Logs:Tales, Glorious Tales

Tales, Glorious Tales
Dramatis Personae Anahita, Karida, Kamil
In Absentia Khalil	2024-11-15 "I was explaining!"
Location <NYC> Chimaera Arts - Dumbo
This is just one of the many abandoned warehouses in DUMBO, and like many of them it has recently changed hands. Unlike most of those, however, it does not have some corporate developer's sign out front promising a transformation into luxury condominiums or a boutique shopping center or the latest concept restaurant. Instead it's marked by a piece of weathered but wildly colorful plywood propped up on a stack of broken pallets, which reads "Chimaera Art Space!" above "chimaera.org" in smaller letters. The warehouse is moderately large and decorated with graffiti art in various styles--some of it recognizable as the work of renowned local street artists. A pair of monstrous scrap metal sculptures, perhaps still works in progress, flank the entrance. The building itself has undergone significant renovation recently, complete with wiring, plumbing, and a modular partitioning system. The grounds, too, have been cleaned up, ramshackle fences torn down and rusting detritus removed in favor of reclaimed (and brilliantly repainted) outdoor furniture ringing an impressively engineered firepit. It's actually pretty chill here on this lazy Friday afternoon. Several of the ongoing classes are quieter classes -- a beginner's painting in one of the studios, a business lesson for aspiring musicians, a training for legal observers in a smaller classroom. In the courtyard there's an enthusiastic debate happening between several very animated and somewhat drunk youths about whether Hot Fuzz is copaganda or a satire of copaganda; in the kitchen an argument about dishwasher loading looks like it might almost come to blows. There's setup underway in the cavernous central space for some kind of variety show later, through which a grizzled old mutt who seems to belong to Nobody In Particular is prowling to maximize how much of an underfoot nuisance he can be. Karida, dressed in tight midriff-baring marbled black and red tank underneath a warm black fleece, tight black jeans tucked into calf-high chunky New Rock boots emblazoned with flame detailing, is just returning to where she'd left some clay out in the pottery section, with two beers held in one muddy hand. At least the streaks of grey are only on the lower necks of the drinks and not on the mouth? She's plopping herself back down in front of where she's carefully been layering dark slabs and light slabs of clay, offering out one of the beers together with the complaint: "-- Tired of these bullshit binaries, man --" in the pause she's cracking her beer against her large thick skull-stylized belt buckle. "Satires can also be the thing they're satirizing." Kamil is sitting slouched over on a tall stool, methodically pinching a hunk of clay into a neat, fairly symmetrical round pot; something about his quick, snippy movements vaguely suggests that he does not have the patience for this, but alas he definitely doesn't have the patience to keep screwing up the faster (and much cooler) way on the wheel. He sets it down and sort of tries to wipe his hand on his jeans before he takes the bottle, though these jeans are so worn and woebegotten it doesn't much show (his black t-shirt, too, has seen much, much better days.) He's opening his bottle with a kind of casual pinch around the neck, and as the bottle squeezes inward like rubber the cap rockets off; without moving from his seat, Kamil makes a somewhat feeble show of craning his neck to see where it went, before not doing anything about it. "Are they still satirizing it though, at that point?" he says dubiously, before he has a swig of beer, and frowns very deeply. "No, wait, shit. Am I doing the binary thinking?" Anahita is emerging from the kitchen, chatting with a skinny young white person recently recruited to Food Not Bombs, who shortly takes their leave with a spring in their step. The scent of rich stew that follows them out is a hopeful indication some lessons have been underway. She's plain and practical today in thick denim overalls, a flannel in shades of green, and beaten up Doc Martens, unwinding a purple batik scarf from her head to drape it over her shoulders as a shawl instead. She's wandering towards the setup, whether to help or to pet the dog (helpfully, of course), but she slows when she spots the Magnússons and makes her way. "Karida." There's no exclamation point or question mark in her voice, but the emphasis is significant by the standards of her speech. She does not address Kamil, and it's hard to tell whether she recognizes him. Her expression is soft and neutral, but there's something indefinably critical in the way she looks him over. Her eyes flick back to Karida. "When did you get back in town?" "Hell yeah, man, I mean, Clue is still a mystery, Galaxy Quest is still sci-fi, Cabin in the Woods is still horror, right?" Karida takes a swig of her beer and then sets it down beside her layered clay. "Yo you'll get it evener if you're more steady with your hands, like --" She's demonstrating a motion in the air, but not nearly long enough for this to be any kind of helpful tutorial because in the very next moment she is leaping out of her seat to cross over by Anahita in a couple large bounds to pull the smaller woman into a tight and kiiiind of muddy hug, tall enough and fierce enough to briefly swoop her off her feet. "Daaaamn, Anahita, girl how you been? Uh, just a couple weeks, dropped in right before Halloween. You know my bro? K, you know this bitch?" It's an affectionate sort of bitch, excited and warm with a jerk of her thumb, "she was down in Purgatory with us, years." "But is copaganda the genre or the message --" nope, he no longer cares -- as Anahita comes in, Kamil is slouching lower on the stool, his back curved prodigiously over his pot-in-progress. He does not say 'hi' and when Karida loops him in, he looks a little like he would rather keep pretending he doesn't exist, but he nods tightly -- "She was in Freaktown with us," he says, then, "...yo." Anahita does not look particularly surprised when Sudden Large Viking descends upon her, but it still takes her a moment to adjust and hug her back. "I have been keeping busy, if you can imagine that. Are you planning to stay a while?" She gives Kalim a shallow smile and also shallow bow, and looks him in the eye when he straightens up. "Oh yes, but I must admit I could never remember which of you was Kalim and which Kasim." Her smile has gone sheepish for a moment, but fades now. "He and K got out before the town was razed. What have you been up to? I haven't seen either of you for over a year." "Hah, yeah, we've all been busy. Haven't been too solid on plans yet, but I think we're hanging around. Came out to bury Khalil," for a moment Karida's face rearranges into the solemnity that this statement deserves, but she's careening right back into immediately jovial to add, "staying hot minute because apparently you guys are freak central up in here. -- it's Kamil." She adds this with a casual nod of her head to her brother, "but don't sweat it, our own Umma she can't keep 'em straight." "Oh, you know," mumbles Kamil -- he does not manage to return this eye contact for very long before his eyes dart to his sister, and though he's possibly trying to mirror her good mood he hasn't quite gotten there when he finishes, "...stuff. We, uh, we missed Freaktown a lot when we left. Sorry we never got to go back." Anahita's pleasantly engaged expression falls. "My condolences." She does not rebound as fast as Karida, but tries gamely to keep up. "You missed the freakiest of freak central, unfortunately. The place where I met the younger Ks." She indicates Kamil, fixing him with a steady gaze. "Why did you leave? With not so much as a goodbye." She's winding the tassels of her scarf around her index finger and unwinding them again and again. "We were so worried, after all that happened that week. Until we got wind of where you turned up." "I heard good things, shame about the fucking pigs, huh?" Karida's own good cheer is slightly dimmed, here -- Kamil's tenuousness she's easily willing to overlook as He's A Damn Weirdo but with Anahita's vibe edging more off she's taking a step back, studying both of the others with a small but noticeable intensity. "Hope you landed okay, I bet that shit shook up a lotta people." Kamil drops his head sort of abruptly down, but then swings it fiercely back up, that nervousness giving way to an expression of simultaneous guilt and outrage, aware he's been caught out and unjustifiably mad about it. "They killed Henney," he says. "I couldn't even -- I was going to dip anyway, the house was miserable without him, but -- we had to do something, somebody had to do something, but nobody ever gets close to those shitbag fucking fucks -- and then Kasim said --" unfortunately all these explanations collapse into spluttering, like he's having trouble getting his engine to turn over. He squishes the half-formed pot he's been working on in his hand like a squeeze ball (alas, this does not do that rubbery rebound trick when his grip loosens again) and then squashes it heavily on the table. "-- I wanted to say goodbye!" he adds, like that's the sticking point. "I -- landed." There is no suggestion here that Anahita is trying to hide anything here, or euphemize, or dismiss. "I am still trying to help others do it." She looks back at Kamil, her brows furrowing deeper with each halting attempt at an explanation. "A lot of people dipped. I do not blame them and I would not have blamed you. But if you wanted to do something you could have joined the safety squad, or the Mongrels." She runs the tassels between her fingers and closes her hand around them. "You are lucky you did not say goodbye before running off to become a Nazi." She hisses the last word. Not quiet, not loud, but she might as well be screaming it. "The fuck?" The rest of Karida's fading good mood crackles fiery in a second. "After everything he's been through, you --" She's whirling back on Anahita, glaring daggers. "The fuck you call my brother --" There's really no time to answer this, though, because simultaneous with the question Karida's fist is coming up in a hard punch directed at Anahita's midsection. Kamil has gone so tense all over that he's trembling, his face twisting with frustration -- "You're not -- I was -- I'm explaining, let me --" his voice has gone from spluttering to bleating, weird and wavery, but he finds it again once Karida launches herself to his rescue -- "Wh -- no wait!" He's on his feet fast, surely what this fight needs is six more feet of Viking trying to shove between the two women. Karida's punch lands squarely. Anahita doubles over with a sharp exhale that might have been a cry if the air had not just been knocked from her lungs. She staggers back a step, regaining her breath though it still comes heavy, and does not fully straighten up. Her eyes tick between the two siblings, and she shuffles one foot back for a steadier stance upon which to take her beating. "I called him," she says calmly, enunciating each word clear and even, "a Nazi." "You hear this shit, K --" Karida is still bristling at this clearly 100% unfounded vicious character smear. She's not exactly ignoring Kamil's attempts to get between them, but she is hanging onto one of his arms like it's some weird bendy gymnastics bar, swinging herself beneath it to continue this aggression. This time thwacking an elbow towards Anahita: "My brothers' no fucking Nazis they're twice as goddamn brave as you'll ever be." "Yeah, but -- ow!" As soon as Karida lets go of it, Kamil's arm yoinks itself forcefully straight again with a thwap, probably Karida and her elbow are getting a little extra oomph out of the whiplash, too. Kamil is not learning from this at all, he reaches for his sister again, trying to grab her around the waist -- "I was explaining oh my God -- technically -- we had to -- I told you, no one gets anywhere near those fuckers!" "Ask anyone who was in Freaktown when they threw their lot in with the Sword of Tyr." Anahita still does not shout, still does not back down from the somewhat springy tangle of Viking siblings. "They wore their colors for all to see. What does bravery matter when it's founded on treachery?" At Kamil's further attempt to explain, she finally starts raising her voice. "You had to?!" Her hands curl into fists, and while her stance suggests she has, in half a century on this planet, seen a few brawls, even she does not look very sanguine about her odds. "You got plenty near enough to be their stooges!" "Threw their fucking lot in --" Karida is stretching her brother's arms out with the force of her forward lunge, but at least this time she doesn't quite connect with Anahita. "Of course it fucking matters you think those fucking Nazis deserved their honesty? She turns her head slightly to the side, spits on the dusty floor. "World's better off for their goddamn 'treachery' -- you got near them," this last is to Kamil, with a puff of pride. "Ow -- stop it, K --" Kamil's arms are snapping back to their usual lengths, yanking Karida back with them; Kamil lets her deal with the rebound from his weird rubber body herself, too busy squeezing one hand around his forearm, letting the flesh squash out between his fingers in -- well maybe that's some kind of relaxing massage, for him. "Oh my God, let me talk!" he huffs, like the real victim of these impromptu fisticuffs was his incredibly cogent and coherent story. "We went to go kill them. Get real up close and --" he makes an illustrative upward stabby gesture with one fist, "chk. As many of 'em as we could." "What -- I don't mean the Nazis!" Anahita's anger is sliding quickly into sheer bafflement. "They betrayed us by joining --" This time, at least, she cuts herself off in response to Kamil's request, though she looks none too happy about it. His explanation does not change her expression, still knitted into a deep bewildered frown, but her hands drop to her side and she straightens, wincing. "I gave you ample opportunity to explain. Please consider leading with that next time you encounter one of us who fell for your very effective ruse. So that commotion in Staten Island a couple of...weeks ago..." She looks past the Magnússons to their abandoned pottery. "Oh gods. Khalil." "You think if some bitch rocked up to me like yo, Anahita decided to join the KKK, I wouldn't have questions," Karida is huffing as defensively as if her brothers had not been fine upstanding pledges for a Nazi gang for the better part of an entire year. She's crossing her arms over her chest, dried crumbs of clay breaking off her fingertips to crumble against her sweatshirt. "Khalil." Her chin lifts, jaw set. "Took some of those bastards down with him, though." "I was explaining!" Was he? Kamil says it with a kind of defensive petulance that suggests that he already knows he's wrong. He looks at Anahita, at Karida, echoes in sage agreement, "Khalil," probably just because he felt left out. He scratches idly at the healing Nazi-murder scarring on his scalp with a wince. "You way underselling it. Sucked those fuckers into the Earth with him. Ripped Deep apart like --" he puffs out his cheeks to a fairly somewhat comical extent, before he blows out a breath, mimes an explosion with his hands, somehow a little morosely. "I think the KKK would have questions," Anahita points out, mildly. "But if I were under deep cover for some improbable espionage, I hope you would get answers like, 'why yes, she's poised to become the first Grand Witch'." Her scarf had gotten disarrayed in the scuff, and she rearranges it, fussing at the folds where it drapes over her shoulder. "We were meant to believe it, and I imagine that was horrible, too. A year." She shakes her head, reminded by the motion her hair is also disarrayed, and pulls it all back again, though she leaves it loose. "But what a vengeance! There should be tales, glorious tales." "Yeah, that they'll tell from whateverthefuck they're building for Prometheus 2.0 once those tales get back to the cops whose cousins are --" Karida makes a slicing motion across her throat. As her hand drops, she's looking kind of wistful. "Shit's unfair, though. There should be tales!" "Yeah, maybe if we'd all died it would make glorious tales," Kamil sounds frankly disappointed by their failure on this front, "but, seeing as we maimed and murdered a bunch of people." He's puffing himself up, though, quite pleased that Anahita of all people is deeming this a glorious tale, his lips quirked into the slimmest yet smuggest of smiles. Something softens in Anahita's expression, which had been stuck in a sort of lightly perplexed frown that she just forgot when she made the connection about Khalil. "We carry the tales here." She taps her temple with one finger, then her chest. "And here. For the dark days when we need reminding, and for the bright days when we can tell them. I should find something to pour out for him." She looks back at the clay drying on the wheel again, and it turns dark and malleable again though it doesn't unsquash. "And I can tell you the tales of Freaktown that you missed."