005 | Dictated/Spam

[hellofist]

Halloween is... for candy and costumes, right? Scary movie marathons, haunted houses. [There's a short, thoughtful pause here.] Or haunted castles, I guess.

This is first Halloween, for me. Not really sure... how it works. What do you do, where you're from?

Will need a costume...

[For anyone who happens to be out on a walk today, Cass can be found sitting on the grass outside the castle with a rather large pumpkin, a set of plastic carving tools, and an electric carving knife that's been kind of tossed off to the side. Apparently, the castle decided to get cute with her when she asked for something to carve her pumpkin with.]

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[ofhope]

[ Christ everyone and tea. But Lucrezia lives here, so there is definitely tea. Before her there was just Earl Grey and a tea set gathering dust. ]

Yes, of course... I guess I'll wait in the kitchen, then.

[hellofist]

[Hey, tea is how Alfred shows his love okay. It's like a comfort food by now for Cass, it's something she shares with people she cares about.

And before long she'll show up at the kitchen window with a cake in hand, peeking in to see if she can find him. Windows are the best doors, you know.]

[ofhope]

[ He associates tea with a different sort of relationship, but there's no need to get into that. The tea set will be ready, anyway, with hot tea steaming and a maid standing quietly in the kitchen's entrance. The other is near the foyer but it looks like she won't be needing to answer the front door when he spots her through the window.

Well, there is a back door through the kitchen, which he'll be polite enough to get up and open for her. No need to crawl through windows if the door's two feet away, especially when a cake's precious life is on the line. ]

What flavor is it?

[hellofist]

[Party pooper, but Cass will behave and come in through the door if he's going to worry about it so much.]

Marble cake, chocolate frosting. Should have asked... what your favorite is.

[She'll eat anything, after all. Oops.]

[ofhope]

[ Joshua worries about...very few things. He's just being polite. Normally he does remember his manners, even if they're sometimes delayed or even at a time when they shouldn't be. Time flows so very differently for him. ]

It's strawberry.

[ But he grins, clearly approving of her voice anyway as he shuts the door and follows her back into the kitchen where hot tea is steaming and the maid waits off to the side in case of new orders. ]

But really, I think my favorite type of cake is cake. I guess it should go with stories.

[hellofist]

Strawberry. Will remember.

[She takes the cake over to the table, smiling at the maid in a silent greeting because what is a maid if not a lady Alfred? Alfred always got smiles as thanks, so it only seems right.]

I like stories... as much as cake. Will be good afternoon.

[ofhope]

I'm not sure what kind of story you're expecting.

[ The maid will just mutely nod, and Joshua will be the one to pull a chair out for Cass before he sits back down. ]

I haven't seen her in over eight years.

[ Normally he struggles with telling time so crisply, but in the time it took her to get here he did some reviewing of his old journal. He can math. ]

[hellofist]

[She sits, scooting the chair closer to him.]

Any kind. Whatever you... want to tell, is good.

[ofhope]

[ Meh meh, he shrugs like this is really no big deal while cutting up the cake, and there's nothing in the way he sits to currently suggest anything different. ]

You're the one who wants me to tell. So what kind of story do you want?

[hellofist]

Why not start with... how she is? What she's like?

[ofhope]

[ Such a broad question. One he can't honestly answer, although everything in his body language makes it seem so. He believes what he says, or he wouldn't say it. ]

She's perfect. Kind, patient, beautiful... Smart, obviously. Everything a woman should be. [ Nevermind that he hasn't seen her since they was kids. ] We used to want to be explorers.

[hellofist]

[Honestly, that's about how Cass would describe Steph and she'd probably have about the same body language going on. She smiles, already leaning forward in interest.]

Explorers? What would you explore?

[ofhope]

Anything, everything? Egypt, maybe, and southern Africa. Hm, but as kids we could only go what was within walking distance of the orphanage.

[hellofist]

Discover anything good, together?

[ofhope]

A crypt. A tomb. A demon.

[hellofist]

A demon?

[Welp, now you've definitely got her interest even more than before, Joshua.]

Tell that story.

[ofhope]

He wasn't that impressive. Not anymore. Especially after wasting away in that tomb for one or two hundred years, something like that, and not having his horns...

It's much more interesting who was in the tomb, although I didn't find that out until much later.

[hellofist]

[He's a fantastic story teller, Cass is discovering. He's got her almost on the edge of her seat, cake completely forgotten. That takes talent.]

Who was there?

[ofhope]

[ He stabs the end of his cake slice, waiting until after he answers to take a bite (he's no barbarian).]

Mary Magdalene. And I found out she was an Apostle. Like all Apostles who don't fight, her fate was sealed as tightly as that crypt.

[hellofist]

[She frowns, unsure.]

Should I... know who that is?

[ofhope]

Nobody ever read you the Bible? It's the greatest work of fiction ever to stretch across the Earth.

But there's always more than one version of a story.

[hellofist]

[It's now that Cass looks away from him, reaching for the cake to secure her own slice.]

No one ever read... anything to me.

[ofhope]

More the shame. There's plenty here to read from if you ever want anyone here to.

[ This cake goes pretty well with the tea, he'll give it that. ]

One thing that is true is that she was afflicted by demons...but only one remained with her even after her death.

His name was Chrono. It was rather amazing when my sister and I found him...the idea that demons were real. But he was just a shell, his own fault for giving up his horns. For Mary herself, I can't say. He kept it all to himself.

[hellofist]

[She glances at him again, to see if he really means that. No one has ever offered to read anything to her before, but it's hard to ignore how much faster she could learn things that way. There wouldn't be any struggling with her own limitations, she could just learn new stories, catch up on the things people are just expected to know about.

She'll ask later, maybe. For now, she doesn't want to distract Joshua from telling his story.]

What happened to him?

[ofhope]

[ He doesn't mind. Lucrezia asks for stories a lot, after all! Granted he recites most by memory, when it doesn't fail, but he can't remember everything. ]

He ended up serving the Magdalene Order. Big surprise.

[ This part Joshua sounds rather sarcastic about, though his body language remains relaxed and uncaring, like it usually does unless a threat is perceived. ]

I don't know where my sister went.