Spicy Hot Chocolate

Kiara
It's hardly what most would deem park weather, Denver at present.

Though the lack of radiant warmth has never particularly held the Verbena back from doing whatever it was she pleased to do. And not infrequently, Kiara Woolfe liked to run. There was a peacefulness, one might have even gone so far as to term it tranquility, to running the pathways that zig-zagged throughout the expanse of Washington Park. At present, the walkways that she preferred were touched with frost; it gleamed in the afternoon sunlight and adventurer though she was, the brunette also had an uncanny sense of self preservation.

Which was why she wasn't found traversing the depths of the park as the sunlight desperately quested to warm what it could but situated under a tree; a blanket spread out beneath her and the lake glinting in the distance. The world was become December's, in all her icy power and while the pagan respected it enough to dress for nature's demands (coat, boots, gloves, the usual adornments of the season) she wasn't afraid of it. At least, not enough to keep her from coming to re-align herself with it.

The Verbena's back was situated against the tree; her legs crossed neatly beneath her and there was, playing on her lips, a rather contented expression as she pressed one hand; gloveless; back against the brittle bark. If a stranger didn't know better they might have guessed she was listening to the tree. Which, the way the air around the Verbena hummed with a particular sort of vibration of energy, might not have been quite so far from the truth.

[Doo de doo, we're just harmonizing with nature, no big deal. Bit of Life 1. Practiced. Coincidental. Unique Foci, etc.]

Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (3, 10) ( success x 2 )

Grace
[Awareness!]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 4, 10, 10) ( success x 2 )

Grace
The last time they were here, they played basketball against Ian. If Grace had any idea what Kiara and Ian were playing for, she probably wouldn't have. But ignorance is bliss. This is so, even for Grace, as long as she doesn't know she's missing anything.

She's an odd beast in the park. Walkways are more of a guideline to her than anything, a signal that there might be such things as benches beside them. So, she's often seen making her own wandering path. Today, she's leaving a trail through the frosted grass that looks very much like someone didn't know where they're going. At one point, her trail turns sharply. Somebody feels like the cycle of life over there.

It might seem to Kiara that Grace is an unchanging creature. Does she always wear jeans, sneakers, and that red coat festooned with small plastic bits here and there? When she arrives at Kiara's tree, she's silent, watching, not wanting to interrupt.

Kiara
[Oh yes I should have done this before. Do I sense a Grace?]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )

Kiara
The last time Kiara had been here, or, quite near to where she currently sits, there'd been a spirit nearby and other Awakened. He'd been wary of her, the departed, with her resonance that called to the fore the notion of something destructive, something entirely devouring and inevitable. It wasn't anything that got simpler; being feared the way he'd feared her in the moment. Though it wasn't the first time something other had felt her to be an implied threat.

Such was that of a child of nature; that felt cyclinic like her whims could be. It was easy to fear that which you couldn't control.

Grace's presence isn't a strange one to the Verbena; that keen sense of something shifting; sands pouring through the hourglass but in the moment; she doesn't feel her approach. Not until she opens her eyes after a protracted moment; a blink. A tilt of her chin upward at the shadow canting across her sunlit afternoon. It takes the brunette a second to come back. To divert her focus from the Pattern of the world around her and latch onto another.

"Grace, hey." She doesn't sound unhappy to be disturbed, Kiara, rather entirely at her leisure. Relaxed, you might have said, despite the chill in the air. There's a thermos on the blanket beside the female, a small wicker basket beside it. Somebody had been enjoying a winter's day picnic, apparently. The brunette shifted her weight a little; straightening. "You caught me mid-conversation.

They're happy." This, a tilt back at the tree behind her; the touch of a smile gracing Kiara's red mouth. "Winter agrees with them." There's a stretch and Kiara unfolds her legs, gestures at the blanket. "Pull up a square of blanket."

Grace
Grace looks up. "Aww man, we're not stuck in a painting are we? Happy trees?"

"I'm trying to get the plants to talk to me too. Though it's more like..." she says, and trails off. Okay, so maybe tread carefully here? Sometimes people can be a bit put off by the techno part of technomancy.

"Like they're having a conversation with the sunlight that I'm trying to decode. To see if I can use it to send my own messages, if that makes sense?"

She takes up the offer to share a blanket, stretching out her gangly legs, leaning back on her hands, in order to continue looking up into the trees.

"I wish I could say my ivy was happy with me, but it keeps getting nibbled on by cats. I imagine there's got to be some animosity there."

Kiara
There's a sharp grin, at that. Kiara tucks one leg back under her body to reach over and unscrew the top on her thermos. Her glove hasn't been refitted and the Verbena's fingernails are painted a bold crimson that matches her favored shade of lipstick. "God, I hope not, as soothing as watching Bob Ross paint can be I think I'd rather something a little more exciting." She lifts an eyebrow. "If I was going to be caught in some alternate universe. Picasso, maybe. Salvador Dal . Now he'd be worth it."

She reaches into her basket, takes out a pair of small cups. "All those melting clocks and ships made of butterflies?" The top of the thermos steams with something warm inside and when she pours out one cup, it smells like sugar and spice; something with chocolate. She sets one out and inclines her head toward it in a help yourself motion. Pours a second and curls her legs up; resting an arm across a knee and turning over what the other woman says.

"Nature talks to nature, without question. Interpreting what they're saying and using it - " Kiara nurses her chocolate in one hand; lifting it to her mouth to take a sip. "Let's just say I'm still trying to figure out what she's saying half the time." Her ivy is being nibbled on by cats. There's a breath of laughter at that. "Beware the scorned house plants." She wiggles her fingers back into a glove. Offers a thoughtful look the other woman's way.

"You know I was in here the other night and met a few newcomers. They were feeding the homeless. There was a lot of talk of God's work." Oh, there's a hint of something wry, there, in the pagan's tone.

Grace
"Newcomers? Doing God's work, eh? Well, feeding the homeless is good, I guess," Grace says, shrugs, still looking to the trees. "As long as they're not doing the God of Murderous Rampages' work, that's fine by me. I'd ask if you meant Kalen and Danny, because apparently Danny wants to bring the joy of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to all of Denver, but they aren't new and they don't really ever speak of doing God's work."

Grace takes the offered cup just as she did the blanket -- no thank-yous. There's only a look of surprise at the offer itself, and then complete acceptance, as if she were fully engaged in making herself at home on someone else's blanket, drinking someone else's hot chocolate.

"This is really nice. Hot chocolate on a cold day in the park? Brilliant."

Kiara
"It was a man and a woman. She was -" Kiara pauses, her expression knitting into something a little uncertain. A flicker of some agitation at the very fact. " - captivating, in a way and he was - " There, again. A flicker of something. She's smiling throughout it, though it verges here and there on becoming less sincere. More a grimace. "Oliver and Lavinia, I think they introduced themselves as. Said they were settling into Denver. Kalen was there, though."

Her smile returns then, a little more sincere. A little less burdened by whatever it was that grated at her about the newcomers presence. "They called us townies." There's amusement painted into the Verbena's voice at that; some pleasing warmth like that of the hot chocolate she's offered Grace. It seeps under the skin, that good humor. "I suppose they get points for that. It's a first, for me." She flicks aside the heavy fall of her hair from her face so Grace can see the full weight of her amusement at the fact. She's foregone any sort of hat today, the Verbena and her dark hair falls in waves; spilling down over Kiara's shoulders.

It adds to the picture of her being some wild thing at times, the pagan. Perfects that combination of dark eyes and red lips. The clatter of jewellery around her wrists; her neck.

"Mm, it's an old recipe. The secret is to add a little chili." She takes another sip from her own cup, resettles against her tree. "I come in here a lot. Just to sit and - " she tilts her face upwards; toward the treetops. "What about you? What brings you to the splendor of Washington Park on a Friday afternoon?" There's a decided tease to the edge of Kiara's mouth as she says this. As if she knows it's unlikely the park lures everyone back the way it does herself. That, or she imagines Grace has some deeper reasoning for finding herself within it without company.

Grace
"I don't know. I sometimes just feel like I need to get on my feet and go somewhere, you know? Like, sitting in front of the computer all day is my main habitat. Good stuff comes when I can sit there for days with just my coffee and not have to bother with anything. But then I get all antsy," Grace says, her eyes tracing the outline of the lake. She sips some hot chocolate, noting that not all of the heat of it is thermal.

"This is good stuff," she mutters. "Like the chili. Gives it character."

Her gaze then shifts over to the mountains in the distance. "Townies..."

There is a wildness to Grace as well, though not in the way of animals and plants and the cycles of nature. It's more to do with being unrestrained. Her mussy hair has a twig stuck in it today, and she really couldn't care less about that. Twigs happen. But there is always something a bit unnatural about her, isn't there? The way she doesn't like to look at people. The way her eyes tend to follow lines.

Kiara
"I do." Kiara murmurs, with eyes focused on Grace's features, even as she casts her attention out over the lake. It's late afternoon and cool; the crisp wind cutting across their small shelter intermittently. They're half protected by the ancient tree Kiara's perched against but there's no total concealment from the elements. It sends occasional sharp gusts that flip over the edge of the blanket the Verbena had lain out earlier. Rustles the leaves high above and whips the surface of the water up.

Chopping and changing the otherwise serene lake.

There's something thoughtful; perhaps sympathetic to Kiara's attention for a beat. A contained consideration before she chimes in with: "I've never been too good at staying in one place for too long. Winter is - " The Verbena's features twist into something rueful. " - a challenge, for me. I don't like the way everything stops. Freezes over." There's steam slowly rising off the cup housed between Kiara's gloved palms, a reminder perhaps, of the very subject of her consideration.

"Hibernation isn't really something I understand. I guess there's a reason for it but, " Thin shoulders lift in a shrug; dismissive. "Give me Spring any day." She's quiet for a moment or two then, Kiara, eyes perhaps taking in Grace's presence. The twig in her hair is undoubtedly noticed; perhaps the reason for the brief suggestion of a smile at the edge of the other woman's mouth. Her eyes dip down then, away and she curls up against the tree like a child might have against a doting mother.

"It's odd how often I meet people and spend time around them and never really know a single thing about them. You, Ian, Serafine." Kiara's dark eyes rove over Grace's face. "I get the impression there's a lot that happened here before I found my way into it."

Grace
"Here? Well, I mean, just in this park alone... The Message occasionally pops up here in the form of a scarecrow by the lake. He's nice. There was this guy who got stuck in the 'spirit world' and he used the last bit of oomph that he had sending a message across to us, just so he wouldn't be forgotten. The Message kind of, I don't know. Gained sentience? Over here it looks like a scarecrow. Over there it looks like an owl-angel. Some people I know come to this lake and have picnics just in case Mr. Message pops in to say hi.

"Not everything here is so nice though. I mean, you have Ginger now. You can read. We have been through a lot. And no matter what the new guys like to say, we're all new guys here. The real old guard? They got wiped out about a couple years ago."

She sits up to balance herself while drinking the hot chocolate, because it wouldn't do to dump it all over herself on accident. Its heat is appreciated.

"There's one thing about Denver. It never freezes here, if you catch my meaning," Grace says, and there is a note of anger there. Not at Kiara, but at whatever force it is out there that seems to want to kill and/or torture everyone in existence.

Kiara
There is something very soothing to the hot beverage in both their hands. A strange juxtaposition to their conversation but it somehow works to anchor them in the moment. There's something very human to it, after all. The sweet yet spicy chocolate; a warm drink for a winter's day and all that's missing, really, are marshmallows roasted over a fire.

Call backs to utterly benign, mortal things. What tethers a person to the world while they're in danger of finding pathways beyond it, after all. Grace talks about The Message, the park, what's come and gone and picnics in their very spot. Kiara's expression suggests interest; curiosity; banked investment where she sits, curled up; hands clasped tight around her plastic cup in their soft leather gloves. "I don't doubt it's seen a lot, this place. I got that impression from what I saw. Looking across."

It never freezes in Denver, if she catches her drift. The way the brunette's smile fades a little; settles into something a touch more subdued, she does. There's a certain way she looks off into the distance; a certain way she breathes out carefully that says she knows it well. Kiara's mouth is mutable as it folds and arranges itself to suit her expression. Resignation, maybe. A shared anger banked there with it that matches that heard in Grace's voice.

"Yeah, you could say the same was true about New York." She looks back then, meets Grace's eyes and there's a suggestion there in Kiara's - Pain, commiseration, understanding of some unnamed horror that couldn't quite be shaken off like rain from an umbrella after a storm. "You know what they say about cockroaches, though," she considers her hot chocolate. "Persistent little buggers."

Grace
"Mmm," Grace says, nods, drinks some heat in.

"So far, at least going back a couple of years, we've had some level of weirdly good bad luck. Shit keeps going down and fucking with us, but we keep going. Really, yes, rather cockroach-like at that, I guess. Maybe we just make our own good luck by being so damn stubborn."

Grace walks the park alone, trying to find peace. Something inside her doesn't want to be tethered -- wants to find the paths beyond the here and now. It doesn't care about the danger. She does, though.

Some days that tether snaps taut. The need to go rises, though 'to where' isn't really a meaningful question. There is no where.

"I guess where you are doesn't really matter in the long run. Shit happens anyway. That's what I gather, at any rate. None of us seem to have simple, uninteresting lives. It just doesn't work."

Kiara
Kiara's eyes gleam a little at that. She laughs and - dipping her head, pours herself a little more hot chocolate from the thermos. The edge of her mouth is always hinting at something. That's Kiara, though. The eternal sense that for as much as she offers - she holds back, too. Perhaps that's a learned trait of the Awakened. When you never quite knew where the Technocracy was going to show up, you got accustomed to talking in half truths. In codes and veiled glances.

Kiara's people had made something of an art of it throughout history. Persecution did tend to have that effect.

"You know, I have to admit, before everything -" She sits back on her knees; her thumb toying with the rim of her cup. " - I would have called my life exactly that. Uninteresting. Predictable. And even for a while after it - " She glances at Grace, then away, smiling. Some faint impression of mirth at herself; her past. Her journey.

"I sort of clung to this idea I could do both. Be both. As if one wouldn't infect the other." She looks back; eyes searching the other woman's face. "But you're right. It doesn't really matter where we are. It all - " She curls her lip. "Finds you out, one way or another. At least we're in good company, right?"

Grace
"It's possible. To do both. There are some who make a real effort at that, and manage to make it work. A lot of us have professions in the 'real world' although I've never figured out how. Then there's the ones with children.

"There's no way to avoid 'infection' though. It's not like you're literally two people. Just one person with two lives."

She drinks the last of her spicy hot chocolate. It's no longer really hot by now, but the spice is heat enough.

"I've found it's simpler to try not to do everything at once, though."

Kiara
"I envy them that. I mean to an extent I have both but - not quite the same way. Not, mind you that I'd go back to the way it was before, but - " There's a sense of loss snarled in there, somewhere. Behind the easy smiles and dramatically painted dark eyes. The way Kiara speaks of her old life, as if it's a monument to time she can't quite recapture. Echoes and ghosts of the times that had come before.

Footprints in the sand long since washed away.

" - it's easy to remember it with a certain wistfulness on the other side, I guess." The Verbena finishes her second cup and carefully stows it back inside her wicker basket. There's a myriad of other things in there when she lifts the lid. Bunches of wrapped herbs; something in a glass that resembled misty water; a plastic baggie of what could have been dried leaves. Food items too, one supposes, somewhere.

Kiara carefully pushes herself to her feet; brushing down her jeans with gloved hands and shifting the basket to one side so its freed from the blanket. "Speaking of real world professions, I have a session tonight I should probably get back and set up, for." She'd mentioned it once before, what she did. How she made some use of the connections between who she'd been and what she was.

A healer, that's what she'd called herself. A practitioner of energies. "You should stop by one of my classes." She casts Grace a winged eyebrow, a briefly coy look as she sets to carefully folding a corner of the blanket up. "It's good for a little clarity of mind. Or if you prefer," she picks a few dry leaves from the folds of the fleece. "I do private healing sessions, too. It's not quite the same kind as hot chocolate, but," the brunette shrugs, smiles. It's a brief, contained thing. Easy, unfussed about the likelihoods of Grace taking up the offer.

"It's a way to calibrate yourself, so to speak."

Grace
The blanket is being folded, and so, Grace stands and removes herself from it. She's not a cat, to get upset when the blanket needs to move out from under her.

"That would be interesting. I've never seen reiki before. I wonder if I could see it work in the... you know, the 'Tapestry'. Or whatever you call it."

Some Virtual Adepts would scoff at the very idea of reiki. Pseudoscience at best, right? Too much woo, not enough foo and bar. The ones like Grace, who have seen far weirder things than palm healing and who have 'grown up' around the Traditional types, not so much.

It shouldn't come as a surprise that people have found so many different ways to hack the universe, really.

"It was nice to talk with you, fellow townie," she says, and her eyes flit to Kiara's just in time to perform the fakest of formal bows. "I look forward to the next time you give me a drink and conversation."

Kiara
"Reiki is about using the energy that already exists in the world. With the right intention, you can map it. Channel it. Use it to heal or conversely - " Kiara pauses folding her blanket, straightens, her hair scooped back from her face in a restless; impatient gesture. " - well, there's a lot of different kinds of will workers out there. The way I use it, it helps me see life. Articulate the patterns, understand them."

She tucks the blanket under the edge of her basket; picks it up to stow under an arm and smiles; a dimpled, bright thing as Grace mock bows. "Likewise. We should make a habit of it." Kiara tilts her head, motioning them toward the frost-bitten pathways. The sun is beginning to dip; the temperature shying as it does.

"After you."

In their wake; there's a small square of lawn warmed by their presence; the frost has melted away; but it won't take long for it to recapture the verdant grass. It was December's whim, after all, and one that brought with it a decided touch of ice.