[prp] witching amateur hour (eve + jer)

[cibarium]

Tea wasn't tasting the same since losing her fox senses, even a month later, so after finding none of her usuals enjoyable Eve found herself turning to a common old standby she once found beneath her: Earl Grey. Earl Grey was for the stuffy and unadventurous. It was for people who only drank English breakfast and Earl Grey; maybe Irish breakfast if they were feeling daring. But bergamot at least had a taste and a smell suited for a human.

Speaking of: there was a human she needed to do some catching up with. She slowly composed a text message with irritated and bandaged fingers:

azuredreams

to: jeremiah m

made some earl grey.
come help me drink it?

 

[azuredreams]

c1barium

tab text to: eve fitzpatrick

you know i'll never turn down tea.
of any kind, if i am honest.
i'll be at the back door in a moment.

Jeremiah was, in fact, at the back door and knocking politely before poking his head in. "Eve?" he called out, looking for her. She was likely nearby, if she had been making tea.  

[cibarium]

"Here," Eve waved from her seat at the dining room table. She did this without having turned to look at him, obviously engrossed with the task she was busying herself with. It involved Renard's notebook, opened to a page with a simple circular diagram, a scattered few pages of notes on looseleaf paper -- Eve and Aleksy's handwriting were both present there -- and several more pages of aforementioned diagram copied over and over in Eve's hand.

"You know where everything is, have a seat here when you're all set up. I'm hoping this will be worth your time." Her tone was flat, a little weary, but still friendly.

azuredreams

 

[azuredreams]

"I'll make myself a cuppa and be right there," he called out, friendly as ever himself. Jeremiah joined her not even a handful of moments later, looking over the dining room table.

His cup was set down - very carefully - as he continued to look at what was done. Something about the diagram made his head spin but he couldn't say why.

"Research?" he inquired, taking a seat and then a sip of his tea.

cibarium

 

[cibarium]

"Yes," Eve answered. "In theory." She huffed, pushing some of her hair back behind her. "In practice it's a lot of staring down the material feeling like an idiot." If it hadn't been for Aleksy, she might never have gotten anywhere: now, at least, there was an array of colored post-it tabs stuck to some pages to give her a sense of all the broad topics she could find there.

"But I think I might finally have made some progress." The latest attempt she'd made at copying the circle was on a piece of her finer stationery she used to make labels and personalized notes. After centering it in front of her she reached for a pincushion an arm's length away on the table, and between that and the bandages and the tiny spatters of blood on some of the papers it was kind of obvious what she was up to.

azuredreams

 

[azuredreams]

Jeremiah watched, eyes widening slightly as he noted the blood and the bandages and- "Eve," he said slowly, "what exactly are you researching?"

Then it took him a moment, just another one, before he clicked. "Is this that book from Renard?"

cibarium

 

[cibarium]

"Yes, it is," said Eve, as she emptied some rubbing alcohol into the bottle's cap and dipped a pin in it. "And what I am researching, is magic." Of course. She pricked one of her fingers again and another drop of blood dotted her nice, expensive paper.

"I remembered Aleksy mentioned this one might work better with a captive audience, so I'm being a little dramatic on purpose," she admitted with a smirk. "The earl grey might have been a bribe. Would you say it's working?"

It was unclear whether she meant the tea or the allegedly magic circle.

azuredreams

 

[azuredreams]

Jeremiah watched her before he let out a snort. "I can't say," he let out a breath, "but I am certainly intrigued to see what you are doing."

Then he deliberately took a sip of his earl grey, watching Eve as she dotted blood on the paper.

cibarium

 

[cibarium]

Besides the sight and almost imperceptible sound of it, it didn't seem like anything had happened. Nothing was flashing or vibrating or producing unpleasant blends of smell and flavor. Eve peered down, frowned, then retrieved a pencil. "One of the tricks here is you have to assume it worked until it doesn't," she said, and held the pencil a few inches above the circle, and let go.

It stayed in the air, unmoving, and after registering that was the case, Eve had never looked so smug in her life.

"I'm a witch, Chief. I can float pencils."

azuredreams

 

[azuredreams]

Jeremiah watched and then chuckled at the sight. "Well, then I would say you're doing well. Should I ask if you're Tara or Willow?"

No one would ever mention Kennedy. No one.

It was something else to see magic performed, this kind at least, in Ashdown. Then he was blinking rapidly and looking over to Eve. "Have you- Are you gaining your magic back?"

cibarium

 

[cibarium]

"No," Eve replied bluntly. "Either the Spinel Lady wasn't very thorough, or anyone can do magic the hard way now." She had a weary tone that underlined just how hard it was.

"It's a lot like programming," she continued, idly pulling pins out of the pincushion and placing them in the air around the pencil. "This is a 'Hello World,' more or less, except it took me almost four days instead of half an hour."

azuredreams

 

[azuredreams]

"I would assume that certain methods are still available to you," Jeremiah replied lightly. "You had magic in you before you gained magic." Or, at least, Jeremiah had always thought she did. Perhaps he was wrong but there was magic in what she did.

He listened and nodded, overlooking what she was working on. "So are you following things outlined by this? Or are you using it as a guideline to try your own?" There was sympathy in the fact it took her four days and not less than that but the fact that she was doing things with the pencil in the air was impressive.

cibarium

 

[cibarium]

"I haven't gotten far enough to say," Eve admitted. "Like I said, this one's basically a teaching tool. Or a proof of concept." The underlying point: something simple to start with. "The important thing I had to understand is that nothing's actually floating in that circle. It's... being stopped... from falling." Her last line was delivered a little metronomically, and she gave an incredulous look to the circle as if she were still demanding to know why it dared pull that kind of semantic bullshit on her.

"Renard's always seemed... finicky," she frowned. "You probably have to be that way to be good at magic, or at least the kinds he was trying to do."

Eve looked up at him with a curious expression.

"Did you know he officiated our wedding once?"

azuredreams

 

[azuredreams]

"Knowing the outcomes, the consequences, of the magic you are casting," replied Jeremiah in understanding a wry smile on his lips because of the look on Eve's face.

"I can't say I'm surprised to hear that." Another sip of tea was taken. "I was, or have been, at some point a father figure to him." Not anymore for obvious reasons. "No clue about Algie but I think I found a picture of Liam, Renard, Alg and myself out at some social gathering dining together."

His gaze flicked back down once more to the blood she had spilled.

"He is a man who knows himself and just what he is capable of. It is what makes him a formidable magic-user but also what makes his notes hard to work through. It's something that you've worked some of this out, Eve."

cibarium

 

[cibarium]

Imagining Jeremiah as a father figure in another life was easy, except for the part where Eve may have been decades younger at the time. Hadn't they talked about her being his grandmother once? Weird.

"I wouldn't have gotten anywhere without Aleksy's help," Eve replied with a dismissive wave. "And I'm starting to realize I can't just read around the diary entries." She flipped to a page unmarked by Post-it tabs and slid it to Jeremiah to take a look at: news of someone's declining health, and a self-reminder about a hospital visit, could be found there.

"It's the work, and the reasons why it was being done. If I ignore that, I'm ignoring the consequences Renard was trying to achieve." Eve sighed a little, taking a long drink of tea and tapping the cap end of a pen quietly against the table. "That'll limit what I can do, ultimately."

azuredreams