[Log] Reunion

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Eavesdown Docks, Persephone
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Surrounded by slums on the edges of the city, the docks are chaotic and bustling. Ships are haphazardly lined up side by side, and vendor's stalls and carts are interspersed between them. Dust kicked up by ground traffic and engine exhausts billows through the air, coating near anything that manages to remain still long enough with a film of grime.

Single voices vie to be heard over the cacophany of crowds from across the 'Verse, and are lost altogether amongst the grind of machinery and roaring of engines. Exotic scents mingle with that of the unwashed and sweaty, while there's an undercurrent of less easily defined odors in the air. Unless you're looking for clean and shiny, there's a little something for everyone to be found here on Eavesdown's docks.
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Eavesdown. The bustling port that it is, all manner of walks of life filter through to conduct the daily dealings of their lives. One such person happens to be Lu, who is sitting in the passenger side of a conventional MULE, white-knuckling it while a familiar auburn haired woman identifiable as Lu's sister drives through the chaos, cussing with an untamed tongue at anyone who tries to get in the way of the food delivery vehicle.


Walking a little closer to the line of ships docked haphazardly, Aradia skirts the edges of the crowd with Saienne alongside her. "I got a wave from Lu this morning, saying she was comin' back to Persephone," she says conversationally to the woman at her side even as her gaze turns to look up and over the form of a ship far too sleek and well kept to be docking on Eavesdown for any legitimate purposes before she draws up alongside the lowered ramp of Grace. The cussing of Lu's sister doesn't reach her ears so much as the return fire of a pedestrian leaping aside before he's run down, cursing the driver and her spawn for the next seven generations to come. Always one for learning new and inventive curses, Aradia turns and looks thataway.


Saienne walks alongside Aradia with her customary long, loping strides. Her hat, predictably enough, is perched at a slightly rakish angle on her head - rakish because her hair is growing out and the hat, which was once a perfect (if floppy-brimmed) fit, is no longer quite so snug. She has her hands thrust deep into the pockets of her coat. "Is that so?" Saienne asks, with some surprise, as Aradia brings Lucinda up. "An' we're plannin' on meetin' with her, I hope?" She squints around Eavesdown - at Grace settled there, and at the assortment of other ships roundabout - "Like a bad penny, ain't it?" She muses, about the dock. "Showin' up over an' over again."


Lu's voice rises up as well, but its to kindly remind her sister to keep her eyes on where the MULE is headed as opposed to the flagrantly cursing pedestrian she's now flipping off. "Sis, please. I don't want to be the first patient in my own clinic..." She nudges the auburn-haired woman who snaps her attention back to the driving portion of this evenings entertainment. They hit a particularly nasty pothole, which sends the crate in back tipping precariously. Its only a well placed and well timed hand from Lu that keeps the load from tumbling off.


A wide grin appears as Aradia watches the cursing pedestrian a moment and then shifts her gaze to the cursed. Squinting, she brings a hand up to shield her eyes, the back of her other hand coming up to cover her mouth at a cloud of dust being kicked up. Holding back a cough, she says, "Speak o' the devil. Is that...?" as she watches the careening MULE drive through the parting wave of people.


Saienne turns her attention from the ships, be they gleaming or be they dusty, towards the fast-moving MULE and the two women perched atop it. She squints too, using one hand to push the brim of her hat up a little so that she can see better. "I do believe..." Saienne begins, before pulling her hat clean off her head and waving it in Lucinda's direction like a great mis-shapen flag. "I do believe you're right," she says to Aradia, with a crooked grin.


Waving hats seem to work, Lu's attention apparently caught as she's trying to straighten herself back out in the seat. "Hey sis, slow down..slow! Fine, just stop!" She grumbles at her sibling slams on the brakes, sending Lucinda lurching forward, stopped only by her palms on the dash of the vehicle. In a true show of blood-relative love, her sister sticks her tongue out at the Doctor as Lu steps off the MULE, having spotted Sai and Ara. She weaves through the crowd in their direction, before appearing infront of them, flustered but smiling none the less. "Well look what blew into Port."


Just about to call out, Aradia lifts her hand to wave in Lu's direction right before Lucinda's attention turns toward them. Still grinning from ear to ear as Lucinda's sister slams on the brakes and Lu hops out to make her way toward them, she says idly to Saienne, "She drives worse 'n I do." Wrinkling her nose up and poking her tongue out at the doctor in much the same way as her own sister did to her just prior, Aradia replies, "Are you so surprised to see Grace here? She wasn't that wounded that we had to put her down."


"We didn't blow nowhere," Saienne says, with some indignation. "We touched down real gentle, like." She waves the hat at Grace this time. "Look, she ain't got so much as a scratch on her." She peers. "Although that might have more to do with the new bodywork than with Aradia's pilotin', true enough." She crams the hat back on her head and turns her lopsided smile on Lucinda: "An' you're keepin' fine an' dandy, I hope?" The question is a little lame, even if the offered smile indicates more truly how pleased she is to see the doctor.


Lucinda clasps her hands behind her back as she regards them both. "Good. Couldn't be better." Which is always a lie, no matter who says it, but when the doctor does, there's almost a bit of sadness touching her eyes. "Glad to see that the Grace is once again flitting about the 'Verse, I only regret I won't be able to fly with you all again. How is everyone? Max? Josephine? Richard? I'm sure Bishop sends his regards to you all as well, if he would remember his manners."


Aradia's own hands come to rest on her hips as Lucinda's clasp behind her back and she quirks a brow at the all too stoic woman standing in front of her. Clearing her throat, she says, "I think you're forgetting something," before holding her arms out to her side. She's not going to answer any questions until she gets what she wants, stubborn brat that she is.


"He ain't got no manners to remember, surely?" Saienne says, with a slight - albeit fond - smirk, of Bishop. She takes a slight step backwards as Aradia threatens embraces, lest she get swept up in the madness. Something of the exchange between Aradia and Lucinda causes her smile to falter, though, and (as always) she awaits the captain's cue before wading in any further. She's hanging back in earnest, now, her hands thrust deep into her pockets again and a pensive expression finding its way onto her face, creasing the wrinkles at the bridge of her nose and the crowsfeet around her eyes. "I'm glad to see you, Lucinda." Saienne speaks quietly but firmly. "An' I mean it, in earnest."


Lucinda blinks for a moment at Aradia, before realization dawns. "Oh, uh. Right." She steps forward a bit awkwardly, her own arms disentangling from behind her back to wrap around Aradia briefly. Once actually -in- the hug, Lucinda seems to relax a bit, but doesn't seem intent to linger long in the embrace lest it become uncomfortable. "Do did you get my Wave then?"


Aradia returns the hug, giving Lucinda a brief squeeze before she lets her go and steps back, "I did get it, 'n I was just telling Sai about it when you came barrelling through." She shifts her gaze over Lucinda's shoulder toward the MULE parked in the middle of the thoroughfare and grins before she looks back to Lucinda. "Your own clinic huh? Are you excited?" she asks, apparently quite willing to ask as many, if not more, questions than she answers. "You know I'm goin' to be gravely disappointed if you ever do need a ride somewhere 'n you don't call on me to have Grace take you."


Saienne nods a confirmation to Aradia's statement. "An' then I started talkin' about bad pennies." A beat. "Meanin' Eavesdown," she adds, in a bit of a hurry, "Not you." She takes a step back into the circle, adding to Ara's barrage of questions with some of her own. "Where you basin' yourself? Down here by the docks?"


Lucinda gestures vaguelly off in the distance. "Not to far off, actually." Meaning her player hasn't pinned down where it will be yet. "And yes, my own clinic. Yes, I am excited. And of course, I'd be happy to call upon you again, if only to see my old friends. Like MRE." Hah! The doctor just made a joke, or at least a statement that was vaguely amusing to her.


Smirking, Aradia folds her arms loosely across her chest and says, "So you'll be coming for a ride out to Greenleaf with us one of these days to visit Finn, then? MRE's been staying with him while things have been so...unsettled." Chuckling as she uncrosses her arms and slips her hands into her pockets, she says, "I'm real glad to hear you're doin' it, Lu, even if it means you won't be flying so much no more."


"We ain't drownin' in dogs for a change," Saienne says. "Although we do still have a chicken... but I ain't seen Larry-the-Rat for a good long while." She looks with some suspicion at Aradia. "Josephine ain't let him loose now, has she?" She falls silent, though, and listens as Aradia comments on Lucinda's chosen path. "Oh, aye," she says, nodding so that the hat brim flops and the pheasant feather tucked into the band bobs and ducks. "An' we know where to come next time we crash into a moon or run afoul of folks with a trigger happy attitude, don't we?" She grins crookedly.


Lucinda dips her head in a nod, "Of course, the door to the clinic shall always be open. And well, if its not, then just come around back and knock on the window to my bunk I plan to keep in the back. Speaking of flying though, I'm going to need a bit of help transporting all the medical equipment to the new place, and if anyone knows where to get supplies..." She glances around, as if in paranoia, "A little bit -cheaper- if you get my meaning.."


"Oh no, Jo has left Larry in the loving hands of the children back at the monastery she spent time at," Aradia reassures Saienne before she looks to Lucinda with a wry grin and asks, "Oh, someone like Mister Brooks and perhaps a ship like Grace?" She hesitates a brief moment before she asks, "Do you really mean always open, like say if Frankie brought any o' the kids by...I mean if they did, I'd see I made good on whatever it ended up costing you to see to 'em."


Saienne's crooked grin broadens. "We get your meanin', I reckon." She nods as Ara mentions Max and his particular kind of resources. "An' if he ain't in the mood for sharin', I don't doubt we could scare out some others who might be, ain't that so?" She runs a long finger along the line of her jaw. "Oh, good gorram, she left the rat with a bundle of kids? Lovin' hands surely ain't how I would describe them..." She quietens down again as the other group of children are mentioned, waiting to see Lucinda's response to the suggestion.


Lucinda smiles congenially to the idea. "Of course. It would be nice to see how Angel has gotten along, too. I will have a bit of governmental subsidizing to help off-set costs, but I'm sure you wouldn't be surprised if I told you how little that actually amounts to." The good doctor is standing speaking with Aradia and Saienne, while her sister idles on a MULE nearby, looking slightly bored and annoyed.


"No, you should be willing to help your fellow citizens out of the goodness of your heart," Aradia says with no small amount of sarcasm evident in her tone even if her expression is deadpan and all too serious. "We'll help with whatever we can help you with 'n I'll see that you don't go needin' for anything for helpin' them out," she promises, the seriousness fading away with a smile. "Of course, if you need us to fly to Ariel, there will be no carting of chickens on our way out there," she adds sternly, a mock frown creasing her brow and her finger wagging at the doctor standing in front of her.


"That ain't the first time I've heard you say that, Aradia, about chickens." She turns to Lucinda. "You heard her, ain't it so? No more chickens, even if we are zippin' out to Ariel. I'm countin' on you to have heard that, Lucinda." There is a melodic burbling from within one of Saienne's pockets and she makes a face. "Good gorram," she mutters. "Ain't on this rock for more than five minutes an' some poor idiot's gettin' their knickers in a twist over somesuch..." She digs the PDA out and peers at its screen carefully, stepping back out of the conversation again.