@coolbar

Serafíne
Hole in the wall of holes in the wall.  The entrance is from the middle of a long alley behind some shallow galleries and the space is strange and there's a red door and a purple light above it that is intuitively menacing but a strange scroll-worked sign above that says simply: cool bar.  Then something like a bank big bank vault door and a long stairway down-down-down and: oh hello.


Bar and stage as likely to host impromptu walking productions of MacBeth written back into street slang as it is to have a band, but tonight there's a band.  Not much notice.  Folks who got the invitation late this afternoon only saw: pop-up show, @coolbar with a link to the location and a minute later come here are new stuff  thanks, auto-correct.


Pen
Here is Pen - come through the ominous purple haze, come through the big bank vault door and the long stairway, the echoing stairway, the stairway which echoes (it does echo, echoes and contains, a tunnel) like some kind of nautilus, and: oh hello.

Here is Pen, who came because she wanted to hear the band and see the band members, in an artist's smock doubling as a tunic. The effect is airy and winsome John Williams Waterhouse, some Spring-witch, cobalt blue embroidery at the edges of the collar which is a split that goes down to her sternum the laces left loose like that, and her hips are banded by a belt of braided leather.

Here is Pen - but where is Dan; where is Sera? Pen sweeps the place with a glance, aspiring (the soldier) to alertness, and if she sees either of them: she beelines. Or she joins the small crowd at the bar, ordering a ginger rye from the bartender.

Serafíne
Bright and warm and windy the next morning.  The snow mounded up so high yesterday now has a bright, granular crust and everything, everywhere is a paean to gravity, a lesson in watersheds.  Easy to get out and back on the road home, even at the immoderately early hour of ten-or-so a.m.  And she's curled up in the passenger's seat, knees drawn up, forehead against the glass, sunglasses yes, dark and huge, against the glare.  He doesn't imagine she's slept.  Doesn't imagine she's slept much, anyway.  He knows how much acid she took two days ago.  How long it takes to come down.

Well, hey!  Dan and Dee and Rick are setting-up on the small stage and there's something easy and companionable about it all, some return-to-rhythm, something necessary and organic that passes between them as they go about the work in an unfamiliar space.  Been forever since they 'played-out' after all.  Sera is sitting on the stage while the others work.  She wanted to wear her Easter dress again but it seemed that the skirt would be an impediment to the on-off she tends to do with her guitar, so she is back to one of her standards: a pair of tiny denim cut-offs and fishnets and filmy, lacy black bra beneath a ripped, worn, studded, shorn leather jacket.

Her legs are swinging, swinging, swinging and she sits while her friends work, and she has a beer and a shot and she's talking very companionably with an attractive young rather-earnest looking black guy sporting a pair of hipster glasses, worn jeans, and a distressed t-shirt which features a line drawing of an enormous sheep eating a tiny laser-eyed monster.

Sera waves and beams when she sees Pen making-a-beeline.  Her hair is worn differently than it often is, and when she turns to say something to Tre about who-Pen-is it becomes obvious why: she is wearing a crown.

"Hey!"  That smile.  "You came!"

Silas
Silas' pants are too loose for a true hipster, but other than that?  There is the stubble, the hair swept just so, the button down shirt (with sleeves rolled up to approximately the elbow, displaying tattoos on his arms) tucked into denim that moves well with him rather than constricting his movements, the bow tie that coordinates, contrasts, something.  It doesn't match, no, where would be the fun in that?

He drinks his whiskey neat, at least tonight, and of course he's here for the band.  Why else could he be?  But there are things that mark him out as different [as primal, as Other], and there are things that Echo from him, literal representations of the Ars Vitae with which he is so familiar.  His skin is warm to the touch on the occasion it's brushed - a sunlit glade full of riotous growth.  There is no jewellery but for one thin gold band on his right ring finger, and a paler bit of skin of a similar width on the middle finger next to it.

Sitting with drink in hand, his back is to the bar; his eyes on the assembled are a vivid blue, clear and vibrant, and observant.  He sees Pen enter, sees so much.

Serafíne
Awareness!

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 8 ) [Doubling Tens]

Silas
Same!

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 6, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )

Serafíne
Then, well.  This moment when she lifts her chin and looks and looks and oh: everything in that moment is sharp, heightened, intimate, surreal.  "Check that guy out."  So she says to Pen, a lift of her chin toward Silas.  "He feels like someone you'd know."

Pen
[?]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 4, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )

Pen
Sera beams and it is Sera and it is that smile and Pen smiles back: a flash of a thing, burnished like a piece of silver, see, tarnished until suddenly: a rill of brightness, catching the day, and of course her entire expression is lit up by it and by Sera and by the prospect of music made by somebody fashioned and crafted by someones that she knows here on this particular night with snow a rim outside a créme brulee shell to be cracked get to the sweet within. "Of course!" - that rill of brightness in her voice, too: steadiness. "I feel as if I have been longing to hear you play, that it is exactly what I want to feel in my collar and my rib cage - Sera, I am very excited," and the flash of a smile and its left-over remnant pleasure becomes this curl of a grin. "Hello," to Tre. "I'm Pen."

And she might have said more, but there by the stage is Serafíne, observant, lifting her chin and Pen does check that guy out, turning so her back is to the stage and she can give that guy an assessing look (a weapon must be ready, always; she tries to be always ready).

"I don't, though. He seems as if he should have antlers, doesn't he?"

And if Silas meets Pen's eyes, she lofts her eyebrows and cants her head.

Pen
ooc: Er, make that the fancier and more Pen-like: "He seems as if he should wear a crown of antlers upon his brow, doesn't he?"

Grace
[Awareness!]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (5, 6, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 4 )

Grace
There's an invitation. Grace responds to that invitation, not so much because she enjoys going to bars for music, but because of the sender. Sera could make just about anything worth it.

The swirl of different in this place doesn't surprise much. She still blinks as she steps in the door, this be-winged thing, at everyone else's oddness. She wears her coat-of-many-colors -- red, with strips of LED lights sewn in. If it looks a little worn, perhaps it's just because she wears it everywhere in winter.

A bee-line, she travels, straight to Pen, head down, like she is trying to forget the rest of the crowd is here.

Silas
Eyes are met, yes, and a brow raised in return; questioning, perhaps, from the bit of the bar closest the stage.  Silas is not terribly far from where Sera and Pen met, and so after acknowledging their presence (and feeling their Presence) he takes up his drink, signals the bartender for two drinks of the women's choice to be added to his tab, and makes his way to where they stand.  Why not?  There is music, and there is quarry here, even if he chooses not to hunt, and there are people of interest.

Silas is brazen, he is bald, and when he moves towards where Pen assesses and Sera prepares his gait is sure, and nigh predatory.  It is not rushed but measured just right to give Sera chance to give answer before he's close enough to hail them.

"Hello," he says and his deep voice is familiar to Grace.  There's a slight accent there, as the Other carries itself from impression to reality; it's English, maybe, if you listen to it sideways, but the kind of upper class English that one hears in places that commoners aren't often about.  "I feel that you two may be people I should know.  I'm called Silas."

Grace
Silas is Arianna's friend. So is Pen. It remains to be seen if Grace will be able to associate with either of them once it comes out that she'd much rather punch Arianna in the face than give her prejudices credit by being nice.

For now, though...

"You don't know Pen? Really?" Grace makes a 'huh' face. Lets them introduce themselves. "Hey, Pen."

Serafíne
"You know we're loud," Sera-to-Pen, "right?"  And there is a moment there of introduction: Tre to Pen and Pen to Tre, perhaps.  Sera tells Pen that Tre is, you know, cool, which is code enough for Tre to understand that Pen, like Sera, is magickal.  And to Pen's comment about crowns and antlers, all Sera has to add is: "Don't look now, he's coming this way."

With a neat wink.  They can be all archaic together.

And: a twirl of Sera's fingers at Grace as she is bee-lining and this glance at Tre that includes a neat little smirk and this particular NPC might well shake hands with Pen and even Silas and also: Grace if she gets here soon enough but he also has a feeling that it is time to take his leave.  He's gonna go chat up the bartender/manager and work the crowd and he has enough easy, unselfconscious charm that he can really work a crowd.

"Serafíne.  Hey.  Everyone calls me Sera."

Nick
Here is Nick, who was likely gently persuaded into coming and ultimately came because he wanted to hear the band play.  He is come separate from Pen, though he went back to the house to change before coming out because he couldn't stand to be in his work clothes any longer.  He is wearing a collarless chambray shirt and a pair of dark brown khakis and boots: the effect is a simple one, contrasting neatly with Pen.

It will also let him blend in here, which is just as well.  Nick has the sort of air about him that could be a buzzkill in a place like this.

Nick gathers his bearings for a moment after he has stepped in the door into the haze and red and purple lights.  Pen is easy enough for him to see, and so is Sera, and there is Grace.  He lifts a hand to all of them, and he stops at the bar first, because damned if he is going to be at a loud concert without a drink in hand.

Pen
They can all be archaic together, and here come to roost two bird-things (winged quake herald of change dark crow reverent portent) in the cool bar as well. The cool bar really is cool; look how many cool people have come to it (because of Sera - core of gravity; center of the circle). Silas has Pen's attention, as a stranger and a stranger who feels as he does, but when Grace cuts through the crowd she is welcomed with a warm look. She offers the man-who-should-wear-an-antlered-crown her hand. Her wrist is clasped in a metal bracelet; there are rings on every finger, including above the knuckle of her thumb, and she says -

"Silas. From Silvanus, I take it?" with easy good humor, and in the middle of the question this perplexed look for Grace, which winds past Grace to rest on Sera: the question continues. Why should Pen know Silas and not Sera, hmm?

Grace
She waves back at Sera, the twinkle of fingers, a quirk of a lip. But she doesn't understand the weird look Pen gives her. Some people are easier to read than others.

"Hey, Nick too. We're freaking flocking."

Silas
"Yes, actually.  My mother is ever interested in the esoteric."  Grace is there and she waves her fingers, so Silas gives a nod of his head; it could be a bow but that it isn't at all, and while he may sound like it, look like it, he isn't quite that archaic.  Any hand offered is shaken, displaying his tattoo-sleeved right forearm - it is cloaked in symbols of Horned Gods and Hunts, lending still more credence to the thought that perhaps there ought to be horns on his person.  As stated, he is warm to the touch in a way that might be considered feverish, were it not so vigorous a sign of life.

"It's a pleasure to meet you both.  And to see you again, Grace - I hope all is well."

Serafíne
Grace says that we are freaking flocking and Sera favors the Virtual Adept (sorry: Grace, Sera has not adjusted to the name change.) with a neat liiittle smirk.  Grace and her propensity for commenting on the coincidences of mages-coming-together.  Well: no coincidence tonight.  It's the first time Sera's band has played out in...

...months.  Nine or more.  She has a shot and a beer and when Siles orders another one of whatever the women are drinking to be put on his tab, hell, she gets another round.  Of shots, not beer.  Stranahan's Colorado whiskey: goes down a treat.   She tosses it back like a pro.  Eyes Silas' tattooes when he outstretches his hand to be shaken.  Notes the warmth and goes, "Oh, your hands are warm!"  And she remembers: others with warm hands.  The passing wonder of it.

"I hope you brought your earplugs," Sera says this mostly to Grace, in a way that is teasing-serious, and reaches out to ruffle Grace's hair.   Whom Dan pauses in his  work doling out cords and setting up drums and amps and whatnot to greet with a grin framed by his blond beard.

Nick
When Nick appears behind all of them, it's without emitting a sound; a more forceful presence than his would be likely to startle other people.  Lucky he's not like that.

"Hello everyone," he says, and when he finally settles on a place to enter the little circle of Willworkers here it's next to Pen.  He has a whiskey and soda in hand.  Dan, where he is setting up amps and doling out cards, gets a wave.

Nicholas, curly-headed and solemn, offers a moment's quiet regard for the other man present: he had not arrived in time to catch his name.  "Hello.  I'm Nick."

Grace
Grace shrugs at Silas. He can hope all is well all he wants. She isn't going to explain why it isn't right now. But she leans into Sera's ruffling fingers, pulls out -- yes -- a pair of earplugs connected to each other by a wire from her coat pocket. Smirks.

"They are loud," she explains. Gives Nick a wave.

There's goodness to this. Coming together, waving at people, the meeting, the parting. Grace, for her part, is simply present. If her eyes go darting to some light fixture or other rather than a person, it's just the way she is.

Silas
"Silas," he says for Nick's benefit, offering a hand as well; there are Manners to this one, and they are deeper and stronger than just a handshake might seem.  And Grace's shrug is taken in stride - already he's come to realize that Grace tends towards the terse, at least with him, and that her reactions are not always what he would consider apropos.  Or polite.  Still, he reserves obvious judgement, and attempts to include her as much as the others, until it seems she'd rather be left alone.

"I've not been in Denver long, though if you are the Nick and Pen of whom I've heard, we have a friend in common."  He's not as secretive as his Housemate in some ways - in this way.  He doesn't much mind the assembled knowing who he knows.

Pen
Pen's gray as gloaming eyes gleam when Silas blames his name on his mother's love of esoterica, but she does not discuss it (or the fact that she believes likely his mother was inspired by the mien of him, the clear and present godhood in his shadow; what will Margot make of this one?). Only seems friendly enough, inquisitive but questions will keep.

She executes a small double take when Grace actually pulls out earplugs; her eyes gone wide. She measures their proximity to the stage (the scant few inches, since Sera was and perhaps is sitting still on the edge of the stage, her band busy about her), then finds the speakers.

"Should we move if we hope to preserve our eardrums then?"

There is a Nicholas; Pen reaches for and takes his drink because she has yet to order one of her own and she wants to drink something.

Pen is sharp enough to: "Oh, you are Ari's childhood friend. Sera, have you met Ari yet?"

Grace
[Manip + Subt = Ari? Oh no, I have no probs with her.]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 7) ( success x 1 )

Grace
Never let it be said that Grace has manners. Perish the thought. It's a rare day she remembers to thank people for gifts, and has a tendency to look at people oddly when they thank her -- because property is a bit distasteful when it comes right down to it. What are manners, except for the customs and rituals of tribes who've never claimed her?

"Well, we can," she says, to Pen. "I'm just not a huge fan of loud music, myself."

She tries not to let it show on her face the distaste in her when Ari's name is brought up. She licks her lip, snakelike, tilts her gaze to the side. Not paying attention anymore.

Nick
[Oh?  Perception + Empathy.]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )

Silas
[You think so, do you.  How droll.  Per+Emp]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (5, 7, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )

Grace
[Yeah, okay, so it's obvious that Grace's demeanor changed when Ari was brought up, you two. Grace looks like she's trying not to react to something that smells bad over there..]

Serafíne
"Tre always has extras," Sera assures Pen: of earplugs.  If she is intent on preserving her hearing.  "Dee too."  Because hearing loss is a problem for musicians.  Or at least: musicians who are not disciples of life.

They are indeed very close to the stage.  Sera is still sitting there, letting her legs swing and swing and swing.  She is excited, wired.  Perhaps she is on some-small-thing other than alcohol, in addition to alcohol, but the darkness in cool bar is deep enough that there will be no good view of her pupils.

Gives Nick a quick, chasing grin.  Shakes her head no to Pen: she has never heard of Ari and she takes no part in the examination of Grace who is trying-not-to-let-things show.  That shake jostles a few of the curls pinned up amidst the glories of her crown but the whole of the mass is well-secured.

Then Dan is there with a hand on her shoulder because everything's set up and they need five minutes to go over the set list, don't they?  In the past they've always done covers, or covers of their own shit that Sera-and-Dan have sold to other artists, stitched together by Sera's irrepressible and slowly raveling charm.  Tonight though -

"We'll be out in a few!  So glad you guys came - "

Nick
His drink is commandeered; Nick allows this with hardly a sideways glance.  This is the way of things.  It frees up his hand to shake Silas's, and there is this glimmer of recognition there as the man says his name that Nick doesn't bother to hide.  "Ari's mentioned you," he says.

His hand falls back to his side, and Nicholas is an insightful man and it's not difficult to notice the way in which Grace's gaze slants sidelong, how there is this slight wrinkling of her nose.  Nick marks it; for now, he says nothing.  His hazel eyes are for Sera, who is swing swing swinging her legs, and there is this crinkle of amusement at the corners of his eyes.  "I didn't realize you were in the band, Sera.  Thanks for inviting us."

Pen
Nick didn't realize she was in the band; that brings out Pen's dimples, for whatever reason, a mischievous glint.

Then: "I am glad too! Break the bone and chase the echoes down," Pen says, earnest and whole-hearted and here a quick flash of a smile again that winds up not being quick at all; flash bomb, the way it just dazzles (lake-light, shield-light) for a moment but there's the blinding blot after effect. That lingers; in the place of this metaphor, it becomes diffuse. Dan gets a tilt of her chin, a pleased hello acknowledgment; then courtesy: "I am for the bar."

It is an invitation, sure, because there are people now crowding in, and their area is a coveted one; funny how a crowd will eddy, will whorl like a river against a stone-strewn shore.

She hands back to Nicholas his drink; it has been considerably depelted. "It is good to meet you, Silvanus." Pause; "I meant to say Silas," and she sounds perplexed: because she did. (When one is marked, such things often happen. Especially if one is speaking to someone myth-seeped as Penelope.) "In some other venue, I shall want most dearly to ask you questions!"

And she is for the bar, so.

Silas
Silas marks the same shift in expression that Nick does, and he too lets it lie; he is the new addition, after all, and Arianna is more than capable of fighting her own battles when they're worth fighting.  And sometimes when they aren't.  More interesting is that Pen has labeled him a childhood friend, and that Nick's eyes sparkle recognition at his name.  The way he sips his drink, finishing it, is casual, as are his posture and eyes.

"Yes, she and I know each other of old.  If you'll pardon me - I promised my roommates I would remind them to be here for the show.  Break legs, Sera."

He says this with sincerity, in the way of far older performance arts than this - and with pleasantries traded, he makes his way for the door - where he'll be able to make his call in more favorable conditions.

Serafíne
This is a ridiculously small venue and those invitations went out to maybe one out of five people on Sera's normal invite-people-to-shit contact list (which is of course, managed by Dan-not-Sera) and the other magi may well have five-ten-fifteen minutes or more of conversation before the quartet come out of - er - the back office and the hallway down to the bathrooms with their instruments and plug in to check a few levels and channels and whatnot but they already tried out the space on Monday when the bar was closed and figured (most) of that shit out.  Dan and Sera with guitars, Dee with her bass, Rick on the drums.  And this is new work and it is collective work, brawny and rhythm-section forward.  Great big and (yes) loud as promised though the wave of noise has been modulated for the space, you see.  It is also: loud as in, full, driving.  The wall of instrumental sound and Sera's and sometimes Sera-and-Dee's or even Sera-and-Dee-and-Dan's voices a melodic cloud above it, floating through a river of noise.



(Er: thank you all for coming!  I gotta sleep!)

Grace
Grace huffs at Nick. Didn't realize Sera was in the band? Wait until the first time she does literal magic with that voice of hers. It is something.

Pen departs for the bar, and Silas departs for his roomates. "Want to follow Pen?" she asks Nick. "It's about to get loud right here. Might be better at the bar, eh?

She hefts her weight back and forth, clearly ready to move if he is. Clearly ready to wait with him if he isn't.

Nick
Does Nick want to follow Pen.  Does Nick want to retreat out of the growing crowd that is probably going to start jostling and pushing and spilling booze everywhere in the next fifteen minutes.  "Yeah, let's move," he says to Grace, as he begins to disentangle himself from a few college age kids who have pushed forward.  Sera: she'd gotten a wave and a smile before she'd gone backstage; Nick is the hugging sort but they just aren't all that familiar with each other yet.

He has his drink back, and he takes a swallow from it as he weaves back through the throng so he can reach Pen at the bar.  There is a glance spared backward for Grace; Nick is of the Leave No (Wo)man Behind variety.

He exhales as they come up next to Pen then.  "How have you been, Grace?  I haven't seen you in a bit," he says.

Serafíne
(Needed a transcript!)

Grace
She doesn't want to leave him alone either, and so walks with him through the crowd to the bar, eventually shrugging at him as she did with Silas. "I've been."

Been out to see Alex. Been wondering what to do next. Been arguing with people and been fed up.

She asks the bartender for a rum and coke, because at least it has a little caffeine, and there's just a little time yet before ordering will be made difficult over the braying of guitars and drums.

Nick
A quirk of Nick's mouth here, at that.  "I don't think people take the time often enough to just be."  He takes another swallow from his glass, which Pen mostly drained of its water and smoke and fire, and so he tosses back the rest.  He might as well get another one before the band starts to play.

"It sounds as though it doesn't sit well with you, though."  Is this the best place for this conversation?  Well, no, in all likelihood, and yet here they are.  It's Nick's way.

Grace
No, indeed. Simply existing does not sit well with Grace. She isn't, really, simply existing at the moment. There are things to be done. There are always things to do. And yet, with recent events being what they are, the right things to do are still up in the air.

Should she try to put together a new Ginger? Would anyone accept it if she did, knowing what happened with the first? Should her office remain abandoned as it is, its contents distributed in secret to some new place? Or is that just the fear talking?

Can't say she hasn't put thought into it. But for now, a shrug. Again. Her shoulders must be tired by now.

"I can never just be. Feels wrong."

Nick
This throaty, thoughtful noise.  He has stepped up to the bar next to Pen, set his glass down, and there is this casual brush of his fingertips between the Hermetic's shoulderblades as they arrive there next to her.  "Why is that, do you think?"

Pen
Pen does not seem to be particularly affected one way or another by the crowd. She is only made alert by it; she is constantly looking around, not rapidly, not nervously, but because there is so much to see. Because Pen is: clear-eyed.

The counter space Pen took (which is to say, arrived at and stayed with such confidence that it is clearly going to belong to Pen and her friends for now) is toward the end, but with a good view of the stage. Just two feet over, and hanging bottles and glasses would refract Sera's band a foam-lacery of light in the middle of dark dark darkness.

The promise of the ginger & rye is fulfilled and when Nicholas and Grace arrive, the bartender and Pen are just working out that Silas has already paid for that drink, that his tab is still open, that he had not specified closing it at any time, and here: Pen is often torn between letting people buy her things and refusing to let people buy her things.

Frugality wins out; she lets Silas's gesture pass.

Okay, now she has her drink, the cost of it has been determined, Nicholas's fingertips whisper between her shoulderblades, and Pen casts him a (lure) smile when she hands him her drink, turns back to them both and listens. What are they talking about? Time to jump back in.

Grace
"I don't know," Grace says, eyes on the bartender coming with her drink, for which she pays with enough cash to leave a decent-sized tip. Doesn't think to thank the woman.

"Feels like I'm missing out on something, I guess."

She tips the rum and coke, sipping at it.

Nick
Nicholas has a second whiskey and soda, which will not be pilfered by Pen as she now has her own drink.  He takes a sip of hers when she offers it, and then after making a pleased noise slides it back over to her.  Silas appears to have left them to make his phone call, but it's just as well; before long the entire place will just be noise.

After that, he glances over at Grace, and sweeps his eyes over her.  This thoughtful thing.  "You sound like you're feeling pretty discouraged about something."

Grace
"Well, the second there is something in my life to be couraged about, I'll tell you," she says, sips at her drink some more.

She sighs, looks up to the stage. Sera, okay, maybe she is something to be couraged about, eh? A little smile. There are still the wild ones here in Denver.

Nick
Grace says this, and there is this arch to Nicholas's eyebrows, subtle but present, as he leans into the bar next to Pen and takes a swallow from his glass.  There's no one on the stage yet, though perhaps there will be soon, and he too follows Grace's eyes for a moment.

"So there's nothing in your life to be couraged about, at the moment?"  He leans leans just to the side, bumping Pen's hip with his own, and eventually comes to rest there.  The bar is crowded; it's not like he needs an excuse.

Grace
She side-eyes Nick. "No."

Isn't that basically what she just said?

"Look, why talk about me? Sera's going to be playing soon, just..." You know, stop?

"It's a mood. It'll pass. Or it won't."

Pen
There are conversations one does not jump right back into. This seems to be one of them. Pen listens, of course. A sympathetic and compassionate ear, and she keeps a weather eye out (assessing [vigilance]), and she is not as impulsive and heedless (headlong, forward-flung) as she was once.

Pen sways when Nick bumps into her; hooks her foot around his ankle and begins to lean back against the bar counter. Her hair is loose and getting long (she'll cut it when it gets past the small of her back; another week and a half, maybe), so the tail end curls tangle over it all hooks and thorns. She should cut her bangs, too. They're too long, swept to the side almost like layers instead of bangs.

Pen blows them out of her eyes. They go whisking up, fwoof! Then flop again.

"What's her band's name, anyway? Does it have one?" Pen asks.

Nick
Grace says this, and Nicholas shrugs, taking another swallow from his tumbler.  "Sorry," he says, and might've said more or offered a change of topic of his own, but here's Pen asking about band names.  He casts another look over his shoulder at the stage, which has an air of waiting about it, between its silence and the hum of the gathered crowd.

At which point he looks over to Grace again, interested in the answer.

Grace
He's a consummate therapist, isn't he? Wants to help people even if they don't necessarily feel it at the moment. Grace knows about duties, the way they drive you. She just nods at him, says: "No worries."

"I don't know, to be honest. Band name, I mean. It's just Sera's band, I guess?"

She cares so much, pays so much attention to the posters and the billing, doesn't she? Not here for the music, is Grace.

Pen
"I wish I could play an instrument," Pen says. "I wouldn't mind if I wasn't a great musician," and see, she is presuming that Serafíne (enthralling, liminal) is going to be great. "But I'd like to know enough to carry a tune. Perhaps I should try to pick something up."

"Do you ever listen to that atonal stuff? Noise music? There's one of your people back in New England I remember meeting who messes about with noise music. Nietzsche's Schrodinger is the name they go by?"

There are weirder things than a Virtual Adept in New England and a Virtual Adept in Denver (Mercurial Elite: welcome to a new age) knowing one another.

Grace
"God exists in a superposition of dead and alive?" Grace says, snorts -- she finds that to be hilarious. "Never heard the name, but they sound fun."

"I've been told my taste in music is terrible though. I... don't really. I mean, I'm here for Sera more than I am to hear her sing?"

Nick
There are stranger things; Nicholas has encountered here in Denver someone who may have known one of his past incarnations, and besides, Awakened communities are small.  It's not hard to find a gu who knows a guy.

He listens to the two of them, sipping quietly at his drink in the pause between breaths.  "So you've heard her play a lot before, then?"

Grace
"A few times," she says. "She sings a lot outside of the band too. Works with it, you know."

Grace slips up onto a barstool, takes the earplugs out of her coat again, fiddles with them absentmindedly while she waits.

She remembers -- lullabies to help her sleep, when sleep wasn't possible. Sera's songs as a balm against the world. As she told Pen not too long ago, the strongest bonds between her and her friends were always forged in pain.

Nick
The hum of the crowd has grown, and Nick glances over his shoulder to note some stirring behind and backstage; perhaps it won't be long before they step on.  They can be heard back there now, tuning their instruments.  Every once in a while the note from a guitar drifts out, thrumming and discordant until it stabilizes into harmony.

"I've known people who used music to Work before.  It's interesting to me.  I'm looking forward to seeing her."

Pen
There's time yet for a little more conversation, but not much more of it.

This is around when the band returns, having set up: Serafíne in a crown, metal and red and beauty, and then all the rest of them: their sizzling charisma, their noise and their loudness. Somebody does the opening patter; maybe it is Sera, with that smile of hers, as she looks around.

But then they play.

--

And for a time, in this moment, in just this present instant, there's much to be 'couraged about: music. companions, drink, survival, even a reason for survival: that lovely cloud of sound thrown up above the rest.

Pen quite literally wears a pair of rose tinted sunglasses sometimes, though.

Pen
[TY for scene!]

Talking Around The Issue

Penelope Mars
Pen has been in the library for hours and is, just at this moment, remembering that she is a living woman, with muscles that will protest being in one position for too long or would were Pen not so wholehearted in her studies. The Flambeau sets her pen down on the table and stretches her arms up, over her head; her sleeves skim back from her wrists, catch at her elbows and then slide down her upper arms as she arcs her back and bows her head, burnished lashes low on her cheekbones. Then she lengthens her spine and, her feet had been curled around the chair's legs, but now she points her toes and languishes back on the chair, going loose. Having stopped reading and taking notes, she becomes aware that her hand hurts, so Penelope packs her arcane ledgers away in her bag, and wearily heads to the kitchen for some tea.

Up the stairs, then, thumb kneading the center of her palm, between the mount of Venus and the mount of Luna, circling the Plain of Mars, through the hall and into the kitchen.

Grace
Grace arrives with a mission. Her singular purpose today is to visit the library. Books are better than people. They put their prejudices on the inside cover, usually. That, or they have a reputation, which makes it easy to avoid the Starship Troopers and the Sad Puppies. That, and if a book pisses you off, you can always put it back on the self, write a scathing review, and never have to see it again. Not so, with people.

People are bunch of assholes.

Pen will find her in the living room discarding her coat atop a couch, to reveal the t-shirt underneath. It's got a giraffe on it, one with about 8 ties around its neck, with the words: 'Trust me, I'm super professional' written off to the side.

Penelope Mars
Does Pen want to be social? Pen does want to be social; she just left the library, and so Grace noisily discarding her coat (Grace, who feels like the beginning of a quake or an abrupt change in the zeitgeist who feels like the edge of a blade and a flurry of wings) in the living room does pause the Hermetic before she even makes it to the hall.

"Hello, Grace," says she. "How are you?"

Penelope: well. Penelope is not wearing a coat; she has left it down below, in the library, at the chair she has claimed. She did not leave her bag; it is criss-crossed over her torso, the strap of it embroidered with a floral motif. Her blouse is open (scoundrel [sensuousness]) at the collar, but delicate eyelet detailing at the seams revealing skin and lending the billowing drama of the sleeves a certain delicacy; her pants are a burnt orange-red and dully iridescent, a banked spark of heat in a coal dying down, which teases out brighter colors from her hair, and her boots are not in evidence today.  Many rings, as usual, and one bracelet which almost seems like a bracer, some piece of cool armor dredged from who knows what lake-side realm what fantasy.

Grace
Pen says hello, and it would jolt Grace, if Pen weren't alltogether so vibrant she couldn't be missed. Even as single-minded as Grace is today, she can't find herself missing notice of the Hermetic.

"Hey. Could be better," she says. It's all she says.

Penelope Mars
"Do you wish to talk about it? I was going to make myself tea, but I can share the pot," Pen says, and the offer sounds quite sincere. And looks sincere, too, doesn't it? Pen has a certain reserve, but the impression left behind by the reserve is more one of self-possession and self-control (hard-won, fought-for) or passion kept at bay than any coldness.

Grace
"Not really," she says. "I mean, I don't really want to talk about it,  but I'd love the tea."

For one, Grace isn't one for gossiping. As much as she believes wholeheartedly in the spread of information, going and telling everyone exactly what happened between herself and Ari would be a dick move. That, and Ari is Pen's friend, and the last thing Grace wants right now is another fight,another break, another weakness in the community for something larger and stronger to exploit.

As much as her t-shirt screams silliness, there's something subdued about Grace today -- like she is sick, or suffering from some other ache that's less definable.

Penelope Mars
"Do you object to black tea so late in the day?"

Pen, you are speaking to a Virtual Adept (Mercurial Elite, whatever), they do not usually object to caffeine. Still, she asks the question to be answered, not simply to make small talk, and once answered Pen will make the necessary arrangements: Fill the silver kettle high with water, turn the burner on; find a pot, find a cage for loose leaf tea, find loose leaf tea and scoop it in. Russian Caravan, smoke-fires and Siberian trains, is one possibility; if Grace follows Pen into the kitchen Pen will look to her (a questant note in her eyes) for an opinion. If not Russian Caravan, then Creamy Earl Grey; a classic. If Grace does not follow Pen into the kitchen, Russian Caravan is the inevitable end: Pen likes smokey things.

Grace
Grace follows Pen into the kitchen, leaving her coat all alone on the sofa. She splays her arms atop a counter when she gets there, stretching her back out with a pop.

"It's late?" she says, thinks about it. The sun's still up. How late can it be? "I'm good. I don't have a bedtime."

She claws at the counter-top, with short nails that come from being upset at the inability to type with long ones.

"Whichever you like is fine. There's good tea here."

Penelope Mars
"After five o' clock," Pen says. There's a stricken pause: "It is after five o' clock, is it not? It isn't -- "

This swift glance toward the windows; and yes, the mellow gold of late afternoon is indolent on the fields, and it does not seem to be morning after all. The alarm stirred up subsides again, replaced by naked relief. The Russian Caravan is inhaled; dust and ash and smoke, a hard iron edge, cardamom and purple flakes of poppy. There is a purple stone nestled in the hollow of Pen's throat, as a jewel might nestle in a pommel, suspended by a fine silver chain; stone and moonlight and mere.

"I wish Saturn did not rule me so, but if I want to see Nicholas sometimes I need to yoke myself to his sickle and pay attention to the time."

With nothing to do about the tea for now except wait for the water to heat, Pen rests her forearms on the edge of the counter and rests too her regard on Grace. "I noticed about the tea. Someone has good taste; I can be quite a tea snob."

She can be, her tone says, but the good humoured glint in it says that she probably isn't when presented with an opportunity to turn up her nose.

Grace
"It's probably Kalen," Grace says. "He likes bringing gifts for the Chantry, and making sure we all don't go without the very best."

There's fondness there, a lot of it. And also perhaps a bit of a playful jab at him for requiring that 'very best'.

She straightens up, and the necklace about her own throat glints silver onto a wall. A flat pendant with the sun on one side, and a latitude/longitude pair on the other. It's the only adornment she has today, and were it not for that one thing, would be happy to go without.

"I don't really... yoke myself to anybody, really. My sickle, well, he has similar hours to mine. Which is to say, few of them."

Penelope Mars
"Whoever it is, I commend their taste," Pen says, May Queen gracious. Her blouse is the color of May flowers, that particular Spring-snowy cream and ivory and it casts a hazy shadow on her skin when she shifts to a more comfortable lean.

She likes it when people are fond of other people; it reminds her of why she should be fond of people. Pen listens, massaging the palm of her hand again and then her bare wrist (as opposed to the wrist encased in metal). Pen's hands are an artist's model's hands, too, long-fingered and sharp-knuckled, My sickle, Grace says, and Pen's nose crinkles; a smile sifts up in her eyes, because she is ardent and romantic, or maybe because Grace is using poetic language too.

"Have I met him? I'm still unsure whether I've met practically the whole city, or only the iceberg tip of it, and beneath the waters are lurking all manner of other Magi. But," oh, the brightness dims - intent curiosity, "Few of them? Work which takes you two away from one another?"

Grace
Has she met him? At first, Grace wants to say of course. Pen has met Kalen. But then, she goes on, and it becomes clear she's talking about that sickle of hers.

"I don't know? Maybe you have? He travels a lot. Mike MacCarrick ring any bells?"

She drops a name. Perhaps Pen has met him. More likely she has heard of him, this leader among the Chakravanti. He travels a lot, because those who have a need for his services do not always arrange themselves in one place, and they all require a personal touch. Many are the people who need to die.

"He came here hunting a Nephandus once. Reluctantly agreed to let me help," she says, curls up at the mouth over the memory. "But, you know, afterwards, duty called for elsewhere."

Penelope Mars
Does Mike MacCarrick ring any bells? Penelope creases her brow in consideration, but ultimately shakes her head; unless Mike MacCarrick was based in New England, in which case: she probably slants her mouth to one side and says something along the lines of "Maybe."*

She seems interested in Grace's adventure with Mike, however, and perhaps sympathetic to the call of duty. She might ask about it, except at this moment exactly the kettle boils over, whistling shrill and bright and gathering steam and Pen is quick (truly) to straighten and take the kettle from the burner, quick to turn the burner off, too. Pen: is a visual poem; a ballad, a throw-back, an Archaicism forced into a modern shape - she does not feel 'forced.' She takes the lid back off the tea pot, and says,

"Speaking of afterwards, Alexander is saved! Have you seen him yet?"

---

* aka Jess is keeping this loose in case Jamie ever does anything with that NPC again and is like 'lol yeah he's totally been in New England Pen/Nick totally know him'

Grace
"Not yet," she says, and the tone to her voice retreats back, away from fondness, and more toward the muffled.

He's saved. Physically. Saved, to come and rejoin the community, which is now full of people who might just look down on him for being who he is. Plucked from one prison, into another. Makes her stomach churn.

They should be better than the fucking Technocrats.

"I will, soon." And what is she going to tell him?

Penelope Mars
Pen pours; the water is clear, breaks light; steam rises in billows, roiling up and outward. Delphic. There's a ceramic click as she neatly slides the top back on the tea pot. Silver kettle to one side, and elbow by the pot to soak up warmth.

"You seem," and here: a slender pause. "Trepidatious. Do you believe he doesn't want to see you?"

Grace
Well, that wasn't what she was thinking, but... maybe he doesn't. The thought raises her eyebrows, and she presses her lips together.

"Maybe. The last time we talked, he didn't want to speak to me again. I uh... Sent someone to the precinct where he works to ask him some questions, and didn't let him know she was coming. I thought she'd say. He thought she was a Technocratic agent, and proceeded to disconnect himself from everybody for like, months.

"I figured out what happened, and when I told him, he got so so pissed. Understandably, so. And then, he gets caught for real. I don't know. Don't know if he'll be exactly happy to see me."

Penelope Mars
The hot damp air from the pour-of-boiling-water has burnished her braid, polished it, whetted the gleam in it; has softened her lashes; threatened a tendril of hair with more curl, this dewy luster now come to her complexion; that might be how a lady knight would look, after pouring boiling water on some enemies below: a cruel way to do somebody in; boil their skin off. The kiss of all that heat. She winces when Grace gets to 'and then, he gets caught for real,' strokes the smooth metal of one of her rings, meditative over that brightness.

"Did you apologize then? I know," and there is fervence, here; some old rue, "that apologizing does not always help, as we are told it will when we are kids, but ... well, all I know is you were so passionate and quick in his defense, you seem to really care, and hopefully he will see that. I don't know how happy he will be; I think it is hard to come back to yourself after you have been kept in a cage."

Grace
"Of course I apologized," she says, huffs. "And yeah. I imagine it is hard, for him."

There, she shifts herself away from the counter, starts pacing the room. It helps. Her eyes take in the borders of the place, the parts where axis meets axis.

"And I mean, I do care about him. But I'd do the same for even the people who regularly piss me off. People don't deserve that kind of thing just for being a little wrong-headed."

Penelope Mars
The Mercurial Elite (winged, quake) cannot be still: pushes herself up, and paces the room, sizing up the boundaries. The fire-crowned May-Queen sword-eyed Wizard(ess) braces herself on the counter, on the palms of her hands, after watching Grace for a moment.

She doesn't interrupt yet, in case Grace is going to say more; people pacing tend to say a lot, although sometimes in fits and starts; Pen has noticed this.

She pulls down two mugs, one which she thinks Grace will like because it has a robot smashing up a cake on it, and one which she knows she likes, because she has used it every day she has come to the Morrison House, and it is of green clay shot-through with an iridescent silver glaze, shadows seeping along its cracks, and pours the tea.

The fragrance of it is smoke: is dragon's heart, is rich; is winter, in its way; is the heart of coal.

Grace
Grace does like the one with the robot smashing up a cake. Maybe Kalen brought that here for her as well. He does things like that, sometimes. Whatever the reason for it, she crosses over to the mugs, takes the one she likes, continues pacing.

Wordlessly.

At least, for a while.

"Thanks, for the tea."

Sometimes, Grace remembers manners. Most of the time, not.

Penelope Mars
"You're welcome."

Pen cups her fingers around her mug, and it burns her; scalds her; scorches her. At least, it promises to do so - and, see, her magickal signature yearns toward such things, ardent as it is, and perhaps one of the first things she ever learned was how to feel heat.

Pen does not pace. Stillness, that reserve, seems comfortable and natural for her; even as open and honest as she is (seems), she is reserved; some richly colored thing, vibrant and tempered into a muse.

"I hope your reunion goes the way you want it to go," she says, finally. "And that there need be no more rescue missions for some time. What does Alexander do for fun? Can he be lured into joining our future battle ring that will be?"

Grace
"Maybe. If he doesn't just leave. I wouldn't blame him," she says. After all, here is where the Techs still know he is. Here is where the tide is turning against him.

Grace isn't in the mood for the theme of joy.

She has to move slower now, with the hot water in her cup, lest it spill over the sides. She stares down into it as she walks.

"I've seen him play basketball," she says. "He rides a motorcycle. Likes camping, marshmallows, that kind of thing. He is a good fighter, but I'm not sure if he finds that to be fun exactly."

PenelopeGrace has to move slower now, but something about how she moves, the constancy of it, makes Pen think that perhaps Grace would be moving swiftly still, hurtling like a comet around and around the room, if only the Russian Caravan didn't slow her down. Pen takes a sip of her tea; lets it scald her tongue, her throat, as she swallows. Cardamom and darkness, the darkness of the interior of a seed: that's what Russian Caravan's faint bitter aftertaste makes her think of. She smiles faintly at this picture of Alexander which Grace conjures up, somebody outdoorsy and sporty and maybe uncomplicated, at least in his tastes. But the smile is a brief spark of luminescence, because there are graver topics on Grace's mind, Pen thinks.

And the Hermetic is glass-clear, always: she Cares.

"Do you think he should leave?" She just doesn't know what's bothering Grace, or how much to pry. "Is that why you seem upset?"

Grace"Mmm," Grace says, into her tea. "I've got about five or six different things to be bothered by right now, and Alex's fate is one of them."

She blows on her tea, trying to cool it, because she doesn't need her taste buds burned into silence -- and also because it gives her time to think about what she's going to say next.

"If he did leave, it makes me wonder. I've heard, in other places, those unaffiliated with a specific Tradition are frowned upon and shunned. I've seen the way some people come here, to Denver, and are so... Well, it's obvious they've been through Hell with nobody at their backs. Maybe he's better off here, with the Techs at his throat than that.

"Ultimately, of course, it's up to him what he does. But I don't even know what advice to give."

Penelope"Honestly, I don't think leaving will keep him any safer than staying will. It's not like the Union is limited in scope to one city or another, and if rumor is to be believed, they are monolithic in a way we aren't. I don't really believe it, but I guess what I'm trying to say is he might as well stand tall here, where he survived, where he was captured and in the middle of being imprisoned like that went Seeking successfully -- the spirit of Crow told Nicholas and Kiara that, then go try and start 'fresh' elsewhere."

"At the same time, I'm like you. I wouldn't blame him if he wanted to go elsewhere. I just," and here, a delicate shrug, "don't believe he should, if safety's the only reason he would."

The rest of what Grace said has Penelope thoughtful. Pensive, even, her gray eyes undimmed, curious. "Did you Awaken here in Denver?"

Grace"I did. So did Alex," she says, eyes going up into the distance, as if to look into the past. "I can't speak for him, but when I was an apprentice, I had no end of people ready and willing to take me under their wing, even if they didn't have a clue what was coming out of my mouth when I talked about my Magick.

"Alex, it seems he tries to put everyone else under his wing, so to speak. Even if he's... was just an Apprentice, he offers up to go wading into danger with just his gun and his strength, and..."

It just makes everything Arianna said burn a hot-fresh streak in her brain. She grips the mug tight. Takes a sip of tea.

"This is good tea."

Penelope"I do like Russian Caravan," Pen says, longing satisfied in the remark; it is a place holder remark, because she is thinking about what Grace said. When Pen and Alex meet (again, not that Pen can be sure of it), it will be strange for her: to have heard so much about one, to have been so involved in his saving, and yet still know him not at all.

"I'm sorry Alex was taken." Brisk; they both already know Pen is sorry about that. They're all sorry about that. "And I can't speak for everywhere, of course, but I found the same thing back when I was a Disparate. I ... well, for a while, I was rather determined to stay one. I had a number of Traditionalist friends - should I say friends?" She sounds musing, meditative. "I don't know; interested parties? Some of them taught me or explained things to me without any strings attached, or only the sort of strings that building a community and lending aid, which gift-giving, naturally endows one with."

"But it wasn't all people trying to help. It was people being suspicious, as well, or scornful and dismissive. I was never shunned, but some people are more fanatical than others about their ... way of life, I suppose."

Grace"I never got that. Even after I'd joined the Adepts -- and I know a lot of people are scornful of technomancy in general. Well, I say never. One or two times, and they were highly avoidable people."

She sips her tea again, stops in the restlessness, to go lean against the far wall.

"The core spirit of community in Denver as long as I've been here has always been to band together, because if we don't we die," Grace says. "Not a whole lot of room to argue about how people should do their Magick when you've got an Umbral Lord of Terror crawling out of the walls. Not a whole lot of room to call someone a dick for who he chooses not to sign up with, when he's in between you and the plant zombies."

Grace huffs. Tea ripples. Maybe Denver will be the lesson Arianna needs to learn. Maybe she'll learn it before the creature with five arms tries to eat her head, but that's doubtful.

Penelope"You'd be surprised by how willing some people are to argue," Pen says, and her thoughts seem to have pulled somewhere else; probably somewhere in the past, but who is to say? The tea has begun to rejuvenate her. There are still dark hollows around her eyes from too many hours spent hunched over books, but there's more vigor in the way she stands. She is not so drained, so worn, as Grace is; only studied out. The warmth of the tea has done away with most of the ache of her hand; at least, it has done away with it until she tries to hold a pen again. "Even in the face of what seem to be insurmountable terrors."

Brief pause. "I am happy to have come to a place with so many ready to help, when it comes to survival; I could wish," and she softens her voice; she is earnest, see, and hopes not to sound critical, because she is not: only an idealist of a very particular kind, "that it was building, rather than being besieged, which brought the community together, but I understand it is difficult when a community is small and there are - "

Another brief pause. "Have there really been plant zombies?"

Grace"There has been building, too. Just, when it comes down to it, people tend to trust the ones standing between them and death a lot more readily than the ones offering them a place to sleep if they need it, you understand?"

She sips at her tea again.

"Plant zombies -- that was a spirit-y thing of some kind. Nature gone mad or whatever. Had everybody who visited this one lake -- animals included -- turned into mindless shambles with roots sticking out everywhere. I don't really get them very well -- spirits I mean. They seem to be able to do just... a lot of weird shit."

Penelope"I haven't studied them very much myself, in the cabals I have been part of there has always been someone able to speak to them and deal with them, and before - when I was on my own," a bat of a lash; not quite a hesitation. Pen is self-possessed. "I was new; I just didn't study them. I have read some books; truly, they do seem to be multitudinous, and alien."

"And I do understand, up to a certain point. If someone can only be motivated to come together when Death is in the offing, how much can you trust them? Unless Death or Doom happens to be around. It's good to have those people; I just wish..."

Quiet; touched by (tarnished by) yearning. "I just wish for more."

"Did you come to the Chantry for the Node, the Library, or the socializing?"

Grace"It becomes more, when people pick you up after the falling," Grace says. "When they show you that no matter what you're going through because of plant zombies or whatever that it'll be okay."

Spoken from experience, that.

"I came for the Library. I kind of wanted to be alone, but hey -- thanks for the talk. It was..." Informative. "Nice."

Penelope"You are welcome," Pen says, with a cant of her head for the way Grace trailed away before settling on the word. Pen is a Hermetic, see; how language is shaped always grabs her attention. "And you are welcome to call me, should you ever want to talk. But I hope you already knew that."

Grace is here for the library. "I will walk you down if you like; I left my pens there, but I think I am going to take off." Pen finishes her tea; will rinse it, wash it clean; leave it by the window sill to dry, where the sun can get it come tomorrow. Their conversation has seen the sun sinking, not quite gone, but - it is the verge of twilight now, that golden hour.

What happens next?

Kiara
Kiara Woolfe's apartment complex has not changed much since the last time Grace had cause to come calling on the Witch. There may come a time when the reason why she does has nothing to do with danger, or the near-constant peril their lives seem to toss callously their way.

Today would not be that time. Not yet, at least.

-

The elevator ride up to the fourth floor still delivers on its quiet classical music, streaming from tiny speakers overhead. It must seem a particularly surreal touch for the pagan, returning from some of the events and places she does, to step, exhausted, into the lift and rest her head against the wall, only to be serenaded by Mozart's Piano Concerto 23.

Or, maybe, there's a reassurance to something so normal. Those hints of regular human banality. Gum stuck to the wedge of the door, a forgotten coffee cup left, empty, on the floor where it had since rolled over onto its side, music tiding over the short journey for residents from the ground floor to Kiara's. The hallway still presents its rich carpeting and row of sturdy doors.

The Verbena's hasn't been left open but considering what they've all been dealing with - perhaps that won't come as a shock to Grace.

-

Kiara doesn't keep her waiting long, when she knocks. There's a deadlock turned and the rattle of a chain before the brunette's face appears and she waves her inside. She's still wearing the hospital scrubs on her lower half, but the longer sleeved shirt has been replaced with a white tank top, it thrown over the back of the Verbena's sofa.

The curtains are still drawn inside and the apartment carried the faint traces of incense and coffee; the latter in the process of being ground.

"Thanks for agreeing to meet here, I think if I had to spend much longer in these scrubs, I was going to go crazy." She makes a beeline for the kitchen and unearths a cup. "Coffee?"

Grace
Kiara's apartment hasn't been the most auspicious of places, in Grace's memory. She brought Mike here, and watched him lose himself to a murderess. She sat by Samir's side as he told her about all the things he could hear and she could not. How he was afraid he would stay in his own world forever.

It's a place of bad memories. Maybe she should bother to change that? It doesn't seem as though this visit will be nearly as... fraught. She is, after all, a returning hero at this point. The damage, whatever it was, has been done.

The door swings open, and Kiara says her thanks. "No problem. I guess uh... everything went well?" she asks, steps into the place and shuts the door behind her.

"I'd love some coffee."

Of course she would. Mercurial. Elite.

Kiara
Whatever conversation the two women had over the phone had likely been fairly perfunctory. Yes, they were alive. Yes, they had Alexander. Could Grace meet Kiara at her apartment at x hour? And then - a disconnection after a brief farewell. There had been traces of tension in the Verbena's voice then but there seemed far less of it now - at least, on the surface.

Kiara's hands were sure and steady as they poured out two cups of coffee and she moved around the counter to pass on over to Grace, meeting her eyes with a brief cant of a smile edging into the corner of her mouth.

Her coffee up was long and narrow and the sides were decorated with black cats - Kiara's personal sense of humor, no doubt. "Well as in we didn't have to engage anyone in hostile negotiations, definitely." There's a moment, Kiara's hands hug the contours of her cup (her own was a pale blue), where she seems to dip into that same sense of tension Grace had heard on the phone.

"Andrés - Dr Sepúlveda," she corrects, perhaps for Grace's clarity, perhaps for her own remembrance of the man's title, "cloaked a van so it resembled an ambulance. I changed my appearance and we got in past security without too much trouble. It was - " the Verbena's brows constrict, her expression one of distaste. " - incredibly bizarre to be there, surrounded by them. They had Alexander where you said he was." A flash of something warmer, then. Kiara's smile suggestive of gratitude. "And a body bag ready for us."

She breathes out sharply.

Straightens.

"They had us wheel him out of there as a corpse. Alexander was so dosed up though, he won't remember any of that. We got him to a motel room out on the outskirts Sera gave me the keys for. As far as we can tell, he's clean. No bugs, but they did fix up his knee. I left the Doc out there studying his blood." Another pause. "He finally woke up a little while ago, which is why I wanted to meet with you. Alex wants - well, a change of clothes for one thing but - he wants to know what happens to him now.

I told him I'd bring you and the others out there. So we can - " She trails off, the brunette, her eyes full of compassion for their mutual's friend plight. So they could, what? Decide how much of Alexander's life was now denied to him?

Grace
Grace leans against the wall next to the door, eyebrows rumpled together at certain points. A body bag. He wants to know what happens. The doc is studying his blood.

She takes her cup of coffee (black, bleh) and sniffs it. "Clothes. Yeah. I could do that," she says. Not well, but she could do it.

"I wish I could have been more help. They owned me, Kiara. I was only inside for a few minutes before I was spotted and backtracked, and that with a timer already going on my connection. About the only useful thing I managed to get was the confirmation that he was alive and well. I guess that's something, eh?"

Something. And it cost her a great deal, that something.

"What happens to him now should be up to him, I think. He's the one who has to shoulder the danger," she says, after a sip of coffee. "I could offer him a new identity, but the safest way to pull that off is if he moves elsewhere. He'll still be known to them, by face if nothing else."

Kiara
"They could have owned us too, at any point. We just got lucky." She counters, with a brief touch of a hand to Grace's shoulder as she moves past her to turn on one of the low lamps by her sofa; illuminating the room in a soft, warm glow. "The security in there was, not that I ever want to give them credit for a damn thing, pretty impressive.

Even Andrés was nearly stumped once." There's a tiny twitch of Kiara's mouth at that revelation, as she settles down on the arm of the sofa. "I agree that Alexander's life is his to decide on. I told him right now his job and apartment probably aren't the safest places for him to be but - it feels almost as cruel to take everything from him just because they decided he was their toy to mess with."

She rubs the tips of her fingers over her brow, tenders dark strands back behind an ear. For all that she seemed capable of discussing what had happened and wore no obvious signs of the rescue mission - there were dark smudges beneath the Verbena's eyes, a certain paleness to her face that spoke of subtle physical reminders (Paradox).

One could only imagine changing physical features wasn't the easiest feat to manage without drawing significant repercussions.

"But - he's a fighter." She doesn't mention the way the Orphan had clung to her, hugging her tightly before she left. Somehow, it didn't feel right to disclose the moment to anyone. "I think he's going to be okay. He changed, while he was there. You'll feel it when you see him. He's gotten stronger." A touch of a smile graces her lips. "The universe works in strange ways, right?"

A beat, Kiara seems to consider Grace a little closer. Dark eyes ticking over her face. "Are you okay, though? I know what we went through but being on the other side can't have been easy. I know you've known Alexander a while."

Grace
"That's what they do. Take everything because they decide to, I mean. Cruelty on our part has nothing to do with that. It's all on them," she says, listens, sips her coffee. He went Seeking? In there? Incredulous eyes, because damn, but the man can find the time and place for that sort of thing, can't he?

"Well, fuck," she says, scratches an eyebrow. "I'm okay. Certainly not the worst off of us, man."

The coffee's getting cool enough to actually chug, so she does, even though it's bitter. Her eyes pop open afterwards.

"Kalen, he took it hard. Of course. He's closer to Alex than I am, by far."

Hell, Alex might not even like her that much...

Kiara
The Verbana doesn't comment when the Virtual Adept attests that she's fine, that she wasn't the worst off of all of them. But after a moment, there's this gleam of amusement that presents itself into the Verbena's dark eyes, she drops her gaze consideringly to the floor.

"I actually think Andrés may have it the worst. At least, for the moment. He's suffering from a small case of continuing nudity courtesy of his disguise disintegrating after we got Alexander out. Some sort of Union fail-safe, no doubt." A beat, Kiara's eyes return to Grace's face. Her expression sobers a little. "I think seeing you will help. I don't know how much he remembers but from what I've heard second hand about their conditioning process - " There's a grimace.

"He's probably going to need all the familiar faces we can muster."

Kiara drinks the last dregs of her coffee and sets it aside after a pause, as if she were contemplating adding something else, after the mention of familiar faces. Whatever it is and whatever the flicker was that darts across her expression, it passes quickly. She pushes herself to her feet. "I'll change my pants and then we can find Alexander some clothes and go see him - " A brief pause.

"If you're ready."

Grace
Grace blinks. Nudity? "Nudity? What... The Techs did that to him? Why?" As if anybody would want to see him naked... "They just don't strike me as the prank-playing kind, Kiara."

But hey, maybe some of them are classified as human. Had to, obviously, because they got help from the inside.

"I'll help him out. Whatever I can do. If he wants to see my familiar face, he'll get it." If he doesn't, he doesn't.

"Let's go," she says, rights herself from the wall, and drains the last of coffee in four large gulps.

Silas

Silas
It is currently just below freezing, but as the day progresses Denver is projected to see a heat wave reaching into the 50s - spring has begun, it's true, and Silas can feel it in his blood, in the air, in the things growing beneath the ground, but soon enough everyone will be able to feel it nearly as well as he can.  For much of the week it will be progressively warmer, and there will be rains to fuel life that needs it.

For now, though, there's a man somewhere in his late 20s or early 30s, good enough looking if you like that sort of thing, lounging outside of a high end greenhouse.  By which we do not mean dispensary, though he's hardly averse to such things - we mean plants of other sorts.  He's early, or perhaps they're opening late, but it doesn't really matter; around him, there's a feeling of life.  There's also a feeling of being near a predator.

Grace
[Awareness?]

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

Grace
Grace has a new hydroponics system, keeping (of all things) a small succulent plant alive. Well, one of them is the primary, the others are just backups in case of catastrophe.

All this would be a little more understandable if Grace knew the first thing about taking care of plants. She does not. River's expertise has been the entire reason why her first foray into soilless gardening hasn't been a complete waste. However, there have still been problems.

She needs something -- a different nutrient profile for the desert plant. Some rocks that she could have Amazon deliver, or -- there's this one greenhouse...

So, she's leaving the place now, carrying a bottle of hydroponics additives and a small bag of inert rocks. The way she bends the universe around her, you'd swear a giant falcon just landed, making the ground shake.

Silas
And the way the universe bends around Silas, you'd think Spring was a person, and that she'd just arrived - perpetually.  There's the feeling of warmth and growth, and also of storms, and Winter and Summer clashing.  Spring is an in between time, is a time of sometimes violent change, and while this man very definitely feels of all of that?  He also feels of indolence and indulgence.

This woman, this Grace, with her feeling of a falcon having just landed, exits a hydroponics store a few doors down, and Silas' eyes are inexorably drawn that way, intense and intent - a hunter of a more earth-bound variety.  She heads towards her car, ostensibly, and her path takes her near the Hermetic.  Silas nods, smiles in his slow way.

"Morning."

It's a simple greeting that doesn't demand an answer - but instead politely requests one.

[Aware, just cos]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 6, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )

Grace
Spring, time to melt the snow. It's a wonderful time of year for someone who finds Winter to be the most awful season of them all. Grace is bundled up in her red coat and fox-colored scarf (both of these gifts -- she hasn't the first clue about fashion herself) in order to keep the cold at bay.

It feels like Spring now. Now. Very suddenly. She looks up, just as a man tells her it is morning.

"Um. Yes, it is," she says, tilts her head. Stops in her tracks. "You... Are you a co-Worker of mine perhaps?"

The way she says it, the 'Worker' does feel capitalized.

Silas
Silas' eyebrow raises at this, but euphemism and innuendo are more than just used for sexual things and given the feel of this woman . . . it's as apt a description as any.  "Perhaps," he offers noncommittally, and pushes off the wall to offer his hand for a shake.  "I'm Silas."

The introduction feels truncated because it is; there's so much more to it in a way that may or may not feel familiar to Grace.  He is who he is, after all, even after years of learning other things, in other ways.  Half of his life spent largely outside of the Order - minus the near-constant conclaves and symposiums - hasn't erased certain character traits, nor has it done away with certain turns of phrase.  Even in his lean, there was a certain air of brooding formality.

"Might I know your name, Miss?"

Grace
Grace looks down at his offered hand, and says: " I don't know, Silas. Might you?"

She tucks the little bag of rocks under her arm so she can she his hand, which, Silas might note, is an awkward sort of thing for her. She's unused to the act.

"I'm Grace."

Silas
It's meant to be witty, perhaps - and, to be fair, it does elicit a little smirk.  This handshake is something to which Silas is fully accustomed; it doesn't linger, isn't overly powerful, and during the time they retain contact Grace finds any chill promptly and swiftly removed from her fingers, her palm, and that fecund warmth spreads up her arm.  When their hands are separate again, there's a strange and sudden feel of lacking - but many small aches and pains, paper cuts and the like, are considerably lessened.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Grace.  I've only arrived here recently, and haven't met many people yet - coWorkers or otherwise."  There's a nod towards her bag of rocks, her bottle of hydroponics additives.  "May I ask what you're attempting to grow?"

Grace
Almost everyone in Denver would be responding to that with 'pot'. Grace isn't looking for a quickly-growing plant though.

"Hen and chicks. Just got a few chicks now, pretty happy with that. Sempervivum."

She looks at her arm like she's not sure about it. What the hell?

Looks back up at him. Analyzes the pompousness, the healing sensation in her arm. Thinks: Progenitor?

They'd have to invest in some mighty fine nanites to get that to happen, though. And probably wouldn't go around touching strange women with them.

"Lots of new folks in town. Who are you with?"

Silas
Oh, it's a lucky thing that Silas can't read thoughts - if he knew that such allusions were being drawn, he'd sever the conversation that's only barely begun.  From whence she'd draw such a conclusion, he wouldn't even be able to comprehend.  Progenitor!  Pfffft.  Who are you with, gets a mildly confused look, as though Silas doesn't strictly understand what Grace is asking.  There are a great many possible answers to that, after all.

"For the moment, I'm with myself - I contract my services as a master gardener and landscaper.  I've a card, if you'd like one."  And said card is drawn from the wallet pulled from his pocket; it is green and gold, as one might expect, with an abstract feeling of things fertile and growing behind his name and title (the master gardener bit, not any of his more esoteric ones), an out-of-state phone number marked as mobile, and an email address.  "Or do you mean, who do I know?  I've a friend who's nearly as new as I, and another friend who's been here longer but doesn't run in quite the same sort of circles.  With whom are you?"

Turnabout is fair play, and all that - and suspicion is contagious.  Grace's wariness informs Silas' own.

Grace
She takes his card, notes again the exceeding formality of it. This is a guy who likes to aim for the appreciative, queenly nod of Martha Stewart.

"Caution is a necessity these days," she says. "I'm on the good guys' side."

There, a little sly, proud smile. She is on the good side. Doesn't everyone think they are?

"Trads. A rather non-traditional Tradition, but still."

Silas
"Everyone thinks the side on which they reside is the correct one, don't they?"  It's an echo of her thought, without knowing she's thought it.  Perhaps it's simply a case of great minds think alike.  "But, that said, I believe we share the same one, though my own Tradition is one of the most traditional, as most consider them."  For all his experience in Ars Vitae, all his training with a Verbena hereditary witch, he is far more formal than that.

And as for Martha Stewart?  It's quite possible that Silas doesn't know who she is.

"Though I would agree that caution is a necessity, always, I find that far too often it leads to paranoia and the closing of doors that could be quite beneficial if left open."  To be fair, Silas' speech always trends to the formal - but this is above and beyond.  Given Grace's reactions thus far, clearness in where they both stand may serve them best in the long run.  And of course, her assertion that her Tradition is not so traditional leads him to think of the two most recent additions - but she doesn't seem the Etheric type, which means she must be one of the technomancers - the Virtual Adepts.  It's not a mindset that Silas understands, though the knows that most views have some level of validity.

"Are you a Denver native, then?"

Grace
A Traddie, he says. And berates her for paranoia.

"It's not really paranoia if they are truly out to get you," Grace says, attempting to justify herself.

"A few months ago, we had a guy dragged out of his workplace and locked up in solitary for the high crime of association. Dude was a cop who never did anything to anybody.

"So, you know, I don't really care if you find me paranoid," she says, shrugs. No skin off of her back.

"I'm actually a Phoenix native. Hate these winters."

Silas
For the record, everything in Silas' bearing so far has been casually friendly; this impression has carried to his tone, even if his words have somehow been twisted to something far different than their intent.  Formality and manners are hardly the same as aggression in most cases, though anything can be wielded as a weapon if it's held just right.  There is nothing remotely resembling beratement in anything about him; at best, there's a mild curiosity.

"'They' is a vague, amorphous concept that can be used as a ward.  Of course paranoia is sometimes warranted, and naturally I don't know the circumstances that caused yours - I am simply saying that caution and paranoia are different things, and both are best used with discretion.  Either can be just as dangerous as the lack thereof."

And then there's explanation of why she feels the way she does, and Silas nods - cedes the validity of her point, if not her behavior.

"I find you judgmental, cold, and unforgiving, and yes, a bit paranoid.  You have your reasons, as does everyone else, and I hope they keep you as safe as you think they do."  It's not quite dismissive, that.  Not quite condescending.  But a stranger on the street can only take so much aggressive attitude before stepping back with hands raised, metaphorically speaking.  "But, was this cop friend of yours the Disparate of whom I've heard?"

Grace
Grace is a bit taken aback by his response, but amused. Bluntness, oh yes, she can appreciate that.

"Well, I find you to be a bit on the pompous ass side, but I'm trying not to hold that against you," she says, the jesting nature of that statement rather plain on her face. "First impressions are, after all, prone to change."

She draws her coat in closer. "I am cold. Freezing my toes off here. I'm not sure where you got judgemental from though.

"You are right about the unforgiving bit. Though usually I don't make up my mind about somebody until they've gone and done something unforgivable. So far, you've said hello. Somehow, you refrained from raising the dead and skinning people alive while doing so, so you have no need to worry about needing my forgiveness."

"And yes. I am talking about that 'Dispirate'. I guess you know about the situation then?"

Silas
"I'm not entirely sure from where you got pompous, either - any more than you are from where I got judgmental, I'm sure.  Ah, look - she's finally opening.  Do you need anything else for your chicks?"  He nods towards the store for which he'd been waiting, turning towards its door.  "As for 'unforgiving' - I mean like a brick wall.  In the time since we've met - what, five minutes now?  You appear to have decided who I am, and that you don't particularly like that perception."

He shrugs, wry.

"Which is fine.  As you've said, impressions change - and even if they don't, there's hardly need for you to approve of or like everyone you meet.  The situation, though . . . I know little.  I know a Disparate was taken, and that some are banding together to go to his aid, and that a friend of mine is marginally involved.  As I told you, I'm a recent arrival and have little connection here."

Grace
"I think I have what I need for the chicks, but I wouldn't know if I were wrong," she says, admitting to her lack of skill.

"As to the other thing, most of us were marginally involved," she says. 'Were', like the situation is now resolved.

"You should get more connected, you know. It helps."

Silas
"Yes, it does," comes in response to how helpful connection can be, and as he opens the door with something between a nod and a bow - indicating that Grace is welcome to go in first, should she be so inclined.  "And for the chicks, you need feed of some sort, depending on their age.  You've a pen for them?"

Silas is best with plants, perhaps, but he knows quite a bit about most things living.  It's a perk of his upbringing, and his training.  This is a distraction for a bit, the finding of things that might be useful - and plants that will stand up to roaming chickens, keep away predators and bugs that might be drawn by them, and so forth - and pointing out interesting (to him, anyway) plants and their properties, both mythological and practical.  But then, back to . . .

". . . this place is far different from any in which I've lived before.  Many of my connections are familial, elsewhere, and I am strangely and delightfully lacking in that here."

Grace
"Oh, no, uh.. They're hen-and-chicks plants. Succulents. Sorry, that's a bit confusing," she says, holds up her bottle of liquid plant nutrients. "Chicken-feed."

She ducks into the greenhouse door, if only because he opened it, and she doesn't want to stop talking, precisely.

He has a lot of familial connections, he says. "That's nice, I guess. Well, not that you're lacking them here, but that you have such a strong family... Tie?"

Silas
"My mother is a legacy from time immemorial," he says with a shrug, and a bit of smirk at the misunderstanding; Silas had wondered why Grace might need hydroponic fluid for chickens, but he was hardly one to argue about it.  "And my father . . . well, some people call him a fluke.  I just say he's prone to Xaos."  It's pronounced Chaos, of course, but shaped with a capital letter at the fore.

"But I was raised at conclaves, until that became an iffy proposition.  At which point, I was sent to live with my godmother - who is a different sort of legacy entirely than my mother."  There's fondness when he mentions his godmother, but the shape of 'mother' is sharp, brittle around the edges.  Some sort of struggle there, then, and a gleefully appreciated, fairly new-found independence.

Grace
There's a bit of kinship. Grace loathes her mother. She also doesn't really feel the need to go into the ins and outs of that relationship in front of a total stranger.

A small, but powerful family he has, it sounds like. Mages too, likely, from the way he talks about them.

"And who do you know here? I can imagine maybe... Pen and Nick? Dr. Sépulveda?"

All of those are people who are nearly as new as he is, after all.

Silas
"I know Arianna - though she knows Pen and Nick."  They are, after all, bound together into a cabal.  "And I know Dr. Sépulveda, though I've not yet run into him here.  I was friendly with his daughter for awhile, a year or so ago."

Here, there's amusement; one can imagine that the Etherite and the Hermetic might have had some amusing conversations, particularly when the latter - a Hunter by every mark of him, and not just a predator either.

"Who else should I meet?"

Grace
"Me," she says, first and foremost. There's a bit of a grin there. But she does know a lot of people.

"If you like plants, though, you should talk to Kiara," she says. Kiara being the only witch in town that Grace knows of who has awakened her houseplants.

"River, also. She's been helping me with the whole hydroponics system. Oh, also, Nick's putting in a garden, so you know."

Silas
"I'll keep that in mind, and let them know that you said so."

There's an amused grin here, now - his words are still formally structured, but it seems that Grace has recognized his generally relaxed and friendly attitude for what it is.

"You may feel free to pass the information on that card forward, if you see fit.  None is hooked to an address or the like, but either will receive an answer in a timely manner."

Grace
"I will see it as my duty to pass on your digits, then."

Or, at least, to let everone know that this Silas guy is not a Progenitor. Probably.

At that, Grace starts getting distracted by the plants on display in this place. As much as she tends to kill them, she doesn't mind looking at them.

Silas
Plants are a good thing by which to be distracted - and are, in fact, Silas' reason for being here.  So, after a bit of shopping around, some mild advice on gardening and the like, and paying for his purchases?  Silas is on his way.

"I'm sure I'll see you around," is the simple salutation upon leaving.

Straight to Hell.

Arianna
The only way that Arianna Giametti and Andrés Sepulveda seem likely to colocalize is in establishments that are purveyors of fine (or cheap, cheap works too) alcohol.  They are about as unlikely drinking buddies as ever the Awakened world has seen: he with the sense of cold foreboding wrapped around his pattern, and she with the sense of starlight wreathed around her.  And today she has been drinking enough that her hands and words seem inexorably tied, and she is explaining to him something, as the door to said drinking establishment swings wide, something in one of those expressive languages, languages of the heart, romantic, some call them, she is saying something that requires large and sweeping gestures, and Italian is close enough to Spanish anyway.

What they are talking about doesn't matter much.  The obvious sense of camaraderie and mischief to her, the easy way she seems to make very bad ideas seem logical and well within the bounds of reason?  The absolutely impeccable quality of her dress, aspects of her appearance; this easy and uninhibited sense of privilege and wealth? Those are important.  Those are critical.

It turns out, she is telling him about a recipe.  It could be magical; or it could be a secret family pasta sauce.  Her hands still a little, come up to wrap a pashmina around her neck against the cold of the Denver winter. Because it is Spring; and therefore there is a blizzard.

Andrés
[DIRECTOR'S COMMENTARY: jamie has 90 minutes on her laptop battery and will have company in 15-45 minutes so her posts will not be top-notch]

Many airports and European bistros have instances where travelers from Spain and Italy have run into each other and had entire conversations without either having previously learned the other's tongue.

Mexican-Spanish is not his mother tongue. It was his mother's tongue and his father's tongue but his father was barely around and his mother -- well. Arianna has none of this information. She does know that he speaks Spanish with an immigrant's fluency and can understand about half of what she says when she lapses into Italian. A match made in Hell.

If she has not smacked it off yet, he has his arm around her waist. Not tight, not possessive, but like he, five-foot-six in his shoes, needs her for balance. He's wearing most of a suit. The tie is gone. He hasn't shaved his face since Saturday. His glasses are on his face. His wedding band is gone.

"Anyone!" he is saying. "Anyone who denies the change of the climate, they have never been to the United States!"

Arianna
She mostly understands him when he speaks; probably a fair bit better than he understands her, and so it brings the conversation back to English more than her tipsy multi-lingual tendencies would otherwise prefer.

"Tell me again, about this Climate Change -- and why, if you have done the proper cantrips; if you have the associated research; why would it be denied?  Change is inevitable, right, this is how your English saying goes?"

There is a flush to her cheeks, a rosy-warmth and healthy looking thing.  It is partly alcohol, and partly amusement. She hasn't shoved him off of her, rather slipped an arm around his shoulder, steadying him further.  Or steadying herself off of him.  Ari is taller by an inch; she is immeasurably more put together.

It is a small miracle that they are not debating the finer points of Hermeticism as they wander-weave down the street, in search of the next pub on tonight's ill-advised crawl.

Grace
She's bought her plant materials today. Those are stuck in the back of her car, waiting for the chance to be used. But then, she found herself in the general area of a number of bars. It's a good plan, right? Drunken hydroponic gardening? She can always get Kalen to drive her home. Or, possibly, just undrunk herself.

So, she walks into the place, and... finds that Andrés is here, by the way the cold slither goes down her neck. Fantastic.

No, it's good to see him, not... You know... I mean, hopefully he's not...

She walks up, squinting a bit, and then relieved once she actually gets a good look. She's got on her usual red (sharp-looking) coat, with jeans underneath. Accidentally fashionable, at best, Grace only teally cares that she's clothed.

"Oh, hey. Dr. Sepúlveda. Nice to see you not naked. Who's this? Also, it's denied somewhat because people don't understand the difference between seasonal changes and climate changes. Fucking senators throwing snowballs to 'prove' it's not happening..."

Andrés
"Gracia! Ignorance! Ignorance throws the snowballs!"

He neither releases Arianna nor addresses the part of her sentence that has to do with his prior nakedness. He does however speak with the hand that isn't latched onto the Hermetic's hip.

"Le presento a Arianna," he says. "Arianna, le presento a Gracia." Lightbulb! He isn't just trying to be a dick! He has a thick accent and is drunk half the time! "If you want to give each other your..." A flailing yet cyclical hand motion. "... your whatevers. Persuasions. What is the w--TRADITIONS. Yes. Do it. I'm not."

Arianna
Here Arianna is, enjoying the company of commoners, arm looped around the shoulders of a most unlikely friend, dripping with the sense of starlight, tripping over the toes of her multitude of languages. She is almost comfortable in how they discuss these pedestrian things like the fate of the global ecology when...

... Grace wanders up.  Ari's eyes flicker over to her quickly; to the sound of a new and unfamiliar voice.  There is a slick of quicksilver to them, something mercurial and unfathomable but clever, but quick, and all together too inviting. Sharp red, bright white, and what can only be assumed to be shades of what was black -- they are at least a complementary tangle of outerwear, if not resonances.  The corner of her mouth curls, slightly, at some inward joke.

"Naked..."  A look to Andres, and then, in something close to Spanish, she says, "You didn't seem to be the sort."  Mirth here; approval or perhaps cleverly covered disdain. It is difficult to tell just now. Hard to see around the teasing in her eyes.

"It is a pleasure, Grace, to make your acquaintance," and though the words are formal, they are tinged with her mood and her slight inebriation.  There is a playful pass at curtsey here, one that isn't going to drop the good doctor on his ass.  She has manners, after all, however occluded they may be at most times.

Grace
Arionna's curtsey. Grace tries to mirror it, with a frown of concentration on her face. She was named Grace, but the name never suited her.

"Arianna. Nice to meet you. Also, yeah. He didn't really look like he had too much of a problem with it either..."

Grace though. A blush comes to her face just talking about it. She shakes her head.

"I guess not too many people can say The Union desperately wanted to make their clothes disappear. It's, you know, bragging rights."

Of a sort.

"I'm with the Elites. You? I've heard the name Arianna around.

Margot
Let us not worry about what Margot was doing prior to this moment.  Let people presume what they will about the time of a 19-year-old girl and what she may dedicate it to (they're probably wrong anyways).  What does matter is that this here was a hot spot tonight, a veritable leyline where Fates and paths crossed over into a patch of concrete and brick in front of a bar in the heart of Downtown Denver.

She was wearing a pair of black boots laced up the ankle, into which a pair of snug gray jeans were tucked.  A heavy brown jacket warded off the chill from the last breath of winter-- accustomed though she may be to chilliness due in whole to her mentor's resonance, she was still human bodied and susceptible.  She had her hands in her pockets and her hair down, left for the wind to tug and pull however it pleased when it whispered.

Ahoy!  Up ahead!  A zap in the air, a chill, a sparkle, a whoosh.  Margot slowed and stopped several yards away, frowning, hesitating, hovering.

Grace, who walked away upset when she saw her last.  The Doc, with his arm around the waist of a pretty stranger in a dress.  He looked properly toasted, so did she.  Her nose wrinkled and she hovered, unsure of if she wanted to come and play.

But that resonance, though....  They would notice, it was like having a battlefield full of carrion and sticky red crawling up behind you.

Arianna
Grace blushes.  It draws a little more of Arianna's attention her way. This could be a good thing; it could be a very very bad thing.  But these are not her usual circles, and so her usual games are held at bay, but only just so.  When Grace says 'the Elites' one of Ari's eyebrows arches just so, lofted a measured amount.

"The Elites? I thought you were a faery race of nightmares made up just to scare good little Apprentices within the Order into behaving just so, lest their wands be taken away and fashioned in ... to...those memory things." Well, this is where it falls apart.  She has likely never held a thumb drive in her life -- not one that livedto tell the tale.

This, though, with the curl of mischeif sharply intact.

"Though do tell, as I am always curious: from whom have you learned my name?"  Oh yes, now, her Hermetic is showing. The grammar; the grammar always gives them away.

Andrés
"It is a popular name," says Sepúlveda.

What else is he supposed to say. He's on the sidewalk with his arm around the waist of an attractive woman who has her arm around his shoulder. Yeah it's well-known he was going to break into the Amaranthine Laboratories and retrieve Alexander Brandt. Yeah it's not so well-known that he contracted clothing-eating nanites and spent three days holed up in an invisible van outside the motel Serafíne the Cultist had cordoned off in case of cases like this.

And then here comes his apprentice.

It has nothing to do with the fact that something goes off in his pocket. It isn't his cellphone. It's blocky and weird and may or may not resemble something Grace saw in the back of the "ambulance" in which she first witnessed Sepúlveda's nudity.

"Shit," he says when he pulls the device out of his pocket. "I gotta go."

Arianna
[Awareness: because I suppose I should roll this if we are openly talking magics in public]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )

Arianna
[Awareness: because I suppose I should roll this if we are openly talking magics in public]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 5, 7) ( success x 1 )

Arianna
((ACK! Why double roll, why?))

Margot
[[ Variety is the spice of life? ]]

Grace
"I could take your wand and turn it into a stick-insect robot," she says, a fake-cruel little grin on her face.

"Or, a wifi hotspot," she says, with a horrible evil laugh.

But when he freaks out and starts the other way, Grace looks around, a little alarmed that perhaps Dr. Sepúlveda has seen one of the Technocrats he ran into at the lab. But, it's just Margot. She looks at the Apprentice, quite confused, before looking back at the doctor...

Who's disappeared.

"Huh. I uh, heard your name from Silas."

God, but Dr. Sepúlveda is weird.

Margot
Well, there went the Doc.  We'll say that he blew right past Margot when he bailed out after a quick look at some device (not his phone, though) that was produced from his suit pocket.  When he'd passed Margot there was some brief exchange of words-- Margot looking displeased (wrinkled nose, furrowed brow, quickly shaking her head and muttering back to him).  After a certain point Andrés must have decided that he didn't have the time or it wasn't worth the hassle, because he made a gesture of 'whatever' with his hands and continued past.

Some parting words, though, had Margot looking over at Arianna and Grace.  If at that moment either looked her way as well, she pushed a closed-lipped forced smile onto her face and lifted a hand to wave; the wave looked far more genuine than the smile.  Some people are just poor in their social graces.

She started walking again, along the same path she'd been on, which was now a direct approach of the other two Mages.  Her hands went in her pockets, and in another show of amazing social finesse she greeted the pair upon proximity with a simple:

"Hey."

Arianna
Sepulveda departs, leaving Ari to stand on her own and mark this: she has practice at being inebriated and socially adept.  There are aspects of being slightly toasted that make this easier, that keep that smile and the warmth in her eyes despite the grim resonance coming up behind them.

Have you ever heard of monsters?  Do you know them to be true? Margot feels like monsters and this woman, in her dress and her white coat, in the wake of Andres abandoning her, she seems utterly unmoved by it. As if the monsters trapped in Margot breast are not that dark, and not that unknowable.  She is at ease with them; she may even know their Names.

At an appropriate time, perhaps coupled with the doc's departure, she casts a look over to the source of that sticky, dark and --

See this? A flash of teeth. Polite. Genteel.  So, absolutely, politically correct: a little laugh.  "Oh, yes.  That would be a good one."  This, then, with so many unspoken undercurrents.

"Though I would advise against it."  It is only the thinnest shadow of a warning; a blade seen on edge; only at its thinnest point.  It gives no sense of the sharpness of the thing; that is kept caged.

And this brings Margot, and her closed-lipped smile, and her caged expression, and her hesitance forward.  "Good evening," says Ari; it is pleasant and warm.  That sense of mischeif has been walked back a little bit.  It is colder here, without the doctor beside her--isn't that saying something?

Arianna
((Edit:

I could take your wand...  
*And her attention snaps back to Grace.  See this? ... (and so forth...)

I don't know how I lost that in copy/pasting!))


Grace
Grace gets that. If anyone were to take her instruments, she'd be pissed too. Still, it gives her an idea...

She pulls her phone out if her pocket.

"Hey, Margot. What's his problem?"

The last time Grace said anything to Margot it was to tell her to fuck off. This seems to have been forgotten. Mostly.

She then proceeds to tap away at her phone's screen. Mercurial Elites, man.

Arianna
So you've heard that stereotype, right, about how technology really doesn't get along with wizards? How their cars don't quite run right. How they eschew modern conveniences in favor Older, Truer methods.

This is especially true with Arianna.  She is well and truly cursed. Not that she minds it; technology is querrelsome at best.  But she does the Elite the favor of stepping a little further from her when Grace pulls her phone out of her pocket and starts typing away. So it will be less her fault when it starts behaving... poorly.

Margot
Arianna's warmth in her greeting wasn't missed.  In fact, it was apparent the impact it had on the little witch.  She appeared relieved, like she was worried that there was going to be some kind of a what do you want? replacing the 'good evening' that actually came.  The tension in her brow lessened, forehead smoothed and eyes relaxed.

Then came Grace's greeting and question combination.  That relief doubled up enough that Margot actually let out a breath she didn't realize she was holding and her shoulders stopped being so square and rounded down to rest.  It was good to know that grudges weren't being held over how tense their last encounter was.  That she wasn't being held necessarily responsible (yet) for how her Mentor behaved was nice too, though the question did have her glancing back over her shoulder to where the Doc had disappeared.

"Not a problem exactly.  Some project or another."  She shook her head and shrugged her shoulders as though to say 'what can you do?'.  He was a Mad Scientist after all.  She was figuring out that the emphasis on Mad and Science in that title was equal but different between words.  She looked to Arianna and smiled a little-- this one far less tense than the close-lipped thing she'd provided when approaching.  "The Doc said you know Pen and Nick, and that I should come say hi.  I'm Margot."

Yeah, Grace just said that.

Arianna
It's fair, this expectation Margot has of her. In different circumstances, that greeting may be just what she gets from the Initiate Exemptus. But not at an establishment that peddles pleasures; not outside of more strictured social circumstances.  Tonight Arianna is downright pleasant.  She is practically polite.  She has not led anyone astray or into mayhem.

"They are among my dearest friends," she says, confirming this for Margot readily. As readily as she had completely glossed over mention of Silas. Take that as you will. "Are you both known to them?"

This, then, ties the three of them together in one question.  It cements the thing. And three points make a circle, so they are cast together in it; they are made immanent and full of omens.  Then for Margot: "A pleasure. Please, call me Arianna."

Grace
"Oh, you...." she starts. The cussing is cut out. "You do too know how to do that..."

She's talking all right. To her phone. Frowning at it. Finally smacks it, like it had a head and she was slapping it.

Suddenly there is a burst of something sharp in the air. She's done playing nice with Mr. Phone.

[Entropy 3: Debugging. Obviously, her phone is possessed. The only cure is some nice, regular, orderliness. And violent smacking. Diff 5 - 1, taking her time.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (2, 4, 8) ( success x 2 )

Margot
Grace was busy with her phone.  Something sharp snapped at the air and Margot eyed her and the device she was holding suspiciously.  A keen edge, if you will, stinging and biting.  She knew that some used their technology for their Magick and Grace was among them.

As opposed to ask questions, Margot felt out the air to make sure she wouldn't get caught in a backlash somehow, then returned her attention to Arianna.

"Nice to meet you, Arianna."

Were they both known to them?  Margot glanced to Grace, then shrugged.  She couldn't speak for the Elitist's familiarity with the Chakravanti-Hermetic couple  She could speak to her own, though.

"Yeah, the Doc had a dinner party and had Ned and I over to meet them.  We're in touch now, here and there."  She paused, then added for context:  "Dr. Sepulveda is my mentor."  Left out Ned, though.  Sorry buddy.

Arianna
There is a crackle of energy in the air around her, the hallmarks of working magics and, unlike Margot, it draws up something ever-ready and precise in Arianna. Her shoulders square, and her chin lifts.  Even tipsy, even a little off-her-guard, her attention is cast wide before narrowing back to the Elite at her side.

"Is everything alright?" she asks Grace.  It is clear spoken; it is sharp-eyed.  But there is no obvious sense of danger, and so Arianna's hand strays to a pocket, fingers wrapped around the hilt of her wand, but she does not draw it out in public.  Mark, though, that she is ready.  She is able.

This tension remains, uneasiness, between them as she casts her attention back to Margot. She is surprised at something the girl has said, reaches for the appropriate words to touch upon it. "I... am surprised to hear he is your Master.  I would have marked you for an Older ilk; a greener sort."

Grace
"I've... Met both of them, a couple times," Grace says, absentmindedly, well after the question was asked.

But then Arianna said something else, didn't she?

"Oh. My phone. It's acting up. Like, the touch screen isn't... Touching or something. I think..."

She smacks it again.

"I think I fixed it..."

Arianna
"Oh," she says. Just this. And the singing tension drops out of her shoulders; sluices; moves away is if it were never there. And there is mirth to the corners of her eyes again -- one could imagine it amuses her when, yet again, the older ways are proven to be more stable things, to hold more gravitas. In truth, it is just the stay of some unknown altercation that pleases her.

After all, this is a city on the brink of War. This is a place where an unaffiliated Apprentice was taken, reclaimed again, and they are still awaiting the retribution.

"I'm glad it's better now."  That seems like an appropriate thing to say, doesn't it?  That's practically pleasant.  It saves her from making some sort of patently false assertion about how friends of Nick and Pen were her friends too, or some other platitude.  Arianna doesn't deal in platitudes.

Grace
Her phone is amusing Grace now. Taps get followed by mischevous grins.

Somebody's up to something.

"Oh, yes. It's great," she says. "In fact, I have just made 'Arionna's Wand' into a wifi hotspot."

A grin. This time above her phone screen. At Arionna.

"I'm joking! Joking!"

Margot
"Master?"

Margot sounded incredibly offended by the word-- not insulted by Arianna directly as much as appauled at the notion of referring to him, or anyone really, as master.  She stared at the pretty Italian woman with disbelief.  But then--

"Oh.  Hermetic."  Already wide eyes widened further with realization, and the girl relaxed.

Then she realized there was another question hanging in the air.  Forgot for a moment, because she was distracted watching Grace and her phone.  Stared for a moment, then remembered that Arianna had spoken further of Traditions.

"No, no no.  I'm not into Science like that.  I'm studying ecology, but gizmos and chemistry sets?"  She shook her head and waved her hand.  "I don't have a Tradition yet."  She glanced around.  Nobody was passing near, nobody had exited the bar to bombard them yet.  She wasn't worried about being overheard really.  What, would the Technocrats have a stake out in every part of the city?  Wouldn't being around Grace basically automatically ward her by proximity?  She couldn't doubt that Grace kept a Ward up about herself, especially these days.

"I think I may look into the Verbenas.... Penelope actually said she'd ask a friend to meet me."  The Doc was right-- community was key, wasn't it?

Margot
[[ Sorry for the occasional delay, by the way!  I've got a baby about sooo, heh, you know. :) ]]

Arianna
For Grace: If looks could kill is a stupid saying among willworkers. Looks could, in fact, kill. Looks could flay a mind down to its vestigal redundancies and fail to built it back again. Looks could steal air from lungs; they could turn veins to ice. Looks, man, they're powerful things.  So there is delicacy in the Look that Arianna gives Grace; it is measured; it is precisely as warning as she wants it to be without going further into coldness.

"You are quite clever."

This may not be a compliment.

"Oh.  You are the apprentice for whom Thane is visiting," Arianna says, stringing quite a few things overheard into something more solidified.  This brokers a true smile, a thing that touches her eyes. "I am indebted to you, then.  Because we do miss him, and you have given him good reason to venture out this far."

Grace
"I really did though," a huff of a laugh. If Arianna wants to throw fireballs at her, Grace can take it. In fact, all the serious business the woman keeps putting on her face have only served to egg Grace on more.

"I named my phone 'Arionna's Wand' and turned it into a wifi hotspot."

Because, you know, doing what you're explicitly warned not to do, getting around things by using cheap tricks? It's all a good hacker ever does. Even if the result thus achieved is kind of silly...

"And, I am very clever. It is good of you to notice that. Who's Thane?"

Margot
[Perception + Empathy: Are these two goading each other or what?]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (5, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )

Arianna
[Manip + Subter (cunning): Nah, we cool. I'm just a Hermetic.]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 4, 5, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 2 ) Re-rolls: 1

Arianna
((ACK! Not re-rolls. Double 10s. I am such a M20 newb.))

Grace
[Grace just seems like she's having fun for the sake of having fun. There are some things she takes seriously, like the lives and freedom of people (as Margot has seen). Other people's possessions just don't seem to be on that list.]

Arianna
The serious business face is what is keeping Arianna from being an outright ass and asking, in a jovial and friendly tone, for Grace to let her see: how cool! Because she is so very good at being cunning, and also at being mean. And then getting her wizardly cooties all over the Elite's tech.  This abrupt and perturbed outward seeming is the lesser of the available escalation tactics. Nobody's instruments are well and truly called into danger.

Yet.

Grace's smugness is met with a briefer smile.  And here, then, Arianna's own phone, something anachronistic, and bulky, something that flips and doesn't touch, comes out of her pocket.  Things are typed, keys pressed.  It goes back into her pocket.

It does not remain in view as long as Grace's tech.  It would be unfair to call Arianna's phone "tech" this many years after its debut. The question of Thane's providence, then, is returned to.

"A friend of mine, and Nicholas's and Pen's, who shall be visiting for a brief while."  She says this plainly. So that Grace, distracted as she is with Arianna's Wand (the phone [not the true one]), might still take it up this time.  "And will likely speak with Margot her about her mystical inclinations."

Margot
While Arianna gave stern looks and Grace grinned and continued to play (Circuit Coyote), Margot was quiet.  She looked between the two of them, like she was anxious of tension that may begin to flicker-flicker-flint.  She'd seen a pair of Mages in a fight with one another before, and the aftermath made her puke in her mentor's toilet.  She didn't want to be here if it was going to happen again.

But nothing came of it, and Arianna had addresse her with thanks for bringing Thane back out.  Claimed that Margot herself was a very good reason for him to visit.  The Apprentice looked thoughtful while there was filling in on Thane's identity going on.

"...Recruitment's that important, is it?"  She piped up quietly, and glanced between Arianna and Grace both.  Perhaps a question she sought bouth their views on.

Arianna
"Recruitment?"

This draws a furrow to Arianna's brow for a moment, and for a moment she cares not at all what the Elite has named her phone, or whether Naming is sufficient sympathetic magic to link the named thing to the true thing and thus influence the flow of Ars Essentiae between them -- because that would be impolite. And rude, even by Hermetic standards. And would make Nick unhappy with her. A different sort of unhappy with her than he has sometimes been. It would be counterproductive, however satisfying.

And no, Margot, there will be no great awakened throw down in mystical Denver Downtown.  At least, if there was, Arianna with her stern looks would not be the one to start it.

"I... I would speak to you about this in a more controlled environment, but, and please understand, Margot, that I am being brief not in dismissiveness but of necessity -- Choosing the minds with which you will align yourself is more precious and important than 'recruitment' may belie.  It is choosing the framework upon which you hang your Works, your world view, and ultimately your greatest accomplishments and challenges.  You are choosing the shoulders of the giants upon which you will stand as you move forward in your enlightenment. Do not let any Tradition claim you that you would not proudly claim for yourself, but also do not belittle or diminish the danger in remaining apart."

This for the apprentice; this for the one who will claim Thane's attention and possibly join his Tradition. Every single syllable of this is spoken without slurring; it is imperative; it is crystal clear and shining.  For Arianna is also luminous, and the Order has been a shining City on the Hill to many in its millenia of leadership.

Grace
"Oh, that's cool!" Grace says, to Arianna's reply. Honestly, Margot needs more than just Andrés Sepúlveda in her life.

But, to Arianna's words, she shakes her head. "I don't really think 'recruitment' is nearly as important as just having people you can talk to about your... mystical inclinations. Hell, when I Awakened, I had a bunch of people -- none of them technically minded -- who I leaned on a lot to figure out how to deal. There's a lot of commonalities in what we do, when you get down to it.

"You might find if you want to have that in your life, joining up under a banner is the way to go. You might also not. I know a lot of Disparates in the city who adamantly want to go their own way, and there's nothing wrong with that. A bit more dangerous, yeah. Perhaps. But we're Mages," she says, gets down to a more serious tone herself. "There is no fear we can't conquer."

Arianna
"It is more than a bit more dangerous," Arianna says, on the heels of Grace's opinion.  This, too, is clear cut and definitive.  "But Grace is right: the choice is yours."  It is ominous when she says it that way; it gives the thing the proper weight.

"Keep in mind, though: not all places are so... generous... to Disparates."

Grace
"Then, those places are corrupt. And I wouldn't go anywhere near them anyway, Disparate or no."

Ahh, happy shiny conflict.

"There's a word for people who care about other people's labels. That word is: 'bigot'."

Arianna
"So you have a label then, for these other labellers of people?" Arianna asks. Her mouth twists wrily, eyebrow arched and challenging. It is a dark and dangerous thing.  She has honed her skills in this game against a Tytalan. It shows.

Margot
The advice that she received was soaked up like a sponge.  Margot listened raptly to Arianna, for she was well-spoken and serious and impactful, and her words felt like they carried heavy weight.  She listened to Grace, of whom she's heard in almost every conversation that revolved around the magickal community in this city.  Grace said this, Grace set this up, Grace dismantled this and found this and fixed this.  Margot bore this in mind, and also noted a similarity there-- she knew a lot of people, but none of them seemed to match up with what she felt herself to be.

Then, some back and forth about the pros and cons of Traditions and Orphans and bigots and bigoted bigot callers and--

"I'm a witch."

Margot cut in, over their back and forth.  Glanced between the two, almost sharply (scoldingly, a budding emergence of what Mage she would become when her connection to her Avatar was stronger, no doubt-- when her confidence and Power were given time to grow), and continued on.

"Ned and I, we've talked about this.  We'll find Traditions, it's unsafe to do otherwise.  I've seen what happens.  I--,"  But her phone started ringing in her pocket.  She glanced down at the screen, then sighed and explained:  "It's the Doc, will you excuse me?"

She stepped away.  A brief conversation later (tense back and forth for perhaps a minute or less), Margot sighed and pocketed her phone.  Returned to the others and explained:  "I guess the Doc's gonna get his assistant tonight after all.  Thanks for, y'know, your time and stuff you two."  An awkward pause, for an awkward girl, then-- "'Bye."

And away went Margot Travers, briskly up the sidewalk from whence she came.

Margot
[Thanks so much for playing you guys!  Time for me to bail, I work reaaaal early in the mornings.  Goodnight!]

Grace
Margot interrupts. It's probably a good thing, because Grace was about to go on a rant about how there exists a whole group of people out there who cared so much about the internal thoughts and beliefs of other people that they went and tried to force everyone into 'recruitment'. In their prisons of Primium. Via mind control. And other, even less savory methods.

"Bye," she says, to Margot, who's already leaving, already left.

"I just think... one shouldn't have to give up all that they are, all that they believe in in the process of gaining safety, Arianna. That's what some Disparates would have to do, you know. Your heart chooses. You don't choose a Tradition and then cut pieces of yourself off so that you'll fit. I guess some people do. Because people would treat them like shit if they didn't, in those 'other places'."

Arianna
Arianna's chin is held a little more proudly as she watches the Apprentice retreat up the street and off toward her temporary mentor.  There is some measure of esteem for the young woman held there. The weight and knowing of it is opaque; she does not strive to clarify it.

"You may think whatever it is that you like," she says to the Mercurial Elite. It is not rude, or cold, or even unkind but it is as firmly spoken as Grace is emphatic.  "And we will disagree upon this point: Because choosing a Tradition does not require one to dismember their Will.  It requires one to view the security of the whole community, of the Work we all do and the sanctity of other Wills above the singular importance of the self -- which must sound strange from a member of my own Tradition, but it is the truth.

"The Disparates are selfish; their standing apart makes them vulnerable, and risks common resources to bring them home.  Because we will not leave them to these Others that you speak of: the best among us will not leave to them their consequences.  You can have your opinions, but they are expensive.  They are costly in ways you cannot pay down all yourself."

Grace
Grace has a particular Disparate in mind. One who's in a hotel room right now, in clothes he got from someone else, because all he was left with was a pair of khaki scrubs. A man with scars in his mind now. A man who has given his all to stand in the face of danger for Traditionalists.

"I'm guessing you're talking about Alex? The guy who stood in an alleyway in between a Hermetic and a vampire, willing to lay his life down? The guy who helped cut up a bunch of possessed plant-things in order to save a Verbena? The guy who, when he was a cop, was the kind of cop wholived to put his life on the line every day for other people, Awakened or not?

"He was selfish? Because he got caught and risked common resources? Those were partly my resources, freely given. Hell, I would have given my left leg to bring him back, Arianna. The 'best among us' in your opinion meet a basic standard of human dignity in mine. You don't want to help someone else because they're a Disparate and you feel they are being selfish, okay. That's your right. You choose your own path and all, even if that path leads straight to Hell."

Let the record stand, if Arianna was glaring daggers about her wand, Grace is doing a bit more than that. Every word is sharp. Every gesture. Like the very resonance she carries with her. She wants to hit this woman, to make her feel the hurt her words have brought to the surface, but restrains that.

Arianna
[This seems like a good time for dice.  We don't go full red-head hermetic in public, right?]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 6, 6, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 5 )

Arianna
[Awesome.  And we are super chill about reacting right? Manip + Subt (Cunning, because evasion)]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 6, 7, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 6 ) [Doubling Tens]

Arianna
((Hallelujah! Praise thrice-wise Hermes.))

Arianna
Grace has a particular Disparate in mind, and the association brings everything hot and heavy to the foreground. She is ready to hit Arianna for the intimation; she is ready to escalate a difference of opinion and value structures to violence.

Grace has called Arianna a bigot.  Grace has called the sacred places that she has known Corrupt.  Now she's practically spitting words at the Hermetic woman, sharp words, sharp gestures.  It's the sort of thing that people notice.  And Arianna?

She steps close. She keeps her voice low. It is not heated and spitting and violent like Grace's. It is controlled, and calm, collected and cool.  Remote, even, for all that it will piss Grace off even more.

"I did not speak about your Alex.  He is vouched for; he is claimed.  There are many who would have missed him.  I was well informed of this.  You take offense where there is none given, Grace of the Mercurial Elites."

Ari steps back, she looses the tension in her shoulders.  She smiles.  This is not for Grace, but it is for all the sleepwalkers around them.  It de-escalates the brimming clash of starlight and something winged.

"I think, perhaps, we should take our leave of one another.  You on your path, and mine as straight away it leads to Hell," this seems to amuse her.  The amusement of it cuts through her eyes.  It does not dampen the sense of warning; that Grace is being given grace just this one time; that there are dragons here, and Arianna has kept them on their chains.

Grace
"That sounds like a great idea," Grace says, with finality. Turns and walks away without another word or glance. There is only so much that she can take.

Arianna
There is no tab to pay, but Arianna waits until Grace has left before she gathers her phone from her pocket and types out a short text.  True to form, it likely gets queued for ever in some tech spooler in the sky. It won't matter in the long run. This sparring with Grace has given her time to recuperate from her outing with Andres.

But Ari is a pretty woman, and there is probably some poor unwitting sleeper who will ask her if she is okay. And there will be feigned pleasantries, and politenesses, to keep, which will space her departure all the more from Grace's. Which is probably a good thing for everyone involved.