(no subject)

[sunbaked_baker]

So, it has been something of a wretched few days for the seventeen-year-old Rae Seddon. Thankfully, Sunshine discovered she could get a room - paid for by some sort of fund set up for the purpose, thank all the listening gods - so she wouldn't have to spend the whole time miserable, hurting, and feeling wretched in public. At least the nausea and vomiting have tapered off by now.

Restlessness has driven her outside, this afternoon. Though her very skin aches from every movement, it seems to do so less when she's out in the clear daylight, and the anxiety twisting tight in her chest seems to relax some.

One can find her sitting wrapped up in a blanket down by the lake shore, her face turned upwards towards the light, trying to keep still, trying to focus on not giving in to the overwhelming urge to fidget and move.

Comments

[herr_bookman]

"Effugium," a boy says, and drops down from above. "Rae, I wanted to see if you were you interested in--hoo. Are you sick?"

[sunbaked_baker]

Rae pulls the blanket tighter around her, offering Autor a wan smile.

"Well, I'm not currently whaling my guts out, so I could say I'm doing relatively okay?" It's been an awful week.

[herr_bookman]

"Huh," Autor says, bringing his carpet out again to sit on it. "I'd wondered where you'd run off to. What happened?"

[sunbaked_baker]

Restlessly, she rubs her arm through the blanket. She has drunk more water in the last few days than she thought possible, but the water is just about all that she's been able to keep down. "Just had to get some stuff out of my system, apparently."

[herr_bookman]

Autor nods, kicking his dangling feet in a 3/4th rhythm. He'd start humming again, but that messed with her last time, so he doesn't. "You don't look entirely done," he says hesitantly. "Have you been able to eat anything?"

[sunbaked_baker]

"Not really," she answers. She had had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich early this morning, but it stayed down only until the next wave of nausea came through. "Though the sick to my stomach feeling has tapered off, I'm not really willing to risk it yet."

[herr_bookman]

If this were the older Rae, Autor would have stomped up and said something along the lines of, "You look like you stumbled across a cat who hadn't met his dragging quota for the month." If she were younger, he'd offer food, or maybe a book, or a side to curl up and cry on.

It's people his own age he's never been on equal footing with.

"So, you're cold and achy, can't take food, and a carpet ride is a bad idea," he summarizes, not quite sure where he's going with this. "So would you be able or interested in playing a game or...?"

[sunbaked_baker]

Rae blinks at him, eyebrows lifted in vague curiosity. She isn't at her best - far from it - but she could use a distraction.

"What sort of game?"

[herr_bookman]

"Well, let's see," he says. "I have a cards on me, or I could fly back to the bar. Hm. Actually, do you know the Green Glass Village? It's a word association and pattern-matching game."

[sunbaked_baker]

"Never heard of it," she says, tilting her head this way and that. "So let's try it - though I might not be very good at it." Rae is very much aware of how muddled her mind is, at the moment.

"Mind if I sit up there with you? The angle is hurting my neck a bit."

And she bets the rug is softer than her rock.

[herr_bookman]

"Oh, right, of course," Autor says, and lowers the rug to the ground. Once she's up, he'll raise it again, but this way she can scoot or slide or stand if she chooses.

"All right, so once upon a time, nestled in a deep green valley near the steep green hills there was a Green Glass Village," Autor says. "Grass grows there, but not flowers. And princesses, but no towers."

[sunbaked_baker]

Rae gets her feet under her to move, but is privately glad that the rug was lowered to her level. Her balance isn't the best, nor is she very strong as she is right now. She settles soon onto the rug.

Autor's voice has a lovely cadence to it, telling of the Green Glass Village. Unthinking, the blanket-wrapped, slightly-shivering Sunshine leans against his shoulder as she listens.

[herr_bookman]

Rae's lean startles him, but he tries not to move; loosening his shoulders, he lets her lean. "The Green Glass Village can be little or small, but never big, or gigantic, or humongous. They have wooden dwellings or cottages, but never houses," he says quietly. "Eggs and roosters are created without hens, and eaten with spoons but not forks or knives; nor are they salted, but peppered."

The last time he'd played this game was with Lohengrin--and it was a game, then, but Rae was always fond stories.

[cook_the_rude]

"How is, well, everything?"

Hannibal has been walking towards her for a while, waved to her, but only speaks now when he doesn't have to raise his voice.

[sunbaked_baker]

She had seen him coming, and given a little wave in return.

"Wretched," she answers with a tiny, exhausted smile. "But better than it has been, so that's something. How have things been with you?"

[cook_the_rude]

"Interesting," Hannibal says. "May I sit down?"

[sunbaked_baker]

"Sure," she says, scooting to make room on the medium-sized boulder she's using as her perch.

"What's made it interesting for you?"

[cook_the_rude]

He sits.

"I talked at length to this young fellow who knows me as a grown man," he says.

[sunbaked_baker]

A faint line appears between her eyebrows. "A seer?"

She says it, of course, as though it is a very real possibility.

[cook_the_rude]

"No," Hannibal says. "It seems that normally, when I come here, I'm a lot older."

[sunbaked_baker]

"That would be the sort of thing that happens here," she says, wryly, pulling the blanket tighter around her shoulders as a wave of shivering passes through her. "Space-folding doors, I get - SOF's got those in development for use in emergency evacs, but time's usually much more difficult and dangerous a medium to work with."

"I feel I don't know the half of this place's secrets."

[cook_the_rude]

"It seems time works just like space here," Hannibal says, "and gets bent by magic, too. There was a sign about a problem with a time spell; I guess that's why we're here so young."

He looks at her, then shakes his head. "Try letting the warm sunlight touch more of you, not less? A blanket only holds in what warmth is there."

[sunbaked_baker]

"The breeze is so chilly, though, it's like it negates just about any warmth the sun offers," she says, doubtful about unwrapping from the thick blanket. The nights are already longer than the day.

"...Do you mean to say you think I come here from later in my life, too?"

[cook_the_rude]

"... Yyyyes," Hannibal says, slowly. "Autor gave me no reason to think this doesn't apply to everybody who is young and confused at the moment. On the contrary, he seemed a bit superior about the fact he alone escaped. Between the lines, that is, of talking about music."

[sunbaked_baker]

Rae breathes a brief sigh out through her nose. "I've not been down in the bar, with all the people and noise, these last few days." She hasn't felt like suitable company. "I hadn't heard about the spell."

She considers the idea that she might come in from a later time in her life, and a tiny smile quirks the corner of her mouth.