-5 MCA, Friday Afternoon/Evening

[talentforlying]

John had gotten the surprise of his fucking life this morning. In a good way, that was, and while it had taken a few moments for him to wake up enough to realize what, exactly, was coming out of his shower-head, he had figured it out eventually.

A call and a bribe to get a same-day delivery of a few giant bottles of Culligan and a water cooler from the mainland, a trip over the Causeway to the YMCA for a godsdamned shower with water and a shopping trip for the appropriate accouterments...

It was getting on towards dinner time by the time once he was back and had everything he needed. The door to his flat was propped open, text messages reading my fucking taps are running absinthe come fucking help me enjoy it, music on and food available.

Fuck yeah Constantine was indulging. And no, he wasn't lighting his sugar cubes on fire, that shit was for showy amateurs.

[OOC: Open post! If you think you got a text, you did, or feel free to stumble over Constantine's Bad Choices.]

Comments

[arboreal_priestess]

There was a knock on Constantine's open door and a blonde with a pixie cut stick her head inside. "Excuse me?"

Verity's taps were running green and smelling like gin of all things, and she hadn't been on the island anywhere near long enough to figure out the connection.

"I was wondering if there was something wrong with your pipes, too?"

[talentforlying]

"Nah, there's something right with 'em for once," John laughed. "Absinthe, of all things, which is far better than the eggnog incident. Though with it being Saint Pat's, you'd think I'd have beer like Peter over there. Come on in and pull one up, love."

[arboreal_priestess]

"Eggnog incident?" Verity asked, though she did accept the invitation to come inside. "Wait, are you saying your pipes are filled with absinthe?"

Which made the 'eggnog incident' even worse to contemplate. It was bad enough she smelled like a gin distillery mixed with lime. The idea of smelling like eggnog was a hundred times worse.

"...How the hell did that much absinthe get into the plumbing?"

Poor, precious lamb. So new!

[talentforlying]

"It's green, it's Saint Pat's, and the island has decided to try and be funny again. This time, it actually succeeded," he said dryly. "Not bad, for a sentient bit of rock."

[arboreal_priestess]

"...Please explain the part about the island trying to be funny," Verity said, blinking several times as her brain segfaulted. "Sentient rock?"

[talentforlying]

"Fandom is, in and of itself, a sentient nexus of realities. Sometimes it gets bored, once it had a baby, and it tries desperately to understand 'humor' but tends to fall flat," he said with a shrug. "How? No fucking clue. How does my library manage to have every book ever written? Or have its own pocket universe for Special Collections? It just does."

[arboreal_priestess]

"So I got the speech about it being a reality nexus," Verity said, "but I missed the--did you say every book ever written?"

Oh lord, you were in for it now, Constantine. That? That was the look of a woman who'd just been offered the location of the holy grail.

[talentforlying]

"As far as I can tell. One of the reasons they hired a mage-- someone has to know if the magic theory holds up, or if it's a bit of fiction that tried sneaking over to pretend to be one of the big kids." He gave a long-suffering sigh. "The books tend to be sentient, too. Or at least animated inside the bounds of the library. 'Genre War' isn't just a way of talking about the NYT's Best Seller list."

[arboreal_priestess]

"Magic?" Verity groaned and covered her face. "Oh god. My grandma's gonna get wind of this place and then you'll have a problem."

What was Constantine's opinion on grenades in the library? Just asking. For reasons.

"A mage, you said? Like, not a routewitch or someone with a penchant for accidentally setting things on fire or whatever, but an actual, like, wielder of the arcane arts or whatever?"

If he was a snake cultist, Verity was burning this place around her ears.

[uncertain_dume]

"But there is something wrong with mine," Kanan offered up. "They seem to be running sludge."

He really should have sampled it, though. Shamrock shakes were awesome.

[arboreal_priestess]

That was lying propaganda and Kanan had made the right choice!

"That's one way to make me feel better about my gin-and-lime-juice shower," Verity said, sitting down with a drink in hand. "On the plus side, that's a hell of a cocktail to wake up to. I guess I should just be glad I didn't try to take a bath."

A sip of her drink and then she was offering her hand. "Hi, I'm Verity. I'm new, as everyone keeps pointing out."

[uncertain_dume]

Kanan grinned and reached over for the handshake.

"And I'm Kanan. I wasn't going to ask if you were new, but yeah, I haven't seen you around."

Which could just as easily have been a testimony to how often he didn't get out, these days. Clearly he needed to start doing more of his drinking in bars.

[arboreal_priestess]

But drinking at a bar cost money! Drinking at home (or in Constantine's house) was free!

"It's okay, pretty much everyone does," Verity asked. "I moved here about a month or so. Thought I was settling in okay, but this was pretty unexpected."

[uncertain_dume]

True enough! And Kanan preferred to drink other people's alcohol over his own whenever he could help it.

"That's this place all over," he chuckled, shaking his head and lifting his glass. "Pretty unexpected. What brings you here, Verity?"

[arboreal_priestess]

Verity's instincts were to lie, but there was a green woman hanging out here with no one seeming the warier and alcohol was coming out of the taps. If this place wasn't safe to be open about cryptozoology, nowhere was.

"My job," she admitted. "I'm a cryptozoologist and my family heard about the teal dear and the alots on the island. I'm here learning more about those species and keeping an eye on the cryptids in Baltimore for the next year."

[uncertain_dume]

"I have no idea what half of that means," Kanan shared, leaning forward and smiling apologetically. "You're here to study the local wildlife?"

He paused, and then decided to clarify, "I'm not exactly from around here. If there's something special about the deer and the alots, I really wouldn't know."

[arboreal_priestess]

Uh-oh, Kanan. You'd released the nerd.

"They're both species that are unknown to most human scientists," Verity explained, animated with enthusiasm. "The specific coloration of the deer--and at least some of their behaviors--set them apart from their various cousin and I haven't even figured out what phyla they belong to, never mind narrowed it down further."

[futurespacemom]

"Everybody's seem to have something different," Hera said. "What's in yours?" Then, realizing this was a strange face, "Hi, I'm Hera. Do you live in the building, too?"

[arboreal_priestess]

For a moment, all Verity saw were Hera's lekku and hastily averted her eyes, thinking the other woman was a Gorgos medusa, or, more colloquially, a greater gorgon. Verity had never met a greater gorgon before, but that was in no small part deliberate on both sides. Most greater gorgons avoided humans out of fear of another attempt at extermination and Verity didn't want to chance being turned to stone with a glance.

"Hi," she said, a little awkwardly, carefully not making eye contact. "No, I live in the other apartment building in town, but I didn't know what apartments were inhabited and didn't feel like knocking on a bunch of empty doors, you know?"

And it was about then that Verity realized Hera's...hair-tentacles?...were not actually snakes at all. And if they weren't snakes, then it meant Hera was not a gorgon and--okay, now Verity was making eye contact and offering more than just a polite smile. "Hi," she said again. "I'm Verity and the pleasure is mine."

Much easier to be personable when the other person wasn't a giant snake-woman ability--and possibly the inclination--to petrify you!

[futurespacemom]

Well, that was a weird greeting. Hera wasn't really sure if it was good or bad.

"Nice to meet you. You don't see a lot of twi'leks, then?"

[arboreal_priestess]

"I believe you're my first!" Verity said cheerfully. "I thought you were a greater gorgon for a moment because of your...uhh...cranial appendages?" Hopefully that was a non-offensive way of saying 'head tentacles'. "And to make eye-contact with a greater gorgon if neither of you are taking precautions leads to a very painful death, so I was being cautious."

It wasn't like cockatrice and basilisk petrifaction that was reversible if treated in time. While it was possible there was a cure for greater gorgon petrification, Verity hadn't heard about it.

[futurespacemom]

Hera blinked. "Huh. I don't know that species. The only thing too much eye contact does with twi'leks is get awkward, just like humans. And they're lekku," she said, gesturing at them. "I keep forgetting twi'lek aren't usual on this planet."

[arboreal_priestess]

"Not at all," Verity said, noting the word lekku. Her fingers itched for a pen and paper so she could ask Hera all about twi'leks, both biologically and culturally, but she refrained. Because she was a grown adult who knew how to carry on a polite conversation, even with a species she'd never encountered before.

Which brought the total up to five or so since she arrived.

"I also just learned that Kanan isn't from this planet, either," she said, nodding in his direction. "Have you had a chance to talk with him yet?"

She wasn't going to assume the aliens knew one another just because they were aliens.

[futurespacemom]

Well, it would be better than refusing to look at her, anyway, though Hera wasn't exactly a biologist.

And that assumption was probably a good thing, but in this case... Hera glanced over at Kanan - who seemed determined to get cheerfully drunk - and rolled her eyes at him. "I came here with him, actually. Or technically he came with me. He lived here first, I flew us back," she explained.

[arboreal_priestess]

Even so, she probably knew a lot more about how she and the rest of her people worked than Verity did!

"Are you new, too?" she asked. "I've been here a over a month and people are still commenting on that."