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 Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2016 10:57 am
"Rumors. Mythology." Algie frowned and rubbed his face. He had the book here, he'd read some things, but Algie was derailed by the conversation. "So you agreed to bring them home and I.." agreed to take responsibility for whatever he found. "Whatever we find." He only spoke that part of his thoughts aloud and rubbed his face under his glasses. Jeremiah's pacing was getting on his nerves. Even though he sat in his own chair, there was a table and another chair. "You aren't writing anything down in your bloody chicken scratch." His chair was scooted and Algie gave a demanding slap to the cushion of another which was now beside him, "Stop pacing and I'll write it down. I'm the damn writer." He smoothed the book to fresh pages and glanced at the other over his glasses. This was time it was deliberately penetrating and stern.
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Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2016 12:16 pm
A rare sight unfolded: Jeremiah's face coloring faintly as he scowled and stubbed out the cigarette in an old ashtray before he sat down. "******** you, Alg, my handwriting is readable." To himself, to Algie perhaps, and probably no one else. It was why the computers had been a godsend for reports at work. Jeremiah didn't have to take the extra time to write in neat, tidy script anymore. (He'd never admit to taking any kind of typing classes but he had.) He smoothed a hand across his face, peeking through his fingers at the look he was being given by Algie. Jeremiah felt childish, mulish even, suddenly, like they were teenagers again and - - that was so far removed from this he had to shake his head to clear his thoughts once more. "Just like when you're working on a book and pumping me for information, hm?" he snorted, shaking his head and leaning back into the chair. The detective waited a moment before he started talking. He had an eye for details, for the odd things and sometimes the normal things were missed but there had been nothing normal about meeting Sunny. It started with going to where some of the flowers were laid out. Finding Sunny on the bench, the smile she had that was too many teeth and the way that her smoke smelled like old, dried blood. As much as he wanted to, he didn't even leave out the part where she called him Jer-bear (and the grimace, the scowl on his face showed just how much he hated repeating that). Their conversation was easiest part, admitting aloud that he could not recall if the moon had been there and that the tide had been blood was hardest. The inhuman way her eyes had glinted, the feeling that he had walked himself into something he shouldn't have. "... she looked like a normal girl for a moment, sad that she mucked something up," Jeremiah let out a half-laugh, finding the cigarettes and matches once more. The next bit was muttered out, the cigarette hanging from his lips as he lit it. "Up 'til she threatened to eat my he'rt if I don't uphold the promise and disappeared into the dark."
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Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2016 1:12 pm
Algie wrote everything as quickly and accurately as he could, not that it was an issue, he was used to this. He was only grateful he'd gotten the other to just sit and calm down. Getting it all out there, every strange and twisted detail, should help Jeremiah and himself both accurately process. The nickname Jer-bear got a snort, but no commentary, and Algie didn't interrupt or speak until Jeremiah seemed finished. He leaned back in his seat a bit to look over the careful scrawl of dialogue. "You realize this sounds insane," Algie's eyes cut to his friend with a small smile, " Jer-bear."
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Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2016 2:00 pm
As usual the talking and laying it all out did help calm him some. At least until Algie decided to call him Jer-bear. "Watch it, snowflake," he growled, another rude gesture made with a flick of his fingers. It was an old nickname, one reserved just for Algie. Sometimes in other languages but it had been years since he had said it last. A moment later the detective seemed to deflate and sink into the chair. "... and I realize that but I know what I saw and what I smelled and ..." He shook his head as he took another drag. No need to repeat himself, Algie had seem at least some part of Sunny's strangeness. "She said all the old stories are true, Alg, and I don't know how I feel about that." A hand was smoothed along his jaw, along the side of his face and he was scratching at the back of his head. He only knew bits and pieces of things, the rumors told and some of the old tales that came out when people were drunk. Worse, he wasn't even drunk and he was considering all of this as real.
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Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2016 4:19 pm
The nickname wouldn't, couldn't, be debated. Not while they drank out of his snowflake etched shot glasses. It did get the tips of his ears a bit red though. Algie opened his pipe box beside him and began meticulously cleaning his pipe. He had a took to get the old tobacco out, scraped into the same old ashtray, before he pinched some tobacco from a small bag and pressed it into the bowl, "Not just what you saw, the whole thing. It sounds crazy but-" A match was lit, pipe between his lips, and he puffed lightly until smoke rose from the bowl and finally rolled from Algie's lips. He didn't speak again until he he'd had a few puffs though he did push the other book forward, Heliodora's book, with her reciept bookmarking a page.
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Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2016 5:29 pm
Jeremiah smirked because of those red-tipped ears, relaxing further because of the familiarity of Algie fixing his pipe. The tense line of his shoulders eased and he reached forward to take the book from the other.
It was handle delicately, with an utterance of should be using gloves because it was technically evidence. His cigarette was deposited into the ashtray, not wanting to risk ashes falling, and he read the story with his fingers pressed against his lips. When he was done, he glanced back up to Algie. Was there an implication this story was true? They're true, Sunny's voice echoed in his head, all the old stories.
"... why are these bits highlighted?" he asked, wondering if Algie had any clue. Not entirely sure why he felt unsettled by someone wasting away after their love die.
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Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2016 6:33 pm
"I'm not quite sure but I'm sure I could manage a short history of the Agawam tribe if you really need it.." Algie murmured around his pipe and glanced over his glasses again, "But I couldn't help but think about your blood in the water... since you mentioned it." The sinking ship, the stories being real, other ashford. The man sighed and a thick plume of smoke billowed from his mouth and his words were muffled through teeth and pipe, "Some town you found us, Jr'miah. Ha' it always been like this?"
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Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2016 7:07 pm
Jeremiah just huffed, having read up on local history and otherwise over the years. It was a tribe, so far as he knew, that had been absorbed into the people that had colonized the area. It was the mythology and some of the stories he was not always clear on. He preferred facts, not fiction. (The only fiction he read was high fantasy and Algie's novels.) Closing the book and laying it back down on the table he gave it an accusing stare before he picked his cigarette back up.
His fingers rubbed against his head, thinking again about the tide rolling in, sticky and wet and ... Algie was lucky he was smoking his pipe because that was nearly a nickname with the way it sounded. (Truthfully part of it was the idea of being a Jer was skin-crawling.)
"I don't think so," his voice was quiet as he leaned forward to fix himself a cup of tea finally. "Nothing like this that I know of in the years that I've been here." A dash of cream added, he swirled it in with the spoon. "I still can't quite wrap my mind around the fact that there's an other Ashdown."
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Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2016 7:29 pm
"I'll admit I," Algie took the pipe from his lips finally, though he was near clouded in smoke in the lamplight, "I'm not sure I truly grasp that. I didn't see what you saw..." And what about it being a cage??The writer looked tired suddenly, head resting on the palm of his hand. He watched Jeremiah prepare the tea before eyeing the booze bottle. In moments he was pouring another shot each. "She looked upset like you said," Algie glanced over again as he put the lid back on, "and not far off in age from the those kids themselves. Have you seen her before? Even glanced?"
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Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2016 7:56 pm
Jeremiah pulled a hand through his hair, mussing it up and then realizing it and trying to smooth it back out. He was going to smell like cigarette and pipe smoke and Algie's apartment. A disgruntled noise was pulled from him (that had nothing to do with what he was going to smell like) and he just nodded.
"As much as it's likely to get you angry, I'd much prefer you don't see anything and not be involved," another grunt, "but you are regardless." At least a little bit because he had seen Sunny and he had the book and he had made a deal with her as well. Jeremiah would like Algie safe and, for the first time in years, he was not sure that Ashdown was safe. Worse a sense that he could not protect.
... never mind that trying to keep Algie not involved now was likely more trouble than just letting him.
That thought had him putting aside the tea cup and reaching for the shot. "I haven't, no. I've been here for years and I couldn't place her." Jeremiah laughed a bit. "I think I offended her when I told her she wasn't from around here."
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Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2016 8:24 pm
"Don't even try it," Algie admonished sternly but didn't really get mad. There was absolutely no way Jeremiah was keeping him away from this, besides that he was already drawn in and he'd already shaken a hand with Satan herself. "Besides, Sunny brought me into this." He took his shot then, nose crinkling, "She didn't have to bring this book to me. And I imagine she didn't have to talk to you either." So even if these were the whims of a crazy person, they'd both been dragged in regardless of their will.
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Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2016 9:08 pm
"I'm not so stupid as to try." Jeremiah was no fool, he knew better than to try and stop the other. Especially once he was already involved. He was done with another cigarette and decided against another; the detective would just enjoy the smoke from the other man's pipe instead. Algie did have excellent taste in tobacco.
He just made a noise of agreement at what the other said in regards to Sunny. The empty shot glass was rolled between his hands and settled it on his leg. His finger ran along the rim, frowning at it while he thought. "She told you were more like her now ..." Jeremiah glanced up towards Algie, his blue-green eyes dark. "I don't like that."
Not that there was much about this he liked. Some part of him was thinking he had snapped and fallen off the deep end.
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Posted: Sat Mar 12, 2016 11:38 am
"Hopefully 'like her' doesn't mean deal making kidnappers..." Not that he was viewing this like kidnapping, it seemed much more than that now. "Or witches or... whoever- whatever she is." Algie watched Jeremiah again through the smoke, silent and thinking. His books were closed in front of him before he concentrated again on the tree. HIs tea had gone tepid but apparently it didn't stop him. The couple shots had put some color in his cheeks so he was barely noticing the tea's lack of heat. "You promised to find them... I promised to help." Not so much, but that was his gist of it, "So where do you want to start?"
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Posted: Sat Mar 12, 2016 12:11 pm
Jeremiah, in a different mood, would have corrected that it was bring them home but finding them was obviously the first step. He leaned forward to set his shot glass on the table and pour himself another shot. "Look at the old stories," a snort, that was more Algie than him anyway, "see if I can find out anything for an Ascencion 'Sunny' Shore."
Sitting back, his head fell against the back of the chair. "Walk the town?" Another eye-roll. "She did say three days of rain and then fog. Then I would see it." Jeremiah smoothed across his face and took his shot. The alcohol was warm in his gut and he was finally starting to feel a little less on edge.
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Posted: Sat Mar 12, 2016 1:03 pm
"Well it's.." he checked his watch, "Not super late. We have alcohol. We have a bookstore full of books.." Algie fished a phone from his pocket which was rather new. He wasn't unintelligent so he grasped the usage of things easily, he just hated the entire concept of societies reliance on phones and people's heads stuck in them, so he rarely used his for much besides being a phone. "I can also order food you may find passable. Though you do amazing things with the slop in my fridge and a drink or two in you." Algie chuckled. With Jeremiah so grim, he could only try to make this look up in some way. Perhaps the mystery and slight disbelief roused the writer in him. He also hadn't seen what the other had.
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