( catch-all ) can we just start over

[sorser]

WHO: Stephen Strange & Various
WHAT: Post-canon update shenanigans and other things.
WHEN: Throughout the month of August.
WHERE: Thorne & the Horizon

(( closed starters below! PM this journal or hit me up at aurajen if you want to plot something! ))

Comments

for wanda.

[sorser]

[It had been like awakening from a years-long dream, heavy with the breadth of experience and emotion and spellwork and even shreds of humility, long needed. Memories flooding in a slew of recollection, buffetting against the mind; it would be nearly enough to drive a man mad should they not have given themselves proper time to let it settle, let it decompress within.

Stephen Strange, ironically, does not like giving himself time. Especially not when the connections of then and now meld together like pieces of a broken blade resmithed again, giving him new context. Wanda had gone missing, a troubling thought before. Wanda had gone missing — a fearful thought now, and one that has Stephen flying into action only moments after he could sort through what he now knows. What time has gifted him, or so it feels.

It does not take long before he’s in the Horizon, seeking her. Finding nothing but crimson, billowing mist where there once was a swath of trees and a small little cabin overlooking a glittering lake. Stephen glances about, frowning deeply, his hand thumbing at the scarf around his neck — a borrowed thing, sent by a raven from Thor, belonging to Wanda herself.]

Where’d you run off to…?

[He mutters before his hands fall into their usual form of spellcasting; the easy, familiar gestures of uncomplicated magic, borrowing a plucked thread from the scarf itself. The location spell follows his fingers and hovers mid-air, warbling and amber, until Stephen spreads his hands and a halo of energy pulses outward.

This energy shimmers against a form in the distance, standing solitary against all else in the barren nothingness. He can see it now — a door. Stephen waves a hand to reveal it fully, and there it stands, stoic as a sentinel, and he is sure there must be someone on the other side.

He approaches and doesn’t bother to knock, reaching out to turn the knob and see what awaits him.]

for wilhelm.

[sorser]

[He was late for his previous lesson with Wilhelm; for all intents and purposes, on the heels of new and somewhat concerning updates and goings-on, he had ghosted him completely.

And now, with a few books gathered up in the library, stacked on a desk, he sends the young man a message.]

So. [Ssssssooo, is the tone hidden within.] A lot's happened. I missed our arranged time last week. That's my fault.

I'll make up for the lesson that we missed if you have the time today. Meet me in the library if you feel up to it.

-Stephen Strange

[Things have to shift back into normality once more in Abraxas, don't they? Routines set back into place where they had been momentarily upended? Well, that's the hope.]

for thancred.

[sorser]

[In the evening, perhaps out of the blue, Thancred will receive a message from Stephen.]

Could really go for a drink right now.

[Bafflingly, it is left at that. Yet given Stephen is so rarely the sort to ask for an outing for no reason at all, much less be the one to instigate it in a casual way, one must assume that this drink is sorely needed.

(It is.)]

bats eyelashes at.

[vixening]

[ perhaps stephen missed one of his and yennefer's relatively frequent study sessions. or maybe it was an evening sharing a bottle of wine. or, maybe, it's the simple fact that something has changed in him, a sudden growing older, that yennefer recognizes. something that takes her back to her own weeks, locked away in her room, wondering what the singularity had done.

either way, one day stephen will be going back to his study. or his classroom. or through the door to some hallway in the wing only he is allowed to enter. wherever it is, there will be a student who catches up to him, one that he recognizes as one of yennefer's apprentices. she looks a little harried, like this is only one item on a long list of things she needs to do before the sun sets, and she will hand him a note and rush off without really waiting for a response.

when he decides to read it, he will see yennefer's casual scrawl, not quite trying but looping all the same. ]

You owe me a bottle of wine.
The gardens. Tonight.

[ she doesn't give him a chance to accept or deny - just a heads up that she will be expecting him. ]