faderift | closed | Busy old fool, unruly sun,

"What do you mean?" It's paint, shouldn't it all cost the same amount?

Abby sees his raised eyebrow, and raises him... one of her own. He's quite perceptive. Either that, or he knows how to pick survivors, and that tells her something about him all on its own.

"I was with the Washington Liberation Front," she supplies, after a beat. "Paramilitary." The word 'soldier' is in there somewhere, but Abby doesn't like the sound of it, or the implication, even though that's exactly what she was. Didn't care enough to be anything else for a very long time. "We were at war too. None of this is really... new ground, for me."

"Paint for murals probably costs something different from paint for interiors which probably costs something different than the paint for portraiture. Not to mention paint for crafting. How thick it is, how fast it dries, how much rare pigment is in it... all of those things factor into the cost."

She must be from a very strange version of Midgard not to understand an economy around paint, of all things, but he just files that bit of information away.

What he thinks when she says 'paramilitary': aren't you a bit young by Midgardian standards for war? But war changes everything, and she might be from a timeline he knows nothing about, a future he's never seen. What he says, instead: "What was the nature of the conflict?"

She has to stare at him as he keeps talking, clearly bewildered, "How am I supposed to know all of that?"

Why does anybody bother knowing that... it sounds far too complicated for something as simple as paint. Maybe they should steal it. For all Abby knows, they've been sent to buy cans and cans of a rare pigment, or whatever the fuck.

She's still looking at him when it's her turn to answer a question, her brow furrowed as she mulls explanations over on the flat of her tongue. "Over land," she says, eventually. "My faction was in control of most of the area. Fucked up death cult had the rest. Got stuck in a power struggle for– years."

"Are there no craftspeople in your world?" Another raised eyebrow; now there are two. Where there are those that will make things, there are those that will charge them too much for the things they need in order to make things. This is the basis of many economies.

There's always the chance that Abby just doesn't... know anyone who makes things, or that she comes from a world that has moved beyond the necessity of such a system.

Loki is neither directly nor strongly opposed to stealing what they need, actually. That would probably be easier than trying to buy it, at this rate. He frowns, considering it, considering her answer.

"Is that who you were at war with, overall, or just a piece of the puzzle?" Hm, that's two questions, possibly unfair, but. He's asked them anyway.

"Course there are," Abby scoffs, blustering in an attempt to hide that she really doesn't know anything about paint or craft, "But we don't have money, where I'm from. We trade for things."

She's seen money from the old world before, it's not as if it's hard to find. Always in residential areas, stuffed into leather wallets, tucked away in folded wads underneath mattresses or curled into pairs of shoes, kept in house safes and locked up tight. Abby's interested in quarters, because her dad used to collect them, but the paper notes mean nothing to her.

That'll be why he says that. Why he looks at her, frowning, and asks her again who she's at war with. Abby holds the answer on her tongue, feeling odd; first time she's spoken about it to somebody who didn't already know.

"... We have a common enemy," she volunteers, finally. Her gaze is on him, gauging his reaction. "The infected. S'what we call the people suffering from cordyceps brain infection."

Barter? Nothing else? No... money, no coin, just material needs? Well. He doesn't think she's lying, so that's something, but it sounds like the full collapse of Midgardian society from here. Loki leans back a little in his chair, assessing her. "...huh."

Her explanation (if it can really be called that) of the situation back home for her doesn't really clear up much, for Loki. "Aren't cordyceps a type of mushroom, or something?" Wouldn't a brain infection just mean a lot of people are dead?

"Yeah," Abby says casually, glancing out across the water as the boat continues to pull them closer to the harbour. "It mutated, and infected a human for the first time around about... um, five years, before I was born.

If you're bitten, it gets in your bloodstream, and attacks the brain. Makes you hyper-aggressive. Takes over the host in a matter of hours after infection."

She gestures at her face, using her hand to indicate something– sprouting, out of skin. "You get this fucked up, fungal growth all over your skin, and then it completely destroys your eyesight, and removes all logic and reason. Makes you angry, and fast, and mean. It spread fast. Destroyed everything."

"Everything about that sounds like an absolutely shit horror show," is stated pretty flatly, because Loki had somehow managed to completely miss Midgard's cultural obsession with zombies and would equate the word with the lacking of free will in rather dangerous people who are in turn being magically puppeted by much more dangerous people.

You know. The classical definition. Or something.

"Gods, and they bite people?" He shudders. Sounds terrible, Abby. "Is there a cure, or a vaccine, or anything?"

"Tell me about it," she mutters, staring resolutely forward. Loki doesn't know the half of it. Abby hasn't explained even half of what the infected really are, how they move, like they're drunk, like they're in pain, or the sound of them. What it feels like when you're trapped in a dark space and you suddenly hear a volley of high-pitched clicks, and whistles ring out over the top of the spore-riddled air.

Absolutely shit horror show is a great way to describe it.

Her expression doesn't twitch out of place at his second question, but a muscle tightens up in her jaw all the same. Her voice is clipped, when she answers. Flat, matter-of-fact.

"No." And it's clear she's not about to elaborate, either. "There's no cure."

He notices that tightening in her jaw and wonders. He's not going to wonder out loud, however. Loki can have some sense of when it's best to just shut up instead of poking at something.

"Do you want to go back there?" That is what he asks instead. It's not a better question, on its face, but he remembers her asking him in the library if he was going to stay. At the time he presumed that she had nothing keeping her in Thedas, emotionally or whatever, and now? He's not sure he was wrong, per se, but it's an important question.

"Yes." It's easier to answer if only because Abby's completely sure in her conviction, but it does nothing to ease her tension. "I left somebody behind."

Her person, the only person that she has left, and every day spent here doing nothing feels like time ill-spent. She should be figuring out how to get back to him. The library in the Gallows had books about magic, but none of them had information on travelling across worlds. Even if they did, she wouldn't know how to use it.

Before she's able to think twice, it bursts out of her. "Does everything back home just... go on, without us?"

"I don't know," is Loki's honest answer, and he feels a little bad that most of what he has; he doesn't know anything for certain here, and it's very frustrating.

However: "It seems doubtful, really; for instance, I know some things about the future of someone here, things he didn't seem familiar with, though I don't know what year it was for him before he ended up here. If it is possible for two separate people to arrive from two different points on one specific timeline then it would make sense that there's a sort of... stasis effect, when a person gets pulled from their own reality into this one."

Abby can't decide how to feel about it: pessimistic, perhaps, because wouldn't they be reassured about this upon arrival if it wasn't true? Riftwatch needs people for their fight, and it might benefit them to keep the truth of the situation a secret. Hard to focus on a war when you're dedicating your time to trying to get out of it.

On the other hand there's hope. Hope that everything is fine, and that life back home is hanging in the kind of stasis that Loki describes. It's the same kind of feeling she gets when she allows herself to consider the existence of the Fireflies, something so sweet she can hardly bare to let herself taste it just in case it isn't real.

Abby sighs, and rubs her neck. "I know which one I prefer."

But she isn't keen to discuss it any further than that. "What's the first step, for when we get there. Split up?"

Loki would imagine those that run Riftwatch are in a strange position, wherein they can't confirm what actually happens to Rifters, and also, as Abby has surmised, they need bodies in this war.

At her question he nods. "I'll find us a place to stay while we're in town and will ask after painters in the area. We'll need to reconnect to figure out how best to get the trademaster out of his office, and sort out when makes sense for the other two locations."

"Kids," Abby says, because she's got an idea, "I'll see if I can find a couple kids who will help us out." Who else could get around without being paid a scrap of attention to. Who else is typically annoying like no other, and good at being distracting without that coming off as suspicious. Children, every time. Low stakes enough that they're not being put in any danger, either.

"Want to take an hour or two and then meet back in the middle."

"Street children would probably be best," he agrees. Granted, he doubts that Abby would go and find, say, a boarding school or some upper crust household and ask there.

Her plan is sound, for as thin as it is, but they're both in the same place regarding that so Loki nods again. "I'll find you."

closed | Busy old fool, unruly sun,

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I love how I mixed up our threads and had him in a chair for like one tag. now, POOF no chair

he's a magic man OK sometimes he has a chair!!

a deck chair and an umbrella drink, just for a brief, shining moment

god, good for him!

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