Departure [Jamie ST]

departure
The sky is clear, the forecast optimistic: nothing but blue skies through the weekend, with clouds rolling back in and the chance of rain increasing as the week goes on. Possible snow as a cold front rolls back in. A typical June in Colorado.

A few states over in the city that awaits her, few things ever change. Nightfall brings with it a reprieve from the heat, which Grace has learned from past experience is not enough to convince a certain Euthanatos acarya to wear short sleeves. That acarya may have something to do with her decision to make a physical location. There are more opportunities for her to interact with other Virtual Adepts, to meet more Mercurial Elite. Denver, it seems, was a place where people went to escape, to regain their balance, and to disappear again.

Those who do not know what they are running from have the most difficult time settling down.

--

Once inside, the weather does not matter one iota. The logistics team running the Denver International Airport has ensured that every aspect of operations is under tight control, from the spacing of tables around the fast food restaurants to how quickly the lines move through security to how long a plane will sit on the tarmac. As soon as fliers walk through the sliding doors, out of the shaky summer and into a brightly lit 65 degrees Fahrenheit, an LCD board greets them, displaying the status of every departure, every arrival, without making a sound. What sounds there are come through an overhead speaker, multiple variables altering the speech until it more closely resembles a voice bubbling up from the bottom of a lake.

The 10:15 DIA to LAX is boarding in an hour and a half. It is up to Grace whether she is on the morning flight or the evening. She knows her body and its willingness to function from one hour to the next.

Regardless of Earth's rotational position relative to the Sun, she is here. She is going through the ritual of producing her boarding pass - does she go through the self-checkout, or does she get in line to interact with the ticket clerk?

Grace
Denver's airport gives Grace the creeps, even in the middle of the day. For someone who wears a pendant inscribed with its coordinates, that might seem a little odd, but most airports don't have a demon horse outside beckoning travelers, and a demon bursting out of a suitcase inside -- just in case you happened to forget that the decorating team was obsessed with demons.

The other thing that gives her the creeps is going through security. There are two choices -- body scan, or hands getting all grabby everywhere. She opts for the pat-down every time. Those body scanners just scream Technocratic fuckery. They might be able to catch people smuggling explosives onto a plane, but they've probably also caught quite a few supernatural beings for the Techs to dissect. All the people in line would just see someone getting taken away for a more "thorough examination" to one of the TSA's special rooms, and never coming back. It'd probably even make them all feel much safer.

So, she grit her teeth and bore the gloved woman checking her pockets for contraband like a champ, all while wondering if this was truly worth it. Every time, it feels like breaking the Universe's laws is just so much easier than this.

Easier is rarely wiser.

That being said, there is not so much a problem with doing the self-checkout. The same data gets entered either way, after all. The boarding pass gets presented for machine eyes to read, and Grace's eyes go soft, thinking more about her destination than the here and now. It won't be long, and she'll be flying -- flying to a certain Euthanatos acarya who never wears short sleeves. To a warm state.

departure
The garbled voice persists as Grace interacts with the machine, attempting to get the attention of a party meeting someone whose name would only register with the person to whom it belongs. It is not Grace's name. Grace is departing, not arriving. Clusters of weary travelers mill around the baggage claim area. More than a few stand with balloons and handcrafted signs to welcome home servicemen returning from overseas. A child is keening somewhere in the echo chamber that is the lobby.

Her boarding pass tells her everything she needs to know. Her flight is boarding at Gate A28, so close to the main terminal that she could have arrived ten minutes before final call and probably been fine. Probably. There is always the threat of being detained going through the security line, sure, but Grace has more to fear from the NSA than from the TSA. Having a Reddit account is enough to land Sleepers on a government watch list, and that is among the least of her online offenses.

Alienation. Cutting oneself off from the rest of humanity due to a feeling of not belonging, of being different, of being in danger: all of this is a reasonable human response, as Michael would say, but she and the rest of their brethren are not strictly human. But then some would say Michael is operating on a different plane than even other Awakened. All Adepts are. They have to be able to grasp universal concepts, to rid themselves of barriers that would impede their mastery of a Sphere, their taking the place of the ones who abandoned Earth during the Ascension War.

In some way, Grace must want for her Avatar to test her. These tests do not come out of nowhere. The moving walkway en route to catch a flight isn't the most ideal place for it to happen, but the transition is subtle. One moment she's moving along, perhaps spacing out again, perhaps checking her phone. At some point she has to look up.

A man holding his daughter's hand, his hair in dreadlocks, hers in twin puffs contained by black hair bands, yellow balls on one side, purple on the other. First the father flickers like a television picture cutting out, then the daughter. A stutter, their laughing conversation cutting in and out, and then they remain that way: white noise. Behind her, two businessmen are having a loud discussion about someone of mutual acquiantance. The same thing happens to them. Interference, then static. And then the gaggle of teenagers, wearing pajama pants and track t-shirts, the girls' hair sloppy and the boys wearing caps over their heads, half of them carrying pillows, two beleaguered chaperones coming up behind them.

It is like a rolling blackout, moving from one group to the next.

Grace
She is, indeed, looking up from her phone when she sees it. Time seems to go slower when we're shocked out of normality and into fight-or-flight what-the-fuck mode. Maybe that's one reason why we tend to freeze up -- everything else is frozen too. Grace doesn't freeze, though. She just tenses her jaw, looks down to see if she too is dispersing into static, and then back up again to witness the wave of weirdness.

Crowds are hard for humans to understand. We evolved from ancestors who never knew more than about thirty individuals for their entire lives. That tribal structure no longer fits, but it persists. The brain has a hard time grasping that a mass of people are just that -- people. It tends to render crowds as forest. A person's only a person in a crowd when you make a mistake -- you run into them, or mistake them for someone else -- breaking the illusion that they aren't really there. Grace hadn't even registered the people around her until they started to blink out. Strange, how they only began to be real in her mind just before they weren't anymore.

"Shit."

She reaches out, trying to touch the place where the father once was. Maybe he's still there. Maybe this is just her eyes playing tricks -- or somebody making her eyes play tricks. It's better than the thought that this plague of snow-crashed people will just keep claiming more -- will leave her in some solipsistic nightmare.

"Are you... okay?" she says, to the fuzz of white noise.

departure
Though they appear as though they are becoming insubstantial, the people around her are no more so than the television that is experiencing signal interception.

Through the white noise, everyone is continuing on doing what they were doing before this happened. Ghosts, almost. But not quite. They are very much still alive.

When Grace reaches out to touch the father's shoulder, he briefly flickers back into focus, as if she had wiggled the rabbit ears on an old motel television. As soon as she takes her hand away, in comes the snow again. But she can feel the fabric of his polo shirt, the thin muscle wired across hard bone. The warmth of him.

He does turn to acknowledge her. She cannot hear what he's saying, for it is just as garbled as the voice over the terminal speakers. The man is not used to people asking him that. For all she knows, he is telling her to mind her own business. More likely he is smiling uncertainly, assuring her he's fine, thanks, while his daughter tugs on his hand, come on Daddy come on we're going to miss the plane.

At the end of the moving walkway, the effect has taken over everyone. The food service workers, the kiosk staff, the porters and the airline staff and the security guards. Everyone except for Grace.

And an individual, androgynous to the point of near featurelessness, standing 50 meters in the direction she needs to go.

Grace
She can't hear the man, but his reaction calms her enough for her to pretend that she did, with a twitch of a smile, and a step back into her personal space. It's a comfort to catch on to the idea that she doesn't have to fix every person in the airport -- just one.

The moving sidewalk ends, so she steps off of it, and notices the one other solid person in the place. It's like a quest objective in a game almost, right? The one that stands out, you must not ignore. She doesn't bother going off to search for Easter eggs -- just walks right up.

"Hello," she says, breaking eye contact to gesture around at the bizarre ghosts of television static. "Are you seeing this? Are you doing this?"

There is the off chance that this is the second person to whom she's just said something mildly unhinged. Somehow, that doesn't seem quite as likely in this case.

departure
Everyone else continues on their way, though the din of hundreds of conversations muddling together is even more impossible to decipher when the thin fuzz of static stretches over everything, like a membrane between their reality and hers. The question she asks about the happening is not unhinged, if asked of the right person.

But she isn't speaking to a person at all, so the point is moot.

As she draws closer, Grace may become aware of the fact that the figure's facial features are uncomfortably symmetrical, perfect to the point of inhumanness. The aesthetic would enthrall a Cultist, frighten a Chorister. Probably make a Euthanatos believe they were in the presence of a Nephandus. But the entity does not feel malevolent. When it opens its mouth, its voice has a low tone and another, higher, almost echoing tone atop it.

Shifting, one might call it.

"This?" Though it neither smirks nor quirks a brow, Grace can hear the lilt in its speech. "Tell me what you're seeing."

Grace
Grace blinks. "Uh..." she twists her head, looking at the static. "You. You're still clear. Everyone else is coming through like they're on a broken TV set."

Except when she touches them. She fidgets with her hands as she gazes out across the room packed with people, all blobs of noise.

Her gaze pins down the entity again, and she continues: "Who are you?"

departure
"Who am I?"

Again with the impression of laughter that does not give way to it. The laughter of a being beyond time or space, who has known sentience since the first shards of light burst through the Milky Way but never corporeality. That's what the Awakened is for. That is what some of them think, anyway: that Ascension is really just the body dissolving and the Avatar fulfilling its true purpose.

Speaking of purposes:

"If I am clear, you would not have to ask." A beat. "Although, perhaps, you have to ask because I have not been clear in the past. Does this trouble you?"

Grace
She squints at the thing, shakes her head slightly. That response answered approximately nothing.

"Yeah, okay, in terms of making sense, you're about as clear as mud and just as solid. But at least you're present. Everyone else is... filtered out or something."

She scratches an ear and closes her eyes, but the hissing sound of randomness continues as a reminder.

"And yes, it troubles me," she says, a little irritation entering her voice. "Why wouldn't it trouble me?"

departure
"People trouble you, do they not?"

A just entity would allow her time to answer. Or a fair one. But this entity, even if just or fair, is also impatient. It wants something from her. Her attention, it has. Her curiosity, also. Yet it isn't satisfied.

Thus far, her Seekings have been fairly straightforward. Her Avatar has come to her filtered through the lens of a reality she knows rather than as it truly is. It is not in the nature of the Questing Avatar to be forthright. Those responsible for one find themselves imbued with a strong sense of purpose, a singular task they must complete before they move on to the next.

Not every situation they encounter is a side quest, however.

"Is that not why you avoid them?"

Grace
"So, the answer is to filter them out? Completely avoid them?"

She shakes her head. "No. I don't want to be alone."

Her eyes open again, determined. With what little this being has said to her, she's beginning to put things together. It seems familiar somehow, and it is familiar with her in turn. Talking to it isn't like speaking to a stranger.

"Troubles are good sometimes. I wouldn't have learned quite so much about... everything if there weren't trouble around literally every corner. The real problem is when they overcome you."

departure
"And yet, are you not overcome when you stand down? When you remove yourself entirely?"

The topic is swinging back around to people. If she gets the sense that the people in question are other Awakened...

Grace
"Yes. I'll admit that," she says, with a sigh. Her eyes start to dart elsewhere, at nothing in particular. At the static where a person used to be. At the sky.

"If I could just understand them, I wouldn't feel like I have to. Hell, if they could just understand me. But no. I get that this is my lack.

"You run into one incomprehensible person, that's them. But if nearly everyone in the world is--" she says, gestures around to the unintelligible mass "-- then that's on you."

departure

"Hmm."
 

That thoughtful noise says more, perhaps, than an entire sentence would. Grace could unpack plenty from that two-toned voice, if the point of conversing with another person, even if that person is not a person at all but a shard of energy given form.
 

"And what do you intend to do about your lack of understanding?"





Grace
'Keep trying' seems like an unacceptable answer. Do, or do not. There is no try. So, she takes a moment to think back through her past, to times when the connection between herself and others was even worse. What actually helped?

Computers did. Like training wheels, providing an interface in between herself and others -- and nobody could judge her for not reading the hidden meaning or the body language or whatever else. If she wanted to run, she could turn the thing off. And she did -- a lot, at first. But it was the online time that helped.

"I guess... I'll never understand anybody if I run away from them whenever I can't fathom them. I'll have to stop that."

departure
So the entity watches her, the droning of humanity persisting on around them - around Grace - like the beginning of a wicked Quiet episode. Disconnection and delusions. None of this is actually happening, and yet hasn't she assured one of her associates of the mind parsing reality, that everything technically occurs inside one's head all the time anyway.

This is a dream world. It feels very real, but the only reality within it is what she has brought in with her. Her hopes and her fears.

At the phrase I guess, a minute shake of the head.

"Is that what you want?"

And like that, the lights cut out. From within the droning comes a commotion of panic. All the solid ghosts stop moving. They don't know what else to do.

Grace
Yeah, Grace. You didn't expect that little conversation to be the end of it, did you? Still.

"Shit."

She fishes her cell phone out of her laptop bag, with the intent of using it as a flashlight -- but no. It won't turn on. It's like all the light has been sucked out of this place. It's not going to be that easy. She slides it into her jeans pocket and begins reaching out with bare hands...

Sensory deprivation is supposed to be a lot more calming than this.

departure
In a situation like this back in the Real World™, order would come out of the loss of power. A generator would have already kicked on, or would have been on the entire time, and the backup lights would have come on after a moment of uncertainty. Someone would come on over the PA and the gate agents would take control of their people.

If anything like that happens, it is happening to the people who are not coming through because of the static. Someone does activate the overhead PA, but Grace cannot make out what the person on the other end is saying.

It does, however, sound a bit like her mother, if she really stops to think about it.

So: no light. Not even from the windows overlooking the runway, which had been letting in natural light when Grace began this whole checking in affair.

Grace
'The entity' is probably not there anymore. Was it ever? Even still, she's fairly sure it still watches. Why wouldn't someone want to watch as their pawn wanders around blindly in the dark? That's half the fun.

So, she moves, hands first, toward whatever staticky sound seems closest. Maybe she can produce the same effect as last time when she comes in contact with somebody -- make them visible at least?

"Can anybody hear me?" she asks, to the darkness.

departure
The darkness, at least, does not answer her.

As she gropes her way in search of another person, she might have expected her eyes to start adjusting to the low light. Aside from the flickering of the static cloaking the forms that seemed to be people earlier, nothing comes close to qualifying as 'light.'

What she finds in the darkness certainly feels as though it belongs to a person. The arm she brushes is solid, underneath the static and whatever clothes it wears, and warm.

It also turns towards her - she can feel attention on her that was not there before - and grabs her by the wrist. A feminine grip, by the size of the hand itself and the composition of the bones, the skin. Yet there is malice behind it.

Grace
The person she finds, it seems, is not keen on being bumped into in the dark. Maybe she's just startled or not otherwise looking for a fight. Grace puts her other hand on top of the one on her wrist -- not to wrench it off, but as a calming gesture. There there.

"I can't see. Can you?"

Maybe they can't hear her either, but it's worth a shot.

departure
Whoever it is cannot, in fact, hear her.

That calming gesture may or may not have an effect on the person. Grace cannot read their face, their posture, anything about them that might serve as a social cue. If the question makes it through the static and comes out sensical on the other side, she has no way of knowing that, either.

Point is, she takes the shot. The person, whoever they are, wrenches back hard to extricate their own wrist, and the glitching response does not trigger an affirmative or a negative. It is a response. Or maybe it isn't.

A thin stream of blue light begins to glow from beneath a closed door some distance away, then around its sides. A portent of its opening. The droning persists.

Grace
All right. Check that particular static person off. Grace sighs, wondering what to try next, when she sees the literal light. A door, opening. It's best not to ignore that kind of thing, and so she heads in the direction of it.

"What's behind Door Number One?" she mutters to herself.

Grace
[WP!]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 8, 8, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )

departure
As she makes her way over to the awakening door, Grace can see no discernible change in either her surroundings or in the people still milling about, reacting to whatever threat the darkness bred. Skewed perspective. She is not seeing them, nor is she seeing what lies under the absence of light. What she sees is a door, a way out if not a way through.

Fingertips brush the air between her shoulder blades, almost reaching out to touch her but not quite managing. If she turns to examine the cause of the almost-touch, she sees nothing has changed. She cannot tell if the woman - woman? - who had grabbed her made another attempt or if this is someone else.

But the door does yawn open. Stretching some distance, curving at an awkward angle, the corridor offers no hints as to what lies beyond.

So soon as she has made her decision to investigate, the corridor draws her forward. If she had the choice to turn back, or stay, that choice is now forfeit.

The last thing she hears before she hears nothing else is her mother's voice:

Stop that, Grace.

And the door slams shut behind her, leaving her in a darkness even more absolute than the one she just left. For a moment it feels as if she has gone weightless. As if the next sensation she should expect is a plummet, and a crash.

---

No crash comes.

Her feet touch the ground, and she is still in possession of her faculties. She has not yet been punted back to the meatspace. That absolute darkness gives way to light again, and she finds herself back in the main terminal of the airport, boarding pass in hand, everything back the way it was.

Grace
A scream feels like it wants to escape as she plummets toward whatever, but Grace doesn't let it. And then? Well, at least it's a soft landing. The first thing she does upon being punted back to reality is to reach up and rub her eyes, half expecting to open them again to darkness. Darkness doesn't come.

That must have been the wrong choice -- to turn away from a person toward a door? To run to an exit? "Fuck," she says, under her breath, at her boarding pass.

At least this time, she heads to stand in line -- to a person to check her pass instead of the machine. It might do to get some practice at peopleing in.

departure
With the exception of her decision to interact with an actual human being this time, every other detail about the terminal and the people inside the terminal remains the same. As if a tape rewound, or she dropped into a transposed reality running along a fixed trajectory that only changed if she did something to change it.

There will be time to contemplate the physics of dreamscapes later, how much of it is stable and how much of it is impacted by internal decisions.

The line moves smoothly and quickly, the airline representative assigning check bag tickets and final boarding passes as if she could do so in her sleep. Towards the gate, towards security, and the woman sitting behind the podium waving people forward with a gloved hand gives Grace a once-over, taking in her outfit and her single laptop bag and her general demeanor before making a beckoning motion for her to hand over her pass.

Security processes her just as before, a child a few machines over making a game out of not holding his mother's hand as they walk through the metal detector together, only this time one of the TSA agents decides to chit chat as she's waiting for her turn to go through.

"So where you off to?" the agent, a rail-thin young man with cow-licked blond hair, asks.

Grace
This time, Grace pays more attention to the forest. The trees become people, if only while she can still see them. She actually missed other people when they were filtered out, after all.

So, she smiles at them. Especially, at the child doing child-things, playing with disobedience.

It's strange, how calm she can be after having just gone through a horrifying waking dream, but hey -- it wasn't so bad, was it? A chiding. A warning. Her mother's voice was about the worst of it.

Some other voice now, with a question...

"Oh, um. I'm going to L.A. How about you?"

Yeah, TSA agent. Where are you headed?

departure
It would not be impossible to take everything in, Grace being capable of heightening her senses and treating her brain more like a computer processor than like a barely-understood network of synapses and neurochemicals, yet without doing so this place is teeming with conversations and activities.

The small child is the source of a good deal of amusement in the immediate vicinity, even if the mother is wearing an expression of threadbare patience.

How about you?

Though the TSA agent laughs, he does so wryly, like they're both in on the joke. Of course he isn't going anywhere. This job is a dead end for him. On the other side of the X-ray machine, his much larger and more sedentary coworker is twirling a pen through his fingers and taking his sweet time moving parcels down the conveyor belt.

Overhead, the automated voice on the PA system reminds travelers to keep an eye on their surroundings and support any suspicious activity or unaccompanied luggage to TSA.

In the area beyond the checkpoint, where chairs are half occupied by fliers lacing up their shoes or waiting for their companions, a young woman with bright eye makeup and an impatient expression on her face asks the cellphone plastered to her ear, "I don't know what to do anymore, it's like he doesn't have any, like, goals or anything, we're graduating next year and he won't even--"

Grace's bag rolls out of the X-ray machine. The skinny cow-licked TSA agent has to take the person behind her aside to wave a wand over them. Everything continues on as it did before.

It's happening again. This time there's no static: the volume begins to drop. All of the conversations, all of the electronic and mechanical sounds, the din of thousands of people getting to where they need to go. By the time Grace reaches the moving walkway, it is as if someone has clapped noise-cancelling headphones over her ears.

She can hear the sound of her own breathing. Nothing else.

Grace
We're all going somewhere, even the TSA agent, and she tells him as much. Says to enjoy the journey, though society's rules say they can't stay and chit-chat without his journey being to a pink slip.

She rolls her eyes at the PA system, seeing as how she is a walking suspicious activity.

That's about when the noise of the airport muffles. Grace glares at the moving walkway. It must be cursed. Next time (will there be a next time?) she'll take the non-moving walkway. Less cursed.

The people. This time, don't run away, right? Easy. So, who's here?

departure
The moving walkway keeps right on doing what it was doing before, just as the other people in the airport keep right on doing what they were doing before. Everything is carrying on as normal.

'Normal.' There's a word that defies definition.

In looking around, Grace can see behind her what she may have missed before: the two businessmen laughing, or at least baring their teeth and throwing their heads back slightly, their joke even more private now than it was before. The flock of teenagers, in dead silence, have become a solemn procession rather than a sleep-deprived yet hyperactive group for their chaperones to keep track of.

Two ladies at the newsstand are having what appears to be a grave conversation, one of them holding her uniformed elbows tight to her torso while the other nods and worries her ID badge.

At the point that she became distracted by the white noise last time, a young man wearing a backwards cap goes flying down the lane between the moving walkways, able to move at such a quick clip because his sneakers have rollerskate wheels in them. He carries nothing with him, and once he's assured of the clearness of his path he holds his hands behind his back and continues on.

Grace cannot hear his wheels, cannot hear the whispering of the walkway as it bears her steadily towards her gate.

A Deaf couple stands as far out of the way of traffic as they can, arguing, the female of the pair asking the same question twice in a row, more emphatically the second time: Does it matter?

Grace
If there's anybody here who might be able to empathize with Grace right now, it might be the deaf couple. She tries to remember the alphabet of sign language from way back in grade school -- just a few letters come instantly to mind.

But she approaches anyway, trying to appear mildly worried. She points to her ear and shakes her head.

"Excuse me, but I seem to have suddenly lost my hearing," she says, out loud. Maybe they're good lip readers too?

departure
Although the male of the pair is in the midst of firing back a response, their peripheral vision and situational awareness is perhaps higher than the average individual's. It isn't extrasensory, and they are at a bit of a disadvantage because they are arguing with each other, but the woman appears to be looking for an excuse to disengage from her partner anyway, and it is with a firm set to her teeth and an air of tempered dismissal that she turns from her person to see what Grace wants.

The man, a tall and gangling redhead, wears a blue t-shirt underneath an unbuttoned flannel and carries a laptop case himself. He could use a haircut and a new pair of shoes, but he seems otherwise put together. The woman is nearly a foot shorter than he is, wearing red skinny jeans and a black peasant blouse, her green-dyed hair up in a topknot that reveals her blond roots. They both appear to be in their twenties.

So she's pointing to her ear and shaking her head. The woman blows out a breath to calm herself and looks over at the man, who frowns at the woman and speaks. He does not seem to immediately grasp what the problem is, so the woman smacks him with the back of her hand and goes rooting through his laptop case until she finds a small notepad and a pen. She uses his back to write out a message before handing it off to Grace.

ARE YOU OK

Grace
Losing your hearing at the airport should be just awful, and  for a regular person, it would be. Grace, however, just seems to accept this turn of events as rather par for the course.

In fact, it's a little better than the last time she did this. At least she can see people now. Communication can be had, as evidenced by the pen and paper messaging system.

She reads, and ponders that question. Answers with a shrug, but takes the pen to write out (on the poor man-turned-writing-desk) "I DON'T KNOW".

Before she gives the pen back over, she adds: "NICE HAIR".

departure
Both of them read the response together. Though the man appears to laugh the sort of laugh one looses when one does not know how else to react, the woman frowns and reaches up to toy with a bit of green hair that has popped free from its restraint. A nervous habit. Then she signs THANK YOU? as if she isn't sure that's the correct thing to say.

A surge of activity further down the concourse as, it would appear, another flight has arrived and passengers disembark from the plane.

After a moment of silent conference, the woman writes:

YOU NEED HELP TO FIND YOUR GATE?

Grace
In truth, Grace could probably find it on her own by reading signs, but something says that would be the wrong choice. The airport would morph into a maze or everyone would turn into an airplane or something terrifically dire, even though it doesn't seem to be terribly dream-like right now. Everything can change in an instant.

So, she nods in response, and pulls out her documentation. Points out the gate. A28.

And, while they're figuring out what to do with their new charge, she takes the pen again, kneels down to the floor to write.

"T

Grace
[Er. THANK YOU]

departure
[JAMIE IS GOING TO WRITE A SUPER AWESOME WRAP-UP POST TMRW CURSE YOU CIRCADIAN RHYTHM]

Odessa's Box

Odessa
Annie and Sasha were on a couple's retreat. That's what it sounded like, anyway. That, or they were going to couple's therapy because things had been quiet on the western front and, occasionally, the chantry door was locked instead of unlocked. Sometimes, there was an uneasy silence that came only when there was amagic afoot and someone had something very personal to say that they didn't want to be said in front of people who might actually know better. Triangles are nothing without their third, and where was Trinity without Leah?

Well, it would appear that Trinity was at couples' counseling.

Which is what made this awkward.

The door was unlocked, there were notes pinned to the fridge (Could someone check the mail this week? - Annie) The television was on and it sounded like the Stanley Cup was playing. Overall, it was a boring day.

Grace
Grace is sprawled out on a couch in the den, one leg hooked over an armrest, reading from her e-ink device. It's not easy to tell what that book is, but it's apparently enthralling. So much so, she's barely touched her mug of coffee since plopping down in her spot.

This couch has a stitched-up hole in the back where a chihuahua puppy was rescued from the inside. It's that kind of couch.

Jeans and a t-shirt are her uniform. Few people have seen her wear anything else. Today, she's wearing her favorite (and thus threadbare) giraffe-wearing-ties tee.

With Annie and Sasha gone, someone's got to just be here. It's not a duty or a requirement or an order. Grace was just around, doesn't have a day job, and thus...

Alex
[God, so long since I did this...  Arete, Spirit 1, Diff 4, -1 for the node, WP and stuff.]

Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (7, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Alex
Alexander had been a little scarce recently.  Not gone, not again.  Just…  other things had been occupying his time, taking him a little more distant from whatever end-of-the-world antics had been plaguing the local Awakened.  He hadn’t been completely out of touch.  There had been dinners with Kiara, coffee and Pho with Grace, the occasional trip out to the Chantry for dinner with Annie and Sasha.  Recent changes had brought him a little closer to Sasha in some ways.  Alex had moved off the beat and into an office, not so far away from her, as he worked through his probationary period as a squeaky new detective.

Around the back of the Chantry, sat at the patio table not so far from the node, sits Alex now.  Cold, abandoned coffee sits in a cup, various text books lie open with various bookmarks and notes scribbled in them.  (Sorry, lovers of books, he sees nothing wrong with writing in books!)  A mirror, something cheap and easily disposable, is half-buried under a book that had been knocked when Alex had turned to watch…  something elsewhere.

Michael
The last time Mike was in Denver, so much happened that recapping for the sake of expediency would reduce the events to: a Nephandus Adept pissed off the wrong person. Although Alex met the acarya's student, Ihsan, she did not introduce herself as such, nor did she stick around after stirring the embers of the poor Disparate's paranoia.

Sadness upon sadness, Alex and Mike didn't have the pleasure of making each others' acquaintance last year.

This year, this night, Michael parks a different rental car in a different parking lot and steps out, assuring himself that this must be the place before clapping the door shut and locking it with the fob. Up the driveway, pocketing the keys before letting himself in like he was invited.

Surprise, Grace!

Grace
[Perception/Awareness = Oh really? That resonance?]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )

Alex
[Per+Awareness]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 5, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )

Michael
[awareness! didn't give him a spec bc i'm lazy.]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 7, 7, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )

Odessa
My, now this one is unfamiliar, isn't it?

There is a quiet in the area, over the sound of the Stanley Cup there was the internal silence and quiet that comes from a stillness of the soul, followed by a brightness so bright that it seared its image in the mind's eye and left a feeling on one's skin of dying embers. Yes, it is the feeling of those embers contained that sticks on the mind.

The back door is flung open. There is a small woman in black holding a box. Wooden box. Pandora's box, perhaps?

"Aaaaaaaannie?"

A beat.

"Hallo?"

Odessa
That box feels and looks like a massive glitch in the universal code. Feel free to embellish a little.

Grace
Grace's eyes flit up off of her book when she senses Mike's presence. What? But, the stupid grin that plasters itself on her face soon after says that it's not an unwelcome surprise.

She leaps up as inelegant as a baby zebra. Mike. It's got to be him.

And indeed, there in the entryway he is.

"You little jerk," she says, eyes bright, happy smile. "You didn't tell me you were--"

Just then, the sound and presence of someone else interrupts. She raises a brow. Whispers an aside to Mike: "I don't know who that is."

"Annie's not here!" she yells down the way.

Alex
The weather was warm, not needing much in the way of clothing to guard against a chill.  Asphalt, however, was much less forgiving.  A leather jacket sat on the back of Alex’s chair, protection against random chance that might wish him to fall while riding.  At the initial sense of someone else, someone unfamiliar, approaching, Alex’s attention returns from elsewhere.  A few blinks and the almost mirrored surface to his eyes fades, his gaze and his hands moving to the jacket.  Something fetched and checked before he steps back inside, towards the new presence.

Arm straight, hand masked by the doorframe to the room where Grace sits, there’s a question and a considering glance at the unfamiliar man.  “Grace..?”  She doesn’t seem threatened, though.  More happier than he’d seen her in quite some time.

A slam as the door is opened, a call for Annie, and Alex turns to face the second new arrival.  Pistol aimed at the floor but ready to raise, another question comes on the tail of Grace’s yell.  “And you are?”

Michael
Mike, for reasons both mystical and practical, knew there was a likelihood Grace would be here today. He didn't warn her he was coming. She (and Alex, once he comes close enough) can feel his resonance, that feeling of a strong storm blowing over, the strength of his Arete making his presence feel like a force of nature. It would be unsettling even to Sleepers if he weren't disarmingly charming.

A handsome bastard in a suit and tie, with dark brown hair and a clean-shaven jaw, he barely has the door closed behind him before Grace has sprung to her feet and called him a jerk. He shoots her a grin, unabashed, like Yeah I am a jerk aren't I before the door blasts open and in comes a little woodland witch the Chakravat hasn't seen in God knows how long.

"I think I do," he whispers back.

Annie's not here.

And then here's a tall young man, pointing a pistol at the floor but comfortable enough with it in his grip that Mike, never having met the man before, takes a step forward like to block Grace and holds up both hands to show he isn't currently armed.

Never mind that raising his arms reveals a shoulder holster beneath his suit jacket.

"Odessa!" Mike calls, raising his voice--his voice, without Alice hijacking his voicebox--for the first time in Grace's recent recollection. His palms are still on display and empty. "That you?"

Odessa
The woman, who couldn't have been more than five feet tall and as vast as the ever-expanding cosmos, looked from the pistol to her box and then back to the pistol again. Her mouth quirked upward before falling again. Eyebrows stayed raised.

"Odessa," she replied, "Annie and I share a lineage." She awkwardly held the box for a moment, before extending it to Alexander.

"It's me!" she called back, "and-" she stops, "I think Mike is the only one of you that I know. Who are you all? Will you be here for long?"

Grace
"Oh for..." Grace slaps her forehead with her palm. "Alex, this is Mike. Mike, Alex. Please try not to gun the Chantry down."

She pats Mike on the back. Alex is okay, dude.

And now? To pay attention to Odessa. And that box. "Oh, I'm uh... Grace. And, uh, yeah. I plan on being here. Annie and Sasha are away this week, so I'm...  helping."

"What's in the box?"

Alex
As potential Technocratic invasions of the Chantry went, this wasn’t high up the list of how Alex saw it going.  Although Mike did appear to be armed, he seemed to be more interested in protecting Grace from him.  An eyebrow raises at that, followed by a flash of some recognition at the name.

Mouth open, waiting for words to emerge for a moment, he considers: that he’s the only one waving a weapon around.  A faint click as his mouth closes and his teeth knock together, another faint click as the pistol’s safety goes back on and the weapon is tucked into the back of his trousers.  There’s no apology, but he does toss a glance at Grace:  so shoot me.  It’s not like he didn’t have reasons, after all.

Odessa offers the box, but it’s not taken.  Examined, briefly, but not taken.  He introduces himself, “Alexander,” to both of the unfamiliar individuals.  Sorry, Grace, he still has that stick up his ass about certain things.

Michael
For his part, Mike leaves his pistol in the holster. He never had any intention of removing it. Now that the excitement is more or less over, he lowers his hands, buttons the top button on his jacket, straightens his tie, and tucks his hands into his trouser pockets.

Oh right. There's an object in there he meant to ask Odessa about. His brow flickers into an almost-frown, but he doesn't broach the subject just yet.

For Grace's sake as much as Odessa's, maybe Alex's too, Mike says, "I had business to attend to in Texas. I thought I would swing by on my way back to Los Angeles."

Because Denver is so on the way, Michael.

Odessa
What was in the box, you ask? She looked at the box again. Nobody had taken it from her as of yet, so the witch just stood all black clad and awkward holding onto it. She gingerly made her way into the thick of the place and, instead, found a nearby coffee table to set the box on top of. It was placed on the glass top with a deceptive thud. Heavier than a discussion about cancer, that box.

"I don't know exactly what's in the box," she said, "I've only had it for the last half century and have done a very good job of not opening it myself. The only secret given to me to keep by the Keeper of Secrets."

A beat.

"I was hoping Annie would babysit the box while I go run some errands. Woudl you three mind watching it while I'm out?" She says like she's asking them to watch her dog and not a box that feels like the fundamental upheaval of the universe.

Michael
[int + past lives for shits +/- giggles]

Dice: 5 d10 TN8 (3, 6, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 1 )

Grace
"Aww," Grace says, to Mike's explanation of how he got here. That stupid grin returns to light up her face. She bumps into his side slightly too -- far more physical contact with someone than is normal for her.

But then, Odessa explains. And a suddenly serious Grace asks: "Keeper of Secrets?"

"I've heard that name. Not a fun fucking thing."

Alex
The end of the world at least a few minutes away now, Alex steps back into the kitchen for a moment as Odessa moves to find a table.  The bang of a cupboard and a further sound of a coffee jug being slid back into the filter preceed his reappearance with another mug of coffee.  He doesn’t move to close the distance between himself and the newcomers, contenting himself to lean against the doorframe and watch.

“Why does a box need babysitting?  Is it likely to crew the furniture if you leave it alone?”

Michael
Decorum, Grace. We practice it.

Yet it's obvious Mike wants to smile, himself. The laugh lines around his hazel eyes deepen a bit with the tensing of his jaw, the staving off of a proper reaction. He stands like a statue as the Virtual Adept bumps him, but in doing so he leans back against her for a second.

"The Keeper of Secrets does not abide stealing," he says. "Opening that box would be akin to breaking the bond of trust between the entity and the practitioner." Just a suggestion: "Perhaps it should go downstairs in the library, until Odessa is able to retrieve it."

Odessa
"Tell people who can rewrite the fabric of reality that they can not have something and can not touch it because they will be incapable of comprehending what they've just seen. Mages are petulant children with superpowers."

She nodded, "essentially, I need someone to watch the box because there are individuals who would like very, very much to open said box. People think twice about taking things from witches, but.... my home isn't as secure as it once was."

Grace
"I've heard that name in connection with a... rather cold case. A bunch of dead and missing apprentices in Colorado Springs. A bunch. Like somebody lured them there for that purpose," Grace says, dropping that tidbit into the conversation.

"I'm not at all eager to open that box. I am eager to know a little more about that entity."

Alex
The mug stops in its rise towards Alex’s mouth, eyes watching Odessa and Michael as they discuss what should be done with the box.  “Who are these individuals who are interested in this box of yours?  And what happened to make your home less secure?  Is that something that would be likely to happen here too?”

“I don’t think it’s our decision to make, about whether it should be kept here.  I think it should wait until Annie and Sasha get back.  It’s their home, after all.”

Michael
"Well." There's a solution for that. Michael removes his cell - a flip phone. Don't say anything. "I'll give Sasha a call. Excuse me."

And so he does, the sound of the call dialing loud enough to be heard as he gives Grace's elbow a quick squeeze and steps back out the front door.

[i need to bounce, guys. i've hit the point where i need sleep more than caffeine. mike will be back tho <3]

Odessa
"Well... go ask them. If you have chiminage to offer, the Keeper of Secrets will honor your requests." Odessa continued on, "and my mountain has been purchased. Logging issues, land rights. Petty things. No amount of warding can slow the pace of change and bureaucracy- I haven't existed legally in this lifetime."

Odessa scoffed.

"Annie owns this place, so long as the bank doesn't foreclose on her house nothing should happen to her."

Grace
She smirks at Mike's elbow squeeze, but quickly returns again to the hyper-focus. "Chiminage? What does the Keeper of Secrets like?"

Gold? Blood? Quintessence? Human sacrifice?

"And, I think Alex was more thinking along the lines that the bad people who want to open that box might come here and... I don't know... Shoot down the Chantry?"

She smirks at Alex. It's just a joke.

Alex
Well… go ask them.  Alex glances to the door that Mike had just passed through, presumably to stop his conversation with Sasha from getting in the way of the ongoing conversation, and back to Odessa.  Grace picks up on his other point: that somebody with an interest in the box might, at best, be unconcerned about the disruption they cause to the people living here, or who still use the house as somewhere to meet.  At worst…  Well, the warehouse hadn’t been lost to them so long ago.

He makes a face, as if there was something unpleasant tasting in the mug, before lowering it.  “Pretty much,” he says in reply to Grace.  “I’m sorry, I don’t know you.  Holding onto your box would probably be something best left to people you have some level of mutual trust with.  You have no idea if we’re capable of keeping that thing safe, and we have no idea if you’re literally dropping the end of the world on us.”

Alex pushes up from the doorframe, shrugging.  “Just try not to get this place turned into a crater.  We’re running out of safe places to meet.”   Alex steps back out to the kitchen, shortly followed by the sound of running water from the sink.

Odessa
"Secrets."

Obviously.

"No. They're not technocrats, they're just a cabal of selfish, impetuous children who are very accustomed to the mysteries of the universe being open to them," she laughed, "students don't like being told no, and they don't like listening to their elders."

She let her shoulders rise and fall, and with that she was already headed to the front door, "I will be right back- I understand that you're concerned, but it's here now."

She gave a little wave and kept walking, completely ignoring the fact that the mages in front of her basically told her that they weren't going to watch her box, "I'll be on the other side of the gauntlet if you need me, I'll be right back!"

Grace
Grace shrugs, walks over to the box and hefts it up. Heavier than it looks, really, and oddly vibrating, this box. "I'll take it down to the library. It is really the safest place."

She sighs. "I don't know whether to cheer her on, or hate her for making me babysit a box just when Mike gets here."

Alex
Enough of the conversation made it through the door over the sound of the water.  A voice comes back through the open door, sounding similar in some ways to what Odessa had said.  “…they’re just selfish impetuous children who don’t like being told no… Nope, can’t think of a single person here who sounds like that.”  A sigh follows, after Grace says she’ll take it to the library, and Alex reappears at the door.

“Maybe we should just throw in it the fireplace.  Release all of the evil in the world now and just save time.”

Grace
"Uh, no. Someone told me that Secret Keeper thing was not to be fucked with. I'm not going to," she says, making her way carefully to the stairs leading down to the library.

"I'm no expert on spirit-y business and I probably wouldn't be able to do a damn thing about it. If we do have Pandora's Box, let's not be Pandora, okay?"

Alex
Alex stays by the door, seriously thinking about simply walking away.  But that wouldn’t be fair on Grace, to leave her alone with whatever the hell was in the box and the prospect of a cabal of Odessa-a-likes descending to reclaim it.  He sighs, deeply, again.  Then Alex follows Grace down into the library.  “Can’t say I think much of her ability to keep a secret if she just dumps it on the first people she comes across who don’t move fast enough.

“So what happened with the apprentices?  Was it a recent thing, their going missing?  And what the hell is this keeper thing anyway?”

Grace
"I really wish I knew the answer to that question," she tells Alex. "All of those questions, really."

They walk, they descend, they get to the door.

"Hey, Alex, could you get that for me? Hands are full."

It does say something about the, ahem, secrecy of the situation that Grace hasn't yet found the answers to those questions. She is, usually, so good at that, after all.

Odessa
(Dex roll, please GRace! Diff 6. Dex+athletics)

Grace
[Dex + Ath + WP, because yeah, when you're carrying the end of the world, you should really try to be careful with it]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 4, 5) ( success x 1 ) [WP]

Grace
[lol, thank you WP]

Odessa
My, it really would appear that there was something in that box. The vibration increased, and for a second one could have heard the unspoken oooooooh of something finding a shiny opportunity to jump-



... and immediately be caught by Grace. The box seemed content to try and coincidentally wriggle out of her grasp, but she kept a hold well enough to keep anything terrible from happening. The lid did jostle a little, though.

Alex
“Well, let me know if I can do anything to help.”  This said as Alex turns to slide past Grace, against the wall, to get the door.  He pauses as she seems to almost drop the box, catching it again before it falls and hits the floor.

“Did that thing just move?  If there’s something in there trying to get out, I’m pretty sure there’s some tape up in the garage that we can wrap it up with.”  The door is opened and Alex steps into the library first, finding the light switch.

Grace
"That's really not a bad idea. This thing... is like a... animal or something. It did move," she says, relieved to have kept it up.

She walks into the library, carefully puts the box down on a table, and fixes it with a glare.

"What the Hell did you give us, Odessa?"

Odessa
[aaaaaand willpower diff 4 from everyone]

Alex
[WP]

Dice: 6 d10 TN4 (1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 7) ( success x 4 )

Grace
[WP!]

Dice: 6 d10 TN4 (2, 3, 7, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )

Odessa
There was a feeling that came to the air, one that was brief but purposeful enough that it made the two mages perk and pay attention. They were observant creatures, and aware as well. The box? Was pouting. It very clearly was pouting and pinged on their senses and they were unmoved by its whining.

But let's make it very clear, the box had consciousness enough to make such a gesture.

Alex
Just as he’s about to speak again, that feeling passes over them.  Mouth still open, he looks from Grace to the box and back again.

“Maybe we should get that tape.”

Alex scans the shelves for something first, though.  A book, something large and heavy.  The contents really didn’t matter.  Something suitable found, the book is placed on the lid to weigh it down.

“Or there’s still the setting the whole thing on fire option.”

Grace
When that pouting sensation comes across her, Grace really fixes it with a stare.

"How do we know it isn't made of fire?" she says. "It seems like the flighty type. But yeah, go find some tape, I'll make sure it doesn't actually chew the furniture."

She says that, but then pulls out her phone.

Grace
[Mike gets a text message soon after Grace goes for her phone. It reads: "Box is 'alive', please advise."]

Alex
“I guess…  How about shoving it in the freezer, then?  Good against fire and water, plus air tight.  Why the hell couldn’t she take it with her, anyway?  If it’s to keep it away from spirits, it seems like a really dumb idea to leave it near the node.”

Another sigh, something rapidly becoming a habit when strange Mages passed through town.  With another glance at the box under its heavy book lid, he heads out to find tape.  And possibly ropes.  Or chains.

The Brightness of Experience

Grace
It is not quite the time of year to be wearing a coat, but Grace has one on anyway -- a sharp red number with black plastic strips along the seams. She expects to be here when the sun has set for real and things get more than just a little chilly.

She is also lying down in the grass, her feet dangling into the pool that is the Node, her shoes and socks a safe distance away, so they can't tip into the water and ruin her day.

As usual, any approaching person will find her with her head squarely in her phone. Even here, she needs her internet like she needs her caffeine. And she's even wearing her special coffee-bean stud earrings today, to drive home her love of the latter.

Mr. Evian
Caleb has acquired a dog.

He put the dog in his pocket one day, namely because he had no idea what to do with aforementioned dog when he picked it up and didn’t quite want to put it down. People were talking and migrating. He wasn’t sure of the social protocol to keep going or engaging so he just… yeah. Caleb has a Chihuahua now.

It’s a tiny thing. Tiny, tiny thing and that is the first herald of Caleb’s approach. It is a small ball of fluff bounding over to the node at what would be a pretty reasonable speed were it not for the fact that the dog is so. Damn. Small. It has tiny legs and tiny paws and tiny everything (except a giant head because it’s a Chihuahua and they have huge heads in proportion to the rest of them). He decided that he didn’t want to wear shoes.

Where he walks, the world seems more alive. Grass seems more robust, healthier, happier.

The Chihuahua decides to attack Grace’s elbow, as soon as it gets there. Or if it wasn’t so far away.

Grace
There are the tiniest of barks. That's what initially draws Grace's attention away from her phone -- the yips of an excited chihuahua. And when she sees it -- it? Him? Her? her eyes alight with happiness.

This happiness is not abated in the slightest by the fact that it begins to gnaw her elbow.

"Oh. My God. You are so cute, I don't even mind the fact that you're attempting to eat me," Grace says, in her talking-to-cute-animals voice.

Mr. Evian
He hungers! Oh, how he hungers. And tries to get at Grace’s elbow and only succeeding in  flipping over on his back and sticking his tiny, tiny legs up in the air. I’m so vicious. Look at me, arrrrr

Wiggle wiggle wiggle.

“Ahhh, dog, why? Why are you trying to eat her?”

Hi Grace, this is the random awakened guy you met at the book store.

Grace
"I have a flavor, apparently," Grace says, reaching out with a finger to boop the dog on the nose. It'll probably be a bitten finger. She doesn't much care. "And that flavor is delicious! It's delicious, oh yes..."

There is a saying that states that the closer one is to a cute animal, the more inane the average human's statements become. Grace isn't average, but at least she's somewhat human.

Well, somewhat. She is also almost entirely ignoring Caleb in her complete focus on cute dog.

Mr. Evian
It wouls appear, however, that Grace is in the presence of non-humans. Which, of course, consists of the dog (who did try to eat her finger) and Caleb, who plopped down somewhere between the dog and the house, and is content to watch the Chihuahua try to play with Grace.

And he tries, he has his little mouth around her finger and has forgotten that he is trying to eat her and, instead, decides he is going to start licking the finger. His little eyes try to focus on her, and by the time he forgets what he’s doing his tongue is hanging out. The term, Caleb had learned, wasblep.

The dog looks between Grace and Claeb, trying to figure out very clearly what it was that he was doing here and what he was supposed to be doing.

Grace
And so, Grace wiles away a little time being utterly enchanted with all things pertaining to the cute dog -- its adorable ears, its stubby tail, the way it shows its tiny affection.

It takes her a while longer for that attention to shift to the dog's bipedal companion.

"You're ah... Caleb, yeah? This dog is unbelievable. So tiny! Does he have a name?"

Mr. Evian
“I don’t know how to ask him his name,” he says with a sigh, “he must have one, but I’ve just been calling him dog. I have been waiting to ask Annie to ask him, but she must have better things to do than ask her houseguests’ dog companion what his name is.”

“You’re Grace?”

Grace
"Hmm," Grace says, with an upturned mouth. "You know, if he has a name he calls himself, it's probably unpronounceable by people. Some combination of yips we'd never be able to imitate. If you chose a human name for him, it wouldn't be the first time someone didn't get to pick their own."

She puts her phone down at last, stuffing it into one of her shoes.

"I'm sure he'd love whatever name you came up with."

Mr. Evian
A phone!

Grace’s hand moves and the dog bounds over to try and catch the phone, because it will be his phone. Yes, yes it will be his phone and then he will be living with it and it will be his and then? And then?! Oh, damn, the hand is there again, time to try and eat the hand again.

“Names are so important, though. I got to choose my name, or at least most of it, I suppose it would be more like a nickname. I’m sure he has something he calls me.”

Mouth curls up at the corners, “what about Bill? What do you think about a name?”

Grace
"Bill's cool," she says, laughs when the dog goes after her hand again. Man, she must have dog magnets in her fingertips. "Bitey Bill."

"You got to choose the name Caleb? Why Caleb? I mean... what drew you to that name?"

She swishes her feet around in the Node's waters, a calming kind of noise.

Mr. Evian
"I read a lot of Christian mythology and I thought the idea of being one of the few people who was able to see the promised land after a long, long journey seemed really appealing. I found him interesting as a character, and it means bold. Or dog. Dogs are known for being loyal so... why not be known for being bold and loyal?"

Bill, as he has been dubbed, concludes that he needs to eat her fingers. Makes his vicious, vicious little sound and tries to pounce on her with his little, little paws. Bitey Bill is not a bright dog by any stretch for the imagination.

"Why did you pick Grace?"

Grace
"I didn't pick Grace. My mom did," she says, with perhaps a little more venom than is really warranted.

"But hey, that's not a bad reason for a name there. A bit of the Cynic about you? I don't mean that in a bad way. I have a lot of appreciation for Diogenes."

Mr. Evian
"Humans have complicated every simple gift from the gods," he says with a smile, a nod to the fact that he understood, "and I can appreciate the need and desire for independence. I wish I knew more about Diogenes, but my knowledge is lacking. Most of my education in the subject was directed entirely around history."

A moment, then he smiled, bright and pleased, "I like the name Grace. It has a lot of meaning. It flows off the pen."

Grace
Grace rolls her eyes. "It also doesn't describe me in the slightest. But then, how are you supposed to accurately describe a person before they're born, like, you know, when most names are given?"

She kicks at the water, then, raising a foot that's starting to go all pruned.

"I've had nicknames," she says, smiles then at a memory. Blackberries and rain. "One guy I know always calls me Kit, like a fox cub? It fits me better."

Mr. Evian
“Then stop being called Grace and start being called Kit,” as though it was that simple. For Caleb, it seems to be that simple- if you don’t like your name, change it. Simple enough.

He looks at her again.

“Why do you think that Grace doesn’t fit?”

Grace
"'Cause I'm about as graceful as a newborn giraffe, both with words and on my feet? I don't know. It just doesn't."

She attempts to pet the newly-monikered Bill. It'll probably result in another play-bite, but that's just so adorable anyway.

"I guess somebody showed you where the Chantry is, eh? I mean, obviously. Or you wouldn't be here..."

Mr. Evian
And it does. This is Bill. Bill’s response to anyone trying to love him is to try to eat them, then realize that he likes pettings, which ends in him licking and nuzzling and bouncing like a popcorning guinea pig.

“Margot brought me here,” he replied, “and Annie said I could stay. I’ve started on the westmost shelves in the library and I’ve been working around. If I keep at my usual pace I should be done with it in… eight months? She has a lot of books.”

Grace
"Aww. Margot and Annie are nice people," she says, "And you... you are just precious. Precious!"

A beat.

"The dog. I mean the dog."

She sighs contentedly at Bill's little bouncing antics. This is, well, just what she needed, really.

"I've been meaning to set up a place like this near the city. No Node, of course. I don't know how to make them, or if that's even possible. But Annie's said she'll donate the library in digital form, and I'll have space for people. I just haven't gotten around to it, because..."

Mr. Evian
"Because..?"

Grace
She paused there because perhaps the next words will break the spell of calm on this place. It's hard to talk about.

"Well, because I'm busy. There's been murders and disappearances I'm investigating. I'm really glad you ended up here, to be honest. It's safer."

Mr. Evian
He thinks about this. It's an odd thing, because the way that he looks is at once distant and a little like one would expect a toddler to look when they're processing a very complicated thought.

"I don't understand why someone would actively want to kill another person," he says, "there's a sacredness in living, in how much effort and energy it takes to become alive. It seems like you'd be destroying art."

Grace
She frowns a bit, as if trying to figure Caleb out -- a mirror of his own toddleresque quality.

"There's many reasons. The noblest of which is to end someone's great suffering. But I don't think these deaths were so noble. For one, if they were, we'd already know why the people died."

Mr. Evian
"But... if it's noble then it's not murder. Murder is harmful- ending someone's suffering isn't harmful."

A second, a beat as he pieces through what is going on, and what he knows.

"How did they die?"

Grace
"In one case, hypothermia. In two others, gunshots to the head and chest. In three others, we have no clue, and can only guess that they might be dead. They just never came back home."

She pets Bill again, Bill the oblivious. Bill the bitey. It makes things easier, somehow, when there's something that simple around. Bite and bounce and lick, in that order.

"It's all gone down in Colorado Springs, but yeah. From all accounts, they were all fresh Awakened Mages. That has everybody understandably worried that it might spread to here."

Mr. Evian
"Maybe people didn't want them anymore," he says. Doesn't insist, but offers as though this was a very real possibility. That life can be sacred on one hand but so easily tossed aside the next.

He nods, "I think things are okay here. Everyone seems to be really nice and Annie has a nice house and people are welcome here. There is a lot of support."

Grace
Maybe people didn't want them anymore. There's a sad statement. It has her petting arm going limp, to Bill's dismay. "I don't think that was it. They were missed."

It's possible to not be missed. The concept isn't really lost on Grace. On the contrary, she knows it too well.

"And, I'm glad to hear that you have the support you need here."

Mr. Evian
A second passes, and he sits with the idea that someone missed these people- did he know if he was missed? Did he know if his creator really cared for him, if he was more than just lab equipment? Why would he have been given away so easily, he wasn't ready to go and yet... the longer he moves on the more he wonders if he should have feelings about his state.

"What's a Mormon?"

Grace
"Er..."

Bit of a non sequitur, that. It has the train of Grace's mind a bit derailed for a second, as she tries to come up with an answer that makes sense.

"It's um... an offshoot of Protestant Christianity? Started by Joseph Smith, I think? They believe in angels a lot, and abstain from coffee, which is like," she huffs out a laugh. "A holy sacrament to me, so I'm obviously not Mormon. Why do you ask?"

Mr. Evian
"I tell people I'm from Utah and they keep asking if I'm a Mormon and at first I thought it was like being an alien? And then I wondered if it was an ethnicity? And I don't know what my ethnicity is, so I thought maybe I'm a Mormon?" he shrugged, "I figured you would know."

Grace
"Caleb, where are you from? I mean, besides just Utah..."

She sighs, sits up from her awkward lying-down-and-petting-chihuahua position.

"Eh. I guess you don't need to tell me if you don't want to, I just... I don't know anyone from Utah who wouldn't know what Mormonism is. Sometimes the question of where you come from doesn't just mean a location."

Mr. Evian
"I've been with a member of the Society of Ether for the entirety of my existence up until now," he says, shrugs and says this as though this is normal. As though spending time with awakened society was just how people lived their lives.

"We spent all our time in Eden, and then I left and came here," he said, "it's a lot more lively than being there."

Grace
"So... Isolated, like? Your whole life? They obviously didn't teach you everything you needed to know, did they? Like, well. For instance. What's a Mormon."

There's better ways of putting all this. Grace winces at herself for it, and resumes petting the bouncing ball of fluff, although she can't help but plaster her worry over Caleb all over her face.

He's just so... sheltered.

Mr. Evian
"Mormons never really came up. I have a basic introduction to numerous subjects, though. History, theoretical physics, the American legal system, superstitionist theories, gardening," he could go on and on, "and I know how to disassemble and reassemble most conventional electronic equipment to cannibalize for parts."

"Science doesn't need to be completely expensive."

He pauses.

"Are Mormons going to come up a lot?"

Grace
"Maybe. That and murders. There's stuff you can't easily just... learn out of a book. And as such, you're about to learn a lot. Not all of it good. Most of it, completely bizarre."

She swings around, and grabs her pruny, wet feet, so that she can more easily look him eye-to-eye, even if she rarely actually manages to do so.

"But... Someone told me once, that your eyes get opened to the beauty of the world along with the ugliness. There will be good things to learn, too."

Mr. Evian
"I'm finding that... the people you interact with and see... they're a lot more interesting than the magick of it all. This... maybe we're drawn to what's new."

Grace
"I did mean the people you interact with and see. There's not a whole lot of difference between that and the magick of it all, when you get down to it. I mean..."

She stares up into the sky, the stars starting to come out -- and from a place this remote, you can see them so clear.

"What Margot and Annie did for you, the support you have, that's beautiful. The ones who hate and kill, not so much. But they don't get to dull the brightness of experience."

Ned, Be Careful.

Ned
The knock comes on whichever of however many security doors Grace has between her and the outside world and that Ned has managed to gain access to before having to Knock in the first place.

Opening the door, he is brow perked and lip pursed, hair gel'd back and flat along his scalp (contained) while the semblance of his resonance, a controlled suffocation, like a baptism or a bit of bdsm with a trusted partner, washed in ahead of him, even as the effect he'd no doubt come here within, steadily begins to diminish and dissolve.

What was once a pair of slacks and black sweater, all as non-descript as it gets, becomes a more noticeably impressive black hoodie, cut up pair of converse and dark gray jeans.

"Did what I could to mask the approach. Hope that satisfies our mutual paranoia." A pause in the doorway the brow remains perked. "What's up?"

Grace
She's been doing this a lot lately -- inviting people to this place. It's one spot she doesn't mind if the Technocrats discover. It is empty except for a past life. A Sleeper version of Grace once lived here, and she kept it around out of a desire to have a place to store her clothes. This is the backup. It doesn't seem, to Ned, that anyone actually lives here. It isn't steeped in the sharpness of a bird's wing. There is dust.

And, there is Grace, sitting on a box at a tiny table with her laptop.

"You're actually the first one to do that, and it's nice. You probably should."

She turns to him, gives him what she hopes is a reassuring smile, and gestures over to the 'kitchen' counter where there is a plate of store-bought cupcakes. "If you want one... you know. Protect me from having to eat them all."

Ned
"No thanks. Trying to cut back."

Smile met with a smirk, his hands vanishing into his pockets when she invites him inside. He nudges the door shut behind him and follows her into the 'kitchen' gaze travelling the length of the place and easily dismissing it as a 'hideout' rather than a home. His hands remain in his pockets and he moves to pull his hood up (all the better to keep DNA samples/fingerprints from being left anywhere).'

"I checked out your 'Wiley' at an Auction the other week. His girlfriend is actually his Fiance and the pair of them are pretty tight knit. No secrets, so they're both in on it."

Grace
She shrugs at his dismissal of cupcakes, not exactly sad that there'll be more for her. But then he follows that up with more business. He went out to talk to Wiley. Okay. Well. That's news.

"I found out something that suggests that we need to be... well. More careful. At least one of the murder victims was a secret Technocrat. They've opened up their own investigation."

"But, please tell me what you found out, if anything?"

Ned
"Shit."

Something in Ned's features falls away, pushing him internal for a moment. A hand pulls out of his pocket against better instincts and grinds fingers into his brow for a second.

"I was hoping it was them doing the killings."

It takes a moment for the information to sink in before Ned returns to the conversation  hand slipping back into his pocket, a breath puffing free of his cheeks.

"I don't have much more than that other than confirmation of everything you told me about him. Description, Fiance. They do really dangerous hunts for 'sport' and as membership events go. One of Wiley's friends own's land up near Pike Peak where he said they can go to 'practice' the hunts...which was the location of one of the murdered Victims, St Croix? Who was a member of the Order as you know."

A pause to parse through any further information.

"I spoke to the Doc so I assume you've got the low down on what Margot and I sorted out with this Keeper thing. We're not going near that with a Ten foot clown pole and I think everyone else needs to steer clear of it too. Evelyn's  a pretty heavy suspicion at the moment so if someone wants to jump on talking to her, interrogating her, figuring out who the hell she actually is, that'd be pretty great..." Another pause. A bit of sarcasm there, though it doesn't seem aimed at Grace (because she knows the tone of his sarcasm by now when it's aimed directly at her).

"That's about all right now. I'll know more before the weekend is out, hopefully....but...."

Ned stares at Grace, sucking in a deep breath.

"I need to know how likely it is that it's a Euthanatos doing these killings." She mentioned Mike. She's been dating one. A high ranking one if rumours suggest. Ned's eyes are firm here, lips thin and pressed.

Grace
There's information. Stuff that Grace just soaks in, like the reference to Pike's Peak and practicing. Practicing on LaCroix? Ned wants to take everything directly to Evelyn, and that's a fine idea, except that they have no real proof yet, and it would just clue her in on the next people she needs to kill if she is the one.

And Grace would respond to all that, if not for Ned's last statement. The thing he needs to know.

"A normal, sane Euthanatos? Not likely, except for the Technocrat. I don't know about you, but if I found somebody spying on us for the enemy and endangering us all, it would piss me off. If Laura Fairbanks was hiding her status as a Technocratic Agent, there's no telling what else she was hiding. A member of the Euthanatos would be able to find out and dispense justice. But they also would, I don't know, tell people.

"They don't go after innocents, Ned. Not unless the only thing left in that life is suffering, they don't."

Ned
(Life 1/Entropy 1: Polygraphic Likelihood Test. Diff. 4 - 1 for Pain)

Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (9, 10) ( success x 2 )

Grace
[As far as Grace is aware, she is not even stretching the truth. Now, normal and sane are relative terms. It stands to reason that an insane Euthanatos is scary shit, but so are most insane Mages.]

Ned
"Far as I can tell, the Euthies have an agenda that doesn't sit well with a lot of the Trads. That agenda could well pose problems and more than likely, has posed problems in the past. Killing folks  is part of the mission. I can't imagine it would be terribly difficult to get carried away with that. Especially given Jhor and all that..."

Ned's nostrils flare. His hand in his pocket is bunched, fist forming a tight knot that the hoodie's excess falls over for the most part. The air still lingers with that controlled asphyxiation he brought in with him.

"...I've recently learned more about them and they are a lot more...exacting in who they hunt and why. In a clear cut world and case history, sure they're top notch and respectably doing the right thing. This situation though...a lot of variables involved. Maybe it's a rogue agent, or worse, a fallenone-" A vague curl to his lip that vanishes with a cleared throat "-or maybe they found something out about this Order we don't know yet and are playing 'damage control'."

The fist relaxes steadily, shoulders shrugging inside the voluminous hoodie.

"So far though....I'd like to know some other suspects you think might operate with a 2 to the chest, 1 to the head sort of mentality when it comes to killing people. Who are knowledgeable enough about crime scene cleaning to know what to wipe away and how to do so with impossible clarity. Can actively take on mages and deal with them pretty comfortably and who...by your account...aren't Technocrats."

A pause. No, he's done for the moment.

Grace
"Like I said, your average, normal, sane 'Euthie' has a rather strict code of ethics that they adhere to like it's a lifeline. And it is, considering. I'm not going to sit here and tell you it's never happened, that no Chakravanti has ever gone on a killing spree for fun or quintessence, but... I couldn't say that about any Tradition. And everybody knows how to use guns, man. Hell, it was a Chorister who taught me how to shoot, for fuck's sake.

"In my experience, they're less likely to be the cause of mass panic and murder than others. I know that's just anecdotal. I don't have a scientific data set revolving around Tradition serial killers, but you know..."

She sighs, looks at the door behind him. Remembers herself pleading with Whitney not to open it -- not to endanger herself...

"A Euthanatos once stood behind that door with the intent to kill me. It was probably the most compassionate and caring thing anyone's ever done for me."

Ned
"If it was just about the guns, I wouldn't be concerned. All the facts combined do a good job of eliminating a lot of potentials though. Capability to do all of this as well as keep the collective Mage community in Denver in the dark as to their identity alongside Kill three Mages without anyone, the Techies included, knowing until after the fact? That is not a small thing to accomplish, you have to admit that at least. Someone capable, skilled and secretive enough to make those acts happen that knows what they are doing and how to accomplish it all directly and effectively."

A pause. Hand held up.

"...But you're right. There's no guarantee whatsoever nor evidence. I'd like to be wrong but that level of capability is...well, you said it already." Scary Shit. "Regardless of that particular fact, our Cabal's going to do some investigating around the Order. Try to dig up some of the more esoteric nonsense these people seem to believe in. Part of me thinks there's something nephandic going on in their ranks but I won't know until we get a closer look. I do need to know more about what we'd be looking for though. Iconography or symbols or even phrasing and language. If you've got anything around that, feel free to leave it in the mail box."

Ned's wrapping things up. The air is clear and free once more and his demeanor seems a touch antsy. Ready to get moving again.

"Anything else?"

Grace
"It suggests a powerful Mage, to me. Not Euthanatos. Perhaps your Secret Keeper spirit cleaned up the crime scenes? I don't know. I also wouldn't know the first thing about Nephandic iconography. Empty voids in the depths of space? Cthulhu? Those ridiculous upside-down crosses that Goths like to wear? No. I take that back. That's an insult to Goths."

She rubs at her eyes. "And probably Cthulhu... I will say, though, that their Workings sometimes have a... feeling about them. They can use Magick like normal folks, but they can also use this kind of... inverted Magick. Qlippothic. You'd know it if you looked at it. Not fun. I can show you an example sometime. It might still have that... disgusting quality."

"But, you should probably know what else I found before you leave. Elizabeth Palor's father? Grandfather? Is a high-ranking member of the Falcon-people. His company is where I found that Technocrat talking about his dead partner and investigations into the murder. His name was Phillip Wright. He might be off trying the same thing as you."

Ned
"Mmmmm, well that puts Wiley's membership into perspective, given they're getting hitched. Daddy needs a successor."

Ned's eyes dart a little at the information, but he doesn't offer more than that. He pulls back from the kitchen with a glance around, already rolling his shoulders into an easier gait.

"I'll be in touch again once we've solidified something more concrete. I trust you'll share things out with the rest of the collective. Better suited than me...or the Doc I think-" A bit of a laugh there, utterly unbidden "-keep me posted on what else you might find though."

He's heading for the door, thoughtful if grim.

Retro -- The Fallout

Pen
THE SETTING:

A green field somewhere in Washington Park, clover and the dream of green: green as green only is when man wishes green to exist; green as a fairy's glade, green as a hope of summer. The setting: flower garden nearby, and it's late evening - not dark yet. Darkness will descend during the second act of

TIDUS ANDRONICUS

OR

THE TEMPEST

OR

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING*.

THE TIME:

Right now the sun is sinking, thinking about setting, There is a stage built up in the park for tonight's play, beginning soon--twenty minutes from now.

People are still coming with their blankets, their picnic baskets, their transportable chairs.

THE CAST:

Penelope Mercury Mars has already staked out a corner of the grass and has spread a nubby blanket out, something in grays and blues which looks like the sea and is well-worn, worn-so-well that it is raveling, that the only hope it had to continue its existence was to become a picnic blanket. Picnic blanket, most hallowed of blanket jobs!



*VOTE FOR THE PLAY NOW. BY SHOUTING IT OUT, OOC.

Grace
Grace came with Kalen, bringing the necessary food and drink. She would also consider robots to be necessary, but apparently no -- they are not actually so. Shakespeare did not know of robots. A very sad fact that, with time machines, should be possible to rectify. Why has this not been done yet? Or perhaps it has.

Shakespeare must have had to beat down the time travelers with a special stick made just for future-people. He probably gave it a unique name that would, had he writ it down, have survived the ages.

Shakespeare did know of spirits and wizards though, that much is evident by the play on offer today in the park. It also shows his feelings towards all those time travelers, by making his wizard break and bury his staff and abandon magic altogether.

"Woostick. I think he would have called it that. Or a Magerybopper. You think? A stick for bopping sorcerers?"

That, by the way, comes out of nowhere. If anyone were to ever ask Grace Evans what she was thinking at any given time, it might just be something like that.

Nick
Nicholas Hyde arrives very-nearly-late, particularly for someone well-versed in the Art of Time.  He appears in a whirlwind of dark hair (unfortunately frizzed by humidity) and checkered blue dress shirt and grey tie, fresh from work, and there is a bottle-shaped object in his hand, covered in a brown paper bag.

He halts at the edge of the park, scanning over the gathered heads, and: fortunately Pen's is bright red enough to be spotted quickly.

So he beelines, and soon enough he is about to -

"Oh.  Hello, Grace," he says, lifting a hand in a wave as he approaches and notices the Elite there with his wife.

Elliott Chandler
Kalen Michael Holliday has been a lot of people.  He is, in the end, another person now.

They are about to watch the Tempest.  None of the people he has ever been have watched this play.  None of the people he has ever been understood how to just stop and watch something ridiculous for the sheer joy of it.  The people he has been, likewise, read things to help them survive.

He appears tonight with Grace, calm enough, in jeans and a plain pale gold tee-shirt.  They have enough food to feed a small army.  And coffee.  Two kinds of coffee because some people want dark roast and some people like those blonde coffees.  It is, at least, less complicated than when he brings hot chocolate with about a dozen kinds of gourmet marshmallows.  (But there are hazelnut marshmallows, for Grace to put in her coffee.  And some extra.)

Both Pen and Nick get a subdued, though not hesitant wave.  "Hey."

Pen
Here are Grace and Kalen. Pen lifts a chin by way of greeting once they're close enough for her to acknowledge: cool, welcoming - glad, see, in a way that is quite uncomplicated. She is glad about people. The air is full of possibility; of spirits, of the end of a day; it is sleepless. See how she chases it with the luminous slash of a smile and a raised hand, fingers curved just so. Hello! Come here? Yes no? There's this flick of a look toward Nick because it has been all day long, all long day long, and such engenders longing, and anyway: she is glad in an uncomplicated way to see people knows; she longs in an uncomplicated way for someone she does.

There's a bag of stuff on one corner of the blanket. That includes an environment conscious bug repellent, some fancy cheeses, grapes, bottles; it includes salt and vinegar chips and a baguette. Simplicity.

Grace
"Hello! You like your coffee dark or light roasted? I... think this one is light," she says, grabbing a green thermos out of her bag and shaking it next to her ear, as though she could hear the darkness thereof.

The differences in what people constitute a picnic is definitely on display here, as Grace then unlugs her bag of coffee and stuff all over Pen's blanket. There are multiple thermoses. And marshmallows. And udon noodle take-out. And dumplings of some unknown kind. Also, cupcakes, because Grace decided that sugar was necessary.

There is very little simplicity here, or even a theme beyond "Hey, this might be tasty." Chaos, definitely. Delishus chaos.

And, also, a bit of bluntness, as if Pen and Nick's blanket were already hers to plop down upon. After all, the food and drink are also already theirs.


Nick
Nicholas watches as Grace's bounty spills all over the blanket: dumplings and marshmallows and thermoses and take-out.  A very generous bounty, all told.  It takes him a half a heartbeat, but he smiles up at Grace after a moment and gestures to the expanse of blanket.

Then he hands the bottle-shaped object to Pen, and takes a moment to reach up and loosen his tie and undo the last button on his collar before he sits down and leans over to place a kiss on her cheek.

His gaze then returns up to Grace and the man with her.  "Who's this with you?"

Elliott Chandler
Elliott seems a little more hesitant to just take over their blanket, although he does not seem at all concerned that Grace is putting their food out for people he barely knows.  Still, even if he has abandoned the Order, he is fond of Penelope Mercury Mars.  He settles; relaxed enough, yes, but at the very edges of the blanket.

For a second, even though he came with the food, even though he picked it out with Grace, he studies the food as though it seems as new to him as to anyone else.  He still expects something else.  Something more like what Penelope brought.  And wine.  Red wine and a different language.

Denver still seems surreal.  "We met once," he says quietly to Nick.  "Some time ago.  Though I was someone else then, I suppose."  Not that he actually offers anything other than that.  Apparently Nick asked Grace and will get his answers from Grace.

"Penelope," he says.  It is all the greeting that she gets, but there is a warmth to the tone and there is a little smile.  No.  It is almost all the greeting she gets, because now, now that they aren't bound by their Tradition and separated by it (though Pen may not yet have heard), Elliott reaches out across the expanse of nubbly blanket to offer Pen a hand.

Pen
"What a feast is here," Pen says, as Grace begins to unload thermoses and dumplings and cupcakes/as Nick bends down to hand Pen the bottle of (shh, it isn't alcohol, to be consumed publicly; it is in a brown paper bag, which everybody knows is just how people choose to drink juice sometimes in parks on warm summer evenings while the lightning bugs spark and the stars come out peer out slip away from the edges of the clouds which roil on the horizon to the west see and it will be a beautiful sunset once it comes for certain a sunset like a battle between Hell and Heaven a sunset of gold foil rims of luminous and bloody) wine. She sets the wine bottle down but her hand stays finds Nick's arm and then his thigh and then oh good a Nicholas shaped chair.

To Grace: "I like my coffee dark, but I'm not adverse to light. Would you two like to share our grapes, perhaps some wine? Have you two seen this troupe perform before? I hear they are very good, and that Prospero will be Prospera."

"I feel I haven't seen either of you in an age!"

Grace
Grace looks back and forth between the two men in disbelief. They don't know each other. "Kalen, you're so antisocial these days," she says, no disappointment or shaming there, just a statement.

Kalen will be as he is in the moment -- a whirl of changes around an essentially good man.

"This is Kalen. Or Elliot. It depends on what he wants to be called. My partner in crime and business, which is really one and the same when you think about it." It certainly is where Grace is concerned, in so many different ways.

Then, she goes to making a hole in the cupcake box. Managing that, she hands a lavender vanilla bean one over to Kalen, who clearly needs it.

"We are hoping to open a community center here at some point, because Denver needs more counselors before it goes and hurts itself again."

Pen explains how she likes her coffee dark, so Grace examines a red thermos and rolls it over. "This one's dark! There's a creamer tin in here somewhere, and hazelnut marshmallows..."

Nick
There is a furrowing of Nick's brows as Kalen says they have met before, and: it is hard to pin down faces sometimes, when one is continually meeting new people day in and day out.  Grace mentions Kalen, though, and then there is a light of recognition - ah! and Nick nods and extends a hand forward and up.

"I remember you from the meeting now.  Good to see you again," he says, apparently nonplussed as Pen seats herself on him; evidently he is so used to it that it gives him little pause.

Denver needs more counselors, Grace says, and there is another little furrow of his brows and Nick hmms and reaches for a few grapes.  "Were both of you expecting other people?"

Elliott Chandler
"I've been away a bit," he says to Penelope.  "But I've missed home.  And the people in it."

Elliott reaches for Nick's hand once his is free of Penelope's.  "Good to see you."  He smiles a little again, relaxed but for the first time a little unsure and his eyes travel from Nick to Pen, even if he is still, at least in theory, answering Nick's question about who he is.  "Probably Elliott, more than Kalen.  I've left the people I took that Name with.  Enough people know me by that that I expect it will stick with some of them."

"Denver," Elliott says, returning his attention actually to Nick, "Has a way of seeing to it that one encounters others.  We've simply learned never to assume that we will have a solitary picnic."

Pen
The clasp of hands, Pen to Kalen, was firm: gacious. Pen: she leans back against Nicholas and watches Grace's fingers whisper over the thermoses as if she were shaping the existence of dark roast as if she were a trasure-keeper, market-owner, and aren't there legends about Mercurial Elite Virtual Adepts and their caffinated rites in the deep dark hallowed hollow light of their monitors, rites which - fueled so, by coffee - might shed this world and blossom another? "Hazelnut marshmallows?" soft, this, and bright.

Then: "I recall you - " Kalen. A glance fixes him as the subject. " - saying something about community outreach among the sleepers."

And the conversation flows, as conversation will, and Penelope leans forward a touch to reach for thermos or pull out a cup so that Grace can pour some of the dark roast in (drink of shadows), and then:

The temperature does not drop in actuality, but Pen: she sharpens, come suddenly to attention: is as still, see, as ever anything ready to be pulled from a stone. She is studying Kalen. She studies him all through his commentary on the possibility of solitary picnics in Denve.

And then she says, "Why have you abandoned your Name?"

Grace
"We always expect other people. It's the way of things."

Grace just keeps right on going, after Pen's iciness shows up, offering a kettle-shaped ceramic device to her -- it is the creamer. A tube of marshmallows follows, their brown color indicative of something fancier than Jet-Puffed.

"He's decided to go be a priest of like, all the gods," Grace says, and she is so incorrect, and she knows it, and yet -- this is fun. "We've not got room for all the statues. He got me a Buddha one for my room, and I don't even have a room to put it in yet."

A conspiratorial smile at Kalen, there. Come, play this game with me. It won't be that bad, her eyes say. No matter what.


Nick
Nick settles an arm around Pen and reaches for the bottle of wine even as the others are preparing coffee - at night, in the summer, in the park.  Nick will take the wine, thank you.

"A priest of all the gods?" he asks, and here he turns his eyes up to the other man, and there's a sort of easy acceptance in them: curiosity and openness are often the same thing.  "So you're joining the Celestial Chorus, then?"

Elliott Chandler
Elliott does not, not really mind Penelope's sharpened attention.  He understands that this must, to her, seem as incomprehensible as it once seemed to him.

Grace tries to play, to seize the threat of an oncoming storm and to wrest from it something gentler and warmer.  There is a smile that flickers briefly, something that speaks more of fondness and indulgence than agreement.  Elliott though, allows Penelope to still see his eyes.  His expression.

Because this conversation is less about Nick, really.  Nick just got caught up in a moment between one Flambeau and one former Flambeau.  Grace struggles to pull away from the seriousness of the moment, but Elliott owes Penelope more than that.  They were family, once.  They might be, in another way, family again.

"For years," he says, very quietly, "Everything I did, everything I was called to do...there is a war whether I will it or not.  I will not try to pretend our world is otherwise.  But over and over and over again, the solutions I had were...."  His voice trails off, and it not only that they are surrounded by Sleepers.  Those Sleepers can almost certainly not hear him.  "They were what they were.  I do not regret what I have been.  Those things needed to be done.  But I was always too late, Penelope.  I was always too late and there was but one solution when I arrived.

"It wasn't enough.  I can't be what I was.  Not anymore.  And what use, your people, for someone who has only horror left for war."  He shakes his head.  "Fuck, Penelope.  There may be circumstances that force my hand, but given the choice...I would never again do the things that I have been forced to do.

"I don't belong there anymore, with you.  You know that.  I think you've always known that."

His attention slides from Penelope to Nick.  "Not of any, I'm afraid.  I just have a very inclusive sculpture garden.  Though you're right, about that second thing."

Grace
Grace fake-pouts at Kalen, because he's decided to be serious and not play along with her. Even about being a priest of all the gods. Inclusive sculpture garden? Pah. The hat one has to wear to be a priest of the All-Fathers has to be enormous and grand(iose). It would be awesome. To make fun of.

"There goes my plans to get you a Pope-headdress for Halloween..."

She obtains herself the thermos of other coffee, the blonde, as though Grace ever had a preference when it came to caffeine. She minds the taste of course, they are all lovely.

"You want a dumpling?" she says, to Pen. Dumplings make things better. Don't they?

Pen

When Pen feels Nick's muscles move, she reaches for the wine bottle and snags it before he. The paper bag crinkles and she sets it between her knees, investigates the bottle's neck and mouth,  ah, a cork and the bottle opener tucked away in the bag with grapes, too far for her to reach easily.

Never let it be said that Penelope is not a poised woman; she is poised, just now, and the thing about poise: one cannot tell whether it is because one is on a narrow edge, or a wide avenue; it is only poise; it might be the same anywhere, and ever. Her eyes are such a grey -- Prospero might've conjured such a color for his seaspray-laced cloak or Sycorax (Circe) might've looked into the scrying cup with eyes that witching; that gloam-drunk; that clear. She swiped the wine bottle but she is listening to Kalen Holliday Who Isn't Any Longer explain his weariness.

Her eyes stay on him as she leans forward to snag the bag; get the corkscrew, unfold it: a shining bit of metal. She hands them both to Nicholas, demurs with a courteous shake of her head when Grace asks her if she'd like a dumpling. She would not like a dumpling, just as she does not want the creamer; she does not take it when it is handed to her, unless Grace looks a though she's going to drop it other; then she takes it and sets it down.

"Why do you think I've always known that, Elliot? What could you mean?" It is easy for her to change names for someone; as long as they claim the name, it can be theirs.

She is poised, sure; that does not preclude passion. It tints her voice; it's there in the cant of her head - the flash of her throat when she glances at the stage, conscious alertness, then brings her eyes back; it's in the very slow circling of her fingertips along Nick's knee. She might not even realize she is doing that - she'd abhor what might be regarded as a superfluous movement right now. 

"Do you believe I hold something in my heart for 'war' other than horror?" 

Beat. "This conversation may not be comfortable for our companions." 

Grace

Oh, the ice descends upon this place, now that both Kalen and Pen have ignored her unspoken pleas to keep this whole thing lighthearted. She's been heavy too long. Going to collapse into a black hole at this rate. One must be determined to avoid that kind of thing. It can suck you in, despair. Looking at abysses and all that.

Grace smirks at Pen when she starts declining to accept gifts. Somebody is getting a never-ending delivery of hazelnut marshmallows to their house. More than one could possibly consume in a day, every day. She'll make it hard to cancel, just for fuck's sake. Don't like hospitality? That's too bad. She's going to hospitality the fuck out you. And just try to complain about being buried in a mountain of marshmallows. Oh, that will be fun.

She pulls out her phone, starts typing. "Hey, Nick? Where do you guys live? I want to send you something. Very important, can't discuss this sort of thing in public, you know."

Well. There will be marshmallows. And a note, which won't arrive via shipment. Wrap a lie in a truth, yes? She does have important things to share. And it looks like she and Elliot won't be welcome on the blanket here for too much longer.

Nick

Pen's demeanor changes, and Nicholas is quiet as it does.  He allows Pen to take the bottle of wine (still paper-wrapped) from his hands, and then moments later to hand it back to him with the corkscrew, and he does this all wordlessly.  There is a deftness in his fingers as he flips the wings on the corkscrew up and works the screw into the cork with a few quick spins of his hand, and then he pulls it free with a pop.

His silence could be mistaken for trepidation or fear: his wife is a passionate woman, and Nicholas is an insightful man, and the current of tension passing between her and Elliot could not go unmissed.

Grace says his name and this draws his eyes up and away from what he is doing, and then there is a little furrow of his brows.  "We don't give out our home address, but I can give you the P.O. Box," he says, his voice tinged with apology.  "What is it?"

Elliot

Penelope's attention sharpens.  It is impossible not to note the shift in the energy, but Elliott seems unconcerned.  Truthfully, he has not faced many beings he would consider more dangerous than Penelope.  Nor, truthfully, more graceful.  Iris was, perhaps, both of those things and he stayed his ground then.  His lack of fear then and his lack of fear now are similar things - to him, neither Iris or Penelope are enemies.

There are, aren't there, reasons he is leaving the Flambeau?

"If I thought you had any love of war," Elliott says softly, barely audible over the crowd, "I would not have offered you advice when you arrived in my city, I would have found the leverage to run you out.  I certainly would not be here now.

"I meant only that I thought you saw what I was just coming to understand then, which is that at some point I was going to hesitate a second too long and someone was going to get hurt.  Perhaps worse.  And that changed, in some respects, everything.  Not because I loved what I did once and did no longer, but because I was no longer capable.

"That my place is between people and things that would make them suffer has not changed.  But the ways in which I can protect them have changed.  Enough that in some ways, our path are divided.  

"Though I do hope not in all of them." 

Pen

There is a spark of reaction: a shooting star is the same thing as a falling star, and both smoulder in the wizard's cup. Her eyebrows perk: eloquent. He'd have found the leverage. She listens. She listens earnestly and with a whisper of tension in her shoulders and the End-of-Afternoon gold is gathered up, growing long in this twilight. Grace and Nick are having their own conversations: sort of. 

Pen. Simply: "I don't know what to say to you." 

Her gaze wicks away as water wicks from a stone. It lingers on the sward where the play is to be performed as she sets her thoughts in order (tries to). Her voice is confessional quiet but intense: of course it is intense (vibrant). "I'm not insightful as some other people are. I wish I was. I don't know how to say the right thing." Now her gaze flicks back to Elliott. "There's probably a right thing to say to you, but Ash and Oak wither if I know it. I should probably say nothing. But I can't say nothing. What should I say?"

"I don't believe you see the Order clearly. And how could you see yourself clearly in the Order if you don't see it clearly? You're speaking as if there's only one way to be. As if the only thing to do is fight and toil in gruesome scenes and watch your conscience chiseled away as you follow orders like tock follows tick and there's only one set of orders; but there's more than one House and more than one way to be. What is our Will for if not the freedom to choose and make what we would. I just -

"Tonight I want to watch the Tempest with Nicholas. I don't want to watch it with someone who I know, freshly know, feels such contempt for one of the more important things in my life. Elliott, I'm sure our paths will cross again. But right now you two should find your own blanket. I'm sorry, Grace. Thank you for the marshmallows and the coffee."

Grace

People are mostly incomprehensible. Kalen... Elliot didn't say the things that Pen's accusing him of. Contempt? Grace is still quite dedicated to bringing the fight to wherever it needs to be, and he holds no contempt for her, only love. Always that. Grace had expected this reaction from some people. Pen? Well.

Suppose that answers that question.

Not allowed to know where they live, not allowed in their general area even. For the present, at least. Until Pen cools down, if she cools down. On second thought, sending her marshmallows might be misconstrued as appeasement.

Grace sighs, looks around at the scattered array of food and drink, starts re-packing her favorites up into her bag.

"We can't both survive, and put these walls up between us."

She looks to Kalen, gives a sad smile. It'll be okay.

"I am going to be sending you both the details of what you should actually be getting worked up about." She lowers her voice. "Apprentices have been getting disappeared from Colorado Springs. The locals think it might be our most favorite enemies."

Sending it to your P.O. box. Because that's apparently safer. Yes.

"He doesn't hold contempt for you or what you believe in, Pen. Otherwise, he'd have contempt for me too. One thing I am not about to do is stop fighting."