[Intro/OTA]

[dj_esebel]

Audrey's not entirely sure how she's managed it, but she fell asleep on the beach last night. It was just meant to be a breather, dipping her toes in the frigid water just long enough to wake herself up for the short drive back to her trailer park. Only the water had been extremely fucking cold, so cold she'd rippled up in orange scales and had to warm up the siren way just to get back to the sleeping bag she'd spread out to take a seat.

The plan had been to sit, warm up, wake up.

Which, in a manner of speaking, she's accomplished. After all she's very warm in her deep chill sleeping bag and she's mostly awake with the cold, gray morning light. "The fuck..." Audrey sits up and drags a hand down her face. "Well that sure is the fucking ocean..."

Good thing she's awake before high tide. That would have been more trouble than she'd been prepared to deal with.

Grumbling, she unzips the sleeping bag and carefully wills the orange scales away.

Comments

[astra_inclinant]

It's taken nearly a week, but Mira's just about figured out the weird shit going on with her dreams. Or other people's, to be specific.

It doesn't make it any less weird, though, and while it's a kind of nice break in the nightmares she's been having, she hasn't found herself getting a whole lot of rest out of it (though she had a really lovely conversation last night picking blueberries with the teenage incarnation of a woman who, by name, she realized halfway through is a teacher at her mom's school).

So when she woke up she just got out of bed in order to stave off anything else bizarre and got out of the house to walk by the water and think: about these magical powers and what if they never go away and what is it for, this stuff was supposed to make her her best self, right, so it has to be for something.

That's when she sees the girl, sitting up and looking slightly less than dressed for the weather but definitely rocking a sleeping bag, and stops. "Hey," she says out loud, and runs a few steps down the beach. She could be homeless, or lost, or -- trying some stupid fire spell -- really anything in this town, especially this week. "Did you sleep out here?" she asks as she gets closer.

[dj_esebel]

"Not on purpose, but yeah," Audrey says, levering up from her nylon cocoon. She doesn't even know what she looks like right now. Honestly, probably a hot mess on a stick with scales. Between the awesome energy of her set last night and the fact that she'd probably changed shape for warmth and her natural inclination for bedhead, Audrey's pretty sure she must look...not particularly sane.

"I would love to have a good explanation for why I fell asleep on the beach in January, but I've never been very good at lying."

[astra_inclinant]

The smudged eyeshadow and bedhead (pretty tame compared to Mira's own, honestly) isn't what catches her, it's the last of some orange-gold scales fading back into skin. For a second Mira freezes: that's siren shit right there and sirens take her back to a place that's...cavey. But sirens are what got her out of it too, she reminds herself, and also this whole conversation is getting a lot like hey I've got a friend who's a siren! and that's not anywhere she needs to be. She doesn't know this girl.

"Hypothermia?" she jokes, but grins. "Weirder stuff has happened. I mean, much, around here." She tilts her head. "Are you new around here?" She doesn't recognize her, really, and she's lived here long enough to know most people at least a little bit by face.

[dj_esebel]

"Hypothermia, no. Intense stupidity? Yes." Audrey smooths away the last of her scales until she looks completely human. "I was driving up from a gig in Nantasket and I just got tired on the last leg..."

She shrugs, tilting her head toward the ocean as if to say quid pro quo.

"And no. I've just been out of town. I never stay too long."

[astra_inclinant]

Mira raises an eyebrow in a way that says fair enough. Nantasket's a good four hour drive, closer to Brown than it is to here, which is how Mira measures most things even remotely in the Northeast.

"Damn, I'm losing my touch, sorry." She sticks her hands in her pockets, a handshake seeming too formal, but she doesn't quite know what to do with them. "I'm Mira, by the way. So what do you play? Or...is it not that kind of gig."

[dj_esebel]

Audrey nods. Yeah, that kind of a gig. "Audrey, and I play...whatever they need me to. Plus I sing." A siren of many talents, she'd say.

"We had an ongoing contract with a Ren Faire down south, then a couple weddings, then...whatever last night was. Calling it a frat party sounds too tame."

[astra_inclinant]

Mira raises her eyebrows, impressed. She's pretty solidly not a musical person, much as she might suck it up like it's her only source of food sometimes. "That's awesome. I can't play anything. I wish I could. My parents tried me on Suzuki piano when I was a little kid and I...yeah, no. All the performing talent went to my sister."

She laughs a little at the wide variety encompassed there. "You should check out Classics House parties sometimes, we used to go pretty off the rails," she deadpans and tilts her head. She's imagining something in a kind of Irish punk, Flogging Molly kind of vein and she's not quite sure that's correct. "I'm picturing like -- rowdy mandolin here between the Ren Faire and the frat."

[lesparker]

It's far too cold to be out on the beach. There's still snow on the ground, but Les is never one to be deterred and he has the luxury of warming himself with his powers so his morning stroll along the water isn't too terrible. Especially not when he spots the all too familiar camper parked out on the shore. He walks up with a smug smile on his face.

"Just look at you. Always the belle of the ball," he says smirking, sipping the very warm coffee he has in his hands. "Rough night, Cinderella?"

[dj_esebel]

Audrey snorts and drags herself out of the sleeping bag so that she can make an effort of swiping his coffee, fixing him with a Look that promises terrible things to come if he doesn't share.

"I just meant to get warm and then...I conked out." She doesn't bother making up a story, he's heard them all by now.

[lesparker]

"Conked out 'cos you were too sleepy or too drunk?" Les asks allowing her to steal his coffee. He looks over her sleeping bag and the state of her hair. "Haven't seen you around in awhile. Where have you been?"

[dj_esebel]

"Um..."

Audrey takes a long drink of coffee, asking herself the same question. "I thought that if I just stuck my toes in the cold water I'd wake up enough to get home..." She gestures vaguely at the sleeping bag. Clearly it hadn't gone to plan.

"Renaissance Faire in Georgia, then some...wedding in South Carolina."

[lesparker]

"Ess, dude, your home is parked like thirty feet over there. You should've crawled instead of sleeping in the snow," he says laughing. "Nice. Were you dressed as a trashy bar wench? I wanna see pictures."

[dj_esebel]

"Sand," she corrects. "And you know I have a permanent spot in that park. I wanted to get there but it didn't work out."

Groaning, Audrey gets to her feet and looks down at herself. Jeans, a Revengers t-shirt, barefoot. Okay good, at least she wasn't in that wench outfit. "Pirate, excuse you."

[edcabot]

"I know, it's it incredible?"

Ed had been out for a late night turned early morning swim when he had noticed the girl on the beach. He'd been intending to swim back to where his clothes were but when he saw the girl he had been worried that it was going to be a dead body. Instead, it was a sleeping siren. Even then, he felt kind of weird just leaving them there. So instead he shifted back to his naked human form and just sat off to the side a bit, waiting for her to wake up.

Now he just needed to make sure she was alright. She was probably alright.

"I'll never get over how big it is."

[dj_esebel]

Audrey laughs, shimmering with orange scales for a moment before their glimmer fades from her skin. When she's faced with full-frontal siren, she doesn't bother to hide her more than cursory glance.

"It's pretty great, but this is not what I expected to see in the A.M."

[edcabot]

"I'm curious... what did you expect to see in the AM when you camped out on the beach?" he asked, giving her a look back. She was definitely hot, which was saying something considering she had apparently slept all night on the beach. Ed generally didn't look his best when that happened to him.

[dj_esebel]

"I expected to actually make it home," she says, jerking a thumb in the direction of her RV. Audrey snorts, giving him a rueful grin that suggests she'd much rather wake up in a warm bed with a hot side of siren.

"I don't even have the excuse of being wasted." She flops back on her sleeping bag, still grinning.

[edcabot]

"I can see why you gave up an abandoned hope. I mean, nothing short of some Hobbits with a magic ring could have made it from here to there," Ed said with a smile. She seemed amused at the whole thing so he didn't feel too bad giving her a hard time about it.

[dj_esebel]

Audrey just snorts and flops back onto her sleeping bag. "If they just had the fucking eagles carry them." She'd just never been a fan of something that illogical.

"I just wanted to warm back up for a second and then..." She gestures to the water.

[fairywren]

Wren's up for dawn more often than not - either gets up early enough for, or stays up till, in this case the latter - and it's always a good thing. He let the dog out already but on this particular chilly morning he's got more tolerance for it than Inari does. ("You're supposed to be from snowy mountains, foxface," he'd told her, and she'd looked at him like he was particularly stupid, which is honestly why he loves her so much.)

Wren's rarely cold; today it's below freezing, he's got a hoodie under a jacket and his gloves are of the fingerless moto persuasion and it still feels like a little much halfway down the beach. These days he realizes that's probably siren blood but it's stood him well through tours with the heat turned off in the van to save gas, wading through a hurricane drunkenly, playing guitar in the snow.

So when he sees someone sitting up and taking stock of their surroundings on the beach as the sun peeks over the coast, he isn't phased, but he does think they might have a lack of self-preservation in common with him.

He's quiet enough, or the - girl, statistically - is still sleepy and confused enough, that he makes it close enough to cross his ankles and sit down by her. "It's not the first place I'd think of sleeping, but it is a nice view," he says without bothering to say hello. "Good thing you don't sleep late, though. The sea likes her sacrifices."

[dj_esebel]

"In this case, I'd say it's more like she's reclaiming me," Audrey says. She's still bent over her knees, trying to get the cotton fluff out of her brain while she finger combs her hair. "Sorry, I swear I'm not some kind of beach-creeping vagrant."

Just the musical, gig-to-gig kind of vagrant.

"How about you? What's got you up at the asscrack of dawn?"

A shower, she thinks. A shower and then a therapeutic forty-eight hour nap and snack session, emphasis on the napping.

[fairywren]

Wren smirks at that, glancing at her. "Fair enough." He laughs softly. "No apologies needed." Vagrancy isn't something he can judge on. Might give her extra points.

"Mm, up suggests I went to sleep," He smiles and stretches his shoulders. "Thinking got to writing, writing got to playing and then it was 4 am. I'm a musician," he contextualizes.

[dj_esebel]

"Oh yeah?" she asks, lifting up her head. "What kind of mus..."

Wait. Even half asleep and numbed by the cold from the tits down, Audrey knows she's seen that face before. Squinting, she imagines the man's face someplace dark, possibly with lots of glitter. Possibly while she's drunk.

"Oh..." Audrey says, her voice small and her eyes very big. "Oh holy Jesus lord Christ..."

[fairywren]

Her total pause when she glances at him and the ensuing wide eyes is a reaction Wren's seen before, and it never fails to inspire a sort of amused-appreciative-embarrassed-proud combo that tugs his smile into a grin.

"Definitely not," he deadpans and offers a hand. "Most people go with 'Wren'. And yourself?"

[dj_esebel]

"Um...usually I go by Audrey, but I'm thinking of legally changing my name to Biggest Fuckwit This Side of Canada..." Wren Bellamy is in front of her. Talking to her and smiling at her.

And she looks like she just got scraped off the pavement.

"I didn't know you were in town. Oh god. I have...all of your records. I lost my virginity t..."

Wait.

"Oh God, I said that out loud. Fuck. Shit." Audrey, stop talking. "...Hi."