prophet girl

“didn’t they teach you not to judge a dog by its cover at vet school?” he leaned down and scratched the chihuahua behind the ear; the animal instantly rolled over to expose his belly. “he looks mean, but all he wants is belly rubs and her attention.” he nodded to starfire as he stood to let lettie take them back. in the time it took the dogs to get their checkup done and lettie to bring them back, alistair had closed his eyes in his chair and dozed off. sleep was something he didn’t enjoy doing, so oftentimes, when his body was tired enough or was given a small break, he’d find himself dozing off somewhere random. a booth at fryday’s, against a tree in the park, and the veterinary’s waiting room.  caught off guard by lettie’s sudden arrival, he all but jumped out of his seat, barely stopping himself from leaping at her directly as he snatched back the leashes. “great, yeah; told you they didn’t bite…” he shook his head out, trying to dislodge sleep from his mind. grabbing one of the treats, alistair crouched down and held them out to both the dogs. “you know they’re not supposed to have treats before meals; shelter’s strict about that. which means I should give them two.” he glanced up at her almost smiling while he held out one hand as a question for more. “they’re begging.”

HE CAN’T IMAGINE THE WEIGHT OF IT ALL. how disorienting it must be for her, to see things you can’t place, can’t explain until it’s too late. how heavy it must be to carry the knowledge, to be the first to experience it before anyone else. how lonely. he wouldn’t know how to hold it, what to do with it all.  “that must be…” it’s said softly, barely audible as he can’t finish the sentence, can’t find the right words, can’t convey how much he is trying to understand her and feels like he’ll only come up short. instead, a soft touch to her shoulder, keeping steady eye contact. as if to say, i hope you know that i’m here for you. you don’t have to do this alone. because what else can he do for her? “by him you mean…” he begins to ask, hesitates to say the name, flashes of memories from the last time he saw him. “...alistair? in the void?”  he tries to process what she means, that she had seen him before he had crawled onto the banks and everything started shifting. he’s not sure he’s ready to ask what she’d seen, to know what his choices—or lack of choices—led to. he’s watching the way her face shifts as she talks about all her visions. maybe it’s not fair to ask to begin with.  “have you told him? that you saw him? or… does everyone else know, about your dreams?”

the woman thinks of her cousin, of the way they would sometimes linger at her doorway following a particularly taxing dream. they've never spoken of it, but she knows they at least have some understanding. "lily knows. matteo, too. i'm not sure about the others."

the  scream  rips  through  the  laundromat  just  as  he’s  watching  his  blood  swirl  pink  in  the  drum.  matteo  jerks  so  fast  he  slams  his  hip  into  the  coin-op  door,  white-hot,  stupid  pain  shooting  up  his  side  hard  enough  to  wring  a  hissed,  “shit—”  out  of  him,  but  his  hand  is  already  on  her,  fingers  locking  around  her  arm.  one  look  at  lettie's  face  and  whatever  curse  was  coming  dies  behind  his  teeth. because  she's  not  looking  at  him. she's  not  looking  at  anything  in  the  room. eyes  wide  open  and  fixed  somewhere  else,  parked  on  something  that  sure  as  hell  isn’t  here. matteo’s  seen  men  knocked  stupid  in  fights.  seen  bar  drunks  go  glassy  while  the  whole  room  pitched  sideways  around  them.  seen  his  ma  sit  dead  quiet  at  the  kitchen  table,  cigarette  ash  falling  soft  as  snow  over  overdue  bills,  gone  somewhere  mean  and  far  down  inside  her  own  skull.  he  knows  that look.  knows  when somebody's still standing there but ain't all the way inside anymore. this  is  something  else—  not  a  fit,  not  panic.  one  of  those  goddamn  sight-things.  “hey—hey.  eyes  on  me.” he  yanks  her  hard  enough  to  rattle  her.  matteo  doesn’t  know  shit  about  gentle.  gentle’s  for  people  who  got  room  for  it.  his  free  hand  hovers  stupidly  near  her  cheek,  like  maybe  there’s  something  useful  in  it,  like  maybe  he’s  the  kind  of  man  who  knows  how  to  do  comfort.  he  isn’t.  he  knows  pressure.  impact.  how  to  keep  something  from  coming  apart  by  throwing  his  own  weight  against  it  until  his  bones  start  to  ache.  so  he  drags  lettie  closer  instead,  keeping her upright before  whatever  has  hold  of  her  can  pull  the  rest  along  with  it.  behind  them,  the  machines  keep  up  their  idiot  racket,  wet  denim  hammering  steel  like  locked-out  fists. “come  on.  i’ve  already  dealt  with  enough  shit  today.”

if alistair and lettie had one thing in common, it was their preference for showing animals kindness before people. granted, it may not have been as solid a preference as his, lettie’s in greeting them and not on a whole, but it was a common ground he was not unhappy to see in the woman’s attention to the dogs; a faint expression of approval on his face. but, then she dropped her pen and looked at him like he was a ghost, and his expression dimmed back into the one of apathy he usually wore. of course.  it was a look he was used to now, even if it annoyed him to no end. usually it came from people he knew before he’d “died”, but occasionally, such as the current case, it came from people who knew him through the rumor mill or news clippings, as if they’d seen an urban legend come to life and didn’t know how to process that. usually, alistair would let this kind of reaction to his presence change the course of his day, give people something to react to, but he was having a good day. he wanted to have a good day; it was a dog day, and he wasn’t going to let this stranger's reaction get in the way of what he wanted. “are you afraid of dogs? they don’t bite if that’s what you’re nervous about.” he handed her one of the leashes, but held onto the other, not letting go until he dryly joked. “neither do I.”

xingyu just nods quietly, at first, the mention of her mother causing his eyes to drift in the direction of the neighborhood, roofs jutting out over the trees. he grew up hearing rumors about the devauxs, that he shouldn’t go near the house just down the road. whispers that they were cursed, or that the house was haunted. that a daughter ran away and never looked back. he had figured by lettie’s last name that she must be related in some way. but xingyu had never been one to put stock in the town gossip, so realizing the fact never changed that much for him, never made him question her before. eyebrows raise at the new information, then knit into slight concern. he shifts on the bench to face her better. “dreams?” he repeats, more to himself as he processes it. he shouldn’t be too surprised, he supposes — with friends who grew up as slayers their whole life and he was none the wiser; with a werewolf and vampires joining their circle; with the knowledge that something unfathomable lurks underneath town. and as much as he tries to understand it all, in truth he doesn’t know anything else except being human. “when did you start having them?” he asks, tries to contain all the questions he has but another spills forth. “are they… about random things? about our group? about…” he trails off. he means the hunger, but he’s unable to finish the sentence, like speaking about it directly will conjure it before them.

"the  first  graders  have  to  wait,  they  don't  know  what  it's  like  to  have  a  sleepless  night  in  the  bad  way  yet,"  tone  light  as  he  springs  backwards,  the  motions  fluid  as  he  turns  so  they  can  make  their  way  out  of  the  front,  various  balls  bouncing  in  the  netting  with  each  cheery  step.  you  would  have  never  guessed  he  barely  slept  a  wink.  "it's  shaping  up  to  be  a  pretty  good  summer  around  here,"  met  with  some  surprisingly  in  tune  whistling  as  he  heads  towards  the  makeshift  coaching  trailer  (put  in  place  when  the  gym  was  undergoing  work  to  hold  barely  15  kids  at  a  time).  he  opens  the  door  to  lead  her  in,  ridding  himself  of  his  sporting  goods  as  he  releases  the  pink  floral  furnace  and  two  travel  cups,  splashing  the  tea  into  it  with  barely  a  glance,  "they're  getting  a  new  maths  teacher.  that's  what  i  heard,  apparently  she  finally  retired."

it  was  that  time  of  year,  the  fleeting  jokes  when  he  signed  a  yearbook  with  lucky,  the  good  byes  to  those  that  wouldn't  return  next  year,  streaming  sunlight  through  the  window  earlier  and  earlier.  there  were  moments  that  he  could  almost  forget  the  signs,  overlook  the  circling  crows  and  the  wilting  greenery  that  should  have  at  least  had  chance  to  turn  to  the  sun,  open  armed.  the  first  break  is  in  place  and  he's  wandering  into  the  library,  net  of  footballs  thrown  over  his  shoulder  as  his  hip  slings  against  the  library  desk,  a  knock  of  his  fist  to  catch  her  attention.  "i've  been  having  visions  all  morning…  it's  hazy  but  i'm  pretty  sure  that  i  saw  you,  me,"  raise  of  an  eyebrow,  "an  amazing  chamomile  tea."

the  detergent  in  her  hand  catches  his  eye—bold  red  cheer!  hollering  against  the  pallor  of  his  face,  loud  and  stupidly  bright  under  the  laundromat’s  wasp-buzz  lights. the  kind  of  cheerful  that’s  never  limped  home  half-dead  with  somebody  else’s  blood  drying  cold  on  its  sleeves.  at  the  mention  of  a  first-aid  kit,  that  same  gaze  cuts  toward  the  back  room too fast. the  light  back  there  keeps  flickering  on  and  off, like  a  bad  thought  that  won’t  die,  and  his  mind  is  already  pawing  through  the  possibilities:  iodine,  peroxide,  gauze. then straight past them, toward the chance of  something  stronger  shoved  where  it  shouldn’t  be, something  useful to sand down the raw scrape of his nerves.  by  the  time  sense  comes  limping  in  after  instinct,  matteo’s  already  reached  for  the  detergent,  fingers  brushing  hers  only  long  enough  to  steal  the  scoop.  his  own  hand  is  rough  as  busted  pavement,  nicked  to  hell,  dried  blood  and  ash  ground  deep  into  the  lines  of  his  knuckles  like  they’ve  rented  the  place  for  good. “depends  what’s  in  that  kit,”  he  says,  voice  dragged  sideways  into  something  that  could  almost  pass  for  playful  if  you  didn’t  listen  close  enough  to  hear  the  rust  in  it. he  dumps  the  detergent  in  with  all  the  care  of  a  man  who’s  never  treated  anything  carefully  in  his  life. blue  powder  rattling  into  the  drum  and  spilling  over  the  rim  in  a  soft  chemical  dusting,  some  of  it  catching  on  the  scuffed  toes  of  his  boots,  some  of  it  vanishing  into  the  grime  already  living  there.  “if  it’s  just  iodine  and  disappointment, i’ll  pass.”

it was an oddly good day for alistair; the sun was high, the fog that clung to the town wasn’t nearly as thick as it usually was, and he was working at the shelter. Some days that meant hours of shoveling crap and hauling food around, other days it meant being mobbed by the more rambunctious animals that kept their energy despite the way town made most skittish, and today that meant taking two new residents to the vet for a routine checkup. above him a bell rang as he walked through the door and into the clinic; the smell of damp fur and antiseptic greeting him in a way that would make most noses crinkle, but had him drawing in a deeper breath. once upon a time, before he had to become something else to survive, he dreamed of working in this clinic; maybe opening his own, helping animals, and living each day doing something he enjoyed rather than something he settled for. but that was before, and this was after, so he could only find that joy in little ways now.  the smell of dreams softened alistair's usual edges as he walked up to the front desk and signed the check-in sheet. it seemed he was the only person there at the moment, aside from the woman who manned the desk in front of him.  he rapped the desk twice before speaking. “do you know how long it’ll be?” his tone was even as he gestured first to a red goldendoodle and then a black chihuahua. “starfire and nightwing haven’t eaten cause they gotta get bloodwork done, and they’re starting to get cranky.”

perhaps the familial connection was enough to explain her involvement, but lettie continues. the words feel odd on her tongue, as if the muscle isn't used to such honesty. "i've been dreaming about it...whatever's happening. or has happened, or will happen. i can't really tell the difference sometimes." when her visions dreams visions came, time didn't work the way that it was supposed to.

i hope i can sleep straight through the madness. but i can’t even tell when i’m sleeping anymore.

he turns back to lettie. “you got the note too, right? from lily?”

even after six years, half a decade of lettie's existence not only being in their per-view, but at the forefront of loretta's own mind, they still sat restless, shifting amongst the squeaky, cracked vinyl of fryday's booths. love in action, love in blood, but never words — loretta was never good at those. " how are you... — how are you doing? " a wide, unblinking stare, words punctuated by a clearing of their throat. after twenty-something years without a concept of family, it was still an uphill battle to just be. though, what they meant to say was: have you seen anything? the air has been thick, stinking of something they couldn't exactly put words to yet. but, their cousin's powers remained something short of taboo — loretta knowing all too well what it felt like to have conversations centered around ability, rather than simply being. " i saw a new cat outside the house yesterday — left 'em a can of wet food, but they were too skittish to take it. 'm hoping the food's gone by the time i get back tonight. thought you'd want to know. "