At the water tower

[Enid Geraint] And, true to her word, somewhere between ten and twenty minutes later, Enid's at the water tower - or, more accurately, heading into the little museum/gift shop at its foot. It's cold outside, after all, even if twenty-three is practically a heat wave for January in Chicago.

[Wharil Choc] The holiday season was, technically over, but that only meant the type of tourists inside Chicago's self proclaimed tourism center had shifted slightly. Instead of the American staycationers they encountered in here last time, a group of asian and european tourists mill about the old water tower with its renovated gift shop and tchotchke ridden interior. They followed the tours well enough, but mostly one member of a particular group would hold up the entire flow to translate to the rest. It was a promising sign for those of them who weren't here for the tours. That is, for Wharil Choc and his cloak and dagger ways.

It would have been nice to say that he was there early. That he'd been waiting for them outside, smoking a cigarrette in his dark wool coat and fedora. He wasn't. Instead he's late, arriving after the girls, and arriving with a bit of a shuffle. He looks pale, too. Disheveled, slightly. Unwell.

Wharil comes straight up to the two of them and, without a hug hello, without a happy New Years, without so much as a Hows-your-technocrat-mum, he gets right to the point.

"You have the card?"

[Emily Littleton] Emily is as much as tourist as the staycationers and foreign-borns. She is not one-hundred-percent Continental, after all, and could blend in easily with most of the European contingencies. She could adapt the mannerisms of the Asians. She could... fade away and get lost in a crowd. Not as completely as Wharil, not with native Chicagoans like Enid. Only with the Others who did not quite belong here.

Emily is less than when Wharil had seen her before. Less bright-eyed. Less playful. She is not physically diminished, nor is she quintessentially lessened, but somehow she is not quite entirely the Orphan he remembered.

She is also more. More appropriately dressed for winter in the snowy Midwestern lakeside ciyt. More solid, staid. More cautious.

Her gaze rakes over Wharil, and the expression she wears becomes uneasy. It is not completely masked. Concern. Anxiety, too.

"You are unwell," she says, and it is a statement that begs a question or two: How? Why?

[Enid Geraint] ".....are you alright?" Enid frowns when she sees him, looking so unwell. "You look like you should be home with tea, a blanket and a book."

It's amusing, maybe, when the two girls say almost the same thing at almost the same time. But then there's the question about the card and that is, apparently, more important than how well Wharil isn't, so Enid shrugs and fishes it out of her back pocket.

"Yeah, I told you. I just didn't see any reason to carry it around all the time when my phone can store the information from it."

[Wharil Choc] "Yeah, I'm fine. I mean...well, I'm getting there. I was at home with tea and blanket, actually. Now I'm not."

He holds out his hand, palm up and beckoning to be given the item he asked for.

"So is this why you asked your question? You wanted to know if your mom was the bad guy?"

[Emily Littleton] She had her hands in the pockets of the dark wool coat she wore, and that was an improvement over her haphazard layers of earlier months, but Emily watched them with a gravity that weighed down her smile and deepened her eyes. She watched their exchange, feeling a bit apart of it.

There was sympathy, though, for Enid. If a little hidden behind the harder expression. And concern for them both. "I hope you feel better soon," she said to Wharil.

[Enid Geraint] There's an automatic step away from Wharil and a little closer to Emily [You're on my side, right?]; it's quite likely she doesn't realize she's taken it. "I . . . um. No. My mom's not a bad guy. Often controlling, absent at best even when she is here, way too concerned with perfection . . . but not a bad guy. I just wanted to know if you agreed with what I've already heard."

There's a pause, but too brief for anyone else to say anything, before she adds, "You all agree with each other, you know. Just . . . sometimes in reverse."

[Wharil Choc] "Yeah, that's sort of why we're an 'us'. It makes sense if you think about it."

He sighs, looking between them now, and his face droops slightly with a tinge of guilt as Enid steps back.

"Alright, lets get this out of the way. I'm not after your mom. I'm not after anybody right now. But that card has an address. It leads to a house. A house where people live, eat breakfast, watch TV, study, and feel safe. If you..."

Wharil stops here, apparantly having said a bit too much. He wheezes slightly, as if fighting back a painful cough, and his hands fumble through the pockets of his coat until he finds one a brown and yellow medicine bottle, pops the top, and rattles out a single tiny white pill into his palm before popping it into his mouth.

Slowly his breathing calms, he seems to gather himself, and picks up where he left off.

"If you can appreciate how rare and important that is, you have to give me that card back. Do you understand?"

[Emily Littleton] She separated herself a bit from them, finding something to lean against and letting her attention sweep back and forth between them like a pendulum's steady arching. Emily was older than Enid, younger than Wharil. She could appreciate what they were both saying as clearly as she could feel the tension between them building.

"W..." She is about to ask if he would like to sit down somewhere, or to get out of the cold, when Wharil continues speaking. And Emily's voice fades, slips under and away from his. So this is why Enid had asked her about bad guys. Emily felt a little guilty, now, that she had sent her on to Wharil.

[Enid Geraint] "I didn't mean just you and Ashley." That's left to sit, to settle, even as she hands over the card; she does understand how important and rare such a place is, perhaps oddly. "Should I . . . not go there, then?"

There's a lot Enid doesn't understand, and she hates it. She feels behind the curve, and she's never been that in her life.

"I mean . . . Ashley already said I probably should be careful inviting people over for a while. And everyone's gone now, and they don't hang out at Dad's and my apartment when they're in town that much anyway. So I'm being careful, and I don't want anyone to get in any trouble. On either side. I just want to understand why. And all the whats and hows and whos would be nice, too."

[Wharil Choc] "Lets uhm. Lets just take it step by step for right now." He says, as his fingers shred the card with his handwriting into pieces as small as he could manage, and then deposit those pieces in his coat pocket.

"I uh...had...an attack."

True enough.

"A mild heart attack."

You dirty, dirty liar.

"I was gonna wait until I was feeling a little better before finding you two but...this changes things, admittedly. C'mon. Your gonna need some tools."

Wharil shuffles forward, leaning against the doors until they opened, then holding them open for the other two girls. Once inside he'd head for the gift rifling through the shelves with the same urgency of a casual shopper.

[Emily Littleton] There is a softness in Emily's eyes as she steps past Wharil. It is most likely concern. It is possibly... understanding. She does not doubt that he is unwell, but something about the way he explains it seems... off. Emily knows that feeling all too well, and has been there (off [dirty, dirty liar) more than a few times herself.

Once inside, she removes her hands from her pockets. Unbuttons the top fastner of her jacket. Just around her neck, a thin silver chain glints, glimmers. They all know what it supports, and how that small heartbeat calls out to Home. No one is surprised to feel the faint calm around her any longer, even when it is juxtaposed so sharply with the prevailing moods.

"Should we find a place to sit?" she asked. Emily was unfamiliar with the Water Tower, but there had to be a place to loiter less actively, a place to settle and let him rest awhile.

[Wharil Choc] "I'm not an old man yet, Emily." He informs her as he moves to a rack of postcards, and then the shelf of magazines next to it.

"You've been kinda quiet. Anything the matter?"

[Enid Geraint] "You're the one who said you had a heart attack. Old people have them. Or people who've suffered high fevers at some point. Or people who smoke or drink in excess. What are we looking for?"

Enid doesn't believe he had a heart attack - not because the lie wasn't convincing, but because he's to young for such things. In Enid's worldview, heart attacks simply don't happen to reasonably attractive young-ish men. They're for fat, old people who smell like mothballs and cigarettes.

[Emily Littleton] Emily was going to tell him she was still a little jet-lagged, but that wouldn't fly in front of Enid -- with whom she'd gone running just the previous afternoon. No, and once must keep her mistruths consistent, if nothing else. So Emily smiled, somewhat, and said, "It's been an interesting week."

Which was neither untrue nor was it forthcoming. Lies of omission, they were the skilled deceiver's bread and butter.

[Wharil Choc] Wharil shrugs at Emily's response apparently finding that reason enough.

"We're looking for tools...tools of the trade. Things that'll help you guys make sense of this brave new--"

At once he seemed suddenly wracked by a weezing cough. Eventually it passed, and Wharil waved a gaudy looking notebook at each of them. Red and blue, with the Chicago Cubs logo on the front.

"Here we go. These'll do."

[Enid Geraint] "Are we taking notes? I have an extra pen . . ." This actually perks Enid up a bit, and she reaches into a pocket of her peacoat to bring out both pens and hand one over to Emily, just in case. Enid likes school, clearly. She'd done well there. And Emily's 'interesting week' doesn't even get a blink from Enid.

She's had an interesting week, too.

She's also pulling out money to pay for the notebooks, of course - she's honest, most of the time. She does things the way she should, most of the time. She's hardly going to shoplift a seventy-nine cent notebook, even if she is paying an extra dollar for the Cubs logo on the front of it. "And . . . which trade?"

[Emily Littleton] She eyed the notebook with... out much pleasure. "I have plenty of those," she said, though Emily's were all solid, demur colors without designs, or special ones had covers made of cork or old PCBs. She didn't own anything, at all, with a sports team logo from the States.

"Or does it need to be brightly enough colored that I can find it in a brown out?" she asked, because she could probably find something that glowed in the dark, too.

[Wharil Choc] "Yeah. Yeah, that's right. You're both exactly right." Wharil said as he paid for the two notebooks. The cashier was about to put them both in a bag when he marveled at the items proudly, and said 'Hey! Cubbies!'

Wharil shook off the bag and took the notebooks individually, smiling wide as he handed them over.

Then the smile waned and his hand came up to his chest.

"Maybe...maybe we ought to sit down afterall."

[Enid Geraint] Enid does look concerned, frowns. "Maybe you should go home? We can do this later, if you're too sick. It's hardly right to keep you out here, getting worse." But she is, of course, finding a place for them all to sit - there's a duo of benches in an out of the way corner, where impatient kids sit while their parents shop, that are currently unoccupied. "This good enough?"

[Emily Littleton] The elder girl is worried about him, too, and she wears it like a dour drape over her features. Emily waits until Enid has chosen whichever notebook she prefers, and then takes the remaining one for herself with a small Cheers.

She let Enid lead them to the benches, following along behind the two of them and stealing a glance out the window as it passed. She no longer felt so wide-eyed and eager over all of this. Something had changed in the intervening weeks that left Emily a little more... somber. Or perhaps it was only seeing the warm-eyed young man so gravely unwell that made her quieter.

[Wharil Choc] "Yeah. Yeah i will. Just...lemme give you your assignments. First of all, take your ugly ass books."

Before he can properly sit a japanese tourist marches up the them, beaming excitedly. "Chicago Cubs!" she says in her clipped Asian accent, followed by a huge thumbs up before she walks away.

Wharil doesn't seem surprised about this in the least. He's just a little tired. A little unwell.

"This is gonna be better than i thought. I want you guys to...record...all the weird shit that you're gonna encounter. And I want you to use these books. C'mon, lemme hear it. I know you're dying to ask."

[Emily Littleton] "Can I fill this out retroactively?" Emily asked, because she had plenty to say about the last week that would otherwise go uncaptured. "Or is it only from the present forward? Also... should there be any obscurity, or do you want names and places recorded in full?"

Oh yes, Emily was good at task-based things. But she could also fill pages, right now, if he just let her write. She also, indavertantly, had tipped her hand about what had (most likely) left her more serious and less chatty than before.

[Enid Geraint] Enid, like a good student, has already opened her book (she's taken the blue, leaving Emily with the red), and takes a moment to date it, and to write down the assignment. When she looks up, speaks, it's a bit wry and amused. "Define 'weird'." Because of course everything's been weird for a while now. And then, there's a moment of thought, and a hint of suspicion.

"You said that we're going to encounter. When? Where? And how do you know we're going to?"

[Wharil Choc] "Wow. None of those were the question I was expecting. I must be losing my touch. To answer though, yes you can fill them in retroactively, but there's a catch. Try and balance being vague and expressive. And the whole idea, actually, is for YOU to decide what's weird. What pops out at you. What gets written down."

And as for the other question, the one that came with a hint of suspicion, he turns to Enid, waving a finger languidly to indicate their surroundings.

"You remember this place? Remember how I was trying to find it?"

[Enid Geraint] "Well, yeah. You thought you'd be able to feel it, or something, because it's been here since before the Great Fire and as something like that, it's probably picked up a lot of the ambient energy signatures from people and happenings and stuff."

There were other things he'd said - stuff about the city father and so forth - but Enid remembers the stuff that had made sense to her the most clearly.

[Emily Littleton] Emily opened her notebook while Wharil answered Enid's question. She took the pen that Enid had offered her and she jotted something down on the last page (odd) of the little book. While they talked, she eased the last page out of the book, folded the paper and tucked it into her pocket.

Then she flipped back to the first page, dated it, initialed it, and left it otherwise blank.

"Notice what you notice," Emily said, and it lilted upward at the end like a question. Was Wharil asking them to be merely mindful, or to start developing some sort of internal rubric for judging this brave new world?

[Wharil Choc] "Right. Well that's what I want you guys to do. Feel your way around the city. The people. The places. Best way to start is...out there. In the street. Open yourself up to that energy around you. For a while it'll all be the same. When you sense something different, I want you to hunt it down and record it.

Do it with the mundane as well. Places you pass by all the time. Get to know what the familiar feels like. Get to know when something's different or off. And...well...most importantly I want you to do this with each other. You two are in the same boat at the moment. Sort of. Well, you're in the same body of water at the very least.

"We'll call this lesson...building your Awareness. The better you are at it, the less likely it is that you'll be caught by surprise. Survival skills, get it.

"I chose these god awful, brightly colored monstrosities because they're brightly colored god awful monstrosities. And worse, they've got the cubbies logo. Now, the Chicago cubs haven't won a world series in a hundred years, but the only thing Chicagoans love more than their team are other people who love their team. These books will get you noticed a lot. So you're gonna have to learn to stay low key. Under the radar. How to observe without being observed. I won't tell you. You have to figure it out yourselves."

He sighs, breathing slowly this time and his eyes dip slightly.

"Umm...what else was I gonna say?"

As if they might help him.

[Emily Littleton] She closed the notebook and stared at the club logo. Emily felt no connection to the Cubs, no particularly personal connection to Chicago, but she could appreciate what Wharil was saying. She could also think of plenty of ways to circumvent the exercise (perhaps that was the exercise) by obscuringly the unforgivingly red cover or always leaving the book open.

But now it was closed. And she was staring into the red, seemingly deep in thought. Emily's brow furrowed and her mouth pursed. She ran her fingertip down the spiral-bound spine and then tapped it against the cover.

"You would probably tell us to be careful," she offered, helpfully, as if she hadn't heard it about a hundred times already. "And to check in if anything seems a little too off."

[Enid Geraint] "I've started that, a bit. Not writing it down, though. And not consistently. But I will."

She's noted some of the rest of what he's said under where she'd written the assignment, and Awareness gets capitalized and underlined. In this situation, it's not at all difficult to see the girl who only got one B and who has more than enough service hours. The last, though, gets a bit of smirk, as does Emily's answer to it.

"That, and to have fun, and to learn as much as we can from the exercise as opposed to limiting ourselves only to its goal."

[Wharil Choc] "No, that's not it. That doesn't sound anything like me. All good ideas though. Go with those. I'll collect these at some point in the future. Right now though...I got an electric blanket with my name on it."

Finally he stands, no longer resting like the old man he insisted he wasn't.

"Any questions before we scatter?"

[Emily Littleton] "Actually... If I might have a word with you," Emily said, and the odd formality of it seemed to (apologetically) excuse Enid from that query. Perhaps it was a personal matter, and Emily just didn't want to share everything with the red-head just yet. Her expression was serious, though, and Emily was no longer trying to hide the worry that was weighing her down.

[Enid Geraint] ".....oh! Sorry. I'll just be . . . over there." And so Enid removes herself from listening distance - but not from the premises - so that Emily can have her conversation with Wharil.

[Wharil Choc] "Um..." He says, slightly uncomfortable as he eyes Enid for a reaction, finally stepping back to his seat and patting lightly next to him.

"Sure. Step into my office."

[Emily Littleton] She watched Enid retreat with an odd sort of removal. As if something she'd heard or seen had made her slightly wary of the other girl. Or, perhaps, Emily didn't want to stir up bad memories or difficult moments for Enid. Goodness knew, Enid had had enough of those of late.

Emily sat beside Wharil with her cubbies notebook (logo down) in her lap, hands folded neatly atop it.

"I need to ask you about a man named Dylan," she said, simple and direct. Emily waited for his response before she said any more. It was not a name she should have happened upon, though, and perhaps it would displease him to hear it.

[Wharil Choc] Wharil had had that pleasantly curious look on his face, as if he enjoyed this particular emotion. It only takes Emily to mention the name 'Dylan', and that look is decidedly less pleased. His eyes search her own, looking for more of the secret of this name in hers, and his lips tighten around his teeth.

"Why do you ask?" He says flatly, and still those dark eyes dance unwavering and unresting against her own, as if to say 'Dont...lie...to...me.'

[Emily Littleton] She doesn't fold under that witheringly inquisitive look. Nor does Emily set her chin defiantly. In fact, his reaction confirms part of what she'd been looking to solidify in his own mind. This Dylan guy was... important. Perhaps because he was dangerous, and perhaps because he was running amok.

"... Because of moments like this," she replied, and her eyes were calm on the surface but stormy none the less. "I met him, on the Mile, not long ago. And I have heard that he is gravely dangerous. I wanted confirmation."

[Wharil Choc] "When exactly was this?" Comes Wharil's one track response. "And where exactly was he?"

[Emily Littleton] "The night of the third, near to midnight," she said, and looked upward thoughtfully as she tried to place the street corner. Emily is counting something on her fingers, and then tells him the exact intersection.

"I am not the only one who's seen him," she said, and in the pause that follows her glance meaningfully slides over to where Enid is standing, and then returns to Wharil's.

[Wharil Choc] "Shhhhit." He says. A not to subtle indication that, yes, Emily was right. He is dangerous. He must be.

And their meeting, it seems, would be adjourned here as he's standing again, reaching for those pills before he even had a chance to get dizzy or reel in sudden pain again.

"Just...stay out of his way. You see him, you run in the other direction. Both of you."

[Emily Littleton] Emily pushed herself to standing and tucked the notebook under her arm. She glanced over to Enid and smiled, a bit tense but still warmly. It was enough to say You can come back now even as they were getting ready to go. Emily buttoned the top fastner of her coat.

"You won't have to tell me twice," she said to Wharil. Her tone was level, but rang of a promise made.

[Wharil Choc] "I'm sorry. I'll tell you more some other time but...I gotta go. You guys uhh...Take care."

Whatever he and Emily spoke about had him obviously concerned, and Wharil left the water tower looking just as worried, concerned, and generally unwell as he had when he arrived.