Second floor common room, Friday evening

[sairis]

Sairis had successfully completed the first week of classes here. Even if today's had been much less fun than the others. Fighting, seriously? Him?

Anyway, it was over. And he was back to the room here. After watching Liliana, he thought he could manage the kettle, even if he wasn't sure exactly how it worked. And he found tea and a mug and some honey and milk.

So now he was sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the couch with a cup of tea, frowning and poking at his new phone, trying to figure out what some of these things were.



[Open common room!]

Comments

[not_a_haint]

Caleb had been perusing a book of modern history and not particularly liking what he was finding out. Needing a break he went looking for other people and naturally the common room was the first place he'd come to.

"Hello Sairis, settlin' in okay?"

[sairis]

"Hi, Caleb." It was friendly if a little distracted. "Have you figured out these 'phones' yet?"

He poked another 'icon'. It asked him to 'log in'. What even was that?

[not_a_haint]

Caleb grimaced. "No I haven't tackled that yet. Lady in the library gave me a basic rundown of the internet though. Where'd you even get that? I also haven't done enough explorin' in town."

[sairis]

"Magus Liliana gave it to me. It's a bit bewildering, though."

He set it aside, happy to talk to his roommate instead.

"I haven't really looked around town yet, either. I did see the beach and the sea. That much water is amazing."

[not_a_haint]

“Ain’t it?” Caleb agreed.

He had set out the other day intending to try to get a sense of the town, but had gotten distracted by the beach. The sight had filled him with a wide eyed wonder he hadn’t felt since he was little.

“I used to live in a small town in the mountains, and the school teacher had travelled so far and wide that she’d even seen the ocean.” It had made her a figure of great esteem, or suspicion depending on who you asked.

“A’course that’s more a testament t’how little interest anyone in the area had in goin’ anywhere. Still, I feel quite worldly now.” he chuckled.

[sairis]

Sairis nodded. "I grew up in an area where all our water came from wells or rain. I've never seen our sea before."

He'd never seen anything bigger than a washbasin before.

[not_a_haint]

Thinking about the months he spent with the Abshers in Baker's Gap was doable. He missed his adopted brother, and his friends, but it was a distant pain. what he didn't like to think about was the reservoir, because that reminded him of Death Island and the thing that had...

So instead he did what he usually did and focused on the happy times in the Devil's Cradle.

"We had a river, near where I grew up. I dunno how it is with haints in your world, but in mine runnin' water formed a kinda natural ward against most things. So our territory butted up against it. And I dunno if it happened naturally or if Granny had folks dig it out but there was a...what's the word, inlet or somethin', that we used for swimmin'."

[sairis]

Sairis nodded. "I'm not sure what a haint is. Running water gives some beings pause, though."

[not_a_haint]

"A haint is...well we use it as kinda a catch-all term for spirits and ghosts. I think it's derived from the word haunt, but even the granny witches I asked said I was overthinkin' it."

[sairis]

"Oh! Okay. It doesn't cause issues for spirits where I'm from - at least not as far as I'm aware - but I'm learning magic is very different here."

[not_a_haint]

"It's not fool proof," Caleb mused, "There's so many different kinds of things, and of course if you get a dry season it can mess things up, so Granny relied more on traditional wards that she created and maintained. Nothin' that meant us harm could get in, and even most reg'lar people couldn't even find the place less they already knew where it was."

[sairis]

Sairis nodded. "That's more like what I'm used to. My master had wards built into his tower and reinforced them constantly as much as we could. The door wasn't even visible until I was in my teens."

[not_a_haint]

Caleb grimaced. "You were stuck inside a buildin' until you were in your teens? I think I mighta gone stir crazy bein' cooped up like that. No offence, I'm sure your master had his reasons."

[sairis]

"Oh, we could get in and out," Sairis clarified. "It was just so other people couldn't get in."

[not_a_haint]

"Oh! I see. That's handy. Did y'all have much trouble with the locals? It was sort of a mixed bag where we were. Granny told the little'uns that we were hard to find because of busybodies and thieves, but as we got older she let us know that some of those busybodies might like to try to burn us out."

Which Caleb sometimes thought might have been a scare tactic, like his telling the youngsters about the monster that lived in the cupboard where the dangerous chemicles were. But Granny hadn't been the one to name their holler The Devil's Cradle.

[sairis]

Sairis grimaced and shook his head. "The locals were fine. They were scared of us, but they'd still come sometimes for charms or to trade. They didn't give us trouble. But knights and hunters would come for the bounty to kill the 'evil necromancer'."

[not_a_haint]

Hunters. Such an innocuous word for something that could be so dangerous. There were things in Caleb's world that looked on humans as prey, or worse. And while most folk who knew the way of things were content to avoid 'em, or banish 'em or bind 'em as they were encountered, there were some who took it as either a sacred calling or just a worthy challenge to actually seek out anything touched by the dark, or the feral green and smite it, or some such nonsense.

Plenty of those folks died ugly, but all of them seemed to have a distinctly polarized view of the world. They might suffer a witch to live, but folks like Caleb? Well they were monsters, pure and simple.

"Yeah." Caleb sighed. "We had folks like that too in my world. The place I grew up, all of us were affected by...well we called it the Dark. Or sometimes even the Green. We was just kids but to a certain type that didn't matter."

That had been just one of the threats Caleb had been warned of. The ones he'd been really worries about of course had been those that wouldn't necessarily want to kill him. They'd want to use him.

[sairis]

"Yeah," Sairis agreed. "It never does." He'd been a child witch suffered to live, but with "suffering" the operative word.