strangetrip | [EP] Progress (OTA, Corbie or Curnen)

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[EP] Progress (OTA, Corbie or Curnen)

It was almost December, but the day was still more than warm enough to spend outdoors. So two girls were out in the sunshine, one fair, one dark, aware and amused with each other’s efforts but not particularly paying attention to each other.

Curnen’s fingers were starting to remember what to do with a guitar, though they were still incapable of being fancy. Sitting on the lawn with Rob’s guitar in her lap, she played anything that came to mind. Her sixth fingers were a bit lost, but it did sound like music at least. It would be some time yet before she could really play again, though that didn’t bother her much. If it meant she was scraping herself back together, becoming a Tufa again, it didn’t matter. And besides, the singing was always the best part. She wasn’t sure why this song, since there was no wind and rain, but in many versions of this same song there were two girls colored rather like the two of them.

There were two sisters came walkin' down the stream
Oh the wind and rain
The one behind pushed the other one in
Cryin' oh the dreadful wind and rain

Johnny gave the youngest a gay gold ring
Oh the wind and rain
Didn't give the oldest one anything
Cryin' oh the dreadful wind and rain

Corbie meanwhile was busy setting things on fire again, but this was different fire. Or at least it was for her. She and Regina had been practicing creating fire and putting it out. She set a circle of protection around a small stone, using what she understood of Cabaline theory to keep the spell literally grounded. And then she proceeded to do her best to destroy the shit out of that rock by throwing fireballs at it. It gave her something to aim at, gave her more than one thing to practice at a time. She was getting better at aiming and her ward was holding.

She stopped only to take the ward down and set another one, larger this time, on her knees in the road with a piece of chalk.

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"I never knew my mother." It had been so long ago, Kash felt almost nothing in saying it. His left hand did stray unintentionally to the scars on his right forearm, but it didn't mean anything. "But Bliss can stop fussing. About me anyway. You're okay by me." Which, honestly, wasn't something he said all that often.

"It's a hard habit to break," Curnen admitted. She knew how much she'd broken her sister's heart. "She raised me. She taught me to play, because our granddad didn't have the patience to work with my extra fingers. He was barely patient enough to teach her, and she's amazing. She..." her voice lowered almost to a whisper. "Toward the end, with the curse, she was one of the last people who could still see me. And I wasn't much to see."

"A true sister will follow you anywhere, find you anywhere, save you even at the cost of their own life." Zahra had been that for him. Still was, as creepy as it might sound to someone who didn't get it to call her his sister when they were together, too. "Sounds like Bliss would've seen you if you were invisible."

Curnen nodded. "So when I remember someone like that telling me I can't share these things..."

Kash nodded and reached over to set his hand on her wrist. "Someone like that would forgive you anything you needed to do to thrive." He knew. There was nothing Zahra wouldn't forgive him in a situation like this.

Curnen went still, looking at his hand on her arm. Not because she objected, but because she recognized it was significant that he was willingly touching her. Her lips curved in a tiny smile, and she nodded.

"Maybe." After all, bringing in an outsider had saved her life. "And I think she'd like you." She chewed her lip. "If it really wouldn't alarm your friends, I'll take your word for it. But I'm asking you not to talk about it to anybody else if you don't have to. I'm not ready. 'Cept Coby, Coby knows already."

"It's not my story to tell," Kash demurred immediately. "The only person I'd ask your permission to tell isn't here. The rest of them can learn when you're ready." She'd learn soon enough she could trust them. But maybe...

This was probably the stupidest idea he'd ever had. Familiar laughter echoed in his mind, Zahra's fangs flashing over the time he'd suggested in frustration they just ask Vecna how to get rid of the ziggurat (in his defense, he'd been trying to get her to come to bed at the time). Okay, maybe not.

"We're having this...dinner. To celebrate a winter festival from home. Pike'll probably make us all say we're thankful for something. Then it'll get all emotional and awkward. But it'll just be us." Last week he'd been thinking he'd invite Molly. Now it felt too much like putting a rival in Zahra's space. Curnen was a lot of things, but not that. "Would you want to come?"

Contrary to what anyone who knew the truth of them might think, Tufa did do Christmas. Compared to the length of Curnen's life it was still a fairly new custom, but it was there and even before then winter holidays were important. It was the sort of thing where you keenly felt it when your family weren't about you.

So... yeah. It'd be nice to belong to people. If only for a night. She smiled. "I'd love to."

"Don't say that too quick." But Kash smiled back at her. "Lord Percy and Lady Vexhalia--" he said with only a trace of mockery and a strong dose of teasing. "Are insisting on nice clothes and an actual seating chart."

It struck him as thoroughly ridiculous, but on matters of protocol, 'one did not argue' with nobility. Even when they were family. Yeah, family.

That revelation though only made Curnen look uncomfortable, the smile slipping slowly from her face, her eyes falling to the guitar in her lap.

"What did I say?" Kash knew immediately he had. If Zahra had taught him anything, it was how to know when he'd stuck his foot down his throat.

"It ain't you," Curnen assured him. "I just... I dunno how to do that." Fancy wasn't something that she'd known before the curse, it was something she'd never been taught. Normally her utter lack of sophistication really didn't bother her very much, but this was one of those things where her mother or Bliss would tell her to act like she'd been to town before.

Right. Cursed for fifty years. Kash looked at her steadily. "If they put up with my grumpy ass, they'll love you. You move the floor whenever you feel like it. If anyone says a word, I'll sic Mittens on them."

"... Mittens?" Just saying the word was making her smile.

For the second time in several weeks, the question drew an absurd, but somehow proud, grin from Kash. "My secret weapon," he told her, enjoying the opportunity to make a pretty girl laugh instead of cry.

"Okay, I'll bite," Curnen's gaze lifted toward him. "I known men who named their guns, what the hell kind of weapon is a 'Mittens'?"

So did he. And he had to say, as such things went, Bad News was a good name for a gun.

"Spiritual energy that takes the form of a highly unexpected black cat," Kash deadpanned. She'd be forgiven for thinking it a joke. He might even have meant for her to.

"You're making that up!" Curnen laughed.

Without cracking a smile, Kash lifted an eyebrow, challenging. Am I?

If it was a bluff, this was one Curnen was going to call. How could she not? She lifted her chin. "I think you are."

Kash glanced around for a target that wouldn't bleed to death and found a tree stump surrounded by dessert grasses. He turned back and drew her gaze along with his and then jerked his chin toward the stump.

With as little pomp as he could manage, he gripped his symbol and spoke the spell. As it had with Snow, the black energy boiled forth from his extended hand and formed itself into a cat. 'Mittens' immediately pounced and savaged the inoffensive stump.

He turned back to Curnen and gave her a satisfied smirk.

Once Curnen started laughing it was impossible to stop. She laughed so hard she fell back on the grass with only just enough thought to keep the guitar safely against her belly.

Corbie had been writing something in her notes and looked up only to give the two of them a sidelong glance that said she was considering a very slow retreat.

Since "Mittens" was only the equivalent of a glaive in the form of a cat, once the first attack was made, the energy "sat" predator-patient for his next "instruction."

Kash caught Corbie's glance and shrugged, smiling. He'd never been one to laugh the way that Curnen was, but he found he couldn't regret being the cause.

After a while, Curnen managed to catch her breath and sit back up, failing to completely swallow her amusement. She kissed Kash's cheek, trying not to succumb to another giggling fit on his shoulder. "Well. With that kind of protection, how could I say no?"

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[EP] Progress (OTA, Corbie or Curnen)

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