beginnings
The speedway, as it turns out, was a wonderful place to deal drugs and commit a homicide because the surveillance was absolute shit. What happened after that day was of little note, save for the fact that Makayla was informed by a nice form letter that the speedway was under new management and would be opening again at the beginning of December. New management would like to sincerely apologize for the convenience, and here is your check for the time you worked up to this point.
School kept going, even though the break for Thanksgiving was coming up. She'd get Wednesday off. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. They gave a little alotment for travel; Tuesday was a ghost town in class. Makayla's English teacher was phoning it in, deciding instead to put on The Green Mile and wanted the kids to write about it, essay in hand, when they come back on Monday. Math had a substitute teacher who looked like he was probably an ex-football player. He had a knee brace and a bit of a gut, but seemed to really know what he was talking about. Nobody was paying attention so he just kept the work sheets flowing and the class chatter to a dull roar.
Maybe, she dreams. Maybe, she keeps the thought to herself but there is a pull. A tug, something when she looks out the window that reminds her that the world is going dormant and resting- that this is her time and not her sister's (except, of course, that's silly because she doesn't have a sister. The autumn and winter don't belong to anyone and she doesn't have in fucking work to do because her stupid job got closed up because of-)
Then, it ended. Bells rang and she got to go home.
Then, she got to go home. Her mother was working a double tonight- left a twenty taped to the other side of the door near the peephole with the expressed instruction to not bring Greek food in the house because the fridge still smelled like gyros from the last time that happened. Things feel normal... ish.
Makayla
It's been hard to keep focused on school the last several weeks.
Aside from the paper diary she keeps wedged between her mattress and the box spring Makayla hasn't told anyone about what happened. She mentioned that work had been crazy to her girlfriend Emma and that that was why she didn't want to stay on the phone super late that night. Sat in the shower for a really long time and then moved on with her life. Wasn't as if she had any other choice.
It's the week before Thanksgiving and half her class was gone today. Emma is going out to Boulder to stay with her dad and she wanted to hang out before her brother picked her up but Makayla made up an excuse. Said she had to check on her grandmother after school because her mom was working a double.
That wasn't a total lie. It was a partial lie because her mom was paying a Ukrainian woman to take care of her at night but not a total one. Her grandmother still recognized her most of the time and told her stories about life back in New York and those stories always involved wild partying with semi-famous people. But Makayla did not go to see Grandma Brenda on the way home from school. She went straight home to the emptiness and the twenty and the note written in green marker in her mom's loopy script.
Still doesn't feel like home even though they've been here almost a year but other than the lingering numbness it's as if life is carrying on as normal.
She dumps her backpack right inside the door and locks it behind her.
Makayla
[straight motherfuckin' perception]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (5, 6, 6) ( success x 2 )
beginnings
It's probably going to be a night full of... well, whatever it is that Makayla does on her week nights.
And perhaps this is how things go, that lingering feeling that something is going to happen. That something has happened and you don't know how to feel. Maybe being in Denver was always going to feel strange. It isn't a digression, though, that something in the apartment doesn't feel right.
First, there comes a feeling. A feeling like she's standing at the edge of a very tall building and there is the sudden urge, the undeniable pull to jump that all human beings have before their better instincts kick in and they know better. It is that feeling like she is going to fall. Maybe that's how it feels off. Maybe that's how it is off.
There is something tangible, though. Something moves in the reflection of a picture hanging on the wall. Just barely out of the corner of her eyes.
Makayla
That feeling makes her heart start racing. She's afraid for no good reason. She's afraid and it feels like the sort of fear that comes not from the outside world but from herself.
After what happened last week Makayla would have thought she had known what fear was. Fear of violence against her does not compare to this fear. She could name Cass as the source of her fear that time. This time she's alone in the house and there's no reason for her to feel like this and all the rationalizing in the world isn't going to do her any good when something moves in her periphery.
She takes a deep breath before she turns to glare at the framed poster of the Tournée du Chat Noir. Expecting nothing but her mind playing tricks on her.
beginnings
What she finds in the glass of that framed poster is nothing more than her reflection. Someone staring back at her with the same expression she was wearing until, finally, something changes.
The reflection blinked.
Makayla
Nope.
Nope nope nope.
She turns away from the picture frame as if that is going to make the image of her reflection blinking at her disappear. Have it un-happen. Clearly she's just tired. It's been a long week and she hasn't been sleeping very well and not having the speedway as an outlet anymore has been messing with her head. Maybe she needs to go for a drive or take a nap or something.
Yes. Nap. That's a great idea, Self.
beginnings
Maybe she does need a nap, because it does solve things. It's early enough in the evening that she could conceivably get some sleep and still be up at a decent time. It's not like she needs to really be up though, or as if that even matters because there isn't any school tomorrow. Emma's off in Boulder doing whatever. Her mother isn't going to be home until the sun comes up, it's just a normal night.
And so, sleep comes... eventually.
--
She stands at the front of a city, walled high and the bricks of the outermost wall gleaming sandstone. The air is cold- the kind of cold that one feels when you're standing in a desert in wintertime. There is a sun in the sky but it doesn't appear to be bathing down any sort of light. Doesn't appear to be blotting out the pinprick light of the stars above them. She's on a path, though no travelers pass through.
The road is long, and leads off to nothing.
At the other side there is a gate, a tall arch with azure bricks and high doors. Torches light the front and the air smells like amber and frankincense. It's a feat of architecture, albeit one from an ancient time. There are the sounds of people talking, just beyond that first gate.
Makayla
This is the age when youth begin to feel the weight of nostalgia. As if in her eighteen years she has experienced enough that she can look back and the distance between where she is and where she was makes her yearn for what she had to leave behind. Growing up is hard.
She remembers the desert outside Las Vegas. She's been to the desert outside the city. Wind sweeping across a barren plain and the cold sun overhead and Makayla tries to wrap her arms around herself.
It doesn't feel as though she's dreaming.
When she turns to look back to see the path's beginning the wind tugs at her hair. She shivers. Turns back around and underneath the chill of the night that scent. She shivers again.
The idle thought that if she goes through that gate she won't be coming back.
She walks towards it.
beginnings
The desert outside of Las Vegas is beautiful in its own rights; people tend to overlook it in favor of the lights of the strip and the visual of coming in to a place like that for the first time. The desert, though, has its own beauty. Its own colors, its own life and this place...
It sounds like there is life. She heads for the gates; she can see people from beyond the walls, a face occasionally peeking down from the small, round opening along the top of the gate. Then, she can hear jibberish from the other side. There is a tension there, as those watch her, unsure if she is there to be a threat to their great, walled city.
The doors do yield, though.
When she steps through the door she is met by two male figures- or at least outwardly male. Masculine is the best word, with darker skin and eyes like starlight. They were clothed in feathers, almost avian in their appearance but they looked at her with a sort of ancient knowing.
Dropped to their knees as though she were royalty.
One spoke-
"Enter, my lady: may Kutha give you joy. Go in, my lady. Such are the rites of the Mistress of Earth."
- and produced an ornate box for her. Carved and inlaid with gold, the same azure as the gates. The same coldness as the sun.
Makayla
This has happened before.
Sharper than she has ever felt déjà vu does Makayla feel as if this has happened before. Not to her. Maybe to her. She has the narrowest definition by which to hem herself in.
She sucks in a breath as the two feather-dressed men approach her and though she wants to back away from them a part of her clings to the notion that this is a dream. It feels like a dream. Real and yet separate. They go down on their knees and she wants to ask them what they're doing but she can't find the breath to make words and then it's 'my lady' this and 'my lady' that.
"What...?"
That box frightens her. Further and further away from the point of no return and if she opens the box she won't be able to put back into it what comes out of it but this doesn't feel like the Greek myths they studied in English and Social Studies three years ago. This feels like something older.
Makayla takes the box and enters the city.
beginnings
The gates yield- all of them, and into the city she goes.
It's large- it's large enough to contain a whole world and Makayla has an innate sense of knowing when she steps in. She knows where her feet fall, she knows each stone on her path. She knows the plants and trees and gardens that hang there. It is a city, but it is not a living city. It is not a dead city, either. This place simply... is. Approximations of people seem to be going about their day. Life has gone on here.
She is met, of course, by another man in robes. His hair is long and his beard is as well. He's not wearing a toga- though he does have quite a lot of fabric in his clothing. They are colorful and seem to be of a high quality. Linen, you see, not wool. He certainly isn't some common creature.
His expression when he sees Makayla is fond.
"The world above doesn't suit you, your majesty. Must you have left so soon?"
Makayla
Your majesty.
The title chafes. She doesn't want it. Her mind is that of an eighteen-year-old girl even if her soul may well be as old as the oldest star. This isn't anything she's ever thought about. Spirituality isn't in her cards.
Emma went to church every Sunday. Emma didn't have much of a choice. Her mother was a devout Catholic. Divorce was nothing she was going to go for and though Emma's parents were separated and living in different cities they were still married. For a time Emma experimented with every religion she could get her hands on. A couple times they smoked pot and giggled their way through a tarot card reading but that was as close to religion as Makayla ever got.
She didn't know the first thing about Mesopotamian mythology. 'Kutha' means nothing to her. It is in her and she could find her way through it as if by muscle memory. But there's dissonance.
These people think she's royalty or something. This feels like the plot to a Disney movie.
"How long have I been gone?" she asks. Playing along and genuinely curious at once.
beginnings
He opens his mouth, as though he would most assuredly have an answer but-
He stops. Quirks his mouth to the side like he doesn't much know how to answer that question. How long had it been.
"Dear lady, in your absence a day feels like an eternity, and you've been gone long enough that I felt the sun blot itself from the sky and return yet again. Inanna feels that your dalliances in the world above are an insult to her," he rolls his eyes.
Makayla
Inanna. Sounds like a jealous lover or a bratty sister. Neither of which Makayla has ever had to deal with being as Emma is not the jealous type and her mother had an IUD put in after she came along.
"Heh," she says. "Well... maybe Inanna should get out more."
Makayla
[lol straight perception again]
Dice: 3 d10 TN8 (1, 7, 9) ( success x 1 )
beginnings
He laughs, as though this is one of the funnier things he's heard today and, in truth, it was. One does not receive much in the way of humor in the underworld. They continue walking, unless Makayla stops. There is still a world bustling around them. Scribes taking notes. Potters doing their work, shrines to be tended and what-have-you.
There is, however, something that pings at the back of her mind. A sound that doesn't seem to fit with the rustling of society moving around them. The sound was truly hard to place, but only remarkable in the sense that it was out-of-place.
The vizier stops, long enough to give Makayla a look like he heard it, too.
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