Welcome to Gaia! ::

Barth avoided eye contact. He could tell this was all going to spiral very quickly into paperwork. He bent to sip at the stew.

"Well yes you wouldn't be interested. You have to walk, for example. Out of this building. Very unpleasant business. I hope you are enjoying your stew. C-Calder," Barth said, "if you would. Um. The book on my desk. You can look through it."

What Calder would find marked was details of a temple.

And, connected to it, rumors of items of varying degrees of power, left behind by old gods and able to do much more than the paltry magic devices Barth had about his apartment.

"Walking can be negotiated, if the reward is sufficient." he said with a shrug mirrored by his bone wings. "And the stew is indeed enjoyable." Small talk. He normally enjoyed it, revelled in it. Today he couldn't focus on it.

He turned his attention to the book he implicitly wasn't allowed to read and physically flinched at the irreverent fashion which Calder read it in. It was so bad he had to look away, physically nauseated by the idea of getting food on a book.

Talking to the wall to his left, he said carefully. "Yes. Monsters are very useful."

It was practically painful.

Calder looked up and noticed that Zar wasn't even looking at him now and felt his ears, expression, and heart drop at once. Sipping his tea, he continued to read. "Demons only like to get something out of something, right? What do you find valuable?" He asked Zar before looking down.

"Oops." He had spilled some tea and wet his cup down before wiping his sleeve. When he noticed that there was some dirt on his sleep from his morning run, he winced and then decided just to lick the page instead to clean it.

"That's um...that's from the-" Barth sighed. "Nevermind. I'll err. I'll just buy it."

It wasn't like he ever returned library books anyway.

They probably would have revoked his card if it weren't for the chunks of money they kept wringing out of it. He fully intended to return the books. He just...didn't. Each checkout might as well have been a purchase.

He didn't expect Zar to fall out of his chair, but the demon nearly killing himself on Barth's furniture was a bonus.

Barth sipped the stew again, somewhat smugly.

"...Alright?" he asked, tone heavy with genuine concern.

Zar narrowed his eyes at the flippant way he just decided to buy the stricken book. Oh is only everyone could make such flippant financial decisions. They probably wouldn't buy a replacement either.

"Well that's convenient." he said icily. "And I am just fine."

He still couldn't bear to look at the kelpie again, he didn't trust himself to keep his cool. His tail didn't curl around the chair this time, it flicked at his feet properly as his temper frayed.

"Dampness warps and ruins paper beyond any hope of salvagability, as incidentally, does blood." He folded his wings a little tighter with a click of bone. He had a lot of paper feathers once.

"Oh." Calder lowered the book, tongue still poking out as he looked at it, and then held it up for Zar to take since he seemed to know how to care about it better. "Sorry." He said, sticking his tongue back in his mouth before looking at Barth and then Zar who was tucking his wings.

"Maybe we really can find magical papers and fix your wings!" He said, as Barth brought that up and he remembered what Zar said before about his wings getting damp. "Or waterproofing. That's a thing, right?" He looked to them both as it was only something he heard about. A weird thing for a kelpie, but something he guessed people would want.

"I'm sure you've noticed," Barth allowed reluctantly, black, snakey vines beginning to coil around his own chair legs.

"Well there's...obviously several things going on. The gray, chippy effect. When people start turning to stone and their eyes go blue. That's been going on. Infected Christmas last year. Several people that have contracted it turned out alright, though, and Christmas seems to have recovered. Sort of a...long-term flu, ultimately. Medical science," Barth waved a claw dismissively. "That funny warping that the Horsemen have access to. And some of their...followers. Err. Hasn't bothered anything, I don't think. ...The meat in this is very good, by the way."

Barth fished up another piece, only half-aware of the chattiness, as if he'd been immersed in his project so long that talking about it came second-nature. It was most of what he had thought about. And it was like unstopping a dam.

"But more interesting to me is the kind brought about by human technology. I've always liked humans. Very...inventive, you know, and very clever. I'm just not keen on being turned into a sword, ultimately. Or err, or having...you know, any of my friends- in any case, anything done can be undone, that's what I think. But it's more complicated than that. A lot of us shift, you know, but it doesn't effect our Core. A change of that nature is so radical...they use written magics for it, I've studied some of their devices. So to undo it or repurpose it, it runs a very high risk of...err, you know. Breaking the creature. For good. But if I had some sort of...well, like one of the items mentioned there, to smooth the process...?"

Zar was right to be interested in Barth's comment as his expanded explanation seized his attention firmly. "I am rather...acutely aware of that unfortunate affliction. I was subject to it myself after the hunters thought it was a wonderful idea to put a small chip or whatever piece of tech it was in me." he didn't expect them to particularly believe him either, he was known for his conspiracy-like theories. "For a long term flu the hunters also sounded very concerned about it."

He curled his lip slightly at the keen way that Barth discussed humans and their technology, unable to shake the lurking sick feeling he had that Nuru was going to fall foul of it. "I have observed it happen, the machine I mean. I was on their island for some time" he said flippantly. "It was fairly unpleasant." He didn't mention how near he'd come to willingly stepping in himself, nor how the idea still lingered. The hunters had promised a new life, a new situation, a way out.

"Many go willingly. Would they want it reversed?" he asked.

He set the irreparable book aside, the words still swirling in his thoughts. "I am not doing much else." he conceded.