The Barker Street Irregulars case 2 A vision in pink

[CPT_J_Percell]

"Are you stopping sir?" Tobias asked Captain smith.
"No, I have something I need to attend to, but if you need me then just send a messenger," He replied before dismissing himself and leaving.
Tobias watched Toby attack the food on the table and at the assistance of Beety walked stifly to the table, sat down and started eating the meal but in a more reserved manner.

[walking stick]

"Tobias" Beety said quietly  "I know it's all strange to you but you're very much needed here and now or you'd have been brought in somewhen else."  Somehow her words made it easier for him to cope.

[CPT_J_Percell]

Tobias put his knife and fork down gently on his plate, finished his bite, then wiped his mouth with a napkin before turning to Beety, "Thank you Ms Beety but this is all so new to me and I still worry about my actions before I was killed."

[Stella Gaslight]

"I remember what you went through." Celia said softly smiling at him.  "You are welcome here so don't worry."  She wiped a bit of jam from Toby's face.  "Does any one have a connection with the art world?  I can go almost anywhere in London and the city will let me in but people are harder to get to speak."

[CPT_J_Percell]

Tobias looked up, "I don't know what influence I may have left since the Old Wolf broke my sword and I don't have many memeries before the Vail, but I can help then I'm willing to try!"

[Stella Gaslight]

"I may be able to fill in some blanks if you want me to.  We may not even need that. if whomever is doing this is connected to the white knights the fact you have come back from the dead may be enough for us to find something out." Celia looked out the window deep in thought only to be startled by a little figure with wings moving by out of the corner of her eye.  She startled then moved a little closer.  She saw it again and Celia swore that she had seen it before.  Oh yes that was it the girls that took the fairies pictures in the garden.  "But those were fake."  She muttered in confusion.  We it wasn't fake now. it looked like there was at least half a dozen peering in at them from leaves and branches.  "All of you see that right?'

[Ranger Reid]

Reid had slumped into a chair while Tobias and the others talked.  If not for all the intrigue, it would have been obvious the ranger was troubled.  He had been looking at the floor, miserable.  With a start, he looked up and said "see what?"

[walking stick]

"Those Sweet Little Fairies" Beety was looking vague again, by now Reid knew how seriously to take that. "Living pictures, I think those may even be the original drawings.  Magical power is enhanced by belief and a lot of people believed those were real. Enough still do to make them very dangerous."

[Stella Gaslight]

"Newspaper fairies." She answered Reid feeling a little silly.  "There is one peaking out of the bush near the gate and another by the roses." Celia was very much hoping that whatever the black vanes were was not causing her to hallucinate but Betty seeing them too was a good sign. "I don't know if they are friend or foe yet but I don't like the looks the little one down among the patway stone is giving me."

[Ranger Reid]

"Cel, step back a bit please."  (this was the first time Reid had said her name way,)  "I learned a long time ago that the sweetest looking little monsters often have the sharpest teeth.  Maybe we should put out a bowl of warm milk?"

Reid's Celtic/ Appalachian upbringing had included some of standard stories of the fey.

[Stella Gaslight]

"Oh that is not good.  See the building over there?  It's windows weren't gray yesterday and every now and then it moves like breathing.  I think there are a lot more of them but they aren't attacking. Are they waiting for something?"  Celia wondered if they could catch one and examine it more closely.

[Ranger Reid]

"Not attacking is good.  Let's try to make friends not war.  So does anyone know how to befriend fairies?  I only know of the warm milk thing, but even that is old family legends."

[Steampunk Away]

Abraham looked at the picture. Looked away, and looked back again.

"Easiest way is to offer food and drink, but never dance. Ever."

[Stella Gaslight]

"Toby dear stay with your brother,  I am going to give this a try."  Celia carefully poured a saucer of milk  and opened the window a little bit and pushed it out  There was a fluttering that sounded like paper in the wind and the little one from the rose bush was sitting on the edge of the saucer looking curiously at her. It tasted the milk and made a sort of odd whistling.  All of a sudden the windows across the street burst in to movement and the sky was full of winged bodies makeing their way to the club,  "I think we are going to need more milk."

[Ranger Reid]

Reid said "I don't think they will break the seal and enter without an offer, so you might be able to put milk out the other doors.....  Then again, maybe you could invite ONE of them in.  Maybe it would be better not to.  I simply don't know yet.  But they haven't attacked, so..... so far so good.

[MWBailey]

"AHEM!"

Said a voice from atop the philosopher's bust behind them; there stood Bill, somehow looking like just a raven, and yet just a bit more than a raven.

"In moy day, a pinch o' ginger with the milk did th' trick. Th' li'l people loves ginger, so they does."

He preened  his feathers, and feaked his beak on the philosopher's ear. "Boy the way," he added, "Marley sez "hello." He'd be here 'imself, but Mollesley's turned  'im back into a raven, and posted 'im to th' Tower o' London for some koinda secret work. Myself, I finks he's gettin' the whippin' stick fer telegraphin' about Albionese 'ighlords and sommat. Anywho, they've trimmed 'is left wing again and he's kinda stuck there til he figuires iout how ta fly better all over again." Oh, god den, milady Biridonia... Anybody got abit o' steak for a tired old bird?"

[Stella Gaslight]

She tossed a bit of meat up to Bill. Celia decided she would start keeping some on hand.  "Lets try inviting them into the garden. I have enough wards there that if things go bad we should be able to keep them from spreading too badly.  Maybe with a bit more milk we could get them to speak. If they can at all." 

[MWBailey]

Bill deftly caught the gobbet of meat and held it down with his foot while he ripped away at it and swalloweed snmall bits of it as he went; he was determined to savor it, since much of what he ever got was either carrion or half-spoilt castoffs from the food carters in the city's streets. He'd get the occasional bites form the Tower yeomen, but that was only when they were feeling like trapping a rogue bird for the Tower's "flock."

He refused to think of them or any flock of ravens as an "unkindness," simply because he thought it an unfair, human-imposed name.

The fact that he even had such thoughts was making him realize more and more that he was once something far more than just a wily bird with a taste for raw meat.

"ere, you sure you wants ta do that, milady?" He addressed Celia. "I mean, they looks ta me loike they was slapped in a diary, kinda fing, They moight not be feelin' loike taklkin'...

[Ranger Reid]

Reid smiled an evil grin. "Well, if you are feeling adventurous, maybe a spot of whiskey in the next bowl?"  of they are capable of speech, they should open up."   

[Stella Gaslight]

"With what ever spell is animating them spreading like a magical influenza I have to at least try and see if they can give me a clue on how to stop it.  All of England may be overrun with living pictures if I can't."  She opened a crystal fronted cabinet with a little golden key on a ribbon around her neck.  Very carefully she pulled out a tiny bottle in the shape of an ass' head.  "This is bottom's wine.  Quite possibly the strongest spirit that has ever been brewed.  The fumes alone can get you so drunk you no longer know land from sky or man from woman.  It can easily be deadly for humans but it could be one hell of a bargaining chip if we need it."  She pulled another bottle this one brown and with a hand written label.  "I think we should try this first.  Home brewed honey spirits from last year. " She uncorked it and put a little bit in the saucer.  It smelled like all the warmth and sweetness of summer.  Celia turned to Toby.  "If I ever catch you messing with this you will be in boatloads of trouble, understand?"

"Yes mama." He said without any hesitation.  He had seen drunk people and had no clue why anyone would want to be in that state.

[MWBailey]

"Honey Mead...Ambrosia..." Bill said, his voice strangely unlike Inkpot's all of a sudden, and more like a young man's, full of yearning and desire,  "I remember Essilte and the grapes of spring, pressing her gr-"

"Woss all 'at about, then?" he said, suddenly back to his current self. "Woolgatherin' I was, eh? I dunno if openin' up is what ye want; ever 'ear of elf-bolts?"

"still, maybe I can get 'em ta talk to me, bein' smaller 'n you folk an' myffic an' all, shall I?"

[walking stick]

Beety quorked a comment at Bill in Raven then raised her shoulders and tilted her head slowly. "Honest int doing it for a drink!" Bill fluffed his feathers indignantly, "I was offerin a bit o help I was only goin to dip me beak in to be social like."  Beety put out a bowl of water.  It somehow seemed that the Raven was blushing.

[MWBailey]

Bill was in fatc blushing, or would have been if he had any exposed white skin to blush with. "Milady, I'm...Overwhelmed..." he eyed the bowl, then Beety, then the bowl again...There was something he was supposed to do here; Too big to grab wi/ me feet, so I can't take itr from 'er 'and...I doubt she wants me ta jump in and bathe, though it does look mighty invitin'... he floundered  desperately in his head...Ah, well do somfin' lad, even iffiss wrong...

He approximated Beety's gesture and somehow fond teh right response to add, though if the encounte rwere to happen again, he didn't know if he could do that again, whateve rit was. "I thank ye, milady, well met, and again..." he dipped his beak into the water and siipped, then dipped his head in and ruffled his neck feathers. "A bond we share." How long's it been, lass? A century? Three? More? I've not been 'uman for a long time, yet 'ere I am in a fledglin's body... he thought, trying to send the thought across. it hurt; the old connections were difficult and slow with the young raven's brain.

[Stella Gaslight]

Celia smiled she had suspected there was something more to Bill.  "Tell you what if we don't get pulled in to a fight you can have a sip of my mead. Only a sip mind it is more potent than it tastes.  Grandmother taught me how to bring out all the summer sweetness."

[MWBailey]

This was no ordinary bit of Faerie fraternization, Bill knew. faeries with normal sensibilities could be a slippery and unpredictable bunch. But these faeries looked (and the more faces he glimpsed throgh the blinds and drapes, the more he was sure of the fact) downright ...well... papery, and  abnormal, somehow. As if they were drawn on foolscap and set alive with the old student conjurer's cantrip. But that was a mere five-minute sophomoric wonder. These were more like...

"Don't Loik it," he said aloud. "I'll go, but there's sommat...off, like, about these li'l folk. These're look more loik sumbuddyby passed up th' auld scrip-and-made-body golem and jus' made th' scrip isself into the golem." He speculated. "and they're gone spare about sommat. Was there sommat ye should ha' done what ye di'n't do sometime back (These look like seelies, but with unseelie  ideas)? Jus' tryin' ta figure things out 's all, no offense intended..."