Tamsin
Here they are. Jackass Hill, again - not busking today, just hanging out, just telling stories, just being Hector and Tamsin, Tamsin and Hector who're fog's darlings, who'd never reveal a mystery outside of their people, who're subtle and - well. That's the idea, anyway - the Uktena and the Fianna are hanging out. Cold day, cloudy day, day of showers, of rain sweeping in from one direction or another - it caught them out and they didn't need to go inside to get out of the rain but they're human right now they're wearing human skins and it gets cold and clammy and wet so they're currently sheltering just inside an empty women's restroom. Because nobody's really out at Jackass Hill Park today, maybe one or two dedicated joggers, somebody who needs to walk their dog - and the mouth of the bathroom is cool and transformed by that haunting acoustic echo bathrooms and pools have. There are three sinks and two of them are out of order, one of them is clogged up, but it's relatively clean - relatively does not mean clean. Tamsin says, "if we're going to do an actual album to sell, even if it's just an EP, we need at least five songs. I think one for each auspice? But um, which? We can do my Sam-song, and... I dunno, do we want a theme?"
Hector
"EPs need themes."
Like that's just common sense. Hector has swapped out the flannel for a hooded sweatshirt that he wears underneath a blazer like that makes it look like he's making a fashion statement and not just throwing on layers until the chill beats back from his Rage-hot skin. Hood tucked up against the cold and the rain and he squints out at it like he expects it to stop sometime before never. Hands in the pockets of the blazer.
He doesn't wear the gloom and the introspection of someone who almost died last night but he's been more distant today than usual. Hyperactive people-loving Uktena-boy that he is.
"The songs should be about... the path, you know? The one that brought us here. And then we can branch off from them when we do a whole thing." His breath doesn't plume because it isn't that cold but he's from California and he likes to exaggerate. "I wanna at least borrow an electric for this. You can't shred an acoustic."
Tamsin
[Sing-y sing?]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
Tamsin
[Oh, and purebreed.]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (6) ( success x 1 )
Tamsin
Tamsin taps her chin thoughtfully with the chewed-up edge of her pen, a cheap little plastic thing taken from the counter of a store. She has a notebook open in her lap, the heel of one boot caught up against a crack in the asphalt. Her hair is loose and there are little kinks and would-be waves, fly-aways, curling ends that give her a halo of friz, places where her hair is still a little damp. Rain-weather hair, water-soaked air hair, and the notebook has a staple falling out of it, pages a little loose, and Tamsin doodles something on the edges - she simmers because she is a monster, becuase she is barely real, unacceptable to human-beings, disbelieved and terrible. Because she is a weapon, Tamsin the not-girl - and then after tapping her chin, she says, "Um, sure. We'll need a name…" And she trails away, then smiles at Hector and sings, coaxing melody from poetry:
"The Road goes ever on and ondown from the door where it began.Now far ahead the Road has gone,and I must follow, if I can,pursuing it with eager feetuntil it joins some larger waywhere many paths and errands meet.And whither then? I cannot say."
She sings beautifully, wistfully, an ethereal-Galliard-song from the tribe-blessed-by-Fairies.
Tamsin
ooc: I hate you Denver
Tamsin
Tamsin taps her chin thoughtfully with the chewed-up edge of her pen, a cheap little plastic thing taken from the counter of a store. She has a notebook open in her lap, the heel of one boot caught up against a crack in the asphalt. Her hair is loose and there are little kinks and would-be waves, fly-aways, curling ends that give her a halo of friz, places where her hair is still a little damp. Rain-weather hair, water-soaked air hair, and the notebook has a staple falling out of it, pages a little loose, and Tamsin doodles something on the edges - she simmers because she is a monster, becuase she is barely real, unacceptable to human-beings, disbelieved and terrible. Because she is a weapon, Tamsin the not-girl - and then after tapping her chin, she says, "Um, sure. We'll need a name…" And she trails away, then smiles at Hector and sings, coaxing melody from poetry:
"The Road goes ever on and on
down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
and I must follow, if I can,
pursuing it with eager feet
until it joins some larger way
where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say."
She sings beautifully, wistfully, an ethereal-Galliard-song from the tribe-blessed-by-Fairies.
Hector
Of either of them she is the one most cloaked in the smoke and the steam with whom their totem spirit keeps company and when she tells her stories dredged up out of long-dead lore or woven out of the sunlight strands of her imagination her lineage rears its head not so lost as his was but lost all the same for she is out here without her parents.
And this is what they had in common in the beginning, wasn't it, the fact that Willow and Maria and Glen and Corey all knew what they were getting into and were led up to their Change because that is what their ancestors did and they knew of their ancestors and this caught both of them by surprise. Hector only speaks of what came before All Of This when directly asked and then it's half in jest.
Her voice is honest for her people are honest and something stirs up inside of the Uktena as she sings. His breath comes hard for a few seconds and his nostrils flare and he stares out into the rain like he can see the next hundred years through the gloom. A shiver cuts up his spine but he'll never own it.
"This bathroom has bitching acoustics," he says all quiet in the wake of her aching song.
Tamsin
"Fuck, I know, right? We should record some bonus material and call it like 'Public John Songs'," and she grins, but it's a sleepy sort-of grin. She'd like a bed tonight - a real bed, some-place with pillows and sheets; part of her even considers wandering out and over to Calden's, but that's just a pleasant thing to consider, has nothing to do with reality or force of will to move. The sleepy sort-of grin is the sleepy someone gets after reading one of their favourite parts in a book, where you just smile because you know these words so well, look up and off - something like that.
"What'cha thinking about?"
Tamsin has a backpack and she pauses her doodling once it catches her eye again, like maybe it's time for some food.
Hector
Hector scoffs at the question but doesn't tell the doodling Stag-girl what's so funny or ironic or whatever about her question. Leans against the tile of the open-air entryway like he doesn't fear the germs slid across the tile and setting up colonies in the grout. Probably doesn't. He hasn't fallen ill since he was a child.
But she asked. That's the way in. First a scoff and then a sigh. Silence stretches out for one two three heartbeats and then he wings it back at her.
"When's the last time you saw your parents?"
Tamsin
Brief pause, space of a heart-beat, Tamsin blinks solemnly at Hector, then frowns solemnly at Hector, then smirks less solemnly, but lets it fade back into solemnity; at least a narrow questioning sort of solemn, "That's what you were thinking about?"
Tamsin scootch scootches over, the soles of her boots screech, amplifying like belfry bats, the dream of belfry bats somewhere twilight always is, somewhere sketchy and October-graveyard dim-dark-gloom, and she unzips the outter pocket of her backpack and she says,
"I dunno. Physically, maybe - once after I joined Celduin? But not since then. It's hard to be a black sheep artist making bad mistakes if I'm around. Why? You thinking about your parents?"
Hector
Another scoff. "No."
Wait for it. He's not fidgeting or raking at his hair or tugging at his jewelry. Just standing there with his back mostly to her and she can hear him killing the expression on his face so she doesn't catch it in his voice.
"Ugh. Yeah. Maybe. I don't know why."
Tamsin
He's not a very good liar. He's not even a very good dissembler, Hector, and Tamsin knows her packmate, even if she jokes and says things like too fucking bad for me. Tamsin doesn't say anything immediately, just unzips her backpack and digs around for change and a little bag of trailmix, mostly sunflowers seeds but some dried apricots and yogurt-covered raisins, and she puts most of her weight on one of her hips, sort of skewing or listing to the side. She waits to see if he's going to say anything else.
She waits and waits. And then, "Well maybe you miss them?"
Hector
Now he rolls so his back is flat against the tile and he can look at her out of the corner of his hood. Watches her dig around through her backpack and listens to the rain pattering outside and lifts his eyebrows like he's not at all certain about the direction this conversation is headed.
"They think I'm dead," he says and then the frown vanishes. "What happened when you dropped in, after? Were they scared of you, or..."
Tamsin
"I thought that they didn't know what happened to you," Tamsin says, and who knows where she heard it from, if not from Hector; from Willow, maybe, or Corey. "Do they really think 'dead'? There's a grave somewhere and everything?"
He wants to know what happened when Tamsin dropped in, and Tamsin - Tamsin frowns thoughtfully, picking (nails close-bitten, nail-polish chipped, fragmented) through the seeds for the raisins, then nibbling the hardened yogurt-coating off before eating the whole thing and sucking on it.
"I don't think so. I mean... I didn't go when the moon was going to make it easier for them to tell, and I'm not that... Y'know? I've got good control of myself unless I've been, uhm, focusing really hard on other stuff that day. They were just suprised and really, really, really, really mad."
Hector
"Are you going to shove the peanuts in your mouth-pouches for later? You eat trail mix like a hamster."
It's said in the same not-at-all-mean tone that all stupid little brothers deliver their wisecracks and he only says it at all because he's getting angry thinking about the fact that he doesn't even know what his parents think. Didn't have anything at all until Corey asked him one night what the hell happened out there and showed him the power of the Internet.
But he takes in what she tells him and he thinks on it and he nods. His presence isn't easy for most folks to bear but they have ways around that.
"The cops stopped looking, after a while. It was all over the wires for the first month or so. They never came out and said it but, you know. Seventeen-year-old boys run off all the time. I don't know what they actually thing. Dead at least there's closure."
Tamsin
Tamsin flips Hector off, casually and without conviction, puffing her cheeks out. Perhaps because she has become introspective, thinking about her parents and about what they wanted for her, what they still want for her, what they still think about her. For a long, long moment, the word closure is only chased by the plip-plo, vaguely metallic sound of water joining more water, "Well. We can see if there's a Facebook Memorial or something. You want to see them?"
"The only thing is you need to figure out how to ... Eventually, you're going to die, and they're not going to get a grave to go to. I'm kind of hoping to make it so by the time I disappear, my parents just figure I've gone complete bad seed, that I just don't want anything to do with them, so they'll always think I'm out there being a shitty daughter. But alive. I think they'd rather that, you know."
"Though I suppose if we're really staying here for a while, maybe I can talk to one of the kin with police connections about what if."
Tamsin shakes her head, as if to dislodge herself from these thoughts she's running down, "So you know. You just gotta figure out how to be in their life without being in their life."
Hector
At the question of Facebook Hector scowls but doesn't shoot down her suggestion the moment it crosses into his airspace. It's not a terrible idea. It's just that he's trying not to come barreling in through the front door anymore. That's the quickest way to leave your kinswoman a widow.
Not that she is his as far as the Nation is concerned but he also hasn't tried to stake a claim on her. They don't even touch each other in public unless it's in passing. Whatever they do when they're out there in the woods with the door locked is nobody else's business but theirs.
"Life goes on, man," he says. "That door has closed. And your parents would so not rather you were dead than out there being a bad seed. That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard." A huge sigh and he reaches out a hand like to haul her out of the bathroom and back into the wet. "Come on. I wasn't kidding about the electric. Let's hit the music store before they close."
Tamsin
"That's what I meant," Tamsin says, with a little spark-flicker smoulder, something the rain drenches away, that central pull-drag-pull of a waning moon doesn't work hard on her right now oh no, and this is when he says your parents would so not rather, etcetera. "That was the point. Wait, what door closed? Dude, doors as far as metaphors go are not gonna work here, because uhm, well, wait, what door? And..."
Tamsin sighs. The sigh is separate from their conversation; it's a sigh at the rain. Sigh at the veil of it, the hanging drizzle, sigh at the chill that's hanging in the air, sigh at knowing that come Fall she's going to have to pick a place to stay in, den-up in, there won't be couch-surfing and kinfolk-couch-surfing and the occasional library sleeping, bathrooms like this, it's going to have to be a choice.
"My butt is asleep, help me up," and she shoves the trailmix back into her backpack, though not before offering some to Hector, then winsomely holds both hands up, blinking like faunette from bambi.
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