Grace
The DMV in Denver sits in an inauspicious part of town. It's the kind of place where you don't want to let anything remotely valuable show from the windows of your car. So it's good that Grace has nothing of value she ever decides to take with her other than her laptop, and that doesn't often make it out of her sight.
It's two in the afternoon. The lines leading to the desks are about a mile long, if you were to stack all the people lengthwise. And it's this sort of thing Grace contemplates while in lines, because it is so much more fun than actually contemplating where you are. With all those people. Shuffling along.
Once five-o-clock rolls by, this place will turn into a madhouse of people trying to get their thing done before it closes, because they can't take off of work. Grace thinks the cops must snipe this place around that time, looking for the people who left with their hands empty of required registration documents. Slaves to the system, right? It always finds another way to keep you in your place, like a line that goes on forever, until you finally get to the end and have to leave without anything to show for it.
It sucks here. At least the ceiling is interesting.
Jo
"Dude...for real?" She teeters on her heels next to girl with round glasses and that Harry Potter look; the kind of look that indicates she has no life, and likely lives for the one moment where she could maybe...just maybe Wingardium leviosa the hell out of all those boys who bypassed her for Barbie. Jo likes people like here. All smarts, hidden beauty, and no fucks. Oh yeah.
"I'm telling you, Kit Harrington cut his hair. "
The vibration of the electrical current hummed out from Jo as she rocked, snapping a green tea pocket between her tea and chewing on it. It was low, always present, and easy to miss. Her hard drive was still in the early stages of technological advancement; she was more like a powerline, almost old school Edison with a hint of the progress that Tesla would bring.
"Nah, gotta be nuthin. Martin so didn't write him off completely."
"But what he's actually going to kill him off?" The girl shrilled out. "I can't. Even. What if Jon Snow..."
"TCHT!" Jo reached her green fingers into the box of pocky, pulling out another twig. "Dude so not gunna happen. Jon is one of the dragon riders. Duh. I mean. We all know that his daddy wasn't old Lord of Winterfell himself. Was totes his sister and Rhaegar havin a jig."
Harry potter pursed her lips. "Spoiler you know."
"What eff. Totally not a spoiler if it hasn't been written." Jo waved the half eaten pocky at Harry Potter and grinned widely. "Seriously. 'sides, if Jon kicks the bucket, he's totally gunna warg into Ghost. Everyone knows that."
Grace
[Awareness???]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Jo
[whoops aware]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )
Grace
Standing in line at the DMV is the last place one expects to run into the Awakened. I mean, there's just appropriate settings, right? Places where convergence of they ley lines and whims of fate and what the fuck ever subroutine of Magedom runs to randomly assign a load of them to the same bookstore or the same coffee shop or the same park. This is the fucking DMV. Grace looks around, and there exists so many people.
The feeling she gets reminds her of Awakening. Of the hum of an electric power station. The hum of creation, destruction, and stasis in a single breath. But it's one she's never felt since.
Okay... So, not to be falling prey to stereotypes or anything but... Mohawk dude? Or maybe the woman with bright orange eye shadow? Or... the one with the arm warmers talking about Game of Thrones?
Right. So Jo is getting stared at now by a woman in jeans and a bright red coat that's festooned with strips of LED infused plastic. Welcome to Grace's full attention.
Jo
"It's Martin! Jon is too good to stay alive!" Harry potty huffs and crosses her arms over her chest. "He's going to kill him off."
"Tcht. Seriously? Daenarys is alive. I mean that's totes gotta mean something."
"She's a bratty bitch."
Jo grins widely, slipping another pocky between her lips. "You know, if that was like..Jon snow, you'd be like..all over it."
"Would not." The girl grumbles.
"Like, I don't even get why everyone likes Jon. He's all pouty cry cry, pouty, oh I have pretty hair." Jo pushed out in a mocking voice. "If you're totes gunna be all over some guy, the Viper dude."
"He's dead."
"Tcht. So what? That dude was all cool. And Tyrion?"
"He's a dwarf."
"For reals? Like that's just all discriminatory and shit. Totally awesome dude. All brains and totes knows how to have fun."
This time, she stuffed her hands into her panda hoodie, which looked much less like a panda hoodie from where Grace could see. It was just white and black. If she pulled it up, the ears could give it away...and the fluffy puff tail on the back. Harry Potter tightens her lips a little and cringes. "I can't wait for next season." She laments.
"Could, ya know, like keep yourself busy with Walking Dead. Darryl is still kickin and all."
"Peh!" The girl spewed out. "Why does everyone like him?"
Jo's brows furrow slowly in confusion and disbelief. "Cause he's like, the coolest guy ever? I mean uses a crossbow and like..I dunno...makes redneck look cool."
"Redneck is never cool."
Jo looks out of the corner of her eye to Grace, blinking for a moment before she gives the woman a wide grin and lifts her fingers, wiggling them. Whatever Grace meant by staring at her, Jo took a different way; Jo gave Grace a glance over and a little wink.
Grace
Blink. Blink. It's got to be code, right? The wink means she's been seen and acknowledged. Grace tries to go back to nonchalantness, and resorts to scratching at her knuckles.
Minutes pass. Feels like hours, but no. The lines shift, and people flow onward towards their destinations, and Grace and Jo end up next to each other. Separate lines, sliding faults.
"Hi," she says, and gives a wary smile to Jo and Harry Potter Girl.
Nothing further than that. No 'I like Tyrion too' or the like. Just a quick, short greeting.
Jo
Oh she's been seen and acknowledged alright, though in the way that only a fresh college student could manage who still hadn't worked out the dating scene beyond which options to choose in Hatoful Boyfriend. Harry Potter girl blinks, adjusts her glasses and looks towards Grace. "How do you even know?"
"Know what?" Jo blinks at the girl, crunching the last of her pocky and realizing that, yes, the box was empty, with a bit of a frown. Jo stuffs it in the bag at her side.
"You know... if someone likes girls."
Her head cocks a little to the side. "Totes didn't seen the sign didja? Must be like...something only lesbian super powers pick up. "
"Like Superman's Xray vision?"
"TCHT. Screw Superman. Worst. Super hero. Ever. Totes not at all."
But hell, at that point they were standing near one another and Jo was already in the midst of ruffling through her bag for...
AHA! Panda chocolate filled tiny cookies. Pandas. It's all about the pandas. The foil wrapping is popped open and she holds the box out towards Grace with a half-cocked smile. "Hiiiiii. Chocolate things. Like.. super good. Totally should try it." She jingled the box like it were filled with coins.
Grace
Grace doesn't accept handshakes from people she meets. That sort of thing will just get you tagged and bagged. Accepting food from random strangers is so far beyond the pale, it gets Jo a look of utter confusion.
"Oh, no, no. I'm fine. Really. I don't um..." Um what? Eat? Damn it, Grace, pull it together.
She fishes around in her laptop bag and pulls out her phone next, seemingly done with conversation. She is so very not done with conversation.
[Corr 2: Secure Connection: Diff 5 - 1 for taking her time]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (1, 7) ( success x 1 )
Grace
[Extend! And WP!]
Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (4, 5) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Jo
"Totally get it. Chocolate not your thing right? Like.. woah. Some people got this like weird allergy to chocolate. Get it tho. Ran across it like once or twice. Better than like, not liking chocolate cause that is just bizarre." But Jo is the friendly sort, and she stuffs the chocolates in, ruffling around in the bag for something else. "Jelly babies? Cause I got those. Kitkats? Like I got green tea, and kiwi and strawberry cheesecake..." Her nose scrunches.
Harry Potter watches in a sort of fascination and leans in as if to enlighten Jo on the situation. "She isn't a fan of carpet."
If there were a way to clock the speed by which Jo throws her head up to look at Harry Potter, it would have outranked airliners. "Whu? Dude, like where did you even like hear that phrase? Seriously like the 80s?"
Grace
On Grace's phone screen, the black of shiny nothing slowly seeps with the light of something. A game? Looks like it. It seems to respond to her fingertips, accepting some input.
Somebody is talking about Kit-Kats, but it cannot be to her, right? She's busy. Totally absorbed. And the feeling of a faultline suddenly jolting pops into Jo's sixth sense with all the lack of subtlety resonance is fond of.
There's a noise coming from Jo's phone. It doesn't sound like any text notification she's ever received -- some new little jingle -- but it is definitely her phone.
If she checks it, there will be a message written on the screen, white on black, no apps apparently visible.
You're humming.
Jo
It is definitely not Thunder Cats that comes through her phone. Liono does not pronounce their organization name, and no, there is not a diddy to celebrate bipedal hominid cat people and their valiant efforts to protect the universe. That only serves to confuse Jo, particularly when that deviation does not follow into Mario Kart or Tetris.
Her senses have pricked and something has sparked her, the little fuzz hairs that have managed to escape the confines of the rest, rising up just a little to tell her that, yes, there is something odd happening...and it's not just a strange diddy on her phone. She can't help but rub at her ribs a little, reaching into her pocket for the phone. Unlike those in Grace's circle, she's not accustom to this affair.
"Ugh." Harry potter mutters, now feeling a flush of embarrassment from her friend. "Can you hold the spot?"
"Like...totes. Don't take forever cause like the police are totally gunna know it's not you when you get a picture of like..me on your license." Harry Potter bites her lip and scampers off to the restroom while Jo bothers to look at her screen. Idly, since there has been no response from the woman next to her, she chooses a sucker and stuffs the end into her mouth. Her head cants from one side, to the other, as if she's singing in her head, brows furrowed curiously.
Follow the Cheshire Cat, Neo.
It makes her snicker as she taps it into her phone, lifting her head and then rolling it to the side to look at Grace curiously.
Grace
Grace giggles into her phone, and walks up a few steps to avoid the ire of people behind her.
Hey, you're cool. You new in town?
It's the awkward Magic welcome wagon. Hooray.
Jo
I'm awesome. Way better than cool.
New like a spiderman movie.
You're consciously jacked too?
Jo lulls the sucker around in her mouth slowly while she frantically types, eyes glued now to the bright screen of her phone.
Jo
[meh forgot the font! Sorry]
Grace
Sweet.
Well, consciously? I am conscious. I'm not unconscious at least.
Ahh. Awake. Yes.
There's some people you should meet. Not sleepy peeps. Want me to just, like, put them in your contacts list for you?
Jo
Unplugged. Whatever.
Anyone named Trinity? That'd be rad.
You can do that? Put them in?
Jo rolled her attention back towards Grace, who was now ahead of her. Her brows knit, the sucker rolled in her mouth.
Grace
Grace snorts. Can she do that? Really?
I can do anything. But I won't unless you say so.
Nobody named Trinity. That'd be stealing someone's handle. Someone named Chimeric01 tho. Who's you?
Jo
CIN.
TheCollective on youtube.
All out in the wire baby.
Jo does not know Grace's foibles. Not in the least bit. That's why she feels comfortable doing something like lifting her foot and lightly poking Grace in the hip with her toe. Others who know Grace might not have ever done that.
Totes share. We're all connected.
Grace
Okay. So, first things first right? Grace goes to check out TheCollective. It sounds like the Borg. Borg are bad, mmkay? CIN doesn't seem like a stuck-up corporate drone on a mission to uncover the denizens of Denver, but it never hurts to be cautious.
TheCollective's feed is full of gameplay videos from Silent Hill, Metal Gear Solid, etc. No spreadsheets. Good sign.
So, CIN will be the welcome recipient of new contacts, new phone numbers: Kalen, Lena, Pan, Eleanor, Grace. For Kalen and Grace's location, she puts "The Office" and nothing else. Pan actually has an address listed, that of a church on Federal. Lena's listed as 'awesome' and Eleanor's location is apparently 'probably some place with fucking solid marble desks, idek'.
Shared. If you run into any trouble, don't hesitate to call somebody. Or just say hi.
Jo
"Super cool!" She lets out with a cheer, and yes, people give her the odd look. Jo doesn't seem to mind all that much.
You're Chimeric01 I guess?
Jo rocks on her heels again, one hand in her pocket of her hoodie while her thumb works swiftly on the phone.
You got an e-mail? IM? Contact other than phone?
Grace
About fifty of them. I'll give you one.
Under Grace's contact, there's now an email: gevans@gmail. Not very creative, but it's a point of nerd pride. To have a gmail address of such simplicity means she had to have been an early adopter.
Grace
And yeah. That's me. Chimeric.
Jo
She grins as widely as her lips can manage, just as Harry Potter manages her way back with a straight face. Jo looks up and gives the girl a little nudge with her hips. "Yer up. Come on, let's get this like..overwith so we can get some scones or something. "
"Ugh, where do you PUT it? We -just- had burgers!"
Jo takes it with a bit of pride. "In my like, third stomach. I'm like a cow like that. Just stashin it in case of emergencies."
Harry potter twists her face in disgust and takes her place at the register.
Gotcha covered Trinity. Give me a holler if you get bored over there in awkward land.
She stepped over and eventually away with Harry Potter, lifting her hand up to give Grace a salute and a wink.
Grace
What? Awkward land? Oh. It must be pretty blatant today, huh?
She twists her mouth to the side, slides the Code away with a finger on her phone's screen. Jo's phone stops reporting phantom texts, and lines reach their ends.
It was nice, having someone to talk to while waiting. She smiles back at Jo, and gives a Spaceballs salute in return, complete with royal wave. She can lack complete levels of awkwardness. Sometimes.
Friday, January 9, 2015
Tuesday, December 30, 2014
Callisto
Kiara
South of Denver is a place called Morrison. It's got the quaintness to it that easily transcribes it back into the day of black and white photography, of Western movies and times when making your fortune wasn't half as difficult as it seemed in today's age if you had a will, a way and a pistol in your holster. A railroad town by design, the touches of that past are still visible as a small red car navigates its way through the downtown region; tracing along Bear Creek, the lifeblood to the town; the same river that trickled through to Denver itself.
In truth Kiara had never ventured this far south of Denver, Colorado as much as it was her adopted state of residence, was still in large part a mystery to the woman. Though the lure of the Chantry property, the glimpses she'd heard through others was enough to prompt her to ask a favor of Grace.
Feel like a road trip? She'd texted, a few days shy of the New Year. Arriving to collect the Virtual Adept in a car that was, to put it kindly, well loved. Kiara's car was a small hatchback, decidedly not built for the mountainous regions of Colorado but it managed to zip along the highways, to weave along snow spotted streets and rumble, eventually, with the aid of Grace's navigation, to the base of the hill where the ranch house sat; windows dark in the overcast afternoon light; a light snow dusting the windshield as the Verbena cut her engine and peered over the steering wheel out at the impressive sight.
"This place is huge. And nobody is staying here?"
Her expression was some mixture of incredulity and surprise; it pulled her red mouth into a twist; remaining so as she unbuckled herself and stepped, with the soft crunching of freshly falling snow underfoot, out of the car; carefully slamming the door and standing with a hand raised over her hood; taking in the shape of the hill surrounding the chantry; the cobbled path leading away, curving around to the doors.
She took in a breath, the pagan and on the release, it misted in front of her.
Grace
"It's a bit far from the city. I guess people don't stay here because they'd have to drive a long way to get anywhere else. There's been times I've crashed here before, though," Grace says as she steps out of the car.
Grace's own mode of transportation is similarly well loved. She could always get something better, but what works works. Best not to improve on what isn't broken. So she seems totally content and at home with Kiara's car status.
The Chantry, however, gets no such kindness.
"Yep, too big, too ranchy, too out of the way. But I guess you can't choose where the Node is, eh?"
Grace is bundled up in her red coat. Kiara will remember it as the distraction-filled lightshow coat that she apparently wears whenever it gets the slightest bit cold outside. It's not just slightly cold right now, which has her making a shuffling beeline straight for the door. Someone is not from a chilly climate.
When Kiara gets there, she'll notice the Christmas decorations are still up. Kalen's doing -- and Kalen's presents still lounging beneath the tree.
Kalen Holliday
[For when we finally do post - how awake are we?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN8 (2, 3, 3, 5, 7, 7, 8) ( success x 1 )
Kiara
"It's perfect, though." This, said with a smile. A breath as much as a declaration. Kiara was a child of nature, after all. One supposed that for a Verbena, a witch of the natural world, being surrounded by rock and snow and trees was her notion of heaven -- or whatever passed for it, at the very least. She stood for another moment, Kiara and then took a few steps, dropped to her haunches and pried a glove off with her teeth; digging into the snow and lifting a small pile of it.
Whatever she was doing, she took some level of enjoyment in it.
Standing again after a moment and dusting off her jeans. Kiara's attire was suited for the climate; black coat; a hood half drawn up over her features; white scarf and soft leather gloves to protect her fingers. If anything about what she wore raised an eyebrow, it was perhaps her insistence on those high boots; laced up and with heels that sunk a few inches into the snow-packed earth. Grace heads for the door and Kiara, tracing her fingertips across the walls, follows at a more leisurely pace.
There's a sense of course, with the Node so near, of that hum of activity. Power and connection. It's heady, even the barest sense of it and the brunette is smiling even as she stamps her boots by the door; lowers her hood and allows her eyes to adjust to the indoors; sliding gloves off and unzipping her heavier outerwear. "My coven in New York, we gathered at a small place outside of the city, I used to think that was impressive but this place - " Kiara shrugs her coat off; she's wearing a knitted cardigan beneath; earthy tones of brown over a white blouse; that ever present silver jewellery around her neck.
"It might just be cooler." A gleam in Grace's direction. She takes note of the decorations, then. The tree. The symbols of the holiday season. "Santa's been visiting. Security breach." Teasing, that, as she drifts to take a closer look.
Grace
"Oh, Santa's one of us. Really? Hangs out with elves, has enchanted livestock... although the whole knowing who's been bad and good thing is pretty creepy, I have to say."
Grace kicks at the floor to release snow from her tennis shoes (no fancy boots for her) and hangs up her coat before heading further inside. Under the red coat is a green t-shirt with lemons printed on the front. It reads: 'If life gives you lemons, keep them. Because, hey, free lemons.'
"This is Kalen's doing. I'm sure if he could, flying reindeer would totally be on his list though."
She ambles on over to the tree, with Grace-like ungracefulness. There's a pile of presents still sitting there, some of which she helped wrap. None of which she helped pick out.
Kiara
There's a laugh at that, a thin eyebrow wings upward as the Verbena pulls her hair over a shoulder; bending low to read over the tags on the gifts strewn under the pine tree. "Touché, I guess if I had to pin the guy to a master of anything, it'd be Entropy. All that fate and prediction and guess work about naughty or nice." There's a flicker of surprise when Kiara's fingers slide over a green package with her name on it. A twist of something shy of pleasure as she picks up the gold tied gift and turns it over in her hands.
"You know there's a legend in pagan lore, predating the Christian idea of him, called the Holly King." Kiara settles on the arm of a sofa; her clever fingers making easy work of the gold ribbon. She unties it with a particular sort of care; setting it aside and tendering apart the wrapping with a deliberation no excited child on Christmas morning could ever have boasted. "He does battle with his brother, the Oak King and depending on the season, one prevails and the other goes into hiding."
There's a smile that twitches the edge of her mouth when she pulls out a small stuffed panther; tilting it up to eye level before turning it on Grace with that edged smile. "Cute. Is this suggesting I have plans to devour everyone?" The scarf invokes a quiet noise of appreciation; she winds it around a wrist; admiring the catch and play of the threads of color weaved throughout it.
"I don't usually get gifts around this time of year." She seems thoughtful, the brunette, one might have said touched. "That's sweet of him. Kalen."
Grace
Grace picks out her own presents, the ones she was not allowed to help wrap. Kalen has some sense of tradition, and, she suspects, would not have let her peek.
"He always gets everyone a stuffed animal. Mine was a lion, so apparently I am in the same boat there. Let's see what I got..."
She's not nearly as nice to the wrapping paper and ribbon as Kiara was. The first tear starts, and she finishes it, ripping through hologrammed snowflakes. And inside the first box is...
Another scarf. This one fading from white to gold to copper and back again. It's almost unbearably soft. Cashmere perhaps? In any case, it is warm, and that's really what Grace cares about.
"Neat. I got one too."
Kiara
Kiara folds up the wrapping into a neat square and sets the panther on top of it; absently scratching at the faux creature's head as if it were capable of registering the sensation. She draws her legs up; crossing one over the other and leans her weight against the spine of the sofa, watching Grace's progress with her own wrapping paper.
Kiara's scarf finds its way around her neck; the black thread with its tri-colored highlights settling and sparkling in the light. It suits her, which may say much for Kalen's eye for selecting such things. Grace's is greeted with pleasure too and Kiara's hand finds a way into her dark hair; she reclines on an elbow and observes the other female. Lounging as she is, there's an unnoticed likeness to the feline she's been gifted with; all that ease and confidence.
Ownership of her place, even as a newcomer to the Chantry's midst. "It suits you," she attests and then shifts awareness back to the tree; the decorations. "So does Kalen take care of the house? I'm going to assume it's protected by more than just jolly Saint Nick, right?"
Grace
There's a cubish box next, wrapped in geometric patterned wrapping paper, and she goes at it -- but not without first wrapping the scarf around her neck several times as if to try it on.
Just under the surface of the wrapping paper is another geometric pattern -- a box of lacquered wood. Unfortunately, this one doesn't seem to have a lid.
"Huh."
Grace flips it this way and that before realizing that there are panels on the sides that slide out. It's a puzzle box. Something Kalen knew she'd tinker with and try to figure out. She smirks at the thought.
"Kalen sometimes, yes. I think Pan still comes back and checks in on it from time to time. And just, you know, anyone. I come by every now and then and make sure it hasn't blown up. It could happen."
Kiara
There's a deliberation, of course, to the why of Kiara peppering Grace with questions. To why she asked to be taken out to the property in Morrison; to be given the chance to get familiar with the property; to fall into sync with its energies and, most likely, engage with the great bear spirit that protected its Node. If Kiara were the sort, one might have wondered at her intentions in inching her way into closer proximity to something that sacred to the Awakened Tradition Mages of Denver.
"Pan?" Another unknown name; Kiara's brow wrinkles with it. She sits up; slides off the sofa in favor of beginning a short examination of the living room; touching her fingers to the surfaces as if to read memories from the very surface of them. There's a fascination and curiosity to the brunette's movements; to the way Kiara's dark eyes take in every small detail, commits it to memory.
"I think I might have a look around." She calls from the doorway to the hall; leaning out into it. "There aren't any hidden doors around here, right? A trap door leading to the mysteries of the universe, perhaps?" Kiara's boots fall heavy on the floorboards as she creaks over into the dining room; skimming her fingers over the table; sliding them over the backs of the chairs.
Grace
"There's a locked door leading to the mysteries of the universe. I can open it for you. You'll have to talk to Pan for actual access though," Grace says. "Pan's an okay guy. He has a church in town. Usually I can't stand the moral majority, but he's not all preachy. And he tries."
Tries not to be overbearing. Tries not to come across as the patriarch he really is. Tries because he knows he has no claim to leadership.
"Other than that, nothing hidden. That I've found. And I have looked."
Kalen Holliday
[How distracted by Resonance are we?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )
Kalen Holliday
It is, perhaps, because Pan has never tried that he gets to command Kalen. That and that Pan reminds him of another man, who did a lot more to earn Kalen's obedience. And, right now, Kalen is exhausted. He would have liked nothing more than to find Pan here tonight. Where Pan is, after all, Kalen worries less about what will happen if monsters come out of the ether to attack them; not him, but them. In a crisis, Kalen trusts Pan to save everyone he cannot. And he tries not to think about the fact that Pan isn't likely not to consider him one of the people to be saved, for the same reasons that he tries not to remember the man that Pan reminds him of.
He remembers, tonight. He cannot help it. He has been dreaming. He remembers everything. The things that have happened. All of the possible futures for them he has glimpsed.
All of the ways in which they die.
He is quiet as he comes in, quiet as he hangs up his coat. He knows that Grace is here. That Kiara is here. But he does not head immediately for them. Instead, he heads for the kitchen and starts making coffee. None of that drip coffee, either. This is like a grinding hand-roasted beans for a French press kind of coffee making.
Grace
[Resonances?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 5, 8, 8) ( success x 2 )
Kiara
"He has a church." Kiara says it more to herself than Grace, though with the acoustics in the dining room being what they are, it's highly probable her voice carries. There's some unknown expression on the Verbena's face as she looks out over the patio. Some measure of wearied acknowledgement. "Of course he does." It's a private struggle, that. The sentiment of it, the reasoning. The why Kiara's eyes will always betray some element of mistrust to those of the established church.
It's tempered, always. She's not a creature to broadcast her feelings, but to cage and observe them; it; any situation. Smother it in smiles and measured looks. The quiet contemplation of a woman whose guidance is in the wind and rain; the elements converging. There's the catch of the door; a sense of another; Kiara turns a look over a shoulder and then opens a door and slips out into the back yard, her breath misting in front of her.
She's weaving a path down into the yard by the time Kalen begins the task of preparing coffee.
[Resonances and stuff.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4) ( botch x 1 )
Kiara
[D:]
Kiara
[EVERYONE IS A TECHNOCRAT, RUN.]
Grace
There's the sudden sensation of static electricity -- not such an uncommon occurrence in winter. But Grace places the feeling just before the door opens. Kalen.
"Thanks for the box!" she yells, in the general direction of the door. "And the scarf is so warm!"
Kiara
Only the sense of another - is a lie. The wash of isolation drapes over the brunette's shoulders and she shivers; not merely for the chill in the air. The isolation is pressure and it's not simply that there's nobody close, for the moment, Kiara feels utterly alone. She wades further down into the yard; her progress cut into the packed snow; the scarf Kalen gifted her trailing after her like a black marker until she is blotted from clear sight by the incline of the hill; the trees and stones that line the Node itself.
Her resonance though; that cyclic pattern of hers, edged with something darker; base and visceral, its still felt.
Kalen Holliday
"Have you solved it yet," Kalen calls from the kitchen. Water is heating. Now he sets to taking out the other things. Mugs. He sets one of the rock candy stirrers in Grace's mug. She sleeps now, yes, but she has not yet turned down coffee.
He knows this kitchen almost as well as the kitchen at the office, though things here are slightly more likely to be somewhere unexpected. Even so, not much changes. Mugs, coffee, tea kettle. Everything is familiar. As familiar as it was in his dreams. As familiar as it was when he was pulled into a Mindscape. As familiar as it will be when-
No. We must not think about that now.
Kalen pours cream into a tiny pitcher. He is almost as pale as the cream. It makes the shadows under his eyes all the more evident. There is, as there almost always is, reason enough Kalen is rarely without coffee.
Grace
"I just unwrapped it, dude!"
Right as she says that, her fingers are still working at the thing, trying to find the right combination of sliding panels to get it open all the way. And, with a click and a slide...
"Oh wait. Yes, I have. At least one of the sides. I think there's two."
She wanders into the kitchen after him, carrying her box, the scarf still wrapped around her neck. "Kiara's here, if you want to make her a coffee too. She wanted to see the Chantry. Though it seems more like she wanted to go outside and play in the snow..."
Kiara
She's visible as she re-appears from the kitchen window; Kiara, her dark hair snow-dusted; tracing a path back through the ankle high snow; hands around her body, tucked in low beneath her arms to keep them from the cold. There's an expression of mingled appreciation and uncertainty as she reaches the patio. Canting a sharp look over her shoulder as if she can't quite re-align herself with her location.
The door slides open; heavy boots sound on the floor and for a long moment; there's silence. Then: "There's a bear sleeping by the Node." The Verbena appears in the kitchen doorway, looks utterly startled for a moment by the appearance of Kalen; the smell of freshly brewed coffee; Grace at his side. As if she'd been perfectly alone, speaking to herself and then found the house descended on by unknown guests.
"Hey," offered when she recovers, the corner of her mouth drawn up in a smile; though the shadow of unease felt outside lingers in the pallor of her skin, even Kiara's mouth looks a little less vibrant for that foreboding sense to the world right now. She plucks the edge of the scarf.
"You shouldn't have." The snow is melting in her hair, she looks as nature-touched as you might expect.
Kalen Holliday
"Already on that," Kalen says to Grace. He glances at the box in her hands. "I was going to put something in it, like an extra surprise, but I couldn't open it." Wait. What? Couldn't he- "Without cheating. Using magic on the box seemed like cheating. Though, now that I think about it, also excellent practice. I should get some more of them."
"Oh," Kalen says quietly. "Next year perhaps I will just get everyone a copy of How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Or, perhaps, coal.
"And, yes. Her name is Callisto." His eyes widen, just a little, even now. There is pretty much nothing that can completely dampen his wonder about Callisto. "You can see her? I can't usually see her. Sometimes people show her to me."
Grace
"The guard-bear. I've heard of that, but I've never seen it," Grace says, her fingers working at getting her puzzle box closed again. Little strips of lacquered wood on the side of the box slide slowly back and forth as she goes, making little clicking sounds.
"Kalen always does Christmas gifts," Grace says to Kiara, with a shrug, as if to explain that the sky is blue, the grass is green, and Kalen is Kalen. "You get used to it. It's his thing, giving stuff to people."
Kiara
Kiara leans more fully into the doorway. "I mean that in an entirely 'thank you, I love it' sort of way, for the record." Her dark eyes are brighter, in the moment. Her smile accompanies the easy gratitude and she slides into the kitchen proper with a rattle of heavy jewellery. Moving to hop up on the counter and help herself to a piece of fruit; rolling an apple between her hands.
"I can if I peek across, " Kiara rubs a thumb over a blemish on the fruit. The bruise of impact where it had been jostled at some point from tree to factory to bowl of fruit. "It's a little easier here, the energy out there, the trees. The earth. Callisto," the dark eyed pagan turns the apple over in her palms. "I'm guessing mentioning Zeus around her wouldn't make a girl popular." There's a twist of Kiara's mouth; humor banking there and gone before her expression smooths into something a little more sober.
"I could probably show you, if you want to see. She was watching what I was doing out there. I got a sense I was being scrutinized."
Kalen Holliday
"She does that, at first," Kalen says. "I'm not sure where her name comes from in that regard. And...maybe. I'm not sure if falling asleep watching her is on my list of things to do again. It wasn't, precisely, the first time." There is a soft huff. "I blame Alexander."
He pours coffee over the rock candy stirrer waiting in the mug, slides that mug and the cream across the counter toward Grace. He could, by now, just fix it for her entirely, but he does not. He pours another mug and holds this one out to Kiara. If she takes it, he pours another for himself. Whichever way he takes a sip of his coffee before he adds anything to it.
"And you are, of course, welcome. I'm glad you like it. You're one of the people I was less sure of." He looks over at Grace, and there is, for a second, a touch of something mischievous in those pale green eyes of his.
"But we all have skills, no?" His smile widens a touch. "And considering the company I've been keeping, I have so few opportunities to practice."
Grace
Ooh, coffee. With a rock-candy stirrer like she likes, and the cream like she likes. She pours some cream in, and stirs it with the stirrer, then sticks the stirrer in her mouth like a lollipop. Coffee flavored sugar -- the best, right?
"Oh whatever. You get me things all the time. You get everybody things all the time."
She turns to Kiara. "Really? You could do that?"
Kiara
She takes the coffee, setting the fruit back down and instead drawing one leg over the other; those boots of hers a complicated affair of laces and leather; tied up beneath her knee. One of Kiara's feet moves a little; a tiny betraying motion. Unsettled, perhaps. A lingering uneasiness she's dragged back from her brief foray outside.
"Alexander. I met him, I think. Quiet guy, sort of intense." She muses on it; on him; holds on to mentioning what else he gave her an impression of. They all had their demons, after all and Kiara Woolfe is hardly without her own. It reads there, for a beat, in the subtle change and shift in her mouth, the supple shape of it reforming into some schism of understanding when Kalen mentions being unsure of what to gift her with.
She cups the coffee in both hands; warming them around it. She leaves it black, Kiara. No sweeteners or cream. Perhaps she savors the bitterness to it; the strength imbued in the purity of the coffee blend, or something along those lines. "That doesn't surprise me," she admits with an expression opening into something curling and bright.
"Most people take longer to get a handle on what impression I'm making." Dark eyes shift to Grace, Kiara's teeth flash before her smile vanishes beneath a sip of coffee. She sets it aside; slides off the counter with a careless sort of grace; one that spoke of confidence, if not certainty in landing on her feet. "Sure I could. Have you ever seen the other side before? It's better, the first time, out here. You can see things easier. The city is a wonder but - " Kiara looks thoughtful as she turns her gaze out the windows. Into the snowy afternoon.
" - she talks better to me out here."
Kalen Holliday
"You've met Alexander," Kalen says quietly. And he does, from time to time, forget who has met who. But Kiara and Alexander...there are reasons he remembers that. "He can be quiet, yes. And intense. He is not always, but-" You remind him of this cannibal cult, Kiara. Of the woman neither he nor I could save. You taste, in part, like their endless hunger. "Sometimes he takes a moment to warm up to people."
"It is," Kalen says quietly, "Much nicer here." So many memories to haunt people. Kalen...Kalen is familiar with that kind of haunting, if no other. And so he remembers the things that they cannot forget, the weight of their memory and his memory mingling to strike a balance with his futures and their futures. Dizzying. Precise. Delicate.
He really does wish that Pan were here.
"And Callisto is magnificent." He takes another sip of his coffee, then adds whiskey. Two raw sugar cubes.
Grace
There are things Grace understands, certainly. Space, matter, the Code. The realm of spirits is not one of those things. She's been there, across the Gauntlet, and yet still doesn't know exactly what Kiara means by the 'other side'.
"Er. I've seen some things. I don't think I've seen the other side. Unless you mean like, other worlds?"
The rock candy stirrer is still hanging out the side of her mouth.
Kiara
She should know, of course. What her resonance might mean to some. She'd been there, after all. That night in the park. Felt the agony of a spirit processing precisely how he'd died. What horror had been visited upon him. He'd been searching for his dog and then Kiara - the dark eyed pagan with that sensation that feeds under your skin - and she'd stood there and been a witness to it.
Solemn and quiet and in the aftermath - she'd removed herself from the moment.
But right now - she simply looks at Kalen and the composition of his quiet response and feels - what - something, some semblance of things that aren't spoken out loud. Kiara listens to what she's told and it strikes some recognition in her the way her mouth firms; not cruelly; into a line. The way she studies Kalen's face with this unrelenting intentness for a beat. It's hard, that. Being scrutinized by the woman who reminds you of things you'd rather forget.
Her eyes tick away eventually, her smile doesn't quite ebb but she returns it to Grace and tilts her head; that dark hair slipping free like waves of dark water over her shoulders. "I suppose that depends on your definition of other worlds. I just mean - seen across, to the place where Callisto lives. My - we tend to think of it in other terms but I guess - the Umbra." She says it slowly, Kiara, there's a sense of great respect to it; the way the devoted might murmur their Gods names to invoke them.
"C'mon, I'll show you something."
She collects her coffee, inclines her head. "Kalen, you're welcome to tag along if you fancy."
Kalen Holliday
Kalen permits Kiara to stare into his eyes. He never felt the hunger that she and Alexander did; that particular threat he never faced in person. And he waits, patient and still, until she is finished her study. That stillness is broken not by turning from her but by sipping his coffee.
"There are a number of treatises on that subject, no few conflicting," he says, probably more for Grace than for Kiara, because as he continues something warmer threads through his tone. "Shall I make a formal request for them? Have you learned yet to read Latin?
"The summation of such as concerns your inquiry being whether the metaphorical ether the spirits inhabit is of a greater whole with ours or set apart can be rather a matter of interpretation. What I believe offered at moment should be a great deal more familiar than our last excursion. She is lovely, Callisto. I would suggest that you take the chance to see her."
Grace
"I'm sure I can make my computer read Latin for me," Grace says, "If you think it would help. I don't know though, I don't have a great track record at learning from your books."
Especially if they are written in Latin. Good grief, how old those books must be?
She takes a sip from her coffee and looks up at Kiara from the mug's brim. Of course she'll go with. Of course she'll be shown this thing. What seeker of the new wouldn't? So she slips away from the table.
"Like I would pass up such an offer, eh?"
Kiara
The snow has stopped falling outside. It sets the world into a pristine white kingdom; snow dusted treetops and melting (deadly) frost on the patio as Kiara slips back outside; zipping her coat back over her clothing. She's reclaimed her bag en route and wound Kalen's scarf tighter around her neck; the ends neatly folded and tucked into her outer layers.
The coffee is drunk and left on the ledge in favor of better balance as the Verbena weaves a path through the newly-fallen snow to toward the rocky outcropping that doubles as a ledge for the Node. Kiara moves to the left, then. Toward the overgrown fountain; crumbling stone thriving with tall weeds; they're dotted with snow too, though there's less in this corner where the tall shrubs have provided some scant protection against the weather.
She turns a small circuit, the brunette and then drops her bag down; squatting and tilting a smile up at Grace. "The way I do this will probably seem a little strange, but just - go with it." The smile widens for a beat before Kiara rises to her feet holding a small packet of what looks (and after a moment smells) like sandalwood and sage, mixed with something vaguely spicy. She moves in a circle; carefully setting four long sticks into the earth and flicking a lighter extricated from her bag. Rising, she motions to Grace (and, if he's so inclined, Kalen).
"Make yourself comfortable inside the circle. It helps when I'm invoking." Kiara draws back her sleeves, then and settles down on her knees; palms flat on her knees. There's silence as she faces the direction of the meditation pool. Nothing but the sound of the pagan's breathing and then a quiet chanting. Kiara saying something softly, under her breath.
Apparently, she's calling to the elements.
Kalen Holliday
Kalen follows them outside. He watches, curious, as Kiara begins her preparations. The Order advises caution in dealing with spirits, so much caution and so much preparation and so much ceremony. And Kalen knows that that caution and preparation and ceremony need not be exclusive of familiarity and affection, but in this he knows that he is advised to be so.
It is hardly the first point upon which he has deviated from the advised and the expected. His fascination with Callisto would certainly be enough to give some who once taught him pause. That he would, if pressed to name what The Message is call him friend...? There is a reason he has not requested those treatises in Latin, and it is much the same as the reason that he studies Kiara's preparation so closely.
And he does, quietly and calmly, step into the circle when she gestures.
Grace
Grace goes to get her coat. Apparently this is a thing that cannot be done from the inside, like normal people would. And she is not braving the snow in a t-shirt. At least she has a new scarf and everything, right? Her neck's going to be the warmest part of her. In fact, she pulls the scarf up over her nose and mouth before stepping through the door, coffee still in hand.
She rolls her eyes at this 'little strange' that Kiara speaks of. It's a shame that scarf is covering up her smirk. Something about that amuses her. She goes inside the circle, but apparently doesn't want to make herself comfortable. Sit down? In the snow? Be comfortable? In the cold? She puts her free hand in her pocket and drinks coffee with the other.
But she does watch. The habits of others when doing their thing can be so interesting. It's strange how it works. There's the thought of what Kiara thinks she's doing, and what Grace thinks she's really doing. And then, a thought of who's right? Probably both.
Kiara
[Open the Doorway, Spirit 1, let's take a peek across. -1 Practised, -3 Node, we might extend this too]
Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (1, 9) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Kiara
[Once more! I think we'll go for at least 4 suxx.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (2, 3) ( fail )
Kiara
[Ouch! Screw you paradox. -1 WP.]
Kiara
[Let's keep going.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (3, 3) ( success x 1 ) [WP]
Kiara
[One last time.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (6, 8) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Kiara
[The universe is mean.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )
Kiara
[Ouch.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (6, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 4 )
Kiara
It takes work.
There's a moment, after she begins that Kiara's will begins to crumble and she visibly tenses; the building energy surrounding the circle the trio are within seems to waver and ripple before, with a harsh breath and push of her will exerted -- that sudden sharp tugging at the Tapestry, the air itself being devoured, as if all the oxygen were sucked out of their circle -- before the sense ebbs and is replaced with -- wonder. Like a layer peeled back from the world in front of them; drawing in and over and the world seems -- brighter.
The trees are luminescent; the earth isn't simply snow covered but glittering; vibrant with life. Some skitter at the sight of them; others fluctuate as they stop and observe and then skim right out of reach and there, across the Node; her great coat gleaming as if rich with the stars themselves sits the great Callisto, the bear spirit who guards their source of greatest energy and renewal. She's a massive sight, the spirit, even at her ease. Over 7 feet of snowy white fur and a presence that seems almost transcendent; unfocused; as if some cosmic tuning where taking place.
She distorts then reforms; sits back on enormous paws and regards the Awakened as they behold her.
The world is the world but the doorway, as Kiara would deem it; opened. The outer layer shed and a deeper opened. There's a quality, to the other side, that their side lacks. A gleaming, unearthly presence. The world beyond the one they walk. The Verbena's chanting has stopped; though she remains as she is; eyes focused on the sight before her.
Her hold on the casting has been tenuous and Kiara seems intent on maintaining it long enough for Grace and Kalen to look across and take stock of the guardian where she sits; omnipresent in her domain.
Kalen Holliday
Kalen's curious study gives way to wonder when his perceptions shift. Shimmer. Gossamer threads and coccoons and-
No. Focus.
There is Callisto. He turns his eyes toward the great spirit-bear, wide and alight with wonder. He can still remember when he first met her. More than a year ago now, but the memory has remained sharp. Full of the taste of crisp, cool starlight and celestial heights and something he has never been able to Name.
Kalen smiles, and watches her. He can feel butterflies walking over his skin, the memories of them, the symbols of the them. They remind him that he needs to find time to study with Alyssa. That he needs to bring Trent his present. Should he bring Grace? I was partly her-
Grace.
He turns from Callisto to look at Grace looking at Callisto.
Grace
When the invocation to the elements ends, when the chanting ceases and the world stands before Grace, certain veils of perception removed, there's only one thing she can say: "Oh, shit."
Her eyes are wide and smiling as she looks out at Callisto, at the trees, at the Node which looks somehow even more watery than it used to. Everything looks so much more real than it truly is, which of course makes it all seem unreal. Grace doesn't just stare at the bear. It's as if she wants to catalog everything. When Kalen looks at her, she's looking at the stars peeking out from behind clouds.
And then, to the snow -- itself alive with the flow of energy. Then, to the bear now taking notice of all this magic going on.
"It's beautiful."
Kiara
Everything has a silvery sheen to it, looking across.
It's as if Kiara has worked to temporarily wipe condescension from the window between the Umbral planes and their side. The Gauntlet is thinner here, by the Node. The working, to stretch and encompass not merely her own perceptions but those of all within the circle has exhausted her. Her skin feels stretched tight; the whiplash of reality drawing back and pushing against her attempts to rework it.
She's paler than when she began; not simply for the chill to the air where they are. Still - her mouth parts in a smile as she takes in the sight of the bear spirit; listens to Grace's astonishment. Feels the vibration of her excitement near her. It feels like magic, in the moment, the subtle aroma of Kiara's incense burning around them; spirals of smoke rising in their respective corners; the ripple and roll of the edges to her casting.
The Verbena makes a noise of assent when Grace calls it beautiful.
"Yeah, it is. So is she." Kiara's eyes are on Callisto. The great bear is scenting the air much like a real bear would; a black nose twitching as she makes a low grunting and swings her weight around; prowling a little along the other side of the Node. The posturing is that of wary supervision. Kiara cants a look over her shoulder. "You can move around a little, if you want. Just don't break the circle." She takes a breath; discreetly wiping her hands along her jeans.
Kiara
[Condensation, not condescension, freaking auto correct.]
Kalen Holliday
Kalen remains mostly still. His head turns, his eyes sweep across the umbral landscape, but he does not really seem interested in movement within the confines of the circle.
His attention settles back, soon enough, on Callisto. He seems, for once, oblivious to the cold.
Grace
There should be more stars out tonight, Grace thinks. It's just not fair. Callisto looks like she belongs with stars.
Subconsciously, Grace begins to teeter her way back, away from the bear. Something about being suddenly presented with a very large polar bear like being seems to have struck a lizard-brain response in her.
Just don't break the circle
Right, okay. So maybe keep those shifting feet away from the edge. Grace doesn't know what will happen if the 'circle' is 'broken,' so. She stays. Her coffee gets sipped, without thought.
"How does that work?" she asks, as though Kiara might be able to explain in a way she'd understand. Probably not. But it does no good to never ask.
Kiara
"When you invoke the elements, you create a space." Kiara sits back, turning a little to face the others. They can see the strain the casting has had on her face, like this. She looks pale against the black of her coat; the dark waves of her hair standing out in greater contrast because of it. She seems alert, though. Her eyes don't seem dulled for the weariness working has had on her.
"I've drawn a - " The Verbena pauses; trying to frame the way her casting works. Translate it the way another might understand it. Especially one of Grace's ilk. " - it's like running a program inside a system that isn't native to it. In here," Kiara gestures around them. "It understands what I've asked it to do, out there - " She nods toward the edge, where the spirals of smoke still curl, burning down slowly. " - I haven't extended it to know. Once they burn out, or we step outside - " Kiara twists a little, looking back across at where Callisto is now resting; idly keeping watch on their small gathering; decided perhaps; that they pose no direct threat and resuming her respite.
" - It closes the door. It's easier, to close the circle from within."
Kalen Holliday
Kalen lets them discuss magic. He listens, certainly. But this time, for all he knows enough of cosmology to keep up with this discussion, he stays silent. He has seen the Umbra here, but not since he was in that Mindscape. He can remember this place, all too well, as empty and barren.
The Node gone, Callisto gone, everything coated in dust. How far had they all come? How far had he and Sid driven each other away? What had it cost them all?
And so, he watches Callisto. Tries to impress this memory over the others. Tries to bind this one with falling asleep with Alexander on the lounges in the rain, with Shoshannah brushing something over his closed eyelids. This world. Here. Perhaps not entirely now, but here and unruined.
Grace
"Hah! So like running a virtual machine? You're translating it for us inside. Cool," Grace says, grins over to Kalen. Kalen who is so distant right now. She smiles at him.
"I like her," she whispers, leans in so as to make it conspiratorial -- or to try to drag a smile out of him.
"This is so cool, Kiara. It's like another world, but it's really here too."
Kiara
For all that Sid and Kiara shared a commonality; shared aspects of the same understanding of the world; the way they perceived the World Tree and the quest to protect and nurture back the threads; they were very different creatures housed beneath the branches of their Tradition. Had they ever met, this might have seemed even more pronounced. For as much as Ms Woolfe carried a great reverence for the craft, for the working and protection of what the Verbena held dear -- she opposed just as much of it.
Boundaries laid down by generations before needed, in her own presumption of them, to be broken down; not rebuilt. There was so much, as they saw now, so much more to be known. The old ways were thus for good reason and it was the modern age; the adopted, brought under the re-imagined Verbena's wings, that helped them prosper after the Burning Times. Her mentor's people; her former coven, would not have approved Kiara's translating for another not of their midst.
But then, the Dreamweavers had always gone their own way. Pushed the acceptable into new dimensions. It's there, in the curling of her lip; the gleam in her eye before she winks at Grace that solidifies she's doing just that -- making her own path. Etching into the earth Kiara Woolfe's variation on what it meant -- connection.
Kalen is quiet; lost to memory and the moment and Kiara lets him be; lets the Umbra speak to him as it will. She carefully gets to her feet, brushing herself down. "It's always here. It's just -- " She tilts her head, the corner of her mouth giving into some expression of pleasure. " -- learning how to see it." She looks over, taking in Callisto, the softly shaking treetops; the glimmer of the water; the hazy glow of the Umbral reflection. "There's so much there, though. So many things we can't see. Half of them I only know about in theory," Kiara's brows knit. There's a wistfulness, a yearning to her voice for a moment.
"I think if we could still walk there the way we used to be able to, we'd see things differently. But - " She shakes it off; shrugs thin shoulders. " - times change."
Kalen Holliday
"Has any of us ever told you about The Message?" Kalen asks. "And by extension, our adventures in the Umbra?" His eyes stay on Callisto. "Perhaps not, those were not, as such, the best of times. But The Message is rather remarkable."
Grace
"Yes, we've been to the Umbra before. But it didn't look like this. It didn't look like our world at all," Grace says, and there a memory sparks. Kalen was there. He told her, 'welcome to the Umbra'. He still couldn't walk right back then. And she was still so new.
"It sort of... hurt a bit. But we all managed. Maybe if we ever see him again, we could ask him how he does it."
She ventures a look above, into clouds that do not merely obscure the sky, but seem to roil like you'd expect clouds to -- like they were fluid living things.
Kiara
Kiara tilts her head; breath misting a little as she does toward Kalen. "Grace might have mentioned it once, I think." There's an edging smile there, directed the Virtual Adept's way, as Kiara's hands find sanctuary from the bite in the afternoon air in her pockets. The sun is dipping lower now, late afternoon drawing out hues of orange and gold into the horizon, soon enough -- though perhaps not quite quickly enough for them to glimpse them through Umbral skies -- the stars will be out, winking through the cloud cover.
"I wish I'd been there to see it."
It's honest, that. For all that Grace mentions it had hurt, crossing the Gauntlet; being pressed and pulled apart on the journey. Kiara's heard stories from others, about the things that can go wrong, the ways an avatar can be torn apart trying to cross over. Folklore, some of it, probably. Truth to much of it, undoubtedly. The Verbena tenders hair behind her ear as she moves to carefully drop down into a squat beside one of the burners. The ash has scattered around the base and the amber glows faintly as it nears the end of its life.
"It's nearly time," she offers quietly and glances toward the other side of the Node; where Callisto's great eye is open; regarding them. Her enormous side rising and falling in her recumbency. Kiara's lips move, she mouths something and the air around them seems to shimmer -- it holds, for a moment, the casting, the Umbral reflection around them and then, slowly, it begins to recede; the silvery glow; Callisto; the otherworldly tinge to everything begins to fade as if a literal curtain were dropping.
The incense burns itself out; snuffing into a whirl of smoke on four sides and Kiara's soft chanting tapers out likewise. She pushes herself to her feet. Looking across to where there's now just empty snow-touched earth, but where altered perception tells Grace and Kalen Callisto remains, watching them from the other side.
Kalen Holliday
"The first place we were was actually rather beautiful. Dangerous, perhaps, but incredible. Mountains and a glorious sky. And The Message is...he is not an Angel, but he is angelic. It was a little sad, the way that he died, except that he didn't, exactly. Just transformed and became what he is. Which is...like but unlike a ghost? I don't know. I don't think there is another like him.
"Granted, Nephandic cemeteries were a little creepy, and I'm not fond of bodies of water than puddles in general, so even after that thing was no longer in control of that place the river of souls still unnerved me a bit, but...when it was the land of the dead as the land of the dead is meant to be it was rather peaceful.
"He's something, though. The Message. Hopefully you'll have a chance to meet him one day."
Grace
Grace is still staring at everything as the scenery changes, and the curtains drop again. She washes away the disappointment that it's all over with a sip from her mug.
"Callisto was pretty. I'm glad I got to see her finally. Thanks."
Kiara
She stands; a collection of burned offerings in hand as Kalen speaks; pushing the fall of her hair aside; looking across at him with an expression that was a mixture of interest and uncertainty. Some hint of bemusement when he mentions Nephandic cemeteries being unsettling. "I'd have guessed they wouldn't be a thrill," this, with a twisting smile; a glance around as she collects her bag and carefully zips it up; slings its weight over a shoulder and casts Grace a brief little expression -- contained acknowledgement; understanding.
"Anytime. It's great out here." She lifts her chin, the Verbena; the profile she offers is appealing; the cut of her jaw; the slope of her nose. She's an odd juxtaposition at times, the brunette. Seemingly delicate but with a thread of something harder; harsher; inside. A curling, contrary nature. She breathes in carefully, looks out over the Node and then nods back toward the illuminated house behind them.
"Coffee?"
Kalen Holliday
"Sure." Kalen turns and heads back toward the House. The coffee he made will be cold by now, but they can make more. "Alexander is translating the journal he kept, the Archmage whose last spell consumed the last of his life and then merged with shards of the Avatar storm and became The Message. If there are parts about the places he's been in the Umbra, I will see that you have the chance to see them."
Grace
Kalen speaks of The Message, explains how the being came to exist. It sounds so academic when he says it like that. But then, he can be academic when he wants to be.
Snow is beginning to creep in under her shoes. She's just now aware of that, after the wonder of Kiara's vision.
"Yes. We'll make sure. I made a promise that I'd share that book with everyone. Not that I needed to, but still," Grace says, heading to the door with quick but shuffling steps.
Kiara
"I'd like that," Kiara collects her empty coffee cup as they reach the patio; stamping snow off the edges of her boots where its gathered beneath her heels. "Thank you," she unzips her jacket as they shuffle back inside; warmth curling into their bones; it's a little startling; it prickles, after a length exposed to the winter's air outside.
Kiara shakes her hair loose of snow; plucking her gloves off and stowing them into the pockets of her coat as she hangs it up. "I was thinking I might stay out here a night or two every now and then. Get to know the area a little better." The edge of the Verbena's mouth draws up as she cuts a look back out the way they'd come.
"Maybe even commune with Callisto a little, if she's willing to."
There's a beat; Kiara's gaze slips between Kalen and Grace. "Assuming that would be okay, of course. I don't want to step on any toes."
Kalen Holliday
"No. You're welcome. People have lived here. Shoshannah did. Sid kept a room here. Pan stayed here for a couple months. I spent a week here after I escaped the hospital once. It's...actually kind of empty-seeming now that no one is living here.
"There's...food and alcohol and pretty much everything you'd need. I really should get around to picking up more things for when people crash here less expectedly.
"And, if you need anything, or get bored, Grace and I have our office not far from here. We technically have other homes, but we're not so often in them. So, one or both of us are generally close by."
Grace
"Yeah, nobody's going to care if you decide to stay. This is like, an everybody thing."
Grace decides that most things are everybody things, but that is Grace. She has a tendency to decide that other people's things are everybody things too sometimes.
"I lived here for a while. We were hiding from Thakky, and it was safer."
Kiara
More names for faces she's never known. Two she's at least heard before, one earlier today as a matter of fact, the other, the first Kalen mentions is unknown to the brunette. Kiara heads for the kitchen, sets her cup down in the sink and rinses it out with a meticulousness born more of consideration of what Kalen says than anything.
Turns and leans her weight against it, hands bracing the sink. The afternoon light is cutting in behind her; casting a strange halo over the crown of the Verbena's head, sinking the hollows of her eyes into shadow. The dip of her shoulders. "I don't really mind the solitude so much, being closer to nature is good for me, anyway, besides - " Here she lifts her face, Kiara, cants her head toward the empty rooms behind them.
"It's probably not the world's worst idea to have someone here. Just in case." She quirks an eyebrow. "I promise not to go through anyone's underwear drawer."
Kalen Holliday
Kalen turns to Grace. "And this is why there are still Easter eggs somewhere in this house. No one is committed to opening everything."
He turns back to Kiara. "It isn't bad, I'm just used to someone living here. It seems odd because I never expect it to seem unlived in. If it had always been empty, I don't think I'd really notice it was empty."
Kalen starts water boiling on the stove again. For yet more coffee.
Grace
"Oh, Kalen. Those candies will rot, you know. Am I going to have to run a scan on the place for egg-shaped plastic objects? For real?"
She knows he's probably joking. But probably is different from certainly.
She also knows there is a puzzle box on the table that's only halfway solved. And now that she's figured out part of the pattern, it should be simple, right? She sits at the table with it, keeping Kalen silent company as he makes coffee, her coat still on (because somebody wants to warm up after their little stint outside).
Kiara
There are questions Kiara wants to ask. They're there, on the tip of her tongue as she watches Kalen go about the process of brewing fresh coffee. Where these people were, that had once lived here but did no longer. Were they lost, were they still in the city, had they, like she had once, run away from something haunting their footsteps and dogging them, even in their dreams.
She doesn't, at least, not today.
Not as the afternoon light wears down into dusk; as they settle with refilled cups and the Verbena, at least, recuperates after her casting by the Node. Little by little; hour by hour, color will return to her cheeks, the shadows under her eyes will lessen. She'll take to exploring, Kiara, to venturing up the stairs and into bedrooms heavy with dust and disuse. She may, at some point, pick one as a potential bedroom on the nights she does stay over.
Not tonight, that being said. There's still a Virtual Adept to return home. Kiara has obligations to keep but it's a start. A beginning and she's not unaware that the wind that had been swirling and howling outside her apartment all the morning before she left for Grace's now seems silent.
Satiated, at least briefly. Onward and onward, Woolfe.
South of Denver is a place called Morrison. It's got the quaintness to it that easily transcribes it back into the day of black and white photography, of Western movies and times when making your fortune wasn't half as difficult as it seemed in today's age if you had a will, a way and a pistol in your holster. A railroad town by design, the touches of that past are still visible as a small red car navigates its way through the downtown region; tracing along Bear Creek, the lifeblood to the town; the same river that trickled through to Denver itself.
In truth Kiara had never ventured this far south of Denver, Colorado as much as it was her adopted state of residence, was still in large part a mystery to the woman. Though the lure of the Chantry property, the glimpses she'd heard through others was enough to prompt her to ask a favor of Grace.
Feel like a road trip? She'd texted, a few days shy of the New Year. Arriving to collect the Virtual Adept in a car that was, to put it kindly, well loved. Kiara's car was a small hatchback, decidedly not built for the mountainous regions of Colorado but it managed to zip along the highways, to weave along snow spotted streets and rumble, eventually, with the aid of Grace's navigation, to the base of the hill where the ranch house sat; windows dark in the overcast afternoon light; a light snow dusting the windshield as the Verbena cut her engine and peered over the steering wheel out at the impressive sight.
"This place is huge. And nobody is staying here?"
Her expression was some mixture of incredulity and surprise; it pulled her red mouth into a twist; remaining so as she unbuckled herself and stepped, with the soft crunching of freshly falling snow underfoot, out of the car; carefully slamming the door and standing with a hand raised over her hood; taking in the shape of the hill surrounding the chantry; the cobbled path leading away, curving around to the doors.
She took in a breath, the pagan and on the release, it misted in front of her.
Grace
"It's a bit far from the city. I guess people don't stay here because they'd have to drive a long way to get anywhere else. There's been times I've crashed here before, though," Grace says as she steps out of the car.
Grace's own mode of transportation is similarly well loved. She could always get something better, but what works works. Best not to improve on what isn't broken. So she seems totally content and at home with Kiara's car status.
The Chantry, however, gets no such kindness.
"Yep, too big, too ranchy, too out of the way. But I guess you can't choose where the Node is, eh?"
Grace is bundled up in her red coat. Kiara will remember it as the distraction-filled lightshow coat that she apparently wears whenever it gets the slightest bit cold outside. It's not just slightly cold right now, which has her making a shuffling beeline straight for the door. Someone is not from a chilly climate.
When Kiara gets there, she'll notice the Christmas decorations are still up. Kalen's doing -- and Kalen's presents still lounging beneath the tree.
Kalen Holliday
[For when we finally do post - how awake are we?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN8 (2, 3, 3, 5, 7, 7, 8) ( success x 1 )
Kiara
"It's perfect, though." This, said with a smile. A breath as much as a declaration. Kiara was a child of nature, after all. One supposed that for a Verbena, a witch of the natural world, being surrounded by rock and snow and trees was her notion of heaven -- or whatever passed for it, at the very least. She stood for another moment, Kiara and then took a few steps, dropped to her haunches and pried a glove off with her teeth; digging into the snow and lifting a small pile of it.
Whatever she was doing, she took some level of enjoyment in it.
Standing again after a moment and dusting off her jeans. Kiara's attire was suited for the climate; black coat; a hood half drawn up over her features; white scarf and soft leather gloves to protect her fingers. If anything about what she wore raised an eyebrow, it was perhaps her insistence on those high boots; laced up and with heels that sunk a few inches into the snow-packed earth. Grace heads for the door and Kiara, tracing her fingertips across the walls, follows at a more leisurely pace.
There's a sense of course, with the Node so near, of that hum of activity. Power and connection. It's heady, even the barest sense of it and the brunette is smiling even as she stamps her boots by the door; lowers her hood and allows her eyes to adjust to the indoors; sliding gloves off and unzipping her heavier outerwear. "My coven in New York, we gathered at a small place outside of the city, I used to think that was impressive but this place - " Kiara shrugs her coat off; she's wearing a knitted cardigan beneath; earthy tones of brown over a white blouse; that ever present silver jewellery around her neck.
"It might just be cooler." A gleam in Grace's direction. She takes note of the decorations, then. The tree. The symbols of the holiday season. "Santa's been visiting. Security breach." Teasing, that, as she drifts to take a closer look.
Grace
"Oh, Santa's one of us. Really? Hangs out with elves, has enchanted livestock... although the whole knowing who's been bad and good thing is pretty creepy, I have to say."
Grace kicks at the floor to release snow from her tennis shoes (no fancy boots for her) and hangs up her coat before heading further inside. Under the red coat is a green t-shirt with lemons printed on the front. It reads: 'If life gives you lemons, keep them. Because, hey, free lemons.'
"This is Kalen's doing. I'm sure if he could, flying reindeer would totally be on his list though."
She ambles on over to the tree, with Grace-like ungracefulness. There's a pile of presents still sitting there, some of which she helped wrap. None of which she helped pick out.
Kiara
There's a laugh at that, a thin eyebrow wings upward as the Verbena pulls her hair over a shoulder; bending low to read over the tags on the gifts strewn under the pine tree. "Touché, I guess if I had to pin the guy to a master of anything, it'd be Entropy. All that fate and prediction and guess work about naughty or nice." There's a flicker of surprise when Kiara's fingers slide over a green package with her name on it. A twist of something shy of pleasure as she picks up the gold tied gift and turns it over in her hands.
"You know there's a legend in pagan lore, predating the Christian idea of him, called the Holly King." Kiara settles on the arm of a sofa; her clever fingers making easy work of the gold ribbon. She unties it with a particular sort of care; setting it aside and tendering apart the wrapping with a deliberation no excited child on Christmas morning could ever have boasted. "He does battle with his brother, the Oak King and depending on the season, one prevails and the other goes into hiding."
There's a smile that twitches the edge of her mouth when she pulls out a small stuffed panther; tilting it up to eye level before turning it on Grace with that edged smile. "Cute. Is this suggesting I have plans to devour everyone?" The scarf invokes a quiet noise of appreciation; she winds it around a wrist; admiring the catch and play of the threads of color weaved throughout it.
"I don't usually get gifts around this time of year." She seems thoughtful, the brunette, one might have said touched. "That's sweet of him. Kalen."
Grace
Grace picks out her own presents, the ones she was not allowed to help wrap. Kalen has some sense of tradition, and, she suspects, would not have let her peek.
"He always gets everyone a stuffed animal. Mine was a lion, so apparently I am in the same boat there. Let's see what I got..."
She's not nearly as nice to the wrapping paper and ribbon as Kiara was. The first tear starts, and she finishes it, ripping through hologrammed snowflakes. And inside the first box is...
Another scarf. This one fading from white to gold to copper and back again. It's almost unbearably soft. Cashmere perhaps? In any case, it is warm, and that's really what Grace cares about.
"Neat. I got one too."
Kiara
Kiara folds up the wrapping into a neat square and sets the panther on top of it; absently scratching at the faux creature's head as if it were capable of registering the sensation. She draws her legs up; crossing one over the other and leans her weight against the spine of the sofa, watching Grace's progress with her own wrapping paper.
Kiara's scarf finds its way around her neck; the black thread with its tri-colored highlights settling and sparkling in the light. It suits her, which may say much for Kalen's eye for selecting such things. Grace's is greeted with pleasure too and Kiara's hand finds a way into her dark hair; she reclines on an elbow and observes the other female. Lounging as she is, there's an unnoticed likeness to the feline she's been gifted with; all that ease and confidence.
Ownership of her place, even as a newcomer to the Chantry's midst. "It suits you," she attests and then shifts awareness back to the tree; the decorations. "So does Kalen take care of the house? I'm going to assume it's protected by more than just jolly Saint Nick, right?"
Grace
There's a cubish box next, wrapped in geometric patterned wrapping paper, and she goes at it -- but not without first wrapping the scarf around her neck several times as if to try it on.
Just under the surface of the wrapping paper is another geometric pattern -- a box of lacquered wood. Unfortunately, this one doesn't seem to have a lid.
"Huh."
Grace flips it this way and that before realizing that there are panels on the sides that slide out. It's a puzzle box. Something Kalen knew she'd tinker with and try to figure out. She smirks at the thought.
"Kalen sometimes, yes. I think Pan still comes back and checks in on it from time to time. And just, you know, anyone. I come by every now and then and make sure it hasn't blown up. It could happen."
Kiara
There's a deliberation, of course, to the why of Kiara peppering Grace with questions. To why she asked to be taken out to the property in Morrison; to be given the chance to get familiar with the property; to fall into sync with its energies and, most likely, engage with the great bear spirit that protected its Node. If Kiara were the sort, one might have wondered at her intentions in inching her way into closer proximity to something that sacred to the Awakened Tradition Mages of Denver.
"Pan?" Another unknown name; Kiara's brow wrinkles with it. She sits up; slides off the sofa in favor of beginning a short examination of the living room; touching her fingers to the surfaces as if to read memories from the very surface of them. There's a fascination and curiosity to the brunette's movements; to the way Kiara's dark eyes take in every small detail, commits it to memory.
"I think I might have a look around." She calls from the doorway to the hall; leaning out into it. "There aren't any hidden doors around here, right? A trap door leading to the mysteries of the universe, perhaps?" Kiara's boots fall heavy on the floorboards as she creaks over into the dining room; skimming her fingers over the table; sliding them over the backs of the chairs.
Grace
"There's a locked door leading to the mysteries of the universe. I can open it for you. You'll have to talk to Pan for actual access though," Grace says. "Pan's an okay guy. He has a church in town. Usually I can't stand the moral majority, but he's not all preachy. And he tries."
Tries not to be overbearing. Tries not to come across as the patriarch he really is. Tries because he knows he has no claim to leadership.
"Other than that, nothing hidden. That I've found. And I have looked."
Kalen Holliday
[How distracted by Resonance are we?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )
Kalen Holliday
It is, perhaps, because Pan has never tried that he gets to command Kalen. That and that Pan reminds him of another man, who did a lot more to earn Kalen's obedience. And, right now, Kalen is exhausted. He would have liked nothing more than to find Pan here tonight. Where Pan is, after all, Kalen worries less about what will happen if monsters come out of the ether to attack them; not him, but them. In a crisis, Kalen trusts Pan to save everyone he cannot. And he tries not to think about the fact that Pan isn't likely not to consider him one of the people to be saved, for the same reasons that he tries not to remember the man that Pan reminds him of.
He remembers, tonight. He cannot help it. He has been dreaming. He remembers everything. The things that have happened. All of the possible futures for them he has glimpsed.
All of the ways in which they die.
He is quiet as he comes in, quiet as he hangs up his coat. He knows that Grace is here. That Kiara is here. But he does not head immediately for them. Instead, he heads for the kitchen and starts making coffee. None of that drip coffee, either. This is like a grinding hand-roasted beans for a French press kind of coffee making.
Grace
[Resonances?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 5, 8, 8) ( success x 2 )
Kiara
"He has a church." Kiara says it more to herself than Grace, though with the acoustics in the dining room being what they are, it's highly probable her voice carries. There's some unknown expression on the Verbena's face as she looks out over the patio. Some measure of wearied acknowledgement. "Of course he does." It's a private struggle, that. The sentiment of it, the reasoning. The why Kiara's eyes will always betray some element of mistrust to those of the established church.
It's tempered, always. She's not a creature to broadcast her feelings, but to cage and observe them; it; any situation. Smother it in smiles and measured looks. The quiet contemplation of a woman whose guidance is in the wind and rain; the elements converging. There's the catch of the door; a sense of another; Kiara turns a look over a shoulder and then opens a door and slips out into the back yard, her breath misting in front of her.
She's weaving a path down into the yard by the time Kalen begins the task of preparing coffee.
[Resonances and stuff.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4) ( botch x 1 )
Kiara
[D:]
Kiara
[EVERYONE IS A TECHNOCRAT, RUN.]
Grace
There's the sudden sensation of static electricity -- not such an uncommon occurrence in winter. But Grace places the feeling just before the door opens. Kalen.
"Thanks for the box!" she yells, in the general direction of the door. "And the scarf is so warm!"
Kiara
Only the sense of another - is a lie. The wash of isolation drapes over the brunette's shoulders and she shivers; not merely for the chill in the air. The isolation is pressure and it's not simply that there's nobody close, for the moment, Kiara feels utterly alone. She wades further down into the yard; her progress cut into the packed snow; the scarf Kalen gifted her trailing after her like a black marker until she is blotted from clear sight by the incline of the hill; the trees and stones that line the Node itself.
Her resonance though; that cyclic pattern of hers, edged with something darker; base and visceral, its still felt.
Kalen Holliday
"Have you solved it yet," Kalen calls from the kitchen. Water is heating. Now he sets to taking out the other things. Mugs. He sets one of the rock candy stirrers in Grace's mug. She sleeps now, yes, but she has not yet turned down coffee.
He knows this kitchen almost as well as the kitchen at the office, though things here are slightly more likely to be somewhere unexpected. Even so, not much changes. Mugs, coffee, tea kettle. Everything is familiar. As familiar as it was in his dreams. As familiar as it was when he was pulled into a Mindscape. As familiar as it will be when-
No. We must not think about that now.
Kalen pours cream into a tiny pitcher. He is almost as pale as the cream. It makes the shadows under his eyes all the more evident. There is, as there almost always is, reason enough Kalen is rarely without coffee.
Grace
"I just unwrapped it, dude!"
Right as she says that, her fingers are still working at the thing, trying to find the right combination of sliding panels to get it open all the way. And, with a click and a slide...
"Oh wait. Yes, I have. At least one of the sides. I think there's two."
She wanders into the kitchen after him, carrying her box, the scarf still wrapped around her neck. "Kiara's here, if you want to make her a coffee too. She wanted to see the Chantry. Though it seems more like she wanted to go outside and play in the snow..."
Kiara
She's visible as she re-appears from the kitchen window; Kiara, her dark hair snow-dusted; tracing a path back through the ankle high snow; hands around her body, tucked in low beneath her arms to keep them from the cold. There's an expression of mingled appreciation and uncertainty as she reaches the patio. Canting a sharp look over her shoulder as if she can't quite re-align herself with her location.
The door slides open; heavy boots sound on the floor and for a long moment; there's silence. Then: "There's a bear sleeping by the Node." The Verbena appears in the kitchen doorway, looks utterly startled for a moment by the appearance of Kalen; the smell of freshly brewed coffee; Grace at his side. As if she'd been perfectly alone, speaking to herself and then found the house descended on by unknown guests.
"Hey," offered when she recovers, the corner of her mouth drawn up in a smile; though the shadow of unease felt outside lingers in the pallor of her skin, even Kiara's mouth looks a little less vibrant for that foreboding sense to the world right now. She plucks the edge of the scarf.
"You shouldn't have." The snow is melting in her hair, she looks as nature-touched as you might expect.
Kalen Holliday
"Already on that," Kalen says to Grace. He glances at the box in her hands. "I was going to put something in it, like an extra surprise, but I couldn't open it." Wait. What? Couldn't he- "Without cheating. Using magic on the box seemed like cheating. Though, now that I think about it, also excellent practice. I should get some more of them."
"Oh," Kalen says quietly. "Next year perhaps I will just get everyone a copy of How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Or, perhaps, coal.
"And, yes. Her name is Callisto." His eyes widen, just a little, even now. There is pretty much nothing that can completely dampen his wonder about Callisto. "You can see her? I can't usually see her. Sometimes people show her to me."
Grace
"The guard-bear. I've heard of that, but I've never seen it," Grace says, her fingers working at getting her puzzle box closed again. Little strips of lacquered wood on the side of the box slide slowly back and forth as she goes, making little clicking sounds.
"Kalen always does Christmas gifts," Grace says to Kiara, with a shrug, as if to explain that the sky is blue, the grass is green, and Kalen is Kalen. "You get used to it. It's his thing, giving stuff to people."
Kiara
Kiara leans more fully into the doorway. "I mean that in an entirely 'thank you, I love it' sort of way, for the record." Her dark eyes are brighter, in the moment. Her smile accompanies the easy gratitude and she slides into the kitchen proper with a rattle of heavy jewellery. Moving to hop up on the counter and help herself to a piece of fruit; rolling an apple between her hands.
"I can if I peek across, " Kiara rubs a thumb over a blemish on the fruit. The bruise of impact where it had been jostled at some point from tree to factory to bowl of fruit. "It's a little easier here, the energy out there, the trees. The earth. Callisto," the dark eyed pagan turns the apple over in her palms. "I'm guessing mentioning Zeus around her wouldn't make a girl popular." There's a twist of Kiara's mouth; humor banking there and gone before her expression smooths into something a little more sober.
"I could probably show you, if you want to see. She was watching what I was doing out there. I got a sense I was being scrutinized."
Kalen Holliday
"She does that, at first," Kalen says. "I'm not sure where her name comes from in that regard. And...maybe. I'm not sure if falling asleep watching her is on my list of things to do again. It wasn't, precisely, the first time." There is a soft huff. "I blame Alexander."
He pours coffee over the rock candy stirrer waiting in the mug, slides that mug and the cream across the counter toward Grace. He could, by now, just fix it for her entirely, but he does not. He pours another mug and holds this one out to Kiara. If she takes it, he pours another for himself. Whichever way he takes a sip of his coffee before he adds anything to it.
"And you are, of course, welcome. I'm glad you like it. You're one of the people I was less sure of." He looks over at Grace, and there is, for a second, a touch of something mischievous in those pale green eyes of his.
"But we all have skills, no?" His smile widens a touch. "And considering the company I've been keeping, I have so few opportunities to practice."
Grace
Ooh, coffee. With a rock-candy stirrer like she likes, and the cream like she likes. She pours some cream in, and stirs it with the stirrer, then sticks the stirrer in her mouth like a lollipop. Coffee flavored sugar -- the best, right?
"Oh whatever. You get me things all the time. You get everybody things all the time."
She turns to Kiara. "Really? You could do that?"
Kiara
She takes the coffee, setting the fruit back down and instead drawing one leg over the other; those boots of hers a complicated affair of laces and leather; tied up beneath her knee. One of Kiara's feet moves a little; a tiny betraying motion. Unsettled, perhaps. A lingering uneasiness she's dragged back from her brief foray outside.
"Alexander. I met him, I think. Quiet guy, sort of intense." She muses on it; on him; holds on to mentioning what else he gave her an impression of. They all had their demons, after all and Kiara Woolfe is hardly without her own. It reads there, for a beat, in the subtle change and shift in her mouth, the supple shape of it reforming into some schism of understanding when Kalen mentions being unsure of what to gift her with.
She cups the coffee in both hands; warming them around it. She leaves it black, Kiara. No sweeteners or cream. Perhaps she savors the bitterness to it; the strength imbued in the purity of the coffee blend, or something along those lines. "That doesn't surprise me," she admits with an expression opening into something curling and bright.
"Most people take longer to get a handle on what impression I'm making." Dark eyes shift to Grace, Kiara's teeth flash before her smile vanishes beneath a sip of coffee. She sets it aside; slides off the counter with a careless sort of grace; one that spoke of confidence, if not certainty in landing on her feet. "Sure I could. Have you ever seen the other side before? It's better, the first time, out here. You can see things easier. The city is a wonder but - " Kiara looks thoughtful as she turns her gaze out the windows. Into the snowy afternoon.
" - she talks better to me out here."
Kalen Holliday
"You've met Alexander," Kalen says quietly. And he does, from time to time, forget who has met who. But Kiara and Alexander...there are reasons he remembers that. "He can be quiet, yes. And intense. He is not always, but-" You remind him of this cannibal cult, Kiara. Of the woman neither he nor I could save. You taste, in part, like their endless hunger. "Sometimes he takes a moment to warm up to people."
"It is," Kalen says quietly, "Much nicer here." So many memories to haunt people. Kalen...Kalen is familiar with that kind of haunting, if no other. And so he remembers the things that they cannot forget, the weight of their memory and his memory mingling to strike a balance with his futures and their futures. Dizzying. Precise. Delicate.
He really does wish that Pan were here.
"And Callisto is magnificent." He takes another sip of his coffee, then adds whiskey. Two raw sugar cubes.
Grace
There are things Grace understands, certainly. Space, matter, the Code. The realm of spirits is not one of those things. She's been there, across the Gauntlet, and yet still doesn't know exactly what Kiara means by the 'other side'.
"Er. I've seen some things. I don't think I've seen the other side. Unless you mean like, other worlds?"
The rock candy stirrer is still hanging out the side of her mouth.
Kiara
She should know, of course. What her resonance might mean to some. She'd been there, after all. That night in the park. Felt the agony of a spirit processing precisely how he'd died. What horror had been visited upon him. He'd been searching for his dog and then Kiara - the dark eyed pagan with that sensation that feeds under your skin - and she'd stood there and been a witness to it.
Solemn and quiet and in the aftermath - she'd removed herself from the moment.
But right now - she simply looks at Kalen and the composition of his quiet response and feels - what - something, some semblance of things that aren't spoken out loud. Kiara listens to what she's told and it strikes some recognition in her the way her mouth firms; not cruelly; into a line. The way she studies Kalen's face with this unrelenting intentness for a beat. It's hard, that. Being scrutinized by the woman who reminds you of things you'd rather forget.
Her eyes tick away eventually, her smile doesn't quite ebb but she returns it to Grace and tilts her head; that dark hair slipping free like waves of dark water over her shoulders. "I suppose that depends on your definition of other worlds. I just mean - seen across, to the place where Callisto lives. My - we tend to think of it in other terms but I guess - the Umbra." She says it slowly, Kiara, there's a sense of great respect to it; the way the devoted might murmur their Gods names to invoke them.
"C'mon, I'll show you something."
She collects her coffee, inclines her head. "Kalen, you're welcome to tag along if you fancy."
Kalen Holliday
Kalen permits Kiara to stare into his eyes. He never felt the hunger that she and Alexander did; that particular threat he never faced in person. And he waits, patient and still, until she is finished her study. That stillness is broken not by turning from her but by sipping his coffee.
"There are a number of treatises on that subject, no few conflicting," he says, probably more for Grace than for Kiara, because as he continues something warmer threads through his tone. "Shall I make a formal request for them? Have you learned yet to read Latin?
"The summation of such as concerns your inquiry being whether the metaphorical ether the spirits inhabit is of a greater whole with ours or set apart can be rather a matter of interpretation. What I believe offered at moment should be a great deal more familiar than our last excursion. She is lovely, Callisto. I would suggest that you take the chance to see her."
Grace
"I'm sure I can make my computer read Latin for me," Grace says, "If you think it would help. I don't know though, I don't have a great track record at learning from your books."
Especially if they are written in Latin. Good grief, how old those books must be?
She takes a sip from her coffee and looks up at Kiara from the mug's brim. Of course she'll go with. Of course she'll be shown this thing. What seeker of the new wouldn't? So she slips away from the table.
"Like I would pass up such an offer, eh?"
Kiara
The snow has stopped falling outside. It sets the world into a pristine white kingdom; snow dusted treetops and melting (deadly) frost on the patio as Kiara slips back outside; zipping her coat back over her clothing. She's reclaimed her bag en route and wound Kalen's scarf tighter around her neck; the ends neatly folded and tucked into her outer layers.
The coffee is drunk and left on the ledge in favor of better balance as the Verbena weaves a path through the newly-fallen snow to toward the rocky outcropping that doubles as a ledge for the Node. Kiara moves to the left, then. Toward the overgrown fountain; crumbling stone thriving with tall weeds; they're dotted with snow too, though there's less in this corner where the tall shrubs have provided some scant protection against the weather.
She turns a small circuit, the brunette and then drops her bag down; squatting and tilting a smile up at Grace. "The way I do this will probably seem a little strange, but just - go with it." The smile widens for a beat before Kiara rises to her feet holding a small packet of what looks (and after a moment smells) like sandalwood and sage, mixed with something vaguely spicy. She moves in a circle; carefully setting four long sticks into the earth and flicking a lighter extricated from her bag. Rising, she motions to Grace (and, if he's so inclined, Kalen).
"Make yourself comfortable inside the circle. It helps when I'm invoking." Kiara draws back her sleeves, then and settles down on her knees; palms flat on her knees. There's silence as she faces the direction of the meditation pool. Nothing but the sound of the pagan's breathing and then a quiet chanting. Kiara saying something softly, under her breath.
Apparently, she's calling to the elements.
Kalen Holliday
Kalen follows them outside. He watches, curious, as Kiara begins her preparations. The Order advises caution in dealing with spirits, so much caution and so much preparation and so much ceremony. And Kalen knows that that caution and preparation and ceremony need not be exclusive of familiarity and affection, but in this he knows that he is advised to be so.
It is hardly the first point upon which he has deviated from the advised and the expected. His fascination with Callisto would certainly be enough to give some who once taught him pause. That he would, if pressed to name what The Message is call him friend...? There is a reason he has not requested those treatises in Latin, and it is much the same as the reason that he studies Kiara's preparation so closely.
And he does, quietly and calmly, step into the circle when she gestures.
Grace
Grace goes to get her coat. Apparently this is a thing that cannot be done from the inside, like normal people would. And she is not braving the snow in a t-shirt. At least she has a new scarf and everything, right? Her neck's going to be the warmest part of her. In fact, she pulls the scarf up over her nose and mouth before stepping through the door, coffee still in hand.
She rolls her eyes at this 'little strange' that Kiara speaks of. It's a shame that scarf is covering up her smirk. Something about that amuses her. She goes inside the circle, but apparently doesn't want to make herself comfortable. Sit down? In the snow? Be comfortable? In the cold? She puts her free hand in her pocket and drinks coffee with the other.
But she does watch. The habits of others when doing their thing can be so interesting. It's strange how it works. There's the thought of what Kiara thinks she's doing, and what Grace thinks she's really doing. And then, a thought of who's right? Probably both.
Kiara
[Open the Doorway, Spirit 1, let's take a peek across. -1 Practised, -3 Node, we might extend this too]
Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (1, 9) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Kiara
[Once more! I think we'll go for at least 4 suxx.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (2, 3) ( fail )
Kiara
[Ouch! Screw you paradox. -1 WP.]
Kiara
[Let's keep going.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (3, 3) ( success x 1 ) [WP]
Kiara
[One last time.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (6, 8) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Kiara
[The universe is mean.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )
Kiara
[Ouch.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (6, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 4 )
Kiara
It takes work.
There's a moment, after she begins that Kiara's will begins to crumble and she visibly tenses; the building energy surrounding the circle the trio are within seems to waver and ripple before, with a harsh breath and push of her will exerted -- that sudden sharp tugging at the Tapestry, the air itself being devoured, as if all the oxygen were sucked out of their circle -- before the sense ebbs and is replaced with -- wonder. Like a layer peeled back from the world in front of them; drawing in and over and the world seems -- brighter.
The trees are luminescent; the earth isn't simply snow covered but glittering; vibrant with life. Some skitter at the sight of them; others fluctuate as they stop and observe and then skim right out of reach and there, across the Node; her great coat gleaming as if rich with the stars themselves sits the great Callisto, the bear spirit who guards their source of greatest energy and renewal. She's a massive sight, the spirit, even at her ease. Over 7 feet of snowy white fur and a presence that seems almost transcendent; unfocused; as if some cosmic tuning where taking place.
She distorts then reforms; sits back on enormous paws and regards the Awakened as they behold her.
The world is the world but the doorway, as Kiara would deem it; opened. The outer layer shed and a deeper opened. There's a quality, to the other side, that their side lacks. A gleaming, unearthly presence. The world beyond the one they walk. The Verbena's chanting has stopped; though she remains as she is; eyes focused on the sight before her.
Her hold on the casting has been tenuous and Kiara seems intent on maintaining it long enough for Grace and Kalen to look across and take stock of the guardian where she sits; omnipresent in her domain.
Kalen Holliday
Kalen's curious study gives way to wonder when his perceptions shift. Shimmer. Gossamer threads and coccoons and-
No. Focus.
There is Callisto. He turns his eyes toward the great spirit-bear, wide and alight with wonder. He can still remember when he first met her. More than a year ago now, but the memory has remained sharp. Full of the taste of crisp, cool starlight and celestial heights and something he has never been able to Name.
Kalen smiles, and watches her. He can feel butterflies walking over his skin, the memories of them, the symbols of the them. They remind him that he needs to find time to study with Alyssa. That he needs to bring Trent his present. Should he bring Grace? I was partly her-
Grace.
He turns from Callisto to look at Grace looking at Callisto.
Grace
When the invocation to the elements ends, when the chanting ceases and the world stands before Grace, certain veils of perception removed, there's only one thing she can say: "Oh, shit."
Her eyes are wide and smiling as she looks out at Callisto, at the trees, at the Node which looks somehow even more watery than it used to. Everything looks so much more real than it truly is, which of course makes it all seem unreal. Grace doesn't just stare at the bear. It's as if she wants to catalog everything. When Kalen looks at her, she's looking at the stars peeking out from behind clouds.
And then, to the snow -- itself alive with the flow of energy. Then, to the bear now taking notice of all this magic going on.
"It's beautiful."
Kiara
Everything has a silvery sheen to it, looking across.
It's as if Kiara has worked to temporarily wipe condescension from the window between the Umbral planes and their side. The Gauntlet is thinner here, by the Node. The working, to stretch and encompass not merely her own perceptions but those of all within the circle has exhausted her. Her skin feels stretched tight; the whiplash of reality drawing back and pushing against her attempts to rework it.
She's paler than when she began; not simply for the chill to the air where they are. Still - her mouth parts in a smile as she takes in the sight of the bear spirit; listens to Grace's astonishment. Feels the vibration of her excitement near her. It feels like magic, in the moment, the subtle aroma of Kiara's incense burning around them; spirals of smoke rising in their respective corners; the ripple and roll of the edges to her casting.
The Verbena makes a noise of assent when Grace calls it beautiful.
"Yeah, it is. So is she." Kiara's eyes are on Callisto. The great bear is scenting the air much like a real bear would; a black nose twitching as she makes a low grunting and swings her weight around; prowling a little along the other side of the Node. The posturing is that of wary supervision. Kiara cants a look over her shoulder. "You can move around a little, if you want. Just don't break the circle." She takes a breath; discreetly wiping her hands along her jeans.
Kiara
[Condensation, not condescension, freaking auto correct.]
Kalen Holliday
Kalen remains mostly still. His head turns, his eyes sweep across the umbral landscape, but he does not really seem interested in movement within the confines of the circle.
His attention settles back, soon enough, on Callisto. He seems, for once, oblivious to the cold.
Grace
There should be more stars out tonight, Grace thinks. It's just not fair. Callisto looks like she belongs with stars.
Subconsciously, Grace begins to teeter her way back, away from the bear. Something about being suddenly presented with a very large polar bear like being seems to have struck a lizard-brain response in her.
Just don't break the circle
Right, okay. So maybe keep those shifting feet away from the edge. Grace doesn't know what will happen if the 'circle' is 'broken,' so. She stays. Her coffee gets sipped, without thought.
"How does that work?" she asks, as though Kiara might be able to explain in a way she'd understand. Probably not. But it does no good to never ask.
Kiara
"When you invoke the elements, you create a space." Kiara sits back, turning a little to face the others. They can see the strain the casting has had on her face, like this. She looks pale against the black of her coat; the dark waves of her hair standing out in greater contrast because of it. She seems alert, though. Her eyes don't seem dulled for the weariness working has had on her.
"I've drawn a - " The Verbena pauses; trying to frame the way her casting works. Translate it the way another might understand it. Especially one of Grace's ilk. " - it's like running a program inside a system that isn't native to it. In here," Kiara gestures around them. "It understands what I've asked it to do, out there - " She nods toward the edge, where the spirals of smoke still curl, burning down slowly. " - I haven't extended it to know. Once they burn out, or we step outside - " Kiara twists a little, looking back across at where Callisto is now resting; idly keeping watch on their small gathering; decided perhaps; that they pose no direct threat and resuming her respite.
" - It closes the door. It's easier, to close the circle from within."
Kalen Holliday
Kalen lets them discuss magic. He listens, certainly. But this time, for all he knows enough of cosmology to keep up with this discussion, he stays silent. He has seen the Umbra here, but not since he was in that Mindscape. He can remember this place, all too well, as empty and barren.
The Node gone, Callisto gone, everything coated in dust. How far had they all come? How far had he and Sid driven each other away? What had it cost them all?
And so, he watches Callisto. Tries to impress this memory over the others. Tries to bind this one with falling asleep with Alexander on the lounges in the rain, with Shoshannah brushing something over his closed eyelids. This world. Here. Perhaps not entirely now, but here and unruined.
Grace
"Hah! So like running a virtual machine? You're translating it for us inside. Cool," Grace says, grins over to Kalen. Kalen who is so distant right now. She smiles at him.
"I like her," she whispers, leans in so as to make it conspiratorial -- or to try to drag a smile out of him.
"This is so cool, Kiara. It's like another world, but it's really here too."
Kiara
For all that Sid and Kiara shared a commonality; shared aspects of the same understanding of the world; the way they perceived the World Tree and the quest to protect and nurture back the threads; they were very different creatures housed beneath the branches of their Tradition. Had they ever met, this might have seemed even more pronounced. For as much as Ms Woolfe carried a great reverence for the craft, for the working and protection of what the Verbena held dear -- she opposed just as much of it.
Boundaries laid down by generations before needed, in her own presumption of them, to be broken down; not rebuilt. There was so much, as they saw now, so much more to be known. The old ways were thus for good reason and it was the modern age; the adopted, brought under the re-imagined Verbena's wings, that helped them prosper after the Burning Times. Her mentor's people; her former coven, would not have approved Kiara's translating for another not of their midst.
But then, the Dreamweavers had always gone their own way. Pushed the acceptable into new dimensions. It's there, in the curling of her lip; the gleam in her eye before she winks at Grace that solidifies she's doing just that -- making her own path. Etching into the earth Kiara Woolfe's variation on what it meant -- connection.
Kalen is quiet; lost to memory and the moment and Kiara lets him be; lets the Umbra speak to him as it will. She carefully gets to her feet, brushing herself down. "It's always here. It's just -- " She tilts her head, the corner of her mouth giving into some expression of pleasure. " -- learning how to see it." She looks over, taking in Callisto, the softly shaking treetops; the glimmer of the water; the hazy glow of the Umbral reflection. "There's so much there, though. So many things we can't see. Half of them I only know about in theory," Kiara's brows knit. There's a wistfulness, a yearning to her voice for a moment.
"I think if we could still walk there the way we used to be able to, we'd see things differently. But - " She shakes it off; shrugs thin shoulders. " - times change."
Kalen Holliday
"Has any of us ever told you about The Message?" Kalen asks. "And by extension, our adventures in the Umbra?" His eyes stay on Callisto. "Perhaps not, those were not, as such, the best of times. But The Message is rather remarkable."
Grace
"Yes, we've been to the Umbra before. But it didn't look like this. It didn't look like our world at all," Grace says, and there a memory sparks. Kalen was there. He told her, 'welcome to the Umbra'. He still couldn't walk right back then. And she was still so new.
"It sort of... hurt a bit. But we all managed. Maybe if we ever see him again, we could ask him how he does it."
She ventures a look above, into clouds that do not merely obscure the sky, but seem to roil like you'd expect clouds to -- like they were fluid living things.
Kiara
Kiara tilts her head; breath misting a little as she does toward Kalen. "Grace might have mentioned it once, I think." There's an edging smile there, directed the Virtual Adept's way, as Kiara's hands find sanctuary from the bite in the afternoon air in her pockets. The sun is dipping lower now, late afternoon drawing out hues of orange and gold into the horizon, soon enough -- though perhaps not quite quickly enough for them to glimpse them through Umbral skies -- the stars will be out, winking through the cloud cover.
"I wish I'd been there to see it."
It's honest, that. For all that Grace mentions it had hurt, crossing the Gauntlet; being pressed and pulled apart on the journey. Kiara's heard stories from others, about the things that can go wrong, the ways an avatar can be torn apart trying to cross over. Folklore, some of it, probably. Truth to much of it, undoubtedly. The Verbena tenders hair behind her ear as she moves to carefully drop down into a squat beside one of the burners. The ash has scattered around the base and the amber glows faintly as it nears the end of its life.
"It's nearly time," she offers quietly and glances toward the other side of the Node; where Callisto's great eye is open; regarding them. Her enormous side rising and falling in her recumbency. Kiara's lips move, she mouths something and the air around them seems to shimmer -- it holds, for a moment, the casting, the Umbral reflection around them and then, slowly, it begins to recede; the silvery glow; Callisto; the otherworldly tinge to everything begins to fade as if a literal curtain were dropping.
The incense burns itself out; snuffing into a whirl of smoke on four sides and Kiara's soft chanting tapers out likewise. She pushes herself to her feet. Looking across to where there's now just empty snow-touched earth, but where altered perception tells Grace and Kalen Callisto remains, watching them from the other side.
Kalen Holliday
"The first place we were was actually rather beautiful. Dangerous, perhaps, but incredible. Mountains and a glorious sky. And The Message is...he is not an Angel, but he is angelic. It was a little sad, the way that he died, except that he didn't, exactly. Just transformed and became what he is. Which is...like but unlike a ghost? I don't know. I don't think there is another like him.
"Granted, Nephandic cemeteries were a little creepy, and I'm not fond of bodies of water than puddles in general, so even after that thing was no longer in control of that place the river of souls still unnerved me a bit, but...when it was the land of the dead as the land of the dead is meant to be it was rather peaceful.
"He's something, though. The Message. Hopefully you'll have a chance to meet him one day."
Grace
Grace is still staring at everything as the scenery changes, and the curtains drop again. She washes away the disappointment that it's all over with a sip from her mug.
"Callisto was pretty. I'm glad I got to see her finally. Thanks."
Kiara
She stands; a collection of burned offerings in hand as Kalen speaks; pushing the fall of her hair aside; looking across at him with an expression that was a mixture of interest and uncertainty. Some hint of bemusement when he mentions Nephandic cemeteries being unsettling. "I'd have guessed they wouldn't be a thrill," this, with a twisting smile; a glance around as she collects her bag and carefully zips it up; slings its weight over a shoulder and casts Grace a brief little expression -- contained acknowledgement; understanding.
"Anytime. It's great out here." She lifts her chin, the Verbena; the profile she offers is appealing; the cut of her jaw; the slope of her nose. She's an odd juxtaposition at times, the brunette. Seemingly delicate but with a thread of something harder; harsher; inside. A curling, contrary nature. She breathes in carefully, looks out over the Node and then nods back toward the illuminated house behind them.
"Coffee?"
Kalen Holliday
"Sure." Kalen turns and heads back toward the House. The coffee he made will be cold by now, but they can make more. "Alexander is translating the journal he kept, the Archmage whose last spell consumed the last of his life and then merged with shards of the Avatar storm and became The Message. If there are parts about the places he's been in the Umbra, I will see that you have the chance to see them."
Grace
Kalen speaks of The Message, explains how the being came to exist. It sounds so academic when he says it like that. But then, he can be academic when he wants to be.
Snow is beginning to creep in under her shoes. She's just now aware of that, after the wonder of Kiara's vision.
"Yes. We'll make sure. I made a promise that I'd share that book with everyone. Not that I needed to, but still," Grace says, heading to the door with quick but shuffling steps.
Kiara
"I'd like that," Kiara collects her empty coffee cup as they reach the patio; stamping snow off the edges of her boots where its gathered beneath her heels. "Thank you," she unzips her jacket as they shuffle back inside; warmth curling into their bones; it's a little startling; it prickles, after a length exposed to the winter's air outside.
Kiara shakes her hair loose of snow; plucking her gloves off and stowing them into the pockets of her coat as she hangs it up. "I was thinking I might stay out here a night or two every now and then. Get to know the area a little better." The edge of the Verbena's mouth draws up as she cuts a look back out the way they'd come.
"Maybe even commune with Callisto a little, if she's willing to."
There's a beat; Kiara's gaze slips between Kalen and Grace. "Assuming that would be okay, of course. I don't want to step on any toes."
Kalen Holliday
"No. You're welcome. People have lived here. Shoshannah did. Sid kept a room here. Pan stayed here for a couple months. I spent a week here after I escaped the hospital once. It's...actually kind of empty-seeming now that no one is living here.
"There's...food and alcohol and pretty much everything you'd need. I really should get around to picking up more things for when people crash here less expectedly.
"And, if you need anything, or get bored, Grace and I have our office not far from here. We technically have other homes, but we're not so often in them. So, one or both of us are generally close by."
Grace
"Yeah, nobody's going to care if you decide to stay. This is like, an everybody thing."
Grace decides that most things are everybody things, but that is Grace. She has a tendency to decide that other people's things are everybody things too sometimes.
"I lived here for a while. We were hiding from Thakky, and it was safer."
Kiara
More names for faces she's never known. Two she's at least heard before, one earlier today as a matter of fact, the other, the first Kalen mentions is unknown to the brunette. Kiara heads for the kitchen, sets her cup down in the sink and rinses it out with a meticulousness born more of consideration of what Kalen says than anything.
Turns and leans her weight against it, hands bracing the sink. The afternoon light is cutting in behind her; casting a strange halo over the crown of the Verbena's head, sinking the hollows of her eyes into shadow. The dip of her shoulders. "I don't really mind the solitude so much, being closer to nature is good for me, anyway, besides - " Here she lifts her face, Kiara, cants her head toward the empty rooms behind them.
"It's probably not the world's worst idea to have someone here. Just in case." She quirks an eyebrow. "I promise not to go through anyone's underwear drawer."
Kalen Holliday
Kalen turns to Grace. "And this is why there are still Easter eggs somewhere in this house. No one is committed to opening everything."
He turns back to Kiara. "It isn't bad, I'm just used to someone living here. It seems odd because I never expect it to seem unlived in. If it had always been empty, I don't think I'd really notice it was empty."
Kalen starts water boiling on the stove again. For yet more coffee.
Grace
"Oh, Kalen. Those candies will rot, you know. Am I going to have to run a scan on the place for egg-shaped plastic objects? For real?"
She knows he's probably joking. But probably is different from certainly.
She also knows there is a puzzle box on the table that's only halfway solved. And now that she's figured out part of the pattern, it should be simple, right? She sits at the table with it, keeping Kalen silent company as he makes coffee, her coat still on (because somebody wants to warm up after their little stint outside).
Kiara
There are questions Kiara wants to ask. They're there, on the tip of her tongue as she watches Kalen go about the process of brewing fresh coffee. Where these people were, that had once lived here but did no longer. Were they lost, were they still in the city, had they, like she had once, run away from something haunting their footsteps and dogging them, even in their dreams.
She doesn't, at least, not today.
Not as the afternoon light wears down into dusk; as they settle with refilled cups and the Verbena, at least, recuperates after her casting by the Node. Little by little; hour by hour, color will return to her cheeks, the shadows under her eyes will lessen. She'll take to exploring, Kiara, to venturing up the stairs and into bedrooms heavy with dust and disuse. She may, at some point, pick one as a potential bedroom on the nights she does stay over.
Not tonight, that being said. There's still a Virtual Adept to return home. Kiara has obligations to keep but it's a start. A beginning and she's not unaware that the wind that had been swirling and howling outside her apartment all the morning before she left for Grace's now seems silent.
Satiated, at least briefly. Onward and onward, Woolfe.
Lunch with a lost cause
Grace
There's a place next to the Knights of Columbus building on Federal called Pho 96. Considering a lot of the other pho places in town have names like Pho 555 or Pho 79 you might think that this naming scheme refers to how many pho restaurants there were in Denver at the time they opened. It certainly seems like that, on a glance down Federal.
This particular one is now the temporary host of an Awakened individual. You can tell by the way the air seems to shift, and by the sharp edge. Or maybe you can't. Grace's resonance, like every other sense of her, typically goes without notice. Hell, three times so far into her lunch she's had to wave her arms at the waitstaff to get their attention. It can be an annoyance. But then, there are times when going unseen has its advantages.
Inside, neat little black tables go with neat little square chairs. Despite the run-down nature of Federal Boulevard, this place at least tries at respectability. Grace doesn't much care. She just thinks they make good soup -- a soup that she is currently devouring at her table-for-two along the wall. The smell of pho lingers in the air, warm cinnamon and meat.
Arionna de la Babin
It's a place that, hopefully, won't be playing holiday songs, or at least will have the decency to play holiday songs in another language. Really it's for the food that she's here, and a little flier that had been posted on campus some time ago to drum up college business. It doesn't seem to be working, but then Ari considers that a blessing. She likes places that aren't as inhabited as others, places where she can enjoy food, tea, and maybe read a little without hearing the latest campus gossip.
Unlike Grace, Ari is noticeable, though no more than most people except for the general air she gives herself. Were she to dress normally, she'd simply be another attractive young lady; but no, she has to dress in conspicuous clothing.
For her part, Grace is not exactly invisible, and given that they've met, she at least has some inkling who the woman is the moment Ari walks in the door. She pauses. She considers the idea of sitting alone against the idea of sitting with Grace. Not being a particularly social character seems to create problems of its own in her life.
Her dark lips press tight and Ari forces herself to make way over to the table, ignoring the waitstaff, and take a seat across from the rather normal woman. No words. Ari simply sits, sets her purse on the floor and begins to undo her coat.
Grace
There's noodles hanging out of Grace's mouth when she looks up in surprise that someone has just gone and sat at her table. A flash of alarm, there -- who is it -- before she realizes that this is someone she knows.
Someone she knows, and has yet to say hello. She grunts in greeting, before cutting off the hanging noodles with her teeth.
Grace's coat adorns the back of her chair. It's red, and something obviously not bought by her, as the rest of her ensemble isn't nearly as stylish. She wears it because it's warm, but it's something Kalen spent way too much money on for a costume. He probably didn't expect that she'd keep it for near daily use, but here we are. He probably also didn't expect (at the time) that she'd go on a modding spree, but again... The thing sports many black plastic strips, the use of which will (likely) remain hidden for the time being.
Otherwise, she's wearing a grey zipped-up turtleneck jacket and jeans. It's a fairly regular uniform for her.
Arionna de la Babin
A black button up blouse, right to the top of her throat, and tight, in the style of victorian clothing, with a deep red waist cincher. A contrast to the normal Grace. A pendant with three crows or perhaps ravens, rests at her throat. Ari lifts a hand, dark manicured nails glinting in what light there is. "Green tea." Is her simple order as the menu is given to her.
She's never been particularly skilled at talking. It seems so odd to give an obvious greeting when she's already sat down. And then what? How does one proceed after that? "I didn't think you'd mind." Ari says, finally, as if to explain away the fact that she asked nothing of Grace's preferences for company.
"You know slurping noodles is considered polite in asian cultures, typically. Not to slup is an insult."
Grace
"I don't mind," Grace says, mouth still half-full. "And yeah, I know about the slurping. I eat it the way I like to eat it," she says, shrugs. You get the idea that etiquette isn't really a thing she does, considering how fully she flaunts her lack of it for either western or eastern cultures.
"How are you? You going to that party tonight?"
Arionna de la Babin
It's a sentiment she shares in many ways. Cultural ideas, particularly their own, often had very little sense to it. She did find the other cultures interesting in a variety of ways.
"I thought to." She set her menu down and slid it to the end of the table. "Likely be a hippy party." Pressing her elbow on the table and her chin on the top of her hand. "Don't know why I ought to show up, but I suppose I should." If the winter chill that surrounds her could thaw, it might have for that brief moment.
She slipped her eyes away from the table, looking at the restaurant and those in it quietly. "Are you?"
Grace
"Seems like I go to at least a party every year," Grace says, and says it with a kind of cringe. "Parties aren't usually my thing, but you know, if I can get somebody off to themselves it's not so bad. And I trust Kiara not to do something stupid like make me wear an antler hat or something. Kalen on the other hand..."
She shoves her lips to one side, like the iconic gymnast missing out on the gold medal.
"He better not."
Arionna de la Babin
"Ferret? Doesn't strike me as the sort of behavior he exhibits." Her gaze moves back to Grace, brows furrowing at the thought of him insisting someone wear a reindeer hat. "You could always blackmail him with an elf hat. Or a santa hat, and insist everyone sits on his lap." Though the idea of sitting on Kalen's lap for gifts made her cringe a little. "Seems like he'd hate that sort of thing."
"What do you do?"
Grace
"Kalen? He'd love it if everyone sat on his lap," she says, just a comment about the state of the world, without judgement. "It wouldn't be much of a punishment."
She stirs the soup with a chopstick, unsticking some basil leaves. "I do a lot of things. What in particular are you getting at?"
Arionna de la Babin
That confused look only becomes more obvious. "He likes that?" Apparently Ari had been interacting with his twin, or a doppelganger. Or maybe they were a little more alike than she thought. "Profession, I suppose. Daniel is a musician, that I hear. "
"Did you get them anything for the holiday?" Terrible, terrible small talk. But what else was there? And besides, she was trying wasn't she? Failing, of course, and later she might feel a deep sense of regret at even attempting, but she was.
Grace
Grace huffs a little laugh into her pho at the idea of her profession. "Well, that's a little... complicated. As far as anyone official is concerned, I am the co-owner of a small business. Security company. With Kalen. As far as what that really entails, it usually boils down to 'what Denver needs'. In our way, we try to keep Denver secure, if you get my meaning."
She's saying, in a roundabout way, that her profession isn't what it appears to be from the outside. What she does probably can't be spoken about in clear language in public.
"What about you?"
Arionna de la Babin
"I don't. Do the lot of you think yourself defenders of something?" It's an honest question, though Ari had a way of making her curiosity sound a bit...hostile. "What are you keeping it secure from, exactly?" All the others had this odd fear of speaking about themselves openly, a fear she had very little of; she'd always been different.
"I'm a student. Conservation."
Grace
"Generally? Apocalypse," Grace says, smiles like it's a joke. "This place is a hellmouth if you haven't noticed."
Still smiling, she goes in for more pho, dipping into the broth with the large ladel-like spoon. It tastes like summer -- just what one needs in the depths of winter.
"Conservation? Like, preservation of natural resources? That kind of thing?"
Arionna de la Babin
When the waitstaff finally finds its way over, she orders something similar to Grace's, and takes the green tea, lightly blowing on the hot surface. "Cities are always terrible places. Fewer trees, too many people. But not a hellmouth, by any means." With a light sip, she set the tea aside. "I see nothing apocalypse worthy."
"Preservation of nature. The land is not a resource, nor at the animals. If anyone is a resource, humans would be it. So much prey in one area for any number of predators."
Grace
Grace just sips more soup. "Just wait around a while."
Apocalypse happens. It's a fact of Denver.
Her eyes narrow a bit at Ari when she speaks of humans being prey for predators. "Yeah, well... That's all well and good until you're the prey."
Arionna de la Babin
"You assume I've never been. The prey most adaptive will survive. If I am hunted, and I die, then I was a poor candidate. The gods, nature, know what they are doing. The truth of life can be emotionally painful, but it doesn't diminish it. " Though she still considered herself far more of a predator in comparison to the others of her species.
"Why do you defend it?"
Grace
Man, it's like speaking to a child. Why do you defend the world at all? Why not just lay back and let it sort itself out?
"Because I want to live," Grace says, a bit dumbfounded. "Because there are other people who I care about, and I also want them to live. Pretty simple stuff, really. I don't think there are gods out there that know what they're doing. Nature sure doesn't, not any more than a program knows what it's doing. I've personally watched a 'god' learn a thing or two about what it was doing, so I'm fairly certain they're in the same boat as us. The truth of life is what you make it. And you can make it painful if you want to, sure."
Arionna de la Babin
"Your existence isn't bound by your location. You wouldn't vanish if you stepped outside of Denver. Therefore it seems an absurd excuse to use your own life as a reason; you could leave. You could take others with you, by force of necessary. Thus, others lives seem to be a flimsy reason as well, unless you mean all of the Denver population. I have difficulty believing anyone would have a quarter of that kind of love."
"Gods are not perfection. It's a common, and understandable, misconception." She blinked lazily at Grace, finding these people to be curious. They were annoying, frustrating, isolating, but curious. She felt in a good enough mood to indulge in her own curiosity for once. Besides...she was trying.
"They are embodiments. Representations. Essence. The pieces that make up the world. "
Grace
"The kinds of things we've faced in Denver have been world-devouring horrors, and from what I understand it's no different anywhere else. So, location, as always, means exactly jack. But if I'm here, and I'm faced with an end-of-the-world scenario, I'd be lacking in a whole lot of self preservation to just let that go, wouldn't you think? Also, if you're looking for someone with a quarter of that kind of love... I know a few."
Maybe not Grace herself. No, she's not saying she is full of that kind of love toward all humanity, but then...
She lifts some noodles up to her face and slurps.
"And they don't know everything," Grace says, with her mouth full.
Arionna de la Babin
"Self preservation only entails that you protect yourself. If your intent is to keep Denver safe, then you are no longer in self-preservation mode, but are now exhibiting excessive altruism. " She lifted her chin from her hands, sliding a hand into her bag to pull out a small book while they talked. "The norse believed that when the end of the world would come, no amount of effort would save it. The end was inevitable. They would fight until the end despite it, but they never believed their efforts would yield a world that survived. I wonder why it is that humans often feel a need to believe that, should something world-ending occur, that they alone have the power to save it. Seems rather...egotistical."
Grace
"You talk like we haven't already saved the world many times over," Grace says, drinks some more soup with her ladle.
"Happens all the time. All the time. You better thank your lucky underpants there's people out there exhibiting excessive altruism on a daily basis, is all I gotta say about that."
Arionna de la Babin
"You say you have, and yet..."
"I see no evidence to the claim. The world is still terrible. The land continues to be taken, the balance ever shifting away from where it ought to be. Assuming you have done something, you've only delayed it. Delaying death is not saving, necessarily, not if you're saving what is already quite ill. "
She cracked open the book, slipping the pages to where she had left off. "I've never witnessed such altruism, not without a price. I've not been subject to it. I have nothing to thank for what I haven't been given."
Grace
There are such things as complete lost causes, aren't there? Grace just tilts her head to the side, having occasion again to wonder about a member of their little 'community' such as it is. Elijah is afraid of what he is, of the power he might wield. And Arionna sees no point in ever using it except for herself.
Ari's not dying of super-ebola. She's not wholly taken over by invasive plant roots. The universe she lives in has not been consumed by another. That she hasn't seen the many ways in which her life has been spared is really beside the point. That she exists at all is the evidence.
But she wouldn't believe it if Grace told her that. Ari seems so Ayn Rand, doesn't she? Thinks of herself as a lonely superwoman, an island unto herself, refusing to believe that any other human being ever had a hand in keeping her safe. Bet if asked, she'd claim to have spun the fibers for her dress, wove the cloth, and sewed it herself too. So...
To silence we go.
Grace is all about having interesting conversation, but when it's to a brick wall of contradiction? Not so much.
Soup's gotta be eaten, after all.
Arionna de la Babin
Grace wouldn't be the first to wonder, and sometimes Ari even asks herself if she simply prefers it that way. There's security in being that lonely island. It served her well up until this point, and she feels no need to change it.
Silence has never been troubling. Sometimes, though she wouldn't admit it, Ari simply likes the idea that someone is nearby, even if they're not touching or talking to one another (though she's never been overly fond of touching). Sometimes it's just the idea that there is another organism sitting in the room, sharing space.
Her own food comes eventually, and she sets her book aside to eat it. The silence is far more comforting. It's normal.
There's a place next to the Knights of Columbus building on Federal called Pho 96. Considering a lot of the other pho places in town have names like Pho 555 or Pho 79 you might think that this naming scheme refers to how many pho restaurants there were in Denver at the time they opened. It certainly seems like that, on a glance down Federal.
This particular one is now the temporary host of an Awakened individual. You can tell by the way the air seems to shift, and by the sharp edge. Or maybe you can't. Grace's resonance, like every other sense of her, typically goes without notice. Hell, three times so far into her lunch she's had to wave her arms at the waitstaff to get their attention. It can be an annoyance. But then, there are times when going unseen has its advantages.
Inside, neat little black tables go with neat little square chairs. Despite the run-down nature of Federal Boulevard, this place at least tries at respectability. Grace doesn't much care. She just thinks they make good soup -- a soup that she is currently devouring at her table-for-two along the wall. The smell of pho lingers in the air, warm cinnamon and meat.
Arionna de la Babin
It's a place that, hopefully, won't be playing holiday songs, or at least will have the decency to play holiday songs in another language. Really it's for the food that she's here, and a little flier that had been posted on campus some time ago to drum up college business. It doesn't seem to be working, but then Ari considers that a blessing. She likes places that aren't as inhabited as others, places where she can enjoy food, tea, and maybe read a little without hearing the latest campus gossip.
Unlike Grace, Ari is noticeable, though no more than most people except for the general air she gives herself. Were she to dress normally, she'd simply be another attractive young lady; but no, she has to dress in conspicuous clothing.
For her part, Grace is not exactly invisible, and given that they've met, she at least has some inkling who the woman is the moment Ari walks in the door. She pauses. She considers the idea of sitting alone against the idea of sitting with Grace. Not being a particularly social character seems to create problems of its own in her life.
Her dark lips press tight and Ari forces herself to make way over to the table, ignoring the waitstaff, and take a seat across from the rather normal woman. No words. Ari simply sits, sets her purse on the floor and begins to undo her coat.
Grace
There's noodles hanging out of Grace's mouth when she looks up in surprise that someone has just gone and sat at her table. A flash of alarm, there -- who is it -- before she realizes that this is someone she knows.
Someone she knows, and has yet to say hello. She grunts in greeting, before cutting off the hanging noodles with her teeth.
Grace's coat adorns the back of her chair. It's red, and something obviously not bought by her, as the rest of her ensemble isn't nearly as stylish. She wears it because it's warm, but it's something Kalen spent way too much money on for a costume. He probably didn't expect that she'd keep it for near daily use, but here we are. He probably also didn't expect (at the time) that she'd go on a modding spree, but again... The thing sports many black plastic strips, the use of which will (likely) remain hidden for the time being.
Otherwise, she's wearing a grey zipped-up turtleneck jacket and jeans. It's a fairly regular uniform for her.
Arionna de la Babin
A black button up blouse, right to the top of her throat, and tight, in the style of victorian clothing, with a deep red waist cincher. A contrast to the normal Grace. A pendant with three crows or perhaps ravens, rests at her throat. Ari lifts a hand, dark manicured nails glinting in what light there is. "Green tea." Is her simple order as the menu is given to her.
She's never been particularly skilled at talking. It seems so odd to give an obvious greeting when she's already sat down. And then what? How does one proceed after that? "I didn't think you'd mind." Ari says, finally, as if to explain away the fact that she asked nothing of Grace's preferences for company.
"You know slurping noodles is considered polite in asian cultures, typically. Not to slup is an insult."
Grace
"I don't mind," Grace says, mouth still half-full. "And yeah, I know about the slurping. I eat it the way I like to eat it," she says, shrugs. You get the idea that etiquette isn't really a thing she does, considering how fully she flaunts her lack of it for either western or eastern cultures.
"How are you? You going to that party tonight?"
Arionna de la Babin
It's a sentiment she shares in many ways. Cultural ideas, particularly their own, often had very little sense to it. She did find the other cultures interesting in a variety of ways.
"I thought to." She set her menu down and slid it to the end of the table. "Likely be a hippy party." Pressing her elbow on the table and her chin on the top of her hand. "Don't know why I ought to show up, but I suppose I should." If the winter chill that surrounds her could thaw, it might have for that brief moment.
She slipped her eyes away from the table, looking at the restaurant and those in it quietly. "Are you?"
Grace
"Seems like I go to at least a party every year," Grace says, and says it with a kind of cringe. "Parties aren't usually my thing, but you know, if I can get somebody off to themselves it's not so bad. And I trust Kiara not to do something stupid like make me wear an antler hat or something. Kalen on the other hand..."
She shoves her lips to one side, like the iconic gymnast missing out on the gold medal.
"He better not."
Arionna de la Babin
"Ferret? Doesn't strike me as the sort of behavior he exhibits." Her gaze moves back to Grace, brows furrowing at the thought of him insisting someone wear a reindeer hat. "You could always blackmail him with an elf hat. Or a santa hat, and insist everyone sits on his lap." Though the idea of sitting on Kalen's lap for gifts made her cringe a little. "Seems like he'd hate that sort of thing."
"What do you do?"
Grace
"Kalen? He'd love it if everyone sat on his lap," she says, just a comment about the state of the world, without judgement. "It wouldn't be much of a punishment."
She stirs the soup with a chopstick, unsticking some basil leaves. "I do a lot of things. What in particular are you getting at?"
Arionna de la Babin
That confused look only becomes more obvious. "He likes that?" Apparently Ari had been interacting with his twin, or a doppelganger. Or maybe they were a little more alike than she thought. "Profession, I suppose. Daniel is a musician, that I hear. "
"Did you get them anything for the holiday?" Terrible, terrible small talk. But what else was there? And besides, she was trying wasn't she? Failing, of course, and later she might feel a deep sense of regret at even attempting, but she was.
Grace
Grace huffs a little laugh into her pho at the idea of her profession. "Well, that's a little... complicated. As far as anyone official is concerned, I am the co-owner of a small business. Security company. With Kalen. As far as what that really entails, it usually boils down to 'what Denver needs'. In our way, we try to keep Denver secure, if you get my meaning."
She's saying, in a roundabout way, that her profession isn't what it appears to be from the outside. What she does probably can't be spoken about in clear language in public.
"What about you?"
Arionna de la Babin
"I don't. Do the lot of you think yourself defenders of something?" It's an honest question, though Ari had a way of making her curiosity sound a bit...hostile. "What are you keeping it secure from, exactly?" All the others had this odd fear of speaking about themselves openly, a fear she had very little of; she'd always been different.
"I'm a student. Conservation."
Grace
"Generally? Apocalypse," Grace says, smiles like it's a joke. "This place is a hellmouth if you haven't noticed."
Still smiling, she goes in for more pho, dipping into the broth with the large ladel-like spoon. It tastes like summer -- just what one needs in the depths of winter.
"Conservation? Like, preservation of natural resources? That kind of thing?"
Arionna de la Babin
When the waitstaff finally finds its way over, she orders something similar to Grace's, and takes the green tea, lightly blowing on the hot surface. "Cities are always terrible places. Fewer trees, too many people. But not a hellmouth, by any means." With a light sip, she set the tea aside. "I see nothing apocalypse worthy."
"Preservation of nature. The land is not a resource, nor at the animals. If anyone is a resource, humans would be it. So much prey in one area for any number of predators."
Grace
Grace just sips more soup. "Just wait around a while."
Apocalypse happens. It's a fact of Denver.
Her eyes narrow a bit at Ari when she speaks of humans being prey for predators. "Yeah, well... That's all well and good until you're the prey."
Arionna de la Babin
"You assume I've never been. The prey most adaptive will survive. If I am hunted, and I die, then I was a poor candidate. The gods, nature, know what they are doing. The truth of life can be emotionally painful, but it doesn't diminish it. " Though she still considered herself far more of a predator in comparison to the others of her species.
"Why do you defend it?"
Grace
Man, it's like speaking to a child. Why do you defend the world at all? Why not just lay back and let it sort itself out?
"Because I want to live," Grace says, a bit dumbfounded. "Because there are other people who I care about, and I also want them to live. Pretty simple stuff, really. I don't think there are gods out there that know what they're doing. Nature sure doesn't, not any more than a program knows what it's doing. I've personally watched a 'god' learn a thing or two about what it was doing, so I'm fairly certain they're in the same boat as us. The truth of life is what you make it. And you can make it painful if you want to, sure."
Arionna de la Babin
"Your existence isn't bound by your location. You wouldn't vanish if you stepped outside of Denver. Therefore it seems an absurd excuse to use your own life as a reason; you could leave. You could take others with you, by force of necessary. Thus, others lives seem to be a flimsy reason as well, unless you mean all of the Denver population. I have difficulty believing anyone would have a quarter of that kind of love."
"Gods are not perfection. It's a common, and understandable, misconception." She blinked lazily at Grace, finding these people to be curious. They were annoying, frustrating, isolating, but curious. She felt in a good enough mood to indulge in her own curiosity for once. Besides...she was trying.
"They are embodiments. Representations. Essence. The pieces that make up the world. "
Grace
"The kinds of things we've faced in Denver have been world-devouring horrors, and from what I understand it's no different anywhere else. So, location, as always, means exactly jack. But if I'm here, and I'm faced with an end-of-the-world scenario, I'd be lacking in a whole lot of self preservation to just let that go, wouldn't you think? Also, if you're looking for someone with a quarter of that kind of love... I know a few."
Maybe not Grace herself. No, she's not saying she is full of that kind of love toward all humanity, but then...
She lifts some noodles up to her face and slurps.
"And they don't know everything," Grace says, with her mouth full.
Arionna de la Babin
"Self preservation only entails that you protect yourself. If your intent is to keep Denver safe, then you are no longer in self-preservation mode, but are now exhibiting excessive altruism. " She lifted her chin from her hands, sliding a hand into her bag to pull out a small book while they talked. "The norse believed that when the end of the world would come, no amount of effort would save it. The end was inevitable. They would fight until the end despite it, but they never believed their efforts would yield a world that survived. I wonder why it is that humans often feel a need to believe that, should something world-ending occur, that they alone have the power to save it. Seems rather...egotistical."
Grace
"You talk like we haven't already saved the world many times over," Grace says, drinks some more soup with her ladle.
"Happens all the time. All the time. You better thank your lucky underpants there's people out there exhibiting excessive altruism on a daily basis, is all I gotta say about that."
Arionna de la Babin
"You say you have, and yet..."
"I see no evidence to the claim. The world is still terrible. The land continues to be taken, the balance ever shifting away from where it ought to be. Assuming you have done something, you've only delayed it. Delaying death is not saving, necessarily, not if you're saving what is already quite ill. "
She cracked open the book, slipping the pages to where she had left off. "I've never witnessed such altruism, not without a price. I've not been subject to it. I have nothing to thank for what I haven't been given."
Grace
There are such things as complete lost causes, aren't there? Grace just tilts her head to the side, having occasion again to wonder about a member of their little 'community' such as it is. Elijah is afraid of what he is, of the power he might wield. And Arionna sees no point in ever using it except for herself.
Ari's not dying of super-ebola. She's not wholly taken over by invasive plant roots. The universe she lives in has not been consumed by another. That she hasn't seen the many ways in which her life has been spared is really beside the point. That she exists at all is the evidence.
But she wouldn't believe it if Grace told her that. Ari seems so Ayn Rand, doesn't she? Thinks of herself as a lonely superwoman, an island unto herself, refusing to believe that any other human being ever had a hand in keeping her safe. Bet if asked, she'd claim to have spun the fibers for her dress, wove the cloth, and sewed it herself too. So...
To silence we go.
Grace is all about having interesting conversation, but when it's to a brick wall of contradiction? Not so much.
Soup's gotta be eaten, after all.
Arionna de la Babin
Grace wouldn't be the first to wonder, and sometimes Ari even asks herself if she simply prefers it that way. There's security in being that lonely island. It served her well up until this point, and she feels no need to change it.
Silence has never been troubling. Sometimes, though she wouldn't admit it, Ari simply likes the idea that someone is nearby, even if they're not touching or talking to one another (though she's never been overly fond of touching). Sometimes it's just the idea that there is another organism sitting in the room, sharing space.
Her own food comes eventually, and she sets her book aside to eat it. The silence is far more comforting. It's normal.
Balls and Brats
Dan
Darling Betty's is a little gastropub embedded between a pop-up gallery and the stupid of an up and coming ceramicist, across the street from a headshop and a high end clothing boutique that only carries sizes in prime, single-digit numbers, so goodluck finding something to fit your ordinary sized assed. Tonight the whole street is alive. Still early but everyone's staying up late. There are trees and holiday trees and Yule trees and on and on in every window and kind of bustle in the air that makes everyone who senses it feel a little more brisk and a little more important. Darling Betty's has a sign in the window promise JAZZ TONIGHT! until 1 a.m. but the JAZZ TONIGHT! hasn't started yet. Not precisely a lull but dinner's a slow time for them on Wednesdays so the whole thing is a happy hour. Deep fried stuffing is the featured app! promised by the blackboard out front, but a certain tall, tattooed guitarist has an order of sauerkraut balls on the table in front of him and a beer.
Grace
It's a cold night. Not cold by Denver winter standards, but cold to the Arizona transplant who's out in it. So she's got her coat on -- the sharp red thing that Kalen got her for Carnivale. The coat's been modded. Strips of blackish plastic adorn the sleeves and run down the front, but at least she's hidden the wires well -- they don't show.
It's also Christmastime, complete with those horrid trees and lights and holly and candy canes and whatever other symbols go along with the worship of Santa Claus.
The thing about Santa is that Saint Nicholas became that icon for giving toys to the poor children. Funny how meanings change over time, huh?
There's one place on the street that advertises jazz and deep fried stuffing and doesn't have a fat man in red painted on the window to taunt her, so that's where Grace heads, slipping in the door like she's not really there. To most in the place, she isn't. Her presence hasn't registered yet.
Dan
Some folks spend half their lives on their phones. Any moment without stimulation is a moment that should be dedicated to half-dislocating thumbs. Dan's alone just now or alone tonight and Darling Betty's isn't the sort of place festooned with flat screen television sets so you can keep up with the progress of the Beef O'Brady bowl (Northwest Arkansas versus Middle Tennessee, a real nailbiter for .00231% of the coutnry) while downing your food and your drink. And he doesn't have his phone out. He does have a little leather-bound volume open on the table beside him, which he sort of considers in between sips of his beer and glances - up and out of the warm, close, comfortable (alas, Grace - holiday atmosphere) - toward the street.
He's out of beer though and or nearly and reaches up to signal for another round. He knows the bartender pretty well - she's one of Dee's fellow derby dolls, as tattooed as he himself is, and she's already drawing him another. The signaling though, also has him looking up at just the right moment. Catching sight of Grace.
Smiling.
Gesturing, too, if she looks his way.
She should join him.
Grace
She catches his eye, the familiar face. Dan. Grace should join him, yes. Dan who is Sera's friend. Dan who is cool.
There's some disappointment that the promised jazz has not yet begun, and that this -- like everywhere else -- seems to have been infected by green and red. But she smiles at Dan. It's nice to see someone familiar.
She walks over, threading her way through the closeness of the place, to join him at his lonely table.
"Dan. Hey. What's up?"
Dan
So Grace consents to join him and Dan signals for two rather than one of whatever he is drinking. Something seasonal - dark and spiced with the sort of body to it that stands up to winter. He shuts the journal or whatever it is and shifts his position in the barstool, at once coiling and reclining somehow, shifting to include Grace in the space he had previously claimed entirely for himself.
There is a wry tug to his mouth as he takes in Grace in her sharp red coat.
"Grace." Says her name with a presence and an absence, a deliberateness that names her and sketches her out in front of him. Dan has crinkly blue eyes, the sort that were meant somehow to squint against the boundaries of the horizon and see something there and he gives Grace the same sort of smile one gives a horizon just then. "Have a seat. And a sauerkraut ball. My ex is playing here tonight but I'm sitting in to play for a friend who broke her hand later. So I figured I'd catch dinner and his first set, then head over to the V-Club. What about you?"
Grace
"Sauerkraut? Is that what those things are? Looks like cheese balls or something," Grace says, and takes one of the deep-fried balls. Deep fried anything usually looks the same as any other deep-fried thing.
She listens as he explains his upcoming night to her, and she nods as if she actually understands things like exes and going to clubs. Well, she understands them as something other people might have or do. The only time nightclubs have ever shown up in Grace's life lately it was tragic.
"I like jazz, thought I'd come in from the cold? That's my night in a nutshell. I am also trying to escape Christmas. That's not going so well," Grace says, giving a fake pointed glare at a festive reindeer decoration.
Dan
"Sauerkraut and sausage," Dan explains, watching Grace a she takes and examines one of the balls, or maybe just eats it. They're bigger than deep fried cheese usually is, closer to the size of a tennis ball or baseball than a golf ball. "They're kind of known for 'em here. wednesday is balls and brats night. These things are a buck each, and the bratwurst is two bucks. Can't beat it."
By now their beers have arrived, the tattooed waitress slips them onto the table, careful not to let the head spill over the edge of the frosty mugs. The beers are dark and aromatic, heavy and perhaps a little bit sweet. Dan gives the waitress a wink over Grace's shoulder, then returns his attention to Grace.
There's a beer each, and Dan reaches over to liberate his from the duo they make on the counter, holding it expertly by the rim as he lifts it to his mouth to sip.
"What's wrong with Christmas, then. You have something against egg nog or presents?"
Grace
Grace takes a bite out of her ball, and then, mouth still full, says: "Balls and brats? Seriously? They had to do that on purpose. Phallic as the Washington Monument that."
He asks what she has against Christmas just as Grace lifts up her dark beer to eye level in order to inspect the bubbles. She shrugs. It will take a while for her to explain what the problem with Christmas is...
"Christmas is that lovely time of year where people would, and have, trampled each other to death in order to get a good deal on a shitty TV set, if the big stores hadn't come up with ways to corral people so that wouldn't happen. It's a holiday twisted from nice origins into a way to keep the economy lurching along. I don't see it as egg nog and happiness, I see it as the feast of the beast."
She takes a sip of beer to wash down the sauerkraut, the slight sweetness countering the tangy fried fermented cabbage. Well, it's a good combo, isn't it? She nods at the beer, as if to say 'this is good...'
Dan
Oh, Grace. She makes Dan choke a little bit on his beer. Not enough that he is ever in danger of anything more than a supple spit-take but there's this way that his half-smile both hands on the edge of his mouth and curls and grows, understand.
"You noticed," is all he says, and mildly. Of course balls and brats is on purpose, but trust Grace to make a point of noticing and remarking on it. The half-smile attaches to and lingers in his eyes as he reaches for another sauerkraut ball.
Then he listens to her indictment of the holidays and chews on his sauerkraut ball and takes another sip of his beer and glances briefly away - someone passing outside the window lifting an arm to offer a wave that he returns - before returning to her, both thoughtful and aware.
He wonders if she is always so linear, if that is part of her magic, if that is what she saw when she opened her eyes. If ones and zeros mean that sort of all or nothing. Fuck, he has no idea how she sees the world.
"Well, I've always thought it was a little bit of all those things. I mean, look how many meanings we attach to the most ordinary sort of words. I don't see why Christmas couldn't be both a frantic, grasping season and something a little more charming and meaningful. You know? I like the lights, especially. The lights and the darkness, the way it stretches. And the drinks. You ever had a Christmas bomb?"
Grace
"Yeah. I know. It has other meanings. Family, togetherness, giving..." Grace points her ball at Dan, spiking the air with it, and giving him a little smirk. "That's just what they use to make it sound all good and wholesome."
She doesn't sound particularly angry when going off on Christmas, really. Not upset, mind you. Just, she has a point and she's sticking to it, regardless of how unpopular it might be. And she pairs that unpopular stance with a wry smile to laugh at her own seriousness.
"Is that that thing Sera had last Christmas? I think I remember drinking something where you dropped a shotglass into another glass and then it went and did chemistry real quick so you had to chug..."
Dan
"That's it. Rumchata and Christmas ale. Pretty sure they could throw one together for you here, if you were of a mind." So he offered, with another grin verging on the lazy over the edge of his beer. "So it's not that you object to family, togetherness, and giving, right? Just to the fact that the ideas have been co-opted for other ends, like selling sequined boots and legos?
"Or do you just have a philosophical objection to whatever they say?"
Grace
"Yeah. Both," Grace says, and takes another bite out of her ball. "Corruption of good things always ticks me off. And they usually tick me off too."
She chews, eyes wandering the place, examining its borders, then shifting down to inspect her beer again. The bubbles are slower now.
"I remember that being really strong. And I'd probably throw up rumchata and sauerkraut, and that would be absolutely disgusting. But this beer is good. Goes well with the balls."
She pauses a bit, seemingly remembering something.
"Oh, and thanks for sharing."
Dan
(fade!)
Darling Betty's is a little gastropub embedded between a pop-up gallery and the stupid of an up and coming ceramicist, across the street from a headshop and a high end clothing boutique that only carries sizes in prime, single-digit numbers, so goodluck finding something to fit your ordinary sized assed. Tonight the whole street is alive. Still early but everyone's staying up late. There are trees and holiday trees and Yule trees and on and on in every window and kind of bustle in the air that makes everyone who senses it feel a little more brisk and a little more important. Darling Betty's has a sign in the window promise JAZZ TONIGHT! until 1 a.m. but the JAZZ TONIGHT! hasn't started yet. Not precisely a lull but dinner's a slow time for them on Wednesdays so the whole thing is a happy hour. Deep fried stuffing is the featured app! promised by the blackboard out front, but a certain tall, tattooed guitarist has an order of sauerkraut balls on the table in front of him and a beer.
Grace
It's a cold night. Not cold by Denver winter standards, but cold to the Arizona transplant who's out in it. So she's got her coat on -- the sharp red thing that Kalen got her for Carnivale. The coat's been modded. Strips of blackish plastic adorn the sleeves and run down the front, but at least she's hidden the wires well -- they don't show.
It's also Christmastime, complete with those horrid trees and lights and holly and candy canes and whatever other symbols go along with the worship of Santa Claus.
The thing about Santa is that Saint Nicholas became that icon for giving toys to the poor children. Funny how meanings change over time, huh?
There's one place on the street that advertises jazz and deep fried stuffing and doesn't have a fat man in red painted on the window to taunt her, so that's where Grace heads, slipping in the door like she's not really there. To most in the place, she isn't. Her presence hasn't registered yet.
Dan
Some folks spend half their lives on their phones. Any moment without stimulation is a moment that should be dedicated to half-dislocating thumbs. Dan's alone just now or alone tonight and Darling Betty's isn't the sort of place festooned with flat screen television sets so you can keep up with the progress of the Beef O'Brady bowl (Northwest Arkansas versus Middle Tennessee, a real nailbiter for .00231% of the coutnry) while downing your food and your drink. And he doesn't have his phone out. He does have a little leather-bound volume open on the table beside him, which he sort of considers in between sips of his beer and glances - up and out of the warm, close, comfortable (alas, Grace - holiday atmosphere) - toward the street.
He's out of beer though and or nearly and reaches up to signal for another round. He knows the bartender pretty well - she's one of Dee's fellow derby dolls, as tattooed as he himself is, and she's already drawing him another. The signaling though, also has him looking up at just the right moment. Catching sight of Grace.
Smiling.
Gesturing, too, if she looks his way.
She should join him.
Grace
She catches his eye, the familiar face. Dan. Grace should join him, yes. Dan who is Sera's friend. Dan who is cool.
There's some disappointment that the promised jazz has not yet begun, and that this -- like everywhere else -- seems to have been infected by green and red. But she smiles at Dan. It's nice to see someone familiar.
She walks over, threading her way through the closeness of the place, to join him at his lonely table.
"Dan. Hey. What's up?"
Dan
So Grace consents to join him and Dan signals for two rather than one of whatever he is drinking. Something seasonal - dark and spiced with the sort of body to it that stands up to winter. He shuts the journal or whatever it is and shifts his position in the barstool, at once coiling and reclining somehow, shifting to include Grace in the space he had previously claimed entirely for himself.
There is a wry tug to his mouth as he takes in Grace in her sharp red coat.
"Grace." Says her name with a presence and an absence, a deliberateness that names her and sketches her out in front of him. Dan has crinkly blue eyes, the sort that were meant somehow to squint against the boundaries of the horizon and see something there and he gives Grace the same sort of smile one gives a horizon just then. "Have a seat. And a sauerkraut ball. My ex is playing here tonight but I'm sitting in to play for a friend who broke her hand later. So I figured I'd catch dinner and his first set, then head over to the V-Club. What about you?"
Grace
"Sauerkraut? Is that what those things are? Looks like cheese balls or something," Grace says, and takes one of the deep-fried balls. Deep fried anything usually looks the same as any other deep-fried thing.
She listens as he explains his upcoming night to her, and she nods as if she actually understands things like exes and going to clubs. Well, she understands them as something other people might have or do. The only time nightclubs have ever shown up in Grace's life lately it was tragic.
"I like jazz, thought I'd come in from the cold? That's my night in a nutshell. I am also trying to escape Christmas. That's not going so well," Grace says, giving a fake pointed glare at a festive reindeer decoration.
Dan
"Sauerkraut and sausage," Dan explains, watching Grace a she takes and examines one of the balls, or maybe just eats it. They're bigger than deep fried cheese usually is, closer to the size of a tennis ball or baseball than a golf ball. "They're kind of known for 'em here. wednesday is balls and brats night. These things are a buck each, and the bratwurst is two bucks. Can't beat it."
By now their beers have arrived, the tattooed waitress slips them onto the table, careful not to let the head spill over the edge of the frosty mugs. The beers are dark and aromatic, heavy and perhaps a little bit sweet. Dan gives the waitress a wink over Grace's shoulder, then returns his attention to Grace.
There's a beer each, and Dan reaches over to liberate his from the duo they make on the counter, holding it expertly by the rim as he lifts it to his mouth to sip.
"What's wrong with Christmas, then. You have something against egg nog or presents?"
Grace
Grace takes a bite out of her ball, and then, mouth still full, says: "Balls and brats? Seriously? They had to do that on purpose. Phallic as the Washington Monument that."
He asks what she has against Christmas just as Grace lifts up her dark beer to eye level in order to inspect the bubbles. She shrugs. It will take a while for her to explain what the problem with Christmas is...
"Christmas is that lovely time of year where people would, and have, trampled each other to death in order to get a good deal on a shitty TV set, if the big stores hadn't come up with ways to corral people so that wouldn't happen. It's a holiday twisted from nice origins into a way to keep the economy lurching along. I don't see it as egg nog and happiness, I see it as the feast of the beast."
She takes a sip of beer to wash down the sauerkraut, the slight sweetness countering the tangy fried fermented cabbage. Well, it's a good combo, isn't it? She nods at the beer, as if to say 'this is good...'
Dan
Oh, Grace. She makes Dan choke a little bit on his beer. Not enough that he is ever in danger of anything more than a supple spit-take but there's this way that his half-smile both hands on the edge of his mouth and curls and grows, understand.
"You noticed," is all he says, and mildly. Of course balls and brats is on purpose, but trust Grace to make a point of noticing and remarking on it. The half-smile attaches to and lingers in his eyes as he reaches for another sauerkraut ball.
Then he listens to her indictment of the holidays and chews on his sauerkraut ball and takes another sip of his beer and glances briefly away - someone passing outside the window lifting an arm to offer a wave that he returns - before returning to her, both thoughtful and aware.
He wonders if she is always so linear, if that is part of her magic, if that is what she saw when she opened her eyes. If ones and zeros mean that sort of all or nothing. Fuck, he has no idea how she sees the world.
"Well, I've always thought it was a little bit of all those things. I mean, look how many meanings we attach to the most ordinary sort of words. I don't see why Christmas couldn't be both a frantic, grasping season and something a little more charming and meaningful. You know? I like the lights, especially. The lights and the darkness, the way it stretches. And the drinks. You ever had a Christmas bomb?"
Grace
"Yeah. I know. It has other meanings. Family, togetherness, giving..." Grace points her ball at Dan, spiking the air with it, and giving him a little smirk. "That's just what they use to make it sound all good and wholesome."
She doesn't sound particularly angry when going off on Christmas, really. Not upset, mind you. Just, she has a point and she's sticking to it, regardless of how unpopular it might be. And she pairs that unpopular stance with a wry smile to laugh at her own seriousness.
"Is that that thing Sera had last Christmas? I think I remember drinking something where you dropped a shotglass into another glass and then it went and did chemistry real quick so you had to chug..."
Dan
"That's it. Rumchata and Christmas ale. Pretty sure they could throw one together for you here, if you were of a mind." So he offered, with another grin verging on the lazy over the edge of his beer. "So it's not that you object to family, togetherness, and giving, right? Just to the fact that the ideas have been co-opted for other ends, like selling sequined boots and legos?
"Or do you just have a philosophical objection to whatever they say?"
Grace
"Yeah. Both," Grace says, and takes another bite out of her ball. "Corruption of good things always ticks me off. And they usually tick me off too."
She chews, eyes wandering the place, examining its borders, then shifting down to inspect her beer again. The bubbles are slower now.
"I remember that being really strong. And I'd probably throw up rumchata and sauerkraut, and that would be absolutely disgusting. But this beer is good. Goes well with the balls."
She pauses a bit, seemingly remembering something.
"Oh, and thanks for sharing."
Dan
(fade!)
The music of the meteors
Danny
*He hadn't really kidnapped anyone in ages, so he was a bit rusty, but he did manage somehow to convince Grace that it was worth coming out tonight to go watch a meteor shower fall. And so it was, the Observatory door was open, light streaming out from it and Danny was showing Grace around.* So if we wanted to look at this section of the sky for example, we could just easily rotate the wheel, you see the notches? That's how many degrees. It's cool huh? Even from the 1890s everything still works!
*The dome shaped top of the slightly weathered pale blue green observatory roof was built on red brick, and had formal looking stone steps that lead down to a nice lawn. Outside, there were random students and teachers all setting up their telescopes and some of them were setting up digital recorders to go with it.*
Grace
Danny's no good at kidnapping. He is, however, insanely good at convincing people to go with him, like some kind of pied piper of meteor showers.
"You don't think anyone's going to ask what you're doing touching the 1890s era telescope?" Grace asks, not really concerned about what those nebulous other people might say about Danny. She could easily walk up to the wheel and mess with it herself for all she cares. She'd probably get away with it easier too. Her friend has long purple hair and a penchant for outfits designed to draw the eye. He's somewhat... noticeable, shall we say?
Grace is not so loudly announcing her presence. Jeans, sneakers, short straight dark-ish hair. Trying to describe her would describe about half of the people in the room. So she could totally mess with that telescope. If she wanted. Only Danny would probably get blamed for it.
"We're traveling through an asteroid's debris trail, Google says."
Grace has been checking her phone now and then throughout this 'adventure'. Apparently she's been looking things up.
Danny
*He was dressed warmly, it had snowed lightly during the day and nearly the event had to be called off, but as usual, someone had cleared the snow from the roof to allow for a good show, and at this time at night, there was little alive in the world. Apart from the warm heater in the Observatory itself, there were hot beverages and soup on supply via a good travel stove someone had brought, no one was going to starve.
Danny himself had a his leather jacket on, when didn't he? He also had a cowboy had on of all things, and jeans with instead of the usual shabby combats, tonight he had walking boots on that would grip to the snow easily. Even with the chill in the air, he was happy. His cheeks bright. His long purple hair was loose today, it hung straight and there was a long desert scarf around his neck, tied so it could mask his face a bit if he needed it to. Nope, our boy wasn't getting cold for anything. Tonight he wore black leather gloves.*
I won't get in trouble. *he grins.* I've enrolled, I'm studying Cosmology and this is literal mana from the heavens. We doing an experiment as well with some other places to see if there's a sound made when the Meteors skim. It'll just add to the Cosmic Music.
Grace
"Of course there's a sound made. The meteors light up when they hit the atmosphere, so by the time we can see them, they're having rather violent interactions with air. That tends to make noise. Though, we might have trouble hearing it from here. They are small things. Usually burn up pretty fast," Grace says, spouting off the facts with great speed.
From the surrounding people, a chorus of interested voices pipe up, announcing the arrival of a meteor, an early arrival? Or just one of the normal meteors one can spot on any night? It doesn't matter. For those who were looking up, it was something to see, apparently.
Grace was not looking up.
"Damnit... Missed it," she says, scanning the sky for a few seconds.
Danny
That's why we've got other installations working with us. *He grins.*
We're going to share the data, and well, as I'm musician, they want me to take a listen as well. I think it's going to sound like one constant note, I hope so anyhow.
*He looks up and grins, then moves to where they had wifi set up to listen in on other places. The speakers are set up but for now they're just listening to make sure they get the right place and frequency.
He looks up and frowns, then leans with his arm outstretched.* That's where we're looking. See? Not too far from Orion.
Grace
"Oh hey, that's kick ass," Grace says, going right over to the tech setup. "Can I get a copy? For fun?"
Grace is, predictably, looking over the equipment (because ooo pretty toys) when the next fireball streaks the sky. Distracted much? Maybe.
"Aaaugh, I'm going to have to just lie down and look up aren't I?"
Danny
Absolutely! *he grins and glances up with a nod before heading over to her.* If you want to you can, or we can....
*he leans and moves the mouse then brings up the large flat screen monitor, turns on the speakers and less than a second later, the live feed from four different camera installations were on the screen.* I'm not going to worry about explaining.
*He let her take the seat if she wanted to, and nodded over her head to the professor with a knowing smile. Then turned around and looked up and out through the hole in the roof to let the telescope work. People were lined up to take turns round the big old brass thing, all it's cogs and wheels shining. For such an old machine, it was beautiful.*
Grace
"Ooh hey, or, alternatively, man the video feed," Grace says, and takes the seat. "Thaaaanks."
With the speakers turned on, the slow, trickling start of the shower will now be audible. And what noise does a meteor make?
After a few minutes of tense anticipation, a light streaks across the screen of the laptop, and a whooshing noise emanates from the speaker. This, followed by the ghostly echo of the meteor's passing -- a long, bell-like tone. It sounds like it comes from a cold, dead place. But to the students and professors, it might as well be the most amazing thing they've ever heard, judging by the smiles.
Danny
*He drops his jaw and spins back around hearing it, his eyes widening up and this look of sheer delight on his face. He had silent joy written all over his face and he even hi fived his delighted professor, who then went about collecting data from the different readouts and noting things down. The techs were congratulating themselves quietly as the notes continue to chime away* Isn't that incredible?
Grace
It's been a long time since Grace had anything to do with the academia scene. Or at least, it feels like a long time. So much has happened, so many events, that it's hard to reconcile her current life with the one she left behind.
They are amazed to hear the meteors. And truly, it touches some of Grace's own need for discovery and experience. But...
The stars and their rocky children remind her of the space station she lived on for a short while, where every window's view led to the starfield. It reminds her of that time she met a universe. There are some things, wilder than meteor songs, that she'd never be able to share with these students, these professors.
The ringing atmosphere does put a smile on her own face, but it's brought there by other means than just the meteor shower.
"Oh, it's credible. But very neat all the same."
Danny
*He laughed.* Well, thank you for coming along anyhow... Do you want to stay here watching it through the screen?
Grace
"Well, I suppose I could. That's not the 'analog' way though, is it? I suppose if I want to 'really' experience it, I've got to go outside," Grace says, layering her sarcastic distaste of the analog ways in her voice.
"This is really neat, what you've got here. But I'm afraid to fuck with it any. I don't know, would that mess up your experiment?"
Danny
*The questions began at once. Could she improve the feed some? Could she think of any thing that might improve the tech here full stop? It appeared that as usual, this sort of department might not get the same share of money as say the Smithsonian for example. So of course there were going to be questions. Danny smiled.* It's up to you, I'm happy to just stay here staring up and listening in.
Grace
"I suppose it wouldn't be good to cause a bunch of questions wondering what I did to you guys' poor machine," Grace says, and leaves the computer screen for a bit. Let someone else have a turn at it, eh?
She starts looking up at the sky then, head craning up to see. Without taking her eyes off of the up, she lays down on the floor, just as another whooshing sound fills the air.
"Oooh. Nice one."
Danny
*He grinned, then sat down too before laying back, staring up.* This is just... So yeah, this is my big secret. Sounds of the Universe.
Grace
"It's kind of lonely-sounding. Beautiful, but eerie, don't you think?" Grace says, listening to the echoing ring.
Danny
It is, but essentially what we're listening to is a dirge of a sorts isn't it? As they burn up, parts fall off and are ground to dust, perhaps some of the meteor flies on, perhaps most of it is destroyed? I think it's a beautiful sound as well.
*he falls silent, listening as a few go across together, the smile coming back onto his face.* It's like they're singing.
Grace
"Mmm. The mourning of a lost space rock. Kind of poetic, that," Grace says. It's cold here. Elevation combined with winter does that. But as they lie there, listening to the sky, they are not lonely.
Perhaps the rocks would be pleased to know that their music was heard by someone, appreciated by some small corner of the universe. It heard them as they sang their last.
"It's good you brought me up here. I'd have sat in my room drinking coffee all night, you know it."
Danny
*The grin broadened and he nodded in satisfaction.* Well you're welcome to come up here whenever you want to, if there are other things going on, I'll let you know. It's pretty cool... Oh wow look at that long one go!
*The keening faintly flat note rang out true and sharp, then it was joined by another one go to with it. Shorter bursts sang out around it as a cluster of the space rocks rang out across the sky.*
Grace
"I think it's starting to get going full speed, what do you think?"
The meteors are coming in quicker now. Shower would be a bit of a misnomer. They're not literally spraying the sky, but certainly come in faster than the usual. Some rare ones are true fireballs, that leave little trails in their wake.
Each one sounds a little different to the ear. They're not 'in tune' to any human measure, but the notes they sing are at times a little higher or lower.
"Maybe you could map that to actual notes and make a melody out of it? It'd be pretty random I guess."
Danny
That's what I'm planning on doing. Writing around the notes and tones set out. There are sounds from pulsars that I've retrieved as well, so I can punctuate all around it. It's all going to be very experimental. I might need a sound engineer though. *he glanced at her.*
Grace
"Oh man, I know just the person. Lena," Grace says, perhaps surprising Danny by not bothering to apply for the position herself. "She's one of us, she's a deejay, and she's totally awesome."
The sky rings a hollow note again. For a time nobody speaks, everyone listens. And then, when it's over...
"You should talk to her, at least. I'd be terrible at that."
Danny
*He nodded in agreement to her.* Well if you can hook me up I'd be grateful.
*He couldn't help but grin and be happy about this, then when he speaks again it's quieter.*
Coffee? Or are you warm enough?
Danny
(((FADE)))
*He hadn't really kidnapped anyone in ages, so he was a bit rusty, but he did manage somehow to convince Grace that it was worth coming out tonight to go watch a meteor shower fall. And so it was, the Observatory door was open, light streaming out from it and Danny was showing Grace around.* So if we wanted to look at this section of the sky for example, we could just easily rotate the wheel, you see the notches? That's how many degrees. It's cool huh? Even from the 1890s everything still works!
*The dome shaped top of the slightly weathered pale blue green observatory roof was built on red brick, and had formal looking stone steps that lead down to a nice lawn. Outside, there were random students and teachers all setting up their telescopes and some of them were setting up digital recorders to go with it.*
Grace
Danny's no good at kidnapping. He is, however, insanely good at convincing people to go with him, like some kind of pied piper of meteor showers.
"You don't think anyone's going to ask what you're doing touching the 1890s era telescope?" Grace asks, not really concerned about what those nebulous other people might say about Danny. She could easily walk up to the wheel and mess with it herself for all she cares. She'd probably get away with it easier too. Her friend has long purple hair and a penchant for outfits designed to draw the eye. He's somewhat... noticeable, shall we say?
Grace is not so loudly announcing her presence. Jeans, sneakers, short straight dark-ish hair. Trying to describe her would describe about half of the people in the room. So she could totally mess with that telescope. If she wanted. Only Danny would probably get blamed for it.
"We're traveling through an asteroid's debris trail, Google says."
Grace has been checking her phone now and then throughout this 'adventure'. Apparently she's been looking things up.
Danny
*He was dressed warmly, it had snowed lightly during the day and nearly the event had to be called off, but as usual, someone had cleared the snow from the roof to allow for a good show, and at this time at night, there was little alive in the world. Apart from the warm heater in the Observatory itself, there were hot beverages and soup on supply via a good travel stove someone had brought, no one was going to starve.
Danny himself had a his leather jacket on, when didn't he? He also had a cowboy had on of all things, and jeans with instead of the usual shabby combats, tonight he had walking boots on that would grip to the snow easily. Even with the chill in the air, he was happy. His cheeks bright. His long purple hair was loose today, it hung straight and there was a long desert scarf around his neck, tied so it could mask his face a bit if he needed it to. Nope, our boy wasn't getting cold for anything. Tonight he wore black leather gloves.*
I won't get in trouble. *he grins.* I've enrolled, I'm studying Cosmology and this is literal mana from the heavens. We doing an experiment as well with some other places to see if there's a sound made when the Meteors skim. It'll just add to the Cosmic Music.
Grace
"Of course there's a sound made. The meteors light up when they hit the atmosphere, so by the time we can see them, they're having rather violent interactions with air. That tends to make noise. Though, we might have trouble hearing it from here. They are small things. Usually burn up pretty fast," Grace says, spouting off the facts with great speed.
From the surrounding people, a chorus of interested voices pipe up, announcing the arrival of a meteor, an early arrival? Or just one of the normal meteors one can spot on any night? It doesn't matter. For those who were looking up, it was something to see, apparently.
Grace was not looking up.
"Damnit... Missed it," she says, scanning the sky for a few seconds.
Danny
That's why we've got other installations working with us. *He grins.*
We're going to share the data, and well, as I'm musician, they want me to take a listen as well. I think it's going to sound like one constant note, I hope so anyhow.
*He looks up and grins, then moves to where they had wifi set up to listen in on other places. The speakers are set up but for now they're just listening to make sure they get the right place and frequency.
He looks up and frowns, then leans with his arm outstretched.* That's where we're looking. See? Not too far from Orion.
Grace
"Oh hey, that's kick ass," Grace says, going right over to the tech setup. "Can I get a copy? For fun?"
Grace is, predictably, looking over the equipment (because ooo pretty toys) when the next fireball streaks the sky. Distracted much? Maybe.
"Aaaugh, I'm going to have to just lie down and look up aren't I?"
Danny
Absolutely! *he grins and glances up with a nod before heading over to her.* If you want to you can, or we can....
*he leans and moves the mouse then brings up the large flat screen monitor, turns on the speakers and less than a second later, the live feed from four different camera installations were on the screen.* I'm not going to worry about explaining.
*He let her take the seat if she wanted to, and nodded over her head to the professor with a knowing smile. Then turned around and looked up and out through the hole in the roof to let the telescope work. People were lined up to take turns round the big old brass thing, all it's cogs and wheels shining. For such an old machine, it was beautiful.*
Grace
"Ooh hey, or, alternatively, man the video feed," Grace says, and takes the seat. "Thaaaanks."
With the speakers turned on, the slow, trickling start of the shower will now be audible. And what noise does a meteor make?
After a few minutes of tense anticipation, a light streaks across the screen of the laptop, and a whooshing noise emanates from the speaker. This, followed by the ghostly echo of the meteor's passing -- a long, bell-like tone. It sounds like it comes from a cold, dead place. But to the students and professors, it might as well be the most amazing thing they've ever heard, judging by the smiles.
Danny
*He drops his jaw and spins back around hearing it, his eyes widening up and this look of sheer delight on his face. He had silent joy written all over his face and he even hi fived his delighted professor, who then went about collecting data from the different readouts and noting things down. The techs were congratulating themselves quietly as the notes continue to chime away* Isn't that incredible?
Grace
It's been a long time since Grace had anything to do with the academia scene. Or at least, it feels like a long time. So much has happened, so many events, that it's hard to reconcile her current life with the one she left behind.
They are amazed to hear the meteors. And truly, it touches some of Grace's own need for discovery and experience. But...
The stars and their rocky children remind her of the space station she lived on for a short while, where every window's view led to the starfield. It reminds her of that time she met a universe. There are some things, wilder than meteor songs, that she'd never be able to share with these students, these professors.
The ringing atmosphere does put a smile on her own face, but it's brought there by other means than just the meteor shower.
"Oh, it's credible. But very neat all the same."
Danny
*He laughed.* Well, thank you for coming along anyhow... Do you want to stay here watching it through the screen?
Grace
"Well, I suppose I could. That's not the 'analog' way though, is it? I suppose if I want to 'really' experience it, I've got to go outside," Grace says, layering her sarcastic distaste of the analog ways in her voice.
"This is really neat, what you've got here. But I'm afraid to fuck with it any. I don't know, would that mess up your experiment?"
Danny
*The questions began at once. Could she improve the feed some? Could she think of any thing that might improve the tech here full stop? It appeared that as usual, this sort of department might not get the same share of money as say the Smithsonian for example. So of course there were going to be questions. Danny smiled.* It's up to you, I'm happy to just stay here staring up and listening in.
Grace
"I suppose it wouldn't be good to cause a bunch of questions wondering what I did to you guys' poor machine," Grace says, and leaves the computer screen for a bit. Let someone else have a turn at it, eh?
She starts looking up at the sky then, head craning up to see. Without taking her eyes off of the up, she lays down on the floor, just as another whooshing sound fills the air.
"Oooh. Nice one."
Danny
*He grinned, then sat down too before laying back, staring up.* This is just... So yeah, this is my big secret. Sounds of the Universe.
Grace
"It's kind of lonely-sounding. Beautiful, but eerie, don't you think?" Grace says, listening to the echoing ring.
Danny
It is, but essentially what we're listening to is a dirge of a sorts isn't it? As they burn up, parts fall off and are ground to dust, perhaps some of the meteor flies on, perhaps most of it is destroyed? I think it's a beautiful sound as well.
*he falls silent, listening as a few go across together, the smile coming back onto his face.* It's like they're singing.
Grace
"Mmm. The mourning of a lost space rock. Kind of poetic, that," Grace says. It's cold here. Elevation combined with winter does that. But as they lie there, listening to the sky, they are not lonely.
Perhaps the rocks would be pleased to know that their music was heard by someone, appreciated by some small corner of the universe. It heard them as they sang their last.
"It's good you brought me up here. I'd have sat in my room drinking coffee all night, you know it."
Danny
*The grin broadened and he nodded in satisfaction.* Well you're welcome to come up here whenever you want to, if there are other things going on, I'll let you know. It's pretty cool... Oh wow look at that long one go!
*The keening faintly flat note rang out true and sharp, then it was joined by another one go to with it. Shorter bursts sang out around it as a cluster of the space rocks rang out across the sky.*
Grace
"I think it's starting to get going full speed, what do you think?"
The meteors are coming in quicker now. Shower would be a bit of a misnomer. They're not literally spraying the sky, but certainly come in faster than the usual. Some rare ones are true fireballs, that leave little trails in their wake.
Each one sounds a little different to the ear. They're not 'in tune' to any human measure, but the notes they sing are at times a little higher or lower.
"Maybe you could map that to actual notes and make a melody out of it? It'd be pretty random I guess."
Danny
That's what I'm planning on doing. Writing around the notes and tones set out. There are sounds from pulsars that I've retrieved as well, so I can punctuate all around it. It's all going to be very experimental. I might need a sound engineer though. *he glanced at her.*
Grace
"Oh man, I know just the person. Lena," Grace says, perhaps surprising Danny by not bothering to apply for the position herself. "She's one of us, she's a deejay, and she's totally awesome."
The sky rings a hollow note again. For a time nobody speaks, everyone listens. And then, when it's over...
"You should talk to her, at least. I'd be terrible at that."
Danny
*He nodded in agreement to her.* Well if you can hook me up I'd be grateful.
*He couldn't help but grin and be happy about this, then when he speaks again it's quieter.*
Coffee? Or are you warm enough?
Danny
(((FADE)))
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)