fightingevilbymoonknight | Annexed: IC Inbox

What do you think?

[Attached is a series of images of an apartment, high-ceilinged and sunny, with what looks like three rooms - two full sized bedrooms and what looks like it could be a den or small office - in addition to the main living space.]

[Steven and Marc have worked out a system to show which of them is which. Not that it's not stupidly easy to tell if you know either one of them, but still. Steven's text is blue.]

oh wow that looks amazing. is that for us? what's the monthly rent on a place like that, can we afford it??

Yeah. Seems like just what we need, doesn't it?

The place belonged to the owner's aunt before she passed, he's looking for someone to inventory the contents and get them packed away. We do that, he's willing to give us a deal on the rent.

[The number she includes is definitely a good bargain for the space, even considering the amount of clutter that needs to be cleared out.]

oh that sounds amazing. we can definitely afford that and unless the place is wall to wall packed I don't think sorting some stuff would be hard! where is it? are you there now?

Not quite wall to wall, but there is a lot of stuff.

I'm there now. Want to see if you can find me before I give you the address?

sounds great! I'll be there when I get there I guess

[And he sends several smiling and thumbs up emojis.]

See you soon.

[The neighbourhood, once he finds it, is quiet - in the Magitech sector, but a ways out from Central Command. There's a silver tabby sitting on the post by the gate, and she pauses in cleaning one paw to mrrp at him inquisitively.]

It doesn't actually take him long to find, in the end. He's gotten pretty good at their tracking across the tether.

"Oh, hello, puss." Steven pauses to give the cat a hand to sniff, then a scritch behind the hears if she's amenable. "I'm looking for a really amazing lady. Think she's in this one? I think she's in this one."

The cat sniffs delicately at his fingers, then bunts her head into the palm of his hand, striking up a rumbling purr that seems far too loud for so tiny a creature.

"Oh," says a man's voice behind him. "You must be Layla's husband. Let me show you up."

The speaker is tall, and cadaverously thin, but oddly nondescript despite that, as though his features have been crafted to slide away from the mind between one blink and the next.

Steven is thoroughly distracted by petting the cat and the voice makes him jump, quite likely scaring said cat off her perch. "Oh. Um. Yes, probably. I mean, yes, that's me."

What a weird looking gentleman. Steven is already kind of passively looking for magic, now that he's actually noticed.

"Though I hope she won't consider that cheating," he adds. "We're working on the tether thing, you know, I followed it here."

The cat puffs up, tail standing up like a bottlebrush, and launches herself into a nearby bush, where she peers back with enormous blue eyes at the interloper.

There's no magic at all surrounding the man, neither active nor passive - Heba, perhaps, with a power related to camouflage. Or shapeshifting. He gives Steven a kindly smile. "I'm sure she'll understand. It's good luck running into you out here. You're Tian?"

"Yep, that's me, very very Tian, or so I've been told." Steven gives the poor kitty an apologetic look, but lets her hide. And he sets the puzzle of faceless-man aside to chew on later, too. He's got Layla to get to.

Introductions first, though. "Off-worlder, too, one of the first batch to get rescued, just like her. I'm Steven." He offers faceless-man his hand an an amiable smile.

"Suren," the man offers by way of introduction, and clasps Steven's hand. "I'm sorry you're in the Camp under these circumstances. Or at all. But it is a stroke of luck."

He reaches over to unlatch the gate.

"Aunt Hala was an enchanter, you see. Mostly minor items, little utilities. Self-mending clothing, self-filling canteens, that sort of thing. But she never met an organization system she was willing to use. The hardest part about packing away her belongings is sorting the magical from the mundane."

"I've dallied a bit in that! I'm, er, not really very good yet, but I'm getting there. I made an amulet that casts an unlocking spell and a protection spell once a day, for a friend." He follows Suren readily, a little bit of attention reaching out to check where in the building the other end of his tether might be. "Layla did mention something about sorting things. Actually sort of sounds fun, really."

That little glimmer of presence is upward, on the third and uppermost floor. There's an edge of slightly-nervous anticipation to it, like she's noticed his arrival and is just waiting for him to make the ascent.

Suren nods as he leads them through the front door into a wide hall that leads back to a stairwell. No lift here - either whoever built the structure hadn't thought it tall enough to need one, or it was seen as a needless risk.

"I need someone to go through the rest of Aunt Hala's things. Sort out the magic pieces, and the spell components, and the mundane things that are still in good enough repair to go to neighbours or the refugees coming in from Zephyr, or the markets if there's no immediate use. Most of the rest can be recycled."

He pauses, then adds, "You can keep the furniture, if it's to your tastes."

"Oh, thank you very much! We might wind up keeping it, even if it isn't to our taste, I mean, don't think we can keep the stuff from the off-worlder housing, really, so it's not like we have much, though I guess we can probably afford to buy some, hadn't really thought that far," Steven says, rambling, distracted by an attempt to actively send some affection and reassurance back along the tether.

"You can, but it'll cut down the urgency a bit."

Suren glances back as rounds the top landing into the upper hall. There are only two doors, one on either side of the hallway. "You haven't been paired long, have you?" he asks. And then utters an embarrassed little chuckle, though there's no answering flush to his cheeks. "Of course, you couldn't have been, could you? Unless people tether to each other where you're from?"

"Month and a half," Steven admits sheepishly. "We've both been here going on six months, now, sure, but Layla thought-- well, nobody knew if it really worked the same way for people not from here, right? Figured we might as well test it. And what d'you know, it does work the same way for people not from here. So yeah, it's still pretty new."

He's aware of the honesty thing now. And he's trying to be careful. He's proud of himself just then for not mentioning Marc. It was, after all, as much Layla's thought as his.

"Bold," Suren says. "It's an exciting time, though, getting to know each other all over again."

The door on the left cracks open, and Layla pokes her head out, smiling when she spies Steven at the top of the stairs. "Oh," she says. "You ran into Suren. That's handy - I was hoping to introduce you two."

"Exciting, sure, maybe terrifying," Steven says before the door opens, but then he smiles more brightly at the sight of her, padding over readily. "Layla, hi. I cheated a little, Suren told me what floor you were on. But I found the building! And I probably could've found you with him, but he was very nice, too."

"Next time," Layla says, catching hold of one of Steven's hands, and rising up on the balls of her feet to press a quick kiss to his cheek, a physical reflection of the warmth he'd beamed along the tether.

"I brought the draft papers," Suren says. "Why don't you show him around, and take a look over them. If everything looks all right, you can bring them by the shop this afternoon, and we'll hammer out the rest of the details."

"That sounds like a great idea," Steven says, swinging Layla's hand a little with excess energy, before holding out his other for the papers in question, since he's closer to Soren still. "Thanks very much for considering us."

"You seem like a lovely couple," Suren says, and places the slim folder of documents in Steven's hand before retreating back down the stairs.

Perhaps to see if he can coax the cat back out of the bush.

"See you later," Layla calls after him, then tugs Steven through the open door. "Come on. I think you're going to love this place."

Steven tucks the papers under his arm and obediently follows Layla in. Once the door is shut, he flicks his hand in what Layla will recognize by now is a dispell magic gesture, and the ears and cat tail from the night before reappear. The tail gives a little fluff before settling.

"Phew. Do you know how uncomfortable holding an illusion over someone else's spell is?" he says more than asks. "That feels much better."

The corners of Layla's mouth crimp as she fights not to grin at the sight of that fluffed-out tail.

"And here I'd thought you'd managed to get an early reprieve," she says, and reaches up with her free hand to absently smooth his hair down where it lies in slight disarray around the previously-invisible ears. "I don't think you need to hide them around here, though. Anyone who's not in on last night's festivities will probably just assume it's a Heba thing."

Text; backdated to the morning of the Winter Festival

Re: Text; backdated to the morning of the Winter Festival

pretend that said morning *after*

you know what I didn't even notice haha

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pretend that said morning after