Exploring the Island, Monday afternoon

[not_a_haint]

It was still cold, but to Caleb's reckoning it wasn't quite as bad as it had been, but maybe that was just his need to go for a walk talking. He'd spent many years staying in one place but that one place had been large enough for long pensive/brooding walks in the woods, and Caleb had had one or two spots he liked to call his "thinkin' places".

He'd marked out the beach close to the school as a possibility, as it had kept him enraptured for a nice while when he'd first come upon it. It had in fact distracted him from trying to explore sooner. But he wanted options.

As he went he tried to balance paying attention to his surroundings/orienting himself, and doing a bit of pondering.

So far, he thought his favorite thing about the 21st century was the indoor privy. (okay maybe that was more down to no longer living out in the wilds of Appalachia but still) His least favorite might be the internet. It was just so...distracting. And trying to determine truth from lies was, as Miss Arden had warned him a challenge. Not that books were necessarily much better in that department.

And of course his mind kept coming back to the disturbing things he'd learned about. The historical events of the past century. It hadn't been all bad of course but some of it had made him almost long for the simplicity and honesty of inhuman monsters. Even the liars.

[ooc: Caleb won't mind company, posted here instead of in townies because of longer pensiveness than I'd expected. Soundtrack for this post: Atonement by Jon Charles Dwyer]

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[afraid_of_marshmallows]

Arden was on her way to Midnight Manor, carrying a truly ridiculous amount of leftovers from class today. She figured she could probably just put it in the fridge with a For the sharing! sign and it would be gone within hours, especially considering Cal and Illyana, both.

"Oh! Hey, Caleb!" she said as she spotted Caleb. "What's up? You wouldn't happen to want any strozzapreti with oxtail ragù, would you?"

[not_a_haint]

Caleb had been in the midst of a particularly deep thought about what he'd seen of some of his childhood friends' fates and how it matched up with certain events he'd since learned about when the familiar voice brought him back to the present.

"Miss Arden!" he smiled. "Not much, I'm just explorin'. I uh, I have no idea what any of those words mean. Has the English language changed that much? Oh, well I guess I recognize oxtail at least."

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

"Technically, I only know what ragù is because it's also the name a jarred spaghetti sauce," Arden laughed. "But nah, strozzapreti is Italian. It's a pasta dish." She raised her arms a bit, which were laden down with takeout containers. "I'm in Beginning Gourmet Cooking Techniques on Mondays, which I think is just an excuse for Dr. Lecter to cook food for people."

This was absolutely not a complaint.

"I'm heading home--" she nodded vaguely towards the lighthouse "--and was already thinking of sharing this with the folks that live there. But hey, if you wanna lighten my load a bit for the rest of the walk home, I won't mind."

[not_a_haint]

Caleb had in fact been about to offer his services in that regard and was somehow simultaneously relieved at the opening and slightly irked that she'd beaten him to it. Somewhere in his mind he worried that now it would look like he'd only offered because she'd asked, but that certainly wasn't going to stop him from doing so.

"Well if it won't be too much of an imposition, I would like to help you out, thank you." he grinned. "Come to think of it," he added, "I'm not sure I've ever eaten Italian food. Certainly nothin' that would be described as gourmet. Which if it's the word I'm thinkin' of, I now know is not pronounced gor-met." He'd only ever seen it written down before.

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

Never talk shit about someone who mispronounces words that they learned from reading. Because it meant they were reading.

"Every time we talk, it's a learning experience for you," she said with a laugh. "Last week the internet, this week, Italian cooking." She had made the task of bringing the leftovers home even harder on herself than it needed to be, putting all the food into smaller, portion-sized containers, rather than her entire share in a few larger ones, but her foresight had paid off! "So we got, ahhhh...the strozzapreti, which also has horseradish crumbs, winter squash carbonara with pancetta and sage, crispy brown butter sweet potato gnocchi with balsamic caramelized mushrooms and goat cheese...aaaaaaaaaaaaaand pesto. I'll let you guess which one I made." She held out her arms. "Feel free to take however many you feel like trying?"

She'd just been assuming he'd grab however many he wanted to bring back to the dorms and eat and she'd keep carrying the rest.

[not_a_haint]

And now he was stuck tryin' to seem helpful without seemin' greedy. He did his best to find a balance. "There were words in there that I recognized, and some I didn't. But if I'm guessin' I'll say you made the one with sweet 'taters, uhm, potatoes?"

Most of the spices were familiar. Granny Amburgey had despaired of teachin' Caleb the intricacies of cookin' anythin' more complicated than pancakes, or of mixin' up remedies an' such. But with the plethora of youngin's around she'd fallen into the habit of narratin' what she was doin' in hopes of passin' on somethin'.

mun is in the process of re-listening to some of Caleb's canon and thus has the podcast's usual narrator in his mind, so there may be some extra accent stuff in the narration here :D

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

"The potato gnocchi," Arden said, pulling out one of the red-topped containers. And then she frowned at that. "Are you sure you only want one?" she asked. She shook her head and added the other three to his pile. "If you don't want the rest of them, you can put them in your dorm fridge," she said, nodding at her own handiwork. "I figure it's gotta go as fast there as it would at the boarding house." She loked up at him and crooked a smile. "I'm Southern. Feeding people is a compulsion."

[not_a_haint]

"One of the many useful life lessons my elders imparted on us, was that it is rude to turn down food if it is offered." he smiled back.

"'Specially if a young lady offers it.'" Caleb heard in his memory. Melvin Blevins, actin' as chauffer to young Caleb and his then guardian Miss Ellie, had given the boy that advice when Caleb was a boy. Miss Ellie had huffed good naturedly, insisting that;

"Cowboy is far too young for such concerns Mr. Blevins."

"On behalf of all the residents of the second floor," (if he and Sairis weren't the only residents) "I thank you. If nothin' else this'll give me a chance to practice with the microwave." That invention was another plus of the modern age. Convenience aside, Caleb believed it was only right and proper that such a marvel should exist by now.

"Can I ask, how long have you lived on the island?"

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

"Two years in September," Arden said, sounding oddly proud of that. "Came for college when I was eighteen. And yeah, in case you were wondering, this place still blows my mind on the regular.

[not_a_haint]

"I guess the classes have always been...eccentric? Although, for all I know they ain't all that different from college anywhere else. Probably other schools don't provide false identification for their students but no one I ever knew went to college before so I don't know."

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

"They've pretty much always been like this, yeah," she said with a laugh. "I've taken a bunch of classes about how to hit people." Which had come in handy, la la la. "According to TV and movies, the classes are pretty weird? But I couldn't say for sure because I was, ah. Homeschooled. For most of my life." She glanced away as she said that; probably the ocean was really exciting or something. Surely no other reason. "So what counts as a normal curriculum is outside of my area of expertise, too," she added, swinging her focus back up to him.

[not_a_haint]

"I think my education would count as bein' homeschooled too. Maybe. We had a buildin' we called the schoolhouse, and got our letters and 'rithmatic. But mostly we learned more practical stuff." Such as, how not to let the seed of darkness within you compel you to commit acts of horrific violence. "I had more formal schoolin' for a while but...I had to leave.

"Are, at the risk of pryin', are you from Earth?" She'd said she was southern, but maybe lots of planets had a south.

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

Fun fact! Lots of planets had a north, but a south? Surprisingly unrepresented.

"Yup!" she said. "Grew up in North Carolina, real close to Raleigh." She doubted he'd know what 'the Triangle' was, since it had originated in the 50's, but he might recognize the state capital. "My world's a little behind this one, time-wise? But only a handful of years, so it wasn't exactly a shock to get here. Well, the temporal bits weren't, pretty much everything else was."

She paused, looking back out to the ocean and stealing small glances at him. "...A different kind of Earth, though, than the usual one. Mine has--" Another quick glance, and then a sense of steeling herself. "Witches and vampires and shifters and stuff." That all came out in a rush, like she was saying it but wanted to get it out quickly.

[not_a_haint]

He wasn't sure if she just didn't like to talk about that stuff or if she was worried he'd not believe her. He'd been told when growing up that it could be an awkward subject for many reasons.

"Oh mine does too. Well, I dunno if we have vampires, and I suppose it might depend on what you mean by shifters. But we definitely got witches. Good ones. Presumably bad ones too I guess. But we got all sorts of haints and boogers, by which I mean bogeymen, not the stuff what comes outta yer nose."

Maybe some could come outta your nose but he squashed that thought real quick.

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

"Shifters, uh, people that transform into animals? Usually predators? Jaguars, panthers, wolves are the most common, at least in North America," she said, voice getting a little more confident. "It's, uh, against one of the most important laws back home to talk about the existence of the Other Side to a human - probable human, apologies if I got that wrong - and I'm just getting comfortable talking about it openly, you know?"

She laughed, a little awkwardly. Be happy, Caleb! You missed out on the full explanation which involved...well, a whole lot of sanctioned murder.

"I don't think we have any uh, haints? Or boo--bogeymen? But we've got a smattering of other types, too. Fae, djinn, elementals? Any of those ring a bell for you?"

[not_a_haint]

Despite one spirit's insistence when he was a kid, Caleb was still pretty sure he was human.

"I am human, yeah, but I won't tell on you. I think we do have something like shifters, though I never met one. I've read about Fae and they sound a lot like some of the things we get cautioned about. Not sure about djinn though. And one of my teachers might actually count as an elemental. Which I don't think I was supposed to tell about." he grimaced.

"'Haints and boogers' is kinda our way of sayin' ghosts and goblins, it's kinda a catch all for the bein's we're meant to stay clear of."

mun has somewhat recently pondered how similar spooky tales of the Appalachian mountains, vampire legends, and many dark fae are

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

Her head snapped up at that and she looked at him, wide-eyed. "What do you mean, might count as an elemental?" Arden asked in a very normal fashion.

Honest.

[not_a_haint]

Well heck, in for a penny as they say.

"Well I ain't sure, but Mr. Bartholomew helped me learn...well now I have to back up. I gotta condition that I had to learn to control. It's why I had to go live with Granny Amburgey in Kentucky. Mr. Bartholomew helped me do that. And sometimes he's a man, and sometimes he's a bear...oh that might qualify him as a shifter too? Except he ain't actually either. He's an avatar of The Green, and even though he looks like a natural, if very large person or bear, he's actually made outta dirt and vines and stuff."

Hopefully Bartholomew wouldn't mind Caleb telling about this. It wasn't exactly a secret but it wasn't really Caleb's "not secret" to tell.

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

"Oh! That's not like--" The slightest pause. "Not like anything I've ever heard of," she finished.

#NailedIt

"He sounds like he's part of the natural world. We don't have an equivalent of 'the Green' or anything like that, I don't think." Don't worry, Caleb. Liliana would back your understanding of elements as correct. "Elementals, I think, just harness their element for magic or something."

Look, yes, Arden was trying to be better about telling people what she really was, but she'd used a lot of daring last week and she was going to have to use more tomorrow. Give the girl a break.

[not_a_haint]

"Oh, yeah I'm not sure we got anything like that then. But I'm not an expert. A lotta my knowledge came from a witch or witch in trainin' readin' over my shoulder and scoffin' at whatever the author had come up with.

"Cause a lot of it was literally fiction." he finished sheepishly. "But some of it came straight from folks who knew what they were talkin' about." Probably.

Plenty of the tales folk told in Caleb's world were true at the base of it, but when facts were light, they were filled in with speculation. Caleb's "patron" was a prime example of that. There were quite a few stories told of the Witchy Woman, the Dark Mother, the...well you get the idea. Caleb knew some of the truth, but only some.

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

"I know...some stuff," Arden said. "Bits and pieces. I'd like to know more, but that would require going home and I'm not doing that, so..." She shrugged. "Bits and pieces it is, I guess!"

[not_a_haint]

Even after 90 years, Caleb wasn't certain it was entirely safe for him to go home either. When he'd gotten old enough he'd been given a bit more than the usual ominous but vague "bad people and things might want to harm or use you" warning. He'd been given some names. And many of them were either not mortal, or worked for organizations that could possibly still be around.

"It might sound silly comin' from someone who just got here but I don't relish the idea of goin' home neither. I poked around a bit in the library and on the internet, and boy were you on the money about that, and found, well some promising sources for knowledge of the weird and uncanny but it wasn't nothin' more than anyone could find out.

"There was a phrase Granny Amburgey and some of the folks who come by to help teach us liked to use when we asked too many questions, or tried to get a peek into her private library; 'cherish the bliss of ignorance young'un, for it is a pleasure denied some of us'.

Sometimes I could see their point, I mean alla us kids in the Devil's Cradle were there because one way or t'other we'd found out more'n our share about the dark things in the mountains. On the other hand if maybe someone'd been more open about things my family wouldn't've...

"Well anyway I'm sure I had a point when I opened my mouth but I lost it."

He'd mostly just wanted the conversation to continue. The last year or so there'd been a considerable age gap between Caleb and the other children in the Cradle and he'd missed this.

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

"Your granny had the right of it," Arden murmured, thinking all too vividly of books she'd found in libraries she'd been forbidden to enter-- and how much she wished she could unsee what she'd seen.

"Devil's Cradle...is that like some kind of...foster housing?" she asked, hearing that trailing off and deliberate topic switch after he mentioned his family.

[not_a_haint]

“Yeah, though Granny wasn’t too pleased with the name. But it stuck and us kids kinda embraced it. We all had some condition or other that kept us from bein’ taken in by ordinary folks.

“Some of us were worse off than others. I’m one’a the lucky ones. Both in terms of gettin’ a handle on myself and…I lost my people, but found others who looked out for me. Hence my comin’ to an otherworldly institute of higher learnin’.”

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

"Me too, actually," Arden said, giving him a wry smile. "Mostly. My parents died when I was a few days old, and I bounced around from foster care to foster care. None of them wanted to keep me, and I didn't understand why. Not until I was seven and adopted by my legal guardian, Callista." It was hard to make out exactly what she might have felt about this Callista, but from the hardness in her voice, it probably wasn't well. "Turns out I wasn't an ordinary kid, either, and people could, like, low-key sense it."

[not_a_haint]

“I’m so sorry.” There was a lot in that sorry, sorry for her loss, sorry for everything that’d happened since. Hard luck story competitions were inevitable in the Cradle, and they generally served him as a reminder of how good he’d had it.

He shifted awkwardly, worrying he’d been monopolizing the conversation, and also that this topic might be painful. So he tried to smoothly segue (not that he knew that word) to something still about her, but hopefully less troubling.

“So uh, you’re from the past too?” Nailed it.

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

And here, Arden hadn't been trying to get into the Sadness Olympics, but bond over the whole, 'wow, being an orphan with weird conditions that make other people not want you sucks, huh? But hey, at least here, you're not alone in that, either!'

Ah well, somethings were lost in the transition from brain to mouth, sadly.

"Only by a few years," Arden said. "So I'm not really sure it even counts as being from the past when the only thing that's noticeably different is which model the iphone is on."

[not_a_haint]

Always a chance it'd come up again.

"Is, is that different from the phones most ever'body seems to have or is that the actual name for 'em?" He wasn't sure what was more incredible, their size, their being wireless, or that they apparently weren't just phones.

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

Only because she didn't have telepathy!

"That's the actual name for some of the phones," Arden said. "The big two types of phones are iPhones and Androids, owned by two huge rival tech companies. Please don't ask me what the difference is? I have no idea. Have you gotten a phone yet?"

[not_a_haint]

"No, not yet. I'm not even sure how to get one. And t'be honest I wasn't sure I was interested in tryin' for a bit. I'm still gettin' used to computers. Are they pretty essential though?"

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

"You can get one at Turtle and Canary," Arden said. "And yeah, it's pretty essential. It's a computer that fits in your pocket and you can also talk to your friends and take pictures."

[not_a_haint]

So far he'd somewhat liked that it took as much effort to get to the computer lab as it did to get to the library. Someday he'd encounter the term "luddite" and wouldn't take it too badly.

He supposed however that his new circumstances would make a telephone more useful than it had ever been to him before.

Also,

"Pictures eh? That reminds me I been meanin' to pick up a few hobbies b'sides starin' at the world like a rube."

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

"Oh! Do you have any ideas about what you'd like to try?" Arden asked. "Mr. Argentum at the Photo Hut would love to get you into photography. And there's the Magpie Emporium that has a lot of games and stuff. There's the bowling alley and the movie theater."

[not_a_haint]

"Well I'm takin' cinema studies and creative writin'," Which he might have even chosen for himself if he'd been the one to pick this first time around, "I haven't seen a lotta films. Sometimes a friend of Granny's would bring a projector and some old films, mostly cartoons. And we'd get reg'lar deliveries of old pulp magazines and national geographics...so I guess my first forays into tryin' to write fiction'll be mostly inspired by them.

"I don't think I'd thought about photography until you just mentioned it. I'm gettin' the feelin' I just might be spoiled for choice alla a sudden. What about you? When you're not cookin' exotic cuisine or helpin' lost souls in the library, what do you do for fun?"

And if creating playlists counts as a hobby then when he figures out how to use tidal or spotify...I already have one created

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

Arden fully believed in the hobby that was coordinating playlists.

"I took a couple of photography classes with Mr. Argentum, so I also do photography. Hang out with friends, listen to music, read...in the summer, I practically live at the beach. Paintball is really fun...and kill time on the internet."

[not_a_haint]

“I haven’t gotten to it yet but catchin’ up on music is on my list…I somehow doubt that paintball is what I’m picturing’.” Which was baseball but involving paint somehow.

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

"So, umm, I don't know if you've met Captain Rogers yet, but he was originally from around when you are, I think? He is probably a great resource to talk to," Arden said, snapping her fingers. "Cause he knows everything he did to acclimate."