Who: Marne and Alix Where: LG pool When: Morning after April moon (backdated) What: Just chattin' Warnings: N/a
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Coming back to themselves after the moon was always a disorienting experience. Conditions in the cirque shifted it over the line from frightening to interesting—most months since they’d joined they came to with Rowan nearby, still safely locked away from doing harm. Possibly scrunched upside-down or in other uncomfortable tangles. This morning had been with a wad of shredded leather in their mouth, a victim of a stray shoe left close enough for them to menace as an alligator.
(An old shoe, judging by the taste.)
Alix’s bones still felt creaky by the time they’d gotten themselves together and back to their home. Even after food and stretching. They must have kicked the shit out of that shoe and killed it good.
Once Alix had flossed (so very, very) thoroughly they slipped on their swimmies and a tank, grabbed a towel, and shuffled off in the direction of a familiar blue-green tent. With any luck, no mermaids would be about to be annoyed at crocodilians in their pool, and with great luck there might be friendlier faces.
They slipped inside the tent quietly, waiting until they heard the sounds of soft splashing to announce themselves with a simple, “Hey?”
Ripples undulated the mirrored surface of the pool, the reflection of blue lights shimmering across the walls of the shady tent like fae fire. Having been wholly unaffected by the full-moon’s influence the night prior, Marne had spent the evening here, safely sequestered from the blood thirsty urges of the shifters and weres in the shadowy depths. Her clothing was still piled neatly by the water’s edge, deftly hidden behind a small assembly of scenery; she didn’t need them where she paced serenely at the bottom of the pool, her streaming tentacles propelling her in spiraling loops through the water.
She broke the surface, bright eyes slatted with a horizontal pupil observing the humanoid shape moving at the water’s edge. A beaming smile emerged next, teeth sharpened to a predator’s edge while one humanoid arm hoisted in greeting. “Oy!” She cradled the heels of her hands together, fashioning her fingers into makeshift teeth as she pantomimed a chomping motion with them. “Made it through the night!” Her eyebrows rocketed, expressing delight. “You look hungover.”
Drifting nearer, she folded her upper body against the lip of the pool to better observe Alix’s trajectory, revealing flesh paled to an almost waxy coloring. “Didn’t think I’d see much of you or the other moon babies today. You good?”
Marne’s immediate observation about the state of them made Alix snort, corners of their mouth curling up as they came to stand at the edge of the pool Marne was leant over. “I think I ate a shoe,” they admitted, looking sheepish.
They turned briefly to scoot enough to set their towel and other things down out of the ways of any stray splashes before coming back, careful not to speak unless Marne could see their face. “But I think I spent the night kicking its ass first, you know? I’m so sore.”
Nothing a little true rest and more food wouldn’t take care of. There were worse ways to spend a moon, they knew.
“Have you been here the whole night?”
She laughed. “Bet you showed that shoe who’s boss,” she joked, a small, triangular sliver of tongue poking from between her jagged teeth in a playful gesture. She slid back away from the water’s edge as Alix came nearer, seeming to float there in the center of the vast, dark pool without the need to tread.
“Poor thing.” She tutted and a vibrant tentacle teased the water’s edge, honey-glow bright and ringed with cerulean halos. It crooked towards them in an inviting, come-hither gesture. “Need a massage after all that ass-kicking?”
A shrug of one smooth shoulder, faintly tattooed with the same sapphire markings printed upon each of her eight appendages. “Figured if everyone else was going all natural, I should too.” She posed. “Safer in here, anyway. My shoes are untouched, aren’t they?” Through the playful charade she tilted her head, a distinctly alien gesture; the chin tilted a touch too far, the motion too sharp. “I’m glad you’re not hurt. Where did you end up?”
“I mean, if you’re offering…”
Marne was one of the most inhuman looking of the cirque’s residents. Alix wasn’t put off by the teeth, the tentacles, or the preternatural movement. It was still all fascinating and new for them. That Marne had made a life with the cirque felt like knowing a special secret—creatures like her existed, and only they as a circus family got to spend time with her as she naturally was.
Or maybe it was just that her sunny personality made everything, including her serrated smile, seem friendly. Alix wasn’t going to question it. They were going to smile in response and climb into the pool instead.
Unlike Marne, Alix did need to tread, but they did so lazily and with one hand gripping the edge of the pool. “Oh, I’m a bitten shifter, so uh… I spend my moons locked up. It’s always the same. Haven’t really figured out that whole ‘everyone isn’t food’ bit yet when it’s the full moon, y’know?” Their shrug was only partly visible, submerged as they were.
“You liking Japan so far? I’d never been before this.” Their ex’s band had gone plenty of places, but never so far east that it was practically west again. “I went to a noodle museum with Sloane. Wild place.”
“I am,” she signed agreeably.
Her bottom lip jutted, full and glossy as polished amber. “That’s no fun. You shifters have a lot of rules.” This was said without taunting or malice, a simple observation. “So once a month you just…” Her signing faltered, her hands spread helplessly out to either side of her as though attempting to grasp the proper words from the air itself, “hold yourselves prisoner?” She drifted a bit closer to them there in the water, being sure to fold her lengthy appendages slightly behind her so they didn’t accidentally brush Alix’s feet as she did so.
Human-creatures could be so weird about that.
“Has it always been that way? How do you teach yourself who’s food and who’s friendly?” Her curiosity was genuine; she seemed fascinated by the prospect of being beholden to oneself in such a way.
“Oh. Japan is great. Everyone here likes their seafood raw. It’s delicious.” The alien blues of her eyes widened. “You and the kitten? A noodle museum? An entire history of noodles, right there in one place? Did they give samples? I need details.”
She reached out a sharpened fingernail, trailing it against the tightened muscle connecting Alix’s shoulder to their neck. A soft sound, disapproving. “You are tense,” she noted.
A corner of Alix's mouth pulled up as Marne touched them and they tilted their head, exposing more of their neck. Further down their arm, gooseflesh raised. "It's hard work, beating up shoes. We can't all be as flexible as you."
They appreciated that Marne wasn't making fun of them or expressing any judgement for how they spent their moons. If Alix were honest, they were likely a very uneducated shifter who had become one for all the wrong reasons, and only did things a certain way because they worked the first time.
"And I'm not sure about your question, to tell the truth. It’s always been that way for me. You might ask Sloane. She’s got it all figured out. Surprised you didn’t see her up in here last night trying to con pets out of you.” But was Sloane bitten? Alix didn’t know. They didn’t know a lot of things about a lot of people, despite the cirque’s tendency to mix together like oversharing soup (if the network was any indication, anyway).
“But the museum was cool,” Alix grinned, thumb to their chest and fingers wiggling as they remembered the sign. Over the last few months they’d managed to get a general handle on fingerspelling and could interpret a whole whack of vocabulary on sight, but when it came to their own hands moving anxiety made their mind dry up no matter how much they practised to the nice bald man on youtube. “If you like noodles you’d like it, there was totally samples.”
“Would be nuts if you could be.” Emboldened by the wordless permission of their head tilting off-kilter, Marne flattened her hand against their shoulder. Her thumb pressed inward at their nape, gently spreading out and down along the strung trap, smoothing it on one side with a generous application of pressure.
She considered Alix’s plight, the unknowing questioning of if they were dealing with their own self the correct way. It was not one she was familiar with, but it sounded pretty shit.
The slow, meticulous march of her fingers had to halt upon Alix’s skin so that she could respond, a wry brow elevated as she noted, “Sounds like you should ask her.” A toothy grin. “And she doesn’t need to con me. Much.”
Their attention to communication didn’t go unnoticed. From the deliberate positioning to the proud little flair of her wiggling fingers, it was downright endearing. “Hey, getting good with that. Been practicing?”
The suggestion to ask Sloane about their own situation was met with a hum, born of both consideration and mild protest that Marne's fingers had stopped. Physical touch had never been a barrier for Alix, though receiving a front-facing massage while clinging to the side of a pool from a person with knives for teeth was a wholly new, pleasant experience so far. They smiled and rolled their head from side to side in the absence of kneading, corners of their eyes crinkling. “Thanks. And I have, yeah!” That sign for that word would have taken two hands, so they didn’t take the opportunity to show off. Best to quit while they were ahead.
“You might be surprised how quiet it can be on show nights. Everyone’s too busy to be making bodies when they’re doing their jobs,” they quipped, suggesting that some idle hands were more destructive than others. “We’re gettin’ there.”
There was still more vocabulary to learn, and the spectre of ASL grammar hung looming in the far distance, but…they’d cross that bridge when they got there.
“Enough about me, though, yeah?” They let go of the side of the pool, briefly bobbing before gently pushing away from the edge and beginning to swim backwards as they followed the pool’s curve. “I know you’ve been chilling here tonight, but what else have you been up to?”
She watched them push away, cutting the water. She always thought it was cute, the way humans swam. All discombobulated paddling and splashing, all the limbs going in different directions. It was hard to stay focused on their mouth with all that going on, but she managed. “That’s not that surprising. Better for you, I say. Imagine the amount you’d deal with otherwise.”
Though the shifter was doing their level best, signing was difficult enough even without the dual task of trying to stay afloat. A bright tentacle rippled the surface, inching over the edge of the pool to rummage through her pile of clothing. “Practice has been keeping me busy. Rehearsals, shows. The new choreography is fun.” From the pile, glittering silver emerged coiled in the arm; she hovered it towards her human hand and promptly applied the cuffs to the outer shells of her ears, wincing only a little as muted sound replaced the silence.
“What about you? Noodle museums and shoe wrestling aside, how’s the cirque treating you?”
“Fine, fine,” Alix answered, distracted by watching the ultramarine rings on Marne’s retreating tentacle fade back into the water, flashing almost neon as they caught the last of the visible light. There had been the very human urge to reach out and touch it as it passed despite having to use arms to tread water. They wondered what it felt like, and if the textures of those spots and rings were any different. “Feel like I finally settled in.”
They looked back to Marne, continuing to make a mockery of limbs as they dog-paddle-treaded in a slow circle. It was nothing like the sinuous grace of their other form in water, but even with Marne’s stunning deduction skills they didn’t think she could parse out what one rumbling grunt would mean from another.
(It might be funny to try one day, though. Alix filed that away for later.)
“How long did it take you to settle in, when you joined? I feel like probably not long. You know eeeeveryone, don’t you?” They were teasing, but it wasn’t hard to spot Marne getting along with others in the day-to-day. “You make a lot of friends in the places we stop, too?” They were smirking despite the absolutely ridiculous amount of non-smooth swimming they were doing. “Leave a trail of broken hearts?”
She laughed, head tipping back. “Not eeeeeveryone,” she corrected, playfully splashing a palmful of water in their direction. “Took me… well, not that long. But I spent a lot of time in here, actually. Was too loud out there.” Her nose wrinkled emphatically. “Not that that’s bad, but I wasn’t really used to it. Needed the water to help me feel like I was home.”
Her grin was a sharkish thing, spreading wide and slow across her lips. “You know me, always making friends. Can’t help myself, really.” The accusation of being a heartbreaker made her laugh anew, the strange, rasping sound tumbling between her sharpened smile. “Don’t know about all that. Nothing wrong with being friendly, so long as you’re upfront. And I myself am fairly upfront. Besides.” The humanoid portion of her body disappeared to her shoulders beneath the water’s surface, the long, swaying forest of arms beneath her unfurling outwards so that it could playfully bump the underside of one of Alix’s human feet, “hardly the only one in this place who’s friendly. C’mon, no one’s taken you for a tumble? Find that very hard to believe.”
Alix’s mouth had opened to answer, only to fill rapidly with pool water when they let out an abrupt yelp and stopped treading at the soft swipe of something unknown at their sole. Their head broke the surface again a moment later, eyes squeezed tight and sputtering with laughter. They'd been gotten got splendidly. Alix swiped water off their face and cracked open an eye, still laughing softly.
“Holy shit, that was amazing. Good job,” they snickered and pushed water at Marne the way she had earlier, amused at their own ability to be startled. “But what I was gonna say is no, no one has. That's by choice, though.”
There had been one stellar makeout session spurred on by the fancy witch drinks at the gathering, but other than that they kept their hands to themselves. “Don't make fun of me,” they started, one finger raised in warning despite the smile, “but I'm a romantic kinda lizard. I like going on dates and all that kinda shit. Not really anyone's speed here that I know of. Yet.” If they could have wiggled their eyebrows they would have, but they lacked the coordination and ended up looking intermittently faintly surprised and…not. “But it's cool. Leaves a lot of time for hanging out elsewhere.”
They continued to paddle about, careful to keep themselves within eyeshot of Marne. “So is your new choreo live now? Haven't been in there for a while, but I'll totally drop by to see it if it is.”
The sound of the shifter’s laughter was muted, but Marne enjoyed it nonetheless, watching them with amusement as they vanished and reappeared, grinning widely above the water’s surface. Not everyone would have taken such a joke in stride, but then not everyone would have willingly jumped into dark water with a cecaelia, either.
Alix’s good humor (and bravery) only endeared them to Marne more.
“By choice?” Her eyebrows skyrocketed, intrigued by the notion. “Aw, I’d never make fun of you, babe. Nothing wrong with that, anyway. You’re a lizard with class. I like that. I’m a sucker for a good bit of romance myself, actually, but could never say no to a little getting handsy on the side.” She did wag her brows here. “You should let me sweep you off your feet sometime. I’m clearly good at it.”
She kept those strangely-slitted eyes fixed on Alix’s movements in the water, beginning to glide counter to their trajectory to give them space from her lower half. “And they like to watch?” She was teasingly scandalized, clawed fingertips pressing to notched sternum to clutch imaginary pearls. “It’s live as it gets. Sexy stuff. Astrid’s work lets me do some gorgeous things up there with these.” A tentacled arm poked from the water, giving a little wave to compliment the movement of her other hands.
“You come on by whenever you want, especially on slow days. I’ll set you up with a front row show, yea?”
A lizard with class. The remark made Alix’s grin turn sly, bordering on wolfish as the cecaelia continued to suggest some time out together. It was the first outright offer of something that wasn’t purely physical since they’d arrived at the cirque, and neither did Alix sense any other intent behind it besides just a date. Of course, there was the whole ‘just a date or just a date’ sort of handwringing to be done, but it could happen later. For now, they were recovering from the moon and had just received an open invitation from a stunning woman—and this was after having admitted to eating a shoe. They’d take the win.
Whatever perception of rakishness they’d built up dissolved under the inescapable urge to wave back at the tentacle, which they did without second thought. “I believe it. I’ll definitely take you up on it.”
Levi was still a new-ish addition to the body cleanup crew but had proven himself to be an extreme overachiever in both taking bodies apart and delivering pieces to those in need. He probably wouldn’t even notice if Alix tucked into the big top for a show or two. Maybe once they’d recovered, and even once the cirque moved—things always felt weird right up until they woke up somewhere else—they’d come peek in at Marnie’s routine.
“But I think I’m gonna leave you here now, babe.” The dark water was the perfect temperature for moving around in, and now that their muscles were pleasantly warm they were clamouring for sustenance. Another meal and a fat sleep and the moon would be completely behind them. “Time to find something less tough to tuck into.”
Gripping the side of the pool, they pulled themselves out and sat on the side for a brief moment, letting water drip off of them naturally before chasing it with their palms. “And I mean I'm taking you up on both things. Or out, I guess. I'll take you out sometime.” Winking, the pulled their feet out of the pool and stood. “We can both do some sweeping.”
She sighed and followed Alix’s trajectory towards the side of the pool, cutting the water like a shark’s fin until her pale arms could cross over the side. “Aw,” she pouted, and gazed up at them with smirking interest as they hand-dried themselves with their hands and rose to a stand. “Alright, go on then. Tuck away. And good. You best.” A wink and a laugh accompanied that final addition.
“I’ll look forward to that too, then. Have a good one, Alix.”
She slid back into the water, letting the inky blackness close back over her head as she propelled herself to the deepest corner of the tank, letting her legs find purchase and feeling overall content with just how that interaction had ended up afterall.