strangetrip | [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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Corbie bit her lip to muffle herself so she could calm down. "The latter. It's the favorite swear of a very dear friend. I got a fondness for it."

"A mouthful of soap couldn't put a dent in that," he told her, still mildly incredulous. "Books and magic weren't all you learned," he observed, reaching to finish the half-done braid he'd abandoned to her giggle fit.

Corbie shrugged. "I was a whore in a port city. I didn't just learn filth, I learned international filth." She had, after her initial reservations, decided to just roll with her past instead of trying to hide it. It was a fact about herself, and one she wasn't exactly ashamed of.

Even if her gran would most certainly have washed her mouth out with soap.

"Were you?" A different girl, a different tone, a different context, he might've taken it as some sort of joke or a lie to cover something more painful in its honesty. But he didn't see it as fitting with what else he knew of her to make up a story like that, even if it was a surprising truth.

"Was this before or after your schooling?" He'd properly ended the second little braid by then, and started to gather up all of her hair, braids included, so as to put them all together.

"Before," she answered simply. "I got snatched here out of school." Quite literally, as she'd been deep in the Nullity. Magic shouldn't have been able to reach in there, and yet it had and here she as.

Vax put the whole of her hair into three, and loosely braided them all together where they would frame her face on one side. He left the uneven ends to come back together in a brush, tips curling coy and natural.

"Corbie," he said as if he'd just decided something, and held the large, loose braid together in one hand, the other reaching for the end of one of his own braids to steal away the tie that held it fast. "You're too interesting to go without having other people around you. Do you know that?"

Faced away from him, Corbie took comfort from the fact that he wouldn't see her cheeks going pink. Too bad her ears were betraying her blush, too. "Um." She shrugged awkwardly.

"Now you know." He wound the bottom of the braid with a couple of snug loops of the skinny black leather strip, then tied a tiny bow rather than his usual knot.

Vax sort of looked at her hair, but it was different from the back of course. "Let me see?"

Corbie's face was warm enough that she knew she was red, but she sighed and turned around, keeping her eyes firmly on her lap.

"...For you, I think I still like it loose and free," Vax admitted after a moment of studying his own handiwork. "You've got those natural curls and all."

He reached out to thumb the bright red of her cheek in a soft pinch. "But it's good to try something different now and again. Just for funsies."

Normally someone pinching her cheek would probably have irritated her, but right now it was just the thing to distract her from her embarrassment. Corbie started, eyes staring and going very round. Then she smiled shyly. "Yeah."

"It must be hard, not having anything of home. Not speaking the same language. That sounds awfully lonely." He sighed, then smiled back at her ruefully. "I also think... You'll fit just fine here, once you figure out the shape of things, where you ought to go."

The blush was starting to fade as Corbie's smile softened into something more relaxed. "I'll try. Thanks for letting me bitch, in any case."

"I don't mind. Everyone needs to bitch once in a while." But come to think of it, Vax remembered that wasn't the only reason he was here. "...Before there was bitching and hair-braiding," he broached, "I was actually looking for you to see if I might ask a favor."

"Sure!" Corbie said at once. And then, more measured. "I mean, if I can do it."

"Well, not only are you magic," Vax pointed out. "But I've heard you're good with sewing. So if anyone can do it, it would be you."

Corbie's embarrassment vanished completely. "I'm listening."

[EP] Progress (OTA, Corbie or Curnen)

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