strangetrip | [EP] Lunar eclipse

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[EP] Lunar eclipse - OTA

Sunny was not a natural star reader. Tall though she was for a woman, it wasn't such a remarkable attribute that it played any part in her abilities. Still, Anatov and Sugar Cream has seen to it that she had a thorough education and she could do it. She had a question that needed answering and a night with such an unusual moon seemed like the right night for such an important question.

When the hell are we next getting out of here?

She wouldn't ask about a final escape. She was pretty sure that even if she did have a knack for this that the sky would only laugh at her efforts to answer that question. So she looked for signs of a portal. Of a break from this tedium.

There was a window of about an hour starting just after 8:40 where the moon was swallowed from the sky. Sunny sat herself down in the grass, watching the black and the stars. The night was cool, but still not cold. It was never properly cold here. This was like trying to read a language that you had only been learning for a short time and wasn't related to any other tongue you knew. She could do it, but she had to read it one letter at a time. While the letters were moving.

What was normally a frustration became a thrilling challenge and source of delight. And who knew, maybe she'd actually learn something.

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Liz did not have powers, but she loved the stars. Ever since she was a kid she had been staring at them and the fact she came from Roswell meant she was often bombarded with space on a daily basis. Even though she still didn't feel well, Liz really wanted to see the eclipse.

When she saw someone else was out - Sunny - she kept a polite distance and sat down too. Sitting down kept the nausea at bay and the cool air felt nice on her clammy face. As she looked up at the sky, she smiled - the stars were always so beautiful.

The inn was generally a safe place, but that extra sense of someone being there was something Sunny had developed early and strong. And further that sense of can I handle this if I have to. You kind of had to, when the other option was constantly getting jumped in the girls bathroom as early as kindergarten.

But sometimes you did have to look, too, which Sunny did. Liz's was not a threatening presence, even when she was well. Right now, though, the kid looked awful. Had for a while. They were a robust people at the Madonna Inn, but apparently when they did get sick it dug in its heels and lasted (though Corbie was at least more or less back to all her shifts in the library now that Mildmay didn't need her hovering).

"I'd tell you to be in bed," she said, "but there's plenty of time for that."

She looked over and offered Sunny a small smile. It was definitely not the first time someone told her to go lie down. She appreciated it was a sort-of scolding rather than a full-blown one. "I promise I'm only out here for a little bit. When the eclipse is done, I'll go back to bed. It's just... these things are so amazing, it's hard not to want to watch them." At least for her.

Sunny only shrugged. It really made no difference to her; Liz wasn't her responsibility and she was plenty old enough to make choices about her own body besides. And... "We don't get much in the way of breaking routine around here. It'd be a shame not to enjoy it."

Edited 2019-01-22 08:30 (UTC)

She gave a bit of a nod. "I've always liked eclipses. As a kid I was fascinated how the moon and sun interacted together like this. For a little bit I wanted to be an astronaut, but I think most kids in Roswell go through that phase." Lots of kids did, in fact, but somehow it seemed like it was more of a possibility from Roswell.

"Mm..." Sunny was keeping one ear on the conversation, but her real focus was intent on the sky. "I started learning star-reading in my mid-teens alongside my friends." Chichi and Sasha had been quickest to memorize what a plethora of signs meant, but it was Orlu who had the greatest knack for it. Came from being the most patient of them.

"Do you mean Astrology?" Her eyes moved back to the sky too. Maria liked astrology a lot.

"Mmhmm," Sunny confirmed. "There's a reason most horoscopes are crap. Assuming the person writing them actually knows how to read the stars and isn't making up some garbage, it's hard to get anything good." Not impossible. But exceedingly difficult. People with a natural talent for it were rare and prized in the Leopard world.

When Liz looked up, she saw science. She saw suns and comets and planets. She saw constellations and space with all its wonder. She knew aliens existed now, too, which meant she thought about other life in the universe. She had a hard time looking up and seeing answers to the future.

"Are you trying to do that now?" Which also came out sounding a little like 'should I shut up and let you do your thing?'

"Rare events mean even someone as bad at this as me can't help seeing something," Sunny said by way of answer. Which wasn't exactly a yes, but it wasn't a no, either. Liz had never offended Sunny personally, but you could only listen to so many stories of a person (however innocently) offending and hurting the people you cared about before their company wasn't particularly desirable.

She wondered what sort of thing someone could see as she regarded the eclipse happening.

Quietly she reached for the phone she had received for Europe and lifted it to take a photo. The whole use of the phone looked a little more like when a parent new to technology used such an item rather than a typical teen born and breed with one.

Getting a picture, she pocketed the phone away, smiling briefly to herself.

Sunny paid her no heed. She was close to something, she knew, but that didn't mean she was actually going to get there. It crossed her mind And then there, just before totality ended, she saw it.

She wished the answer were more definite, but again, trying to read a complex thought in your third best language that wasn't related to your other two while all the letters were moving. All the same, before spring was more than she'd known previously, and it was a kind of relief.

She really should go in now, after so much of her warmth leeching out of her onto the grass. But she only sighed and lay herself down on the ground, watching the moon slowly come out of the Earth's shadow like the opening of a single, huge eye.

Emma hadn't realized there was going to be a lunar eclipse until she looked up on her way back to the room from the kitchen, but when she did, her pattern-seeking mind got one of those flashes of inspiration she associated with the Moon. This close to the buildings there was too much artificial light for what she wanted to see, so she went in search of a better vantage, only to find Sunny where she'd thought to go.

Because it was Sunny, she didn't move on to somewhere else, just gave a little more space than she would leave if they were intentionally hanging out together, and sat down on the ground. She pulled a journal – complete with Madonna Inn logo on the cover, and pages only fit for writing things down and the roughest of sketches – from her bag, and looked up at the night sky as she started to jot notes and catch up with her thoughts.

Sunny was silent for a long time, long enough that one might assume she hadn't noticed Em at all. But eventually, without taking her eyes from the sky, she tipped her head in her friend's direction and asked, "Do you see things in the stars, or is it just the cards?"

"Just the cards," she answered, like Sunny, not turning from the view or the notes she was making. Very occasionally other art, but usually only when there's a strong and direct connection to what she's seeing or who it's about. "But I can't help making patterns and parallels." Psi minds didn't always work like other people's, reaching out and at least in Emma's case, trying to see meaning in the most random of things. Okay, so most people's brains did that to some extent.

"Is that what you're doing? Reading the stars?"

"Well, making a complete hash of it, anyway," Sunny admitted with a laugh. "The times I've had clear, accurate visions have been because a spirit showed something to me. Like Christmas, except less dealing with your unresolved mommy issues along the way."

And often more risk of slipping off a cliff into madness, but for some that was less scary.

"But being able to read signs of the future on my own was part of my education."

"It might be nice, if signs of the future were more like traffic signs, or billboards maybe. But even for natural precogs, they usually aren't. And when they are... I usually wish they weren't." When the cards were that specific and straightforward, it was pretty much always something really, really bad. Like natural disaster bad. Or demon invasion bad.

"On the other hand, the Christmas spirit wasn't too bad for me." Emma hadn't talked about her visitor much. Ollie had left her with a lot to think about, and she hadn't felt ready to share while she was still trying to work through what she'd seen.

"Yeah?" The one word was invitation for Em to say more. Or nothing. Sunny would be fine either way. "I had no visitors, I just watched most everyone else getting wrecked."

She had almost hoped for it, though she supposed it was for the best. Seeing Orlu would have been sweet in the moment and devastating now.

"One of Jag's flatmates from London came to see me." It hadn't hurt the way it would have to get a visit from someone from home, although seeing Bobby would've been nice, and probably easier than others, she realized now she was thinking about it. "And I've had a while to get used to people who know me better than I know them, so that part wasn't so bad."

Sunny had known Emma and Jag before coming here, so Emma had to ask. "Ollie? I don't know if you knew him or not. Quiet, artist type. Unobtrusive, even."

"Know of him," Sunny allowed. "We never met. How'd that go?"

Emma took the time to think before answering, even though she'd been thinking about it a lot in the weeks since. "Good, I think," she decided. It had hurt, seeing Jag so open and easy, when he'd always held back in the time she'd known him – ever since she crushed that very first moment of relief when he'd first seen her in their suite – but she thought she'd needed to see what the other her's life and relationship had been like with him.

"He took the Christmas part of ghosts of Christmas seriously. He showed me three Christmases with Jag and... the other me."

While it didn't sound like such had been the case here, or if it had that Em had already processed it, Sunny felt it would have been very poor form not to acknowledge, "That sounds awkward."

"Yeah..." Emma couldn't deny it had been awkward in some ways. Or maybe she could, but she wouldn't with Sunny. "But it was good too. I think I needed to see for myself. And it was my choice. Ollie showed up and offered, but if I'd said no, he would've gone." From what she'd heard, not all the ghosts had cared about consent.

She shrugged. "But you know me, always wanting to know. And I'd been in a reading when he showed up, first as the Hermit, and then in the room."

"Polite," Sunny said, approving. "Learn anything helpful?"

"Other than what could have been, or how much terrible this place truly is?" She shrugged. What she'd learned, some of it she was still working through. But that had probably been the worst of it, seeing Jag the way he'd been before.

"The me you knew before is really lucky. Finding the home she did."

Sunny wasn't sure what could have led to the observation of how terrible the inn was, but she could take a guess or two. But given it was threatening to crush her, too, she didn't want to dwell on it. She nodded her agreement. "She always spoke very fondly of her family."

Emma nodded too, glad her other self had had that, and understanding better now she'd met Ollie and seen her with Jag.

"Would it be easier for you, if I wasn't so much like her?" Maybe it was a cruel thing to ask, when she couldn't do anything about it, but Emma was used to that sort of impotence when it came to things she needed to know.

Sunny blinked, visibly surprised by the question. "What does it matter what I feel about that? I should think it's much more unfair to you to have people expecting things of you based on their connection to another person."

That wasn't how Emma had meant it, and she shook her head as she tried to figure out how to explain.

"It's not the expectations," she began after a quiet moment. "You and Jag have both been really good about that." Since those first moments, when they hadn't had any reason to think she wasn't the Emma they knew.

"I don't know. It's kind of something Ollie said, that I really am a lot like her. And the first real conversation I had with Jag, he wanted to know more about me, because while he knew I wasn't her, he didn't really know it deep down. Only the more we talked, the more like her I seemed and it made things worse. And I knew that, and some of it's just being stuck in this place, but I didn't realize, I couldn't realize, how much Jag doesn't let himself be himself around me. And..." Emma shrugged again. There wasn't really anything more to say, but there was so much more than the words seemed to hold.

Oh. That.

"Jag's got a lot of feelings he's trying not to foist on you." An obvious point, but one that needed making. "And he's not good at... not feeling things. I don't have that same road block." Sunny shrugged. "Plus I tend not to associate with people I need to watch every little thing I say and do with, I have to compartmentalize enough. We're fine."

Jag was, obviously, a special case, and Emma hadn't thought it was as difficult for Sunny as it was for him. But Emma also had a tendency to overthink, especially when the alternative was feeling too much. And just because she was used to not being the person someone wanted, didn't make it any easier, especially when the person she wasn't was another version of herself.

"Don't mind me. I'm just..." Another shrug. "A lunar eclipse is a good backdrop for long, dark teatimes of the soul maybe."

Even before Em had finished saying 'don't mind me' Sunny was moving to close the distance between them. Settling by her friend's side, she put an arm around her shoulders and drew her into one a one-armed embrace. "Yeah, that's fair."

Emma's arm fitted around Sunny's waist as she leaned into the embrace. "I'm okay really. And I am glad Ollie showed me what he did. I can see why she'd like him too."

She didn't pull away, but her spine straightened as she deliberately set aside her issues spiral for another time. "Okay. Enough of that. What are the stars showing, or not showing you, and is there any way I can help?"

"Truth be told I stopped paying attention for a while there," Sunny laughed self-deprecatingly. "And I'm not sure how to describe it in any quick and easy way..." Turning her eyes back up to the sky, she had a brief flash of understanding. It was weird how that could happen. Not unlike books in some ways. You could throw yourself against them for hours, and then so much would make sense all in a rush. "Before spring," she said.

"What's before spring?"

Timing could be one of the more difficult things for Emma to read in the cards, unless she was specifically asking about it, and even then, when past, present, and future could all look the same, dates and times got blurred. And Sunny hadn't said what, if anything, she'd been looking for in the stars.

"Our next field trip," Sunny said, smiling a little self-deprecatingly when she realized she hadn't explained what she was looking for. "Whatever it is, whenever it is, it'll happen before the equinox." Time indeed could be the most difficult thing to predict, regardless of medium. A natural star-reader would likely be able to pick it out, but Sunny wasn't about to try to push her luck so far.

"A break from the cabin fever would be good." How long had it been since they got to go to Europe? Emma mentally counted back. Six months. No wonder they were all going crazy from being stuck here.

"I could try to find out more. What, where, when, that kind of thing. Or we could anticipate the surprise of it?"

"I don't know," Sunny mused. "So much around here is routine. It's almost... nice for at least something to be unexpected."

Emma nodded. As much as she liked – okay, needed was probably more accurate – to know more about what was coming, she couldn't deny there were times it was better to be surprised.

"We have a time frame, something to look forward to in the not too distant future. Details can wait."

That made Sunny smile. "By all means, find out if you want to. And then tease me with the fact that you know something I don't until I just crack and ask."

Maybe. But Emma wasn't sure she would look ahead of time.

Unless...

"Maybe. It will probably depend how antsy people get about being stuck here," she admitted. Jag was 'people'. That counted.

Only Emma wasn't sure whether knowing they were going to get another break from the monotony would help, when they couldn't get home, and they were going to get dragged back here soon enough.

Sunny snorted. "People been antsy. It's been pretty quiet since the summer."

"That's why I said how antsy. There's only so much we can take before things implode. But knowing more and not being able to do anything but wait and wait until almost spring..."

Anticipation was a tricky thing. Knowing there was some kind of temporary escape coming in the next couple of months could help. Then when it got to feeling like that time would never get here, maybe find out a little more.

"In the meantime, we're all trying to find ways to hold on. Or blow off steam."

"Ah, and did you have a gauge for that?" Sunny grinned. "Like how on fire everything needs to be?"

"Dani always told me I should trust my instincts." Unfortunately, Emma's instincts weren't always as accurate as she would like. Especially when it came to understanding fiery types.

"Besides, the inn could use a good burning down sometimes."

"Sometimes, yes," Sunny agreed. "Though maybe not right now. I'm good for once."

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[EP] Lunar eclipse - OTA

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