[ closed-ish ] not till I can read by the moon am I going anywhere

[gramarye]

Who: Benji, Philomena, Shrieky, Wolfgang, guests maybe??
What: Slice of life.
When: Over the past few weeks, stuff can be backdated etc.
Where: Nawiedzonydom, Badside
Notes: Put up a subthread in here with maybe a description of your character's usual daily routine and/or any unusual happenings that may have occurred lately? Things other characters would have noticed about them? Weird habits etc? Then tag each other? Yes this is a good plan.
Warnings: None yet!

The house is a fairly large property and while it looks a bit frightening on the outside — Wolfgang never seems to get around to fixing that much, he always has a million other more pressing projects to distract him — it's turning out quite nicely. He's filled it with proper furniture, a working kitchen, even decorations, a lot of local art, some "donated" by his weirdo artsy friends. The yard is coming back to life from the long neglect it's suffered from before, but slowly, like it's shy.

There's a fence around the backyard now, high enough to keep the pets from jumping over. There's a rumour around town that the house is haunted, but that's probably because most of the people who live in it are a little eccentric.

Comments

[cestrumnocturnum]

A couple of weeks ago, Benji came home asking for help to bring a tank upstairs, one that a spider was due to live in. She'd been apologetic-- "I was thinking of getting a bird, or a plant..."-- but very taken with the idea of owning a tarantula. She'd been declared as 'Hannah'. Sometimes, the eight-legged pet is taken from the tank, but often goes unhandled, content to feed her grasshoppers and watch her navigate hills of dirt, branches, an upside down plant pot.

Her work hours are erratic, tailored to suit the needs of those she visits to tutor, which is sometimes in the early evening, sometimes on the weekends, sometimes in the morning and leaving her afternoon free. She brings books home from the library, invites Shrieky to sit down with her, shows passages that she likes in particular, tries to get him to enjoy reading more as he improves. Benji will wander Baedal, a lot, and take opportunities to nap; she sleeps more than most people, and probably for good reason.

Sometimes she will be moved to use the kitchen for more than just simple meals. Baking is more her area, although she has attempted to cook dinner for everyone before, something English and fishy and acrid that only the resident Mermaid liked, but she does better with desserts. Dense fruit slices with flaky pastry, pies and ganache, truffles made of chocolate and cookies rolled in dried coconut. Breads with spices to accompany the Middle Eastern meals Wolfgang might create. As the weather continues warmer, one can find sealed jugs of sangria in the fridge, using pale wines and mint leaves and lemon or lime slices clinging to the wet glass from the inside. Iced teas.

Despite the people she lives with, her wardrobe doesn't spontaneously become more exciting, almost more conscious of herself when surrounded by butterfly people. The exception is the inclusion of a silk robe that is a stunning shade of icy blue with embroidery, but didn't cost so much that she can't swan around in it over less exciting shirt and pants when she isn't going out anywhere. A dress was bought, sleek and black, and has since lived in her wardrobe.

She is used to communal living, and tidies if she can see it. She reads a lot to pass the time, outside and inside, in shared space as well as her room, freely coaxed into doing other things when asked or invited, whether it's a simple conversation or leaving the house to go somewhere. If she needs time to herself, she retreats to her room, usually in sudden fits of homesickness.

Then there are dreams. She makes a point not to invade the heads of her housemates in any regular fashion, but there are exceptions. The standardised attempts to lessen Shrieky's nightmares, but Philomena and Wolfgang may be visited as well, just to say 'hi' or smooth a rumpled dream, whether letting them know she is there or not. She can usually sense whether her presence is wanted; unwanted invasions may mean a note left beneath their door the next morning.

Sorry! :( - B

Dreams sometimes drive her out of sleep. She will be found downstairs, in the kitchen or outside, bare foot and drinking tea or wine or simply milk, sometimes frazzled, sometimes serene, sometimes not wholly there.

[gramarye]

Making this decision took a lot of thought. The idea of getting help, or just being helped, or not being alone — isn't this what he wanted? But wanting and having are two different things, and he tells himself it's not that he's afraid of the unknown, it's that nobody deserves to be subjected to what goes on when he sleeps. He has secrets he tells himself are important. He tells himself it's considerate. Someone could get hurt.

Someone else could get hurt.

So he does something on the roof, which is where he always goes to do magic, something that feels like the slow building pressure of diving into the deep sea. And after that, no dreams. He could call it a fence, but no, it's a wall around his head, so high it blocks out any sky entirely. It's invisible but still somehow there, somehow solid, and somehow at once both transparent and opaque. On the sides, you can see the imprints of his dream sometimes in the form of graffiti: nonsense words, a dead girl, a painted hole opening to the other side not actually there, a little boy with his face pressed against it, blowing on it and drawing shapes in the fog. They're gone afterwards, like the police come by to paint over them.

This was a few weeks ago.

He keeps odd hours, so it's not unusual for him to already be in the kitchen this early in the morning, having already knocked back half a glass of shitty box wine. It's still nearly dark outside, false dawn turning the sky into a pale grey that washes everything out. He looks up when he hears footsteps through the threshold, blinks bearily, then smiles wryly, like it takes his face a few seconds to keep up with his mind. To be fair, it is the asscrack of dawn. "You too?"

[cestrumnocturnum]

"Seems so."

She slows, when company makes itself known, but doesn't stop, meeting smile for smile, eyes still sleepy but made somewhat vibrant for it, electric blue encouraged from turquoise dressing gown. Not immediately joining Wolfgang at the table, Benji comes to stop at the fridge, opening it and doing the 'just woke up' stare into its innards, as if scrying for something or waiting for a sign as to what she wants out of it. That, and part of her is still back in bed, beyond bed, wistfully clinging to something that isn't here.

At first she hadn't been able to tell what Wolfgang had done; it's different to telepathy, or willpower. Draws to mind fogged glass, and Benji had slid away into some other dreamscape after only leaving the faint impression of her having been there, a flickering thought, absent and intangible. This hadn't been tonight.

Outside the nearest window, a particularly zealous bird chirps his or her joy for the coming dawn, eliciting a small sound of protest from Benji as she takes a glass for herself. "Don't judge me," is-- at the bird, not Wolfgang. What is to Wolfgang; "How're you?"

[gramarye]

Wolfgang groans and puts his head in his hands. Well, that would answer that, but he is being slightly comically exaggerated about it, because he's just complaining, not... actually sick or anything.

There is a cup of coffee sitting on the table in front of him, although given how he is, it could actually be his third or fourth. Either way, it's cold now, up until he touches the rim of it and it abruptly starts to steam again. He shifts, one hand over his face and covering one eye, the other dropping to the table, fingernails running between the grooves. "It's too early to live," he says, voice sleepy-hoarse and low because he's not sure who else is awake or asleep, including pets.

[cestrumnocturnum]

There's the sound of trickling fluid, Benji not bothering to remove the box of white from the fridge and she fills a water glass with a conservative helping, enough to make the road of going back to sleep a little smoother, she thinks. She grins at that answer, containing herself to that; being quiet, yes, for those that keep more normal schedules, including the cat and the dog. (The spider is fine.) It's also good, a belated, sleepy realisation, that Wolfgang is responding at all. That is never a total guarantee.

She sits down nearby, sort of feeling her way around the kitchen rather than trusting her still bleary attention span. "Bed after this," she says, words already muffled into glass as she takes a sip, wincing a little; strong taste for the morning, but. Coffee made warm again renews, too, its scent, and she tips a look to it over her own choice of beverage. "Are there cows to milk? Or. Other things people do at ridiculous hours."

[gramarye]

"Cows and other things..." He says this, pauses, and pulls a bit of a face. "Ah, sorry." He's pretty sure that's cow milk, at least. Pretty sure. Not that the weirdness of Baedal's fauna is a surprise, but probably not what one needs to be reminded of at this ungodly hour.

He slides his hand down his face, cups his chin and squints vaguely. "Sewers to fix, apparently." Which is what he should be doing in two hours when his shift starts, but honestly, he'll probably get halfway through getting ready, fall back asleep on the couch, and miss it. Again.

[cestrumnocturnum]

"That sounds like a terrible thing to deal with in the morning." Her tone is serene, gently sympathetic to Wolfgang's plight, although only in the way that hints at jobs, huh? "I just have, mm. Commuting. This afternoon. Gallmarch? It's literally--" Vague gesture that is probably facing the wrong direction. "--on the other side of everything. I have to take the train."

Which isn't a problem if she is with someone who she can latch to or get lost with, but she hasn't yet shaken off the nervousness of missing a stop somehow, or being unable to beat the crowd, or just. Being in the crowd in general. "I'm probably going to be late." Yes, well, especially if you think wine is a valid choice at this hour in order to sleep.

[gramarye]

"It's terrible to deal with at every hour." Wolfgang you're not funny, you are actually a huge dork. "The velociraptors are nocturnal, anyway. I wouldn't trade you, I hate going that far." The trains are not bad here, it's just kind of a big city, and thus a long trip -- he used to go out to Flag Hill a lot until Tanoreen opened. He still does sometimes, and it's still not a fun trip. He blinks, bleary still, rubs at his eye hard enough to see spots. "Work thing?"

[cestrumnocturnum]

"Yes. It's more difficult for her to go somewhere than it is for me," handwave, "and I don't want to bring people back here. I guess it's-- um, the job, it's not going awful enough to the point of comedy; I keep getting cases." Benji is bringing her drink up to sip, but then lowers it again, repeating a keyword in her mind that she'd dismissed but manages to resurface;

"Velociraptors?"

[gramarye]

"You can, you know, ah -- if it'd be easier for some of them. It's fine, I don't mind." He's not sure how the others feel about it, but he's okay with it. He spends so much time asleep, he probably wouldn't even notice.

"Mm. There are a bunch underground. Albino, they can't handle sunlight." He folds his arms on the table, leaning over, chin resting on top of them. "They're important to the ecosystem because they eat the sewer rats and landsharks, but." ... but they are fucking velociraptors!! Fuck this city.