I am teaching myself how to be free. [Open]

[chasingtwisters]

It's early in the morning when Marina settles herself just on the edge of the water, letting her bare feet rest in the dampened sand where the water comes and goes. The sun is staggering out of the night and int the sky, casting the beach around her into an eerie glow. She has a book by her side, thick and heavy as any college textbook, except obviously older, with rips and tears all over the seams and pages. She has a topaz from one of the necklaces she owns curled protectively in her fist, and she wears a necklace made of lavender and mint leaves. Even if this doesn't work out, she muses, smirking, at least she'll smell pretty.

She found the spell Friday night, in her research. According to what she now knows of Moira Coombs, she ought to be able to pull this off, without any danger to the baby. Her hand with the topaz comes to rest on her swollen belly, thoughtful. I'm doing this for you, she thinks, because it's true. She doesn't know that she herself wants to entirely remember; but she owes her unborn child the truth, and, if she really is Moira Coombs, she owes it to Moira's sisters to remember, too.

She sighs, willing herself to relax. She drank the same chai tea Rian had before he'd read her hands to help her concentrate; now she just needs to do it, already. The instructions are easy enough to follow: raising her fist with the topaz, she holds it out over the water as she begins to read the words to the spell, written in a mixture of English and French, which comes to her from her high school French lessons.

The words blend musically into the air around her; the tide begins to pick up around her feet, whirling around her like a miniature whirlpool. She chants the incantation, repeating it the three times required, as warmth begins to cackle and pop within her, like fireworks. In the same vein, light begins to spark from her, and she worries briefly that she might, in fact, catch fire in doing this.

When she finishes the spell, she casts the topaz into the water. As soon as she does so, the water explodes, cascading around her and soaking her to the bone, though she does not feel the cold. She trembles all over as images and words spill out from all the cracks in her thoughts: her father teaching her how to swim on her fifth birthday, her twin sisters and her running together over the local playground, and her mother, when once she thought she cared about her. Moira manages one last gasp of air before the world fades to black and she falls back into the sand.

She awakens to the sun fully in the sky, and the chipper sounds of sea gulls circling around her, wondering if she has food. For her part, Moira feels groggy and unsteady, as though suffering from a hangover. She winces at the brightness and focuses hard on not losing what little she has in her stomach at the moment. And then it hits her, all at once. She's Moira Coombs; she got engaged in Europe, and she's about to become someone's mother.

And she's home, back in Siren Cove.

"Fuck!" She yells, still on her back on the sand, unsure if she has the strength to pick herself back up.

[OOC: Moira remembers! The spell itself takes place early in the morning, around four or five am. Moira herself waking up is set to 9 am. Feel free to have seen her perform the spell, or come across her still lying prone in the sand. I'm sorry it's taken me so long to get Moira's shit together, but she's finally herself again! Any questions or concerns, just let me know!]

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[nomadic_cam]

It wasn't every day you came across a woman lying prone on the beach alone and while he was all about personal expression and behavior, he knew he had to check to make sure she was all right.

It wasn't until he got closer that he realized who it was.

"Marina?"

[chasingtwisters]

She's content to lie prone as she is, with the warm sand on her back and her feet still lingering in the water. The contrast is wonderful, and helps to ease the blow of all of her memories rushing back at once. But she does need to move eventually, especially when she recognizes the voice of the man calling out to her.

"Hey," she says sitting up with a minor grimace. "It's Moira, actually. Sorry for the confusion. It's...a long story."

[nomadic_cam]

Cam dropped down to sit beside her, offering his hand if she needed it to steady herself. "Easy there. Don't want to go jarring anything that shouldn't be, you know, jarred. Or something."

He offered a half smile even though his eyes widened a little. "Moira? Did I get your name wrong the other day?"

[chasingtwisters]

She laughs at that, grateful for his easy manners. They've only just met, and under false pretenses, for Moira, but she decides that she really likes this Cam, for all his kindness. "Yeah, that wouldn't end well, me jarring anything else that shouldn't be," she agrees, accepting his offered hand as she pulls herself to her feet.

"No," she says, shaking her head. "I'm afraid I gave you the wrong name. I was off in Europe and I got hit with a pretty nasty..." She pauses, wondering how much he knows about the supernatural nature of Siren Cove. She decides she's better off not telling him the entire truth until she knows for certain how much he knows. "Something happened to my memory, but it's come back. My real name is Moira Coombs."

"Marina is just a name I've always liked," she admits with a sheepish shrug. "And what I tried to call myself when I was going through my angsty college freshman phase."

[nomadic_cam]

"Moira then," Cam responded as his mind worked through what she told him. "So you had amnesia or something like that? Were you in an accident or an illness?"

He wasn't being combative, he was genuinely curious. He'd never heard of anyone having that for longer than a few hours after a car accident and frankly, it fascinated him. "That must have been...well, disconcerting doesn't even sound close."

[chasingtwisters]

"Accident," she says, latching onto the word as soon as he says it. Though it didn't explain everything that happened to her back in Scotland, it was a close enough word that she doesn't mind using it. "It was unfortunate. I'm still really putting together bits and pieces of it."

"Yeah, disconcerting is the polite way of putting it," she says, managing a smile in spite of her fragile emotions. "In some ways, I feel like I've kind of lost part of my life I won't ever get back. It's weird."

[nomadic_cam]

"There are parts of my life I wouldn't mind losing," Cam commented in a voice that was almost a mumble before he cleared his throat and gave his head a shake. "Are you all right? After getting those parts back, I mean? Is there someone I should call, or...?"

He reached up and rubbed at the back of his neck. "I'm really not usually this useless. I promise."

[aoife_coombs]

Thor loves curse words. Aoife doesn't know his trail of thought here, maybe he expects excitement when curses fly, or just likes the blast of volume in his pretty silent life (Aoife doesn't care much for music, and now, with Isaiah gone, she can go without talking for days). Either way, it sets him off barking and jumping around like it's a party.

"Marina!" She was learning. "This is my dog, the one I was talking about. Received from a great aunt. Are you okay?" As long as it wasn't labor, Aoife would accept a lot of things.

[chasingtwisters]

She hears Aoife and her dog, and she sits up, rubbing a hand over her face. She tries to avoid getting sand in her eyes, and fails. Of course. It seems like a perfect metaphor for how her life is going, lately. And here, after managing to converse with Aoife peacefully for once, she gets to ruin that moment of truce, too. By being herself.

"Thor, right?" She says, turning and picking herself up out of the sand. "He's a cutie."

She manages to avoid telling the truth, for a moment, anyway.

[aoife_coombs]

"That's the name." Marina doesn't seem hurt, and Aoife doesn't know if she inherited Moira's stubbornness to never show weakness, so she's not going to probe. "Thank you, although it's all thanks to himself."

Thor rubs himself against Marina's legs, tail wagging and tongue out like they have been friends forever. Maybe he's picking up on Moira, somewhere deep. "You can tell him off, I don't want him to push you over. He's such a pup still, sometimes."

[chasingtwisters]

"He looks like he could totally call down lightning bolts, with that cute face of his," she comments. Her natural tendency towards stubbornness is what keeps her from spilling out the truth. As soon as she does, she knows, this temporary peace between her and her sister is going straight to hell.

She bends as much as she can to scratch behind his ears. In any case, she finds herself happy for Aoife. A dog seems to really suit her. "No worries," she tells her. "His puppiness means he can get away with it, for now."

[aoife_coombs]

"That's what I do, he just acts like he can chase them back into the clouds." Aoife smiles. "Still, it's very nice to have him around. Pets give support in a very different matter than humans, and they judge even less. With the past we- well, I'm still waiting for life to become easy again."

"And he's a good judge of character, so it's nice to see he likes you."

[chasingtwisters]

"Pets are totally better than people," Moira agrees with a genuine smile, continuing to pet Thor for a bit. He does seem especially happy, and it makes Moira happier than she would have thought that her sister has found such a companion for herself. She manages not to wince when Aoife mentions life becoming easier; she doubts life will ever grant such a favor to anyone in the Coombs clan. But her expressions sobers, nonetheless. It's shitty to lead her sister on.

"Hey, Aoife," she says. "It's me. It's Moira. I remember."

[aoife_coombs]

At first, Aoife just accepts it. Marina is trying here, and Aoife should admit to her that it is not that bad, having a sister that can't remember their shared history. It's not like it is a happy shared history, anyway.
But it is something in her sister's voice, in the pronunciation of her name that assures her that this is no pretend. Thor immediately picks up on her mixed emotions and crawls over to her, belly in the sand.

So what happens next? "Oh." She meets her sister's eyes. "Hello, Moira. Does that - do you remember everything as Marina as well?"

[jamesthorn]

There are reports that there has been a strange woman wandering up and down the beach, yelling curse words at unsuspecting tourists. He's out trying to grab lunch from one of the food trucks parked near the docks, where they wait for the boat workers to dock. He hears the call on his radio and once his food is ready, he takes it down with him to go check out the situation.

He is both surprised and not to find that it's Moira who's been reported. "Moira?" he calls out to her.

[chasingtwisters]

She's managed to pick herself from where the force of the spell knocked her over into the sand, thank God. Though she still has sand in all sorts of uncomfortable places, and she feels as though her stomach is weighed down by lead, she manages to gather up her things and move back a bit from the water. She needs to get to her cottage, she thinks. She wants, more than anything else, to curl up in her own bed and just forget about the world, for the moment.

And then she hears an all-too familiar voice, and she winces. But she turns around, regardless. She's going to have to talk to James soon enough, anyway.

"James?" She calls back. "I'm assuming you're here about the reports of the crazy lady on the beach, and yeah, it's me."

[jamesthorn]

James finds himself laughing because it truly does not surprise him that Moira with her memories returned is first found on the beach screaming curse words into the nether. Some things literally never change, do they? He approaches her looking over her carefully. "Well, I guess you've remembered who you are," he says, taking a sip of his coffee. "I don't know if this is good or bad. You've been Moira Coombs again for about thirty minutes, and already had the cops called on you..."

[chasingtwisters]

"Yeah, I uh, I guess I did," she replies, running a hand through the back of her hair awkwardly as he laughs. Truthfully, it's a pleasant sight and sound; James ought to do it more often. He seems more human this way. She smirks, falling quickly into old habits. "Yeah, well. I could be naked, too. So at least there's that?"

[jamesthorn]

"There is that. I'm surprised now I didn't find you stark naked," James says with a nod still smiling a little until it fades. When Moira left town, their relationship wasn't as hostile as it used to be over the years, but the amount of times he's arrested Moira is too many to count. Probably enough that it hindered them from ever being anything but distantly amiable. Still, he wants to know who or what did this to her.

"So what happened? I saw you a week ago Moira, and you still thought your name was Marina."

[chasingtwisters]

"Yeah, well. Losing clothes is too much effort, at this point in time," Moira says with a small smirk and knowing shrug, which, like James', fades after a moment. They'd improved their relationship slightly before she'd hightailed it for Europe, but they still have a ways to go in terms of being beyond politely friendly with one another. Still, she'll give him credit for not being openly antagonistic towards her.

"Yeah, it's a long story," she says, heaving out a breath and running her hands through her hair. God, she doesn't know where to start; let alone, she isn't sure how to really say what she needs to. She's gotten her memories back, but she's still lost Stefan. "I was in Europe, as you know. I met a man named Stefan pretty soon after I got there, and we started dating as we traveled all over." She pauses, bringing up her hand with the engagement ring still on it. "He absolutely proposed to me, and I said yes."

"And then we wound up in Scotland, and we found ourselves surrounded by some kind of cult coven, with a leader who makes my mother look sane," she says, bringing her gaze to the ocean. "George Logan, I think his name was. And the next thing I knew, Stefan's dead, and I'm running to France, where someone told me to head back here. And well. Here I am."

[jamesthorn]

James bristles at the mention of Moira's mother Violet, the woman responsible for his own mother's death, but he doesn't say anything because he knows that Violet put Moira through hell just as much as him. It was part of the reason he believed she skipped town. To hear, that there's someone out there worse than Violet Coombs is unimaginable. Moira doesn't look like she is telling a joke though.

"That's...." James shakes his head not knowing where to begin to understand what Moira's been through these past few months. "George Logan," he repeats the name so he doesn't forget it. When he gets back to the station, he plans to do what little searching he can, but Scotland is pretty far out of SCPD's jurisdiction. "Do you think he knows you came back here?"

[ameliecoombs]

Amelie finds Moira on the beach again, which has never been much of a surprise. This time, she'd felt the magic as she was walking nearby, and the feeling sent a thrill straight to her bones. Amelie's been feeling disassociated from the magic for so long that it's nice to feel it, to sense it, and know that it's still part of her. So she'd followed it, and found Moira laying on the sand looking like the world's just been knocked out of her.

"Moira?" She still can't wrap her head around the whole Marina thing, and her concern for her sister's wellbeing overrides any thought otherwise. "Are you okay?" She kicks off her sandals and hurries down to the water's edge.

[chasingtwisters]

She has to take a few moments to regain her bearings. The world spins above her, a tapestry of blurred colors all weaving together before her vision. Her heart lurches in her chest as she gradually regains her strength; slowly, she's gathering the pieces of herself once lost to a dark magic. And then she hears Amelie's voice, approaching from somewhere behind her on the beach.

Moira manages to get herself into a sitting position by the time her sister reaches her at the water's edge. "Yeah, I'm fine, mostly," she says, finding herself even more relieved than expected at not having to correct people about her name. It really does feel good to be herself again.

"I got my memories back," she adds, unnecessarily, looking up at Amelie.

[ameliecoombs]

Amelie digs her toes in the sand, partially because she likes the way it feels and partially so that she remains standing at the news. There's a moment of shock and then a grin breaks out on her face and she falls to her knees in the sand beside her sister, barely even noticing that she's going to ruin her dress.

"Really?!" Her hands find her sister's shoulders and she doesn't know which one of them it's to steady, but she knows this is the best thing that's happened all day. Things with Aoife haven't been right for months, and she misses their family, misses her sisters like nothing else in the world. Nothing else has sat right since everything in their family fell apart. "That's amazing, are you okay? How do you feel?"

[chasingtwisters]

Moira is taken aback by how happy Amelie is apparently to see her. She expected shock, sadness - even anger, really, at her regaining her memories, at last fully returned from Europe in one piece. When Amelie kneels beside her in the sand, Moira has to blink to make sure she's processing what she thinks she's hearing.

"I feel bloated, mostly," she replies with a wry grin, falling back onto her wit to cover how confused she really feels. She wonders what is going with her sisters; guiltily, she wonders how Amelie is doing with her magic. "But otherwise, I'm still me. Just a little...magically hungover, I guess? From doing the spell to restore my memories. How are you doing, Amelie?"