WHO: Kaden and Merlin WHEN: Wednesday night, Jan 19 WHERE: The Enodia WHAT: A chance meeting, totally by chance, how very random WARNINGS: TBD
The Enodia had been a weird-ass hotel when he was here the first time, and it continued to be a weird-ass hotel now. Halls that seemed to go on forever. Floors that gave the impression they had whole different footprints to the floor below or above them. Freaky art. Concrete fire stairs that echoed when you ran up and down them like there were two or three other people on the stairs with you. Plants that bloomed when they shouldn't.
Most nights if he went for a wander he could find something new, and lately he'd started to test himself to see if he could work out what was magic and what wasn't. On the bookshelf in the refugees-only common room (Hecate didn't call them refugees, but come on) there appeared one night a copy of an Animorphs book he hadn't read, one that hadn't been part of Cathal's collection (number 36, where they all acquire deep sea morphs and discover what they think it Atlantis) and Kaden was pretty sure that was magic. He wondered what would happen if he posted it to Cathal. Would it dissolve once the sun touched it?
He kinda wanted to try, cos if Kaden hadn't read it at Cathal's that mean Cathal didn't own it, and he'd probably be really excited that Kaden had managed to find it.
But on the other hand... what if tomorrow night, someone new arrived? Someone who'd never read Animorphs and might be interested, and Kaden could tell them all about it, and then they could find the rest of the books together and talk about them too.
He kinda missed Hazel. Not that he thought Hazel would be interested in Animorphs, but just because... well, she'd talked to him. But she was long gone now, gone wherever people went when they didn't need to be here anymore.
Marcie listened to him talk about Animorphs but she didn't have any passion for it, and he knew it, so he tried not to bug her with it unless it'd been a really boring day and he needed to talk about something. Tonight over dinner he'd told her all about underground rivers instead. It was kinda tangential to a project he had to do for school, but way more interesting, and he'd been falling down rabbit holes reading about them all afternoon when he was supposed to be doing proper school work. Marcie wasn't super interested in underground rivers, either.
Hecuba was a good listener, but she never had anything to add.
Maybe Marcie would be interested if he talked about magic. But... there wasn't a lot to say. Sometimes charms sing at me and one night Hecate took me gardening. Yeah. Boring. Or... not boring, but he was worried Marcie might think it was. And he didn't care (much) if she thought Animorphs and rivers and whatever else he'd watched a random YouTube video about that way was boring, but he didn't want her to raise one of her stylish brows and look at him like he was weird if he talked about magic.
He definitely wasn't gonna bring up the ghosts thing, either. That might make her a little more insistent on therapy and ever since Hecate had introduced him to Ariadne he'd been really, really careful not to do anything that'd remind Marcie he said he'd try talking if they could find someone who'd understand. Not that he'd be totally against talking to Ariadne. She was very, very, very pretty. But... auuugh.
He'd still rather keep avoiding talking, thanks.
Well... no, he was desperate to talk. To anybody. About anything. Except any of the things a therapist would want him to talk about.
Kaden shoved the idea out of his mind and carried on wandering the halls, this time down on the forth floor. He couldn't remember if this was the floor where he'd first run into Hazel or not. Part of it was that his memories were a bit messed up, part of it was that the Enodia had changed subtly enough that none of the hallways were exactly how he remembered them pre-Burlington anyway. Just little things mostly. Art and plants and maybe the patterns on the runners.
He stopped up short when he noticed a door he'd never seen before, though. It was slightly ajar, which was really weird in a hotel when every other door led to someone's room. People in hotels didn't leave their doors open, but this one was. And Kaden couldn't stop himself stepping toward it and giving it a little push with one finger to make it open a little further. There was no light on the other side and something made him think of home.
Kaden stepped through a little more, blinking in the dark as his eyes readjusted from the fluorescent light of the hallway. The air moved gently against his face. And cold. Outside air. He stepped across the threshold and—
Found himself standing on the roof.
"What the fuuuuck," he breathed, equal parts chilled and delighted. No way any door should've stretched from the forth floor to the roof. This was cool. He could definitely tell Marcie about this later.
He'd maybe just... edit the time of night to sometime not way past his bedtime when he was telling it, though.