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 Posted: Fri Jun 26, 2015 11:41 am
Maia sent Dari a bright smile. Maybe aliens didn't have to worry about temperature. "Great!" She said. She looked forward to it.
She looked away, at Toby's question, towards the water. "Your home. You had to travel all this way to find me. And find dozens of other creatures. Do you miss it?" She knew she'd miss hers. The ocean, the smell of the beach, her seals. Maybe leaving home so often made It easier to deal with.
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Posted: Fri Jun 26, 2015 11:45 am
For just a moment Toby thought that she had meant his old home, way back when. The place he had lived when he was still human. Of course she had no idea about all of that. She must mean where he lived now with all of the missions he had to go on. He gave a thoughtful frown and shrugged.
"Sometimes. On the longer assignments for sure. I'm lucky, though. I get to bring a little piece of home with me." He thrust a thumb back toward Dari who offered him a small smile. "It can be hard, but it gets easier with time." That last part was added, of course, purely for Maia's benefit.
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Posted: Sat Jun 27, 2015 12:24 am
Toby seemed to understand. She decided to confide in him."I'm going to miss mine." Everything would change. She'd be located to a different beach, probably one with other selkies, a foreign place. She'd have to talk to HQ people.
Maia wasn't sure she was up for that. She was only just warming up to the two agents. "I don't think the seals are going to come," she said. "They're afraid of boats. And I can't communicate with them in this form to tell them it's alright to come. But maybe its better they don't. Beach goers might decide to attack them." She focused on the horizon. "You're very close to Dari, aren't you?"
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Posted: Sat Jun 27, 2015 12:04 pm
Toby nodded. "I know."
With just that statement, though, he was reassured that she was going to come with them. They would have saved her. Of course it would be difficult to uproot entirely, especially after having a house, but people did it all the time. She'd be okay. They'd just have to distract and amaze her back at HQ to make the transition a little easier.
"It does get easier, though. I can promise that." He was now referring to his original uprooting, the painful one. You never stopped missing it, but it got easier to deal with. It stopped hurting so badly.
At Maia's question regarding the partners, Toby leaned back to address Dari.
"Well, what do you think, Slimebag? Are we close?"
Lacking fingernails, Dari couldn't pinch the man, and he'd rather not lean in and take a big old chomp of his ear, so instead he gave the werewolf's hair a decent tug. Toby laughed.
"I'd say so," Dari agreed, smiling softly and then resting his chin on his hands.
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Posted: Sat Jun 27, 2015 12:44 pm
Maia sighed. She supposed it did get better, but right now she couldn't see that happening. She moved a little closer to the edge of the boat. "I thought about escaping. I was going to break into that safe, grab my pelt and you'd never see me again. But then I remembered those camera men. And I remembered I wouldn't be safe here. Even after all this dies down, if it ever does." They seemed the better option: better than being caught and experimented on, better than becoming some man's property.
"How long do we have the boat?"
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Posted: Sat Jun 27, 2015 12:49 pm
This confession did nor surprise either man. Nobody liked to be forcibly removed from their home and held captive. Really that was what they were doing any way you wanted to slice it. Captivity to keep something safe was still captivity. Neither Toby nor Dari made a comment on Maia's thoughts of escape. Nobody told her it would have been fruitless or scolded her for putting herself in danger. It was what it was and there was no way to change it.
"Two hours," Dari responded. Toby looked at his watch. They still had about an hour fifteen left, in that case.
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Posted: Sat Jun 27, 2015 1:09 pm
Two hours. Maia leaned back, legs still in the water. Two hours wasn't long enough, but the two probably wanted more time to look around town. "We leave tomorrow?" she asked. "Or the next day?" There wasn't really much the town had to offer, really. It was for tourists, full of shops with useless things, restaurants full of food that was probably bad for you.
"There's water where we're going? A lake? Maybe a beach?"
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Posted: Sat Jun 27, 2015 1:16 pm
"Probably tomorrow, yes," Toby nodded. "However long it takes them to get us a jet." He lay back again, basking in the sun.
"Arizona is unfortunately landlocked," Dari told the selkie then, and it felt pretty horrible to be the bearer of bad news. "We do have a couple of pools, though, and there's a lake about an hour away."
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Posted: Sat Jun 27, 2015 1:25 pm
Landlocked. Maia frowned: pools didn't make up for the lack of natural resources. "And people live there?" she asked. People tended to flock to the nearest water source, she'd noticed. They paid more to stay in hotels closer to the beach, and to live near it.
"What is your headquarters like?"
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Posted: Sat Jun 27, 2015 1:36 pm
"No, people don't really live there. It's sort of a popular area what with it being Arizona and all, but there's no houses." It was peaceful out there. Calm. Quiet. "And I guess it is sort of a beach. I mean, I think of the beach being at the ocean but it's sandy and a bit rocky, so..." Was that good enough? Good enough to stave off the depression for a little whole?
"Headquarters is just like it sounds. A big compound, hangars, a big building that goes pretty deep underground. It's got apartments, though. It's top-secret, sort of like Area 51 except with real aliens." Also, fronted by an agricultural study center to diffuse suspicion.
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Posted: Sat Jun 27, 2015 2:34 pm
The description didn't help in the least. The Selkie went quiet, looking towards the shore. She sighed. She put her arms behind her head and rested It there. "It sounds like an awful place." A beach without water. A desert. Rocky and Sandy and hot.
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Posted: Sat Jun 27, 2015 2:40 pm
Toby gave a little snort of laughter.
"It's not as bad as it sounds, I promise."
Dari looked up to him and then to Maia. "I can reinforce that opinion."
Nothing seemed to help, though. The silence stretched a short while, and then Toby rolled to one side to look at Maia.
"Who do you want to meet?" Just a quick subject change. They had all sorts of people and the world was veritably coated in beacons. Presumably she'd want to talk to a selkie, and that could be done rather easily so long as time zones were taken into account.
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Posted: Sat Jun 27, 2015 2:56 pm
Maia looked up at the subject change. It surprised her. Who did she want to meet? Talking to a Selkie would be an educational experience, but really she wanted a friend. Like Toby had in Dari. She shrugged. "I don't know," she said. "I'd like to meet another selkie, I suppose." But the world was filled with more than just Selkies.
"I'd like to meet other fae too," She said. She wanted to visit that beautiful forest sometime.
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Posted: Sat Jun 27, 2015 3:07 pm
"I don't think we have any fae agents at HQ," Toby said, but turned to Dari with a questioningly furrowed brow. Or did they?
"That's not true, we have Lorien."
"Okay, I stand corrected. We have at least one. We'll get you in contact with Niamh too, but that'd be long-distance for now, unfortunately. Lorien's Seelie. A good guy, really. Oh, and Annie." Merfolk were probably as close to a selkie as one was going to get at headquarters itself. There were a fair amount of supernatural agents and allies, sure, but few chose to stay in Arizona following schooling, if they schooled at all. Besides fae were, once again, generally not native to the united states, and yet they had met two in their time here.
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Posted: Sat Jun 27, 2015 3:38 pm
A seelie. That was good, she wouldn't have to worry about being eaten. "Niamh's your selkie agent, yeah?" She asked. "Are you hungry, Toby?" she asked. If she'd had her pelt she could have caught fish, but there were simpler ways to attaining food. Humans didn't really have to hunt for food. There were food places on every corner.
"Want to go to my place after we eat?" she asked. "That'll give us time to shop in the evening, if you like."
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