RP:I've Got A Bad Feeling About This

Part of the Hungry Like The Wolf Arc

Summary: Khitti tells Meri her concerns about this whole amulet adventure over coffee and cake. Meri is, unfortunately skeptical, and Khitti's left with more worries than she went to her sister with. And also, Khitti continues the trend of opening portals to the Shadow Plane and throwing her problems into them (no, she didn't throw Meri in there).

The Greenhouse (Rochester-Boyce Residence), Sage Forest

Khitti || There were a lot of problems lately. There were so many problems that Khitti was having trouble checking them -off- her list than she was putting them on. It was getting overwhelming. What’s a Khat to do then? Talk to Brand? No, he was a part of one of the problems, re: the Shadow Plane. Lionel? No, he had enough to deal with in Venturil. So who? Well, her sister of course! It did not help, however, that Meri was also associated with one of the aforementioned many issues, but at least, in comparison, it seemed like it was a relatively small one. Maybe. Hopefully. -Seriously hopefully.- Lugging Dominic along so he can see his aunt and cousin, Khitti headed to Meri’s house. She had a hell of a time trying to decide whether or not to bring some sort of dessert or booze, eventually opting to keep the whiskey at home--she might need it moreso when she confronted Brand about going back to the Shadow Plane. Her tikifhlee was dealt with once they reached the house and Khitti led her kid to the door. She hesitated when she went to knock, and while one wouldn’t think it’d be long enough for anything to happen during that time, it certainly is for a toddler. Dominic took it upon himself to bang on the door a few times with his tiny fist and yelled, “Aunt Meri!” Okay, so it sounded a lot more like ‘Aunt Mehwi”, but still.

Meri :: Dominic's impatience to be let in is probably spurned by the fact that immediately after the first knock on the door, the dogs start barking. All three of them. As dogs do. Khitti's favorite dog sounds a little yappie in comparison to the other two, but hey. The dogs only gain more excitement with their barking when knock round number two happens. And of course they are familiar with Dominic's voice, so this really only makes them happier. People they -like- are at the door. If the dogs and Dominic were not enough to get Meri's attention, Fleur can be heard in the background with those repeat cries of "Mom! Door! MOOOOM." Okay guys, Meri gets it. Someone is at the door. They need to be let in. After a bit of wrestling with the dogs, Meri manages to accomplish this task of opening the door. Sort of. Khitti and Dominic have riled up on the whole house so they're pretty much getting pounced by the dogs and the minion (Fleur). "See what happens when you knock? You're just supposed to let yourself in so that you can deal with them in bursts and waves." Meri vaguely gestures to the excited mob of wild beasts (yes, still referencing Fleur too) that has rushed passed her.

Khitti’s jaw dropped when her son decided to do the thing. “Oh no. What have you done?!” The hounds were about to be released and all Dominic could do was giggle maniacally. Meri opened the door and all -Khitti- could do was just stand there for another moment or two with her mouth open. “B-but! He did it!” She pointed at the kid who was still laughing. Khitti was half tempted to tell him he couldn’t sleep with his precious chickens tonight, but alas, it was better for him to be laughing like he was than screaming his head off. Sleeping with his chickens every night was -very- important, you see, and Henrietta, Locutus, and Kevin would agree. “I swear he’s just like his father,” she said, shaking her head as she gave Dominic a push into the hoard of slobbering beasts so she could actually set foot inside the door. It ended up too much of a push; the kid took a few steps, tripped onto his face, rolled over, and was promptly licked to death by doggos. It would be a good death, at least. RIP. “Okay, so he’s like me too.” Sigh. “Anyway…” She said, moving to find a place to sit amongst the masses, “How… uh… are you? And things?” Unfortunately for Khitti, when awkward conversations are to happen, her mind suddenly decides it’s a good time to start with the small talk. Khitti is not good at the small talk.

Meri makes herself useful while Khitti struggles to deal with the crowd of crazies. Her usefulness is going to come in a few forms. "Hey! Dogs! Kids! Outside! All of you!Out! Go play...outside!" She's half tempted to get a broom to help shoo those with the higher energy levels outdoors, but she resists. They seem to be mostly listening anyway. This is for the better, because it allows Meri the freedom to prepare adult things. Tonight, that adult thing comes in the form of sweet, precious coffee. A percolator is prepared and then put on the stove, it would only be a couple of minutes before Khitti and Meri could smell that warm goodness. Okay, maybe sooner for Meri but that's neither here nor there. While she prepares this coffee, the blonde lifts a brow at Khitti's awkward manner. Meri rolls her eyes as she places the percolator on the stove, turning to face Khitti with arms folded across her chest. She lightly chides her sister, "Uh huh, get out of here with this 'how uh are you and things' and say what's on your brain, woman." Meri smirks wryly, "You adopted me for a reason, eh? Part of that reason is I know you better than most. Maybe not Brand..but most. So what's up? What are you being a weirdo? What's on your brain?"

Khitti had a stroke when Meri called her out. Okay, not really. “To be fair, I am always a weirdo and it’s a title that I actually like, thankyouverymuch,” she said with a smirk of her own. She does not get right to the point of her visit yet, however, because she remembered she had cake! And the kids are outside, which meant their mothers could be hella sneaky. The couch was ultimately forsaken so that Khitti could follow Meri into the kitchen, and therefore keep the cake even farther away from the kids. They can smell that stuff from miles away, you know. “I managed to sneak some of this off the ship. I had to kill someone to keep my secret safe.” She did not, in fact, have to kill someone. The two large pieces of chocolate cake with strawberry filling was carefully unboxed and sat on the table as she took a seat. “I think there’s a problem… with the wolf amulet,” she said eventually, at length. “Alvina and I might’ve gone to the place you found it at… and did some digging.”

Meri smirks when Khitti explains that she had to commit murder to sneak this cake off the ship. The blonde understands. Kids. "Well if you go to jail, it will be worth it. Your cake always is." Meri jokes while she pours the coffee while Khitti preps the cake. Between the awkwardness and the chocolate cake that Meri is viewing as perhaps a bit of a 'don't hate me' bribe, the blonde is left to assume this chat will not be a good one. The tattooed werewolf responds as one might expect her to respond. She merely lifts a brow and waits for Khitti to go on with her explanation. There is coffee and cake to be had while Khitti attempts to explain her piece, which is enough to keep the momma-beast tame for the time being.

Khitti || “Well… Once we got past the ridiculously high cliff and killer lizards, we found a hut with some guy in it. Alvina got him to talk with Lanara’s crystal skull. He says the amulet is his and that he wants it back… That he -will- get it back. I don’t think he was telling us everything. We’ve seen the way that skull worked at Lanara’s trial. It still felt off.” In between speaking, Khitti shoved bites of cake into her mouth and downed some of the coffee. “And then he frakking teleported out of there. Meri, it looked like the portal to the Chaos Realm. Exactly like it. And the damn thing had a pull to it, like a whirlpool. And... I think he put the dragon there…” There was clearly a lot of speculation going on, and it was obvious, but the bad feeling in the pit of Khitti’s stomach told her things were not going to go well. Whenever she spoke of it though, to most people, it was just brushed off as paranoia, and now she too tried to dismiss it as such. “I dunno. Maybe it’s nothing major at all. We knew something like this amulet would be guarded heavily. Selen Island was definitely proof of that.”

Meri should probably be more alarmed by the account then she is. One thing is clear though, she is at the very least not mad over Khitti and Alvina doing their own investigative work behind her back. That's about the only plus that Khitti gets from this situation, every single word goes pretty much unheeded by Meri. "I mean...I went into a den and stole a couple something's from it. I cannot exactly blame them for being upset that their property was stolen. I think if someone stole my things, there are definitely a couple of items that I would want to get back?" Plus as a rogue, Meri would take particular offense in being stolen from. She would definitely feel inclined to flex her muscles and get her property back. Meri shrugs and slices the cake with her fork. "As for the teleportation. I don't know. I think probably a good chunk of mages can maybe do this...? Is it really that odd...? How do you know it was the Chaos Realm this person went to?" Meri promptly shoves that fork-full of cake into her mouth.

Khitti let Meri talk as she finished off her cake, and then took to chewing at the inside of her cheek when she was done. She was certainly glad that Meri wasn’t upset or anything, but the questions made her a little wary. In her haste to get here, she’d completely forgotten about the book she’d gotten to look up other planes of existence and that was not going to help things. “I mean, whether or not you stole it isn’t exactly what I care about, you know. Even if he -had- been there, who the hell is going to listen to some hermit all the way under the Enchantment? And of course, any mage can learn teleportation spells, but it was just… the nature of the spell itself. Maybe it isn’t the Chaos Realm, but the description of it that I read about sounded a hell of a lot like it. Or maybe it’s a different form of it or something… My own portal spell to the Shadow Plane isn’t the same as other portal spells I’ve seen come from there. I think it’s different by region or culture…” She shook her head and frowned, trying to get back to the topic at hand, “I just… have a bad feeling. I guess it could just very well lead to some part of Lithrydel or Rynvale that we’ve never been to, though… I’ve just never seen a spell like that before. Not through enchanting or arcane or shadow magic.”

Meri is silent for a time. She's trying to process Khitti's concerns against her own feelings, plus there was the distraction of cake and coffee making this processing a bit slower. Plus Meri also has to try and figure out what sort of solution Khitti was hoping for. Surely the redhead was not suggesting that they abandon their search? That seemed to be very much not to be an action fitting for the Adventurer's Guild. Abandoning a quest just because it was a bit scary or there were too many unknown variables...? This was not something that Meri could bring herself to do. The only time she's tapped out of anything is in regards to the Shadow Planes...and why is no mystery. Though she does see how there could be parallels. What if Meri ended up trapped in the Chaos Realm? After a time the blonde issues a hesitant shrug. "So...we'll...be careful?" Was this answer sufficient? Meri had a feeling no, but honestly the two mom's have been kid free for an incredulous amount of time. Fleur puts that streak to an end as she pops her head in the front door and then promptly shouts at Dominic, "Cake!" Oh no. Their secret has been discovered.

Khitti wasn’t quite sure where she was going with this either. It’s not like they hadn’t been through things like this before. Hell, this was certainly easier than what they went through to get Khitti’s vampirism cure. “Yeah… we’ll be careful,” she agreed in defeat. It’s not long before both Khitti and Meri’s thought processes are utterly destroyed by children. “Oh gods. I’ll buy you new stuff, Meri!” Panicking, Khitti opened up the tiniest portal possible to the Shadow Plane, to throw the plates and forks into it, but not before she took whatever frosting and crumbs was left on said plates and tossed it into their coffee cups to hopefully flavor what was left, as a ruse. “What? There’s no cake here. Just our coffee! It’s new. It -smells- like chocolate cake.” Khitti might have become a little too reliant on throwing things into portals to get rid of her problems. But, you have to admit, it’s definitely handy.

Meri :: Khitti panics and does her best to hide the evidence. She really does. Except, Fleur is a werewolf and it's harder to pull a fast one on her. Her and the dogs but KNOW there was cake in this house. Dominic, on the other hand, could be more easily convinced that the chocolate they were smelling was the coffee. The rest of them? They know there are two very distinct smells. Cake and coffee. But Fleur cannot find any evidence of cake. Like anywhere. And she's trying. She even tries to look in trash....the dogs probably taught her that trick. Jerks. Alas, she is still too young to be making these high level accusations to her Aunt Khitti. She's still got a lot of words to learn before she'll get there, but that time is very quickly coming. No, all Fleur can do is give Khitti a very incredulous look. She looks like the spitting image of her pretty boi father right about now, that's definitely the look that he gives people when he is certain he is being fed a load of bs. Meri just shrugs and supports her sister's lie. "If there was cake, we would have told you there was cake. Honestly I was just yelling at Khitti for coming over and -not- bringing cake. It's really very rude." Does Fleur believe her mother? Nope.

Khitti || “I’m literally the worst. I will have some sent here though!” Khitti was quick to follow up on Meri’s obvious lie, “A full chocolate cake with lots of strawberries and lots of sprinkles. But for now, it might be time for me to get Dominic back home. Your uncle is likely wanting his dinner and I promised I’d actually be home to make it for once.” Dominic would eventually wander his way in, lagging behind the crowd, and peered up at his mother, “Cake please.” It was not a question. It was definitely a very polite demand. “You can have some cheesecake when we get home, sprout,” she said, lifting him up into her arms. “If your father hasn’t eaten it all, anyway.” Her attention shifted to Meri then, another frown threatening to surface, “It’s probably nothing. Just me worrying. You know how I am. It’s not like I was gonna stop this whole thing anyway. That would be incredibly unfair and hypocritical of me after all you went through with us for my own cure. I just… wanted you to know it was a thing.”

Meri is the one giving Khitti the looks now. Because there Aunt Khitti goes, abandoning ship on the premise she needs to get home and cook dinner. She even promises Dominic CHEESECAKE right in front of Fleur, who KNOWS they were just eating cake. She is going to be hearing about this ALL night now. Cake. Mom. Want cake. Cake. Despite the fact that Aunt Khitti is being quite the terror tonight...! Meri manages to flash her sister a knowing smile. "I mean, we're family. We're supposed to be concerned about one another." At the very least Meri was not finding fault, even if she was clearly not really heeding the concern that was brought to her. She'd let Khitti make her escape so that Fleur could begin her relentless and torturous whining for cake.

Khitti || Unfortunately for Dominic, Brand definitely had eaten all of the cheesecake. And thankfully for Fleur, Khitti would end up being nice enough to stop by the bakery and have them get a cheesecake to Meri’s house -immediately-. And if the courier that was trustworthy enough was asleep? She’d tell them to wake his ass up. Because this was a matter of life and death. Goodbyes would be given out and then she was off! Like she’d never even been there in the first place! Except she was… and she’d done a bit of damage. Just another lovely day with a worried Khitti.