It's late in the evening, and that's when Etsys often wake up from their naptimes, then are active for a few hours before falling asleep again. So it might be odd, or it might be not, to find an Etsy finishing her evening nap... here.
Sitting on a chair outside the trailer, in what might be considered the 'stoop' area, Etsy is wearing an undershirt made for someone about a foot taller than her, a ratty, light-blue jersey houserobe hanging open, and those tatty silk slippers that she seems to never go anywhere without. Stuffed in the pocket of the houserobe is an old-fashioned all metal mirror, and the mrbl wanders around the junkyard with Tick and Tock. Or rather, Tick and Tock patrol, and the mrbl trundles diffidently after them, observing. Very managerial, that hedgebeast.
On a rickety little table next to Etsy's chair, there's a large pile of cooked bacon, and a steak. Her webbed hands are wrapped around a very large mug full of heavily-creamered coffee, the big plastic sort that gets filled at gas stations for 99 cents, with a worn-off logo half-showing still. She alternates between drinking from the mug and eating bacon, slowly and almost thoughtfully, her eyes blinking slowly open and closed, like an old-fashioned dolly being tipped one way and then the other.
A truck comes pulling up. In it is a unicorn and a Jotun, but the Jotun is on the phone to someone he keeps calling "Ma." The unicorn gets out of the driver's seat and starts walking over to Etsy. She might be a unicorn dreaming of lobster rolls, (which she so is,) but she's also a unicorn carrying a bag of onion rings. Jon's got the less vegetable matter with him. "Heya, Etsy!" calls out Dielle. "How they hangin'?"
The unicorn is wearing a plaid cotton shirt, very lightweight, tied under her boobs and Daisy Duke shorts with her cowboy boots and hat.
The question seems to confuse Etsy for a moment -- maybe it's just because she only just woke up, or maybe it's because her language is not necessarily as idiomatic as others, but she just blinks slowly at Dielle, brackish eyes changing color from dark green to a middling sort of green. "They... are... oh!" Another swallow from her coffee, and Etsy seems to perk up a bit more, rather precisely like a flower that's being watered. "It is a goodness," she assures the unicorn, and then carefully nudges the plate aside on the table so she can set her coffee down. "Would like a bacons, Dielle?" She waves her hand absently toward Jon, but he's on the phone, and so, Etsy doesn't bug him more, for now. Instead, she carefully extracts one (1) slice of bacon from the tower of meat she (or someone else) constructed on that plate, and extends it to Dielle in offering.
Etsy has shared her bacon. Are the heavens about to open and herald the second coming?
Dielle takes the bacon with careful deliberation and smiles proudly. She has been offered a bacon! She crunches it, chews, swallows and says, "It's delicious, thank you! Mind if I sit? How've you been, Etsy?" She seems to be shoving down a little bubble of amusement, along with the bacon, but it doesn't feel mean so much as delighted.
"You'rewelcomeandofcourse." Her cheeks briefly color blue at the proud smile, a quick flush of color. "Yes, come, have a sit! Is a chair, and I will get a chair another one for Jon," Etsy assures Dielle, playing hostess as if, well, as if she lives here. She's wearing a loose blue jersey houserobe open over an undershirt that's the property of someone at least a foot taller than she is. Or was the property of that person. It's Etsy's now. She absently pulls the robe closed and lashes the belt around herself; the metal mirror in her pocket thumps against her leg as she does so, and then she flits off to drag another folding chair around for Jon. Then she settles back down in her chair, picking up her giant plastic mug o coffee once more. "Am a goodness," she assures Dielle. "Was a sleeps, and now is drinks a coffee, and watch doggos and mrbls, and maybe a Maddox will come out of a workshops and have a social times, and then is bedtimes again. Tomorrow, is a swims time. What is a funny?"
Dielle takes a seat and opens up her bag o'rings. "Not so much funny as an observation. I like to wear Jon's clothing, especially if I'm upset. It's like he's hugging me even if he's not, y'know? And it looks like you're wearing someone else's shirt and I was bein' glad for you to have someone's clothes to wear. Except then it occurred to me that I'm probably wrong, and that might be your shirt, because sometimes I buy really big shirts because I like to sleep in 'em."
Real smooth, Dee.
Jon blinked and looked to Dielle letting her take point on that one. Now he was blingking at both of them and came right out aand said it to Etsy, "I dunno what the hell you said kid, but I'm toucched." He thunked his stermun with two fingers, "right here. Yeah. Seat'd be good. Something somwthing...dogs?" He was tryin here and was trying to be patient. He couldn't help it that he looked chronically ready to tear someone's arms off like a Rancor.
She looks vaguely confused by Dielle's expression, and scratches her cheek with one webbed hand. "Oh, no, is a shirt of Maddox," she answers diffidently, reaching for another piece of bacon. She leans slowly across toward Jon and holds that bacon out toward him as if she's offering him the Holy Grail. (Dielle can explain to him later how he has been Honored by the mermaid who never shares her food. Unless you're super cool.) "Am a sleeps here." As if this were totally normal and not at all news. "And a shirts of Maddox is a very comfortables."
When Jon doesn't appear to be able to follow what she's saying, Etsy tilts her head to one side and then the other. "A mrbls is names of an Etsy hedgebeast? Mrbl is likes to play with dogs of Maddox? Maddox is a works now?" Since she doesn't know what was confusing to Jon, after all, all she can do is try to say it again.
"Don't mind Jon, he was talkin' on the phone, it always takes him a few minutes to catch up with whatever we were talking about before." Dielle finishes her bacon, and then says, curiously, "How's he get the grease out of his clothes, anyhow? Is it hard? Because every time I so much as drip butter on myself, it stays for months!"
Jon squint at her. Oh Ogres were not good wiht processing brain meats. They could process bacon like a champ though and gave her a genuine, "Aww thank you. Ya' too kind." Still though he worked it out piece by piece. Okay a hedgething was playing with the dogs. "Is a works now? Wait is he hurt and healing or are you saying he is working right now?" He looked between Mermaid and Yoonicorn trying to parse out if he should be calm or in action here.
She shakes her head slightly at that. "Is not a know," she answers Dielle absently. "Is just a wash? I am not so much for caring about stains, is blood stains on most of my clothings," she admits. Most of Etsy's brain processing is going toward not stuffing all the bacon in her face and trying to be a good hostess, and also on being comprehensible. "Am thinking probably takes clothes to a place and have them done. Count used to own a laundries, in Maine." Her nose wrinkles up slightly, and she makes a vaguely dismissive gesture with one hand. "How is a you?" And then she turns her attention to Jon, trying to parse what he is asking next. "Oh. He is do a works. Is not hurted, is in workshop, making a thing."
"Jon's askin' because he's a healer, he was worried," says Dielle, quickly. "I'm doin' good, though. Gettin' some work done before school starts again in the fall. How about you? You likin' it here in Vermont?" And then there's a beer-battered onion ring and she starts nibbling on it.
Jon pointed to Dielle. She had it in one. "That. But that's cool> Seems like you worked out a place to stay. Friends. It's a good start. WHen I got back that was the hardest part. At least I found a roommate that wasn't crazy. " He eyed Dielle and shrugged, "any more than a person needs to be to accept me as passable company"
"Oh! No, is not a hurted. Would have had a fix for him if he was a hurted, but if I could not fix would have called right aways. Jon is a Greenies also, I know." Etsy picks up three strips of bacon at once and casually shoves them into her toothy maw. Omnomnom. Once she swallows, she continues, "Is okays, a Vermont. No oceans, which is not so goods? But Maddox sealed up a showers in the trailer so is kind of a tank, and can rest if wants to." She absently swings a foot, nodding to Jon. "Officially am livings in my tent, because am a Courier. But... " her voice trails off. "Was living with Angelicas. She is a goods for a Springs. She wants a lot of things. A lot of peoples. Flirts a lots." She looks back over her shoulder at the trailer door, and shrugs with an odd sort of uncertainty on her delicate features. That same sort of expression sometimes shows up on the faces of deer when their heads snap up from eating, ears going every which way. To call Etsy 'emotionally skittish' is the understatement of the year. It's all going well, and therefore it's probably all about to fall apart.
Dielle starts by grinning as Jon calls her crazy. "Crazy AND unlikeable, didn't you get lucky!" she tells the Jotun. "Poor bastard." She looks back at Etsy as the woman starts talking and looks wistful for a few moments at the mention of the ocean. She might miss the ocean, herself. It's entirely likely. "I got no clue who Angelica is," she admits.
Jon shook his head to Dielle, "Nah Lucky's a different guy. This is Maddox's place." He looked to Dielle and said like the salty bastard he was, "Flippant Spring." Nope, no real love lost for him there. He ate the bacon and what was put in front of him but he didn't take and was careful not to touch anything. "So courrier huh? That sounds pretty neat. You like it? What'chu thinking about doin for you?"
The interplay between Dielle and Jon makes Etsy's eyes glitter with amusement -- literally glitter, like sunlight on waves -- and she shakes her head a bit, finishing off her bacon and settling in with her mug of coffee. "She is a person? Not a Lost, a mortals. But is sworn to the Freehold. Can see us. Enchanted, I think?" Her shoulders roll absently at that, webbed hands cradling the mug. "Mmm, no, Spring is me, not Angelica." And then Etsy clicks her little blue tongue against the roof of her mouth. "Mmm. Yeah, Courier. Is sometimes a dangerous. I started the doing of it when Maine fell apart." One hand absently skims through the air. "It has a keeping of business. To go place to place."
Dielle tracks up until the last two sentences, which kinda go right the heck over her head. "Who's Lucky?" she says, mystified, at Jon. She looks back at Etsy and says, "Has a keeping of business? I'm sorry, I didn't catch that one. I'm a bit tired."
Jon eyes Dielle "The guy at the Dawn dinner thing Gisa had. Talks lots. Friend of Joel?" Holy shit Jon paid attention to people. Earth be stilled! He squint at Etsy and shrugged. "Eh, no offense intended. Though this enchanted mortal thing is starting to feel unnaturally high. We know what's up?"
Dielle blinks. "Thought that was Logan, the Golden Boy, who did all the talking. I honestly don't remember Lucky." She shakes her head and says, "There really are a lot of 'em, aren't there?"
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