Blackwood Grove, Fandom, Wednesday Morning

[witchoftheflesh]

It had taken awhile to get everything ready, especially with the break in the middle to go to Quebec, but Adrian and Boston had been working like mad to finish getting the stones ready. He wanted to make sure everything was done by the time the ground froze - which, sure, might not be as much or as soon as he was used to in Massachusetts, but neither witch nor familiar were keen on taking chances and the rocks still had to settle into their new locations. It had been several days of intense labor, hoisting rocks and digging ditches, moving in patterns that left beautiful markings on the ground wherever they went. Or, at least, he thought they were beautiful and that was what mattered. Some of the stones had been put flat into the earth, creating large stone spirals like the one in front of his house. Others were standing stones, dotted around his grove. There were a few more rocks to place, these ones nearly Adrian's own height, and a large hunk of natural quartz he'd found, but these were the last, getting placed not far from his garden.

"Proper circle or elliptical?" he asked Boston, using the bottom hem of his shirt to wipe the sweat and grime from his face before peeling it off entirely. There was a definite chill in the air, but he'd be working too hard to notice it soon enough.

Boston hopped down from the tree he'd been perched on, and wandered around the planned location, then began drawing a spiral pattern in the dirt with a claw. "Circle," he declared. "Make the radius bigger than the last one, though. Between the garden, greenhouse, and your heart tree, this will end up handling a lot of magic and the less we need to diffuse through the spiral--"

"--The better off we'll be in the long run," Adrian finished. "At least we got good rocks. I was worried we'd be working with shale."

"So you've said," Boston noted. "You've got the markers, right?" Adrian held up a fistful of long, wooden stakes. "Excellent. Let's mark out the proper places and then you can start digging."

"And then hauling. And then more digging," Adrian said, though he sounded happy about it, rather than complaining. "Let's get this done then, huh? After lunch, there's vegetables to harvest in the garden and the tomatoes should be done simmering by the time I'm done with that, and that'll leave us the evening to bottle more potions..."

"Less talking about things on your to-do list, more actually doing them," Boston said. "Get to work."

[Open! Conversation about Natasha NFB, please!]

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[the_best_sister]

Yelena scowled. “Look, I don’t know how this stuff works,” she muttered, sounding apologetic. “How was I supposed to know all this? I didn’t grow up around trees and magic. You know how many beating hearts I’ve seen buried in a forest before I got here? None. I’m—”

She took a breath. Yes. It was still hard for her to say out loud.

“—sorry.”

What was going on here? When did she become the bad guy? Sure, she was a bad guy, but not this time.

She frowned at the cat. “Hey, I sent you halibut. Doesn’t that get me a little slack here?”

[witchoftheflesh]

"Not when it comes to the Old Wives," he said, still facing away, but at least acknowledging her.

"Like I said," Adrian said firmly, "not your fault. Bran. You heard her. She apologized." The broom still bristled at her - literally - then pulled itself out of Adrian's hand to angrily sweep at the rocks.

Did you know that sweeping can be angry? Because it could be, Yelena. You were seeing it right now.

"The Old Wives," he said. "They're the three most powerful witches in the world. The leaders of the Blackwoods coven. They're extraordinarily powerful and more than that, incredibly skilled. It's like you just questioned the capabilities of...Okay, I have no idea who would be a good example here. But yeah. They're not just my aunts and my mom. They basically are the Blackwood."

[the_best_sister]

Yelena sighed, realizing she’d stepped in it.

“I had a sister. Natasha,” she began, sounding pointed but awkward. “She saved my life. She saved a lot of lives. She helped bring millions of people back to this world and sacrificed herself for it. If someone said something stupid about her, I’d probably shoot them. She was my other half. My... Old wives.”

Okay, that didn’t sound right, but she pushed on. “I thought they were just aunts. Normal, magic-using aunts. I didn’t realize I was insulting anyone. Can we be cool? I’ll get you more fish, Boston. And Bran, I’ll get you…”

Damn. What do you get for a broom as a gift?

“A copper… personalized dustpan.”

She cringed. Yeah, she was terrible at this.

[witchoftheflesh]

"We're good," Adrian assured her.

"I would like more fish," Boston said to the air.

"We're good," Adrian said again, sharply. His voice softened when he turned back to Yelena. "You didn't know. You couldn't possibly know. It's okay."

And he stepped forward his hand, reaching out for her. "I'm so sorry to hear about your sister," he added. "Truly I am."

[joan_of_bark]

"Sometimes I think the city has its own cycles," Pam said. She set her glass aside, and rose to her feet. "We just don't think to look to find them."

[the_best_sister]

Yelena took his hand, caught off guard by the moment. She had no idea how to react to the situation and no snarky comeback ready to toss out.

Her expression softened as she looked back at Adrian, warmth seeping into her voice. “But, um, I appreciate the sentiment. It’s... nice of you.” She cleared her throat awkwardly, trying to regain her composure. “Not everyone can manage that.”

She gave his hand a little squeeze because... that's what people do right? And then she slowly pulled it away because now it just felt weird.

[witchoftheflesh]

"It does," Adrian said, then amends, "it should." He couldn't speak with authority on the matter, of course. "All magic comes from the great cycles. Life, death, the seasons, the weather, the phases of the moon, the orbits of the earth and sun - they all turn and spiral through each other, and that movement creates magic. Why should a city be any different? If cities can thrive and if cities can die, I can't believe that don't have cycles."

[witchoftheflesh]

Probably for the best he hadn't offered a hug. Yelena seemed very prickly about her personal space.

"I'm glad I can do better than 'people who can't even be nice in the face of a confession of a major loss,'" he teased, since he didn't think Yelena wanted more sympathy to undermine her composure-gathering. "You always have the nicest compliments."

[joan_of_bark]

"It saved my life," Pam said.

She strode towards him, hands in the pockets of her overalls. "Realizing that even within all that concrete, if you reach out-- find the life playing across the skin of a million human beings-- there is boundless renewal."

She thought about Gotham. About Queen Ivy. How she'd shared some of that story with a stranger, but not with Adrian, yet. Should she?

She wondered if he'd think less of her.

[witchoftheflesh]

Well, he hadn't thought less of Yelena when she admitted she'd been an assassin, so...Who knew?

"Not to mention the dandelion growing up through the cracks in the concrete, the mushrooms growing anywhere they can take hold, the poison ivy reclaiming abandoned areas. They're still there. Cockroaches, bedbugs, mildew, mold. As people, we think of them as filth, something to be destroyed, but it's thriving life."

[joan_of_bark]

Did Pam's lips twitch a little at that 'poison ivy'? Well. Maybe.

"Exactly," she said. And then: "How about that tour?"

Still toying with a thought. Was it cowardice? More like caution.

[witchoftheflesh]

"Right!" Adrian said. "Here, we'll start with the house." He led her over to the snug wooden cottage that he'd brought with him from Massachusetts.

The front door they stepped through was intricately carved, and decorated, though that level of decoration did not seem to extend into the house proper. Here, simplicity and ruled, letting the craftsmanship speak for itself. Most of the space was taken up by a single vaulted room that seemed to be a combination kitchen and workshop. Where they weren't pierced with tall antique-glass windows, the wooden walls were covered with built-in shelves containing every sort of witchy ingredient from rosemary to dried snakes. One entire corner was dedicated to a fieldstone fireplace with a massive cauldron hanging from an iron chain at its center. The kitchen area beside it had a wood-fired iron stove along with a deep enameled sink and a spice cabinet the size of a wardrobe. Well-used copper pots and pans hung from an iron rack above the wooden island, which had a second cauldron stowed beneath it as well as rows of glass bottles in all different shapes and sizes. A small bedroom lay off to one side of the workshop, and a door out the back led to a glassed-in greenhouse patio that was already full of plants. The ceiling was steeply pointed and braced with massive oak beams, one of which supported a ladder-accessed loft that appeared to be Adrian's office. There were several bookcases up there along with a large circular window to let in the light, a comfy-looking pile of cushions for reading, and, oddly, a laptop computer. Other than that, nothing in the house seemed to use electricity.

"This is my home," Adrian said, pulling his phone out of his pocket and hooking it up to a portable solar charging panel, which he shimmied up the ladder to place under the loft's sunny window. "The greenhouse out back already has full rainwater capture and filtration, which means I won't have to worry about digging a well. I use a combination of aquaponics and compost for waste removal, so that takes care of septic and trash. Food scraps go to the garden - I will have to buy some real solar panels for the roof eventually, because those I couldn't make myself, but this should do for now."

[joan_of_bark]

Pam's eyebrows had steadily risen as he showed her around.

"You've been busy," she commented, looking not so much at the phone as at the-- everything else. "And all that with just one shovel."

[witchoftheflesh]

Adrian laughed. "No, no, I built it before I got here," he assured her. "I would have needed a shovel and at least a screwdriver to have gotten it done here."

[joan_of_bark]

"Magic?" Pam guessed, as her attention finally passed back to him.

[witchoftheflesh]

Adrian shook his head. "Practice and hard work," he said. "We build everything we use. It's called witchcraft for a reason. Though I'll admit the only reason any of the metalwork in here is fit to be seen is because I traded my cousin Deena three quilts and a carved headboard. I never took to blacksmithing the way I did sewing or woodworking."

He could make things, they just often weren't up to his standards.

[joan_of_bark]

Pam let out a soft huff. She shook her head. "We'd be better off if humanity showed the same work ethic," she said, and then sighed, well aware she was getting her own particular maudlin all over his pretty home.

"It's lovely, Adrian. Thank you for showing it to me."

[witchoftheflesh]

"Thank you," he said, running his hand over a bookshelf, looking quietly pleased. "I'm very proud of it. It was not at all motivated by the dressing down my Aunt Lydia gave my sister Annaliese when her floor caved in."

[joan_of_bark]

Pam smiled. "Is that a story I should ask about?"

[witchoftheflesh]

"You might have noticed from, oh, everything about her, Aunt Lydia isn't one to suffer fools lightly. She had gone to my sister's house to berate her about being careless and taking easy shortcuts. I wasn't there, of course, certainly not in a tree, eavesdropping. Even at ten, I was far too mature for that. But as she was just getting to the crescendo of her argument, Aunt Lydia stomped her foot to make some point or another - and her foot went right through the boards. Because most of the floor was actually particle board. And Annaliese, rather than trying to help her, said something like, 'Okay, thanks for the chat Aunt Lydia, bye!' and ran out the door. I think she was hoping to get to Mother before Aunt Lydia heaved herself out of the hole and caught her."

[joan_of_bark]

She could picture it. (This nice, comfortable family life that Adrian had had-- despite it all.)

Pam let out a soft laugh.

"So you decided to be more particular about your building materials."

[witchoftheflesh]

"Ten was an impressionable age," Adrian said with a laugh. "I swore right then that I'd learn to do everything right so that Aunt Lydia would never had a reason to put her foot through my floor."

[joan_of_bark]

"That also sounds like a wise lesson," Pam said, a twinkle in her eye.

Her eyes scanned over the shelves, making quiet notes about just-- how many spices Adrian really stocked.

"I guess I don't have to lecture you about respecting the women around you."

[witchoftheflesh]

"It's amazing what you don't pick up when there are no men around," Adrian said. "I hadn't seen an adult man until the first time I was given permission to accompany the family out of the Blackwood."

[joan_of_bark]

"That must be nice," Pam said. Her mouth cracked a little further into a smile. "And a culture shock."