Christmas and New Year's always turn themselves right back around and into January. It is some sort of terrible alchemy - all the aftermath of all that celebration. The days grow brighter at both ends but winter settles in, unrelenting. People stop drinking so much, start working out more. Resolve themselves that they will try to pay off their credit cards, and the stores are bare, or just filled with the leftovers that no one purchased in the first place, and the restaurants are less busy, and the bars are rather more quiet, and on and on.
Most of the homeowners up and down Corona Street have taken down their Christmas decorations. Not 719. The blonde-brick three story house is still wrapped in many colored lights. The trees, the shrubbery, the porchposts and the railing. The upstairs windows and on and on.
There is a fresh-cut tree discarded in the yard awaiting recycling, so some of the interior decorations must be down.
Even from a block or two or three away, it feels like Sera. She is sunk into the bones of the place.
GraceGrace got a call a few days ago, and since then, has not been back to the Chantry except to sleep. Let us say, she has been having fun, in Grace's definition of the term (which is a lot more solitary, a lot more focused and requires less chemicals than Sera's definition). But eventually, even playing with her new servers gets old.
Wait a minute, no, it does not get old. It will never get old. But her servers are busy with a long process that will take a few hours, and Grace decided that watching them do their thing was about as exciting as watching grass grow, and sent Sera a text.
'Wanna hang out?'
It's probable. I mean, we are talking about Sera. It would take something fairly serious to make Sera not want to hang out. There's more to it than Grace put in the text, but that'll have to wait.
SerafíneWhat Grace receives back from Sera is a very clear and very simple and very concise,
sure. come over?
a few seconds or minutes or hours after she sends the inquiry. And not long after that first text, a second,
my place i mean.
Just in case, you know. When Sera gets started texting, watch out world.
Grace[Oh yeah, I forget. Nightmares?]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (4, 5, 6, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
Grace[Also, Awareness!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )
GraceIt's not hard to feel that sense of Sera as she drives up to the house, bringing her own abrupt shift with her. She parks, and gets out of her old Toyota wearing a grey turtleneck jacket and jeans and tennis shoes, her very own uniform. Seems like she always has this same getup anymore, now that winter's struck. Sometimes there's a heavier coat on top of that, but it doesn't seem to change.
And of course, she's wearing her laptop bag. Can't go without that for more than a few minutes.
She also knocks at the door, and maybe she doesn't have to exactly, but still.
SerafíneAwareness!
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )
SerafíneNo one really knocks at the door. Or rather, the variegated parade of people who feel like they belong here or want to belong here or need to belong here or dream about belonging here do not knock. Some others do.
People like Grace who wear the same thing every day and carry laptop bags and dream about the pleasures of exploring their brand new servers.
No one's really listening for the door but of course someone answers it. Eventually. It may be that our Sera sensed Grace at some remove and when that sense of Grace's movement-through-space became static rather than dynamic, nudged one of her housemates to answer the door.
So, yes. The door opens. Dee answers, dressed in her derby gear, a duffel bag and a pair of roller-skates slung across either shoulder. The quick flash of a perfectly crimson smile, "Grace, hey. I was just on my way out. Sera's upstairs, pretending like she's not smoking in the house. You know where her room is, right?"
And if Grace does not know where Sera's room is, well. Dee tells her. Up the stairs, the second door on the right. Can't miss it.
Grace"Hi Dee! I must say. Ninjabread. Awesome," Grace says, and gives her a thumbs up and a smile. She's better at this, the one-on-one, than than the one-on-fifty like at the Christmas party. It's highly likely that Dee was there and got totally ignored by Grace in her way of dealing with crowds (which is to try very hard to imagine that there aren't actually people there).
In any case, she nods a farewell to the roller-derbyist and heads inside, up the stairs, and when she gets to Sera's room (note, she did not know where Sera's room was, this is a first) she knocks. Again.
And again, she probably doesn't have to.
SerafíneGrace did not even make it up the stairs before. So now she climbs past the black and white photographs of Amelia Earhart and the spider plant in its macrame holder onto the upstairs landing, and knocks on a particular door. There is a sweet, somewhat skunky odor evident when Grace gets there, though the smokiness is not deep and beneath it the sharp bite of winter air from an open window. Music a low and background rumble, which does not stop when there is a brief and quiet scramble from someone inside, who gets up to answer.
Once again, Sera sends someone else to open the door. This time it is Dan, who towers over Grace. The scent of pot is wrapped all around his skin and his eyes are bloodshot and there's a keen sort of languor to him as he steps back to let Grace in. All,
"Grace, hey. You didn't have to knock."
Though given that this is Sera and this is Sera's bedroom and one never knows whom she might be entertaining, or how,
" - but it was probably wise." This quick, bemused grin. "I'm gonna run downstairs for a sec. You want something to drink?"
Sera is just evident behind him, sitting on the arm of a huge old armchair parked beneath a bank of windows framing the winter garden. One of the windows is open at least a quarter of the way, and Sera is exhaling a lungful of smoke into the bright cold air. Otherwise, Grace just has a moment to take in the surroundings - the chaos of them. Art and clothes and clothes and art and jewelry and many, many stranger things are scattered everywhere. Some on the wall, others on the floor. There is a covered with stuff and a huge, unmade bed in the middle of the room. A mismatched group of thrift-shop finds and antiques, all of it thoroughly Sera.
Grace"Oh hey, Dan," she starts, but her eyes skip around the room, from thing to thing to thing. "No, I'm fine, really. But um... You have Sera's phone perchance?"
'Cause, Dan is the keeper of technological things. So, he might be the one to ask.
And Sera's old phone, the one with Ginger, is dead and gone.
Whatever his response, she finds Sera in all that stuff (not hard, Sera is unmistakable, unmissed) and quirks up a little smile. "Hey Sera."
Serafíne"I want the Jacobite," Sera calls after Dan, as he's greeting Grace and Grace refuses the offer of drink and Dan's greeting Grace but is also trying to remember whether or not he has Sera's phone, and is starting to reply that he thinks Sera has it,
except, Sera answers for herself. Giving Grace a lazy wave from where she perches on the arm of that big armchair, breathing out one last lungful of smoke all wrapped up in a green chenille blanket as ward against the necessary cold. Covering the bowl of her bong with the body of a Zippo lighter to deny the remaining embers oxygen and until the spark inside dies.
"I have my phone. Graaaaaaace."
She might be stoned, Sera. She holds up the device for approval and/or inspection.
"See? Come sit."
There are three places to sit in the room, other than the floor. The bed. The armchair, of which Sera is presently taking up about a quarter, all of that on the arm, and the bench for the vanity, which is quite close to the door and all the way across the room from Sera's perch.
GraceSera might be stoned, like the sun might be hot, or the ocean might be wet, Grace decides. It's probably the way Sera says her name. Anyway, she gives a grin and plops her laptop bag down on the bed, followed by her self. She sits on the side of the bed closest to that window, mind you, so she's not too far away. Somewhere in the middle.
"I thought maybe you'd like to chat up Ginger again sometime, you know? Also just thought I'd stop by. Say hi. So, hi."
SerafíneThe bed as mentioned is huge and - a King or perhaps even a California King or maybe an Emperor - unmade. White or perhaps ivory sheets with an obscenely high thread-count that feels like silk, and a fluffy white/ivory duvet and loose top sheets more or less twisted into the sort of fluffed up nest that hamsters or other small, adorable rodents might make to burrow themselves into. Grace sits on the side closest to the window and while she picks her way through the chaos of shoes and spangly bras and teeny t-shirts and leather jackets and carved wooden frogs and folk-art sculptures and mixed media collages and flyers for this show or that opening, the embers in the bowl are finally extinguished. Sera sets the no-longer-smoking bong aside in the windowsill and puts down her phone on the seat of the armchair long enough to reach over and mostly-shut that half-open window. The garden beyond: stark and spare. Bare limbs and an interrupted view of the downtown skyline, there, between that apartment building and that home behind them.
"I've been doing pretty well without Ginger, lately." Sera tells Grace, then. Confesses, really. She's still holding herself, and holding herself a little bit apart, even as all the other pieces of her life are slowly fitting themsleves together. The edge of a moderately ironic half-smile as her dark eyes drop from Grace to the phone, then lift again. "But I suppose I could find a way to do just as well with her.
"Hi Grace. How are you?"
GraceGrace bites her lower lip and smiles at the question. "Kalen... do you know Kalen? Anyway, he bought us a computer lab. Just like, up and bought all this equipment, like its a Christmas present or something."
She sits up stock-straight, but wobbly, and all grins. "And he says he wants to learn the language of computers. I have a wee little nerd on my hands, to bring up as my very own!"
"Hey, you get that from Connor?" she nods toward the bong. "He had some great free samples at the Chantry."
Serafíne"Hermetic, right?" The briefest pause for confirmation of the information, before Sera gives Grace a little curl of her shoulders. "I met him. We got high together. Talked about the way people used to navigate the sea, with just stars."Learning the language of computers sounds boring-as-fuck," she continues, Sera, all wry, her eyes dark and affixed on Grace, taking in the smile and then the grin, the excitement evident on her face and in her voice. " - but I'm glad you're happy.
"Don't know Connor. I don't think we've met. As for this, I've got sources." Then a pause, and perhaps a double-take.
"Wait. You said great free samples. Grace did you get stoned?"
GraceGrace's eyes glitter with fake-menace as Sera insults her very being as 'boring-as-fuck'. Two can play this game. "Well, I find parties boring as fuck, so there.
"But it was nice to see you happy at Christmas."
"Oh, that's a shame. You should really meet him. He's new, like really new. And he sells pot," she says. Sera and Connor would get along like peas and carrots, one would think. But then, Sera and Grace get along, and you wouldn't think the same of them.
"And... yeah? I had some of his free samples," she says, and scans the ceiling's borders. It's less cluttered up there. "Helps me relax. And eat. And you know... relax."
Serafíne"I had a good night that night," Sera tells Grace, with a quiet sort of smile that lingers in the gleaming intention of her eyes and settles a quiet, steady curve on her quick-moving mouth. Which is true, absolutely and objectively true. " - but I'm still not," a brief, apparent pause. "I don't always have the energy for strangers, right now. I think I still mostly need it for me. It's hard to say why. That's just how it feels."
There is a particular inflection to the word strangers, there. Easy enough to read it as strangers, period, though in truth Sera means it much more specifically: strangers, who know magic.
"Maybe you'd like parties more if you go stoned first. I'm taking it that was an endorsement of the product, yeah?" The vaguest sort of grin. Then, a gesture toward the now-exinguished bong. "You want to try some of this?"
GraceSera says she doesn't have the energy for strangers, but if that were true, why the party? Why did she look so beatific surrounded by strangers? It puts a quizzical expression on Grace's face as she tries to puzzle this one out. But then Sera makes with a bit of innuendo. "Yes, Sera, the product, not Connor," she sniffs, and coughs. "I think he's more interested in Shoshannah anyway. Or she is with him. Or whatever."
But then, like it usually happens (when pot dealers aren't leaving notes behind saying 'please, take some of my stuff!' that is) a friend offers her a hit. Sera might have been surprised at Grace getting high, and truthfully it's not a common thing. Mostly that's just because Grace doesn't like the idea of spending all that money on something as 'unnecessary' as weed. But when offered...
"Sure, I'll bite."
SerafíneGrace is going to bite. And Sera, who does not have the energy for stranges - and she means, implicitly though Grace does not understand that she means this implicitly - awakened strangers, magic and all its many consequences. All the expectations and disasters, all the - whatever it is that strangers bring with them.
All the need.All the love.
All the light.
She has no room for them in her heart now; just her own strangers, fallible, lovely humanity, crowding itself into her home again and again and again.
And she wasn't even meaning to make with the innuendo but Grace hears it and gives Sera a brief glimpse into the love life of Connor the stranger and Shoshannah and Sera gives her a wry, rather indulgent little grin, then picks up the bong and the lighter and nudges open the window a bit more and carries the former over to Grace.
Sera is wearing boxers and a t-shirt which is her I am lounging at home for a while attire and she parks herself beside Grace, offering her both the bong and the lighter. "I don't usually smoke inside but it's too fucking cold. You ever use a bong before? Breathe in through the opening while you hold the lighter lit over the bowl, see."
GraceOk, so Grace has yet to use a bong. Most of her partaking has been in the form of a shared joint, but she likes the idea. It's economical, they say.
So, she gets handed the proper equipment, gets instruction, and sets to it -- holding bong in one hand, lighter heating up the bowl's contents in the other. It catches, and then a breath held deep. There's always a bit of a challenge to keep from coughing at this point, but she takes it, blowing the spent air out the window as much she can from her Sera's-bed perch.
And then, she coughs. Destroying that whole 'yeah, I'm so cool' moment.
SerafíneSera, who has tucked herself quite neatly beside Grace in these moments, is absolutely ready. Ready to take the bong from Grace's hand and take her own easy hit, rather smoother than Grace's but no one is watching them and Sera is not measuring cool points. She's just breathing in the smoke from that long ceramic column and holding it in not desperately but savoringly, as if she were a dirigible just loosened from its mooring, already starting to drift into the sky. Her exhale is a deep and abiding sigh that opens up her body through the vertebrae of her spine, and she's ready to hand the bong back to Grace when Grace starts coughing.
So, instead, Sera leans forward and half rises to set the device on the windowsill where the embers can continue to burn without consequence for the many things scattered on the floor, and reaches over to rub Grace thoughtfully between the shoulderblades as she coughs out those lungsful of smoke, so deeply held that perhaps tears from the force of the coughing fit.
"If you want I could see if there are any leftovers of Dee's brownies, instead."
GraceGrace flaps her hands at Sera like she's waving her off, "Oh, I'm fine. It's just the first hit, you know... always a bit hard for me."
Oh, to be smooth! To not be so red-in-the-face! She disguises it with a quirked-up smile, and the tiniest of thin coughs. Well, it's a good thing that pleasantness is starting to kick in, yeah? It relaxes the social anxiety right out of one...
"Oh you're kidding me. She makes those kind of brownies too? You won the roommate lottery, Sera."
SerafíneSo it's just the first hit, and that's always hard on Grace, and Sera hardly notices the red-in-the-face or the social anxiety or the awkwardness or the longing for something other-than-awkwardness or any of the rest of it. Or perhaps Sera does notice it; she cannot help but notice it, she breathes such things in the way strangers at the beach take in that first lungful of salt-sea air, with a present sort of mindfulness, an awareness of the strangeness and beauty in everything they inhale.
But Sera does not acknowledge it. Just gives Grace a skimming and sidelong glance, which is shaded by the dark smear of her own inky lashes and graced by the curve of a quite darling sort of half-smile and keeps rubbing Grace's spine, the knuckles of her left hand smooth over the knobby jointures of Grace's vertebrae.
"'course she does and 'course I did," Sera returns, full of affection for Dee and all the rest. "Dan and I met Dee and Rick back in North Carolina. Raleigh-Durham. Dee's got this brightness to her. And this physical, earthy fragility I can't fucking resist. I love the way she blushes. All-fucking-over."
Grace"I love her gingerbread," Grace says, thinking with her stomach. "My roommates, when I tried that experiment out... not so nice. I had one draw a line down the dorm room and forbid me to step a toe over it. Made getting inside rather difficult. Sometimes I hung on to the door and swung over to my side, like her side was lava, but mostly that was to show her how dumb the idea was. But I like your roommates."
Grace talks, and as she talks, tries to ignore the fact that Sera is doing something weird with her spinal column. Sera just is this touchy feely person, and Grace supposes if spines are her thing, okay. Sure. That works. Odd, but you know, it's Sera. Whatever. So there's not much leaning in to the touch, or signs of her enjoyment, other than the general laziness of sitting on Sera's bed during a break from 'work'.
Serafíne"People are fucked up, Grace." Grace's coughing fit has finally passed, and Grace has moved from thinking about coughing to thinking about spines and whether or not spines are Sera's thing, and spines, assuredly, are one of Sera's many things. Think of all those nerves tunneling through all that bone. Think of all of those electric currents. Think of all those sparks.
With the coughing fit over Sera gives Grace one last quiet, affectionate caress, the solid weight of her warm hand between Grace's scapulae, then pulls herself up onto the bedspread, cross-legged in her t-shirt and boxers, the chenille blanket still draped over her shoulders like a cape. The lick of chill from the half-open window bright against the heavy muskiness of the smoke in the air.
The bong is within Grace's reach. She can go for another hit or leave it be, just as she chooses. Sera is pleasantly high, enough that her body feels undulant even when it is still, which is really a rather lovely feeling, edged with golden.
" - really fucked up," Sera is going on. Giving Grace a lazy and philosophical look. And maybe Sera's talking about Grace's roommate or Dee or thinking of something else entirely, " - which doesn't really free us from the responsibility to try and love them anyway, you know? Even if it's only for a little bit. At some particular intersection of place and time. During one particular breath."
katabasisembers in the instrument of smoke, smoke dissipating in the air, curling lazy drifting unmoored and look Serafíne look this is a vision this is your vision this is not an oracular vision this is like a quickening of the pulse a steady picking up of the heart's tattoo tempo quickening, yes, a quickening, this, what is this, what is this vision this is a vision the smoke should dissipate but for a moment it falls in reverse it coalesces out've the air and streams toward the lungs before a breeze watermelon-on-your-tongue bitter-salt-rind breeze kiss-of kiss like tip-of-tongue-to-tasting-tip-of-tongue that sort've breeze just a taste touches Serafíne then everything as usual embers in an ainstrument of smoke smoke dissipating in the air pot-smell lingering chasing and chased that fickle breeze-rill that is (was) so warm and is (was) so insistent for a moment sensation sense sensual something waiting behind the four chambers of the heart song shhh can't hear it shhh no it's not a song but shhh shhh shhh
Grace"Yeah, maybe. One particular time, one particular place, for some. But you let the ones who bake you kickass ninjabread people live with you," Grace says, defiantly non-philosophical.
She retrieves the bong from the sill. Better to not let it go to waste, yes? All those smokey embers are busy getting the air high, which helps no one. And she takes another hit, breathing in... blowing out.
Not too long ago, those miraculous lungs were bleeding inside, and she wasn't coughing smoke up, but rather pieces of herself. This time, however, being so aware of her own breath comes comfort-wrapped.
She gives Sera a sidelong glance. She knows what Sera's really talking about, or thinks she does. Who else in their experience has been 'really fucked up'? Only Sera found a time and place to love them all. Somehow.
SerafíneDefiantly non-philosophical Grace takes another lungful of marijuana and holds it in and coughs this time if she needs to cough and otherwise holds the smoke inside her body and there's magic happening as her blood pumps through her lungs, picking up oxygen and intoxication, both. Sera had a head start and is leaning back to settle herself on her elbows to watch Grace smoke and watch Grace's defiance of any and all philosophy and watch Grace's sidelong glances, as Grace thinks she knows what Sera is talking about Sera, for her part, thinks she is just fucking talking -
and then there is a moment which bends itself like a tattoo at the back of her throat. The sudden hammering of her heart there, higher than she remembered it, clotting up her esophagus and the drifting coil of something she cannot quiet remember and will never precisely forget rolling toward her rather than away. Coalescing, not dissipating.
Sera is breathless in those moments, not really paying attention to Grace, not really capable of paying attention to Grace, no and no. Her dark eyes are fixed before her and her mouth is open and there is an air of startlement, of wonder, evident in the easy arch of rather flat brows over her close set eyes. In the way her mouth is parted, as if she were about to receive communion.
And maybe she is.
--
It lasts a moment. Sera is affixed and then it passes and she's breathing in and drawing herself upright through the shoulders as she does so and giving Grace a startled, startling sort of glance with a strangely guilty edge to it before they are interrupted by Dan, knocking softly at the door to the bedroom, returning with beer.
GraceGrace blinks a few times at Sera, and then, "Are you okay?"
Because Sera looks like she's just gotten a surprise. Whether it's a good one or a bad one isn't all that clear. The first thing that comes to Grace's mind is that perhaps a certain demonic entity has managed to attack from afar again. But she would feel that, right? She hopes she would feel that.
Sera doesn't respond. Maybe she never heard the first time, but then when her eyes come unfixed, Grace offers again. "Are you alright?"
And then, there is Dan, and the moment seems broken. And everything seems okay again.
Serafíne"Course I am," Sera murmurs to Grace, pulled back into herself by something. The retreat of the smoke, the assertion of her consor's presence at the door or then, crawling over the bed, behind her as he presents Sera with her bottle of Jacobite and Grace with a bottle of locally brewed ginger beer. The non-alcoholic sort made with actual ginger and raw sugar and fresh water from some spring in the Rockies, even though Grace turned down a drink, just because.
And Sera's course I am feels solid and full and correct because of course she is alright, here in the room where she locked herself in to die. Of course, she's just fine.
Sera gives Grace a rather lazy, lingering smile and settles back into Dan's arms so he is obliged to stay and lounge on the bed with her and tells Grace, quietly. "I'm glad you came."
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