fandomhighdorms | Second Floor Common Room, Wednesday Evening

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Second Floor Common Room, Wednesday Evening

Erasmus had ordered Chinese takeout for dinner, but the delivery guy had brought...way too much. Like, way too much. So he'd decided to eat in the common room, where maybe he could foist some off on someone else, and there was always the refrigerator for leftovers.

While he shoved fried rice and mushroom chicken into his mouth, he'd started flipping idly through the channels on the TV, and wow, this dimension's TV programming was weird. Where were all the nonhumans? Where was that popular crime drama about a warlock detective and his vampire partner, who the whole internet agreed should make out and Erasmus totally hadn't written half a fanfic about, really, he swore? Where was--wait. He flipped back a channel.

"Oh, thank Gaia, Interspecies Habitat." A popular home design show about refitting homes to suit the needs of romantic partners from two very different species? He'd take it. This week's pair were a siren and a yeti, so it ought to be interesting.

(Open common room is open!)

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Finally, someone besides Arden who came from a normal world, although given what Arden had said about her world Erasmus was gonna have to reserve judgment on just how normal Eleanor's world was. "I was homeschooled," Erasmus told her, and did not explain why. "So this is all really new to me, but I bet you have it down pat. And Maine, huh?" He shuddered. "Too cold for my blood."

Just like how Eleanor would not be explaining why she wasn't homeschooling, so that worked out.

"Fair enough," she allowed with another smile. "I don't actually remember much about the winters there, though. Mostly just a lot of copying up by thr fire surrounded by a lot of warm bodies and fur..."

She felt a sharp ache in her chest and was eager to move on.

"I don't think I've ever been to Mississippi before," she admitted. "Do you like it there? Have you started to feel homesick yet?"

Erasmus thought about it. "Not...really. I've been away for longer than this before," he explained. "My father lives in California, and Momma doesn't always go with me when I go visit him. But I've never been away from both of them for this long before, so...I miss them more than I miss Mississippi, I guess. Ask me again when it gets cold, though. It's already what I'd call downright cool." It had been 80 degrees that afternoon.

"Oh, you are definitely going to be in for it, then," said Eleanor, with a small laugh she couldn't help that she really hoped didn't come out as unkind. But just in case it did, she added, "You'll want to get a good pair of boots and some nice warm gloves; that can make all the difference. And there's even days where hot chocolate or cider or eggnog comes out of the faucets here, too, to help keep you warm."

Erasmus took a sip of the Coke he'd been forced to order when Ching Tai hurt his feelings by not having sweet tea as he considered that. "...showers...?" he eventually said.

"Showers, too," Eleanor confirmed. "A little bit of a good news/bad news situation, but at least it's usually only for a day. Things get really crazy in December, too. Sort of like last week, actually, but stretched out for the whole month, with a different festive holiday thing each day."

Erasmus considered this and decided to put the bright face of, "Well, I guess it's nice of the island to celebrate the holidays?" Solstice and Christmas being so close together and all. "Uh, no one turns into a reindeer or whatever it is with that Santa guy, do they?" He didn't want to not have thumbs again, Eleanor.

"I don't think anyone has," said Eleanor, after a moment, to tilt her head and try to remember, "but that doesn't mean we're entirely safe from it. It likes to throw all sorts of things at us. I take it you were a pony last week, then?"

Her look was sympathetic. She herself had once again been spared.

"I was," Erasmus confirmed. "You don't really appreciate your thumbs until you don't have them, it seems."

"It seems to skip me," Eleanor said, and even her shrug was apologetic. "It happened last year, too, but I stayed the way I am now. I guess a wolf isn't the only thing I can't turn into..."

A blessing in disguise, maybe, especially for her thumbs.

"A wolf?" Erasmus asked, and then got excited. "Oh! Do you have werewolves in your family?"

"Several," Eleanor confirmed with a nod, and then a certain awkwardness seemed to settle back over her. "Er...well...it's just...my sister and my cousin now. My grandfather, too, but he...he doesn't change back into a person anymore."

By choice or by force, they just may never know.

"And there was my father, too, but he..."

Thank god Luma hadn't quite swanned in yet.

"...is no longer with us. I....can't, though. Turn into a wolf. I take after my mother's side, which is distinctly not werewolf."

Which was putting it lightly.

Erasmus nodded. "That sort of thing happens with interspecies relationships sometimes," he said, sympathetic because he was also one of those things that happened sometimes with interspecies relationships, and in the interest of honesty, he added, "I mean, look at me."

Maybe Eleanor didn't quite know all the intricacies of interspecies relationships, because she did look at Erasmus and....didn't understand what he might have meant by that.

So she figured she should just asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, sorry," Erasmus said. "I keep forgetting people don't just know here. I'm a necromancer. It's, uh...it only happens sometimes when a warlock and a human have a child together, in my universe. Apparently other universes are different?"

"Oh, I thought--" Eleanor started, then shook her head a little. It didn't matter how she'd misinterpret that now that she (sort of?) felt like she understood what Erasmus meant.

"You get that a lot here," she said, "different universes and things like that. The only necromancer I know is Miss Vess, and I'm pretty sure that's not how she got there, and my grandmother...." Oh, how to put it? "Dabbled, and that's not true for her, either. And I don't even know any warlocks, unless you count my cousin Charlie, but we just call him a witch like his mother."

But she was now wrapping her head around what it might mean that Erasmus was a necromancer, and seemed to be looking at him in a carefully considering light.

"So what does that mean for you, anyway? Being a necromancer? What sort of things can you do?"

Granted, if Miss Vess couldn't figure out how to help her fix Rhys, she doubted Erasmus could, but it never hurt to knos if there were options...

"Well," Erasmus said. "I raise the dead." He didn't mean to be vague like a vague thing. It was just that that was not necessarily true for all necromancers where he was from.

"At home, all witches are female," he said. "All warlocks are male. And they don't...they don't get along, usually." He was sure some individual witches and warlocks crossed the divide here and there, but, you know. In general.

"Oh."

And just like Erasmus didn't mean to be vague, Eleanor didn't mean to sound so disappointed, and yet...

But that didn't sound like it would help her at all. Rhys wasn't dead, not technically, but she...she didn't really know what he was now.

But she tried to push it aside with a soft laugh.

"But, hey, maybe I might turn out to be a decent witch after all, because Charlie doesn't get along with any of us."

"Sorry, I don't...I don't know how to explain it, really," Erasmus said. "It's not like I usually have to, back home. People just know." Or thought they knew enough. "It's different from raising zombies. That's just a shell the priestess tells to do things. I take the soul and put it back in the body, and some people think that's...disrespectful, I guess." Even when they were the one asking him to do it so they could speak to their loved one one last time.

And Eleanor blinked, then stared at Erasmus for a moment.

"You do...what?" she asked, fairly certain she must habe heard that incorrectly, while also getting mental whiplash for how quickly her thoughts reversed on whether or not Erasmus could help her or not.

But she also didn't wait for him to answer before asking a follow-up questions.

"In your world, where are the souls if not in the body? Can you put someone's soul back if that soul has been put somewhere else?"

Eleanor didn't even know if that's what it was, that she had Rhys' soul inside of her, but....it had honestly been the most logical explanation yet.

Just filled with Rhyses, that Eleanor Zarrin, apparently...

"Well, when someone dies their soul leaves their body," Erasmus says. "Where it goes sort of...depends. Some souls move on to...whatever's next. Some stick around. And, yeah, that's what I do. I call them back. And then I send them on again, of course."

He was, unfortunately, way too far pre-canon to even be able to associate this question with the concept of a living person being involved.

"I...see," said Eleanor, slowly, her gaze somewhere off on the distance of her newly whirling thoughts. "Is it difficult? To call them back from....wherever they are?"

Surely, some sort of afterlife or spiritual realm had to be more difficult than a fathomless void within someone?

Well. The whole fathomless part was likely troublesome, but Eleanor had no problem bringing their bodies back up from it, how much more difficult could a soul be?

She was clearly just going to ignore the sending them back part. This was obviously a special situation.

The problem was not your fathomless void, Eleanor, the problem was going to be that you were an alive person.

"Not really," he said. "I mean, if I have a body it's easier than if it's cremains, of course." Of course!

Well, if that needed to change....Eleanor did kind of owe it to Rhys...

Well, okay, there may be some issues with that for some other people, but maybe they'll just cross that bridge when they got to it.

"Of course," she said, easily, distractedly, because the body was the absolute least of the concerns. "But that's....very interesting, Erasmus. I...I think I might like to hear more about your necromancy at some point, if...if you're open to sharing, anyway."

This did not sound like a good plan!

"Oh," he said, startled, "I don't...no one ever wants to talk about it back home, is all. But...maybe? It's so nice to meet someone from a world that's at least kind of like mine."

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