[. . . july showers bring august ghosts]

[sevenhorrorsmods]

Who: EVERYONE
When: August 3, wobbly hands
Where: Around the school!
What: some things happened. the school is suddenly a lot more crowded
Warnings: references to blood and bite injuries, but otherwise, non! unless you bring something to the party yourself

[August 3 stars off. . . weird.]

[The morning bell chimes at 6 a.m., as it usually does! But there appears to be a very thin layer of fog settled against the ground outside. Some of it seeps into the school's hallways, before dissipating in a few wisps of haze. Weird??]

[As the day goes on, you feel like you can hear strange whispers echoing in the air-- a voice, hissing the word miiiiiiiine over and over again. Also weird!]

[And by the time the afternoon hits, you may find yourself running into some very unwanted guests. You've been here two weeks, and this is the first time you're seeing these guys?? Where have they been??]

[By the way, the nurse's office is unlocked!]

Comments

[ratiocinations]

[Forward, not at. If she's hoping to take refuge in the fact that his hands will be busy and therefore the moments between them will not be stilled, then she will be disappointed. Because the first step is: placing the heat pack carefully down onto her frostbite wound, warming up her skin. And just holding it there for a bit.]

Meaning?

[velluminous]

[ meaning he will have to wait, because the instant the heat pack presses to the handprint, she doubles over slightly with an inward hiss of pain. it—burns. it burns!?

her free hand goes to grip the edge of the bench seat. so tight the wood creaks.

quietly: ] Uhn—...

[ratiocinations]

[Oh. Hm.

The thing with not being a doctor: realizing belatedly that you have to probably put something in between her skin and the heat pack prior.]

My mistake.

[kasfja; grabbing a little rag he brought in, too, and places it on her arm. Waits for her to... recover.]

[velluminous]

[ guess what! IT STILL BURNS!! this is the process of thawing frostbite. it's excruciating. only tenable, perhaps, by the sheer fact that as a tiefling, her flesh did not freeze as completely as it could have.

jaw set, nostrils flared, she makes no further noise, but that hand does whip over to grab his wrist. she squeezes that next. ]

[ratiocinations]

[BE NICE TO HIM HE’S TRYING HE’S NOT THE DOCTOR IN HIS CANON 😭

Wrist: gripped. She is clearly… still in pain, but this is the only way to unthaw her skin to his knowledge right now.]

Ms Fairplay. [Is she squeezing in a reactionary way, or because she’s displeased with him? He refrains from adding the pack again.] Let go.

[velluminous]

[ lets... go. mechanically. she grabs onto her own kneecap, instead. ]

I cannot help it.

[ it's microscopic shards of ice thawing between layers of skin! ]

[ratiocinations]

[Wrist free, he rolls it once and retracts, then raises the heat pack and slowly draws it closer to her covered wound.]

You must endure if you want this healed to the point of minimal scarring. Focus on my voice, if you must.

[velluminous]

[ a strident, clear, articulate voice. she can focus on that. inhales, exhales, shakily. the heat pack draws nearer in her periphery. ]

I must.

[ratiocinations]

[Which means he must commit himself to talk about something at length, which is not generally hard to do if he gets to pick the subject at random-]

Are you familiar with Conium maculatum?

[He does not give her a chance to reply. He presses the heat pack against her wound, slowly and carefully, but the pressure is now there in earnest.]

A herbaceous, biennial plant that is known for being highly poisonous to humans. Commonly known as hemlock in British English. It grows up to eight feet tall and blossoms an umbrella-like array of small white flowers in its second year, which, frankly, emit a horrid stench. Its seeds and roots are particularly potent — if I recall, the toxicity resides mainly in its piperidine alkaloids, which can induce respiratory collapse in even small doses.

[Here, his eyes drift upwards, in the manner of someone trying to recall something.]

Was it "M" or "N"? No, "N." Newport! Douglas Newport. An old farmer out in Yorkshire was murdered by his wife, who had sprinkled ground hemlock seeds into his stew. A crime she might've gotten away with, since he was already in possession of a weak heart, had the neighbors, visiting unexpectedly, not sampled from the same broth out of the husband's oblivious and ultimately fatal hospitality. Hm!

[is this helping,]

[velluminous]

Hemlock...

...Piperidine alkaloids, which can induce respiratory collapse...

[ Douglas Newport. old farmer in Yorkshire murdered by his wife. ]

... Weak heart... Fatal hospitality...

[ her feverish, hushed murmurings repeat after him so immediately that they are virtually underlaid beneath him. the mantra of someone in incredible amounts of pain, leashing themselves to it, and talking themselves through it. she rocks gently and barely in place, back and forth millimeters at a time. self-soothing gesture. ]

[ratiocinations]

[There’s nothing he can do for her pain, other than to help her through it. His gaze drifting back down only confirms the degree in which she is experiencing it, his words likely not comprehended, but buoyed to.

He must keep speaking. The subject hardly matters.]

Needless to say, if I kept a garden, I would grow more amiable flora. Iris, Lily of the Valley. Roses and coneflowers, I think. If only you could look upon a formal English garden, Ms Fairplay — acres of land, groves of trees, perhaps a solitary rotunda next to a large pond. You could nap in the sun.

[Wouldn’t that be so nicer than… this.]

You could feel the summer breeze and take comfort in knowing that you’ve not a single care in the world, that the rote and mechanical attributes of daily life have lifted themselves from your bones and left only the energy to marvel at the sights surrounding you. Now, wouldn’t that be something?

[velluminous]

[ oh, christ. he may not consider himself a sentimental man, nor a prosaic one, but in his efforts to turn her mind from her arm's agonizing thaw, Kieran Adair has stepped briefly into the role. he paints with a wide brush, yes, but the sentiment... is unmatched. roses, coneflowers, a pond, and trees. she can picture that it any configuration.

what ruins her is this: you could nap in the sun. wouldn't that be something?
such a simple want.
and so far beyond her. ]

...

[ none of this repeated back. a pinch appears between her brows; she starts to blink, fast. the tears well up as quickly as she comprehends the scene he posits to her. the—fantasy. ugh. flicks her fingers as quickly across one eye as she can. ]

[ratiocinations]

[Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Of course Holmes can only think that he's made a misstep, that he's either not distracting enough or being too maudlin, when all he's doing is thinking of a situation in which might soothe even the most frayed of nerves.

Miscalculation(??). Damn.

This is why he needs Watson for this sort of thing. He hasn't the bedside manner to be a healer.]

Not bewitching enough?

[His poor description of a garden :( ]

[velluminous]

[ she cringes from him. ]

It is unimaginable to me.

Do not stop talking.

[ratiocinations]

[Unimaginable? A garden? Sleeping in the sun?

He thinks again, of this great fire she's only just escaped, ravaging her work. Perhaps sitting in the country, not a worry in the world, is too distant an imagining to apply to her. And now, torn away even from that, existing in this haunted school, it feels like a true impossibility.

Do not stop talking.]

...Do you want to hear more of England? There are sights aplenty; I've taken samples from soil and stone alike each time I go traveling. We've great white cliffs along one coastline, overlooking the sparkling blue strait, and there’s chalk in that flint to give it its pale appearance that stands sentinel over the sea. I plucked a stone away myself and kept it in my pocket all the way back to London.

More than three hundred feet tall, the very top of those cliffs. Imagine that sight, stretching out before you, and how small it makes a person feel. It is not the sort of grandeur you see in the smog-clotted cities, that is for certain.

[velluminous]

[ he would make a clever wizard. he chooses all the right things to draw her attention to: chalk, and flint, and rationale. the inability to resist cataloguing and taking something back for himself. it... does help. the knot around her heart blessedly loosens—

though her arm still screams in an agony of heat and thawing. ]

Smog?

[ratiocinations]

[And he will keep the heat there, until it has thawed — how will he know if it has? Well. He’s leaving that judgment up to her. They really need a doctor in the house.]

London is known for its rain, its fog, and the grime from its factories amid industrial growth. So, yes, smog on the worst days, choking the skies as a consequence of burning coal.

[velluminous]

[ this is difficult for her to conceive of, in a different way from napping in a garden's sun. and indeed, good thing that it is, because it's something else to pull her mind away from the pain. ]

Smoke-fog. You must live in very heart of machinery and metal for this to happen...

[ they haven't hit the Toril industrial revolution yet. ]

[ratiocinations]

[Huffs. Well. Yes and no.]

I live in a time in which railways, steam engines, sewing machines, telegraphs, and even the motor car have become—or will become—commonplace. And what does a city require to produce such innovations? Factories upon factories upon factories.

[Thus, the smog. The pollution! Oh boy! What a time to be alive.]

There is a reason we men in the city wear dark-colored garments. [BECAUSE IT'S ACTUALLY GROSS TO LIVE IN LONDON AT THIS TIME] You would have to be very brave or foolish, indeed, to be a man donning pink while strolling down B- [a pause] Any street at all.

[velluminous]

[ it is only through her own study that she could claim to know what railways, steam engines, telegraphs, and motor cars are. and, in fact, her grasp on them is still tenuous enough that there remains a degree of separation in her understanding of what he describes. factories upon factories, all without magic. coal-powered. she imagines the stench. ]

Such infernal racket it musssssst [ a hiss of breath ] be.

[ratiocinations]

[It is indeed pretty uh oh stinky in that era.]

It can be, but I am fortunate to not live particularly close to a factory. Yet my street is often nothing more than horses, carriages, and paperboys hawking for buyers. It is a racket in its own unique way.

[But it is still… home.]

[velluminous]

Oh.

[ familiar. ]

Tell me more about it.

[ratiocinations]

[About Baker Street? Ah, well.]

I live in a residential building, which means I am spared from the immediate inconveniences of living next door to a bustling business. No, indeed, my flat is upstairs, and my window affords a fair view of all that happens directly below, earning me some distance to properly observe.

And yet London is still London. Every morning, without fail, there is hustle and bustle below, loud enough to awaken anyone who isn't used to the growing murmur of the working crowd. And cabs and carriages that carry the hoofbeats of horses reverberating down the street for what must be blocks and blocks. Beyond that! My landlady will not let a man rest when he truly desires it, besides.

[velluminous]

[ a bittersweet note of nostalgia twists her features, then, rather than strictly pain. yes, she can imagine this so clearly. the bustle and hum. the scent of horse dander and manure, woodsmoke, sea-salt air. hawkers and merchants, the groan of great ships in the harbour. the harbour bells, the gulls. all this and more... how she misses it.

kneads her fingernails in at the edge of the bench. the sound of the wood splintering slightly. ]

Living near water, you?

[ratiocinations]

[This is a different kind of pain, he thinks, hearing that wood protest. He is almost sorry for it, but it is good for her to focus on this sort instead of the other. And perhaps he does not mind speaking of home too terribly, either.]

All of Great Britain is an island, but London is about forty miles or so from the coast. But the River Thames cuts through Southern England and the capital is included in that. So yes, in a way, I do live near water.

Though... perhaps not in the same manner as a city named Waterdeep.