four - place the moon at my eyes

[kingsroads]

[ the post goes up late Thursday, into the evening hours. and MAN is Strange so thankful for this magical journal system. He really doesn't want to have to write this multiple times. ]

One of our new visitors is an enchanter of some sort. He has cursed me and trapped Sabriel.

Francis, McGonagall, I shall need your help. I cannot save Sabriel alone. Likewise, I will need to help of any new magicians who might have arrived with the visitors. As I cannot tell the new magicians this myself, I am relying on the rest of the ship's crew to pass on this message as I cannot myself. Please meet me at my room—the proper one, not my cursed apartment.

Persson, Sheehan, I have a question of you. How can one dream up an item they had back home? Does it work the same as the communal dream of Goodsir and Jopson's rooms or can I do this by myself? I know the item's properties perfectly as I created it myself, I simply need it here. Do not come to me in person, simply respond with your journal.

As for the rest of the ship, I need a mirror and something dead—flowers, perhaps? Please leave them outside my door if you have them. There is a spell I can still cast, a spell to see what my enemy is doing. I do not know who my enemy is but the enchanter hurt Sabriel. Undoubtedly he is my enemy and undoubtedly he is on this ship.

Stay safe.

Comments

[mayiofferyouacoughdrop]

McGonagall knocks at Strange's door once she's gathered the requested materials. She's not sure what she's going to find inside, but she has a feeling that he either has done or will do something impulsive, but she's braced for it, whatever it is.

[kingsroads]

Strange has indeed done something impulsive in the sense that he knocked back some concentrated madness and is hallucinating a teensy bit right now. He opens the door, looks at McGonagall, and then the mouse that provided the madness and he can still feel running around his brain just freaks the hell out.

Strange stumbles backwards, tripping over a book he threw on the ground and wiping out in the process. Because this woman is a cat. She's simultaneously a woman and a cat, not the woman who became a cat who gifted him the madness in the first place. A cat and a woman that exists in the same space.

This is amazing and terrifying all at the same time: from his position on the floor, Strange looks up at McGonagall with an expression that's half awe, half outright fear.

[mayiofferyouacoughdrop]

Her eyes widen and she moves forward to help him. "Mr Strange, are you quite all right?" He'd known she was coming--why on earth does he seem shocked to see her?

[kingsroads]

He closes his eyes, scrunching them tight like a child receiving a surprise, in the hopes that the cat part of her will go away and the mouse part of him will quiet down. When Strange opens his eyes, he is visibly relieved that McGonagall seems like a woman again.

But they have business to do. He reaches into his coat pocket to pull out the dead things Fitzjames brought: the wilted flower and some mustard stalks, all of which look a little crumpled thanks to Strange eating some floor. He looks over at McGonagall expectantly: did she bring the mirror?

[mayiofferyouacoughdrop]

She's a little surprised that he's not talking--his message hadn't mentioned his actual curse, just that he needed help--but she assumes that it's part of the enchantment somehow. She offers him the mirror, along with parchment, quills, and ink. "I don't suppose a simple finite would do the trick?" she asks. She doubts it. Complicated enchantments usually involve complicated countercurses.

[kingsroads]

Strange brightens up a little as he takes the supplies from McGonagall. These will be very useful, though how she managed to carry them this far with her paws—hands?—paws, he will never know.

At her question, Strange shakes his head. He starts to explain some of the intricacies of fairy magic before realizing halfway through that oh yeah, his voice is still magically removed. Great. He takes some of the parchment and quills and messily scribbles a few sentences.

Fairy magic. It is very hard to break: I am still under a fairy curse myself (not the one of silence a different one). I have tried a simple spell of revelation already but you are willing to try.

There's another pause before Strange continues to scribble. He's getting ink all over his fingertips but does not seem to mind.

When I cast the spell with the mirror, you might not see anything. Do not worry. I suspect the enemy is a fairy and only madmen can see fairies if the fairy chooses to conceal itself. Fortunately Minerva, I am quite mad.

[mayiofferyouacoughdrop]

Fortunately Minvera, I am quite mad.

She reads the line a few times, then gives him an exasperated look. He hadn't been mad when she'd last spoken to him, so she can only assume it's something he's done to himself. "I sincerely doubt that is fortunate," she tells him archly as she takes out her wand. Even if he needs to be in the state to cast the spell, she wouldn't call it fortunate. "Finite." she flicks the wands in the simple countercurse, but--predictably--nothing happens. Still, if you don't at least try the simple way first, sometimes you end up looking like an ass wasting your time on something complicated when the easiest spell might have sufficed.

"Very well. Cast your spell."

[kingsroads]

As McGonagall casts the spell, Strange finds himself inherently standing up a bit straighter and squaring his shoulders back. Her magic feels like rules, structured, like a sonnet or a poem, something you memorize and study and practice. He can clap out the beats in his head. If we shadows have offended, finite incatatum. It is magic that Wellington would like, which means that Strange likes it because Wellington would like it. But it is magic that he worries won't work with fairy magic, the magic of the land itself, a wordless song that you twirl to and keen into the night.

Still, he has occasionally been wrong before. He might be wrong now. Probably not, but you never know. And Minerva is a powerful magician and she is offering her help so he shall take it.

Strange takes the mirror and places it on the ground. He sets the dead plants on either side of the mirror and draws a circle on it. And then suddenly, the reflection shifts. It shows a ceiling that is not his ceiling, a different part of the Terror.

Strange picks up the mirror and moves it around, trying to catch a glimpse of whoever his enemy might be. He looks back at McGonagall, giving her a wide grin, an expression of 'see? Look what I did!'...

...and then almost drops the mirror entirely when he spots a familiar looking head of thistledown colored hair. That wide grin shifts very quickly to a strained one as Strange looks down at the mirror with utter loathing.

[sssstephen]

Like a moth over the shoulder the Gentleman can feel something tickling the back of his neck. He whips himself around and raises his brow, looking off into the nothing with a deeply annoyed scowl.

The magician can see him now, but it doesn't mean his fun has to be over.

[mayiofferyouacoughdrop]

McGonagall doesn't see the person in the mirror, but she can practically smell the magic in the air, and the look on Strange's face is very telling. She motions to the quill and parchment. "What do you see?"

[kingsroads]

Strange starts on a long rant which once again is undercut by the fact that he damn well can't speak. He looks very frustrated at the mirror for a second then looks back at McGonagall (he can hear the sound of cats again, meowing in his ears, but these sound younger and plaintive, almost sad) then moves to the parchment to scribble down a few quick words.

It is him. He is on the Terror and he torments me still.

[mayiofferyouacoughdrop]

"'Him'?" she repeats. "An old enemy, I assume?" She's familiar enough with those. "Is there anything that can be done, aside from protection spells?" He seems to think his enemy will remain invisible to the sane, and she's willing to take his word for it. If that is the case, then the only thing left to do is to protect the ship and the rest of the crew.

[kingsroads]

The meowing in his ears now sounds like crying. Like an impenetrable sadness that Strange cannot place. It sounds to him like the cry of sadness he made, when he looked over Arabella's body and accepted that she was gone. It is not coming from McGonagall but it is, just as it is not coming from him (though it is) and it is not coming from Sabriel (though it is).

Strange blinks a little as he looks up at McGonagall, trying to push past the sadness in his eyes and in her...heart? Whiskers? It might be both of those, it is hard to place.

He takes the quill and starts to write.

Protecting the others might be best. He has already hurt those close to me and I suspect he will attempt to harm others. You are as strong a magician as I, possibly even more so. I am certain you will keep them safe no matter what happens to me.

Because if this happens like it happened back home, circling in on itself, events repeating, then Strange knows it will not end well for him. There's a pause before he takes the paper back and scratches in,

I am sorry about your children? apprentices? kittens.

None of the words feel right, though, and he can't help but look at the paper with a quizzical frown.

[mayiofferyouacoughdrop]

She stares at him. Kittens. Her kittens. The word hits her in the heart in a way she hadn't expected. She doesn't think she ever would have referred to her students that way--silly. Fanciful. But it suits. The children she's guarded and taught and helped to raise. Her kittens.

She swallows. "Thank you, Mr. Strange. I've lost too many students. It doesn't get easier." She pulls a smile onto her face. "I will do my best for the rest of the ship. I believe I have one or two tricks I might be able to employ."

[kingsroads]

Students? No, that's not the word either. Is it? Strange looks a little confused as McGonagall mentions her students and his brain tries to suggest what the word might be. The confusion fades a moment later when she smiles: he matches her smile with a shaky one of his own. The reassurance is what matters.

He reaches over to McGonagall's hand and gives it a little bit of a squeeze, something that he hopes can convey what he's feeling: thank you.

[mayiofferyouacoughdrop]

She nods and after a moment's hesitation, squeezes it back. "You're welcome," she says. "Please contact me if there's anything else you need. I'll be here in a moment." She's discovered that she can Apparate, so long as she stays within the confines of the dream.

[kingsroads]

Strange looks a little surprised by 'here in a moment' and starts to ask for more specifics...but right, he can't talk. There's a brief moment where Strange looks like he's going to tear his hair out before his expression shifts back into something neutral.

He needs to get to work. So, with a little nod, Strange turns back to his books to start crafting a possible spell.