RP: Blinded by the Light

[tt_cecilia]

Date: 16. April 2002
Characters: Cecilia Proudfoot and Sirius Black
Setting: The coast of Eastern Australia, north of the Australian Settlement
Content: TBD
Status: Open: Private


It had been a good day. A hard day physically, sure, but with Sirius’ company, it had been a pleasant day with a lot of exploring and a plethora of samples gathered for further examination and cataloguing. She had happily accepted his invitation to come along for the day both to spend time with him but also to get her research started on the other continent. Jamie had been in complete agreement and had proposed to making it a trial run for him to be home alone without supervision, to which Cecilia had partially agreed, and they had settled on her returning before midnight so he wouldn’t spend the night alone.

As dusk had started falling they had stopped their wandering and had drawn towards the beach where Sirius had started a fire while Cecilia had gathered what she could find of things suitable to supplement the supplies they had brought from home. The rocks that created natural wave breakers had made it almost ridiculously easy to pull in the meal’s worth of shrimp that were now roasting with a few simple herbs on the pan she had transfigured from her trowel.

When the first flicker of light registered, she had simply continued scooping the shrimp off the pan an onto a large palm leave figuring that it was the beginning of a thunderstorm. However, that hadn’t seemed right, for one there was a chill beginning to settle in that wouldn’t be there if thunder was about to break out, though mainly because it wasn’t followed by even the slightest rumble. When it appeared again, she looked up to find the sky slowly filling with mesmerizingly waving bands of green. “Aurora Australis,” she breathed in awe as she got to her feet until she was staring at the amazing light show that was happening above them.

Comments

[tt_sirius]

They'd covered a lot of ground, with Sirius in his element out in the bush, directing Cecilia to where he'd seen the stranger looking plants, while he kept watch for wild animals. It was a good time, actually, giving them both an equal footing to talk to each other, filling the day with easy silence and occasional exchanges.

Near dusk, he directed her down an animal path to the ocean, where she put together a dinner that rivaled anything he could do back at the settlement with a stove. Sirius tossed up some minor 'keep away' wards around their impromptu campsite and unlaced his hiking boots before stretching out on the sand while Cecilia cooked.

He'd been lightly dozing when he heard Cecilia say something, cracking his eyelids to see something that made him shoot to his feet in both alarm and caution. "Aurora? Dammit," Sirius growled, not at all impressed by the light show. He'd been stuck on Australia more than a few times due to solar flares - solar flares were transient and usually represented with strange sky lights.

He pulled his wand from his pocket and cast faerie fire, breathing a sigh of relief when they appeared, which faded into a hard scowl when the magic faded away a second later. "Dammit," he repeated himself as he drew up the leg of his jeans to reveal a small holster. Sirius drew the pistol out. "No magic," Sirius explained grimly to Cecilia.

[tt_cecilia]

The moment Sirius shot up from the ground, Cecilia knew what was up. It wasn’t until then, though, that she had connected the light in the sky with the solar flares they had discussed earlier. Instantly, an acute sense of awareness of everything around them took over. The smoke from the fire made her remove the pan to keep the shrimp from burning and potentially attracting the creatures Sirius had kept an eye out for all day.

She looked at him just in time to see his faerie fire fade, and sighed deeply in resignation when the significance of that became clear to her. Nevertheless, she pulled out her own wand as he explained it to her, because… what if? “Accio backpack,” she tried, feeling nothing but powerless when all that happened was one of the straps shifted slightly, a movement that just as easily could have been caused by the breeze from the ocean. “No magic,” she agreed and chewed on her lower lip as she assessed their current location and surroundings.

Being on the beach meant that they were relatively safe from predators, or at least they didn’t have to worry about trees blocking their view of what might be sneaking in on them. It also meant that they had some degree of protection from the ocean, though that too was limited, as neither of them knew the waters well enough to know how far they could risk going. “Are the wards still up?” she asked him, nowhere near as familiar with the loss of magic as Sirius was, while she retrieved her backpack to see what they could possibly use from it.

[tt_sirius]

While he hadn't expected it to work for her, seeing that it didn't did nothing to make him feel better. This was a situation he'd been in before. At least they were on the beach, and he'd already cast the wards before the flare. With any luck, it would pass in a few hours.

Sirius turned and walked over to where he'd cast them, between the trees, reaching out a hand. After a moment, he nodded. "They are. They should hold until morning, but after that, we'll have to move on," he stated, already doing a mental checklist in his head trying to figure out what they had on hand. "There's no telling when this will let up. Sometimes its minutes, sometimes hours. I've been here for a couple of days at a time in the past."

[tt_cecilia]

“Alright,” Cecilia conceded with a nod. “So, for now, we’re safe, which gives us time to figure out how to go from here, though hopefully we should have our magic back before we have to make use of those plans, yeah?” Gesturing or him to come and join her, she sat down in the sand, placing the bowl of herbs she had gathered into salad next to the pan with the shrimps. “Come, sit down, have some food while it’s warm, because not eating won’t do either of us any good.”

Picking up a shrimp from the pan she broke the shell open and ate the juicy, warm flesh, licking her lips in approval. For a meal that had been put together with what she could find in half an hour, it was pretty good. “Tell me about this place,” she continued. “What kind of animals are we likely to encounter here on the beach?”

[tt_sirius]

"Safe enough, yes. I've got a Muggle weapon as well, it's standard over here since half the engineering team is Muggle," Sirius explained slowly. It wasn't something he readily admitted since he rarely thought about it back on Zealandia.

He joined her at the makeshift eating area near the fire, taking some of the shrimp as well. "On the beach? Tortoise. I've seen some of the really large ones on occasion. They aren't shy. Other than that, just the odd bird. If you go in the water, stay close to shore - don't go out any further than up to your waist. I have seen fins out there."

[tt_cecilia]

”I thought you might,” Cecilia said softly with a small smirk as she popped another shrimp in her mouth. Sirius carrying a Muggle weapon here didn’t come as a surprise to her. Rather, any surprise she might have felt was at his almost reluctance to say it, almost as if he was admitting to something wrong. It didn’t bother her in the least, and at this point, she found herself very glad that he was carrying the weapon. Just in case.

“So…” Cecilia began summing up, “if we stay on the beach, we should be relatively safe. Don’t remember tortoises being particular aggressive, and I’ve no plans of going swimming, really.” As she chewed and swallowed, she pulled open her backpack to see what she had that could come in handy. “I brought a spare change of warmer clothes,” she sighed as she pulled up the tiny bundle, “and I shrunk it to save space.” Well, that was just perfect, especially since she was wearing shorts and a sleeveless tunic. “So… we keep the fire going?”

[tt_sirius]

"No, they aren't aggressive, just openly curious. Don't be surprised to wake up and find one watching you. One night, I came back to my camp to find four of them pulling things out of my backpack. The ruddy buggers got away with one of my t-shirts. I don't even want to know what they did with it," he explained with a soft laugh. It was easier for him to tell her about his incidents on this continent, then discuss his own feelings anyway.

He kept eating, mindful of leaving some for her. They'd need all the energy they could get. Sirius always planned for the worst, thinking of just how far away from the settlement they were. "I have two changes of clothes, if you want to borrow a t-shirt, but the blanket was shrunk," Sirius admitted with a wry grimace. They'd manage. It wouldn't be glamorous, but they would be alright. "Yes, definitely. It gets pretty chilly at night on the coast, and it discourages curious predators."

[tt_cecilia]

“Tortoises with a killer sense of fashion,” she chuckled. “Makes them the fabulous kind of predator, I guess.” There was no telling how long they would be without magic. So far, it hadn’t been long, though it had been longer than any of the previous times Cecilia had experienced it and it could change at any moment. Worst case scenario, it wouldn’t come back and they would be stuck here on Australia until somebody had found a way of making sailing across the water. Right now, though, they were aware of the immediate dangers and there wasn’t much they could do about it, aside from what they were already doing. The last they needed was to give up or give up realistic thinking to pessimism.

Cecilia returned all of her things to her rucksack. Aside from her clothes, her small bag of toiletries and personal belongings had been shrunk too, so all she could contribute were the plants and herbs she had collected during the day, a dry quill and a notebook. The notebook could come in handy, she figured, if they needed to start a fire again later, and right now she was very glad that the solar storm hadn’t come earlier, since she had Transfigured her trowel into a pan. That made cooking anything they found a whole lot easier.

Eating a couple more shrimps, she wiped her fingers and let herself fall back to lie on her back as she looked up at the sky. “Could be worse,” she mused aloud, turning her head to look at Sirius. “We could have been days away from the coast or stuck with someone we didn’t care about.”

[tt_sirius]

He chuckled, remembering just how annoyed he'd been when he'd first discovered the theft, but that had quickly passed. Sirius had few possessions that he cared about, none of which were clothes. Watching her repack the rucksack, Sirius was already thinking of the day ahead, hoping that the storm would pass quickly and they'd be able to apparate back to Zealandia.

When Cecilia finished with the shrimp, Sirius took the remaining ones in the pan and ate them down. He glanced over to her, thinking of the added responsibility of keeping her safe now. It wasn't a resentment, just an acknowledgement. "True," Sirius agreed, sighing and looking out over the ocean. There were far worse places they could have been on the continent, closer to far worse predators. "If things aren't back to normal at first light, we'll have to cover as much ground as we can tomorrow. I hope you're ready for a lot of walking."