milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Shortly before sunset, Moiraine had come downstairs and gone quietly out the door to the lake. From time to time, a particularly observant or sensitive patron might well have noticed a flicker of golden or silver light near the edge of the building, or by the greenhouse, or at the fringes of the forest.

Sunset had turned into deep dusk, and now night has fallen. The Aes Sedai is still outside, gliding noiselessly over the grass under the dark of the moon. Silver fire sparks from her fingertips as she tests possibilities and considers threads.

Frequently, her gaze flicks upward as she scans rooftops and skies and the branches of trees.

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"Better if you had been," she says crisply, moving toward Beverly in order to brighten the area around them both and casting a sharp glance at the forest trees as she does.

"It is not safe out there at night, I do not think; at least, not at present. You are well, though?"

"I'm okay. I just didn't really notice until it was already almost dark, and..."

She trails off. Making excuses when she's in trouble never helps, at home.

Instead, she glances around. "And I really would've gone back sooner if I'd known it wasn't safe. Why isn't it?"

The look she directs at the two owls in the nearest tree is flat and filled with distaste. Moving to the girl's side, Moiraine says quietly,

"This place is thought to be neutral territory, but for the most part that neutrality is observed within the confines of the bar itself. It is not always an issue, and yet there are those who are not safe to be around, as there are in any world, I am afraid."

"At present, as it happens, there is one here who is filled with a spirit of malice and cruelty, and I would not see you harmed by encountering him outside here."

"Oh." Her voice is small, and a bit scared, as she glances around.

"I'll be more careful from now on."

She pauses, then asks, "The, um, the person you just mentioned--do you know who it is?"

"I am sorry that it was necessary to give such a warning in the first place," she says quietly.

"And I do, as it happens. The name he is known by here is Dale Cooper, but he is not truly himself at present."

Bev's brow furrows for a moment as she thinks.

"I haven't met anyone named Dale Cooper, I don't think...there's a couple of people I met and never got names for, though."

If there's a guy around who's 'filled with a spirit of malice and cruelty', she wants to stay the hell out of their way.

"He is tall," she begins, indicating his height. "Dark hair, brown eyes; there is still a mark of a wound on his forehead, as it happens."

Her own eyes are shadowed as she speaks, but she gives no other outward sign of her distress, nor does she glance toward the thankfully-distant lake where the Pale Slayer swims.

...If Bev were aware of the shark, she'd be glad they're not very close to it, too.

"...Fuck."

For the moment, she's too startled to even worry about cursing like that in front of an adult.

"I think I met that guy. He seemed nice."

"It depends on when you met him, Beverly." Moiraine sighs very slightly. "He may well have been, if it was not within the past few days."

"It may be hard for you to accept this, but there is another influence within him at present."

Beverly thinks hard, then says, "It was last Wednesday, I think."

She pauses, then adds, almost reluctantly, "...What's wrong with him?"

"Sa souvraya niende misain ye, the saying might be," she says. "He is lost inside his own mind, with another spirit commanding his body."

She thinks over the days and adds, "And it would seem likely that was who you spoke with, Beverly. I am sorry for that."

Beverly looks down, tucking her hair behind one ear.

"Um. This might sound like a weird question." Beat. "I hope it sounds like a weird question. But, the thing that's controlling him...have you ever seen it?"

Beverly's remembering a day when she looked up at her father's face, and didn't see anything remotely human there.

She takes a few moments to consider her answer, watching the girl carefully as she does.

"I have not seen its true face, I do not think, although I have spoken with it. Others have, I believe."

A pause.

"Why do you ask, Beverly?"

"It's nothing," Bev says automatically, then bites her lip.

"I mean, if you haven't seen it outside of him, you wouldn't be able to tell me--"

She breaks off again, hugging herself, every movement full of a nervous, coltish energy.

"Something kind of like that happened where I live. Only it wasn't really happening to just one person. It sort of happened a little bit to my whole town."

Not just her father that day, but the men who had seen her running away from him, and just laughed. Henry Bowers with his switchblade. It, everywhere in Derry. Filling the hollow places.

If anything, her gaze sharpens at this, and the light expands around them to brighten the area.

Moiraine darts a look toward the owls, considering... but not yet.

"I would hear more of this, I think, Beverly. Where is it that you are from?"

Her tone remains calm, but not unkind, not as she watches the girl's reaction.

"Derry." Softly. "It's in Maine."

She looks around, still hugging herself.

"Can we go inside?"

She relaxes very slightly. It would not have been impossible for the girl to be from Twin Peaks, but still...

"I think it best that we do, child. Come with me, and stay in the light."

It is gently said.

Not Twin Peaks. But there are, shall we say, certain similarities between the two small towns.

Beverly nods wordlessly, and follows Moiraine back to the bar, needing no further instruction to stay in the light.

Once they're settled at a table inside, with tea and hot chocolate, respectively, she relaxes some, but still seems unsure, hesitant to talk.

"I really wish there was someone else here you could talk to. Bill, or Mike, or...someone. They could probably tell it better than I can."

Moiraine studies her for a moment or two, and then says,

"I have long been a student of history and a collector of stories, Beverly. In many cases, the most important thing about a tale is simply that it be told, and not lost."

"Okay."

She takes a deep breath, and fiddles with her mug for a moment or two longer, then starts.

"We--my friends and I--think it's always been in Derry. Like, before Derry was even there. Underground." Beat. "We always just called it 'it'--we all knew what we were talking about."

She takes a sip of hot chocolate, then goes on.

"Two years ago, there were a lot of kids going missing. Sometimes they turned up dead. Sometimes they just...never turned up anywhere. There was a curfew and everything, and the police were trying to figure out who was doing it--but they couldn't, because it wasn't really a person. It was it."

Underground.

The Dark One is bound in Shayol Ghul...

The Black Lodge... fear and love open the door.

It is not the same, cannot be the same, and yet the associations are instant. Moiraine's lips tighten slightly, but she remains silent, listening attentively.

"We figured out what was going on--my friends and I--because we could see It. I think that's part of why we got to be friends...we just sort of came together, like we knew."

She smiles faintly, and a little sadly. It fades quickly as she goes on.

"And like I said, we could see It. A lot of the time It would look like something from a horror movie--a werewolf, or a mummy, or something. But most of the time It was a clown. Or even if It was something else, It was in a clown suit."

(full of fun)

"That's what I was going to ask you about, if you'd seen the thing that's here."

"To discern if it was the same thing."

She shakes her head slowly.

"I do not know, Beverly. I cannot say for certain, I am afraid; is there more that you can tell me about this creature, that you faced?"

The girl is so very young, but Moiraine does not show her surprise.

Beverly takes a deep breath, running things over in her mind.

"Okay. Bill found something in a book that he thought was a lot like It--some people called it a glamour, and people from the Himalyas called it a taelus. There were a couple of other names--all things that could change shape.

"The thing we could see--the clown, or whatever It looked like--was really there, even though no one else could see It. Like, you could touch It. I shot It with a silver ball from a slingshot, and we didn't see the clown again after that. But there was something else. We knew It wasn't dead, so we went down under the sewers, and...there was this Spider. This giant Spider. Like, bigger than a horse."

Visible surprise flickers in her glance at the mention of the Spider, but Moiraine remains quiet, listening with clear interest.