[PRP] @ Mom: I'll go check it out (Lily/Pride)

[AMItotic]

Taking selfies to get to Other Ashdown was honestly the best thing Lily had discovered. It was convenient, even when she had to drop her phone immediately afterwards because her hands were paws. As a fisher, she scampered to the ground from her tree perch, a notebook held gingerly between her needle teeth. She shuffled it and her discarded phone into a backpack on the ground below, zipping it halfway with her teeth and then stepping through the straps to drag it around like a sled for noodles. The park she'd been resting in was only a few blocks from campus, so she waddled forward, trying to think of where she might find the Prideful One and deliver Eve's message.

At the edge of the ruins that made up Other Blackfriar's, Lily paused, sniffing at the air, and then she filled her lungs and let out a blood-curdling screech. If that didn't work, she supposed she could start scratching up the bookshelves. Some of them were even mahogany.

shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

"There's no need to scream," said Pride grumpily. He was slowly acquiring more clothes: Mercer's jacket, a shirt, even some pants now. And the place was already trashed, so, yeah.

Also he seemed to have made some knocked-over bookshelves into a workspace.

"What is it," he asked the fisher.

AMItotic

 

[AMItotic]

Lily let her scream trail off into a soft chuff, dragging her backpack to the workspace. She slid out from the straps and dug her face into its pockets for the notebook, then offered it up to Pride with a helpful tail wag (regardless of whether fishers did that in the wild, it was like sign language with her butt for 'hello I am friendly').

In slightly drooled-on black ink, the open page read as follows:

Quote:

Hi Pride
So this whole charter thing is going down and its supposed to mess with moonwalkers but I'm still not sure how
Or what we're even supposed to be fighting for
Eve said you might know?? please advise
It's all very confusing and unfortunately I am not a very good enforcer :C

The whole thread is on my cell the lock is 1001 if you want to look at it

She did not climb on the bookshelves, but she kept looking at them between watching Pride, making soft huffing noises. He would never know how patient she was, to not climb the thing.

shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

Pride read the note, picked up the phone from the backpack, and read the thread. He made a face and settled himself on the area of the bookshelves that was evidently a chair now. "The wordy one's right. Lady? You're supposed to be making sure that no tithes get ******** and no violent other creatures go on vacation in the real world. The wargs ought to be helping. But I'm not sure what this Eve person wants to know from me...

"The reason there weren't any weres to mentor you is because most of them got dead in the years since the last group of you awakened," he said, musing, scrolling back to look through the emails again. "By got dead I mean they were ******** murdered. Who by, I don't know. Not Renard or Liam, it has to be someone who was already here."

He looked at Lily over the phone. "D'you mind if I add something to this email chain?"

AMItotic

 

[AMItotic]

Lily made a deflated squeak. Of course the mentors were murdered. Of course they were going in blind. She still wasn't sure how to keep tithes in line or how to network with wargs (beyond running in the forest with Nasir and Trouble, but that was less business and more just a really good time). Still, the least she could do was get information out there where it could be had, and so she motioned towards the phone with her paws as a sign of permission. Whatever Pride needed to do was fine by her.

shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

"Thanks," said Pride.

He was quiet for a few minutes as he typed. When he was done, he set the phone down so Lily could investigate what he'd sent.

"So I think someone's been sabotaging our efforts," he said, with no other preamble. "Someone here, in the otherworld. I know you say you aren't the best enforcer, but I think you're what we've got, so you're gonna have to try. Can you start looking into the others? Me, the original three, Noeh, Pax--that's not everyone but it's a bunch of us--Ezra and Melany, I suppose. Someone doesn't want this s**t to end, and I think they'll keep ******** things up until we find it out." He looked really ******** serious. "If you agree to try, do the fisher thing where you stand on your hind legs," he said.

AMItotic

 

[AMItotic]

Lily sniffed her phone as she glanced over the new responses, carefully reading over the new words. With her nose, she started a new message and poked out, in choppy typing, the following without sending it off:

Quote:

what haoppeended back thwn

She nodded solemnly, then wiggled up to standing on her hind legs, her forepaws tucked in close to her chest. She wasn't sure she could ever be the best enforcer, but she could sure as hell be 'what we've got', whether it was for Pride or for Eve or the rest of Ashdown or maybe even herself. It seemed like a small enough task, one that even she could get done.

shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

"Thanks," said Pride again. He nodded solemnly, and extended an arm in case Lily wanted to climb up to him. "What d'you mean, back then? There's a lot of back thens."

AMItotic

 

[AMItotic]

First Lily typed out a message, slow and metered to minimize errors:

Quote:

the savinfg the world thing yiu did
we truied thatb too and it made everthing weird
I hink we messed up again like with michael sad

Her message complete, she scampered up the offered arm, mindful not to use her claws. She draped around Pride's neck, settling in on his shoulders with a sad croon.

shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

Pride patted Lily behind her ears, a slow meditative movement. When he talked, she could feel his voice resonating. And he was about to talk a lot.

"So once upon a time, my friend Ming was working with a well-known magician," said Pride. "It used to be that that word had a real meaning and heft to it. In your home world, the place you came from, it wasn't like that. Magicians pulled rabbits out of hats and chains of handkerchiefs from their sleeves. But for us, a magician was someone who worked with the most difficult kind of magic, the theoretical kind. Sort of like a rocket scientist for magic.

"Ming was so proud they'd gotten accepted to be the magician's apprentice. The magician had never taken an apprentice before, you see. They said he was the greatest theorist since Turing and Einstein. But Ming was disturbed by some of the things that he saw and learned, and he decided to look into the magician's private library. And what he found was a spell schema which could reshape the world, a functional spell schema that was theoretically impossible but right there, almost ready to be deployed.

"We didn't have time, but we all agreed that we had to fix it. We had to prevent it. But Ming wasn't willing to simply destroy the schema. He would've lost his apprenticeship. It would be better if the schema just never came to be. If the magician was just a theorist, and not capable of such craft on his own."

Pride took a breath.

"We tried it once. It failed. Ming died. So we regrouped. We tried again. I died. But the third time was the charm, and we were pulled back into this world as little better than ghosts, and we were standing in a sideways-world, where we had never existed at all, and the magician had no magic anymore, but he had lived for hundreds of years..."

He sighed. "He was Renard, you see? And Ming is Pax, and I'm Pride."

AMItotic

 

[AMItotic]

Lily listened faithfully, leaning into the softness of the pets and the warmth of his hand. With her head tilted, she chuffed softly at the idea of an impossible spell, and her ears flickered forward, nodding along. She wondered what it was that made the magician's work so terrifying and yet so valuable, that Ming would give his life to both prevent and preserve it, that Pride would give his, that all of this would need to happen three times only to be in a world with no space for any of them. It just didn't seem worth it, to save a world you couldn't be a part of.

When Pride revealed Renard as the magician, Lily wanted to say 'oh s**t', but she didn't have the mouth parts for it, so she just let out a surprised squeak instead, mindful of her proximity to Pride's ears. She pawed at his shoulder softly, unsure if he could feel the packtouch the way the rest of the moonwalkers did, but she exuded out her strongest and most mindful essence of 'that's rough, buddy'.

shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

"Yeah," said Pride, sighing. He seemed to get it, even if there was no responding feeling of family echoing back to her. "It seemed like a good idea at the time."

AMItotic

 

[AMItotic]

She wiggled her way off of Pride's shoulder, clambering down gently to the broken workspace so she could get to the phone. She tapped awkwardly with her paws, little huffs of frustration in between each word, but she got out what she wanted to say, nosing the phone back to Pride.

Quote:

I givwe you a gold nstar for trying
tghats all anmy of us can do

shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

He watched Lily as she worked the phone. "I suppose," said Pride. "Doesn't it frustrate you to be trapped in that form? I have often wondered."

AMItotic

 

[AMItotic]

Quote:

csan be
but then again i can do thidx

When Lily finished typing, she curled inwards on herself and started spinning in place, making soft chuffs of exertion. She slowed down a moment later, still curled up but now holding her tail between her teeth, and she congratulated herself on such a feat with a happy squeak, muffled by a mouthful of fur.

shibrogane