abraxaslogs | Open December Catchall

Entry tags:

Open December Catchall

WHO: Nadine and OPEN
WHAT: Horizon and Nott catchall for the month
WHEN: December
WHERE: Nott and The Horizon
WARNINGS: Will add as needed!

Nott

When not working - and with the weather turning, she's working more hours - Nadine can be found in the common room of the inn with a warm drink and a book, or at the lake's edge with a basket and heavy boots and cloak, gathering ingredients for the herbalist she works for, or behind the inn practicing with her fire magic. And of course she can be found at Nan Maeda's Tonics and Tinctures, the herbalist healer's shop where she's found employment. She mostly collects and prepares ingredients for her elderly employer, but she's learning and that's as important as the money.

Horizon

With the coming of the cold months, Nadine's domain reflects the season. Gone are the autumn leaves and the blue skies, snow covering the little slice of New England town that she's created for herself. The sky is overcast and white string lights and garlands have begun appearing. There's a towering Christmas tree in the square in front of the white wooden church, and the shop windows have old fashioned holiday displays in them. It bears a striking resemblance to something Norman Rockwell would have painted.

Nadine herself is often in the square, at the gazebo by the skeletal carousel, or in her own little cottage at the edge of 'town'. Easily identified as hers, as it's the only home with a shoveled walk and puffs of smoke coming out of the chimney. Sometimes the smell of baking or sound of music wafts out...

(Specific starters in comments, hit me up if you'd like one!)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Nadine's quiet a moment, looking off towards the farmland and forest. What sort of answer to give? Dismissive and curt? Or something honest? Geralt has never shown any inclination to judge or make assumptions. He already knows more of her than most.

"My husband. Randall. I knew him most of my life. He...looked out for me, when I was young. Before there was anything romantic."

She'd known from the start that she'd marry him, but when she was young it had only been a vague idea of something in the future. And he'd never made it more than that. Oh, he'd influenced her in other ways, but in those years he'd been more like an imaginary friend - only one that was real.

"I, uh, knew I was different since I was a kid. I still honestly don't know exactly how, or why, but." Nadine shrugs. Even Randall hadn't had the answers, beyond some greater force than even him had ordained it so. She had been chosen, she was the special one.

But apparently whatever force had chosen her fate wasn't as strong as Thornean magics.

"It was just us against the world for a really long time, is my point."

The silence goes uninterrupted. What answers she may or may not give, he isn't looking to pry. But that doesn't mean he isn't wanting to know. Julie, he understands. Nadine's been much more of a puzzle.

His brows draw together ever so slightly. He's not one to judge, it's true. But there's something about the way she describes it that leaves him with a vague sense of unease. How young? he thinks. He suspects it isn't a question to ask at the moment.

"And now he's not here." It's stated softly. He gets it. Doesn't matter, in the end, the details. It won't change what her husband meant to her, or that he may have been the only one who understood her power, and now he's simply vanished. What was he? Another mage? She might be one, too, without ever realizing it.

He studies her for a second. "Back home, those sensitive to magic often had what we call a conduit moment. They would exhibit some untrained power on their own. Perhaps that's what you experienced as a child."

"Uh...I don't think that was it."

Nadine shakes her head, but her tone and expression are more thoughtful than anything. So much of her life is a mystery, even to her. But she'd never had any power of her own, not until this place. What little flashes and brushes had all come from someone else.

"He...I honestly don't know what he is, exactly. But he reached out to me, using magic. He can do that. But I could reach out to him, too." And as far as Nadine can tell, from what both Harold and Lloyd have said, that bit isn't normal. "It was honestly sort of like this."

She waves her hand to gesture at her domain and the Horizon at large.

"How we'd talk and see each other. It looked real and felt real but it was some kind of dream world, I was still physically wherever I was in the actual world." But Randall had power over dreams, it hadn't seemed that strange. That place had been limited, though, and he held all the control within it.

That's. Mm. Unique. There's a sense Geralt's got more he wants to say or ask, but isn't quite putting any of it out there yet. It sounds a bit like the sort of magic that slips into your mind, builds inside the cracks there, and though he doesn't know anything about her husband other than what he's been told, that's...something to think about.

He supposes, now that the man is gone (if he was ever a man at all), it may no longer be relevant. She seems to be doing all right on her own, with her little group in Nott. From what little time he spent with them, he can tell she cares about them and they her.

He does ask one thing, though, a question more loaded than his usual but in a way that carries no expectation of an answer. She can ignore it if she wishes. Whatever she does or does not do or say, he thinks it'll tell him enough. "Are you hoping he'll return?"

Nadine offers a shrug in response, her initial reaction without thought or consideration. It isn't a yes or no answer, for her.

Does she want him to come back? Yes and no. She's felt lost without him, missing a part of herself. She's been denied what she was promised all those years ago, taken from everything she's known and set adrift, lost the man she's loved for nearly all her life. It was easier, when she just followed Flagg's lead and did as he told her to do. And her bed is much too empty without him, a month or so of intimate awakening and then that gone, too. Even the last scratches and bitemarks have faded from her skin by now.

But there's the other part of her. The part of her that always wondered about that briefly glimpsed, hypothetical Other Life. The part of her that secretly and shamefully hopes one day she'll see Larry again, angry as she is at his decisions. It's stupid, she knows it is, but...in another life, in another time, maybe they could have been happy together.

Besides. There are people here she cares about. People who she doesn't want to see anything happen to. Randall is a possessive thing, and lacking in true compassion. He had plans for this world, plans that she knows would result in people getting hurt. And worse. This isn't like back home, where most of Boulder could rot for all she cares.

But she has to give an answer. An honest one, but carefully worded.

"I'm not really the type to hang much on hope. Whatever I want doesn't matter, this world has enough problems already without adding the chaos Randall brings."

For awhile, he thinks the shrug may be all he's getting. But she seems to be mulling over something more, so he keeps quiet, still seated by the skeleton horses. He thinks again of her old domain, her insistence on protecting the children, the ethereal emptiness. He wonders, suddenly, if that's what she'd found there when she went to visit her husband, this man, all those years ago. A safety in the blankness of whatever strange realm they met in.

He knows a thing or two, about inviting chaos into his life when he should not. It's a complicated matter, to love who you do. And he will not pretend, for all that he cares about Yennefer, that he doesn't realize that it has been, by and large, for the best that she isn't present out there in Cadens alongside him. Her abrupt appearance in this world has been...he doesn't know what happened in Sodden, but he can guess. Between it and her first venture into the Horizon (and perhaps between the things he's said, too), he's gathered she remains too wounded—more than usual—to do much else than wrap herself in thorns.

But then, he's not exactly allowed himself to make room for her, either, over the past few months. Maybe that will change after they speak. He's put it aside for now.

"It's not easy," he says finally, "to find your path may not align with someone you love."

"No. It isn't. And I do, love him. I've always loved him, I always will. He's...part of me. For better or worse."

But sometimes she wonders. There has to be a reason it was her. Some darkness within herself, maybe. Some potential. Flagg had certainly seen that, encouraged it in her. But to be fated to a man like him...there had to be something about her.

"And I'm not exactly an innocent, myself." Something she's already implied to Geralt, so she has no fear in saying as much. Nadine doubts she could say much that would shock him. There is a capacity for cruelty and sin in her. How great, she doesn't know, but she'd been willing to kill so many people. Not the children, and not Larry, but the rest...

"But I guess it doesn't matter now, anyway."

Yeah. For better or worse. Destiny.

His gaze flicks up. "Few are."

There's a capacity for cruelty in all of them. He does not know, exactly, her reasons for acting on what she has or what it is she's even done, but the fact that it seems to weigh on her says enough. They all carry a heavy past. And perhaps one day, she will tell him something that'll change how he feels, but the same can be said for him in return. He's said little about himself, too.

The truth has a way of shaking loose in time, anyway, piece by piece. He imagines he'll get the full picture when she's ready.

For now, he tips his head towards the snowy little town she's built for herself. It's quaint. Bits of the architecture are familiar, but much of it is unusual. He's curious about her, and homes are an easier glimpse into another than open questions. "Show me around. I've got time, if you do."

Nadine is grateful for a change of topic, having said all she really wants to say in regards to her marriage and choices.

"Yeah, sure, I don't exactly have pressing business elsewhere." In the Horizon or the real world. "There's not all that much here, but...it's comfortable. It's not a replica of anywhere real." That's something she's quick to assert. This isn't some place she grew up, or somewhere she misses. It's a dream of an idea of a place.

"It's just sort of an idealized combination of a bunch of little towns around where I grew up. This is the square, which you're already pretty familiar with. That's the church." She nods to the white, steepled building in the square with the yellow door. Maybe it's odd to have one here, but it's not like it's active. It holds no services, it's...stage dressing, really. Another idea of a place.

It would be stranger not to have one here.

"I don't know how much you know, about the world Julie and I come from..." She hasn't told him much, but she imagines Julie may have. She begins walking, heading for the street and the little row of quaint storefronts.

That's unlike him—creating what's not at all real. He gets it, though. When most of your world has crumbled, perhaps it's simpler to make what never existed. So you need not miss so keenly what used to be in it. The people that were there.

The emptiness in the halls of his rising fortress is different. Geralt grew up with that, the way it's been hollowed out. From what he can tell, what occurred on Nadine's world was far more recent.

He studies the church, though he isn't certain from its decorations what it's meant to be the church of. Is it important to her? Does she believe in a deity or is it simply a place that exists? Geralt lets the question pass for the moment in favour of answering hers.

"I know enough," he says. He won't regale her with details he's heard that she's already lived through. "Is this what your world looked like before?"

"Yeah. This is generic New Hampshire small town. That's where I grew up, New Hampshire. It's on the coast, there's a lot of fishing towns." One of the reasons Nott feels so comfortable and familiar. It may not be on the ocean, but it's a fishing city all the same.

Nadine looks to the shop windows as they walk by, with their seasonal displays and the illusion of wares inside. There's a hint of the Victoriana to it all, something slightly vintage.

"This is a little more old fashioned, but...I always liked old fashioned things. Someone once told me I'd been born an old lady." She snorts at that, amusement clear in her tone. "Probably part of how I was raised, I spent a lot of time in the care of a religious order and they're pretty old fashioned."

It was harder to find more 'old fashioned' than New England nuns.

Geralt stops by, too, peering in with genuine curiosity. He's seen enough modern trappings in various people's domains that the wares inside aren't as strange to him as they might've been once, but...the thing that stands out the most to him still is the uniformity of certain items. How a series of spoons or cups will look exactly the same, like they've been endlessly replicated with precision.

He brushes his fingers over a small golden orb hanging on a wreath before continuing down the path with her. He makes a thoughtful sound. In the care of suggests something about her that would explain a few things if it's true.

"I spent some time at a temple when I was a boy. Though the priestess would have anyone's head if they thought her old-fashioned." There's amusement, too, and underneath that is a note of fondness. His childhood was a complicated matter, but some parts of it are less so and his time with Nenneke is one of them.

"You grew up under the church's care?"

"Uh...it's a little complicated."

Nadine gives another little laugh. She picks up on that little sense of fondness, something she can't say she shares.

"We had something called foster care. Kids without a family or who's family couldn't take care of them would be placed in foster homes, families that would take care of them and if the circumstances were right, adopt them. When I was a baby I was placed with a family that adopted me, but they died when I was little. I went back and forth from foster homes and a church run children's home until I aged out of the system."

Those are the broad strokes, which Geralt always seems perfectly content with. The broad strokes were depressing enough, the details only made it worse. She'd never lasted long, in any of the homes. For one reason or another.

Then again, she hadn't exactly fit in with her first family, either.

"So I was with the nuns a lot. They're an order of women who've devoted their life to God and the church, and they live by a code that emphasizes acts of service and helping the needy."

Broad strokes are all he needs. Sometimes details come later; sometimes he can fill them in himself. Orphans are aplenty; he'd not presumed her one before they spoke today, but having her confirm she is one doesn't surprise him, either. The way she'd explained her husband as us against the world—if she'd had a family, they couldn't have been more than vaguely present at best.

It's interesting, though, that she calls it a system. Like it's organized and not just a series of orphanages here and there, taking in lost children for one reason or another. Not always charitable ones.

"Sounds like it was hard to decide if a roof was worth the bullshit." Been there. A few minutes pass where he's silent, regardless of Nadine says anything else, before he adds, "I was left with the Witchers. Up on some frozen mountains. Made for a unique childhood."

As for who left him, he doesn't clarify. She can probably guess. He made his home there eventually, but that was not how it started. It'd taken time. A long time, if he's being honest, to decide exactly what home looked like and meant to him.

"I probably would have been happier if I'd just stayed in the children's home. But it wasn't up to me. And some of the other kids there were...scared of me, so maybe I wouldn't have been."

Nadine glances over at him, hesitating. She's not often one to ask questions, and particularly of Geralt. But he doesn't have to answer, she supposes.

"Witcher...I've heard that a couple times now. I'm not familiar." But she's a bit curious. He's alluded to his differences before, but that had hardly been the time to start pursuing a line of questioning. Still. There's a sort of kinship in being 'different'.

She can make assumptions. 'Left in the mountains' makes her think of old monasteries, the rest of secret societies.

Scared of her? His brows knit together a hint. Because of her connection to magic or something else?

He studies her for awhile before looking back ahead. The snow crunches beneath his boots. He appreciates it more, the snow and cold, now that he's trapped in a desert city.

"What they call us," he replies. A small pause passes. It's less the information he's reluctant to give up—he's told folk before what he is—but he's just. It's harder to think about lately. Still, he can't dwell forever on what shadows him, so he presses on.

"We've been mutated to help do what we do. Kill monsters. Recover from being split apart." There's a wry twist to his lips. "It's the reason I was still standing when Julie found me."

Barely, but he was. He knows he'd have never made it so far if he'd been anything other than what he is.

Nadine doesn't miss that brief look.

"The first time he reached out to me...I wasn't alone. I was in a shared dorm. A few other girls saw what happened, they didn't understand but...they didn't stay quiet, either. There were a lot of rumors about me - I was a witch, I was cursed, that kind of thing." And her own demeanor and behavior hadn't helped.

It's all in the past now, anyway. And Geralt's offering something of himself, which Nadine understands is rare. She doesn't want to turn the conversation too far back away from him, while he's willing to talk.

"You're augmented." That's what the tv shows always call it. People who've been modified somehow, or genetically engineered, or given powers beyond the normal. "We don't have anything like that possible where I come from, but I'm familiar with the concept. That explains why you don't have to worry about infections."

A small look of concern mars his brows at that. He absorbs the information without asking more, though it's clear he's thinking about it. She'd been adamant none of the power expressed came from her, but if not—did that make her a conduit? (A conduit for what?)

He moves past it. She redirects the subject soon enough and he can gather it isn't a matter she wants to get into right now. He's already asked her plenty about her husband as it is. He lets the topic rest for the time being.

"Mm-hmm." Something like that, though there are a lot of ways to augment someone. Like the spells used to transform the mages. This is...more. "It's mutagenic in nature. And not the most delicate procedure."

There's something too casual about the way he says it. He stops in front of another shop. His hand rests on the door. Do they open? He can't tell if it's a shell of a building or if she's built the interior of them, too.

"I can't imagine rewriting someone's genetic code is a simple or fun process." All Nadine has to go by is fiction and her own modern understanding of biology and DNA. But it is something she has context for. And it's never pleasant, in the fiction.

The doors will indeed open, into shops devoid of people but done up as though they offered real business. The wooden sign above the door announces 'OLD FASHIONED SWEETS AND ICE CREAM' and the interior makes good on the promise. The little counter with the register has a display of hard candies and wrapped candy bars, there's an ice cream counter to the far side with a cabinet of a half dozen different barrels of ice cream. The narrow handful of aisles boast boxes of fudge and peanut brittle. Taken all at once, it looks like a perfect replica of an old fashioned candy shop.

But close inspection will reveal some of the candy wrappers are a bit sloppy, or the brand name not quite right - Milky Way bars stacked next to Mrky Waa bars, boxes of penne buckle, or just the exact same item replicated a dozen times to fill a display.

"Is that....common, where you come from?"

Despite the conversation, Geralt seems to be equally curious about what he's seeing in the shop. He peers at the assorted sweets and wrapped bars and cartons. They're all decorated and labelled, which is what catches his attention the most. The small, impossibly fine lettering and uniform design on them. It doesn't look painted or inked by hand.

It also smells overwhelmingly of sugar, all of it.

"Mm." He glances over his shoulder, and then leans his hip against the front counter. "Once, perhaps. To a degree." Even then, common is not the word he'd have used. Just not as rare, as impossible, as it is now. "I was one of the last. There've been no new Witchers for decades."

Nadine thinks she can infer a few things. Like why Geralt seems so unused to kindness from people like herself and Julie. Why he's as guarded and private as she is.

She nods, running her hand idly over a display of candy bars, coming to the jars of penny-style candy at the end of the counter. She doesn't want to offer sympathy, isn't sure if that's even what's called for, but she can't imagine he'd appreciate it either way.

But she doesn't want to make him talk more about something he clearly isn't exactly eager to.

"Your world is very, very different than mine," she settles on. If he wants to share more with her, he will, but she isn't going to ask it of him.

"In some ways," he agrees. "Seems about the same in others."

In the end, every world is just filled with people trying to survive and protect their own. And sometimes there's a cruelty that is birthed out of the fear that grows from that desire. That never changes. Whatever his thoughts, he seems to be finished sharing—though he's said more to her about himself than he has to most. He doesn't mind her knowing, exactly. It's just a lot. Long story.

Instead, he joins her by the jars, peering inside.

"Food's very different. We're not so complicated as yours. Or so variable."

Even a royal banquet wouldn't have as much as what he found at Sam's gathering. It's a level of plentiful he's never seen before and he's gotten the sense that for Sam, it's perfectly common.

"The more things change, the more they stay the same."

The words are said quietly, just an adage being repeated as it pops into Nadine's head. He's right, she's sure, there will always be commonalities when talking about people. No matter where said people come from.

But Geralt offers an easy distraction.

"Oh, yeah, we love our food. And will try almost anything. Deep fried turkeys are a thing. That's an entire turkey that's been coated in a breading and dunked in boiling oil." She laughs a little bit.

"Do you want to try anything? It's all candy and sweets in here...your world doesn't have much in the candy department, does it?"

Essentially. There's a little quiet between them at that before she speaks up again. A what? His brows furrow, as though he's trying to imagine it. It seems like an incredibly drastic thing to do to a turkey and also a waste of oil.

"Uh." Somehow the question catches him off guard. He wasn't expecting to be offered anything. He considers it, not because he's got a particular sweet tooth but because he's not really about to turn down the gesture in another's home. Which, this sort of is. Her home, that is. "Surprise me."

He's certain whatever she gives him, he'll have no idea what's even in it. Which for him continues to be a strange sensation. It's not often he can smell something and not recognize what it is.

"Depends on what you can afford," he says. There's some. Not near as plentiful as what's in this place, but it isn't nonexistent. "I spend most of my days living out of the woods and merchants aren't fond of us. Little room to acquire sweets."

"I have been informed that sweet custards are pretty popular in your world." But it's the lack of chocolate that she thinks about most. The concept of what is, to her, the most common and popular dessert category doesn't even exist in other worlds is still amazing to her.

She moves behind one of the counters, bending to retrieve a display box from the glass display cabinet beneath.

"And that's all the more reason you should indulge when you can. Here. This is fudge. It's a staple where I grew up, every little town had at least one old fashioned fudge shop." From Maine down to Rhode Island, New Englanders loved their old fashioned fudge.

She picks out a two-toned square, cradled in a little wax paper holder, and offers it to Geralt.

"It's dark chocolate peanut butter swirl."

Open December Catchall

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)