riverviewlogs | I don't know where I been

Entry tags:

I don't know where I been

who: Athena Parker AND YOU!
what: Catch-all
when: from mid-August through September
where: All Around Ze Town
warnings: None, will edit as needed.

i. shenanigans - backdated to august 8th

[ Athena likes shenanigans, but she is also a giant-ass softie. So here she sits on a park bench with a jar full of multicolored fireflies, feeling guilty over trapping them. They look just like real fireflies, fireflies from home, except they're in there blinking away in their little rainbow.

She holds the jar up to her face. She managed to catch them all without getting bitten, somehow, and the jar is pretty heavily populated. ]

Hey little dudes.

[ Yeah, sure, the original plan was to turn them loose inside a building and retreat to watch the chaos unfold, but she can't stand the idea of the little guys being trapped inside and starving. ]

What am I gonna do with you?

[ Another moment of thought, and then she makes an impulse decision and acts on it, twisting the lid off the jar and upending it over the back of the bench. Not into her lap. She's not that dumb.

The air around her fills with sparkling insects, and for a second it's nothing but beautiful.

And then, y'know, the bugs scatter and go after anyone in the vicinity, Athena included. ]

ii. the good samaritan

[ Athena's thrown herself into the beach cleanup wholeheartedly, working almost every day she doesn't have to go to her job. It feels good to help clean this place up, to feel like she's contributing something. It makes her feel a little more at home here, instead of like a tourist staying in some space equivalent of an air bnb.

It's midway through one of the days of cleanup when she finds a weird, wriggly mammalian thing trapped in a plastic bag in the water. It's hopelessly tangled, and whenever she tries to get close enough to work on the knots it snaps at her with very long, very sharp-looking teeth. ]

Come on, little guy. I'm trying to help.

iii. please note - twofer night

[ It's buy one get one night at Please Note karaoke bar. This applies to songs, to food, to drinks, to the whole place, which means Athena is way busier than normal.

She mostly likes her job. She even likes her uniform, which changes depending on the theme of the week. This week it's Earth-hippies, something that Please Note's owner only barely seems to understand, but by god he's got the place decked out to look as psychedelic as his budget and magical skills will allow.

Athena's wearing a tie-dye shirt and ripped up jeans, a bandana tied around her forehead, serving drinks and occasionally singing along with whoever's on-stage, her rich alto covering up any mistakes the customer might make. All the Earth music is half-off tonight, and there's a lot of Willie Nelson happening.

She'll live. ]

iv. do I know you?

[ So here's the thing. Tell a teenage lesbian who misses her girlfriend that she has to find a partner to pop open a "Man's Best Friend" romcom party favor with her, and her immediate reaction may just be FUCK YOU.

This whole party favor advertising thing seems stupid to her, and she resents everything about this movie and how it's everywhere around town. When she's accosted with one of the advertising party favors, she takes it, steps on one end, and yanks on the other, while glaring at the giver the whole time.

It bangs open, the mist drifts free, and very abruptly Athena's mind goes blank. She's standing there, holding half a party favor, in the middle of a busy sidewalk on a street she doesn't recognize. It's alarming enough that she backs up until she hits the nearest building and can stay as out of the way as possible. The woman who gave her the cracker is already gone, apparently not eager to see the results of her handiwork.

Hopefully no one nearby got hit with the other side of the spell. ]

v. Mini Mingle??? - closed to Jeff, Cam, and Peter

[ Gee, Athena sure has had Peter over a lot lately. She says it's because he's helping her study for her GED-thing, which is probably true, but it also just happens to fall immediately after her meltdowns on Jeff and Cam over, y'know, having a friend who's going to die.

No correlation there, right?

Anyway, today is one of those days where she planned on making dinner for Jeff and Cam, and what d'you know, Peter just happens to be helping her study again. It goes a little long, in fact, long enough that she just asks Peter if he wants to stay to eat.

This won't be awkward at all. Not during Athena's prep to cook (she insisted on doing it herself this time, sorry Jeff). Not when Athena runs to the store to get some ingredients she forgot for what she wants to make and Peter is left alone with Jeff and Cam. Definitely not during the meal itself!!

What could possibly be awkward about any of this. She's just having a friend over for dinner! ]

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"Hey, doc!"

She waves, brightening when she sees him. If anyone can help her with this little monster, it's probably Harry Goodsir. She wades over and grabs his arm, towing him back toward her discovery. "I found a thing and it hates me."

"Reptile, avian, or mammal?" he asks, following along. His question is answered as soon as he sees it, though—he's seen these creatures in the river. They somehow manage to be reminiscent all at once of otters, serpents, and shrews. "Oh! good lord, the poor creature."

"Yeah, and I can't get close enough to even like, try and cut it ou....t."

Cue Athena being struck by the most obvious solution in the world.

"I could totally magic this situation."

"You—can?" He stares. "How?"

He knows Athena is from the same world as Jeff, knows that Jeff is conversant in magic somehow, but not the details. He's still vague on the rules that govern magic—what it can do, how it can be used. Never mind the fact that it seems to vary by world.

"I can sing a spell." She frowns at the little animal, trying to figure out what would work best. Something with words, maybe, something about untangling or getting free or suitably metaphorical.

Athena scrubs her hand through water-dampened hair. "That's kind of my thing--bard, so I do magic through music, basically."

It sounds like something out of a fairy tale, even if Athena is ... if not completely the opposite of a fairy-tale princess, something almost entirely unlike. But Harry is more than happy to let her attempt it.

"If you are willing to try—by all means. Can I help in any way?"

She takes a deep breath, thinking through how she wants this to work, what she wants to accomplish, setting mental limits on what the spell can do and how powerful it needs to be.

"Just yank me back fast if that thing tries to eat my face."

She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes. The song she landed on isn't exactly what she was looking for, but it'll work. Her voice is a rich alto, well-trained and pure.

"It's been a long dark night
And I've been a waitin' for the morning
It's been a long hard fight
But I can see a brand new day a dawning
And I've been looking for the sunshine
'Cause I ain't seen it in so long
Everything's gonna work out just fine
Everything's gonna be all right
That's been all wrong."

There's a thrum of power to the words. She keeps her focus on the little animal and the bag, imagining the two slipping free of each other, imagining a gentle separation. The bag tugs lightly against the water, one strap sliding over the animal's head and into the water. She keeps singing, more confident now. The creature thrashes, feeling itself starting to come free.

"'Cause I can see the light of a clear blue morning
I can see the light of a brand new day
I can see the light of a clear blue morning
Everything's gonna be all right
It's gonna be okay."

The bag slides away like a snake, bobbing to the top of the water. The little animal rolls in the water and hisses at the bag.

Harry watches, astonished. It's not the first time he's seen magic in Riverview, but it's the first time he's seen it used so beautifully.

As soon as the bag slips free, he reaches in with a stick and flicks it out of the water.

Athena exhales quietly, coming out of the spell. As soon as her concentration is broken, it's replaced by delight and pride.

"Fffuuu--rick. That wasn't bad. I thought I might be rusty."

The little creature rolls in the water a few times before diving and vanishing. She squints in disappointment. "Aw, man. I wanted to touch it."

Because that's a great idea.

"The males have poisonous spurs," he notes matter-of-factly. "But if you would like to see them again, I found a den on the other side of the river a little downstream, not long ago. The kits in particular are quite charming." He disposes of the bag in one of the large trash bags they've been given for the purpose. "But that was truly marvellous, Athena! I have never seen anything like it. Have you always been able to do this?"

"Cool. Man, I want poisonous spurs. Why don't humans get anything interesting? You've got to show me. The babies I mean, not the spurs, but the spurs would be cool too."

She sloshes toward the shore, backwards, still euphoric from success and pleased with herself.

"Thanks. It's not that uncommon where I'm from? I mean, magic isn't, but magic with music isn't either--am I making any sense? Anyway no, I couldn't do it when I was really little, but I got tested when I was about eight and that's when I started learning."

"So your magical skill is akin to an aptitude for—say—mathematics?" He smiles. "I think, you know, that while we humans may lack claws, fangs, or indeed poisonous spurs, we rather make up for it with our brains."

"Yeah! Yeah, exactly. And with magic like mine, like ours I mean, it's like... Okay, I use magic through singing, but other people use different things, like painting or dance or woodworking, stuff like that. So if you want to be any good at the magic part, you have to be good at the craft part, too."

She pauses. "Okay, that's fair, but I'd still like poisonous spurs."

Harry laughs. "And they cannot be created with magic?" Partly a joke, but he's also curious.

She starts to answer, and then stops, her mouth open.

She shuts it. Thinks.

"I mean, our magic can't? I mean I don't think it can. I know some people have Affinities where they can change into animals or whatever but that's super rare. Magic here could probably do it though."

"Now here is something I have wondered—" Harry says, and pauses a moment, trying to think of how to articulate the source of his puzzlement. "It seems that with so many people from so many different worlds, there are any number of magical systems that they have ... brought with them, so to speak. But how do they all coexist? Forgive me if this is a naïve question; I admit I know little of what I speak, but it seems to me as if—say there was a man who came here from a world water flowed uphill, and whereas for most of us, water flows as we know it, but for him, it always went in the opposite direction." He stops, the look on his face indicating that he feels he's gotten his brain badly wrapped around the axle, so to speak. "Am I making a grain of sense?"

She stops, staring at him with a slightly helpless look.

"Uhhhhh."

She shrugs, scrubbing a hand through her hair. "I mean yeah, I think so? I guess I... never thought about it."

Harry has the grace to look embarrassed.

"I'm sorry—I ought not to think out loud when my thoughts are barely formed. Much less on a subject I don't even begin to understand yet." He'll have to figure out a way to put it, because his curiosity on the matter is only growing.

"No, dude, seriously, it's fine! Jeff can tell you, I talk until I figure things out all the time. I might not... get everything you're trying to say, but that doesn't mean you have to stop."

She rubs her nose. "Besides I think I kind of... get it... maybe? Like. Okay. Say each world's magic is like a giant jigsaw puzzle--you know what those are right?"

"We do have those, yes," Harry says with a smile—not mocking, but he is amused. He's interested to see where she's going with this.

"Right. So each world's magic is like a big jigsaw puzzle. Including this place, it's a full jigsaw puzzle on its own."

She bends to catch a bit of debris floating by and chucks it past Harry and onto the shore to be picked up later. "So people come here and they bring little bits of their jigsaw puzzle with them, and dump them in with Riverview's pieces, but somehow the Riverview jigsaw puzzle doesn't get fucked--fricked--messed up. It doesn't make sense. There shouldn't be anywhere for those pieces to fit."

"Yes—yes, I see what you mean," Harry says, relieved. That's a better metaphor than any he was fumbling toward on his own. "And yet somehow it does, and the pieces accommodate one another just as the local puzzle does for the newcomers."

He is charmed by Athena's attempts to not swear around him. He wants to tell her to not worry about it, but he enjoys her little amendments and would miss them.

"I wonder—" A thought occurs to him and he frowns. "I wonder if the system can be sustained indefinitely."

Athena blinks. "You don't think it can?"

There's a frightening thought. Magic is so much part of who she is that it's hard to imagine it... not being there. Somehow breaking, or coming to pieces, or just simply not working any more.

"I don't know," he admits, "and it's probably not my place to speculate so wildly in a field that is completely alien to me." That's about as close as he can get to being comforting.

It's just that he knows what happens when organisms compete for resources, and when the population grows to be more than those resources can bear. Perhaps magic doesn't follow those rules, particularly not on an alien moon populated by men and women from across a multitude of universes.

But then perhaps it does.

"Cam," she says suddenly. Her thoughts catch up to her mouth. "We should tell Cam. He does the whole public representative thing, maybe he can find out more about how the magic works? Christ--" A pause as she tries and fails to find something to replace Christ, but then she's barreling on. "--I would hope they know how their own magic works. What if they don't? I mean they've got a whole school for magic so they at least have to know something, don't they?"

"Surely," he agrees, "but I think you are right—it could do no harm to ask, and the answer may very well set our minds at ease."

On one hand, he can't imagine that a couple of newcomers would have hit upon a problem that no one else has already considered. But stranger things have happened.

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I don't know where I been

definitely not, this should just be a thing

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