2025-01-01 - The Woo Woo

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

"Oh for fuck's sake." Smoke rises from Isengard tonight. Or, well, from the oven in the kitchen in the Mitchell apartment. Sadie, panicked, turns from chopping a zucchini to address the situation. "Shit shit shit!" She grabs a potholder from off the wall, opens the oven door, and pulls out the round baking sheet upon which would be a pizza if it wasn't a charred disc. "Aw man!"

"AGAIN?"

That's the voice from down the hallway, though really, Louise wasn't helping so does she have any room to talk here? Probably not, still isn't going to stop her though. The voice gets closer - "Tell me it wasn't the--" -as she pads out of her room, a random t-shirt in hand to flap at the smoke detector so the thing will shut up. But oh, it was. Pizza reduced to charcoal. The saddest of kitchen mishaps.

"We're going to starve," Lou says, still waving her shirt despite the fact she's given up hope and resigned herself death.

"Nooooo," Sadie wails, tossing the sheet on the stove top and whipping the mitt around in a flail of hopelessness. Eventually the alarm stops beeping, and there's a long pause for dramatic effect. Is anyone going to come crashing through their door or windows or anything to save them? No?

"Welp." She turns, opens the freezer, takes out another pizza. "Take two! What were you doing back there?"

Finally the beeping stops, and Lou stops her mad flapping to put hands on hips and scowl up at the smoke detector, like it's to blame for all this. Then the gaze drops to Sadie (as they go woefully unrescued from this travesty), and her lips press in something that threatens to be a smile.

Looks like she's in this now, so she tosses the shirt over the back of the couch and comes over to hop her butt up on the counter. "I was avoiding helping." At least she's honest about it. "Clearly a mistake. You should set a timer." Oh no, she's taking on a supervisory capacity. "Did you hear the music? Scared me half to death, one of the neighbors must have had it set full volume for a few seconds." No. No one else would have heard the music, isn't that funny. "Speaking of which, is the oven still set to 'raging inferno'? Maybe turn it down a little." She's very helpful.

Oh good. Sadie has supervision. "Hurr hurr gee why didn't I think of that. Dweeb." On her way by, she pretends to hit her sister over the head with the frozen pizza box. But also, "Yeah I probably should do that." Because she didn't and look where they are.

Once Pizza: The Sequel is in, she sets a timer on her phone and sighs. Then something comes back to her and she turns a quizzical look on Louise. "What music?"

Rather than take offense, Lou raises her arms in an exaggerated shrug, like yeah, why didn’t you? “That’s what I’m saying.” Probably no coincidence that’s moments before she ducks and weaves to dodge getting walloped. Maybe a little dramatically. “Choosing violence.” shocking.

She’s just slipping off the counter to go take over with the zucchini, a silent peace offering, when Sadie asks. And she scrunches her nose, frowning like the veg may be to blame. “Just a weird song. It was so loud - you really didn’t…?” She shrugs. No big. “It kind of reminded me of the music at the tree lighting.” She says it offhandedly, while making a disaster of chopping that zucchini. “Did you catch any of that?”

One question lifts itself up from the ashes of their fallen pizza: why is there zucchini. Sadie might be in an experimental mood tonight. How often has she had a cookbook open amidst the chaos of an attempted recipe gone all kinds of awry. There is a salad bowl out.

Did she catch any of that? It isn't like Sadie to dodge questions from her sister. Growing up, she never delivered anything but the truth. Honest. Except for all those times she lied because it was funny. "Wait no, what song?" For some reason living in a place where magic just exists and everyone's cool with it, Louise hearing music that she can't hear has become the focus. Go figure.

Why is there zucchini? It's almost always a valid question, unless there's beer batter and ranch dressing involved, but Louise doesn't ask questions, she's helping. Somehow. In some way. There are raised eyebrows Sadie's way, like what are we pretending to do with this as she scoops the cut up zucchini into the bowl. Mmm vegetable. Look how healthy.

She doesn't not notice that Sadie didn't answer, but apparently they're still talking about her thing and she sighs dramatically, shooting Sadie a look. Here she was trying to play it off all casually, figure her sister would hone in like a sniper on the thing she was being cool about. There's an eye roll for good measure, but she answers. "It's just like a loud..." She wiggles her fingers, like that's going to help. "Doo doooooo-" No, wait she's tone deaf, no way that's going to help other than the fact she pitched her voice real low. "I keep feeling it." Which is different than hearing it, maybe, but she says it airily. "Like the bass is turned up. Better go yell at the neighbors, right?"

Maybe there's a surprise salad. The bottle of olive oil is out, there's some vinegar somewhere. It could get crazy.

There's no way in hell she's not going to want more information about this thing her little sister is dealing with, and the shift from silly, goofy Sadie to concerned, parental sibling is sudden. The reenactment of whatever it was Louise heard is ridiculous but she doesn't waiver. Her eyebrows furrow. "You feel it? When did this start? At the lighting? Did you tell anyone else?"

Lou can just about feel it, the way that energy shifts, and she's dealing with big sister Sadie rather than goofball-bad-chef Sadie, and it scrunches up her face as she turns, arms already crossing over her chest. Because habits die hard and it's hardly the first time they've been in this position, whether it's because Little Lou stole Sadie's candy and was having to face the music, or because a kid was mean to her and Sadie was fixing to square off with that punk...

Only of course this is different, because it's crazy. Only not. Because of where they live. And that might be more unsettling than anything, that it might not be crazy. Just might also not be normal. "Ugh. Awhile ago." But that isn't going to satisfy, clearly, so Lou shifts uncomfortable, waves her hand vaguely. "Like a few weeks." That's all. "Just now and then. Sometimes. No I haven't told anyone, it's not really a big...I mean, usually it's just the music." Usually.

And like that's it, she picks up that olive oil to eye it skeptically. She can drizzle, some drizzle can happen, while she offhandedly asks, "Has anything weird happened to you?" That weird kind of weird.

Sadie regards her sister with narrow eyes, her lips pursed. Some decision making is happening, here, and it's important so it's taking a minute.

One wins out over the other, and she crosses the kitchen to one of the many plants (god there are so many plants in this apartment) on the counter. This one is a parlor palm that already sports robust leafage, but with a very gentle touch she strokes her fingers along a stalk and encourages a few more to sprout into existence. As if this was very normal, she turns to her sister and lifts an eyebrow. Like: okay now you.

Don't think Lou doesn't know it. There are calculations happening behind her sister's eyes, so even before Sadie goes and does...what she does... Louise's eyebrows have gone up. Because it's a yes, that narrow-eyed look. It's a clear unequivocal confirmation. "Sadie." There's a warning in her voice; the 'fess up' is implied.

Then that. The fronds that unfurl, Lou's mouth opens, she comes to join her sister next to the plant, and this time it's sharper. "Sadie." How dare.

But she doesn't have room to talk. Not with that eyebrow in action. So she reaches out to run her fingers over those fresh new magically coaxed leaves, and sighs with exasperation. It's easier to just ignore stuff like this, but of course...Spellbound doesn't like playing subtle. "I keep seeing things. A thing. A place." She wrinkles her nose, and dares a glance up at her sister. "Weird old tunnels. It blots everything else out, like it's all I can see, and then..fft." She flicks her fingers expressively. "It's just gone."

"Tunnels like... the tunnels under the park?" Even as she says it, Sadie hears the issue. Normal tunnels like the ones under the park wouldn't be the subject of eerie dreams. Probably. So these must be... special tunnels. "Do you know if anyone else has been having... that?" It's hard to word a dream that could be more than a dream. 'That' will have to do for now.

Her sister already gets it, Lou still feels the need to clarify with some exasperation - not with Sadie, not really, but with the all of it. The weird of it. Exasperated feels a little better than unsettled, so that's what she rolls with, "No. Weird old tunnels... like dark and rocky and..." She hesitates, trying to conjure detail now that she's being forced to talk about this. "Just suddenly there and gone again. Same with the music."

'That' does just fine. 'That' conveys volumes, and Louise shrugs helplessly, palms upturned because how do you even find that out. "Need a t-shirt. Seeing and hearing shit that isn't there? Join the whack-ass vision club". She purses her lips. "I guess that's a little long."

Don't think Sadie's off the hook though, after those moments of touching the new leaves, she narrows her eyes at her sister. "So how long hav you been holding out on me? When? How did you figure out you could..." You know. That.

"Hey, you'd be surprised by how many people have weird stuff happening. Especially after last night." New Year's Eve sure was something. "We could ask. I know a couple of people who might know something. We could at least start asking questions?" But there's something in the tone of Sadie's voice that suggests more than demands. Big sister protective streak aside, Louise is her own person.

When? How? She looks reluctant to talk about her stuff when there's something going on with her sister, but, "Since I got here. I didn't know anything was really happening for a while, because of the plant stuff with Nana and everything." Sadie, always in the garden with their grandmother in Santa Cruz. "But they started... talking to me. Not with voices, but they can tell me what they need. What they've seen." She turns her gaze on the new leaves she encouraged into being. "I can ask them to do things."

"Some people have bat wings," Louise says a little distantly. Some people, one person, same difference, anyway it made an impression. But it's true, between the holidays and New Years, it's undeniable that things are happening...at least, Lou can't deny it anymore, no matter how she went into this conversation hoping that she'd get a laugh off and a shrug and a sure that seems normal and a regular thing to have going on. "But like...it's different when it's us."

Everyone else at the park having strange and unusual powers? That's gravy. The Mitchell girls getting their witchy woo woo on? That's gonna take a sec. In the end though, she nods. "Yeah, we can ask around. Just casually. No big deal." Little bit of a big deal. "How 'bout them imaginary creepy ass tunnels, huh?" She'll do great.

She of course welcome the change of subject, hazel eyes lifting to watch Sadie speculatively. Might even be a little bit of a sharp look, at the 'Since I got here', since wait a second, how was she not informed? (Ignore where she didn't mention hearing and seeing things for the full month of December). But as her sister goes on, Lou's expression changes, to something more like wonder. "Holy shit, Sades." That is a lot. "You have like...a spy network. That's..." Well. There are so many adjectives that could be inserted there, but she goes with, "Insane." Only with the right inflection that it's in a good way, really.

"Mm. I'm pretty sure someone has a tail." It's so hard to keep track of these things. Sadie can't argue about it being different. It hits a little closer to home. She steps forward to scoop her sister into a hug, squeezes her tightly, and says, "Don't worry." And yes, it really is that easy in her eyes, offensively optimistic person that she is.

Insane? "I know. I wish I could tell Nana. She'd probably think it was pretty cool." After the whole 'wtf are you talking about' part. Maybe. There are things about magic that she knows, and things she's very new to, and she hasn't been off the island since realizing what she can do. She doesn't know about the way the magic just... leaves, with the memories of it. But that's a different concern for a different pizza.

Speaking of, she checks her phone's timer. "Okay. Let's make sure I don't burn the fuck out of this one, and I'll tell you everything I know while we eat. And we come up with a next step to getting your... thing figured out." As far as Sadie is concerned, they're going to get it figured out.

Sure enough, over their dinner of (not burnt) pizza and salad, she answers questions and explains things as best she can with what she knows, and plans are made to know more. Watch out Spellbound, the Mitchell sisters are on the case!