westwhere | the weather vane will say it smells like rain today

Five has seen her. That first day she came in out of nowhere, he'd been aware of the new arrival. Nobody else seems to think it's strange at all to welcome anyone who seems out of place. There's been a number of them recently, and they all seem to gravitate here if they weren't outright invited by those hired to keep an eye out for them. The assumption, he's gathered, is that they have no choice. That they're stuck here together, united in a common goal.

But Five isn't like most people, and neither are his priorities. He doesn't simply accept things because they've got other distractions.

At a distance she seemed perfectly pleasant; barely phased by her situation. He watched her from a distance when she was drying her things not long ago, getting comfortable in their temporary shelter, but waits until he finds her alone in the garden to step forward.

When she comes over and asks him about the rune, he simply smiles up at her. Trying for the disarming 13 year-old boy he's never been that great at impersonating. It usually works.

"Enjoying some gardening?"

"No, just having a look around," her smile didn't falter but there was something about the way that the boy looked at her that reminded her of the expression some of her fellow students had while they were trying to get away with something they shouldn't. It was subtle enough that she filed the detail away under 'speculation', and tried the question again.

"I'm Lily. Have you been here for long? Karsa said there were other arrivals like me who have been here a while. Do you know anything about how the runes work?"

Since her arrival Lily had been getting her bearings slowly, piecing together the scope of her situation bit by bit. She appreciated having a chance to talk to anyone who might help her get a clearer picture of what she was in for. Not to mention the apparent influence of magic in this place, this world, whatever it was, was intriguing on a multitude of levels all on its own, and it was something she meant to learn about whenever the chance presented itself.

Someone who might know more than she did was, to Lily, the definition of a chance.

Just having a look around. That's just great. Not that they have any means of screening around here, but she probably supposes dropping Karsa's name is good enough to prove that she's like the rest of them. Far be it for that woman to give any of them a heads up that she's sending anyone, or where they were found.

It's fine. He'll figure it out himself.

"Haven't a clue." And that doesn't chafe at him at all, because he most definitely knows more than she does in the general sense. His smile gets that much tighter as he takes a breath to reply. "My name's Five. You just arrived, didn't you? I don't know if that would have been my first question."

She got the sense he was trying to be instructive, and she didn't appreciate it, and though she kept her face as pleasantly neutral as she could, Lily couldn't stop one eyebrow from raising at Five. Bit lordly of him really.

"Oh? And what would your have first question have been?" Her voice was light, and she didn't point out that his first question had been to inquire after her enjoyment of gardening that day. She wanted to, but that wouldn't have been productive. She wanted information, not to exchange barbs with a stranger.

"And I did, as of a few days ago. I'm trying to get my bearings." It was the truth after all. This kid was prickly, but he hadn't given her a reason not to be honest.

There's always a reason behind what he asks, and it's never really to socialize. Which might account for how he tends to come across. Not that it really matters to him, but Lily seems agreeable enough that he tries to be civil.

"I think I was more concerned about undead warlords than how they grow the turnips, personally." Truthfully, his first question on arrival had been how the hell did they screw up the timeline this badly, but he didn't actually voice it to anyone he expected to answer. He's long assumed he's the only one who can figure that out. And he will, eventually.

"A few days ago. And where did you meet our good friend Karsa?"

"If you're not going to tell me about the turnips why would I ask you about the undead warlords?" It seemed to her that leading with smaller questions yielded a better chance of getting answers, and any information was useful information.

The way he repeated what she'd had to say before tacking his own question on at the end reminded her of those police dramas her Mum and Dad liked to watch. His question made her shudder, as her hand went to her bruised wrist, grimacing.

"By the lake. That, that thing." Her expression soured, and she shook her head. "That thing in the lake," either unwilling or unable to continue - the ordeal had been miserable and its finer points were still hazy - she held up the wrist she'd been rubbing, letting Five get a look at the handprint shaped bruise around it.

Edited (why oh why do i keep accidentally defaulting) 2021-06-06 15:58 (UTC)

He narrows his eyes at her first comment, but doesn't quip back about her priorities. If it's not already obvious, he isn't the one maintaining the garden, so it's not like he actually has that information handy. It wasn't really his point anyway. This is much more about finding out who she is than actually filling her in. It just so happens that being pleasant about mundane topics sets off alarms for him.

But when she starts talking about 'that thing' in the lake, his entire demeanor changes. That's unexpected. More than it should be, considering when she came here she was still damp. He steps forward to get a better look at her wrist, frowning when he sees the bruise there.

"The body in the lake?" Now there's an insane conclusion. How brow furrows and he glances up for clarification. "It grabbed you?"

"It hurt me," she answered, quiet but no less emphatic. "It kept me down there," her eyes narrowed as she searched her memory, trying to dispel the cloudiness that lingered around her recollection.

"Those people in the forest, I think they," that thread of a thought was so close to clarity, she couldn't stop herself from prodding at it, despite the way it made her skin crawl.

"Do they push people into the lake?"

He absorbs that information quietly. As reassuring as it is to see her break character, he still finds himself questioning. He's been called paranoid before, and he's been around some terrific actresses who know how to respond in a way that would escape suspicion, but... no, she doesn't seem cunning enough for that. She's too young, and in this case, she has evidence.

"I don't know." More frowning. It seems like she should remember, unless it was all too traumatic. "Others have been drawn to the lake before. Did you see them...? How long were you down there?"

"No, I wasn't drawn." The words came quick on the heels of his last question, as though despite the evasiveness of the memory, she knew that much for sure. Lily looked off to the side, her brow furrowing as she stared into nothingness, her expression pained as though she were trying to solve a very hard math problem with a very bad headache. It was so close, and she wanted it. She deserved to remember all of what happened to her after what that horrible thing in the lake had done to her.

"They put me there, but there weren't any others." Lily looked back to Five, almost relieved to have reclaimed a little more of what had happened, however terrible it was. "They put me in the lake and that thing kept me there," she repeated with new certainty. "It caught me and it didn't release me until dawn. I was close to the banks when Karsa came." The more she talked about it, the more came back.

"Do you know what it is? Or was? The thing in the lake, I mean."

Just watching her he can see that she hasn't fully figured out the answers to his questions until he asked them. Maybe she blocked the memories. It isn't clear from her explanation if she was floating in the water, or if it held her underneath and somehow prevented her from drowning.

He hasn't gone into the lake himself, so he can't fully relate to the experience, but he was briefly entranced by the voices coming from the woods that he doesn't doubt would have brought him there. They always happen at night and by morning everything is calm again. This is the first time he's heard of anyone being put there by force.

"It's a long story, but the short answer is no." He sighs, knowing that he's going to be obsessing over this new bit of information that will likely get him nowhere. He's considerate enough to run through the truncated version that doesn't really explain what happened to her. "If you've heard of the warlords, it has to do with Anurr. The body in the lake supposedly belonged to his predecessor who was drowned by his own people."

If that's really true or not, it's impossible to say. He can only confirm to what he's seen with his own eyes.

"They've been investigating it since we got here."

Edited 2021-06-07 02:48 (UTC)

The explanation he gave her left Lily with a disgusted look on her face, looking down at the bruise on her wrist again.

"They? They should be careful." She knew a little about what that thing could do, and she couldn't fathom wanting to know more than that. Whoever 'they' were, Lily hoped they proceeded cautiously.

Breathing out slowly she nodded to herself and lifted her head to meet Five's eye once again. Recollecting this, at last, hadn't made her feel as better as she had hoped, but it hadn't made her feel worse. Some of the finer details were still unclear, how she hadn't managed to drown while the thing at the bottom of the lake kept her there among them, but this was still an improvement. A very morbid improvement.

"Would those people in the forest do something to make me forget?" She assumed they'd pushed her in the lake to do her in, wiping the memory of someone who wasn't supposed to survive seemed like a waste of time. "Have you dealt much with them?"

Since 'they' apparently included his sister, he tends to agree. He's been meaning to make it a little clearer to everyone who they shouldn't get tangled in their mess, but that's for another time.

As she looks down, he casts a glance around to see that they're still alone. There's so many people crawling around these days, he always expects to have one of them popping out of the shadows. And then there's the aforementioned sister, who really doesn't need to be troubled by any updates about the lake.

When he settles back on her again, he watches her expression carefully. He decides that he believes her when she says she doesn't remember. For all he knows, she's been here longer than she thinks.

"I'm familiar enough." It's too early in their relationship to tell her he has one kidnapped. He's only planning on sharing that bit of information once he gets something useful for his trouble, if he does at all. He shrugs. "They're fanatics. Some of them are undead, and others aren't, but I haven't confirmed what abilities they might have. Assuming it's not head trauma."

And honestly, this whole thing would be a lot simpler if his other sister were around to compel them to answer.

"What happened before the lake? Is that the earliest thing you can remember?"

The kid seemed - cagey almost, enough so that she refrained from digging through her satchel to bring out a notebook and a pencil to jot down the little shards of information he was inclined to toss her way.

Instead of taking notes, she frowned thoughtfully at the question, breathing out another sigh as she squinted her eyes and tried to drag the rest of that memory out of whatever corner it was hiding in. "I stepped off the train and then it was as though I'd walked into," trailing off Lily gestured around her. "Instead of the platform that was supposed to be there."

"I was out of sorts, it's a blur until the edge of the lake and," Lily stopped and looked at Five, focusing sharply on his face as she squinted. "They were speaking, the only word they used that Karsa used when she found me, and told me what was happening was Unhalad. Then they pushed me and I went under, and," again she held up her wrist in wordless conclusion.

She doesn't mention specific symptoms he'd expect, but being out of sorts covers most of the basics. What she recounts is unsettling enough not to ask his usual follow up questions; placing her in a year and location to keep track of the timeline. If people are beginning to show up at random locations, it's going to be that much harder to track his family down.

Why push her into the lake? He still doesn't know the process they use to convert someone, or whatever the term is, to a member of the undead. If they wanted to kill her, they could have done that outright. Did Anurr's people assume she was aligned with Unhalad? And if so...

"I don't get it. You don't fit the pattern." He seems more perturbed by that than he is empathetic, but these have been a frustrating two months. More questions to ask the captive from the forest while he has the chance. "They knew where to find you and they knew why you were here. You said Karsa found you, did you see her with them?"

"What's the pattern?" It was the most pertinent question, a pattern was promising, it could be jotted down in one of her notebooks to be picked over. As piqued as her curiosity was, the concern on her face and in her voice was unmistakable.

"I remember being on the shore of the lake long enough to dry my clothes and hair, no longer than ten minutes at the most - but she wasn't with anyone. She told me she was on her way to the trials and brought me with her while she told me what I was doing here, and how I was meant to go east with the rest of you to get home."

Of course there wasn't anyone else. He sighs, like explaining what he means takes too much effort on his part. It doesn't benefit him to catch her up to speed, and anyone could provide this information to her, but he goes ahead anyway.

"We arrive in groups, usually chained and drugged... put into some menial labor. The jail or the mines. The last was on a ship." Not one person by a lake. There's a possibility that they were simply too sedated that no one remembered their capture. Five had eventually located the briefcase that brought him here, but has no memory of anything before waking up at the jail. Though as exhausted as he was from overusing his powers, not to mention taking a cast-iron frying pan to the head back in the '60's, that isn't entirely surprising.

"They must have been holding you for a reason." Until Karsa retrieved her? It seems suspect, whatever it was. He doesn't want to keep speculating though, so he presses on with his next question.

"What were the trials about?"

"I think they intended for the thing in the lake to handle me," Lily shook her head disdainfully, at the thought, still unsure why it had even let her go at all. She would remember the grip it had on her for a long, long time.

That her arrival had broken his suggested pattern wasn't lost on her and she intended to mull it over, already wondering what might have caused things to change in Unhalad's absolutely terrible recruitment strategy. "Do you think it's a showing of desperation? Has anyone gotten the upper hand enough to drive him to simply pluck people out of train stations?"

Analyzing the situation was the first step towards taking control of it, and more than anything Lily wanted to know what was going on. "The trials? She said they were Anurr's people in the forest, proving their wit and strength and the like. I didn't want to risk them recognizing me and trying to force me back into the lake, so I left quickly after she told me where to find this place, though if it's safe I'd return."

Why any of them thought that the trials were worth investigating is beyond him, but he's not surprised that the cult would come up with that kind of activity. For some reason it interested Karsa enough to visit. That's all the information he thinks he's going to be able to gather from her on the subject, so he doesn't ask any follow up to it.

As far as her own questions, he could probably make a reasonable guess. One she could have figured out on her own after seeing how excitable Anurr's people are.

"You think you were just some random person at a train station?" She really seems to be trying to sell that. Before hearing her answer, he asks for the sake of the timeline. Old habits. "What was the date when you left? Where was the station?"

Shaking her head at his first question, she crossed her arms over her chest. "No, what I mean is - if it's not a group at a time anymore, just whoever strikes his fancy, would that imply urgency."

Lily shrugged at Five. She knew she wasn't just a person on a train station. There was going to be a war, she was talented and she would fight in it, but if they weren't arriving in groups, just plucked one by one - it was peculiar enough to mention.

"London, King's Cross Station, Nineteen-seventy-eight. I was getting off my train. You?" She got the sense it was a bit of a coinflip whether he'd tell her where and when he came from, but she had no reason not to try and ask.

"It's possible. Unhalad seems to be threatened by Anurr, and apparently he's getting weaker if he can barely hold who he manages to take." They've seen that enough. While that tracks, he's not exactly sure if it's a great development. Harder to find people when they trickle in one at a time.

"Day and month?" Back to this important subject. Yes, he gets that specific with everyone. It helps to narrow down world events if he doesn't have to go through an entire year.

He considers what was going on during that time period for a moment before he comes up with the answer he gives to anyone asking. Keeping his story straight.

"I was in Dallas, Texas. November 23rd, 1963."

"June 30th, stepping onto platform 9¾ at about four in the afternoon, if you want to put a very fine point on it." She got the sense he did, and she wasn't going to argue with it, there always was a chance that something was hiding in the finer details. His meticulousness was absolutely one of those finer details,

"Have you found any pattern in the dates so far?" Watching him curiously she continued to wish it wasn't terribly rude to take out her notebook and begin writing furiously. Five didn't seem as though he would take very well to it. For a kid who looked about thirteen, he struck her as not being the sort to put up with a lot of rubbish.

He can't tell if she's mocking him by giving him that extra bit of information, but he takes it all the same. Anything could be relevant. The day he stops asking is the day he's given up on fixing this, and that's just not going to happen. Forty-five years hadn't broken his resolve, two months isn't about to.

Nothing immediately stands out, but he doesn't admit at the lack of an epiphany. These things take time and he scrutinizes her a moment before he replies.

"I'm working on it." That is as polite an answer as he gives, even in his dry tone, so he must take her curiosity as genuine. It only occurs to him after how accepting she is to the possibility of time travel. "You seem to have adjusted to the idea pretty quickly."

At the mention of her adjustment, Lily looked around them for a moment, before looking back at Five rather dubiously.

"I wasn't aware there was much of a choice beyond adjusting." Time travel existed, she'd read about time-turners in school and even indulged the rumor there was one on school grounds. It was the idea of different worlds that struck her as the strange part but confronted with the apparent reality of the situation Lily had no choice but to accept that it was the case. They had all been brought to this place, and the implications of just that fact alone were huge.

"So if this is what it is, then I want to help figure out the hows and the whats of it."

His eyebrows twitch up, but he shrugs a moment later. Not that he's one to talk, but he feels like a normal person would take more than a few days to be so casual about meeting others from entirely different timelines. What that familiarity says about her is an unknown. But noted.

"By seeing who you'll run across in the garden?" That's one approach. He can almost empathize with her. If he knew he couldn't do anything to fix what's broken, he might be right where she is, trying to figure out how turnips grow in the winter.

"How's that going so far?"

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