Yo, I'll tell you what I want, what I really really want

[justrunsasaloon]

Who: Ellen/Porthos & You
Where: Everywhere
When: Duration of the event (May 16th - 19th)
Rating: Pg13 (will change if necessary)
Summary: Everyone's craving something. Some cravings are easier to satisfy than others.
The Story:


Ellen: Ellen can be found all over the mansion and the Greenhouse, painting symbols and sigils. Some are recognizable (like so) others are a lot more obscure, and might not even be right! Ellen doesn't care, she's doing it all from memory, and is working them into everything she can think of. The last day will be chalk because she's out of paint and isn't thinking well enough to get more from the closets.

She will draw them on people upon request.

Porthos: Porthos is looking for the ~Ladies~. Any lady want someone to spend some time with? Platonic or not? Porthos is your guy! He likes all sorts of attention. He will still have that slight moral compass that the ones too young will be safe from anything but platonic attention, but he will enjoy their company all the same.

Comments

For Ellen.

[seekinghome]

Ed starts to leave his room to go spend the entire weekend a few hours in the library when he spots Ellen. "Oh hey. What's with all the paint?"

[justrunsasaloon]

Ellen is actually humming while she works. This is the sort of thing she should have done a long time ago. Why hadn't she again?

She makes the final mark of the sigil and caps her paint can finally, brushing hair out fo her face. Flipping back a rug - because she's defacing property, but no reason it can't be pretty - she looks up at Ed.

"Devil's traps, a few banishing sigils for ghosts and evil spirits." She pauses for a minute. "You live with your brother right? I can do your rooms to keep the nasties out if you want."

[seekinghome]

At the moment, what Ed's taking from this is "There's potentially going to be an angry demon stuck outside my bedroom?"

Just what he needs. A demon having a hissyfit out in the hall.

[justrunsasaloon]

"They can't hurt you." She sounds almost offended at the thought that she'd leave him, or his brother, to be hurt. Ellen sighs. "All it will do is prevent him from getting in your room that's all. There will be plenty of room for him to go around it, if he doesn't want to get stuck."

He just won't be able to get in your rooms. That's a good thing, right?

[seekinghome]

"I was thinking more of whoever got stuck would be very loud about voicing their pissiness, making it hard to sleep."

Ed thinks for a moment and then shrugs. "Why not."

for porthos.

[wolfwild]

This morning, Lyanna dared to test out the indulgences of these closets. And from hers she found a tidy set of wooden weapons: play sticks; training swords; untrimmed shields. And she marched the whole lot of them out to a grassy section outside the mansion. If she is to get to know the strangers in this place, she would test them. Not a test of ability, per se, but a test to see whether they would even deign to knock swords with her -- however childishly.

She recognizes Porthos from a distance and springs from where she reclined in the grass -- jumping on bare feet, she set her skirts a flutter as she hopped a few times. And waved her arms. "Ser! Beg pardon, ser!"

[dashingdignity]

Porthos is finding a rather dearth of feminine company this morning and he isn't sure why. He finds himself craving it and left the others behind to their own pursuits. He wanders among the grounds, waving to the merchants and missing the sights and sounds - though not the smells - of Paris.

Hearing his name, he turns and sees Lady Lyanna beckoning him over.

Well, he's not one to turn down a lady now is he? Smiling he wanders over to her and bows deeply. "Good morning, Lady Lyanna. How may I be of assistance?"

[wolfwild]

His bow delighted her. And she returned it by way of a curtsey so enthusiastic that her sheer exuberance might be mistaken for clumisness. But in reality, she was merely trying to overcome a deep dissatisfaction with revelations given to her by Lord Robert Baratheon. And to overcome them, she sought to overcome all else: sensibility; sadness; strangers, in all manner of challenges and wagers.

She brushed hair back from her face and smiled -- a little too widely. "We spoke on the day I arrived of swords, ser. And now I have some--" Wooden ones only, of course. But she stepped to the left so she might show them off all the same.

[dashingdignity]

Porthos laughed at her utter delight. She was like the young flower girls that often danced during festivals, smiling with flowers in their hair. He eyed the wooden weapons and raised his eyebrows at her. Nothing could have surprised him more, really.

He put a hand on his sword hilt - he still went everywhere with it, almost afraid the mansion would eat it, should he leave it behind.

"Ah, testing the theory that I don't care if a woman carries a sword, my Lady?"

[wolfwild]

"Hmm!" She hummed. And crouched to catch up the handle of a training sword in her hand. It received a lazy spin -- more art than skill. "Or else just the theory that I should be carrying one at all."

For Ellen.

[pottershotter]

James has absolutely no idea who's been dumping salt on the windows or why. As soon as he notices it, he sees them everywhere. He's pretty sure the mansion's just mocking him at this point, or maybe making him see things, because otherwise why would there just be salt lying around? That's just silly.

The first day he leaves them alone, though seeing them usually makes him veer towards a closet for a bag of crisps. But by the second day, he's can't hold himself back anymore. After making sure no one's looking, he goes right up to the windowsill and runs his hand across it, completely ruining the line. It feels good against his fingers, and he pulls his hand back and looks at it, making sure there's nothing gross from the window on it. Then, unable to help himself at all anymore, he licks the salt right off his fingers.

He does this for every salted window he comes across. Eventually, as the third day rolls around, he find windows he already wiped clean salted again and takes the salt from them all over again without a second thought. And by the last day, when they've inevitably been laid down again, James wants the salt so much that he's stopped looking to see if anyone's watching him. He doesn't care if anyone else thinks it's gross anymore he needs it, okay?

[justrunsasaloon]

Who the hell keeps ruining her salt lines? It isn't the mansion. No, there are definite fingerprints in all of the salt lines that have been removed. The boys and Jo know better, Cas wouldn't... Crowley couldn't and Meg supposedly wasn't here any longer.

Well, that's definitely bothersome.

Muttering, she starts checking her salt lines and just... stares, seeing the young man scoop her salt up. "Hey! What the hell do you think you're doing?"

[pottershotter]

James nearly jumps out of his skin when he's shouted at. He'd been so absorbed in what he was doing that he hadn't even heard her coming. He whips around, immediately putting his hand behind his back, and his eyes are wide. He's been caught red handed. His salt covered fingers twitch behind his back and he uses his free hand to hold that arm still. It takes far more effort and concentration than it really should.

Slowly, he realizes he recognizes this person. It's Jo's Mum, and the fact that it's someone he only sort of knows makes it worse somehow. The whole situation is mortifying, mostly because he really doesn't have a good answer. He prides himself on being able to sweet talk his way out of most things, but...he's been wiping strange lines of salt off of windows and compulsively licking it off his hands. There is no good excuse for it and frankly he's lucky it actually was salt, since he eventually stopped paying much attention. What good reason could he possibly have for doing what he's doing? Only amateurs say "nothing" when they've obviously been caught, but the truth is horribly embarrassing.

"Oh," he finally says, dumbly. "...Were those your salt lines? I. I am so sorry. I had no idea. My mistake!"

James forces himself to sidestep away from the window, and decides that choosing not to answer is the best thing he can do for himself right now.

[justrunsasaloon]

She scowls and uses the bag of salt in her hands to fix the line he's ruined. "Of course they're mine. Jo and the boys haven't done it." So, who else would think of doing such a thing? Honestly, what is he thinking.

"What's behind your back?" Because now she isn't sure what's going on and she wants to know. There has to be an explanation. She just hopes it doesn't involve demons. Exorcising doesn't work here.

[pottershotter]

James stares as she draws the line over again, the way a drug addict might stare if she was lining the windows with cocaine. The temptation is so strong to mess it up again, to drag his hand through it and bring it up to his mouth. Or maybe he could just lick it right off the window and skip a whole step. His whole body wavers, but with great difficulty he makes himself stand in place. He only heard about half of that first part. Something about Jo?

But he catches that question and it startles him back to full attention.

"Nothing! Nothing's behind my back," he says quickly. Since he knows she won't believe him unless she sees, he lets go of his wrist and puts both his hands up in the air. One of them is speckled white with salt. So there was salt behind his back, but she knew that already, right? He meant there was nothing else there.

He doesn't even last a full second though. It's too close to his face and he can smell it on his hand and before he can even think twice about it he's licking it off his fingers. It brings immediate relief, but it's fleeting. It's gone as quickly as it came and before James knows it there isn't a single grain of salt left on his hand.

Saturday for Ellen

[airshipswank]

Wonderland has always made it abundantly clear that Buckingham was not permitted to satisfy all his cravings the same way he might at home; months and months in this world have made him a grudging student to that lesson. And yet since yesterday he has come to discover an entirely new cruelty, a desire so deep that his usual distractions would no more sate it than a man with a wooden bucket would empty the waters of an ocean.

After a while he took to distracting himself instead, at least as best as he could. He had, for instance, the notion that perhaps tending to the flowers in the Greenhouse might soothe his thoughts, as it often had in the past. But already he thinks of his gardener rather than the gardens; not of the beauty that bloomed around his estate, but of the shelter its hedges would provide from prying eyes when they lay entwined.

Buckingham shakes the thought off, and vows not to allow his mind another excursion into their direction, which... proves somewhat more trying than anticipated, when he finds the greenhouse occupied by an old, ah, acquaintance.

"Ellen," he greets curtly through a somewhat clenched smile, before he can reel in his surprise.

[justrunsasaloon]

Ellen knows that there are herbs in here that she needs. She'd promised Derek not to use wolfsbane because of the wolves, but there are other things - sage, agrimony, and others - that will come in handy for protective circles and the like.

"Your lordship."

She's plucking the leaves off a plant, using the mortar and pestle to grind the leaves into paste for the protective circle she wants to put in the bar.

Ellen wipes her hands off. "Did you need a devil's trap or something more complex?"

[airshipswank]

"Something far simpler, I suppose," Buckingham muses without thought.

At the back of the greenhouse he spies his lavender blue queen, luscious and full in its bloom. His need for its services had been scarce in Wonderland, yet he thought it a fine distraction to obtain further supplies all the same. The harvest, if nothing else, would require some concentration and care, which he hoped might suit to take his mind away from other matters. An endeavour somewhat doomed to fail now.

Buckingham considers making his excuses, but already his feet object to the retreat, and he finds himself approaching Ellen. At least his eyes trail towards the mortar yet, and to leaves which he thinks he recognises well enough, although for what purpose they would be combined that way he could not quite imagine.

"A poultice?" he ventures after some thought. "I'd thought the clinic had... better cures to offer."

[justrunsasaloon]

She raises her eyebrows at him and reaches over to pull a bit of lavender in front of her. That too gets chopped and pulverized into the hex bag she's making.

"I leave the medical stuff to those that know it." She's not going to step on toes there. Besides her length of herbal knowledge ends at peppermint for upset stomachs and lemon tea and honey for a sore throat. After that, she likes medicine the way it is.

"This is for hex bags. Protection spells. And I'll be throwing in some holy water in a bit." She picks up one of the bags - crocheted in a delightful purple and tied tight - and tosses it in her hands. "You should hold onto one of these. Never know when it might come in handy."

[airshipswank]

"I'd not taken you for a witch!"

Yes, that discovery certainly ought to suffice in curbing his cravings, should it not? ...No, no, all in all the opposite effect seems far more palpable. The duke leans against her work surface, and reaches to attempt closer inspection of one of the bags.

"Suppose none of them will ward against Wonderland's whims, eh?"

Ellen bb come teach Hector this hunting thing.

[justguidelines]

This...Compulsion, for lack of a better word, that has him actually moving through the mansion at the busiest of times when he typically avoids the heavy traffic times and areas to the best of his ability, has honestly left him slightly worried.

Oh, he's been here long enough to know it's an event, and that soon enough things will return to normal for a short span of time, because Hector is certainly not the type to go out and seek companionship of the human type without a reason to do so. He's been perfectly content to carry on as he has.

And yet here he is, anyway, seeking out some of the faces he regards as friendly. The strange markings everywhere are not necessarily something he's familiar with, though they bring to mind his short jaunt on the other side of the mirrors, where he'd met a dragon, of all things, who'd taught him something more than passingly similar. The salt on the windows he understands. It's a practice used in Obeah, and he'd seen it plenty of times in that dead time he'd spent waiting for the others to turn up at Tia Dalma's shack. He'd thought it funny, then, to waste something like salt to keep spirits out.

But then, he knows there's a soul in this place that puts just as much weight behind things like that. Which is why he follows the trail, to come up on her. And for a moment, he simply stands there, because there's no purpose beyond him tracking her down, other than sometimes it's a little nice to converse with the few you get along with, before he shakes it completely.

"You've been busy, I'd wager."

PREPARE TO LEARN A THING.

[justrunsasaloon]

She looks up from staring at the devil's trap. Just why... Damned events. She's getting damned tired of this place yanking her around. Still, protecting certain places can't be bad things.

Humming to herself, she keeps at it. The Key of Solomon holds a special place of honor near the bar, because she'll be damned if certain people are getting in. She paints salt into the circle just for the extra kick. Why the hell not?

She snorts, hearing Hector's comment and doesn't look up from her work. "Damn place yanking us around again. I'm gettin' real tired of it."

Sitting back on her heels, she uses the back of her hand to shove hair out of her face. "You out joinin' the masses?" She knows his lone wolf tendencies and usually doesn't care.

But if this is an event and he's about to hug her, she wants to shoot him first and spare them both.

/TAKES NOTES

[justguidelines]

Luckily for the both of them, he has no intention of remotely touching anyone in any fashion. He's not so far gone as to want things that imply feelings. Only a little pleasant company.

So on that score, Ellen should take it as a compliment that he's sought her out in particular.

"Aye, I've noticed. Otherwise nary would I be standing here." It's a hard thing to admit that he's a much a puppet to these things as anyone else. It dings his pride a little. "But, I suppose as long as I must, at the very least I could point meself in places where I won't be blamed for killing some fool."

He's still boggled that, all his time here, he's not killed a single soul. It's truly a miracle.

He looks around then, at both the seal she's painting, and back behind him, before bothering to speak again. "And I suppose yours is drown in paranoia, is it?" He has a general idea of what things are supposed to do, though he's never bothered seeking out the knowledge himself.

[justrunsasaloon]

She'll take the compliment as she usually does: Silently, and without any acknowledgement at all. What are feelings?

"Well, at least it's not nearly as bad as some. The singing I could have done without." It's said dryly and a poke at her own lack of singing ability. She hadn't minded too much, but singing about death had sucked a lot.

"Protection." She shrugs. She protects people as best she can. She's always brought people into the roadhouse - and now the bar - as she sees fit to protect them, whether they think they need it or not.

[justguidelines]

Feelings are gross, that's what they are.

"Protection." There's possibly a slight uncharitable tone in his voice, as he continues to look over the markings. "Protection from what. Spirits?" Because they are entirely similar, indeed to the veve found in the tiny village around Tia Dalma's shack, what he'd seen of them at the time, and in New Orleans, the few times he'd visited there.

But it's kind of funny, because it's not something he'd expect a person from the supposedly modern and godless future to worry themselves with. "As far as I know, only the obeah bother with this. And pardon me forwardness - o'course - but you don't strike me as the type to be a practitioner."