Arrival: Lyra Part One (#4: Leslie Everlake)

It started with a squat human man rolling out a blanket lined with glittering, rainbow prisms. Jo had seen stalls and marketplaces pop up near the Inn any number of times, usually from other adventurers who had made it their business to explore other portals and trade what they'd found. Everlake, however, had a different kind of trade in mind.

She'd talked with him for a while, told him she might have work she could offer. Caving for crystals, though, was iffy business. Climbing in general could be dangerous. She'd need backup.

She knocked on Evan's door, by now her firm, thrice-banging knock pretty familiar.
 AM
Sitting by himself with the letter hadn’t really helped, hadn’t made the thing feel less like somebody was trying to crowbar out his heart. At least Jo had left him alone, though that itself had been a double-edged knife; still, the new awkward strangeness of her having been the deliverer of a love note from a dead man had outweighed the nominal comfort of a familiar face.

He hadn’t cried. Crying had felt both cheap in the face of it, and weirdly inaccessible, like his tear ducts were gummed up. Still, without crying, what was there to do? 

He would have stashed the note. There was a little bit of room in his card box at the back, just right for a folded-up eleven-by-seventeen… except for the note’s persistent wetness. He wasn’t sure what to do with it. Once he’d made it back to his room — stolidly ignoring concerned looks from strangers — he sat with it for a while, at a loss. He couldn’t really put it anywhere, the soggy thing, he couldn’t tuck it out of sight in some safe pocket without it making itself known. That felt thematically appropriate, and hollowed him out miserably.

In the end it went in his bedside table. That felt impersonal, so he’d gone out in search of something better. In the food welcome basket, at the bottom like paper streamers in an easter basket, had been a small amount of coins and a few little objects that seemed like trash; he’d taken those, and the trade of some of it had furnished him with a little satchel, and a few bits of leather.

His first substantiative interaction with this world. The irony of it was not lost on him. It was the most achingly miserable kind of kick in the ass, but as it turned out, doing things kept him from having to think about it and so he did his best to keep his momentum up.
As such, when Jo knocked on his door there was no answer, but just as she might start to get antsy and try another cop-knock, there was Evan, coming down the hallway, burns looking better and shoulders set. 

“Oh.” He stopped a couple meters out. “Hey.”
 AM
"Hey," she echoed, bemused by his unexpected appearance. Their last conversation came rushing back, and she wrestled with the resultant surge of adrenaline. She hated small talk, and this was threatening to be that, so she cleared her throat and said, "I need help."

Hell of an opener; she looked unsettled, and considering their initial dynamic of rescuer and rescuee it threw him for a loop a bit. He shrugged his satcheled shoulder, hiking the bag up, and furrowed his brows.

"Are you alright?"

Jo raised her brows, giving him a thin grin. She didn't answer otherwise, except to say, "there's a guy who's looking to hire help to bring up a certain kind of crystal that grows deep in a certain kind of cave. I never go into caves alone, and you're the only one who can help me. Want in? I'll split the earnings 60/40."

Alright, that -- that was good. That's a direction and an action. He had little enough grounding that the literalist in him appreciated a direction, rather than forcing him to take note of her little dodge there.

"Fifty-fifty," he pitched back. "Fair is fair and caves are inherently a dangerous proposition."

"And all you're doing is spotting me," she huffed. "I'm supposed to split it half with you when you're just holding the rope?"

"If all I do is hold the rope I'll take a 50/50."  This is a stupid hair to be splitting, but weirdly, it's offering him a small sense of control. It's almost banter. He actually doesn't care that much about the currency; he doesn't intend to start a bank account, here.

"Guaranteed that's all you're doing," Jo said. She gave him a speculative look, like she didn't think much of what she saw. And, granted, besides his recent brush with death, here he was carrying a purse and looking about as scholarly as he was going to get without tweed to seal the deal.

"And it's going to be cold. Not as cold as... well, but still. It's a portal hop. You have time to come to the market with me to get anything you need?"

"Am I doing anything else with my day?" he echoed, very dryly. The speculative look gets squinted right back at her. "Of course I have time. Apparently right now I have nothing but time." Time and sarcasm, apparently.

Jo rolled her eyes, the uncanny paleness of them somewhat mitigated by the disgruntled wrinkle of her nose. "Well then, right this way, timelord."

She turned about, leading out past the tavern with their still apologetically pissy beer, and down the path that led to the sometimes impromptu market. There was a better one in town, with shops even, but it was  a longer trek and, unlike some people who had brought home pets, Jo didn't have an affinity for animals. What she did have an affinity for-- that is, beat up old pickup trucks-- were in incredibly short supply around these parts. Boots continued to have to do.

The unsubtle clanging of something metal on something else metal, or similar enough that it didn't make a difference, announced Leslie long before the pair of would-be adventurers reached him. Lo, a short man with a huge sword (Jo suspected he was compensating for something) was doing some peen work on what looked like something between anodysed aluminum and damascus steel. Neither of which existed in this world, but Jo had no desire to know the specifics. He didn't look up until the pair of them were close, when Jo dumped her backpack on the ground at her feet. She had a length of rope, some tools, and her rifle, and apparently help, give Evan was present.

Leslie grinned. "You still in?"

"Both of us are, apparently," he answered, having once again sharpened his focus as they got close.

He didn't clock Leslie, not at that point, more than sort of sitting up and taking notice of someone else who had a familiar kind of vibe. It diverted him, gratefully; the walk with Jo had been no walk-and-talk and he'd occupied himself with checking out the scenery they passed. Some of it was familiar from his brief creep out to the marketplace to get his satchel. He glanced at Jo, looking away from this compelling older man to do so. "I'd love a little more info on where and what and how, though."

Leslie gave a short nod, his grin a little lopsided. "Well, crystals from Volai at the portal over yonder are easy enough to find, and some folk love them for their magical properties. The good ones, though, those are tougher. Near the portal's entrance are some caves that run deep under the mountains, and those are where the larger crystals lie."

"And we're doing some caving. At great expense to our own time," Jo added, voice dry.

Leslie chuckled. "Oh trust me, I know. When I was a young'n I spent a week lost down there because my dumb ass got turned around. Bring some extra provisions. It's not as cold down there as on the surface, but finding what's suitable to build a fire is scarce as you can imagine."

"I think I have that covered," Jo said, less dry than flat. "You said you had a map?"

"Mmph, well. I do, but it's more of a loose drawing. The usual stomping grounds are a little more picked over these days. A few others have come by with some real beauties, but I can always use more. You never know when you get a chance to revisit a place like Volai."

He looked at Evan, something knowing in his gaze. "Keep your friend here safe, and maybe you'll find the motherload. The weapons I make sell for a pretty piece. I'd be willing to cut you a bit of the earnings for something truly quality."

"That's generous." Honest to god, the currency should maybe be more important but Evan keeps just sort of breezing by it as a factor here. Sure, it's good to get paid? He's more concerned with the map, the warnings.

Pulling a little notebook and square, scratchy pencil out of his satchel he flips the thing open. It's fully untouched, except for a brief first page of writing he flips past. "Can I copy down your map? Maybe I can improve upon it while we're there." He looks sidelong at the smith, curious and concerned, his brow furrowed for the task at hand. "Are the... the dangers environmental, or are there specific flora and fauna we should be concerned with." Adding, self-consciously, "this will be a new experience for me."

"Always a first time for everyone," Leslie replied. He gave a quick gesture, and Jo watched as the pair of them went over the basics of the cave layouts that the smith knew. She listened, watching over Evan's shoulder, but she fidgeted with the strap of her rifle all the same. It was difficult not to be cognizant of people coming and going by them, of how strange they were-- not everyone who stayed at the inn was human, not by a long shot-- and what that might mean.

There was a term for it; xenophobe, bigot, racist maybe... but as far as Jo was concerned, she'd seen some very not-human creatures try to murder her for weeks. She felt she had a right to be a little twitchy.

By the time that they were wrapped up, Leslie finished, "be sure you go fast. The portal to Volai doesn't stay open too long. Maybe a week more at most."

"And what if we miss it?"

He shrugged. "I hope you don't mind the taste of venison. It'll open up again in a year or two. You just have to get by until then."

Jo exchanged a look with Evan, reconsidering their bargain. A year or more...

"Then we won't take a week at it." He had felt his own stab of alarm, closing his book and fidgeting with his pencil. Had he been aware that this was going to be a multi-day proposition? Did it matter? No, and no; or at least he had to tell himself it didn't matter. He didn't have any stuff to drag along with him, certainly. "That's a good deadline. If we don't find anything after a few days we come home. I'm not much of a hunter, in any case." Not a great attempt at levity, and honestly not entirely levity after all.

"You don't have to be," Jo said, her fidget turning into a natural heft of her rifle strap. She said, "we'll be back soon. If we find something, you'll see us. If we don't, maybe let someone know that we're trapped on an ice planet."

Leslie snorted a laugh and waved them off.

Jo was feeling more anxious than before. She fell in to step next to Evan and gave him a looking over. "This is the sort of work for people like us, here. It's a good time to get used to it."

He gave her a long, assessing look as they walked away from the forge, Evan more or less following Jo's lead. He'd keep an eye out for a stall selling winter clothing, but in a moment. 

She was still practically a stranger to him and that letter had not exactly closed the gap. Maybe it should have -- maybe it would have been kinder to bond over something from a lost friend they shared -- but everything was so fucked up that it was hard to know how to. Moreover he wasn't sure he necessarily trusted the lens through which she was viewing the world, but at the moment she was his only familiar reference point.

"Sure," he allowed, "Video game nonsense, right." It wasn't like he could just flip a switch, he wanted to say. A week ago his biggest concern had been figuring out what to do with his education with Calgary inaccessible, he wanted to say. Instead he said, complicated and a bit flat, "I'm sure I'll adjust."

It was a pang to hear that flat response, but Jo wasn't all that surprised. She missed Ryan's ability to flip a double bird in the face of the worst of it, missed his ability to add levity to whatever might come at them next.

Giving Evan some time to get what he needed, she did some of her own shopping. Some food, a trade-in set of bedrolls she was sure had been passed around by others in their boat so many times that they were starting to get threadbare... but it would be enough. She'd suffered so, so much worse.

The trip to the portal was a matter of a morning's walk, and she wasn't very long into it when she said, "have you ever been climbing before?"

He'd packed up what he could, wandering around the market. The good thing about their destination being cold was at the very least Evan knew how to handle cold. He knew how to dress for it, how to compensate for it, though winter camping was not so much something he'd taken on as a hobby he knows what kind of outerware (and innerware) to look for when it came t being out and about. Reconvening with Jo, he carried a new bag of bits and pieces, as well as a big coat and gloves draped over his arm sheep, or something like it, with a thick downy inner and leather outers. It'd taken the rest of his money, and so the question of cash in hand really did turn out to be one he needed to pay attention to.

But he was as ready as he could be with a trip through the market. 

She asked, and he answered with a wry pull to his mouth that betrayed the response ahead of time. "I went to a climbing wall for a friend's birthday party when I was like thirteen. So, fucntionally, no. I did get a few things, at least," he added, a little more tentatively. There had been someone selling a basic rope, pitons, and a used belay device, and he showed her these in the larger bag he now had. "I suppose you have your own, but," he shrugged.

"Doesn't hurt to double up," Jo said, nodding approval. "And if we're talking crystal caves, I want extra support. I climbed all the time, back in Canmore. But..." she shrugged, her own wry grin answering his. "Those scrambles ain't got shit on alien ice worlds."

The portal itself was an unsubtle thing. 'Snow' from Volai had accumulated where the mouth of the mirror-smooth distention in space-time intersected between this world and the other, and a cool-- not a cold -- breeze was issuing in a strange way. It smelled of boreal air, crisp and cleaner than just about anything one could get in the likes of Calgary's city limits.

Jo stood before it, unable to stop herself. "Shit. There's worse places to get lost for a year."

Without meaning to or noticing that he was, Evan pulled in a big deep breath of that breeze. It was just genuinely wonderful. There had been something in the air, back home, as the front had advanced, some odor that hit the back of the throat almost sub-perceptually, ruinous and viscerally upsetting. This felt... clean, that cold, and despite himself it lifted his spirits a touch.

But not that much. "I see it'll be up to me to make sure we stay on schedule."

Jo gave him a look, her grin growing as she punched him on the shoulder. "That, I could use the help with."