strangetrip | [GP / EP] Welcome to the Madonna Inn Expanded Public Library

Freedom from her bonds had given Illyana more than freedom of movement. It had returned to her the use of her magik and her ability to teleport. These abilities had, in turn, allowed her to finish making ready the library for public use. It was less about collecting books and media from around the premises (and some from Limbo, or donated collections harvested from the Otherworlds) and arranging shelving and seating, most of which had been relatively easily done. It was more a matter of laying the appropriate wards, and negotiating the finer points of the old-fashioned catalog and check-out system, which included odd donated items such as sporting equipment and electronic devices available for rental. Xavin's espresso machine counter necessitated a mini-bar refrigerator, glass-domed cake stands for assorted pastries brought in from the kitchen, and various cafe sundries.

Repurposed from what had been the 'Garden Room,' the library space with its high wooden ceilings, chandeliers, and landscape murals over busy floral carpet still looked somewhat like a touristy banquet hall, yet the area was now also highly saturated with layered magic. The hodgepodge collection of random books and so on were fiercely protected by these magics. When needed and as possible, worn volumes had been restored. The books could not be damaged nor marred from here on out, at least not by coffee spills nor page-tearing or inconsiderate attempts at margin notation. Nor would they leave the boundaries of the library area without proper dispensation, simply stopping mid-air and dropping should the attempt be made at the threshold. Ask at the Desk for Assistance With These Items, prompted the signs on several glass display cases featuring certain perhaps unsettling curiosities within - books in arcane languages, skulls from indeterminate creatures, and artifacts such as a green glowing cube suspended on a chain. At said desk, a gleaming service bell sat waiting, should the staff be needed and not clearly present.

Illyana finished affixing the large engraved plaque to the wall beside the double-doors, and then returned to attend the newly opened library with little fanfare:

Madonna Inn Expanded Public Library

Established ~01.25.2018 Earthly Gregorian Calendar

Open All Hours

Volunteer Staff on Duty as Schedules Allow

Classes & Tutoring for Most Subjects Available Upon Request

Donations Encouraged

Disruptive Patrons Will Be Zealously Evicted

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"It's a good question that will help me decide where to apply my efforts without being about relationships with other people or life and death that might reveal something I'm not ready to know, I think," Kitty said as she took the cards from Emma.

She focused on the Inn and all the puzzles of it, all the things she wanted to know, and the ways she'd been trying to get out. While she shuffled, she kept asking herself and the cards and Emma (in her head) the question. Although she was trying not to let them, thoughts about whether she'd see Wyatt or Lara again if she did get out probably slipped in.

It took a long time for the cards to stop feeling slippery, and Kitty wondered if that meant the question was just very unsettled. Eventually, though, she felt like they were 'done' and handed them over.

Kitty had come up with and shared a question before Emma got around to telling her she didn't need to know what it was. The cards would give an answer to what she wanted to know, whether Emma knew what the question was or not. But as she laid out the spread, images playing out in her mind and layering over the images on the cards, Emma frowned slightly.

"It is a good question," she agreed, after a moment. "But not what you're really curious about right now. Not according to the cards, anyway."

Kitty raised a brow, but then raised her hands instead in a sort of mea culpa. "I was sort of thinking about it. It's just that when I do think about the science when I'm not doing it, it gets tangled up with all the people I might lose if succeed."

It wasn't the first time she'd had this sort of experience, but the first time she'd let herself invest in the world she found herself in.

"Home is people, not a place," Emma said, understanding even without what she'd seen. "When those people are in more than one world, things get complicated." Emma had made friends here, but it wasn't home, and she wasn't sure she'd want to to start to feel that way. It would be too much like giving up on Pyro, on Sabine and Dani, her life and friends in Duninnean. But Kitty had been here a lot longer already.

"When you mean to ask about one thing, but your mind drifts to something else, it's usually something your subconscious has already been pondering." She'd seen a dark haired white man she recognized from around the inn, Kitty's boyfriend, Emma thought, but she hadn't learned his name. Also a woman she didn't recognize. "Relationships in flux." Emma tapped one of the cards and slid another around beside it. "But... not in a bad way, from what I can see. Wow, that sounds like something you'd hear from fake psychic who's not very good at cold reading. It's not, I just can't get a fix on exactly how things will turn out. I could look deeper, if you want me to try for more."

"It doesn't, really, because you're not a fake psychic who's not very good at cold reading," Kitty said easily. "If your abilities require a connection with my mind, that could be part of it. Jean always complained I was hard to reach. It's because even when I'm solid, my thought energy slides in and out of phase."

It could also be that Kitty didn't know what she wanted to know well enough to focus on it. Or that she wasn't really sure she wanted to know the answers to her questions.

"Maybe. We never really figured out exactly how all the pieces came together for my abilities. But that it most likely involves some sort of psi connection. Dani says psi minds aren't meant to stay just in our own heads." She still focused on the cards in front of her. There were patterns there, but they suggested things were on the cusp of something, where they could fall either way.

"And I never read specifically for the Kitty at home, so I can't compare that way."

"It's an interesting question, isn't it? How this all works and how our mutations are designed to connect us to each other and to the world." Kitty had her I'm thinking, I'm thinking, I'm faaaaading face on. Her own mutation had some evolutionary advantage on its face, but she didn't think of it that way.

"Pretty cool how they shape us, too. Sometimes I think me being so fundamentally unstable at a molecular level makes me hard to get a grasp on in the relationship sense too."

"I'm pretty sure relationships are just hard, no matter what your mutation is." Or maybe she was a precog who didn't like to look at the future of her own relationships, worn down from Pyro pushing her away from his brushfire of emotions.

"But the only other mutant I knew who could change density is an ass and doesn't know a good relationship when it's right there in front of him." She looked down and away. Kitty didn't deserve the flash of protective anger on her cousin's behalf. "Sorry. That has nothing to do with you, at all."

"Whoa." Kitty sat back and looked at Emma. Not upset, but assessing. "Whoever he is, he sounds like a jerk. Any chance I know him?" Because it might be easier to start talking about that than whatever he did to deserve that.

"Shinobi Shaw?" It was possible, but no way to know except to ask, when they didn't know what would be the same from one world to another. "His father is Sebastian Shaw. And he's my cousin's boyfriend. We... don't exactly get along. But at least he's been not as much of an ass to her lately." She did have to admit that, and as long as Sabine was happy, that was what mattered to Emma.

Before Emma had even finished speaking, Kitty's expression turned like she'd smelled something foul. "Yeah. I know who he is. If he's dating your cousin, I hope yours is one of the worlds where he's not Daddy's Little Killer."

The look on Kitty's face mirrored how Emma often felt when it came to Shinobi, but she had a lot of practice not showing it, because as long as he made Sabine happy, that was most important.

"If he is, Sabine will find out, and they won't be together any more." Most of their friends had killed, but that wasn't the same thing. And Sabine took death more seriously than many. "And all it would take is one ghost to say something to her. She's a psychopomp. He has always been kind of rude about the Soul Train, though, and anything to do with her powers.

"I think he's just an asshole, though, in our world."

"That's a power I've never seen." And one that would be really interesting to the Professor and Dr. MacTaggart, she thought. "And if Shinobi's hanging around long enough to be rude, he's no Shaw I know. They make pets out of people. Take them where they are. Not hang around where there are people to disapprove of them."

Anyone who could give the women perspective enough to walk away couldn't be tolerated. Unless the women were the ones doing the keeping. That happened sometimes in the Hellfire Club that she'd heard.

"It's a family thing. Her connection is to the past, through the dead. Mine to the future, with the tarot." Talking about Sabine's powers was much better than talking about Shinobi. "We spent a lot of time helping ghosts find peace and move on, before we found out we were mutants and the Brotherhood tried to force us to Genosha."

[GP / EP] Welcome to the Madonna Inn Expanded Public Library

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