TIMING: Current, after Black and White and Desperate All Over (also see The Sound of Silence) LOCATION: Fully Booked PARTIES: Leah and Regan SUMMARY: Regan stops at the bookstore that Cass pointed out to her, hoping to find some answers in the pages of medical texts. Leah has other thoughts about what's going on. CONTENT WARNING: None
Regan had scoured her own library dozens of times, coming up completely without answer other than a few poorly sketched mushrooms in an old journal. As much as she didn’t want anyone seeing her like this, it was time to source some other help. She frowned down at her feet, noting her footsteps had grown eerily silent, as she headed for the only bookstore in town that she knew of: Fully Booked. That girl from the park got her most of the way there, and she was determined to take it from here. But she’d practically ran right into the closed door. Regan backed up, sighing as no sound came out, and pushed her way in.
She tried to ignore the stares from the couple of people perusing books inside. People sometimes stared at her anyway. She was always pale. But as she looked down at her stark white hand, she knew this was beyond even her normal, and it didn’t help that every article of clothing she put on ended up going straight to monotone. She even tried her brightest turtleneck – the beige one. Looking around, she located the counter and tried to get the woman’s attention. But when she opened her mouth to say “hello,” nothing came out. That was still happening? She scrunched her face in irritation.
Still, there were other ways to get attention. She gave the counter a light rap with her fist and tried to hook the woman into making eye contact. Once that was achieved, Regan nodded eagerly. Now what? She twisted her lips. This was frustrating. She assumed she’d be able to explain herself, but the laryngitis was in full force. Regan pointed out toward a notepad she saw, asking silent permission to have it handed to her. She gestured to her mouth and shook her head. I can’t speak.
The duck herding book deliveries were finally… finally slowing down. Still, Leah had piles and piles of them in the back room, no matter how cheap she tried to make the books, nobody in Wicked’s Rest wanted them. So instead, she was stuck writing letters of donation to the closest wildlife reserves in the area, feeling a bit guilty that these donations weren’t out of the kindness of her heart but of the desperation to clear some room in her stockroom.
A light rap on the counter shook her out of her guilt, and she looked up with a bit of a jump. There had been no indication someone was in front of her until the knock- she hadn’t even heard footsteps. Still, she greeted the pale woman in front of her with a smile. “Oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t hear you coming!” she said, closing her laptop and getting a better look at the woman’s pale complexion. She wondered, briefly, if it were a very hungry zombie staring back at her. Or someone allergic to the sun with a very specific fashion sense.
The woman, for her part, looked like she was trying to communicate something, but it wasn’t until she pointed to the notepad that Leah knew what she was looking for. Okay, allergic to the sun, specific fashion sense, and …couldn’t speak? This was one for the books. “Oh! Yes, okay…”
Hastily, Leah ripped out the first page of the notepad, full of scrawls about what to look up next in the Scribary, and stuffed it into her pocket. Then, she slid the notepad over to the eccentric woman, placing a pen on top as well. “I’m glad to see you’ve been pulled in by the appeal and addiction of literature. Are you looking for anything in particular? Right now we’re running a sale on Gardening Books, and 99% off of this fantastic work I have about duck herding. Are you interested?”
Regan’s relief at having the pad of paper and pen slid over to her was short-lived. What was the woman talking about? Duck herding? There was no way Regan heard that correctly. And what had she so frantically torn off the top of the pad? The woman’s words all kind of blurred together, as did the rows and rows of books behind her, and Regan wasn’t sure which of the two of them was more confused right now. She groped for the pen, annoyed at how clumsy it felt in her fingers.
At least she could write. But what to write? How could she even explain this madness? She looked down at the blank paper with her face scrunched up. Right. Regan slowly started writing. “Mushroom laryngitis.” She tore the page off and showed it to the woman. Well, that probably clarified nothing at all. Regan tried again. “Encounter with unusual mushrooms. Now I can’t speak. My senses are impaired. My shirt is supposed to be beige.” She hesitated, unsure how much offering the name of the mushroom might be of assistance. While the others knew about it, Kaden clearly hadn’t. Still, she included it: “Carbad an bháis.” With that, she shared this page with her, too. Maybe she should have included her complete lack of interest in duck herding somewhere in the explanation.
Was it rude to peek while someone was writing if the message was for you? Leah wasn’t sure. She drummed her fingers on the desk, looking around the shop and trying to seem appropriately nonchalant, even though she was dying to know more about this strange person in front of her. It didn’t take her long to show her what she wrote, though. But Leah didn’t really have an answer for the words laid out in front of her. Mushroom laryngitis. Her mouth opened, and then closed tight and opened again. For a moment, her mind drifted to the fae, and their affinity for mushroom circles. But it was not the season, and their circles didn’t cause laryngitis, as far as she could remember. But she was smart enough to know that not everything they had written on the fae was accurate, thanks to their tricky nature.
By the time she opened her mouth to speak again, the woman had already started writing once more. She squinted her eyes to try to read the writing upside down as it was appearing on the page. Politeness be damned, now she was invested. When the paper was presented to her once more, she had already almost read it all. She looked behind the pale, strange, mushroom infested woman and around her store, noticing that it only housed a few people besides the two of them, all of which were a good distance away.. Still, she felt the need to keep her voice down, to keep what the woman wrote down on the paper hidden under wraps. Because there wasn’t much doubt in her mind that whatever she was experiencing was Supernatural.
“Okay”, she said, a little breathless with a nod. She let out a sigh. “Okay.” She blinked, and then placed her hand on the woman’s, nodding a little at her. “Before we start, I want you to understand that what’s happening to you has probably happened before. I’m confident that we’ll get your senses and your beigeness back, as long as you understand that the methods you come across might appear a little unorthodox.”
She didn’t know if this woman believed in the supernatural. She didn’t even know if she was human. There was a heartbeat there, sure, but it was slower than most. Was that due to the mushroom as well? “I guess… before I go looking for something that could help, I probably need to know if this encounter was… accidental or on purpose. Did you happen upon them in the woods? Put them on an eclectic flavored pizza?”
It was obvious that the woman was watching as Regan was writing, but she just took that as a sign of being invested and helpful. It was good. That she seemed alarmed but not scared was also a good sign. This was far more promising than that fae child she’d ran into yesterday.
Her hearing went dull and quiet for a moment, the woman’s words difficult to make out, as if she wasn’t speaking so quietly already. Like she was hearing them from underwater. Regan’s mind flashed to her training, the first time she took to the water, the hands that held her down and the frantic way she’d clawed at them. Cliodhna had complained about the thick lines her fingers had razed into her skin for days. They were pitiful, she said. When Cliodhna had taken to the water herself, she accepted it without scramble for air. At least, according to her. Regan frowned. Right. Focus. She inhaled a deep breath if only to remind herself that she could. On the paper, she wrote sorry. What had she said? Fox methods? It didn’t matter. Regan flicked the pen against the paper and wrote need to find which antifungal to use.
This was good, though – she had someone’s attention. Someone with resources. And she could hear her a little better now, like cotton had been removed from her ears; she knew it was only a matter of time before it would be stuffed back in. Regan nodded, eyes alight, allowing herself some hope that the woman knew a thing or two about what she was talking about. She had doubted her decision to come here, but now it seemed like the most fruitful thing she’d done over the last few days. In the woods, Regan scrawled, went too close by mistake. They grow around death. No pizza. And the others had tried to warn her. They would know how to fix this. But nothing could make her go crawling back to them. Nothing. Regan had tried to flick through her own books that she’d managed to pilfer from her Saol Eile collection before leaving, but she couldn’t find anything about these mushrooms. She tore off the piece of paper and handed it to the woman, even though it was clear the woman had already seen what she’d written. On the new page, Regan added, I’m a doctor. Where are your medical texts?
The woman seemed deep in thought, and with her face twisted in introspection, Leah really had a chance to get a better look at her, and something struck her. Between the black and white clothing, the pale complexion, and the lack of a speaking voice, she almost reminded Leah of a… mime? No, it couldn’t be, right? She opened her mouth, ready to ask more questions, when she was writing again. “So this is just from inhaling the spores, then? Interesting…”, she said, coming from behind the counter so she could search the store for something that might help the woman.
Hidden among the shelves of Fully Booked were a number of works about the supernatural that Leah considered quite reputable, although she had to classify them as fiction to keep the secret of the town under wraps. Whenever someone needed real advice, like the mime-woman, Leah always pointed them in that direction. A new page was presented to her as she walked by, and what was written there gave her pause. “Um…”, she pressed her lips together, bringing the woman close so no one else would hear. “Did you ever consider that what’s going on with you might not have a medical explanation? I mean, strange things happen in this town all the time, don’t you think?” Choosing to momentarily ignore the mime and her (frankly) ridiculous request, she grabbed her wrist and gently pulled her toward the fiction section, already thinking of a supernatural plant book that might have an answer for them. “Maybe we should explore other avenues first!”
Regan nodded. Yes, just from the spores. Not a fashion statement. It was beside the point that this was just about her usual level of pale anyway. It felt good to be believed, but it was unusual. Had this happened to someone she knew, she wasn’t sure she would have extended the same courtesy. She would need to return someday and thank this woman – finding other words to do so, of course. Presuming she’d be able to speak.
The woman seemed deep in thought, considering something. Did she know what this was? Or – oh. Regan deflated. As far as she was concerned, everything had a medical explanation; the real question was whether or not it was known yet. A silent sigh left her lips, and she shook her head no. Before Regan could take to the paper again, she had the woman’s fingers around her wrist – fingers that were burning hot – and was being tugged into one of the aisles. She looked around, trying to read some of the spines. Why did that book cover have a dragon on it? What kind of medical text section was th– fiction. It was fiction. Regan dug her heels into the ground and stopped the two of them in their tracks. She crossed her arms, and gave a pointed look at the woman, who she knew was trying her best to be helpful.
Fiction? She mouthed the word, clear as day.
Leah paused. Curse her efficient, readable labeling system! It was entirely inefficient at a time like this. “Have you ever heard the phrase, ‘One man’s trash is another man’s treasure?’”, she asked, rocking on her heels a bit. “It sounds otherworldly, but sometimes the same is true for fiction. Plus, my teenage employees are terrible at organizing, so… who knows what we’ll find!” Leah knew exactly what she would find, but this poor, naive woman didn’t seem like she was going to be too keen on it.
She wasn’t good with confrontation, at least not with customers. So, like an asshole, she took advantage of this woman’s temporary inability to speak. “Right!”, she said, clapping her hands together. She ran her fingers over the spines, pulling out a few and handing them over to the woman before she had a chance to protest. “Let’s see…, ‘Mushrooms and the Shapes they Take, Supernatural Quandaries for Dummies, Plants and Mushrooms in Maine: An Expert’s Guide”. That last one was passable as legitimate, it wasn’t until chapter two that it started listing supernatural diseases. “I do think these will all be very helpful, but if you’re insisting on looking at the medical texts, we have a small section back there by the children’s section.”
Before Regan could gesture out a protest, she was having a pile of books stacked into her arms. Betrayed by her own ears, she barely heard any of the titles. But she looked down as a book with the word supernatural was shoved toward her, and she visibly bristled, giving the woman a look that was equal parts desperation and irritation. This certainly wasn’t the kind of help she had been looking for. Regan buckled under the weight of the books and the woman had at least stopped piling them on. What was that about medical texts near the children’s section? She couldn’t use her hands to wave no more, but she shook her head to get the point across. This was enough. She hobbled back toward the counter, dropped the books on it, and took a closer look.
One of them at least appeared to be a field guide. That could have some useful information. She flicked through it in thought, and it looked reputable enough. The other ones, though, made her stomach curdle. She could almost see Cliodhna, disappointment etched deep. Regan shuddered and pushed all but the field guide away, then took out her wallet – which was also now entirely black and white. As were the bills she had on her, and her formerly-blue credit card. She grumbled silently and handed it to the woman, communicating an utter lack of amusement with her monochrome face.
This wasn’t going well. The first rule of customer service was to appeal to what the customer wanted, and this mime-woman clearly didn’t want what she was selling. But, she decided, the first rule of helping clueless citizens of Wicked’s Rest was to play the fool while offering whatever you could. These works probably would help her customer, but it was up to her to trust the process. Leah couldn’t help but urge her along. “I know it doesn’t make any sense”, she said at the woman’s first sign of protest. “But it’s not going to hurt at all to at least read these books, okay? Maybe they’ll surprise you.”
She followed her customer back to the counter, putting on her best, fake, store owner smile. She wished that she could come out and say it- that what this girl was experiencing was almost definitely supernatural, and the longer she denied it the harder it would be to cure, but there was a certain reputation to uphold, and, as a Scribe, a secret to uphold, too. As ran the dull black and white credit card, she caught the woman’s eye contact. “Bring it back if you don’t find anything useful. I’ll give you a full discount. And- here…” She ripped another page off of the top of her notebook, writing her name and phone number there, pushing it over to her. “In case you think of anything else that might help.”
The woman’s insistence only made Regan more firm in her convictions, and she crossed her arms as her card was run. She had half a mind to stick her tongue out and just storm out, which she hadn’t done in many years. Apparently having her voice taken from her brought back some of her recalcitrant attitude from long ago. But of course, she wouldn’t let herself do that. So she waited, her eyes narrowed and her frown deep as she looked at the woman who seemed so annoyingly sure of herself.
After what seemed like an eternity, she had her stupid black and white card back in hand, and she stuffed the probably-useless book into her bag. She looked toward the ones she was choosing to leave behind, her eyes hovering for a moment, but… no. She was desperate, but not that desperate. Regan stared down at the notebook page that the woman had torn off. Leah. An interesting woman. Maybe too interesting. Regan hesitated, but decided to grab the page. She folded it and stuck that in her bag, too. With a quick wave, she ducked out of the store, allowing herself a kernel of hope that she wouldn’t need to come back for the books left behind on the counter.
