citylogs | [closed]

The ravens, specifically?

[ Puzzling... But the rest is a good sentiment. Midnight laughs. ]

Your gran sounds like a marvel. I'd love to meet her someday. No, I'm no longer an escort. Ended up becoming a soldier, actually. Citizen reserve, paramilitary.

Yeah, they remember people's faces. Everyone knows that.

[ She raises her eyebrows, a little incredulous. ] Go on, now. You're a soldier?

[ With that hair?? ]

— Oh, they're fowlbeasts where you're from, aren't they? Right.

[ He grins. ]

Bit more likely than one would expect. Long story short, I was living in a medical facility funded by a pharmeceuticals company. Said company funds a paramilitary unit as well. I looked into it, liked the ethos, and decided to enlist. Went through basic, passed the examination battery, and, well.

[ He shrugs. The rest is history. ]

--Ah.

[ "Living in a medical facility" might be just what he said. Johanna's own mind goes to "Ravenscar Secure Hospital." And, well, if someone had offered her a chance to get out of there, a year into what looked at the time like a life sentence, she might have enlisted, too.

Maybe she's got the wrong of it, if he liked the ethos of whatever this unit was. Maybe that's more than is her business, just yet. Hounding Midnight with questions about his past, no matter how casually he discusses it, seems -- well, ill-mannered. ]

Long story very short.

Now, I have to ask, what's a raven to you, and what's a "fowlbeast"?

[ There's a bit of nuance to it, yes, but Midnight's not all that caught up in explaining the finer details of his life. Why would he? The night is young, and Miss Constantine is hot. ]

Well, a fowlbeast is a small creature of an avian nature that flies, usually. A raven is a subspecies of Liberi, and a Liberi is a species of human with avian ancestry.

[ Midnight hums. ]

How's that? Been working on the explanation for a while now.

[ He doesn't miss the way the woman's voice sounds, slow and drug out, like.... like maybe that's not it?? Then what could it be? Or maybe.... she's just thinking it through?

Either way, Peter's heart is doing nervous flip-floppy things in his chest again, so hard that it makes his head feel a little dizzy. He sits there on the couch, staring widely at her as he listens, finding himself nodding quickly along to the suggestion. ]

Yeah— yeah, I'm down for that. Energy cleansing.

[ He says the term like it's foreign in his mouth and tastes a little funny. But his concerns are rising now, bubbling up to the top. ]

Do you think it'll be enough? What if they can do.... magic, too? Can they do a spell to just like.... get past a deadbolt?

Christ, you can't just say "bird"?

[ Amused, she steps closer to loop her arm through his and tug him towards the more food-centric area of the fair. ]

Let's go see if they've got fried fowlbeast at any of these stalls, then.

All right, you've got angels that aren't angels, vampires that are vampires, sort of, birds that are fowlbeasts, and people that are ravens. Have you got-- [ She tries to think of more human-animal hybrids. ] Centaurs?

Not if I can help it.

Peter, have you seen any of them here, though? Anything that makes you think they're here already?

[ It's a serious question, asked not like she doubts him, but like she wants to make sure. The fear that they might show up in future makes sense to her; it's not like she hasn't wondered every so often if the next train will bring Kit, or Chas, or for-fuck's-sake Logue into the City. ]

Sounds like they weren't shy in your house.

[ He opens his mouth for a playful retort — he can say birds, but birds are humans, which runs into the same problem — but then that phrase drops so smoothly out of her mouth that he's taken aback for a second. He's been so used to adjusting to what the people here consider normal vernacular. This is the first time, out of occasional conversations with Broca, that someone's spoken in his own.

So he stays like that, mouth open in both the arrested reply and no little surprise, before he laughs softly and shakes his head. ]

Er — well, I wouldn't know much about that. I believe centaurs share ancestry with the Pegasi of Kazimierz, but out of the Pegasi I know... Well, Miss Whislash and I have conversations of another kind, you understand.

[ ... Listen, she's very pretty. ]

[ Well, hey, score one for her! She didn't even know she was winning. ]

Are you serious? I was trying to think of something out there. So they're horse people? Wait, have the Pegasi got proper wings?

[ are you not gonna ask if the bird people have wings johanna no okay whatever you weirdo ]

Ah, no, they haven't, although I'm fairly certain that the line used to... These days, it's just the ears and the tails, like most humans of animal descent. Lovely people, very ancient bloodline. A family of knights. A bit uptight, except Miss Whislash... and I suppose Miss Blemishine too, but she's the upbeat sort.

[ Well, it's a very fair question, seeing as how Terran angels have wings, yet demons, apparently, do not! ]

Steven is, oddly enough, rather used to it by now. The emptiness of the space, and how much it feels like a vacuum. Going through spaces that were ravaged by the Blip, it had sometimes felt like some kind of apocalyptic siren had gone off mere hours ago and everyone shut up shop and hurried home. Storefronts and signs would stay untouched and you'd only realise a place was permanently closed when you saw the newspapers covering the windows. If it's between this or a dilapidated, been abandoned for years, struggling to find fresh food and produce city, he'd rather stay here.

Even if the place does give off bad vibes.

"Well I meant the more permanent fixtures but yeah. The fair's a wee bit strange, innit? Who set it up and how's it going to run itself and all?"

"Suppose it's working the same way as the parties and the restaurants, right?"

She shrugs as she starts in on her meal. "It's like these things just grow by themselves. Like mushroom fairy rings."

Oh, just tails, of course.

[ The writer is briefly forced to consider how familiar Johanna Constantine is with the concept of furries, and concludes the answer is probably "yes" given that the writer has also established she's encountered a tulpa version of Ogtha before. ]

Are they like royalty, or what? With all these different types of humans running around, people must have developed some bloody complicated class politics.

Royalty? I suppose, although I'm not terribly acquainted with the history of Kazimierz. Now, if you asked me about the shukun shogunates of the Warring States era or the Bloodpeak Campaign of 1072, I'd know a bit more about that, class politics and all. Learned it in school. When it comes to the rest of the world... Higashi's historically been a bit of a hermit nation. What I've learned about other nations came from books or speaking to people on the landship.

[ Midnight shrugs. He does like history and social politics, but when it comes to anywhere but Higashi, he's had to do some catching up. ]

"Fair enough mate..." They know so precious little about this place, and she's being awful cavalier about it, but he doesn't have anything meaningful to offer either so... Well. Maybe he hasn't been as focused on finding out more about the city than he should be.

"I know very little about magic. Or mushrooms. Or magic mushrooms." Not those kinds of magic mushrooms. "But we'd be pretty buggered if all this just stopped, don't you think?"

[ He has no idea how the fuck magic — assuming that magic really is real, which is still a very hard pill to swallow — works. Does it have limits? Can someone just... use it to do whatever they want?

It seems like there might be limits, by the way this lady's talking about it, though. If she can use it to stop other people's magic, then... there's got to be rules, right? Fuck, this is wild. ]

.........I'm not sure. [ He feels bad admitting that again, knows it can't be helpful for her to hear. But he adds on, thinking seriously about it— ]

Like, I haven't outright seen any of them here, no. But.... sometimes it feels like someone else has been in here? Maybe when I'm gone, or something. I'll find my stuff moved around, or... things just feel weird?

[ He hesitates again, before adding on. ]

....And I feel weird. I have a hard time remembering shit. Sometimes I forget stuff I shouldn't. Like um. My name. [ He's looking nervous again, fingers worrying themselves in his lap. ] What if that means they're here, like... doing shit to me?

[ "I expel you." Yeah, that feels like it tracks with forgetting your name. Did they hex him, maybe?

They could go in circles for hours, she realizes, him describing things he's got only the vaguest vocabulary for and her speculating. Better to get to cleansing. Something with some oomph to it, too, not just mumbling some nice words and lighting a candle. Though, to be fair, the external difference between a fake cleansing for the "live, laugh, love" crowd and a real one is pretty slim; intent makes a larger difference than anything.

And once the cleansing is done -- a binding. Something to keep Peter within his body, within his self. Sort of a reverse exorcism, she supposes. ]

I think it could be whatever they tried to do before, still hanging around. Sort of like a shitty hangover, if you've ever had one. [ He's what, like, seventeen? He's probably had one of those. ] So we'll clear the space, and then do what we can to sort of blow the cobwebs off you, too.

[ She gives him a smile, professional and cool and reassuring. Everything here is under control. ] And I'll need two things from you, even if they sound absolutely fucking stupid, all right? First, I'll need your full name, middle name and all. And second, when we start, I'll need you to really focus on what makes you feel safe. What makes you feel like yourself.

[ Peter pauses at that explanation, quiet for a few moments as that sinks in. Then he's nodding, because— ]

Yeah. Yeah, that... makes sense. That it's still like, hanging around.

[ It does make sense. And as creepy as the thought is, at least it's something to hang onto. Some avenue of thought and reason, and a problem that can be... fixed. Right? With what she's saying?

And then maybe he'll be.... fixed. Maybe not all the way, but. This weird shit. The forgetting things, losing track of time and self and so much else, even the little... hallucinations; he thinks that what they are, anyway.

He nods again, more firmly this time. ] Okay, yeah. I uh— it's Peter (insert middle name here because he has no canon one lmfao) Graham.

[ ...A safe place, though. That one's not so easy. He pauses, a soft frown tugging at the corners of his mouth. ....He doesn't have anything like that. Not really. Nowhere felt safe, not for a really long fucking time. Not even sleep was safe. ]

...Can it be a place that used to?

[ Something about that pause gives her a pang in her chest. When she was Peter's age her home felt ... not unsafe, usually, but never once comfortable. Most of Liverpool felt like a gray iron box pressing in on her, and nowhere more than the small house she shared with her sister and the old man. ]

Yeah. [ Her voice is gentle for that. ] Doesn't even need to be a real place, if that's easier. It'll work best if it's real, but -- it's about the feeling.

[ Then, clapping her hands lightly together, she stands up. ] You think on it. I'm going to draw on your floor. Mind if we chuck that mattress in a corner for a bit?

I don't think I'm qualified to ask you about any of those, frankly. Barely qualified to ask people where I'm from about all our wars and kings. I learned about them in school but I didn't enjoy most of it.

"Yeah," she says, a little grim. "Don't know about you, but I've never been much of a farmer. I kill cactuses, even.

"What about you? Done much exploring? Found anything interesting?"

It was best when I thought about it all as a nice story, but...

[ Midnight shakes his head. He wasn't the best at school, honestly. ]

What did you like at school? Were you a troublemaker?

"I wouldn't mind learning. But it's one thing to grow some parsley on your windowsill and another to feed a city..." He has slightly more confidence given his track record with fish, but. Bit of a joint effort there between himself and Marc, and even if they could find and catch a live one somehow, he's definitely not going to volunteer rearing fish to be eaten.

"Not really, no. Marc's been adamant about not going off on me own too much so... and anyway I do love me some books. I've been reading a lot. You know you can normally tell a lot about a place by how accessible their libraries are. How many bookstores they have and what's being sold, what's not being sold, whether there's a separate children's section and whatnot." She probably shouldn't show Steven the contents of her fridge if she doesn't want to be judged.

"Considering how hard it is to get information about the city otherwise... It's been easier to just look elsewhere for clues."

[ Johanna snorts, grinning up at him. ]

What do you think?

It was all "doesn't apply herself" until I was old enough to get into real trouble, and then it was demerits for wearing my skirt too short and smoking behind the school and "practicing kissing" with girls.

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