[D5 LA] Tiff's Tiff and other Miscellany

[Tiffani]

"No," she says with finality. "There was absolutely nothing else there. Just this cheap suspicion. I felt no concern. No fear. The only other thing I felt was this ... protectiveness from Marcus. That he had to protect the motley if things take a turn for the worse. Given what I heard today, I'm inclined to believe that he wanted to protect Chantelle and you from me ... and whatever bad thing I brought with me."

She unwraps the silverware from the napkin, picks up the knife, and starts marking up the table with it. She hasn't looked at Jack since sitting down.

[Jack Doyle]

"That seems odd. You are more sensitive to emotion than I am, so I believe you." he assured her. "I personally find emotions to be unreliable compared to logic and reasoning. Even if they seem obvious. Holmes said 'There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.'"

"I don't doubt you felt what you felt, but it must have been very strong for you to walk away from our conversation like that."

[Tiffani]

"I was heading to MIT on a full scholarship before ... this happened," Tiffani said matter-of-factly. "My whole life was based on science and empircal evidence."

She jammed the knife, dull as it was, a little deeper in to the soft wood despite it being only a butter knife.

"Like I said, though. It wasn't just what I felt. It was what I heard and what I saw. I could have been as dumb as a brick insofar as emotions are concerned and I still could have read them."

"Won't matter, though," she said casually, "because I'm pretty sure by the time we go back, the stories will change and I'll come out of it looking like the one and only person at fault. I'll give Chantelle credit, though. I've never met anyone who could so completely say exactly the wrong things in that situation. It was as if she were deliberately trying to piss me off, to be honest, given how ... strategic her words were."

[Jack Doyle]

"You don't think it's odd how things changed so abruptly?" he asked. "From jubilation and unity to suspicion and fear? Or, you suddenly walking away after I suggested picking up groceries and household items? Just the idea that the emotions were so specific and limited feels off. Regret and sorrow are what I notice most, but it's rare that there are no other emotions accompanying them, even conflicting ones."

"How much evidence do you have, regarding their opinion of you?"

[Tiffani]

"Like I said before - my Keeper liked pulling mind games like this. Raising me up for the express reason of pulling the carpet out from under me. So yes, I wondered that myself, wondered why I was invited to join this motley if they could look at me with such ... negativity. And then not even ask any questions for clarification. It was like she wanted to feel what she did."

"If you understand my durance, you would understand why it makes perfect sense why there would be jubilation one minute and conflict the next. Yes, I thought it was possible ... possible ... that they might get the wrong idea where the money came from. Considering the happiness from before though I felt it unlikely - and if anything they would ask me if my explanation didn't satisfy them. But as I keep saying - it's not just that they felt such suspicion and mistrust in that I was even capable of such things, but they seemed rather satisfied to think those things about me and therefore said nothing, asked me nothing - cuddling up with their foul thoughts of me instead while they talked about the banality of moving."

She still plays with the wood, having yet looked up. "It's probably best that I just avoid them. Because everything will always be 100% my fault. What I do. What I say. What I feel. They are of no consequence. If they had any bearing at all, then Chantelle's response to me would not have been so absolutely one-sided with me taking all the blame - with a heaping helping of guilt-trip thrown on for good measure - and her standing there as if she did or said nothing at all wrong. Not even in the slightest."

[Jack Doyle]

"But, you only read heir emotions, not their thoughts, correct?" he asked. "You said Marcus was concerned about the safety of the Motley, but that you felt it didn't include you. That's understandable, given the feeling of suspicion, but it's still an assumption." He glanced over at the man behind the counter. "I was kidnapped by Santa Claus. I find it hard to trust anyone. That's why I'm so quiet. Why I sit and watch. That's why I've been alone for so many months. But, we can't live in this world thinking the worst of everyone. There has to be some trust."

"If it had been me they were suspicious of, they would have been right. I have no intention of bringing danger to the Motley, but I've done things that could have consequences." he explained. "I had a conversation with some sort of cosmic vampire the night we met. Thankfully, any suspicions they had, passed. Any questions I had were satisfied. Obviously, your situation, your experience, is different. But, it felt like everything happened in the heat of the moment. I hope you'll give them more consideration than that."

[Tiffani]

Tiffani followed Jack's gaze to the cashier who seemed to be preoccupied with reorganizing the soda cooler. She waited until he was done and returned to the back of the restaurant where the kitchens were before she made her answer.

"Where I lived in Thurleigh, there was an ice cream vendor on the edge of town. So, when I was seven, my parents ..."

And then her voice trailed off into a whisper and then silence. For the first time since the two of them sat down, Tiffani looked up at Jack thoughtfully, even ... if Jack notices, sympathetically.

"You ... you were taken by ... uh, Santa Claus?" She blinks a few times in utter confusion; such a revelation seems to have scrambled her brain momentarily like a computer that was just hit with an EMP burst. Once she manages to put her thoughts back together in some coherent form, she continues. "I wondered about you, to be honest. You were so quiet, so aloof, and you were almost impossible to read. I didn't know what to make of it, so I just left you alone. It's why I was so surprised when you, of all people, agreed to go shopping with me."

She heaves a rather large sigh - one that hinted of many things: frustration, confusion, sadness, defeat, resignation. She paused in her speaking for a moment before resuming her thoughts.

"Jack, I do trust them. Or I did. Some would say I trust too damn easily. That, apparently, was a mistake since, it's quite obvious by their reaction that they don't trust me. So far, it's all been one-sided. I lived that way during my before life, always giving and getting nothing back. It drained me, left me a hollow shell. I spent most of my time fighting these horrible black dog depressions." Tiffani takes the butter knife and presses it against her arm. "I almost did it ... several times. I don't want to go back to that, but it appears I've walked right into the same situation."

"Plus ... there's something else ..." But she doesn't say what that is, at least not yet, giving Jack time to react to what she had already said. Instead, she looks past Jack's shoulder and notices that they're pulling their pizza out of the oven.

[Jack Doyle]

"At the least, he was a Gentry who resembled Papa Noël, kidnapped 'bad' children, and made them build toys as punishment." he explained. "Maybe some of the Christmas legends are based on him, Santa, Père Fouettard, Krampus, who knows? Maybe he just likes the holidays." he shrugged.

"If they've given you other reasons to feel this way, that makes more sense. But, if it's just what happened at the house, I'm not sure there's anyone who won't disappoint you, myself included." he said. "We're all emotional creatures. That's part of humanity, including bias and prejudice. We make assumptions and jump to conclusions, instinctually at times. We should be better than that, but we really aren't. But, we do try to be better. We act outside of our emotions, if we're given the chance."

[Tiffani]

At that point, a server steps up to the edge of the table and puts down the pizza in a large metal serving tray. With practiced ease, he runs a pizza cutter over the pie cutting in into 8 almost identical pieces. He then puts two glasses down followed by two cans of soda, and a couple of napkins. A small stack of paper plates follows. "Enjoy," the kid says and hurries off to attend to other duties.

"Oh you're going to love this," Tiffani says, already pulling a piece out for herself, the cheese dripping all over the place. "In all seriousness, I've never met a person who didn't like pizza. It's like it has this universal appeal to human taste buds or something ... I dunnae."

She doesn't eat right away knowing if she did, she'd burn the hell out of the roof of her mouth and it would bother her for another day or two.

"Hmm," she utters in a thoughtful way. "So that is how you obtained your talent. I know this may be kind of a stupid question, but ... in this age of modernity, aren't wooden toys pretty much, well ... obsolete? I mean, what did you do with these toys once you made them?"

She realized she was wandering off the path, so to speak, but she almost wanted it that way. "And yes, I agree, we are all emotional creatures and normally I'm very good at managing emotions. I have no role in this motley ... at all. Sure, I said I would be the counselor, but ... no I won't."

And she left it at that.

[Jack Doyle]

Carefully taking a piece of the pizza, he blew across it before comfortably taking a bite.

"Oh, that is good!" he smiled. "We said our oaths, but how we follow them may not be as simple as what we said. Ultimately, I think we're each going to find our own way to be true to our nature and help one another. Wooden toys aren't the only kind I can make. I can actually make pretty much any toy. Chantelle had the idea of selling them to make money, but I don't know what would be most appealing. You mentioned older things having value, however, that could be the way to do it."