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The clearing that Maddy's cabin sits in is well off the beaten path, with a narrow dirt road that runs almost a mile and a half from the nearest paved stretch until it opens into the glade where she set up her residence. The cabin itself is small, but probably comfortable for a single resident, with solar panels on its roof, smoke tricking out of its chimney, and about half an acre of open space between it and the tree line. That space is almost entirely filled with gardens that seem to be entirely dedicated to growing food, though there's not a whole lot there to be harvested at this time of year. All in all it looks like a place that belongs to someone who lives almost entirely off-grid, with signs of stations for tanning hides and other survival tasks scattered around.
Of particular note is the fact that despite the lack of fog anywhere else on the journey out to the cabin, the forest is full of dense mists that start about a quarter of a mile out, and within the clearing itself it persists up to almost knee height.
Maddy herself is seated in a hand-made wooden rocking chair on the porch, bundled in a fur-lined shearling parka and cradling a steaming mug in her hands. Seated at the other end of the cabin's porch is a white stag with two separate racks of antlers, laying idly on the wood slats like it's completely normal for a deer to be sitting there. Any sort of closer look is likely to reveal the fact that it's a familiar, not a normal animal.
Tommy was dressed in her business suit, black with a white under shirt and a green and red tie. Her gaze swept back and forth at the various ephemeral beings as she moved.
The woman had a few various effects about her person, but they were all on her own pattern. As she approached the cabin through the fog, she seemed unbothered by the temperature.
At an appropriate distance from the cabin itself, she announces herself, "Hello. I'm Bones of the Mysterium. May I approach, under the laws of the Lex Magica and all the duties and honors that it implies?"
Maddy stands up when the voice calls out to her, still holding the mug in one hand. "Approach and be welcome, Bones of the Mysterium!" she calls back formally. "I offer you sanctuary at my hearth." The stag watches the stranger with curiosity but doesn't rise. Maddy's free hand rises and she beckons Tommy forward, then she turns and sets the mug down on a table next to her chair and picks up a thermos. "Would you like some tea?" she calls back over her shoulder.
Bones let out a sigh, that was always the first step, now things could be comfortable. As comfortable as begging forgiveness to someone you've never met could be, at least.
She followed the Child of the Tree with a warm smile, bowing to the white stag as she neared, with respect to the spiritual being.
A tilt of her head as she looked back and forth, studying the area as any might study a new place, but was polite enough not to scrutinize or the like.
"I would love some tea, whichever blend you prefer," she replied and then found a place to sit on the deck across from Maddy, seemingly as comfortable on the floor or ground as a chair.
There's plenty of seating to be found on Maddy's porch, and everything looks like it was probably hand crafted, whether that was by the druid or someone else. Maddy pours a mug of tea from the thermos that was sitting on the table beside her, then offers the mug to Bones when she's seated. "Let me know if you're hungry," she says. "I have some stew on the stove, if you feel the need to warm cold bones after the trip out here." She's not going to make assumptions about people's ability to keep themselves warm with magic or not, and so she makes the offer.
"The tea is an herbal blend I put together, using things I grew here. I can send you on your way with a little when you leave, if you enjoy it." She offers Bones a smile, and in general doesn't seem to be approaching this situation from a place of anger about rules being violated, which hopefully offers a bit of peace of mind about how difficult a conversation this might end up being.
"I appreciate it. I do not feel temperature the way others do, the Lie that it is. But the emotional warmth of a bowl of stew is always welcome. Thank you for letting me see," she smiled across to Maddy from the chair where she's seated.
Tilting her head, she sipped at the tea once it was ready, and released a very content sigh at it.
"I understand," Maddy says with a nod and a smile. "I'll be right back." She steps inside, humming softly to herself before she's even through the door, and leaves Bones and the familiar together on the porch for a minute or so before she comes back out with a steaming bowl of stew. The bowl, spoon already sitting in it, is offered to Bones.
"Just to get a little business out of the way, I'm Druid Amity of the Children of the Tree, Master of Space, Time, and Fate." She truncates the title quite a bit from all the details it could have, but nit-picky formality isn't normally the strong suit of either the Walkers in Mists or the Children of the Tree, so that's probably not that much of a surprise. "I imagine that you wanted to talk to me about your the recent incident at my diner?"
"Oh, in that case," as she took the bowl and listened to Maddy, "I am Savant Bones, of the Mysterium, Master of Forces and Prime, and a whole bunch of other things that don't apply. And yes, I did wish to discuss, and considering your masteries, you have my permission, should be needed, to use me to scry back to that time..." she took a few bites of the soup, letting the warmth flow through her happily.
And then looking up, "I do want to start with... I absolutely apologize for scaring your staff. When I went to go apologize in person, it's when I confirmed the snapping of the key blocking me out. Regardless of whatever might be decided, I do hope that you convey to the staff my most sincere apologies."
"A pleasure to meet you," Amity answers with a smile as she settles herself back in with her mug. Once she sits down again, the stag familiar lowers its head and relaxes again as well.
"I appreciate your offer to use you as a sympathetic connection for scrying. I'd rather if you just told me what happened in your own words, though. I will, of course, pass on your apology to the staff. I appreciate the thoughtfulness, and I'm sure that they will too."
She bobbed her head, "I... phew... I've always been an impatient person. Even when I'm talking, I try and get all my thoughts out at once and it tries to become a ramble, all right? So I apologize in advance..." and she sets the bowl down and runs her hands through her hair before beginning, "So."
Now she stood and paced a little to talk, "So. That night started like a lot of nights, okay? I picked my shape, picked my clothes and was heading to the portal... cool idea by the wya... and I saw an acquaintance... one might even say, a growing obsession for study, and friendship... ahead of me, getting into the portal. Titania is an 800 years old Germanic witch, based on some discussions we've had. She's a vampire that uses her blood to make magics, and has quite a potent looking spellbook... So I followed her in, and greeted her, a few regulars, and then two new-to me faces..."
With a soft laugh and a casual wave of a hand Maddy dismisses the concern. "Take your time, proceed however is comfortable for you. I've got all the time I want, and I'm a very patient person. If something doesn't make sense, I'll just ask for clarification."
She sips tea while she listens, which she does attentively. Her head nods at key places, her brows raise at certain things like the blood magics, and in general she seems to be doing her best to give Bones the space to get the story out however is most comfortable. Clearly Maddy is not the sort of person who responds to someone breaking the rules at the diner with wrath and fury. Maybe the fact that it was a mage grants some leeway, or maybe she's just always like this.
"I feel like all our communities are best served by some controlled exposure to each other. So much hatred and misunderstanding between groups of people happens because there's a tendency to fear and hate the unfamiliar, and a lot of problems can get solved just by talking things through, so I wanted to do what I could to provide a place for people to gain familiarity and have dialogue," she explains, before gesturing toward Bones. "But continue, please."
She stopped pacing to study Maddy while she spoke, before starting to pace again, ""So. It turns out, the two new faces were another genderfluid individual named Avery. They're a Lost who apparently is also a bird-like being. The other face was Vincent Drake, a child Vampire who's sire was killed after illegally making him, and belongs to something called The First Estate. .. sorry, not all relevant..." Bones took a breath to try and focus again.
"Titania has living shadow familiars," her eyes glanced to the Stag and back to Maddy, "And when I first met her, there was a cat and a bird."
Her eyes close as she remembers the night, pausing in steps, "So, it seems that the Lost was a Bird-pet of the one who took them. They don't like that Titania has a bird-pet-spirit. I can see the parallel, si?"
her eyes open and the pacing returns, "Avery started to literally heat the air. It was obvious to me something was wrong, and so Vincent and I start to talk them down. We're getting good progress too by the way. BUt Vincent gave Titania a look. The kind that I've seen young members of the Great Ape families give to the boss when they're upset and about to attack. That led Titania to do ... something... with her eyes..." she paused again, thinking back on what happened for details.
Maddy eases back in her chair and settles in to do some more listening, clearly in as little hurry to get through the story as her words suggested she would be. She simply listens and sips, letting Bones tell the story at her own pace.
"Her eyes... they became cat-like, and full of just... RAGE. She didn't do anything to them, but tell tehm to rethink the look. This made... Avery draw her knife, a talon of a blade, to be noted, and put it to the Kindred Titania's neck. This seemed to amuse Titania, in retrospect, but in hopes of preventing Avery from full breaking the rules, and to defend everyone involved, I quickly worked the Imago to Create Fire on the handle of the Knife... honestly, if I was going to get banned for it, I was hoping to stop the others from crossing the line."
Her face displayed sadness, but had a strength behind it too, "Then the staff paniced and Titania moved faster than anyone I've seen move without at least Discipleship of time, while Vincent seemed about to run the other way. I ran after Titania, worried about any regular folx between her and safety.... and that's the story."
Maddy nods slowly as Bones finishes the retelling of the tale, then spends a few moments quietly sipping her tea. Her expression is thoughtful, but she doesn't leave the Mystagogue in suspense for too long before she leans toward the table with the thermos on it, sets her mug down, and starts topping herself off. "Fire is risky to use around vampires," she says. "It can lead to a loss of control, and while usually that loss of control isn't a directly dangerous one, it's my understanding that they can unintentionally hurt people if they feel like those people are in the way of their desire to leave the situation. Using fire around them has the potential to put bystanders in danger, indirectly." She smiles. "Fortunately, it doesn't seem like anyone ended up actually being harmed in this case."
"I burnt Avery's hand. I know that, just because I turned up the potency because they seemed to have a fire affinity. And a later-that-night discussion with Titania and Guy explained using fire for vampires is bad. I felt even worse about that..." a shake of her head, and she finally sat down and started eating and drinking again.
"It seems like your intention was to de-escalate things," Maddy responds. "Which, as we know since we're sitting here having this conversation, isn't something that the rules allow for as they stand right now, which is intentional. My preference is to urge people to keep things cool all the time, and to only rise to the level of getting involved if they're prepared for the possibility of not being allowed back." She takes another sip of her tea. "That being said, the intention is also for violations to result in conversations and potential reversals of bans. I believe in the importance of intentions, and in second chances, and my preference is for bans to stand only when it doesn't seem like there's a safe path forward if they're reversed. This doesn't seem like an egregious case."
She looked much like a young kid, looking up to her Mom with a mouth full of soup. Hope filled her eyes and she waited to see what Maddy would say next.
"If we end up needing to have another of these conversations I may be less inclined to forgive easily." For the first time, a hint of warning comes into Maddy's tone as she says those words. "But this time, I'm inclined toward leniency. You're forgiven for this violation of the rules of Maddy's Waffle House." There's a sense of formality to the way she says those words, and because of the way the Keys are set up, they're enough on their own to let Bones find her way into the Waffle House again.
SHe bounced in her seat, very much that excited child still, talking with her mouth full "Twaynk Yaus. Thnk yo...." she swallowed, "Thank you!" A wide grin filled her, and her whole body seemed to lighten up, "Thank you so much!"
Maddy laughs at the mouth-full response. "You're welcome," she says. "I try not to be a hard ass, unless I keep having to repeat them." She stands up. "I'm not much for sitting still for very long, though. You're welcome to stay here and enjoy the tea, the stew, and so on, but I should be on my way if there's nothing else you needed to discuss."
"Be safe, be well, and please reach out to me, should you need help. I do have some familiarity with Spirit, should you need to send a messenger or something...." she stood to offer Maddy a hug... and then a hand... and then back to the hug and then that weird loop where you don't know if someone hugs or not.
Maddy hugs, so she extends both of her arms to offer one, making it clearly what her preference is in this case. "Thank you for the offer, but I'm an Adept of Spirit myself. What kind of Druid would I be if I didn't study Spirit, after all?" Not that unusual one, necessarily. It's not like Spirit is a required component of being a Walker.
She returned the hug, "I figured you were some sort of spirit practitioner... so if you need to send me a messenger, I meant. Thank you again. Thank you so much."
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