Implicate and Explicate Orders

Grace
It's during a hacking session that Nick texts her. Not the "breaking and entering" kind, but the plain old coding kind. There was a time when this sort of fuzzy subjective meaning shit used to piss off the alpha nerds, who kept on trying, unsuccessfully, to get the word "cracking" to mean the malicious attack. Cracking a safe, cracking into a vault, it had precedence. It didn't stick.

Now, the word 'hack' has about three different meanings, and it still pisses off the old alpha nerds, but they can't do much about that.

So what Grace is hacking on in the middle of the afternoon is a tool. A password-guessing device that uses databases of old, previously hacked passwords to guess new ones. This is why they always tell you to change you password every x days, kids.

Anyway, the chime from her phone causes her to blink and then to ignore it, because phh. Probably unimportant. But it causes an itch in her brain that doesn't go away until she checks to be sure.

Nick: hey, Sera told me about talking to the cops and the kid she's looking after.  she said you might know more.

Hmm. Well, that doesn't exactly explain much, but Nick probably shouldn't over text anyway.

Grace: Come to my place? We can talk about it.

In private. And she doesn't offer much more than that, because it's very likely she's on a watch list.

Nicholas Hyde
Nicholas, too, may be on some sort of watch list.  He is Awakened, and he works in a hospital: traditionally one of the bastions of Conventional thought, though sometimes the social sciences lean both ways, and in that Nick has found his home.  He is not as cautious as he ought to be, or so his friends tell him: but he is cautious enough to be careful of what he discloses over text.

So he agrees, and after obtaining the address from Grace, he makes his way over to her place.  He hasn't been to River's apartment before, may have even forgotten that Grace and River are roommates in fact.

He arrives downtown perhaps an hour after his initial text (though he was polite enough to provide Grace with an ETA.  He's considerate of such things, Nick.)

There is another chime from her phone when he arrives.

Grace
Grace has, at the very least, washed up and dressed by the time he gets there. It's tempting to forget about sleep, hygiene, and street clothes when you don't plan on traipsing out of your room for a few days. At least, it is for her.

This is the unspoken reason why Kalen made sure to outfit her office at the old place with a small kitchen, refrigerator, and coffee.

She greets him at the door in wet hair and a fresh jeans-and-t-shirt combo. The t-shirt has a happy sloth picture on it, and her socks are done in a penguin pattern.

"Okay, so. I don't know anything about Sera talking to the cops, or this kid? So I'm a little lost. But come in, dude. Let's figure this out."

Nicholas Hyde
Nicholas is well used to mages who abandon, or simply forget, the body's basic needs: he is married to a Hermetic.  Had he arrived to find her in her pajamas it would not have surprised him.  He himself is put together as he often is in a way that is almost artful in its disarray: wearing a rumpled pale pink buttondown over a pair of shorts, his curls oiled back and to one side in some attempt to tame them.

There is something different about him which will be difficult to place at first, because it is a feeling, a sense he gives off (as resonance often is.)  He stands there in the small space after he is invited inside, twirling his wedding band around his finger with the ball of his thumb.  "Thanks," he says, as he steps past the threshold.

Once the door is shut, "Sera met with a Chorister who was also a cop, and she'd found an Awakened kid.  An apprentice.  He seems like he's pretty tech savvy, so I thought you might know him.  Or know something of him."

Grace
Chorister who is also a cop. Grace frowns a bit, in thought. "Isolde? From Colorado Springs?"

She makes her way toward the couch -- River's couch. The whole place is River's idea of what constitutes a living space, because Grace knows herself. Her own room has a bed and bookshelves in it, and nothing else.

"I'm afraid I don't know him? Does he have a name, or an alias? I might know him and not know it. Many of us don't exactly get together in meatspace very often."

She flumps herself onto the couch, taking up far more space than is usually allotted to small women. "You're... different today."

Nicholas Hyde
Nick follows her to her couch.  There is a little point that has appeared between his brows, appeared when Grace named the Chorister: she says that, and he shakes his head.  "I don't know her name and I haven't spoken with her," he says.  "But it sounds like that might be her, maybe.  I'd like her information, if you're willing to give it."

Meatspace, Grace says, and Nick nods to this again.  It's a slow, contemplative movement of his head; he processes things this way.  He sits down on the other end of the couch so as to allow her to take up as much space as she wishes, and half turns in her direction.  He takes up less space than is generally allotted to men.  And he smiles when she comments on his difference, and says first, "I went Seeking last week and came back."

He folds one leg underneath him, and his smile has faded now and back into that thoughtful expression.  "His name is Grant.  I don't know his last name.  His dad was running some sort of snuff film ring and Grant was helping maintain the website.  He's young though.  Probably eighteen or nineteen."

Grace
She nods and smiles a little to him at the mention of a Seeking, but leaves her commentary to that. Mostly because the next thing out of his mouth has her eyebrows raising a lot.

"Grant Kherrington the Third, aka NomNomzDead, son of evil asshole Grant Kherrington Junior and Elizabeth Bartlett. I read his email," Grace says. "I also owned their onion site and shut it down."

She doesn't explain what an onion site is, because doesn't everybody just know?

"So, yeah. I know of him. He seems like..." she shakes her head. "A kid who had the wrong fucking father. His emails were like... He was trying to fight back, but not too hard. I think he was afraid of his dad."

Nicholas Hyde
"What's an onion site?"  Because evidently not everyone just knows, and Nick is the sort of man who asks a lot of questions.  He is naturally curious.

His eyebrows, too, are raised: enough so that she can surmise that they are probably talking about the same Grant.  What he says next confirms that.  "Yeah.  I've spoken with Grant a couple of times.  Sera gave him a place to stay.  I think he was afraid of his dad, and I also think he was kept in isolation to the extent that he didn't really understand the full implications of what he was doing."

Grace
"Ahh. It's a site you can only get to using TOR. The Onion Router. It encrypts and decrypts your data requests and posts over and over again, in a process akin to peeling the layers off of an onion. It's supposedly safe. But I know ways around that," Grace says, waves her fingers as if to say it is simple. It isn't, but that's beside the point.

"I figured as much, about the isolation. His dad had him 'killed' on paper, probably so he wouldn't have to go to school. I can only imagine what that life was like."

She sighs once, looks out the window. "I've been trying to track down his dad, but if he's not already dead, he's playing it smart and going off-grid."

Already dead. As if to say that when Grace finds him, she will make sure of that.

Nicholas Hyde
He's an intelligent man, Nicholas, but he can only half-follow Grace's reply: sometimes intelligence isn't enough, when a base of knowledge is lacking.  He is only dimly aware of the sort of data requests she is talking about; it is all abstract to him.  "Ah," he says.

"I'm not sure if he knows where his dad is, either.  He's pretty eager to talk to people, though.  It might be helpful for him to talk to you.  I'm not sure he realizes he's Awake, or what that even means."

Grace
"Well, I can supply him with some answers. Not many, but some," she says, her eyes still on the window.

There is a bit of the morose in Grace's response, as excited as she might be to talk to another tech-leaning Awakened individual. She's still trying to hunt his father down. She was the one who started the process of turning his life upside down, even if his life was a shit-show before now.

There's really no way to tell how Grant Kherrington the Third is going to take all that.

"If he doesn't know what being Awakened means, I can show him. If he wants to know if things are ever going to get better?" she shrugs.

"Where is he?"

Nicholas Hyde
There is a furrow of one of Nick's brows, a quirk of his mouth when Grace shrugs.  "What do you mean, if he wants to know if things are ever going to get better?"

A beat.  "He's at a place of Sera's.  Let me check with her to see whether or not she wants me to give the information out.  If she doesn't, I'm happy to bring Grant to you instead.  I'm sure he'd like to see more of the city."

Grace
"Well, that's a question only he can answer, eh? I can't," she responds. Recovery or further falling into his father's ruts is going to be up to Grant, really.

She rolls her eyes at his suggestion that Sera might not want to give the information out. Grace has lounged on Sera's bed smoking her pot before. That's almost a given. But...

"Okay. I'll be around. And if I'm not, I can be around. Just let me know when you want to set this thing up. I'll be happy to help however I can."

Nicholas Hyde
"I suppose," Nick says.  "I think things are going to get better for him, though.  I think he wants that."

He bites the inside of his cheek here, still thoughtful.  Perhaps he missed the roll of her eyes; his gaze is elsewhere, off at some undefined point in the room.  Perhaps he is only ignoring it.

"Are you willing to provide me with Isolde's information?  I'd like to talk to her a little more too."

Grace
"I've never actually met Isolde. I have her number, though. If she asks who to blame about her number getting around, you can always throw Angela under the bus," Grace says, slight uptick of a smile. "Angela Avella is her partner on the force. She's Chakravanti, and I've been helping out with a few things on her plate -- including this whole... snuff porn thing."

Grace's nose wrinkles up at the mention of what the site was selling. She had to look at it, if only just to confirm that yes -- that is what the site was. A red room.

She shifts on the couch, pulls her phone out of her jean pocket, and flops over enough to show Nick her contacts listing for Isolde.

Nicholas Hyde
Nick's eyebrows lift briefly as Grace mentions Angela, Isolde's Chakravanti partner: a name unknown to him, apparently.  He pulls his phone out of his pocket so that he can add the number into it.  "Thanks," he says.  "I'm glad that you helped bring all of that down, it sounds like it was bad news."

That is putting it lightly, but, well.  They are both experienced enough to have seen as bad and worse.

A beat.  "How are you doing, Grace?"

Grace
"Yeah. I just went out looking for companies that didn't deserve to be in business anymore, you get it? I didn't expect to find something like this, really. But it's what I found.

"I'm glad I found it, too. I just hope it was enough, and I found it in time."

He asks her how she is, and her head lolls to one side in contemplation.

"I'm good. River and I are scouting out some real estate. Maybe I can house Nomz in whatever I finally manage to get? I'm looking to create a kind of meeting-place and housing for us that isn't all the way out in Morrison. And bonus points, it would be something nobody else knows about yet. I mean, it would be safe, for a while."

Grace is okay. Okay as long as she has something to strive for, at least. Always, there is something on her horizon.

"How are you? I mean, Seeking. That's pretty cool, man," she says, gives him a smile.

Nicholas Hyde
"I'm sure you found it in time to save lives," Nick says, and there is a little furrow to his brow here: there were probably other lives that weren't saved.  He doesn't say this; Grace is not at fault and doesn't need the guilt.

Nick hums thoughtfully as Grace tells him that she is planning to construct a sort of chantry.  "It would be nice to not have to hike all the way out there," he says.  "I'm doing well.  Glad to be...I mean, I felt for a while that I was building up to something.  I'm glad it...that I found what I was looking for."

Grace
"Well. When you go out looking for yourself, sometimes you are surprised to find that quarry," Grace says, smiles at him. "We're usually so relentlessly hidden away."

She smiles again. "It is good to hear that you are glad to be."

Everyone should be so glad, shouldn't they?

"I don't know when it's going to happen to me again. I'm usually kind of blindsided. But I'm sure it will. Maybe that surety is my sign it's going to happen soon, eh?"

Nicholas Hyde
Grace smiles, and so: so does Nicholas.  It is easy for him, this mirroring, reflecting the emotions of others back at them.  It is easier for him to do this than it is for him to understand how he feels separate from what he sees in them, sometimes.

"Maybe," Nick says.  "Depending on how in touch you are with your guide, you might be able to bring it on yourself.  Though I suppose it can be nice to be surprised."

Grace
"I don't know if I want to challenge my guide to 'bring it on'. It might make me participate in a cheerleading competition, led by Pat Sajak. It's kind of a dick sometimes," she says, with fondness.

"You know, the first message I got from my Avatar was a text that read: 'DO YOU WANT TO PLAY A GAME?' Little shit thinks its funny."

She laughs, because it really is.

Nicholas Hyde
There is a quirk of his mouth when she laughs, a pull of the muscles there at the corner and along his cheek.  "Sometimes I think it might be nice to have one with a sense of humor.  I don't always see mine taking the same form, but she isn't much of a joker."

Grace
"Mine never takes the same form," Grace says. "Birds, Technocrats, a giant Hydra, the aforementioned Pat Sajak..."

So, you know, a wide range of crazy there.

"It's kind of a question, right? A surprise. What will it be next? Sometimes its jokes are hilarious ones like shooting me over and over again until I learn not to be afraid." She rolls her eyes. Still, it was doing that for a reason, wasn't it?

"I don't really know what mine is. It's 'it' until I can figure out something that fits better."

Nicholas Hyde
There is another lift of his eyebrows, a subtle arch, as she tells him what form her Avatar has taken.  "I don't know if we're ever supposed to completely understand what it is," Nick says.  "That's one of the themes of something that's divine or infinite, isn't it?  We can't fully grasp or define it."

He reaches up thoughtfully to tweak one of the curls near his ear, tugs on it and lets it spring free as his eyes wander away.  "At least, not before Enlightenment.  Maybe that's where Enlightenment occurs.  That understanding."

Grace
"Pssh. There are plenty of ways to define infinity. Countably infinite, uncountably infinite... the infinity of numbers between zero and one, the infinite numbers both real and imaginary, the infinite number of prime numbers. Some infinities are bigger than others. Some infinities are very very small, bounded ones.

"I think Enlightenment is a big infinity. One of the everything ones. The infinity of emotion, of consciousness. An infinity of universes in the sea of them. We may not be grasping it ourselves just yet. But maybe that's for the same reason an individual neuron doesn't grasp the color red.Something is attempting to grasp it, and we help by trying?"

Nicholas Hyde
Nick listens in this very intent way: it is clear when he listens that his sole focus is on Grace, on her words, on understanding and processing the words she is saying.  "I think we're saying the same thing, in a sense," he says.  "The point is, it's unfathomable to us currently."

Grace
"Maybe it isn't, to all of the 'usses' everywhere and everywhen. I don't know. A thought I've had, before. Like the universe itself tries to figure things out through us. That it learns. I've seen it happen before, in another universe. Straight from the personification's mouth."

Although, knowing this universe, would it be a good thing to meet its personification? It wouldn't exactly be nice would it? Then again, are they ever?

To what purpose is that question being answered?

"Maybe the thing that is capable of understand is just curious, like us. It would make sense, right?"

Nicholas Hyde
"Maybe," Nick says, and this too is thoughtful.  "I suppose it could be curious about us the same way we are of it.  But I don't...I don't know if I necessarily see it as something external.  Believe in some outside entity larger than myself, that is."

There is a little frown there, something that suggests he is trying to wrap his head around it, around the thought.  "I believe in an interconnected creation, I suppose, and that's the larger thing for me.  I don't externalize it that way."

Grace
"Neither do I. Externalize it, that is. Natural versus manmade, observer versus observed. They're all artificial boundaries that we make. But, we make them for reasons, because sometimes it is easier to understand a thing if you dissect it. The important thing to keep in mind though, is that your boundaries aren't actually there.

"We are the larger thing, trying to understand itself -- partly by erecting artificial boundaries that we experience as conscious lives."

To keep the paradox of the one and the whole, to switch between the two like unfolding a paper snowflake when it becomes advantageous, this is how she sees 'it'.

"There was a guy. A physicist. David Bohm. He came up with the idea of an implicate and explicate order to the universe. The implicate order has a sort of 'folded' quality to it, and the explicate order are the abstractions through which humans experience reality -- an unfolded quality. When folded together, we are one, when unfolded, we experience a separation, but we're the same general 'thing' in both concepts."

Nicholas Hyde
Nick makes a ruminative noise; his eyes drift skyward as he considers her words.  "So how do the artificial boundaries help us understand ourselves, then?"

Grace
"I think of it like..." she breathes in, looks at the ceiling. "Okay, you want to write a story about human nature. Obviously, then, you write about a robot."

She leans back on the couch.

"Why? Well, because in that case, you can clear away everything else about humans except one or two parts, and examine how those parts interact with each other. Maybe at first your robot doesn't experience emotion, it just has the ability to reason. You examine the implications of that. Then, you give it emotions, and examine the implications of that. Now, you have a better idea of how reason and emotion both interact with each other and how it is when they don't.

"The parts are interesting in and of themselves, and can't be fully understood until teased away from the whole. But then, the whole is also interesting too, so we can add things to the parts until we get a whole, and inspect that process too."

She looks amused at the ceiling for a bit.

"But then, I write science fiction, so of course I'd say that's the way the universe thinks of us."

Nicholas Hyde
Nick makes another musing noise as he considers this.  "So you think the universe sets us up to interact with each other, that way, sort of an eternal thought experiment."

Grace
"I think the universe sets us up to interact with each other and with itself. I think it sets up electrons to interact with other electrons in its eternal thought experiment. We aren't exactly special, except that we have a tendency to accelerate the process a bit.

"It also never forgets anything that has ever happened, and I think that has a purpose behind it too. Otherwise, you could much more easily unmix a milkshake or unscramble an egg. The arrow of time's purpose is to remember what the universe has learned, in a way. It's very tightfisted with that data."

Entropy, Nick. All conversations with Grace eventually lead to this point. It's like a law of the universe.

Nicholas Hyde
Nick scrubs a hand along the side of his jaw as he listens, his eyes still on some undefined point in the room.  "I see," he says, and maybe he actually does.  "So you're...trying to understand how the universe works, and you're hoping to tackle that question as you move on toward Enlightenment?  For when you Seek again next?"

Grace
Grace blinks at the ceiling. "Well, no. Most of my Seekings have dealt with... I don't know. Behaviors my Avatar didn't think would lead me to Enlightenment any faster, if I kept indulging in them? Basic stuff. Removing obstacles, and all.

"Maybe next time, it will be different. Or  maybe it will never be different, and I will never cease being someone new."

She laughs. "As if that wasn't the way it already works. We are always someone new, from nanosecond to nanosecond."

Usually, though, that newness isn't quite so profound.

Nicholas Hyde
"We are," Nick agrees.  "I think that happens until you reach Enlightenment.  Until you reach a point in the Wheel where it stops."  A beat.  "So your Avatar mostly gets you to try to stop old behaviors, instead of learning new ones?"

Grace
"Mmm. If you stop an old behavior, don't you learn new ones as a general rule? Like, if you stop being overly-emotional, you learn control? There's two sides to every coin and all."

Like her, when she had to cease being afraid, and learned bravery. A turning, there, however slight. Towards what? Something better? Or something else?

Nicholas Hyde
"I suppose you do, in a sense," Nick says.  "But I think it's more in the framing of it.  Trying to learn a desired behavior isn't the same process as trying to unlearn an undesired one."

Grace
"I don't know. You're the expert here on behaviors and psychology and shit. Changing the framing changes the painting, is what you're trying to say?"

Well. It changes the way you look at it, and isn't that a change? The biggest one, in some ways.

She tilts her head.

Nicholas Hyde
"Yes.  That's the basis behind some therapeutic concepts, actually, cognitive behavioral therapy being one.  Thought informs behavior, and the way in which you frame a thought influences behavior."  Nick shrugs, then.

"I've been thinking about it a lot, lately, because I was...I was trying to avoid doing certain things, but all it made me do was feel more bounded in, not less.  I think I started learning more recently when I started focusing on things I wanted to learn to do instead of things I wanted to learn to not do."

Grace
"Oh, well that's good. And it makes sense. Avoiding things isn't going to teach you anything, is it?"

Well, chances are he was trying to avoid the darker things. But there are two sides to every coin, aren't there? The darkness and the light go hand in hand.

"Whereas throwing yourself into things that you like, well that's almost guaranteed to. I... never really had that problem. I had the problem of throwing myself into everything all at once, though. I had to take a chill pill and realize that I wasn't going to miss out if I didn't."

Nicholas Hyde
Nick nods when she says this, and there is a glint of amusement there in his eyes.  "I think Pen is like that too, sometimes," he offers.  There is a certain kind of mage that is this way.  Then, as an afterthought, "Well, a lot of the Hermetics I've met are like that.  You're the only Elite I've talked to extensively though."

He stretches one of his arms behind him.  "You had to learn to prioritize, or you had to learn to choose?"

Grace
"Yes," she says, the quintessential answer to everything.

"I mean, there was a time when I was a full-time grad student, and a full-time Awakened individual. It kinda sucked having all those priorities that I couldn't fulfill. I had to prune away some things in my life, but also figure out what not to prune, and how to manage my time."

She looks over to Nick, finally, after a good chunk of time staring out the window and at the ceiling.

"I think the same about Pen. You know, the first time we met, I thought to myself, well here's a kindred spirit."

Nicholas Hyde
Nicholas smiles, at that; glances back to Grace.  He is remembering a conversation, remembering being woken up late at night by his wife who then had only been excited to have him in Denver with her.  "I think she thought the same thing."

Nick reaches back and tugs at the curls on the base of his neck.  "I hope that you Seek soon and it goes well, Grace."  A beat.  "I should head home soon, but I'm glad we got a chance to talk more."

Grace
"I am too. Thanks for telling me about Grant," she says, lifting an arm in a farewell gesture. "I'll be waiting for your call on that one."

Fraternal Order of the Falcon

Grace
Grace only really knows two people from Colorado Springs. Well, two people who are Mages. One of them just Awakened, and isn't exactly local to the place either. Angela. Got to get with her, right? Got to find out what the hell is up with Peregrine.

Falcons are rather near and dear to Grace's heart, but somehow she gets the idea that it's meant in some vaguely horrible fashion. Birds of prey. Preying on Mages?

So she calls one afternoon, irrespective of such things as normal working hours, because when has Grace had normal working hours? Her work takes up most of days and nights and plenty of Doritos to fuel it.

Ring ring, Angela.

Assuming the woman picks up, she'll get Grace on the line, with a: "Hey, Angela. I have some... information about... things. Oh yeah, this is Grace. Evans."

Angela Avella
When she answers the phone, she sounds like she works at a call center. Not at all like a police officer, not at all like someone who was a detective at one point. Not at all like someone who has, in the past, seen the depths of human depravity (and that was before she awakened) and come back with an overwhelming need to bring about justice.

There's a reason to call Angela, and there's a reason she keeps up with the job that she does.

"Oh," is how she replies, "well, I get off in... three hours,t he commute is an hour and some change... I'll be there close to dinner."

Angela, clearly, has no idea when/what it is that Grace eats, but presumes she eats food like a normal person.

Time basses, though, and inevitably she shows up on the front door step of the apartment she's looking for. No need to give real directions. Angela Avella knows her way around places.

Grace
Grace does eat food. Normal person, though? That's stretching it. A lot. Where and when Grace decides to eat is largely determined by whether she is hungry, and whether she is too engrossed in something to remember that she is hungry.

That said, she is a fish swimming in a culture that says approximately what time one should eat dinner. It's not that she doesn't know this fact, just that she doesn't quite understand why it exists.

"Dinner. Okay. Do you like Samosas?"

Because, of course her first thought is to make sure her ally didn't just bring that up out of a desire for food.

Time passes, and Grace has obtained some samosas and paneer masala and some naan, regardless of what Angela says, because hey -- dinner actually sounded like a good idea. Whether she has to share or not, there is food for more than just the two of them. River might like leftovers too. Everybody wins.

Angela doesn't need directions, which isn't entirely unsurprising. Most Mages don't. The front door opens, and Angela will find an apartment -- largely decorated by River's own standards -- Grace having left all the aesthetic decisions to her.

"Hey, thanks for coming by. I uh," she says, steps aside so Angela can enter. "I've been meaning to tell you some things. And also ask some questions."

Angela Avella
What Angela lacks in a phone presence she makes up for in her physical presence. Grace has seen Angela vault over a fence with little fanfare in a pair of pajama pants and an oversized shirt. Seeing Angela in uniform was almost jarring were it not for the fact that it didn't seem out of place on her; the uniform wasn't a power play on her. It just was. She smiles bright and takes her hat off when she comes inside.

Angela deposits several things at the table by the door. Hat. Firearm. Car keys. Cell phone. She inhales and lets a smile cross her face witht he quiet delight that comes from knowing that Indian food was forthcoming. She lingers at the door while unbuttoning her shirt. She treats it like a jacket instead of a shirt-

"Isolde finally stopped being my dry cleaning service," she tells Grace with a grin. Magick is the best stain remover.

"I will try my best with questions- what do you need to know?"

Grace
Grace is usually rather put off by the uniform of a cop, let's be honest. But there is Alex to consider. He didn't turn out to be bad. In fact, most Mages are open-minded enough to understand. After all, they routinely break the rules of the universe. And Angela's a Chakravanti.

Indian food, yes. The warm smell of it is rather intoxicating even from the door, because Grace has already laid out a spread in preparation, and also because she wanted to get a head start on it herself.

Speaking of which, she just starts heading in the general direction of the dining room.

"Do you know anything about 'Peregrine'? Doctor Sepúlveda told me about you guys' problem with a rash of murders... I think this 'Peregrine' might be connected somehow."

Angela Avella
Angela's preferred uniform is a pair of sweatpants and a My little Pony shirt, truth be told. It was the first impression that she got to make on Grace, and it would probably forever color the way that one may perceive her. Police officer or not, Angela Avella believes in being comfy and believes that Friendship is Magic.

"I... know... that a peregrine is a type of falcon?"

She pauses.

"We've had a few murders in the area, but the word on the street is that they may be technocratic in nature. Isolde doesn't believe that, but... maybe there is something I'm not catching. Could you tell me more? I've not spoken with Doctor Sepúlveda"

Grace
"The Technocrats here in Denver seem to be willing to go way out of their way to avoid killing us," Grace says, with a cock of her head. "I realize, though, that we may be just incredibly lucky there."

She leads, not intentionally so, but leads nonetheless over to the table of food, where Angela can note that Grace already has a plate, and has already begun to dig in. But there is another, clean plate available, as well as silverware, even, as if some manners happened to occur to her.

"We had an Apprentice captured by some guy, they took him to their lab. But it seems the head honcho was very displeased by that, and decided to 'kill' said Apprentice -- in their books. And then send him home in an ambulance. I don't think it's connected to what you guys are having."

She sits down at her chair and shoves a samosa in her mouth, before continuing -- with the samosa still in her mouth.

"Doctor Sepúlveda said that the only clues anybody found at the murder sites were half a fingerprint, and a single hair. I traced the hair. Found a really weird guy who nonetheless doesn't seem to be a Mage."

Angela Avella
"They're not fractured, but we did hear about what happend with that Apprentice... he was on the force, yeah?" a bit of empathy there. A bit of sadness but... it makes her knit her brows together, makes her set a little more concerned and sharpens her thoughts.

She starts getting her plate together- has it halfway together before Angela seems to realize something and finishes taking her shirt off. Leaves it to the side and then gets the rest of the delicious deliciousness together.

"The issue with your apprentice friend doesn't sound connected, though... the last few deaths we've had in town were all transplant people- with the exception of one, but that... that was off. Dory died of hypothermia-" she pauses like she was trying to remember- "it wasn't a natural death, and we knew her. She'd lived in Colorado Springs for awhile, didn't fit the MO."

A pause.

"We'd presumed it was either technocratic in nature or big money in play because crime scenes don't come that clean without having a professional tend to them or having someone purposefully botch the clean up so badly that the only things that get logged are a single hair and a dead fingerprint."

Grace
"Big money fits with what I saw," Grace says as she mops up some curry with naan. "The guy looked to be loaded, but carried no identification. He had a credit card, but the name on it was Elizabeth Palor. He did have another, rather opulent card with the word 'Peregrine' on it, too."

She munches, considers, thinks back.

"He seemed rather happy about that card. He showed it to his girlfriend and she asked about one of the guys who was murdered -- La Croix? Asked if he 'got in'. Seems he did not."

Angela Avella
"The only rich bird men I know are the guys in the Fraternal Order of the Falcon- they're like a Elk's lodge- they do charity events. They rub me the wrong way that any organization of rich white guys who like guns rubs me, but they're not backing Trump so I figure they can't be the completespawn of Satan," she takes a mouth full of rice and chases it wiuth some curry. Angela chews like she is being mindful of the taste, but holds her plate like someone who knowes her own weaknesses.

She is going to get food on her shirt. She knows this. She does not accept it easily.

"Did they find the same hair at each crime scene or just the one? Was it the same guy at each scene?"

Grace
Rich white guys who like guns, eh? The murders were mostly accomplished via gun, too. Grace chews. And frowns a kind of thinking frown. "Fraternal Order of the Falcon."

Sounds like the kind of name a Hermetic might think up. They adore the unnecessarily long and extremely verbose. But no, this does not exactly reek of Hermeticism either. Why would they be killing their own allies and potential recruits, for one?

Andrés did bring up the quintessence angle. And Hermetics often don't have nice things to say about Orphans. There's only a small step from thinking a group of people bad to thinking them inhuman. And from there, murder for profit doesn't seem so morally wrong.

She chews more.

"Just one hair, at one crime scene. It's not much to go on, no. But some of the bullet casings matched another murder -- Jacqueline Paix?"

Angela Avella
"Jacqueline Paix was a body dump, or at least that's what homicide thought. Body was scrubbed down clean, they found her by a creek. No clothes, no evidence of sexual assault. Two bullet wounds- one to the chest and one to the head, and the bullet to the chest wasn't a through-and-through. Two different angles, too... I don't work special victims for Colorado Springs. If this were Dallas I'd have a lot more for you.

"Leave it to an affluent neighborhood to not really care when a working girl ends up dead," the disdain for her current place of employment is ever-so-obvious. It's what causes her to drip food on her shirt.

Grace
"Yeah. That doesn't surprise me. At all," Grace grumbles. The thing about the 'justice system' is that the phrase has something in common with with the Ministry of Peace and the Ministry of Truth. Very 1984, at its heart. There is no justice to be found in a system that categorizes some people as worthless and others as needing protection.

And yet, people rail on about Black Lives Matter as if they shouldn't. So just we are, as a society, eh?

Grace lifts her eyes from the curry to the uniform, then to the person wearing it. Someone's trying to change the system from within. She wonders if Angela has yet figured out that that's a Sisyphean task.

"I'll look into the bird men. That sounds at least a little promising. The guy did look like a hedge fund sociopath."

He'd be hard to take down, if they went through legal channels. Thankfully, Grace doesn't give two shits about legality.

Angela Avella
"Let me know if you need anything. Or Hell, talk to Isolde- I can give you my partner's number. She's been a lot more involved with these particular murders than I have, plus I think she and some of the Denverites play poker on Mondays. It's a civil-servant-only game, apparently. I came once but it turns out that the witch in HR is out for blood when it comes to her poker games."

Grace
"Ooh, more names and numbers. I like," Grace says, with the kind of aplomb that might make one nervous. Grace can do so very much with a name and number.

She grins at the mention of a witch in HR. A Verbena in human resources? There's a really terrible pun to be found there.

"I'd be... well, shit at poker. But I don't really care. I'm not a civil servant though, so eh."

Angela Avella
"Well, if you want to meet Isolde at any time, you can always say you're trying to either kick a drug habit or you're seeking the guidance of Santisima Muerte. She'll go to Hell and back for you if she thinks you're one of the flock."

She shrugs, is shoveling food into her mouth again and trying to eat away the feeling that comes when she sees the grin on Grace's face and knows good and well that she's thrown the Chroister under the bus and... well... maybe doesn't care too much about it in that regard.

"Choristers, am I right?"

Grace
"I wouldn't even be able to pretend to be one of the flock, and I really don't want to stop smoking weed, so--" Grace shrugs. "That would be really hard to pull off too."

Hell, Grace is good friends with a drug dealer. Not that she's going to say that much in front of a cop, good one or no.

"They can be... not sucky," Grace says. "Sometimes." She grins at that statement too, thinking of Kalen -- a man who dumped his tradition to go join up with the religious nutjobs. Also, not sucky in her book.

Angela Avella
"The Iveys used to be the it couple in Colorado Springs. I didn't get to know them for very long, but James Ivey was my partner's mentor. He was a chorister and his wife Melissa was a Cultist- I'm still trying to figure out how that worked..."

She pauses, "but it's Santa Muerte, she's... she just is. She grants miracles for either purpose because she is truly neutral. I can get behind a Chorus with a healthy respect for death."

Grace
"I don't know. The one Chorister I know really well once went out with a Cultist, but then he's really... rather strange for a Chorister." And he went out with a vampire. But she's really not going to say that either.

Inter-Tradition relationships can be... interesting. Insightful. Useful. Human-Vampire relationships on the other hand? Not so much.

"I don't know much about Santa Muerte, to be honest. When I was growing up, I always thought such things were kind of... Well, I grew up in one of those actually-Agnostic families that sometimes drags their kids to Easter Sunday church and nothing else? I mean... Now, I know that there aregods, just not how I might have envisioned them before."

Gods then. A Mercurial Elite who believes in them. Gods in the machine of the universe.

Angela Avella
Now, I know that there are gods, just not how I might have envisioned them before.<
"They never are," she replies. Seems content to leave it at that and, maybe, have normal conversation sharing stories and generally enjoying Grace's company when it comes to talking about things. Maybe she talks about Texas. Maybe she talks about the yearsthat she spent being the Virgin Mary at her Chrismtas pageants.

Hell, maybe they even talk about Mike. It's hard to tell, but for now Angela seems content to just converse and enjoy the time she has with another person.

Will and Grace

William
William wanted to hang out with Grace.

Call this a rebound from his last terrible attempt at having a birthday, but this year he decided that he was going to hang out with Grace instead of getting plastered. He hasn't seen Sera in awhile. In truth, they haven't really talked in awhile either- William and Grace, that is. He hasn't been talking to too terribly many people that were over 5'2". He has a type, you see, and that type usually also falls into friends. Friends that are short (comparatively) and get into all sorts of magickal troubles. Or, well, he drags them along into trouble.

William is getting better at realizing he doesn't do the dragging. People often come of their own volition and run into troubles accordingly because he does things that are dangerous. Except on his birthday, which involves doing things like walking up staircases, going to a bar, or (in the most recent case) driving to New Mexico.

So, he called Grace. Asked Grace to come hang out with him in Santa Fe, stare at art, and mooch off of the free drinks that come at these particular events.

"The rules are simple: drink every time you see something that looks suspiciously like genitalia. Finish your drink when you see overt depictions of people's junk. Ready?"

Grace
"Oh, fuck. I'm going to get so plastered," Grace admits, tossing a sarcastic look at the sky that says: "Why me?"

Yes, why her? The one person on Santa Fe who has yet to see the point of stockpiling works of art in your house. If she were paying attention, though, that's not really the point, is it?

"I'm ready though, sure. Where should we meet up?"

----

And that's how they ended up at Bitfactory, because Grace thought that sounded cool. Free drinks? Yes. Pictures of genitalia? Well, they'll just have to see.

"Hmm. I'd thought this place would have more digital art, but I guess it'll do," Grace says, passing by a painting of blue, red, and yellow stripes. The ceilings, she notes, are black. Maybe River was right?

William
He's got whatever they're giving out for free, hands one over to Grace like a gentleman- well, more like a sir. Offers her a saucy eyebrow and a little mi-laaaady, in a fashion that makes neckbeards 'round the world both envious and pissed off because, clearly, the little ball of southern blond privilege totally doesn't get it and is clearly trying to get into Grace's pants and damn it, Grace should just give nice guys a chance and-

Nerp. Grace Evans probably doesn't tolerate morons. Not in real life and not on the internet, so William was safe in being a dork around her.

"There are some places in Baton Rouge that do digital art, but they're under water now."

Grace
William is safe. His affect is noted, but she takes it another way -- like he's pretending at posh. She returns in kind, a nose-in-the-air, pinky-raised salute with her new wine glass.

She doesn't often understand it when people do try to get into her pants. It doesn't parse. Not part of the program.

But then, when he speaks of Baton Rouge, her face falls, the fakey with it.

"Dude. Sucks," she says, takes a drink. There are no genitalia in view, but hey -- why play by the rules? "That's where you're from, isn't it?"

William
"Yeha," he says, starts on the meandering trip to find something that looked like boobs so he could take a dri-oop. There we go. Something with a circle. It was boob-enough. (When you're a young man in your early twenties, who remembers being an irrascible teenager, everything is boobs. Any port in a storm.)

"Basically, everyone's uprooting. Bonus grandpa's oldfolks home hasn't washed away. Mom and Dad are sleeping on Jenn's mom's pull out couch right now- I figure at some point in the next couple of weeks when the flooding stops I should go down and try to fix some of the important stuff in the house.

"Dad says the first floor is a wreck but the second floor is fine at the house. Business is going to pick up after this... so... yay?"

Yeah, his yay is so committed.

Grace
"Well. I mean..." Grace follows up her start with another drink. Doesn't know what to say. "At least nobody was hurt?"

Right? He would have mentioned that, surely.

They pass by an abstract landscape that reminds her of Arizona, all lumpy pillars of red under a golden sky. A home where it rarely rains except in monsoon season. Then, it does flood. Not like what's going on in Louisiana, though.

She points at it. "Look, there's a 'V' shape in that valley. It counts."

William
"Oh yeah, no. Mom's wigged out but my dad deals with flooding all the time. He stayed way longer than he should have back during Katrina? I'm pretty sure there's a picture of my dad with our dog somewhere on the internet. So imagine this big, line-backer looking guy chilling out on a roof with a Yorkie. He called me yesterday and tried to get me to come back home for a couple weeks.

"Which means that either they're going to come and visit soon or I'm not going to hear from my parents for the next six months because my dad's going to be elbow deep in reconstruction projects at work."

They pass the landscape, and his eyes fall on the lumpy pillars and-

"Yep, totally counts," he takes a drink, "but it makes me think of sunburns too which I think deserves a second drink because ow."

Grace
"That's gross," Grace says, drinks again in solidarity.

A thought comes to mind. She hasn't heard from her parents in years. It's better that way. But not everyone is so.

"How are you dealing with it? Besides going out to drink with me on your birthday, I mean..."

William
"Oh ho, not my birthday. I spent my birthday going to New Mexico, then I got hit with a car and-"

It dawns on him.

"I... uh... actually might need your help about something. Can we pause drinking so I can give you the run down?"

Like she didn't know he was trouble already.

Grace
The concern on her face goes from mild to shocked. Hit by a car. The fuck, Eli... Will?

"What do you need help with? I mean, you look to be in one piece. It can't have hit you that... hard?"

She cocks her head to the side.

William
"OKay, so. August 5th. I got hit with a car  because I was crossing the street and the world was silent. My rental car popped all four of its tires like something had just shredded them. Completely, not like a road hazard, more like deliberate damage. Oddity number one:

Oddity number two: I get to a gas station and this guy is possessed by some spectre that is totally enjoying all the intense emotions and stuff she's spreading around- like shades are want to do-" he says it like this is a normal thing to expect. Surely, everyone knows about weird spirits who possess people, right? "- we get into it while he's taking me back to my car to tow it to a service station. Wrecks the car, I manage to scare the spirit out and it goes off to cause more havoc and more damage but this guy is really messed up because, y'know, massive car accident. He's probably still in the hospital, has a shit ton of bills, and I'd like to try and help but I'm getting off topic-

Oddity three: I try to call the guy's nephew at the shop that we'd been at, but the guy's nephew is nowhere to be found. He's dropped off the radar. And? And? My rental company can't find my stupid rental car. I'm just saying the damned thing was stolen, but nobody can find it.

"So, there's a spirit running around doing what they normally do- which isn't unusual, a thing shredded my tires- which is unusual- and some guy and my rental car have up and vanished."

William
"Turning twenty-two is slightly worse than turning twenty one. And at least turning twenty involved just having a dissociative episode and being divorced from reality and not experiencing grievous bodily harm."

Grace
Grace turns her attention toward the blackness of the ceiling. Truly, William is a nexus of terrible things. Someone has cursed the dude, like put a cosmic "kick me" sign on his back.

"Okay. I can help with the guy's hospital bills," she says, and that's something new. She's offering of her own, not Kalen's. "I can't do jack shit about 'shades'. But you probably wanted me to do something about the guy's nephew, right?"

She turns a sorrowful gaze at Will. "Got any personal effects? And I'm sorry the universe is treating you shitty."

William
"I could tell you where he worked?" he offers, like this might be helpful. He shrugs, looks across the room and points at a statue of what appeared to maybe be a swan but-

"eh?"

Raises brows and drinks before he has to think about this. He quirks his mouth to the side, "when it comes to spirits, I can handle it. That's something I'm comfortable with, and it's something I'm good at. When it has to do with... uh... finding literally anything I'm at a loss. It's the corner of the universe that I can't wrap my head around."

"So, if you could help with medical, and maybe help me figure out how to go about finding this guy? I figure he might be with my car."

He takes a moment longer, looks at his drink before looking back. "And thanks, I figure until I tell the universe to knock it off I'lljust keep rolling with it."

Grace
"So, do you think someone magically made your tires pop so that they could steal your ride? They'd get a car with four popped tires, doesn't sound very useful. Maybe it was that shade? Do you think it feeds on road rage?"

She's joking. Partly. Doesn't know anything more about shades than what she's been told by people who know better than she.

"I can try to help you find the guy's nephew, but the more information I have to go on to start with, the better. Do you know his name?"

William
"I don't know what that was, I... honestly, I really think that my tires popped because of a creepy-assed corn doll from the side of the road where my tires blew out and when I have time, I'm going back and taking that stupid thing and it's going to live in a spiritually warded box on my mantle like a freaking possessed Beanie Baby."

He may or may not be joking. It's William. He seems like the type that would have possessed Beanie Babies.

"His name is Jose, his uncle's name is Oscar? I can tell you a fuck ton about Oscar, and I could tell you what Jose looked like, but I didn't know I was going to need to be finding him."

Grace
Right. A creepy-ass corn doll. Grace nods her head and frowns. "Dolls. Terrible creatures. Rip your face clean off. That's why I always decapitated my Barbies. They needed to be incapacitated."

She looks around. Notes the swan-thing. Gestures at it, and drinks.

"Really, though, I'd be more worried about who made the doll. Sounds like a trap."

William
"Why would you decapitate Barbie? I loved Barbies!"

He scoffs, and then looks at Grace like he couldn't possibly believe her, despite the fact that he has completely glossed over the fact that he very real and honestly rpofessed his love for Barbies. Nobody likes Barbies, Will. Barbie doesn't even like Barbie.

"Anyway, I'll bet corn-doll is just a misplaced possessed cultural artifact. I totally want to go see who put it there, which will necessitate a trip back to Santa Fe. Wanna come with? I can share."

Grace
"I... may not be able to? I have some weird business going down in Colorado Springs. People dying, so," she says. So there's a good reason why she might be a bit... distracted. Will's problem just doesn't seem to be as immediately pressing.

"I also set a Barbie on fire once with a lens. I was pretty terrible to mine, but I kept on receiving them as gifts. Something something female child..."

She shrugs. Dolls are just creepy, period.

"Does Jose have a last name? Maybe I can pull up some records somewhere."

William
Does Jose have a name?

William gives the oh fuck look, like he has completely blanked on getting literally the most important piece of information possible. Like, you know, names.

"I will get that for you and then maybe you can help? Seriously, some random thing in Santa Fe is my business, you... uh... you deal with Colorado Springs. It's closer, and... what's going on there?"

Grace
"Apparently, someone is hunting the newly Awakened," she says, lowering her voice. "It's got the population there understandably upset."

There's just something about the idea of a thing preying on the helpless, isn't there? People who'd just come to and realized their potential, only to have it snuffed out by something bigger and tougher than they. Grace wrinkles her nose. It's got her understandably upset too.

"And yeah. I'll help you find the guy. It's just 'Jose' is a fairly broad thing to look for. I'd find thousands of them if I went looking for a 'Jose', you know? Maybe if you can get some DNA from Oscar, it might help me narrow it down too."

Apparently, there is more to it than just asking the universe nicely for the right direction -- at least, for Grace.

William
"Eh, let's see what Google gets me. If I need help getting into any records or file structure things, I'll let you know?"

He'd told Margot that he wasn't too keen on being alone, but at that juncture, William was getting pretty good at being able to do the preliminary work of most things on his own. He nods, sure he can get Grace the appropriate information in order to proceed further on and go places that he, for now, really can't go.

He drops his voice, keeps on the move.

"So.... any ideas who? Do we have a list of dead people?"

Grace
"I found somebody who I think was at least at the crime scene. Could be the guy, he's weird anyway. But I need to know for sure, you know?" Grace says. "There is a list of dead people. Dead and missing people. The crime scenes were scrubbed, though. No fingerprints, only one hair left behind."

So, pretty strange. And fairly reeking of the supernatural. Whatever Grace is hunting has skills too.

"If it's not this guy, I'll be surprised. I just don't understand a lot of things yet. I'm getting there."

William
"Do... you... want someone to look back in time and see what happened at the crime scenes? Has anybody done that yet?"

Grace
"That might be helpful," Grace says. "It might also be dangerous, but..."

She smirks at Will, like she's in on the universe's big joke. "I don't think, at this point, you really have a choice. Danger is like catnip to you, isn't it? I've doomed you by just telling you."

They walk, and pass by a painting of a blue child in white pigtails who seems to be picking her nose.

"If you do decide to do that, let me know? I'll have your back, just in case."

William
"See, you opened your mouth anbd said people are dying terribly somewhere really close to you so of course I'm going to meddle. I can't help but not meddle. Horrible things happen to me even when I'm minding my own business and completely not doing anything worthy of getting smacked down."

He does stop by the blue kid in the painting. Stops and lingers and really inspects the painting. Looks at the artist's name and-

Brows raise, mouth turns into a thoughtful curve, and he continues on.

"And yes. I loves me some danger catnip."

Grace
"No, really --  says the guy whose tires exploded and got hit by a car. You don't say," Grace says. "Try to keep that craving under control, though? At least for a little while? You got hit with a car, dude."

She shakes her head. Someday, she might have to scrape the poor boy off the highway when a semi comes after him, drawn by whatever horrible luck has been placed on his head. Let's count the life-threatening things that have happened to William in just the last year, shall we? And those are just the things Grace knows about... This makes, what? 4? 5?

"Take care of yourself. Stay inside and eat cupcakes. That's fairly safe."

William
"I got hit with a car and had two car accidents within a twenty-four hour period. If you count blowing all four tires as a car accident."

He smiles like he just ate a cupcake and was thoroughly pleased with the prospect of being told to go and eat more cupcakes.

"I'm taking that as a doctor's order, by the way. Staying inside, eating cupcakes. Being safe. This is how you live to be as old as Grace Evans."

Grace
"I'm not that much older than you, dude," Grace says and rolls her eyes. Is this what it's like? Getting old? People start talking about how ancient you are?

"But yes. Doctor's order. Cupcakes. They're good for you."

Now that they're on the subject of cupcakes, it seems the heavy shit has been left behind. Now, there is only a game of find-the-phallus left to play. She hopes it will help him. Too much on his plate right now, but when are their plates ever empty?

She points at a modern art piece. A line and two circles at the end, messily drawn. She drinks. "Might as well be gazing at the marvelous art displayed on the wall of a bathroom stall, eh man?"

On Avatars

Margot
The park is a big damn place, capable of hosting multiple events simultaneously-- which truthfully was most often the case, as far as gatherings and events went.  Some people met regularly at the volleyball sand pits to play during the summer, others scheduled weekly arrangements for yoga or drums or playdates with childrens groups.  All of these people could coexist without realizing one another were there.  That was the wonderful thing about great public spaces like this.

Margot was taking advantage of the ease to become lost by settling upon the bank of one of the less populated edges of a large pond.  She had a blanket spread out to sit on, with a bag of yogurt pretzels and a bottle of water beside her.  A messenger bag was on the blanket as well, with the flap folded open and over to reveal the spines of a couple books.  A smaller paperback book with pink-dyed pages was in her hand, posture neck and spine curled down over the yellowed pages as she read.

Were it not for the constant low thrum of war (the steady march of boots caked in mud and blood on toward the next battle) that saturated the air around her, Margot would be very overlookable indeed.  Her brown hair was drawn back into a ponytail, loose bits tucked behind ears.  She'd dressed in a three-quarter-sleeved baseball tee (white body/navy sleeves) and a pair of blue denim shorts, with her feet in white ankle socks and white tennis shoes alike.

She had a pencil held between her teeth as she read.  At a certain point she moved it to scratch at her scalp with the eraser end, then twirled the utensil about in her fingers to put graphite to the paper of a spiral notebook and take some notes.  When finished writing she looked up and about with wide and watchful eyes.  Hunting for someone.

Specifically, a Doctor who was finally available to come out and visit.

Sepúlveda
Marking their mentor as unreliable isn't the fairest assessment anyone could make of the guy. Granted, he provides such an abundance of unflattering characteristics that one probably doesn't need to fling on another one, but the two of them are beginning to be able to tell when their mentor is either out of town or buried in work because the emojis stop flowing.

Up until earlier today, or yesterday, whenever the hell it was that Margot reached out to him or he answered something she had sent weeks ago, the kids had not heard from him since the end of June.

He comes ambling down the path towards the duck pond wearing tan Oxford shoes, jeans that probably came out of the boys' section, and a tri-color panel shirt that looks like it's been alive since the 1950s. His hair could use a trim, as could his beard, but he doesn't look as if he's been living under a bridge for the last month, at least. Doesn't reek when he plops down next to her, and if his eyes are bloodshot, he's wearing sunglasses.

Before either of them speak, he wiggles one of the books out of the stack and reads its spine.

"Huh," he says.

Margot
To her credit, Margot's sense of anxiety about the Doc's well-being and sense of self preservation has abated considerably.  The successful rescue of Alexander Brandt helped solidify faith in an otherwise doubtful and anxious girl.  Helped, but didn't contribute soley.  Since her Seeking she seemed less high strung, still just as serious but more thoughtful and steady.  She saw the pattern in unresponsiveness followed by reappearance, saw it as a pattern of work and Work both, and settled for 'no news is good news until multiple months have gone by'.

All the same, she was quick to reply when he'd answered an old text she'd forgotten about, and now when she spied him she smiled and raised her hand in a still-motion version of a wave of greeting.

The book that he wriggled forth from the bag was laminated over the cover, checked out from a library, and covered some asshole's theory on chance over fate.  If he wriggled further the next book was Nietzche's 'Beyond Good and Evil'.  The one in her hand was some Wiccan-proclaimed book of rituals.  She surveyed his shirt and hair length while he judged her taste in literature.

"Huh," she agreed.  It sounded like he passed whatever test there may have been in initial meeting.  Glanced around, then moved the bag of pretzels to offer him some.

"It's good to see you," she started genuinely.  The tone would become forgetfully casual with familiarity as she continued on, groping about for her bookmark around her for a few moments before realizing it was in her lap and fetching it from there.  "I would say that pre-Awakened I didn't forsee myself doing nothing but studying over summer break, but that would be obvious lying.  Didn't really predict the Nietzche though," she confessed, glancing to the books as well after marking her page in the little rituals paperback.  Then, up to him:  "What've you been up to?"

Sepúlveda
"Oh shit," he says, "pretzels."

Nietzsche returns to the pile and the Etherite takes up the task of transferring pretzel twists from the bag to his stomach. It seems like he's attempting to stave off any sort of inquiry into or observation about his physical well-being. Seems that way, but it doesn't do him any good.

She can't see him roll his eyes when she tells him it's good to see him, but she can see his chewing slow to a halt. Maybe she has something nestled in her gray matter he's going to have to extract in a minute.

What've you been up to?

Crunch goes another pretzel before he tosses the bag back at her and dusts off his hands. He folds himself to sit cross-legged rather than sprawling out on the grass like a goddamn college kid and bounces crumbs off his shirt.

"Sorting out the connection between immediate and distant locations," he says, "and how to warp said connection so as to be able to Work remotely." You know. The usual. "Where's the other one?"

Margot
The Doc was studying Correspondance, it seemed, and when he said as much Margot's attention sharpened a bit more.  Specifically the bit about working from a distance.  She could be seen considering that, almost with a dab of envy (how nice would it be not to have to go to the actual scene of a murder and try to find a bloodstain to summon a victim from-- if only she could speak to the dead from the comfort of her own living room.)

"Huh," she sufficed to say again, rather than really speak her mind on the subject, then nodded appreciatively and looked around when he inquired where the 'other one' was.  When she didn't see him she shrugged.  "Probably studying and practicing, like one does."  It seemed to be the theme these days.  She reached for the pretzel bag herself and popped one into her mouth before shuffling the books all back into her bag and closing up the notebook she'd been writing into as well.  That, pencil in the coils, tucked away as well.  That done she leaned forward over her knees, which were bent up into the air, and began pulling the laces of her own shoes.

"I've been unlocking the secrets of Life and Spirit," she said casually and with a small grin to match the twist of humor in her voice.  She'd glanced over and started pulling off her shoes, followed soon by socks.  "With your help, of course.  But I'm deciphering what I'm supposed to do with those secrets."

Toes curled into the grass, finding it cooler here at the bank where the riding mowers didn't clip as close to the dirt for the sun to steal all the shade.  "Do you just... Work for yourself?  I mean, I know what I'm doing is all tied up in my Goddess, but what about people like you without that diety?"  A pause, then, caveat:  "Ned's obsessive puzzle-solving is another story, I'm not talking about that one."

Sepúlveda
At twice her age, there are loads of things Sepúlveda can do that Margot can't that may or may not cause her envy. He's already aware of their class differences and the visceral reaction she has to flashes of exorbitance, near as strong as her reactions to stressful situations. He is not aware that she might be experiencing something akin to covetous thoughts.

It would be something he could understand, though. He was nineteen once. Granted, at nineteen he was studying biochemistry at DU and had a newborn daughter to worry about, couldn't do half as much as Margot could as far as Work goes. He likes to remind the two of them that he didn't just open his eyes one morning capable of melting walls and turning mailboxes into trees and whatever the hell else he does with his free time.

She starts to clarify what she means, and Sepúlveda shifts his hip to extract his flask from his back pocket. Glug.

"Do you remember what I told you about Avatars," he asks, "the night I showed you two dunderheads what Quintessence is?"

Margot
"I remember what you said about the types of Essences that people have," Margot mused thoughtfully.  She tucked her socks into her shoes, then set her shoes neatly in the grass next the square of blanket.  She'd glanced over to Sepúlveda, then looked out toward the pond.  Intently at the grasses and mud along the shore, specifically.

"I know that they're different not just in their relationship, but they're a part of what your Magick is, what your Essence is, where it all comes from.  Which is why everyone's perception and ability is different."

Yeah, that would about summarize it, kid.

[Frog Huntin'!  Perception + Alertness]

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

Sepúlveda
"Well..."

Whatever it is she's doing, she can do without having to explain herself. The last time they met at the edge of the water, Margot sensed a dead body at the bottom of the lake. It turned out to be a skeleton with no lingering spiritual agenda.

"You also have to take into account people's refusal to admit when they're wrong. That has as much to do with their perception and abilities as how their avatar appears to them. So long as I don't become, eh, uninspired, you know, lazy, mine leaves me alone."

Margot
"So it's a Demon and a Muse both..."

She felt a scolding for analogies in the static of the air, but those seemed only to come with half a heart if ever at all despite the warnings they've received about drawing dumb analogies before.  Somewhere in the mud she spied a peek off smooth green skin shining through-- just a glimmer, and she felt elated like she'd just accomplished what a hawk would in spying a rabbit in the fields below.

Only she didn't swoop in for the kill.  She did keep her eye on that spot, though, for later.  It wasn't moving anytime soon but she didn't want to lose track of it.

"That relationship can change, though.  Like.... what if it were to catch you, but the instead of just shaking you up and setting you loose to go back to work it kept a hold of you and that's the way it was from there on out?"

Pen
(Life ain't easy, sing the Fates,
One by one they sing: Life ain't fair.)

Enter a long-limbed runner, one Pen. Pen whose appearance is always a myth-whittled thing, asking for oils and canvas or gouache and wood, is this coming 'round the bend: Burnished curls braided into a crown, bangs a rake of embers, curling around her ears, and she's been running hard enough and long enough that there's a glow to her skin and the suggestion of a flush to her cheeks and her lungs are bellows and air is transformative air is flux air can be coaxed into Fire or Matter air can be cajoled into Gold and there's nothing gold about Pen's color scheme. Short shorts which nonetheless are possessed of pockets and a thin but long long almost covering the shorts moon-gray t-shirt for a band called Sapsorrow.

(Girl's gotta fight for her rightful share, say the Fates.
They wanna know: What'cha gonna do when the chips are down?
They gloat: Now that the chips are down?)

This wood-block piece of art across the chest, roiling waves and an arm and a chalice with a flower. The hippiest thing. Stark. An earbud in an ear, another earbud dangling, and the mp3-player is tucked away in her bra.

(What'cha gonna do when the chips are down?

Now that the chips are down?)

Monochromatic, Pen: or almost. There's color at her fingers and at her wrist, little droplets of light spraying out scattering where a lance of the late afternoon light hits just so; Millais-vibrant color, on fire. Rings jewels things a Hermetic will wear.

(Help yourself, the Fates sing.

Hell with the rest.)

Her footfalls are steady, drumbeat rhythm boom and boom and boom and thud and thud and thus and fleet-footed be light be Mercury be swift be steady be a drum.

(The Fates are bold:

Even the one that loves you best.

What'cha gonna do when the chips are down?)

She's getting tired and she's circling toward water; it's always water, isn't it? Water which is the one element to dare shape your image back at you: A challenge. Look at this. What is it.

Some runners hold their mp3 players, but Pen is not doing that. Pen is holding a bottle of water, and it is sloshing, sloshing, and she'll be near enough Andres and Margot to notice them in T-minus. But does she have advance warning; does the air suggest them to her before she sees them?

Let's see.

[Am I aware?]




Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 8) ( success x 1 )

Sepúlveda
In t-minus the cavalry will arrive and he'll have reinforcements. In the meantime, it's just him and his former student and her ceaseless questions. And her frog hunt. Or whatever the hell she's doing.

Margot can practically hear him roll his eyes at the analogy but the eye-rolling keeps him from lashing out at her. Gives him the strength to uncap his flask and take another big swig.

"That would defeat the purpose of the entire relationship. The Avatar can only achieve Ascension through the practitioner's expanding enlightenment, so locking me in a dreamscape or, eh, whatever the fuck analogous situation you just tried to describe, it's not... it's not likely. I've never heard of anyone getting trapped in a dreamscape because of a Seeking, not unless they were already in a Quiet episode or something." Sip. "Demon and Muse..."

Margot
For all of her gold and fire Penelope was difficult to miss.  Margot was so focused on the frog, however, that she wasn't even mindful of what Magickal tickle or familiar sense of Resonance might be on the horizon (or nearer).  The Hermetic would be a welcome sight, but only after she'd drawn the little witchling's attention to her first.

Conversation, though, that didn't require eyes.

Margot shook her head a little as though she was going to correct her mentor's statement.

"That's not what I was saying."

Oh, look at that.

"I didn't mean that your Avatar was going to catch you and hole you up forever.  I meant, what if it caught you but kept close?  Changed the nature of how the relationship works entirely?  Or, perhaps it would even change the nature of the Avatar itself.  What if instead of being shadows on the wall and in the edges of eyes it kept close like a cloak on your shoulders?  Empowered instead of drove?"

She paused, then added in a somewhat self-conscious manner:  "I mean, it could potentially..."

Pen
(Eurydice sings, Oh my aching heart.
And the Fates keep on her,
What'cha gonna do when the chips are down?)

The freezing, ice-rime touch of augury, of fatalism just before it becomes numbing, wafts through the air; does resonance waft? No; it's a note, like the smell of grass, of water, of the air full of ozone. The grisly blood-splattered gut-strung note coupled with a steadiness an even-keeled something a hand that won't rock or waver too. Together a pair of ominous signatures, but Pen knows them like she knows little duck fluff-butts are cute (they simply are), and if either of them made her aware of omens they'd likely know; Pen is a woman of emotive countenance.

(Take if you can.
Give if you must.
Ain't nobody but yourself to trust,
the Fates say.)

Once she knows what to look for it doesn't take long for her sharp eyes to pick them out, an Impressionist painting on a blanket by a pond, and ducks in the duck pond beyond a child much further with his parents running at the ducks flinging a stone at them and squealing with laughter. It's funny how sounds can make certain planes seem otherwhere elsewhere.

She leaves the path, cutting across the grass, and slows. Slows, while calling out, "Hey, fellows!"
















Pen
(Man I do not know what's up with the ginormous blank space. I typed that sh' in the window!)

Sepúlveda
(Jove hates the soft return tag)

Sepúlveda
[awareness!]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )

Sepúlveda
That's not what I was saying.

Even with the sunglasses in place Margot can see the frown take over her mentor's entire face. He sucks on an eyetooth and settles in as if for story time. It's not possible for him to frown any harder the more she talks, so he sighs and scratches at his beard.

"Only you would come up with the idea of avatars giving out hugs."

Wait a minute. Here comes a distraction.

"PENELOPE," he says as he springs to his feet. "HELP, THE CHILD IS TALKING NONSENSE."

noel-lurk
[I need to fix that soft return thing... someday.]

Grace
Grace is not so put-together as Pen, who walks (runs?) into the scene as if out of a painting. The slight woman in her jeans-and-black-tee getup would have run her clothes ragged if not for the intervention of others who keep supplying her with gifts.

Mostly this is Elliot's doing. Chances are he has a box full of copies of her favorite tee shirt that he keeps replacing as need be.

She also doesn't so much walk or run into the scene as much as stumble upon it, looking up from her digital reverie only because Dr. Sepúlveda has just shouted to Pen that the child is talking nonsense.

People almost always talk nonsense. But it is sometimes interesting to hear what kind and style of nonsense it is. So, she heads in the general direction of the shout.

Margot
[Apologies for that delay y'all!  I had company drop in for a minute and then went to put food in my face but my laptop died and yeah and *types*]

Margot
She wasn't so pale-faced as she was in the colder months when she hid away from the sun-- Northern European (read: white as hell) though she may be she was picking up a bit of a tan all the same-- rituals tied to the earth demanded more time outdoors, after all.  Still, summer's signs did nothing to lessen the impact of her blush-- magenta cheeks and even those ears too.t

"I didn't say hug--," she started to insist, looking away from the frog (who would promptly dig itself away into the mud, out of sight, of course) and back to the man sharing the blanket with her (her professor?  hopefully they weren't dating.).  Penelope's calling to them cut her off, had her looking quickly to see who hailed them, distracted from whatever defense she was going to try to make from herself.

"Hey--," she began to greet, but was cut off by Andres leaping to his feet and yelling loudly toward the red-haired runner.  She lifted one arm up to protect her side from any errant elbows or other angles that may have clipped her when he sprang, then sighed and shook her head and grabbed a fist full of yogurt-coated pretzels to munch on while waiting for the temporary and tiny stormcloud of teenaged indignance to dissapate quietly away.

Pen
Up springs Sepúlveda, Pen smiles deeply at him. Look; it carves dimples, long, into her cheeks; the color of her eyes is an uncertain one, today, difficult to decipher; the dark t-shirt, the heightened color of her cheeks, the sky as Phaeton puts the Sun's chariot through its paces - these all contribute.

Once she has reached the pair of them, Pen reaches out to take Andrés' elbow and, keeping a courteous difference because she is sweaty, will go in for a cheek kiss-by-the-air. "It's been too long, Andrés."

The smile is back - and easy, and wide - for Margot. An elegant loft of her eyebrows is also eloquent, see: is this the child? Good humor.

"I take it you mean you have a disagreement. Hello, Margot. How is Yorick? What were you two talking about?"

Approaching: Grace - who can't just approach, can she? Flutters like butterfly wings which'll shift and shake the city walls downward.

Grace
Margot is the child, a fact that, when Grace finds out, causes her to smile a bit. "He does like to claim that people are being nonsensical. I don't know that people have another way to be, really."

"Hey, guys," she says, finally introducing herself in a way, after inserting herself into the conversation. "Nice to see you."

A bird catches her attention then, a quick flash, and her eyes dart to track it, such that she gives off the impression of someone not present for the conversation... not really. She tries hard enough, but alas.

Sepúlveda
Sepúlveda doesn't do courteous even if he has, from time to time, executed distance as part of his social protocol. When she takes his elbow he mirrors the gesture, the opposite hand going to her shoulder like to steady himself against the mild height difference. If they're going to air kiss like Europeans, it's got to be bilateral.

"July, you know? Useless month."

The Hermetic and the teenager, by extension, are spared the Etherite's interpretation of the misunderstanding by the sudden appearance of Grace. Her proclamation has him pointing one skinny finger at her.

"I do," he says. Know, that is. They all have the distinction of being in the presence of a paragon of sense, don't you know.

Margot
Pen approached and asked what they were speaking about after greeting The Doc, and Grace appeared not too far behind.  The sudden appearance of two other mages had her raising her eyebrows suspiciously.  She pulled a spiral notebook from her messenger bag and tugged the number two pencil from its rings.

"Hey Grace, hey Penelope," she offered to both of them and turned about on the blanket, remaining the only person still seated on the ground and not appearing to have any intention of standing up anytime soon.  Bare feet settled back on the blanket when she'd turned to better face the angle from which the two approached (that is to say, not the damn pond), and she propped the notebook up on her thighs to start writing a couple of words-- a thought for later.

She looked up to Penelope specifically to answer the questions that had been posed.

"Yorick's a happy handsome rabbit, he's well."  The pencil moved to gesture to Andrés with the eraser.  "We were talking about Avatars, mostly."  You know, philosophical Mage stuff.

Pen
Pen smiles at Grace, too, one of those touch-the-eyes smiles, a candescent woman, who then while the hellos are happening takes a draught of her water bottle. The water becomes water-light when she lifts it; her long throat works. There are no necklaces today, or right now, only the many rings, only studs in her ears. Some water escapes; dribbles down the water bottle's neck when she swings it, traces a line over her Mount of Venus and then her wrist. When Pen brushes her bangs away from her forehead, she leaves behind a smear of water.

"What of them? Their nature and function?" Mage philosophical stuff, aka Order of Hermes catnip. Pen could just roll around in Mage philosophical questions in a frenzy of happiness, if she were a cat who could roll around in intangible concepts and abstract ideas.

Grace
Mind you, this is the guy Grace once caught stark naked in an invisible van performing blood tests. Sensical is not the word she would use to describe Dr. Sepúlveda.

Unhinged, maybe. Confusing, yes.

Her eyes actually find him, and she smiles at him. "July isn't useless. It's about the only month where it isn't freezing here. Tell me you don't love the fact that it's not snowing."

"And yeah, what about Avatars?"

Speaking of Mages and catnip...

Sepúlveda
"I don't love the fact that it's not snowing."

So there.

Margot
"Uhm...," Margot glanced up between the three people standing and blushed again.  At least this time it wasn't the bright obvious reaction, but just a pink tinge.  She looked down at the notebook again, wrote a little more, and then paused with the pencil point still on the page when she spoke.  "Well, about their purpose.  And nature.  And how that nature could change but--," and she glanced briefly to Andrés here, as he was was contrary toward Grace (he was a hobbiest in the art, it seemed).  Frowned just a touch, but continued with the faint tone of a student answering a question that they were only about 75% certain they were correct on.

"--but how the purpose can't and won't."

Perked and interested in the nuances of Mage philosophy though others may be, Margot didn't much care for being behind podiums, in spotlights, or really in or on any kind of 'spots' in general.

The notebook was closed back up again, whatever thought that was written down being sufficiently recorded for her to revisit another time.  It tucked back into the messenger bag and Margot took a drink from her own water bottle before, at last, rising to her feet as well.  She'd turned to give her left shoulder to the conversation and her right to the pond.  Back to skimming the shore for frogs.

Pen
"Ooh. Interesting. And what do you believe, Andrés?"

He is a doctor in the Society of Ether, after all. What do they believe, if one thing? Pen has not had in-depth philosophical discussions with enough of Andrés's tradition mates to know, it seems - or she is interested in people on an individual basis.

Grace
"I don't even know what the purpose of my Avatar is, much less whether it's changed. I've heard they sort of travel from person to person as we live and die, but I don't know if I really... Well, I have no data to prove that."

Or anything related to her Avatar, for that matter. It probably exists. She has had Seekings and all...

"Maybe your Avatar's purpose hasn't changed, but that doesn't necessarily apply to everyone? Just throwing that out there. I know nothing."

Sepúlveda
Brave woman, Pen, asking the guy who can't shut the fuck up for longer than a few seconds what he believes.

While Margot and Grace discuss the purpose of the Avatar and whether or not it changes, Andrés scratches the back of his neck and aims his sunglasses up towards the sky. It isn't a beseeching posture but it sure looks like it from a certain distance. The moment passes and he returns his attention to Pen.

"I maintain--through science, Penelope, not belief--that the purpose of the Avatar, unless it's gone inverted, is to push the practitioner towards Ascension, and its nature is determined before the Awakening, and the only thing that changes is the practitioner's understanding and application of that understanding."

Pen
"Hmm." There is a gleam, see, to the eyes; the same Mystery that is under whatever is luminous on the surface of a dark pool; it could be pleasure; or mischief; or worship; or celebration; it is present; blooms into another curve of her mouth, something quick and - like most things about Pen - honest. He maintains through science, not belief.

"Grace, Margot -- how do you two define an Avatar's nature?"

Margot
What Grace had to say about her Avatar, how she barely knew it, drew Margot's curiosity and gaze both.  Then, back to the Doc, who had the floor to answer Pen about his beliefs of Avatars.  His answer, like every other speaking bit had here between the Awakened, was listened to and heard just as clearly.  She looked at him for a few moments before blinking wide-set hazel-colored eyes and asking (genuinely, mind you, not testingly):

"What determines the nature of the Avatar before you even Awaken to it?  How does that get shaped?"

She was still listening, certainly, but leaned down and went about the task of re-socking-and-shoeing her feet.  Pen wanted to know what her definition of an Avatar's nature was, and all Margot could do was shake her head.  "I just know mine.  Anything else is a theory or a guess."

A short answer-- she wanted to hear what her mentor had to say about how pre-awakened life impacted Avatars and Magick.

Grace
Margot isn't asking her, and Grace honestly hasn't a clue. But she'll blurt out something anyway. "No fuckin' idea."

"It's good that you know yours. It's nice to know somebody does. My Avatar once dumped me in the middle of Wheel of Fortune with Pat Sajak and Vanna White. I don't know what's up with it, honestly."

"But, I mean, the doc's answer does kind of ring true. I don't usually sit down and chat with my Avatar, I only really interact with it when it's in the middle of pushing me onward."

Sepúlveda
The fingers on Andrés's left hand waggle like he's about to conjure up something consensus-breaking. Those of you playing along at home will notice the wedding band has not reappeared since its removal prior to the Amaranthine Laboratory heist. At this rate, it's not coming back.

In a moment the waggling ends, and he points at his student.

"Pack up the pretzels," he says. "I have a book for you," the pointing finger starts to bob, keeping time with his thoughts, "back in the room. It's not Nietzsche, but I think it'll put some shit in perspective for you. Come on."

Pen is given a fist bump. Grace... well, they do better the fewer words they spare each other anyway. He's on the fast track to exiting stage... over there.

Pen
"Have you never learned about Essences then?" Pen is curious, see.

The question is directed toward both Margot and Grace, again, although her eyebrows flick upwards (good humor, again; a shiver of surprise, intrigue) when Grace describes one of her interactions with her Avatar.

A beat, and, "Andrés, you should take he to the ranch and show her that library, if you haven't already."

Her pocket vibrates, and she ignores it for a moment. Reaches up to fix the earbud still in her ear, and she absolutely fist bumps Andrés. Watch out for the rings. There is an explode-y finger twinkle, too. Pyooooo. Crshhh.

Grace
Grace doesn't get a fist bump, and Grace doesn't really care. She would probably stare at his fist, if offered, unsure of what to do with it.

"I've heard what other people say about Essences, yeah. That's a bit different than knowing it from first-hand experience, though. Sounds a lot to me like a personality test."

And, she knows, they are mostly wrong -- trying to categorize people who are spectral into binary boxes.

Margot
Let it be known that Margot can keep up with conversation.  She kept track of what was being said and what needed to be answered fine.  It was just the social pressures that she didn't fare especially well with.  Luckilly things academic, like philosophy and 'what you know', were more her wheelhouse.

For Grace:  A hard-to-place stare at the story about Wheel of Fortune as a Seeking.  Disbelief and humor and confusion and curiosity.  What?  "That's... strange.  And ambiguous.  That could be anything."  A pause before she offered up more information about her own in turn.  "My Avatar is the Goddess Andraste.  It's all... ancient war and victory and divination and things of that like.  Way more direct."

At this point the Doc gestured to her and advised that she gather her things, he had a book for her and apparently that meant they were going to get it right now.  She didn't disagree, though, and instead shrugged and finished pulling on and tying her shoes.  The messenger bag strap was pulled across her shoulder and chest and as she did this she spoke to Pen's question.

"I have, I know what those are.  I get that there are types, but how people come to their Avatars and the relationship beyond is varied in big ways.  My Avatar's nature is Victory and Prosperity-- that's what we strive toward.  Chances are that Grace's Avatar's nature is just a little different, given its sense of pop culture."  She glanced toward Grace, grinned just briefly, then lifted a hand to wave at the both of them.

"See you guys around."

Sepúlveda
[thanks for the scenes, you maniacs <3]

Pen
"I can understand why you'd think they sound like personality test answers," Penelope says, waving to Margot as well. "Give Yorick a carrot from me," she says, and then, "It seems as though it might be nice to have a seminar at the ranch sometime... well, perhaps 'seminar' isn't the right word. A kaffeklatch, a discussion group, topic: Avatars. Or a certain Sphere. Then we could all benefit from the different experiences and knowledge the people of this city have to bring to the table."

Grace
"I like that idea. The discussion group," she says, not really the seminar. Grace can't imagine herself going to a seminar.  "I can just sit and talk about Entropy all day long, I have to say. Might be hard getting me to shut up,"

This comes from personal experience. Mike never tries to get her to shut up when she goes on about it, though. On the contrary.

"Well. As long as people aren't like 'No, it is exactly like this, and no other way.' I can't say I've seen too much of that in Denver, though."

Pen
Pen grins. "Well, since you know your flaw, you can be mindful. Ars Fortunae is a fascinating subject -- I think we might have touched on it the first time we met, at that restaurant, now that I'm thinking of it."

Her voice drops, confessional, and she leans closer to Grace. "I have been considering getting little fliers out to some people about a 'Spirit Club.' 'Spirit Club: for Those interested in discussing the Cosmology of the Ethereal, Shadowy, and Otherworldly, and Denver's haunts.' Because a few of our brethren here have asked me if I have any skill with that Art -- I do not -- and ... I think Nicholas," and yes, Pen sounds, as she always does, besotted when she says his name; says it soft and special: a treasure, "would like to just get together with other people interested in the Art of Spirit and shoot the shit. I was thinking Alexander, Margot, Kiara, Nicholas. But I haven't yet hit upon the right way to anonymously set up this club and lure them all to it so they can talk."

The corners of her eyes crinkle, and she shrugs.

Grace
"Unfortunately, I don't know jack about any spirits save for Thakky, and that only because he... it? Tried to crawl out of a movie at me. Why does it have to be anonymous? You could just tell people: 'Hey, you know what would be a good idea? Spirit Club. Like Fight Club, except without all the fighting and hypermasculinity.' It would be great."

Grace, of course, is all about being blunt as a sledgehammer. She doesn't see the point in anonymous luring when one has the option of directness.

"Like, you want it to be a present? A surprise?"

Pen
"Right," Pen says, with a nod. Pen is: not sneaky, by nature or inclination.

Her phone vibrates again, and this time she takes it out.

"On that note, I need to keep running. We should get together for dinner soon, Grace, bring some things to the ranch house and share or something."

Grace
"Oh, sure! That sounds great. I need to get with you and talk about... stuff anyway," she says, eyes going far-off again. Now that she thinks about it, yeah, Pen needs to know some things.

"I will bring food, we can consume it. Cookies, at least, because everybody likes cookies. Except for those vegan carob ones I got once, ugh. Pen, do not ever buy vegan carob cookies, you won't get rid of them."

Not even vegans eat those things. She tried to get Sam to, but no. Mr. I'm Currently Being Devoured By Unreality didn't want any. Figures.

Pen
"Noted about the vegan carob cookies. I'll see you later," Penelope says, her eyebrows shifting with amusement at the warning against vegan carob cookies. There is a hand lift; the rings glitter, lake-light - evening-light, shivering in their cold glamour; she brushes at her burnished color-of-burning bangs and then jogs off and away. The jog becomes, after a deep steeling breath, a loping run.

Strive, strive, strive.