"So I got us a map, and I've packed backpacks for us both." Gillian explains to Loki as she sits on the floor of his father's living room, unfolding the map for him to see. "You're still the same size you were when you last visited, right? I hope so - I mean, I went up a half-size just in case, but you don't mind loose anyway, right?"
     There is a crate of other stuff - a plastic tub, sealed. "I went to a shop and had everything checked," Gillian continues, "and all the equipment's ready. I got us lightweight but pretty rugged digital cameras adapted for variable light conditions, and there's harness rigs and supplies in the backpacks. Any questions?"

     Enormous ceiling to floor windows cover one wall of the living room, overlooking a balcony of covered planters and then a spectacular view beyond that would go very well with a sterile, modern set of furniture where everything is set at right angles. Unfortunately, the man in charge of interior decoration here has chosen something that looks more like a collision between the backstage of a play and one of those shops that always smells like incense.
     Loki is making up for it as best he can, having dressed as utterly unlike a hippy as one can without veering into formal business wear. "I haven't really changed size since tenth grade," he points out, "but loose will be fine." He looks over the tub, faintly dubious. "Just remind me of the details for proper harness use before the descent. I haven't gone rock climbing since I dropped out of college."

     Ooh, this sounds delightful.
     In the space between spaces and world between worlds, Bran ap Davydd sits upon a bit of sofa, watching the events before the events unfurl. From thin air -- or rather, the slip of a shadow that exists Somewhere in Thin Air -- he pulls down an apple and takes a bite, looking very like a satisfied serpent on a break from seducing bright young girls with the promise of knowledge.
     This must be the adventure they've been going on about. Well, apparently sewers are a step up from getting fingered in a Range Rover. I can't wait to tell my nephew.

     "Well, we're going to be wearing these eventually." Gillian hops up to pick off the lid of the crate, hauling out full-length wetsuits and oxygen tanks. "I'm not sure if we should start out wearing them - I'm inclined to say yes, and then skin out of them and leave them behind if we have to, later. We'll only use the oxygen tanks when we have to - I got a gas spectrometer, a small one, the kind they use in coal mines to determine if the air's safe. It'll fit onto a belt. If we're wearing them, we'll have to wear it under our clothes until we get on site."
     The suits are laid out and she pulls out harnesses and climbing lines and leads. "According to the map, we can enter in a disused maintenance platform about two blocks from here and half a block back. I scouted it out - it's not being used, there's a padlock but I included a pair of boltcutters in the kit. They have a lot of uses at times like these. I also brought some waterproof fluorescent wall markers so we can mark our way as we go. They glow in the dark in case the batteries on our headlamps die."

     "If this were anyone but you telling me about this," Loki says, "I'd be fucking terrified. As it is, I know that if we suddenly run into alligators in the sewers, you'll just pull out your can of Alligator Off and continue." He points to a door set between a framed poster for a staging of The Wizard of Oz and a teak relief image of elephants. "Bathroom's through there, if you want to change."

     Another bite of apple and things are starting to get interesting. Breathing apparati? Harnesses? Looks like Brother Gwilym's apartment on a Friday night. Grinning and chewing, Bran hops off the sofa soundlessly. Wrapped in shadows, he is clothed in them -- black leather that is not leather, black shirt that may as well be painted on, green-black eyes full of mischief and mirth. He grins sidelong. You should be terrified, Loki. I've heard of the primrose path, but this is ridiculous.

     "Piffle! There's no alligators in the sewers." Gillian rolls her eyes, picking up her package and heading for the bathroom. "Rats - there's definitely rats. But they'll mostly leave us along. We'll have defense, though." The bathroom door closes behind her with a thud on those ominous words.
     She emerges about ten minutes later. The wetsuit's on, but over it she has a formfitting set of overalls and latex gloves, and boots that look like a cross between a maintenance worker's and mountain climber's. On her belt there's a hooked gas spectrometer, and her hair's been braided and tucked up underneath a black swimcap, the hood of her wetsuit currently tucked under the collar of the coveralls. The boots close by a zip on the side rather than lacings. "There's faceplates and spare regulators in the backpacks, along with change of clothes, the climbing harnesses, sample jars, and food and water and a few other things," Gillian tells Loki cheerfully. "How do I look? Oh, and the lightband can snap onto the wetsuit for hands-free viewing."

     Loki has taken the interval to go change in his room, now looking up for some dubious fiddling with the way the sleeve of his coat doesn't want to smooth out over wetsuit plus shirt around the cuffs. He's dug some decent hiking boots out from somewhere, and hasn't quite gotten to gloves yet. "Looks like everything's in place, though the swimcap might draw some looks on the way there, if we're trying to be all surreptitious about this. And I really hope we are, given the bolt cutters."
     He checks on the place where the lightband snaps on. "Food and water? How long do you expect us to be down there?"

     I wonder if I should help them...
     Don't interfere, he hears Gwilym's command repeated from his own memory. Well, it's not really interfering is it? To lend a helping hand? Just to make sure they don't get killed. It'd be a sad, sad story to have to tell nephew his bit of crumpet spent her last hours in the shite of London instead of with him.
     Bran demolishes the apple, slowly reducing it to nothing more than a core. He'll keep the seeds; arsenic can come in handy.

     "Past lunchtime?" Gillian gives Loki a duh look, then relents. "Honestly, I doubt we'll be gone long enough for it to matter, but it's a basic security precaution. You always pack food and water when camping or hiking or climbing, and you always pack a first aid kit. Hopefully you won't need it but that way it's there if you do."
     She reaches into the crate, pulling out a flat checkered cap. "I can keep this on over the swimcap or we can put them on when we get there, but if we do it when we get there, I'll need your help in lieu of a mirror. It's hard to get all my hair tucked away under it. Okay, then." She pulls the last item out of the box - it's a collapsible hand cart. She uncollapses it and begins loading the oxygen tanks onto it, strapping them in place. "Are we ready?"

     Loki crouches down to help load the cart. "Another reason to keep hair short. I hope you appreciate the vast sacrifice I'm making in leaving my phone behind on this. Better to be without a connection to the real world for a day than drop it down there."
     He straightens, running a hand through his aforementioned quite short hair. "As ready as we're going to get without hiring sherpas for the trip."

     So that's it then. On we go.
     Bran tosses the core into shadows where it becomes Something Else. Bran rubs his hands and thinks of the possibilities. What shall they find? What shall he help them find...

     "I appreciate it," Gillian assures Loki. She hefts her backpack onto her shoulders; it's actually not too bad, maybe twenty pounds or so. "The air tanks aren't full-sized scuba tanks, they're only rated for about two hours." She begins pulling the hand truck towards the door. "My thinking it we can explore briefly any submerged waterways but if it doesn't clear out, we'll backtrack. I've laminated the map and the backpacks are waterproof for up to an hour of full submersion - I checked."
     Isn't she Miss Thorough. She takes the hand truck to the service elevator; every posh block of flats has at least one. "I've marked several potential routes for exploration, so if one's blocked we have other options. They're a bit guesswork, though, so I don't know what we'll actually find..."

     Loki follows Gillian along, not quite sufficiently committed to the cause of chivalry that he's making any move to haul the hand truck around himself. "So long as we can find the way back, I'm prepared to enter into the spirit of very thoroughly planned adventure."
     "Well, that's what the marker on your belt is for. Mine's pink. Yours is yellow. We can trade if you want." Gillian and Loki do not draw much attention. Workers are essentially invisible to the common masses. They reach the alleyway soon enough, where Gillian looks around cautiously, then takes the bolt cutters and snips off the padlock, tossing it into a dumpster. The maintenance door, a rusting metal thing that might have been orange because it became tobacco spit brown, creaks annoyingly but gives way for the two to step inside.
     Inside is a flight of stairs and a musty, dank odor. It is dark. There could be grue.

     Loki stares at the dark, smelly stairs, and snaps on his light. "No pink for me, thanks. What mythical creature do local sewers supposedly contain, since they don't get any alligators in these parts?"

     Oh, there's all sorts. Basilisks, chimera, cockroaches...
     A shadow slips among shadows and coalesces into the form of a black rat. He clings to the wall, unnoticed in the darkness, black eyes glittering with curiosity. What shall this become, I wonder?.

     "Probably mostly rats. Maybe a few escaped or released ball or Burmese pythons, in areas with enough heat due to methane concentrations. But we'll be avoiding those areas - we're going into closed sections, sections which haven't received throughflow since the nineteenth century." Gillian pulls the handcart down into the darkness, activating the lamp on her coveralls. It sends a beam ahead into the darkness, illustrating some graffiti and old newspapers rotting on the steps. "We'll be fine, Loki. You worry too much!"

     "Inherited trait," Loki says absently, looking around as he follows. It's a very close kind of following. Having his own light source is not enough reassurance for this kind of place. He draws out his not-at-all-girly yellow marker. "Where do we mark the way back? Just in case we end up fleeing for our lives from some unusually well adapted to the cold pythons."

     "On the walls. They're supposed to write on any surface including underwater and in space." Gillian probably spent a good five hundred or so dollars on all this stuff. Hurrah for charge cards. She heads to what looks like a long disused train station. "This station was closed during World War Two when it was deemed no longer safe enough to be used as a bomb shelter during the raids. Nobody's been down here since. Come on, this way." She goes to the edge of the platform, and stops. "We need to strap on our tanks first. You do mine and I'll do yours."

     Loki mouths Not safe enough to be used as a bomb shelter to himself, and decides that this is not an appropriate time to consider the implications of that phrase too deeply. He dabs a yellow mark on the wall, then slides the pen back in place to lend Gillian a hand. "Does it need any hookups at this point, or just strapping on?"

     Duly noted. She likes strap-ons. A black rat slinks along the walls in silence, its whiskers flicking this way and that. One must be on the lookout for basilisks.

     "Hook it up," Gillian instructs. "The gauges are pressure-sensitive, so they won't unclamp to release oxygen until we take a breath. Just be prepared to get your regulator in in a hurry if the alarm goes off." She reaches into her backpack for her goggles, tossing the hat in where the goggles were and pulling up the hood of her wetsuit. "I don't know that it'll be necessary. There's an access ladder down onto the tracks down there - we're heading due north along the tracks until we see marker 87."
     She loosens the straps of her backpack, enough that the tank can be wiggled up into place. "We turn off to the south-east, then, which'll lead us into a pre-Victorian set of tunnels. Past that, the maps are a bit ... optimistic."

     Loki is quiet for a minute while he gets everything into place. This is one of those situations where being very careful to do each step properly the first time is unlikely to be a downside. Once the tank's strapped in and hooked up, he turns around to let Gillian do the same to him. "What do the optimistic maps predict? Standing height, or will we be crawling soon?"

     Gillian works quickly and efficiently, with the speed of someone who's been working with scuba gear most if not all of her life. "We'll probably be hunching a bit when we get to the oldest bits, at least part of the way. I don't know for sure, there's nothing at all about that. But the ancient Romans were excellent engineers; it depends on how much work they really put into building an aqueduct system in London."
     She pats Loki's back with her fist to indicate his gear's secured, dragging her regulator around to take a quick breath from the tank just to prime the tubes. Then she goes hunting along the platform's edge for the ladder. "Found it! - Most of the time, we should be able to get by without crawling. There's one or two tight bits, but I gave us plenty of allowance for our sizes and equipment. The neatest part, really, is I have no idea what we'll find!" She's glowing. She thinks this is a good thing.

     Ooh, I do like her...
     The little black rat crawls upon the upper shelf of brick and stone, heading slightly ahead of where the pair are bound to go.

     "Great," Loki says weakly. "That's...going to be exciting." There is no standing in the way of the Gillian Enthusiasm Train. "Tell me if you want help recording anything once we get past the known parts of the maps. Otherwise I'm just going to be watching out for where we're going."
     He takes a breath from his tank to make sure he knows how it works, and that it's not mysteriously broken and likely to fail on him at the worst possible moment. Though that always remains a possibility. "Shall we?"

     "Of course we will!" Gillian smiles cheerfully from under her mask, climbing down the ladder. It creaks alarmingly but does not part ways with the wall of the train tunnel. She hops down the last few feet, scampering briskly over to follow the tracks. "Listen to how quiet it is down here! Isn't it awesome?"

     It's almost completely quiet. Apart from you, and a few rats.

     Loki marks the wall next to the ladder, and then hurries to catch up with Gillian. "I do like that part. It's not a bad place to go if you want a long, guaranteed stretch of privacy." He rubs at his nose. "Assuming you don't mind the smell. And rats."

     Hey, sonny Jim, not everyone can be a scuba tank-wearing sewer pirate. A small black rat skitters ahead, ducking into shadows to watch you and the girl.
     To be honest, she makes a better priest than you, little priest. This girl has balls. I'm sure Balthazar will be horribly disappointed. She's too brave for him.

     "The smell isn't too bad so far. But this is why I checked for lines which haven't been used," Gillian admits. The tunnel ahead is large, and dark, and ominously still. She heads down it with the confidence of a woman who was never afraid of the dark as a child and whose closet and the space under the bed never had monsters.
     "Let's see..." Gillian consults her compass. "Yep! Due north. So about a third of a mile til we get there. Let's go." She heads off determinedly in that direction.

     Loki follows closely. "It could be worse."

     Oh, it could be a lot worse, No Man's Son. The little black rat scuttles ahead again, heading north and sniffing out impending disasters, if any.

     She hums a little as she walks, bouncing a little with each step. She is clearly excited. It is better than Disneyworld. The turnoff at a third of a mile is almost invisible in the darkness; it looks more like a chunk of broken stone than anything else. Closer inspection reveals finished edges, though, and a small gargoyle-like fixture above the archway. Gillian stops. "You're taller. Can you make out any details on that?" She fumbles for the digital camera. "Get a shot of it so we can check, but I think that's Victorian work."

     Oh this is grand fun! I should get Aeron to follow me...
     The black rat slips and sleeks its way forward, but not too far. It looks at the way and at the treasure hunters. It waits for their next step.

     Loki takes the camera, and stands on tip-toes to shine a light on the gargoyle. "Aren't gargoyles more gothic than Victorian? Or am I displaying my ignorance of architectural history?" He snaps the picture, then moves over to take a few more from different angles. Memory is cheap.

     "The Victorians used gargoyles in some of their architecture as a ... a memorial, in a way. If you ever look at Victorian architecture, you'll find it's crawling with carved roses, flowers, leaves, beetles, animal heads, even cherubs and the occasional death's head. It must have been hellish to keep it dusted and polished," Gillian replies as she carefully climbs through the crevice. The floor on the other side is a trifle less even; it isn't poured cement but more like cobblestones, and it slopes gradually downwards. "It looks to me like it'd been sealed over and must've been knocked open - maybe during the Blitz."
     She is excited all over again. "I can't wait to see where we end up."

     "Knocked open deliberately, or by one of the bombs that fell during the Blitz?" Loki actually sounds interested. If he's not careful, he may catch a dose of the excitement. He picks his way along more slowly across the cobblestones, marking the wall beside the door in yellow.

     "I don't know! Maybe during the Blitz, if a bomb hit directly overhead. It could crack a sealed-over area, since there'd be a natural weakness with no rock behind it," Gillian explains. "Or someone might've knocked it open with a sledgehammer. It didn't look like a sledge, but it's been a while, so it's hard to say."
     The cobbling is uneven, and slightly damp and slick. The smell here is something less like mold and more dusty and wet, like damp earth. It does make the footing a little bit precarious, but not interminably so. Gillian checks her compass. "We're heading roughly west by southwest. The air smells breathable to me."

     "If the air gets bad slowly, I doubt both of us would pass out at the same instant. Plenty of warning for the other person to get a mask on." Loki plays his light along the walls as he walks. "Is the map even offering educated guesses on what's ahead anymore?"

     "Let's check." Gillian turns, pressing the map up against the wall. Disturbingly, it sticks in place. There are a handful of routes; they're on one leading downwards. "It should open into old sewers, according to this, that got closed in the early to mid nineteenth century. There's branches leading off here, here and here," she points to where she's marked it in purple ink. "We can try any of those branches, but I don't know where any of them will lead."

     Loki has a look, a gloved finger hovering over the map. "If it makes no difference, let's try the closest one. That way we can work our way down the list in order if we run into blocked routes early on. That'd be...this one, looks like."

     I should give them something for their trouble...
     The little black rat scratches its ear with its hind foot and momentarily preens its whiskers. For all their dubious reputation, rats are quite fastidious you know...

     "Sure," Gillian agrees readily. That's about ... three-quarters of a mile from here. Well, at least it's a reasonably straight run. Just ignore any of the tunnels leading to the left, those lead to cisterns and holding pits for waste materials." She wrinkles her nose. "If we fall down there, we're probably screwed."

     "No tunnels to the left. Check." The deeper they get, the less gloomy Loki becomes about all the potential doom. Too late to bother with pessimism now. "Those underground cisterns must develop some fascinating ecosystems after they've had a few years to stabilize."

     After the rat scritches itself, it disappears...
     In the shadows, one of the shadow walkers.

     "They've had almost two hundred years," Gillian answers with a grin. She peels the map off the wall. "So we'll take the first turnoff on the right and see what we find. I should've brought a pedometer too, to have a better idea of the distances we're actually traveling," she adds in a mourning sort of way. "Oh well. Next time!"
     Already, she's planning for followup visits. She's dedicated. Or something. She heads downwards, following the slick cobblestone 'path'.

     After the rat scritches itself, it disappears...
     In the shadows, one of the shadow warriors, its guardian and protector moves. He moves in the memories of these sewers, passing through its collective memory of stones, smut, and secrets. He moves beside this intrepid warrior woman. He smiles at her though she cannot see him, and he sees into the darkness and into the past. Yes, dear. It is this way, this way.

     Loki trails along further behind, shining his light into the passages on the left that they're avoiding. "There must be a zoology thesis or three in what's growing in those cisterns. Is your roommate interested in coming along next time?"

     "I can ask her, but she'll probably think we're crazy for exposing ourselves to it. There's a lot of diseases which were rampant before the modern era which could in theory be lurking down here somehow - in the rats if not in the remains." Gillian pads along patiently, eyes gleaming behind her goggles. "Oh, I think that's it! See where there's that purple lichen?"

     The purple lichen almost glows and in the shadows a figure smiles. This way... this way...

     Loki waves his light in the right direction. "I think so. Let me mark the wall before you run in there."

     "Yes, daddy." Gillian rolls her eyes goodnaturedly at Loki, then laughs. "I'm glad you came with me. I'd have gone without you, but it wouldn't be this much fun. I'd be a lot more nervous if I were all alone down here." She waits for Loki to make the mark, trying to peer down the pathway.

     Loki makes another yellow dash on the wall, resisting the urge to graffiti it up with something more artistic. "I never would have come down here alone at all, so I'm glad you asked me. And not just because Pres will do less yelling." He tucks the marker back on his belt. "Ready."

     The way keeps going down and circling to the right a bit. The passage remains medium in width, then abruptly narrows at the first of the openings on the left, slightly slanting in that direction. It's a very slight slant, fortunately, and eventually it does right itself, but keeps going down. Rocks have partially but not completely blocked the way ahead. There's room for them to squeeze through without too much difficulty, and Gillian, of course, goes to do just that. "I think there's some bioluminescence up ahead!"

     Loki catches his boot on outcropping of rock while following Gillian, and nearly plummets onto his face from the sudden jolting stop. His hand presses against the wall to the side, and he takes a quiet, deep breath to calm down from the adrenaline flash. "Does that mean something?" he asks. "That it's glowing. Does it mean anything about what sort of material it's probably growing on?"

     The fungus glows on both sides of reality. It is a marker for those who know the way. The purple lichen is surrounded by an otherworldly green. It grows healthy and vibrant upon the dank decay, renewing itself, turning decay, in fact, to something beautiful.
     On the other side of midnight and reality, a shadow is moved out of the way reveal a thing long hidden. So long hidden it was Forgotten.

     Gillian doesn't answer immediately. She drops to a knee, snapping pictures of the lichen and beyond it. "It depends. You get mosses which do that, but they grow in places where there is especially an absence of light. It means that we're near more water, though - possibly stored water, since I don't see real signs of serious seepage here. I don't think we've come far enough to be under the Thames."
     She rises, moving further forward, peering into the gloom. She gasps sharply. "Oh. My god. Is that what I think it is? Loki, tell me if that looks like marble to you!"

     There is a wall there, with patterned stone that speaks of ages long since passed. A part of an aqueduct used long after it was built but now lingering in this obscurity.

     Loki draws closer, raising his light. "Fuck," he says, very much in admiration. "That's definitely stone, it doesn't look like granite to me..." He puts out a hand to touch it lightly, trying for some sense of feeling through the gloves. "What do your maps say is supposed to be down here? This can't be anything like the Roman catacombs, can it? But maybe something Roman."

     "This is off the maps. This isn't ON the maps." Gillian is shaking with excitement, but not so much that she doesn't begin promptly to document everything. "We HAVE to follow it further, Loki. We have to! I'm not sure what this is, but if I'm right about what I think it is, this is the find of the century! Well. Of the decade," she amends. "The cave of Romulus and Remus is probably more of the century."

     "Find of the decade still sounds flashy and impressive." Loki walks back to the opening they came through, and marks it on that side, too. No staining the possibly antique Roman marble. "I'm following you, O mighty historian of imminent fame."

     Shadows are plucked and pulled, and the Veil of Forgotten Time is lifted, pulled away. It is like a dark cobweb, covering what was once a monument of a culture. Walking in the space between spaces, Bran ap Davydd reveals the long hidden.
     But what has been revealed to him is of far greater value.

     Gillian squeezes past, looking absolutely thrilled. Every few feet she stops to take pictures. "Oh my gawd, Loki. Look at this mosaic!" The tiles are smudged by centuries but flashes of vivid color are still visible underneath. She looks suddenly crestfallen. "...We have to keep this secret for a little while longer. I - I don't know. I'm not sure how to handle this." She stops, looking around, the very image of conflicted desires.

     Loki lowers his light from examination of the ceiling. "Why? Because of pesky little details like breaking and entering to get here? If that's an issue, I could call up one of my fathers' respective lawyers to find out how to handle that."

     In the darkness, Bran ap Davydd smiles. Some revelations create secrets of their own. He perches upon the marble of the atrium. In the Shadows it lives in the present as if it had never been abandoned. He brushes his hand against the marble...
     ...And in the London of today, a piece of colored marble comes free near her foot...

     "No, it's technically public property, and they can't prove we cut that lock. But if I reveal it now, there's no way they're going to let me in on the dig - I'm just a master's candidate, and I'm not even attached to the archeology division." Gillian frowns. "And if I don't tell, there's going to be some horrific questions when I present my paper! So I'm - I'm not sure what to do."
     She looks down, jumping back slightly. "What just moved?"

     Loki swings his light around. "I didn't see anything. One of the rats? You're current on your rabies boosters, right?"

     There is a piece of the mosaic that is loose. The color of a figure's eye...

     Keep your eyes open, hunter of secrets...I believe you may have the power to see in the dark...
     Bran transforms once more into a small, sleek rat, as black as the shadows from which he comes...
     A small black rat skitters nearby, staying away from the two of you but following the periphery back the way you came.

     "Of course I am. That isn't the point." Gillian bends to pick up the piece of marble, her eyes intent now on the mosaic, trying to seek out where it came from, to fit it back in the slot, or figure out at least in how bad repair it really is. She is conscientious and honorable. She bites her lip. "...I'll see if this will fit back in. If not, I'm going to take it with me, we'll get some more pictures and get out."

     "I'd try to make reasonable suggestions on how to keep control of a dig down here, but since I ran screaming from academia, I wouldn't be the best choice for useful advice." Loki aims his light in the direction of the section of mosaic she's working on. "My dad might know more, if you want to email him about it. I think he's still on the Getty board."

     "I'll think about it. I'm going to have to think about this a lot." Gillian snaps more pictures. Lots and lots more pictures. She actually is in danger of running out of room on the memory stick. "...Let's go back." She sighs, pocketing the piece of marble very gently. "I'm elated and I am so depressed."

     Isn't that the way it always is...
     Be careful what you ask for...

     "I'll buy you a drink so you can celebrate and drown your sorrows," Loki says, in honest sympathy.

     "Aww. So sweet. I'd kiss your cheek, but I think I'll wait until we're out of, y'know, antique sewers and showered and stuff." Gillian begins resolutely to lead the way back to the surface. It's 'only' a five mile hike.

     "No kissing necessary, but I'm calling dibs on the bathroom when we get back to my place," Loki says, rolling his shoulders under the weight of that tank and turning to follow her. "Because I don't think you want to take the train back sans shower."

     The little black rat skitters ahead, dodging and darting. And then it disappears.
     In the shadows, Bran leads them back the way they came, and he holds in his hands a thorny weapon, black and shiny. Antlers, odd-multi-edged blades? It cuts the cobwebs of doom ahead of them, and it holds Chaos at bay. For now, it is on guard for cockroaches. There's just nothing worse...

     Gillian laughs at that. "Okay. I'll buy dinner, you buy drinks." She is elated. And depressed. And perturbed. How does she keep a secret this big to herself? She looks around once they reach the train station again. "Someday I'll check all the other passageways too."

     "Just make sure you bring someone along in case you slip into a cistern," Loki says, keeping up even if he's starting to feel a touch winded. "And by someone I probably mean me, unless you start bringing the boyfriend on these trips. How does he feel about sewer crawls?"

     She blushes, going suddenly and unnaturally quiet. She doesn't say anything as she makes her way over to the ladder. "...I haven't told him about them yet. I don't know when I will. Or if I will," Gillian says finally. She concentrates on climbing. "He's very big on the entire protecting the little lady thing, you know? And while sometimes it's nice ... you know what I'm like, Loki. I surf, I go places, including by myself, I've parasailed, for god's sake. I - I can't be that kind of mousy girl who sits at home all the time. I guess he got the wrong image of me because I'm a history scholar." She sighs. "So I'm kind of wondering if it's going to work. I mean. I'm not who he thinks I am."

     "If he has any sense, he'll get over the protective streak," Loki says. He waits for her to finish climbing before he lays a hand on the ladder. With those creaking noises, two at once seems like a bad idea. "Or learn to channel it into coming along instead of trying to keep you from doing things. I'm not going to tell him about any of this, but I bet he can cope if you do. Just present it as a done deal, not something to argue over. He doesn't seem like the kind of guy to recoil in shock because you want to have a life outside of libraries. Not with his music."

     "Maybe." Gillian smiles, looking over at Loki. "Maybe I'll show him a photo montage. But seeing as the guy gets upset about the idea of me taking the train by myself at night... between London and Oxford, for god's sake. Can you imagine if he knew I've been on the subway in New York alone at night?"
     She shakes her head, turning to head up onto the platform and in the direction of the stairs leading up. "I like him. I like him a lot. I think he likes me that much, too. I hope he does. But I ... need to know it's the real me he likes that much, because if it isn't ..."

     "You could do it up as a picture book," Loki suggests. "See Gillian. See Gillian in a bathing suit. See Gillian in a bathing suit, surfing, not breaking her neck. See Gillian in respectable clothing. See Gillian in respectable clothing on a subway train in New York at night, not getting mugged. See Gillian in spelunking gear, and so forth. Educational and entertaining."

     That gets a laugh out of her, as she plunges out into broad daylight. Well. It's London. Broad cloudy and overcast with chance of sleet. "Let's go get cleaned up," Gillian declares. "We've earned a good dinner tonight."

     Oes, Gillian West. And a secret or two. Out of the shadows, a raven flies overhead. Harbinger of death and dreams, it exists on the fringes of the world, where he likes it best. Far from the Tower it appears... this rook... and with the cawing call of success, it heads for other adventures.

Posted by rowan at March 09, 2009 08:55 PM