Dip in the Pool - OTA

[st_unaligned]

Bo had spent several days visiting the boutique looking for a swim suit and finally gave up and took the only option they seemed to had. She was starting to get restless in the Inn and there was only so much sex and sparring a girl could do. So she put on her swim suit and headed for the pool in the afternoon. She wasn't an avid swimmer by any means, but the water felt good as she began to do laps. Her mind went over things from back home - how she was the Ash's champion, whatever that really meant, how her relationship with Lauren would never be the same, how she was still sure Trick was keeping big things from her, and how all her friends were in danger. It felt unfair that she was here while they were back home and she was frustrated that she hadn't found a way out of this place yet too.

After several laps, Bo pulled herself up out of the water to sit on the edge with her legs dipped in the water. She slicked back her long dark hair and sighed.

Comments

[st_eampunk]

On warm days, Molly spent most of her time at the pool, either as a lifeguard or a bartender at the pool bar. When she wasn't doing either, which was today, she was swimming. She loved the water and it also helped alleviate some of the pain from her hip. It had got a lot better with time, massage and Kash's healing.

When she saw the beautiful dark haired woman that she'd noticed at the meeting and around the Inn, Molly waved before diving in and to do a few laps. Rather than go to one of the lounge chairs when she was finished, she popped up next to the woman with a smile. "Hey. It's nice to see someone else out enjoying the pool, too."

[st_unaligned]

"I've noticed it doesn't get used a lot. Maybe people don't have pools back home?" Bo could not help but take in the woman who was very much good looking. She offered the woman a smile. "I'm from a place that has hot weather like two months in the year so the desert vibe hasn't gotten old for me yet."

[st_eampunk]

"Oh you're from Chicago, too?" Molly teased her. They had at least three months of hot weather back home.

At the woman's smile, she felt her stomach flip and warm liquid course through her body. The only time she'd felt that, well felt it this strongly was with Thomas and Lara Raith. But it could also be that with her empathic abilities, someone nearby was aroused and Molly was caught in the wave. Last time Molly had been to a sex shop to buy fun toys, she'd had to leave before she'd embarrassed herself.

[st_unaligned]

"Toronto, actually, but pretty close from what I know about Chicago." Bo wasn't much of a traveler. "Is it really that windy there?"

[st_eampunk]

Molly tightened the shields even further as she answered. "Yeah. But I live more in the suburb parts of the city rather than downtown where the wind whips through the skyscrapers." They actually had a treehouse and a yard. "You should see it coming off the lake. What's Toronto like? I've never been there."

[st_unaligned]

"Sometimes people call it the New York of Canada." Bo shrugged a bit. "Cold in the winter. Hot in the summer. Has some cool ethnic districts and a really tall building we try to make seem cooler than it actually is."

[st_eampunk]

"I've only been a couple of places outside of Chicago." Molly flicked her fingers in the water. "Well not counting here." She tossed over at the woman and then held out her other hand. "I'm Molly, by the way."

[st_unaligned]

Bo reached out and shook her hand. "I'm Bo. It's nice to meet you." Her feet gently kicked slowly in the water. "I'm not a big traveler either. This is my first desert."

[st_eampunk]

"Well I have been to California, but it was a quick trip and not to the desert part." Molly confessed. "I would take that trip over this one." She turned to look at Bo. "It's not that it's bad here, it's not, especially for a place you can't leave." Her shoulders lifted in a shrug, "but sometimes I just want to cut a hole in the boundary and see what's on the other side that they don't want us to see or go."

She got the theory of bubble or inbetween space and time but even with the Nevernever and the Outsiders there was something Outside and definitely something on the other side of the Nevernever. Hell, even with a bubble, someone on the outside had to make it and keep it going.

[st_unaligned]

"Maybe we're in just a big giant fish bowl like at the zoo and people are paying to watch us." Bo said it as a joke, but when she did, realized it might actually be true. She leaned back a little and lifted up one leg to let the water slowly trickle down. "Or a science experiment."

[st_eampunk]

"Probably a science experiment. Sometimes it feels like a rat in a maze. Let's see what they do if we do XYZ." Molly nodded and slowly kicked her feet in the water. "And other times they leave us alone, which can be a pain in the ass, too."

[st_unaligned]

"Were you here for that Cupid thing?" Bo was a bit fascinated, but at the same time glad she hadn't been cut up in that because who knew what would have happened.

[st_eampunk]

It had not been pleasant for Molly as an empath, or to be technical, it had been an overload of pleasant.

"Yeah, I was. I wasn't as affected as some of the people, but yeah." She had been, only like second hand smoke. "Luckily, that's the only time it messed with us like that."

[st_unaligned]

"So mostly just those other world things popping up in rooms?" She nodded and took that in as if trying to make sense about it, but ultimately failing and tabling it later for when she was in a nice hot bubble bath.

She gave a slight sigh. "I haven't had this much down time since I was a teenager"

[st_eampunk]

"Workaholic?" Molly asked her curiously, though she didn't seem the workaholic type, especially since she was relaxing around the pool. "Or needing to work for the money instead of needing to work to keep busy?"

Molly had assumed she'd meant down time in regard to work rather than life.

[st_unaligned]

She scrunched her nose. "More like there's always something to fix or someone who needs help." Bo paused. "I'm kind of like a private detective."

[st_eampunk]

"I've done that before." Molly said easily. "Well helped out more than be one on my own. My mentor, Harry, used to advertise in the yellow pages, 'Harry Dresden, Wizard. Lost items found. Paranormal investigations, consulting, advice, reasonable rates, no love potions, endless purses or other entertainment'. I did it for awhile on my own but life got in the way. Do you get many cases as a private detective?"

[st_unaligned]

"All the time." She nodded. Then paused. "Your mentor is a wizard? Does that mean you are a...?"

[st_eampunk]

"A wizard, too. Yeah I know, wizards should only be guys, but in my world we're all called Wizards." Molly grinned over at her, "I prefer Jedi master but ya know they didn't ask me for titles."

[st_unaligned]

"Screw that." She made a face. "Men think they get all the titles for things. I've just never met a wizard before. Nice to know wizards can be hot." She winked with a friendly smile. Bo got the reference about Star Wars but that was where it ended having never watched the movies ever.

[st_eampunk]

"I rock being a wizard." Molly winked at her. She'd never lacked for self confidence. "There's a few of us that do." Carlos and Harry for one. There were also a few more.

"Our head Wizard has the title Merlin and he looks like Merlin." She made a face as the only Merlin she'd ever seen was the Disney version. "Long white beard and about five hundred years old."

Okay, maybe not that old but probably close as wizards were long lived.

[st_unaligned]

"I guess if you're going to call yourself that then you need to look the part. At least it's not a requirement for all wizards. Not everyone can rock a beard "

Bo had to wonder if there was a Merlin in the Fae. She added it to the list of questions she was accumulating for Trick.

"Must be frustrating to know magic and can't use it to get out of here."

[st_eampunk]

"Oh I plan on getting out of here with my magic." Molly said and splashed the water a little bit with her fingers. "I just have to find the vulnerability, and there is one." Even if it took her decades, Molly would always try to find a way out.

[st_unaligned]

Bo liked her style. "Any way I can help? I'm usually good with finding things." And a way out would be really nice.

[st_eampunk]

"How are you with finding this spots in a forcefield?" It probably wasn't a forcefield because her magic would have made anything that technical blow up, but that was the best description of it.

"The Wizard I told you about, the Detective? He was here for a little while and we'd go out and just throw magic at whatever's holding us here. It had started out as a way throw our anger at something but then we thought what the heck, keep blasting and maybe sooner or later, we'll find the crack or whatever it has."

There's got to be something with all the magic being thrown at it.

"You're welcome to come along sometime if you want. I do it on my own since he left, but two or three temper tantrums at it can't hurt."

[st_unaligned]

"I'm pretty good at ruining plans so if someone's in charge of this place, I plan on being plenty annoying." She grinned. "I'd like that. It might even make me feel like I'm back home instead of in some weird zoo thing."

[st_eampunk]

Molly snorted softly in laughter, that was definitely a Harry vibe. "Great. I can always use help in being annoying, though I'm pretty good at it already." She flashed a grin at Bo and did a cheesy Bogart impression, "I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

[st_oriedqueen]

"5 out of 10. Ariel's hair is red. She wears more. And is three hundred percent more annoying," Regina remarked over the sound of her heels clacking on the paving. She stopped where Bo could see her without looking into the sun, which was, for her, a significant courtesy.

"Bemoaning a prince or our prison?" With the positive state of things between herself and Dyson, the question lacked any but her typical bite, and a reasonably obvious genuine interest.

[st_unaligned]

"Bored." She gave another sigh as if to prove her point. "And frustrated because I really thought maybe there was some hint of a way out." Bo would still continue looking but something told her that there wasn't anything to find.

[st_oriedqueen]

"There are hints," Regina countered and then took a seat at the edge of the nearest deck chair. "They're simply useless hints. If you'd ask, I'd have told you as much. But then you'd have had to believe I would know and trust me to tell you."

She shrugged in mild amusement. "At first it was irritating that every new arrival assumed they could do better than those of us who've been here for months. Now, I just let it happen and hope one of you can."

[st_unaligned]

"I come from a place where people are sort sighted from rules. Besides, I'm the only one here like myself as far as I know so I figured it was worth a chance." She shrugged, though did feel a little sheepish. "What are the hints?"

[st_oriedqueen]

Regina elected not to point out that Dyson was Fae too. Relevant or not, it was unnecessarily bitchy and she didn't feel that right now. "It's always worth trying. Some of us have ongoing projects."

Her fingers fluttered almost dismissively as her hand settled on her wrist where her forearm rested on her thigh. "The food and alcohol arrives from somewhere. If it were being summoned from within the Inn or on the grounds, one of us would have found it by now. The shops change their offerings when a new world will open up. There are decorations that are season appropriate, and every name is known when a new guest arrives. There is an intelligence at work here, but what kind is a mystery."

[st_unaligned]

Bo knew most of that from Kitty, though she nodded as Regina explained it again. 'Right. But is it good or bad? I'm not sure I'd like the idea of being in a playground for some evil psychopath."

[st_oriedqueen]

"I'm sure I don't," came Regina's rejoinder. "But it feels more like benign neglect that malignancy. More like a child with an ant farm and a magic wand than a genocidal sociopath." And she would know.

[st_unaligned]

"I guess that makes it a little better, but I hate feeling like I'm some puppet." She had enough of that back home and it drove her nuts.

She gently kicked the water as she sat there. "So I never asked before, but what's your deal? Where'd you come from before here?"

[st_oriedqueen]

"Don't we all." For the first time in a very long time, she thought about Gold's pawn-shop left behind in Gotham. Archie's parents, the puppets, sitting on the shelf. Pinocchio who had escaped the forest with Emma.

She pressed her lips together lightly. "The short version," since that was all Bo had earned from her so far. "Is that I was Queen in the Enchanted Forest, and then Mayor in Storybrooke, Maine."

[st_unaligned]

Bo repeated that in her head to figure out exactly what that meant. Queen she understood. Enchanted forest she didn't. She did understand Mayor and Maine. "Usually in charge then." Another way that Regina reminded Bo of the Morrigan.

[st_oriedqueen]

"That is the usual meaning of Queen and Mayor, yes," Regina said with a sharp, wry twist to her voice. "But before you go all anti-authoritarian on me, I'm not in charge here. I've taken on crisis management because I have the experience and if I don't do something I'll lose my mind. But you don't need my permission to sneeze."

[st_unaligned]

Bo gave a small shrug to suggest she wasn't saying anything so overt. "I just thought it was interesting. You remind me of someone back home who's in charge of a lot of people." Less evil, from what Bo saw, but she didn't know Regina too well.

[st_oriedqueen]

She thought of Trick, who from the way Dyson spoke she'd spend the rest of her life trying to resemble, but didn't mention him, because Bo might not be one of those who knew. "More than are here, anyway," she concurred without relenting. The comparison was unlikely to have been a favorable one.

"You remind me of a thorn in my side." Miss Swan. Regina did smile slightly then. "Who is my son's other mother."

[st_unaligned]

It took Bo a second to figure out how that would work. It was possible they were lesbians, but something in the way she spoke of the other woman said otherwise.

"I have two moms too." She let her legs play in the water. "One religious and one evil, because life likes to mix it up."

[st_oriedqueen]

Regina had crossed over her own comfortable lines. Just because Dyson had loved her, trusted her, and Regina wanted to make this easier for him (and, all right, she liked Bo, just as she'd come to like Emma), didn't mean she was ready to share her story.

"Religious is not a word you could apply to Emma. You'd like her. She wears almost as much leather as you do."

[st_unaligned]

"Leather is a girl's best friend." She smiled wryly over to Regina. "And way more versatile than diamonds."

[st_oriedqueen]

"Please." Regina smirked, one girl to another. If nothing else, in this she could be sure she and Bo were alike. "A man, a woman or a good vibrator is a woman's best friend."

[st_unaligned]

Bo's smile widened and she let out a soft laugh. For a woman she was supposed to hate - and she could hear Kenzi frustratingly sigh at this very moment in her head - Regina was making it hard to not like her. "On that we can both agree."

(ooc: FTB?)