Blackberries Aren't Really Berries

Grace Evans
There is a thing about college campuses in that they seem like the busiest places on Friday, and then ghost towns on Saturday. Just the ones without lives remain.

And indeed, Grace has spent the morning in a computer lab working on a masters' thesis, so life? HAH! Fittingly, her t-shirt today is brown, with an intravenous coffee graphic printed on the front. It's just a regular student uniform of jeans, tee, sneakers, and a laptop bag. She looks extremely ordinary, like anyone you've seen in your life. Like you could just forget her.

It's time to refill the caffeine tank. Or eat, maybe. And she's headed to one of the campus coffee shops along the spidery little foot trails that wind their way through the campus, amid the carefully landscaped green. She looks like she knows exactly where she's going, and doesn't need to waste time figuring out where she is.

[Awareness, because always Awareness!]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (8, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )

Kalen
Kalen ambles along the paths with considerably less purpose and considerably less speed, leaning heavily on a cane.  He's of an age to blend in easily enough with students, though he isn't technically a student here.  He's wearing jeans and a cream colored tee-shirt with a faded lion print on it.  His attention keeps getting caught by windblown things and he occasionally stops entirely to watch airborne leaves and dandelion fluff and bits of paper.

[Indeed.  Perception+Awareness]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )

Grace Evans
Suddenly, it feels like it's going to rain. Not exactly surprising, considering the clouds, but no... This feels like one of those random windstorms that sweep in off the mountains with lightning and sudden downpours. At first, Grace thinks only to curse the weatherman for not getting it right again, but then her head snaps up. It's coming from a person.

In this place, where most people are gone for the long weekend, it doesn't take her long to figure out who, and her eyes follow him, even as he follows windblown detritus. Who is that?

And suddenly very curious, she doesn't let him leave her sight.

Kalen
It certainly isn't difficult to keep up with Kalen.  Before long, he's searching for a spot that's elevated and out of the way, but lacking any real hills on the campus, he settles for a picnic table.  The table part of the picnic table, naturally.

Grace gets a glance, and then a second glance, but unless she comes closer, or perhaps watches him for long enough, that's all the attention she gets.

Grace Evans
She does come closer. A strange man sitting on a picnic table, smelling like the oncoming storm? If he allows it, she walks up to the picnic table, and takes a seat like a normal person would, and says, "Hey, you're new around here. Or at least, I've never seen you here before."

Bold, this one. Perhaps a bit too bold, but she's new and curious and this line of questioning has yet to utterly fail her yet.

Kalen
Kalen doesn't stop her, but for the first ten seconds or so after she joins him there is an expression on his face that can only be translated as, 'Srsly?  Did you just walk right into my personal space?'

"I am not, in fact, from Denver.  I arrived here only a few days ago.  It continues to fail to be boring, apparently."  His voice is all silken quiet, with an underlying trace of annoyance.  Kalen certainly isn't welcoming on the whole, but there is a very subtle shift from an annoyed 'what are you doing here' to a more curious 'what are you doing here' if Grace watches his pale green eyes closely enough.

Grace Evans
"Oh... hah, yes. Denver is interesting. If you enjoy interesting times. You don't know the half of it. Or possibly the quarter of it," Grace says, completely failing to meet his eyes, and instead staring up at the shifting clouds.

She picks up on that personal space issue... takes one to know one, really. She herself sat on the edge of the bench, and when she notices his discomfort, still looks for how she could possibly get herself further away. "I'm sorry, am I... Am I bothering you? I don't want to bother you."

Kalen
"Some fraction or another, apparently."  Kalen shrugs and then follows her line of sight to the clouds with his eyes, lingers on them a few seconds, and looks back at Grace.  She may not meet his eyes, but he has no such misgivings, which will be clear enough whenever she looks at him instead of the clouds.  "You're here now.  I suppose you might as well stay."

Grace Evans
It's not an overwhelming endorsement of her continued presence, and she kind of shrinks down, scoots over to the very edge of the seat. And while she can feel those eyes bearing down on her, she doesn't really stop looking anywhere else but at him. Her attention shifts to the grass or the trees or the clouds, like she's not paying him any mind, or her mind is elsewhere.

"Glad I can stay. I'm kind of new myself. Not to Denver, but..." she trails off.

Kalen
"Stop.  Cowering."  Kalen says with a roll of his eyes.  Grace probably misses it, with all her focus anywhere but on him.  "First new rule of the day.  No more cowering.  It certainly won't help anything.  And looking everywhere but at me is not going to serve you any better than burying your head in the sand."  He considers her a few seconds, and then, at least seemingly out of nowhere asks, "Do you like blackberries?"

Grace Evans
"Cowering? I... huh," she says, considering a leaf fluttering in the light breeze. "I was just trying to make you feel better about my being here. And I love blackberries..."

She looked over at him, then, those eyes which others have described as 'amazing' reflecting the shifting sky. "You don't like people much do you?"

Kalen
"By attempting to compress yourself into nothingness?  It's certainly an interesting avenue of approach, kit, I'll grant you that." There is a faint smile when Grace says that she loves blackberries.  Or possibly when she looks back at him.  It's difficult to be sure which of those things earned her the smile.  "Not immediately, no.  Eventually, a handful of them."

Whatever prompted him to ask about blackberries remains unclear.  He certainly doesn't produce anything blackberry flavored.  He doesn't suggest wandering off for smoothies or going blackberry picking.  But he seems already done with that.  Perhaps it was a distraction?  Hard to say.

Grace Evans
"You know, blackberries aren't actually berries. They're drupes. Kind of like how tomatoes aren't actually vegetables. Strange how the things that come to mind when one thinks of 'berries' aren't," she says, without any hint of a reason for saying that. Like she just though of it, and plop! Out of the mouth.

"So, ah, where are you from?" she asks, her eyes seeming to want to jet off somewhere else, if not for his earlier admonishment. And then they do, and she stares a hole into a tree trunk instead of his face.

Kalen
Kalen's eyebrows twitch just fractionally inward toward each other.  "Blackberries are what, now?"  Apparently, he did not know that.  And now he's curious.

He shrugs in response to the second question and watches a single windblown leaf make a lazy spiral and sighs.  "I'm not from anywhere, these days."

Grace Evans
"Drupes. Well, lots and lots of drupes. Aggregate. More akin to peaches than to blueberries. But tomatoes, they're berries. Oh, botany! Taxonomically weird..."

"I'm from Phoenix. Originally. Stupid place. Yes, lets all go live in the desert so you have to truck water in. Sounds perfect," she says, all sarcastic. "I like the name though. It's a good name to be from."

Kalen
"I see."  And he probably did follow the basic gist of that, even if Grace didn't directly explain drupes.  Clearly they are little fruit sacs with one seed.  Perhaps he should test this theory out.  "Like...pomegranates?"

"They truck all kinds of things here," he says in response to her critique of Phoenix.  "I always liked it out there."

Grace Evans
"Huh. I don't know what a pomegranate is," she says. And then, she rummages around in her laptop bag, pulling out her phone, and tapping intently on the screen for a few seconds. She grins at the thing before stating, "They're berries! Haha!"

"Phoenix is... I don't know. Maybe I just don't like it because it's where I'm from? It's probably safer than here, though."

Kalen
"Of course they would be."  He frowns.  What do these patterns tell him?  One sac and one seed, clumped into a larger skin, berry.  One sac and one seed, clumped up together or no, drupe.  "Mangoes?"  He tries after a few seconds to consider.

He seems surprised by the assertion that it is safer here than in Phoenix.  "Safer?"

Grace Evans
"Well, I didn't have my eyes open back then. Guess I don't really know. But here?" She looks around, for people, for interlopers. Most of them gone for the long weekend, most of them on their way to somewhere else other than a picnic table off the beaten track a ways.

"There's been some like... Dawn of the Dead incidents. Dogs especially, but people too. They are not rabid like the news says." She cringes a bit at that.

"I told you. Interesting times. So now you know the quarter of it."

Kalen
"I may have had a singular experience.  And, technically, that wasn't Phoenix.  That city may be a bastion of safety yet.  I haven't been back to Arizona for awhile."

His eyes widen slightly, more curiosity than alarm, at the mention of zombies, and his voice drops a little in volume, but they're not really in earshot of anyone anyway.  "Well, I'll try not to leave the shotgun at home next time."  He sighs.  "Why can I never have these problems in the winter? In winter it's all snowmen.  Possessed snowmen that reform themselves and could care less about gunfire."  He shakes his head a little.  "At least they had the decency to hate fire.  Though, in the end, most things do."

Grace Evans
Her eyebrow raises, and she does look at him when he talks about possessed snowmen who fear fire. "Like Frosty's Revenge?"

She kicked at the table absentmindedly, without really noticing that it would be essentially kicking his seat.
"Anyway, I think there might be some Umbrella Corporation involvement in this one too. I know of a bio-lab in the area. They're capable of it at least. And now you know the half of it."

Kalen
"While I've never had the questionable privilege of seeing a movie by that name, I'm going to pronounce that likely correct in at least the broader context."

The kicking at the table doesn't really catch his attention, but new information does, though the reference to Umbrella Corporation as opposed to an umbrella corporation seems to slip right past him.  "Do you know their name?"

Grace Evans
"I think.. I don't know, they're being all secret. I don't think they're even running under an assumed name. But you know, the techs. Just, Them."

She sighs, looks up at the sky again. And this time, it really does look like rain. The summer's drought has only occasionally brought relief, and though today was only listed as having the slimmest of chances...

"Do you think it will rain?" she asks, seemingly wanting to change the subject. It frightens her.

Kalen
"That is only so much to work with, still, it is something.  If I give you an address, can you drop off what you have?"

For a moment, Kalen studies the sky.  "I do believe it may."  There is a pause before he looks back at Grace.  "Don't be afraid, kit.  Life is too short.  And too precious."

Grace Evans
"I can. I don't have much though, I'm afraid. Just a warning. Stay away from strange dogs, and don't think Denver is so quiet. It's not."

She maintains her sky-study, watching. "I just... I can't stay at home. I have work to do. Life goes on. But truth be told, I don't know what I'd do if I came face to face with a... dog or whatever other than run. Hope it goes after someone else. Gah, that's a horrible thing to say..."

Kalen
"I may be able to help you with that; though, regrettably, not so well as I once may have."  He sighs and rubs absently at his leg.  Perhaps because he's thinking about it now. Perhaps because it will rain.  "At the very least, I can still teach you to shoot."

He looks around to be sure that they are out of earshot and offers Grace more helpful advice, though it probably is not going to calm Grace's nerves even a little.  "If you do enough damage to the joints, you'll immobilize most most things with a physical form.  For some of them, that will be enough; whatever you will have to do to destroy or unsummon or unName a monster, you immobilize it and there is only so much it can do if it relies on its physical form.  Unless your so-called rabid dogs are psychic, that should still help you.  Failing that, fire.  Sacred fire, if you can get your hands on it or conjure it."

Grace Evans
Grace listens, but part of what he says just turns her face to confusion. A couple months ago, she would have run away from someone talking like he is now. She talks about the zombies, but she's never seen one. She thinks of them in scientific terms because that's how she understands the world. Unsummoning, unnaming, relying on physical forms, conjuring sacred fire... She's beginning to come to terms with the fact that such things exist. Beginning.

"I don't have a gun. Maybe I should get one. I always thought they were more dangerous to have than not. Maybe not anymore, heh." she scratches the back of her head.

"Thanks for the offer. I might take you up on that."

Kalen
"You can, if you like, try one of mine before you decide.  I'm partial to them, but not everyone is.  I can help you find one, if you wish.  There are other ways to hurt things, but those I largely will prove unable to assist you with.  Some because I have no proper understanding of them, and others because I no longer have the ability to demonstrate for you.  A few because even if I could teach you somehow, I fear this would long be over before you'd have the chance to grasp them."

Grace Evans
A strange man she's just met on the road at school, offering to take her off and teach her how to shoot his guns -- this doesn't sound like a bad idea at all! But no, she finds herself seriously considering it regardless. Something about seeing what they did to Pan -- a guy like that. The man radiated power, and the dogs rearranged his insides.

"Well, maybe if I could bring someone else? I mean it's not that I don't trust you, it's just... I just met you. So, ah, maybe that does mean that I don't trust you," and her eyes swing up to the sky again.

Kalen
Kalen laughs at that, not bitter, not angry, but honestly amused.  "Kit, if you trusted me already, I might be a little concerned.  You can bring someone, if it makes you less concerned I'm going to kill you.  Granted, it would have been easier earlier in this conversation because you look at me more now, and that would tend to make it more difficult."  That, judging by the slightly softer and slightly warmer tone, probably passes for a joke, possibly even affection from Kalen.

Grace Evans
She looks at him with a half-amused, half-confused demeanor, as if to say 'that was a joke, right?'
"My name's Grace. You can still call me kit if you like. Just, you know, it's my name."

Kalen
That gets another, slightly more subdued laugh, and Kalen extends a hand.  "I have...a fair number of names.  Perhaps, one day, I will give you a more proper introduction.  But, for now, Kalen.""You study here?"  He asks after a second, glancing around the campus with renewed interest.

Grace Evans
Uuuugh, the hand. The world's least understandable custom. Well, okay, there are others that are even worse, but this one is continually done to Grace, and therefore hated. She looks at his hand like she's trying to figure out which of her own hands to present, puts on a fake smile, and awkwardly grabs at his hand.

And that, over with... "Kalen. Hi. Nice to meet you. And I do study here. Grad student, for now. Hoping to stay that way."

Kalen
"I could imagine it may be difficult.  You like it here then?"

Grace Evans
She looks down at the ground a bit at the 'it may be difficult'. Well, yes. She's wondered lately just how long she can make this last.

"I did, like it. It's not Phoenix," she says, as if that explains everything. "I don't know if there is a safe place anymore though, you know? If I were to go somewhere else, I just wouldn't know what the dangers are."

Kalen
"Well, the second new rule of today is, if avoiding danger then stay away from me.  I attract all kinds of dangerous things."  He considers for a moment.  "There are safer places.  And ways to make places safer.  Nothing is inviolate, not if you have determined enough and persistent enough enemies; nut, with reasonable precautions, you can be as safe as you could expect to be.  And, though I know it doesn't feel like it right now, the world is no more dangerous now, you just know more about those dangers.  You can prepare for them now, arm yourself against them.  Trading sound sleep for better odds is...still better odds, no?"

Grace Evans
"That's a good way to think about it, I suppose. I just know more now. Ignorance never saved anybody anything but a bit of fear. It's why I try to tell people what I know at least. Usually people tell me something in return."

She smiles up at the sky. "Why do you keep giving me rules?"

Kalen
"I don't have much else to do with my day.  And I'd offer you something more specific to your problems in return, but I've been in Denver not even a week.  I'm afraid it takes even me slightly longer than that to establish much of a baseline for specific information."  He smiles, faintly but definitely joking all the same.  "Next week, potentially the outlook is hazy.  But within about a month, we should be on."

Grace Evans
"Mmm. About a month. I've been Awake about two," she says, just out of the blue, like. "So I don't know what you mean sometimes, man. But I'm trying."

The sky curls above them, clouds acting like they want to rain but won't. Maybe the air is too dry, maybe the day too hot. The transplanted, regular, orderly trees feel it, and they reach out in the breeze. Grace watches them, curious.

"I'll have to drop in on you in a month, then, eh?"

Kalen
He blinks at her.  "Well, fuck."  He says, and it's the least affected, most sincere statement she's gotten from him all this time.  "If you like, you could drop in sooner.  I still don't know where I live yet, but that shouldn't be much longer.  Certainly not a month."

"When you do, and you may of course bring a friend if you like, I will tell you more about who I am.  Contextually speaking.  Affiliations and what they mean.  Et cetera."

Grace Evans
Yes, she has apparently been a very busy girl in this time, to learn what she's learned, to become so aware of what's going on. But she doesn't know where the sudden sincerity comes from, and quirks her head at him.

"There you go with the things I don't understand again. But okay. And prepare to learn how to shoot?" She looks a bit pleased, like maybe being curious about this guy wasn't a bad idea after all. He was going to teach her stuff. Yeah.

Kalen
Hermetics love knowledge, and Kalen is no exception.  He might not put that on display all the time, but when he has a chance to learn things or teach things, it does show.  Even with him.

"So long as I have somewhere to teach you by then, yes.  There is really only so much preparation.  And, while I can certainly teach you the basics, I actually only began learning a few years ago.  I'm not a bad shot, but I'm far from an expert."  He smiles a little, deliberately this time so it's not so understated.  "And you will understand more after we have a chance to properly talk.  I know you don't now, but I will explain."

Grace Evans
Ahh, vagueness. The crazy vagueness. But then again, they are outside, in semi-public. And she hates that, how they have to hide to say anything.

"You want to go... get some coffee? I was headed that direction when I ran into you. Looks like it might decide to..." and she feels the drop on her arm. The sky has managed at last. "Hah, you see?" she lifts up her arm so as to display the raindrop. "Oh, I should get out of here before my stuff gets all wet."

Kalen
If he'd been alone, he probably would have stayed out in the rain, but half of the point of being in Denver is not being alone.  Of not running.  And so....

"In which case, you should run.  I will catch up to you, the rain won't bother me at all.  Where is the coffee?"  He slides a little stiffly off the table and onto his feet and waits for directions, eyes tracking the first few visible drops of rain toward the ground with a smile.

Grace Evans
"Coffee is, ah..." she looks around for the place to point him, "See the building over there with the white roof? Behind the one just up ahead? It's got a little cafe next to a bookstore inside. Can't miss it if you follow the signs."

The raindrops are large, summery, hot things, but they cool the air. Slightly increasing in number, but then, this is Denver and they could be gone just as soon as they appear. The mountains do strange things to the air here. And she walks fast, ahead of the man with the cane, as if trying to step between them.

They won't be able to talk freely in the coffee shop, which is a shame, but perhaps they can be vague. Perhaps they can talk about Arizona. Perhaps she can just refill the gaping caffeine-shaped hole in her life and get back to work. It's all pretty much the same. But to meet another on the road, with information to share, with stories and promises... It's already been a good day.