[PRP] well past the middle of it [Alexis/Eve]

[Daekie]

Sometimes people still looked at them, when they wanted to shop with spare cash, cash that was legitimately theirs -- it burned, it hurt, and inevitably Alexis ended up buying something. They never got to window-shop from inside, anymore, even if it was just entering the shop on the whim; they'd buy knicknacks. Trinkets. Things that fit in their pockets but that they wouldn't, couldn't steal.

It was routine at this point, really. Specialty stores, unique, out-of-towners; it was a way to pass time. There were so many options for purchases they'd never thought about before. They'd taken to perusing antique shops, foreign sweets, anywhere that wasn't too classy for them to blend in with other possible customers. Well. Most other customers.

"Do I know you," Alexis asked, looking at Eve with a little suspicion. She looked familiar -- they couldn't place it, but the wheelchair was more than a little distinctive.

cibarium

 

[cibarium]

Between preparing to bewitch a pinecone to embody elemental fire and trying to progress further on her chronomancy project, Eve had a rather interesting shopping list to complete. Some of the items were just vague descriptions of qualities she needed to find in something. Right now she was looking at a collection of mineral samples on a table, trying to decide whether she wanted to deal with crystals at all. They weren't normally her thing. She was frowning at them like she'd spotted a dead bug on the table when someone spoke to her.

"Not well enough to know my name," she replied, not turning her gaze to the stranger just yet. "You're a magic user?"

Yes, she did just ask as much about the shifty looking kid with the ******** ankle bracelet on, in the middle of the god damned store.

daekie

 

[Daekie]

"Um," Alexis said, very eloquently, and fumbled the book they were holding for a few seconds before catching it and putting it down on the nearby table. "I -- was, yeah. Sorry. Nobody's asked me in a few months." (They hadn't talked to very many people in the past few months. It seemed inappropriate, to start interacting while they felt so hollowed-out.) They didn't try to smile, because it wasn't funny, and they had the feeling she wouldn't appreciate it all that much anyways. "Void, then, right?"

Now they were looking at her with restrained interest, and a tiny little flicker of fear. Not the place or time, Alexis.

cibarium

 

[cibarium]

At the was, Eve looked up and turned to regard Alexis more properly, and nodded at the mention of the Void. "Spinel Lady got to you too, did she?"

daekie

 

[Daekie]

Alexis bit their lip. "Yeah. It was her right - I should've listened. But I didn't, so." They gestured to themself. "Back to all this." They gripped their left wrist with their right hand, eyes cast down. "Whatever. What're you here for? And -- I didn't know she did it t'anyone else."

cibarium

 

[cibarium]

Eve frowned again at Alexis's assessment of their situation, but made no comment. "I'm shopping for spell reagants," she answered plainly. "What about you?"

daekie

 

[Daekie]

"I like to look." They shrugged. "It's cultured to have a variety of interests, right? Now that I've got the time, tryin' to figure out what I actually think is nice." Alexis poked the book they'd previously placed on the table, lip curled. "This ain't it, at least. But y'saw me puttin' it down, so we're good."

cibarium

 

[cibarium]

"Why would..." Eve started, puzzled at Alexis's last comment, but then she peered down and saw the ankle bracelet. Oh. Her expression turned a little sympathetic, though her general demeanor was still cool at best -- being approached by a stranger in someone else's store had a completely different context than being approached in her own.

She'd turned back to the table to consider the samples locked away in a display case. "That's not a bad use of your time. I've had plenty of time to reacquaint myself with my own humanity, seeing as I'm stuck that way." It was still unpleasant to acknowledge. Eve could easily imagine the inner fox she'd lost locked in a cage, starved and pacing behind the bars.

"If we're going to continue speaking, I'd like to know your name. Mine is Eve."

daeie

 

[Daekie]

"Alexis." Their tone went a little softer, at her sympathetic words. "I was Scholz' tithe, if you remember him. Dunno where he went." Their hands interlocked -- fingers twisted, twined, to pass off extra energy; their nails dug white scratches into their knuckles. "Guess he did a bad job with me."

They paused, for a few seconds, looking over the samples as well. "You normally into this kinda stuff?"

cibarium

 

[cibarium]

A couple of pieces had caught Eve's eye for the moment, and she retrieved her phone to Google them and check on their traditional uses. "I've been doing witchcraft for years," she answered, "but never used crystals much, they just don't agree with me. I'm looking at them because I needed to branch out for my project."

She looked at Alexis again. "You wouldn't happen to know where I can find a whole skeleton of a small animal, would you?"

daekie

 

[Daekie]

Alexis frowned a little, contemplative. "Alois' store should still be around, right? Mount Me or somethin' stupid like that. They're taxidermy, that's dead stuff." They spoke quietly, in the sort of tone that - if not carefully watched - would sound half-conspiratorial. "Never been, but I -" they swallowed - "I think he talked 'bout it, couple'a times."

cibarium

 

[cibarium]

The name of the taxidermy store made Eve wrinkle her nose. She clearly wasn't a fan. "Might as well put it on the list," she decided anyway, tapping away at her phone again for a few seconds as she did so.

"By the way, Noble patrons always do a bad job. The Court's practically designed that way." Lady was at the forefront of her mind as she spoke. Now, more than ever, she was properly angry at Ezra for what he'd done to her -- she didn't need to hear any details to know better than the Spinel Lady still wasn't good. "If I were you I'd take your loss as... maybe not a blessing in disguise. But it's a chance to make more of yourself than what the Court demands of people, this time apart from it."

daeki

 

[Daekie]

Alexis flinched, when Eve mentioned patrons always did a bad job; it was one thing to hear it from other Nobles (not other, not anymore, but Other) about how the Court should be torn down, because they knew, they'd lived it and lived in it - they could list the fine bones of the hand, the tendons; they could remember Alois breaking their fingers for failure to memorize properly, for failure to retain information. It was the sharpest point of their memories there. But Eve -- she hadn't been a Noble, not the way she talked, so how dare she -

it was stupid. It was stupid. They put the thought aside for later, because anything and everything had to work for anything to be okay again.

"I want 'em back, but." They didn't smile. "With everythin' else goin' on - better I don't hurt anyone again. It was too easy, like that. I don't want people to have to keep cleanin' up for my messes."

(They were lying, but they didn't know it, because they wanted it to be true. They wanted it to be true that it was their fault, that the disadvantages of them having magic outweighed anything else, because then it was okay.)

cibarium

 

[cibarium]

"It's still possible to do magic, even without the innate abilities," Eve said with a sigh. She was waving an employee down to unlock the display case after all. "The Spinel Lady can't take that touch of power completely away from you, I think. Ultimately this makes you as powerless as you want to be." A lesson hard-earned in her case. She still hadn't truly broken through the depression and feeling of emptiness; it was simply a motivator now instead of an obstacle.

"And ultimately I intend to get all my magic back," she continued. "It's why you found me here. At least in part."

daek

 

[Daekie]

"I know 's still there." Alexis smiled, a little sardonically. "It's -" they held their left wrist with their right hand, fingers curled, knuckles white - "there, but 's blocked off to me. Let's give an example, though -- y'fall into this world, you're married to someone you've never met, been married to them for years. It's not your life. Would you really want to live it?"

cibarium