multiversallogs | (no subject)

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(no subject)

Who: Martel and Rachel
What: Tea and information.
Where: The library.
When: backdated to Coardi, late afternoon.
Notes: N/A.
Warnings:THEY ARE SURROUNDED BY BOOKS OH GOD. ...I mean, nothing, so far.

Back home in California, libraries were plentiful. But they were terribly modern affairs, all glass and steel and carpet, new shelves neatly lined with books. The libraries in New York were a bit better. Some of those were actually in stone buildings and looked well lived-in.

But this library, she thinks as she steps inside, this one looks much more like the mental images she had of libraries when she read about them as a kid. It seems old, hushed, full of dusty leather tomes and serious people doing serious reading.

She goes over to the first librarian's station she sees, politely asking for Martel in hushed tones befitting the place.

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It's hard to know whether it would or would not come as any great surprise to his former fellows if they knew how quickly and efficiently he'd taken to the library; on the one hand, he's a mercenary bastard who spent most of his adult life living by the sword, and on the other, libraries are the basis of all scholarship and he has always been nothing if not an accomplished scholar.

In any case, the overly tall gentleman who joins Rachel looks thoroughly at home with both the books and the antiquated air of the place. He is, after all, an antiquated sort of a man.

"Come this way," he says in lieu of a greeting, though he's pleasant enough - he can be charming, when he wants to be, but he only wastes words when he feels like listening to himself talk. (Which happens.)

She recognizes his face from the video chats; again she finds herself caught off guard by how tall one of her cohort buddies turns out to be. There's so much you can tell from a video--and so much you can't.

...Does whatever's behind this like to kidnap tall men? Maybe that's it. Sam Winchester is remarkably tall, Martel not far behind him. Even Raylan Givens and Jack Harkness aren't slouches themselves, about six feet a piece. Rachel makes a mental note to try to meet more of the male cohort members in person to see how tall they are.

"Thank you." She follows Martel away from the desk, as requested, taking in more of the library as they walk.

He leads her to his out of the way office space, and as it usually does, an oddly wry expression crosses his face as they step into the room - meaningless, to her, but it was only after he'd stopped poking at the room that he'd realized upon whose room he'd inadvertently modelled it. There's a certain amount of expertly wielded self-hatred involved in how he hasn't changed anything since noticing.

"Tea, then books," he suggests, clearing a space on a desk that bears the (messy) tells of someone who knows what he's doing with an overabundance of knowledge. ('Everything'.) "The statistical data for the cohorts is upstairs; I took a few glances through in advance. It's interesting."

"That sounds great." She sets her bag on the edge of his desk a moment to rummage around in it, coming out with a canister. The bag is stowed under a chair, the canister's lid pried off, and the canister opened and offered.

"Check that out and tell me if that'll fit the bill. I brought another one, too, if this isn't what you'd like."

"That will more than do," he assures her, after tasting it; particular creature that he can be, the truth is that it's more of a game to be played than any real feeling that he badly needs these things just so. He'll drink the cheap house ale the same way he drinks good, good red wines, and he eats what's in front of him if it doesn't look as though he might catch something from it.

Fussiness is just a part of who he reminds himself he is.

"Strange the things that surprise me," he adds, ruminatively, making an illustrative gesture with the canister itself. Baedal in all its surreal wonder - not so much. Little things of worlds other than his, electricity and odd-looking tea canisters, those still give him pause.

"Good," she murmurs, coloring a bit under his praise. She's pleased she made a good choice, pleased he's happy with it. Even if she doesn't really know him. She can be fussy too, but she focuses that fussing on looking after other people.

Her smile grows warmer and wider; she nods. "I've been, like, feeling that way myself. A lot. I mean, like, once I got over the totally huge shock of being here. And, you know. Monsters. It's little things that throw me off, or remind me that I'm a long, long way from home."

"It's the monsters as are familiar," Martel says, with a dry edge that doesn't detract from the truth of the observation. Elene cities weren't so...magical in their nature, or at least not so openly, but even so.

"...Oh." The look she gives him is half sympathy, half fascination. The weirdest thing she ever came across back home was... well. Herself. This place seems like it's right out of some fantasy novel.

"Similar monsters or entirely different?"

"Those of someone's innovation, like what we're still cleaning up after-" the library had needed cleaning and repairs, like much of the rest of Brock Marsh, and though they've made good headway, it's not all done yet, "-aren't common, but known. It varies. I've yet to see a troll or ogre here."

Which he could live without, really, but it's unlikely, regardless; Baedal isn't troll country. They're creatures best suited to the snow, and he suspects the climate here would play merry havoc with them. The last thing anyone needs is a sick, upset troll.

"So you heard the explanation, too," she notes. The broadcast that said these things had been made, done on purpose. "What do you think about that? Why would someone make those things and attack the city?"

"They had the mark of it, when I fought them," he says, in support of the explanation; he did catch it, but he's not inclined to solely take the word of authority on anything. Particularly not here, when it's plain that authority's best interests and theirs are like as not at odds. "But I can think of any number of reasons a fellow might feel the need- too many possibilities to commit to a few."

Rachel nods, glad for the confirmation. She wasn't inclined to take the official word for it either, wanting proof--he's offered it, with his observation.

"How can you tell? What's the mark of something that's been made by a man?"

"The birds didn't, though they're hardly going to be a coincidence-" they could be, he's wary of ruling it out entirely because god forbid things not be as utterly complex in the least convenient way, but it's less likely and would, indeed, make things far more complicated in the worst way, "-but the more flesh-based creatures shared a particular..."

He makes a gesture here to indicate he's not entirely sure how to explain it to someone who doesn't have his experience to provide context. "Perhaps a signature, you might say. The beasts were plainly tampered with, and I wonder if the birds weren't created simply by implication of the way they were destroyed, the pearls left behind."

"Yeah, that was weird." She's taking in all this information--it's something she has no past experience with so she's eager to learn more. "I saw them turn into those pearls when they died, outside the inn. That's not normal."

She thinks for a moment. "In your research, did you find any mention of anything like this happening before? I wonder if there's a pattern."

Martel shakes his head - his hair is, as a note, far too well looked after now for him to have not taken advantage of modern products he didn't have before - and sips his tea. "I'd my eye on population statistics." This is something else again, albeit something he's going to end up digging around in the stacks for anyway.

Fear not, Martel--Rachel has taken note of those lustrous locks, with no small measure of admiration. But that's neither here nor there at the moment, not when she has this gentle interrogation underway.

"Population statistics. Learn anything interesting there?"

"That there's a pattern to them. For the most part, cohorts have come in more or less generational waves, but - I'm simplifying a great deal, you'll want to look yourself," and they'd need to go over them in more detail, likely. "But, they tapered slowly, over time. Down to us."

"Wait, so." She leans forward a bit, brow creased thoughtfully, wanting to make sure she understands what he's saying. "Did the cohorts get smaller with each generation, more or less?"

Martel makes a 'sort of, maybe, not quite' face, saying, "Rather the cohorts themselves became fewer and further apart."

Rachel hums thoughtfully. "That's interesting. I wonder why that happened. Why they needed fewer people as time went on. Did you see any reasons why?"

"I haven't looked closely." He sips his tea before adding, "I'd hate to spoil the delight of discovery for you," in his terribly dry way. "But I've set the records aside for our perusal."

Rachel grins around the lip of her cup, mid-sip. "That's very thoughtful of you," she says back, that grin still playing at the corners of her mouth. "I'd love to see the records for myself."

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