when by now and tree by leaf
04:00 - In the Kashtta Tower, soft music is floating from the piano room tucked back by the cursed hallway.
It's not terribly good music.
J picked his way through a primer someone had left on their piano, and is now demonstrating minimal proficiency at having memorized any of the songs. He can pretty reliably hit the first few bars of Ode to Joy, but it tends to morph into either Beethoven's Fifth or Kokomo, wherefrom it usually skips through at least three other unrelated songs before being wiped clean by a pianissimo but vigorous round of Chopsticks and started over again. All of the notes are rendered in key-by-key glory; chords are something he's apparently just going to have to work up to.
06:00 - The Vesmier is awake.
We know. He was surprised, too.
Physically he's in fine shape - a healing trace will do that for one - but he's uneasy, unsure of what's changed in the world around him. But he can't stay in the TARDIS forever.
He pauses when he steps out onto Michigan Avenue, to all appearances exiting a somewhat-anachronistic telephone booth in front of a steakhouse that isn't open for business just yet. A moment later the telephone booth disappears - off to find unsuspecting civilians to chat with, no doubt - and Ves debates for a moment where he's headed. The Conrad is always a good touchstone, a library might have access to some of the more transient periodicals...
But a number of things he's uneasy about trace their way back to a certain subset of people, and to that end, he turns his footsteps toward the Kashtta Tower. The Doctor is probably not there, but the probability that one can find the Doctor in any given location is always low. At least while he's looking in on other matters, he can inquire as to whether anyone's seen him.
08:00 - The morning commute is in full swing, the streets are busy, and there's even a decent press of folk, despite the cold, making their way across the Millennium and Grant Parks on their way to classes or gainful employment.
And then there are those who, like One For Sorrow, are making a nuisance of themselves.
At the moment he's flapping around the dry Crown Fountain, completely derailing one man's quest for profit by yelling things like "Look out! Some schmuck named Kelsey Marcus Berber is pickpocketing your wallets! That's him there with the brown hair and the beret. He thinks he's an artiste! Watch out, coming your way!"
In fairness, Kelsey Marcus Berber gave up trying to pickpocket anyone somewhere back by the edge of the lake. Now he's just trying to dodge his way through the crowds and get away from the talking bird.
10:00 - It's still significantly below freezing, the sun is mostly obscured by clouds, and on the whole the humid atmosphere is some sort of ironic complete inversion of a muggy summer afternoon. At the Cloud Gate ruins in Millennium Park, Owen Harper is bundled up and complaining, and also trying to suction a slime mold off one of the Bean's former anchor points into a vacuum specimen collector.
...it's for science.
12:00 - Leona Sandric had been getting a massage and a light lunch between meetings. Of course, this being Chicago, things can't ever be simple or restful, can they?
She's now standing outside a high-end spa which has gone rapidly downhill since a rift opened up and started dumping lizard-creatures through. She's barefoot - and rather angry about this, as the concrete sidewalk underfoot could be charitably described as ice-cold - and wrapped in not one but two fluffy spa bathrobes, each one now ripped creatively to let her wings mantle out.
She's still holding an lizard-person's appendage - she thinks it's an arm - like a bludgeon, glaring at anyone who passes by. Some of the lizards are still inside the building. But so long as she's holding dismembered bits of them they don't seem to bother her, and there's no time built into her schedule for brawls and debacles today.
14:00 - Exactly how Dmitri Lang got started explaining the theory of laissez-faire economic policy to one of the Conrad's receptionists is a question which has been unfortunately lost to the ages. How events progressed to this - an hour and a half later, she's engaged this receptionist in making a multimedia exhibit on the heuristic probability model for small-business success in the Chicagoland area - is the sort of question that makes psychologists and quantum theorists consider shifts to more relaxing career fields. Counterintelligence, maybe.
In any case, she and a receptionist have taken over an end table in the Conrad Hotel's main lobby and are busy assembling collages with scissors, glue sticks, and more Sharpies and copies of the Chicago Tribune than one might think available on such short notice.
About as many of them as you might think have to do with the Coffee Shop, in one way or another.
16:00 - Around and about the city, Elashte is treating himself to a walking tour of various damaged and not-yet-rebuilt parts of Chicago. He has a thermos stuck into his computer bag, which he's been periodically refilling at local coffee shops, and the laptop he rarely ever uses (yes; in some areas, he does have to admit to old-fashioned sensibilities) is tucked away so he can be available to those outside the Chicago journal network.
Las Vegas's finances are so comprehensively tangled that it's a miracle anything got done there at all, and that's just from trying to set up some sort of accounting for the local Demonic powers and their tribute to him and his appointed governess. It's amazing that the audit is getting off the ground now; Elashte has to think that it should have been happening a year ago, but one runs into these problems when ones auditors keep getting eaten.
That Behemoth should know his place by now.
Soon enough, though, he should have enough money to think about investing in the advancement of this city. His city. He might as well form some opinion on where to spend it.
18:00 - On the roof of the Kashtta Tower, Andy Mackenzie is going over the lens of a standing telescope with something to keep it from frosting over. Hey, it's only going to be partly cloudy tonight, and that might be the only bit of night sky she's going to get this weekend.
20:00 - The TARDIS has broken down by the side of a road.
Not really. But she is disguised as a very attractive broken-down blue sedan, and she's making a good show of it. Really she just gets people to approach by leaving her hood up and a tire flat, and then she talks to them.
Fun times!
22:00 - One might think it a bit late to be getting kicked out of restaurants, or a bit early to be getting kicked out of bars, or a bit completely inexplicable to go flying out of a sports bar's window on Navy Pier with a tray full of French fries and mini burgers, half a chair, and a croquet mallet previously tacked to the wall as decoration flying after one.
Malek Asenath thinks none of these things. As he's picking himself up out of the window shards, he just thinks that man, someone in that bar is going to get it now.
It's not terribly good music.
J picked his way through a primer someone had left on their piano, and is now demonstrating minimal proficiency at having memorized any of the songs. He can pretty reliably hit the first few bars of Ode to Joy, but it tends to morph into either Beethoven's Fifth or Kokomo, wherefrom it usually skips through at least three other unrelated songs before being wiped clean by a pianissimo but vigorous round of Chopsticks and started over again. All of the notes are rendered in key-by-key glory; chords are something he's apparently just going to have to work up to.
06:00 - The Vesmier is awake.
We know. He was surprised, too.
Physically he's in fine shape - a healing trace will do that for one - but he's uneasy, unsure of what's changed in the world around him. But he can't stay in the TARDIS forever.
He pauses when he steps out onto Michigan Avenue, to all appearances exiting a somewhat-anachronistic telephone booth in front of a steakhouse that isn't open for business just yet. A moment later the telephone booth disappears - off to find unsuspecting civilians to chat with, no doubt - and Ves debates for a moment where he's headed. The Conrad is always a good touchstone, a library might have access to some of the more transient periodicals...
But a number of things he's uneasy about trace their way back to a certain subset of people, and to that end, he turns his footsteps toward the Kashtta Tower. The Doctor is probably not there, but the probability that one can find the Doctor in any given location is always low. At least while he's looking in on other matters, he can inquire as to whether anyone's seen him.
08:00 - The morning commute is in full swing, the streets are busy, and there's even a decent press of folk, despite the cold, making their way across the Millennium and Grant Parks on their way to classes or gainful employment.
And then there are those who, like One For Sorrow, are making a nuisance of themselves.
At the moment he's flapping around the dry Crown Fountain, completely derailing one man's quest for profit by yelling things like "Look out! Some schmuck named Kelsey Marcus Berber is pickpocketing your wallets! That's him there with the brown hair and the beret. He thinks he's an artiste! Watch out, coming your way!"
In fairness, Kelsey Marcus Berber gave up trying to pickpocket anyone somewhere back by the edge of the lake. Now he's just trying to dodge his way through the crowds and get away from the talking bird.
10:00 - It's still significantly below freezing, the sun is mostly obscured by clouds, and on the whole the humid atmosphere is some sort of ironic complete inversion of a muggy summer afternoon. At the Cloud Gate ruins in Millennium Park, Owen Harper is bundled up and complaining, and also trying to suction a slime mold off one of the Bean's former anchor points into a vacuum specimen collector.
...it's for science.
12:00 - Leona Sandric had been getting a massage and a light lunch between meetings. Of course, this being Chicago, things can't ever be simple or restful, can they?
She's now standing outside a high-end spa which has gone rapidly downhill since a rift opened up and started dumping lizard-creatures through. She's barefoot - and rather angry about this, as the concrete sidewalk underfoot could be charitably described as ice-cold - and wrapped in not one but two fluffy spa bathrobes, each one now ripped creatively to let her wings mantle out.
She's still holding an lizard-person's appendage - she thinks it's an arm - like a bludgeon, glaring at anyone who passes by. Some of the lizards are still inside the building. But so long as she's holding dismembered bits of them they don't seem to bother her, and there's no time built into her schedule for brawls and debacles today.
14:00 - Exactly how Dmitri Lang got started explaining the theory of laissez-faire economic policy to one of the Conrad's receptionists is a question which has been unfortunately lost to the ages. How events progressed to this - an hour and a half later, she's engaged this receptionist in making a multimedia exhibit on the heuristic probability model for small-business success in the Chicagoland area - is the sort of question that makes psychologists and quantum theorists consider shifts to more relaxing career fields. Counterintelligence, maybe.
In any case, she and a receptionist have taken over an end table in the Conrad Hotel's main lobby and are busy assembling collages with scissors, glue sticks, and more Sharpies and copies of the Chicago Tribune than one might think available on such short notice.
About as many of them as you might think have to do with the Coffee Shop, in one way or another.
16:00 - Around and about the city, Elashte is treating himself to a walking tour of various damaged and not-yet-rebuilt parts of Chicago. He has a thermos stuck into his computer bag, which he's been periodically refilling at local coffee shops, and the laptop he rarely ever uses (yes; in some areas, he does have to admit to old-fashioned sensibilities) is tucked away so he can be available to those outside the Chicago journal network.
Las Vegas's finances are so comprehensively tangled that it's a miracle anything got done there at all, and that's just from trying to set up some sort of accounting for the local Demonic powers and their tribute to him and his appointed governess. It's amazing that the audit is getting off the ground now; Elashte has to think that it should have been happening a year ago, but one runs into these problems when ones auditors keep getting eaten.
That Behemoth should know his place by now.
Soon enough, though, he should have enough money to think about investing in the advancement of this city. His city. He might as well form some opinion on where to spend it.
18:00 - On the roof of the Kashtta Tower, Andy Mackenzie is going over the lens of a standing telescope with something to keep it from frosting over. Hey, it's only going to be partly cloudy tonight, and that might be the only bit of night sky she's going to get this weekend.
20:00 - The TARDIS has broken down by the side of a road.
Not really. But she is disguised as a very attractive broken-down blue sedan, and she's making a good show of it. Really she just gets people to approach by leaving her hood up and a tire flat, and then she talks to them.
Fun times!
22:00 - One might think it a bit late to be getting kicked out of restaurants, or a bit early to be getting kicked out of bars, or a bit completely inexplicable to go flying out of a sports bar's window on Navy Pier with a tray full of French fries and mini burgers, half a chair, and a croquet mallet previously tacked to the wall as decoration flying after one.
Malek Asenath thinks none of these things. As he's picking himself up out of the window shards, he just thinks that man, someone in that bar is going to get it now.