dejah_thoris | [M'ways] Room 1001

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[M'ways] Room 1001

It was after dinner and she'd finished up her work for the day. She shook out her hand, stretched the muscles of her fingers, hoping that the tendon would stretch with it. It hurt more and more with each passing day, but she had other things to worry about. Curtis was supposed to meet her after he'd worked out and checked on Edgar.

That was two hours ago. She finally broke down and touched two fingers to her bracelet. It pulsed blue and she got the sense he was in his room. Strange. She touched it again, just to be sure. No, he was there. Alive and attached to the pendant.

She decides to go down and say hello, find out if everything's okay. A few minutes later, she's knocking at his door.

"Curtis?"

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"Vanished. Into thin air. One moment we were talking. He was standing on my balcony, overlooking the city. I told him to come back to bed. He smiled, said it felt like he'd forgotten to do something, but he was right behind me. The next moment, he disappeared.

Woola came to me in a panic. He can track a scent over hundreds of miles. And John was just... Gone. Not in the city. Not anywhere.” Her hand curls into a first around a handful of the soft knit fabric. Her entire body nestles closer to him.

"Ten years we were apart. I knew he was alive somewhere, I could feel it. Turns out, one of the Thern came, transported him back to Jasoom, purely out of spite. It took him ten years but he outwitted them. Found another amulet and came home to me."

She's not quite sure why she's telling him this, other than its a part of her history. The humor returns to her voice. "He used to joke that the best part of that whole mess was, when he got back, I never complained about him leaving his boots in the middle of the floor ever again."

Edited 2015-07-31 17:12 (UTC)

He huffs out a tiny laugh, even as his embrace tightens.

Ten years. That's barely anything for someone with Dejah's lifespan, but it's, what, a quarter of the time she and John were married? To have so few years together (by her standards), and to have a chunk of that yanked away with no warning, a loved one disappearing with no sign...

(He's thinking of the kids again. Of Gerald, querulously telling his wife he'd be okay, not to worry, he'd come back.)

"I'm sorry you went through that," he whispers.

Losing him on their wedding night made the absence feel like an eternity, regardless of her lifespan.

"Thank you. I taught me to appreciate the people I love while they're here, because tomorrow holds no guarantees." She pushes away just enough to look into his face. Her eyes glow in the half light. "It also taught me, you humans are incredibly tough bastards. Clever. Resourceful. If something's happened to Edgar, I'm sure whatever it is, he can handle it."

It's startling. Up in her room, out in the meadow, even down in the bar, that glow just makes her eyes look more vivid than usual. But here, Curtis can see the actual light they cast: beautiful, and utterly alien.

He strokes his palm over her hair, cradles her cheek. Doesn't say anything right away.

"He spent almost his whole life in the tail," he points out, soft.

It could be agreement. It could mean what Curtis was thinking earlier: Edgar barely knows what the outside world can be like, even on a thawed Earth. What it can do to you.

She leans into his touch, her eyes drifting closed. He's making it difficult to focus on his words, on the problem he needs solving, but goddess she doesn't mind.

She turns her head to place a soft kiss on his palm, and whispers, "What can I do to help?"

He pauses the rocking of the hammock, considering.

"You said Woola can track people?"

Her eyes fly open. "Yes, yes he can." She tries to sit up but the hammock twists and her feet flutter on open air. She growls and grabs the fabric higher up, hauling herself up and out. It is the least elegant thing he's ever seen her do, but she manages. She offers him a hand, looking a little embarrassed but still fired up.

"Do you have something Edgar wore?"

To his credit, Curtis doesn't laugh.

(The narration won't say anything about grins that may or may not happen, however.)

He takes her hand, standing up with considerable more ease than she did, and casts a look around the tiny room. "Um -- "

The only thing immediately visible is the twine Edgar made. It's been a while since those socks were on his feet, but maybe it'll work. He snatches it off the table, holds it out to Dejah, and said, "Here. It's old socks."

"Perfect." She takes it in hand. "If he's anywhere on the grounds, Woola will find him. I left him sleeping in the forge."

She heads for the door, woman on a mission.

Curtis falls in step behind her.

Even without the two of them striding along faster than normal, it's a quick walk to the forge: an elevator ride, a cut through the bar, and they're outside in minutes. Curtis does his best not to fidget, with mixed success.

"How's your hand doing?"

He's not expecting anything but the usual it's fine, but he could use the distraction.

She glances down at her hand, flexes her fingers again, working the stiffness out of it. "It's been acting up a bit, but my hands are always a bit sore after doing precision work. I don't have a full workshop here, so I'm doing most of the work manually."

Even walking at a clip, she reaches out and slips her good hand into the crook of his arm.

"Better in the long run, I feel, so it's worth it. In fact, I think I might be ready for a full trial run. After we're sure Edgar is all right."

"After," he confirms. "Yeah."

Even the allure of the new arm feels dimmed right now. It's like following the light of the engine straight through the whole train: find Edgar first, worry about everything else later.

"Sure you don't want someone to look at your hand?"

She's quiet for a moment, her head down, a crooked smile on her lips. When she does speak, her voice is quiet, as even talking about it seems selfish and indulgent.

"I'm not sure it's to that point yet. I just need to put some heat on it, maybe massage out the sore bits. I'm sure it's nothing."

"Okay." He sounds a little doubtful, but, in lieu of pressing her good hand, lightly bumps his shoulder against hers. "Do it if it does get to that point?"

Last thing either of them need is for Dejah to overwork herself to the point of serious injury.

"All this fuss," she says, nudging him back. "Let's find Edgar and then we can worry about stupid things like my hand."

She fishes in her pocket for the ball of twine, and whistles. A moment and a puff of dust later, Woola is standing before them, two hundred yards from where he'd been sleeping beside the forge.

"Woola. Do you remember Edgar?"

The calot grumbles a little, looking puzzled. He glances at Curtis and back at Dejah.

"Yes, that's right. Curtis's friend. Here, you can smell him here." She offers the calot the ball of twine. He sniffs it once, twice, and then his face splits in a calot grin. Yes, he remembers that smell.

"Find him, Woola. Find him now." Dejah's voice drops low, and the command is unmistakable.

Woola's face takes on a look of grim determination, and he lifts his nose to the breeze. He takes a few steps towards the bar. Nope. A few steps towards the stables. Nope, not there either. When he turns his head to the lake, his entire demeanor sharpens. Before either one of them can speak, he disappears in another puff of dust.

"This shouldn't take long at all," Dejah says, trying her best to sound hopeful.

That...does not help Curtis' earlier worries that Edgar fell into the lake. Can calots track scents through water?

Oh, for fuck's sake, stop it.

At least Woola smelled something. That means Edgar can't have gotten far. He nods, quick and a little jerky, all his attention on the lake.

Dejah doesn't wait. She sets off at a slow trot, not even trying to keep up with the calot.

"He can cover an incredible amount of ground in a very short time," she assures Curtis. "I'm sure we'll find him in no time at all. Come on."

"Yeah, here's hoping," mutters Curtis.

He follows after Dejah, still scanning the lake for any sign of movement: the blur of Woola racing along, anybody who might look like Edgar, hell, even the squid. The squid understands English, doesn't it? If Edgar fell in --

Okay, now he really has to fucking stop it if he's seriously considering enlisting Julia Fruitnugget in the search for Edgar.

Before the thought is even finished, Woola is turning back, a guttural short bark cutting across the water.

"He's found something!" Dejah shifts from a lope into a proper flat out run. "Woola? Where's Edgar?"

The calot shakes his head, and then jerks it in the direction of whatever it is he's found. "What? What do you mean he's not here?"

He feels his face go cold. "Not here like -- not by the lake here? Up in the mountains not-here?"

Helplessly, Curtis drags his hand over his head, pulling his hat back a couple inches. "We're dead, we can't go anywhere -- "

And Woola's shuffling around like he found something, so obviously that means Edgar's around here somewhere. Or something that smells like Edgar. Curtis breaks into a dash toward the spot Woola indicated.

There's a huge section of ground that looks like it's been trampled. Thoroughly.

Dejah's standing there with a puzzled look on her face. "This doesn't make any sense at all."

Woola is darting around in ever widening circles, trying to find the scent again. But it's no use. Edgar is Not Here.

He doesn't see it right away. The mud and grass along the lakeshore got churned up a hell of a lot by whatever happened there; to the untrained eye, one smashed, reedy-looking plant doesn't look too different from another.

But there's a ball of them that looks a little more together than the rest. Like somebody wove it.

Like a picnic basket.

The chill sinks lower into Curtis' gut, washing through his arm and chest. Slowly, he sinks to a crouch next to the ruined basket, reaching out to touch what used to be its handle.

Dejah puts a hand on his shoulder. "There's no blood. Whatever happened here, he was not injured. But Curtis, look at these. These look like thoat tracks to me. If I had to read the ground here, I'd say he was knee deep in the mud here," she pointed to a soupier bit of the muck.

There's more disturbance in the mud a few feet away, and she points again, "And something tried to trample him. Something large. But something small -- a juvenile thoat? Issus this is strange. It looks like a juvenile thoat stood between a prone Edgar and a larger thoat. And then they both ran that way."

That way being where Woola is standing in the grass, his nose lifted. A moment later he comes back to Dejah, a decidedly dejected look on his face.

This close to the lake, he thinks, no blood might not mean much. The water eases back and forth over the shoreline all the time -- it'd be easy to wash the blood clean.

But if some tracks are stil intact, maybe it hasn't been that long.

And did she say --

"Thoat tracks?" He looks up, shock and worry parting under the sharpness of his gaze. If she's surprised to see them, and there's only one other Barsoomian who could've brought some kind of native Martian animal to Milliways -- "Does Tars keep any here?"

If Tars did anything to Edgar, Curtis will fucking end him.

Dejah shakes her head with a dry laugh. "He is a Jeddak, not a thoat master. He rides one, and I've seen it tied outside the stables before. But that doesn't explain the little one. Here. And here."

She's pointing to the clear marks in the dark soil above the bank. "I may not have been hunting for many moons, Curtis Everett, but I can still read sign. Especially in ground this soft and wet. Whatever happened here, Edgar got away unscathed."

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