She's gonnnaaaaa fiiiiind youuuuuu (Les, backdated to pre date)

[callmeemily]

Raleigh, when she's on a mission, is something to be feared.

And right now? On a mission. She's got a cake box, she's got a notebook, and she's got a pen - and she's looking for Les. She knows what he looks like, but she doesn't have a last name, or an address, or anything - but she does have the fact that he could drop $35 on pastries without even blinking, and that's why she's got the cake box.

She's sitting outside the police station watching the world go by, until - there. There he is. She knew she'd see him sooner or later, and thankfully it's sooner. Standing, she moves towards him and then approaches him from the side as he walks down the street, clearing her throat. "Hi. Uh, I know this is weird, but... do you have a second?"

Because she's got a proposal for him.

Comments

[lesparker]

Tonight was the night. He had just sent a text to Alfie, Corry, and Riley to meet him in the woods at the disclosed location, a spot that had actually been dictated in Nerium's spellbook. Something about the entire thing still felt unsettling to Les, but there was no other way to run the mist out of town than to vanquish it according to the instructions. That's why he pokes his head into the small hardware store near Quill for some large candles and anything else he could think of that may help should something go wrong. With Riley there too, he doubted anything would catch them too off-guard. But he couldn't be too sure, and he was involving Corry and Alfie into this, he didn't want anything to happen to either of them.

When he comes outta the store, he is almost rundown by a tiny blonde chick waving a box at him. He takes a good look at her once she's speaks, and he smirks, wide and amused. It was Emily from the french pastry thing who thought the hydra was a crane. He folds his arms over his chest, raising an eyebrow. "Depends. What's in the box?" he asks, not unopposed to bribes. Ever.

[callmeemily]

"It's a cake. For you. And it's not just any cake, it's pretty much the best cake I've ever made." She holds it out of his reach. "If you have some time so I can ask you a bunch of questions." She paused. "I... I'm sorry. That I was wrong, and I believe you now, but yeah. Cake? I have a fork."

She looks at him expectantly, because she's a woman on a mission - and she thinks she knows what he likes.

[lesparker]

Les eyes the cake carefully because if it was the best cake she's ever made it was probably going to be the best cake he's ever eaten, considering that the pastries she'd made had been the best thing he's ever eaten. Until now. He immediately wants it, and she has a fork. She's his new best friend.

"Mmm. Can I eat the cake while you do your question thing?" he asks. He should probably get going if he's gonna be on time to the meeting spot, but he could spare a few minutes for this. Especially if she was giving out food.

[callmeemily]

"That was the plan. You eat the cake, I get some answers on if things exist or not, because you know what you're talking about." She tipped her head towards the picnic table by the town hall. "It's not going to take long, I don't think. I have a list, and I just want you to tell me if they're real or not."

She's remarkably organized, once she stops freaking out about shit. She even went to the library, looked things up.

[lesparker]

A list. He snorts out a laugh but follows her over to the picnic table. "I am more than obliged to tell you everything you need to know. As long as there's cake," he says, reaching for the cake box and the fork. He isn't sure what exactly is on her list, but he imagines it's gonna be amusing.

He rips the lid away from the box, twirls the fork between his fingers, and digs off a hunk of it. "Fire away, Dorothy," he says.

[callmeemily]

She doesn't correct him from calling her Dorothy - probably because Emily's not her name anyhow, so either way he's wrong. Besides, he keeps it up, she'll have her Halloween costume in the bag.

The cake is vanilla cream layered with chocolate ganache, with a caramel-sugar crust. She's been working on it for about two months - getting the recipe right, and now's the first time she's tried it bigger than just one serving.

"Great." She tugs the notebook out of her purse - it's an ordering book she'd brought from work, because if she didn't have to spend the money, she wouldn't. "Ghosts, demons, devils, dragons? Oh, and do witches have familiars?"

[lesparker]

He eats the bite off his fork, and he is this close to proposing marriage to her, even though Alfie would simply die he's been usurped by a chocolate ganache, but he gets distracted by her list of things. It sounds like a list of kid's nightmares, and he is smirking again for no reason.

He peeks at her notebook, pointing at 'ghosts' with his fork. "I thought we established ghosts," he says, chewing his food. "Demons. Yes. Devils, uh, like the Devil. 'Cos I think you need a priest for that one?" He picks up another bite of cake, interested in the sugar crust that he can't quite understand but loves. "Uh, dragons. Like giant bird lizards that spit fire?"

[callmeemily]

"You were weird about the ghosts. Yes or no? And demons possess people, Devils... uh. Are sort of... their own thing. Shape. And yeah, The Devil, I know." She's scribbling things down. "And I don't know if they're giant or not, but fire breathing lizards? And Selkies."

Her eyes flick up to his. "I know I've only got til you finish that, and it'll take me a bit to make another one." She wants to know. Knowing means that she doesn't have to be as scared or as surprised - it doesn't make her safer, but it makes her feel better. That's why it's worth the time.

[lesparker]

"Fine." Les nods at her. "Ghosts, yes. Demons, yes. The kind that possess you and make you do evil awful things. Devils, no. Dragons, yes." He puts a bit of cake into his mouth. It really is the best cake ever. "But not. Really. I mean dragons don't just exist all the time. Or the hydra. They exist because someone puts them here. Conjures them with a spell."

He uses his fork to move around the icing on the cake, thinking. He still didn't know who could've managed that spell with the hydra. It was powerful magic. "And I promise I can be bribed with other things," he says, winking.

[callmeemily]

Her brows furrow, and her pen just... stops, as he talks about dragons. About the hydra. "For something as big as a hydra," she says seemingly off-handledly, even though she is only thinking about Jason, about him saying how powerful somebody would need to be to actually disintegrate a person. "You'd need somebody pretty powerful, right?"

She glances up, her brows high. "Other things? Like other food?" Because of the wink, she doesn't know if he means what he actually means.

"Selkies, pookas, brownies - and you never answered if witches have familiars."

[lesparker]

"Exactly." He jabs at the cake with his fork. Someone powerful.

"I'm about to eat this entire cake? You really think I can't be bought out with other food?" he asks, shaking his head. "Gimme a jar a pickles, and I'll tell you whatever you want to know. Oh! And peanut butter." He stuffs more cake into his mouth, thinking the only thing that would be better was if he had pickles right now.

He chews listening to her reading off the rest of her list until he waves his fork at her. "Pookas? I don't even know what the hell that is? Did you find this list on the internet or something?" he asks. "Look, every witch's powers are different. A witch could have a guide or a familiar if that's how their powers work. Just like some witches have a cat form. I don't have either."

[callmeemily]

"Peanut butter and pickles? Are you sure you're not pregnant?" She grins as she says it, actually teasing him even as her mouth curves up at the corner, scribbling herself a note.

She stops, though, and it's weird. It's weird, because she never thought she'd just... know something, know something magical that a witch doesn't, and she can't stop the well, duh tone in her voice. "A pooka's a ghost horse. Well, sort of. It's a shapeshifter that brings either good or bad fortune with it." She did look at the internet for a lot of it, but pookas and selkies and banshees and the like were the stories her mother told her when she was little.

"Seriously. I just don't want to be all 'Oh, no, werewolves aren't real' and surprise! You know?"

[lesparker]

"Shut up. It's good. Don't speak of what you do not know," he exclaims because why were people always judging his tastes in food. Whenever he ate around Riley or Alfie, the two just had made these faces, like judging faces.

When she explains the pooka, Les literally chokes on his cake from laughter because he doesn't know what it is about Emily that he finds hilarious. She is so extreme. "If you see a ghost horse, just let me know ok? That would be brilliant." He coughs a little, catching his breath. "Why does it matter so much if it's real or not?"

[callmeemily]

"Just for you, I'll try it." She means it, even though she sort of stares at him a little, because that mix - peanut butter and pickles, that's literally what is like, Generic Pregnancy Craving all up in a nutshell. If it sucks, she's going to blame the witch thing. Magic makes your tastebuds weird, maybe.

The glare when he starts laughing and chokes is pretty epic. "I'll let you know," she says tightly. "And it matters. It matters, because- because. Because now if I see something weird, maybe instead of being all, 'Oh, what's that', I'd just be like... 'Hey, maybe not.' You know?" It made sense to her. It made so much sense that Raleigh made him a freaking cake. "It matters," she said again, more definitively.

[lesparker]

Les takes a few more bites from his cake, thinking over her objections, but in the end, he just shrugs at her. "You're gonna go exhausted if you spend too much time trying to figure this town out. It's got secrets buried upon secrets. Just when you think you know it all, a hydra pops up," he explains. "You may wanna just learn to roll with it." That's what he did. Just like he didn't realize there were secret tunnels stretching for miles underground with secret rooms and dead bodies until a couple weeks ago. Siren Cove was a mystery even to him, and he'd lived here since birth. You just learned to live with it.

[callmeemily]

She looks at him for a long second, before she realises he's right.

He's right, and that's why she swaps tactics. She hesitates, then takes a deep breath. "Okay."

And then- "Okay. So.... rolling with it, but... I guess then-"

She pauses. "What are you the most scared of? Supernatural things, I mean. Because I guess that is what's important." Not if things existed, because he may or may not know, but either way - there's a set of things that are important. What's going to eat you in the night. That kind of thing.