Sapphire opened quietly.
It may not be what anyone would have expected, but the cafe with its glass tables and its soft wash of blue light and its juice bar did not really do any advertising. It just appeared, an old cafe that used to host poets and that had checkers sets missing enough pieces that you had to substitute coins or chess pieces or poker chips converted quickly, quietly into this trendy glass and metal and colored light kind of space.
Despite the lack of attention drawn to the opening, the cafe is rapidly drawing a clientèle that appreciate fancy coffee, exotic drinks, free Internet, and late night hours. It is modestly populated at the moment, people alone or in small groups, drinking coffee or juice cocktails. Some have wraps or soup or salads in various stages of being eaten.
Grace
[Perception/Awareness!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 5, 5, 9) ( success x 1 )
Lena Reilly
[[Per+Aware, Uncanny Instincts]]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 4, 5, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 3 ) Re-rolls: 1
Lucy
[sure why not, awareness!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )
Lena Reilly
A cafe? Well, you know why Lena Reilly is here. The Cultist of Ecstasy can always be found looking for new places to subsist on caffeine; despite claims to the contrary, she does have a preference for the non-Starbucks kind. (It's just when you have a headache, you find the quickest source.) The woman is dressed down a bit; it's a warm day, a comfortable mid-seventies and so she's wearing a sea blue babydoll tee that reads "In Love With the DJ" and a pair of jeans. Her backpack is slung over her shoulder, a pair of Lennon-style sunglasses perched on her nose as she makes her way into the place for her meeting.
They'd planned this, after all. Lena and Grace. Their text conversation ended with promises of meeting for coffee at some point, and so here we are. She's in a pretty good mood, all things considered, as she strolls in and looks to find the Virtual Adept (and the menu). There are bad days in Lena's life, but this isn't one of them. Yet.
[[Per+Alert]]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 5, 6, 6, 9) ( success x 3 )
Yun
Grace can sense an unfamiliar Resonance in Sapphire. Justice/Serenity/Immersion - like being bathed in a constant, warm, peaceful lagoon.
Lucy
Lucy isn't here for fancy coffee. She's here looking for a job - sort of. The tall woman with the long vibrant red hair is not looking to get behind the counter and learn how to make espresso. She's looking for a manager or someone who can tell her if they ever need a live performance, something that can draw in more customers or soothe those inside already. Someone to set the embience. And Lucy is pretty damn good at setting an embience that encourages people to order more hot drinks.
She does not have a manager to do this sort of thing for her, and her business cards are hand-written (about half of which have lipstick kisses pressed into the back). She doesn't always get the gig, but that's alright. Like she told someone else, this is just a way to pass the time and keep her and August fed.
She does not have her cat with her this time, she is alone. Clothes tonight are short denim shorts over a pair of black tights and knee-high, heeled black boots. Her shirt is white and has a jester's cap over a black face-mask. Beneath it reads "I'm not saying I'm HARLEY QUINN I'm just saying no one has ever seen me and Harley Quinn in a room together."
As she walks into the room it feels like the warmth gets leeched right back out of it.
[alertness!]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (4, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Grace
Grace woke up late today, still somewhat worn out after her marathon coding session. Not that she had to be anywhere today, but that's the fine thing about Saturdays. They're lazy things.
It's the perfect day to set up a date for coffee with a... well, let us call Lena a friend, and figure out what it really means later. More than that, and yet love is the best of vehicles with which to truly crush someone isn't it?
They agreed on Sapphire, a place for coffee and juice and free Internet (all lovely things). Grace got there first, and noticed the strangeness inside, unable to break it down to a particular person, but it could be just that someone like them lives here. Like Adam and the bookstore infused with the flashing of steel. It doesn't necessarily mean danger, but still. When Lena arrives, Grace appears to be watching the place closely.
She's dressed in what's now practically a uniform. Jeans, gray jacket, tennis shoes, laptop bag. The laptop is out on her table, as is a froufy espresso thing.
Grace
[Perc+ Alert]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (7, 9, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )
Yun
When she steps into the cafe, there is a soft chime, and it is just slightly different from the soft chime of the young man who entered ahead of Grace, Lucy, and Lena, though it is like theirs. At the sound of the chime, a woman looks up from her laptop and glances at the three Mages, then returns her attention to the laptop. It wouldn't seem terribly significant perhaps, but that woman also seems to be the source of the Resonance.
Yun
[I suck. Alter that to Lena and Lucy getting diferent chimes than all the mundane peeps. Thats what I get for editing their results.]
Lucy
To Lucy, all the resonances in here are unfamiliar to her. There is the woman with her laptop who feels shifting but keen. She walked in just after someone who feels withering and pulsing. And there is the other woman with her laptop. When the other woman looks up at her Lucy offers her a smile, lifting her hand in a brief wave. When her hand lowers she rests it on the strap of her slouching canvas bag, the strap hanging from one shoulder rather than across her body. Sure that makes it easier to get snagged off her person, but she's inside and about to try and persuade someone to give her a gig.
First, though, she looks up. Up to see the chime that sounded one way for her, one way for the woman with resonance, and differently for the person without. Huh.
Bright green eyes thickly outlined in black with lids made smoky by shadow take in a quick sweep of the room. It's as she's heading toward the counter - which means heading around Lena - that she glances at her, sees her face, and stops. And she very blatantly studies her face thoughtfully before asking, "Do I know you?"
Straight to the point, this one.
Lena Reilly
Lena is reasonably alert today. To be fair, part of that is because she doesn't have her headphones in as she dances her way down the street. She hasn't done that in a while. So she pauses a moment, head lifting in a curious expression as she gets the sense of a couple Resonances she doesn't know. First among those directs her eyes to a woman with a laptop, watching as she gets looked at herself. And the second, the chill that winds its way around the edge of her consciousness, draws her attention over to Lucy who has also just walked in.
There's a moment's pause there, a recollection from an earlier day. An earlier Lena. Of course, for Lena time is relative and like most Cultists, earlier could be the same as later. Regardless, she recognizes this person, if vaguely, and she has to think on it a moment. Believe me, Lena would remember someone like Lucy. It's there, and it's...somewhere past. Distant but not. She looks back around momentarily and notices Grace, giving her a little warm smile and wave before she looks back to Lucy and her question.
"You know, I was literally just thinking the same thing." She smiles. "So I guess so. Did you ever live in New York, perchance?"
There's a pause before she says. "Oh! Right, sorry. I'm Lena."
She's still keeping the laptop woman in the corner of her vision, though. Something interesting there. Those Ecstatics, always distracted...
Grace
Grace slides out of her chair, shuts her laptop, starts packing it up (apparently she's ready to leave now and will abandon the coffee even). Some horrible memories flood back -- the ones about being singled out as a Mage on a date out for coffee with Lena. This has happened before. They must be cursed, 'cause history's repeating itself.
She tries to remain calm, to make it look like there's nothing wrong. Just late for an appointment.
But she does make a beeline for Lena, and grabs her teeshirt to give it a tug before giving her a reason. "We should go. Somebody here has set up a warning system for us."
She tries to keep her voice low, but there's this (frozen, cold) woman trying to have a conversation.
"Did you notice the chimes?"
Lucy
"I did," says Lucy brightly. "My sister and I went to school there for a while. Lucy." She doesn't offer her hand to shake in greeting. If this seems at all strange, hopefully it's covered up by the approach of the shifting woman.
"Oh you two know each other?" she asks, curious, and not at all put off by Grace's furtive paranoia. Lucy's been a lot of places and she's seen a lot of people be a lot of different things.
"I did." Notice the chimes, that is. "Do you think maybe it's set up so that they can go if we show up?" she asks, and it's contemplative. And she looks past the two new (to her) oracles to the third stranger. And again, if this stranger with the laptop looks up and sees Lucy looking back, she'll offer that same smile to her, friendly but distant.
Yun
The woman with the laptop returns waves and smiles, but makes no move toward them. She does peek at them from the corners of her eyes, but most of her attention seems to be concentrated on her laptop.
Other people drift in. Other people drift out. Some people stay. Off to one side is a first date, complete with a tiny brunette that cannot bring herself to tell her date that he has whipped cream on his nose. It's okay though, he thinks his stories are extra-hilarious today. There is a guy laying across a lightly padded bench, headphones on, who seems to be asleep. He's been here since before Grace got here. Maybe since before dawn. Around them, people seem to have picked up off that initial Resonance they sensed, and though the shifting, pulsing, cold notes seem to be jarring some of them into more animate states, most of them still seem very calm.
Lena Reilly
Grace comes over and she's worried, and Lena understands that. Two mages walk into a cafe and something funky happens...well, with these two there is a history, and Lena gets why Grace might default to alarm. Lena, on the other hand, doesn't feel that way. It's a tenet of the Cult not to let fear overpower you, and Lena has rededicated herself to the Code of Ananda recently. So when the Adept comes over, Lena smiles a bit and shakes her head.
"An alert system. Yeah, I noticed. But we don't know that it's a warning. Not yet." Lena isn't intending to run out of here just because she heard some pings. Lucy has her own ideas about it, and Lena nods. Also a possibility, though she has her own idea.
"Or the owners have it set up so they can know their own. It's the kind of security we might set up," she says to Grace. The Chantry is warded against several things, after all. She follows Lucy's gaze to the woman, and gets a thought.
"I'm going to go say hi." A little shrug to the other two women, before she puts a foot forward to head over.
Grace
Grace turns her attention to Lucy, and she's still a little spooked by the warning chimes, but manages a smile anyway. "Yeah, we know each other. Were going to meet here to catch up, but that seems like a mistake," she says, her eyes gliding over the room by the end, drifting off.
Lena goes off to say hi, and okay... that's uh... Not the right direction, Lena. But Grace follows. Safety in numbers and all that. She stays behind, cautious, watching.
Lucy
[awareness-as-empathy: how YOU doin', lady?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 7, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )
Yun
The woman pushes her chair back a few inches as Lena and Grace begin to approach, her smile brightening as she turns more fully toward them. She moves like water, fluid and graceful. Turn, twist, tilt. She closed the laptop with a gentle motion of one hand, looks away from them for a few seconds as she slips it into the bag hanging off the back of her chair.
Lucy
Grace says meeting here seems to have been a mistake. Lucy's brows lift, but she says nothing. She doesn't know Grace, doesn't know where she's been or what she's been through, but from Lucy's angle? From Lucy's angle this meeting is far from a mistake. In fact, all two of her encounters in this city so far (two in a row, two days in a row, what will tomorrow bring?) have seemed auspicious.
Lena's going to go say hi and Lucy turns to go with her, but when Grace moves to follow she pauses. She watches the woman who has noticed them, has waved to Lucy and returned her smile. She was the one, Lucy noted, who paid attention to the way the door chimed. Her suggestion that it was a warning for someone in here to run, someone who might just be as paranoid about strange happenings and untoward gatherings as Grace appears to be, it had been her turning Grace's own hypothesis. Now she's not so sure.
Either way, she's not going to join the posse currently ganging up on the woman. Not that they're ganging up on her, but if it were Lucy, and Lucy had been minding her own business, and suddenly three people walked up to her? Yeah, she'd probably think about bolting, too.
Instead she goes to her intended target all along. She heads for the counter to see if she can speak to a manager about a job, and order an iced coffee while she's at it. But while she's there, asking, she keeps an eye on the woman with the laptop, Grace, and Lena.
Lena Reilly
If she's going the wrong way, there's nothing to indicate to the Ecstatic that this is the case. In fact, everything points to the woman as being potentially involved, so they should at least eliminate the possibility. Lucy is headed in her own direction and Lena doesn't argue it; we all go our own way and what's best. Three on one probably isn't the best idea anyway.
She gives the woman a friendly smile as she comes up...not getting so close as to tower over her in her seat and intimidate, but not so far away as to seem wary. Because she isn't...not yet, anyway.
"Hey," she says with a little nod. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to be interrupting what you're doing. I just wanted to say hi. I'm Lena." No offered hand, because the Ecstatic may be making physical contact with people she knows these days but the woman is someone she doesn't know. She doesn't introduce the other two because she doesn't know if they want their names to be known to random Awakened. "I don't mean to pry if it's not wanted, but is the heads-up alert yours?"
Because hey, she could be talking about a text alert or something else to the people around her.
Grace
Grace gives the woman a little wave, a small smile, but otherwise Grace today looks tired and cautious. Trust seems to be the order of the day, so yes, we'll go with it while it lasts. Though Katie looked nice and sweet at first too, you know. Grace doesn't offer a hand to her either. Never was one for handshakes though. Not even before.
"I'm Grace," she adds, to Lena's greeting. "Hi."
Yun
The person behind the counter is all smiles to Lucy, just as she was to the people before her. The person she needs isn't here right now, but would Lucy like to leave her information? Would Lucy like to take his card?
~~~
The woman does offer her hand, bracelets glittering at chiming at her wrist. Her nails are perfectly manicured, delicately painted cherry blossoms on either ring finger and the other fingers a wash of patterned lines. Each of the bracelets is engraved, though the patterns are so delicate it isn't possible to make them out from any distance.
"Yun," she says quietly. Softly. Like a flower petal falling to the surface of a slow pool.
If they take her hand, she shakes, very gently. If they do not, after a slight pause she brings her hand back to herself.
"It is not mine specifically," Yun says. "But I listen for it, yes."
Lucy
Lucy would absolutely love to take his card, and she even offers one of her own. Before handing it over, she writes beneath the handwritten script of her name (using a silver-ink pen found in her bag) "Musician."
Then she waits, patiently, for her iced coffee before finally meandering over in the direction of the others. She wants to make sure the woman has time enough to settle after the approach before adding a third new face.
[so like one more turn and she'll be with them]
Lena Reilly
The hand is offered. Of course it is. There's a moment where she's considering it, shaking this stranger's hand. It isn't like she doesn't occasionally make contact with people in the club, but that's different. That's not coffee shop Lena; that's DJ Halcyon. And for the moment her personal issues win out, so instead of shaking the hand it is her head that shakes, accompanied by an apologetic smile. "I'm sorry Yun, I don't...it doesn't have anything to do with you, I promise. It's nice to meet you, though."
Yun says the alarm isn't not hers, which only serves to pique her curosity. "Do you know who's it is? The owners of this place, or...?" She trails off there, leaving it open for Yun to fill in the blanks if she does. "Are you new to town? I'm sort of a relative newcomer myself, only about a year."
She glances over, more a shifting of the eyes really, as Lucy is starting to make her way in this direction. She slips that attention back to Yun quickly enough.
Grace
Grace looks at the hand offered, the delicate bracelets and manicured nails. Decorative, huh. People like being complimented on their appearance if they have put that much effort into it right? "Oh, cool nails."
Yes, Grace, they are cool. But observing her nails was not likely the point of that particular action.
She does notice that Lena's not shaking Yun's hand either. Grace gives an awkward smile to the woman. "Yeah, same here. I don't."
Yun
"It is for all of us," Yun explains, as though that is the entirety of an explanation. Perhaps to her it is. There is an elegance to simplicity. It echoes through art and lines of ice cream with fewer than five pronounceable ingredients and computer code. Sure, there are other artistic movements, other styles of architecture, shitake mushroom and raspberry reductions with goat cheese over tiny puffs stuffed with grass-fed aged beef. And those things find their place. Some of them in the juice bar near the little gathering.
"Thank you," she says to Grace.
Lucy
Lena looks back and sees Lucy making her way over again, meandering a little, taking it slow. She can see that the woman's movements are light. She is lithe, and there is a kind of soft gracefulness in how she moves.
"Don't what?" asks Lucy, upon them at last. One hand is wrapped around the plastic to-go cup, the other is lifted to hold onto the straw as she takes a drink. She is a towering thing, is Lucy, five feet nine inches in her bare feet but her feet aren't bare. The heels of them are elevated a few inches. She stops so that she's maybe half a step behind Lena and Grace, still not wanting to crowd up on the woman.
"I'm Lucy. This place is pretty cool, is it yours? It's so peaceful."
Lena Reilly
She watches Lucy meander a little longer before hearing Yun's response. It is for all of us, she says, and that seems to be satisfactory to Lena. Is there a curiosity underneath it all? Yes, absolutely. But there's also a willingness to go with the flow, and the important part is that none of this seems to be a terrible trap. Lena's hopes are rewarded this time, or at least she thinks they are.
"I'm just not one for a lot of touching, is all," she says in response to Lucy. There's a faint smile and a shrug, a sort of it is what it is expression. She doesn't interject further into the conversation though, letting Lucy's question stand.
Grace
"Shake hands. Bizarre ritual in my opinion," Grace says to Lucy in an attempt to explain. "Why is that a greeting? What is the purpose behind grabbing someone's personal... you know, hand... like that? And then you just let it go afterwards." Grace shrugs, as if to say the act described is one she just cannot fathom for the life of her.
There's more to it than that. She knows it's the socially acceptable thing to do. But why do something so unnecessary and so dangerous?
Lucy says the place is peaceful. Perhaps Grace brings her own lack of peace here, with her skittering blade's edge self. It doesn't feel like peace to her. Perhaps the woman does. But it's not as though people like them get to choose what they feel like.
Yun
"It is not mine. I've known the people who opened it only a short time. I may have assisted them, but I do not feel any particular sense of ownership." Peaceful, Lucy says, and Yun is peaceful. But, as Grace understands, still surfaces cast reflections. Sometimes you look out over peaceful water and see storms brewing in uneasy clouds. Raised weapons. Falling bodies. Some of what you see of the world comes from where you look at it.
"There are theories that it is meant as a sign of peace." Yun rises. Lifts her bag from the back of the chair and settles the strap across her body. "Regardless, it has come to be understood as a part of a polite greeting. Language is equally arbitrary, and you use that well enough. It does not matter, in the end, why the word we use for apple sounds like apple so much as we understand that that collection of sounds symbolizes the apple. You are free to question whatever conventions and traditions and customs you like, of course. Everyone comes to question something. I think, in the end, it is those things we choose to question that most define us."
Lucy
Grace explains to her that the handshake ritual is unfathomable, and Lucy turns her head as she listens, watching Grace politely. When she finishes Lucy offers her a smile.
A smile which she turns to Yun. It becomes a little warmer that smile. She nods. "The theory is it's meant to show the other person you're unarmed and welcoming. Most of us are always armed, though, depending, which makes it meaningless if you look at it that way."
She looks at Grace. "But it's also a ritual. And some people find comfort in rituals." She steps aside to make room for the woman to pass if she is indeed about to pass on out of this building. "Who are the people that opened it?" she asks, and she pulls the card from her pocket, looks at it, flips it so that Yun can see it. "Is it this guy?"
Grace
"So you think people have definitions?" Grace shrugs. "Who are you, then?"
It's an old question, one without an answer. Yun could try, and Grace would decline every one. A name is not who you are. A title isn't. Neither are all the adjectives in the world. People don't fit labels. They're perpetually undefined. Sand mandalas busy being blown away even as they're being created.
Even still, she's curious about what Yun's answer might be.
Grace holds her hands in the air, a 'hands up' gesture, like she might make to a policeman. "Unarmed. Honest. Is it the touching that makes it a welcoming gesture? That's so weird."
Grace questions rituals and human social interactions and perhaps humanity itself. Why why why? And how does that define her?
Lena Reilly
Grace's explanation makes Lena press her lips together a little bit. She gets it from Grace's perspective; she knows the woman. Lena has her own reasons for it of course. It's not a disapproving look at all; it's more of a sense like she feels compelled to explain as well now, especially as the Virtual Adept presses the issue. She doesn't venture such an explanation though. They all have their reasons.
"Well, it's nice to meet you, Yun." She lets the smile return to her face, an easy gesture that slides there. This is how she was before, and she's definitely getting back to that person as of late. "Are you heading off? If so, I'd like to give you my contact number. It's always good to know more of us here in Denver."
She reaches into a pocket, pulls out one of her DJ business cards and reaches to hand it over. There's one offered to Lucy too, if she wants to accept it.
Yun
Yun pauses to look at the card, then steps into the opening Lucy so generously offered. "Among others, yes."
She turns to Grace. "You are grasping at the wrong aspect of that word. There are others. But in answer to the question you lay more as a statement, no. I do not believe in that sense, that people have definitions. They do have borders, edges, that form a perimeter. Those borders are fluid. Porous. They may allow some entry and barricade others. But, in the end, we see most often only the shifting edges of the boundaries of other people. What lies past those boundaries...it may be possible to define, though I would not try such a thing. Not even with those who have let me pass through the edges of their space. Such an act seems overly prideful to me."
She reaches out to take the card from Lena, slips it into a small compartment of her bag. "Thank you. It was nice to meet you as well. All of you."
Lucy
Among others, she says, and Lucy's brows go up. She seems to have landed in a pretty populous place. Luckily, the people she's met thus far have been - more or less - friendly.
She of course accepts Lena's card, looking it over and nodding once before smiling to the Ecstatic. While Yun explains the shifting nature of people to Grace, Lucy opens up her bag and starts looking around in it for something. First she looks into its surprising depths, then she starts rooting blindly, her face turned up toward the ceiling, biting a brightly painted lower lip as she tries to find-
Yes. Smiling, her hand comes free of the bag. Between her index and middle fingers are a handful of what look like business cards. They are business cards, or business card stock at least. On one side is Lucy's name handwritten in a looping, silvery script. In the bottom corner is a phone number with an out of state area code. On the backs of a few of them are lipstick kisses.
So, Lena's card is returned with one of Lucy's own, and she also offers one to Yun. She holds one up between the middle and forefingers of her right hand, giving Grace a questioning look. If she'd like the card it's hers, if not, well, that's no skin off Lucy's nose.
"And you," she says to Yun. "I'll probably see you around."
Lena Reilly
It's some kind of communal place, is what Lena takes from that. Interesting. She takes that in, thinks about it. It's a conclusion that is based on a leap of logic, but it's not entirely out of the realm of possibility. The chantry wasn't known to them until it was, so of course it's possible that others exist. She'll have to ask about that later.
It will be later and not now, because Yun is moving to go. She smiles to the woman and nods. "Have a good day. I hope I'll meet you again sometime."
And Lucy trades cards with her. She takes the offered card with, looks at the front and then the back. A little smile hits her when she looks back to Lucy. "Thanks. Did you do the club scene in New York? We might have met there, I worked them pretty regularly."
Grace
Yun talks a lot of... well, calling it nonsense would be rude -- about people having borders, boundaries, edges, perimeters. Even if she admits to some porosity being in the mix. Grace smiles in return, though. It does explain a bit about Yun. Perhaps she sees everyone as the placid lakes that she herself feels like. A fluid boundary into which we are sometimes poured. And she doesn't think that the roiling going on under the surface can, or should be noted.
It certainly is a way to see people.
Grace gets offered a card, which she accepts. It's one with a lipstick kiss on the back, which Grace frowns at. Not in admonition, more in mild confusion.
"It was. Nice. Pleasant," Grace says to Yun as it seems she is leaving. And then, Grace goes to retrieve her poor forgotten espresso thing on the table. It's a crime to waste caffeine. When she returns, Lena and Lucy are talking about New York, and Grace just starts digging her laptop out again.
Yun
Yun takes Lucy's card as well, offers them all a final smile, and slips toward the door.
Grace
The others talk, and Grace is curiously out of touch, into her computer. Her screen is loading a special program, of course. To most, it would look like a screensaver, if it ends up working. But to her, it's the Code, the Data. And she wants to know where its been altered.
Those chimes. How? What? Do they seem like they were made by Yun or someone else?
[Prime 1: Watch the
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (2, 9) ( success x 1 )
Lucy
The frown at the lipstick marked card is noticed, noted, filed away for another time perhaps. Grace goes to collect her drink and Lucy takes another drink of hers. At least this time no one's asking her about sex and just the right time to make her choke.
"That's!" she says, starting off excitedly when Lena asks if she did the club scene in New York. Toning it back to a grin, Lucy continues, "That's probably where I know you from. So wow, you've been going that long, huh? Impressive."
Yun
Those chimes have a Prime/Forces effect built into them. They are a blanket 'detect Awakened crossing this line' warning. Aside from the sound, they do not have any other effects. It does not look like Yun made them.
Lena Reilly
Grace is heading off for her espresso and at that point, Lucy and Lena make the connection to where they know each other. It puts a grin on the DJ's face; it's been a long time since she met anyone from back in the days, and she reaches up to run a hand through her hair. It's a bit self-conscious, because that's another life ago for her. She was a different person then (not literally, but she has changed) and there's a tendency to want to slip back into that which she holds off. Plus, there was a compliment in there.
"Yeah, that long. There's no other job for me as far as I'm concerned. Music's my passion, you know?" Grace comes up and Lena smiles to her; she's not trying to ignore the Adept, of course. But she's working with her computer and Lena gets that little ping in the air, with Grace's Resonance. Best not to distract.
"What brought you out here to Denver? I was traveling a lot for my work, but decided to settle here about a year ago."
Grace
Well, that was boring. At least they are boring chimes and not adventurous chimes. Grace closes the laptop, puts it away again, and gulps coffee, looking at Lucy and Lena in turn as they talk.
Grace isn't much of a club-goer. Or a music-fiend. Not that there's anything wrong with either of those interests. It just means she has nothing to add to that particular part of the conversation.
"I came to Denver for school," she says -- in an attempt at joining in. She gives a sheepish grin and then, "I kind of dropped out though."
Lucy
Lucy smiles, and she nods. She does get that. Granted, she has several jobs these days, but there are a few things that she counts as the real thing. Those aren't really the things she gets paid to do, though.
Grace is busy examining the code of the universe for a bit, and so the former-NY residents chat for a little bit. Lucy's eyes widen slightly when she feels the shift in the air, but she places it quickly enough that it doesn't make for a distraction for long.
Music brought Lena into Denver, and school brought Grace. Lucy listens, and she grins. "Well. My sister and I are just sort of wandering around. You're now the second and third," she angles her drink toward Lena and then Grace, "people I've met here who make me think we're not going to be able to leave. Is Denver one big Hotel California or something?"
Lena Reilly
She chuckles a little bit at Grace, and shrugs. "You've gotta do what's best for you, Grace. Frankly, I think that's probably best. You run yourself a bit ragged, you know?"
The 'Hotel California' reference brings a grin to her face. "Okay, you've clubbed in New York and you can make Eagles references on the fly. You're on my good list already. And maybe. That would explain the colitas I smelled when I stepped off the plane. Although that could have also just been a few people pre-empting the recreational smoking law, too."
See, Lena can banter. It has been known to happen from time to time.
Grace
"Why do I make you think you're not able to leave? You can leave. I'm not some creepy-ass doorman asking if you wanna 'check out' you know."
Grace sips (okay gulps) more espresso thing. Nods at Lena as if to say 'I KNOW' without so much as verbalizing that.
Lucy
One moment she's grinning at the bantered conversation with Lena, the next she's looking at Grace and she is unsettled. She says nothing, only looks at her a moment, brows together and wide mouth turned into a slight frown.
"I didn't say you were," she says quietly. Breathing in deep, summoning up some inner something, she turns to Lena. "Well. I should get going. I have a lot of other places to hit before sundown." A little of that smile of hers comes back, mostly in the form of a forced relaxing at the corners of her mouth. "I'll give you a call later for sure."
And with that, the tall redhead turns to make her way out.
Grace
Grace turns to Lena, a little worried. "Did I offend her? I did, didn't I..."
Lena Reilly
Grace's sense of humor doesn't always come across to everyone. Lena knows this, because it doesn't always carry to her either. She's not sure, but she's assuming that's what just happened. She lets it go for a moment, smiles and nods to Lucy. There's warmth there. "Awesome. Let me know, I'll show you around to all the good night spots. I know them well...kind of my job."
And with that, Lucy is gone. Lena watches her go, and then looks back to Grace suddenly with a blink. She doesn't dip heavily into the drug pool like most Cultists (occasional, yes; regular and heavy? No.), but she does still have the tendancy to zone out, get lost in through from time to time.
"Hm? Oh." She sighs a bit, then shrugs. "I don't honestly know, hon. Maybe. She probably just took the joke wrong, perhaps." There's a little smile. "You're a good deadpanner."
And that's when her phone goes off. She frowns, looks at it and sighs. "Shit...I have to go Grace, I'm sorry. Work thing, someone needs me to help. We'll do this again though, okay?"
Grace
"Yeah, we will," Grace says, gives her a smile. She's still a little sad, probably over the fact that she just told Lucy she could LEAVE. Like NOW, Lucy. Don't you know nobody wants you around here?
Except that's totally not what she meant.
So many times, the words that come out of Grace's mouth get taken in ways she doesn't intend. Most of the time she doesn't even notice.
For the time being, espresso will serve to sooth the ragged mind, though. Eventually, she'll give Lucy's number a try. Perhaps a text that says "I didn't mean it like that! You are free to stay or go as you wish. Free. I'm not trying to trap you, that's all I meant."
Like Grace would ever try to hold someone back, restrict their freedom...
Alone at last, as much as one can be in a room full of people enjoying themselves, Grace stares at the corners of the room, lost in her own meandering thoughts.
No comments:
Post a Comment