Log - We Need to Talk (Open)

[graveyounglady]

Who: Mercy Graves & OTA
When: Early/mid-November
Where: Around the ADI HQ
Summary: Going to some counseling sessions and offering her own counseling services.
Warnings: Will add as they come up!

A. Attending Counseling
It might be the first time she's here or the third or fourth. Stepping through the doors to the counseling center in ADI never does get much easier. She'd feel better if it were some sort of temple, maybe, knowing there were clerics behind the doors or some other leader. At least she knows that some of the time, there is another cleric. Caduceus when he's in is someone she feels safe with.

And today, she has someone else with her. Maybe an old friend, maybe someone she's only just met. They might be there to meet with Caduceus to talk or it might be someone else working in this department.

"You feeling all right with this?"


B. Mealtime Wisdom
It's not just Mercy who needs help. She knows others do, and some of them don't seem keen to head to the counseling center. That doesn't mean she can't lend an ear for those that might want it. She notices someone sitting alone in the canteen when she steps in during lunch or dinner. Maybe they're new, maybe they've been here a while and just look lonely to her eyes. Either way, she steps close to the table.

"This here seat taken? Don't much like eating by myself. Makes it dull as hemming a skirt."

Comments

[graveyounglady]

"Mr. Caduceus, at least. I owe him my life, and you get to trusting a body when that happens, don't you?" She does, anyway. "We got a fair few things in common, too. He's a grave cleric, and I'm an undertaker. Was, anyway, growing up. There's magics and gods that's good in his world, too. Not like this one.

"How about you? What were you up to 'fore you were here?"

[abrightboy]

He hadn’t realized this Mr Caduceus was brought here like them. He’d assumed he was regular ADI staff.

“I work with the police,” he tells her. “How did Mr Caduceus save your life?”

[graveyounglady]

"And police is like... guards." Yes. She thinks she understands that at his point. Or... security is like guards and police are like soldiers. Except she's been told those are different. It's confusing when the towns and countries are so much bigger than she's used to. Leigland's huge, but it has nothing on this place. "Right.

"It was when those kelpies were around. Were you here for that? I got caught and turned into a seal. Him and another fellow pulled me out of the water when I had a kelpie chewing on my heel. Probably would have taken that flipper and my heel clear off if he hadn't stepped in. Mr. Winter did a fair bit of rescuing my, too, but Mr. Caduceus is the one who cut me out of the skin."

[abrightboy]

"I was here for that," he admits grimly. "They took a friend of mine. Mr Arroyo. I got into the cave with Winter's help. I'm sorry you had to go through that," he tells her.

[graveyounglady]

"I'm sorry anyone did." She shakes her head, slightly. "I was able to help a little while I was a seal, but it all felt so strange. And I kept having nightmares after that, getting twisted up in my blankets and thinking I was in that skin again." Mercy shivers slightly.

"Everyone here's so brave, brushing so much of it off like it ain't nothing."

[abrightboy]

“I think they’re… repressing more than brushing,” Malcolm observes. “It’s easier to feel like you’re okay if you pretend to be okay.”

[graveyounglady]

"Is that what you do? I... try not to talk about some of the bad things that've happened, but that don't mean I don't spend time ruminating on them when it's quiet. Think that's part of why I like being around folk. Harder to get trapped in your own thoughts that way."

[abrightboy]

Malcolm breathes a laugh out down at his coffee, then looks at her.

"That's absolutely what I do and back home I work as much as possible to avoid living inside my own head. Unfortunately, the work here is less... absorbing. But, I guess, fortunately I have good roommates, so there are always other people around. This is the first time I've ever lived with anyone outside of my family, and that was only while I was growing up."

[graveyounglady]

"What would make it more absorbing?" Mercy tilts her head. "Maybe they ain't got you doing the right kinds of work." He might be here for her benefit, but she's going to try to help him, in turn.

[abrightboy]

“I hunt murderers at home. Human monsters with motivations I don’t agree with but do understand,” he explains to her. “They’re puzzles I take apart to protect people. I can’t do much to protect people here, where my nightmares murder my friends and actual monsters overpower me to do whatever they want.”

[graveyounglady]

She falls quiet for a moment because those concerns aren't unfamiliar, certainly. "We got a bigger puzzle here, that's for sure. One I ain't got much in the way of experience with. Truth be told, I never seen magic like they got here in my world. It's all... natural stuff. The way the plants grow and you feed the soil and healing arts.

"All of this has got the cast of something wicked, the like you hear about in stories, but never see. Like one of the evilest gods is ruling over this place, pulling it apart. Have you got magic back in your world, at all?"

[abrightboy]

“No,” he tells her. “No, not at all. But we do have evil and I’ve seen a lot of it.”

[graveyounglady]

"Suppose you don't need gods for evil, aye." Mercy sighs, glancing off to the side. "It'd be nice if folk didn't pick at each other while we got bigger problems."

[abrightboy]

“I think you’ve summed up every problem with the human race,” Malcolm points out.

[graveyounglady]

Mercy huffs. "There's the occasional picking that needs doing when someone's making a problem they shouldn't be, at least. Taking more than their fair share and the like."

[abrightboy]

"Well, they become the bigger problem, don't they?" Malcolm says with a light laugh.

[graveyounglady]

"Suppose, but don't that bring at least some of this down to the sort of thing you're used to? Avatar's, they're... they were people, right? Maybe some of them still are, after a fashion, just god-touched." With all the blessings and curses that come of such things, if the old stories are to be believed.

"Reckon you could still figure out the people part of it, even if some of the cursed things isn't part of your trade."

[abrightboy]

"I suppose so," he admits. "It just... feels so different. It feels weird and wrong."

[graveyounglady]

"Because it's magic? Or because it's all evil?"

[abrightboy]

"Must be the magic," he concedes. "I'm used to the evil."

[graveyounglady]

Mercy thinks on that for a long moment. "Thinking maybe magic's got different meanings to different folk. What's magic to you?"

[abrightboy]

"What do you mean, it's different to different people? I'm not sure I understand what kinds there even are," he admits.

[graveyounglady]

"I mean... there're things here I'd think of as magic. The way that plants grow and thrive, how birds know when the spring is coming and set out their nests, or how the seasons turn. But most people here don't seem to think that's anything much. It's... amazing, though, ain't it? That's magic to me. And learning to read the patterns or cultivate things to grow better, that's a form or practicing magic for my people."

[abrightboy]

"Oh, that's like.... Clarke's Third Law stuff. No, I mean... mystical... magic. I guess. We don't have magic where I'm from, so... yeah, I don't think I even have the magical education level required to go into it," he admits.

[graveyounglady]

Mercy blinks a few times. "Can't rightly say I ever heard of Clark or his laws. Is that god?"