Alana (athenacalled) wrote in olympian_rewind, @ 2011-02-03 12:58:00 |
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Entry tags: | adam jenkins, alana kellings, atlas, natal maltose, npc, polyhymnia, shiri eneas |
Who: Alana, Shiri, Adam (Kinda), Freya and Atlas in texts
What: Running from the Cops
Where: A park, then Alana's
When: BACKDATED... We'll say Jan 27th
Warnings: Alana has a potty mouth? Texts from scene in comments.
It didn’t matter what the weather was... Dogs needed exercise. And as Alana no longer kept her hours at the hotel, it was easier to find time to take her happy little Pirate out for time at the park. Just now, she sent the slobber covered tennis ball flying through the air as the young pup took off after it, excitedly with his tag wagging. She wiped her hand on her jeans, and glanced about with a small smirk on her face. She was enjoying the freedom.
Shiri enjoyed her freedom, too, which was exactly why she was hiding behind one of the park’ s trees. At least, that is what she would explain if someone asked and catching sight of Alana, it was possible that explanation would be forthcoming. It would be forthcoming because she trusted the mortal. She had no opinion on the dog. " Psst, come here.”
Alana blinked, and glanced around until she sighted the albino hiding behind the tree. Arching her eyebrows, she glanced after her pouch to see that he wasn’t going to greet someone, and worked her way over. “Hey, hey,” she greeted her, smiling. “What’s goin’ on?”
“ Shhh...” Shiri was quick to scold, completing the sound with the traditional gesture of shushing someone before looking over her shoulder and all around her, “Is your truck nearby?”
“Uh, yeah...?” The mortal blinked, and looked at the muse in slight surprise, before giving a whistle to call in Pirate. She frowned. “Why?”
“ You have to hide me,” The muse grabbed the mortal’ s wrist with utmost seriousness. She wasn’ t kidding; this wasn' t a joke. Her fear and anxiety reflected in her pink eyes, “ You have a tarp in the back of the truck? I could hide beneath it...."
Alana nodded, not bothering to ask further about the situation. Taking Pirate’s leash from around her neck, she hooked it to the dog’s collar and started to walk in the quickest direction of the truck. “I’m over here.”
Shiri kept looking around. No one seemed to be following her. No one seemed to be coming for her, but her heart continued to pound in her chest. Her hands wouldn’t stop trembling as she followed close behind, “ Do not draw any attention to yourself when you drive. We are both not being arrested."
“You’re going to so owe me an explanation,” she mentioned, continuing to lead her dog, looking calm before turning to Shiri and grinning. “And I’ve never gotten even a ticket,” she adds on as the truck comes quickly into view.
“Well, I cannot be arrested, so …” Shiri was not grinning. It was too hard to grin, or even feign one, when she was using all her effort and strength to not tremble herself into in pieces, “ Just hide me.”
“Alright.” Reaching her truck, Alana dropped down the back and jumped up into it. Quickly she shook out a folded tarp, and tilted her head for the muse to come on up and find a spot on the bottom of the truck. It wasn’t clean, but it would be safe enough if that’s what she wanted.
All the muse wanted was to be safe and hide. With all her grace and in all her fear, she leapt to the back of the truck and grabbed the tarp. “ Now, hopefully no one notices a body under your tarp but I am good at obscuring....”
“Stay close to the sides and bunch it around you,” Alana pointed out, before jumping from the back and pushing the end back into place. She glanced at the back space, waiting for Shiri to get completely settled, as Pirate chewed on his tennis ball nearby.
“ I know how to hide in the back of a truck....” Shiri both wished she hadn’ t done this as much as she had and wished she had done it more.... Or that she knew better hiding spots in Miami. What had gone wrong with her thought processes? She always found hiding spots. " Just go. Drive,.” The muse was quick to hide under the tarp.
A shake of the head and Alana was moving to the cab of her truck. She unlocked the door and ushered the poor pup up and in, before going to the driver’s side and hopping in herself. She’d assumed that they were headed to Shiri’s house.
The traffic wasn’t exactly great, and not entirely remembering how to get to Shiri’s place complicated things. All the same, Alana did the best she could. Stopped at an intersection, she opened the window that lead to the bed of the truck behind the cab and turned her radio up just a hint more.
If one looked in the back cab of the truck, one would never guess a person was under the tarp. Shiri hadn’t lied, she was good at obscuring. Years, centuries of hiding in carts, wagons and trucks had made her quite skilled at obscuring her form under blankets and tarps. The act of hiding began to calm her racing heart, the knowledge that as long as Alana obeyed traffic rules, the police wouldn’t think to look for her here...
But she wondered where Alana was going to take her. Very carefully, she peeked out from the tarp and frowned. She knew this way.... This was the way to her house! That was the worst hiding spot!
She knocked on the metal divide to get Alana’s attention and risked speaking, “They will look for me at my house! What is wrong with you? Are you going to hand me over?” Because she wouldn’t be forgiving if she was.
Well, shit. How the fuck was she supposed to know what was going on? Alana sighed and reached out to pet her pouch, twisting slightly. “Where do you wanna go?” she called out to ask.
“ Where you can hide me!” Shiri could not believe it. As the words left her lips she was dumb struck that she had to say them at all. She understood that many, especially mortals of this age and country, probably weren’t accustomed to hiding people from the authorities but it was on the television and movies all the time. When the socialist military state came that the news channels promised her, she wondered what they were all going to do without such important skills.
Alana nodded. “Alright...” She quickly to think of the best place, and decided that, at least briefly, she’d simply take her to her house. Later they could move her somewhere else, once the pair had a chance to talk. So as the light changed, Alana maneuvered her truck along a different path, starting toward her house. Hey, it wasn’t like she and Shiri were known to be great friends...
The fact they weren’t was the exact reason why the muse had asked for her help in the park when she caught sight of her. She assumed that Alana’s friendship with Adam would gain her the benefit of assistance while the police would not look there first. When she could see they were moving away from her own house, Shiri hid back completely beneath the tarp. All she could do was trust Alana was not betraying her and the police were not on her heels.
It took a bit of time since she had to change directions, but eventually Alana got them to her house, and the truck was pulled into the garage. It was a messy beast, and clearly set up more to be a workshop then anything else. As soon as the truck was parked though, Alana left the cab door open for Pirate to jump down, and she went to the back, dropping down the tailgate, and waited for Shiri to emerge.
Shiri’s hands had stopped shaking. Her body had ceased to tremble but her heart still pounded in her chest. Divine adrenaline continued to flood her veins as lifted the tarp to see they were somewhere, assumedly a hiding spot and scurried out from the back of the truck. “I just need time to think... I will not stay long here...”
Alana shrugged, then shifted to jump up on the tail gate and sat there with her legs swinging below. “Whatever ya need... But I want to know what the fuck is going on,” she stated.
As if to poetically contrast Alana, Shiri crouched down to occupy herself with the dog. Animals always had calmed her soul a little and she needed to be calmer... it would help her think. Now if only her cowardly soul would understand that and calm down. She spoke as she petted the dog, “There was a protest near the campus... A solidarity protest for the oppressed women overseas. I had to go to it, partially to get my friends off my back if I did not and partially...” she shrugged and let it drop that she had been an oppressed woman overseas at one point. “Not important really. We all had masks, and that should have warned me something bad would happen... Some of the protesters got violent for reasons I do not understand. The police came out...”
The mortal lifted her eyebrows, and watched as Shiri played with the happy pouch. He was a sucker for the attention, as most young dogs were. “Did they identify you?” she asked simply and frowned a bit, immediately wondering if they should be looking for a lawyer.
Shiri shrugged. “I do not know. I ran as soon as I saw the police. I cannot be arrested so I did not stick around. I knew how this country’s police break up protests that seem to have turned violent. Either gas or fire hose and then dogs and then arrest. I was not waiting. I ran. I, at least, did not ditch the mask until I did not see them anymore.”
Alana nodded, then grinned and hopped down from the bed of her truck. “Are you hungry at all?” she asked, as Pirate turned to look at her, his tail wagging, the tennis ball in his mouth.
“A little,” Shiri replied as she stood up, taking the tennis ball from the dog’s mouth, “Being terrified and running from the police does make one hungry...” But even as she thought of food, she wondered if the police had followed her... maybe they hadn’t even been able to identify her in time. Where was her phone? With the tennis ball in one hand, she rummaged through her pockets with the other.
Opening a door between garage and house, Alana simply headed inside. She figured that Pirate and Shiri would be behind her, and called over her shoulder. “Homemade burger work then?”
Why were her pockets so deep? How was it possible in this skirt? Shiri pounced the tennis ball to tease the dog as she followed, deep in her own thought, “That would be fine. Do the police hunt down protesters in this country and time?”
Alana paused and turned to watch Shiri, before giving a whistle to call Pirate to her side. The dog hesitated, caught between ball and command, then trotted himself over to Alana. She gave the dog his reward scratch. “I think it depends mostly on damage done,” she mentioned with a shrug. “I wouldn’t worry if you didn’t do anything.”
“When has doing something mattered to the police?” Shiri shook her head. Alana’s words were not comforting to her, at least not yet, “But do they go out of their way to find people who escape initial arrest? I know they did not decades ago but that is because they had the Klan as lapdogs”
“I think you’ll find them a bit more mellow,” Alana responded as she made her way to the kitchen. “They’ll start with those they caught and question them, and go from there. It’s not exactly illegal to join a rally or anythin’.” Once Alana made it to the kitchen, she started to pull things free from the fridge, items needed to make burgers.
Right, right. Right to assemble. Right to free speech. That was what the Americans loved to say and shout... she wondered if it applied to him or if it applied to anyone if the police and the authorities did not want it to. Shiri sat down in the kitchen and placed the ball on the table as she finally found her phone. Maybe if she made a few text messages, she could find out if the police were bothering... “I do not think any of my friends were arrested... at least not when I ran so maybe they do not even know my name...”
Alana nodded, and looked over the selection of items she’d pulled out. “... What do ya like on your burger?” she asked, then noticed that Shiri had her phone out. “If you want, you can use my cell. I doubt they’re looking for you, but they won’t notice as much if the call comes from me.” Or so she hoped.
“Whatever you wish to put on i---” Shiri looked up when her mind had actually made sense of Alana’s second sentence. She had been so focused on texting that she hadn’t understood the words coming from Alana’s mouth or had understood them until it was much too late. She looked down at her Sidekick and the two messages she had always sent with a soft sigh. Oops... if the cops were looking for her and tracking her by her phone she was in trouble. And she was making the trouble net wider...
Could the cops just look on her phone? Intercept the messages? Would they make sense? Well, she was already in this far and Natal didn’t seem to be second guessing it... She glanced over to Alana, “I think I will be safe with my phone for now. I am trying to see if they are looking for me... but I did not call anyone they would think of if they know me at all.”
Alana chuckled at that and started to build the burgers, microwaving some patties she’d cooked before. “I doubt that they’re gonna be that actively lookin’ for you just yet,” she pointed out. “They’ve got their hands full and can always get you in class later.” She paused. “If they even cared.”
Text messages were an incredibly fast means of communication and her final reply had been seen and Natal’s reply had appeared on her little phone as she listened to Alana. The texts had calmed her nerves, but Alana... Alana had done anything but that. Flashes of images appeared in her mind of the police stormed in on one of her classes... It was her music therapy class. She could see herself with her guitar on her lap and then they came rushing in shouting.
Her eyes clenched shut as she put her phone back into her pockets and pulled her legs to her chest on the chair. They didn’t look like Americans in her imagination and they didn’t shout in English. Her trembling began again and her fear was easily multiplied.
“Shit,” Alana swore as she saw Shiri’s reaction, then sighed, lost at what to do for a moment, before she moved around to crouch in front of the albino. “Hey, they aren’t gonna come after you, alright?”
Adam had been looking for something to munch on, when he realized that something was wrong. He didn’t bother to question it, simply walked from the kitchen and into the bedroom, lighting a candle on the shrine, and prayed to his goddess. Well, sort of. What’s wrong?
“Yet... That is what you said...” Shiri whimpered as she opened her clenched eyes to look right Alana while she did so. That was what she had said They could always come for her later. Just knock on her door and drag her out of wherever....
She gasped as she heard her priest in her soul... His voice and presence reminded her she was a goddess, not some frightened woman. And there were ramifications when she remembered she was a goddess. A simple prayed question offered her a moment of clarity. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes again, Alana is scaring me. Making me doubt the assurances of the divine by clouding my mind with nightmares.
Adam had to open his eyes to blink, and he did. He closed them again and prayed once more. He knew Alana well enough to not question that, somehow, she could do just that. Ignore her. You can think clearly past her and the nightmares she may invoke, he prayed simply, his tone even carrying the calm confidence he had in his goddess.
Alana dropped her head, and paused to think about the a reply.She lifted her head again, and looked to Shiri. “You’re going ta borrow trouble if you worry about that now. They aren’t likely to come to you if you didn’t do anything.”
“Shhh,” Shiri scolded the mortal in her presence, partly taking up her priest’s advice to ignore her and partly because she found it utterly rude Alana talking while her and Adam were having a conversation. A divine conversation, As if Alana totally understood that fact. She concentrated her priest; his devotion, affection and concern acted like strong arms cradling her very soul.
Alana had scared her, yes. Scared her in spite of the fact that she knew Natal would not lie to her about her safety and her sister-in-law was not out to get her. But at least she wasn’t angry at Alana. No. She was angry at her own life for having brought these fears to her in the first place.
If she could, she would raze Kabul to the ground.
Maybe in her next life she would.
Sweet Priest, just stay praying with me for a little bit... Until my body calms and my anger subsides more. She spoke to him to his soul in complete confidence that he would do so, And maybe be ready to pick me up not long from now...
Only then did she open her eyes and look at Alana. That’s right, the mortal had spoken to her. Hmmm, “You know, you could just not speak in such minor possibilities and we would both be better off.”
Alana had lifted her eyebrows, slightly surprised to be shushed, and was about to stand to go back to making food when Shiri opened her eyes. The mortal lifted her hands in that ‘I surrender’ pose, and stood. She headed through the kitchen and began to put her hamburger together. “You get ta choose the topic then,” she declared.
Alright, came the priests simple reply, in response to her request for prayer as well as the ride. He’d do both. He already had a candle light, so he started with some other prayers, meant to boost her back to her normal self, and a bit beyond.
Choose the topic? Alana thought Shiri was going to be able to hold a detailed conversation while Adam was praying at her altar? It suddenly dawned on her then, and only then, that Alana was not privy to such knowledge. That fact made her giggle as she rose to her feet, no longer drawn in on herself. Her priests prayers were quick to help her as they were to reassure her of facts that were written in black and white on her phone. She was fine.
But conversations. How to have a conversation while being amused that Alana didn’t know Adam may as well have been in the room with them as far as the muse was concerned. Oh! She knew, “Why are you not at work?” Make the conversation about her.
“Because I don’t have any to be at,” she responded easily, and started to cut up a tomato. She’d already set out a bag with lettuce, plus a jar of relish, mayo, ketchup, mustard and some sliced cheese. Alana picked up one of the plates and pushed it to the muse. “Here, make what you want,” she said, then plopped a bun on top of the plate.
“Why not? You had a fancy office when last I saw you.” Shiri asked on the heels of Alana’s words as she took her burger bun and began to dress it as she saw fit. She really was hungry and now that she believed she was out of mid peril, she could actually enjoy eating it.
Alana turned around and put two patties into the microwave, letting them cook as she finished prepping everything else. “I quit. Handed everything over to June and went back to being a Handyman. I’ve also got Hephaestus teaching me how ta use a forge.” She couldn’t help but grin at that. She was pleased to be learning the trade, and knew that she’d be a master of it in time. Maybe a long time, but in time.
“Quit?” Shiri was about to ask more but then she trapped the question of ‘why?’ deep inside of herself never to emerge. Alana didn’t need a reason why besides because and that she wanted to. The muse wouldn’t question lest she begin to sound like her professors and guidance counselors and she refused to do that. Instead, she continued to smile now with a new thing to be amused about -- it sounded so weird when both mortal names and real names were spoken in the same sentence, “Well, you could find no better teacher for it than him.”
The mortal gave a nod to the statement. “I needed something else to do. I don’t feel like bein’ a handyman forever, and he said he’d help so..” Alana gave a shrug and started to build her burger further, gathering up the patties as the microwave went off and dropping one onto Shiri’s plate. Not fancy, but it was food. “You want somethin’ to drink?”
Once the burger patty was on the bun, Shiri closed her burger and took a bite. It was only as she was eating did she realize how hungry she actually was. Eating at dawn and then skipping all other meals and snacks had been a terrible idea, in retrospect. But she shook her head, “No thank you. I do have one more favor to ask you though.”
A patty was plopped down on Alana’s own well built bun, and she quickly put it together. She paused though, and turned to get some chips. “Yeah? What’s that?”
“After I finish eating,” Which would probably not take long at all, Shiri figured, as soon as truly dedicated herself to consuming this burger. Her adrenaline was wearing down from the soft prayers of her priest echoing in her soul and her fear was washed away from accepting logical truths about her safety that hunger and weariness was becoming more and more apparent to her, “Do you think I can take a nap on your couch until Adam comes to pick me up?”
Alana nodded. “Sure. I’ll grab Pirate and head into my room or something. Just let me know when you’re leaving.” She grabbed a bag of chips and opened it, settling a number onto her plate before offering the bag to Shiri by setting it on the counter before her. Only then did the mortal gather her burger together, and take bite.
“I will be incapable of telling you that if I have my way but we will work that out for you,” Shiri explained and then closed her eyes.
Her food was ignored for a moment as she concentrated once more, fully on her priest in their phone. Sweet Priest, she addressed him, subtly giving him freedom to break his prayers for the moment, Not long from now if you continue to pray and focus you will feel a warmth come over you. That will my consciousness settling into sleep, but I am still with you. I always will be when you pray... Come get me then. Try not to wake me up. Just put me into your car and bring me home. It will be better for all of us if I sleep through the ride.
From Adam came the simple assent of agreement. He’d heard and understood, and would do as she bid.
Alana cocked an eyebrow at Shiri’s statement, but decided that where the muse was concerned, it was probably not best to question, so she shrugged. She wouldn’t mention the thought that came to mind of ‘but how do I know the police didn’t get you?’ aloud. “Whatever works,” she said and shrugged, continuing to munch away. “Ya need anythin’ else?”
Alana would have to depend on Adam to tell her if Shiri got arrested. It certainly wouldn’t be the muse once she left this house today. If she was arrested, calling Alana to tell her about it was going to be very low on her list of things to do. Shiri opened her eyes and shook her head, “No. I think I have everything I need post-freak out. Thank you, Alana.”
Nodding, the mortal gathered a drink and her goodies and gave a whistle for Pirate. The young dog followed along and she took them both into her room, closing the door behind her to let Shiri sleep.
Summary: Alana's in the park when she's surprised by an albino looking for escape. She provides it, then demands answers, before Adam is 'called'.