strangetrip | Check-In: Not-Mother Hen

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Check-In: Not-Mother Hen

Kitty sat at the bar with a cup of coffee and her notebook, watching the 'welcoming committee' make themselves busy. Liz was here, as she'd promised Kitty she would be and Kitty gave her a quick smile of encouragement.

One of the worst things about Check-In Days was that you never knew whether it'd be a whole long day of no one arriving, one spectacular fall from the ceiling and dropping dead after another, or anything in between. It made it hard to know what to do with yourself. After awhile, you got used to it and just kept on with whatever you'd do otherwise, and know that if you didn't step up for a new arrival, someone else would. But for someone not used to treating it like a responsibility to be here, especially someone with Liz's anxious need to be perfect at it, Check-In Day could be emotionally exhausting.

So Kitty made sure to have milk warmed for hot cocoa and her plans for the obstacle course handy in case Liz needed something to do with herself. Otherwise, she was working on a modification of Cerebro to see if she could start detecting new arrivals.

[ooc: Regular check-in day gathering post. If you want Kitty, ping me.]

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Vax stared at him for a moment, as the other stared at the table. He couldn't help but be struck by how much he identified with fending for yourself at a young age with a sibling in tow.

"Best as we can figure, us being here is like... Making a copy of a key," he tried to think of how to explain. A copy of a key you pressed into wax to save yourself some trouble later. "The life you remember from home still goes on, and that other self keeps on doing what you would've done there on your behalf. We're one or the other, the key or the copy. No one seems to notice that there might be another you out there somewhere. Does that help at all?"

He listened and tried to follow. A copy. Like somehow there are two of me...

"Yeah, actually." He said with a nod. "As long as I'm there, or someone like me anyways, then Caleb will be safe and that's all that really matters."

"I'm sure that other-Brad is taking very good care of him right about now." He didn't even have to grown-up-lie to say it. From the stories of where and whens Vox Machina had shared, no one seemed able to notice at all when one of them had ended up at the Inn.

"As for you, you're safe for now. This place is more boring than not. There are all manner of strange people, and we get up to the same bickering as most people do, though there's rarely real trouble. We've got to entertain ourselves, is the biggest concern. But there's not much cause for real worry when all of our basic needs are being met."

Brad is put somewhat at ease from Vex's words about back home. If there was really nothing he could do about it right now, then he would have to hold onto the idea that someone else, or another 'him' was helping Caleb.

"I met someone here who said they go to school here to pass the time," he commented. "...Do you teach here?"

Vax blinked as the question caught him between the eyes. "What? Me?" He gave a sheepish sort of sideways-smirk. "That's never gone over well," he muttered to himself. He'd fucked it up badly with Kynan, though the boy got around to something good for him eventually. He shouldn't have had to go through everything with Ripley, and that was Vax's fault if it was anybody's.

"No, I'm afraid anything I could teach wouldn't be much useful here. Unless you've always secretly wanted to grow herbs and vegetables?"

Brad's eyebrows lifted. Vegetables?

"Uh... no. I'm not really into gardening." He said. "Plus it's like winter for so long where I'm from gardening is kind of a summer only thing."

And for old people.

Vax gave a nod, and looked rather satisfied with that answer. Because how many teen boys wanted to be fucking gardeners? He certainly wasn't about to ask if Brad wouldn't rather learn how to kill people.

"Leave it to us old folks then," Vax put it with some amusement. He could guess at how stuffy and boring it sounded to someone Brad's age without anybody having told him so. "Are you from 'Earth?' Most people here seem to be."

"Yeah," He affirmed with a nod. "I'm from a place called Sudbury in Canada..... but I guess you probably haven't heard of either."

I never thought I'd be answering a question like 'are you from Earth?'

"Where are you from?" He asked.

"Not so much," Vax agreed. "We call our world Exandria, where I'm from. My friends and I have traveled all over, but we mostly come from a kingdom called Tal'Dorei, the capital city of Emon. ...Which all probably sounds as silly to you as Kahl-ee-Fornea sounds to me."

Bradley smiled at his strange pronunciation of California.

"I guess I never thought how names of places sound weird before," he said, amused. "Your place sound cool."

Sort of like the fantasy movies. Brad thought better than to bring that up to Vax.

"Was it hard to adjust to the inn?" He asked. "Other than being stuck here suddenly, obviously."

"There's much more advanced stuff here than I was used to," Vax agreed. "Electrified lights, phones, teevees - even the indoor plumbing took some getting used to."

"I can't even imagine being without phones and tvs." He said. Now I know what it's like without plumbing though... "Some of this stuff looks kind of old to me... like the tv in the bar. Looks like it's straight out of the 90s"

Vax somehow doubted the boy meant the 790's, PD.

"I can't even imagine having had them my whole life - of having theatre in your very own room whenever you want to watch it, or being able to instantly capture portraits of people as real as life to look at later. What an age to be alive!"

Brad smiled and then laughed at Vax's obvious excitement. He had never thought about it.

"I guess it's kind of something no one really thinks about," He said. "My mom always jokes about how when she was my age she actually had to go to a library."

Brad had never stepped foot into a library unless it was the school's library and the whole class was going there for an assignment.

"Knowing how to read is still something of an accomplishment in a lot of places in Exandria," Vax pointed out. "Some people go their whole lives without seeing the inside of a library or a real school."

Which was true, but... He winced at himself, a bit, hearing how preachy it sounded. There was nothing like speaking to people half his age to make him feel like an old curmudgeon.

"Not to say libraries can't be unspeakably boring," he hastened to add. "Just because it's written down doesn't mean it's interesting or even useful."

Even though Bradley knew it was a lecture, he also could concede a valid point.

"Guess I'm just used to computers. I'll have to unlearn that here, I guess." He said with a small smile.

"You never know what might be useful again later." Vax didn't know from computers at all, but he'd had them explained to him. He still wasn't sure he really understood them, but it wasn't a whole lot stranger than magic he supposed.

"We get to travel to other places once in a while - we call them 'Otherworlds.' None of them has been home to any of us yet, and it's only for a few weeks. But I'm sure some of them have got computers."

"That's not what I meant about unlearn..." Brad said, but smiled. He nodded. "I think computers is sort of like riding a bike. You always remember how to use one... I've basically been around them all my life."

Bikes? ...Bikes.

"You mean like riding a horse?"

Bradley blinked. He didn't understand for a second. Vax's slightly pointed ears reminded him that his world and Vax's world were different.

"Yeah, I guess so." He replied. "Bikes are... like horses except not alive. They're machines with wheels that you peddle to move."

It was a fair description, but Vax couldn't help chuckling. "Oh, I've seen them since I've been here, on the teevees and in pictures," he explained. "It's just I've never ridden one, so I don't rightly know what that's like."

"Oh," he replied, looking embarrassed for a minute. Smooth, Bradley... "well, if it helps... It's not that hard. I mean, most people learn when they're like 5 I guess. I bet you could learn quickly."

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Check-In: Not-Mother Hen

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