savetheearth | (no subject)

Who: Reimu and anyone who wants to bother
When: Sunday Jan 5 In the afternoon
Where: The Shinto Shrine in Japan Town
What: Reimu is just lazing about like usual, at least this time it's after work.

Things had been far too exciting for Reimu's peace of mind as of late. Thankfully, after the whole ordeal at the barn things had more or less settled down and the only thing she'd had to deal with were locals coming to the shrine for their New Years Shrine Visit, and the usual noise of that time of year. The normalcy of this had been comforting enough that Reimu was in a somewhat better mood than she had been for most of last month, even a few days after New Years.

Now, once again, she lazed about outside after shrine chores were (more or less) done, in warm clothing, drinking tea while sitting in front of the donation box. It was a nice day, not too cold despite it still being winter. For the moment she just relaxed and enjoyed the winter scenery from her position, forgetting completely about aliens and weird powers and past life memories for a bit.

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Sometimes when Russel took his dog out for walks, he used it as an excuse to do a bit of exploring. Such was the case today, as he wandered through an unfamiliar part of the city with Tchaikovsky leading the way.

He was bundled up in a white pea coat with a green scarf, and instead of earmuffs he wore his headphones. Proper headphones--and green, of course. The cold was just a good excuse; he wore those almost everywhere, and they were distinct enough that if you'd seen them once, you'd probably recognize them a second time. They'd certainly been included in any video replies he'd given on the network.

Currently, he had a classical playlist running, a nice low-key level of background noise that didn't distract too much from his surroundings. That is, until the playlist keyed up part of Stravinsky's Firebird Suite.

He'd listened to it before, of course, but those familiar notes suddenly felt so much more familiar than they ever had before. His step faltered and he slowed to a stop, his mind and heart both worlds away. Appearance of the Firebird was no longer just a song. He could feel it, Prince Ivan's wonder and fear at seeing the majestic Firebird, and then his frantic chase to catch it. It struck a chord with him, something deep inside his heart that brought forth a powerful sense of...of something. Longing. Or homesickness. Or...or nostalgia...

And then, with a loud bark, Tchaikovsky tore the leash out of his hand and bounded off after whatever point of interest had caught her attention. Russel snapped out of it. "Tchai!" He gave chase, pulling the headphones off so the music wouldn't distract him again, leaving them hung around his neck.

The dog bounded onto the shrine grounds, hot in pursuit of a panicked squirrel. The squirrel raced up the nearest tree, leaving Tchaikovsky standing below, with her front paws braced against the trunk, barking up at the branches.

Russel was not far behind. He caught up and snatched up the dog's leash, yanking her away from the tree. "You dumb dog!" he muttered, though not with any real sense of vitriol. "Don't run off like that, what if you got hurt? Or--" He stopped.

This...looked like a shrine out of an anime...

Maybe he could just sneak away and nobody would ever know--but then he saw Reimu sitting there. "Ahaha--" He nervously edged back onto the path, tugging the dog with him. "S--sorry! My dog is--um...y--you know how it is! With dogs. Ha ha...!"

OH GOD THIS WAS A DISASTER ALREADY AND HE'D ONLY BEEN HERE FOR THIRTY SECONDS.

The shrine maiden's relaxation is interrupted when a dog suddenly came running onto the shrine grounds chasing a squirrel. She sighed, and grumbled to herself, shaking her head as it barked up the tree. Then someone she recognized from the network came running in after it and the shrine maiden blinked.

When he finally noticed looked around and noticed her, she just stared flatly at him as he spazzed out.

"... What are you doing here?" The shrine maiden asks plainly, once he was done.

The spazzing stopped cold, like somebody had pressed pause on a video. "...Um...?"

Slowly, hesitantly, he relaxed, and took another look at the girl whose peace he'd intruded on. She...looked awfully familiar, now that he thought about it...

"OH!" he realized suddenly, and his entire manner switched immediately to enthusiastic recognition. "You're the girl from the network, with the cute magical-girl miko costume!"

As it happened, her "Warm clothes" were just the winter version of her shrine maiden uniform with some extra clothes underneath, since her shift had just ended and Reimu is too lazy to change out of them just to sit around for a bit. She just kind of makes a face at him when he mentions the outfit and then sips her tea again before answering.

"And you're that one guy who likes jRPGs." That's pretty much the only thing she can think of.

"Yup, my name's Russel." Had they really gone this long without exchanging names? Oh well, it was happening now and that was good enough.

He gestured to the dog. "And this is Tchaikovsky." She sat beside his foot with a thump and gave Reimu a friendly bark in greeting. "Sorry about earlier, she got away when the Firebird Suite distracted me."

Well, it wasn't really that surprising to Reimu they hadn't properly introduced themselves yet. She wasn't known for that. "...Reimu."

"It's fine, I guess. It's not like there's anyone else around to care." The shrine maiden shrugged. "What's Firebird Suite?"

He looked gratefully relieved when she told him it was fine. This was a shrine! That sort of thing was typically frowned on in these kinds of places, wasn't it? So it was good to have that reassurance.

At the question, he instantly perked, like--well, not much different from Tchaikovsky when she'd seen the squirrel in the first place. The chance to introduce an amazing classical composition to somebody who didn't know what it was! How could he not be excited?!

"You've never heard it before? Oh man--you have to!" He moved to stand in front of her, digging his ipod out of his pocket and navigating it to his Firebird playlist (he has a playlist for everything, because you never know). "Firebird Suite is a ballet written by Igor Stravinsky, it's about Prince Ivan and how he teams up with the Firebird to rescue a bunch of captives from Koschei the Immortal...! It's really good, here--" He took off his headphones and held them out to her.