[Closed to Jackson] Let's talk about all the good things and the bad things that may be

[st_arkintern]

"Captain?"

For once, Peter Parker's voice is timid as he approaches Captain Jackson, even though to anyone who might be spectating, there's nothing out of the ordinary.

The Captain is sitting in the same place he normally does (the same stool at the same part of the bar), drinking the same thing he normally does (bourbon), looking the same way he always does. The only person who doesn't is Peter, who's standing rather awkwardly about ten feet away, scratching an elbow with one hand, and looking very uncertain that he should be here.

"Can I join you?" he asks, abruptly. "And uh... maybe ask you some questions?"

[EP] Coax light and shadow - OTA

[st_oneswidow]

It had been three weeks and change since Curnen had opened the egg to find her daddy's violin, and she'd practiced almost obsessively since then in order to make the instrument feel like it belonged in her hands, to feel like she was doing justice to a man who had given her his name and his love, if not his blood. She would never be as good as he had been, not if she played until time ended, but that didn't stop her.

Partly because she spent as little time indoors as she could, Curnen was out on the lawn near the main building as she tried her hand at "The Butterfly," an Irish jig that had come over with the Scots-Irish settlers. She knew it well, even if she couldn't quite get all of the notes. Her fingers were still not fast enough for that, but the effort wasn't sloppy. She kept in time, and what she lacked in precision she made up for in enthusiasm.

It might just have been a trick of the light. The sun, strengthening to summer, was already so bright and warm. A person could see something out of the corner of their eye that wasn't there. But as Curnen played there just may have been a shimmering shadow spreading wide, iridescent and fragile as a soap bubble at her back.

The faintest hint of long lost and dearly missed wings.

The song drew to a close and the shadow was gone. Curnen blinked up to meet the eyes of the person watching her. "What?"