fandomhigh | Fandom High Library, Friday

In case you're here for non-research-y things, and don't need the librarian.

For those looking to bust ghosts!

There's coffee. REALLY, REALLY STRONG COFFEE. Blacker than the blackest pit of whatever hell these punks crawled out of.

Also, John made it with holy water. SURPRISE!

Elsa really wasn't a coffee person, but she wasn't taking any chances today, and besides, she hadn't gotten nearly enough sleep last night to be able to trust that tea would do the trick. So she had a cup of coffee in one hand, while the other flipped through a few books about locating dark energies.

Some of them looked kind of silly, mostly things involving actively summoning the dead - that was the opposite of what they wanted! - and some sort of party game involving a board with letters all over it. But one book had a few pages that looked useful, enough so that Elsa read it again, and then a third time before looking up.

"I... think I might have something," she said, addressing the room at large. "Instructions for making a... dowsing rod? It needs to be made from a forked rowan branch, and only people with psychic or magical power can actually make it work, but it seems promising."

There was a pause, and then she added, "I know I've seen rowan trees in the preserve before. They're the ones with the red berries, aren't they?"

"I think so," Cosette offered. "I've certainly seen those trees, but let's have a look and find out if they're the ones we're looking for."

She got up and darted into the stacks, and returned shortly with several botany books; she was already flipping through one of them, so she was a bit distracted when she offered the others to Elsa.

"Yes, this picture looks like the ones in the preserve, do you think so too?"

"That's the tree I'm thinking of," Elsa agreed, smiling a little as she looked at the photo. "They're all over, out there!"

She hesitated for a moment, then swallowed a little.

"So if somebody with... magic... or psychic powers... were to find a forked branch from one of those trees, they could, in theory, use it to point them toward where all of these ghosts are coming from?"

"I know I've read about such things in stories," Cosette said. "I'm afraid I'd be of no help there, but we've plenty of people who would be. And it certainly gives us more of a place to start looking than we've had yet."

"It really does," Elsa agreed, and then chewed on her lip. "I can think of a few people who might be able to get it to work."

Herself included.

"I... I think I might head out to the preserve. To... see if I can find any good branches."

And to see if her own magic counted. She certainly had a lot of it.

"Yes, I can think of a few myself. Would you care for some company in the meantime, though?" Cosette asked. "I don't like the idea of any of us venturing out alone right now."

She wasn't sure what she could do really if anything did happen, granted, but she had to at least offer.

Elsa gave Cosette a grateful smile as she nodded her head.

"Please," she replied. "But only if you feel alright with doing so. We can each bring plenty of salt. And there is strength in numbers, isn't there?"

"That seems to be the case." Cosette smiled. "I'd like to go outside for a while, to tell the truth, and perhaps the air will do us some good. And I don't think the troll who does the cleaning would mind too much if we borrowed a bucket from one of the supply closets, under the circumstances, do you? To carry salt in?"

Carrying a bucket into the woods . . . No, no time to dwell on flashbacks of that sort. And maybe just being outside in the daytime would help dispel a little bit of that vague what is out there? fear, too.

Elsa bit her lip, looking thoughtful for a moment, and then she shook her head.

"No, I don't think he would mind at all, unless he's using the bucket, of course. And even then, I think he could most likely be reasoned with. Trolls generally can, I think."

Well, all the ones that she'd met could. Probably. She hadn't spent much time with them, actually.

"He seems like a nice troll, from what I've seen." For what that was worth -- Cosette generally assumed everyone was nice until proven otherwise. "If need be, I'll promise he'll get the bucket back, or make sure to apologize very thoroughly afterward. Have you ever tried to reason with a troll before?"

Yes, that was getting off topic but she was curious.

"Well, not personally," Elsa admitted, shaking her head a little. "I've met them before, though. They were... very helpful, once, when my parents took my sister and I to see them."

In fairness, it had sort of been a matter of life and death. But then, wasn't this, too?

Cosette would take some of that coffee, thank you. She hadn't slept too well last night; all that reading about ghosts and possessions had stirred old childhood fears in a way that she didn't like.

So she kept yawning, and occasionally rubbing a hand over her bleary eyes, but she was here with a stack of books again (and her phone this time!), digging through for any more information.

She had also left a small stack of copies of the Kitchen Sink spell from yesterday out on the table in case anyone more knowledgeable in that department wanted to take a look, or give it a try.

Rapunzel was actually going to take some of that coffee, and was grateful for it in spite of her grimaces. She had spent the night bundled in her hair like a security blanket, waking at every tiny noise.

She had just started to feel safe here, and now something...something bad was compromising that safety.

So she was dutifully back at the books again, her cheek propped against her hand as she paged slowly through a text on exorcisms.

Because obviously no one had looked at that idea, before. It was hard not to give up hope, even for Rapunzel.

Kitty had brought her laptop to help research- most books were online somewhere these days, and she could easily hack into anything from here should it be needed- but she had a few books spread out around her that she was occasionally flipping through, too.

She kept trying the coffee, but oh dear god you could get wired just smelling this stuff.

Yeah, like he's going to make you go out to get lunch. Where, you know, there's demons running around.

One of the research tables has a few loafs of bread and juice boxes on it, with a small cooler with lunch meats and some cheeses tucked underneath. ...kids drink juice boxes, right?

Whatever. Just keep the food mostly-away from the books and keep working.

Rapunzel had indulged in a little bit of a nap in the middle of the day -- or, rather, had involuntarily fallen asleep on top of a book. But now she was awake and alert again and even more determined to find something -- anything -- that might help. It was late afternoon, and they'd been at this all day. It was impossible not to be discouraged, but she was trying not to let it get to her. There had to be an answer around here, right? Somewhere? Even though all signs had pointed to absolutely nothing helpful today, since Elsa's dowsing-rod discovery that morning.

In desperation, and in an effort to keep herself from losing hope, Rapunzel took to the shelves. Just because they'd thought they'd pulled everything didn't mean there wasn't possibly still something in amongst the shelved books that might be useful, right?

She was on her knees, paging through a book on evil clowns (yeah, it was much more reminiscent of what had happened this summer than what was happening now, but she was trying, here) when something (http://www.amazon.com/Go-F-Sleep-Adam-Mansbach/dp/1617750255/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=&qid=) fell right onto Rapunzel's head.

"Ow!" She rubbed her head in annoyance, then reached for the book. She blushed a little when she realized what the F-word there was (...Barry, so help her, if you were somehow to blame for this, you were getting so yelled at), and began to flip through the pages.

A slip of paper fluttered to the ground, with music (http://iambicnut.com/rpg/misc/babyislandgtfts-front.jpg) on one side, and a strange symbol (http://iambicnut.com/rpg/misc/babyislandgtfts-back.jpg) on the other.

"...hey guys?" Rapunzel called, too excited to keep her voice down as she gingerly rose to her feet, clutching the book and carefully staring at the slip of paper. "Guys? I think I found something!"

Edited 2014-12-05 17:57 (UTC)

Kitty looked up from her computer. "What've you got?"

"This paper," Rapunzel said, scurrying over to Kitty to show her. "It fell out of, um, this book."

She held it out, blushing a little darker. "It has a bad word on it," thanks, Rapunzel, "but, um, it looks like it's for kids?"

"It's more for the parents of kids," Kitty told her, smiling a little. "What's it say? The paper, not the book."

"I don't know," she admitted apologetically. "It's not in a language I know, but...um. Isn't 'Ingvar' the name of that little island? The other one?" She pointed to the very end of the song, frowning. "That's probably not a coincidence, right?"

"Nothing here ever seems to be a coincidence," she said, frowning at the paper. "Yeah, that's the name of the island. And the original word was scratched out to write it in?"

"Yeah, I didn't do that," Rapunzel assured her with a shake of her head. "Do you think the book part is important? Like...what book?"

Because naughty language aside, Rapunzel was pretty sure something wanted something else asleep, here. That was her interpretation, anyway.

"Could be someone sending a strongly-worded message," Kitty said, reaching again for her laptop. "Here, I'll run the note through a translator."

"Whoa, you can do that?" Yeah, Rapunzel was going to peer eagerly at the screen while Kitty did that. "I didn't know that was a thing!"

Further reason for her to stop being vaguely afraid of the internet!

"Yep. I mean, it's just Google Translate, so you type in the words and it gives you a rough translation in English," Kitty said as she typed. "It's not perfect, but... And this looks like it's some Swedish lullaby."

"So someone wants someone to go the -- to go to sleep," Rapunzel mused, eyeing the lullaby. "No, wait, someone wants Ingvar to go to sleep. But...um."

But like, islands didn't sleep, right?

"Yeah. That's a little weird," Kitty said. She had experience with sentient islands but she didn't really know everything about Ingvar to talk knowledgeably about it. "But we have this, and that's a step in the right direction."

He's patrolling the stacks and laying down salt lines.

Why would you do that, John? Why? Just to be harsh?

Constance flickered into sight on the other side of one of them, and gave him a skull-faced glare for those damn salt-lines.

"Come off it, Constance. Once I get these all down I can write in an exception for you, but I'll need your true name," John said, giving her an equally pissy glare as he kept working. "But the last damn thing I need is one of our other visitors deciding to come in here and pick on the kids."

"Unless, of course, your problem is all the anti-possession charms. Then, sunshine, you're out of luck." Those? Weren't getting any alterations done to them, no matter how much John wanted to give you another chance.

"No," Constance said. Truth. She had no interest in possessing anyone...

...except in the never-leave-me-ever sense.

"Constance." A beat. "Welch."

She grumbled, looking out at the girls. Them, she had no problems with. They were so young.

"Men do worse things than ghosts. Most of the time."

"Of course we do. Mankind has free will, yeah? 'Course, that doesn't mean we're always gonna make great choices, but it's the great defining beacon of humanity," he replied. "Men, women, the kids... we might all become great unbelievable fuck-ups, but at least it's our choices to make. No gods, angels, or demons should be taking that away from us."

Constance flickered in and out again, reappearing closer to the edge of the line, turning that over in her memory of a brain.

"There have to be consequences," she said slowly. "Broken promises have them." She contemplated the salt lines, and something almost seemed to get through to her. "Prevention might be better."

Like she did, with men who were going to cheat....

"Some people believe in law and order for those consequences," John replied. "Me? Shit catches up with you sooner or later. You can try to manage the when or the how, but trust me. The devils come calling."

He finished a salt line, shaking out the rest of his box before tossing it in the trash. "As to prevention... people are people, Constance. You can't save 'em from themselves unless they want saving."

"It definitely does." Constance looked over her shoulder, hearing childish voices calling Mommy? and forgetting why.

"But if you can't save them--" She shook her head, flickering to a skull and then back to herself. "There's only pain."

"And if you do save 'em, there's different pain later. It's called having a soul, pet. If nothing causes you pain, you aren't really alive," he said, a bit more gently this time. "Or, in your case, undead. Bad shit is part of being self-aware."

"I--" This was the longest conversation she'd had with anyone, really, who wasn't already dead, since... ever. This was the most she'd thought about existence as more than an endless loop of trying to get home (trying to escape) ever.

Too much too much too much

Constance disappeared again, fleeing what John was saying, afraid that it was going to stick with her.

"Constance? Constance!" John swore, looking around the library. "Fucking hell, woman!"

He could summon her back, hold her. Make her listen to whatever she was running from. He had her true name.

But he wouldn't.

Constantine swore again, then rummaged in his pocket for a pack of cigarettes, lighting up right in the stacks. "Hear this, Constance Welch of the unhappy dead. I can't save you, and I won't try. You have to want to save yourself, first."

"You know where to find me if you want to talk."

The rest? That was up to her, now wasn't it?

Where John is occasionally catching a nap, but he'll still talk to you if you need him.

FRIDAY

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