Out of the Loop [Andrew, the TARDIS, and possibly her current inhabitants]

[bluesuit_handy]

Andrew has been postponing contact with the TARDIS in the hope that she'll contact him, but it's becoming more and more obvious that that hope is in vain. There's the not so small matter of his growing bashfulness re: going outside, too; he's rapidly gotten big enough that he can no longer hide the bulge of his belly. None of his regular clothing fits, he feels heavy and unnatural, and the clinic has confirmed that he's not just imagining that things are going much faster than they should.

This morning, though, he's going stir-crazy just thinking about hanging around the flat yet another day. The rain offers an opportunity to cover up with a long raincoat, too; summer clothing normally doesn't afford a lot in the way of layering to help mask his changing shape. A kiss and an explanation for James later, he heads off to the park via the subway, opting not to send the TARDIS a message to let her know he's on his way lest he give her the opportunity to tell him not to come. At least if she detects him on the way and sends him a message he can pretend not to receive it until he's already there.

It's harder than he remembered to find her in the park, but eventually he arrives at her doors bedraggled from the weather and trying to convince himself that he's here primarily because of his concerns about Zagreus's activities and that recent angel spotting nearby, not because he's hurt that she never contacts him. Andrew knocks politely before trying the door even though he knows she'll have seen him coming for a while. "Let me in, I'm wet!" he calls as if it weren't his own fault.


[OOC: Not sure if this is going to be just Andrew and the TARDIS or nooooot; should have asked around before now probs.]

Learning. Assimilating. [Open]

[omnomnom_feels]

Compared to how he was when he arrived, Rashad looks like a new man. Wounds that should have taken weeks to heal have left only faint scars that will continue to fade; in a city this large it has not been difficult to find sources of energy. He has lived on an emotional rollercoaster over the last half week, fluctuating through every intense feeling the people of New York have offered him. No one seems to have connected the death of the man in the park with his arrival. He is ignorant of the looming presence of the two factions, having escaped the attentions of one without knowing just what he was escaping; while the lack of a place to sleep has little impact on his health it has made it necessary to keep himself clean through magic, which is mildly taxing. He does not know this time or its people; the handful of professions he has learned to round out past personae are unlikely to do him a great deal of good here and he does not know even enough to fabricate a plausible explanation for his own existence. Fortunately, most people of new York are uninterested in strangers, and soon enough he learns of the prevalence of homeless shelters, though unsurprisingly these face more demand than they can supply and July 2 is the first night on which he is able to procure a place to -- importantly -- gather information about other resources and -- less importantly -- to lay down and pretend to sleep (that he does seem to sleep and to dream is certainly unexpected).

That this is not the world he came from compounds the problem of not even knowing what questions to ask. The absence of nonhuman mortals is glaring; in his first days here he thought he might be looking at the results of widespread segregation, but there are no signs whatsoever of the existence of beastfolk, dwarves, ogres, or any of the others here. For once it seems fortunate that his semi-mortal form is that of a 'Common Man' rather than the Eldren form favored by most angels, though he wonders whether it can really be true that the other subspecies never existed here or if -- as seems more likely to him, though it is still difficult to conceive -- they somehow went extinct in some past disaster.

Having recovered his health and obtained clothing from the shelter that is at least serviceable if not particularly attractive, Rashad sets himself the task of filling in the gaps -- no, the gaping holes -- of his knowledge of this version of the mortal world. The public library is, he thinks, one of the mortal world's most sensible inventions, and it is advantageous that such libraries have become more common rather than less since 'his' time. He makes himself as inconspicuous and inoffensive as possible as he plumbs the depths of the nonfiction section, not yet ready to approach the strange, intelligent machines many of the other patrons are using. Each day he visits a library he gathers a stack of history books and recent almanacs through which he slowly works his way, writing cramped notes in mixed alphabets to remind himself of names, dates, and facts that seem significant and to require more in-depth investigation. This will not tell him how to behave in this world, but it will help him begin to build the context he needs. For behavior he will have to look to the people themselves...and perhaps to their entertainment, though he has had only enough access to television to be aware that it exists and that it seems to happen very quickly.

When he is not at the library he can be found meandering through public spaces, observing the people he finds there. He does not venture into Central Park lest he encounter someone who might recognize him from his previous appearance there, but he roams the streets peering into shop windows, listening to the conversations of passersby, and watching for opportunities to create a more stable position for himself in this society. He doesn't know what to do, but drifting aimlessly is nothing new.


[OOC: If you need a hook, either talk to me to arrange something or just drop a tag about what your character is doing in whatever place you choose for them to meet and I can come up with a way for the interaction to start in my reply. I can put him just about anywhere.]