Simple Hearts Will Be Prized Again

[cryptoherpetology]

WHO: Alex Price, Karen Page, Kat, YOU (OTA)
WHERE: Inn Records, Kat's House, Schoolhouse, Somewhere Outdoors
WHEN: Dec 1-15th
OPEN TO: Karen, Kat, OTA
WARNINGS: Mention of Dead Animals (Mice)

---

Lions, Tigers and Bears Sound Quaint (For Karen Page)

Alex has been spending more and more time in the inn since discovering the records, especially since Tony's mining expedition and the snake hunt. Mostly, he's been adding to what notes he can- especially for the ones he's been studying up close- mostly the fever snakes, since he's been handling those so much lately, but there have been pages on the snake bats and peacock cats added as well, since he's had so much experience with them up-close of late.

It's the ice mice that have him here today, with some anatomical sketches (including some that are clearly drawn from references of dissections) and as many of the field notes he's taken that he thinks will be useful. He isn't expecting to find someone else when he comes in, but smiles pleasantly when he spots a familiar face.

"I was starting to think this place was being haunted by the ghost of a librarian," he remarks to the woman he'd met in the corn. "It's Karen, right?"

King of (Birdlike) Cats for Kat

The peacock cats tracks aren't exactly like a domestic cat's, but they're similar enough that Alex can, after a couple of hours in the woods, he's able to locate a clowder (or would it be a flock?) of them. Most of the adults want nothing to do with him, and the juveniles are jumpy- except one, which has him confused at first, until he notices the way it's favoring three out of four legs.

When he arrives at Kat's door, the peakitten's left forpaw has been bandaged. Having just come from the wild, it's a good deal less plump than the litter he'd been fostering. Despite the frostbite, which he thinks might be the result of a failed attempt at preying on an ice mouse, and maybe some slight malnutrition, there are no other problems he can identify with the cat.

Boudica had just about thrown a fit with an unfamiliar cat in the house for as long as it had taken to bandage the poor thing up (he'd sacrificed one of his pillowcases for the cloth), so it'd been clear he couldn't keep it. Kat was the first person to come to mind- her notes on the animals here were enough to convince him that she wouldn't have any issue taking care of it, and she'd mentioned being interested in one.

Of Ice Mice and Men OTA

The mice in the schoolhouse are getting bold, if you ask Alex. Not quite as bold as he's used to mice being, given the... unique nature of the Aeslin mice that lived with his family. Thinking of their songs, their little shouts of "HAIL!" and the countless hours of theosophical debate almost makes him feel bad about the small knife he sends flinging through the air at the one he sees skittering across the plank wood floors, skewering it in place.

They're keeping his knife-throwing skills sharp, at least. Pun not intended.

Where There's Smoke... OTA

Like most people in the village, Alex is the type of person who runs towards screaming, so when he hears a surprised shout and the FWOOMF sound of something spontaneously combusting, he does just that. The fire isn't terribly large- enough that between the stomping of heavy hiking boots and armfuls of snow, he's able to smother the flame before it does too much damage.

"Are you alright?" he asks, checking his boots for signs of the treads melting, and finding them mostly intact. "No burns or anything?" It was hard to tell if the shout had been in pain, panic or both.

Comments

[digging]

Another laugh, and a slight duck of her head. "Without a doubt. I keep telling myself to break it down into smaller steps, but then I have to break those down into smaller steps, and break those down into smaller steps..." She shrugs with a roll of her eyes. "It's frustrating. But I don't know how to stop looking."

[cryptoherpetology]

Alex laughs, mostly because he's said those same words himself, usually over a crowded desk full of reference material and old family record books, identifying and memorizing everything that he could find that crawled the forest floor around his family home. He nods in understanding. "What field were you in back home? You'd have made a hell of a scientist."
He's realizing now that he's pretty sure he skipped that part of the small talk when they first met. But he's also a good deal more comfortable surrounded by books and research than a crowd of people of varying levels of sobriety. This is much closer to his natural habitat.

[digging]

"I was a journalist— Well, technically I had just quit that to become a full-time researcher, but the process is the same," Karen answers. Having her name on the byline had never been the important part for her; just getting to the truth.

"It's not a bad skill set to have for all of this, even if any actual answers are hard to come by. The people in charge don't really play by the rules, from my experience." She sits back with a faint creak of her chair. "How long have you been here now?"

[cryptoherpetology]

Alex can't help but smile a little at the answer- when she'd said 'research' his mind had filled in some academic field, but it made sense. And he stops to think for a second, that were he at home, this would normally be where he dove into the dry, boring tones of Dr. Alexander Preston, making it clear that there was nothing remotely interesting about him or his field of study. Pay no attention to the basilisks behind the secret locked door in the reptile house. Or the moderately spooky house nestled in the suburbs outside the city where only one out of four of its residents are technically human.

He's not really sure what it says about how used to this place he's getting that there's no inclination towards that.

"I was new enough when we met the first time that I still thought I'd been kidnapped by faeries," he admits. "In my defense, that is the sort of thing my family has a history of," he adds, with the sort of wryness that suggests he knows exactly how ridiculous it sounds.

[digging]

"That would make sense, what with the way you said 'kidnapped by faeries' like that's remotely normal," Karen replies with a soft laugh, teasing him. Her brow pinches, and she looks down to the papers in front of her. "You know, this place never stops surprising me, no matter how jaded I get." There's no room for reasonable skepticism here, only the question of how things fit.

"Okay," she says, going with it as she looks back up at him. "Tell me about faeries."

[cryptoherpetology]

"I can tell you prettymuch anything that humanity has ever called a faerie has been anything but fair. At least not in human terms," he starts to say, catching himself before he starts to cross the line from conversation to lecture. He seriously doubts Karen actually wants him to recite the family field guide's entries on everything remotely Puckish.

"And maybe this place is making you less jaded. You did just ask me about things that should be imaginary. And I'm willingly talking to a member of the press, which is something I'd be way to paranoid to risk at home. At least not without going into a fifteen minute diatribe about giant Chinese salamanders that I have memorized specifically for it's ability to make a reporter lose interest in me as any sort of source. Or, given how well it went over in tenth grade science class, also probably why I didn't date much in high school."