st_oriedqueen: (hmmm chinhand)
Regina Mills ([personal profile] st_oriedqueen) wrote in [community profile] strangetrip2017-03-22 10:25 am

[EP] each has been sent as a guide

Even for a witch, keeping track of inventory in a inn that magically resupplied itself on no definable schema, planning for non-magical and magical shortages and disasters, was only about 10% magic and 90% paperwork. For a witch putting the inhabitants of that inn before herself as penance for past evils and in place of her actual victims, it was 100% soul-searing. Especially because of her self-imposed restrictions on telling people what she'd been doing (they had to notice, because if she spoke through actions she wasn't being boastful or attention-seeking), it was also 100% isolating, lonely, and tedious.

Still, Regina persevered, today working on the health and healing aspects of her pencil-and-paper draft of a crisis management plan. The problem, of course, was that while she'd heard rumors of magical healing, no one had exactly jumped up and proclaimed their expertise in that area, and the few people with practical experience had more field medicine and triage. The only real light in that plague-threatened darkness was Henry's medicinal herb garden.

As morning passed into afternoon, Regina stood, stretched, reversing the bow in her back and then stowed her glasses in the drawer of the desk in the officer she'd appropriated in the otherwise unoccupied back office suite behind the front desk. In need of a break, she passed through the front desk area, told the Innkeeper (who scanned magically as human but never had anything useful to say) she still had the towels he'd given her before (which she did, in the beach bag she'd acquired from the shops), and headed out to explore the best locations on the grounds for fruit orchards and what, if any, structures she could appropriate or manipulate to greenhouse them so the magic wouldn't be as obvious.

High sun found her in the Madonna Meadows across the street from the registration and cafe building where she sat on the clean towels the Innkeeper had given her and made planning sketches. It had the advantage of plenty of room, even if it didn't have the 23 acres the hotel brochures claimed (some of the acreage had been lost to scrub desert by whatever planar shift magic had brought the Inn here. As she surveyed it she decided it would do for bulk growth, but in the event of another plane shift might be lost.

After 2:30, and lunch of a chicken Caesar salad, an apple, and cranberry-soda with a wedge of lime, she packed up her bag again and struck out again. This time she went to the "Secret Garden," and began investigating surrounding structures. When she found a useful tool-and-tractor shed, she rolled up the sleeves on her blazer and blouse, then began clearing the apparently unused materials from the shed. She did most of it using her physical strength (penance), but in the case of heavy objects or the tractor without the keys, she permitted herself magic instead.

[ooc: Find Regina anywhere she is in the post. She's not being showy with her magic, but if you're gifted, you'd probably notice. In the last location, she's uncharacteristically sweat-shiny and her hair's a bit of a mess, because she's not using magic to maintain her untouched glamor. I promise no fireballs unless previously agreed upon.]
st_rutsthepolka: (Default)

[personal profile] st_rutsthepolka 2017-04-01 12:04 am (UTC)(link)
Butters blinked and jerked upright. "Um. No. I mean, I don't think so, Chicago was fine last time I was able to check, or, you know, at least within the usual margin of error. Do you... raze a lot of people's villages?" Come to think of it, he'd mostly discounted the Faerie explanation, but given Harry's penchant for enthusiasm when describing attractive women, this lady could be...

Well, no, wait, hang on, this was completely the wrong climate for a Winter Queen, unless she was also trapped here, and if Summer could do that to a Winter Queen then global warming would be a way bigger deal. Still. Anybody scary enough to maybe be a Queen of Faerie was somebody to be careful of.

"Sorry. I'm trying to get back into practice at people skills and I'm rustier than usual."
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[personal profile] st_rutsthepolka 2017-04-04 10:51 pm (UTC)(link)
"I don't get out much." Butters shrugged apologetically, then tilted his head with--had he known it--a remarkably rabbit-like curiosity. "And either you were a very precocious child or you've aged spectacularly gracefully. Although I don't suppose there's any reason it couldn't be both."

He wished Andi were here. Not only was she better at talking to people, she could always turn into a wolf and kick their asses if they turned out to be actual town-destroying faeries, which was an underrated conversational advantage, in Butters' opinion. Also, he just missed her.
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[personal profile] st_rutsthepolka 2017-05-06 07:44 pm (UTC)(link)
"Ah, see, I went the other way around, I'm pretty sure I've seen the inside of every gifted and talented program in the greater Chicago area, music lessons, the whole bit. My mom wanted a violinist doctor and a dozen grandkids." Butters snickered. "I think sometimes she still thinks it's a little passive-aggressive of me to turn into an unmarried medical examiner with a one-man polka band."