Ian
The day was pleasantly warm, if a bit cloudy. Above the trees, the sky was soft and grey. Only a week ago, there'd been blood splattered in the grass by the tennis courts, but it had long-since been washed away. Today there were no monsters hiding in the bushes. There was just the interwoven threads of urban and natural life that always existed here.
Ian wasn't by the tennis courts today. He was sitting lotus-style in the grass near Grasmere Lake underneath the overhanging branches of an oak tree. Above him, the leaves whispered softly in the wind, and he could smell the cool alkaline of the lake water. At present his eyes were closed; his body relaxed in its meditative pose. The grass tickled gently at his bare feet.
He was aware, of course, of the presence of other bodies. People walking, talking, playing. They passed him by on the trail or ran through the grass at his back. He let the presence of their patterns exist within his awareness without needing to look at them.
Grace
[Awareness!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Serafíne
Also: awareness.
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 8 ) Re-rolls: 2
Grace
[ lol ]
Serafíne
Ian: meditating, lotus-posed, aware but also closed-off. Remote, see.
Strangers divert themselves around them, drag blankets through the grass for a late-week picnic, change their choice of frisbee-lawn, come running after any toddlers who appear to be on a collision course. We live with certain rules of behavior. Among these: don't bug people who are doing yoga or whatever that shit is in the park.
Someone else here, not far away really, not so meditative either. Still, there are similarities. She is aware of every-fucking-thing and also sits with her legs crossed. Not lotus-style though, plain old criss-cross applesauce.
Green smoothie on the worn wooden planks of the picnic table she inhabits, plastic cup sweating in the heat. Leather journal laid open on her bare thighs, elbow digging into what meat remains, cheek cradled in the heel of her palm, an ink pen in the other hand, the shadow of the nib neat where it hovers above the page.
Caught between: between things, between places, between thoughts.
There.
Grace
Every now and then, Grace rides her bike. It's good to keep in shape, and apparently it's also good to throw at horrible dog monsters, in Jo's opinion. Grace won't be resorting to the bike-as-a-weapon principle any time soon, but hey, it's a great form of a getaway.
She seems to dodge people and things along the path without having to pay much attention, and perhaps people wonder -- if not that, what is she paying attention to?
Today, it's the weird.
Vampires, dog monsters -- this park has gone insane.
But it's not anything horrible she picks up on. It's Sera, sitting at a picnic table. Of course she pedals over. It's been a while. And the last time -- it wasn't a time for talking.
When she arrives, she tilts her head, as if trying to figure something out about the Cultist, and then: "Hi. What's up? Besides clouds."
Ian
[Awareness]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 4, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )
Serafíne
Sera knows Grace is coming, has to know Grace is coming, always seems to know where everyone is, and there is a strange and rather precise sort of awareness livid in the air around her as the bike gets - closer and closer. Climbs off the path and onto the grass - trampled here because so many people come to picnic.
Maybe Grace reaches out and balances herself against the frame with a spare hand on the picnic table. More likely, she drops her legs from the pedals to the ground, sliding ever-so-slightly off the seat, straddling.
Creature that she is, Sera does not look up until Grace greets her, and then - she does look up. Somehow she is already oriented in that direction, something about the cant of her chin, the angle of her neck.
Smiles: quiet, compressed, spreading, slow.
Lovely.
Which angles into a rather private smirk when Grace says besides clouds. That joke doesn't seem to match Sera's particular brand of humor. Neither does it surprise her from Grace.
"Hey Grace. Writing a song, planning a trip, letting the world in. How are you?"
Ian
He'd been in the park for a while now. Probably close to an hour, though in his current state time seemed to pass differently. Fast, slow, standing still. There is a nexus at which all things intertwine. Ian wasn't so much not thinking about the time as he was not thinking at all.
But he wasn't asleep, for all that he might have looked it. (No, his posture was too straight.) And there were familiar notes of resonance dancing in the background, alongside the voices of playing children.
His coming out of the trance was gradual. First a slow roll of his neck, then he lay back in the grass and unfolded his legs. Then he opened his eyes and looked up at the sky.
After a while he rolled up to his feet and walked over to the picnic table where Grace and Sera sat, talking. He didn't say anything when he sat down on the opposite side, but he cupped his jaw in his palm and leaned an elbow on the table, smiling quietly. Watching them, as though he found their actions interesting.
Grace
"Building a robot and playing with my office plant," she responds, as if those two had anything to do with one another.
"That doesn't exactly explain how I'm doing, more the what... I'm really good though."
She steps off the bike, lets it crash to the ground. Whatever -- it's a bike. If it weren't built to be used, Grace wouldn't have bought it.
Ian's getting closer, a thing she notes by the resonant feral sensation. She doesn't quite turn to greet him yet though, lets him sit at the table first. And what he is doing to her, she does right back. She looks at him, little quizzical smile on her face, cupping her jaw in her palm (though there's nothing to rest her arm on).
Serafíne
"Mmm." The noise Sera makes is: warm, and quiet, and affectionate and just a little bit removed. As if she were both here but elsewhere. Floating in the middle of the lake, perhaps, the sun warming her face, the world both expanded and constricted to the boundaries of water and sky, dampened, insulated, lapping - gently.
"I'm glad you're well."
That same reaction as the bike crashes, though it is sharpened. Maybe surprised. This bright-edged hook that darts to one spinning wheel then rises to bank off Ian's smile.
This flash of dark script, a rather chaotic hand, tangled with doodles ornate enough to be a match for the many dark tattooes framing Sera's hand as she drops the pen into the center of the spine and closes the journal around it.
There's Ian - looking and Grace being kind of weird and looking too, monkey-see, monkey-do style.
Sera: who is golden, sunbronzed, sweating faintly, sharper now - leaner see? Huffs out this low laugh.
"Fucking hell. You two know each other, right? Or did you contract some brain-eating disease and lose all memories of each other and now need a new introduction?"
Elijah
[oooh, people? I'm not looking for them, but if I notice!]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )
Elijah
One of the benefits of being blind was that Arionna didn't have to actually look at some of the things that Elijah eats, because let's face it- Elijah ate garbage. Delicious, chili covered garbage, but chili dogs had no nutritional value and despite the fact that he'd seen a documentary on what went into hot dogs he didn't seem to actually care. The thing about Denver was that it lulled you into a false sense of security that things might be of a higher quality than they actually were. They were not, in fact, of a higher quality. They were just a dollar more expensive than the dogs in New York City.
Not that he was aware of this. He'd never been to the big apple.
But he was, in fact, out with a friend and enjoying the fact that today wasn't completely crappy. He had a recital coming still, so it was nice to spend some time completely away from a harp. And darling dear, Arionna had likely learned her fill of what was interesting about harps (very little) versus what is pretty straight forward (most of it.) But? He was talkative. Always talkative. Clad in jeans and a V neck and a pullover sweater. Pocketwatch in the kangaroo pocket (because pockets). But, there he is, making his way down the nearest path when he feels…
Something.
It's enough that it makes him pause. Makes the blond a little confused as to whether or not he's noticing something magical or he's got indigestion.
Ian
"I'd like to see that. The robot."
He was wearing a white v-necked t-shirt and a pair of dark jeans. Fairly standard casual clothes. Likely, he'd been walking through and stopped to meditate on a whim. (And point in fact, his hat and shoes were currently taking up residence inside the crook of a tree root.)
To Sera, he offered a lofted brow. Then to Grace (playing along) he said, "I'm not sure. What's your name again?"
Grace
"He started it!" Grace exclaims, in mock-defense.
"Okay, Ian," she says, emphasizing his name because she does know him. "How are you today? I heard the last time you were here, you patched up some people? Good thing you were there."
Arionna de la Babin
[awareness]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (6, 7, 7, 8, 8) ( success x 5 )
Arionna de la Babin
[Alertness]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 5, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )
Grace
"You can come see my robots any time." Robots. Plural. "And you know where."
"And, I am not telling you my name, you will have to guess."
Arionna de la Babin
She can smell it though. She wouldn't consider herself much of a snob when it came to food, but hotdogs were not exactly a food she found enjoyable. She had eaten plenty of them in her time, and if anything, she'd rather keep her distance. Except with Elijah is eating them of course, and she's walking along beside him.
Her hair had been cut to make it easier to handle now, and her eyes ventured off into the distance, looking through people instead of at them. Unlike those with some etiquette and care for others, Arionnna didn't bother to wear glasses to hide her lack of vision; she just expected people to handle it on their own.
When Elijah pauses, Ari stops a moment after, his footsteps having faded, and she tilts her head a little in his direction. "If you are sensing what I am, there are familiar people nearby." Because she just felt it, more powerfully than she could smell or hear right now. All of them just washed over her. Though even she recognized something different...something new.
Arionna simply felt colder. Sometimes, even her skin felt colder. She put a hand on Elijah's arm, sliding the red tip of her cane in the rough direction of where the sensation seemed the strongest. "That way, I think."
Ian
"Chastity, right? It's something biblical like that." His lips widened into a grin, but he dropped the act quickly. Apparently Jo had spoken to Grace about the creature they'd encountered last week, and Ian's subsequent assistance. He pressed his lips together and made a soft sound. Serious and thoughtful.
"I think they would have been okay, regardless. Jo was in bad shape though. I guess it was lucky I was nearby."
(Not so lucky for him, really. He'd ruined half of a very expensive suit.)
Serafíne
Something somewhere in there makes Sera breathe out sharply, this quiet, self-contained little huff. Whatever is going on, bouncing back and forth between Grace and Ian makes her skin prickle in a way she would struggle to define if you asked her to define it. She doesn't like it though. Gives them both a sharp line-of-a-look and reaches for her green smoothie and untucks her legs from her not-quite-lotus position. Drops her feet to the bench seat in front of her.
Gladiator sandals in silver-trimmed leather criss-cross her calves right up to the middle of her thighs.
--
This: shifts, though slightly, when Ian's mien and demeanor change. Softens, really - a note of passing concern that comes and then goes, rather without awareness or context. Sera takes a sip of her smoothie, and reaches for her little leather book.
Elijah
[Who am I looking at?]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 4, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )
Grace
Grace flips Ian off. With a huge grin on her face, because that's how she does. "Yup. That's me. Chastity."
Although, let's be honest -- when's the last time she was unchaste? Long ago. Still, much like her real name, it doesn't quite fit.
"It was lucky. I think that was Jo's first taste of weirdness. She'd argued with me before about how some things just can't exist..."
Ian
[Per+Empathy on Sera (Did I say something wrong?)]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (5, 5, 5, 5, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )
Elijah
There is a moment of redirection. He chooses to rely on what it is that Arionna is telling him, and also takes the opportunity to peer into the distance. There were people and when he finally squinted and tilted his head a little to the side he noticed that there was a Grace-shaped person, an Ian shaped person, and Serafine. He could recognize Sera anywhere because she just drew attentions. She was distinct. She was most assuredly herself.
He shot Arionna a glance, a smile that was heard more than seen and he used the corner of his sleeve to make sure he was presentable. Or at least not covered in chili.
"It's Ian and Sera and Grace?" he is already headed that way, "let's go be social."
And so, he walks. Perhaps a little slower than he normally would, but mostly because her legs were shorter than his. He continued on, called out and offered a wave, "was there, like, a meeting nobody told me about?"
A beat.
"Okay, that was lame, hey!" and he bridged the gap his voice didn't quite cover.
Arionna de la Babin
"Seems to be the presence I sensed. Seems entirely like them." Though she was more familiar with Ian's because she had seen him lately. Her lips tightened, but Ari kept her hand on his arm as he walked, at least for the time being. Adjustments took time.
"Incredibly. If there were a meeting, I'd suspect you'd be the first to know. Is there anyone in Denver that you aren't friends with?" He always seemed to know people, or were at least, friendly enough to seem as if he knew them. She was not, on the other hand, and knew it quite well, just as everyone else did.
"I'm not certain being social is an activity I generally engage in, you understand?"
Ian
"She seemed like she handled it fairly well, all things considered."
Jo could have run, after all. Many people would have. She could have curled up into a ball and gone catatonic (no one would have blamed her, really.) But she didn't do either of those things. And Ian didn't say: I hope she's alright, because he already suspected that she was.
Instead he glanced at Sera and tilted his head a bit - this alert, animal expression. He wasn't as adept as she was at this sort of thing (at seeing into people,) but the look didn't escape him. Nor did her body language.
And again, he did not say: are you alright? Instead his eyes softened a little and he got up to walk around to her side of the picnic table. There he sat down beside her on the table, letting the warmth and weight of his presence say what he was not saying out loud. If she didn't like the proximity, he'd slide away a moment later. Otherwise, he set his hand lightly on her lower back.
"Hey guys." This, of course, was for Elijah and Arionna.
Grace
"I heard she threw a bicycle at a dog-thing," Grace says, nods.
It feels... chilly. And this is not the season. So Grace sighs, at the 'hey guys,' and goes to look-see. It could be Alex, right?
But no, no such luck.
The ease with which she was handling the previous social interactions just goes flying out the door now that Arionna has arrived.
"Yeah, hi Elijah. I better, uh... I need to get back, actually."
With that, she goes to right her bicycle again.
Serafíne
Something about what she's doing: reaching for her battered journal, holding her long-neglected kale-and-pineapple smoothie suggests that she is gathering herself. Then Ian is circling the picnic table to take a seat beside her. She doesn't tense; there's no physical objection to his proximity, just a minute, curious flash of her dark blue eyes at his profile. The frame of it against the park's impressionistic blur beyond.
Her lower back is warm on his palm. The sharp little articulations of her spine evident beneath her skin. You'd think she would have a tattoo there, something dark and curled given the tattoos all over her hands and arms, flashing even from her palm when she reaches for something with her left hand but no: merely skin. A sun-born, sun-worshippers remarkably undamaged skin, but she's only 25, and she's magic. Maybe she'll never grow old.
--
Elijah and Arionna arrive and Ian greets them and Sera gives them this spare, ghosting, half-framed kind of smile that stands-in for a greeting.
Then Grace goes from garrulous to, well, not. Sera glances at her. That glance lingers and sharpens, because really, she cannot help herself.
(Per + Empathy: WTF Grace?)
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )
Elijah
[Per+empathy: WTF just happened? Grace?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 5, 5, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )
Arionna de la Babin
[perc+emp - all the cool kids are doing it...and I totally suspect....]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 6, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )
Elijah
[Manip+sub: don't worry, Grace, I got your back. This is totally normal.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 5, 5, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )
Elijah
"Hey," he does catch that something is up, that something feels up, but for once he resides fairly firmly in his realm as a young man in his early twenties. He is a beast that can be observant when he doesn't put his mind to it (and it is true, Elijah can't seem to risk paying attention to something. He notices things when hey aren't screaming at him.) All he notices is this: Grace is in a hurry to leave.
He does, however, catch enough to know that he needs to step up his game.
"Yeah," he says, tone convivial and like he had just remembered something, "oh yeah, you're doing, like, robot things." Even half warbles because Elijah… well… doesn't understand what it is Grace does in a magical sense. "That did seem pretty important, I'm surprised you took the breather as it is."
Arionna de la Babin
Arionna can hear it. Tones have shifted. Before she might not have heard it, might not have noticed. But now she must, and she does. Grace isn't just in a hurry to leave, she's in a hurry leave because of Ari. They never really got along, and they most certainly don't now, but she never truly picked up on such a....deep tone of dislike. There's a twitch of her lips, a lip of a corner. It's amusement, almost, though whether at Grace's reaction or at the little details she's picking up...
Ari pulls her hand away from Elijah's arm. "That won't be necessary, Grace." Because Grace may not acknowledge her, but she will acknowledge the woman. Ari lifts her hand to blindly pat at Elijah's shoulder. "It is, after all, your circle. Hardly seems appropriate for an outside to barge in when all the pleasant conversation was just starting."
"I'll get a cab." She turned, sliding the red tip of ehr cane in front of her lightly, careful of her steps on the way back. Though she does pause to tilt her head and body towards the group. "By the way. Ian. I appreciate the help you provided the other day. " That's really all she needs to say to him. It's a round about way of saying 'Thank You,' but it's how Ari does things.
Ian
"I wasn't there for that part." (The bicycle-throwing.) Ian noted Grace's reaction to Elijah and Arionna's arrival with a look that might have been some combination of questioning and skeptical. He remembered, of course, how Grace and Arionna felt about each other. But he didn't call her out on it. Instead he said, "If you're still at the warehouse, I might come by sometime." Because he genuinely was curious about Grace's robots.
Sera was gathering herself. Perhaps she had somewhere to be or perhaps she was not happy with where she was or perhaps she simply liked to be on the move. Regardless, Ian stayed beside her for as long as she remained. Sat there and touched her in this way that was quietly and casually intimate. Like the way that cats will sometimes sit quietly in a person's space just to be there. (That's what it felt like, too. Like sitting next to a very docile tiger.) Her skin was warm under his palm. Just once, he slid the spread fingers of his hand slowly up and down her spine. Then he let the contact fall away.
"You don't need to go, Arionna." Neither of them did, but Grace hadn't left her departure as open to debate. "We're just hanging out. I like your hair, by the way."
Grace
"Oh, yeah," she says, to Ian. "Come by. I'll make tea or something. We can play laser tag in the arena too, if you like."
Still no response to Ari, but she gives Elijah a nervous smile, and steps back up on her bike, walking it out, and feeling out the pedals first before hitting her stride.
She doesn't even look at Ari. Not once did she even notice that something was off, that she'd cut her hair or enjoys staring through people nowadays. It's as though she's making a clear effort to ignore the fuck out of the woman.
Serafíne
"See you guys."
With all the arrivals and departures and offers of departure, Sera's is pretty low-key. A supple arch of her spine, the bracing of her feet on the seat of the picnic table. Then she's rising up-up-up and jumping (perhaps gracefully?) down-down-down, flatflooted tonight. Green sludge sloshes around her in plastic cup but (clever girl) she keeps it lidded so it doesn't spill.
Another kind of magic.
Seems to include everyone in that see-you-guys though there is a different sort of awareness of Ian than the rest. Subtle, supple. Another glance at Grace then, lashed and quietly banked, empathetic. Love, see, even when Grace is being weird.
Hey, we're all entitled.
Sera lifts her cup by way of farewell as she saunters off.
Who the hell knows where she's going except: away. Away from here.
Serafíne
(Graceful jump? Dex + Ath)
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 5, 5, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )
Serafíne
ish. night y'all!
Elijah
"You don't have to go," he says, he assures but she's walking and he doesn't reach out, doesn't impede Arionna's flight if only because he isn't sure if she's terribly aware of what her surroundings or where she was going. He runs his hands through his hair. Mouth quirked to the side, "I mean, it's not- you're not unwelcome."
He assures, he assures because he believes it.
Arionna de la Babin
She hadn't seen Sera's greet, and if she meant to say farewell to Ari, she hadn't picked up on that either.
Ian and Elijah, they try. They do. She's grateful, even if she doesn't say it. She stops enough, at least to begin with, to respond, if only because neither seem to get it. "It's goo to know that it hasn't been made into a mess. She reached up a little to touch at the strands. "Though I do miss it."
"Grace is not pleased by my presence. If anything, she seems rather disliking of it. I don't see a reason to break up your merry group. I can function quite well without others. She seems far more a social animal, regardless of her quirks."
"But to say that I am not unwelcome is not entirely true, though one can forgive you for thinking so."
Ian
The truth was, Ian had about as much training with guns (laser or otherwise) as Grace did with swords. But despite this, and despite the fact that he'd once told Kalen that laser tag was decidedly not his thing, he laughed and said, "Sure."
Maybe he was getting soft. Maybe he was just getting more competitive.
Sera hopped down from the picnic table, and Ian regarded her as she turned that subtle gaze his way. He didn't say goodnight, but he watched her go for a few moments before letting the conversation pull his attention back.
"If either of you want to go, you can go. If you want to stay, you should stay. You're adults. It's your choice. I'm going to sit here and enjoy the last of the daylight." And with that, Ian lay back across the picnic table and folded his arms under his head, eyes turned up to the clouds. His bare feet rested lightly on the bench beneath him, and the edge of his t-shirt hiked up over the lower part of his stomach.
Elijah
He inhaled. It was slow and it was deep and it was like pushing on a bruise but this was Elijah we're talking about. He either lacks a self-preservation instinct or he is accustomed to pushing on bruises to see if they're still there, push past something that's intense and intent to remind him he's alive but this is a little different. Only a little. He grew to accept things about his friendship with Arionna. The first, of course, being that she was going to hurt him. The second being that he was going to deal with it.
That little reminder, that little note that she'd never be accepted no matter how vehemently someone accepts her (or does he accept her? Does he really? Or does he just pretend that there are truths about Ms. de la Babin that aren't really there?) it isn't ever going to be true. Exhales, eyes and attention wander and there is a slight grin on his face because he is shameless, heavens is he shameless because having a remarkably attractive person lounging in the last rays of sun being that close is enough to make a man's imagination wander.
And oh heavens does Elijah have an active imagination.
He contemplates, takes a look at Ian with a grin and then takes a seat in the grass.
"Sprawling in the grass, Ari… about… fuck… I don't know, seven? Eight feet to your right?"
A beat.
"Also, I've decided I'm going to finally start writing that shit Elijah does because he's bored blog. So, uh, pretty soon I'm gonna start rock climbing, because I will have run out of interesting drinking stories."
Kiara
It's the raised voices that probably alert them, first. A jogger becoming ensnared in an excited dog's leash and the tumble of limbs and paws and the high whine of a startled; injured animal punctuated with startled yelling and a flurry of spontaneous activity.
It's down from them; the distant catch on the late afternoon breeze; carried over. Somewhere close to it though; knitted through with the agitated cries of control your damn dog and if you looked where you were going is a heartbeat - no, not quite a heartbeat but something close. A skittering pulse and then, stronger, the prickling; soothing wash of rejuvenating energy.
Kiara was nearby.
She was appearing around the source of raised voices and agitation down the way; her dark hair sailing out behind her like a curling; heavy banner; dressed in black and navy; a hoodie tied around her lean waist; a set of earphones plugged in and her attention skirting the dilemmas of fellow runners with a private; chin-tucked-low smile. This ghosting glimmer that appears and vanishes as all Kiara's smiles seemed of a notion to do.
The dog; a golden retriever; untangled from its foe watches the Verbena's passing with great solemnity; nose lifted to the air as if it could scent her. A brief tensing of muscles; the stirrings of a growl but then - she's too far; too distant to be the threat she momentarily seemed to be.
Further on; the brunette's momentum slows; dawdles as she catches sight of familiar figures; feels the sense and surety of them. It slows her to a walk; the afternoon sun behind her; outlining the suggestion of flushed cheeks; the lean strength of her arms; the slope of her shoulders.
[Belated thingy!]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (5, 7, 8, 8) ( success x 3 )
Arionna de la Babin
If there is one thing she can appreciate about Ian, it's his attitude. Most of the time. Sometimes even they don't get along. But the point is that his attitude almost makes her smile. Almost. He doesn't sway to one side or the other, doesn't beg or plead, and she can appreciate that quality in someone. Only prey beg.
Grace has gone. She can't feel her presence anymore, and Sera has vanished as well. Since the other has vanished, Ari sees no reason to leave. "Seven feet." She says to herself, turning her body to the right (though she doesn't know how far exactly) and beginning slow steps towards him. She waits until she can feel the bump of the cane tip against his shoulder.Ari waits, just in case she's hit someone else.
The other newcomer gets a lift of her chin and a slide turn of her head. Tonight she's attuned, though tomorrow she'll feel as lost as ever. Adjustments...take time. "Someone ...else?" Because she can't see Kiara. She doesn't know she's there other than what she can hear, smell, and sense.
"Are you ever bored Elijah? When is there time for your boredom?"
Ian
If it was possible to create a circumstance in which Ian might be inclined to beg for something, no one in Denver had yet discovered it. Though he might argue that Arionna's understanding of predator and prey was rather lacking in nuance.
Not that he was thinking about that right now. In fact, he was thinking mostly about the shapes in the clouds, and the way the boards in the picnic table felt against his back: hard and rough and warm from the sun. The lingering effects of his meditation was still present, which perhaps explained his relaxed demeanor (though he often appeared relaxed, even when he wasn't.) If he noticed the way that Elijah looked at him (at the exposed V of his transverse abdominal muscle,) he didn't say anything. Didn't even catch his eyes, at first.
Then Elijah sprawled out in the grass, and Ian turned his head to regard the pair of younger mages as they got settled. At least, until he heard the distant sounds of an argument and felt the drawing presence of Kiara's resonance. Then he turned his head the other way, craning it slightly to get a good look at her as she jogged over. His eyes traced the length of her arms, the cut of her collar bones, the slope of her neck.
Finally he sat up.
"Busy evening," he commented. And when Kiara was within greeting range, he said, "Hey."
Elijah
"I do get bored, that's the problem-" he said, looked up at Ari as she poked him. He tapped her cane back, just to make sure that she felt the vibration and didn't feel the need to poke any further lest he get a little red tip in the face. He had to make sure that he didn't get too terribly damaged, or even more damaged than just grass-stained. "I told Grace and Kalen once that I wanted to be Indiana Jones, but then I just figured I could settle for being a lifestyle writer. you know, fight the whole fear of missing out and going out and doing things. Good, bad, whatever."
He is still looking at people upside down, smile brightens and he has to resist the urge to look like a complete dork and wave while he's looking at Kiara upside down. It was a nice angle to see her from. There was a different feeling, yes, something that catches up with him once she does come up. It's more renewing, more living breathing renewing flushed skin lean strength lines and-
He can see why Jenn does things like this. People are different from a different perspective, or at least more themselves.
"Hey Kiara, what's up?"
Kiara
With Arionna's senses being what they are now, she can likely feel, when she realizes who has drawn close; the sense of the Verbena. There's Kiara's resonance of course; altered now from what it once was. The sense of caustic; inevitable deconstruction has gone from her presence; there's a not entirely unpleasant hum to her now; underlining that rejuvenative energy which has grown stronger since she'd encountered her last; a gentle thrum like that of the earth; as if her pattern were reassuring and reasserting its place in the bigger picture.
She smells like sweat and sunshine and tangled within in; something sweeter.
"Hey, yourself." It's a familiar enough echo to his greeting; Ian's; there's a way she meets his eyes as she tugs her earphones out; threads them around her neck; a dimpled smile that sharpens as she notes Elijah's repose in the grass and mellows, somewhat - adopts a briefly contemplative; concentrated interest in Arionna.
The study feels like something, no doubt. Surprise. Scrutiny. Something between both and yet - not without some degree of warmth; some persistence to break that glacier. "Hey, Arionna." She doesn't hesitate to step up onto the picnic table beside Ian; to nudge him over with this over-the-shoulder glance and settle down beside him; her skin warm everywhere it brushes against him.
"Oh, you know Elijah. Breaking hearts. Starting fights." There's the briefest cant of her head; the hook of slight breathless teasing embedded in there somewhere for him. "The usual."
Arionna de la Babin
"That's who that is. I thought it was familiar." Ari lifted the cane, giving it a light toss to move it further in her hand so that she can sit. She crouches, sliding her hand out in front of her until it felt the grass, and bringing herself down onto it.
"Hello." She finally mirrors. They have both changed it seem, and she was quite alright with that. Denver felt like it was in flux. People were growing, building, changing...and she was starting to attune to it. "How do you get bored? There's plenty to do in the world. There are books, art, playgrounds, amusement parks, movie theatres, plays, dance recitals, live music, television, and of course the ever so stimulating conversations of your fellows. You could always take a moment to listen, you know. Nothing is ever boring then."
Elijah
[Per+empathy- are you insinuating that I don't listen?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 4, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )
Arionna de la Babin
man+sub
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 6, 6) ( success x 2 )
Ian
If Kiara had not yet noticed the slim cane that Arionna carried with her, or the way her eyes refused to focus when she looked at things, she would likely figure it out soon. They'd all gone through changes these past months. Perhaps that was part of what it was to be alive in spring.
Kiara sat beside Ian on the table, and he looked down at the grass with this subtle little smile, leaning forward with his hands wrapped around the edge of the wooden plank. The outer part of his leg pressed against hers - contact that felt warm and a little bit electric. When he looked at her, he let his gaze linger for a long moment.
Then he looked away, and he rolled his lower lip between his teeth.
"If you're really that bored, Elijah, I'm sure I can think of something for you to do."
Arionna de la Babin
[>.> What are you insinuating there Ian? perc+emp]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )
Elijah
"However do you manage," he turns up the southern, grin widening and there he is comfortable and amused and ever-so-pleased, as if being in her presence, however lightly teasing that may be, "I've hit the level of vain that I'm writing an autobiographical travel blog. You wanna take part in the escapades? I still haven't eaten Korean food so I figure that's a good place to start."
But there was the question, as Arionna sits and levels herself into the grass and he looks from Kiara to the other woman to the clouds and he peers at them. They told stories, and even when you weren't looking at things from the other side they were expressive. He looked at the clouds and sthe spaces between into a beautiful, shining, fading blue ombre to something pale and chipper at the horizon during the day or perhaps it was coming close to yielding itself to orange now. Or maybe it would be gray. It would do as it was.
"Listening would imply that I ever stop talking, Ari, and I'm pretty sure that we've already established I never really shut up," she can hear the grin on his face, the light poke. The complete lack of hurt feelings. He tossed his attention- butterfly fleeting fluttering little thing- to Ian. It was enough to make him sit up, to shake the grass out of his hair. Brows raised, expression somewhere between playful and amused and ever-so-pleased.
If you're really that bored, Elijah, I'm sure I can think of something for you to do.
"You promise?"a poke, a prod, the tiniest bits of joy at rising to a challenge of some variety.
Kiara
She does perceive it. There's a certain stillness when she does; a way she resettles her attention so wholly on Arionna with the faintest line between her brows. The change in the other girl's presence; the way she seems to draw the warmth from the day more potently now; the alteration to her hair; the unseeing; unfocused way she looks out - change was and ever should be, inevitable.
Kiara knew it; understood it powerfully but as much as she respected the progression of nature; the change of season and the cycle of life; sometimes; the cost seemed almost cruel. She doesn't ask why Arionna no longer has the use of her eyes; perhaps she knows, in some way, what the answer to that will be.
Perhaps, in her own way, it's a sign of respect. Who knew.
Still, she looks for a moment and then the stillness shifts back and perhaps only Ian, close enough to feel that nuanced shift will know she'd been made awareness; could cut a glance at Kiara's profile and see the registering of it in dark eyes; the tiny, protracted shift of facial muscles in sympathy. In consideration before she's returned; before she's smiling down at Elijah with something akin to bemusement; offered flirtation that feels unadorned; teasing for the simplicity of the gesture.
"You had me at vanity, kid. I'm in."
She pauses, then. "Arionna's right, though. You know sometimes turning down the excess and listening can be the best form of entertainment. Hell, in the right place, with the right company - " She feels, but doesn't look, directly at the man beside her. She feels his attention though, when it returns to her. " - doing nothing but listening can be downright erotic."
Kiara
[*made aware, I can type ya'll.]
Wednesday, June 3, 2015
Danny Returns
Danny
*He had returned, he'd set down gifts for people and then just simply stood there with his eyes closed and soaked in the relaxation. Slowly he made his way to the kitchen, checking things as he went. One hand opened the fridge to see the contents and he pursed his lips slightly in thought. "Hmmm...."
He was dressed properly. The weather wasn't good enough to go out and do anything with really and it was chilly. So he'd turned up in his leather jacket, jeans and boots, a hoody under the jacket and gloves, when he'd gotten inside he removed the gloves and jacket, hanging them up. So now he was walking around in socks and a hoodie, Examining the contents of the fridge.
Grace
Somebody said there were presents. Grace wondered if Danny had brought her another puzzle box or some Pocky maybe, but this? There's a box with her name on it, full of other people's names.
Names of robot manufacturers and tool makers and contacts in the computing industry. Which, hey -- it's much better than Pocky.
Danny would find the place different than the last time he stepped foot here. There were wards which spoke of new people keeping the place. And the permanent presence of a trio of witches has begun to make itself known, if not by resonance then by their habits.
Grace, also, is different, though that's not something she broadcasts by look alone. No, Danny will find her dressed same as ever, in jeans and grey turtleneck -- if he finds her at all.
"Hey! Are you really here!?" comes a voice from the living room. Well, okay, that should make her a lot easier to find.
Danny
He nearly jumped out of his skin hearing a voice, distracted by the new presences and newer sensations. With a chuckle he closed the fridge door, then made his way through to Grace. As he passed her he bent his head to kiss hers on top gently. Then went and found a place to sit down near her.
"I am really back, yes. This leg of the tour has been done, there's talk of maybe doing a bit of Europe over a few months maybe later in the year but we'll see. How are things?"
He sits casually, leaning back on the couch and smiling as ever. His hair unbound and free to hang down his back and shoulders again. On his wrist is the latest of the new gadget watches.
Grace
She lets him kiss her. The Grace he knew before wouldn't have let him do that, but she accepts it without so much as a missed beat. She's holding her box of names, and lofts it up.
"Thanks. I'll see what I can get out of this."
Damn. An iWatchThingy. She really really wants to go into her rant about Apple products right now, but hell. There is a time and place for everything right? Later.
Danny
"Well I'm hoping you have fun finding things out and making new contacts. You never know, you could perhaps one day do something life changing for billions of people. Its all about the first contact though." He smiled, then took a long deep sigh and relaxed further into the couch.
"So what's new?"
Grace
There's a lot of things Grace Evans could do with a list of names and numbers. She could, for example, 'arrange' things such that these people stumble upon the breakthroughs of their lives, it's true. She could also arrange things such that they form the strangest impromptu flash mob ever, and then make their phones moo. However funny the last bit might be... Probably not worth it.
It still makes her smile.
"New? Apparently, it's vampires and dog monsters in Washington Park. We dealt with the vampires though."
Danny
"Kalen told me about the Vampire, he's going to meet someone who's going to assess the threat level or something. He told me." Danny leaned forwards again though and smiled at Grace.
"Things are different here. What's going on?"
Grace
"We have some new people. Or, rather, old people. Not old, like, they're 80 or something, just... The old owner of the place came back from Texas."
She takes up a spot on the couch -- the other end of it.
"And oh really? Kalen told you about the vampire? I'm not too pleased about the vampire myself. But Kalen does what he wants. I just hope he keeps his mind shields up."
Danny
"Well, I've never really had anything to do with them myself either. Or at least I hope not!" He chuckled a bit, then smiled once more as he leaned back.
"So what's this dog thing?"
Grace
"It attacked some of ours -- Jo and Lavinia? I don't know if you've met them yet? But it did a lot of damage. And then Lavinia killed it," Grace says, like she's talking about the weather.
"I don't really know specifics, just 'twisted dog thing'."
Danny
His eyebrows shot up in surprise. "That is fucked up!" He shook his head slightly in disbelief.
"This world never ceases to amaze me, so was it like one of those movie were wolves?"
Grace
"I do not even know. You should talk to Jo, she could probably give you about 50 movie references. They're okay now, luckily Ian was there to patch them up."
This is their world, yes? Where werewolves are a thing that might just attack them in a park and need to be put down?
"It was okay. Definitely not something too terrible."
And that, too, is telling.
Danny
His eyebrows relaxed slowly as he folds his arms across his chest and studies Grace for a while, then slowly he leans forwards. "So, what change did you go through? I've spoken to Kalen, remember? Something has changed in you. What is it? What new revelations have you yet to reveal to us?"
None of his tone was mocking, Grace could do things he hadn't even dreamed possible, but hearing things in Tokyo when some of the techs didn't think he could hear them spoke about some of their studies with various things in the 'mirror'. His eyes remained on her and he relaxed his arms as well.
"So, go on, spill."
Grace
"I learned some things that might only apply to myself, really. Nothing more earth-shattering than the idea that my enemies are afraid of me, and to battle them, I cannot be afraid in return.
"Also, I learned what it feels like to fly around on falcon wings -- not bad! Totally cool, that!"
And she kept those wings, Danny. She feels... different, like that.
Danny
The smile grew, hitting his eyes and lifting them from that deep mahogany to a joyful earthy colour. He nodded and chuckled again.
"I dunno, I go away and everything changes on me! Oh and some of those cards are from New York as well, so hell, you can have a field day looking at their stuff and figuring out new ideas. Is it a good present?"
Grace
"Yeah. Yeah it is. Jo and I were going to build battle robots together, to see who would win in a fight -- Gamera or Godzilla? I have my leg up now," Grace says, and grins.
"Everything changes, always. It is the way of things. Also! Speaking of, you should totally come play laser tag sometime. The room's all set up."
Danny
"I would love to. Set me up with the armour and rifle and I'll find a snipe point," He grinned, "too many hours of Call of Duty on tour. You should have seen it Grace." His hands move to start air sketching high story scrapes, towers of glass and the lights, then he began to tell her about a moonlight night flight over the city in a helicopter and how incredible it all was.
Grace
"Ohh, you might be the sniper, but I'm the sneaky spy. You'll never see me coming," Grace says, and her tone is joking -- but isn't that the way of Grace? Her enemies should be afraid of her.
"Tell me all about it! How was Japan?"
Danny
"It was crazy!" He laughs. "But I love the Japanese now, I got to hang out with Harajuku girls, I got to go shopping with them, I got to hang out... " He shrugs and laughs.
"The crowds there were incredible too, they knew every damned song! I've made a dent on the Japanese circuit, which is cool. But, I am damned glad I'm home now and able to chill out. I slept for the best part of a day when we turned our trucks for home." He leans back into the couch again and spreads his arms out lazily.
"I just slept for nearly the entire flight and then the rides across country from time to time. I've officially been to Hawaaii, but I have no idea what goes on there, I was awake for bout half an hour mebe, then I crashed in the lounge, then it was off to another plane."
Grace
"Damn. I like that though -- the always moving, always something different. It would be nice to get out of here for a while, see something else. Maybe meet that priest Kalen has in Chile."
Because Kalen has a priest in Chile, of course...
"I suppose it wouldn't be too different, though. Every place has its share of dog monsters."
Danny
"Yeah, remind me not to go sitting out there with my six string for a while..." He held one index finger up in the air lazily and smiled again.
"I met Ari, did you know she's gone blind?"
Grace
Grace's eyes widen a touch at the new info about Arionna, or 'Ari' as Danny calls her. "No. I didn't. Then again, I try to stay as far away from her as possible, lest we annihilate each other."
Danny
He nods. "Yeah, she uh, said she made some sort of a pact or something?" His eyes narrow a bit in thinking about it and he frowns with a grimace, then sighs heavily.
"She of course then proceeded to berate me for a long assed time about my just up and vanishing and doing my job."
Grace
"A pact with what? The Devil?"
Wouldn't put it past her...
Grace sighs, looks at a wall. It's easier to deal with.
"Also -- so you up and vanish. Is it her business?"
Danny
"Not that I'm aware of." He kept on smiling, Grace always helped put things into perspective. The smile soon crept back into place by simply being in her company and he waved off the ghost of Arionna as he rose to get up out of the couch.
"I've got some supplies in my car, wanna help me get them in? I can make this great Japanese dish that I had. I harrassed the guy at the stall into writing it down then got our liaison to translate it for me. It's going to be good."
Grace
"Yes! Japanese food is awesome!" Grace leaps off the couch to go help haul the food -- pretty much the only thing she should be allowed to help with, really.
"I suck at cooking, but I can maybe chop things?"
Yes. Someone who feels like the very essence of sliding blades might be able to chop things...
Danny
He was caught out by her enthusiasm but he nodded at it and grinned. "Sure, why not?" He tossed the keys into the air reaching instinctively for the sense of where she was likely to be when the down arc began, then began to head to the kitchen to go start hunting down spices and herbs, filtering through things that weren't necessary. Grabbing pots and pans and other utensils and setting them out in groups, by the time Grace was back and done, there were tools, and Danny had tied his hair up out the way at the nape of his neck in a loose knot of itself. He was washing his hands.
Turning he nodded to the sideboard. "Okay, well, most of this is flash fried in a hot pan, so we're good on most of it. It's the prep work that can be an ass though. First, lets get the rice on so it goes nice and sticky."
Grace
Never let it be said that Grace isn't industrious. She hauls rice bags and veggie bags like a champion, or at least somebody who knows her own strength. There may be multiple trips, but they are all fueled by the excitement of good food, so it gets done pretty fast. And then, she's waiting in the kitchen, somewhat third-wheel-like (Danny and the food being the other two wheels) waiting for something else to do.
"Do you know how to make the rice sticky? Because I don't. Are you supposed to do something to it?"
Grace buys her rice pre-stickied. It's a good thing, really. She could burn water if she tried.
Danny
He grins and sets up the pans and scales. Then sets the rice into a bowl of water, leaving it to soak while he unpacks some more items. "This is the vegetable stuff, we need slices, not too thin, about .5 millimetres?" He shows her with a couple of slices, then steps back after setting the knife down.
"Your turn."
Grace
[Dex + Crafts = Slicing perfection?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
Grace
"Right, right..."
She steps up to the cutting board and veggies, lofts the knife up into the air. This might look a little scary -- if so, just smile and nod, Danny.
"Choppy choppy choppy...."
Those slices may not be up to Japanese perfection standards of exactly a half-millimeter, but Grace is giving it a solid effort. And quickly, too.
Danny
Nodding his approval, Danny begins to figure out what else he's got and starts dicing up chicken, begins to simmer up a light soup to start and from time to time he kept an eye on Grace while she got her hands on cooking. Supervision but not quite supervision. After all, if the girl could dance rings about her robotic things, then reason led him to believe she could probably cook too. As he worked he hummed lightly to himself. Then pipped up a little bit later.
"Do you want something to drink by the way Grace? I can put some tea on?"
Grace
"Yes, tea. Good," she says, still chopping. And maybe it's that that makes her words so clipped? She's focusing on that half-millimeter thing.
Danny
He nodded and kept an eye, not intervening nor interfering as she went about her work. He was busy putting the things she'd started on in one by one with a light hand and a hotly oiled pan. Pretty soon the heady smells of good home cooked food was filling the air.
He turned a short while later and set the up and a tea pot beside her for her to help herself to while he himself held his mug on handed and with the other was stirring the vegetables.
Grace
"You are so good at this," Grace says, and goes for a mug. Surely the pile of veggies she's made will be enough, yes? Time to enjoy the fruits of labor?
And tea?
She fills her mug, content to let somebody else handle the intricacies of food-making, and goes to sit at the kitchen table, to blow on her tea.
Danny
He continues to cook, tasting things. Turning things down and checking things. Eventually things are turned off and there's the frantic serving up that goes on. But he comes out finally with the food, bowls for the soup and more bowls for the main course, a platter with sticky rice wrapped in seaweed, a japanese version of perhaps another land, but it was worth it.
He sat and wiped his hands on the cloth he'd casually tucked into the back of his jeans pocket and grinned.
"Enjoy." There was the easy gesture, chopsticks had been set out and a spoon for those who might prefer it. Danny himself just picked up the chop sticks with practised ease.
Grace
Grace also goes for chopsticks first. With as much Asian food as she eats, it would be hard not to learn.
"It's so much work. I mean, thanks."
There's a smile, and then she starts shuttling various things over to her bowl with the chopsticks. She might not eat it exactly Japanese style, but she doesn't much care for the traditions or manners of any culture, including her own.
Danny
He grins watching her eat, then starts on his own food. "I've got footage and a few videos in the pipeline, it'll be good. Things are heating up."
He comments. "So, next time give me a shopping list of things you really really want from where ever I am in the world, I will try to give you what you need."
Grace
"Are you always going to be on the move like this? It might make it hard to keep in touch with people," Grace says, offhand, like she's not saying anything of any importance.
She might, also, be able to do something about that...
Correspondence can be a wonderful thing, can't it?
Danny
He shrugs slightly, then sighs heavily. "It's going to be hard, honestly from time to time I got real homesick, like I'd lost my tribe or something. I mean I love being on tour, I love playing on the game consoles, I love the creative process that comes with it.... " He shrugs again. Then lifts his eyes to look at Grace. '
"Why? I've got email, I've got skype, I've got an insane schedule to blight the both of them. That's one big issue with it, no privacy nearly. Fame can be great, it can be amazing, but there's the other side to it as well."
Grace
"Ahh. So it's just the time involved? I can do nothing to give you more time. Closer space? Sure..."
She picks up a seaweed-wrapped sticky rice ball, and shoves it in her mouth with her chopsticks. Mmm.
"I guess you'll just have to try that much harder to connect to your 'tribe' when you can, huh?"
Danny
He nods. "Yes, and that means you all got to call me or something from time to time. It gets maddening, it's like this merry go round life that just, constantly keeps going. Does that make sense? A complete whirlwind.
I mean I can..." Then he frowns hearing her words. "What do you mean by closer space?"
Grace
"I mean lots of things. I could hook you up with some VR, make it almost real. I could give you, I don't know... an enchanted lock of hair perhaps? So I Could follow you wherever you go. I can do that literally, now. There's things I could do."
And then, she's eating again, slurping down hot soup.
Danny
"Ahhh, the art of bending reality in a subtle format." he nods with same smile, eating between talking.
"So how does that work for you anyhow?"
Grace
"I know I see the world in a very different way from most. But I see us as living in a simulation of a universe. A computer program, right? So, we appear to be 'living' in three 'dimensions' but that's not really the case. It's all data that's being read and understood as such by our individual processing unit brains, but it's data, right? Numbers. Bits. There's nothing physically real about space."
Grace talks a lot, but she also does so while eating. Might not be the most pretty thing to look at.
"I can explain how that data is laid out, how its organized, but that's not really the point. The point is that all 'things' are one thing -- data -- and every 'thing' is connected through this. It's holistic -- a holographic display. There is nothing discrete, but rather all events, all matter, all 'things' are enmeshed everywhere at once.
"When you realize this, you can see the connections, and even travel along them, by modifying the underlying data."
Danny
He blinked listening to her, staring with the chopsticks paused halfway between the bowl and his semi open mouth. "The extra dimension? Worm tunnel?
Grace
"No. The 'no' dimension. They don't really exist," Grace says, chews, goes for more tea.
Danny
"Hmm..." He thought about it and then got up from his seat, then got a piece of paper and sat back down as he thought about it. Then he took another bite of the sea weed wrapped ball, munched it and spoke again.
"Okay, space. Or at least how I see it is that fibres of the paper are the different layers." He bends the paper and then drives a chopstick through it. "This is how I see it working. It creates a warp in the weave allowing for two sides to bend and morph close to each other, each of these random spikes or warps can be bridged. Therefore, making correspondence a workable principal. Or at least that's how I see it." He grins.
Grace
Grace smiles at his depiction of space as a bent piece of paper with a chopstick through it. "That's not bad. It's something kind of similar, I guess, with me. Only I see the paper and the chopstick as ideas, not really existing in a physical sense."
Chew chew chew.
"If that makes sense."
Danny
"It kinda does?" He hedges slightly. "I mean who hasn't seen Matrix? With your idea, there is no way out."
Grace
She giggles at him. He has no idea. "No way out? Why wouldn't there be?"
Danny
Both hands come up gently and he chuckles.
"Its okay, right, explain it to me, but do it slowly and remember that I'm not tech savvy."
Grace
Grace sits up in her chair, says, very slowly: "I have been to another universe."
Danny
His jaw literally drops as he stares at her. Attention fixed as he stares at her, here, a stunning musician was captivated by talk of other worlds.
He whispered as if afraid of sudden noises for a moment, enrapt with the conversation twist as he was. "Tell me.."
Grace
"I've told you this before, haven't I? Bastion? The thing that Kalen was sucked into, and I tried to rescue him from?"
Kalen would be horrified to hear it referenced as such. A 'rescue' operation. For him. But that's almost what it was.
"It's a specialty of the Virtual Adepts -- creating new universes. Or at least, attempting to. Bastion succeeded, but it drew the ire of the Technocracy, and the makers got killed off one by one, leaving the new, untested Bastion damaged and without any tech support. Fantastic idea, there, Technofucks."
Danny
He nods. "Yeah, you've both told me snippets, but the problem is, I need it in laymans terms."
Grace
"Think of it like this. It was a baby universe, created within our own. Like our universe gave birth, right? And it kept trying to feed off of its mother, until we told it 'no'. We fixed its boo boos and weaned it, and let it go free."
Layman's terms. Weird-ass layman's terms. That's as good as she can get.
Danny
Now that he could get his head around and grinned. "Originally, while it was feeding it would be getting it's own heat and energy? Then some sort of catechism event happened, would this be where you and Kalen got involved?"
Grace
"People's minds were the milk. That was the problem. It needed... I don't know... mental energy? Something like that?"
Danny
He nods. "Absolutely, it's what binary stars do off each other. One feeds the other, usually it ends up with the "mother" or the elder twin star from binary star system leeches power and heat and this makes it flash, the younger ones flash slower than the older ones. As the star gets more energy from it's unfortunate sibling, it spins faster and faster and faster, finally when it's got all the energy it can from the dead star..." He shrugs.
Grace
"If we hadn't fixed it, it might have drawn more attention, and then... either it would have died or we would have. Awful to consider, either way."
Grace picks up her bowl of soup and upends it, trying to get the very last bits. Homecooked meals are so awesome, aren't they?
Danny
"But in the meantime, there's this mirror world to us then?" He leaned on the table with his elbow resting on it and his hand held up to cup his chin as they talked to each other. "I still think something like Correspondence would be nice though, cheaper than phone calls."
Grace
"It can be... tricky. Sometimes, I find the best thing is to make the phone call. It's better than leaving your foot behind."
Danny
"Mmm.." He nods in agreement, "The oldies are still the best, what about wifi though? What I get fascinated from time to time by is how to bond something to something else, you know? So you can get a read of the person you've got the bonded item to.. I'm not too sure about the idea behind it all though. Not sure I like the ethics too much either."
Grace
"Mmm. Binding an item to a person so that they can be tracked? Kalen just ups and leaves sometimes. But he gave me a little stuffed lion once, just so that I could track him if need be. He's like that.
"And ethics? Well. I've tracked vampires before. If they attack you, I consider that to be fair game. I'm just saying."
Danny
"I'll talk to Kalen about it then." He smiled and then shrugged. "I think Vampires should be avoided at all costs thank you. I'm not your Van Helsing type thing. I'm the one that runs round screaming. Utterly useless in conflict. But I'm learning."
*He had returned, he'd set down gifts for people and then just simply stood there with his eyes closed and soaked in the relaxation. Slowly he made his way to the kitchen, checking things as he went. One hand opened the fridge to see the contents and he pursed his lips slightly in thought. "Hmmm...."
He was dressed properly. The weather wasn't good enough to go out and do anything with really and it was chilly. So he'd turned up in his leather jacket, jeans and boots, a hoody under the jacket and gloves, when he'd gotten inside he removed the gloves and jacket, hanging them up. So now he was walking around in socks and a hoodie, Examining the contents of the fridge.
Grace
Somebody said there were presents. Grace wondered if Danny had brought her another puzzle box or some Pocky maybe, but this? There's a box with her name on it, full of other people's names.
Names of robot manufacturers and tool makers and contacts in the computing industry. Which, hey -- it's much better than Pocky.
Danny would find the place different than the last time he stepped foot here. There were wards which spoke of new people keeping the place. And the permanent presence of a trio of witches has begun to make itself known, if not by resonance then by their habits.
Grace, also, is different, though that's not something she broadcasts by look alone. No, Danny will find her dressed same as ever, in jeans and grey turtleneck -- if he finds her at all.
"Hey! Are you really here!?" comes a voice from the living room. Well, okay, that should make her a lot easier to find.
Danny
He nearly jumped out of his skin hearing a voice, distracted by the new presences and newer sensations. With a chuckle he closed the fridge door, then made his way through to Grace. As he passed her he bent his head to kiss hers on top gently. Then went and found a place to sit down near her.
"I am really back, yes. This leg of the tour has been done, there's talk of maybe doing a bit of Europe over a few months maybe later in the year but we'll see. How are things?"
He sits casually, leaning back on the couch and smiling as ever. His hair unbound and free to hang down his back and shoulders again. On his wrist is the latest of the new gadget watches.
Grace
She lets him kiss her. The Grace he knew before wouldn't have let him do that, but she accepts it without so much as a missed beat. She's holding her box of names, and lofts it up.
"Thanks. I'll see what I can get out of this."
Damn. An iWatchThingy. She really really wants to go into her rant about Apple products right now, but hell. There is a time and place for everything right? Later.
Danny
"Well I'm hoping you have fun finding things out and making new contacts. You never know, you could perhaps one day do something life changing for billions of people. Its all about the first contact though." He smiled, then took a long deep sigh and relaxed further into the couch.
"So what's new?"
Grace
There's a lot of things Grace Evans could do with a list of names and numbers. She could, for example, 'arrange' things such that these people stumble upon the breakthroughs of their lives, it's true. She could also arrange things such that they form the strangest impromptu flash mob ever, and then make their phones moo. However funny the last bit might be... Probably not worth it.
It still makes her smile.
"New? Apparently, it's vampires and dog monsters in Washington Park. We dealt with the vampires though."
Danny
"Kalen told me about the Vampire, he's going to meet someone who's going to assess the threat level or something. He told me." Danny leaned forwards again though and smiled at Grace.
"Things are different here. What's going on?"
Grace
"We have some new people. Or, rather, old people. Not old, like, they're 80 or something, just... The old owner of the place came back from Texas."
She takes up a spot on the couch -- the other end of it.
"And oh really? Kalen told you about the vampire? I'm not too pleased about the vampire myself. But Kalen does what he wants. I just hope he keeps his mind shields up."
Danny
"Well, I've never really had anything to do with them myself either. Or at least I hope not!" He chuckled a bit, then smiled once more as he leaned back.
"So what's this dog thing?"
Grace
"It attacked some of ours -- Jo and Lavinia? I don't know if you've met them yet? But it did a lot of damage. And then Lavinia killed it," Grace says, like she's talking about the weather.
"I don't really know specifics, just 'twisted dog thing'."
Danny
His eyebrows shot up in surprise. "That is fucked up!" He shook his head slightly in disbelief.
"This world never ceases to amaze me, so was it like one of those movie were wolves?"
Grace
"I do not even know. You should talk to Jo, she could probably give you about 50 movie references. They're okay now, luckily Ian was there to patch them up."
This is their world, yes? Where werewolves are a thing that might just attack them in a park and need to be put down?
"It was okay. Definitely not something too terrible."
And that, too, is telling.
Danny
His eyebrows relaxed slowly as he folds his arms across his chest and studies Grace for a while, then slowly he leans forwards. "So, what change did you go through? I've spoken to Kalen, remember? Something has changed in you. What is it? What new revelations have you yet to reveal to us?"
None of his tone was mocking, Grace could do things he hadn't even dreamed possible, but hearing things in Tokyo when some of the techs didn't think he could hear them spoke about some of their studies with various things in the 'mirror'. His eyes remained on her and he relaxed his arms as well.
"So, go on, spill."
Grace
"I learned some things that might only apply to myself, really. Nothing more earth-shattering than the idea that my enemies are afraid of me, and to battle them, I cannot be afraid in return.
"Also, I learned what it feels like to fly around on falcon wings -- not bad! Totally cool, that!"
And she kept those wings, Danny. She feels... different, like that.
Danny
The smile grew, hitting his eyes and lifting them from that deep mahogany to a joyful earthy colour. He nodded and chuckled again.
"I dunno, I go away and everything changes on me! Oh and some of those cards are from New York as well, so hell, you can have a field day looking at their stuff and figuring out new ideas. Is it a good present?"
Grace
"Yeah. Yeah it is. Jo and I were going to build battle robots together, to see who would win in a fight -- Gamera or Godzilla? I have my leg up now," Grace says, and grins.
"Everything changes, always. It is the way of things. Also! Speaking of, you should totally come play laser tag sometime. The room's all set up."
Danny
"I would love to. Set me up with the armour and rifle and I'll find a snipe point," He grinned, "too many hours of Call of Duty on tour. You should have seen it Grace." His hands move to start air sketching high story scrapes, towers of glass and the lights, then he began to tell her about a moonlight night flight over the city in a helicopter and how incredible it all was.
Grace
"Ohh, you might be the sniper, but I'm the sneaky spy. You'll never see me coming," Grace says, and her tone is joking -- but isn't that the way of Grace? Her enemies should be afraid of her.
"Tell me all about it! How was Japan?"
Danny
"It was crazy!" He laughs. "But I love the Japanese now, I got to hang out with Harajuku girls, I got to go shopping with them, I got to hang out... " He shrugs and laughs.
"The crowds there were incredible too, they knew every damned song! I've made a dent on the Japanese circuit, which is cool. But, I am damned glad I'm home now and able to chill out. I slept for the best part of a day when we turned our trucks for home." He leans back into the couch again and spreads his arms out lazily.
"I just slept for nearly the entire flight and then the rides across country from time to time. I've officially been to Hawaaii, but I have no idea what goes on there, I was awake for bout half an hour mebe, then I crashed in the lounge, then it was off to another plane."
Grace
"Damn. I like that though -- the always moving, always something different. It would be nice to get out of here for a while, see something else. Maybe meet that priest Kalen has in Chile."
Because Kalen has a priest in Chile, of course...
"I suppose it wouldn't be too different, though. Every place has its share of dog monsters."
Danny
"Yeah, remind me not to go sitting out there with my six string for a while..." He held one index finger up in the air lazily and smiled again.
"I met Ari, did you know she's gone blind?"
Grace
Grace's eyes widen a touch at the new info about Arionna, or 'Ari' as Danny calls her. "No. I didn't. Then again, I try to stay as far away from her as possible, lest we annihilate each other."
Danny
He nods. "Yeah, she uh, said she made some sort of a pact or something?" His eyes narrow a bit in thinking about it and he frowns with a grimace, then sighs heavily.
"She of course then proceeded to berate me for a long assed time about my just up and vanishing and doing my job."
Grace
"A pact with what? The Devil?"
Wouldn't put it past her...
Grace sighs, looks at a wall. It's easier to deal with.
"Also -- so you up and vanish. Is it her business?"
Danny
"Not that I'm aware of." He kept on smiling, Grace always helped put things into perspective. The smile soon crept back into place by simply being in her company and he waved off the ghost of Arionna as he rose to get up out of the couch.
"I've got some supplies in my car, wanna help me get them in? I can make this great Japanese dish that I had. I harrassed the guy at the stall into writing it down then got our liaison to translate it for me. It's going to be good."
Grace
"Yes! Japanese food is awesome!" Grace leaps off the couch to go help haul the food -- pretty much the only thing she should be allowed to help with, really.
"I suck at cooking, but I can maybe chop things?"
Yes. Someone who feels like the very essence of sliding blades might be able to chop things...
Danny
He was caught out by her enthusiasm but he nodded at it and grinned. "Sure, why not?" He tossed the keys into the air reaching instinctively for the sense of where she was likely to be when the down arc began, then began to head to the kitchen to go start hunting down spices and herbs, filtering through things that weren't necessary. Grabbing pots and pans and other utensils and setting them out in groups, by the time Grace was back and done, there were tools, and Danny had tied his hair up out the way at the nape of his neck in a loose knot of itself. He was washing his hands.
Turning he nodded to the sideboard. "Okay, well, most of this is flash fried in a hot pan, so we're good on most of it. It's the prep work that can be an ass though. First, lets get the rice on so it goes nice and sticky."
Grace
Never let it be said that Grace isn't industrious. She hauls rice bags and veggie bags like a champion, or at least somebody who knows her own strength. There may be multiple trips, but they are all fueled by the excitement of good food, so it gets done pretty fast. And then, she's waiting in the kitchen, somewhat third-wheel-like (Danny and the food being the other two wheels) waiting for something else to do.
"Do you know how to make the rice sticky? Because I don't. Are you supposed to do something to it?"
Grace buys her rice pre-stickied. It's a good thing, really. She could burn water if she tried.
Danny
He grins and sets up the pans and scales. Then sets the rice into a bowl of water, leaving it to soak while he unpacks some more items. "This is the vegetable stuff, we need slices, not too thin, about .5 millimetres?" He shows her with a couple of slices, then steps back after setting the knife down.
"Your turn."
Grace
[Dex + Crafts = Slicing perfection?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
Grace
"Right, right..."
She steps up to the cutting board and veggies, lofts the knife up into the air. This might look a little scary -- if so, just smile and nod, Danny.
"Choppy choppy choppy...."
Those slices may not be up to Japanese perfection standards of exactly a half-millimeter, but Grace is giving it a solid effort. And quickly, too.
Danny
Nodding his approval, Danny begins to figure out what else he's got and starts dicing up chicken, begins to simmer up a light soup to start and from time to time he kept an eye on Grace while she got her hands on cooking. Supervision but not quite supervision. After all, if the girl could dance rings about her robotic things, then reason led him to believe she could probably cook too. As he worked he hummed lightly to himself. Then pipped up a little bit later.
"Do you want something to drink by the way Grace? I can put some tea on?"
Grace
"Yes, tea. Good," she says, still chopping. And maybe it's that that makes her words so clipped? She's focusing on that half-millimeter thing.
Danny
He nodded and kept an eye, not intervening nor interfering as she went about her work. He was busy putting the things she'd started on in one by one with a light hand and a hotly oiled pan. Pretty soon the heady smells of good home cooked food was filling the air.
He turned a short while later and set the up and a tea pot beside her for her to help herself to while he himself held his mug on handed and with the other was stirring the vegetables.
Grace
"You are so good at this," Grace says, and goes for a mug. Surely the pile of veggies she's made will be enough, yes? Time to enjoy the fruits of labor?
And tea?
She fills her mug, content to let somebody else handle the intricacies of food-making, and goes to sit at the kitchen table, to blow on her tea.
Danny
He continues to cook, tasting things. Turning things down and checking things. Eventually things are turned off and there's the frantic serving up that goes on. But he comes out finally with the food, bowls for the soup and more bowls for the main course, a platter with sticky rice wrapped in seaweed, a japanese version of perhaps another land, but it was worth it.
He sat and wiped his hands on the cloth he'd casually tucked into the back of his jeans pocket and grinned.
"Enjoy." There was the easy gesture, chopsticks had been set out and a spoon for those who might prefer it. Danny himself just picked up the chop sticks with practised ease.
Grace
Grace also goes for chopsticks first. With as much Asian food as she eats, it would be hard not to learn.
"It's so much work. I mean, thanks."
There's a smile, and then she starts shuttling various things over to her bowl with the chopsticks. She might not eat it exactly Japanese style, but she doesn't much care for the traditions or manners of any culture, including her own.
Danny
He grins watching her eat, then starts on his own food. "I've got footage and a few videos in the pipeline, it'll be good. Things are heating up."
He comments. "So, next time give me a shopping list of things you really really want from where ever I am in the world, I will try to give you what you need."
Grace
"Are you always going to be on the move like this? It might make it hard to keep in touch with people," Grace says, offhand, like she's not saying anything of any importance.
She might, also, be able to do something about that...
Correspondence can be a wonderful thing, can't it?
Danny
He shrugs slightly, then sighs heavily. "It's going to be hard, honestly from time to time I got real homesick, like I'd lost my tribe or something. I mean I love being on tour, I love playing on the game consoles, I love the creative process that comes with it.... " He shrugs again. Then lifts his eyes to look at Grace. '
"Why? I've got email, I've got skype, I've got an insane schedule to blight the both of them. That's one big issue with it, no privacy nearly. Fame can be great, it can be amazing, but there's the other side to it as well."
Grace
"Ahh. So it's just the time involved? I can do nothing to give you more time. Closer space? Sure..."
She picks up a seaweed-wrapped sticky rice ball, and shoves it in her mouth with her chopsticks. Mmm.
"I guess you'll just have to try that much harder to connect to your 'tribe' when you can, huh?"
Danny
He nods. "Yes, and that means you all got to call me or something from time to time. It gets maddening, it's like this merry go round life that just, constantly keeps going. Does that make sense? A complete whirlwind.
I mean I can..." Then he frowns hearing her words. "What do you mean by closer space?"
Grace
"I mean lots of things. I could hook you up with some VR, make it almost real. I could give you, I don't know... an enchanted lock of hair perhaps? So I Could follow you wherever you go. I can do that literally, now. There's things I could do."
And then, she's eating again, slurping down hot soup.
Danny
"Ahhh, the art of bending reality in a subtle format." he nods with same smile, eating between talking.
"So how does that work for you anyhow?"
Grace
"I know I see the world in a very different way from most. But I see us as living in a simulation of a universe. A computer program, right? So, we appear to be 'living' in three 'dimensions' but that's not really the case. It's all data that's being read and understood as such by our individual processing unit brains, but it's data, right? Numbers. Bits. There's nothing physically real about space."
Grace talks a lot, but she also does so while eating. Might not be the most pretty thing to look at.
"I can explain how that data is laid out, how its organized, but that's not really the point. The point is that all 'things' are one thing -- data -- and every 'thing' is connected through this. It's holistic -- a holographic display. There is nothing discrete, but rather all events, all matter, all 'things' are enmeshed everywhere at once.
"When you realize this, you can see the connections, and even travel along them, by modifying the underlying data."
Danny
He blinked listening to her, staring with the chopsticks paused halfway between the bowl and his semi open mouth. "The extra dimension? Worm tunnel?
Grace
"No. The 'no' dimension. They don't really exist," Grace says, chews, goes for more tea.
Danny
"Hmm..." He thought about it and then got up from his seat, then got a piece of paper and sat back down as he thought about it. Then he took another bite of the sea weed wrapped ball, munched it and spoke again.
"Okay, space. Or at least how I see it is that fibres of the paper are the different layers." He bends the paper and then drives a chopstick through it. "This is how I see it working. It creates a warp in the weave allowing for two sides to bend and morph close to each other, each of these random spikes or warps can be bridged. Therefore, making correspondence a workable principal. Or at least that's how I see it." He grins.
Grace
Grace smiles at his depiction of space as a bent piece of paper with a chopstick through it. "That's not bad. It's something kind of similar, I guess, with me. Only I see the paper and the chopstick as ideas, not really existing in a physical sense."
Chew chew chew.
"If that makes sense."
Danny
"It kinda does?" He hedges slightly. "I mean who hasn't seen Matrix? With your idea, there is no way out."
Grace
She giggles at him. He has no idea. "No way out? Why wouldn't there be?"
Danny
Both hands come up gently and he chuckles.
"Its okay, right, explain it to me, but do it slowly and remember that I'm not tech savvy."
Grace
Grace sits up in her chair, says, very slowly: "I have been to another universe."
Danny
His jaw literally drops as he stares at her. Attention fixed as he stares at her, here, a stunning musician was captivated by talk of other worlds.
He whispered as if afraid of sudden noises for a moment, enrapt with the conversation twist as he was. "Tell me.."
Grace
"I've told you this before, haven't I? Bastion? The thing that Kalen was sucked into, and I tried to rescue him from?"
Kalen would be horrified to hear it referenced as such. A 'rescue' operation. For him. But that's almost what it was.
"It's a specialty of the Virtual Adepts -- creating new universes. Or at least, attempting to. Bastion succeeded, but it drew the ire of the Technocracy, and the makers got killed off one by one, leaving the new, untested Bastion damaged and without any tech support. Fantastic idea, there, Technofucks."
Danny
He nods. "Yeah, you've both told me snippets, but the problem is, I need it in laymans terms."
Grace
"Think of it like this. It was a baby universe, created within our own. Like our universe gave birth, right? And it kept trying to feed off of its mother, until we told it 'no'. We fixed its boo boos and weaned it, and let it go free."
Layman's terms. Weird-ass layman's terms. That's as good as she can get.
Danny
Now that he could get his head around and grinned. "Originally, while it was feeding it would be getting it's own heat and energy? Then some sort of catechism event happened, would this be where you and Kalen got involved?"
Grace
"People's minds were the milk. That was the problem. It needed... I don't know... mental energy? Something like that?"
Danny
He nods. "Absolutely, it's what binary stars do off each other. One feeds the other, usually it ends up with the "mother" or the elder twin star from binary star system leeches power and heat and this makes it flash, the younger ones flash slower than the older ones. As the star gets more energy from it's unfortunate sibling, it spins faster and faster and faster, finally when it's got all the energy it can from the dead star..." He shrugs.
Grace
"If we hadn't fixed it, it might have drawn more attention, and then... either it would have died or we would have. Awful to consider, either way."
Grace picks up her bowl of soup and upends it, trying to get the very last bits. Homecooked meals are so awesome, aren't they?
Danny
"But in the meantime, there's this mirror world to us then?" He leaned on the table with his elbow resting on it and his hand held up to cup his chin as they talked to each other. "I still think something like Correspondence would be nice though, cheaper than phone calls."
Grace
"It can be... tricky. Sometimes, I find the best thing is to make the phone call. It's better than leaving your foot behind."
Danny
"Mmm.." He nods in agreement, "The oldies are still the best, what about wifi though? What I get fascinated from time to time by is how to bond something to something else, you know? So you can get a read of the person you've got the bonded item to.. I'm not too sure about the idea behind it all though. Not sure I like the ethics too much either."
Grace
"Mmm. Binding an item to a person so that they can be tracked? Kalen just ups and leaves sometimes. But he gave me a little stuffed lion once, just so that I could track him if need be. He's like that.
"And ethics? Well. I've tracked vampires before. If they attack you, I consider that to be fair game. I'm just saying."
Danny
"I'll talk to Kalen about it then." He smiled and then shrugged. "I think Vampires should be avoided at all costs thank you. I'm not your Van Helsing type thing. I'm the one that runs round screaming. Utterly useless in conflict. But I'm learning."
Welcome to Ginger, Lavinia
Grace
Hey. I have seen you around. I'm Grace. I got your number from Kalen. You want to get in on some things?
The text comes in on a Friday afternoon, the day after Lavinia faced down a horrible dog thing. She might indeed be wanting in on some things. Grace has yet to find out about the incident. Perhaps this invitation comes a little too late?
But whatever. It comes.
Lavinia
There was a text that came back. It wasn't immediate, of course. There were moments of good downtime, maybe fifteen minutes of whatever it was that Lavinia happened to be doing for the time being, and frankly who knew what it was that she did in the times that things. Maybe Lavinia was sleeping, and oddly enough that seemed to make sense. There were odd typos in her reply.
Sue, i want to di Thigs.
And then, shortly thereafter.
Fuck, blindtexting. I would love to do things. Location?
Lavinia rolled off the bed, stumbling to her dresser to grab some tights. Time to be presentable.
Grace
Come to Auraria Student Lofts, apartment 314. I'll meet you there. Bring your phone/computer/whatever.
Maybe a little cryptic, that? Okay. But it's Grace, right? Has Lavinia paid any attention to her? If so, it might make a bit of sense.
Grace arrives at her own apartment, and unlocks it for the first time in days. It's a bare-bones thing, not like her office. Nice to get away to sometimes, when she needs the blankness and solitude, or needs to pick up some clothes, but that's rare. And so, it sits empty the vast majority of the time.
There's a small table with a chair, and a bed in a little alcove. There's a tiny kitchen, too, off in a corner of the one big room. The only other rooms in this place are the closet and bathroom, which are only barely big enough to be called rooms.
It speaks the language of college student (or, perhaps, ascetic monk with bad taste in mismatched plastic furniture).
When Lavinia arrives, Grace will be set up with her laptop (bright, shiny, new and sleek, a sharp contrast to everything else around) at that little table, sitting on a box.
Lavinia
It was a little cryptic, and for that Lavinia was.. intrigued. Pleased, to say the least, but there was a sort of joy in finding someone who was going to be covert about things. She looked at her phone again, and got onward and outward to where she needed to be.
Lavinia showed up with tights on. Tights and a skirt that was short beyond measure, hammering in the fact that she is taller than the average man. She even has a couple inches on Kalen, and today she hasn't deigned to wear heels. There are combat boots. Legitimate, honest-to-God combat boots. Her constant companions.
It's into the apartment, not at all with a bit of judgment. Actually appraising, actually pleased with the surroundings. She drops a purse by the door. Phone comes out of her back pocket.
"What's the rent on this place like?"
Grace
"Cheap, but you could probably find cheaper farther from campus. I used to go to school here, so it made more sense," Grace says, and then swivels her her head over to get a better look.
Ahh. Much better. Not a suit this time. There's a bit of a relief, eh?
"So, welcome to Denver, eh? Have you been here long?"
Grace is clad in her usual jeans and t-shirt. The t-shirt is black, and has a penguin on the front, waving a red and black flag with the anarchy symbol on it. There's some text too, but unless you're of a certain persuasion, the jargon may as well be another language.
> kill -9 state
> rm -rf
/system/capitalism
# apt-get install anarchy
[t-shirt reference: http://www.wired.com/wp-content/uploads/blogs/wiredenterprise/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/capitalism.jpg]
Lavinia
"I came a few months back, work took my partner and me out of town. He settled down, I came back," she told Grace. She rolled her shoulders back and stood a tad hip-shot. There was a sort of early punk. The skirt wasn't short because she liked mini skirts, it was just because she was ungodly tall. The tights had holes. The shirt was torn up.
There was something about that, though. On first glance it's carefully cultivated disheveled mess. On second glance, the holes seem to be genuine and dressed up to be workable. The holes in her shirt? More than a couple looks like it survived a fight instead of just being cut up to look cute. She had a sports bra on, but Lavinia didn't have much to hold up.
"So I've been back for about a month? Did Jo tell you about what happened?"
Grace
Blink. Blink. Something happened? With Jo?
"No. Could you elaborate on that a bit?"
Grace looks around, seemingly at a wall.
"Oh yeah, and please do come in. Get comfortable. Mi casa es tu casa and all that shit."
Lavinia
"Basically," this isn't good. Nothing good ever happens when someone starts their sentence with basically, "we were in the park and there was a dog-that-wasn't-a-dog- twisted warped once-a-dog-but-corrupted-and-no-longer kind of thing. Comes at us, Jo keeps me from getting completely mauled, takes some damage. Thing dies, Ian comes and patches us up-"
a beat.
"Jo kept a corrupted physical monster from attacking by basically insulting it and throwing a bicycle at it. She means well, but that generally doesn't actually end well. I'm grateful? But seriously, don't throw bicycles."
She plops down in a nearby plastic chair.
Grace
"Ohh, geez," Grace says, rubs her eyes. Jo. "Well, I'm glad she's okay. She is okay, right?"
There's okay physically, and then then there's okay mentally. Ian patched them up? So don't worry about the one. The other?
"I'm going to have to teach her better techniques. I guess now, she knows why."
Lavinia
"Yeah," she said, "Ian made sure she was patched up, she's got a spine so that's... that's a pretty damn big deal. You can't teach someone that. She also asked for me to feed her ice cream in an apron. And I have no clue what a waifu is."
Grace
Grace snerks while staring at a spot just behind Lavinia's head. It really sounds like that, too. Snerk.
"Well, yeah, okay. That answers that question. Spine gets her props too. Just, you know, as you said, a bicycle is not really the appropriate weapon to wield when taking on a dog monster."
Oh, the strange things that come out of one's mouth when one is a Mage...
"A waifu, by the way, is another word for the target of your obsessive love for an anime character."
Okay. Adjust. Look at the person you're talking to, okay? Okay.
"Right. So, I did invite you here for a reason. You're a Traddie, right? Or at least not all hostile with us?"
Lavinia
"I'm a Disciple of the Celestial Chorus," she said. Unashamed, unabashed, proud even- and why shouldn't she be? "I'm with the Sisters of Gabrielle, we're an order charged with keeping care of the physical- actually, if you don't care, just say so. I won't keep you up with the details. Long story short, we're a martial order."
Grace
Oh, yay. A Chorister. But then, Pan wasn't too much of a little shit, and Kalen's a member of the Pretentious Little Shit's Club, yet he manages to stay sane. The labels people choose often don't come with every single piece of baggage.
Lavinia gets smiled at.
The t-shirt, by the way, was a test. A Technocrat would have been nonplussed, almost assuredly.
"I'm a Grand Hooptydoo of the Virtual Adepts. I'm an informational order. Speaking of which -- I have some for you. Chantry location, and a shit-ton of other goodies, should you wish for them."
Lavinia
[Perception+empathy- do I catch the Grace emotions?]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 6, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 4 )
Lavinia
"Hunting demons alone is a shitty hobby," she told Grace, "I'll take what I can get, I want someone to know to look for me if I die."
Chipper, but... not at all being anything other than serious. She wasn't being dramatic, over the top, in fact she was almost flippant- but there is an understanding there. A hope that someone really would notice if she died, just in case it is an unpleasant occasion.
Grace
[Manipulation + Subterfuge = nope, there was not just a slight disappointment that Lavinia is a Chorister...]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 7) ( success x 1 )
Grace
[She seems genuinely pleased, genuinely playful. She's rather unafraid of Lavinia, despite having felt her rather strong resonance before, so there's not a lot of watching her tongue or deferential respect there. Her needling, joking statements are how she speaks to friends and equals.
However, yes, there was a bit of a microexpression there -- a frown at the mention of the Chorus that could only mean a split second of disappointment, before she put her face back in order.]
Lavinia
She grinned, the expression pleased, "don't worry, I totally got over my convert all the things phase years ago."
Grace
"You sound just like Kalen. He's a Flambeau," she says, as though that should explain everything.
"And, I think you just found out that Denver is a happening place for hunting evil corrupted nasty things. We have a kind of underground communication system for that. Runs off of a hacked phone sex line, which I hope you're okay with. It's a place where nobody would look, right? But, it'll show up on your phone records that you enjoy dirty conversation.
"There is no actual porny stuff on the hacked version," Grace says, and is she blushing a little? Yup. "It's just our message drop stuff."
Lavinia
"Aw, no actual porny stuff? Well that kills half the fun of having a secret conversational line," her lips upturn and she's got a grin on her face, eyes dark like the space between the stars and bright and shining like torches. She's getting a bit of a tan, coming close to bronze or getting there. It seems to suit her, what with her golden halo of hair and a voice like a herald.
"It's a burner phone, if someone is checking my phone records I've done something wrong," she says as she produces her phone, "I think. And would it be weird to ask your friend to come hunt demons with me? Is that a thing? Or do I have to take people out to coffee first, normally someone else set up my war party play dates."
Grace
"I'm sure he would be thrilled. He likes investigating tunnels and abandoned places? And I'm pretty sure it's just so he can run into stuff that needs killed?"
She takes Lavinia's phone, looks it over for data ports, and rummages around in her laptop bag for the appropriate cord. "I do... have to install a piece of encryption software. I'm also not going to guarantee complete and utter safety. This setup has been designed to avoid people being able to easily track down the entire network of users, through various means. Encryption, obscurity, the fact that the hub never calls out, we are only calling it? But if somebody were truly truly relentless and skilled at Magicking it out... It could happen. Then again, dog-monsters could happen. Anything could, right? Right."
After finding the right cord, she pauses before connecting it to Lavinia's phone. After the safety spiel is done, Lavinia has to consent to the terms and conditions.
Lavinia
"Well, first off, abandoned places are gorgeous, and secondly things tend to pool there and there's this feeling of- well, it depends on why it's been abandoned. Anyway, totally loved checking out abandoned places with a posse," she watches as the other woman takes her phone. Listens to the spiel and waits. She does turn so that Grace is on her left side, so that she's where Lavinia can keep her full attention on her.
"So, more secure than most things, but not completely secure, use with caution and care. I agree that I won't do anything stupid intentionally."
Grace
"Well, that's the best policy, I find..."
Grace plugs in Lavinia's phone, and then gets to work. It's not a long, drawn-out endeavor, here. The process of installation has been streamlined and smoothed out so that hiccups can be avoided. She's had to do this a lot.
"Then, we'll uh... have to... explain how to get to the Chantry..."
And we're all done. Lavinia's phone gets unplugged, and Grace hands it back.
"It's out in Morrison. I wish there was someplace closer, but no such luck."
Lavinia
"Do you think I could crash there?" she asked a little more quickly than she realized she was asking. She cleared her throat, "generally when I blow into town, I crash at a chantry because I'm not staying but I'm staying this time and I'm kinda sick of living in a no tell motel."
Grace
"Oh, absolutely. I mean, you'd probably want to ask Annie first, but I'd be pissed if she said no," Grace says. "It's a really big house, there's lots of rooms. And a Node, and a library. It's pretty chill, if you don't mind the country living."
The address is discussed, as are the important landmarks. The mailbox. Thing is, the Chantry can be hard to find. All good Chantries are hard to find, of course. It makes sense.
Lavinia
"I wouldn't mind country living. Who knows, if I stick around for too long I might actually get to get my books out of the damn trunks," she informs Grace, "but whatever the case, if I'm staying I don't want to be in people's hair for too long. It's been a long time since I've sene a node."
Not true. It's been a long time that she's seen a node that wasn't attached to someone she had no desire to speak to, who she said in no uncertain terms that she never wanted to see him again. (Lies, all lies. Ezekiel or Eric or whatever she wanted to call him, Palmer. Whatever his name he wasPalmer and she was something that defied human lips and-
It was complicated. Suffice to say, she never wanted to see that person again, and therefore cut herself off from a pretty nice node in the northwest.
"Oh," she says, brows raised, smile lights up and there is a moment as if she finally remembered something, "I actually acquired a student, I don't know if you know her- Arionna?" No statement about how she is or how she interacts with people, "if she does anything that gets her into hot water, let me know?"
Grace
Grace's eyes pop open wide at the mention of Arionna. What. The. Fuck. That girl has a teacher? Does Lavinia have her chained up in the basement or something, and is calling that a mentorship?
"Really? Her? Uhh... Well, that's... Yeah. You're a saint, I think. If she does anything that gets her into hot water, it'll be on Ginger. Just so you know. If she becomes a threat to people, they have a right to know. Unless it's, you know, not that serious. Then, sure. Yeah. I'll just call you."
Lavinia
"Yeah," she says, matter of fact and completely unabashed. It was as if there was no question, as if there was nothing that was to say. She said it, solid and sound. She said it, like this wasn't something that she should shy away from and shudder and act embarrassed about. No, it's said with the same way that she said she was a member of the Chorus.
"And with anyone, if they become a threat to people then everyone does have a right to know. And if anyone becomes a threat to anyone else, I will be there to make sure that the problem is taken care of."
This isn't lip service.
This is the kind of taken care of that one only thought Chakravanti dealt in.
"I assumed that was just customary behaviors of where you are." No, Lavinia, having the guaranty that someone will kill you if you become a threat to the community at large on account of walking some unpleasant path is not normal.
Grace
"That's actually the best news I've ever heard about Arionna. I'm glad you're going to be there for her, in whatever capacity."
Because, you know, cleaning up after fallen Mages is not a fun and pleasant task. It never has been. And if Lavinia can keep it from happening entirely? Even better.
"It's not something I could do. Don't have the patience. That's for damn sure."
Lavinia
"I was a shit when I was an apprentice," she said matter-of-factly, "I definitely got more chances than I should have courtesy of good ol' fashioned nepotism. If I can have faith in an intangible, unknowable divine, then I can have faith in a tangible, knowable piece of it."
Grace
Grace has no faith in any divine. And yet, others do. And they're able to hack with that, and so be it. Still, she gets it -- Arionna bends the universe with her will, and that is not something that you should just throw to the winds. One could conceive of their skills as being a tangible, knowable piece of the divine, even if one does not believe in divinity. Gods, perhaps, for certain definitions of the term...
"Well, good luck with that. I'm extremely surprised she let anyone teach her anything. But yeah, go you. Major props."
Lavinia
"I feel bad for her," she laughed, "because I? Have never had a student until now. She has the unfortunate honor of being my guinea pig."
she crossed her legs and drew her attention to the ceiling. Stretched because she needed to stretch, "so... is there anything else I need? Sending you thank you texts? Loaning you library keys? Something?"
Grace
"Library keys?" Yeah, Lavinia mentioned books... "Actually, if you don't mind, I would like to get a look at your books. My partner and I have a digital library project going. We take books and scan them for the sake of sharing through a distributed network. So far, we have... uh... our books. And a few others. But we'd love to grow it."
Lavinia
"I've got it all packed up into a nice, viable format. Are you working primarily in English or does the language actually matter? A fair bit of it is in Greek as of the current. Greek and Latin and a little Arabic. The arabic is for personal purposes." Lavinia muses, "but once you want it let me know how long you'll have it."
Grace
"Language doesn't matter. It's for sharing. I'm sure some of the people who would eventually look through it would know Latin and Greek and Arabic. And I can always hook it up to a translation dealie, but those are never quite as good as you'd hope they'd be...
"I'll have to show you where we work sometime. Aside from the various projects, we also have a gun range, a bunch of nonperishable foodstuffs, thick doors, and a combat training arena, because some people like to be prepared."
Grace grins. Lavinia seems to be the kind of person who would not consider her crazy for such a statement, but would understand. Life's tough out here sometimes.
Lavinia
"You know the worst part of traveling?" she said, and it was a non question, because Lavinia was no doubt going to tell her the worst part about traveling, "the worst part about traveling is that you don't have people to practice with. It's being the perpetual army brat, from what I understand. Everything I've read says this is what other people who travel a lot do."
A beat.
"I'd show you where I work, but it consists of a car, a motel room, and my sister's attic. I'm lucky I have that. "
Grace
"Well, now you have our place too. If you ever need a safe place to crash that's closer than Morrison, or just need a lot of guns or backup fast? Well, we're usually around. And if I'm not around, I can be around -- quickly."
It's the welcome wagon, Lavinia. Here's your gift basket of ammo...
Hey. I have seen you around. I'm Grace. I got your number from Kalen. You want to get in on some things?
The text comes in on a Friday afternoon, the day after Lavinia faced down a horrible dog thing. She might indeed be wanting in on some things. Grace has yet to find out about the incident. Perhaps this invitation comes a little too late?
But whatever. It comes.
Lavinia
There was a text that came back. It wasn't immediate, of course. There were moments of good downtime, maybe fifteen minutes of whatever it was that Lavinia happened to be doing for the time being, and frankly who knew what it was that she did in the times that things. Maybe Lavinia was sleeping, and oddly enough that seemed to make sense. There were odd typos in her reply.
Sue, i want to di Thigs.
And then, shortly thereafter.
Fuck, blindtexting. I would love to do things. Location?
Lavinia rolled off the bed, stumbling to her dresser to grab some tights. Time to be presentable.
Grace
Come to Auraria Student Lofts, apartment 314. I'll meet you there. Bring your phone/computer/whatever.
Maybe a little cryptic, that? Okay. But it's Grace, right? Has Lavinia paid any attention to her? If so, it might make a bit of sense.
Grace arrives at her own apartment, and unlocks it for the first time in days. It's a bare-bones thing, not like her office. Nice to get away to sometimes, when she needs the blankness and solitude, or needs to pick up some clothes, but that's rare. And so, it sits empty the vast majority of the time.
There's a small table with a chair, and a bed in a little alcove. There's a tiny kitchen, too, off in a corner of the one big room. The only other rooms in this place are the closet and bathroom, which are only barely big enough to be called rooms.
It speaks the language of college student (or, perhaps, ascetic monk with bad taste in mismatched plastic furniture).
When Lavinia arrives, Grace will be set up with her laptop (bright, shiny, new and sleek, a sharp contrast to everything else around) at that little table, sitting on a box.
Lavinia
It was a little cryptic, and for that Lavinia was.. intrigued. Pleased, to say the least, but there was a sort of joy in finding someone who was going to be covert about things. She looked at her phone again, and got onward and outward to where she needed to be.
Lavinia showed up with tights on. Tights and a skirt that was short beyond measure, hammering in the fact that she is taller than the average man. She even has a couple inches on Kalen, and today she hasn't deigned to wear heels. There are combat boots. Legitimate, honest-to-God combat boots. Her constant companions.
It's into the apartment, not at all with a bit of judgment. Actually appraising, actually pleased with the surroundings. She drops a purse by the door. Phone comes out of her back pocket.
"What's the rent on this place like?"
Grace
"Cheap, but you could probably find cheaper farther from campus. I used to go to school here, so it made more sense," Grace says, and then swivels her her head over to get a better look.
Ahh. Much better. Not a suit this time. There's a bit of a relief, eh?
"So, welcome to Denver, eh? Have you been here long?"
Grace is clad in her usual jeans and t-shirt. The t-shirt is black, and has a penguin on the front, waving a red and black flag with the anarchy symbol on it. There's some text too, but unless you're of a certain persuasion, the jargon may as well be another language.
> kill -9 state
> rm -rf
/system/capitalism
# apt-get install anarchy
[t-shirt reference: http://www.wired.com/wp-content/uploads/blogs/wiredenterprise/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/capitalism.jpg]
Lavinia
"I came a few months back, work took my partner and me out of town. He settled down, I came back," she told Grace. She rolled her shoulders back and stood a tad hip-shot. There was a sort of early punk. The skirt wasn't short because she liked mini skirts, it was just because she was ungodly tall. The tights had holes. The shirt was torn up.
There was something about that, though. On first glance it's carefully cultivated disheveled mess. On second glance, the holes seem to be genuine and dressed up to be workable. The holes in her shirt? More than a couple looks like it survived a fight instead of just being cut up to look cute. She had a sports bra on, but Lavinia didn't have much to hold up.
"So I've been back for about a month? Did Jo tell you about what happened?"
Grace
Blink. Blink. Something happened? With Jo?
"No. Could you elaborate on that a bit?"
Grace looks around, seemingly at a wall.
"Oh yeah, and please do come in. Get comfortable. Mi casa es tu casa and all that shit."
Lavinia
"Basically," this isn't good. Nothing good ever happens when someone starts their sentence with basically, "we were in the park and there was a dog-that-wasn't-a-dog- twisted warped once-a-dog-but-corrupted-and-no-longer kind of thing. Comes at us, Jo keeps me from getting completely mauled, takes some damage. Thing dies, Ian comes and patches us up-"
a beat.
"Jo kept a corrupted physical monster from attacking by basically insulting it and throwing a bicycle at it. She means well, but that generally doesn't actually end well. I'm grateful? But seriously, don't throw bicycles."
She plops down in a nearby plastic chair.
Grace
"Ohh, geez," Grace says, rubs her eyes. Jo. "Well, I'm glad she's okay. She is okay, right?"
There's okay physically, and then then there's okay mentally. Ian patched them up? So don't worry about the one. The other?
"I'm going to have to teach her better techniques. I guess now, she knows why."
Lavinia
"Yeah," she said, "Ian made sure she was patched up, she's got a spine so that's... that's a pretty damn big deal. You can't teach someone that. She also asked for me to feed her ice cream in an apron. And I have no clue what a waifu is."
Grace
Grace snerks while staring at a spot just behind Lavinia's head. It really sounds like that, too. Snerk.
"Well, yeah, okay. That answers that question. Spine gets her props too. Just, you know, as you said, a bicycle is not really the appropriate weapon to wield when taking on a dog monster."
Oh, the strange things that come out of one's mouth when one is a Mage...
"A waifu, by the way, is another word for the target of your obsessive love for an anime character."
Okay. Adjust. Look at the person you're talking to, okay? Okay.
"Right. So, I did invite you here for a reason. You're a Traddie, right? Or at least not all hostile with us?"
Lavinia
"I'm a Disciple of the Celestial Chorus," she said. Unashamed, unabashed, proud even- and why shouldn't she be? "I'm with the Sisters of Gabrielle, we're an order charged with keeping care of the physical- actually, if you don't care, just say so. I won't keep you up with the details. Long story short, we're a martial order."
Grace
Oh, yay. A Chorister. But then, Pan wasn't too much of a little shit, and Kalen's a member of the Pretentious Little Shit's Club, yet he manages to stay sane. The labels people choose often don't come with every single piece of baggage.
Lavinia gets smiled at.
The t-shirt, by the way, was a test. A Technocrat would have been nonplussed, almost assuredly.
"I'm a Grand Hooptydoo of the Virtual Adepts. I'm an informational order. Speaking of which -- I have some for you. Chantry location, and a shit-ton of other goodies, should you wish for them."
Lavinia
[Perception+empathy- do I catch the Grace emotions?]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 6, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 4 )
Lavinia
"Hunting demons alone is a shitty hobby," she told Grace, "I'll take what I can get, I want someone to know to look for me if I die."
Chipper, but... not at all being anything other than serious. She wasn't being dramatic, over the top, in fact she was almost flippant- but there is an understanding there. A hope that someone really would notice if she died, just in case it is an unpleasant occasion.
Grace
[Manipulation + Subterfuge = nope, there was not just a slight disappointment that Lavinia is a Chorister...]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 7) ( success x 1 )
Grace
[She seems genuinely pleased, genuinely playful. She's rather unafraid of Lavinia, despite having felt her rather strong resonance before, so there's not a lot of watching her tongue or deferential respect there. Her needling, joking statements are how she speaks to friends and equals.
However, yes, there was a bit of a microexpression there -- a frown at the mention of the Chorus that could only mean a split second of disappointment, before she put her face back in order.]
Lavinia
She grinned, the expression pleased, "don't worry, I totally got over my convert all the things phase years ago."
Grace
"You sound just like Kalen. He's a Flambeau," she says, as though that should explain everything.
"And, I think you just found out that Denver is a happening place for hunting evil corrupted nasty things. We have a kind of underground communication system for that. Runs off of a hacked phone sex line, which I hope you're okay with. It's a place where nobody would look, right? But, it'll show up on your phone records that you enjoy dirty conversation.
"There is no actual porny stuff on the hacked version," Grace says, and is she blushing a little? Yup. "It's just our message drop stuff."
Lavinia
"Aw, no actual porny stuff? Well that kills half the fun of having a secret conversational line," her lips upturn and she's got a grin on her face, eyes dark like the space between the stars and bright and shining like torches. She's getting a bit of a tan, coming close to bronze or getting there. It seems to suit her, what with her golden halo of hair and a voice like a herald.
"It's a burner phone, if someone is checking my phone records I've done something wrong," she says as she produces her phone, "I think. And would it be weird to ask your friend to come hunt demons with me? Is that a thing? Or do I have to take people out to coffee first, normally someone else set up my war party play dates."
Grace
"I'm sure he would be thrilled. He likes investigating tunnels and abandoned places? And I'm pretty sure it's just so he can run into stuff that needs killed?"
She takes Lavinia's phone, looks it over for data ports, and rummages around in her laptop bag for the appropriate cord. "I do... have to install a piece of encryption software. I'm also not going to guarantee complete and utter safety. This setup has been designed to avoid people being able to easily track down the entire network of users, through various means. Encryption, obscurity, the fact that the hub never calls out, we are only calling it? But if somebody were truly truly relentless and skilled at Magicking it out... It could happen. Then again, dog-monsters could happen. Anything could, right? Right."
After finding the right cord, she pauses before connecting it to Lavinia's phone. After the safety spiel is done, Lavinia has to consent to the terms and conditions.
Lavinia
"Well, first off, abandoned places are gorgeous, and secondly things tend to pool there and there's this feeling of- well, it depends on why it's been abandoned. Anyway, totally loved checking out abandoned places with a posse," she watches as the other woman takes her phone. Listens to the spiel and waits. She does turn so that Grace is on her left side, so that she's where Lavinia can keep her full attention on her.
"So, more secure than most things, but not completely secure, use with caution and care. I agree that I won't do anything stupid intentionally."
Grace
"Well, that's the best policy, I find..."
Grace plugs in Lavinia's phone, and then gets to work. It's not a long, drawn-out endeavor, here. The process of installation has been streamlined and smoothed out so that hiccups can be avoided. She's had to do this a lot.
"Then, we'll uh... have to... explain how to get to the Chantry..."
And we're all done. Lavinia's phone gets unplugged, and Grace hands it back.
"It's out in Morrison. I wish there was someplace closer, but no such luck."
Lavinia
"Do you think I could crash there?" she asked a little more quickly than she realized she was asking. She cleared her throat, "generally when I blow into town, I crash at a chantry because I'm not staying but I'm staying this time and I'm kinda sick of living in a no tell motel."
Grace
"Oh, absolutely. I mean, you'd probably want to ask Annie first, but I'd be pissed if she said no," Grace says. "It's a really big house, there's lots of rooms. And a Node, and a library. It's pretty chill, if you don't mind the country living."
The address is discussed, as are the important landmarks. The mailbox. Thing is, the Chantry can be hard to find. All good Chantries are hard to find, of course. It makes sense.
Lavinia
"I wouldn't mind country living. Who knows, if I stick around for too long I might actually get to get my books out of the damn trunks," she informs Grace, "but whatever the case, if I'm staying I don't want to be in people's hair for too long. It's been a long time since I've sene a node."
Not true. It's been a long time that she's seen a node that wasn't attached to someone she had no desire to speak to, who she said in no uncertain terms that she never wanted to see him again. (Lies, all lies. Ezekiel or Eric or whatever she wanted to call him, Palmer. Whatever his name he wasPalmer and she was something that defied human lips and-
It was complicated. Suffice to say, she never wanted to see that person again, and therefore cut herself off from a pretty nice node in the northwest.
"Oh," she says, brows raised, smile lights up and there is a moment as if she finally remembered something, "I actually acquired a student, I don't know if you know her- Arionna?" No statement about how she is or how she interacts with people, "if she does anything that gets her into hot water, let me know?"
Grace
Grace's eyes pop open wide at the mention of Arionna. What. The. Fuck. That girl has a teacher? Does Lavinia have her chained up in the basement or something, and is calling that a mentorship?
"Really? Her? Uhh... Well, that's... Yeah. You're a saint, I think. If she does anything that gets her into hot water, it'll be on Ginger. Just so you know. If she becomes a threat to people, they have a right to know. Unless it's, you know, not that serious. Then, sure. Yeah. I'll just call you."
Lavinia
"Yeah," she says, matter of fact and completely unabashed. It was as if there was no question, as if there was nothing that was to say. She said it, solid and sound. She said it, like this wasn't something that she should shy away from and shudder and act embarrassed about. No, it's said with the same way that she said she was a member of the Chorus.
"And with anyone, if they become a threat to people then everyone does have a right to know. And if anyone becomes a threat to anyone else, I will be there to make sure that the problem is taken care of."
This isn't lip service.
This is the kind of taken care of that one only thought Chakravanti dealt in.
"I assumed that was just customary behaviors of where you are." No, Lavinia, having the guaranty that someone will kill you if you become a threat to the community at large on account of walking some unpleasant path is not normal.
Grace
"That's actually the best news I've ever heard about Arionna. I'm glad you're going to be there for her, in whatever capacity."
Because, you know, cleaning up after fallen Mages is not a fun and pleasant task. It never has been. And if Lavinia can keep it from happening entirely? Even better.
"It's not something I could do. Don't have the patience. That's for damn sure."
Lavinia
"I was a shit when I was an apprentice," she said matter-of-factly, "I definitely got more chances than I should have courtesy of good ol' fashioned nepotism. If I can have faith in an intangible, unknowable divine, then I can have faith in a tangible, knowable piece of it."
Grace
Grace has no faith in any divine. And yet, others do. And they're able to hack with that, and so be it. Still, she gets it -- Arionna bends the universe with her will, and that is not something that you should just throw to the winds. One could conceive of their skills as being a tangible, knowable piece of the divine, even if one does not believe in divinity. Gods, perhaps, for certain definitions of the term...
"Well, good luck with that. I'm extremely surprised she let anyone teach her anything. But yeah, go you. Major props."
Lavinia
"I feel bad for her," she laughed, "because I? Have never had a student until now. She has the unfortunate honor of being my guinea pig."
she crossed her legs and drew her attention to the ceiling. Stretched because she needed to stretch, "so... is there anything else I need? Sending you thank you texts? Loaning you library keys? Something?"
Grace
"Library keys?" Yeah, Lavinia mentioned books... "Actually, if you don't mind, I would like to get a look at your books. My partner and I have a digital library project going. We take books and scan them for the sake of sharing through a distributed network. So far, we have... uh... our books. And a few others. But we'd love to grow it."
Lavinia
"I've got it all packed up into a nice, viable format. Are you working primarily in English or does the language actually matter? A fair bit of it is in Greek as of the current. Greek and Latin and a little Arabic. The arabic is for personal purposes." Lavinia muses, "but once you want it let me know how long you'll have it."
Grace
"Language doesn't matter. It's for sharing. I'm sure some of the people who would eventually look through it would know Latin and Greek and Arabic. And I can always hook it up to a translation dealie, but those are never quite as good as you'd hope they'd be...
"I'll have to show you where we work sometime. Aside from the various projects, we also have a gun range, a bunch of nonperishable foodstuffs, thick doors, and a combat training arena, because some people like to be prepared."
Grace grins. Lavinia seems to be the kind of person who would not consider her crazy for such a statement, but would understand. Life's tough out here sometimes.
Lavinia
"You know the worst part of traveling?" she said, and it was a non question, because Lavinia was no doubt going to tell her the worst part about traveling, "the worst part about traveling is that you don't have people to practice with. It's being the perpetual army brat, from what I understand. Everything I've read says this is what other people who travel a lot do."
A beat.
"I'd show you where I work, but it consists of a car, a motel room, and my sister's attic. I'm lucky I have that. "
Grace
"Well, now you have our place too. If you ever need a safe place to crash that's closer than Morrison, or just need a lot of guns or backup fast? Well, we're usually around. And if I'm not around, I can be around -- quickly."
It's the welcome wagon, Lavinia. Here's your gift basket of ammo...
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
Ari's Seeking (Noel ST)
Arionna
[Do you think the chat is onto us?]
Arionna
She had spent the previous night with Lavinia. It was a strange relationship they had now, one that was tentatively mentor and student, though Arionna resisted such tutelage while Lavinia struggled not to push her away. But they were growing together, whether Arionna wanted to believe it or not. Lavinia had been honest with her, she knew that much, and had told her blatantly that she believed in her, not just as a person, but as a person who could be something. Something beautiful, something devout, something akin to the Morrigan.
The event was going to stick with her, no matter where she went, and sit in the back of her mind while she tried to go about her normal activities.
Sundays were sometimes quiet because people often had religious services. Cafes were not as cramped, libraries weren't as full until the evening... it was, for the most part, enjoyable. Ari, for her part, had decided to venture out for more enjoyable things to read. Since the semester was over, she had plenty of free time.
So she stood in a bookstore, moving among the shelves casually, in search of something that had caught her eye. Anything really...she wasn't even seeking a particular subject this time.
Arionna
[perc + alert]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (6, 6, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )
Untamed
The bookstore isn't where one goes to find crowds. There's still a woman behind the counter, bored and sneaking a glance at her phone every now and then. There are the few others who find themselves wandering the aisles with Arionna, but they are easily ignored and not currently in view. It's so quiet here she could imagine herself completely alone. Quiet and cold, in the graveyard of trees.
Because, this is a place of tree-memory. It has a distinct smell of old paper, and it wants silence.
Around a corner, there is a new smell -- something fresh. Pine needles and rot. It's almost as if the books are coming alive again. And she sees, on the placard (which usually tells which section of the bookstore you're in -- Self-Help, Religion, Fiction...) says "Forest".
Drifting through the air, small as dust motes (and they could be dismissed as such, if she were not quite so sharp) a few tiny flakes of snow.
Arionna
And were it any other thing, she might have dismissed it.
But while Arionna was a wary creature, she was also a curious one. The scent of pine drifted in her nose; she inhaled even deeper, closed her eyes briefly even. She might have mistaken it for perfume, or some other scent, but no...it was unmistakable. The scent was real. The flakes were real..
Her fingers drifted along the spines of the books as she stepped along her aisle and turned to make her way towards the Forest aisle. Arionna inhales, and not just because of the scent, but because she's not even sure if she's dreaming anymore. And if she's dreaming...
Ari stops briefly to glance at the ground, to make certain she isn't stepping into another brea trap in her own head, and then she progresses into Forest. Not all dreams are bad Ari..
Untamed
Not all dreams are bad. Some are, though.
Stepping into the Forest aisle, Arionna finds that the carpeting has turned into springy pine-needle litter, the lights dim, the air colder than she remembers, fogging up with her breath. Books are twisted into strange shapes around her, caught halfway between tree and word, until she progressesand all semblance of civilization vanishes.
The woods sit in twilight, in silence like only the lonely places of the world can bring. Most of the time, such lonely places are not quiet -- they hum with the activity of a living organism, but right now it is as if every cell of this organism is holding its breath, watching, waiting. Some wait out the moment in fear, others because of the promise of scraps. The trees wait because that is the way of trees.
The air is icy cold, ground crunches underneath with a crust of snow. Whatever happened to spring? It isn't here, and never was.
Arionna finds herself on her back (and wasn't she walking before?) There is something heavy on top of her -- something alive and terribly fast, with a familiar scent. She's been here before. Somewhere like here. Only then, she got away.
These are the sensations that Arionna might have time to process before the cougar's fangs penetrate her eye sockets. She can see through her removed eyes still -- can watch her own bleeding face through his maw of teeth, until he closes his mouth, blotting out her sight.
The pain is, momentarily, the most excruciating that she has yet experienced, until it, along with the weight on her chest sublimates into the frigid air, leaving her to lie on the forest floor.
The trees are all she can hear, creaking in the wind.
Arionna
It's comfortingly surreal, at least in the beginning. The forest generally was. It felt like home most of the time, especially when the cold sank in. She shivered a little against it, but let out a soft sigh of relief. That didn't, of course, mean it wasn't worrisome. Wait, was she dreaming? Did she never leave the house? Fall asleep in the store?
No time for that. Move forward. Dreams had purpose after all, as your mother would say. Remember them. Write them down. They will whisper truths to you.
Maybe that's true. It it was, she would have to wonder at what point the dreams felt she needed such violence from her own to tell her something. She might wonder that later. Maybe.
But for now, as she lay on her back, uncertain of how exactly she found herself there, she felt pain. It was more intense than the bear trap, and that said something. Ari screamed. Her lungs expressed her pain with all their might and Ari just screamed. She screamed until the lights went out, until she was alone.
Darkness.
Arionna lifted her hands, lightly pressing her palms against her eyes as if to question if that had just happened or maybe... maybe she was about to wake. Elijah had said her cougar was her guide. Something that helped her along her path, but now she felt betrayed. Why would she need that? In what way would that help her now?
She rolled on her side, pressing her palms into the ground to slowly push herself up. She's never felt more afraid. She can't see. The thing she relied on most was gone, and there was no one to help. Suddenly she had the desire to cry, to give up and accept it. Was that the purpose? To tell her to give up?
No.
Arionna has never given up. No matter what, she's always tried to live...just long enough.
Arionna
[perc +aware]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Untamed
Something smiles. Arionna can feel it inside her chest as she rises, defiant. Apparently, something else inside her doesn't want her to give up either.
There is no one around to help, she thinks, but then -- she was just in a place with people, wasn't she?
And she can hear them now. Low, whispering.
"Is she okay?"
"Just ignore it. Probably just tired, come on."
People's disembodied voices surround her, some more compassionate than others. They can tell that something's not quite right, but they don't seem to realize that her eyes are bleeding. Nobody mentions what should be painfully obvious.
Elijah -- she has him in her thoughts. He said her cougar was her guide? Maybe it is. Maybe...
"Ari?"
It's his voice. She can smell the maleness of him. There is no sight to tell her anything else.
"What's up?"
He doesn't seem to notice either.
But Ari -- she can feel her own eyes. They're a piece of herself, and they are moving. The frozenness that she is feels like it is receding into the forest. If she wants them, she must claim them. If she is weak, she will not.
It is that simple. Life is a struggle, is it not?
Arionna
Somehow she had hoped, expected even, that she'd be completely alone. Completely. But no. She's not. She's not as alone as she had hoped, originally. She's accustom to being the odd one out, the one people comment on...and it doesn't phase her as much as the fact that no one seems to notice. Is she mad? Is it all in her head?
Her breathing grows shallow, labored as she attempts to come to grips, rather quickly, with the loss of her eyes, the blindness of people around her and...
Elijah? "I can't see." It's soft. A whine almost. But she has no time. They are still there.
Her eyes aren't gone. They're just somewhere else. She needs those. She could rely on someone else to help her, but she needs them now. Ari orients herself in the direction she can feel them moving, and she begins to run. "I have to find them." That's all she gives in return, all she says as she takes off, trying to use her own hands to steer her in their direction. That's what has always driven her. What she needs to continue. She wants to ask for help, just as he told her once, but there is no time.
Untamed
She leaves Elijah, and oh -- one can only imagine the poor lost puppy look he gives her in response. He also seems content to let her flee, in a rather un-Elijah-like fashion.
She runs. Blindly. And she is unused to blindness. Perhaps, given time, she might become accustomed to a lack of sight -- might fashion for herself a cane or learn to hear the shape of things, but this is not a thing that has happened yet.
In fear, like prey, she runs. Like a weak thing, she runs. A predator should know better, she thinks -- or is that her thought? Something else's?
Her strength is right there, and she denies it.
And the forest is not kind. It is no kinder than life. It shelters no weakness. Ari falls, her foot tangled in a root she didn't see, momentum carrying her no further than the ground, filling her nostrils with snow and dirt, knocking the wind out of her.
Arionna
[Life magic - sensing life, Correspondence - sensing spatial relations - Dif 3 +1 fast casting] -wp
Dice: 1 d10 TN4 (10) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Arionna
[extend] +1 dif
Dice: 1 d10 TN5 (10) ( success x 1 )
Arionna
It's the fear. The fear that has pushed her forward. The fear of losing something so important. But something tell her, reminds her that it's fear that defines who we are. The predator only becomes the prey when it is fearful. Predators, true predators, never run. They struggle, they limp, but they never run. They live or die. They take the life of the runners.
She sits on the ground momentarily, enough to get her breath back, then rises to her feet. Her lips tighten as she breathes in. The blood she can feel along her face. The blood she knows rests where her sight use to be, and it's this that she uses to speak out quickly to her gods. "Nomino ventum se apud me nunc circumdederunt me, et in terram oculi mei neque vestigium . Manibus vestris ut ambularetis ego vobiscum." It's the cold of her ski, the cold of her self that she sends out into the land and into the wind, asking it to carry her, and to guide her, lest she give in to her instinct to run.
Untamed
She speaks words of power, names the wind, calls out for help from without -- and something answers from within.
Arionna cannot see, but she can sense the presence of life about her with a clarity that rivals sight. The trees sway, there are animals here that she knew were there to begin with -- a rat tunneling away from the noise, an owl watching in the high branches, annoyed about the disturbance that cause the rat to hide.
It's not far to where the cougar, almost a beacon in the darkness (from how very much she wants to find him) has carried his prize. He stretches his limbs, looks at her, stares into her empty face, and turns to walk away again.
There is another behind her, approaching slowly. Human in form.
Arionna
She turns a little where she stands, almost looking over her shoulder, even if she can't see the one who approaches. Ari turns back to her game, shifts between the trees to take her away from her straight path. Diagonal, zig zags, never straight. She wonders if her follower is hunting her as she is hunting the cougar, or if he is someone she knows. But she presses forward, no longer running but following the feel of the puma, and her eyes.
But Ari keeps the presence of the other close to her mind, keeps her focus on him. The cougar has no need to run, so he won't, she thinks. But they will meet, because she will find him. He must sleep sometime. He must rest. And when he does...
But for now, the human. Hunter? Friend? Tourist? No. They are in a forest now, not the store. Anything here must be in the same world as she. Arionna drops her bag, pushes off her shoes from her feet and keeps walking, pressing her feet carefully into the ground. Who is stalking who, she wonders.
Untamed
She walks, this time being careful, this time using her brain and her skill and her will. She can 'see' the life around her as an echo, and it is everywhere. The trees are no longer a thing that stand in her way to trip her up.
There seems to be a break in the trees ahead of her, and that human-shaped creature still follows her. Whoever it is, they don't chase and they don't threaten, but they keep going.
With her shoes gone, she can feel the snow's cold cracks and the spines of pine needles. Perhaps she doesn't care about the discomfort. Perhaps it's a good thing that she decided to use another sense, because the pine litter and snow gives way to slick rock, and then?
There is a tug at her back. The human-shaped thing has her by the fabric of her dress, holding her.
"Stop. You will fall," says Lavinia from behind her. Her voice echoes as if from the depths of a chasm. The yawning thing she nearly lept into, devoid of life with which to see.
Arionna
The snow was a fascinating thing. It was cold, wet, and it hurt sometimes, but it kept you awake, aware. Your feet became your sensors, even if they felt half numb. She liked the pain of it, the reminder that she was exactly where she thought she was, and a reminder that this is her time.
She walked, ever mindful of the presence behind her, especially when it took hold of her clothing. Arionna stopped. She hadn't noticed it before...the chasm. She hadn't see the drop even with her senses. But now...now she saw it, in a manner of speaking. Arionna didn't move, except to give a look over her shoulder at the woman behind her. "How did you find me?" But it feels like an odd question, if only because Lavinia was not entirely normal. She was something else.
Her lips tightened, and she felt a momentary burst of defiance, but...
But there was a hole right there, and while she could thrash and cry, and yell about how Lavi can't tell her what to do...it was in her best interest not to. Arionna stepped back slowly, enough that she was not in so much danger anymore. "Did the cougar go in there?" Because she doesn't know. Did he? Did he leap in?
Untamed
How did you find me?
"I have always been here," comes the response.
Did the cougar go in there?
"No," she says, terse, and to the point, that. "He is beyond this cliff."
So much for finding her eyes, then. Not unless...
"Would you allow me to help you?"
Strange words. Not, 'Do you want help?' or 'I could help you.' but something else: would Arionna allow it?
Arionna
Allow.
She could see, enough, she knew. But somehow she had missed where the cougar went. A few months back her response would have been an immediate 'No.' She would have said it harshly, even stalked off to do it on her own, as she always has. But times have changed and now she hesitates, unsure of how she feels about it.
Lavinia has promised that she would help her. Train her well enough that she won't need Lavi anymore. Promised to help her find a closer path to The Morrigan. And she's said all this without lying. That much Ari knew. Lavinia hadn't lied to her. Elijah hadn't lied to her. There were two whole people in the world she could trust, mostly, because they had always been honest, or honest enough.
Her lips tighten, and she reminds herself that through all of this, she has to live. She can be defiant, she can struggle, she can even yell and scream at the people around her, but if she does it just because, she's hurting herself. Lavinia could have let her fall. She could have pushed her. She could have been quiet while Ari walked right in.
But she didn't. Isn't that the definition of someone you can trust? A person who, at your weakest, won't take advantage of you? Won't let you fall? All the others had turned away when she wasn't compliant. She didn't bend to their wishes; didn't do what they wanted, and they left. They didn't deserve her trust because they only wanted to be friends so long as she did what they wanted.
Lavinia...Elijah...
It wasn't about bending to them. They bent to her.
She turned slowly to face Lavinia and held out her hand slowly, palm up. "It's obvious I can't find him on my own. You've hunted worse creatures and lived. I'd like your assistance." Saying it was still hard. It was always hard. But at least she could say it now.
Untamed
"You're getting stronger," says Lavinia, and her hand comes up to hold Arionna's, slides down her arm, grasps her around the waist. Apparently, that's all that she needs to do to hold the young woman aloft.
Wings erupt from Lavinia's back, like the wings of a great black bird. It seems to complete her friend, in a strange way -- those wings fit, like they were always a part of her. And then?
Lavinia leaps.
And the dark place where there is no life to see does not drag her down.
It doesn't take Arionna either. Lavinia, once trusted, does not drop her.
To the angelic being, such a jump is like a hop over a puddle, but to Arionna it would have been death, that much is certain. Once on the other side, Lavinia lets her, gently, to the ground.
"Pride is a weakness," Lavinia says.
"And I suffer not the weak," says another voice, deep and dark.
Like that, Arionna's sight returns. From her eyes, under a cougar's mouth, she can see herself and a winged Lavinia side by side.
Arionna
She remembers, clearly, the first time she ever flew.
It was also the first time she could ever, truly, do magic. She had felt the wind at her wings, saw the world with the great, powerful eyes of the bird. She knew that this was what she had always wanted; to be a part of the world, not just as a human, but as everything. But flying... she longed to fly again.
Lavinia brought those memories back. And while she couldn't see as the bird did, and could only see through the eyes of her magic...and while she could not fly herself, she felt...
It felt wonderful again, even if it was only very brief.
It was a strange feeling to see herself from a third person. To act as if she were in control of some character not her own. Arionna knelt down slowly onto her knees. For her to give in, for her to really understand how much she needed someone else, she had to lose something so obvious and important to her. Something about that was telling.
"Pride...has it always been pride, Lavinia?" She lifts her head as if to look at her, but she can only see her across the way, from him. "I don't know how to not be proud. But..." Her face moves a little in the cougar's direction.
"Keep them then." She said, and it took effort to say it. She needed it, or did she? "Give them to The Morrigan." A devotion that Lavinia was trying to instill in her. Conviction to serve her goddess. Her lips tighten, thin out as she realizes what she's doing. But no... that's precisely it. She overcame herself when she lost what was most important. And to give it to the deity she's meant to serve...
Blood almost seems like such a ridiculously small gift to any god. "As my gift to her. My thanks."
Untamed
"You have come all of this way, but not for your eyes, have you? I think you see that now," says Lavinia, who strides up to the cougar, black-winged and elegant.
She takes Arionna's eyes from the ground, slides them onto a cord that she ties about her neck, like living jewels.
"In order to gain, you would suffer. To see, you must be blinded first. So be it. I accept your gift, that you might continue to grow in understanding."
The cougar pads over to Arionna's kneeling form, nuzzles her, marks her with his scent. It's a strange kind of cat-ritual. You are mine, he says, in body language. You are family. You are loved.
And oh -- the power courses through her. She feels the change come over her -- a bolt of raw strength infusing her soul.
"We will meet again."
The ground melts. Its coldness is replaced with warmth and the conformity of carpeting. The scent of pine needles leaves her, and the smell of dust and books returns. She is kneeling in between the stacks of books. And when she opens her eyes?
There is only the blackness of the deep forest.
"Is she okay?" someone says.
"Just ignore it. Probably just tired, come on," says someone else.
They don't see how powerful she is now.
[Do you think the chat is onto us?]
Arionna
She had spent the previous night with Lavinia. It was a strange relationship they had now, one that was tentatively mentor and student, though Arionna resisted such tutelage while Lavinia struggled not to push her away. But they were growing together, whether Arionna wanted to believe it or not. Lavinia had been honest with her, she knew that much, and had told her blatantly that she believed in her, not just as a person, but as a person who could be something. Something beautiful, something devout, something akin to the Morrigan.
The event was going to stick with her, no matter where she went, and sit in the back of her mind while she tried to go about her normal activities.
Sundays were sometimes quiet because people often had religious services. Cafes were not as cramped, libraries weren't as full until the evening... it was, for the most part, enjoyable. Ari, for her part, had decided to venture out for more enjoyable things to read. Since the semester was over, she had plenty of free time.
So she stood in a bookstore, moving among the shelves casually, in search of something that had caught her eye. Anything really...she wasn't even seeking a particular subject this time.
Arionna
[perc + alert]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (6, 6, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )
Untamed
The bookstore isn't where one goes to find crowds. There's still a woman behind the counter, bored and sneaking a glance at her phone every now and then. There are the few others who find themselves wandering the aisles with Arionna, but they are easily ignored and not currently in view. It's so quiet here she could imagine herself completely alone. Quiet and cold, in the graveyard of trees.
Because, this is a place of tree-memory. It has a distinct smell of old paper, and it wants silence.
Around a corner, there is a new smell -- something fresh. Pine needles and rot. It's almost as if the books are coming alive again. And she sees, on the placard (which usually tells which section of the bookstore you're in -- Self-Help, Religion, Fiction...) says "Forest".
Drifting through the air, small as dust motes (and they could be dismissed as such, if she were not quite so sharp) a few tiny flakes of snow.
Arionna
And were it any other thing, she might have dismissed it.
But while Arionna was a wary creature, she was also a curious one. The scent of pine drifted in her nose; she inhaled even deeper, closed her eyes briefly even. She might have mistaken it for perfume, or some other scent, but no...it was unmistakable. The scent was real. The flakes were real..
Her fingers drifted along the spines of the books as she stepped along her aisle and turned to make her way towards the Forest aisle. Arionna inhales, and not just because of the scent, but because she's not even sure if she's dreaming anymore. And if she's dreaming...
Ari stops briefly to glance at the ground, to make certain she isn't stepping into another brea trap in her own head, and then she progresses into Forest. Not all dreams are bad Ari..
Untamed
Not all dreams are bad. Some are, though.
Stepping into the Forest aisle, Arionna finds that the carpeting has turned into springy pine-needle litter, the lights dim, the air colder than she remembers, fogging up with her breath. Books are twisted into strange shapes around her, caught halfway between tree and word, until she progressesand all semblance of civilization vanishes.
The woods sit in twilight, in silence like only the lonely places of the world can bring. Most of the time, such lonely places are not quiet -- they hum with the activity of a living organism, but right now it is as if every cell of this organism is holding its breath, watching, waiting. Some wait out the moment in fear, others because of the promise of scraps. The trees wait because that is the way of trees.
The air is icy cold, ground crunches underneath with a crust of snow. Whatever happened to spring? It isn't here, and never was.
Arionna finds herself on her back (and wasn't she walking before?) There is something heavy on top of her -- something alive and terribly fast, with a familiar scent. She's been here before. Somewhere like here. Only then, she got away.
These are the sensations that Arionna might have time to process before the cougar's fangs penetrate her eye sockets. She can see through her removed eyes still -- can watch her own bleeding face through his maw of teeth, until he closes his mouth, blotting out her sight.
The pain is, momentarily, the most excruciating that she has yet experienced, until it, along with the weight on her chest sublimates into the frigid air, leaving her to lie on the forest floor.
The trees are all she can hear, creaking in the wind.
Arionna
It's comfortingly surreal, at least in the beginning. The forest generally was. It felt like home most of the time, especially when the cold sank in. She shivered a little against it, but let out a soft sigh of relief. That didn't, of course, mean it wasn't worrisome. Wait, was she dreaming? Did she never leave the house? Fall asleep in the store?
No time for that. Move forward. Dreams had purpose after all, as your mother would say. Remember them. Write them down. They will whisper truths to you.
Maybe that's true. It it was, she would have to wonder at what point the dreams felt she needed such violence from her own to tell her something. She might wonder that later. Maybe.
But for now, as she lay on her back, uncertain of how exactly she found herself there, she felt pain. It was more intense than the bear trap, and that said something. Ari screamed. Her lungs expressed her pain with all their might and Ari just screamed. She screamed until the lights went out, until she was alone.
Darkness.
Arionna lifted her hands, lightly pressing her palms against her eyes as if to question if that had just happened or maybe... maybe she was about to wake. Elijah had said her cougar was her guide. Something that helped her along her path, but now she felt betrayed. Why would she need that? In what way would that help her now?
She rolled on her side, pressing her palms into the ground to slowly push herself up. She's never felt more afraid. She can't see. The thing she relied on most was gone, and there was no one to help. Suddenly she had the desire to cry, to give up and accept it. Was that the purpose? To tell her to give up?
No.
Arionna has never given up. No matter what, she's always tried to live...just long enough.
Arionna
[perc +aware]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Untamed
Something smiles. Arionna can feel it inside her chest as she rises, defiant. Apparently, something else inside her doesn't want her to give up either.
There is no one around to help, she thinks, but then -- she was just in a place with people, wasn't she?
And she can hear them now. Low, whispering.
"Is she okay?"
"Just ignore it. Probably just tired, come on."
People's disembodied voices surround her, some more compassionate than others. They can tell that something's not quite right, but they don't seem to realize that her eyes are bleeding. Nobody mentions what should be painfully obvious.
Elijah -- she has him in her thoughts. He said her cougar was her guide? Maybe it is. Maybe...
"Ari?"
It's his voice. She can smell the maleness of him. There is no sight to tell her anything else.
"What's up?"
He doesn't seem to notice either.
But Ari -- she can feel her own eyes. They're a piece of herself, and they are moving. The frozenness that she is feels like it is receding into the forest. If she wants them, she must claim them. If she is weak, she will not.
It is that simple. Life is a struggle, is it not?
Arionna
Somehow she had hoped, expected even, that she'd be completely alone. Completely. But no. She's not. She's not as alone as she had hoped, originally. She's accustom to being the odd one out, the one people comment on...and it doesn't phase her as much as the fact that no one seems to notice. Is she mad? Is it all in her head?
Her breathing grows shallow, labored as she attempts to come to grips, rather quickly, with the loss of her eyes, the blindness of people around her and...
Elijah? "I can't see." It's soft. A whine almost. But she has no time. They are still there.
Her eyes aren't gone. They're just somewhere else. She needs those. She could rely on someone else to help her, but she needs them now. Ari orients herself in the direction she can feel them moving, and she begins to run. "I have to find them." That's all she gives in return, all she says as she takes off, trying to use her own hands to steer her in their direction. That's what has always driven her. What she needs to continue. She wants to ask for help, just as he told her once, but there is no time.
Untamed
She leaves Elijah, and oh -- one can only imagine the poor lost puppy look he gives her in response. He also seems content to let her flee, in a rather un-Elijah-like fashion.
She runs. Blindly. And she is unused to blindness. Perhaps, given time, she might become accustomed to a lack of sight -- might fashion for herself a cane or learn to hear the shape of things, but this is not a thing that has happened yet.
In fear, like prey, she runs. Like a weak thing, she runs. A predator should know better, she thinks -- or is that her thought? Something else's?
Her strength is right there, and she denies it.
And the forest is not kind. It is no kinder than life. It shelters no weakness. Ari falls, her foot tangled in a root she didn't see, momentum carrying her no further than the ground, filling her nostrils with snow and dirt, knocking the wind out of her.
Arionna
[Life magic - sensing life, Correspondence - sensing spatial relations - Dif 3 +1 fast casting] -wp
Dice: 1 d10 TN4 (10) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Arionna
[extend] +1 dif
Dice: 1 d10 TN5 (10) ( success x 1 )
Arionna
It's the fear. The fear that has pushed her forward. The fear of losing something so important. But something tell her, reminds her that it's fear that defines who we are. The predator only becomes the prey when it is fearful. Predators, true predators, never run. They struggle, they limp, but they never run. They live or die. They take the life of the runners.
She sits on the ground momentarily, enough to get her breath back, then rises to her feet. Her lips tighten as she breathes in. The blood she can feel along her face. The blood she knows rests where her sight use to be, and it's this that she uses to speak out quickly to her gods. "Nomino ventum se apud me nunc circumdederunt me, et in terram oculi mei neque vestigium . Manibus vestris ut ambularetis ego vobiscum." It's the cold of her ski, the cold of her self that she sends out into the land and into the wind, asking it to carry her, and to guide her, lest she give in to her instinct to run.
Untamed
She speaks words of power, names the wind, calls out for help from without -- and something answers from within.
Arionna cannot see, but she can sense the presence of life about her with a clarity that rivals sight. The trees sway, there are animals here that she knew were there to begin with -- a rat tunneling away from the noise, an owl watching in the high branches, annoyed about the disturbance that cause the rat to hide.
It's not far to where the cougar, almost a beacon in the darkness (from how very much she wants to find him) has carried his prize. He stretches his limbs, looks at her, stares into her empty face, and turns to walk away again.
There is another behind her, approaching slowly. Human in form.
Arionna
She turns a little where she stands, almost looking over her shoulder, even if she can't see the one who approaches. Ari turns back to her game, shifts between the trees to take her away from her straight path. Diagonal, zig zags, never straight. She wonders if her follower is hunting her as she is hunting the cougar, or if he is someone she knows. But she presses forward, no longer running but following the feel of the puma, and her eyes.
But Ari keeps the presence of the other close to her mind, keeps her focus on him. The cougar has no need to run, so he won't, she thinks. But they will meet, because she will find him. He must sleep sometime. He must rest. And when he does...
But for now, the human. Hunter? Friend? Tourist? No. They are in a forest now, not the store. Anything here must be in the same world as she. Arionna drops her bag, pushes off her shoes from her feet and keeps walking, pressing her feet carefully into the ground. Who is stalking who, she wonders.
Untamed
She walks, this time being careful, this time using her brain and her skill and her will. She can 'see' the life around her as an echo, and it is everywhere. The trees are no longer a thing that stand in her way to trip her up.
There seems to be a break in the trees ahead of her, and that human-shaped creature still follows her. Whoever it is, they don't chase and they don't threaten, but they keep going.
With her shoes gone, she can feel the snow's cold cracks and the spines of pine needles. Perhaps she doesn't care about the discomfort. Perhaps it's a good thing that she decided to use another sense, because the pine litter and snow gives way to slick rock, and then?
There is a tug at her back. The human-shaped thing has her by the fabric of her dress, holding her.
"Stop. You will fall," says Lavinia from behind her. Her voice echoes as if from the depths of a chasm. The yawning thing she nearly lept into, devoid of life with which to see.
Arionna
The snow was a fascinating thing. It was cold, wet, and it hurt sometimes, but it kept you awake, aware. Your feet became your sensors, even if they felt half numb. She liked the pain of it, the reminder that she was exactly where she thought she was, and a reminder that this is her time.
She walked, ever mindful of the presence behind her, especially when it took hold of her clothing. Arionna stopped. She hadn't noticed it before...the chasm. She hadn't see the drop even with her senses. But now...now she saw it, in a manner of speaking. Arionna didn't move, except to give a look over her shoulder at the woman behind her. "How did you find me?" But it feels like an odd question, if only because Lavinia was not entirely normal. She was something else.
Her lips tightened, and she felt a momentary burst of defiance, but...
But there was a hole right there, and while she could thrash and cry, and yell about how Lavi can't tell her what to do...it was in her best interest not to. Arionna stepped back slowly, enough that she was not in so much danger anymore. "Did the cougar go in there?" Because she doesn't know. Did he? Did he leap in?
Untamed
How did you find me?
"I have always been here," comes the response.
Did the cougar go in there?
"No," she says, terse, and to the point, that. "He is beyond this cliff."
So much for finding her eyes, then. Not unless...
"Would you allow me to help you?"
Strange words. Not, 'Do you want help?' or 'I could help you.' but something else: would Arionna allow it?
Arionna
Allow.
She could see, enough, she knew. But somehow she had missed where the cougar went. A few months back her response would have been an immediate 'No.' She would have said it harshly, even stalked off to do it on her own, as she always has. But times have changed and now she hesitates, unsure of how she feels about it.
Lavinia has promised that she would help her. Train her well enough that she won't need Lavi anymore. Promised to help her find a closer path to The Morrigan. And she's said all this without lying. That much Ari knew. Lavinia hadn't lied to her. Elijah hadn't lied to her. There were two whole people in the world she could trust, mostly, because they had always been honest, or honest enough.
Her lips tighten, and she reminds herself that through all of this, she has to live. She can be defiant, she can struggle, she can even yell and scream at the people around her, but if she does it just because, she's hurting herself. Lavinia could have let her fall. She could have pushed her. She could have been quiet while Ari walked right in.
But she didn't. Isn't that the definition of someone you can trust? A person who, at your weakest, won't take advantage of you? Won't let you fall? All the others had turned away when she wasn't compliant. She didn't bend to their wishes; didn't do what they wanted, and they left. They didn't deserve her trust because they only wanted to be friends so long as she did what they wanted.
Lavinia...Elijah...
It wasn't about bending to them. They bent to her.
She turned slowly to face Lavinia and held out her hand slowly, palm up. "It's obvious I can't find him on my own. You've hunted worse creatures and lived. I'd like your assistance." Saying it was still hard. It was always hard. But at least she could say it now.
Untamed
"You're getting stronger," says Lavinia, and her hand comes up to hold Arionna's, slides down her arm, grasps her around the waist. Apparently, that's all that she needs to do to hold the young woman aloft.
Wings erupt from Lavinia's back, like the wings of a great black bird. It seems to complete her friend, in a strange way -- those wings fit, like they were always a part of her. And then?
Lavinia leaps.
And the dark place where there is no life to see does not drag her down.
It doesn't take Arionna either. Lavinia, once trusted, does not drop her.
To the angelic being, such a jump is like a hop over a puddle, but to Arionna it would have been death, that much is certain. Once on the other side, Lavinia lets her, gently, to the ground.
"Pride is a weakness," Lavinia says.
"And I suffer not the weak," says another voice, deep and dark.
Like that, Arionna's sight returns. From her eyes, under a cougar's mouth, she can see herself and a winged Lavinia side by side.
Arionna
She remembers, clearly, the first time she ever flew.
It was also the first time she could ever, truly, do magic. She had felt the wind at her wings, saw the world with the great, powerful eyes of the bird. She knew that this was what she had always wanted; to be a part of the world, not just as a human, but as everything. But flying... she longed to fly again.
Lavinia brought those memories back. And while she couldn't see as the bird did, and could only see through the eyes of her magic...and while she could not fly herself, she felt...
It felt wonderful again, even if it was only very brief.
It was a strange feeling to see herself from a third person. To act as if she were in control of some character not her own. Arionna knelt down slowly onto her knees. For her to give in, for her to really understand how much she needed someone else, she had to lose something so obvious and important to her. Something about that was telling.
"Pride...has it always been pride, Lavinia?" She lifts her head as if to look at her, but she can only see her across the way, from him. "I don't know how to not be proud. But..." Her face moves a little in the cougar's direction.
"Keep them then." She said, and it took effort to say it. She needed it, or did she? "Give them to The Morrigan." A devotion that Lavinia was trying to instill in her. Conviction to serve her goddess. Her lips tighten, thin out as she realizes what she's doing. But no... that's precisely it. She overcame herself when she lost what was most important. And to give it to the deity she's meant to serve...
Blood almost seems like such a ridiculously small gift to any god. "As my gift to her. My thanks."
Untamed
"You have come all of this way, but not for your eyes, have you? I think you see that now," says Lavinia, who strides up to the cougar, black-winged and elegant.
She takes Arionna's eyes from the ground, slides them onto a cord that she ties about her neck, like living jewels.
"In order to gain, you would suffer. To see, you must be blinded first. So be it. I accept your gift, that you might continue to grow in understanding."
The cougar pads over to Arionna's kneeling form, nuzzles her, marks her with his scent. It's a strange kind of cat-ritual. You are mine, he says, in body language. You are family. You are loved.
And oh -- the power courses through her. She feels the change come over her -- a bolt of raw strength infusing her soul.
"We will meet again."
The ground melts. Its coldness is replaced with warmth and the conformity of carpeting. The scent of pine needles leaves her, and the smell of dust and books returns. She is kneeling in between the stacks of books. And when she opens her eyes?
There is only the blackness of the deep forest.
"Is she okay?" someone says.
"Just ignore it. Probably just tired, come on," says someone else.
They don't see how powerful she is now.
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