Open Post: Hooked On A Feeling

[rememberettersberg]

What hobbies have you got? Susan had asked him, and he had to admit to not being sure. At school and for some time after, he played rugby. More recently, he only watched it on the television Peter had set up in the tech cave. Here at the mansion, he has books and research and the beginnings of mentoring, but it occurs to Nightingale that he has been building himself a facsimile of work and very little else. He's survived that way for half a century and been perfectly all right (though others may disagree with that assessment) but here, in this hinterland between realities, he is feeling a growing itch for... whimsy, perhaps.

At this moment, propping up the bar with a pint of bitter and a crochet hook, no one would dare accuse him of being whimsical. Nightingale is scowling fiercely at the hook, the yarn, his pint, and the book sitting open beside it. Company would be more than welcome.

Comments

[timebethine]

"And tell me more of Peter," Laertes urges. "How long has he been your apprentice? Is he diligent and careful with your arts?"

[rememberettersberg]

Nightingale laughs again, bright and unfettered. "Diligent and careful are words I imagine Peter to be utterly unfamiliar with. He's impulsive, cheeky, easily distracted, and apt to set things on fire." Fondness permeates every word. "He's also as smart as a whip and has tremendous potential as a practitioner. We've been working together for almost a year and a half."

[timebethine]

"I understand better now why you've had such patience with me," Laertes laughs. "How did you find each other? Was he another young man barging into your home and demanding to be taught silversmithing and magic?"

[rememberettersberg]

Nightingale snorts. "He was a young police trainee sent to guard a crime scene. He took a witness statement from someone who turned out to be a ghost and hared off on his own unofficial investigation. Dragged another trainee along with him for the ride." His face darkens momentarily at that, but he moves on without further comment. "I caught wind of it quickly and got him recruited into the Special Assessment Unit, which is the Met's impressive euphemism for the Folly these days. The entire case was riddled with the uncanny and Peter turned out to have a knack for sensing magic... and using it too."

[timebethine]

"It's clear you have a great interest in his career," says Laertes. He guesses from the context that police means a constabulary. "Is he a personal friend, as well as a colleague and an apprentice?"

[rememberettersberg]

"I'd like to think so," Nightingale says. "He's much younger than I and we've lived incredibly different lives, but we get along well enough. He's brought life back into the Folly."

[timebethine]

"If you return, will you seek out other apprentices?" Laertes asks, a little more quietly. "Forgive my rudeness, but at times you seem ... very lonely."

[rememberettersberg]

Nightingale's first instinct is to protest, suffused with a quiet sort of shame at being so perceived, but then the question hits him, forcing the breath out of his lungs. "I had a second apprentice," he admits. "A colleague of Peter's, the one who went along with his initial investigation. Lesley was... horribly injured in the line of duty, unable to continue working with the police. Peter had demonstrated the process of lux for her - completely without permission, of course - and she turned out to be an incredibly swift learner. Just before I came here, we discovered that she had betrayed us, allying herself with a dangerous dark practitioner."

[timebethine]

"It must claw at you, to know that you can't resolve it. I'm sorry," says Laertes. He looks down at his hands. "I know not what I would do, if I were so betrayed. What did you intend for her?"

[rememberettersberg]

"We'd had no time to form a plan," he says. "Yet another reason to worry about the situation I've left behind, I'm afraid. If she'd stayed, I would have attempted to have her apprenticeship formalised like Peter's. There has been a significant reemergence of magical activity in our world - the more people trained to respond to it, the better."

[timebethine]

"Do you know what caused this reemergence? Or does that cause remain veiled to you?"

[rememberettersberg]

"It's probably tied to whatever is keeping me young." He shrugs. "There aren't enough of us left to make a proper study of it."

[timebethine]

"And even if there were, here you are," says Laertes, a little wry. "Is this place more than ordinarily magical? Does it have any properties of note of which I should be wary?"

[rememberettersberg]

"It feels less magical than it ought to," he admits. "I would expect the whole place to be thrumming with unusual energy, but everything seems quite mundane." He grins. "Until it suddenly isn't."

[timebethine]

"As though the magic here is less inherent to the place than interjected betimes from somewhere else," Laertes muses.

[rememberettersberg]

"That's an interesting theory," says Nightingale. "I wish we had more idea of what this place actually is."

[timebethine]

"Do you have any theories?"

[rememberettersberg]

"It all feels like a grand experiment. Or a game. I suspect we're here for entertainment."

[timebethine]

The idea raises the hairs on the back of Laertes's neck. He can all too easily imagine lurkers in the shadows, peering unseen at him and all his friends. If Nightingale's theory is correct, Laertes wonders whether these supernatural spies are benevolent nisser or something more sinister. "Entertainment? Of whom?"

[rememberettersberg]

"It all feels very fae to me." He frowns. "Although that word covers multitudes."

[timebethine]

"I have thought more than once that this feels like the old stories of wandering into the land of the fae," says Laertes, nodding. "And it would well explain the regular mischief that attends us here."

[rememberettersberg]

Nightingale nods along with him. "It's the only way I can make sense of it. And from everything I know of the fae, we won't be done here until they decide so."

[timebethine]

"What have the fae to do with magic, in your world?"

[rememberettersberg]

"They are creatures of magic. Their laws are their own, their reality not quite ours."

[timebethine]

"That does seem to fit--I wonder, would they delight in the mischief of giving us books about their nature, knowing full well we're powerless to resist them? Or would they conceal that knowledge from us?"