this was an escape plan
It wasn't that he minded investigating weird things like this.
Honestly, that was a part he came to enjoy fairly quickly- he'd always liked puzzles, trivia, things like that, ever since he was a child.
Some of that might be because he'd grown up in Nebraska in the Depression, and there wasn't much else to do every winter.
But he had an exhausted feeling about going to Maine. Steven King was not... completely off about some of the things that could happen in Maine. And it was cold, windy, and wet.
At least he wasn't the one who had to deal with the mad vampire in the Faroe Islands, he reminded himself. He was... twitchy about vampires.
Still, Stephen Strange thought, trying not to huddle in his cloak, he could do without being on a lonely island in Maine. In January.
But whatever this was needed to be dealt with now, before it dug in like a tick and the researchers came back in the spring.
He'd used magic to shift his eyes rather than risk conjuring a light, and was frowning at the razor-sharp images, all painted in shades of grey and grim, muted parodies of pastels.
There- there was a shape, roughly human sized.
He stepped closer, hoping whatever it was couldn't weaponize the poison ivy everywhere. He did not want to explain that one.
“What was that? Is somebody there?”
He blinked, startled for a moment. The voice sounded- afraid? A woman's voice, low and hoarse.
Either a trap or a victim? Perhaps there was a boat tucked up in a cove- he knew there were a few privately owned cottages, and he learned to not be surprised about human risk assessment skills back in med school.
The wind picked up, howling in a way that promised a storm.
“Who's there!” The voice sounded angry, then, and the accent more pronounced. “Motherfucker, get out here!”
He stepped forward, towards the direction the woman's voice came from. In his experience, traps usually didn't involve that sort of cursing. “May I help you?”
There was a noise, a sliding sort of thud, and another curse. “If I say no, I'm pretty sure I'll faceplant next time.”
He turned around the dormitory, and saw the woman try to pick herself up, leaning against the wall.
Grey waterproof coat, pulled tight around her face, thick cloth pants that were covered in mud, and a complete lack of flashlight that had his hackles up.
There was a soaking wet lock of dark hair plastered to what was visible of her forehead, and a vaguely cranky expression. “Who are you?” she asked, tilting her chin up.
“A doctor,” he said, eventually. “And you?”
“Engineer,” she said, raising her eyebrows. “Why are you here?”
“Why are you?” he asked, not inclined to tell what might be an angry water spirit anything more than he needed to.
“Handling something for a friend,” she said, looking over her shoulder. “Again, you?”
“Looking into something for a friend,” he said, ignoring the cold creeping under his collar. His gloves were enchanted to keep the cold away, anything else he could deal with back in the Sanctum.
She seemed wary. “Like what?”
“Rumors,” he said, watching her carefully. She wasn't wearing gloves, and her hands were pale as frostbite.
“What sort of rumors?” she asked, and he decided to cut to the chase before she went for his throat.
“There were stories about specters seen in that water around here, and someone taking care of the winter cottages claimed to see a ghost,” he said, crossing his arms and looking down on her. It scared novices and med students both. “As the man in question has power of his own...”
She paused, holding up a hand. “Oh, that's it?”
“...yes?” he said, wondering if she was his specter/water spirit. Or one of them. “There is concern that it might be sirens setting up a lair.”
She let out a raspy laugh. “Oh, sweetheart,” she said, lips twitching as her foot tapped. “Wrong water beings. They're selkies.”
He blinked. Selkies were harmless. And found up and down the North Atlantic. He reckoned what would happen to his eardrums if Namor thought he'd frightened a selkie pod, and held up his hands. “I stand corrected.”
“Smart man,” she said, and he frowned. Didn't selkies have webbed hands?
“You are not a selkie,” he said, and she rolled her eyes.
“Yes, but the poor dears are professionally helpless,” she said, slightly wickedly. Her voice was pitched a bit louder, and he didn't flinch at the sound of someone behind him.
“I was going to help,” came a soft, whispery voice.
“Of course you were,” said the... witch? Maybe? If he used the Eye of Agamotto he could figure it out, but that might also distract him. “You even picked up a shovel.”
He did not jump, even if he heard the maybe-witch chuckle in satisfaction.
The selkie was small and delicate looking, with large dark eyes, liquid-steel hair, and the webbed hands he'd expected clutched around a muddy shovel.
She was also wearing a sealskin, which was just as eerie as he'd suspected, the first time he'd heard of them.
“Gracie,” whined the selkie. “You didn't say you'd be mean about helping me.”
“And you said you'd keep me from turning to a block of ice while I dug up the cooler with your sealskin, Nin, but here I am, freezing my fucking ass off,” the maybe-witch- Grace- snapped.
“I didn't want Marshall sailing up,” said the selkie, shaking a bit.
Grace sighed. “Fair, but you could have told me that before calling up this weather.”
Stephen could guess the rough shape of what had happened. “I can tell them that I banished what was here quietly, Miss Nin here can swim back to her pod with her recovered sealskin, and we can all pretend this never happened?”
Grace and Nin shared a look.
“...nobody to see here?” Grace asked.
“You have my word,” he said, holding out his hands again.
“That'll work,” Grace said, and Nin dropped the shovel and dashed off.
Stephen watched her run through the scrub with ease, and then back at Grace, who shook her head.
“I thought she'd gone to the sea while I was investigating,” she admitted, a bit sheepishly. “I didn't think she'd be that brave, not with her ex at her back.”
He nodded, grateful he wasn't going to be cold, wet, and slammed into rock or tree. He'd like to blame the Avengers or other superheroic types for making him suspect that every encounter like this would end in punching, but his job involved a lot of idiots who heard his name and decided fighting was a good plan. “Perhaps she thought of it as a debt?”
“Maybe,” Grace said, shrugging as she looked up. “The storm won't fade until dawn, I think. Good thing I didn't rely on a boat to get here.”
“Quite,” he agreed, still a bit curious. “I have other matters to attend to, and I assume you must as well?”
If the matters to attend to were curling up with hot tea, a warm blanket, and a good book, that was for him alone to know.
“...I decided to go digging up a selkie skin on a deserted island in January,” Grace said, her voice the only dry thing around. “In Maine. On an island that has so much rock. I'm just happy it only took a couple hours. The selkies found the island, I just needed to figure out where on it the cooler was.”
“And dig it up,” he said. “What sort of spell did you use?”
“That,” Grace said, smirking up at him, “is proprietary, Doctor Strange.”
He paused. “It was the cloak that gave me away?”
She nodded, “And the...” she drew her hands back from her temples, mimicking his silver streaks. “I'll see you if I see you, Doctor.”
With that, she stepped forward and vanished.
“Hopefully,” he mused, “this won't come back to bite me.”