The fortune teller.

Serafíne

Awareness

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (2, 3, 4, 6, 6, 6, 6, 10, 10) ( success x 6 ) Re-rolls: 2

Serafíne

The night is dark and the street is a crowded whirl of second-hand costumes and second-hand magic and second-hand clowns riding double-decker bicycles and would-be sideshow geeks showing their stuff, barkers in striped pants and tophats and organ grinders and little monkeys and snake handlers and belly dancers and steampunk belly dancers and steampunk organ grinders and artists and sculptors and food trucks and buskers and sellers of things and among this great and cacaphonous frenzy we find a fewa very fewcapable of true magic.It is not as earth shattering as you might imagine, see - but Sera felt Tí¡ltos from three or four blocks or more or endless blocks away, some bar, probably a dive, with live music and a sweating crowd and 2 for 1 well drinks where she said fuck the well drinks and got herself a bottle of tequila she has carried all the way here, trailing a few friends and watching them peel off and allowing them to peel off here or there or wherever so that by the time she arrives at a particular booth in a particular stretch of the indie circus / carnival she is alone except for her friend, the bottle of tequila. Lime slices long since gone and she has no shaker of salt and she's dressed, ohwe know how she dresses. Tonight, in a short black circleskirt that barely covers her ass and a pair of tights that are solid black up to the thigh, where the Paris skyline is, uh, evident. Overthat a strappy black bustier that is really closer to a bra and a very thin, very fine-gauge hoodie in a beautiful sullen heathered gray."You're telling fortunes?"This spike of her dark brows, wry. She lifts up that bottle of tequila and sets it down on his table like an offering, like payment-in-advance. "I want my fortune told."

Serafíne

The night is dark and the street is a crowded whirl of second-hand costumes and second-hand magic and second-hand clowns riding double-decker bicycles and would-be sideshow geeks showing their stuff, barkers in striped pants and tophats and organ grinders and little monkeys and snake handlers and belly dancers and steampunk belly dancers and steampunk organ grinders and artists and sculptors and food trucks and buskers and sellers of things and among this great and cacaphonous frenzy we find a few

a very few

capable of true magic.

It is not as earth shattering as you might imagine, see - but Sera felt Tí¡ltos from three or four blocks or more or endless blocks away, some bar, probably a dive, with live music and a sweating crowd and 2 for 1 well drinks where she said fuck the well drinks and got herself a bottle of tequila she has carried all the way here, trailing a few friends and watching them peel off and allowing them to peel off here or there or wherever so that by the time she arrives at a particular booth in a particular stretch of the indie circus / carnival she is alone except for her friend, the bottle of tequila. Lime slices long since gone and she has no shaker of salt and she's dressed, oh

we know how she dresses. Tonight, in a short black circleskirt that barely covers her ass and a pair of tights that are solid black up to the thigh, where the Paris skyline is, uh, evident. Overthat a strappy black bustier that is really closer to a bra and a very thin, very fine-gauge hoodie in a beautiful sullen heathered gray.

"You're telling fortunes?"

This spike of her dark brows, wry. She lifts up that bottle of tequila and sets it down on his table like an offering, like payment-in-advance.

"I want my fortune told."

Tí¡ltos

[Hmm. Dex + Crafts, for earlier. DECISIONS.]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 6, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )

Tí¡ltos

The lick of stretch where Tí¡ltos Horví¡th has his fortune teller's booth feels different from the rest of the c a u c h e m a r indie fringe-outsider summer carnival. Like this is a place where somebody'd wander onto and get lost or really drunk puke see through the thickening net of glamour past and into -- no. But they wouldn't see past it, 'least not looking at the dreamspeaker's set up. He constructed, with help because in spite of his grin, his energy, he was like a skinny candle, tired quickly when the flame was lit, this tent-thing out of thrift-store teeshirts and dishcloths and cut-up rags and squares of cardboard and circles of mirrors that catch and reflect the light and there's this fucking paper lantern inside it that sets up an ambient glow and behind the paper lantern, one of those cheap star things, you can just see this row of bottles (no tequila yet, but whiskey, gin, vodka, beer, one lone vanilla creme soda), some with their tops popped and others quiet as quiet can be, and of course there's a table such as it is, a scrap metal twist of city discarded city property, and there's a little sign that says fortunes told for fun and profit; beware the vultures of expectation and somebody else tried to afix a better sign but that's fallen and been blown down the street and that one just says tarot readings, spirits spoken to, and the point is this is where Serafíne is drawn to following Tí¡ltos's unique resonance that thing welling up from his heart and his blood and his sharp-shrewd mind to effect the world. Beguiling Tí¡ltos, Tí¡ltos who lusts for life, who is always in the middle of wanting it so:

He's lounging when she arrives. All 6'1 of him, lounging on the cracked asphalt covered in a rug or a beach towel who knows the difference outside his tent, and of course there's no surprise because he felt her, but of course there's surprise because here she is, and look at him with his owl eyebrows going up, the flash of his teeth under that splendid-of-all-splendors mustache, tonight waxed and curled and thicker than she probably remembers, just as his cheekbones are a little sharper, the flash in his eyes a little more tarnished.

"Sera!" He proclaims her, you see, smacking his palm on his thigh, un-lounging now, like you'd proclaim an old friend who danced you under the table though you don't really remember it just this general sense of it happenedness or one of the furies wandering in to seek shelter from the cold before they head back to the business of righteous murdering, "Tequila will buy you only one half of your fortune. Can't say which half, the bad or the good. Sure you want your own and not somebody else's?"

Tí¡ltos

The lick of stretch where Tí¡ltos Horví¡th has his fortune teller's booth feels different from the rest of the c a u c h e m a r indie fringe-outsider summer carnival. Like this is a place where somebody'd wander onto and get lost or really drunk puke see through the thickening net of glamour past and into -- no. But they wouldn't see past it, 'least not looking at the dreamspeaker's set up. He constructed, with help because in spite of his grin, his energy, he was like a skinny candle, tired quickly when the flame was lit, this tent-thing out of thrift-store teeshirts and dishcloths and cut-up rags and squares of cardboard and circles of mirrors that catch and reflect the light and there's this fucking paper lantern inside it that sets up an ambient glow and behind the paper lantern, one of those cheap star things, you can just see this row of bottles (no tequila yet, but whiskey, gin, vodka, beer, one lone vanilla creme soda), some with their tops popped and others quiet as quiet can be, and of course there's a table such as it is, a scrap metal twist of city discarded city property, and there's a little sign that says fortunes told for fun and profit; beware the vultures of expectation and somebody else tried to afix a better sign but that's fallen and been blown down the street and that one just says tarot readings, spirits spoken to, and the point is this is where Serafíne is drawn to following Tí¡ltos's unique resonance that thing welling up from his heart and his blood and his sharp-shrewd mind to effect the world. Beguiling Tí¡ltos, Tí¡ltos who lusts for life, who is always in the middle of wanting it so:

He's lounging when she arrives. All 6'1 of him, lounging on the cracked asphalt covered in a rug or a beach towel who knows the difference outside his tent, and of course there's no surprise because he felt her, but of course there's surprise because here she is, and look at him with his owl eyebrows going up, the flash of his teeth under that splendid-of-all-splendors mustache, tonight waxed and curled and thicker than she probably remembers, just as his cheekbones are a little sharper, the flash in his eyes a little more tarnished.

"Sera!" He proclaims her, you see, smacking his palm on his thigh, un-lounging now, like you'd proclaim an old friend who danced you under the table though you don't really remember it just this general sense of it happenedness or one of the furies wandering in to seek shelter from the cold before they head back to the business of righteous murdering, "Tequila will buy you only one half of your fortune. Can't say which half, the bad or the good. Sure you want your own and not somebody else's?"

Serafíne

See, she takes a moment to read the sign, the sign left behind not the better sign, the sign that passing strangers might understand, dark eyes crawling across it in the paper-latern glow and there's a laziness to her smile tonight. The first time they met she was sober and now she is not sober and being not sober is evident in every languid inch of her rather-shorter frame (but she wears liar's shoes that make her 5'9.5" tall tonight, wedge-heeled boots with platforms that any other would would dodder around in but she walks in like a linebacker, love, not a girl at all).

It isn't a bottle of tequila, that. It is a half bottle of tequila.

He - straightens on that rug or beach towel or forth-hand saddle blanket and she sinks into a low crouch, an arm slung across her knee, her eyes all glassy and direct, so they are eye-level.

"I expect a whole fortune the same way I expect a whole ass," she tosses back, her mouth crawling wider, " - but well, someone else's fortune will do me fine. What do I get for a bottle of tequila and a kiss?"

Tí¡ltos

He is sparing with his voice with his first response, which is this chuckle, this bright-eyed laugh, that's just three syllables nicked out've his throat, amused and good like the Devil about to entertain a witch's Sabbath or maybe more like the Devil about to give that fiddler-boy his due for being just so damned good. Sounds like this: hh hah haah, and of course it animates his eyes and animates his animated aristocratic features. Tí¡ltos settles his bony elbows on the scrap metal table next to that half-bottle of tequila and his right arm is all bangles and his left arm is all temporary ink right now and duct-tape and of course there's that harrowing ring that malicious thing holding court amongst all the other rings.

"A story to tell somebody's grandchildren, a fucking song in my fucking heart," he replies, spring-lordling and all, "and a secret that everybody knows. Depending," and his mustache twitches, as he pretends to be a serious, to be sober (he is sober, though really, he is celebrating, and the true celebrant is never sober, because they are always possessed by exultation, huh?), "of course on the kiss and how quickly the tequila is drunk. Whose fortune do you want me to tell you? There's a hat to help you decide."

"And, honey, you've gotta beware the vultures of expectation."

There is a hat. It's under the table.

Serafíne

"The kiss'll be fucking awesome, Tí¡ltos the tí¡ltos," she returns with this swimming and drunk bravado, her mouth sliding and her eyes all glassy-gleam and with sharp note of appreciation for that three-syllable laugh he utters and the bangles on his arm and the temporary ink and ducktape. "Mine always are."

And that's not arrogance, that's just solid knowing. Look at the way her mouth crawls, look at the way her mouth curls, look at the way her eyes settle on his, look at the way she feels. Girl knows how to kiss.

"I want a stranger's fortune, I think. Make it a sweet one, I don't think I can abide the dark tonight or - "

A sharp breath out, a shake of her blond head. " - is that an expectant vulture there, looking for sweetness from the tí¡ltos when maybe there's only sour out there lingering on the tongue? Fucking hell does that mean, the vultures of expectation?"

She has ink too: and her ink is real and it is sharkscissors, the blades on her index and fore-fingers, the handle on her palm turning into a shark that curls down over the pulse point of her wrist and she holds it out to him like this hand, this left hand, is the hand you are going to read. "The fuck's the hat for?"

Like an afterthought but she's reaching for it anyway.

"Oh wait, do I have to give you your kiss first?"

Tí¡ltos

"The hat's for fishing-out other people's fortunes." He answers that question first. Her hand's on the table and he doesn't take it yet. He waits until she's pulled the hat out and up and put it on the scrap metal or until she's just reached her hand into it.

The hat's one of those old top hats you find in vintage shops sometimes or an old uncle's chest and it's not really in shape enough to be worn but it's old and it's got knowing and it used to be worn out on the town and the inside is still lined in silk, but it's silk turning into scraps, and it's hard against her knuckles. But there's a lot of other stuff in the hat. Coins, cards, oblong objects, rings, little sharp hard things, stones, keys, plastic bows, beads, a lug-nut or two or three, salt-toffee twists wrapped in paper, other paper things like photographs maybe or postcards, larger cards not the shape of a playing card, and it's all a jumble.

"And oh, pick your stranger first, put whatever you get right here," and he taps the table (clack, clack) with two fingers, "then you've gotta give me my kiss." The smile he gives her isn't really about the flash of teeth or a twist of the mouth; it's this secret thing that's always burning behind his skull and his skin; a warm thing like the gold gets put into corn; but a contained thing, like it's his. "We tellers of fortunes don't fuck around with payment. Look shit-stupid otherwise."

Serafíne

What she pulls out is a single silver earring, this small tarnished dangle with a silver bead swinging from the French wire in the shape of a rosebed, the dark shadows of the inner petals oxdized to a near carbon black, the silver old and worn from handling and warm for reasons she cannot name and does not consider, and she holds the warm bead in the palm of her hand for a long beat of a moment then deposits it precisely where he tapped his fingers in the center of the little table.

Then oh she shifts her crouch forward until she's kneeling instead of crouching and braces her hands on the tabletop, see, palms flat on either side of the of the ear-ring she has fished up from the depths of that tattered silk lined hat and leans forward until her thighs are against the edge of the table and shifts the brace of her weight from two hands to one and reaches up to curve her fingers around the back of his skull see and twist them through his hair and pull him closer and she's closing her eyes and she's

kissing him and she knows how to move her mouth with s soft but gentle and increasing pressure and how to suggest the teeth behind her lips and how to withhold that suggestion and withdraw from it without ever really ending the kiss so,

you see,

it is a lovely, lovely kiss and when she is done she's smiling and sitting back down on her knees, kneeling with her rear end tucked just so over the heels of her shoes and smiling at him rather smugly.

"Make sure it's a good one," Sera tells him, " - my stranger's fortune."

And there's a glint in her eyes.

She dreamt of him last night and now she is remembering why.

He's telling a fortune to a seer; he's telling a fortune to an oracle, but she doesn't tell him that.

Tí¡ltos

[DOO DEE DOO. Char + Exp + Specialty, maybe?]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 6 ) Re-rolls: 2 [WP]

Tí¡ltos

He's telling a fortune to a seer; he's telling a fortune to an oracle, but he doesn't know that. What he does know is that that was a fucking awesome kiss, and Sera's got rights to that rather smugness, though the smug earns another one of those three-note from-the-throat pleased laughs. Don't go ahead and think that Tí¡ltos sat there on his flat ass with his lips pursed like a marble statue to Disney's version of the kiss, either. That would be silly with a enthralling, visceral Serafíne girl who knows how to kiss and that tumble of pale hair and Tí¡ltos himself as red-blooded as the ol' silver-tongued Beguiler himself; oh no! His participation is enjoyment, edged in Lust. Or else. He's one of Jarovit's men, and his touch brings flowers up out've the earth and coaxes fallow seeds into wakefulness; he knows how to kiss, too. He also knows how to keep his hands to himself. How to accept a gift and a bribe. How to draw a tincture out of berries that will heighten a fever, before breaking it. How to guess at somebody's life from a drop of their sweat.

So - that hh hah haahh. An appreciative gleam when he licks his lips, perhaps partly for her handling of the 'stache without giggling, and then Tí¡ltos puts his hand over the object she drew out've his hat, holds it up so it dangles and looks it over. Then he reaches for her hand [his hands are spring, are spring] - the scissors-inked hand - and puts the earring in it, closes up her fingers, keeps her hand between his warm hands.

If she thought she was going to feel true magic, maybe she'll be disappointed.

But then again,

Tí¡ltos

is a fucking urban-poet shaman. He lures you in; he draws you down; he fixes his eyes on yours and he speaks and every word's just another wall in the maze and you're maybe the Minotaur or maybe you're Icarus and he's just Daedalus-tongued, weaving that story, giving you wings made out of wax and thread and feather, showing you the way the sun burns.

He tells her a stranger's fortune and he makes it a sweet one. No; he makes it romantic without letting it taste too much of sorrow. He tells her about the son of the daughter of the daughter of the daughter whose first crush came up with the design way back when and how they never lost each other, but they lived, and as living sometimes does that worked its own inevitable decay, happy-decay, good-decay; he tells her about how the son of the daughter of the daughter of the daughter who started it all has lived this life feeling always on the brink of discovery, haunted by things from his youth he half-remembers, fighting against falling prey to the knives of nostalgia, and he tells her about how this son wants more than anything to figure out how to save this small and little known sub-species of fish which only live in this one lake up in the mountains and how the son's destined to hold the last of those fish's bones in his hands but how once he does that he'll make a wish and how once he makes that wish it'll come true. He tells about how that son is going to wind up jumping off a mountain and landing on his feet, how his parachute is going to open, how the woman he falls in love with is going to fall in love with him too, and how the last thing he sees is going to be a patch of sky so blue it almost hurts his teeth but it makes him happy because he remembers the fishbones in his hand and making a wish and when he remembers that his spirit is going to move and he's going to

really fucking see

and then somebody is going to hold his hand and he'll feel that

and the end.

Serafíne

"Oh,"

This is her reaction at the end; it is sweet and it is sighing though she herself is sweet only in reference to darkness, in reference to things made to intoxicate and her sweetness has nothing to do with the plain edge of sugar dissolving on the tongue. It is complex and smoke and a current of shadow but throughout that tale she is so perfectly in tune with him, so entirely affixed on him, that the end of it is a disappointment verging on the painful. And,

" - oh," her mouth curves around the word and her hands are cupped in his and the ear-ring is still inside, warming now against her skin, which is against his skin, against those spring-hands.

And a third-time, "Oh." This one with a sigh that heaves through her shoulders and drifting glance away from him, past the many half-empty bottles into the frame of the make-shift tent with its cheap paper lantern and diffusing light.

"That was a lovely fortune. That was perfect.

"If I make a song of it, will you come hear me sing?"

Tí¡ltos

"Sure," Tí¡ltos says, releasing her hands after her question. He puts his bony elbows back on the sheet-metal, leaning forward, his spine practically a C.

He pauses; then groans, standing up. The sheet-metal shakes like theater-thunder, and he takes the half-bottle of tequila, his eyelids low and his lashes shadowing, "Drink the rest of this with me, this way," and he tips his head toward his tent. "Keeps away the vultures of expectation."

And then: another meeting, ending with libation and exultation, huh? With a drinking game called: drink up! Drink up!

This might be! The last! Time you see your cup!

Welcome home.

Serafíne

Morning the day after and Sera has been up and Working for twenty-four hours and there's an ache in her body and an ache in her bones and the grit of sleeplessness behind her eyes and the flare of those sirens and those lights and the ooh-waw ooh-waw of the ambulances rushing to the courtyard where the kids were found. Mass poisoning. Comatose. Traces of some sort of fucking poisoned PCP in their system. Sera and Jim watched from another vantage point Sera in a hoodie that she found in one of the fucking closets in that creepy flat where the creepy guy from her creepy past was being a total fucking creep and hoarding magic PCP charms with the hood pulled up over the crown of her golden head and her throat aching and her hand in Jim's, the whole time they watched. Listened, and felt, making sure the kids in their 'charge' all night were all found, accounted for, rescued. The big kid and the shrill girl and the rest and the others -

- not the ghosts, though.

The ghosts are gone, except from memory.

Sera and Jim fucking walked there. Maybe a few buses but - walked and then Sera walked Jim to the busstop that would take him to a route that might (after hours of travel) take him back to the chantry outside of town.

Then she kept walking. Hands in the pockets of the hoodie that wasn't hers, commandeered after one of the kids puked on her favorite Siouxsie Sioux t-shirt because the only thing else she's wearing is a black and red lace push-up bra, but it's Sera so the hoodie is more than half unzipped and she shouldn't be walking around like that in this or any other neighborhood and she's still sort of bleeding resonance and hasn't eaten anything solid in how fucking long and -

- there it is.

The Church, at the end of the block. Sera sends her senses out, seeking.

She's just checking to see if he's home.

Serafíne

Per + Awareness - are you there Pan?

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (2, 4, 7, 7, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 5 )

Pan

Every other time she has come by in the past three weeks he has not been here. He has been caught up at the border heading from Texas to Veracruz or he has been caught up at customs going from Veracruz to Texas and he was definitely held up coming back into the U.S. longer than he was held up going into Mexico. They didn't believe he was a citizen even traveling with a passport and they were more aggravated by the fact that he spoke fluent English and didn't get upset than they would have been if he were stammering and confused.

Suffice to say he was slightly late getting back. Rosa was more relieved to see him in one piece than she was upset at him.

The day is warm and the sun is bright and the children who attend daycare are outside playing to work up an appetite so they will nap after recess. The women who run the daycare during the summer have assistants this year where they have not in the past. When Padre Echeverría comes out to see how things are going the lead teacher comes over and is so grateful that he's back and that he's given her extra hands that she gives him a big hug and almost cries on him. Consuelo - Connie, 42, engaged to be married

Pan

And the chat is eating all of my posts and doesn't think anyone cares about Connie's parents being second-generation Mexican-Americans or that her Spanish is terrible. It's character building Jove get it together.

Any-fucking-way: by the time Sera rolls in she's calmed down and she and Padre Echeverría are standing in the shade shooting the shit. Sera can feel him from the street. He's got a Mind effect going so he can't feel how tired he actually is, so it won't affect anyone else.

Serafíne

WP

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

Serafíne

She can feel him. It's warm and bright and the sun peels down from the sky and it hurts her eyes, gleams off the windshields of the cars lining the street, the gaudy ornament of some saint or other in his fucking shrine. Sera stops on the street down the block and just - feels him and wonders if it is an hallucination or a fever dream or some strange amalgam of both. Shakes herself half-way awake and feels the familiar flavor of his bright magic at work in the air, somewhere close but not visible until she climbs the steps from sidewalk to churchyard, slips her skinny ass through the small gate and circles around to the playground in the back.

Sera is wearing: cut-off jeans and fishnets and she's been wearing them not for a solid 30 plus hours and a bra and someone's second-hand heathered gray hoodie with the hood up and her hands slung in the kangaroo pockets and the hood caught on the crown of her hair and she stops as soon as she sees him, there with the teacher and the kids and she pulls a hand from one of those pockets and lifts it up to push her hood back and squint at him through the glittering light and then raises that hand by way of greeting nevermind that she wants to go running and throw her arms around his neck, it's daylight and she knows something about denial, today.

So she contents herself with a wave; skirts the kids and is careful of them and doesn't run and doesn't even approach him until that laughing conversation he's having with the teacher's aid has come to some conclusion and the woman has to go tend to a bumped knee or a dispute over the teeter totter or merry-go-round or the best of the swings.

Then she does walk up. Bumps him with her right hip, both hands back in the pockets of her hoodie. She's biting her lower lip and looks so very pleased to see him and she's skinnier than he remembers and he might be forgiven for thinking that she's started using heroin or something you sink into so thoroughly you forget to eat.

She wants to hug him so damn much but yeah, all she does is look at him and give him this tired, lopsided grin and say, all obvious, "I'm so glad you're back. I missed you."

Pan

"Miss Davies. Hello."

He turns his back to the daycare center then. A cue that they're meant to walk away from the premises. Isn't ashamed of her but no one would blame her for thinking that knowing how he's shielded Rosa from her before, how the women talk about her when she isn't there, talk about her and the priest like she's some kind of she-demon looking to suck the goodness out of him and they can't tell if she has yet or not.

They can't speak freely in front of the kids or the women watching the kids. Got nothing to do with the f-bombs she can't drop. Can't talk about Charms or dead cabals or reality-threatening trips, either.

"You quit drinking or something? You're too skinny."

Part joke, mostly concerned. He's looking a little smaller about the waist himself but he's got more weight to spare than she does.

Serafíne

Oh, she takes the cue, Sera. God knows what she thinks. It's been a day and a night and another half-a-day and she has reached the point of exhaustion where sleeplessness is beginning to feel like a trip and she glances back at the day care center and its ladies and the shouting kids and gives him an ironic little smirk when he calls her Miss Davies and then her attention swings back to him and hangs there when he asks if she quit drinking.

"I did," she tells him, quiet. "As a matter of fact. Food too. Two week juice fast. Gave it all up. Practically fucking holy now," a glance down at his waist not really pointed she just doesn't know how to really control her impulses right now. Gives in to them. " - what about you?"

And soon as they are out of sight of the daycare and its ladies and its children she gives in to that first impulse, shakes her hands free of the borrowed hoodie and throws her arms around his neck in a tight hug so that she's practically hanging from his neck. Hell, she's skin and bones, maybe she is hanging from his neck.

Pan

Pan is a tall man. He's strong. To even get her arms around his neck in the first place she has to leap up. He doesn't bend down to collect her into a hug not because he doesn't see it coming but because he thought she'd at least wait until they were across the street.

So yeah: she does hang from his neck for as long as it takes him to realize she's not letting go right away.

"¡Ay!" he says, "easy," though he's laughing as he says it. Puts his arms around her to return the hug and bends at the waist until her soles are flat on the ground again. He smells like the sun now, sweat obviating that godawful soap he uses though it lingers in his hair. Which he found time to cut between the phone call and the funeral service. It's short enough that she can just barely grasp a piece between her fingers.

Eventually she has to let go and let him get a good look at her. That's when he asks.

"What're you fasting for?"

Serafíne

Sera inhales the scent of his sweat with the scent of his resonance with the scent of his skin with the lingering scent of his Work in the air and the only thing that turns her nose is that godawful soap he uses. Surely someone in his parish still knows and practices the art of soapmaking though they probably make little cakes of lavendar and peony to please an old woman's tender hands and flatter an old woman's crepey skin but still, christ Pan, there are decent bars of soap in this world and also there is that thing called -

shampoo and something else we know as

conditioner.

By the time the hug ends she's figured out the haircut too. Catches a piece of his hair between her index and middle fingers and gives him a mournful little look as they let go, "You cut your hair."

He asks what she's fasting for then and she gives him a sidelook and says, "Ritual," with a little shrug, curving her body sideways when they come to the gate and she doesn't say anything more about it until they're across the street and heading toward the rectory: where it feels more right to explain,

tiredly, "Jim and I, were doing it, tracked down some fuck who was handing out magic PCP like Skittles. Had to find a way to find him without taking the damn PCP.

"Finished now, though. I just figured I'd walk over here to see if maybe you were here.

"And look, here you are."

Pan

"So I picked a good time to go out of the country for two weeks, then, huh?"

Oh, right: the week before he even left was spent making arrangements to even get the body down there seeing as they needed documentation that didn't exist or had to be tracked down. She walked in on that conversation the night she couldn't sort out the front door or the suitcase.

But still. Jokes. Makes up for the fact that he's been too busy to eat and in a foreign country where the people didn't give two shits if he stopped what he was doing to go eat lunch, making sure he had something besides tea and prepackaged junk before he retired with the sun.

"If the ritual's over, that mean you gotta make up for lost time, or what?"

Serafíne

"Yeah," Sera returns with a remarkably tired smile. She's running on fumes and she's not sure what else but she's going to make it home and she's not going to eat before she sleeps, like this is a sunrise to sunset thing, some last final challenge. "I was pretty fucking grouchy."

When she wakes up, though. When she wakes up: all bets are off.

Then a flare of laughter, god. His stupid fucking jokes and the sudden flash of her teeth in her crawling mouth, the curl of her shoulders beneath the hoodie, which is nearly shy, certainly girlish, in nature and movement. The laughter is mostly soundless, full of fond eye contact, and ends with another little shrug in response to his question.

She's all gleaming-eyed, all shining, when she huffs out a wordless answer to his question that ends with a quicksilver grin and a mostly-rhetorical question for a mostly rhetorical question, "What the hell do you think? I wasn't really made for denial, you know?"

Pan

And he laughs his own brand of quiet appreciative laughter at her counterstrike.

"Well, only thing I got to offer you is hot chocolate or rice. I don't wanna keep you too long. Just make you more grouchy."

Serafíne

"You probably have priest shit to do anyway," Sera returns with a faint shrug and a slightly sad flicker of her tired eyes. They haven't made it inside the rectory yet, they're standing in the yard in the sunlight and her eyes are on his face and there are a half-dozen other things she should tell him: about Grace most of all but she can't remember them right now and wouldn't know what to say even if she did.

"I'm gonna head the rest of the way home. Glad you're back."

And she turns around and heads back the way she came, hands in the pockets of her hoodie, head down, shoulders curled forward - one foot in front of the other, the way it always happens. Just one foot then the other.

Byron

Justin

[Mind shield, as per usual - diff 4 -1(practiced)]

Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (5, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Justin

[Extending because reasons, +1 -1 (focus)]

Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (4, 7) ( success x 2 )

Justin

[Oh crap I forgot Nightmares >_>]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )

Byron

If they find him hard to find it's by design that they cannot track him the way one can track a body fallen down the bottom of a dark pit calling out for help the way they could find Kelsey or they could find Lydia. The way they could find Dick Fairchild. People who don't go into this with intent but wander in and lose their way or never had a way to begin with.

Kelsey's fine now and no one has spoken to Lydia and Dick is... well. Dick is Dick.

The Cultists Work their Work and their bodies are empty but their spirits are full and their hearts are full and they know the way they know in which direction the sun will rise the general direction in which they can find Byron and they know that he occluded himself more than once and blipped across their mental maps more than once and it might have been intentional and it might have been an accident.

Doesn't matter which it was. They can see through Time and the cracks-through-the-glass paths he can take and they make a decision. Go to his house. He lives in the area though he hasn't always lived in the area and in some of the paths he lives past today and in some of the paths he doesn't and some of them cross over into each other and that's just the way Time runs.

In this time they find him and his menagerie in a mixed area residential and commercial. Wide well-kept alleyways with ornate gates. Squares instead of stretched-out lengths of nothing. The sounds of a party trickles through a plaza in the center of a block.

They can hear the music. They can hear the echoes of conversation. They can get to the plaza where their minds and their mind's-eyes tell them Byron reigns through one of the alleyways.

Someone laughs and the laugh turns into a scream but it's hard to tell with drugs if it's the scream of an uninhibited or the scream of an unfortunate.

Serafíne

It has been: such a long day and such a long night and such a long span of weeks to come back into this ritual and now that long day and night are closing into this precise moment in a strange section of a strange neighborhood where the strands of time sift and curl and shake themselves like the layers of an onion until these things intersect:

their presence here. and his.

Serafíne is tired and sober and hungry and there's an odd sort of ecstasy in the Work that is carrying her through to this moment when they're standing outside the edges of a party and the throb of the music and that soundcloud of crowd noise rising in a way that feels both organic and natural and fucking ominous and Sera, she breathes in the air the way you do ozone, tasting it shallow and clear in the back of her throat.

What is she wearing? Oh yes: Siouxsie Sioux t-shirt, shit-kickers, fishnets, and cut-offs. Well, she reaches up and pushes her long fingers through her hair, shakes it out so it falls properly away from her fucking side-cut, so you can see the dark fringe of her hair, the grabs the hem of her t-shirt and takes it off and now she's wearing a black push-up bra with red lace accents and fishnets and cut-offs and fuck if she doesn't look like she's ready for a goddamned party.

Two things, then.

The first: her canine tooth through the soft tissues of her inner cheek, until the blood ruins. The sharp spike of pain that opens and briefly contracts her eyes dilated wide open from the darkness and deprivation and ritual. She breathes out sharply and tastes the wash of blood in her mouth and opens her eyes and opens her eyes even as she sends out her senses, bright and seeking.

The second: a quick gauging glance at Jim, then Justin, largely nonverbal but clear because then she just starts walking, Sera.

She looks like she came to party and she's going in the front door.

Serafíne

Per + Awareness

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 10) ( success x 2 ) Re-rolls: 1

Serafíne

Watch the Weaving Dif 4 -1 (focus)

Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (10, 10) ( success x 2 )

Jim

Jim's ears perk up as the raucous din of revelry becomes a laugh that transforms into a howling scream. Maybe it's release. Maybe it's pain and horror. He can't tell, but he looks intent on finding out, crossing the plaza toward the sound, intent on it.

His sandals slap on stone as he gobbles up the distance, and he finally slows. Looking to the other Ecstatic and the Verbena with them, as if to reassure them he wouldn't go racing off into the breach.

Not without them.

His dress is disheveled from a day's exploration. Exploration of a place within himself that had become overgrown, a place he needed to hack and slash at to clear and make habitable again. A place of mindfulness and focus. A place of asceticism and restraint.

But when his eyes turn on them that stoicism has taken on a new resilience and strength.

"It sounds like he's trying to wake up the entire neighborhood," not just the sound, and not in the way a loud party might. His tone says he's referring to a more shaken and starling awakening.

His gaze goes back ahead, on the path they're taking toward that place and that location where Byron is (hiding? waiting? scheming?). And when they come upon that location, he takes it in, takes all of it in with a sobered awareness, trying to seek out the runs pulled in the tapestry with his newfound clarity.

[ Perception + Awareness ]

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

Justin

Justin's involvement in all of this had so far been limited to the periphery. Serafine had gotten him caught up some the other week at the park when she'd asked if he'd come with them to find Byron. To find the rest of the drugs. Hopefully, to stop him from hurting other people. Maybe she'd expected him to hesitate, but he hadn't. He'd said: Yes. I'll come. (Of course.)

So he'd met them at Sera's place or Jim's place or wherever they'd all agreed to meet up and driven with them to this place where it sounded like someone was having a party to end all parties. And while the others moved ahead with determination, Justin actually stopped.

Still. Listening. Like he was trying to decide something. Then he crouched down on the balls of his feet and ducked his head and closed his eyes and put his hands to his ears and started whispering something low and unintelligible and half-formed.

When it was over, he stood and followed.

He was wearing a jacket. A gun sat holstered against his chest beneath it.

[Life 2 - dialing down the acute hearing cause seriously that shit will make his ears bleed - diff 5 -1 (practiced) -1 (sure we'll say enduring resonance fits)]

Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (4, 5) ( success x 2 )

Justin

[Also! Per+Awareness]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )

Byron

To the ones who know no better the aura in the air is the same as any other congregation of celebrants and college kids on a summer when they have nothing else to do. That Saturday afternoon tension-wire drawn back like the game of beer pong could stay easy and free or it could conjure up old memories gone as warm and miserable as the liquid in the bottom of the cup after too long in the sun. Like a fight could break out because the music is so loud and the conversation starts to glint with a razor's edge after too long.

Yet you walk by and you smell the grill and you hear the lilt of the laughter and you see the toned legs beneath the hems of the sundresses and you look anyway. Isn't until the sun goes down and folks have had too much to drink that the lilt of danger sets in and danger draws a certain breed of folk.

Danger and the drugs but the drugs are a promise and as the three Awakened come upon the place they know that it is the place and they have a choice of alleyways but every alleyway is the same. Paved not with filthy asphalt but bricks and some of the bricks have little sprigs of green pushed up through them and no windows up the sides of the alleys for they belong to businesses and some of the walls have chalk graffiti and they pass a smattering of Sharpie graffiti but it lurks in their periphery and it blinks out when they look at it. Blinks back a second later as they pass into the plaza.

Kiddie pool pilled with hose water. Beer pong table made out of discarded doors and sawhorses.

They can feel the drug in the air and Lydia said there was more of it but she didn't tell them what it would do or what it was mean to do other than open the mind and as they draw towards the center of it there's a flash

-- and they see what happened here or what is going to happen here as the hippies and the burnouts all drank out of plastic cups and sprayed each other with squirt guns and lay out on the grass or on the picnic tables and they smoked grass and laughed and then it all turned wrong--

and then they can feel it all start to unravel like even the air itself knows of the wrongness of this the impermanence cigarette smoke drifted in front of an open window only for it to snap back again. Can't escape if you keep taking hits.

And scattered overtop of the ghosts of those who came before are a dozen young people in denim and cotton their eyes glazed but not from magickal causes though they exude an air of expectation like someone's gone off and come back and the music is so loud here and two of the young people are screwing around. Big tanned boy picking up a smaller girl with unruly processed hair and they're both laughing but the girl is shrill and uncertain.

No one notices the interlopers because people ought to come and go. People ought to take the vibe with them.

Byron is inside. He'll be outside in a moment.

Serafíne

Sera's got her t-shirt slung over her right shoulder and she's sweaty because it's summer and it's a warm night and there's the kiddie pool and that -

oh, flash of memory gives her such an immediate and heartstopping pause that she is not recalled to this place and time until the shrill and uncertain shout of that girl (being picked up by that big boy) hits some central part of her lizard brain and pulls her back to now and she knows it is now as in where-she-is and swallows against the yawning hungry (which is physical and otherwise) in her and saunters around the courtyard.

Flashes those other kids a quick little peace sign and she looks like them except: cooler and edgier maybe and if a daylong ritual of denial doesn't give a girl like her the glazed-out eyes of a burnout nothing will.

Sera hipchecks the guy and glances up at the girl and grabs his wrist all "Put her the fuck down, man. You're harshing the vibe." Because of course she just fucking said that, and she waits to make sure either the shrieking girl is into being manhandled or has actually been put the fuck down as she keeps going around the courtyard. Picking up three or four of the beer pong cups, tilting them, sniffing them, feeling them for residual.

Plastic cups. In that vision the ghosts drank from plastic cups.

That air of expectation, though, that open door and he'll be down in a moment.

Sera gives Jim a look and Justin a look and the open doorway a fucking look and she cannot help it. In that moment she shivers, all physical, like something strange and dark and changing just crawled up the ladder of her spine.

"Shall we?"

And, if they agree, she does.

Jim

Jim is not behind Serafine when she interrupts to see if it's a matter of King Kong kidnapping Ann or Tarzan rescuing Ann, but he's a step to the side, not meeting the young man's stare and possibly catalyzing an already testy situation, but watching from his periphery should he need to step in.

And on they go when it's resolved, if it gets resolved, if anything in this mess, this tangle of magic and emotion, could ever get resolved. It seems more like a sustained reaction.

And then there is that open doorway. He looks to it too until Serafine questions him and Justin.

They shall. Jim nods his agreement first, ready to meet Byron at that door, or past it, or whenever time and fate will cause their two opposing forces to contact one another. He steps forward with them to do so.

Byron

Dice: 4 d10 TN3 (4, 6, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )

Justin

Sera wasn't the only one of them who had to remind herself of the difference between memory and here-and-now. Justin, at least, wasn't so likely to be consumed by his own. But there was this quiet hesitance about the way he approached the party - the way he moved through the guests. And he looked almost sad as he watched them.

But he didn't say anything, and he didn't seem inclined to abandon the two Cultists, so when Sera looked back and asked in that silent expression if they meant to follow, he did.

Serafíne

Somehow they're through the door and on the bottom landing of a concrete walk-up. The buzzing of electricity from somewhere upstairs and the echo of the party from outside beyond them and Justin's not there anymore. It's colder in here than it was outside. All that concrete keeps the summer out and chill in and Sera grabs her t-shirt and slips it over her head as they start up the stairs.

Can feel Byron's presence above them and this Work will be harder but they're still in that denial stage, in that head-and-physical space and she says fuck it and grabs the metal railing and tightens her hands and climbs the stairs, rather quickly, pausing on the landing or outside the door as Jim joins her and when he does she reaches for his hand.

Jim

Jim can feel it around him. The party jumps and skips but he leaps and bounds. He'd seen the end of these roads. He'd seen these young faces grow old, these nubile and hale bodies grow withered and broken and used up. And he can only imagine what the awakening of such drugs might do to their fragile minds. Minds unsure and unwilling to believe in their fragility until already broken.

Where he sees revelers he sees not ghosts, but the walking dead they will become in search of their next fix. And then he imagines Bryon. For money or clout or maybe some sickened delight, some social validation, whatever his ends spreading the hits out amongst them and greater Denver.

Like party treats for a Festival of the Damned.

That shiver he'd seen down her spine has made him consider it, but now he doesn't hesitate. It's probably the first real intimate contact they've had all day, their hands meeting, fingers on fingers and the sweat of palm mashed together as they grip to one another in this twisted maelstrom.

[ Crime and Consequence. Mind 2 and Time 2. Coincidental + 2 - 1 for taking their time and - 1 for blowing a Quinessence. Difficulty 3. Casting in concert with Serafine. Blowing a WP. ]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (1, 9, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Serafíne

(Mind 2 / Time 2. Coincidental 5 -1 (resonance appropriate))

Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (6, 6) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Byron

Dice: 4 d10 TN8 (2, 2, 5, 10) ( success x 1 )

Serafíne

Countermagic

Dice: 2 d10 TN8 (5, 6) ( fail )

Jim

The connection to that looming future and all the misery and despondency it will create, makes him squeeze back at Serafine's hand. He feels her Avatar, clung beside his own, reach out to try and diffuse the charm and its hold on Byron. The boons it grants. And his own does the same.

[ Countermagic. ]

Dice: 3 d10 TN8 (6, 7, 7) ( fail )

Jim

[ Perception + Larceny. Fucking WP. ]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 6, 8, 8) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

Serafíne

Sera squeezes back; they're standing on the landing, outside an open fucking door, looking into a drug den with the kingpin of sorts inside. Can feel the magic warping in and around and through him and the magic potential in the remaining charms scattered around and pull the bleakness of potentail futures back into the presence and inflict him with his own ghosts and -

- there's still the magic; he's still stoned. He's still stoned and drifting on the magic and the future-memory and he probably doesn't even really see them when the Rite ends (god knows, really, how long it took, but her knees are stiff and the cold is colder and the party downstairs has shifted and Sera does not let go of Jim's hand until they're inside, searching through the old stiff couch and the discarded vials and the cheap-ass furniture and the stiff, stale scent of old cigarette smoke and someone's open-mouthed, sandpaper-eyed panic and inside the apartment Jim finally lets go of Sera's hand to start searching through the cabinets in the laminate kitchen, where the only food is a jar with one pickle and moldering mayo and a half-dozen old pizza boxes deliquiescing into nothing-ness and she's tucking the first aid kits into a plastic bag and Jim's found the rest of the stash and then, downstairs -

- those fucking kids, man.

They're going to be here for a long fucking time.

Jim

Floorboards. Check. Mattress. Check. Under the dresser. Fall bottoms? Closet. Inside jackets, pockets, everything soaking up that primal smell from Byron's den of love and lustmaking. In the end Jim has amassed a good pile. He almost misses the first aid kits.

Almost.

But he doesn't drawn to them in the last-place-he'd-look kind of way, adding them to the pillowcases full of haul he's uncovered.

Cleaning him out. He's lost his privileges, and yes, these things are privileges, not rights. Ones the Ecstatics have the power and duty to revoke. When he's finished he finds himself sitting on the edge of that bed, trying not to imagine what has happened on it, though he can smell and guess. It's in the air. He no doubt used users, used their addiction for himself, used himself, and this is what Jim finds himself solemnly contemplating.

A wake up call.

He looks up to find Serafine stuffing the kits into a plastic bag. Nods, as if shaking himself out of the reverie he's stuck in.

Standing again.

Tired, but not too tired to help.

"We've got to keep them here. In one place. Where they can't hurt others. Keep them from hurting themselves," he says to her in a way that she might get the idea of what he's considering. "They're our responsibility. Their shepherd's gone to the corner to think about what he's done. We put him there."

Jim

[ Mind 2 and Correspondence 2. Warding the revelers to the party. Coincidental + 2. Base is 5. Dropping a Quintessence. Difficulty 4. Dropping a WP. ]

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (3, 3, 3) ( fail )

Jim

[ Forgot to click WP on the last. So 1 success. Extending. ANOTHER QUINT to keep it at 4. He only has one left after this. ]

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (3, 5, 7) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Serafíne

Sera's just standing there, with her arms crossed and her eyes hazy and her body taut and her throat aching and this place feels -

this place feels -

this place feels -

Oh, she breathes out. Looks from the window, shrouded by an ugly old blanket, to Jim and the light in here is ugly and spare and it makes them ghoulish in the whole ghoulish place. He has his pillowcase and she has the first fucking aid kits and they have everything, they have cleaned the bastard out and she breathes out a long slow sigh, tired.

"Show me what to do."

And reaches for his free hand with her own.

Serafíne

(Mind 2 / Correspondence 1 - Keeping revelers at the party!) -1 dif for quintessence

Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (1, 9) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Serafíne

[Mind 2 / Correspondence 1 - participating in Jim's ritual] Difficulty +1, still -1 for quint.]

Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (8, 8) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

sober

Serafíne

Only in the way you want it
Only on the day you want it
Only with the understanding: every single day you want it

- Worship You, Vampire Weekend

--

City Park, once sunlit Friday morning. Early enough that the morning joggers are still on the trails and the rush of traffic is a quiet, washing hum of white noise. Shops are shuttered and kiosks just opening and the light in the east still has the pale, butter yellow tinge of dawn. Finds Sera, entirely sober, sitting on a park bench, hair still wet from her shower that morning.

Nothing to drink since Sunday-last, Sera, who spent the morning and afternoon at the chantry as her hangover receded into a fog and then a haze and then a drifting mist, and then the hard edge of sobriety she wanted to replace with -

- well, something.

So, one girl of modest height in her flat-soled Doc Marten's, all dressed down in cut-offs and a Siouxsie Sioux t-shirt older than she is, seated, legs crossed, on a park bench. She has a little bag slung across her body and inside: a vial of blue powder, cigarettes, her covered pipe, the bowl all packed. And so on. There's a bagel with cream cheese in a brown paper bag and a very large OJ she has yet to touch, deliberately. The early morning light finds the threads of gold in her hair as she waits.

Yearning.

It's just her body, right now. Just her mind. The cool morning air and the damp grass, the rough wood of the park bench behind her shoulder blades, her elbows back. It has been five days since her last drink, and five days since her last cigarette, and five days since she last got stoned, and drive days since she kissed someone, and longer, likely, since she last had sex. Seventy-two hours since she had anything but liquids and the last twenty-four hours: only water. This morning, not even that.

Just the cold blast of a shower in the morning and the chillbumps radiant up her arm and the immediacy of the day, sharp and threaded and punctuate with hunger and need and want that she cannot quite contain or encapsulate.

This is where it starts.

Jim The sick. The urge. That's where I'll find him, in that ugly place he's afraid of; that ugly place he's running from.

In the last hours of night Jim sinks like a stone into the hot springs, feeling its mineral laden water pulse with life across his skin and its energy fill his pores to bursting. Finally, he rises from the water as the sun begins to light the sky all its many colors. Colors the sky gives it, colors it gives the sky, and colors they share. When it threatens to break across the horizon he bends at the waist to grab then heft the fat enamel basin full of ice water to his mouth, taking a final drink, and then lifting it high above his head, turning it to slowly pour across his body with the beginning of a new day.

Jim allows the air to dry him. He pulls on a simple gray v-neck and a pair of muted brown shorts. He remains barefoot as he walks around the chantry and down toward the the road, though he does lean down again to hook two fingers onto a pair of sandals outside the front door should they become necessary during his journey to City Park.

One bus driver does ask that he put them on and he obliges the woman's request. She looks like she's expecting a fight, but he simply smiles and nods. It's about an hour and a half's journey, taking the 116X to the 15 on East Colfax, then a twenty minute walk to the park.

Jim and Serafine are easily drawn to one another even as they deny some basic aspects of themselves. Perhaps that hunger rouses those aspects. Perhaps that denial distills it to an essence. He is addled without the muddling of chemicals. He is stoic without being stoned or dulled to blunt rock and chiseled sharper with the urges to fight against. And he is psychedelic and psychedelia in the way he views the world. Imagining how he could see it. All the possibilities without one substances' sway superimposing itself over the others.

In this moment existence is the very temptation.

We don't need to climb every mountain just because it's there. It'll leave our hands raw, and our friends on the ground, if we try.

The clarity is almost overwhelming. He is an empty vessel waiting to be filled by the world along with its before and after. He'd brought no towel. He takes off his shirt as he nears her, looking around to see if any others would come. Over his daily pilgrimages to City Park his face had become familiar, and he was use to others joining him in his asanas. One had even been invited.

In this moment her presence is the very temptation.

The sequence, a dance of smooth muscles and long holds and steady breaths, is no quicker than a flower blossoming. The vessel opens to take in the morning air. He fills his diaphragm when his core is open, emptying his lungs when it closes, each shift a growing stretch. He does not give the names, from the lotus to bound angle, as bound as his yearnings and inclinations, upon the boat to walking out on the plank. Pushed off to drift away in the water as the wind carries his exhalation of breath. The cobra consumes the frog. The bow is loosed and the pigeon falls to it. The child grows into a hero, but rides no galloping horse, instead a slow and steady camel as reliable as the one two three of Jim's breath. The camel walks through this desert of denial and does not thirst. And onward until they are finished, until they are flower to child to corpse, and he is laying on his back with only the dew of the grass to mingle with the still-steady-growing sheen of purifying sweat.

In this moment respite is the very temptation.

One trial finished and on to the next. The day expands out before them, filled with possibilities that are temptations to be faced. They walk. Though his stomach rumbles hungrily as it has for days, they are forced past brunchers brunching and washing it all down with the endless (bottomless) Mimosas and Bellinis and Bloody Marys that turn into something stronger when the man behind the bar gets that look. On to those places packed thick with with people. The kind of places they usually leave without remembering the name, but maybe not this time, not if they can keep that first drink that never happens from turning into three or thirteen and a bump in the bathroom or something slipped under the tongue or a tongue slipped onto someone else's. This whole time that vial sits in his pocket like an anchor he is unsure whether he should pull aboard or cut loose to the sea.

In this moment revelry is the very temptation.

And they do. Somehow. Jim is not unmoving, not unblinking, but he manages to find enjoyment in the press of others. In the music without dancing. In the company without passion flaring like a bonfire. Manages to push it all down, though the temptation is there. He does not wave down the bartender. He refuses drinks even as they are pushed his way. Instead he finds the emotion in the eyes of these revelers as the night wears on. As they find themselves suddenly in one place and then the next.

In this moment life is the very temptation.

These shining and clear-eyed diamonds stumble on into the night. Face their crucible and their gauntlet. In their existential fast they find sustenance for its own sake. For their own sake. These moments and these many yearnings coalesce into one. There is a very real fear that it could be like this forever. But he overcomes that fear. Would that really be such a bad thing?

In this moment temptation is the very temptation.

And he smiles. And he laughs. And he sees.

[ Rolls below. Serafine did have all the spheres of the effect just not all the dots. I'm not sure if the one success she can grant by acting in concert with Jim is rules as one for each round of an extended effect or one for the entire effect. That means this could be either ten successes or thirteen successes. Depending on how many it ends up being some will be spent toward making the scrying subtle. They are seeking out Byron and minds effected by the charm.

] Round 1

Serafine Sera's part in this is: Correspondence 1 / Mind 2 / Time 2 / Prime 1 [So: Difficulty 5, -1 for taking time. Not sure if the -2 for her merit applies] Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (2, 8) ( success x 1 )

Jim [ Correspondence 2 / Mind 2 / Time 2 / Prime 1Coincidental + 2. Difficulty 5 - 1 for taking his time and - 1 for sympathetic magic in that they have the vial. Final difficulty is 3. ] Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (3, 4, 6) ( success x 3 )

Jim [ Also beginning an extended willpower roll to avoid vices and tempation. ] Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 6, 7, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 5 )

Serafine [First WP roll to avoid vices and temptation] Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 8) ( success x 1 )

Round 2

Jim [ Extended effect roll at + 1 and - 1 for spending a Quintessence. ] Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (1, 1, 5) ( success x 1 )

Serafine [Correspondence 1 / Mind 2 / Time 2 / Prime 1. Extending. Difficulty 5 -1 for taking time; -1 for sympathetic magic, +1 for extending] Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (3, 7) ( success x 1 )

Jim [ And another extended WP. ] Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 6, 6, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )

Serafine [Another extended WP] Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )

Round 3

Jim [ Extended effect roll. Spending another Quintessence to maintain the difficulty. ] Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (1, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )

Serafine [Correspondence 1 / Mind 2 / Time 2 / Prime 1. Extending. Difficulty 5 -1 for taking time; -1 for sympathetic magic, +1 for extending] Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (2, 9) ( success x 1 )

Jim [ And WP again. ] Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 5, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )

Serafine [Third extended WP roll] Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (5, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )

Round 4

Serafine [Correspondence 1 / Mind 2 / Time 2 / Prime 1. Extending. Difficulty 5 -1 for taking time; -1 for sympathetic magic, +1 for extending] Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (1, 5) ( success x 1 )

Jim [ Extended. And another Quintessence. ] Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (4, 6, 10) ( success x 3 )

Serafine [One more WP roll just for the heck of it.] Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 6, 6, 9) ( success x 3 )

Jim [ Why not? WP. ] Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )

jamie SO IT HAS BEEN WITNESSED SO SHALL IT BE DONE

Serafíne

They start with yoga. With fucking yoga at dawn in the park. Jim does this regularly, fills his body with his breath, opens his core, stretches from asana to asana and gives no directions and offers no names and strangers who-are-not-strangers come and join him, because this happens too: and they share the movements and the moment and the rising sun and the breath of the wind and the dew on the grass and that feeling of emptied oneness, stretched out, open to the world at the end, just breathing.

You guys, Sera looks ridiculous doing yoga. She is wearing denim cut-offs and has that Siouxsie Sioux t-shirt and a fresh pair of fishnets and heavy black boot in the middle of July and athletic and lean though she may be (more than lean now: closer to starveling than lean) she has never, not once in her life, done yoga.

But what the hell.

She tries it, see? Laughs when she fucks it up, though her laughter is quiet and mostly inside herself because there's this knot of tension and this first trial is the hardest for her today, as it moves on and on and she grows more and more sharply conscious of her body, and how it moves, and the morning light, and she wants -

oh, she wants.

--

The night moves on; it is so very different for both of them. Jim finds enjoyment in the press of the crowd, in the pleasure of strangers, in the gleaming eyes of the people all around them, opening up from libation, movement, liberating themselves from the mundane for an evening, losing themselves in pleasures the Ecstatics - who so often lose themselves, whose Work always seems to involve that sort of loss, those things that make them slip-their-skin: and he fears that it could be like this forever, as he would, mindful of every moment, and he wonders Would that really be such a bad thing?

(Yesyesyesyes. - is Sera's only answer to the question she doesn't bloody well hear. Yes. And yes and yes.

Also this: yes. For fuck's sake, yes.)

They are so alike.

They are so very different.

The night is so sharp for her, so stark - see. She finds no genuine solace in the pleasures of strangers, in the press of the crowd, in the light gleaming in their eyes, in the furious energy of a dance floor or pit, in the glassy-eyed revelry of these lawyers and baristas and truck drivers and nursing students, in the clink of glasses, in the invitations extended, extended, and turned aside and deferred. Each serves to make her own desire and her own denial all the more keen, all the sharper and it is a physical thing that she is cultivating and it has a sharp and silver tip and a long half and she's pushing it through her skin like a needle and her heart like a spear and it is bright and lovely and painful and it opens her up from throat to belly as the night moves on,

but still, she finds him,

and they Work.

Library Fines

Justin
It's interesting the way that places could grow on you. Could call you back to them with steadily increasing frequency. Justin's residence at the chantry had been sporadic at first, but these days he was here just as often as not. Even, sometimes, during the week. So it was early Tuesday evening and the sky was a wide expanse of solid blue broken by distant trails of dry, stretched clouds and the sun was a bright, low point to the West, shining a glare in the corner of Justin's eye and he tightened the wire on the finished section of fence he'd been working on.
The pasture, of course, was still empty, apart from the tall grass and the occasional chirp or scuttle of a small animal. For a moment the Verbena took a step back to survey the work he'd done, wiping a sheen of sweat from his forehead with the back of a hand. There were a couple of scrapes and bruises on his arms and fingers, one of which was still bleeding slightly, but he didn't pay them any particular mind. Instead he crouched down and began to pile his tools into the crate he'd carried them in, getting ready to head inside for a shower and some food.
Grace
Grace parked her car in the driveway of "The House" a bit crooked, but then the car itself was a bit crooked, so it all balanced out, right? There would be others here, though she couldn't yet feel their presence, and she took a brief look in the mirror out of self-consciousness. At least she didn't look half-dead with lack of sleep.
Her first week had been one long string of nights where her brain just wouldn't stop asking questions she couldn't answer. It's hard to sleep when you can't stop talking to yourself. And her attempts to find such answers consumed her waking hours as well.
But now, she'd managed some rest. There were Answers. That made a difference -- just knowing that her questions weren't impossible.
She put on her best smile, set out to greet... whomever, and beg them for more.
After ringing the doorbell, she thought to herself how silly that was really... they were probably already quite aware of her presence.
Grace didn't fit in this place -- square peg, round hole, and all that. The beautiful sky and verdant outdoors, the smell of pines on the wind -- all pretty... maybe somewhat interesting from a mathematical perspective. Fractal pines, strange attractor wind-flows, the quantum tunneling of scent, these were her thoughts on the matter of nature as she waited to be admitted.
Shoshannah
"Someone's here."
Shoshannah is an interesting girl, and she'd taken it seriously when Justin asked her if she wanted to help work on the fence - so there she is, helping how she can. Chances are good she's hammered at least one thumb and picked up quite a few splinters and scrapes in the process, but she'd worked hard. It's what she does, as Justin's starting to know - she disappears in her tasks (self-assigned or otherwise) and the results thereof, and mostly hopes people ignore her when they can't help but notice her. Sid and Pan are exceptions, as Justin is starting to be. And as to how she knows someone's here? Well, she has been working on extending her perceptions. And spirits still whisper to her quite a lot, even if they aren't as drawn to her, or as easy to understand, as they once were.
"Race you, tough guy."
She doesn't wait for an answer and yes, she knows he has the handicap of the bucket of tools - she also knows she has no chance of beating him otherwise, so maybe it evens out. And so it is that an eighteen-year-old Dreamspeaker comes running, running from the pasture, only to slow down when she sees a stranger at the door. Obviously she's Awakened, no one else can find this place - and obviously she knows someone, or she wouldn't have thought to look. So prickly, sharp, hard edged (creepy, eerie, scary, angry) Shoshannah looks at the newcomer, and isn't sure what to say or do.
"Hey." It's minimal, as greetings go - and the girl is still out of breath. Sure, that's why.
Justin
Even with the tools, he could probably have beaten her. If it'd been earlier in the day, maybe, or he'd been feeling especially competitive. As it was, Justin just laughed and let her get a head start before he propped the small wooden crate under his arm and jogged after her. Shoshannah would probably be disappointed by the lack of effort.
He arrived at the front door a few moments after the Dreamspeaker did, but he recognized Grace from a few yards away and paused to wave at her. He smiled when he pulled to a stop at Shoshannah's side, re-adjusting the box of tools under his arm. "Hey again. Glad you found your way out here. Shoshannah can let you in while I put these away."
And then the two women were left to themselves for a couple of minutes as Justin rounded back to the garage and went inside to put the tools away.
Grace
[Awareness+Perception to take note of resonance]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )
Shoshannah
[same-same!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 6, 7, 8, 8) ( success x 4 )
Grace
Grace seemed to snap out of some kind of daydream as the girl opened the door, and her smile flickered a bit at the sudden onslaught of 'angry'. It was her tendency to put up walls against others, to deal with the rawness of anger from arm's (or continent's) length. But the teenager in front of her was a surprise. So much sharpness in so small a package. She herself radiated a kind of sliding quality, either the shifting of sands, or the violence of a fault slip, so she probably shouldn't judge.
"Hey, um.. I'm new," she said, with that faltering smile, trying to put the girl at ease.
Her eyes slid off of Shoshannah at Justin's greeting, and gave him a small wave in return.
"Name's Grace," she said, with a bit of eagerness, but no outstretched hand.
Serafíne
This if for e-mail scene. Perception + Awareness-as-empathy
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 3, 3, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )
Serafíne
(Also as preparation for entry to scene which will be in a few! Per + Awareness)
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 7, 10) ( success x 5 ) Re-rolls: 1
Shoshannah
For all that she feels it, Shoshannah doesn't look particularly angry - like she's sullen and bitter and has a chip the size of Colorado on her shoulder, sure, but not actively angry. (She feels more like Death come to call, like purgatory, like loss and anxiousness and goosebumps and chills and nightmare sweats. Her resonance is just the icing on the cake.) There's no answering smile, but at least when Justin recognizes Grace there's a slight relaxation.
Only slight, mind.
"Shoshannah. Come on in, I guess." And she does let Grace in, though the relative ease of companionship she'd shared with the Verbena moments ago is gone - for now, for who knows how long, or where. "You're the one Sid called about. Right?" The accent's odd - a good bit of southern American (Texas, to be exact), but more of something vaguely British, vaguely exotic. "You hungry? We were working. I'm starving."
Grace
"I, yes, Sid did let me know it was okay to show up," she said, still faltering a bit as she walked inside and looked around. Her eyes didn't so much stick to the usual objects in the room, but rather its boundaries. The ceiling took as much notice as the furniture.
Hungry? Well, she hadn't thought of hunger, but now that food was mentioned... Had she eaten lunch?
"Oh, you know what, I think I am hungry. Huh," she said, with a kind of half-smile. "What are you working on, if I might ask?"

Justin

When Justin reappeared, it was through the door that lead directly from the garage into the kitchen, so if the other two were headed that way they'd likely run into him just as he was coming through the door. When he shut it behind him he had to give a little tug to get the latch to click into place. One of a handful of small defects around the otherwise very well-built house that he'd been meaning to fix (but hadn't gotten to yet.)

As Justin walked toward the sink, he pulled his shirt off and used it to wipe the sweat from his face and neck. His skin was tanned beneath it, with darker lines marking the spots where the neck and sleeves of his t-shirt usually lay. He spent enough time shirtless that his worker's tan wasn't too obvious, but it was still there.

He'd been doing a lot of work lately, and it showed. (In more ways than one.)

At the sink, he set down his shirt and ran a line of cold water to wash the blood and grime from his arms, scrubbing his skin clean with a bar of soap.

"There's some leftover lasagna in the fridge, if you want to heat it up."

Grace "Ah, yes, it was Sid who let me know it was okay to come by," Grace said, still faltering a bit. As she walked in, her eyes seemed to flicker with equal attention to the ceiling and the furniture, as if checking the boundaries.

Big place. Pretty, if you liked the ranch aesthetic. If. Shoshanna's voice got through to her a bit, and her face pinched. Well, she hadn't thought about hunger at all, but now that it was brought up, had she eaten lunch? Or breakfast?

"You know, I think I am hungry now that you mention it. Huh," she said with a little nod to her head. "And, what have you been working on, if I might ask?" Of course, it wasn't fence work she was expecting, or hoping for.

And then, her head swiveled in the direction of Justin and, well, wasn't he ah... comfortable. And bloody? "Are you okay? Your arms..."

Shoshannah

"Just a few scrapes from the wire - I think I hammered each of my fingers at least once." She holds her hands up to show whatever bruises and cuts she's gained with the kind of pride that only comes from pampered kids learning to do something with their hands. "We're building a fence around the pasture. I mean, we work on all kinds of other stuff," not necessarily - or even often - together, but still, "but everyone needs to try something new every now and then. Right? Knowledge and understanding are experiential."

She's talking more and faster than Justin's ever witnessed - it's almost like that first day all over again. And never mind that, while she'd looked (for longer than necessary, even) when he'd taken his shirt off, she's pointedly looking Anywhere Else right now.

"I'm learning how to ward, though, if that's the kind of work you want to hear about. What are you working on? Or, I guess, what do you want to work on first, since you're new?"

Serafíne

Serafíne will never, ever, ever, be any help whatsoever in mending fences, wooden or otherwise; or 'tilling the garden, or mowing the grass, or repairing the screens or putting up the storm windows or washing the back patio or cleaning the kitchen or really -

- much of anything.

She will, however, replenish the chantry's pot supply with great regularity, particularly since she may well be the only person who dips into it with any regularity. Though that isn't happening now.

But see, not long after Grace has shown up, a goddamned anniversary edition Porsche 911 in anthracite brown pulls up behind Grace's car and Sera -

- who is dressed in a white babydoll mini-sundress with spaghetti straps and flat-ish heeled black Doc Martins because she wants to know what it was like to have lived through the age of grunge as more than a child -

- slides out of the passenger's side door, waits for someone to pop the trunk (do these things have trunks?). Grabs the handles of some re-useable shopping bags, the sort made of laminated rice and/or feed bags and sold in fair trade shops.

Essential supplies these, you'll have to guess what. For now.

---

Inside, the doors swing open. Sera carts her bags (just two) in to the kitchen and -

"Grace! You made it. Rock on. I was just thinking that I oughtta give you a call. Fuck, welcome! What the hell has been going on with you - "

And Sera is the sort of person who can say rock on and not sound like a complete shit. Mostly because she sounds so pleased, and draws attention to herself like a lodestone. Then circling the kitchen, before Justin has quite finished at the sink.

"Jesus Christ, Justin, is this a chantry or a nudist colony, put some fucking clothes on, man. What the hell - " with an edgy, quicksilver grin that takes in that glance Shoshannah was giving Justin. " - careful, or the natives'll get all restless."

Also: pot - kettle Sera, since as soon as she heaves up those shopping bags they can all see that beneath her not-exactly-prim white sundress she is wearing black lingerie and thigh-high fishnets held up by black garters. All visible beneath the translucent material. Because that is how she dresses, guys.

Hawksley

Anyone who has shaken Hawksley's hand -- and in this instance, everyone has -- knows that what callouses he has are thin, light things. The activities of his fingers involve page-turning, primarily, not hammering stakes into the ground or stringing wire. He has done manual labor in his life, but by god, that was punishment. Why someone would choose to build a fence when there are plenty of people one could hire to do that sort of thing... why, it boggles the mind.

But he drives a Porsche. That he has never worked a day in his life has not seemed to affect the quality of that life, at least not in the material sense.

--

These things have trunks. They are not large. They are a pocket where you put A Suitcase or Two Bags of Something, in this case ... groceries? He didn't ask when Sera put the bags in. He doesn't ask -- well wait, no, of course he does. After he gets out of the car as well, pocketing the keys.

Is he wearing aviators? Of course. Are his khakis straight-legged and just a bit skinny and rolled up at the cuffs to bare his ankles? Naturally. Light blue -- what are those? Loafers? Boat shoes? A strange amalgam of both? They have laces, whatever. His t-shirt is tissue-thin, with brown and burnt orange in thick horizontal stripes. Hawksley takes one of the bags, if Sera is willing to share, and heads in a step or two behind Sera.

Sera zeroes in on Grace. Hawksley's eyes run up Justin's back from lumbar to cervical spine like a finger dragging across skin. "Excuse her," he says to them, or perhaps just Justin: "she's gone Puritan. Too much clean living."

He gives Shoshannah an upward nod, a nonverbal hey, and sets a bag down, and pushes his aviators up and grabs some counter, swinging himself up to sit on the edge, long legs dangling down. He leans over to peer into the bags Sera had him trafficking, but he's talking to Justin while he does so. You can tell, because he starts with:

"Justin, when you have a minute, we should talk."

Serafíne

Groceries. Yes. Those are groceries emerging from the bags, one of which was indeed surrendered to Hawksley on the walk from the Porsche to the kitchen door. Absolutely and bloody essential groceries Sera is currently unpacking including a more or less complete vintage cocktail kit - bar tools on a neat silver caddy with red bakelite handles, a pair of cocktail shakers, a chrome caddy with four highball glasses all silvered with silver coasters and etched with portraits of Roman soldiers or whatever. And, several varieties of fairly top shelf liquors, focus on the locals like Stranahan's, but also a few liqueurs, shelf-stable mixers, the beginnings of a properly stocked cabinet.

And: her second-favorite bong, which she is donating to the chantry for Reasons. It is genuinely lovely and looks like a handcarved sculpture and is shaped like an elegant black swan.

And: a medium sized illuminated black writing board, the sort often seen in coffee shops, advertising the drink of the day, along with a set of fluorescent markers. It needs to be hung up and plugged in somewhere for anyone to use it, but Sera just assumes that someone else will handle that sort of thing. Which is usually what happens in her world.

Too much clean living, earns Hawksley a smirk and a brief moment of very direct eye contact as Sera is unpacking her purchases. Clearly, she is anticipating the end of clean living any day now and laying in supplies, as if for a siege.

"I don't know where to put all this," to Shoshannah and Justin, more than anyone else, " - does this place even have a proper bar?"

And her attention snags on Justin, then cuts this direct line back to the Hermetic. That quicksilver grin reasserts itself as she gives him a faux-critical once-over before adding -

"Oh, Hawksley. You're throwing the energy of the room all off-balance right now." Nods this little note of agreement with herself and anyone looking at her in that moment can see that she's absolutely bullshitting and challenging and gleaming and bright and bemused and self-amused and enjoying every second of it. "You should take off your shirt too.

"I mean, it's just feng shui. Equilibrium and what-all." A beat and a faux-puzzled look to the room at large. "Or maybe it's Science?

"For sure it is one of those things."

Justin

Are you okay? Your arms...

There'd been some blood, yes. Not much, but enough to leave a visible line of red down the back of his hand and a few inches of his forearm. There'd been a nail in one of the old fence posts (which had shortly thereafter been removed) that he'd missed. One of the many hazards of manual labor.

But when Justin pulled his arms out of the sink and reached for a towel, there was no sign of injury. Maybe the cut had just looked worse than it actually was.

(Maybe, with her awareness active as it was, Grace would sense the little flare of vital and enduring energy that seeped from Justin's hands while he washed them. Even when he wasn't working an effect, Justin resonated like an ever-renewing life-force.)

"Just missed a nail in the fence," he explained, in a tone that sounded a little like a verbal hand-wave.

Somehow during the midst of all this, Sera and Hawksley had shown up. Maybe Justin noticed the way that Shoshannah's eyes refused to make contact with him, or the way she'd started rambling when she came into the kitchen. But if so, he didn't acknowledge it, because Sera was there in her white sun dress and her black lingerie telling him to put some fucking clothes on. Justin gave the Cultist a pointed look. One of those expressions that was meant to convey an obvious sentiment.

In this case, the sentiment was: ...seriously? (One would imagine his tone to be very bemused.)

And though she may have managed to succeed at making him feel awkward (note the way he turned away from them and rubbed the back of his neck,) he didn't make any further attempts to acknowledge the moment or put his shirt back on. It was lying, loosely balled-up, on the floor at his feet and smelled about as sweat-soaked as it looked. Not exactly an appealing prospect. Justin picked it up and made his way toward the entrance to the dining room, moving past Hawksley as he did so.

"Sure. What's up?"

If the Hermetic seemed inclined to follow him, Justin would continue on toward the living room. If not, he'd stop and turn around.

Hawksley

The young man on the counter is, at the moment, actually even more useless than Sera is. Sera brought groceries, and liquor, and is unpacking them. Hawksley is sitting in her way, looking through her stuff, picking things up and playing with them, reading bottle labels, and essentially getting in the way of everything. While he does, he looks over at Grace, brightening. "See! Our schedules refused to match up and we met again anyway." He says this as though he and Grace have been in a long debate about fate vs. will or happenstance vs. serendipity and he thinks he's winning. Then again, Hawksley seems like the type of person to think he's always winning, one way or another.

Oh, Hawksley. He lifts his eyed, eyes alighting on Sera again, curious. Then: grinning, broadly. "Good god, you're right," he says, reaching up to whip his sunglasses off the top of his head with the body language that would normally accompany a Great Scott!. "My eternal apologies," he tells her, hands gripping the edge of the counter and pushing him off with a smooth shove. His feet hop to the ground again, surprisingly light despite his height. The aviators stay on the counter, chrome-rimmed and amber-lensed. "That certainly sounds scientific."

Justin heads for the living room, saying they can talk now, and Hawksley starts to follow him, reaching to the hem of his shirt. His long arms cross and then unfurl as he pulls it up, lifts it over his head, and then slings it over his shoulder. Beneath that shirt he is golden in a way that makes it seem like he was born that way, would look like this even if the sun never touched his skin. He's wearing a golden wing on a chain, the emblem hanging above his solar plexus.

"As for what's up," he's heard saying to Justin, as he walks into the dining room and around that long, long table to the fireplace, but the rest of the sentence is lost. The now-equally-shirtless Hawksley is saying to Justin's back: "my agenda is blended."

Sera

"Thank god they're gone," says Sera, once Hawksley has - yes - stripped off his damned shirt, tossed it over his shoulder, and followed Justin from the room. The Cultist (who returned Justin's ...seriously? glad with a ridiculously smug grin) slides Hawksley's aviators aside now that her groceries, such as they are, are unpacked and littering the counter, and hoists herself up onto the counter in the precise spot he just occupied, all fiddlingly annoying and in-the-way. She is rather shorter but her legs swing just the same and she turns to Shoshannah and Grace then, see, all fucking conspiratorial. "We can totally talk about them now - "

Except: the flash of her teeth, the sudden curl of her mouth.

"Wait, actually, we are going to pass the fucking Bechdel test and talk about Nothing to Do with Them. How about magic?

"Did you feel that, Grace - " eyes on the apprentice, slide to the creepy Dreamspeaker a moment later. "Justin healed himself. There at the sink. That flare in the air, that was his Work. I don't know how he does it, I don't know all that much about Verbena practice but yeah - see, it's different for all of us. Did we talk about that?

"Different for Shoshannah than it is for Pan or me or you. Shit, you know Shoshannah I have no idea even what your Tradition is? Like for the longest time I thought you were Pan's apprentice. Seriously."

Shoshannah

This? This is an interesting thing for Shoshannah, if by interesting one means 'embarrassing as hell' and also 'really more than a bit irritating' in addition to 'confusing'. For a girl who's so abrasive and angry feeling to begin with, it only makes things worse - and the problem is only slightly alleviated when shirtless!Justin (and now shirtless!Hawksley) leave the room.

"Give me your hipster-vintage bar toys. I do the aesthetics." It's sullen, grouchy, a bit sneer-y, and par for the course as far as Sera knows the girl - she hadn't been all that different the night in the bar, when Padre had ordered her home. And never mind that she can't quite look at Sera, either, making the tough act a bit more obviously a lie. In reality, Shoshannah is supremely uncomfortable and refuses to acknowledge it. And Grace? It's quite possible that in the midst of all this, Shoshannah's forgotten that she asked her a question. And of course the bar toys are put where Shoshannah wants them, and of course they're placed so well that she could be staging the house for sale. She's got a great eye, really, though no one ever expects it of her.

This gives her time to center a bit, to more firmly affix the I Don't Give a Shit attitude she wears so well so much of the time. "Dreamspeaker. And Initiate, thanks. I'm not really just a kid." Despite the common perception goes unsaid, naturally - it's not needed. So bland, so removed that tone even as everything about her prickles and pokes. She's a difficult one to get a bead on, is Shoshannah, and her trust issues? They're about a mile high.

-----

And since we know what everyone else is wearing, and to mark the difference(s) between Shoshannah and Sera still more clearly, here's this - a completely superfluous description of the girl's looks.

The Dreamspeaker is tall for a woman at a long and lean five foot nine inches, and has the model build to go with her model height although it's not quite so waify if one gathers the courage to actually touch her. It's all glamour, that, though she certainly is tall and thin. Her hair is black, or as close thereto as hair gets, and pulled back into a loose, somewhat messy ponytail in deference to the manual labor she'd been doing and the wind that occasionally blows it into her eyes if she doesn't restrain it. Underneath the pale rarely-sees-sun shade of her skin is an olive tone that comes more and more to the fore as she spends time outside working with Justin, playing with spirits, doing . . . whatever it is Shoshannah does when no one's looking. Her eyes are bright, clear, piercingflayingscarringscourging blue. Her ears are pierced, once each, and the holes there are filled with simple gold studs.

The clothes are simple today, but still of remarkably good quality given what people (think they) know about her - shorts bare her long legs, ankle height work boots adorn her feet, and a well made cotton tank top covers (most of) her torso, though it leaves a sliver of belly, hip and back bare. It's modest, really, but not particularly conservative - if she weren't everyone's nightmare, Shoshannah might be someone's dream. Goodness knows she's good looking enough.

Grace

Shoshannah proudly bore her bruises, and Grace tried hard to care about the fence and the effort put into it, though her mind wandered to other places. Good fences make good neighbors, perhaps, but something there is that doesn't love a wall (the poem went) that wants it down. Walls, fences, firewalls... She filed away an idea there, the germ of a concept. There was a story there, somewhere.

When she came back to reality, the younger woman was talking about knowledge being experiential -- one has to do to learn. Perhaps, yes. Or, you can teach a computer how to do it for you, and then go take a long nap.

Despite the mental wandering, Grace was actually paying attention to the words, if not the deeper content, and when Shoshannah got to the real interesting bit, the gears clicked into place. "Wards? What are wards?" she asked, knowing the word 'ward' but not its context. "And, yeah... I'm working on something, but it's really embarrassing. I mean, I know what good code looks like, and this is not it. Knowledge is experiential, right? Well, I'm learning a lot about how to hack things together in a really sh... uh... crappy way."

She leaned in and fake-whispered to the girl, "I'm really new." A half-smile lit one side of her face, and she continued, "I'm actually here to check out the library, so I won't embarrass myself much more, you know? But as for stuff to work on here, oh... Well, I suppose that depends on what needs doing? A local network wouldn't be bad, I don't know what you guys have though --"

Serafine's entrance tore off the end of Grace's little spiel in grandiose fashion, the woman sweeping in with her bags of 'stuff' and her presence, and a 'rock on' that made Grace's face light up even more. These little connections, drawing down the walls, these people with the mischief of spring in them.

Hawksley was next, and Grace imagined the two must go everywhere together, so alike. The house didn't seem too big anymore, filled with people and activity and a sudden surge of primal force that drew her attentions back to the man cleaning up at the sink. Huh.

And then, there were two half-naked men in the room, one with no real reason to be... "Hmm, I guess this means we do all need to take our shirts off... Or put on parkas. I guess it depends on whether you're after equality or balance."

Thankfully, there was no need for that. They left, presumably to discuss... what? Half-naked guy things? But Serafine was talking interesting again. "He healed himself? That's incredible... I did feel that, I was wondering," she said, her mind again in-gear. Magic? Well, Grace didn't think of it like that really. But a better word for it she couldn't muster. Breaking down reality's barriers (for she really is the thing that doesn't love a wall, shifting the stones out of her way), digging into the vulnerabilities, until...

Verbena? Pan? Dreamspeaker? Initiate? This is why she needed a fucking book. Hell, just a dictionary for this new jargon would be fine.

Shoshannah

"Verbena and Dreamspeaker are Traditions - like the Cult of Ecstacy," here, there's a nod at Sera though really she's only guessing - that one meeting had been months ago, and goodness only knows if she'd found out then. She certainly doesn't remember. "Groups of Awakened that share a similar worldview, though it's not a hive mind or anything. Pan - I usually call him Padre - is a person. He's in Mexico now, but has a church in Federal, in the city. And Initiate and Apprentice are ranks. They're pretty general, and mostly we don't make a big deal of them unless it's a formal occasion that calls for it, but they are what they are."

She shrugs and simply looks at Sera for a moment, sitting on the counter surrounded by things she expects other people will take care of - and Shoshannah probably will be the one who does, because despite her love for fine things and her high quality clothes, she has no aversion to doing what needs to be done. This one eighteen year old girl has more work ethic in her little finger than most people do in their entire bodies, in lifetimes. Soon (not soon enough) her eyes flick back to Grace, then wander away.

"You wanted to see the library - I can take you, if you want."

Serafíne

"Yeah, you know what?" This to the sullen, grouchy, teenaged demand that Shoshannah be allowed to take and stage the bartools somewhere in the house. For reasons of aesthetics. "My hipster-vintage bar toys are actually tools of ritual, and not tchotchkes. See," and this with a quicksilver grin to Grace, "some of us think that the ability to make a decent cocktail and or drink cheap tequila straight from the bottle is exactly what separates us from the unenlightened masses," then back to Shoshannah, "so: the barware is going on or in the bar if there's a fucking bar.

"Otherwise, they're staying in the kitchen by the cabinet that is designated for the booze until we secure a proper bar."

And still focused on Shoshannah, returning that look with another bemused and slightly wider grin than even Grace received, full of wry apology, "I meant apprentice in the general-language sense rather than the rank-sense. His student."

Her attention sweeps back to Grace as Shoshannah offers a litany of tradition names, bullet points about their purpose, guesses at her own, and explains who the hell Pan is. And Sera, oh her own eyes are completely steady on Grace's, even if the brand new mage is looking at Shoshannah and trying to absorb all of this.

"Hawksley was right," a bit dreamy, to Grace, when Shoshannah's explanations end. "You have fucking incredible eyes. Did you get any of that?" Compassion and humor in that too. And if Grace seems inclined to wander off toward the library with Shoshannah's offer, Sera will follow.

Grace

Confusion could be a word written on Grace's forehead, and apparently Sera had read it. The information headed her way was like a gloss over something more substantial, much like Sera must have felt when Grace had gone over her own newly-acquired worldview -- lost in words that barely made sense, from a culture that wasn't familiar.

Confusion was replaced by incredulity at Sera's pronouncement that both she and Hawksley agreed on the status of 'fucking incredible eyes'.

"Do what now?" the question was posed essentially to the both of them, Grace's incredible eyes flitting between the two to prove the point.

Ahh yes... library. And at that word from Shoshanna, the offhand mention of food, and lasagna in the fridge was completely forgotten. Time to answer some questions.

"Yeah, I think I need a beginner's book... Double You Tee Eff 101?"

Serafíne

Sera hops down off the counter with an easy movement. She's nowhere close to Shoshannah's willowy height, and even if she oh-so-often works to create that pretense, to take up that much more space in the world than the gods or whomever thought she should perhaps be granted, see: she moves with ease. Loves that body she has anyway and all the things it can feel and be and do.

"Most of those terms Shoshannah was throwing out, they're like religions, right? See, it's like, all the religions in the world, what if they were all correct. All internally and specifically correct, at least for their adherents. Buddists and Weirdoists and Catholics and what-the-fuck-all all got their prayers or spells or lives answered and framed and judged and defined under their specific set of beliefs.

"That's more or less what it's like for us. I mean, the way I work is nothing like the way Justin works, or Shoshannah, or you. And you can sort of make it up as you go along, right? Just push yourself, your frame, your worldview until it all comes more sharply into focus -

" - but when you find someone who shares your world view. Hell, then you can sort of draft off their Work a bit. Use their understanding to push your own along.

"So when I said Justin's a Verbena, it's like saying he's a fucking Catholic. Or, well. Technically a pagan or whatever, the Catholic bit was a fucking analogy."

Sera looks like she's ready to tuck her arm into Grace's just as easily and intimately as she sat with Hawksley that night they first met at Mutiny, and walk with her through the kitchen, chatting as they follow Shoshannah toward the library. If Grace stiffens up or pulls away, though, it won't get that far. Sera'll tuck her hands into the pockets of her cut-offs instead.

"Does any of that that make sense?"

Shoshannah

Something, goodness only knows what aside from it being fairly obvious that it was something one of the other women said, sets Shoshannah's shoulders stiffer, stutters her step, and suddenly she's peeling off. "You know what? Sera can get you into the library, Grace, you don't need me. See you around, or whatever." This is muttered only barely loud enough to hear, and now the Dreamspeaker can't look at either of them. Somehow, she's managed to shrink in on herself, giving her the appearance of a less corporeal waif - so much about her feels like the grave (and sets the hairs on the back of one's neck on edge, gives one shivers and goosebumps) that the visual impression is fairly strong. In truth, if she could she'd just disappear . . .

. . . but she can't, so she does the next best thing. Which is, in this case, all but fleeing (despite the urge to fight - who knows what would happen if she did that here, now) the company she's in and getting to her room as fast as she can. It's quite probably a relief for Grace and Sera when she does.

Grace

Grace listened as the Cultist of Ecstasy spoke (and if that were the name, it seemed appropriate for her) but a bit of sadness fell about her face as Sera continued.

She wasn't religious. At all. The opposite in fact. Religions were mostly a way to control people, she thought. Most powerful institutions are. Sure, individual practitioners could be perfectly wonderful people, but the leaders? The ones shoving ideology down from on high? They could make you believe anything. Greed is good, murder is permissible, you can get to the afterlife if you give me all your worldly possessions...

It was just an analogy, she tried to say to herself. Don't read too much into this.

"But, I haven't really met anyone yet who does share my world view, or come close. I mean, I think Sid is the only... you know... one I've talked to who really gets me, and she's not at all about computing," she said, her eyes flickering to Shoshannah, who looked offended. Oh. Well, crap.

When the girl stormed off, all teenage rebellion and spite, Grace looked about to follow her for a second before catching herself. Instead, Sera caught her by the arm, and the touch did set off alarms, did cause her body to involuntarily tense. It didn't help that today, the usual pins and needles in her skin were worse.

Sera responded by putting her hands into her pockets, and Grace went apologetic. "Oh, um... Sorry, you startled me."

Serafíne

Sera's face is rather narrow and her eyes are large but close-set and her brows rather straight (and rather darker than her bottle-blonde curls) but they spike upward as Shoshannah huffs off and her dark eyes linger on the teenager as she stalks from the kitchen, all venom and spike. She says nothing and makes no move to belay or interrupt Shoshannah but breathes out a breath that says, teenagers, what can you do which is, uh, pretty ironic coming from a girl who looks like Teenage Riot made flesh on her best days. And see, still her eyes linger, until the Dreamspeaker is out of immediate view.

That breath also serves as apology / brush-off of Grace's apology for that awkward moment where Sera's all let's link arms and Grace is all stiff no thanks which ends with Grace having her arms (tingling or otherwise) to herself and Sera with her hands not in her pockets because her author forgot she was wearing a sundress that probably does not have pockets but instead: linking in front of her like she's holding her own hand for a moment, then swinging free again as she leads Grace down toward the library.

And, talking,

"Well, see, one of the Traditions are the Virtual Adepts? Computer geeks, I suppose you would probably fit there," a narrow shrug of (growingly bony) shoulders beneath that not-prim little white dress. " - though I don't know of any in Denver I suppose you'd find them in the internet," - yes she said in the internet - "or whatever, too? But fuck if I know how you'd start doing that. They probably have some secret magickal hideout in games or whatever somewhere but I know fuck-all about computers,"

- the flash of a grin,

" - as I think we've established. I mean Dan puts music on my iPhone for me even if he hates it. Vinyl geek all the fucking way. 'Course you gotta be careful for a whole helluva lot of other reasons with that online shit because there's the Techs but that's probably WTF 102 right?"

"And," does she breathe? Probably has learned some circular breathing technique from Jim or: she's just a talker. "I am an Ecstatic. You remember the word I used for that feeling of oneness with the universe you were talking about? That feeling is kindof our jam.

"You should probably talk to Jim. He's one of us and he's a badass and he's smarter than me. Knows all kindsa shit about Ghandi and neuroscience. I mean, maybe you're more like us than you think."

Grace

The fluidity of Sera, the way she just moved on from every little bump in the social landscape like it was nothing, was turning into a point of envy for Grace. Be like that, sometime, okay? And then, the thought was banished.

She followed Sera down the hallways, listening to the words, and zeroing in on the back of her head quite absentmindedly. Secret magickal hideouts in internet did sound more her style. But again, there was nothing to go on really.

And another option, Grace the Cultist of Ecstasy? Again, Sera knew someone Grace should talk to about it (did she know everyone? Wouldn't surprise).

"Okay, but, I saw you unpacking your ritual equipment? Yeah, I don't really drink much, or do pot much. I don't know if that's a necessity or something. I wasn't on anything when I went down to that power station, though, I know the description kind of sounded like it."

"But I have another question. Why should I be careful of the people who fix broken computers? Techs?"

Serafíne

They're headed down the stairs to the lower library level when Grace remarks that she saw Sera unpacking her ritual equipment and oh that makes Sera laugh. Grace cannot see the sudden flash of a widening grin across Sera's sharp features, but that tip-back of her blond head, the swing of her curls against her spine are frame enough of the laughter beneath. Which is mostly embedded rather than uttered, framed by her body.

At the foot of the stairs, while Sera's sorting out the technology required to enter, she turns back and gives Grace a wry little look, through the width of that abating grin.

"I was being a little over the top when I called the barware ritual equipment. We're not quite so formal," chagrin? Not quite, just the a certain degree of self-awareness and a certain understated bemusement. " - and honestly, alcohol isn't as good for expanding consciousness as other substances, especially hallucinogens. But it's more experiential - sex or music or energy, right? Like a fucking crowd when they're vibing on something, all moving together, just this one pulse and you lose yourself into the expanding mass of that movement. Or even," a mild smirk, the slightest arc of distaste, from the Cultist-on-a-fucking-fast, " - denial. Exercise, yoga, breath control? Those things aren't for me, but yeah.

"Honestly, I was being a bit tongue-in-cheek." There's a directness to her gaze her, steady and certain, "but you know, when it doubt, recruit recruit recruit. And you should still talk to Jim. He's fucking awesome and he'd like you. Oh, but I hope you drink at least a bit. Hawksley's going to throw you a party as soon as his Collins secures him a permanent place to live."

The door to the library swings open, and Sera gives Grace an after you style gesture.

"The techs, fuck. I don't know where to fucking begin. I suppose with the fact that we call them the Technocracy, and they know what we can do, but they prefer the status quo.

"I've heard that they call us Reality Deviants. Which should tell you something.

"And I know that there are some in town."

Grace

So, it wasn't just a collection of like-minded people, it was a collection of wildly differently-minded people? Well, that's almost even better, right?

Sera's description of the Cultists didn't exactly make Grace feel any closer to them. She was more a kind of techno-monk, an information-age scribe than anything else. Much more content to sit by herself in quiet focus than in a crowd. Denial wasn't exactly the word for it, Grace did what she wanted, she just didn't want much.

But a world without people like Sera? Boring.

"Really? A party, for me?" she said, and the introvert in her cringed. But hey, networking, right? Just put on a smile, and take it. It was intended to be a gift, no doubt, or just an excuse to party.

When Sera unlocked the library, Grace's face lit up, and a tiny "eeeee" noise escaped her before she could control it. Immediately, she beelined to the nearest bookshelf and started reading titles. Unfortunately (intriguingly) they all sounded quite... Odd.

Sera continued, and Grace tried paying attention to both books and voice, until a word struck her, "Wait, Technocracy? The rule of technology?"

Serafíne

"Hell yeah, are you kidding me?" Sera returned glancing over her shoulder at Grace to take in the other woman's expression. A certain directness to the look with which Sera favors her, this steady and quiet survey that takes in the expression around the edges of the smile as well as the smile itself. They're in shadow in the library until Sera reaches for the lights, and in the darkness her eyes glitter with reflected light from the living space up the stairs. "Waking up's a Big Fucking Deal.

"People mark passages, right? Crossings, borders. Places where definitions start to blur, and that's what's happening to for and by you, isn't it?

"It's so fucking amazing, Grace. You have no idea. - "

And then the library doors open and Grace makes that eeeeeee noise and Sera falls a little bit in love and throws her head back, laughing out loud in the quiet hum of the sealed library. Oh yes, the titles were... Odd.

While Grace starts to browse, Sera starts to circle to a particular shelf. She's spent enough time in here on her own research (which might suprise anyone who knows her) that she knows exactly where to go, but then Grace asks about the Technocracy and Sera pauses, glancing back at Grace. The chasing note of puzzlement on the Cultist's features suggests that she has literally never considered the provenance of the word until Grace just broke it down for her.

"Huh," like a lightbulb, " - yeah, I mean. I guess that's what they are. Like Big Brother right? They're like the Reality Cops or something. The man. Make a spectacle of yourself and you might bring them down on you." And then, a little chill, Sera's eyes all unfocused and searching the room, the library, its rafters, the hushed quiet of its mechanically cooled air. She breathes out sharply; breathes out the memory of an unconscious girl and a bullet through the heart and a wholly different awakening, collapsing entirely into ash. The blitheness leaves her voice, and Sera's eyes find Grace again. Fix on her, this brief and haunted air about her as she admonishes, quietly, with a spare little smile. " - so, you know. Don't do that."

Hawksley

There is a knock at the library doors. Who could it be?

Serafíne

Sera opens the library door. Is that Hawksley!?!?

(If so she looks oh three seconds or so from hugging him because yes being absent from her company for anywhere from five minutes to twenty-three years might earn you yet-another-hug. Except uh, he may be still half-naked and she is resolutely Not Touching Him. So the potential hug sort of metamorphs into an open-armed this. is. the. library. sort of gesture that may be more than the place really demands or requires.)

"Hey! C'mon in." Sera wants bonus cool points for being the first person to let both of them into the chantry library. But she says this only with her shining grin. "I was telling Grace you were gonna throw her a party. And we were talking about the Techs and stuff."

Sid

The visitors may have noticed the old as hell truck parked in the drive. Up until Sera and Grace entered the library, that truck's presence has been the only clue that a particular Orphan is on the premises. She must have arrived sometime after Justin and Shoshannah went off to build a fence or she would have offered to help. She missed the fireworks in the kitchen and whatever happened in one of the rooms on the second floor.

When the door swings open for Sera, she'll see that the lights are already on. Sid has been in the library for who knows how long now, curled up on one of the loveseats, back pressed into one of the arms, a book opened on her upraised knees. She missed the entrance of the other magi due to a combination of an incredibly lowered guard (it's a library, a library in a basement behind a high-tech security door, chances are it would survive a zombie apocalypse) and an attention that is thoroughly engrossed in the text she's reading (something about mass and Matter and physical things).

Sera's laugh is like the piercing of a veil, or the snapping of a twig in the forest. Like some prey animal Sid comes alert, and she tenses a second before she recognizes the voice as belonging to a certain Cultist. Tucking a slip of paper between the pages of her book to mark her place, she sets it down on the cushion near her feet before she swings her legs to the side and rises. She's peering around a bookshelf just in as the discussion of the Technocracy starts to gain momentum.

Slipping her hands into the back pockets of her jeans, the Orphan reveals herself in her entirety. She is wearing, Sera will notice, a light green t-shirt with grey stars over a pair of new jeans, both items purchased recently while in the company of the Ecstatic. Her feet are bare and her hair is down, curling over her shoulders.

"Reality cops," she repeats, voice quiet in the aftermath of its revelation. "I only knew they were bad news."

No hellos, no hey how are you or nice to see you Grace. Even as her old self starts to assert itself over the new, some of Sid's habits aren't fading.

Hawksley

That's Hawksley!

He has put his shirt on again. Having left Justin upstairs, balance has been restored to the universe and it is no longer necessary for the chantry's feng shui that Hawksley be half naked and disturbing to teenagers or landscape architects. Not, of course, that he needs to be shirtless to disturb anyone.

He sidles in and she throws her arm to show him the library and he gives her a pursed-lip smirk, a smile trying not to be a laugh, shaking his head. "You showed me last time you brought me here, you mad thing," he tells her, and leans over her, because in her highest of heels she is not his height, to put his hand on her back and plant a kiss on the top of her head,

like one she might have given Dee. Quite like that, in fact.

He smiles at Grace, giving her another nod of hello, though he saw her not so many minutes ago in the kitchen. "I will throw you a party. Would you want one before or after my birthday party?" Fuck no, he's not sharing his birthday party, he doesn't care if she's a newly Awakened mage and it's sort of her birthday, too. "Also: fuck the Techs. Never forget what you are and the power your belief has to shape your world. As soon as you decide that they're omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent, that's your reality."

His fingers snap, as though it's that easy. Like it's magic.

Which he's saying: it is.

Sweeping away from Sera, mercifully sliding his hand off her back, he gives a sharp whistle through the library, which is just... not... library behavior. "SID. HEY. I SAW YOUR TRUCK, SID. HEY."

But Sid is right there, and stepping out from behind some shelves and Hawksley just beams at her. "Sid!" As though he wasn't just shouting her name like a kid who hasn't been taught the rules yet... which is one of the more accurate descriptions of Hawksley, and one he'd be proud to wear if he could hear the unreliable narrator of his existence saying it. He opens his arms. "Hug? I put my shirt on, I'm totally safe."

Granted, since she wasn't upstairs to see he and Justin shirtless, this comment has no context, but nevermind that. Maybe he means that hugging Sid without a shirt on would drive him out of his mind. Could be.

Grace

The way Sera described it, the party would be more of an initiation rite than anything else. A way to mark a transition, like puberty almost. Ceremonies like that were intended to drag the liminal being (in the halfway, fuzzy, almost-there state) into a new life. Was it tribal politics, human nature, or both that people felt such ceremonies necessary? Thoughts buzzed around as she listened and read book titles.

She paused at a tome whose spine read 'Dissertations on Enochian Vowel Forms' with a quizzical expression. Was there a card catalogue or something? Oh, paper! What she wouldn't do for a search engine for this.

When Sera started getting serious again, the creepiness edging into her voice, the shifting of attention stopped. Techs, then, were like the police. Avoid. The name, at first, had frightened her a bit -- she was a tech (technician). Her whole life revolved around tech. And she was new and didn't know the specifics.

The liminal state is a dangerous place. She didn't know what to do, she didn't know what was expected, and wasn't that why she was here? Visiting the library was a kind of ceremony then, passing a locked threshold, being granted new words.

There wasn't any drinking or music right now, but it was as good as a party, to her mind.

And then, much like a party, people just started showing up, or showing themselves. Sid appeared out of nowhere from within the stacks, to whom Grace gave a grin and wave.

And Hawksley, shirtfull, but no less distracting, asking her when she'd like to have that party. "Oh, well, it's.." She almost said, 'your party' but no, it really wasn't. "I'll leave that up to you, I guess."

Her head cocked at his 'Also', the mental machine chewing on that one. Just as soon as he'd said it, he accosted Sid with her name and threatened her with a hug, and Grace laughed. "Don't believe it, Sid."

Sid

Hawksley gives a sharp whistle that shatters the subdued quiet of the library. Where she was peering out from behind the shelves, Sid startles, but she doesn't shrink back or try to hide. She's done with hiding, at least from these people.

And then she's there, stepping out and making her presence known as if they couldn't feel her already. She lets them know that she doesn't know much of anything about techs except to stay out of their way.

Hawksley greets her brightly and she looks at him uncertainly, though the corners of her mouth threaten to curve upward as she looks at him. How could anyone be wary of Hawksley for very long? He looks at the world with the wonder of a child. Being near him feels how Lois Lane must have felt flying with Superman - except without the romantic connotations.

He says he put his shirt on so he's safe, and that look of amused uncertainty shifts to pure confusion. She looks from him to Sera, her lips parting to ask for clarification (are his hugs somehow contaminated unless he wears a shirt?) when Grace laughs and tells her not to believe it.

Sid looks back up at Hawksley, eyes lifting first, then her head. She smiles, a small, slight curving of her mouth. "I believe him." Bare feet moving whisper quiet across the plush carpet, she goes to accept that hug, possible cooties be damned.

Serafíne

Here's the thing, Sid pops out of the woodwork and Sera's dark eyes are on the Orphan as she appears from behind one of the stacks. Reality cops Sid repeats and Sera gives her this little shrug by way of acknowledgment and awareness, see. It's sort of a yeah and also something like maybe y'all should talk to someone with a wee bit more authority about this sort of thing all wrapped up together. Because the larger the audience is for her bullshit on these topics of intellectual interest, the more immediate and prickling is her awareness of how fucking little she really knows.

Then That's Hawksley and she's doing that thing with her arms and he's smirking at her and kissing her on the crown of her head with his hand on her back and calling her you mad thing and, "Oh," she's saying, rather under her breath, a bit stiff beneath his hand but also rolling her eyes and muttering, " - I knew that." With a certain vehemence that says she knew no such thing.

"He's right too," to Grace more than Sid and rather quietly at that, then, with this upward lilt of her chin towards Hawksley as he goes to hug Sid. "Pretty much everything we do's in defiance of them, and their world view. Down to our fucking existence and every breath of magic in our blood and bones. Every vision, every breath, every time we open ourselves up to the pattern or spike in to the - what the fuck is it you see? was it data or something? is a great big fuck you to them.

"I mean, there was this whole war and shit," this to Grace and Sid both, with another little curl of her shoulders by way of a seriously, don't listen to me disclaimer. "Uh, you should ask someone else if you wanna know more? 'Cos I know fuck-all about it."

Then, a little comma between her brows, " - wait, when's your birthday?" to the Hermetic, as he and Sid share a (dangerous?) hug. (Sera's only response to Sid's confused glance, if she caught it, was a mild smirk and an encouraging upward lilt of her straight dark brows. "I didn't know it was your birthday. How old are you going to be?"

Hawksley

Hawksley. Is. Aghast. At Grace. "How dare you, madam!" is his response when she tells Sid not to believe that he's safe, and yet:

there's some truth to that. His intensity, his presence, the sheer power one can feel flickering at his fingertips and behind his eyes, the lust for that power, the lust for the sun and moon and physical touch and the books -- god! -- the books, the knowledge, the newness and the freedom of Grace, the gut-wrenching-spine-bending existence of Sera, the gasp that is Sid.

Yes, Sid, the wonder, the eyes of a child, the eyes of a god infatuated with all that dwells in its sight.

No, but: Grace is right. None of that is safe.

--

"We'll do it after," he decides, easily, without waffling or shifting or pressing for preference, as his arms are folding like wings around Sid as though they hug like this all the time. He puts his chin atop her head. He squeezes, crinkling up his face, making a noise that speaks of comfort and satisfaction and the sheer effort of the squeeze. Even after that pressure abates he holds onto her, swinging her slightly, to the beat of: "You're. So. Warm."

Mercifully, he releases her after that, inhaling deeply and giving a quick -- of course I'm right -- rejoinder to the conversation Sera is having with Grace. He drifts towards a stack, glancing back when Sera mentions the war, and chimes in: "I've got some histories at home. You could probably find some here. Some of them are... old. There's newer information, some of that is on some magic-locked net or something, I don't know, I hear rumors."

His voice is getting more distant as he's fading through the shelves, calling back: "August 8th, but we'll party on the weekend. And! A quarter of a century, so I expect all my gifts to be solid silver. JUST KIDDING. Grace! Come here! I found a programming manual from the seventies, but -- hot damn. This ain't your daddy's ...I don't fucking know, insert-programming-jargon-here." There's a beat, and a flip of pages. "Ooh! Margin scribbles!"

Hawksley has never sounded more gleeful.

Grace

Sera explained more about the 'Techs' but each explanation formed new questions in Grace's mind, and Sera wasn't the one to answer them. Her gaze wandered the stacks, then. "Maybe these books hold some answers then, you think?"

She lost herself in the reading of titles, some in languages she didn't know, none of which sounded promising, until her yelled name caught her attention.

The book Hawksley found was old, no, ancient in programming terms. Grace was a little crestfallen at the mention it was from the 70's. Why keep it, save for nostalgia? He was right, the newer stuff wouldn't be in dead-tree format. But his enthusiasm was infectious, and the thought of notes in the margins was quite intriguing.

She stopped pawing her way through the section she was at, and bounded over to the way back, to peer at the found programming manual from behind.

And her eyes went wide.

Of course, a manual like this would be mostly math. It would be made to last, in a language that never ages. She was expecting COBOL, and was getting so much more.

Hell, the diagrams of data entropy that Hawksley was just thumbing past like they were nothing...

"Hey, wait, hold on, go back, you're hogging it!"

Hawksley

Hawksley, as though he's out to prove that he can't be trusted, just says "Ack!" (yes, aloud) and hops the book a few inches from his hands to Grace's. She'd better catch it.

Okay, frankly, if she doesn't, Hawksley will. But he grins either way, abandoning the manual to Grace. He peers over her shoulder a bit, but frankly: this isn't his jam. It's hers. He knows it's hers. He knows none of them are going to be able to teach her like this, and because of that: he envies her. Oh, how he envies her.

With a pat on her back, he smiles again, warmer, almost fond, and heads back to Sera and Sid. Or starts to. And then he finds that Dissertations on Enochian Vowel Forms and makes a Murr? sound behind his tongue, halting his steps and reaching for the spine.

Sid

Sid knows that Hawksley, all of them aren't safe. Any one of them can turn in an instant. They could hurt her. And by opening up to them and trusting them she risks bitter betrayal, which would hurt all the more.

And yet when Hawksley folds his arms around her, Sid's arms wrap around his lean torso and she leans against him. A warmth like pure sunshine envelopes her. When he squeezes her he can feel her hands tighten against his back an instant before she relaxes, but she doesn't jerk or twist away from him. He rocks, says that she's. so. warm, and she laughs somewhere near his collar and says, "You're one to talk."

Then he's releasing her to go chasing after something else and Sid turns her face away in hopes that no one will notice it is a little redder than it was.

"Ah," she says in response to Sera's lack of knowledge. "Maybe, maybe Pan might know more. Or Jim. Did I give you Jim's number?" she asks Grace, who may or may not be hunting after Hawksley by then, leaving Sid alone (relatively speaking) with Sera. Sid closes the gap to the Cultist (or she closes the gap to Sid, or they close the gap to each other) and offers her a hug as well. And though she's concerned for the sharpness of Sera's figure beneath her arms Sid only says, "I'm going to," while twisting and pointing with her thumb abck over her shoulder. "I want to finsh this chapter before I go home."

She goes back to her couch or loveseat or whatever, stopping to give Grace Jim's number should she need it, but otherwise she prepares to lose herself again to her tome.

Serafíne

Sera returns Sid's hug but see: her own is lightly offered, is a stand-in hug, an analogue for a hug rather than a genuine embrace. The Cultist has reached the point of her fast where (oh, inhale the scent of Sid's red hair, loose around her shoulders) she has to hold herself a little physically apart from those to whom she is closest. This day or the next or the one after:

the rite.

And then, oh Denver, be afraid.

But see: the loose curve of Serafíne's skinny arms around Sid and then Sid retreats to finish her chapter before she heads home and Sera waves a little farewell and thinks that book looks boring and the books see that Hawksley and Grace are showing such interested in look boring-er and boring-est.

And see, when there is a break in all of this mutual adoration of Books the Cultist Couldn't Give a Damn About she interrupts it to offer Grace two more volumes for her perusal. Yes, they're in the chantry library, but yes, they are also available on amazon.com and in the odd (Very Odd) actual physical Sleeper-accessible bookstore. Doesn't matter.

They are both by the French surrealist author Rene Daumal.

The first: A Night of Serious Drinking.

The second: Mount Analogue: A Novel of Symbolically Authentic Non-Euclidean Adventures in Mountain Climbing.

"When you get done with programming and shit, try these. You know?" A little grin, this shake of her blond head. Then, all quiet see? "Don't get stuck."

Which is a great thing for Ms. Your Books Are So Boring to say, but there's a wry twist to her mouth that suggests that she is perfectly, sublimely conscious of her own hypocrisy.

Grace

Grace did catch that book, and afterwards, jabbed Hawksley in the side with her elbow (for when she does reach out and touch someone, it usually comes with some level of violence) but her gleeful demeanor showed it hadn't been meant to hurt.

And for once, Grace attained focus. She flipped back to the data entropy diagram, which seemed to be making a point about entropy maximums and boundary conditions, and what they looked like. The side-note in this page's margin seemed to be a generalized algorithm to process that in the field. She touched the pen marks with numbed fingers, seeking a connection to the one who wrote that. What she wouldn't give to sit down and have a long chat...

It was a bit beyond her, but she didn't much care. The pictures were beautiful, at any rate.

Then Sera invaded her consciousness, to whom Grace gave the strange, dawning comprehension look of 'oh, yes, I am actually in a library with other people'. "Oh, ah, A Night of Serious Drinking," she mumbled. "The only night of serious drinking I have ever engaged in was my 21st birthday, and it was a bit regrettable, I'm afraid." She gave the Cultist a smile, and then, "But I'll try to keep an open mind."

Over the course of the evening, to at least be able to say she kept that promise, she would peer into those other works, and she would find the one to be more than a story about drinking, and the other to be much more than a story about mountain climbing. They were way more metaphorical than the concrete programming manual, but no less truthful in what they had to say (although a great deal of any of the books she read that night went a little beyond her ken).

In the end, she would likely have to be told to go home, or told to sleep. But for now, she went and curled up on one of the couches, taking her shoes off so she could properly contort herself into comfortable reading position, taking a break from people and talking -- recharging in her own fashion.