strangetrip | [EP] open your hands if you want to be held

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[EP] open your hands if you want to be held

Out beyond the greenhouse and the gardens, in the orchards she'd nurtured with love, and magic, and friends, Regina had stripped her usual business casual battle armor in favor of a softer mien. She rested beneath the shade of a tree, inhabited by an elemental named Manzanita, who understood nothing of fashion, everything of fornication and fertility, and laughed like a babbling brook or syrup sap at the words she didn't understand from the fashion magazines Regina read to her beneath her boughs.

At her feet or more occasionally her head, a puppy-now-nearly-a-dog sprawled, his tail thumping when his mistress laughed unusually loudly. From time to time, inexplicably, a black kitten-cat herded by a spirit Russian Blue appeared to torment the dog. Behind them in a magically constructed paddock, a mare grazed, keeping quiet watch over the antics, and less quiet watch over the picnic basket of fresh fruit (apples, and plums, and pears, and berries and cherries, oh my) on a picnic blanket at Regina's side.

The conversation that was more of a communion took a turn for the sly when Manzanita detected thoughts of a certain wolf in her not-a-druid's mind. It wasn't words, but a suggestion, perhaps Regina might leave this issue of outer-bark wholly behind. Head back, laughing, Regina (briefly, magically) shed her clothes for a light dusting of leaves. (~~Please, let me down, Mama. I'll be good.~~)

On second thought, with a flip of her wrists to replace her clothes, she murmured, "Smelling like forest is freedom enough."

[ooc: Slow because shit is real, but hit me til I scream. Find Regina in the orchards she planted at any time during this post. Avoid seeing her naked if your fireball tolerance is low. Otherwise, fireball forecast: low. Title quote: Rumi.]

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There were elementals in the trees? That was cool. And weird. But mostly cool, Emma thought, as long as they didn't mind them using the fruit. It probably would have taken longer to wrap her head around, if she wasn't somewhat used to Dani making friends with the local wildlife. "That is a very good reason for using the fruit. Tell them thank you from me?"

"You've told them yourself," came Regina's reply on a ripple of amusement that wasn't quite laughter. Against her side, Manzanita also 'laughed', leaves shivering on her tree's branches with responsive delight.

"They only speak and communicate in the loosest sense, unless you have a bond with them. But they have--" How had Atticus explained it? "--an empathic awareness of living things around them. So if you're grateful when you pick fruit, they know. If you want to make a special point of it, lay your hand against the tree's bark for a minute before you take the fruit. If you do that often enough, you'll find they subtly rearrange their leaves and boughs to offer you the fruit they're most proud of."

It was sort of sweet, really. She'd noticed it first with the berry bushes in Atticus's greenhouse.

That sounded even more like Dani's communicating with animals, or even more like her encouraging and interacting with T-O. If it wasn't exactly the same, the familiar framing meant it didn't sound all that strange to Emma. "I'll do that. It kind of reminds me of my teacher back home, although her connections weren't to plants or elementals living in them."

"Your teacher, might I know her?" She'd met more than a few who spoke to animals in various worlds. It probably wasn't Atticus, because she'd know about elementals, but Regina couldn't help asking.

There was no one else at the inn from Emma's world. Her readings had confirmed that. Not now anyway. Laynia had been, but she was gone now, and had been from before Emma knew her anyway.

"Probably not the one who taught me, since you're not from my reality. But there are a couple of people here who know alternate versions of Dani. Moonstar. Unless there's a version who's really different from the one I know, if you've met her, you'll remember."

Not Atticus, then, but Regina chuckled anyhow. "She was friendly with the druid who taught me," and who'd held her while she cried over her losses. She did miss him, sometimes. "My son played with her children."

Emma blinked. Regina had said words, and they were words she knew, but those words, in that order, it was hard to make them make sense.

My son played with her children.

"Dani. Has kids." Plural even. Regina said children, not child.

"With who?" came out before she knew she'd thought the question.

Regina tilted her head, surprised by the reaction. The Dani Moonstar she'd known had been...the consummate mother. So much so that Regina had been bitterly jealous of her at first. It had helped, of course, that Snow had never taken to her, but even so.

Strange to see someone surprised at the fact.

"As I recall, her husbands' names were Bobby Drake and Scott Summers."

Emma been so busy trying to wrap her head around the idea of Dani being a mother, she didn't think about it when she cut off another bit of plum and ate it as Regina answered. If she'd been thinking, she wouldn't have needed her precog to know that was probably a bad idea when she was likely to get another surprise, two even, and she coughed as juice tried to go down the wrong way. She covered her mouth with the back of the hand holding her knife, and shook her head to wave off any concern from Regina.

It only took a moment to physically recover, but she sounded a little breathless still. "She and Bobby got married?" That Dani and Bobby would end up together wasn't a surprise, but that they'd married... Emma remembered Bobby looking down at the T-O ring he never took off, and wistfully saying, This is as married as we'll get.

She didn't know what to do about the idea of Scott being with either of them. Other than assuming Jean must still be dead in that world.

Blame maternal instinct, Regina shifted forward even before the cough. She reached out just as Emma waved her off--something else maternal instinct probably should've foreseen, but Emma was the seer (so she'd heard), not her.

She waited for Emma to recover before answering, "I assume so. They called each other husband and wife, in any event, and I know one of the boys was Bobby's."

"Sorry. I should be used to the idea of alts being really different from each other. Kitty's enough an example of that. Or Nate and Nathan." Although that was more complicated because of time travel and other weirdness, and Emma didn't even know if Regina would know either of them.

"But still, the idea of Dani having kids, or being married. Or Scott being with somebody other than Jean..." Of course her thoughts went to Sabine, who'd loved him knowing it would go nowhere as long as Jean existed. And from things TJ and Mariko had said, Jean and Scott were meant to be together in lots of realities. "It's hard to even imagine."

An elegant eyebrow lifted at one of the names. "Nathan was my son Roland's friend. I understood him to be Scott's son."

She had some sympathy for Emma's confusion. After all, Snow was very little like her namesake. "Even if the story begins the same, events shape them differently. The version of Snow from my world is a mother and a schoolteacher, a princess who wears pastel cardigans. She's been in love with the same man since the day she met him, more or less. Snow, as I'm sure you've noticed, has a pathological aversion to most of those things. On the surface, at least."

Emma nodded. That much she understood. "Nate and Nathan were different versions of the same person. One from the future, one from a different world. And they were very different people.

"Probably not the same as the one who was friends with your son, though. Nathan is Dani's Teacher. And one of her... lovers." That was such a weird word, but calling Nathan a boyfriend felt more wrong.

"Most likely not." Although Regina had seen the way the universes tended to cluster people together even if their relationships changed. "In any event, that Nathan was no teacher, though he was the most solemn child I ever met. And one of the more powerful."

"Was she happy?" It wasn't her Dani (or the Bobby or Scott she knew), but Emma still hoped the other Dani had a life she wanted. That was more important than whether Nathan was alt-Nathan, or a namesake, or someone else entirely.

"Were they?"

"They were." Of that particular family group, Regina felt confident in saying, "Very," without the usual caveat that she wasn't one to know. "I didn't know her well at all, but it wasn't something you could miss." And it hadn't been obnoxious enough to make Regina resent it.

"Thanks. That..." Emma paused, and stopped herself when she realized she was biting her lip. "I guess it shouldn't matter really, that somebody I never met and maybe never will has a good life, but.. I'm glad."

"It's kind," Regina said after a moment. "And it might matter, someday. The worlds are more intertwined than we usually give them credit for. Most of them are only a wish away."

"Too close sometimes." For Jag, and the Emma who wasn't his Emma. Or far enough no wishing could bring them closer. Pyro.

Emma shook her head again. None of that was Regina's problem. She'd been having a good day, from what Emma could tell, before she'd been interrupted. "I should probably get back to the kitchen, and let you enjoy the rest of this lovely afternoon.

"Let me know when you want to try a flaugnarde. I can put one together pretty quickly whenever."

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[EP] open your hands if you want to be held

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