{open} pick it all up and start again

[thehobbsgirl]

Who: Abigail Hobbs & you
Where: Mansion & surrounding grounds
When: Through the end of July; specify in threads please
Rating: none yet (will add as needed)
Summary: A catch-all post for non-event interactions.
The Story:

{this is a general prompt: if you want to work out a more specific scenario, hit me up on plurk}

If someone had told her in advance how quickly she would get used to this place, Abigail wouldn't have believed them. But the fact of the matter is, unlike most of the people here, she really doesn't have anything she misses, anything she's eager to get back to. Sure, some of the stuff that happens in Wonderland is alarming: transformations, puppy plagues, murders. But there were plenty of murders back home, and at least here she is afforded a comfortable anonymity. She can go where she wants without asking permission, and there is no point worrying about her future. Time is suspended, and the looming prospect of the rest of her life with it.

There is a just noticeable loosening in her personality. She is still reserved, still cold and suspicious by most people's standards, but her hostility is not quite so close to the surface. Abigail gets in the habit of walking every day, through the mansion and around the grounds, lost in her own thoughts. She has plenty to work through, after all.

Comments

[thehobbsgirl]

"Sure."

Evelyn's complete lack of response seems a pretty obvious cue that she definitely does not want to talk about her and Will. Abigail can't remember Will's exact wording, come to think of it. She'd been operating under the understanding that the two of them had some kind of ongoing thing, but now it crosses her mind that it might have been a one-time occurrence -- something far more casual. Might she have made trouble for Will, talking to Evelyn like this?

Oh, well. Even if she has, the damage is done. A tiny part of Abigail, that she doesn't want to acknowledge at the moment, hopes there is a small degree of trouble. It'll be useful, to see how he reacts. (Even now, when she is more relaxed around him and about him than she has ever been before, Abigail is perpetually testing boundaries, wary, waiting for the other shoe to drop.)

"Have you got any family here?"

It's a natural enough transition. Now that their conversation is starting to normalize, Abigail finds herself feeling intensely nosy about Evelyn.

[nascensibility]

Admittedly, Evelyn and Will's relationship took a new and interesting turn as of this past week, but she isn't the sort of person to kiss and tell. The ongoing thing is still ongoing, that she knows of. Perhaps it is popular in the twenty-first century for people to divulge the sordid details of their sexual exploits, but Evelyn hardly plans on assuming that mantle of vulnerability in front of a teenager.

"I used to," she volunteers, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. "My older brother was here for several months, a year or so ago."

With all the gentility of an upper-crust hostess, Evelyn leads Abigail around the furthest shelf to a pair of desks, one of them considerably more used than the other. Mark Meltzer's files spiral waist-high from the floor-up, a thin layer of dust coats the papers over his workspace. Evelyn's desk is marginally tidier, but only just. She hadn't the heart to move his things after he disappeared.

On a little electric stove in the corner, a kettle begins to whistle. It prompts her to gather cups and saucers before steeping the leaves and turning back to Abigail.

"When did you arrive?"

[thehobbsgirl]

Abigail takes in the details - the dusty desk, the well-maintained one, the setup that Evelyn has made for herself.

"Two months."

It's a little frightening to her how quickly the time has flown by. So easy to lose track, now that she understands the way things work around here, the logistics. She isn't getting any older, time isn't passing in the real world (she still thinks of it as the real world, not just her world) without her. It's like a very long, very mundane dream, really.

"You must've been here a really long time..."

Abigail runs a fingertip through the dust on top of one of the manila folders sitting atop the desk nearest to her.

[nascensibility]

Evelyn laughs, but the sound comes out a more humourless than she had intended. To make up for it, she slides a cup across her desk toward Abigail and sets a dish with sugar and lemon just next to it.

"Let's see now, in about six days it'll be...three years."

Saying it out loud makes something in her stutter, a gear missing a tooth wobbles out of place for just a moment before clicking back. Three years. A third of her years married. A tenth of her lifetime. Evelyn reaches for her own tea and stirs it absently, setting the spoon aside and taking a sip.

It's too hot, but the burning is the sharp jolt she needed to remind herself not to dwell on how long it's been. So many people have come and gone, footprints in sand being washed away by the tide. She casts a glance to Mark's desk before speaking again.

"A very long time."

[thehobbsgirl]

Abigail betrays her surprise in stillness rather than anything more overt ;all the same, she is surprised - shocked, even. Three years. Abigail does the same kind of qualitative calculations as Evelyn, but measures on the scale of her own life. She is still young enough that three years sounds endless. Three years ago she was fourteen years old; she was in sophomore year. Her father hadn't even started teaching her to hunt, yet.

Even if they don't age here, hearing from someone who has been around that long is disconcerting to Abigail. What if she is here three years? Or five? She's been enjoying her time here, generally. Enjoying the freedom from responsibility and notoriety. But the real possibility of being here indefinitely hits her then, and she realizes she doesn't want to. She wants to get back to her own world, her own life - to make something of it. What, she doesn't quite know yet. But something.

Holding the teacup absently, Abigail sits down heavily in the dusty chair at the unused desk.

"Wow." That's about all Abigail can manage, right now.

[nascensibility]

Evelyn realises how utterly dreadful it must sound out loud to someone who hasn't been in Wonderland all that long. Just do what you can to survive. A cloud of dust floats up from the cushion on Mark's chair as Abigail seats herself, the idea that she might be trapped here indefinitely sending a shock of hopelessness through her (no doubt). Evelyn hastens to make amends.

"It isn't- This is impermanent," she points out, setting down her cup for emphasis. "We aren't here forever, I've gone home multiple times. I just...have also come back here multiple times."

Two, to be exact. The first disappearance allowed her a day or so to bring the dead back to life and potentially doom the world in the process. The second leave of Wonderland lasted nine years. Now that's a story.

[thehobbsgirl]

She recognizes that Evelyn is trying to cheer her up, which seems odd to Abigail. It's her who has been stuck here so long. Evelyn ought to be the one in need of cheering. But instead she is worrying about Abigail and her feeling - this girl she only just met. Interesting.

It does comfort her some, to know that Evelyn has left within those three years. The thought of being pulled back to Wonderland again and again is horrifying in its own way, but the possibility of it seems more removed somehow. Abigail smiles, just a little, takes another drink of her tea.

Abigail's curiosity about Evelyn is, for the moment, stronger than her thought that just maybe, the question she's about to ask will make Evelyn feel worse about her captivity. "So where's home?" She's guessing England, at the very least, based on the accent.

[nascensibility]

Flopping down into her own seat at the other desk, Evelyn blows a stray curl out of her eyes and gives Abigail a crooked smile. The expression doesn't falter this time when she reaches for her tea and waves the steam away with her hand, processing Abigail's query and wondering how many times she's answered this question before.

"England, originally. I grew up at Mentmore Towers, it's- um. An estate over a village in Buckinghamshire."

She isn't entirely sure if that means anything at all to Abigail, as knowledge of the English peerage rarely extends to Americans whose surnames are not Waldorf, Astor, Carnegie or Rockefeller. Probably best to move onto more exciting information.

"But my mother was Egyptian, so we spent summers and holidays in Cairo. It inspired me to study archaeology as a profession."

[thehobbsgirl]

Abigail doesn't bat an eye at any of that. Evelyn's hunch is correct: it's pretty much all Downton Abbey to Abigail.

"What, like pyramids and mummies?" It's such an outlandish profession, to Abigail. Then again, outlandish is somehow the norm in this place. No one is just a teacher, or just a baker - they're all teacher-who-solves-crimes and baker-who-also-solves-crimes, or monster-hunters, or goodness knows what else.

[nascensibility]

"Pyramids and mummies," she affirms, smiling into her teacup. "And reading ancient Egyptian, studying architecture and pharaonic power, excavating temples and mastaba tombs."

And resurrecting the dead from the afterlife. It is Evelyn's understanding that the fields of both archaeology and Egyptology (while intertwined, the former can be mutually exclusive from the latter depending on the concentration) are somewhat more difficult to break into in the future, that they are not as highly regarded, and that the studies are relics of a bygone era.

Her era.

"I suppose that, for context, I should tell you that I'm from 1935."