pennysheets | Eldritch PSL: Ellever

"They're all over the place," Ellever explains, as she performs a last-minute mental double-check to see if she has everything she needs. "But generally they're in the wild, and people don't see them much anymore. We only go get them if they turn up and show a lot of interest in people. ...kind of like bears, I guess."

Minor things can be bought in convenience stores along the route. Equipment is harder. But she thinks she's got it all in order. This is a recon sort of situation, so she doesn't have to worry about containment or anything drastic. Just tracking. Tracking is the fun part.

Assuming there's anything to track.

"It didn't want money in return," she goes on, unlocking the black Sprinter van and opening up the driver's side. "It wanted our cherished memories. Got a little upset when I didn't want to trade the story of my first dog for a rusty piggy bank. Hard, considering I've never had a dog to begin with. But it calmed down when we brought it here."

"What are the Lights like when they're upset?" he has to ask warily as he reluctantly swings up into the car's passenger seat. He's kind of glad he didn't have to deal with that. He's hardly got any memories to trade anyway, and he doesn't want to lose any of them.

Hopefully if they run into this cryptid, it won't want memories, too, Jesus.

She squints. "Loud."

Ellever's grateful that caring for the Lights is so easy. They don't ask for much, and they like having the company of other Lights. Over time, they've drifted apart, and asking a Light to find anything is an exercise in frustration. Living at Zier Security's seemingly done a lot for them. But every so often...

"And bright. They get super bright and screamy and usually fly away, depending on how upset they are," she says, settling into the driver's seat and closing the door. "This one wasn't bad. Just bright. Like a stage light."

But despite the conversation topic, her face is bright. They're really doing this! She's finally getting a break from the mundane side of the job.

"This trip's going to be nicer because we can be off doing our own thing," Ellever adds, cheerfully humming as she starts the van. "I don't like trips as much where I have to talk to people a lot."

He's glad the Lights seem happy enough, then. At least they'll make it known if they're not, apparently. He doesn't visit them as much as he does the bunyip or the wendigo, let alone Fuzz or Elle herself, but he does kind of crave company even though humans aren't safe, and they're definitely company.

"What, I don't count as people?" He's joking, and that's clear. He kind of doesn't count as people, anyway.

The Sprinter has a deep, relatively quiet engine that Ellever likes the sound of. She isn't sure if she likes the sound for the sake of the sound, or because it means that she's going off on a trip, but either way, her amber eyes glint as she buckles her seatbelt and puts the van in motion toward the freeway.

She laughs quietly at his joke.

"Talking to one person's easy," she says, shrugging. It feels too forward, somehow, to say that she likes the sound of his voice. And that she feels comfortable around him. They're still technically getting to know each other.

And Ellever has been told, in the past, that she should be less forward. Less rambly. More focused.

"I'm not people, anyway."

"Well, if you're not people, I guess neither am I," he points out, and leans his head back against the headrest.

Breathe, he reminds himself. Don't focus on the feel of people in the cars all around him as they pull out into traffic. Proves the point, he supposes, reminded more tangibly than he has been in weeks, now, of just how not like a person he has to be now. "So maybe you're right. As long as I'm not too bad of company for you."

"I don't usually have any," Ellever notes, "so it's nice to have some."

Doctor West has come along on a few trips, but that was a while ago. They'd discovered that, unless it was a pivotal moment, maybe it was better for the two of them to do their research separately. Nolan is impulsive, chaotic; Ellever is precise and strategic. Their methods do well for them when not working together.

She relaxes a little when she pulls onto the freeway. For the near future, this is where they'll stay. Once they get out of Los Angeles, the traffic will even out.

"How're you feeling?" she adds, looking over at him.

"Not gonna explode out of the car and kill anyone," he answers, aiming for try but instead it just sounds a little tense. "But I can feel everyone in their goddamn cars, around us. All those lives."

He's had peace, for a while. Not necessarily comfortable peace, he's finding he really doesn't like being alone all that much, but peace enough that he has some reserves to draw on. It's less like a raw, painful nerve and more like an irritating little scratch. "I'm okay," he says, and keeps his eyes open to watch the more distant scenery. Buildings and scrubby hills.

Her smile is just faintly more frazzled as he talks about exploding out of the car, but her face returns to normal as she glances back ahead at the road and keeps her eyes there. Eventually, they'll clear bumper-to-bumper and she won't have to stay quite as vigilant. For now, it's LA traffic.

The worst.

"Good," she says quietly. Ellever's had a few thoughts as to what she might do if he loses control of himself. They aren't great thoughts; she'd prefer they stay in her head. "We'll get to open road soon, here."

She sighs. "I'm looking forward to seeing the countryside. And greenery. The brown just doesn't do it for me."

Just being honest, Ellever. He doesn't notice, anyway, eyes firmly on the scenery as if that might help him ignore all the dying people around him. It's been weeks since he's had to, and while that makes it all seem so much louder and more insistent, he's also not stretched so thin anymore that a little noise is going to send him over the edge. He's pretty sure.

Conversation. That'll help. "Yeah, green is better. I keep being surprised by all the brown here, like this. Isn't where I used to be," he says.

This is already a hundred times more conversation than she's used to, in a car, but she doesn't mind it at all. It's nice to have someone to commiserate with — someone else who isn't like all of the people in the cars they're passing. And yet, someone who isn't like one of her cousins, who require every ounce of her concentration and come with tense conversations attached.

"What was it like, where you were?" she wonders.

There wasn't much data that she could parse, before, and that had been by design.

"It was." He pauses, grasping futilely for something more then ephemeral sense of his past and failing, like usual. "I don't really remember. I just know it was green. Busy, but not like LA. Different kind of busy. It had seasons."

Ellever chuckles. She wouldn't mind being somewhere else. This is the only place she's ever lived, and part of her life had been behind closed doors. Maybe when she gets to an age she can retire. Most people retire in their sixties or seventies, don't they? That means she only has a few more decades to go.

"More than sunny and hot, and rainy and cold?"

Somewhere the leaves change color would be nice.

"I grew up here. And I'm still here," she muses. "But we'll get to see a lot of green on this trip, at least."

"Would you go somewhere else? Somewhere green?" he asks after a moment, frowning. Feeling thoughtful. "If you could?" He knows she probably doesn't feel like she can live anywhere else, given the residents and given her own nature. And he certainly can't go anywhere else, not unless he wants to hermit himself in a cabin in the mountains or something.

But if she could.

She hums quietly in the back of her throat, thinking of all the places she's been lucky enough to travel to. Always like this: looking for new information on a myth or legend that might turn out to be all too real. Finally, she nods, tapping her fingertips thoughtfully against the steering wheel.

"I mean, if I didn't have to take care of the money-making side of things? Maybe," she says, thoughtful. "Just give me a bunch of books and an internet connection and I'm happy. Maybe the pacific northwest. Or another country."

Maybe if she's isolated, whatever... might happen in the future won't happen. Ellever glances over at him.

"What about you?"

"What, if I wasn't a murder machine unable to stand human company?" he drawls at her, but he does give it a good stab. A wistful stab.

It's not possible, and he knows it, but the thing he wants isn't hard to conjure up: "A city. Not LA, it don't feel right. Somewhere else. Somewhere with taller buildings. Chicago, maybe. Or New York. Get an apartment somewhere high up enough the windows aren't sniper-bait, where I can see lights all night and hear the city breathe."

Ellever laughs quietly. "It's a hypothetical, right? We can daydream. I haven't spent a lot of time in tall buildings, but the view's always nice."

Looking at people makes her feel guilty. She isn't sure she'd like it as much as somewhere with fewer buildings. But this is a pleasant, hypothetical conversation, so she keeps that part to herself. No need to drag in the guilt of being... what she is.

"Do you like people-watching? You know. In this scenario we're dreaming up."

"I do, actually. There was one place I holed up in once for a night," he remembers suddenly. "Not sure if it was a mission or after I'd escaped, it feels like it was a long time ago. But it was this high-rise under construction. Almost nobody in the building. And I just... sat up there and looked down. All night. Didn't sleep at all, just watched the people going by while I waited for morning. I was too high up to feel them, but I could see them, just going about their business. I liked that."

She makes a thoughtful sound in the back of her throat as the last vestiges of 'city' are left behind and the only thing next to the car is desert. This is how it will be for quite some time. But Ellever doesn't mind. The desert is a mysterious place; a place she's found plenty of oddities in.

"Kind of like having a perch."

Ellever stores the Dude's memory in the back of her mind. Another piece of the impressive jigsaw puzzle that is her road trip buddy.

"I don't usually get along with people long-term," she admits, a moment later as she stares at the road ahead. "So I like being more... isolated than that."

"You don't get along with people?" He rolls his head in her direction against the backrest, while she drives. "Coulda fooled me. Don't you have friends?" Maybe not outside the compound, since she doesn't leave much, but he's seen her be friendly with people on staff. And there's always the internet.

Ellever pulls her lower lip, briefly, through her teeth. She thinks of her childhood of watching movies with young kids — movies with sleepovers, parties, school — and being intensely jealous of those fictional kids, out in the world.

"I know people at work," she says slowly. "And I'm friends with a couple of 'em, sure. But uh. I guess my closest person outside of work is... one of my cousins?"

God, that's sad. But she can't refute herself, when she thinks over it again. Ambarish is her closest. She sees him every few months, like clockwork, for one bizarre reason or another.

"He's a dick," she adds, with a sigh. "But there's worse."

"Doesn't sound like a friend, to me, if the best you can say about him is 'there's worse'," he points out. It doesn't sound like it's enough for her, either way, if she's saying she doesn't get along with people long-term.

How long-term is long-term, anyway? "But friends from work are okay, right?"

She nods, a smile flashing onto her face again. "They're great. I grew up in Zier, so it's like my home. Circe's kind of... my stern mom, and Sanjay's like my really weird and chill brother. Circe's head of HR, and Sanjay's one of the agents," she adds, since he hasn't met either of them yet.

Ellever's briefed Circe on the situation, like her father, but there isn't much need for anything else yet. Not with the guy just getting used to everything. Plus, she knows that both of them would ping the Dude's senses in a bad way. Best to keep things nice and easy for him with the other strange critters in the Back, for now.

"Sanjay and I used to go out to a bar every Friday and do trivia nights, but we haven't done that in a while."

"You should do that again," he says, looking back out the window, strangling back a wave of what he's learned to recognize as envy. He's got a lot of practice with it. Friends. He doesn't even remember what that's like, not really, but something in him aches at the thought of it. "Maybe when we get back. You shouldn't lose your friends."

"We've just been busy. Lots of business on the security side," she notes. Sanjay doesn't have much to do with the other side. "But you're right. We'll probably get rusty with the trivia and start losing again if we don't keep it up."

At first, Ellever hadn't cared if she'd won or lost. Simply going out and having fun in such a setting had been enough. But she and Sanjay had woken up something competitive, before long. Something they hadn't known existed, in either of them.

"I'd rather be out here, though."

She looks out at the desert sky, starting to darken.

"Going somewhere."

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seriously slacking on my psls, sorry for the slow, hun

I'm glacial rn so don't even worry <3

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