taako-waititi:

The Vision

There came a time when, a couple of weeks into February, they found themselves in Indrid’s Winnebago again.

It was a cramped space, but they made do: Aubrey perched on the countertop, Duck squeezed onto the little half-couch with Indrid, Ned sat on the arm of the driver’s seat and bitched about it the whole time. All of them held mugs of warm nog. It was growing on them, like the man who gave it to them. After the funicular train, they’d realized that Indrid was more useful than they’d thought – and perhaps, too, he could be a good ally. A friend. It was hard to offend someone when they had a few extra moments to prepare for whatever bullshit you were going to say. Between the three of them, they had a lot of bullshit to spare.

Besides. Indrid seemed to like them, anyway. Poor guy was probably lonely, out here in the woods by himself.

Aubrey took a sip of her nog and slowly wove a ribbon of fire between her fingers. It was a control exercise someone in Sylvaine had taught her; from the looks of it, the exercise seemed to be working. The fire looked like one of those Chinese dragon puppets, but in miniature. Its light flickered off Indrid’s opaque glasses. “So, Indrid,” she said casually.

The man looked up. “Hm?” he said.

“What’s the weirdest vision you’ve ever had?”

Ned chuckled, and winced a bit, shifting where he sat on the chair’s arm. That had to be uncomfortable. “Yeah, see anything… wild?” he said, grinning. “Anything worldshaking, or crazy? Anything… risqué?”

Aubrey choked on her eggnog. “God, Ned, don’t be gross,” Duck muttered.

Indrid, though, didn’t seem offended. If anything, he seemed to be taking Ned seriously. “Well, I’ve had quite a few,” he said in his soft, polite voice, smiling placidly. “I’ve ignored the ones that don’t, well, have worse implications down the line, but I can see nearly everything if I focus hard enough. For example, I -”

Ned shifted again on the chair’s arm, slid back too far, and fell down into the driver’s seat with a yelp.

“I saw that coming,” Indrid said stoically. Duck snorted with laughter.

Ned grumbled something rude and rearranged himself in the driver’s seat. “Thanks for the warning, mothboy,” he said, but with no real heat. “But c’mon, Indrid – don’t tell me you’ve never seen anything interesting, or -”

“Something you couldn’t explain,” Duck said. Aubrey nodded in agreement.

“You ever see the Kennedy assassination coming?” Ned said.

“Yes, actually,” Indrid said, the smile stiff on his face. “It went poorly.” The air went a little tense in the Winnebago. Duck patted him on the shoulder.

“But really. I’m just curious,” Aubrey said again.

Indrid took a deep breath, and let it out through his nose. The smile slowly faded from his face. “Well,” he said, and paused.

He suddenly stood up and set his nog on the counter. Aubrey tugged it away from the edge, and watched as the man drifted towards a far wall of the Winnebago. Here the dust lay thicker on his sketches, and they seemed wild and frantic – the edges of each shape shaky, as if half-glimpsed through dream and just barely pulled back to reality. His long fingers skimmed over the pages and riffled through. “Once,” Indrid said, and paused.

The three watched him in rapt silence. He peeled back the sketches until he reached an old one, drawn on a yellowed paper napkin, and gently tugged it loose from its pin.

“Once,” he said again, with his back still to them, “I saw seven birds.”