fandomtownies | The Perk, Monday afternoon

"Not hanging upside down from a jungle gym today?" Liliana's voice was amused as she sauntered by him with a cup of something that smelled strongly of peppermint and could only generously be considered 'coffee.' She sat down at his table without a by-your-leave, assuming, of course, that her company would be welcomed.

The weird thing was that it was. Well, weird for Jon. Or at least the air he put off.

"I doubt my hand or legs would appreciate that," he said dryly and not at all wistfully. "You seem a bit more decorous yourself."

Well, of course, darling. There were people who realized that Liliana Vess was a delight, and then there were people who were wrong. Simple as that.

"Oh, not at all," Liliana assured him, a sense of mischief hanging off of her like a warm fur mantle. "Quite the opposite. I may not be hanging upside down currently, but that's only because I've found so many more fun ways to be indecorous." She gave him a catlike smile from over the side of her cup as she took a sip.

"So what do people do after these kinds of weekends? Tease? Commiserate? Agree to never speak of them again?"

Not that she had a preference, of course.

"Er...any of the above, honestly," Jon answered. "It depends entirely upon personal preference. For me, I..." He sighed. "I'm honestly torn between enjoying it and being frustrated. Mostly I wish things had remained as simple as they were back then."

Something flickered in Liliana's violet eyes; regret, perhaps, or some other, even less fathomable emotion. Either way, it was there and gone between blinks and easy to miss if one wasn't looking, smoothed into Liliana's customary expression of arch amusement.

"There is something to be said for the mindset of a child," she agreed lightly. "So willing to accept the bizarre and impossible with simply a shrug and a request for another piece of cake."

Edited 2023-11-20 19:28 (UTC)

Jon was always looking. Jon was also, however, socially clueless.

"Or utterly clueless about the bizarre and impossible." He shrugged. "Back when the worst I had to deal with was not getting on with other children. Well," he amended with a quirk of his lips, "that and the police bringing me back home again and getting me grounded."

"In your defense, other children could be quite horrid, I'm sure," Liliana pointed out. "There were more than a few miserable brats when I was young. I remember one son of one of my father's lieutenants who liked to pinch me when no one was looking and laughed when I'd get in trouble for losing my temper. Though Jo--" She stopped and sipped her coffee.

"Your poor...grandmother, was it? I'm sure you drove her to distraction, however."

Jon scowled. "Bullies. There were a few bad ones when I was growing up, but...well." Look, don't ask about that, and he won't ask about "Jo".

"I was...'a handful' would be putting it politely. I was a deeply annoying child." He'd internalized that well. "She did her best with a child she'd never planned on raising."

Mr. Spider sometimes ate very well indeed. Still, she was quite happy to take you up on that deal, Jon.

"I find most children deeply annoying," Liliana said, likely surprising no one. "Though a handful? How? I mean, you've mentioned your penchant for unauthorized exploration, but honestly, with all your questions yesterday, you strike me as a child who just needed to be properly engaged."

"I was difficult to keep engaged," Jon confessed. "I read a lot; she would practically throw any books at me that she could find. Some worked better than others. And she wasn't really sure what to do with me, I think. It had been decades since she'd raised a child, and the world had changed a lot since then."

"It has the troubling tendency to do that," Liliana admitted with a heavy sigh. "Especially in more urban places. A year in Ravnica is the equivalent in change to a decade on Innistrad."

She looked up at him, curious. "So, when you went exploring, what kind of child were you? The type the threw rocks at feral cats or the type that poked around abandoned buildings?"

Her tone did not change appreciably between either option.

"I would never hurt a cat!" Jon protested hotly. "I fed them my lunch. Threw rocks in the ocean. Climbed around the shore. Went to the library a time or two, but they have a tendency to call your guardian if you're unaccompanied. People watched - Bournemouth is a tourist town, so sometimes there were interesting people." And there were often a lot of dull ones, but you could ignore those.

"Then you were already doing better than a good quarter of most sapient species and two-thirds of goblins," Liliana said easily, unmoved by his vehemence. "So however much a handful you might have been, at least you weren't deliberately cruel."

To cats anyway.

"What kind of books snagged your attention?"

Jon was never - well, until recently - deliberately cruel. Just often clueless.

"Oh, um. Well, anything really." He shrugged. "Fantasy, crime novels, biographies. I loved learning things. I hated feeling like I'd read something before - authors with particularly distinct styles, I never wanted to read more than one book. Didn't enjoy series. Once I'd seen it before, it bored me."

He belatedly realised he was talking all about himself, which was probably rude. "I, um. You seemed like you enjoyed learning magic."

Or was exactly what Liliana had been angling for. One of those.

"I always have," she said, with a soft smile. "Magic is fascinating, a complex puzzle that requires both imagination and precision and the prize for solving it is that you bend reality to your will, whether you look at a wounded body and declare that it is healed, or the opposite." She chuckled. "I went to a magical college, you know. Strixhaven, on the plane of Arcavios. Founded by five dragons almost a thousand years ago. They were a good four years. Did you attend university, Jon? What was your field of study?"

See above, re: socially clueless.

"Oh, erm, yes. I went to Oxford. It's almost a thousand years old, and it is considered quite prestigious, but it was not founded by dragons. I studied literature and philosophy. Magic wasn't an option, which...is probably a very good thing, considering my world."

And Liliana was also very good at what she did. It worked out nicely that way.

"Magic has brought multiple planes to the brink of destruction, and some beyond," Liliana said softly. "Less than a hundred years ago, the fundamental laws of the Multiverse were rewritten to stop the nexus from succumbing to all the damage that mages had carelessly caused over the past few millennia."

Did Liliana sound both regretful and resentful about that rewriting? Never you mind.

"And what did you take away from your philosophical learnings, Jon?" she asked, returning to the previous subject. She'd somehow found a way to lounge in her chair, holding her coffee and fixing him with a steady look, like a cat that's found something particularly interesting. "To me, philosophy seems so broad, so very much the underpinnings of everything that I don't understand how you can learn about it."

Did Jon look inordinately relieved to have something to talk about that wasn't worlds being destroyed? Never you mind that.

"Oh, it's...we learned a lot about existing philosophical approaches, which mostly are a horrendous mix of useless old men coming up with justifications for their actions, but it was - as you say, it's so much the underpinnings of other things that it was a good way to learn a broad spectrum of history, psychology, and so forth, as well as critical thinking. We did a lot of arguing."

"One of Strixhaven's Colleges is called Silverquill, and they explore the magic inherent in eloquence and expression," Liliana said with a faint, nostalgic smile. "Imagine a philosophy debate where words could literally cut. They were fascinating to watch. And their dramatic performances? Flawless."

"That does sound impressive," Jon admitted. "But I, um. I prefer my philosophy a little less violent." Not that he'd ever had much choice in it. "Not that I..." Well, his own words had done quite a bit of damage, after all. "Well. I've had poor experiences with the sorts of magic words can do."

To put it mildly.

"All five of Strixhaven's Colleges are organized around the idea of philosophical principles joined in concordant opposition," Liliana said, leaning forward because she truly loved talking about her university. "The paradoxical unity of of two polar principles. Silverquill embodies the principles of shadow and radiance in regards to communication. Students who follow the radiance principles look to illuminate others, make the world brighter, use words to uplift and empower, and shine light on the evils of the world. Whereas the students of the shadow principle focus on the power of language to stab and harm and shame, to expose the truths others would remain hidden, while also obfuscating secrets of their own."

Jon fidgeted. "I think I've mentioned my world has...well, no good magic. Nothing helpful." Maybe once or twice, yes. "It's, um. There are...there are entities. Connected to each other, o-or possibly part of the same thing. They're made of fear; they feed off it and try to generate more. Everything unnatural in my world comes from them. There are...are animals and people and places they infect, things they create or alter. Books, too. And some people, they...they worship them as gods. Serve them. Try t-to bring them further into the world. Shameful secrets and hidden truths and obsessive knowledge, that's one of them. Beholding. The Eye."

Edited 2023-11-21 03:03 (UTC)

Liliana absorbed this thoughtfully. "Like, demons?" she asked. "I know several demons with cults that worship them."

And apparently vampires who sleep with them, you creepy cow, Henrika.

"The Eye? It...tries to find your secrets?" Liliana hated that one already.

"It...well, it lives off of the fears of, um. Of having secrets discovered. Or pursuing knowledge that destroys you. Or...or anything like that, really. It doesn't really think itself. Or not like people do, anyway. It just...it causes things like...um. A mirror that shows your worst fears, or a person who can know what you're thinking, or...or surveillance that follows you around. A book with your secrets written out, and the fear anybody could find it. Or a book with someone else's secrets written out, depending who's reading it."

He took a deep breath, trying to focus. "The Fears, they don't...they don't actually have bodies. Though at least one of them, the Desolation, is associated with a demon, but that could mean the demon was something it created, or that its followers conceived of it as a demon, or...any number of things."

Liliana looked at him. She looked at him for a looooong time. "It's these Entities, isn't it?" she murmured. "The reason for your interest in my ability to remove memories."

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