kore_logs | a tisket, a tasket, an angel with a basket?

Entry tags:

a tisket, a tasket, an angel with a basket?

Who: Balthazar, Mina and open!
Where: the library and the outskirts of town
When: Day 109, around nightfall
Summary: Balthazar's promised to try and teach Mina about angelic healing powers, because that can't possibly go wrong. He can also be found inspecting various edible weeds growing around the town and forest eaves.

On the one hand, Balthazar is as content in Kore as he has been in thousands of years. No wars, no bewildering orders from on high, no siblings murdering one another, and on top of that he has both mortal friends and archangels being relatively sociable. If it weren't for the looming fear of things taking a turn for the lethal, he'd be downright ecstatic to be here.

But the food situation is worrisome, and the monster situation is worse. He finds himself racking his brain to think of ways to keep the status as quo as possible. It's not his job, of course. He never signed on to play shepherd to a motley crew of humans and others, and most of them probably wouldn't thank him for worrying about them anyway. Maybe if there was enough alcohol available to actually keep him drunk, he wouldn't bother. Maybe he's trying to keep himself from fretting over how quickly and easily the people he cares about can be taken away.

Times like this, he misses Anna.

And so, he finds himself, circling the outskirts of the town and plucking what plants he can find out of the shadows of buildings as the sun sets behind him.

When it's finally fully dark, he crosses back over to the library, leaving his basket just outside the door. If anyone helps themselves to the plants, that's fine with him. He's not going to eat them, anyway.

He doesn't bother with a light once inside, sitting on a desk to wait for Mina. He can see well enough in the blackness, and presumably so can she.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Oops! He didn't mean to drop unpleasant spoilers. Then again, she was bound to hear it from someone here sooner or later.

"A pirate, too? You've just had all the fun, haven't you?" He accepts the handle carefully and looks the blade over with a slight nod. "Right. I'm just going to do a shallow cut across my arm, and let it heal so you can see how it goes. If that seems useful, we'll move on from there."

He glances at her to make sure she has no objections.

"Oh, darling," Mina said with a bit of a smile, "you have no idea." In all fairness, fun had never been a high priority. She'd become a pirate to survive. Bloody survive.

Of course...some fun had, admittedly, been had.

But she dismissed nostalgia for the time being, nodding her assent to Balthazar. She was hardly squeamish, after all. And her scientific curiosity was peaked.

"I might ask for stories later." He almost says 'over a drink', but then he's not sure if she drinks alcohol, and it's in short supply anyway. Stories should be enough excuse for a civil conversation, anyway.

With a faint nod in return, he makes a light cut across his forearm, about two inches long and just deep enough that a doctor might recommend stitches to close it, without really threatening the muscle. It bleeds like any wound, but only for a few seconds. He's trying to rein in his Grace to keep the process slow enough to observe, but it's fast nonetheless. Still, she may be able to see the signs of wound healing slip by in rapid succession: clotting, inflammation, scabbing, and finally restoration to the pre-cut state. What she may or may not sense is the flux of power: energy drawn from his angelic Grace forcing the flesh-and-bone vessel to speed up its physical processes.

Mina watched, unflinching. Actually, she was a bit disappointed. There was something terribly mundane about it all, accelerated though it seemed. And while she was blessed with an exceptional mind, she didn't have exceptional eyes. Not in the way that Jacqueline did, able to see everything.

Well, she as Mina didn't.

But the Queen felt something. Something old. Not quite as ancient as herself. But powerful.

Dangerous.

A low sparkle ran along Mina's skin as she observed. It was unconscious, the Fae part of her nature unwillingly escaping for a moment. "That's your Grace, then?"

He watches the sparkle appear and fade, then answers mildly, "Yes. The power of Creation itself, or so I'm told."

Pulling a handkerchief from his pocket, he adds vaguely, "I wonder if this wouldn't go better with a microscope of some sort. Alternatively, I suppose we could experiment on a meat animal, but I wouldn't want to make one suffer."

He dabs the few drops of blood he's shed off his arm, then cleans the scalpel. "We'll figure something out before long, I'm sure. May I ask you a personal question?"

"My kingdom for a microscope," Mina mumbled. She was from the 1930s, so she didn't have as high of expectations for technology as some of the others. But it was still frustrating, sometimes, how little she had at her disposal.

Sighing softly, she leaned back in her seat. "Go on. We're making nice, aren't we?"

"If we could just get our captors to be more amenable..." He smiles wryly. They'll need another approach, perhaps, but as long as she's willing to keep trying, so is he.

He leans one hand on the table, twiddling the scalpel idly now. "Who or what is in there with you? I can sense the power, but it's a bit beyond me, and I don't want to get on its bad side if it can be helped."

Mina couldn't help but let out a quick, explosive little laugh. It was a good question. But certainly not a simple one. And back home, she supposed, she would have done everything in her power to get around it, either by wiping his memory or just shooting him in the face.

Obviously, her methods had changed somewhat in Kore.

"A complicated question," she told him, resting her temple on her fingertips. "There's me, of course. Nothing but an old soldier, really. And there's what we Kindred refer to as 'the Beast.' It's the source of every vampire's abilities and bad temper."

Those two parts of her had been married for so long, though, that she'd come to think of them as very much the same thing: Mina. It was the last little bit that was the parasite.

"And," she said slowly, "I don't know how familiar you are with the True Fae, but for the last few months, I've also played host to a Fae title. The Queen, to be precise. I imagine that's the part that's beyond you. I do think she may be older than time itself."

He listens attentively, expression betraying none of his thoughts. Fae are all but an unknown quantity to him. That they exist on his world--or rather alongside his world--is certain. What they want, and how powerful they are, is something he's never been able to get a clear answer on. He'd like a clear answer, but he doesn't want to get it the hard way.

So, for lack of an analogy that better suits his mind, Mina seems to have a being at least as powerful as an archangel stored in her brain. Good to know, indeed. Score another point for their captors in being able to push around beings that are better left undisturbed.

"...yes." He says at last. "That third one was what I was questioning. You're housing this Queen voluntarily, I hope?" Not that there's anything he could do if that weren't the case. "Sounds a bit like a time bomb on the scale of a supernova, if you ask me."

"The True Fae are funny about the idea of 'voluntary,'" she said dully. It was still a sore spot with her, not that that was Balthazar's fault. "Let's just say, from their point of view, it was voluntary. But that wouldn't really hold up in a court of law."

Not even a Kindred court.

And the supernova metaphor was adequate. She never knew when the damn thing was going to go off.

He grimaces. "I'm...sorry to hear that."

But it sounds like they're treading on sensitive territory now. "So I'd best behave myself. Got it. Shall we go back to the healing attempt? Suppose we start with trying to control the dilation and contraction of blood vessels in my skin, around the wound site?"

"I would say that sounds simple enough," she replied, content to let the subject of the Queen drop, "but I suppose that wouldn't be entirely honest."

But she would make it simple. Mina was nothing if not determined.

"What sort of physio-mental process goes into that?" she asked. "On the part of the healer?"

"That's where it gets hard to put into words. The best I can give you is a visualization technique, I think."

He sits in a chair, stretching his arm out on the tabletop, and makes another shallow cut with the scalpel, using the kerchief to blot up blood. It takes a little focus to keep himself from healing instantly. "Right. Instead of letting the normal clotting process occur, try to picture the severed blood vessels. Imagine the bleeding ends closing. Pinching or constricting. If the full level of anatomical detail is too much to hold at once, simplify it and just picture, I don't know, tubes or pipes."

The full level of anatomical detail was easy. But what Mina didn't understand was how willing something to happen made it so. It was different with her abilities. She understood how to find another being's willpower in their eyes. But this was a power of the body, not the mind.

She stared down at the cut in his arm, picturing in intricate detail the spider's web of veins and arteries inside of flesh. She concentrated on the biggest of them, the ulnar artery, willing it to seal itself.

It's the process by which an angel converts energy into action that Balthazar can't explain. It's such an instinctive part of him. Perhaps it's like a bird trying to teach a human to use a hang-glider. The principles of flight are the same, but 'you just use your wings!' isn't an effective way to explain how air currents are caught and ridden through the ether.

Something's happening, though, clearly, because he feels a faint twinge in his arm. The blood flow from the wound seems to be slowing gradually, but more importantly the skin under his fingernails is starting to go bluish-violet.

"Well...that's a start. Not very comfortable." But he's willing to take it a moment longer, if it helps the learning process.

Mina pressed her palms on the table, leaning forward a little bit on them. She knew, of course, that proximity probably didn't make any kind of a difference, but she couldn't fight the instinct completely.

She found herself, once again, thinking about the night that Doctor M peeled her skin off in court. Mina tried to mimic the doctor's facial ticks, wondering if that would help her to better channel some kind of flesh-crafting ability.

If nothing else, Mina was determined.

Anything that aids her in learning is acceptable as far as Balthazar's concerned. Watching her, he can easily believe she's capable of mental domination. If that gaze were any more intense, his arm would be a smoking husk.

"You're definitely slowing the blood flow," he says, pointing out the blueness at his fingertips. It's starting to feel numb, too. Not exactly healing, but it's body manipulation and it may open the door to more. "I think you're blocking the artery, though."

There's a twinge in the muscle now, as well, and he's not certain whether it's from lack of blood flow or if her will is actually pulling at his flesh. Not a pleasant thought, but even if she accidentally snaps his arm, he'll heal. "Don't overexert yourself. Rest when you need to."

She didn't want to rest, but the unnatural colour of his hand put a stop to the experiment. Mina blinked and broke whatever sort of connection she felt. Even if she knew that he was an angel and could heal himself, her medical instincts were still there.

"Damn," she hissed, leaning back in her seat.

"What are you swearing for? That was a brilliant beginning." He heals his own wound over and shakes his hand to get some of the feeling back. "You'll just have to practice. Probably quite a lot of practice, but you have the ability and the time to learn to use it. How do you feel?"

Now that was an interesting question. Ever the consummate learner, Mina was naturally frustrated that she hadn't aced it on her first go. But all the same, she'd accomplished more, she supposed, than she expected.

She nodded slightly. "I feel...intrigued," she finally decided.

"Mind you, I still think if Raphael doesn't object to this project, you'll get better help from him. But I'll keep at it as long as you're interested." He curls and uncurls his fingers, stretching.

"Or...actually, I wonder if it wouldn't help to talk to Fortescue. I don't believe she does much healing, but she's certainly a sorceress of some sort. Her input might be useful. Do you know her?"

Her lips twisted slightly at the mention of Raphael. He had been somewhat...uncooperative. Not outright offensive or rejecting of the notion. But stubborn about it.

Her sea-storm eyes raised with interest a little at the mention of a sorceress however. "No," she said. "I don't believe I've had the pleasure."

"She's very charming. As long as you get along with cats, I think you'd like her. She's got one, you see." That Fortescue's cat carries around her soul is not something Balthazar thinks he's authorized to share, so he'll leave it at that.

"Would you like me to get in touch with her and introduce you?"

To some, it would seem old-fashioned. But Mina was still well behind the times. As much as she was ahead of her own time. Apparently. It was all rather confusing and she had far more pressing matters to set her mind to than that.

She dipped her head courteously. "Yes, I do think so."

He nods, approving of this plan. Fortescue's got a good head on her shoulders, and since he's having trouble explaining his modus operandi, perhaps she can bridge the gap.

"Perhaps we'll call it a night, then, and I'll get to work on that. I'll be your guinea pig another time, though."

a tisket, a tasket, an angel with a basket?

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)