WHO: Sabrina and Dan WHEN: yesterday afternoon WHERE: Ice cream shop WHAT: Exorcisms, creation myths, and future plans RATINGS/WARNINGS: some mentions of death STATUS: Complete
It was still winter, technically (according to the date), but it didn’t feel like that in their city of magic. Vallo was an island, so while Dan wouldn’t describe anything as tropical, the weather was warm enough to where you’d just need a cozy sweater on the beach at night - likely most people who were born and raised here had cold-intolerant bones. Dan himself had been exposed to all sorts of climates, though he vastly preferred a place where it didn’t snow - for him, snow meant dark things. Dark memories. A frigid hedge maze, lockboxes on a dusty shelf.
And since it wasn’t fucking freezing, it was still a good time for ice cream. He couldn’t pinpoint his favorite flavor exactly, since he had a few, but today he thought he’d go for mint chocolate chip. Maybe?
To the parlor Sabrina recommended, with the black-and-white tiled floor, candy stripes and spirals and fresh waffle cones - that was where he went, and since his sleeping schedule was out of whack he was in the need of a sugar fix when he arrived; at least it wasn’t peak hours either. Good, because he didn’t want to be surrounded by crowds - parents and children, putting their sticky starfish fingers on the glass, no thank you. The quiet at least gave him time to think about what he wanted, since there were so many selections. Paralyzed by choice, he experienced that sometimes.
While it still took some effort to comprehend that there were unicorns and other creatures just milling about their daily lives in the streets, Sabrina had become fairly comfortable in the city over the last few weeks. Finding different places to eat and explore had given her something to do while pushing back the constant itch of knowing she was needed elsewhere. She wasn’t a big fan of all the buildings and noise that came with city life, constantly pulled toward the forest that lay just beyond the city proper, but the appeal of restaurants and the others in a similar situation was hard to pull completely away from. As great as the network was for communicating face to face interactions were still her preference.
That was why she had agreed to this meeting. Plus what she knew of Dan from the network and past reading--which she wasn’t sure exactly how reliable that was any longer--he was a good guy. And she couldn’t help but be a little intrigued about what he wanted to discuss with her. Salem prowled outside the parlor, not allowed inside of the walls, but keeping a watchful eye on her as she strolled inside and right over to Dan.
“I suggest getting three scoops. Then you can get all the flavors that you’re considering instead of trying to pick just one to go with.” It's what she always did. Especially with them rotating in a few new flavors every day with their usual staples.
“Three scoops?” Dan glanced at Sabrina, who had arrived right on time. There was a spark of amusement in the oceans of his eyes, all that aquamarine. “I think our metabolisms differ a little, but why not.” He was well past the days where he could eat three scoops of ice cream and not need a Lactaid or feel like he gained five pounds. But hell, you only lived once, right?
Or twice, in his case. The magical city of Vallo being a second chance and all.
There was probably a mathematical formula meant for picking out flavors but he just went with butterscotch, chocolate, and cookies and cream. Surprisingly forgoing the mint chocolate chip, but mint was one of those flavors that really didn’t go with a ton of other things. “And whatever she wants,” he added when he went to pay, because ice cream today was on him.
She might have a job and be able to afford her own treat, but Sabrina wasn’t about to pass up someone else paying either. It just meant she would need to get the bill next time. “The usual and I’ll try the pistachio this time too.” Strawberry, cake batter and pistachio seemed like a good mix to put together.
“I’ll go get us a table since you’ve got this.” She turned on her heel and headed toward one of the booths near the back of the parlor but away from the restroom door. There was always too much traffic the closer one got to that area in any sort of restaurant and she had a feeling they would need some privacy to talk about whatever it was Dan wanted to discuss. Grabbing some napkins, she slid onto one side of the booth, quietly speaking a simple sound barrier spell as she sat down.
There. That should help with any nosy eavesdroppers as well.
Being away from the restroom was a good choice - no one wanted to smell what wafted out when the door opened and closed while shoveling ice cream into their face. Dan headed for the booth Sabrina selected, handing her the color ice cream cone. He’d try to eat his before it melted and got sticky, though he was pretty sure he could manage. Just had to keep ahead of the temperature.
“Thanks for meeting me,” he said, sort of unsure how to segue into the conversational topic of choice - but no sense hemming and hawing. “I guess I just kind of wanted to pick your brain - “ Not literally, of course, “...involving separating, say, a spirit from a body? Safely? And if you knew of any other realms besides Hell where a spirit would go.”
If he even mentioned the word Hell, or hinted at sending Justice there, Anders would shut down. Dan wanted to have an actual conversation about this because he just did not think that a spirit inhabiting a human body would end well, even if the two had come to some kind of accord. Maybe he was biased, given what happened to his father, but possession was sort of a sticky subject and the fact of the matter was - a human body was not meant to be a host for something else. Something much darker (and Justice was no cuddly spirit either).
It was nice having people treat her as though she might actually know something. Unlike back home where the teachers at the witch academy--or at least the Head Priest--had mostly seen her as an outsider and a nuisance. She leaned back as she contemplated the question, utilizing her spoon to eat some of the ice cream before it started to become a mess.
“There’s Purgatory.” Though...Sabrina paused, wrinkling her nose as she considered what all she had been able to feel from the magic this place appeared to have. “I’m not sure there even is a Hell here so like there has to be somewhere for the spirit to go. I’ve done an exorcism before and that one we did send to Hell because he was a demon and that’s kind of where they belong. But just a spirit would look for someone else to inhabit if they aren’t given proper trajectory.”
“So that’s kind of the issue you run into here with not knowing what any of the different realms are. I figure there has to be some information that the local witches know, but I haven’t met any of them yet.” Which she really needed to look into more. Hopefully they would start coming around Bonnie’s shop when she was working so she could pick their brains too.
“There’s always dolls. Or trees. Like you can definitely transfer spirits to objects but that gets trickier with containment and comfort level, I guess.”
Dan made a hmmm sort of sound, a contemplative one. He too used his spoon, sculpting the ice cream construction so it wasn’t so Leaning Tower of Dairy - just a bit off the top and around the edges. “This spirit in particular, I don’t think he’d be comfortable in an object,” he mused. “But I really had no idea there...wasn’t a Hell here. Though I guess that’s why I think studying the history and culture of this island is a good idea. To learn about things like that.”
How did magic even originate? Where did it come from, was it always this unseen force that powered and shaped the world? Plus, the study of religion and worship was important too - if they were going to get into Hell and other theological issues, that also seemed prudent to know.
“Where do witches generally hang out?” he asked. Maybe he needed to start frequenting those places. And the library (not like that was a hardship, however).
Objects seemed to be regulated for punishments of spirits, or at least that was the way it worked in her world. Being locked in a person was usually deliberate too, meant to either contain the spirit or punish the person who was inhabited. It was difficult to know which it might be without knowing more about the spirit.
“Not that I can feel, but I might be blocked, which I’m perfectly okay with.” At least that meant she wasn’t being pulled toward it like she was back home. No fate or destiny shenanigans here. “There has to be something though. I have no idea what the creation myths are and I’m really interested in those. They usually have a lot of little truths sprinkled in them, but you have to know what to look for.”
“But to answer your question, the woods.”
Oh, of course. Probably at night too - black tree trunks against the blue-charcoal shades of the sky. That was the way it always looked in paintings. Dan chuckled throatily. “I’m interested in learning those too - the creation stories, I mean. You might be a good research friend?” he hedged. “We could do it together.”
Sabrina was a teenager, sure, but that didn’t matter to him in terms of knowledge or skills - Abra was about her age, and she had Shine even brighter than her Uncle Dan’s.
Besides, Sabrina would probably know what to look for better than he, when it came to that sprinkling of truth confetti.
“I’m in. It’s good to have some kind of purpose here.” She wasn’t all that sure messing with the Waypoints would end up getting them anywhere besides some screwy consequences. Going home was her goal with how much she had to do back in her world, but she also didn’t want to take the choice away from anyone who might want to stay. She knew all too well what it was like to have that happen and refused to do it to someone else. Not again, at least. That had to be growth, right?
“Library or some of the museums have got to be the best bet on where to start for myths. Then probably reaching out to a local coven.” If there were any. She wasn’t entirely certain that was even a thing there. Bonnie would probably know.
“Sounds good,” Dan nodded, taking some more ice cream with his spoon, from the behemoth mountain. He was making headway, at least. That was something. “I’m free on the weekend, if you want to hit up the library or a museum or two.” Provided that their waypoint adventure on Friday didn’t end up in some kind of horrorshow, but he had a feeling it wouldn’t - the general vibe of the city was benign, and if there was any sentience to the magic, he doubted it would be malicious.
Pausing to assess the state of butterscotch ice cream, he thought about how to best put this. “I’m just curious about everything because I know someone with a spirit-in-body issue - “ He didn’t say problem, because to Anders (and maybe even Hawke) it didn’t seem to fall under that category but Dan wasn’t necessarily sure he agreed. “And while I solved my own spirit problem by locking them in boxes in my head, I’m going to consider that method...a last resort.”
“I can do this weekend. Preferably morning or afternoon, just in case the others decide on an impromptu escapade or something again.” They might have found some decent waffle places, but there was always a chance that some other food craving would hit the teen sector and need to be scouted out. Sabrina hoped it would. At least it meant something to do with other people and not sitting around her big apartment with only Salem as company.
She’d made quite the dent in her three flavors, the pistachio that had been pushed into the cone not spilling out and creating a mess down the sides any longer. “But like, that’s a hard one. Because whoever you know that has a spirit-in-body issue kind of needs to decide what it is they want to do with it. You’re not going to get very far if they think they’re doing fine with hanging onto it.”
“Right. That’s the thing.” Dan didn’t feel like arguing until he was blue in the face - it was ultimately Anders’ decision. And using his own bag o’tricks to try to nudge him toward that decision, well, Dan didn’t feel right about that either - he’d talk the spirit down from an angry tantrum, but he wouldn’t take away someone’s free will. “It’s why I’m going to do all this research, find out what the options are,” he said. “I want to bring something to the table.”
But anyway. “Afternoon it is,” he agreed. “Thanks in advance for the assist.” Sabrina didn’t have to indulge an old guy’s requests, but she was and so he appreciated that. Hopefully something would get figured out - at the very least, Dan would get to soak up more myth knowledge and that was never a bad thing at all.
“It's interesting stuff. Happy to help.” She shrugged, that nonchalant but not quite truly as calm as she might outwardly seem that teens preferred to show to the world.
“Have you dealt with any other spirits here?” Because she remembered that he had been plagued by them as a kid. Or at least that’s what the book had said...or was it the movie? It didn’t feel right to try and read or watch them again to get things straight in her head. Not when she was sitting across the table and having an actual conversation with him.
Dan lowered his gaze, picking a little at the paper around his ice cream cone - it was a waffle cone, of course, because those were the best. Especially dipped in chocolate or something (this one was just plain). “Not here,” he said. “But - I’m somewhat accustomed to dealing with them otherwise. Like I said, I have a bunch locked in my head - in boxes. It was either that or let them consume me as a kid.”
Mrs. Massey. Those twin girls. Party revelers with their bleeding scalps, dearly departed bartenders, hungry spirits, ones that ached for steam. For blood.
“I had a friend who showed me how to lock them up - or it was his spirit, I guess. He came to me to help, after he died.”
It seemed weird--invasive, even--to let him know that she already knew that and so she simply nodded instead. She remembered a few of the ones from the first book, the sequel was a lot harder for her to grasp hold of though. She’d always prefered the first book and Carrie was her favorite by far of Stephen Kings. Or maybe Pet Sematary. Though it differed between movie/tv mini series/book for which version she would have picked.
Sabrina wiped her fingers on the napkins as she finished off the cone. Wet wipes would have been really useful right about then. “But you don’t have them any longer?”
“I thought I had gotten rid of them - you know, when I died,” Dan chuckled ruefully. He only had a few bites left of the cone too - that was always the best part, the crunch. And when you sucked ice cream from the bottom of the cone, that also. Talk about a way to make a mess though, so he just ate it in bits and pieces rather than reverting to the way his twelve-year-old self ate ice cream. “But I’m here and they’re still here too. In boxes, on shelves. They can’t hurt anyone.”
He wouldn’t dream of opening those boxes either - there was no reason to do that, to unleash pure madness into the city (even if those angry spirits would just end up possessing him anyway). Instead, he’d just let them stew and starve.
Did the Waypoints put them back? Did the spirits never really leave anyone even when unleashed in the first place? She had so many questions, but refrained from asking most of them. No reason to overwhelm him on their first meeting when they were going to be working together on other things.
She leaned back against the booth seat, thankful for the air conditioning that kept the vinyl from sticking to her skin and making noises as she moved. “I wonder how many of us have died before coming here.”
He hadn’t been keeping a tally, but from what Dan read on the network? “It seems like a lot,” he winced. “Way more than one would think.” No wonder pretty much every new person thought Vallo was the afterlife.
“But I’m sure it just takes a minute to realize that you’re alive and get to do things you never thought possible - “ Like research unfamiliar creation stories and meet with witch covens to talk about what potentially happened when your spirit left this world, “...or at least it did for me.” He didn’t have Abra (he’d already tried to reach her - he couldn’t) but maybe he would have others.
She wouldn’t have wanted him to rot alone after being brought back from the dead, he knew that. And speaking of others...
“Oh, and by the way, I’ll bring you some enchiladas tonight. For dinner later.” Ice cream did not count as dinner, Sabrina. And Dan was only cooking for one, which always meant leftovers because recipes just were not designed that way.
After the sandwiches, pizza pockets, and fast food that she’d been eating since arriving, a home-cooked meal sounded amazing. “You really don’t have to,” she weakly protested, before quickly adding, “But thanks. I’ll clean and bring any dishes back.” She wasn’t about to be too proud to take up something that was more edible than she what she’d been living on.
At least she’d been eating some fruit--if one counted the strawberry ice cream, which she did. “But yeah, coming back from the dying is a really weird experience. Especially when it reveals a whole bunch of crap about your life that you didn’t know. Thankfully it seems to be more second chances for people here than that happening though.” And she enjoyed her newfound powers, even if she wasn’t entirely sure if they were witch or celestial just yet.
“That’s true,” Dan chuckled wryly. “A good support system helps, in that case.” While he didn’t know what it was like to die and be resurrected with newfound powers, he did know what it was like to shuffle off this mortal coil - the whole ‘coming back’ part was just a bonus, and still something to wrap one’s head around.
Either way, a good support system helped and so did actual home-cooked meals. Sabrina may be a competent teenager but she was still a teenager, and deserved to have someone looking out for her. Even if his dad jokes were pretty bad and he was generally just all-around awkward sometimes.
But, you know. He tried. And he made enchiladas, so that had to count for something.