Unyielding Stroke

"Of course." Gideon was familiar with the West End, though he'd spent very little time there. He'd done a short stint as a tinker there before he left for Germany. It was filthy and rude, just like the rest of London.
He draped the turtleneck over one arm and bent to examine the other sweaters. "I'm familiar with a wide majority of Europe. I stand by what I said; however: your clothes are bizarre beyond anything I've ever seen. The trousers, for example. They look inexpensive but are made with blue ink, yes? And your boots are in a style I've never seen before." To his knowledge they didn't wear anything like this in any country, let alone the West End of London.

“Well, looks like everyone’s getting busy in their own way, so we better go, too.” Jam notes, dusting off his clothes before looking at their surroundings.

“I figure water should naturally be near by the forest, or trees? Or something growing on the ground at least, or maybe some animals or something. Nature revolves around plenty of water usually.”

“How’s that sound?” He turned to Levi, not wanting to talk his ear off.

“Uh...”

Well, Gideon was right about her clothes being cheap, at least. Skyler couldn’t afford to spend much money on what she wore, only buying a couple outfits every year. Any more than that wouldn’t work for her budget. However, it shouldn’t be strange that they weren’t very expensive. Jeans weren’t a fancy item by default. Why would they be pricey?

“I mean— yes, they’re dyed, though the color’s closer to black than blue in my opinion. I guess it’s really a very dark navy, a much deeper shade than this sweater I’m holding. That’s pretty standard for jeans, right?” She was examining her new sweater as she spoke, checking one last time that there was no damage before she slipped it on over the blue shirt she was wearing. That should keep her warm. “No need to spend a lot on those.”

Sky glanced down at her heeled leather boots, which had a similar color scheme— mostly black with a bit of blue.

“I’ll admit leather can be a little expensive, though,” she added. “So maybe these weren’t so easy to buy, but they were more than worth it in my opinion. Do they not wear any of this in Scotland or Germany?”

She’d never been to either place, but she couldn’t see them not having something as widespread as jeans. In fact, she was pretty sure Levi Strauss, who’d been one of the first to manufacture blue jeans, was from Germany.

"They don't wear that anywhere." Gideon sorted through some more fabric. There was nothing in a style he preferred, everything was far too casual for his liking and some of the materials were absurdly soft. Who wore these things?
"Out of curiosity," he said, reluctantly picking out a stripey grey sweater, "Is the phrase 'jeans' something you Londoners use to describe trousers nowadays?" It seemed it would have to be a recent term; he had just been to London a year or so ago and no such word was used.

“Oh. Well, we do say trousers too. I’d argue that ‘jeans’ is the more American word for it, and that I probably started saying it more during my time there, but you get what I mean.” Sky shrugged. “Although it doesn’t seem like I’m the only one here dressed this way... in fact, I was thinking your clothing stands out quite a bit.”

Maybe she shouldn’t call Gideon’s clothes old, even though that seemed true. He could possibly take offense at that. There was definitely a better way to phrase it slightly differently.

“What you’re wearing is a style I’ve seen before,” Skyler said thoughtfully. “Just not very often, and not as an everyday thing. In fact, it looks like the style people would wear a few centuries ago.”

"A few centuries ago people were wearing heeled shoes with massive buckles and flowery doublets," Gideon scoffed. "And chopping the heads off their wives." This girl couldn't possibly be from London if she didn't know basic history. Unless....
He picked up a few more sweaters and turned on his heel, facing her. "Miss, what year is it by your count?" If he was right, things would make quite a bit more sense. The strange clothes, the new words, the odd remarks...that would all make sense. But that led to more questions. How could people be pulled from different times and thrown into this world?

Levi nodded. Not everything revolved around water, but the type of greenery he would see on Earth usually did rely on some kind of body of it.

"There might be some kind of water source underground," Levi guessed. "This entire city is covered in plants. Unless it usually rains here, the water has to be coming from somewhere else."

When Gideon had scoffed, Sky had turned around, a little offended he’d called that into question and was doubting her. Heeled shoes with massive buckles and flowery doublets. Okay, she was pretty sure that was fashionable in Europe at some point— though certainly never fashionable to her— but not in the same time period that his clothes were from.

That was... strange, to say the least.

It got stranger, in fact, because now he was asking her for the year.

“It’s 2019,” Sky said off-handedly, moving on to searching the piles for clothes that might be better for others. If this was acting, it was getting a little annoying. “You don’t dress like it is, but that’s where we’re at.”

Gideon smiled; he'd been absolutely correct. "Well, no. That isn't quite right. See, I come from the year 1895. It seems this dimension has pulled people from all manner of times and worlds." He removed his suit jacket and slipped on the turtleneck, looking down at himself thoughtfully. Mobility was much easier in an outfit like this, but the high neck clung rather uncomfortably, a bit like his shirt collar.
"How does this look?" He did a small turn, spreading his arms.

Sky's jaw dropped.

No. No, there was no way he meant that. Emma and Winthrop were claiming to be from other worlds, which was wild enough already, but someone from another time? This was the kind of thing that would happen on BBC shows like Doctor Who. Not in real life, and certainly not to her. And if we were in the middle of a surprise Doctor Who episode, we'd have seen the TARDIS by now, she couldn't help but think.

This couldn't be real. Were half the people here crazy? Levi and Jam were the only ones besides her who weren't claiming to be from somewhere weird, so maybe they were sane. Unfortunately for her, they'd already started to go on their way, and she wasn't exactly going to go running after them now.

Gideon, apparently, was completely chill about the time thing, and was now asking for input on a turtleneck. But she couldn't think about fashion right now.

"S-Say what?" Sky spluttered.

"Ah, you're right." Jam said, thinking over what Levi's words.

"Hmm. Where to find water in the middle of nowhere?" He didn't want to just stand there and wait until some sign appeared, but he had no idea of what to do now. "If nothing else, we should go in a straight line 'cause I dunno about you, but I'd get lost pretty easily."

"I asked how the 'sweater' looks," Gideon said. "Oh--oh, you meant, ah yes. I said I'm from 1895. If you're from 2019, I can only assume what brought us here can pass through both space and time." He paused, removing the turtleneck. "How are things so far forward in time? Have they managed to make airships less flammable?" And more importantly, was there anything like him walking around? Somehow he doubted Sky would react well to what he was.

“Woah, woah, slow down.” Skyler held up a hand, feeling a little lightheaded. She took a deep breath, closing her eyes and letting it out in the form of a sigh.

If everything about her surroundings didn’t feel so real, she might have believed this was a wild dream, that she could be sleeping on an old mattress back in New York and none of this was happening outside her head. She’d always had a creative imagination. But she couldn’t have so many details about this place in a dream— the soft sweater fabric, the air temperature... she even felt like she needed to sneeze. Maybe there was pollen in the air, with all these plants.

It was the people that didn’t make sense.

"Airships," she mumbled. "Uh, we call those planes and rockets and stuff. And yeah, we're doing pretty well at flight I guess... Overall, I suppose the best word for the 21st century is 'chaotic'. That kinda sums it up."

Please let this be a joke that's carried on too long, she silently begged. Her head was starting to hurt.

Levi glanced around the area surrounding the abandoned marketplace.

If he was right about the water being underground, there were two ways to easily get down there. The first would be to track down a subway entrance. But that relied on this city actually having a subway. There hadn't been anything like that in the most advanced cities there. There wasn't a need for complicated transportation systems like that.

But there was something that this city had to have.

He turned his gaze down to the street.

Smiling, he pointed at the little bit of metal that was peeking out from underneath a thick layer of plants. "I found a way to combine both of our ideas," he said. Without giving Jam a chance to react to his suggestion, Levi walked over to the manhole cover and started to push the plants off of it. A few moments later, he had enough of them cleared that he could open the cover.

He easily lifted it up and slid it to the side.

Legs dangling over the hole, he glanced back at Jam.

"Are you coming?" he asked.

"There are all sorts of chaos," Gideon pointed out. "How would you categorize the chaos of the 21st century?" It certainly couldn't be any worse than a forest taking over an entire city. This place truly looked to be something of an apocalyptic world, especially with all these empty shells of people. Speaking of which...
Gideon brushed away the husk that had its hand over an item of clothing he was trying to get. It crumpled immediately, flaking away. Some of it got on his suit, and he brushed it away as best he could.