Twin Moons

Participants:

delia2_icon.gif s_eve_icon.gif s_gabriel_icon.gif

Scene Title Twin Moons
Synopsis Ya see what happened was…
Date August 6, 2018

Dreams


Twin moons hang in the pale pink sky above midway through the horizon the skies shift to a deep indigo almost as black as night. The land below the sky is green, lots of trees and hills. A waterfall thunders somewhere in the distance but sitting on top of a grassy overrun hill is a stone hut, one with a small curved opening carved into it and no door, the temperature is humid. Inside the hut and out.

A woman's voice can be heard singing as she bangs around the kitchen, no need for a staff here. Eve Mas is brewing.. something in a muck splattered cauldron. Her hair is tangled into a bun of some sort that hangs off half of her head though every time she whips her hair it moves, wildly.

In the midst of her song the oracle is content with the baking of cookies and… other things while a fire pit smokes in the middle of the room.

Something's for dinner.

Bubble bubble toil and trouble?

It's been a while since Delia's been inside this sort of dreamscape, the last time she's visited witches was years ago when she was lost. That was in Eileen's head. Slowly, the outside of the hut forms into a smaller fare made of mud, sticks, and sod. Twisted branches like gnarled hands reach out from the thatched roof as though begging for change. Waving her hand in front of her, the background behind the hut changes to a more devastated place of grey dust, obsidian shards.

This is where a witch should live, this is more familiar.

Without hesitation, Delia raps on the weathered door, her knuckles creating a sharp cracking sound that echoes through the now barren landscape.

"Come in! You know the way," as Eve stirs the pot with a grin, dressed in a long flowing black dress that moves around her lazily like tendrils of smoke. The contrast with her skin is striking and the light of the fire gives her skin a ghostly glow.

"Dreamy! I hope you're hungry." Whether this is a dream doesn't seem to matter much to the precog and she hums as she dances around the hut, now more appropriate in look. Grabbing this spice and that she sprinkles them inside and smoke rising up from the liquid within.

"Witches brew!" Eve's face distorts and morphs as she talks though she doesn't seem aware.

Delia stoops as she steps inside. "Not really," she murmurs as she idles closer to one of the walls, the one that holds the clock. Oddly enough, it's got one of those black and white cat clocks. The kind that moves its eyes with every tick tock tick tock. Her eyebrows knit together and she squints ever so slightly, "There's someone else though, someone who is. Are you expecting him?"

The cat's face grows a pair of eyebrows, making it look like a cat she used to know that lazed around Ichihara's Book Shop.

She scratches at the wall by the clock, pulling away some of the plaster and mud until a peep hole forms. "There he is…" she says, waving toward Eve, "… want to invite him over?"

The grey, supernatural light of the terraformed environment outside casts in silver through the hole Delia has worked through the wall. The wasteland of grey dust and dull obsidian is as she last shaped it, save for now trees as long and black as shadows create a forest line thick around the witch-hut, and that sound of distant waterfall has been replaced by the sound of ocean, crashing its waves on rocky cliff-side somewhere out of sight. There's a tree trunk, with a woodsman axe stuck into it, left there for later.

No woodsman, though. The glint of eye shine is just visible, followed by the shape of a large black wolf creeping closer. Mud-spattered, fur straggly, tail jutting straight out behind and alert as big paws impress deep in grey dust.

Despite this, that Delia proposes he be invited for dinner feels like the most natural thing in the world.

Milky white eyes widen at the sight of the axe and then the wolf before she breaks out in a grin. "Gabriel!" There he is. She's missed the man. Eve follows after Delia as they come to meet the wolf at the door and Eve crouches to wave cheerfully. "I've got your favorite!" Speaking of, Eve wheels around to scurry to the cauldron where she stirs a few more times and snaps her fingers to the rhythm of a song that's just started to play, Rhiannon by Fleetwood Mac.

Swaying her hips in a circle she points at the table near the large pot and it grows in size and the room too, to accommodate for the space that needed with their new guest.

Eve's hands dance in the air as the plates appear there, of obsidian black material. Three large bowls pop into existence and Eve tip toes over to one of the chairs.

"Hello Hungry," that's the greeting Delia gives as she makes her way to the table, not concerned about being eaten at the moment. There's worse things, there have been worse things, than Eve's mindscape and the redhead is confident enough in her own ability to escape. Maybe not with Eve in tact, but at least she's familiar with the wolf. Delia only knows him by reputation and glimpses of a future that will never be.

She takes a seat in front of one of the bowls before motioning to the last place, "I'm Delia…" it's there that her words drop off to an uncomfortable silence. How does one explain a relationship that will never be but has already happened. "I used to be.." again she pauses, puzzled, "I mean.. I am.." Her shoulders drop as she glances at Eve, "I know Nick."

The wolf enters the little homestead, larger than expected, as wolves tend to be. Big enough that it can see over the edge of the table, nose lifting to make questing sniffs after food. The dense, shaggy bristle of its coat shivers and drips with silty water.

Golden eyes turn to Delia, frank, assessing, before the wolf moves to the third empty chair. For a moment, the coiling of muscles beneath fur seems to imply that the over-large beast intends to jump up onto the rickety wood, but in that same movement, a moment of double vision occurs, and its a man that sits down as men do, instead. Dressed in that same deep black, and the bristle of hair grown in along his jaw is not quite as unkempt as the wolf form's shaggy mane, but he has an aura of wildness to him that never leaves.

There is dirt on his hands that were paws, and he slides his palms together to rid them of it, looking down at the black plate. His dark hair is streaked in silver-grey, thickest at the temples, but otherwise recognisably Gabriel Gray.

"Thank you for this," She says to Delia with a light smile as the bowls in front of the trio fill with the stew, a bloody mix of broth and steak. Not too cooked, there's raw in the icebox in the corner just in case. Eve's head snaps up and she frowns as it dawns on her that she's sought Delia out for a reason, the same for Gabriel.

Dipping her spoon into the bowl before leaning before to slurp at the stew, "I have… news." Her expression guarded and Delia and Gabriel both will know that something is amiss. White eyes looking down into the bowl as if divining the secrets that she sees in dreams but it's more of a way to hide, the cheerfulness she wore as a mask earlier ripped away. The tendrils of her dress play over her face more to hide her emotion before she's leaning back and speaking slowly.

"It's about Eileen."

"Ask and ye shall receive," Delia doesn't know if that's an actual bible quote or not, but it was repeated often enough before the first bomb went off. She just stares at the bowl as the stew bubbles up from nowhere, because it's the most natural thing in the world —of course. Like Eve being a witch and inviting a wolf to dinner. Speaking of which..

She turns to Gabriel and opens her mouth to say something but then that word catches her ear. It causes Delia to frown and slide her gaze back to Eve. She's more dead? Those are the words that Delia doesn't say out loud but because this is all in the mind, they echo through both Eve and Gabriel's head anyway.

Gabriel leans to duck his head down, taking in the smell of meat and salt coming up as steam. His hands close on either side of the bowl, drawing it in closer and lifting it up to touch the edge of it to his lips, where he drinks the broth. Sets it down, dips fingers inside to collect a chunk of steak, tearing it between white teeth as he rolls a look towards Delia when she begins to speak to him.

Then to Eve. He finishes the morsel of half-done meat, his demeanor guarded. As Delia's words take flight through his mind, he returns his attention to the stew in front of him, except now with a distinct lack of appetite.

Eve gulps.

Slurping down more of the stew she's very focused on it apparently. As she eats the cauldron behind him bubbles and smokes, collecting in the air with a shimmer until a young girl, blonde and wispy looking. Her blue eyes glare outward. “That is Sibyl. Somehow she is a black hole of psychic energy.” Eve delivers that easily and pushes the bowl away from her with pale hands, finished. “I.. didn't know when I met her at first. There were clues but..”

“Eileen is in there. Taken over the girl’s body but she doesn't.. she's not right.” She's said it and she slumps in the chair as she looks at Gabriel and then another smokey and bubbly image appears next to Sibyl. A memory of Eve and Sibyl tumbling in the well and then Samson Gray’s face hovering over the rim plays in a static loop. “I think she knows who she is but not really.. there's..” Eve stares at the memory on loop with a grimace, “There's something else too..”

“…I'm so sorry Gabriel.”

clink

Delia's mouth hangs open as the spoon drops into the bowl, splashing a little of the witches brew all around her bowl. A triple blink and the shake of a head later. "No, that's not possible," she snaps, her eyebrows coming together into a furious line. "That little…" the word is left unsaid "..can't be Eileen. No. She just can't. Eileen would never make me-" burn down an orphanage.

The hurt and anger radiate off the redhead like waves of heat. "No. Eileen isn't that."

Hands set on the table, black earth gathered beneath his nails and in the creases of his knuckles, Gabriel twists in his chair enough to watch the slideshow play out in the rise of steam over top of the cauldron. His expression is as severe as it is always is and doesn't seem to stir, even as Eve delivers this news, and then apologises for it, even as Delia's denials eke into the conversation. He remains fixed in place, watching this loop of memory presented, fingers curling inwards as the visage of his father cuts through the tangle.

The sound of claws on wood, but no claws are visible.

"What is it?" he asks, his voice a growl, on the subject of something else, on the same motion that carries his attention back to Eve. While Delia radiates emotion, Gabriel's output is nothing — if anything, it absorbs, with little escaping. A black hole of a presence at the end of this table.

"Didn't want us to find her Del, I.. she's gone to extreme lengths." Her breath short as she grips the table as Gabriel does and the sound of claws echoes in her gut. Twisting her head to stare at the memory on loop Eve bites her lip and debates for a moment. Was this fair? It ultimately didn't matter and as Delia's anger washes over her and Gabriel pulls the seer is swaying from side to wide with a grimace, screwing her eyes shut.

As her chair rocks back and forth the visage of Sibyl vanishes in a poof as another dark shadow draws itself up to an upright position, ice blue eyes peer out from the depths as Eileen steps forward into murky light. Wearing gloves to her elbows, the too pale woman sits in a casino clouded with smoke, her eyes intent in front of her. "There's another from another.. another time. Not here. She has the Dark One." There is just no easy way to say any of this to her friend and Eve's expression is vulnerable as she stares unblinking at the smoky image of Eileen. "She's angry." Everyone seemed to be.

"No. No!"

Throwing herself back in her chair, Delia folds her arms and glares off to the side. "I don't know how you can get darker than burning down an orphanage." A brief, maybe sympathetic, glance is passed over to Gabriel but it's fleeting. Almost sooner than it's given, she's glaring again, this time at Eve. "So there's two, two, and —" The redhead wrinkles her nose and puckers her lips into a tiny frown. "Just one is angry?"

Then again…

"What does she have to be angry about?" Besides being hunted, killed before her time, swallowed by a black hole psychic (the one not sitting at the table with them). Speaking of which, she turns back to Gabriel. After all, she does know him a little by reputation. "How are you going to pull the sick little monkey out of her and make her the real Eileen again?"

"Stop it."

The subject of it is not Delia's query, but the hellish combination that is this unnatural image of Eileen rising from the steam, wound with Eve's words. Gabriel's demand is quietly uttered, perhaps too quietly, and then only stands, reaching with one long arm to grip the heated edge of the cauldron and upending it in a flourish of violence as he repeats himself in a loud, fang-filled growl, steam whorling, smoking as strange contents sear across the warped wooden planks of the floor. Fire burns bright, exposed, setting shadows dancing.

An improvement, perhaps, compared to the cold collapse he could have become. Eve's seen that up close. "Eileen is dead," is to Delia, now, a flash of white teeth, brow knotted in his fury. That would be a no. And then, to Eve, "She's gone. No coming back from dying stars."

Delia's fury and Gabriel's outburst has Eve leaping from the table to land on the counter in a crouch, hands dangling down between a wide open stance. The hot tears in her eyes stream down her face collecting in a rapidly growing by the minute. Eve's sobs ring loud in the ears of the two as she shuts her eyes and throws her head back feeling the pain of the two mixed with her own. Pale hands go to clutch at her hair as she yanks at it while shaking her head from side to side, again her face distorts in a blur before righting itself the expression still one of pain.

Rocking from side to side the hut mimics her movements shifting everything in the room, "I can't take it back. I can't take it back. I can't take it back." Like a broken record the seer threatens to spin out into a full out episode if this isn't already one. Her eyes squeezed shut as tears continue to fall the puddle wobbling in the movements of the hut, a bead of liquid sliding down to Gabriel's foot. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

"Okay then…" Following Gabriel's logic, Delia simply nods and then turns to stare at her bowl. The rocking hut threatens to interrupt the slow dawn of the redhead's understanding of the situation. Then there's Eve's — breakdown? "Eileen, our Eileen, is dead Eve. Even if she was swallowed by that girl somehow.. what then?" She rubs at her forehead and then turns to the clairvoyant. "Stop that," she barks, her voice turning as gravelly and menacing as the wolf itself, "you're not allowed to pile that on us and then shut down."

With a snap of her fingers, Delia steadies the hut, stops the shifting and mimicking, clears up the puddle at Gabriel's feet. Although, she can't do the same for Eve.

As the hut starts to rock, Gabriel grips the edge of the table, unafraid but still uneasy at this sudden sense of fragility in this world, enough to scatter his mounting rage. When it settles with a sudden lurch of stillness, he looks to Delia, as if better comprehending what is even happening in this moment. She can sense his realisation like the way a lock gives beneath a key — that this is a dream, and what governs it, and how he has come to be here.

And then he just looks tired, head bowing.

Moves to sit down, chair scraping beneath his weight. "I felt it," he says, slowly, to the room. "What was left of her, after her body was destroyed, a ghost, a psychic imprint left behind. I felt the moment it was torn apart, scattered, like ribbons. Feathers. She died twice. I don't…"

He stops speaking, there, looking at the centre of the table for something to look at.

Eve's wailing becomes warped and twisted as her face follows suit the open mouth expression swirling into a mix of white and black and Eve's face slides back into place although this Eve stares ahead at the two with a calm expression. Picking lightly at her loose and wild hair, she begins to coil it into a tight bun with a snap of a finger a black chopstick materializes and she sticks it firmly into place. "Apologies, she can be a.. a mess."

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Settling herself down on the countertop and crossing her legs to grip at her knees Eve tilts her head to stare at Gabriel, "I didn't know. I.. well she wants assistance now." She doesn't pick at the state of her dress it can't be helped, a brown eye regards her reflection in the evaporating pool the wailing Eve fading with it. This is a tense situation and Eve's eyes cloud in thought.

"People are trying to save her, I guess it is up to you to help.." a light frown creases her wine colored lips. "This is.. not what anyone would want to hear but we're here now." Head turning to look at Delia, "Do we let her wither away completely?" A twitch of her eyelid at the brutality of that.

Yes, it is sort of all her fault.

Delia bares the brunt of Gabriel's realization with a slight lift of her chin and a clench of her teeth. The Ryans pride shining through, brighter than all of her other attributes. At least at this moment. Though, when he breaks first and hunkers into the chair, she stands a little straighter, stepping up to claim the alpha spot, in spite of Eve literally tearing out of hysterics and taking control of herself.

"How?"

Her answer to every one of Eve's statements and questions. Delia just doesn't bother repeating it for each and every one. "…And I guess who, who is trying to help?" More importantly, "Does Nick know?"

Eve's transformation draws his eye, and even if his shape is that of a man — even more, now, than it was a few moments ago, human-like laxness in his shoulders — there is a sense of hackles raising. Distrustful of masks, or splits. They only form cracks, compromise the foundation of the whole. Gabriel is somewhat acquainted with inner multiplicity.

But this one speaks calmly and direct, and raising of hackles isn't followed through with anything else. Gabriel lapses into silence, letting Delia's questions stand in priority.

Now brown eyes stare into Gabriel’s for minutes at a time as this more calm and direct Eve weighs her words against the people in the room, whatever she’s looking for in the man’s eyes she must have received because she relaxes and sits up even straighter than before, “Kaylee, Luther, I need.. To talk to Gillian. We also need to talk to Nick.” Delia is given a look as well as Gabriel. “I can’t force you to help Gabriel but I.. implore you to at least meet the girl. The situation is.. Distressing to say the least.” This unruffled Eve waves a hand as to the hows. “We have the abilities of gods at our disposal I believe we just need to be.. Creative.”

Sliding slowly down so that her feet touch the floor of the hut she strides over to the fire and overturned cauldron. Eve kicks at the embers at the side and she frowns deeply.

“Maybe bring the fractured Eileen into another vessel, person or.. Bird. And..” Eve shudders, “We could rip that one with the Dark One out but we might risk our Eileen ending up with that darkness.” It’s not an easy fix then, “What I think Nick and Kaylee are hoping for is your help Gabriel.” Eve doesn’t smile still and she doesn’t fidget, her frown almost permanent. “This.. is.. “ she has no words.

Delia glances at the black hole wolfman before gritting her teeth and turning to Eve. "You can't shove her into a bird and what kind of a vessel do you think you could get for her? There's no such thing as a coma patient anymore, the infrastructure just isn't here to keep anyone alive like that." She shuts her mouth right away after that, not voicing the next bit that runs through her mind. Unfortunately, her thoughts seem to run loud and clear through this place.

You'd need a fresh kill.

Immediately, the redhead shakes her head. "Or someone freshly braindead," then she just looks guilty because she's thought of a way. A passing thought ripples, almost tangibly, through the air. One of a woman, it could be anyone, just never waking up.

Names spring up like unwanted weeds into the conversation of things personal and dear, names familiar and unfamiliar. Kaylee. Luther. Gillian. Gabriel turns a look away in a restless shift of dislike for such a network of support and aligned interests, having never been much of a team player, and so as Eve implores him, she's doing so to his profile. But she can, too, tell he is listening, absorbing, for better or for ill.

He reflects: trying to stay dead when you're not is a fool's errand. He shoulda just dug down six feet and planted himself beneath the earth and do it properly.

And in a grave is where Eileen ought to be.

Having lived a certain reality for so many years, the idea of restoration, to birds or humans alike, feels more like necromancy, and indecision and discomfort are visible as he shifts a gaze to Eve, to Delia. He can be certain of one thing, though, which he states: "I'll find her."

The girl, he means.

Delia’s plan of action makes the oracle stare deeply into the dream manipulator’s eyes, “Nick and Gabriel have the most right. If they choose..” Gaze catching an ember still fighting for life maybe as Eileen has inside of Sibyl. “Then I stand by it.” Lips turned to a frown because a death is still a death something Eve wishes she always thought in the waking world. Eve leaves the counter to sit next to Delia while gripping the woman’s shoulder, a show of support. A sisterhood. One of their own was in trouble.

Unite.

The word pings around in the heads of the trio in the hut but Eve either pretends not to hear or actually doesn’t hear it. Gabriel’s decision gets a flicker of eye movement, she knows his methods. Lone wolf and while who is more qualified to seek out Sibyl while she is kept by Eileen than him? No backup though.. It just seems..

“Take Nick with you,” a man without a gift or at least none Eve knows of. “He is of her blood,” but blood held power all the same. “He deserves to.” Fingers snap and a glass filled to the brim with red wine appears in an outstretched hand and the pale woman takes a small sip. “If you want help with what comes next. Delia and Kaylee.. Kaylee is gifted. Hear her out.” The oracle done with dealing out bad news and stepping into territory that has already got her thrown down a well takes another sip this time more like a gulp of wine but not a bit runs down her chin or onto her dress. What was a chaotic wind now laid as still as prey hiding from it’s fate and Eve’s hair and face are as immovable but she utters again softly the wineglass pressed against her lips, “I’m sorry.”

Eve gets the strangest look from Delia, it gets a little more strange with every phrase uttered. “Of her blood? Really Eve? Just say brother, come on.” Her eyebrows knit together a little in worry though, when the suggestion sinks in. “If you do take him with you, you’d better take care of him… or else.” Against the wolf, Delia knows that the threat holds about as much weight as a hissing kitten, but she can only hope that he pays attention to her seriousness.

“I mean, really be careful,” she adds, “Sybil is… she’ll do awful things to you if you’re not. She can control you in your dreams, not like anything I’ve ever seen but… I was sleeping when she made me burn down the orphanage. So take care of Nick.”

Gabriel makes no promises as to Nick's involvement and offers no reassurances as to his safety, either. He absorbs their words — advice and warnings and apologies — with all the pending wariness of a predator taking in stimuli, no different than the squeaks of prey or the rattling of branches in the wind. Ears back, bright eyes fixed.

Moves, then, rising up from the chair and turning for the door. There's no supernatural transformation between man and wolf, more like a moment of double vision with one image bleeding through and superimposing over the other, and the whole room seems to smell like wet beast and warm blood. The wolf turns with a bristle of thick, thorny black fur raised along its spine and shoulders, blood-infused drool spattered across its silvered maw and the rough tangled fur of its breast, trailing mud and rending claw marks into the wooden floor as it takes off at a dash for the door.

The hunt is on, as it were.

His exit out of the dream is crude, a surging attempt to wake himself up as he throws himself bodily against the confines of the dreamworld in a violent effort to escape.

The woman with the weird way of saying things just wiggles her toes and a full glass of red wine that looks… suspiciously thick materializes in front of the dreamer. “Have something to drink dear, this is a stressful time.” Eve’s fingers tighten on her own wineglass as Gabriel shifts into a wolf once more. As he looks back at them the wine in her glass begins to bubble and she leans forward. “Gabriel I—”

And then the wolf is mad dashing out of the door, out of the dream. Away from the truth he has been confronted with. A shiver runs through the oracle as she stops and leans back into her chair again, watching as the door bursts apart and a vicious wind billows in taking each candle lit out.

Sitting in near total darkness the pale woman almost glows, looking over at Delia with a look that's undefinable Eve crosses her leg slowly and takes a sip of her wine that's stopped with its bubbling. The edges of the glass burned as if touched by flame. Mid sip the woman seems to switch and instead tips the wine glass back guzzling the rest of the wine with eyes closed, once it's drained she places the cup gently on the table and stares ahead at the opening in front of the pair, eyes filled with regret, “That went well.”


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