taennyn | Wild Roses fic prompt 065 "Passing"

Title: doorman express
'Verse/characters: Wild Roses; Isael, Aodh, Yasha
Prompt: 065 "Passing"
Word Count: 953
Rating: all ages
Notes: I think this is where it ends. Ye little gods. Thanks for coming along for the ride.

When he emerged from the bathroom, adjusting the collar of the new, clean shirt to lie smooth, he found his visitors still in the kitchen. The room smelled of thick, hot chocolate, and there was a steaming pot on the stove that smelled of milk and more chocolate. Aodh must've brought something in--he hadn't bought milk, when he came here.

Aodh glanced up when he entered, lifted his mug in a brief toast, then looked back at the kid, who was ignoring his own cup in favour of a green and gold dragonfly darting around. His cousin was back up on the counter, crosslegged with his mug now resting on one of his knees. The kid was sitting at the kitchen table, feet dangling from the chair but not swinging in the space.

The large earthenware pot he'd been using for kitchen debris was missing, he noted as he walked into the room, swinging wide to avoid the table, then paused, train of thought arrested, when he saw what all three of his visitors were focused on.

A fist-sized hole in reality was hovering over the table, spitting out what looked like mosquitos or small flies, along with a strong smell of the noxious yellow flowers that grew in swamps, and the rotting vegetation they grew near. The dragonfly was performing strafing runs on the smaller insects, approaching the hole in perfect en passant form, then circling back, eating on the wing, to do another run.

It perched, eventually, on the handle of the kid's cup, and the hole winked out, the kid shaking his head and hands out like he'd been holding still a little too long.

"Not bad," Aodh remarked, leaning over to ladle out more chocolate into his own cup. "Y'held tha' at least two minutes longer than t'last, and no wriggly edges this time."

"Hundred'n'thirty clicks," the kid agreed, shooing the dragonfly off his cup to take a sip, small hands wrapped tightly around the pottery.

Isael felt an eyebrow rise, then lowered it again as he crossed the kitchen to get a cup of chocolate for himself, pouring out the remains of the pot into the mug.

Aodh slid down from the counter after a moment, holding his apparently empty cup carelessly by the handle, and crossed to the sink, waving Isael off with an easy flick of fingers. The water from the tap steamed instantly when he tapped it, and the dish scrubber and pot floated over helpfully without the benefit of hands.

Isael, leaning against the counter near where Aodh had been sitting, found it a distinctly surreal experience to be watching his cousin wash dishes. Even with the obvious leaning on power that made the kid's empty cup float over and the pot hang upside down in air to drip nearly dry well above the sink, it was still Aodh washing dishes.

He could probably make a ridiculous amount of money if he made bets with the Keep's staff. Assuming he could get Aodh to reproduce this where an impartial witness could judge, anyway.

"Oi, Yasha," Aodh said eventually, after he'd stolen Isael's mostly empty cup, drunk the last of it, and washed it too, "Think y'can tag all the food, get it moved like you did t'garbage?"

"Uh . ." the kid--Yasha, apparently--said, blinking, "maybe?"

Aodh laughed. "Try. --'Sael? You want to go pack up t'things you're bringing back 'th you, so we can leave soon's everything's clear again?"

He barely kept from making his own version of Yasha's inelegant reply, nodded, and headed for the bedroom.

What wasn't compressed into the rucksack the keeper'd given him he put away neatly, though he left the damp blanket hung up in the bathroom to dry. The bed, when he passed by it again, had acquired the kitchen's drape-blanket, folded and laid across the foot of the bed, though he hadn't heard footsteps.

"Think you could bring us back to the Keep?" Aodh was asking Yasha when Isael came back to the kitchen, setting the rucksack down on the table so he could pull his boots on.

" . . You're kidding, right?" the kid replied, incredulous.

"Dunno," Aodh said cheerfully. "Dutch gave me t'understand you'd started tagging places 'tomatically, and I know y've been to the roof, at t'least, and t'library."

Yasha flushed briefly scarlet, then screwed up his face, thinking.

Isael found himself watching, fascinated, as the icebox went away and a wind gusted past them, smelling of woodsmoke and clean river water. The edges of this hole were wavery, flickering through oil-slick rainbows as he watched, but it was more than big enough for people to pass through.

"I'm going through first," Aodh said conversationally, "then Isael, then you, okay? D'you want help anchoring on t'other side?"

"Won't need it if you go through in the next forty clicks," Yasha replied distantly, eyes closed and face smoothing out into a blank sort of concentration.

"'kay." Aodh reached over, effortlessly snagged the sack off the table, and walked into the space where the icebox used to be.

"C'mon through," his light voice whispered in Isael's ear, and Isael barely kept from jumping. "You've got another thirty seconds before he's going to start having trouble with the door, and even if he does I'll catch you."

Heart pounding, he rose, and walked past the kid, then closed his eyes as he stepped through.

Yasha followed near instantly, almost bouncing off Isael's back as he came through, turning back and eying the--door?--hole as it winked closed. Turned around again and looked up at Aodh, a sunny smile splitting his face. "Go, me?"

"Go you," Aodh agreed, laughing, then swept a half-bow to Isael. "Welcome back, cousin."

" . . . thank you, I think," he replied, nearly laughing himself.