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Who: Dominique DiPierro and YOU
What: The new god of Law and Justice gets to work
Where: The Temple of Law and Justice and around Vernos Bay
When: Anytime in the first week after Dom claims the throne of Law and Justice

For the first day, it doesn't seem like much is different in Vernos Bay. But soon men and women start reporting for duty at police stations. Lawyers open their offices. Judges—the priest of Law—discover formal regalia that they'd forgotten they owned. Clerks set up shop in the Temple—the highest court in the land, as it turns out, sort of like Vernos Bay's equivalent of the Supreme Court or the Old Bailey (both of which buildings it vaguely resembles, Dom thinks).

Dom surprises herself a little. She turns out to be a fussy, hands-on sort, talking to everyone she can, learning about the way things used to run around here before the old gods disappeared. There's a lot of gaps. Rules and regulations that have fallen by the wayside, records and texts that need to be recovered from the dusty shelves and file drawers of the Temple. So she spends her week everywhere—in the Temple, at this or that police station, visiting a courthouse. You might see her there—or you might just see her about in the street, trying to get a decent cup of coffee or a sandwich.

As always, her clothes and hair and makeup are on point. Still, she looks a little tired and a lot driven—and also, weirdly perhaps, kind of happy.

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Alex still looks like she needs a nap, despite her claiming her bed-like throne. She feels like she's slept most of the day away, but it seems like she's probably got over a year of sleep debt to work her way through, and even being a goddess probably wasn't going to fix that overnight. So, she wandered in her red coat, her hands in her pockets around her device which is like a recorder but also so much is not.

She stops and smells the air almost like a hunting dog when she sees a woman with a cup in her hand. Moving quickly and purposefully towards her, Alex has decided she knows what she should ask for from her priests, and damn what it means for the throne that she's claimed. It's not her fault that her blood has been basically been replaced by caffeine since before college.

Her voice is warm and radio-ready with some of its canadian accent still there. "Oh my god, is that coffee?"

That's a really nice voice. That and the lady in question is ... kind of Dom's type. Probably. Insofar as Dom is aware that she has a type. Which is a whole other open question.

Anyway—"Yes. I mean, sort of. It's what currently passes for coffee without a God of Coffee to manage it, I guess."

For a moment, Alex just practically glows with hope. This would have been the one good thing that would have happened since she was here, because she has a lot of stuff to do back home...

And then her face falls and she lets out a sigh. "Something tells me we're going to need to wait for one of those. I mean, especially considering that the first thrones that people took here were death and luck of all things." Alex could talk quick, but then she offered a bit of a better smile and her hand. "Hi, I'm Alex."

"Dom DiPierro." A brief fumble as she switches her mug to her other hand, and she shakes Alex's hand firmly and briskly. "And, well, I guess I'm in charge of Law and Justice, myself. You? I mean, if you are—you know." A sort of wobbly hand gesture that's supposed to mean a god.

Alex takes Dom's hand with a grin and she smiles. "Nice to meet you." Alex means it because at this point she's started to feel more than a little bit like a den mother. She's only 34 but everyone seems so much younger than her. As for the god thing there's a little shrug. "Sleep. I mean. It seemed like the thing to do."

"Sleep? Interesting choice. Seems like it'd be a bit—I dunno, quiet?"

What the hell are you talking about, Dom?

Alex just shrugs at that, and she chuckles softly, the sound having more than a little shade of self-abashedness at that. "Well, I know it's one of the things I need the most, so I guess I was being a little selfish. I mean, back home I'm sort of an insomniac." Or actually an insomniac so bad that Alex needed a sleep therapist and even she couldn't help.

Demons were not fun things.

"Were you a cop back home?"

"Insomnia. I can definitely relate."

Alex can't know how the question stings right now, but Dom does flinch a little. Still, she pulls herself together to answer. "FBI, actually. Cyber crimes division, New York City."

Alex is a reporter, and a good one, so she's good at reading people's body language, and she can see that flinch easily. Without thinking about it, she reached out and put one hand on Dom's, and gave her a concerned smile.

"Hey. You okay?"

The physical contact startles Dom, but it's—not unwelcome. She stares at Alex's hand for a moment before she can work up an answer.

"Yeah. I mean. No. Not really." A deep, shaky sigh. "Things are kind of fucked up for me. Back home. Like really fucked up."

Alex knows shaky sighs like that. Her life is practically built on shaky sighs like that at the moment. Quickly, she steers Dom into a seat and she sits across from her, her eyes peering into Dom's. "It sounds like you need to talk about it."

Dom lets herself be steered and draws a deep breath. Her mouth opens and she's about to find somewhere to start—

—but then all she can see is Santiago and Irving and the axe and she feels the splatter of blood on her face all over again, even the Dark Army massacre and Cisco getting shot in front of her wasn't that bad—

—and she chokes, and suddenly finds herself wiping away tears.

"I can't," she manages. "I mean, I want to, I have to, but I—I can't." She swallows. "I guess it's still kinda raw." She tries to smile and fails utterly.

If there's one thing that Alex is good at, it's reading people and being a good ear, it's what makes her a good reporter. But she can also see that Dom's not ready to talk yet. Instead, she just sits there silently with her hand on the other woman's arm before she softly says: "It's okay. I'll be here when you're ready, Dom."

Dom nods, wipes at her face again.

"Thanks. That's really nice of you," she says. She looks down at the hand on her arm in surprise, but doesn't pull back.

"I wonder how many of us came here right when lives back home went in the shit."

"It's okay!" The voice is cheerful, but a shadow passes across her face at the statement about things going to shit back home. Just because it was true didn't mean that it hurt any less, and Alex just gave a noncommittal shrug before she squeezed Dom's arm and pulled back.

"Maybe they figure people in moments of crisis will be better gods or something?"m

"Oh! Hello." Zelda stares around the building that she could have sworn was empty yesterday.

"I'm sorry, I didn't realize there was anyone here. I was looking for a book." She already has two clutched to her chest, she's just here for a specific one.

Dom's been head-down over a pile of dusty leather-bound law codes. The covers of the stupid books are unmarked, and they seem to be all out of order. Dom's trying to get them organized.

She's so into the task that she starts at the sound of the young woman's voice. "Oh. Hey, no problem. What're you looking for?" A pause. "Fair warning, not sure I can help yet."

She observes this for a moment, then sets her own books aside.

"I found a few references to law books, but they weren't at the library. May I help? This looks like a dreadful mess, and as so-called Goddess of Knowledge I suppose it's at least partly my duty."

"I would be so freaking grateful," Dom says. "It's a disaster in here. I mean, technically it's part of my job to fix it too, but—" Oh right, introductions. "I'm Dom, by the way. Ah, Dominique DiPierro, call me Dom—and I guess I'm now in charge around here." A wave of the hand, indicating the temple.

She pauses for a moment before introducing herself. If she just doesn't say she's a princess, or acting queen, it isn't really a lie, is it? She isn't in Hyrule right now, after all.

"I'm Zelda, of Hyrule. And I would be happy to help. If nothing else it's an excellent opportunity to learn more about this place."

"Dominique DiPierro. Call me Dom, though; everyone does." She brushes her hair out of her face and sneezes from dust. "I'm just trying to get through this stack here. I think it's laws pertaining to the criminal code, but it's all out of order and nothing is labeled. I'd kill for a stack of post-it notes."

The dust might be a problem. Zelda's not really familiar with dusting, but she knows how they cleaned the things they found in the Shiekah ruins.

"I don't know what post-it notes are, but if you have more parchment we can use bookmarks to help us organize."

She starts looking around for spare parchment and writing utensils... none of which will look like what she's expecting.

"You don't have post-its where you're from? You're missing out." Dom walks over to a nearby desk and opens a drawer, which squeaks horribly from disuse as she does so. Inside she finds a stack of paper and some pencils, and—hurray!—a roll of masking tape. "Little bits of paper that stick to almost any surface, and peel off without leaving a mess. They'd be perfect for this."

The tape catches Zelda's interest, though the paper and utensils are rather odd-looking as well. She experiments with it on her own fingers as she listens to Dom's explanation.

"An adhesive? We don't have anything like that in Hyrule, to leave no marks." She's a little confused by how weak the adhesive on the masking tape seems, too.

"Sorry, I'm getting distracted." She sets the tape diligently aside and takes up a pencil and paper.

"Are the entries numbered? We can record those, as well as the general subject matter of the laws." The numbers may repeat or not, but it will be useful to have as many shortcuts as they can.

Dom nods, and lays down one of the books on the nearest flat surface that isn't too covered with other stuff.

"Title page has a brief summary of the contents." This one is Property - Land Holdings Part I. Ownership, sale, title.. "Then the entries are numbered, but apparently they didn't see fit to number the volumes. So you have to flip to the first entry." 49.I.i§a "And it would be nice to say that this is all of 49, but somewhere—" a hopeless gesture at the stacks, "you're going to find a 49-dot-20-dot-i-section a, which will be the second part of property law ownership. And maybe a third."

"Are those Is letters or numbers?" She's not sure Dom will know, though, so she starts writing the information down on a ripped off edge of paper. They won't need the whole sheet, and it makes more sense to conserve.

Once she's finished taping the note to the cover - rather genius, really - she rips another bit of paper and takes a moment to inspect the pencil tip.

"Is this charcoal?"

"Numbers. I think—I mean, I'm assuming they're like Roman numerals. Could be wrong, though."

She drops another stack of books on the desk and looks up at Zelda. "It's graphite. Harder than charcoal. You don't have pencils where you're from?"

“I suppose not.” She doesn’t even know the word. “No more than we have Roman numerals, though if I’m lucky they correspond to ancient Hylian numerals.”

She tries the pencil on her finger tip and is duly satisfied that it’s definitely not charcoal. Deciding no further inspection is warranted she finds another book to categorize.

Haha, whoops. There I've gone again, she thinks, forgetting that people come from who-knows-where in this place. Though really, the other woman's ears ought to have been something clue-like.

"What's Hylia?" she asks, thinking as she does so that she could have phrased that a little more felicitously.

The question confuses her for a moment, but then it dawns on her.

"Hylia is the name of the goddess who, it's said, gave up her immortality to save the land and founded the kingdom of Hyrule." So Hylian refers to citizens of Hyrule, not citizens of Hylia.

"Right. Makes sense." She's not being sarcastic; it's as logical as anything around here. "Reminds me a little of this concept we have in my world, in the Buddhist religion—something they call the bodhisattva That's um, someone who could step out of the cycle of reincarnation, but doesn't out of compassion for the world."

Or ... something like that. As she's saying it, Dom wonders if she's getting it wrong.

"Step out of the cycle..." It takes her a second to parse that sentence, working as she has to on context clues.

"Yes, it's rather like that. Legend says that girls born into the royal family are the reincarnation of the goddess, but it's more tradition now than true belief. It's why I was named Zelda. We still pray to the goddess Hylia, just in case."

As she explains she pulls another book to her and riffles through it, just to check on the numeral theory. So far it tracks. Satisfied, she closes the book and finishes a label for it.

River's making it a point to visit all the Temples that appear to have new incumbents, but she's at least attempting to do it on the down-low. She doesn't like the feeling of being watched (something, admittedly, she probably should have given more consideration to before she elected herself into the position of goddess) so she's dressed as she always is, a mismatch of skirts and oversized shirt, hardly looking like an adult let alone a fellow deity.

She's standing outside the Temple but off to the side, listening to others talk about cases they intend to bring before the Judge-Priests, things they hadn't known what to do with before this Temple's rebirth and the reintroduction of Law to this world.

Dom's coming back to the Temple after a quick lunch, clutching another mug of what-passes-for-coffee and taking the stairs in front two at a time. There's a stack of files waiting for her inside that pertains to some of the last cases that were under scrutiny before the last God of Law disappeared.

Her foot catches on a step and she stumbles. Doesn't fall, but that cup of almost-coffee goes flying. Probably towards someone.

Edited 2018-01-08 19:34 (UTC)

River's reaction isn't panic, although the way she lashes out at the incoming cup might seem that way at initial glance. But she knocks the cup away was unerring accuracy before folding her hands in tightly to herself, not meeting Dom's eyes.

Dom flinches as the cup goes bouncing away down the stairs. She was expecting to have to apologize to someone for coffee-ing them, and now—

Huh.

"Hey. Sorry about that. You okay?"

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