abraxaslogs | 𝕊𝕥𝕒𝕝𝕜𝕖𝕕 𝕚𝕟 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕗𝕠𝕣𝕖𝕤𝕥, 𝕥𝕠𝕠 𝕔𝕝𝕠𝕤𝕖 𝕥𝕠 𝕙𝕚𝕕𝕖

That's a Jo Harvelle paradox there in one: a tide of fire and brimstone at anyone who demands she be anything other than her truest self, and yet so bone deep it's effortless lying the part of someone she wasn't for half of most of her life and still skipping in and out of doing it, on her own, for nearly three years, with no one who truly knew who she was during most of it?

Yeah. There are some things to untangle in this place the longer Jo has to stand still.
When people ask if she's a mess, they should start with that leyline.

"Yeah. Sure." Jo's words are evasive against the thought that sprung into her head too clearly. "How do we do this? Do we imagine it up and try to see what it looks like? Or?"

Edited 2022-10-19 00:21 (UTC)

"That's pretty much how it works. You just imagine it hard and..." Nadine shrugs. She doesn't know the science or technical explanations for how things work in the Horizon. But she can demonstrate.

"And it's the Horizon, you can go a little further than just a traditional costume. Like this." She closes her eyes and thinks for a minute, changing not just the clothes she's wearing but the length and style of her hair. Her comfortable lounging around clothes just sort of fade into an iconic pink satin dress, her long hair and simple hairstyle shorten and twist themselves into a short bouncy glam instead.

"And now I'm Marilyn Monroe. It's that easy."

There's a huff out of Jo's nose.

Nadine looks nothing short of iconically gorgeous, no hair out of place and no weird fake costume patchiness to it all, and —

"You make it look so easy."

Edited 2022-10-19 00:52 (UTC)

"It is easy. At least if it's something that exists and you've seen and know. I have some trouble with things I just make up myself." Which is why Nadine's domain is just a blend of a dozen little towns from the shore of New Hampshire. While that place as is doesn't exist anywhere, each part of it had.

"Why don't you try. Just think of something really familiar and simple. Like a uniform of some kind. And don't picture a costume version of it, just picture it. And think about wearing it."

Jo grapples with the idea before crossing her arms and closing her eyes. Her jaw is a little too hard set, like somehow she could bull rush the air by tensing her

Flicking through thoughts of one restaurant (not realizing the colors flutter against her skin; replacing her clothes with a pair of skin-tight black jeans and a tank top that matched, but read Buddy's BBQ & Beer across her chest), then it shivers and vanishes, as she settles on something normal. Something without details and the need to focus on what she might be forgetting. Actively just unappealingly normal.

Black pants, a white button-up shirt, and a pair of matching low heels.

She cracks one eye, catching the white on her shoulder, and then looks down. It's about as crappy and boring as her focus on it and the world's weird medium for what general restaurant uniform hit. But it is. Still. God awful boring. She plucks at the shirt fabric, pulling it and letting it go.

"At least it worked?"

Edited 2022-10-19 01:37 (UTC)

"Yeah, that's the basic idea. Now try something a little more...involved. How about a pirate outfit? That's still pretty basic, but a little...more."

It's a good effort. The whole creation thing doesn't come easily to everyone, and Nadine's not here to judge. Just to try and help. After doing it a few times, it does come easier.

"Once you get the hang of it, you can really go wild if you want. Last year Jaskier was some kind of satyr type thing and he had actual goat legs. You're honestly only limited by your imagination."

Jo stares down at herself, trying to think of the last thing she watched with pirates or generally just whatever came to mind of the image. Her pants shrink in, becoming like leggings. Heels shifting toward knee-high boots with folded-over tops. Her shirt goes from white to something more creamy, flowy in the front, a little billow, and she frowns, which tones it down fast. There's a belt, and then her vision is shadowed when a hat appears, but Jo hardly notices it.

Her eyes are glued to the cutlass hanging from the belt crisscrossed at an angle across her hips. Her face lights up a little for the first time as she lets her hand rest testingly on the pommel. "Sick."

"There! See, you're getting the hang of it!"

Nadine's own clothes have morphed back to the comfortable ensemble she'd shown up in. But this is good, Jo's catching on to the knack of it.

"It's even easier than magic. Now just...think about stuff you like, and if anything would work as a costume."

Jo looks a touch over Nadine's shoulder—which Nadine might catch the soft scrunch of her brow—as a mirror takes shape on the wall. Oval and large. Comically one picked from a house she half destroyed during a fight at the end of a hunt. She remembered smashing into it, thinking no one ever needed a mirror this big in their life.

She wasn't keeping it, but it let her see herself, and this wasn't bad...

...but it wasn't it either.

Jo frowned at the mirror and then right back down at her outfit. She thought about what Nadine had said earlier, and it started to shift. The leggings faded out for a blue jean skirt. A belt low across her hips that is decoration, not defense, flats of silver with turquoise circles at their center. A shirt that only just isn't a tank top, and a short jacket with fringe. The boots turn rustic and brown-blue stitched leather, as her hat and its hatband that matches her belt turn western with them.

And she tilts her head, studying it in the mirror, before shifting her gaze to Nadine.

"Does this only work one way? Or can you affect and change them, too?"

That could sound like general knowledge injury, and it is, but there might be a softer question under it. Since Nadine was the one who had ideas and had laughed when she crossed out all the first ones that came glaringly to mind.

"No, all of us can affect and change things in the Horizon, no matter what domain we're in." There's probably more to it, Nadine doesn't do much outside of her own domain. But she knows Julie does, and easily can. And Jaskier's made a few things in her domain.

"A lot of people don't, though, unless there's that kind of relationship. Good friends and stuff like that."

It's just etiquette. Like not going into someone's house and changing their furniture on them.

In another demonstration, Nadine imagines up a comfortable, vaguely Victorian chair to sit in.

Jo nods. It makes sense, especially since she's unsure how it works with her domain and Dean's. The actual arithmetic and rules. If it's half and half, or some full-on filtered mix of the two, and what does, how does that relate back to it being their thoughts, subconscious, etc., in the real world. The way it's gotten even bigger since Dean gave her this room. Attached this place.

He didn't seem to have even given a thought to doing anything else.

"Do you think you could—" Jo is searching for a word. No. Jo knows the words. It's just easier to use about bleeding bodies and burning houses, and yeah, she gets precisely how fucked it is that she'd rather be asking for help with that than something as stupid as a party costume. "-uh, help, then?"

There's a gesture absent toward her chest and her torso, but she means the costume.
As four or five in her parent's closet, she'd never played dress up since,
and this felt like a bonkers new version. But she's asking.

"I can, but there's a reason I just have Julie pick my costume. My ideas are pretty boring. I wasn't kidding when I said I usually just wear a hat or a headband with ears and call it good."

Nadine's just not sure she's the best person for this. If Jo were a little kid, it would be a different story. She can think of dozens of cute costumes for small children. A fully grown woman? She doesn't even put in effort for herself when it comes to Halloween.

"Maybe we should have a drink or...something. Loosen up the creative juices. Otherwise I'm probably just going to cycle you through a bunch of singers from the 80s." A pause. "You would make a pretty kick-ass Joan Jett, though."

Jo turns for the door, meaning to go find a bottle and a set of cups in the kitchen or the dinning room, before it catches up with her a second later. Her mouth presses, and she looks instead at her dresser. It's not habit here, but like Nadine's chair, she stares at the top of the dresser and thinks up the bottle and label of one of her favorite whiskeys.

It appears alongside two short glasses,
and she makes an uncertain noise at the back of her throat.

"I don't know how long it might take to get used to that."
It feels weird. It feels like cheating. Like everything Jo fights against.

But it's not hurting anyone. It's not harmful on any level. It's a weird little perk of this weird shared mental space. Jo pours the two glasses, only a finger for each, and then holds one out to Nadine. "I should have asked. Maybe you want to change it to something else? I know how to make softer drinks, most anything, but I usually stick to the basics when it's just me on my own."

"You'd be surprised how quick you start to get used to things. And it's fine." Nadine takes the drink, she isn't that picky. But after downing it she does call up her own, a rum and coke she can sip as they go.

"I find myself thinking about once a week, how weird my normal is now." Especially where her normal had always been pretty weird. The day to day, though, had been unimpressively mundane.

"I was never exactly what you'd call an ordinary girl, but...I spent most of my adult life in a little town on the coast of New Hampshire, Barnstead. I had a little house with a decent car and a normal job and I'd watch shitty reality TV at night while working on lesson plans and eating whatever Stouffer's crap I'd pulled out of the freezer...and that was normal. Now magic and Jules Verne medical school and fighting desert monsters and shapeshifting...that's my normal. But I'm used to it."

Jo takes a sip of her drink, not downing it fast, but there's a quirk at the edges of her mouth for watching Nadine down it in one go. She takes her small sip, holding it in her mouth briefly, enjoying the sharpness, while Nadine starts talking and Jo nods, leaning on the dresser behind her. It's a little odd trying to reconcile those first two statements. Not being normal; then describing the most normal, maybe even boring, Jo can think of.

The last mention there brings Jo to a halt.

"You're a shapeshifter?"

"Well, I wouldn't put it like that. 'A shapeshifter' implies I can change whatever, whenever. It's not like that. I can just turn into a wolf. Sometimes we just develop an ability like that. It's the same with these." Nadine gestures to the little pearly points of horns sticking out through her hair.

"They're not decorative, they happened after I first visited the Horizon. I can also touch someone and diagnose whatever's medically wrong with them. I call them gifts from the Singularity."

Jo's eyebrows raise on that last one.

The's a short whistle. "Out there or in here?"

That's got to be an incredibly handy skill as a healer.

He's starting to realize there are a lot of shades to this whole thing. Most of which aren't entirely apparent from the outside. The fighting. The politics. The magic. The Summoned. The Horizon. Everything, everywhere. She even has her own now, and that's so weird to think about after the long road of very specific facts leading up to this point in her life.

"Out there. That's how I was able to know what was going on so quickly, when we were on search and rescue. I didn't have to see to know what was wrong. It's like any other magic, it tires me out to use it a lot and if I'm worn out it doesn't work well, but it's really useful."

The most useful of the things she's developed in this world, Nadine thinks. Turning into a wolf is fun, especially now that she's been properly exploring the ability, but it's not useful daily. Diagnosing people is.

"Alright...a costume for you. Okay, I think the important question I need to ask here is do you want to do sexy or normal? Julie always veers to sexy, I'd put good money down that I'll be going as a slutty nurse this year."

Jo'd thought that they'd just been that good on their feet between the two of them, Nadine and Jayce. It's both impressive and a little wary making. Not about Nadine or her powers, but about herself and not having picked up on anything like that. The idea that powers could be showing up in the world, invisible all the time. Hiding in wait. Until released. No way to prep for them.

Dean's wings and weird little zippo lighter trick.
Even hers. It couldn't be seen until it was happening.

But Nadine shifts them back before Jo can think too hard about that and does so with a question Jo hadn't expected to come straight out of the blue. It makes Jo clear her throat, with a snort at the directness. The only defense against flummox of surprise that zigzags through her stomach. "It couldn't hurt to try some of them, I guess."

Except it's not really I guess, is it?

Except she's avoiding looking back at Nadine for a moment.
(Oh, god. How stupidly fucking stupid might this be?)

"Something more than—" Jo looks down at the cowgirl outfit still on her, leaning on the dresser. There's nothing wrong with the jacket, skirt, and boots other than she doesn't feel like this is here at all, but it's not just that. "...this."

"Okay, there's always the classic go-to for a basic sexy costume."

Nadine concentrates a moment, focusing on Jo. She's not as used to this. But after a moment Jo's clothes shift and rearrange themselves into a cheerleader uniform. Bright blue and yellow with a generic H on the front, and matching blue and yellow little sneakers.

Not a bad job, she thinks.

"The cheerleader. Cute, easy to move around in, easily recognizable as a costume but firmly rooted in the normal. And really easy to accessorize."

Jo looks down at it, and her hands come up as though not even sure about the idea of touching her own body suddenly in this. Her face probably says it all. This is every bit of the worst dreams she's sure her mother would have cried tears of gold at the idea, average apple pie, anything but a hunter's daughter. Jo's wondering, for the first time, if you light something on fire in the Horizon, does it burn up?

"No." She's shaking her head at it. "Not this one."

Beat. Jo tries to make it some more words.
"Maybe not something from high school times?"

"Okay, there's always the other most popular, simple costume option." It's funny, Nadine had never imagined it could be so hard to pick a costume. But she doesn't care what she wears, for the most part. She has no investment in Halloween as a holiday, really. The costume part is just what you do for Halloween parties, it doesn't mean anything to her.

The cheerleader outfit begins shifting, turning into tight black pants, black fuzzy boots, a black sleeveless shirt, black long gloves and a pair of furry black cat ears.

"The sexy cat, always a classic."

Interestingly, it's weird to watch her clothes changing on her body but not feel anything other than disconcerted by the strangeness of visually seeing it happen. There's no part of her worried about what Nadine might do to her (even as somewhere in the back of her mind, she's ticking away the knowledge that this is possible outward toward someone).

Jo turned around, looking at herself in the mirror. Considering.

"Not bad, but—" She let it linger. "Not exciting?"

"Not no?" But she wanted something,
something she couldn't name,
something more.

"Maybe we keep it in mind case there's nothing else?"

"Okay, we'll put it as a 'maybe'. Uh...if you want to go a little more glittery and girly, the cupcake thing was big for a while."

By which Nadine means a sparkly layered tulle skirt and sequined top with a cupcake hat and tights. It's certainly not something she'd imagine Jo ever wearing, and that's sort of the point of a costume. And it is cute.

But she only has so many ideas, and is pretty much just thinking about things she's seen on TV and in movies. Otherwise her main context for reference is elementary school children.

Jo looks at Nadine through the mirror, eyebrows and mouth both tilting,
a little wicked and the only warning for the words that come next.

"Right. And do I spend my night batting my eyelashes and telling people to 'eat me,' too?"

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nadine_he_loves - 2022-11-08 02:17 (UTC) - Expand