Log: Abi and Kell WHO: Kellach Donallen and Abi Blyg WHAT: Getting milkshakes to get Abi's mind off art critique WHEN: afternoon of 15 September WHERE: Basrar's Soda Fountain WARNINGS: vague reference to an assault toward the end, reference to werewolf murder, references to men being creeps
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Abi smiled brightly and waved when she saw Kellach approaching Basrar’s. “Hey Kell!” she called, making sure he’d see her even though she was shoulder-height on half the crowd. She waited until he was closer to continue. “Thanks for coming–I seriously needed a friendly face and a pile of sugar.”
“Oi!” Kellach waved back as he made his way through the crowd, mumbling out apologies and “‘scuse me” as he did his best to avoid bumping into people. He greeted Aby with a big grin when he finally got up to her. “My pleasure,” he said. “That class o’ yers sounds like hell.” He opened the door to the ice cream parlor for them both. “Is that what university is like?” He asked her, genuinely curious. “Making people cry? Why would anyone want to go there?”
“So in theory, getting critiques is supposed to make your art better,” Abi said on their way through the door. “And you do have to learn to take criticism of your work if you’re going to be a professional artist, because once your work is out in the world people can say whatever they want about it. I just wish I would’ve gotten more constructive feedback and less insane hooey.”
Yes, she said hooey instead of bullshit. After going straight from camp counselor to art teacher for little kids at Art of Expression, the habit of avoiding cursing was just too ingrained.
The term “hooey” made Kellach grin despite himself, but he knew what she meant by it. And what she said made some sense to him. “Aye, I get that,” he said. “When I was doin’ me apprenticeship back in Ireland, me master was real good about telling us what we were doing right and what we were doing wrong. Believe me, I did a lot wrong back then. But usually the stuff he’d say was…I don’t know…helpful?” The corners of his eyes scrunched up in thought. “I dunno how ‘artistic’ makin’ horse shoes is, but it’ kinda the same thing?” He looked at Abi for confirmation. She was the artist, after all!
“It’s definitely similar!” Abi agreed. “Any time you’re making something, especially when you’re starting out, you have to learn what you’re doing wrong so you can get it right. But yeah, the criticism is supposed to be useful, not just mean for the sake of being mean. Or saying something just to say something. Or creepy!”
The guy who talked about the raw sexuality of her landscape painting while staring at her chest was starting to make her angry rather than just exasperated. The more she thought about it, the more it seemed clear that she shouldn’t have to put up with it.
In Kellach’s opinion she didn’t have to put up with it. “What’s the point of the class, then?” He asked her as they made their way to the counter to order. “These people given’ you critiques,” he said the word as though he didn’t believe it to be the correct word for what had actually happened. “They’re other students, right? Why isn’t the professor the one given’ the feedback?”
“The professor also gives feedback, and that was…slightly more useful?” Abi said. “To be honest, so far I don’t like him much. I think I’m just gonna have to survive this class so I can get to better classes with better teachers—and hopefully better classmates. Not that they’re all bad, but wow do the bad ones stand out.”
At the counter she gave her order efficiently, requesting a chocolate monstrosity that she knew she wouldn’t be able to finish. She didn’t care. She had suffered, and she had earned that chocolate.
Kellach’s brows furrowed. “That seems like a lot of misery to have to go through,” he said, more to himself than to her. With all the talk of going back to school he’d seen recently, he wondered if maybe he should give it a shot -- finish the education he was never given the opportunity to have. Now he wasn’t so sure if he should.
He hadn’t realized he’d gotten to the counter until the person behind it prompted him for his order. Caught off guard, he glanced up at the menu and blurted out the first thing on it that had peanut butter in it. He then paid for his and Abi’s before stepping to the side and out of the way.
“Is it worth it?” He blurted out to her. “Havin’ to go through alla that bullshite?”
“I don’t know,” Abi sighed. “If this gives me what I need to be a professional artist, then yeah, I can suffer through some stupid stuff. If all the classes turn out like this…”
The “maybe not” was evident in Abi’s expression. She wanted so much for this to be worth it, but today it surely felt like it might all be a huge mistake. Art school had been her dream since she was a little girl, but what if it wasn’t what she’d hoped for at all?
“I’ve had others that weren’t, though,” she said, trying to get her confidence back. “Like Figure Drawing, this summer? It was a great class, the professor had great advice, and I really learned a lot. I think this is just going to be one crummy class.”
Kellach realized (too late maybe) that he wasn’t helping the situation. That was the whole point of them coming to get milkshakes! He gave her somewhat of a sheepish look. “I’m sorry, Abi,” he said. “I shouldn’ta asked that. You’re doin’ what you need to do in order to be the best artist you can be! The last thing I wanna do is discourage you from achieving yer dream.” He smiled at her. “Yer gonna be a great artist an’ if this is gonna help you, is helping you, then you should stick with it.”
“No, no, don’t feel bad!” Abi quickly assured him. “I get that it doesn’t make any sense. We’ll just see how it all goes. Besides,” she added with a grin, “you just bought my milkshake. That gets you some extra leeway.”
Kellach laughed. “Buyin’ you a treat is the least I could do after a hard day of unhelpful critiques,” he said. “After dealin’ with that plus a creep on top of it, I’d say you’ve earned it! Besides,” he went on with a shrug. “Yer already a really good artist. You’ll show all of them next time! Do you know what you and that other girl are gonna do fer your next project?”
“The theme for the next project is Motion, so I was thinking I might try catching one of the chocobos in action,” Abi said. “Tammy said she was thinking about going ultra-simple, like maybe a droplet of water making ripples on the surface of a pond. I think it’ll all go easier for both of us since we can critique each other before we have to show the projects to the class—and there’s definitely no way Greg can make something sexual out of a racing chocobo.”
Kellach grunted. “I’m sure he could if he wanted to,” he said with disgust. “It may not make any sense, but if that’s where his mind be…” Kellach shook his head. “I like t’ flirt, but that’s takin’ it a bit to far, eh?” He glanced up as their milkshakes were placed on the counter. “But yer smart, you’ll think of something to say back at him. Challenge’im on it, right?” He handed her milkshake to her. “Or jus’ call him a horny arsehole to his face. That’d probably shut him up.”
Abi laughed as she took her milkshake. That probably would shut Greg up, and she had to admit she liked the mental image of it. She was usually more the sort to avoid confrontation at all costs, but maybe this was a time to find her courage.
“I can at least give him a good ‘my eyes are up here, bro’ or something,” she said, heading toward a likely looking table for two. “He deserves at least that much of a warning before I ask Iggy or Kaitlyn to make him regret making girls uncomfortable.”
Kellach followed her to the table. “Mmm,” he agreed, already sucking on the straw to drink the thick shake. Finding the shake too thick and the straw useless he moved it aside. “Hopefully just callin’ him out in front of the class will be enough,” he went on. “One thing I’ve learned since comin’ here is that there are bellends in every time period. Unfortunate that.” He took a gulp of the milkshake, coming away with peanut butter ice cream in his mustache. “But feck Greg fer now,” he said. “He doesn’t need any more of yer time.”
Abi resisted the urge to snicker at the peanut butter ice cream adorning Kell’s face. Instead she slid into one of the chairs and raised her milkshake with a bright smile.
“Cheers to that,” she said. She’d thought quite enough about Greg and Amaryllis and everyone else in that dumb class. “How’s your shake?”
She was also not going to comment on the wolf ordering the peanut butter.
In all fairness, Kellach probably wouldn't have gotten the reference if Abi had made mention of it. But he looked happy enough with his rich desert. If he had a tail in his human form, it definitely would have been wagging.
Kellach clinked his glass against Abi’s. “It’s really good.” He said. He reached for a napkin to clean off his face. “Peanut butter isn’t a thing in my time. Cryin’ shame that. I like it a lot. And you can find it everywhere here!” As if Abi didn’t already know that.
She did, but Abi was never one to dampen anyone’s enthusiasm for something they were excited about. If she’d come from a world of no peanut butter and was suddenly in a world of peanut butter, she’d be excited about it too.
“Ooh, next time Iggy makes the peanut butter cookies I’ll snag you a couple,” she said. “And have you tried a peanut butter and banana sandwich yet?”
Kellach furrowed his brows together and shook his head. He had never thought to put the two together. He was still getting used to how common certain things were in this world. Not only was peanut butter an actual thing, but certain fruits and veg that wouldn’t be common place in either the UK or Australia were in abundance at Vallo’s stores. It often amazed (and sometimes overwhelmed) him.
“I wouldn’ta thought to put bananas in a sandwich,” he admitted. “I always thought sandwiches were savory. Y’know, with meat and cheese. Maybe a tomato and lettuce. No onions, though.” He made a face.
“Ew, no, raw onion has no place on a sandwich,” Abi agreed. “Grilled onions on a burger, though, yes. And now I’m going to have to introduce you to the peanut butter sandwiches, because they’re childhood classics where I come from. Peanut butter and jelly, peanut butter and banana, Fluffernutter, and the king of all sweet sandwiches, peanut butter and Nutella.”
Kellach had heard of both Fluffernutter and Nutella, but he hadn’t tried either of them yet. Both of them seemed exceptionally sweet, and as much as he did like peanut butter, he didn’t have a huge sweet tooth. Still, he was willing to try. Kellach was the type to try just about anything once.
“Are those things ya have back home?” He asked her with a slight smile. “Is there anything you had back there that you don’t have here and miss?”
Abi paused to think about it a moment. So many people’s worlds were vastly different from Vallo, she was sure they missed tons of stuff. For her, though…
“Not really,” she said. “The big difference between my world and Vallo is that we don’t have much in the way of magic where I come from. I’ve had to find new brands of art supplies and stuff, but mostly the only thing I miss is my friends.”
Kellch nodded. He understood very well what it was like to miss people back home. “Aye, me too,” he nodded. “I think about me pack a lot. Sometimes I wish that they’d turn up here so I can see’em again. Then there are times that I’m glad they’re not here.”
“I get that,” Abi said with sympathy. “Sometimes things here get really crazy.”
When she thought about what her friends were probably dealing with at home, though—explaining what had happened at the camp, probably not being believed—she couldn’t help but wish they were all here with her and Kaitlyn.
But that was heavy stuff, and she didn’t want to drag down a perfectly nice milkshake meetup with it.
“What about you?” she asked. “Is there any stuff you miss, or is it just the people?”
Kellach looked thoughtful, his head tilting to the side and his eyes moving upwards towards the ceiling. He thought back to Australia and what life had been like there. “I don’t know,” he said slowly. “I haven’t thought about it. I haven’t really given myself time to think ‘bout it, if I’m honest.” He looked back at Abi across from him.. “I was livin’ in Australia before I ended up here, but Australia wasn’t my home. Other than that’s where my pack is, it never felt like home. Ireland was my home. I miss Ireland.”
“I’ve heard it’s beautiful, but I’ve never been,” Abi said with gentle sympathy. It wasn’t a feeling she’d experienced herself—no one was ever overcome with longing for the DC suburbs—but she could see in Kellach’s eyes how much he missed his homeland. “Would you tell me about it?”
“Oh it is beautiful!” Kellach said with no small amount of pride. “The most beautiful country you will ever see!” He went on to tell her about the countryside, specifically about a farm a cousin of his worked on that he occasionally went to visit. However, he talked more about Belfast, the city where he was born and raised. It wasn’t the prettiest city in the world, certainly not in the mid 1800’s, but he talked about it with such pride and love. He talked about the little neighborhood he grew up in, how he and his sister would sometimes go down to the beaches to play (much to the chagrin of their mother). He talked about the pubs and the shops and the people.
It all sounded charming to Abi—not just the place itself, but the sense of community Kellach described, and his obvious love for all of it.
“No wonder you miss it,” she said. “It sounds like you had a really good life there. How did you end up in Australia after that?” It didn’t occur to her until after the question was already out of her mouth that the answer might be something awful.
“Ah, that…” Kellach sat back in his seat. “…is a complicated story.” The last thing he wanted was for Abi to think that he was the same kind of werewolf that had attacked and terrified her in her world. His eyes fell on the mostly finished shake in front of him. He wished he had whiskey on hand to spike it, though that’d probably only curdle the milk.
Glaring at the drink in front of him, he tried to think of how to tell Abi the story without including how his cousin Danny, while in a frenzy, had mauled someone to death. Kellach could say Danny had been defending his beloved at the time, but it didn’t change the fact that someone had been brutally killed. Thinking of that brought up the memories of when Kellach himself went through his first change. He’d come away stained with blood as well. The more Kellach thought about it, the more he realized he probably was worse than those monsters from Abi’s world.
Old guilt closing up his throat and fear of what Abi would think of him both suddenly made it very hard to breathe. Kellach really wanted a shot of whiskey – of anything. -- to calm his nerves. “The…uh…the short of it is, my cousin, Danny…he…uh – “ He faltered, stopped and then started again. “Danny had been courting Betsy McDermmot,” he said. “They were gonna get married. Problem was a British landlord, Robert Pettiscue,” he spat the name as though it was sour in his mouth, “also had eyes on Betsy, an’ he wasn’t the type to take no fer an answer.”
Kellach palmed at his shoulder nervously before going on. His hand slid over the scars that ran the length of his collarbone, bringing him back down to earth a bit more. “Danny defended her and he…uh…killed the landlord. At that time I hadn’t gone through me first change yet so I was just kin. Kin serve the changers an’ Danny was a changer…” He closed his hand around his shoulder. “So, I took the blame. I was convicted and they sent me off to the penal colony in Sidney Town.”
Abi listened quietly through the story, shocking though it was. That English landlord sounded like he deserved whatever he got from Danny, she thought; she wasn’t naturally the bloodthirsty type, but she made an exception for rapists. And what Kellach did—that seemed incredibly brave and selfless, if also a little bit crazy. It didn’t seem right that he should have had to give himself up and take the blame just because of where he was in that whole werewolf process, but it wasn’t like she knew anything about it, really.
Abi felt awful for raising a topic that was obviously a painful memory. She should have known better than to ask; almost everybody in Vallo seemed to have some awful trauma in their history. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “That’s so awful and unfair and just…really terrible. I’m sorry for bringing it up, I know that can’t be easy to talk about.”
“I did what kin are supposed to do,” Kellach said. “Danny’s me cousin, I couldn’t let them hang’im. Besides, no one thought I would ever change anyway. The sept wasn’t gonna suffer any great loss if I went instead.”
He forced a smile for Abi. They’d come here today for her after all. She was the one who’d had a miserable day of being picked apart and ogled. “I’m sorry, Abi,” he said a little sheepishly, his hand moving to the back of his neck. “I’m supposed to be helpin’ ya feel better after a bad day. I don’t think I’ve done a very good job o’ that, have I?”
“You’ve done a great job,” Abi immediately assured him. “Just getting out of the house and getting milkshakes is great, and we were doing really well at having a nice cheerful conversation until I went and brought up the sad stuff. We can just change the subject! Did I ever tell you about the time I got invited to a vampire orgy?”
Wild non-sequitur, sure, but Abi felt like maybe that was what they needed.
It did the trick! The last thing Kellach had expected to hear was anything about an orgy, much less a vampire orgy. He stared at her for a moment before he laughed and shook his head. “Nah, lass, I think I’d remember if you told me somethin’ like that before. When did this happen?”
Abi grinned, pleased with succeeding in getting Kell’s mind off the troubling past.
“Well, it all started when I got kidnapped by geese…”