noah parker (vantage_point) wrote in shadows_rpg, @ 2018-05-27 14:20:00 |
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Entry tags: | #october 2017, lem, lem x noah |
Who: Noah and Lem
When: Tuesday, October 24, late afternoon
Where: the cemetery
Status: Complete
The problem with there being so many rumors about Point Pleasant was that there were only so many hours in the day to look into them. Attempt one hadn’t gone great, but after a combination of eating a lot of pie and going through the offerings at something called a Spooktacular with Magnus, Noah was in better spirits. Still, it felt better to play it safe and avoid anything that could have the words private property thrown around, so since a few people kept mentioning it, he decided to check out the cemetery.
The afternoon was cloudy, but not too cold and it wasn’t raining, so now seemed a good as time as any. He didn’t think it would be large or interesting enough for him to need more than an hour or two looking around. Making sure Magnus didn’t need the car or want to go with him this time, Noah drove over to where it was located. He found a place to park and made sure he had everything he needed in the pockets of his jacket--plus the seemingly ordinary sunglasses the witch lady at the festival had given them--before locking up. Walking into the cemetery, it felt old, but not necessarily any different than other ones Noah had been to. As he walked along, his gaze caught on one of the angel statues. That’s what supposedly moved, right? He decided to go closer to look at it. Then, on a whim, since it was all utter nonsense, he pulled out the sunglasses and put them on. They definitely still worked as ridiculous eighties sunglasses.
Lem liked cemeteries and she always had. They were usually quiet, kind of peaceful. She and Vex had already walked through this one, with him pointing out important spots and talking about how the angel statues moved when no one was looking. Lem had tried to memorize their positions for later, to see if she could spot any of them in different spots, but her memory was spotty at best, and so far she hadn’t noticed any differences. Maybe they did that on purpose, made themselves hard to remember. She wished she could do that sometimes.
She was currently perched on a wide headstone a few rows away from the cemetery entrance, her legs crossed under her, forearms resting on her knees. A guy had come into the cemetery to walk around, and she got the sense he wasn’t there to see anyone in particular. Another explorer, like herself. She watched motionless from where she was, curious about the curious. But when he took those sunglasses out, she had to laugh a little. They didn’t really jive with his whole look at all. Not that she was one to judge the fashion choices of others, it was just funny.
Nerves heightened since Saturday night, Noah jumped a little at the laughter. He turned toward the source, a girl sitting on a tombstone, whom he hadn't noticed. Grinning, partially in relief, partially because it wasn't cracking a state secret to guess why she laughed at him, he lowered his sunglasses as he looked over at her. "I look great in these, right? Really makes my whole outfit," he said sarcastically, then slipped the sunglasses off entirely since he had confirmed that they continued to serve only their mundane purpose. “A witch at the festival gave them to me and said they’d help me see the supernatural.”
Lem could see she’d startled him, and that gave her a tiny rush of joy. She liked scaring people, it kept them on their toes. At least he looked amused by it too. “You’re a fashion icon already,” she declared. Lem uncrossed her legs to let her boots dangle, lightly tapping the heels against the stone under her as she leaned forward a bit. “Do they work?” She wasn’t sure if she counted as ‘supernatural’ or not, especially without Vex around, but it would be neat to look different to this guy through his ridiculous shades. Lem wondered vaguely if the witch had been Zan. It sounded like something naughty she would do. But maybe there were other naughty witches around too.
Noah tended to not take himself or anything else too seriously, so he tried to have a sense of humor about most things. “Starting trends one pair of sunglasses at a time in northern Maine,” he said. He walked a little closer toward her, now that they were talking. Swinging the sunglasses a little by their temple, he pretended to give the question more serious consideration than it was due. “They work very well as protection from the sun,” he said, grinning as he was never good at keeping a straight face. “Or at least I haven’t spotted anything unusual, except some invisible ink on some bottles.” At least, that’s what he had concluded was most likely for the bottle labels at the Castell booth. “Maybe I’m just not checking the right places.”
The invisible ink tipped Lem off that it had been Zan, because she’d mentioned that at the festival. The bottles that could only be read by some people. That was a delightful connection, and she grinned at this new guy. She couldn’t tell yet if he was cool or a sucker, but it would be fun to find out either way. “Maybe,” she agreed. Lem glanced around them, pursing her lips in a thoughtful way. “There’s older graves toward the back. And a mausoleum that’s supposed to be super fucked up. And the angels.” She gestured around them vaguely; she had yet to see one of them move, but if Vex said they did, Lem was inclined to believe him. She hopped down off of the stone marker and approached Noah, slipping her hands into her back jean pockets. “Let’s walk and see,” she declared.
The function of the sunglasses still seemed incredibly mundane to Noah, so he figured the witch lady had just been pulling their leg to get them to look a little ridiculous and he didn’t really blame her. He hadn’t taken any pains to hide his disbelief and he could err toward sarcasm. Still, he kept them on him when Magnus didn’t want them, just to see what would happen, with the expectation of very little. His inherent skepticism always won out at the end of the day, but he still enjoyed poking around. Cemeteries always had a kind of creepy vibe that he enjoyed, similar to the thrill he felt with a well-done horror movie. Nothing was actually going to jump out at him--it was just a byproduct of his imagination. He was pretty sure. “I’ve heard several people mention the angels. Hadn’t heard about the maosoleum, but sounds like it’s worth checking out,” he said, smiling as the girl jumped down and approached to join him. Having company was unexpected, but not unwelcome. “Do you know what’s supposed to be fucked up about it? I’m Noah, by the way,” he said as they started to walk.
Lem shook her head -- Vex hadn’t been specific about the mausoleum, just that it was fucked up and she shouldn’t go in there. It wasn’t often that he told her not to do something, so she listened when he did. “Just don’t go inside, I’ve been told. It eats people,” she said to this new guy, sounding grave about it. Noah. That was a Bible name, wasn’t it? The flood or the big fish or one of those stories she’d never much paid attention to when it was regurgitated at her as a child. It was funny how none of that seemed very plausible to her now, even with what she’d seen first-hand. “I’m Lem,” she told him belatedly. “Can I see?” Lem didn’t wait for an answer before she reached and plucked the sunglasses out of Noah’s hand and put them on her own face. She blinked and squinted and looked around them, hunting for something out of the ordinary. It was kind of hard to tell with a bunch of creepy statues around.
“That seems easy enough,” Noah said. Or it should be, anyway. He didn’t have the best record of not going into places he shouldn’t, but with mausolea it tended to be easier to respect that boundary. Even if he might not believe any existed that might actually eat people. He would have handed the glasses over, but was spared needing to do so as Lem took them and he couldn’t help but grin as he looked over at her. There was something forward about the action that Noah appreciated and he wasn’t sure if the sunglasses wouldn’t look kind of silly on just about anyone. “What do you think? See anything supernatural that I might have missed?” he asked. From what he could tell, the statues looked like ordinary, if unsettling, statues.
Nothing jumped out at Lem, literally or figuratively, as they walked and she looked. She was used to seeing strange things, but really only around Vex. He had the Sight, he could peer through dimensions and veils and all the things that kept ordinary folks from seeing what was True. Not really at will, unfortunately, but everything had its limitations. “Mmm, not yet,” Lem murmured to Noah. Then, of course, she spotted an unnaturally dark shadow off in the rows of headstones, crouching against one of them, vaguely human-shaped, watching them. Lem stopped and reached out to grab Noah’s arm to make him stop too. She leaned in and squinted, then pointed. “Do you see that?” she asked, pulling the dude she’d just met in closer so he could follow her finger. “Against that tall one right there. It’s too dark.”
There probably wasn’t anything supernatural here more than there was at any other part of town. Noah had met more people who believed in this stuff than didn’t so far, which surprised him a little, though it wasn’t like he had a large sample size. He jerked to a halt when Lem grabbed him, looking down at her in surprise. Was she just pulling his leg? It had to be that. Still, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up as he peered to the spot she pointed, but it looked like an ordinary shadow to him. Right? Unease stirred in the pit of his stomach and he didn’t resist as she pulled him closer. Don’t be ridiculous, he admonished himself. Being in a cemetery was creepy, sure, but he didn’t need to overreact. “It just looks like a shadow...” he said slowly and unconvincingly. “Maybe we’re just looking at it from a weird angle and it seems dark because you have sunglasses on.”
Lem knew she Saw more than most people, but most people tended to have their eyes closed a lot, even while they were awake and walking around. It got annoying. She wasn’t sure why she cared at the moment, but this guy had a cool toy that made Other Things visible, and she wanted him to use it right. “No, here ...” Lem hooked her hand around the back of Noah’s neck to pull his head down to her level, not fazed at all by how rude or forward that might be. She took the sunglasses off to stick them back on Noah’s face and pointed again. Without them, the shadow did look like just a shadow, but with them ... it was way more person-shaped and just ... different. Watchful. “See it now?” Lem asked in a soft murmur, still watching the spot.
Noah was one hundred percent one of those people who had his eyes firmly closed to anything supernatural. He might have a fascination with reading about it, but there was a firm brick wall in his mind behind which he was convinced none of it was based in reality. The sunglasses were just sunglasses. Not expecting Lem to drag him down to her eye level made Noah more compliant, not that he was overly concerned about rudeness most of the time. He crouched a little so he was eye level and lifted his hands to settle the sunglasses better as she jammed them back on his face. “I…” don’t was what he wanted to say, what his brain tried to coax his mouth into saying. He couldn’t not look at where she was pointing, though. His heart hammered as the shadow looked at him. But shadows didn’t look at anyone. “You’re messing with me, right?” he said quietly.
Lem could feel the change in the tension of his body when he saw it. There was no denying that. She let go of Noah’s neck so he could do whatever else he wanted with it, satisfied that he’d seen what she’d seen. She still got the sense that it was watching them, even if she couldn’t see it as well now. It just looked like a shadow, but Lem knew better. “And how would I do that?” she countered, amused. “I mean, I’m flattered you think I can like, project shadow people or something, but nah, it’s there. Probably just curious.” She didn’t get the sense that it wanted to hurt them, but she knew she could be wrong about that. They would find out. Lem patted Noah’s cheek and then started to walk again, looking around them some more. “Do you see any more of them?”
Once released, Noah remained crouched over. It was some instinct to remain still, to not attract further attention, meaningless as that might be. It’s just a shadow. He straightened up some, slowly, and the shadow didn’t move, but he still felt like it looked at them. “Uh... “ he trailed off, trying to get his brain to logic through this. Normally it wasn’t much of a problem for him to do. “Something to do with suggestibility.” It was lame and he knew it; he huffed out a breath. Curious about what? Them. The pat to his cheek and how unconcerned Lem seemed to be got Noah moving again. This was so weird. He resisted the urge to take off the sunglasses, since that felt like admitting something (fear; admitting fear) and he didn’t want to do that. “Not… really,” he said, which is what he wanted to be true. Looking around though and--there, under a tree, another dark shape and he drew to a halt, pointing to it without thinking. “Maybe there.”
Shadow people didn’t scare Lem. She’d seen weirder shit in her time. Granted, it was usually filtered through Vex, but it wasn’t completely unusual for her to see stuff on her own too. The world was full of creepy things. Especially this town, if what she’d been told was true. Lem stopped when Noah stopped again, moving in front of him a bit to follow his finger and peer at where he was pointing. It was another shadow under a tree, and she squinted at it, but it didn’t look like much with her own bare eyes. She believed it was there. That was how they hid, after all. She could feel Noah’s heightened nerves, pushing against her own more-chill emotions, and she guessed this was kind of a first for him. “We mean no harm,” Lem said, louder, so the shadow-thing could hear. If it understood was a different matter, but it never hurt to declare intentions, right? “Just passing through.” Something moved in the corner of Lem’s field of vision, and she looked just in time to see a shadow seem to shift behind another gravestone. “Think we’re attracting attention,” she murmured to Noah.
Looking into this sort of thing was old hat, but Noah usually didn’t get quite so amped up about it, so that part of it was new. His brain kept trying to tell his body to calm down, but he couldn’t quite manage it yet. He didn’t care for it. Lifting his hand, he pulled off the sunglasses. Was it just some weird trick of the light? They definitely looked less anthropomorphic when he took the shades off. He pulled his gaze away to look at Lem when she spoke, feeling kind of ridiculous since she didn’t seem to be concerned, and also ridiculous when he felt a similar impulse to try to...talk to a shadow. He moved past that, instead just answering Lem. “They’re just shadows, I don’t know how much attention they have to give us,” he said; normally he’d be more flippant and less uneasy, but there was something about the atmosphere of the cemetery.
Lem gave him a look that was half incredulous and half amused. She could probably fill a book with the things this guy didn’t know. He’d probably bought the sunglasses off of Zan on a lark, thinking it would just be ridiculous and he could laugh it off with his buddies or something, but then why come to a cemetery alone to look around? He was probably lucky she was there, things were always less scary with company. She plucked the sunglasses out of Noah’s hand again and put them on her face, and yes, that shadow she’d spotted definitely had a head and shoulders, and she got that sense of being watched again. Lem started to turn in a slow circle, her eyes roaming over all the shapes around them. Pointing and moving her lips silently, she started counting the ones she could see. “I see ... five now,” she murmured. Most of them were hiding, but one was just standing in the grassy row between headstones, clearly a human-shaped shadow. “I told you this cemetery was full of stuff.”
There was plenty Noah was just ignorant of, though he was fairly firmly living in the land of denial. The sunglasses Zan had given him came from a place of provocation rather than anything else, but he figured that she had just wanted to make him and Magnus look dumb. Which was something neither he nor Magnus was above, which was why they hadn’t simply tossed the glasses and Noah still had them now. There was a weird fascination that came with looking into haunted places and things and somehow it almost felt like he was trying to prove a point that nothing was there. He gave her a bemused look in return, puzzled in the way that came with his mind not wanting to accept what was right in front of him and his hand fell after she took the sunglasses from him again. “Anywhere can have a lot of shadows in it,” Noah said uncomfortably, swallowing convulsively, but still ultimately deferring to Lem as he asked, “Should we keep moving?”
She looked over at Noah with an eyebrow arched over the plastic rim of the sunglasses, then she outright laughed. “Yeah okay, a lot of people-shaped shadows,” Lem said incredulously. Maybe it was rude, but she really couldn’t fathom how some people stayed that deep in their denial. It seemed impossible to her to ignore reality when it was staring you right in the face, but some people had crazy-big blind spots. Noah did sound a bit nervous, as far as she could tell, so maybe he wasn’t such an unbeliever, but he just whistled in the dark a lot. “Sure!” she chirped like he’d just suggested a pleasant stroll on a nice day or something. Still in possession of the sunglasses, she started off down the path once more, headed toward the older parts of the cemetery. There would probably be even more restless spirits there, and Lem wanted to see them, now that there was more to see.
There were many qualities that could apply to Noah and stubborn was definitely high on the list. Especially when it came to some of his more firmly set beliefs, which included rather decisively that the type of supernatural horror stories that he and Magnus were semi-obsessed with were in the realm of fiction. Noah was more ready to believe he was just seeing things or that he was too tired and just not coping well, as that was at least more explicable. He shrugged at her incredulity, since he had met enough people already in Point Pleasant who seemed to buy into this; still, the unease he felt was instinctual and harder to rein in. Get it together, he told himself. “I mean, people shaped is a broad definition for shadows,” he said, biting back a sigh. As Lem moved forward, Noah followed her further into the cemetery, since there wasn’t anything he should be worried about.
Lem wasn’t sure what was so broad about clear heads and shoulders and person-heights, but whatever. All she could do was point things out, it was up to Noah to believe what he was seeing or not. She walked along for a few minutes, looking around through the sunglasses. Lem spotted a few more of the shadow-people, and thought it was interesting how she could sense that they were looking at her and Noah, but there weren’t exactly faces to see. It was just an instinct. As the two of them got closer to the oldest part of the cemetery -- which held the mausoleum -- Lem slowed down. There were more trees here, so it was shadier, and the headstones were more worn and harder to read. Crooked, like broken teeth. And oh, there was a lot going on there, wasn’t there? “Holy shit,” she whispered, coming to a stop. She’d wanted to see what was here, but she hadn’t expected there to be so many of them. All silently standing and staring. The back of her neck and her scalp prickled, and in spite of her bravado, she got the urge to run.
Noah was content to let Lem keep the sunglasses. Not that they did anything. Right? Maybe there was some kind of glass curvature or tinting that would make shadows more pronounced. He’d have to Google it later, since it wasn’t the sort of thing he knew off the top of his head. His brain was ready to try to rationalize as much as possible, but he couldn’t help noticing everything that cast a shadow now. The cemetery certainly had the creepy atmosphere thing down, that was for sure. He glanced a couple of the tombstones, reading names and dates on them where he could, then drew up short when Lem did as well. His stomach dropped, cold fear washing over him as gooseflesh pimpled his arms. There wasn’t anything distinct to see, but a feeling. “W-what is it?” he asked, standing alongside her and resisting the urge to. Well. Hide behind a girl who was nearly a foot shorter than he was. The stubborn part of him pushed forward, holding his hand out for the sunglasses. To confirm he shouldn’t see anything.
The shadow people didn’t look different from the ones they’d already seen, there was just a lot of them now. And most weren’t trying to hide. Maybe they were ghosts of some kind, maybe they were Something Else, but they were definitely fucking creepy, all just ... there and watching them. Lem was glad that Noah had stopped when he did, because he was pretty close to one at the moment. She kind of didn’t want to hand the sunglasses over, like that would be taking her eyes off of them, and not-seeing was scarier than seeing. But they were his and he didn’t fully believe yet, and he probably should. Moving slowly and without speaking, Lem took the sunglasses off and put them into Noah’s hand. The shadows just looked like tree-shadows again, and that gave Lem her own goosebumps. She knew they were still there.
Noah took a deep breath as he took the glasses. Why couldn’t he get his hands to stop shaking? He put them on--and yelped in surprise when he saw that one of the… weird shadow things was much closer to him than it had seemed moments before. It didn’t move at the sound, but seemed to be regarding them somewhat intently and somewhere in his lizard brain stirred the thought that they should run, run, run. “Hey, uh, maybe--maybe we should go,” he said to Lem, voice hushed, since he didn’t want to take off and just leave her there, but his stubbornness and want to reject what he was seeing was being overpowered by what was probably best termed as survival instinct. Maybe if they backed up slowly? Noah took a careful experimental step back, since he could see the thing--things--watching them. They didn’t move. Yet.
There was a lot that Lem wasn’t scared of, but walking to a big nest of shadow people was pushing it. Maybe if Vex had been there with her she would’ve felt more secure, but she didn’t know this Noah guy, and he sounded plenty scared himself. “Yeah, feel like we’re interrupting something,” she murmured, still looking at the ‘normal’ shadows that were anything but. “Don’t run.” She might’ve blamed it on the glasses too, except the shadows had multiplied since the two of them had started walking. Maybe they were being drawn into actually being seen? Lem didn’t know. She backed up a few steps, then turned to start -- slowly -- walking away.
The instinct to run was strong, but Lem seemed very sure of herself and that made it easier to listen to her. He backed up, matching her pace since it seemed like a good idea. This was all very weird and he normally was much more sensible about calming himself, but his brain couldn’t quite order his body to. Maybe it was a lack of sleep. He didn’t want to pull his eyes away from the shadow he was looking at, but that was silly, and so he looked away, glancing over his shoulder-- “Gah!” More had come up behind them since he had last looked. He reached out instinctively to grab Lem’s wrist to stop her. “There’s more now,” he said, voice hushed. Looking around, the path least crowded would take them through some of the graves, but somehow that felt better and he took a step that direction. “Fewer this way.”
Since Lem was walking blind, so to speak, she let Noah lead her along. They were definitely attracting shadow-people attention if there were more of them on the path behind than there had been before. They were closing in on them. While Lem still didn’t feel like they meant the two living people any active harm, it was still creepy as fuck. “We’re just passing through,” she said again, loud enough that the statement was obviously not meant for Noah. “We mean no harm, just passing through, la la la, you are seen and it’s cool, we know this is your place.” She couldn’t really see them without the sunglasses, but Lem was pretty sure she could feel them there. She would have to tell Vex.
Noah wasn’t sure if talking was doing any good, since shadows didn’t have the ability to hear. Right? He focused on moving away from them steadily, his heart still hammering, and he should let go of Lem’s wrist, probably, but the contact to another in the flesh person was reassuring, even if she was one he just met. Maybe this was some weird mental break he was having suddenly. “Yeah, we’re definitely not going to do anything to you,” he blurted out, looking at one of the shadows that was--well, within inches of them. He immediately felt kind of dumb, but less dumb than he would have even fifteen minutes ago. Would they follow them out of the cemetery? There was only one way to find out and Noah continued to guide them toward it as quickly as he dared.
Being an overly-familiar and touchy person herself, Lem didn’t mind Noah hanging onto her in the slightest. Touching another person’s meatsuit was reassuring, especially when faced with a bunch of potentially-aggressive shadow people. Lem didn’t think they would do the two of them any harm, but who really knew? The Other Things in the world were alien to them -- though sometimes Lem thought they owned the world more than humans did -- and unpredictable. Some had rhyme and reason, some didn’t. But Lem wasn’t above reassuring the spirits that she was harmless. She was, and Noah definitely seemed to be. She let him lead them until they were close to the cemetery gates and then looked around behind them again. “Are they following?” she asked, since he was the one with the magic sunglasses.
Human contact, even with someone who was basically a stranger, was definitely helping right now, so Noah maintained his grip since Lem didn’t seem to mind. He had no idea what they wanted, but they kept looking at them, and he mostly would just like whatever was happening to be over now. Though as usual, so far as Noah had found, wishes were fairly useless and meaningless, since a few of the shadows seemed almost to--peel away from the rest, to keep coming with them apace. “Y-yeah,” he muttered, quietly so as to hopefully to allow Lem and only Lem to hear. “You said not to run, right?” He knew she had, but. Running was what his instinct kept screaming at him to do, but Lem’s confident approach early also made him inclined to defer to her.
Oh great. Lem just hoped that they were confined to the boundaries of the cemetery or something. She didn’t need to bring home shadow people by accident, just because she had run running around with a clueless newbie. She sighed and shot Noah a look that said he ought to know better, even though there was no reason for him to. “They tell you not to run from mean dogs, right? Just seems reasonable,” she said. Like Lem was ever reasonable. She glanced over her shoulder but couldn’t see anything, obviously. “We’re leaving now!” she called to whatever was back there. “Just gonna stroll on out, thanks for the escort, but we’re good, we promise!” Her steps did pick up the pace a bit, and she used Noah’s grip on her arm to pull him along until they were finally out of the main gate.
That logic made sense to Noah at the moment, so he accepted it. He really didn’t know anything about what was going on at all and he didn’t want to believe he was in any actual danger, but some kind of gnawing, clawing instinct kept telling him he was. “Yeah, that’s true,” he said, trying to keep looking forward since… he felt as though there were eyes on him either way, his heart thudding loudly. He matched Lem’s pace as she tugged him along and only when they crossed out of the main gate did he look back. Two shadows seemed to coalesce into something more solid and there was a rising panic and he felt like he needed to keep an eye on them, but he couldn’t help blinking and--there was nothing there. “They’re gone,” he said in surprise to Lem. The shadows still seemed darker, but just normal shadows and. This all must have been a trick of his imagination, right? He pulled off the sunglasses and looked over at Lem. “That was… weird.”
It was kind of exciting, being ‘chased’ out of a graveyard by shadow people. Lem wished she could’ve seen them better too, but oh well! She could sort of feel them, that was enough. Unless that had just been Noah’s fear leaking onto her. That happened sometimes. People’s emotions were messy. She looked back at the gate, wondering if they were just hovering around somewhere out of sight, or if they were really gone now. She gave a little laugh at Noah’s assessment and bounced on the balls of her feet, still holding onto him. “That’s one way to put it,” she said with good humor. “Do you believe it now?”
No is what Noah wanted to say, but he couldn’t quite form the word. None of this made logical sense and none of it was supposed to be real. Even though he had been bordering more toward panic seconds before, not seeing anything there now bled some of the edge of that and it was the kind of thrilling surge of adrenaline that he usually enjoyed in smaller doses. He quirked an eyebrow at Lem, who seemed to mostly be into it and not freaked in a bad way out at all, and maybe it wasn’t so bad? Maybe he overreacted. He huffed a shaky laugh and shook his head, then grinned at her. “Uh, I don’t know. I’ll have to think it over,” he said, which was honest.
Lem groaned in an exasperated way, like Noah was being the most stubborn person ever, and rolled her eyes to the heavens. She shook his arm a bit before she let him go, her expression turning amused again. People were just hilarious sometimes. “Thinking is the wrong thing to do,” she informed him. He obviously didn’t know. “Brains are stupid, thinking gets you in trouble. Use your gut, it always knows more than you think you do.” Having imparted that sage wisdom, Lem turned to head off. Now that she’d had a little adventure, she kind of wanted a slushie and to go home to tell Vex all about it. He might be fascinated or he might not care, it was a toss-up, but at least she had a story.
Brains were stupid and Noah’s was probably panicking over nothing. Or, at least, it became increasingly easy to reason that outside the moment. He'd probably half-follow her advice and do what he often did with things that made him uncomfortable: not think about it. Breathing out a sigh as Lem left, he shrugged to himself and pulled out his phone to text Magnus to ask when he wanted to get dinner, not quite ready to tell him about all the crazy things Noah thought he saw.