The node is a hot tub; no wait. The node here is a hot spring bubbling up from somewhere underground. The air is crisp and cool tonight, the promise of fall that does not carry the same precise promises one finds on the east coast - all those trees starting to change, the burst of brilliant autumn colors - but still. Cool air after a hot day and steam drifting in semi-opaque sheets from the steaming water of the node.
There is a patio and a garden that a Verbena tended, once. Maybe Sid keeps up with the work, maybe Shoshannah does, maybe it has not yet gone to seed and rack and ruin and in any case it is fall. The growing season is winding down. It is time for some things to end.
Everything has a cycle.
--
Out there on the patio: Sera. Not soaking in the waters of the hot spring, but sitting with legs crossed in one of the Aidirondack chairs, an ashtray balanced on the arm, smoking...
...something. Casually and carelessly, tipping her head back to watch the drift of smoke from her nostrils.
SerafínePerception + Awareness
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (2, 2, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 5 )
Kalen[All the rolls - Nightmares]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 5, 5) ( fail )
Kalen[Well...that could have gone worse. Awareness @-1]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )
CC Lurker[Mind if I lurk?]
SerafíneIs cool with me!
KalenKalen comes out slowly toward the hotspring. It isn't entirely that his movements are sluggish, more than that it's the way he has to lean into his cane, heavily favoring his right leg as he approaches. Sera gets a single, lengthy evaluating glance - less appreciative and more assessing the potential level of threat she might be. There isn't much for evidence of appreciation from Kalen, nor of warmth. If not for the rather chaotic resonance his presence would be hardly anything at all.
"Good evening," he says quietly.
SerafíneThe western horizon is still half-lit by the setting sun, and the patio faces west, doesn't it? Out over the wooded hill and spare pastureland, beyond the teeth of the nearest mountains. It is pastoral and iconic and idyllic, the twilight scene. The first stars appearing in the fast darkness of the intermediate horizon.
See, Sera follows the chaotic beat of Kalen's presence - a front on the horizon, the promise of lightning, cloud to ground, or maybe ground to cloud - quite as carelessly and thoughtlessly as she smokes the joint she's working her way through.
She has a distinctive look. Long, dyed blond curls with dark roots, the right side shorn buzz-cut short from her temple to the nape of her neck following the sweeping curve of her skull. Close set eyes and straight brows and aquiline features, dark make-up - shadow, liner, mascara. And a distinctive feel, as they all do, the sense of something gut-wrenching and entrancing. It's dark out here, so Kalen may miss the details of her sartorial choices, but they seem to involve fishnets, torn, denim of some sort, a bare midriff and a leather bustier of some sort, beneath an oversized men's flannel shirt left unbuttoned but still actually worn, her only concession to the cool evening air. Gives him a look that's sidelong when he emerges and then drifts rather head-to-toe while she breathes out a lungful of smoke.
Without a word, she offers him the joint. Holds it lazily upward, tucked between her thumb and forefinger waiting for him to take.
Then:
"Hey." No warmth in his look, but Sera she smiles this slash of a grin that likely has enough for the both of them, and more. "You're fucking new. I'm Serafíne.
"Call-me-Sera."
KalenShe gets another slow sweep of his eyes, mostly dispassionate. He does take the joint, inhaling deeply, holding his breath a few seconds and breathing out slowly before handing it back.
"Sera," he says, as if tasting the name. "Is that your given name?" He lowers himself, carefully, into a chair beside her.
SerafíneHe takes the joint; she half smiles, her arm dropping back to the arm of her chair on the fulcrum of her elbow while he takes a toke and holds it. Then passes it back: there is a rhythm to it, and a lazy one at that. She knows it well.
The question, though, earns him a sharpening, sidelong look. She takes him in more fully then; the cane, the heaviness as he lowers himself to the chair. For her part, Sera still sits cross-legged, feet bare beneath her knees, her shoes discarded at the base of the chair. And those shoes -
- they are insane. Peep toe black leather booties with grommets and spikes and zips and whatchamacallits. Between the platforms and the silver-tipped spiked heels they must have a 5+ inch rise from the ground.
"Depends on what you mean by given. It's my name, though. More than any other."
She takes another drag. Holds it. Holds it. Holds it. Exhales.
Offers the joint again with a wave of her hand.
" - what's yours?"
KalenSera's answer earns her the slightest dip of his head. "That answered my question perfectly, thank you."
He accepts the joint back again, breathes in, lets his head drop back against the back of the chair, and then passes it back to Sera. He stares up at the sky for a long moment and then breathes out.
"Kalen." He laughs, distant and soft like a low growl of thunder from far away. "Almost no one tries to shorten that, but if you wish I suppose you are welcome to try."
Serafíne"Kale?" There is a grin at the edge of the words. She hasn't taken another drag, not yet. She would laugh and cough and choke and lose all that delicious goddamned smoke from her lungs. She is laughing, all sudden, open, unreserved. "Jesus fucking Christ, thank you but no. I spent too-fucking-long on a juice fast. Had enough goddamned kale to last a lifetime. Kale and wheatgrass and fucking flax seed or whatever. Chia fucking pets."
The humor seems as internal as it is external. Her head's tipped back and focused briefly on the sky as she settles enough from the edging laughter to breathe again, and breathe in the smoke.
"You're a Hermetic, aren't you. Asking about my name like that."
Kalen"Perceptive. And yes, I am." He stares up at the sky, seeming completely at peace with not talking for a moment. There are easy, obvious questions, a list that begins with inquiring about her Tradition, but he takes up none of them.
"Can you imagine a time when stars were the sole point of navigation for ships? I can remember reading about that as a child and it seemed almost as magical as flight. It seems more so, now. To put yourself out to sea and lay all your faith in the water and the sky like that? I can stare down monsters, but I still can't imagine doing that."
SerafíneThere are easy, obvious questions to ask. There are also easy, obvious assumptions to make. He does not ask the former, and she cannot read minds so she does not know if he makes the latter. Doesn't consider it either. There is space enough in the conversation for those moments of silence. It is, after all, a time and a place for silence.
Outside, failing twilight. No neighbors, perhaps for miles. Few humans and few human sounds, just the nightnoises now. The song of crickets and something blind and scrabbling in the underbrush. The wind in the trees. The crackle of resin in the joint as she takes another drag.
Sera is a fucking talker. Will chatter merrily about old-fashioned champagne flutes or her favorite chainsaw artist or her last trip or what-the-fuck ever but that doesn't mean she abhors silence and she doesn't try to fill it.
"I can't stare down fucking monsters." Sera breathes the words out. Exhales them, blond head tipped back as she searches the sky for the earliest stars. Quiet, not precisely like a confession. There is something else written into the words and now is not the time or place to explore it. Still, the edge of her mouth curling upward near the end. A little shake of her head as she passes back the joint.
"Shit." Like the question is a revelation: which it is. "I never thought about that before." Ships and stars and navigation. What it's like to be adrift on a wine-dark sea with nothing but the stars are your guide. But she's thinking about it now, letting the wonder of the idea seep through her skin and blood and bones and viscera.
Breathes in a breath like she's taking another toke of that joint even though she's just handed it off, because now she's breathing in something else. The idea of the space between the stars and the sea. She does not know the words sextant or astrolab but she knows what it is to be adrift in the dark, with only a spare few points of light to guide the way. And yet,
"I think you just did imagine that. Jesus Christ. It sounds fucking incredible, though. Like fucking magic."
The joint will burn out soon, but Sera shares it down to the roach. Eventually human sounds will intrude, the crunch of tires on gravel. An old white van, which Sera declares to be her ride and the cue for her to gather up her ridiculous shoes and head out.
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