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

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[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

Emma had always liked libraries. After the kitchen when Sister Thérèse was on cooking duty, surrounded by books to read had been her favorite hiding place at school. And later, wherever she and Sabine traveled, a stop at the best libraries was usually a given. The library at Kinross Castle had been a disorganized maze, with books of every conceivable topic, and it hadn't taken long for Pyro to know to check there as one of the places he was likely to find her, even though he'd never really understood her love for books.

The newly opened library at the inn was none of those places, but it was a library. Emma had spent a little while wandering, perusing the shelves, noting things she might want to check out before she left. For now, though, she was enjoying the quiet atmosphere. She got a coffee and found a comfortable seat, then pulled one of the tarot decks from her bag, shuffled, and laid the cards out in front of her, focusing somewhere beyond the surface of the images to what else they could show her.

Kitty stood and stretched, hands behind her hips to push them forward while arching her back. She rolled her head on her neck and then reached her arms overhead and to either side. She'd been sitting far too long.

Instead of sitting again, immediately, she used the restroom, got a fresh coffee from Xavin, and eventually strolled over to where Emma had seated herself. "Offering readings or just studying them for yourself?"

"I'll read for anybody who wants to know," Emma answered as she looked up at Kitty, a small smile in greeting. She couldn't remember how much she'd told Kitty about her abilities. "A lot of people don't, once they know what I see is real. Will be real. Verb tenses can get blurry sometimes."

"Like time travel on paper. Both the verb tenses and the foreknowing are a real headache." Kitty observed the cards in front of her, but saw no patterns and nothing she recognized. "I don't mind you reading for me if you enjoy doing it."

Gathering up the cards in one hand, Emma invited Kitty to join her with the other. Knowing was, almost all the time, better than not knowing. But in the same way decent telepaths didn't go prying into people's heads just because they could, she tried not to throw the cards for more than she needed to know about people, without their permission or even better interest.

"In some ways it's kind of like science. The clearer you define the question you're asking, the more likely you are to get obviously relevant answers. Also, like science, the observed phenomena are true; it's seeing only part of the whole and bias in interpretation that throw things off sometimes."

Edited 2018-01-31 21:32 (UTC)

Kitty sat and lay a hand warm from her coffee over Emma's. "It's okay. I get it and I believe. You're a precog. What you see is real. What it means depends on things you may not see or I may not know and may change depending on other things neither of us currently control. Not to mention that knowing it, can alter it, because like a particle, the future can't be observed without being altered." She smiled. "Or at least it can't be observed scientifically without altering it."

She withdrew her hand from Emma's and set it on the table. "How about, am I ever going to figure out how this place works?"

Remembering Lorna's curiosity and not entirely rigorous investigation of Emma's abilities had helped, gave Emma ideas on how to talk about it from a more scientific perspective.

"If that's what you'd like to know." She set the cards in front of Kitty. "Shuffle them while thinking about your question. If you usually shuffle playing cards a certain number of times, that should be good. If you don't have it standardized, just until you feel done, or the cards don't feel loose and slippery any more. Then I'll see what they have to say."

"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."

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"See anything interesting?" Sunny had her own coffee in hand, and it was almost as if you squinted and looked at the scene sideways their lives were almost normal for a moment. Not that it was a very solid illusion and not that it would last outside of this room.

"Nothing helpful." Helpful wasn't the same as interesting, but what glimpses she'd gotten weren't much of either. "Vague questions aren't getting me anywhere, and I haven't found the right specific ones." Yet. She wasn't giving up. Bobby wasn't dead; she knew that was true. She would find a way back home; that was nothing more than hope, but one she wasn't letting go of yet.

"In better news – library." Tiny library, but library.

Edited 2018-01-31 21:32 (UTC)

"It's excellent news," Sunny agreed, tentatively taking a seat at the table. "I offered my services to our new draconian library overlord."

"You'll know you're doing well if you get a reaction that's anything above Illyana is unimpressed." She made a sternly neutral face, if that was a thing, in imitation of Illyana. Emma had managed not entirely unimpressed Illyana once. Well, her cooking had. She wasn't surprised Illyana hadn't admitted Emma had been right in their debate.

"My cousin is friends with a version of her. And my teacher too, but Dani and Illyana being close is common across multiple realities, from what I've seen."

That had been Sunny's impression as well, though some form of confirmation was welcome. "Then I passed with flying colors, and that sounds amazingly complicated."

It was pretty normal back home, at least for people living in Duninnean, especially the castle. Alternate realities, time travelers, different planes. She shrugged. "You can get used to all kinds of things, and we had a lot of complicated at home."

"More things in heaven and earth?" Sunny snorted. "I hate that play, but sounds about right all the same."

"It's not my favorite," not her least favorite either, "but yeah. I imagine it's not much different being around magic."

"It was mostly fairy bullshit in London," Sunny explained, pulling a face. "But yeah, there's a lot of weird."

"Fairies. That sounds dangerous." From some people that might have been facetious, but from Emma it was sincere. She'd liked non-Disneyfied versions of fairy tales even before Sabine found her. And the folklore about fairies was mostly pretty dark.

"My expanded social circle contained a Seelie prince," Sunny admitted, even as her expression soured just thinking of Willy. "He tried to screw with my name at our first meeting. Good times."

Emma grimaced, and then a thought came to her and she laughed. "Some day we're going to have a conversation that doesn't come around to yet another level of weird from our pasts. I just can't see how long before we get to that point."