diviningtime

[diviningtime]

"Some are human, some aren't," Lilia answered with a small shrug, still not understanding the variations even now. All she knew was that for as long as there had been witches, there had been those who wanted to hunt them; their motives varied but their intent and violence never did.

In some ways it used to be easier, but since the 'Witch Craze', hunters had gotten a lot better at hiding in plain sight, blending with the crowd. Lilia had even heard rumours of Hunters romancing the witches they wanted to kill, deliberately getting close to them in order to expose a vulnerability.

Distracted by these thoughts, Lilia almost didn't hear his question.

"Hm?" Registering what he'd asked, she gave a one sided shrug, shaking her head a little. "Make sure they don't find us, and try to fight back when they do. We don't always lose," she added as she looked down at the fallen witch, the silence heavy in the air. "How can this be the fifth dead body?" she burst out suddenly, unprompted, as if in mid-conversation.

               In the form he was now, this witch could be a decent-sized meal, but if he stood how he should have been, she'd barely equate to a grain of rice and something about that detail made rage simmer deep within. Smallness was something that did not suit him and he could almost smell her delicious discomfort. If only.

“Targeted? Hunted. Who are these witch hunters? Are they humans or something else?” Question came as a simple way of trying to understand the dynamic being presented to him; if these hunters were humans, what was stopping the witches being pursued from retaliating and putting a stop to this game of cat and mouse?

Standing upright again, his demeanour shifted, him looking clearly uncomfortable on two legs instead of being crouched on four.

"What can you even do to stop them?" Not that he could be much use as a human if going up against things that weren't, for lack of a better term, this was his not-so-subtle way that if there was a situation where there had to be blood spilled, he would be more than happy to be on the front line.

[diviningtime]

Rain felt like the perfect weather; it was exactly how she was feeling about this little idea of Vivienne's. Unenthusiastic and drizzly. It felt like an instance of real life pathetic fallacy.

"Fun?" Lilia repeated in sceptical disbelief. "People like this are the reason divination is mocked as much as it is, why people dismiss star signs and planets, and call palmistry woo-woo, and think that picking up a deck of tarot cards will somehow summon the devil," she complained, only just managing to bite her tongue against a complete, and longer, rant. In her opinion, people like this were as bad as the ones who co-opted everything else about being a witch, alongside the 'new age' movement which had done damage in the name of so-called 'inclusivity'.

The only thing people like this had ever given Lilia was an idea about how to hide in plain sight, which had proved a lot more successful than other tactics over the centuries.

"Vivien--" Lilia cut off her protest as the girl had already headed inside, instinctively hurrying on after her. "What are you doing?" she hissed in her ear, climbing onto her tiptoes in order to reach.

Looking around the shop, Lilia couldn't deny it was remarkably similar to her own. Except the incense was clearly imitation, as were the crystals. Nosiness overcoming reluctance, Lilia moved towards one of the shelves, instantly picking up one of the curiosities to exam it, and quickly finding 'made in China' written underneath. She was prevented from having a closer look at everything else by the owner's arrival.

Not even bothering to hide she'd been looking, Lilia returned the item to the shelf casually, offering a tight smile to the woman.

"It's my friend who wanted a reading," she told her, gesturing to Vivi, and throwing the girl a side-look as she did so.

"Ah, of course," the woman nodded, as if to imply she knew already. "A lover's quarrel, perhaps? No! You wish to know the identity of your true love, and when you shall meet him."

Lilia could barely hide her snigger.

@diviningtime sent the thing i least expected! [ 1AM ] the stoop of a brightly lit psychic shop, pondering haven from the rain. (couldn't resist haha)

“ Doesn't look like this pouring rain would stop anytime soon. ” Her voice cut through drumming of the rain against the stone sidewalk, two women managed to find cover under small room in front of a psychic store. Vivi could feel water flowing around in her shoes and a look down only confirmed it.

A smirk crossed Vivi's face, the one that said she wanted to go in with Lilia. “ Let's test her out? Come on, it'll be fun! ” Her smile widened when she saw Lilia's face. “ Aren't you even a little curious of the competition around? Or maybe what an actual fraud acts like? ” Maybe Lilia could learn something from this encounter too as it seemed to be the only thing this psychic could surprise them with.

“ Let's go in, please! ”

Too late for any reply, the girl was already inside, leaving little to no choice for the other. As soon as she came in, she got hit with overwhelming smell of incense sticks and scented candles.

Scrunching her nose, Vivi took a look around, there was a see through fabric thrown over the lamp, dimming the lights, crystals exposed on a shelf, ones Vivi could recognize from an ornaments section in a thrift store. This cheap imitation couldn't compare to the real crystals Vivi used for scrying.

“ Hello. ” A middle aged woman emerged from the back, her eyes black as night and dark hair flowing over her shoulders, colorful headscarf on her head. “ What can I help you with today? ”

[diviningtime]

"Maybe it's the fact you get annoyed with everyone instead of actually listening to what any of us have to say," Lilia suggested, impatience trickling into her voice. Shaking her head, she rolled her eyes a little before deciding to start again.

"Being young isn't something you should hide from, or try to deny. It means you have more room to grow, to learn," Lilia told her. "If you listen to people before you start arguing with them."

“I asked for help, not for you to be all… condescendin’ at me.” The huff with which she said it was not really helping her case. “Is there somethin’ about me that makes people do that? ‘Cause it’s startin’ to feel like everyone treats me like I’m still a teenager. Does my face say ‘idiot’ or somethin’?”

Another huff. Yep, clearly she's very mature. “But fine, whatever, you know best, I guess.”

[diviningtime]

Lilia gave a small scoff of a laugh.

"It isn't," she assured him, a wry smirk puling at the corner of her lips. Taking a breath, feeling a little reluctant to burst his bubble about the potential progressiveness of an old ninna nanna, but knowing she was going to have to regardless.

"The lullaby is about all the people she wouldn't give her baby to. Including an 'old hag'," she quoted pointedly. "La Befana, specifically. A witch."

Her inner voice didn't seem to quiet down. Not much, if it did, not enough for him to tell. But the words themselves were less jarring. Less choppy, enunciated for passion or shock. It seemed lullabies were good for something on the inner voice.

"I didn't realize there was an old Italian lullabye about adoption. That seems progressive."

[diviningtime]

Writing Lilia there's always the temptation to have her slip out of time and just randomly make her have no clue what's going on suddenly. Just to shake things up, haha

[diviningtime]

@heirceleste One character suddenly lose their powers and/or inhuman traits.

"It's only temporary," Lilia offered in reassurance. "You wanted something to stop you from unintentionally hurting people, and this has," she reasoned, even though she knew full well that this wouldn't have been Cassidy's intent when she attempted the spell. If Lilia had known what she wanted to try, she would have advised against it. Not that it would have made a difference; she had fast learned that it was hard to shake an idea from the girl's head once it was fixed in there.

"We'll find a way to undo it. But in the mean time," she added pointedly, "you're going to have to make some adjustments."

[diviningtime]

"My face! My formerly perfect face!"

[diviningtime]

It wasn't so much seeing as experiencing, and Lilia wasn't certain how 'Herculean' she felt in the way she dealt with it. So much of her life was spent trying to suppress those gifts, making an effort to ignore it and put it away. 'Ruled by fear' as her mentor would have no doubt said, and not for the first time.

"As long as you have a good right hook, then you'll be fine," Lilia assured him with a smirk. She took a deep breath, pushing herself through both the dull pain and the impatience for it to be over.

"Is that how you see yourself?" She asked him, her voice filled with a genuine and gentle curiosity. "As a glorified secretary?"

Sterling tensed as she winced, not wanting to harm her further as he worked. He waited a second or two before continuing so she could ride through some of the discomfort.

"It's hard enough seeing it as a straight line. I couldn't imagine how you see it. Your mental fortitude is... Herculean."

"I'm sure that's muuuuch easier to say as a witch than a glorified secretary." Sterling said, voice even and dull so he wasn't breathing so much it made his hands shake at all. He was almost done at this point and he didn't want to trip at the finish line. "I'm sure O+ is delicious. I'm a snack." He leaned over again so she could see his smile, determined to keep the conversation light.

[diviningtime]

Lilia gave a small shrug in acceptance, a wry look on her face. If her gifts and visions were triggered by simply handing objects, including objects that had half their information removed, she wasn't sure she'd ever have the energy to go outside. It was already bad enough passing places that were charged with emotions and death--graveyards, hospitals, overcrowded shopping malls...-- without glimpsing tragedies and natural disasters just because she'd handled a flyer from an election campaign.

"Well, that all depends on what the other reason is for your visit," she teased back in reply.

"I thought as much." Sterling grinned, taking back the file. "But, you know, I had to test it." He'd never let a civilian read a real file anyway. Even someone with her abilities who could probably figure it out on her own.

"Good thing I have two reasons for this visit or that would have been embarrassing." He winked playfully at his little joke.

[diviningtime]

"Of course it's about you!" Lilia argued right back, causing the agents to flinch a little. "We might not like what we See in divination, but trust me; if you're in it, you're linked, whether you want to be or not." Lilia had experienced the same thing for herself; where her Sight had forced her to accept things she had been trying so hard to reject.

"I don't know about you, Scully, but this place is starting to lose the calm fortune teller vibe it had when we came in," Mulder observed drily, increasingly convinced that 'Madame Calderu' or 'Lilia' as Vivienne kept calling her was very much the real deal. Frauds didn't let their performance fall, and he'd never known one that actually argued.

"What do you mean you're not staying?" Scully asked, ignoring Mulder's comment for now. "Is this about feeling we're in danger?"

"Or is it about the mission you keep insisting you have to finish?" Mulder added, the same concern in Scully's eyes reflected in his own.

"Oh yeah, you're really not attached," Lilia commented drily, throwing Vivienne a knowing look.

Lilia had tried repeatedly to make Vivienne realise that travelling through time, trying to change the past, wasn't only near impossible, it was far from simple; life didn't just step aside because you had a mission, or you came from another time. Lilia knew from experience that people came into your life even when you were determined to be completely cut off; the universe didn't care about your plans when it had a whole idea of its own. These agents had been put into Vivienne's path for a reason, and she into theirs; any of them denying it was just going to make things more complicated

"If you wanted a filtered reading without your feelings involved, there are plenty of hacks you could have gone to," Lilia pointed out, her tone a little more gentle. "Denying what you're feeling and hiding it from those agents, or from their son, isn't going to make things as easy as you think it will, Vivi. It's going to do nothing but just make everything harder."

Outside, Scully was keenly aware that Lilia was keeping an eye on them even from inside her shop, and got the unsettling feeling that the woman knew more than any of them realised. It wasn't possible, and yet Scully couldn't convince herself otherwise.

"How does she know so much?" Mulder, ever the believer eager for answers, asked. "Scully and I, we've met psychics before, but what they know has been limited--"

"Or fake," Scully cut in.

"But she's...she's the real deal, isn't she?"

"But if she knows so much, Mulder, then why, as Vivi says, does she have to be convinced to share it?" It didn't make any sense; surely if it was a scam, then the moment they paid the woman should have given them any answers they asked for. And if she was real, and Scully wasn't saying she was, then why was she so hesitant? Or confrontational.

"Maybe she's had some bad experiences," Mulder suggested, putting on his glasses and getting out his phone to Google. If Lilia Calderu had been involved in any kind of scandal, or personal attack, he was determined to find it.

Scully's focus, however, was on something more personal.

"Is that true?" she asked, her blue eyes searching with a genuine warmth. "What she said about William? Are you...are you falling for him in those dreams?"

Of course Vivienne had questions, more than a dozen. Having in memory the image of Mulder flooding her with thousand and one questions when they just met in the hospital, the roles will probably get reversed when they go back to the motel. Though now, they came here to ask about William and it was rather clear that the girl didn't like when they strayed from that topic. Especially on the topics that had nothing to do with him or the agents.

“It doesn't matter what I think or feel about it. This is not about me, Lilia!” Vivienne protested, seeing how Lilia tried to make her realize, with no chances of actually acknowledging, that perhaps her role in all this wasn't as limited as she tried to convince herself.

“You know I'm not staying. Why get involved, why get attached, when it only makes things harder later?” She didn't want them to miss her. The closer they'd get now, the harder it will be to say goodbye. The girl's logical side needed these limits, needed to build these walls with purpose to save them, and herself, more hurt later. It didn't mean her heart didn't need them.

When Lilia followed her out of the store, her head snapped back around. She didn't rush outside only to be followed, but also never stepped away from a heated conversation.

“I'm not upset at what you're Seeing, I know you can't influence that. I'm upset that you choose to speak of things that, as you know very well, I'd like to keep out of it. My feelings, or lack of thereof — she emphasized — is absolutely irrelevant to finding him. That's all we want, to find the boy. And keep him safe.”

As Lilia turned on her heel to go back inside, Vivi kept her eyes closed, shade of grimace on her face. She took another puff of smoke. That was quite convenient, drop a truth tsunami and leave Vivi to explain. She knew in her bones that explanations were to be made, they were expected. Always when something intentionally hidden was being brought to light, trust got hurt in the process and she was aware how fragile trust was with Scully and Mulder, how much it meant to them.

Mulder's words crooked a smile on her face. This man's talent to break the tension never stopped to amaze her. “For what it's worth, you're the most passionate person I've ever met and I've had a blast on adventures with you so far.” Even if they ended in a hospital, or police station. Or both.

She took one more deeper draft of the smoke before dropping the cigarette to the ground and stepping on it just to put it out. The next second the leftover flew to the nearest trash bin without Vivi even moving her hand.

“Well, since I'm not aligning with Lilia's marketing PR, it's my cue to go.” A shrug followed stuffing her pockets with her hands. “It's your reading and you didn't get any useful information about where to find William, so my advice is that you go back in. Because Lilia does know. She knows a lot, the trick is to convince her to share it.”

And not get emotionally carried away as Vivi always did. Lilia just knew where to push with her words to get the girl all worked up. No matter what timeline, the woman saw right through her and didn't agree with her plans, not keeping quiet about it.

Lilia's words about the four of them kept echoing in her head. Vivi didn't want to allow herself to believe it could be true, that thought terrified her. But she couldn't completely deny the possibility that soon this connection will have to be maintained somehow, ended, when it won't be needed anymore.

Hands scrambled for the cigarette pack once again. It almost slipped from her pocket. “I'm going back to the motel.”

[diviningtime]

@thecavclry Agatha has a ridiculous injury that they don‘t want to explain to Lilia

Sometimes it was easy to forget that Agatha was only a century and a half younger than her. Sometimes with the way she behaved, it felt like she was younger than Teen.

"Just show me what happened, Agatha," Lilia said with a sigh, shaking her head at the fellow witch. "You can't honestly be embarrassed about an injury; for goodness' sake, we're both adults."

[diviningtime]

Lilia sighed heavily. This was the problem with these kinds of dualities; animal and human, while they had a lot in common, just didn't sit along side by side so easily. It was natural for an actual wolf to hunt and if they did kill a human, it was sad but it wasn't murder. The same couldn't be said for a werewolf.

"It's addiction," she summarised simply. "The come down is from the adrenaline, the rush of giving into animal instincts. And suddenly you're less free," Lilia added sagely. "No one likes losing freedom."

Pursing her lips, Lilia considered the situation. She didn't know whether to be complimented by the girl's confidence in her, or insulted that she was here from a lack of choice.

Or maybe just irritated it was happening at all.

"Even if I'm here to help you now, I'm not always going to be. I'm not a werewolf sitter," she protested matter-of-factly. "Eventually you're going to to have to control your actions for yourself. You realise that?"

this was why cassidy had called lilia, for someone that could help with a reality check. “i…i know hurting people is wrong, i don’t like that i hurt people. but the hunt feels good. there’s this come down when i shift back and all of those feelings conflict,” cassidy explains. running a hand through her mess of hair, tugging roughly until a knot loosens up.

letting her body sag just a bit, she pulls the hood of her cloak over her head and rests her face against her knees. “i picked up the phone to try and call someone else so i wouldn’t bother you. but we both know i don’t have anyone else, and i didn’t want to bother the kids. they’re too young and shouldn’t have to deal with my bullshit.

“i just feel like if i’m left to my own devices i’m going to go back out there and hunt. i don’t…i don’t want to hurt anyone though.”

[diviningtime]

@nightdaughtcr Both characters wake up somewhere... But don't remember how they got there.

Lilia started, jerking awake as if from one of her visions, but as soon as she tried to grasp details, the elements faded away like smoke. It was an odd sensation; while living a life out of sequence could make the present confusing, her visions always held an element of clarity. She certainly always managed to remember them. So what was different now?

Blinking a little in confusion, Lilia shook her head to clear it before looking around at her surroundings.

"Where are we?"

[diviningtime]

"Your mother has a more complicated relationship with death than most witches. Literally and figuratively," Lilia qualified. "Dying, going into that-- what is it called? 'The Cain Pit?'" She rolled her eyes at the biblical term; one of the many reasons she'd always kept her distance from Satanic witches in the past. "It obviously had to affect her more than it would--" Lilia took a breath. "It's made her face something."

"I've been thinking it was. We had to put Agatha in it one time and she didn't react to it well either." Nicholas admits. He had been keeping a close eye on his mother ever since herself and Zelda had showed up in the driveway and he in fact helped dig the hole to help put Agatha in. He saw how bad she looked after power syphoning from his mother. How dead she really was, but Zelda had been insistent that they try. If he was honest, he was too. He like Lilia was certain his mother had went somewhere because he and Sabrina had when they died, his mother just refused to say anything. "Besides the not eating, not sleeping. or at least less than usual."

[diviningtime]

I will do the rest of those random generator starters tomorrow. I've got to go to bed early tonight because someone is coming early to do some work on the attic, so no time to write. Alas!

Fingers crossed for everything going smoothly tomorrow and the cats not being freaked out by the noise and strange men in the house!

[diviningtime]

Lilia looked over at the man, a knowing smirk teasing across her lips.

"I know they do," she told him, fully aware of who he was, and just who he was related to. "But that still doesn’t mean you’re not after something."

"Relax, not that kind of famous." Andy can't help the chuckle at the the woman's reaction. "My daughter and her mom come into your shop, and apparently do deliveries."

[diviningtime]

Grateful that there wasn't anything complicated or odd about finding somewhere to speak, Lilia followed on and was surprised to find they were heading into a library. And, more surprisingly, that the library was normal. So far, anyway.

Taking a seat in the their tucked away corner, grateful to be off her feet, Lilia gave Glinda a wry look.

"I'm getting that impression." Shaking her head a little, she considered her answer. "Where have I come from today?" Lilia repeated the question back to her. "New Jersey."

“This way.” Glinda was relieved this witch wanted somewhere to speak privately. She wouldn’t have to watch her words quite so closely if she could speak more freely, though she wasn’t sure what she wanted to tell her just yet. She led her inside, towards a room she sometimes visited when she wanted some peace and quiet. She wasn’t much of a library visitor, but it seemed she could often find a far away corner where she could be left alone.

“Where did you come from?” Glinda asked, furrowing her eyebrows. “People don’t just come and go from Oz that easily.”