RP: Where Have You Been?
Character: Sam Kennerly, Penny Kennerly, Nathaniel Kennerly
Location: London
Date: March 2nd, 2000
Status/Warning: Closed.
Summary: Sam comes home frustrated after a long day of wandering the docks. Home is no respite.
Completion: Complete.
"Oh, look it's my son, the wharf rat." A sweet voice announced between lips set in a chilly smile. Penny Kennerly set a plate of meatloaf and mashed potatoes in front of him as Sam tried desperately to breathe feeling back into his fingers. However bright the days were getting, the cold had refused to let up.
Spending nine hours at a time ducking in and out of every dive within a sane distance from home had not helped things of course. No one he questioned really minded, but he supposed that was because they had nothing to tell him. He heard them talk about The Gallagher as though it were just another story to scare cabin boys and greenhorns. Oh boy did they not know the half of it.
"Ah, sorry for being late, mum." Sam replied, digging in not because he was hungry but because he was cold and the food was hot.
Penny had suppressed every motherly instinct some time ago when it came to asking what had happened aboard The Gallagher that had her son on the doorstep almost two months ahead of schedule looking like he's been through hell and back. She did her motherly duty and slipped him a sleeping pill now and again when he woke screaming, calling a name her college education could make no sense of.
"Fenrir! Fenrir!"
Now, however, was another story.
"Sorry won't cut it anymore mister. I hope this isn't an idea of what we can expect when you start school again." Penny filled her own plate and sat, leaving the casserole dishes warming on the stove. With any luck, her husband would walk in any minute and they could be the united front they had never thought they would need to be.
"I'm not going to skip class mum," Sam assured her, looking offended. Bright green eyes narrowed a little across the table. "I'm just bored."
"And ignoring Emma."
Sam flinched.
"She stopped by again today...I just...it would be nice to tell her where you go every day."
A dusty blond head shook and a fork was gently set down on the table. "Er...It's just...Ahm...I'm looking for someone, mum. That's all."
Penny's brow furrowed. Her son was a terrible lair, she knew that, but even so...
Creaaak-Clack!
"I'm home!" Shoes kicked off and Nathaniel Kennerly followed the smell of food to their tiny but comfortable kitchen. There was a reluctant sort of triumph in his wife's eyes as she kissed him in welcome.
"Our son has finally decided to tell us why he's been skulking around the docks for days on end." Penny announced once they were all eating. Nathaniel eyed his son across the table, noting the hard glitter in bright green eyes that told him that Sam was in a frightful mood. Two bites were taken from his dinner, no salad had been procured and there wasn't even a lip mark on his glass of water.
"You don't need to tell us Sam. As long as you're home by dinner..." Nathaniel began, but a thunk of heavy porcelain cut him off.
"Doesn't need to tell us!" Penny spat, ignoring the fact that Sam had risen from his seat and marched upstairs to his bedroom without another word.
Their voices carried like two clashing measures of music, one slow, the other sharp and almost stacatto. Sam shut his bedroom door and hurled himself frustratedly onto the bed, face burried into a stiff pillow. Around the bed, books with strange titles were scattered: The History of the Occult, The Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology, Magic and Demonology, Werewolves in Reality and Popular Fiction, Shadow Cults, Yeats and the Kabalah, The Book of the Dead, The Book of Thoth...the list went on and on, shutting Sam into a low paper fort.
He was getting nowhere. Two weeks until the paperwork went through for him to return to school and he hadn't heard anything, not even a rumor, of Fenrir or Nessy. Tears peaked at the corner of his eyes and he bubbered there, but only for a moment. The old sense of worthlessness didn't win this time, it couldn't...not when Sam was there, surrounded by his memories. A silver-haired man leaning over the rail of a ship with a fishing rod, laughing; a monsterous eye staring at him from a wall, followed by the same man holding out his hand, offering so much more than just a steady counter-weight.
'My friends call me Fenrir. Welcome to my world.'
Newspaper clippings, a marked map of London, showing everywhere Sam had looked, places he planned to go, but he didn't have time for it anymore. Two weeks and his last window of oppertunity to devote worthwhile energy to his search would be gone.
"Bloody hell!" Sam cursed, sitting up and with a single arm sending the pillow flying at a low bookcase, where it hit, dislodging a thin hard-backed book. Faded lettering sparked another set of memories altogether. Sam stood slowly, approaching the book as though it were a long lost idol. A lean hand picked it up, thumbing over the barely legible wording.
The Tales of Beedle the Bard.
The old nanny. It was to her that Sam traced his entire interest in reading and science. Every story she'd told him sounded so wonderfully impossible that on some level he had wanted to prove them true. That young Sam had never really gone, but had grown more practical. Of course there were no such things as trolls and monsters; of course there was no such thing as magic.
But he knew better now, didn't he?
Sam flipped open the book. There was no ISBN, no date of publication, no note on edition, nothing to indicate it came from an era were books were not simple hand-bound. But even there there would be certain things to look for...the publisher's mark was nothing he'd ever seen, either, Pheonix Press.
A small smile flit across Sam's face. The nanny had up and left years ago, breaking Sam's heart and annoying his mother to no end. Not that he really needed a nanny by then, really, but his mother was like that. He had no idea she'd left the book. Even then, holding it something felt different about it though deep down Sam knew he must be grasping at straws.
Or not.
Either way, he didn't have anything to loose.
Location: London
Date: March 2nd, 2000
Status/Warning: Closed.
Summary: Sam comes home frustrated after a long day of wandering the docks. Home is no respite.
Completion: Complete.
"Oh, look it's my son, the wharf rat." A sweet voice announced between lips set in a chilly smile. Penny Kennerly set a plate of meatloaf and mashed potatoes in front of him as Sam tried desperately to breathe feeling back into his fingers. However bright the days were getting, the cold had refused to let up.
Spending nine hours at a time ducking in and out of every dive within a sane distance from home had not helped things of course. No one he questioned really minded, but he supposed that was because they had nothing to tell him. He heard them talk about The Gallagher as though it were just another story to scare cabin boys and greenhorns. Oh boy did they not know the half of it.
"Ah, sorry for being late, mum." Sam replied, digging in not because he was hungry but because he was cold and the food was hot.
Penny had suppressed every motherly instinct some time ago when it came to asking what had happened aboard The Gallagher that had her son on the doorstep almost two months ahead of schedule looking like he's been through hell and back. She did her motherly duty and slipped him a sleeping pill now and again when he woke screaming, calling a name her college education could make no sense of.
"Fenrir! Fenrir!"
Now, however, was another story.
"Sorry won't cut it anymore mister. I hope this isn't an idea of what we can expect when you start school again." Penny filled her own plate and sat, leaving the casserole dishes warming on the stove. With any luck, her husband would walk in any minute and they could be the united front they had never thought they would need to be.
"I'm not going to skip class mum," Sam assured her, looking offended. Bright green eyes narrowed a little across the table. "I'm just bored."
"And ignoring Emma."
Sam flinched.
"She stopped by again today...I just...it would be nice to tell her where you go every day."
A dusty blond head shook and a fork was gently set down on the table. "Er...It's just...Ahm...I'm looking for someone, mum. That's all."
Penny's brow furrowed. Her son was a terrible lair, she knew that, but even so...
Creaaak-Clack!
"I'm home!" Shoes kicked off and Nathaniel Kennerly followed the smell of food to their tiny but comfortable kitchen. There was a reluctant sort of triumph in his wife's eyes as she kissed him in welcome.
"Our son has finally decided to tell us why he's been skulking around the docks for days on end." Penny announced once they were all eating. Nathaniel eyed his son across the table, noting the hard glitter in bright green eyes that told him that Sam was in a frightful mood. Two bites were taken from his dinner, no salad had been procured and there wasn't even a lip mark on his glass of water.
"You don't need to tell us Sam. As long as you're home by dinner..." Nathaniel began, but a thunk of heavy porcelain cut him off.
"Doesn't need to tell us!" Penny spat, ignoring the fact that Sam had risen from his seat and marched upstairs to his bedroom without another word.
Their voices carried like two clashing measures of music, one slow, the other sharp and almost stacatto. Sam shut his bedroom door and hurled himself frustratedly onto the bed, face burried into a stiff pillow. Around the bed, books with strange titles were scattered: The History of the Occult, The Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology, Magic and Demonology, Werewolves in Reality and Popular Fiction, Shadow Cults, Yeats and the Kabalah, The Book of the Dead, The Book of Thoth...the list went on and on, shutting Sam into a low paper fort.
He was getting nowhere. Two weeks until the paperwork went through for him to return to school and he hadn't heard anything, not even a rumor, of Fenrir or Nessy. Tears peaked at the corner of his eyes and he bubbered there, but only for a moment. The old sense of worthlessness didn't win this time, it couldn't...not when Sam was there, surrounded by his memories. A silver-haired man leaning over the rail of a ship with a fishing rod, laughing; a monsterous eye staring at him from a wall, followed by the same man holding out his hand, offering so much more than just a steady counter-weight.
'My friends call me Fenrir. Welcome to my world.'
Newspaper clippings, a marked map of London, showing everywhere Sam had looked, places he planned to go, but he didn't have time for it anymore. Two weeks and his last window of oppertunity to devote worthwhile energy to his search would be gone.
"Bloody hell!" Sam cursed, sitting up and with a single arm sending the pillow flying at a low bookcase, where it hit, dislodging a thin hard-backed book. Faded lettering sparked another set of memories altogether. Sam stood slowly, approaching the book as though it were a long lost idol. A lean hand picked it up, thumbing over the barely legible wording.
The Tales of Beedle the Bard.
The old nanny. It was to her that Sam traced his entire interest in reading and science. Every story she'd told him sounded so wonderfully impossible that on some level he had wanted to prove them true. That young Sam had never really gone, but had grown more practical. Of course there were no such things as trolls and monsters; of course there was no such thing as magic.
But he knew better now, didn't he?
Sam flipped open the book. There was no ISBN, no date of publication, no note on edition, nothing to indicate it came from an era were books were not simple hand-bound. But even there there would be certain things to look for...the publisher's mark was nothing he'd ever seen, either, Pheonix Press.
A small smile flit across Sam's face. The nanny had up and left years ago, breaking Sam's heart and annoying his mother to no end. Not that he really needed a nanny by then, really, but his mother was like that. He had no idea she'd left the book. Even then, holding it something felt different about it though deep down Sam knew he must be grasping at straws.
Or not.
Either way, he didn't have anything to loose.