capeandcowllogs | (no subject)

WHO: Lyra and Dick
WHERE: An out of the way corner of some park.
WHEN: Tuesday evening
WARNINGS: none.
SUMMARY: Lyra messes around with her powers, and Dick runs across her.
FORMAT: Prose to start

For all it's near constant frustrations, life in the City had some nice parts.

Like having superpowers, which was the reason Lyra and her daemon were in a quiet corner of a park. It started out simply, with a few pebbles and twigs Lyra lifted with a single gesture. Then a few more twigs, then a handful of leaves from a nearby tree joined them, before Lyra glanced behind her shoulder at Pantalaimon watching her lazily from a tree branch, she took a deep breath and got started.

Keep each object moving on a different course, but don't let them touch each other, Lyra reminded herself as she began. She started out slowly, but began to speed up as she and her daemon's focused on the objects in front of them, and the rest of the world seemed to fall away, and Lyra's expression became both more relaxed and more focused, as it sometimes did when she was working on a particularly difficult problem in school.

"And yes, Pan," she muttered in response to her daemons comment on that thought, "I'll do that worksheet after we're done with this."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

For everything that’s changed, there’s some things that stay the same.

Things like this park, for all that the fountain is still on the wrong side of the gravel. If you turn the other way and look you could be back home in New York with the way the grass spreads out before the skyline.

Being here at all is always a little self-indulgent, but with the week he’s had taking a walk out of costume and grabbing a hot dog on the way out is all the downtime he’s really earned. Ten minutes. Then he can suit up for the night.

From this angle there’s a little movement in his periphery, just present enough that after a few seconds of ignoring the feeling he has to turn and look. But it’s just a kid sitting there off to the side, maybe staking out the spot for homework. Nothing to worry about.

And he’s about to turn and walk away when the movement that caught his eye resumes, and when he looks again he sees them; what looks like twigs and leaves floating in mid-air.

An import.

He’s not really ready to invite questions or demands from a stranger. And it's probably not the nicest idea to break her concentration, as hard as she seems to be working. Still, the coincidence is strange enough that he’s feeling oddly tempted. Oddly envious.

He nudges a pebble with his foot, then tries reaching out with that invisible flicker, aiming for the same easy confidence that she has. It rolls once and then stops on the grass.

Lyra and Pan's sense for when other people are using telekinesis isn't the most developed, but Pantalaimon's hearing is better than a human's and he twists his head around absently to see the source of some snatch of birdsong he just heard until he spots a man watching them.

In the same instant Pan spots the man, Lyra's back stiffens and she whips around, the leaves and twigs moving more wildly as her mental grip loosens, then drops entirely, sending twigs, leaves, and pebbles flying in every direction.

"Ah!" Lyra looks up, and has to fight the urge to vanish behind an illusion, "Sorry!"

Not quite the reaction he’d been hoping for.

"My fault," he says, putting his hands up in case she’s worried he’s packing a weapon. "Just a little surprising. To, uh. See that." In public is what he means, but maybe she hasn't been here long enough to read the vibe in the people that live here full time.

Wait... had she heard his voice somewhere before? It sounded familiar. Lyra picked herself oup and dusted off her knees.

"It's all right, I didn't mean to scare you," Lyra apologizes, Pantalaimon flattening himself against the tree branch as Lyra keeps talking.

"I wasn't expecting anyone to come by here, so I thought it would be all right..."

There isn't anyone else nearby; nobody at all taking an interest in either the kid with TK or the guy who almost jumped her. Still, once you get started paranoia's hard to shake.

"I'm sure it's fine," he says instead, glancing back over his shoulder at the playground before he focuses his gaze on the girl again. He knows that accent from somewhere. "I'm just usually a little more careful. With stuff like that."

"You... you're an import too?" Lyra asks, not completely relaxing, but letting some of it slide out of her shoulders as she offers him a hand in greeting, "I thought your voice sounded familiar!" Not that she knows who he is, but if he was someone really bad, she'd remember him.

"So... where do you practice, then?" She asks in a conversational tone as she uses TK to lift one of the leaves to float above her right hand.

"The TK thing's new," he says with a small grin. He watches the leaf move, a little tempted to try and reach for it. "I had a totally different power when I was here before. And it took me a while to get the hang of that one too."

Lyra pauses for a moment, "You have telekinesis too? I had some trouble with it at first, but I found some teachers to help me- how much have you been able to do? What was your old power?"

Pantalaimon peers over the branch eagerly as Lyra raises her hand and brings the leaf up to the level of the man's eyes. It's an invitation- she hasn't worked with another telekinetic since Ken and Rachel left, and she's curious to see what this stranger can do.

He pauses and stares at the leaf, feeling a little on the spot, suddenly. Still, it's not as if he hadn't brought the display on himself. He squints a little and focuses, then tries reaching out one more time, grasping at the thinnest edges. It flutters once, and maybe it actually wasn't the wind.

"That pretty much caps it out," he says, and shakes his head. "Maybe I'm not supposed to do more with it."

Lyra's not the greatest at sensing telekinesis, but her own mind is already holding the leaf, so she can feel it, just barely. It's like fingertips brushing against the leaf, instead of another hand grabbing at it. Instead of another-

"I bet you could do more," Lyra suddenly says, peering up at him. "I couldn't do much at first with it either."

"Do it again," Lyra tells him, "And this time, imagine you're grabbing it with an invisible hand- move your real hand like you want the one in your head to move, it helps a lot."

He can feel his cheeks starting to warm a little bit already, but he's probably pretty unlikely to get the opportunity to try this with an audience smaller than this one. He lifts a hand up and tries focusing again, this time imagining the fingers taking hold and flicking the leaf upwards. It's definitely not the wind when it twitches, this time.

"Hey, look at that," he says, and breaks into a grin. "You're not a bad teacher."

Lyra smiles widely in response, at both the compliment and the movement of the leaf.

"Well, I've head some pretty amazing teachers myself- My name's Lyra, who're you?"

"Dick," he says, and offers her a hand. Now he knows where that accent's from. "I think we've talked before."

At that name, Lyra's eyes widen slightly, as things click into place.

"Oh! Yeah, we have. I'm glad I could help you with your powers!" Lyra told him.

"I had a good teacher for this kind of stuff, but she got 'ported out, so I dunno who you can go to to learn more about it. But you should practice more, see if you can lift stuff," she advised.

(no subject)

Late! ;;

It's okay!

<3

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