The air was crisp and cool, the sky blue with the occasional sheet of clouds to pass over the sun and send the temperature plunging for about 15 to 20 minutes until the bright warming rays could break through once more. Margot decided that this, of all days, was the best day to go back out to that spot she had once-upon-a-time-ago chosen in the mountainside as her 'witches den away from home'.
William had recently come to, and Margot wanted to get him out and stretch his legs and pump fresh air into his lungs after the extended stint almost literally watching paint dry within the walls of his new home. So she'd pulled on a hat and mittens (both natural-colored wool) and a black winter coat and boots and driven him out into the mountains to come with her on this witchy errand.
"I'd burried them by the big rock I wanted to make a cauldron," she was explaining while her boots crunched on crumbing leaves, the last to fall recent from their branches and be anything besides spongy and decaying underfoot. "I thought about a year should do it, and wouldn't you know it we're about there already." She was talking about runes, she'd previously explained in the car. Or, more to the point, runestones that she had carved a year earlier and buried in the earth to help instill them with some connection to it, or some nonsense like that.
William
He likes being outside, and having the opportunity to be outside. He’s a little like a plant in that regard; if given the opportunity William will seek out the first opportunity to be in the sunlight and just enjoy what it is. He wasn’t this way before he moved here. Colorado does a strange thing to one’s desire to be out and about plus it didn’t help that Louisiana had far too much swamp land to be a particularly sane place to go traipsing through nature.
“A year and a day,” he tells her, “you’re probably pretty on with that.”
He left lights on in the house still. A nice, steady stream of lights where he came and went so he could see precisely what was in the room and where his exits were. Things had stopped scratching in the walls, thankfully. It didn’t stop him from listening sometimes and trying to track things down that weren’t there. It wouldn’t stop him from zoning out periodically, but it went from being almost ceaseless to an hour at the very worst. He’s a lot more present and, again: sunlight.
William’s been beaming the whole time they’ve been out here, looks up at the sky and the resting life and, yes, seems content with things being precisely how he thought they were supposed to be.
“Are you still gonna make the cauldron?”
Margot
"Yeah, but I'm still gonna need help with Shaping it and hollowing it out." She had parried his habit of leaving lights on where he went by turning them off as he abandoned them forgotten. She'd snapped at Ned once about it, who'd explained it wasn't him, and after that she seemed fine with just continuing the practice of quelling the light when she found it.
She glanced back over her shoulder at him and appeared content with what she found. Much like a golden retriever, taking him outside had of course promised good for him (so long as nothing unpleasant and unexpected descended upon them this afternoon). Her expression was relaxed and she grinned a little when they met eyes, then looked forward once more. A big heavy stick she'd found, sheared of its extra branches, and had adopted as a walking stick thunked into the ground to serve as leverage to help her and her backpack up the incline of the mountainside trail.
"It's not exactly a priority, though-- I'm not ready to, like, set up shop here yet. So no sense in leaving something as conspicuous as a cauldron about until I've got the place properly established and warded and organized and stuff."
William
(un)surprisingly, he actually had gear for hiking and being out in the wilderness. He had a coat that could stand it if it so decided to become unseasonably cold. Then again, any Hermetic worth their salt could deal with a shift in temperature and rarely if ever had to worry about the prospect of frostbite save for if one felt they might fall unconscious.
“When you’re ready to do it, let me know? If you’d want the help I’d love to give it,” said like he was actually able to make plans for the future. The when portion of him being back seemed more definite and less like a timeframe parents give children when they’re asking when they can go to the pool. Soon becomes later becomes not today becomes-
Anyway. They were going to go to the goddamned pool at some point.
“I’m pretty excited about your little witchy hole in the wall, not gonna lie. I mean, how awesome is that, you will have your own hobbit hole filled with don’t fuck with me.”
Margot
Margot chuckled at how William described her mountainside witch burrow-to-be. "I suppose that's the idea, yeah..." She'd envisioned it as a place to get away from distractions and get in touch with the energies that Andraste pulled her power from and in sync with the world around her. She imagined creating many shelves in the walls, a small circular window she could push open if she needed more airflow, a pit in which to burn that which needed burning, a cauldron she could pull over the flames and off it again as need be. A bunk to sleep and contemplate. A circle to sit and Work. She imagined spending a lot of time there, but not just yet.
"I figure by the time I work out how to Cast from a distance, then this place will get a lot of use. Until then, I won't be doing much out here besides meditating and decorating, and that only remains productive for so long."
William
”Work in it anyway even until then, so you get the place to feel like you. Build your own little bubble of reality and reinforce that this is your space. That way, when you Work, it’s easier on you and you don’t run the risk of turning yourself inside out or exploding or-“ he gestured to himself “-going into Quiet. Your reality. Your rules.”
The place should get a lot of use, and at that juncture he was thinking of things. William had an expression when his mind wandered that was assuredly different from the expression he adopted when it was getting pulled somewhere. He continues along, but stopped for a second to pick something up and pocket it.
“That is gonna be your lab.”
Margot
The advice that Will had to offer was fair, and it was clear it sank in because Margot listened attentively, and the one eye he could see from how she walked ahead of him with her head turned to the side was bright. The more her Resonance saturated the place, the more the area became familiar with her Work, the easier and more natural weaving reality from that space would become.
"Hmm...," she said, then nodded. "Good call." A small smile crawled on her face when he mentioned it being her lab, and she looked around before pausing and stepping off the trail, leading him from the path that the national forest rangers would prefer they stick to and out on one she was working on cutting into the earth with her own two feet.
"I suppose I should leave a little magick there before we leave." She thought for a second, then snapped the fingers of the hand not already wrapped around the walking stick. "I'll test the runes! And a little premonition with them..."
Her free hand tucked into the pocket of her jacket, though soon after that action she found herself rolling and hitching her shoulder to pull the backpack's strap back up into place. She called back over her shoulder: "What should I try to read, do you think?"
William
[Manip+Sub: this is a completely innocent question to divine, I swear]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )
William
She smiled, which in turn made him smile and continue tromping along down the trail. It wasn’t delicate when he got off the path, mostly because he needed to make sure he didn’t fall over or trip on something that nobody else could see or something to that effect. What should she read.
“Something easy? If it’s really off you’ll know you messed up, so you can always try it again. Or, y’know, give the runes a few more baking days,” he couldn’t help but grin at the notion. Because, as we all know, magickal tools were like well-crafted foods. They need a little tweaking sometimes on the recipe and you can’t be afraid to pop them back in the oven if they aren’t quite done yet. Using something undercooked made for a terrible meal, and could ruin everything else and-
Okay, Holmes, enough with the food metaphors, did you eat today. (Oh crap, did I?) If you must ask-
“Do you have a protein bar or something?” But then it was back to the question at hand- butterfly that he was, “you could check and see what the sunrise is going to be like tomorrow.”
Margot
"Define 'like'," was the intellectual little lady's reply. She stopped her heavy-booted (yet nimble-footed) way along the path, stepping over roots cutting across the slope's edge that she was making her path into. The walking stick was propped up against a tree that grew horizontal from the ground, and the backpack was pulled from her back and set down on the ground for her to crouch before. A zipp! echoed in the mostly-bare branches above, and a pack of trail mix was pulled forth along with a bottle of water, and both were offered up to Will's hands one after the other.
"Do you mean what time it will rise? What the weather will be doing? What you will be doing?"
William
Trail mix was offered up which he accepted very, very readily. It was opened and food went straight into his mouth. He’s lost some weight since this whole expedition going off into his own little world, and frankly he probably couldn’t have spared much to begin with. Part of it came from a distrust of what he was eating (Which he had likely let Margot and/or Ned know on several occasions) or just because he forgot that he was supposed to be eating and had difficulties placing where he was in time and what he was supposed to be doing at the time. So, there was food, and it was delicious judging by the sound he made.
William is about as easy to please as a rescue golden retriever right now. There wasn’t much of a filter these days and thoughts, complex and magickal or mundane and otherwise. “I don’t know, pick one? Just… make sure the sun’s involved. Maybe as a point for orientation?”
“What time it’ll come up would be nice, and the weather. If you want to see what’s most likely to happen you could see what I’m doing and then we can compare it to tomorrow?”
Margot
Lips pursed together in contemplation, and Margot nodded and zipped the pack back up again before shouldering it and grabbing her walking stick up. This way Will could walk along with the bag of trail mix and the water in hand. She seemed eager to get to the place where she'd buried her runes to rest, given the slightly more hastened pace when she'd found her face once more.
When they arrived in the place where the ground plateaued into a nice flat space before the rock face of the mountain pushing its way higher up, where the trees grew tall and shady, Margot looked up and breathed in deep and let her backpack slide down off her shoulders. It clattered just a little when it hit the ground, but she paid it no worry. Instead, she turned to look out at the view over the valley, where the buildings and streets were nestled up against the wilderness that would always press them right back. Judging by the again content look on her face, it was clear she had reaffirmed her decision making in choosing this spot as her own.
"Hey, pass some of those?" She asked of Will and whatever remained of the trail mix before leaning down and digging a small garden spade (wrapped in a kitchen towel) out from one of the front pockets of her pack.
William
He was quiet the rest of the way, and generally seemed content to just follow along and enjoy the surroundings. He occasionally hopped over something that may or may not have been there. Occasionally stalled to look at things or seemed dubious of some incredibly innocuous thing like a rock or a tree or something to that effect. Overall, traveling was not an arduous task and nature- with all its sunshine and life instead of everything falling apart and burning out- was a worthwhile task in his mind.
There was a fair bit of trail mix left when they got there, and about half of the water. Once she took what she needed, the young man settled down into a space nearby by the gigantic would-be cauldron in question.
“You ever just know when something is right?” he starts, “because the look on your face says that you’re having one of those moments.”
Margot
Margot looked up to Will from where she crouched, then grinned and blushed just enough to color the apples of her cheeks and rims of her ears. "Yeah," she admitted, and glanced back out over the view once again before picking up the spade and walking over to a large hunk of rock, something easily as wide as Will and tall as Margot's shoulders, rough and rounded from the wind and elements. A solid piece of dark granite that's been there for a Very Long Time, with plenty of moss riding upon its shoulders and back.
"I always figured that I'd stay by the ocean. When I was growing up, that was the thing that resonated with me the most. It was eternal and unrelenting, depthless and full of so many mysteries that man can never hope to solve them all. Even after I Awoke, I thought it was inevitable that I would go back. It just seemed like it aligned with my essence, my magick and how it works. Like maybe my connection to Andraste and her lands was from the shared edges of that ocean, and I'd have to go back to settle sometime."
As she spoke, she crouched once more, but this time beside that massive rock that would one day be a similarly massive cauldron, and began to dig. The dirt turned dark and rich (encouraged by spells and tendings over the course of the past year or so), but still full of rocks that needed to be pruned out. Before long they turned up a small burlap sack tied shut with a strip of animal leather (something she purchased, of course-- she wasn't quite to the point of skinning her own animals for her materials just yet), and she pulled it free from the earth and slapped it gently so the dirt stuck to the fabric fell back to the ground.
"But this place feels right, too. The lakes are deep and secluded and have mysteries of their own just as well. It feels promising, that I can still be where I want to be. Not everything in my life has to be dictated by the Goddess."
William
He leaned against it, shoulder to the stone and then he rested his head on it while he watched her work. He wasn’t tired, not by a long shot, but the young man seemed content to half lounge for a moment and become familiarized on an energetic level to things that were most likely going to be an integral part of his cabalmate’s practice.
“You might have been attracted to staying by the ocean for different reasons. Something you’d come into later maybe? Or… I don’t know, the ocean is something that is majestic and terrifying to me; water carves valleys and weathers mountains into sand. It leveled pretty much all of New Orleans when I lived there. But… it’s something to be respected, you know?”
“I don’t know, maybe we’re just drawn to things that seem bottomless and unfathomable- lakes, oceans, caves, the outer reaches of the realms we can barely touch-“ William seems to realize he’s rambling, and that his thoughts are going off the rails and onto details and tangents and he isn’t staying present. Meditation had not been his strongest suit; Kalen had been less than pleased with his inability to stay on a tangent or sit still for long.
“You’re chosen because you are who you are; I think if everything about you were to be determined by your Goddess she wouldn’t stand by your side… water like blood.”
Water is blood. Blood is water. The two mingle.
Margot
"That makes some sense," Margot agreed, affirming that even if he had found himself rambling a little, something had been taken away from it. "The unfathomable elements are the bits that attract me. And the possibility for the unknown. But I suppose I'm learning that the unknown exists almost everywhere, even where you'd least expect to find it."
She opened the bag, finally content with the amount of dirt she'd shaken from it, and poured its contents onto the sparsely grassed ground next to the patch she'd dug up. Within there were a plethora of small round stone-shaped objects, though they were a smooth ivory that would make him suspicious that they were actually carved from bone. All had different runes in the style of simple lines (he would probably recognize them as Ogham, with how Hermetics loved their languages), and each meant their own thing.
She scooped the rocks up again and rubbed them over her palms, chill from the freezes the earth had suffered since she'd left them there, returning her warmth and familiarity to them, and perhaps also feeling them for what they had learned while she was away. Soon, once the warmth of her body was finally starting to linger in the stones themselves, she puffed her breath from her lungs and swallowed and then opened her hands to let them fall to the ground. A few moments passed for the energy in the air to settle once more before she looked down upon the runes as they'd fallen.
[What will tomorrow's sunrise be like? A Weather Forecast - Entropy 2 + Forces 2: Coincidental + Bone Runes (-1 diff focus)]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (6, 6) ( success x 2 )
William
Hermetic practice was often steeped in the importance of symbolism and ritual. When he looked at her runes, everything had a significance that he was looking for and would inevitably tell him more about Margot in the process. The runes were smooth and ivory-colored and perhaps not stone in the slighted. The language was Ogham, the lines were careful and precise. Each set of lines had its own distinct meaning, as they always did.
He wondered how they would fall, what made the difference, if there were inverse positions and if it were a mirror or simply relaying more of the same whole. Time had come naturally for him; he’d been too afraid to go back and explore Entropy further, finding that the basic lessons had proven to be too much for him to handle at his awakening and he suspects- well, who really knew what he suspected. Would it be some slope to fall? Some secret that would make the wall crack (don’t you want it to crack)
Will waited, all baited breath and wonder waiting to see if there would be some kind of confirmation, something that would set his mind at rest that there was one thing he didn’t have to worry about enforcing.
Margot
One day the air here would seem thick and cloying without an actual stench lingering in it, though it seemed like it ought to have one. It would seem meaty and dangerous like the kind of place that meat came to die and then rot if it couldn't be consumed fast enough. People would steer clear of the area presuming a mountain lion or small bear might have set up home there. Margot's bloodied aura didn't stick to the trees and earth just yet, though, but it did thrum an even tune into the air while the runes settled to show likeliness.
The witch's eyes fluttered open and then down upon the runes, and the space between her brows pinched while her face screwed up with concentration and tried to make out what she was reading. It had taken a few goes over with the flashcards and some dummy stones (painted instead of carved, rock instead of bone), but she'd memorized the foreign alphabet she'd used to call upon the old words and ways of her Goddess's art, and tried now to make sense of what it was telling her.
After some time she cleared her throat and stated. "It's gonna be cold and it's gonna be wet."
An anti-climactic reading, but then what did one expect from a weather report? It was tricky to vocalize, but Margot felt almost certain that she was picking up a touch of boredom and judgment in how the runestones had arranged themselves on the ground. With her left hand holding open the bag that smelled like the mountain dirt, she plucked the runes from the ground and dropped them back from whence they came. "I suppose we'll wait and see if that holds true."
William
"But it comes up, right?"
Oops.
Margot
The bone-stones stopped plunking into the sack for a few moments while Margot paused to stare at William with surprise. After those moments passed she binked a couple of times, then went back to the act of collecting.
"Uhhh.... Yeah, pretty sure of it, otherwise I think everything would end up being too shitty for it to be able to rain and snow."
William
He doesn’t even try to not look relieved when she says that. The young man looks back at the stones, tries to laugh it off like it was some kind of dummy question but it’s clear that it was anything but. William Holmes was legitimately concerned that the sun might not come up. Runes fall as they will, do their duty to tell the odds and what may come in their favor.
“It can snow for a little while after the sun goes out,” he says, conversational, “but yeah, you’re right, it would end up pretty shitty.” The Hermetic confirms this before using the soon-to-be-great cauldron to stand himself up.
Margot
"I suppose it would depend on what kind of snow was falling... Though the Runes did specifically say that it would be 'wet', and I don't think that a nuclear winter's snow would be water. And if it were snowing because Yellowstone finally exploded, that wouldn't be water-based either."
The stones tucked away into their bag, Margot rose to her feet once more as well and thumped the bag a few more times against the heel of her boot for good measure before she tossed it over beside her bag to be tucked away later, when they were ready to go, and carried home to join a plethora of other supplied dedicated to pulling the fibers of reality and manipulating/reading them to her benefit (or, often, distress).
The cauldron stone was looked upon next, and her bare palm lay against a spot where the sun had been cutting through to warm it. Felt the difference in temperature between where her palm lay and where a few fingers cross into a shadow, where the stone was far more cold to her skin. "This thing is gonna be a beauty, though... I'll need to build some kind of... I don't know, lift-and-pulley system to get it on and off the fire. I'll never be able to just up and drag it on my own."
William
“Have you felt it? Wait, duh, of course you have… this thing is fantastic. I kinda like stones. They have seen all sorts of things. But, yeah, you’re going to need something that will make it possible to actually move. Or, you know, build a pit underneath it and heat it from the bottom? I don’t know… the pulley system seems cool.”
“Kind of like the rigging they use to fly Peter Pan,” he pats the stone before tracing some mark on it that seemed particularly interesting. It wasn’t a crack, but rather some vein that caught the light just right and therefore caught the sunflower’s attention. “It’s one set of ropes for up and down and another set for sidewards motions… I think? I dunno, maybe we could fly Ned. Or you could learn to levitate things. That’s also a thing for the future.”
MargotMargot chuckled twice-- first when he'd asked if she's felt the stone and immediately corrected himself to continue, and second when he'd proposed that she learn to levitate, or Ned learn to levitate, or that perhaps they learn to levitate Ned? She shook her head and adjusted the wool cap she was wearing to keep it warm.
"Even if I did learn to levitate things... which I think I could... it would be a hell of a feat to lift something this heavy over and over again-- not worth it if I could make something do it for me." That she is speaking of tools and pulleys and inanimate somethings is unspoken, but the fact that it's not specifically clarified had a small cast of something looming, like foreshadowing, on the horizon of ponderance. She took her hand from the stone and stuck it (along with its other) into her coat pocket before turning to regard the mountainside, and the small nook she planned to hollow out further and make her own.
"That's gonna be a pain in the ass... And will definitely need to wait until I can manipulate Matter. And until it's warm." She furrowed her brow, now doubt imagining her fingers plunged into unpleasantly frozen earth to try and Work the churning and bringing them out cold as hell and just as red from how frozen they would be too.
"It'll turn out nice, though," she said with a sense of semi-finality, no doubt to be found. A glance was cast back to Will, and she raised her eyebrows when she did. "Ah, you just let me know whenever you wanna get back. I've got what I came for, I think I'll see if they do well in their forecast when the morning comes and go from there."
William“I want to learn to fly,” he tells her, “but I’ll be honest it is pretty low on my list. I need to learn to keep you and Ned from dying horribly in the event something bad happens and time is a factor… I also need to return all of my voicemails because I finally figured out how my cell phone works again.”
Which was true, at some point during November he, in a less coherent moment, had likely shaken his cell phone at Margot and been wordlessly confused by the fact that he couldn’t figure out how to answer the damned thing despite the fact that he knew he very obviously knew how to use a cell phone- the obvious portions made sense but the parts that involved numbers and symbolic communication were right out. You don’t realize how much stuff you have to read and interpret (numbers, words, certain symbols in pictures) until literally none of them make sense. As of yesterday, William Holmes had seventy-six unheard voicemail messages and enough texts to compose a novella.
When did he want to get back? Let her know? “It’s actually really nice out here.,, let’s wander around. Are there any creeks?” a second, “did you stop being a terrifying doom beacon yet?”
Margot"It's good to see you've inherited the Doc's anxiety-addled belief that Ned and I are constantly on the verge of getting ourselves killed." Margot was smiling when she said it, but the expression was sidelong in the way that accompanies a half-hearted scolding. She kept her hands in her pockets as she turned to regard the landscape and hummed her agreement. "It is nice out here..."
Then, when asked about creeks, she shrugged.
"I dunno-- there's one that cuts along the main trail near its top, the one we came up to get here. There could be more; I haven't seen any but I also haven't really roamed too far from here just yet.
Her eyes hopped toward the side of the mountain as it continued along its side-- her little plateaued space tapered for a ways further but soon the mountain's slope overtook the landscape once more. Out further that way, where a shadow from a peak was persistently present, the snows were white and crusted with ice in their small clinging and rippling drifts on the ground. "It looks pretty slick out that way, though..."
William“You hang out with me; the entire reason I got invited here was my propensity for getting people in trouble- ergo,” he gestures outward, grinned and presented his logical conclusion, “all those trips to Taco Bell we’ve made? Ticking timebombs. I’m dangerous.”
He couldn’t keep a straight face saying that, and he had to laugh at the very prospect of him being some sort of literal threat to, well, anything. William Holmes is as dangerous as a Disney princess. His attention flickered down the way that she had pointed out, where her attention fell and, instead, he found himself wandering in that direction anyway because it seemed like just the natural thing to do. Impulse control wasn’t on his to-do list today.
“What are your favorite places out here? What drew you to the mountain-what made you say this is mine rather than any other place in the reserve?”
MargotHesitation was rife around the little witch when William first started roaming off toward the south, like she could already see him slipping and scramble-slide-falling his way a good twenty or thirty feet down the mountain before finally stopping on a tree. While she was sure they'd figure something out, it still wasn't the kind of afternoon she'd hoped to have.
Ultimately, though, she'd start creeping along after him, even though she was reluctant to step off the actual plateau itself. "The seclusion," she answered, and there was no hesitation to be found there. "A lot of other space is too open, but this is a mountain to my back with a mountainside to my front, and the cover of trees from above and afar to keep people from knowing I'm here and what I'm up to, too." If he glanced back, he'd find her smiling apologetically and shrugging. "Nothing too mystical, just practicality, I suppose. Though the mountains are old, and the view is nice."
She then rembered a question he'd asked earlier as well, and that she'd never answered it. "Oh!" Was the declaration of memory, and she continued speaking into the otherwise still daytime air toward Will's roaming back. "I don't think I'm throwing out the beacon any longer... I went to the grocery store the other day and the clerk actually made small talk with me."
William“Not everything has to have some great mystical significance. Sometimes, because I wanted it is good enough. Hell, it’s more than enough,” he replied. Was less ambling now and more actually walking towards the spot with the snow flecks and the ice with purpose. It was a conscious decision of precisely where he wanted to go, though the young man did do a quick look around to see if he could find some other location with the white stuff peppering the area. The more treacherous route, it would seem, might not be his only option.
The clerk made small talk, she blurter out that she didn’t think she was a death beacon anymore and he turned around to face her. Kept walking, though Mr. Holmes was content to walk backwards for a bit. “Fuck yeah small talk!”
“I haven’t been grocery shopping in awhile, but I found out that apparently my parents keep trying to send groceries to my house because Jenn told them that I was really sick so I couldn’t make the holidays.”
"Even if I did learn to levitate things... which I think I could... it would be a hell of a feat to lift something this heavy over and over again-- not worth it if I could make something do it for me." That she is speaking of tools and pulleys and inanimate somethings is unspoken, but the fact that it's not specifically clarified had a small cast of something looming, like foreshadowing, on the horizon of ponderance. She took her hand from the stone and stuck it (along with its other) into her coat pocket before turning to regard the mountainside, and the small nook she planned to hollow out further and make her own.
"That's gonna be a pain in the ass... And will definitely need to wait until I can manipulate Matter. And until it's warm." She furrowed her brow, now doubt imagining her fingers plunged into unpleasantly frozen earth to try and Work the churning and bringing them out cold as hell and just as red from how frozen they would be too.
"It'll turn out nice, though," she said with a sense of semi-finality, no doubt to be found. A glance was cast back to Will, and she raised her eyebrows when she did. "Ah, you just let me know whenever you wanna get back. I've got what I came for, I think I'll see if they do well in their forecast when the morning comes and go from there."
William“I want to learn to fly,” he tells her, “but I’ll be honest it is pretty low on my list. I need to learn to keep you and Ned from dying horribly in the event something bad happens and time is a factor… I also need to return all of my voicemails because I finally figured out how my cell phone works again.”
Which was true, at some point during November he, in a less coherent moment, had likely shaken his cell phone at Margot and been wordlessly confused by the fact that he couldn’t figure out how to answer the damned thing despite the fact that he knew he very obviously knew how to use a cell phone- the obvious portions made sense but the parts that involved numbers and symbolic communication were right out. You don’t realize how much stuff you have to read and interpret (numbers, words, certain symbols in pictures) until literally none of them make sense. As of yesterday, William Holmes had seventy-six unheard voicemail messages and enough texts to compose a novella.
When did he want to get back? Let her know? “It’s actually really nice out here.,, let’s wander around. Are there any creeks?” a second, “did you stop being a terrifying doom beacon yet?”
Margot"It's good to see you've inherited the Doc's anxiety-addled belief that Ned and I are constantly on the verge of getting ourselves killed." Margot was smiling when she said it, but the expression was sidelong in the way that accompanies a half-hearted scolding. She kept her hands in her pockets as she turned to regard the landscape and hummed her agreement. "It is nice out here..."
Then, when asked about creeks, she shrugged.
"I dunno-- there's one that cuts along the main trail near its top, the one we came up to get here. There could be more; I haven't seen any but I also haven't really roamed too far from here just yet.
Her eyes hopped toward the side of the mountain as it continued along its side-- her little plateaued space tapered for a ways further but soon the mountain's slope overtook the landscape once more. Out further that way, where a shadow from a peak was persistently present, the snows were white and crusted with ice in their small clinging and rippling drifts on the ground. "It looks pretty slick out that way, though..."
William“You hang out with me; the entire reason I got invited here was my propensity for getting people in trouble- ergo,” he gestures outward, grinned and presented his logical conclusion, “all those trips to Taco Bell we’ve made? Ticking timebombs. I’m dangerous.”
He couldn’t keep a straight face saying that, and he had to laugh at the very prospect of him being some sort of literal threat to, well, anything. William Holmes is as dangerous as a Disney princess. His attention flickered down the way that she had pointed out, where her attention fell and, instead, he found himself wandering in that direction anyway because it seemed like just the natural thing to do. Impulse control wasn’t on his to-do list today.
“What are your favorite places out here? What drew you to the mountain-what made you say this is mine rather than any other place in the reserve?”
MargotHesitation was rife around the little witch when William first started roaming off toward the south, like she could already see him slipping and scramble-slide-falling his way a good twenty or thirty feet down the mountain before finally stopping on a tree. While she was sure they'd figure something out, it still wasn't the kind of afternoon she'd hoped to have.
Ultimately, though, she'd start creeping along after him, even though she was reluctant to step off the actual plateau itself. "The seclusion," she answered, and there was no hesitation to be found there. "A lot of other space is too open, but this is a mountain to my back with a mountainside to my front, and the cover of trees from above and afar to keep people from knowing I'm here and what I'm up to, too." If he glanced back, he'd find her smiling apologetically and shrugging. "Nothing too mystical, just practicality, I suppose. Though the mountains are old, and the view is nice."
She then rembered a question he'd asked earlier as well, and that she'd never answered it. "Oh!" Was the declaration of memory, and she continued speaking into the otherwise still daytime air toward Will's roaming back. "I don't think I'm throwing out the beacon any longer... I went to the grocery store the other day and the clerk actually made small talk with me."
William“Not everything has to have some great mystical significance. Sometimes, because I wanted it is good enough. Hell, it’s more than enough,” he replied. Was less ambling now and more actually walking towards the spot with the snow flecks and the ice with purpose. It was a conscious decision of precisely where he wanted to go, though the young man did do a quick look around to see if he could find some other location with the white stuff peppering the area. The more treacherous route, it would seem, might not be his only option.
The clerk made small talk, she blurter out that she didn’t think she was a death beacon anymore and he turned around to face her. Kept walking, though Mr. Holmes was content to walk backwards for a bit. “Fuck yeah small talk!”
“I haven’t been grocery shopping in awhile, but I found out that apparently my parents keep trying to send groceries to my house because Jenn told them that I was really sick so I couldn’t make the holidays.”
No comments:
Post a Comment