Open!

[mayqueen]

Who: Ivy and you!
What: Wandering, irritation, flowers? Come and bother a barefoot green woman wearing a leotard made of plants.
Where: Mostly around Mog Hill, extending into the surrounding districts (Bonetown, Saltbur, Pincod, Echomire, as far as the river to the west and south) - also the forest in Sobek Croix, around the evening.
When: Today (Coardi)
Warnings: Unlikely but will edit as needed.

She had to convince herself to take anything except her seed case. The vouchers and the money were stuffed into an empty compartment she kept for discoveries made on the road; though she had no intention of staying at the Valhalla Inn, or buying clothes for that matter, perhaps they'd have value as currency. Taking the CiD had been the hardest decision to make - she couldn't imagine a more blatantly obvious tracking device - but overall it was better to be informed than not and she'd bound it to her waist with vines for the time being.

Her encounters with the staff at the Inn had been fleeting to say the very least. Now she was outside, feet planted on the earth, and the faintly disturbing pamphlet had been accurate: this wasn't home. The plants spoke to her, mostly, sometimes in tones and languages she didn't yet understand - but they didn't recognize her, didn't love her as they did anywhere on her Earth. It prompted a sense of loneliness she wasn't familiar with; even in Arkham's most secure cells she'd always been aware of the Green just outside its walls, waiting for her to step back into its embrace.

For time time being she was wandering, taking in the lay of the land, sometimes hesitating for passing glances at the shops and business but not straying inside. More often it would be trees or wild flowers that would make her stop, her eyes closing briefly, the act of communication sometimes coaxing a little extra life from the plants she paused to speak with.

Comments

[behindfirelight]

Liaising with the sheriffs is a standard part of Sol's day job; it's a courtesy that they're better off paying than not in most cases, making sure an area's given local-level law enforcement has at least some vague idea of what Hellsing agents are doing in their canton. Saves hassle, toes getting stepped on, people getting hurt over what amount to bureaucratic misunderstandings - he's down-to-earth charismatic and good with people in a way that's essential to making Hellsing's administration a little more palatable to other people's boots on the ground when his superiors still aren't really used to having to accommodate anyone else.

Cutting a long story short, it's not as unusual as it sounds at first blush to see Captain Desk Job out and about in the city, and much of the plant-life in his more familiar routes is already familiar with him and the friendly way he connects and listens to them by instinct and innate gift. He's subtler and more discreet in it than Ivy by necessity and practicality (he's more useful if the full extent of his capabilities aren't well-known or easily traced), but perhaps it'll be hard for her to miss when he tips his hand to her as he goes by and the roses that grow wild seem to know his name.

He's always done well with roses.

[wontturntofoam]

Shrieky's moods in Baedal are strangely cyclical. He swings between elation and rage, the desire to be liked and the urge to antagonize. Sometimes he goes between contentment at being somewhere where he's acknowledged - where he's not alone or ignored and it's the best feeling in the world and he'll never let it slip away - to a blistering, panicked state of uncontrollable overstimulation.

Sometimes everything just becomes too much for him. There are too many people in the streets and the city is too large and nothing stops moving and his feet always seem to hurt. Sometimes he accidentally thinks about the vastness of the universe and how small a part of it he is (which was never a problem when the universe seemed constrictingly small). Other times, he'll feel suddenly as if he's not himself anymore. As though losing his loneliness, slowly giving up his rage, takes something else from him as well, something defining and important that he won't get back once it's gone.

When these thoughts come to him, all he wants to do is tear up the streets of the city he loves. He wants to burn down the buildings and fight the militia and the candlelighters and the rioters and the vampires and everything and everyone and fight, and fight, and fight until he tears himself apart just to prove that he can. He wants to hate everyone, and himself, without qualification.

Shrieky doesn't like having to deal with the cognitive dissonance of having those feelings, while being around people he likes, so he can't go home like this. Instead, he flees the city, flees the humans and loses himself in Sobek Croix. It's not the same as it was back home, a different, more bearable kind of isolation, and sometimes he needs that. His target is one of the moon pools, one within walking distance of the main city, if you don't mind a fairly long walk, but as he approaches it, he catches sight of some slight movement in the bush up ahead.

He squints his eyes, trying to pick out a figure beside the pool who could have been responsible for the motion, but all he sees is green, brown and red. Nothing that doesn't belong. He pushes his hesitation aside, and comes closer.

[amasveritas]

"Mommy, look."

That's such a common phrase, and one Sally is beginning to associate it with these moments, the ones where she winds up wincing and apologising to the xenian that Antonia drew attention to, and it's hard because Antonia is better at learning not to do these things when they're objectively mean. But she isn't being mean. She's being fascinated, even if she's been told pointing is also rude (and sometimes dangerous, for little witches). And right now, Poison Ivy is super fascinating, and being pointed at by a wee nearly five-year-old girl.

"Honey," Sally says, reaching out to gently redirect that hand, and giving Ivy a smile -- the tired, knowing smile of a parent, the kind that tries to communicate some kind of adult allegiance. Kids, you know? The park-like area in Ludmead, near the river, is quasi-public -- the trees are dense, thick roots breaking the earth that Antonia had been previously playing amongst, but manmade paths as well.

Sally herself is dressed in warm-weather clothes, whites and floral and practicality, a hemp bag hanging off her arm from shopping. "Sorry," she says, "she's just curious about. Everything."

[satrinah]

Lyla does not look like a 'nature person', by any description; the twang of her accent may say rural Tennessee, but the fishnets and heavy eyeliner are straight-up city girl, as is the penchant for recreational drug use. That said, some of the gifts she's learned have drawn her repeatedly out to the forests surrounding Hellsing in Sobek Croix--she remembers how the plants responded to the things Narcisse taught her, how they saved her. The trees moved, snapping up invading monsters and strangling them in the branches.

It had been much more reassuring than when she kills something or someone with her own bare hands. That's always out of instinctive fear and panic, not like something is helping. Anyway, for that and other reasons, Lyla likes it out here, especially when it's quiet, and she's easing off from one of her binges.

Like now.

She's skinny and very young, teen-aged with a baby face to boot, though she attempts to disguise as much with the application of make-up, dressed in ripped fishnets, too-short denim shorts, a gray band t-shirt cropped high on her ribcage, and big clunky combat boots, a leather jacket draped across her knees. Her eyeliner is smudged from the nights of partying, and she overall gives the impression of 'coming down', though with none of the irritability that usually accompanies, thanks to a valium and the fact that she's incredibly used to it by now, a genuinely jaded edge that is much sharper than the adulthood she is otherwise feigning. There are drugs in her system, still, but with a dhampire's constitution, they won't last long.

So while her senses are somewhat dimmed, they're not dampened enough for her to miss someone else's presence. Lyla inhales wearily through her nose and leans forward (she is slouched, currently, underneath a big tree with overhanging branches half-shrouding her, one that she remembers and that, she likes to think, remembers her). It seems like a lot of effort, and she reminds herself not to move so much until she's less of a mess. K-holes will do that to you.

"Somebody there?"