strangetrip | [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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"I have--and trust me, I'm doing much better this time than last time." she sighed, sheathing her daggers again and gesturing with the sheathed blades. "Short version? I thought I was hallucinating and nearly jumped a couple people."

She fell silent as she clipped her sheath against the small of her back again, frowning curiously.

"But...so this is just...here? Darrow was a whole city." She gestured towards the distant building, shifting on her crutches to squint at it. "Is this it?" The girl was outside, so they could leave the building...

"How much play?" she asked, still staring at the building before she looked to Snow again. "Darrow had some rural areas around the city. Countryside--you could travel some, but any road you took out of town eventually led you back to the city. I'm assuming something similar has to happen here."

Snow nodded her understanding. She'd almost shot Roy.

Gotham before she'd arrived had been inside a very tight bubble, which had then widened. Most of her time there they'd had a world, but an unfamiliar one full of danger. "Four hours," she said. "However far you can get in four hours. You don't hit a wall or anything, just... world curves in on itself and you're walking or running or whatever back here."

"Just like Darrow, then." she murmured half to herself, still half talking to Snow. She let that settle into her head, then refocused on her new friend--definitely new friend with her attitude and her gun. Too new to trust, but that would change.

Sometimes she wished it wouldn't...but she wasn't keyed that way any more than Jason was.

"I never tested it, so I don't know the time, but that's what happened in Darrow, too." she explained, shifting on her crutches to relieve some of the weight on her good foot. "Least there's nothing keeping me from running if I need to. I'm used to...space."

The wilds of the dark and the streets, where she could fly and fight, where she could put on her mask and show the world the face that felt more like her own than the one Snow was looking at right at that moment.

In that moment, she realized the Alpha couldn't live in this place, and the notion immediately started an uncomfortable, heavy itch between her shoulders that she wouldn't be able to scratch as long as she was trapped here.

While she didn't know what or where Darrow was, that didn't particularly matter. It was another pocket universe. What else did she actually need to know?

"Right now, though, should probably talk to the innkeeper about getting your room. There'll be a reservation waiting for you. Creepy as shit, but that's just Darryl."

"Reservation. Right." Allison sighed, shifting on her crutches and rolling her head restlessly to stretch her neck. "Of course there's a creepy innkeeper, too--but it beats the hell out of the cult of Tiffany Charlotte."

Realizing that she was talking mostly to herself, she shot Snow a rueful smile.

"You, uh--you don't wanna know. Anyway, right, get my room from Creepy Darryl." She paused, then looked from the building to Snow again.

"Anything else I should know about this place? If there is, walk with me. Might as well get check in over with."

Snow's brow furrowed faintly for just a second at the unfamiliar name, but supposing that it wasn't exactly important for her to know she let it go and the pinprick frown smoothed away.

Instead she nodded and started back to the main building, matching her pace to Allison's. "So it's safe here. There's people who don't look human, and sometimes weird shit happens, but for the most part, nothing and nobody's gonna hurt you unless you start up a feud with somebody else here." She glanced at the cast before turning her eyes back to the pink building. "We got some healers and doctors around here, also."

The remark about denizens that didn't look human made her wary, but she didn't immediately go on guard--there were too many werewolves in her life for her to totally mistrust anything that looked monstrous.

She knew better than anybody that a human face could hide something far darker than any inhuman visage ever could.

The mention of doctors and healers had her curious--because she didn't really see a difference between the two--but she was more interested in the other part that came out of Snow's mouth.

"Define 'safe.'" she asked slowly. "I mean--Darrow was safe, too? But my big brother's wedding got crashed by kaiju parasites, and I once got caught in a swarm of fire bees--yes, you heard me right. Fire bees."

"That, basically," Snow answered, not blinking at the idea of fire bees. She had no idea what a kaiju parasite was supposed to be. "We had zombies about a week back. But things like that don't happen much. But the other people here are fine."

"Zombies." she echoed slowly, incredulously--and with a pang of wistful fondness, because Stiles would probably have freaked out. With glee or with fear, she honestly couldn't have said.

"Right." She sighed, shaking her head...then growing quiet, because if there were zombies...

"...are there any werewolves here?" she asked, trying to sound casual. It was always possible, there was always hope...

"Dyson," Snow answered right off. "My mama's boyfriend. There have been others, but they... disappeared. We don't really know what happens to people who leave, other than they didn't do it on purpose."

"Yeah. I know all about that." Allison replied, her tone gone quiet, hard, and ragged at the edges with remembered pain. A rooftop in Darrow, with nothing left but Jason's domino in her hand...

It's enough to make her stop dead, shifting her crutches into one hand so she can shove a hand into her pocket, because what if--

The soft, sleek material of the mask touches her fingers, rips a quiet, shuddering breath of relief from her lungs. She grips it for a second, just holds on to the familiar material, and fights the urge to pull it out and press her lips to it.

Withdrawing her hand from the pocket of her cutoffs, she keeps her head down, just taking a second to collect herself before she settles back onto her crutches and starts limping along again, finally able to look Snow in the eye.

"I've lost people in Darrow the same way--so this boyfriend of your mother's, is he an Alpha? I was part of a pack back home, both homes. It feels wrong not to be in one...I guess if he's looking to expand, let him know he can talk to me if you see him?"

Snow had looked away at the sound of that fraying tone, trying to offer at least the semblance of some privacy. She'd felt something like that after losing Sansa, though now she wasn't entirely sure why it had hurt so much at the time. It had been a crush, she was sure of that now. If it were love...

Well, she'd look like that, wouldn't she?

"You'd have to ask him 'bout that. I honestly don't know." Dyson was good to her in his own way, though she had no idea whether or not that made her pack in any way. Hell, she didn't even know if Regina counted.

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