Year/Job
Private Detective
There's something rotten in Denver. |
Travis
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Post by Kermit Palantine on Apr 14, 2024 20:43:20 GMT -8
The last time Kermit saw Ceilidh he was about to flee the country. With the Ministry on his tail and monitoring everything from the floo network to Muggle airports, Kermit needed one last favor from a good friend. She found him in her kitchen munching down a bowl full of her flatmate’s sugar frosties.
An airplane ticket, one way, purchased in her name. One last favor and he’d never see her again.
Kermit was proud when he found that Ceilidh had upgraded in the ten years since he had seen her last. He double checked the hastily scribbled address on the napkin to be certain that this cute little bungalow in the swanky part of Edinburgh was the place. Ceilidh had magic proofed her locks since the last time, so Kermit had to kick the door in. They teach you how to do that in cop school.
It was late but Ceilidh wasn’t home yet. There were no sugar frosties in the kitchen, but Kermit found a lunch bag in her freezer with some leftover Chinese in plastic containers. He smelled the contents of the largest container which he thought was orange chicken, then dove in. It was cold and bland and tasted vaguely like chicken. That’s right, he thought, Ceilidh doesn’t eat meat. Rather than waste food by dumping it in the trash, Kermit reached for a smaller round container and popped the lid to find rice which he dumped into the box of orange chicken. Still bland, but he was hungry enough from a long day of stalking cheating husbands that he could make himself stomach it.
He went back into the bag to grab the can of soda at the bottom and slurped it down as he shoveled food into his mouth, waiting patiently for his old friend to show up.
Cèilidh MacBride
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Year/Job
Curse Rehabilitator
gonnae no dae that though... |
Lamp's.
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Post by Cèilidh MacBride on Apr 15, 2024 17:04:24 GMT -8
Once upon a time--
No, fuck it, nevermind, this just ain't that kinda story bruv.
But this one time, Ceilidh had aided a fugitive. He was a school friend, and one of very few friends, period, that Ceilidh had managed to hold onto over the years. That sort of went out the window when he had appeared for one last time in her little Glasgow flat to all but beg her to buy her a plane ticket, promising that if she did, she'd never hear from him again.
In all honesty, Ceilidh did not consider that worthy payment. She didn't even want it in the first place. What kind of person wanted people to disappear? ...Statistically, she was certain, plenty of people wished for that, but Ceilidh wasn't one of them. She had made peace with it regardless: the promise at least carried with it a certain closure that she valued.
Closure unlike the door to her little home when she arrived on foot, which judging by the looks of it had been busted open. Not just unlocked. Few things frightened her, but alarm was another matter. She wouldn't call herself paranoid, but there were a couple things you got in the habit of when your past including helping an old buddy escape the law and the country. Things like checking your locks, or bringing your wand with you to synagogue. Ceilidh looked up and down the road for any passersby, as well as for any unfamiliar vehicles, and drew from her sleeve when she'd determined there was neither, before quietly pushing the door in and sneaking into her own home, breathing deep and slow, silent as she could get with her purse over one shoulder. There was no one in her living room... She spun around the corner leading into the kitchen, wand raised--
To a man eating her Chinese leftovers.
Her first instinct as far as identification was some desperate tramp, despite the smooth skill displayed in her injured doorframe, but this man, while a little slapdash in style, did not look homeless. "Jesus Christ," she shot, ironically, as she tore a tiny circular hat from the crown of her head and threw it at Kermit, wand now lowered. "You," she accused, "Are supposed to be an ocean away."
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Year/Job
Private Detective
There's something rotten in Denver. |
Travis
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Post by Kermit Palantine on May 4, 2024 14:27:19 GMT -8
“Oy gevalt!” Kermit exclaimed through a mouthful of rice and fake chicken as his blaspheming friend tossed her yarmulke at him. It wasn’t much of a fond welcome home, but about what Kermit expected given the circumstances.
What had Kermit even expected coming home after so many years? He and Ceilidh hadn’t left it off on the best of terms. A plane ticket and a “see you never” hidden in the subtext of their goodbyes. Kermit remembered the look in Ceilidh’s eyes as he turned to look back from the entrance of the airport terminal. It was a look that Kermit had denied himself in Bea’s eyes, slipping out of their flat in the dead of night just a day earlier, leaving behind only a letter explaining the reason for his flight. The truth was he couldn’t bear to see in Bea’s eyes what he saw in Ceilidh’s that night. It was part disappointment, maybe even a bit of relief.
Kermit had asked a lot of Ceilidh over the years. What had started as a couple of goofy kids playing war games in the Room of Retirement turned into a couple of goofy kids playing superheroes around the school. Maybe Ceilidh never expected Kermit to take the act so far, but the cracks had shown as early as Kermit’s decision to apply to the Ministry to become a Hit Wizard. “We used to play justice, Ceilidh,” Kermit had said. “But I want to be justice.”
How could it have gotten so turned around?
Kermit had written his speech to Ceilidh on the flight home. Chronos is a wicked deity, it began. One which shapes and shifts us through its passage with countless trials and hardships. Our only refuge is in the arms of family and good friends, etc.
But when Kermit saw Ceilidh in the doorway, the words just sort of fell out of his head. He could only smile at the comforting image of an old friend. Maybe Chronos had been cruel to him, but it was only to spare Ceilidh. She was more fabulous now than he’d ever remembered, definitely better put together than when he had her stealing files from the Ministry for him.
“I came back,” he laughed, standing up from his chair to pick up her cool hat. He offered it to her as he continued, “I love the new place. What are you doing these days to afford it?”
His question was only a friendly courtesy. He’d already run a background check.
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