And now... owls.
((Link goes to a post in Mayday's journal. Didn't want to spam the comm with a socking.))
After a shower, a good night's sleep and another awkward meeting, Jaime managed to get some breakfast and make his way to the Owlery without further incident ( Read more... )
After a shower, a good night's sleep and another awkward meeting, Jaime managed to get some breakfast and make his way to the Owlery without further incident ( Read more... )
He returned her grin in spite of himself. "Interesting? Nah, I'm the normal one in my group of friends if you can believe it. Weird just comes after me. You want entertainment, spend five minutes with Brenda and Paco."
"I've heard rumors about that. I'm good, though, thanks." Well, he does have lettuce and tomato on his sandwich, too, so he's not a total loss.
"You hsve no idea." But he smiled anyway at that, his own smile fading at the next question. "They weren't very clear on the how so much as the why.
I'm not sure what it was supposed to do, but I can probably guess. And I really don't think it involved me being in control." He frowned. "If it wasn't supposed to be good, I don't know what that makes it now. Or me."
((Taking off! Should be back late Sunday night!))
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Hm. He was the normal one? "I think you're entertaining," said Lola loyally and took a bite of her sandwich. She was planning on having this one all to herself, away from hungry birds, so she didn't put it aside after one bite. If he didn't want a taste, tehn it was his loss! He wouldn't get a second chance at the yummy watercress, the foolish boy...
"I don't... get a really evil vibe from it," she said, a little hesitantly. It was difficult to get a real grip around the scarab. Sometimes she thought she had it figured out, but then the energy changed and she had to give up to avoid giving herself a headache. "I don't know what it is. It's... slippery." She bit her lip and looked up at him, sudden surprise in her eyes. "I do know that you are good, though. It doesn't matter what the scarab is. If it's broken, then you're in control, right? With a little practice, you can tell it what to be."
((Okay! Sorry this took me so long. >.< ))
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Without the passenger in his head, yes. "I'm the straight man in the group. Or the referee. Or the babysitter, some days." Jaime chuckled. "Let me put it this way: the whole freshman class bet their entire spring trip money Brenda would take Paco down before midterms." He took another bite of his almost-gone sandwich, chewing thoughtfully. "You know, I never did find out what happened with that."
"Really?" He blinked, honestly surprised. Not that he'd expected it to come off as good, but if he ever encountered someone who could get an idea of what it was, he'd mainly expected it to come off as crazy evil or something. Oh, he'd hoped otherwise, but at the same time he'd been trying to brace himself for the worst. "'Slippery' sounds about right. Whatever logic it operates on isn't anything like Earth logic. It thought this batty researcher was a threat, but it didn't want to even fight the magic homicidal trees that were trying to smash me and my friends to bits because it 'doesn't damage nature.' Go figure."
Her observation about him made him blush, a little, and he tried to cover it by finishing off his sandwich. "I'm trying. It's a really, really, really slow learner, though. And even when it's freaking, it'll listen if I yell at it enough." He took another swig of his soda. "Maybe I'll even be able to do it without the yelling someday. That would be nice."
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She smiled when she heard him talk about his friends. Drawing parallels to her own circle was a little difficult since angels didn't usually go for taking people down (though of course there were a couple of hotheaded exceptions) but she recognised the way he talked about them. Suddenly she kind of missed Heaven. Okay, so she had a couple of her friends here, but there were some that she hadn't seen in months. Lola wasn't really used to being away from the Heavenly City for that long. "Sounds like you have a lot of fun," she chuckled. "Never a dull moment, anyway."
Lola paused in the middle of a bite, her mouth open in surprise. Then she closed it, blinking. "Homicidal... trees?" she repeated incredulously. Okay. That was new. Hey, if the scarab was opposed to damaging nature, Lola was supporting that. She was all thumbs-up about nature. Still... homicidal trees?
She looked down at her toes, cheeks flushing - again - as she realised that perhaps she had been a bit forward. Stupid truth-telling compulsion... "I'm sure you'll be able to." Oh, and she was just making it better for herself. Sigh.
"So, where do you want to go afterwards?" Lola asked, hoping she wouldn't just keep making the both of them blush. "I mean, I did promise to show you around."
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Maia was married to an octopus. He stared at Lola for a second, letting that concept sink in, before he burst out laughing. "I'm sorry," he said once he'd managed to recover. "I know I shouldn't - but that's just so wrong. How does the Hat even enforce that? I'm surprised there isn't a riot at this point."
"No kidding." Even before the Crisis. "Yeah, and all the arguing and crazy aside, they're really good friends. Don't know where I'd be without them." A lot less sane, probably.
"Yeah. It was some kind of spell that made them start attacking us. Which is when Brenda and Paco found out - I was going to tell them anyway, the tree thing made that happen earlier than planned. They took it pretty well." Dude, Brenda's first reaction (after giving him the "you're an idiot sometimes" look) was a hug, so that was a pretty good sign. Paco already knew, but the story of how he knew was so long they'd be there all afternoon.
He smiled; Lola might feel a bit better if she knew how much he needed to hear something like that. "Thanks."
Taking a bite of the apple, Jaime thought about that for a second. The tent village was immediately out of the question. The wizarding village might be an entirely separate trip. "I was wondering where to find the library," he said after a moment's thought. "Especially if that's the best place to learn stuff." Care of Magical Creatures might be cool, but he doubted it would cover how to screen conversations or protection charms.
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Wow... His stories just sounded so completely out there. Lola shook her head, laughing softly. "Your stories make mine sound so stupid... I've never been attacked by a tree." She paused, thinking. Hm, well, there had been the time where she'd been assigned to look after the young man who turned out to be William Shakespeare, and who could forget that one mission where she'd been stuck believing that she was a Jamaican slavegirl? "I did turn into a cat once, though," she said brightly, grinning. "That's impressive." Or, you know, weird.
Oh yeah, the library! "I'll show you that," Lola nodded. "The whole castle is really so huge it'd take more than just one day to see it all... You can still get lost, even if you've been here for months, too..." With that, she finished her Coke and put the empty bottle back in the basket. "It's really a pity they don't make maps over this place."
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Oh, man. The hat had married Lola off too? Did that even count as a marriage if a Hat did it under duress? So did that mean this wasn't a date? He was so confused. "That - that really sucks," he said, feeling bad about laughing now. "You didn't get married to anything really weird, did you?"
Most of his stories really were out there, sadly. And she hadn't heard about the two trips to outer space yet. "Yeah, because being attacked by trees is so many degrees of not stupid." But he was smiling. "I've never been turned into anything before. You've got me beat there."
Polishing off his own soda - there wasn't much left anyway - he put the bottle in the basket as well, wrapping up the half-eaten apple and tossing it in. "I heard it changes every so often," he mused. "I guess maps would be obsolete really quickly. It'd still be nice to have a general idea. Not everybody's helpful when it comes to giving directions around here."
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She finished off her sandwich, leaving the crumbs out for the birds, and laughed softly. "Guess we're both kind of weird, huh?"
The angel nodded, starting to fiddling with her hair to make it lie down a bit at least before exposing it to the wind again. "Well, the Great Hall is constant, as is the library and the common rooms. It's just the getting there that's tricky." The left-overs from the sandwich that the sparrow had stolen were taken and wrapped in plastic, since the bird had given up on trying to devour the whole thing. Lola shook her head at it, slightly amused, and watched it protest feebly as she took the sandwich away. "No, if I leave it here you'll eat until you explode," she told it firmly. "I won't have that. Stop being so greedy."
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Jaime shook his head, chuckling too as he got to his feet. "I think we're par for the course around here."
He offered her a hand to help her up. "I've already been warned about the moving staircases. There's a girl in my house who says they have it in for her." The sparrow's protests made him grin. "She's got a point, man, it's five times your size," he added, feeling silly for talking to a bird but unable to help himself.
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Accepting his hand, Lola stood and brushed off her jeans just in case grass had stuck to them. "Thanks," she grinned, and kneeled to pick up her shoes and look at the sparrow. "See? Jaime agrees with me." Talking to animals was nothing special. Lola had a friend who did that all the time. She stroke a finger over the sparrow's grey little head, and it made a vague attempt to nuzzle her hand. Lola sighed. "Okay, fine. If you're hungry later you can come look me up. Silly thing."
She shook her head at the silliness of birds and stood up again. "Okay! Library? I hope I don't get us both lost." And then there was the Question, too. The Date Question.
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Jaime closed the basket and picked it up, quickly checking to make sure they weren't leaving anything behind as Lola actually stroked the sparrow. Must be an angel thing, and wow, did that ever prove he was getting jaded to the weird. "Sounds good. If we get lost, it'll be an adventure. Or something. But probably not your fault."
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"I'll do my best to make sure we get safely to our final destination," she promised. Then she paused, looking slightly nervous. "Jaime? Is... this a date?" Okay, forward. But she couldn't stop herself. "Because if it isn't, that's fine," she babbled, hand going up to fiddle anxiously with her hair. "I mean, if this is a friend thing. That's good. Friends are good. But if it is a date, I mean, that's... good too." Could you fry eggs on her cheeks? They certainly felt hot enough. She should just stop talking now... And she was NOT going to look directly at him, either.
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After the Info Dump of Weird, the whole date question had kind of fallen by the wayside. It was kind of funny, really. "I... don't know," he admitted, managing a nervous laugh. "Haven't really asked anyone out since, well, it happened. So I'm, y'know, a little rusty? But I was hoping it was. A date. Really." Okay, he was just going to focus on not dropping the basket and stop running his mouth. Good plan. But he couldn't help smiling.
He looked towards the castle. "So... which way? Do we brave the food fight zone or is there a better route?"
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"The library is on the fourth floor," she explained. "So we take the main stairs, past the Great Hall... If we move swiftly we'll avoid the foodfight. Um. I hope." She nodded at the picnic basket. "We can leave that to a House-elf when we get inside, so that you won't have to carry it around with you all the time." Lola doubted the librarian, whoever that was, would approve of food amongst all the books.
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