groovygamers.com

This will serve the same purpose as a lunch thread.  Chatter over the dinner Sammy arranges.  Her folks and sister will be out of the house, so a gathering is arranged to feed the musicians and other people.

Alicia will knock on the door more or less on time. She's a bit out of breath; She's been saving on bus fare by using the Sneaker express.

She's wearing her chain pants and boots, with a mid-sleeve concert T-shirt so faded the band logo is barely legible and an unzipped hoodie. Her hair sports a brand-new purple streak on one side.

As Sammy opens the door, the aroma of what promises to be lots of pretty good food floats out of the house.

"Come on in!"  She heads back to the kitchen, where she's getting things set up for people.  The contents of a couple of crock pots are bubbling away, there are a few more pots on the stove, and the microwave and the oven are going too.  Elrod is calmly moving around in the thick of it.

Sylvia's still pretty wiped out from her injuries, but she shows up later in the afternoon nevertheless.  It's just, no one can see her.  She chills on the couch in front of the TV and practices listening to the cheesy dialog from a string of 80s science-fiction movies.

That would explain why the vegetarian chili is disappearing faster than it should be.

[Whoops.  Sorry.  Let me be more specific.]

The vegetarian chili does look great, and Sylvia appreciates the gesture.  But she left her stomach in her other body.

OOC: Good of you to clarify. I happen to notice her invisibility doesn't affect certain other senses. :D


Alicia's face is reminiscent of a Catholic being presented with the Hallelujah Chorus. She hovers on the fringe, offers to help, but mostly inhales all the good smells, especially the meat-cooking variety.

OOC: Might have been a technical oversight.  It used to not effect all senses.  Now it does though, Sylvia and Sammy's sheets are way out of date.

OOC: Spoilsport. :P ;D

Colin has arranged to send his mom and Chris out to a movie, but they insisted driving him to Sammy's, instead of letting him go by bike. He has to admit he still feels a bit weak.

He fills his plate with fries, and sinks into the couch with a sigh, just as Marty has to rebuke the advances of his own mother.

"I've heard of wallflowers, but this is taking it a whole new level." he says, jokingly, in a soft voice. He seems to be facing the screen.

Sylvia's astral head swivels to face Colin as if she has to train her senses on him to hear him distinctly.  She seems placid and content; Colin's presence means it's less likely some sweaty rocker will try to sit on her.  "I wasn't feeling good, but I couldn't sleep.  I thought I'd come and be companionable."

She looks at the space above his head.  "I was sort of hoping to see all those spirits you keep talking about.  Where's the bird?"

"I'm not sure you can, you're not in the same place they are. I could show you the difference, next time you bring your body. I guess you could see the blackbird, though, if he's around to be seen. He's a discreet friend. Normally he only shows up when he's got something important to say, when he's needed, or when I call him out, and he has been seen by normal people as well. I guess most of the time he's busy with his day job."

He takes a look around for any spirit or ghost, including the blackbird. Doing so reminds him of Sammy's grandmother. Kenneth said he would have looked for her. He probably hasn't found her yet.

"You mean his sole duty isn't to babysit you?  Did you ever ask him if you're not the only one he watches?"

At one point, Alicia cocks her head and looks confused in Colin's direction.

She doesn't know enough about Colin to decide whether having conversations with himself is "normal" for him so, after a second, she shrugs and goes back to pleasuring her nose with the wonderful smells from the kitchen.

"He doesn't babysit me much. He's got more of a hands off approach. I actually did ask him. There's only one Spirit Dancer at any given time, but there are people with similar charges, elsewhere in the world. They have their own spirit guides though, if any."

Sammy shoves a bowl into Alicia's hands.  "Start eating," she whispers, "so people quit wondering if its okay to... oh, wait, its okay.  Colin started things."  She smiles.  "You can eat anyway, if you want."  She points to a particular crock pot.  "That should be really good.  Mom made it this morning."

"He doesn't babysit me much. He's got more of a hands off approach. I actually did ask him. There's only one Spirit Dancer at any given time, but there are people with similar charges, elsewhere in the world. They have their own spirit guides though, if any."
[/quote]

"How do you get a spirit guide?  Do you have to be Native American?  Is it something you inherit?  Are they all birds?"  Sylvia, in the astral plane, enjoys a clarity she hasn't felt since the moment she became telepathic, so all the questions she would usually smother under waves of irritation and agitation bubble up and pop right out of her mouth.

Alicia nods happily and zeroes in on whatever exudes the greatest amount of meat-like aroma, complementing it with other selections as offered. She completely ignores the vegetarian chili.

Having armed herself with the appropriate utensils, she finds a spot to sit and consume. Strangely, though she is almost obsessively fastidious in her eating, she manages to go through her plate with alarming speed.

Rhys arrives, lugging his bass and sporting his obnoxious scarf. Spying Alicia devouring her food at speed prompts him to ask "Is there anything left?" with a big grin as he puts his bass down.

"Spirits aren't exactly forthcoming with info, you know. I think Bobby's grandfather said that by knowing too much about something you can break it. The blackbird only told me that he chose me."

He has to smile at that.

"Who's Bobby?"  Sylvia is imagining some girl Colin met on the side.

Alicia does her best impression of someone not seeing Rhys come in. She does seem to take an inordinate amount of time licking her spoon clean, though.

"A good friend of mine. He helped my understand what I am, though his job is quite different from mine. He's... we could say he's a spiritual policeman. When you use magic for evil, there's a good chance he'll find his way to you. And then you're going to regret it."

"I'm not sure I understand," Sylvia says.  "If that's what he does, what do you do?"

"I only do that when it's necessary. Normally, you could think of me as an ambassador. Energies flow, to and fro the spiritual and the material world. Setting things right in the material world makes for healthier energies flowing in the spiritual world. On the other hand I can ask the spirits for help when something needs to be done here. Like yesterday."

"Thank you for that," Sylvia says.  "Was that a near-death experience?  I didn't see a tunnel, and there wasn't anyone waiting for me.  Is that a bad thing?"

"You could call it so. No, I don't think it's a bad thing, it's probably got more to do with me messing with time. I think that instinctively you got scared, and detached yourself from your body."

He munches on some fries.

"And you're welcome. What are friends for, otherwise?"

"That's a standard I'm not sure I can live up to."

Sylvia watches him eat his fries as if it's performance art.  "A friend told me there are only two ways to get here--through psionics or magic.  Have you done this?  Do you ever travel in the astral plane?"

Colin smiles, but doesn't comment.


"No, it's never happened to me so far. I can peek out of my body, but I'm still here when I do that."

Rhys sidles up to Sammy. "Um. I don't quite know how to ask this... but who is Colin talking to?"

"Do you mean that you can peek into the astral zone?  Do you ever see anything interesting?  It seems pretty placid to me, but I understand people come here to kill each other."

"The blackbird can lend me his eyes. It a bit like seeing through the eyes of an invisible bird who can pass through closed doors. I don't know if I'm in the astral zone when I do that, but it sounded a similar experience.


"Uhmm."

He considers it for a while.

"What happens if you touch someone while you're there?"

Sylvia reaches out and gives Colin a good hard poke.  At least, it would be a good hard poke if she were there in the flesh.

Her hand passes through the space he occupies.  Colin feels a slight tingle from the contact, like that part of his body is getting rained on.

OOC: No one else in the US will have the same feeling when/if she touches them.

"I thought so. I don't feel much, anyone else probably wouldn't feel anything. If people do go there to kill each other, they do it so that no one else get involved. Or, at least so that there's no witness."

Sammy looks over.  "Um.  I'm not sure.  Sometimes I think he sees dead people."  This causes a little shudder to pass through her, and she involuntarily clutches Rhys' arm.  "Lets go in the kitchen.  No dead people in the kitchen.  Just El.  OK?"

Sylvia savors the blue world.  "Is this what death is like, you think?"

Rhys smiles at Sammy. "Sure. Besides, that's where the food is, right?"

"Heh.  Yeah."  She tugs him toward the kitchen.

And by food I mean eye candy...

"So what's cooking?"

"Different kinds of chili in the crockpots and --oh!-- time!" She grabs a couple of oven mitts and pulls open the lower unit of a double wall oven.  "Hot cornbread.  Have you ever had cornbread?" She fwumps the oven door closed and puts the bread down to cool.

El stands at a counter, chopping onions.

"I'm from Wales, not Mars. But no, I haven't."

Sammy makes a rude noise.  "I didn't know if it was just an American thing or if it was overseas too."  She cuts out a square and slathers it with butter.  "Try some?"

"Sure. I'll try anything."

Rhys takes a bite and makes a dramatic show of testing out the flavor - rolling it around his mouth like a fine wine.

"Interesting. Not what I'd expected, but I like it."

"It's good with chili," she explains. "Or milk."

She leans back against the fridge and nibbles delicately at her own piece of cornbread.  "You did good yesterday."

"No. Death isn't a state, or a place. It's an event. There are plenty more adventures after that." he says with a smile.

"Thanks," he replies, chewing on his own piece. "It's good to feel useful, you know?"

"Yeah, I know."  She takes another bite.  "Do much of this at home?"

"Not really. But everything is so much bigger here, I get the feeling I'll be seeing more action in a week here than I did in a year back home."

She lifts a glass of milk to her mouth as she says "Especially if Alicia has her way."

Elrod coughs and nearly chops the tip of his finger off.

Wide eyed and apparently innocent as a newborn lamb, Sammy says "Are you okay, sweetie?  Do you need a band-aid?"

Elrod shakes his head, "Noooo.  I'm good."

"You believe that, but you don't know it."  Sylvia seems unruffled, even in insisting on her usual lack of faith.

Jakob is a late arrival, toting a case of sparkling cider.

"Greetings all.  Smells good.  I just had dinner at home but I think I could probably eat again."

Rhys gives her an "oh, come on now" look. "There was plenty of that kind of action back home, thank you. Frankly I'm shocked about how uptight you people are about that over here. Not you specifically, of course - I mean Americans in general."

Sammy shrugs uncomfortably, probably proving his point.  She's saved by the bell -- "Oh, the cobbler is done!"  She grabs the mitts and extracts peach cobbler from the upper oven.

Alicia, over by the family room, goes back to eating after pausing to make sure to catch what she could of the conversation.

Food for thought...

"We act uptight about it because it's what we want the most."  Elrod says putting the chopped onions in a bowl.  "And we think that maybe wanting it so much is wrong somehow, because the people around us don't seem to want it as bad.  And that's the catch.  We all want it.  They claim there was a sexual revolution, but it was more like an uprising in some tiny Balkan Republic that made the evening news once."

Sammy looks a bit confused by what El said.  He's the one who's been enforcing the rules.  He's also the one who broke those same rules with...  "I'm going to take this out to the other table."  She grabs a trivet and carries the cobbler out of the kitchen.

Rhys looks from Sammy's retreating back to Elrod sympathetically. "I don't know the history here, but I'm willing to wager you just said something wrong. You might need to do some making up tonight."

"And the difference would be...?"

Alicia pauses long enough to say, "Can't talk. Busy eating." She does lift up her glass in request at the cider.

Elrod shrugs.  "It was in an article I read online.  But you might be right."

Jakob shrugs.  "Whatever gets you through the day."

He brings the case of cider into the kitchen and asks where to put it down.  He takes out three bottles and opens them while carrying them to the table, stopping along the way to pour some into Alicia's cup.
He manages to find a space at the table and helps himself to some cornbread.

"Thanks for inviting me."

"I'm not going to argue faith with you.  It would be a waste of both our time.  Besides, this is a party, and you're getting strange enough looks for talking to yourself without its turning into a heated debate about spiritual matters."

Colin smiles as he gets up to get some chili.

"Why do you always assume we can't have a civil conversation?" he says jokingly to the seemingly empty sofa. "And it's not like I can be bothered by strange looks. I am strange. I've got to deal with it."

On his way to the kitchen he greets all the people he knows with a smile. Noticing Jacob trafficking his homemade cider, he gets nearer.

"Hi Jacob. Is that fermented?"

"Nope.  I'm afraid it's just sweet & delicious.  No alcohol involved."

"Nice. Fill me up then, please." he says, handing him his glass.

"Did you have trouble with your... uncles, right? for what happened yesterday?"

Jakob pours Doc a big glass of cider.

"No trouble at all.  My uncle and dad both knew about my... ability.  They both worked with me a lot to help me learn how to move in metal form, how to fight, all that stuff.  It was pretty basic at the beginning - I literally had to re-learn how to walk."

Sammy glides by and snags the bottle of cider out of Jakob's hand (after he's finished pouring), filling a glass for herself.  She smiles and says "It tastes like sunshine and autumn."  Then she puts the bottle down and slips away again.

Jakob smiles, a little, and follows Sammy with his eyes.

"Did she get hit in the head yesterday?"

A single guffaw is heard out in the dining room, where Alicia is sitting.

"Yeah, well, I meant if you had trouble for using it in public, or using it against a big dangerous robot. In the first week of me having my powers I was nearly shot twice. My mother wouldn't have minded a gentler introduction to this part of my life."


"Not so hard. You sure there's no alcohol?"

"No trouble there either.  My family has always figured it'd just be a matter of time before I found myself in a situation where I needed my ability.  They do worry but deal with it.  Until yesterday the only time I really ever used my ability was to take down a rampaging bull on a neighbor's farm - that was funny.  My dad told the guy we'd take care of it for him as long as he went in the house, shut the door, and stayed away from the windows.  Dad went in with him to make sure he did and I went and wrestled the beast down and hauled it back to its pen.  When dad & Mr. Harper came back out the bull was just hanging out in the pen as if nothing had happened.  Mr. Harper didn't ask and we didn't tell."

He takes a swig of cider and helps himself to some more cornbread.

"Besides, my grandparents used to tell us all stories about Hitler and the war and all that.  Killer robots aren't so scary compared to that stuff."

Jakob takes another big swig of cider and refills his glass.

"I don't think so - my aunt insists that my uncle put the hard cider in dark bottles instead of these clear ones."