- awwww. 

"I'm a cat, yes. And Isabella's a raven," he confirms after checking with her. 

"Now you mention it...yes, I think it's just emotions," he says, not entirely certain. "From both of you, and from Rae. It's...I feel like it could easily get overwhelming? And I think it's a good thing we're the only people in this bar."

Rex seems to droop a bit further, looking worried. "Empaths often find it harder to shut their sense down than people with things closer to telepathy," he says. "Joss...!" It comes out as a distressed whine.

Joss scritches his neck again. "Needed to know what I was dealing with first."

She turns to Michael, not stepping too far away from Rex. "Okay. I have no idea if this is going to help you. I tend to anchor my sense to someone if it becomes too overwhelming. I pick either the calmest person, or the person I know best. I focus on what they feel like, get that to flood my sense. It's hard to explain, but it's like focusing on one thread of a piece of music and ignoring the rest." She rests her hand lightly on Rex's shoulder. "Rex here helped me block out a fallen angel with her grace blazing. And that is bright."

"Alright, I'll try it." 

The obvious person to focus on is Raven, who is perhaps not the calmest one in the bar - that would be Bar herself, followed by Joss - but definitely falls under 'person he knows best'. He focuses on his sister, drawing his awareness of her to the forefront of his mind until it blocks out Joss and Rex.

It's intimate, almost unbearably so - would be, with anyone else. The pack bond lets her catch a glimpse of what he's doing, sparking off a feedback loop of introspection that catches them both in its coils for several long seconds. He still can't read thoughts with his new sense, only emotions, but at this level of detail, with someone he's known since they were three, the difference is academic. 

He drops it, and the world comes back into view. 

"...I think," he says shakily, "I will have to find a different method."

"Damn," Joss murmurs, rubbing her hands over her face. "You could always try building walls. I hated that though, but...then again, I was used to using my sense automatically to check my surroundings for danger. It felt like I was cut off from everything."

"She got very flinchy, and stopped sleeping," Rex says, "and that was miserable for all of us."

Joss has reclaimed her barstool at this point, and Rex drops down to sit at her feet, leaning against her legs.

"You remember the conversation about seats don't you?"

He just looks up at her with plaintive eyes.

"If you're happier there, then."

aaaa why is he so distractingly cute - 

"Yes, I can see why that wouldn't work for you." He nods.

"A way to block out everything sounds better, for me; it's too...not loud, exactly, but that's close." 

With only three other people here, not counting Bar - who is most definitely a person even if she is very different from anything else he's experienced - it isn't too hard to keep track, but he can easily see it getting bad in larger crowds. He can't just avoid situations like that, either, not when they live in London. Blocking it out it is.

"Do you have any advice? It isn't your favoured method, but you have tried it, which is...more experience than I have."

Joss purses her lips, fingers rattling on the bar-top. "It's a lot of visualisation. Or it was for me. It's imagining something, I used walls, but I've heard of people using soldiers, between you and the sense you're trying to block out. And then making it real. Making it block it. I...think you can probably vary the level it works at? But...for me it was all or nothing. I was too flinchy to actually figure out the nuances of it."

Raven, off to one side, has asked Bar for a stack of books on the empathy side of Fire magic and is flicking through them looking for something that might help. 

"Yes, this recommends visualisation as well," she confirms. "It has examples of a brick wall, a fence, a bubble, or a blanket, for different levels of protection."

"I think I'll try the wall first," he decides. "It'll be the easiest to notice whether I've succeeded." 

Raven nods in approval. 

He closes his eyes, focusing inward again but this time on himself rather than Raven. Calling up a mental image of a wall - the walls of their house, why not - he imagines it forming a perimeter around his mind, blocking out everything but himself. 

All is suddenly, blessedly quiet. Even the pack bond is locked out - which, as soon as he notices, makes him lose concentration and drop the barrier. "I had it! Just for a moment, but I had it."

"That's great," Rex beams, and there a very definite impression of a wagging tail. "Took Joss nearly an hour to manage that the first time." He grins up at her for a moment before turning his attention back to Michael. "Now it's just practicing till it's second nature. I think. We don't really block people out." (The we seems to be distinct from him and Joss.)

He says something modest about having always been a quick learner, the sort of non-reply he can throw out without much conscious attention.

Rex's happiness is distracting; he seems to feel every emotion at least twice as intensely as anyone else. 

Wait, what was that?

"We? I didn't know you had anything like this..."

Rex looks up at Joss. "You didn't explain?" he asks, tilting his head at her.

"Of course not," Joss says. "Not mine to tell."

Rex leans slightly closer against her legs, looking back to Michael. "I'm a hellhound," he says. "I mean, the 'hell' is kind of irrelevant, but it comes from the fact that we tend to end up working for demons, again, kind of irrelevant. They picked their name up from somewhere, but they're not actually evil. Well, mostly. They're basically just humans. I don't understand why people feel the need to attribute good and evil to different species like it's an inherent trait."

Joss makes a quiet sound.

"Oh. Right. So. We basically have large packs? And you don't have secrets in your pack. And there's a connection there, and you don't block your family out? It's not common outside of our kind, and I can't tell you if it's the same in the shifter communities, but we're all hounds, and your family is a pack."

This is interesting to drag Raven back out of her books. 

"There hasn't been much research on shifter genetics," she says in a tone of annoyance, "and we're both adopted, so I can't tell you whether our families would be the same type of shifter as us. Nor anything about shifter culture in general, really," she adds.

"Is the 'hell' part of 'hellhound' related to the reason your tail was on fire earlier?"

"Oh. Yeah. Hellhound comes with a side of flaming tails and potential to breath fire," he bounces slightly in place. "I haven't mastered the breathing fire bit, and my flatmates won't let me practice," the last includes a pout that isn't entirely serious. "But given general descriptions of hell include eternal flames, that's probably where the name comes from. That and the fact that we're normally employed by demons. Again, not really related to hell."

"I think your world's magical and supernatural elements may have been designed, or at least classified, by someone who had a rather unhealthy obsession with Catholic invented beliefs," she comments, amused. 

"Do you know where hellhounds came from?"

Cat is attempting to practise shielding, and is mostly ignoring them.

"Our history is...kind of a mess? And mostly verbal? And...I didn't take as much interest as I should?" he looks a little sheepish. "There's also a lot of speculation that we're a branch of shifters who learned some form of magic that somehow became innate? A lot of stuff got lost because, well, the Catholic church took pretty severe exception to our existence. There's a reason we work for demons. Working together made it a lot easier to avoid and repel Hunters."

Raven nods solemnly.

"Much of the early history of shifters and mages, in our world, has been lost for similar reasons," she agrees. "Although I believe it was the Protestant church, rather than the Catholics, which especially persecuted magic."

She seems a little less focused on learning new information than she was with Joss earlier, and keeps sneaking distracted glances at Cat. 

Joss slightly sheepishly tugs on the medallion that she still hasn't been able to stop wearing. "Seems like a lot of churches are like that," she says. "All hellfire and damnation for anyone who doesn't fit with their view of how things should be. And a tendency to fail to advance with the times."

"I think I've got it," Cat says, opening his eyes cautiously.

"And did I hear something about religion? Do not get me - or Rae - started on Puritans. Or Catholics, really."

"We try not to discuss it in general," Rex says. "We all have very different views, I mean...we all believe in something. Hard not to all things considered..." He made a vague gesture over his shoulder. "But...none of us are exactly religious."

"Very, very lapsed for me," Joss admits. "And...gotta check, is this an honest 'don't get us started' or a 'we could do with ranting about this'?"