strangetrip | [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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Hurley tenses at the explanation. Things had been going great. The numbers weren't appearing in all these weird places like they did at the island. Things were going so well that Hurley was starting to think that maybe this place killed his curse.

But now, Regina's saying this place is a curse or something and maybe Hurley's not getting it, but if so, this sucks.

"I mean, yeah, I know what a curse is," Hurley says. "I'm pretty sure I am cursed, so being brought to a place that might be cursed? Again? Yeah, it kinda puts me on edge."

Regina tuned her arcane senses and studied him for a long minute. She didn't sense any magic on him, but that wasn't anything like infallible. A curse could be attached to an object he wasn't carrying, it could have been on something he ate or touched once. Only a blood curse would probably leave a trace.

If she had pixie dust, or a cellar full of ingredients, she might be able to concoct a blown powder that would reveal any magic entanglements, but she didn't. "I don't sense a curse on you," she said, because it was true and unless he told her a lot more about it, she wouldn't be able to remove it. "As far as I can tell, the Inn is the opposite of cursed. It's as if it's warded for safety. But in terms if how it behaves, it's like a curse or wish world. It's hermetic. Nothing here but what was cursed or wished here in the first place or what the barrier allows in."

Hurley really, really wants to believe he's not cursed. Though he was worried about it when he first showed up, he really was starting to think that maybe whatever curse was on him had faded with his arrival. Yeah, things might not have been perfect since he showed up here, but they had been pretty good. Especially compared to that time before he arrived at the island.

"Okay," he says, though he's still unsure. He really hopes that if Regina's right, whoever wished or cursed them all to be here didn't wish or curse him the same way the numbers were/did.

"This place is really starting to sound like the island," he says. "All this weird stuff happening, us never getting to leave." That might have been about to change if Charlie succeeded, though. Hurley still wasn't sure what happened to Walt.

"Tell me about this island," she suggested, leaning slightly forward to indicate her interest. She lifted her wine to her lips, took a sip, and smiled a motherly sort of encouragement. "What kind of strange things happened there?"

Because islands where strange things happen immediately make her think of Neverland.

"Uh, well." How do you even begin to explain this?

"There was this smoke monster on the island that just kinda went around giving people visions and killing them and stuff. Sometimes it just chased you. And then there were other people on the island. We called them the Others and they started attacking us. And we found some hatches and there was a code you had to enter every 108 minutes or else..."

Hurley pauses there.

"I was never relaly clear on that, but the Others never had anything to do with the hatches. That was the Dharma Initiative. They were running like, some sort of social experiment or something. I'm not really clear on that, either. My friend Charlie and my friend Desmond went to one of the hatches under the water because the Others set up something to block transmissions so no one could get off the island. And there was this French chick named Rousseau and she was like, the only survivor left on the island for a really long time that wasn't an Other."

Some of the details are out of order and some are missing outright and Hurley wouldn't be surprised if it didn't make sense to Regina. A lot of it didn't make any sense to him and he had lived on the island.

When he began rambling, Regina suppressed a sigh and sipped her wine. She could do this. She did know how to listen for content amidst a great outpouring of words. After all, neither Henry nor Roland were particularly restrained in their speech. Henry spoke in volumes and Roland was simply effusive.

Hurley trended more toward Henry's end of the spectrum which made it reasonably simple to pick out the salient points. Which all added up to a peculiar pack of nonsense. "It sounds like someone mated Wonderland and Neverland." She shook her head. "Do you remember how you arrived there?"

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

Re: Hurley & Regina

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Re: Hurley & Regina

Re: Hurley & Regina