[prp] bistro brunch (eve + renard)

[cibarium]

"You know, some people like to recommend new food places to me by telling me the tea will be good."

Eve was idly spinning her spoon in her cup longer than she normally did, which betrayed the fact she was in unusual company. No meeting she'd had with Renard had ever been under mundane circumstances, and they certainly couldn't have been called friendly either. But now they were (finally) having a one-on-one talk, at what must have been the world's tiniest bistro.

She took a long sip of her tea, which was already cold, dammit. "They're always wrong."

shibrgane

 

[shibrogane]

Renard was having a no-good, very-bad week. His husband was missing, his daughter was practically climbing the walls, and he wasn't feeling well. But he'd been through no-good very-bad weeks before and come out the other end, so he kept his appointments and kept his head up.

He had a cup of coffee, which was fine, and a barely-touched plate of french toast, which was also fine. He was not a picky eater (except that he totally was).

"Familiarity breeds contempt," said Renard. "At least when it comes to food." He picked up his fork like he was going to take another bite of his brunch, but appeared stymied by the artistically arranged portion before him. (He should have gotten a mimosa, he thought; he deserved it.) "I do apologize for my lateness. Ascencion didn't want me to go."

cibarium

 

[cibarium]

"You mean Sunny?" Eve asked -- mostly as a means of feeling Renard out. His use of the formal name was offputting to her, though she had no good reasons for it besides personal history and instinct. "The store will survive another half hour without me, though, it's fine."

She'd gotten some scrambled eggs and a lemon crepe. The latter was her wife's influence, and it had disappeared in minutes.

shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

"Her name is Ascencion," said Renard. "My husband named her. If she chooses to have her friends call her something else, then that's as may be, but I will use her given name." He was a crotchety thousands-year-old man. "Or if she expresses to me that she wishes to be called something else," he added. The wants of other people came second to Ascencion's own preferences.

He sighed and reached for his coffee cup. "I'm sorry. I'm not myself today." Whether he was or not, he always seemed snippy and testy, so like, who knew. He probably was himself, just more stressed out.

cibarium

 

[cibarium]

Eve's composure was rattled slightly at Renard's response, which she'd defiinitely rolled herself right into, but it was still too familiar in ways she didn't want to be reminded of. This seemed to be a theme among the ancient immortal men in her life. Did being thousands of years old incline one to being kind of a douchebag?

"Of course," she replied deferentially. At least she was used to douchebags and other forms of grumpy people. "I brought your notebook. I was wondering if you would help get it open."

shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

He arched a well-manicured brow and said, "My notebook?" He held out a hand for her to pass it over. "I wasn't aware it wouldn't open. I apologize."

cibarium

 

[cibarium]

With a polite nod, Eve retrieved the notebook from her bag and handed it around the side of their criminally tiny table once she'd made sure no one was about to walk past them.

shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

Renard looked nonplussed at the notebook. It evidently was not very familiar to him; why would someone so put-together use a notebook like this?

He attempted to flip through it. The bulk of it went in one large chunk, which seemed to enlighten him as to something, since he said "Ah," and left it on the page to which it had opened. "Apparently my other self locked it." He scoped out the materials on the table and eventually just flagged down a waiter for a marker. Casually, he drew a complicated series of nested squares on the cover of the book. It ended up looking like nothing more complicated than a rose.

"Sub rosa," snarked Renard. He pressed his thumb to it like he might a fingerprint reader, and it flared a strange blue-purple (blurple) and disappeared. He waited a few seconds, then riffled through the pages, making sure they were all open. They were. "I always did love puns." He closed the book, and handed it back.

cibarium

 

[cibarium]

"Quite a display," said Eve, momentarily amused. "Thank you. Do you mind if I look through this for a moment? You look like you could use a break from being interviewed by mortals."

shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

"Technically I am presumably returned to mortal status," said Renard. "But if you wish."

He had a staring contest to win with his french toast, anyway.

The handwriting in the book was astonishingly legible. Renard didn't look like the type, but apparently he was. Each letter took up barely half the line it was on, so it was small and cramped and in flat black ink. Boring. Renard also didn't look like the type for that: he was basically covered from neck to... presumably at least his wrists in tattoos. They were visible beneath the cuffed sleeves of his button-down shirt, and remained colorful despite his many, many years.

Anyway:

The book turned out to be organized planner-style. The first few pages were blank: the months of April to June 1988. The first entry was on June 29th 1988, and it began like this:

Temperance died today. Couldn't get a city graveyard to take her. Have to go out to the boroughs. Liam is beside himself. Don't know what to do; can't let it go on. So hard to be safe. I refuse to lose the boys.

cibarium

 

[cibarium]

"Late 80's. The AIDS crisis?" Eve asked idly. She wasn't expecting Renard to confirm or clarify. Instead she continued scanning through the journal.

shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

"Genocide," said Renard. "It was a genocide." Besides that correction, he seemed content to continue with his coffee and french toast thing that he was doing.

There were other gaps. None as long as the gap in the beginning of the book, but still gaps. And some dates had smaller notes: Deaths, births, anniversaries. The deaths far outnumbered the births, and the book went much longer than a usual planner might. There were pages where the writing was dense and packed around sketches of something that might be constellations, notes on materials and times and tidal heights. The last pages were for the year 2017, and they stretched into what might be viewed as the future. The final note is for December 12, 2017. It says:

We found Ming's body today. Poorly hidden. I checked; not suicide. Jenni is still missing. I can't do this again. There's a change in the magic. Something's going to happen. Lyoshka is dead; Liam is beside himself. Haven't seen him this bad since Jamie and Shi. Can't do this again; almost done. There's hope.

Must finish soon. Henbane maybe?

cibarium

 

[cibarium]

The notebook was more of an ongoing obituary record than an explanation, but that was probably the point -- the rest was magical theory, or something, that would likely take hours to decipher and contextualize if it was worth doing so at all.

"You couldn't stop it," she observed simply. "What's this about changes in the magic though, at the end? Did you figure out what was happening?"

shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

Renard scowled. "Their cage," he said. "The first attempt had been made by then. I didn't know this at the time--I pieced it all together later--but it wasn't until their third attempt to seal me that they succeeded. Ming died the first time. Jenni the second. On the third attempt..." He hesitated. There was a piece of french toast and strawberry on his fork that he stared at as he sorted through his thoughts. "It worked. They wrapped all my magic up, all the magic I'd created or affected. The world reset, and it was the sixteen hundreds, for some ungodly ******** reason."

He stabbed his french toast. The fork was now ridiculously overloaded. "Ascencion was born almost two thousand years later. No one's body can contain that much magic for so long without suffering some ill side effects."

cibarium

 

[cibarium]

"I don't understand," blinked Eve. She had been, somehow still, expecting some sort of supervillain manifesto to reveal itself once the notebook had been opened. Instead the story she was getting was simply sad. "Why were they trying to cage you at all?"

shibrogane