Open

[familysucks]

Who: Michael and various
When: May, post-Event 18
Where: Horizon, Solvunn
What: Opens and catch-all for May
Warnings: None yet

Comments

OPEN - Horizon - Michael's Domain

[familysucks]

There's no weather damage to put back to rights here, trees standing tall and wind gently rustling the leaves of the otherwise silent forest, but in some ways Michael's domain has been neglected far longer than the three weeks they were missing. He hasn't spent much time here since his temper tantrum last fall.

His domain had been home to him for an imaginary eight hundred years, however. Michael wonders if it could become home to him again.

He just doesn't know quite what to do with it to make it feel like home. The version of him that lived multiple centuries of a possible future isn't who he is now. It's not as easy as adding a desert and giving some of the trees a crystalline gleam (though he did try it, for about a half hour or so). He sits in the off-white thinking chair Wanda put here in the clearing for him many months ago. It's got more padding than Michael would have added, unconcerned with comfort or ergonomics as he is, but it's a convenient perch.

So far, he's managed a cube.

Two feet long in each dimension, it appears smooth and white, with a subtle mother of pearl sheen if one takes a close look. Every now and then there's a brief moment where it's bright red, like the booths at Jaci's Red Wagon (but he can't just make the diner again, there must be more in him than that).

He's not so distracted working through his artist's block that he won't notice approaching company. Michael will turn to face strangers and friends and give them a nod.

"Visiting, or just passing through?"

[sonofacesius]

Will was honestly just passing through, exploring. He hadn't experienced anything unlike most of the other Summoned. So, he was checking things out, seeing if anything was amiss. Or anyone. He'd reached out to those he knew. But those he didn't know? He just went wandering.

"Uh, nice cube? " Will completely ignored Michael's question and crouched by the block, looking at it. "What color is it supposed to be?" Honestly he wasn't sure what its purpose was, besides. Existing?

"I'm Will. How you doing?" Cause this? This was super fishy.

[familysucks]

Michael doesn't bother thanking him for the compliment. He recognizes it's the nice, socially acceptable thing to say rather than genuine admiration for his creation. Besides, it's clearly unfinished.

"It's a work in progress."

He'll decide what colour it's meant to be later. Form and function before aesthetics, and right now he's not sure what he wants it to be.

"Michael. I'm doing well. And you?" he says, his voice flat. More social niceties. They don't know each other, though, so he's sure Will can't be expecting anything more from him than the dull standard reply. "I haven't seen you around Solvunn. Free Cities or Thorne?"

[sonofacesius]

"Wow, so you're not human." Will crossed his arms in utter amusement and more than a bit disrespectful. Call it an educated guess, but he'd been around enough immortals and deities to peg them when he saw them. Or when they generally were completely not trying. Like at all.

"What flavor of immortal are you? God? Titan? ....A Titan named Michael? ....Right. Not a Titan. And you're definitely not a nature spirit." Yeah, they were skipping the social niceties, and this guy? Was not fluent in sarcasm at all.

"I'm Free Cities. We can skip the small talk although you really need to practice. You must be super fun at parties."

[familysucks]

"Never cared for parties. Too much pointless small talk."

He has other virtues. All seven of the heavenly ones, according to his PR team. Close family know well that his temperament lies more on the wrath end of the spectrum than the patient side.

Will's definitely striking him as rude, but that's about what Michael's come to expect from this age group. He hasn't specifically picked a fight with him. Yet.

"Aren't you perceptive? Archangel. And what about you? I can tell you're not human—not fully."

If he were back home, he'd be able to tell demigod from nephilim from demon at a glance. Here though, where so many realities intermingle, what looks to him like a monster might not be quite the one he expects.

[sonofacesius]

"Okay.....stupid question. How many angels are there in this place?" Okay, this was only his second, unless you counted Dean who for some reason had wings.

His dad had a PR team too. Apparently Apollo was excellent at haikus. That held up until you heard one of them. Seeing was believing, Michael. Or hearing. But the smart people held their tongues. after a couple renditions of how Apollo flayed Marsyas alive well, everyone shut up. Except his kids, who were completely not scared of him.

"Nah, it's not perception. You just don't seem to care enough for a mortal. Or an Olympian. That narrows down the field a bit. They care about what people think. Especially about something they care about. Like your horizon. You definitely don't. "

Will settles down, sitting on the floor opposite Michael. "Do you really want to know or do you want to play twenty questions?"

He was bored Michael. Really, really bored. No one had gotten stabbed in days. And in all honesty he was used to trying to entertain bored ADHD demigods who thought fun was setting things on fire.

[familysucks]

"More than one. You can't expect me to keep track of every Summoned across the entire continent."

He's not head of the Heavenly Host, here. He's not going to be held up as a liar just because one of his siblings or some alternate world angel he's never met happens to be hiding in one of the other territories. Also, he doesn't know Will beyond him being the sort of person who asks a question and then plays coy about answering the same in turn. He and his brothers aren't exactly on the best terms, but there's still a familial loyalty that says he doesn't go handing out gossip about them to virtual strangers.

Michael reserves the family drama for people unfortunate enough to call him friend (or even more unfortunately, brother).

"You're the first to guess it on first meeting, so I stand by my comment."

Perceptive little whatever-he-is. Usually people just think he's a bit of a stick in the mud. Maybe sheltered, maybe homeschooled. Definitely from some kind of religious household. Perhaps overly interested in birds, for the almost avian way he tilts his head.

"I'd like to know. I answered your question without forcing you to play a game, and I'd appreciate the same in return."

[sonofacesius]

"You guys don't have like a secret hand shake or something?" Okay, call him overly optimistic sometimes but he kind of figured angels would be able to keep tabs on other angels, even in here. Maybe it was this place. Or maybe angels weren't like the greek pantheon, which. Was pretty obvious now that he thought it through. Maybe it was both. Or maybe, as what gave Michael away to Will, was the fact that this guy didn't seem to care. Then again, maybe he had the same relationship to his family that Will had with his. He certainly wouldn't go telling just anyone how many demigods were here. On the other hand, Clarisse had basically lit a signal fire and called FAFO. So......there was that.

"You're right. You respected me enough to answer my question. I'm a demigod, son of Apollo." Wow, this guy was definitely not Greek. He had no enthusiasm. And his posture is kind of weird.

[familysucks]

He's a celestial presence larger than a skyscraper folded to fit into Adam Milligan's six foot something frame. If there's something off about his posture, it's only to be expected.

Michael is in fact very comfortable in this vessel of his by now, after the decade (a thousand years and then some in Hell time) he's spent in it, and he's learned well how to express his moods with it. Being a little stiff and a whole lot impassive just happens to be what he wants to get across most of them time. It's who he is.

"Nothing of the sort, though I'd recognize my brothers."

They do have angel radio, a form of communication which might count as a handshake in the computing sense of the word. It's not exactly secret, though. It's rare they use it, and accordingly rare that they speak of it, but Michael is sure Castiel wouldn't hesitate to blab about their angelic communications network if someone were to ask the right question.

"A Greek demigod? You're not the first of your kind here, either. I'm surprised they haven't managed to summon more of you to Solvunn. You polytheistic types seem like just the sort of people they're hoping for."

OPEN - Solvunn - Tertiary Settlement

[familysucks]

I. The Laid Egg

After three weeks of storms, there's plenty of repair work to go around. Michael lends a hand at his host family's home when he can, but he's now sole owner of a planned bed and breakfast in the Tertiary Settlement. It's there where he has the most to fix.

The Laid Egg is technically open for business, the sign out front—a chicken brooding a pair of eggs placed just so to imply breasts and cleavage—still in place. If Gabriel were still around, the opening of their establishment would probably have involved a party: drinks, some rigged card games, and maybe a little nudity. As it is, with only Michael in charge, the inn opens quietly and without fanfare. It's not going to be a very comfortable stay until repairs are complete. A section of the roof is bare, some of the siding has been ripped loose by the winds, and one of the first floor windows is shattered, letting in the cool coastal air.

Michael can be found putting the place back together: replacing the missing shingles, securing siding, replacing the broken glass in the window frame. Helping hands will receive—after a moment's delay to process the appropriate response—a "thanks."

There's just as much work to be done on the inside. Any guests will be greeted by an annoyed-looking Michael, mop in hand, whose expression clears to his usual unaffected at the sight of company. It's not visitors that irritate him. It's the whole coming back to a mess, you understand.

"The room down the hall is dry." Assuming they're looking for somewhere to rest a while.

Tours are available upon request.

II. Carl

Along with the inn, Michael has inherited the ruffled yet ominous-looking monstrosity of a bird that came with the building. It's been trained to respond to Carl by persons who shall go unnamed. When Carl isn't on his perch in the lobby, looming threateningly over guests, he might be off with Michael for a "walk."

Michael is the one doing all of the walking, of course.

It's unhealthy for a bird to stay in all day, cooped up and sessile, so Michael can be encountered wandering the settlement with a vulture-sized bird perched on his arm. Occasionally he stops on a path bordering a grassy field and points out a small bird. Other times, it's as they're crossing a rocky beach that he pauses to call attention to a dead fish. Carl should be making an effort to hunt or scavenge. The exercise would be good for him.

Invariably, Carl will stretch out his neck—longer, taller, longer and taller still—and at the end of a long moment's contemplation, let out a rusty awk before tucking his head back in and puffing up his feathers. Michael might be caught awk-ing back at him in bird tones, his disapproval evident despite the language barrier (unless the listener also happens to speak bird, in which case it sounds a lot like "you're not much for independence or self-reliance, are you?")

i.

[nomnoms]

Nanaue arrives in the Tertiary Settlement not long after they return from the crater. He has a destination in mind, but he stops at the building Michael is working on. Two feety fish scamper after him, and in one hand he carries a small basket. He peers up at the roof where Michael is fixing shingles.

He cannot get on the roof, unfortunately, without putting a new hole in it. He does - however, take something out of his basket and place it on the ground near the entrance. One of his art pieces, Michael can assume, a lumpy piece of clay with a face.

[familysucks]

Michael recognizes the sound of Nanaue's footfalls down below, but he can't quite place the slapping of smaller ones trying to keep up with him. A glance over the side of the roof reveals the source to be his attendant land fish. He didn't think anyone had managed to keep anything so tangible from their recent experience, one he'd be inclined to call a shared mass hallucination.

Good for him.

From his perch on he roof, he nods at at the shark looking up at him. He puts aside his works and a flap of unseen wings carries him down to the ground to join him.

"Nanaue, brother," he says. The title is automatic. Fake or not, eight hundred years of memory is still a habit that takes more than a week or two to break. "What's this?"

A gift, but what of? Michael looks at it, but he's not always very good at interpreting Nanaue's artistic intent. That clay face could be anyone's likeness.

[nomnoms]

Nanaue happily repeat broooother and laughs to himself as Michael descends to ground level. So funny how Michael makes wing sounds but his wings are invisible! Michael has good magic...

At the question his gills flutter and he points at the lump of clay.

"ZEEMER!" Maybe up close Michael can see an attempt to make a tail and two stubby arms. Nanaue lifts his basket, which also smells suspiciously like fish.

"BRING SHRINE PRESENTS!"

But Michael can have this one. Maybe Xeimer will visit him too!

[familysucks]

He can see the likeness now that Nanaue has spelled it out for him. Sort of. Well, Nanaue's seen Xeimer closer than any of them, so who is he to judge this interpretation?

Of course the manshark would have less trouble processing their recent experience—or is it more trouble putting them aside? He has the memories, so it must be real. It certainly seems like he's not giving up on Xeimer.

Michael's not so sure he wants a gift to one of the gods on his lawn, but since it's from Nanaue...

The rain will probably melt the unfired clay anyway.

"I see. I have just the thing for that."

He disappears into the house with another flutter. Michael could just walk this distance, but he knows how short the shark's attention span is. He might wander off in the three minutes or so it would've taken him to go inside and get it. Instead, a moment later, Michael is back standing where he was with a stone statue in hand: a fish with the face of a smiling child, one of the last pieces of junk Gabriel had left behind.

"Here, for your offering."

Please just take it.

[nomnoms]

Nanaue doesn't wander off (although he does eat a couple of the fish he gathered for the shrine in his basket). He'll be standing in the same spot when Michael reappears, jaw agape as he stares at the offering for a long moment before accepting it.

"FIIISH...?"

He seems both in awe and mildly confused. But he places it in his basket with the real fish.

"THANKS, BROOOOTHER."

He grins widely, and begins to toddle off with a wave of goodbye.

The feety fish watch him go, then stare up at Michael expectantly.

[familysucks]

Michael waves back and wonders if he ought to follow and make sure there's still enough left in his basket for an offering by the time he reaches the shrine by the coast. Nanaue doesn't generally concern himself with things like portion control. Like a child, he'll probably just be upset without understanding where it all went.

Is that what the walking fish are trying to convey? He stares back at them, watching him with their shiny little eyes as if he's forgotten some routine and expected step of this interaction.

"Do you also want gifts, or do you want me to follow?" he says, speaking in their own tongue.

Except the language of fish is not terribly complex and they don't have the concept of gifting, so it's more of a questioning Food? Follow? spoken in the soft, wet lip-smacking of a toothless fish mouth opening and closing.

[nomnoms]

The feety fish reply in a small chorus:

Food? Food! Please food! Follow yes! Friend? Friend! Safe? No dog. Safe!

It seems, that if Michael wants, he has his own feety fish to look after.

Closed - Claire

[familysucks]

Called to her side by her message, Michael doesn't waste time stopping by the house first. His flight path takes him overhead and it's enough for him to see the damage to the roof. They'll deal with it later, find her somewhere dry and warm to sleep while repairs take place. Right now, it's Claire herself he's worried for.

He alights a foot away with the usual flutter. He used to be good about personal space, and then some—the angel definition means staying outside of not just arm's reach but wing's reach, which is twice as far—but he doesn't hesitate to put a hand on her shoulder now.

"I'm sorry about your bees."

And the house, and whatever damage is yet to be uncovered, and everything else she lost when their shared vision ended. Michael gained in the transition from fantasy to reality, memories and people he'd forgotten. He knows that's not the case for many of them. To have lost not just the dream but real, tangible things too? It must be gutting.

[beautifullies]

She isn't sure if she's simply overwhelmed by everything that's happened, or if the bees really did mean that much to her, because she feels it deep in her chest. She feels it like a weight, a feeling like she's failed and let down these small insect lives that trusted their food would always be there.

Claire doesn't ever mind Michael being close, he feels like the most consistent force from the confusion to now. He's her best friend now, he was then, and that's something of a comfort. Maybe not everything is different.

"They didn't deserve this. At least they don't know why."

[familysucks]

And they're not hungry anymore, Michael thinks, but recognizes that thought as too morbid to share given her current mood. They've had eight hundred years of close friendship and he can sense the guilt in her words better than some of his own feelings. It's not her fault they're dead, but he understands why she might carry it anyway. He looks at the silent hives, full up with dead bees, and for a moment it's Heaven. Younger siblings fracturing into factions and starting civil wars and fighting battles well beyond them because he wasn't around to lead them. When he'd come back, the usual chatter of angel radio had been nothing but dead air.

If he'd been there, he could have prevented it; if she'd been here, she'd still have her bees. The if only is hard to let go of.

"You had no way of knowing how long you'd be gone. Even if you had, you wouldn't have been able to do anything about it." The locals hadn't been willing to take 'no, I'd rather not visit the Singularity' as an answer. "Even in nature in nature this sometimes happens. You took care of them well, for as long as you could."

They were probably as happy as bees can be, under her care. He'd never thought to ask.

[beautifullies]

Claire takes a deep breath, letting it out slowly before looking up at Michael.

"I know. There's quite a lot I can blame on not being here, not realizing, not remembering." Her eyes dart away at that, and then she slowly pushes herself up off of the ground.

"I'm sorry I asked you here in a panic. I shouldn't...it just....took a year to get them to this point." Maybe it isn't about the bees at all, but about all the things that happened, and she needed a friend. Her friend.

"Are you...in the wake of all of this, how are you?"

[familysucks]

"That's not something you need to apologize for. I understand losing something you've worked at for so long is painful."

Other people might need to apologize for wasting his time with their emotional struggles—really not his strong suit—but Claire? Never. She matters to him, wet human sorrow and all. She'd know if he were annoyed with her anyway. He wouldn't bother to hide it or temper it anymore.

He lets out a sigh of his own. How he's doing is something he's still sorting out. He'd been happy in that pretend future, but he also hadn't been entirely himself.

"Better than some. I think that's an inside conversation, if you're amenable?"

Stop staring at the dead bees and come indoors? There's an unspoken promise of a comforting tea in his words.

[beautifullies]

"Only if you're making the tea," she says, attempting at levity, trying for a smile that doesn't make it to her eyes. Smoothing out her skirts, she takes his arm for the short walk to the house.

"Thank you for coming so quickly, Brother." Because he's allowed to call her Sister, that was...their lives, for better or worse, and for her it was...well. It was better, and she isn't sure if she should hate herself for thinking so.

"Please forgive my lack of a full roof, it seems a storm thought a large hole is just what I needed."

[familysucks]

"Evidently."

Would he try to distract her from her woes without offering a warm drink? Perish the thought.

If she wants to call him Brother, Michael won't be the one to stop her. It's an old and familiar title to him, even older than the hundreds of years they collectively imagined. At most it might merit a warning: calling him brother is something some of his siblings had come to regret. But that's a conversation they'll get to soon enough.

He gives her a moment to take his arm and then leads the way to the front door, taking it slow as they pick their way around fallen branches and other debris that still litter the ground.

"Not your fault, either," he says, referring to the roof. "Whose domain was the wind?"

Maybe they can blame one of their fellow former-gods for the weather.

"I'm sure Josie will make room for you, if you need somewhere to stay temporarily."

[beautifullies]

"I'm not sure if I'd take Josie up on that, though I'll keep her in mind. I've lived in worse conditions than a house with a sky view. Now that I can remember, anyway."

When they're in the doorway, Claire pauses with her hand on the doorknob, staring at the wood before directing her gaze at Michael. Searching for words, she finally lets out a huff of breath and looks away, shoving the door open and leading him inside.

"I enjoyed that life. If it hadn't ended when we woke up, if we'd had to march out of there the way we'd been rounded up to the Singularity, I'm not sure I'd have gone willingly." It's a full admission of guilt, that not only would she have forsaken this life in Abraxas, but the one before it. She has no idea how to feel other than confused, angry, and ashamed of herself.

Inside, the kitchen is relatively fine, but where the hole in the roof is, over the living room, plants are overturned, books are strewn about and ripped apart from the wind wreaking havoc. To have something to do while Michael works in the kitchen, she begins making a pile of things to throw out, keeping her hands busy.