Free radical and all.

Serafíne

Here is a park, in Denver, on a Sunday. The sun's out, glitters across the man-made lake. There are swans and they reflect beautifully in the calm waters. The grass is greening, the world is mudlicious, right. Some particularly brave souls are sun-bathing, all golden. Three separate ultimate frisbee games are in the process of being started, though their players and adherents are also generally nursing hangovers from this night last, so there is a fair amount of coffee-drinking and carb-loading in addition to muscle-limbering.

There is also, among them, a girl who bends reality. A young woman, a Disciple. The seconds start to slip together, or span apart, when you get too close. Striking, but with the look of someone still chasing last night's high, or perhaps last night's low. Seated on a parkbench, an umbrella - a black umbrella, naturally - open over her head, to shield her from the sun, or maybe from the rain.

Either, both. Whatever comes.

Coffee cup in hand.

She appears to be watching one of the nascent games, though she isn't attached to it.

Free radical and all. What a creature.

D. Gallowglass

Here is a park, in Denver, on a Sunday. The sun's out, glitters across the man-made lake, and Adam has come here before, a shadowless vampire of a young man, his skin too pale for the sun. He does not like it. He does not often go out in it: how wan he is. How wan and exhausted and cloaked in an air not just of Mystery but of shelter, of man-made care. He isn't very easy to describe, those who bother to notice him at all. But Serafíne's interactions with him have grown, and her perceptions are such that she's sharper than most people, things stay in her mind longer, sometimes, things that are cloaked by Mystery and Arcanum like the Hermetic without a shadow anyway.

He is cutting across the park on his way from one point to another. The points are not important and anyway he isn't telling. Serafíne's resonance touches the Sleepers, too, because it's getting stronger, a suggestion coupled with who she is just anyway just any day -- but that's nothing compared to what her resonance does to someone Sensitive. Adam.

He notices her and veers off path. There she is on a bench with a black umbrella. The last time he saw her was at a bar; Kalen was needing solidity, using Adam to lean against. Adam, he was giving it a few moments before - before whatever. Or maybe the last time he saw Serafíne it was some other time: time is porous; time is fluid; time is a slip. A slide.

This time, he's the one beelining. He says, "Hello, Sera," when he has come near. "Long night?"

Serafíne

This is how she sits, Sera, on that park bench. One leg is crossed, the foot tucked beneath the opposite thigh. The other is on the ground, still in its Absurd heel. The other Absurd heel is kicked off. It cuts a jagged line of darkness against the pourous, springsweet ground. Sera has one hand on the shaft of her umbrella and the other wrapped around a coffee cup. There is the scent of whiskey from it, though Adam is not close enough to capture it.

She gives him a look, a once-over, an over-once. There is something dragging about it, something lingering.

"Mmmm." She confirms, the hum of it in the back of her throat. And she looks it, doesn't she? Mascara smeared, lipstick washed away to no more than a stain. Nails painted a red-black so intense that even chipped and imperfect, her manicure looks full-of-sin, or made for it.

Without a thought, Sera offers Adam her umbrella. She expects that he will take it. Maybe she has seen him take it. She thinks, if she thinks at all, that a boy without a shadow might appreciate this one.

"Where's Ruse?"

D. Gallowglass

He isn't the kind of young man who just accepts things. Who accepts things at all if he doesn't want to. But Serafíne offers an umbrella and she is sitting in the sunlight where it lances through the barren finger-branches of a tree that's far too slender to ever offer much in the way of shade-cover leaf-canopy anyway, even in the most verdant season, the lushest of. Without a thought, Serafíne, but what are Willworkers if not metaphors, poems, thought-creatures constantly thinking themselves real? He accepts the umbrella but he doesn't stay standing, holding it over him like a(n appropriate) black cloud. He sits next to her. A space between, the umbrella a neat sword (valiant [relentless], flashing brightness-that-is-not-bright because Adam isn't necessarily bright it's all about connotations: what think thee of valiancy and relentlessness?) between them, and holds it so it covers them both.

"Sunday," he says. "So probably killing stuffed bunnies."

Serafíne

"Not mine, though." Sera is thinking about -

well, Sera does not know what she is thinking about. She does not think about what she is thinking about. She does not classify it. Adam takes the umbrella; he holds it over the both of them. This seems to be both a question and an answer to her. She glances at his profile and opens her now free hand. Here, Adam, is an Absurd tattoo to go with the Absurd shoes, sharkscissors. Isn't Sera like both those things; the teeth and the blades, see.

Aren't they all?

Sera offers him, too, a sip of her coffee, whiskey laced.

"Have you ever been in love?"

She's been up for twenty-six hours now. Some days, she never wants to go to sleep.

This has nothing to do with her dreams, those she does not remember.

D. Gallowglass

"As far as you know," Adam says, because his sense of humour is a mean sense of humour, a smirk hovering somewhere around his mouth. Today his beard has grown back but is neatly trimmed, a shadow for the shadowless creature. As far as you know: it's not Sera's bunny.

He demures when she offers him a sip of her whiskey-laced coffee, though whether that's because he doesn't like coffee, whiskey, or sharing germs with an Ecstatic who's coming down from or readying herself to go up let's leave a mystery. As much a mystery as he usually is to those who're asleep; a shape they can't quite place. Speaking of such a shape, there's the shape of something in his expression at that question of hers, something that doesn't quite want to be given a shape.

He shrugs. He's a gawky guy, Adam. Long neck, big head. A bit out of proportion, but potential and enough personal charisma to see him through, thick eyelashes even though he's always worn-out looking, a Nothing.

"I'd say so. Have you?" Beat; because she is an Ecstatic: "What do you mean by 'in love'?"

Serafíne

As far as you know and that smirk hovering around the edges of his mouth. There are smirks hidden away in hers, but they do not arise this morning. See: coming down from rising high, right? And more. Sera returns the smirk not with a smirk but with a flicker - not of hardness, but a sort of flintyness. Something solid, and strange. A lozenge of power in the back of her throat. A knot of something that is woven, neither dark nor bright. For the nonce, she does not rise to his bait. Nor does she sink with it.

Then away, a sip from her coffee. The morning (is it morning?) light all around them.

"I don't know what I mean by it," Sera says, quietly. Consideringly. Something in the back of her throat and her head cocked aslant so that her curling hair falls in long array down her left shoulder. The ultimate frisbee game is starting up, at last. The players take the field in elegant, orchestrated chaos.

"I was wondering what you'd say back. It's an absurd question, don't you think?"

The smallest of shrugs.

"I'm always a little bit in love. I wonder, why isn't everyone?"

D. Gallowglass

There is a certain poise to Adam. His expressions are poised; are measured out, not carefully, but they're far from reckless - they're far from thoughtless. He carries himself like someone who keeps things in reserve.

"Why do you think they're not?"

Serafíne

This quiet noise, from Sera as she comes-down. The edge of her smile is traced with a lingering sadness. Is that it? Is that what she feels? This catch beneath her sternum?

She shakes her head, something loose, something reckless about the gesture, for all that it remains small. Contained within a structure that may not be enough to contain her.

"I don't know. Do you think they really are?"

D. Gallowglass

"Do you never check?"

Serafíne

"Ha." Sera laughs, open-mouthed. Twice really, the sounds open in the back of her throat, even though they are voiceless. The shape of her breath rather than the vibration of her vocal chords. "Shall I?"

D. Gallowglass

"If you want to know whether your wondering is true outside of your head," Adam replies.

He studies her, and it isn't covert. It's direct; a direct young man, Adam, with that wild hair. "If you just want to wonder answerless, no."

"I don't think it's easy to find two people who agree on the definition of 'in love.'"

Serafíne

"I don't care about the fucking words," Sera returns, see. Sure, sure now. See the edge of her smile; which is itself a sort of echo. It has a blade and a memory and a promise. Sera is neither valiant nor relentless, but in her own way, she never lets go. Last night beneath her skin, the glancing blow of her gaze over his wan face. "Just the feeling.

"Maybe what I mean is why do they always forget. What about you. Are you still in love?"

D. Gallowglass

[>.> SUBTERFUGE.]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 7, 9) ( success x 1 )

D. Gallowglass

[2, Denver-style. *g*]

Serafíne

[Awarempathy!]

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (3, 3, 7, 9, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )

D. Gallowglass

He ignores her question at first to respond to the whole. Faintly mocking, then - "Who said anything about words. Definition is a concept. A concept is an idea. A feeling is an idea; perhaps an idea is a feeling." He's mocking, yes. But not directly of her, per se; or not meant cruelly. There is perhaps something distracting about it.

Because he was ignoring her question at first, but Serafíne sees the answer anyway in the cool certainty of the expression in his eyes, as surely as there's something beneath the surface of a lake and one needn't touch the lake to know, because the surface is flat, but there's always a presentiment of depth, right? Serafíne sees the answer in the certainty in his eyes; perhaps she intuits it from the way he shifts his grip on the umbrella, or the half-beat before he answers. Adam's still in love with something; of course he is. Unrelenting; like he'd know how to stop.

But the thought of it is just longing and distance and can't. He says, "And I don't know," why they always forget, with this air of trying to figure it out, of questing. "The romantic egoist would say 'so that they can remember,' but that's a load of crap probably. They forget because forgetting is a strong Word."

D. Gallowglass

ooc: make that Adam's still in love with something(someone); of course he is.

Serafíne

"I don't like definitions," oh, Sera. Smiling around his mockery; of her, of the absurdity of her ideas-without-definition but no, see. Listen, the ways she feels, instinctively between, right? Always spent, always spending. Always breaking, always broken. She quite nearly licks the words, Sera, look at her. They break on her palette like quail's eggs, but somehow she holds them whole. "either. Feeling just is.

"But I don't suppose everyone can just be."

Then she's rising, Sera. Uncurling her curled-up leg, toeing on her Absurd shoe and standing and reaching back to brace her open hand on the spine of the bench and leaning in to brush her dry lips over Adam's temple. Maybe she does not get that far, just the impression of a kiss, the murmur of her voice against his hair. "I hope she remembers. Someday, or soon. Whichever you prefer."

Inhales, see. Straightens.

"Keep the umbrella." A wry little toast with her booze-laced coffee. "You look like you could use a shadow of your own."

Then she's turning; maybe going. Probably gone.

The smack of plastic against flesh; someone catches a frisbee. Someone scores a goal. The game goes on.

D. Gallowglass

[HMM!]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 3, 8, 9) ( success x 1 )