Logs:Summoning Spells
| Summoning Spells | |
|---|---|
| Dramatis Personae | |
| In Absentia | 2024-12-22 *(Matt --> ???): Are you an AI? |
| Location
Phone & Chez Tessier | |
It's quite late -- certainly well past any reasonable polite calling hours -- when Matt's phone actually rings. The number on it is not familiar. "Ouais?" Matt sounds rather bleary on the other end when he picks up. Then again, maybe the bleariness is why he picked up at all. At first there is nothing on the other end. Then, abruptly, there's a burst of -- is it applause? It sounds like recorded applause, together with some deep chortling laughter. A hearty and good-willed audience. It goes quiet, and then plays again. Then again. Then the phone hangs up. It's a good minute after the call ends that Matt calls the unknown number back. Nobody picks up, and the answering machine unhelpfully is simply the factory standard, a robot voice reciting the number he's reached. Shortly after, though, a text is coming back from the number:
There's no answer from the Singularity on the other line. Perhaps it was a bot, after all. Or a poor phishing scheme. Matt is left to, hopefully, get back to sleep. --- Some time later -- now it's way past reasonably polite hours for anything -- there's rich herby smells coming from the kitchen. With startlingly little fanfare or noise, the kitchen has not just sprouted an occupant, but an occupant well into the stages of cooking up some kind of stew. Where did he get the fresh veggies and herbs in Matt's unevenly stocked kitchen, who knows, but here is Damien, flamboyantly dressed as ever in a royal purple frock coat with ornate gold braid trim over a mandarin shirt in black brocade with a gold qilin motif, and white linen trousers tucked into tall black riding boots. There's a black top hat that he has removed and set aside, upside-down on the counter. He's singing quietly to himself as he cooks, no particularly recognizable language but the tune is ethereal and haunting in his somewhat captivating voice. Matt's steps are quiet and maybe just the slightest bit hesitant. He looks half asleep, his hair all askew, dressed in a soft seafoam tee with a huge white whale surfacing under an eight-pointed star and ancient threadbare blue jeans, phone in hand, though there's no particular suggestion he thinks it's going to protect him from the intruder. He comes up short in the doorway of the kitchen, blinking at Damien without comprehension. He opens his mouth, but holds back whatever he was about to speak and listens in a vain attempt to identify the song, or at least the language. It's a moment before he shakes this off and scrubs one side of his face with his free hand. "Was that you on the phone earlier?" Damien is just scraping a cutting board into the pot, dropping its cache of mushrooms in with a quiet plop before he sets the lid back on. "You," he says this as a severe criticism, "did not answer my summons." Matt just stares for a moment. He starts to answer, stops; starts again, stops again. Finally, he shakes his head and slips into the kitchen. "I did answer. Only, I'd no earthly clue what I was answering. Were you drunk?" Notwithstanding this, he's heading straight for the bar. "Can I get you a drink? Gods know I need a drink." "You are meant to come when I summon you." The criticism in Damien's voice has subsided here to just a patient forbearance, like perhaps one day this man will be properly trained up into his role. "I have quite urgent need of your services." "I know what 'summon' means." Did Damien answer his question? Matt is pouring two glasses of Scotch regardless. "It's the rest of this I don't understand. You could have just told me what it is you needed. On the phone. Instead of..." He comes up short again as he offers one of the glasses. "How did you get in here? Are you cooking for me? What..." Then his perplexity eases all at once. "Ah, of course. This is a dream, no?" "I told you," Damien is insisting -- still quite patiently. "I needed you to come. You did not, and I had to trek all the way here. All for the best -- this kitchen has been lonely." Once again, this is coming with a very critical edge creeping back in. "I am cooking for it, you've neglected it horribly. You ought to eat, though, of course, it may go a small way towards repairing the insult." He is leaving his chopping board, flitting over to retrieve the glass from Matt. As he takes it his eyes widen, tone positively brimming with delighted intrigue. "Do you dream about me?" "You can't just --" Matt sputters, at a loss despite having determined this is all a dream. "My gods, I know you're older than you look, but really! If you need someone to come to you, you must tell them where you are. The phone won't do that automatically." His mouth twists to one side as he looks over the clean if uncharacteristically barren kitchen. "I do cook." It's a weak protest. "Thank you, though. It smells delicious." He leans back against the counter and sips his whisky, studying Damien sidelong. "Evidently I'm doing so right now." After another moment's consideration, his brows wrinkle. "Oh! I did dream a while back we were trying to sail to the Isle of Avalon, and you were very put out nobody knew the way." He hesitates minutely. "Were you -- in trouble? Earlier. Surely you have other people you can call on." "People around here do seem to know remarkably little about the geography of their world. What business did we have at the Isle of Avalon?" Damien doesn't take a drink, though he does take the glass and set it down upon the counter beside his chopping board. "If you cook, you ought to be putting more love into it." He's returned to his prep work, this time stripping fresh sprigs of thyme with quick nimble fingers and amassing a small pile beside some other, less familiar herb. "I was in the most terrible trouble! A summoning ought not be frivolous. Though as it didn't work, I suppose that part matters less." Matt rubs his temples with thumb and middle finger, like he's massaging away a headache, though he's smiling behind the gesture. "We did try to pull it up on Google Maps. As I recall, we were trying to smuggle --" He stops cold and draws a quick breath before continuing. "-- someone offworld, and all the other borders were closed. Are you still in trouble? I've some resources, even now. Though not, alas, directions to Avalon." He watches Damien strip the herbs, his expression far away. He lifts his glass again, the way that someone might who is getting ready to toss back way too much whisky at once, but then sets it down on the counter. "There's only so much love I can put into frank and beans for one, but I can help with that. Probably. Luci trained me well." "All the other borders? Who on earth managed a trick like that. The multiverse is quite infinite. Our dream selves could not have been all that resourceful." Damien is glancing up again, and for all his striking dissimilarity to his son there is something very kin there in the quiet solemnity of his tone, or the way it complements the blink-and-you'd-miss-it glimmer of humour warming his eyes. "If he'd trained you a bit better I think he could have avoided some problems, mmm?" "I guess dream-SHIELD was just more resourceful than dream-us." Matt turns one hand palm-up. "So it goes. If I still remember in the morning, I'll register a complaint with my subconscious, or Lord Morpheus, or whoever was responsible for that glaring inaccuracy." He doesn't really react immediately to the question, his gaze fixed steadily -- stubbornly -- on the herbs. "It's no fault of his training. I'm not altogether sure one can be trained out of madness, but that madness will never happen again." "Mmm." Does Damien sound skeptical? The very quick glance he flicks Matt before looking down to his work looks a little skeptical. "Madness follows its own unpredictable rules." He lifts up the pot lid and scrapes the herbs into it, gives the stew a good stir before replacing the lid. "Nearly ready. We will need vessels for the stew -- I do hope you are hungry." "I've some highly specific booby traps in my head against it, now." It's hard to say if Matt's actually pleased with his new security measures, but there is a faint, fanatical edge in his otherwise pleasantly languid tone. "They may not stop it, but I'll know it's coming, and I am far more bloody-minded than my madness." He blinks at Damien, and there's something almost like surprise in his weary expression before he inclines his head and sets out a pair of bowls and spoons at the breakfast nook. "I wouldn't want to let the kitchen down in any event, but as a matter of fact, I'm starving." | |
