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The world shakes.
Well, perhaps not the world but the room as Blackagar's eyes jerk open and he sits upright. The shaking continues, rattling walls and floor, ceiling and windows to shake free items to the ground. The normally static eyes of the man, who exudes calm and control at all times looks fearful.
It is early morning, a day not unlike many other days but this one comes with a rude awakening as vibrations reverberate through the apartment.
*
Scarlett rises early, often before the sun. Rarely does she abscond from bed for long, sometimes allowing herself to float back into the tide of dreaming alongside him. Others, she slips out into the living room or ascends to the rooftop to perform her yoga asanas while dawn softens the sky and banishes the shadows. This morning, neither applies, a surprise intended holding her to the kitchen. Cast iron plates shatter together around bubbling batter as the building rocks.
Her instant response is going airborne, dropping a spatula into a bowl. Already moving before the vibrations reach a point she can hear, she flits out into the main room and catches a framed picture falling from the wall. Tossed to the couch, she dashes for the doorway into the bedroom, the harmonics quaking her bones and settled into her gut.
The silk robe slides off her shoulder, fluttering around her legs. Waiting a moment, she breaks the humming silence with a gentle, compassionate question wrapped up in a tether: "Blackagar? Love?"
*
His head shakes; either in warning or warding off but both could be acceptable as a response as the shaking continues. It is visible, with great effort, that it slows then ceases. The man's chest rises and falls as he struggles to bring himself back to control before abruptly tossing off the blankets that covered him and rising in just the shorts he was sleeping in.
Hand reaches out, he fetches a slate and writes on it quickly to show to Scarlett, eyes trying to maintain their calm and clarity that usually adorn them, «Something is wrong.»
*
The glance to the bracelet ever locked around her wrist follows. Sorcery can contend with a mutation, but his unique inherent ability will go untested. Instead, Scarlett walks to the bedside and sits on the edge as he seeks the slate and turns it to her. Her hands clasp over her knees as she radiates benevolent serenity even when disquiet brews along the sharpened intuition for any immediate danger. That innate knowledge isn't a conscious reflex. She reads all the same, and then gently holds out her hands to Blackagar in a sure, certain gesture. «I understand. What do we do?» A nod follows careful phrasing of posture and gesture. «How do you feel?»
*
Blackagar seems to think for several moments before he shakes his head. «I do not know. I have not lost control since I was small.» The calm focus comes back to his eyes and body after moments, although it seems as if the energy within him is just under the surface ready to leak out once more. «Since I have begun working to use my power more, I feel it growing. Harder to direct and control.»
*
Her hands remain poised as is, palms upturned to him. Not taken, the position has similarities to Buddhas and bodhisattvas professing enlightenment. Scarlett doesn't frown, although a fine line registers against the pale smoothness of her brows. Contemplative more than anything, she allows thoughts to seep through a tightly controlled channel and manifest after a few seconds of calculation.
«Do we need to go somewhere? Or can you focus?» A glance of those verdant eyes alights on the closet, and she idly reaches to pull the sleeve back up over her arm.
*
«Away.» Blackagar's response comes as he looks around the apartment, brow furrowing. «Where there are no others, no one to risk hurting.» He starts to step now, grabbing a shirt from where it was across the arm of a chair to pull it on. «Mountains? Ocean?» Both cross his mind. «The Arctic…»
*
Scarlett unfolds her knees, standing from the bed. In five steps she ventures to the closet, and pulls out a rather sturdy backpack whose shape and weight indicate already being loaded with certain gear. "Go bag," she explains without having the proper non-verbal cues for it, trusting any latent turmoil imprinted on her will stay properly sealed away. "Pacific islands are properly isolated and warmer. Arctic islands might disturb ice sheets and birds. Australian outback is too desertified, limited for water." Hangers slide as she seeks a particular outfit in green leather and gold mesh, not entirely for show, the armour carried out reverently and laid down. By design it's in no way human, proof of her travels abroad. Pulling it on after snatching a light sleeveless shirt takes surprisingly less time. "I will take you to any of them. But Svalbard is probably the safest, long sunlight, cool, isolated and non-volcanic."
Because she thinks about these contingencies always.
*
Listening to the break down that she offers, Blackagar is pulling on his pants and he nods his head towards Scarlett. «That would be ideal. I need to go until this passes. There is no one alive there?» The last has an important expression to it, the most important part in his mind. He's pulling on boots before he finishes standing up and patting himself down. A slow breath is taken and there's a small rumble before he closes his eyes and pushes it down.
*
Tugging on the leggings takes more time than sliding into the reinforced bodice, but Scarlett aligns the garments and adjusts the stays despite their complexities. When completed, she's clothed throat to ankles, leaving only the boots to seal off skin from touch. Her gloves don't so much as creak to the motion of her fingers, an important factor given she brushes those digits down Blackagar's arm in a gesture of mute solidarity. «No. No one on the north islands where we go. Do not be afraid.» Her smile is faint, as she says, softly, "Polar bears and reindeer I can handle." The go bag is easily slung over her shoulder by the straps, and she nods to the closet again where various garments aren't hers alone. «Dress warm. Only gets to forty in the day.»
*
A look is given to Scarlett and Blackagar shakes his head. «Cold doesn't bother me, won't need to dress warm.» The explanation comes with a slight remembrance of his time in the mountains, of why he was there to begin with. A look to the north,then to the hand on his arm and he nods. «Take me there. Then the next step I will figure out.»
*
That, at least, they share. Scarlett resettles the pack carefully over her back. She guides him to the rooftop access stairs as before, a necessity to find the garden and the open air high above the rooftops of Greenwich Village. Even so, the place is dwarfed next to the towers of the Financial District. Blackagar has a fine view of the nodding flowers, the source of the dahlias and camellias worn in her hair or left to flourish as they are. She pulls her hair back and tucks her braids under the collar, the better to prevent him being inadvertently lashed in the face. «Will you let me stay?» A simple question, that, the dawning of the emotion moving in shadows and light across the span of those wide, grave eyes. If he sees the northern lights, their precise shade is sure to be familiar. That said, her arms gently enclose him in an embrace spanning torso and hip, holding them together as she lofts them up into the clear morning skies. He can answer as he would as she gains her bearings.
It might, in retrospect, explains why so often Scarlett reads maps and charts at her leisure, among the myriad other books in the apartment. Knowledge of landforms is essential to know where the heck she is, other than dead reckoning by the stars.
*
«Not until it passes.» Blackagar responds to Scarlett, glancing at her before getting ready to fly off. He frowns deeply to her but attempts to push a smile through to the surface. «Must find a way to control the energy.» Even as he indicates it, shares it via thought and motion, the vibrations begin anew.
*
«I know how hard it is for me to control it. I will wait for you.» Her smile holds an ember of sorrow amongst a deeper, quieter regard and the white flame that tethers affection to the most powerful of the passions. Scarlett rests her cheek briefly against Blackagar's dark hair and pivots slowly to the sun, ever mindful of where it rests in relation to her shoulder. Other matters of passenger aircraft and weather balloons or radar are easily enough forgotten; any of those objects scanning them have to catch them.
Her desultory pace is meant to give them time to clear populated areas before proverbially kicking on the afterburners at a rapidfire pace that cuts down the transit time from long hours to showing up prior to lunch time on a barren, icy islet rimmed in mountains and facing the northern sea. Mining operations on the main island account for a small population, and few if any ships travel to the rest of the archipelago.
The larger bodies are too much the home of winter to bring fortune-seekers. It's a long skim over the ocean at speed, passing the southern tip of Greenland where an abandoned Viking outpost remains, that eventually delivers Blackagar to his isolated niche of choice: forbidding Nordauslandet and its chilly seven islands offshore.