A Rose Arose Alongside A Purple Dusk - OTA

[thinking_about_it]

Open/locked?:Open
Who: Cassidy, Grey, and whomever they encounter
What: Arrival!
Warnings: Given their series, pretty much anything has potential, but other than violence mentions these two are pretty safe.


Cassidy groaned and pushed herself up off the ground. Her head hurt. Had she passed out in the herb garden again? Tulips, Grey was going to go hissy cat on her for that. Except... she hadn't been draining anything into the land. It had still been locked under too much snow.

It was still cold here, but this wasn't the garden at the Queen's Residence at all. It was some sort of lawn. And there was a.... Wow. she stared at the large school, building. It was almost as large as the Hall, though not as intimidating. And not as Dark.

Hearing a groan, Cassidy looked behind herself, then gasped and dropped back to her knees. "Grey!" she called, reaching out a trembling hand to touch him carefully. When he just groaned again, she took a breath and snapped some steel into her spine. And her voice. Sitting back on her heels, she spoke in a firm and even voice. "Prince Jared Blaed, attend."

That did it. Like someone having a bucket of cold water thrown on him, he was at once awake and alert. Though with less sputtering and anger. He sat up, his green eyes locking on her hazel ones. "What's wrong?" he asked, the words almost a demand.

"That's what I'd like to know," she said, leaning back on her heels now that he was sitting up. She got to her feet and offered him a hand, which he took. Once they were both standing, she reached up to take off her hat, but at a glare from him, her hand dropped and she played with the end of her red braid instead.

They were an odd looking couple, based on where they came from. He had the look of Shalador and Dena Nehele - athletic, fit, golden skin, angular features, dark hair, green eyes. She, on the other hand inherited all her looks from her mother Derva, which meant that she was gawky, too tall, with pale skin, freckles that she hated, hazel eyes, and red hair that she was coming to hate less this past year.

But at the same time they looked perfect as a couple together. But that was because of how they stood, ready to face any trouble together. They even circled with their backs to each other as they looked around the new place.

"Is it concerning or a relief that I haven't spotted Vae?" she mumbled.

His temper sharpened and he reached back to give her hand a warning squeeze. "Company," he said, seeing someone notice them...

Comments

[thinking_about_it]

"What are these?" Grey asked, leaning closer, pressing slightly into Cassie's back to look over her shoulder.

Cassidy also peered at the stand. "Some sort of....?" Nope, she had nothing. Except maybe "Like an entrance to an amusement?" Like the Spooky House for the Landens? She hadn't been, but she'd heard about it.

[queen_butterfly]

"Well, you wanted an explanation," she said, picking up one of the pamphlets in each hand, to offer them to the two with a smile. "Someone already wrote up more than I normally concern myself with about it all. And then there are... ah... those...." She eyed the phones, hesitating as she thought. Did she even have hers with her? Or did she leave it, once again, while she was refilling her bottles, in an effort not to kill it again? Hmm... she should probably find it again, if it wasn't with her. Or at least figure out somewhere to leave it where she wasn't going to keep losing it. "They're rather interesting little things, I admit."

[thinking_about_it]

The took the pamphlets. Grey started reading at once. Cassidy followed Mallia's gaze. "What are they?" she asked.

[queen_butterfly]

"I forget what they called it. But I'm assured it's technology, rather than magic." She picked one up, holding it out to her. Might as well play with it?

[thinking_about_it]

Cassidy took it, turned it around a few times. Probed it with her magic. Stumped she offered it to Grey who did the same, then shrugged. He vanished it and went back to looking over the pamphlet.

"Hopefully someone will be able to explain it all to us later," Cassie said.

[queen_butterfly]

Mallia, meanwhile, was frowning at the collection of other new phones, still trying to remember where it was she might've left hers this time. "It's a rather simple thing to mess with," she said. "I know it has a map and a few little games to play with it... which... I really ought not to play; I lose track of time quite enough as it is."

Who lost a few hours one day due to distraction? Yeah, that uh. That might've been her.

[thinking_about_it]

"I... can't see how that small box could contain that many things," Cassidy admitted. "It didn't feel abnormally dense..."

[queen_butterfly]

"Even small hands may have enough paintings in wait, to fill hundreds of castles," she said, raising an eyebrow. "And one frame, a myriad of puppet shows. Appearances may deceive."

She glanced back to them, but didn't see the phone she'd just handed off... oh well. Perhaps they'd pocketed it already. "Perhaps you should simply try it sometime. You need only press this part here, to wake it, and then it rather explains itself after asking your name and the like." She pointed to the button on one of the other phones, then turned to lead down another hall, the main one toward the room they'd been using as something of a central meeting area lately.

"And we may as well see who's in the likelier places...."

[thinking_about_it]

The phone reappeared in Grey's hand as he looked at it. "It is alive?" he asked.

"I'm so sorry," Cassidy said, turning to face it. "Are you alright?"

[queen_butterfly]

"I've been informed that it isn't," she said, "but that it's more like how a music box plays on its own, at least once it's been wound... but far, far more complicated."

She paused a step or two away... were they coming?

[thinking_about_it]

They started walking again, but Cassidy was now holding the phone carefully. "But if it can wake up and communicate..."

[queen_butterfly]

She simply shook her head, not sure how to reply back for a second, but resumed leading down the other hall again. "I've tried feeling for a spirit, but I've yet to find any in it. It is rather convincingly... lifelike," that much she could concede easily enough, "But I've yet to find anything I could move from it, save energy itself." And she was trying not to do that again, honestly.

[thinking_about_it]

"I wonder if Jaenelle would know..." Cassidy mused.

[queen_butterfly]

"I should clarify... Were there a spirit present, I would have found it by now."

Which wasn't to say that she was going to rule out the possibility of it developing one later on, of course. But at least at present, there wasn't any to be found in hers, nor had she found one in the others at the table....

"I take it you're familiar with poppetry? Or at least passingly familiar with poppets?"

[thinking_about_it]

"I know about poppies..." as in the flower, "but I'm not sure what you mean by poppets..." Cassidy admitted.

[queen_butterfly]

"A doll with a soul," she said, matter-of-factly, almost distractedly; this was simply How Things Were, not something dramatic, at least in her view, it seemed, "usually a created soul. And not necessarily a doll, but very often; a vessel which wouldn't have been truly alive, if not for the spirit it holds."

[thinking_about_it]

They both looked utterly perplexed at that. "I.... maybe ask the High Lord...?" Cassidy asked, with a shrug. "Oh! Unless you mean like one of Jaenelle's shadows?"

[queen_butterfly]

"Ask... who? About what?" She'd just explained it to them. Why were they telling her to ask someone about...? No, no, no speculation. This was all confusing enough as it was.

[thinking_about_it]

"Well, they're darker then we are," Cassidy said. "Maybe they'd understand it better."

[queen_butterfly]

What....

She paused there, turning to look at them, expression still hesitant, trying to figure this out.

"If you think someone else would understand what little I've said better than you do, I suppose that that's fair enough... but that doesn't explain to me why you think I ought to ask someone else about something, or what you think I ought to ask them about...?"

[thinking_about_it]

"Well... you asked what we know about it..." Grey said.

"Because you wanted help with something to do with the topic, right?" Cassidy finished.

[queen_butterfly]

"...No." She paused again to look back at them, quiet, and baffled and not even trying to hide it. "You sounded rather lost and I didn't want to explain over your heads... so I wished to know what your basis of understanding might have been. I was informing you of the practice." A small sigh, and then a bemused bit of a smile, shaking her head as she resumed leading off; apparently she wasn't offended, so much as just finding the confusion entertaining. "I daresay I likely have a bit more experience with the practice myself, than whoever you're speaking of would, if they're a human, as you look to be...? Hence being certain there's no spirit within those little things, at present."

[thinking_about_it]

"Oh," they both said, a little sheepish and embarrassed.

"Sorry," Cassidy added. "I think we're both still a little mixed up over everything."