newcomb | mingle log | the quad and elsewhere | we were young and drinking (coffee) in the park

Characters: Gansey and whoever shows up
What: Interpersonal interaction! Meet each other face-to-face while nothing is on fire
Where: the quad, unless elsewhere seems cool to you
When: loop 1, day 10 (6/10 irl)
Content Warnings: nothing yet. please use and check thread subjects

It's a pleasant day outside. There's a nice breeze and the sun is doing its best. At very least, it's not raining and warmer than it was yesterday. This is, statistically, likely to bring college denizens out of their dorms and offices since rain seems to often be on Newcomb's horizon. Fall in not-at-all-New England is lovely that way.

Gansey, for his part, can be found throughout the day in several places! He likes hanging out near the clocktower to study, since he's found time works best there (at least for him). It's nice to have a watch that's doing something vaguely akin to timekeeping for once.

But he's an explorer at heart, so he can probably also be found in the library, the computer lab, and wandering the grounds. Gansey isn't sure he's interacted with anyone outside a classroom or on Fermii since the train crash, so he's more likely than usual to strike up conversation instead of waiting for it to come to him.

The real question is this: where's everyone else hanging out today?

[ i'll be throwing gansey at anyone who doesn't note that their tag is closed. please mingle! ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"No ability to control that desire?" Penric asked. "What my people call demons are chaos elementals -- we don't really know how they get out of the Bastard's Hell, but they need a body to survive in the physical word. They are destructive, but can learn to control the use of such power. It turns out that things like bleaching fabric or killing lice are useful uses for destruction."

"It didn't have any other desires." It's the statement of someone who looked into a void and still has nightmares about how the void laughed back. "It had its own body and could bend people's minds to its will if they were of a similar inclination. And it was killing Cabeswater and my friends. It was consuming them." Gansey has studiously avoided the black goo because it reminds him so strongly of the oily miasma of the Demon's corruption inside Cabeswater. "The Demon was uninterested in coexisting with anything, and the woman who thought she could control it..." She died an ugly death. Gansey shakes his head as though to clear it. He's aware that he's not explaining this well, but it's sort of like trying to describe the worst night-terror someone's ever had.

"Yes, that sounds like a situation where we'd be sending in multiple saints to exorcise it, if we hadn't caught the problem earlier. Though the other difference with our demons, is that they can't directly kill people with magic. Well, they can do so once, and then the White God himself takes them out of the world."

Penric paused. "I don't mean to bring up bad memories, but... I'm a sorcerer, which means I have one of our sorts of demons within me."

"We could definitely have used a few saints at the time." Instead there was Gansey and his friends, a rainy night, and a trade with a ley line. It could have gone worse. "So our Demon is different than your demons. It did quite a bit of killing." He didn't miss the part where divine intervention is a thing that happens in Penric's world, but it's not a subject for right now.

Gansey shrugs, suddenly more at ease. "As long as you -- both of you? -- are all right with that then it's fine," Gansey says. "It's there with you all the time?" In Penric's head, he means. Cabeswater is usually a comfortable presence in his mind, but it's also a lot more and a lot less than a fully formed other person.

"She. Her name is Desdemona. And, yes. She sometimes isn't paying much attention when I'm doing things she finds boring. She's been known to chime in when she needs to say something, but she has to use my voice."

"Then nice to meet you as well, Desdemona. Apologies for misgendering you." He says it with a pleasant smile, looking through Pen's eyes to the second being sharing them. His own eyes shine green-gold for a moment instead of mundane hazel in a way that would look like a trick of the light if the library wasn't indoors.

There is no obvious indication of the shift, but the expression on Pen's face and his body language changes as Desdemona ''steps forward'. "Thank you. And don't worry about Penric. He's protective of me." The accent is different, and the tone is one of someone speaking about a beloved family member or spouse.

"That's her. And she does like being included in conversations, if she finds them interesting. Or not, but she'll just opt out and tell me if she's getting bored. That's more likely to happen if I'm working on my own, though."

The casual affection of her tone makes his smile brighten. That's good, the way they so clearly care for each other. "I'll remember that for the future."

Seeing Desdemona step forward as a clearly distinct person comes with the realization that there must be a lot of negotiation and compromise involved in everything they do. He's a bit boggled and very impressed. "You said you're interested in...medicine, Penric, but not being a physician. And theology. I'm guessing that this is a partnership of shared interests, or you wouldn't get along very well. So what's interesting to both of you?"

"Novelty," Penric answers. "When you are as old as Des is, new things are interesting. Watching me go through the same training as her prior riders is not."

"Or watching you translate the same book into multiple languages."

"Or that."

mingle log | the quad and elsewhere | we were young and drinking (coffee) in the park

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