Work Text:
“Can I ask something, Mog?” Jupiter was lying down on a sofa in the Smoking Parlour while Morrigan laid out cards for their next match. He was teaching her Whist but it was better played with at least four people apparently. “Why were you at Wunsoc when Sofia ah- we were all so caught up in it all, I actually forgot to ask what you were doing there in the first place.”
“Um,” said Morrigan, who had only just remembered that he had expressly told her not to do the thing she had absolutely done and was now being questioned on. “Well.”
Jupiter did not look impressed. Considering everything she had done in the past month, including committing treason, apparently, this was impressive. “What did you do?” He sounded nervous.
“Um,” she said again. “Well, you know ah- how you said not to go into Liminal Spaces without you?”
“I did,” he narrowed his eyes. “Morrigan, tell me you didn’t-”
“I got this imprint on my hand and I could open the door to the Liminal Hall, and it was so weird, like another place, like it was right next to the sun or something, and there was this bundle of twigs but it was actually something called The Kindling and it's one of these Wundrous Divinities and- and well.” She swallowed, her left middle finger, the one with the new imprint, drumming impatiently against her hand, “See?” She raised it out to Jupiter. “Can you see it, actually? I- you’re a Witness but I don’t know if you can see an imprint you don’t have?”
He took the finger gingerly, raising her hand up so he could see it better, “I can see that something is here, there’s like- something’s glowing, like wunder, except I just can’t see exactly what it is.”
“It moves now,” she said, drawing her hand back
“It moves?” He almost sounded jealous. “Mine doesn’t move.”
“Jupiter.”
He scratched his beard, “Right, right. How does it move?”
She could have traced her finger in the air, wiggled it around a bit, but instead she chose to breathe out a sliver of fire, and have that form the shape for her instead, “Like this?” she looked to her finger for reference, and nodded. “Yeah, this.”
“Right,” he said. “And why?”
“The Kindling uh, did something to it?” She tried to remember exactly what had happened but that day had been one of the longest in her life. “And I gave him an offering, except The Kindling just went through my memories of every time I used inferno until I hit the Fireblossoms, really.”
“Hm,” Jupiter said. His beard was mussed up from where he had been pulling at it. “So you… met a Wundrous Divinity. And told no one until now that you had done this.”
She ignored that she had actually mentioned it to Squall and nodded. “I don’t really know anything about the Wundrous Divinities, except what Elder Quinn mentioned right before our first C&D meeting.”
He sighed, the weight of the world making its home on his shoulders, “Nor do I, really.”
“Is there anywhere I can look into it?” she asked. She could ask Squall - he was her master now, and she his apprentice, but he was her only source on this, and she wanted to see if there were any little forbidden books she could get her hands on, as well as the fact that it would be probably quite suspicious if she didn’t seem interested in working out what the Divinities were and what their whole deal was.
“Hmm,” he said. “I’ll find out for you, Mog.”
“I think it’s a wundersmith thing,” she said. “The Liminal Hall, I mean.”
“I’d say the portal to some other realm with gods in the bowels of Proudfoot House is a wundersmith thing, yeah,” he said weakly. “I don’t think I’ll ever stop learning new things about Nevermoor and the Wundrous Society, but that takes the cake. Don’t do that again though, no more liminal spaces, I mean it, Mog.”
“What if I get another imprint?”
“We can talk about it first,” he said decisively. “Case by case basis, but all of this is going to give me a heart condition, Mog. And I am not on good terms with the society’s cardiologists,” he held his chest dramatically.
She tried not to smile, “How many people have you sent to them?”
He pretended to count off on his fingers, “Twenty six.”
“What did you even do?”
“I seem to remember an incident involving myself, Paximus Luck, an escaped dragon hatchling and-” he put a finger to his lips, “Was it an elephant? Anyway, not yet an Elder Quinn only just saved me from expulsion.”
“I’m not going to tell Hawthorne about this,” she said. “I’m not giving him any ideas.”
“I don’t want to give you ideas,” he said. “How do you jump off the roof of the hotel three times in three years? That’s too many times.”
“You did it the first time,” she pointed out.
“Morningtide tradition!”
“I mean,” she pressed her hands to her chest. “Extenuating circumstances for the other two. I would have rather taken the stairs.”
“Or the lift.”
“Or the lift,” she agreed. “I pinky promise that I will do my best to stay out of trouble and also most liminal spaces from now on.”
He hooked his pinky around hers, “Please, Morrigan. You’re going to make me grey. I cannot win Snazzy Man Magazine’s Snazzy Man of the Year for the fifth year running without this hair colour.”
“Hair dye exists, Jupiter.”
He gasped, “Excuse me, Morrigan Crow! I have some integrity, thank you very much. I will win on my naturally occurring physical appearance or nothing at all.”
She took a look at his bedazzled bell bottom jeans, and then at his face, deliberately raising an eyebrow, “Naturally occurring?”
He pointed his finger at her, “And excellent fashion taste, of course. That’s the true Snazzy Man Magazine Snazzy Man of the Year way.”
She sniffed. “Naturally.”