fandomhighdorms | The Deck [Monday afternoon]

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The Deck [Monday afternoon]

A week had come and gone since Ichabod had turned into an owl (not that Celia had witnessed the transformation itself -- for all she knew, it had been longer), and she was starting to get a little concerned. How long did one have to linger as an animal before there was cause for worry? Elsa had been a bear cub for what seemed to have been the better part of two weeks, after all, and didn't seem to have any ill effects or remaining bear-like tendencies.

He at least seemed to have adjusted to a more diurnal schedule, at least, which Celia was grateful for -- hard enough to come back from a week (or more, she was afraid) of having feathers without having one's sleep schedule utterly confused as well. So Monday morning saw Celia taking advantage of her day without classes or work to go out to the deck to get some sun, with Ichabod on her arm.

While she had brought her book to read (of course), she also had stuck a few brightly-colored rubber balls in her pocket, and was making a game of throwing those off the deck as far as she could for him to fly off and find. Was it demeaning to play fetch with one's significant other when they were trapped as an animal? Probably, but he seemed to be having fun with swooping off to go find the balls and bring them back in his talons, and Celia would infinitely prefer that they exercise his owl instincts this way, rather than by having him bring her mice or other adorable small creatures.

(She had heard about Elsa and the fishes, yes. Eleanor was clearly in possession of a stronger stomach than she was.)

[open deck is open!]

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Barry was still in the process of avoiding the warehouse. And for once he was heading outside where there was air and sunlight instead of being hold up in his room.

But he still had his tablet and was monitoring his experiments remotely. Because he really couldn't stop that.

"Getting him some exercise?" Barry asked as he watch the fetch and retrieval routine a couple of times.

"It's not every day you turn into something with wings," Celia said, turning to him with a small smile. "I figure he ought to get the most out of them while he has them, you know? Make the best of this stupid animal transformation business."

Because ugh, seriously. It was really starting to get old.

"Have you turned into an animal yet?" Barry asked curiously. "I'm wondering how much you remember from the experience.'

Celia shook her head. "I'm lucky," she admitted, though she slanted a curious look Barry's way. "You know who you ought to ask is Elsa. Poor thing was a bear cub for forever. It got to where Eleanor asked me to change her back with magic, but I was afraid she'd...be Elsa-shaped, but with a bear's mind."

Go ahead and picture that, Barry. It was hilarious.

Picturing Elsa with a bear brain, eating fishes and drinking coca-cola? Hilarious. Absolutely hilarious.

"She said she didn't remember a lot of it," Barry said with a wry grin. "Except for fish. I remember her and that ferret thing running around in Reno's class that one week. I wonder if how much you remember depends on the type of animal you turn into."

Barry was going to regret having this conversation in a week or so.

"Assuming Ichabod turns back, ever," try to sound a little less desperate there, Celia, "he might be able to give you a straight answer." She paused, looking thoughtful. "Maybe it depends on the age of the animal, too. Elsa was a baby bear, but Ichabod's an adult owl, from what I can tell." Not that she knew much about the various life stages of owls, of course. "And we've been communicating, sort of! That's probably a good sign, right?"

"Well, yeah," Barry said thoughtfully. "That shows some degree of consciousness. And from what I've looked up I haven't read any case where a student never transformed back to his or her normal self. If I could figure out a way this works I might be able to find a way to reverse a transformation. Unless it's fucking magic then I'm fucked."

"If it's magic," Celia offered, "I might be able to help. I'm just...hesitant to experiment when people's brains are involved. I can change my own features, at least, but I've never tried changing someone else. Living things are tricky."

She tilted her head, thoughtful. "I didn't realize this sort of thing had been going on so long, that it's...researchable." She felt stupid for not looking things up herself, now.

"I've been listening in on the old radio podcasts," Barry explained. "There seems to have been quite a few dogs, cats, birds who were also students and faculty. There's also this locker which you apparently need to stay away from too."

He grinned.

"This place is fully fucked up at times but I love researching it."

"Locker," Celia repeated, looking alarmed. "As though we didn't have enough to worry about, here, there's also lingering threats of sudden animal transformation and lockers to beware of."

She shook it off, sighing, and actually smiled. "Sometimes I honestly wonder if my father actually knew what sort of a place he was sending me to, or if any of our parents have any idea what they're sending their precious children into. Supposedly there's some sort of visitor's day in the fall, though. Maybe I'll be lucky and turn into a rabbit for it, or something."

Hector would think that was hysterical, probably, until she couldn't turn herself back.

"Yeah, well my parents have no fucking clue about this place," Barry said. "In fact I found out about this place from a radio broadcast I captured while monitoring different dimensions and made arrangements to come here."

He chuckled a bit.

"It's a bit more fucked up than what I originally thought but so far the only thing that's thrown me for a loop is the magic and that fucked up weekend I thought I owned a speakeasy."

"Magic isn't that confusing," Celia said, taking a bouncy ball from a newly-returned Ichabod and throwing it out for him again. It flew farther than a girl of her size would have probably been able to throw it, because of course she was cheating. Of course. "At least, no more than your science is to me. I think they're one and the same. We just call them different things, depending on how much we want to investigate what's going on."

She nodded to his tablet. "In my time, people would be baffled by that, and call it 'magic,' just as much as what I can do with my mind. The terminology rests entirely in how much you want to explore what's happening."

"Oh, I agree there's some crossover between magic and science. And I'm firmly convinced that magic is something science just hasn't figured out yet and..."

Barry shook his head.

"Trust me when I say I know my shit when it comes to science. But there's some magic on this island that I just don't know how it fucking works and it seriously pisses me off sometimes."

"Like?" Celia prompted, raising a brow. "Because I barely even understand how my own magic works. I just know that it does, and I think it's somehow connected to my biochemistry. I know it's genetic, at least -- I inherited my abilities through my father's side."

"Okay. Well first there's-"

Barry paused as he wasn't aware if Celia knew about Elsa's powers or not and wasn't going to spill them without her permission.

"-a friend who has the ability to generate extreme about of cold and can manipulate it. Snow. Snowfall. Snow balls. Fuck I don't even know her limits. I've done scans of her and for the fucking life of me I can't figure out how she does it. And then there's Rapunzel and her hair. I'm mean the length of it alone is just fucking impossible."

Barry sighed. "Coming here and seeing this shit genuinely makes me feel like a fucking idiot."

~~Well, Disney magic is special, Barry, god.~~

"Unless there's more than one of those running around, I've worked a bit with your friend and her snowball powers," Celia said with a small smile. Some part of her was touched at Barry's secrecy, though she wouldn't admit it, necessarily. "Her gifts seem to be a little like mine -- ruled by her imagination and her own psychokinetic fortitude, though I don't know why it's specifically cold things."

She shrugged. "Rapunzel's hair is its own entity, though. I can barely manage my own hair, let alone understand why someone would want yards of it."

Barry raised an eyebrow at Celia. "Okay, I saw the ball trick you were doing. What else do you have running under the hood? Because now I want to see what you can do."

Celia smiled a little, and shrugged a shoulder. "Well, that's awfully broad, Barry," she said. "I can do lots of things."

And in the time it took for her to widen her smile slightly, her dress changed from a deep green to bright red, the color bleeding down her sleeves and saturating easily.

"That's probably easiest, though. I can do something more impressive, provided you're not going to want to conduct experiments on me."

"What you mean no brain tissue samples?" Barry joked. "Man, people get so tetchy about that."

"Wonder why," Celia mused, conjuring up a glass butterfly in her palm and sending it flapping over to Barry, lazily. "I'd be willing to let you look at something less intrusive, though. I sort of need my brain in one piece. Funny how that works."

Barry watched the butterfly flap over and held out his hand to see if it would land there. "Okay, now you're just showing off," Barry said giving Celia a look of amusement. "So I'm seeing physical manipulation of objects. Spontaneous creation of matter. Probably telekinesis with the ball throwing. Do any of these tax you at all? Drain your energy somehow?"

"No, but I'm keeping it small," Celia pointed out, letting the butterfly land on him. "Ask me to change the conditions of the entire castle, or to conjure an entire train car, and it might wear me out a bit more. I can also change the size, texture, temperature of objects, too, but I wouldn't want to show off," she added, looking equally amused. "Living things are different, of course. I can manipulate my own body, but I've always had trouble with other people and creatures."

"When you're taxed how do you get your energy back?" Barry asked thoughtfully. "Time? Rest? Food?"

"All of the above," Celia said with a nod. "Sleep more than anything, but I'm usually fairly ravenous, too." She frowned a little, eyeing him. "It's been a long time since I have taxed myself, though. Not a lot of call to do it here, so that's fairly outdated data."

"Sorry, I'm not getting too personal am I?" Barry asked looking concerned. "Because seriously, if I'm getting annoying tell me to fuck off and I'll stop."

"No," Celia said, her face splitting in a grin as she giggled, shaking her head. "No, sorry. No one's ever asked me this kind of stuff before, that's all. Provided you're not going to stick me under glass and prod me with sticks, I'll answer whatever you like."

Ichabod returned with the ball then, and Celia took it from him telekinetically and hurled it off in the distance again for him to find. (Ichabod, frankly, seemed to be tiring of this game, but Celia was running out of things to do with an owl other than talking to him and wishing he was himself.) "I grew up with a magical father, taking what I can do for granted. I've never really examined it critically this way, except for talking to Eleanor or Will or -- other people, to compare with what they can do."

"Just questions, I fucking promise," Barry said with a chuckle. "Nothing invasive like that. I think it's interesting how using... well magic drains you somewhat depending on the amount used. Kind of like how doing some situps or running a marathon would drain me physically."

He paused a minute as he watched Ichabod fly off.

"You said that you can manipulate yourself. To what extent? Is it just hair color or can you change your body type...? No need to show me examples just telling me would be enough."

"I can heal myself," Celia offered, since that was the readiest example. "I've put my wrist back together after having it shattered, and knit my skin back after being cut. I could probably turn my skin green, or...make myself larger or smaller, too. Never tried, admittedly."

Though now she was thinking about it. That'd certainly solve her general height deficiency.

"And you're exactly right -- it's like any other sort of exercise. My magic is a muscle, I tend to think, and I've been training it steadily for eleven years, now." She shrugged, smiling, and added, "The flip side is that I'm absolutely hopeless without it. I lost my magic for a weekend, last spring, and I couldn't so much as put my hair up."

"Huh," Barry said getting lost in thought. "I wasn't aware that had happened. I can see that though. I'd probably be lost without my brain constantly moving on me. Then again I'd probably get a good night's sleep."

He shook his clearing his train of thought.

"So you don't use anything in your magic? Like wands, artifacts or reagents?"

"Rinoa once made me use some potions?" Celia said, thinking about it. "But no, not really. My father makes his living as a stage performer, so sometimes he pretends to use such things, because the audience expects him to, if that makes sense."

She tilted her head at him, curious. "How do you sleep, with your brain working like it does? I feel like I'm always hearing about you working on something."

Seriously. The very thought of that much experimentation exhausted her.

"Not very well," Barry admitted. "Have you ever felt fucking exhausted, so you go to bed but you're thinking about so many things you don't fall asleep as much as drift from thought to thought and stare at the fucking ceiling? It's a lot like that."

"How," Celia wondered, "are you still even sane?"

Sanity was obviously relative, to some.

"I spend a lot of time putting those thoughts to fucking reality. It helps," Barry said trying to phrase it in such a way that it sounded like no big deal. "And also going to school and socializing helps. If I can focus on a conversation or just fuck around with friends... well not to sound crass but the distraction is a pound of cure right there. It's actually been easier since I came to Fandom. I don't have to hide who I am to others and worry about getting sold out to some government."

Celia leaned her chin in a hand, tilting her head curiously at him. "I know how that goes," she admitted. "We're not open about magic, at home. My father has to put all sorts of tricks into his act so people can think they see how it's done, even if it's the real thing."

She smirked, adding, "But out of curiosity, does the cursing help? I'm not offended, but I've simply not heard such a volume of 'fucks' since leaving New York."

And even then, really.

Barry gave Celia small grin. "Maybe a little. Kind of like little pressure release valve," he replied. "Honestly I've been swearing so fucking long I don't even notice it."

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The Deck [Monday afternoon]

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