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Oct 29 Witches/Cryptids
There are more people in Chrome's woods than there should be.
She becomes aware of them long before they become aware of her, thanks to Ken scurrying back in the form of a simple baying hound one day - only one of many beasts he can shift into. "There are people who came up the road!" he grumbles, curling up underneath the kitchen table. "They have all sorts of equipment with them. They know we're here!"
Personally, Chrome is pretty doubtful about that. In fact, more than the people down the road from her tiny little cabin in the woods, she has other concerns. "I'm bothered about the vegetables we're missing in our garden," she sighs, looking out the window in disappointment. "I need those for when it gets to be winter..." She could go into town, but she doesn't really want to. She likes it much more when she can simply live out here in the middle of the woods all on her own. Her mentor does it so well, after all. No one has ever met him without him deciding it for perhaps years and years.
Either way, if there are people in her woods, even if she doesn't like it, Chrome supposes she should go see what they want. That doesn't mean she has to do it right away. Instead, she cleans up the cabin while Ken sulks, and puts a fresh blanket over the back of her couch. While she may follow the ways of people before her, of the strange masters of magic like her teacher, she isn't completely out of date. She makes sure to dust the television clear of all the dog fur that Ken sheds, and tucks her computer out of sight in her bedroom so that no one can go snooping through it, even if she does have a password. Then, when she's done, she makes tortellini for the two of them. Ken doesn't complain as much as usual; she must be getting better.
It's late in the afternoon when she finally sets off for a stroll, and to see if there are more mushrooms growing for both work and pleasure. That's when she runs into the first of the group that Ken must have been talking about: a tall man with messy black hair with a friendly smile. He just laughs when she sneaks up behind him as silent as a ghost, not even scared, and strikes up a friendly conversation that he is more than happy to carry all on his own.
The whole thing comes to a rather abrupt stop at the sound of yelling, but the man just smiles more. "Oh, right!" he says cheerfully, as another with silver hair and far too much energy starts to crash through the brush towards them. "I forgot to introduce myself. I'm Takeshi Yamamoto, and this is my friend, Hayato Gokudera!" He turns to beam at Hayato as he crashes to where they are at long last. "Hey, Gokudera! I was just talking to this lady who lives around here!"
"No one just lives around here!" Gokudera snaps, eyeing her up with mixed excitement and aggravation. Chrome can't tell exactly how much of which is involved. "We're in the middle of the woods!"
"People live in the middle of the woods on their own," Takeshi says casually, as though this is absolutely a totally normal thing. "Haven't you watched those shows about people who live in Alaska, and rely on themselves for everything during the winter? Preppers or whatever, right?"
For approximately ten minutes, Chrome gets to stand there and serenely listen as Gokudera tries very hard to make their conversation on her existence an argument, and Takeshi just casually ignores all of his efforts. It takes another fifteen minutes before she finally gets an answer to why they're here, and what, exactly, Takeshi was setting up in the first place.
Gokudera says they are paranormal investigators of mysterious events. Takeshi more happily says they investigate weird stuff. This starts off another argument for around five minutes, before they both somehow manage to explain that they're following a mysterious creature throughout the woods. Apparently, they've been tracking it for quite some time... a mysterious creature that sometimes pretends to be a deer, and other times pretends to be a bear, all in order to confuse and infuriate hunters of the woods.
"Well, there are definitely bears and deer here," she says simply. "You can drop by my cabin sometime, if you'd like." And with that, she turns and steps away, leaving the two to their... whatever it is exactly that they're doing.
Ken slinks out when night falls in the form of a Catahoula Leopard dog, and Chrome lets him do it, much more content to drag her knife through small pieces of wood as she carves out various little owls. They're gifts she's sure her teacher will like, whenever he drops by again, which could be who knows when. She has an entire shelf of them, now. They're simple little charms, the kind she's best at, the kind that look like nothing particularly special and do as much on their own. It's a nice way for her to pass the time, especially on nights like this where there's no moon in the sky.
It's a couple of nights later when Ken comes back, flopping onto the pillows spread out in front of the fireplace and becoming something like human again. "It's five people," he grumbles to Chrome, and only sighs in contentment when when she moves her foot to gently rub it along his back. "There's that Gokudera guy, the Yamamoto guy, some shrimp whose hair is way too messy and smells nice... Then this girl, and some kid who doesn't look like he's old enough to even drive a car without getting carded."
Chrome is pretty sure Ken has mixed up his American signs-of-age stuff again, but she doesn't correct him. He doesn't say anything else about if they're being suspicious, so she can only assume that the group is doing exactly what they said they'd be doing: trying to lure out this "cryptid" that's in the woods, allegedly, and running around with cameras and all sorts of other recording devices. Chrome doesn't let herself worry about it, instead going to sleep, content with the knowledge that no one will disturb her.
There's no human that can find her home if she doesn't want them too, after all.
At least, that's what she thinks all the way through the night, and then to the morning. She's making herself some simple bacon, feeding burnt bits down to Ken where he sits down at her feet in human form, when there's a call from outside the cabin. "Um, excuse me? Hello?" Befuddled, Chrome goes over to the door while Ken hastily transforms into a dog once again, and she pokes her head out.
It's a boy with messy hair and large brown eyes, looking terribly embarrassed... and only in his boxer shorts. Chrome would be more worried if she couldn't see a pile of sopping wet clothes in his arms, and water still dripping from his hair. "Hi," he says awkwardly, looking as if he would rather just die on the spot than be in his current position. "You were the woman that, uh, Takeshi said lived around here, right...? Could I... bug you for a moment? I mean, I just need a robe or something, if you have one..."
Despite the fact that she is a witch, with a herb garden and a familiar and a lot of other things, Chrome does not in fact have a robe. She does, however, have a pretty constellation patterned sundress that has stars that glow in the dark, and which she rather likes. She lets the guy borrow it, which he doesn't seem to much mind at all either. This is Tsuna, the boy who Ken thought smelled nice. It's a rather nice day, him falling into a small creek notwithstanding, so she hangs up the rest of his clothes on her line since she's not completely heartless. It seems this crew plans to stay in her forest for a while, so... There's no reason to be mean.
The problem comes up when she walks with Tsuna back to the trailer that the group has brought with them, and then walks back once he's gotten a proper change of clothes. It doesn't take too long, and probably not enough time for his clothes to have dried completely, but she's still expecting them to be in fairly decent condition. Maybe a few minutes longer for them to dry.
Except they're completely missing from the line when they all return, and an investigation reveals scraps of cotton and cloth scattered beneath it. Chrome is all prepared to blame Ken for it - he did say that he liked the way Tsuna smelled, and he's never exactly been one to hold back on his impulses before - except then she realizes that Ken stayed right by her side as she walked with Tsuna. Gokudera immediately blows up in excitement, bossing his friends around, getting cameras set up near her property.
Well. She guesses she has guests tonight. Chrome tells them she'll have carbonara ready for everyone to eat by the time they're done, and then they're all running off back to their trailer to get their equipment, mostly at Gokudera's urging. At least someone is having fun. Leaving the scraps of cloth where they are, she crouches down by her herb garden and begins to gather up a couple of things, just for flavor.
She's not been there very long. It's only been long enough for the sounds of Gokudera and his friends to have long faded, swallowed up by the heavy leaves that hang from their branches, when there's suddenly the crunch of something underneath... hooves? Chrome looks up, expecting a deer, or a moose, or any other hooved animal that likes to wander through the woods and doesn't see much reason to be too frightened of her cabin.
It's not a deer. In fact, it might be a little rude to even call the individual in front of her an "it" until she knows a little more about their preferences on the matter, and the English language in general. What she does know is in the realm of the immediate obvious, such as the fact that the person is leaning forward with their arms crossed along her little fence in a way that shows off their impressive cleavage even more impressively.
Also, their arms are bear arms. Chrome supposes that's noticeable too.
She blinks for a moment, deciding on how she wants to deal with this. "Hello," she says after a moment, and peers past the tiny little gaps inbetween the fence posts. She can just barely make out the fact that the woman's lower half is just as fuzzy as her arms, but with more hooves instead of massive claws. Chrome doesn't take that to mean they're any less dangerous than the claws. Instead, she simply accepts them, and meets the person's eyes again. Well. There's an obvious question to ask here. "Did you take Tsuna's clothes?"
"They were very delicious," the person confirms, smiling brightly. Despite the bear arms, and what Chrome suspects are moose legs, she has to admit that this person is quite... spectacular. They have a variety of kitschy necklaces hanging all around their neck and hanging across their bare chest, and a pair of equally bright shades covering their face. In contrast to the hairiness on the rest of them, their head is shaved almost completely bare, save for a small set of straight bangs dyed a neon blue. "The name that hangs around me is Shitt P., but you may know this wonderful she as Shittoppi-chan. Part of it is for fermentation."
Well. That makes some things easier to understand, and other things not so much. Chrome finishes picking the herbs she wanted to use and pushes herself up onto her feet. She's never been a particularly tall woman, but Shittopi-chan makes her feel especially short. She wonders if it's the moose or the bear in her. "You can call me Nagi," she says, which was the name she was given at birth, but not the name she's put actual power into. If it were to be stolen, that would be fine. After a second, realizing that Shittoppi-chan is going with very Japanese conventions, which is interesting on its own, she adds, "Like calm seas. Did you eat my vegetables too?"
"They grew in beautiful soil." Shittoppi-chan shifts her position against the fence, and points down at the nearby vegetable garden. "I could taste the magic that has sunk into it. Just like with that clothing... You could tell too, couldn't you?"
"I haven't asked." Chrome doesn't plan to, either. She knows better than to start talking with most people about magical things. Still, she has her suspicions. Most people can't find her home so quickly, enchanted as it is... and yet Tsuna seemed to have no problem whatsoever. Some people are like that... Their sixth sense, their connection to magic or spirits, sometimes even the result of a long dead ancestor - all of that can act as a connection that thins the veil a bit for them.
If that's the case like she thinks it is, well. She feels almost sort of bad for him that he's stuck with a group of friends who wander around looking for magical entities and ghosts and things like that. They must be attracted to him like cats to sunspots.
Regardless... That's Tsuna's problem, she thinks. Her problem is a lot more mundane. "Will you stop eating my vegetable garden without permission if I make you dinner, too?" she asks. "I was going to make pasta." She's not sure if Shittoppi-chan knows what pasta is. Frankly, while she knows a few different magical entities - she thinks that sometimes her teacher at least partially counts - she's not well versed in many yet, and definitely not in matters of culture, or how much certain groups pay attention to things outside of.... You know. Fending for themselves.
Fortunately, Shittoppi-chan at the very least seems to know what's happening beyond remote forests like this one. Beaming, she finally straightens up. "An equivalent exchange! I had planned on doing that my way." And she makes her way back to some of the trees not that far from Chrome's little cabin, reaching up into some branches until she pulls away a packet made out of leaves. Even in her enormous bear claws, it's not a small thing, and Chrome realizes what it is as she's handed it. "I live a life on my own, but I still know that people are communicative creatures, and communication heralds social groups."
So... Chrome supposes that means she knows she can't just do things completely on her own. That at least makes this all simple enough, even if she's dealing with an entity that doesn't quite operate on human levels of sense or morals. At least she doesn't appear to be one of the fae. Then it would be a lot more frustrating. She accepts the package, and feels how heavy the salmon is in her palms. Is there a river this close by? She suspects not. In fact, she's pretty sure not.
"I'll make something with this later," she tells Shittoppi-chan, because she did already promise that she was going to make pasta, and Chrome had been looking forward to it herself. "Thank you. I'll leave something out for you later."
That seems to be enough to satisfy Shittoppi-chan, and she nods, turning away with a flourish. Chrome watches her for a while, to see if she changes how she walks like Gokudera would seem to believe, but she doesn't. She just disappears past the trees, like she was never there at all.
Well. Everyone has a way of disappearing. Chrome doesn't question hers, and instead just turns back to the cabin where Ken is peering out the door with his fangs bared and a growl rumbling out of him. Chrome shoos him back inside. They have a dinner to make.
Gokudera and the others return, and Gokudera makes criticisms about her cooking while Tsuna praises it, and then they all run off into the woods again, leaving her to her woodcarving. During the morning, they all trudge back to their trailer, pouring over video feeds and recordings and the things they experienced during the night. During that time, Shittoppi-chan comes back for some cooked fish, and eats it while hanging down from a low enough tree branch because she says it tastes better.
This becomes her schedule for a solid week.
"The air around you tastes sweet," Shittoppi-chan says on the first day, when she's brought over some honeycomb in exchange for the bruschetta Chrome has done her best to plate. Chrome knows that, back in Gokudera's trailer, he's grousing over how all of their cameras had leaves put in front of them that were carefully cut into strange shapes.
If she really wanted to, Chrome suspects that Shittoppi-chan could disappear without a trace, and no one would be ever the wiser. Yet she doesn't bring this up. Instead, she lets her gaze drift, and she considers her herb garden, carefully tended to and kept from spreading too wildly into the rest of the surrounding forest. "It's the smell of herbs," she says simply, and nibbles on her honeycomb. It tastes far sweeter than any flower.
Shittoppi-chan doesn't disagree. She only nods, seeming to understand perfectly. "I like that which grows here," she answers, before she hops away, once again only using her hooves instead of her large bear paws. Chrome wonders how long Gokudera will continue to be teased for this... but that's none of her business. Instead, she returns to her home to finish off the honeycomb, and reads over books filled with runes she has to memorize before the next time her teacher comes to visit her. That could happen anytime at all.
"The light around you is beautiful," Shittoppi-chan says on the third day, when Chrome hands over a small container of gnocchi. She has a lot of pasta, so much that it fills up entire cupboards and no small part of her storage. Just one little gift from her teacher.
Chrome cranes her head back and looks up to the trees that tower all around her little home. She's taken a lot of care to make sure that no trees grow over her cabin, or the gardens that she's tending for both work and food. Not everything requires charms or magic; she's simply climbed up there with equipment and ignored Ken's whining. "It's because I make sure the forest doesn't swallow me up," she replies.
This morning, Gokudera had his head in his hands, and Takeshi had to explain to her that one of their cameras had been stolen and placed right on top of their car while it was still running, with the sound somehow cut out. She's starting to suspect this is a kind of game, but Gokudera is refusing to concede defeat. Maybe that's part of the fun. She wouldn't know, and Shittoppi-chan seems perfectly happy as she rests her enormous paws along the fence to Chrome's garden.
"I like that, too," she says, before she accepts the gnocchi and eats it with her bare paws on her way back into the forest.
On the fifth day, Shittoppi-chan doesn't come in the morning for the ravioli that Chrome has made for her, so Chrome eats it for herself instead as a substitute for breakfast, and finishes up with the rest of her home while Gokudera and his friends all sleep throughout the day. At least, she presumes this is when they sleep, because she has no idea when else they would with their nocturnal lifestyle. Gokudera seems like the type who could go without sleep while fueled solely by his passion, but the others...
"It's been too noisy around here," Ken complains as she carefully starts to put her various carved owls into a basket. "Those guys are going to scare away all the deer, and then I won't have anything to chase! Not even rabbits!"
"They're not going to be permanent..." Chrome is pretty certain about that, at least. Places like the trailer they have attached to their truck aren't things meant for any sense of permanency. They're meant to be on the road, gathering new experiences and sights. Besides... "Tsuna said they only plan on staying for a week or so. After another week... All the animals will have forgotten anyone else ever came at all." But that's none of her business, what the animals do. All she does is tie up her boots, put on a large sunhat that's more effective than any witch's hat, and trek off into the wood.
Despite the strange things which have been happening around her lately, Chrome isn't particularly concerned about running into any oddities on her walk. At least, nothing any more odd than her usual life as it exists currently. She keeps an eye out for any fairy rings that might be growing, takes note of what animals have marked the trees, and doesn't look too long in staring into strange spots between the trees that don't quite seem to match the rest of their environment. The average person could walk past these sorts of things plenty and have nothing bad happen to them... But the more one knows, the more they're in danger.
That's fine, by Chrome's book. She'd rather this life, stranger and dangerous as it can be at times, than the life she had before.
Of course, sometimes even she's not prepared for the exact kind of strange things she can stumble upon. Chrome kneels down at the spot she'd had Ken sniff out long before this funny little business with the paranormal investigators happened, and begins to dig with a nearby small stone. She has gardening tools back at her home, for when she's planting herbs and vegetables and berry bushes... But that won't do for this. For this, it has to be a stone of the forest.
It doesn't need to be dug in too deeply, but even with that little time, she's interrupted by the sound of grass and sticks crunching beneath weight. When Chrome looks up, she's not particularly surprised to see that Shittoppi-chan is back. What is surprising is the switch of her body. No longer does she walk on hooved feet. Instead... her legs have been replaced with those of a bear, matching her arms, now.
Chrome blinks. Shittoppi-chan only smiles. There's a bit of a beat where neither of them do anything. It's Chrome who acts first, tilting her head to the side. "I have to bury this," she says simply. "I'm sorry I didn't have food for you this morning."
"You had food," Shittoppi-chan answers back casually. Maybe she smelled it when she dropped by, if she dropped by at all. Chrome hasn't asked her about how good her sense of smell is. "I was busy. We should date."
....So that's kind of sudden.
Chrome considers that and then, as though it weren't said at all, goes back to digging a hole. She does have work to do, after all, and she can talk as she does it. "What is dating like for you?" she asks, picking some dirt out from beneath her nails. She could save it for later, but it bugs her anyway. "I don't date often."
As a matter of fact, she didn't date at all, even before she decided to go live in the middle of the woods with a protective barrier that would keep most regular people from finding her place or stumbling upon it. There was no real reason to do it, in her opinion. Most of the time, a lot of people didn't care for her quiet and awkward personality. When they did, it was because they had an interest in her parents, whether the celebrity side of her mother or the rich side of her father. So... She can't really say what dating is like for herself, but maybe she could be perfectly fine with however Shittoppi-chan's people tend to date.
There's a long low hum, that's a kind of strange noise all in its own right, and far more different than anything she's heard from a human throat. "We could meditate together," she says, which definitely wouldn't have been the first thing Chrome would have thought of herself. "We could make clothing out of various things taken from the places where humans toss away all their unwanted things. I like making guesses behind the stories of each item as well."
Guessing and making up the origins behind items, discarded by people... Chrome smiles a little bit, taking one of the woodcarved owls from her basket so that she can set it snugly inside the hole she's dug. "I like that last one," she says. "It sounds like it will take a long time for us to get to the nearest human dump. I'll make sandwiches for us." She wants to practice her Italian food cooking even more... but that's the kind of food best served hot.
"Can you make dinner tonight as well?" Shittoppi-chan asks.
"Gokudera and his friends are going to be here..."
"And if they're not?"
Well... Chrome shrugs, smoothing dirt back over the small hole. Already, she can feel the land pulsing with some weak traces of magic. "If they're not, then I suppose so," she says. "There wouldn't be any reason to not make dinner for you and I and Ken."
While Ken has grumbled about Shittoppi-chan's presence before, he's not been outright hostile... And, in turn, Shittoppi-chan hasn't seemed to minded him either. Chrome nods. "Alright," she says. "Then I'll see you later."
Later comes sooner than expected, almost as soon as Chrome makes her way back home with an empty basket and various charms buried about the forest. Takeshi comes jogging up, laughing and saying Gokudera is excited about some evidence they've gathered, so they need to go back to town to get it properly developed... And Ken later confirms they're gone.
Chrome confirms something for herself when she pokes her head out the door, and Shittoppi-chan is waiting contentedly in her herb garden.
Well.
"Would you like to come in?"
She becomes aware of them long before they become aware of her, thanks to Ken scurrying back in the form of a simple baying hound one day - only one of many beasts he can shift into. "There are people who came up the road!" he grumbles, curling up underneath the kitchen table. "They have all sorts of equipment with them. They know we're here!"
Personally, Chrome is pretty doubtful about that. In fact, more than the people down the road from her tiny little cabin in the woods, she has other concerns. "I'm bothered about the vegetables we're missing in our garden," she sighs, looking out the window in disappointment. "I need those for when it gets to be winter..." She could go into town, but she doesn't really want to. She likes it much more when she can simply live out here in the middle of the woods all on her own. Her mentor does it so well, after all. No one has ever met him without him deciding it for perhaps years and years.
Either way, if there are people in her woods, even if she doesn't like it, Chrome supposes she should go see what they want. That doesn't mean she has to do it right away. Instead, she cleans up the cabin while Ken sulks, and puts a fresh blanket over the back of her couch. While she may follow the ways of people before her, of the strange masters of magic like her teacher, she isn't completely out of date. She makes sure to dust the television clear of all the dog fur that Ken sheds, and tucks her computer out of sight in her bedroom so that no one can go snooping through it, even if she does have a password. Then, when she's done, she makes tortellini for the two of them. Ken doesn't complain as much as usual; she must be getting better.
It's late in the afternoon when she finally sets off for a stroll, and to see if there are more mushrooms growing for both work and pleasure. That's when she runs into the first of the group that Ken must have been talking about: a tall man with messy black hair with a friendly smile. He just laughs when she sneaks up behind him as silent as a ghost, not even scared, and strikes up a friendly conversation that he is more than happy to carry all on his own.
The whole thing comes to a rather abrupt stop at the sound of yelling, but the man just smiles more. "Oh, right!" he says cheerfully, as another with silver hair and far too much energy starts to crash through the brush towards them. "I forgot to introduce myself. I'm Takeshi Yamamoto, and this is my friend, Hayato Gokudera!" He turns to beam at Hayato as he crashes to where they are at long last. "Hey, Gokudera! I was just talking to this lady who lives around here!"
"No one just lives around here!" Gokudera snaps, eyeing her up with mixed excitement and aggravation. Chrome can't tell exactly how much of which is involved. "We're in the middle of the woods!"
"People live in the middle of the woods on their own," Takeshi says casually, as though this is absolutely a totally normal thing. "Haven't you watched those shows about people who live in Alaska, and rely on themselves for everything during the winter? Preppers or whatever, right?"
For approximately ten minutes, Chrome gets to stand there and serenely listen as Gokudera tries very hard to make their conversation on her existence an argument, and Takeshi just casually ignores all of his efforts. It takes another fifteen minutes before she finally gets an answer to why they're here, and what, exactly, Takeshi was setting up in the first place.
Gokudera says they are paranormal investigators of mysterious events. Takeshi more happily says they investigate weird stuff. This starts off another argument for around five minutes, before they both somehow manage to explain that they're following a mysterious creature throughout the woods. Apparently, they've been tracking it for quite some time... a mysterious creature that sometimes pretends to be a deer, and other times pretends to be a bear, all in order to confuse and infuriate hunters of the woods.
"Well, there are definitely bears and deer here," she says simply. "You can drop by my cabin sometime, if you'd like." And with that, she turns and steps away, leaving the two to their... whatever it is exactly that they're doing.
Ken slinks out when night falls in the form of a Catahoula Leopard dog, and Chrome lets him do it, much more content to drag her knife through small pieces of wood as she carves out various little owls. They're gifts she's sure her teacher will like, whenever he drops by again, which could be who knows when. She has an entire shelf of them, now. They're simple little charms, the kind she's best at, the kind that look like nothing particularly special and do as much on their own. It's a nice way for her to pass the time, especially on nights like this where there's no moon in the sky.
It's a couple of nights later when Ken comes back, flopping onto the pillows spread out in front of the fireplace and becoming something like human again. "It's five people," he grumbles to Chrome, and only sighs in contentment when when she moves her foot to gently rub it along his back. "There's that Gokudera guy, the Yamamoto guy, some shrimp whose hair is way too messy and smells nice... Then this girl, and some kid who doesn't look like he's old enough to even drive a car without getting carded."
Chrome is pretty sure Ken has mixed up his American signs-of-age stuff again, but she doesn't correct him. He doesn't say anything else about if they're being suspicious, so she can only assume that the group is doing exactly what they said they'd be doing: trying to lure out this "cryptid" that's in the woods, allegedly, and running around with cameras and all sorts of other recording devices. Chrome doesn't let herself worry about it, instead going to sleep, content with the knowledge that no one will disturb her.
There's no human that can find her home if she doesn't want them too, after all.
At least, that's what she thinks all the way through the night, and then to the morning. She's making herself some simple bacon, feeding burnt bits down to Ken where he sits down at her feet in human form, when there's a call from outside the cabin. "Um, excuse me? Hello?" Befuddled, Chrome goes over to the door while Ken hastily transforms into a dog once again, and she pokes her head out.
It's a boy with messy hair and large brown eyes, looking terribly embarrassed... and only in his boxer shorts. Chrome would be more worried if she couldn't see a pile of sopping wet clothes in his arms, and water still dripping from his hair. "Hi," he says awkwardly, looking as if he would rather just die on the spot than be in his current position. "You were the woman that, uh, Takeshi said lived around here, right...? Could I... bug you for a moment? I mean, I just need a robe or something, if you have one..."
Despite the fact that she is a witch, with a herb garden and a familiar and a lot of other things, Chrome does not in fact have a robe. She does, however, have a pretty constellation patterned sundress that has stars that glow in the dark, and which she rather likes. She lets the guy borrow it, which he doesn't seem to much mind at all either. This is Tsuna, the boy who Ken thought smelled nice. It's a rather nice day, him falling into a small creek notwithstanding, so she hangs up the rest of his clothes on her line since she's not completely heartless. It seems this crew plans to stay in her forest for a while, so... There's no reason to be mean.
The problem comes up when she walks with Tsuna back to the trailer that the group has brought with them, and then walks back once he's gotten a proper change of clothes. It doesn't take too long, and probably not enough time for his clothes to have dried completely, but she's still expecting them to be in fairly decent condition. Maybe a few minutes longer for them to dry.
Except they're completely missing from the line when they all return, and an investigation reveals scraps of cotton and cloth scattered beneath it. Chrome is all prepared to blame Ken for it - he did say that he liked the way Tsuna smelled, and he's never exactly been one to hold back on his impulses before - except then she realizes that Ken stayed right by her side as she walked with Tsuna. Gokudera immediately blows up in excitement, bossing his friends around, getting cameras set up near her property.
Well. She guesses she has guests tonight. Chrome tells them she'll have carbonara ready for everyone to eat by the time they're done, and then they're all running off back to their trailer to get their equipment, mostly at Gokudera's urging. At least someone is having fun. Leaving the scraps of cloth where they are, she crouches down by her herb garden and begins to gather up a couple of things, just for flavor.
She's not been there very long. It's only been long enough for the sounds of Gokudera and his friends to have long faded, swallowed up by the heavy leaves that hang from their branches, when there's suddenly the crunch of something underneath... hooves? Chrome looks up, expecting a deer, or a moose, or any other hooved animal that likes to wander through the woods and doesn't see much reason to be too frightened of her cabin.
It's not a deer. In fact, it might be a little rude to even call the individual in front of her an "it" until she knows a little more about their preferences on the matter, and the English language in general. What she does know is in the realm of the immediate obvious, such as the fact that the person is leaning forward with their arms crossed along her little fence in a way that shows off their impressive cleavage even more impressively.
Also, their arms are bear arms. Chrome supposes that's noticeable too.
She blinks for a moment, deciding on how she wants to deal with this. "Hello," she says after a moment, and peers past the tiny little gaps inbetween the fence posts. She can just barely make out the fact that the woman's lower half is just as fuzzy as her arms, but with more hooves instead of massive claws. Chrome doesn't take that to mean they're any less dangerous than the claws. Instead, she simply accepts them, and meets the person's eyes again. Well. There's an obvious question to ask here. "Did you take Tsuna's clothes?"
"They were very delicious," the person confirms, smiling brightly. Despite the bear arms, and what Chrome suspects are moose legs, she has to admit that this person is quite... spectacular. They have a variety of kitschy necklaces hanging all around their neck and hanging across their bare chest, and a pair of equally bright shades covering their face. In contrast to the hairiness on the rest of them, their head is shaved almost completely bare, save for a small set of straight bangs dyed a neon blue. "The name that hangs around me is Shitt P., but you may know this wonderful she as Shittoppi-chan. Part of it is for fermentation."
Well. That makes some things easier to understand, and other things not so much. Chrome finishes picking the herbs she wanted to use and pushes herself up onto her feet. She's never been a particularly tall woman, but Shittopi-chan makes her feel especially short. She wonders if it's the moose or the bear in her. "You can call me Nagi," she says, which was the name she was given at birth, but not the name she's put actual power into. If it were to be stolen, that would be fine. After a second, realizing that Shittoppi-chan is going with very Japanese conventions, which is interesting on its own, she adds, "Like calm seas. Did you eat my vegetables too?"
"They grew in beautiful soil." Shittoppi-chan shifts her position against the fence, and points down at the nearby vegetable garden. "I could taste the magic that has sunk into it. Just like with that clothing... You could tell too, couldn't you?"
"I haven't asked." Chrome doesn't plan to, either. She knows better than to start talking with most people about magical things. Still, she has her suspicions. Most people can't find her home so quickly, enchanted as it is... and yet Tsuna seemed to have no problem whatsoever. Some people are like that... Their sixth sense, their connection to magic or spirits, sometimes even the result of a long dead ancestor - all of that can act as a connection that thins the veil a bit for them.
If that's the case like she thinks it is, well. She feels almost sort of bad for him that he's stuck with a group of friends who wander around looking for magical entities and ghosts and things like that. They must be attracted to him like cats to sunspots.
Regardless... That's Tsuna's problem, she thinks. Her problem is a lot more mundane. "Will you stop eating my vegetable garden without permission if I make you dinner, too?" she asks. "I was going to make pasta." She's not sure if Shittoppi-chan knows what pasta is. Frankly, while she knows a few different magical entities - she thinks that sometimes her teacher at least partially counts - she's not well versed in many yet, and definitely not in matters of culture, or how much certain groups pay attention to things outside of.... You know. Fending for themselves.
Fortunately, Shittoppi-chan at the very least seems to know what's happening beyond remote forests like this one. Beaming, she finally straightens up. "An equivalent exchange! I had planned on doing that my way." And she makes her way back to some of the trees not that far from Chrome's little cabin, reaching up into some branches until she pulls away a packet made out of leaves. Even in her enormous bear claws, it's not a small thing, and Chrome realizes what it is as she's handed it. "I live a life on my own, but I still know that people are communicative creatures, and communication heralds social groups."
So... Chrome supposes that means she knows she can't just do things completely on her own. That at least makes this all simple enough, even if she's dealing with an entity that doesn't quite operate on human levels of sense or morals. At least she doesn't appear to be one of the fae. Then it would be a lot more frustrating. She accepts the package, and feels how heavy the salmon is in her palms. Is there a river this close by? She suspects not. In fact, she's pretty sure not.
"I'll make something with this later," she tells Shittoppi-chan, because she did already promise that she was going to make pasta, and Chrome had been looking forward to it herself. "Thank you. I'll leave something out for you later."
That seems to be enough to satisfy Shittoppi-chan, and she nods, turning away with a flourish. Chrome watches her for a while, to see if she changes how she walks like Gokudera would seem to believe, but she doesn't. She just disappears past the trees, like she was never there at all.
Well. Everyone has a way of disappearing. Chrome doesn't question hers, and instead just turns back to the cabin where Ken is peering out the door with his fangs bared and a growl rumbling out of him. Chrome shoos him back inside. They have a dinner to make.
Gokudera and the others return, and Gokudera makes criticisms about her cooking while Tsuna praises it, and then they all run off into the woods again, leaving her to her woodcarving. During the morning, they all trudge back to their trailer, pouring over video feeds and recordings and the things they experienced during the night. During that time, Shittoppi-chan comes back for some cooked fish, and eats it while hanging down from a low enough tree branch because she says it tastes better.
This becomes her schedule for a solid week.
"The air around you tastes sweet," Shittoppi-chan says on the first day, when she's brought over some honeycomb in exchange for the bruschetta Chrome has done her best to plate. Chrome knows that, back in Gokudera's trailer, he's grousing over how all of their cameras had leaves put in front of them that were carefully cut into strange shapes.
If she really wanted to, Chrome suspects that Shittoppi-chan could disappear without a trace, and no one would be ever the wiser. Yet she doesn't bring this up. Instead, she lets her gaze drift, and she considers her herb garden, carefully tended to and kept from spreading too wildly into the rest of the surrounding forest. "It's the smell of herbs," she says simply, and nibbles on her honeycomb. It tastes far sweeter than any flower.
Shittoppi-chan doesn't disagree. She only nods, seeming to understand perfectly. "I like that which grows here," she answers, before she hops away, once again only using her hooves instead of her large bear paws. Chrome wonders how long Gokudera will continue to be teased for this... but that's none of her business. Instead, she returns to her home to finish off the honeycomb, and reads over books filled with runes she has to memorize before the next time her teacher comes to visit her. That could happen anytime at all.
"The light around you is beautiful," Shittoppi-chan says on the third day, when Chrome hands over a small container of gnocchi. She has a lot of pasta, so much that it fills up entire cupboards and no small part of her storage. Just one little gift from her teacher.
Chrome cranes her head back and looks up to the trees that tower all around her little home. She's taken a lot of care to make sure that no trees grow over her cabin, or the gardens that she's tending for both work and food. Not everything requires charms or magic; she's simply climbed up there with equipment and ignored Ken's whining. "It's because I make sure the forest doesn't swallow me up," she replies.
This morning, Gokudera had his head in his hands, and Takeshi had to explain to her that one of their cameras had been stolen and placed right on top of their car while it was still running, with the sound somehow cut out. She's starting to suspect this is a kind of game, but Gokudera is refusing to concede defeat. Maybe that's part of the fun. She wouldn't know, and Shittoppi-chan seems perfectly happy as she rests her enormous paws along the fence to Chrome's garden.
"I like that, too," she says, before she accepts the gnocchi and eats it with her bare paws on her way back into the forest.
On the fifth day, Shittoppi-chan doesn't come in the morning for the ravioli that Chrome has made for her, so Chrome eats it for herself instead as a substitute for breakfast, and finishes up with the rest of her home while Gokudera and his friends all sleep throughout the day. At least, she presumes this is when they sleep, because she has no idea when else they would with their nocturnal lifestyle. Gokudera seems like the type who could go without sleep while fueled solely by his passion, but the others...
"It's been too noisy around here," Ken complains as she carefully starts to put her various carved owls into a basket. "Those guys are going to scare away all the deer, and then I won't have anything to chase! Not even rabbits!"
"They're not going to be permanent..." Chrome is pretty certain about that, at least. Places like the trailer they have attached to their truck aren't things meant for any sense of permanency. They're meant to be on the road, gathering new experiences and sights. Besides... "Tsuna said they only plan on staying for a week or so. After another week... All the animals will have forgotten anyone else ever came at all." But that's none of her business, what the animals do. All she does is tie up her boots, put on a large sunhat that's more effective than any witch's hat, and trek off into the wood.
Despite the strange things which have been happening around her lately, Chrome isn't particularly concerned about running into any oddities on her walk. At least, nothing any more odd than her usual life as it exists currently. She keeps an eye out for any fairy rings that might be growing, takes note of what animals have marked the trees, and doesn't look too long in staring into strange spots between the trees that don't quite seem to match the rest of their environment. The average person could walk past these sorts of things plenty and have nothing bad happen to them... But the more one knows, the more they're in danger.
That's fine, by Chrome's book. She'd rather this life, stranger and dangerous as it can be at times, than the life she had before.
Of course, sometimes even she's not prepared for the exact kind of strange things she can stumble upon. Chrome kneels down at the spot she'd had Ken sniff out long before this funny little business with the paranormal investigators happened, and begins to dig with a nearby small stone. She has gardening tools back at her home, for when she's planting herbs and vegetables and berry bushes... But that won't do for this. For this, it has to be a stone of the forest.
It doesn't need to be dug in too deeply, but even with that little time, she's interrupted by the sound of grass and sticks crunching beneath weight. When Chrome looks up, she's not particularly surprised to see that Shittoppi-chan is back. What is surprising is the switch of her body. No longer does she walk on hooved feet. Instead... her legs have been replaced with those of a bear, matching her arms, now.
Chrome blinks. Shittoppi-chan only smiles. There's a bit of a beat where neither of them do anything. It's Chrome who acts first, tilting her head to the side. "I have to bury this," she says simply. "I'm sorry I didn't have food for you this morning."
"You had food," Shittoppi-chan answers back casually. Maybe she smelled it when she dropped by, if she dropped by at all. Chrome hasn't asked her about how good her sense of smell is. "I was busy. We should date."
....So that's kind of sudden.
Chrome considers that and then, as though it weren't said at all, goes back to digging a hole. She does have work to do, after all, and she can talk as she does it. "What is dating like for you?" she asks, picking some dirt out from beneath her nails. She could save it for later, but it bugs her anyway. "I don't date often."
As a matter of fact, she didn't date at all, even before she decided to go live in the middle of the woods with a protective barrier that would keep most regular people from finding her place or stumbling upon it. There was no real reason to do it, in her opinion. Most of the time, a lot of people didn't care for her quiet and awkward personality. When they did, it was because they had an interest in her parents, whether the celebrity side of her mother or the rich side of her father. So... She can't really say what dating is like for herself, but maybe she could be perfectly fine with however Shittoppi-chan's people tend to date.
There's a long low hum, that's a kind of strange noise all in its own right, and far more different than anything she's heard from a human throat. "We could meditate together," she says, which definitely wouldn't have been the first thing Chrome would have thought of herself. "We could make clothing out of various things taken from the places where humans toss away all their unwanted things. I like making guesses behind the stories of each item as well."
Guessing and making up the origins behind items, discarded by people... Chrome smiles a little bit, taking one of the woodcarved owls from her basket so that she can set it snugly inside the hole she's dug. "I like that last one," she says. "It sounds like it will take a long time for us to get to the nearest human dump. I'll make sandwiches for us." She wants to practice her Italian food cooking even more... but that's the kind of food best served hot.
"Can you make dinner tonight as well?" Shittoppi-chan asks.
"Gokudera and his friends are going to be here..."
"And if they're not?"
Well... Chrome shrugs, smoothing dirt back over the small hole. Already, she can feel the land pulsing with some weak traces of magic. "If they're not, then I suppose so," she says. "There wouldn't be any reason to not make dinner for you and I and Ken."
While Ken has grumbled about Shittoppi-chan's presence before, he's not been outright hostile... And, in turn, Shittoppi-chan hasn't seemed to minded him either. Chrome nods. "Alright," she says. "Then I'll see you later."
Later comes sooner than expected, almost as soon as Chrome makes her way back home with an empty basket and various charms buried about the forest. Takeshi comes jogging up, laughing and saying Gokudera is excited about some evidence they've gathered, so they need to go back to town to get it properly developed... And Ken later confirms they're gone.
Chrome confirms something for herself when she pokes her head out the door, and Shittoppi-chan is waiting contentedly in her herb garden.
Well.
"Would you like to come in?"