ArchivedLogs:Camera Obscura

Camera Obscura
Dramatis Personae Flicker, Isra
In Absentia	2014-11-03 Of eggs and dangerous propositions.
Location <NYC> {Geekhaus} - Harbor Commons - Lower East Side
There's an open airy feel to the floorplan of this unit. The door opens up into a wide expanse of common space that is not so much divided up into rooms as it is simply multipurposed. Ash-grey resin flooring underfoot runs up against the paler grey of the exposed stone in the walls; between the stone support there are wide floor-to-ceiling windows looking out at the river on one side of the home and the Commons' central yard on the other. Half of the space has a ceiling at one-floor height, though half of the space is left open with a balcony up on the second floor overlooking the living space below. A slatted stairway heads up to the second floor balcony; on the other side of the room, a fireman's pole running straight down the the basement provides a quicker way /down/. The wide open space here is combination living and dining room; near the windows there are a pair of couches and large armchair around a wide coffeetable; further off a steel-and-glass dining table is surrounded by eight tall black chairs. A full bathroom behind the stairway is done up in dark granite; the glass-doored bathtub/shower is rather expansively large. The kitchen is tucked off in back, beneath the half-height ceiling; in here the appliances and cabinets and shelving recessed into the wall are in brushed steel, wide grey sweeps of tempered glass countertops running around the edge of the room and a large central island holding stoves and oven and deep double sink. Adjacent to the kitchen, beneath the ceiling as well, is a sitting area structured largely around the enormous television against one wall, a wealth of video games for a number of consoles held on the shelves around the television. Crates and beanbags and one low futon folded against the floor are arranged in good viewing distance; opposite the television, a sturdy large pen built out of wood shrines a couch amid a sea of brightly colorful playpen balls. A door in one wall opens up to the apartment next door; a door opposite leads down to the basement. Geekhaus is quiet, circa lunchtime. Kind of too quiet, more eerie than peaceful given the often boisterous residents that /should/ be inhabiting it. But with the upper floor empty and the basement bleak there isn't a whole ton of /boist/ left in Flicker. He's either headed to work soon or coming off it, to judge from the Mendel Clinic guard uniform he wears. Half-wears, he's got the pants on but the shirt is draped over the back of his chair where he perches on a high bar-seat at the kitchen counter. In lieu of Uniform Shirt he just has on a harness currently attaching a shiny new arm to his side. Maybe not that shiny, really, it's kind of just a drab beige color around its metal parts. His slightly pained (more than slightly tired) expression doesn't seem particularly enamored of it either. Mostly he is just regarding it with a grimace that eventually transfers over to the plate in front of him. There's an omelette there, cheese-and-tomato-and-spinach, but he looks about as thrilled with Omelette as he does with New Arm. The fork in his meat-hand pokes at the omelette almost suspiciously before ignoring it to pick up a glass of cranberry juice nearby it instead. Out of the cold windy November comes Isra. This would not, in itself, be worthy of remark, save that she enters through the front door--her usual point of ingress being the balcony. She is draped in a heavy gray cloak with a shorter green capelet, her backswept horns tucked away beneath a generous hood. Her skin has returned to a paler and less healthy shade of her natural gray, something no one but her colorist has seen in months. She pauses at the threshold, nudging the door shut with one wing, ears swiveling to take in the unwonted quiet as she sheds the cloak. Beneath she wears a white himation and, oddly, a camera bag in lieu of her usual messenger bag. Without a word, she stalks into the kitchen--one wing brushing Flicker lightly as she passes him--and fetches a plastic container from the refrigerator. She carefully eases the camera bag down onto the counter alongside her leftovers across from him, though she does not sit. Her slanted green eyes shift from her own unopened food to Flicker's omelette. "That good, huh?" "Hm? Oh -- oh." A small flush of pink dusts Flicker's cheeks, and he sets his glass down with a shake of his head. "The /omelette's/ fine." The hint of blush remains as he twists in his seat, snagging his shirt and (in a fairly awkward-ungainly struggle of movement) working it on. From the looks of it, he isn't proving /enormously/ adept at manipulating his new arm. "What's in the bag?" Isra's expression remains largely blank, though she blinks a couple of times when Flicker reprises his shirt, as though she hadn't considered that he was half naked until that moment. "Egg." She indicates the camera bag with a slight tip of her head. "A very large, very tough egg." Her wings shiver and settle across her shoulders. "But I meant your day...which, I suppose, includes the omelette." She opens the plastic container and plucks out a kibbeh. Flicker's eyes open wider, his eyebrows shooting up. He ignores the omelette, ignores, even, buttoning up his shirt; it hangs open as he leans in towards the bag as though staring at the /outside/ will sate his curiosity. "I -- can I --" He gestures towards the bag. "Did you just -- when did that -- uh." His blush is deepening. "Come -- out?" "Last night--or early this morning?" Isra pops the kibbeh into her mouth and unzips the camera bag. Inside, nested in a lavender towel with a heating pad, is a dull gray egg maybe ten inches long. "I brought it to the clinic for a checkup earlier, but they couldn't tell much about what's going on inside, if anything." She shrugs, a gesture as much wings as shoulders on her, and picks another kibbeh out of the tub as though looking for a very particular one. "They want an ornithologist to take a crack at it." A long pause. "Figuratively. Forgive me, I'm not all here today." "Did -- uh. Did that... hurt?" Flicker peers into the bag, rather wide-eyed as he stretches his hand cautiously towards the egg. He pulls back short of actually touching it. His eyes skate from the egg to his omelette and back, and he thunks back into his seat with still-red cheeks and a small dip of his head. "No, I -- wouldn't expect you to. To be. Here. This is -- what are you going to --" He quiets, nudging his plate of omelette a little farther back from himself and swapping it out for the juice instead. "Not as much as these," she touches one of her horns, then the long phalanx of one folded wing, "or these. But yes. Enough that I couldn't really think at the time about..." She drops the kibbeh back into its container and sighs. "I don't know what I'm doing. Just one thing at a time. I desperately want to tell Dusk, but what he needs right now is...to survive." A faint growl rises in the back of her throat. "One thing at a time." Flicker leans in against the counter, running his fingers through his hair. He leaves his hand there, head cradled in a palm and fingers splayed through his previously-neatly-combed hair. He's quiet, then. Slow breaths, the tap of his mechanical hand as he attempts (without much success) to close it around his glass, the thunk (once he's /achieved/ that) of his glass bumping back down onto the table when he tries lifting it to his mouth. His eyes don't leave the egg through this. It's possible he'd have more success at drinking if they /did/. "-- Maybe." His brows furrow once he finally breaks the silence. "Or maybe it's more of a -- two birds, one stone. Kind of thing." Isra gives the barest shake of her head. "It isn't that..." Her eyes follow Flicker's mechanical hand, her expression unreadable. "Of course, anyone who could bring him blood could also bring him word. I had wanted Ion to do so if he found him, but now I'm not sure that would be the best idea. The news may not weigh down the /messenger/ much, but Dusk has so much to worry about already. Surely he doesn't need this." She punctuates 'this' by laying the pads of her wickedly taloned fingers on the egg as if feeling for a pulse. "Especially given we do not yet know whether 'this' is our child or a legendary omelette waiting to happen." "Think he'd like to know, though. Worry or not." The omelette comment pulls his eyes back towards his /own/ omelette with a grimace. "I could. Maybe," he offers hesitantly. "Bring him both. Word. And blood." "That's probably true, and anyway, he has a /right/ to know." Isra's ears press back, almost flat against her skull. "That would be excellent, but isn't it exceedingly dangerous, though, given we don't know his precise location, much less the clearest path there?" She pushes the container of kibbeh around the countertop with an idle fingertip. "Hive cannot scout for you..." "Exceedingly." Flicker's eyes shift towards the closed basement door. Afterwards his head returns to sit cradled in his hand. "But maybe he doesn't have to. I just need a clear /visual/. We don't /need/ a telepath in there, we just -- need a camera." "Oh." Isra's eyes focus on the middle distance and all of her fidgeting stops at once. "Of course. So either a security feed or a drone. B could supply the latter, and probably the expertise in terms of operating it." She shivers visibly, the spell of predatory stillness broken. "Even so, it is a perilous quest, as you assuredly do not need me to tell. You think you can do this?" "Well." Flicker finally closes his hand around his juice /and/ transports it to his mouth, though after this he stabilizes the glass with his other hand so that he can drink without spilling or dropping it. "As far as I /know/ county jails don't use murderdrones like the labs so I'll -- probably get out in." His grimace deepens, fingers running over his mechanical arm once he sets the glass back down. "... more of one piece than I'm used to. Probably." "I am not a woman of faith," says Isra softly, "but I do have faith in you." She unfurls one wing and stretches it easily over the counter to wrap around his shoulders, prosthetic arm and all. "Which puts you up there with a number of scientific principles and maybe a few laws of physics on their good days." This last with a faint smile, the tips of fangs flashing white against dark gray lips. She glances down at their meals. "Do you want to trade? There's no egg in the kibbeh..." "In good company, then. I feel honored. Though half the people I know defy a good few of the laws of physics." Flicker's quick bright smile banishes some of the exhaustion from his face. He leans into the wing, closing his eyes as his smile slips more wry. Nudging the omelette towards Isra, he slides the kibbeh towards himself. Eyes the camera bag and its egg again, pensively. "Got work soon. Should scrounge B up afterwards, though." "I'll let her know if I see her, though I'll probably just nap until someone wakes me." She snags Flicker's abandoned fork and digs into the omelette. "And the laws of physics /have/ taken a beating." Isra's smile is full and fierce this time. "But in truth they've always been a bit rocky, and good scientists take pleasure in seeing them broken."