” Chuckling quietly, she lifts up again. “For now, I’m going for a walk. But next month, you and me. Stars, snow, and… I don’t know. Moose.”
“Stars, snow, moose.” Raking her free hand through her bushy curls, she sighs dramatically. “How romantic.”
“I guess that’s putting a lot of assumption on karma playing a role,” Gracie supposes. “Maybe I just have bad luck.” She coughs after another drag. “Or good luck, since I keep seeming to duck it, right?” The look on her face says she doesn’t believe that for a minute.
"You do have rather bad and good luck, like me." Eve considers and shrugs, whatever keeps landing Rue in the middle of these… situations, Eve can relate.
Eve also understands that often her shenanigans are of her own doing. "We make choices dear, sometimes itsy bitsy small ones and sometimes they are as grand as an old Victorian manor. You catch my drift?" The almost seer poofs into the iridescent crimson nimbus, hovering in the air and pulsating with tiny flecks of red light. "These choices lead to roads that lead to other roads, those lead to the Ends. The final resolutions."
Her smoke voice booms and echoes, sounding as if it's coming from a shell on a dark, rocky beach. "You will survive again." Of that Eve is certain but where she will end up…
"What do you know of other worlds, Cherry?"
Gracie huddles in on herself a little, head turning slightly one way, then the other, like trying to pinpoint the exact location that voice emanates from, even though Eve is sort of everywhere but nowhere at the same time in this form.
“I was at the Cardinal Arcology,” she offers as to her experience with other worlds. “I saw people from other places. Heard stories…” She doesn’t need to ask why, only to wait and find out where this is leading.
"Hmmm. Hmmm."
Eve hums and bops in a loose circle, almost aimlessly musing on whatever she felt was stirring. "Must be careful. Echoes of people can be misleading, we are not monoliths. Every shade has their own life. Every shade ponders their own choices. Mmm?"
If Eve were corporeal she would gaze at her hands in slight horror. Was she herself now more than ever? Wasn't she slowly losing every bit of what lies inside?
"Maybe this can all be saved, Cherry. Maybe there won't be a need for what cracks the egg. BAWK!!" The disembodied voice sounds happy now, hopeful. Eve slowly lifts up towards the sky.
The chicken’s cry causes Gracie to flinch, head dipping lower, shoulders raising higher, hazel eyes squinching shut hard, breath sucked in sharp between picket fence teeth.
Then one eye cracks open and she lets out her breath. Lets the rest of her sag back to neutrality, her head lifting to follow the jovial spirit that is Eve Mas.
After a moment of short breaths she lets out a shaky laugh, nodding her head. “Yeah. Let’s hope for that.”
Eve's form drifts off slowly into the distance, a distorted hum like a nursery rhyme ringing out from the hollow place within. Tendrils formed out of crimson mist search lazily but find nothing and withdraw into the cloud. "Cherrrry, Cheerrrrryyy." Singing softly it echoes back to the redhead.
"Cherrry, Cherrrry."
Red light now twinkles through the trees, Eve iss off to wherever it is her chaotic mind has directed her (more than likely to perform some sort of ritual or chant, screaming to the heavens while twirling in a circle), but Gracie can still hear the echoes of a timelost witch calling to her coven.
Calling for home.