(Untitled)

[kid_skin]

Who: Jonas (Middle Billy Goat) & Luke (Eldest Billy Goat)
When: Friday evening
What: Faux-family reunion
Where: The Pen, rooftop shenanigans.
Status: Thread, Incomplete

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[elder_goat]

Luke clambered onto the roof via the fire escape. He'd worn his hiking boots and had been up a time or two before, so he trip-trapped along with a bit more stability than Jonas, but not by a lot. The height was comfortable, even enjoyable. At this hour, before the lights really came on but the sun cast everything in the same shade of murky blue, he could almost feel like he wasn't in the city, that the towers and spires were mountainous peaks, dramatic formations made by water and wind, not hammer and bolt.

He tucked his fiddle under his chin and plucked across the strings for a moment, tuning the instrument to compensate for the sudden temperature change. She needed a few minutes to adjust. When she was ready he drew the bow across the strings, reaching out for a half-forgotten melody, quick and light, on a three-beat rolling rhythm that reminded him of a cantering horse.

As he played he became conscious of someone else on the roof, but he didn't mind an audience, and unless they came and pestered him he'd keep playing. There weren't any laws against fiddlers on the roof, after all.

[kid_skin]

The music gradually filtered into Jonas' awareness with a twitch of his toes. It reminded him of mountains and running, made him smack a quiet counter rhythm with the rubber sole of his flipflop. Tree tops scraped the bottom of his skyline view, swaying in the wind with just enough tempo to look like skeletal arms waving to the melody. Building lights began blinking on like yellow cat eyes. A car alarm went off, blaring a jolting bass-line. He watched it all blink and merge across the horizon until there was suddenly a whole city of swaggering bonemen doing the electric slide to the Devil Went Down to Georgia routine happening on his sloped ribbon of rooftop. Sometimes Jonas thought he seriously had the best life ever.

"Hey do you know any Russian music?" he asked as the melody wound down. He craned his neck, finally, to see the distorted silhouette of the phantom fiddler. With a started 'whoa' he abruptly sat up, and stared, and shivered. His coat was most of the way off at that point, bunched down around his elbows and rendered completely ineffective. He could not care less. The guy was dark and scruffy, he kind of looked like a bum, and whatever, Jonas looked like a bum most of the time, too, but the thing was. The thing was, there was a pair of the most shockingly huge, gnarly, fearsome horns arcing back from the guy's head. They were better than that freakish faun in Pan's Labyrinth, better than anything he'd seen on National Geographic or the Sci-Fi channel, and Jonas felt his heart breaking a little bit in wild, unfettered envy.

He rolled over quickly, pushing up onto his knees and sliding nearly a foot toward the edge of the roof before his fingers caught the edge of a shingle. The other hand caught his totally insufficient devil horns before they fell off entirely, shoving them back into place as his toes dangled into the rain gutter. None of this inhibited his unbridled staring. The amiable tone of his original request was completely usurped by the shock-muted way he asked, "What are you?"

[elder_goat]

"Sure, I know a couple of Russian tunes," Luke said as he tuned his A-string. But it was old, and with a comical twang it popped and curled. "Damn," he muttered, reaching into his case for a new string.

At the second question, Luke turned his head around with a quizzical look to see who he was addressing. He chuckled slightly at the ragamuffin clinging to the roof in the devil horns. "I'm an old goat," he answered. "What are YOU then?"

[kid_skin]

"Are you for real?" Jonas scrambled to his feet, skidded again, and stepped out of his flipflops to avoid imminent death. Once he'd shunted the risk of plunging five stories and probably making Bob's life, he turned to stare at the be-horned guy again. In a somewhat sloppy attempt at being casual, he sidled over and half-circled Luke. Without any pretense of good manners or personal boundaries, he reached out and drew his fingers down one horn, then skittered back a couple of feet. He clasped his hands behind his back in a completely contrived display of innocence, like he hadn't just totally groped some stranger's...head protrusion. It was so totally unfair.

Raising his eyebrows, he cast his gaze shiftily to the side and ignored Luke's question as if he had no interest whatsoever in him or his question or the fact that he just said he was a goat. Seriously, how many goats could there be? He had no idea, but he sort of felt that heinous, awesome urge to throw up, like after going on Space Mountain seven times in a row without having eaten all day. He tried to play it cool, almost whistled innocuously, but couldn't contain himself at the last second and cast a painfully curious sideways glance back at Luke. "Like a billy goat?"

[elder_goat]

"Last time I checked I was real," Luke answered as the kid skidded towards him. He tensed, ready to try to catch him if it looked like he was really going to fall off the roof -

But no, he was alright, evidently. Though he could see Luke's horns, which was noteworthy. Not many people could. He was a bit taken aback when the boy ran a hand down his horn - that was forward.

"Yeah, oldest Billy Goat Gruff, to be exact about it," he said, watching Jonas with a wary eye. "Aren't you cold?"

[kid_skin]

"Huh?" Jonas articulated brilliantly, then blinked and shook his head, shuffling his weight from right foot to left, then curling his toes against the shingles. "Oh, yeah, but I'm from California." As if that explained anything at all, much less why he was incapable of keeping shoes or a coat on in January. He rose up on his toes, as if this was going to help him inspect the alleged oldest billy goat. Seriously. There wasn't much room to argue the claim, not that he even wanted to, but the horns--the horns were so unfair. He hoped to god Rita didn't have nubs or something, because he would die of shame. And envy. "Um."

Dropping back to a normal stance, he edged warily closer to his brother, which was terrifying and cool all at once, because even if he had transcendental memories, nineteen years of a solo act made him gun shy. Rita didn't exactly count the same way because she was a complete snot, but mostly because so far only some written words on paper, which...whatever, he had better relationships with pizza delivery people than Rita at the moment. This, however, was a real scruffy dude with a fiddle and oh my god.

"I'm Jonas," he explained, slipping right up to Luke again and sort of...plucking at his sleeve, but pretending quite thoroughly like he wasn't. "I'm your brother, I guess. I mean. I was."

[elder_goat]

Luke's face broke into a smile. "Really! Well that's fantastic! I came to New York to look for you and your brother! Well, sister, as it turns out, and a bit of a - But that's neither here nor there," he said, stopping himself before he could say something irritable about their youngest sibling.

He set the fiddle and the spare A string aside and scooted around to look at Jonas better. "Should've known I'd find one of you on the roof," he chuckled. This was delightful - he'd found the rest of his Tale. It felt strangely like coming home.

"So tell me about yerself," he drawled.

[kid_skin]

"A bit of a b..uhh, brat. I know, right." Jonas watched Luke with suspicious interest, then grinned faintly at the super-Southern drawl. He was sort of excited and freaked out in a totally unfamiliar way, and also weirdly aware that he had no idea what to do with his hands. He stuffed them in his pockets and bounced on the balls of his feet a few times.

The question was one Jonas had never answered honestly, starting in Mrs. Hurley's kindergarten class, when he'd told everyone he came from an asteroid. Often times, the truth of his childhood was actually more mystifying. "I'm the adopted child of a Chinese mobster who killed my family in an act of retribution for betraying the honor of his clan," he tried out, pursed his lips thoughtfully, then added, "I know twelve ways to kill a man with pork dumpling. Were you really looking for us?"

[elder_goat]

Luke laughed. The kid was cute, alright. "Alright then, keep your history, then." He closed the violin case and stood up.

"'Course I was lookin' for you an' Rita. The past few hundred years, the point of my existence been to look out for you two. Not that I always found you." He twitched; there had been a few disasters along the way. Like Haiti. Fucking island ought to sink into the sea.

"So it's a good life when I can track you both down. Seems to me there's a bit of destiny behind it. Besides, with the Troll so close at hand, we goats gotta stick together." He inclined his head meaningfully.

[kid_skin]

"Sort of got the short straw in the Tale, huh?" On the other hand, he sometimes found irony in being the middle kid (literally) for eternity. Pretty much no one in his current life had bothered looking for him, it was a novel feeling, and Jonas cast a flurry of sly looks between Luke's face and his shoulder. Fortunately the mention of Bob, god seriously Bob was always ruining awesome moments, distracted him from his nervous curiosity.

"Seriously, Bob," he vocalized, all false bravado for Luke's benefit, because Bob sort of scared the crap out of him when he was actually there and slavering like a huge zombie with rocks and moobs. "Has he tried to kill you yet? I bet you totally took him, you're like uh," he waved his hands at Luke, "scrappy. And. Horns." He scratched his cheek and bounced up onto the balls of his feet. It proved to be a bad plan, and he kind of had to do some quick, tricky-business moves to keep his balance. "He totally has a thing for throwing rocks still, which whatever, this is the age of technological weaponry. De-evolution, dude."

[elder_goat]

"Actually I kinda like my short straw," Luke said with a tilted grin. "Gives me purpose, which is somethin' most people don't have." Never mind he'd been admonished more than once that there was more to life than obsessing about his Tale. Wasn't that enough, with two little ones to look after?

Which he hadn't been doing too well, what with running from Bob when he'd actually been attacked. But hell, didn't a vorpal blade get a guy some slack? He decided to gloss over the whole screaming like a girl and bounding over couches to escape the be-sworded troll.

"He has tried to kill me, as a matter of fact. But as luck would have it, he has yet to succeed." He gestured to his unharmed body as evidence.

"So you can see the horns, huh? That's cool. Not many people can."

[kid_skin]

"That's cool, I've never been somebody's purpose. Uh, in this lifetime, anyway," Jonas said feigning nonchalance, trying and failing not to look completely thrilled.

"Bob totally can't kill me either, I mean he tries, but I move fast like lightning. It's because I'm electric." The statement was very sage, and he gave a punctuating nod, glancing over Luke for proof that he didn't have a peg leg or a hook or something pirate and cliche. No, just horns. The mention of horns made him visibly downtrodden. "Uh, your horns are awesome? Like if I had horns? My life would pretty much be the best ever."