fightingevilbymoonknight | Annexed: IC Inbox

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."

"No, no, just me seeing if I could, mostly, since-- Oh." He stops short and blinks a little, ducking his head into her touch. He wonders if some of that is the cat thing, or if it always feels that nice to have someone pet your hair. "Oh, that's nice."

Her hand stills briefly at that first 'oh', until he leans into her touch rather than flinching away. She resumes gently tidying his hair, the brief flicker of worry at her end of the tether fading into warm fondness.

"If you start purring, I'm not sure I'll be able to keep a straight face," she warns.

"I don't think I can purr," Steven says, keeping very still under her ministrations. "Though I haven't tried, either. You could do that all day, though, and I guess we could find out." Though they do have an apartment to view. He really shouldn't stand here all day and let her fuss with his hair. "Does Marc like it when you do this?"

Layla makes a small, amused sound in the back of her throat, not quite a laugh, but definitely in that family. "I'm pretty sure you'd get a crick in your neck in the first half hour," she says, mock-rueful. "And yeah, sometimes. Depends on his mood a bit."

Having determined that his hair's probably as neat as it's going to get - and recalled now to self-consciousness - she takes one last gentle pass before dropping her hand to cover his instead, so that it's sandwiched between both of hers.

"Let's take a look around, hmm? I really do think you'll like this place."

"Yeah, well, everything with Marc depends on his mood a bit, don't it," Steven comments, but straightens obligingly and lets her tow him further into the flat, looking around with interest. "It's not as cluttered as it could be," he says charitably. The huge windows really do help it feel more airy.

"Good to know that whole forced honesty thing hasn't affected you much," Layla says, tone slightly teasing - but not, notably, indicating much in the way of disagreement.

"I've seen worse - I remember when one of my father's mentors passed, we helped clean out his place. There was one room, just...wall-to-wall newspapers and old magazines, dating back to the 1940s. I think some of them were even older than he was. But this place does give off a little bit of a 'prick your finger on a spinning wheel' vibe, doesn't it?"

She pauses to crouch down and peer at a little stone carving of a winged lioness - not a sphinx, but close enough to catch her attention.

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