Log:Culture Clash

Culture Clash
It's alright, little Kitchen Witch, he's only judging you a little bit.
Participants Audrey Wilson and Scarver	19 June, 2018 2 Apostles Meet Up, No Drugs Are Consumed, Everyone Leaves Confused
Location Schoolhouse Apartments Unit 2D
The text exchange between them was perhaps an exercise in compare and contrast. Scarver's method of texting v. the cheerful shotgun scatter of emjois and the use of the word 'bro.' All the same, Scarver was invited over to talk rabbit-in-a-hat-and-a-wand emoji which probably means magic. Or weird places to keep pets. In any case, Audrey's readied the space for her first official guest by brining home beer from work and accumulating all the candy she uses for rituals into one slightly chipped, chintzy looking bowl that was probably intended for fruit in another life but was .05 cents at some thrift store. Add in one blow up novelty couch, and the space is prepared. She's sitting on the edge of the mattress on the floor she calls her bed, attempting to play some app game in that distracted way that allows for no real enjoyment or focus until Scarver arrives. The texts Scarver had sent had been, well, less than telling. They were written in short unpuncutated sentences that none the less utilized full words, and they came with distracted delays that kept any real conversation from forming, but it did leave a curious, proverbial door opened just a crack. He wasn't blowing her off ... So invitations had been made and the shave and a haircut rhythm was tapped out beneath his knuckles on her door. The man standing on the other side of it looked like he'd woken up on a strange couch, rolled off it, and made his way here with only a stop off at some coffee shop. He had a cup in hand with the name 'Obama' written across the outside. The other had 'Zelda' written on it and it's this one he pushes forward towards her as he steps inside. A single glance around the room had his brow lifting in tandem with one side of his lips. He chuckled quietly when he remarked, "I've seen meth dens that are less depressing than this shit. Did you get that couch at Spencers?" "Family Dollar." Ah, there are fates worse than being crammed between the Spencers displays of posters featuring universally terrible musicians and tchotchkes that hold the torch for that old salt: the fart joke. Audrey accepts the coffee, eyeing the name with a small quirk in her expression. Zelda who? "I haven't bought any furniture yet," she offers up in slightly self-conscious apology, as explanations go. "I was gonna but the bar happened and-" She continues, arresting further detail in mid-air with a look that may propose that she expects that he doesn't give a shit about this. "But um, if you want to drink for me- you can come by. We got murder scenes on the walls?" This offered to Scarver in a one-two punch of incentive: free booze and also, crime art. Scarver smirked at the correction, and dropped his ass with a fwump-squeak into the corner of the inflatable couch. He kicked his legs out as he sat unstably to one side of the 'cushion' , crossed at the ankles, and sipped at whatever was in his cup with - yes - a very bored 'Get on with it' look about him. She skipped ahead from the superfluous fluff about her home decor and gets on to ...the bar. He snickers at that as well and leans forward with all the crunch-creaking of the cheap plastic, and sets his cup down on the floor. "I can't figure out if you're trying to ask me out on a date or if you really wanted to talk magic," he levels flatly as he leaned back, propping an elbow on the arm of the sofa and resting his jaw to the curl of his knuckles, his other hand slipping a pack of smokes from his hip pocket; wrinkled and half-crushed. "Oh." Audrey's expression takes on that which you normally see from a small animal caught in a huge light - baffled, a little afraid, the gears in their head working out if they should bolt or fall over. "No, uh- just being friendly? And I thought you and Vinnie..." She lets that lead itself over a cliff of unfinished sentences. Audrey herself settles on to the floor, happy to sit across from Scarver on the fake wood flooring. She sits Indian-style, holding the coffee cup with both hands and testing the contents for a minute. "I think we're into the same kinda magic and I generally only know the people I was raised with who know it so I thought it'd be good to maybe talk and then also, if you need help with anything where that's involved, there's another one around." She pauses, clarifying. "Me. That being the one around." In case, apparently, that wasn't clear. Scarver's gargoyle grin curls up further at that bitty fluffy in the headlights look, his tongue just making a glimpse of an appearance when he runs his tonguebar to the back of his teeth. There's only another little hitch to his brow at the unfinished - and what would prove to be unanswered - quandary of what he and Vinnie might constitute. The drink in her cup is a sugary sweet concoction, something with chocolate and mallow and cinnamon and probably errs dangerously closed to cinnamon roll smore in taste. "Yea?" He finally 'asks' when she gets to the meat of it. He chuckles when he lifts one of the shaken loose smokes to tuck between his lips, and then points the lighter taken from the same pack to point towards her, then himself while mumbling around the cigarette, "You make it sound like the latest foodie trend. 'Into'. Alright then, Audrey, what are you 'into' ? " Audrey can't see the spirit, which is in many turns worse for her and better for the spirit. Or if she can't, she's doing an excellent job of not focusing at all on it in a way that may highlight a supersonic talent at ignoring spirits. It is, however, probably the first one? She does, however, seem to approve highly of the contents of her cup by the way a small sip follows a huge one. She shifts where she sits, freeing up a vaporizer tucked into the back pocket of her cut off shorts and repeats the same motions displayed with Scarver's lighter, in reverse. Seeing his tobacco and raising him some THC, as it were. "It won't lock you down to the couch," she informs him, attempting to refine any concerns. "It ain't Hot Topic shit," she informs him with a pale resentment for the idea that she's 'into' anything. "Kitchen Magic." The tone so solid and confident in the type and cross of her thaumaturgical origins. Scarver had to imagine that she just couldn't spot the spirit. It was a difficult thing to ignore - Gula being the particularly disgusting thing that it was and looming over her in Twilight licking up the taste of her essence like it was...Surely, there'd be some tell. He shakes his head at the offer of the vaporizer and raises her THC with a baggie of particolored pills and smaller baggies twisted up around brown and yellowish powders, tossing it down to the floor near his boots. "Some of those will definitely lock you down to the couch," returned, no fucks at all given for concerns. He's just lighting his smoke when she delivers that confident 'Kitchen Magic', and winds up snort-laughing a plume of gray from his nostrils, and sitting back to rub at his nose when he gets himself under control. "Kitchen magic? That's what you think I'm into, cupcake?" He laughs again, sniffs once, and sighs as he tucks his smoke between his lips to bob and drop ash between lazy drags, leaving his hands free to retrieve his drink. "Are you trying to pull a fast one on me, princess?" Audrey looks... lost. The kind of lost that went out into the woods with a pretty good map only to find out its a flier for some sub-par pizza place two towns away. She's blinking in confusion and watching Scarver react, her mouth open and sort of arrested in its development in what was intended to be a small 'o'. O is for oh shit, what's happening? Her eyes skim the bag of pills, taking them in but also... not, given the primary problem at the moment. "No." She replies finally, the word a little stung. "Why the fuck would you think I'd joke about that?" Depending on how much Audrey partakes, she may or may not recognize a substantial amount of value in that baggie of pills. A few thousand in traditional and designer drugs he was tossing around far too casually for someone dressed the way he was, who looked the way he did. Scarver shakes his head as he drags his feet back and leans forward again, forearms propped across his knees and coffee cup dangling from his fingertips of both hands. "Because it's so fucking absurd," he tells her with very genuine (if somewhat mean spirited) amusement. "It's like calling what Picasso created a doodle." Lifting his hand to exchange smoke for cup deftly just long enough to snag a sip of whatever he's drinking, he adds, "And I've never practiced in a kitchen a day in my life. We had ceremonial chambers and ritual spaces for that shit." "We didn't?" Audrey counters, a certain shame hung around the edges of how low tech and hill dirt her local coven by comparison is apparently turning out to be. Her eyes shift downwards, eyeing the pills with a note of uncertain reticence as if a giant device of doom might appear if she does anything on the order of reach out and touch the bag. The contents don't seem to the be issue; it's perhaps that Scarver is just letting her have access like that doesn't mean anything at all. "I'm not- I didn't name it," she adds, self-consciously as she retreats into her cinnamon roll flavored drink. "Just how we always have done it where I'm from. That's how they wanted it." Scarver grinned that much further, right into the corners of his eyes, while he watched the discomfort fraying at her edges. And Gula, well, he just about slurped that shit down with unseen tremblings and gurglings. "I guess it's not your fault," he offered with a heavy weight of pity splattered all over his tone. It's alright, little Kitchen Witch, he's only judging you a little bit. There's more curiosity in the cant of his head when he swaps cup for smoke again, and upnods towards her. "That's how who wanted it? Your people or....Something else?" "It was a family, we all just worked for them. Well, people still work for them. I don't." She slows, keying into the second part of his question. "...was there supposed be something else besides Mr. Baliff?" This question, uncertain and careful in tone with an expression that's now uncertain of just about anything. "And. It's not my fault. It's how I was raised /and/ I was good at it." She finds her spunk, finally but only sort-of in the way she tries to reclaim some ground in this positively uneven match. "It was all part of the family for me too," Scarver offers as he slouches more, stretching his legs back out, and just letting the smoke roll through his fingers and out his nose. "I don't know who the fuck Mr. Baliff is. Never said anything was your fault." He points at her then adding, "But if you feel that way we can probably explore that." It's the push to present confidence and value, rooted in her own self, that he seems to key into more, that the first glimpse of genuine interest starts to shine there in his eye. "Were you just?" teased before he pressed further, "What were you good at? Tell me." A brief, hot streak of dead eyed lack of appreciation appears in her eyes for Scarver's teasing, the corners of her mouth tightening. So touchy, this one, in her upended state. "Wards." Audrey's declaration is certain, a flag thrown into familiar territory as she answer the question. "I kept all the buildings plus a few other things away from things that don't need to know what's behind some doors..." Her eyes momentarily skim the bag of pills and other things on the floor, the insinuation made. "Luck. Making operations smoother. Making the family happier. Fucking up the day of people who needed to be nudged," she adds to her CV of superior-in-her-view witch abilities. "Other people handled other things. That was what I was allowed to do." Audrey informs him, the tale of her service to her 'family' concluded with another indulged sip of her drink. Scarver leaned forward as the list was gradually elaborated on. WArds. Luck. Ill-Fortune if he were to guess. Familiar tricks from a familiar bag. He didn't look away from her when he pressed, "But you don't know how to deal with spirits?" like this were some great lapse in her magical education. "You're not going to get too far at this without being able to communicate with the agents of...whatever you're tapped into." He shifts his weight some and glances down towards his cup, mulling it over. Coffee, the most benign of his vices. "Tell you what. I'll make you a deal, Princess. You come when I call, and tell me the stories I want to hear...and I'll teach you about spirits." His grin cracked a hair wider when he peered towards her past the devilish curl of his brow. "How's that sound to you?" "Wasn't allowed to yet." Her answer, spoken with a certainty of fact, spoken over the top of her drink just before a stolen sip. "I was getting there. But. Ya'know." She gestures errantly and shrugs, as if that explains all of it even though it likely explains exactly none of it. "I fell into the Shadow accidentally a couple weeks ago. I've gotten less shitty at it sense but these black things tried to eat my arm, just ended up tickling after I was done freaking out. And a deer spirit tried to fuck me up." She adds this, as sort of progress report where stumbling around in the spirit world is concerned. His offer though, there's a slight beat. A half-hair pause that seems to both thrill and skirt away at the notion. The wide smile and that devilish curl all too rakish to refuse. "Yeah, okay," she agrees with a reticent fascination, her mouth offering him a self-conscious grin. "Better than tried to fuck you. They can be randy shits, the harts," Scarver grunted like it were all casual besides the fact information. Spirits 101. When she agreed to the offer, there's a flash of yellowing teeth added to the unsettling smile and a low rumbled growl, almost like the purr of some monstrous thing, of "Good...very good." If it left her with the feeling she'd just signed away her soul, well, it'd be hard to fault her, being looked at like the man opposite her very much wished to devour her whole just to see how bits of her would crunch between his teeth. But he was finding his feet again, leaving the bag of drugs behind as he stepped around her. "Have a story for me next time, Audrey, and we'll see if you can't be taught," was called more over his shoulder, making his way to the door and leaving her behind well, not entirely alone. Gula would be staying. Spying. No doubt making the occasional appearance. A story? Her expression is already looking sliiightly panicked, that she doesn't and isn't going to come up with a story that Scarver will like by whatever point in time this 'next time' becomes. That expression isn't any way helped by that look that he displays for her, as the all but sound of some sort of witch-version pledge scroll snapping into accord in the aether. She's climbing to her feet, trailing behind him to see him out - the basic physics of politeness in observation here. Gula- still - goes unnoticed, even as Gula itself is commissioned to spy on the little Kitchen Witch. Instead, oblivious to the idea and presence of the gargoyle, Audrey opens the door for Scarver and lets him pass through. "Thanks for coming. I won't go near a deer spirit, then, I guess," she adds, a little awkwardly. The whole of her still scrambling to find her footing in this encounter. "Thank you for working with me, though. I appreciate it." That bit she seems to mean sincerely, a rough note of lonely exile in that appreciation. "We'll see if that's still the case this time next week," he grinned widely at her. "Also, don't mix the purple ones with the yellow and white ones," added with a nod inside as he stepped out into the hallway. The pills, surely. Was he just leaving all those here? He lifts his cigarette-and-coffee burdened hand in a half-assed wave as he pivoted around on his heel, and started to head down the hall, whistling quietly to himself all the while.