Don't Talk To Hector

Tamsin

Tamsin Hall. Dark-haired Tamsin, hair cut-short, getting longer again, grows so fast, just down under her shoulders, diminutive Fianna-girl, fey-thing, that is Tamsin: Tamsin who has been particularly moody, lately, broody, moody, quiet, a simmer-song of just-contained fury stomping around, but the packmates come and the packmates go and Tamsin, well, she'll no doubt say to Thomas, that stupid Uktena, meaning their alpha, that stupid brat, meaning the same, and then maybe also show off the knit wolf-hat that she's making, oh - Tamsin. The things she's told Thomas: everything, in passing, when they pass together: that time there was a vampire at the university, that time Hector and Willow (old-pack) got stuck between this world and that and Willow had a vision and meanwhile the Ragabashes and Tamsin and Corey were trying to figure out how to get them out and, yes, the things she's told Thomas. Here have some food. Here look there's a show are you gonna come. Hey there's this Fianna distillery, maybe Reese would like. Or hey hey hey over here, something awesome.

And sometimes Tamsin stays at Thomas's, and he isn't there.

And sometimes Tamsin stays at Thomas's, and he is.

And sometimes she grins at Reese and asks after his sister, because Tamsin loves Sam.

And sometimes Tamsin is nowhere to be found, mysterious foggy Galliard brat, a waning moon for sure.

Tonight though with the moon in its crescent and waning like the moon is closing its eye, Tamsin comes to the Castle that's what she calls it or no maybe it has a Lord of the Rings nickname or she's mulling nicknames for it over in Elvish hasn't settled on anything yet, and she starts poking around for Thomas as soon as she gets in. Doesn't holler his name or anything, just starts:

poking around. First the kitchen then maybe a deck she's shy (still) of his room and and and

Thomas Delacroix

Thomas is, as per usual, to be found in the keeping room. It is still cool enough to have a fire, and so he does. He's sitting opposite the fire, with a glass of red wine and the bottle on the table and a book about business law open.He looks up when he hears Tamsin, turns his head and watches her. Curious. Expectant.

He is a Galliard that seems to be disinterested in speaking, Thomas. Though Tamsin, in the glimpses she catches of him with Reese, has seen this is untrue. Thomas is interested in being open with very few people. Earn his trust, which is difficult and takes not only work but luck, and he will talk forever.

But he has not yet learned to do that with Tamsin. His eyes, for all there is affection in them when he regards her, are still wary. He listens to all her stories, he goes with her to Fianna distilleries, he goes to shows and allows her to drag him to here or to there. And he will talk to her about her stories, about the Fianna whiskey and the music and whatever else they do. He does not speak about himself, except, very occasionally, to describe an art exhibit Reese drags him to or to tell her about a fund-raising dinner. His past, and most of his present, he does not discuss.

Tamsin

He looks so fucking classy, Thomas with his stupid wine and his fire and his book about business law. He looks like the kind of young man Tamsin's mom would really like and nevermind that he's into other men, she can still be friends with him, follow his example, can't she? "Hey," Tamsin says, hovering in the doorway for a moment. "Good good good I was wanting you specifically, um, just you alone, that is. What do you know about dreams that are more than dreams? Um, wait, no first, how was your fucking day? Was it good?" - a weary grin, eyes as close to doe as any wolf can get. "I got, er, your boyfriend's sister, she gave me the coolest thing. I think I'm falling in love with her a little."

Thomas Delacroix

Thomas waits as Tamsin zigs through questions and zags through information. He never knows until the end what bits of the zigging and the zagging will be the most important, or which bits will form the center from which to start from.

"Reese is in the city. Sam is amazing. A little, but sit down. You too? Because I was about to go talk to Hector." He answers the questions entirely out of order, and not exactly in order of importance. He skips the one about his day entirely, but he doesn't look upset, so that's probably just on principal.

Tamsin

Tamsin doesn't mind questions answered out of order; after all, she's asking for it, the way she has of piling questions on without any respect for narrative. Respect for narrative comes later, during moots, or during un-ravelling, re-puzzling, putting-together. Tamsin, she bites the corner of her mouth, chews on the inside of her lip, wanders drifts look you can see the fairies in her blood the sidhe are shining or maybe it's satyrs dryads Fianna are fire and heath-burning autumn darkness falling and mysteries inside stones and and and: she drifts away from the door, plops onto the couch near Thomas. Near enough for her knee to touch him, but not so near that it actually does.

"He's so fucking stressed out about Lola popping a watermelon out and tearing up her vaj like he won't still like it later-on I mean he is like should I take a picture hah," here, a simmer-grin; Tamsin likes to fuck with people. She has not fucked with Thomas that much yet: he strikes her as delicate - or she is still just shy. "Um, anyway," her eyes meet Thomas's. "Basically he is really stressed, so don't be an ass, you can bug me too! Like I am now bugging you, um, see? So right, shit. Fuck, where the fuck was I -- ?"

Tamsin, she presses her palms into her eyes, presses them, and takes a deep breath:

"You too?"

Now she is focused. She might smell a bit boozy, woozy, Tamsin doesn't smoke weed very often at all hardly ever nope, but she drinks like a stereotype sometimes.

"So you've been having dreams that feel like they are more than dreams? Have you woken and felt like the world is different? Or something's changed? Or..."

"Do you taste salt right now, Thomas?"

- intensity, in that last question.

Tamsin

[Who doth spy there?!]

Thomas Delacroix

"No," he says. Quiet. Final. About the salt, but all the gods that have ever been or will ever be help her figure that one out....

But then he sighs and rolls his eyes. "Do you have any idea how much more annoyed he's going to be if he finds out we were having these dreams, and we knew we were both having them, and we didn't tell him?"

"I don't know. I thought the world was different when I had them, but then came back. Or something. I thought it was nothing, and then kind of strange, but only just now a real thing."

That Guy

['tis I, Courtney! =D ]

Tamsin

"Duh, yes, but that annoyance isn't going to fuck him up, that's just normal annoyance," she says, with a brief grin: then let that subside. Dissolve, communion wafer in wine.

Tamsin wraps her arms around her knees. Rests her chin atop them. Tamsin: she is such a small thing, but it is easy to forget. Because Tamsin is a Galliard and she fills a room. Not like Thomas does: Thomas is captivating, Thomas is thunder's, thunder's, thunder's, Thomas is storm-smoke, storm-crack, Thomas, oh Thomas is more than a calling that echoes from the sea. Still.

Look how carefully she listens, and absorbs. He doesn't know. Thought the world was different, and then.

"There are two others who have had vivid dreams, too. They're not waking dreams at least: but what do they mean?" How puzzled she seems. "There does seem to be a pattern. Mostly. Melantha and I, I recognized things from hers, but Erich ..."

"What were your dreams of? Tell, and I'll give you the full story as I have it so far, and perhaps we will be able to figure out what to do, if anything is to be done."

"I thought perhaps they were fay dreams," she confesses. "The good people have been known to do that, you know? To send inspiration like that; or maybe if not dreams from the good people - dreams from old Galliards, from the tale-pot, you know, the cauldron of story."

Of course the cauldron of story, Tamsin.

Thomas Delacroix

"First...there was...I don't know. I was standing in a line and it was moving so slowly and...I was there to get matches. The long wooden kind. People were arguing ahead of me. About candy. And I caught a flash of myself in the mirror, but I wasn't. I couldn't really understand. I don't think it was me. But..I couldn't really see what it was.

"Only once. After that, when I dream I'm in a place that I know well, except that I don't know it when I'm awake at all. Tongue and groove pine. I look up as I'm crossing the threshold." His dark blue eyes are a little wide, because he doesn't understand how he can know something so well he can smell pine wood and know without looking that there are a cluster of knots like a constellation just to his left even though he never looks just to his left and he knows it when he sleeps and he still knows it when he wakes and now he always like he's forgetting something when he crosses his own threshold in the morning.

"I do that every morning. Look up like that.

"And I know that through the door is a room with wood like that. Stairs. All wood, all worked and kept by hand.

"And I think...I think I'm carrying something. I can feel it, I can't...I don't see it. And I never look. I...don't know what it is.""

Tamsin

Tamsin frowns. Her frown is an intent frown and it is hidden behind her knees. Behind the loose circle of her arms around those knees. Should she take her shoes off the couch? Perhaps she already took her shoes off. Perhaps it's just dirty socks and she just did laundry a few days ago at Cold Crescent too.

"Hmm."

Thomas can see Tamsin beginning to puzzle at this. Beginning to engage the puzzle; the game of it. This is not a joyful ha-ha game; this is absorbing.

Perhaps he saw the spark, when he mentioned matches.

"Melantha dreamed of a mirror, too, just once. I did not. Neither did Erich. But Melantha and I have dreamed of ash; Melantha, ash; me, I know it is green wood, and a fire; a fire that is coming, I think. Erich, he's waiting for something; he's full of anticipation. He's somewhere he knows well too. Erich, he - "

A pause. She was about to do that thing she does where she just starts storytelling and she pulls herself back from that brink to say,

"Do you remember anything... about..." And Tamsin, she sounds mystified (but no less intrigued). "About light or dark?"

Thomas Delacroix

He nods, slowly but with no hesitation. "It's morning. Early, just barely dawn."

Tamsin

"Erich," she says. "Erich wakes up in a room full of light. In his dream, that is. A sunlit room, waiting, coiled, ready, something coming on the horizon, something just there; it's good. It's a room. Maybe you two are waking up in the same room in this dream we're having. When I dream: there is light, but it's faltering. It's failing. And there is no light in Melantha's. There's a bulb that goes out," Tamsin snaps her fingers. " - darkness. And there's a lot of darkness in mine, the light barely touches. I'm high though; I'm high where it shouldn't taste like the sea."

Thomas Delacroix

"I don't know. It does sound connected. It might not be one event. It might be two. Me and Erich seeing one, you and Melantha seeing another. Related events. Maybe...two people?" He shrugs. "We should ask Hector." Because Hector will magically be able to help. Thomas believes that Hector can help. With the same unquestioned certainty that he knows the sun will rise.

Tamsin

"Mm. You with your matches, yeah, I'd say so maybe. You guys might be the before. Melantha and myself, we're the after. There are gates in mine, too - roads. Winding roads, roads that circle themselves."

Tamsin gives Thomas a hostile look when he suggests, again, asking Hector. "What should we ask Hector?"

Thomas Delacroix

Thomas sighs heavily. "Why the Hell don't you want to talk to Hector?"

Tamsin

Tamsin opens her mouth to shoot off a quick reply, then closes it with a snap in order to give Thomas a more considered reply. The more considered reply sounds like this: "Because he is my Alpha, and he is my friend, and he is my brother, and I love him, but right now I do not have a specific-enough question to ask him. I don't think he has the answer. And it would stress him out needlessly to think there's some mystery that his pack-sister, and now I guess pack-brother, is meeting in their dreams. I don't read any danger in it yet. So what do you think we should ask Hector?"

Thomas Delacroix

"He's our alpha. We should tell him." Because reasons. And because so far on the list of involved people, Thomas trusts none of them. He sighs again "Whatever. I'll talk to Phoebe."

Tamsin

"Dude, did you really just 'whatever' me?" Tamsin pokes Thomas in the knee. Poke.

Thomas Delacroix

"Yes. I did."

Tamsin

"Why? Whatevers suck!"

Thomas Delacroix

"Because I think we should talk to our alpha. But...fine. I will go see what Phoebe thinks. She's likely to know all about dreams and visions and things."

Tamsin

"Yes, I know, you said that. You said we should ask him! But what should we ask him? That's what I want to know. See, Thomas, I am coming to you and I would like to know what you think and also why. I told you why I think what I think, dude. So come on! Don't fucking whatever and fine me. That's just mean."

"And yeah, Phoebe," Tamsin is still frowning, and still intent. "That's a good idea. Or maybe one of the Elder Galliards. Dreams are really more of an 'our auspice' thing, you know? Prophecy and shit. Not that I think the dreams we're having are prophecies. I don't know. They feel gentle. Or not ... gentle, but not..."

"I haven't totally given up on the cauldron of tales theory, you know?"

Thomas Delacroix

"Well. I'll try Phoebe first, she is a Theurge, and she is my friend. So...maybe she'll know something. If we shouldn't be bothering Hector because our question isn't specific enough, we probably shouldn't be harassing elder Galliards."

Tamsin

Tamsin grins. "Fair point. And anyway I have faith in us being able to figure more out on our own, to be honest. I mean, at least now that we know the dreams are - shared. Connected? Riddles. Erich n' I were thinking that maybe we could try to control the dream now that we know it's - a connected thing. Like try to find each other when we have the dream. Tonight - you wanna try to look for Erich? Since maybe you guys are 'closer'?"

A pause. "Yo Thomas?"

Thomas Delacroix

"I'll try.

"And..yeah?"

Tamsin

"Are you mad at me?"

Thomas Delacroix

"No. I think you're wrong. But I'm not mad at you."

Tamsin

"Okay. I can live with that." A pause. "Don'tcha wanna know why, if I do not want to bug Hector, I came to you? Or wonder, I mean?"

Thomas Delacroix

"Not until now. But sure. Why?"

Tamsin

"Because I want you to think of me and I want to think of you. Because I don't know you as well as I want to know you, you know? Because you're this tall dark echo-y thing that is nice and shit and a little way too fucking willing to jump after Hector down holes but like: I like when you come out with me and stuff but we need to do more shit together dude. SO! OH!! OH! OHOH! I have a fucking awesome idea."

Her eyes glint, and she bites her lip. "You wanna hear it?"

Thomas Delacroix

"Sure."

Tamsin

"We're going to tell a story together for the next moot."

Pause; beam.

Thomas Delacroix

Thomas, who had been watching her with patient and distant eyes, suddenly grins. "Okay."

Tamsin

Tamsin puts out a hand: "High fucking five, Thomas! High fucking five!!!" Don't leave her hanging, please.

Thomas Delacroix

He looks at her for a few seconds, as if to indicate that doing this for two people night be entirely too much, but then he picks up his hand and high fives. And tries not to smile. Tries.