Upstairs

Though Mitch had said good night to Abel, he stayed on the terrace for a moment longer. He grabbed his Zippo lighter off of the railing and inspected it silently and solemnly. He looked at the emblem of the brown bear on the lighter base, going over it with his thumb. He looked up to the sky, as if searching for something in the clouds. Moments passed. Mitch sighed, and he put the lighter back into his wooden case. "I hope I make you proud." His words were barely audible.

After his moment of silence between himself and the sky, he ambled back inside and found himself any flat surface he could rest his bones on, which ended up being his own bed for tonight. As soon as his head hit the pillow, he was out for the foreseeable future.
 
Ivy woke up with a start. Normally, she slept in a bit later, but she had in a stage of light sleep, and in that moment, she realized rather suddenly, she was not sleeping in her bed, she was in some new unfamiliar place, and, yes, it only took her a few moments to recall where she was and that she had moved, but even though she tried, she could not manage to fall back asleep. Oh well. She yawned, and climbed down the later to get out of bed. It was pretty nifty, having a ladder to get in and out of bed. When did she even get to bed? She couldn't recall.

She looked about her new room for a few moments, trying to remember where her things were, and she saw her father, still sleeping. That was good. Sometimes he didn't sleep anymore. She would hear him walking around their house at night. But today he was sleeping--although she did not know he had only managed to fall asleep a few hours ago. It was weird sharing a bedroom with him, and for a little while, she wasn't sure what she was supposed to do. She didn't want to accidentally wake him up--not that it was an easy thing to do--but where was she even allowed to do? Could she just get her own breakfast like she used to?

But then she remembered: there were secret places in this house. That was something she could do. So, after brushing her teeth in the bedroom, Ivy began to sneak up and down the halls, quiet as a mouse, so that nobody would catch her and tell her to stop, and went touching the walls, searching for a hidden panel, and she pressed her ears up against them, because maybe it would sound differently. In the Nancy Drew books she liked to read, sometimes you could find a hidden room or compartment by knocking on the wall, because it would sound differently, but there were dogs in this house, and she didn't want to knock on the walls and get them barking. Then she would surely be caught, and her sleuthing put a-stop to.
 
It was improbable the dogs would bark, seeing how one was usually out in the backyard or resting in the stable, and the other shared a bed with Ishade. He wasn't supposed to let her, but Sophie was his baby and he'd do whatever he wanted.

In her knocking and wandering Ivy might hear a sudden loud snore. It came from the upstairs living room, where a platinum blonde man was sprawled on the couch. His body was partially covered by a blanket, his pyjamas shirt partially unbuttoned. He tended to snore in certain positions or after smoking. The TV was off, no unnecessary light allowed. He had momentarily opened one eye, but his frigid bitch radar told him the best he could do was to go back to sleep for the time being.
 
Ivy heard the snore, and looked up. She pressed her ear back up against the wall, to double check it was not coming from a secret room. But it wasn't. Disappointing. Oh! Ivy quickly scrambled back to her bedroom, and grabbed her newest, prettiest notebook and a pencil. Normally she saved them for writing stories, but this was a special occasion. She needed a map. Because if she found a secret passage, she needed to be able to mark it, and she didn't want to waste time checking places she had already learned were just normal.

Her map was imperfect, and she wasn't the most proud of it, but it was hastily drawn. She'd fix it later. The point right now wasn't to create art, it was to keep track of her exploration. She returned to her post, and crawled around on the floor, because you never knew when there would be a secret hiding beneath the floorboards, and pressed up against the walls. Checking and pressing and being careful to not make too much noise.

So far there was nothing. Disappointing. But she hadn't checked much of the house, yet, and she held to the faith. But the snoring wouldn't stop, and that was curious, too, because it was not coming from one of the bedrooms. So, to solve this smaller mystery as to who was snoring out in the open, she silently crept around the corner and came into the upstairs living room to find a blonde man sleeping on the couch.

She pursed her lips, but let him be, and instead decided to seek for hidden rooms within the upstairs living room. Just because the secret room or passage wasn't accessible from the hallway, didn't mean it wasn't accessible from the inside, and--she slowly turned around to look at the sleeping man--he could be guarding it. Well, he wasn't very good at his job.

She decided to this time pick up and fiddle with various objects in the room, because perhaps one of them triggered a secret mechanism, remaining as quiet as she could.
 
Not quiet enough though. She had been picking at things and turning and messing around for a bit when the man on the couch stirred.

Abel groaned, turning to lay on his back and then stretch his limbs with a yawn. He was wearing a pyjamas, though he was barefoot, and the blanket was barely on him and practically off of the couch. He rubbed his eyes, really tired, only to open them and see Ivy in the room with him.

"Oh for fuck's sake..." He said with a low growl, proceeding to yawn again, turn around so his face was to the back of the couch and fully cover himself with the blanket. Now at least he could go back to sleep and pretend there wasn't a kid in there with him.
 
Ivy turned around when he groaned, and watched him as he stretched and rolled over, and she frowned slightly when he swore. Not a very good guard indeed. She wanted to take hope that it would make her job easier, but she had a bad feeling it meant there weren't any secrets in this room either... Or he wasn't a guard, and she had just been pretending he was for the fun.

She sighed, and began gathering her map and her pencil, because she figured she shouldn't risk waking this stranger. She'd go look somewhere else, because she'd really rather not get in trouble. But she was annoyed, too, because why shouldn't she be in here? She had worked really hard to be quiet in the room and down the halls, and she hadn't even said a single thing out loud, and the door to the room had been left open when she came inside, so...!

And she couldn't help but wonder if the rest of her life in this house would just be her trying to be quiet all the time so as to not disturb the adults. And yes, she had only faced one ounce of criticism, and he rolled over and seemed to have gone back to sleep, but she had felt the energy in the house from the moment she woke up. She just wanted to explore.
 
The door to the pink bedroom creaked on its hinges as the shaggy man on the other side pushed it open. Mitch stepped into the hall, wearing a loose-fitting button-up pajama top; long, flowing pajama bottoms; he was covered head to toe in a red and black plaid. His hair was wrapped in a black silk cloth -- the only time when his hair didn't seem to be in a state of disarray -- and he wore on his feet some quite novel bear slippers, with little ears poking out at the top and black plastic noses on the tips. He stretched his arms out, letting out quite an emphatic yawn. That was a major sleep deficit taken care of.

Mitch had taken notice that he, of course, was not the only one awake at that moment, as it sounded like Ikanov was snoring more to prove a point than to actually sleep; which could only mean someone tried to wake him up, right? Naturally, it did not take long for Mitch to discover the little cartographer in training scouring the halls and rooms for secret passages and entryways. He smiled to himself, thinking for a moment about what he knew from his time at the house. He had known that Dark and Ivy had taken the blue bedroom, and there were certainly things to discover just in that room alone, let alone the entire house. He recalled, at the least, a small cubby hole that a previous tenant made use of that hid behind the standing mirror. Whether it went anywhere, Mitch couldn't say; he was no longer of the appropriate size to explore in cubby holes.

Of course, he can't spoil all the fun of Ivy discovering secrets on her own, so he settled for a bit of a hint -- maybe something that will create a little bit of intrigue. "There are some people who say..." Mitch spoke aloud to Ivy from a distance, not really paying any mind to Ikanov's slumber; what was he going to do, anyway? Mitch wasn't afraid of him. "... That mirrors are portals to another world. Only those that can see past them, they can see what truly lies beyond."
 
Ivy peaked her head around the door frame, hearing Mitch speak about mirrors. A few strands of her long, dark hair fell in front of her face, and she didn't bother pushing them away, "Like in Through the Looking Glass?" She took a few steps soft further out, Ikanov entirely forgotten. Her eyes were shining brightly, "Mirrors trap lost spirits, that's why we cover them. And, you can't look in a mirror too long, 'cause it'll take bits of your soul."

She spoke very seriously, as if she truly and totally believed what she was saying about ghosts and spirits, "I bet the mirror realms aren't gaurded like other things are," She looked behind her at Ikanov, "But they're probably far more treacherous." Even were she not speaking so gravely about mirror worlds and spirits, the correct usage of 'treacherous' revealed much about how she had been brought up. She held her notebook tight to her chest, and held her flashlight down at her side, switched off.
 
No, apparently he wasn't going to go back to sleep at all. The conversation he could hear could've been a concoction of his mind. However, because he wouldn't ever have a literal child and Mitch in the same goddamn dream, he must be awake.

"Maybe you ought to go find a mirror and give it a fuckin' try! Don't take this wrong, I say this from the heart... but It's early as hell SHUT THE FUCK UP" Said Ikanov, his shouts partially muffled because of the blanket he was hiding under. But still easy to hear.
 
"You're lucky my dad's asleep," Ivy replied, rolling her eyes as she turned around to look at him, entirely unimpressed by his attitude. Then she turned back to Mitch, heavily sighed, and said, "Grown ups, I swear."

She walked further down the hall, annoyed, deciding if she stood further away from the door, she could speak as she liked, because the pale sleeping man surely could not lay claim to the entire house.
 
Mitch shrugged dismissively, also stepping further away, mostly as a display of no intended malice. "Never grow up. It's not worth it," Mitch said listlessly, undoing the silk cap on his head. As he pulled the cap away, his hair fell down to his shoulders, the even waves in his hair settling in probably the neatest position they would be in all day.

"No, the mirrors aren't guarded quite the same way as things that are more tangible." Mitch lowered his voice only enough to be barely audible to Ikanov in an act of defiant compliance. He glanced back at the living room where the blonde man lay in bitter slumber. "Unlike a couch that's guarded by a moody, spoiled cat, the mirrors are their own guards, if that makes sense." Maybe this was a bit more of an abstract conversation than he was intending to have, but hey, it was a topic that was intriguing to him.

"You and I know how the mirrors work and what they contain, right? But anyone else would go up to it, maybe touch it, and nothing will happen, and they'll think nothing of it. But when we believe in what they are capable of, that's when they open up to us. Like portals." Mitch held the silk cap in his hands, looking down at it for a moment before looking back at Ivy. "They're dangerous, sure. But they also reveal a lot to us."
 
When Mitch called the sleeping man a moody cat, Ivy laughed, but the conversation about the mirrors was too interesting to continue joking about, and she nodded solemnly when he said they're their own guards, and added, "That's why it's bad luck to break one. I did, once, and Mama made me wait and leave all the pieces on the floor, and later in the day, me and her picked up all the pieces, and then we waited until nighttime, and then we walked to the park--because we didn't have a yard--and buried it in the moonlight, 'cause--because--otherwise it was very bad."

She frowned, and thought for a few minutes, "Mama was probably safe from them though, I think, because she was blind... But then she couldn't learn any of the secrets from them, so she missed the powers in them. But maybe that's good, because it's dangerous to mess with those things. And she was able to figure out a lot of other stuff without them... " She looked up at Mitch with large, thoughtful eyes, and she rocked on her heels, "But, I don't think they all reveal their secrets to people who even do know they have secrets.
 
Said moody, spoiled cat was doing his best not to hear the other two, so he didn't really hear the way they talked about him. Still, since the conversation went on, he ended up getting up from the couch.

With an annoyed groan, Ikanov walked into the hallway wrapped in his blanket. He had a scowl on his face, and he yawned.

"If you're not using your bed, in going to fuckin' steal it" He said, then, marching towards Mitch's room with every intention to go inside and at the very least steal a pillow. But maybe, just maybe he'd also steal the covers, and if he was too tired, fall face first on the bed.
 
Mitch smiled wryly as Ikanov stalked past him into his bedroom. "Go ahead. I'm sure my personal effects will bring you the peaceful rest you need," he teased, rolling his eyes.

He looked back at Ivy with a solemn nod. "Maybe, but I believe that blind people can sense things that we can't. She may have even understood more about mirrors than we even do. When you don't have to distribute energy between all of your senses, you can put more energy into other senses... Or maybe even a sense that we don't know about." He shrugged. "Of course, you may be right; there are just some things we don't know and can't know for sure."
 
Dark's eyes opened, and he was awake. He rolled onto his back and for a few moments just stared silently up at the ceiling. Thankfully for the people out in the hall, he only woke up shortly after Ikanov had threatened to steal Mitch's bed, and so missed anything which had happened before, and he was not quite yet aware of any conversation happening in the halls. He heard voices, but was not listening to what they were saying.
He sighed. His body felt weighed down and stiff, and looking at the clock Dark noted he had gotten just under three hours of sleep. Well. It was better than some nights and worse than many. But at least he slept at all. And he knew--of course he knew--he should get up. He should make breakfast for his child. If she was awake.

He lay silent to try to hear her breathing above him, and when he couldn't hear her, he at last turned his attention to the conversation in the hall, and heard his daughter (albeit muffled, because his door was shut).

She was saying, "Mama always said her third eye was more sensitive than most people's two eyes, but I never asked her much about mirrors, except when she said we were going to need to cover them."

He didn't know exactly who she was talking to, but he was certainly uncomfortable with her speaking unsupervised to any of the adults in this house until she got to know them better--especially considering the conversation he had last night. Normally, he hated being seen in his pajamas, especially after just waking up, but in that moment, he could not remember where he put his robe, and so he accepted his fate, and stepped out into the hallway with messy hair, wearing pajama pants and a tank top, which of course instantly revealed the tattoos which covered (at least) his arms, chest, and back, although they went no higher than his clavicle, and calmly said, "Good morning."
 
Mitch froze for a moment. Not because he felt he was being a bad influence or anything like that -- he was a solid 15 feet away from Ivy and he wasn't speaking of anything particularly uncouth -- no, he froze at the sight of Dark's plethora of ink. It certainly wasn't what he was expecting from this man. He quickly shook off the nerves and nodded at the man.

"Good morning," he finally spoke. "We were talking about mirrors." He didn't know what else to say. He wasn't sure if he could just continue the conversation or if this was the cut-off. He subconsciously rubbed his arm and looked away. He certainly wasn't opposed to tattoos, far from it, but it gave significant air to the intimidating nature of the man. And here he was in his bear slippers and plaid pajamas, looking like a child.
 
Ikanov did continue into Mitch's room, a bit surprised the other didn't stop him. It's not like he made a habit out of invading the tenants' privacy, much less when it was a friend. Luka wouldn't let him stay if he did. But he thought of Mitch as someone who liked his privacy, not that there was much to see in his room. Which said more than anyone might think.

With a yawn, he did what he had threatened to do and got into Mitch's bed. He had his own blanket, but just mixed it in with the other man's and made a cocoon for himself. Taking deep breaths he let himself relax, ignoring whatever was going on outside. He didn't fucking care, he didn't want to care. He was tired and this bed was way more comfortable than the couch.
 
Dark ran a hand through his hair and rolled his shoulders back. He forgot about the shock most people had upon seeing--him. It was far too early to remember not everyone had spent decades seeing his skin like this, and so he very casually, without mentioning what he was referring to, held up one hand and said, "It is fine," which served him rather well, because it seemed like he didn't need to be concerned about the conversation, if their body language and physical distance meant anything, so there was no need to elaborate on if he was telling Mitch it was fine to stare, if he wanted to, or telling him he deemed their interaction acceptable, "Mirrors?"

Ivy nodded, "We were just talking about how mirrors are portals to another world and about ghosts and stuff."

"That sounds quite interesting. Mirrors can be treacherous."

"That's what I said!"

Dark hummed slightly, and then, crossing his arms, said, "Alright. Are you hungry? Did you brush your teeth?"

When Ivy assured him that she did, and said she was a little hungry, he nodded, and said he was going to get dressed and then he would see about breakfast.
 
That explained where Ivy learned all of this lore about mirrors. "Treacherous, indeed. My ma taught me a lot about the power that mirrors have, too. The lost spirits information is new to me, though. Gives me some new appreciation for them." Mitch was still looking at the tattoos adorned all over the man. One tattoo did catch his eye in particular. "I apologize for my surprise, I'm sure you get this reaction all the time. I like that Ouroboros."

Mitch stretched his arms out once more. "Well, I've got a tune in my head that's been rattling around in my brain, and I have to get it written down." Mitch nodded to them both and continued back to his room.

Mitch casually stepped into his room and tossed the silk cap onto the bed where Ikanov rest -- why not poke the bear one more time for the hell of it? -- and then quickly grabbed his hollow-body guitar, heading right back out and making his way downstairs.
 
Dark nodded, "More than you know... but once upon a time it kept food on the table, so who am I to complain? And last night, Mr. Lukais nearly fainted, so, I have had worse reactions." Ivy had mentioned the night before she had brought up his employment history, so he thought he may as well leave a few bread crumbs.

Then, when Mitch left, Dark went into the bathroom to comb his hair and brush his teeth, and and embark on a multistep skincare routine, while Ivy went into their bedroom, put her things away, and got dressed for the day. She dressed herself in clothes some people would term 'boys clothes' but she liked the thick overalls with the light blue patch over the right knee. They were really easy to play in. When they were both finished, Dark braided her hair in two twin braids, and headed downstairs to eat breakfast.
 
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