Delilah

Delilah
[I feel like these greetings would be more appropriate for Lux/Verna. *g*]

Grace
[Hahahahaha. Poor Verna]

Grace
So it's a great day to get out of the office. For most people, that would be every day. But for Grace, the reason is more personal. She's one of those jealousy-inducing people who truly loves her work. So why is she so happy to be here?

Might be because Adam is there.

If he's going to spend much more time hanging around their place, Grace is going to have to at least try to get along, but for the time being, the lure of pho is a decent enough reason to flee that particular thorn of a person.

And a bowl she has, steaming up her little table by the wall. Like a good girl, she's even put her phone away for the time being in order to eat without risking the poor electronic device's early demise.

The place is mostly empty. It's not lunch time or dinner time, but somewhere in between. Two-ish. It's the middle of the day, when most people are between meals. Grace just eats when her stomach says it's time. Maybe that's why Kalen always says she forgets to eat?

It's the kind of place that tries very hard with very little. Between rent and upkeep and trips to Vietnam to see family and order spices in bulk, the decor suffers a bit. There's some silk orchids in vases on the walls, but also some peeling laminate in the corner. They're using the free version of Pandora as background music, but it's not loud enough to really pay attention to the advertisements. Just your average American dream, really. And at that table near the wall, a nondescript woman (man?) in black and grey (blue?) eats her lunch or dinner or whatever you want to call it, in relative peace.

Delilah
The door opens. Delilah enters. Delilah enters, alone and with an umbrella because the air is full of the presentiment of rain. Delilah, see, is a golden creature, a dawn-thing, hair a blaze of unburnished brightness even back in a braid, posture straight see as if that whole muscle sinew bone flesh body anatomy is poetry physicality is a spare story and a spare story can be made, which is to say she carries herself well, and Delilah is wearing jeans and tall boots and Delilah has on a brown leather jacket and there is something stolid about the Dawn-myth, Dawn-lady, Daybreak-hearted whatever -- young woman. Truly, she just looks so much like somebody'd want her to personify Dawn, see, that it's easy to when one does notice her accept it and define her (stamp her with that name) and that's all. That: not the broad features, airy ethereal delicacy only here and there, stolidity in the brow, whatever, whatever, whatever, whatever, the point is:

Door opens. Young woman comes in, with umbrella. And it's Aurora, Eosophoros, some other scrap of gold-story light-ritual, coming into the pho place, because gosh darn it sometimes one just wants pho.

Delilah breathes deep, approaches the host desk and follows a young asian woman with thick middling brown hair red glints in it to a table, sets the umbrella against her chair, looks around because she is in a new place! curiosity! settles her bag down, too, and smiles up at the waitress her eyes open see her gaze direct when she does it and here is the menu and now

Here is Delilah and here is a menu and

[here is an awareness roll, because who knows what evil might happen, mwahaha. -2 for Grace's Arcane.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (3, 10, 10) ( success x 2 )

Grace
[Awareness too! Does Grace notice the dawn coming to rest upon Pho-nomenal?]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )

Grace
[Apparently, we're all about the 10s today.]

Delilah
[Seriously. We're using them all up before STed scenes, aren't we? D:]

Delilah
Delilah, marked as a myth, sure, but Grace can sense: radiance - that shining-forth, that beginning of luminous threading threading in and out and in and out and

Grace
Grace is in the midst of slurping noodles when Delilah walks in, dragging the sun with her to spite the rain, and it draws the gaze up, despite the fact that the mouth is full.

Not really a 'couth' person, this one.

Also, one trying to pay attention. Who is this?

Delilah
Who is this? Delilah looks around, see, and her gaze does land on Grace. Her gaze was direct when the waitress handed her the menu and her gaze is direct now, look, look, she sees you, she is seeing you, she is seeing you see, anyway, she looks not a touch startled and another touch curious, this careful sort of curiosity, but the carefulness cannot actually conceal the subtle little shift in her expression (open). Is Grace still looking at her? Because if so, their eyes will meet. Delilah alone, pausing with menu open in front of her a screen to look over bambi-lashed bright, that sense of cities walls barriers shifting quaking falling that keen edge keen incisivie strategic perhaps hm?

Grace
"I haven't seen you here before," Grace says, meeting Delilah's gaze with one that doesn't know what the rules are for staring at people. "You're new in town?"

Or perhaps older than Grace to the place. Who knows? Mages migrate sometimes.

Delilah
They will get along famously, at least when it comes to directness. Delilah, she knows one shouldn't stare, but when her attention is taken she gives it and it is difficult to hide it, far-flung from her nature, see. Delilah, she offers Grace a neat little smile, something demure but with a cheschire edge: any moment, it will be sweet mischief.

"Not really. Newish. I've been keeping to myself, mostly, but not out of any inherent unfriendliness, just - you maybe know how it is. Are you, I'd guess, one of the established clique?"

This is a conversation had across space and tables, Delilah rests her chin on the top of the pho menu, the better to talk. The waitress brings water with ice and also some jasmine tea and because of this Delilah has to look at the waitress and thank her because Delilah isn't rude (well). But her attention swings back to Grace. Little scrunch of her nose. The word clique isn't quite right.

Grace
If Delilah had only met Grace a few years earlier, she'd know just how wrong the word 'clique' is. There's Grace, and then about a few light-years away, there's the popular cheerleader archetype.

"Well, maybe? I suppose? I guess it depends on what you mean by that. I mean, we're hardly what you'd call 'established' here. Unless you mean something else entirely. Which, I don't know, maybe you do?"

Her gaze turns to awkward as she realizes she's rambling about, words coming out of her mouth rather haphazardly.

"I'm Grace. Hi."

Delilah
The blonde at the other table is a little cautious, but that demure Valentine mouth and its smile see - she lifts her chin from the edge of the menu and sets it down flat on the table because she isn't reading it anyway and when the waitress does return to ask her what she wants she will come alert and be not stricken with apology or terror or even exactly urgency just alertness just oh no the need to do a thing and then she will pick the first thing her eye falls on just as if she were a fairy tale king gone home after a long long walk. Caution means nothing when one's got a sunbeam flaring beneath their skin, see? It's only a shadow; passing, and Delilah says, leaning on her forearms, "Oh! I've heard about you. I'm Delilah, Lucy's my sister - you've met her? D'you wanna..."

Her eyebrows go up and her head is lowered like a bull's there's a certain bovine sensibility right as if she could have horns and catch the sun in them but no no just frame the sun in them it is just a presentiment of stubborness and here, now, welcome: yes welcome. Welcome with a hesitation, make it over into something delicate.

D'you wanna...

and she nudges out the chair opposite her. Sit is the word she doesn't say because the expression and the nudging of the chair and yes.

Grace
"Lucy... I think I have actually? No wait.... No, yes I have. Once. At that weird place with the chimes! Right, that was at least someone named Lucy. Geez, that was months ago," Grace says, proud of herself for having remembered.

She eyes the room a bit, calculating. She looks at the spread in front of her, the pho and accouterments thereof. Delilah gets a shrug, and then Grace starts the task of moving tables. First the big bowl of soup, then the plate of condiments, then the coffee and water, then the laptop bag which goes everywhere, and she still leaves behind a bit of a mess. Napkins and straw wrappers and a bit of disorder are what's left to show that there once was a person sitting at that table.

Once everything's moved, she slides into the chair opposite Delilah and gives a little joyous smile at being so welcomed.

"Does you sister feel kinda... cold?" she asks, voice low so as not to draw attention.

Hawksley
[awareness!]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 4, 4, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )

Hawksley
There's a chime over the door, or a bell, and it goes off when that door swings open, letting in another blast of the cool-wet air that actually feels like autumn and warns of winter.  But there's less flinching this time when the door opens, less  hesitance at the thought of rain or prophecy of snow, because the man entering the establishment feels like laying on a beach in summertime, south of the equator.  The warmth is drenching, saturating, coating the skin in languid heat.  You think if you dared open your eyes like that, only half-shaded against the sun, you would see something flying overhead, wings outstretched to catch the breeze as well as the rays, but never quite blocking that central, burning light.

His eyes, which are an unrelenting blue, flick over the interior as he is standing there, regal, despite the fact that he's in nothing more elaborate than jeans and a hoodie over a plain white tee.

Granted, his outfit cost as much as some people's rent, and that's before the shoes.  That's definitely before the watch.  It takes a lot of money to look that effortlessly chill.  Let's not even discuss how he gets his hair to look like that.

--

He sees a friend, or someone he considers a friend.  And it's in her direction he walks, unzipping the hoodie as he goes.  He has noticed the woman Grace is sitting with.  There is not a cell in his body that hasn't noticed her.  But it's to Grace he directs his first attention, Grace with Those Eyes.

"Grace!" he bursts, and kicks the edge of a chair lightly with his foot.  "Are you on a date?  If you're not on a date, you should let me sit down."  He grins.

Delilah
Delilah keeps her forearms on the table. The waitress does come by, and it is just as predicted: that sudden alertness, a golden bow drawn - the string humming, just so, see - her attention thinned and readied and here is the strike, this plate right here, this one, #4 special. The waitress leaves, and Delilah sits straight again now that Grace has chosen to come over to her table with her bowl and her laptop and her many things. Does Delilah's sister feel kinda cold?

"Like winter," Delilah confirms, and her gaze is still direct direct not the kind of direct that becomes a staring contest or a bid for intimidation, oh no, just the kind of direct which is honest about how it is wondering, wondering, oh how i wonder what you are. "Or ice cream." Here here here a moment of focused concern: "You're not bothered by that, are,"

Grace! somebody says, because the door has opened and see in swoops this regal-godling raptor a golden man who looks like he's sun-drenched like he's just pretending to be a man like his skin actually belongs to something which flies high and drops sharp and swift and to kill

(or for the joy of it, eh?)

and anyway, Delilah: Delilah is not shy, and there is a tension at the corners of her mouth the beginning of another smile (see, her mouth purses like a kiss, and there is a sense of conspiracy: the most obvious, most non-conspiratorial conspiracy ever to be conspired, because even when she is almost almost sly it is only for the fun of it). Delilah is not sly.

Grace
"I am not on a date, and since when am I in charge of the chairs?" Grace asks, and looks to Delilah. Does she believe herself to be in charge of the chairs? Perhaps so, considering Grace had to be welcomed aboard.

Granted, Grace is never on a date. Never, especially in comparison to certain Denver denizens who seem to pick up a new delightful person every week. Or every day in some cases. But then, they can. They want to.

"And no, Delilah. I am not bothered. I mean, who am I to judge someone based on how they... uh... feel, eh?"

Hawksley
Oh he loves that smile.  He's looking at her for a moment, the purse of her mouth and glint of her eyes, but then back to Grace.  He has no idea whose table it is, only that no one is protesting his presence.  He does so like to pretend that he has manners.

Hawksley drags the chair out with his foot and drops into it, sprawls into it, hearing Delilah's name despite the lack of formal introduction.

"Delilah," he says, wrapping himself around the name as clearly and with as much entitlement as Grace's burst from his lips.  "Hawksley Rothschild," he says, offering a hand.

Delilah
Delilah is in charge of the chairs, but Delilah's charge is a benevolent one, hands-off, from-a-distant, beaming-down-from-above; a pale wash, the sweep of a glance here, touch of a glance there; all are welcome to the chairs as long as there are chairs, and see - she gives Grace a firm little nod, and Delilah's expressions are sparking things, and her answer sparked some stubborn-steadfastness some ease some oh good there is a puzzle piece and this is its place: snick! everything satisfied glint.

"Oh! Cool. I mean, I'm really glad you said that, Grace. I know it might sound weird, but I'll confess to weirdness. Who doesn't like ice cream in winter?" Here is a Hawksley's hand and how strange it is to shake hands with, oh, but it isn't, is it? He's just hawk-headed: the impression overwhelms her when she takes it. Her mouth curves further: conspiracy! "Hi, Hawksley. Delilah Swan."

"Have you both been around for ages and I've just been missing everybody?"

Grace
"I haven't been around for ages. A while, yes. I mean, technically I've been in Denver like five years, but a lot of that was before you'd probably even notice, and now it's even harder to notice me, so...

"Oh man, I am rambling again. I should stop that."

Grace attacks pho with her chopsticks, trying to cut the weirdness by just not talking for a while.

Hawksley
"My god, of course you are," Hawksley says, hearing her name.  He's almost swept up with the desire to lift her hand to his lips, quick and gallant, but he's not that easily overcome, even by his own desire.  There's one more reason he never considered joining the Cultists.  There's only one thing he wants that well and truly captivates his will.

"I don't know about ages.  But I'm always meeting new people.  Delilah, will you join me in ganging up on Grace to tell her that she absolutely should not stop rambling?"

Delilah
"Yes!" Delilah grins, and nothing Delilah does is sidelong: not really, maybe just-beginning, maybe flushing, blushing: that's as sidelong as she gets, coming at a thing from the side, welling up: nothing Delilah does is sidelong, so the grin is not sidelong, it is a broad stroke. "And I bet you get 'my god' all the time," because Delilah, see, she wants to lift his arm and check for feathers, but she does not. Because: the grin; and Grace. Delilah's grin diminishes a touch, because, oh, she wants to be careful, so she says this earnest as a penny as dew on grass as wet on water:

"Truly, ramble away. I myself find myself rambling quite often. Well! Especially around new people, before - you know? You fall into a groove with them, know who you are around them, who they are around you, find that - oh. The point is, ramble away. Especially about yourselves."

Little beat. And: "I like to hear it." Little lift of her shoulders, lean back in her chair, posture: straight again poise poise poise.

Grace
"Mmm. Mmkeh," Grace says, though she's still trying to get those noodles to go down, at least they're not trying to escape her mouth.

"Rambling. What do you want me to ramble on about? Because I can, about almost anything."

True statement, that. And something catches her eye on the side of the table. Oh! Oyster sauce. Yes, let's do that. She goes for it and squeezes a bit into the soup.

"And even if I don't know about a thing, sometimes I will just wing it anyway."

Hawksley
Delilah surely isn't meaning to puff up Hawksley's ego when she says he must get my god all the time.  But she does.  It sparkles down inside him, lights up his viscera.  He smirks.

He is leaning back in his chair; someone comes to see what he wants and he points to a couple of things on the menu and then returns his attention to the two women he sat down with.  "Are you flirting with me?" he says, interrupting the rambling to respond to Delilah's comment about his godhood.

Grace
[afk a bit! brb. Feel free to skip.]

Grace
[back! Continue!]

Delilah
Delilah startles. Not a lot. Just a little: see, it is in the tug of her wide-set oh morning clear gaze musing on Grace's face as if writ there is a perfect topic for rambling to Hawksley and Delilah is, indeed, a flusher, a blusher, rosy-fingered rosy-skinned air and sunlight whether or not she feels as if she should blush. The startle means she: blinks, her brow lowers.

"I didn't notice," she says, and then: that sly presentiment of a smile, Valentine heart of a thing. "Was I? I never flirt."

Be serious, Delilah: but see, the smile snicks up further becomes meditative a little because does she never flirt - she means it when she says it but as she thinks about it as she thinks about it and she looks Hawksley over and as she says it she turns to glass and it is not very true, is it, that she never flirts? Lucy would call her a liar.

"Why don't you ramble about skydiving?" Look between them. Delilah, blushing ol' clear as anything Delilah, is impartial.

Grace
Oh, there's a giggle from Grace. "I think you mean to ask Hawksley to ramble about skydiving don't you? It seems like the thing he'd do. I've never been, but then I did promise to wing it didn't I?"

She sips some coffee, accidentally dainty.

"Hmm. Did you know the first skydivers came before the first airplanes? People were jumping out of hot air balloons. I suppose it's always been this big human desire, to try to fly, to cut free and just go. Personally, I haven't the slightest interest though. I get enough adrenaline on the ground."

Hawksley
"Liar," Hawksley says, scarcely have the words I never flirt left her lips.  "I've seen the way you smile."

As though her smile, itself, is a flirt.  Which it may be.  He lets it go, smirking to himself as skydiving is brought up.  He feels a tug of his ego there, as well: he attributes the thought of falling through the sky to his presence at the table.  Who wouldn't, who can sense him?

"I've actually never gone skydiving," he chimes in, lifting a glass of water as soon as it is set down to sip at it.  "I'm not so entranced with the falling as with the flying."  He stops there, listening to Grace after she's sipped her coffee.  An expression of utter delight casts over his face: HOT AIR BALLOON SKYDIVING.  "Now that I would try," he mentions.  He's grinning.  Of course he's grinning.

And then his phone is ringing, and he is scowling.  He slips it out of his pocket, glancing at it.  It's something razor-thin and sleek, shiny, unmarred by dents or dings or being more than a few weeks old at most.  He frowns as he looks at it, then taps it and puts it away.  "I'm afraid I have to be going."  Taking out his wallet instead, he lays down a twenty on the table.  "Take whatever it is I ordered home, all right?  Sorry,"

he adds,

which Grace, at least, may have to wonder and realize she's probably never heard him say before.  "Delilah, a pleasure," he says, dropping a small card from his wallet next to the cash.  Grace has probably seen one of these before: a simple calling card.  A name, a number, an email address.  All for 'Davie Livingston', who introduces himself as Hawksley Rothschild.  "Grace, always a pleasure," he adds, and then he's moving -- quickly -- for the door, taking out his phone again.  Must be an emergency,

but to have those you have to have responsibilities, and Hawksley has so few.

Hawksley
[thank you for the RP!]

Delilah
Delilah: gives this little shake shake of her head. Did not mean to ask Hawksley to ramble, even if he did put the thought in her head: look at him; it drops your gut out; it makes you hear the slash of air. Delilah looks quite interested intrigued her mouth goes slack for a moment and then and then and then Hawksley is talking, confessing, no, admitting, and she adds, "I'd just like to go," oh, phone ringing: well Delilah ignores it because Delilah is talking, saying to Grace, "up in a hot air balloon. I bet it would be lazy and glorious."

Then Hawksley is taking his leave and putting down a twenty and Delilah, blushing still, pink diminishing, see, more light less pink, well! Delilah is not so flush even if she is flushed as to turn away twenty whole bucks worth of whatever the heck Hawksley ordered (did he order anything yet?), but she says, meaning it, "It's okay." Then laughs: "Back atcha."

And then he's gone, and the waitress comes with special #4 and Delilah looks at it with the same amount of pleasure she'd looked after this idea of hot air ballooning chased by a fleeting moment of hm is this healthy and then and then and then:

"What gets your heart pumping on the ground? Are you a jogger?"

Grace
Grace tilts her head at Delilah. She's been in Denver how long, and she has to ask that question?

"Uhh. Well, no, not necessarily. But more or less, you know, it's the..." Grace scratches her ear, turns her voice down again after a good look around to see who's listening. "More ground-based dangers. Vampires. Demons crawling out of the theater screens. The regular. By the way, stay away from the Black Orchid, it is a feeding ground."

She then takes her chopsticks in either hand and makes it look like she's attempting to be a walrus. If people get that idea, great.

Delilah
Delilah responds to the change in temperature (mood [low]), dawn-haired young woman lowering herself the better to listen and she was once stronger has let herself weaken slightly muscles have lost some definition but when she recalls she is still wearing a jacket and may be dripping the sleeve through things and takes it off there is a line of strength in her wrist, a woman with arms for expressing oneself: the body as expression, understand.

"Oh, I think I see. Just so much danger, so many Hellish events," faint smile on Hellish, not because the idea of Hell is pleasing, but because association connection see; it isn't a pleased smile, only a faint flex of internal acknowledgment, "that you don't have much of a taste for seeking it out?"

"I don't -- "

Pause. Delilah says, "Do you know about the hungry men?"

Delilah
ooc: "for seeking it, um, adrenaline that is, out?" even

Grace
"I know plenty of guys who are occasionally hungry, I don't think that's what you're talking about though, is it?" Grace asks, putting the chopsticks back to their intended use and going after some meat this time.

Apparently Grace is a hungry person as well.

"Do, tell."

Delilah
"Lucy, Elijah, an unnamed woman who feels like 'rebirth and destruction,' were all drawn to this ghost looking for his dog - " Delilah pauses. Earnest: "Stop me if this is familiar."

Grace
"Not familiar at all, and that's weird, because I live like right next door to Elijah. I assume we're talking about the same Elijah..."

Delilah
"He's got a reputation for being a good kisser?"

Grace
Grace blinks. What? Really? Elijah? Well, that's not the reputation she'd pin on him first, but hey, good for him.

"I... would not know. Young, has this kinda... hair?" Grace says, and makes a swooping gesture about her head, because Elijah's hair always looks like it's about to fly away.

Delilah
"I think they're the same," Delilah says. "He lives with somebody named Kalen?"

Brief pause, for confirmation; and see how serious her eyes are now, morning colored, mourning colored? They're gloaming blue, a bat-song spring. Still direct, because Delilah is always direct.

The she says, "So. This guy was looking for his dog. Turns out, four hungry men killed the dog, snap." One less person Lucy will have to explain what she saw to, fresh. That's what Delilah is thinking. Dawn: it is first. Goes out before dusk. Somehow, they've done the opposite in this city so far. "Then they, they got him. I mean they took him in a van. They got his legs. And they ate him, like. They took his heart. Elijah believes the ghost is one of many disappearances happening over the summer, that it's connected to something he and Sera ran into -- right? and Lucy," a pause.

"Lucy is going to find them. I think that's probably everybody's goal, because horror that bad, I think it's hard to leave. Don't you? I don't know. But that's what happened, the hungry men. Maybe it's not really a 'men' thing. Or a 'man' thing, you know. I don't know."

Grace
Oh, this is the perfect conversation to have over dinner/lunch/whatever, isn't it? Grace blanches a bit, eyes widen a touch. She's trying not to let it show.

Well, shit.

"That's really disgusting," Grace says, and the chopsticks drop.

"I'll have to bug Elijah to let everybody else know."

Delilah
"Yes," subdued, that, to the: that's really disgusting. "I'm sorry," and she is. The sorry encompasses their food, steaming; delicious. Devoid of human hearts, at least. Of hungry men, of any ravenning. "The 'feeding ground' thing made me think of it. And it just happened two nights ago. Not the best 'make a new friend' icebreaker, although," see, the beginning of a hopeful lilt of a smile again: not-quite-coy. "Well! 'Don't go here, possible death' is a pretty great friendly gesture, so thanks."

Grace
There are worse things to be eating right now. Worse things on this restaurant's menu even. Bun bo hue, with its cubes of congealed blood, for example. But Grace still gives a pause to her eating in order to digest.

Her mind goes to the description again and again.

"It's okay. I mean, thanks for the warning. That's always appreciated. There's a thing we use, and I'm surprised Elijah hasn't yet? But we share things like this through it. You should give me your number. I'll see about getting you access."

Delilah
"Uh, what is it?" Delilah asks. "Like a magic cabinet?" she brightens; even bright, it's clear she doesn't really truly think the magic cabinet scenario is likely. "Everybody's got a cool cabinet, you turn a key and hey presto, cool note inside? I've always wanted a magic cabinet, and I don't even know what movie from my childhood I should blame for my desire."

Grace
"Kind of. Like a magic... uh..." Phone sex line. "Well, my friend who helped set it up envisioned it like a super secret spy message drop. Open it up and you might find something really interesting. But most of the time, it's just horrific."

There's a little shrug, like 'Sorry, you live in Denver, not Super Happy Fun-Time Land.'

Delilah
Delilah considers. Taps her chopsticks, once, twice, the beginning of a rhythm. Delilah has an excellent ear for rhythm, for one-two-thre one-two-three, and it was never intrinsic: trained. "I get it," and this is still earnest, open. "We warn each other about horror so not everybody has to experience it, and, I guess, well! To stop it, too. The horrible things get more press." Wry. But let that fade: Delilah can only be wry for brief moments; it is natural, but it doesn't stay naturally. "Hey, on a less horrible note, can I ask you about -- well. People? Other people who are cool in Denver? I barely know anybody, you see, and," and. There is an and; this thorn of worry, see, something not quite dark but which underlies the question asked just out of curiosity.

Grace
"And...?" Grace asks, and it's such a hypocritical gesture from the one who constantly trails off in her conversation.

"Of course you can ask about people. Whether or not I answer depends on if the information is private or not. But shoot."

Delilah
"Information isn't private," Delilah says, with a grin - brief-blooming thing: "But people are, true, and I shouldn't want to upset them," the bloom fades as she continues on, see, into earnestness. "And is all. And I want to know about who's out there. Who's out there? Who's trusty? Is it true, the city's mostly full of people who won't like -- harry you on if you don't belong? Granted," academic this. "Nobody's harried yet, but - " here, a shrug; she bites the inside of her lip, finally ends with -- "Ramble?"

Grace
"Just don't go to this one place," Grace says, leaning down over the table. "An Arch Key books? Dude there is... well, he can be a total prick. You might get harried there. But he generally sticks to himself. And I wonder why, right?" Grace rolls her eyes.

"Mostly, though, nobody here really cares what your sign is. Or even if you have one. I thought I was going to get a lot more people breathing down my neck because of what I am, but so far? Everybody's been super nice."

Delilah
The natural response is: "What are you?"

Grace
Grace considers Delilah. She knows Elijah, that's a plus. But then, so does a Technocrat. Delilah has Lucy for a sister, she's helping... Okay. Probably not a threat, this one.

"Virtual Adept," she says, low-toned, but not said as though she's trying to hide something important.

She is, of course, being very careful who hears. The place is almost empty though, so that helps.

Delilah
Virtual Adept. They've got something of a reputation: the Virtual Adepts. Hot new kid on the block. New kid until somebody else joins the Council. Delilah is a knowing one, settled in her own skin, settling in her own skin; but she couldn't recite the history of the Traditions, and what she knows about the Virtual Adepts is gleaned from a smattering of experiences and - oh, who knows. But she accepts this piece of information as if it were a matter of course, though the shape of her there across the table: curiosity. Delilah is finally, finally no longer blushing: banish all pink.

"I don't know why people would breathe down your neck for that, but I am glad to hear that everybody's super nice. I might, um, breathe down your neck for a favor, I guess, if some jerk tried to post naked pictures of me or something, but - oh! and I guess I'd stereotype pretty hard about cool new or unreleased or special video games and you being the one with the potential hook-up."

Grace
Grace makes a face, a kind of nasty, smelled-something-bad look. Jerks posting naked pictures of people without consent? Try to do that here, jerks. Just try it. Grace will find a way to make your life hell, by the look of that scrunched-up nose.

"If somebody pulls some horrible shit like sharing your nude pics, I will definitely get on the case. Nobody does that to people I like and gets away with it."

People she likes, Delilah! You have made it to the list of people Grace Evans likes! Are you not proud?

Delilah
Delilah is already sitting up straight, but she puts her palms together, knuckles curled and kissing, a happy little gesture. Honestly happy, too. Because having somebody in your corner is a good thing, when it comes to the scum scurf of the world, and because: oh, the principle of the thing. Hands go down; chopsticks get taken up again and she gestures with them once.

"Okay then! I will call you in that case, with, I hope, minimal amount of breathing-down-neck." Oh. Hawksley's business card. Delilah remembers it: peels it off the table and flips it over, lofting her eyebrows. "Well, I will if I have your number."

If now is the time to take that down, Delilah will write it.

Grace
"Oh! Right. Numbers, numbers are important," she says, punctuating the air with a finger.

Grace fishes in her laptop bag for a pen. It's got a nubby rubbery end (capacitive, it's a stylus too) and goes for Hawksley's card. The thing is expensive, of course. Everything of Hawksley's is that luxe. And Grace is going to scribble on it.

314-1592 - G

Delilah
[ - and Jess's brain dies. But Delilah totally gives out her number, too. And the rest of the meal is enjoyed, and then they part ways, and it is very free of doom. Yay!]