theweirdos | TLV: Inbox

While his family home most certainly did have a telephone, it certainly wasn't the entrenched technology that it had become by Nancy's time and even beyond that, Wiktor had usually done his communication through letters as he'd traveled. Letters or telegraph. As such, it's really no wonder that he seeks her out in person, doing his best not to find her in a moment when she seemed engrossed in some other activity.

"Pani Nancy Downs?"

She is, as it happens, up on deck, smoking a cigarette and watching the ever-shifting starscape fly by. She stiffens a little when he approaches, and glances at him sidelong, brow knitting in something between puzzlement and challenge.

"What did you call me?" There's suspicion there, an anticipation of insult.

He looks genuinely baffled at this response.

"...your name?" A pause. "Unless you are not Nancy Downs."

He offers a dip of his head as one hand turns to tap his own chest.

"Wiktor Szulski. I am... very new here."

She flicks a hand, gesture dismissive. "Before that."

The perils of dealing with the terminally monolingual.

It's actually so automatic he has to think for a moment.

"Pani?" A pause. "It is... 'Miss'. A polite form of address for one you don't know yet."

He turns one hand up from his crossed arms.

"Language is a strange thing here. But it is a Polish word." The problem of the multilingual. He'd grown up in Warsaw, then been shipped off to Paris, and spent some time under an English doctor for his treatment.

The set of her shoulders loosen very slightly, though there's still an air of defensive bristle about her. "Just Nancy. The only people who call me 'miss' are the nuns."

She takes a drag from her cigarette, studying him. It's several seconds before she asks, around a plume of exhaled smoke. "That where you're from? Poland?"

"Nancy it is."

There's a moment's pause before he, too, relaxes a little. Then he nods.

"Yes. I'm from Poland. Warsaw, specifically." A pause as he looks at her a second time. "1905, if that makes anything clearer."

Honestly, the cigarette smoke is comforting. It reminds him of his sister, who could do with smoking a little less, not that he'd dare comment on it overmuch. He's not that brave.

Edited 2025-05-17 05:04 (UTC)

"Sorry, man," she says, in a tone that suggests she very much isn't sorry, actually. "Hundred-year-old history European history isn't really my thing."

Which doesn't mean she won't try to track something down the next time she's in the library - just that she won't admit it.

That comment provides him information, so he appreciates it regardless. Honestly, he appreciates it in general. He's always dealt better with bluntness.

"It wasn't my topic of choice either." History had a lot of prickly points, especially for a Polish man. "Then you are from 2005?"

Edited 2025-05-22 02:47 (UTC)

"1996," she says, hitching one shoulder in a shrug. "I was rounding up."

And 'hundred year old history' rolls off the tongue better than '91 year old history'.

His shoulders hop in a little shrug. No skin off his back. Fair enough.

But he recalls what she'd said about 'nuns'.

"Nuns... You were raised in a convent, then?"

...that's some sympathy. No doubt. He might be Catholic, but that doesn't mean he's happy about it. The fact that he now shares a mind and memories with a Jewish woman, a Muslim Tatar, and a 'circumcised atheist' makes the whole thing even more awkward.

She blinks at him in surprise for a moment, then laughs, a short, sharp, almost-cackling sound.

"I was raised in a trailer park. I go to a Catholic school." A brief pause before she amends, "Went to a Catholic school. Probably don't count as a student now that I'm dead."

"I have never been dead, so I cannot provide my opinion on the matter. Should you question matters after being blown up or losing your mind, there I can help you."

A pause.

"I do not know what a 'trailer park' is but from your tone, it doesn't seem a place you are fond of."

"It's a slum," Nancy says, with another brief, dismissive flick of her hand. "--You survived being blown up?"

"Not happily, he says with a small huff, but he nods. Eventually, when he's off the Barge and time goes back to functioning for him, he'll find that his eyesight starts to go a bit early because of the explosions. ~~The player is skipping it because while he's adorable in spectacles, there's exactly three minutes of the game to get icons for it from so maybe after a canon update.~~

But for now, that's the long and short of it.

"One was not too close; I was out for a few minutes. The other took three days to recover from and I scared the shit out of my sister and my uncle, from all accounts." A pause before- "I cannot recommend it."

[ Wherever she is? Well, hopefully she feels the same pull that he does. And he's using his warden item this time, instructions written and then erasing themselves in his grimoire.

Which is fascinating, really, but not for right now. ]

Nancy?

"Cool," she says. "And that's too bad. Blowing a few things up sounds like a hell of a lot of fun right about now."

She flicks the butt of the cigarette away and watches it fall, faint embers snuffing out long before it gets anywhere near the net below.

"Usually I stick to beating the shit out of people and drinking heavily. It's easier on my ears. But to each their own."

He considers it for a moment.

"Have you tried the Enclosure yet?"

[Nancy's prowling one of the corridors between their floors, stiff and tense. She's without make-up today, the alien tug manifesting as something close enough to claustrophobia that it's driven her from her cabin before she can apply all of her customary armour, and it makes her look younger.

No friendlier, though. The set of her jaw is hard and unhappy, and she stops when Wiktor approaches, crossing her arms over her chest like a defensive bulwark.]

This you?

[She's almost certain it isn't. It's definitely magic - nothing else could put that itch to find someone in her bones - but she can't sense it past the effect it actually has on her, has no sense at all of the source. She would if it was someone human scrabbling around in her head, surely.

Surely.]

[ He shakes his head. ]

No more than you've done this to me.

[ He looks her up and down for a long moment. ]

...if we are to touch, as this... compulsion drives us, I would prefer we touch hand to hand. Brushing your clothing would tell me things I doubt you want me to know.

"The what now?" she asks, brow furrowing a little. It rings enough of a bell that she thinks it was probably part of the messy and fractured orientation she'd gotten, but it hadn't sounded immediately important enough to stick.

What, like some kind of psychometry shit?

[There's a flicker of interest there, almost in spite of herself, though her knuckles pale as she grips her own arms hard enough that there are probably marks on her skin beneath her shirt.]

I have never heard the word, but it sounds right. I call it thaumaturgy or... temperomancy: to read the secret thoughts and feelings under the surface and unseen by others.

[ He taps his grimoire on his hip. ]

And to deal with salutors to utilize such energies.

[Her eyes narrow slightly, and in spite of the nagging compulsion, she leans away from him.]

How much time have you spent crawling around my head?

[There's an edge of frustration there. If he'd done it at all, she should have been able to sense it. She has no way of being sure if the fact that she hasn't caught anything means that he's left her alone, or that even this has been muted to near-uselessness by the Admiral's restrictions.]

[ He raises an eyebrow at the accusation. ]

None. [ He folds his arms together in reply. ] Will you be accusing me of killing livestock next? What about your crops? Perhaps your milk was a little sour this morning?

Clearly my work.

"The Enclosure," he repeats again easily enough. "Apparently an apparatus that transforms a place into another place, lifelike, like a vision but one that someone can share with others. I haven't tried it yet, but it seems like the sort of things that might be diverting."

TLV: Inbox

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