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Under Construction (9) : Construction in Destiny City is a constant; it is never surprising to see buildings come and go. However, almost overnight it seems as though a large project has suddenly come to life. Where there was once an abandoned strip mall and a sad, trash laden park, the ground has now been completely bulldozed. There's no information about this project available in any media outlets or online, and all attempts to research it result in dead ends. A large fence has been put up, but twelve feet of wire isn't enough to keep out anyone curious enough to investigate. Cameras are set up all over the place and there is a strange, almost magical energy. The space is large enough to be a theme park. Strangely, frosted glass stars in an array of colors can be found randomly across the lot. Someone obviously has big plans for this space already, some strange, fantastical buildings are going up. The space feels strangely large, and once you have jumped the fence it feels like Destiny City is a world away. The sky seems brighter and the city lights seem far away, almost as though there is some strange barrier separating the construction zone and the rest of the city. And, oddly enough, if you are standing outside the fence and looking into the construction zone, everything appears blurry and it's hard to make out the details. It's strange, for sure, but nothing seems wrong about it. Yet.
Sure, Halia had warned him that in the magical world, weird things tended to happen over the summer and around the holidays. And, sure, there were plenty of weird things that had, in fact, occurred - or things that had been normal for most of his life were suddenly revealed to have a magical aftertaste, an extra level that made the previously-normal thing much, much weirder. It wasn’t always in a bad way - like the lights in the fairy circle, or the caterpillars in the caves - but sometimes it definitely was.
He still hadn’t convinced himself to go back to the reservoir. Even though it was hotter than Satan’s armpit outside and the water sounded so cool and lovely - every time he thought about going, he flinched, remembering the sickening crack with which he’d hit the water. He was fine, sure, but he was pretty convinced that the only reason he hadn’t straight up died - or at least broken bones - was because he’d been powered at the time, and he was a lot harder to hurt when he was like that.
Harder, but not impossible. His ribs had hurt all night after that fall; he’d tried his best to keep that fact hidden from Halia, with middling success - he didn’t want her to get mad and charge the sea monster on his behalf. But hiding it from Madeline was next to impossible, and he gave up when he nearly broke his favorite mug because he extended his arm at the wrong angle. She let her look at his ribs, and she determined it was just a bad bone bruise, but he got a stern talking-to about it all the same, and he had to admit it did make him a little more hesitant about jumping head-first into monster-infested waters, both literal and metaphorical.
Which was why he was standing in the shadows of some loud, bad-smelling bar, staring at the construction spot across the street. Looking at it was giving him a headache, like when he’d borrowed a friend’s glasses to see how bad their prescription was. His eyes wanted to look anywhere else, but he kept them trained on the site in front of him, waiting for something - anything - to happen. Someone to come out, or go in, or something that might give him a clue about what exactly was being built over there.
Normally, Mason didn’t notice or care when new buildings went up or got torn down in his city - it happened literally all the time. It would be like noticing every time you lost an eyelash or something equally insignificant; it was just a thing that happened. But it was thing that happened with demonstrable progress; first land was cleared, put up for sale, bought, then foundations were laid and then construction guys were swarming the place, assembling walls and windows, bathrooms and stairs and whatever else went into building a building. And then they were done and then there was a building where there hadn’t been one before.
This had exactly none of those things happen - except the building being there where there had been no building before. He tried to stretch his memory, tried to picture what had been on that lot before the construction began, but he just… came up blank. He had absolutely no recollection. Maybe the construction had always been going on…? Maybe he only noticed now that he was powered up…?
Blarney shook his head at himself. Not only did that not make sense, if it was a powered thing, that definitely meant that someone had to go check it out. Someone had to make sure it wasn’t the bad guys building an above-ground torture lair or something.
And tonight, that someone was Blarney, Page of Earth. He took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, hoisted his stick, and darted across the street, sticking to the shadows thrown by the streetlights. With barely a thought, he vaulted himself over the flimsy fence meant to keep thieves and lookiloos out - but not him. He was half-expecting some sort of forcefield or something, but nothing stopped him, and he landed lightly on the other side of the fence, unharmed and somehow even more apprehensive for the lack of magical security.
It just didn’t make sense. Nothing about it did. He’d done his due diligence and searched all over the internet; he’d even gotten Madeline to find what government office housed property records, since they were public record. He’d found nothing but dead ends and nonsense, and that was before he realized how huge the place was.
“Woah,” Blarney breathed, his attention momentarily pulled by - unsurprisingly - something big and shiny. A star, made of some kind of frosted glass, colored pink. In this distance, another one, blue, and another, green, then gold and white, scattered all over the lot, which seemed to go on forever.
And also, a tiny blinking red light, from the top of one of the fenceposts. A camera. Crap. Blarney hissed and leapt further into the shadows, hoping against hope that either the camera hadn’t caught him or that if it had, it wouldn’t be clear enough to come close to identifying him. Or, if so, that his magical glamor would protect him from camera lenses as well as human perception.
Further into the shadows, Blarney noticed the sky for the first time. “Woah,” Blarney said again, eyes going wide as he took in the absolute explosion of stars above him. It was like a computer background courtesy of NASA - one of those extremely high-detail, crazy-zoom photos of the galaxy that you can only get from a telescope that cost more money than God to build.
Except it wasn’t NASA. It was basically in his own backyard. He was absolutely certain that something weird, something was magical, and something was - wrong, but something was…kind of beautiful, too? He scanned the sky, a little breathless laugh escaping him; it was gorgeous.
But…how was it happening? Blarney had no idea. He wanted to take a picture of it, but he knew that it wouldn’t do it justice, if it even turned out at all. Some things were maybe just meant to be enjoyed in the moment.
It was a long moment, but it did finally come to an end, and Blarney decided that since he wasn’t getting dangerous vibes from this place - just weird ones - it might just be a beautiful little gift he’d been lucky enough to break into stumble across. Maybe it would just end up being….a nice thing. For once. For a change of pace.
On his way back toward the fence, something else caught his eye - a shimmer of something sparkly. He went over to investigate it, and a smile came to his face, in spite of himself. There, half-buried in the dirt, wedged in a halfway bootprint, was a Star Charm. Amber, glinting orange-gold in the bright starlight above. He plucked it out, held it up to the light, and tucked it into his pouch with a smile.
A nice thing. They did still happen, on occasion. He squeezed the charm close and let out a heavy sigh. Good things could still happen.
So Blarney left the space as he’d found it, retreating back into regular, boring old Destiny City, which had space its normal, too-far distance away. It made him sad, somehow, looking at the sky now - it was like that construction zone had given him a glimpse of what it could be, and now anything else just felt like a cheap imitation of the real thing.
He could only hope that whenever the construction was done, it would have built something beautiful, and that maintained the strange, special glance into the far-away corners of the universe.
WC: 1311
