Very few people actually ENJOY hedge travel. The constant dangers, the threat of attack, or getting lost, or killed, or maimed, or chewed on in the not fun way? Yeah. They tend to dissuade people from making it a party destination. That is absolutely not the case with one Reginald Danger, Otter of Adventure! He and his paramour Esther Swift, manning the massive metal dragonfly that is the Amazing Dangerbug, are zooming through the hedge mazes and confines of the more distant trods. Where weird gets weirder and strange gets more normal. Statistically speaking. With his scarf flapping behind him, and his goggles making his adorable brown eyes all the more bulbous appearing, Reggie keeps his eye on the ground ahead, letting the Dangerbug worry about the threats from the air. "Lovely weather for it," Reggie calls back to his co-pilot in the seat behind him.
Is that a person down there? Right there, pushing their way out of the thorny tangle of the wall of one of those hedge mazes? It sure is! Wearing clothing that might at one point have been something other than tattered, filthy, bloody rags, Quinn bursts free of grasping branches and into the clear space of the maze's path only to stumble and fall on their face in response to the sudden lack of resistance. Then the figure just lies there, face down in grass. If not for the fact that they were ambulatory just a moment earlier they could be mistaken for a corpse, so little do they stir. Hopefully it's just exhaustion, and not a case of death.
When you have a siren, you always have a soundtrack. This is at least 10 percent of why Reggie loves Etsy: she provides him with Adventure! Music! (tm) Doot doot do doooo! Heroic flying music! Being sung! By a siren! Doot doot doooooo doot doo doooooo! She's see-through, not actually in this world entirely, and singing him a magical song of adventure while sitting in the back seat.
"Reggies! Looks!" Whatever else she might have said is cut off when the girl breaks free. "OH NOS. Reggies if is a traps is a good ones you must landings for right nows!"
Etsy's relationship with the English language is tenuous, at best.
Reggie adjusts the attitude of his craft and aims it towards the trod floor. "Stay in the air and cover me, darling. I am about to be terribly reckless in a brave and dashing manner!" And true to his word, Reggie hops out of the cockpit-- WHILE THE PLANE IS STILL DIVING --and slides out onto the hand and foot rails for actually climbing into the cockpit in the first place. The craft pulls up, right across the ground, and Reggie leaps off just as the craft begins to pull up. He glides across the ground, kicking up dust and debris ahead of himself, raising a cloud of obscuring dust that finally disipates to reveal the man standing there, covered in grime, but smiling like a movie star from the golden age of cinema. He removes his goggles, revealing the only dustless part of him, and notes to the world, "Take a good look, world! Danger's here." He pulls out the raygun pistol at his hip and strides forward towards the prone figure of Quinn, flopped there a short distance away. "Right! If this is a trap, you have one chance to surrender before I start shooting." He checks his ray gun briefly and notes, "I've got six shots, so if there's more than six of you, I'd be terribly grateful if you afforded me a chance to reload now and again."
The figure laying on the ground, pale skin and dark hair, begins to stir at the sound of some dragonfly airplane thing that they can hear but not really see while face down on the ground. By the time Reggie is jumping off onto the ground and the plane is climbing again, Quinn has started trying to scramble onto all fours again, finding some reserves of strength, or just pure adrenaline. The first called out words, telling the world to take a gander, makes the figure let out a terrified cry and with a glance Reggie's direction, Quinn notices the gun. Quinn scrambles back into a sitting position on the ground, hands raised overhead and revealing a face covered in dirt and blood alike, streaked with tears. "I surrender," comes a musical tenor, one filled with notes of fear and anguish. "Don't hurt me, please." That pale skin seems to pulse faintly with the steady rhythm of the words.
"What?" Reggie seems a little distracted by Quinn's surrender. Thrown out of his idiom, if you will. The pistol is lowered, and he exits his dashing movie star pose, and enters a more casual stance. The weapon is brandished haphazardly, the way one might with a stage prop. "No, not you. Them. THEM." Reggie gestures out towards the hedge she'd popped out of. Perhaps indicating whatever she was running from. "I mean, obviosuly YOU surrender, not knowing where you are or who I am. Whatever you're running from, on the other hand? Oh. That's usually much more obstreperous." Reggie waddles his way closer to Quinn and leans down to offer his hand in order to help her up. "Suffice, you've been rescued. Technically. I mean, it appears you've done a knock up job rescuing yourself. But we'll take you the rest of the way. You wouldn't happen to remember your name, would you? That will make it easier for me to introduce you to Esther once she swings back around."
The plane circles back around -- it obeys Reggie, not Etsy, but it does know basically what Reggie wants, so that's good.
It's actually a giant metallic dragonfly, on second look, which everyone gets when it circles back around and Etsy leaps out of it a solid fifteen feet from the ground.
Solid is the feet, not Etsy. She floats down insubstantially through the air and lands on the earth as light as a leaf. "Hellos! Is not a dangerouses. Are you injureds or doing a bleeds? I can do a fixes!" Some people talk about 'musical voices,' but Etsy literally laughs in arpeggios.
"Them?" Quinn seems just as confused as Reggie, but really being in shock at this stage seems perfectly reasonable. Quinn's idiom probably got left behind somewhere miles back in the thorns. "No, no, I'm alone," Quinn tries to say to the tune of placation, but the meter gets all jumbled into a mix of exhaustion and fear that's lingered so long the senses grow numb to it. When Reggie waddles closer, Quinn scrambles back a few feet and then hits the wall of the hedge maze and jerks away from it.
Quinn also currently looks a lot more like a he than a she, but it's kind of hard to tell given how filthy they are. Pale blue eyes blink a couple of times at the question, and for the moment the hand gets ignored. Then Etsy hops down out of the plane that landed nearby, Quinn's attention wanders over there, and the poor escapee lets out a terrified attempt at a simultaneous shriek and sob. It comes out more like a strangled choking sound, and Quinn starts trying to clamber back onto exhausted legs in order to run again. While with Reggie it seemed to be a more generalized terror at the whole situation, with Etsy this seems more specific. There was definitely a light of recognition there.
"Wait. You're terrified of /Esther/?" Reggie looks aside at the transparent woman in question and seems genuinely puzzled. His little carnivorous flower fish? Really? "I get being scared of me, I'm a world renowned adventurer, actor slash aviator with a heart of gold. But Esther?" He's gesturing with the muzzle of his pistol, mind you. As though he were somehow offended. As though he might retire to his trailer to call his agent and demand higher billing. It only dawns on him after he manages to somehow divest his ego from the situation that this may be due to Esther having once been a man eating mermaid of no small repute. "Oh." Yes, Reggie. "OH." Yup. "OoooooooOOOOOOOooooh." He starts to walk after Quinn, which probably isn't going to help with her general desire to run screaming for the hills. "Ehm. Listen. There's been a small mistake. You see. We're actually the protagonists. We're not going to eat you, or anything." He gestures between himself and Esther, once more with his pistol. "We're actually terribly friendly people once you get to know us."
-> >> Etsy to Here << <-==============================================
Rolled 3 Successes
< 2 2 4 4 4 4 4 5 6 7 7 9 10 10 >
=====================-> >> Resolve + Stamina + Mantle No Flags << <-
Floop. Etsy sits down on the ground -- she's still insubstantial, but her Mantle isn't: sweet little green runner vines and small white flowers spread around her on the ground, and the air smells of the sea. Her eyes half-lid, and she sighs, staying quiet. Her talking at this moment isn't going to help, more likely than not. I mean, it could, she has more social dice than God, let's be honest. But sometimes it's best to let Reggie handle things, within his adorable, 'gosh I'm so inoffensive and dashing and cute' idiom. Because her teeth are more terrifying, anyway.
She spreads out her small, webbed left hand, a thin gold band at their second knuckle on their left hand, and then warmth and comfort spreads through Quinn's body, filling up the every fiber of her and making her -- him? -- her feel full, rested, and well.
The attempt to climb back up on legs that had decided it was time to give out a few minutes ago becomes a lot easier when the only thing giving them any strength at all us pure adrenaline. A moment later Quinn is up and backing away, pointing in Etsy's direction but talking to Reggie. Well, it's more shouting than talking. "You brought one of them," comes a cry, affannato, as one hand jabs a finger in Etsy's direction and tears well at the corners of eyes to overflow to leave new trails across dirty cheeks. "I thought I got away, but you brought one of them here." Blue eyes flit around. "Where am I?"
-> >> Reggie to Here << <-============================================
Rolled 5 Successes for an exceptional success.
< 2 2 4 4 4 7 7 7 8 8 9 9 10 >
=======================-> >> Wits + Medicine + Mantle No Flags << <-
Rather than answer immediately, Reggie reaches out with a hand towards Quinn. His Spring mantle manifests itself around him quite gloriously. Laurels, and golden light. A halo about the head. The cries of proud birds and the distant cries of an adoring public. With it, Quinn's injuries begin to mend themselves. The tears and lashes of the thorns knitting shut, replaced by a sense of warmth and fufillment. Which is a great way to demonstrate one's goodwill. "Well, yes. I did. On account of her being an escapee like you, and like me. You're on the other side, my dear. Wherever you were? You've left it. And now you're here. This? This is the hedge. The place between the home of the Gentry, and the place where humans dwell. And while, yes, we all did a whole host of awful things-- or had awful things done to us, I suppose --you've reached the place where past sins are forgiven. The second you broke through those thorns, all bets were called off. Clean slate. Tabulae rasa, as they say. Baptism! Born again! Not in a Catholic sense, but in a thoroughly pentecostal sense. Or maybe a Mikvah, if you're one of the tribe, I don't know." He's gone off script, here, clearly. "But that's entirely beside the point. THE POINT. The point is. That. Ehm." He glances aside to Etsy for a moment, then back to Quinn. "Oh, bollocks, I've forgotten it." He taps the barrel of his ray gun against his forehead and snaps his fingers as though trying to remember the line. "Ah! Right." He resumes his prior heroic pose, tosses his scarf over his shoulder, and intones in his best baritone, "The point is that we're here to save you. And once Reggie Danger saves you, you stay bloody saved." He offers a wide, sharp toothed smile, during which one of his canines gleams in the light, followed by an audible *ting*, as though a tiny bell had been rung.
It's not possible for Etsy to roll her eyes -- her eyes are a beautiful sea-change green, undifferentiated between sclera, iris, and pupil -- but the feeling that she has rolled her eyes remains. It's an affectionate thing, as one after the other of Mr. Danger and the future Mrs. Danger heal up Quinn, sending warmth through the recent escapee's limbs. "We all did, there, what we needed to in order to survive." It's a surprisingly coherent sentence for someone whose relationship with the English language is adversarial at best. "Is not how I am doings now. Will have a savings."
Quinn's accusingly pointed finger lowesr as more words come along, and she -- they looked like a he a few moments ago, but she now -- looks around in confusion. The words might make sense, but it doesn't mean she's making sense of them. "Is it like this everywhere?" she asks in a rhythm of despair, while hugging her arms around herelf. Her skin pulses with faint hints of color that match the melody of her words, like she has an epidermal visualization plug-in or something. "What happened to the real world?" At least now it's more confusion than stark terror.
"The real world? Oh. It's still there. Only Donald "A lot of people are switching to these really long putters, very unattractive" Drumpf is president of the United States, so you may want to stay in here as much as possible." Reggie gives her a particularly understanding look. It's a lot to take in, the Donald "A lot of people are switching to these really long putters, very unattractive" Drumpf presidency. "Also, Turkey is a dictatorship now. And Russia isn't bad. It's a lot to take in." Reggie finally holsters his weapon, since it seems nothing is immediately intending to leap out and give him a chance to be a legend. "Tell you what. Why don't we get you up into the Dangerbug, and I'll fly you back to the Airship Adventure. We can rest there, you can bathe, change your clothes, get something to eat. And when you're ready to dip your toe back into reality, we can visit my stately Georgian manor house atop its palatial hill abreast the Tam river. My butler can make you hot pockets." Reggie takes a turning step aside and gestures towards the ground which, in short order, is occupied by the rapidly landing Dangerbug. "Welcome to the credit reel."
"Um. Yes." Etsy might have said something more than that, but Reggie kind of covered most of it, and when he gets to 'welcome to the credit reel,' she starts humming the outtro music. Yes, of course, of course, Etsy has heroic outtro music that she uses and made for Reggie. "I do not weigh anythings, I can do a ridings along."
Being somewhat in shock, the glassy-eyed look that Quinn gives Reggie's words is probably understandable. A lot of that stuff just doesn't compute when your mind is already having trouble making sense of so much many immediate, terrible, and chaotic concerns. She turns her head to look toward the Dangerbug when it's referenced and balks a bit, taking a step back as if she's quite sure she doesn't want to get on that thing. Then something else Reggie says sinks and her head whips back around as her eyes focus more than they have for the last couple of minutes. "The Tam?" she asks with a quavering vibrato as she reverses her step back and takes one forward. When Etsy begins humming the young woman's tightly wound muscles visibly seem to relax, and very faintly the shimmering of color on her skin matches the music, like she's attuning herself to it. "You can take me to Fort Brunsett?" She asks, and the tempo, rhythm, and pitch of the words all match the hummed notes. This seems to be a turning point where she goes from certainty that this is a trap of some sort she just can't identify yet to allowing a spark of hope to find purchase. "You can take me home?"
"Tamarack Falls, in any case. We live on the western bank in my aforementioned palatial manor. My driver can take you to Fort Brunsett, however. I don't like to visit. Bad luck, you know." Reggie may be joking, and he also may be telling the truth as he sees it. There's no joke in his tone, in any case. "But my point is you shouldn't just get a cold blast of the real world right in your face the second you've escaped Arcadia. You need some time to rest, to heal, to decompress. To eat. To get cleaned up. It's a lot to take in, the real world. I promise you, however, that once you've had time to do all of those things-- however long or not it takes you --you will step out into my mansion, and my driver will take you anywhere you want to go with ten thousand dollars in cash to spend as you see fit. I can get you fake IDs if they're needed, establish credit for you. What year was it when you were Taken? Do you remember?"
It's possible that Etsy may have put togther one and one and gotten two somewhere along the way, because her small, slender face turns toward the greenery behind Quinn, and her delicate face crinkles up. "Maybe less conversations right outside Their places? A person doing an escapes means is -- maybe a pursuits... " and with that, Etsy skitters away to clamber up weightlessly and sit astride the space between the forward and aft seats in the Dangerbug. Her skirts are very generous, thankfully, so all of her stays modest. Not that mermaids normally care about such things, but.
The other couple of times that Quinn's appearance has changed between feminine and masculine has been during moments of scrabbling around on the ground, flailing about, or otherwise accompanied by agitated circumstances that might have covered up the transition. This time she's nearly still as her features blur and blend, from a feminine to a more masculine version of the same person. Quinn's voice changes to match, from its clear mezzo soprano to a warmer tenor. "What year?" comes a confused question in a rhythmic sing-song, along with a rapid blinking that matches its timing, and then. "I think... 2015? What year is it now?"
Quinn looks rather dumbly at Etsy, then at the Dangerbug, then at the tangle of thorn and branch that makes up the wall of seemingly impassible hedge that lays behind, and faces the two strangers again. Standing a bit straighter, trying to muster some confidence, a none the less wavering voice replies in faltering rhythm, "okay. Yeah. We should go. But I have been trained to fight, so don't think I'll be easy prey if you try to betray me." With that she -- he? -- whichever, Quinn moves tentatively forward toward the plane.
"It's only just 2018. And no betrayal today! Just conspicuous heroism and unasked for generosity." Reggie follows along after both Quinn and Etsy, and once more mounts the fuselage and climbs up into the cockpit to resume control of his fae mount. "Right, then, everyone. Hold on tight. You'll want to strap in," he assures Quinn once they're settled in the passenger seat behind him. "Just in case we have to do any fancy maneuvering." He waits for all precautions to be taken, then sets the wings to fluttering again. The craft seems to go weightless, bobbing in the air at a hover, and then lifts up properly to turn about and retrace its former path through the lesser known trods out this way. "It will take us a short while to make the return trip. Feel free to catch some rest if you're able. I'll see to it you're safe, once we're in the sky trods."
True to his word, the flight back takes ... an hour? Three hours? Two? It's hard to say once the hedge has you. The good news is, the longer it takes, the more normal things begin to feel. For certain values of normal, anyway. Once they're in the sky trods, Reggie relaxes considerably. These, he knows quite well. And without much further ado, a giant flying ... glass ... terrarium? Comes looming into view. Great glass bulbs floating in the air, with tubes connecting them at various intervals. Hanging in the sky like balloons, drifting through the clouds through some strange magic or other. One of these glass bulbs opens like the maw of an anglerfish to welcome the craft home. It sends down on a very modern seeming hangar deck, rife with tools and crafting materials. "And we're back. Safe as houses. Out you go, everyone."
Once sitting astride the Dangerbug, Etsy is -- oddly silent -- until they're in the air. Once they're in the air? Three hours of mermaid singing! Reggie's Theme is something like the best parts of Indiana Jones, Star Wars, and Superman, but all its own as well. Whatever it is, apparently Etsy likes the musical stylings of John Williams. There's a dash of 'Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow' in there, too. Really, it's very stereotypical. But she shows her love, apparently, by singing his theme song. Doo doo doot doooo... three hours.
There's plenty of variance there, mind. And at the end, she slides down to the hangar deck... and becomes solid again. Only in the hollow does she release her Separation from the world and become whole and solid once more. "Only a Reggies does a calling of me as Esther," she says, finally. "Everyone else callings me an Etsy."
Quinn pauses at Dangerbug's fuselage and gives the contraption a disbelieving look. Only for a moment. A long moment of wondering about the sanity of climbing into this thing and flyinig off to who knows where with strangers. Ultimately, the other options are slim, and by slim that is to say the only other option is to wander aimlessly through the hedge with no certainty of arrriving anywhere good, so even this dubious option is better than the alternative.
Hestitantly at first, and then with deft agility, Quinn climbs up into the second seat and gets strapped in. Watching at first with eyes made wide with nervous fright, soon enough Quinn's fear-induced adrenaline spike at the whole encounter fades away, and that combined with ragged clothing that and rushing air results in them sliding down in the seat, curling up against the bulkhead, and shivering until sleep takes over. All the while, the notes of Etsy's singing pulse in tiny bursts of pale, barely-there color across Quinn's pale skin, under all the grime.
When they land and the music ends, the rhythm of the Dangerbug's flight fades, and Reggie calls out that they've arrived, Quinn jerks awake, pokes a head up, and looks around. Pale blue eyes blink and take in the surroundings, and then Quinn climbs down to the deck as well. With a look first at Reggie, then a more nervous one at Etsy, followed by a heavy swallow, Quinn says, "Etsy? I'm Quinc... Quinn."
"Welcome aboard the Airship Adventure, Quinn." This from Reggie as he peels off his goggles and flying cap and hangs them on the stick of his aircraft. While they debark, a small host of hob sea creatures pool up from a nearby standing pond of water that seems decidedly out of place here in a plane's hangar. They scuttle over to the craft and begin cleaning it, feeding it, tidying it up, and tending to it as though it were a prized horse. Reggie, of course, thinks nothing of it. Why shouldn't crabs be mechanics? He's actually heading TOWARDS that standing pool of water, which begins to blow a tremendously large bubble as he draws closer. Once he's right beside it, the ring around the pool lights up green, and he gestures towards the bubble in invitation. "This will take us to the bridge. Which is really my captain's quarters. So it's sort of. Ehm. Quirky and sea-themed. So forgive me in advance. Once you're there, if you're hungry, just think about what you'd like really hard and the shellfish will see to the rest. Or thirsty for that matter. Clothes, too. The Adveture provides." Reggie steps into the waiting bubble, which bulges around him and wobbles and wibbles once he's through. "It's perfectly safe!"
When Reggie says 'welcome aboard the Airship Adventure?' Etsy sketches a curtsey so nice it could belong in Victoria's court. She pats one of the passing creatures so gently. "It is very perfectly safes. And please do a forgiving of me because I really cannot -- with -- too much walkings. It frustrates. So I will get into a waters as soon as can do this, Quinn. Is so good to have you aboards!" And into the bubble she drifts, as light as sea foam
All of this still seems to be pretty overwhelming to Quinn, who looks around at everything that's going on with a wide-eyed surprise. While also doing that strange gender-shifting thing, slowly fading from looking like a young man to a young woman, about the same height and still slenderly built. When she speaks again it's with her bright, feminine voice again, a rhythmically musical voice full of wonder. "This is all kind of amazing," she admits as her feet start to follow Reggie and Etsy without the rest of her being entirely aware of what she's doing. With the reminder of how hungry she is she puts a dirty hand over her stomach, which growls as soon as she thinks about it. "I'd love something to eat," she admits, her voice taking on a hollow timbre. "Something to drink, too." Then she lets out a laugh that's eerily similar to Etsy's earlier arpeggio and adds, "I can't blame you for wanting to get into water, Etsy. I would love a bath myself." At the bubble she hesitates, looking rather uncertain about climbing into it and riding it through tubes of water or something, where she's likely to drown if it bursts, but with the reassurances she steps into it after only a brief delay.
"Of course it's amazing. I developed it over a course of several long and lonely years. I poured myself into my flying, and my fame. For quite a long time after I escaped, myself. I only turned up among our society to do astonishing things, and then crept back here to my fortres of solitude. With my money, and my sunlight, and my water. I only recently admitted my loneliness and reached out. That's how I met Esther." Once the trio are in the bubble, it slurps down into the water. True to Quinn's fear, the find themselves zooming along a glass tube, filled with water, at an alarming rate of speed. Swirling through clouds and through aquaria alike. One moment it's a passing bird, another a passing fish. And when the bubble once more surfaces amid a rippling of water, they're in a large bulb of glass with a clear view of the sky above and the hedge maze that obstruct it. There's a large sand bar with some modern amenities. Chairs, couches, and the like. But the rest is just... water. Crystal clear blue water, gently lapping at the sand. And no sooner do they arrive, than a large crab scuttles out of the water with a silver tray and lid, which contains whatever it is that Quinn most desires to eat and drink. Reggie's already plucked a cocktail from a tray of his own, which he swishes about with a straw before taking a sip. "Now. Feel free to change clothes and have a wash. I'll settle down in my lounge chair and keep my eyes closed. Or just be on my way, if you prefer."
"I am the very best at not-alones, because a mermaids is requiring a pods." Which is probably something Quinn knows all too well, since none of the mermaids in their shared Keeper's domain ever hunted alone. Don't think about it too much: Etsy actually looks a little aghast a moment later, realizing what it is, exactly, that they said. Oops. They stand quietly in the bubble as it whooshes them about, not at all worried about it moving them about. This, it seems, is home. And when the crab scuttles up with food for her? It's a tray of sashimi. Only meat. The carnivore coos happily, taking the tray, and then heads for the water closes to the chair she knows is Reggie's, setting her tray down and shedding her dress and shoes. No shame, only a desire to be in the water. That may not be reassuring, but Etsy is moving almost by compulsion.
Quinn had kind of been getting past some of the shock she was in after everything she'd been through with her harrowing escape, and much of the fear of these two strangers who so far have been quite strange, but at least seem to be treating her well. Then Etsy reminds her of the mermaids, and somehow she goes even more pale and gets a little wobbly on her feet, like she's ready to retreat back into being vaguely catatonic. Fortunately, the crab scuttling over with a tray happens right then, and catches her eye, and the strangeness of it is enough to snap her out of it before she can really get all the way in. "Uhhh... thanks," she says and even the confused utterance sounds musical. She's startingn to reach for the tray when the comment about changing her clothes and having a wash comes, and she looks over at Reggie and goes suddenly kind of blank in expression, like her internal computer crashed.
Then her features start to shift, sliding between the male and female versions of her at random, so that patches of her face, the shape of her shoulders and limbs, hips, waist, and everything else are weird and unsettling mish-mashes of both versions. Yep, the computer definitely crashed. This lasts for just a couple of seconds before it goes down in flames completely, she lands on something pretty much half way between both but at least not constantly changing, and she covers her face with both hands.
At which point she bursts into tears and half-sits, half falls to the floor, sobbing uncontrollably.
-> >> Reggie to Here << <-============================================
Rolled 1 Success
< 4 6 9 >
=================================-> >> Wits + Empathy No Flags << <-
Now Etsy? Etsy he can watch! And he does. That's what comes from putting a ring on it. You get to watch casual disrobing, and grin about it. He's smiling broadly as he takes a gulp of his drink, which coincides nicely with Quinn's sudden tearful collapse on the ground. He appears briefly alarmed at this turn of events, and even backs away from Quinn somewhat and looks the mirrorskin up and down as though wondering just what's wrong. Is Quinn broken? In the meantime he takes a long and thoughtful sip from his cocktail and squints his eyes. Feelings. People feelings. They're a thing. Yes. "Is this something to do with your. Ehm." He gestures vaguely at Quinn's changing features. "Gender situation, there?" What cocktail goes best with gender dysphoria? Probably something with bitters. "I'm an otter. It took some getting used to. I'm a bipedal pool noodle. You get over it, eventually." Normally this is where Etsy excels. Not him. But she's hardly the one to be consoling now. In this instance. There's a slight wave of panic that washes over Reggie, but he tamps it down fairly quickly.
-> >> Etsy to Here << <-==============================================
Rolled 4 Successes
< 3 4 5 5 5 7 8 8 9 10 >
======================-> >> Wits + Empathy.Adroitness No Flags << <-
"She see'd me," explains Etsy, horrified a moment too late. "Tell her I am not a bad mermaids, promise him I am not a bad mermaids. I am going to go under the waters until she is okays. Send someone to get me." And then -- shocker of shockers -- she leaves her food on the edge of the water, and dives into it, disappearing from immediate sight.
It seems like maybe Reggie hits the mark, because when he asks about her gender situation Quinn just cries louder. In what could be either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on the listener and their perspective, even her keening, grief-filled sobs are lovely and musical, even if the rhythm is a little off-kilter and jarring. It's kind of wrong. "I don't even know what I want to wear!" she wails around her tears, which out of context would probably be a much more comical thing for someone to be expressing this much grief over.
"Well, you wear only the finest if you're staying in this house. I can send you for a fitting in Milan and Paris, if you like-- Etsy goes now and again to satisfy her need for frilly dresses and filling up my credit cards." Reggie is not the most touchy feely person. He's british, for one, and they're somewhat standoffish since the collapse of their empire. Talking about his feelings-- or anyone else's feelings, for that matter --isn't really his strong suit. At all. So he moves over to the sideboard to begin mixing up a cocktail of his own devising. Quinn won't know they want it, after all. "For now, a nice poofy white cotton robe should suit you nicely. Gender neutral, modest, comfortable as a massage from panda bear on qualudes." Reggie finishes his mixology, pours the results into a high ball glass, and carries it over to Quinn. One old fashioned. Ideal for combatting outmoded gender theory. "No one expects you to know everything right away. The fact that you know anything at all is a start, isn't it? Here. Drink heavily. It helps." He nudges the glass towards Quinn's hands.
Reggie has been left alone with Quinn while Etsy wallows in beautiful salt water and regret.
Fortunately for Reggie, Quinn has spent a lot of time over the last couple of years being alone. It means that she's had to find ways to work through her own grief, and the fact that he's not really equipped for helping with this kind of situation doesn't make it harder for her to get through. He even gives her something to latch onto and start pulling herself out, both by handing her a drink and by suggesting a comfortable and gender-neutral robe. She continues laying on the floor and sobbing for a minute or so after he holds the glass out to her, but before he can withdraw it the crying starts to subside some and she reaches out for the glass as she starts to sit up. She sniffles and asks, "do you have any tissues?" Somehow her voice manages to be both cracking and lilting at the same time, which is just weird. She takes the glass, takes a big gulp of it, then chokes on that and starts coughing. The last time she had anything to drink other than water was years ago, so maybe she wasn't ready for that yet, but as soon as she stops coughing she takes another drink. "None of this should be real," she finally says in words that are little more than a whisper. "Am I crazy?"
Reggie has had time to finish off his first cocktail and conjure up a second, which he is only just finishing off when she gets around to asking sensible questions. He doesn't answer it until he's holding a mamosa in a large fluted glass. He kicks off his boots and heads over to his lounge chair, dropping into it to let the sun soak in to his fuzzy face and clawed feet. "Are you crazy." Reggie is silent as he considers the question. It speaks to his own sanity as well, of course. "Well. If you were to walk in to a psychiatrist's office and tell them what you see, what you went through, what you're capable of? Yes. They'd diagnose you as crazy. Psychotic, it all likelihood. Schitzophrenic, perhaps. Just because people say you're crazy, however, doesn't mean you're wrong." Reggie takes a sip through his straw, crossing his little stubby legs for comfort. "Now. There's more to it than that. Because there's crazy, and then there's a danger to oneself and others. It's a sliding scale. Clarity, we call it. If you KNOW you're crazy, you can't be TOO crazy. It's when you're certain you're not crazy that your insanity becomes a problem."
Slowly, Etsy surfaces again. Only her eyes, and the spread of her black hair, show above the water's surface. This may or may not be reassuring, because crocodiles do this thing, too. But, of course, the mermaids there were never surrounded by tiny white flowers and lily pads that floated on the surface. That's just Etsy's Mantle.
Quinn takes another big drink from her glass, then pulls her knees up to her chest where she's sitting on the floor and sips while she listens to Reggie talk. She finally lets out a laugh, a brief and bitter melody. "So I should be reassured by the fact that I think everything that's happening is completely bonkers?" she asks to a rueful rhythm, the notes of her speech as brittle as they are sharp. "That's good to know, I guess." She gulps down the rest of the old fashioned and looks over at the eyes that peer out over the water's surface. There's a quarter rest, a half, a whole, and then she lifts a hand and wiggles her fingers as she offers a meager attempt at a smile.
"You should ABSOLUTELY be reassured. What I said may make no sense to you now, but it will in a few weeks. Once you've settled in somewhat and wrapped your head around matters. It helps to have touchstones, people that look after you. Things that matter to you in the outside world. The real world. But, as I was saying before, you'll do better if you adjust to things in here for now, and then make your way out into the real world once you've had time to process. You're not my prisoner, though. At any point, you can walk right through that door, there, and it will lead you into my mansion. The prior terms I mentioned will be adhered to, you just need to ask Thurgood, my butler, to see to it all." Reggie's got his eyes closed, so he can't really tell Esther's creeping back into matters.
Slowly, once the fingers wriggle in her direction, Etsy swims back to shore. Reggie can undoubtedly smell her approach even with his eyes closed. Wyrd 6 Flowering ain't nothin' to turn your nose up at. Even if you do turn your nose up, the smell of water lilies would chase it! Anyway. She slowly pulls herself up onto the sand, reaches one webbed hand for her platter of sashimi, and pops a bit of salmon into her mouth. "We would never keepings you. Always free to goes." Reassuring, maybe.
Quinn watches for a moment when Etsy swims back to shore and pulls herself onto the sand, then she shuffers and leans her forehead against her knees, where they're pulled up to her chest. "I shouldn't have drank that so quickly on an empty stomach," she says with a quavering voice. "Where's that crab with the food?" She picks her head up and looks around again, blinking like she's trying to clear the effects of too much alcohol on too empty a stomach, and then spots the crab and unravels herself to scoot over and pick up the lid on the tray. Apparently the food she most wanted was some kind of casserole, and when she sees it she lets out a shuddering breath like she's on the verge of starting to cry again. "Fuck," she says, rubbing her eyes with the heel of one hand. "How am I going to deal with my family." The minor key of her words suits their content well. Because thinking of comfort foods tends to bring memories of family back, for a lot of people. "All I wanted when I escaped from that place was how I wanted to see them again, and now I don't know how I'm going to face them." She sniffles, puts down her cup, and picks up the bowl. Without waiting for any answers she starts eating.
"That, too, is something you need to consider carefully. I'd let us look into what happened after you were Taken. It's possible there's ... something. Living in your place. Right now. A Fetch, they call it. Just a bit of fairy magic holding together a mop handle and some golf balls and whatever else. Made to look like you, and act... enough like you? That they go on thinking you never left. So. Before you make contact with your family again, let us sort out if you can't just show back up and say hello. It's possible, too, they think you're dead. Or kidnapped. Or who knows what. Really, whatever else you have going on in your emotions right now about seeing them? The facts of the matter may be more complicated, and could make deciding what to do a lot easier." Reggie opens one eye to watch Etsy resurface and pats his lap in invitation. Should she wish a warmer spot to curl up.
"A make-believe dolly living a make-believe version of your life. But it doesn't have a knowing of that. And it has a little bit of you insides of it. It believes it is reals. And it is, kind of. But it is likes... " Etsy rubs her face with one hand, shoves a handful of salmon into her piranha-toothed maw with the other. "Is likes maybe you are ten percent fakes and ninety percent reals and it is ninety percent fakes and ten percent reals. It is still a little bit you. Many ways to deal with a fetches." She beaches herself, crawls up into Reggie's lap, and states, "Am wishings for floofy robe!"
A crab skitters out and brings her a floofy robe. It was going to do that from her wanting it, but Etsy likes to say it. "What kind of a dishes is the foods you are eats?"
Withe very bite Quinn takes, the next one is a little faster. She starts out eating slowly, almost rote action as her mind spins over other things, but soon enough she's shoveling the food in as fast as she can because hunger has taken over. She stops when Reggie tells her something else might be living her life and Etsy supports itt "You're kidding me," she says with a rhythm of doubt, then there's a trlil of laughter and a shake of her head. "No, you're not kidding me." She takes another bite and keeps talking around it. "Unless a lot has changed in few years, my family shouldn't be too hard to find around where your home is. My name is Quincy Taylor Garreau." It's not like her family isn't pretty well known in the area. She shovels more casserole into her mouth and then points at the contents with her spoon. "Chicken broccoli casserole," she says with her mouth full, which shouldn't still sound musical but does.
"I think we even have some Garreau in the Lost community, other than yourself, so I can reach out and see if I can't put you in touch with them. That ought to make matters a lot easier for your family and for you. Lucky that." Reggie waits for Etsy to get robed and welcomes her into his lap with one arm around her waist. The other reserved for his mamosa. Which he sips with some difficulty, having to fight physics and his straw. "So don't worry about that part, I'll have Thurgood make the necessary phone calls and so on." He seems much more relaxed with that bit of news. As though it's all going to be a simple matter from here on out.
Patiently, Etsy fixes the straw and places it against Reggie's lips so he can drink his mimosa properly. They indulge one another, and care for one another, without seeming to think about it. They just do. "I am not knowing names so very much goods, so I will trustings Reggie. Oh! Oh. You knows. Lumi would knows. Lumi knows an everythings. I can go and see if Lumis is in the place house?"
Meanwhile, Quinn looks briefly relieved and then even more horrified by finding out that other members of her family have gone through some kind of craziness that might be like what she was subjected to. Misery loves company, but that doesn't mean that you should wish that misery on your family. For a little while she pokes at her food and seems to be trying to figure out what to say about that, then she makes a soft noise that could mean anything and just returns to eating. The bowl's contents are gone quickly, she gives it back to the crab, and then she wobbles to her feet. "I'm going to wash off while you do that. Do I just..." she points toward the water. "Bathe in there? Or is there an actual shower or something?"
"Just bathe in the water, yes. We do. Don't worry about polluting it, or anything. It's fairy water. It cleans itelf." Reggie is lounging, boots off, cap and goggles off, on a lounge chair in the 'bridge' of the Airship Adventure, his giant terrarium airship in the sky. Which is basically a sand bar in the middle of a ring of water, held in a massive glass bulb tens of thousands of feet over the hedge land below. Inviting! He's got Esther curled up in his lap in a floofy robe, and therefore likely not much else. "Esther and I will find a way to entertain ourselves while you see to the necessaries. Won't we, my dear?"
"Hello, crabs, please go and get a Lumis, send a message to a Thurgoods and he can do a calling." The awkward noob has been brought back to the Airship, and Reggie and Etsy are canoodling. For the values of canoodling that Etsy and Reggie get up to in public -- which is to say, not at all, because Reggie may be Spring but he is extremely British. She's eating sashimi, he's drinking a mimosa, and occasionally she kisses the corner of his mouth with her fishy lips. It's cute, not real sexah.
See?
The question that made Quinn break down into a sobbing fit that left her barely able to breathe she seems too answer now by just not picking an answer, since when she disrobes to get into the water she seems to have opted to make of herself a genderless form, with nothing to distinguish one way or another. Not that Reggie and Etsy are probably even paying attention, as distracted as they are with each other.
She spends a while cleaning all the dirt, blood, and other nastiness off of herself, then just floats in the water for a few minutes staring at nothing, lost in her thoughts, before she swims back to the shore and waits for the crab to come over with a robe. When it does she takes it, climbs out of the water, wraps herself up, and then already has more food getting delivered to her.
By the time that Lumi arrives she's stuffed herself to capacity, but is still sittinig in a chair, nibbling on a salted caramel chocolate chip cookie and holding a white russian in her other hand. Now that she's cleaned up she looks a lot better, but still not great. Even with healing, refreshing magics, and everything else, there's only so good you can look just hours after escaping from Arcadia, confused and distraught and everything else. Plus she's been drinking a bit.
Lumi eventually gets a call from Thurgood, and in this case 'eventually' is probably quite quickly after Etsy asks the crabs to deliver the message. That Butler is usually pretty efficacious. So is Lumi, who figures that if she's being asked to show up here, there's probably something important.
So it is that with all haste she arrives, dressed in precisely the way that someone might expect a high-priced lawyer to be dressed when they're not actually acting like a high-priced lawyer and were actually at home watching TV. Casually, in jeans and a slouchy sweater. She steps in and takes in the scene, particularly the new face, and then addresses Etsy and Reggie. "Well, at least not everyone is divested of their habiliments. Robes are good enough, I suppose," she says. She's probably making a joke, because it's not like she hasn't seen at least Etsy without clothes on any number of times and never taken issue, but the problem is that Lumi's voice is devoid of emotion, so it's hard to tell. "Who is your new friend?"
Theirs is the most PG canoodling you're like to find. Mostly, it is snuggling, feeding one another, and so on. And, yes, it's as much to afford Quinn privacy the hollow is not otherwise built to provide, as anything else. When Lumi turns up, Reggie toasts her with his glass and offers a bright smile, complete with that tell-tale ting. "Hello! Oh, this is Quinn. We rescued her while we were out touring the hedge. She's a Garreau, apparently, and native to Fort Brunsett. We're letting her... decompress. Here. In the Adventure. Before we bring her out into the real world. Let her adjust a little to the realitie of things. It's only been a few hours."
Lumi has in fact snuggled with Etsy when she was naked! Calm is a terrifying presence. Etsy is curled up on Reggie's lap, and she nods firmly when Reggie introduces Quinn. "She was very afraids of mermaids," explains Etsy carefully. "Maybe -- not so much Reginas or Calms right now." And then her head turns toward Quinn, and she explains, "If you had the night-sky panthers and the star-wolfs... many of us is also from theres coming so maybe a startles will do."
Quinn has seen a lot of things, as most of the Lost have. She spent a couple of years being music, after all, and if she can be music, why can't other people be other strange things, like mermaids, or otters, or ice? That was all the strange, weird, fairy tale land that was only a scattered handful of hours in her past, but already lies on the dark side of her memories where she finds she can no longer look directly at them. Everything is more or less just impressions, and even then, running into people who looked like people but were made out of ice wasn't really normal. Mostly they would just be actual ice, not people-ice.
All of this is a long winded way of explaining that when Lumi comes in Quinn stops, part way through taking a little nibble off the edge of her cookie, and stares at the stranger. It takes her a moment to recover. "Hi," she says hesitantly when she does. She already got introduced so she leaves that out. "They thought you might know who else in my family was... was like us." Her sing-song, musical voice comes with an uncertain rhythm, steady but hesitant.
She, though right now her features are so gender-neutral it's hard to tell, looks over at Etsy and blanches a little, then nods like maybe she understands. Given the reaction she probably does.
Lumi's demeanor softens, but in her case that's more of an internal thing than anything visible. She has sympathy for the new escapee and the way that she must be feeling, but she's not very good at actually displaying that kind of thing, so it looks like she just turns her flat, emotionless regard on the newcomer while she listens to the explanations. Then she nods. "First, Quinn, let me say that I'm terribly sorry for what you went through, and I'm glad that you made it out. Most of us don't, and what it took for you to do so makes you at least that much a hero." She looks at Etsy and Reggie and says, "the only Garreau I'm certain is one of us is Isolde. Franklyn spends a lot of time around some of the Lost, but I've never met her and that could be coincidence, so Isolde is probably a better choice to reach out to, and she's Spring like the two of you. Can either of you two contact her?" She goes to pour herself a drink then.
"I can get word out to her, of course. Or, rather, Thurgood can reach out by telephone. I'm going to be sticking around young Quinn, here, until they're demanding to be left alone. We'll be making up a room at Lazy Otter Downs for her, and I've already instructed Thurgood that he's to get some cash together and make a car and driver available for her use for when she's ready to leave. I don't precisely trust the wayhouses and such to treat her with the delicacy she requires in the here and now. They're accustomed to handling travelers, not escapees." Reggie's voiced an actual opinion, which is a rare thing. Usually it's just offhand jokes and requests for adoration. Who knew he had principles?! "Still. Best you meet Quinn like this, rather than stumbling out of a guest bedroom, you know? Good looking out, Esther."
<Pose Order> Etsy has skipped Etsy.
Quinn seems taken aback a little by the spiel she gets from Lumi at the beginning, and though she probably needed to hear the words, she shrinks down a little in her robe and nibbles on her cookie instead of responding to the declarations. She winces when her family members start being named, not because she had bad memories associated with them but probably because they're people she knows who may have been subjected to horrible experiences. Instead of replying right away to that, she takes a drink and then lets out a heavy sigh. Part way through what Reggie is saying she starts paying attention to him more keenly than the half-listening she was doing up to that point, where everyone seems to be deciding things for her. Before he has finished she's smiling softly, and her androgynous features have become more feminine again. The smile fades when a thought comes to her, though the femininity remains in the timbre to the musical way she speaks. "How do people not notice us everywhere we go? I mean..." she gestures with her cup. "Look at you all." She looks pretty normal, except for the way that soft pulses of color come to her pale skin in sync with every note of her speech and the very slight point to her ears, and maybe that her eyes are just a little too vividly blue. She looks pretty normal, but they sure don't.
"That will work just fine, I'm sure," says Lumi of having Thurgood make calls. "I'll also make sure that the others know that a guest might be around, and to try not to startle her too much. That might be fine for Billy Ray, but I'm not sure how non-startling Regina and Calm can even be." She finishes pouring her drink and shakes her head, then looks at Quinn. "If you see someone walking around who looks like a big emptiness, try not to be too terribly alarmed. Hearing me say that might not mean much if you run into her unexpectedly, the rest of us were sure as hell alarmed, but at least you won't be completely unprepared. That's Calm. She's one of our motley, which is kind of like a coterie or chosen family or something along those lines. She's creepy, but she'll actually probably go out of her way to help you if you let her." Either that or she'll just flat our murder you without hesitation or remorse, but Lumi's not going to say that to the newbie. She'll just hope Calm doesn't have a reason. "Anyway, staying here is probably safer than the Wayhouse until you get up to speed. Speaking of which, the answer to your question is that they can't see us for what we are. Usually. Drunks and the mentally ill are sometimes exceptions, and some others, but we can get into that later."
It bears noting that when Etsy's feet aren't in shoes, they unfold into fins. It's a hell of a way to stretch your feet. No, she doesn't look human at all, to those who can see. "Calms is a little scaries but she is the nicests really. And Reginas is a little scaries but she will feed you until your tum almost asplode and it will be the best foods you ever eated and that is not an exaggerate. She is so much a better cook than anybodies."
It's nice having Lumi around to take over the exposition. Reggie is able to rest his voice and his brain and enjoy his liquor and his fiancee. He sighs, he smiles contentedly, and for once he doesn't say anything. Nothing at all! And it's wonderful. A passing crab hands him another mamosa and scuttles off with his empty. Another passes by with a copy of the Times of London, which he receives with a murmured thank you. Still another brings by a pipe and a match, though it waits patiently for him to have free hands.
The truth is that Quinn is only kind of paying attention to anything that's not being said directly to her, because she's at a bit of an information overload anyway. She has also had a little bit too much to drink. While Lumi is talking about getting word out to other people and how scary they are, she's slouching in her seat rubbing the arm of her robe against her face. "These robes sound nice," she murmurs, watching the others and partly listening until the answer to her question comes. It's not what she expected to hear, so it takes a moment to sink in. "They just don't see us?" she asks.
"That's a pretty good summary, Etsy," Lumi agrees as she sits down with her drink. Quinn might not entirely be listening, but that's okay. Having people around, talking, in a normal way even if it's about abnormal things, seems like it might be helpful for adjusting to this being the escapee's new reality. "They see us, but they see us as we were, or close to it. It's more of an art than a science, what they see, and for some people it's just like they were, for others there are minor changes." And she didn't miss some minor changes earlier, so there's a considering pause before she adds, "some few of us can change what people see more or less at their whim." She takes a drink, ice cubes clinking in her glass, and then she lazily swirls the contents. "If I'm not mistaken, you might be one of those." She looks over at Reggie and Etsy, who have spent more time around her.
"I would do a showing you of what I am looks likes to a persons, but I can only do that in a real worlds. Cannot wear a Masks in a Hedges, here we always show our real faces." Etsy puffs up pleasedly when Lumi compliments her summary, and she snuggles in to Reggie, leaning to sip his mimosa. Just a tiny sip. And then a crab skitters up to her, bearing a bottle of mead on a silver platter, which Etsy takes and drinks from.
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