nexus_crossings | Leather and fine wine

Leather and fine wine

The days are getting darker, the air has started to bite. Naturally this means that a certain Winter spirit is starting to brighten. With Hazel's beautiful influence all around him, he's been spurred on to keep busy and ready himself to do an equally (if not better) job. While people may have seen him marching around the Nexus, often with full arms, today he's taking the time to stay in the Nexus to do a little work. Back on his world the weather took a turn into torrential rain. Here, however, it's dry. Cold, blustery, but dry.

Reynard has his trademark leather coat spread out on one of the tables in the Plaza. Two pairs of boots are waiting on the ground, one pair noticeably newer and smaller than the other. His feathered hat rests on one of the chairs, carefully weighted down with a brush. Perhaps it's no surprise then that Reynard is dressed rather lightly then, with his coat all laid out. It's around this table that Reynard moves, brushing and wiping and occasionally taking a sip from a cup. Those who approach will be met with the rich scent of mulled wine and the more cloying smell of whatever he's using to treat the leather.

Finally he pauses for a moment, thinking over his cup before asking, "What is your least desirable quality? What could you stand to improve about yourself?"

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"Antarctica." Reynard brightens up immediately, face splitting in a large smile. "I went to the Arctic on an expedition once. Beautiful! I haven't been to Antarctica yet..."

"Reynard North." He takes the offered hand in a firm grip and brisk shake. "You're... not a zombie, are you? Or a walking corpse?"

"I'm assuming your expedition didn't get attacked by a space monster. You're lucky. Antarctica was beautiful, but also very dangerous." Spoken by someone who had very bad memories of being stuck in the cold, blinded by white, and stumbling through the snow, terrified he would die before his team found him.

But of course that hadn't been what killed him.

Kinner warmly shakes Reynard's hand and can't hold back a quiet laugh. "No, I don't think I'm a zombie. Or a walking corpse. I mean, I've still got a heartbeat and all my body parts are still working."

Get what by a what now? A frown forms on his brow. "No. No it didn't."

"I'm happy to hear it." Really, he is. Not that he's having the best time with humanity in general, but a living human is better than a walking corpse.

He glances at his cup and then crooks a smile at the man. "I'll tell you what. Tell me a story or two. What happened to you. This 'space monster' and 'dying'. In return I'll pour you a cup of warm mulled wine."

"You're one of the lucky ones. Well, I guess it's more that we were the unlucky ones. There's a lot that can kill you in Antarctica, but folks don't usually get eaten by space aliens."

Make that two of them. Kinner's very happy he's here in one piece and feels alive.

Kinner gives a crooked smile back. He has some good stories from Antarctica and he would like warm mulled wine. "I'll take you up on that offer. It's a bit of a long story. I was the hired cook for a geographical survey expedition - a thirty-seven man team. We were attacked by a creature from outer space. We found it frozen in the ice and took it back to our campsite. One of our biologists, a man named Blair, thought it would be a good idea to unthaw and study it."

Kinner says it's a long story and Reynard just sets his cup down, moving to the box tucked under the table. He pulls out a thermos, setting it on the table, and then grabs a cup. Which is when Kinner mentions their biologists.

Standing suddenly, Reynard looks him dead in the eye, waving the cup at him to punctuate his words. "Never. Trust. Scientists. Especially biologists. They can seem all harmless, but..." He wrinkles up his nose and returns to his task of pouring Kinner some wine.

"Eh. Some of 'em were all right. McReady, our meteorologist, is a decent sort. Norris, our physicist, thought unthawing the alien was a horrible idea. Blair wasn't a bad guy, even, he just did something boneheaded and got us all killed." He's not sure why he's defending his scientist coworkers, he sure wasn't one himself, but they had been a team.

He watches Reynard pour the wine, continuing the story.

"The creature turned to be some sort of shapeshifter. It could wrap around people and digest 'em, copying their memories, then build a copy of them out of...itself, I guess. One of its human victims was none other than yours truly. I let someone into my quarters, they sprouted tentacles, and regrettin' it was the last thing I had time to do."

Kinner gets a vaguely suspicious look while he defends his coworkers, but when no biologist is explicitly mentioned Reynard feels vindicated enough to return to his task. He pours out the still hot mulled wine and offers over the cup before refilling his own cup and closing the thermos.

"That sounds… unpleasant." He takes a sip of wine and then eyes Kinner. "How can I be sure you're actually you? How can you be sure?"

Kinner usually wouldn't have anything good to say about Blair, and to be honest his particular biologist is not in his good books. Now he wonders what Reynard's beef with biologists is, but he doesn't ask. Reynard probably has his reasons. Kinner sure does.

"I think I'm still me." He answers the next set of questions as he accepts the cup from Reynard. "Well...if I was secretly a big blue slimy tentacled thing with red eyes, I think that's something I'd know. That thing's walkin' around Antarctica looking like me."

"Maybe it thinks it's really whoever it's eaten. Until it eats the next person." Reynard thinks about that for a moment too long and sends a shiver down his spine. "Imagine that. Being a creature and never knowing until suddenly you were eating someone alive."

He lets that sit for an uncomfortable minute before glancing at Kinner again. "You said it was an alien?"

Kinner brushes off the possibility. "Well, I've met plenty of people since then, and not felt any desire to eat any of them."

He sips the wine, shivering as he does.

"Yes - we're pretty sure the creature came from space. We found it frozen near a spaceship that must've belonged to it before it crashed near our campsite. That's why we wanted to study it. Not every day you find that."

"Good enough proof." He supposes. Though a hint of suspicion will remain. After all, that could just be the effect of the Nexus.

"A spaceship?" Well of course. How else would it get to Earth. "What does a shapeshifter's spaceship even look like? Did it change shape too?"

"It looked kind of like a flying saucer. Looked like a submarine, though very vaguely - like nothing we'd ever seen before. It was frozen in the ice, too, and we figured the creature was its pilot when it crashed."

Kinner gave an outraged huff. "Fine way for it to thank us by eating us. We risk our necks to get it outta the ice and that's what we get in return."

"Evidently not such a good pilot."

It still seems odd that Kinner has been eaten, yet here he stands, perfectly normal. Is the Nexus secretly an alien's stomach? Ugh. What an awful thought. "Have you tried going back?"

Kinner laughs, not sure whether he should wish that the alien had been a better pilot.

"Well, I'm dead, so I don't think I can go back. I haven't taken the risk." Kinner doesn't quite understand all the rules of the Nexus, but he's almost certain you can't go back home when you're dead. And Kinner was digested by an alien, so he's pretty dead. "I last remember it grabbing me with a tentacle, and then I woke up here."

Edited 2018-11-15 04:45 (UTC)

"Maybe you never got eaten at all, then," Reynard suggests. "Perhaps you were simply transported here. Maybe even before it got a chance to copy your face."

"Still not gonna take the chance." Kinner shakes his head. "Until I meet up with another member of my team and find out whether there's another me running around, I'm gonna assume the worst. I know what that thing can do. What was your expedition for?"

"Exploration, mostly. Charting routes and trying to reach the centre. We didn't get that far, but not for lack of trying, and not because of me. There was nothing groundbreaking about our expedition. A valiant attempt, but one that didn't go as the captain planned. But I it could have gone worse, by the sounds of things."

"Mapping, then." Kinner nods. He's familiar enough with that kind of expedition. "We were studying the magnetic properties of the Pole. Well, I wasn't, but other men on my team were. And you're right, I'm certain your expedition didn't end as badly as mine did. No alien shapeshifters, for example. That was just our bad luck and stupidity. Damn Blair."

"No, we just had the cold to contend with, and animals. I didn't mind, but the rest of the crew struggled with what it threw at us. Was your expedition privately funded...?"

"I don't remember. I think we had government funding, but don't quote me on it." Kinner faces Reynard, thoughtful. "You sound like a talented explorer. If it hadn't been for what happened, and we'd shared the same world, I would've asked Commander Garry to find a place for you on our team."

Reynard beams, slapping a hand over his heart in a playfully charmed way. "Such flattery!" Chuckling, he shakes his head. "I think my methods might have been a little outdated for your team. I'm not sure I would have had anything to bring to your techniques and technology."

"What was the date?" Now Kinner's kind of curious - he read up on other polar expedition out of curiosity, but is no expert. He's guessing it took place in another world, anyway. "Our own expedition took place in 1938, and the South Pole was reached in 1911. I'm guessing yours was earlier?"

"You went early enough, then." And it means that Kinner is from a different era than most of the people here. That must take some adjusting. "Ours was eighteen ninety-three to ninety-six. Not the earliest, but not the latest either."

"We were studying the magnetic properties of the South Pole. That and a few other things, but magnetism was the big one." Kinner's adjusted better than expected, mostly because he has no choice. "We had relatively few encounters with wildlife, though Benning, our mechanic, almost got pulled underwater by a leopard seal when we first showed up. Not so many animals once we got inland. Animals gave you troube?"

"Why are magnets so interesting?" It seems that scientists find the oddest things fascinating.

"I was our team's man for dealing with the animals and the fickle terrain. We had an encounter with a polar bear which was a little close for comfort, but it wasn't the first bear I'd fought. We managed to keep all the other animals at a much safer distance."

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