strangetrip | Winter's Crest Snow Day [GP]

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Winter's Crest Snow Day [GP]

The Inn was decorated in, if possible, an even more outlandish style than usual. Garlands of evergreens and bright berries competed with gold angels and cheerful small grinning creatures with pointed ears and shoes. A large fir tree had appeared seemingly from nowhere and was now draped with lights and hung with colored glass balls. At the top perched a figure in white robes with wings.

It was, Percy mused, probably for whatever the local holiday was, but it was also close enough to Winter's Crest decorations for him to feel a bit homesick for Whitestone. After all, it was only a year ago that he'd been able to celebrate Winter's Crest in his home city for the first time in years.

Something was still missing - or rather, many things were missing but one thing that he could solve for. Winter's Crest called for snow, and better snow in abundance. To solve for that last problem, he turned to a gnome of exceptional talent. While he didn't know how Sarenrae's power worked, he did have complete faith in her cleric. And thus, together, they concocted a plan: to turn the weather to a more appropriate clime.

The morning of December 20th dawned as it often did in this place - heavy with clouds that would burn off before noon. The clouds were important. They would make the spell casting easier, and Pike knew that she needed all the help she could get. Weather magic was not her forte. Like all clerics with powers as advanced as hers, she knew the right spell but when you had a druid around, there hadn't been much need for her to use it.

Dressed in a warm coat and a big floppy, knit cap, she sat on the ground with her legs crossed. Holding her holy symbol in both hands, she concentrated on the sky. As the Celestial incantation took root, golden rays of light encircled her and rose into the air. With each heartbeat, she could feel Sarenrae's power drawing warmth from the clouds above and into her body.

It took ten minutes to cast the spell and another twenty minutes for it to take effect. The spell would fade if she didn't maintain concentration all day, but it was a small price to pay.

And that's how, before the sun had completely finished rising, it was snowing on the Madonna Inn.

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"Some time I'm not blind drunk, too," Jackson requested, and brought his hand down, walking back around to face Coby. "I'd appreciate it." He frowned a little. "You know if we got any'a those around? Fairy assholes, I mean." He'd rather do without brand new appendages, himself, and forewarned was forearmed.

"Not any I know of." Curnen wasn't an asshole, and Coby wasn't going to out her as Tufa to anybody with what that actually meant.

"Sometimes felt like you couldn't go one tube station over without running into one in London, and okay, that's probably exaggeration, but I never knew fairies were real until I got there, and met some. And those were just the ones who didn't bother hiding."

"There musta been an invasion between your time and mine," Jackson stated, pulling a cigarette out of his pack and offering one to Coby. "If we're from the same world, that is. No fairies running around our neighborhood." If anyone would have noticed them, it would have been the criminal investigators of H Division, you asked him, and there would have been no better place to hide than Whitechapel.

Shit, what if the Ripper...

No. That was crazy talk. The Ripper was as human as Coby and him. Well, as human as him, anyway.

Coby took one of the offered smokes, jerking his chin up in a silent thanks. "Maybe. Or I somehow wound up running in strange circles with types who, if they're smart, hide. Who knows what's possible when some people have magic."

"Aren't fairies supposed to live in their own world, anyway?" Jackson asked with raised eyebrows, as he pulled out his lighter. He reached over to light Coby's cigarette first, his own cigarette stuck between his lips as he spoke. "Never trust a goddamn legend, huh?" And then he lit his own.

"Yeah, probably," he agreed once his cigarette had caught, and he breathed out a line of smoke. To be honest, he hadn't paid that much attention to where the fae he'd met were supposed to be from. "But are you telling me London wasn't full of tourists and expats in your time?" One American from London to another; yeah, he thought he was funny sometimes. "Maybe fairies can't stay away any more than the rest of us."

"I lived in Whitechapel," Jackson anwered with a wry smile. "The only tourists we got were there for the Ripper tour." Fucking vultures.

"They still do those, you know." Maybe not stranger than fairies, but still, fucked up in other ways. "Ripper tours. And books, and movies too."

"Glad the macabre still fascinates," Jackson stated, smoke wafting out of his mouth with his words. "They ever figure out who it was? With all'a those modern techniques they got by your time."

Coby shrugged. "Every few years, somebody comes out with a book or something, claiming they've solved it. I never really paid that much attention, except to know nobody really knows."

Okay, so maybe Coby was slow sometimes. "Is that what you did? Coroner during the Ripper hunt?"

"Might've, if I'd met Reid any sooner," Jackson answered, and shook his head. "I got started after his run."

"I... realize I don't know what to say to that." To Coby, Jack the Ripper was history, and fodder for 'based on a true story' adaptations. But Jackson, he'd lived there. And he worked with cops who'd been there. It would be a lot more real, right?

"Not much I'd expect you to say," Jackson replied, unsure what there was to get tongue-tied about.

Coby shrugged. He still wasn't sure his initial reaction of 'lucky you' would have been kind of messed up.

"Anyway, it's a reminder the world was fucked up enough without asshole fairies and magic traps and who knows what will turn out to be real next."

"I don't think there was ever a time or a place," since, apparently, the world was full of separate worlds, "where the world wasn't - fucked up." Not a phrase he was used to using, but it certainly did the job. "We all just gotta try to make the best of it."

"It's all good, just go with the flow?" Coby suggested. It was how he got through his own fucked-up-ness, and the rest that crossed his path. "That's the truth."

"That works, yeah," Jackson agreed with a short nod. "Still hopin' I'll never have to apply that philosophy to brand new appendages."

Didn't mean he wasn't looking forward to examining Coby's wings, though.

Because he could, and because they had been keeping off some of the chill, Coby manifested said appendages again, stretching them wide before folding them into place. "I'll second that. But they do have some advantages, once I got used to having them."

"They look wide enough to carry you," Jackson stated, and looked back at Coby's face with a questioning look.

"They are." Because that had obviously been a question, statement or not. "Took awhile to build up the strength for that, though. At first they were fucking heavy just to have without letting them drag on the floor." He'd spent a pretty miserable month or so, with his back muscles screaming or in knots.

"Human body isn't made for having wings. Go figure."

"I can't even imagine the sort of muscles you've had to develop," Jackson let out, his tone making it clear that he wanted to figure it all out.

"Imagining's fine," Coby said, humor to cover any seriousness. "You can look or even touch. But since I haven't seen an MRI around here, that's as far as any anatomy studies get to go."

One of the fancy machines Butters had told him about, Jackson figured. Remember their acronyms was a bit difficult. "I ain't much used to anything but look and touch," he answered. Well, and dissecting, but that was only once people were dead, and he was damn well hoping he would never get to dissect Coby.

"But anyway, yeah, if you want, you can see what you can figure out about them." It wasn't like Coby really knew much, and before he'd come here, he couldn't exactly go to a doctor about them if he got hurt or anything. "Some time if you aren't too drunk to trust your own eyes."

"Some time you ain't enjoying the snow," Jackson told him with a smile that crinkled his eyes. "I'll leave you to it for now, wings and all."

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Winter's Crest Snow Day [GP]

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