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Tweak says, "Captain, My Captain!"

Rosario Ortiz (

reluciente) wrote in

nevermore_logs,
@ 2022-03-21 15:28:00

WHO Rosario and Lyra
WHEN Late afternoon, Friday 18 March, after this
WHERE Crown Heights, Lyra/Avery/Armaan’s apartment
WHAT The afternoon after
WARNINGS TBA

Rosario’s stomach didn’t stop churning the whole bus ride over.

She’d seen it. A wild parade of snakes centred around a herdsman — Patrick, Patrick had been a shepherd, snakes were his symbol, she knew that — amber liquid flowing and flowing and flowing from a goblet — it hadn’t even been subtle, she’d smelled the beer, the premonition had stopped just short of hitting her over the head and she still hadn’t got it.

She had to be the shittiest prophet. Couldn’t meditate, couldn’t manage a basic trance. Couldn’t even read the future to save her best friend’s life.

Lyra could have died. Alcohol poisoning wasn’t a little thing, even for a preternaturally lucky saint’s kid. Rosario had to study this stuff, she knew. Lyra’s blood alcohol content had been so high, it’d literally been depressing her vital functions (she’d been drowning, waterlogged feathers dragging her under). She could’ve stopped breathing. She could’ve choked to death, fuck, she could’ve ended up in a coma, or with permanent brain damage from seizures, or— she could’ve died.

The bus rumbled along Fulton and Rosario jiggled her foot, twisting the handle of the plastic shopping bag round and round her fingers.

It wasn’t like the Orion Property Group stuff. Those had been so vague, Rosario still see-sawed back and forth over whether she could classify them as omens. If she saw a name on the spine of a book and a pattern in some grease splatter and an image on a billboard, was that really a sign about Apollo was moving in on their building, or was it just a sign that she still the constellation Orion on the brain and that Apollo – who always had to be a smartass about things – knew it?

This hadn’t been vague. This had been a warning and she’d known it, and she’d ignored it. Shoved it to the back of her head because it’d been too confusing and too weird and too much, and then Lyra had almost died, a small colourful bird flailing in an ocean of booze.

The sick feeling clung to her throat as she rapped on the door.

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