Difference between revisions of "Log:First Steps Toward A Pilgrimage"

28 April, 2017

Alonso returns to the bookstore to find that people have placed a drunken golem on the pull-out couch he's been crashing on. A golem's compulsions are uncovered. The Darkling tenders advice.

MT03 - Tamarack Falls Jewish Bookstore

It's somewhere around 2 AM on Thursday night/Friday morning, and the back room of the bookstore isn't quiet, but it is ... well. There's only one sound, an intermittent thing that's something like a handful of pebbles rolling in a rock tumblr over... and over... and over.

The lights are low, Alonso's neatly made bed? It isn't empty. There's a sprawled golem across the bed, in such a way as makes it very clear that someone (or someones, let's be honest, the golem isn't a light creature) picked her up and put her on the bed.

There are four empty wine bottles scattered around the floor, three of them next to her favorite chair in this room, and the fourth rolled across the floor toward the pull-out couch. She's fully-dressed, her clothing rumpled, dried blood on her dark sweater. Snoring. Drunk.

Well, that's not usual. Alonso considers the drunken, snoring golem for a long series of seconds before chuckling and shaking his head. He collects the empty bottles and sets them into the waste bin, tidies up any of the remaining mess left over from the night's 'festivities', and then heads over to remove Gisa's shoes at the very least. Once that's all concluded, he finds a blanket she's not lying on and tucks her in. As an afterthought, he goes to get a very tall glass over water and leaves it beside her bedside. She'll wake up at some point and be glad for it, no doubt. This leaves the question of where he's going to bed down for the night, not that he's complaining particularly. He arranges the couch cushions, lies down atop them, covers himself with a sheet, and props his hat over his face. He's slept on worse, no doubt, over the years.

The funny thing about Gisa's shoes is that they haven't got any soles on them. Probably they look like regular shoes to non-Changelings, the Mask concealing them, but these Hedgespun shoes have only a thick strap that goes across the arch of the foot, and then the rest of it is just... well, made to look like she isn't running about essentially barefoot. She doesn't protest when he takes her shoes of, and she barely stirs then. The clink-clink of the glasses, though, that makes her eyes flutter, and the thunk of the glass on the side table, she murmurs drunkenly.

After he's lying down, and has had a chance to settle? Gisa mumbles something in Hebrew. Very few other people probably could have understood it at all, but, well. Lucky Alonso. She mumbles something that's clearly a slurred apology, followed by words that are nonsense.

"Don't apologize. It's your house. But you may want to drink that water while you're awake enough to think to do so. Or you will regret it very much in the morning." Alonso crosses his legs at the ankles, folds his hands over his stomach, and seems quite content to play her loyal watchdog. Sleeping at her feet on the floor while she's otherwise unable to defend herself. Having a 'what's the matter' conversation while she's drunk doesn't seem his intention. He probably wouldn't be able to understand her, and she might not want to share were she sober. So.

If she was only halfway awake before he actually said something, Gisa slurs her way into drunken wakefulness when he responds to her. She pushes herself up onto her elbows blurrily, her weight shifting from one side to the next. How the drunk can sway when they're almost horizontal is sort of a magical talent. However, Gisa does listen to him, mumbling her thanks -- again, in Hebrew -- and rolls slowly over onto her side, reaching for the water. The glass clinks against her lips, glass on ceramic, and she slurps the water up, messily. It dribbles on her sweater, but she drinks the whole thing before dropping onto her back with a groan. She slumps one of her arms over her face, covering her eyes, and there's a low, rattling sound like rocks being crushed.

Whatever she drank, it wasn't enough.

When she downs the glass, Alonso pokes his hat up, and rolls back up to his feet. He takes the empty glass and steps away to refill it again, carrying it back and setting it once more beside her bed. It's really the only cure to a hangover. Not developing one. Once she's sprawled on her back and all miserable, Alonso gives another sigh and seats himself down on the fold out beside her, a presence felt if not seen what with the arm over her face. He doesn't say anything prompting or make any demands, he just seats himself there, watches her, and waits.

Well, that and Eternal Spring, but you can't use that on yourself. Alas. Gisa doesn't move her arm from across her face, even though she slurs, in Hebrew, "I know, I should drink the water that is mine. I know. I know. It's good." The creak of the foldout, and his presence, makes the golem just sigh heavily, that weird overstressed-blacksmith's-bellows sound. Her other hand rubs across her belly, the dried blood on the knit of her stomach. She starts to sit up to drink again, and then slumps back onto the bed, covering her face with her hands, clink-clink. No explanation yet. Instead she prays. She gets all the way through the bedtime blessing, and the Sh'ma, and loses her place halfway through Hashkivenu. Another long groan as she tries three times to find her place in the prayer again, and then another one of those "stone being crushed" sounds.

"I believe your God gets the idea," Alonso assures her after her third failed attempt to complete the prayer, "I am certain it is the intention that counts in these circumstances." With her trouble sitting up to drink, Alonso hops back to his feet and goes searching through the drawers to find a bendy straw. It's put into the glass to make matters a little easier on her. One gets the idea this isn't his first time nursing someone through a hangover. "Since you are moderately awake, would you like to change into pajamas? Or relocate to your own bed? Would you be more comfortable in either case?"

"I have to," answers Gisa, a low, almost pitiful moan. "I can't. I can't not." Whatever the actual source of her distress was, now she seems genuinely distressed about the fact that she can't find her place in the prayer again. "I have to. I made myself." Everything's in Hebrew, no matter what he answers in. She starts the Hashkivenu over again, compulsively. And again. And again. Sixth time is the charm, and she gets all the way through it on that go.

His questions don't seem to sink in until she's finished shoving her way through it. Then and only then does she try to get another glass of water in herself. She gets water down her face again, on her sweater. "Curly stairs," she offers, then, "I should -- I should -- her blood is on me." There's guilt in that, maybe. Sadness. Weariness.

"Jews used to have to not fight on the Sabbath, too. And then their enemies started attacking them on the Sabbath and that stopped. Judaism is practical and fungeable. So you should give that a try, my ceramic senora." Alonso considers her blood-spattered attire and gives an agreeable sort of nod, "So it is. You should bathe and change, yes. But I believe your shower is also up the curly stairs, so we are at something of an empasse. Unless you intend to bathe down here. Which, by all means, avail yourself. Just realize your clothes are also up the curly stairs. I suppose you could wear one of my shirts?" Alonso rises to his feet and heads over to his duffel to begins sifting through his meagre possessions. "It's up to you."

"But I have to," answers Gisa, stubbornly. There's a compulsiveness to her words that Alonso might get the idea hints at an area where -- unlike the never-a-hair-out-of-place Spaniard -- she has a broken edge, a weakness she's shoring up with prayer. She pushes herself up onto her elbows, and then to a sitting position, fully so. She sways slowly, back and forth, creaking from one side to the other like a tree about to collapse, or a landslide about to start. "I can -- I can go up the -- but I might fall down. Don't want to hurt you." She tries to stand up, and ends up on her feet but lunging forward and then face-first against a wall. Walls are your friend against gravity!

"You don't have to do anything, Gisa. Religion is not an obligation. If it were, there would be no element of faith or deliberation to the exercise. It would be breathing, eating, shitting. Autunomic process. How can you worship without intention, eh?" Alonso asks all of this as he's rooting around in his bag for something for her to wear. But she's up to her feet and heading for the stairs, so his offer of clothing is rendered moot. "I think you underestimate my resilience." He straightens back up and heads her way to help lead her to the stairs, offering her an arm and a stiff back. "I am amazed that someone who has walked such a long road as you have, and for so long, has not come to this realization."

She laughs, her face against the wall, and then says in low, mumbled Hebrew a phrase that Alonso has undoubtedly heard before: "We do and then we learn." Which is legitimately a Jewish value, that 'fake it till you make it, pray if you mean it or not' attitude, but it's papering over a hole in the wall, not decorating an undamaged wall. "I made myself," Gisa repeats, as if that explains everything. She sways back and forth through the bookstore, like a very, very lazy pinball. Stumble stumble, lean against the doorframe. Wobble weeble, thunk against a bookshelf. ("Finding God: Ten Jewish Reponses" falls off the display cradle on the shelf.) Shuffle shuffle aaaand lean on the bottom of the stairs. And now it's time for her to try to unhook the chain with the sign that says private on it which is across the bottom of the stairs. Uh. He'd probably better help her with that, unless he wants to watch her try to unhook that chain for the next hour. "Don't wanna hurt you. You're so nice. I'm a people."

"I have remade myself twice, there is nothing particularly special about making oneself, Gisa. Or, rather, it's incredibly special but by no means unique. You seem so determined to be what you have made yourself that you have not stopped to consider what you should be making yourself next. Remember: the Golem of Prague was made by the Rabbis. For a purpose. You have made yourself, yes. But for a single purpose? If you are only one thing, there are ten thousand things you are not. What of those things? What will you do when those things are needed, rather than what you are? Will you say, 'sorry, I made up my mind to limit myself to what I am, you'll have to fend for yourselves'?" Alonso unclips the chain for her, as something of an object lesson, perhaps. "I could have remained a harbinger. A harbinger and nothing more. A bad penny. A dybbuk. But in seeing everyone's troubled everywhere I looked, I made up my mind to try and be their solution. So I made myself lightning fast. Fleet of foot. Able to respond to what I see, able to prevent the things I foretell from coming to pass. Whenever I find a weakness, I address it and I move on. Which is how I came to be so nice. Resilient. And so on. Now. Up you go."

That's an awful lot of words for a very very drunk golem, and so Gisa just stands there and slowly sways back and forth, the words washing over her like a wave. Her shoulders slump slowly, and her head leans forward, eyeflames guttering. Ash dribbles from the corners of her eyes, and she makes a weird keening sound in the back of her throat. Apparently drunk goylomim have the very worst mood swings. She staggers a step or two up the spiral stairs, against the rail, the center, the rail, the center. Eventually she slowly collapses forward and ends up crawling up the spiral stairs to the landing at the top. It's... kind of a process. It takes a while. When she gets there, she ends up sort of rolling so she can sit her butt down on the top stair and slowly scoot herself backwards. But now she's sitting on her butt on a landing at the top of the stairs, and doesn't seem sure as to how to stand up. "Not a dybbuk, yer not," the golem insists, as if that's all she took out of that. (It isn't, surely?) "'d know."

"No? I come into your life, you're stable and confident. A week later, you're wallowing in your guilt and stumbling drunk." Alonso follows her up, patiently observing her battle with gravity and her own body. He never chuckles at her expense despite how tempting it might be. "Perhaps these events are unrelated, but perhaps they are not. Regardless, my point is that I spent a good long time developing my manners, my sense of hospitality and so on, so that everyone would give me the benfit of the doubt when the bad things I see coming all the while start coming to pass. I overcome my shortcomings deliberately. As could you." Alonso crests the stairs and offers a hand down to her, help up off the floor. "If you choose to do so."

"Fffff, m'not wallowing, I still got blood on. Deserve... this." answers Gisa, rolling her head to the side; her fine-copper-wire hair goes scree scree against the iron of the staircase. "Started before you. Just got worse, worse, worse." Maybe that's reassuring, but probably not. Oh, it was extant but got worse once he got there? Well, surely that is fine. Totally unrelated. She makes a small, weary sound in the back of her throat, lets the words roll over her again and again, crashing waves in a Spanish accent. Good thing he understands Hebrew, even if he doesn't answer her in it. "Mmmmmghhhhh," is her response, and she takes his hand, hauling herself up by climbing her hands up his arm to his shoulder. The golem's hands are warm from the fire inside her ceramic skin, like he'd picked up a mug full of rather toasty hot chocolate. "You're so good," she answers, sighing that big wheezy sigh of hers. Ah, so we're in the golem version of the 'I love you, man,' stage of drunk.

Alonso leans back as counterweight and hefts her up to her feet, hand clasped around her forearm. Once she's on her feet, she is confronted with the gaunt Darkling features that he keeps hidden under the brim of his hat. The perfected symmetry of his mien, the hybrid nature of his kiths impact on his mien as well. The sparkle of energy hiding in his eyes, the subtle swirl of air that surrounds him. The extra length on the top of his ears, the subtle fur that decorates his cheeks and temples, blending into his hair line. He really wasn't joking about being more than one thing, and his mien very clearly tells that story. "I would be lying if I said you were the first woman to tell me that after a night of drinking," he jests. "But we should probably get you cleaned up first. Do you want a bath, or do you want to try a shower instead?"

Whereas she's got fire burning in her eyes, skin of ceramic... but she's heavy for her size. Bones of stone and earth, and the muscles to match. She is more than one thing, but they're so close, so in sync, and she fought so hard to claim for herself what she is from what was done to her that the concept of remaking herself -- Reforming herself, if one will -- is as depressing and unthinkable at the moment as the idea of... well, no, that might be one of the most unthinkable things in the world, actually. Still, she stares at him for a long, long time, at his gaunt features, the almost-invisible fur on his face. Her hands cling onto his shoulder, twisting the fabric of his shirt in between her fingers.

What he says finally sinks in to Gisa's brain, past the several bottles of wine, and the look on her face becomes a sort of weird, almost bitter one. "Yeah, I bet," the golem slurs, swaying on her feet, and her hands drop from his shoulder as she realizes she's been staring. Her shin flares, bright and sharp, and she stumbles into, and then past him, opening the door to her loft apartment, spare as it is. "Shower, guess," she slurs, weaving her way to the bathroom. "Hair goes green." Copper would, in the water for too long.