Difference between revisions of "Bookstore Chitchat"

Latest revision as of 14:08, 4 June 2019

{{ | date=05/31/2018 | time=18:00 EST | summary=Alma talks to Maya and learns that there is a threat on the other side. | cast=

• Alma
• Maya

| place_name=Bookstore | place_desc=A bookstore with a cafe section. | log=Earlier today Maya got a text from Alma, "Would you help me pick out a book? gonna go by this place later (google map url with address is included here)"

The answer comes pretty quickly: lmk what time? free after 4

"anytime after 6 or so. I'm going to be hanging out there a while. not late late." comes back in a reply from Alma. Sometime before 6pm Alma can be seen walking in the neighborhood. She doesn't have all her gear with her, maybe she doesn't need it. She heads on in to the store, and browses for a while before settling down with a tisane at one of the tables. A notebook is open and she's got her phone out and is swiping through some pictures.

Maya shows up a little while after, dressed in flowing knits and Birkenstocks, beaded bag slung at her hip. She looks tired, the usual vivacity thinned-out somehow, but a smile shows up nevertheless as she heads for Alma's table.

The woman is greeted with a smile and a "Hi Maya." She scoots chair out with her foot to open a little space for her friend to sit. "You look a little tired, want some coffee or something? I know it's late, but..." Alma shrugs like a college student who drinks coffee all the time and has the sleep schedule of an 20something in college, the jerk. (Alma's player is a little goofy today and we apologize for the inconvenience, - Ed.)

Answering with a quick shake of her head, Maya gives the woman a smile. "It's all good. I can't hang long, I gotta make dinner for someone, but..." She blinks with realization, right as she sits down. "Did I give you the coin?"

Alma's puzzled answer comes back pretty quickly, "A coin? No? What kind of coin?"

Maya makes a face, and hauls the bag into her lap to start rummaging. "Um. It's... I think someone just used it, like, in a working? There doesn't seem to be anything super special about it that I could find, but maybe you can look?" She finds the thing, and hands it across to Alma.

Alma takes a look at the coin. "I'll do my best. I can try a few things?" She looks around the bookstore and puts the coin away in a pocket that has a snap flap. "Probably not here right now." She looks back at Maya, "Have you found," and here Alma's voice sounds tentative as she's trying to remember, "The spirit? of the city? yet?"

Maya shakes her head minutely, hugging the bag her body. "I asked around a long time ago... I'm worried there might not be anything, anymore."

"I've been trying to hear spirits of the dead. I can't get much at all. It's all muffled. When I can see through the shroud, I can barely make anything out... or there's no one there, just the landscape."

The blue-green eyes study Alma's face. "Is it like that everywhere? I mean... isn't it usually kind of deserted?"

"But I've been doing this for a couple of weeks. It seems different than when I started last year. I know I had help, but I didn't expect it to be this hard." She shows a list in her notebook, with the locations of some places and notes on what she's tried. "Over near Trinity Cemetary, where Kai planted some trees? I set out a little alter of marigolds and candles, and I dropped some of my blood in to a line in the dirt. I read about Oddeseus doing something ilke that. He used sacrificial animals, but I didn't want to kill anything." She looks around the bookstore. "Do you have any books to recommend?"

Maya blinks at the abrupt course change, and then lets out a breath that comes with a rueful half-smile. "I haven't had time to read in ages. I mean, I don't know what kinda thing you'd be looking for, either, so... I wouldn't presume. All my books are in boxes for now, or I'd offer to lend anything you might want. I... don't get to read for, like, entertainment, much."

Alma laughs. "Me either... I mean, I'm catching up on so much. I have the corvid research, and now I'm doing a crash course in... the humanities I guess. I didn't know about Tiresius, like. Odysseus talked to him by pouring blood out. So I thought maybe spirits would come talk to me if I gave blood. And people use marigolds in alters. There are all of these ways people have of respecting the dead and family. There's more to it than that, but do you see? I must be missing something obvious." This is a kid who has learned a lot by hitting the books. She's got more practice doing independent research when it comes to corvid cognition, but the spirit world? is gonna take a lot of work.

With a little tip of her head, Maya says, "Dollars to doughnuts it's relate--" Then she blinks, another realization hitting as she looks away, into emptiness. "Oh. Yeah, duh. No, uh..."

"And I don't know if it's related to this city thing... but like, if the dead are having a hard time around here, mabye the spirit of the city is too? Do you ever look across the shroud? Does it matter what kind of shoes you wear?"

Blinking and taking a few breaths, Maya focuses on Alma again. "Did I tell you about how the Gauntlet's guarded? Like, why you shouldn't try to step sideways?"

"No? What is stepping sideways? Walking through the shroud?"

Maya nods quickly, leaning forward a touch. She looks the slightest bit sickened. "There's a spirit the enemy has working for him, or cooperating with him, who attacks people as they try to pass between the worlds... Steals-the-Dead. And he's called that because that's what he *does*. He's a soul stealer. If he's been omnipresent, watching Detroit, *however* he's doing it... no *wonder* the lower world is empty. Those souls have been *stolen*."

Alma looks absolutely horrified. Hairs rise on her body, her skin is prickled all over. "What does that mean? They're gone?" Her eyes tear up. She looks angry too. Very angry.

"It's... likely, yeah," Maya says, her voice carrying a touch of nausea. "I didn't even think of the fact that he would have been feeding on death this whole time..." Her posture gradually draws inward, eyes lowered, arms hugged tight across her body. "I should have attacked them a long time ago. We could have been attacking this whole time, instead of..." She looks stricken, sickened.

Alma face is ashen. "When did this start?"

"I don't know," Maya whispers, blinking quickly. She doesn't look up. "Years, at least. I-- there's someone I can, can ask."

There's a sequence of three long breaths, and Alma asks "Do you want to go for a walk outside? I can show you something?"

Maya takes a slow breath, her eyes still focused on the surface of the table. She nods quickly. "Yeah. Yeah, okay."

The notebook goes away in to a pocket, the pencil behind her ear. Alma offers her hand to Maya, and picks up her cup to drop off at the counter so that no one has to bus her table.

Maya rises smoothly, looking over to give Alma a small half-smile. "Yeah. Let's get some air. That's good."

Alma walks out of the book store and leads her along a sidewalk. "It will be just a few minutes," she says. "There it is," she says. She's pointing to a chain link fence next to a utility pole. There is a bag stuck in the fence. Curling up around the utility pole and the fence are branches from some sort of a bush. Alma explains "The pole has this neat stripe running up. It's really cool see?" And then she laughs, "And if you are walking by and only see it from teh corner of your eye? That bag looks like a bird walking upside down on the tree, like a woodpecker. That's what got me to stop." She fans out her fingers like the branches. "I think they look like antlers coming up from the ground. pretty cool." She invites Maya to walk along some more.

Breathing a little deeper, Maya follows her, pausing to study the branches. Her expression has a distracted look, disconnected, as if she's seeing other things as well.

It's getting more in to summer, and the evergreen bushes that were tipped in a light green are starting to go darker. Their texture is still soft ont he ends, and Alma shows this to Maya. "Look," she says, and trails her fingers along a bush. "It's still softer right now." She's content with this walk. She's upset, but being outside and around growing things just simply helps. "Lots of helicopters ahead."

Maya tenses, a shift of posture and movement in Alma's peripheral vision. "Helicopters? I don't hear anything--" There's more edgy nervousness than self-blame, which is at least a change.

When they reach that part of the block, Alma crouches down to pick up a helicopter seed to show Maya.

"Oh," Maya says, her face flushing scarlet with embarrassment. "Oh. Sorry. I, um. I thought--" Yeah, it's obvious what she thought, and equally obvious that she feels incredibly self-conscious about it. Looking around, she finds the tree. "Red maple," she says in a quiet, less awkward voice. "I think sugar maples fruit at a different time, or something..." She goes still for a moment, focused on that tree, and one might have the feeling she's running through a calculation in her head. Or, this being Maya, perhaps a mantra.

"It's getting dark" She observes. "Maybe we'll be able to see some nightjars or bats, but maybe we need to be closer to a body of water for that."

Maya takes a deep, clearing breath, and is suddenly... back. She gives Alma a swift smile, and says, "I should run home, I owe someone dinner. But-- but I'm glad you called me. Maybe we can have lunch or something, soon?"

"Hug?" Alma asks.

The Dreamspeaker actually smiles for real, meeting Alma's gaze. "Sure," she answers, offering the embrace without any of her usual awkwardness.

Alma hugs Maya. "Yes," she nods. "Let's have lunch soon."

"Blessed be," Maya says as she draws back, her smile easier. }}