They don't make jukeboxes like they used to...

[rememory]

To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To reach the unreachable staaaaaaaaaar....

From the kitchen that she'd designated as the focal point for de and reconstruction, Sabine barked, "Mimi!" and then choked out a laugh that was half a sob. Man of La Mancha had always been one of Byron's favorite musicals.

"What? You can't build without music and you don't have a boombox!"

"No one has a boombox anymore. Don't make me regret manifesting you." She shook a finger at the showgirl ghost who was lounging on the back of the couch like it was a baby grand.

Unrepentant, Mimi went on singing,

To right the unrightable wrong
To love pure and chaste from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star.

"I love that line, don't you?" Mimi teased not just Sabine but Scott, even though he was out of earshot.

"Zip it, or it's Tsura's turn," Sabine snapped, cringing at the reference to their chaste, but far less than pure love.

"What was that?" Scott emerged from the next-door apartment through the hole he'd put between them to make testing the walls for support beams easier. There were two more like it in the filthy foursquare they'd chosen to turn into a community area -- for the time being.

"Nothing. Mimi was just asking your favorite musical so she could sing for you. Isn't that right, Mimi?" Mind-to-ghost she sent #Don't even contradict me.# Forbidding it with power was the simplest of her abilities, but Sabine didn't abridge her free will.

Mimi just laughed and laughed, sticking to Impossible Dream until the next person joined them Then she started in on songs from Annie:

It's a hard knock life for us!
It's a hard knock life for us!

Sighing, Sabine shot Scott and the newcomer an apologetic look then shrugged helplessly. "It's not like she's wrong."

[ooc: Gathering post! Sabine and Scott are clearing out a group of four apartments to start with to make a communal kitchen, dining, sitting area on level D. Mimi is audible and vaguely visible as a holographic figure of a showgirl with an indistinct face. She won't interact unless you ping me and ask for her. Will, Molly, Marie, Jack, Sebastian, Nick, Porthos, Maggie, all got a message inviting them for potluck and construction. Anyone else can have heard from them or have seen the 'excuse our dust' sign and stop by. Feel free; all are welcome. Tag Sabine with a note in the subject line; all other tags are top levels.]

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[rememory]

Sabine noticed the murmur and wondered at it but took no offense. After a decade of working through countless issues with spirits from hundreds of cultures, she tended to accept anything that wasn't outright threatening in stride. Instead, she had a sip of her own beer--not her personal preference, but it tended to be less risky than wine or spirits in a new place.

"Ghosts make surprisingly good scouts. Especially ghosts that were gourmands in their lifetime." Sabine laughed and manifested Sal, who of all of her spirits had the most pronounced features owing to his powerful sense of selfhood. He swept a bow that was no less graceful for the portliness of his figure and dipped his head. "He says he's charmed to meet you. Molly, meet Sal."

[thewinterlady]

Molly smiled as the ghost bowed low and replied with one of the more elegant curtseys she'd been taught in Mabs court. "Pleasure." she said, enjoying the mans aura as it glowed proudly around him. He seemed a kind sort of guy.

She turned to Sabine. "So you just sent him off to find you supplies you could buy?"

[rememory]

"More like he begged me to let him investigate what 'culinary delicacies' he might be able to find." Sabine smiled at Sal and he brushed a kiss against her cheek, the cold spot from his touch tingling in the wake of his passage. "He gets bored since there's not much else he can do, and he's a love. He likes to help." Sabine could both see and feel the warmth of his blush. She imagined Molly might sense his pleasure as well; she wasn't sure, entirely.

[thewinterlady]

The ghost..? She wasn't sure what term to use so settled for 'spirit' in the end. The spirit was evidently pleased with Sabine's compliments, pride and pleasure coming from him, making Molly smile, feeling warmth and an affection she couldn't quite name in the wake of the words.

"I guess they're pretty useful to have around a new place, huh?" Molly said, sipping her beer. "Have they been with you long?"

[rememory]

"They're good company," Sabine returned, gently redefining Molly's assessment. She tried not to think of them in any way that made what they did for her anything other than friendship. "And they've been known to go to dangerous lengths to help them. I lost one of my oldest friends that way, the last time I was taken captive. He pushed himself beyond the range of our bond to find--" She glanced over to where Scott applied himself to a section of wall next to a support beam. "Scott, broke the bond, and used up the last of his earthly energy in the process."

A soft wistfulness overcame her features and she had to pause a moment to let the pain of that loss on top of the others fade. "He always did want to be a romantic hero, so I guess at least he fulfilled his life's ambition." She smiled then, sweet and a little wry. "He, Byron, and Ada and Sal had been with me since I got out of juvie. Sal's the only one of them left. Mimi and Corwin have been with me since a year, and two years after respectively. Leah was the newest. She and Ada got left behind when I got here. And Tsura stayed with me after a nasty incident near Lety concentration camp. About five years now."

[thewinterlady]

"Wow." Molly murmured. She couldn't imagine having that many different presences around her all the time. Still Sabine seemed completely at ease with it so maybe it wasn't as intrusive as it sounded. When Sabine looked over at a man working on some wall across the room Molly caught the look, felt the affection and grinned a little.

"I take it they're not around all the time?" She asked, gesturing at the guy.

[rememory]

"There's usually at least one of them--" Sabine glanced at Scott and back to Molly and then blushed slightly. "Oh. No. It's not like that between us. Not that I wouldn't, but it's complicated."

But since the substance of what she'd asked was less so, Sabine continued more easily to explain, "I tend not to sleep with anyone who doesn't know about them, because they're not always discreet. If I ask them to give me privacy, they will--mostly." Again the sorrow of loss swept over her, but she continued doggedly, "Byron used to play unpleasant tricks on the men in my life and he could be very resistant about leaving when he knew I'd be having sex. It's one of the only times I've ever used my power to force one of my companions out of my presence."

[thewinterlady]

"You're very forebearing." Molly said, wincing a little at the loss that swept over Sabine. She could understand loss like that, but it never made it easier to feel it in others. Molly was a fixer and some things just couldn't be fixed.

She shored up her defenses and smiled. "But this is good." She said, gesturing around. "What made you decide to start something like this?"

[rememory]

Sabine's mouth twitched in a small, sad but fond smile. "Home is Castle Kinross, honest to goodness Scottish castle. Our rooms are generous but the kitchens are shared. Whenever anything bad happens--which is often, someone starts cooking and someone else joins, and people eat and cry and talk or not talk..."

She rolled her shoulders in a slow, pained shrug. "It seemed like the sort of thing we could use."

[thewinterlady]

"It's a really good idea." Molly said with a smile. Kitchens were always comforting to her. Her mother had ruled the stove with an iron gauntlet, but it had always been a welcoming and warm place, a place to talk and relax, occasionally a place to stitch wounds or have heated arguments. It was the soul of a place, really.

It'd be a shame if something happened to it, Molly thought, images of someone official coming through and seeing what they were doing. But she could do something about that.

"If it's okay with you, I'll put some wards around the place. It'll essentially stop anyone that doesn't know about it for realising it's here. they'll just...pass it by." She offered.

[rememory]

Sabine frowned thoughtfully. "I'd hate to think of anyone needing a place to be and people to talk to not being able to find it. Serendipity's such an important part of making friends in a place like this."

But Molly did have a point. The labor and the resources would make it valuable, which meant that someone, sometime would almost certainly try to destroy it or at least take it from them. "Can you key the wards to bad intentions? If not, maybe we could take up a small collection, and pay people to take shifts as guards. Or just put an alarm on it to trigger if someone without the code tries to get in when there's no one with the code there to invite them?"

[thewinterlady]

Molly gave that some thought and then nodded slowly. "I can tune the wards to outsiders. We have a different aspect to us that's unique to us." She said smiling. "I can make exceptions for locals if we need to, but that would work I think."

[rememory]

"That should do. And we can take turns keeping watch in here in case anyone needs a place to be or people to talk to," Sabine said decisively and flashed Molly a quick smile. "It shouldn't be too hard to amass a small library and a chessboard to pass the time."

[thewinterlady]

"Why not? I mean it's not like a lot of us have anywhere else to be." Molly said. "Work isn't exactly forthcoming at the moment."

[rememory]

"What kind of work do you do--" Sabine tipped her chin and flipped a hand playfully toward the wall Molly'd been demolishing. "--when you're not in construction?"

[thewinterlady]

"Does being a faerie queen count?" Molly said, eyebrows raised. "Honestly, I barely finished high school. I was a nanny for a while though. I think I could do something with that."

[rememory]

"It certainly sounds like a lot of work," Sabine replied, curiosity piqued if nothing else. "Are you Fae? Or was that some sort of magical bargain you got the wrong end of?"

She couldn't help thinking of Illyana and how Belasco had abused her. Molly didn't have that same tragic air, but that could be misleading.

[thewinterlady]

"I wasn't Fae." Molly said, smiling ruefully. "And thankfully I'm not fully Fae now, but I have Fae power. I didn't realise I was being tricked and before I knew it, bam, Winter Lady, one of the three queens of Faerie. At least in my world." She shrugged. "It just means I have to deal with that power on top of my own magic. I do, for the most part."