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I never really appreciated just how difficult it is to teach an apprentice. I knew it would be tough the second I said yes to Granuaile, because becoming a druid takes practice, patience, and most of all, time. Twelve whole years of it.

Seven years in, and I've long since understood what difficult truly means. Sometimes Granuaile gets frustrated (who can blame her? I wasn't much better during my own apprenticeship), and sometimes I channel my old archdruid more than I care to admit. He was a shit excuse for a human being, but a brilliant druid and teacher. I'm being a bit of the former today, I will admit, and coupled with Granuaile's frustration over our current project, the day hasn't been going well. At all.

When Granuaile slams a door in my face for the third time today, I decide we should probably take a break. I hear the Geekmobile start up and drive off, and I sigh. She'll be going into town to blow off steam, and I've long since stopped tailing her, content to let us both cool off and come back when we can handle it.

I'm about to reach out to Oberon as I go down the hall and open my bedroom door, but as I step through, everything changes.

Again.

"So this wasn't a weird fever dream," I say out loud. I scrunch my bare feet in the carpet and take off down the hall that opens out into a lobby that looks very familiar. I head over to the main doors and peer outside. Yep, the view is exactly as I remembered it, and I'm glad I haven't eaten since dawn.

I turn back to face the lobby and take a good look at the people around, and wonder who I'll meet this time. Thor again? Al Capone? Ooh, Captain Mal? Fingers crossed it's someone interesting.

Maybe I'll have some more time to study the magical patterns here and figure out how they work - and how I can work with them.

I can find the door home in a little while.

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This particular human smelled different than the others Eric had encountered in the hotel and he wondered why exactly that was. It was an intoxicating scent, heady, but not like fae blood seemed to smell. No, this was something entirely different and something Eric wanted to investigate further.

"Just arrived, then?" With his luck, this particular man would be a new arrival and unaware of the hotel itself and Eric's particular identity.

You know, when you walk through your bedroom door into a whole new pocket universe that is seemingly populated by fictional characters, it puts your mind on high alert. Or mine, at least; I dislike wearing shoes and walking where I can't reach the Earth on a good day. Being somewhere with no hold on magic except for what I have in my battery pack (really a necklace I wear all the time, but that's a long story) is not the best of strategies.

So, when I turn around and spot my old frenemy Leif Helgarson, I almost unbind him right then and there, power source be damned.

But two thousand years of being on the run has trained my mind to suss out a situation about as quickly as my reflexes, and the brief panic I feel drains away when I realize it isn't Leif.

He could be his long(-long-long-long)-lost brother, however.

"Just arrived," I say brightly, covering my reaction with a friendly smile.

Eric had learned to be subtle over the years when dealing with humans and living in a human world and so the question that was burning at the front of his mind was one that he pushed down for the time being. There was no better way to scare off a potential food source than to ask why it smelled so damn good.

"This place can be...confusing. It's not the best word for what this place can be but it seems to be the one I can most easily access right now. Do you agree?"

Do I agree? Hell yes. But it also happens that confused is a word I don't like, especially when applied to me, because it's generally followed by surprised and dead if one's not careful. (And I am careful. It's not paranoia if the gods really are out to get you, you know?)

I nod and take another look around the swanky hotel. "Yeah, confusing is definitely up there."

I don't need to activate my Faerie Specs charm to see that Leif's brother from another mother is a vampire. The pasty skin alone would give it away - it's very dead chic. I have a vampire unbinding spell ready to go if things go wrong, but for now...we can talk.

"I've only been here once before, and didn't have much time to explore. Still feeling my way around, I guess."

"I have made it more or less my permanent residence. Things at home are not actually in my political favor." Eric preferred being alive over meeting the true death and there was nothing in Bon Temps or even the rest of American right now that was conducive to his staying alive agenda. It was much easier to simply hide in the hotel until things calmed down and were back to normal.

"It isn't so bad, once you get over the strangeness of it all."

I hate vampire politics. They somehow always find it more in their interest to make other people (see: me) do their dirty work for them. And are they sorry when they get caught out? No. No, they're not.

"If by strange you mean the fact that we're on an island floating in the middle of space, there's no getting over that."

I felt more comfortable when I shift planes. At least then I know where I'm going and what to expect. This? This is some next level weirdness that my brain isn't ready to handle yet.

"Of all the strange things I have encountered in life, I have never floated on an island in the middle of space. Unless it was Fae-country, of course, and they are not fond of us."

Eric still did not know what this man was, exactly, other than not human but he didn't seem to be Fae based on his own (admittedly limited) experience. The hotel did seem at times to be Faerie, given the time anomalies, but Eric had no other evidence to indicate it was.

Olaf is stoned.

No, it's not like this is an event or something that's really out of the ordinary, but it does make him wonder if maybe he ought to stop smoking so much while he's in a place where his sense should probably be on high alert. Still, it doesn't exactly matter because if there's a threat, he'll probably find out when he's in trouble.

So he reiterates no promise that he's ever made to completely relax. "Hi," he greets the bloke wandering through the lobby like he's looking for someone. "You here to relax?" he asks, tapping his front pocket with his palm to give a signal.

"Relaxing is a possibility," I say, a little dumbfounded. I didn't expect to be given a secret signal from what I think is a marijuana dealer within minutes of arriving back in this hotel. I've had my fair share of experiences in altered states of consciousness, but I generally dislike anything that dulls my mind and reflexes.

I haven't had any gods trying to kill me for a long time now, but two thousand years of being on the run breeds habits that are very hard to break.

Even though I don't really have access to the Earth's power here to refill my magical batteries, I turn on my Faerie Specs for fun. They're not actual specs, just the name I give a charm I have on speed dial thanks to my necklace. They allow me to see everything in the magical realm, from charms and spells to auras.

A glance is all I need, because this guy's aura...yeah, he's relaxed, all right. I'm about to cut the charm when I realize something about his aura doesn't add up. It isn't anything to do with the magical bindings and auras around this place, but it's familiar. As in, I may be looking at a god familiar.

Well, shit.

"You a regular here? I've only been here the once, and it wasn't that long of a visit."

Edited 2014-03-25 04:03 (UTC)

"They don't charge me a dollar of rent and don't make noises about contributing if I see the need to stay." Because obviously Mike had gone for that care of Val and even Ty had started to make those little faces that usually was a prelude to being kicked out. After all, apparently blood doesn't run thicker than low hydro bills. "I don't leave unless I have to," he says, reclining back and relaxing back happily, looking over the man and wondering why there's a blinking light in the back of his mind telling him to pay attention.

There's nothing about the man that Olaf really thinks bears investigating, after all.

A free ride in a hotel that looks like it belongs in the heart of Paris? Yeah, okay, I get that. I've stayed in some pretty nice places in my past, so I understand the desire to hang around if you've got nothing better to do. I have to return home to get back to Granuaile's education (once she's cooled off, of course) but I can stand a little hanging out and exploring until then.

I take a seat in one of the ridiculously comfortable arm chairs and look over the guy without my Faerie Specs. He seems to act just like your average surfer/stoner, but I was having a hard time placing him. I don't have as much experience or knowledge of the Australian or New Zealand religions, so I have no clue which god he is. He could be some version of death, for all I know.

I really don't like not knowing what god I'm dealing with. It's the knowing that keeps you alive.

"What, so everyone just hangs out here like they're all on extended vacation?"

"I don't know that everyone hangs out like that," Olaf feels compelled to say, because pointing out the truth of his own volition and without any fear of consequence is generally one of his favourite things to do. He's happy to let other people worry about the consequences and ramifications. "I like to," he says. "Mostly because I generally don't pay much rent at home and this plays tries to kick me out less."

Though, he can't sleep behind the bar here the way he does at home. "And their policies are surprisingly lax."

"Surprising," I say, because this doesn't look like a place that makes for lax security or even letting people go without paying. But I guess if you end up here against your will without a single cent on you, it'd be too rude to ask you to pay up.

Plus, hotel on an island in the middle of space, possibly in another universe or something just as science fiction-y. Payment kinda seems silly to worry about in the face of that.

"How long have you been here, then?"

"Time is a manmade construct that hinges on small arms telling me when it is," he replies, which might sound deep and vaguely like he's one with the earth, but the truth is that between the drugs, the alcohol, and the general oracle and god settings in his brain, Olaf doesn't really cope with the telling of time as well as other people might.

He'd check his watch, but he can't really afford one of those and it's not that he really wants one, either. "The real answer is long enough that the housekeepers hate pushing my surfboard and other stuff aside to get in."

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