asgardmeridiem | ® oo3. ] open [ ways of learning

Entry tags:

® oo3. ] open [ ways of learning

Who: Erica Reyes & Open
What: Spending time outside of Hel
When: Days 287 & 288
Where: The Library and Around Baldr
Rating: TV-G
Notes: Feel free to reply with [bracket] or prose! Past or Present! Have her on the way or returning from either of these places, too!

|| Day 287 ||

Erica had found her way to the library. She'd brought books to Johannes earlier and maybe she was still thinking about what he'd told her, but she'd been finding her way around the stacks more and more recently. She had her visit with Merlin coming up and maybe that also drove her to the library. Somehow her choice to let Merlin look at her and try to magically heal her epilepsy had gotten around to the pack and now they all wanted to watch. The library was quiet and it let her think. She finds books on epilepsy, putting them into a pile. She digs through the aisle and tries to find something on werewolves that isn't in the fiction section.

Once she has a large stack of books, she moves to the chairs and curls up with a book to try and read what she can about her own disease. Her parents always handled it and usually she was given the pamphlet version of what was wrong with her. The internet would give her mixed answers, but these books at least seemed to have research she could see.

After a bit, she moved from the medical books and dove into the mystical and the legends of certain cultures. These were definitely more interesting than averages and percentages of people with symptoms.

|| Day 288 ||

Things with Merlin went off... with little incident. She didn't really want to focus on that. It still felt a bit weird to her and she didn't know if it was working. She would meet with Dr. Watson later and get a second scan. Erica wanted to do that, not just for her own knowledge, but because she knew that everyone that was concerned -- everyone that was protective of her would want to know too.

Baldr had a park. She'd been there a few times, but today she was planning on spending most of her time in the petting zoo. She liked the smaller animals, but she also didn't feel bad when she practiced her power on them. It was easier to switch to a different animal if she wasn't as good with the one. It also wasn't someone that was just letting her do it, it was her trying to really use her power.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

After his run ins with Derek and Isaac, Stiles had taken to staying in his own district. He wasn't in the mood to have another altercation that left him with more marks than he had, ones he'd already had to hide from Scott. Thankfully, they were fading, but not fast enough for him.

Sure, he could use them to drive a wedge further between Scott and Derek and Isaac, but that was playing on a level Stiles didn't want to go to. He was still pissed, both at them and himself, and until he could figure out which one he was more mad at, he was just avoiding everyone all together. Except for Scott, because Scott wouldn't leave him alone, and to be honest, he needed at least one person who didn't hate him or think he was utterly pathetic and easily tossed aside.

Since he didn't leave the district much, that gave him loads of time to search around in the library. He was more than a little amazed at the size of it as well as the variety of topics to research. Habit had him finding himself in the occult and mysticism section, which is generally where he wound up for his duration of his stays there.

He was heading there today when he saw a familiar head of tousled blonde hair. He balked, stopping in his tracks and wondering if he should just turn and leave her to her... whatever she was doing. He didn't know how much, if anything, Derek or Isaac had told her and he wasn't in the mood to be belittled or picked on again. A soft reminder nudged in his brain that she wasn't that version of Erica anymore.

Slowly, hoping not to be noticed, he crept as stealthily as he could into the section, going over to where he'd last been to continue his reading there. Maybe she wouldn't notice him. Maybe he could actually have a decent day. Maybe...

One of the books on Werewolves she picked up kept referencing another book and she wanted to see if she could find that one. It would be a bit of back and forth in her reading, but she was willing to do it if it would help her clear up a few things.

Heading toward the aisle, she spotted Stiles. It wasn't like he was hard to miss. Erica had been spotting him for years. She paused for a moment. She knew why Scott had abandoned him with her that day, but he had still been nice to her.

Erica cleared her throat softly, just alerting him to the fact that she was there. Waving to him, she took a breath, "Hey. Reading anything interesting?"

He'd been reading the titles in front of him, forgetting that he was supposed to be avoiding her. When she spoke, his hand jerked the book he was looking at off of the shelf, dropping it on his foot and causing this huge slamming noise to echo in the library, one that was followed by his garbled attempts not to swear out loud.

With his lips pressed in a line, he hummed, bending down slowly to grab the fallen book, which was huge by the way, and hold it under his arm, trying not to look like he was keeping his injured foot off the ground.

"Uh, hey. Um... no. No, not yet. Just got here. Got this," he said, holding out the huge book. It read 'The mating rituals of hybrid creatures', and he blinked at the title before hiding it behind his back. "Uh, you? What are you reading?"

She lifted a brow at the book title. It seemed a bit odd, but then again she hadn't been aware of what Stiles had been involved with back home. It felt like an entirely different world had been hiding right there.

When he asked her what she'd been reading she held out a book that was just titled 'The Mythos of the Moon'. She shrugged, moving to hold it close to her chest.

"It's a start, at least." She wasn't sure if she wanted to ask him why he was reading about mating rituals. Maybe he'd met some...one since arriving here.

He hadn't meant to show her that, but he'd been curious about the title and that had been the one his hand had been on when she'd startled him. Bad timing, Erica. Way to out him as a pervert.

"A start? To what?" He looked the book over, wondering if she was researching what it looked like she was.

No, Erica. He hadn't met something. Well, he'd met Jade, but she was seeing someone and had a tail and made him pie and wanted to set him up with a guy. There was a whole lot going on there, okay?

"What happens back home," she admitted. "I mean, it helps me. I don't have access to that here, but I still want to know how it helps."

The magic was one thing, her prescription another. She just wanted to know what else she could be doing, what else was out there. She shrugged up her shoulder, "It's dumb, because I can't actually do anything about it, but I just want to at least know about it."

"So... you're looking up what happens in case you do go back home?" He was struck with a thought and he had to ask her. "Would you do it again? I mean, you haven't done it as far as you're concerned, but, I mean, if you went back home and Derek offered to do it again... would you?"

He slid the book back, shaking his head. "I don't think it's dumb. If I found out I'd been mauled by a mutated sewer turtle, I'd want to look that up, even if I planned on avoiding it."

It took her a bit to think of her answer, mostly because she knew it right away and wanted to make sure that it was her answer. Having it come to mind so easily almost scared her, but she knew that it was what she wanted. Even here if Derek could... she'd take it.

"I'd do it." It helps her. It brings her friends like Isaac and someone who looks out for her like Derek. She wouldn't want to go without that.

He couldn't really blame her. He'd seen her seizures and they hadn't looked pretty or fun. But he might be a little sad that she'd lose that shy part of herself. Not that hot and confident Erica wasn't as sexy as all hell, but she was too brash. Too aggressive. It was like she was making up for all the years of being fragile with being harsh. Sometimes, maybe a little cruel.

He nodded, not sure what to say to that. "Yeah, that's what I thought."

"Do you think it's a mistake?" She wanted to know, to know how it was looked at by someone who wasn't her. Not that she believed he had any real idea how it was for her. That he understood how horrible it felt.

She knew he hadn't been someone to be kind to her. The look he gave her before he climbed the wall wasn't easily forgotten. None of the looks were ever easy to forget.

"I... I don't know, Erica. I mean, I get why you did it. I do, honestly. But..." How do you tell someone that they change from what she was into some sexpot looking vixen with an aggression issue?

"What I think doesn't matter." There. That was true and he only hoped she didn't take it the wrong way. "I mean, it's your decision. Not mine." He'd made his choice and no matter what Peter said, he was sticking to it.

Nodding, Erica tried to understand, but it was hard when she knew that people seemed to only tell her the things she wanted to hear. They all protect her and she figured that Stiles was doing that too. Shrugging, she settled the book into the crook of her arm.

"Mating rituals of hybrid creatures? That's like centaurs, right?"

He looked over at the book he'd put back, hoping the blush he felt wasn't showing. "Uh, yeah, I guess. Or lamias, nagas, sphinxes, satyrs, fauns, mermaids. I guess pretty much anything that's a mix of two or more things."

Why, oh why, had he been holding that book?

"Mermaids? Are there mermaids here?" If there were, Erica sort of wanted to see if they were like the ones in the cartoons she watched growing up. Were they the ones that wanted to drown girls or become girls?

"I know there are horses with eight legs."

"Um, I don't know. I haven't really gone on any sort of 'what creatures can you find' quest." He saw the almost excitement at that and wished he could tell her definitively one way or the other.

"What? Oh, right. Uh... Sleipnir, right? Or are there more?" He'd known about the myth of Loki getting freaky as a mare with a stallion and having an octohorse, but Loki seemed like he got freaky with everything. Giant serpents and wolves as babies? Yeah, Scott would love him.

"I think there are more of them. They're at the park. Carriage rides or something," she replied. She'd seen them a few times since she'd been going to the park.

"You should go on a quest though. It'd be like license plate bingo, but more weird."

"And if I do happen to see a sphinx or a chimera or a centaur and they see me checking off my magical creatures bingo card, I'm likely to have my ass handed to me." He grinned at the thought of carrying around a bingo card with pictures of mythical beasties and crossing them off when he found them.

"I think the proper thing to say if I got a bingo playing that would somehow be Jumanji."

"You'd just have to be careful about it. It's not like you'd need photographic proof."

She shrugged, moving to lean against the bookshelf, relieved that it didn't even budge when she did so. "It could be just you making a note, drawing a picture."

"If you're so eager to possibly get trounced, why don't you run around playing 'Spot the monster'?" He copied her, leaning against the shelf and folding his arms.

She braced herself internally when she saw him move to lean against the shelf too. She worried that added weight would topple it, but when it stayed she relaxed.

"They're not monsters," she answered. "If you think they're monsters, maybe you deserve to be trounced."

"I didn't mean it that way. God. Haven't you ever read the monstrous manual? Wait, no, that's a dumb question." She was a girl. Of course she hadn't.

"I'm not saying they're like, the boogieman or anything. It's just a... classification."

"Dungeons and Dragons," she replied softly. "I didn't... read them, but I saw them."

They were on the shelf, but she never picked them up. Instead she'd found her escapism elsewhere, in the pages of printed heroines that overcame their difficulties.

"Even still, it's not a nice classification." Erica wondered if he classified her as a monster.

Stiles didn't want to read about damsels in distress. At first it was because girls were icky and who needed to read that shit? Then it was because he found himself getting a little too excited when reading some of them. Now he knew why those books were so popular. Damn.

"Not necessarily. Sometimes, that's just what it is. Like, Little Monsters or Monsters Inc., or Aliens vs. Monsters. Doesn't mean I think they suck or anything, but it's kind of just what they're called."

"Is that what you classify werewolves as?" She didn't stop herself from asking the question this time. It wasn't as if she was one now, or that anyone that had been one was still one.

They'd all had that part of them removed, but that didn't remove the question or the opinion that Stiles had on them.

"Werewolves? Yeah, of course. And for good reason. A lot of them go on murderous rampages. Peter, Jackson, hell, Isaac might have killed me if Derek hadn't stepped in. When they're... wolfed out? They're not really all there. Not all the time. Especially not during a full moon. And I say this as someone whose best friend is one. I love Scott. I'd risk my life for him and I have. Part of that risk was him. Werewolves are monsters, but that doesn't mean that they can't be good people too."

Day 287

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