Mael Bordelon (voodoo_touch) wrote in light_of_may, @ 2010-10-21 12:21:00 |
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Entry tags: | #solo, 2009-07-30 |
Papa was a rolling stone
Who: Mael and Jean-Baptiste (NPC)
When: Early morning
Where: Mael's home
What: Familiarizing! ...weak pun. Shame on me.
It could have been mistaken for a really loud engine running against the side of Mael’s head. But, having lived by the bayou and listening to its sounds for eighteen years, Mael knew exactly what that was. His first instinct was to grab the shotgun by his bed and shoot it either between the eyes or as it opened its mouth. As he shifted in bed to reach for the shotgun, however, he realized that he was wrapped up in a thin blanket on a lumpy couch and not in his childhood bed with the goose down mattress. Then it’s just a dream, Mael told himself as he yawned and opened his eyes. It’s a lawnmower.
It wasn’t.
Jean-Baptiste opened his jaws wide and growled again. ”Good morning.”
Mael froze.
And then screamed.
”Shut up, shut up, shutupshutupshutup,” Jean-Baptiste growled back at Mael, snapping his jaws together. The sound was a little less impressive when he wasn’t crunching a log between his jaws but the sharp clack would have to do. ”Odile warned me you were a screamer.”
Scrambling up to a sitting position, Mael dragged his flimsy blanket up with him as he tried to blink the alligator in his living room away. “Where the fuck did you come from? How’d you get here? What do you know about Maman Odile?” Mael began firing questions at the talking alligator in a series of frightened question marks that ended with significantly higher tones.
”Slow down, hatchling,” Jean-Baptiste responded, swishing his tail from one side to the other. He appraised his new ward with a careful eye. He wasn’t Odile. Far from it. The old woman had been strong and made of sinew. Nothing about her was scared, not even in the face of death. She’d smelled of old age, fire and spellwork. She’d been the bayou. Her grandson did not compare. He was soft, frightened and unsure. The quiver of his jaw did not go unnoticed. And he smelled of fear, sweat and aftershave. ”Didn’t your Maman teach you any manners? The name’s Jean-Baptiste. I’m your new familiar.”
“Familiar?” Mael echoed, touching the side of his head. He must be dreaming. There was a bayou crocodile talking to him in his living room. He pinched his arm.
”You ain’t dreaming, hatchling. I’ve lived longer than you have and I’ve seen more than you can imagine. Now, Odile told me you’ve left the old ways and forgotten the blood that makes you inherently a witch.”
“I don’t have it,” Mael responded quickly. “Mother didn’t have it either...wait, you haven’t told me what happened to either of them. How’d you even get in?”
”I’m your familiar, not a dusty vampire. I come and go as I please,” he responded haughtily, watching Mael closely.
“But if you’re Maman Odile’s familiar, what are you doing here?”
”Tsk, ahhhhh,” Jean-Baptiste looked at Mael with a cold eye. ”Papa Legba...he done took your grandmama away. Look, hatchling, she was old...your grandmama, much older than you think or anyone thought. Deep inside, if you know what I mean...she had called on her friends too many times. And that takes a lot out of you every time. Do you understand?”
Mael nodded. He’d been there. He’d been trapped in that little shanty with no one to hide behind and he’d seen what Maman Odile had done...even learned what she’d done. Blood and other things. Dark things. “So....she’s dead?”
”You’re a slow one, aren’t you?” Jean-Baptiste’s tone was sharp again. ”Look, nothing can be done for your grandmama. After she done and passed away, Anouk put her in the ground and left to who knows where. It ain’t my concern anyway since Odile specifically told me I was to come and look for you and not follow the woman.”
“Me? Why me? I need a drink,” Mael threw his blankets off him and walked towards his fridge.
”Don’t you think it’s too early to be getting drunk?” Jean-Baptiste sighed at him. ”Why, Odile never did get drunk ever. And she lived to be a nice, old age. You should follow her example.”
Shaking the bottle of water he retrieved from his fridge at Jean-Baptiste, Mael opened it. “I meant a drink of water, gator. And the last thing I want to do is become my grandmother.”
”You could learn a thing or two from you grandmother, hatchling.”
“Stop calling me a hatchling. And why aren’t you with my mother? Even if Maman Odile did say to follow me, shouldn’t your calling be....I don’t know, stronger?”
”Slow, slow, slow,” the alligator sighed. ”I am attached to Odile and to her blood. You are her closest blood relative. I come to you. You are my calling. Marassa Jumeaux, may you welcome Anouk to the pits of hell.”
Mael crushed the empty bottle in one hand. “Don’t you say things like that about my mother, ‘gator,” he growled.
“Or what? You’ll get a headache at me?” Odile had informed Jean-Baptiste what Mael’s powers were and were not. It was his duty to force him to learn Odile’s magic and forget about harnessing his clairsentience, which was a stupid power anyway. Anything Mael could do with his psychic powers, Odile could have done with low-level magic and one arm in a gator’s mouth.
Reaching his arm back to throw the bottle at Jean-Baptiste’s large head, Mael paused as everything he had said caught up to him. “What do you mean my mother wasn’t of Maman Odile’s blood? I’m next? I can’t be...she’d have been...oh gods,” Mael dropped the bottle. Maman Odile was his mother. How was that even possible? Was he the product of some form of demonic blood magic ritual? Cackling broke into his train of thought.
”Slow,” Jean-Baptiste blinked at Mael and shook his head. ”I can hear your thoughts, so you know. I am your familiar. You can hide very little from me. You are so naive, hatchling. You should have stayed in the bayou. It would have given you strength. Strength you don’t have because you are a city boy. Odile’s your grandmama but she had a son.”
“OH GODS,” Mael paled.
”Not you, stupid. LeRoy was a damn fool who ran away like you did at eighteen, knocked some pretty dame up in Lafayette and sent her home to Odile when she demanded it. Why d’ya think your grandmama was so upset when you decided to leave her like your daddy? But don’t you get any thoughts of looking for your old man. Your daddy is waiting on the other side for your grandmother. And they both be waiting for you when your time comes...but that’s not for a long time yet.”
Mael had nothing to say to that. Absolutely nothing. So he just kind of stared at the alligator. Maman Odile had a son and not a daughter...and now that he knew that, it made so much sense. The fact that Anouk couldn’t be used for spells and that Maman Odile always called his father a good for nothing...Mael pinched the bridge of his nose. “Why the farce?”
”So you wouldn’t run and follow your daddy,” Jean-Baptiste explained. ”Fat lot of good it woulda done you anyway. Your daddy got himself killed in Lafayette. Bar fight, or that’s as far as Odile told me, though she got no reason to hide these things from me.”
“How did you even get here all the way from Louisiana?” Mael suddenly asked, trying not to think about his family or his father or his grandmother or anything. He pressed his palms against the tops of his counters and tried not to reel.
”I took a plane, genius,” Jean-Baptiste responded. “Of course, I swam up the Mississippi. It wasn’t easy, let me tell you. That’s cold waters you got there. Don’t try and distract me. It won’t work, hatchling. The house is waiting for you. It’s warded so only you can enter or one of your blood. That being your kid, if you don’t get it because I know you’re slow. Your grandmother sent me here to make sure you study right. You’re gonna have to pick her spellbooks up, though, I couldn’t bring them here. They’d have gotten wet.”
“I’m not going back.”
”Yes, you are. And I’m here to make sure you do.”
“You can’t make me.”
The alligator flashed a toothy grin. ”You wanna bet? If I took a leg off, you’ll still live and you’ll still be able to get the spellbooks. You’ll just have to do it all with one less leg than you would have if you’d paid attention.”
“You think I’m afraid of death? I stared death in the face, gator.”
Jean-Baptiste cackled again. ”How about I just curl up next to you, then, city boy? After I arrived, Odile got so strong, she got to do things even the darkest people fear to say and I saw all of it. I’ve seen darkness that would break your sweet little city boy brain if you so much as touched me. Are you willing to take that chance?”
Mael remained silent.
”Besides, I know of another relation, hatchling. Not your daddy, but one that could help you. But only if you do as I say.”
It was Odile controlling him from beyond the grave. She’d promised she’d find a way to get him to go back to the bayou. And she had. Bitch.
”I heard that, hatchling.”