Strange friends all surround me Who: Danica and Kai Where: lol!cafe in Scarlet Oak When: Noontime Note: Started in gdocs, set to finish here in thread
It was finally time for Kai to go out on her lunch break during her shift at Wonderland. The brunette let out a massive groan while rushing out to her truck to drive to the nearest place that sold caffeine and muffins. Seriously now, don’t between a girl and her needs. She didn’t sleep well the night before, all worried about Harley and the full moon. Yes, that mean she could sleep in his bed, but she still worried about her feathered friend. Having him wake her up in the morning, seeing all was well put a smile on her face. But now she needed something to properly wake her up.
Walking into the cafe, Kai let out an immense, obnoxious yawn, not even bothering to cover her mouth. It didn’t help that the line was somewhat long - damn lunch rush - and the psychic was growing impatient. Those voices were haunting her head again, but as she focused on them, she realized they weren’t talking directly to her. They were indeed voices of the baristas and customers and everything related to that particular building. Kai didn’t understand it and she wished she had a better grasp on it.
“Um, miss?”
Kai fluttered back to reality, realizing it was finally her turn in line. “Oh hey! What’s up? Can I get aaaaaaaa large chai with extra vanilla shots? Oh, throw in an espresso one, too. OH! And make it iced!”
The barista just blinked at how random the girl was being and grabbed a cup to jot down all the notes on it. “Anything else?”
“And a blueberry muffin, please!”
“Oh, I’m sorry, we’re all out of those.”
Wrong answer.
“WHAT.”
The sudden peak in Kai’s emotions caused the nearby straw container to explode, straws and wrappers flying everywhere and causing a few people to scream and duck. Kai blushed a new shade of red as she realized that was her fault, but the barista didn’t seem to register that. “Oh... um... I don’t care what muffin. Just surprise me, ok? Here!” She gave the barista the money and scurried off to the other side to wait for her drink, albeit a tad emarrassed.
Danica had just finished a house call in the neighborhood and decided to stop in for a treat. It had been a check up and a preliminary planning for a homebirth all in one, and she thought that it had gone well. Her patient and the baby were both healthy, her patient’s partner was supportive, and Danica had the feeling that everything was going to go well with the delivery. Not that she could know for sure, of course - she wasn’t clairvoyant, after all - but she was good at her job, and had good instincts to boot. The barista handed her an iced tea lemonade just as the straw container on the far end of the counter exploded, startling her with the sudden noise and motion. It only took a moment for her to recover, however, and realize just what had happened. Danica asked the barista for a straw from behind the counter and turned to the sheepish-looking woman waiting for her own drink.
“My whole house looked like that when I was a kid,” she told Kai, gesturing to the mess caused by the little explosion. Her smile was warm and her expression more amused than anything. Both of her older siblings were telekinetic, after all, so she was rather used to flying objects and uncontrolled outbursts. Of course both Ausra and Felix had gotten control of their telekinesis relatively quickly - Ausra quicker than Felix, since she’d developed it as a teenager and therefore had more patience for it than a child - but Danica knew most families weren’t like hers. And not everyone’s powers were subject to such careful control.
Kai whipped her head to the side to see the woman who spoke to her and gave her a nervous smile. “Really? Mine was too busy lighting shit on fire and-” WAAAAAAAIT. Delayed reaction. Does that mean...? This woman was used to this, her whole house like that. Did she mean... it was a family of psychics?! Kai never really met another psychic, save for Rigby. But a whole family of them?! Oh god, Kai wished she had that luxury, knowing that she would have learned how to control her powers... maybe even know what the hell were these voices she heard all the time. “Wait wait wait... So, do you mean, like... you’re a... you know.” She didn’t want to flat out say it and offend this woman, but she seemed so nice and not a drop of fear was in her eyes.
Danica wasn’t sure if the other woman was just being cautious or if she was reluctant to say the word, but Danica didn’t have either of those hang-ups. It wasn’t the psychic part that usually got her in trouble, after all. “I’m psychic, yes,” she confirmed, still smiling. “Everyone in my family is, which is unusual.” The last part was added mostly so Kai didn’t think it was her own family that was strange. Just the opposite, actually; it was rare that everyone in a generation ended up psychic, and in Danica’s family, everyone in every generation at least a hundred years back had been, except for a few instances here and there that no one much liked talking about. It had both its benefits and its drawbacks. “Not a telekinetic though, I’m afraid. That one went to one of my sisters and one of my brothers.”
Holy crap... a whole family of psychics?! That would have been Kai’s dream family. All she got was a bunch of fire elementals who hated her. With a giddy grin on her face, Kai flailed a bit at this discovery. “Oh my god, that’s so awesome! Totally jealous of you! I didn’t have that kind of family, so...” She rolled her eyes and gestured to the straws and wrappers on the floor. “I kind of don’t know what I’m doing at all.” And then her drink and muffin were handed to her, to which Kai eagerly picked up. After a long sip, she looked back to the woman and tilted her head to the side. “Say... would you mind if I joined you? Sit down and talk? I’m sorry, but I don’t know too many people like me and I have NO CLUE about half of this and I’m eager to learn more.” Maybe this woman could even help her with figuring out about the voices she heard, too.
While Danica certainly had issues with her family, many of which stemmed directly from them all being psychics and the way they’d been raised in their abilities, she had to admit that the benefits that Kai was wishing she’d had were certainly ones she’d enjoyed. She may be ill, but if not for the in-depth knowledge of her powers that came from growing up in the family she did, she might not have been able to separate her actual symptoms from her psychic abilities. And without being able to separate them, it’s doubtless she would have received far less effective treatment than she had, if effective at all. “Of course,” Danica replied, happy to help out a fellow psychic. “As long as you’re not overly allergic to dogs,” she qualified, gesturing to where Nana was sitting next to a chair, essentially saving her seat. “She’s big-” An understatement. “-but I promise she’s harmless.”
Kai looked on over to where this dog was and- “WHOA! HOLY CRAP ON A STICK!” Now that was a dog. Kai was definitely not allergic and was amused more than anything. With a giggle, she looked back to the woman and smiled. “Nope! Not at all. She’s quite adorable and fluffy.” Then something occurred to her. “OH!” She extended out a free hand to the woman, still being pleasant. “I’m Kai, by the way. It’s really cool to meet you.” And she couldn’t wait to talk with another psychic. This woman looked way older than her - and damn good for whatever age she was - and Kai could only imagine that meant she had more experience under her belt. This would definitely help her out.
“Danica,” she replied by way of introduction, taking Kai’s hand and giving it a friendly, if rather brief shake. It had been a good day thus far, and a hot one at that, so Danica had foregone the gloves. Walking over to her chair and sitting down gave her a moment to let the images she picked up from Kai wash over her, and Danica was thankful that it hadn’t been anything troubling. She’d had rather enough of that lately. “So, a lone psychic in a family of...I’m guessing fire elementals?” Elementals had cropped up from time to time in her family line, as elementals were wont to do, but she didn’t have any in her generation that she knew of. And she was the only born witch among her siblings, so for the most part she’d grown up knowing a lot about psychics and relatively little about the other kinds of supernaturals.
“Yeah, definitely fire elementals.” Kai rolled her eyes while sitting down, not liking the memory of it, but get her going and she definitely didn’t stop. “I was the youngest and EVERYONE else was a fire. Didn’t help that they were immune to it and I wasn’t. They liked to light my toys on fire a lot. Then one day I screamed over my Strawberry Shortcake doll being burned and it caused the windows to shatter. Like... I know that whenever I feel something extremely, my telekinesis goes off. I can’t do shit with it, man. Seriously. I’ve TRIED and all that happens is the object blows up or something.” Which was hilarious if she wanted some bitch’s drink to blow up on her, but it always left Kai with a headache. “I wish I had a family that knew the inside scoop on being a psychic. You’re probably like, the second person EVAR that I’ve met that’s a psychic. Trufax.” Kai then took a sip on her drink and leaned over to scratch Nana behind the ears. “Hey puppy! You’re so adowable.!”
Her entire family might have been made up of psychics, but that didn’t mean Danica couldn’t relate. “Everyone in my house - my parents, all five of my siblings - had two psychic gifts. We were all pretty much born with one, and then developed another later on. Except me. I don’t have a second gift, but I was born a witch even though none of my other siblings were. So I get being the odd one out.” And, well, she was schizophrenic, but that wasn’t information she went around announcing to people she’d just met. Danica also understood why she was one of the only psychics Kai knew. Despite the way the news sometimes presented things, there were still far more non-psychics out there than psychics. Not to mention that a lot of them still had good reason to keep quiet about their abilities. Most people weren’t exactly enamored of the idea of having their thoughts read or someone else knowing their future before they did. “There’s always a chance that you’ll still be able to get control of your telekinesis, though. It takes some people longer than others.”
Oooo, Danica was a witch, too? Doubly badass! And she did hope that one day the telekinesis could be properly controlled, but so far no luck. “Yeah, I can imagine. Watch me be an old granny by the time I-” Waaaaaaaaait. Delayed reaction on Kai’s part, but it finally clicked with her. Danica mentioned everyone in her family having two psychic gifts. Two. All this time Kai figured the voices thing was just her being crazy, but could it be something psychic? Like another ability? “Wait, so... like, everyone had two abilities? You sure they did?” The tone in her voice was both intrigued and frightened, mostly because now Kai was 25 and potentially discovering a new ability. This was on par with low-leveled elementals receiving familiars. She just didn’t know what to make out of all of this, but if Danica could even help a tiny bit, she would have been forever grateful.
“Definitely sure,” Danica answered, wondering if Kai’s curiosity was just that, or if her question was going somewhere. “Most of the people in my family share the same ability with at least one other person in the family, which makes it easier to confirm. And the ones that no one else in my immediate family has, someone else in the extended family has.” Though psychics - at least in her family, she couldn’t speak for all of them - tended to have their own quirks and limitations, abilities still worked in the same basic ways and under the same general principles from person to person. “Of course some abilities are easier to identify than others,” she had to admit, “but yes, definitely two. It actually made it much more difficult to convince my parents that I don’t have two abilities myself.” And to recognize that she wasn’t telepathic or clairaudient, but ill.
So she could possibly have two psychic abilities and she merely didn’t know about it. Kai wasn’t sure whether to be excited or scared about this. Her entire life she grew up thinking she was the weird child, the one who everyone pointed and laughed at. She munched on her muffin at bit while thinking on this, then after she swallowed, her eyes went straight to Danica’s. “So... um... if it’s possible, like you say it is and stuff... would you mind if I ran something by you? You know, to see if whether or not I have a second thing going on or if I’m indeed whacko?” For some reason, asking that of the older lady felt weird. Kai didn’t mean to be crossing any boundaries with someone she just met, but holy crap, if she could take away anything from this chance meeting, then it was going to be this. Who knew, maybe she could befriend Danica. Kai always wished her psychic father was in her life to guide her.
Danica would have been willing to talk to Kai about her abilities anyway--it was the least she could do for a fellow psychic, after all, and Danica liked being able to help people--but then Kai mentioned thinking that she was crazy. If anyone could understand that feeling, it was Danica. Granted, in her case it had been everyone thinking she was psychic when she was actually schizophrenic rather than the opposite, which was far more common. Still, it was just as important to figure it all out. The only way for Kai to get the help she needed, whether it be psychic or psychiatric, was to figure out what the problem was. “Absolutely,” she replied with a comforting smile. “I can’t promise I’ll be able to help, but I’m willing to listen. Can’t hurt, right?”