Tenebrous
The Rules
1: I think by now everyone knows that I like to stick to an established posting order. So please only post once per round (unless you have a correction or something that you need to add quickly – that kind of thing is fine.) If I have nothing to add, I’ll tell you to skip me.
2: Try to be efficient when you post. I’m not going to set time limits on this scene, but keep in mind that we’ll need to wrap up at a reasonable hour. (This is less of a concern with just a couple of us, so you know. Don't stress. Just don't get up and go make a sandwich while it's your turn or something.)
3: Keep track of your own tempers (WP, Quint, etc.) and Health levels.
4: There is a high chance of combat in this scene, FYI.
5: As always, if anything in the scene makes you uncomfortable, please let me know.
6: House Rule…
“The Kiss” – Normal VtM rules state that mortals cannot resist the effects of the vampiric kiss (feeding bite) unless they have a WP rating of 9+. I am going to handle things differently for mages. If your mage’s WP is higher than the WP of the vampire biting them and they have reason to be frightened/suspicious of what is happening, then they may roll WP at diff 8 to attempt to shake off the effects. Mind shields will also protect against the effects of the kiss. If your character has an active Mind shield, the vampire must roll their WP at diff 8, with the shield countering 2 successes for each level of strength (so a level 3 mind barrier would remove 6 successes.) If the vampire is potent enough to overcome the shield, the above resistance rules still apply.
Regardless of other factors, if a vampire consumes enough blood to endanger the mage (5 or more blood points,) they may always spend a point of WP to attempt to break free.
7: Have fun! :)
Tenebrous
It was a properly chilly evening that night in Denver. For once, the landscape reflected the season. The air was crisp and cold, and the ground in Washington Park was blanketed with freshly fallen snow. The picture of it was actually quite lovely. Dreamlike and serene. The hour was late enough that most of the park's visitors had gone home. Only a few die-hard night runners could be seen traversing the trails, and they were few and far between. The area around the lake was silent and empty, the water frosted over with a paper-thin layer of ice. A few drifting snowflakes fell through the air, dancing around in the yellow-white glow of the flood-lamps.
Grace
[Awareness = Can we feel a Sera? (or whatever)]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )
Serafíne
Awareness because.
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 5, 5, 7, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 6 )
Serafíne
There is a lake and the shore of the lake is wrapped 'round with snow. There is a bench on the shore of the lake. Ducks, beaks tucked beneath their wings, gliding, huddled on the shore, fluffed up for warmth.
There is a girl seated on the spine of a bench on the shore of the lake. Her footprints wander through the snow. She is drinking a Mexican hot chocolate from one of the nearby coffee shops, spiked with whiskey, and watching the reflection of the moon in the water. Has a bag with some churros in it and periodically picks one out, peels it apart, tosses it to the mallards.
She is: not well dressed for the weather and stopping here like this only magnifies the cold. Spikes and leather on her wrists and hands, more adornments punched through her ears, bright and bristling. The curling fringe of her hair-shorn head, the golden fall of the rest. Just there.
Grace
Grace is sitting on a bench under a tree by the lake, staring into her phone. She's been there for hours now, barely moving from the original cross-legged hunched stance she plonked herself in. The snow has decorated her hair by now, but she doesn't seem to be bothered. After all, she's got her hat, her pretty scarf, her red coat, her jacket, and she doubled up on jeans today just to be sure that the cold wouldn't attack her.
It's a valiant defense, in other words.
But there appears to be something that finally, finally budges in her aside from her fingers, and she perks up. Sera?
A figure feeds the ducks across the way, showing so much skin they're either a local skiing fanatic for whom 20 degrees might as well be summer, or Sera. So Grace waves to her, a big happy thing. Hi there, you.
Tenebrous
Sera and Grace were alone by the lake, apart from the huddled presence of those mallards. As usual, Sera's awareness of the landscape was a wide, expansive thing. Places had their own kind of resonance, subtle though it often was. A taste that lingered on the air. Impressions left by those who'd come before, and by that which was there now. The trees around her slumbered. The park felt... sleepy. Calm.
And then there was Grace. Shifting and Keen and Winged. And Grace - she felt Sera too. Sera with her Visceral, Enthralling, Liminal energy. They were both rather dynamic beings to be so still in this dreaming place.
The solitude wasn't likely to last. Even at night. Even in the cold. This was Denver, after all. And sure enough, not long after Grace spotted Sera (each of them perched on separate benches near the lake) they'd both be able to hear the subtle crunch of approaching footsteps in the snow. See (f they happened to look back) the shadows of two figures walking together, leaning into each other in this sweet, intimate way. A couple, perhaps. A man and a woman. The woman had soft blond hair. The man's was a darker shade. The pair of them kept a reasonable distance from the lake, stopping to lean against a large tree bathed in shadow, whereupon they disappeared from sight. The man gave a soft laugh, and then went quiet.
Serafíne
Sera is - so aware, right now. Her senses are bright and open and widely flung and she cannot help that: the world just seeps itself through the boundaries of her senses, some mechanism like osmosis, not that she knows what the fuck osmosis is, but there you are.
There she is, shivering a little bit, boots on the seat of her bench, her hot little ass on the spine-of-it, and it's not that she doesn't sense Grace, because she absolutely senses Grace, she cannot help but know that that peculiar combination of sensations is: Grace, Grace, Grace,
but she's not looking that direction. She doesn't really see except with her peripheral vision because she's not looking at anything. But movement or something: some shadow of it has her chin rising.
There's no wave back. Just a tip of her coffee cup.
--
Pays no attention to the strange couple behind except for a brief, sharp glance over her right shoulder. The fleeting impression of her profile sharp against the darkness. Unconsciously, she runs her right thumb over the band of a bronze ring she wears on her right index finger.
Strange. Tonight, she doesn't find it soothing.
Grace
Grace tucks her phone into one of the pockets of her coat, and takes to her feet, a little surprised at all the snow that falls off as a result. True, it isn't like a dynamic being to be still, but Grace's mind is an ever moving thing, and what she seeks inside her devices can span the globe in instants.
Of course, right then, she was playing Clash of Clans, but you know. The statement still stands.
It's Sera, the tip of the coffee cup says so, for all her lack of exuberance does not. So Grace starts making fresh prints in the snow over to her. A couple of people going off to kiss under the tree barely even makes it on her radar of things to care about right now.
Serafíne
Sera offers that little tip and then takes a draught of her alcohol laced coffee, feels the warmth spread through her body and somehow - strangely - it makes her feel all the colder. She -
shivers, visibly, physically and some piece of her psyche assumes that it is everything, everything, everything inside her.
Her shoulders hunch forward, bracing against the sensation but then no, no no. It is apart, it is external. She turns - Grace can see her turning, catches a glimpse of her face in the lamplight, which shines, damp cheeks. Maybe it's the snow.
The spark of her magic, then. As she wrenches something apart, inside her heart. Finds it well-nigh as effective as any other pain.
Prime Scan. Dif: 4 -1 (focus)
Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (6, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )
Grace
Grace can feel that -- the way the universe seems to gut itself at Sera's twisting it. She tilts her head to the side, as if to question why, and looks around. But there's nothing, isn't there? Nothing out of the ordinary. Maybe Sera's just being Sera. Something's not quite right about this, about Sera tonight, though.
She walks up at last, leaving a trail that curves around the frozen lake surface (oh, but Kalen would be horrified).
"Hey. What's up? Or down. Whatever."
Tenebrous
[Mysterious dice roll]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 6, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Tenebrous
Sera knew that something was wrong, but couldn't quite parse out precisely what she was sensing. Grace approached her bench and the two converged. What's up? Or down. Whatever.
What's up was... the night was getting darker. Or at least, it seemed to be. Maybe Grace or Sera looked back. Maybe they saw the way the shadows crept in as though they were living things, enveloping a space of about 40 feet. The lakeshore (where Sera and Grace were) was still bathed in its soft glow, but everything behind them was... pitch black. They couldn't even see the trees anymore.
Serafíne
Mind 3: telepathic link to GRACE. Difficulty: 6. -1 (focus) .
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (4, 7, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Serafíne
This little shrug, that's what Sera offers Grace. A note of something that seems - yes, even to Grace - disconnected and strange from someone who is always so bright and affectionate. But god knows what Grace actually knows about Sera: right? We're all strangers beneath the skin.
Tonight anyway.
Sera reaches up and scrubs the tracks of the tears lingering on her cold cheeks away. She's not wearing gloves. The tips of her fingers are bright, bright red.
Her magic in the air again, stronger now.
Grace. Don't look. Just listen. Something behind us, in the trees. Dark dark dark. Turn around, walk back to your car. Act like you don't see it.. Just go.
I'll come next. But first: you go.
Grace
There's something clawing at the boundary that separates Grace from the rest of the world -- a porous thing to begin with. It's something that likes straddling boundaries, that likes to enthrall, but it's only after a moment's hesitation that Grace doesn't try to fight it off. She's no old hat at telepathy, but Sera is doing that. Pretty sure that's Sera at least.
I'll come next, but first: you go, Sera says in her mind, and Grace frowns at her. No coherent words follow, more of a mix of emotions and strategy concerns that hit bang bang bang bang -- like: to Hell with that plan. And: I'm not leaving her alone in danger. And: This is how They get you, divide and conquer. And: I am not a child. And: She is crying. And: Oh fuck, she can probably hear everything can't she.
"Why don't we both go home together, eh? You don't look so good," she says, out loud, nonchalant. Like, perfectly normal conversation going on here, nothing to see.
"Come on. I'll even drive you."
With that, she does turn, pulls out her phone, and pretends not to notice that the park's snow isn't glowing sodium yellow in the light pollution.
Grace
[Scanning stuff: Prime1/Entropy1/Forces1 -- Diff 4 = Why so dark?]
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (4, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )
Grace
[Extending...]
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (2, 2, 3) ( success x 1 ) [WP]
Tenebrous
Grace can definitely sense the lack of light behind her. The way the boundary of the darkness seems almost to be pushing light away. And there is something else there too. Something... arrested. Like a halt in the natural flow of entropy. That being - whatever it is - seems to be the source of the dark cloud.
Tenebrous
Act like you don't see it.
Sage advice, when confronting a potential threat. Perhaps whatever force commanded those shadows had no real interest in them. Perhaps they might, as Sera suggested, continue on their way and leave the darkness to its alien appetites. There was a chance, certainly, that it might play out that way.
But it didn't.
Because that darkness? Was moving. And even if they didn't look, they'd feel it. Feel the cold clamminess of it as it crept up behind them. And then the lamp nearby flickered and died. And the shore got very, very cold. And the ducks gave a chorus of anxious warning-calls before they spread their wings and flapped away over the ice.
Then everything went black.
It was more than just a lack of light. The darkness was tangible. Blocking all sense of sight. Muffling sound. Crawling down their throats when they breathed. The sensation was suffocating. As though the very night itself meant to strangle them.
[Alright guys, I need some Init rolls.]
Grace
[Wits3 + Dex3 + roll!]
Dice: 1 d10 TN5 (4) ( fail )
Tenebrous
[+6]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (1) ( botch x 1 )
Serafíne
+6
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (10) ( success x 1 )
Tenebrous
[And the order is:
Sera - 16
Grace - 10
? - 7]
Serafíne
WP
Dice: 7 d10 TN8 (2, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
Tenebrous
[Odds Grace evens Sera]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (3) ( fail )
Grace
[WP]
Dice: 7 d10 TN8 (1, 1, 2, 2, 4, 4, 6) ( botch x 2 )
Tenebrous
Grace is fucking terrified. That kind of animal fear that starts in the lizard brain and then completely takes over all sense of rationality. She loses 1 die from all dice pools for the remainder of the scene and, while in the darkness, can take no action except to escape or defend herself from attack.
Tenebrous
[? closes distance to Grace while in stealth-mode]
Grace
[Runs screaming]
Serafíne
[Prime 2: Attack Thingy. At ?]
Serafíne
Prime 2: Vulgar Without Witness. Dif: 6. -1 (focus) -1 (quint)
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (4, 9, 9) ( success x 4 ) [WP]
Tenebrous
[Sera hits ? with her Prime attack and does 6 agg (owwwww)]
Grace
She swipes away Clash of Clans and gets to work figuring out what's going on here. There's another 'game' on her phone now, one that pulses with different colors as they're slowly weeded out. There is a buzz of white (alterations to the Code, things that are not recorded in the normal background) and a purple sheen concentrated into a single phosphor of fuschia that... well, it's not good. There's an entropic sinkhole on her radar that reminds her of one thing.
Vampire. Pretty sure it's coming from a vampire. Shield your mind. If this connection helps let other things in, sever it.
Her thoughts are more focused once Grace figures out that Sera's probably listening in, but then, suddenly, the darkness crawls into her mouth. And all Sera can sense in Grace's mind after that is primal fear. It's a wild thing, disconnecting the higher order functions.
She tries to flee in the direction of 'out'.
[Dex + Ath - 1 = AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (4, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )
Tenebrous
[? changes action to gtfo because ow? ow? the fuck was that? Dex+Ath running awaaaay]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 6, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
Tenebrous
[er... Wound penalties. Forgot those. -5 and I don't think she can actually "run" per se. Re-do]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (5) ( success x 1 ) [WP]
Tenebrous
Whatever was attacking them, it clearly did not expect Sera to hit back. At least, not in the manner that she did. The darkness descended. Grace screamed and ran, but Sera stayed where she was. Let the shadows fold over her while she focused her Will.
The blast of quintessential energy was bright enough to chase away the darkness for a few heartbeats, and in that brief flash, she'd see the face of her attacker coming at them: a young blond woman with blood smeared across her mouth and fangs bared. She screamed when the prime blast hit, crumpling over as the light lacerated her body. The sound of it was like a wailing ghost.
There was shock on her face, too. Confused incomprehension. But the blast took away all sense of aggression. She'd clearly attacked the wrong target, and now? Now she wanted to get the hell out of dodge. And that's exactly what she tried to do, turning to limp in a panicking shuffle in the opposite direction of the lake. And as she did, the shadows around them dissipated, crawling back into the night in much the same manner as their summoner.
Serafíne
Paradox!
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (5, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )
Serafíne
Soak!
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (2, 6) ( success x 1 )
Serafíne
Soothe Grace: Mind 2. Coincidental. Difficulty: 5 -1 (practiced)
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (3, 7, 9) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Serafíne
The connection is there; is not broken but is pulled back. Everything happens too-quickly. Grace goes screaming. Sera -
Sera does not run screaming. She focuses her Will and sends their attacker screaming, instead. Whatever was inside of her, torn apart, poured out into a blast of primal energy, the fabric of the universe ripped open by nothing more than a half-broken heart.
Grace is still running. The connection is broken, and it is for the best. A moment later, though - just enough magic to calm Grace, so that she can slow down, run - straight if she wishes to, not blindly, back to her car, to something like safety, wherever or however she will go.
Grace
After a brief shrieking panic when the shadows seemed like living things crawling their way down into her lungs, into her eye sockets, muffling her hearing, and the only thing she could think to do was 'out' -- they crawl back again. She can breathe. Look, there's the snow and the lake.
And there is Sera in her mind again, calming, soothing, serene.
"Holy fucking shit," Grace says, while taking a look behind her to see -- it's gone? The shadows are fleeing? But they were so strong and Sera -- is just standing there. Like a badass.
She takes a breath, and watches with a hand over her mouth as the entropy sink limps away and her heart thuds in her ears. "Woah."
Tenebrous
Sera didn't run. Even now, while the creature limped away, affording them a moment to regroup and possibly make a similar exit, she did not move. Only took the time to watch the woman (their attacker) leave while she collected herself. While she sent out that calming wave to envelop Grace's mind. Maybe Grace felt the familiar prickle of paradox energy (it felt the way the air felt when a storm was coming) when the backfire hit, but whatever damage it cause Sera was minimal.
They were going to be alright.
Their attacker? Less so.
But she was still alive when she limped away. If they wanted, they could probably chase her down. But Sera and Grace were not soldiers. They were not assassins. And Sera, at least, let her go.
Perhaps then the thought might hit Grace: what about the man she was with? Was he still there? Was he even alive?
Grace
[Matter 1, Entropy 1, Mind 1, Corr 2 = Vampiric Tracking Device -- You just think you're getting away, asshole. Diff 5]
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (1, 5, 6) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Grace
[Extending...]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 9) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Grace
Grace looks down at her phone again, still running that thing that looks like a fancy screensaver crossed with an abstract art game, and starts adjusting some vertices. The screen explodes with what looks like static as she folds the code and unfolds it again, origami-like, this time going for a different tactic. That bright purple spot is trying to get away. It's not going to.
First, we grab the geographic coordinates of that shithead, and then... we graph it. Like so. And lo, on a map of the city that resolves with another swipe of her fingers, a red blinking dot limps away.
Grace looks up and surveys the place finally, after that prolonged staring into her phone. There was a witness, wasn't there? Where's the man? He didn't pop up on her radar like a miniature black hole...
Tenebrous
If the man was still there, he wasn't in view. At least, not from this distance. Maybe he'd gotten away. Maybe he was dead. Maybe he was still behind that tree.
Grace
She checks her phone again to make sure that the entropic entity is still in retreat mode, and then advances toward the tree, mentally preparing herself for the worst. She's seen the dying before, in ways she's fairly certain would give even vampires some challenges in a 'how horrible can you go' contest. There's nothing like watching someone melt to death.
She takes a breath and goes to look behind the tree.
Tenebrous
Once the vampire got going, she didn't look back. And as hard as it must have been for her to limp away with the wounds she'd taken, she left the park as quickly and as quietly as she could. If only she knew that she was being tracked...
The blinking dot on Grace's screen showed the vampire's movement as she made her way to the parking lot. More than likely she had a vehicle there waiting for her. Eventually she'd reach it and drive away - back to wherever it was vampires in Denver went when they needed to go lick their wounds. (A hospital? Probably not.)
When Grace rounded the tree, she found the man lying there at the base of the trunk. His head hung loosely to one side, but if there had ever been a wound on his neck, there was nothing there now but a faint smear of dried blood on the collar of his shirt. (Which did rather beg the question: how in the hell did the vampire get the blood out of him without leaving puncture marks?)
He was alive, barely. But unconscious. His breaths were low and shallow. If left here, he'd probably freeze to death. He looked fairly well-to-do, in a warm leather coat and tailored slacks. About mid-30's, age wise. Handsome. Poor guy probably thought he was getting lucky that night.
Grace
She quickly ascertains that the man is still alive, and this presents a new problem. What does one do with a vampire victim? Hospital? That sounds...
Phone time again. This time, to use it for its intended purpose. She calls Kalen, asks him what one should do about it if someone were to say, run across an exsanguinated, but unconscious person in the park. Someone with no marks on their skin.
She argues with him when he says to avoid the hospital if possible. He's out cold from blood loss and looks like he's in bad shape, and there's Sera, but Sera's... probably spent. It isn't possible.
The man's condition doesn't implicate mages. That's the bottom line. The next number she frantically calls is 911.
Tenebrous
There was always a risk to involving mundane authorities in supernatural affairs. Certainly the doctors would wonder how the man had lost so much blood in the first place. But there was nothing there to implicate any of them. Nothing that might lead Sleepers in the direction of the truth other than wild speculation. (And who really believed in vampires these days?) More than likely, they'd just assume that someone had stolen his blood - and done a very good job hiding the needle mark.
So Grace called 911, and the operator informed her that an ambulance was on its way. Whether Grace and Sera remained behind to talk to the paramedics or left when the sound of the siren approached, the man would get help. He would be okay.
But there were still at least two vampires running around the city. One of which seemed rather less concerned with endangering innocents than the first one had been. That alone was cause for some concern. But for now? It was late. And Grace and Sera were tired and shaken. Likely, they would need to rest.
(Likely, Kalen would be getting another phone call soon.)
Thursday, February 26, 2015
Grace the Dominatrix.
Ian
It was after sundown, but not yet late enough that Washington Park had cleared of visitors. Joggers ran in staggered numbers down the winding trails. A group of teenagers occupied one of the fields for a game of soccer, shouting rambunctiously over muted din of passing cars. A few couples were playing doubles in the tennis court.
Ian wasn't running tonight, as he often did. Instead he occupied a patch of ground beneath a couple of tall, overhanging trees. The grass beneath his feet was cold and brittle from winter, but the unseasonably warm temperatures had melted the last snowfall. It'd been like that for months, snowing and melting in sporadic bursts.
He was rehearsing something. Or at least, it looked it. Testing out how certain moves flowed and letting them settle into his muscle memory. Dancing alone in the park at night without music. Stopping and starting periodically with slow, measured movements. His expression was focused and withdrawn. With the temperature in the 40's, he had on only a sleek black windbreaker over his athletic clothes (the lower half of which consisted of running shoes and a pair of 3/4 length sweats with cargo pockets.)
Grace
The park holds a special place in Grace's heart. She knows she's not alone in coming to see the lake, just for the prospect of getting to talk to The Message again. But today has her wondering why...
Why did she decide to step out of the nice warm Inside and go to the Big Room? It's a refrigerator in here. Colder than a refrigerator, even. At least she had the presence of mind to bundle up in her coat, gloves, and that scarf Kalen bought her for Christmas. His gifts are practically the only vehicle through which Grace manages to show a sense of fashion. Underneath all that, she's got jeans and old sneakers on. It's a strange mix of upscale cashmere, wool, and grubby. Whatever, eh? It's not like she cares.
There's a trail of crushed crunchy grass behind her that meanders, because this free spirit does not enjoy being constrained by sidewalks. And then, she sees Ian. It's hard to mistake him, even at a distance. Few other people in the city are such graceful dancers. The meandering stops, and instead, she shuffles over to him in a straight line, hands in her pockets to keep warm.
Arionna de la Babin
[feeelsins the feels]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 5, 7) ( success x 1 )
Arionna de la Babin
Arionna was not jogging. She was not playing soccer. She was not dancing or engaging in any form of physical activity. Instead she does what she often does, and she simply walks. Spring is coming, a season her mother would rejoice in, being her own embodiment of it. Odd how Ari took to winter; the season of death and slumber. With the last throes of winter so near, it seemed only right that she should walk and enjoy what little remained.
The moon would be peeking over soon, and she would feel the pull of it. But for now... she only walked.
The others slid into her perception soon enough, though the true intensity of it was deeply muted compared to their previous encounters. It might be her own ties with the moon, or perhaps...she was merely preoccupied in her thoughts. The cup of coffee in her hand expelled steam through the small hole, and Arionna took a moment to sip from it. Did she dare it? T hat was often the million dollar question. Was it worth it?
Ultimately, she decided on a small, and almost insignificant 'yes.' Her steps deviated, moving slowly towards the sensation.
Ian
[oh look, resonance]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 8) ( success x 4 )
Ian
Temperature could be such a subjective thing. For someone from a warm climate, 40-odd degrees might seem like scarf weather. For someone used to the cold, it felt like spring.
He didn't look up at first when he felt Grace drawing near, keeping his focus on what he was doing. His awareness of her was an instinctive thing - the way he was aware of the trees and the wind. He heard the shuffle of her feet behind him. Felt her resonance shift and soar. She was something familiar. He never seemed to mind when she watched him.
Arionna was... less familiar. But her approach was slow and distant. Ian waited until she was within easy earshot before he stopped dancing and turned to regard first Grace and then her. Grace got a small, knowing smile. (It always seemed like he was keeping some kind of secret.)
"What, no basketball tonight?"
Grace
[Magedar!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 7, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )
Grace
"I don't basketball," Grace says, in a complete lie. "I just sometimes crash other people's games when they beg me to. You must have me confused with someone who owns..." balls? No. That would be bad. Don't say that. "Sporting equipment."
She skips up, breathing in the cold. And she is cold, this southern desert creature. Phoenix is not known for its freezing temperatures, after all. She almost doesn't tie it to Arionna, but then... oh yes. Her.
Oh well. You shouldn't let people get to you, any more than you should the cold. Arionna is her Arionna's problem to deal with, as we all are. Still, one of Grace's hands pokes out of her coat, gives Ari a wave. It's a brief thing. Hopefully, it won't be seen as too fucking altruistic.
Arionna de la Babin
If Ari had felt supremely comfortable with the situation, and the people, she might have found Grace's demeanor amusing; in some way she still did. They both seemed to lack social capabilities, though in amazingly different ways. Perhaps that's (part of) the reason why they don't get along quite so well. The others were...self evident to those in the know of her person.
She pauses nearby, close enough to talk, far enough to give them all space from her, more for her than them. "You're doing better." Better from last they met, when he left rather quickly. Grace's small wave casts a glance her way and Ari....sips her coffee. Not an overly active individual.
Ian
Arionna surmised that Ian was doing better than he had been upon their last encounter, to which Ian offered her a look that felt blandly cryptic (almost dismissive.) He didn't humor the assumption with a verbal response. Instead, his attention slid back to Grace.
"Oh I see. That was a different Grace I played last time. Your more fun twin. Does that make you the evil one?" His aloof expression melted in a subtle grin. "You should give me her number." He trotted back a few steps, glancing at the tree overhead. There was an hint of animal energy in the way he moved. The ready way he rested his weight on the balls of his feet, like any moment he might spring into motion. And sure enough, a moment later he jumped up and grabbed the overhanging branch, hanging there experimentally to be sure the tree would hold his weight before he swung and landed closer to Arionna.
"Arionna, right? From the Pho place?"
Grace
"I have to grow a goatee before I can be considered the evil one. Duh. I though everyone knew that," Grace says, totally dry.
She watches him do his little jumps and swings, and rolls her eyebrows. But there's a little smirk there too. She's only slightly mocking his showing off. After all, if you've got it, flaunt it, right?
"Arionna and I, uh... at least share one thing in common. We both have an appreciation for noodle shops."
Arionna de la Babin
"They also cackle. Villains cackle. Terribly. Sometimes they have a mustache that they twirl. A sort of Dali-esque, though hardly as grandiose. " She cast a glance towards Grace. "I think the mustache would suit you. But now the usual goatee. Far too tame and boring." Though Grace wasn't on her list of most entertaining people. She only seemed less of a mundane, and more of the sort of person who might twirl their mustache, if given one.
Maybe Ian was showing off. That was typical of men, was it not? A youthful male, in his reproductive prime meets a youthful girl in her reproductive prime, and naturally one must woo the other. So does the dance go. So when he hangs, and jumps, Arionna takes a step back and gives a small cant of her head. Mostly his actions are interesting (though it didn't help that he did have a very nice figure and face).
"Yes. I enjoy food. Culturally different. Noodles is part of that. "
Arionna de la Babin
[ARE.. noodles ARE. holy crap english]
Cala
Doors open for her.
They always have.
Small doors and large doors, locked doors, every door she has ever encountered. Some of the doors are more metaphorical than others, but even the most literal ones - they click.
Open.
--
Here's one of the arts a refugee learns: how to disappear in plain sight. How to slip beneath the ordinary radar. How to seem like part of the room. How to drift with but not of the crowd. How to settle for a time - to alight - against a bench, on one's own haunches, meditative as the light sky darkens and the strangers start to desert the park. Time to go, which she knows with a glance at the sky and something else - something (distant) - that pulls her upright from the energy-conserving reverie, the slip-through-the-spaces determination with which she lives this life.
Across the lake, just on the other side of the boathouse, someone looks up.
Senses the skim of energy in the air. Closes her eyes to feel the beat of it against her senses.
And: gets up.
Walks the other way.
Cala
Too far away for Arionna to sense her, but both Ian and Grace feel the brief brush of a stranger's resonance against their senses. Distant, then gone. It feels like a key sliding into a lock. Simple, slight.
Cala
(That was just a cameo, guys. I've gotta get up early to hike through the neverending snowstorm and below 0 temperatures to get to work tomorrow, so need to get my rest now. :) night!)
Ian
"I would genuinely like to see Grace grow a Dali mustache," Ian mused, eyeing Grace's features in this sharply appraising way - as though he were painting the picture in his mind. "She wouldn't be the cackling type though. She'd be the kind who sneaks up on people."
Maybe he was showing off, a little. Maybe he was just finding ways to keep his body warmed up. Arionna was a good 6 years younger than he was, which... was not an insignificant number. (Though Elijah had been the same age, hadn't he?) Either way, the gesture was more playful than luring. And when Arionna stepped back to widen the space between them, he didn't follow.
"I prefer sushi, but Pho will do in a pinch..."
His voice paused and trailed off in a beat of silence, and he glanced over his shoulder as though he'd heard (or felt) something that distracted him. A brief skim of his eyes across the lake. Hunting. But whatever he was looking for, he turned away a moment later.
"You go to school?" (This to Arionna.)
Grace
Holy shit. Arionna made a joke. Grace actually smiles, and fake-twirls an invisible mustache. She catches Ian painting the 'stache on with his eyes, and laughs when he says she'd sneak up on people. "I totally would. You would know."
It's then that a... slightly familiar resonance slips across her perception. She looks in that direction too, suddenly a look of intense focus comes over her, like the bird is seeking prey.
"I think... I've felt that before. That... opening."
Arionna de la Babin
"...and ties them up on the railroad tracks? Grace would be an old western villain? Fascinating." The more she looks at Grace, the more she can see it. Yes, maybe Grace would have a Dali mustache, and tie up people while she cackles behind her teeth. Grace was becoming more like a cartoon villain.
They perk up, sense it. It's on the edge of Ari's senses. There, but not there. She doesn't know it, though Grace has. Another magi, and likely just as sickeningly joyful as the rest.
"Yes. Sushi is enjoyable. Not octopi. A dwindling species with a large level of intelligence. Squid, however, are delicious." There's another slow sip of the coffee as her attention fully centers on Ian. "I do. I study biology."
Ian
"I don't eat octopus meat either." Though he didn't bother to explain why. His eyes seemed more considering when they lingered on Arionna, and he uttered a soft, subvocal hum. Quiet interest. (At her area of study? He'd never really expressed much interest in science before.)
Grace drew further attention to whatever had caused that brief stir across the lake, and Ian's focus shifted to her a moment. "Think it's something worth checking out?"
Grace
"I don't know. I don't think so. There was this person at a bookstore Elijah and I went to. Felt like that. A little. And then she fled like we were trying to chase her instead of just saying hi. I tried to send a text, you know? But it wouldn't go through. Like she didn't have a phone. Ever. I don't think running her down would do any good. I imagine someone like that really does not want to be cornered."
Grace keeps looking in that direction, but the sensation passes over again, and then... apparently we are talking about octopus now. Grace does not know quite how that happened, but okay. Squid and stuff.
"I like squid. It's chewy. And yeah, it would make sense that I would be chased down by Dudley Do-Right. I'm just despicable like that. Hey, maybe that could be Alex's new nickname?" She laughs. Apparently the strange woman across the lake has already been forgotten.
Arionna de la Babin
"Most of you don't give off a particularly inviting sensation. I wouldn't give fault to her for keeping her distance. One human may be worthwhile, but a cat knows better than to take the chance unless the benefits exceed the costs. Though, it takes a particular personality to attract an animal with the good sense to keep away."
A brow slowly lifts as she glances back at Ian, though her attention is sliding between them both a little. "You'll need a top hat if you're going to tie people up. It's classic. "
Ian
"She didn't feel like a cat to me."
(More like a key.)
Ian took Grace and Arionna's assessments and added them to his own. But in the end, the girl was just that - another new face in a very big city. Someone who may or may not prove worthy of interest. Someone who may or may not be dangerous. If she wanted to avoid them, then he'd let her be. (For now.)
"As for tying people up, I think a dominatrix outfit would be more suitable than a top-hat. Lots of black leather." A beat. "Come to think of it, Grace might be good at that."
His gaze slid from Grace to Arionna. "Why biology?"
Grace
Ian says the words 'dominatrix outfit' and Grace's eyes widen. When he goes on to say she might be good at that, her brain goes 'poink' and refuses to budge for a bit.
That, and she turns a bright red. Thank goodness it's dark.
"Uhhhh."
Brilliant. Utterly brilliant.
"Yeah, Ari. Why biology?"
Arionna de la Babin
Her brows furrow a little at Ian, almost a sort of puzzlement. "It was a metaphor. One doesn't need to feel as such, to be associated if the association fits the behavior. Cats never liked to be cornered, and move away from strange individuals. If she follows the same, then a cat she is like. Even if she lacks the hunting instinct." There's a small quirk of the corner of her lips at Ian. "Grace as a dominatrix?" Ari focused her attention solely on Grace and her figure. "In a comedy, perhaps. She lacks the demeanor. "
And turn the conversation away from Grace and her Dominatrix tendencies... or Ian's fantasy of the sort...right to her own personal interests. "Why not?" She lifted a hand to pop the top of her coffee from the cup. "Someone has to defend the world from humans. Never seems to be enough of them."
Ian
Ian's laugh was a quiet thing. A breath of air and a slight upturn of his lips. "I got the metaphor." There had to be some kind of irony in debating the nature of felines with Ian, of all people, but if he had any further feelings on the matter, he kept them to himself.
"Thinking of going into environmental science? I have a friend who does that. It's... not a bad use of one's time." Though he wouldn't have phrased it the way she did. As though humans were not a part of the world.
"I was dance major. Which is not at all useful." His smile there was self-deprecating, though it was a fair bet that he did not, in fact, think that dancing was useless. (Certainly not the way that he did it.)
Grace
Grace, recovering from core dump, gives Arionna a confused look. How can anyone be so... so...
Ugh. Let it go. Make a snowman. Or whatever the fuck that Disney movie says. The cold never bothered me anyway?
"I was a CS major. Who would have guessed, huh?"
Arionna de la Babin
"Ecology and Biodiversity. Conservation."
"Dance is art. Art is useful. Art encourages creativity and appreciation for form, color, and motion. A society without art, is a society that is not worth living. Scientific innovation can't occur without art, and so the opposite is true. " Maybe she missed some cue to tell her that she really didn't need to go on her own little speech. But there it was.
Her head had tilted a little to Ian, but now she was looking to Grace momentarily. "Hm. Strange. I might have placed you in Fashion Design."
Ian
She didn't need to, no. But all the same, Arionna's response got a long, meaningful look from Ian. Enigmatic and subtle in the way it warmed his dark eyes. "Apparently we agree on something."
If he'd known her better, he probably would have done something else. But they didn't, so he left it there.
As for Grace...
"I never did ask you about that, did I? Guess I kind of assumed." (More than likely, for someone like Ian, Virtual Adept was basically synonymous with computer nerd.)
Grace
And Grace might have placed you in Mass Murder, Arionna but hey... Grace gives her a strange little circular nod of the head. A yes-no.
Fashion design.
"I'm not anymore. I had to skip class too much for silly little things like catching Awakened Ebola and later, for having all my tech spontaneously crash whenever I touched it. Hard to explain to your profs that you can't be in class because if you so much as look at the projector wrong it'll start noping out at you."
She sighs, remembering. But then...
"I was advancing anyway. Not much to learn anymore when the universe teaches you so much more."
Arionna de la Babin
It's not lost on her that her own humor is rarely delivered well. Social interactions were never her area. If it had been a school subject, she would have failed it...miserably. Ah but she tries.
Her attention sits on Ian, taking in the look and lifting her brows in response. "Surprising. Isn't it? I'd be interested to know what form of dance you specialize in, if any. I admit a fondness for tribal forms."
Grace and Arionna will never see eye to eye; she knows that. When Grace speaks, it's good Arionna knows how to hide her own emotions, else she might have rolled her eyes. But...Grace might have done the same for her own perspectives. "Yes, it would be hard to say that. They'd likely sent you to a psychiatrist."
She takes in a bit of air and lets it out slowly, pausing to slide the buzzing phone from her pocket. "Was good to actually meet you." She threw out to Ian, then lifted her hand just a little, much like Grace's tiny wave from earlier. "And seeing you again. Try not to look at electronics funny. If they have half the temperament that their designers do, they'll likely take offense quite easily."
Arionna turned on the ball of her foot and began to head the way she had come prior. No more walking for tonight. There was much to do at 'home.'
Ian
Arionna took her leave of them, and Ian watched her go. Perhaps another day he might have cause to answer her question, but for now the hour was getting late. She needed to head home, and so did he. He stayed for a few moments longer though, standing beside Grace with his breath making little wisps of steam in the air.
"I'm sorry that happened to you." His voice was noticeably more weighty than it had been earlier. Maybe he understood what it was like to have your life thrown into disarray. What it was like to give up something you loved because of something else that you had no control over. Maybe it wasn't like that for her. As she'd said, she was already evolving beyond her courses. But still, it had to be a hard thing to do at the time. Maybe it still was.
"Life can be fucking bullshit sometimes."
He let out a breath, allowing the muscles in his body to relax. To wind down. "I should get going too."
Grace
"I did. Go to a psychiatrist. Once. It sucked," Grace says, stumbles over her words a bit. As much as Arionna puts her on edge, at least she's not Garrett Franklin. At least it took Ari more than a few minutes to get on her bad side. Garrett made her want to scream in pure rage. Arionna just gets... pity. And confusion.
And again, Ari gets that utterly confused look as she leaves. Grace is pretty laid back, or at least she thinks so. If anyone has a temperament issue, it isn't her. Right? Surely.
Ian says he's sorry that happened to her, and she looks to him instead of Arionna's retreating back. "Well, it can be, sometimes. But I have to think, if I never had any obstacles to overcome, I would never have found out how capable I am at overcoming. Sometimes the bullshit, while yeah, it's total bullshit -- still gives you the opportunity to teach yourself who you are."
She gives him the smile that Arionna didn't receive, because she was being unfathomable. "Walk you back to the parking lot?"
Ian
"How very enlightened of you," Ian teased, though he didn't necessarily disagree.
Walk you back to the parking lot?
"Sure. You can protect me from roving hoards of teenage girls."
(He was joking. Right?)
Ian grinned and tapped Grace lightly on the shoulder, turning in the direction of the lot. "Let's go."
Grace
"Well, apparently, I do like to tie them up a lot. So..."
[P.S. -- Wrap joke!]
It was after sundown, but not yet late enough that Washington Park had cleared of visitors. Joggers ran in staggered numbers down the winding trails. A group of teenagers occupied one of the fields for a game of soccer, shouting rambunctiously over muted din of passing cars. A few couples were playing doubles in the tennis court.
Ian wasn't running tonight, as he often did. Instead he occupied a patch of ground beneath a couple of tall, overhanging trees. The grass beneath his feet was cold and brittle from winter, but the unseasonably warm temperatures had melted the last snowfall. It'd been like that for months, snowing and melting in sporadic bursts.
He was rehearsing something. Or at least, it looked it. Testing out how certain moves flowed and letting them settle into his muscle memory. Dancing alone in the park at night without music. Stopping and starting periodically with slow, measured movements. His expression was focused and withdrawn. With the temperature in the 40's, he had on only a sleek black windbreaker over his athletic clothes (the lower half of which consisted of running shoes and a pair of 3/4 length sweats with cargo pockets.)
Grace
The park holds a special place in Grace's heart. She knows she's not alone in coming to see the lake, just for the prospect of getting to talk to The Message again. But today has her wondering why...
Why did she decide to step out of the nice warm Inside and go to the Big Room? It's a refrigerator in here. Colder than a refrigerator, even. At least she had the presence of mind to bundle up in her coat, gloves, and that scarf Kalen bought her for Christmas. His gifts are practically the only vehicle through which Grace manages to show a sense of fashion. Underneath all that, she's got jeans and old sneakers on. It's a strange mix of upscale cashmere, wool, and grubby. Whatever, eh? It's not like she cares.
There's a trail of crushed crunchy grass behind her that meanders, because this free spirit does not enjoy being constrained by sidewalks. And then, she sees Ian. It's hard to mistake him, even at a distance. Few other people in the city are such graceful dancers. The meandering stops, and instead, she shuffles over to him in a straight line, hands in her pockets to keep warm.
Arionna de la Babin
[feeelsins the feels]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 5, 7) ( success x 1 )
Arionna de la Babin
Arionna was not jogging. She was not playing soccer. She was not dancing or engaging in any form of physical activity. Instead she does what she often does, and she simply walks. Spring is coming, a season her mother would rejoice in, being her own embodiment of it. Odd how Ari took to winter; the season of death and slumber. With the last throes of winter so near, it seemed only right that she should walk and enjoy what little remained.
The moon would be peeking over soon, and she would feel the pull of it. But for now... she only walked.
The others slid into her perception soon enough, though the true intensity of it was deeply muted compared to their previous encounters. It might be her own ties with the moon, or perhaps...she was merely preoccupied in her thoughts. The cup of coffee in her hand expelled steam through the small hole, and Arionna took a moment to sip from it. Did she dare it? T hat was often the million dollar question. Was it worth it?
Ultimately, she decided on a small, and almost insignificant 'yes.' Her steps deviated, moving slowly towards the sensation.
Ian
[oh look, resonance]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 8) ( success x 4 )
Ian
Temperature could be such a subjective thing. For someone from a warm climate, 40-odd degrees might seem like scarf weather. For someone used to the cold, it felt like spring.
He didn't look up at first when he felt Grace drawing near, keeping his focus on what he was doing. His awareness of her was an instinctive thing - the way he was aware of the trees and the wind. He heard the shuffle of her feet behind him. Felt her resonance shift and soar. She was something familiar. He never seemed to mind when she watched him.
Arionna was... less familiar. But her approach was slow and distant. Ian waited until she was within easy earshot before he stopped dancing and turned to regard first Grace and then her. Grace got a small, knowing smile. (It always seemed like he was keeping some kind of secret.)
"What, no basketball tonight?"
Grace
[Magedar!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 7, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )
Grace
"I don't basketball," Grace says, in a complete lie. "I just sometimes crash other people's games when they beg me to. You must have me confused with someone who owns..." balls? No. That would be bad. Don't say that. "Sporting equipment."
She skips up, breathing in the cold. And she is cold, this southern desert creature. Phoenix is not known for its freezing temperatures, after all. She almost doesn't tie it to Arionna, but then... oh yes. Her.
Oh well. You shouldn't let people get to you, any more than you should the cold. Arionna is her Arionna's problem to deal with, as we all are. Still, one of Grace's hands pokes out of her coat, gives Ari a wave. It's a brief thing. Hopefully, it won't be seen as too fucking altruistic.
Arionna de la Babin
If Ari had felt supremely comfortable with the situation, and the people, she might have found Grace's demeanor amusing; in some way she still did. They both seemed to lack social capabilities, though in amazingly different ways. Perhaps that's (part of) the reason why they don't get along quite so well. The others were...self evident to those in the know of her person.
She pauses nearby, close enough to talk, far enough to give them all space from her, more for her than them. "You're doing better." Better from last they met, when he left rather quickly. Grace's small wave casts a glance her way and Ari....sips her coffee. Not an overly active individual.
Ian
Arionna surmised that Ian was doing better than he had been upon their last encounter, to which Ian offered her a look that felt blandly cryptic (almost dismissive.) He didn't humor the assumption with a verbal response. Instead, his attention slid back to Grace.
"Oh I see. That was a different Grace I played last time. Your more fun twin. Does that make you the evil one?" His aloof expression melted in a subtle grin. "You should give me her number." He trotted back a few steps, glancing at the tree overhead. There was an hint of animal energy in the way he moved. The ready way he rested his weight on the balls of his feet, like any moment he might spring into motion. And sure enough, a moment later he jumped up and grabbed the overhanging branch, hanging there experimentally to be sure the tree would hold his weight before he swung and landed closer to Arionna.
"Arionna, right? From the Pho place?"
Grace
"I have to grow a goatee before I can be considered the evil one. Duh. I though everyone knew that," Grace says, totally dry.
She watches him do his little jumps and swings, and rolls her eyebrows. But there's a little smirk there too. She's only slightly mocking his showing off. After all, if you've got it, flaunt it, right?
"Arionna and I, uh... at least share one thing in common. We both have an appreciation for noodle shops."
Arionna de la Babin
"They also cackle. Villains cackle. Terribly. Sometimes they have a mustache that they twirl. A sort of Dali-esque, though hardly as grandiose. " She cast a glance towards Grace. "I think the mustache would suit you. But now the usual goatee. Far too tame and boring." Though Grace wasn't on her list of most entertaining people. She only seemed less of a mundane, and more of the sort of person who might twirl their mustache, if given one.
Maybe Ian was showing off. That was typical of men, was it not? A youthful male, in his reproductive prime meets a youthful girl in her reproductive prime, and naturally one must woo the other. So does the dance go. So when he hangs, and jumps, Arionna takes a step back and gives a small cant of her head. Mostly his actions are interesting (though it didn't help that he did have a very nice figure and face).
"Yes. I enjoy food. Culturally different. Noodles is part of that. "
Arionna de la Babin
[ARE.. noodles ARE. holy crap english]
Cala
Doors open for her.
They always have.
Small doors and large doors, locked doors, every door she has ever encountered. Some of the doors are more metaphorical than others, but even the most literal ones - they click.
Open.
--
Here's one of the arts a refugee learns: how to disappear in plain sight. How to slip beneath the ordinary radar. How to seem like part of the room. How to drift with but not of the crowd. How to settle for a time - to alight - against a bench, on one's own haunches, meditative as the light sky darkens and the strangers start to desert the park. Time to go, which she knows with a glance at the sky and something else - something (distant) - that pulls her upright from the energy-conserving reverie, the slip-through-the-spaces determination with which she lives this life.
Across the lake, just on the other side of the boathouse, someone looks up.
Senses the skim of energy in the air. Closes her eyes to feel the beat of it against her senses.
And: gets up.
Walks the other way.
Cala
Too far away for Arionna to sense her, but both Ian and Grace feel the brief brush of a stranger's resonance against their senses. Distant, then gone. It feels like a key sliding into a lock. Simple, slight.
Cala
(That was just a cameo, guys. I've gotta get up early to hike through the neverending snowstorm and below 0 temperatures to get to work tomorrow, so need to get my rest now. :) night!)
Ian
"I would genuinely like to see Grace grow a Dali mustache," Ian mused, eyeing Grace's features in this sharply appraising way - as though he were painting the picture in his mind. "She wouldn't be the cackling type though. She'd be the kind who sneaks up on people."
Maybe he was showing off, a little. Maybe he was just finding ways to keep his body warmed up. Arionna was a good 6 years younger than he was, which... was not an insignificant number. (Though Elijah had been the same age, hadn't he?) Either way, the gesture was more playful than luring. And when Arionna stepped back to widen the space between them, he didn't follow.
"I prefer sushi, but Pho will do in a pinch..."
His voice paused and trailed off in a beat of silence, and he glanced over his shoulder as though he'd heard (or felt) something that distracted him. A brief skim of his eyes across the lake. Hunting. But whatever he was looking for, he turned away a moment later.
"You go to school?" (This to Arionna.)
Grace
Holy shit. Arionna made a joke. Grace actually smiles, and fake-twirls an invisible mustache. She catches Ian painting the 'stache on with his eyes, and laughs when he says she'd sneak up on people. "I totally would. You would know."
It's then that a... slightly familiar resonance slips across her perception. She looks in that direction too, suddenly a look of intense focus comes over her, like the bird is seeking prey.
"I think... I've felt that before. That... opening."
Arionna de la Babin
"...and ties them up on the railroad tracks? Grace would be an old western villain? Fascinating." The more she looks at Grace, the more she can see it. Yes, maybe Grace would have a Dali mustache, and tie up people while she cackles behind her teeth. Grace was becoming more like a cartoon villain.
They perk up, sense it. It's on the edge of Ari's senses. There, but not there. She doesn't know it, though Grace has. Another magi, and likely just as sickeningly joyful as the rest.
"Yes. Sushi is enjoyable. Not octopi. A dwindling species with a large level of intelligence. Squid, however, are delicious." There's another slow sip of the coffee as her attention fully centers on Ian. "I do. I study biology."
Ian
"I don't eat octopus meat either." Though he didn't bother to explain why. His eyes seemed more considering when they lingered on Arionna, and he uttered a soft, subvocal hum. Quiet interest. (At her area of study? He'd never really expressed much interest in science before.)
Grace drew further attention to whatever had caused that brief stir across the lake, and Ian's focus shifted to her a moment. "Think it's something worth checking out?"
Grace
"I don't know. I don't think so. There was this person at a bookstore Elijah and I went to. Felt like that. A little. And then she fled like we were trying to chase her instead of just saying hi. I tried to send a text, you know? But it wouldn't go through. Like she didn't have a phone. Ever. I don't think running her down would do any good. I imagine someone like that really does not want to be cornered."
Grace keeps looking in that direction, but the sensation passes over again, and then... apparently we are talking about octopus now. Grace does not know quite how that happened, but okay. Squid and stuff.
"I like squid. It's chewy. And yeah, it would make sense that I would be chased down by Dudley Do-Right. I'm just despicable like that. Hey, maybe that could be Alex's new nickname?" She laughs. Apparently the strange woman across the lake has already been forgotten.
Arionna de la Babin
"Most of you don't give off a particularly inviting sensation. I wouldn't give fault to her for keeping her distance. One human may be worthwhile, but a cat knows better than to take the chance unless the benefits exceed the costs. Though, it takes a particular personality to attract an animal with the good sense to keep away."
A brow slowly lifts as she glances back at Ian, though her attention is sliding between them both a little. "You'll need a top hat if you're going to tie people up. It's classic. "
Ian
"She didn't feel like a cat to me."
(More like a key.)
Ian took Grace and Arionna's assessments and added them to his own. But in the end, the girl was just that - another new face in a very big city. Someone who may or may not prove worthy of interest. Someone who may or may not be dangerous. If she wanted to avoid them, then he'd let her be. (For now.)
"As for tying people up, I think a dominatrix outfit would be more suitable than a top-hat. Lots of black leather." A beat. "Come to think of it, Grace might be good at that."
His gaze slid from Grace to Arionna. "Why biology?"
Grace
Ian says the words 'dominatrix outfit' and Grace's eyes widen. When he goes on to say she might be good at that, her brain goes 'poink' and refuses to budge for a bit.
That, and she turns a bright red. Thank goodness it's dark.
"Uhhhh."
Brilliant. Utterly brilliant.
"Yeah, Ari. Why biology?"
Arionna de la Babin
Her brows furrow a little at Ian, almost a sort of puzzlement. "It was a metaphor. One doesn't need to feel as such, to be associated if the association fits the behavior. Cats never liked to be cornered, and move away from strange individuals. If she follows the same, then a cat she is like. Even if she lacks the hunting instinct." There's a small quirk of the corner of her lips at Ian. "Grace as a dominatrix?" Ari focused her attention solely on Grace and her figure. "In a comedy, perhaps. She lacks the demeanor. "
And turn the conversation away from Grace and her Dominatrix tendencies... or Ian's fantasy of the sort...right to her own personal interests. "Why not?" She lifted a hand to pop the top of her coffee from the cup. "Someone has to defend the world from humans. Never seems to be enough of them."
Ian
Ian's laugh was a quiet thing. A breath of air and a slight upturn of his lips. "I got the metaphor." There had to be some kind of irony in debating the nature of felines with Ian, of all people, but if he had any further feelings on the matter, he kept them to himself.
"Thinking of going into environmental science? I have a friend who does that. It's... not a bad use of one's time." Though he wouldn't have phrased it the way she did. As though humans were not a part of the world.
"I was dance major. Which is not at all useful." His smile there was self-deprecating, though it was a fair bet that he did not, in fact, think that dancing was useless. (Certainly not the way that he did it.)
Grace
Grace, recovering from core dump, gives Arionna a confused look. How can anyone be so... so...
Ugh. Let it go. Make a snowman. Or whatever the fuck that Disney movie says. The cold never bothered me anyway?
"I was a CS major. Who would have guessed, huh?"
Arionna de la Babin
"Ecology and Biodiversity. Conservation."
"Dance is art. Art is useful. Art encourages creativity and appreciation for form, color, and motion. A society without art, is a society that is not worth living. Scientific innovation can't occur without art, and so the opposite is true. " Maybe she missed some cue to tell her that she really didn't need to go on her own little speech. But there it was.
Her head had tilted a little to Ian, but now she was looking to Grace momentarily. "Hm. Strange. I might have placed you in Fashion Design."
Ian
She didn't need to, no. But all the same, Arionna's response got a long, meaningful look from Ian. Enigmatic and subtle in the way it warmed his dark eyes. "Apparently we agree on something."
If he'd known her better, he probably would have done something else. But they didn't, so he left it there.
As for Grace...
"I never did ask you about that, did I? Guess I kind of assumed." (More than likely, for someone like Ian, Virtual Adept was basically synonymous with computer nerd.)
Grace
And Grace might have placed you in Mass Murder, Arionna but hey... Grace gives her a strange little circular nod of the head. A yes-no.
Fashion design.
"I'm not anymore. I had to skip class too much for silly little things like catching Awakened Ebola and later, for having all my tech spontaneously crash whenever I touched it. Hard to explain to your profs that you can't be in class because if you so much as look at the projector wrong it'll start noping out at you."
She sighs, remembering. But then...
"I was advancing anyway. Not much to learn anymore when the universe teaches you so much more."
Arionna de la Babin
It's not lost on her that her own humor is rarely delivered well. Social interactions were never her area. If it had been a school subject, she would have failed it...miserably. Ah but she tries.
Her attention sits on Ian, taking in the look and lifting her brows in response. "Surprising. Isn't it? I'd be interested to know what form of dance you specialize in, if any. I admit a fondness for tribal forms."
Grace and Arionna will never see eye to eye; she knows that. When Grace speaks, it's good Arionna knows how to hide her own emotions, else she might have rolled her eyes. But...Grace might have done the same for her own perspectives. "Yes, it would be hard to say that. They'd likely sent you to a psychiatrist."
She takes in a bit of air and lets it out slowly, pausing to slide the buzzing phone from her pocket. "Was good to actually meet you." She threw out to Ian, then lifted her hand just a little, much like Grace's tiny wave from earlier. "And seeing you again. Try not to look at electronics funny. If they have half the temperament that their designers do, they'll likely take offense quite easily."
Arionna turned on the ball of her foot and began to head the way she had come prior. No more walking for tonight. There was much to do at 'home.'
Ian
Arionna took her leave of them, and Ian watched her go. Perhaps another day he might have cause to answer her question, but for now the hour was getting late. She needed to head home, and so did he. He stayed for a few moments longer though, standing beside Grace with his breath making little wisps of steam in the air.
"I'm sorry that happened to you." His voice was noticeably more weighty than it had been earlier. Maybe he understood what it was like to have your life thrown into disarray. What it was like to give up something you loved because of something else that you had no control over. Maybe it wasn't like that for her. As she'd said, she was already evolving beyond her courses. But still, it had to be a hard thing to do at the time. Maybe it still was.
"Life can be fucking bullshit sometimes."
He let out a breath, allowing the muscles in his body to relax. To wind down. "I should get going too."
Grace
"I did. Go to a psychiatrist. Once. It sucked," Grace says, stumbles over her words a bit. As much as Arionna puts her on edge, at least she's not Garrett Franklin. At least it took Ari more than a few minutes to get on her bad side. Garrett made her want to scream in pure rage. Arionna just gets... pity. And confusion.
And again, Ari gets that utterly confused look as she leaves. Grace is pretty laid back, or at least she thinks so. If anyone has a temperament issue, it isn't her. Right? Surely.
Ian says he's sorry that happened to her, and she looks to him instead of Arionna's retreating back. "Well, it can be, sometimes. But I have to think, if I never had any obstacles to overcome, I would never have found out how capable I am at overcoming. Sometimes the bullshit, while yeah, it's total bullshit -- still gives you the opportunity to teach yourself who you are."
She gives him the smile that Arionna didn't receive, because she was being unfathomable. "Walk you back to the parking lot?"
Ian
"How very enlightened of you," Ian teased, though he didn't necessarily disagree.
Walk you back to the parking lot?
"Sure. You can protect me from roving hoards of teenage girls."
(He was joking. Right?)
Ian grinned and tapped Grace lightly on the shoulder, turning in the direction of the lot. "Let's go."
Grace
"Well, apparently, I do like to tie them up a lot. So..."
[P.S. -- Wrap joke!]
Tuesday, February 10, 2015
Post-Vampire Coffee [Retro]
Kalen
Kalen drives them all back, not to the house he has in the city, but to the Library. All of them are drained, one of them is hurt, and Grace is possibly still watching the little red dot that is their new vampire acquaintance crawling over her screen. Kalen is going over the things he knows about vampires, but the things he knows about vampires are mostly how to kill them.
Unless they start a conversation while he's driving, he's content to be quiet while he drives. If they're paying close attention to him, they might notice the amount of attention he pays to the mirrors. There is more than one way to track someone. Did they figure out which car was theirs? He needs to talk to Grace about creating a bug-detecting device. About automatic sweeps at the gate. Can she enchant his car? Give him a little indicator light?
For now, he lets those things go. There are probably no bugs on the car. There is probably no danger here. Not the kind that he needs to prepare for immediately, anyway.
If the others are quiet while he drives, he'll focus on the few things they need to do once they reach the Library. Show Alexander where there is a ridiculously well stocked first-aid kit (which is, perhaps, more like the first-aid and ammunition closet). Start water boiling for the coffee. Grind coffee. He won't dissuade them from following him into the kitchen, but if they want to collapse in the library where there are couches...who is he to judge? He'd rather like to collapse in there too.
Just not yet.
He may have talked about tea rituals with Alexander, but there is a certain practiced calm about this that wasn't evident in watching him prepare tea. He reaches for the knobs to cabinets without looking for them, touches buttons on the grinder after a little swipe of his fingers over it, pulls out the container of coffee he wants without needing to check the label. He'll pull out the things Grace likes, or perhaps she will, she's been in a kitchen with him often enough by now that he barely has to look at her either. He knows the things she wants and where they are. Alexander, if he comes into the kitchen, gets slightly more attention, but only because Kalen doesn't know where to expect him to be or to go.
Grace
What Grace does on the road back to the library is sleep. Being a passenger in someone else's car always has a tendency to knock her right out even on a good night, and this has not been a good night. When she walked out of the club, she looked exhausted. Her head hurt when she had to put it through its paces tonight. So Grace slumps her way into the back seat and promptly uses all that space to get comfortable enough to nap.
It's not that she thinks she's perfectly safe, having just walked out of a vampire den. No, she just trusts Kalen to be able to get away from any danger. That's how he Awakened, after all, right?
When they stop, she does mumble out, "sss mmpr?" It's something that her hazy half-dream insists is very important. But no, Grace, it is not vampires they're stopping for. It's coffee and couches and books, in a place that is not a coffee shop with its resultant other people.
Upon dragging herself into the building, she does make a beeline toward the kitchen, but it's not coffee she's after. She goes straight for the freezer, and digs around way in the back until she finds her prize: a year-old bag of frozen peas. Strangely enough, nobody has yet thought to themselves in the middle of the night that a bag of peas would make the finest snack ever. Who would have thought? The icy peas have had plenty of time to stick to each other, so it comes out as a rather firm block, until Grace hauls off and slams the bag against the corner of the freezer.
This isn't normal Grace behavior. She's not normally so violent with vegetables.
She takes a kitchen towel and wraps the bag with it, then goes off to find Alex.
Alexander
Alexander, for his part, is pretty quiet on the drive back to the library. The only real noise inside the car, beyond the sound of the engine and the tyres on the road, is whatever radio station the radio turns onto. Some local station, automated system playing 80's tracks through the small hours of Monday morning. Initially Alex rests his head on the passenger door frame, looking at the wing mirror. Not, this time, to peer through the Gauntlet. Like Kalen, he's just keeping an eye on what's behind them. Eventually the light night traffic dies away and he dozes off.
He rouses again when Kalen parks up and the sound of the engine dies away. Following the others into the building, he grabs the first aid kit and heads into the bathroom. He pulls off his tshirt and hangs it over the top of the door before prodding and cleaning the injuries he already knew about and started checking for others. Rinsing his mouth out leaves a little watery blood in the sink, but no teeth. He rinses his face in clean, cold water and spends a little time staring at himself in the mirror. Then closes his eyes and rests his forehead against it.
He hears the movement of Grace approaching with cold vegetables and pushes himself from the mirror, finding a towel to dry off before replacing the tshirt. He takes the offered bag with thanks before heading towards the library proper. For the couches rather than the books.
He sits on an arms and topples backwards, lying flat on the cushions with his legs hanging over the arm. He holds the bag against his jaw, with a sharp inhalation when it makes contact with the painful area.
[[Apologies if I missed any auto car - wrecks - typing on the phone is a pain!]]
Kalen
Kalen brings the coffee, still in a French press brewing, and sets it on the table. Then vanishes to return with a box with sugar of various kinds and honey and some flavored syrups. And then mugs. And then cream. Because Kalen is incapable of drinking black coffee. Or coffee that didn't cost at least twenty dollars a pound and wasn't fresh ground. Except that Alexander saw him drinking straight black coffee that had definitely been sitting too long on a warmer.
Now that all that is brought out, he settles onto the arm of the couch that Alexander's legs aren't draped over. He runs a hand through his hair. "I don't have pie. Or cupcakes. I was getting those when Elijah was here more. I should...get some frozen ones or something. Ah." His eyes flick to Grace, and he smiles, faded by exhaustion a bit, but a real smile. His attention returns to Alexander, and there is, very faintly, a trace of an amused purr. "Do you like blackberries?" The corners of his mouth twitch a little. "And have I ever told you about how I met Grace? I think it may have been more awkward than when you and I met."
"Or...how I Awakened? It occurs to me that both of those things are relevant right now. One of them more conversationally and less like business than the other."
Grace
Alex might notice that she's been paying a great deal of extra attention to her cell phone, but the why of that remains to be seen. She's concerning herself with a map of Denver, if he's really perceptive, but that's unlikely, considering. She walks into the library after him, her face buried in that phone, and without looking up, asks him, "How's the damage? Peas help?"
When Kalen arrives with coffee, Grace has planted herself in a chair and already taken off her shoes so she can curl up into an impossible shape upon it. Coffee will help at least stave off the hour of passing out, but she looks even more dead than the vampire had.
Thinking of which, a number of questions came to mind about that one. Whenever Kalen used to tell her about vampires, she honestly didn't make the connection between that and something real. It's like the difference between hearing about a rhinoceros and actually going to the zoo. The man looked like a man, spoke like a man, seemed to have a conscience. Not a mindless monster, then. Perhaps a more devious one.
She smiles back at him, similarly dimmed by what they'd put themselves through. Then, sniffs a little huff of laughter at the ceiling when he speaks of the awkwardness of their first meeting. Strange, she didn't think it was awkward at all.
Alex
Peas help? He glances over at the chair Grace has settled into. "It helps numb it a bit, so yeah. And it's not so bad. I've had worse." He'd shrug if he was in a better position to. "That guy had a mean swing, though. And I don't think he even noticed the hits I was getting on him." He looks towards the door when Kalen arrives. "Is that normal for them?"
He watches as the coffee is set down on the table. And the syrups. And the other coffee - related paraphernalia. "Was that a really stupid thing to do, by the way? Taking a swing at a vampire?" Not that he'd have done much differently right now. Not after seeing the state of the spirits that were loitering in the club. That Alicia had been another Mage had been purely coincidental in his reaction.
He'd have to ask Alyssa what would happen to them...
“You have drupes?” He tilts his head back to look up at Kalen and pokes his tongue out. "You told me about the vampire thing. Rock beats scissors and truck beats vampire. But no, you never told me how you guys met up.
Kalen
Kalen's attention shifts between the two of them. He remembers when he wasn't sure they could be in the same place. And look at them now. There was a time he thought he and Sid would be something else too. Strange how sharing the kinds of things Mages inevitably share shift relationships in ways that are difficult to predict. Perhaps, with enough magic, you could try, but the variables....
"I've got pretty limited vampire experience. I know not all of them look like monsters, but I'm not entirely sure the one we met tonight even is a monster. He's definitely dangerous. He isn't exactly our friend. But for now, I think we should leave him be." He glances at Grace. "Watch. I don't think he was lying about what he said. And if he really isn't off killing people...we have bigger problems.
"There is considerable variation in reports about what vampires can and can't do. But hurting them...generally involves significant force. Fire is good. Beheading is good. Enchanted weapons are good." There is a flicker of a smile. "Beheading with enchanted weapons that are also on fire is excellent.
"The older they are the more frightening they are, in general, but knowing how old they are at a glance...the ones that live that long either learn to disappear or learn to blend in, I think. We may just have to assume they are all incredibly dangerous." He pours a mug of coffee for each of them.
"The day I met Grace, in addition to establishing that she liked blackberries, I asked her to come by my totally not creepy murder warehouse to learn to shoot. I think, judging by the whole people standing in the mouth of the alley situation, we may need to consider doing some more training. And maybe, all things we learned tonight considered, put up some general vampire survival tips on Ginger.
"And, in not entirely unrelated news, we may want to think about finding people who can't stop something from affecting their minds someone to partner up with to learn. I'd rather not...." There is a faint shudder and he takes a sip of coffee. Black. Undoctored. He sets the mug back down gently so that he can pour cream in.
"You remember Thakky," he says to Grace. His eyes track back to Alexander. "We had an evil spirit problem, before you got here. It was...unpleasant. But it was able to do some pretty unpleasant tricks. It would probably be for the best if everyone learned at least the basics for avoiding those."
Grace
"Yeah. I saw what he was doing to Alicia, and Elijah and I worked together to stop it. Then, I went and shielded myself just in case he decided to make us all fall into blithering lust with him," Grace says with a shudder.
She goes for the blue mug, not exactly taking much care with it or the french press carafe. She's just too drained to give a shit. But at least she doesn't forget the cream and brown sugar rock candy stirrer. Kalen and Grace have a stock of these. They're essentially lollipops. Some people have yet to figure out what growing up is supposed to entail, and let's hope they never do.
"Thakky was... hmm," she says, leaning back in the chair with her coffee and actually looking toward Alex. "You remember the riot at the Mayan Theater? Four people died? I was there. Thakky was the evil spirit behind a monster crawling out of the screen to drive the crowd of theatergoers into a spontaneous mosh pit. And it really didn't stop there of course."
She will never stop calling Thakinyan 'Thakky'. It's a point of issue: what do you do with a spirit who thrives on fear and madness? Give it a cutesy name. It'll hate that.
"So yeah, mental shielding is a wonderful thing to have. I'm not sure how many people could learn it from me, though. Seems like there's a huge gap between myself and others sometimes." Grace pauses, considers. Her eyes wander a bit. "When it comes to, you know, ideas about how their magic works."
Grace blows on her coffee, spreading the steam, slightly decreasing the entropy of the coffee-cup system. Slightly increasing it for the room. Always increasing, however, toward the end of all events.
"When I scanned the vampire, he looked like... Like he was storing entropy. Most of the time, entropy always increases in a system, and it was increasing for the vampire too, just it wasn't affecting the vampire himself. It was just built up like stress on a fault line. No actual movement, but you could see the eventual earthquake just waiting. Kinda creepy. But now I know what to look for."
Alexander
Everyone makes ripples as they live their lives. Those ripples interact and amplify and cancel. The outcome isn’t anything definite. Mages? They seem to be more as they live. The highs are higher, the lows are lower, and the chaotic interactions are so much more unpredictable as a result. Not so long ago, Alexander had been ready to have – looking to have – a blazing row with Grace. More because she was a convenient target for the anger, fear, frustration and countless other emotions that he had been struggling to deal with. But that encounter could have left them pushed ever further apart.
Nothing is fixed by fate.
He stays lying on the couch while Kalen sorts out the coffee. There’s a cup on the table waiting, he’ll grab it in a minute. For now, he’s comfortable. “Do you have any idea how many of them there might be? Are they common?” He takes a breath as a thought come to him, turning to swing his legs off the couch and sit upright. “I thought the whole vampire thing was spread through biting? Why were there so many drained spirits in the club if they turn into vampires?”
He reaches for the coffee, leaving it black and unsweetened, before sitting back on the couch and crossing his legs under him. He nods then takes a sip from the mug. “A little more help would have been nice. But I think it would have been risky for to do much tonight. They’d probably have had as much chance of hitting me as that guy. So, yeah, lessons. Lessons are good.”
Alexander looks between Kalen and Grace as they explain the whole Umbral Nasty thing in the cinema. You remember? He shakes his head. “That was before I got here, I’ve not heard anything much about it other than bits and pieces from you guys.” You guys – the Awakened. “I… would definitely be interested in learning to shield myself, though.” He looks down into his coffee, feeling little bad about that night with Sera, but wanting more to stop anyone getting into his head like that again.
He nods when Grace explains the concentration of Entropy, cringing inside. He was just getting comfortable with the idea of poking into the spirit world again. Looking into chaos and probability and possibilities tending towards decay and death and destruction? That is very much less comfortable.
Kalen
"Drained spirits?" Kalen asks softly. "Just a bite is not sufficient. Sometimes when they feed they merely kill. Often, I should think, otherwise they'd be like unchecked rabbits. It is hardly as though they have many predators."
"I'm less disappointed in the outcome this evening, everyone is still breathing after all, as concerned for what may have happened if circumstances had been a bit different." He smiles. "And you and Elijah did a good thing there. It was hardly a disaster when considering the whole of the cosmos. It just illuminated some ways in which we could better prepare."
"I taught Elijah the basics of Mind magic, though I'm hardly to be classified an expert. I learned by reading, honestly. Reading and practice. But that is not necessarily ideal. Sera and Alyssa would be better teachers than I am. Still, in some ways pairing the proper students and proper teachers is more important than the sheer vastness of knowledge."
With more space on the couch he slides onto the actual couch instead of the arm, and curls into the corner with his coffee. "For tonight though. Coffee. And I'll answer what questions I can. Tomorrow, research. Into vampires and into specifics about these vampires. Even I can see the wisdom in fighting no more battles tonight. Or even preparing for them."
Grace
No more battles tonight, the Flambeau says. And the incongruity of that makes her smile, just a little.
"All I know about vampires I learned from watching random bits and pieces of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so I'm probably in great need of questiony-answery time. What gets me is that he looked so normal. Like some regular guy. He probably does normal better than we do."
To add to the list of people who do human better than you, Grace? The inhuman entropy-sink. Great.
"So, I guess then the big question I have is what do I do about this?" she says, and holds up her phone, displaying the map with the little blinking red dot.
"I can try to figure out where he goes, figure out his patterns, perhaps? Or just drop it. I mean he did try to attack Alicia, but okay, you say you trust him that he didn't intend to kill her. I don't know though. I mean, going and fucking with someone's head like that is harm enough. He wanted to get her alone for some reason, and it can't have been good."
Alexander
"Yeah," He shifts again, turning to Kalen a little more, "they looked like they were completely drained of everything. I'm no expert, but some of the spirits I've seen before were at least active. These guys just looked like they were just biding their time until whatever happens to them happens." He shrugs. Although he may be able to see more of the spirit world than Kalen or Grace, he's by no means any kind of expert. "Hell, I don't even know what happens to them after."
Not yet, anyway.
There may be more questions to come but, for now, Alexander is tired. He sinks back against the back of the couch and listens to the talk of students and teachers. Alyssa sounds like the best option, given how Sera's last attempt to use Mind magic went.
"Track him, I guess. We can try getting more information about the club and its owners. I'll have a dig and see if I can find anything about crime in the area."
Kalen
"I don't know that much about spirits. A little. If they're...kind of catatonic and there...we might have to try to help them later. Once we clear the place. It's not likely we can get close and call them. Well." He looks at Grace. "Maybe some people could. But I don't know if we have anyone who can get close and call them with magic. And...physically close...I don't think is safe."
Alexander sinks back against the couch and Kalen smiles a little, and then after the note about looking into the club reaches out to squeeze his shoulder. "That's what mornings are for."
He glances back to Grace, like, 'Is there more now?' But he is also tired, not quite so much as they are, perhaps. But, definitely tired.
[Wow. I totally spaced. You people should poke me so I behave. Ugh. Sorry about that.]
Grace
It can wait, Kalen's tired glance seems to say.
And truth be told, it can. Even though Grace tends to long to chase down everything in her life straight to the finish line. She shrugs and puts the phone down on the table.
"Well, in the morning, you can let me know what you want to do with this guy," she says, to no one in particular, but probably to Kalen. "I've got a pretty strong tether going straight to him. It'll last for as long as I can keep it going, but the longer we sit on it, the more of a chance it stands of being broken. Or discovered. I don't know if vampires can do what plant-zombie-spirit things can, but I don't particularly want to find out."
She regards the room with closed eyes and a strange cant to her head like she's going to fall asleep right there, but she lifts the mug up to her mouth instead. It's comforting, the normalcy. After such a night, just sitting back in a safe place with coffee -- in her chair? It's less home than it is territory. Every inch is a memorized one, and every presence a known entity. So she lets that sink in, in order to find balance.
Alexander
“The morning is good,” Alexander says as he wiggles down in the couch a little and stretches his legs out in front of him, eyes closing. He’s certainly in no rush to go find any other supernatural nasties to get into a fist fight with tonight. Or, probably, tomorrow. As Kalen had said, they were all breathing. He was probably the worst off physically, and that was all stuff that would heal given a few days. Alicia and Elijah? That would take a lot more time and patching up, but wasn’t anything he could do anything about or – at the moment – really knew anything about anyway.
So the bag of peas slides down and lands on the arm of the couch, the hand with the coffee cup wedging against the same arm keeping the cup upright, as he falls asleep.
Things can definitely wait until the morning.
Sunday, February 8, 2015
Cala
Grace
[Awareness! = How well is the Magedar working today?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 3, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
Elijah
[I like rolling! Awareness]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 7, 9, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )
Elijah
He had texted.
This particular book store cum coffee shop/gelato place was his most recent acquisition. He was now the mayor of a place called The Book Rack. The book shelves were packed high and full of second hand books of any and every kind. The cafe served things in mismatched mugs with bright smiles from the pink-haired Vietnamese girl who was slinging cappuccino today. The air even smelled like chai spices and some strange array of otherness that one seemed to only find in Asian food markets.
It boasted one of those little machines that heat seals the lids on the bubble tea. Elijah didn't know what honey dew and taro was going to taste like, but there were tapioca balls involved so he wasn't going to complain too terribly much.
He had a pile of books.
He'd already bought a couple, but was perusing the others to see if they were something that he actually wanted. Mostly art history. Things he couldn't replicate but most definitely wanted to understand. A beginner's guide to physics. Some first aid- bridging the gaps in his mundane knowledge base. Attire was comfortable, vaguely River Phoenix-esque with tousled hair and without the tragedy attached. Button down shirt, a pair of lacks, and a vest. There was a fine line between appearing like a hipster and a business school drop out, and today Elijah was most assuredly riding the line.
Grace
"Okay, so Elijah... You're going to maybe not want to do that," Grace says, walking up to Elijah. Like kittens to milk, so Mages are to information and the caffeine necessary to consume said information. She puts her hand out over his phone without looking up from hers. "Foursquare is so spy-tastic. I can find you too easily. At least make it a little hard?"
Smells like dead trees and espresso in here, and she takes a deep breath. Looks up and around finally, as though realizing at last that she might need sight to navigate. It does help. A bit. She's in her coat -- the all angles, suggestive of something vulpine. It was never her idea, but she's worn it enough and modded it enough to make it a thing thoroughly Grace. It feels like her -- sharp and shifting.
"You want to hit the ice cream at all?"
Grace has no books. Or at least, she hasn't chosen to buy any. She's read bits and pieces of quite a few while here, in complete disregard for 'this is not a library' rules. If it were up to her, every single thing in here would be digitized and given wings. Perhaps even including the people. Yep, definitely the people too.
Elijah
"Aw, come on. You have a steady stream of constant information regarding where I am and what I am doing at all times. In the event that I go missing, there's going to be twenty people at least who think that's weird because I'm not instagramming the Hell out of this," he only half whined, but his heart wasn't in it. There was a grin on his face and there he was. Comfortable and pleased and everything smelled like dead trees and espresso, and this awas a completely acceptable smell in the mind of one Elijah Poirot.
Does he want to hit the icecream? At all?
"I was hoping you would ask that, Tao said they have lemon pommegranate gelato," he said. He paused, "I dig the coat, by the way."
Grace
"I'll make you one. Give me an old coat you've got hanging around, and I'll fix it up for you," Grace says, and realizes that of course Kalen won't approve of that plan. He'd have Elijah in something new and tailored AND festooned with lights and infrared sensors. Grace is a creature of practicality, however, so Kalen can go take a flying leap -- into a ball pit or something, because she's not that mean.
"You'll need one to participate in the training room activities."
There are lemon pomegranate gelato scoops to obtain, so she starts wandering in that direction. Elijah can follow or not as he will, but she will keep talking.
"Didn't you ever think that those things were just a ploy to find out how to target adds at you better?"
Cala
Awareness.
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )
Elijah
"I'm pretty sure I've got a coat hanging around somewhere. I need some danger room gear, it seems," he couldn't help but grin, perking up at the notion that he was going to get to go be in a place where there was training for danger. Like an X-Man, but he didn't have cool mutant superpowers.
Magic doesn't count as a cool mutant superpower. That's completely different.
He does start to head that way, content to keep talking and acquire gelator because the idea of keeping him away from something with sugar was strange at best, "I figured it was a data mining kind of thing? You kind of voluntarily give up some privacy with social media. It's socially acceptably creepy."
Cala
Corner table in the little cafe, just within the spill of lights from the street. Reflections, see. Some businesses are starting to close down for the evening: the restaurant supply store next door. Others are just starting up: the strip club on the corner. The Book Rack isn't closing soon but the cafe is already half-empty. Maybe it'll fill up again, later. Folks who want gelato on the way out, or back in. Some local band's local track playing over the soundsystem. It's a concept album about biscuits.
The girl at the corner table is farthest away from Grace and Elijah and the most aware of them. An edge to her, the slantwise way she watches them. It feels both refined and furtive. And perhaps they don't even notice the way she watches them.
The way she is aware of them.
That doesn't mean they don't feel her.
(Manipulation + Subterfuge to hide her interest, et cetera.)
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 7, 7, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 5 )
Cala
Grace senses something new when she and Elijah start toward the gelato counter. The sensation is hard to pinpoint, but it feeling like something opening, or perhaps an opening.
Grace
[Perception + Subterfuge = Can I tell you are trying hard not to let on?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 5, 5, 6) ( success x 1 )
Elijah
[Can I tell?]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 6 ) Re-rolls: 2
Grace
Grace is oblivious to the spying, but not to the sensation of someone else in the place. Some new presence filters in softly, and her head rises a tic. Who is that?
New Awakened people in Denver are often very new indeed. It doesn't surprise or put her on edge to feel an opening. She's just curious, looking rather like her nicknamesake -- foxlike in her quick glance around.
Oh. They have strawberry...
"Elijah. Green tea gelato. I think I have hit sugar nirvana," she says, presses her hand to the glass covering the gelato counter.
Somebody is totally unconcerned.
Elijah
He paused, mid approach to the counter and he knew better. He knew that he shouldn't be following that sort of curiosity, but there was something new, and his gut pulled him towards the corner and-
What sort of creature would he be did he not follow his gut. "What do you open," he says to himself.
Really, apprentices shouldn't be left to their own devices and Grace said there is green tea gelato and he nudges her a little before starting his approach to the corner, like Aurora Rose towards sme magical spindle, but less trance and more curiosity. Because he was a curious thing, that curiosity would get him into trouble at some point.
"I'm gonna make friends," he called back.
And thus it is off to the corner to make friends.
Cala
The girl - she is a girl - is winter dressed. Dark coat, slung over the shoulder of the flimsy cafe chair. Battered leather gloves pulled off her hands and left to their devices on the table. Cup-and-saucer steaming on the table, one of the small metal teapots for the ferrying of hotwater on the table. Dark hair and dark eyes. Sharp, okay?
And forgettable.
She seems relaxed. Watching the dark street through the dark windows, tending to her tea. Strangers' reflections swimming across the surface, the bustle outside. The smear of headlights, the spray of green-to-yellow as the stoplights outside change colors.
Seems.
Elijah sees her better than Grace.
Reads the wary tension that underscores that facsimile of ease and disinterest.
Someone is braced for something. Someone is ready to run.
Grace
"Hmm?" Grace says. "Oh, new friend?"
She smiles at the guy who stands on the other side of the gelato counter waiting for her order. She's not going to give him any. Friends await. Or, at least, attempts at friendliness await.
No, she'll walk with Elijah over to the corner, letting him take the lead. Yes, let's see what'll happen. Let's see.
"Is that her?"
Elijah
Someone is braced for something. Someone is ready to run.
It makes someone else stop, or at least slow. She's going to run, she's going to bolt and something is going to happen. That much he knows, or thinks he knows. But he straightens, exhales and pulls his confidence together because he has to say something now that he's turned around and made his approach.
"Excuse me," he says, quiet enough to not be obtrusive. Loud enough to not be hard ont eh ears, "but is that any good?"
He gestured to the tea in its little metal teapot-and-cup-and-saucer set up. He doesn't justify, just continues, "I caught it out of the corner of my eye and I figured I might as well ask, ya know?"
Cala
The small cafe is half-empty, a few murmured conversations in the air, sure. The biscuit concept album on the sound system, turned down to the level that Norah Jones' records often are: inobtrusive.
So there is not much to cushion the conversation. To make it contextual or natural. Not much in the air to give it substance - that glow that seems to spark in the air in busy social spaces.
The girl - the young woman - gives up the pretense used to conceal her interest as soon as it becomes clear to her that Elijah has chosen a deliberate path to her or near her table. Elijah and Grace are half-way through the tables, one trailing the other, when she gives them both a frank, spare look. She has dark eyes. They touch on Elijah, then slide to Grace.
That is where they linger longest.
--
Her mouth is flat. There is a small, lumpen bag beneath her feet - leather like the gloves, battered, a match for her dark brown boots - and as Elijah comes up and says to her, excuse me, she is bending down beneath the table, stuffing or shoveling something back into it.
When she sits up again, she's pulling the drawstring closed.
Gives the teapot a sideglance. Gives Grace another sideglance, her mouth flat.
"It's fine," she says, non-committal. Reaching across the table for her gloves. A glimpse in the mug and it doesn't even look like tea.
Just hot water and lemon.
Both free.
Grace
The stuffing of a purse, the going for the gloves -- these are 'I'm leaving' signals. Grace has done that before. The fleeing from danger impulse used to be quite strong with her.
So she just smiles at the woman, trying to impress upon her the non-monster nature of the two of them. Just good people, we are. Not going to hurt you.
When the cautious woman's eyes land on her, mouth flat, all nerves and furtiveness, Grace will wave at her. Chill. It's cool. We're all cool here. Look at how cool we are.
Elijah
[Is there magic going on I need to know about? Prime 1 - sans foci (because spouting off Words right now may be bad). Diff 4 + 3 = 7 ?]
Dice: 1 d10 TN7 (2) ( success x 1 ) [WP]
Elijah
He's distracted.
There is a moment of focus there, and he is definitely distracted by somerthing or focusing on something just out the window. Just outside of his reach and he's thinking, and there are things he could say, and there are things he would want to say but he has so little language and Kalen had been very specific that those particular words were to be kept secret.
Can't very well be secret when you're talking to someone who is fleeing, now can you?
"Uh..." so, Mister Personable can't quite come up with words at that juncture. He's too torn elsewhere.
Cala
Elijah is distracted, trying to focus, trying to find the threads of magic in the air lingering around her. He needs more time, perhaps more words, but the strange girl has already flexed her long fingers around the strap of her backpack and now she's picking it up.
Now she's standing.
She has no great height and something about her is forgettable in the same way that Grace can be forgettable. Though she is taller than Grace, with a contained expressiveness that flickers behind her mask like the shadows of passing clouds over a summer sidewalk. These subtle flickers that are hard to spot beneath the tension.
Spare humor, the sort that some might call gallows.
A deep down impulse to smirk.
Her hair is pulled back and twisted into a loose bun. Her clothing dark.
"Excuse me," she says, once she is standing, the pack slung over her right shoulder, the gloves in her left hand.
And then she cuts between them, headed toward the front door.
Elijah
"Why were you watching us?"
It's the first thing that comes out of his mouth, the first thing that is coherent and he lets that thread of magic start to pull and he can't quite find it, can't quite grasp the concept of that fundamental truth. He can't quite put a meaning to it all, he can't find where intent pulled the formless into the fold.
Not suspicious, just... frank.
Grace
"I think maybe we chased her off," Grace says to Elijah, as his tumult rises about him. "It happens."
She looks to her phone in hand, and starts tapping away at it. There is another thing Grace likes to do with new people other than say hi to their face. She also likes to send them her own brand of text message -- one that works without the intervention of a phone company.
So her screen goes black, replaces the black with Code, that she slips herself into. All things connect to one another, and you might say that phones are uniquely suited to the task. They send out signals and receive them in turn and all of this tying and untying and bending fucking space goes unnoticed because it is so commonplace. But Grace can tie threads where there should be none.
[Corr 2: Secure Communication -- We're trying to send a message to someone without knowing their phone number, with direct communication between the devices.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (2, 5, 8) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Elijah
[Per+alert]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 2, 4, 6, 7) ( success x 1 )
Cala
Elijah is distracted, trying to focus, trying to find the threads of magic in the air lingering around her. He needs more time, perhaps more words, but the strange girl has already flexed her long fingers around the strap of her backpack and now she's picking it up.
Now she's standing.
She has no great height and something about her is forgettable in the same way that Grace can be forgettable. Though she is taller than Grace, with a contained expressiveness that flickers behind her mask like the shadows of passing clouds over a summer sidewalk. These subtle flickers that are hard to spot beneath the tension.
Spare humor, the sort that some might call gallows.
A deep down impulse to smirk.
Her hair is pulled back and twisted into a loose bun. Her clothing dark.
"Excuse me," she says, once she is standing, the pack slung over her right shoulder, the gloves in her left hand.
And then she cuts between them, headed toward the front door.
Cala
Cala breathes out so sharply when Elijah asks that question. It is enough to arrest her. To make her stop her forward progress and turn around and just look at him. There is still a sense of furtiveness about her but beneath that is something else he can only just read: a kind of defiance. The look of saints and martyrs.
And - revolutionaries.
That smirk gets swallowed up in the collar of her oversized cloak.
There's no other answer for Elijah.
She gains the door soon after, pushes it open and heads out onto the dark street.
--
Meanwhile, Grace works. Or rather, Works.
The screen of her phone goes black and she loses herself in the Code. She knows this space, knows too that all spaces are one. She's met the girl, she just needs to get through, and it's working, everything is pulling together, the connection -
- Wait. There is no such number.
Anywhere.
Ever.
--
Outside: she does not double-back. Does not pass by the cafe's windows.
Still, Elijah sees the girl through the closing door, a brief glance over her shoulder.
Something about bodylanguage tells him that she very well may actually run.
Lock.
Key.
Grace
"She's afraid. What is she afraid of?" Grace asks Elijah, though her gaze is a confused one, straight into her phone.
"She's blocking my attempts to reach her," she adds, in quiet whisper. "I refuse to believe that anyone that young anywhere in this city has never owned a phone. That's ridiculous."
Even more ridiculous than any number of things Grace has seen. Apparently not even watching a ghul burst through a movie screen and start causing a riot is enough to merit the level of disbelief she finds in that particular notion.
Elijah
"I don't know yet," he said. Yet being the operative word. Yet because there was a puzzle, because now he wanted to know, needed to know if he could just hold onto the memory of her long enough to be more than dark and with the smirk of a revolutionary. Someone with fire.
He doesn't know the word for lock in Enochian, but he does know the word for key. He knows it because he tastes it on his tongue, because his wrists and fingertips have practiced drawing that sigil and the meaning of it sticks with him.
There is a door, some kind of door- but... but in that corner, it wasn't a thing, it wasn't a tangible thing, it was a person. If a person could be a feeling and it lingered. His gaze sharpened, and he watched.
"Lock... key," he said. "Lock," and then, something under his breath, something a little more guarded and alien. Key.
[C'mon, pattern, what you doin'? Watching the weaving, perhaps? Prime 1?]
Dice: 1 d10 TN4 (1) ( success x 1 ) [WP]
Elijah
[Magic, do what you will?]
Dice: 1 d10 TN5 (10) ( success x 1 )
Grace
"Oh, is that 'key' then?" Grace says, smirks, because she cares not for the rules of Hermetics. Kalen, who showed her his books of sigils long ago, likes to bend them from time to time as well.
Knowledge seeks such cracks in walls through which it can flow. Grace likes those faultlines.
"I just want some damn green tea gelato now. Miss Mystery can run away all she likes, I guess. If she doesn't want to talk so very hard, who am I to restrain her? Especially if she's afraid of us, that could be taken the wrong way..."
Elijah
"Whoever she is, she sure as Hell doesn't want to be contained or cornered, that's for sure," and that... sounds a little like approval from the young man. LIke he had room to really disapprove, but there he was. Things that were threads and intent and then ones and zeroes and keen edges and honed winged flight and they fluttered off into nothing.
Then something.
Then nothing again.
"I met a girl who didn't own a phone, like, ever? She may or may not have lived in a cult for the entirety of her life," he eventually does put his hands up and, hesitantly, turned around with a grin, "and it's key-ish. Approximation of what a key is for and not- anyway. Mostly key."
Grace
"Bah. Cults can be weird, I'll give them that."
So Grace is, a thing of constant contact with the internet and her devices, that she feels a pang of reflexive sorrow for such a person who had never known the joy of technology. To have nearly the sum of human knowledge hanging out in your pocket is a power so many take for granted. It's superhuman. A preparation for the day when humans leave humanity behind and become.
For today, green tea gelato. And a forgetfulness that droops over her. Is this what it's like when people meet her for the first time? How they look at her on the second time as though they don't know who she is anymore? Maybe the next time Grace sees Miss Mystery she'll have to ask herself why that person seems familiar, if it even registers at all.
Just one thing is for certain. They met a new Someone. She was afraid of something. She left in a hurry. And she never owned a phone (or, perhaps, had wards up to protect it).
[Awareness! = How well is the Magedar working today?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 3, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
Elijah
[I like rolling! Awareness]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 7, 9, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )
Elijah
He had texted.
This particular book store cum coffee shop/gelato place was his most recent acquisition. He was now the mayor of a place called The Book Rack. The book shelves were packed high and full of second hand books of any and every kind. The cafe served things in mismatched mugs with bright smiles from the pink-haired Vietnamese girl who was slinging cappuccino today. The air even smelled like chai spices and some strange array of otherness that one seemed to only find in Asian food markets.
It boasted one of those little machines that heat seals the lids on the bubble tea. Elijah didn't know what honey dew and taro was going to taste like, but there were tapioca balls involved so he wasn't going to complain too terribly much.
He had a pile of books.
He'd already bought a couple, but was perusing the others to see if they were something that he actually wanted. Mostly art history. Things he couldn't replicate but most definitely wanted to understand. A beginner's guide to physics. Some first aid- bridging the gaps in his mundane knowledge base. Attire was comfortable, vaguely River Phoenix-esque with tousled hair and without the tragedy attached. Button down shirt, a pair of lacks, and a vest. There was a fine line between appearing like a hipster and a business school drop out, and today Elijah was most assuredly riding the line.
Grace
"Okay, so Elijah... You're going to maybe not want to do that," Grace says, walking up to Elijah. Like kittens to milk, so Mages are to information and the caffeine necessary to consume said information. She puts her hand out over his phone without looking up from hers. "Foursquare is so spy-tastic. I can find you too easily. At least make it a little hard?"
Smells like dead trees and espresso in here, and she takes a deep breath. Looks up and around finally, as though realizing at last that she might need sight to navigate. It does help. A bit. She's in her coat -- the all angles, suggestive of something vulpine. It was never her idea, but she's worn it enough and modded it enough to make it a thing thoroughly Grace. It feels like her -- sharp and shifting.
"You want to hit the ice cream at all?"
Grace has no books. Or at least, she hasn't chosen to buy any. She's read bits and pieces of quite a few while here, in complete disregard for 'this is not a library' rules. If it were up to her, every single thing in here would be digitized and given wings. Perhaps even including the people. Yep, definitely the people too.
Elijah
"Aw, come on. You have a steady stream of constant information regarding where I am and what I am doing at all times. In the event that I go missing, there's going to be twenty people at least who think that's weird because I'm not instagramming the Hell out of this," he only half whined, but his heart wasn't in it. There was a grin on his face and there he was. Comfortable and pleased and everything smelled like dead trees and espresso, and this awas a completely acceptable smell in the mind of one Elijah Poirot.
Does he want to hit the icecream? At all?
"I was hoping you would ask that, Tao said they have lemon pommegranate gelato," he said. He paused, "I dig the coat, by the way."
Grace
"I'll make you one. Give me an old coat you've got hanging around, and I'll fix it up for you," Grace says, and realizes that of course Kalen won't approve of that plan. He'd have Elijah in something new and tailored AND festooned with lights and infrared sensors. Grace is a creature of practicality, however, so Kalen can go take a flying leap -- into a ball pit or something, because she's not that mean.
"You'll need one to participate in the training room activities."
There are lemon pomegranate gelato scoops to obtain, so she starts wandering in that direction. Elijah can follow or not as he will, but she will keep talking.
"Didn't you ever think that those things were just a ploy to find out how to target adds at you better?"
Cala
Awareness.
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )
Elijah
"I'm pretty sure I've got a coat hanging around somewhere. I need some danger room gear, it seems," he couldn't help but grin, perking up at the notion that he was going to get to go be in a place where there was training for danger. Like an X-Man, but he didn't have cool mutant superpowers.
Magic doesn't count as a cool mutant superpower. That's completely different.
He does start to head that way, content to keep talking and acquire gelator because the idea of keeping him away from something with sugar was strange at best, "I figured it was a data mining kind of thing? You kind of voluntarily give up some privacy with social media. It's socially acceptably creepy."
Cala
Corner table in the little cafe, just within the spill of lights from the street. Reflections, see. Some businesses are starting to close down for the evening: the restaurant supply store next door. Others are just starting up: the strip club on the corner. The Book Rack isn't closing soon but the cafe is already half-empty. Maybe it'll fill up again, later. Folks who want gelato on the way out, or back in. Some local band's local track playing over the soundsystem. It's a concept album about biscuits.
The girl at the corner table is farthest away from Grace and Elijah and the most aware of them. An edge to her, the slantwise way she watches them. It feels both refined and furtive. And perhaps they don't even notice the way she watches them.
The way she is aware of them.
That doesn't mean they don't feel her.
(Manipulation + Subterfuge to hide her interest, et cetera.)
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 7, 7, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 5 )
Cala
Grace senses something new when she and Elijah start toward the gelato counter. The sensation is hard to pinpoint, but it feeling like something opening, or perhaps an opening.
Grace
[Perception + Subterfuge = Can I tell you are trying hard not to let on?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 5, 5, 6) ( success x 1 )
Elijah
[Can I tell?]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 6 ) Re-rolls: 2
Grace
Grace is oblivious to the spying, but not to the sensation of someone else in the place. Some new presence filters in softly, and her head rises a tic. Who is that?
New Awakened people in Denver are often very new indeed. It doesn't surprise or put her on edge to feel an opening. She's just curious, looking rather like her nicknamesake -- foxlike in her quick glance around.
Oh. They have strawberry...
"Elijah. Green tea gelato. I think I have hit sugar nirvana," she says, presses her hand to the glass covering the gelato counter.
Somebody is totally unconcerned.
Elijah
He paused, mid approach to the counter and he knew better. He knew that he shouldn't be following that sort of curiosity, but there was something new, and his gut pulled him towards the corner and-
What sort of creature would he be did he not follow his gut. "What do you open," he says to himself.
Really, apprentices shouldn't be left to their own devices and Grace said there is green tea gelato and he nudges her a little before starting his approach to the corner, like Aurora Rose towards sme magical spindle, but less trance and more curiosity. Because he was a curious thing, that curiosity would get him into trouble at some point.
"I'm gonna make friends," he called back.
And thus it is off to the corner to make friends.
Cala
The girl - she is a girl - is winter dressed. Dark coat, slung over the shoulder of the flimsy cafe chair. Battered leather gloves pulled off her hands and left to their devices on the table. Cup-and-saucer steaming on the table, one of the small metal teapots for the ferrying of hotwater on the table. Dark hair and dark eyes. Sharp, okay?
And forgettable.
She seems relaxed. Watching the dark street through the dark windows, tending to her tea. Strangers' reflections swimming across the surface, the bustle outside. The smear of headlights, the spray of green-to-yellow as the stoplights outside change colors.
Seems.
Elijah sees her better than Grace.
Reads the wary tension that underscores that facsimile of ease and disinterest.
Someone is braced for something. Someone is ready to run.
Grace
"Hmm?" Grace says. "Oh, new friend?"
She smiles at the guy who stands on the other side of the gelato counter waiting for her order. She's not going to give him any. Friends await. Or, at least, attempts at friendliness await.
No, she'll walk with Elijah over to the corner, letting him take the lead. Yes, let's see what'll happen. Let's see.
"Is that her?"
Elijah
Someone is braced for something. Someone is ready to run.
It makes someone else stop, or at least slow. She's going to run, she's going to bolt and something is going to happen. That much he knows, or thinks he knows. But he straightens, exhales and pulls his confidence together because he has to say something now that he's turned around and made his approach.
"Excuse me," he says, quiet enough to not be obtrusive. Loud enough to not be hard ont eh ears, "but is that any good?"
He gestured to the tea in its little metal teapot-and-cup-and-saucer set up. He doesn't justify, just continues, "I caught it out of the corner of my eye and I figured I might as well ask, ya know?"
Cala
The small cafe is half-empty, a few murmured conversations in the air, sure. The biscuit concept album on the sound system, turned down to the level that Norah Jones' records often are: inobtrusive.
So there is not much to cushion the conversation. To make it contextual or natural. Not much in the air to give it substance - that glow that seems to spark in the air in busy social spaces.
The girl - the young woman - gives up the pretense used to conceal her interest as soon as it becomes clear to her that Elijah has chosen a deliberate path to her or near her table. Elijah and Grace are half-way through the tables, one trailing the other, when she gives them both a frank, spare look. She has dark eyes. They touch on Elijah, then slide to Grace.
That is where they linger longest.
--
Her mouth is flat. There is a small, lumpen bag beneath her feet - leather like the gloves, battered, a match for her dark brown boots - and as Elijah comes up and says to her, excuse me, she is bending down beneath the table, stuffing or shoveling something back into it.
When she sits up again, she's pulling the drawstring closed.
Gives the teapot a sideglance. Gives Grace another sideglance, her mouth flat.
"It's fine," she says, non-committal. Reaching across the table for her gloves. A glimpse in the mug and it doesn't even look like tea.
Just hot water and lemon.
Both free.
Grace
The stuffing of a purse, the going for the gloves -- these are 'I'm leaving' signals. Grace has done that before. The fleeing from danger impulse used to be quite strong with her.
So she just smiles at the woman, trying to impress upon her the non-monster nature of the two of them. Just good people, we are. Not going to hurt you.
When the cautious woman's eyes land on her, mouth flat, all nerves and furtiveness, Grace will wave at her. Chill. It's cool. We're all cool here. Look at how cool we are.
Elijah
[Is there magic going on I need to know about? Prime 1 - sans foci (because spouting off Words right now may be bad). Diff 4 + 3 = 7 ?]
Dice: 1 d10 TN7 (2) ( success x 1 ) [WP]
Elijah
He's distracted.
There is a moment of focus there, and he is definitely distracted by somerthing or focusing on something just out the window. Just outside of his reach and he's thinking, and there are things he could say, and there are things he would want to say but he has so little language and Kalen had been very specific that those particular words were to be kept secret.
Can't very well be secret when you're talking to someone who is fleeing, now can you?
"Uh..." so, Mister Personable can't quite come up with words at that juncture. He's too torn elsewhere.
Cala
Elijah is distracted, trying to focus, trying to find the threads of magic in the air lingering around her. He needs more time, perhaps more words, but the strange girl has already flexed her long fingers around the strap of her backpack and now she's picking it up.
Now she's standing.
She has no great height and something about her is forgettable in the same way that Grace can be forgettable. Though she is taller than Grace, with a contained expressiveness that flickers behind her mask like the shadows of passing clouds over a summer sidewalk. These subtle flickers that are hard to spot beneath the tension.
Spare humor, the sort that some might call gallows.
A deep down impulse to smirk.
Her hair is pulled back and twisted into a loose bun. Her clothing dark.
"Excuse me," she says, once she is standing, the pack slung over her right shoulder, the gloves in her left hand.
And then she cuts between them, headed toward the front door.
Elijah
"Why were you watching us?"
It's the first thing that comes out of his mouth, the first thing that is coherent and he lets that thread of magic start to pull and he can't quite find it, can't quite grasp the concept of that fundamental truth. He can't quite put a meaning to it all, he can't find where intent pulled the formless into the fold.
Not suspicious, just... frank.
Grace
"I think maybe we chased her off," Grace says to Elijah, as his tumult rises about him. "It happens."
She looks to her phone in hand, and starts tapping away at it. There is another thing Grace likes to do with new people other than say hi to their face. She also likes to send them her own brand of text message -- one that works without the intervention of a phone company.
So her screen goes black, replaces the black with Code, that she slips herself into. All things connect to one another, and you might say that phones are uniquely suited to the task. They send out signals and receive them in turn and all of this tying and untying and bending fucking space goes unnoticed because it is so commonplace. But Grace can tie threads where there should be none.
[Corr 2: Secure Communication -- We're trying to send a message to someone without knowing their phone number, with direct communication between the devices.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (2, 5, 8) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Elijah
[Per+alert]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 2, 4, 6, 7) ( success x 1 )
Cala
Elijah is distracted, trying to focus, trying to find the threads of magic in the air lingering around her. He needs more time, perhaps more words, but the strange girl has already flexed her long fingers around the strap of her backpack and now she's picking it up.
Now she's standing.
She has no great height and something about her is forgettable in the same way that Grace can be forgettable. Though she is taller than Grace, with a contained expressiveness that flickers behind her mask like the shadows of passing clouds over a summer sidewalk. These subtle flickers that are hard to spot beneath the tension.
Spare humor, the sort that some might call gallows.
A deep down impulse to smirk.
Her hair is pulled back and twisted into a loose bun. Her clothing dark.
"Excuse me," she says, once she is standing, the pack slung over her right shoulder, the gloves in her left hand.
And then she cuts between them, headed toward the front door.
Cala
Cala breathes out so sharply when Elijah asks that question. It is enough to arrest her. To make her stop her forward progress and turn around and just look at him. There is still a sense of furtiveness about her but beneath that is something else he can only just read: a kind of defiance. The look of saints and martyrs.
And - revolutionaries.
That smirk gets swallowed up in the collar of her oversized cloak.
There's no other answer for Elijah.
She gains the door soon after, pushes it open and heads out onto the dark street.
--
Meanwhile, Grace works. Or rather, Works.
The screen of her phone goes black and she loses herself in the Code. She knows this space, knows too that all spaces are one. She's met the girl, she just needs to get through, and it's working, everything is pulling together, the connection -
- Wait. There is no such number.
Anywhere.
Ever.
--
Outside: she does not double-back. Does not pass by the cafe's windows.
Still, Elijah sees the girl through the closing door, a brief glance over her shoulder.
Something about bodylanguage tells him that she very well may actually run.
Lock.
Key.
Grace
"She's afraid. What is she afraid of?" Grace asks Elijah, though her gaze is a confused one, straight into her phone.
"She's blocking my attempts to reach her," she adds, in quiet whisper. "I refuse to believe that anyone that young anywhere in this city has never owned a phone. That's ridiculous."
Even more ridiculous than any number of things Grace has seen. Apparently not even watching a ghul burst through a movie screen and start causing a riot is enough to merit the level of disbelief she finds in that particular notion.
Elijah
"I don't know yet," he said. Yet being the operative word. Yet because there was a puzzle, because now he wanted to know, needed to know if he could just hold onto the memory of her long enough to be more than dark and with the smirk of a revolutionary. Someone with fire.
He doesn't know the word for lock in Enochian, but he does know the word for key. He knows it because he tastes it on his tongue, because his wrists and fingertips have practiced drawing that sigil and the meaning of it sticks with him.
There is a door, some kind of door- but... but in that corner, it wasn't a thing, it wasn't a tangible thing, it was a person. If a person could be a feeling and it lingered. His gaze sharpened, and he watched.
"Lock... key," he said. "Lock," and then, something under his breath, something a little more guarded and alien. Key.
[C'mon, pattern, what you doin'? Watching the weaving, perhaps? Prime 1?]
Dice: 1 d10 TN4 (1) ( success x 1 ) [WP]
Elijah
[Magic, do what you will?]
Dice: 1 d10 TN5 (10) ( success x 1 )
Grace
"Oh, is that 'key' then?" Grace says, smirks, because she cares not for the rules of Hermetics. Kalen, who showed her his books of sigils long ago, likes to bend them from time to time as well.
Knowledge seeks such cracks in walls through which it can flow. Grace likes those faultlines.
"I just want some damn green tea gelato now. Miss Mystery can run away all she likes, I guess. If she doesn't want to talk so very hard, who am I to restrain her? Especially if she's afraid of us, that could be taken the wrong way..."
Elijah
"Whoever she is, she sure as Hell doesn't want to be contained or cornered, that's for sure," and that... sounds a little like approval from the young man. LIke he had room to really disapprove, but there he was. Things that were threads and intent and then ones and zeroes and keen edges and honed winged flight and they fluttered off into nothing.
Then something.
Then nothing again.
"I met a girl who didn't own a phone, like, ever? She may or may not have lived in a cult for the entirety of her life," he eventually does put his hands up and, hesitantly, turned around with a grin, "and it's key-ish. Approximation of what a key is for and not- anyway. Mostly key."
Grace
"Bah. Cults can be weird, I'll give them that."
So Grace is, a thing of constant contact with the internet and her devices, that she feels a pang of reflexive sorrow for such a person who had never known the joy of technology. To have nearly the sum of human knowledge hanging out in your pocket is a power so many take for granted. It's superhuman. A preparation for the day when humans leave humanity behind and become.
For today, green tea gelato. And a forgetfulness that droops over her. Is this what it's like when people meet her for the first time? How they look at her on the second time as though they don't know who she is anymore? Maybe the next time Grace sees Miss Mystery she'll have to ask herself why that person seems familiar, if it even registers at all.
Just one thing is for certain. They met a new Someone. She was afraid of something. She left in a hurry. And she never owned a phone (or, perhaps, had wards up to protect it).
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