OTA

[forleaving]

Who: Adam and YOU!
What: Spending time at the park and doing some shopping
Where: Various places around Wechester City
When: 10/17
Warnings: None yet

A. Blossom, willow grow your leaves

Adam had been here for weeks already and he was no closer to figuring out a way home now than he'd been when he'd first gotten there. It was true that things weren't as bad as he'd expected them to be, but he was still far from home, with no answers, and everything was a mess.

Everything being a mess was part of why he was sat in the park, on the grass, flipping over tarot cards three at a time. Every time, he frowned at them, swept them back into the deck, and tried again. This wasn't like when he'd been connected with Cabeswater; he couldn't just ask a question and receive an answer from whatever had brought them here.

Taking a deep breath, he leaned back for a moment, squinting up at the sun. Things would have been easier with a ley line, but he didn't have that kind of luxury here. He didn't have many luxuries, period, except a roof over his head and friends. So really, nothing much had changed on that front.

Looking back down, he flipped three more cards, squinting at them.

B. 'Cos my soil dries round fractured seeds

There was a little store next to the hardware place where he worked that was stocking some nice autumn decorations. It had more than that, though, and even better it was inexpensive. He browsed the aisles with a basket in hand, picking up odds and ends. A welcome rug for the Barns. A few scented candles for his room. Some storage baskets that didn't fit in his shopping basket and had to be carried in his other hand. If he'd driven there he would have had to worry about only getting whatever could be stored on his motorcycle, but he'd walked, so it wasn't that big of a deal.

He stopped in front of the animal toys section, rearranging his basket before poking through toys. He didn't know if goats played with anything or if they just kind of headbutted things as their way of playing, and he wasn't about to try calling Ronan to ask him. Moving on, he found himself in a cramped book section, putting down all of his baskets so he could use both hands to poke through the books.

Comments

A

[smudging]

A day off from both of her jobs was a rare thing in the life of Blue Sargent -- at least that was one of the few things that remained the same no matter what dimension she found herself in. -- and when one of those blessed days finally came along, she spent as much of it as she could exploring the city.

(And taking voice notes on her phone about the odd things she found.)

An odd thing that didn't earn a voice note, however, was Adam Parrish sitting in the grass with a stack of tarot cards. Standing at a food cart a good distance away, Blue watched him go through the process of flipping over the cards only to put them back and draw a new set, repeating the process over and over as she waited for her order -- a tofu dog and a regular hot dog.

Blue watched him go through the motions once more before crossing the grass to where he was seated, coming up next to him. "You know, you're not supposed to keep drawing over and over like that." She extended her hand that held the real hot dog, offering it to Adam. "Hot dog?"

[forleaving]

He frowned, looking down at the cards for a moment before sweeping them back into the deck and looking up. Maybe that was why he wasn't getting an answer, or maybe there was nothing to answer him. It wasn't like Cabeswater, after all.

After tucking the deck to the side, he accepted the hot dog. "Thank you. I was trying to get answers, but." He shrugged a shoulder. Maybe it hadn't worked because he'd been doing it wrong. In this place, he wasn't sure. A little while ago it'd been a beach town, now it was a city. He was certain of very little here.

[smudging]

Once he'd taken the hot dog from her, she used her free hand to help settle herself down on the grass next to him. Legs clad in brightly colored and "artfully" ripped tights folded underneath her. "The cards aren't giving you much of an answer if you're just searching for the one you want." While she wasn't nearly as versed in reading tarot cards the way the other women in her family were, Blue had at least learned the basics over the years she'd spent sitting in on readings.

Blue took a large bite out of her faux hot dog, a hand covering her mouth as she talked around a mouthful of food -- manners? What manners? "They'll get angry," She motioned to the deck of cards with a nod of her head. "or, at least that's what my mom said."

[forleaving]

He didn't even know what answer he wanted. Something that would help him, something that would open another door, another avenue of discovery so he had something to work with for this mystery. He hadn't thought he was trying to force an answer from the cards, but maybe Blue was right. He didn't want to make the cards angry.

On the other hand, he was already trying to think of how he could pay her back for the hot dog. Things were different here, but old habits died hard.

He took a bite of his hot dog, chewing thoughtfully. "Can I ask you something?" he said when he was finished with his bite.

[smudging]

She wanted to reach over and shuffle the cards herself -- wanted to go through the motions of carefully mixing them in her hands, laying them out in a simple three-card spread, and see if they provided her any better answers. But there was a part of her that was worried about just that. Back home, she always drew the same card -- The Page of Cups -- but who knew if that would still be the case here. Something about the possibility of that small change unsettled Blue.

The energy was strange, it didn't feel like the ley lines. If a different card appeared for her what would that mean about this place and its energy? What would that mean about her and her own? It was more than Blue wanted to think about right now, and instead, she kept her attention on her hotdog, chowing down rather contentedly (it wasn't too bad for street-vendor vegetarian cuisine.)

"Yeah. What's up?" Her head tilted to the side a bit, one hand coming up to prevent the sun from blinding her too much.

[forleaving]

Talking to Gansey and Ronan had made Adam realize there was a lot he hadn't talked to Blue about. They'd never talked about him and Ronan, or about what had happened to Gansey, and it was just like with DC; he'd assumed. Here, in this place, he was realizing that a lot of his assumptions were wrong. Almost all of them, really.

"What's the last thing that happened back home?" He knew it was a weird question because they should have all been on the same page, but he also knew they were very much not. He didn't want there to be weird time things with Blue, too, but he wasn't in control of that.

[smudging]

Blue had been doing her best to wrap her head around the fact that they seemed to have all come from different points in time -- and while she wasn't sure exactly where in the timeline Adam seemed to be plucked from, she was sure that was different from the rest of them.

That seemed to be the trend, after all. Another thing added to the growing list of unsettling details about this little pocket dimension.

Blue took time to silently think over the question and chew over her hot dog before pulling her knees up to her chest and going over her final memories of home again. (And by now she'd done this countless times. Not only to Ronan and Gansey, but to herself as well in an effort to find some kind of answer.) "Gansey and I went to that party," She didn't want to linger too long on it, she and Adam hadn't left off on the best of terms regarding her going along with Gansey, "and I couldn't get a hold of anyone at home so we stopped by to see what was going on."

She paused long enough to exhale a sigh, resting her chin on her knees and staring off in the distance at nothing in particular. "We found Noah there, but he wasn't Noah. Something was wrong with him. Gansey and I tried to bring him back, but... " She shook her head, shrugged her shoulder, it was a painful memory to relive, and the more times that she did, the more she worried about Noah and the state of everything back home. "I don't know if it worked. He was gone and then I was here."

[forleaving]

The party. Adam tried to fit that into his mental timeline of events, assuming he was thinking of the right one. That was...better than Gansey and Ronan, but still behind what he remembered. He didn't understand why this was happening. Or how.

Taking another bite of his hot dog, he gave himself some more time to think. There was a lot going through his mind, just like there had been every day since arriving here, and even before that. He just had to focus on one thing at a time, tackle one problem and go from there.

"Noah?" he asked after swallowing. Both Gansey and Ronan had mentioned that name, but Ronan hadn't explained. "Who's that?"

[smudging]

At Adam's question, Blue gave him A Look -- as far as she was concerned Adam was attempting to play a joke on her (a joke in very poor taste, but a joke nonetheless.). Something that didn't really seem in his character to do, but with everything else weird going on in Wechester (or was it Beachville? She can't keep up anymore.), the thought only stuck with her for a brief second before it flitted away.

"Noah." She repeated, as though it explained everything. "Czerny." Another single word in a tone that once again sounded like an explanation. "The ghost that lived at Monmouth with Gansey and Ronan, murdered by his best friend," Her voice tightened just a bit at the memory and she tried to focus on the better ones of Noah. "Really likes glitter."

She paused and gave Adam a suspicious sort of look. "Why are you acting weird?"

[forleaving]

He was very confused. Had this place taken something from him? Not only did they all seem to be stuck at different points in time, but had Adam lost memories, too? It wouldn't entirely surprise him. If everyone else was missing something, he'd been wondering if he was, too. He didn't like it though. He didn't like things messing with his head.

"I'm not acting weird," he said. "And I'd think I would remember a ghost living at Monmouth." Was Blue acting weird? Or was this why Ronan had looked at him the way he had when Adam had asked him about Noah?

"Are you messing with me?" It didn't seem like a Blue thing to do, not about something like this, but he was hoping this was some elaborate prank that all three of them were in on, conspiring against Adam. It was better than the alternative that something had been taken from him.

[smudging]

Blue continued to just stare at Adam, studying his features in an attempt to try and find some inkling that all this was some big funny joke -- a twitching of his lips in a smile, some sort of levity and lightness in his eyes, even a wavering tone in his voice would have been helpful. But there was nothing, Adam was completely serious and confusion colored Blue's features the longer he spoke.

"What are you talking about?" Her tone was a little sharper than usual and her eyes narrowed at the other briefly. "How do you not remember? He was literally with us almost every day." Sort of. Some days Noah was more there than others, but for the sake of the argument, Blue didn't want to get into the semantics of Noah's thereness. "We went to his funeral and you guys have a whole school spirit day at Aglionby that he created." She paused to finish off her hot dog, crumpling the wrapper in her hand and putting it in her pocket until she could find a proper trashcan. "Quit it. This isn't funny."

[forleaving]

None of that made things any clearer. Blue wasn't messing with him, he could tell that much. Which meant...he'd lost something, somehow. Or everyone knew something he didn't, somehow. He didn't know which it was and it made him feel unsettled that he, apparently, didn't know about an entire person, ghost or not.

"I'm not trying to be funny. I genuinely have no idea who Noah is." How did he not remember? No matter how hard he thought about it, he couldn't remember anybody else there with them. Nobody else living at Monmouth, no one else joining them on their adventures. He thought he remembered something about an Aglionby spirit day, though.

"I'm just- I'm really confused. Gansey and Ronan mentioned Noah, too, but I..." he spread his hand, the one not occupied with what remained of his hot dog. "Do you think this place took that from me?"

[smudging]

Her features quickly changed from mildly annoyed to genuinely concerned. A lot of things had been weird about this place -- the changing landscape, their sudden appearance, the multiple different timelines -- but the thought had never crossed her mind that whatever was controlling this place could be that sinister. Taking their memories, the only things they had left that tied them to their home worlds.

"I don't know." She paused, searching her own mind for memories that might be missing. Any sort of blank spot in the long timeline of events that she could point to and say 'something used to be here.'. It was silly sort of idea in theory, how would she have actually been able to tell if anything was gone? Adam hadn't realized he was missing anything until the it had been brought up.

"Who knows what this place can do. Maybe it's taken something from all of us, but you just figured it out sooner than everyone else." Blue pulled her knees into her chest, wrapping her arms around her legs. There was a slight sadness in her voice when she spoke again, staring off in the distance. How many of the same memories did they even share anymore? And without all those shared memories, was she even talking to the same Adam she knew back home? "I wish you remembered him. We all had a lot of fun."

[forleaving]

He'd been the first to figure out a lot of things were weird here, first with Ronan, then with Gansey, now this. He wasn't proud of himself for figuring anything out. He was just sad they were all missing things to start with. Even him. He wondered if this was how Ronan had felt when Adam'd told him about them.

"Maybe that's what it really wants from us," he said after a moment, after he'd finished his hot dog. "Our memories." Maybe this place or whoever was controlling it got power from their memories. Who knew how it could get worse. Maybe it would keep taking from them.

"I wish I remembered him, too," he added, quieter.