I turned over the map for the inside of my mind

[bearshermark]

Who: Elliott (Eleven) and OPEN
What: Elliott doin' a heckin' research
When: Feb 16th-28th
Where: New York Public Library
Rating/Warnings: Low-key anxious teenager


To think only a few weeks ago, he'd lamented the fact that all of his friends were growing up. Getting jobs or else bogged down by responsibility, increasingly short on time to hang out like they used to. And now here he was, holed up in the library every day after school and every weekend, more relieved than anything that he didn't have to explain himself to many of them. Sitting in relative peace with a stack of books to work through while he flipped between tabs of scattered information on his laptop.

It didn't make a great deal of practical sense, but the public space felt safer than attempting to study alone at home. The library had a productive atmosphere, he reasoned: an air of focus in the shuffle of papers and heavy thump of closed books while still maintaining a quiet sense of community.

In such a space, he didn't feel at all remarkable. To everyone there, he was just a perfectly ordinary high school student working on perfectly ordinary schoolwork. Though occasionally, he did quickly change tabs or shift in his seat to discretely obscure more esoteric texts- a guilty habit he had yet to break himself of. No one would care about what he was reading, he knew, yet still the sense of self-consciousness persisted.

And then there were times he zoned out while he read or scrolled down a page, either intensely focused or not at all, and jumped back to reality whenever someone brushed by his seat. Always offering a nervous greeting and silently praying no one decided to sit next to him. His materials were spread about a bit rudely to that effect, scattered to take up more table space than strictly necessary to make sitting elsewhere an easier choice for most.

Unfortunately, it didn't always work.

"Oh, uh, sorry, let me move that.."

Comments

February 16th-ish, early afternoon; a day after their network thread

[traceofeffort]

Despite having been here almost two years, Lisa still marvels at the scale of this library. If she needed to do research at home, the place she went was kinda small. Homey, at least, but there were very clear limits on what you could accomplish without requesting books from faraway places or using the online catalog. It was at least part of the reason for wanting to go somewhere bigger, to be able to learn stuff without having to search halfway across the state. Now, looking around, she's got a certain sense that there's a lot of work ahead of her, but at least she won't have to do it alone.

It doesn't take her terribly long to find Elliott; true to his word, there's his bag. And his laptop. And a pile of books... sheesh, he got started already, huh? Rather than announcing herself right away, Lisa sets her gig bag down on the table just beside his books. When he turns to clear his things, she flashes a gigawatt-smile down at him. "Hey! Elliott, right? Anxious to get started?" There's a messenger bag slung over her shoulder, and she's dressed for the cold, a somewhat heavy jacket over her, heavy denim jeans, and a solid pair of boots; she briefly takes a half-step back to shuck her hat and shake out her hair. But her attention is very clearly on him the whole time.

[bearshermark]

Oh. She was cute.

For some reason, that was unexpected.

Elliott cleared his throat and took a moment to remind his brain that yes, girls were a thing, then focused on her question in a vain effort to block out the traitorous bit of it that wondered if guys were a thing, too.

"Yeah- well I mean, it's been kind of distracting. I have schoolwork too that I'm trying to get done, so. Two stones, one bird thing."

Spot successfully cleared, he sat back down and belatedly realized he'd gotten the expression wrong. He covered his burning face with his hands, words a bit muffled between his fingers.

"Sorry! I'm kind of everywhere right now. It's um, nice to meet you."

[traceofeffort]

She waits patiently for Elliott to pull himself together; clearly he's got something of his own going on, too. If she gets through today without another breakdown like last week, that'd be fantastic! If only she knew what was actually going through his head right now.

Lisa can't really complain about being scattered, so she just relaxes a little bit, setting her messenger bag down on the table too and taking a seat where he'd cleared space for her. "Nice to meet you. And don't worry, okay? We'll get through this. Everything's gonna be fine. We'll make it fine," she adds, a little of her Southern drawl coming out unconsciously as she makes sure she gets her point across. "You wanna focus on your homework first? I can help out, I need to decompress a little anyway. If you want, I mean - you organized the meeting, so it's your show, okay?"

[bearshermark]

Eleven peeled his hands off his face and spared a glance to his textbooks.

"No, that's okay, I can always do that later. Thank you, though."

He shuffled through his things and tapped at his laptop, felt the color in his face fading as he did. "I've been looking up Yggdrasil and reincarnation stuff because of... you know, but is there somewhere else you wanted to start?"

[traceofeffort]

That's... quite a stack, now that she's looking at it in a little more detail. "I don't have a better place to start, no - nothing I saw is going to give me direction. Your stack looks... a little intimidating, but it's as good an idea as any. I'm not sure what we're gonna find, but we won't know until we try."

Idly, she reaches for whatever's on top of the stack, but for a moment her eyes are distant as she thinks about what is going to give her direction. Playing bass in a band, when she could barely play guitar now... what is that supposed to mean, even? What is she going to accomplish? "What are you trying to tell me, Lisa...?" she breathes out softly, apparently not realizing she said it out loud as she stares at the cover of the book she'd grabbed, unseeing.

[bearshermark]

Elliott tipped his head, taking in her blank expression with a jolt.

"H-hey," he said, reaching out for her shoulder, voice increasingly worried. "Are you here? Are you okay? Lisa?"

[traceofeffort]

"Buh?" Inelegant, but as she snaps back to herself she doesn't really think about it. "Oh, sorry, Elliott. I just... at least you know something, y'know? I just keep thinking about what I saw and it just makes me want to play music. Except I can't even do that, because I play the guitar and my vision had me with a bass." Lisa pauses, then grimaces. "A nice-looking bass, for that matter. Just that right kind of shiny to be expensive but not gaudy. So it's kind of got me in a mood, and I was thinking about it again, because if it's supposed to mean something, I'm not very good at talking to myself. Didn't mean to scare you."

Shaking her head, she refocuses, smiling back at him again. "I'll be okay."

[bearshermark]

With little to musical inclination, Elliott fears he doesn't quite know what a bass is, but at least from context, he understands that it's clearly very different from a guitar.

"Okay," he says, not really an expert in okay-ness and deciding to take her word for it. "But, I don't know, if it's believed, they're past selves and different from our current.. incarnations. If not, maybe it means you could be good at two instruments if you wanted to?"

[traceofeffort]

Lisa takes a second to take that in, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. "Okay, I think I get that. Past me isn't necessarily present me, right? We're separate people, just... connected," she says slowly. "And I could be good at two instruments, sure. I could be good at three, or four. But learning bass would take time, and I'd have to buy one. When I'm decent at best on the instrument I do know, I'm not really... sure I wanna pick up another one, just over a vision." Now she frowns, sighing. "Bleh. It's not enough to doubt myself, I guess, I have to doubt another me across space and time too. Good going, Lisa."

With a grumble, she runs a hand through her hair. "I'm being a little bit of a downer here, and I hate it. Sorry again."

why are you making me pick a day, I don't know when

[temptationaccomplished]

Aziraphale loved libraries. There was just something about old books and the smell of paper and dust and ink that was simply soothing. He supposed anyone who enjoyed books felt the same, and he was always incredibly pleased to find other people milling about, using the resources that the city had provided, even if some could be downright brutal to the books. (Sadly, rescuing them from sticky child fingers was out of the question)

Libraries: the great monuments to human creativity and knowledge. (Computers, though... Nightmare, those. Brilliant as they were, he sort of missed the whole business of accessing information on microfiche, if paper wasn't available.)

Aziraphale wouldn't have disrupted the young man if there were other places to sit, but the cool February weather and Spring midterms made space difficult to come by.

"Norse mythology?" he murmured, noting the covers and pages open in the boy's research. He put down his own stack: a book on Pre-Romanesque art and architecture on loan from another library, and several self-indulgent choices of mystery novels. "Funny, someone recently asked me about that."

~sometime~ is fine!

[bearshermark]

"Really?" he asked, removing his backpack from the chair to finally let the man sit. His planned excuse that it was 'just a school project' withered in the face of curiosity. "Are you some sort of expert in it?"

What kind of weird luck would that be?

Elliott pulled the last of his books out of the way and shuffled them to the other side of the table, then resumed his seat. "What were they asking about?"

[temptationaccomplished]

"Hardly an expert." He arranged his books on the table, trying not to encroach upon the young man's space. "I specialize in antique art restoration, so one does encounter the odd mythological reference from time to time. More often it's biblical, however."

He enjoyed reading about mythology but Norse wasn't something he found himself very well versed in.

"They were asking about the tree, Yggdrasil. What sort of research are you doing? Ah, if you don't mind me asking."

[bearshermark]

Elliott paused in reaching for his laptop, fingers falling short of its slim edge.

"Oh. Uh, the same, actually.."

He turned his full attention to the stranger beside him. World Wide Web. Only an older person would have said it like that.

"What uh- can I ask what sort of information you gave them?"

[temptationaccomplished]

"Well, I believe I suggested they try the library," he said with a twinkle in his eye. "Other than that, if I recall, I mentioned that the tree was incredibly important to the Norse cosmology, being the connecting point of the Nine Worlds."

It had been a while since he had that conversation, and Aziraphale, good as his memory was, couldn't recall word-for-word what else had been said.

"Oh!" He looked pleased as anything to have recalled, "and we had a brief discussion on Hamlet. Or at the very least, Horatio and the failings of the American school-system for not properly teaching one of Shakespeare's best."

[bearshermark]

Elliott felt his ears warm.

"They do teach it. I guessed right, didn't I?"

Well, at least he could feel a bit comfortable with sharing his research and findings with his table partner. He offered him a timid hand.

"My name is Elliott."

[temptationaccomplished]

"You did indeed."

Aziraphale returned with a far more confident, but friendly and hopefully not intimidating offer of his own hand for a warm handshake.

"My name is Aziraphale. Or Mr. Fell. So, how does your search go, Elliott? Make any headway with your mystery? You know, I'm rather envious of your having a clear lead to explore. My memory was not nearly so forthcoming."

[bearshermark]

Elliott shook on it, surprised but relieved to put a name and face to another Different.

Mr. Fell it was.

"Not really," he said, then hesitated. "I mean, sort of? But I think I'm just finding more questions for every answer I think I have. In a way, it feels more like a wild goose chase than a lead. I mean, who can really make sense of mythology and something as mysterious as life and death? There's people that study this stuff as a career and debate everything in academic papers with dozens of sources that may or may not be credible."

Elliott's head fell into his hands, fingers threading through strands of his hair as he stared dully at the grains in the table.

"But it's for sure, if that was really a memory of a past life, then it almost definitely wasn't on this planet. And that kind of.. that's really weird to think about too hard."

Monday afternoon I guess

[hardtoignore]

"Don't worry about it," Clarence responded in protest, taking a seat away from Elliot so he could leave his books ad papers sprawled however he needed them. Raising his feet and placing them into the chair across from him, Clarence sat back and pulled his own backpack up onto the table, shuffling to get something from inside.

He didn't frequent libraries to read. Rather, he stopped after school some days just to derp around on the computers so he wouldn't have to go home. Sometimes he did homework if he felt like it. But today had been a computer day. Had been. Then he had spotted Elliot and, well, he didn't want to say that he was feeling friendly necessarily, but the guy seemed nice and hey, if he wanted Clarence gone then it just meant their first real conversation the night before hadn't been genuine and he could dump this line of acquaintance.

He kinda hoped that wasn't the case, but he'd never say it out loud.

"Whatcha looking for?" There were... a lot of books on the table.

[bearshermark]

Elliott brightened, only just remembering to keep quiet before he announced the boy to the rest of the library.

It was a smile that dropped to a bit of a despairing glance over the books in question. He fidgeted and slowly sat back down.

"Oh, well.. I'm kind of behind on stuff. Got a new project to work on. How are you?"

[hardtoignore]

Elliot was a nice guy. Probably too nice for having just met Clarence, but he could get used to seeing someone smile at him so often.

Taking the frown as an indication on how Elliot’s grades were going, Clarence grimaced in solidarity. “Sounds annoying. Hope you manage to figure out how to shuffle it all.”

Pulling a smaller zip bag from his backpack, Clarence removed a few bottles of nail polish. He debated between straight black and a dark, maroonish purple. “I’m just chilling. Killing time before dinner. Not much else to do unless I wanted to do homework, but that ain’t happening.”

Turning to Elliot, he held up the two bottles. “Which should I go with?”

[bearshermark]

Elliott wasn't exactly in a position to offer with anyone's homework considering his current workload and his unimpressive grade point average, but the offer was almost out of his mouth anyway when Clarence presented him with a different problem.

"Uh.." he peered closer at the bottles, then to Clarence's skin tone. "The purple one?"

[hardtoignore]

Clarence was alright with that. Homework was not getting done if he had anything to say about it.

“Adventurous today, then.” Considering his wardrobe, it was clear Clarence likes black. But it was nice to branch out now and then. He replaced the black bottle into the zipper pouch and pulled out his nail clippers and a nail buffer. He slowly began the meticulous work of taking care of his nails.

After a moment, he glanced over at Elliott. “So, uh... that Bureau stuff. It’s weird, right?”

[bearshermark]

"Um.." Elliott said, glancing around the library. "Yeah, weird."

He sat back and put his hands to his keyboard, fingertips tapping idly at the keys. After a few moments at it, he gave up. Whatever he was going to type for his homework was gone; in its place, a thousand unrelated distractions.

"..Do you believe it?"

[hardtoignore]

By the time Elliott seems curious enough to push, Clarence has gotten his nails to the right length and buffed half of them to perfect shape. Clarence glanced over, noticing the softness of Elliott's voice. Maybe he didn't want to bring it up in a public place but Clarence has no such qualms. It's New York City. People don't actually care what you say as long as you're not disturbing someone.

"Hardly," Clarence scoffs, rolling his eyes as much as physically possible. "I saw stuff that was literally impossible. Plus, if that was me, then I was nothing like I am now."

He finished buffing, blowing on his nail to clear away any last bits of dust. "What about you? Thoughts?"

[bearshermark]

Elliott bit his lip, then chewed it for good measure.

"I dunno. I saw a giant, floating tree."

He stared at his books and scattered notes. "Other worlds and past lives.. That sort of stuff seems impossible, but I've been doing a lot of research into it, actually. It might not amount to much, but I can't stop thinking about it."