come_sailaway | The Law Of Nature Is Named Wasp [OPEN + Closed]

Entry tags:

The Law Of Nature Is Named Wasp [OPEN + Closed]

Who: Erin Peters and YOU, plus some closed threads
What: Erin tries to settle back into life as December starts
When: First like, ten days of December?
Where: Various
Warnings: CW Lost shit, possibly Erin's general deal, use of a hurdy-gurdy

1. The world is beautiful [Tauva and/or Drunken Sailor]

Erin's nightly drink routines have changed subtly. Find her in Tauva or the Drunken Sailor of an evening, nursing a drink very slowly with a slate and stylus to hand, practicing her braille. If it's in Tauva, the scents of her cigars have changed! The smoke has a variety of alluring fruity scents, and she retrieves them from a wooden box stamped with a stylized map of Cuba ringed by thorny vines; at the Drunken Sailor, she nurses a beer with pretzels. Either way, the televisions in the bars are playing the Muppets if no one stops her, and Erin sings along to every.

Single.

Musical number.

Under her breath, at least until she spots you and waves you over.

2. The flower that never fades [Fight Club]

Since returning to fight club Erin's mostly kept her head down; she's most active in tactics class, though she's still taken a bit of a step back (this week's theme is Don't Stand In Front Of The Fucking Gunline), but otherwise she's been doing a lot of drilling, and a lot of observing how other people fight. Maybe she's approached you to ask about a technique unfamiliar to her, or you've noticed her imitating your style and incorporating it into her own. She's also taken to bringing, though not wearing, her armor. Every now and again when she's taking a break she sits on the ice mail, her ass slowly going numb, and just watches the way everyone moves, looking thoughtful.

Of note as well is the second sword, sheathed above her saber on the small of her back. For almost all of December's first fight club that blade stays in its sheath, the only visible part of it being a pommel made of kaleidoscopic glass. As class starts to wind down though, Erin steps back into the area set aside for sword drills and pulls it free, revealing a blade of stained glass that depicts mighty battles between gods and giants.

She's stanced up to run drills, but Erin can't quite seem to start. She's lost in her own head, staring at the blade.

3. Midnight at noon [Bellona Theater]

Erin's late-night theater visitations have moved into the afternoons; find her there with a hurdy-gurdy connected to an amp, trying to shake the rust off. There's a lot of false notes and good-natured swearing. It's been a hot fucking minute, after all, but when Erin can let herself drop into the zone pirate shanties and ominous music float from the theater for quite a distance. She's oddly happy to get walked in on, even to take requests.

The first person to ask for Wonderwall is getting a nickel thrown at them, though.

4. A study in scarlet [Spas]

She's finally biting the bullet, going 'fuck it, we ball' on seeing if her hair will take dye, but Erin needs a friend to help with that one. If that friend is you, she's looking to turn it a deep red color and has given you a stern warning not to wear clothing you don't want to get stained. She intends to try it without making her hair more human, at first, and that means the front seats might just be a splash zone. Have fun explaining those scarlet stains to everyone on your way back to your room to change your clothes.

5. Cave paintings [Closed to April]

Hey so I forgot in all the you know everything from the back half of last month but I have a portrait of myself thoughtfully provided by Peter Smith. He even knows I intend to use it for a bit of an experiment though I did not of course name any names or provide any details. You ready to do dark science?

6. There is only one stage of the life cycle, and it is... [Closed to Crabb]

Torturing Crichton with the knowledge that he missed out on the Peter Jackson adaptations of The Lord of the Rings has Erin on a bit of a fantasy kick, and she's decided to continue introducing Crabb to the genre by skipping all of its foundational authors and going directly from Stardust (a feature of previous reading dates when it was Erin's turn) to Howl's Moving Castle. Sat on Erin's bed, there on the pillow, is a little wooden box with a hinged lid. It's been there for the entire date, and Erin's not said a word about it. It'll keep.

7. Chaos reigns [Wildcard]

Have a different idea, a missed connection, something to slip in later in the month? I'm available on Discord!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Pratt has his customary pack of Marlboro Red's because he's a basic bitch from Montana, and is keeping his distance from the bartop as he enters one of the few safe spaces to smoke. His right hand is wrapped in clean gauze, carefully protecting the wound where he had his pinky finger severed from his hand, but that isn't stopping him from smacking the pack against his other palm a few times before pulling a cigarette out and lighting it with a cheap plastic lighter.

"Whatever you're smoking smells good."

Well, this gentleman has clearly seen better days. Erin takes a cigar from the box, cuts the tip, and offers it out to Pratt with her best effort at a welcoming grin.

In a rare moment she's thankful to not have eyes so she can't be seen looking at his hand.

"Showed up in Sundries, flavored cigars from..." She turns her head to look down at the box. "...Somewhere. This bad boy here is strawberry, but honestly who knows at this point. I've been through mango, watermelon, and dragonfruit so far. Care to roll the dice with me, Mister...?"

"Oh shit. I don't wanna take any of your stuff from home, like the care packages we get are kinda special you know? I mean I keep getting shirts and cigarettes but it still feels cool. Like someone in my world is sending me gifts even if I know that ain't what's happening." He does take it though, mostly so he can smell it, because fuck yeah that smells amazing? Maybe there are cigars he could be into. He offers it back though because he doesn't wanna take her things unless she's really sure about it.

"Deputy Pratt."

The song I Shot the Sheriff immediately enters Erin's mind and refuses to leave. Erin resigns herself to this to the point where she doesn't even try to ask herself why this is happening. "My pleasure, Deputy, I'm Erin. Take a seat, relax." She takes a puff on her cigar and makes a happy little noise in her throat. "Am I off-base if I say you sound American, Deputy?"

Please. For the love of God. Erin is so ready to meet other Americans aboard. She wants to bitch about road repairrrrsssss.

"Hope County, Montana." He grins, plopping into the seat across from her glad that someone knows what America even is. He's been lucky that most people know about or are from Earth, but other than Sharky and (he thinks) Ava, none of them are from anything remotely like his world.

"The year was 2018 for me, when I uh... died. But I think now it's like, twentyyyyyy" He pauses trying to do mental math without counting on his fingers. "2035 I think? At least in my world"

"Oh hey you're from like a whole year in my future. Neat. Well...'my' future. Unless you're about to tell me a bunch of fairies got revealed in your timeline we're probably from separate Earths." Montana. What does Erin know about Montana? Isn't that the place with no legal speed limits?

(...Is it?)

Is it???

"I'm shipping out from Maryland but no one's ever heard of the place I was living in, which is...weird. New Avalon, like ten minutes from DC by train, big port city with all the medical schools and such?"

Baltimore. She's describing Baltimore.

"Nah we had a nuclear apocalypse instead. Fairies might have been better? Assuming they're the cool giant water ones from Zelda and not... Navi." He frowns, considering the luck that Hope County seemed to have they'd all be stuck with their own personal nightmare screaming HEY LISTEN every few minutes.

"Never been there, haven't been much of anywhere really. I've been to like.. New York, and Idaho and Alberta. I don't get a lot of time off and kinda get paid shit."

And then his brain actually catches up with what she was saying, "Wait your world had literal fairies?"

There is a long.

Awkward.

Silence.

"...Pratt. I'm fairies."

"Uh... you're not like thirty feet tall coming out of a well to let me know my shirt just got a bunch of new enhanced stats." Pratt blinks at her, because he has no idea what she means really. Also he doesn't know that his clothing doesn't now have a better stat block, though he doesn't currently have any rupees so...

"Isn't calling yourself that kinda derogatory?"

"Why would that be - right! Homopbes exist." Erin laughs and shakes her head. "The witches and nerds prefer 'fae' as a category, things and people of our magic, but yeah. There was a big to-do just after Trump got elected, the illusion that masked us went out to buy cigarettes and never came back. 'm human, but I'm also a fairy. Just don't call me a princess."

Something about his references is tickling Erin's memory. Give her a minute; she stopped being a gamer during the SNES era.

Blink.

"Uh.. Okay. Say all that again, but explain it to me like I'm five years old and have no idea what the fuck any of that means? What illusion? What's a fae? What does being a fairy even mean?" He is so utterly confused right now, and thinks maybe he's hallucinating this entire conversation.

"Hoo boy. Um. So, okay, from the top...no not from the top..." Erin drums her fingers on the table in thought. "...God help me for reaching for this one and may I be forgiven: are you familiar with Harry fucking Potter?"

Well that is an extremely weird question and for him a strange fucking turn in this conversation. Because weren't they talking about like... tinkerbell?

"Never read the books but yeah, I know who he is. Wizard kid gets an owl and goes to magic school were he's the Final Fantasy chosen one who will kill the evil noseless guy." Pratt may have learned all that from osmosis on the internet, but he's got the jist anyway. "Are you saying you went to wizard school?"

"...I feel like we may have been very different kinds of nerds, Deputy," Erin says at last with a defeated sigh. "No, what I was angling at was the idea of like...a hidden magic society. For a really, really, really, really, REALLY, stupidly really long time people like me would look human to you, smell human to you, we'd feel human, sound human, all that. And then very, very recently, that stopped. 's why you can see the pointed ears and the special effects and hear my voice as it is."

Erin leans back thoughtfully in her chair. "...There's a lot of kinds of fairies. My folks try to be good ones."

Hold on, is there a reason we're explaining this badly?

(You mean is there a reason we're not telling the dude who still introduces himself as a cop about our people?)

...Fffffffffffffffffuuuuuuuuuck.

"...Also I'm not gonna lie I'm a bit distracted by the ones you were talking about, they're so naggingly familiar but I can't put my fuckin' finger on it. Where're they from? I keep trying to think of a book but I don't think it's a book."

They most certainly are and Pratt is about to prove it, "Oh okay. So like when the Forerunner activated the Halo Arrays but instead of wiping out all sentient life for however many planetary radii that is" [(It's three. He knows it's three. He's that level of nerd.)] "it dropped the cloaking shield for you guys. So you got exposed to everyone and I'm assuming the Covenant got pissed and bad things happened? And yeah, that definitely didn't happen in my world. Though I'm in Montana so that's basically like being on Noble Team and having no idea what's going on elsewhere. Oh shit that makes me Emile. Fuck. Never thought of that."

Okay he's definitely getting off track here like.. completely.

"Oh! Uh in Zelda. They were apparently huge and awesome in Breath of the Wild but I was never able to score a Switch to play it because there's only one store around and Amazon was always fucking sold out."

All of this babbling about video games has given his brain time to actually process some things though. He can talk about that shit on autopilot for days. "So there's bad ones, is what you're saying. What's the difference? I mean.. not the good and bad part, but what does a fairy even do?"

Yeah that sure is a whole lot of references that Erin only understands in third-hand terms; from events she attended or was hired to attend, from people talking at bars, from that friend of Colors' who did all the gaming shit...

Well, both of those, actually.

But it sounds vaguely like Pratt might be on the right tra-

"Zelda? OH YOU'RE THINKING OF THE POOL FAIRIES! They get giant later? Fuck me I went blind at the wrong time."

Did she get distracted from answering his question?

Yes actually there's no dissembling here, Erin was the teen who had a crush on the little pixelated pool fairies back in the top-down era.

"Oh yeah they wind up being like 30 feet tall, super hot, wearing barely any clothes. And you bring them materials and they upgrade your armor. I think maybe you have to do puzzles to get to them? I dunno. Mizuki has a switch and games but I haven't seen him for a while."

Since around the same time as Ebalon. Weird.

"There's probably not a good time to go blind tho."

"Urgggghh! I've been robbed of the giant women! Robbed!" Erin sighs wistfully. "God. At least Nintendo sounds like they still have good taste. Anyway, Deputy, the shortest answer to your question is that my kind of fairy back home tries to live our lives among the conventionally human and protect them from fairies that...care much less about that. For awhile we had to do that as vigilantes, these days we're working with the government monster hunters of all fucking people. We do all the normal stuff - eat, sleep, get married, vote, die, run businesses, all that - but we also like, protect people's dreams, spin straw into gold, fight boogeymen, all that. Me, I'm a fighter."

Unfortunately Pratt predates Lady Dimitrescu so someone else is going to have to tell Erin about the other giant woman she also missed out on.

"So am I out of a job in your world then? Because if I don't ever have to do paperwork again it'll be too soon man. Fuck all of that. Stupid fucking forms." No one told him there was more to law enforcement than standing around looking cute in his uniform, he was betrayed by the system.

"And you fight other fairies. Who wanna... fuck shit up I guess?"

"You wish you were out of a job. People didn't stop speeding, robbing, or driving drunk any less after their entire notion of earthly reality got upended, Deputy. I might venture to say they mighta started driving drunk more. Nah, more like...uniformed officers got told pretty quick that your remit doesn't extend to shit from other dimensions. Besides, there's not a ton of my kind running around. City like New York has maybe two hundred of us - y'know, in the capital of the world? We don't have the warm bodies to replace cops. Shit, we don't have the warm bodies to do our job."

That confession comes with a weary sigh. "...But yeah, that's more or less the job. Not all of the dangerous ones are bad-bad, but like...y'know how shady fireworks stands are illegal because there's no certainty you're not gonna blow your hand off if you buy from 'em? A lot of fairy things are bad like that. Some goblin sells you a ribbon, says it'll make your gun shoot straight and true, and it does! So you wrap your rifle in it, go deer hunting, bag a couple bucks, and then you learn the ribbon rips a tooth out for every shot, and now you're down four teeth and you're never gonna see that goblin again. Y'know?"

"I'm gonna be real with you, I didn't understand any of that shit. But that's okay because there's a fifty-fifty chance I don't remember this conversation tomorrow anyway." He shrugs, stubbing out his cigarette.

"Why would I buy ribbons from goblins? They're goblins. Also are there goblins and fairies? Is it like a whole Lisa Frank fantasy scenario with pink dolphins and unicorns too? I'm seriously asking that isn't a joke, cuz you're saying a lot of crazy shit and I thought I was the insane one on the ship."

"It only sounds crazy because I'm very bad at explaining it." Erin pauses. "...Well, no, it also is crazy, but I'm still not good at explaining it. We could drop it?" The offer's made with...hope, let's call it hope, because Erin looks keenly fucking embarrassed here. "I'm noticing you still introduce yourself as Deputy, you still uh...on the clock there?"

"Sure, whatevs. I'm easy." He gives a smirk, mentally adding the Sunday morning part in his head. "It's a habit, and saying my name is Pratt makes everyone from not America snicker so the Deputy part softens that a little, you know?"

As for the on the clock part... "I've been on the clock constantly for like three years before I died so this is basically my retirement. It's a shitty one but it's what I get. So don't call me if someone is loitering or shoplifts from the Tommy Bahama."

Erin "don't call me Miss Peters" Peters nods in sympathetic understanding at Pratt's name troubles. She will remember this.

Wait.

"Three years?" Erin's head tilts. "Y'all's police union not any good or...did something happen? That's a long time to go without so much as a weekend or a vacation day, my dude."

"Hope County, Montana." He says that like it explains everything. "There were only three of us and the Sherrif, shit was even worse before Rook joined. But then the last two years we uh..."

Long pause, staring at Erin, "You gonna freak out if I say some insane shit right now? Like I know you just told me about fairies and goblins and shit, but I've had so many people get all weird about cult stuff. I kinda don't have a filter and will keep rambling on if you don't stop me."

The Law Of Nature Is Named Wasp [OPEN + Closed]

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