EP: Kate Barlow | Main Bar, Library (age spell plot)

[ikissdhimbck]

It had been a quiet day for Kate when the loud BWA-BOOOOOOOM shook the bar. She'd just settled down after her nightly chores in the stables, easing the tension out of her back in an armchair by the fire, sipping on a hot tea with bourbon in.

(It's getting close to All Hallows' Eve, and that's making her anxious.)

However, she didn't have all that long to think about the approaching holiday before she was seeing the room from an even lower vantage point, face scrunched in distaste at the liquor on her tongue. She blinked at the teacup and quickly set it down, jumped to her feet, and looked around the strange room.

" ... Daddy?"

Kate Barlow, aged twelve, was off in search of her father.

What she found instead were the libraries.


Now, far calmer, a young Kate sits amid a pile of books, occasionally sweeping cautious glances around the room. She's finding the words of Jules Verne to be a comfort at present. Clearly she slipped and bumped her head during chores, or stumbled onto a glorious vessel somewhere in deep space. She isn't quite sure what to make of it right now, but anywhere with an endless supply of science fiction can't be all that bad.


[ooc: open forever! you may find Kate in the library or the main bar. if your character wants to be in on a heist, they can take this opportunity to meet Kate. the actual heist will happen in a later post, so it's not required you tag this one (I'll update all interested parties once it's all in place). if you'd like me to send Kate round to one of your posts, just let me know!

tiny!tag: age spell plot]

Comments

[cook_the_rude]

There's an older boy of seventeen or so in the library, taking books of shelves and looking at them and putting them back.

[ikissdhimbck]

"What good will they do if y'don't open them up?"

A pair of judgmental blue eyes peer at him over the cover of From the Earth to the Moon. Kate's in a simple white dress with blue embroidery, hair braided over her shoulder.

[cook_the_rude]

"I look at the blurb," the boy says. "But they sound very odd."

[redintheledger]

Kate's not the only one to find the library - Natasha, still holding that dreadfully confusing Sherlock Holmes book, walks in as unobtrusively as she can manage.

Given her rather distinctive hair, it's...not as unobtrusive as she'd like.

"Oh, um, hello," she says, when she spies the other girl.

[ikissdhimbck]

Kate rarely gets to play with other girls her age. They only go to town once a week on Sunday for church, and the rest of the time it's just her and her daddy and the workers on their ranch.

"How d'you do?"

Her voice is soft and polite, and though she smiles there's an insatiable curiosity in her eyes that gobbles up everything about the other girl.

"Um. My name is Katherine."

[redintheledger]

"I'm Nataliya, but really, it's Natasha," she says, walking over. The other girl's clothes are a bit odd, but then, nearly everyone's clothes here are a bit odd.

"Where are you from?"

[electro_kinetic]

There's a cackle of laughter as a nine-year-old Noriko goes streaking by, getting a running start and skidding over the floor in her sock feet.

When she crashes into Kate's pile of books she topples over, black hair all disarrayed.

[ikissdhimbck]

Kate's eyes are very, very wide as she watches.

"Tarnation! How'd you do that?"

She leaps to her feet — she's in a pair of ladies leather boots, laces crooked — and peers over the broken stack. The other girl is pretty, hair blacker and straighter than she's ever seen before.

[electro_kinetic]

Noriko's still giggling as she rights herself, shaking her pigtails out of her face.

"How'd I do what, go sliding?" she sticks a foot up, clad in blue-and-yellow argyle socks that go up to her knees under her jeans. "You just run and sort of turn and if you're fast enough you go sliding like on skates."

[balancingminds]

Charles has gone exploring, because being around all the people in the main Bar is tiring. All he wants is a good place to hide away from everyone and he eventually finds the library and smiles.

There are so many books and he starts looking for a place that he can hide in and finds Kate, "Oh, these shelves don't make sense."

His button down shirt is now a little rumpled but he's still fairly neat.

[ikissdhimbck]

He's very clean and orderly in Kate's eyes. She blushes, tucking her skirts around her knees to be sure she's decent.

"I could help you, if y'like. What are you looking for?"

[numbered_doctor]

A small, willowy girl eventually stumbles across Kate, she's not sure how she's arrived in this seemingly magic bar, but it looks like she's stuck here for the time being.

At least it's better than home.

When she spots Kate, she almost seems shocked to do so.

"Oh! Sorry. I didn't know anyone else was here."

[ikissdhimbck]

Kate eyes the other girl warily.

"That's all right. I was jus' reading."

She tugs the tip of her braid. She finds Milliways fascinating, but she's all kinds of suspicious about the people here.

[gavin62truck]

Tommy's exploration of Milliways has taken him to the kitchen, the infirmary (ew), the gym, and finally-- the library? This place has a library? Tommy has never cared for libraries in particular. So he's about to leave when he spies what looks like a small fort made of books. He's made a fort out of couch cushions before, but not books.

Creeping closer, he can just see the top of a girl's head above the shortest pile.

Creeping closer still, he tries to sneak a look at her face when he accidentally bumps his foot against a stack and knocks it over into her lap.

Tommy is not the most graceful creeper.

[ikissdhimbck]

Kate yelps, book corners and edges digging into her legs as they all tumble over her. Her head snaps up, eyes burning with indignation at the ... creeper.

"Do you mind?"

How rude!

[queenofmay]

This isn't Marian first time in the really big tavern that isn't the tavern in Nottingham. That isn't really a tavern either, for all that it has in it. She has only been here once or twice, usually falling into it when chasing after Robin, and why wouldn't impossible things happen when you were chasing after impossibly, impudent boys.

But she hadn't quiet expected to blink and find herself in the library there, not quite sure when she'd gotten here or what she had come to their great library for. But there were books. So many more books than ever at home, and she really could not keep herself from running her fingers along the spines of the books in front of her as she looked around trying to regather her bearings.

[ikissdhimbck]

The young cowgirl, for that's as deeply bred in her as her aversion to sitting still, is nose deep in a collection of Madame d'Aulnoy fairy-tales when Marian catches her eye. It's not in Kate's nature to make herself small, so she straightens her shoulders and follows the girl with her eyes, pretending to still read.




"Are you from a fairy tale?"

In this strange place, stranger things could happen than that. Besides, the girl is dark and lovely and dressed in clothes not unlike something she's seen in a book.

[filemyclaim]

So many books! Dixie - tiny, barefoot, and freshly wandered in from her foster family's wheat field - is a bit young to be reading, but never let it be said she's not the curious sort.

The older girl's thoughtfulness gives her pause.

"Whatt're you thinking about?" She chomps a chunk out of the half-melted caramel she's been toting.

[ikissdhimbck]

My, ain't she a picture. And she looks so much like someone from back home that Kate instantly thinks of the miller's daughter, who she sees almost every Sunday at church. It puts her more at ease.

"Space travel."

She's decisive, serious. However, she smiles after a moment.

"What're you thinking about?"

[lifethatisscratched]

Ratonhnhaké:ton finds her in the library - while he cannot read yet, that doesn't mean he can admire the stacks of books sitting in the musty room.

There is something familiar about this girl, he thinks. And so...

(Four-year-old Mohawk boy to your eleven o'clock, Kate. Peering out from behind the bookshelf like he's got a secret.)

[ikissdhimbck]

Why, isn't he lovely?

You'll have to pardon young Kate; she's never seen a Native American child before, and certainly never one of his tribe. Chenoa, the Tonkawa man who works for her daddy, would be sighing at her right now if he was here.

"Hello."

She smiles softly, watching him around her bound volume.

[bornuntotrouble]

"You lost, young miss?"

Conversely, John runs into her in the main bar, just shy of a table. He takes his hat off - she's a little too tall for him to get away with squatting down, but he can look into her eyes just fine.

[ikissdhimbck]

"Um. I'm not sure."

She's not about to say 'yes'. 'Yes' means admitting to the fact that she doesn't know what's going on, and that means giving up control of the situation. She keeps her chin up, eyes wary.

"I didn't mean to be here. I'm Miss Katherine Barlow, of Heyser, Texas."

[boston_bruiser]

Voodoo hasn't had the time or inclination to wipe off the grease paint on his face or change out of his cammies.

So, young Miss Barlow, there is a fearsome-lookin' man with stripes of green and brown and black all covering his face and neck and ears and a boonie hat hanging from his neck by its cord as he goes over what looks like a stack of papers, writing too small to be seen from where you are.

Please don't scream?

[ikissdhimbck]

Oh, honestly.

A proper lady does not scream or wail, thank you.



She simply — stares. Slack-jawed and a little alarmed. She's seen men paint themselves up before, but nothing quite like this. She's more disarmed by his strange haircut and odd clothes.