2025-02-26 - Teaming Up

When Elmo reached out to Waverly to let her know that he was interested in meeting, she accepted the time that he gave her to meet at Tails and Tales in the resort. It's early enough that the bar isn't overly crowded but late enough so that there's a few people up at the bar and a few sprinkled at the booths. She arrives punctually on time. She is dressed in a grey pin-striped skirt and a black turtle neck with black tights and shoes. A grey cardigan is worn over the turtleneck. Her long dark hair is left loose and flows down to her lower back. She looks to be in her early twenties. As she enters the bar, she looks for Elmo, pausing in the entryway.

Elmo did try to contact whoever sent him that email; the thing stank of a scam. The more he thought about it, though, the more curious he got. Landrydale wasn’t something he expected to lead him even this far: Tales and Tails, a bar that confuses him every time he ends up here, if only because he can never remember which word comes first in the name.

Here he is, though, sitting in a booth sipping a Monkey’s Uncle, not knowing what will come through the door. Literally. They both don’t know what the other looks like, but Elmo dropped his name during the call to the hotel and is wearing a white shirt featuring a BIG picture of the character’s face on it (under a grungy-yet-fashionable jean jacket, it should be said). Also, he let the staff know.

Still, he watches the front of the bar for new arrivals, noting this one as he sucks on the tropical rum drink. Her? Maybe.

The convenient thing about the name of the bar is that unless you are writing it down, it doesn't matter which word comes first! Also, that email totally stunk of a scam.

She spots the Elmo shirt almost immediately and it makes her smile, a warm, soft seeming smile, and she doesn't bother with the host stand. She just walks over to his table. "Hi," she says when she reaches the table. "I'm Estella," she introduces herself. "Are you Elmo?" She hopes so, otherwise she's going to feel very silly when he looks at her like she's crazy.

Elmo tracks the stranger's movement and realizes she's heading his way. He sucks down some of the rum cocktail (through a yellow twisty straw) before she gets to him, then looks up at her and peers. At first, he doesn't answer; he needs a moment to assess her. Is she trustworthy? Is she dangerous?

Whatever he decides, he eventually nods. "Yep." Gesturing to the seat across from him, he looks ready for a conversation. "Someone told me the name Landrydale might mean something to you."

Estella has a bag hung across one shoulder, a smart leather messenger bag, and she sets that down first before sliding in across from Elmo, looking a little relieved that he is who she thought he was. Folding her hands in front of her, she nods at the mention of the name and says, "I think he was an .. ancestor? What's a relative that's several generations back but not .. ancient? I guess ancestor is the right word. Anyway, I think he worked with an ancestor of mine. Or at least I think we're related."

She pulls out some very old notebooks from the 1800s and sets them on the table in front of them. "These were the notes of Alistair Waverly and they mention a partner, Landrydale." She opens up the notebooks to a page that shows a strange spherical device inside of a metal housing with runes inscripted on it.

Elmo clocks the bag immediately; small signs of wealth and privilege sometimes stand out to those who grew up with so little. “Right, so he’s a great, great…something.” He runs a tongue over his right incisor and sucks his teeth. “You think.” Without much of the context others in the park may have, he’s unsure what to make of this woman and even a possible connection to this historic figure.

The old notebooks reel him in a bit more, though; he tilts forward to look. “What the hell is it?” It looks straight-up out of a Jules Verne novel.

"Something," she agrees. But it's clear that she isn't sure what. When he takes interest in the notebooks though, she pushes them closer to him so that he can flip the pages and look through them. They're definitely old journals with a lot of scientific notes and scribbles in them. Some of the writing is clearer in parts than others.

"He calls it a siphon in places. It's supposed to be some sort of.. energy source? I think?" She frowns slightly and says, "I'm more of a librarian than I am a scientist. I've done a lot of research but a lot of the symbols and equations that I've seen in these books and the symbols.." she taps the runes with one fingertip. "I can't make heads nor tails of them."

Elmo slides one of the notebooks closer to him, turning the old pages carefully and giving their contents a brief skim. The image, though, is what he focuses on most. "Okay. So, I guess you being here means it has something to do with this place. This part of the world." When he looks back up, it's to give Waverly a curious look. "Did these guys have something to do with all the...magic?"

"Maybe?" Estella says as she frowns and looks down at the books. "I.." she pauses, hesitates, and seems to consider what she says next before offering up, "I don't know a lot about how I'm connected to any of this. I have amnesia and don't remember much of my life before I was fourteen or so. All I have are these journals. And my name, and his to go on. So I'm trying to figure out the mystery, too."

Elmo turns another page, but he's becoming less focused on the journals than the woman across from him. He expected someone who was a bit more knowledgeable than this, a bit more confident. Instead, he got something that surprises him. "Really?" His gaze darts around a bit before he busies himself with his cocktail. "I'm sorry. That sucks." His fingers tap against the open page. "OK. So, I don't know much about any of this, either. My neighbor mentioned the name. Said he and some others here at the park heard it in a dream." His eyes narrow then, searching Estella for a reaction.

Estella looks down when Elmo looks back at her, frowning slightly as though perhaps realizing that it's not quite what he wanted to hear. "I'm sorry. I know that's probably disappointing." That she doesn't have a lot of answers. "But.. I'll tell you everything that I know." When he admits that he doesn't know much about it either and that his neighbor mentioned the name heard it in a dream, she takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. "Oh, yes, the dreams.. I keep dreaming of a fire." She asks Elmo, "Have you had those dreams? The ones where the whole city is burning?"

Elmo's bottom lip juts out as he shakes his head. "Naw, not disappointing. Like I said, I don't much about what's going on here. Even showing me these has taught me something." He taps the journal again. That machine. He'd never seen anything like it outside of movies.

As for the dreams, he can only shake his head again. "No dreams for me. Maybe it's because I sleep like a rock. Like, every night." He makes a snoring sound and frowns. "What city?"

"Chicago," Estella says. "I think it's the big Chicago fire where most of the city burned to the ground. I keep dreaming about it. Sometimes I'm running through the streets. Sometimes I'm in a townhouse. Sometimes I'm on a ship pulling away from the dock with the city burning behind us." She then flips to the back pages of one of the journals and points out an entry, tapping it with her finger.

October 8th, 1871 - Tonight, I will be speaking in front of the press, a panel of my fellow academics, and some brilliant students about The Looking Glass. I believe that if we can gather enough interest, that we can get the funding to begin the development in earnest once we set up the new laboratory. The ship is due to leave in two weeks. We've already begun to load the cargo hold with all of the equipment that we'll need when we get there and all of my various projects. My wife has felt uneasy all week. She keeps saying she wishes that we could leave early. I'm not sure why the sudden case of nerves has come over her. But she and my daughter have both been restless. I am at a loss how to reassure them. This is not the first time that we've uprooted and begun a new. I doubt it will be the last. But this time we have several investors and interested parties willing to help fund this work. We should be optimistic! Perhaps once we are on the ship, they will feel more at ease.

"Chicago?" Elmo nods and nods, still not quite believing that something like shared dreams could happen, which is wild given all that he's come to accept in this world. "Sounds wild. I never heard of people have the same dreams over and over, though."

He looks at the journal when Estella points the page out to him and reads. As he does, his mouth slips further into a thoughtful frown. "The Looking Glass. I wonder how much it's based on the story." When he looks up again, he searches the young woman's face. "What happened after this? Did they set up that lab?"

Estella says, "I've heard of people having the same dreams over and over but I'd never heard of people all sharing the same dream before." So her experience was somewhat the opposite.

"I think that maybe the Looking Glass is supposed to allow you to see into.. another world? another reality? another.. something. Or maybe even cross over, like in Alice in Wonderland's Through the Looking Glass." She studies the page of the journal in front of her, brows furrowed just a little bit. "But unlike the other device, I've never actually heard of The Looking Glass actually existing. At least, if it did, or does, I don't know where it might be."

She shakes her head when Elmo asks about the lab. "The journals kind of stop right before the fire. I don't know if there were more that got lost in the fire, or that there are more somewhere else. But they just end there. All the information that I have about the lab is from earlier entries that talk about it. They talk about going north to Sault Sainte Marie. That's where the ship was headed. That's where, I think, they intended to set up another lab."

Elmo’s brow has been up and down throughout this conversation, so he just leaves it up since surprise is evident. “I think it would be badass if there was a prototype somewhere, at least.” What would another world look like? This place is gradually becoming more otherworldly, so he doesn’t have to think too hard, but still.

“OK.” He finishes his cocktail with a loud slurp once Estella explains this. “So, let’s see if we can find out more.” He’s shrug like he’s got nothing else going on. “You down to team up?” He extends his fist out over the table for a bump.

"It would be amazing if there was," Estella agrees. "Can you imagine being able to look into other worlds? Even if you couldn't travel to them. Just to see them would be amazing."

But when Elmo seems down to team up with her to find out more and continue the investigation, she lights up excitedly and reaches out to return the fist-bump with one of her own. "Yes! Thank you. It'd be so nice to not be working on this on my own anymore."