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Right now, the sun has gone down and the moon has come up, and Mei had a long day on the job, came back to the Firebirds sanctum, got something to drink out of the fridge, laid down on the couch, and immediately fell asleep. There she is, flopped face down on comfy cushions, snoring softly and drooling a bit. She has one hand and one arm dangling off the side of the couch, not having bothered to even make it all the way onto the comfy furniture before she was asleep.
The sun has gone down and the moon has come up, and right now here's Fox, carrying a cup! She made herself some hot chocolate, saw Mei snoozing, and made some for her, too, bringing both mugs out. She juggles her freight so she can put down a coaster on the coffee table and set Mei's mug on top of it, then sets her own on a side table (on a coaster, she may be an animal but come on) before insinuating herself between Mei's head and the couch. Mei's head on lap? All set. Now is time for hair pets, and hot chocolate sipping.
For reasons not to be named or mentioned, except if someone asks nicely, Simone was in the neighborhood already and decided to drop in. Chances are that it took a little persuading to convince her that she wasn't being rude just inviting herself over, but eventually it got through.
Not through enough to stop her from stepping in the door and calling out, "hello! It's Simone! Is anyone home?" Like she isn't sure she'd be welcome snooping around if they weren't.
Mei does sleep through Fox in the kitchen making hot chocolate, but she doesn't sleep through Fox sneaking her lap under Mei's head. she cracks her eyes open, rolls onto her side to make the entire position more comfortable, and lets out a content sound as she settles in. "I didn't intend to fall asleep. What time is it?"
Then the calling out. "Is she still doing that?" comes Mei's amused question. Clearly the answer is yes. Clearly she thinks it shouldn't be! At least she thinks it's charming, or at least funny.
"It's like... 9, I think." She could know exactly what time it is, down to the millisecond, but she doesn't want to. "Hi Simone! You can come in, as always. We're in the living room." Fox sets her drink aside and stretches her hands out towards the doorway, wiggling her fingers toward the place where her sister will soon appear. She's wearing a pair of sleep shorts and a t-shirt which reads MY WIFE CAN BEAT UP YOUR WIFE in big white letters across the front.
Lesja being an Acanthus and randomly buying shirts online always turns up some weird stuff.
Simone follows the sounds of voices to where she already knows the living room is, still wearing her coat and shoes, purse slung over a shoulder and both hands on the strap, like she's not sure if she'll be staying, or even welcome to say. The uncertainty doesn't mean her face doesn't light up when she sees Little Fox, and that doesn't dim when she sees what's she wandered into. "Don't you two look cozy," she says. "Am I interrupting? I didn't have anything immm..."
The word trails off as she looks at something out the window, while her knuckles turn white where they're gripping her purse's strap.
"Did you see that?"
Mei doesn't bother with sitting up when Simone comes in, but this isn't intended to be a slight. It's just a sign that she's comfortable with Simone's presence, and in no hurry to act like it warrants behaving like it's anything other than, essentially, family dropping by. "Hey hey," she says, lifting one arm up to offer a wave. The staring out the window makes Mei turn her head to look, though. Nope, nothing there, which means she answers accordingly. "No, what?" In a cautious tone.
Fox's head snaps towards the window when Simone's knuckles tighten on her purse strap, and she flows out from underneath Mei, collapsing her body into a fox's, which makes it easier for her to hop over the back of the couch, her sharp eyes swiveling back and forth. A sharp shake of her vulpine head -- she doesn't see anything -- and then a woman is standing there instead. "What did you see?"
It will probably take a little longer than it has been before it stops being just a little weird to see her sister turn into a fox, and then back. It doesn't matter that she can work magic herself. It's still weird! That provides a moment of distraction from whatever Simone saw, leading to the side effects of her calming down from that initial reaction, but also getting a distant gaze that's followed by a pinching of her brows. "I. I don't know. I tried to pull the memory up and it was like trying to grab a fistful of water. One second."
A few thoughts later and peripheral sight warns of magic from her. The lines between her eyes get just a little deeper, along with her puzzlement. "That makes no sense. I tried to pull the memory back up, but there's nothing there. Sorry, that wasn't clear. The memory is there, but there's nothing out the window."
Mei is on her feet moments after Fox is, wiping her face where there's still a little lingering drool from her nap. Gross.
She's all ready to prepare for battle mode or something, but what she hears from Simone ends up being alarming in a different way. "You mean like Perfect Recall?" she asks, guessing that must be what Simone means by pulling the memory up, considering the flare of magic.
It's probably even weirder, now knowing what she knows, that Fox shifting to her vulpine self and back doesn't come with a flash in her own periphery, since Fox's attainments provide that shapeshifting, and not Life. She stops, standing totally still for a moment, and her head turns just a little to the side. "Ziskeit?" One of a million family nicknamed for Simone, the baby of her generation, the Yiddish word for 'sweetness' (literally 'sweet time') is all Fox says for a moment, tentatively followed by, "You want one of us should look?" (edited)
"Hm? Oh. Yes, that's the one." Simone's frown has only deepened, because she's grown to rely on her magic working the way she understands it's supposed to work, and suddenly it isn't. It's almost as disconcerting as getting the magic in the first place was.
Moving toward Fox isn't something she really thinks about, she just does it, old habits leading her to look for safety in her big sister. "Can you? I must be doing something wrong."
"I'm going to leave looking in your sister's head to you, Fox," Mei says in a voice that has suddenly gotten very calm and collected. Life magic flares around her as she enhances abilities, like she's preparing herself for sudden battle. She is a Doowarden, holding down the fort is kind of her thing.
She does opt not to transform into an angel at this moment. It might confuse the situation in ways that are not ideal, given current events.
"Okay," agrees Fox; she pap pap pap her bare feet across the floor, closing the distance between herself and her sister and reaching a hand out to take one of Simone's. There's a glance towards Mei, concerned and checking in, before her other hand, her left, rises to draw a symbol in the air. The wedding ring on that hand -- steel, with gold, silver and copper inlays -- shimmers, and there's a pulse of Mind in peripheral Mage sight.
Simone follows the sounds of voices to where she already knows the living room is, still wearing her coat and shoes, purse slung over a shoulder and both hands on the strap, like she's not sure if she'll be staying, or even welcome to stay.
You shouldn't be here. You should be sleeping. Dreaming. You don't belong here
The mantra repeats itself in her head.
The uncertainty doesn't mean her face doesn't light up when she sees Little Fox, and that doesn't dim when she sees what's she wandered into. "Don't you two look cozy," she says.
See? She knows. She was sleeping. Did you take her away from us?
"Am I interrupting? I didn't have anything immm..."
The word trails off as she looks at something out the window, while her knuckles turn white where they're gripping her purse's strap.
Trying to define what she's seeing is difficult, because it's more feeling than something that can be seen with the eyes, but somehow both. There's a presence there but not there, vast and distant. It's awesome in the original sense of the word, and it feels like it's looking in on Simone. Looking through Simone. It seems worried for her. It seems to be calling to her.
The eye that isn't blinks and doesn't open again. Doesn't exist, again.
"Did you see that?" (edited)
Mei's just over here flipping on some mage sight, looking for anything unusual going on. When there's nothing immediately apparent she crosses the room to the light switch and flips it off, so that they're not a bunch of people in a lit room in a glass bubble while it's dark outside. They're pretty much the highest floor around, so chances are nobody can really see in, but still. Drones exist. Marks exist. Better to be safe than sorry.
She has no idea what's going on in people's minds. She could find out, but it's not necessarily her business.
Fox's hand tightens around Simone's at the precise moment in the memory such that she doesn't need to ask if Fox saw it. "... I... don't. Know. What that is," the Thyrsus says quietly. "But whatever it is, I don't like that it was looking in here at us. At you. Through Pheme's wards." The invocation of Pheme by her Shadow Name is another indication. "Parhelion, it looked like there was -- some sort of indefinable presence -- looking in through the window. Can you please take a look and see if you see anything there now, or any ... fingerprints... and I'll try timewalking it if you don't see anything."
"What did you see?" Simone asks while tightening her own grip in answer. She sounds a little confused and more than a little afraid when the reaction to the memory starts. "I still don't see anything in my own memories. I. It feels a little like I woke up from a dream, and something was there but I can't remember what it was." She moves to be standing half behind Fox, at least from the direction of the window.
"I've been looking with Sight," Mei says as she approaches the window carefully to peer out for a better look, while putting up a Life shield just in case. The tone is informative, just catching Fox up with what's been going on since Fox was busy looking into Simone's mind.
A bit of magical silliness and a lot of Peripheral Sight triggers later and Mei's gone through a scan the simple existence of anything in every Arcanum she knows well enough and which might have something going on, Forces, Life, Mind, Prime, Space, Spirit, in two quick spells.
"Yeah, I'm not finding traces of anything," she says, but she doesn't let her guard down, just moves back from the window and looks over at the sisters.
Fox's hand remains closed around Simone's, holding on gently. "I saw... a feeling, more than anything. Something that's -- I don't know." She pauses, and turns her attention towards Mei when she speaks, nodding. Fox is absolutely shit at lying, so all of her emotions play out big on her face. She's worried, but it's tough to say about what, precisely. "Give me just a second, okay? I'm going to timewalk this, and I'm going to keep you connected, Ziskeit," a squeeze of her hand along with that family nickname, "so you can see what I see. We'll just look at this from outside your perspective."
Her free hand gestures again, and this time the silver on her ring seems to gleam brightest. Time rewinds around the sisters, and they watch themselves like a 3D playback, as if they're walking through a holosuite. Here is Fox on the couch, with Mei asleep-ish on her lap. Here is Simone. And there, at the window?
There's nothing.
The entire situation is so far outside of Simone's experience and comfort that she gladly holds on to Fox's hand and stays close. "Maybe it left before we started looking?" she suggests, while her surface thoughts match up with the words. Mostly. There's an impression there of a need to go with whatever that presence was, too. A feeling like a missed opportunity. It feels like it's part of Simone's own thoughts, but not, at the same time, like a parallel track.
She nods her assent to the timewalking, and to having the visions of that put in her mind, but the confusion in her thoughts is clearly echoed on her face when there's nothing there. "I saw something. I know I did," she says a touch defensively.
Mei is currently waiting to see how things shake out when Fox looks back through time, which really only takes a matter of a few seconds, right? There's not a lot of time for her to do much other than watch the two with half her mind and their surroundings with the other, trying to pick up on any clues about what might have happened. She's a talented PI, but if there's nothing to find, there's nothing to find, which is in itself a clue.
She pauses for a long moment, and as much as Simone can tell that Fox is absolutely terrible at lying, she can also tell that Fox is trying to thread a needle. To match up what she knows and has seen with what Simone knows and has seen. "It is nothing ... outside of yourself," Fox finally says, turning her golden eyes to her sister. "Which doesn't mean it's nothing. Sometimes parts of us need to make themselves seen. Were you ever taught what goetia are?"
Simone might be slightly better than Fox at lying, but that doesn't mean she's good at it and it doesn't mean she likes doing it. Especially deceiving her friends and family. With the way her expression goes through one shift and then another after Fox says it wasn't something outside of herself, there is clearly something more on her mind that immediately came forward. Her mouth opens and closes like she was about to say something but couldn't figure out what, and then she answers the question instead.
"Yeah. Yeah," she confirms. "I'm a Discipline of Mind now, I'm familiar with Goetia. But I... where are you going with that?"
Mei used to be a psychic, of the telepath variety, and she doesn't need Mind or her previous psychic powers to read people's minds, sometimes. She just reads people well. There's a second there where her eyes narrow, then she relaxes from her almost battle ready posture to something more sympathetic. More tuned to put Simone at ease, to prevent her from getting more defensive than necessary when the questions start. "You have some idea what actually happened, don't you?" she asks. "Not for certain, I don't think, but you don't actually seem to be surprised. Scared, yes, but not surprised." She pauses. "Are you scared of how we might react to what you know?"
She moves closer and puts a hand on Fox's shoulder, trying to be some reassurance for her girlfriend.
When Mei speaks up, Fox quiets herself, and raises her eyebrows slightly. "Simone?" she asks. It's a careful thing, a worried thing.
Keeping things to yourself is one thing, yet outright lying is another. No matter how afraid she is, Simone won't outright lie to either of them about something she's only afraid, or maybe ashamed, to speak aloud. "I... I've been having some strange things going on my head recently. Just a few days. I thought it was just that I was tired, or stress over problems with finding a gallery for a new show. I tried to clear things up with Mind, I got a good night's sleep, but it didn't fix things."
Mei encourages the opening up by smiling, not by judging. "Ah," she says. "Why don't we all get comfortable and talk about whatever things you're hinting at, but not actually saying." The hand she put on Fox's shoulder goes around those shoulders instead, and she pulls Fox in for a hug and a kiss to the top of the head. "I can take your coat and your purse and hang them up, if you like. Do you want anything from the kitchen?" Stay a while, in other words.
Her eyes meet her sister's, and she just... waits it out. She's patient, and this is about her sister, not about her. There's a brief shimmer of Mind, and her face calms even more. When you're shit at lying, and worried about someone? Just put all of those worried thoughts into the other half of your mind. It's not a new technique for Fox; it's undoubtedly something both of them have seen her do more than once. "That's a good idea," she offers aside to Mei, along with a thankful smile. "I can make more hot chocolate!" She squeezes Simone's hand again, then lets it go gently so she can take off her purse and coat and settle in.
She probably should have known the reception would be receptive concern, and maybe did know that, but doubt can be an insidious thing. "Yeah. Yeah, good idea," Simone says. After her hand is freed she slips the purse from her shoulder, offers it to Mei, and then removes the coat and does the same. "Thank you. I'd love some hot chocolate, too. With marshmallows?" If her tastes haven't changed, maybe more marshmallow than hot chocolate.
Simone sits down to wait for people to treat her like a guest, which provides her some opportunity to think about what to say, and how.
Mei takes bag and coat a like with a smile, then wanders off in slipper feet to hang them up. "There are always marshmallows around here," she says. "Especially during the winter." She gives Fox a reassuring look, like she's confident that whatever is going on they'll sort it out, and in the end it will all be alright, and then exits the room, only to return moments later. The place is huge, but it still doesn't take that long to hang up some clothes, and she heads back to the sofa to join Simone.
"You got it." This is an easy task, and one which Fox relishes, in part because it'll give her a moment to put all of her thoughts together. She leans in to kiss her sister on the cheek, smiles back at Mei for that reassuring look, and goes scampering off to the kitchen like absolutely nothing is wrong at all.
That kiss makes a lot of things suddenly better, or at least easier. One of Simone's legs is tucked under her and she's sitting back, relaxed, in her seat when Mei returns. "I should wait for Fox before I get into things, I suppose. Thank you for being so understanding so far, though. For trying to help. I didn't intend to bring trouble with me when I came to visit."
The private lift disgorges Lesja, smelling like a Philly crowd and looking like she just walked through precisely that. She's a little scowly, her braids pulled back tight and severe, her sunglasses not really helping with looking cheerful, given it's night out and all. She's shrugging out of her uniform coat almost immediately, not bothering to hang it up and leaving it draped over the nearest bit of soft furniture instead.
Rather than go for her usual post outing drink, she raids Leta's stash and comes back out of Leta's room with one of her pre rolled joints already lit. That is absolutely going to help her demeanor given time. She sinks down onto one of the nearby chairs with a grunt. Her usual two fingered salute is given.
"Want some?" She offers the joint up generally.
Mei's answer for SImone is a shrug followed by, "you're not my sister, but you are my Sister. If you're having any sort of trouble I would want you to come to me with it, and of course I'd do everything I could to help you with it, too. In other words, any time." It's the kind of thing that sometimes just needs to be repeated until it actually sinks in.
She holds her hand up to refuse the join, though. "I'll pass," she says. "At least for now. Ask me again in an hour and we'll see."
"Hello, my love!" Fox calls from the kitchen. If Lesja hadn't learned that Something Was Up by the fact that Mei isn't sure whether or not she'll want a joint in an hour, the fact that Fox doesn't come running for kisses means she's Doing Something.
"We don't do anything alone," Fox adds, an appendation to Mei's words, "save the mikveh." There's a whorl of Time and Matter magic from the kitchen, because screw you, sometimes you want perfect hot chocolate quickly, and this is why Fox will never have Wisdom 8. She returns with big mugs filled with hot chocolate and marshmallows (as much the latter as the former), passing one to Simone and one to Lesja, who is smoking the weeds and will want a delicious snack shortly if she doesn't right now. At least, that's Fox!Logic. It's usually sound. Once the drinks are handed over, she leans to claim a kiss from her bride. "Hello again. Simone is having a rough night."
Just for a second, Simone considers turning down the offer of the join. Only for a second. "Yeah. Yeah, actually, I think I could use some of that," she tells Lesja, definitely ready for something that might help make this whole situation a little easier to talk about. "If you'd care to pass it."
The reason for not just getting up to get it? She's being passed a giant mug of marshmallows with hot chocolate. It's like a bowl of Lucky Charms with just the marshmallows, and hot chocolate for milk.
"A rough night. A rough couple of days," she starts. "Like yesterday morning I had an episode where I was suddenly absolutely convinced that I was having a lucid dream. Completely convinced. I think the friends I was having brunch with thought I was losing my mind for a minute."
Lesja tilts her head up to receive the kiss, and that does more to brighten her expression than the joint could in an hour's time. This leads directly to a crackling of magic and the flickering of her nimbus, however.
Ever since she decided to live as Lesja full time she's proven a lot more cavalier about personal magic use. Proof of that is the little Time Imago that flickers into being over her head. She forms the mudras for Time and Patterning with her left and right hands, blows a breath of smoke through them, and then leans back to watch the eddies spin and whorl as a consequence. She frowns.
"Okay, in my defense I was asking if you'd want a joint in an hour, Mei. Simone's receiving an important message from some entity or other, and it's probably not a threat." She takes another big old puff, though. Because god dammit. (edited)
The joint is then passed right on along to Simone, leaning over to cross the distance and not really caring if ash gets on the carpet. Nope. Not even a little.
"Unless you count spirits, in which case there's always a decent chance you're not at the mikveh alone either," Mei says. "But, fortunately, I don't count them. Otherwise it gets a little weird." It's just idle words, things to fill a little air, and she forgets all about it as soon as Simone starts sharing things. "That seems like it could be pretty alarming. For you and for them. Was there anything happening in specific that made you think it was a dream? Usually dreams are pretty weird."
She gives Mei a Look aside once she has smooched Lesja, and in fact pauses to zerbert Lesja on the cheek before she pap pap pap over to the couch to pick up her hot chocolate. Then she takes her mug of hot chocolate over to where Simone is sitting and curls up next to her sister. If necessary, she'll curl up on the arm of a chair. Now is the time to rest her head against Simone's shoulder and just ... be present. Other people can talk right now.
Simone takes the joint and then a long drag off it. Somewhere in Philly her parents are probably alarmed for reasons they can't understand, but when she doesn't start coughing even after holding the smoke in her lungs for long enough to pass it back, it's probably quite clear this isn't her first time.
The smoke gets blown out while she puts her arm around Fox and leans into her, looking for comfort in her sister's presence. She doesn't answer questions right away, thinking over answers instead. "Not exactly. It was a feeling. Kind of a feeling? Kind of a voice, but in the same way that I hear my own voice in my head sometimes anyway. I think it was something Allie said that spurred the thought, or maybe how she..."
A shrug cuts the words off. "I don't know."
Lesja lets out a thoughtful little sound from the back of her throat. Then that sound dies away into a little, whiny, complaining groan. Quiet, almost mewling. And then, oh then Lesja slooowly rolls forward until her face is in her hands and she just whiiiiines the sort of whine an Acanthus can make to another Acanthus and the other Acanthus will probably understand it. Something just made sense in hindsight.
Still whining, she pushes back up to her feet and goes to her discarded uniform jacket. She roots around in it for a blue velvet pouch and carries that back over to the group. She tosses it down onto the coffee table before Simone, pointing at it like it's something she personally did wrong somehow. Or is responsible for. She draws a line between herself and Simone with her fingers, implying sympathy perhaps, and then makes a two handed choking gesture before growling a little frustrated sound out.
The bag will contain, when inspected, Lesja's freshly perfected bag of divination knuckle bones. Some letters and numbers, but also fridge magnet style as well. All in freshly perfected bone from the bawn of the Mother's Tree itself.
"Well," she accuses Simone with Slavic bitterness, "go ahead and use them since they're here to see you."
Mei finally returns to her own hot chocolate, which she leans forward to pick up from the coffee table, and then heats back up by use of forces. It has been sitting there for a little bit, after all. Her tongue gets stuck out briefly at Fox in answer to the zerbert, but mostly she listens and drinks and acts like she's confident they'll figure out whatever it is that's going on. It's a confidence for Simone sake, but also just the result of them being aware that they've usually solved all the problems that come their way.
Fox seems a little puzzled by Lesja's very Slavic grumbling and throwing the bag of perfected divination knuckle bones onto the table. "... they are?" she asks, scraching her cheek. "Okay," she agrees, and hushes, wrapping her hands around the mug which contains her hot chocolate and taking a little sip of it so she doesn't interfere.
Simone is a little confused where all the whining and complaining is going to lead, but with but a short pause she leans forward to put down her mug and pick up the bag, which is opened and inspected. "I don't know what that accusing look was for," she says while giving him a look right back. "Don't act like any of this was my choice."
The knuckle bones get tipped out into her hand, and she turns them over in her hand like she's learning the feel of them. Once she's confident that they'll speak to her, and for her, she forms and imago and intones in high speech before casting the dice onto the table and letting loose Fate, only to draw it back in like a net trawling for answers.
"Of course it's not a choice," Lesja complains bitterly, "we never get choice, Simone. We just get assigned things. You start getting visions you need oracular help with, my dice perfect the same day, and the visions you have happen to be messages from some other entity? We don't do coincidences, Simone. It's my own fault for having an Acanthus for an Apprentice. It always goes badly for both parties. The Supernal just says 'oh, look at those suckers, let's let them have it' and it's just-- it's always annoying, that's all. This is going to be annoying and inconvenient and important. Watch. Just watch."
She folds her arms up stubbornly and scowls at the imago a little, waiting for it to prove her correct.
"Lesja will find any excuse to stomp around and grumble about anything. If she's doing it about you it just means she likes you," Mei says between sips of her hot chocolate, while watching all of this stuff unfold. Letting the Acanthus do Acanthus things, while she sits over here watching. Sipping. Waiting to find out if Simone learns anything that she wants to share with the class.
The Thyrsus gestures towards Mei, as if to say, that. Fox sips her hot chocolate.
Answers come flooding into Simone as she drags them back from the chain of possible futures, the magic she wrought picking out probabilities from implausibilities, sifted and sorted and catalogued into meanings. A lot of what gets said around her gets filtered out as background noise, not meaningless but also not currently consequential, while her main focus is on figuring out what to make of all the things she just learned.
"It's not just me," she says. "I mean that I'm not just... not losing my sanity all on my own. Something... things, plural, they're calling for me. Or giving me a calling? It feels like both. And I need to find them, or things are going to keep getting worse." She slowly shakes her head and blinks, like she's trying to clear her vision, and then succeeds. "That was both informative and not very helpful at all. I hope asking better questions comes to me with practice."
Lesja does a living, full body impression of the 'I guess' gif. The scowl. The frustrated resignation. All of it. She stews lower into her seat, hunches up her shoulders, and scowls out her love and worry at nothing in particular. "It's my job to see these things coming. I'm slipping. Too much caring about chickens," she complains quietly, mostly to herself. And then she gets around to the bits hiding under all of that.
"Whatever you need from us," the rest of it isn't spoken, but she's Ukrainian so that's probably all she's got right now. The rest of the nice will come in the next shipment.
"You are actually human," Mei points to Lesja. "Once in a while you have to actually care about things that you care about for your sake, and not just for other people. That's how people work. You're allowed to care about your chickens."
She looks around the room, at three others who are all also Children of the Tree. "Does any of this sound familiar to any of you? It doesn't to me."
There's something small and brittle about the way that Fox smiles, then, something like broken glass in the sunlight. She turns to look towards the door that leads out to the balcony. Maybe it's because her pigeon loft is out there, or maybe it's because she just needs something to look at which isn't anybody or anything. The Thyrsus turns her cup in her hands and takes another sip of her hot chocolate. "Sounds a little like Mom," she says, curling her feet up underneath herself, her arms in against her sides. "Not -- not our mom," comes her amendment, a moment later, an apologetic glance at her sister's hands.
Without much warning, there's a Husky just suddenly there on the couch next to Fox, and then not next to Fox but sort of on her in the way that big dogs can just sort of become massive fur-based weighted blankets. Fox grunts, and puts her cup aside, and is quiet, and pinned to the couch by a very solemn dog which may not actually be a dog.
Simone is briefly, understandably, confused when Fox says something sounds like Mom. Before the clarification. "I was going to say! I don't know what about all of this might have sounded like our mom to you, and you'd have needed to explain that one." If she's able to smile about this a little, she's probably not in too bad of shape.
"I don't know what else to try to look for answers except... dream? That seems to be the direction everything is pulling me. And further than my Oneiros. Further than I've traveled before. I... I think? I really hate vague feelings like this."
Oontz-Oontz appears in Lesja's lap, arms around her neck, sunglasses flashing with concealed light. The fact that the familiar is staring deadpan at Fox probably means this show is not actually for Lesja's benefit at all. Which may be why she's fussing and squirming and making annoyed sounds at the spirit occupying her lap.
Lesja gets a hand on the Familiar's face and pushes the kid down onto the couch with a tumble of legs and a squack and buzz of complaint. But it's for the best. The spirit poofs back into twilight again, and Lesja gets back to being helpful. "Elder Balm's Dream Anchor, Talekeeper. I think it may be time to ask the Elder if we can't borrow it again. We've been meaning to go out there again. And, well. Once again, I don't believe in coincidences any longer. Not in Philadelphia. Not anymore."
"Well, I could certainly stand to learn a little more about astral travel," Mei says with a little shrug, while leaning over to pet the dog that might not be a dog, which means it might not set off her allergies. "If my help is needed, I'll be more than happy to be around to assist, and pick up some new knowledge myself on the way. Not to, you know, invite myself for anything, or butt in if I'm not wanted, but my help is always available for the asking."
"Borrow what?" Fox offers from underneath her familiar, who seems to be dealing with whatever Fox is Feeling at the moment by sitting on her. This being a pretty common behavior in therapy does doesn't mean that Fox gets any less fur in her mouth. She doesn't resist being laid on, though. It's comforting.
"The Dream Anchor? The artifact Balm had? That she used to get you to the Astral? It was used to climb the Spire Perilous once, I believe. Or twice. A few times. Once that I know of. If we're going deep into the Astral that will start us at the Lunar Lagrange. It's been set there since her ascension. And if the destination is in the axis mundi, we can use it to landmark our journey there. It'll make the trip safer. For all of us. Plus... I think Balm would like to know the stone's been moved. And that we're moving forward, too. It should remain a tool for her people, not a memorial marker." Lesja's mouth twitches at the corner, and then the lines and furrows start showing in her forehead. "Am I making matters worse?"
Simone definitely doesn't know what they're all talking about, so she's busy looking around the room trying to put pieces together before someone notices and she feels like the newbie all over again. Some day that will stop, right? Until she knows what's going on or has something to suggest, she'll just stay quiet and listen.
This is all stuff Mei wasn't a part of, so she doesn't have much to offer by way of input. Which means she pets the dog! (edited)
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