gmlogbox | [Sandra] :: LOG :: Old Times (Reply)

Sandra dreams. All is quiet. She floats on a soft bed of leaves, as the wind blows gently overhead through swaying branches. Back and forth. Back and forth. The gentle scratch of pine needles becomes the rustle of feathers. Black feathers. White feathers. Iridescent. She has forgotten something simple. Something simple is missing. Up and down. Back and forth. Perching on a branch above. Flick. Hop. A dipping tail. A single black eye. A little black and white bird. Feathers in the sun.
Black and white.
Green.
Blue.
White.
Do you remember?
You've forgotten something.
Little birds.
Clever birds.
Do you remember?
Sandra turns her head, and there's a little bird there, peering at her. A second, perching on her arm. Now they're gone.
Do you remember?
We remember.
Where are the magpies?

There are no magpies.

Sandra wakes.

A pleasant and sunny day has Emma back at Edgewood. She's in the kitchen currently, a glass of lemonade at her side as she sits at the table. A piece of oddly burned paper sits inside a ziplock bag, and is stared at with furrowed brows.

'Dragging her tail' would be the best way to describe the unFenrir that steps into the house, no matter that Sandra is making an effort to move past it. Fatigue is apparent in subtly bloodshot eyes that are 'complemented' by a faint lividity beneath them, denoting someone who has had all of zero luck with sleep for a couple days. She perks up slightly upon seeing Emma, the Ahroun afforded the usual nod of greeting as she makes her way into the kitchen, the paper afforded a slight raise of her brow in silent question.

Emma is broken from her concentration by that arrival, but is likewise pleased to see who it is. "Sandra, good. I was hop-" she pauses, "You look like hell. You alright?"

Sandra gives a little dismissive wave of her hand, but she makes no attempt to deny that she could stand to look better. Still, "I'm fine," is the first thing she puts forward. "As well as I can be, anyway, under the circumstances." The rueful beginnings of a smile appear. "Sleep isn't quite what it could be," she says, making her way to the fridge to pick through it. "What's that you've got there?"

The Get studies her a moment longer but doesn't press on the issue. Instead, she points to the item on the table. "Something left behind after our conversation the other day. You left, Trace came in, and suddenly this thing was there. Just appeared." She pushes it over a bit so she can read it.

The purest state is lack of lacking. Reality is the mistake of birthed ideas, and so it must follow that in order to undo the mistake, ideas must be undone. Even Entropy must die to unravel dying. The greatest mercy is not pain healed but pain never endured. In this way, It is the greatest physician.

Things remain. Ripples of Was But Isn't. Reality is not a still pond, but a lake with a stiff breeze. Sometimes, stones must be dropped in. What you see are echoes of victims, imperfect remnants of unmaking. They are less than corpses and ghosts, and more implacable. They are distorted shadows burned into a wall. Broken marionettes dancing to half remembered music. Evidence of invisible ripples in the fabric of the reality consensus, flowing always outward from mortal wounds.

It has no mind, but it has a will. It has no thoughts, but it has memories. There on the edges drift what remains just before the event horizon, footprints where no foot exists, shadows with nothing to cast them. Echoes that hunt.

Know that reality bleeds black.

Sandra, having apparently decided that nothing looks particularly appetizing at the moment, sets aside the makings for fresh coffee before making her way back towards the table, the sealed piece of paper picked up to give it a once-over.
The more she reads, the more her brow starts to furrow. At least at one point, Emma is favored with a particularly incredulous look, and it probably doesn't take much guesswork as to why this occurs. To say it amplifies her overall suspicions may be an understatement.
"The phrase 'hell of a coincidence' springs to mind," she says flatly, tone suggesting that she doesn't for a moment believe 'coincidence' is a word that applies.

"It makes it seem as if whoever, or whatever, dropped that off, was very aware of our discussion. But what it means, or why they felt the need to drop it off?" she shrugs at that. "Ran it past a few eyes, and am waiting to hear back on it more. But..." she pushes herself back a bit, slouching into the chair. "More vague riddles that feel like we're getting somewhere, but make no sense."

"What did the others have to say about it?" Sandra asks, before rattling off her own impressions, the coffee-fixin's again attended to in order to start assembling a pot of it. A strong one, by the look of it.

Emma shakes her head, "Admittedly, only that we think it's from the mage entity involved with Hanford. You hear about that 'guy' yet?" The guy offered with genuine air quotes.

"No," Sandra says, a glance cast in Emma's direction once the grounds are placed in the filter. "Or-- maybe," she admits. "It may be best to assume I haven't."

Emma says "Player is hella rusty on all this."
Emma pinches at the bridge of her nose. "There's speculation. And backed up with enough, as you said, coincidences, to suggest that there is a party involved in this whole mess, that may not be entirely an enemy. Some of our fellows have mentioned the idea of it being a mage. An old one. Might have gotten his foot stuck in this door a long time ago. These warnings, and notes and weird riddles? Might be coming from him. As far as I know, from before I headed to LA, we weren't sure on this as an absolute. But, one such set of eyes, thinks it sounds about up the alley of a mage."

Sandra frowns noticeably at this, a glance cast towards the window for a moment as if to look for the set of eyes in question. Or lack thereof, depending on the get-up he chooses to wear. Turning from the window, she dumps some water into the coffee maker, flips the lid closed, and switches it on, returning to the table soon after to look over the note again.
"Just what we need," she says, the words coming on the tail end of an exhaled sigh. "Another warper." A pause. "By 'foot stuck in the door,' what do you mean? Do people think it's possible that he's the one that let this thing through?"

Emma's eye narrow just subtly at the 'another warper' as if trying to gauge her stance and the weight behind it. She doesn't linger long though, instead moving on to her question. "Maybe. Or perhaps less of let it through, and more of woke it up. Possibly unintentionally. But all that stuff is beyond my grasp. Oh, I brought the notebook with me. It's on top of the fridge." She nods her head in that direction.

Though one can be sure that Sandra noted the look given the (again) subtle incline of her head, she doesn't appear to be gearing up to make apologies for it, instead looking over the words in front of her. All in all, if she has a stance beyond the complications another Mage in the works poses, it's a difficult one to get a read on.
May just be the fatigue talking, in other words.
She goes look over her shoulder towards the notebook, then, getting back up to her feet not long after to grab it from where it sits, "Thank you," said gently, "it's appreciated," the first few pages scanned through curiously before she looks as though she's intent on getting back to the note, and her as-yet unvoiced impressions. Something, though, very visibly stops her short. Not enough to appear disturbed, but it's hard to miss dawning realization when one sees it.

Emma watches the other, "What is it?" she asks at that noticable realization. "Don't leave me guessing out here." She pushes herself closer to the table again, leaning heavily onto it to shift her attention between the note and the Shadow Lord.

"I, ah..." Sandra begins, squinting at one of the notebook pages before it's closed, a slight shake of her head to follow. "Sorry," she says, distractedly, seating herself at the table, one hand raised to rub at her eyes. "I had another dream last night." A pause. "I'd been meaning to tell Jamethon about it, since he'd mentioned it before, but--" Her hand drops. "Seems someone out there, at least, is as concerned about the Magpies as he is."

Emma mmms at this, "That was the totem of the Last Days. Which is related to Hanford." She groans, "God, I hate how it all makes such sense and connects, and at the same time doesn't. What was the dream?" she asks.

"Which one was Last Days?" Sandra asks, a bit absently. "Which tribe was in charge of it?" Then, seeming to realize she's been asked a question, another, similarly absent, "Sorry," is offered. "Ah--" She pauses to think, the burbling of the coffee maker getting a couple quick glances, but the window has her attention, for the most part. "It was-- less coherent than the first one," she says. "Scattered images. Phrases." She considers. Then, "'Do you remember?' repeated over and over, as I'm seeing birds-- Magpies-- perching nearby. Or-- on me. It's hard to tell who it is that's speaking." A pause. "Something says, 'We remember,' after the third refrain. Asked where the magpies are." Her brow furrows. "Said there were none."

Emma considers the description of the dream. "Last Days was up by Hanford-ish, around the bend in the river. I can't remember who held it most recently before it fell, but... it might have been held by Croatan in ancient times. And one of the dreams we'd had come up in the past was a native woman with black hair and white streaks... magpie colors." She nods to the notebook. "Scribbles about it in there. Both the woman in the dream and the river spirit, Chuush... I think, were talking about the old times. Before any of us got to these lands."

That frown just deepens again, the Shadow Lord not looking disturbed so much as-- well. Understandably vexed. "Old times," she repeats, glancing at Emma. "Puts an odd spin on the possibility that this has something to do with Hanford assembling the first atomic weapon," she notes, "or... I don't know." She rubs lightly at one side of her face. "Time tends to be a fluid concept when it comes to the spirit world," she says, apparently not too pleased by this fact, at the moment.

Emma nods to that, "Yeah, connections that don't connect. But the river. I think he was the one that explained the timeline. The people, the new people, the new new people. A blast wave." She frowns, "I mean, we'd know if something blew up right here in Hanford, it wasn't beyond the measures of history. I wonder if there was something prior to that... maybe something that was like, a precursor to the atomic work they did there?"

Sandra's eyes drift down to the paper again, her hand still resting against her face, elbow resting against the table. That furrow appears again, though she does glance up to Emma at the last question. "It's possible," she replies. "Something like the Demon Core, maybe. Or the Infinity Rooms of Rocky Flats." A pause. "Rooms whose radiation levels are too high to measure," she notes, whether or not there's a questioning look at the reference. "The seared shadows is too uncanny, though," she says, then. "And the imagery is a bit too precise. I *feel* like it's on the right track to look into the creation of the bomb, but-- as you say, we'd know if something blew up on-site."

Emma nods to that, "Well, we can do some digging on that. Maybe, maybe what happened here was caused by this mage, or the mage and the entity known as the Nothing combined. Maybe what /they/ did, lead to the discovery of what could become Hanford and the atomic powers that it fueled. I can get into the mundane research on it. Hit the library and internet, see if I can dig up old articles."

"I'll see what I can do on my end," Sandra replies. "And we should see about speaking to anyone that's had any contact with this Mage over the years. Put together a more structured timeline of what's been said, what's been done..." A pause. "No half-assing it, either," she amends, not that she seems to think Emma is going to. "We need as many detailed and precise accounts as we can get our hands on. We've had enough of the clandestine bullshit from Thane to last a lifetime, and it's time that ended."
A light sigh, then. "She says," ...she says, "having only been here for, what? Half a year?" At which point, there's another glance at the coffee maker.

Emma looks up at that, caught off guard perhaps, but in the most pleasant of ways. "Then take point on this as much as you're able and willing. Work with the others that've been cracking their heads agaisnt this wall. I'll do the same. We'll have to pick up pieces, but we'll get the puzzle back on the table. And if you start getting loopy, or feel like you're getting sick? You tell me." She stands up then and grabs up the note. "Gonna see if any of our Theurges can poke at this. I'll text yuo later if something comes up!"