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Green gazed over from his place near the stairwell. With Arthur's voice now echoing down, the mountain moved. With ponderous tread, he left the basement and returned to the ground level - and by extension, more space. Besides, someone needed to stall their host.
"Well. Looks good. Plenty of room. Almost too much room, yeah. Was it always just storage space down there? Yeah. Lotta room."
Once on the ground floor, Green simply waited for Arthur to appear.
The ever so slight breeze of the door caused more than just a breeze, it picked up speed as if it had another place to go. Not far behind Evelynn and Daniel, there was a faint rattle. If they were to turn around, there was a shelf with light items on it. The two would realize there were many similarities to this shelf as the one they'd just opened.
Arthur
The old man was just hanging up the phone. As Green had moved up the stairs, the man mentioned to whoever it was that he had some prospects on the property and a 'nice bunch of kids' were there. At Arthur's age, all people were kids to him.
He wrote a few things down and came out of the office. "Well, Malcolm, we did build it to possibly make up a few more rooms down stairs if necessary. Storage, well, yeah, it's a large basement. We've got to do something with it..." The man's old soft eyes looking inquisitively at Green. "What all did you find down there? Anything going bad that I forgot?"
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Daniel instinctively made to shut the door when he heard Green start to talk Arthur upstairs. But then a breeze blew and there was the same rattling of a what could be a latch that Evelynn had fiddled with. Daniel paused, his black eyes searching the other shelf. Another secret door? It seemed almost too much of a coincidence. They had just stumbled into a mystery novel. And what with Evelynn say another of the Lost had stayed here and producing what looked like Hedgespun.
The Darkling gave a sideways glance to L'aire. Had she known any of this and kept it hidden, or was all this the Wyrd bringing this together, drawing them further into its story.
"I think there might be another door here," he said quietly going over to the shelf. He tried to mimic the Wizened's action before that had open the latch
2 successes
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Evelynn knew enough to press her sleeve over her nose when Daniel closed the door this time, warding off a second coughing fit as the little cloud of dust billowed out again from the closing door. She heard Arthur's voice upstairs and stuffed the brooch back into her pocket, as if showing it to him would constitute some kind of breach of Changeling secrecy - which was ridiculous, she realized afterwards, since he'd been the one who had given it to her in the first place.
She didn't get a moment to chastise herself, though, since Daniel almost immediately observed a second door. "Another?!" she repeated, keeping her voice low despite the clear curiosity in her voice. She went to stand next to L'aire in an attempt to make their milling about in the basement look more natural, in case Arthur glanced downstairs, but her gaze remained fixed on Daniel and the new secret door he'd found. She was eager to discover what was behind it.
Yumyumcrow liked this post
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OOC
Daniel didn't prove adept at getting the latch to work as the Wizened had before him but he kept working it, determined to get the door open.
"So, Evelynn," he said calmly while he kept fiddling with with the secret mechanics of the entrance "Why are you interested in making a new place for people to gather and meet?" An odd question to ask in the middle of doing something that felt like breaking into where you shouldn't, but anything to keep the nerves to a minimum and the conversation casual if they were overheard.
alias-of-a-girl liked this post
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Evelynn's head jerked in Daniel's direction at the sound of her name. She'd assumed he wanted help with something, so when the question came out, it took her a moment to understand what it was he wanted. "What?" She blinked, then winced at how foolish she sounded. "Oh, um..." Another pause while she considered how to word her answer - and more, how to word her answer in a way that didn't reveal anything she wasn't supposed to.
She laughed softly once she thought back to why she'd originally shown up to what was left of the Four Seasons. "To be honest, when I first saw your flier, I came because I was curious about what you were doing. I didn't know much about the old hotel. The explosion happened before I arrived in Sacramento. It hadn't really occurred to me that there was a sort of common meeting place, so I wanted to come see. I wanted to see what was lost. And besides, that the rest of you seemed so keen on the idea... it had to mean something to you. And it wouldn't, if there wasn't value in what we're doing, you know?" She paused, realizing that she hadn't really answered his question. Sure, she'd shown up out of a sense of curiosity, but that wasn't why she was still here. "But, um, I think it matters that we have a place for everyone. We have places to meet up now, but if we're not all in the same, um..." She paused, wracking her brain for some appropriate slang to refer to the seasons in general, but coming up empty. "If we're not all in the same group, some people are more at home than others. I think it'd be nice to have a place that everyone can call home. And I think, you know, after what happened to the last place, it'd be good for morale." Whether the others in the Hold agreed or not, letting the Commons slip away and never rebuilding struck her as letting Fairweather win.
She offered him a faint smile, tilting her head in curiosity. "What about you, Daniel?" She expected he'd been attached to the Four Seasons in some way, but that was just an assumption. And she was curious about him, about what mattered to and drove him.
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Daniel kept working on the lock, but now it wasn't quite as urgent as he thought about his own response. How much to reveal. How much to keep secret.
"I never saw the Four Seasons before it burnt down," he admitted "But something about it also made me curious. Made me want to see it for myself." All the dead bodies and ghosts buried just beneath the ground.
"But that wasn't the reason I put up the flyer." Well... maybe not the main reason.
"I wanted to make a home. Not just for me but for everybody in the club." Metal and wood clinked softly at long intervals as the Gravewight seemed deep in thought for a moment. But then he seemed to shake himself out of it.
"Sure, I got my own place but it's too cold for most people." The Winter Hollow only offered so much comfort to people outside the court outside of emergencies. "I wanted to help make a place where everyone feels safe. Where they are safe. I was hoping to reserect the old common area but this spot seems pretty good."
He glanced back at the tinkerer with a half smile. "If a little mysterious." He risked a glance upstairs to where Arthur and Green were talking before going on. "Where did you find that pin?" he whispered.
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Evelynn had to smile. It sounded like they were both here for much the same reason.
When he asked about the pin, she glanced up to the basement door quickly, as if it were a secret (which was ridiculous) before pulling it back out of her pocket again. She held it out for him to see before responding in a whisper of her own. "It was upstairs, in Arthur's wife's old office. It was pinned to the bulletin board." She paused, looking up the stairs again for a moment before giving in and shuffling over to stand next to Daniel near the hidden door."He said it belonged to a woman who stayed here for a while. She disappeared suddenly, and left it behind. They tried to contact her to return it, but I guess they couldn't get a hold of her."
She looked down at the brooch, a little wrinkle appearing on her forehead as her brow furrowed slightly with concern. It wasn't necessarily a given that the woman had been Lost, but given the touch of the Wyrd on the brooch... "I hope she's okay..." She said it more to herself than to anyone else. It was a thought that had been rolling around her head since she found it. A Changeling just up and disappearing probably wasn't guaranteed to be cause for concern - they were among the likeliest to simply disappear over a non-existent threat, especially if it wasn't someone who was a member of the Freehold. But the potential for something darker was certainly there. A loyalist group, maybe, coming to seize her in the middle of the night...
That little wrinkle deepened for a moment before smoothing abruptly as her gaze lifted from the pin to Daniel's face. "I never did thank you for taking the lead with that. My mouth got ahead of me when I asked what was in there, and I felt so bad once he explained..."
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Daniel stopped with his efforts to open the door a short while to give a more detailed look at the butterfly brooch, leaning closer to get a better look. Cool fog seemed to envelope Evelynn in misty embrace. Even inactivate it was kind of pretty. Like an antique piece of costume jewelry a mom might let their kid wear when they played dress up. Then there was glint of something more. The subtle hint that it was Wyrd touched. And it had just been pinned to a bulletin board? He remembered the short conversation between Evelynn and Arthur upstairs and Daniel wondered why the wife had kept it all these years. Had she hoped the woman would one day return?
"You should keep it. Sometimes people have... anchors, that draw them back." Ghosts certainly did. "Maybe one day you'll meet her."
There was no way to know if the woman was safe but all the Lost who made it back had something to help them make it back across the vastness of the Hedge. If she had been recaptured, the brooch could be a key to her making it home. It was a long shot but it was hope that there was light even the darkest scenario.
"Have you tried activating it?" Probably not. Probably was a bad idea until someone with more magical knowledge than Daniel had taken a look at it. Who knew what it would do.
He finished his examination, taking a step back before he made her embarrassed. His smile was friendly when she brought up him taking lead but there was a touch of sadness hidden in his black eyes.
"No problem. That kind of stuff is sort of my thing." Calmly digging up long buried sorrow. Causing pain while trying to help. It was his fate it seemed sometimes. His duty at others.
L’aire had been lost in thoughts of the Four Seasons. The former common area where she slowly found herself before the dreadful Dragon destroyed the dwelling. It was home away from home for the Dancer. At the rubble, there were faint smells of Mrs. Rosemary’s amazing cooking, Mr. Bates’ cologne, Violet’s floral aroma, baked bread, the smell of a storm and everything else that made it wonderful.
Or, it was all just memories in her head that effected her olfactory nerves.
Slowly snapping back to the present, the Fairest was aware that she’d drifted off, just to hear Daniel speak about the brooch again. “I agree with Daniel, I would hang on to it for a bit. There may be something more. Even if there isn’t, he did tell you to keep it. It may have been some sort of grandfatherly gesture.”
The door
The door that Daniel had been working on opened to a space big enough for someone to crawl upwards. From there, you could hear upstairs, but muffled like a door was closed. The small built in ladder had rails on either side that were like two fireman’s poles to make sliding down it very easy. The ladder appeared to go up to the third floor.
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