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]

It had been a while since Yelena had visited the grove. Partially because she watched man bury a beating heart in the ground which was one of the weirder experiences that she had experienced in her life.

And she's from the MCU. That says something.

Still as she approached the grove, she was not in her usual mode of snark and attitude. She carefully approached trying to get a sense of Adrian's mood.

"You've been busy," she said looking around at the house and grounds.

[witchoftheflesh]

It was a totally normal thing! Who among us hadn't buried our hearts in something? Adrian's was just slightly less metaphorical than most!

As for Adrian's emotional tenor, the surprise he showed upon noticing her seemed to have melted into cheer at her approach. "I have," he said proudly, gesturing at the garden full to bursting with vegetables easily double the size of what Yelena might expect, and then the stone spiral she was standing on. "Still behind where I should be, though."

"You're the one who wanted to take a week's vacation," Boston called from his tree. "Good morning, Yelena."

"I want to see more of the world," Adrian said simply.

[the_best_sister]

"Good morning, Boston," Yelena said, flashing the cat a smile. "Good to see you in better spirits."

Hey at least he wasn't crying in emotional pain at the moment.

And then she turned to Adrian and nodded in approval of his garden.

"Well for someone who is behind, I'd hate to see this place if you were on schedule. Pretty sure it would put the rest of gardeners and farmers to shame."

She paused a second before adding in a half-joking fashion: "Have you recovered from having the world's worst roommate, yet?"

[witchoftheflesh]

"I live with a cat, Yelena," Adrian snorted. "I'm used to someone taking up far more of the bed than should be physically possible and refusing to share."

"Thank you, Yelena," Boston said politely, ignoring Adrian's comment. Hmph.

"My shoulder and left kidney may never be the same, though."

Someone was feeling sassy today.

[the_best_sister]

That comment earned Adrian one of Yelena's smirks. "Well, I believe you only need kidney to survive," she noted, dryly. "And you seem to have done well here with your shoulder in the agony you claim to have."

No, he wasn't making that claim but he's not the only one who can sass. She made her way over to Boston to see if he might be in the mood for a ear scritch.

"I did come by to apologize. I know I was a shitty roommate and gave you more than your fair share of crap last week."

[witchoftheflesh]

"You apologized already," Adrian reminded, while Boston graciously allowed the scritching. "And I think I maybe figured out what was behind it all anyway."

[the_best_sister]

There was a slow sideye towards Adrian when he uttered that statement.

And then a couple of blinks.

"Oh? And what is that?" she asked, curiously.

[witchoftheflesh]

"You've been trapped on the island, right?" he said. "Can't even call home? And then you got to leave, but just to go there, right? Nothing else?" He went back to shoveling, though he'd turned to face her so they could keep talking. "It's rough. When you feel free, but you know you're not."

See, Yelena! Totally figured it out!

[the_best_sister]

Yelena eyed, Adrian trying to wrap her mind around the concept. "Right. I'm sure that's it," Yelena replied, briskly. "And obviously you bore the brunt of it being stuck in the room with me."

We'll just go with that. Yes. Made total sense.

"I would like to make it up to you," Yelena replied. "Obviously I cannot have you as a client and have any kind of ill will between us."

[witchoftheflesh]

Well, if it hadn't been that, he was at a loss for what it could have been!

"There's ill-will between us?" He asked, now confused for a different reason. "You're mad at me?"

"Adrian." From his perch in the tree, Boston sounded pained. "Let Yelena make it up to you."

Not that she was feeling guilty or anything! Purely business!

"But--oh! Oh, I got--uh, yeah. You're right. Good idea to make sure the air is clear between us."

There was a slight tapping on the window, like say a broom was hitting the end of its handle against the glass at this conversation.

[the_best_sister]

"I'm not mad," Yeleana replied shaking her head. "I just-"

She paused.

"I'm sorry, does the broom need to go on a walk or something?"

[witchoftheflesh]

"No," Boston and Adrian said at the same time. "Bran's just--"

"Dramatic," Adrian replied at the same time Boston said, "Exasperated."

[the_best_sister]

"Why is he being dramatic and/or exasperated?" Yelena asked. "Did you get a Roomba? Should I let him out?"

[witchoftheflesh]

Boston declined to explain his choice of words. He knew, Bran. He knew.

Adrian shrugged. "He's pretty high-strung," he said. "My Aunt Lydia made him, so he's incredibly powerful and that comes with...personality quirks, I guess. Or, well, a personality in general. It's hard to explain. But he's more than a simple tool, even if he's not a full-on familiar like Boston."

[the_best_sister]

"So I should just ignore him and hope he doesn't break through the window," Yelena said with a shrug. "Fine. Anyway, I was thinking dinner or a drink or something. Or taking you someplace you haven't been."

[witchoftheflesh]

"He won't," Adrian assured her. "He's not hitting it that hard. Just like...being dramatic. Over something."

Who knew? Maybe Adrian hadn't been paying enough attention to him.

"Well, Supper Club is for going to restaurants we haven't been," he pointed out. "But I've never been to the Devil's Nest. Or to any of the Baltimore restaurants."

He frowned. "Which doesn't mean anything if you're stuck on the island. But whatever, there are a bunch of restaurants we can go to before Supper Club gets to them. Devil's Nest or...do you know what restaurant you wanna try?"

[the_best_sister]

Seriously Bran! Chill out.

“We can do the Devil’s nest, definitely,” Yelena said nodding in approval of the plan. “Probably not tomorrow though as there’s that fancy Halloween party at Liliana and Ignis’s place. Are you going?”

[witchoftheflesh]

A slight hesitation before he shook his head. "Probably not," he said. "Besides, it's Samhain. I'll probably go home for the celebration. I'm not a true Witch of the Bones, but all Blackwoods are a braid of the three, sooo..." He trailed off.

[the_best_sister]

Yelena frowned. “Is that something that I should go with you as your appointed body guard?” She asked. “Because you said a lot of words that just made zero sense to me other than “No, Yelena I’d rather go be boring than go get drunk on free booze.”

[witchoftheflesh]

Adrian laughed at that. "No, I'll be back with my family in the heart of the Blackwood," he said. "Oh! Right! You probably don't know! All Blackwood groves are connected. So I can walk through my grove and exit in the one in Massachusetts. That's how my mom and my aunts got here. Mine is still a baby, so I have to use more power to support it, but with careful--" He stopped. "Right. You don't care about the nitty-gritty details. Anyway, I'll be safe as houses."

He looked like he might have said something else, but subsided. "Do you know what you're going to dress up as?" he asked, in what was not at all a conversational redirect, honest.

[the_best_sister]

“Oh, I don’t know,” Yelena admitted. “I’ll probably find something silly to wear. I felt like I hit it off with Liliana and she seems like someone who knows how to throw a party. I’m sure I’ll find someone to hang with there.”

[witchoftheflesh]

"She is...a lot," Adrian said, thoughtfully. "Very powerful, but her magic feels pretty anathema to mine. Not entirely? But a lot. Still I like her, and I hear the inside of their home is much nicer than the exterior would let on."

[the_best_sister]

"Yeah, I don't understand any of the magic part and I haven't seen her house," she admitted. "What's so bad about it? Is it a ranch from the 70's?"

[witchoftheflesh]

"It's a creepy old Victorian mansion that they don't have to decorate the outside to make it look like a haunted house. A possibly condemned haunted house. But neither Liliana or Ignis strike me as the type who'd want to live in a house that is as destroyed as it looks."

He points off in a direction in his grove. "They're my neighbors."

[the_best_sister]

Yelena turned in the direction Adrian had been pointing, realizing which house he meant, and shrugged. “Oh. Okay. Well, I’ve been in shittier places. The food and booze will probably be better, though.”