Jess Mariano (beakedme) wrote in saveatlantisic, @ 2017-06-30 23:33:00 |
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Jess Mariano and Liv Parker
Earlier in the month
Library
PG
Complete |
There was a lot about this world that Liv still didn’t completely understand. The missions, people from completely other worlds, time jumps, and the weird things that happened on almost a daily basis. As a young girl, she’d convinced Luke to try to help her make some of her My Little Ponies talk and come to life. The spell that they’d done had done something to those horses, but it definitely hadn’t gone quite as she’d hoped or planned. So, seeing Donald Duck walking and squawking around asking about other Disney characters was a little hard to wrap her mind around. The magic here was potent. The problem was that Liv wasn’t quite magically potent enough. Not yet. Bonnie was here and was a lot of help in that department, but Liv was a Gemini witch. She could do magic on her own, but the really big spells? The powerful ones? She needed another Gemini witch to say the words with her. The irony definitely wasn’t lost on her that the only other living person here who could help her with any Gemini spells was none other than her psycho brother. The very person she definitely wasn’t going to go to for help especially when she was trying to send him back to his own personal hell. Ever since her meltdown at the jazz fest, Liv and Bonnie had been actively working to repair the ascendant and figure out how to bypass some of the Atlantis magic which seemed to be a little trickier than she’d thought and had hit a few snags, so she found herself at the library doing some research. One good thing about this place was that magic was everywhere, and there were even books that she remembered having passed down in her family back home. Books about her family and about the other types of magic here. Getting comfortable in one of the plush chairs in a quiet corner of the library, Liv started scanning the pages to see what she could learn about the other types of magic that were here. Jess knew a little about their world. Not much. He didn’t like to pry, but he knew this was the sister of a guy that had torn her family apart. It was more than enough to deal with for anyone. He didn’t want to interrupt her but he’d made himself a coffee and something made him make one for her too. He’d seen her around but neither of them were known for being chatty by all accounts. “Hey…” he said simply, placing the cup of coffee in front of her. “I’m Jess, One of the librarians here, I thought you could do with a cup.” He took a sip of his own, not really wanting to get in her way, and so he made to walk back to his desk and leave her in peace to get on with her reading. But before he did... “I’m trusting you with coffee and my books. Just so we’re clear.” he added with a smile. Liv was a little surprised when the guy came up and sat the coffee in front of her, but the interruption wasn’t unwelcome especially when he brought an offering of coffee along with him. She closed the book with her notes still tucked inside the pages to keep her place and looked up at him with a sly smile. “Your books, huh? I’ll see what I can do about not filling them with coffee stains.” She picked up the coffee and took a sip. It was pretty good actually. Strong, but not strong enough so that it was going to get up and walk away on its own. “Thanks.” She nodded to the seat across from her. “You can sit down if you want. I’m Liv.” Liv wasn’t exactly the most talkative person in the world, but she could make a little casual conversation here and there especially when someone brought her good coffee. “Do you bring all of your library patrons drinks or just the ones who look like they can multitask without spilling?” She was amused and he couldn’t really blame her. He spent most of his time here, writing, reading, forgetting to eat. It wasn’t that he was antisocial, he’d changed a lot since his teenage years but he would sometimes sit reading for hours and forget the world. That said, it was probably a bad habit he should think about breaking. “If I’m not interrupting, I won’t say no to a break” he said sitting down next to her and taking a sip of his own coffee. “And actually you’ll find I’m very selective about the people who I allow to multitask about my books. You seem like you’re up to the challenge.” Of course they weren’t his books. Not really. But he was as protective of them as they’d expected him to be when they offered him the job on his arrival. “Anything in particular you’re looking for?” “You’re not interrupting.” LIv was never really the big research type anyway, so she didn’t mind the chance to put down the books and think about something else for a while especially when she’d hardly been able to think about much else since the first day she arrived and saw who had somehow managed to beat her here. Tunnel vision had been kind of a thing. “I’ll try not to disappoint,” she said. When asked about what she was looking for, she paused for a moment and glanced down at the book in her lap. If Jess had been in Atlantis for even a couple of weeks much less longer, he already knew that a lot of weird things happened here and even weirder people showed up here. She would lump herself in that group too. There was a lot about her life that was strange even without the psychotic brother. Magic and magical people were hardly a secret. “Well…. I guess you could say I’m just trying to learn more about this place and what makes it tick. And I want to understand about other worlds and the people here and what they can do. How they do what they do and if this place itself has any influence on that.” It was a little vague but the best and least complicated way to describe what she was trying to find out. “Sounds a little boring, doesn’t it?” It seemed fair enough. He paid attention to the newcomers but he also didn’t pry too much. Liv Parker and reading about how things worked here were none of his business. He would help her, point her at what she needed but unless she volunteered anything, he wouldn’t pry. “It’s not boring. Not to you. Doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. And it's sensible, y’know, figuring out how people do what they can do and if it’s different from your home worlds?” He wondered if there were things she could do and that was why she was looking into it, but he simply sipped his coffee for a moment before venturing another idea. “There’s books about this place, little bits of the history?” “Eh. It kind of is a little boring to me,” Liv said with a smirk. “If I was going to be reading about magic, I could find a lot more interesting books and histories than this.” She shrugged. What she was doing now was more out of necessity than a desire to learn. She was a skilled witch with a lot of power, but there was a reason Luke was the stronger one between the two of them. He’d put in the research and practice early on more than she had. “Finding out what people here can do has been pretty interesting though. There’s a lot more here than even I knew of back home.” He caught her interest, though, when he mentioned other books about Atlantis and its history. She nodded. “Those would probably be pretty great actually. I haven’t been here that long, and I guess you could say I’m trying to understand how this place works. The more you know the better, right?” “Knowledge is power and all” he said, trying to figure this girl out. She’d had a plan before coming in of what she wanted to learn and it seemed like she was doing just that. It wasn’t the history of other worlds, or hers she wanted. It was the history of this one, the thing that had pulled them all here, how it worked. That was a pretty hefty topic but he got the feeling she was more than up to the task. “Seriously, this, any of this, magic, powers, hell, a library like this? You just didn't get that at home. My world didn’t tap into any of this and I guess in some ways I’m glad about it but in other ways it keeps me at a disadvantage. I’ve been reading what I can too, trying to work some of it out. It’s interesting to see how one little thing, an addition or a subtraction of something can shape an entire world. There are people here from space, from Star Trek or Star Wars, there’s historical figures...it’s insane. But figuring it all out if one of the highlights of being here for me.” “We had all of this kind of… stuff back home, but accessible in a nice library for the public to check out and enjoy? That part is new.” She smirked a little as he explained that he was catching up on things he’d missed. Some of the people here had been super surprising for her too. People and characters she’d seen on TV, superheroes, and so much more in between. It was hard to wrap her mind around it all, so Liv mostly opted to ignore it as best that she could until it stared her right in the face. “I take it that you didn’t have magic or people with abilities at home?” While that probably should have been the norm, she was finding that most people here knew about the supernatural one way or another or were apart of them themselves. “Sometimes it’s better, or easier, to be the one without any extra powers than the ones with it.” “Nothing like that. Unless you count the Gilmore’s coffee consumption,” he said amused. “Sorry, just...my ex and her Mom. They seriously drink more coffee than I’ve ever seen anyone, even here, even non humans drink.” He was getting used to it though. This place had a way of broadening horizons. And it was something he liked about this place. No two days were ever the same and while that was often a mixed blessing the benefits still outweighed it, which was why he was still here. That and the library. He would never get tired of it ever. “I love being here, I mean, I miss some people back home but I always wanted to travel more, see the world This...is a little more than I expected but hey, such is life.” “Hey, drinking coffee can sometimes be a superpower. How some people drink so much and don’t end up spinning off out of control is one of life’s big questions,” she said, a little amused by the small bit of info from his home. “I like a good cup of coffee as much as the next caffeine-addicted person, but I’ve never been someone to guzzle it down like a lifeline. Though I might have come close back during midterms and finals week.” She was nearly done with the cup he’d brought her, and she leaned forward to hold the cup in both hands and stared down at the dark liquid as he explained how eye-opening it was here. “I like being here,” she said after a moment. “I mean, there are some drawbacks, and I miss people from home but… well, I’d miss them there too. It’s complicated.” Mostly because she was dead. “It very well could be, I could come from a world fuelled by the energy of coffee drinkers. There’s weirder things.” he suggested. He was pleased he could help her and it was nice occasionally just to talk to someone without any history or agenda. And this place was good for that. She seemed to have taken to this place as well as he had. “There’s always drawbacks, always people to miss. And there are always complications. But the way they tell it if you choose to go back you go back to the moment you came from. So it’s not the worst option. I’m taking my time, but i don’t think it's possible to get bored here. Especially right here.” He was babbling. “I should stop interrupting your reading. I’m a terrible librarian, talking in the library and all” he said with a grin. I’ll bring another coffee in an hour?” |