2024-11-23 - The Most Magical Place In The Midwest

Arte and Poe’s apartment is an eclectic blend of two women’s separate aesthetics, much of the latter’s tending toward function and comfort. This isn’t a dorm room, and it’s clear that thought and compromise have gone into furnishing this divinely feminine space—even if part of that design includes the giant plastic tub of cheese puffs that only fits in the space above the fridge, providing it with maximum visibility.

Poe isn’t a performer, nor is she guest-facing in any way, so her typical work outfit consists of comfortable sweats or leggings, and a hoodie, sweater, or some other equally plush, figure-obscuring article of clothing that she can curl up into in her chair. She also wears Crocs, like almost all the time, but at least her charm collection is cute.

Rounding the corner, she exits the bathroom with both hands in the air as she wrangles her impressive mane of curls. A fragrant cloud of de-frizz spray follows her.

One of those compromises has been the inclusion of Artemisia's pink couch, which despite its slightly intense shade of blush has been softened by piles of cream and grey blankets and a few decorative pillows. It helps that the thing is really comfortable.

When Poe comes out of the bathroom, she finds her roommate tinkling away on an electric keyboard dressed in mismatched socks, dark leggings, and a thick patterned sweater with at least five kinds of stitches that are done just well enough to keep it from looking manic. "Hey Poe!" Artemisia greets brightly.

Hair secured in a messy, lopsided bun, Poe settles into the corner of the couch with her legs folded beneath her. That very same pink couch. She pulls a Flynt the Friendly Dragon stuffed animal and hugs it close to chest. "In a piano duel, how can you tell who wins the duel?" She peeks over the back of the couch, innocently blinking and adjusting her glasses on the bridge of her nose.

"Random! Love it. Okay. Hm." Artemsisia purses her lips and hums for a moment as her fingers slide along the keys playing the jeopardy theme. "Sometimes you can't. Sometimes it's like totally like snowboarding and you manage more like peak tricks than the other guy."

"Okay! So... give me like, an ollie," Poe twists, leaning her chin atop her hands on the back of the couch. Plushie-Flynt watches Artemesia expectantly, too -- albeit with a bit more of a glazed expression. "Ollie is snowbaording, right?" She laughs. She doesn't know.

Artemisia laughs. "I think that's jump?" She's around the era of Tony Hawk Pro Skater - right? She does a little flourish over the keys. "Something like that maybe. I mean, the point isn't to really duel but to look like you're dueling and then end up in a big tangled harmony."

"Yeah," Poe cosigns that with much hesitance. She, too, is basing her snowboarding knowledge off of whatever the generational equivalent of the Tony Hawk games is. She didn't even play. She probably just watched someone play. "Do you rehearse what you're both going to play? Or is it just like, a jam session? It always looks rehearsed..." She's talking about on the monitors, of course. Far be it from Poe to experience things in real life.

"Oh," Artemisia laughs. "We definitely rehearse so that it looks spontaneous. I mean, sometimes rehearsals turn into jam sessions, but that's like just kismet."

Abandoning the purple plushie, Poe hobbles inelegantly off the sofa and crosses the apartment. "I think I would lose my mind spending that much time with somebody," she says with her back to Artemisia. "Even somebody I like." Stretching up toward the giant cheese puff container above the fridge, she has to wobble the container a bit to get ahold of it. In doing so, she also dislodges the circle of diatomaceous earth that's been oh-so-carefully sprinkled around it's set location.

Poe lifts onto her tippy toes with intention, gently thumbing the circle back into place and waving her hand over it with a crawling-conjuring gesture of her hands. Her broken ward is reproduced... only it isn't ants she's protecting her cheesy puffs from. It's klutzes.

"Well, it's not like we work together constantly," Artemisia says lightly, moving to flop onto the couch and knocking over a small horde of pillows. She spends the next few minutes attempting to put them back into place.

The spot above the fridge isn't the only ward guarding against any totally theoretical clumsy individuals. There is, for example, a delicately sprinkled circle around the base of the stained glass lamp that Artemisia just now comes into dangerously close proximity to.

Poe returns with a bowl of cheesy puffs, the massive container replaced in its previous position. Plopping back down onto the couch, she holds the bowl within Artemisia's reach. "Okay," she seems to agree. Her voice goes up an octave girlishly, which probably actually means she feels the opposite. And then she stuffs one side of her mouth with puffs.

Ooh! Artemisia brightens at the Cheese Puffs. It's almost like a contact high, Poe gets a little buzz of joy from her roommate as she munches on the snacks curled in the new pile of pillows. Today she is wearing big, fake rings that look like gemstones that likely she got while in New York. Most of her stranger closet pieces are explained by, 'Oh, I met an artist.' "So you work by yourself most of the time, right? Do you get to see everything in the park?"

Poe's emotional state is dominated by casual contentment. It's intermixed with playfulness—playful contrariness, in this case—and a glimmer of maternal protectiveness, the kind that might toddler-proof the decorative lamps.

"Mostly alone, I guess. I mean, usually we work in shifts. And you're on the radio with security out in the field, so it's not like alone alone," Poe answers between crunches. She stifles a laugh, "No. There are a few blind spots. And I'm only one lady. A lot of the time, it's going back and pulling footage after the fact."

Arte-proof.

The bubbly blonde happily crunches cheeses puffs with her feet tucked under her, happy to sit in the casual calm of the unlikely household. "Oh. That's - do you ever feel like a secret agent?" Artemisia asks, dark eyes twinkling as she looks at Poe. "Also. What's the most scandalous thing you've caught that you can talk about?" Monch monch.

"Totally." Poe crinkles up her features and pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose with her index finger in what might be the least secret agent thing ever.

As for scandal, she doesn't even have to take a moment to think: "A famous actor's polycule having a break-up fight mid-heavy-make-out-sesh on the Arnold the Arboreal Anteater Flying Ants Ferris Wheel at Park After Dark." Poe's mouth gets really really small and her eyes get really really big, then she flaps up both hands in mock surrender. "I've already said too much."

"O
M.
G."

Artemsia stares at Poe and squeals and taps her fingers against leg. "That's insane. Tell me if it was hot."

"Okay. Obviously I don't know the nuances of their relationship dynamic or like, if they were official—" Poe interrupts herself here to confirm: "—It was SO hot."

Her voice lifts an octave, again. Betraying a certain naivety. "It seemed way too emotionally charged and meaningful to be just a vacation fling."

"Trust me. Hearts... were broken. And then they were on the back of that flying ant for like... ever. Like... almost six minutes." She pauses "...most of our footage doesn't really have any sound."

"Lord." Artemisia fans herself with a ring clad hand. "That is one of the juiciest incidents I have ever heard of." She flashes Poe a grin and then stands to make a cup of tea, heading to the kitchen. "You want tea?"

"People do all kinds of crazy stuff!" Poe says helpfully, "They're just usually on the ground where we can stop them." Her expression brown eyes flick upward in wayward thought. She adds in a mutter: "Of course, now some people can fly..."

"I'm good! I don't want to be up all night." She holds up a hand flatly before Artemisia can offer her sleepy time tea, not that they are even facing each other, "And I don't want to have to pee all night." The sound of crunching reverberates throughout the apartment.

"Oooh. Who flies?" Artemisia is behind on the gossip. "I don't know that I do anything cool yet," she says, warming up a pot of tea.

"Tourists," Poe cheerfully laments. She turns to look at Artemisia from over the back of the couch. One of her cheeks is stuffed full of cheese puffs like a chipmunk's. "But. You're like? The most magical person I know?"

"That's because I'm like a pixie incarnate," Artemisia jokes, wrinkling her nose "Chaos follows-" As if on cue, she slips on the kitchen floor in her socks. "Me."

There's not so much as a hint of surprise. Poe watches Artemisia slide with fond amusement. All the knives are put away and the corners of the countertops aren't very sharp, so... have at it!

"You are chaos incarnate. Chaos fairy. Maybe channel all that," Poe laughs, making a gesture to encompass all of her roommate and her activity. And then she motions toward the rest of the apartment—and perhaps the park in general, "We're in the Most Magical place in the Midwest."