2024-12-12 - Use It If You Got It

It's mid-afternoon on a Thursday during the quiet week before the true holiday madness begins at the park and Trace is wandering, exploring an area that he hasn't been to yet -- the Ice Palace and Ice Sculpture Garden. He's got his badge on and name tag and whatnot, but his lack of a particular uniform or costume would identify him as one of the backstage crew rather than a guest-facing presence.

He's dressed in a pair of faded jeans and black laced up boots with a dark blue and white marled sweater on and a black jacket over that to keep warm around this actually-chilly portion of the park, kept that way presumably to keep all the frozen things frozen.

Purposely kept chilled in the area as the sculptures work on new pieces to be placed or fixing ones that have gotten cracked or for water reasons started to lose their shape in one place or another. Currently, Avery was standing in front of a larger-than-life-sized angel figure with its wings spread wide.

Dressed in layers, Avery has on a long-sleeved white shirt with a blue sweater vest, her name badge placed on the top left of her vest, and a thin jacket was pulled on over as the last layer. Something that wasn't too bulky so that she could still use her arms freely. A tool belt hung around her hips for easy access to chisels, wireless heaters, picks, and anything else she might need.

Up close and personal with the angels face, Avery stood on a step ladder working with a pick to get the details and shape of the eyes juuuust right.

Trace wanders over to where the work is ongoing and stands outside of the marked off area, just off to one side, hands slipped into his pockets as he tips his head to watch the angel's features coming to life. He's quiet, not interrupting, just observing with interest as some other guests sort of come and go around him, focusing on the finished sculptures.

It's only when she gets to a point that she seems to have stopped and he won't startle her that he says, "I've always really envied anyone who could sculpt like that and bring a three-dimensional vision in their head to life. It's really beautiful and impressive."

Without missing a beat Avery replies, "I would call it skill, but it really just takes practice and a desire to want to." tourist and employees alike wandered around and would cast comments or even ask questions from time to time, she'd gotten used to hearing voices behind her and could keep her focus regardless of them.

Leaning back from her work, eyes roaming the angelic face, tilting her head and staring at the eyes. "Do the eyes look the same to you?" Unaware if she was asking an employee or a tourist, but a person was a person and the opinion mattered. Finally, she turns back to see Trace standing there and offers him a smile, "Don't worry, I won't throw a snowball at you if you think they need more work."

"I'm pretty sure no amount of desire is going to make me capable of getting those wings right," Trace laughs. He takes a step back though when she asks if the eyes look the same so that he can see both together and then he nods, "They are. They're even, too, and properly spaced by the nose." He then lifts both brows and says, "And I'm not just saying that so you won't pelt me with snowballs."

"That feather up there on the left wing though is missing the uh..." he kind of draws a line in the air, the line that goes down the center that would match the twin on the opposite wing.

Laughing while stepping down from the step ladder. Avery reaches the ground and puts her pick away in its rightful place in her toolbelt and steps away from the angel. Walking towards Trace she lifts her brows as he tries to tell her what the wings are missing. "The what?" asking confused.

Turning to look back at the angel from Trace's view of the sculpture from this distance, "Oh, I see what you mean." Nodding her head slowly and sighing, "I'll fix that next. The wings and the face are the hardest part." Turning her face back to him, "Good catch, by the way." Offering a hand, "I'm Avery."

"The uh.. quill part? The middle line there," Trace tries to explain, though when she turns and sees it he looks a little relieved that he doesn't have to fish out his phone and try to figure out feather parts in order to accurately explain what he's seeing. "Honestly I might not have noticed if you hadn't asked about the eyes. Once I started looking at them I started looking at everything else." He smiles a little apologetically.

He takes the offered hand and gives it a friendly shake before releasing it. "Trace," he says. "I work over in pyrotechnics.. the fireworks shows, laser shows, anything that goes boom, smokes, or is on fire, pretty much."

"No, don't apologize, I like the honesty." Avery might have seen the imperfection later on but she hadn't noticed it right then due to her focus on the eyes. "I had not stepped back and looked at it in a while. It would have driven me nuts if I thought I was done and then saw that later."

Retrieving her hand and slipping her hand into her jacket pocket, "Oh cool! Those fireworks shows are great and I love that I can see them just about anywhere." smiling "They change with the season, don't they? It doesn't seem like the same fireworks show that we had a few months ago."

Trace nods and says, "We're all our own worst critics when we notice something we wish we'd fixed," with a little chuckle. "Know how that goes."

"I've only been here since October, but yeah we have a different show for next couple of weeks for Christmas and then we have a really big one for New Year's, then it goes back to the usual winter show.. then there's smaller ones for weddings and events that go on at other times. It's actually a lot more variety than I was aware of before I got here."

"And yeah, a few months ago we had the Halloween show.. and autumn ones. I'm looking forward to seeing how we continue to change it up throughout the seasons. Have you been here a while?"

“ Who knew that fireworks could be so versatile?“ Avery laugh softly. “I might be overthinking this… But I kinda always saw fireworks like musical notes.“ Removing her hand from her coat pocket, making a burst gesture with her hand opening wide into the sky. “One burst after the next after the next after the next is just a series of musical notes in a captivating sky song.”

Her arm lowers again, and her hand slipped back into her coat pocket “I haven’t been here that long either, I got here just before spring this year.” Her eyebrows draw together thoughtfully. “I guess it’s coming up on a year. I hadn’t even realized it time has been flying by. “

Trace grins as Avery makes the bursts in the air, like musical notes. "They kind of are, and that's how I do the choreography for them, time the bursts to match the notes, to create a visual that tells the story along with the song. Though I do like the term sky song. I may need to borrow that."

"Time probably seems to move faster when you like what you do," Trace says and then pauses, "Or maybe that's part of the magic of the islands, too. I'm still trying to sort all of that out, myself."

"You are welcome to," Where does the term sky song come from? Somewhere in Avery's brain. It sounded pretty. And she was glad that Trace liked it. "It's a skill," much like he had mentioned her ice sculpting was a skill, "A sky song skill," she emphasizes.

That was an interesting thought, "Do you think time goes faster on the islands?" she'd never considered it, especially since she was so dedicated and engrossed in her work most days, the time flew by without much thought. A year? Months? Days? Interesting. "Do you have magic?" Never to assume someone had it or wanted to admit they had it.

Trace's smile is genuine and appreciative when she calls it a sky song skill. It's clear he likes the term and the idea and/or the imagery behind it. "I don't know. I've only been here since October and it hasn't felt all that much faster than usual to me, only in the way that holiday season always seems to go fast with everything going on."

Though when she asks if he ahs magic, he nods. "Yeah. Mine came on pretty early.. within the first couple of weeks that I was here. What about you?"

"Same," she admits, rubbing her thumb over her fingertips within the folds of her coat pocket as she explains, "I first thought that the magic came to me because of what I do. After talking to other people and what they can do, it seems rather random." Avery smirks, "I'll tell you what I can do if you tell me what you can do."

If he hadn't already figured it out yet based off the clues she'd left behind.

"I can control water... and therefore ice." Gesturing to the angel sculpture, "I try not to cheat for my daily job stuff, I was taught this stuff before. But I can make shapes with water or freeze things... I can also help people go to sleep. That was a weird one to figure out." Not that all of it wasn't weird, but that one particularly.

"Yeah, I just had a conversation with someone about that recently. He theorized that the magic had something to do with what people do or their identity, how they envision themselves. I was trying to figure out how mine fit in with that theory since it didn't really seem to," Trace admits with a slight shake of his head. But he nods when she says she'll tell him if he tells her, agreeing to that deal.

He glances from her up to the angel sculpture and then back, grinning. "If I could control fireworks, I would absolutely be using that in my day to day job. That's not cheating. You got the job at a magic park and the park gave you magic. Seems to me that's just a job perk, not cheating."

But then she says she can make people go to sleep. "Huh, that's.. interesting. So.. I can control dreams -- mine, other people's -- and I can travel through them, from one person's dream landscape to another." Then he adds, "And I can make a telepathic link with someone so we can talk back and forth in our heads."

"Control dreams? Travel through dreams? Can you see other people's dreams? Make them dream something that you want them to see?" Intrigued by that idea.

Given Trace's words of encouragement, the idea was already in her mind... Why not use her powers to make life easier at work? She didn't have to struggle so hard to make perfection when she could summon some power to help her do it. "Huh." she sounds more than voices.

A hand comes out from the pocket of her jacket, outstretching towards the angel figure, and curls her fingers around, mentally making the changes she would make on the eyes and the wings that needed fixing. The changes start to transform right before their eyes. Engrossed by the power she keeps going, there are cracks of ice as pieces fall off or melt away to nothing to form droplets of water that make a certain piece smooth and clear. The entire sculpture is miraculously done in seconds.

A laugh puffs out of her. It was perfect.

Trace nods in answer to all of those things, "Yeah. I can watch other people's dreams or I can change them. Like if they're having a nightmare, I can stop it and turn it into something else." Then after a moment's pause he admits, "Or vice versa." He then pauses and says, "That'd be a dangerous combination. If you could help people go to sleep and I could see their dreams. I can't help peopel go to sleep. If I could do that.." he trails off, unsure if he feels comfortable with the idea of being able to do both of those things, himself.

When Avery takes out her hand and gestures toward the sculpture, he turns to watch it with fascination as the changes begin to take shape right there before his eyes, little bits breaking off, smoothing out, etchings appearing without the need for tools. His grin is broad as he says, "That is fucking awesome." He offers her a hand for a high five. "Yeah, that's not cheating. That's just combining what you already know how to do with the gift you got from the place. Use it."

"With our powers combined..." Avery says in a very captain planet like voice... but it trails off, "That is an interesting combination. If you ever need that for whatever reason..." Trailing off because the offer was there and he could call on her if he needed it. "So have you used your power much? I'm curious how you chose to use it and when?"

The high-five it met with a smack of her own hand. hell yes. She'd just created something amazing with her power. "I've don't something like that before, when I made some monogram ice cubes for a couple's anniversary... But I've never used it for my sculptures." For sure will definitely be doing it now. "That'll free up so much time!"

"Maybe.. I could see where it could be helpful if like someone was having real nightmares and was afraid to sleep. You could help them sleep and I could stop the nightmare and let them get some real rest," Trace says. "That wouldn't be a bad way to use that combination." There are certainly bad ways that he could think of to use that combination, as well, but he doesn't give them voice.

"Which one? I don't use the telepathy very often. Just from time to time," he admits. "The dream stuff? A lot. Mostly on my own dreams, just seeing what I can do with them, making shit up, playing things out in my head. Sometimes just wandering from one landscape to another to see what's there."

Then he admits, "It's a little bit addictive. I find dreams fascinating. I find what other people's psyches create even more fascinating than my own. It's like.. having a million Netflix channels you can wander through and never know what you're going to get and still wake up rested afterward."

"Think of how productive you can be! And.. how many more breaks you can take." He grins.

"You can go into your own dreams too?" Avery hadn't even seemed to think of that as an option, she was only thinking about going into other peoples dreams, not his own. "Thats... interesting. Is that restful though? How do you wake up feeling refreshed? Or is it like having insomnia? Waking up and functioning... just tired all day long."

Avery nods in understanding, "I've always been pretty interested in dreaming meanings. Such as, if you dream of a snake attacking you? What does that mean? An easy Google search usually brings up something like dreambible.com or even AI these days and it tells you what it means. But you... You can actually see it all. Can you determine what the dreams mean too?" Because he can change them.

"Those coffee and croissant breaks are going to be way more frequent." she laughs.

"Yeah, that's how it started. I realized I was aware I was dreaming, like fully aware I was in a dream, and that I could control and change it," Trace explains. "No, it's not like having insomnia since I am actually asleep. It's just like if you sleep and have a dream that you remember when you wake up," he elaborates. "You were still asleep. You still wake up feeling like you slept. You just sometimes remember your dreams and sometimes you don't. It's kind of like that. Just that I remember them more clearly since I was in control of them at the time." He pauses, trying to figure out if that's the best way to explain it and then says, "If that makes any sense."

He laughs and shakes his head, "No, not really. I don't have any particular insight into what anything means when I'm in a dream. Like.. if I walk in and someone is standing in a field of cherry trees with the blossoms falling and they're painting a picture or something... I can get a sense of the peace of the scene, but I have no idea what that means to them. Not unless I really know them and can make some guesses. But even then, it's still just guesses. I'm a Chemist, not a Psychologist."

He then grins. "Speaking of which.. would you like to? Get a coffee?" He nods vaguely in the direction of out, where the food vendors are. "Now that the statue is done."

"It does," Make sense. Avery nodded along to affirm that she does get it, "Thats pretty cool though. Being able actually be in a dream world." Laughing softly, "Can you imagine if you were a psychologist and had that ability? It seems like it would be almost too invasive or overstepping if someone had that ability and was a psychologist."

After a moment she says, "So, you are literally the man of our dreams?" Avery teases and winks. "You'll have to use that as a pickup line someday." A bit cheesy, but it would be a good icebreaker.

Looking back at the finished sculpture. "Why not? Looks like my work here is done for the moment." slipping her phone out of her tool belt and pushing into the back pocket of her pants before removing the toolbelt, "Let me just put this down and we can go."

"Yeah, I think maybe that would be a little much. I mean, unless they had full consent for it or something. Some kind of dream therapy," Trace ponders and then shakes his head. "Not for me, though."

Though the pick-up line has him wincing and laughing at the same time. "Yikes. I think I'd be way too worried they'd laugh, and not in a good way either. That sounds super, super cheesy. I'm more a... hey, I'm a scientist.. want to see if we have any chemistry? kind of guy.." Then he pauses. "Yeah, that's no less cheesy. I think I'm probably going to pass on the pick-up lines."

He waits while she cleans up her tools and then it's just a quick wander across the path to a place that sells cocoa, coffee, and other hot drinks on the chilly mountain.