strangetrip | [GP/EP] Check-in Day

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[GP/EP] Check-in Day

The woodwinds in her collection were for noodling mostly, and the violin was for memory of her family, but when Curnen really wanted to play she turned again and again to her guitar. This would probably always be her best instrument. It was the first of the month, she’d been here over a year, and it was probably a check-in day. So she sat on the lawn with her instrument in her lap, sending out a subtle magic to call anyone stranded in their little world this way.

At one point, though, she set aside the guitar and turned her face to the sky. For just a few minutes she required a different kind of magic.

It had been a week now since Scanlan had vanished in the battle. And Pike, too, though Curnen honestly couldn’t have cared less about her going away if she tried. Still. The two of them were family to people very dear to her, people who missed them. And Scanlan had been her friend. You marked something like that with a song.

Of all the money that e'er I had
I spent it in good company
And all the harm that e'er I've done
Alas, it was to none but me
And all I've done for want of wit
To memory now I can't recall
So fill to me the parting glass
Good night and joy be with you all

It was a traditional Irish goodbye, a farewell to friends said with love, drinking, well wishes, and the hope of meeting again. She couldn’t think of a better one for the occasion. And as she sang she twined her magic into her voice in a new way, sending the song to any ears that needed it, ears of those who knew and missed the departed. Not all of them might understand it, not all of them knew what she was, but she didn’t particularly care about that right now. The song was more important than the hiding.

Once the last note had dissipated she picked up her guitar again and resumed her work. If there were anybody out there, they had to know where to go.

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Liz had been right. Tess had killed Alex. Tess had killed Alex. Maria felt bad that no one had believed Liz all this time. She felt bad she hadn't believed her. Some best friend I am

They were now racing to the desert to tell Max and the others.

"Liz, I am so sorry." She repeated again.

She turned her head and realized Liz was no longer beside her. Maria slammed on the brakes and her car went skidding.

"Liz?!" She said with on setting panic. "Liz!!"

Maria looked around. Liz just vanished. Maria unbuckled herself and stepped out of her car. While it looked like desert, it didn't look like New Mexico desert. Her flip-phone wasn't working.

Her eyes found the Inn.

"Okay, okay. I have no idea what just happened, but I need to get to a phone and we can figure this out." She said to herself.

Maria climbed back into the car and white-knuckle drove all the way to the inn. The parking lot was empty, but the hotel looked like it was open.

She hurried inside and was currently trying not to hyperventilate.

"Hello?? Hello!!" She said. "Anyone know where the payphone is?"

Vax'ildan hadn't been much in the mood for rolling out on the welcome wagon. With Scanlan and Pike gone... He didn't know he had much heart left for anyone new, not just yet.

But he had come when he'd heard Curnen's song. And it had touched him, where he'd found a shadowed place against a tree to lean and listen, been a balm when he hadn't known what could have made him feel any better. And once the song had finished, he'd been debating if he shouldn't go to tell Curnen... There, on the road. What was that?

He stalked the girl that climbed out of the armored carriage at a just-discreet distance, even slipping soundlessly into the door behind her as she burst inside to find someone. "There's phones here," his soft voice explained with a bit of an accent. The speaker, as it turned out, was a lean fellow in black armor and feathered cloak, with long dark hair to match. "But it's more complicated than what you're thinking."

She turned and saw some dude in a Halloween costume.

"Sorry. Did I just, like, turn up to some sort of convention or something?" She asked. "Listen, I need to phone home. A friend of mine - well I don't know what happened, but I'm trying not to freak out right now, but I need help finding her."

The man looked a bit non-plussed about the whole 'convention' question, but the freaking out? That was probably unavoidable.

"Okay, this is going to all sound super weird," he started. "But that armored carria- That car of yours, you probably drove it here without expecting to find a pink inn at all, yeah? Have you suddenly found yourself in a place very different from where you were?"

"Uh, yeah. Exactly." She said.

Maria paused. This has to be some weird alien thing. Her eyes narrowed and she pointed at Vax.

"Is this your doing? Did you bring me here?" She asked with a glare. "Where's my friend?"

"It's not my doing," he assured her quickly. If she thought he was an archfey or something, he could understand why she'd jump to that conclusion. "And I've got no idea what it was that brought you to this place, same as I don't know how any of us got here. I don't know where your friend is either, or who your friend might be, but we can check the guest list at the front desk."

Her friend was almost certainly still on the girl's homeworld, where this new arrival couldn't reach. But one thing at a time. "I'm Vax'ildan. What's your name, miss?"

"Maria. Maria DeLuca." She replied tensely. "And if you're lying to me I will find out. I promise you. I've dealt with scarier things like the FBI and homicidal aliens."

Maria hopes her bravado was good enough to mask the panic she was feeling inside. She took a deep, deep breath.

"Okay, fine." She conceded. "Let's find out if she's here. Her name's Liz Parker.... we might as well look for Michael Guerin and Max Evans while we're at it."

He didn't know what 'the FBI' was, and they were all of them alien to this place, but Vax could see this Maria putting on her brave face and appreciated the grit of it when thrust headlong into so much strangeness.

And that name... That name. Their young Liz, about the same age as this girl, was Liz Parker if he remembered it rightly.

"It's this way to front desk," he gestured as he started walking towards Darryl's haunt. "There's a room for you already, Maria - again, it's not me, it's just something about this place. And your friend... Is she in trouble?"

Maria followed, but her eyes were ever watchful. She kept her eyes open for anything that might indicate aliens.

"Liz?" She replied. "Not in trouble. Well, I don't know. It's complicated. It's this whole thing."

She threw her hands up and rolled her eyes.

"Boyfriend's and pregnancies and... Other things." She said with a sigh. Murderous bitch aliens

He stopped, staring at her a bit. Her face, then, very briefly - involuntarily, really - her belly, before picking his eyes hurriedly back up again. "...Yours? Or hers?"

Maria took a full ten seconds to realize why he was looking at her belly. Her hands went to her belly and her eyes widened.

"What?" She said incredulously, "No. No, I am so not pregnant, thank you."

Maria was a virgin and as far as she knew, Liz was too.

"Not Liz either. Some other girl with Liz's used-to-be boyfriend. And she's a total bitch." She said with narrowed eyes. "She's not here, is she? Tess Harding ring any bells?"

"No?" He turned back the way they'd been headed, and maybe it was something to do with her reactions... But no, it was a gut feeling, more than any reason. He decided to trust that feeling. "Ah... I think your friend has been here a while. Liz I mean."

"Wait, Liz?" She asked. "She's here? Wait. Did you say 'a while'? I just saw her."

Maria followed with an inquisitive look.

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When Curnen had first arrived at the inn without Rob, she had been so determined to make him find her and yet so without song that she'd all but howled "Wayfaring Stranger" at the gathering dark without any words, without even remembering what the song was called. It had been Lindsey who'd given that back to her, starting what had at first been an agonizingly slow process.

She no longer thought Rob was going to find her here. For all that the night winds had brought them together, perhaps it had only been for that one purpose. To free her. To destroy Rockhouse. But she still sang it on arrival days, because it worked so well with the subtle magic she wove. Because she didn't want to forget.

Sitting cross-legged on the grass with her guitar in her lap, Curnen flowed from the last song she'd played into the old standard.

I'm just a poor wayfaring stranger
Traveling through this world of woe
There is no sickness, no toil, nor danger
In that bright land to which I go
I'm going there to see my father
I'm going there no more to roam
I'm just going over Jordan
I'm just going over home

Her voice soared high and clear, eyes closed in the enjoyment of the music. She'd been doing this for so long with most of the same people about that it felt entirely natural now. If she had any audience, she didn't notice.

Edited 2018-09-03 18:03 (UTC)

Maria couldn't find Liz, but the man at the front desk confirmed she was here. She was probably busy doing something important which was typical of Liz.

She heard the music. It was pretty. She had never heard that song before. As she approached, Maria was all smiles. The person singing was also playing guitar.

She stood and watched.

There was a feeling you got when somebody was watching you, even when you weren't particularly paying attention or looking for anything like that. It was also, in Curnen's experience, rarely a wrong feeling. So when the last notes died away, she stilled the strings and opened one eye before she grinned at the kid. "You're new, huh?"

"That obvious, huh?" Maria said with a half laugh. "Yeah. Just got here like an hour ago. Still don't really know if I'm just hallucinating or not, but I heard you singing and thought I'd take a look. Whatever you were singing sounded really nice."

Curnen shrugged. "Ain't many of us here. Couple shy ones'll keep you on your toes, but 'side from that you'll see pretty much every face inside a week. But," and here she leaned forward lightly on her instrument, "where and when're you from that you haven't heard 'Wayfaring Stranger' before?"

Is it a song I'm supposed to know? Crap

"Uh. Roswell? 2001?" She said with a grimace. "Sorry. Sort of more into alternative and rock with some boy bands on the side. And my mom's way more into ABBA and anything between the decades of the 60s to 80s. "

That explained it, and Curnen nodded. She smiled to show she was mostly teasing. "It's an old standard, the sorta thing lots of people take a crack at. Like Scarborough Fair, 'cept worth learning and listening to." It was really hard to make Scarborough Fair sound like anything worth listening to with the huge exception of Simon and Garfunkel in her opinion.

"You mean for guitar," Maria said. "I'm not the best with instruments. I can write songs, but playing them is, like, way hard. I can play Blackbird and that's it."

Maria didn't think she did that very well either.

"I have...had a friend who was good at guitar." She said, thinking of Alex. "He even had a band and let me sing with them."

That got Curnen's eyebrows up. "But you write. That's impressive. That's hard." Both intellectually and emotionally. At least, if you did it worth a damn it was. You put a piece of you into music you wrote.

"And you sing. The world's first and best instrument, if you ask me. Curnen, by the way."

"Oh right." She said, smiling. "Maria."

Curnen was the first person she met that seemed to understand why song-writing was important to her. Maria wanted to be famous like everyone else, but she wanted people to here her music.

"You're right." She said. "Being able to sing - it's the best feeling. I mean, don't get me wrong. If I could sing and play an instrument at the same time, I know I'd look way cooler, but if I can at least sing, I'm good."

"It ain't walking and chewing gum at the same time," Curnen assured her with a laugh. She wasn't about to judge. "I'm more a singer than a player, but... well. My sister ain't here to do the playing, so I gotta polish up best I can." She'd never be able to handle a guitar as well as Bliss could, though. Bliss could take this thing out of her hands and make it recite goddamn Shakespeare.

Maria tried to learn, but she didn't have the patience for a lot of learning. She got bored easily and moved on.

"Are there a lot of musicians here?" She asked. "Anyone have like, a band or something?"

Now that would be interesting

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