Isabelle 'Izzy' Shaw (izzyshaw) wrote in birthrightrpg, @ 2020-11-10 21:03:00 |
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Entry tags: | james hutchins, ~izzy shaw |
Who: Izzy and James
What: Flashback
When: Winter 2015
Where: San Bernardino, CA
Ratings: Low
When Izzy started at USC everyone agreed that with LA traffic being what it was and the variety of opportunities campus life afforded that it just made more sense for her to move into the dorms. So for the last two and a half years she’d only been home once a month on average, even during the summer. Her plans just didn’t allow for anything else, not if she wanted to graduate with a master’s and two minors by the date she’d set for herself. But winter break was the exception to the rule, all the coursework and exams were done and everyone was going home for the holidays anyway unless they were international students.
The family home wasn’t anything exceptional to look at: a modest ranch house in a working class neighborhood put down sometime in the 1960s. But it was where she’d lived her entire life before moving onto campus and the people she cared most about in the world lived there still, so it was always a treat to come home. Of course a chance to have her mother’s cooking and do laundry for free was nothing to sneeze at either, and her trusty old Camry was loaded with bags of dirty clothes.
Seeing the garage door open, Izzy grabbed a basket out of the backseat and started through toward the house itself. Her mother’s car was in the driveway along with a motorcycle she didn’t recognize, but that by itself wasn’t so unusual.
“I’m home!” She called out, nudging the door to the house open with her foot and stepping through, barely able to see over the pile in her arms.
Behind the mountain of laundry, a thirty-two year old man in a long-sleeve tee shirt, jeans, and a pair of leather boots was leaning against the kitchen counter, his ankles crossed as he stood alone, waiting for his host to come back into the room. There was an open beer in his right hand. When the door opened, James couldn’t see much of the face of the shorter person behind the clothes but he knew Big Mike and Sarah were expecting a visit for the holiday. He checked to see if they were on their way back to the room, but nothing yet. James set down the drink, pushed away from the cabinets, and reached out to take the basket out of her hands.
“They’re in the back,” he said, hefting the weight so she could shut the door, only belatedly realizing it would put his chin in near-contact with what looked like pajamas and a bra. James off-loaded the basket as gracefully as he could on an empty surface.
“Thanks!” Izzy gave the visitor a quick glance up and down while he was offloading the laundry basket onto the counter. He was wearing typical biker attire, but wasn’t wearing the MC’s cut and she was familiar with the club’s members and prospects anyway. So, not a rival club member either, and trusted enough to be left on his own -even for a minute- in her parents’ home. He was cute, for an older guy.
Deciding he passed inspection she grinned and gave him a quick wave “Be right back!” She disappeared through the dining room to go find her parents and let them know she was home. A minute later she was back, her mission accomplished and in possession of slightly more information on the visitor than she had before, a name at least.
“Thanks again,” she said, coming up and getting close enough to offer a handshake while looking up at his face. Why did she have to inherit her birth father’s vertical handicap? It was annoying.
“I’m Izzy, their daughter.”
“James.” He took her hand and shook it. He’d had a minute to assess the younger blonde as she made her way to greet her parents and come back to the kitchen. In that time, he’d resumed drinking his beer while he tried to place her wide-set eyes and heart-shaped chin, to figure out who she looked like. She had a cheerful energy that was in contrast to his quieter watchfulness. “I’ve known your parents a long time,” he said, indicating the other side of the house. “My mom used to live out here when I was a kid.”
“Yeah?” That implied he lived somewhere else now. He looked maybe ten years older than her? Hard to tell with older adults but he clearly wasn’t her age. The rest of her stuff could wait, interrogating ‘James’ sounded more fun at the moment. “Not ‘Jim’, ‘Jimmy’ or ‘Jimbo’?” He looked a little like ‘Jimmy’ to her, ‘James’ sounded too stuffy. She leaned against the opposite wall. “So where do you live these days?”
Jesus. He thumbed his eyebrow, a ghost of a smile making its way onto his features. “No,” he laughed. “Definitely not Jimmy.” He tried to imagine his father, who had named him after the author of Ulysses, having ever agreed to him going by something as gauche as Jimmy. “You can call me Jay.”
He shifted his weight back to the counter and watched her settling in to talk to him. If she was Sarah’s daughter, he wondered if Izzy had picked up any of her mom’s talent in her gene pool. Nothing on her screamed witch to him, but he’d been surprised before. Some people didn’t telegraph it. James tipped his head back to finish the beer and set the empty beside him. “I’m from Las Vegas,” he said. “You ever been?”
"A few times, but it isn't a place designed to entertain kids so there wasn't much for me to do until the last year or two. And with my course load I haven't had time since." Of course it helped that she'd been an early bloomer, so she'd been running around with fake ID's since she was sixteen. But even then she'd been more interested in the concerts than getting shit faced or gambling, not that she'd often had the time to spare for a five or six hour drive each way from campus and back since she started at USC except on special occasions.
"Of course mom and I have been out to the desert and stuff. It has a certain draw if you know what I mean." If he were here to do business with dad then he wouldn't be left to his own devices and mom often took her time. So probably magic.
James’ eyes warmed to the shift in topic. “Yeah, I think I do. Depending on who you’re with, it’s not all that family friendly, either,” he said. There was an implication that what Izzy was doing with her mother out in Clark County might not be the same as what he got up to, unless she wanted to correct him on it. Maybe Sarah had been sowing wild oats, or Izzy had a rebellious streak and crept out when her mom crashed for the night. She was the right age for it. James propped his hands on the counter on either side of him. “She ever introduce you to an older guy named Sam? Works in a shop downtown?”
"Depends on the family doesn't it?" Izzy shot back. [Private school name tbd] and then USC had been eye opening experiences. Her family might be part of a criminal biker gang, but they didn't have anything on some of her classmates' families. The difference was in scale and respectability.
Her face broke out into a wide grin at the question. "'Curiosities? Totally! I've been a couple times, the second floor is hella cool. Sam's a sweetheart. How long have you known him?"
“Since conception,” James said. “He was there.”
James took in the magnitude of her smile. It was a common reaction when people thought of his kind (if self-righteous) dad. He’d have to tell him that his restricted section was coming across as ‘cool’ to the younger set. It might be time to shake things up. He didn’t need Sam’s input to put in some work on the inventory. Still, letting Izzy go up meant that Sam put some faith in her. James was sure he’d done a quick read of mother and daughter before he ushered them up the staircase, which meant her magic bent towards light.
“I take it you don’t see the resemblance.” He smiled under the messy helmet hair and stubble.
“He’s your dad?” She couldn’t imagine why he’d lie about it to someone he just met so it must be true. Izzy’s eyebrows drew closer together as she tried to see the resemblance. “No, not really.”
Okay so she’d only been up on the second floor the last time, when she and her mother had gone to a Sabbat out in the desert her senior year and swung by Curiosities on the way home the next day. But it had so much there! For a practitioner, even a young one like herself, it was like being a kid in a candy store.
He clearly knew what her mother was and what she’d just outed herself as so why not ask the obvious question? “So can you make with the hocus pocus too or did the magical mojo skip you?”
“No, I got it.” James’ fingers lightly drummed the countertop. “My mom’s clairvoyant, but I take after Sam. I think I got the long end of the stick. Even if I use it differently.” It had been apparent from his childhood that he was a kid meant for spells, not one who could see the future, but there was no doubt in his mind that some of his mom’s fixations passed onto him, anyway. “What about you?” James tipped his chin at her. “Are you like Sarah? Magic’s version of a mixologist?”
“Kinda.” Izzy shrugged, shoving her hands in her pockets and looking down for a second. “I can do it but it doesn’t come as easy to me yet.” Her mother made potions look so easy that Izzy wasn’t certain she would ever be her equal, even if at its basics it was organic chemistry with a little something extra. “I take more after my gran, she could do enchantments and spells too. I haven’t had a lot of time to put into exploring how easy or hard it is for me beyond the simple stuff, but once I finish school that’ll change. I get her grimoire once I graduate, so that’ll help tons when I finally have time to sit down and work on it all.” She made a face. “And it’ll be a lot of work.” Her mother still thought her idea was crazy, but she was determined to figure out a way to make it all come together.
“What’s so much work?” James raised his shoulders. He kept his face passive, not questioning her ability so much as what she was trying to do with it. “She write it in Phoenician?” It was said in jest, in part to cover up his surprise that her family was holding a grimoire hostage until Izzy came home with a college degree. James imagined rolling up to the occult shop with his Associate’s Degree in Automotive Technology, demanding access to the second floor. If he ever reproduced, that wasn’t the path he planned to take. The kitchen was warmer than outside, so he pushed his long sleeves up to his elbows.
That got a laugh out of her and she smiled. “Not quite that old, but it’s pretty old. I’ll have to translate some of it into modern English.” The smile faded. “You’ll think I’m crazy, mom does.”
“Try me,” James challenged. In his book, it took a little bit of crazy to try half the things magic users did. “The craft flies in the face of accepted science and the majority of modern-day religions. It’s either a leap of faith or ego, no matter what you do.”
“That’s just it.” Izzy looked up and stared at him. “I want to reconcile the two. I don’t see why we can’t approach magic from a scientific basis, it’s just energy after all. Energy we haven’t figured out how to measure just like we couldn’t measure electromagnetic spectrum back in the past. If I can figure out how to build the right tools we can detect and measure magical energy, maybe even have devices that work off of magic.”
James raised his eyebrows, not because he thought it was crazy, but because she had a different perspective on their power than he did, seeing it more like the power that kept the lights on than a spiritual current that ran through everything. “If that worked and people found out about it, you’d be unveiling a new source of power. Power that’s unlimited, if a witch opens the right door. You do that, and it’s a matter of time until a corporation wants to commodify it.”
“Nothing’s unlimited.” Izzy managed not to roll her eyes and figured she ought to try to explain where she was coming from. “Magical traditions are so diverse I think we’re tapping into different kinds of energy depending on what it is we’re trying to do or how we’re doing it.” She wasn’t an expert, not by a long shot, but she’d been watching for a while now and listening to various magic users talk shop when the opportunities presented itself. Plus her mythology classes in college had got her thinking about it as well. “You can’t tell me that the energy out by Vegas is like the Force. It’s got to be something like a magical equivalent to...a geological hotspot, like Yellowstone.”
“I don’t even know if combining magic and technology are possible, but I want to try. At the very least though I can put some scientific principles behind why it acts the way it does, given enough time.”
“Who said anything about the force?” James asked, lifting his shoulders in an easy shrug. “It’s unlimited because there isn’t one source. A magic user who can open doors to other worlds or call on deities can always tap into more. I don’t think what you want to do is impossible,” he told her, “But it's worth asking if you should. If you took magic into a mainstream context like electricity, it would have consequences. Not to mention who or what you might tap into in the process, because it isn’t ‘just energy.’ People of faith have gathered around Vegas for hundreds of years, and they’d tell you it’s not the next Hoover Dam.”
"Faith alone can't explain everything." Why did everyone bring that up? Faith was a wonderful thing, and she believed in the Lord and Lady, but faith alone wasn't enough for her. She had to understand the reasons why magic behaved the way it did. The rites and methods people used to access magical powers had to come from somewhere, they hadn't (all) just been handed down on a mountain top engraved on stone tablets. There had to be some sort of logic to it.
“But faith is just belief in something. It doesn’t bother explaining,” he said, shaking his head. “No matter how irritating and arrogant it is. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a worshipper, but I think there’s spirit behind all of it, whether it's from gods or demons, the earth, or us. For me, it never seemed like magic came from physics. It always felt divine.”
He idly rubbed at the spot below his ear. “But I like the questioning.” James let himself smile. “I do it a lot.”
"You do?" She hadn't been expecting that. Sure her mom humored her, but most practitioners she'd talked to got tired of her asking why. So she'd been expecting more arguments or for him to dismiss her altogether. "Good. It would be weird for someone whose dad runs a bookstore to not like questions.*
He gave her a quiet laugh. “Sam always told me I could do all the questioning I wanted, as long as I didn’t do anything stupid.” James’ eyebrows went up. “I live to disappoint.” The truth was, he liked seeking, too, looking for answers even when it wasn’t safe. Izzy and James were just curious about different things. He picked up his beer bottle and put it with the recycling, glass clinking against other bottles and cans. “I’ve got to know. What kind of device would you try first?”
That statement got filed away for future reference, as it sounded to Izzy's ears like there might be an interesting story behind it. If there was ever another time for conversation. Her family kitchen where her parents could come along at any moment definitely wasn't the place.
She pushed off the wall and sauntered over to the refrigerator, picking out a raspberry flavored water for herself and another beer for Jay. "I'm an engineer," then decided she better add "-or at least I'll have my engineering degree in another two years."
She handed him the beer and took a long pull of her water. "We like to have data to work with when we make things. To have data we need reliable measurements, and we have to have something that can take those measurements. So first order of business is figuring out how to make something that can reliably measure the amount of magical energy, either in the atmosphere or going into an object."
James thanked her and popped the cap off his beer. He drank some while he listened to her talk about her plans, following where she was going with it and thinking of the practical uses for a practitioner. “Or coming out of one,” he surmised. He thumbed the neck of the bottle and turned over her idea in his mind, which, if it worked, could take a lot of the guesswork out of when and where to try a ritual.
“What about in a person?” he asked. It was worth asking if she’d considered it or thought it was possible. Good or bad, one invention had a way of spawning others down the line.
“In theory, if I can figure out how to measure the energy from an object then I ought to be able to do it from a person.” She waved her free hand around, not bothering to hide her enthusiasm for the topic. “For all I know it might actually be easier to get that information about a person, but I doubt it. Unless they’ve got a crazy amount of power they probably won’t even register on the first version of whatever I come up with, it’ll probably be too crude. But if I can make it work then that proves the concept and I can start figuring out how to improve the design.”
Another swig of her water. “Of course, detecting the energy will probably be the easy part. Building anything that could actually use it in some meaningful way? If history is a guide I could be a grandmother by then. But even a monitoring device would be hella useful to a serious practitioner.”
James gestured with his beer. “I think the main benefit would be remote access to the data,” he said. “A serious practitioner can already tell if an area’s humming, but they need to be there to know it, unless it’s putting off something big. You're proposing a magical seismometer, right?” James checked in to make sure he was on the same wavelength. “Or even… the way cell towers can triangulate a signal.” He exhaled heavily and smiled at her. “Imagine a caravan of witches chasing an energy spike like it’s a tornado.” The bottle tipped towards his mouth.
“That would be awesome.” Izzy grinned at the mental image, and had been nodding along as he talked. “And yeah, theoretically that’s what it would be like. Or a Geiger counter depending on what ends up being the magical equivalent. Either way, it would monitor the energy in a given spot. What I’d like to be able to do eventually is predict what’s going to happen out in the desert with the energy there, since it seems to jump around so much.” A shrug. “Of course, that assumes that I can build something that would actually do what I want, and I could make enough of them to place in spots that would be useful without going broke in the process.”
“Yeah. I doubt there’s a lot of funding out there for magical Geiger counters.” James pushed his hair back from his forehead and looked out the window, thinking of the new place he was setting up out in Searchlight, an hour from his old apartment in Las Vegas. “When you get out there, you should stop by the shop and show us know how far you‘ve gotten. Even if I think it’s a bad idea, it’ll be interesting to watch you do it. Maybe you can return the favor, tell me something I want to do is a bad idea.”
Izzy beamed. So what if he thought it was a bad idea? At least he showed some interest and wasn’t dismissing it as impossible. Sure her mom humored her, but she knew it was just that: humoring her. “Awesome! Give me your email and I’ll keep in touch, let you know how it’s going.”
“Okay.” He grabbed a pen off the kitchen counter and a piece of paper that looked unclaimed, scribbled a circle until the ink cooperated, and jotted it down for her. Whether he was at Curiosities or the new garage, an email address would follow him. James handed it to Izzy and capped the pen, then tossed it back where it came from. The plastic barrel rattled an inch or two across the counter. There were sounds of movement on the other side of the house, which let him know that Sarah was finishing up what he’d come to collect. “Good luck with the Old English.”
“Thanks.” Izzy admired the shot for a second, someone clearly had too much free time in their lives to be able to perfect that particular skill. But the sounds of her mother approaching told her the conversation was at an end and she still had all her stuff to get out of the Camry anyway. “Good luck with whatever it is you’re doing with mom’s mixology.”
She finished her water, gave him a grin and a wink, then went off to unload the car.