2025-01-05 - Dream Pastries

It's Sunday, early evening, and Huck is sitting at a table in the coffee shop. He has a hot latte cup in front of him, along with an old, battered copy of The Catcher in the Rye. The book has a bookmark in it about halfway. He's leaning back in the chair as he loads a film cartridge into a vintage Polaroid Instamatic. Recent events on the island have left him with large, bright brown lion eyes and his ears are now a little pointed.

Rowan doesn't come here for the coffee. It may be very good, but he's a staunch tea drinker. He could drink tea in his room, with his cat, but for some reason he needed to not be there right now. So, he's come to the cafe to get as large of a mug of tea as possible. A pastry is also chosen but remains untouched in front of him at his chosen seat.

Also with him is a tote that reveals a half-finished knitting project using fine, ultra-purple yarn. Some paper, likely the pattern, is also brought out and it's studied for a moment before the cabled needles are picked up to continue working.

The recent events on the island have also left him with changes, only evident, for the moment, as he lifts his mug of tea to his lips and there's a soft 'clink' and a mutter as teeth apparently clink against the ceramic mug.

Huck clasps the Instamatic closed and the camera whirs and clicks for a few moments as it loads up and readies. Finished, he sits the camera back on the table and looks up to notice Rowan. He smiles widely, a big toothy grin that also reveals his long feral fangs, lifting a hand into the air. "Rowan!" Laughing, he gets up, collecting his book, camera, and coffee, and just moves over to the seat across from Rowan with no permission. His tail wags happily as he flops down onto the seat. "Is that tea?" He shakes his head, still smiling as he asks, "How can you drink that grass water?"

Rowan looks up at his name and it doesn't take long to figure out who did the calling. He manages to take a sip of the tea after a moment of figuring out the proper angle and sets the mug down even as Huck moves into an empty seat at his table. "Hey, Huck." Dark eyes flick to the mug and then back, "Grass water? It's not green tea, it's a chai tea." He'll even push it a little closer so he can smell it if he'd like.

His own elongated canine teeth are less animal-like in nature and more along the whole Vampire aesthetic.

"Is chai like a special non-grass tea?" asks Huck. He picks up the cup that was pushed toward him and he smells it. "Gah." He makes an awful face. "Do you like this stuff?" He then takes a sip, sitting the cup back onto the table and moving it back toward Rowan. "That is awful," he declares with a great big smile. "For real? Tea just tastes like grass and water." He slides his caramel latté closer to Rowan. "This is a real drink."

He upnods toward Rowan, "Those fangs new?"

"It's a tea based out of India, black tea and a bunch of spices steeped in milk," Rowan starts, but then Huck is expressing his opinions about the tea. Black-lined eyes blink a moment before he responds with, "Well, I really wanted blood, but they don't serve that here." The corner of his mouth twitches, possibly giving away that it's a clever quip even if it's delivered in such a dry manner.

It sort of answers the 'fangs' question.

"I don't like coffee. It's too bitter and it just makes me jittery."

"Blood?" he asks, brow furrowing. "Why would you... Did the blue light thing the other night change your stomach to make you want blood?" Huck's tone is serious and concerned. Slowly he tilts his head a little, "Or... are you messing with me?" He taps his index claw to his pointy ear, "Sorry, I'm Deaf so sometimes I struggle with sarcasm. I don't get tone."

"Is there no caffeine in tea?" asks Huck.

"That's all right, I said it with a rather dry tone anyhow." Might others have gotten the teasing? Maybe, maybe not. "Yes, I'm messing with you." Rowan does grin then, the fangs showing a bit more then. "I don't want blood. But I do like to eat steak no more than medium rare."

But to answer the question, "There is caffeine in tea, but it's not as much as the caffeine in coffee. And it reacts differently. I dunno, it's less of a jolt for me. But I just prefer the taste and feeling of tea over coffee."

"That's a relief. Cooking a steak more than that is a crime. So did the teeth just show up with the fanfare the other night? I don't know what kind of magic you can do, but is it creepy vampire magic?" With a laugh, Huck taps his claw on the table and asks, "What are you making? You doing a latch hook rug or something?"

"Agreed on the steak," Rowan nods, but then takes his chai back for another sip of it. He gives another little sigh before answering, moving the mug so his mouth can be seen, "I woke up the next morning with it. Scared the shit out of me when I went to brush my teeth." His eyes lift to look back at Huck, "What -is- 'creepy vampire magic'?" The mug is set back down then.

"In my show, I do close-up magic. I was doing that before I had any magic from being here. But the other stuff is...telekinesis, moving things with my mind, Illusions, seeing things other places, and protecting a space. But I don't use any of that magic in my shows."

There's another blink before he looks to his knitting, "A rug? No...I'm making a shawl. It's...it looks like a crumpled mess right now, but it won't once it's done." He'll even spread out a section of it to show the intricate lace design that looks a bit spider-webby.

Huck shrugs, "I don't know, really? Maybe like... entrancing people with your eyes or turning into a bat?" He leans forward a bit to look closer at the teeth. "You're lucky. When my fangs grew in, it took a week, and it hurt like a toothache. It was awful. Yours don't look quite as long or sharp though."

Inspecting the shawl, Huck nods, impressed. "That's really cool. I can't even use chopsticks any more," he notes, waggling his long clawed fingers in the air.

"Yeah, you do the cool card tricks and coin stuff," he smiles, "It's awesome! It's also a little creepy. Sometimes I think prestidigitation is demon powers!" He tilts his head a little, "Wait. You move things? With your mind? Really? With your mind? Really!?" He leans forward, "You HAVE to show me. Dude. Move your tea."

"Oh, you mean you haven't noticed my hypnotic personality?" Yes, Rowan is teasing again. "Turning into a bat might be interesting, but...I don't think I'd be able to take it as calmly as you have." A hand then lifts to touch his teeth, "I don't think this is the same. Maybe it will go away at some point? And I don't know that they're meant to be anything more than ornamental? But I remember when you were having your toothache. I hope that's over for you."

In regards to chopsticks, he shrugs, "Picking up sushi by hand is a thing, I think. So you're all set." His own nails are painted black and are -not- long.

The compliment gets another little smile, "Thanks. And it's not demon-powers...that would be possession and stuff." There's another blink and a long look at Huck when he's asked to move his tea. "Uhm..." Dark eyes look at the mug of tea and a hand elegantly lifts towards it, moving from left to right...and the mug moving along with it, not having been touched.

When Rowan mentions turning into a bat and handling it calm like Huck, Huck's brow creases and he chews on his lip. He doesn't respond to that, but it's not hard to tell that something in that touched a sore spot. "Yeah, it was pretty painful for a few days there," he answers about the toothache.

"Well, I also have friends who are willing to feed me," Huck says with a laugh. "And, I have forks."

"Look, maybe it's not demon powers, but it's freakin' insane. That stuff David Blaine does freaks me out and not human." Huck clearly doesn't actually believe it's demonic, but it does actually weird him out enough to be uncomfortable with it. "Wait, are you doing it? You're doing it! Oh my god!"

He watches the mug move, and then immediately hops to his feet and claps, "OH MY GOD!!" He's laughing heartily, "That's incredible!"

Rowan is seeing the calm, that's all he has to go by. "I'm sorry that it was. It didn't sound comfortable when we talked about it last," with Jett. "Forks are a great invention and friends are also great inventions."

Mentioning David Blaine and his magic being 'not human' actually gets a grin from Rowan. "That would be the dream, right?" To be as famous as Blaine. The standing ovation for moving the mug gets a little start and then a laugh, "I just moved the tea mug! It's not that big!"

"Are you kidding," exclaims Huck as he sits back down. "It was awesome, Ro. I have a tail." He shrugs, an action in which both his shoulders lift along with his tail, "Big whoop. But you have super normal mental powers! Oh! Do you ever use it to like, tap someone on the shoulder so they turn around but then there's no one there because you used your powers from the other side of the room?"

"Wait," Huck looks worried, "You dream of being able to do the creepy ass fuckery that David Blaine does?" It's almost silly, the way Huck seems so surprised by that. "Why would you do that?!?"

"You stand out. You're unique. And you seem to embrace that and that's not something a lot of people can do easily." Especially not at their age. "Some people have wings here and can fly. This...is useful when I don't want to move but I want my water bottle or to play with the cat." Rowan gives a shake of his head, "I don't think it can do that. I can only move things...so I'd have to move something that would touch someone else. But I could move something small to the other side of the room. Or actually make something float in the air," without using his close-up magic tricks.

But the question about David Blaine has him shrugging, "Well, it's more that he's doing something that he loves, and it's Magic, and he's gotten a lot of renown and fame and money for it. Isn't that what we all want? To be able to support ourselves and make a difference doing something we love to do?"

Huck chews his lip again, and there's a crease in his brow once more. He sighs, and then leans forward. "It's not easy, Ro," Huck shares quietly. "Sometimes I get confused and wonder which Huck is the real me. Am I the Huck in the park, or the Huck on the mainland? How do you reconcile that if you know one of you will forget the other if you leave? Does that make the Huck I am right now false? Does it make me, here, not matter because I won't remember me if I leave?" He flops back again into the chair. "I'm awesome, but dude," he grins, "It's fucking exhausting."

"Are you doing something you love?" Huck asks Rowan with interest. "Are you making a difference?"

Any sort of smile that Rowan had fades as he listens to Huck. Finally, after a moment, he asks, "Which feels like the real Huck? Maybe you're really a little bit of both? Or none? But how do you know you'll forget if you leave? Also, I think you've made an impression so other people will remember you here. If that's how you want to be remembered." He works on his chai some then, maybe needing another moment to put some thoughts together.

"I think you get to decide which Huck you want to be. You can let the changes inform something or you can just shrug and say 'Well, this is me now and when I move on, that may change.' I think we have more control of that than we think. I think it all depends on if we're brave enough to act on it."

"I don't remember which feels real," confesses Huck. "Ive not left the island since my claws came in." He shrugs, reaching out and helping himself to using his claw to nip off a piece of Rowan's pastry. He looks at the piece in his hand a moment, "When folks leave here, the magic goes away, and then not long after, so does the memory of the magic. That's what I've heard from others." He puts the pastry piece in his mouth and chews it up, swallowing.

"Maybe that's my problem? I'm the cowardly flyon."

Rowan hasn't touched the pasty yet so he apparently doesn't mind sharing. "It's kind of weird, isn't it?" Rowan offers after a moment. "Like, we come here to be a part of the Theme Park...part of the 'magic', if you will, and we end up getting this stuff...real magic, pushed on us. Whether we want it or not. Some people really embrace it, other people deny it. Some people just sort of shrug and make do. But yeah. When we're here, we're different."

He's mostly thinking out loud and pauses to take another sip of the tea. "It's like...we're meant to be different people while here. Maybe we forget about it, eventually, because if we didn't, the rest of the world just couldn't live up?" There's another pause before he reaches for his phone, "I have an idea." He'll then move closer and set up the phone for a selfie, "Let's take a photo. I'll share it with you. Then, when we go back to the mainland, we'll try to remember to look at the photo and remember what it shows." Will it show them as they are on the island? As non-fanged, non-tailed people?

"For me the hardest part is how freaking much I love it and how much it fucks with my head." Huck's tail swishes about, moving up to caress the side of his own face for a moment as he smiles. He's being playful and silly. "But you're right. I actually think the magic may be sentient. Or, it's being given by someone or something that is. There's too much thought behind who is getting what."

"That's really good." The pastry, Huck means.

"Sure, I have no idea if technology is affected." Huck picks up his Polaroid camera. "Let me shoot you, too."

"Is there thought, though? I don't know if there was that much with mine. Maybe. Possibly. But I don't generally use my Park-gained magic in my shows like others do, sometimes." Because he can take his act and go elsewhere and not be as affected as some others might be if they did the same. "How does it fuck with your head if you love it? I mean...yeah, looking at yourself in the mirror and not seeing what you expect..." he had a small dose of that recently. "Is there more than that?"

There's a glance at the pastry but Rowan is already setting his knitting down and moving so that he can take a selfie with Huck, even smiling so that his own fangs can be easily seen. "Ok, your turn."

"Well, the shared dreams are certainly an indicator. The magic is putting together the right groups of people in these dreams to accomplish tasks and fight off monsters trying to stop those tasks from being finished," Huck explains. "I dunnow. To me it just feels like more than just us changing or mutating because of exposure to some natural phenomenon here on the island."

Huck shrugs, "I really struggled with how everyone around me got all these cool magical powers like you did, but all of my magic was physical alteration to my body. I wondered why was I different from everyone else. And then, like we were just talking about, there's the whole thing about not really being sure which me is me. I can't even tell my mom."

Huck lays his arm over Rowan's shoulder and wraps his tail around Rowan as well, letting it brush against Rowan's cheek if he allows. It's soft and furry! He also smiles to show his fangs and lifts his claw into the picture." Once it's done, he grabs the Instamatic, which is not really selfie-abled, and just points it at Rowan to take a picture of him. The flash goes off, and there's a clack, some whirs, and another clickety clack as the undeveloped photo emerges. He shakes it like a Polaroid because it is one, before laying it on the table face down.

"I'm not sure when I'm ever gonna leave, though," notes Huck as he returns to his seat. "Are you going to eat that?"

"What shared dreams?" Rowan wasn't a part of those, it seems. Just another way for him to feel an outsider even though he's been here since the place opened. "But it would make sense that it's something to do with the island. I mean, the tourists are affected sometimes, right?"

He's quiet again as he falls into some thought, "I think it's which 'You' do you want to be here? I think you get to choose and decide. And maybe change it if it ends up not feeling right. And if it's true that we won't remember once we're off the island, will it even matter? I mean, as long as you're not, like, a terrible person. But I doubt you would be."

With that, he'll even smile for the selfie and for the polaroid, he'll be sure to strike a pose for it. "Do you -want' to leave" is asked as he returns to his seat. There's another glance at the pastry before he TK's the plate over to Huck's side of the table.

"I've had two," shared dreams, Huck means. "I dreamt I was on a boat with like five or six other people and we were all fighting off these zombies of drowned people. The next day, it turned out all of us had the same dream. And like two of the folks I had never met before the dream." He smiles, "It was wild."

"A few days before New Years, I had a dream with a bunch of others too. Jett was there, and Theo and Esme, and more." He thinks a moment, trying to get it all correct. "Half of us were there to fight off these red-eyed monster people in lab coats and the rest of us were clearly there to fix or assemble this giant magical orb that was glowing blue. The monsters were trying to stop it from getting fixed. A few days later, that glowing blue sphere grew up out of the island and stuff on New Years."

When the plate slides over without being touched, Huck lets out a yell, "AAHAHHHH!!!! Amazing!!!" He laughs and claps his hands together. "You're my hero, Ro!" He picks up the pastry and takes a big bite as Rowan asks him if he wants to leave. His chewing slows to a stop, and he shrugs a little, making a sound that might be something like a full-mouthed "I don't know."

"Those dreams sound wild," Rowan will offer. "Maybe there's something to the 'This is being done for some reason by an outside entity' thing with the blue sphere. Or maybe it's aliens." That last bit is said with that dry tone but teasing twinkle. "I haven't had any of those dreams, but...where did the sphere come out of? Maybe I can take a look?" Magically, that is.

The laugh and clap at the pastry gets a chuckle, "You're welcome." Will he get something else later? Maybe. Right now, he seems fine with the tea.

The shrug and the answer about leaving gets a slight nod, "Yeah. I should go visit home at some point. I wonder if the stuff will go away and come back when I return?"

"Could be aliens," Huck agrees with another shrug. "I don't know where it came from. Just that it expanded and exploded outward from the island on New Years Eve. Right at midnight."

He eats the pastry heartily, chewing it up and swallowing it with exuberance, bouncing his head a little as he does so in enjoyment.

"It comes back – at least, the magic abilities and things do. I don't know exactly what happens with memories," concedes Huck. "My mom would want to come visit me here, so I don't tell her about it. I'd be afraid she'd show up to spend a week and end up getting magic while she was here. Then she'd have to decide to stay or go, and that seems cruel."

"But, theoretically, she'd forget fairly quickly upon returning home," Rowan points out. "I'd sort of hate to leave, lose all the stuff, then come back and not remember and freak out all over again. That hardly seems fair." But as they've established, maybe it's not a fair system.

"I don't think she -could- stay if she's just visiting. I mean, unless she gets a job here and moves?"

"She would, I mean, we all will," Huck notes. "But isn't that the rub? You remember when you're making the decision to leave it behind – whether that's leaving unmagical you behind in favor of magic or vice versa. I just wouldn't want anyone to have to make that choice. It's hard enough for me."

"I think you remember you had magic when you come back, but I don't know how your magical memories are affected when you're gone." He thinks a moment, "Or how your nonmagical memories are affected when you come back."

Rowan works some more on his tea - he's likely to be nearly done with it soon! "I wonder if anyone's gone off long enough to forget and come back? It would be nice to have someone's first-hand account. Or maybe, like the magic, it's different for all of us?"

Huck taps his sharp claw on the table, thinking for a second. "There was a guy here named Eli. He's gone now, but... He had left a few times and came back. According to him, his magical abilities left pretty fast. Like, as soon as he hit the mainland fast." He shakes his head a little, "The memory fade or rewrite or whatever? That seems to take longer. He could go to the mainland and go to the mall or stay like a day and then come back, and not have forgotten things even though the magic was gone." He sticks the last of Rowan's pastry into his mouth and gobbles it up. "I know it happens. I just don't know how long it takes."

Rowan looks back to his knitting and picks it up, but he doesn't start up again. "I'm not entirely sure I'm willing to be the guinea pig for that, but maybe. In a bit. If I decide to visit home, I'll let you know. I do kind of want my parents to come out and see everyone. There are some pretty cool acts that they might enjoy." Presumably they get discounts for friends and family.

"I think I can explain these," he sticks his tongue out between his fanged canines, "As being those glued on ones. At least, for a couple of days. Maybe."

"Yeah." Huck purses his lips, and his tail swings around to pick up his coffee, lifting it up to his lips as he takes a drink. "I think mom would notice my tail." He grins. "Listen, I have to run, but, for real, let me know if you go ashore? We'll compare notes. And photos." He hops up to his feet, slinging his Instamatic around his neck. "Cool?"

Rowan's lips twist into a smile, "You can say you're trying out a new animatronic tail...and it's all about getting immersive into your character for the park. Tell her that it was part of your contract." Maybe it would work? Maybe not as he doesn't know Huck's mom.

There's a nod when Huck says he has to go, "For real, I will. You too. And for what it's worth, I like this -you-, even if you're still trying to figure it out. At least you're real." He'll even lift a hand for a dap of farewell. "Cool."