Thursday, December 3, 2015
Retro: About Love.
Grace
It's Wednesday night when Grace calls Kalen up while he's on vacation, and may want to stay vacationing and not worrying about what's going on back home. Well, he can deal with it. It's late in Denver, but Chile's four hours behind, so as long as he's not suffering the extreme jet lag anymore, he should be awake.
Grace can't sleep. It's been one of those nights.
When he picks up, the first sound he'll be greeted with is a slurp. Grace is attempting to use his own tactic of hot tea to relax, although she is not ceremonial about it. If a little tea is good, surely a lot of tea is better, right? She's not meditating on the essence of tea, she's just hoping the heat and phytochemicals do their work for her.
"Hey. Can't sleep. Is now a good time to talk?"
----------
Kalen
Quite some distance away Kalen glances at his phone and then back to the man sitting on the couch with him. He mouths the word Grace, despite the fact that he has not yet picked up the phone.
Ramon nods. Kalen curls up into the corner of the couch and taps the phone. "Hey," he says. "Of course, Kit. Anytime." And he means that, for all that what little time he gets with Ramon is precious to him. And Ramon is still there, squeezing Kalen's shoulder as he steps off for a minute.
"What's going on?"
----------
Grace
"Well. Things," she says, cryptically. "Have you checked your messages lately?" she asks. She means to ask, in a secretive way, whether he has read the message she posted to Ginger yet. The one about Farrah Esmail.
She doesn't remember the woman very well. She was River's friend, but beyond that, there was no long conversation or budding friendship between her and Grace. Still. It's disturbing. All of it is disturbing. All of the murders, all those lives, gone just to wear Michael down in his fight. Like The Artist doesn't want him to have anything left to live for.
"I didn't exactly tell everybody everything." There's a pause on the other line, the noise of a slurp again. "'Cause, you know, privacy and all."
She'll wait to hear from him whether he knows the basics.
----------
Kalen
"Yes," Kalen says quietly. "I've checked my messages. I saw." There is something in his tone, the way that the steadiness in his tone is just a little too uniform, that indicates he must have met Farrah.
There is a slight pause, a murmur in Spanish to Ramon as he offers Kalen a glass of wine and then settles onto the couch again. Close at hand.
"I am starting to think it was a mistake to leave. There is more to this?" Ramon does not seem to respond, to offer any reassurances. But then, Kalen is speaking in English.
----------
Grace
"Well, yeah," she says, and there's another pause, like she's drumming up the courage to say the thing. "I haven't told anybody yet, because it's nobody's business. But uh. Hmm. I guess it really started when I told Michael I wasn't going to follow his orders to stay out of his investigation. He stood up and swore an oath of protection on me, and we just... Started," she says.
We just started.
"I've been deeply involved in the hunt for this... creature. And then, I became deeply involved with Mike. Like... I think I'm falling in love with him involved."
And then, she waits out the inevitable pause while Kalen stops to digest that. Of all the things he expected Grace to do, that was probably far down on the list. She knows that.
Kalen's about the only person she feels comfortable with coming out and saying this to, but even then, it's pretty damn uncomfortable. It's so sad, the way she talks about loving this man. Despite the joy involved, there's just so much else. Fear for him. Upset for him. He's had to clean up the body of his former pupil tonight. It hurts when someone you love is hurting, even if it's a shadow of their pain.
----------
Kalen
And they just started.
Kalen takes a breath and then a sip of wine. Listens until Grace pauses. Overly surprised...perhaps not. And this is Kalen, to whom love is often a complex, messy, edged and weighted thing; and yet, to whom, love is always indescribably beautiful. Even with a Catholic priest. Even when he knows that he will not be loved the way that he loves. And even, though he does not speak about it to Grace, even, sometimes, with a vampire.
Grace is in love with a man who is, at least at present, compromised by a Nephandus. Perhaps they will be able to pull back those tendrils and extricate his soul and his fate from that of the Fallen creature that would claim him. Perhaps there will be no salvation that is not death. Perhaps there will be only death. Or even some darker fate.
Grace will have assessed the situation. She will not need him to tell her all of the ways that this might end. That might have been what he would have done when they met, when Kalen was still so much more what the Order demanded than what he wanted to be. But now....
"The first thing, is congratulations. I am so very glad that you found someone you can share yourself with in such a fashion. I know that you may not be certain how long you have, and with good reason, but however long we have it never seems to be long enough."
Kalen raises the wineglass in his hand to his lips, but barely does more than taste the wine. "The second thing is that, however this, whatever may happen, you are not alone. If we save him from this thing, if we can't, if he stays when it's over or he leaves, whatever that may force him to do...you do not, ever, have to be alone.
"And, third, whatever monstrous things that he may be forced to do or to become, I understand what it means to love someone that most of our friends in Denver would consider a monster. I know what is like to see both the true spirit of a person and the curse entwined with it. Even if we must hunt him in the end, even it goes horribly wrong, I understand.
"You will never have been wrong to love him. However it ends. Love is only grace."
----------
Grace
There is a reason why Grace called him. He always knows the right thing to say. And he knows her well enough to get at the heart of the issue.
There are times when Grace doesn't trust herself when it comes to being human. Many things other people do are unfathomable to her, and always have been. She's had to learn the behaviors that come naturally to most. Even before she Awakened she always had this sense of being alien. So what does it say about her that the first, and perhaps only, person who she could see herself in a relationship with is a serial killer?
It's not his fault. It is The Artist, she thinks. And perhaps if she didn't love him, she wouldn't be so inclined to view him as innocent. She knows her own biases.
Kalen says though, that it was never wrong to love him. And she holds her breath because she really doesn't want to cry.
"Thanks," she says, after a long pause, followed by that slurping sound.
"I know I'm not alone. I am so lucky there. I just never thought this would happen, and now it is. And yeah..."
Yeah. Couldn't pile more meaning into that solitary word, could she?
"What if I can't do what I need to do when it comes to him? Worse, what if I can?"
She can see herself coldly taking Mike out, in her more morbid ruminations. If The Artist took him over, if he attacked her. What would she do? A part of her already knows. It would depend on the circumstances, on whether hurting him would lead to greater or lesser success, and not much else. Why? Why so calculating?
"I don't know how you handle it, being in relationships with people. I can barely handle the one."
----------
Kalen
Kalen draws in a breath when Grace not only asks what if she cannot do what she must, but what if she can. And Grace cannot see his expression, nor can she see Ramon reach out to rest a hand on his shoulder.
"You will do what you must. You are too strong not to." There is a pause, because Grace is not the only one in this conversation trying not to cry. "It is, in some horrific irony, easier to do for love. When you look at someone and see only a corrupted mockery of what they were, when you know death is the last gift you can offer...you won't care what it costs you.
"You will do it. You won't even see a choice. That moment...that moment will not be as hard as you think."
The moments after.... Grace saw Kalen after all the horrors of that zombie mindscape. Certainly, killing a boy before he turned was not the only thing that weighed on him.
Perhaps he dreads what he might one day do to Wesley. For Wesley. If he thinks of that, if he recalls the few days where he thought that he might have to do that before they connected those dead women to something else, he does not say.
But then, how could he? Really? Grace might forgive him that. But what would become of her if it were found out? Kalen has no illusions about what that might cost him. What it might cost anyone who knows about it.
"I lived alone for a very long time," Kalen says quietly. "I realized, in the end, that however difficult and painful love can be it is always worth it. Love is...it is all the light I have ever found in this world.
"And perhaps its only hope of redemption or peace."
----------
Grace
It's easier to do for love. When you know death is the last gift you can offer, you won't care what it costs you. Damnit, Kalen, this cup of tea isn't enough to hold all of these feelings, is it? She sips at it again, like it might, if she tries.
"I will. Do what I must, I think. If it becomes necessary. Kiara thinks she can help, though. And it's a good thing too, because I don't think we can take on the Artist without him. He's... powerful. Both of them are."
Again, she's speaking in strategic terms. He might be saved, yet. Which is good. They need him to fight. What's wrong with her?
"Also, it's a good thing, because I love him. And I don't want to see him tortured anymore."
Yes. There is also that. Drop the strategy for a few moments and drink tea and try to remember your own humanity, Grace.
"It hurts when he's hurting. And I want to fix everything, but I can't," she says, chuffs a little dark laugh into her tea. "I guess I'm doing the same thing to you right now, huh?"
----------
Kalen
"I am sorry I am not there to help you. Kiara...she seems wonderful. I trust her. I'm not sure she knows that. Or that I trust a lot less of Denver than I used to."
Kalen takes a sip of wine. "Even if this cost me something that was difficult for me to give you, which it doesn't, I wouldn't be sorry. So you definitely shouldn't be."
Grace has seen a few versions of Kalen Holliday. She has seen him after injuries robbed him of the easy physicality that had once been a huge part of how he dealt with the world. She has seen him adapt and refocus his attention, shifting from the Order and war to the various Magi of Denver and their protection and education. Grace has watched him learn to trust, and learn not to trust, and learn to trust again. And in all of those versions of Kalen Holliday there were certainly glimpses of this one. Pressed aside, pressed to the edges of his consciousness and awareness so that he could try to become whatever he thought he needed to be. And now....
Now he is not pushing aside experience or memory. Not for his friends, not for his lovers, not for the Order. Grace is getting to watch him approach transcending boundaries - his boundaries, the Order's boundaries, the Traditions' boundaries. And perhaps, like Icarus, he will fly too close to the sun and he will plummet back to the earth.
Bones shattered. Dreams shattered. Blood-soaked feathers.
He seems now, not to fear that. Not anymore. And the loss of that fear seems, in so many ways, to have freed him to be more like the person he was, before, only in precious fragments of seconds. Little slices of eternity.
Whatever this might have cost him once, whatever losing Farrah might have cost him once, it seems to cost nothing so terrible now.
----------
Grace
Grace has seen a few versions of Kalen Holliday. Somehow, she doesn't quite see the difference between them. Nothing reminds her of this conversation more than the time he wrapped a blanket around her shoulders (in lieu of a hug that he knew would be terrible) and sat with her, soothing her blood-scarred mind. He is, to her, as he has always been: someone who gives a shit. That has been the core about which all the rest of him shifts.
The day he lets her know something is troubling him, now that will be a change. And on that day, she will tell him that she already knew, like, months ago. And it'll all be fine.
"Kiara's good. I trust her too. What she does doesn't make any freaking sense, but it works," she says, her voice trying to return to something more stable. Perhaps now that she's gone and shown him her vulnerable spots, it's time to cover over them again.
"I trust you, too. I mean, you've always been there for me, and I can't... Well, you know. Thanks. I'm not sorry I called you. This is what you do, is listen to me go on."
It's probably one of those things that needn't be said to be understood, like Kalen's endless doubts about people, or his fears for the future (that Grace knows plenty about without him having spoken the words). It's obvious she trusts him, right? He's the one who gets late-night phone calls about... Well... About that.
Grace braves the police department.
Officer Brandt
It’s Sunday afternoon on a cold, but otherwise bright, day. There’s no fresh snowfall outside, but an occasional blast of wind stirs up loose flakes and sets them flying through the air and drifting into new piles. The roads are relatively clear and pavements – at least in the busy centre of the city – have been scraped and gritted and salted. It’s nothing that anyone who hasn’t just moved from a sunshine state would have any trouble dealing with.
Alexander isn’t outside just at the moment, though. He’s tied up somewhere in the back of the Downtown Denver PD station, working through yet another pile of the administrative hassle that comes with the job. Arresting the shoplifter was the easy part. Various windows sit open on his PC screen, waiting for his attention. Waiting for data, to be filed and stored and analysed and – most likely – forgotten about when it was decided that prosecuting the guy wasn’t worth the hassle. But that wasn’t his decision.
The PC is forgotten about as he sits back in his chair, turning to look out of the window, several desks’ distance away, and watch the clouds pass over. A mug of coffee cools slowly on the desk. A phone – the one kept for his ‘normal’ life – buzzes away in his pocket with another weather warning. It could be another windy night.
Grace
It's mid-day when Grace decides to stop by. She sent him a text, without much hope of it having gotten through. Didn't he say he'd destroyed his phone or something? So that's how she's standing at the front desk -- another strange woman asking for Officer Brandt. Saying they're friends. She needs to talk.
Which, yeah, maybe they aren't too inclined to fall for it this time. Grace isn't the most persuasive person in the world either. Nervous, in this place of The Law that she so loves to flout. A flash of red coat is all the color in her outfit, her hair wild with wind. No makeup. Doesn't look like the kind of person who would be Officer Brandt's friend.
And yet, she's adamant. "Please, just tell him Grace is here to see him? He'll know me. If he doesn't, you can kick me out."
Hell, they can kick her out just fine right now...
Officer Brandt
The text message was never received. The data would have made it as far as the carrier but no further. The SIM associated with the number was no longer connected to the network – to any network. No, it was in so many small pieces in landfill by now. The same with the phone that it had been plugged into. Before long it would be another piece of data lost into the ether, undeliverable and forgotten about.
He sits there for a few moments more, putting off the tedium for just a little longer, as he grabs his mug and cups it between his hands. He’s taking a sip when the desk phone rings. There’s another walk-in, asking for him by name. He’s a little more cautious this time, after his last ‘friend’ turned out to be nothing of the sort.
From Grace’s point of view, there was more of a conversation than might have been expected for simply passing a message on. It starts that way, the officer behind the desk – 5’8, blond hair pulled back into a tight bun, apparently no sense of humour – dialling a number and saying that there was a visitor for him. But she turns more attention on Grace as she’s asked more about the visitor, maybe starting to judge her as a threat. A brief description is given, just before Grace makes her appeal and offers her name. She says her name is Grace. The officer’s eyes narrow a little as there’s a brief pause on the phone. Then she hangs up.
“Grab a seat, he’ll be down shortly.”
The officer nods to a row of uncomfortable-looking wooden benches along one wall and returns to what she was doing before Grace arrived. Grace might notice the occasional glance from the officer while she waits.
Grace
Grace raises a brow at the officer at the desk, trying to decide whether grabbing a seat is the prelude before they barge down the hall and arrest her for being annoying in a police building. Hey, there is probably a rule for that somewhere.
She doesn't take a seat. Instead, she just nods and says thanks, then goes to lean against the wall, hands in her pockets, yeah. That's right. Not going to do what you tell me...
Officer Brandt
[Awareness? Throwing in a WP, because I'm going for an active feeling thingy before he makes an entrance as his last visitor wasn't such a great one.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (5, 7, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Officer Brandt
The phone handset is set back into its cradle and Alex takes a breath before doing anything else. Things run through his mind, but the basic thought is the same: why is she here? It could be out of concern for what he’d told her in the park – that he thought he’d snagged the attention of a Union agent. Or it could be something else, given that he was staying scarce from the usual hangouts for the Awakened in the city. It’s not like he’s been passing through the Chantry for post-its warnings of doom and gloom. He wasn’t even that sure that Grace knew where he lived, although he didn’t have any doubt that she’d be able to find out without any great difficulty.
But the description fit the name, and it’s enough to bring him downstairs. It takes a few moments to lock the PC screen and make sure that there’s nothing important left on show on the desk before he makes a move. He stops before pushing through the frosted swing doors behind the front desk, though. A few moments spent with his eyes closed, feeling for things that the Sleepers might be unconsciously aware of – even be guided by without any kind of realisation – to check that it was Grace outside; A few moments where he is more than passively feeling for what’s in the next room. Just like straining to hear something faint, or squinting to make out some fine details, all he concentrates on is that sixth sense that Resonance washes over.
Those moments taken, Alex doesn’t turn about and head back upstairs. He pushes through the doors, letting them swing and slow to a stop behind him, and walks past the desk to meet Grace. He flashes the officer on the desk a brief smile as he passes.
“Hi Grace. You’re maybe not the last person I’d expect to see here, but it’s still a surprise. What can I do for you?”
Grace
She leans back off the wall when he shows up, gives him a smile. "I wanted to talk. About that discussion we had a few nights ago."
Meaning, probably best not to do it here. But you know, maybe they can just continue using codewords.
"I know, police departments are so my usual haunt right? I came anyway, because this is important. You are important."
Officer Brandt
“Yeah, that. The thing I was trying to avoid dragging anyone else into.” Alex sighs, looking around the front office. The officer behind the desk looks away just before he catches her eye. His gaze lingers on the cameras around the room. When he’d been talking with Sasha on the range, it hadn’t been too hard to mask their conversation from the ever-watching eyes with walls and partitions.
His gaze passes over a couple of doors on a different wall to the benches, areas where things can be talked about more privately. Still monitored by CCTV, though. Not that it would (probably) be any great stretch for Grace to kill the camera, but would that leave clues for any Agents who happened to pass through to find.
He growls quietly, although mostly at his frustration about the situation he seems to have found himself in. If he was being watched, how close was the monitoring? He hadn’t noticed anything. And other than his previous visitor and Sasha, he hadn’t picked up on anyone else around the station that seemed to be even remotely Awake.
“We can talk in there.” Alex nods towards one of the doors, left ajar to show its availability before moving towards it. He slides in, holding the door open and letting Grace pass before pushing it closed behind them. “We’ve had a few problems with the camera in here; maintenance can’t seem to trace the problem. It just cuts out now and again.” His eyebrows raise a little, hoping the hint wasn’t too subtle.
There’s a metal table in the room with a couple of metal chairs, all fastened to the floor. The black dome of a CCTV camera lurks in one corner. The walls are a depressing, uniform institutional off-white but are otherwise unadorned. Frosted glass in the door lets a little light in from outside, but otherwise the room is lit by a faintly-buzzing fluorescent strip light secured in the ceiling behind wire netting.
Grace
Usually, when one hears of the cameras mysteriously going out in a police station, it's because the officers destroyed some evidence. A prisoner ended up dead, and they need to disguise the fact that they 'let off some steam' on the guy right before he died of totally natural causes. Grace frowns a bit, but doesn't eye the black dome.
"I'll go in later and make sure that camera looks like it malfunctioned," Grace says, low-voiced so as not to be picked up on microphones.
"Look. Alex. You don't take on something like this alone. And I'll tell you why. You'll lose. And that is more a threat to the rest of us than anything," she says, and pulls her phone out from her coat, making sure to point its screen away from the camera.
She's going to finish what she started -- looking into his every detail to see if they have already done something horrible -- messed with his mind or his body or whatever. Starting with the most vulnerable target...
"Why don't you tell me exactly what happened? What did this person look like?"
[Mind 1: You're still Alex, right? Nothing to see here?]
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (3, 5, 7) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Officer Brandt
[Still Aware? Ditching the Arcane penalty, given she's stood right in front of him and not trying to make herself scarce]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 5, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )
Officer Brandt
[Either nobody had been fiddling with Alex's mind, or they were more skilled or subtle about it than she's able to pick up.]
Alex chooses to lean against a wall, back to the camera. This isn’t a formal thing; it’s just a personal friend of his stopping by to ask about something. So it shouldn’t look odd that they aren’t necessarily sat at the table, or that he hasn’t asked anybody else to step in. But, then, that’s what the cameras were there for: gradual cuts – efficiency savings - to departmental funding have eaten into sworn officers, replacing them with civilians and volunteers.
“Hell, I’m not trying to take anything on. Right now, I just want to lie low and disappear from anyone’s notice. I haven’t done anything particular exciting since I sent you guys that message, beyond come to work, go home, and some pretty ordinary leisure pursuits. And that’s why I’ve stayed damned clear of anyone and anywhere that might be of interest.”
There’s another sigh as Alex sinks a little on the wall, but he looks up at Grace as he feels... something. There’s the bending of reality, but not in a way that he recognises. It’s not hard to guess what Grace might be doing – either scanning the room for bugs, checking if they’re being observed by less orthodox means, or looking at him in ways that he can’t recognise. Hell, he’d probably be doing the same. Alex is less concerned about being heard than being observed by the camera, but his own voice drops and becomes quieter, and a whole lot more serious. “Do whatever you need to, but stay the fuck out of my mind.” He knows that he can’t stop her if she tried – hell, he probably wouldn’t ever realise if she was – but that’s one limit that he isn’t willing to knowingly let others pass. He’d told Sera to get out of his mind when she’d tried to show him her wonder. He makes the same request of Grace.
There’s a half-hearted shrug, whatever will happen will happen. He trusts her to respect his privacy – hadn’t she always been clear about that – but that still doesn’t stop him asking.
“The day after I sent the message, I had a phone call from a woman. She knew my name, she knew that I’m a cop, and she knew about the guy.” Kozlowski. The poor bastard who had been sliced open in his own home. “If that wasn’t as suspicious as hell, she showed up here after that and asked for me. She seemed to know an awful lot about me, given that I’d never so much as heard from her before. And hey, here she is, searching for me straight after I’d tripped over something strange.
“As for what she looked like... About 5’7, dark skin, dark hair and eyes. Well dressed, well made-up. Some kind of foreign accent, maybe Africa somewhere.”
There’s a pause. “She gave her name. I’d have tried to look her up if I wasn’t worried about tripping over some kind of monitoring or alarm. Ms Ghali.”
Grace
What Grace is doing isn't quite... getting inside his mind. It's more pointed than that. She's not digging into his natural mental state, just specifically looking to see if it's been altered. And it hasn't. "Well, you should be happy to know your mind has not been messed with," she says, still looking into her phone. "By anyone. And that's all that I was looking for."
Grace looks up from her phone at the description of who Alex is talking about. She shuts everything down and rubs her eyes. "I know who that is. She's one of us."
Jesus Fucking Christ. Ihsan?
"First, I want to apologize. I should have called you first or something. I was working with Mike and I told him about... everything. Ihsan is a student of his. Ihsan Ghali. So. Congratulations, everything's cool."
But the way she says that? Everything's cool? Everything's not cool. She is apologetic there, for just assuming things would be fine. But Ihsan too? She couldn't have explained herself at all to Alex?
Officer Brandt
I know who that is. She’s one of us.
“What?”
There are times when Alex’s resonance seems somehow... fitting. When he’s trying to push other people away because he doesn’t know how to deal with something. When he’s feeling, for want of a better word, righteous. And, now, when he’s pissed. That single word comes out cold, frigid.
Alexander is quiet as he listens to what there is of an explanation. And he stays quiet, watching Grace for a while after. It could be that he’d trying to choose what to say, or it could be that he’s mentally counting to some arbitrary number before he trusts himself to speak. Maybe it’s both.
When he does speak, he’s very quiet. Measured. Cold. “I’ve cut myself off from everything and everyone because nobody thought to tell me what was going on. I’ve spent nearly a month looking over my shoulder, not doing anything that might draw any more attention to myself than I already do. I’m warned about Union agents appearing in the department, and then I get a mystery, Awakened woman asking for me straight after a murder where the killed vanished into thin air. Nothing at all suspicious there that might attract unwanted attention.
“And you want to congratulate me? No, everything is not fucking cool.“
He pauses again, for a heartbeat and a breath. “She’s dealt with, right? The murderer? “
Grace
Time was, Grace would be terrified of an angry cop having taken her into a back room with a faulty camera and loosing some rage on her. That time has passed. She just lets him speak, and then, when he asks that question, she nods.
"Yes. I explained it all on Ginger, but I guess you'd broken your phone by then. I'm sorry. I didn't know you were so out of the loop. If I had, I would have been there."
This is why we tell people important pieces of information. This is why we don't isolate ourselves. Lessons for everyone, right?
Officer Brandt
Alexander is angry. Pissed, even. But Grace wasn’t in any real, physical danger from him. Hell, she was probably more capable of defending herself than he was. At least with her phone in reach.
Grace had said that he’s important, but really? How important must he feel right now, knowing that he’d been an oversight. Oh, all very important when people were asking for information. But then hardly important if it had been weeks since he’d dropped out of all communication and nobody had thought to check he was even still breathing. Oh, he’d been making himself scarce, but Grace had just shown how easy it was for anyone who knew much about him to find him.
Grace says the murders were dealt with. Alexander nods. “Good. Then you don’t need anything more from me. Goodbye, Grace.”
Alexander pushes off from the wall and starts for the door.
Grace
She nods back at him. "Okay. One more thing, before you go. The one who physically performed the murders was... not himself at the time. He was under the influence of a Nephandus. That Nephandus is dead. My number's 314-1957 if you want to know more. I figure you might have lost all your contacts. If you ever need me --"
The sentence goes unfinished. As steady as her voice is, it's obvious she's upset. Doesn't meet his eyes. Seems defeated, almost. She doesn't finish the sentence before she turns and walks out.
That Nephandus is dead. But not the murderer.
Well, now she knows that Alex would rather handle any and everything on his own. He won't think he needs her until it's too late. Too bad for him that Grace lets people make their own decisions up to the point where they become a threat.
All she offers are choices. Call or don't.
Officer Brandt
Alexander pauses, almost to the door – hand outstretched to grab the handle – when Grace throws the last pieces of information at him. Grace sees his head cock to the side as she says himself, maybe something doesn’t quite match up as he’d been calling the murderer she in their last couple of meetings. But in the end, Grace says it’s dealt with. The Nephandus was dead. It’s over.
“I know where to find you. Be seeing you.” He’s still facing the door, so she won’t see his face as he pushes her away. Doesn’t see that his eyes close and he sighs, although she’ll see the sagging of his shoulders as he exhales.
It had been mentioned at least once that he’s probably too new, too weak, too inexperienced – too unimportant – to be of any particular interest to anyone. Maybe he was better off without the community dragging him into the latest disaster.
Only time would tell.
He opens the door and leaves without another word, headed into the back offices of the station.
It’s Sunday afternoon on a cold, but otherwise bright, day. There’s no fresh snowfall outside, but an occasional blast of wind stirs up loose flakes and sets them flying through the air and drifting into new piles. The roads are relatively clear and pavements – at least in the busy centre of the city – have been scraped and gritted and salted. It’s nothing that anyone who hasn’t just moved from a sunshine state would have any trouble dealing with.
Alexander isn’t outside just at the moment, though. He’s tied up somewhere in the back of the Downtown Denver PD station, working through yet another pile of the administrative hassle that comes with the job. Arresting the shoplifter was the easy part. Various windows sit open on his PC screen, waiting for his attention. Waiting for data, to be filed and stored and analysed and – most likely – forgotten about when it was decided that prosecuting the guy wasn’t worth the hassle. But that wasn’t his decision.
The PC is forgotten about as he sits back in his chair, turning to look out of the window, several desks’ distance away, and watch the clouds pass over. A mug of coffee cools slowly on the desk. A phone – the one kept for his ‘normal’ life – buzzes away in his pocket with another weather warning. It could be another windy night.
Grace
It's mid-day when Grace decides to stop by. She sent him a text, without much hope of it having gotten through. Didn't he say he'd destroyed his phone or something? So that's how she's standing at the front desk -- another strange woman asking for Officer Brandt. Saying they're friends. She needs to talk.
Which, yeah, maybe they aren't too inclined to fall for it this time. Grace isn't the most persuasive person in the world either. Nervous, in this place of The Law that she so loves to flout. A flash of red coat is all the color in her outfit, her hair wild with wind. No makeup. Doesn't look like the kind of person who would be Officer Brandt's friend.
And yet, she's adamant. "Please, just tell him Grace is here to see him? He'll know me. If he doesn't, you can kick me out."
Hell, they can kick her out just fine right now...
Officer Brandt
The text message was never received. The data would have made it as far as the carrier but no further. The SIM associated with the number was no longer connected to the network – to any network. No, it was in so many small pieces in landfill by now. The same with the phone that it had been plugged into. Before long it would be another piece of data lost into the ether, undeliverable and forgotten about.
He sits there for a few moments more, putting off the tedium for just a little longer, as he grabs his mug and cups it between his hands. He’s taking a sip when the desk phone rings. There’s another walk-in, asking for him by name. He’s a little more cautious this time, after his last ‘friend’ turned out to be nothing of the sort.
From Grace’s point of view, there was more of a conversation than might have been expected for simply passing a message on. It starts that way, the officer behind the desk – 5’8, blond hair pulled back into a tight bun, apparently no sense of humour – dialling a number and saying that there was a visitor for him. But she turns more attention on Grace as she’s asked more about the visitor, maybe starting to judge her as a threat. A brief description is given, just before Grace makes her appeal and offers her name. She says her name is Grace. The officer’s eyes narrow a little as there’s a brief pause on the phone. Then she hangs up.
“Grab a seat, he’ll be down shortly.”
The officer nods to a row of uncomfortable-looking wooden benches along one wall and returns to what she was doing before Grace arrived. Grace might notice the occasional glance from the officer while she waits.
Grace
Grace raises a brow at the officer at the desk, trying to decide whether grabbing a seat is the prelude before they barge down the hall and arrest her for being annoying in a police building. Hey, there is probably a rule for that somewhere.
She doesn't take a seat. Instead, she just nods and says thanks, then goes to lean against the wall, hands in her pockets, yeah. That's right. Not going to do what you tell me...
Officer Brandt
[Awareness? Throwing in a WP, because I'm going for an active feeling thingy before he makes an entrance as his last visitor wasn't such a great one.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (5, 7, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Officer Brandt
The phone handset is set back into its cradle and Alex takes a breath before doing anything else. Things run through his mind, but the basic thought is the same: why is she here? It could be out of concern for what he’d told her in the park – that he thought he’d snagged the attention of a Union agent. Or it could be something else, given that he was staying scarce from the usual hangouts for the Awakened in the city. It’s not like he’s been passing through the Chantry for post-its warnings of doom and gloom. He wasn’t even that sure that Grace knew where he lived, although he didn’t have any doubt that she’d be able to find out without any great difficulty.
But the description fit the name, and it’s enough to bring him downstairs. It takes a few moments to lock the PC screen and make sure that there’s nothing important left on show on the desk before he makes a move. He stops before pushing through the frosted swing doors behind the front desk, though. A few moments spent with his eyes closed, feeling for things that the Sleepers might be unconsciously aware of – even be guided by without any kind of realisation – to check that it was Grace outside; A few moments where he is more than passively feeling for what’s in the next room. Just like straining to hear something faint, or squinting to make out some fine details, all he concentrates on is that sixth sense that Resonance washes over.
Those moments taken, Alex doesn’t turn about and head back upstairs. He pushes through the doors, letting them swing and slow to a stop behind him, and walks past the desk to meet Grace. He flashes the officer on the desk a brief smile as he passes.
“Hi Grace. You’re maybe not the last person I’d expect to see here, but it’s still a surprise. What can I do for you?”
Grace
She leans back off the wall when he shows up, gives him a smile. "I wanted to talk. About that discussion we had a few nights ago."
Meaning, probably best not to do it here. But you know, maybe they can just continue using codewords.
"I know, police departments are so my usual haunt right? I came anyway, because this is important. You are important."
Officer Brandt
“Yeah, that. The thing I was trying to avoid dragging anyone else into.” Alex sighs, looking around the front office. The officer behind the desk looks away just before he catches her eye. His gaze lingers on the cameras around the room. When he’d been talking with Sasha on the range, it hadn’t been too hard to mask their conversation from the ever-watching eyes with walls and partitions.
His gaze passes over a couple of doors on a different wall to the benches, areas where things can be talked about more privately. Still monitored by CCTV, though. Not that it would (probably) be any great stretch for Grace to kill the camera, but would that leave clues for any Agents who happened to pass through to find.
He growls quietly, although mostly at his frustration about the situation he seems to have found himself in. If he was being watched, how close was the monitoring? He hadn’t noticed anything. And other than his previous visitor and Sasha, he hadn’t picked up on anyone else around the station that seemed to be even remotely Awake.
“We can talk in there.” Alex nods towards one of the doors, left ajar to show its availability before moving towards it. He slides in, holding the door open and letting Grace pass before pushing it closed behind them. “We’ve had a few problems with the camera in here; maintenance can’t seem to trace the problem. It just cuts out now and again.” His eyebrows raise a little, hoping the hint wasn’t too subtle.
There’s a metal table in the room with a couple of metal chairs, all fastened to the floor. The black dome of a CCTV camera lurks in one corner. The walls are a depressing, uniform institutional off-white but are otherwise unadorned. Frosted glass in the door lets a little light in from outside, but otherwise the room is lit by a faintly-buzzing fluorescent strip light secured in the ceiling behind wire netting.
Grace
Usually, when one hears of the cameras mysteriously going out in a police station, it's because the officers destroyed some evidence. A prisoner ended up dead, and they need to disguise the fact that they 'let off some steam' on the guy right before he died of totally natural causes. Grace frowns a bit, but doesn't eye the black dome.
"I'll go in later and make sure that camera looks like it malfunctioned," Grace says, low-voiced so as not to be picked up on microphones.
"Look. Alex. You don't take on something like this alone. And I'll tell you why. You'll lose. And that is more a threat to the rest of us than anything," she says, and pulls her phone out from her coat, making sure to point its screen away from the camera.
She's going to finish what she started -- looking into his every detail to see if they have already done something horrible -- messed with his mind or his body or whatever. Starting with the most vulnerable target...
"Why don't you tell me exactly what happened? What did this person look like?"
[Mind 1: You're still Alex, right? Nothing to see here?]
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (3, 5, 7) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Officer Brandt
[Still Aware? Ditching the Arcane penalty, given she's stood right in front of him and not trying to make herself scarce]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 5, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )
Officer Brandt
[Either nobody had been fiddling with Alex's mind, or they were more skilled or subtle about it than she's able to pick up.]
Alex chooses to lean against a wall, back to the camera. This isn’t a formal thing; it’s just a personal friend of his stopping by to ask about something. So it shouldn’t look odd that they aren’t necessarily sat at the table, or that he hasn’t asked anybody else to step in. But, then, that’s what the cameras were there for: gradual cuts – efficiency savings - to departmental funding have eaten into sworn officers, replacing them with civilians and volunteers.
“Hell, I’m not trying to take anything on. Right now, I just want to lie low and disappear from anyone’s notice. I haven’t done anything particular exciting since I sent you guys that message, beyond come to work, go home, and some pretty ordinary leisure pursuits. And that’s why I’ve stayed damned clear of anyone and anywhere that might be of interest.”
There’s another sigh as Alex sinks a little on the wall, but he looks up at Grace as he feels... something. There’s the bending of reality, but not in a way that he recognises. It’s not hard to guess what Grace might be doing – either scanning the room for bugs, checking if they’re being observed by less orthodox means, or looking at him in ways that he can’t recognise. Hell, he’d probably be doing the same. Alex is less concerned about being heard than being observed by the camera, but his own voice drops and becomes quieter, and a whole lot more serious. “Do whatever you need to, but stay the fuck out of my mind.” He knows that he can’t stop her if she tried – hell, he probably wouldn’t ever realise if she was – but that’s one limit that he isn’t willing to knowingly let others pass. He’d told Sera to get out of his mind when she’d tried to show him her wonder. He makes the same request of Grace.
There’s a half-hearted shrug, whatever will happen will happen. He trusts her to respect his privacy – hadn’t she always been clear about that – but that still doesn’t stop him asking.
“The day after I sent the message, I had a phone call from a woman. She knew my name, she knew that I’m a cop, and she knew about the guy.” Kozlowski. The poor bastard who had been sliced open in his own home. “If that wasn’t as suspicious as hell, she showed up here after that and asked for me. She seemed to know an awful lot about me, given that I’d never so much as heard from her before. And hey, here she is, searching for me straight after I’d tripped over something strange.
“As for what she looked like... About 5’7, dark skin, dark hair and eyes. Well dressed, well made-up. Some kind of foreign accent, maybe Africa somewhere.”
There’s a pause. “She gave her name. I’d have tried to look her up if I wasn’t worried about tripping over some kind of monitoring or alarm. Ms Ghali.”
Grace
What Grace is doing isn't quite... getting inside his mind. It's more pointed than that. She's not digging into his natural mental state, just specifically looking to see if it's been altered. And it hasn't. "Well, you should be happy to know your mind has not been messed with," she says, still looking into her phone. "By anyone. And that's all that I was looking for."
Grace looks up from her phone at the description of who Alex is talking about. She shuts everything down and rubs her eyes. "I know who that is. She's one of us."
Jesus Fucking Christ. Ihsan?
"First, I want to apologize. I should have called you first or something. I was working with Mike and I told him about... everything. Ihsan is a student of his. Ihsan Ghali. So. Congratulations, everything's cool."
But the way she says that? Everything's cool? Everything's not cool. She is apologetic there, for just assuming things would be fine. But Ihsan too? She couldn't have explained herself at all to Alex?
Officer Brandt
I know who that is. She’s one of us.
“What?”
There are times when Alex’s resonance seems somehow... fitting. When he’s trying to push other people away because he doesn’t know how to deal with something. When he’s feeling, for want of a better word, righteous. And, now, when he’s pissed. That single word comes out cold, frigid.
Alexander is quiet as he listens to what there is of an explanation. And he stays quiet, watching Grace for a while after. It could be that he’d trying to choose what to say, or it could be that he’s mentally counting to some arbitrary number before he trusts himself to speak. Maybe it’s both.
When he does speak, he’s very quiet. Measured. Cold. “I’ve cut myself off from everything and everyone because nobody thought to tell me what was going on. I’ve spent nearly a month looking over my shoulder, not doing anything that might draw any more attention to myself than I already do. I’m warned about Union agents appearing in the department, and then I get a mystery, Awakened woman asking for me straight after a murder where the killed vanished into thin air. Nothing at all suspicious there that might attract unwanted attention.
“And you want to congratulate me? No, everything is not fucking cool.“
He pauses again, for a heartbeat and a breath. “She’s dealt with, right? The murderer? “
Grace
Time was, Grace would be terrified of an angry cop having taken her into a back room with a faulty camera and loosing some rage on her. That time has passed. She just lets him speak, and then, when he asks that question, she nods.
"Yes. I explained it all on Ginger, but I guess you'd broken your phone by then. I'm sorry. I didn't know you were so out of the loop. If I had, I would have been there."
This is why we tell people important pieces of information. This is why we don't isolate ourselves. Lessons for everyone, right?
Officer Brandt
Alexander is angry. Pissed, even. But Grace wasn’t in any real, physical danger from him. Hell, she was probably more capable of defending herself than he was. At least with her phone in reach.
Grace had said that he’s important, but really? How important must he feel right now, knowing that he’d been an oversight. Oh, all very important when people were asking for information. But then hardly important if it had been weeks since he’d dropped out of all communication and nobody had thought to check he was even still breathing. Oh, he’d been making himself scarce, but Grace had just shown how easy it was for anyone who knew much about him to find him.
Grace says the murders were dealt with. Alexander nods. “Good. Then you don’t need anything more from me. Goodbye, Grace.”
Alexander pushes off from the wall and starts for the door.
Grace
She nods back at him. "Okay. One more thing, before you go. The one who physically performed the murders was... not himself at the time. He was under the influence of a Nephandus. That Nephandus is dead. My number's 314-1957 if you want to know more. I figure you might have lost all your contacts. If you ever need me --"
The sentence goes unfinished. As steady as her voice is, it's obvious she's upset. Doesn't meet his eyes. Seems defeated, almost. She doesn't finish the sentence before she turns and walks out.
That Nephandus is dead. But not the murderer.
Well, now she knows that Alex would rather handle any and everything on his own. He won't think he needs her until it's too late. Too bad for him that Grace lets people make their own decisions up to the point where they become a threat.
All she offers are choices. Call or don't.
Officer Brandt
Alexander pauses, almost to the door – hand outstretched to grab the handle – when Grace throws the last pieces of information at him. Grace sees his head cock to the side as she says himself, maybe something doesn’t quite match up as he’d been calling the murderer she in their last couple of meetings. But in the end, Grace says it’s dealt with. The Nephandus was dead. It’s over.
“I know where to find you. Be seeing you.” He’s still facing the door, so she won’t see his face as he pushes her away. Doesn’t see that his eyes close and he sighs, although she’ll see the sagging of his shoulders as he exhales.
It had been mentioned at least once that he’s probably too new, too weak, too inexperienced – too unimportant – to be of any particular interest to anyone. Maybe he was better off without the community dragging him into the latest disaster.
Only time would tell.
He opens the door and leaves without another word, headed into the back offices of the station.
Alex and the Fake Technocrat
Alex
It wasn’t a dark and stormy night, but it looked like it soon would be. It’s late afternoon and the light of day is already starting to wane, the clouds speeding overhead blocking much of the sunlight and making the day seem darker that it should be. To the west, the division between mountain and sky is blurring as snow falls thickly. The rain hasn’t yet arrived over Washington Park. People are already beginning to make their way home, to escape the oncoming blizzard before it hits. What few families and runners and other random people usually found in the city parks are starting to make their way home, or at least to somewhere warmer and more sheltered.
The park has been something of a magnet for the supernatural over the past year or so, but it hasn’t done too much to discourage many of those who are aware of such things from coming here. Perhaps because it’s just as much a magnet for more positive meetings amongst the Awakened. So it’s maybe not surprising to find Alexander here. He’s away from his usual hangout, though. Away from the lake where he’d met the Message twice. Away from the basketball courts. Away from the patch of trees where he’s played Hide and Seek not so long ago.
He’s there, though, near one of the stone circles that have been scattered around for people to light fires. There’s a small fire flickering away, flames buffeted by the slowly building wind. Alexander is dressed for the weather – heavy jacket, hiking trousers, walking boots. He’s sat on a folded-up blanket, protecting him from the wet and the cold of the ground, and there’s a rucksack sat on the ground close by. His attention is on the fire, arms outstretched as he absent-mindedly warms them near the flames.
Ian
Winter has arrived early this year. The wide open vistas of Washington Park lie still in the fading light, blanketed with layers of new-fallen snow. By the time Ian gets there it's cold enough to warrant proper winter attire. Cold enough, in fact, that most of the park's visitors have surrendered the fight to the elements and gone to warm up indoors. Its that relative emptiness that attracts Ian to the park tonight. When he arrives he leaves his car underneath the same streetlamp that he once damaged (on purpose, and for entirely selfish reasons.) That was nearly a year ago now, and the bulb has long-since been replaced.
He makes his way through the park along one of the winding paths, hands in the pocket of his coat as he watches the sky shift from blue to grey. Delicate flakes of snow descend around him in a lazy pattern, cast about by a drifting breeze. Elsewhere in the city, hoards of Black Friday shoppers are bustling their way through the city's packed malls and crowded parking lots, but here in the park those things seem a thousand miles away.
Eventually the orange glow of a small fire appears in his field of vision. Ian glances toward it and recognizes Alexander's shape in the snow. The other Orphan feels very much as though he belongs here - the crystalline, frozen quality of his resonance blends with the scent of ice in the air. Ian takes a moment to consider the picture from a distance before turning off the path.
He doesn't try to hide his steps today, so Alex will likely hear him approaching. His shoes crunch quietly in the snow as he approaches from the back. When he arrives, he comes to a stop beside the fire, glancing between it and Alexander. He's dressed in jeans, dark boots (heritage Redwings,) and a sheepskin-lined leather coat, with a pale grey cashmere slouch beanie hat. There are leather gloves on his hands too, but he pulls them off to crouch down and stretch his hands over the flames.
"All alone today?"
Grace
[Awareness!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
Grace
She doesn't really want to get out of the car.
Inside the car, it's warm and dry. There's no snow on the inside. Things are as they should be. Outside, well... It is Winter in Denver, and this does not bode well.
However, as she was driving along this afternoon, trying to pick up some things while the roads were still somewhat okay to drive on, she found some... interesting sensations in the direction of Washington Park. Normally, that would be a concern, except that she has a sense for who they might belong to.
Is it enough to brave the outside? Well, she hasn't seen Alex in forever...
Shortly after Ian arrives, so does Grace, with a scarf wrapped about her head, and her red coat all buttoned up, her hands shoved in there like she'd rather layer as much as possible.
"Mmm, it doesn't look like it from here? Hi Ian. Alex. 'Sup?"
Alex
Ever since that eventful day nearly two years ago now – no longer New Last Thursday – there had been something of an affinity between Alexander and the winter climate of the city. He had always been something of an outdoors person – much happier walking, running, hiking, climbing – than someone who vegetated in front of the TV. But since he’d opened his eyes to the true nature of the world, since his Awakening had marked him with his resonance, it just seemed like he fit better.
So here he perches, alone and seemingly unbothered by either the solitude or the climate. But, then, he was dressed for the weather and he’d cut off much of his link to the other Awakened in the city when he’d received an unexpected phone call. That had been reinforced when that woman had shown up at his place of work, unexpected and unannounced. And seemingly well informed about what he’d been looking into just a short time before. It had seemed safer to stay away from the Chantry, the Warehouse… To be as ordinary as he could.
Alexander looks up from the fire as he hears the sound of footsteps in the snow. His had started to fade, covered by the light snowfall that held the promise of what was to come over the next few hours. His attention shifts to Ian, weighing and judging his arrival in his mind, deciding whether to stay or go. For the moment, he stays. His reply catches on a breath, frozen on his tongue, as Grace arrives too. This probably wasn’t the greatest of places to be if he wanted to stay away from the others, but then it had been weeks since he’d even set eyes on another Awakened.
“Given some of the crap that’s been going on recently, it seemed like a good idea. How’ve you guys been?”
Ian
[Awareness]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 4, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )
Ian
[and alertness]
Dice: 6 d10 TN4 (2, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )
Ian
It's been a while since Ian's seen most if the other Awakened himself. They do that sometimes: flow together, drift apart. Life is often like that. He doesn't feel Grace approaching the same way he felt Alex, but he picks up the sound of her steps in the snow and glances back over his shoulder to make note of her. The red of her jacket catches his focus for a moment before he turns back to the fire.
"Mm, you may not be wrong about that." He notes ambiguously to Alex. He tilts his head to regard Grace, a faint slip of a smile pulling at one side of his mouth. "That's a loaded question, these days." (Asking them how they've been.) "All things considered, they could be worse." He glances back at Alexander. "I've been trying to enjoy my last few days off before I go on tour for a month. You?"
There's a brief pause before he adds, "Mind if I commandeer some of your blanket?"
Grace
"Loadiest of questions," Grace says, sighs dramatically -- a bit too dramatic for her to really mean it. "Chasing after a Nephandus did wonderful things for my psyche, I'll have you know." But not so much that she seems especially bothered.
She gives a smile to Alex, a welcoming thing, even if she's not going to request to share his blanket. He really thinks being alone will save him from evil things? Is that it? My my...
"Everything's pretty calm now, though. Wonder how long that will last..."
Oh, enough time to have some good holidays, right? Right?
Alex
“Nothing loaded into the question, although I guess that doesn’t make it any simpler to answer sometimes. Hope you’re enjoying the free time.” Alex shifts unfolding the blanket some more. There’s less protection from the ground – the snow would melt through before too much longer, but then the blizzard would most likely have arrived by then – but it does give enough space for three to sit without getting cold, wet asses. “Where are you touring?”
Grace gives Alex a smile, but it’s barely returned. Maybe it’s just the talk of the Fallen. “Is she still out there? Or has that whole thing been taken care of now?”
Ian
This kind of news tends to make the rounds in Awakened circles. Ian hasn't spoken to Grace in weeks (months?) but he's more aware of everything that occurred than Grace may realize he is. When Alex asks her if everything's been taken care of, he gives Grace the space to answer for herself, his expression quietly cryptic and withdrawn. Alex unfolds a section of the blanket and Ian sits down on it, draping his arms loosely over his knees. The cold air bites at his unprotected hands, but the heat from the fire is enough to keep the worst of it at bay. Alex is a solid, grounded presence beside him. It isn't altogether unwelcome, though the two of them would probably not call each other friends - not yet, at least.
"Maybe we'll get lucky and have a calm winter," he offers to Grace, though he knows the chances of that are unlikely.
To Alex he says, "We're hitting a bunch of cities. Vegas to start, then LA. After that, you'll have to consult my calendar."
Grace
"I put a message up on Ginger. Yeah, the situation's... about as taken care of as it can be."
Mike told her about how just killing The Artist wouldn't be enough. They'd show up again, someday. Reincarnated. The whole thing makes about as much sense to Grace as being reborn does, which is to say -- not much. But whatever. That particular thing will be quiet. For now.
"No more chimeras. No more serial murder sprees." The latter performed by a man who swept her off her feet when she didn't even know sweeping was possible. But she's not telling them about that.
Alex
“If I had anything to drink, I’d toast to a calmer winter.” Alex snorts at the thought, though. As if the world gives a damn that they wanted a bit of time to rest before the next end of the world. “Sounds like whoever planned the tour doesn’t like being cold. Is Hawaii in the itinerary too?”
Ah, Ginger. The indispensable messaging service for the Awakened that, sadly, relies on them having some way of calling into it. “That’s good to know. I’ve not been on Ginger in a while. My phone met an untimely end.” Alex sighs, crossing his arms over his knees and resting his chin on them. “I think the fans of dark suits and mirrored sunglasses were getting a little too close, so I thought it best to destroy it. One of them came to talk to me, seemed to know a lot about my business.
“So, yeah. It seemed best to avoid dragging any attention closer to you guys than I had to. That’s why I haven’t been by the office in a while.”
Ian
No more serial murder sprees. For the moment, anyway. Ian watches Grace while she speaks, his eyes tracking the details of her face - the subtle shifts in her expression. Almost, he starts to say something, but then Alex asks if he's heading to Hawaii and mentions, a little too casually, that he had a run-in with a (supposed?) Technocrat.
Ian turns his head a bit suddenly, regarding Alexander with an expression of muted alarm. "Wait, what? That's not... they don't just stop by for chats, Alex. They either watch you, abduct you or kill you."
See, he can't really connect the dots. What he knows about the Technocracy versus what Alexander just told him. But either way, the news is more than a little alarming.
"What happened? What did they want to talk to you about?"
Grace
"Holy shit, Alex, what?" is Grace's reaction in a nutshell. All the sudden, that quiet time she was looking for just flew out the window.
And, she goes silent as a hand comes out of her coat pocket with her phone in it, and she begins to Work. If there are Technocrats after Alex, she'll want to be sure he isn't being watched right now. Or set to explode. Or any number of things.
[Corr 1: Any tracking devices in the area eh? Actually no, I know there shouldn't be, but that's the first thing to check...]
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (2, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )
Alex
“A mutual friend warned me of some unwelcome guests trying to get friendly with the admin staff.” He’s talking to the fire more than to the others. “Not long after I let you guys know about the case I’d walked in on, I got a phone call from someone I didn’t know. She knew my name and she knew the name of the guy involved in the case. That was about the time that my phone met the shredder.
“Then the day after that, this woman just appears and asks for me. Says she wants to help me, but wouldn't say how. She wanted to get me alone. I refused, she left, and I’ve not heard anything from her since. But that’s why I’ve been so keen to be alone for a while and trying to be a good little Sleeper.”
Alex looks to Ian, then to Grace. “I’m not even sure talking to you now is the greatest of ideas ever. I should probably go, but you said I should let you guys know if I thought one was getting close. I would have, if I’d had any way of contacting you that couldn’t be easily traced.”
Ian
Ian watches Grace pull out her phone. He has a rough inkling of what she might be doing, and it seems to relax him slightly. If there was anyone in Denver who could pick out some kind of high-tech spying device, it would be Grace. When she doesn't voice any immediate warnings, he turns his attention back to Alexander, listening while he explains the details of his encounter.
It isn't much to go on really. Ian's expression shifts into a pensive frown as he glances at the fire.
"Maybe she was trying to feel you out. See if you'd make a good recruit, or something." It isn't entirely out of the scope of possibility. Alex is, after all, unaffiliated. And new enough that he probably doesn't present much of a threat in their eyes. Still, the behavior feels odd. More like something a solo agent would do than someone working for a vast network.
He glances back at Alex, and there's a soft crease of tension between his eyebrows. "Or maybe she isn't what you think she is."
Grace
"Well, I don't think you're being tracked," Grace says, mumbles really, into her phone.
"You said she was asking about the Kozlowski case?" she asks, a little more loudly. But she's still messing with her phone.
Maybe it wasn't Alex they were looking for, but Mike. And... okay, yeah, that would look exceptionally bad wouldn't it? And Technocrats wouldn't be the ones to take 'It was one of my past lives' as an excuse.
"Also, do you mind if I scan your body for other nasty things?"
Alex
“I honestly don’t know what she is. She didn’t say, but then she wouldn’t would she. All I know is that she had my name, she had my number, she knows where I work, and she knows about a case I’d only just tripped over.”
Alexander’s attention shifts from the flames to Grace when she mentions the name. “Yeah. She knew the name, and that hadn’t been released to the press at the time. That’s just one of the things that have been worrying me.”
He takes a deep breath, blowing it out slowly through his mouth. “I should go.” The decision seems to have been made already, as he pushes up from the blanket and grabs his bag. “You probably don’t want to be around me for a while. Enjoy the fire. And enjoy Vegas.” This last one, to Ian, with a vague, brief smile.
[More because I really need to crash out than anything, so apologies for bailing.]
Ian
Two years ago, if there'd been even the slightest suggestion of a possibility that Alexander might have been a target for the Technocracy, Ian would have vanished. Maybe not from the city, but certainly from Alex's life. He's alive today because there are certain risks that he never allowed himself to take.
He doesn't vanish now, but there is a quiet sort of confirmation in the absence of any objection to Alexander's claim. He gets to his feet so that Alex can reclaim his blanket, watching the man quietly as he prepares to leave.
"Hey, be careful." He says it to Alex's back as the other man starts to walk away, and something about the tone makes it sound as though he might genuinely be worried - not just for the risk Alexander might pose to the rest of them, but more specifically for Alex's own safety.
When he's gone, Ian looks down at the fire, banked low and licking lazily at the ends of charcoal-logs. He gathers up a mound of snow with his boot and kicks it over the flames until they go out. Then he slips his gloves back on.
"How's Michael, by the way?"
Grace
"No, wait, Alex! I..." Grace just breathes out her nose in a huff, because she's talking to the back of Alex's head. Well, at least she knows where he works, right? She can always stop by and... ask? At the police? For him? Yeah, okay so maybe that's not Grace's favorite thing to do ever. But like Hell is she going to let Alex handle this thing with a possible Technocrat contact all by himself.
Nor is she going to just let him isolate himself when there's likely no need. If they were after Mike? Mike's long gone. He's in L.A. and the trail of murders stopped.
Speaking of Michael, she hears the name. Ian's asking about him.
"Oh, uh. You know, if I didn't know any better, I'd think nothing ever got to him. More like, he doesn't let it show. He sounded good, last time I talked to him."
Ian
"Yeah, I get that."
Of course he does.
"Kiara told me you and he were sort of close." It isn't an insinuation - the truth is, she could have meant any number of things by that. Friends. Lovers. Colleagues. Ian starts to turn away from the fire pit, walking slowly through the snow. He settles his hands into his pockets, glancing at Grace as he does so. "How are you?"
Grace
Kiara. Ugh. Grace squints her eyes a bit in memory of that latest conversation with her. Of course she'd tell Ian. And is that where it's going to stop? Oh, no, it won't. Soon the whole city will know, and... and this is all crazy-talk going on in her traitorous brain. Who the fuck cares?
Ian starts off, away from her, but glances back. Asks her how she is doing.
"Talk about fucking loaded questions, Ian..."
"I'm good. Recovering from emotional rollercoasters of doom, but good."
Ian
It's the same question Alexander asked, and Grace fires back a very similar response to the one Ian initially gave. But he wasn't asking out of courtesy or small-talk. He was asking because he's worried. And maybe she'll hear that - the subtle lace of it in his voice.
Grace doesn't give him any more detailed answers than she gave earlier, though.
She doesn't try to walk with him either.
The sky is getting dark, drifting from afternoon to evening. As the light fades, more snow starts to fall. Ian stops walking and watches Grace for a long moment. It gives her the opportunity to open up more, if she chooses. But perhaps he isn't the person she'd like to open up to. So instead he nods and says "Alright. You've got my number, if you need anything."
He doesn't just mean practical things, but she may not interpret any other meaning.
"Have a good night."
And then he turns to make his way back to the trail.
It wasn’t a dark and stormy night, but it looked like it soon would be. It’s late afternoon and the light of day is already starting to wane, the clouds speeding overhead blocking much of the sunlight and making the day seem darker that it should be. To the west, the division between mountain and sky is blurring as snow falls thickly. The rain hasn’t yet arrived over Washington Park. People are already beginning to make their way home, to escape the oncoming blizzard before it hits. What few families and runners and other random people usually found in the city parks are starting to make their way home, or at least to somewhere warmer and more sheltered.
The park has been something of a magnet for the supernatural over the past year or so, but it hasn’t done too much to discourage many of those who are aware of such things from coming here. Perhaps because it’s just as much a magnet for more positive meetings amongst the Awakened. So it’s maybe not surprising to find Alexander here. He’s away from his usual hangout, though. Away from the lake where he’d met the Message twice. Away from the basketball courts. Away from the patch of trees where he’s played Hide and Seek not so long ago.
He’s there, though, near one of the stone circles that have been scattered around for people to light fires. There’s a small fire flickering away, flames buffeted by the slowly building wind. Alexander is dressed for the weather – heavy jacket, hiking trousers, walking boots. He’s sat on a folded-up blanket, protecting him from the wet and the cold of the ground, and there’s a rucksack sat on the ground close by. His attention is on the fire, arms outstretched as he absent-mindedly warms them near the flames.
Ian
Winter has arrived early this year. The wide open vistas of Washington Park lie still in the fading light, blanketed with layers of new-fallen snow. By the time Ian gets there it's cold enough to warrant proper winter attire. Cold enough, in fact, that most of the park's visitors have surrendered the fight to the elements and gone to warm up indoors. Its that relative emptiness that attracts Ian to the park tonight. When he arrives he leaves his car underneath the same streetlamp that he once damaged (on purpose, and for entirely selfish reasons.) That was nearly a year ago now, and the bulb has long-since been replaced.
He makes his way through the park along one of the winding paths, hands in the pocket of his coat as he watches the sky shift from blue to grey. Delicate flakes of snow descend around him in a lazy pattern, cast about by a drifting breeze. Elsewhere in the city, hoards of Black Friday shoppers are bustling their way through the city's packed malls and crowded parking lots, but here in the park those things seem a thousand miles away.
Eventually the orange glow of a small fire appears in his field of vision. Ian glances toward it and recognizes Alexander's shape in the snow. The other Orphan feels very much as though he belongs here - the crystalline, frozen quality of his resonance blends with the scent of ice in the air. Ian takes a moment to consider the picture from a distance before turning off the path.
He doesn't try to hide his steps today, so Alex will likely hear him approaching. His shoes crunch quietly in the snow as he approaches from the back. When he arrives, he comes to a stop beside the fire, glancing between it and Alexander. He's dressed in jeans, dark boots (heritage Redwings,) and a sheepskin-lined leather coat, with a pale grey cashmere slouch beanie hat. There are leather gloves on his hands too, but he pulls them off to crouch down and stretch his hands over the flames.
"All alone today?"
Grace
[Awareness!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
Grace
She doesn't really want to get out of the car.
Inside the car, it's warm and dry. There's no snow on the inside. Things are as they should be. Outside, well... It is Winter in Denver, and this does not bode well.
However, as she was driving along this afternoon, trying to pick up some things while the roads were still somewhat okay to drive on, she found some... interesting sensations in the direction of Washington Park. Normally, that would be a concern, except that she has a sense for who they might belong to.
Is it enough to brave the outside? Well, she hasn't seen Alex in forever...
Shortly after Ian arrives, so does Grace, with a scarf wrapped about her head, and her red coat all buttoned up, her hands shoved in there like she'd rather layer as much as possible.
"Mmm, it doesn't look like it from here? Hi Ian. Alex. 'Sup?"
Alex
Ever since that eventful day nearly two years ago now – no longer New Last Thursday – there had been something of an affinity between Alexander and the winter climate of the city. He had always been something of an outdoors person – much happier walking, running, hiking, climbing – than someone who vegetated in front of the TV. But since he’d opened his eyes to the true nature of the world, since his Awakening had marked him with his resonance, it just seemed like he fit better.
So here he perches, alone and seemingly unbothered by either the solitude or the climate. But, then, he was dressed for the weather and he’d cut off much of his link to the other Awakened in the city when he’d received an unexpected phone call. That had been reinforced when that woman had shown up at his place of work, unexpected and unannounced. And seemingly well informed about what he’d been looking into just a short time before. It had seemed safer to stay away from the Chantry, the Warehouse… To be as ordinary as he could.
Alexander looks up from the fire as he hears the sound of footsteps in the snow. His had started to fade, covered by the light snowfall that held the promise of what was to come over the next few hours. His attention shifts to Ian, weighing and judging his arrival in his mind, deciding whether to stay or go. For the moment, he stays. His reply catches on a breath, frozen on his tongue, as Grace arrives too. This probably wasn’t the greatest of places to be if he wanted to stay away from the others, but then it had been weeks since he’d even set eyes on another Awakened.
“Given some of the crap that’s been going on recently, it seemed like a good idea. How’ve you guys been?”
Ian
[Awareness]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 4, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )
Ian
[and alertness]
Dice: 6 d10 TN4 (2, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )
Ian
It's been a while since Ian's seen most if the other Awakened himself. They do that sometimes: flow together, drift apart. Life is often like that. He doesn't feel Grace approaching the same way he felt Alex, but he picks up the sound of her steps in the snow and glances back over his shoulder to make note of her. The red of her jacket catches his focus for a moment before he turns back to the fire.
"Mm, you may not be wrong about that." He notes ambiguously to Alex. He tilts his head to regard Grace, a faint slip of a smile pulling at one side of his mouth. "That's a loaded question, these days." (Asking them how they've been.) "All things considered, they could be worse." He glances back at Alexander. "I've been trying to enjoy my last few days off before I go on tour for a month. You?"
There's a brief pause before he adds, "Mind if I commandeer some of your blanket?"
Grace
"Loadiest of questions," Grace says, sighs dramatically -- a bit too dramatic for her to really mean it. "Chasing after a Nephandus did wonderful things for my psyche, I'll have you know." But not so much that she seems especially bothered.
She gives a smile to Alex, a welcoming thing, even if she's not going to request to share his blanket. He really thinks being alone will save him from evil things? Is that it? My my...
"Everything's pretty calm now, though. Wonder how long that will last..."
Oh, enough time to have some good holidays, right? Right?
Alex
“Nothing loaded into the question, although I guess that doesn’t make it any simpler to answer sometimes. Hope you’re enjoying the free time.” Alex shifts unfolding the blanket some more. There’s less protection from the ground – the snow would melt through before too much longer, but then the blizzard would most likely have arrived by then – but it does give enough space for three to sit without getting cold, wet asses. “Where are you touring?”
Grace gives Alex a smile, but it’s barely returned. Maybe it’s just the talk of the Fallen. “Is she still out there? Or has that whole thing been taken care of now?”
Ian
This kind of news tends to make the rounds in Awakened circles. Ian hasn't spoken to Grace in weeks (months?) but he's more aware of everything that occurred than Grace may realize he is. When Alex asks her if everything's been taken care of, he gives Grace the space to answer for herself, his expression quietly cryptic and withdrawn. Alex unfolds a section of the blanket and Ian sits down on it, draping his arms loosely over his knees. The cold air bites at his unprotected hands, but the heat from the fire is enough to keep the worst of it at bay. Alex is a solid, grounded presence beside him. It isn't altogether unwelcome, though the two of them would probably not call each other friends - not yet, at least.
"Maybe we'll get lucky and have a calm winter," he offers to Grace, though he knows the chances of that are unlikely.
To Alex he says, "We're hitting a bunch of cities. Vegas to start, then LA. After that, you'll have to consult my calendar."
Grace
"I put a message up on Ginger. Yeah, the situation's... about as taken care of as it can be."
Mike told her about how just killing The Artist wouldn't be enough. They'd show up again, someday. Reincarnated. The whole thing makes about as much sense to Grace as being reborn does, which is to say -- not much. But whatever. That particular thing will be quiet. For now.
"No more chimeras. No more serial murder sprees." The latter performed by a man who swept her off her feet when she didn't even know sweeping was possible. But she's not telling them about that.
Alex
“If I had anything to drink, I’d toast to a calmer winter.” Alex snorts at the thought, though. As if the world gives a damn that they wanted a bit of time to rest before the next end of the world. “Sounds like whoever planned the tour doesn’t like being cold. Is Hawaii in the itinerary too?”
Ah, Ginger. The indispensable messaging service for the Awakened that, sadly, relies on them having some way of calling into it. “That’s good to know. I’ve not been on Ginger in a while. My phone met an untimely end.” Alex sighs, crossing his arms over his knees and resting his chin on them. “I think the fans of dark suits and mirrored sunglasses were getting a little too close, so I thought it best to destroy it. One of them came to talk to me, seemed to know a lot about my business.
“So, yeah. It seemed best to avoid dragging any attention closer to you guys than I had to. That’s why I haven’t been by the office in a while.”
Ian
No more serial murder sprees. For the moment, anyway. Ian watches Grace while she speaks, his eyes tracking the details of her face - the subtle shifts in her expression. Almost, he starts to say something, but then Alex asks if he's heading to Hawaii and mentions, a little too casually, that he had a run-in with a (supposed?) Technocrat.
Ian turns his head a bit suddenly, regarding Alexander with an expression of muted alarm. "Wait, what? That's not... they don't just stop by for chats, Alex. They either watch you, abduct you or kill you."
See, he can't really connect the dots. What he knows about the Technocracy versus what Alexander just told him. But either way, the news is more than a little alarming.
"What happened? What did they want to talk to you about?"
Grace
"Holy shit, Alex, what?" is Grace's reaction in a nutshell. All the sudden, that quiet time she was looking for just flew out the window.
And, she goes silent as a hand comes out of her coat pocket with her phone in it, and she begins to Work. If there are Technocrats after Alex, she'll want to be sure he isn't being watched right now. Or set to explode. Or any number of things.
[Corr 1: Any tracking devices in the area eh? Actually no, I know there shouldn't be, but that's the first thing to check...]
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (2, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )
Alex
“A mutual friend warned me of some unwelcome guests trying to get friendly with the admin staff.” He’s talking to the fire more than to the others. “Not long after I let you guys know about the case I’d walked in on, I got a phone call from someone I didn’t know. She knew my name and she knew the name of the guy involved in the case. That was about the time that my phone met the shredder.
“Then the day after that, this woman just appears and asks for me. Says she wants to help me, but wouldn't say how. She wanted to get me alone. I refused, she left, and I’ve not heard anything from her since. But that’s why I’ve been so keen to be alone for a while and trying to be a good little Sleeper.”
Alex looks to Ian, then to Grace. “I’m not even sure talking to you now is the greatest of ideas ever. I should probably go, but you said I should let you guys know if I thought one was getting close. I would have, if I’d had any way of contacting you that couldn’t be easily traced.”
Ian
Ian watches Grace pull out her phone. He has a rough inkling of what she might be doing, and it seems to relax him slightly. If there was anyone in Denver who could pick out some kind of high-tech spying device, it would be Grace. When she doesn't voice any immediate warnings, he turns his attention back to Alexander, listening while he explains the details of his encounter.
It isn't much to go on really. Ian's expression shifts into a pensive frown as he glances at the fire.
"Maybe she was trying to feel you out. See if you'd make a good recruit, or something." It isn't entirely out of the scope of possibility. Alex is, after all, unaffiliated. And new enough that he probably doesn't present much of a threat in their eyes. Still, the behavior feels odd. More like something a solo agent would do than someone working for a vast network.
He glances back at Alex, and there's a soft crease of tension between his eyebrows. "Or maybe she isn't what you think she is."
Grace
"Well, I don't think you're being tracked," Grace says, mumbles really, into her phone.
"You said she was asking about the Kozlowski case?" she asks, a little more loudly. But she's still messing with her phone.
Maybe it wasn't Alex they were looking for, but Mike. And... okay, yeah, that would look exceptionally bad wouldn't it? And Technocrats wouldn't be the ones to take 'It was one of my past lives' as an excuse.
"Also, do you mind if I scan your body for other nasty things?"
Alex
“I honestly don’t know what she is. She didn’t say, but then she wouldn’t would she. All I know is that she had my name, she had my number, she knows where I work, and she knows about a case I’d only just tripped over.”
Alexander’s attention shifts from the flames to Grace when she mentions the name. “Yeah. She knew the name, and that hadn’t been released to the press at the time. That’s just one of the things that have been worrying me.”
He takes a deep breath, blowing it out slowly through his mouth. “I should go.” The decision seems to have been made already, as he pushes up from the blanket and grabs his bag. “You probably don’t want to be around me for a while. Enjoy the fire. And enjoy Vegas.” This last one, to Ian, with a vague, brief smile.
[More because I really need to crash out than anything, so apologies for bailing.]
Ian
Two years ago, if there'd been even the slightest suggestion of a possibility that Alexander might have been a target for the Technocracy, Ian would have vanished. Maybe not from the city, but certainly from Alex's life. He's alive today because there are certain risks that he never allowed himself to take.
He doesn't vanish now, but there is a quiet sort of confirmation in the absence of any objection to Alexander's claim. He gets to his feet so that Alex can reclaim his blanket, watching the man quietly as he prepares to leave.
"Hey, be careful." He says it to Alex's back as the other man starts to walk away, and something about the tone makes it sound as though he might genuinely be worried - not just for the risk Alexander might pose to the rest of them, but more specifically for Alex's own safety.
When he's gone, Ian looks down at the fire, banked low and licking lazily at the ends of charcoal-logs. He gathers up a mound of snow with his boot and kicks it over the flames until they go out. Then he slips his gloves back on.
"How's Michael, by the way?"
Grace
"No, wait, Alex! I..." Grace just breathes out her nose in a huff, because she's talking to the back of Alex's head. Well, at least she knows where he works, right? She can always stop by and... ask? At the police? For him? Yeah, okay so maybe that's not Grace's favorite thing to do ever. But like Hell is she going to let Alex handle this thing with a possible Technocrat contact all by himself.
Nor is she going to just let him isolate himself when there's likely no need. If they were after Mike? Mike's long gone. He's in L.A. and the trail of murders stopped.
Speaking of Michael, she hears the name. Ian's asking about him.
"Oh, uh. You know, if I didn't know any better, I'd think nothing ever got to him. More like, he doesn't let it show. He sounded good, last time I talked to him."
Ian
"Yeah, I get that."
Of course he does.
"Kiara told me you and he were sort of close." It isn't an insinuation - the truth is, she could have meant any number of things by that. Friends. Lovers. Colleagues. Ian starts to turn away from the fire pit, walking slowly through the snow. He settles his hands into his pockets, glancing at Grace as he does so. "How are you?"
Grace
Kiara. Ugh. Grace squints her eyes a bit in memory of that latest conversation with her. Of course she'd tell Ian. And is that where it's going to stop? Oh, no, it won't. Soon the whole city will know, and... and this is all crazy-talk going on in her traitorous brain. Who the fuck cares?
Ian starts off, away from her, but glances back. Asks her how she is doing.
"Talk about fucking loaded questions, Ian..."
"I'm good. Recovering from emotional rollercoasters of doom, but good."
Ian
It's the same question Alexander asked, and Grace fires back a very similar response to the one Ian initially gave. But he wasn't asking out of courtesy or small-talk. He was asking because he's worried. And maybe she'll hear that - the subtle lace of it in his voice.
Grace doesn't give him any more detailed answers than she gave earlier, though.
She doesn't try to walk with him either.
The sky is getting dark, drifting from afternoon to evening. As the light fades, more snow starts to fall. Ian stops walking and watches Grace for a long moment. It gives her the opportunity to open up more, if she chooses. But perhaps he isn't the person she'd like to open up to. So instead he nods and says "Alright. You've got my number, if you need anything."
He doesn't just mean practical things, but she may not interpret any other meaning.
"Have a good night."
And then he turns to make his way back to the trail.
Pen
Grace
The African Grill & Bar is a nice-ish place. Well, okay, so it's rather aesthetically boring, but the food isn't. Grace doesn't care for aesthetics much anyway, as long as the purpose of the thing (obtaining food) is accomplished.
It's the kind of place an immigrant with some starter funding might set up. A rented building, whose very American walls are festooned with tiny reminders of the kind of place they came from. You see it all over. If this were a Korean restaurant, the shelves would be packed with little dolls in hanbok, even though the more common dress a Korean girl might wear in this day and age looks like something out of 50's Americana. Hanging up here are little leather purses and large wooden forks, masks, bows... African coded knickknacks.
And so it is that Grace is seated at a table by herself, two large bowls in front of her. When last she'd been at this tiny chain of two restaurants, Mike had opted for the vegetarian fare, and well -- fried sweet spiced plantains are really not horrible at all. He has good taste, she decides, after digging into one of the bowls.
The place isn't really hopping on a Sunday night. Saturday is when the musicians play, so most people stop by then. Grace isn't most people. She doesn't much care for crowds of strangers.
She also feels like a thrum of power. An earthquake perhaps, sliding the ground beneath your feet with a sharp jolt...
Pen
[Dice, a question. Will anybody with the sixth sense to feel earthquakepower feel it or will they be oblivious as f'? P + A. -2 for Ms. Grace's Arcane]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3) ( fail )
Grace
[Nooo! Will Grace save the day with a finding of Pen?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 5, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )
Pen
There is a Virtual Adept (Mercurial Elite [Science Fiction Writer?]) in the corner. Remarkable, but often unremarked by the sleeping population and even sometimes that Mystery which can smudge away the details of her passage works on those who aren't asleep. The woman who opens the door to the African Bar & Grill and walks in is not a sleeper and looks nothing like anybody on a hunt. The woman appears to be in her mid-to-late twenties. Her jaw is strong, and her hair is braided into a coronet. The coronet is burnished a deep red a red that'll set a gray day afire. There is a glint of some metal thing in her hair, a chain with a stone. Her leather jacket is a autumn-leaf orange, zipped up and close. The collar is military and the cuffs are dramatic and there is a ring on every finger, even the thumbs, and her trousers are green and they disappear into oxblood doc martens (which serve as a place to hide things [of course. Some people have smart-phones and lap-tops and some people have things that get sheathed by boots]).
The door shuts behind her because she doesn't shut it and she is unzipping her jacket and seems to be one of those creatures who is calmly self-possessed: even though there is a newness to the way she takes in the African Bar & Grill, an open sort-of measuring, what is this place like, there's not even the slightest shiver of uncertainty: wait here? Wait where? Wait there? Just sit? Pen sweeps the African Bar & Grill with a glance and her eyes meet the host's or waiter's immediately and she tilts her head and flicks her eyebrows up in a question and the host or waiter comes over to tell Pen that she can take her pick of places to sit and to hand her a menu.
The woman is not a sleeper. The woman is a Mage, and she might like to be in the middle of an earthquake: might just dare it. This Mage's resonance is resplendent: is radiant glory, is a daring tempered only by the sort of passion that is a verb see ardent as a kiss as an ideal dearly held as the meaning behind dear as a spark as love.
Chance has brought her here, of course. Chance also sets her down at a table just one over from Grace's, although the African Bar & Grill is mostly empty.
Grace
A newcomer walks in, and Grace is the first one of them to figure out that she is a Newcomer. Capitalized for emphasis, for importance, you know? She gets a bored flick of the eye, a raised brow, and a satisfied crunch of spiced fried plantain.
But that's about all she gets.
There are rumors, you see? And there may have been a time when Grace was totally keen on walking up to the New in Denver and chatting them up like they're already old friends. Technocrats and monsters have driven away that drive. Still, this woman doesn't look or feel like either.
Instead, Grace pulls out her phone and unlocks it, gives the woman a side-eyed glance. Rings on every finger. Cuffs on the jacket. Loud, to go with the gloriousness of that resonance.
"Hi," she says, after a second of contemplation. Mouth's full of plantain, but she doesn't care. And she's loading up programs just in case Pen isn't the friendly type...
Pen
"Hello." Pen looks up from her menu and over at Grace when the Virtual Adept speaks. There are a number of ways to say hello to a stranger in a restaurant. Timidly: as if uncertain they're really speaking to you. Or draaaa-a-awling, as if, ugh, why are you speaking to me. That's not Pen.Cursorily: as if certain they're speaking to you and don't make eye contact don't invite don't open the door allow disinterest to be obvious bare recognition eyelash flick and end it. That's also not Pen. Bubbly!: a sudden fountain of enthusiasm, ending on a high note a query bubbly charisma.
That's still not Pen.
This is Pen, right?
The redhead answers with a hello that is (beguiling [a touch of welcome]) easy without being familiar and she doesn't look back at the menu immediately, but keeps her regard on the nondescript woman because hi never wants to be alone and maybe Grace is going to recommend her favourite food or something. Maybe she's just the kind of person who says hi when someone sits nearby and then they'll subside into mutual silence and understanding.
Beneath the coat, Pen's blouse is a pale rose-cream, peach-cream, something also warm; something utterly feminine. The light glints on the zipper of her leather jacket.
Grace
There's a sharp red coat slung over the back of Grace's chair, something far more expensive and eye-catching than the rest of her outfit, which consists of a grey turtleneck and jeans and sneakers. That is the clothing of choice for the one who likes to avoid attention. The turtleneck is bite-proof, for the sake of zombies and other things of the mostly-dead variety.
It's useful, you see?
"I haven't seen you before. Are you new to Denver?"
An odd sort of question for a Sleeper to ask. There's lots of people you get to see for the first time every day in a city the size of Denver. Not so much when it comes to the Awakened population.
Pen
"I am." The menu in Pen's left hand droops toward the table because the tension in her fingers changes. It makes that muted boomf sea-sound that all laminated menus make when they curve. There is a slick of hair that was never constrained by the coronet (bangs, too; thick and swept to one side), and it is a hook at her jaw and throat. Pen likes Grace's coat.
"Nice coat. Is altitude sickness the kind of myth one finds oneself grappling with after a drink or the kind of myth that dissolves like smoke upon examination?"
Pen has set her right elbow on the table and she rests her chin on the her thumb, her fingers curled inward against the side of her chin. Her eyebrows flick upward to punctuate the question.
Grace
"It bothers some people, sometimes. A little bit less oxygen, a little more dry air," Grace says, shrugs.
"Thanks. Um... Nice, uh..." she waves her finger in the air as if to encompass the whole of the other woman. "What you've got going on there."
Compliments exchanged. Okay, so maybe not enemytastic night at the African food place. Well, it could always change.
"This place is pretty good. Try the jerk goat stew."
Pen
"Jerk goat stew, hmm?" Pen looks back at the menu. Her posture is good; she does not slouch. But she lets her head tilt to the side, exposes more neck; a minute adjustment of her spine. Her leather jacket gapes at the back and there are chains around Pen's throat, too, three of them. She finds Jerk Goat Stew. "Would you join me?" Mid-way through the question she looks up from the menu again to (open [lucent]) find Grace's face again. Beat. "Or may I join you?"
Grace
"If you join me, I won't have to move my bowls," Grace says, and shrugs. Noncommital. Just, she doesn't want to move, but you can do whatever you like, stranger lady.
"If you'd like some vegetable samosas or kelewele, feel free," she adds. Some might think that's being incredibly friendly, but there's still something closed-off, waiting for Pen to prove herself a 'Crat or whatever. Grace just doesn't often think in terms of yours and mine. Sometimes, she has to let other people in on that frame-of-mind.
Pen
"Thank you." Noncommittal is not one of Pen's sins/virtues so she joins Grace's table. Places the menu down on its surface, and keeps her jacket on. The waiter returns as Pen is changing places and Pen orders a glass of pink moscato. Then Tuo Zaafi, the Chapatti, whatever the fuck that is. Then, yes, more food, why not also the Jerk Goat Stew. But what do you think the best thing is, waiter? That? Okay, that too. Pen has a refrigerator in desperate need of some left overs. Pen also has a kitchen that longs to be cooked in, but the kitchen can wait for the pots and pans to be unpacked. The kitchen may well be waiting for a very, very long time.
Having committed to a feast and to company, Pen settles. "Who do I have the pleasure to be speaking to? What do you find interesting about the world?"
Grace
Oh, good grief. Pen orders food the way Kalen orders food -- half the menu at a time. There's a growing smirk on her face as Pen orders and keeps ordering. And then... oh. Someone is speaking to her.
She considers. Who is she?
"Grace. And I find the world itself interesting. One of my primary studies, in fact, is what makes it all go 'tick'. But then, you probably already guessed that."
Pen
Brief interruption for Pen's drink brought by the waiter who is grinning a flash of white teeth. He pours the wine at the table twisting the bottle at the end so there are no drips. The twist follows the same geometric lines as a spiral at the center of a flower rose or a sea shell. There is mathematics everywhere: circles to circumnavigate. The waiter asks Grace if she'd like a refill or anything else and then vanishes.
During the mundane exchange, Pen's eyes have sharpened; have become more thoughtful. But then, you probably already guessed that. Mister Bond. Now release the laser sharks. Her glass looks filled with roseish light with some fairy drink. There's tension at the corners of her mouth; the beginning of a smile; rose-glow, and she picks up the glass once the waiter is gone.
Honest woman: "I hadn't yet guessed a thing. If you were spoken by the sphinx, the sphinx would still be speaking; I don't have a feel for you yet! What do you believe makes it all go 'tick'? Time?"
Grace
"Time? I can't say much about it. I suspect it doesn't exist in any real sense. Entropy's afterthought. An emergent property. Not sure yet," Grace says, and chomps down on some more fried plantain. And surely, this is not mundane conversation anymore.
If she realizes she's coming across as some kind of Bond villain, she doesn't let on.
Call it, testing the waters.
Come on, everybody here knows what everybody else is, right? The only question that really remains for Grace is what factions, who's friends with whom...
Pen
"Ha." The punctuation should be something between a period and an exclamation: time as entropy's afterthought. "Do you know Dylan Thomas? Your opinion calls to mind his poem 'the force that through the green fuse drives the flower.' The next lines are -- no, hold on." The fair-skinned woman closes her eyes for a flicker moment but doesn't keep them closed; her gaze has resolved into a distant thing when they're open again, pulling the words from her memory. "'The force that through the green fuse drives the flower drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees is my destroyer.' Oh, the whole thing is so good."
Grace
"Oh, destroying is a part of it. So is creating. Doing. Anything doing. Time is the way we measure change. Entropy is that thing which..." she inhales. Thinks. How to put this in a way that isn't math. "It is a record of things as they change, in a way."
She ponders vegetable samosas, and lofts one into the air with a bit of sauce as though she were about to make a point utilizing food, but no -- she's just eating. And then talking without much consideration.
"It bothers me that so many can only see death and destruction in that green fuse, you know? Fuse, like it's a bomb waiting to go off. Says a lot about how we view the past, and the present, and the future. Like people would rather us stay stock still and in stasis than risk running across a fate."
A challenge issued, a shot across the bow to some Technocrat who might fear the future so much as to put it in chains? Maybe... She's also seeming to speak to her food rather than to Pen.
Pen
The stranger listens. Pale lake-sword eyes still and intent. Of course they're intent. The woman looks like some carved thing, some painted relic. The flamboyance is visible but restrained. How can flamboyance be restrained? The same way a flame can be restrained: to a candle wick or a brazier or a fire place a hearth a home. When she is intent she is balanced on the edge of that intentness, with interest but without judgment.
"Mn. I have an alternate proposition. A devil's advocate sort of position to change the connotation. Fuse. Like two lovers." Pen steeples her hands and then lets her fingers twine. "Fuse. A mingling or a transformation." Twists her palm thumbs wrapped one around the other fingers fanning out like birdwings. Shadow-puppetry. "Or fuse. Like an explosion, not a bomb." Make a fist. Make the fist explode. Wiggle of elegant long fingers. "Big bang. Stars. Universe. Expansion. The sort of fuse that drives 'my green age' might be the sort of fuse that is doing, right? I think the key might be 'drives.' Verb. Being a verb. Being driven out of stasis by this force that compells verbing."
Shift of tone. She isn't playing devil's advocate (poet laureate [almost was]) now. She's voicing an opinion. Hers? Probably. "I don't believe anybody really wants us to stay still and in stasis. Those who seem to are afraid and think that trying to be always the same is the best way to find security. And what's the point of security? What desire does it spring from?"
Grace
"It can be both. Poems, eh?" They often get to truths you can't easily say any other way.
She takes more spicy plantain, because she has decided it it the better of the two dishes, and why save for later what you could have now? It's crunchy.
"The desire behind that is to avoid pain. Oh. I suppose I can say it now, huh? I'm with the Mercurial Elite."
Because Pen does not strike her after this conversation as the type who would blink an eye at that and attempt to shoot her in the head. Precautions were taken, right? Now it's time to experience some change.
Pen
The waiter isn't approaching yet laden down with Pen's feast. They've another two or three minutes before that happens. Pen takes a sip of her fairy drink; sunset in a rose garden distilled into liquid. The taste is just sharp enough to make one think of frost or the late afternoon.
Mercurial Elite. The Virtual Adepts re-branded. Speaking of change, of the fuse that drives. The woman's eyebrows flick, but her response is simple.
"Listen to that. We ae linguistic cousins, then. Order of Hermes."
Grace
Oh. Well. There are a number of reasons why a new Hermetic might be in town, not all of them good reasons. There may come a day when Grace and this as-yet-unnamed woman will be arguing about why exactly she decided to come to Denver to start a war. Change is going to be, as it does. Humans like to put value judgments on change, but one thing in particular tends to stand out: war is bad, mmkay? Really, Grace wouldn't be against it entirely, if the Hermetics had a plan that stood a chance of succeeding.
Some people just want to watch everything burn. Some people with a fine control of Forces magick especially.
It's not going to be tonight.
For one, a public restaurant is not the place to get in a row about magickal wars and vampires and shit. Not without some heavy-duty mental fuzzing and possibly a sonic disruptor shield.
She chews. For once, without speaking.
"You should come by my place sometime. It's this office set up by a Flambeau. We can talk about things. Are you... staying in Denver long?"
Pen
Here is the food!
The waiter flashes another dazzling grin at the red-haired woman. Pen is not petite, mind. But she has a certain something, and the certain something does not imply packing away vast quantities of food of the sort that she has ordered. Before he goes, Pen asks him to tell her what each dish is, and then he is gone and the air is redolent of spice and meat and simmer.
"I hope to, and thank you for the invitation. What Flambeau set up your office?"
Grace
She waits until the 'mundane' conversation is finished, if one can call the discussion of food mundane. Grace's eyes flit from thing to thing in the feast, cataloging them for later trips.
And then? The waiter leaves, so Grace can return to business.
"Kalen. He's cool," she says, and narrows her eyes a bit while chewing. "But who are you? I mean, you've asked me two people's names so far. Should offer up one of your own?"
Pen
Kalen? The Hermetic Mage looks pensive, but the name does not seem to dredge recognition up from 'neath the lake.
"I go by Pen in our circles." No dismay or, oh, how silly; I forgot. No hesitation, or dishonesty, or arrogance; no argument or explanation. When she is asked a question, she answers it. Frank and forthright and without ornament. "Pen Mercury."
Grace
"Heh. Linguistic cousins. Yup," Grace says, shovels some more food into her mouth. Starting to run out of plantains. A pity.
"Kalen's down in Santiago right now, but I can show you around."
Kalen's the one who got her that coat. It must be why Pen likes it so much... Of course, Grace promptly sewed sensors and LEDs into the thing, because adding purpose to an item isn't ever bad, right?
Penny
Pen is not diminutive (and like most Mages gives the impression of being more present [beguile], being more [ardent & resplendent & daring it is a subtle note like a perfume some people don't even notice something that clings so closely to the skin mingling see with the body] than her inches), but she certainly does not look like she can pack away all of the food that she ordered. And she can't, but can't is the worst kind of spell if one just accepts can't as a barrier against what if and there is always the possibility of left overs. All of which to say she tries one of the lentilsy meatsy stewy dishes first, grease swimming a shimmer on sauce savory little spice imps practically building castles out of it. And a bite. Is it spicy? Her skin is naturally fair, as fair as some British sorceress' should be pulled out've a book peeled out've a certain kind of story; she doesn't flush very much; just a very little. Her eyes go to water and she blinks the water away and the water leaves behind a glitter, chokes her voice into a thread: pleased and shining though:
"Thank you! As I find my feet in Denver -- which has always in other cities meant meeting other rule of shady characters and finding the best book shops, whisky bars, and pawn shops -- " nonchalance (flamboyant nonchalance) as she scoops sauce up with some flat bread, economic gestures " -- I'll be glad of the help."
Grace
"I don't know where the good whisky bars are, except for the one at my place," she says. "I mean, I don't like whisky all that much myself. I don't know good from bad. But Kalen does, and he stocks what he likes, so..."
So it's guaranteed expensive and whatnot.
"Bookstores, yes. I know a few good ones. There's An Arch Key Books, used to be run by one of yours," she says, as if chewing on a bad memory. "I think it's his aunt running it now? Adam Gallowglass ring a bell? Anyway, it's really good for old books and whatever."
And whatever. Whatever includes all the screaming at each other, probably.
Penny
"Kalen sounds like a paragon," Pen slips in neat as a blade between ribs the one rib being the trail away and the other rib being bookstores, yes, I know a few good ones. The scoop of spicy stuff finds its way to her mouth. Pen doesn't eat with gusto, precisely. She eats carefully but steadily, with frequent pauses to taste what is on her tongue. If she has a unicorn horn in her boot or strapped against her ribs, it needs time to react to any poison, after all. The pauses seem born less of suspicion and more of care, though. And attention on Grace. Occasionally, Pen looks around the quiet restaurant, and it's a soldier's learned care there. "And the bookstore certainly sounds intriguing, although I take it you and Adam were not fond? Forgive my prying prysomeness, but was it an old media versus new media horns locking sort of thing? I'd ask you what your favourite computer shop was, but I imagine you built your machine from the ground up. And I don't actually know whether there are computer shops; isn't there just Best Buy and the Apple Store?"
Grace
"Mmm. Maybe. He insinuated that I was a 'Crat, and I got a little heated. I'm sure from his side of the story, I'm a total overreacting she-harpy or something. I don't know," she says, and drowns her sorrows with another veggie samosa.
She doesn't know, because they've never spoken again. Perhaps that was an error, but you know? Things happen.
"I don't know where the best computer shop in the city is either," she says, a bit surprised at herself, and with her mouth still partly full of samosa. "Kalen occasionally dumps a bunch of electronics parts at my door, though. He must get them from somewhere. I usually just look for exactly what I want online, but random parts drops are always fun. I get to figure out what I can make with it."
Penny
"Are there build-something-cool-with-random-parts contests?"
Mm, food. Pen takes a sip of the rose, which is sadly depleted now. Fortunately, here's that waiter with a refill and some water. The ice cubes go tink-tink, catching and refracting light.
Grace
"Once, I tried having a robot-fighting contest, but my challenger moved," she says, sadly. "I made Gamera-bot though. Friend to all children. Tried to figure out how to get it to spit fire, but... it's an ongoing project."
So yes. Perhaps Grace has forgotten what 'grown up' entails. And maybe that's a good thing. She actually relaxes and smiles when thinking about Gamera-bot.
Penny
"Oh!" Ardent. "If only I was at the point of making homunculi, we could have a homunculi versus gamera-bot showdown. Perhaps one day."
Grace
Grace blinks. "Huh. Well. If you're going to be like that... It wouldn't be fair, would it? I'd want to have my Gamera-bot equipped with appropriate defenses for a homunculus, right? And..." she waves her fingers in the air at Pen, as if to suggest spell-casting. "Offenses?"
There's a grin on her face. She likes this bit.
Penny
"And of course my homunculus would need to have appropriate defenses for a robot," Pen says, and she sounds fond. Both of her elegant eyebrows flick upward sharply, suggestively. "We could have a ring somewhere safe from unwanted eyes for the contest."
Grace
Kalen will be so thrilled. If Pen isn't actually here to destroy everything in Denver, that is. What fun they could, potentially have, in the future?
"Oh yes. And theme music. And snacks."
Grace doesn't even blink at the homunculus bit. She knows what one is. And she's learned by now that if she knows what something is, chances are it exists, or can be made to exist. Such is the way of Denver to teach one that there is more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in their philosophy.
"Sounds like we have our work cut out for us huh?"
Penny
"Isn't that the most perfect story," Pen says, and there's a quiet thrum of (still - an ardent thread) pleasure in it. "Our work cut out." The warp and weft of expression changes, a new subject grafting on to the old. "Do you write music?"
Grace
Oh, Grace almost chokes on plantain when Pen asks her that question. "Hahaha, no," comes the response. Grace's taste in music has been called into question before, and likely will again. Not that she cares. The Install Gentoo song is totally awesome.
"I occasionally write stories. When I'm not building robots and saving the world and shit."
She says that last one like it's a ha-ha joke. There is a little more substance in there than a passing Sleeper might guess though.
Penny
"Stories inspired by your adventurers or stories inspired by what you'd like to see in the world?"
Pen doesn't bat an eyelash at Grace's ha-ha joke or nonchalant bravado, whichever it is. Grace is one of the Mercurial Elite, after all, and more importantly someone who is Awake to some of the subtler nuances of the world. There is something somewhat meditative about the way the red-haired woman turns her plate around, the better to reach one of the other dishes.
Grace
"I try not to put my adventures into words like that. Don't want to make it too easy for someone to trace those adventures back to me, eh? But the latter, yes."
It's a shame, really, that she can't write about her time in Bastion, for example, without almost certainly getting whisked away for an all-expenses-paid vacation to some Technocratic lab/dungeon. But such is life.
"What about you? Do you create anything other than homunculi?"
Penny
Pen's answer doesn't come immediately. The creature (woman [no, all Magicians are creatures; are shadows thrown into the world by some singing light, human only until they are no longer human or are quintessentially human which amounts to the same thing]) gives the question due consideration. The silence also doesn't stretch out too, too long; when Pen is done chewing, an excellent cover for thought, her throat clicks when she swallows. She says:
"My Art is mostly," and she wiggles her fingers in an echo of Grace's earlier spellwork gesture, a grave thing. "Or lends itself to that. But I like to play with metal. Before my move I was playing around with found industrial objects, broken steel things, and cutting them up into filigreed designs. The idea is that I can eventually make an interesting candleholder or something to throw shadows as I want them to be thrown against the walls."
"And I am a poet. Playwriting next, perhaps, if I ever force some time."
Grace
"Oh, that sounds neat. My robots just cast robot-shaped shadows. I don't know if I could make them look like anything if I tried. Well, okay, I did try to make Gamera-bot look like a turtle, but it had to."
And, really, it didn't get so wonderfully turtle-shaped. It has a shell. And four legs. And a "head". That's about the entirety of the resemblance there.
"I know about the time thing. I mean, how everything else sucks it up until you have almost nothing."
Penny
"Right. It never quite seems important enough in the grand scheme to put all those other, hmm, grand schemes aside. But it is a choice after all." Pen smiles; a half smile, not wistful because she is not wistful (it is a choice after all [one she made]), but something distant kin to it. "What would you do with more time? Build more robots? -- I like the idea of a turtle bot. -- Write more stories?"
Grace
"Sometimes it's not much of a choice. It's all doom and gloom and death unless you act. And so you act."
Instead of poetry or love, writing or creating (the small c creating, the small l love) their Poetry is writ across the world, saved every day because people out there happened to Love it.
"I would... study more. With more time, heh. Be utterly boring."
Penny
A curtain falls over the next half hour.
Pen is passionate about a great number of things, but her passion is restrained (nonchalantly [austere]) or directed by interest in her dinner companion. Here is a picture of the industrial what-have-you. Do you have a picture of your gamera? What about an anklyosaur or dragon-themed shape? There is robot talk or more shop talk (such as there can be between two Mages, still mostly strangers, having a nice impromptu dinner).
They shoot the breeze. They talk. That's why there are restuarants, public places to eat; why it's not done behind closed doors all the time. Convivial. Society.
By the time they part (Pen boxes up most of her food), Pen gives Grace her business card. It has a phone number and P. M. M. on it along with an image of some appropriately alchemical but fairy tale thing her player has yet to think up. Perhaps a moon; perhaps the background is a faded forest. No; a lake. Pen's invited Grace to call her whenever she finds time (ha, ha) and wants conversation or needs etcetera.
The African Grill & Bar is a nice-ish place. Well, okay, so it's rather aesthetically boring, but the food isn't. Grace doesn't care for aesthetics much anyway, as long as the purpose of the thing (obtaining food) is accomplished.
It's the kind of place an immigrant with some starter funding might set up. A rented building, whose very American walls are festooned with tiny reminders of the kind of place they came from. You see it all over. If this were a Korean restaurant, the shelves would be packed with little dolls in hanbok, even though the more common dress a Korean girl might wear in this day and age looks like something out of 50's Americana. Hanging up here are little leather purses and large wooden forks, masks, bows... African coded knickknacks.
And so it is that Grace is seated at a table by herself, two large bowls in front of her. When last she'd been at this tiny chain of two restaurants, Mike had opted for the vegetarian fare, and well -- fried sweet spiced plantains are really not horrible at all. He has good taste, she decides, after digging into one of the bowls.
The place isn't really hopping on a Sunday night. Saturday is when the musicians play, so most people stop by then. Grace isn't most people. She doesn't much care for crowds of strangers.
She also feels like a thrum of power. An earthquake perhaps, sliding the ground beneath your feet with a sharp jolt...
Pen
[Dice, a question. Will anybody with the sixth sense to feel earthquakepower feel it or will they be oblivious as f'? P + A. -2 for Ms. Grace's Arcane]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3) ( fail )
Grace
[Nooo! Will Grace save the day with a finding of Pen?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 5, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )
Pen
There is a Virtual Adept (Mercurial Elite [Science Fiction Writer?]) in the corner. Remarkable, but often unremarked by the sleeping population and even sometimes that Mystery which can smudge away the details of her passage works on those who aren't asleep. The woman who opens the door to the African Bar & Grill and walks in is not a sleeper and looks nothing like anybody on a hunt. The woman appears to be in her mid-to-late twenties. Her jaw is strong, and her hair is braided into a coronet. The coronet is burnished a deep red a red that'll set a gray day afire. There is a glint of some metal thing in her hair, a chain with a stone. Her leather jacket is a autumn-leaf orange, zipped up and close. The collar is military and the cuffs are dramatic and there is a ring on every finger, even the thumbs, and her trousers are green and they disappear into oxblood doc martens (which serve as a place to hide things [of course. Some people have smart-phones and lap-tops and some people have things that get sheathed by boots]).
The door shuts behind her because she doesn't shut it and she is unzipping her jacket and seems to be one of those creatures who is calmly self-possessed: even though there is a newness to the way she takes in the African Bar & Grill, an open sort-of measuring, what is this place like, there's not even the slightest shiver of uncertainty: wait here? Wait where? Wait there? Just sit? Pen sweeps the African Bar & Grill with a glance and her eyes meet the host's or waiter's immediately and she tilts her head and flicks her eyebrows up in a question and the host or waiter comes over to tell Pen that she can take her pick of places to sit and to hand her a menu.
The woman is not a sleeper. The woman is a Mage, and she might like to be in the middle of an earthquake: might just dare it. This Mage's resonance is resplendent: is radiant glory, is a daring tempered only by the sort of passion that is a verb see ardent as a kiss as an ideal dearly held as the meaning behind dear as a spark as love.
Chance has brought her here, of course. Chance also sets her down at a table just one over from Grace's, although the African Bar & Grill is mostly empty.
Grace
A newcomer walks in, and Grace is the first one of them to figure out that she is a Newcomer. Capitalized for emphasis, for importance, you know? She gets a bored flick of the eye, a raised brow, and a satisfied crunch of spiced fried plantain.
But that's about all she gets.
There are rumors, you see? And there may have been a time when Grace was totally keen on walking up to the New in Denver and chatting them up like they're already old friends. Technocrats and monsters have driven away that drive. Still, this woman doesn't look or feel like either.
Instead, Grace pulls out her phone and unlocks it, gives the woman a side-eyed glance. Rings on every finger. Cuffs on the jacket. Loud, to go with the gloriousness of that resonance.
"Hi," she says, after a second of contemplation. Mouth's full of plantain, but she doesn't care. And she's loading up programs just in case Pen isn't the friendly type...
Pen
"Hello." Pen looks up from her menu and over at Grace when the Virtual Adept speaks. There are a number of ways to say hello to a stranger in a restaurant. Timidly: as if uncertain they're really speaking to you. Or draaaa-a-awling, as if, ugh, why are you speaking to me. That's not Pen.Cursorily: as if certain they're speaking to you and don't make eye contact don't invite don't open the door allow disinterest to be obvious bare recognition eyelash flick and end it. That's also not Pen. Bubbly!: a sudden fountain of enthusiasm, ending on a high note a query bubbly charisma.
That's still not Pen.
This is Pen, right?
The redhead answers with a hello that is (beguiling [a touch of welcome]) easy without being familiar and she doesn't look back at the menu immediately, but keeps her regard on the nondescript woman because hi never wants to be alone and maybe Grace is going to recommend her favourite food or something. Maybe she's just the kind of person who says hi when someone sits nearby and then they'll subside into mutual silence and understanding.
Beneath the coat, Pen's blouse is a pale rose-cream, peach-cream, something also warm; something utterly feminine. The light glints on the zipper of her leather jacket.
Grace
There's a sharp red coat slung over the back of Grace's chair, something far more expensive and eye-catching than the rest of her outfit, which consists of a grey turtleneck and jeans and sneakers. That is the clothing of choice for the one who likes to avoid attention. The turtleneck is bite-proof, for the sake of zombies and other things of the mostly-dead variety.
It's useful, you see?
"I haven't seen you before. Are you new to Denver?"
An odd sort of question for a Sleeper to ask. There's lots of people you get to see for the first time every day in a city the size of Denver. Not so much when it comes to the Awakened population.
Pen
"I am." The menu in Pen's left hand droops toward the table because the tension in her fingers changes. It makes that muted boomf sea-sound that all laminated menus make when they curve. There is a slick of hair that was never constrained by the coronet (bangs, too; thick and swept to one side), and it is a hook at her jaw and throat. Pen likes Grace's coat.
"Nice coat. Is altitude sickness the kind of myth one finds oneself grappling with after a drink or the kind of myth that dissolves like smoke upon examination?"
Pen has set her right elbow on the table and she rests her chin on the her thumb, her fingers curled inward against the side of her chin. Her eyebrows flick upward to punctuate the question.
Grace
"It bothers some people, sometimes. A little bit less oxygen, a little more dry air," Grace says, shrugs.
"Thanks. Um... Nice, uh..." she waves her finger in the air as if to encompass the whole of the other woman. "What you've got going on there."
Compliments exchanged. Okay, so maybe not enemytastic night at the African food place. Well, it could always change.
"This place is pretty good. Try the jerk goat stew."
Pen
"Jerk goat stew, hmm?" Pen looks back at the menu. Her posture is good; she does not slouch. But she lets her head tilt to the side, exposes more neck; a minute adjustment of her spine. Her leather jacket gapes at the back and there are chains around Pen's throat, too, three of them. She finds Jerk Goat Stew. "Would you join me?" Mid-way through the question she looks up from the menu again to (open [lucent]) find Grace's face again. Beat. "Or may I join you?"
Grace
"If you join me, I won't have to move my bowls," Grace says, and shrugs. Noncommital. Just, she doesn't want to move, but you can do whatever you like, stranger lady.
"If you'd like some vegetable samosas or kelewele, feel free," she adds. Some might think that's being incredibly friendly, but there's still something closed-off, waiting for Pen to prove herself a 'Crat or whatever. Grace just doesn't often think in terms of yours and mine. Sometimes, she has to let other people in on that frame-of-mind.
Pen
"Thank you." Noncommittal is not one of Pen's sins/virtues so she joins Grace's table. Places the menu down on its surface, and keeps her jacket on. The waiter returns as Pen is changing places and Pen orders a glass of pink moscato. Then Tuo Zaafi, the Chapatti, whatever the fuck that is. Then, yes, more food, why not also the Jerk Goat Stew. But what do you think the best thing is, waiter? That? Okay, that too. Pen has a refrigerator in desperate need of some left overs. Pen also has a kitchen that longs to be cooked in, but the kitchen can wait for the pots and pans to be unpacked. The kitchen may well be waiting for a very, very long time.
Having committed to a feast and to company, Pen settles. "Who do I have the pleasure to be speaking to? What do you find interesting about the world?"
Grace
Oh, good grief. Pen orders food the way Kalen orders food -- half the menu at a time. There's a growing smirk on her face as Pen orders and keeps ordering. And then... oh. Someone is speaking to her.
She considers. Who is she?
"Grace. And I find the world itself interesting. One of my primary studies, in fact, is what makes it all go 'tick'. But then, you probably already guessed that."
Pen
Brief interruption for Pen's drink brought by the waiter who is grinning a flash of white teeth. He pours the wine at the table twisting the bottle at the end so there are no drips. The twist follows the same geometric lines as a spiral at the center of a flower rose or a sea shell. There is mathematics everywhere: circles to circumnavigate. The waiter asks Grace if she'd like a refill or anything else and then vanishes.
During the mundane exchange, Pen's eyes have sharpened; have become more thoughtful. But then, you probably already guessed that. Mister Bond. Now release the laser sharks. Her glass looks filled with roseish light with some fairy drink. There's tension at the corners of her mouth; the beginning of a smile; rose-glow, and she picks up the glass once the waiter is gone.
Honest woman: "I hadn't yet guessed a thing. If you were spoken by the sphinx, the sphinx would still be speaking; I don't have a feel for you yet! What do you believe makes it all go 'tick'? Time?"
Grace
"Time? I can't say much about it. I suspect it doesn't exist in any real sense. Entropy's afterthought. An emergent property. Not sure yet," Grace says, and chomps down on some more fried plantain. And surely, this is not mundane conversation anymore.
If she realizes she's coming across as some kind of Bond villain, she doesn't let on.
Call it, testing the waters.
Come on, everybody here knows what everybody else is, right? The only question that really remains for Grace is what factions, who's friends with whom...
Pen
"Ha." The punctuation should be something between a period and an exclamation: time as entropy's afterthought. "Do you know Dylan Thomas? Your opinion calls to mind his poem 'the force that through the green fuse drives the flower.' The next lines are -- no, hold on." The fair-skinned woman closes her eyes for a flicker moment but doesn't keep them closed; her gaze has resolved into a distant thing when they're open again, pulling the words from her memory. "'The force that through the green fuse drives the flower drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees is my destroyer.' Oh, the whole thing is so good."
Grace
"Oh, destroying is a part of it. So is creating. Doing. Anything doing. Time is the way we measure change. Entropy is that thing which..." she inhales. Thinks. How to put this in a way that isn't math. "It is a record of things as they change, in a way."
She ponders vegetable samosas, and lofts one into the air with a bit of sauce as though she were about to make a point utilizing food, but no -- she's just eating. And then talking without much consideration.
"It bothers me that so many can only see death and destruction in that green fuse, you know? Fuse, like it's a bomb waiting to go off. Says a lot about how we view the past, and the present, and the future. Like people would rather us stay stock still and in stasis than risk running across a fate."
A challenge issued, a shot across the bow to some Technocrat who might fear the future so much as to put it in chains? Maybe... She's also seeming to speak to her food rather than to Pen.
Pen
The stranger listens. Pale lake-sword eyes still and intent. Of course they're intent. The woman looks like some carved thing, some painted relic. The flamboyance is visible but restrained. How can flamboyance be restrained? The same way a flame can be restrained: to a candle wick or a brazier or a fire place a hearth a home. When she is intent she is balanced on the edge of that intentness, with interest but without judgment.
"Mn. I have an alternate proposition. A devil's advocate sort of position to change the connotation. Fuse. Like two lovers." Pen steeples her hands and then lets her fingers twine. "Fuse. A mingling or a transformation." Twists her palm thumbs wrapped one around the other fingers fanning out like birdwings. Shadow-puppetry. "Or fuse. Like an explosion, not a bomb." Make a fist. Make the fist explode. Wiggle of elegant long fingers. "Big bang. Stars. Universe. Expansion. The sort of fuse that drives 'my green age' might be the sort of fuse that is doing, right? I think the key might be 'drives.' Verb. Being a verb. Being driven out of stasis by this force that compells verbing."
Shift of tone. She isn't playing devil's advocate (poet laureate [almost was]) now. She's voicing an opinion. Hers? Probably. "I don't believe anybody really wants us to stay still and in stasis. Those who seem to are afraid and think that trying to be always the same is the best way to find security. And what's the point of security? What desire does it spring from?"
Grace
"It can be both. Poems, eh?" They often get to truths you can't easily say any other way.
She takes more spicy plantain, because she has decided it it the better of the two dishes, and why save for later what you could have now? It's crunchy.
"The desire behind that is to avoid pain. Oh. I suppose I can say it now, huh? I'm with the Mercurial Elite."
Because Pen does not strike her after this conversation as the type who would blink an eye at that and attempt to shoot her in the head. Precautions were taken, right? Now it's time to experience some change.
Pen
The waiter isn't approaching yet laden down with Pen's feast. They've another two or three minutes before that happens. Pen takes a sip of her fairy drink; sunset in a rose garden distilled into liquid. The taste is just sharp enough to make one think of frost or the late afternoon.
Mercurial Elite. The Virtual Adepts re-branded. Speaking of change, of the fuse that drives. The woman's eyebrows flick, but her response is simple.
"Listen to that. We ae linguistic cousins, then. Order of Hermes."
Grace
Oh. Well. There are a number of reasons why a new Hermetic might be in town, not all of them good reasons. There may come a day when Grace and this as-yet-unnamed woman will be arguing about why exactly she decided to come to Denver to start a war. Change is going to be, as it does. Humans like to put value judgments on change, but one thing in particular tends to stand out: war is bad, mmkay? Really, Grace wouldn't be against it entirely, if the Hermetics had a plan that stood a chance of succeeding.
Some people just want to watch everything burn. Some people with a fine control of Forces magick especially.
It's not going to be tonight.
For one, a public restaurant is not the place to get in a row about magickal wars and vampires and shit. Not without some heavy-duty mental fuzzing and possibly a sonic disruptor shield.
She chews. For once, without speaking.
"You should come by my place sometime. It's this office set up by a Flambeau. We can talk about things. Are you... staying in Denver long?"
Pen
Here is the food!
The waiter flashes another dazzling grin at the red-haired woman. Pen is not petite, mind. But she has a certain something, and the certain something does not imply packing away vast quantities of food of the sort that she has ordered. Before he goes, Pen asks him to tell her what each dish is, and then he is gone and the air is redolent of spice and meat and simmer.
"I hope to, and thank you for the invitation. What Flambeau set up your office?"
Grace
She waits until the 'mundane' conversation is finished, if one can call the discussion of food mundane. Grace's eyes flit from thing to thing in the feast, cataloging them for later trips.
And then? The waiter leaves, so Grace can return to business.
"Kalen. He's cool," she says, and narrows her eyes a bit while chewing. "But who are you? I mean, you've asked me two people's names so far. Should offer up one of your own?"
Pen
Kalen? The Hermetic Mage looks pensive, but the name does not seem to dredge recognition up from 'neath the lake.
"I go by Pen in our circles." No dismay or, oh, how silly; I forgot. No hesitation, or dishonesty, or arrogance; no argument or explanation. When she is asked a question, she answers it. Frank and forthright and without ornament. "Pen Mercury."
Grace
"Heh. Linguistic cousins. Yup," Grace says, shovels some more food into her mouth. Starting to run out of plantains. A pity.
"Kalen's down in Santiago right now, but I can show you around."
Kalen's the one who got her that coat. It must be why Pen likes it so much... Of course, Grace promptly sewed sensors and LEDs into the thing, because adding purpose to an item isn't ever bad, right?
Penny
Pen is not diminutive (and like most Mages gives the impression of being more present [beguile], being more [ardent & resplendent & daring it is a subtle note like a perfume some people don't even notice something that clings so closely to the skin mingling see with the body] than her inches), but she certainly does not look like she can pack away all of the food that she ordered. And she can't, but can't is the worst kind of spell if one just accepts can't as a barrier against what if and there is always the possibility of left overs. All of which to say she tries one of the lentilsy meatsy stewy dishes first, grease swimming a shimmer on sauce savory little spice imps practically building castles out of it. And a bite. Is it spicy? Her skin is naturally fair, as fair as some British sorceress' should be pulled out've a book peeled out've a certain kind of story; she doesn't flush very much; just a very little. Her eyes go to water and she blinks the water away and the water leaves behind a glitter, chokes her voice into a thread: pleased and shining though:
"Thank you! As I find my feet in Denver -- which has always in other cities meant meeting other rule of shady characters and finding the best book shops, whisky bars, and pawn shops -- " nonchalance (flamboyant nonchalance) as she scoops sauce up with some flat bread, economic gestures " -- I'll be glad of the help."
Grace
"I don't know where the good whisky bars are, except for the one at my place," she says. "I mean, I don't like whisky all that much myself. I don't know good from bad. But Kalen does, and he stocks what he likes, so..."
So it's guaranteed expensive and whatnot.
"Bookstores, yes. I know a few good ones. There's An Arch Key Books, used to be run by one of yours," she says, as if chewing on a bad memory. "I think it's his aunt running it now? Adam Gallowglass ring a bell? Anyway, it's really good for old books and whatever."
And whatever. Whatever includes all the screaming at each other, probably.
Penny
"Kalen sounds like a paragon," Pen slips in neat as a blade between ribs the one rib being the trail away and the other rib being bookstores, yes, I know a few good ones. The scoop of spicy stuff finds its way to her mouth. Pen doesn't eat with gusto, precisely. She eats carefully but steadily, with frequent pauses to taste what is on her tongue. If she has a unicorn horn in her boot or strapped against her ribs, it needs time to react to any poison, after all. The pauses seem born less of suspicion and more of care, though. And attention on Grace. Occasionally, Pen looks around the quiet restaurant, and it's a soldier's learned care there. "And the bookstore certainly sounds intriguing, although I take it you and Adam were not fond? Forgive my prying prysomeness, but was it an old media versus new media horns locking sort of thing? I'd ask you what your favourite computer shop was, but I imagine you built your machine from the ground up. And I don't actually know whether there are computer shops; isn't there just Best Buy and the Apple Store?"
Grace
"Mmm. Maybe. He insinuated that I was a 'Crat, and I got a little heated. I'm sure from his side of the story, I'm a total overreacting she-harpy or something. I don't know," she says, and drowns her sorrows with another veggie samosa.
She doesn't know, because they've never spoken again. Perhaps that was an error, but you know? Things happen.
"I don't know where the best computer shop in the city is either," she says, a bit surprised at herself, and with her mouth still partly full of samosa. "Kalen occasionally dumps a bunch of electronics parts at my door, though. He must get them from somewhere. I usually just look for exactly what I want online, but random parts drops are always fun. I get to figure out what I can make with it."
Penny
"Are there build-something-cool-with-random-parts contests?"
Mm, food. Pen takes a sip of the rose, which is sadly depleted now. Fortunately, here's that waiter with a refill and some water. The ice cubes go tink-tink, catching and refracting light.
Grace
"Once, I tried having a robot-fighting contest, but my challenger moved," she says, sadly. "I made Gamera-bot though. Friend to all children. Tried to figure out how to get it to spit fire, but... it's an ongoing project."
So yes. Perhaps Grace has forgotten what 'grown up' entails. And maybe that's a good thing. She actually relaxes and smiles when thinking about Gamera-bot.
Penny
"Oh!" Ardent. "If only I was at the point of making homunculi, we could have a homunculi versus gamera-bot showdown. Perhaps one day."
Grace
Grace blinks. "Huh. Well. If you're going to be like that... It wouldn't be fair, would it? I'd want to have my Gamera-bot equipped with appropriate defenses for a homunculus, right? And..." she waves her fingers in the air at Pen, as if to suggest spell-casting. "Offenses?"
There's a grin on her face. She likes this bit.
Penny
"And of course my homunculus would need to have appropriate defenses for a robot," Pen says, and she sounds fond. Both of her elegant eyebrows flick upward sharply, suggestively. "We could have a ring somewhere safe from unwanted eyes for the contest."
Grace
Kalen will be so thrilled. If Pen isn't actually here to destroy everything in Denver, that is. What fun they could, potentially have, in the future?
"Oh yes. And theme music. And snacks."
Grace doesn't even blink at the homunculus bit. She knows what one is. And she's learned by now that if she knows what something is, chances are it exists, or can be made to exist. Such is the way of Denver to teach one that there is more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in their philosophy.
"Sounds like we have our work cut out for us huh?"
Penny
"Isn't that the most perfect story," Pen says, and there's a quiet thrum of (still - an ardent thread) pleasure in it. "Our work cut out." The warp and weft of expression changes, a new subject grafting on to the old. "Do you write music?"
Grace
Oh, Grace almost chokes on plantain when Pen asks her that question. "Hahaha, no," comes the response. Grace's taste in music has been called into question before, and likely will again. Not that she cares. The Install Gentoo song is totally awesome.
"I occasionally write stories. When I'm not building robots and saving the world and shit."
She says that last one like it's a ha-ha joke. There is a little more substance in there than a passing Sleeper might guess though.
Penny
"Stories inspired by your adventurers or stories inspired by what you'd like to see in the world?"
Pen doesn't bat an eyelash at Grace's ha-ha joke or nonchalant bravado, whichever it is. Grace is one of the Mercurial Elite, after all, and more importantly someone who is Awake to some of the subtler nuances of the world. There is something somewhat meditative about the way the red-haired woman turns her plate around, the better to reach one of the other dishes.
Grace
"I try not to put my adventures into words like that. Don't want to make it too easy for someone to trace those adventures back to me, eh? But the latter, yes."
It's a shame, really, that she can't write about her time in Bastion, for example, without almost certainly getting whisked away for an all-expenses-paid vacation to some Technocratic lab/dungeon. But such is life.
"What about you? Do you create anything other than homunculi?"
Penny
Pen's answer doesn't come immediately. The creature (woman [no, all Magicians are creatures; are shadows thrown into the world by some singing light, human only until they are no longer human or are quintessentially human which amounts to the same thing]) gives the question due consideration. The silence also doesn't stretch out too, too long; when Pen is done chewing, an excellent cover for thought, her throat clicks when she swallows. She says:
"My Art is mostly," and she wiggles her fingers in an echo of Grace's earlier spellwork gesture, a grave thing. "Or lends itself to that. But I like to play with metal. Before my move I was playing around with found industrial objects, broken steel things, and cutting them up into filigreed designs. The idea is that I can eventually make an interesting candleholder or something to throw shadows as I want them to be thrown against the walls."
"And I am a poet. Playwriting next, perhaps, if I ever force some time."
Grace
"Oh, that sounds neat. My robots just cast robot-shaped shadows. I don't know if I could make them look like anything if I tried. Well, okay, I did try to make Gamera-bot look like a turtle, but it had to."
And, really, it didn't get so wonderfully turtle-shaped. It has a shell. And four legs. And a "head". That's about the entirety of the resemblance there.
"I know about the time thing. I mean, how everything else sucks it up until you have almost nothing."
Penny
"Right. It never quite seems important enough in the grand scheme to put all those other, hmm, grand schemes aside. But it is a choice after all." Pen smiles; a half smile, not wistful because she is not wistful (it is a choice after all [one she made]), but something distant kin to it. "What would you do with more time? Build more robots? -- I like the idea of a turtle bot. -- Write more stories?"
Grace
"Sometimes it's not much of a choice. It's all doom and gloom and death unless you act. And so you act."
Instead of poetry or love, writing or creating (the small c creating, the small l love) their Poetry is writ across the world, saved every day because people out there happened to Love it.
"I would... study more. With more time, heh. Be utterly boring."
Penny
A curtain falls over the next half hour.
Pen is passionate about a great number of things, but her passion is restrained (nonchalantly [austere]) or directed by interest in her dinner companion. Here is a picture of the industrial what-have-you. Do you have a picture of your gamera? What about an anklyosaur or dragon-themed shape? There is robot talk or more shop talk (such as there can be between two Mages, still mostly strangers, having a nice impromptu dinner).
They shoot the breeze. They talk. That's why there are restuarants, public places to eat; why it's not done behind closed doors all the time. Convivial. Society.
By the time they part (Pen boxes up most of her food), Pen gives Grace her business card. It has a phone number and P. M. M. on it along with an image of some appropriately alchemical but fairy tale thing her player has yet to think up. Perhaps a moon; perhaps the background is a faded forest. No; a lake. Pen's invited Grace to call her whenever she finds time (ha, ha) and wants conversation or needs etcetera.
Dancing around the fire
River
It is twenty-nine degrees outside. There is a light snow. There's a gentle breeze and it's starting to look a lot like an actual winter and not the kind of winter that people from southern California are accustomed to.
If winter is going to happen, they're going to do this right.
River's actually an old pro at setting things on fire in the most mundane of senses. She was the one who was in charge of the camp fire as a kid and she spent good chunks of her formative years burning various and sundry things outside in what she later determined was just what one did when you got cold and were bored and you didn't have an actual stove to cook dinner on. It's just a thing.
There's a ring of stones and pinecone-and-"you're late on the rent" notice kindling and whatever the fuck else one needs to start a fire. Text messages were sent out (recreating the Salem witch trials with marshmallows, want to come hang out?) and bags were set aside.
River took a hit off her flask and put it back in her gigantic purse. Exhales. Watches her breath take to the air. Tosses a sacrificial marshmallow on the pire to appease the camp fire gods.
Grace
Grace found out via Samir. Hanging out in the outside when it's below freezing isn't at the top of her list of great things to do, really. It's a good thing she likes Sam.
So she shows up, dressed in two pairs of jeans, her grey zip-up turtleneck on under her coat. Maybe overkill for 29 degrees, but you never know.
"Oh, nice. Fire's already started," she says, and rushes over, pulling her hands out of her pocket and warms herself at the fire.
"How's things?"
Sam Lakhani
Sam has been here for a few minutes by the time Grace arrives. That tendency of his to hemorrhage out of other folks' awareness is a pain in the ass sometimes. If he's going to be hanging out in the park when there's snow and it's colder than Hell then yes. Yes he did bring a bong inside of a backpack onto public transit.
The things he does for River.
He hasn't busted it out of his bag yet but it's sitting on a picnic table bench and unless he has a fully assembled clarinet in that thing there aren't a lot of objects that could drape the canvas like that.
"I told her we should wait until you got here to get it going," he says. Just because he's taken another step towards ascension doesn't mean he's going to stop busting Grace's balls.
Serafíne
Yeah, sure, alright, okay, thanks winter you fucking asshole, it is twenty-nine degrees outside and snowflakes are falling or not so much falling as drifting and drifting is okay too but: cold right? November and we've still forgotten how-to-be-in-the-cold, the things it does to us, body and breath, skin and blood and bone.
She must've forgotten. Little black dress that pretty much covers her ass and not-much-more. Long (the suggestion of length, the illusion of height) legs bare except for ripped fishnets and black heels wrapped in sharp metal studs, leather jacket framed in studs, zips, a marching line of oversized silver safety pins down the center of the back holds the damn coat together and suggests the elegant symmetry of a bare spine. So: not made for warmth any more than anything else she's wearing.
She doesn't seem to notice the cold though, or maybe each minute without shivering is another big fuck you to the cold front shivering flurries down over Denver at the moment.
--
Didn't get a text about a fire. Has: about a bazillion texts she has received and not returned but for god's sake her phone is working again which means every time it buzzes she can slip it out of her pocket and glance down at the screen and feel: alive, connected, earthbound, and strangely free.
--
And she's walking on the arm of a tall guy with blond hair and a trimmed blond beard and she's wearing those heels and he still has several inches on her, but there they are, walking together like old, old friends, this animated discussion back-and-forth between them. Coming from the city, circling the lake like it's a shortcut they know rather than a place-to-stroll.
Serafíne
(Awareness)
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (2, 4, 6, 6, 6, 8, 8) ( success x 5 ) [Doubling Tens]
Serafíne
(Awareness -3)
Dice: 4 d10 TN5 (2, 5, 9, 9) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens]
Ihsan Ghali
Ihsan was sitting nearer to River than anywhere else, with a blanket spread out on the grass beneath them both. She was from Los Angeles-- Southern California. She had been experiencing heat waves and drought for most of the time that she'd been in this country, and she'd spent the majority of her life in Cairo before that.
Ihsan didn't like the flurries because they made her chilled. She'd traveled, she'd experienced cold before, of course. She would just probably never get used to it. So she was bundled up with wool socks under her calf-high black boots, in dark jeans and a black coat. She wore a hat on her head and her hair was out in curls (flat, curling ironed curls) beneath it. No scarf, at least. No gloves either. She was warming herself near the fire, waiting to be able to shed the hat and open the coat.
She was leaned forward, toward the flame, reading some document or another off the screen of her iPhone with an expression of content-but-mild-boredom on her face.
When Grace arrived, Ihsan looked up and smiled fleetingly for a greeting to her. "Hey there, Grace. How are you? Any more murders for me to investigate yet?"
Because who the hell was eavesdropping on them out here, after all?
Kiara
[Spidey senses roll.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 4, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )
Grace
Grace squints at Ihsan. "No. I heard, finally, that your 'investigation' turned out well in the end, though. Good for you." There's a bit of exasperation in her tone, but she really means that last sentence. It turned out all right, at least.
"Oh, Sam, there you are," she says to him, gives a little wave. Truth be told, she didn't notice his presence until he spoke. Samir is like that, the fucking ghost... She moves over toward him, sitting on the opposite side of the obvious bong. At least there will come some good out of communing with nature or whatever the hell it is they're doing.
Grace can commune with some nature in the form of weed...
Kiara
So, here's the thing.
Kiara Woolfe, daughter of nature and walking manifestation of Spring (or so her presence feels like, so much pulsing, writhing life) actually rather enjoyed the coming of the cooler months. Less for the stagnancy of them, the way the world felt as if it slowed, preparing to enter a chrysalis before re-emerging on the other side of the dripping frost but for the progression of them. It meant change was (should always have been) coming. It meant that despite whatever happenings in the greater scheme - nature was not fooled, or halted.
She would (had to) find a way to survive.
Pattern and purpose to the cycle. An evening like this, after everything she's recently endured, felt cleansing. The air was crisp and flakes of snow are drifting in the air like a promise - landing only to melt in the Verbena's wild dark hair, the waves of which are loose and curling around her shoulders; over the (faux) fur lining of her coat. Hands folded into pockets, dark jeans and boots and that mouth, as ever, painted a brilliant, stark red.
She must have been sent an invitation - or perhaps River simply conjured her with the fire and mention of her ilk via text. Kiara Woolfe, a lean apparition leaning her weight against a tree with her eyes on the fire.
"If you're going to be faithful to the trials, that fire needs to be twice as large." Her voice curls out after a beat. "I could speak in tongues, though." A waspish tease. "To get things rolling."
River
[I totally notice people and resonances. Per+aware]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
River
River has planted herself near Ihsan and, on occasion, gets up to poke the fire and check to make sure said sacrificial marshmallow knows it is in a place of honor- you must burn so that others after you may be delicious. Thus far, she's been pretty happy to just be around people, hair shoved under a hat and her coat isn't pretty but god damn it, it looks like the kind of thing that you would wear if you're going to go out and wander aimlessly through the wilderness.
Laughs when Sam pokes at Grace. Tries to laugh a little less at the bits of exasperation in her tone when Ihsan mentions wanting another murder investigation to paw through.
Then? Kiara is there- someone River hasn't seen in awhile and she waves- fingers uncovered but the rest of her hands seem pretty well shielded from the weather in what can only be described as mittens having an identity crisis.
"I tried to come up with something witty to say to that, but I've drawn a blank," she offers, laughs anyway, "nothing makes marshmallows tastier than the gross misappropriation of justice?"
And, with that, she offers Kiara a coat hanger.
Sam Lakhani
It's too cold for him to even think about sitting down. He may or may not have thermals on underneath his street clothes. He has swapped out the leather jacket for a peacoat and has a ski cap tugged over his hair. His fingerless gloves have a mitten-type option in the form of flaps. It's difficult to strike a lighter when you can't feel your fingers but it's even harder with wool covering your thumb.
"You should," he says to Kiara regarding using glossolalia. "Speaking in tongues is metal."
Ihsan Ghali
"Thank you," Ihsan answered Grace's congratulations in working with River and Mike to bring down the Nephandus that had been melding people into two and triggering a murdering spree from someone entirely different, in a surprise twist ending. She smiled and seemed pretty genuinely pleased with herself, then skewered a marshmallow and put it outside the reach of the fire to toast slowly.
Where this bundle of Mages sat must have felt like a goddamn magnet to other magical forces out there. That many rifts in the hard laws of "reality" would make some waves for sure. It was astounding that they hadn't brought trouble down upon their heads already (knock on wood).
Ihsan pulled her hat from her head and smoothed her hair with her palms, then unzipped her coat some to show the top of a charcoal colored shirt. The fire was warming her and the boots and wool socks were starting to feel pleasantly toasty.
Like the marshmallow.
River
"I thought I was speaking in tongues once, but then it turns out I apparently knew Sanskrit at one point," she said with a shrug, as though this is a completely... no, she knows this is not a normal thing for people but she passes it off like oh, yeah, sometimes you just remember crap from a past life and have no idea why you know how to do something. Just roll with it, NBD. Sigh. Chakravanti problems.
Grace
"I thought yelling while you're simultaneously trying to clear your throat was metal. The things I learn..."
Yes, this many Mages might be a goddamn magnet. If so, let them come. There must be a few more royally stupid things out there who'd like to shove shadows down her throat or something. They could have an actual burning. Fun for the whole family.
Well, okay. Maybe not fun.
She laughs at River, thinking that's a joke she just made. Who doesn't know jack shit about past lives? This Elite.
"Hey, Kiara."
Kiara
The Verbena is still standing off a ways when River holds out that coat hanger, her lip curled up at the edge in a smile that verged on a few things but her eyes: they seemed wholly honed in on her. Watching River with a sudden, total, focus as if by staring long enough she'd be able to tease loose a beat on the other female's mental state.
This is the first time Kiara Woolfe has seen her since news came of Farrah's demise.
It's there, somewhere, in that look and the slow, stretching beat of silence - on the tip of her tongue, to say something of it. A heavy awareness lingers as the brunette eventually kicks off her leaning point and moves into the gathering proper. Ihsan receives a lingering tick of Kiara's eyes as she makes progress and comes close enough to receive the coat hanger.
"Thanks." She accepts it with, and studies River's face again, the firelight drawing gold patterns over the Verbena's neck. The warmth melting snowflakes in her hair. Then there's Samir - and there's Grace and the latter gets a quick, bright smile, but the former -
The regard lingers there.
"I'll keep it mind for a party trick later." She looks at Samir for another moment, then drops down to her haunches and her eyes return to Ihsan. "I don't believe we've had the pleasure yet."
Kiara
[Ahem. "keep it in mind," tyvm typo.]
Sam Lakhani
Just about any other person looking at him the way Kiara looks at him would normally have him wondering what the hell she was staring at. But Kiara is Verbena and he knows what she's staring at besides. His resonance is noticeable now. He is more of a presence than he was the last time they saw each other.
Granted the fact that she is Verbena means she could be staring at a pissed-off spirit hovering behind him or a blight on his aura or something and he wouldn't know until she said something but Sam has a pretty good idea what has her attention.
He throws up a set of rock horns with the hand not holding onto the backpack and drops into a crouch by the Chakravanti as Ihsan and Kiara get themselves acquainted. Time to light this sucker.
Ihsan Ghali
"No," said the North African woman to Kiara. She'd watched the woman as people answered to speaking in tongues-- how it was metal and could be confused for Sanskrit. Ihsan was busy regarding the new dark-haired woman with the bright red lips. Watching her like a lion-- relaxed and assured but watchful none the less.
"I am Ihsan." She smiled and lifted her hand to show her palm in greeting. Hey, that kind of a wave said. Her accent was dense and interesting, different to an ear that's grown accustomed to the Western United States especially. Still, she spoke clearly and had a strong grasp of the English language. She wasn't that difficult to understand.
The marshmallow was brought back and tested with a squeeze of her fingers. It was a little underdone, but apparently that was how she liked them, for she plucked it with her fingers and popped it whole into her mouth. She then pulled her hat back on and zipped her coat back up and rose to her feet.
"I'm going back to make a run to the store for hot dogs and buns. Anyone wanna come with me?"
And whoever did or did not want to come with, so it would be. Ihsan was set on getting hot dogs and returning later with brats instead ("yes, hot dogs, right?").
[Sorry, but I need to roll out early. Bedtime comes quick when your alarm is set for 4:30am]
Grace
Oh, nice, Sam. Abandon Grace over there. Whatever. She looks over at Sam and River and gives him a little smirk.
Well, she knows how it is.
She turns her hands back and forth to the side of the fire, trying to warm the cold side (which is, of course, the side not nearest the fire at that second).
"Hot dogs too? Awesome," she says to Ihsan, but doesn't move to get up. Not going with.
River
She has good days, and she has bad days. There isn't much of a baseline for Kiara to work off of but today? Today seems like a good day. She seems alert and engaged and content to be aware of people. She hasn't punched anyone at work (in fact, she still has a job. The other dancers at the Diamond Cabaret are convinced she must be sleeping with the hiring manager, but realistically River came up in a couple of very positive Yelp reviews. She's a classy lady; classy ladies change the atmosphere enough that you attract clientel who spend more.)
River concludes that Samir is close enough to lean on for a minute, and so she does- it's a momentary breach of space until she realizes oh fuck, Samir is lighting stuff and she stops attempting to assert her manifest destiny on his space.
There is, however, something that stuck on her senses. Brows knit for a second as she remembers that there's a presence that she can't actually place. Though, in the way, she does happen to place its source and finds-
"I'm gonna yell at people," she warns. And then, does raise her voice enough that it carries-
"Dan! Tenemos malvaviscos! Come say hi!"
Sam Lakhani
Living in a trailer by himself in the middle of goddamn nowhere must be doing him some good. A few months ago River would not have leaned on Sam. A slew of variables make today a different day than one plucked random from several months back. He doesn't seem like an individual who would react strong to unprovoked physical contact.
Ihsan takes off to go buy hot dogs and Sam doesn't offer to go with her but he does hand her a twenty out of his billfold before she leaves. Then River is leaning on him and he goes still a moment with the novelty of it. But then she pulls away again and he goes back to packing the bowl.
I'm gonna yell at people.
"Uh oh," he says before he plants the bong in the dirt and covers his ears with his gloves.
Kiara
I am Ihsan.
That ignites a flicker of recognition. Apparently, the name meant something to the brunette and she returns the greeting with little nod. An affirmative sort of gesture. Kiara's eyes follow the other woman when she rises to her feet and makes her declaration of a store run. The coat hanger is still being held between Kiara's fingertips, her nails are painted the same shade of red as her lips.
The firelight reflects in the varnish as she twists the wire hanger around in her grasp.
It's a habit, perhaps, watching other people. It's certainly one that the brunette seems to be making an attempt at, the way her dark eyes follow Ihsan and then return to Samir long enough to catch the gesture he makes, long enough to witness the way he positions himself by River.
The way she leans into his space.
The Verbena's gaze drops away, then. This brief constriction of her brows and she drives the edge of the hanger into the hardening earth below, wedging it there as she rises to her feet. Drawing the hood of her coat up so her features all but vanish beneath the furred lining. "I'm going to make a quick circuit for more kindling. There's bound to be some leaves around here.
I'll be right back."
Hard to tell what the pagan's expression is in the moment before she starts moving again, leaning over periodically to kick up leaves being buried by drifts of snow. Shaking loose the less saturated ones.
Sam Lakhani
[challenge accepted]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 4, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens]
Kiara
[I have a mighty 3 dice now. What? I'm inscrutable.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 7, 7) ( success x 2 )
Serafíne
Of course she's caught by the wild tangle of resonance surrounding the slow-growing (probably illegal but hey: world of darkness) campfire down by the lake and of course she stops, hooked (fish hook/open eye) right? and sometimes it makes her want to breathe: in and in and in and in like she could inhale the world, feel it bubbling in her lungs. Tonight, instead, she feels skewered like those marshmallows on that coathanger and that hook is an odd little interregnum in their coming-from-someplace and going-to-someplace, an arrest, if you will, an institial moment that feels quite as between-things (places, deeds, names, definitions) as she does.
It's a long-ass walk cutting through the park and the sun has set and the sky has that pillowed, shifting, dead-orange tinge from all the ugly lights reflecting off the close-cropped clouds, the fitful swirls of snow and in the midst of that walk is an exchange between them, all statement and query. Her statement; his query evidence in the way he pauses and glances down at her, face on to her profile, sharp against the darkness. Maybe it is that turn of his head that catches River's attention. The beard and hint of tattoos on his ungloved hands. Some lumpen shadow at his back that will resolve itself into a guitar case when he gets closer.
Which he will soon.
Because: River warns that she is gonna yell at people and then she yells at people and Dan lifts a hand by way of greeting (open palm, mildly ironic twist of his mouth) because what else can he do? Drops his mouth to her ear and bumps his forehead against her temple as he does so: so familiar, so close, so careful with her right now.
--
Takes them longer than you might think when they leave the path. Four inches of melting slush on muddy ground that has not yet been settled into a solid winter freeze and, you know, heels and bare legs do not mix very well but whatever. She's solid on those long legs. Knows how to walk on almost any surface in those heels, but here and there, he gives her a hand.
"Hey folks," Dan, when he gets there. Just a glance and a flash of his palm, as his attention returns to the girl-who-yelled, his mouth curves wider. "River." And his attention hangs there for a lingering beat. "I don't think you've met Sera, have you?"
Grace
"Hey, Dan," Grace says, through the fire's heat. He's a wavy-lined Dan to her. "Hey, Sera."
She smiles with her eyes at the newcomers to the circle of fire, but then returns her attention to the flames.
"You going to play for us?" she asks the fire. Obviously it's more for Dan than anyone, but who knows. Maybe she really does mean to ask the fire.
Sam Lakhani
Last time Sam saw Sera and Dan he was in Quiet. Which means the last time he actually remembers seeing them was at a house party. Which means he was stoned when he showed up and not in much better shape when he left around three o'clock in the morning.
Something in Kiara's gaze has him checking his own expression. He lowers his hands after River has yelled about marshmallows to the Cultist and her consor and lifts one to wave but it's an awkward sort of wave. A not-knowing-how-to-act-in-this-situation wave.
The bong is packed and ready to go. He is not the first one to light it. It sits like an offering beside the fire and then Sam stands from his crouch and takes a few steps back from the circle to light a cigarette.
River
"I have not," she carries things like she is used to carrying things because, well, this is just another social situation and River is a social creature. Sees a man with a guitar and his friend who is a spindly but striking creature.
She offers them a coat hanger, like this was a worthwhile offering.
"I told everybody that we were reenacting the Salem with trials with marshmallows, but I don't actually know how to hang a marshmallow so, uh, morbid joke completely lost."
Kiara
She does, in fact, return after a while with a handful of leaves cupped in her hands (trust the earth witch to deliver on such a promise) and carries them dutifully to the small fire; dropping them in a drift of crumbling pieces into the flames where they are greedily consumed and send up the vague, earthy aroma of foliage as it crackles and curls in on itself.
She's brushing her hands off when Dan and Sera make their approach and the Verbana's dark eyes, dramatized more-so by the liner she's applied to them turn to regard both, her hood pushed back far enough now that strands of dark hair are visible where they slither and curl at her neck, the thick waves of it half tamed by her coat.
"Good to see you, Dan. Sera." The latter's name offered with this quiet, delicate touch of meaning. The Verbena's supple mouth pulled into a little half-curl. She tosses the last handful of leaves toward the fire and and nudges at a stray, escaping one with a boot. Urging toward its demise.
A flicker of some darker, answering humor dawns in the Verbena's eyes as she watches the flames. "Burning them alive has always been a crowd favorite." There's this tiny shadow that falls over Kiara's face as she turns it into the treeline, as if searching for the source of a noise.
"Or so I've heard."
Serafíne
"Hey Grace," Dan-to-Grace, through the flames. This quirk, like a smile but checked a bit, framed by the beard. "We could, if you wanted. Couple songs, maybe. We've got a gig though, so we can't stay too long. Sort of a welcome-back thing for Sera, so it'd be pretty shitty if we didn't show. Any requests?"
--
Dan didn't see Sam when Sam was in Quiet. He was waiting in the van, engine off but still ticking in the heat of the day. Watched her leave and come back and knew something was hanging over her when she climbed back in the passenger door. Didn't know how bad it was until she collapsed. Took him forever to scrub the blood out of the upholstery, but he managed it.
Dan gives Sam the self-same quirk-of-a-smile-thing that Grace received and there's nothing awkward about it. Something: prompting, quiet, solicitous in the way he handles Sera in the moment though, cutting a lashed glance down at her profile.
"River this is Sera. Sera, River. So, now you've met."
Sera takes in this: bright, crisp inhale then. "Hey." And it is all very, strangely self-contained, though River has no real context for this, but maybe she's simply: stoned, already, somehow. When Kiara returns with her promised leaves, something a little more animate: warm, less constrained gets woven into her name, "Kiara."
"What about you, River. Any requests?"
That's Dan, he seems to think music is necessary right now and he's letting go of Sera long enough to lift the guitar case over his head and shoulders.
Sam Lakhani
As he traipses further from the fire he puts his back to it and the people around it. He meets Grace's gaze quick and continues his traipsing. They're all sitting around a fire that is giving off a good amount of heat and no small amount of smoke but he wants to keep his carcinogens to himself. What a guy.
He ends up over by Grace again anyway. She's the furthest away from the fire and she's sitting down and he's taller than her when she's standing up.
"You see that thing on Jitbit," he asks, "about the guy who would write cron-jobs for anything that took him more than ninety seconds?"
Grace
"Uhhh. No? Sorry. I'm terrible at music-y things," she says. "Something you like."
Her favorite 'song' at the moment is a guy screaming at people to install Gentoo over a throbbing beat, and there's no guitars in it. And if there were, you couldn't play it without a computer.
Samir saves her by talking nerdy at her. "Nope. Sounds fun though."
River
"Ukelele anthem!" because something with four chords was totally worth Dan's prowess as a musician. She has managed to piece together though that the bearded man is to music what she is to dancing.
River has made her way over to the communal bong, started on with the necessary prep work because she has no problems being the first person to take a hit for the evening.
"I have full intention of getting ripped and asking people to dance, so- does that inform your decision?"
Sam Lakhani
"You need to get a coffee maker with an SSHD. Then you could figure out how long it takes you to walk from the library to the kitchen and, like, have it start brewing and then wait before pouring it into a cup. The guy called it fuckingcoffee.sh or something equally poetic."
It's way colder over here than it is by the fire what the fuck Grace. He finds it difficult to bitch about the cold after the other night though so he digs his smartphone out of his jeans pocket and starts tapping buttons.
"Hang on, I'll send it to you."
Kiara
She moves a little closer to the Cultist, Kiara, her hands finding her coat pockets.
It's a dark navy form fitted thing that hugs in around her narrow waist with a zip and a hood that's lined with a mottled fur trim along the edges and sleeve-ends. The lining was synthetic but it cast the brunette with that twinge of something a little wilder none the less - something she seemed to be manifesting tonight. A certain aloofness in the way she held herself away from the others.
Standing rather than sitting as if her presence were as limited as the two en route to a gig.
She's watching the fire again, the pagan and there's something to that, the way the flames licking and curling into the air, the smoke and the tiny snaps and pops of burning debris, contain and hold her focus. They spoke enough of the Spirit Mages to allow for some assumptions to be made regarding the distraction of the Verbena. Perhaps she was meditating on the way the fire feels to her or senses some fluctuation in the Park itself.
It's the stillness, though. That makes it singular. Her eyes don't leave the fire to comment wryly: "As long as it's not Kumbaya."
Serafíne
"Couldn't even begin to compete with Amanda Palmer." Dan tosses back to River with another supple, subtle expression rising to the surface and sinking back beneath. "Plus I misplaced my goddamned ukelele somewhere between Raleigh and Denver - "
" - you left it in fucking Macon," Sera interrupts and Dan isn't expecting that and he cuts a sort of searching glance back down at her face and she's giving him a mildly pointed smirk that subsides as quickly as it arose in the first place, dark eyes cutting away from him. Lingering on Kiara as the Verbena circles the fire and starts watching the flames: that singular stillness.
"Apparently I left it in Macon, which isn't between Raleigh and Denver at all. Point is: never replaced. Closest I have is a mandolin and that's back at the house. How about a country song, since we've got a bonfire. Ever heard of Jason Isbell?"
Grace
Grace pulls out her own phone, and now -- true to stereotype -- the two Mercurial Elites of the party are staring into their phones in the great outdoors, communicating to each other with them while the rest get all sociable.
And it's about a shell script named fuckingcoffee.sh.
It is fucking hilarious though, and has Grace laughing at her phone. "Ohh, man. Kumar-asshole.sh. Lol," she says. And yes, she actually says the word lol as if it were one. In-jokes are a thing over here.
"He had a cron job for hangover excuses. I think I want to try that. Not that I need to call in at work, hah."
Sam Lakhani
By the time Grace receives the link Sam has moved onto other things. On his phone. They are living the dream over there.
"Yeah but still. You see the words 'vampire' or 'Washington Park' or 'police' on Ginger, you can just have that bad boy fire off and not have to deal with it."
He's joking. Hangovers aren't an excuse when you're BFF with a Verbena.
River
She's holding her breath while he's talking, nods. Pays attention because, no, one can't compete with Amanda Fucking Palmer. No, she has not heard of Jason Isbell and eventually she exhales. It's a long, slow breath like meditation because why the fuck shouldn't getting stoned be like meditation?
"We lived outside of Macon for two months during peach season," River clarifies, "you would think that I would have picked up something about country music in Georgia but it was all Willie Nelson."
Which is weirdly appropriate.
"So, you guys are in the same band?"
Grace
Grace snorts. "Yeah, that's what I need. A 'Handle Emergency' cron job. Just fire it off, and it will do everything that takes more than ninety seconds."
Which, you know, includes taking care of whatever the latest thing to happen in Washington Park is.
"I have never heard of Jason Isbell," she says, into her phone. If anyone were thinking she wasn't paying any attention...
Serafíne
"Willie Nelson is kind of a badass," Dan tosses back to River as she is getting high. "He did this cover of Pancho and Left that is one of the most perfect things on the planet. If that's what you took away from two months in Georgia outside of Macon, you could've done alot worse."
--
There's work to be done. Like, you know: tuning. The overtones of fingers-on-strings, that strange, patterned language, the internal tones as he listens to the acoustic he was carrying-through-the-park and it should've been an electric but: maybe magick? There's a fire and no outlets and Sera doesn't even really quite understand that she knows Forces magick and she has been capable of it for two fucking years.
"Afterparty at my place," this to Kiara. Supple, subtle thing, the invitation a coil of smoke from the strangely-reserved creature. (Maybe: to River she will always be like this: first.) " - when the bar closes. Two, two-thirty? You should stop by."
--
"Yeah, we're in the same band." Dan, to River. "Don't usually do country but he's a killer songwriter and we always have a few off-the-wall covers up our sleeves." Glances sidelong at Sera. "Elephant, then Super 8?"
"Fuck, Dan, that's like tearing someone's heart out, shredding it, then smoking a bowl of the remnants, getting so stoned you wander into traffic and figure out how to make the stars shut down."
He favors her with a quick, quiet smirk. Likes that spark of animation in her eyes and voice.
"Used to be with this band called the Drive-By Truckers," Dan-the-hipster tells Grace. "It's more alt-country than country. He doesn't sing about how sexy girls are when they hang out in trucks or how fun it is to hang out in trucks and get drunk in corn fields so he's probably not gonna get on commercial country radio."
Serafíne
(Hey I can has dice. Dan - guitarishness?)
Dice: 8 d10 TN5 (1, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens]
Serafíne
(This is for mah next post, and oh Dan. :( Sera: singing?)
Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 5 ) [Doubling Tens]
Sam Lakhani
"You do. You need this so hard."
Break from reality over. Sam shoves the phone back into his pocket and wanders back over to the fire. That's where he left the bong and his backpack anyway. When he comes to stand beside River it's almost as if by coincidence. It's easy to forget he exists when he isn't talking.
"Hit me," he says and holds his hand out for the bong.
Kiara
It's been lightly snowing tonight, as if the weather hadn't quite settled on what it desired but the drifts of it come down, every so often. Can't penetrate far where the fire is of course, melt before they're close to that emanating source of heat but they find placement in hair, on sleeves. Kiss the edge of cheeks and it's after one of these finds Kiara's that her fingers emerge from her pockets and she sweeps a hand up.
Suddenly alert to the surroundings, tipping her chin up to stare up at the dark skies, at the clusters of trees. Touching her face as if she'd forgotten, momentarily, where the source was of the sudden dampness on her face.
She brushes it aside and turns her face, just slightly, at Grace and Samir's conversation. Her attention captured by the mention of vampires, by Ginger and Washington Park and handling situations. The Verbena's eyes drop away and she bends down to find a leaf, lashed to the side of her boot, pasted there by the snow. Squats there and peels it off, carefully uncurling the edges.
"They're amazing. You should hear them play a gig sometime." This, almost absently to River at her question as the Verbena twists the leaf around, sets it open on her palm and curls her fingers around it. Finds the other woman's gaze through the flames. Holds there a beat.
Pulls up, opens her fingers and crumbles up the leaf, smears it over the flames. Glances at Serafine as she offers an after-party at Corona Street. "Yeah." Those red lips quirk, give over to one of her smiles, the pagan. Flash of teeth. Curl at the corner that makes it that side of crooked.
"I'd like that." She doesn't offer more, say they should talk. Just - studies Serafine's face for a moment as if committing it to memory and then returns her eyes to the campfire.
Grace
Grace follows Sam, her face still stuck in her phone though. Light from the phone paints her face with blue, battling it out with the fire.
Well, maybe she won't be their chaperone or anything. Grace just wants a hit.
"I don't even know a thing about commercial country radio. Girls hanging out in trucks?" she shrugs. Whatever, to that.
River
"I'm not a pretty crier," she tells Dan and his cultist-friend, "Sam and Grace can attest."
And it's true. though she isn't sure if Grace has seen her cry from underneath the mountain of blankets beyond the little giggling whimpter of a happy ending amidst the zombie apocalypse. River is pretty committed to her makeup staying on tonight, though, because it's cold and her face can feel it and somehow being freezing bakes on your foundation.
She's standing, has the bong in hand and hands it off to him like this is some sacred rite- like this was the passing of the Olympic torch instead of, you know, just hanging a guy a bong and calling it good.
"And hanging out of trucks and getting drunk in corn fields is fun if you can find a cornfield... does colorado have corn fields?"
Bonus points if it's not your corn field.
Serafíne
Sera isn't wrong about that pairing of songs and Dan needs space to move to play and she steps away from him, careful in her ridiculous goddamned heels but god she can move in them, even on the spongy, half-frozen ground.
The cold, the goddamned snow mean that Dan's bare fingers are stiff as they skim over the strings but he pulls the first evocative chords out of the instrument and there is something quite remarkably intimate about the way they balance each other; about the way they watch each other, rhythmic, familiar. This point where she takes in a breath like she's about to join him, but no, and he just repeats those opening bars, eyes on her face, the dance of reflected light in her eyes.
Elephant starts off all-quiet, reflective, nostalgic, but you get pretty early that the song's as close to a requiem as you can get for someone still alive. Unsentimental, ("If I'd fucked her before she got sick / I'd never heard the end of it") clear-eyed - goddamned sad. Sera sings it alternately watching Dan's hangs and staring into the fire and when her voice is supposed to soar, goddamned, it soars -
We'd burn these joints in effigy,
cry about what we used to be,
and try to ignore the elephant somehow.
I buried her a thousand times,
giving up my place in line,
but I don't give a damn about that now.
--
River is committed to keeping her make-up intact tonight but by the end of that there are tears in Sera's eyes and on her cheeks, and both her mascara and her eyeliner are waterproof but there's the eyeshadow too, which isn't. Maybe it just adds to her rock-star vibe and there's no time to dwell on the chord that strikes up in her or how deeply and feelingly she sings or whatever is happening in her or anyone else because: Super 8's a honky-tonk barn-burner and yes, River, you can dance to it. You could probably take off all your clothes to it, and there's not enough time to catch your breath between them:
Having such a sweet night
Audience is just right
Drinking like a pirate do
Don’t want to sleep yet
Buddy it’s a good bet
I’ll raise more hell than you -
And the song keeps going. There's paramedics, pedialyte, and maybe a defibrillator. Haven't we all had nights like that?
So, yeah. That's the impromptu concert. When it's wrapping up, Sera-and-Dan aren't hanging around for hits from the bong, they're packing up. Have somewhere to be: and soon.
Serafíne
(The songs:
Elephant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dg1oYRo9yVk
Super 8: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Fr2Gv3HyqA )
River
[I'm totally good. Manip+sub]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )
River
She's a good audience member, though halfway through the first song she determines that she's going to need a second hit. There's silence, because she knows it isn't polite to applaud but eventually she does because it was really fucking good and she can appreciate a good performance regardless of the responses that it provokes out of her.
"Go have fun!" is what she says out of haze, eyes back to the fire for a moment.
Kiara
[Per + Empathy on River: is she?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 6) ( success x 1 )
Kiara
Music has that way about it, of course. Good music can lift you. Inspire you. Tear you to pieces with nothing more impressive than the slow build of a guitar, a note sculpted and held. The Verbena's been witness to Serafine and Dan performing before - she knows they're that good.
She'd said about as much to River, only moments before.
Music has that way and at some point during the first song the Verbena's dark eyes place River's face again and she watches it; watches the way the firelight plays over it. Watches her the way she had when she first turned up, leaning against that tree in the shadows as if she were an interloper rather than one of the invited.
Whatever Kiara Woolfe does or doesn't see it takes until the end of the song for her to look down, to tip her chin down and draw her hood back up and bury her hands deep into her pockets. She's not inscrutable, the healer. Not accustomed to trying to be, to concealing whatever thoughts or feelings skim across her face.
She's only beginning to understand the ways she can protect her own mind from infiltration.
So maybe there's that glimpse before she draws it up, after she drags her eyes from River's face, where that's clear. What the music does to her. How it presses down on that bruise she's wearing, however deep it runs, however she's attempting to disguise it. A twist across her mouth, a haunted quality to fine dark eyes.
She stands there, hood drawn while the second number happens. That stillness settling back in. She doesn't applaud at the end of it but she does draw her hands out of her pockets, does move to press a hand against the Cultist's shoulder as she makes some bid for departure might not even understand how to articulate.
"You sounded great." She affirms and there's this brief glance back at the gathered. "I've gotta go guys. I'll catch you later."
Serafíne
Per + Empathy, River.
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (2, 3, 3, 3, 5, 6, 10) ( success x 4 ) [Doubling Tens]
River
"See ya," she says. Smiles and gives a wave and she seems fine. She seems fine and of course she is fine, because River has never given any indication that she is not anything other than fine, even when she has to turn off large portions of her brain to keep up the ruse. She is committed, you see. She is committed to any number of things, but right now she is committed to the idea that she is not going to be emotionally wrought over the fact that there was a song that moved her in such a fashion that she's waxing close to nostalgic.
She wears it well, that denial. She wears it like it's a shield and she carries a sword and in some other life she was some brave gladiator. still is.
she'll process later.
"Graaaaace," she says, offers her a hand, "do you know how to tango?"
Grace
Grace gives River a squinty-eyed look, and then makes a grab at the bong. Tango? The fuck, River. Going to break the poor woman. She takes a hit, holds it, lets out a smokey, creaky "No."
But still, she adjusts herself, hands the bong over to Sam, and stands rather stiffly as she holds her arms out -- one of them positioned like it might hold on to somebody, the other in the air above her head like it might be holding another's hand.
She's never really cared about looking ridiculous, Grace.
"Show me?"
River
River looks at Grace and the look on her face can only be described as delight. She steps in, holds her up arms and preens like she's an instructor because, at her core, she can be an instructor of sorts. She's a good enough that she doesn't seem to have a problem.
She beams.
Moves her arms down a little.
"This is probably going to come up again with me. Just for reference."
Serafíne
"Stop by later, yeah?" Sera to Kiara, as Dan is packing up the guitar. A longer glance at River, then, sharper. This almost bruising awareness about her that gets honed in that moment until it gleams, and that's what she was made to be right there, bright, aching, in the moment. A hitch of awareness that hooks, catches, dissipates.
Lovely as the edge of an ever-elusive rainbow.
--
Had she been aware of recent history, she might not have chosen that song. She wasn't. Isn't. Couldn't've gotten on Ginger if she'd wanted to: her phone didn't fucking work. Dan checks it anyway and he couldn't see her, and he kept it up but mostly he was looking for anything from anyone about her. No dice.
All of that etches the air around them. Frames out both the intimacy of their interactions and that strange reserve that Sera breaks out of only in these odd flashes of awareness.
--
"You should drop by too."
And she could be saying that to anyone or everyone, but she's not. Mostly, she means River. Unspoken in there: no more sad songs tonight. "The Edgefield."
And off they go.
It is twenty-nine degrees outside. There is a light snow. There's a gentle breeze and it's starting to look a lot like an actual winter and not the kind of winter that people from southern California are accustomed to.
If winter is going to happen, they're going to do this right.
River's actually an old pro at setting things on fire in the most mundane of senses. She was the one who was in charge of the camp fire as a kid and she spent good chunks of her formative years burning various and sundry things outside in what she later determined was just what one did when you got cold and were bored and you didn't have an actual stove to cook dinner on. It's just a thing.
There's a ring of stones and pinecone-and-"you're late on the rent" notice kindling and whatever the fuck else one needs to start a fire. Text messages were sent out (recreating the Salem witch trials with marshmallows, want to come hang out?) and bags were set aside.
River took a hit off her flask and put it back in her gigantic purse. Exhales. Watches her breath take to the air. Tosses a sacrificial marshmallow on the pire to appease the camp fire gods.
Grace
Grace found out via Samir. Hanging out in the outside when it's below freezing isn't at the top of her list of great things to do, really. It's a good thing she likes Sam.
So she shows up, dressed in two pairs of jeans, her grey zip-up turtleneck on under her coat. Maybe overkill for 29 degrees, but you never know.
"Oh, nice. Fire's already started," she says, and rushes over, pulling her hands out of her pocket and warms herself at the fire.
"How's things?"
Sam Lakhani
Sam has been here for a few minutes by the time Grace arrives. That tendency of his to hemorrhage out of other folks' awareness is a pain in the ass sometimes. If he's going to be hanging out in the park when there's snow and it's colder than Hell then yes. Yes he did bring a bong inside of a backpack onto public transit.
The things he does for River.
He hasn't busted it out of his bag yet but it's sitting on a picnic table bench and unless he has a fully assembled clarinet in that thing there aren't a lot of objects that could drape the canvas like that.
"I told her we should wait until you got here to get it going," he says. Just because he's taken another step towards ascension doesn't mean he's going to stop busting Grace's balls.
Serafíne
Yeah, sure, alright, okay, thanks winter you fucking asshole, it is twenty-nine degrees outside and snowflakes are falling or not so much falling as drifting and drifting is okay too but: cold right? November and we've still forgotten how-to-be-in-the-cold, the things it does to us, body and breath, skin and blood and bone.
She must've forgotten. Little black dress that pretty much covers her ass and not-much-more. Long (the suggestion of length, the illusion of height) legs bare except for ripped fishnets and black heels wrapped in sharp metal studs, leather jacket framed in studs, zips, a marching line of oversized silver safety pins down the center of the back holds the damn coat together and suggests the elegant symmetry of a bare spine. So: not made for warmth any more than anything else she's wearing.
She doesn't seem to notice the cold though, or maybe each minute without shivering is another big fuck you to the cold front shivering flurries down over Denver at the moment.
--
Didn't get a text about a fire. Has: about a bazillion texts she has received and not returned but for god's sake her phone is working again which means every time it buzzes she can slip it out of her pocket and glance down at the screen and feel: alive, connected, earthbound, and strangely free.
--
And she's walking on the arm of a tall guy with blond hair and a trimmed blond beard and she's wearing those heels and he still has several inches on her, but there they are, walking together like old, old friends, this animated discussion back-and-forth between them. Coming from the city, circling the lake like it's a shortcut they know rather than a place-to-stroll.
Serafíne
(Awareness)
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (2, 4, 6, 6, 6, 8, 8) ( success x 5 ) [Doubling Tens]
Serafíne
(Awareness -3)
Dice: 4 d10 TN5 (2, 5, 9, 9) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens]
Ihsan Ghali
Ihsan was sitting nearer to River than anywhere else, with a blanket spread out on the grass beneath them both. She was from Los Angeles-- Southern California. She had been experiencing heat waves and drought for most of the time that she'd been in this country, and she'd spent the majority of her life in Cairo before that.
Ihsan didn't like the flurries because they made her chilled. She'd traveled, she'd experienced cold before, of course. She would just probably never get used to it. So she was bundled up with wool socks under her calf-high black boots, in dark jeans and a black coat. She wore a hat on her head and her hair was out in curls (flat, curling ironed curls) beneath it. No scarf, at least. No gloves either. She was warming herself near the fire, waiting to be able to shed the hat and open the coat.
She was leaned forward, toward the flame, reading some document or another off the screen of her iPhone with an expression of content-but-mild-boredom on her face.
When Grace arrived, Ihsan looked up and smiled fleetingly for a greeting to her. "Hey there, Grace. How are you? Any more murders for me to investigate yet?"
Because who the hell was eavesdropping on them out here, after all?
Kiara
[Spidey senses roll.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 4, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )
Grace
Grace squints at Ihsan. "No. I heard, finally, that your 'investigation' turned out well in the end, though. Good for you." There's a bit of exasperation in her tone, but she really means that last sentence. It turned out all right, at least.
"Oh, Sam, there you are," she says to him, gives a little wave. Truth be told, she didn't notice his presence until he spoke. Samir is like that, the fucking ghost... She moves over toward him, sitting on the opposite side of the obvious bong. At least there will come some good out of communing with nature or whatever the hell it is they're doing.
Grace can commune with some nature in the form of weed...
Kiara
So, here's the thing.
Kiara Woolfe, daughter of nature and walking manifestation of Spring (or so her presence feels like, so much pulsing, writhing life) actually rather enjoyed the coming of the cooler months. Less for the stagnancy of them, the way the world felt as if it slowed, preparing to enter a chrysalis before re-emerging on the other side of the dripping frost but for the progression of them. It meant change was (should always have been) coming. It meant that despite whatever happenings in the greater scheme - nature was not fooled, or halted.
She would (had to) find a way to survive.
Pattern and purpose to the cycle. An evening like this, after everything she's recently endured, felt cleansing. The air was crisp and flakes of snow are drifting in the air like a promise - landing only to melt in the Verbena's wild dark hair, the waves of which are loose and curling around her shoulders; over the (faux) fur lining of her coat. Hands folded into pockets, dark jeans and boots and that mouth, as ever, painted a brilliant, stark red.
She must have been sent an invitation - or perhaps River simply conjured her with the fire and mention of her ilk via text. Kiara Woolfe, a lean apparition leaning her weight against a tree with her eyes on the fire.
"If you're going to be faithful to the trials, that fire needs to be twice as large." Her voice curls out after a beat. "I could speak in tongues, though." A waspish tease. "To get things rolling."
River
[I totally notice people and resonances. Per+aware]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
River
River has planted herself near Ihsan and, on occasion, gets up to poke the fire and check to make sure said sacrificial marshmallow knows it is in a place of honor- you must burn so that others after you may be delicious. Thus far, she's been pretty happy to just be around people, hair shoved under a hat and her coat isn't pretty but god damn it, it looks like the kind of thing that you would wear if you're going to go out and wander aimlessly through the wilderness.
Laughs when Sam pokes at Grace. Tries to laugh a little less at the bits of exasperation in her tone when Ihsan mentions wanting another murder investigation to paw through.
Then? Kiara is there- someone River hasn't seen in awhile and she waves- fingers uncovered but the rest of her hands seem pretty well shielded from the weather in what can only be described as mittens having an identity crisis.
"I tried to come up with something witty to say to that, but I've drawn a blank," she offers, laughs anyway, "nothing makes marshmallows tastier than the gross misappropriation of justice?"
And, with that, she offers Kiara a coat hanger.
Sam Lakhani
It's too cold for him to even think about sitting down. He may or may not have thermals on underneath his street clothes. He has swapped out the leather jacket for a peacoat and has a ski cap tugged over his hair. His fingerless gloves have a mitten-type option in the form of flaps. It's difficult to strike a lighter when you can't feel your fingers but it's even harder with wool covering your thumb.
"You should," he says to Kiara regarding using glossolalia. "Speaking in tongues is metal."
Ihsan Ghali
"Thank you," Ihsan answered Grace's congratulations in working with River and Mike to bring down the Nephandus that had been melding people into two and triggering a murdering spree from someone entirely different, in a surprise twist ending. She smiled and seemed pretty genuinely pleased with herself, then skewered a marshmallow and put it outside the reach of the fire to toast slowly.
Where this bundle of Mages sat must have felt like a goddamn magnet to other magical forces out there. That many rifts in the hard laws of "reality" would make some waves for sure. It was astounding that they hadn't brought trouble down upon their heads already (knock on wood).
Ihsan pulled her hat from her head and smoothed her hair with her palms, then unzipped her coat some to show the top of a charcoal colored shirt. The fire was warming her and the boots and wool socks were starting to feel pleasantly toasty.
Like the marshmallow.
River
"I thought I was speaking in tongues once, but then it turns out I apparently knew Sanskrit at one point," she said with a shrug, as though this is a completely... no, she knows this is not a normal thing for people but she passes it off like oh, yeah, sometimes you just remember crap from a past life and have no idea why you know how to do something. Just roll with it, NBD. Sigh. Chakravanti problems.
Grace
"I thought yelling while you're simultaneously trying to clear your throat was metal. The things I learn..."
Yes, this many Mages might be a goddamn magnet. If so, let them come. There must be a few more royally stupid things out there who'd like to shove shadows down her throat or something. They could have an actual burning. Fun for the whole family.
Well, okay. Maybe not fun.
She laughs at River, thinking that's a joke she just made. Who doesn't know jack shit about past lives? This Elite.
"Hey, Kiara."
Kiara
The Verbena is still standing off a ways when River holds out that coat hanger, her lip curled up at the edge in a smile that verged on a few things but her eyes: they seemed wholly honed in on her. Watching River with a sudden, total, focus as if by staring long enough she'd be able to tease loose a beat on the other female's mental state.
This is the first time Kiara Woolfe has seen her since news came of Farrah's demise.
It's there, somewhere, in that look and the slow, stretching beat of silence - on the tip of her tongue, to say something of it. A heavy awareness lingers as the brunette eventually kicks off her leaning point and moves into the gathering proper. Ihsan receives a lingering tick of Kiara's eyes as she makes progress and comes close enough to receive the coat hanger.
"Thanks." She accepts it with, and studies River's face again, the firelight drawing gold patterns over the Verbena's neck. The warmth melting snowflakes in her hair. Then there's Samir - and there's Grace and the latter gets a quick, bright smile, but the former -
The regard lingers there.
"I'll keep it mind for a party trick later." She looks at Samir for another moment, then drops down to her haunches and her eyes return to Ihsan. "I don't believe we've had the pleasure yet."
Kiara
[Ahem. "keep it in mind," tyvm typo.]
Sam Lakhani
Just about any other person looking at him the way Kiara looks at him would normally have him wondering what the hell she was staring at. But Kiara is Verbena and he knows what she's staring at besides. His resonance is noticeable now. He is more of a presence than he was the last time they saw each other.
Granted the fact that she is Verbena means she could be staring at a pissed-off spirit hovering behind him or a blight on his aura or something and he wouldn't know until she said something but Sam has a pretty good idea what has her attention.
He throws up a set of rock horns with the hand not holding onto the backpack and drops into a crouch by the Chakravanti as Ihsan and Kiara get themselves acquainted. Time to light this sucker.
Ihsan Ghali
"No," said the North African woman to Kiara. She'd watched the woman as people answered to speaking in tongues-- how it was metal and could be confused for Sanskrit. Ihsan was busy regarding the new dark-haired woman with the bright red lips. Watching her like a lion-- relaxed and assured but watchful none the less.
"I am Ihsan." She smiled and lifted her hand to show her palm in greeting. Hey, that kind of a wave said. Her accent was dense and interesting, different to an ear that's grown accustomed to the Western United States especially. Still, she spoke clearly and had a strong grasp of the English language. She wasn't that difficult to understand.
The marshmallow was brought back and tested with a squeeze of her fingers. It was a little underdone, but apparently that was how she liked them, for she plucked it with her fingers and popped it whole into her mouth. She then pulled her hat back on and zipped her coat back up and rose to her feet.
"I'm going back to make a run to the store for hot dogs and buns. Anyone wanna come with me?"
And whoever did or did not want to come with, so it would be. Ihsan was set on getting hot dogs and returning later with brats instead ("yes, hot dogs, right?").
[Sorry, but I need to roll out early. Bedtime comes quick when your alarm is set for 4:30am]
Grace
Oh, nice, Sam. Abandon Grace over there. Whatever. She looks over at Sam and River and gives him a little smirk.
Well, she knows how it is.
She turns her hands back and forth to the side of the fire, trying to warm the cold side (which is, of course, the side not nearest the fire at that second).
"Hot dogs too? Awesome," she says to Ihsan, but doesn't move to get up. Not going with.
River
She has good days, and she has bad days. There isn't much of a baseline for Kiara to work off of but today? Today seems like a good day. She seems alert and engaged and content to be aware of people. She hasn't punched anyone at work (in fact, she still has a job. The other dancers at the Diamond Cabaret are convinced she must be sleeping with the hiring manager, but realistically River came up in a couple of very positive Yelp reviews. She's a classy lady; classy ladies change the atmosphere enough that you attract clientel who spend more.)
River concludes that Samir is close enough to lean on for a minute, and so she does- it's a momentary breach of space until she realizes oh fuck, Samir is lighting stuff and she stops attempting to assert her manifest destiny on his space.
There is, however, something that stuck on her senses. Brows knit for a second as she remembers that there's a presence that she can't actually place. Though, in the way, she does happen to place its source and finds-
"I'm gonna yell at people," she warns. And then, does raise her voice enough that it carries-
"Dan! Tenemos malvaviscos! Come say hi!"
Sam Lakhani
Living in a trailer by himself in the middle of goddamn nowhere must be doing him some good. A few months ago River would not have leaned on Sam. A slew of variables make today a different day than one plucked random from several months back. He doesn't seem like an individual who would react strong to unprovoked physical contact.
Ihsan takes off to go buy hot dogs and Sam doesn't offer to go with her but he does hand her a twenty out of his billfold before she leaves. Then River is leaning on him and he goes still a moment with the novelty of it. But then she pulls away again and he goes back to packing the bowl.
I'm gonna yell at people.
"Uh oh," he says before he plants the bong in the dirt and covers his ears with his gloves.
Kiara
I am Ihsan.
That ignites a flicker of recognition. Apparently, the name meant something to the brunette and she returns the greeting with little nod. An affirmative sort of gesture. Kiara's eyes follow the other woman when she rises to her feet and makes her declaration of a store run. The coat hanger is still being held between Kiara's fingertips, her nails are painted the same shade of red as her lips.
The firelight reflects in the varnish as she twists the wire hanger around in her grasp.
It's a habit, perhaps, watching other people. It's certainly one that the brunette seems to be making an attempt at, the way her dark eyes follow Ihsan and then return to Samir long enough to catch the gesture he makes, long enough to witness the way he positions himself by River.
The way she leans into his space.
The Verbena's gaze drops away, then. This brief constriction of her brows and she drives the edge of the hanger into the hardening earth below, wedging it there as she rises to her feet. Drawing the hood of her coat up so her features all but vanish beneath the furred lining. "I'm going to make a quick circuit for more kindling. There's bound to be some leaves around here.
I'll be right back."
Hard to tell what the pagan's expression is in the moment before she starts moving again, leaning over periodically to kick up leaves being buried by drifts of snow. Shaking loose the less saturated ones.
Sam Lakhani
[challenge accepted]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 4, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens]
Kiara
[I have a mighty 3 dice now. What? I'm inscrutable.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 7, 7) ( success x 2 )
Serafíne
Of course she's caught by the wild tangle of resonance surrounding the slow-growing (probably illegal but hey: world of darkness) campfire down by the lake and of course she stops, hooked (fish hook/open eye) right? and sometimes it makes her want to breathe: in and in and in and in like she could inhale the world, feel it bubbling in her lungs. Tonight, instead, she feels skewered like those marshmallows on that coathanger and that hook is an odd little interregnum in their coming-from-someplace and going-to-someplace, an arrest, if you will, an institial moment that feels quite as between-things (places, deeds, names, definitions) as she does.
It's a long-ass walk cutting through the park and the sun has set and the sky has that pillowed, shifting, dead-orange tinge from all the ugly lights reflecting off the close-cropped clouds, the fitful swirls of snow and in the midst of that walk is an exchange between them, all statement and query. Her statement; his query evidence in the way he pauses and glances down at her, face on to her profile, sharp against the darkness. Maybe it is that turn of his head that catches River's attention. The beard and hint of tattoos on his ungloved hands. Some lumpen shadow at his back that will resolve itself into a guitar case when he gets closer.
Which he will soon.
Because: River warns that she is gonna yell at people and then she yells at people and Dan lifts a hand by way of greeting (open palm, mildly ironic twist of his mouth) because what else can he do? Drops his mouth to her ear and bumps his forehead against her temple as he does so: so familiar, so close, so careful with her right now.
--
Takes them longer than you might think when they leave the path. Four inches of melting slush on muddy ground that has not yet been settled into a solid winter freeze and, you know, heels and bare legs do not mix very well but whatever. She's solid on those long legs. Knows how to walk on almost any surface in those heels, but here and there, he gives her a hand.
"Hey folks," Dan, when he gets there. Just a glance and a flash of his palm, as his attention returns to the girl-who-yelled, his mouth curves wider. "River." And his attention hangs there for a lingering beat. "I don't think you've met Sera, have you?"
Grace
"Hey, Dan," Grace says, through the fire's heat. He's a wavy-lined Dan to her. "Hey, Sera."
She smiles with her eyes at the newcomers to the circle of fire, but then returns her attention to the flames.
"You going to play for us?" she asks the fire. Obviously it's more for Dan than anyone, but who knows. Maybe she really does mean to ask the fire.
Sam Lakhani
Last time Sam saw Sera and Dan he was in Quiet. Which means the last time he actually remembers seeing them was at a house party. Which means he was stoned when he showed up and not in much better shape when he left around three o'clock in the morning.
Something in Kiara's gaze has him checking his own expression. He lowers his hands after River has yelled about marshmallows to the Cultist and her consor and lifts one to wave but it's an awkward sort of wave. A not-knowing-how-to-act-in-this-situation wave.
The bong is packed and ready to go. He is not the first one to light it. It sits like an offering beside the fire and then Sam stands from his crouch and takes a few steps back from the circle to light a cigarette.
River
"I have not," she carries things like she is used to carrying things because, well, this is just another social situation and River is a social creature. Sees a man with a guitar and his friend who is a spindly but striking creature.
She offers them a coat hanger, like this was a worthwhile offering.
"I told everybody that we were reenacting the Salem with trials with marshmallows, but I don't actually know how to hang a marshmallow so, uh, morbid joke completely lost."
Kiara
She does, in fact, return after a while with a handful of leaves cupped in her hands (trust the earth witch to deliver on such a promise) and carries them dutifully to the small fire; dropping them in a drift of crumbling pieces into the flames where they are greedily consumed and send up the vague, earthy aroma of foliage as it crackles and curls in on itself.
She's brushing her hands off when Dan and Sera make their approach and the Verbana's dark eyes, dramatized more-so by the liner she's applied to them turn to regard both, her hood pushed back far enough now that strands of dark hair are visible where they slither and curl at her neck, the thick waves of it half tamed by her coat.
"Good to see you, Dan. Sera." The latter's name offered with this quiet, delicate touch of meaning. The Verbena's supple mouth pulled into a little half-curl. She tosses the last handful of leaves toward the fire and and nudges at a stray, escaping one with a boot. Urging toward its demise.
A flicker of some darker, answering humor dawns in the Verbena's eyes as she watches the flames. "Burning them alive has always been a crowd favorite." There's this tiny shadow that falls over Kiara's face as she turns it into the treeline, as if searching for the source of a noise.
"Or so I've heard."
Serafíne
"Hey Grace," Dan-to-Grace, through the flames. This quirk, like a smile but checked a bit, framed by the beard. "We could, if you wanted. Couple songs, maybe. We've got a gig though, so we can't stay too long. Sort of a welcome-back thing for Sera, so it'd be pretty shitty if we didn't show. Any requests?"
--
Dan didn't see Sam when Sam was in Quiet. He was waiting in the van, engine off but still ticking in the heat of the day. Watched her leave and come back and knew something was hanging over her when she climbed back in the passenger door. Didn't know how bad it was until she collapsed. Took him forever to scrub the blood out of the upholstery, but he managed it.
Dan gives Sam the self-same quirk-of-a-smile-thing that Grace received and there's nothing awkward about it. Something: prompting, quiet, solicitous in the way he handles Sera in the moment though, cutting a lashed glance down at her profile.
"River this is Sera. Sera, River. So, now you've met."
Sera takes in this: bright, crisp inhale then. "Hey." And it is all very, strangely self-contained, though River has no real context for this, but maybe she's simply: stoned, already, somehow. When Kiara returns with her promised leaves, something a little more animate: warm, less constrained gets woven into her name, "Kiara."
"What about you, River. Any requests?"
That's Dan, he seems to think music is necessary right now and he's letting go of Sera long enough to lift the guitar case over his head and shoulders.
Sam Lakhani
As he traipses further from the fire he puts his back to it and the people around it. He meets Grace's gaze quick and continues his traipsing. They're all sitting around a fire that is giving off a good amount of heat and no small amount of smoke but he wants to keep his carcinogens to himself. What a guy.
He ends up over by Grace again anyway. She's the furthest away from the fire and she's sitting down and he's taller than her when she's standing up.
"You see that thing on Jitbit," he asks, "about the guy who would write cron-jobs for anything that took him more than ninety seconds?"
Grace
"Uhhh. No? Sorry. I'm terrible at music-y things," she says. "Something you like."
Her favorite 'song' at the moment is a guy screaming at people to install Gentoo over a throbbing beat, and there's no guitars in it. And if there were, you couldn't play it without a computer.
Samir saves her by talking nerdy at her. "Nope. Sounds fun though."
River
"Ukelele anthem!" because something with four chords was totally worth Dan's prowess as a musician. She has managed to piece together though that the bearded man is to music what she is to dancing.
River has made her way over to the communal bong, started on with the necessary prep work because she has no problems being the first person to take a hit for the evening.
"I have full intention of getting ripped and asking people to dance, so- does that inform your decision?"
Sam Lakhani
"You need to get a coffee maker with an SSHD. Then you could figure out how long it takes you to walk from the library to the kitchen and, like, have it start brewing and then wait before pouring it into a cup. The guy called it fuckingcoffee.sh or something equally poetic."
It's way colder over here than it is by the fire what the fuck Grace. He finds it difficult to bitch about the cold after the other night though so he digs his smartphone out of his jeans pocket and starts tapping buttons.
"Hang on, I'll send it to you."
Kiara
She moves a little closer to the Cultist, Kiara, her hands finding her coat pockets.
It's a dark navy form fitted thing that hugs in around her narrow waist with a zip and a hood that's lined with a mottled fur trim along the edges and sleeve-ends. The lining was synthetic but it cast the brunette with that twinge of something a little wilder none the less - something she seemed to be manifesting tonight. A certain aloofness in the way she held herself away from the others.
Standing rather than sitting as if her presence were as limited as the two en route to a gig.
She's watching the fire again, the pagan and there's something to that, the way the flames licking and curling into the air, the smoke and the tiny snaps and pops of burning debris, contain and hold her focus. They spoke enough of the Spirit Mages to allow for some assumptions to be made regarding the distraction of the Verbena. Perhaps she was meditating on the way the fire feels to her or senses some fluctuation in the Park itself.
It's the stillness, though. That makes it singular. Her eyes don't leave the fire to comment wryly: "As long as it's not Kumbaya."
Serafíne
"Couldn't even begin to compete with Amanda Palmer." Dan tosses back to River with another supple, subtle expression rising to the surface and sinking back beneath. "Plus I misplaced my goddamned ukelele somewhere between Raleigh and Denver - "
" - you left it in fucking Macon," Sera interrupts and Dan isn't expecting that and he cuts a sort of searching glance back down at her face and she's giving him a mildly pointed smirk that subsides as quickly as it arose in the first place, dark eyes cutting away from him. Lingering on Kiara as the Verbena circles the fire and starts watching the flames: that singular stillness.
"Apparently I left it in Macon, which isn't between Raleigh and Denver at all. Point is: never replaced. Closest I have is a mandolin and that's back at the house. How about a country song, since we've got a bonfire. Ever heard of Jason Isbell?"
Grace
Grace pulls out her own phone, and now -- true to stereotype -- the two Mercurial Elites of the party are staring into their phones in the great outdoors, communicating to each other with them while the rest get all sociable.
And it's about a shell script named fuckingcoffee.sh.
It is fucking hilarious though, and has Grace laughing at her phone. "Ohh, man. Kumar-asshole.sh. Lol," she says. And yes, she actually says the word lol as if it were one. In-jokes are a thing over here.
"He had a cron job for hangover excuses. I think I want to try that. Not that I need to call in at work, hah."
Sam Lakhani
By the time Grace receives the link Sam has moved onto other things. On his phone. They are living the dream over there.
"Yeah but still. You see the words 'vampire' or 'Washington Park' or 'police' on Ginger, you can just have that bad boy fire off and not have to deal with it."
He's joking. Hangovers aren't an excuse when you're BFF with a Verbena.
River
She's holding her breath while he's talking, nods. Pays attention because, no, one can't compete with Amanda Fucking Palmer. No, she has not heard of Jason Isbell and eventually she exhales. It's a long, slow breath like meditation because why the fuck shouldn't getting stoned be like meditation?
"We lived outside of Macon for two months during peach season," River clarifies, "you would think that I would have picked up something about country music in Georgia but it was all Willie Nelson."
Which is weirdly appropriate.
"So, you guys are in the same band?"
Grace
Grace snorts. "Yeah, that's what I need. A 'Handle Emergency' cron job. Just fire it off, and it will do everything that takes more than ninety seconds."
Which, you know, includes taking care of whatever the latest thing to happen in Washington Park is.
"I have never heard of Jason Isbell," she says, into her phone. If anyone were thinking she wasn't paying any attention...
Serafíne
"Willie Nelson is kind of a badass," Dan tosses back to River as she is getting high. "He did this cover of Pancho and Left that is one of the most perfect things on the planet. If that's what you took away from two months in Georgia outside of Macon, you could've done alot worse."
--
There's work to be done. Like, you know: tuning. The overtones of fingers-on-strings, that strange, patterned language, the internal tones as he listens to the acoustic he was carrying-through-the-park and it should've been an electric but: maybe magick? There's a fire and no outlets and Sera doesn't even really quite understand that she knows Forces magick and she has been capable of it for two fucking years.
"Afterparty at my place," this to Kiara. Supple, subtle thing, the invitation a coil of smoke from the strangely-reserved creature. (Maybe: to River she will always be like this: first.) " - when the bar closes. Two, two-thirty? You should stop by."
--
"Yeah, we're in the same band." Dan, to River. "Don't usually do country but he's a killer songwriter and we always have a few off-the-wall covers up our sleeves." Glances sidelong at Sera. "Elephant, then Super 8?"
"Fuck, Dan, that's like tearing someone's heart out, shredding it, then smoking a bowl of the remnants, getting so stoned you wander into traffic and figure out how to make the stars shut down."
He favors her with a quick, quiet smirk. Likes that spark of animation in her eyes and voice.
"Used to be with this band called the Drive-By Truckers," Dan-the-hipster tells Grace. "It's more alt-country than country. He doesn't sing about how sexy girls are when they hang out in trucks or how fun it is to hang out in trucks and get drunk in corn fields so he's probably not gonna get on commercial country radio."
Serafíne
(Hey I can has dice. Dan - guitarishness?)
Dice: 8 d10 TN5 (1, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens]
Serafíne
(This is for mah next post, and oh Dan. :( Sera: singing?)
Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 5 ) [Doubling Tens]
Sam Lakhani
"You do. You need this so hard."
Break from reality over. Sam shoves the phone back into his pocket and wanders back over to the fire. That's where he left the bong and his backpack anyway. When he comes to stand beside River it's almost as if by coincidence. It's easy to forget he exists when he isn't talking.
"Hit me," he says and holds his hand out for the bong.
Kiara
It's been lightly snowing tonight, as if the weather hadn't quite settled on what it desired but the drifts of it come down, every so often. Can't penetrate far where the fire is of course, melt before they're close to that emanating source of heat but they find placement in hair, on sleeves. Kiss the edge of cheeks and it's after one of these finds Kiara's that her fingers emerge from her pockets and she sweeps a hand up.
Suddenly alert to the surroundings, tipping her chin up to stare up at the dark skies, at the clusters of trees. Touching her face as if she'd forgotten, momentarily, where the source was of the sudden dampness on her face.
She brushes it aside and turns her face, just slightly, at Grace and Samir's conversation. Her attention captured by the mention of vampires, by Ginger and Washington Park and handling situations. The Verbena's eyes drop away and she bends down to find a leaf, lashed to the side of her boot, pasted there by the snow. Squats there and peels it off, carefully uncurling the edges.
"They're amazing. You should hear them play a gig sometime." This, almost absently to River at her question as the Verbena twists the leaf around, sets it open on her palm and curls her fingers around it. Finds the other woman's gaze through the flames. Holds there a beat.
Pulls up, opens her fingers and crumbles up the leaf, smears it over the flames. Glances at Serafine as she offers an after-party at Corona Street. "Yeah." Those red lips quirk, give over to one of her smiles, the pagan. Flash of teeth. Curl at the corner that makes it that side of crooked.
"I'd like that." She doesn't offer more, say they should talk. Just - studies Serafine's face for a moment as if committing it to memory and then returns her eyes to the campfire.
Grace
Grace follows Sam, her face still stuck in her phone though. Light from the phone paints her face with blue, battling it out with the fire.
Well, maybe she won't be their chaperone or anything. Grace just wants a hit.
"I don't even know a thing about commercial country radio. Girls hanging out in trucks?" she shrugs. Whatever, to that.
River
"I'm not a pretty crier," she tells Dan and his cultist-friend, "Sam and Grace can attest."
And it's true. though she isn't sure if Grace has seen her cry from underneath the mountain of blankets beyond the little giggling whimpter of a happy ending amidst the zombie apocalypse. River is pretty committed to her makeup staying on tonight, though, because it's cold and her face can feel it and somehow being freezing bakes on your foundation.
She's standing, has the bong in hand and hands it off to him like this is some sacred rite- like this was the passing of the Olympic torch instead of, you know, just hanging a guy a bong and calling it good.
"And hanging out of trucks and getting drunk in corn fields is fun if you can find a cornfield... does colorado have corn fields?"
Bonus points if it's not your corn field.
Serafíne
Sera isn't wrong about that pairing of songs and Dan needs space to move to play and she steps away from him, careful in her ridiculous goddamned heels but god she can move in them, even on the spongy, half-frozen ground.
The cold, the goddamned snow mean that Dan's bare fingers are stiff as they skim over the strings but he pulls the first evocative chords out of the instrument and there is something quite remarkably intimate about the way they balance each other; about the way they watch each other, rhythmic, familiar. This point where she takes in a breath like she's about to join him, but no, and he just repeats those opening bars, eyes on her face, the dance of reflected light in her eyes.
Elephant starts off all-quiet, reflective, nostalgic, but you get pretty early that the song's as close to a requiem as you can get for someone still alive. Unsentimental, ("If I'd fucked her before she got sick / I'd never heard the end of it") clear-eyed - goddamned sad. Sera sings it alternately watching Dan's hangs and staring into the fire and when her voice is supposed to soar, goddamned, it soars -
We'd burn these joints in effigy,
cry about what we used to be,
and try to ignore the elephant somehow.
I buried her a thousand times,
giving up my place in line,
but I don't give a damn about that now.
--
River is committed to keeping her make-up intact tonight but by the end of that there are tears in Sera's eyes and on her cheeks, and both her mascara and her eyeliner are waterproof but there's the eyeshadow too, which isn't. Maybe it just adds to her rock-star vibe and there's no time to dwell on the chord that strikes up in her or how deeply and feelingly she sings or whatever is happening in her or anyone else because: Super 8's a honky-tonk barn-burner and yes, River, you can dance to it. You could probably take off all your clothes to it, and there's not enough time to catch your breath between them:
Having such a sweet night
Audience is just right
Drinking like a pirate do
Don’t want to sleep yet
Buddy it’s a good bet
I’ll raise more hell than you -
And the song keeps going. There's paramedics, pedialyte, and maybe a defibrillator. Haven't we all had nights like that?
So, yeah. That's the impromptu concert. When it's wrapping up, Sera-and-Dan aren't hanging around for hits from the bong, they're packing up. Have somewhere to be: and soon.
Serafíne
(The songs:
Elephant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dg1oYRo9yVk
Super 8: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Fr2Gv3HyqA )
River
[I'm totally good. Manip+sub]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )
River
She's a good audience member, though halfway through the first song she determines that she's going to need a second hit. There's silence, because she knows it isn't polite to applaud but eventually she does because it was really fucking good and she can appreciate a good performance regardless of the responses that it provokes out of her.
"Go have fun!" is what she says out of haze, eyes back to the fire for a moment.
Kiara
[Per + Empathy on River: is she?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 6) ( success x 1 )
Kiara
Music has that way about it, of course. Good music can lift you. Inspire you. Tear you to pieces with nothing more impressive than the slow build of a guitar, a note sculpted and held. The Verbena's been witness to Serafine and Dan performing before - she knows they're that good.
She'd said about as much to River, only moments before.
Music has that way and at some point during the first song the Verbena's dark eyes place River's face again and she watches it; watches the way the firelight plays over it. Watches her the way she had when she first turned up, leaning against that tree in the shadows as if she were an interloper rather than one of the invited.
Whatever Kiara Woolfe does or doesn't see it takes until the end of the song for her to look down, to tip her chin down and draw her hood back up and bury her hands deep into her pockets. She's not inscrutable, the healer. Not accustomed to trying to be, to concealing whatever thoughts or feelings skim across her face.
She's only beginning to understand the ways she can protect her own mind from infiltration.
So maybe there's that glimpse before she draws it up, after she drags her eyes from River's face, where that's clear. What the music does to her. How it presses down on that bruise she's wearing, however deep it runs, however she's attempting to disguise it. A twist across her mouth, a haunted quality to fine dark eyes.
She stands there, hood drawn while the second number happens. That stillness settling back in. She doesn't applaud at the end of it but she does draw her hands out of her pockets, does move to press a hand against the Cultist's shoulder as she makes some bid for departure might not even understand how to articulate.
"You sounded great." She affirms and there's this brief glance back at the gathered. "I've gotta go guys. I'll catch you later."
Serafíne
Per + Empathy, River.
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (2, 3, 3, 3, 5, 6, 10) ( success x 4 ) [Doubling Tens]
River
"See ya," she says. Smiles and gives a wave and she seems fine. She seems fine and of course she is fine, because River has never given any indication that she is not anything other than fine, even when she has to turn off large portions of her brain to keep up the ruse. She is committed, you see. She is committed to any number of things, but right now she is committed to the idea that she is not going to be emotionally wrought over the fact that there was a song that moved her in such a fashion that she's waxing close to nostalgic.
She wears it well, that denial. She wears it like it's a shield and she carries a sword and in some other life she was some brave gladiator. still is.
she'll process later.
"Graaaaace," she says, offers her a hand, "do you know how to tango?"
Grace
Grace gives River a squinty-eyed look, and then makes a grab at the bong. Tango? The fuck, River. Going to break the poor woman. She takes a hit, holds it, lets out a smokey, creaky "No."
But still, she adjusts herself, hands the bong over to Sam, and stands rather stiffly as she holds her arms out -- one of them positioned like it might hold on to somebody, the other in the air above her head like it might be holding another's hand.
She's never really cared about looking ridiculous, Grace.
"Show me?"
River
River looks at Grace and the look on her face can only be described as delight. She steps in, holds her up arms and preens like she's an instructor because, at her core, she can be an instructor of sorts. She's a good enough that she doesn't seem to have a problem.
She beams.
Moves her arms down a little.
"This is probably going to come up again with me. Just for reference."
Serafíne
"Stop by later, yeah?" Sera to Kiara, as Dan is packing up the guitar. A longer glance at River, then, sharper. This almost bruising awareness about her that gets honed in that moment until it gleams, and that's what she was made to be right there, bright, aching, in the moment. A hitch of awareness that hooks, catches, dissipates.
Lovely as the edge of an ever-elusive rainbow.
--
Had she been aware of recent history, she might not have chosen that song. She wasn't. Isn't. Couldn't've gotten on Ginger if she'd wanted to: her phone didn't fucking work. Dan checks it anyway and he couldn't see her, and he kept it up but mostly he was looking for anything from anyone about her. No dice.
All of that etches the air around them. Frames out both the intimacy of their interactions and that strange reserve that Sera breaks out of only in these odd flashes of awareness.
--
"You should drop by too."
And she could be saying that to anyone or everyone, but she's not. Mostly, she means River. Unspoken in there: no more sad songs tonight. "The Edgefield."
And off they go.
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