Obtaining Information at the Information Cafe

kai
[may I creepily watch you from the shadows?]

Serafine
(you may!)

Serafine
Most of the tables in Mutiny are a mismatched hodgepodge of second-hand pieces.  Old formica tables from 1980s Wendy's franchises, covered with chipped versions of 19th century newspaper articles, waterstained oak and coffee-stained cherry.  A big pine piece in the middle where a small group of old friends is playing a rather competitive game of Ticket to Ride and a scattering of chairs.  There's an old leather couch where the café proper folds back into the bookstore, surrounded by bookshelves and bins of vinyl records, not far from the barista's counter as well, and that couch has been claimed by a rather singular young woman.

She said that Grace would not miss her, that that no one ever does.

And, oh.  This is true.

Tonight, Serafíne is wearing low-slung denim cut-offs over torn fishnets, with a black leather halter-style bra covered in silver studs beneath a wrinkled, long-sleeved plaid shirt several sizes too large.  Cotton in deference to the fucking summer weather, which is endlessly and ridiculously hot, though not so swampy as it was back in Raleigh.  She has long blond hair, except where she has shorn it away in a distinctive sidecut, and when she wandered into the place tonight she seemed close to 5'9" or 5'10", though this is a height augmented by ridiculously high heels she walks in as naturally as anyone ever could.  Boots with two inch platforms and another three-inches of further, silver-wrapped heels, covered in silver buckles and black leather straps.

A flotilla of necklaces wrap around her neck, and a spike splits her left ear.  Her nails are painted three separate, neon colors, intercut with sparkling black, though the enamel is starting to peel.  She's found an old box of Maximum Rock 'n Roll 'zines from the late 1980s and is flipping through one with the desultory attitude of a sorority sister paging through Cosmo while some poor bastard kneels at her feet, shaving callouses off her heels.

She wasn't lying when she said it was hard to miss her, Sera.

She's impossible to ignore.

Grace Evans
Grace locked up her bike, and proceeded to don a bright purple hooded sweatshirt taken out of her bag. It looked extremely out of place in 80 degree weather, but oh well. She paired blue jeans and a white tee with this blaring monstrosity of a jacket, which looked unworn but rumpled at the same time.

But instead of seeming bothered or embarrassed by this odd getup, she just ignored other people like the eyes upon her weren't her concern. Or perhaps, she was just oblivious. One of the two.

She stepped into the Mutiny Information Cafe, and scanned the room for a bit, before landing on the extremely hard to miss. She quirked a brow, but kept right on going, making a beeline for the couch.

Serafine
Perception + Awareness
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 5 ) Re-rolls: 1

Serafine
The purple wasn't necessary, was it?  Sera felt Grace's presence two blocks away, that sense of something shifting in the air.  Like the plates of the earth near a faultline, like the movement of a crowd, turning to follow two particularly compelling sights.

Glances up as soon as the front door opens though, brows lifting above her close-set eyes (which are: blue, and rimmed with dark shadow and a dangerous amount of carbon-black mascara and are also quick) as she fixes Grace with a steady, somehow crawling glance look that begins at the other woman's toes and climbs steadily up her small frame.

This glint of bemusement in her gaze over the hooded purple sweatshirt that opens into slip-sided grin, this silent suggestion of open-mouthed laughter never given voice.

"Have a seat," with a gesture at the other half of the couch.  "And take off that fucking sweatshirt, you must be roasting, Christ. "

The MRR is left open on her lap.  It's all newsprint, all black and white and worn and the picture in the center is from a mosh pit at a Dead Ant Farm show at a swap meet / flea market in fucking Salt Lake City, Utah in 1987.

"What's your name?"

Grace Evans
She stripped the evil purple thing off with a little nervous smile, and shoved it back into her bag, not bothering with folding. "I don't wear purple much, all I had," she explained, and sat down on the couch. If the other's appearance bothered her, she didn't let on. In fact, she seemed entirely unconcerned with appearances.
"So, yeah... I'm Grace," she said. "And I'm not sure what you're supposed to be helping me with, but ahh.. Justin said..." she trailed off, apparently having thought better of what she was about to say.

She looked around the room, her eyes tracing the walls and floor.

kai
[aw, I kinda wanna play too. would you both be amenable to me joining?]

Grace Evans
[Sure, I'm fine with it :) ]

Serafine
(you would be more than welcome!)

Grace Evans
[Perception + Awareness -- Can sense Sera?]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 5, 8) ( success x 1 )

Hawksley
[I'm doin' just fine, Denver. How YOU doin'?]

Serafine
No way for Grace to know what Serafíne's baseline is, but there's something starched about her, something hollowed out.  She's just a bit thinner than she usually is - and she is far too often harrow-and-bone - and she's just a bit sharper than she usually is, and she's just a bit hungrier than she usually is, and that hunger is a dark pool in her eyes.  There are other patrons in here on a Sunday evening, and most have coffee drinks or espresso to hand.  Whatever Sera is drinking (see: the cup by her booted feet) is not coffee and is nutritive (allegedly) in some fashion, but only just.

She hasn't touched it since Grace walked in.

"Find a way to say it," returns Sera, uncrossing her legs and closing the 'zine at last, with a shift of her fishnet-clad thighs.  Her voice is rather quieter now, and she follows the drift of Grace's attention around the café, before her eyes return fixedly to Grace.  "Without saying it, right?  Hide it in plain sight.

"That's what we fucking do."

And Grace can sense Serafíne, now that she's close.  Now that she's opening her own senses and that sensation of hunger sharpens and darkens, becomes all gut and instinct, the rich vein of need, the first physical urge of it, flesh and blood and bone and the flash of teeth behind a curving mouth.

"Or, if you can't manage that, you can whisper it in my ear if you want."

The faintest suggestion of challenge to her dark, reflective eyes.

Grace Evans
The 'feeling' of Seraphine at once frightens and enthralls, and when she gets it, her eyes light up, even as her body tightens up. Is that what he meant?

"We?" she asked. There were hidden words in there, hidden meaning in that one question. 'What am I, what are you, how could I possibly have anything in common with you', and so on.

She looks a bit exasperated, the challenge not having gone unnoticed. Her expression says it all. She's not here to play games. "What is this about? Why are we here, then if we can't talk?"

Hawksley
[perception + awareness]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )

Serafine
"Oh my fuck." The couch has two big leather cushions and even though the café is non-smoking, they still smell like tobacco and beneath the tobacco scent, somewhere deeper, the herbal musk of marijuana.  Maybe it's just the place and the patrons here, though.  It's not Sera today: she's sober and she does not particular like that, it leaves her marooned somehow in her body, leaves her with sharpened urges and -
- she leans closer, her weight depressing the center cushion, her left shoulder slumping as if under an elegant weight toward Grace.  And now she picks up the October 1987 MRR issue and drops it back into the milk crate at the foot of the couch with all the others and she's biting her lower lip with sharp white teeth, an expression that would look bashful on anyone else looks, well, merely knowing (though perhaps also: gleaming on Serafíne.

Weight resting on her left elbow, leaning toward Grace, into her, really, she finds the other young woman's gaze and holds it, this sudden-bright spark in her own.

"Something, somewhere, somewhen, made itself clear to you, and everything changed.  Right?  I don't know fucking what, but something did.  Opened you up and peeled you back; made you see the frame beneath the frame, the skin beneath the skin.

"Grace, did you just open your eyes?"

Hawksley
Up the street, or down the street, there is an ice cream shop with a garage-style door down the front.  It's open right now, and the line is out the door, but Hawksley isn't at Sweet Action.  He's walking down to the bookshop eating his Stranahan's Whiskey Brickle on a waffle cone when he sees the bookshop.  And decides: bookshop.  Because books.

When he comes in the door, it feels like a goddamn ray of sunshine has entered the building.  Sera feels it.  Sera probably felt him walking by before he even crossed the street to Mutiny's corner.  Something flying, flying, soaring in ever-rising spirals from the earth, wings extended just to feel the wind streaking past them.  Something bright and warm.  It's not like being near Justin or Sid, whose hands are as warm as creation itself.  Hawksley's physical warmth is just that: physical.  He's an active, energetic young man who burns a bit on the hot side.  But by god, his soul: that is the feeling of lying on the beach for an hour, letting the sun soak through you to your very bones.

Grace feels it, too.  When he walks in, tipping his sunglasses up over his brow.  Because he feels something gut-wrenching, something that entrances, and he knows the taste and feel and sense of that soul and he knows its name.  There is another.  Something else, very very different, very very new-feeling, that makes the ground under his feet slide away from him for a moment.  He does not know its name.  He fixes his eyes on it, eyes that are as clear and bright as the day outside, eyes that look at Grace as though she's a mouse he just saw skittering along the desert floor and is going to follow, follow, follow with his eyes.

Yes: he knows Serafine's baseline, and he notices how strange she looks, worse than when he dropped her off at her place a few days ago, but she is also a grown-ass woman, an Awakened mage, and equal to his own rank.  He licks his ice cream, his eyes going over her instead of Grace for a moment, then starts to walk over.

Oh, and this: he's wearing shorts, because it's hot outside, and sandals that are well-worn, and a t-shirt from Buffalo Exchange and he looks somewhere between a hipster and a total bro, especially with those fucking Ray-Bans.

Serafine
(BRB!)

Grace Evans
Grace blinked, the memories of the week returning -- back to when she saw.

Seraphine's advance made her want to back up, put up walls... personal space was a big thing for her. But with those words, it didn't seem to matter anymore.

"It was Wednesday," she responded, her voice down to a creaky whisper. She seemed to take a second of thought, before her face broke out in a grin, "You know... you know what that feels like, don't you? Oh... We..." She stopped in her overly-excited tracks at the feeling of a new presence, the ray of sunlight that just walked in.

Her head twisted to Hawksley's direction, with a confused look on her face.

Serafi­ne
Sera felt him across the street and it made her shoulders lift and it made the muscles flanking her spine tension and her shoulderblades cut back, like some physical fucking memory of flying.  Made her lift her chin and halfclose her eyes, the way some people do, walking from the crisp blast of some chilly, artificial, air conditioned space into the sudden baking heat of a sunwarmed street.  All this long before the front door opened and Hawksley walked in.

"Oh mother of - ."  She is still biting her lower lip, Sera, the sudden brilliance of her wide-crawling smile just curls all around it but see: a bit of flesh caught finely between her incisors.  Her eyeteeth.  "Wednesday.  Fucking Christ."

That first grin, the whisper, the overexcitement has Sera inhaling like the world was new and this was the first breath she had the privilege of taking.  Then Grace breaks off and Sera finally follows her line-of-sight to Hawksley and her eyes snag on his fucking ice-cream-cone for a half-second before they find his gaze.
"He's cool," Sera assures grace, her attention now fixed and a bit too rapt on Hawksley as he approaches.  The twist of her mouth turning wry when he comes into conversational distance.

"Wednesday," Sera to Hawksley, with a lift of her chin toward Grace.  "Fucking Wednesday.  This is Grace.  Grace, his eyes are open, too.  You ever listen to Bright Eyes?   We're all wide awake.  It's fucking morning."

Hawksley
At first he guesses that Grace is just some friend of Sera's, because Sera has all the friends, even ones she doesn't know.  She looks like someone Sera might know, but Sera is super-close-friends with an Anglican priest, so Sera 'might know' just about anyone.  This is what Hawksley thinks.  He approaches as easily and calmly as he would ever, licking his ice cream cone, as the excitement fades from Grace's features, filling Sera's, and he grins.

And sits down on the couch next to Sera.  He'd flop, but he's got ice cream and there's nothing sadder in the world than one's ice cream falling off its cone.  He flings one long arm behind Sera across the back, though there's a good six inches between his hip and hers.  His legs are stretched out, crossed at the ankle, as Sera assures Grace that he's cool.  He's heard that language before, and his eyes alight again on Grace, even more keen.

"'Sup," he says to Grace, with an upward nod.  As Sera is saying a day of the week repeatedly like it's a magical mantra.  He twists his head around to look at her.  Then Grace again.  And then Sera one!  More! Time!  And laughs.  "What the hell, Sera.  You're talking like she's --"

Fucking Wednesday.

Hawksley's smile drops.  He looks at Grace, momentarily still, then beams.  Son of the sun, child of the sky.  "Oh shit, that's awesome.  Welcome to the party," he says, leaning toward her with his arm outstretched to slap palms, to shake, whatever.  "I've got some great stuff for you to read.  You like history?  I love history.  Once you get past all the parts written by the victors, at least.  I've got some stuff written by losers, way illuminating."

His arm retreating back again, he looks at Sera and nevermind that he's also welcoming a new mage in with wide open arms, he is also a friend, and: "Sera, you kinda look like hell.  You okay?"

Grace Evans
She broke into a smile again at Hawksley, when Sera explained that he was also included in the 'we'. This must just be what it feels like, to feel the marks left on the world by one of them. Even though he plopped down next to her on the couch suddenly, she didn't mind, not now.

She looked at his outstretched arm, and kind of gave a half-hearted attempt at a handshake. It's awkward. But she does it anyway, because it seems expected. "I love reading. And history. Sure, I... thanks."
Her expression doesn't change from its wide-eyed wonder anymore. Books, reading, yes... If they explain more about what just happened to her, yes. YES.

Serafi­ne
Hawksley unfolds that long arm along the spine of the couch and Sera tips her head back until the back of her skull makes contact with the crook of his elbow.  Her eyes half-close and she just inhales the sweet, smokey scent of his ice cream like some great cat, as much with her mouth as with her nose.  The long sleeves of the plaid shirt she's wearing unbuttoned over her studded leather bra cover her forearms so the only visible sign of the Work she performed the other night is that healing laceration on her left palm.
"I'm fasting," she explains with Hawksley, with a drift of her dark eyes that snags equally on his mouth and on the fucking ice cream cone he's consuming right fucking next to her.  "Fuck.  I haven't had a cigarette, a drink, or fucking anything - "  this shake of her blonde head, then, that has it lolling along the back cushions of the couch.

"For a week.  I've been on a juice fast for god knows how long.  Maybe not quite as long as Grace's been awake, right, but fucking forever anyway, and you're here, and you're eating ice cream and it smells like fucking whiskey and you - "

Then, a drop of her dark eyes back toward Grace as she announces, enthusiastically, that she loves books. Just loves books.   Sera laughs aloud, open mouthed, this flash of teeth behind it.

"Books, huh?  How the fuck do you feel about sex, drugs and rock and roll? Hint: just say yes to all of the above."  This time, her laugh is subsumed beneath her skin, bright and raw and humming.  "And we'll get along fine.  But now that we're all friends, why don't you tell us what happened Wednesday?"

Hawksley
First: Sera makes physical contact, and Hawksley's arm folds around her shoulders and his thumb strokes her upper bicep, loose and easy in its intimacy.  Second: she inhales the scent of his ice cream, prompting him to tip it toward her, want some,

(Third), right before she says she's fasting, and he pulls it back, peering at her.  He looks a little surprised, but only for a beat or two.  "Oh," he says, acceptingly.  Then he looks at his ice cream, then at her, and looks crestfallen.  "I'm sorry."

She explains a little more: juice fast.  No smoking, no drinking, not even any sex, but he's there and he's got ice cream and it smells like whiskey and bam, right there, are three of the things she's denying herself.  Hawksley doesn't understand, and because he's Hawksley he wants very badly to understand, but asking right now would be rather rude to Grace, so he doesn't.  He leans over and kisses Sera's temple, quick and light, then sweeps himself up, excusing himself without a word from the couch.

When he comes back, he doesn't have ice cream anymore.  He flops back down on the couch by Sera, replaces his arm where it was before, and looks at Grace yet again, waiting to hear her story.

Grace Evans
And if she doesn't want to say yes to all of the above? Grace would respond, but the bigger question was just asked. What happened Wednesday...

"Well, Wednesday. It was just a weird day all around. But, I guess you mean the big... thing. I had my first book signing that day, and it was out a ways -- some little town outside of Denver. I got there, and couldn't find my way back afterwards. I tried getting on Google Maps, it led me to... "

she stopped, trying to think of how to put it. "Well, it was a power station out in the middle of nowhere. My phone insisted I had 'reached my destination.' So I went inside to try to find directions back to Denver, and..." She sighed, leaned back on the couch.

"You're going to think I'm insane," she said, and then looked between Serafine and Hawksley... then again, maybe not.

Serafi­ne
As she always does, Sera yearns into physical contact the way a sunflower opens and turns its head, tracking the warmth of the sun in the fucking sky.  Looser and more physical, more thoughtless tonight, she turns her head as he folds his arm around her shoulder, her mouth closed, just watching the movement of his thumb over her upper arm.  She wants to bend down and kiss his knuckles, but arrests the gesture and is tilting her bright head backwards when he apologizes.  She's starting to say something back, Sera, but Hawksley's already rising, crossing the café to throw away the ice cream.

Sera watches him the whole time, crossing the café, meets pale eyes after he turns then around and holds them as he cuts back through the mismatched tables and chairs, past the intense group of board-gamers at the big central able, until he takes a seat on the leather couch once more.

Gives him this spare smile, this sideswept glance up.  Says, "You didn't have to do that," quietly beneath her breath, "but thank you."  The last is more mouthed than spoken aloud, and the spare smile she gave him quickens to something both sharper and deeper around the words.

Then, her attention cuts back to Grace as Grace resumes - or begins, really - her story.

You're going to think I'm insane, Grace asserts, mid-way through.  Sera's attention is steady again now, and she just shakes her head.

"Not likely," with a lift of her sharp chin, a certain hooding of her eyes.  "What happened then?"

Hawksley
Sera's thank you is met with a small shrug: he knows he didn't have to do that.  He seldom does things he's told he has to do.  She hasn't seen that in action, or how disruptive and frustrating and even dangerous it can be, but the thread of it is in every part of his personality.  He does what he likes.  Today he liked, in a strange and pleased little way, tipping his ice cream into the trash, knowing the purpose and intention behind it, returning to her side without it.  An odd little pleasure, but a pleasure nonetheless.  He turns his attention back to Grace.

I had my first book signing --

"You're a writer?" Hawksley says, and he sounds delighted, then he shushes himself, he's being rude, he's interrupting, stoppit Hawksley.  He shushes.

You're going to think I'm insane.

To that, he just grins.  She has no idea.  Not yet.  She has no idea the things she will see.  Soon.  He even chuckles.  He squeezes Sera sharp and sudden to his side, gleefully.  "She has no idea," he says, even though Grace is right there, because he's just so thrilled.  He wonders if she can see sound waves or infrared yet.  Oh, he hopes she can.  And he also hopes she can't so he can be there the first time it happens.

Grace Evans
She looked to Hawksley and nodded, yes she's a writer. Seemed insignificant now, though.

"Well, I'd been hearing this humming sound all day," she said, her voice dropping, lest someone else overhear, and really think her mad. "I think before I woke up, even, like I was dreaming of it. But when I got inside the power station, that humming got louder. Bigger. Like, 'ommmmm'. I thought it was the electricity, and maybe it was. But it was calling out to me, I knew that much. I looked up, and the ceiling was made of glass, and the antenna on top of the building like... shifted and bent down to touch me. So I reached out and touched it back.

"I can't even describe how that felt, and you know, that's probably the hardest part. Any time I try it just sounds like its not enough, or it's too complicated. I know I had a vision. I saw monks humming that sound, I saw someone saying 'I know that I know where I am.' And so did I. It was like the antenna picked me up and flew me around for a while, and I could see where I was, and I knew... I was everywhere. I was one with everything.

"I know it sounds like it was a dream, but it was so much more. This place, this world, this feels like a dream in comparison, you know? I read once that our universe, this place... it's all a simulation, like we're made of data. All the sudden, that became true to me. Like, I can't even deny it. This isn't real. What I saw, that was real."

"And now... you still so sure I'm sane?" she looked up at them, having just rent out what she'd wanted to say to someone so terribly for days... The words came out like a flood. And now, she waited.

Serafi­ne
Sera's attention slips from Grace as Hawksley squeezes her close, his delight palpable, his excitement so fucking physical that she could fucking eat it up and she turns into him now, not the arm he has wrapped around her, her sharp, narrow shoulders twisting together in a mobile gesture that pulls them framing and close, dropping her head to rest her brow, her right temple, really, and the soft-fringe of her buzz-cut hair on his shoulder.  Eyes closed as she breathes him in.

She has no idea, he exclaims, and this pulls Sera upright again.  Though for the moment she's watching Hawksley rather than Grace, the keen and leading edge of his excitement shining through his avian features.  Sera's own eyes are shining suddenly, and she exhales all-at-once, a warm rush of breath that is followed by the warmth of her mouth in a brief and chaste and thoughtful kiss just at the place beneath his shoulder, where the pectoral muscle curves towards its attachment to the clavicle.

Then her head curves back toward Grace.  She's mid-way through the cycle of her story by the time Sera's eyes are on her face again.  Something about electricity going ommm and the antenna and there's something bright and brighter in her features, and - in that spare moment, quiet and listening - something infinitely sad, which has her looking down and up and away, past the other patrons toward the storefront, the reflection of the interior in the glass superimposed over the long shadowed dusk outside.

"Lakashim."  Back to Grace, "the eternal moment, that's what we call it.  Where you slip out of yourself and you're everything.  You're everywhere and nowhere all at once, and all of those words are meaningless anyway, because the transcendence is sudden and skewering and whole and entire.

"I think you're more sane than you ever were.  Except," a little twist of her shoulders then, a lifting glance upward at the ceiling or maybe beyond the fucking ceiling, toward the sky or whatever might be above it.  " - this world is that world.  It's not separate from you saw.  It's just a little constricted.

"Too many of us are still sleeping, right?  Obeying the fucking rules that say that I can't hear your heartbeat from across the room or that time moves in one direction.  Or what the fuck ever, man."

Hawksley
As delighted as he is, as happy to meet Grace and hear her story, he grows more serious as it goes on.  As she says things like that's probably the hardest part.  Trying to find words for it: well, she is a writer.  Trying to find a way to put that experience into language.  He understands that deeply, not just the indescribability of it, but the longing for the words.  But at the time, you never do.  And when someone gives you words for spheres and energies and rotes, they all seem so... pale.

His hand moves on Sera's arm again, and then he remembers she's fasting, and he's read enough and knows enough and has met enough mages of enough paradigms to know what all fasting entails.  His hand becomes still again: comforting, or close, or simply companionable, but the energy of that restraint and what lies under it loops back through him and into her again, she has to sense it, she has to feel it, and in the back of his mind he wonders, or even perhaps knows:

that's the point.

we're made of data

His head tips to the side.  Those aren't the words he'd choose, but he gets it.  He flicks an eyebrow up at her when she asks him if he's sure she's sane.  Sera answers her, and gives an answer distinct to her tradition, to her own world within a world.  Heartbeats resounding through rooms, time being a ball of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff where 'cause' and 'effect' really become loose guidelines at most.

Hawksley, eyes remaining fixed on Grace, gives a small shrug to her: "When I Awoke, every element in creation spoke to me in its own voice and in its own language, and I knew them all and answered them."  More than that, too.  He doesn't share the rest, though.

"This world is not a dream, and... personally, I don't believe our universe is a simulation and we're all data.  But that is, like everything else we're discussing here, just another way of trying to wrap words -- and understanding -- around what is inherently indescribable.  Everything in the universe is energy, right?  Maybe some matter in there as well, but even then you can make the argument that when you break it all down, everything is energy."  He's leaning forward now, either bringing Sera with him or letting her slip from his arm, because this is his fucking jam.  "There's different kinds of energy and different interactions of energies and so on and so forth, and our tiny, miniscule, pathetic stretch of history where Humans Have Existed has been taken up in large part by all of us trying to figure out what to call it all.  How to survive it.  And how it use it."

Intent, intense, his eyes fix on her, and he looks momentarily like a falcon more than a man, like a raptor descending on prey, and his eyes flash like a thunderbird's.  "Those like us, the ones who are Awake, do the same thing.  We find ways of separating the whole of reality into discrete, discernible parts because otherwise our heads explode.  The thing about waking up is that sometimes, your head does explode.  And you let it.  You chase it.  Because those moments like the one you felt, where everything is one or nothing is anything and there's no boundaries between any of it, no difference -- we all know that feeling.  But we use different words.  We look at it differently.  We do what human beings have been doing since human beings existed and try to make sense of what we know to be true,

"Only," Hawksley says, half-quirking a smile, "we try to do it with fewer limitations than the rest of the world.  We try not to let ourselves forget that all our words and codes and paradigms of reality are just scaffolding so we don't actually go insane.  Permanently."

As though one can go temporarily insane.  Well:

one can.

He breathes in, settling back, either replacing his arm around Sera or again bringing her with him where he goes, depending on how placid she is about either case.  "You are so far beyond 'sane', Grace.  And Sera's right: this world is that world.  It's just that we're seeing it, right now, in the most widely agreed-upon form it can take.  A form where gravity is a law and not an option, and a form where we all walk around pretending like we're separate entities from each other."

Grace Evans
She watched the two others, Sera basking in the man. It made her feel like a third wheel, even as she was spilling her guts.

But when the other woman spoke again, Grace locked the word 'Lakashim' in the back of her mind, to research later. It had a name, she thought, with some small amount of glee. More sane that she ever was? She listened to them both, and it tore at her. More more more, please.

Hawksley explained the difficulty of translating that feeling into something more tangible. Words. And the grateful understanding passed by her face.

Everything is energy, yes, but below that... deeper. Energy as a representation of something else, that's where her mind was at the moment.

"In computer science, we have these... layers of abstraction. At the very basic, there's just ones and zeros, but it's not like a person can really understand what they mean, right? So, you go up one level, that's machine code. You translate the ones and zeros into instructions. One layer up from that is a low-level compiler. You translate more readable instructions into basic instructions, then back down to bits. Eventually, you get so far abstracted out that you can program using pictures, drawing lines on a screen to connect objects to each other, and then that gets translated down," she said, hoping that her words made some sense. The pair didn't seem like they were of the computer persuasion, so she tried to anti-jargon her way through.

"At what level is it 'real'? We have jokes about that one. Real programmers flip the bits in memory with cosmic rays! I guess what I'm trying to say is more that this world feels abstracted. Human readable. And I just understood the bit level. Or at least, I saw the abstraction."

She fidgeted a bit. "Gravity would be optional if you could find the right bit to flip, am I right?"

Serafi­ne
Perception + Awareness-as-empathy to pick up on third-wheel feeling.
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 4, 5, 5, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )

Serafi­ne
Oh yes.  That

is

the point.  Sera's eyes close as Hawksley's hand goes still on her arm.  She's breathing, slow and steady and she can feel the point of contact, the warmth of his fingers, can imagine his pulse, the blood beneath his skin moving with every breathing beat of his heart.  She takes another breath, this one deeper, then opens her eyes again as if she were surfacing from some great depth, as if she were coming-to-consciousness after a knock-out, waking to the world.

She cuts those dark eyes back to Hawksley as he begins to speak again, leaning back into the cushions to give Grace more of a direct line-of-sight toward the Hermetic.  And remains there, as he leans forward, intend and impassioned now because this is his jam, slipping his arm from around Sera's shoulders because honestly, she wants to watch him speak and wants to watch him from a separate perspective, wants both his profile and the cut of his shoulders, the sunglasses on his head and his fucking tailored t-shirt and the hum of activity in the café beyond him, framing him  intent over the drifting background of other, quite ordinary lives, in the middle of other, quite ordinary work and play.

He settles back; her eyes follow, and there's something fixed and fascinated and curious, too.  Her head dips forward thoughtlessly as he settles his arm around her shoulders and her attention slips back to Grace, finding her eyes, dropping down to her mouth.  Sera reaches out, then. Her left hand held palm up, a two-inch laceration in the middle, healing but still ugly, open but not bleeding, the edges crusted over with new scabbing broken.  The cut follows but does not quite mimic the life line, though one imagines Grace is not particularly into palmistry.

Neither is Sera.

Still, see.  She offers that hand, a point of connection.  If Grace sees the gesture and accepts it, curves her own hand into Sera's, Sera squeezes and just - stays connected.  Even Grace's attempt to anti-jargon computer programming language flies entirely over Sera's head.

"I have no fucking idea what you just said," wry, " - sometimes I can't even work my fucking iPhone? but sure.  You get powerful enough and it's all optional.  Except for the - what the fuck, inertia, right?  Things that are want to stay the way they are, the way people expect them to be, so you startle them out of their collective dream and sometimes reality'll give you a beating.

"Listen, we should get together again, you should meet a few more people.  Sid and maybe that lady who talks like a broken robot, what the fuck was her name?" that, to Hawksley, before her attention sweeps back to Grace.  "I bet you guys would get along.

"I've got your number and you've got mine, so stay in touch, right?  But be careful.  We're not the only ones Awake out here.  If someone or something feels wrong, just walk away.  Let me know, got it?"

Then she glances at Hawksley again.

"I need to go to the place in the country.  You wanna give me a ride?"

Hawksley
Emotions play out across Grace's features, flickering like lights, and Hawksley only catches some of them.  Such as: gratitude and understanding.  He follows her when she talks about programming, but only just.  And then she says something about flipping a bit and making gravity optional.  The biggest, brightest smile just cracks across Hawksley's features like a fucking sunrise or a bolt of lightning.

Sera shows Grace her cut palm.  Hawksley's eyes flick to it and yes, there's a shadow, but not an overt one.  He remembers cleaning the last of her blood off his knife, a job he surely could have given to Collins, but chose to do himself because there was magic in that, and power, not just in the blood but in the cleaning of it, the ritual.

If he needed it, or thought he might need it, he might have kept the blood.  But he has her name.  He doesn't need blood, but he knows of magi who do, magi who might mean her ill, so: that cloth was burnt.  As long as he's staying at the Four Seasons, at least.  Not quite as secure as his own place.

Sometimes reality'll give you a beating Sera is saying, and Hawksley winces, like she's talking about something distasteful.  It is.  It's a sad, cold fact of the universe: the status quo.  He glances at Sera and nods when she mentions Sid and 'that lady who talks like a broken robot', to which he fills in: "Patience," because he never forgets a name, then turns his attention back to Grace even as Sera is.  "You would," he agrees, as far as them getting along.  "Not everyone views the universe through the same lens, even among people like us.  It's sometimes easier to work with people whose ways of seeing the universe are a little closer together."
Sera gives her warnings about the things that go bump, and Hawksley adds to it: "And me.  Hell, even if you just want to drop by and read for a while, that's cool."

He wants to talk a bit more, it's perhaps a bit visible in his eyes, but Sera speaks and drags his eyes away from Grace.  She needs a ride to a place in the country, and his eyes spark.  He nods, a little slowly, but he knows what she means and he looks a bit excited, that predatory gleam that he never intends re-entering his eyes.  "Sure."

So they are sweeping up from the couch, and he's leaning over and giving Grace his number verbally, watching as she taps it into his phone, Hawksley Rothschild.  He shakes her hand.  He tells her it was a pleasure meeting her, and he means it, because he really can't say it and not mean it.  He's risen then, though, reaching down to take Sera's hand.  To take her out to the country.