strangetrip | Missing (OTA)

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Missing (OTA)

Liz stood in the middle of the lobby with a quiet, panicked look on her face. She turned around a second time, surveying the scene around her, but the second pass didn't help any. She ran a hand through her hair and then headed for one of the couches. She pulled back the cushions, digging her hand into the crevice of the gaudy plush decor and when her hand emerged empty, she felt her chest tighten.

Liz's journal was missing.

She thought she had brought it back to the room yesterday after studying in the cafe, but this morning when she went to review her notes from the day before, she had discovered that the familiar book she had so many things in was gone. She had checked the library, the restaurant, the cafe, even the kitchen itself. It had to be somewhere, right?

(ooc: Find her pretty much anywhere. Also! Feel free, if your character would so choose, to find the journal and read all or some of it because I am a cruel mistress.)

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Liz blinked and looked confused. "What do you mean? Say what?"

"Some version or other of 'this is stupid,'" Corbie said simply. "Statement, question, sometimes switch out for dumb, but yeah. You say it a lot."

"Oh." She ducked her head. "I guess, I, um. I guess I never noticed." She wondered briefly what that probably said about her.

Corbie's head tipped again, her brow furrowing lightly. "Who do you think is spending so much time judging everything you do?"

That was a good question. Maybe it stemmed from just being in high school or maybe it was something more solely on Liz and how people looked at her to be the one that didn't make mistakes.

"When you put it that way, it makes it sound silly." She pressed her lips together. "I mean... back home, with high school, sometimes it really does feel like everyone is watching you. Especially when I was dating this guy named Kyle who was like, in 3 different sports and pretty popular."

Corbie's frown deepened. "High school sounds pretty shit, then."

She considered for a moment. "Okay. I'm gonna ask you something that's prolly going to feel weird to answer, but. Indulge me. How much d'you think about me? I don't mean in general 'oh shit everybody's looking at me,' I mean you're thinking just about me and stuff that I've said and done."

She thought about it. "Sometimes... I mean, when we talked last time about Peter and stuff by the pool, I think about what you said." She would occasionally deliberate on what to tell Peter or go to someone else. "And sometimes, I guess, when I see you around, I kind of just wonder how you're doing and stuff."

Corbie nodded. "In other words, occasionally." It wasn't an accusation or a disappointment or anything, just a statement of fact building up to a point. "Sometimes more, sometimes less, but averages out to occasionally. That accurate?"

If felt kind of weird to admit that, though she guessed it would be weird to think of her more frequently too.

"Yeah... I guess so." Somehow she managed to just look a little bit guilty.

Corbie reached out to touch Liz's hand. "That's not a bad thing," she said, and she let that sit for a moment so it'd sink in before she continued.

"My point is, that's about how much I think about you, too. Or most anybody else thinks about you, probably, unless you're close. It's not that I don't like you or I don't care or anything like that, it's that I got my own life to worry about. We've all got our own lives to worry about. If anybody really was watching you as close and critical as you're scared of, they really need something to do."

It made a lot of sense, of course, and really, it wasn't something that Liz didn't know somewhere deep inside, but the inn sometimes felt like a weird version of high school and in high school there were people who spent a lot of time watching what other people did - mostly to make those people's lives miserable. Liz thought of Flash from Peter's world briefly.

Corbie was also right, though, that those people were not the norm and they probably needed to re-evaluate their priorities.

She nodded, pulling back a strand of hair and tucking it behind her ear. "I guess.. sometimes I just feel like people expect me to have like, life figured out or whatever. Or at least to sound like it, because of my grades and life back home. And then I talk to people here who've been through, you know, more things than I have or who've traveled a lot -" More life experiences "- and I realize just how much I don't actually know. Then I feel like I'm failing the people who expect so much out of me."

It hadn't been so very long ago when, barely older than Liz was now, Corbie had had a number of preconceived notions of the world--what real magic was, real wizards were, and whether or not she could ever catch up to that. Felix, in a surprising show of patience from someone with as bad a temper as his, only gently untangled the knots with her until she could take a few steps forward.

There were only two or three years of separation between Corbie and Liz if you looked at a calendar, but the actual gulf between their experiences was far wider than that.

So. Okay. She was going to try to do that adult thing. Felix wouldn't have had patience for any of these particular worries, but she could still try to follow what he'd done for her.

"Nobody's got their life figured out," she said. They'd touched on this point before.

"No, I know. But sometimes it feels like people think I should." She thought about Maria for a moment. She loved Maria to death, but Maria liked to call herself 'the wacky best friend' and Liz was the one 'with her head together' and often the others seemed to look to her for the answers too. Well, except Isabel and occasionally Michael. "It's better here than it was back home."

Corbie put her chin in her hands. "Okay. Why?" And she left it at that.

"That it's different here?" She paused. "I don't know... maybe because most people here are adults?"

Most people everywhere were adults, but fine, Corbie'd take it. "Okay, and who thinks you should have everything figured out already?"

Liz paused, pressing her lips together for a moment. There was an answer there, but she just looked at Corbie. "I'm probably just wrong about that too." She offered a small smile to Corbie.

"I know I need to take myself less seriously. I'm trying to work on that."

That was an understatement. Corbie chewed her lip. "Maybe that's a question to ask yourself the next time you get self conscious. Who's putting all that pressure on you? Put an actual name and face to it. Cause I can't think of anybody here who'd put all that energy into watching for you to suck at things."

She pressed her lips together and then decided to keep going. "And while I can't think anybody's invested enough to read your journal unless they already care about you and then they'd hopefully have the damn manners not to do that, if anybody did judge your sex life and what you want from it, fuck them. Fuck them sideways 'til they cry. Yeah, I'd worked on my back for an indiction by sixteen and I know about kinks that you don't even know you don't know, but I was a virgin once. Everybody was, if they ain't still for whatever reason. We've all been there. It's nobody's business for another thing. If somebody'd actually hold that over you and laugh, it ain't that you're doing or thinking anything wrong. It's that they're a mean-spirited piece of shit."

The momentum that Corbie had that flourished with swearing surprised Liz a little. It wasn't necessarily the swearing, but that she had never seen Corbie angry before and it was actually kind of intimidating. Even so, it actually made Liz feel a little better since Corbie was definitely right, even if Liz might not say all that in the way she did.

She actually smiled. "Thank you." Because apart from talking some sense, it also was nice to hear as it meant that Corbie cared, at least in the way people who were decent did.

"I'll try not to let it bother me if someone has. And, I'm going to keep closer eye on this." Liz lifted up the book a little.

Corbie nodded, smoothing her ruffled feathers. She didn't think she had that many feelings about this, but turned out that was wrong. "Sounds like a good idea.

"Also I don't expect you to take me up on it or anything, but if you ever have any sex questions, I'm around."

She paused, looking like maybe she was about to blush again, but didn't. Instead, Liz just ducked her head a bit, then nodded. She would, no doubt, have many questions. She was already thinking of a few things in regards to the next step with Peter, but somehow now didn't seem like the right time to ask.

"Okay." Liz couldn't quite imagine having the same sort of knowledge that Corbie had, though maybe one day she would. Maybe.

"I should... probably bring this back to my room. And find Peter. He's looking for this too." Which she appreciated.

She took a step back, started to turn around, then paused and looked back at Corbie. "Corbie?... I'm really glad, that were able to meet here." Because they weren't from the same world at all so this would be the only place that was capable.

Corbie smiled and picked up her book again. "Me too. See you later." And she turned her attention back to the dilemmas of the Dashwood sisters.

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