The globe on Grace's laptop monitor spins on its table in the library, backlit with unmoving stars, and glowing with sunlight on one side. But it lacks clouds, this representation. The engineers must have thought that too complex, too unpredictable. They could have faked it, perhaps, but this earth is naked.
It's also got pushpins in it, which if they were real, would blot out the sun for miles and pierce the mantle with their sheer size, so it's a good thing this is merely realistic.
It is, of course, what she's been working on for a couple of snow-covered days, before the snow excuse for staying at the Chantry ran out, and so did all of her leads. Now, she's staying inside the underground bunker that is the library for other reasons.
Grace is not at her laptop at present. She's reading a book. It's one she usually goes straight to when the curiosity takes her. It's an old programming manual, which is odd because one usually does not learn programming through books. But it's not like there's a stackoverflow for universe hacks (at least not that she knows of) so she has to make do.
It has pictures, and source code, but more importantly, liner notes written in sometimes pencil, sometimes pen. Whoever the writer was is not here anymore. At one time she hoped they were still around, but lately that seems less and less likely.
Kalen HollidayKalen wanders down into the library. Any illusion that he might have been just coming down by chance, and not because he was looking for Grace, is rather spoiled by the fact that he is carrying enough takeout for two people and a shiny, cobalt blue gift bag.
He pauses when he sees Grace reading, head tilting to one side. And then, without a word to interrupt her, he moves to settle in the chair nearest hers. He starts pulling boxes of food out of the bag and placing them on the table - not close to the laptop or any notes.
Grace Evans[Perception+Awareness!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )
Grace Evans[Also, should have done Nightmares!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (3, 3, 6, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )
Kalen Holliday[Right! Nightmares!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (2, 2, 4, 5, 8) ( success x 1 )
Grace EvansKalen's like a storm rolling around above ground, and she senses that -- the way the universe responds to his presence -- well before he's actually down the stairs. It doesn't really interrupt her reading, because he's been here a lot recently, working on his part of their research project. And for a while, that's what she thinks he's up to, playing around in the office with his papers and string, because for some reason he needs his data to be physical.
But then, he's down the stairs, and there's a storm underground. She lowers the book slightly, peering at him over the pages, at his bags of food and... what? A present?
"I see you're feeding me again. Not that I mind. Also, hi."
Kalen Holliday"It seemed silly to go get food and not bring you any back." Some people would have asked what she wanted. Kalen just tries bringing back options and paying attention to which options Grace likes, New options get added to what seemed to be her favorite options. Then that process continues. It's methodical and experimental and...entirely not how normal people figure out what their friends like.
He slides a pair of chopsticks and a fork across the table to her, Then, a little more hesitantly, that gift bag. He has never displayed hesitance about the food. Not even the day he brought back Caribbean food that was curries and goat and almost nothing conventional for Denver.
Grace EvansGrace enjoys odd food. Odd anything, really. And even goat curry isn't the weirdest she's had and liked. She doesn't get out much anymore, but it's been Kalen's insistence that even if she's not ready to go outside and sit in a restaurant that she eat something that's made the hollows in her cheeks lessen over the weeks. Her body went through a lot. It needs the material to build back what the Hydra stole.
So his food delivery system is never turned down. It might be a little weird, but so is she. It doesn't quite occur to her that it's strange even.
But the gift bag, that's new.
She ignores the food for a bit, putting down the precious tome of Programming, and inspects the present. She's expecting maybe some equipment, or some papers on Thakinyan perhaps (why they would be in a gift bag is unknown) but the stuffed lion it actually turns out to be? Completely out of the cobalt blue.
"Uhh..." her brows knot. She pulls it out of the bag slowly. It's soft, cute, with tiny bead eyes. But she's confused. Why this? Kalen is being very strange. She looks over at him, remembering that hesitation, and she knows that she is missing something important here.
"It's adorable. And thank you. But, what is it for?"
Kalen Holliday"So, it was snowing," Kalen says. "And...it was the first real snow and it was...there wasn't much snow in Arizona. I suppose you know that. My sister thought snow was pretty much magical. It always reminds me of her. The first time...." He ducks his head, like he is about to say something impossibly ridiculous that he knows is ridiculous. "We used to make toys out of bits of junk we found. She wanted to be a princess, so we made a wand out of what I'm pretty sure was a piece of a car antenna. We bent wire into this really lopsided star and...." He clears his throat. "And anyway I always go buy presents on the first day it snows. Mostly donation presents, since historically I'm not much for friends. But, this year, I have friends. Also, your room is missing anything...really personal."
[And, how did you do on your thing I forgot to roll until now Kalen?]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (1, 2) ( success x 1 ) [WP]
Kalen Holliday[YAAAAAAAAY!!!]
SerafíneHah. :) I think I said I was going to run a WtA scene tonight, but y'all are already playing, mage sounds way more fun, and I had a bad day. (grins)
Kalen Holliday
[It's late for me to start a scene anyway. Plus I love Sera, So hop on in.]
Serafíne(Perception plus Awareness.)
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 7 ) Re-rolls: 2
Grace EvansGrace remembers this story, knows why he can't finish it. She just nods. This gift is obviously a special thing for Kalen, and well... Stuffed lions may not have much of a use, but it's not like it isn't... soft.
There's a bit of consternation at the idea that he thinks of her as a child, but well... This is in tribute to his sister. She can't say it was a bad idea. It really isn't.
"Yeah. I know. I usually just... try to keep the clutter down," she says, but really it's that it never occurs to her to buy things like this, things without a purpose. It bothers her sometimes, that she seems to lack the impulse, or have emotional connections enough to have anything 'really personal'.
"Well, it's appreciated," she says, and tries to smile. It's a sad thing, really, but she tries.
Kalen HollidayKalen smiles back, as effortlessly as if she had actually succeeded brilliantly in her smiling. "There was a minute I thought about getting you a robot. But I bet you could build better than any of the robots I could buy you anyway. Also, they robots lacked a certain charm."
He picks up a carton and pokes at the food inside it with his chopsticks, then sets it back down. He seems about as interested in the food tonight as he did the night at Garrett';s. "I got one for Sid too. Not a lion. Sid's is different. She will either think it's cute or punch me. I suppose we'll see. But I think we're okay now."
Kalen HollidayKalen smiles back, as effortlessly as if she had actually succeeded brilliantly in her smiling. "There was a minute I thought about getting you a robot. But I bet you could build better than any of the robots I could buy you anyway. Also, they robots lacked a certain charm."
He picks up a carton and pokes at the food inside it with his chopsticks, then sets it back down. He seems about as interested in the food tonight as he did the night at Garrett';s. "I got one for Sid too. Not a lion. Sid's is different. She will either think it's cute or punch me. I suppose we'll see. But I think we're okay now."
Kalen Holliday[I am TOTALLY awake.... Sorry about that.]
SerafíneThere are things Sera knows, sees, understands, feels, becomes, without every quite understanding how or why. Sometimes the universe just unzips itself in her presence and everything is opened up, hollowed out: made known, right down to the bone. On a night like this, once, Sera caught a glimpse of Hawksley's avatar, inhuman, winged. Christ. Tonight Sera can taste them in the air: Grace and Kalen belowground, down the dark steps, behind the firesafe door in the bunker-of-a-library. And everyone else who has been here too,
since the last time she was here. Which was also the first time she's been here, in a long, long time.
Footsteps: floorboards creaking overhead before they turn and head down, the murmur of voices at the base of the stairs before the library door swings open. Sera ducking beneath Dan's arm as the consor holds the door open for her. He's three-quarters of a foot taller than she is. She does not have to duck, really. It's just a habit, it comes with walking across thresholds.
"Hey." Her dark eyes cut past Kalen, linger, searchingly, intently on Grace, then cut back to Kalen. The greeting encompasses both of them. The introduction, though, "I don't think you've met Dan," with a cant of her head toward the tall, tattooed, bearded blond hipster who is her shadow tonight, "Dan, Kalen, Kalen, Dan. He's Cool." - is mostly for Kalen. She takes in the books, and the take-out, and the lion, and gives the pair of them the suggestion of one of her smiles.
"Study break?" With a lilt of query in her often-flat brows. "Or nascent safari?"
Grace Evans"Nah. I mean, I can take things apart and maybe put them back together again, but designing a robot? No."
She also picks up a carton of whatever the cuisine du jour happens to be and inspects it with chopsticks. Udon noodle stir-fry? Where does he find these places? By now he must be figuring out that she has a soft spot in her heart for noodly Asian dishes though. She's even quite good at using those chopsticks. So, she's got noodles hanging out of her mouth when he exclaims that he's patched things up with Sid. That just gets an eye-widening.
"Oh, you guys are good again? That's wonderful," she says. Grace, let's put it bluntly, has a lot of experience talking with her mouth full. So, she is. It's a rule she knows, but breaks because she doesn't think about it.
And that's when she feels Sera. And her eyes go wider still.
She turns toward the door, expectantly. Some day, she will perhaps learn not to react to each and every bit of resonance she senses, but that's not this day. And that's not for this resonant being.
She gives Sera that sad smile, that mixture of hurt and happy that came out so fully earlier. "We're hunting something, I suppose that's true. Both?"
Kalen HollidayDan gets a little wave at the introduction, but Kalen seems about as interested in strangers as he is in the food.
"Well, now I feel like an idiot for not also picking up some rhinos and a whole herd of wildebeests. I could have done the whole floor here up like the Serengeti. That would have been something."
"And yes, we are hunting, but...on break for a moment at least. I haven't seen you in awhile. How are you?" He has to know what happened to her, but he makes absolutely no mention of it. She could as easily have been away cruising the Mediterranean all this time by his tone.
He glances back to Grace and laughs. "I apologized. It does happen, from time to time. There is a specific alignment of the stars and all that has to happen first, but...every now and again. And then some crazy bitch got all dramatic visual about some threats. And then we both called Trent at like three am. I'm sure he loved that, but once he got over the initial bit of it, he was gracious about it." He stabs his chopsticks into the container of fried rice and nudges it a little farther away.
"I haven't seen her since, but I think we may be speaking now. It's probably better than yelling or pointed silence."
Serafíne"I'm brilliant," Sera lies, and Sera is good at many, many things, but lying is not one of them. She lies terribly. There's something about the way her mouth curves in that frame of a half-smile, in the subdued gleam of her eyes, the way they catch the artificial light from the library lamps, the swirling chaos of the globe on Grace's computer screen that communicates a flash of gratitude for Kalen's circumspection.
Dan is close behind her, settles his hands familiarly on her shoulders, and bends to murmur something into the chaos of her blond curls. Sera tips her head back to him, glancing over her shoulder with some degree of reassurance. He gives her a brief look, then one that lifts over her shoulder to the pair of other magi and lifts his left hand in a wave that is both: answer to Kalen's greeting, and a brief farewell as he turns to head back upstairs.
"If you were going to fill this place with stuffed animals,"Sera does not care for hunting. Or no: Sera does not have the energy for anything except the slow and terrible work of healing right now, and so she does not ask: about what they hunt, or why; about the threats; from whom, to whome. Any of it. There's no room inside her for that knowledge, right now.
No fucking room at all.
"You should fill it with magickal creatures. You know. Not rhinos. Sphinxes. Griffins and manticore. Fucking unicorns. Satyrs and all the rest."
Grace Evans"Zebras," Grace adds, with an odd look of reminiscence. Zebras may not be magical creatures, but they are to her. Striped horses. And there she is, staring through the wall, worry written on her face.
And then, that strange moment ends.
She knows Sera is not brilliant. She knows the road her friend is on is a long one. But still, it is so very good to see her here, making conversation about stuffed sphinxes and manticores. And now she knows how it must feel to Kalen every time he sees her try -- to leave the apartment, to go out and be social with people, all of that.
So Sera gets an even more genuinely happy smile from her, before she digs back in to her carton of noodles.
Grace Evans[Ohh man, I just realized how insulting that looks to Sera. Change 'brilliant' to like 'completely well']
Kalen HollidayKalen doesn't say anything about Sera's suggestion at first, but something about the way his eyes linger on Sera and then scan the room suggest he's actually considering filling the library with huggable magical creatures. He does smile a little when Grace adds zebras to the list of magical creatures.
"Is that what I should do, now?" It doesn't seem so impossible he might, Grace and Sera have both caught him in moments where he has been at least present enough to seem human. "Perhaps."
"Are you hungry? You can have some of this. There's enough here for three." There is enough for three. But that wouldn't matter since there is definitely more than enough for one and Kalen seems to have completely dismissed the thought of eating.
SerafíneSera is not hungry. Or rather, Sera is the sort of creature for whom meals and usually suggestions made by other people. She forgets to eat as often as she eats, more often than she eats - and drinks herself silly, and finds herself in a warm diner with her cheek against the cold window at three-thirty-eight a.m. watching the smear of taillights in the street outside through her eyelashes while a stranger puts a plate of hashbrowns in front of her and someone who loves her reminds her of the peculiar purpose of forks.
But: shared food.
"Thanks," she hitches a skinny hip onto the table and unearths her hands from the pockets of her dark hoodie, pulled low over her short leather skirt. Her black, heavy boots swing in a pendulum arc as she picks up one of the take-out boxes quite literally at random and wholly by chance. Opens it to find steamed dumplings fragrant inside. Which is best because she's not bothering with chopsticks, " - zebras, Grace? One of these things is not like the others. Winged zebras, I'll allow.
"Maybe. There's probably a story about them, somewhere. In hieroglyphs or, you know, what the fuck ever."
A brief pause, and then,
"The hunting stuff. Something to do with the movie?"
Grace Evans"It's something Gadfly used to say," she says, and then swallows a mouthful. "That we're like zebras masquerading as horses. And then I said I felt like a striped horse, something in between, you know? Anyway. They're magic to me."
And Gadfly is gone, missing. The longer it gets, the more she thinks maybe something more than just forgetfulness happened to him. Lost in time, like the mystery writer of liner notes in her favorite library book...
"Yeah. It has to do with the movie."
And she doesn't say, 'because it's likely still after me, and definitely is attacking Shoshannah,' because... It's just not fair that horrible things keep happening.
Kalen Holliday"It'll be alright," Kalen says, and his voice is all hazy distance again. He rises and waves Sera at his chair. "Speaking of slaying monsters, I should go and see how I'm to do that. If you'll excuse me."
And. He. Bows. It's stiff, less because the movement is unnatural and more because Kalen hasn't moved with anything resembling fluid grace (absent perhaps a few gestures) in some time.
"I do hope that you both enjoy what remains of your evening."
[Because someone's player has to go sleep. Stupid sleep.]
SerafíneSera has not actually touched the dumplings. Just opened them, and she's looking over the open container at Kalen when he bows - when he bows. Whatever she was going to say, Sera allows it to dissolve, for the moment.
"Alright," she tells Grace, quietly. "Zebras too."
Then cuts a glance back to Kalen, somber, sober. Aware.
"Fair sailing."
Grace Evans"Goodnight. Thanks for the food. And the lion, too," Grace says after Kalen. And for the constantly being there, and for the trying to help, and for keeping her busy... All that too.
"Sera, you should eat," she says, a bit serious. "You're leaving me with all the noodles rice and dumplings. I'm going to burst," she adds, a bit less so.
And then, there's noodles hanging out of her mouth again, when she slurps up some more.
Kalen HollidayKalen's eyes flicker for a second. Surprised. A little amused that Sera remembered. She gets a very brief, but warm smile for that.
He waves over his shoulder in response to Grace. "Of course, Kit. Anytime. I'll just be upstairs." But he does not look back, and soon after, even with that limp, he is gone.
[Thank you both for scenes!]
Serafíne"'Course I'll eat." Kalen leaves. Sera leans back to watch him limp out of the library, then turns back to Grace, sitting more fully on the library desk at which Grace is working, over which all the take-out has been spread. Sera pops a dumpling into her to prove it, then puts the container down, chewing the fragrant little morsel as she surveys the remainder of the feast.
Then back up to Grace.
"About the movie. Back when we had that council, I said I'd - "
Sera offers Grace a spare, half-shouldered shrug by way of explanation.
"I don't really have the energy to even think about it, right now. Much less do something. So I'm not going to ask. But if you really need me, Grace - "
Grace Evans"Sera, no. Do what you need to do. I'm getting back involved because... because it helps. Gives me something to focus on, you know?"
There's a brief moment in that interim where Grace is certain that Kalen hasn't left. But she watched him leave. Noodles get chewed like they're a help to whatever cogs are running in her brain, and she looks around the room. And then, just stares at the stuffed lion on the table.
She raises a brow, and puts the carton and chopsticks down so she can pick up the toy again. Then, she takes a big sniff of it, like that's the most normal thing to do ever. It smells like rain. Like lightning. It feels, just a little, like the oncoming storm. In Kalen's absence, it stands out a bit, that in a way, he hasn't left.
SerafíneThe truth is, Sera doesn't know. She has never required anything to focus on, except perhaps herself. Her pleasures, immediate or passing, her passions, temporal or entrenched.
And now, these nights, just Sera.
Nothing else. There's no room for anything else. When she curls up in bed, along, the house quiet all around her. The little sparks of life, the quiet settling noises. Fucking Rick's fucking snoring, which has its own weird rhythm - when she curls up in bed and pulls the covers tight and closes her eyes, her whole body starts to shake, no matter how much she steels herself, stiffens her muscles against it. Sometimes the spells are passing and she drifts into her dead-to-the-world sleep with a merciful swiftness. Sometimes she cannot shake them for hours.
"When I said need, I meant need. Need, not want. I just wanted you to know."
Then Sera's eyes cut down to the stuffed lion as Grace picks it up. Sniffs it like that.
"He consecrated it," Sera tells her, quiet. "Imbued it with his essence. He can find it again, easily, if he has need. Sometimes it happens anyway, we just accumulate on the things that are close to us, like silt at the mouth of a river.
"But if you can see the magic in the world. Watching the tapestry as it folds and unfolds, you can do that, too."
Grace Evans"Oh... " she says, a little bit of that old wonder in her voice. But there's another thing too. A question of why?
Is this some kind of tradition for their kind, to give friends objects inscribed with their essence? Like a monogram written in the background. A watermark. Or a digital signature.
Yeah, so Kalen's entrusting her with his private key? Something like that? Maybe she'll have to take a look at it, really look at it and its encoding. Later.
For now, she just holds the stormy lion on her lap. It's a special gift indeed then. Maybe even one with a use after all.
She'll bother Sera to eat more, because she cares. She'll bother Kalen some later because he just gave her a piece of who he is, and she wants to know the significance, and wants to know why he didn't tell her that. But right now? It feels almost normal again. There's Sera, teaching her something new. She's studying in the library. And the safe feeling of being underground and locked away and warded -- that helps too.
"I think I'll put it... on my desk. Would look good there," she says, pretending at normality.
"And, if I need you... I know you'll be there. That wasn't ever a doubt."
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