INBOX: lastvoyages

[stormandwind]

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[orderfromchaos]

"Happy to help," he says softly, crouching down and extending a hand. The damage is - well, awful, but the smell isn't as bad as he feared. Paper burns cleaner than a lot of things.

There's a twitch, a ripple, and bits of paper start to show in the ashes, but none of them are much larger than confetti scraps. He frowns a little.

"Can you do weather in here?" he asks. He's not sure it will work, with someone who isn't Michael, who he can't link with in the same way, but he doesn't see why it shouldn't work. All he needs is the mixing, so he can pull the randomness out of it.

[stormandwind]

She watches as the ash turns to paper, daring to hope but still cautious enough that it isn't any surprise when the pieces are like a jigsaw puzzle it would take a lifetime to solve.

Tris tilts her head. "It depends on what you need. I can't make weather. I only use what's in the air around us, which is nothing much on the Barge, or what I carry with me."

[orderfromchaos]

"Just wind," he says. "Just - if you can make all the bits move around a little. And I'll make them collide right." Order out of chaos.

[stormandwind]

"That, I can do." Tris pulls one braid free from the net holding most of her hair back, and she unravels it in swift, practiced movements. A wind picks up, and she nudges it into circling the library, stirring up all of the tiny scraps of paper.

[orderfromchaos]

There's a shiver in the air as his power reaches out - something soothing and right, a cool breeze across the face of the universe, something that lifts all the little aches and pains of ceaselessly being alive, of always being breaking down.

Pages start to flutter in the gusts of ash, and the first book falls out of the wind with a soft thunk. And then a second, directly on top of the first. They keep coming, scattered at first and then in a rush, like raindrops as a storm sweeps in.

[stormandwind]

It catches her off-guard, because Tris hadn't expected Dillon's power to be directed at anything besides the books. Even just the edge of it has an effect. Dillon could do a lot more if he were trying.

She laughs at the books falling to the floor, even if she knows it will take her weeks to get everything shelved again, then asks, "Does your magic always feel like that?"

[orderfromchaos]

She may discover, when she looks, that the stacks they've fallen into are alphabetized - although not sorted by section or serial or anything else.

"It does when I'm being nice?" he offers, slightly sheepish.

[stormandwind]

Tris crouches to peer at one of the stacks. She scans the titles and authors, twice, then looks back up at Dillon. "These are alphabetical," she tells him so flatly that it's almost disbelieving.

"You managed to make repaired books fall to the floor alphabetically." Because why not add one more impossibility? "Thank you, Dillon."

[orderfromchaos]

"It would have been harder to make them not do that. It's just...orderly."

And that's what the power wants to do.

[stormandwind]

Tris smiles at him, but it fades after a moment.

"That takes care of the damage that can be fixed." She casts a glance around looking for the card catalog, though it's a little halfhearted.

[orderfromchaos]

"It's probably where it was," he says, without any idea of what she's actually looking for. "Or where it's supposed to be, if those are different."

[stormandwind]

"The card catalog. I'll need it to reshelve all of these." But she doesn't actually move to get it.

"I'm not the only person who works in the library. He was in here when it burned."