Naptime is a glorious time in the world of an Etsy: she floats underwater, snoring gently. There aren't any bubbles: she's breathing water. There's just a subtle snoring sound that reverberates through the water as the naked mermaid lounges underneath the surface.
She startle-wakes, though, and floats up to the surface slowly. Spitting water of of her mouth, she yells, "WHO IS HOMES? COME HERE!"
Lumi comes bursting into the room mere seconds later, holding a drawn rapier in one hand. Obviously the concern if someone in the hollow is shouting for people to come, that means that they're under attack. Perhaps they are, in a way, but since there's no enemy physically in the room the point of Lumi's blade lowers from its ready position and toward the floor. With her left hand she brushes a few strands of icy hair behind her ear and looks around again. "What's going on?" she asks.
Reggie waddles in not long after Lumi, apparently having come from the study since he's got a cocktail in one hand, a book in the pocket of his smoking jacket, and his pet rock tucked under arm. "What's all this, then?" He is not indignant despite the phrasing, but it's not every day you walk in on a motley mate holding a rapier while your girlfriend is taking a swim. "I have numerous jokes I shouldn't make at this point," he assures both women. Apparently he's learning.
"I remembered a things," explains Etsy, folding her arms on the edge of her tank. Well, the tank that she shares with Reggie, anyway. Some people have to sleep in tanks now. Reggie will know this: now, Etsy must sleep in the tank, or she gets very fussy and doesn't sleep well and wakes up flailing and unrested. Smells like a new frailty, that one. The fact that it came about the same time that she sprouted little fins at her waist and wrists and ankles, and her eyes gained little stars in them, and her skin now always looks like it has iridescent scales under it? Pretty much a dead giveaway. "We haves a problems."
"At this point?" Lumi asks in her flat monotone, which makes it hard to tell if she's making a joke or not when she briefly levels her rapier at Reggie. She's probably making a joke, though. Motley has been around her enough to tell. She lowers the blade again and turns to look at Etsy. "What problems?" she asks, moving toward the mermaid's tank. Since she brought the sword but not the scabbard, presumably since it wasn't belted on at the time, she just holds the sword lowered at her side.
Reggie bobbles his pet rock out from under his arm and juggles it up to balance it on his palm, as though it were a match to the rapier. Perhaps it is. Cracks crab shells well enough. "Rock blunts scissors. Ha." He snatches the rock back and plops it back under his arm for now, content. "What seems to be the problem by aquatic angel? Some sort of dream vision again? You're not turning into the motley's version of Lassie, I hope. I'll have to have all the old wells and cisterns covered over, if that's the case." Reggie waddles his way towards the tank, taking a sip of his drink along the way.
"I talked with a Lulus recentlies," explains Etsy, and then she gives Reggie a funny look. Not at the pet rock -- no -- she seems to be giving him a funny look at the word 'cistern,' but she discards it after a moment or three. Oh well. "And she -- do you know about the dream problems? The dream poisonings problems? There is a Gentries that is doing a problems with the dreams of peoples. She says -- someone was made to see us. Without a pledge. A humans."
"Who here has scissors?" Lumi glances at Reggie with a lack of expression that is exactly not a smile, but was probably intended to be one, and then she sets the sword aside and comes to lean against the edge of the tank and chat with Etsy. "That isn't good. For the human or for us."
"I may have heard something to that effect," Reggie lies bald-facedly, "in my many doings in and around town." Trips to the liquor store. "Something about a human that was made to see us by a gentry using dream poison. Yes." Reggie perches himself on the edge of the tank and quickly polishes off his cocktail, setting the glass carefully aside. Glass in a water tank is a bad thing, in general. "You have some wondrous insight into the matter, I hope? Such as which Gentry it is and what its secret weakness is and where it is located and how to get it easily?"
There's a side glance given to Reggie by Etsy -- even though it's impossible to see her eyes, you can definitely see the side-eye that's being given. Unh hunh. "Wells, I heared it from a Lulus because she was workings with that persons. She is SO TIREDS because she has to do all the scouring of the dreams on two peoples." She absently stirs the water with her tail. "No, not so much. Is thinkings might be the Gentries of... I forgets, Lulu telled me, we can asks her again. But, um. What she does know is that she is finding the dream poisons in the homeless shelter! And they are lookings to spread it, the people who are infected. It makes them want to spread it." Beat. "So... " More pause. "We have works to do. And we should do a Bastions. So we have safe place."
Lumi mutters a few quiet words in Finnish. They don't sound kind. "That doesn't give us any sort of plan for putting a stop to the problem, but it does mean that we're less likely to get screwed over before we can figure one out," she says to the idea of the Bastion, switching back to English. "It probably won't surprise anybody that the Winter in the motley supports a plan to have a safe place." She glances over at Reggie's glass and says, "I need myself one of those. Not the glass, just what was in it before you downed it."
Reggie is far too lazy to actually get Lumi a glass himself. So instead he calls out to Thurgood and asks for HIM to make them both two old fashioneds. It'll be a few moments, but Lumi will eventually get herself a nice strong drink. And Reggie another one. "A Bastion? Sounds sensible enough. Once we've secured our apple cart, we can stop the toppling of the others. I have to admit, I am the least prepared person to deal with this sort of business in a homeless shelter. I couldn't blend there if you pureed me and sprinkled me liberally on the grounds. But I can be of some assistance in constructing the Bastion, to be sure."
"Well," Etsy offers to Reggie thoughtfully. "I don't needs you to be in the homeless shelters. We have dreamings as part of our motley pledge. What I will need, is for someones to do a checking of mes. And we can pledges for things to make us blend in betters, if we needs. We have that power!" She turns her attention to Lumi. "No, it is... yes. We need to protect ourselves first, and then we are going to be good to do the thing. So we needs to do the Bastions, and build that togethers. Then if I go out, then the peoples who stay behinds can be in the Bastions and feed me glamours and make sure I do not get too hurts."
"I can go to homeless shelters," Lumi says unconcernedly. "If we ever need to get someone on the inside of one. It's just a matter of finding someone in that community, or even the shelter itself, in need of some pro bono legal assistance and there's my excuse. Even if I have to arrange the legal trouble myself." Lumi is terrifyingly well connected. "But Bastion first. I've never built one. What do we need to do?"
"Remind me never to get on your bad side," Reggie asides to Lumi with a wary glance. Yikes. "Play pretend in our dreams, I imagine. Never done it before. But I do enjoy dreaming. It's much easier than being awake, as a rule." Reggie flashes his pearly white smile, complete with the requisite *ting* from one of his canines. "One of these times there will be call for conspicuous wealth and breeding, and then you'll be glad you have me about and marginally sober." Speaking of, Thurgood chooses this moment to return with a platter containing two highball glasses. The drinks are handed first to Lumi, then to Reggie. "Good man, Thurgood. Mind making a snack plate for us? I don't foresee us having time for a proper meal." Thurgood nods and departs. Patience of a saint, that one.
"I am using your conspicious wealth all the times," Etsy points out mildly, which Reggie must know because he gets the AmEx bill, and pays it with the patience of a saint, himself. How many times can someone eat the entire egg stock at Crossroads Diner, after all? "It is so much a helps when I am having to do a jobs or make a friends. But you can do a helps so much with the dreamings, my love. And like I am sayings, can do a pledge to get the skills neededs. New names, all that. The things is, they are wanting to do an infections, you know?" Her attention turns back to Lumi, then, and she blinks. "Yes, let us never gets on bad sides of motley friend Lumi." A moment's silence. "We have to do a dreams together, and in our dreams, we are going to build a Home Base of Dreaming, which is the Bastion. We can always gets there, and it is a safeness."
"I'll stay out of it if you start breeding," Lumi says, intentionally misunderstanding what Reggie meant. When Thurgood brings them drinks she gives the man a polite nod and a quiet thank you, and then sips the drink as she works on relaxing a bit in the face of this news. It helps when Thurgood leaves the room again, though. She's Winter. She can't help it. She's paranoid. "Sounds simple enough, though simple doesn't always mean easy," she says when Etsy explains what they need to do.
"So my accountant is constantly warning me," Reggie rejoins wryly, "the poor man is convinced you're just a honey pot meant to leave me impoverished. It doesn't help that I encourage this belief because it amuses me to do so." Reggie's shoulders lift and fall in the mildest of shrugs. "Anyway. I can certainly make my dreams a fun and wonderful place to be. As it beats the alternative. We can plan a Motley sleepover night some evening soon. Watch feel good movies, smoke something relaxing, and nod off together like a proper raft of otters." Reggie's phone beeps, and he pauses to check it before putting it away. "News alert. Apparently politicians are trying to give me a tax break for some reason."
"Oh gosh, can you imagine me with a babies?" Etsy looks genuinely scandalized. "I would drowns it without realizing, because I would forgets a baby does not breathe a waters like me, or worse, find a way for babies to breathe water... " She pauses at that, frowning just a little. "Probablies could make the goblins vows... " And then she smiles again, absent and cheerful. "Should not have a babies," she asserts. "Even though we would make the cutest of all possibles babies."
Can you imagine growing up in this house?
"I am sweet as honey," Etsy trills toward Reggie, and flashes her teeth at him in a grin. "That is a funnies. And yes, we should do this. Who is getting the marijuanas? I used to get them from a Leos but he left." Beat. "Why do you need a tax breaks? You have all the money forever."
"Please no," Lumi says to the thought of babies, and that's all she says about it. "I can get us marijuana if we want it. Good stuff, too. I know someone at the DEA who owes me favors." Continue to be scared of Lumi, who buys her drugs from DEA agents and pays for them in pulled srings. She shrugs at Reggie then and says, "you and me both, with the tax breaks. About all I use my money for in the first place is keeping up appearances, I don't need a break. Those people at the homeless shelter could use one, though."
"Apparently by giving me more money, I will create jobs." Reggie seems as bemused by this as anyone. "Or trickle the money down. Now. See. They may have something there. Right down my throat, historically." Reggie chuffs out a soft mustelid sort of laugh, then shakes his head once. "Of course the people at the homeless shelter don't pay taxes, so. Can't cut theirs. Could use mine to help them, though. My taxes, that is. Someone ought to suggest that to the politicians." Reggie just dodges the whole baby issue entirely. Not even going to pretend he heard any of that, apparently. "Oh, I can get us some pot easily enough. Could get us some heroin, really, if I wanted." The guy's connected to Hollywood, after all. "In fact, I may have some upstairs, come to think of it. Good for my nerves."
Good for his nerves, and everyone's nerves. So, you know. That's what Etsy is all about. Motley bonding time. Isn't it nice?
|
