abraxaslogs | Open December Catchall

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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!)

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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."

When she holds out the fudge, he takes it, and turns it over in his hand. Sniffing it tells him it's sweet with a faint bitterness underneath he can't place. She's right: chocolate simply does not exist. Even the peanut smells different than what he'd expect from a natural nut.

He's expecting it to be exceptionally sweet. Even so, it surprises him, the flavour: sticky, almost cloying, and with a richness he isn't used to. His eyebrows go up. Hm.

"That's—" He licks a bit off his thumb. He doesn't dislike it, exactly, but it's clear he's got no idea what he's actually consumed and part of him is still processing this. "Unique." He looks at what's left of the square. "We haven't got chocolate."

"And that's just criminal, if you ask me. Fudge is...about as 'chocolate' as you can get. There's much less sweet stuff, if you'd prefer."

It can be a shock, to a system not used to it. Nadine knows she's used to a lot more sugar and rich flavors than people from other, non-US places. And by Geralt's own admission, he doesn't eat much sweets.

"But fudge was always one of my favorites, as a kid. We'd usually have it around Christmas, as a special treat."

He's beginning to collect a number of people insisting he try various foods, it seems. He'd given it little thought before, what's available on his world. Food's always been a simple thing for him. He eats what's there and that's about it. His preferences are secondary.

He breaks off another bit of the fudge and pops it into his mouth. Still sticky.

"We didn't celebrate holidays." He knows of them, occasionally spends time in a village where they have their customs, but it simply wasn't part of his upbringing. He sets the rest of the piece of candy down on the counter. "Mostly, we found blackberries in the spring. Chestnuts in winter."

After the keep fell, that was. Before that, he'd been locked underground with the rest of the other boys, so. Not a lot of room to explore the outdoors.

"Some of them are nice."

Nadine turns back to the jars of candy, checking each one before finding the jar she had in mind.

"Holidays, I mean. We...had a lot of them. And about half of them were meaningless and created so someone could make money." Valentine's Day, for one. President's Day. At least there was usually discount candy.

"Here, try this instead. It's black licorice." She opens the jar of licorice whips and offers it out to Geralt. It's hard to get less sweet than licorice, without going to sour.

"As is tradition." To make money, he means. That's most of what it comes down to in the end.

He takes the licorice. The smell is pungent enough he can scent it the moment she opens the jar. He takes it, curious, and bites into it.

She's right: it's nowhere near as sweet as anything else. He chews thoughtfully, with the look of a man who's not often, if ever, asked for his opinion on the taste of food and is not quite sure what to really say beyond: "Not bad."

He bends the stick a bit, watching it fold in his hand. It's the texture more than anything he's getting used to.

"One day, I'll need to find something you've yet to experience in return. Other than a monster."

"I thought that might be more to your tastes." She won't mention it's also the candy kids hate to get the most.

"And...I'd like that. To experience something that doesn't exist in my world. And isn't a monster." That isn't something Nadine needs to see. She imagines there's probably some running around out in the world, but she sticks to Nott and doesn't go wandering in the wilds.

"I think the scariest animal I've ever seen outside of a zoo is probably a bear. And that's okay with me. But...I'd like to try some food, from your home, sometime."

He can't imagine being so distant from nature, though he gets that's simply the place Nadine grew up in. No room for even horses, Julie had said.

No monsters, either, apparently. So at least there's that.

"I can't promise it'll be a novelty," he replies, "but if you like, come by some time."

To his, he means. His domain. It's not an invitation he extends often—folk either stumble onto his mountains or they do not, but he never explicitly asks anyone to come, unless they need to speak to him. The one exception has been Sam. But Nadine has opened her home to him twice now. Once in Nott, and now here, in this little town she's built for herself. Three times, in truth, if he considers their first meeting, too. Feels only right to return the gesture.

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Open December Catchall

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