The Mayan Arts and Artifacts Exhibit

Mai had wandered to various places that Thaddeus might visit. Darting in and out of the shadows in the small form of a stoat. She moved far more quickly this way, though the steel monsters whizzing past her were faster. She disliked their smells, their noise and their cramped spaces. A twitch of her whiskered nose showed her disdain for them as she hopped the flight of stairs to the museum. He'd been here, she could smell the faint clean smell of his cologne and the soap he preferred. Her charge was always so neat and proper just like his maker. Normally she took care to clean herself up in difference to Thaddeus's tastes, not a small sign of her caring for him, for she rarely gave that much thought for anyone else.
Sliding through doors and running down the halls, she could hear the click of her little claws on the tile floors. Mai headed straight to the section where the older artifacts were kept. Thaddeus had enough sense to know those were the most important. Once she had spotted him, Mai changed form and approached.

Taking out the ring, she looked at it with a frown. It wasn't clean but that couldn't be helped. It might even harm his abilities. Mai shrugged.

"Ba-di-kun, I have something for you." Mai's voice was quiet as always, hardly more than a whisper.

Thaddeus looked up from his notes with a smile of recognition to see Mai looking up at him expectantly with something in her hand. He tried to keep the frown from coming, but he couldn't help it when he saw the state of her once clean kimono. There was nothing for it, he knew; Mai would go where her mind took her, and it seemed to lead her to a mess more often than not. Pulling out of his reverie, he reached out his hand to take the object from her, only to pull it back in alarm. He took a calming breath. She couldn't be serious; whatever she held was absolutely filthy. One more deep breath, and then he spoke.

Good evening Mai. Where did you get that...object?

Mai looked down at the red ring in her hand and wiped it once on the side of her sleeve before extending it once more towards Thaddeus. He wasn't going to like the answer. She knew that but he'd do what he must. Thaddeus was always a helpful child. He was an excellent addition to the clan.

" A rat. " She spoke without a smile and looked at him with calm seriousness. Mai knew that he could sense things about the ring and she would not let him touch it before sharing that information. It was a kindnesss, Mai knew how he felt about rats though she never understood it.

A myriad of emotions, from revulsion to concern to frustration, passed through Thaddeus's mind. A rat. Fantastic.

My Mai, you touched a rat? You want me to touch something that has touched a rat?

He mentally cursed his own limited abilities; he had heard of Pyschometrists who could instantly tell an entire history of an object with one touch, but Thaddeus could only gain a sense of an object's origins, and could only sense its history so far back. If the object was handled too many times, he could lose valuable information; it was possible the simple act of wiping the ring clean could disturb his senses.

Of course, he would sense the rat when he picked up the ring in any case, but it would have been nice if he could have cleaned the ring before touching it with his bare hands.

And he still couldn't quite believe Mai had touched a rat. Well, really, he could on an intellectual level, but the thought sent shivers up his spine. God, where had she found a rat? Still, just as his intellect told him that taking a ring from a rat was not unusual at all for his Mai, it also told him that she had done right. It was quite good of her to take the ring to him directly instead of waiting several distractions down the road. And that in and of itself told him that this ring could be important in some way.

He tried to keep his whining to a minimum as he peeled off his gloves, but couldn't help a little whimpering.

Mai, it's dirty.

He moved over to a bench and sat down; pyschometry could be slightly disorienting, and Thaddeus found it especially so. The sensation was much more tactile than he was used to; he felt, rather than saw, the object's history. An unusual way of looking at the world. At last, he reluctantly held out his hand.

Alright, I'm ready. Let's get this over with.

Mai watched him without answering the first question. It did not seem to require a reply. Of course she touched a rat; how else would she have gotten the ring? This was hardly cause for concern. She spent much of her time as a stoat which was not much different.

She watched him take a seat on a bench and then moved close to him once more. Folding the kimono under her knees, Mai knelt before him and slowly placed the ring in his hand. She watched his face with quiet intensity, knowing what he was likely to sense. She merely wanted him to confirm it.

Thaddeus allowed his eyes to flicker shut as the ring made contact with his open palm. The sensations began immediately, passing through his mind like waves.

Mai's hand. The silk of the sleeve, her hand again, the rat, teeth, god, the rat, I can't...pavement. The street. Another hand. Too fast...cloth...silk...can't see, too dark...I can't...wait...it's a box, I'm in a box, I've been here forever, trapped...

Thaddeus was becoming anxious and more than a little ready to stop, to call this the end of this ring's story. All he had to do was tip his hand a little; the ring would fall and the sense would end. The longer he stayed with the ring, the more disoriented he would become, and the harder it would be to pull away without help. At the same time, Mai was waiting there, watching him...he couldn't let her down even as the four walls of the box seemed to close in on him. God, and he had been worried about the rat.

...in the box, smothered in red silk...light! Light, air, okay...okay...another hand, now a finger, I'm on a woman's finger, she's the one, I belong to her...blood, blood slipping over me, God, I'm on her hand, she's holding onto something, wood, a tree? No, stupid, not a tree, what's she holding?

It came to him so quickly Thaddeus later feared he had imagined it. It was just a flash, over in an instant, of a woman, gripping the ledge of a white gazebo and looking up at the stars.

And then Thaddeus was himself again. With a shaking hand he let the ring drop with an overly loud clatter on the museum floor. He wiped his hand absently on his pants, a sure sign he was preoccupied, and looked down at Mai and found his voice trembling.

It was Emma's. The ring...she was wearing it that night, when she died. I have to write down everything I remember, it all happened so quickly, seemed like hours but really it was seconds, I'm losing it already, was in the box so long...

Realizing he was wasting valuable time by stammering, he opened his notebook and began to write. For some reason his neat penmanship became scrawling on the pages, the pen unsteady and the paper worse. For some reason the letters doubled and tripled before his eyes.

Mai looked at the ring and noted where it had fallen. She'd let Thaddeus pick it up when he had his gloves on once more. He might want to study it again in the future and there was no further need for her to taint the trail. This, as a hunter, she understood.

She listened to him stammer and watched as he began to write in a hasty scrawl so unlike her Ba-di-kun. Mai smiled faintly, he was obviously quite intent on it. Thaddeus had dealt with the ordeal better than she thought he would. Knowing the ring had belonged to Emma, Mai was somewhat concerned for him. Still, he would survive or break as he must and she felt he had the strength to withstand such an emotional trial. She was relieved to see that this was true.

She waited for him to capture his thoughts and then she broke the silence.

"Ba-di-kun?" The quiet query implied multiple questions; his state of mind, what he felt; what he'd like to do with the knowledge. She let him decide which to answer.

As Thaddeus wrote, he was surprised to realize how much he had learned from the brief encounter with the ring. Expressing that all, and separating out what could be embellishments of his imagination, was the tricky part.

When Mai softly spoke the name she had given him, Thaddeus pulled himself from his reverie and met his friend's eyes. He felt vaguely foolish for his loss of composure, though the experience had been difficult for him. He realized that his vague words were probably a source of disturbance for Mai; she had, after all, cared for Emma as a fellow clan member and part of the Triad. With his thoughts awkwardly put to paper, he was now more free to speak openly and discuss what he had felt without fear of forgetting some detail.

Realizing he would likely need to sense the ring again to sort out everything he had seen, he hastily put his gloves back on and picked it up as he spoke in a flat, matter of fact tone.

The ring belonged to Emma. She wore it the night she died. After she was killed...

Here Thaddeus paused. "After she was killed. Indeed."Â?

However, he refused to allow himself to be pulled into his solitary grief again. This was too important, and he needed Mai to know everything.

After she was murdered, the hunter removed the ring and put me...put it in a box. There it sat up until today. Now here's the interesting thing, my Mai...it was two different hands. They felt completely different...I can't really explain. One hand put the ring in the box, another, different person, different hand, took it out.

I'm not sure what that might mean. I lost some of my focus while I was inside the box and might have missed something. I'll want to sense the ring again I'm sure. But Mai, we might be a step closer to finding...finding him. That's the other thing; I don't know how I know, but I am certain the killer is still alive.

What should we do now? We need more information, another breakthrough, but from where? The ring might hold more clues to lead us...but do you think we should ask the remainder of the Triad for help?

Mai listened with interest as he retold the story of the ring. Figuring things out was not her forté but perhaps she could help Thaddeus by remembering his words for later. It was his nature to solve these puzzles, to think and think on them until he had come up with a solution. Just like Emma. Mai hunted, Mai tracked and then she brought it back to the other two Orders to decide what to do with it. The Order of the Night to figure it out and the Order of the Rose to take all the information and organize it into a useful plan. Mai liked her job the best, leave the thinking to those better suited.

Like her Ba-di. She smiled faintly at his question and shook her head slightly to indicate a negative. A hunter is not satisfied with bringing in a feather, they want the whole duck. Right now the vague clues where nothing more than a few feathers. She'd like to have some more evidence before they bothered the other elders with their search.

"You will think, Ba-di-kun and you will find more. I know you will." She raised herself slowly from the floor and pressed out the kimono with an absent gesture. Looking around at the room they were in and taking notice of it for the first time, she turned back to him.

"Did you find that which you sought?"

Thaddeus smiled sadly and shook his head. His initial purpose seemed silly in light of this new discovery, but just the same, he knew he would not let it go entirely. The mystery of the Mayan masks would lie dormant for now, though; he had bigger fish to fry.

I won't know until I think about it more. But yes, my purpose here is complete. Care to accompany me home? I have quite a lot of thinking to do.

Mai nodded an affirmative. Quietly she moved beside him in order to keep pace with him despite his being so much taller than her. She knew he was probably even now pouring over the feelings from the ring, trying to make some more sense out of them. Not wanting to disturb him, she remained quiet.

((OOC: Leaving when Thaddeus does. ))

Thank you Mai. For everything.

And Thaddeus was sincerely grateful, even though the ring seemed more a plague than a gift at this point. He knew he would not rest until his mind was satisfied, but it would all be worth it if they could find the murderer.

Moreover, he was relieved that Mai had been there with him, and was walking home with him now. Her quiet presence was reassuring to him and allowed him to free up his thoughts as they walked. His mind wandered to such an extent that he didn't even notice when he fell in step behind Mai, letting her lead the way and following her like a long, dark shadow in her wake.

(/ooc Thaddeus out)