[GP] Check-In Day

[st_oriedqueen]

The formerly California air had grown crisp with winter moving in, but the sun still shone bright and the sky was clear. At the barn and in the pastures, the horses blew out their breath in playful snorts, shied and sidled playfully, prancing with their tails flagged. Grace, Regina's mare, gave a spirited whinny at her stablemates as Regina sprang up onto her bare back from the mounting block but waited patiently for her mistress, since there would be at least one long gallop in the offing. It didn't matter to Grace that Regina had an agenda for the ride beyond the gallops, as long as she got to run.

Inside the Inn, Kitty tended bar like any ordinary day, and Caroline's baskets had been freshened and set out for any new arrivals. Each one had a magic journal for "texting" and Sam had a stack of fresh ones set out on the same table in case anyone had used theirs up. The Inn had begun decorating itself the day after Thanksgiving, helped, of course, by Caroline, and Thor had brought in a lovely fresh tree that had begun to acquire a patchwork coating of ornaments, traditional popcorn strings, and hideous gleanings from around the Inn.

In short, it was an ordinary Check-In day with a little nip in the air, an extra sprinkling of glitter, and and an abundance of apple-based drinks and a few pies, compliments of Regina's harvest and her stress-baking. What there weren't were any of Emma's fresh pastries or any of her finer dishes, as she seemed to have taken the day off. Which meant that unless Sunny or Mary or one of the others stepped up, everyone was eating dishes with chicken or what they could make for themselves.


[ooc: Feel free to use for any threading purposes anywhere around the Inn. If you want Regina, Kitty, Sam or Lillith, poke me on Slack. Welcome Hook! Don't forget to tag your character's name if you tag the post.]

[OTA] problems aren't the problem

[st_ackeddeck]

There was only so much not-thinking you could do at the inn, when there were so many hours needing to be filled, and best hope you had for breaks in the monotony were the check-in days twice a month. The check-in days, a concrete example of why hopes and fears were usually represented by the same card in tarot spreads. Hoping for familiar, loved faces to show up, and dreading it on their behalf. Emma wasn’t sure she believed that her fellow ‘guests’ could lose track of when the next check-in day would arrive, but this one in particular had loomed large in her thoughts, no matter how much she tried not thinking about it.

A year. She’d been here a whole year.

A year not being able to travel more than four hours. A year of cooking anything but chicken. A year of getting to know people who already knew, and loved, another her. A year of racist rooms and kitschy pink. A year without Sabine, without Dani, without Sarah. A year worrying about Pyro without her. A year *ahem* alone.

She’d mostly held it together, but as December first had gotten closer, the desire to hermit had grown. She tried to follow Dani’s example, spending more time in the kitchen, cooking even when her own appetite shrunk. And she’d spent more time in the quiet of the temple, thankful once again that Vax had been inspired to build it in the first place. That was when she’d noticed the empty alcove, brick slab for an altar, but no signs of being used or dedicated to anyone.

So when she’d woken up on the first and couldn’t bring herself to care if anyone ate, couldn’t face the idea of waiting and watching for anyone new around the inn, she’d taken her pastels and a bucket of sidewalk chalk down to the temple and started to draw on the wall above and behind the unclaimed altar. As she worked the colors began to come together into a nearly life-sized female figure wearing stola and palla, an overflowing cornucopia in one hand, and a rudder in the other.

Her hair was up in a sloppy twist pinned in place by a pencil, and there were smudges of chalk on her face, not to mention her fingers covered in it, when she stepped out of the alcove into the main temple area, looking for a stool or chair to stand on. Only to find someone else there. “Sorry. I’m not disturbing you, am I?” she asked, smearing more color across her forehead as she brushed a lock of hair from her face, and not quite meeting their eyes.

~*~*~

It had been a year for Jag too, and Emma could still remember that first moment he’d walked into the room and found her there. If she’d known she could slip into the suite and up to her loft room without running into him, she probably would’ve done just that, to hermit the rest of the day, wallowing in homesickness. But if he was there… she couldn’t face him right then, not with as off as he’d been for months, and yeah, maybe it had been a little better lately, but she hadn’t stopped worrying about him, and today, she just didn’t have it in her.

Which was how she found herself in the gym. Maybe, if she got herself physically and psionically exhausted, she’d be able to ignore all the things she didn’t want to think about or feel. Maybe she’d be able to fall into bed and pass out for a little while. She dug through her bag, finally settling on a couple of cards from different decks. Her eyes went white as her clothes seemed to shift: striped close-fitting trousers, a short military jacket, and a hooded cloak taking the place of her sweater and leggings, and she could feel the weight of the staff in her hands.

Moving the staff to one hand, she flipped the second card through her fingers, considering. She wasn’t sure she could project both on herself and separately at the same time, not and use them both to fight. Maybe she should try to find a real, live sparring partner first? She honestly hadn’t paid much attention to who else was around when she came in, not exactly up for being social. But she looked now, biting the corner of her mouth as she tried to work around to asking someone if they were interested in sparring with her.

Linkdrop

[st_artandstoke]

Date: December 1-2, 2018

It's Emma and Jag's first innversary, and neither one of them is the best at dealing with it.

[Here | rating (pg) | status (completed) | warning for feeeeels]