taxonomites | [holo | A cottage on the outskirts of Shelley]

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[holo | A cottage on the outskirts of Shelley]

Remus paces restlessly around a small cottage room. There's little in the way of furniture visible, just an armchair and some curtains fluttering in the breeze, suggesting a garden outside beyond the open window.

The man shifts restlessly, clearly agitated and muttering to himself, throwing himself into the arm chair, getting up again to pace, tugging his hair with his hands. "It's getting too soon, too close, I can feel it, but even if I found a brewer, it's too late to start for this cycle. I should tell them, no, Remus, think, you can't tell them, they don't even seem to have magic here, explaining the details of being a Dark Creature isn't going to go over well. But I'm a danger. I know I'm a danger and I need them to stay away. I'm not near anyone, but someone might come looking for me, because they're all nice and thoughtful that way, buggeration, I can't think when it's so close!"

He throws himself into the armchair, glowering at the tablet. "And you, you horrible little thing. Why are you flashing at me? I don't know what you want, stop it."

He's clearly not quite himself. He also clearly has no idea that the tablet flashing means 'broadcast'.

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"Bit of both. We use our magic to make them not notice, in a variety of ways. We have our own train stations, slipped between the cracks of their own, that sort of thing."

"That sounds..." He lets out a small, disbelieving little huff. It's followed by a small delighted grin just the same.

"It sounds a lot neater than having to hide right there, out in the open. Relocating every ten or so years, keeping your head down at all times. It's not bad the way we do it, but sometimes I wonder if magic wouldn't make life a bit easier. There's only so much a person can rationalize as a trick of the light or mind, you know."

He leans forward then, just a tiny bit to inspire confidence of a sort. "And just between you and me? I shouldn't be talking bout the vampire community either. But it sure is liberating, isn't it."

He flushes slightly, smiling a little and ducking his head, nodding softly. "It is. And, you're not recoiling. I mean, being a Dark Creature yourself. Most people in my world, well, lycanthropy isn't kindly viewed."

"Neither is vampirism where I come from." He blinks, tilts his head and rethinks that last statement.

"Well...generally speaking. You'll always get the groupies who are in the know. Freshies, which isn't the most PC term, but you get the idea. Fresh blood. I don't usually go for that. It's too risky, too morally ambiguous for me these days."

Tapping the fingers of his hand wrapped around the cup. "I used to get blood bags, test tubes from a guy at the morgue. Dead blood. So, I come here, and people tell me I can hatch anything. Turns out I can hatch blood too, which means I don't have to find a new contact to get my supply. It was too good to be true. Went into a blood frenzy in a month, give or take. It wasn't pretty, but no one got hurt."

...too badly.

Remus nods, familiar with most of the things he's describing. "What do you do now, if that isn't too intimate to ask?"

"No, not at all." The grin widens, brightens substantially. Truth be told, he still can't quite believe it sometimes.

"I get donations. There's a blood run every now and then, and anyone who wants to can leave however much they want. I keep everything in storage at my place, and supplement with the hatched stuff. I wouldn't want to run out."

That last bit has a tinge of urgency to it, but it's faint, and he doesn't need bold strokes for the other guy to get it. The consequences of running out of blood or donors would be catastrophic.

"So, uh, it's worked out pretty good for me. I don't see why it wouldn't for you too. You seem like a nicer than average guy."

"Would work for... Oh, telling people," he murmurs. "I, I don't know. I've been infected for thirty years and it's never really gone over well. I lost my last job because someone outted me to the student body." There's a flash of anger over his face, a lot of grief.

Mick frowns on his end of the tablet, sipping his cup of blood more to give the other guy a brief respite from more or less invasive questions. And what is there to say to that, even? Out of nowhere, he's reminded of the eighties - as much as he was walking the line of moral ambiguity back then - and another kind of blood sickness, another kind of curse that just the whispers of it could get people fired. Worse than fired: bludgeoned to death at just the suspicion.

"I'm sorry. I'm just saying it doesn't have to be a bad thing, being open. We have magic users here from several different worlds, a dragon, two vampires, an FBI agent--" ...right, 'muggle' things, he thinks, and doesn't even miss a beat. "--which is a law enforcement officer from the non-magic community. Highly trained, and so on. Let's see...

"I told you about Gwen, the girl with the electric touch. Point being, we're all from different worlds and timelines and social contexts. Give it a bit of time - as much as you have. Tell people in your own time, or don't. It should be your choice, no matter what the tablet might get up to. I'd keep it under lock and key if I were you. At least until you learn your way around it."

"I really don't like this thing," he confesses. "I don't really get how it works. I know some muggle things, I've worked in their world when times got hard, but I never went native."

He ponders it for a while. "There's a potion that can control it. Not stop me shifting, but it means I can keep control of the wold, not be dangerous. If there's a skilled brewer among the magic users, maybe-" Maybe he could try and teach them.

"I'm going to have to tell Bagoas. I don't want him to hear second hand. This can't go well."

"You know, you're not too far off from everyone else in that sense. The tablets work the way the tablets want to work, it seems. No rhyme or reason behind them. As for brewers, I think the plant mage is your safest bet. Briar. You guy, currently working as a gardener. Or maybe Willow...she's a witch. Redhead, a bit shy but word has it she's up there where magic's concerned."

Sip, thumb brush over his lower lip. "Oh, the eunuch kid?"

...everyone's a kid to Mick. Even you, Remus. "I'm pretty sure he has no concept of werewolves, what with when and where he's from. Maybe that's a good thing. No preconceptions and so on."

"I know Briar. We met earlier, talked gardens." If his ears could prick up, they would have at the mention of a witch. "A witch. A witch would be good. She might have the background knowledge to help deal with it..."

"Yeah." For a brief moment, Mick nods along with the sentiment in a purely intellectual sense, as he hasn't the first clue about what a witch may or may not know.

And then he remembers something. Strange things making strange noises in the skies, the broadcast two weeks ago by the dark haired girl with the unbelievably big blue eyes.

"Speaking of witches...and of the kid." How to put this? How to word it at all without causing alarm?

"The girl who owns the place, DG, she's usually the sweetest kid. She's also a fairly powerful witch. Her SO, Glitch, took the eunuch in back when he arrived... But seems like DG's been possessed by some real bad news."

"The eunuch," Remus replies slightly frostily, "Has a name and being outside of whatever mutilation may have been done to him."

There's a glint of something else in Remus' gaze briefly, something darker in those amber eyes, but it fades as he takes in the actual issue. "Possessed? That's not good. I know some spells that might work, but against a witch there's going to be problems with her own magic, do you know what sort of possession it is? Is Bagoas somewhere safe?"

The iciness catches him a bit off guard, and he scrambles back over what he actually said and what he meant by it in his mind. Doesn't matter. What matters is he pushed a button there and didn't even know it. "Sorry. I haven't had a chance to meet him, and when you're thirty-something going on ninety, everyone's a kid. Uh. But I get your point."

Moving on to the more important topic at hand. "Last I checked, he was still at the Northern Island. If you go to the menu again, you can find a map," he almost says 'interface', but that likely wouldn't translate. "From there you can pick if you want to see everyone's markers or not."

He taps the screen a few times, eyes focusing on something other than Remus' face. "Yeah. He's here in Wilde, at the palace."

Remus' expression doesn't warm a lot, because Mick clearly doesn't realise there's anything wrong with addressing people by their affliction, but the apology makes the darkness in his gaze settle down.

"He needs to get out, if she's possessed. He could be in danger, though his servile affectations would probably keep him safe from most forms of darkness. How, I need to get a message to him, to tell him to come and meet me. I can't use my methods, a witch would pick up the surge of light magic."

The curse of not actually having been born in this era, but rather your great great grandfather's. He was a kid in the twenties, a teen in the thirties, only moving into adulthood during the Second Great War. Some things linger on, good and bad, and he still considers himself to have fared fairly well through the decades. Adapting.

But that's beside the point. You can be as unprejudiced against women's liberation as you want - if you slight someone for simply being what they are, you still have a long way to go. It's food for thought.

"...I live nearby." So maybe he doesn't exactly know what he's offering, but it's there just the same.

"Too suspicious. He walks a lot, I could risk trying to, no, no, too random, not dependable. There's a way to contact the other people on this, can I do that?"

"Well, sure. There's a call button of sorts, lets you pick out a specific name if you want it. Then you pick what kind of message to send, if you want to lock it, then you start transmitting. Or you record it beforehand and send it once you're happy with it."

All the options that normally make him really actually kind of like the tablet. All the options.

He doesn't want to consider whether Bagoas has been listening in on the tablet, and knows what's going on but simply can't escape - or if he doesn't keep updated, and has been watching everything slide slowly off balance around him without knowing what to do.

Those options, he's not too happy about.

"Okay. I can do that." He's an attentive learner, if not always enthusiastic about muggle things. "I'll ask him over for tea tonight, I think. Now that I have a place of my own."

"All right." Fair enough, thinks Mick, and figures he's put his foot in it one too many times already. Might as well bow out respectfully while there's still a chance for it.

"Call me if you need anything, okay, Remus?"

Remus nods, looking a touch grateful. "I will. Thank you, Mick."

"There's a symbol on screen that ends conversations. Depending on what your tablet looks like, it's either a button on the tablet itself, or on the touch screen. ...in case you ever feel like slamming the phone down, so to speak." He points to the general vicinity of where said end call button should be.

"Take care. Stay out of trouble."

And with that, he ends the call on his own end.

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[holo | A cottage on the outskirts of Shelley]

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