Surprise Party

Elijah
[I swear to god, Elijah, if you botch this we are done professionally]

Dice: 4 d10 TN7 (4, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )

Kalen Holliday
[How awake are we?]

Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 9) ( success x 1 )

Serafíne
So see it is some night it is some weekend night but the week doesn't mean a goddamned thing to Sera, not the rhythm of it, and the week doesn't mean a goddamned thing to most of Sera's friends, not the way it does to Working Professionals, because they all got degrees in art or pottery or philosophy or film and are therefore now stringing together a living bartending or working in the food industry and waitressing on the side and putting together the odd event or three and Sera has perfect timing and Perfect Time and she does not know precisely when it is right not, because she has chosen to be ignorant of such minor details.

There is a bouncy castle in the backyard of the three-story blond-brick building on Corona Street and an extraordinary mass of people spilling out of every goddamned entrance and exit of the building, proper.  Strings of lanterns and Edison lights everyplace and there's a stage wedged in somehow and sometimes there is a band.

Drinks of every sort (try the pitchers of Elderflower Collinses - gin and elderflower liqueuer and blueberries and rosemary and lime juice) and slightly more mind-altering substances always at hand.  Sera is on the front porch, perched on one of the wide bannisters framing the steps coming up from the front garden and she has something colorful in a martini glass in one hand and an ice cream cone (a cake cone) in the other and she is in the middle of a very emphatic story about Vincent Van Gogh but she is sometimes getting it mixed up with a story about the time she forgot whether the mushrooms in her fridge were shitakes or psilocybins and didn't know whether to make tea or pizza with them.

Serafíne
(Perception + Awareness because everyone else is rolling stuff!)

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8) ( success x 3 )

Elijah
"Who's Sera?" Jenn asked as she parked the civic.

Someone had to be responsible tonight and it would seem that it would fall on the tiny tattoo artist to be the one who made sure that Elijah woke up in time to be dragged lovingly home by his diminutive room mate. She was excited, there was something palpable about it that mixed well with the unrest that Elijah brought with him.

"Sera is pretty much made of amazingness," Elijah replied as he got out. He'd acquired vodka and he'd acquired brownies, mostly because he'd acquired Jenn and she had procured brownies with enough pot in them to make sure a rhino was stoned. Jenn might not have drank terribly much, but when it came to thinks with herbs, the little woman who smelled faintly of dirt and rosemary was a connoisseur.

"Who's the party for?" she asked.

"I have no idea," Elijah informed her, "but whoever he is? He's probably going to be trashed by the time the night's over."

It was up the steps with them, Elijah dressed as he usually is (like the missing fifty third member of Mumfort and Sons) and Jenn wearing a pair of shorts that showed off the irises on her thigh and a shirt that hung off one shoulder. The top of a very familiar unicorn peeking down, though the red bull was nowhere to be found.

It was up the steps with them, and Sera got a wave hi, not wanting to interrupt her story.

Richard
There's a big leather sofa on the lawn.  There's no real explanation for this: it simply is.  Maybe someone brought it.  Maybe someone dragged it from inside.  Maybe it fell out of the sky.  It's a pretty nice sofa, though, not rained-on yet, and right now it is occupied by a dreadlocked white girl who looks like she believes in granola and quinoa and free love and legalized MDMA, a college kid who's asleep, and a very tall ex-olympian who is smoking a toke meditatively, ruminatively, while the dreadlocked white girl lays her head in his and holds her hands up against the sky to see their shape.

Richard is listening to Serafine, even though she's a good ten or fifteen feet away.  Most people are listening to Serafine, because most people know Serafine, and those who don't know of her, and those who don't know, at least, that she's the ringmaster of this nonstop party.  Elijah passes by.  Richard nods at him, nods in that sort of slowed-down stately way of people who have partaken.  Granola girl waves.  Sleeping boy sleeps.

Serafíne
The bass is thumping from somewhere inside.  Early enough that they don't have to turn it down quite yet, and maybe they won't turn it down later, either.  Maybe someone will breathe a spell and wrap the house in a bubble that dampens the soundwaves so that Sera can have the music as fucking loud as she fucking wants without getting arrested for public  - for whatever the fuck she might get arrested for.

"And then - "

Sera is swaying.  The world is spinning.  The world always spins.  The world spins on the strangest of axes and Sera feels like they are all pierced through her body, and Hello!

Elijah does not want to interrupt her story; Sera does not remember any longer what the story was about.  She is Greeting People and flings open her loving arms and wraps them around Elijah (hands still full - drink in one, ice cream in the other) and inhales him and does the same for Jenn, whom she has never met, as if they were old, old friends.  The oldest of friends.  The sort of friends who might be more-than-friends.

Boundaries, Sera.

Other people have them.

Elijah has a gift in hand and Sera has a drink!  she gives Elijah the drink and Jenn the ice cream cone and takes the brownies and turns around and hands them to Dan, who is of course close to her, to take inside.

Then she takes back the drink (it is her fucking drink) but not the ice cream cone and, her voice a slurry of intoxicants, tells Elijah and Jenn that there's drinks inside.

And everything else they could ask for.

They should come find her once they are well-provisioned.

--

The story does not resume.  She's forgotten it, or perhaps that last bit before Elijah arrived was actually the end, or maybe she has just now noticed the leather couch in the front yard.

She has just now noticed the leather couch in the front yard.

And, still swaying, she totters over to investigate.  The first thing she does when she gets there is to lean over the back of the couch and clasp hands with the stoned granola girl.

Kalen Holliday
Kalen looks like he should be sleeping. Of course, he looks that way a lot.  He's dressed for a party, which means fitted jeans and a very, very soft moss green tee-shirt.  Normally there would be weapons - there are not.  Normally there would not be glitter or the lingering remains of a temporary tattoo of a butterfly on his face - there are.  He's been other places today already.  He hasn't bothered trying to get off the heart someone drew in red Sharpie on the underside of his left wrist.

He notes the couch, and then that Serafine and Richard are over there, and he wanders that way.  He smiles for Sera, and that smile is a bit tired but brilliant, because Sera.  He smiles for Richard who he recognizes but doesn't really know.  He even smiles for the girl, because why the hell not?

"Hey," he says quietly.

Richard
"Heyyy," Richard says, sleepy-stately-pleased, as suddenly both Kalen and Serafine manifest in his immediacy.  He reaches up as well, quirky-grinning, tweaking the ends of Sera's hair gently as she reaches over to clasp hands with his granola-girl friend.  Which is not the same thing as a granola girlfriend, not at all.

"Which mushroom was supposed to be pizza?" he wants to know, then.  Because he's honestly not too sure.  Shiitake tea sounds pretty gross, but then: psilocybin pizza sounds pretty awesome.

Elijah
Richard got a wave and a grin, enough that it made Jenn's attention flicker to the random leather sofa outside, but it was off to be inside with them.

There were hugs to be had. Other people have boundaries. Elijah, it would seem, was not one of them, because he gave Sera a hug like he hadn't seen her in an eternity because it could have been, or he could have seen her yesterday. It could have very well been both, but comfortable. He smells clean, and a little like whatever fabric softener he used, because the man used fabric softener. Fuck wearing scratchy clothes.

Jenn doesn't seem to know what to do at first, but it lasts for all of a second, because Sera is freaking gorgeous and she smells nice, so she is more than content to hug the woman before sauntering on along inside with Elijah.

---

"Oh my god,was that Beth on the couch?" Jenn asked.

"Who's Beth?"

"Beth, you know. Beth." Jenn gave Elijah a knowing look. Elijah didn't place her. "The Beth I kicked you out of the house for last week?"

"Still not ringing any bells."

"Augh, Elijah."

"I don't keep track of your people-" he said while he poured himself a drink. Eldersomething Collins. He didn't know, but it was delicious. It was to chase down something with a dolphin on it. Jenn took a sip of his drink before getting a grown up vanilla Dr. Pepper.

"That sounds so racist," she replied with a laugh, "I can't believe you just you peopled me."

"I did not just you people you."

---

And it was back outside with them.

"Kalen!" Elijah called out, and it was off with the two of them to go be sociable animals.

Serafíne
"Kalen," Sera greets the Hermetic, please wrapped around the thread of her voice.  She's standing behind the couch, leaning into it with a hip-centered sway, her torso cantilevered forward over the back of the couch to clasp the girl's hand with her left.  The right holds the drink and even in her state of polypharmacological intoxication, she is not so far gone yet that she neglects to hold it upright.

it is a delicious drink.

"Do you know Richard?  He's a fucking giant," and Sera means that literally.  Though right now he's sleepy-stately-pleased on a leather couch in her front yard and she's leaning over it from behind which makes her taller!  for the moment!  and Sera is aware of that in the same way the granola girl friend in Richard's lap is aware of the sky and the hum of the party from the house and the drifting, secondary impressions of traffic from some thoroughfare a few blocks away, and that peripheral awareness gives her a kind of pleasure as she looks down at Richard and the granola girl, then up at Kalen and the remnants of his temporary tattoo and she wants to reach out and touch them because except she has two hands and both are occupied just at the moment.

Richard Kalen, Kalen Richard.

"Neither," Sera tells Richard, without skipping a beat.  Her swimming attention drawn back to him when his hand skims her hair as it spirals and sways.  Something about gravity or - fuck.  Just another one of those laws meant to be broken.  "There were black fucking truffles for the pizza."

Then, to Kalen, with a kind of surprised pleasure, as she if she had just noticed him (again) standing right there - "did you get your face painted?"  And, more generally.  "FUCK.  We should've had face painting."

Kalen Holliday
Kalen laughs in response to Sera's question.  "Temporary tattoo.  I was in a tolerant mood.  Also, I thought it would be less stubborn about coming off and she was very amused.  I think she was disappointed I wasn't dressing up like I used to for parties, because then so much more glitter."  There is something warm under the tone, but it vanishes quickly into a very good impression of being serious.

"There may have been the wanton destruction of glitter trees, back in my youth."

He lifts a hand to wave to Elijah and nods a little.  "And I have met Richard, briefly.  Next time I come to these parties I will try to remember facepaint.  I'm certain it will end in stories, if nothing else."

Richard
"We have indeed met," Richard agrees, "and it was indeed brief.  But I veto the facepaint."  While he speaks, granola girl reaches up and borrows his joint.  Richard doesn't mind.  Emptyhanded now, he links his fingers behind his head, leaning back to look up at Serafine-looking-down.  They are antiparallel to one another, upside-down in both their worlds.

"Do you like the couch?" he wants to know.  "Clara bought it on craigslist.  The guy selling it offered to deliver, so she had it delivered here.  For now."

Clara -- granola-girl -- waves with her fingers.  And blows out a smoke-ring.

"I think the guy's playing mariokart inside now," Richard adds.

Elijah
Jenn's eyes widen at the mention of Mario Kart-

"I. Love. MarioKart- Elijah? Elijah, I'm ditching you to play MarioKart with a guy who delivered a couch," which was about when she kissed him on the forehead and sauntered off inside.



Which, given that Elijah was in the middle of drinking something, he couldn't really protest that his room mate was running away to go play MarioKart with people and go enjoy herself, because, well, this was a party. parties were meant to be enjoyed. Elijah just grinned.

"This is a fucking amazing couch," Elijah said as he plopped down in the grass, "and Kalen? I'd intended on introducing you to Jenn, because Jenn's like oh my gawd, who is Kalen, but then Richard said MarioKart and now my room mate has left me to fend for myself."

Serafíne
"I think you would look," Sera to Richard.  She's smiling.  She's inhaling.  She's looking down at Clara and sort-of-waving back at her, wiggling fingers, all finger wiggles and she wants to ask Clara if she can touch her again but she holds that question inside her with a million other mysteries.  " - fucking amazing with facepaint.  Hi Clara.  The couch is brilliant.  I think it looks just right, too.

"Like it's floating here.  Like it's a boat you sailed up the street.  Or like a fucking spaceship and you just appear and disappear like that dude on the BBC who rides around in a - what the fuck is it.  Dee watches that show all the time.  A fucking phone booth or some shit.

"Like in London."  Breathed out, all together, before she breathes in again, not remembering that one follows the next, inexorable and certain.  "Have you ever been to London?  I don't think Kalen has, because there aren't any goddamned glitter trees there."

Richard
"That's exactly why I vetoed it," Richard deadpans, "I'd look so amazing it wouldn't be fair."

Serafíne
"Fair point.  There'd be a run on magic fucking beans."  Sera tosses back to Richard.  Without explication.  Who knows how her mind works?

Kalen Holliday
Kalen starts laughing and then sprawls over the grass too.  "Yeah.  Best idea ever coming here tonight.

"Anyway, there used to be glitter trees in London but then I went to visit and now they're gone...."

Elijah
"Awww, where is the Lorax when you need him? Someone needs to speak for the fuckin' glitter trees."

Richard
"Fee fi fo fum," Richard replies, grinning.  And granola girl snort-laughs.

"I've never seen that movie.  The Lorax.  Or whatever he's from."

Serafíne
"I don't know why they're talking about glitter trees," Sera is saying to Clara, and she's straightening now, trying to remember how to stand, if only because she would ike to drink a drink of her drink because she has a drink and it is a party and this is the yard and the music has changed inside and the door has swung open and a window has been closed and there is a couple making out at the edge of the porch, where the porch light goes dark and the streetlight does not reach, and there are little violins in the ground or crickets or something and her heart is beating  and beating and beating and -

" - that's so fucking absurd Kalen.  And I know absurdity.  I'm wearing mirrors like glued to my fucking boobs."

Not that anyone can see them.  Because over the mirrors glued to her boobs: a black hoodie.  Zipped.

Kalen Holliday
He doesn't bat an eyelash at the knowledge that there are mirrors glued to her boobs.  "Look.  I can try to be less odd, but that just gets depressing."  He still sounds more amused than anything,

He says nothing about the Lorax.  Whether because he's as clueless as Richard or because he just is unmoved by Dr. Seuss is anyone's guess.

Elijah
"Whaaaat, you've never read the Lorax? It's, like, the world's saddest book written for, well, maybe not the world's saddest book, but it 's really freaking awesome and you need to read it, the end."

This was about the juncture that Elijah found himself really, really interested in the grass under him. Pupils dilating, heart beating steady, and there was a moment of glee because grass. Thank god for blue dolphins

Hawksley Rothschild
Last year he was going to throw a party for himself at his house (it's a mansion, Hawksley, let's be real) but he had to go East instead.  This year he forgets it is his birthday until he receives a text message from Sera, a mass text message inviting him to her house for a secret surprise party at Dee's house.  With a bouncey castle and ironically drug-induced signage and when he read that text he was charmed, and also confused, because surely it's not his b--

"Well fuck me," he'd said, realizing that the 8th was in fact his birthday.  Though he can't be faulted for forgetting, given recent events.

When he got Sera's text message, he'd been standing with his head 3 inches from the double-height ceiling of his library, his feet resting on air.  He's had his mind elsewhere these days.  The pursuit of knowledge never stops.  The pursuit of power doesn't, either.

--

Hawksley is coming late, as you do when it's your own surprise party.  The party is already going on.  Bouncey castle, drugs, drinking, so much music.  But they can feel him, Elijah and Kalen and Richard and Sera can, long before they see him.  There is no sensation of beating wings fanning the air but a lightness to the world, a lifting, as though they can all levitate if they think enough happy thoughts.  Something is soaring over them,

towards them,

coming down Corona Street in a dark car that gleams with flecks like gold, like it's being hit by sunlight even at night.

Serafíne
"I never read the Lorax," Sera is telling Clara-and-Richard-and-Kalen-and-Elijah, and by now she has taken the sip she wanted to take of her drink and then another and she has folded her arms on the back of the couch and is sort of leaning forward and she's short but: couches tend to be shorter and she is also wearing Serious Fucking Heels although they are starting to sink in the grass, " the way it started off was so fucking sad and lonely, that guy and his weird finger-tip full of bullshit and the payment.  I liked the Cat in the Hat."

Of course you did, Sera.

"And you - " to Kalen, "should be as weird as you fucking wanna be - and OH FUCK."

Sera is so happy she actually almost spills the last two drops of her drink.

"Feel that?  He's coming.  It's time to hide.  Okay.  Okay?  Can you," this to Clara and Richard, "hide or do I need to get Dan to bring you an afghan to hide under?  I'm gonna hide behind the couch," all rather stream-of-consciousness, this, while she is trying to text Dan one-handed, which means typing with a single thumb because she is also sipping her drink.  "And then when he comes up we all shout surprise.  See.  Okay."

Sera is briefly quiet, concentrating on texting and then texting is done and she gives in to the sensation of her own glee.  "Elijah and Kalen you have to come hide behind the couch you can't be in front of it.  Afghans would be fucking obvious on the grass."

Sera - wriggles a bit, with pleasure.  She'd stamp her feet but the heel have sunk a half-inch into the ground.  So she's stepping out of them, instead.

"Heeeeeeeee."

Richard
"The Cat in the Hat was the best -- wait.  What?"

People are hiding.  Sera is telling them to hide!  Richard looks mystified: is she for real?  This is a surprise party?  How can it be a surprise when there are bouncy castles and couches and music rolling out every window, door, and crack in the wall of the house,

but he doesn't argue with Sera's logic, which is sort of what you should do: not argue, that is, because it is futile.  "Um," and he kind of slithers down from the seat to hide behind the couch, "okay.  Should we yell surprise?"

Elijah
Oh, fuck! Right! This was a surprise party! Elijah scrambled to his feet, which was not a graceful thing, and made his way over to behind the couch, which was suddenly starting to get crowded and ever so suddenly starting to feel like a wonderful conspiracy and oh my god Richard smelled fantastic- wait, maybe that was Clara that sounded fantastic. Maybe it was Sera who smelled fantastic. Either way, someone smelled really good and his mind was starting to wander and he's just standing like a dork behind the couch before-

Oh, fuck! Right! This was a surprise party!

Elijah crouched, "of course we yell surprise, he's not going to know the party is for him unless we yell surprise."

Kalen Holliday
Kalen's eyes sweep the incredibly obvious party going on, and then, as though it had not registered to him at all, he says, "Indeed.  We will fool no one that way."  

He crawls over to join Sera behind the couch, because fuck standing up to walk like five entire steps, perfectly content to pretend that somehow Hawksley will be surprised.

"Of course, yell surprise," Kalen says, waiting until Hawksley is a little closer.  "On three.  One.  Two.  Three."

Richard
"SURPRISE!!!"

yells Richard.

Serafíne
How can it be a surprise party when she texted the guest of honor and said COME TO A SURPRISE PARTY, but here she is telling them to hide and she is so very excited about hiding and pleased to be hiding and when Richard slides his stoned ass off the couch and hides with her behind the couch she kisses him on the crown of his head (it is the only time in their respective lives that she will be able to reach the crown of his head) -

"That Sera is telling Richard as Elijah scrambles behind the couch in her front garden is what makes it a surprise.  The yelling-of-surprise.  See?  The naming it -"

By now Sera has kicked off her heels and she is ready to jump the fuck up and yell SURPRISE and Dan has even had enough time to corral some of the girls from Dee's roller derby team to come on the porch and take part in the surprise-shouting from behind the supports so their SURPRISE will be not just a handful of hoarse, stoned, drunk voices, but - you know - a chorus of them.

Elijah
Three?

"Surprise!"

Hawksley Rothschild
There are lights and people and so many cars.  There is music and noise and drugs and a couch on the front yard and people scrambling around.  Hawksley, still driving, sees it and smiles.  He sees it and thinks of the same thing that Serafine thought earlier: someone should create a Circle.  Someone, maybe someone with the power to do so, should create a boundary between those noises and the rest of the world.

Hawksley's Porsche slides to a stop across the road, parked at the curb as though it's normal, as though it fits in here, as though he is normal at all.  And he waits a bit, watching for the people on the lawn to hide themselves under afghans and behind couches.  And then he gets out.  And the car's lights blink and the car itself beeps a yes sir when he tells it to be locked, to be secure.

He comes across the black asphalt to the grey concrete and crosses those dark lines into everything colorful and ecstatic, smiling as

SURPRISE!

There are people!  Oh, his stars!  He had no idea!  He throws up his hands, affecting a look of total shock.  He is not surprised by the party but in fact he is a little surprised to see the mages he sees, Kalen and Richard who he has briefly met and Elijah who he can sense but does not know, and they all look... well.  Stoned and high and amused, and then Sera, who looks REALLY FUCKING HAPPY OMFG.  With disco boobs.  And Hawksley is not surprised but he is laughing, his face in a grin, his eyes crinkled at the corners, because he is truly pleased.

And it's hard not to laugh when he's laughing, and it feels like the sun has come up again and it's high noon here, shining down on them.  He has been using magic tonight.  It clings to him like a bright, golden aura that he brings with him across the grass, right to the couch, kneeling on it and reaching for Sera across the back, arms around her waist.  He gives her a kiss between her mirror-covered breasts and smiles up at her,

beatific.

The world hangs for a moment on that look, and then he's up again, he's grinning.  "Is that the giant?  Kalen, how've you been?  Who is this?  DEE!"  Waving to everyone, saying hi.

He is a man who knows how to be the guest of honor.

Kalen Holliday
Kalen is laughing too, from pretty much the second he cues a little surprise chorus from behind their totally not inconspicuous couch.

"Peachy," he says.  And that cannot be a real answer, because that isn't something he would ever actually answer, but he seems actually happy enough.  "Happy birthday."

Serafíne
SURPRISE everyone yells and Sera does that with them.  She pops up right along with them, a fucking foot and change shorter than poor Richard who really had to scrunch to hide behind the couch, and yes she looks so goddamned happy, and her hair is loose and (freshly) blonde and the undercut is freshly shortn and she's a little bit tipsy and a little bit more stoned and a little bit more something else and she is all caught up in the countdown and the compliance and it feels kind of magic to her, like a spell she's never heard the name of, to feel the world open and spinning around her and so many people and the way her heart beats in time with everything happening all around her and the way everything paces itself in time with her heart beats, and she feels swept along, as if she were caught in a rolling tide,

as she pops up behind the couch in a half-zipped hoodie over cut-off denim shorts so short that she had to cut out the pockets because they looked fucking stupid just kind of waving down below the hem so now when she puts her hands in the pockets, she can feel her garter belt.  But she does not have her hands in the cut-out pockets of her cut-offs, she is reaching up to yank down the zipper of her hoodie and reveal disco-boobs!  like, as a present see, so that by the time Hawksley has made it to the totally not inconspicuous couch they are revealed and he can kiss her between her breasts.

Her arms are around his neck and her hands are in his hair and he is smiling up at her and she is smiling down at him and -

oh, it feels like the sun is rising.

Then he's up again, and Sera lets him go and watches his pleasure as he greets everyone with pleasure of her own and she's feeling breathless and chatty and doesn't remember why she took off her heels and is kind of kicking her feet up and it telling both Kalena and Hawksley that, "Dan said I oughtta have a pretense like "Come open my mayo," but I told him that sounded like the shittiest innuendo ever and anyway you'd say tell Dan to open your fucking mayo.

"I bet you weren't expecting us to shout surprise though.  Happy birthday.  You want some molly?"

Elijah
"I have no idea who you are, I'm Elijah," he offers, and he smiles chipper and his pupils are blown out and he's fascinated with the texture of the couch, "happy birthday!"

Hawksley Rothschild
Kalen's peachy makes Hawksley's eyebrows hop, since that doesn't seem like the sort of word Kalen would apply to himself.  Kalen is, after all, a Hermetic.

"You live with a baker who has stronger forearms than I do," this is not true, as anyone who can see his goddamn arms can guess, "and two dudes.  I actually would have told you to have Dee open your mayo.  But I was absolutely expecting you to shout surprise."

He leans over, kissing her cheek.  It is a thank you, that's written all over him, but he doesn't say the words.

"I'll wait," he tells her, and turns to Elijah, to Kalen, grinning.  "Thanks, man," this is to Kalen, and "I'm Hawksley, the birthday boy.  Thanks for coming," to Elijah.  He glances over their heads, between them, spies some of the roller derby-ites and the normals, the plebs, the sleepers, so he adjusts his tone so only those Awakened, who are nearest him in both esteem and proximity can hear, "I'm going to take care of the noise level real quick.  Kalen," who is the only one he assumes has the necessary powers to help him, "want to help a brother out?"

Richard
"It's the giant," Richard, who was smooched atop his head and is now clambering back to his feet dusting grass-blades from his knees, affirms.  Belatedly.  "Happy birthday.  I had no idea, or I would've brought you something."

Which is the truth.  But this also is the truth: he doesn't seem terribly crushed by his own inadvertent lack of manners.  He drops back onto the couch, long limbs akimbo, reaching over to Clara-the-granola-girl to pluck his toke back.

Kalen Holliday
Kalen nods, lets his voice drop as well.  "Sure."  There isn't any hesitation, but there is a pause afterward because he doesn't know how Hawksley Works and almost nothing he does is exactly to a proper Hermetic paradigm.  He slid into Sera's Working as if it were nothing, but he doesn't know Hawksley.

"How?"  There are only so many clues to give here, only so many things that can work with company.  But he waits, watching Hawksley with steady eyes that don't entirely match the smile.

Serafíne
Sera accepts the kiss-on-her-cheek, the thank you with a tilt of her small chin that feels at once both precise and precocious and loving.  Because her eyes close as he bestows it.  Because she savors it, all quietly, lets it wash over her.

Hawksley and Kalen are going to do magic! and Hawksley turns down molly (for now) and Sera closes her palm around the drug and tucks it back into the kangaroo pocket of her hoodie and sits her hot ass back on the spine of the couch and asks Richard, genuinely curious,

"What would you have brought him?"

Grace Evans
Because the word got out, because Grace remembers from last year what the occasion might be, and she knows he likes books, Grace decides to show up (even though it is a party with a massive number of people and it's going to be noisy and crowded and all).

A little Toyota rolls up, getting added to the pile of cars (one of which glitters with sunlight and looks like it costs a hundred Toyotas or more).

Wait a minute... Is that a bouncy castle? Of course, Grace's brain goes immediately to an encryption framework called BouncyCastle, because that's how she rolls, and then it goes to Sera. Of course there would be a bouncy castle.

She steps out of the car carrying an (unwrapped) book. Wrapping paper is wasteful, and it's not like he wouldn't know what it is anyway. Book shaped. Book weight. What else would it be? But there's something else that goes hidden, for now.

Richard
"I don't know," Richard says.  "Something bright and flashy, maybe."  He gives his smoke back to Clara.  "I doubt there's anything I could get him that he needs, but he might like something like that."

Hawksley Rothschild
"I don't need anything," he says, which is true.

His watch cost seven thousand dollars.

There is an anniversary edition 911 across the street in a color that car was not offered in, because he wanted them to make it in that color.

Only Sera has been to his house, and seen how many of Dee's houses could fit inside of it.

No Hawksley: you don't need presents.

Kalen says he will, and this pleases Hawksley, who -- it's true -- does not adhere to most Hermetic paradigms and patterns, who has told at least one Hermetic that they're all -- self included -- assholes, and he drops a kiss on Sera's head this time, about to head off with the other member of the Order.  That's what he's doing, walking towards the side of the house with Kalen, when Grace arrives.  He's telling Kalen, though his voice is pitched not to carry,

"Just a Circle," as though Kalen should know automatically whatever Hawksley means by Circle, "as a boundary between the rest of the neighborhood and the house and grounds.  But then another circle, just inside of it -- maybe a few inches, it's easier the farther the gap is but more noticable, which I'd like to avoid.  Just making a field, see, of soundlessness.  Everyone inside the inner circle can hear everything inside the inner circle, and everyone outside can't.  Keeps the cops from getting called because of the noise level in here.  Granted, we can't hear tornado sirens if they go off, but it's not like we won't get alerts on a million phones anyway."

He's blathering.  "Anyway, to save time I was thinking you could draw the inner circle while I draw the outer circle.  I think your resonance is more attuned to the chaos of the interior, anyway."

He glances back, and that's when they hear him again, brightly: "YO, GRACE!"  He waves.

Kalen Holliday
It is easy enough to draw him off, and considering he needs to hear Hawksley there is nothing uneasy about the fact that they are close.  Or course, he did fucking ruffle Hawksley's hair that one time.  He might have been fine anyway.

Kalen nods to Hawksley, more a lowering of his eyes than any real movement of his head.  He doesn't need there to be circles, but he can make circles.  He takes a breath, closes his eyes, gets ready to draw a circle with nothing but power.

And then it occurs to him Hawksley might want an actual visual circle.  "You don't need it to be chalk or myrr-infused wine or anything?"  He asks softly.  "Just present?"

Serafíne
"It's Grace," Sera, pleased, when Grace is a block or three away because of course Sera can feel Grace and she is happy that Grace is out there ad happy that Grace is here and very, very happy.  She is supplying the name to Richard and to Elijah and to Hawksley and to Kalen, you know, just in case, and she does it as if it were a prophecy, even though it isn't. Sera is just in tune with the world in a way few people ever are.

And Richard is telling her that he doubts he could get Hawksley something he needs and Hawksley is saying that he doesn't need anything at almost the same time and Sera is smiling, and anything ironic about her smile fades to pure and unadulterated pleasure when Hawksley kisses the crown of her head.  She echoes Hawksley to Richard, because he doesn't need anything, and tells Richard, "He likes books.

"And working out.

"And me."

By now she is thoroughly perched on the back of the couch, her legs drawn up, her arms wrapped around them.

"Richard were you a wasp growing up?  Yacht clubs and all that shit?  Or did you just swim.  Did they just throw you in the fucking ocean."

Grace Evans
Hawksley is so exuberant, and he doesn't seem to worry about anything, least of which being the loudness of his voice. It easily carries across the street, and Grace gives him a wave back as she walks the distance up to the front yard with the leather couch and assemblage of mages.

She greets them all with a smile and a wave, and maybe Kalen gets some special warmth at seeing him all covered in face paint and glitter. Somebody's getting out of the office a lot lately. Somebody's trying to get over things. She knows.

Grace has been pretty much stuck to her own end of the office, working. Someone else has other ways of getting over things.

She perches herself upon an arm of the couch, because sitting on it would probably entail sitting on someone, and that's just not cool. To her anyway.

Richard
"Maybe I'll get him a bright, shiny book, then," Richard says, his grin lazy.  Clara reaches up.  That neverending toke smoking between her fingers: Richard parts his lips and she slips it between his teeth like it belongs there.

A moment later he has to take it out of his mouth because he laughs, bright and open and happy: "Oh, god, no.  I wasn't a wasp.  I was a hippie.  My parents moved to Berkeley when I was three.  They might've thrown me into the Bay, I don't know."

Hawksley Rothschild
"Well, it won't get in the way if you want chalk or wine or sacred smoke or seat salt or whatever.  You could piss a circle out but that's a lot of ground to cover and you'd probably run out.  But no: it doesn't need to be physical, concrete; sound is measurable but invisible to the naked -- and sleeping -- eye.  So it makes sense for a circle of this nature to be the same.  But like I said: you won't get in my way if you make a physical one."

Sera is telling truths about him, around the time that Hawksley is noticing Grace and waving.  That he likes books.  He likes working out, which is partly true -- he likes the effects of working out, he likes the effects of books.  He seeks self-perfection.  This is one thing he has in common with the Order of Hermes.  But too many of them neglect the body in favor of the mind, and Hawksley refuses to believe the two are distinct.

And yes.

He also likes Sera.  If the way he smiled at her when he embraced her, kissing her over her heart, was any indication, he is positively devoted.  But Sera knows better.

Sera knows what it takes for him to leave her behind.

--

"Hold up," he says to Kalen, and jogs back across the lawn to Grace, throwing an arm around her and crushing her to his side.  He is firm and warm and he is, simply, the feeling of the sun sinking into your skin on a long day doing nothing but lying on the beach.  "Graaaace," he says.  "Grace with the eyes," which has been his favorite part of her since the moment he met, when she was new and when Sera was fasting and they were all in Mutiny.

He looks at the book, and looks at her.  "Do I have to make grabby hands at you?"

Kalen Holliday
Kalen leans into the side of the house.  He does not go bounding back to the others, but he does lift one hand to wave to Grace.

And he waits.

Serafíne
"Hi Grace," Sera, all lazy affection and mirrored breasts and afterglow as Grace arrives at the couch and perches on the arm.  "Do you know Richard?"

Then: Hawksley.  Hawksley bounding back and Sera stretching her toes like she was bathing in - baking in - the sun, on some beach.  When is is this close she cannot help but watch him, and - well - she does not pursue introductions while Hawksley is hauling in his birthday booty.

"Fuck.  I wish I'd had hippie parents.  I'm from the goddamned Hamptons.  How hippie were your folks, anyway?  Cloth diapers, crystal deodorants?  Fucking yoga?  Jim's into that, man."

Grace Evans
Grace is attacked by a Hawksley, and okay -- she manages it with just a little tension and tries not to look as shocked as she really is. Which, let's face it, she's not at all shocked that Hawksley hugged her.

"Grace with the eyes?" she asks, not really knowing that the man had rated her body parts and placed her eyes at the top.

"You are already making grabby hands at me, man," she says, and hands over the book, which announces itself as a copy of Ancillary Justice.

"It's a story. I brought you that because I thought you might like at least a physical book, and I've already digitized that one. It's about a person who is a former starship made up of many minds linked into one being."

She then reaches into a pocket of her jeans and obtains something else -- a black, nondescript flash drive.

"This contains some more stuff. I put some interesting pieces on this one. So it's encrypted. Password's 'Happy Birthday'."

Grace Evans
[The flash drive has a bunch of Grace-style stuff, her short stories (including one that hasn't been written yet and may never be, now that she's read it before it existed) and also some things which Hawksley might find more intriguing, like the memoirs of a Master of the Celestial Chorus who was imprisoned behind the Avatar Storm, and an encyclopedia of bygone beasts]

Hawksley Rothschild
"Grace with the spectacular eyes," he clarifies for her.  "I never told you this?  I told Sera.  I kept telling her your eyes look like nebulae.  Like galaxies, universes, starry clouds of space... stuff."  A handwave, here.  And then he grabs the Ancillary Justice from her, grinning toothily, taking his arm from her to examine the book with both hands.  Then she hands him a drive!  And 'interesting' which means intriguing.  And,

"That's a horrible password," Hawksley says, cheerfully.  But he's distracted: "You mean you wrote this?"  He waves the book in the air.  "You're a writer?  What the hell, why didn't you tell me!"

He rarely sees her.

He leans over, plants a big comic cartoonish kiss on her cheek.  "You're too kind," but he's already looking at the book again, peering at it, and he's not really a big sci-fi reader but Grace writes books apparently and he is so intrigued he can't contain it.  He looks at her, then across at Richard and Sera and smiles, because he sort of likes the mental image he gives himself of those two fucking, then back to Grace.  "You want to help Kalen and I make a sound-dampening field between the house and the rest of the neighborhood?  I don't know if that sort of thing is your jam, but my style is pretty open, you could probably jump in if you know the basic premise."

By which he means: if she studies Forces.  If she can do things like repel certain kinds of energy.

Hawksley Rothschild
[DLP, rewriting]

Richard
"Protests on Sproul, marches on City Hall.  Pretty sure we had disposable diapers, though."

Richard looks up at Grace.  He keeps quiet on whether or not they've met before; frankly, he isn't sure.  The side effect and downside of meeting a lot of people, making a lot of friends: sometimes you forget.  Sometimes you also call out a name at a supermarket and everyone turns and stares but the person you were trying to call wasn't who you thought it was at all.

Anyway:

"Wait; so what you're saying is, you're actually a wasp."

Hawksley Rothschild
"Grace with the spectacular eyes," he clarifies for her.  "I never told you this?  I told Sera.  I kept telling her your eyes look like nebulae.  Like galaxies, universes, starry clouds of space... stuff."  A handwave, here.  And then he grabs the Ancillary Justice from her, grinning toothily, taking his arm from her to examine the book with both hands.  Then she hands him a drive!  And 'interesting' which means intriguing.  And,

"That's a horrible password," Hawksley says, cheerfully.  "You're too kind," but he's already looking at the book again, peering at it, and he's not really a big sci-fi reader but he is so intrigued he can't contain it.  He looks at her, then across at Richard and Sera and smiles, because he sort of likes the mental image he gives himself of those two fucking, then back to Grace.  "You want to help Kalen and I make a sound-dampening field between the house and the rest of the neighborhood?  I don't know if that sort of thing is your jam, but my style is pretty open, you could probably jump in if you know the basic premise."

By which he means: if she studies Forces.  If she can do things like repel certain kinds of energy.

Serafíne
"Shhhhhhhhhhhhh."

Sera shushes Richard, rather loudly.  Shhhh.  Shhhh.  Shhhh.

"Only Hawsley fucking knows." And she looks at Hawksley because she just said his name and actually catches him looking at her and Richard and she smiles to him and waves a bit and has no idea that he is picturing her and Richard fucking for a split-second there, and her drink is gone.  She wonders where it went.  "And I'm only half a WASP.  My mother was Miss Fucking Argentina, 1988.  That's how she ended up in New York and met my father.  What the fuck is a sproul.  And you don't seem like a hippie.  Maybe because you are so goddamned tall.  Are you going to rebel and become an investment banker?"

Hawksley Rothschild
Hawksley waggles his brows at Richard.  ONLY HE KNOWS.  Also everyone else standing nearby.

Elijah
He'd been really, really fascinated by the texture of the couch at that juncture, by the sound of people's voices and by the world around him and the way the air felt and the way the moon seemed and oh my god clothing is the biggest pain in the ass in the world and-

Hawksley waggles his brows at Richard.

Elijah loses it and cracks up laughing.

Grace Evans
Grace with the spectacular eyes? She doesn't quite know how to react to that. Compliments on her physical self are rare things, and she regards it as one might regard a giant, rainbow-colored caterpillar. Not exactly unwelcome, but not normal either. She smiles, but it's a confused thing. Eyes like a universe. Does she really?

"I can try. Probably. It might work," she says, and shifts the laptop bag off her shoulder. The large (but lightweight) laptop slides out, and she boots it up like it's a thing that everyone does -- set up their laptop in approximately 10 whole seconds.

Kalen Holliday
Kalen does not come back across the distance that separates them, even though Hawksley is lingering.  He stays by the house, watching them.  Watching wandering party guests.  Waiting.

He does not need to think of words while he is waiting.  It is hardly the worst thing.

Richard
"Nah."  Richard, at last, takes the last pull off that everlasting toke of his and bends down to crush it out against the side of his sole.  "Maybe a mathematician.  Maybe a theoretical physicist.  Something nerdy so I can wear tweed jackets and do a post-doc at Berkeley someday.  Maybe.

"And a sproul," he adds, "is the plaza where all the students protest everything ever.  Did your mom watch the world cup?"

Hawksley Rothschild
"Cool," he says, of the laptop.  "You come this way with Kalen and me.  He and I need to actually make the circles because we're cavemen or something.  I'll explain how we're doing this on the way over, but basically --"

and he is helping her carry the thing if she seems to need it, but otherwise it's time to move again, move with Hawksley back to Kalen, and on the way he's explaining how they mean to create the field, and his thinking behind it.  He isn't asking how Kalen will do his part, or how Grace will contribute; he knows they will.  That is all he needs to know.

--

Sera and Richard go on talking about hippies and WASPs, backgrounds, lives.  Elijah is a bit lost right now, so stoned he can't remember he was going to give Hawksley brownies and vodka.  Grace and Kalen and Hawksley are going to make sure that no one ever calls the cops on this party -- at least not due to noise.

This is how it is done: the drawing of circles, with whatever foci Kalen needs for the inner circle, with whatever parameters Grace helps them determine.  His is the storm, his is the chaos and light inside.  He is attuned to such things.  Hers is the gap in between, the sharp boundary of soundlessness, the space between the noise of one sphere and the noise of another; truthfully, Hawksley trusts that solidifying that gap will not tax her.  That's the thing: his expectation of their competence is entire, regardless of tradition, regardless of method.

The outer circle is his.  This is the line where the sounds of the outside world must stop, halting before the gap, just as Kalen is creating a pocket where the sounds of the house and its grounds can live and run amok.  Hawksley takes this one on.  He has to work first: those outside the circle will notice the party suddenly going silent if Kalen performs his magic first, but the sleepers in Sera's house won't notice the lack of sound from the outside world right away.  Still: you have to time these things closely.

Standing in the back yard, in shadows beneath some trees, beside a fence, he touches the sky on the other side of the house, the front of it.  He knows the point where he wants it to begin, opposite the point where he stands.  And his hands meet, thumb to thumb, index to index, a triangle of emptiness in the center. Spreads those hands, sweeping out and close to his face and together again, meeting seamlessly.

It's very simple, for Hawksley.  It is sealed.  He says nothing: no chanting, no Latin, no Enochian.  He has no wand, no external foci at all.  Later on, when it is time to remove the circle -- or even break through Kalen's magic -- he knows the gesture to break the seal and reopen the field.

For a moment, after Kalen is finished, he stands on the outside, watching a party that he cannot hear.  Watching people laugh, unable to hear them.  He smiles.  Then he steps through, experiencing a half-second of profound silence in the gap between circles, and moves into the noise and laughter and music inside.

There are high-fives for both Grace and Kalen.  Then there is booze, and maybe some molly, and he can go in the bouncy castle as much as he wants because it's his birthday.

There is a cake that Dee made.

There is a marijuana-fueled discussion between he and the swimmer about which one of them is taller.  Hawksley keeps cracking up, insisting he's taller, he's taller, he's like, UP IN THE SKY, and Richard is telling him THAT'S JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE STONED and someone says the word 'high' and no one can stop laughing.  Hawksley is fucking crying from laughing so hard.  At one point, later, there is dancing in the living room, furniture pushed out of the way and lights off and so much bass.

There is perhaps a debate about the intrinsic nature of Forces between Kalen and Hawksley over some booze, until they realize they actually agree on a few things and then Hawksley wants to high-five some more.

Maybe they talk about Australia.

Maybe Hawksley tells them -- Grace, Kalen, Sera, Richard, whomever -- that they should just grab a jet and go, y'know, stop talking about it and just go and he's looking for his phone to tell Collins that he wants to go to Australia, but this is not the first time in the middle of the night that Collins has gotten a call like this and Hawksley forgets he's on the phone because someone named Emily -- a Denver Roller Doll who goes by 'Boo Boo Radley' -- is leading him away.  He comes back later, missing his shirt and throwing himself back into the more social debauchery.

The party goes on all night, as you do.  People fall asleep in the bouncy castle and on the floor and on the steps.  Up in her room, Hawksley removes the mirrors on Sera's breasts piece by piece by piece, gently, gently.  He isn't saying anything, but he is also saying thank you for something else about the party with each mirror.  The book Grace gave him is nearby, sitting on a space of Sera's bookshelf that belongs to Hawksley, has belonged to him since his last birthday.  There is a bottle of vodka there as well, but he can't remember who gave it to him.

Some people have gone home.

Hawksley goes home the next day, midafternoon.  But only after he has gone to the front of the house, standing on the sidewalk, holding his hands in a triangle as before and then twisting, sharply, at the thumbs, one hand pointing up and the other down, breaking the seals that have kept the house silenced all night.

--

Roughly a week later, the four other magi who attended the party receive a small card, hand-delivered or mailed or left for them in the chantry, containing a thank-you note for their attendance and an invitation to, at their pleasure, visit with Hawksley at his house.  For lunch, perhaps.  Or tea.  Or what-have-you.

Let no one be deceived: this is Collins's doing, though most of them don't know Collins exists.

Collins thinks Hawksley needs more friends.