Mavis leads the way into the kitchen with bags of groceries hanging from each wrist and clutched in both fists. The mortal had insisted that she and Amity could bring the entire grocery haul up to the house all in one trip and Mavis grunts in exertion as she lifts the groceries up onto the table. She slithers her wrists back, wincing at how the weight of the bags had crunched her bracelets against her wrists.
"See?" she triumphantly calls back to Amity. "Told ya we could take on those steps." They had been, truthfully, murder. Mavis begins to unzip her jacket and push it down her arms while she kicks off her shoes. She'd trundled right through the mudroom without even stopping to hang her coat.
Amity follows after Mavis and lets out a low grumble as she sets down her own bags and begins to follow the example set by the mortal as she starts shrugging out of her coat. She shakes her head, though it's more amused than anything.
"You win this one, my dear," she says as she starts putting things away. Eggs, milk, and other perishables into the fridge, dry goods into the pantry. She's quick and efficient about putting things away--letting them sit out makes her really antsy, okay? She glances down at the cellar door as she moves, the fridge having been left shoved to one side to permit continued access, but doesn't speak on it.
"What shall we make for dinner tonight?"
Mavis hangs her jacket over the back of a chair, kicks her shoes under it then picks up some cans to put them away but Amity was already neatly emptying her bags and storing the contents with such efficiency that the human is not sure where to jump in and start helping. She stands there, holding two tins of soup, watching Amity and, at one point, just hands her girlfriend the cans as she breezes on by. Returning to the table, Mavis starts setting things out of the shopping bags and grouping them together for Amity to grab and put away.
"I dunno," she answers apathetically, eying first the fridge with a thoughtful expression and then the floor hatch with a rather curious one. She forgets to add more to her response then looks up at Amity, blinking. Suddenly, she wasn't very hungry. Mavis glances at the hatch to the cellar and her eyes edge back to Amity's face. "So.. I was thinking.. DO you want to go poking around down in the cellar? We haven't really stuck our heads in since that one night," she explains in a quiet rush of words, poking the tips of her index fingers together and looking over them under her lashes at Amity, "and, I mean, we should at least check for mold, right?"
Amity continues to efficiently put away groceries. Soon, all the perishables are stored and the bags folded up for later use. Then the non-perishables, the Lost woman working with rapidity as each pile of groceries is tucked away. As she settles a new tin of coffee in the pantry, she looks back over at Mavis, blinks.
"Hm. I suppose we should. To be safe." She says, then smiles. "And to make sure there's nothing spooky down there." SHE KNOWS HOW YOU THINK, MAVIS.
Mavis flashes her quick grin when Amity goes along with her idea and she pops up from where she'd been leaning against the kitchen table. After she had gotten all of the groceries out of the bags, she'd just let Amity take over. The Lost woman seemed to operate best with her out of the way and Mavis didn't really mind shrugging off the extra labor.
"Well.. yeah. It's already spooky enough," she says while grabbing the latch handle and prying it up. The hatch-lid is pulled opened and propped back, bumping against the wall behind it. Gray, stone stairs lead down to the cellar with the square of light shadowed by Mavis' silhouette running zig-zagged down the slate steps. She peers over at Amity, uncertain. "Kind of wonder what the hell gramgram did down here," Mavis ponders, gnawing her bottom lip, "but I kinda don't want to know either. Easier not to think about, y'know?" She holds out her hand, many rings banding her fingers, and offers it to Amity.
Amity reaches out to take Mavis' hand and gives it a warm little squeeze. COmforting. She lets Mavis lead the way down the stairs, but she speaks as they go, stooping a little to avoid bonking her head as they go. "She could have been doing a lot down here. Though to me it looks like she was doing..." Hm. How to put it? "...Something magical? Magic might be the wrong word, but it looks like she might have been in contact with or dealing with things that aren't, you know... from this world."
Mavis' fingers curl around Amity's hand and she carefully treads down the steps leading into the space beneath the kitchen. "Magic," she scoffs with a shake of her head and the Lost behind her could be absolutely certain that she'd just rolled her eyes. "Well.." She reaches the bottom step, pulls her hand from Amity's, and tries to find the drawstring for the light down here. A second later, she finds the string, pulls it with a click, and the bulb they'd replaced the last time they'd come down here flickers on. The room is illuminated in harsh, yellowish light that blinds Mavis. She squeezes her eyes shut then open, looking around at the stone walls, straw-covered floor, and various shelves. A desk is pushed against one wall with a single wicker-seated chair in front of it. Mavis peers over her shoulder at the manacles drilled into one wall and the shackles in the floor under it. She stares at that iron bondage and hisses quietly, "Sweet Jesus and Sponge Bob lived in a pineapple under the sea." Then, louder and clearer, "You know, I saw that movie. Teen Wolf. Mebbe gramgram was a werewolf." Mavis looks back at Amity and busts out with a giggle.
Amity knows that Mavis isn't likely to believe her when she says that, but... it still stings a little. A line from a story in her childhood runs through her head over and over again: 'I do believe in fairies, I do believe in fairies!' Well supposedly if you disbelieve in them, they die. If only. She lets Mavis turn on the light and joins her flinching against the harshness of the single, lonely bulb. Squeezing past Mavis, she moves over towards the manacles and examines them, holding one in her hand.
"Hm. No, these are iron. More likely she was worried about the Fair Folk. Though I don't know how she'd get one down in here in the first place," Amity says without a hint of irony. That or she just has a good poker face. "Are there any books or anything down here? What about the desk?" She moves over to the desk and starts checking the drawers for any further clues.
Mavis watches Amity lift one of the manacles. It's heavy and the links clink as the metal shifts. The mortal has a devious grin on her lips as she watches Amity speculate, holding one of the shackles, and her expression is a playful leer.
"Where do you learn this stuff?" she prompts Amity, still smiling and returned to her good humors. The mortal shrugs and looks off at the wall opposite the bare one with the manacles. There were lots of books, as well as small cabinets and drawers, on those shelves. She wanders over to the desk, pulling back the chair and sitting in it primly, trying it out. It wasn't a comfortable chair, Mavis decides without much thought. With about as little thought given to what she next says, Mavis opens her mouth and comments, "You are starting to sound like Audra with all of her," she raises her hands and waggles her fingers at Amity, "woo-woo." She kicks back in the chair, leaning on two of the legs then talks while flipping her hand through the air. "Still, though.. I dunno what to make of all this. Should we just leave this stuff down here? What if the cops have to come out to the house one day over something totally legit and they find this secret sex-cult room down here and then they think we're CULTISTS and we get pinned for, like, a murder-sex spree." She sounds serious.
Amity looks through the desk drawers for a moment, then decides that the bookshelves are the place to look. She turns to head back that direction and pauses, resting her hand on Mavis' shoulder to give a squeeze. "...Because it's important, Mav," she says quietly. "There are bad things out there and even if you don't believe in them, they can still hurt you. They don't care if don't you believe. They'll /make/ you believe." Her voice is quiet and even and entirely serious. While she speaks, her grip on Mavis' shoulder gets tighter and then the pressure is gone as she moves to the bookshelf at last, peering at the spines of books with intent curiosity. "And I don't think we have to worry much about that. Unless we start murdering people down here, which is unlikely."
Mavis brings all four legs of her chair down to the floor when Amity comes over to inspect the contents of the desk. She peers into the drawers the Lost pulls open: curious, aloof, and catlike. She tilts her gaze up at Amity, eyebrows pensively knitting as she absorbs the woman's words.
It was strange. What Amity was saying sounded absurd, but the worry in her tone and held in her blue eyes were real to her.
"Ouch, Amity," she says in a quiet voice, more shocked than actually hurt. Mavis rubs the spot when Amity lets it go and watches the woman pace across the cellar to the shelves. "I get it," she lies. She didn't. She couldn't possibly. A moment later, Mavis says, "Yeah, well.. I've binged too many murder documentaries to not worry about these things. Did you see the one about that guy who was thrown into a prison for a crime that the police totally framed him for?" She was babbling like she did when she got edgy, preferring to put as much word-mileage between themselves and that previous topic of nightmares and fairies.
"I'm serious, Mavis. You need to be careful. I wasn't careful." Amity says as her fingers trace along the spines of books and then pluck one out that she can turn over in her hands. Her heart is starting to pound. Is she really just... going to come out and tell her mortal girlfriend this? She's going to sound /crazy/. She frowns, opening the thick volume--and it is merely a dictionary of common herbs and where and how to find them. Innocent enough. She turns the book to show a picture of St John's wort to Mavis. "This one is useful in warding off the fae, or so I've heard," she says quietly, then closes the book and shoves it back onto the shelf. "I don't think I /have/ seen that one," she admits. "I don't watch a lot of true crime programming."
"That stuff grows wild out back," she says after leaning forward in the chair and squinting at the St. John's wort sketched in the book Amity holds open up to her. Mavis settles back and jabs a thumb over her shoulder in the direction of where the backyard would be if they were above ground. She hadn't sound convinced, though, when she'd said that about the St. John's wort. Merely someone sharing a relevant factoid because it was the first thing to pop into their brain and it was all they had to add.
After a moment, Mavis apprehensively folds her hands in her lap and asks, "What do you.. mean? You weren't careful." What was Amity even talking about? Why was she doing this /now/ when everything seemed to be going so well? Wasn't it /her/ job to scare people off by being eccentric and strange? She stands up. Suddenly, the mortal wanted to get out of here just like she'd suddenly not been hungry when Amity offered to make dinner.
Amity looks back at Mavis and her arms cross tightly across her chest. She seems to shrink in a little on herself, growing smaller and more distant than usual. That spark of excited life and happiness that Mavis has so often seen in her seems to dim and her whole body tenses. She takes a breath. In. Out. It's okay. She's just going to tell Mavis her secret. No worries. Not like it matters. But maybe she doesn't have to tell her everything, right? Right. Right. Breathe in.
"You know, like. Something happened to me when I was younger." She hesitates, then plunges on before her brain can make her stop, can yell at her that she's ruining everything. "That's true. I--I got taken. By one of Gentry." That was how Her Ladyship had always referred to herself. "The Fae Folk. And--" She hesitates, voice creaking like a tree threatening to break in a windstorm. "--And I lost a decade of my life and I--no one would believe me, Mavis, you have to understand it... God I know, you probably think this is crazy..."
Mavis stares across the cellar at Amity, half-turned toward the stairs as she she could set off for them at any moment. She doesn't though. She stands there and watches Amity in alarm as the Lost curls her arms around herself and her voice shakes as she tells her about what'd happened to her.
"Like... Kidnapped," she states quietly while looking at Amity in bewilderment. That had to be what her girlfriend meant. Some lunatic claiming to be a psycho-fairy had kidnapped Amity when she was a child. Then something Amity said catches up to her. A decade of her life. "Ten years? I- Amity, I'm so sorry," blurts Mavis, taking a step forward, stopping short, and feeling heat blur her vision. She didn't want to tell Amity that she was crazy. She didn't want to tell her that she wasn't. "Have you talked to a therapist about.." Mavis, still relating this to the reality she knows, plods on with, "About how to process what happened to you?"
"Yes. Kidnapped. I don't even remember it that well. Just flashes. And dreams. I--I don't like to sleep, you know?" Ha ha. Insomnia. Very funny. No big deal. She takes a breath, eyes closing. For a moment she can feel the rod against her back again. "No. No, I haven't. Because a therapist isn't going to say 'Yes, Miss Mays, that sounds normal.' They're going to think I'm delusional." She looks, eyes wide and scared as she looks into Mavis' own. "They'd drug me. Or lock me up somewhere. And if I talked about it, then--then She might find out about it and come find me--" A pause. "You don't think I'm delusional, right?"
Now Mavis folds her arms over her own self, mirroring Amity's anxious posture, and hugs her body. She looks down at the straw-littered floor, but something about the swirling design that lay under the straw made her feel out-of-place and Amity's words pitter-patter on the edge of her consciousness like raindrops flung against a window. Mavis blinks and looks back up at Amity, gaining traction with everything she had just said. Some of it made sense, some of it didn't.
"Miss Mays?" Mavis echoes in a soft, inquisitive voice. She rubs her face with a hand and stares at Amity, flabbergasted. "I- I don't know, Amity. It sounds.. kinda wild," she answers, wishing she'd had the heart to lie. "I think people have different ways of coping with shit and-" Mavis trails off, hugs herself tighter, and shrugs as a wave of shame sinks over her.
"God. No, I shouldn't have..." Amity curses and sinks down to sit on the bottom step, trying to hold back the stinging tears threatening to spill down her face. She can't seem to pull herself together again now that she's let the gate open and let this spill out into the world. She looks up at Mavis and regrets ever saying a word.
"I should have stayed quiet but you need to know. The truth." She swallows. "The truth about me. I'm still Amity, alright? I've never--I've never lied to you about my feelings or anything like that." She has to regain some control, has to find the words to explain this to Mavis. "Magic is real. The Fae are real." She goes quiet, then speaks in a quiet voice, barely a whisper. "What they did to me is real. I think your grandmother might have known that much."
Mavis, arms still folded over her t-shirt, rubs her hands over the gooseflesh that has prickled along the backs of her biceps. She wasn't cold, though, and her heart was thundering hard in her chest as if she ought to run. A furtive, desperate glance is cast down again and she shakes her head, not looking at Amity as she sits on the bottom step. Immediately, Mavis feels cut off from the exit and turns to face her but doesn't move from the spot over the straw-covered floor that she's rooted to. She meets Amity's gaze, stoic and still. There's a subtle, almost imperceptible pinch at her brows when Amity says that about her honesties and Mavis' eyes turn flinty.
"Show me, then," she challenges Amity, jerking her chin and un-crossing her arms. Mavis lifts her hands, palms up. "Show me. I want to believe you-- I do-- but what you're saying is... Fuck, Amity," Mavis sighs, shooting a glare at her. According to Amity, her grandmother was in the loop on all of this too. Mavis wasn't sure if that worried her or offended her, Amity leveraging her dead relation like that. "You're not making the whole "supportive girlfriend"-," air quotes, "-thing easy."
Amity feels cold and sick, like the world is dropping out from underneath her. This isn't... she had wanted to ease into this but it feels like she's set off something she cannot control. She looks up at Mavis, then looks aside, her breath trembling.
"Showing you--" She breaks off, tries to think of something, anything else she could do or say. Something to make it all make sense that /isn't/ just throwing Mavis into the deep end. She reaches out towards Mavis, wanting to grasp her hand and feel her warm and comforting.
"I was born Michele Lindsay Mays in Hartford, Connecticut in 1970. I was taken to Arcadia in the October of 1984. It was two months after I turned fourteen. We were in Boston. On a field trip." She closes her eyes and she can almost see the street corner as clear as day. "My parents were Robert Mays and Alice Mays. When I came back through the Hedge, I was in my twenties. But it had been thirty-three years since I'd officially disappeared." She opens her eyes, looks imploringly at Mavis. "...You can check that. I don't have any reason to lie, you can see--" She fumbles her words. "You can see that I really--I know it sounds crazy."
Mavis tenses up on herself when Amity reaches out for her and then she turns her head away, ashamed at the reaction. She shakes her head and, trying to draw out some of the sting of her rejection, murmurs to Amity, "Not- not now." Her heart sank somewhere below her stomach, cold and heavy. She shudders when her girlfriend delivers that name-- Michele Lindsay Mays-- of a person she didn't know and Mavis exhales a shaky sigh.
She waits until Amity is finished speaking, pushes aside the countless questions she has, and says, firmly, "No." Then, looking back at her, states it again with more conviction, "No. I don't want to look it up. You just told me that magic is real, fairies are monsters, and you're like my mom's age." She takes a step forward, intending to move past Amity on the stairs. "Even if I do find out that some kid from Hartford that went missing in the 80s.. You're Amity Millikan, says so on your driver's license."
Amity slumps down for a moment, feeling sick and tired and defeated all at once. She's trying. She's trying so hard and this isn't working.
"That's who I am now! Because I couldn't keep--I couldn't be her anymore! Not after what happened! Not when my parents are--are /old/ and think I'm dead--" She groans and then clambers to her feet and starts up the stairs ahead of Mavis, hurrying.
Mavis breezes up the stairs past Amity and then her footsteps stamp into the kitchen hard enough to shake some dust loose from the rafters in the cellar. Amity's shouting after her, climbing up the steps to chase her, and Mavis turns around sharp to cut the blonde off.
"Amity, stop it," she scathes and her light-brown hand comes up to angrily swipe at her eyes. Tears were caught up in her eyelashes as she glares back at Amity. "Just stop it. I don't want to fight with you. What you're saying is so.." Insane. Heartbreaking. "..awful. I'm sorry for what happened to you," she says, softening and lowering her gaze. "That it was so bad you had to.. to fall back on this _fantasy_." Mavis lets that word hang in the air and swallows past a lump in her throat like a hot coal and keeps speaking. "Can.. Can we just have dinner?"
"It's not--" Amity chokes on her words as she emerges into the light of the kitchen, breath taut as she stares at Mavis. She doesn't believe her. Mavis doesn't believe her. God. /God/. She could show her the truth, but would it help? Amity finally starts to cry a little when Mavis declares this whole thing a fantasy. Amity clenches her jaw /tight/ and trembles, pale complexion even paler than normal. "It's not a fantasy," she says. "It's the truth, honestly. It's--it's real, I would never lie to you about this it's so much to carry and I need to tell you because I need to be able to keep you /safe/," she's babbling. She's babbling she needs to stop, needs to figure out what to do, what to say, how to act. She turns to one of the cabinets and wrenches it open. Pulls out a coffee mug at random and hurls it onto the floor as hard as she can muster. It shatters into pieces of ceramic that skitter across the floor and Amity drops to hands and knees to pick up the largest piece she can find--the handle. "I'll show you--"
Mavis rubs at her face again, although not to wipe away the sting of tears, but to sigh and massage her brow. "Amity," she murmurs quietly, lowering her hand and staring into the Lost's eyes sadly.
No. No, she did not believe Amity. But she didn't hold her in any contempt, just pity the shone through her honey-brown eyes flecked with bursts of emerald-green.
"We are safe," she tells Amity, trying to reassure her, but the blonde was already yanking opened cupboards and flinging mugs down onto the floor. Mavis jolts when it shatters, leaping back and looking shocked and then angry.
"Amity!"
Then Amity drops to all fours, heedless of the shards of ceramic and begins to hunt for the right piece. Mavis gasps and she feels like something heavy had just collided with her gut.
"Amity! Christ! Be careful. Honey, no-" Hands reach for Amity's wrists to try to pull them up and safely away from the shattered pieces of the mug. Mavis was crouching down besides her. "It's okay, please.. You're scaring me, sunbeam."
Amity is crying and it will not stop. Her fingers close around the handle of the mug and she ignores the little pinpricks of pain as a sharp shard digs into the pad of one of her fingers, a little drop of blood beginning to bloom like an obscene flower. She shakes her head, but... relents as Mavis takes hold of her wrists and tugs them up and away from the broken ceramic. She wants to show her. Needs to show her. She has to keep Mavis /safe/.
"Mavis. Mavis, please, you have to believe me. I'm not lying, it's not--it's not a fantasy," her voice breaks, finally devolving into rough, unhappy sobs. "It's real, starlight, I promise. I--" She hesitates not certain of what to say or do. Mavis thinks she's gone mad, almost certainly. "Don't leave me," she finally says after long moments of silence. "Please don't leave me."
She's not sure when the tears started to fall, but Mavis feels Amity's blonde hair stick to her cheeks when she presses her head close to hers. Her fingers are closed around Amity's wrists. "Please," she whispers against the Changeling's ear. Her hands open and she shakily leans back with a wet sniff then rubs her nose. "Please, be careful."
Mavis could sense that Amity had to do this. Had to show her whatever she had to show her. She looks down at the shards of ceramic mug over the kitchen floor and back up at Amity while chewing anxiously on her bottom lip. She unbites it and nods her head, saying gently, "Show me." It's what she had wanted back in the cellar, seemed unfair to go back now. She tilts her head, smiles faintly, and tries to catch Amity's gaze. "Hey.. I'm not leaving, okay? Just try to calm down."
-> >> Amity to Here << <-=============================================
Rolled 2 Successes
< 1 2 3 3 3 3 7 7 9 10 >
================================-> >> Wits + Wyrd + 2 No Flags << <-
GAME: Amity spends 1 Glamour with reason: Lost and Found 2
Mavis' hands are soft and warm and comforting but Amity is still trembling, flashes of memory mingling with fear that perhaps she has overplayed her hand. Her girlfriend thinks she's crazy and there's no way to do anything about it except by. Showing her. Which of course comes with its own problems and yet here she is. She grips the mug tight in her hand and holds it close to her chest. There's a moment where... nothing seems to be happening and then pieces of the shattered mug scattered across the kitchen floor stir themselves and whirl together and upwards to the the lonely handle that Amity grips in her hand, reassembling themselves bit by bit. A a moment later the mug is held in Amity's hand as whole as it had never been broken in the first place.
In the same instant, Amity looks back at Mavis, meeting her gaze with a weary smile. There's something like a gust of wind, a burst of energy that doesn't quite disturb the other objects in the room but whips Amity's hair around her, loosening it from her usual tight hairdo and then... well, Amity is /different/. She seems slenderer, if that was possible. Her skin is milky pale instead of her usual New England WASP complexion. Her nose now seems knife's edge sharp instead of merely long , her ears come to a slight point and, threads of gold run through her blonde hair. Most striking of all her normally pale blue eyes now glitter a deep sapphire blue, not quite faceted like gems but when the light catches them in the right way, one might be forgiven for thinking that.
"I'm sorry," she says quietly. "That I couldn't tell you the truth before."
BP Roll for Mavis = Exceptional Success~
Mavis watches her girlfriend with a worried expression. She smooths a hand down Amity's back and, after a few seconds, she begins to hum low, soothing sounds. "It's okay," murmurs Mavis, curling her fingers gently under Amity's elbow like she were about to help the woman to her feet. "It's okay, let's go sink you into a hot, bubble ba-"
She spots movement out of the corner of her eye and immediately stops talking. Mavis doesn't turn her head, not at first. She's too convinced that she hasn't seen the pieces of the mug scattered across the kitchen floor start moving, but then the broken shards climb into the air and drift towards Amity's hand. She makes a tight, strangled sound of fear and Mavis' grip at Amity's elbow tightly clamps down. A moment later, Amity is holding a fully formed mug down to the very last sliver of ceramic and Mavis can't look away from the mug. It was an ordinary cup, save for the fact that it was in pieces just a second ago and now it was perfectly put back together again.
Mavis blurts, astonished and terrified, "H-How?" Her honey-brown eyes lift to Amity's face. A gust sweeps through the blonde's hair, freeing it and strands of gleaming gold are scattered throughout the pale locks. Not only is Amity's hair changed, but the rest of her features are slightly altered and alien. Mavis lets go of Amity's elbow, teeters with her balance, and then just decides to let gravity win by parking her bottom on the floor with a hard thwump. She stares, unblinking, at the woman in her kitchen right where her girlfriend had been a moment before. Mavis blinks and when she opens her eyes, she asks in a squeaky, uncertain voice, "Sunbeam?" The mortal very pointedly looks at Amity's hair, shaking her head in disbelief. She had no idea until now how right Widget had been when she'd said the nickname suited Amity.
"I can't believe it. You- you were being serious? I.. I thought you were crazy," she murmurs, speaking her jumbled thoughts aloud as they come hurtling through her brain. Mavis gasps and covers her mouth with a hand. She speaks behind it, a rush of words, "Oh my God. Amity!" The whites of her eyes are visible all 'round her irises. "Amity, I am so sorry!"
Amity sways for a moment on her feet and then lurches to the side to set the mug down on the counter. She feels drained. It's not that having glamour is bad for her, necessarily--it just feels emotionally exhausting to have done this--to have revealed so much of herself to someone for the first time in years. She takes a step forward and crouches down, reaching out towards Mavis with long fingers. She wants to touch the other's skin, to feel the warmth there and be comforted.
"It's me, starlight," she says, her voice whispy and tired. She tries to take Mavis' hands with her own, kneeling down on the kitchen floor. "It sounds crazy. I... If I hadn't..." If I hadn't been one of the poor souls who had stumbled into the hands of the Gentry. If I didn't see the magic seeping into the world and the Wyrd every day. "It's alright. It--It's okay..." Her cheeks are damp with exhausted tears. "I wanted to tell you. It's just. I was afraid." Of endangering you. Of you leaving. Of being alone again.
Mavis keeps her hand over her mouth with her eyes still wide and shocked. She can't tear her gaze away from Amity, watching her girlfriend slowly rise and move to set the mug on the counter. Her hands move to the floor and she just sits there with an awestruck expression on her face that makes her seem younger. Her head tilts, chin lifting, as Amity makes her way back to her and then lowers again when the Lost crouches down.
She stares dumbly at the hands that Amity reaches out to her with and their overlong fingers. Mavis dazedly places her own hands into Amity's, opens her mouth to speak, but no words come out. The mortal just stares at their linked hands for several, long seconds, listening to Amity's tired, soft voice until she's finished speaking. Then she looks up and leaps onto Amity, heedless of how they end up.
"I didn't believe you, I didn't believe you, I-I couldn't," she chants and sorrowful kisses are pressed to Amity's cheeks, lips, chin, nose, and brow. "I know it's you, of course it's you." She's crying, although the Lost wouldn't know it if not for the wet transfer of tears during those kisses. The mortal does not sob, but there is a raspy strain in her voice and she's nuzzling against Amity's neck and the side of her head like an affectionate bearcub. Mavis peppers Amity with more fervent kisses, against the side of her head, while gripping Amity by the shoulders and repeating the same words again and again. "I'm sorry, so sorry."
-> >> Amity to Here << <-=============================================
Rolled 3 Successes
< 1 3 5 8 9 10 >
============================-> >> Composure + Empathy No Flags << <-
GAME: Amity regain 3 Glamour
Being without glamour is a bit like being hungry. Being completely devoid of it while your girlfriend jumps on top of you declaring their love for you and apologizing for doubting you is rather like setting a plate of food in front of someone who hasn't eaten all day and expecting them not to dig in right away. Good manners not to? Yes. But... God. Amity tumbles onto her back as Mavis leaps at her and finds herself sprawled on the cold kitchen floor. She reaches up and wraps her arms around Mavis, her hand burying it into the other's thick hair and holding her tight. She sighs into the other's ear, hiccoughing a little as tears continue to trickle down her cheeks.
"It's okay, Mavis. It's okay, I understand--I know..." There's a soft sigh from Amity that might be a sob... Or a reaction to the sudden flush of glamour as she takes a little taste of the guilt and sorrow practically pouring off her girlfriend. She leans into the kisses and nuzzles, returning them as best she can. They're both a mess, teary and snotty and just--well, messy. Her voice is strained and quiet, "It's alright. Thank God... Thank God you're still here," she mumbles. "I was so scared of losing you."
Mavis clumsily finds Amity's lips and she kisses her again. She's propped up by an elbow by now and slightly tilting her head to feel the slide of Amity's fingers twined into her hair. Her other hand smooths down the outside of Amity's arm and then slides onto her stomach with the tips of her fingers curling. The kiss ends, a suck and nibble delivered to Amity's bottom lip. Any gasps or sighs from Amity aren't attributed to anything unordinary and it felt good to kiss her girlfriend after their brief bout of conflict. Her guilt doesn't vanish, but it's lessened some.
"I already told you," she says, leaning up to look down at Amity with her red-rimmed eyes. "I'm not leaving you." She pushes herself up from her elbow onto her hand and rolls from a knee onto a hip to sit alongside Amity with her upper-body propped. "I just don't know what is going on.. Or what it means? And.. I have a million questions." Had she just not been listening? Mavis replays everything Amity has told her in the last fifteen to twenty minutes or so. She peers at her, perplexed. "What are you?"
Amity leans into the kiss, returning it with a messy, fervent energy that's a little out of character for the normally restrained woman. It feels good to indulge, though. Feels good to feel a little normal. It doesn't last, though and she looks after Mavis as the other woman rolls over to sit next to her. The question is... a bit hard to hear. Amity flinches a little at the question, but does her best to smile through it.
"I... It's complicated, answering that question," she says after a moment of considertion. She's staying where she is, laying on the kitchen floor. She feels too drained to move anywhere else for the moment. Absently, she brings her finger up and sucks on it, whisking away a little of the blood from her earlier cut.
"Lost," she says as though that explains it. "A Changeling. I was human, you know? Mortal. /Normal/. But, um... I spent so long in Arcadia--the realm of Faery--that it kind of. Twisted me up, connected me to it. Changed me because that's what She wanted." She rests her forearm over her eyes, trying to find more words to explain this. It's not easy. "...I really did go missing in 1984. I just... My parents... I couldn't go find them after I'd been gone thirty years and--and looking like I was two decades too young..." She trailed off, bit back the urge to cry. "I don't know if it's better or worse that I don't actually remember much about what happened to me."
She wasn't trying to be insensitive, but perhaps Mavis' absolute lack of intent is what made it so disheartening. Her golden-brown eyes never leave Amity's sapphires nor do they stop searching them.
"She? Who is She?" Mavis blurts with her expression turning dark and stormy. "The one who took you? Why? Why would She do that?" The mortal hears the rest, about Amity's parents and her missing time, but she's slowly beginning to fume and Amity would be able to see Mavis' temper beginning to mount. She prickles, like electricity just zipped through her, and slowly sits upright with her back straight. A glance is directed over her shoulder, giving Amity the glimpse of her tight-lipped grimace and the taut line of Mavis' jaw. "And She is... where? Just in this.. this Arcadia?" Her voice is getting louder. "She hurt you for ten years?" And louder. Less question, more accusation. "And got away with it?" Yelling. Mavis is yelling now and scrambling onto her feet, spinning around on the spot to glare balefully at a fixed point on the wall as if Arcadia and this Woman's doorstep lay that-a-ways. Her fingers curl to form shaking, white-knuckled fists. "I'll scalp that bitch."
Amity tries to push herself up to her feet, stumbles as she doesn't quite get her footing on the floor, and then reaches out to wrap her arms around Mavis, holding her tight. No. No, Stop. She kisses Mavis' temple, tries to hold her in place, trying to restrain her.
"Mavis, starlight... Shh. Sh." She's not scared. Not exactly. "I--I don't know why, Mavis. Because she wanted to. Because she needed a scullery maid and--and I was in the wrong place at the wrong time." She sounds deflated, trying to give reason to it is something she's done herself over the years and never found a real answer.
"Because that's what the Gentry /do/. They're not human. They're powerful and horrifying and--and yes She got away with it, okay?" She takes a heavy, shaky breath. "Might have been ten, maybe twelve. I don't know. You kind of lose track, or... I think I did? I don't remember details, just... instances. You can't fight them. The best thing to do is hide. Be safe. Get on with what you can of your life."
Mavis grimly stares at the wall as Amity gets up onto her feet, circles her arms around her, and tries to sooth her. Her arms hang at her sides and Mavis shakes her head softly. "That's.. That's wrong," she tells Amity, tilting her head away to turn it enough to peer back at her girlfriend. Her hot anger had frosted over to a cold rage. Mavis forces her arms to move to circle Amity and hug her back. She squeezes, resting her head on the Lost's shoulder and stares. "So," goes Mavis, "You were kidnapped at 14 in 1984," that was an easy one to remember thanks to Orwell, "and taken to... Arcadia," Mavis pronounces that uncertainty, committing it to memory at the same time, "where an evil, sadistic, MAGIC FAIRY made you Her scullery maid?" There's a pause and then Mavis plods on. "But you got away and your parents are really old now." A hot sliver of pain pierces Mavis' heart for Amity. She'd lost her parents, too, albeit through more mundane avenues. "And you're hiding from Maleficent, because you don't want to go back and we can't kill her."
Something about that last sentence. We. Meaning both Amity and herself. And the "can't kill her" part almost sounds like an unspoken question.
Mavis lifts her head from Amity's shoulder to look into her familiar, yet strange, face. She was quite pretty actually, Mavis reckons, but immediately feels rude for thinking so. "Is there anything else that I should know?"
"Yes. It was wrong. And... yes. not just that but. That's part of what I remember clearly. There's more but I..." She trails off, the Lost woman not sure how to explain the strange fragmented images that she gets in her head and the struggle to put those pieces together. The struggle to decide if she WANTS to put those pieces together. "And yes, I got away. Through the Hedge and back here to the mortal world. Put together a life of a sort." A breath. "And yes, I'm hiding because there's nothing else I can do." Now comes the hard part, the struggle to fill in the /rest/ of this.
"There's more but. I think it might be better to wait, because it's not just about me." She smiles, weak and tired. "It's not just me, I'll put it like that. I just... need to figure out how to explain the rest."
Mavis squints at Amity when she says that about how it's not just her. A few thoughts slither up through cracks, form together, and an expression of dawning realization blooms on Mavis' face. "Hang on a second," she rushes to cut Amity off and the mortal gives an excited bounce. "Is that the sneaky stuff you were getting up to with Nathania?" Her mouth falls open and Mavis mouths the words, "Oh-my-God," then takes a step back with her arms straightening out, hands sliding to hold Amity by her slim hips. "I thought you just didn't know how to tell me you were trying to break off the affair 'cos she's married or something. I mean.. Is she? I dunno, asking always seemed like a loaded gun and I never know what to say around her since I saw those texts- uff- that I wasn't supposed to see."
Amity coughs. Mavis has put some of it together. She takes a breath, then she nods across the space between the the pair of them, looking sheepish. "Yes. Nathania also. There's more of us, too. I just... Need to figure out how to explain this whole thing to you. And them. Because since you're under my protection, technically, that puts you under the Freehold's protection. So... give me some time, okay?"
"Honestly?" Mavis says that single word in a tense, high-pitched voice. "I am just glad you weren't screwing me around." She gives a weak, self-conscious laugh at admitting that then leans against Amity and sighs in relief. "The what?" She tenses against Amity then tilts her head back to give her a blank stare. "I'm under your what?" Mavis barks out a laugh and rolls her eyes. "No- no- no, look. I don't want to meet these Freehold guys. I mean, I've been fine my whole life. From what you say, there's nothing I _can_ do if the fairies _do_ come for me. Sides, who the hell'd want me?"
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