Serafine
After a positively frigid weekend, Monday
afternoon is gray enough and cold enough that Washington Park is - if
not supernaturally deserted - certain rather empty compared to the flood
of people one might find jogging its trails on a more temperate spring
day.
When Sera decides that she wants a picnic, though, nothing will keep her from it. Not weather, not wind, not cold.
On
the rather green lawn overlooking the lake, with a sweeping view of the
columned boat house reflected in the glassine waters of the little
lake, Sera has spread a white blanket, which is weighted down with an
ashtray and a guitar case. She's drowsing, or appears to be drowsing,
wrapped up in another blanket (this one fuzzy and perhaps woolen, some
sort of red and green tartan plaid wrapped around her body as she rests
on her stomach, knees bent, both booted feet in the air. Dan she sent
for hot chocolate because it's fucking cold out here and her
teeth are chattering and he suggested oh hey, go inside, warm up, and
Sera was all: fuck that, I wanna have a picnic.
So, picnic.
It
is entirely possible that Alexander and/or Grace and/or others received
texts from Sera inviting them to a picnic. Or perhaps they just find
her by coincidence. Sometimes that is how the world works.
Alexander
[Magedar, just kicks and entrances]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (6, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )
Grace
Grace got a text, because that is how her world works. And perhaps Sera doesn't understand (or perhaps remember) why she got a text back reading:
YES I will be right there
Without punctuation and with a lot of haste.
Even
if Sera did decide on a picnic in the cold, it doesn't matter. That's
what coats are for. And other people's oddities rarely even scratch the
surface of Grace's recognition. She's pretty certain, though, that Sera
will be mostly unclothed anyway, because that's Sera.
So, the
Virtual Adept strolls up, wearing jeans and a red suede coat against the
cold that's cut in sharp angles. It was meant to go with a fox costume
for Carnivale, and Grace keeps on wearing it because it's warm.
But, there's something different about her. Something new.
Maybe
it's the way she cuts through the air, knife-like. Those angles of her
coat reminiscent of a blade's edge -- a fine sort of sharpness.
Alexander
Cold
it may be, but it can always get a little cooler – as those who pass
Alexander walking along the paths around the park find for a moment.
Alexander is reasonably comfortable. He’s dressed for the cool air in a
thick grey hoodie with a couple of layers of long sleeved t-shirts
underneath. Some dark green combats, a pair of walking boots, and a
decent pair of fleecy gloves keeps the rest of him covered and decent.
The
text was received, and replied to, which brings Alexander out today.
But he was here a little early. Just... to try something out. To look
around a little, in more than one way. He’s crouched by the lake, near
to where they met a certain scarecrow not so long ago. He watches the
water, looking at his reflection in it. Tries to remember how it felt
that first time he pushed with his Will at the Chantry, trying to sneak a
peek at probability before the coin landed. Tries to push in the same
way, just peering through the ripples of this particular looking glass
to See what’s there.
[Arete, peeking at Spirit: Diff 4, -1 for taking time]
Dice: 1 d10 TN3 (3) ( success x 1 )
Serafine
Perception + Awareness - Things Are Happening?
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )
Serafine
Prime 1: Watch the Weaving. -1 dif, focus.
Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (3, 4, 6) ( success x 3 )
Serafine
Things
Are Happening and the truth is even wrapped up like that, like a
peculiar Scottish mummy sprawled on her belly on a white blanket in the
chilly, damp grass, breath misting or is that smoke she exhales? one or
the other, anyway. Sera is not napping. She is not asleep. She is
sprawled yes one elbow braced on the blanket, chin and cheek cupped in
the palm of her hand, head listing in a way that makes a golden tangle
of her wind-whipped blond curls and she is watching: the lake and the
man who crouches by the lake and watching him with a back of the throat
consideration and she is alive to the world in ways the few people are
alive to the world, everything scrawls itself beneath her skin before
most stranges have begun to recognize the surface truths, and she can
feel - yes - Grace and something New and wasn't it just last night that
it was Grace and something Old and isn't there a strange and fascinating
symmetry to that and oh shouldn't she tell Hawksley about the mummy,
she should assuredly tell Hawksley about the mummy, and Sera thinks
about texting him -
I have something to tell you about Egypt
-
and she would likely misspell half the damn words but iPhone, it would
auto correct, but her phone is so Very Far Away and it is cold out here
where is Dan with her hot chocolate she is going to dose it with
whiskey. It would be better with Bailey's but it's not like one carries
around a flask full of Bailey's, does one?
Sera bites down sharply on her inner cheek, the pain is incisive, see. It is singular. It is a pierce and a twist and an opening, oh, the world changes, just a little bit.
"Look at that," Sera says quietly, to Grace as Grace strolls up. Her voice is goddamned lazy. "He's doing something. Magic, do you remember the first time you did it on purpose?"
Grace
[Magedar! Does she notice anything with all this magic flying about?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 5, 5, 10) ( success x 1 )
Grace
Grace
isn't so perceptive today, is she? But still, it doesn't hurt that the
both of them are weaving reality around them at the moment, and Sera --
oh Sera is strong and gut-wrenching, isn't she?
Grace looks where Sera is telling her to -- over to Alex, who is leaning over the water's edge, looking for something.
She
nods, and there's this slight bittersweet smile on her face. "It was
soon after I woke up. I was in my apartment, and Gadfly popped in for a
visit. He'd been watching me, which, okay a little creepy. But he guided
me through the program I was already writing. Something to watch the
watcher."
"My first time? I flunked," she smiles for real that time. "Got hit with 'dox."
"Sera?"
she asks, then pauses a bit, sets down her laptop bag and flumps down
on the blanket. "Something's happened to me. I don't think it's bad. But
I feel different."
Alexander
A few ice
crystals form along the edge of the shore by Alexander and, for a few
moments, the world changes. Alexander sees the lake shore in a whole
new light; a little faint, a little cloudy, a little more monochrome.
And promptly falls backwards onto his ass as it actually works!
He looks around quickly, before the effect fades. Looking for...
someone who isn’t there. Who hasn’t been for a few weeks. Maybe he
wasn’t really expecting The Message to still be hanging around here when
he has an identity and the freedom to do as he likes. But it was worth
a try. Normality reasserts itself and the vision fades.
Grinning
to himself, Alexander stands and brushes himself off. He’d felt the
arrival of Sera a short while before, while he was watching the water,
so knows where she’s sat. The familiar Shifting feeling had arrived
too, but with something different about it. Something new. Still
smiling, Alexander grabs the rucksack he’d left on the grass next to him
and wanders over. The smile’s still there when he arrives and greets
them. “Hey! I brought soup.” He shrugs the shoulder with the rucksack
as he says it, then settles on the blanket too. He looks at Grace and
cocks his head. “You’ve changed.”
Adam
[Pre-Entry Awareness Roll -2 Dice for Grace's Arcane.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )
Adam
[+2 for everybody else]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (1, 9) ( success x 1 )
Adam
[+ 2 re-rolled 10s since I hear there are Magical Effects wot are being Effected? Maybe?]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (4, 5) ( fail )
Serafine
"Mmm."
Sera hums beneath her breath. It is a hum of awareness and a hum of
consideration and a hum of something that is not amusement. Perhaps
bemusement. Perhaps consideration. There is something rich and lazy in
her voice and even though it is cold cold cold something about Sera
feels remarkably warm, in just this precise moment. "I don't remember
my first time."
And Sera offers no context for that; just the statement. Maybe it is merely that one forgets the smallest pieces as the world changes and magic becomes not - well, not ordinary, but a matter of course. Hey, I can fucking change the goddamned world.
Grace
though, Grace; a slant-wise look at Grace as she floomps her laptop
down on the blanket. Here is Sera in profile: an impressive nose, all
aquiline, her eyes remarkable light, with a sort of clarity in the side
view on rarely sees when looking at her face-on. Some kind of magic
there, right?
God she's striking. Arresting. The bones of
her face; the sharp and fine-pointed planes of it. The delicacy of her
jaw, the curve of her ear. The odd vulnerability she bears in repose.
Sera
is still considering Grace when Alexander comes up to them, and he has
brought soup. Sera flashes the cop a quick grin, rolls over on the
blanket to make room. "What'd you see out there? When you were
looking?"
And, a flashing glance, this line drawn from Grace to
Alexander and back again. "And Grace, she went seeking. Why don't you
tell us what happened?"
Grace
[Pasted from above!]
So, the Virtual Adept strolls up, wearing jeans and a red suede coat
against the cold that's cut in sharp angles. It was meant to go with a
fox costume for Carnivale, and Grace keeps on wearing it because it's
warm.
But, there's something different about her. Something new.
Maybe
it's the way she cuts through the air, knife-like. Those angles of her
coat reminiscent of a blade's edge -- a fine sort of sharpness.
-------------
So: Keen as in sharp, as in finely-honed. Blade-like. Intense. Focused.
Grace
"Oh,
I didn't go looking for anything," Grace says, completely missing the
reference. She's never heard the term before. "What happened when?"
She looks up to Alex from her seat on the blanket. "Yeah, I know. You can feel that too?"
Then, it's over to Sera again, who has been the only other Mage she's known to do this: change how they are at a deep level. Enough that people can tell.
"It's like what happened to you, isn't it?"
Adam
Look.
(No, don't look. There is nothing remarkable to look at.) Dominic Adam
Julian Gallowglass bani Bonisagus known to most of the Awakened populace
of Denver as Adam who owns or clerks at or manages Night Owl [An Arch
Key] Books. Look. (No, don't bother. He is not remarkable.)
Here
he is in a dark coat, not black but rather a slate gray, wool to drive
the cold winter away, but it is spring now. The coat is long and
unbuttoned and if he had a scarf it is, why, there it is, trailing
out've his pockets, because it's cold but the cold doesn't have a snap
and if he weren't so susceptible to colds since he treats his body less
like a temple and more like an inconvenience or a disappointment (come
on now, body, don't be tired now! Almost to the end of this chapter!
Almost at the top of the hill!), well. This is the kind of sentence that
busybody family members begin and never finish properly because what it
amounts to is a harangue. Here is Adam Gallowglass in a dark gray coat
and, if one has not yet become familiar with Adam Gallowglass, he is
particularly unworthy of note. A Mystery. Other. Don't bother.
Nonentity,
practically: young man with wild hair. He has an apple in hand and he
is biting into it while turning the page of a book which yes he is in
fact reading as he walks down the trail, comes to a fork in a path,
finds himself near [the woods of Arkady are dead, over is their antique
joy; but the antiquarian's joy is -] a lake and a confluence of other
Awakened individuals, one of them very familiar, the other
half-familiar, the third not-at-all-familiar. What an irrestistible lure
to a mind like Adam's.
So he takes the fork in the path that'll
take him this-a-way, folding his book up so his thumb is a marker. He
bites into his apple, crunch. No gloves. He's as pale as a vampire and
should get more sun. Too bad it's such a skinflint day, such a graying
still longing for winter day. This-a-way means he wanders out between
the trees; he doesn't approach from the lake.
The most important thing is of course:
"Hello, Sera, Grace."
Adam is not a creature of hesitation; he approaches, he engages, his smile faint, a quizzical stitch between his eyebrows.
Alexander
“Nothing,
really. I was just..” Alexander looks down into the rucksack,
breaking the eye contact with Sera for a minute. A little embarrassed,
maybe. “It was silly. I was trying to see if The Message was around.”
A thermos and some disposable cardboard cups emerge from the bag, and
he looks back up. “It’s only store bought, but it should still be
warm.” Nice, smooth change of subject there. Chicken, should anyone be
interested.
He loses track of the conversation a little when they
start talking about seeking and looking for things – even less idea of
what a Seeking is than Grace does. There is some concern in his voice,
though, when he asks, “Something’s happened? Was it anything to do with
that night in the library?” It’s the first time Alexander has bumped
into Grace since he stormed out of the Chantry. “Are you ok?”
Before
there’s an answer, someone new arrives. Although it’s only the voice
that grabs Alexander’s attention – the other man would have drifted past
without notice if he hadn’t spoken. He looks down to open the flask,
then starts a little as he notices Adam’s presence again. And waits to
see how the others react before saying anything. Assuming he doesn't
forget again.
Serafine
Oh,
Alexander. He breaks eye contact and busies himself with
soup-getting-out and soup-dispensing and Sera's now on her back and all
rolled up still in her blanket (absurd! absurd) and she's like a turtle
on her back her hair all a-tangle and the world is moving around her
the way the world does move.
Oh! Here is Adam.
Sera tips
her head back to espy him as he offers his hellos and it is strange to
her the way he fades and then conjures himself up again but not so
startling as it must be for Alexander, now, to forget and remember and
remember and forget again.
So, Sera, create that she is turns her
head in Alexander's direction and he can avoid her goddamned eyes all
he wants with the busy-ness she'll just touch him, like a hand on his
thigh. A certain slewing smile.
Maybe she's fucked up.
Probably she's fucked up.
"It's
not silly. You need to see the world. Look for things. Take it apart
and put it back together and feel the way it moves inside you, again
and again and again, and if you're looking for something or someone or
somewhy that has some fucking meaning to you, even better, but that's
not any kind of shit to be embarassed about, you know? Rock on - "
She did say rock on without any goddamned embarassment.
"Seeking,
Grace. You went seeking. Looking for another piece of the world; or a
piece of your soul, or a new understanding of the world. Some
epiphany, right? Something new that you can taste and feel. And Be and
Know and all that shit.
"Yeah it's like what happened to me."
Back to Alexander, then. "Nothing to do with what happened in the
library, that night. Least I'm pretty sure it doesn't have anything to
do with that."
Then back to Adam, smiling up at him, right? Practically angelic with that halo of golden hair.
"Hi."
Grace
"Hey Adam," she greets, though she didn't feel his knight-in-shining-ness approaching. It's Adam. She's cool with it.
Alex is the first to broach that subject,
and as much as she appreciates the gesture, Grace has opted to try to
forget that night ever happened. She only vaguely knows, second-hand
that he was even there. Still, the comment has her first looking
concerned right back, and then curious. "Maybe it did, though Sera. I
mean..." she shrugs, "What happened in my seeking, it... very well could have something to do with that night."
"I slew a hydra," she says, and just lets it hang there. Says it like someone might say 'I mowed the lawn.'
Adam
He
listens, intent and serious. Because direct as he is and unhesitating
(unrelenting) as he is this doesn't mean he lacks social graces. The
conversation swims around him: parts around him, stone-Adam, shadowless
Magus. He listens, and he has opinions because he always has opinions.
The quizzical stitch between his eyebrows smooths; those same eyebrows
leap upward and the expression in his eyes stills, then shifts from one
mood to the other. He regards Grace more fully now, but his attention is
not complete.
"Why did you do that?" he asks Grace, of
hydra-slaying. Then says to Sera, "Hi," because when a woman that
beautiful says hi, if you're not distracted, you say hi back, and then
he says to Alexander, "Who are you?"
He doesn't introduce himself, but Grace said hey Adam.
Adam who then says, "What happened in which library?"
Because of course that would interest him.
Kalen Holliday
[Nightmares]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Kalen Holliday
[Awareness???]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 6, 7, 7, 8) ( success x 4 )
Alexander
The
gloves come off and a hand – a little cool, regardless of its time in
the glove – is placed on Sera’s for a minute. “Thank you,” he says
quietly. He still feels a little silly, a little sentimental. But he
appreciates her words. The hands return to opening up the flask and
pouring out soup, offering it to Sera. Because the third has slipped
notice again.
There’s still concern in Alexander’s face – he likes
Grace, and hearing what was going on in there? Well, he worried. “A
hydra? That’s like a dragon? What happened?” He offers a cup to
Grace.
Alexander is pouring soup for himself, and very nearly
spills it when Adam speaks again. The man looks familiar, but... There
is something odd going on here. He shuffles round a little to keep
Adam in sight. The others don’t seem to be overly worried about the
(re?)appearance of the man, so Alexander isn’t overly worried. Maybe a
little puzzled. “Hi. Alexander.” He holds out the cup to Adam.
“Nice to meet you.” There’s a slight narrowing of his eyes, as he tries
to remember if he’s met Adam somewhere before.
Kalen Holliday
Kalen
is not fond of the cold. But he is out in a golden wool coat and a
ridiculously soft cream-colored cashmere scarf, and he is valiantly
trying to ignore the last echoes of winter. He hasn't come for them, or
for The Message (although, if pressed, he might admit he might have
unconsciously chosen this place and cream and gold because of the
Message). Recognizing such motivations is helpful, but that kind of
self-reflection is not Kalen today.
Winter becomes colder on his
tongue and he can feel the ground trembling beneath hooves. Feel the
world shifting and falling through a thousand thousand possible worlds.
If he could focus on them as they blurred past, he could draw them out
one day, in the manner of star charts and the layered realms of the
spiritual cosmologies that he has seen drawn in inks of precious metal
and crushed gemstones. The grandest of them was inlaid around the
circular gallery in marble. That one is shattered and buried now, but
that one's legacy is Grace's office. For which he did not use sapphires
or diamonds, but just paint. Grace probably wouldn't have wanted
diamonds glittering on her walls in constellations, he would say. (But,
let us be truthful, there are not diamonds glittering from those walls
only because Kalen had no idea how to get them there.)
He cannot
stop thinking of maps and of time and of all the ways in which fate
twists in and around itself in Denver. There are are possibilities and
warnings and wonder all vying for his attention. Those all lose out to
the people he senses assembled, and he heads slowly in their direction.
Serafine
"I don't think it had so much to do with the Library,
Grace, as with what you endured and how it has been haunting you.
Somewhere that shadow of the divine or what the fuck ever inside you - "
other people us Names and Terms and Words that mean things for things
like Avatar. Sera tends to avoid them, for reasons that are not wholly
clear, " - wanted you to confront that; to overcome it. To break free
of the chains that experience has forged around your soul, see?
"I mean, that could be what your Avatar wanted. Or maybe it was all a fucking metaphor."
--
And
Sera takes the soup and holds it in her hands and does that to keep
them warm. The steam drifts and she's still on her back and looking up
and then then she sits up, scoots her ass around because soup, shakes
out her tangled hair as the cold wind skims the lake and whips across
the park.
"Grace and I," Sera begins to explain to Alexander and
by extension Adam, quietly and rather seriously for a Sera, with a sort
of spare sense of strangeness about her because she does not speak
Easily about such things and it is perhaps only the constant iteration
of it from Grace that allows her to do so so easily. " - were infected
by this sickness that some people created to try to target mages last
fall. It made us very sick; and caused us to hallucinate gory waking
dreams of our own deaths over and over again.
"Grace has had
nightmares ever since, and," here Sera glances up at Adam. There is
something circumspect, somehow, about that look. Something framingly
delicate. Something attenuated. There are so many pieces of all of
this that Sera keeps - in whole or in part - inside herself, stitched
into her skin, and she can feel that needle now. Is away of its warp
and weave. " - it was bad enough one night in the library that she
started having waking dreams, hallucinations, that it was happening to
her all over again.
"So. Have you been to sleep since your seeking, Grace?"
Grace
Adam
is oblivious. Wasn't around for the Hydra incident. He wasn't witness
to Grace screaming in agony. He's innocent, and even still... It's
embarrassing. She lost it. And everybody in the Chantry must have heard
exactly how.
"I..." she starts, but can't finish. How do you even begin?
"Uh... Well," she looks to Sera, because this is her story too in a way. And Sera says what she will say about it.
"They
called it Hydra. Because you couldn't just destroy it, it would
multiply if you tried to kill it -- like cutting off a hydra's head,"
she adds, so they understand why hydras had become this massive thing with her.
Then, Sera asks if she's been to sleep since. That brings an honest smile. "Yeah. I have."
She
smells the sudden ozone, the smell of storm in the air, and turns to
see Kalen, still smiling. "I think I killed it but good."
Adam
He
accepts the cup of soup from Alexander, and his expression shifts
again: all nuance, Adam, all subtleties. The shift is a courteous shift;
an echo and -- not surprise. But recognition: "Alexander. Nice to meet
you at last. So many things heard."
But the courteous shift is
off-hand, and the bulk of Adam's attention shifts back to Grace who is
now sharp as a knife (just what one wants shifting, huh? tremoring like a
quake) and Serafíne.
To him, a Hydra is a mythological construct.
A relic of bygone days; of glorious days, in a way. A Hydra is a
metaphor, and a Hydra is a nightmare. A Hydra is an enemy, a Hydra is
self-replicating. A Hydra is water, the North, is child-of-beauty, is a
first-gate second-threshold sort-of creature.
Do him credit. He
listens with an air of grave consideration; smells the soup, and if it
doesn't appear to be some sort of italian wedding soup monstrousity sips
on it.
"Hmm," he says when they are both done. "Compelling," he
says, because isn't it? He follows Grace's eyes over to Kalen, offers
the other Hermetic a nod if not a smile. He's thinking, and Adam
thinking means serious things. "What shape did your seeking actually
take? A video game that felt real? Did you start out asleep?"
"I'm curious." A smile. "Needn't indulge me."
Alexander
Alexander
settles back onto the blanket to listen to Sera’s – and Grace’s –
story. He can’t even begin to imagine how it must have felt, being
affected by that illness. And he doesn’t even try to make empty
platitudes to fill the gaps in the telling. He does look back to Grace,
though, still concerned. Although it eases when Grace smiles,
obviously much more relaxed than she was. He does feel a little more of
a connection to Grace than he does to most of the others – maybe
because she’s not so far ahead in her experience of Awakened life that
it seems like he’ll never reach that stage himself. Maybe because it’s
obvious that things are still freaking her out, rather than the others
who just seem to take everything in their stride.
Regardless, Adam
seems to have heard of him. “Good things, I hope.” He smiles, now
that facing the man seems to have fixed him in memory for the moment.
“I think your name has been mentioned, but there have been so many new
ones... “ He shrugs as the sentence hangs, a little apologetic that he
doesn’t have more to say. He turns to greet Kalen as he arrives, but
otherwise settles back to listen to the conversation.
Kalen Holliday
"Mmmmmmm...."
Kalen says, a bit absently. "My little dragon slayer." He missed too
much of the conversation to quite pick it up cold, but he sounds amused
and proud of Grace all the same. He doesn't need to know what she
killed but good for that. Adam is thinking and Sera is...not exactly
happy and Alexander...Alexander looks fine. That last bit provides him
almost no real information.
His pale eyes sweep over them slowly. Curiously.
It's
a second before the word Seeking and the new keen edge to Grace's
Resonance register and he grins. "Ah. Congratulations, Kit." He
settles carefully onto the ground to join them.
Serafine
Grace
slept last night, and she beams and Sera favors her with another oddly
spare half-smile. Inhales the scent of the soup and sips it, grateful
more for the warmth than anything fortifying. Sera always seems to be on the verge of something, breaking apart or falling together or or or - anything but ordinary.
"Hey Kalen."
But
here, look. Ordinary. She sips the soup wrapped up in a blanket and
listens while Grace tells her story and somewhere on her person her
phone vibrates so, Sera sets down the soup and does so carefully and and
from somewhere deep in the wrappings of that blanket Sera digs out an
iPhone and reads a text and then stands up and starts to unwind her
blanket and beneath it she is wearing a tiny leather skirt and her Docs
and black lace thigh-high tights and a small bandeau-style bustier, the
cups of which are covered in tiny red satin roses, beneath a thin black
hoodie, unzipped. Sera pulls the hood up because COLD but does not
bother to zip the hoddie because SEXY and abandons the party with a
small wave of her phone.
"Gotta meet my dealer. I'll be back in a
bit. If Dan comes back with my fucking hot chocolate tell him to hang
tight too. I need a ride over to the Church. Wanna see that mummy-lady
again - "
Grace
Kalen
knows what happened to her, of course he knows. And just congratulates
her like that, like it's something he must have done before. But she's
never done this before, has she? It's all new.
"'Kay, Sera. Say hi for me," she says, waves the departing Cultist goodbye.
And then, it's back to the others, because Adam asked a bunch of questions, and it's not even within her to withhold.
"It
did kind of start out like a game. I got some random popup on my
computer, and I thought it was my stalker, you know? But I guess it
really wasn't.
"Wanted to play the games from Wargames, you know?
Chess, checkers, Theaterwide Biotoxic and Chemical Warfare. I chose
Wheel of Fortune, and then refused to play, because... hah. The winning
move is not to," she says.
"Oh yeah, and it was like a vision. I
wasn't sitting in front of my computer anymore, I was in a TV studio.
And you were there," she says to Kalen. "And... another guy. We were
contestants. I look down at the wheel, and it's all covered in the
outlines of countries. Pat Sajak says 'Aww, looks like you were playing
Global Thermonuclear War after all'.
"But then, I tried to get out
of the studio, and... I ended up in this red hallway wearing platemail
and with a sword and shield, and facing down a hydra," she says.
"Because, yeah, that makes a whole lot of sense. It was like a dream,
very much so."
Adam
Alexander lets the sentence
hang; Adam does, too, and in spite of the Gallow in his last name does
not twist it into a noose or make Alexander into the Hanged Man.
Symbols, metaphors; aren't they everywhere? The echo that was
accompanied by recognition becomes an echo of something indeed else;
agreement, perhaps. Oh. No; a thought. He reaches into his coat, then
into his back pocket which is where his thin leatherfold wallet is
usually kept. Finds a businesscard and hands it to Alexander. "Come by
sometime," he says.
The name Kit means of course that he gives
Kalen a look of attention that dissolves once he realizes Kalen doesn't
mean him; irritated pang, and a faint frown when Sera says she's gotta
meet her dealer, or maybe, maybe, Dan or the Church or mummy-lady or who
knows. Dispell it, Adam. Do not be grumpy.
The grumpiness does
disappear completely because he's that interested in what a
Technomage-Virtual Adept woman like Grace's Seeking would consist of. Do
you see it? The shadow of fascination, a certain intentness?
"What happened after you faced down the Hydra? Did you get a sense of your Avatar throughout?"
A beat. "Do you feel glad?"
Alexander
Alexander
shakes his head a little, a faint smile as he wonders how Sera manages
to avoid freezing to death. He doesn’t really remember any encounter
when her clothing could be described as anything other than, maybe,
‘sparing’. He waves to her as she leaves. The comment about the
dealer? His eyes roll, but there’s not much more reaction that that.
He knows she uses all kinds of drugs and must have some way of getting
hold of them. But, at least here and now, he’s not overly stressed
about it. He’s certainly not making notes. As long as it stays
relatively discreet... He looks at the others when Sera leaves, asks
“Mummy lady?”
Alexander accepts the business card, with thanks.
He reads it before tucking it away in one of the pockets in his
trousers. A book shop wouldn’t be his first choice for places to go,
but he may well take a look at this one. Although more for the owner
than the contents. The last of the soup is drained from the flask and
offered to Kalen, if he wants it. Otherwise he keeps on listening to
the conversation of those more experienced.
Kalen Holliday
Kalen
blinks when Alexander offers him food. You might think for someone
whose idea of a good time seems to be shoving food at other people it
would be something that wouldn't surprise him. But after a few seconds
of giving Alexander and the offered an odd look, He smiles and takes it.
"Thank you,"
"And I have no idea about the mummy lady."
He
leaves Grace to answer the host of Gallowglass' questions. You can't
reallt dissuade Galowglass from questions. But he does give Gallowglass
a smile. See, I haven't forgotten you. I'm just letting you interrogate.
Gallowglass.
"Dammit. I really need to tell her we're not a thing," he mutters, half under his breath.
Grace
More
questions from Adam, and Grace gives Kalen a twist of a grin, saying
something unspoken about Other-Kit's humorous interrogation tactics. A
barrage of questions.
"It taunted me a whole lot, and I screamed
at it and started slicing it. Got it in the heart, not the heads, you
see? Then it... kinda..." she looks up at the trees, remembering.
"Drenched me in blood, and... I woke up. For a moment there, I could
swear it was getting a huge kick out of it, though. Like, every so
often, it would break character and just grin for real instead of being
all creepy-fucker.
"I think... I think the only reason why it was
taking the 'evil' forms was so that I could have occasion to tell them
to fuck off, if you know what I mean? It felt like Awakening, almost.
Like I was touching that again..." her voice trails off, honestly a bit awed. As odd as the encounter was, as dream-like, the way it felt. So real. So immediate. Like touching the face of the universe.
"And
yeah, I do feel glad," she says, lays down on the blanket, stares at
the clouds. "I slept well," she says, and her eyes slide to Kalen.
"Slept well for the first time in forever."
"Oh, yeah, and a few
hours beforehand, Sera and Pan and Riley and I rescued a mummy from
DMNS. She was walking around and all, but it turns out she was only from
the 50's, not the BC's. Guess she went to sleep?" Grace shrugs.
"Anyway, she's at Pan's church."
Adam
Kalen's
smile, Grace's grin-twist; they don't bother him. Not relentless,
unshadowed Adam; never. His eyebrows leap up at Kalen's muttered aside.
Head cocks, just so, the ghost of or suggestion of a smirk.
But
like Alexander, Adam is ready for story time. He hmms aloud when she
mentions that it would just stop and grin, for real. Adam: He's trying
to place her Avatar, trying to figure out what its Essence must be based
on what he knows of Grace, what he hears now. He's always trying to
figure things out, Gallowglass. The awe makes him smile faintly, and
look, he is out of soup. Glances around in that way people glance around
when they realize they're holding trash, then just keeps ahold of it.
Mummy lady. An actual mummy?
"Sounds like an eventful week. What's your next project going to be?"
Slight chin-lift for both Alexander and Kalen. "Did either of you two do anything half as interesting?"
Alexander
For
a moment, Alexander starts to think he’s done something wrong. Kalen’s
peering at him and the soup, and it’s not clear why. But that moment
passes, and the cup is taken. He nods at the thanks, and returns his
attention to the conversation. Asks, “A thing?” when it’s not quite
clear what, or who, he means.
He shuffles again, sitting almost
cross-legged but hugging one bent leg with his chin propped on the
knee. Listening. “It does sound a lot like Awakening. Did you...
well, more awake afterwards? Like you did the first time?” Does that
mean he’s going to have a rerun to look forward to at some point too?
He winces for a moment, but the conversation has moved on again. That
Grace slept ok last night? That does get a smile – she deserves a
little peace.
“A mummy? Like, bandages and all? How on earth did you find her? Or... did you wake her up, or did that just happen?”
Anything
as interesting? “Not quite as interesting, but a ghost saved me
from... something? Some kind of weird
taking-people-over-and-killing-them kinda thing.” He shrugs. “I don’t
know much more than that, other than she said that she’s seen is happen
three times now.”
Kalen Holliday
He smiles at Grace's comment that she slept well for the first time in ages. His fingers curl around the soup because warm.
He has finally settled on a place to call home and it is unbearably
cold for ridiculous portions of the year. Of course. Nothing is ever
easy, is it?
"Only things you've told me never to elaborate about
for you again," Kalen purrs at Gallowglass. He takes a sip of his soup
and his eyes are still all amusement but his voice is mostly back to
normal with just an undercurrent of that purr still threaded through it.
Rich and golden and warm like sunlight streaming through breaks in
clouds. "Although, perhaps to you. Grace made me the framework but I'm
updating a map of Denver with events and places of interest from old
maps and trying to get it set up so that we'll be able to actually link
those things to relevant sections of books for explanation from the
digital library. Want to help?"
Kalen laughs at Alexander's
question. "So...I was having a horrible day and I may have been all
over Gallowglass in this bar and Sera seems to think that we're-what?"
He stares at Alexander like 'there is a
taking-people-over-and-killing-them kinda thing and you didn't call
me??!!??!!' Nevermind he can't actually do anything about that.....
Grace
Alexander
has even more questions than Adam. It seems this is Grace's day to
answer everything, but she's not tired of sharing. "Yeah, it did feel
somewhat like the first time. There was this hum, this oscillating hum. I
remember that from the first time, when I had that vision in the
mountains? Said it was creation, destruction, and stasis in one breath."
Alex
asks about the mummy next, and to this she laughs. "Oh, Alex, you know
how it goes. You're just out somewhere minding your own business, and
suddenly, boom! Mages everywhere! And somebody needs you. She wasn't
like, wrapped up in mummy wrappings. She was naked. But she wasn't all
rotten or anything. Just climbed up out of a sarcophagus like that."
Then,
she sits up on her elbows, "Hey, did anyone at the police hear anything
about like... a stolen mummy or anything? I think we covered our tracks
fairly well, but you know. We didn't steal her, she just woke up and didn't want to be a display piece anymore."
Then,
when Alex finishes, talking about his weird thing taking people over
and killing them? Yeah, Grace does a double-take the same as Kalen. "What?"
Adam
A thing? And, I may have been all over -
The dark-haired young man looks bemused by this retelling. Bemused, surprised, restive; restless. Let's move on.
A
wraith saved Alexander. Adam says, "Certainly still registers on the
'interesting o meter.' How did the wraith save you; rather, did you -
'something'?" He hmms, again: "Do you remember any details about the
something?"
He isn't a spirit mage, Adam. But he knows an awful, awful lot about things that are going on in the spirit world. (Paranoia, paranoia...)
There are reasons for everything.
Absently,
because Adam is well-able to follow-up on two threads of interest at
once: "As for a missing mummy," bemused again, "I wager the museum would
wish to keep things quiet if they knew their mummy was inauthentic. If
she was. If it isn't an Ars Temporis paradox. If - hmm."
He leaves it there.
Alexander
He
laughs a little as Kalen explains the ‘thing’. And looks from one man
to the other. And shrugs. There have been stranger matches.
Grace
asks about police attention. He thinks for a moment, but nothing
really sounds familiar. “I can’t remember hearing anything about
anything going missing from the museum, but I can see what I can find
out if you like. Exhibits going missing should get a fair bit of
attention.” Mummies don’t generally walk out under their own power, so
people would be looking if they’d noticed her missing.
“I... left
a note at the Chantry. “ He looks between Grace and Kalen. “It
happened at the start of a night shift, and I got tired, and... didn’t
think.” He shrugs again, looking sheepish. “There was a feeling of
stuff rotting. I think I got a bit distracted trying to figure out
where it was coming from. Then a window broke, a ghost was screaming at
me to run, and some weird green guy started chasing us. Well, me, I
think. She said something about the guy not being able to see her yet,
so I guess he wasn’t quite dead.” He looks between all three of the
other again as he finishes. “I went back again, the day after. Other
than a boarded up window, there was no sign anything had happen. And
that feeling of decay had gone too. Alyssa knows the ghost, though. Or
knows someone who can get in touch with her, at least. Any of you guys
know Connor?”
Kalen Holliday
"Hey. It's okay."
He smiles a little. "No crazy green people got you and the ghost knows
Alyssa so we can probably track it down. And yeah, he hasn't been
around much though, I think he has like all the business things going on
right now. But he might be around again at some point."
"You should probably talk to Alyssa though. I can tell you about spirits, but I can't interact with them."
Adam
"Knowledge is power," Adam says, deep in consideration-of-things mode, and then:
His
phone buzzes. He slides it neatly out of his pocket because that
particular buzz means someone in particular he cannot avoid, not even
for interesting discussions of Awakened mayhem.
"I'm sorry, ah,
thank you for the soup, Alexander. The stories, everybody else, but I
need to take this. Ta. Oh, and of course, regarding the library Kalen,
I've told you I'm at your service in spite of my reservations regarding -
"
The phone buzzes again. Flash of irritation, and this time a
wave which seems one-part waving off annoyance one-part just waving a
fare-well, Adam bends his head and walks away. Throws the cup into a
trashcan. Remembers the apple in his pocket and throw that away, too.
Alexander
probably won't remember his face; will remember the basic jist of the
conversation, considering the others, but not everything Adam said, not
specifically. He's got the businesscard though: for whatever that's
worth.
Exeunt, Gallowglass.
ooc: Sorry guys, I need to run super fast! Thanks for letting me into the scene though!
Grace
"Connor, yeah, he sells pot -- legally,"
Grace adds that last bit because, yeah, she's still a bit concerned,
even though Alex knows Sera enough to tell she's rarely sober, and
usually on something a bit more powerful than 'legal'.
"So he's really busy right about now I suspect. Why do you ask about him though?"
Adam
wanders out, and Grace eyes the blanket beneath her, the spread. Oh,
it's Sera's... huh. Will have to take it back to her so she doesn't lose
a blanket and things. It's an idle though in between speaking of
mummies and ghosts and hydras, all the rest of the paranormal backdrop
to life.
"Reservations? What's his reservations?" she asks Kalen.
Not to be mean to Adam, but hey -- maybe he has a point they hadn't
considered yet.
Alexander
“I did think about
calling for help at the time but... well, I ran away from it and I guess
lost it, or left it behind. “ And he now wonders what happened to the
green man. Had he been missed? “Yeah, Alyssa left me a voicemail about
meeting up. We just haven’t quite gotten together yet.” Alexander had
been hoping to bump into her again for a while. He has a fair bit he
wants to ask about.
Adam heads away, fading from memory almost as
fast as he fades from sight. The card is there in a pocket, though,
and he may well be curious enough about how it ended up in his pocket to
pay the shop a visit.
He looks at Grace for a moment or two
before answering her, wondering if she’d ever get over her twitchiness
about his career. Most people seem to ease up a little once they
realise they’re not going to end up with a ticket from him for parking
slightly too far from the kerb, or being a little too noisy at night.
And given that he tends to treat speed limits more as guidelines – once
out of residential areas anyway – getting lifts from people can turn
into a rather slow affair. Yeah, most people. “Oh, Mellie – the ghost –
seems to be a good friend of his. I don’t really know any more than
that.”
Kalen Holliday
[Arete: Forces 2 because dammit cold soup is sad; D=4 (w/foucus)WP]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (2, 6) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Kalen Holliday
Kalen uncurls one hand from his soup to wave to Gallowglass as he heads off. "I'll call you then."
And then his eyes roll dramatically at the legally.
And then he sighs, because Alexander needs to be on Ginger and Grace
needs to stop being so skittish about him. Look, here he is, being
totally fine and giving them food.
Right. Food. Kalen sips at
the soup, realizes it's cold, and blows on it and murmurs something.
It's not something in a language Alexander has heard before, but Grace
has probably heard Enochian at least once by now. He takes another sip
of soup and this time seems much more pleased.
"Connor is friends with pretty much everyone he has ever seen," Kalen says with a smile.
Grace
Kalen -- the man of words.
He speaks a language she doesn't understand, couldn't grok if her life
depended on it. But it works for him, and Works for him. He described it
to her once as a kind of synaesthetic sensation. He feels those words
in more than just sight and sound.
And, it does sound pretty. Even if she does squint at his eye-rolls, like 'whatever, dude.'
Grace
doesn't worry about fucking parking tickets. She worries about Alex
finding out about her many felonies. When the rapists get less time in
jail than the hacker who exposed the rapists... Well. It's easy to see what side of things the Law favors. It ain't her.
That talk is going to be a tense one.
"You
should totally get with Alyssa. She's really great at all that spirity
stuff," Grace says, trying to hide her sudden awkwardness about Alex's
occupation. "And Kalen, stop showing off," she says, with a wicked grin.
"Oh, who am I kidding."
Alexander
It’s
certainly not in a language familiar to Alexander, but he listens
anyway. Tries to make out the words. “What was that you said?” he
asks, after steam starts to rise from Kalen’s cup again. Magic words?
He’ll be waving a wand around next.
It may well be a tense talk,
but not one that’s going to happen just yet. Alexander figures that
Grace just needs more time to relax fully around him. Or maybe she
never will. Kalen’s mentioned before certain... technical illegalities
that can come up now and again, especially around Awakened life.
Especially when you go hunting the things that go bump in the night.
But is it murder when there’s no human left in there to kill? There can
be haziness between the letter and the spirit of the law, but he does
believe – or at least wants to believe – in justice. Although quite
what that is, sometimes, is hard to define.
So he leaves the subject changed, and just laughs when Grace gives up trying to stop Kalen from showing off.
Kalen Holliday
"Just...showing
off," he says to Alexander. "Pay it no mind. I may teach you one day,
but it is traditionally not a shared thing outside of the Order."
Well, there's something he never really told Grace.
"I should get
back to work though. Let me know where you saw that guy later, and the
ghost. I'll update the map with that too." He rises, and from off the
ground and cold-stiffened with one hand occupied by holding soup that
is not easy. He doesn't bother to try to make it look easy. He could.
He could bend gravity to his Will the way he just did heat. But
somethings are important and some things are just inconvenient.
"I'll see you both soon enough, I'm sure. Be well."
Grace
Well, that gets a look, a little twitch of a smile. Kalen, you little rulebreaker you.
Of
course, if he had met her with a 'no, Kit, that's not something you can
learn outside of the Order' she probably wouldn't have taken it too
well. Information wants to be free. Especially information that helps
the cause, that brings good.
"Bye, I'll see you back at the
office," Grace says. "Will likely be sleeping there, too." Because, you
know, Kalen always needs to know where she lays her head.
"I
should probably get going too," she says to Alex and starts packing up
Sera's things. Sera just off and left without her blanket, and yeah...
That's quite a Sera thing to do. But whatever. It'll float in Grace's
car for a while, find its way back to Sera again. All will be well. All
just.
There is a thing that Alex and Grace might agree on. They
are both rather obsessed with justice, when you think about it. It's
just that Grace doesn't trust the law to bring it. Mostly because it
doesn't, in her opinion.
"Hey, Alex? Kalen told me you were there that night. I'm sorry you had to see that. Wasn't me at my best."
She
gives him a smile anyway, as if to say 'But I'm really okay', and
starts lugging the picnic blanket and things back to her car.
Alexander
Alexander doesn’t have any intention of
getting Kalen into trouble, so that what he was saying wasn’t usually
shared? Not such a big deal. He may get told about it at some point,
but – other than a little curiosity about what the language was – he’s
not overly concerned about the lack of sharing. Alexander says his
goodbye to the man as he wanders away. He will given Kalen a call – or
bump into him – later and give him the location he asked for.
And
then Grace is starting to make a move too. Alexander helps her fold,
roll or otherwise pack up the blanket and anything else that Sera had
wandered off and abandoned in her search for a fix. His flask and the
leftover cups get shoved back into the rucksack, and the bag slung over
his shoulders. She mentions the night in the library, and he turns from
what he’s doing to look at her. “I’m just glad you’re ok now. I
wanted to do more to help you, but...” Again, the sentence dies.
Alexander doesn’t really know how much she knows about what went on
outside, or how well she gets on with Pan. He’s still puzzled about
Kalen’s behaviour, too. But all he does is shrugs. “I guess Patience
did a pretty good job.” He’ll help Grace carry stuff to her car, share
the load a little.
No comments:
Post a Comment