Repose

[Batfamily +]

I am staying at the Antique Store for a few days. The phenomenon affecting the town has had effects here.

I suggest you sleep in shifts until it resolves.

[Cat]

The cat will need tending while I am away. Damian is keeping busy with Misha in his care.

What have you dug up so far?

[Teo]

There is not a lot of room here. Clothes first, and one of the computers, please. And all the medicines, whichever you think appropriate.

[Helena]

How is your head?

[Damian and Misha]

Status?

[The problem with a mild case of breaking and entering the houses along the waterline (sidebar: excellent rehearsal of skills gone somewhat to rust given permanent occupation behind the bar of the Cat) was that when the weather began to tilt toward warm once more, occupation became a tad more speculative and less ability to acquire the permanent substance of life worth living, books if we're trending towards particular. The last house was glass clad with a view of the water that made Jude think of the party long after the morning after. It was inevitably time, time when Oli had come back to roost somewhere that wasn't under the eaves of the house-that-wasn't in the woods, where the drafts were frigid even in spring. Time then, to find roots and permanence.

The rent was on a sliding scale given the landlady had a fondness for Christian charity and converting those who looked like they were in need of it. Ever the polite, Jude declined to explain natural religious bent was 'nothing at all', if you please and Jewish if you needed something more traditional to file on forms in triplicate. It was more of the pay-check than the house in the woods required in terms of bills (begging pardon, but only bills so far as you paid for them when you could not simply borrow what nobody asked you to return) but permanence, please and thank you. The lease was final confirmation, p'raps not for anyone but Jude his ownself that he was bound. Fondness for small town with a splash of weirdness and no desire save desultory for big cities and the flit between the cons. Last act in the house in the woods? Careful preservation of Oliver's paintings, swathed in sheets to fight dust and inevitable rain, and the skitter of notes played in fond hand on the decrepit piano. The new place was small, convenient for work and all Jude's own from the moment the lock caught]

[Locked to Stephanie M]
[While on the phone during the nightmares.]

I heard you wake up, and I know you're typing away at Eddie over there.