[prp] Put the kettle on (Eve/Lily)

[AMItotic]

It was about a week away, and Lily felt it. The call of the full moon cut sharper than the dull din of the rain bleeding in from the otherworld, the strange murmurs of anxiety growing throughout the town as tremors continued to quake, day after day. She'd been in the treetops when one of them hit, and had nearly fallen fifteen feet if not for some fast hands, but even despite her newfound hesitance towards heights she felt the urge to climb, to get away from the ground floor.

It was one thing to go to the gym and work herself until she was too tired to care, but Lily could only do that for so long before she broke something, and if her conversation with Shun had any indications for the future, it meant that she needed to be in top form for whatever incoming bullshit they were about to face. It left her with only one option, genuine human interaction with peers who understood.

Personally, she sort of preferred the idea of doing pull-ups until she tore a muscle.

It took her a few days to work up the verve, but eventually Lily managed to drive herself to Eve's tea-shop, staring at the storefront for a good five minutes before deciding to let herself in. It was the early afternoon, the shop was open, but Lily couldn't help but feel a bit furtive as she entered the empty shop, glancing over the fragrant shelves.

"Mom? You in?" As an afterthought, Lily shuffled her way to sitting on the counter, being polite enough to let her boots hang off the edge. It wasn't much height, and she was already eyeing the shelves, but if nothing else it took the edge off.

cibarium

 

[cibarium]

"Hiya!"

That wasn't Eve's voice, and furthermore it was coming from a large box. It heaved itself onto the counter and was pushed out of the way to reveal the werefox's twiggy, strawberry blonde wife, Leila. "Sorry, got roped in to help with holiday season inventory. Eve's here though, I'll skip back and let her know--"

They made eye contact. Leila squinted and flinched a bit as her mind fired up with a series of images, cycling insistently like flash cards until she could make sense of them. She held a pair of fingers up to her forehead. Not because it would help her concentrate or anything, but because these visions always ******** hurt. "********, wait. Just stay right there. Almost got it... right. Holy s**t, you don't know you can make snowballs appear? Like. Right in your hand. At least, I'm pretty sure that's what I'm getting. You just, kind of..."

She held a hand out to demonstrate, fingers curled and palm up as if she was already holding something.

There was a small puff of cold air and suddenly Leila had a snowball.

Now Leila was gritting her teeth from the effort took to not squeal with delight. But she looked... well, she looked like a kid on Christmas morning.

AMItitties

 

[AMItotic]

Lily nearly jumped as a box appeared on the counter, but did her best not to look utterly spooked when Leila popped up. She started to wave, to perhaps offer moving her a** off of valuable counterspace, but she paused as the woman began to seize. Did something happen? Did she pull a muscle? Lily glanced from the rubbing motion on her forehead to the ground, trying to find a sensible solution to what was going on. Eve was going to be pissed if she found out that Lily somehow broke her wife.

But the moment passed, and Lily responded to the strange statement with a slow tilt of her head. "I...what?" She blinked in surprise when Leila simply willed a snowball into being, then nodded, clearly impressed.

"That's pretty sw--whoa," she responded, looking down at a sudden chill in one of her hands. Sure enough, she had one too, a good few months before it was even supposed to snow. Wide-eyed, she dropped the mysterious object, and it splattered with a dull squelch on the floor, still there and still cold and wet. Tentatively, she nudged at it with her feet, and the icy slush moved around, just like real snow.

"That's badass," she murmured softly, staring in awe at the mess on the ground.

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[cibarium]

Leila tensed a bit when Lily's own snowball collapsed into rapidly liquefying slush on the hardwood at their feet. "Oh, that's..."

Lily was tossed a large wine-red hand towel and in the same second, Eve had appeared behind the counter. "I don't mind magic in the store, dear, but I do mind it ruining my floors," she said, sternly -- but she was smiling, so she wasn't terribly angry. "Get that cleaned up, would you? Pet, you're dripping."

The second bit was directed at Leila, who blushed a bit and quickly retreated to the back room so she could toss her own snowball in the sink.

amitotic

 

[AMItotic]

"Okay, Mom," Lily rolled her eyes, but nevertheless smiled as she shuffled obediently from her space at the counter to mop up the mess. On a whim she stared at the snowball, willing it to not exist, but it seemed her domain over the ice and cold was a limited and flighty thing.

"If we're being honest here, she started it," Lily nodded at the redhead as she ducked away to the back room. She stood slowly, holding the wet towel with two hands to prevent any kind of further drips on the floor. "Did you know your wife can hand out super powers?"

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[cibarium]

"Sounds like she had a vision," Eve guessed. "Leila can see glimpses of a person's future sometimes. She must have seen you summon a snowball. The fact she can also do it herself is probably a coincidence."

Probably. Coincidences were nuanced things when magic was involved.

"Anyway, what can I do for you?"

amitotic

 

[AMItotic]

"Well s**t, that's cool too," Lily remarked, leaning against the counter. At a loss as to what to do with the towel, she held it at her stomach and fidgeted, trying to keep her fingers from going numb.

At Eve's question, she flattened her expression, glancing away. "I wanted to talk pack stuff, if that's cool," she said lowly, her eyes distant. "I just...I dunno anymore. Some spooky s**t is about to go down, and I thought we were supposed to be these, like, spooky parole officers, but it feels like we can't do anything, and I don't even know what we are supposed to do."

Lily wasn't normally the sort to try and grab responsibilities by the horns, but for once it felt better than the staggering sensation of helplessness.

cibarium

 

[cibarium]

Eve wordlessly held out a hand for the towel so she could take it back from Lily, and following that hold it out for Leila to grab and take care of during a wordless dip back into the front room to grab something else. "I've been thinking about what we've been told, actually," she admitted, all too willing to talk Pack Stuff with the young fisher. "We're supposed to keep the otherworld from encroaching on this one, and what did damaging the cage seem to do?" A gesture to the window was all it took to indicate she was talking about the weather in both Ashdowns. "Maybe it's time to start looking for a different job."

amitotic

 

[AMItotic]

"Yeah, damaging the cage, not actually helpful I guess," Lily huffed, crossing her arms once she was free of the damp towel. "I'm still not even sure what we were supposed to do there, either, except not get people killed, which we also didn't do, so we're two for two on failing at the party."

She hunched her shoulders, frowning as she considered Eve's proposition. "Okay, but what kind of s**t resume do we even have? Because as far as I know, turning into little furry friends does s**t for protecting people, or saving lives, or fixing the weather, or anything." She was trying not to pout, but it was hard trying to figure out what to do with all her newfound adult werefisher responsibilities and she didn't like it.

cibarium

 

[cibarium]

"Honestly, I'm not sure we need to be up to anything that any other Visitor could be up to," Eve admitted. "But believe that last party gave us some hints of what we used to be up to, now that you mention it. Did you catch that we're exempt from tithing?"

AMItotic

 

[AMItotic]

"Umm..." Lily shuffled, thinking back to all the talking that had taken place in the parlors. "I know we didn't need our masks, which meant we couldn't be...sacrificed...to strengthen the cage, or weaken it, whichever it would do."

The look she gave Eve was hesitant, like she wasn't quite putting the dots together. "So...we...aren't any good at being sacrificed?"

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[cibarium]

"That's not all that means," Eve replied.

Leila, in response to some keen wifely instincts, had brought up a full and boiling kettle for the teapot, offering Lily a friendly grin before placing it on the table near the entrance and skipping her way back to the back room (but not until after Eve gratefully pulled her town for a peck on the cheek). The werefox waved Lily along to follow her over the table while she went to work steeping some oolong.

"You remember Lady? She's a Noble now, same as the rest of the Court we met at the party. And now that she's out of the woods, she's living with us. It's something she's still processing, of course, but one thing I learned is that being a tithe also means being on... a sort of trial. Those who pass get a seat in the Court."

AMItotic

 

[AMItotic]

Lily's glance peeked up when she heard Lady's name. "So she's okay now?" It was good to hear, but it made Lily confront a strange feeling, one where she realized she hadn't ever really questioned Lady's safety, that she'd just sort of assumed that Lady had it together with all of her powers and know-how. She'd also sort of assumed that Lady was pack of some sort, though the more she thought about it the more it made sense. None of the pack could shift like that on this side of Ashdown, so she had to be something else. Kin, not kind.

"So we can't ever be on the court," she clarified, and something about that felt weird, too, because it wasn't like she wanted to be kidnapped, but there was something nevertheless disappointing about being written off as ineligible. "And that's a...good thing?"

She followed Eve to the table, itching for something to do with her hands. "Um, do you need any help, or should I just..."

cibarium

 

[cibarium]

"Not right now, but thanks for offering." Eve had the teapot steeping and some cups ready with the calm speed of someone who'd done it countless times. She'd given a nod of assurance when asked about Lady's well-being, but chose not to elaborate -- the girl was having some trouble in recovery, but it wasn't her place to elaborate on it.

"I've been thinking," she continued, "that we don't know how common the kidnapping approach has been historically." Her speaking was even, contemplative and probably familiar to Lily at this point, as she gave her theories. "And since we're supposed to be protecting people on this side from otherworldly influence, well... a victim of a noble's kidnapping certainly fits that description, doesn't it?"

AMItotic

 

[AMItotic]

Lily paused to consider the other woman's theory. "I just figured it was always how they did things--fairies kidnapping kids, that's a thing, right?" But Eve had a point--they had no way of knowing if this was the norm or if it was some other twist in their cycle, which apparently was already all sorts of messed up.

"Yeah, that sounds about right...so we need to stop the court from taking more people?" It sounded like a feat easier said than done--no one had even realized that the original victims were doubles until the ball itself, and it wasn't like they had much of a crime scene to search for when people were outright replaced.

"Is that a thing we could do?"

cibarium