You'll miss the birds completely. You're traveling so fleetly.

[hark_and_hush]

Who: Ruby and OPEN
Where: Various locations around the edge of town
When: The late evening of day 19
What: Ruby woke up and went exploring instead of playing with the communicator.
Notes: Feel free to intercept her at any point on her journey.


Ruby listened to the voice coming from the little device on her wrist. She listened, but she didn't really accept. She pulled her cloak tightly around herself as she stood, looking around at the sleepy-looking town and the strange little fountain.

She huffed a heavy breath in the cool night air, picked a direction and started to walk. She stopped to eye the pile of rubble that used to be the diner before following the road further towards the forest.

She spied an empty house and pushed the door open gently. "Hello?" It was seeming more and more like this was another curse and she wasn't so sure that she wanted to go in.

Comments

[porcelainpride]

"Right away." A pause, then he pokes his head out of the kitchen. "I didn't. So sorry -- Kurt Hummel, pleased to meet you."

[hark_and_hush]

Ruby took in the information with a nod. She wasn't taking the warning about the wood entirely seriously, though. When it came to the woods, she tended to be the monster in the shadows more often than the prey.

She almost laughed at Mina's comment, though. "I'm from a tiny town in Maine. Boredom and I are old friends. If there are cute boys or good friends, I can handle it."

Maybe not the cute boys, though. Her mind just kept going back to Peter and now Billy. She was dangerous.

[hark_and_hush]

"Hi, Kurt. It's nice to meet you." She keeps walking around, touching things and exploring the room. Something is so off about all of this.

[porcelainpride]

He watches her for a moment, waiting for the kettle to boil.

"...you're new, hm?"

[primogen_vampirate]

"I've been off the market for awhile," Mina said, sucking in air between her teeth, "I'm afraid I'm not the best judge of what qualifies as 'cute' these days. But there are certainly plenty of men and where there's boredom, there's always one, solid default activity. I suppose. I've been told."

It had been far too long.

She folded her arms, leaning against the wall. "From Maine? I've never been. Farthest north I've been in the States is New York. You'll have to tell me about it sometime. But, of course, there's one pertinent question to ask first. I know where you're from. Now tell me when."

[onteamdyson]

"Wow. Must be nice. I gotta beg Trick for pancakes. Apparently they aren't bar food." Whatever, Trick. PANCAKES! "Okay, so special like something else that is special."

Ack. Kenzi hasn't had much luck giving the rundown to newbies without having them go totally internal breakdown on her or worse. She tries her best to smile reassuringly, holding her hands up in a non-threatening way.

"It's a lot of speculation and not many facts. Might actually be better if someone else runs through the basics."

[hark_and_hush]

Oh, that was a loaded and complicated question. It was almost as loaded and complicated as where.

"2012, I guess. Maine's nice. It's a little sleepier than I'd like. At least, it was. It's been getting more interesting lately." For better or for worse. She's not really sure if she was happier without her memories. Some of them are painful, of course, but they're who she is.

She smiled. "When are you from, then, Mina?"

[hark_and_hush]

Ruby made a mental note to make pancakes for the girl, assuming she didn't turn out to be her captor.

"Well I wouldn't mind hearing your guess, too." She gave a warm smile. "My name's Ruby, by the way."

[hark_and_hush]

"I just woke up in the middle of the town by the fountain." She takes a seat in a nearby chair. "Does this happen often?"

[primogen_vampirate]

Oh, this girl had spirit. Either that, or social protocol regarding first names had changed dramatically in the past few decades.

Perhaps even both. Both would be the best.

"Before here? I was in 1932. What I thought was the height of sophistication." She smiled, the corners of her eyes crinkling slightly as she glanced over Ruby's interesting attire. "Apparently, I was mistaken."

[porcelainpride]

"Oh, yes. It's how we all got here." He smiles, like this is a totally normal thing, and pulls down some sugar and honey.

[onteamdyson]

Ruby. Cute name. Kenzi smiles a bit warmer and rests her hands on her hips. "Nice to meet you. Sorry you're stuck in crazy town with us."

Right. Her guess. Well, it seemed to go okay with Galen. Sort of. "Uuuuuuh... I'm leaning towards morally fucked up science experiment? First I thought zombie apocalypse, but I'm pretty sure zombies don't have this kind of technology."

[hark_and_hush]

"Oh, I don't know." Ruby laughed. "I've seen pictures. It was pretty sophisticated-looking to me." Mina certainly was, too. The way she carried herself was almost regal to Ruby. It reminded her just a little of Snow, when she'd been the queen back before the curse hit.

"My time isn't all it's cracked up to be." Not the least of which because it wasn't really her time at all. Yes, she'd lived there for years and she was just as much Ruby as she was Red, but there was still a feeling that it wasn't quite right, that it lacked so much of their history. It was barely more right than this place was if she thought about it too much.

[hark_and_hush]

Ruby's face falls immediately. If it is some weird experiment, they might know about her curse. They know that she can hurt people. What if someone takes her hood again?

She pulls it tighter around herself. "Have they been... doing things to people?"

[hark_and_hush]

She finds that more unnerving than anything. He's acting like this isn't something worrisome at all. "Well, is everyone just settling in?"

[porcelainpride]

He pauses a moment, frowning slightly. "We...don't really have much of a choice."

[onteamdyson]

Ooooh, not a good expression. Now Kenzi's starting to feel guilty.

"Probably? Not directly. Oh, except for that Sam guy. Dudes in white snatched him up while he was sleeping. He appeared randomly a few days later talkin' crazy-talk and being all dangerous. I had to knock him out." Not... helping. She shrugs, "He seems fine now, though!"

Still not helping. Who the hell knows what those guys did to him! Maybe they took the others. Maybe they were killing them.

"A lot of other weird stuff happens, too."

[primogen_vampirate]

"Well," Mina drawled, "as I understand it, in your time, it's no great anomaly for a woman to be a doctor. I would call that progress, I think. Decidedly an improvement over my world."

Mina always had a hard time reconciling her sex and her gender. Her mother's doing, perhaps. But just as much her own too, she supposed. After all, it was her choice to continue living as Mark after the money ran out.

And yet...it burned her every time she had to sign her name 'Mark Barrett.' She'd chosen to be Mina. It was her identity. And she still couldn't use it to get what she wanted most of the time.

[hark_and_hush]

"It isn't an anomaly, no." Ruby nodded. "I think it just makes the fact that you are one pretty impressive, though. Someone had to go first, right? It must have been hard."

She couldn't entirely wrap her head around it, truth be told. She was still trying to reconcile princesses and schoolteachers. Reconciling the cultural past of both worlds was just a little too much to think of outside of the abstract. It was almost easier to see Mina's time as a different world entirely.

[hark_and_hush]

"And we can't leave..." There has to be something, maybe some sort of magic. Whether this is a curse or something else, there has to be a way out.

Her head shoots up at the distant sound of a wolf. She's not even sure if the other girl can hear it. She's still figuring out what senses are her own and what are due to the wolf.

[hark_and_hush]

"I guess you're right, for now." It's not as if she's an expert on this place. She'll have her own look around and then assess for herself.

She smiles a little. "Thanks for the tea."

[primogen_vampirate]

"You have no idea," Mina murmured.

She glanced around the house. "I suppose," she murmured, "we should probably scrounge some things for you, as long as we're here. After all, it's so hard to pack for an impromptu kidnapping these days." She clucked her tongue. "And people simply don't have the manners to send you any kind of packing list."

[porcelainpride]

"Oh, you're welcome. Honey or sugar?" He'll bring both over -- and some cookies.

[onteamdyson]

"Not unless you like fighting robot bears in the woods. I don't think anyone's tried the water yet, but that's probs a death sentence, too."

Yeah. No leaving. Not in one piece.

Kenzi watches Ruby curiously when she snaps to attention like that. She didn't hear a thing. "You okay?"

[hark_and_hush]

"I could certainly use a change of clothes, I guess." And a place to keep them. She'd need a place to sleep to sleep, too. She couldn't be the only person from Storybrooke here, right?

She started to take a closer look around the house. There was a thin layer of dust on most of the flat surfaces. "So no one lives in this house?"