The Morning After, The Walk of Shame (Eliot's Arrival, part the Second) [OPEN]

[eliotwaugh]

Eliot does not do the walk of shame, he takes a promenade of reminiscing on a night well spent. It's early enough in the morning that the heat hasn't gotten overpowering, so he saunters back down to SoHo, getting coffee and a crêpe along the way. He feels better, so much better, having had that little vacation from his life. And his life is already so much of a vacation, isn't it? But he knows, of course, that his usual pace of frenetic idleness couldn't be sustained forever, and when he was stuck with his usual crowd (and Janet, always Janet, waiting for him and still wanting him after all this time, sometimes it made his skin itch to look at her), he hated those moments of self-awareness and chased them away with all the intoxicants he could get his hands on.

But something about today is different. He had taken a much-needed break from the usual scene, and had a lovely time with lovely Johnny, and somehow the city doesn't seem so much like the usual desert of mundane dirty boring everything, like it usually did. Maybe Eliot's looking at it with fresh eyes, but it seems a little bit more magical.

When he gets to the apartment, he starts to realize that he might have a problem. The key doesn't work, but that's not he first time it's happened, the building is so old and the lock gets sticky in the humidity, so he does the usual thing and starts banging on the wood with his fist.

"Janet!" he yells, and oh no his throat hurts from all that drinking, he hopes he's not getting a summer cold, those are the worst. He's about to yell again when he hears something from inside the apartment that chills his blood.

There's a dog barking.

They don't have a dog. Janet doesn't even like dogs, and as much as they joke about their little Ozzie and Harriet setup here she would not go out and get a dog as a gag for them to laugh about and neglect and foist off to Quentin and Alice in a week. So why the fuck is there a dog in his apartment?

He stops banging on the door, because the dog is scrabbling and whining at it and then there's footsteps and it opens and it's some strange bearded hipster douche staring at him like he's crazy.

"What the hell, man?" hipster douche accuses, and Eliot narrows his eyes and looks down at the dog, poking its fluffy white face out from the sliver of doorway. It looks like one of those hypoallergenic designer hybrids people have, with the stupid names. Shitcock. Snickerdoodle. One of those things. It's wrong, the whole thing is wrong, this guy and his dog shouldn't be here.

"What the hell are you doing in my apartment?" Eliot counters, angry and confused and too hungover to try and reason this. They shouldn't be here. This is so wrong, why is there a dog? For whatever reason that's the thing he focuses on, as he backs away from the yelling faux lumberjack, hearing a high-pitched ringing in his ears. His stomach turns, and he gets off the stoop and leans into the bushes to catch his breath or throw up (which mercifully doesn't happen).

The feeling of sickness triggers a sense-memory; he remembers the nausea yesterday, in the evening in the park. There's definitely something wrong, all right, and maybe Eliot was just too drunk to see it before. Something is fucked up, something happened to him, maybe someone's gaslighting him, but it started in the park.

He storms off down the block, out of sight of the hipster who's now closed the door, grumbling. Eliot starts to warm up a teleportation spell but it feels off-balance somehow, his hands don't feel right even though he's gone all over the city like this and it should be as natural as breathing. He feels sick, sick and wrong. Maybe until he figures out what or who's behind this mindfuck he should cool it on the magic. He'll be fine. He digs in his pockets for a wad of cash and sets off to hail a cab.

Eliot's mood darkens as they crawl up Fifth, and when the cab drops him at the southeast corner of the park, the wrongness hits him palpably, like coming out of air conditioning into sweltering summer heat.

There's magic here, powerful and unfamiliar, and it's so absolutely out of place. And Eliot's going to get to the bottom of it.

[[ooc: so off he wanders, hungover and confused and in a hell of a mood! Let's make Eliot's day even worse, friends!]]

Comments

[rae_of_sun]

Hey, speaking of powerful, unfamiliar magic…

Sunshine is taking a break from reading. Probably the most irritating side effect of dark vision is that the only way she can comfortably read anymore is shut in a closet, but that doesn't mean she can't still try during Normal Reading Hours (that is, all hours). She can only keep it up for so long before she needs a break, though, so now she's just lying in the Sheep Meadow, indulging in some single-minded sunbathing, her book balanced on her stomach.

It doesn't occur to her - though perhaps it should - that the prominently displayed title ('Out of Thin Air: Teleportation and Summoning for Beginners') might raise a few eyebrows. Then again, this is Manhattan. Even if someone went out of their way to notice and think it weird, it would take a special kind of crazy to actually comment.

[eliotwaugh]

As luck would have it, Eliot is just the right kind of crazy, plus he's following the vague trail of unease he's feeling, and on the lookout for anything out of the ordinary.

So as he tromps through the Sheep Meadow he has to stop when he catches sight of the book's title. He peers down at Sunshine, casting a lanky, grumpy shadow on her.

"Teleportation?" He asks, almost disbelieving. "Is that what the hell this is? Did you have something to do with it?" Wow rude not even a hello.

[rae_of_sun]

Someone is blocking her sun: not an auspicious start to any given interaction. It does, however, give Sunshine a second to brace herself for more impending annoyance, so Eliot's little outburst, while still unwelcome, is at least not a total shock to her system. She pushes herself up into a sit and puts a protective hand on the book, squinting up (way up) at the belligerent beanpole currently hurling baseless accusations her way. It seems she's found a special kind of crazy, after all. Spartan.

Oh. Wait. Those are not native shadows. So, maybe this guy is less special crazy and more really confused new arrival. She's dealt with the latter before, but this is the first time she's been accosted by one, and she scowls her disapproval. "I take it you're new."

[eliotwaugh]

It's been a long time since anyone has put Eliot in his place with that kind of statement; it jars him, and his first instinct is to protest, to be indignant, but that will only make him look more like some ignorant hick, and Eliot refuses to be seen that way. So maybe he is a bit hysterical, and maybe that approach is not going to fly with this lady, who, he can tell, could probably teach a master's class in Disparaging Eyebrow Judgment.

He takes a deep breath, tries to get his pulse to stop racing. Act natural. Act like you know what the hell is going on. He steps back a little bit and gives her one of his best sighs.
"New to Manhattan, no," he explains. "New to this...messed-up shitshow of energy, yes." Eliot rubs at his head, the headache is not receding, not even a little. "Yesterday this place was practically a desert, not a drop of magic at all, and now there's this...something here in the park? So yeah, I'm a little on edge, what, are we hosting the magician Olympics all of a sudden?"

Eliot normally does not talk this much to strangers, especially strangers who sass him so effectively, but girl is reading about teleportation and summoning, so it's a fair assessment that she's in the know, and not a muggle or whatever.

[rae_of_sun]

Okay. It doesn't seem likely that she's going to be getting back to her sunbathing anytime in the near future, nor does it seem likely that Tall, Dark and Fussy is going to sit down and relax (not that she can really blame him, as it seems he really has just arrived). Sunshine gets to her feet, which does something for the height disparity but doesn't actually stop him from continuing to loom over her like a cartoon storm cloud.

On the bright side, at least he's more engaging than what's-his-face-with-the-rabbit. Maybe it'll be worth attempting the whole Rifty Orientation spiel with this guy. And he's from a universe with magic - another plus. 'Magician' makes her think of card tricks and sleight-of-hand, but if he's actually sensing the rift - which is more than she can do (probably just as well; knowing it's out there is bad enough without feeling the damn thing) - then he's probably legit.

"The thing you're sensing is the rift. That's what brought you here." She puts a slight emphasis on 'that' - as opposed to her, thank you very much. "And me here, for that matter." The look she gives him is assessing, but not unfriendly. Honor amongst thieves, or the dimensionally displaced. She offers a hand. "I'm Rae - Rae Seddon - but everyone calls me Sunshine."

[eliotwaugh]

"Oh, shit," Eliot blurts, when he hears her explanation. Of course it's a rift. He's been plonked down in another world like a goddamn Fillory book, only this isn't whimsical at all. It seems so stupidly improbable, but her expression is serious; this isn't some terrible joke.

He can't think too hard about what this entails; for now, Eliot focuses on networking. He laughs a little, grinning as he shakes her hand. "Sunshine, as in 'well aren't you just a ray of'? That's brilliant." His grin turns into a little grimace. "Sorry about the...carrying on," he says, waving his other hand in a vague gesture to indicate 'yelling at strangers like a crazy vagrant.' "The name's Eliot, Eliot Waugh, until recently of SoHo. It's been...an unusual day for me."

[rae_of_sun]

Sunshine twists her lips into a wry smile; her name isn't all that apt as far as implied cheeriness goes, though it's certainly appropriate in other contexts. Her expression softens a little at his apology, and then she snorts. Unusual. Yeah, that's one way to put it.

"I bet it has. You're the first new arrival I've met who's actually from Manhattan." She's not sure if that makes the transition easier or not, and it would be disgustingly presumptuous of her to make a guess either way, but at least she can acknowledge that it's a carthaginian weird coincidence.

[eliotwaugh]

Eliot considers this, and the possibility that this dimensional whatever isn't just a gateway between the same location in different planes.

"I suppose it could be worse," he says, looking around at the park. "I could have walked into a zombie apocalypse or a world without public transit." Eliot's trying to be unruffled but it's difficult. "I mean, no offense, if you're from a zombie world or anything, but I'm definitely glad this isn't...too different from my New York, as far as I can tell." That feeling of magical residue all over the place is definitely disconcerting, though.

"I was out bar-hopping," he continues, "so I didn't notice it at first, but...was I by the fountain? Is that where the thing is, this Rift?" Way to go Eliot, you are taking the concept of a lost weekend to a whole new level.

[rae_of_sun]

"None taken," she replies dryly. Should she mention the ghouls? Maybe she'll hold off on that; in the grand scheme of things, ghouls aren't that much of a problem. It's the vampires that are taking over the world. "There are definitely worse Manhattans you could have landed in."

Like hers, for example, but she doesn't really want to talk about that, either. She's mostly over the morbid impulse to imagine what her universe's Manhattan looks like based on what she knows of this one - like, would there be anything left of that fountain? How many of these buildings are still standing? Is that painted sign the only colorful thing left along this stretch of street anymore? - but when other Manhattans come up, it's sort of hard to avoid that line of thought.

So, she wrenches her attention back over to what was probably the most eventful night of bar-hopping that Eliot's ever had. Poor guy. "It's centered above Bethesda, yeah," she says, turning to look in that general direction, "but it doesn't drop everyone there. I wound up in the Conservatory Garden. Its full range is…" she makes a vague hand gesture to suggest 'all over the goddamn place,' "most of the island, I think. I can't sense it, though." After a beat, she decides to add, "Not that kind of magic-handler."

Well, if anyone can handle hearing as much without freaking out or laughing at her, it's probably Eliot, right?

[eliotwaugh]

Eliot counts himself lucky he didn't end up in some sort of sci-fantasy RPG adventure Manhattan, that's Josh's thing, so not his scene. He lets out a low whistle as Sunshine describes the extent of this Rift. "No wonder I feel like I'm gonna pass out," he murmurs. "Although I guess the hangover isn't helping."

He tilts his head, interested in the term. "Magic-handler? That what they call it where you're from?" It's a good descriptive term, Eliot thinks, and makes a certain amount of sense in his view of magic as well: it's something you do, something you manipulate, not something you are. "What does that entail, exactly?" It's a pleasant distraction, being able to talk shop and potentially learning about different magical structures. Eliot feels a bit like an anthropologist. What an opportunity. "Uh, would you mind if we sat down, though? I think we might look weird, just standing in the grass, and also I think the Rift is making me dizzy."

[rae_of_sun]

"Oh, right." She's not sure how weird they really look at present - they're both outwardly human, which counts for more in this Manhattan than it might in the one he came from - but yeah, standing out in the sun might not be the most comfortable position for a new rifty with a hangover. Sunshine heads for the shade of a nearby line of trees.

"What it entails depends on the individual," she explains as they walk. "For me, it's, um, not much. Small-scale transmutation, opening locks," embarrassing teleportation mishaps, vampire-specific stuff she prefers not to cop to… Sunshine shrugs, then sits down in the shade. "I'm a baker. Any magic-handling I do is on the side."

But speaking of baking. Food is good for hangovers, right? Presuming that said hangover and the rift's effects aren't just adding up to nausea. Sunshine opens her bag and rummages around for a few moments, producing a little bottle of water (probably not very cold anymore, but at least it's still hydrating) and a paper bag of assorted cookies. She offers him the water, then asks, "Are you hungry?" If not, she can just eat some of the cookies on her own, but she does tend to take enough snacks with her for easy sharing. You never know when you might run into a friend - or a new arrival in need of a blood sugar boost.

[eliotwaugh]

Eliot nods, listening to her explanation. He supposes if it changes from person to person it's not quite the same type of magic he knows, but that kind of transmutation is his bread and butter.

The shade is certainly a relief for his head, and he accepts the water gratefully, taking a swig before answering her. Oh water, you are a delight.

"Yeah," he says, "I think I can handle solids, thanks." Eliot peers into the bag. Ooh, cookies. "So did you make these?"

[rae_of_sun]

"Yeah. Yesterday, but they're still good." They're still better than good, but they aren't fresh out of the oven, either, and she doesn't want Eliot to get the wrong idea.

And speaking of, she should probably not just stare at him in rapt attention while he tries her food. "So, the whole rift-sensing thing," she says, making a gesture that encompasses Eliot's head, "is that going to fade to background noise, or are you going to need to, uh… relocate?" She's hoping for the former, for his sake - if any part of the island is out of the rift's sphere of influence, she doubts it's a very large part - but if it's the latter, he might need to think about moving again before much longer.

[eliotwaugh]

For a moment Eliot can't answer, because he's started eating one of the cookies, which, wow.

He chews for a moment, a beatific expression on his face, and then swallows, and considers the problems this whole Rift business might cause.

"Well," he says slowly, "I don't know, to he honest. It might just be mostly shock and hangover right now, I mean I hope it is, I can tell food and water is going to help, but..." Eliot sighs, and looks around the park. "Ugh I'm going to have to decorate a new apartment." (Which is the least of Eliot's problems, being dimensionally displaced from everyone he knows, but, still. Apartments are a pain.)

He clears his throat and levels a serious look at Sunshine. "Meanwhile, holy shit these are tasty. I hope you're getting paid good money, because I think you might be able to take over a small municipality solely with cookies. Please tell me you're using your baking powers for good."