There's a place next to the Knights of Columbus building on Federal called Pho 96. Considering a lot of the other pho places in town have names like Pho 555 or Pho 79 you might think that this naming scheme refers to how many pho restaurants there were in Denver at the time they opened. It certainly seems like that, on a glance down Federal.
This particular one is now the temporary host of an Awakened individual. You can tell by the way the air seems to shift, and by the sharp edge. Or maybe you can't. Grace's resonance, like every other sense of her, typically goes without notice. Hell, three times so far into her lunch she's had to wave her arms at the waitstaff to get their attention. It can be an annoyance. But then, there are times when going unseen has its advantages.
Inside, neat little black tables go with neat little square chairs. Despite the run-down nature of Federal Boulevard, this place at least tries at respectability. Grace doesn't much care. She just thinks they make good soup -- a soup that she is currently devouring at her table-for-two along the wall. The smell of pho lingers in the air, warm cinnamon and meat.
Arionna de la Babin
It's a place that, hopefully, won't be playing holiday songs, or at least will have the decency to play holiday songs in another language. Really it's for the food that she's here, and a little flier that had been posted on campus some time ago to drum up college business. It doesn't seem to be working, but then Ari considers that a blessing. She likes places that aren't as inhabited as others, places where she can enjoy food, tea, and maybe read a little without hearing the latest campus gossip.
Unlike Grace, Ari is noticeable, though no more than most people except for the general air she gives herself. Were she to dress normally, she'd simply be another attractive young lady; but no, she has to dress in conspicuous clothing.
For her part, Grace is not exactly invisible, and given that they've met, she at least has some inkling who the woman is the moment Ari walks in the door. She pauses. She considers the idea of sitting alone against the idea of sitting with Grace. Not being a particularly social character seems to create problems of its own in her life.
Her dark lips press tight and Ari forces herself to make way over to the table, ignoring the waitstaff, and take a seat across from the rather normal woman. No words. Ari simply sits, sets her purse on the floor and begins to undo her coat.
Grace
There's noodles hanging out of Grace's mouth when she looks up in surprise that someone has just gone and sat at her table. A flash of alarm, there -- who is it -- before she realizes that this is someone she knows.
Someone she knows, and has yet to say hello. She grunts in greeting, before cutting off the hanging noodles with her teeth.
Grace's coat adorns the back of her chair. It's red, and something obviously not bought by her, as the rest of her ensemble isn't nearly as stylish. She wears it because it's warm, but it's something Kalen spent way too much money on for a costume. He probably didn't expect that she'd keep it for near daily use, but here we are. He probably also didn't expect (at the time) that she'd go on a modding spree, but again... The thing sports many black plastic strips, the use of which will (likely) remain hidden for the time being.
Otherwise, she's wearing a grey zipped-up turtleneck jacket and jeans. It's a fairly regular uniform for her.
Arionna de la Babin
A black button up blouse, right to the top of her throat, and tight, in the style of victorian clothing, with a deep red waist cincher. A contrast to the normal Grace. A pendant with three crows or perhaps ravens, rests at her throat. Ari lifts a hand, dark manicured nails glinting in what light there is. "Green tea." Is her simple order as the menu is given to her.
She's never been particularly skilled at talking. It seems so odd to give an obvious greeting when she's already sat down. And then what? How does one proceed after that? "I didn't think you'd mind." Ari says, finally, as if to explain away the fact that she asked nothing of Grace's preferences for company.
"You know slurping noodles is considered polite in asian cultures, typically. Not to slup is an insult."
Grace
"I don't mind," Grace says, mouth still half-full. "And yeah, I know about the slurping. I eat it the way I like to eat it," she says, shrugs. You get the idea that etiquette isn't really a thing she does, considering how fully she flaunts her lack of it for either western or eastern cultures.
"How are you? You going to that party tonight?"
Arionna de la Babin
It's a sentiment she shares in many ways. Cultural ideas, particularly their own, often had very little sense to it. She did find the other cultures interesting in a variety of ways.
"I thought to." She set her menu down and slid it to the end of the table. "Likely be a hippy party." Pressing her elbow on the table and her chin on the top of her hand. "Don't know why I ought to show up, but I suppose I should." If the winter chill that surrounds her could thaw, it might have for that brief moment.
She slipped her eyes away from the table, looking at the restaurant and those in it quietly. "Are you?"
Grace
"Seems like I go to at least a party every year," Grace says, and says it with a kind of cringe. "Parties aren't usually my thing, but you know, if I can get somebody off to themselves it's not so bad. And I trust Kiara not to do something stupid like make me wear an antler hat or something. Kalen on the other hand..."
She shoves her lips to one side, like the iconic gymnast missing out on the gold medal.
"He better not."
Arionna de la Babin
"Ferret? Doesn't strike me as the sort of behavior he exhibits." Her gaze moves back to Grace, brows furrowing at the thought of him insisting someone wear a reindeer hat. "You could always blackmail him with an elf hat. Or a santa hat, and insist everyone sits on his lap." Though the idea of sitting on Kalen's lap for gifts made her cringe a little. "Seems like he'd hate that sort of thing."
"What do you do?"
Grace
"Kalen? He'd love it if everyone sat on his lap," she says, just a comment about the state of the world, without judgement. "It wouldn't be much of a punishment."
She stirs the soup with a chopstick, unsticking some basil leaves. "I do a lot of things. What in particular are you getting at?"
Arionna de la Babin
That confused look only becomes more obvious. "He likes that?" Apparently Ari had been interacting with his twin, or a doppelganger. Or maybe they were a little more alike than she thought. "Profession, I suppose. Daniel is a musician, that I hear. "
"Did you get them anything for the holiday?" Terrible, terrible small talk. But what else was there? And besides, she was trying wasn't she? Failing, of course, and later she might feel a deep sense of regret at even attempting, but she was.
Grace
Grace huffs a little laugh into her pho at the idea of her profession. "Well, that's a little... complicated. As far as anyone official is concerned, I am the co-owner of a small business. Security company. With Kalen. As far as what that really entails, it usually boils down to 'what Denver needs'. In our way, we try to keep Denver secure, if you get my meaning."
She's saying, in a roundabout way, that her profession isn't what it appears to be from the outside. What she does probably can't be spoken about in clear language in public.
"What about you?"
Arionna de la Babin
"I don't. Do the lot of you think yourself defenders of something?" It's an honest question, though Ari had a way of making her curiosity sound a bit...hostile. "What are you keeping it secure from, exactly?" All the others had this odd fear of speaking about themselves openly, a fear she had very little of; she'd always been different.
"I'm a student. Conservation."
Grace
"Generally? Apocalypse," Grace says, smiles like it's a joke. "This place is a hellmouth if you haven't noticed."
Still smiling, she goes in for more pho, dipping into the broth with the large ladel-like spoon. It tastes like summer -- just what one needs in the depths of winter.
"Conservation? Like, preservation of natural resources? That kind of thing?"
Arionna de la Babin
When the waitstaff finally finds its way over, she orders something similar to Grace's, and takes the green tea, lightly blowing on the hot surface. "Cities are always terrible places. Fewer trees, too many people. But not a hellmouth, by any means." With a light sip, she set the tea aside. "I see nothing apocalypse worthy."
"Preservation of nature. The land is not a resource, nor at the animals. If anyone is a resource, humans would be it. So much prey in one area for any number of predators."
Grace
Grace just sips more soup. "Just wait around a while."
Apocalypse happens. It's a fact of Denver.
Her eyes narrow a bit at Ari when she speaks of humans being prey for predators. "Yeah, well... That's all well and good until you're the prey."
Arionna de la Babin
"You assume I've never been. The prey most adaptive will survive. If I am hunted, and I die, then I was a poor candidate. The gods, nature, know what they are doing. The truth of life can be emotionally painful, but it doesn't diminish it. " Though she still considered herself far more of a predator in comparison to the others of her species.
"Why do you defend it?"
Grace
Man, it's like speaking to a child. Why do you defend the world at all? Why not just lay back and let it sort itself out?
"Because I want to live," Grace says, a bit dumbfounded. "Because there are other people who I care about, and I also want them to live. Pretty simple stuff, really. I don't think there are gods out there that know what they're doing. Nature sure doesn't, not any more than a program knows what it's doing. I've personally watched a 'god' learn a thing or two about what it was doing, so I'm fairly certain they're in the same boat as us. The truth of life is what you make it. And you can make it painful if you want to, sure."
Arionna de la Babin
"Your existence isn't bound by your location. You wouldn't vanish if you stepped outside of Denver. Therefore it seems an absurd excuse to use your own life as a reason; you could leave. You could take others with you, by force of necessary. Thus, others lives seem to be a flimsy reason as well, unless you mean all of the Denver population. I have difficulty believing anyone would have a quarter of that kind of love."
"Gods are not perfection. It's a common, and understandable, misconception." She blinked lazily at Grace, finding these people to be curious. They were annoying, frustrating, isolating, but curious. She felt in a good enough mood to indulge in her own curiosity for once. Besides...she was trying.
"They are embodiments. Representations. Essence. The pieces that make up the world. "
Grace
"The kinds of things we've faced in Denver have been world-devouring horrors, and from what I understand it's no different anywhere else. So, location, as always, means exactly jack. But if I'm here, and I'm faced with an end-of-the-world scenario, I'd be lacking in a whole lot of self preservation to just let that go, wouldn't you think? Also, if you're looking for someone with a quarter of that kind of love... I know a few."
Maybe not Grace herself. No, she's not saying she is full of that kind of love toward all humanity, but then...
She lifts some noodles up to her face and slurps.
"And they don't know everything," Grace says, with her mouth full.
Arionna de la Babin
"Self preservation only entails that you protect yourself. If your intent is to keep Denver safe, then you are no longer in self-preservation mode, but are now exhibiting excessive altruism. " She lifted her chin from her hands, sliding a hand into her bag to pull out a small book while they talked. "The norse believed that when the end of the world would come, no amount of effort would save it. The end was inevitable. They would fight until the end despite it, but they never believed their efforts would yield a world that survived. I wonder why it is that humans often feel a need to believe that, should something world-ending occur, that they alone have the power to save it. Seems rather...egotistical."
Grace
"You talk like we haven't already saved the world many times over," Grace says, drinks some more soup with her ladle.
"Happens all the time. All the time. You better thank your lucky underpants there's people out there exhibiting excessive altruism on a daily basis, is all I gotta say about that."
Arionna de la Babin
"You say you have, and yet..."
"I see no evidence to the claim. The world is still terrible. The land continues to be taken, the balance ever shifting away from where it ought to be. Assuming you have done something, you've only delayed it. Delaying death is not saving, necessarily, not if you're saving what is already quite ill. "
She cracked open the book, slipping the pages to where she had left off. "I've never witnessed such altruism, not without a price. I've not been subject to it. I have nothing to thank for what I haven't been given."
Grace
There are such things as complete lost causes, aren't there? Grace just tilts her head to the side, having occasion again to wonder about a member of their little 'community' such as it is. Elijah is afraid of what he is, of the power he might wield. And Arionna sees no point in ever using it except for herself.
Ari's not dying of super-ebola. She's not wholly taken over by invasive plant roots. The universe she lives in has not been consumed by another. That she hasn't seen the many ways in which her life has been spared is really beside the point. That she exists at all is the evidence.
But she wouldn't believe it if Grace told her that. Ari seems so Ayn Rand, doesn't she? Thinks of herself as a lonely superwoman, an island unto herself, refusing to believe that any other human being ever had a hand in keeping her safe. Bet if asked, she'd claim to have spun the fibers for her dress, wove the cloth, and sewed it herself too. So...
To silence we go.
Grace is all about having interesting conversation, but when it's to a brick wall of contradiction? Not so much.
Soup's gotta be eaten, after all.
Arionna de la Babin
Grace wouldn't be the first to wonder, and sometimes Ari even asks herself if she simply prefers it that way. There's security in being that lonely island. It served her well up until this point, and she feels no need to change it.
Silence has never been troubling. Sometimes, though she wouldn't admit it, Ari simply likes the idea that someone is nearby, even if they're not touching or talking to one another (though she's never been overly fond of touching). Sometimes it's just the idea that there is another organism sitting in the room, sharing space.
Her own food comes eventually, and she sets her book aside to eat it. The silence is far more comforting. It's normal.
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