Tame and relatively shallow, the mile-long pond is a popular one for the city's families, especially those with small children. It fills a rough, uneven peanut shaped depression in the local landscape, and over the years, sand has been imported to build up one of its inner curves as a location for launching small rowboats and kayaks into its calm and weedy waters. Water lilies and water hyacinth provide splashes of colour in the summer months, water birds and tiny mink often seen slinking through the tall reeds which border the southernmost side, its muck too slurpy for all but the most intrepid or foolish of adventuresome visitors.
Picnic tables have been set up on the banks, large barrels for trash and recycling maintained by the local conservation commission, and while the lights are seldom used in other seasons, floodlights do exist, bolted to high poles, to illuminate the pond during the frozen winter months for safety of night-time ice skating.
The stars have come out, and the fire is burning down in the grill that John and Billy Ray were cooking in earlier. Gisa told them to go on ahead, and she'd happily clean up once the coals had burned out entirely. Trust a golem to be patient, sitting by fire.
There are beers left in the cooler (microbrews from John and Budweisers from Billy Ray), a couple of Hebrew Nationals on the dying coals, and Gisa, in a long, practical black wool coat, sitting next to said grill. She holds a palm-sized book open in her hands, and rocks rhythmically back and forth, a low sussurus of prayer timed to the rocking. When in doubt, or bored, or lonely: pray.
The keening whine of steam powered hydraulics and ball bearings are audible to ears gifted enough to hear the telltale sounds of fairy. Otherwise it's just the whirring of an electric motor propelling a little old pink-haired granny along in her mobility chair. There's a little tawny furred head poking out of her overlarge handbag, all Yorkshire terrier and adorableness. Staring at the water, and the prospect of ducks to yip at, no doubt. There's a constant undercurrent of 'slightly batty old lady chatting with a dog' carrying from her as she personally narrates her voyage of discovery down a poorly lit pathway. At night. In a park. If she realizes this is a poor time of day for her to be out and about making her kids nervous at her insistance upon independence, she does a good job of not letting on. "Just a little further, wubbins, and you can chase all the little birdies you want. There's a good little boy."
Alice is fond of parks. Parks are where the kids are, although less so after dark, but still, the sense of them lingers. Alice strolls, unhurried, through the trimmed grass, beaded belt softly clicking like a rosary as she walks, a quiet herald of her approach. She's a thing of almost childlike proportion, etched in black and white against the encroaching evening. She doesn't appear to be actually /aiming/ for the banked coals of the charcoal grill, but maybe the smell of food is an unconscious draw. She stops, though, and watches the one-woman parade toodle past, and after a moment, re-angles her trajectory to follow, because frankly, how do you not? Wubbins.
The large man stepping out of the shadows, almost fading into them would never scoff at prayer. Not anyone's prayer. Dressed in black, dark skin, hood pulled up over his head, he almost seems to just appear out of nothing. Abraham drops his hood though, once he sees people so that his face is visible. At least part of it as he wears dark sunglasses. There's a pause as he reaches into his hoodie pocket to pull out a cheap cigar and a lighter. No cigar cutter needed. He lights up, puffing until the tobacco is smoldering properly. Once that's done, he looks over towards Mecha-Granny and Wubbins. His head tilts to the side and his eyebrows arch up over his sunglasses for a moment.
Wubbins? Wubbins? That's enough to distract someone from their Baruch atah Adonai, even a golem. Gisa's head tips up, her copper-wire hair catching the low light of the dying grill-coals. Gisa closes her siddur, tucks it into the pocket of her long coat, and stands up, watching the extremely interesting chair roll past. "Shalom," she calls, because ... there's a whole string of odd-looking people going past. "I have beer."
Alice is twiglike in stature and build. Her dark hair floats around her pallid face as though permanently charged with static electricity. Her large eyes are black, as though all pupil, and much too large for her face. The effect is to make her look otherworldly, or inhuman. Her lips are thin and colorless, her nose narrow, her face heart-shaped, tapered to a pointed chin. Her smile is /perfect/.
Alice's hands are slender, with too-long, spindly fingers that taper nearly to points; in lieu of nails, the fingertips themselves are composed of hard, ivory-colored enamel. She wears severe, closely-tailored clothing in dark colors, with a medieval-style girdle of strung, ivory beads draped over her hips and spilling nearly to her knees. This softly clickety-clacks when she moves. A close inspection will reveal that the beads are teeth. Very, very small teeth.
Abraham is a large man, even in his mien. He stands a few inches over six feet tall and is easily two hundred pounds or more. His shoulders are wide and he's heavily muscled. His head is shaved clean, leaving only his eyebrows, lashes, and goatee as visible hair. The skin of his bald head has a light dusting of what appear to be shiny patches of skin, but upon closer examination are scales. High cheekbones are even more pronounced here, giving his face an almost skeletal feel, like his skull is visible through the skin. His eyes are sunken in and so dark as to almost seem like there's no eye there at all save for the occasional glimmer of a reptilian slitted eye. His nose is also sunken in, completing that skeletal effect of the cheekbones and eyes. The goatee he wears is immaculately groomed and frames a full set of lips that are more often than not curved into a natural and infectious grin, though the skin there is far paler than the rest, giving them a deathly look. His skin is a warm, rich shade of dark brown and occasionally there are peeks of what might be his bones underneath.
His clothing is fairly basic and casual. However, everything is clean, well-tended, and immaculately pressed. Someone obviously takes great care with these clothes. His t-shirt is a charcoal gray with a v-neck and no logo or print. The fit is just loose enough to seem comfortable and relaxed while staying tight enough to allow his body's shape to remain on display. The dark washed denim that he wears fits in a very similar fashion. These aren't restrictive at all, but they do show off that he's in excellent shape. His belt is black leather and the tennis shoes on his feet are solid white. On his wrist is a simple wristwatch of a silver metal. Over his clothing is a black leather breastplate with the appearance of a vest moreso than actual armor. It is decorated with bone buttons carved with a doll face. He wears black leather gloves over his hands and he is rarely seen without sunglasses, which makes his eyes somewhat less predatory and creepy.
"Oh, well shalom to you too, dear," Nana enthuses as she comes clanking up to the Elemental. When her conveyance comes to a stop, there's a profound hiss of steam and a squack of hydraulics as the legs come to rest. "Did you have a very good shabbos, did you?" Nana's purse spills forth her little Yorkie, which hops down to the ground to go trot-trot-trotting towards the water in its tiny little flail-legged gait. The little cat bell on its collar jingles quietly along the way. "You be careful, boobookins! Don't you get your eye pecked out by a hidden goose in the reeds!" Smiling too sweetly, the droopy old wizened settles comfortably back into her pilot's chair. It's not long before her hands are rooting around in her knitting bag for her current project. Both Alice and Abraham receive a sunny, sachranine sweet, 'would you like a Werther's?' smile.
"Do geese hide in reeds?" Alice sounds dubious, but watches the little dog run off nevertheless, a calculating air about her as she observes. "Hello. It's a very pleasant evening." The faint porcelain-crack lines on her face deepen a touch as she smiles, a little too broad, a little too sharp, but certainly genuine. "Don't let me interrupt."
"Dang, ma'am. That thing's got everything but spinnin' rims." Abraham says as regards the very tricked out hover round. "Somebody definitely pimped your ride." His accent is pure Louisiana and his voice is deep and rich. If bourbon had a sound, his voice is it. "It has to have a good sound system, right?" He puffs a little smoke from his cigar and edges closer to the group. His eyes are almost entirely not visible which would make reading him more difficult, save that his mouth is very expressive. That grin could light up a dark room. He turns to Gisa and adds, "Sorry if we're interrupting your prayer time. I was just out walkin' and heard the um..." He struggles for a word for that, "The Scooter Store find." There's a nod to Alice. "As the lady says, don't want to be a bother."
"Oh, we're no trouble, are we, dear," guilts the grandmother.
"It was a good Shabbos, yes. Thank you." Gisa spreads her hands out in front of herself, palms up. She doesn't move quickly, but she moves with a great deal of inertia. And she's not big, either. Not tall. She's just solid. She gives the impression that if she wanted to, she could just walk through a wall, and the wall could choose to move or it could be moved by her. "I... do not think there are geese. I did not hear them." The golem slowly shakes her head, back and forth, her wire hair scraping against the wool shoulders of her coat. "Not a bother. I am cooking the last hot dogs. There are beers. I have Manichewitz. Please come join me. I am Gisa Cohen."
Abraham's smile certainly lights up Alice's face. "Excuse me," she breathes, "but you have /exquisite/ teeth. Do you whiten?" An artist praising a flawless sculpture would be no less rapturous. "Manischewitz... that's quite sweet, is it not?" There is something a touch disapproving in her tone, just faintly.
"Well. If I were a goose wanting to hide around here, I'd do it in the reeds AND I'd be very quiet about it," Nana assures first Alice and then Gisa, one and then the other, with a little authoritative nod for each. In the end, though, the small talk over deadly waterfowl takes a backseat to her ride being talked up by a handsome fellow from the part of the south with the good and spicy food. She lets out a throaty little cackle, swatting a hand at the air in his direction. "Oh, you will go on." No, really. Go on. "This little old thing? You should see my RV." Once she's done chuckle-flirting with a man half her age, she wiggles her glasses onto her nose and begins throwing on stitches to her needles. It's hypnotic, really. "Nothing for me, dear. I shouldn't drink and drive."
"I don't whiten, no. Just brush'em and floss?" Abraham reaches into his hoodie pocket again and pulls out a flask. "I brought my own, but thanks for the offer." The cigar is removed from his mouth and he takes a swig from the flask and then notes to Nana, "That's a shame to hear, I have some delicious spiced rum here." He holds it out like it's on offer for a moment. "Someone has a ride like that? I'd be willing to share with someone like that." A pause. "Or you like cigars?" The flask is then lifted in offering towards the others as well.
"Oh. Okay. All right." That's Gisa's entire take on Nana. Her eyepits widen, and her clay face goes a little slack. Nana is ... a bit much, and that's saying something for someone who's spend most of the last few days trying to translate from Billy Ray's Redneck. "Zayde, would you like some food?" You always offer to your elders first, of course. Honor your father and mother and your creepy gramma in a wheelchair. "Or your little dog? So he is not eaten by geese?" Her head turns slowly, to the others. "It is a sweet wine. I have the blackberry wine." Somewhat overwhelmed, she asks, "Do you have names?" Poor Elemental.
Alice clucks her tongue against her teeth. "Smoking will yellow your teeth," she admonishes Abraham gently, but that's the extent of it. "I have... at least one name," she admits, possibly admitting more without saying so. "You can call me Mrs. O, if you like." Although there's no ring on her left hand to justify it. "What are you making?" This to Nana, while she watches the flicker-flash of knitting needles with too-large, dark eyes.
"Oh, well. I suppose a little wouldn't hurt, now, would it? What's cirhhosis of the liver at my age?" Nana gives Abraham another sweet smile, though she doesn't reach for the bottle herself. Waiting for him to offer it directly, perhaps. "Oh, where are my manners? You can call me Nana, dear. I'm everyone's Nana, nowadays." The hissing of knitting needles working against one another, with the odd clacking now and then, carry from her lap where he's starting to find her rhythm with the yarn. "Mister Wigglesmith, why don't you come back up here and meet our new friends?" The tell-tale jangling of his collar bell comes zooming up from the shore line. The little Yorkie trot-trot-trots up to Giza and sits down very politely in front of her. His big brown eyes look from her to her hot dog and back to her again. Oh, yes. Oh, yes he would. Nana then leans towards Alice a touch and shares sotto-voce, "I'm making a shawl, dear. A little something to throw around my shoulders for when the mornings are still a little chilly. But not so heavy."
Abraham offers the rum over to Nana with a smile, but he's talking to Alice, "I haven't yellowed them in over sixty years, darlin'." Then to Gisa, "My name is Abraham, Abraham La Croix." And it's most certainly not pronounced like croy. "I just got into town. Looking to get settled. But I haven't really met anyone yet." There's a nod to Gisa before he turns back to Nana, "That's an adorable little dog you have there."
"Mrs. O. Nana. Nana, do you mind if I call you Zayde?" Of course she would ask. "I ask because I might forget. So I will ask your permission first." She might forget to call Nana not her name? Elementals are weird. "Oh. I can introduce you, Abraham. To the appropriate people. It depends on which people are yours, of course." Gisa reaches over to the dying grill, picks up one of the hot dogs, and carries it over to offer it to the Dog Of Many Names, delicately pinched between ceramic thumb and forefinger. "Here you are, friend."
Alice nods approvingly, and bends to more closely examine the stitchwork. Not that she has to bend very far. And she does give the impression of being the sort of person to approve of a good shawl. "It'll be lovely, I'm sure. Those are beautiful stitches. You could be a surgeon." She /seems/ sincere, at least?
"Thank you very much, miss, you are most kind." The Niles Crane-like voice emits from the little dog just before he snatches the offered hot dog and drags it away into the shadows so as to remove all possibility of Giza changing her mind. While her doggy trots away, Nana accepts the bottle from Abraham and takes an unabashed swig from the bottle. She's no tea-totaler, not by a long shot. But she talks a good game. The bottle is offered back over with an appreciative and much-wrinkled smile, "Thank you, dear." Her hands return to the knitting, which leaves her to answer Alice with an equally sincere seeming, "Well, maybe I'll knit you one when I'm through. Narrow little thing like you, you're like to blow away on a strong breeze." The comment about her hands causes her to pause and examine them. Mmm. "Oh, I don't know about that."
"I'd be happy to be introduced to folks." Abraham takes his bottle back from Nana when she's done, "Well, Grand-mere, if you ever need anything retrieved from a tall cupboard or if you need someone to lift something heavy, never hesitate to look me up." Again that grin, his face wreathed in the smoke from his cigar. "I'm not used to Northern winters, so I may call upon you for a sweater once the weather turns. This Southern boy is NOT used to cold weather at all. NOt even a little." A pause and he looks towards Gisa, "I could hear muttered prayers, but not what you were saying. What faith?"
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