7814/Roundabout the Whirligig of Life

Roundabout the Whirligig of Life
Date of Scene:	13 September 2021
Location:	Giorgio's Pizzeria - St. Martin's Island
Synopsis:	An incomplete survey of hurts that go too deep.
Cast of Characters:	Meggan Puceanu, Terry O'Neil

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Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Funny how small the world becomes, how easily it narrows, when the need's there. Sometimes all it takes is a properly dropped message, a simple phrase or a promise through a prominent social media account, to attract attention from the Tuathan goddess in the aftermath of so many shadows. Set a time and a place, the distance becomes practically nil.

The world is nothing else if not very small in other aspects too. With the benefit of the Hyperloop or flight, a child who very much would've been appropriately raised in Eighties culture -- if she weren't almost a decade late -- comes through the doors into a memorabilia museum pretending to be a Metropolis eatery.

A place that might be particularly unusual for her to frequent, but Meggan has a few favours she can call in to get coupons or a small discount.

Golden hair runs down her back in a braid, and she's as clear-eyed as they come, her feet barely touching the ground. Yet they do touch, a reminder of being mundane is never harmful here.

Terry O'Neil has posed:
It's not that Terry is cosplaying as an 80s kid- it's the fact that the denim vest, white t-shirt and blue jeans is the last clean combo he had left from the hastily-packed bag he grabbed when he walked out of the Titans Tower. Just a few accessories shy of being ready to join the cast of The Breakfast Club, Terry notices Meggan coming through and he waves at her, gesturing to the booth under the faux Tiffany lamp.

"I got here early and got us a booth, I hope that's okay? If you'd like a table, we can move."

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
A denim vest? Halfway to a denim tuxedo there, and that might render a whole bunch of questions about fashionable decisions, won't it?

Meggan's braid flows in a shattered wave of gold and silver, knocked off her shoulder with a careless gesture. Those pale green eyes, surrendered of their emerald vitality, find Terry among so many faces and swells of emotional interest; the girl and her friends there giggling, the older couple out with their child and happy in that fraught way when dealing with the alien that is a preteen.

"A booth is fine with me," she says, the accent flowing and dipping with radiant ease. "It's so very good to see you. All is well that ended well, isn't it?"

Terry O'Neil has posed:
"The world didn't end, so in this case it is 'all is well that hasn't ended,' but that is decidedly less quotable," the human redhead grins. In this shape, his grin is nowhere near as impressive- when the Cheshire smiles, it's like a spotlight has been turned on. There is no actual light, mind you, merely the /feeling/ that one should be there. When human Terry grins, though, it's a perfectly normal grin.

"The pizza here is out of this world- and the Garlick knots are pretty tasty, too!" he says, sliding the menu over to her.

"Now that we have a little breather until the nextt metaphysical crisis or alien invasion- how is it with you?"

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
The girl's ears are mildly tapered for someone looking close, but not a direct, sharp point that they naturally would give in keeping with her dominant birthright. Meggan shakes her head slightly to Terry, sinking to the outer corner of the booth and shimmying along until opposite the redhead. "If a threat ended, does that not mean we reached the end of a chapter? you might figure it's time for a new page flipped over? I like the thought of that."

She doesn't even need to look at the menu. His suggestion earns a ready nod. "That sounds delicious to me. Care to share a pie or are we better off getting separate ones? I can eat nearly anything, but something weird like kippers on an alfredo sauce isn't really my speed. It's not exactly /good/." Her smile lifts slightly for a moment, a bead somewhere on the frazzled server trying to negotiate with too many drinks on a tray. The kitchen staff, currently embroiled in their opinions on the latest season of the Knights, are barely audible.

"Is there a breather? Always something going on, you have to know the right people. That may be the problem," she adds with a laugh. "I might have to get to know more of them. But we established you know almost everyone, so I'm going to lean into that. Like, you know." Drawing a circle with a fingertip, she drops her hands back to her lap. "I'm processing. Grateful that some things went smoother than I thought they might. I know a doctor, he helped hide me from a thing that enjoys eating people like me, you know? But past that..."

Terry O'Neil has posed:
"One of those strange doctors?" he says cryptically, "I'm an omnivore myself- want to share a pizzha margherita? They make them- mamma mia!" there he goes again.

"A new chapter works. The world has just gotten a new clean slate. Bonds are made and severed, old things pass away and new ones come to be. And sometimes old things come back." He toys with a paper napkin, carefully folding it this way and that until it resembles the hint of a rough draft of a very floppy Plesiosaurus. "I still haven't patched things up with my team. Or, rather, with the person in my team... so I'm a little adrift, myself."

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
"Bonds made and severed?" How telling, that smile. They sometimes can be delighted things or forced, serene or taut with anger. Terry probably reads better than many. Meggan's terrible at hiding her emotions, anyway, her face a clear canvas for a kaleidoscopic turn of possibilities. "Apt phrasing, though wounding." She puts her hand to her opposite wrist, running up her forearm to the elbow and back as a gentle motion absent of any direct purpose. "Yes, that happens. Despite our best intentions, fighting tooth and nail for what we believe in, those threads unexpectedly snap and leave you nowhere to moor them when the craft's carried on. Perhaps the currents will turn and perhaps they do not, aye?" That Cumbrian lilt teases through an odd assortment of Welsh, Scots and Irish Gaelic all remembered when English wasn't a dominant force in the Old North of Albion.

She looks down briefly at her hands. "Old things may come back, but we're travellers on a ship of fools and dreams. We have to find a path. Life's not static." His own reflection earns a brief pause, and then that smile reignites, serene as much as one can be when still vibrating with melodies of pain and hope, idealism and stung faith. "I'm sure that given enough time, you will know when and how to proceed. Not everything has to happen in a heartbeat. The whirlwind sometimes comes up so fast, you have no chance to react well. Or if you do, in that wind, you'll find yourself tossed about a bit. Being a bit adrift is never a fun time. Is there anything I can do to help?"

Terry O'Neil has posed:
The nautical language has the young man smiling a little, and he says: "Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are."

"I'm not unfamiliar with feeling adrift. Twice in my life, but these things usually resolve themselves if we keep at it. The only question is always which way to paddle in."

"To help? I don't think... it's my pride. Really. I am trying to decide how much of it is me feeling disrespected and how much of it is it /actual/ disrespect. My Sensei pointed out that just because you feel something, it doesn't mean it actually is so. Distancing myself from the tower so I can think about it may have been the right decision, even if the spirit of anger in which I made it at the time wasn't the most clear-headed."

He glances down at her hand, running along he wrist, and then back up at Meggan. "The hardest part of being alive is deciding whether our perceptions of something are true to the reality, isn't it? And when you add abilities that can toy with what is /real/, things get complicated."

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
"For my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars until I die."

She can turn the muse after a bit of a nose-wrinkle, and then there rises the shy bit of a smile. "I hope I have that right. I have never been so good with verse compared to some, and most came round by practice and memory. Though in fairness, if we must, better less Tennyson and more a happier turn, for I think you might have the eaper weary, piling sheaves in uplands airy, listening, whispering 'tis the fairy Lady of Shalott.' I am so done with unhappiness, but it seems not done with me."

The smile might crack from side to side, but the eyes hold the measure of some wisdom. Her gaze is bright, settled upon Terry as he speaks. There is no interruption.

Heck, the server probably brings waters and any drinks in the meantime, and three pizzas can be made and done by the time she speaks again.

"Your sensei," words selected carefully, "is wise. Very wise. It rubbed off too."

Her fingers toying with the braid separate a few strands. "Being alive is hard enough, but worth every moment and speck. Time never flows backward so the best sometimes we have is growing from the decisions made or the words said, those we thought were best at the time we acted or spoke. That's indeed the funny point about perception. Can you trust it? Would you let someone nudge you aside? Sometimes, it's bewildering."

A low, mirthless laugh is a hymn itself. "Like being told how it is, even when you know the perceptions of an event or your own mind were not that. Being held accountable for an external view, that can be the extra tricky part."

Terry O'Neil has posed:
"He is very wise. He's also two years younger than I am- seventeen. As you can imagine, his story is very unusual. I'm not wise, as much as lucky to get my ears tugged by wise people when I do unwise things."

He smiles a little at the verse, "Guilty as charged. You remember, I was an Arthurian kid. That was my gateway drug to discover Tennyson- and then other poets. Mom says that our branch of the O'Neils descends from an apprentice to Turlough O'Carolan and that we have poetry in our blood. But she is also sometimes full of shit and pulls my leg to see if I can tell- so who knows? She didn't recognize the Cheshire Cat when she went out with him, so how trustworthy a narrator /is/ she?"

He pauses and leans forward, "Sometimes if someone nudges you aside, they're doing /you/ a favor even in spite of themselves. If someone tries to gaslight you, I say that the best tactic is to throw a match into the gasworks and walk away during the explosion, not looking back, and possibly wearing sunshades."

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
"I always fancied a bit of Rossetti. Christina, that is. She spun such majesty from her pieces. Of course, Shelley too, but his can get a little gloomy when read a certain way. We had some you'd expect, Tam Lin and Thomas the Rhymer of course." But that smile fades away and with it the pause, the descending darkness of her lashes curling against her cheeks. Meggan doesn't project the wobble in the axis around her, only the hint of trouble where she bites into her lower lip thoughtfully. "An Unseelie king stealing away young brides happened to be real, and not only a story. I confronted one. Don't always doubt what the family tales say. Though how could it be only weeks ago that we..."

We. Just a word, and she blows out a breath, forcing her chin up and slipping back against the booth. "Sorry about that. Still bit wobbly when I remember how jumbled the Otherworld is right now. Sometimes those tales of poetry in the blood are true, in ways you may not have seen coming. 'Tis possible your mum could hear the music but not see the player, perhaps? In a roundabout way of thinking?"

Water, then, is something to spare the girl and the cat, for but a moment in time. He leans like a conspirator and she is transparent as the dawn rising to the east, rose-shine and splendour. "The best tactic is sound. Or something about living well. You're right, I reckon. Not like there is anything in there to argue with. What cuts worst is that no matter what evidence would be to the contrary, that belief sprouted and nothing else would dislodge it. I could have the eloquence of a certain Themysciran of broad fame, and it'd have done not a thing. That's hard to sit with."

Terry O'Neil has posed:
"Maybe she did. I don't entirely understand the nature of Wonderland, only that it /is/, and when I was in the Dream realm there was some of it that /felt/ like Wonderland... but there was something missing. So who knows the way these things go? If I ever find my way back to Wonderland, I'll ask questions, and then I'll let you know." He smiles. But then the smile fades a little.

"You know, Marcus Aurelius used to say that an emerald still retains its sheen whether someone remarks upon it or not. If someone refuses to pry themselves away from their own version of events, you should counsel your heart and tell it that it is no fault of its own, it is the silliness of another- and good riddance. Heart, we will forget him!- I'm also partial to Emily... she was such a strange creature writing like no-one else was at her time. And so few recognized her for what she was..." he leans back, "But maybe that's a lesson too. Sally forth and away from those too mired up in their own muck, to clearer waters?"

He raises his glass of water in the manner of a toast, "And think of this- why look behind you when up ahead looms the opportunity of meeting Diana of Themyscira!"