revivalproject | Warm Fuzzies

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Warm Fuzzies

WHO: Omega and you?
WHERE: Temba and Sh'Ka
WHAT: Making sure the locals are warm
WHEN: Through the month
WARNINGS: N/A

This time around Omega was much better prepared for what to expect once the season shifted. She had more than enough free time and had started spending some of it in going through the available department stores for materials, clothes she could use. The nice Hunter had given her a knife so she could cut things up properly, and she'd managed to do so without slicing off any fingers and only giving Echo a mild heart attack.

Her sewing skills were rudimentary at best, but she remembered what she'd been taught during the rain fair that had seemed so long ago now. All she really needed to do was make sure one piece of material attached and stayed attached to another.

Depending on when one came across her, she could be found leaving little makeshift scarves and bundles of blankets by spots she'd seen Funfronds and Barrys frequent, in Temba or Sh'Ka proper. There's also the library where she might get sidetracked in her warmth dispersing and end up buried in mothcats. Or she could be found either carrying a very large bundle of cloth in her arms or in the process of winding what turned out to be a very lengthy, patched together scarf out around a snow-dusted outcropping of rocks that had settled near the spiraling depression of the Temba memorial site. Weird girl.

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"Anyone with that many animal friends does not have as many human friends," Salem said, looking skeptical that anyone else would use 'a lot' to describe Omega's social circle. "Don't worry, I've known plenty of weirdos in my life, and most of them didn't even have a family curse to blame." Unfortunately, the book wasn't so good at lifting family curses, so Omega and her brothers might still have a tough time back home, but Salem was still proud to introduce, "This one's a family heirloom. Most of the modern ones are a lot smaller, more convenient." Her phrasing was just weird enough that after a beat, he realized, "Parents, birthdays and books? Did they keep you in the attic? Is your curse contagious?"

The book seemed hefty enough that Omega decided to sit on the floor with it rather than haul it up on the table. She tilted her head at the cover before flipping it open.

"I guess you're in good company then. My brothers and I aren't really considered normal out of the clones, after all." She doesn't sound upset about it, stating what she's accepted as fact. It's what's bound her strange little family closer together and there's nothing wrong with that.

"I don't have a curse. I was created by the Kaminoans and lived in their city all my life until recently. Information is all computerized. I've never seen anything like this," she said, marveling at the feel of the pages as she carefully turned them. It was fascinating to her.

"So this came with you? It must be difficult to move. What's an heirloom?"

Finally being the tall one suited Salem just fine, and he settled himself with his paws crossed over the edge of the table where he could peer down at Omega, and the occasional picture that would wave at them from the book. The pages she flipped through were worn and delicate, and not without their stains and tears, some distinctly from tiny claws.

"You only use computers? Is that where that little one came from?" he marvelled right back, trying to see where the thing had landed when Omega had hauled out the book. It was a very impressive little machine, much faster and smaller than any computer he had used. He still couldn't carry it, but it was a step in the right direction. "It seems like the book followed me, yes. I was only taking a nap on it, it wasn't my fault! I would send it back if I could. That doesn't mean we can't use it in the meantime." Someone around here was bound to have a finger that still worked, or could be unbound by something in the book, and then they'd all be tucked in their own beds in no time. "An heirloom is the junk that you give to your kids or great grandkids when you're tired of tripping over it in your own house. Everyone pretends to really appreciate it, and they take up a lot of room in the closet."

It was different seeing pictures that moved on something so flimsy as a paper page, but being unfamiliar with how books worked in general, it didn't occur to Omega that this was probably not a normal circumstance as she waved back at the pictures.

"Pretty much. Little one? You mean the tablets? The Agrii gives us those when we arrive, I think." She skimmed the contents of the page she'd stopped on before looking at Salem as he explained heirlooms.

"Well I can see how this would take up a lot of space..." She looked back at the page again, flipping it, mostly to see what other pictures would interact with her. "The cover said something about magic? What kind of magic?"

If the little computers were made by their hosts, their chances of getting out of here were looking bleak to Salem. They must have been very smart. He searched for the communicator again anxiously, not sure if he was as enchanted by it anymore. He was more than happy to ignore the problem in favour of explaining, "Witchcraft! The rules, the incantations, the potions; you want it, the book's got it. Give it a try. What's on your mind?" A clone might have had a little bit of magic of her own in her finger to make it work.

'Witchcraft' was a new one to her. "Me?" Omega blinked. "Oh, I've only heard of magic from people here. I was told there's all sorts. I'm not really sure what I'd want to try..."

She flipped a few more pages, not that she was sure what she was looking for. "What about you? Is there anything you want?"

"Doesn't matter what I want, cats can't do magic. It's part of the..." Salem started, then reconsidered admitting his criminal charges to the little girl and had to quickly come up with, "feline code." Despite the many things he did want. He knew the book front to back, though, and it wasn't going to be doing him any good. Omega skimmed through pages elaborately printed and titled things like 'Conjuring', 'Appetizers' and 'On Love:', without much obvious structure despite the hefty index, and Salem watched them pass by curiously, wondering if any of it could catch Omega's attention.

"Then why have a magic book?" she asked, genuinely confused. The random assortment of topics didn't really help either.

"Appetizers... isn't that more to do with food?" It was a little funny. "I don't suppose it has anything on making cake, does it?" She was half joking, but if there was a possibility then she'd hardly complain about it either.

"It belongs to a friend," Salem explained, "I told you, I'm a housecat. Cats also can't own property. We're mostly relegated to staring and napping, so I don't actually miss it that much." Ideally, he could only be expected to stare and nap and have his own bank account.

"You might be more interested in a cookbook if its just a normal cake you're after," he considered, and couldn't deny this was a good impulse that should be pursued. "Maybe try asking Vincent Price. He should be in the section on 'mood'. Once you get him started on souffles, he won't stop."

"That sounds a little like the mothcats. Though they do like to play. Have you ever gone on patrols?" Omega asked idly.

She made a small face at that. "I've never really cooked," she admitted. "Unless you count adding hot water to the peanut butter paste and mixing in chicken-flavored paste to make soup."

Vincent Price? Where did anyone even find specific sections in this thing? Undaunted, Omega began to flip pages. "Who's Vincent Price?"

Salem's ears twisted, anxious that this might lead to another attempt to introduce him to the mothcats when they were clearly just going to eat him no matter how many hobbies they had in common, only to flick forward again in confusion as he echoed, "Patrols?"

Hot water, peanut butter and chicken paste mixed together had him considering very intently, focus clearly drifting and needing to be yanked back when he realized Omega had asked him a question. "Sounds delicious, you might be a natural. Have you considered adding anchovies to it?" Most of the pictures in the book seemed willing to talk, so it might have been a little difficult to pick out the thin, mustachioed man without Salem announcing, "That one!" as Omega flipped by and the picture gave a wiggle of his fingers in greeting. "Very famous witch, even the mortals love him, didn't even realize he was doing magic right in front of them. Hey, Vinny, you got a cake recipe?" The picture opened his mouth, but no sound came out, making him frown and glance around at his frame like maybe he could find the source of the problem. He tried again, this time with another wave, and a shrug. "...Vinny?"

"I guess that's a 'no'," Omega noted. "I go on them sometimes with my brother, and sometimes with my squad. Just around the city, you know, to keep an eye out for any trouble."

She gave him an inquisitive look, obviously not familiar with anchovies either. Her attention was quickly drawn back to the book and the moving pictures, and she offered a wave back at the man Salem called Vinny. "Is something wrong?" she asked Salem as she saw the little picture man's confusion, and she tilted the book a little as she wondered that there was a volume control somewhere.

With Vincent Price still doing a mime routine with a lot of disinterested shrugging that explained pretty clearly what he must have been saying before his portrait went still as a picture, Salem was pretty sure he did not actually want to know the answer to, "What kind of trouble?" He asked trepidatiously, feeling like the situation itself was bad enough, and the snow, without there being something out there to patrol about. And the book wasn't even working properly! At least it still looked legible. Salem finally dropped down off of the table, onto the open book to try pawing at it himself, slapping at the portrait like that might shake the obstruction loose without much hope that it was doing much of anything. "I don't know why we can't hear him. I've never seen that before."

"Well you never know what's out there. And it's something to do," she explained. Never mind that the only real trouble she'd had was herding her squad.

Omega looked a little alarmed once the picture went still. "Is he all right?" She let out a little gasp as Salem dropped down on the book. "Is it broken..?" She wasn't sure how a book could break though. "Maybe we should try someone else," she suggested.

"Maybe..." Salem agreed, and started to dig at the pages to turn them over, bunching them under his paws until he found another portrait of a woman who looked slightly startled to be revealed this way, and even moreso when Salem practically shouted, "Hey, can you hear me?!" This, obviously, hadn't been the problem in the first place, and the witch in the book looked offended now by the shouting and had plenty to say about Salem's manners, only for her words to slow as she gave a quizzical glance around as she realized she wasn't making any noise. The cat had not endeared himself to her, though, so she was not at all enthusiastic about solving the problem for him, so she harumphed and went as still as the last portrait.

"Your phones here are like this, too," Salem had to acknowledge then, though he had never had connection problems with a magic book like this. "None of the numbers I know will connect, I can't even order a pizza. I thought maybe they were too small to work properly. No long distance plan."

With Salem driving, so to speak, Omega watched until they came upon another portrait. She winced as the cat yelled at the poor woman, not that any different results were produced.

"Phones?" she frowned, looking back at the book. Somehow the lack of being able to interact with it even with the moving pictures made it a little less interesting. "Is it connected to something back where you're from? The magic?"

"In the little computers, they have telephones, except you can only make local calls," Salem tried to explain, not really understanding it himself and slinking off of the book to pace a little closer to his mysterious device under the table. They clearly weren't magical, or they would have been more useful and less confusing. "The book is supposed to be connected to the Other Realm. I don't know anything strong enough to totally cut off that connection. That's like...moving a whole planet. But even bigger. A realm! Maybe something happened over there and that's why nothing is working. Maybe that guy was right, and everyone is gone..."

"Oh! The communicators. True, you can only use them to contact other people here. I think it's limited only to the network established here and in Sh'Ka. We're cut off from anything beyond this world."

Omega looked over the page again, wondering if the text might offer anything helpful if the moving pictures did not. "Other Realm? What's that? If it's something that only exists in your world or galaxy, then that might be why the book's not working. I'm not even sure what galaxy this might be."

Being cut off was clearly worse than the rest of the universe being dead, because that meant it was going on without Salem and he couldn't even see how much anyone missed him. "Anything?" he wondered, already sounding hopeless enough to start sobbing as he curled around his only kind of useful computer.

Beyond the pictures, the book mostly appeared to contain instructions, ranging from gathering ingredients to make a potion, to warnings about errant wishes. If it was still cake that Omega was looking for, the potions might have been the closest, though she would have to do some improvising when it came to frogs' tongues and rosemary. Any other time, they could have just ordered these things from the Other Realm, which Salem explained miserably, "It's not really a galaxy...It's where witches are from, where all of their power comes from, you should be able to get to it from anywhere. Somebody's got to have a doorway to it somewhere around here. Have you seen any weird doors?"

Half of the things on the apparent ingredients listings sounded quite unappetizing, and the other half she had no idea what they were. Omega made a face as she skimmed the potion listings before she set the book down, closing its cover.

"What's a witch?" she asked as she looked at the poor cat. He looked so miserable, oh no! "I'm not sure what would account as weird around here, there are strange things that happen enough," the girl said as she scooted closer to him. Would he let her pick him up? He looked like he needed a hug.

Strange enough things that she knew how to make clones, but didn't know about witches. The mortals hadn't figured that out yet, had they? There really didn't need to be any more, or any dumber of them. "Someone who can do magic," he tried to explain. "That usually accounts for the strange things going on. There are definitely witches here. Are you sure you don't need help making friends?"

"Hm." Omega nodded as she considered this. "Well, Lark can use magic. And Ezra told me that the Jedi used something like magic, but he's not here anymore. There are lots of strange things that happen here. Do you think they might be because of magic?"

She reached over to pet Salem as she thought about things. "Does that mean you don't want to be friends?"

"Almost definitely," was Salem's assessment of the likelihood of strange magic. Most everything that mortals did was too boring to be remarkable.

He immediately started purring before Omega's hand had even landed, which really undermined his lofty, "I am willing to consider a temporary ally in this current crisis. Should your performance be satisfactory, we might negotiate an ongoing arrangement."

Clearly Salem didn't spend time with rogue clones. Omega would never consider anything her squad's done, boring. Well, except the times they told her to sit on the sidelines, but even that wasn't boring for long.

The girl smiled at the purring, familiar enough with it from her experience with mothcats to figure it was a sign of approval. She considered the cat's words, looking amused. "I guess I can agree to those terms," she said.

Arching up into the patting and giving a pleased twirl, Salem declared, "Then it is settled." A very sensible negotiation once again closed successfully. "First order of business, we find a can of tuna. Then, we have to start searching for that door. How many doors could there be in this place?"

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small_compromise - 2023-01-07 23:41 (UTC) - Expand

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