strangetrip | [GP/EP] Check-In Day

Why Caroline had needed her to help with Check-In Day she hadn't bothered to say. Just, "you said you'd help," and when Regina protested she wasn't good with people, "aren't you a Queen or a Mayor or something?" complete with shooing gestures. While Regina found Caroline more exasperating the terrifying, she did have a point.

So Regina suited up--literally, gathered her files and folders, coffee mug, pens and pocketed the wooden carving of Henry/Roland Robin had made for her, then headed for the cafe. If, polished and politic and patently Busy, she didn't offer newcomers the brightest or warmest smile when they arrived, it was nevertheless confident and quite possibly reassuring.

Caroline did friendly. Regina...did knowledgeable and polite. Dot and Ignis had been asked to provide finger food on catering trays. The still-grieving Miss Pryde had been tasked with samovars of tea and coffee and ice chest of soda and beer. Caroline's welcome baskets sat on the table beside Regina's for easy access. And though she didn't when she was alone in the office, Regina spent the magic to fix her eyesight so she didn't put glasses between her and new arrivals.

Madame Mayor was in.

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"Lady Vex'ahlia is booked in room 139," Darryl said as he took the teapot from Dot in exchange for towels and offered the thin paper sleeve and keycard to Vex.

Trying to get a read on the man was harder than usual, and Vex shifted her gaze back to the woman who'd approached her first. She took the... card? and tucked it her armor with a smooth, automatic movement, and then the towel, although she merely held it, instead of drying off.

"I'm looking for my brother. He's...," the word was a boulder in her throat, metallic and choking and unmovable, unthinkable. "He's been badly hurt," she continued instead. "Possibly with a woman, tall, red hair, antlers?" Vex gestured with the hand holding the towel, to suggest Keyleth's headpiece. "Please. I have to find him."

"Well," Dot took a deep breath and smiled reassuringly. "They may not be here. You see you're... well you're not where you were before. And they probably are."

As far as she knew, they didn't have anyone with antlers.

"We can check the book," she gestured toward the front desk. Her voice was soothing picking up on the other woman's urgency. "And see if your brother and your friend are here. And I can explain while we do that."

Plane shifting. Vex had thought so, as much as she'd thought anything other than Vax, Vax, Vax. But somehow Keyleth had Keylethed her spell, and now Vex was here, but the others weren't. Unless that had been the idea? To get her out of the kraken's grapple and away?

Finally slinging her bow over her shoulder now that no attack seemed coming – Dot here seemed sweet as could be and harmless too, from what Vex read in her eyes and the way she held herself – Vex pressed the towel to her face, drying it, and just possibly a tear or two as they just slid from her eyes. A deep breath, another, and Vex straightened her shoulders as she lowered the cloth again.

"They'd be with me if they were here," she admitted to herself, shaking her head before forcing some brightness into her expression. "That's how it works, you know. So. Explain away, dear. Where is here, and what is going on? Because it looks like a house of lady favors, and I know someone modest as you wouldn't be found in a place like that."

Dot blushed, but continued to smile. "My sister works in such a place, we tell our mother she teaches deportment."

Instead of dancing in her skivvies. And other things that Dot chose to believe Nell didn't do. She led the way to the front desk after laying a towel over the damp spot on the floor so they could ask Darryl to look up the names in the book, he was slow but he'd get there eventually.

"I don't know how any of it works actually, one minute I was at home and I walked through a doorway and I was here. It's called the Madonna Inn, and aside from the decor it's a rather nice place to be."

Obviously she would prefer to be home, but with Miss Phryne here she missed it less than she might have. She refused to think about Hugh.

"We can't leave, or no one has found a way to do so. But we have plenty of food, the bar is open and I just made a fresh batch of shortbread."

After her lessons in Syngorn, Vex would choose dancing in her skivvies over deportment any day. Well, most days. She was a lady now, thanks to Percy, but growing up in Syngorn she'd been the uncouth, bumpkin half-breed, no matter how hard she tried.

Vex pushed those memories aside as unimportant here and now and listened to Dot's explanation, although it didn't explain much beyond, obviously, magic. Some sort of pocket dimension, she guessed, following Dot to the desk and the strange hostler.

"Hello, yes. Dot here," Vex turned, tipping her head to indicate the helpful young woman, "has suggested you could tell me if any of my traveling companions have arrived ahead of me." It was easy, slipping into the friendly, but business-like, here to make a deal tone; Vex hardly had to try, it came so naturally at this point.

Darryl pulled out the guest register and waited patiently. Keyleth, able to travel the planes was most likely so Vex started with her. There is no guest or reservation under that name. . Then Grog. Same answer. Taryon next, because he'd been with them at the time, and Vex could bear hearing those words about him more easily than the rest. She even asked after Pike, and with mixed feelings, Scanlan. All she got were noes.

She took a deep breath to steady herself, gripping her broom and the edge of the desk more tightly than strictly necessary. "Percival Frederickstein Von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III?"

The man? The man's expression didn't change in the slightest as he pronounced just as flatly, "Lord Percival is currently a guest."

Vex's breath caught and she slumped the slightest bit in the seat of her broom, then she fumbled for the black pearl earring she and the rest of Vox Machina all wore. "Percy? Where are you? Are you all right? The unsettling innkeeper says you're here but he's completely unhelpful and Dot's being a dear, but she's not you obviously, and where are you?" she rattled off without taking a breath, her throat tight and eyes burning with tears she refused to let fall.

The thing about the earrings Allura had made for Vox Machina was that they were an open channel, once you activated them - the same channel. It was useful to be able to hear cross-party chatter at a distance, be it for entertaining banter, battle tactics, emergencies...

Vax'ildan heard the voice come across at the exact same moment it sounded through Percy's own earring. That same sweet, pretty, satin-soft voice that had his own accent, his own training, the unlikely influence of both low-born backwater humans and high-born elven language tutors. The same voice he'd heard all his life. In his dreams.

"Vex'ahlia," he blurted his way forcibly past the near-choking grip around his throat, loud and immediate and urgent, not giving the first single fuck her words hadn't been addressed to him. As breathless and emotional as hers had been. "Vex! Vex, where are you?!"

...Innkeeper. Innkeeper. Did she mean...

Worry-bitten lips shaped the first word they'd ever uttered, but no sound came out, sound and breath completely stolen by her brother's voice in her ear, and the broom dipped alarmingly where Vex's legs would have slid out from under her if she'd been standing.

"You're..." a whisper so soft with hope and relief, the alive dying on her lips before it could speak the opposite she'd seen to be true. Anger and fear flared in the wake of softer emotions, "What are you- where the fuck are you! We promised!"

She surged forward, like a half-broken horse, calling out to Dot left behind, "I have to..." Never mind she had no idea where she was going. She was the best tracker they knew, and he was her brother. She'd find him.

Or he'd find her.

Just like always.

"Oh good," Dot said to Darryl, or to no one in particular. "She found him."

Then as if women on brooms flew in and out of her life on a daily basis she retrieved her teapot and went back to making sure everyone who wanted it had something to eat or drink.

[GP/EP] Check-In Day

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