strangetrip | [EP/GP] Today is Check-In Day

When the fifteenth of the month came and went without any new arrivals, most people logically supposed that there would be no new arrivals that week, or that the pattern they believed they'd found was false after all.

Kitty Pryde, Caroline Forbes, and Phryne Fisher were decidedly not most people.

Between them, they agreed it would be best to keep a watch for a few days following the fifteenth, on the grounds that, often enough, holidays interrupted regular schedules, which would reassert themselves again at the next instance. If "keeping a watch" had required them to do anything out of the ordinary, they might have been somewhat less sanguine about it. Might have, as they were not, after all, most people. Yet since their routines, almost invariably, had them in public places, working and people-watching, it required no special effort on their part to be alert for new arrivals.

So it was that Phryne had taken up a table in the lobby cafe to read and hold court, while Kitty took an extra shift tending bar, and Caroline tidied up and labeled the boxes of decorations from Valentine's day "for next year's residents" on the morning of the sixteenth and again on the seventeenth--and not one of them were surprised when, in early afternoon, newcomers began to arrive.

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Seeing him struggle, Phryne shifted her seat closer to his and took his hand. "No, Alcuin, I don't. I don't believe in an afterlife that would separate two loves dying together." Or separate Dot from Hugh, but bring her Jack.

Alcuin had not thought about it quite that way, but that suddenly made it all make sense.

"Unless he should have been with someone else instead," Alcuin sighed. "And then perhaps this is the kindest thing after all."

Perhaps it should give him comfort, thinking that Anafiel may have been reunited with Rolande after death. It was what he would have wanted.

"I choose not to believe in an afterlife that treats one lover as the property of another." Or one where she wouldn't be reunited with Janey. "Surely the Divine if it exists is not so small and mean as not to recognize all loves."

She resisted the urge to pet the long, white-blonde hair that gleamed like moonlight, and instead said, "You loved him. Love should be rewarded, not punished."

Property. Alcuin had a subtle negative reaction to that word. But to her attempt at kindness he only said, "I dare say my deities would agree with you. And so perhaps you are right. Regardless. I am here and he is not."

Phryne nodded and released his hand. If he loved men, a woman's touch would be only a very poor comfort, and she didn't want to add to his distress. It occurred to her to mention that this love of his might yet arrive, or someone else he loved, but hope would be cruel now.

"Then it doesn't really matter, does it, whether you're dead or alive. You'll grieve him either way."

"Yes," Alcuin agreed softly.

He reached out and touched her arm lightly, not wanting her to think that he did not welcome her comfort. "And thank you. You're being very kind. And the other I've met here... if I am truly not dead, then it is because he saved my life."

She lay her hand over his as it touched her arm and pressed it gently. It hadn't escaped her attention, of course, that he'd said he'd been stabbed in the stomach when he arrived and he now had stomach enough eat. Ordinarily, she'd have assumed Caroline or Kitty, but 'he' opened up several other possibilities. Since it had been a rescue and not a murder, Phryne felt questioning him could wait.

Now he'd opened the matter for discussion, however, and she felt comfortable saying, "I wasn't aware we had any doctors here. Do you mind my asking who that was?"

"His name is Vax'ildan," Alcuin said. "I... am not entirely sure what he did. But the wound now is as if it has been healing for weeks." Perhaps he should have asked more, been curious at the time, but - well, he supposed he could be forgiven for distraction.

Vax'ildan. He, Sam and Dean Winchester had been her primary candidates, but what had he done? A mystery to be solved, and thankfully not the murder it would have been had Alcuin died.

Phryne smiled. "I've not had the pleasure of making his acquaintance, but I'll have to now, if only to thank him for saving your life."

"He is deserving of whatever praise he is given," Alcuin said, thinking of how he owed some measure of repayment to the man himself.

Thinking then of a very concrete question he could ask, he added, "Does everyone here speak Cruinthe? It is a rather obscure tongue where I come from. I am feeling grateful I happen to know it."

"Cruinthe?" Phryne tilted her head, brows furrowing at the unfamiliar word. Obviously he meant English, but she couldn't place 'Cruinthe' in any of the languages she knew. "We call it English after the original speakers, the Angles." And probably the Saxons and the Jutes, but Phryne's history could be a little patchy. "They eventually colonized much of the world and spread the language."

He did have a look of a different era about him. How extraordinary if he'd come from before the Romans left the British Isles! "May I ask where and when you're from?"

English. The word meant nothing to Alcuin. No did "angles."

"I come from a country called Terre d'Ange," Alcuin said. "Vax'ildan had never heard of it... But he seemed to recognize but not understand the language when I was speaking D'Angeline."

"Terre d'Ange," Phryne repeated, and then said, "Land of Angels. It sounds like French. Say something?" Little though she wished to recall her time in France now, her French was excellent. If D'Angeline was French, or close, and it made him more comfortable, she could speak it.

Alcuin did not know the word French either. He hesitated, and then spoke in D'Angeline: "I appreciate your willingness to help. To not know things, it is disconcerting for me."

Delighted to discover that D'Angeline did correspond more or less to French, Phryne smiled broadly and replied, "In that case, I hope my sharing your mother tongue will help somewhat."

Alcuin smiled, genuine. Ah, it felt good to smile. And it felt good to hear the language, despite the accent being a bit odd. "I thank you. Though this does not make the situation any less confusing."

"No," Phryne replied kindly. "I imagine it doesn't." She sipped from her drink and then smiled again, cheerful. "Consider me your guide, then. I'll answer any questions you have, and if I don't know the answer, I'll be very pleased to attempt to discover it." It wasn't quite investigating crimes, but it might lead to solving the crime of her own abduction.

It was such a kind offer, and Alcuin honestly had no idea what to ask.

"Will you tell me about where you come from?" he asked politely.

"If you like," Phryne replied, her tone suggestive of a certain bemusement. "It's unlikely to help you adjust, though, darling. This isn't my home either."

"My impression is that it is not anyone's," said Alcuin.

"To the best of my knowledge, it's not, although some seem to come from worlds more like this one than mine." Still, he had asked and she had promised to answer, so Phryne began, "I suppose this might be my world, but it would be, fifty or sixty years in my future. I'm told the technology here is from the 1990s, and it was 1929 for me." She pursed her lips and then added, "We measure dates from the putative date of the birth of our god. Before that, dates are measured in reverse..."

[EP/GP] Today is Check-In Day

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