[The Lion: http://g.nordstromimage.com/imagegallery/store/product/Gigantic/10/_8196710.jpg]
Grace Evans
The globe on Grace's laptop monitor spins
on its table in the library, backlit with unmoving stars, and glowing
with sunlight on one side. But it lacks clouds, this representation. The
engineers must have thought that too complex, too unpredictable. They
could have faked it, perhaps, but this earth is naked.
It's also
got pushpins in it, which if they were real, would blot out the sun for
miles and pierce the mantle with their sheer size, so it's a good thing
this is merely realistic.
It is, of course, what she's been
working on for a couple of snow-covered days, before the snow excuse for
staying at the Chantry ran out, and so did all of her leads. Now, she's
staying inside the underground bunker that is the library for other
reasons.
Grace is not at her laptop at present. She's reading a
book. It's one she usually goes straight to when the curiosity takes
her. It's an old programming manual, which is odd because one usually
does not learn programming through books. But it's not like there's a
stackoverflow for universe hacks (at least not that she knows of) so she
has to make do.
It has pictures, and source code, but more
importantly, liner notes written in sometimes pencil, sometimes pen.
Whoever the writer was is not here anymore. At one time she hoped they
were still around, but lately that seems less and less likely.
Kalen Holliday
Kalen
wanders down into the library. Any illusion that he might have been
just coming down by chance, and not because he was looking for Grace, is
rather spoiled by the fact that he is carrying enough takeout for two
people and a shiny, cobalt blue gift bag.
He pauses when he sees
Grace reading, head tilting to one side. And then, without a word to
interrupt her, he moves to settle in the chair nearest hers. He starts
pulling boxes of food out of the bag and placing them on the table - not
close to the laptop or any notes.
Grace Evans
[Perception+Awareness!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )
Grace Evans
[Also, should have done Nightmares!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (3, 3, 6, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )
Kalen Holliday
[Right! Nightmares!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (2, 2, 4, 5, 8) ( success x 1 )
Grace Evans
Kalen's
like a storm rolling around above ground, and she senses that -- the
way the universe responds to his presence -- well before he's actually
down the stairs. It doesn't really interrupt her reading, because he's
been here a lot recently, working on his part of their research project.
And for a while, that's what she thinks he's up to, playing around in
the office with his papers and string, because for some reason he needs
his data to be physical.
But then, he's down the stairs, and
there's a storm underground. She lowers the book slightly, peering at
him over the pages, at his bags of food and... what? A present?
"I see you're feeding me again. Not that I mind. Also, hi."
Kalen Holliday
"It
seemed silly to go get food and not bring you any back." Some people
would have asked what she wanted. Kalen just tries bringing back
options and paying attention to which options Grace likes, New options
get added to what seemed to be her favorite options. Then that process
continues. It's methodical and experimental and...entirely not how
normal people figure out what their friends like.
He slides a pair
of chopsticks and a fork across the table to her, Then, a little more
hesitantly, that gift bag. He has never displayed hesitance about the
food. Not even the day he brought back Caribbean food that was curries
and goat and almost nothing conventional for Denver.
Grace Evans
Grace
enjoys odd food. Odd anything, really. And even goat curry isn't the
weirdest she's had and liked. She doesn't get out much anymore, but it's
been Kalen's insistence that even if she's not ready to go outside and
sit in a restaurant that she eat something that's made the
hollows in her cheeks lessen over the weeks. Her body went through a
lot. It needs the material to build back what the Hydra stole.
So
his food delivery system is never turned down. It might be a little
weird, but so is she. It doesn't quite occur to her that it's strange
even.
But the gift bag, that's new.
She ignores the food for
a bit, putting down the precious tome of Programming, and inspects the
present. She's expecting maybe some equipment, or some papers on
Thakinyan perhaps (why they would be in a gift bag is unknown) but the
stuffed lion it actually turns out to be? Completely out of the cobalt
blue.
"Uhh..." her brows knot. She pulls it out of the bag slowly.
It's soft, cute, with tiny bead eyes. But she's confused. Why this?
Kalen is being very strange. She looks over at him, remembering that
hesitation, and she knows that she is missing something important here.
"It's adorable. And thank you. But, what is it for?"
Kalen Holliday
"So,
it was snowing," Kalen says. "And...it was the first real snow and it
was...there wasn't much snow in Arizona. I suppose you know that. My
sister thought snow was pretty much magical. It always reminds me of
her. The first time...." He ducks his head, like he is about to say
something impossibly ridiculous that he knows is ridiculous. "We used
to make toys out of bits of junk we found. She wanted to be a princess,
so we made a wand out of what I'm pretty sure was a piece of a car
antenna. We bent wire into this really lopsided star and...." He
clears his throat. "And anyway I always go buy presents on the first
day it snows. Mostly donation presents, since historically I'm not much
for friends. But, this year, I have friends. Also, your room is
missing anything...really personal."
[And, how did you do on your thing I forgot to roll until now Kalen?]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (1, 2) ( success x 1 ) [WP]
Serafine
(Perception plus Awareness.)
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 7 ) Re-rolls: 2
Grace Evans
Grace
remembers this story, knows why he can't finish it. She just nods. This
gift is obviously a special thing for Kalen, and well... Stuffed lions
may not have much of a use, but it's not like it isn't... soft.
There's a bit of consternation at the idea that he thinks of her as a child, but well... This is in tribute to his sister. She can't say it was a bad idea. It really isn't.
"Yeah.
I know. I usually just... try to keep the clutter down," she says, but
really it's that it never occurs to her to buy things like this, things
without a purpose. It bothers her sometimes, that she seems to lack the
impulse, or have emotional connections enough to have anything 'really
personal'.
"Well, it's appreciated," she says, and tries to smile. It's a sad thing, really, but she tries.
Kalen Holliday
Kalen
smiles back, as effortlessly as if she had actually succeeded
brilliantly in her smiling. "There was a minute I thought about getting
you a robot. But I bet you could build better than any of the robots I
could buy you anyway. Also, they robots lacked a certain charm."
He
picks up a carton and pokes at the food inside it with his chopsticks,
then sets it back down. He seems about as interested in the food
tonight as he did the night at Garrett';s. "I got one for Sid too. Not
a lion. Sid's is different. She will either think it's cute or punch
me. I suppose we'll see. But I think we're okay now."
Serafine
There
are things Sera knows, sees, understands, feels, becomes, without every
quite understanding how or why. Sometimes the universe just unzips
itself in her presence and everything is opened up, hollowed out: made
known, right down to the bone. On a night like this, once, Sera caught a
glimpse of Hawksley's avatar, inhuman, winged. Christ. Tonight Sera
can taste them in the air: Grace and Kalen belowground, down the
dark steps, behind the firesafe door in the bunker-of-a-library. And
everyone else who has been here too,
since the last time she was here. Which was also the first time she's been here, in a long, long time.
Footsteps:
floorboards creaking overhead before they turn and head down, the
murmur of voices at the base of the stairs before the library door
swings open. Sera ducking beneath Dan's arm as the consor holds the
door open for her. He's three-quarters of a foot taller than she is.
She does not have to duck, really. It's just a habit, it comes with
walking across thresholds.
"Hey." Her dark eyes cut past Kalen,
linger, searchingly, intently on Grace, then cut back to Kalen. The
greeting encompasses both of them. The introduction, though, "I don't
think you've met Dan," with a cant of her head toward the tall,
tattooed, bearded blond hipster who is her shadow tonight, "Dan, Kalen,
Kalen, Dan. He's Cool." - is mostly for Kalen. She takes in the books,
and the take-out, and the lion, and gives the pair of them the
suggestion of one of her smiles.
"Study break?" With a lilt of query in her often-flat brows. "Or nascent safari?"
Grace Evans
"Nah. I mean, I can take things apart and maybe put them back together again, but designing a robot? No."
She
also picks up a carton of whatever the cuisine du jour happens to be
and inspects it with chopsticks. Udon noodle stir-fry? Where does he
find these places? By now he must be figuring out that she has a soft
spot in her heart for noodly Asian dishes though. She's even quite good
at using those chopsticks. So, she's got noodles hanging out of her
mouth when he exclaims that he's patched things up with Sid. That just
gets an eye-widening.
"Oh, you guys are good again? That's
wonderful," she says. Grace, let's put it bluntly, has a lot of
experience talking with her mouth full. So, she is. It's a rule she
knows, but breaks because she doesn't think about it.
And that's when she feels Sera. And her eyes go wider still.
She
turns toward the door, expectantly. Some day, she will perhaps learn
not to react to each and every bit of resonance she senses, but that's
not this day. And that's not for this resonant being.
She gives
Sera that sad smile, that mixture of hurt and happy that came out so
fully earlier. "We're hunting something, I suppose that's true. Both?"
Kalen Holliday
Dan gets a little wave at the introduction, but Kalen seems about as interested in strangers as he is in the food.
"Well,
now I feel like an idiot for not also picking up some rhinos and a
whole herd of wildebeests. I could have done the whole floor here up
like the Serengeti. That would have been something."
"And
yes, we are hunting, but...on break for a moment at least. I haven't
seen you in awhile. How are you?" He has to know what happened to her,
but he makes absolutely no mention of it. She could as easily have
been away cruising the Mediterranean all this time by his tone.
He
glances back to Grace and laughs. "I apologized. It does happen, from
time to time. There is a specific alignment of the stars and all that
has to happen first, but...every now and again. And then some crazy
bitch got all dramatic visual about some threats. And then we both
called Trent at like three am. I'm sure he loved that, but once he got
over the initial bit of it, he was gracious about it." He stabs his
chopsticks into the container of fried rice and nudges it a little
farther away.
"I haven't seen her since, but I think we may be speaking now. It's probably better than yelling or pointed silence."
Serafine
"I'm brilliant," Sera lies, and Sera is good at many, many things, but lying is not one of them. She lies terribly.
There's something about the way her mouth curves in that frame of a
half-smile, in the subdued gleam of her eyes, the way they catch the
artificial light from the library lamps, the swirling chaos of the globe
on Grace's computer screen that communicates a flash of gratitude for
Kalen's circumspection.
Dan is close behind her, settles his
hands familiarly on her shoulders, and bends to murmur something into
the chaos of her blond curls. Sera tips her head back to him, glancing
over her shoulder with some degree of reassurance. He gives her a brief
look, then one that lifts over her shoulder to the pair of other magi
and lifts his left hand in a wave that is both: answer to Kalen's
greeting, and a brief farewell as he turns to head back upstairs.
"If you were going to fill this place with stuffed animals,"Sera does not care for hunting. Or no: Sera does not have the energy
for anything except the slow and terrible work of healing right now,
and so she does not ask: about what they hunt, or why; about the
threats; from whom, to whome. Any of it. There's no room inside her
for that knowledge, right now.
No fucking room at all.
"You
should fill it with magickal creatures. You know. Not rhinos.
Sphinxes. Griffins and manticore. Fucking unicorns. Satyrs and all
the rest."
Grace Evans
"Zebras," Grace adds, with
an odd look of reminiscence. Zebras may not be magical creatures, but
they are to her. Striped horses. And there she is, staring through the
wall, worry written on her face.
And then, that strange moment ends.
She
knows Sera is not brilliant. She knows the road her friend is on is a
long one. But still, it is so very good to see her here, making
conversation about stuffed sphinxes and manticores. And now she knows
how it must feel to Kalen every time he sees her try -- to leave the apartment, to go out and be social with people, all of that.
So Sera gets an even more genuinely happy smile from her, before she digs back in to her carton of noodles.
Grace Evans
[Ohh man, I just realized how insulting that looks to Sera. Change 'brilliant' to like 'completely well']
Kalen Holliday
Kalen
doesn't say anything about Sera's suggestion at first, but something
about the way his eyes linger on Sera and then scan the room suggest
he's actually considering filling the library with huggable magical
creatures. He does smile a little when Grace adds zebras to the list of
magical creatures.
"Is that what I should do, now?" It doesn't
seem so impossible he might, Grace and Sera have both caught him in
moments where he has been at least present enough to seem human.
"Perhaps."
"Are you hungry? You can have some of this. There's enough here for three." There is
enough for three. But that wouldn't matter since there is definitely
more than enough for one and Kalen seems to have completely dismissed
the thought of eating.
Serafine
Sera is not
hungry. Or rather, Sera is the sort of creature for whom meals and
usually suggestions made by other people. She forgets to eat as often
as she eats, more often than she eats - and drinks herself silly, and
finds herself in a warm diner with her cheek against the cold window at
three-thirty-eight a.m. watching the smear of taillights in the street
outside through her eyelashes while a stranger puts a plate of
hashbrowns in front of her and someone who loves her reminds her of the
peculiar purpose of forks.
But: shared food.
"Thanks," she
hitches a skinny hip onto the table and unearths her hands from the
pockets of her dark hoodie, pulled low over her short leather skirt.
Her black, heavy boots swing in a pendulum arc as she picks up one of
the take-out boxes quite literally at random and wholly by chance.
Opens it to find steamed dumplings fragrant inside. Which is best
because she's not bothering with chopsticks, " - zebras, Grace? One of
these things is not like the others. Winged zebras, I'll allow.
"Maybe. There's probably a story about them, somewhere. In hieroglyphs or, you know, what the fuck ever."
A brief pause, and then,
"The hunting stuff. Something to do with the movie?"
Grace Evans
"It's
something Gadfly used to say," she says, and then swallows a mouthful.
"That we're like zebras masquerading as horses. And then I said I felt
like a striped horse, something in between, you know? Anyway. They're
magic to me."
And Gadfly is gone, missing. The longer it gets, the
more she thinks maybe something more than just forgetfulness happened
to him. Lost in time, like the mystery writer of liner notes in her
favorite library book...
"Yeah. It has to do with the movie."
And
she doesn't say, 'because it's likely still after me, and definitely is
attacking Shoshannah,' because... It's just not fair that horrible
things keep happening.
Kalen Holliday
"It'll be
alright," Kalen says, and his voice is all hazy distance again. He
rises and waves Sera at his chair. "Speaking of slaying monsters, I
should go and see how I'm to do that. If you'll excuse me."
And.
He. Bows. It's stiff, less because the movement is unnatural and more
because Kalen hasn't moved with anything resembling fluid grace (absent
perhaps a few gestures) in some time.
"I do hope that you both enjoy what remains of your evening."
[Because someone's player has to go sleep. Stupid sleep.]
Serafine
Sera
has not actually touched the dumplings. Just opened them, and she's
looking over the open container at Kalen when he bows - when he bows. Whatever she was going to say, Sera allows it to dissolve, for the moment.
"Alright," she tells Grace, quietly. "Zebras too."
Then cuts a glance back to Kalen, somber, sober. Aware.
"Fair sailing."
Grace Evans
"Goodnight.
Thanks for the food. And the lion, too," Grace says after Kalen. And
for the constantly being there, and for the trying to help, and for
keeping her busy... All that too.
"Sera, you should eat," she
says, a bit serious. "You're leaving me with all the noodles rice and
dumplings. I'm going to burst," she adds, a bit less so.
And then, there's noodles hanging out of her mouth again, when she slurps up some more.
Kalen Holliday
Kalen's
eyes flicker for a second. Surprised. A little amused that Sera
remembered. She gets a very brief, but warm smile for that.
He
waves over his shoulder in response to Grace. "Of course, Kit.
Anytime. I'll just be upstairs." But he does not look back, and soon
after, even with that limp, he is gone.
[Thank you both for scenes!]
Serafine
"'Course
I'll eat." Kalen leaves. Sera leans back to watch him limp out of the
library, then turns back to Grace, sitting more fully on the library
desk at which Grace is working, over which all the take-out has been
spread. Sera pops a dumpling into her to prove it, then puts the
container down, chewing the fragrant little morsel as she surveys the
remainder of the feast.
Then back up to Grace.
"About the movie. Back when we had that council, I said I'd - "
Sera offers Grace a spare, half-shouldered shrug by way of explanation.
"I
don't really have the energy to even think about it, right now. Much
less do something. So I'm not going to ask. But if you really need me,
Grace - "
Grace Evans
"Sera, no. Do what you need
to do. I'm getting back involved because... because it helps. Gives me
something to focus on, you know?"
There's a brief moment in that
interim where Grace is certain that Kalen hasn't left. But she watched
him leave. Noodles get chewed like they're a help to whatever cogs are
running in her brain, and she looks around the room. And then, just
stares at the stuffed lion on the table.
She raises a brow, and
puts the carton and chopsticks down so she can pick up the toy again.
Then, she takes a big sniff of it, like that's the most normal thing to
do ever. It smells like rain. Like lightning. It feels, just a little,
like the oncoming storm. In Kalen's absence, it stands out a bit, that
in a way, he hasn't left.
Serafine
The truth is,
Sera doesn't know. She has never required anything to focus on, except
perhaps herself. Her pleasures, immediate or passing, her passions,
temporal or entrenched.
And now, these nights, just Sera.
Nothing
else. There's no room for anything else. When she curls up in bed,
along, the house quiet all around her. The little sparks of life, the
quiet settling noises. Fucking Rick's fucking snoring, which has its
own weird rhythm - when she curls up in bed and pulls the covers tight
and closes her eyes, her whole body starts to shake, no matter how much
she steels herself, stiffens her muscles against it. Sometimes the
spells are passing and she drifts into her dead-to-the-world sleep with a
merciful swiftness. Sometimes she cannot shake them for hours.
"When I said need, I meant need. Need, not want. I just wanted you to know."
Then Sera's eyes cut down to the stuffed lion as Grace picks it up. Sniffs it like that.
"He
consecrated it," Sera tells her, quiet. "Imbued it with his essence.
He can find it again, easily, if he has need. Sometimes it happens
anyway, we just accumulate on the things that are close to us, like
silt at the mouth of a river.
"But if you can see the magic in the world. Watching the tapestry as it folds and unfolds, you can do that, too."
Grace Evans
"Oh... " she says, a little bit of that old wonder in her voice. But there's another thing too. A question of why?
Is
this some kind of tradition for their kind, to give friends objects
inscribed with their essence? Like a monogram written in the background.
A watermark. Or a digital signature.
Yeah, so Kalen's entrusting her with his private key? Something like that? Maybe she'll have to take a look at it, really look at it and its encoding. Later.
For now, she just holds the stormy lion on her lap. It's a special gift indeed then. Maybe even one with a use after all.
She'll
bother Sera to eat more, because she cares. She'll bother Kalen some
later because he just gave her a piece of who he is, and she wants to
know the significance, and wants to know why he didn't tell her that. But right now? It feels almost normal again. There's Sera, teaching her
something new. She's studying in the library. And the safe feeling of
being underground and locked away and warded -- that helps too.
"I think I'll put it... on my desk. Would look good there," she says, pretending at normality.
"And, if I need you... I know you'll be there. That wasn't ever a doubt."
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