Summary:Mack heads home from a night of drinking on St. Patty's Day, and runs into monsters. Log Info:Storyteller: None |
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Ah St. Patrick's Day! A day when even the alcoholics don't get looked at twice because everyone is drunk. Mack Linden is no exception to that as she weaves her unsteady way through Red Hook's quiet streets, towards the docks and the boat slip belonging to the Quint's Folly. Most people are celebrating the holiday night in better parts of town, clearly. She has a green Jameson whiskey tee on, with suspenders and dark jeans, her hair in a pinned up French braid, and an old black peacoat over it all. The whiskey can be smelled on her as she hums some irish tune the bar had been blasting as she was leaving.
*Skreeeeeeee k-CHNK.* That's the sound of a manhole cover being lifted and pushed aside as if it weighed no more than a shwarma take-out plate. An unforgettable sound, once you hear it. It's followed by a near-silent rush of cloth and motion, and then—then, the Monster has gained the quiet night. Kneeling next to the manhole, he slides the cover back into place. *THUNK.* Rising, he looks about, his face hidden in the depths of his hooded cloak. He is mostly visible as that grey wool cloak, but said cloak is nine feet tall. It's as if an enormous ghost has crawled out of the underground, except he is very solid. Nothing ephemeral about him.
Mack is drunk, so she giggles a little at the cloaked towering figure. "How many leprechauns do you got under there?!" she asks with a grin and a sway on her feet. Clearly she thinks there's a couple idiot kids on one another's shoulders.
Adam stills, realizing Mack is there. He goes weirdly, utterly still, the only motion the swaying of his cloak. Motion slowly returns as he also realizes the tiny human is thoroughly inebriated and that's why she's not screaming. "None. I regret to disappoint you." His voice is an incredibly deep rumble. If leprechauns have voices like that, none of the stories say so.
"You kids shouldn't be out here at night. Docks aren't safe," Mack declares. Which doesn't explain why she is out here, all alone, tiny thing that she is. Put some wings on her and she's Tinkerbell in small human size. She leans against a stack of pallets discarded by a shipping company and digs in her pockets for her boat keys, unsuccessfully. Because she didn't bring them with her in case someone lifted them. Rufus may not be a guard dog, but the sight of him is usually enough to dissuade thieves. That and the fact her trawler is old and crappy and smells like cod.
In the dark space between two net sheds a pair of bright yellow-green points appear, growing until they're discernible as a pair of eyes. They watch Mack and Adam from this vantage for a time, then Fjorskar slips out of her cover and into the shadows cast by stacks of pallets, drawing closer.
"Indeed." Adam continues to move slowly. If the human is this drunk, the hope is she won't start screaming. It's so awkward when they scream. "They are dangerous for you as well."
"Hah! Nah, everyone here knows me," Mack retorts to Adam, totally missing the glowing eyes. "I'm a boat captain!" she declares, with pride. Drunken pride. No keys in her pockets, but she does find a small bottle of whiskey. "Oooh! Forgot I had that!" Glee! Happy drunk!
Fjorskar wrinkles her nose against the smell of…well, the whole area, but especially the whiskey on Mack. Adam's standing right here out in the open, though, so she takes this as leave to do the same, and starts approaching from around a heap of anchor line, emerging from the half-light like an apparition. Monstrousness aside, there's more to her for Mack to see: two spirits, both human, one a tiny splinter in the other, overlaid on her.
Adam lifts his head as Fjorskar moves out from the shadows. "Ah, my sister. The young one is in her cups. Have a care." Now there might be screaming. Fjorskar can't be mistaken for three teenagers in the world's longest trenchcoat. "Do you hunt tonight?"
Mack wrestles the cap off the booze and tips it up to her lips, before her eyes rest on the very visible monster, and it's accompanying spirits. An air bubble glubs as she swallows a mouthful of whiskey in the moment of panic, then the glass bottle is dropped and shatters on the ground as she staggers back, trying to scream, but unable to because of the alcohol scorching down her throat. That guy in the park, that is what was IN him? She lands on her ass on the wet cold ground.
"In her barrels," Fjorskar growls with narrowed eyes. Her deep, grating voice barely suits human speech, but she makes it work, somehow.
Her ears flick back at the shattered bottle, but she makes no move otherwise. Mack is, near as she can tell, in no way a threat. "Not tonight. I learn this place anew." She gazes around them. "It is much changed."
The strong scent of spirits waft up from the shattered bottle. Adam doesn't move, not a flinch, not a twitch. His face can't be seen, his hood pulled far down, and that's the way he intends it. The hem of his cloak is just barely above the ground. "Yes, all the city is different. It's rather more crowded, as well. No doubt you have discovered it for yourself." He's watching Mack, while his sonorous voice rolls out from within his hood. "Young mortal, we shall not harm you," he addresses her.
Mack kicks her feet out, seeking purchase on the ground to try and scramble backwards in a crab walk, running up against more palettes and having nowhere else to go. Her eyes are like saucers, staring at the very clear monster, and the overlapping images. "Y-you were in the park!" she blurts out at it. "You were in that guy! The one the other guy tried to hook me up with!" Oh Mack. As if. Her head snaps to Adam, though she can't see under the cloak, she's suspecting it's a single person under it. A really REALLY big one.
Fjorskar huffs a breath, tilts her head. 'Hook up' has no meaning to her. She can't really recall any interaction with the drink-addled human on the ground either, though if it didn't make a strong impression on her host well that's hardly surprising. On the other hand, that's not to say it didn't happen. "The host does as he will," she says, apparently feeling this is a sufficient explanation.
Adam sighs. Why do they never listen? Halgrim would be upset if he knew Adam let Mack hurt herself out of fear. "Please, be still. There's no need to panic. You can see, then? You can see the other side of her."
Mack grunts a little at not being recognized by the monster, as if that is a BAD thing, but hey, her ego exists somewhere in that tiny form! She slides herself up the pile of palettes and puts it between herself and the giants. "W-what are you?" she asks, feeling that itch of the tattoo on her back. She never saw shit like this before she got the damned thing. She stammers out at Adam, "I see a whole shitton of stuff, like that guy, and another one, inside that." She points at Fjorskar. "It started a c-couple months ago. Sometimes people, sometimes when I touch t-things." Drunk Mack is forthcoming with answers.
"You have the Sight," Fjorskar snarls. Informs, really, like she's speaking to a student. Head tipped towards Adam now, she growls, "Do they still not teach them, young? Foolish. To let them wander so." She remembers this from her first time in the stinking city. Children with magic and other abilities, flailing around like newborns, causing no end of trouble. How humanity had covered the face of the Earth she would enver truly comprehend.
Adam scowls, unseen. He dislikes reminders of the mad spirit inside Fjorskar. With one stride he approaches Mack, drops to a crouch in front of her. His cloak pools on the ground around him. "She is a wild spirit. You will not see her like again, for she is the only one. What is your name?"
"Teach what!? I'm clearly having a nervous breakdown! That's all!" Even Mack doesn't believe that anymore, deep down. Not since her encounter with that Constantine guy and seeing her dead Grandfather tromping around the boat. "What the everloving fuck is the 'sight'!?" Any doubts she was a sailor are dispelled. And then there is Adam, at eye level, and asking her name. "M-Mack," she stammers, looking like she might faint at any moment.
To Fjorskar the splinter, the shade, is an old problem. An ache she can't disregard but has stopped worrying over. Not a good idea, perhaps, but what else can she do. She's been dealing with him for a thousand years. What's a thousand more.
Fjorskar stays put; monstrous as humans find Adam, he still has a better resemblence to them than she does. More experience, too. She blows out a breath in response to Mack's claim. "Your mind doesn't…deceive. You are seeing the truth. Of things." One ear cocks back. "It will not stop. It may grow." She stops short of recommending Mack find a teacher. She doesn't want more trained world shapers or life binders or anything of the sort.
"You may in fact be going mad," Adam says. "The Sight is always associated with madness. The day is an appropriate one, for the Irish are well acquainted with the phenomenon. Regardless, what you See is true. My name is Adam. She," he nods to Fjorskar, "is my kin in soul if not in flesh. As is her host, the man you see within her. Her story is complex. I won't burden you with it."
"A-Adam? You're…very tall," Mack whispers. Then she faints dead away. Because that is just a bit too much for the wee woman.
Fjorskar grunts, entirely unsurprised by this turn of events. "Too much of their drink. No discipline." One wonders how she feels about Halgrim getting properly drunk, as he has been quite well known to do. She peers about. "I may be able. To scent for her den." Her grumbling has a note of 'no promises, this place stinks' to it.
Adam catches Mack's head in one enormous, cool hand, so she won't smack it on the concrete. "I can't very well leave her here," he says, sounding a little grouchy. He scoops her up, his forearm under her butt and her head on his shoulder like a tired child.
She's a hundred pounds soaking wet, so Mack is probably like a child in the arms of the giant. Also, she's probably going to drool on his shoulder. Sorry Adam.
Fjorskar radiates a pure desire to ask 'why not'. It's there in her body language. The host has taught her a great deal about holding such opinions back when she doesn't intend to insist on them, and so instead she steps forward to sniff at Mack and get a general read of her scent. Then she turns and begins to seek about, breathing deep and long, picking among the myriad odors of the dock for a suggestion of the woman in Adam's arms.
|ROLL| Halgrim +rolls 1d20 for: 10
Adam is getting drooled on. A sad fate for a monster of dignity. He follows Fjorskar, his body language stiff. "When they batter themselves into excess, someone else must always clean up after them." He could be a put-upon mother complaining about teenagers.
There is a scent that clings to the woman, of the dog he had with her when they last met. It's hairs stick to everything, as it is a veritable shedding machine. And he is walked often along the docks. It's not too hard to follow the scent to the 90 foot fishing trawler with "Quint's Folly" painted on it. It looks to be at least 30 years old, but functional if not terribly pretty.
Fjorskar snarls an agreement, for isn't that what she spend five decades doing, in a sense?
She picks up the scent of the dog, follows it to the boat's mooring. Eyeing the boat, she growls, "Here." She seems uninclined to go too close to it, if nothing else because the dog may not find her agreeable.
Adam sets a hand on the deck railing and vaults aboard the trawler, landing in a whoosh of cloak. "She is a fisherman, it seems." He uses the gendered noun without irony. To get her inside, he doesn't want to break anything, so he tries the door.
The door is unlocked, maybe because of the giant mound of fur that sits just beyond it, tail wagging, tongue lolling. Rufus, the Leonberger, jumps to put his paws on Adam and say HI! He'd lick if he could reach his face but dude is TALL. So instead he just chuffs a hello and nudges at his 'mom''s form in the giant's arms. He then looks past Adam to the big predator on the dock, and whines a little in fear.
Fjorskar stays where she is, giving no body language that she intends to invade the dog's space, claim any territory, etc. Neither does she glare at him in a petty bid for dominance, letting her baleful yellow-green eyes slide away to reguard him in her periphary. She is merely here to accompany her pack brother.
Adam laughs quietly as he's jumped on. Slobber from a dog is far preferable to slobber from a human. "Yes, hello, old fellow. I've brought you your mistress. Stand watch over her." He kneels to deliver Mack to a chair, easing her down as if she's a butterfly he's urging off his cloak. Then he wraps arms around Rufus to indulge himself in hugging one of the few living creatures happy to see him.
Mack is easily set on one of the padded bench seats in the small galley. It looks like the 70s never made it out of her boat, decor and appliance-wise. Rufus happily loves all over Adam. He always has to be careful not to knock his mom over since she's so little, and having a big thing to play with is the BEST. Liiiick!
Leaving Adam to play with Rufus, Fjorskar begins to sniff around the boat, poking at it. Checking for other signs that Mack is, indeed, a magus, as she seems to be. If she's a worldshaper, well, Fjorskar has to keep an eye on her.
Adam is unknockoverable, thus the best possible playmate for a giant dog. He plays with Rufus for a few minutes, smiling—a rare sight, the Monster smiling, and often one regretted by those who witness it. Animals don't judge. Adam actually kisses Rufus on the noggin. "Now I must leave you, greatheart. Guard your mistress well." Regretfully he leaves, closing the door softly behind himself with a click.
He leaps to the dock. "Thank you, my sister, for your assistance, and your patience." Adam pauses, looking back at the trawler. "We must tell John."
Nothing on the boat seems to indicate that Mack is a magus of any sort. It's just her tattoo from which all her powers emanate. The boat is haunted by her grandfather, however, who is still trying to communicate with her without her freaking out and running away. Sigh. Frank is frustrated. Rufus is content though, and he curls up on the other galley bench across from Mack, and goes promptly to sleep, like the horrible guard dog he is.
Satisfied that Mack is a new world shaper (so late to come into her power, but then it's not an unknown occurence), Fjorskar leaves off nosing about her boat, waits for Adam to come out. She snorts in agreement. "She is new. To her power. She will need to be taught." Nothing worse than an untrained world shaper. Nothing.
"Yet another fledgling for us." Adam has mixed feelings about that, and his huge awful face, within the shadow of the hood, is pensive. "They are always born anew, grow up, and die, while we continue on."