Like Rockwell, But With Werewolves In The Background

[Miranda Weaver]

Miranda carefully set the chicken in the pan and shoved it into the oven in the common kitchen, running a hand across her face. "This is harder than it looks," she said as she shut the oven door.

[Victoria Valentine]

"That just depends on if you want to give it enough practice, darling," Victoria mused, looking on.

[Miranda Weaver]

"Well, it's kind of a new thing," Miranda said, looking towards Victoria. "And these things keep getting in the way," she poked at one of her wings, which were tightly folded against her back. "How're you?"

[Victoria Valentine]

"This is a bit of a cramped kitchen," Victoria admitted. "And I'm... reasonably all right, I suppose. What about you?"

"Also, what are we making?" she asked, eying any prep going on. No sense in not helping while she was hungry.

[Miranda Weaver]

Most of it seemed centered around some simple chicken with a few spices set out. There was the stuff set aside to put together a salad, but it hadn't been cut yet. "I'm doing reasonably well, I guess. Kay's running some of the stuff upstairs, the stuff we didn't need for cooking. It's just some chicken that I'm baking. I was contemplating a sauce using the pan I seared the chicken in, but I'm not sure how to go about that."

[Victoria Valentine]

"And that's where I come in, I suppose, darling," Victoria said with a smile, pushing herself off the counter and gathering what Miranda would need to start it. "Not to pry, but... you 'guess?'" she asked between instructions. It wasn't like she could just go taking over Miranda's meal after all.

[Miranda Weaver]

"It's been a crazy week so far. And there was apparently some sort of nonsense out in the woods last night. I don't know what about this time. I'm fairly certain there's some sort of nonsense in the woods every night."

[Victoria Valentine]

Victoria scowled. "Trouble in the woods can be anything from illicitly scraped knees to a demon. Best to keep far away, darling, if things are looking bad.". She handed Miranda a measuring cup. "Between the two of us, something just didn't feel right at the moment. Just humor my hypocritical big sistering and be careful."

[Miranda Weaver]

"Things are... cloudy. Not good or bad, they just are. Of course, visions being what they are, I could be *way* off," she said, following the next instruction.

[Victoria Valentine]

"You do not have my envy, darling," Victoria said. "No offense, darling, but I've never seen prophesy work in any way that helps."

[Miranda Weaver]

"No offense taken, I agree with you in the long term. Short-term precog has its uses. Telepathy and clairvoyance are far more generally useful."

[Victoria Valentine]

"Well, if you could make it work at will, sure. I keep hearing that it doesn't work like that, though. Unless you have some lottery numbers you want to try?" Victoria looked over at her with a teasing smile.

[Miranda Weaver]

Miranda chuckled, "No. I only see full moons, storm clouds, or intensely frightening visions of my possible futures and other singularly unhelpful stuff like that."

[Victoria Valentine]

"...Since it's a full moon right now, that's disturbingly short term. Any particular futures involving them that you want to avoid?"

[Miranda Weaver]

"Not really. Most of what I see is metaphor. And there's a full moon every month, sometimes twice in a month, so tieing the vision to this full moon would be... well, I have no evidence to tie it to this particular full moon."

[Victoria Valentine]

"No. But there's nothing to exclude it. Unless that's been an ongoing thing for a while, in which case..." She just shrugged. "My experience with prophetic spirits has mostly been 'we will show you everything except what you need to know.' So I certainly hope it works better as a mutant power after a while."

[Miranda Weaver]

"I do not have much hope for that based on what Mom says."

[Victoria Valentine]

"Well, if nothing else, it's good for getting people to tell you things. Just give them this look like you know that they know more, and they'll just figure you must already know and spill their guts half the time," Victoria offered with a grin.

[Miranda Weaver]

"Some facial expressions just don't work well without eyes, but that one I might be able to pull off."

[Victoria Valentine]

"That one's all in the eyebrows. And maybe cryptic comments. Just make some vague comment to make them think you know something, then make them think you're giving them a chance to explain themselves. Works like a charm." She thought about it a minute. "Just don't tell your mother I suggested this. Either of them. Or try it on them."

[Miranda Weaver]

"I may be naive, but I'm not stupid," she said with a chuckle. "Although Mum is a little softer touch than Mom. But you didn't hear that."

[Victoria Valentine]

"Preaching to the choir, darling. I know full well which of them I'd rather butt heads with."

[Miranda Weaver]

"I honestly think I scare Mom sometimes... and like not in a good or normal way. Just a feeling I get."

[Victoria Valentine]

"There were weird circumstances surrounding everything. Give her some time to stop reading too much into everything."

"Honestly the scariest thing about this is probably that it took her by surprise."

[Miranda Weaver]

"I think she and I will both be cold and dead before she stops reading too much into everything," Miranda jokes.

[Victoria Valentine]

"So you do think it's possible," Victoria joked. Albeit a bit morbidly.

[Miranda Weaver]

Miranda just chuckled at that. "I suppose it's a hazard of living with this power though. Symbolism in everything."

[Victoria Valentine]

Victoria looked at Miranda appraisingly for a moment. "Has your mother talked to you about where your visions come from at all?" she asked curiously.

[Miranda Weaver]

"A little bit. I've spent a lot more time on my telepathy."

[Victoria Valentine]

"Hm. Because that sounds a lot like your visions are following spiritual prophecy rules. The farther out something gets, the less directly it can be spoken of for... well, rules. It's hard to understand why because apparently none of them are allowed to talk about that either."

[Miranda Weaver]

"She is always insistent that it's something I'm doing, not something that someone is sending to me, but that may just be a coping tool."

[Victoria Valentine]

"Well, darling, I'm not an expert on how mutant powers work. But I can tell you that nothing comes from nowhere, and particularly not information. It doesn't always mean that you're beholden to what's sending it to you, it might not even know you're seeing it. But we're three-dimensional creatures. Something that exists on a different scale than us would be needed show you a fourth-dimensional map."

[Miranda Weaver]

"It's a possibility I suppose. I mean, Mom has her whole Priestess thing, so there's more than enough evidence for the existence of 'granting entities'."

[Victoria Valentine]

"Both of your mothers are examples. And honestly, probably more people around here than people would want to imagine."

[Miranda Weaver]

She turned to work on the salad, and some of the various colored feathers in her wings stood out against the black of the majority of the feathers. "A lot of people just don't want to look outside themselves," she said with a nod.

[Victoria Valentine]

"Some people don't have the perspective. And in a lot of cases it doesn't matter. In the grand scheme of things, does it matter if your body has a hyperactive energy field that lets you spontaneously generate flame as opposed to being born with an innate link to a greater djinn? Not really, you still shoot flame all the same."

[Miranda Weaver]

"True. And some people are more comfortable with the implications of the former explanation over the latter."

[Victoria Valentine]

"Mm... no, I think that some people just aren't capable of believing those things. Just doesn't fit their world view. The ones who are? Now they're the ones who aren't comfortable."

[Miranda Weaver]

"An interesting perspective," Miranda said, "I would think that would make things more interesting."

[Victoria Valentine]

"Perspective. A lot of people don't like the religious implications. Some people don't like the idea that we can only be something greater if we indebt ourselves to something that's already 'greater'. They're not exactly wrong, either, but what is, is."