Log:Checking on the Doc

Checking on the Doc
Participants Bronwyn, Velvet	28 June, 2018 After a bloodbath out the front of her cabin, Velvet checks on how Bronwyn is doing...or if she even noticed.
Location Bronwyn's Cabin
Leaving Weaver outside to think about the fact that he just annoyed her, Velvet headed into Bronwyn's place with a little knock knock on the doorframe. After all, she knows the others were just in here. Who knows where they fluttered off to. Velvet is splattered in blood. It's a little older, dried out as she came running to Bronwyn's place when she thought that the woman was in trouble. Thank goodness for Dani and Weaver in that regard. "Bron?" she offers as she pokes her head in. "How are you holding up?" Bronwyn is in the kitchen, poring over the twelve pages Weaver had given her. "In here, Velvet!" she manages to call out before running a fingertip over a line of strange symbols. In the lounge room can be see a number of empty whiskey bottles...but not much in the way of food remnants. The blonde dressed in a silk kimono and leg warmers. "The kitchen!" she clarifies. "Dani and Widget are here too." She looks up to see they are gone. "Oh...they were. Everything okay out there?" Moving toward the kitchen, Velvet leans against the door frame that leads in, studying everything from the liquor bottles to the pages that she's going over. "Everything is okay. Weaver is healing up, the guy who was going to try to shoot you is dead. Fido is cleaning everything up." Which means he's eating the body so there's no evidence left behind. "I just wanted to check and see how you were doing. I know this isn't easy, so I wanted to give you a couple of days to let it sink in." Bronwyn slowly raises her eyes from the paper and removes her glasses to stare at Velvet...elven Velvet. "Pardon? Someone was trying to shoot me?" She looks a little paler. "Why would anyone do that? Weaver was hurt?" A sigh as she sits back on her chair and tosses her glasses on the table. "It isn't easy" she admits, "But life was not meant to be easy. I definitely need a couple of days...maybe years. Though, if I look at it professionally, this is a great opportunity to study a society unknown to the world." She holds up a hand. "Don't worry. I've already been firmly reminded of the secrecy of everything. No Nobel Prize for me." "Did nobody tell you this when they came in here? What the fuck people?" Velvet sighs as she takes a couple of steps forward. "It's connected to what happened at the wedding. There's someone out to destroy Weaver and everything he cares about. You are someone he cares about. So I'm afraid you're caught in the crosshairs. Which... makes me think it might be good if you stayed at the lodge for a little while. Out here all alone, it worries me." Velvet moves to settle on a chair across from Bron, frowning. "I'm sorry it happened like this. I had been planning how I was going to tell you for a while. I wanted to sit down and talk and then give you a choice in the matter. But with everything that happened, that you saw, I didn't have much of a choice. But from a professional stand point, you do get to explore a culture most humans will never begin to grasp. Even if it's secret, that's pretty elite. "Yeah, it's what I have to tell myself or I'll go insane" Bronwyn nods about turning this secret world into work. "It was quite the shock. And I'm talking about just the violence, never mind everything else I saw. Most marriages don't get that way for at least a couple of weeks" she smirks. "Would you like a coffee or something? I learned today that Weaver likes it boiling hot. You the same?" She taps the papers. "Weaver said you found these on someone. Anything you can tell me about the person or the situation that could help me translate them?" "My entire life has been violent. Most of it is hidden, even like this." Velvet gestures over herself. "This isn't the real me," she explains. "Where Weaver is a dragon, all tough with his scales and claws and his flight, I am more like a shadow, and a mirror. I can change and shift myself into any kind of person I want. If I walked around with my true self, it would reveal too much about me. Only two people have ever seen it that are still a part of my life." Or alive, for that matter. She glances to the papers and nods. "It's going to be a long explanation because I'm going to have to explain a few things about Changelings as we go. You can ask whatever you want, I will answer honestly." She gives Bron a look that clearly is asking if she's ready. "So you don't even look like this?" Bronwyn asks before a shake of her head at the craziness of it all. "Why wouldn't that surprise me? And your birth name is 'Baby Jane Doe'?" A dismissive wave of her hand. "Don't worry about that now." She picks up her glasses and places them back on. "Okay, let's talk about this stuff." A gesture towards the pages. "I was born at a high school dance and put in a dumpster to die. I was found and brought to the hospital as Baby Jane Doe. Bounced through the system until I was Taken." That's probably the easiest part of her life to explain. Velvet nods as Bronwyn gestures to the papers. "Okay. The Hedge is a part of the separate world we talked about before. It's the space between Arcadia, where we are taken to and twisted into what you see, and the real world. There are Markets there where you can get all kinds of things. I went, and in exchange for something I wanted, I offered to deliver something. The person who was supposed to deliver it never did. So I had to find what needed to be delivered and then get it the rest of the way. I track the scent of the person who was supposed to deliver it. "I track it to a house in the Hedge, but he is not there, only his foot, about to be eaten by a Hob. Hobs are creatures like... any of the characters from Alice in Wonderland. They are born of the Hedge, not of here. They aren't, and never were human." Velvet frowns. "I took the hob out and reclaimed the foot. I keep following the scent. I find the man it belongs to in another house. He's tied to a chair missing an arm and a leg with her horns shaved off and two Lost women torturing him." She sighs. It's certainly quite a story...and very sad to begin with. "There are markets there? But no markets here. Okay. So if the bad people are in Arcadia, why do you even risk going closer to them by entering this Hedge thing? Sorry, we're going off track a bit. We need to solve this so I don't have to worry about more hitmen." She listens further and learns about hobs...and a tortured deliveryman. "I assume the torturers are dead. Did you get anything out of the delivery person other than the pages? Who was it supposed to be delivered to? Shouldn't you have delivered it, like you agreed to?" "Because the Hedge has things we need in it to help us survive, like the fruits that help us heal," Velvet explains. "The torturers are dead. I took them out when I saw what was happening. After that I go him free and then helped him hobble to the freehold castle. The Freehold is the group of us that have banded together for safety under the rule of a Leader that changes every season. This was where the letter was meant to go, so it was two birds with one stone. The message was a warning about a group of privateers that had formed some kind of cult of power. A group of Lost who like to hurt other Lost for the fun of it. Privateers in general are Lost who will grab other Lost, and humans, to sell for profit." "Once he was safe and things had cooled off for a day or two, I went back to the house to start poking around. I wanted to see if they were part of the cult. You can tell because they have this mark branded on them." She gestures to the top of one of the pages. "That's their brand. If you see someone with that, get away from them as fast as you can while calling me. But I found these papers and some blueprints under a floorboard. Bronwyn nods along to the story...if only she could record them for the scientific community. "Do they wear the brand on their faces or something? I'd hate to have to wait for the person to be naked before I knew." She finds the document that resembles blueprints. "You're certain that this is a blueprint?" she asks. "I mean, it could be a machine of some kind but it could also be a map to worlds within worlds. This Hedge thing you're talking about is another dimension but also overlaid on this world...if I understand it correctly. If you go through one of these gate things, you always go to the same place in the Hedge, right? Anyway, so these pages belonged to the torturers and their intention is to destroy this Freehold of yours which means that they probably refer to a plan to do that. If we're lucky, there could be a list of names here and that will help with determining the structure of what we're seeing to help with translation. The maps could be avenues of attack. Identification of targets. Weapon caches. Cult members." She grins excitedly. "This is so exciting." Her face suddenly goes solemn. "I mean...other than Weaver being hurt and someone wanting to kill us all." "One of the sisters has it on her ass. One of the group had it on their arm, one of the back of the neck. I guess it's like a tattoo. You get it where you want it. But no, I'm not certain it's a blueprint," Velvet admits. "I tracked them to a base at one point, hoping it would resemble that, but it didn't. Until I can decipher what those papers say, I'm kind of at a dead end. Though, I do have one held hostage which is beneficial." Velvet smirks as she watches the excitement on Bron's face. "To be fair, the Weaver thing is something totally different. So right now there are two separate groups looking to kill me. They won't succeed, but hey!" She laughs. "And it's okay to be excited. Excited is good. "Two groups? Wow...I know how to pick my friends" Bronwyn smirks. "I better get this stuff figured out then. And that's all you know about the cult? Oh...what was the original message you delivered to the Freehold that they were so intent on stopping? If it's not my business then fine but if they wanted to stop it then it may be relevant." She smiles warmly. "Like I said, if I don't get excited then I'd probably get insane. Velvet...when you look at Weaver, you always see the wing thing? You always see what I'm seeing now?" "You really do. But, to be fair, you fell into a gold mine of interesting new types of people for you to learn about and explore. As for the note, it was a warning about the cult. They didn't want us to get the warning. Ironically if they hadn't have tried to stop it, we wouldn't have as much information as we do," Velvet points out with a snort. At the question, her head nods slowly. "Yes. Though he only recently got his wings back. He occasionally puts his mortal face on for things, but most of the time it's how you see him. Why?" "I guess if you've been modified yourself then it wouldn't be unusual to see another like that. Though you were all human once" Bronwyn shrugs. "Though...I'm still trying to get my head around things. When I saw him as human, he still had his wings but I couldn't see them, right? So what if I had touched where his wings were. Would I have felt them but not seen them? Your ears. When I stop /seeing/ you like this, your ears will still physically be there. Is your camouflage more than just visual?" A little laugh. "Though I think that kind of stuff we can worry about after I have sorted this out. If it's okay with you, Velvet, I'd rather stay here. You set up security for me, remember? I'm not sure how much of the outside I can handle right now, particularly when I need to concentrate on this." "The mask tricks your mind into not seeing or feeling anything. When we strengthen our mask, we can't even feel or see it. It's the only time I have normal ears," Velvet chuckles. "It's how the Wyrd protects us, and mortals too. Because a lot of them would not handle this as well as you have. Olivia has been drinking up a storm, because she only just found out because of a situation at the hospital. Which I can explain another time." She frowns a little. "If you must. But I don't recommend it. I may ask Widget to stay here with you. Security or not, a sniper is a sniper. With me, I could at least smell them coming." Bronwyn gestures to the empty bottles in the lounge. "I know how Olivia feels. I thought I would be drinking for a long, long time to come. Did you see the bear trap I put on the porch? I didn't hide it or anything but I wanted people to be warned off. Hasn't really worked but I saw myself as an alcoholic recluse until this sight wore off. Then I could go back to happy ignorance without the need of a bottle a day. Widget is welcome to stay any time, she knows that. I'll keep the curtains closed." A pause. "You don't have x-ray vision or anything do you?" "You're going to want to keep the vision, Bron. You already know what's out there, without it you're going to start to question everything. Better to just know." That's Velvet's opinion anyway. She starts to stand up, reaching out to squeeze Bron's arm. "No X-Ray vision, you're safe. But I'm going to do a sweep around and make sure all the safeties are in place. I'll check on you again later.