Welcome to Gaia! ::

Dani hadn't been kidding when she said text any time - a lot of people said things they didn't really mean, especially when it came to things like this, but Dani didn't operate like that. If she told someone she would be available for them, she would be, unless there was some kind of natural disaster or family emergency that kept her from being there. She'd decided that she liked Sven, and he was going to be her friend, so it was as simple as that.

She also appreciated that he was considerate enough to ask to meet up on one of her days off. It was the first one off back-to-back twelve hour shifts, which made her a little groggy, but people liked to tell her that her groggy was someone else's peppy. Maybe that had something to do with the giant mug of coffee she always had as soon as she woke up, and maybe it was just a leftover from nursing school, but either way, Dani faced the day like she did anything else: head on and ready to get to business.

By the time mid-afternoon rolled around, she'd already been grocery shopping, paid the bills, and checked in with her mom to make sure that Magda was still asleep. That conversation had been... stilted, as many of them were, but she thought they were making ground. After she had coffee with Sven, Dani was planning on going home and taking a nap, and if she timed it right, she'd wake up just when Magda was rousing for her natural morning.

All in all, it was shaping up to be a good day.

She breezed into the coffee shop about a minute before their agreed-upon time, pleasantly surprised to see Sven already there and waiting. Sliding into the booth across from him, she flashed him a welcoming smile and dumped her purse into the seat next to her.

"Hey," she greeted, digging her phone out and setting it on the table, screen-up, just in case. As she spoke, she began unwinding her scarf, relieved to be inside and out of the chill. "I love this place. Have you ordered yet?"

"Are you kidding? I practically lived here when I first moved back to town. I think I have the menu memorized." She rose up a little in her seat, stretching, and caught a glimpse of strawberry blond hair. "Oh, Nan's working. Good. She makes a mean latte."

In the early days of her move, Dani had practically spent one meal every day at Just Drink - the most important meal of the day, of course: coffee. She'd gotten to know most of the baristas fairly well, and had sampled every kind of pastry they had to offer. She hadn't been by as often lately, which her wallet thanked her for, but she wouldn't be surprised if Nan still knew her order.

She caught the other woman's eye and grinned, and Nan flashed her three fingers (three minutes, she knew).

Settling back in her seat, Dani clasped her hands in front of her and studied his face for a few beats. He looked tired, she supposed, but who didn't these days?

"Full disclosure: I'm also getting a chocolate chunk brownie."

"I'm biased to this place, but there's also No Beans About It - I know," she said, rolling her eyes with a smile. "It's across town, close to the hospital. They do a rotating monthly special on their drinks, so it's worth it to try something new."

Apart from Yves, Dani didn't actually spend a lot of time just relaxing and socializing. Ever since she'd moved back - and, well, before that, if she really thought about it - she'd been go, go, go, always moving from one thing to the next without a whole lot of time to pause and enjoy the moment. Sometimes that had been necessity (she dared anyone to have a life while going to nursing school andworking) and sometimes it had just been the only way to cope, starting with the loss of her father and then her slow-crumbling marriage. It was nice to feel like she had time to actually start making friends and doing things again.

It helped that she had Magda, too. While raising a kid was certainly a full time job, it also made her look critically at who she spent her time with and how often. She wanted to be a good example, and to make connections that would foster connections for Magda, so she'd squeeze her schedule until it screamed for mercy if she had to.

Crossing her legs under the table, she tilted her head at Sven. "It's been great, actually. I got an early start and ran some errands. I'm a little jetlagged from work, but that just means I can get a nap in this afternoon and be up for when Magda is, and not mess up my sleep schedule too badly. It helps that it's so gloomy outside," she added, glancing to a window. "It makes it easier to want to just go back to bed. What about you?"

Attention back on Sven, she asked, "Big plans today?"

Before he could answer, though, Nan sidled over, flashing them both an easy, friendly smile. "Hey, folks. How's it going, Dani?"

"Great," she enthused, smile growing. "I'm going double chocolate today. Mocha with dark chocolate, please, and a chunky brownie."

"You've got it," Nan said, taking down her order and turning a friendly look on Sven. "And for you?"

If Dani let herself, she'd be taking a brownie home as well - and she wouldn't be sharing it with her mother. It'd mean she had to do extra time at the gym, though, and until she could convince Magda that it was a fun and interesting place to be (read as: it was looking like she would never be able to convince her child to work out except under threat of her own imminent demise) she would sacrifice the extra brownie.

Nan scooped up their menus and headed off to get their coffee going, and Dani reached up to tuck her hair behind her ears, expression brightening. "Oh, painting is fun. I should see if Magda wants to paint her bedroom. She'd... probably have a lot of fun slopping it everywhere, actually."

As much as Dani loved her daughter, she could not for the life of her figure out why Magda delighted so much in disorder and chaos. Sometimes she handled it with more grace than others, but Dani was used to structure, tidiness, and order - and Magda was all loose rules casual destruction. It was still, at this point, small scale, but who knew what the future would hold.

Hopefully no broken furniture.

"What did you settle on?" There wasn't a designated reading area in the house for Magda - just getting the girl to attempt to read along with Dani was enough of a trial at the moment - but they did have a game corner.

Jenga, unsurprisingly, was a favorite. Magda didn't quite play by the normal rules, though, considering she enjoyed it when the tower collapsed onto itself.

It sounded like Sven wasn't kidding when he'd mentioned overcompensating for anxiety about his impending guardianship with planning for his new arrival. It endeared Dani to him quickly and easily; whereas in literally any other situation, she would assume a guy she'd barely met inviting her to his house and offering to cook dinner was some form of hitting on her, with Sven, she was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

"Yellow is a good color," she confirmed, already adding a stop to her mental list of things to do before she went home. If she got a booklet of color swatches from the paint store, she could see if Magda was interested in picking one out and painting her bedroom on Dani's next couple of days off. "It sounds like you have the perfect set-up, honestly. I'll check with Magda and see if she wants to help paint. I think I can sell it to her," she added, knowing which angle to push, and looking amused. "The question is, are you prepared to release my child with a paint roller in your house."

She knew that if she impressed upon Magda strongly enough that she couldn't go wild and crazy, she wouldn't, but she swore that Magda found where the line was by crossing it every single time. With a wry smile, she shook her head. "I'll see how painting her bedroom goes and get back to you on that."

She was curious to know what Sven had asked to meet her about, and maybe some people could have beat around the bush indefinitely, but Dani was a very direct person. So, she leaned forward a bit, eyebrows arched. "If you have any questions or worries, you can dive right in, by the way. I'm happy to help, though the coffee and treats are a definite bonus."

She wasn't sure if it was just good timing, or if Nan could read the mood of the table and waited until Sven was finished talking to bring their coffee and treats by, but she was willing to bet on the latter. It was one of the things she liked about this particular coffee shop; good drinks, good food, and excellent people working there. Dani flashed her a smile, curling her hands around her cup to warm them, and waited until Nan had excused herself again to focus on Sven.

Whatever she'd been expecting to hear, that wasn't it. His interested in Magda - and her soul in particular - now made a lot more sense, especially considering he seemed to have faced a lot more trauma than Dani had during his soul capture. She'd been scared, of course, but very briefly, and had been able to talk to the strzyga, though she hadn't known what it was at the time. In all honesty, the fear had come later, when she'd learned what the creature was that she'd captured, and found out what it could have chosen to do with her.

By then, she'd already sent her soul and essence off to be made into a beautiful new child, and she supposed she'd just... put it from her mind. It hadn't seemed all that real, once she'd been holding the bottle in her hands and watching the mists swirl around inside of it. Almost like a horror movie, one that had a happy ending for once, and she'd been able to easily distance herself from it.

If she'd gone through what Sven had, though, she knew that wouldn't be the case.

Shoulders hunching inward a little, her own brow furrowing in thought, she said decidedly, "I'm sorry you had to go through that alone. That sounds terrifying."

She turned her mug around in her hands, studying his face unselfconsciously. He looked tired, stressed, and maybe even a bit guilty - it was hard to tell, because she didn't know him well enough - but she saw this a lot in the faces of her patients. So, she'd apply the same skills there.

"My experience wasn't nearly as intense as that. It was scary, because I was in a graveyard at night and I was... cornered, by the strzyga, but it was a fairly quick encounter. I was able to speak to her, and she decided to come with me of her own choice. I'm not saying this to shut you down," she added, setting her cup down and rubbing her hands together. "I just don't want to give you the idea I have all the answers when I don't. That being said, though, I do have an idea of how you can get started."

Dani was no stranger to therapy. She'd seen someone when her father passed, because her grief had been so huge and she hadn't been able to parse it on her own, much less handle her mother's. She'd thrown herself into school and work, and nearly self-destructed in doing so; if not for Tristan, she probably would have. Thinking of that gave her a little pang, but she ignored it, focusing instead on Sven and his issues.

"I think you could benefit from seeing a mental health professional about this experience. I've been to therapy myself, first when my father died, and then with my ex-husband when we were trying to salvage our marriage, and I got a lot of tools to help me deal with the curveballs life likes to throw at me. From how you've described what you went through..." She shook her head, exhaling a heavy breath. "I'm not a psychologist, just a nurse, so bear in mind this isn't a diagnosis, but... I wouldn't be surprised if you had some PTS related to this. Post-traumatic stress," she elaborated, reaching for her brownie and breaking a chunk off it.

"I can recommend a few clinics for you to check out, if you think that's something you'd like to do." She kept her voice calm and neutral, trying not to imply that she had a strong opinion on what he should do - even if she did. "I think you're also making really good, positive steps with what you're doing right now - repainting your house, reclaiming that space for yourself, drawing those lines between what was the banshee and understanding that your Raevan will have parts of that, but won't be that. You said before that you haven't turned the bottle and essence in - I would do that right away, if you haven't yet."

Having a physical, tangible reminder of that trauma around for so long after the incident... it couldn't be helping him get past this.

"The longer you have the banshee's soul in your house, the longer you're tied to what happened instead of what could be, you know?"

She realized, after she was finished talking and waiting for a response, that she'd really laid a lot on him. Dani could get carried away when it came to helping people - it was part of what made her such a good nurse, and also part of what made her such an overbearing friend - but she wasn't embarrassed or apologetic about it.

Someone had to be the person to kick things into gear, and while Sven might not have expected to get the whole Romero Friendship package, she'd decided now that he was going to, whether he liked it or not.

Dani was surprised for a moment, but pleasantly so. Usually it took a lot more wheedling for people to see the sense in what she was trying to tell them, especially if it came to their mental health - and especially if she was talking to a man. Maybe that had more to do with her job (and the men she associated with, fond of them though she was) though, and she decided to just be pleased by it.

Sven, she thought, would make positive progress soon. He didn't really have much of a choice, considering he had signed an agreement to be a guardian and, by his own admission, wanted to be a good one. He'd probably just needed a little nudge, and things had just fallen into place to put the right person in his path to give him the boot to the back end that he needed.

Dani was good at that. And he'd helped her out, too, since after they'd met in the book store, Magda had taken home three books and they were already partway through one about aliens. Science fiction wasn't Dani's favorite topic by any means, but it was progress with the reading project, and she was going to take it.

"I'll text you some places as soon as I get home," she promised, finally bringing her coffee up to her mouth to sip. Delicious, as always. "God, I know. This place got me through moving and adjusting to full time graveyard when I first came back to town, not to mention living with my mother."

Her eyes flicked to her phone automatically, almost as though she expected her mom to be calling (Camila hated to text, for reasons that Dani did not and would not ever understand), but the screen was dark, as it had been for their entire conversation. That was good, though; it meant Magda was still sleeping, and nothing had gone wrong at home.

"When you do bring your Raevan home," Dani said, attention back on Sven, "We should have a playdate. After they're settled in, of course. Magda's not... very sociable yet, but we're working on it."