[Dex+Ath]
Dice: 6 d10 TN8 (2, 6, 6, 6, 6, 8) ( success x 1 )
SerafíneSera: Perception plus ze awareness
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 3, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 5 ) Re-rolls: 1
SerafíneSera: Staminas
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 8) ( success x 1 )
ill-luck[Mystery roll.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )
ill-luckPerhaps Alexander's day is about to take a turn for the better. Perhaps Alexander's day is going to live-up to the promise of that frigid blue gorgeous sky up above and its scattering, smattering of pale clouds. Perhaps Alexander's day cannot get any worse, but then, he has not actually been hit by a truck, and the way he's lingering in this place of ill-luck, of mal-fortune, investigating strange things that might be better left un-investigated, let's just say getting hit by a truck is not yet off the table.
This is: a sparse stretch of road -- empty, emptying, not flat because the Rockies are right there, solemn sentinels all dressed in white all cold and cold and cold.
Perhaps Alexander's day is about to take a turn for the better. There is a hair-thin crack in the air, suspended there, un-moving, like a filament of hair except hair would be blown away, hair wouldn't gleam occasionally quite like that, wouldn't feel like a break. And he throws a rock at it.
He almost misses the fissure in the air over the street. Maybe because the finger of one hand is broken and even if he's using his other hand that kind of thing distracts one. Maybe because he just survived something very strange, because he went rolling off've his motorcycle. Alexander just isn't tip-top. Almost misses it.
But he doesn't miss it. The rock hits the crack and never hits the ground again. What rock? The owl hobbles on, making a keening noise.
Meanwhile, somewhere nearby, Serafíne…
ill-luckIt's a lovely day, a thaw-day between snow and ice and snow and ice and snow and ice, and Serafíne has perhaps had another dream. A dream about an alcove on a cave's face, on a cliff face, an alcove where there is an altar, an altar with a lid that could be pushed ajar, where an iguana's teeth are vicious-blooded, full of love; a dream about a storm, lightning. And Serafíne, perhaps Serafíne met a woman this day named Natalee, a woman named Natalee who is a musician and who has very dark hair, and Natalee and Serafíne went on an adventure, and the adventure took them out and out and out again, on one of the easier hikes around Denver, because when you're outside of the city, when you're outside of the city Natalee said, you can forget about language right and the trees will begin to melt the hills lose their shape because you've gone past their names, and it's just fucking beautiful, fucking beautiful, beautiful
and that happened. And there is a truck, somewhere, parked oh a ways away from where Alexander is currently standing, dumbfounded, testing his own luck in a most dangerous way, and Natalee is sleeping it off in that truck, a bottle of tequila (perhaps Sera's bottle of tequila?) tucked under the crook of her arm, a cooler full of tamales and grape hummus and Himalayan food and one lonely slice of pizza in the back of the truck, and . . .
Serafíne was in the truck or just outside the truck when she felt the surge of somebody Working, in a Big, Big, Big, Big way, somebody freezing (Frozen?) the world, somebody sending out a coruscating wave of -- oh, it is her Sphere, Time, Time being un-tocked, un-ticked, and there's something even yet behind this Big, Big, Big, Big thing, this uncontrolled somebody-is-there and somebody-has-worked near-by and there is no taste to the resonance yet (perhaps it is beginning, though: that taste, this First Working), and it is wild. Wild Magick. Isn't stopping.
SerafíneThis lonely road this azure sky this strange stretch of land no one should ever really remember to remember, which Alexander is likely never to forget and there is a fork there is always a fork this is what happens with roads: they cross. There are boundaries. There are choices to be made and the choices open up up up and branch out endlessly fractal, fractally endless, and every river leads eventually to the sea.
The pick-up truck where Natalee sleeps is parked over a rise and down a gully; it is not visible from here and the road on which it is parked is gravel and dirt; rutted, half-forgotten except remembered by those who know it to be a choice they can make: just here.
So Sera's walking and out here she's wearing her Doc Martens, beaten and wellworn, not her usual ridiculous heels, so she is not even five and a half-feet tall, a slight figure cresting a slight rise and just a tiny bit surreal; nothing quite like the surreality of Alexandar down below now - awakening, see? - and perhaps hardly noticeable to him but oh, she can taste that wildness on her tongue, against the back of her throat, the ozone promise of it, and she doesn't quite believe her senses, except she always sort of does, even if right now tequila and the remnants of that mushroom tea she-and-Natalee drank hours ago to welcome the dawn or what the fuck ever that star was, rising in the east are unspooling through her body like whoa.
So, what Sera sees among other things is Seattle Alexander, who works security in the city, and a wrecked motorcycle and a wounded owl and - and - and -
Sera licks her dry lips. She's wearing denim shorts over fishnets, a black cotton halter top as if it weren't fucking winter, which is printed with a skull and a school and an alligator, because why the fuck not, and a flannel tied around her waist, and a blanket slung over her shoulders like a refugee from Woodstock, Original Recipe.
She sees all'a that shit unfolding beneath her, and she bites her tongue.
Hard. The sharp burst of pain incisive as a knife through her skull. A burst of brilliance.
[Prime 1. Watch Ze Weaving. Difficulty: 4; -1 specialty focus.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (1, 8, 8) ( success x 2 )
Alexander BrandtAs bad days go, today is certainly ranking up there. Maybe not quite number one yet: that honour goes... well, thankfully everything else that’s going on distracts Alexander from that. Perhaps he should be thankful for that small mercy, even if he is going to be black and blue for the next week recovering.
The rock he throws sails through the air and... disappears. No clatter and skitter as it lands back on the road and bounces away to the side. No explosion, no cloud of dust. Just... Nothing. That doesn’t happen. But is any of this meant to happen to a nice boy from Seattle? Did he just happen to be walking past as Chance stuck a pin in a map somewhere and decided who was going to wake up? Or is this part of some big plan of the universe.
Such philosophical questions have never really struck Alexander much in the past. Life and the universe simple are, and the only purpose in life is to survive and, if you’re lucky, make it a better place when you leave it.
Which doesn’t really help explain just what the hell is going on here. The crack floats in the air, calling to him. That too-sweet call of his name sounding just wrong enough to damped down Alexander’s usual sense of curiosity. He just has a feeling that this is... well, wrong. He back away, looking towards the owl. The keening could be from the poor thing’s injuries, or it could be picking up on the fissure. Or there could be some new calamity just waiting to prove that things can, indeed, get worse. He does, however, ask again warily: “Who are you?” To the fissure. To the other voice. To whoever will answer.
ill-luck[Wise guys.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 4, 5, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )
ill-luck[Dmg]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 4, 5) ( fail )
Alexander Brandt[Per+Aware. Huh, what was that?]
Alexander Brandt[With dice..]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 7, 7) ( success x 2 )
SerafíneWits: Sera!
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (5, 9, 9) ( success x 2 )
ill-luckAlexander appears to be in an ongoing relationship with Cursing Himself with Ill-Luck, Mis-Fortune, Missed Fortune, Malefaction, Malediction, and he is chained-up and bound-by and dragging-behind a knot of Bad Luck (Entropy: All Things Break, All Things Fall Apart, All Things Are Sundered, All Things, All Things, All Things), but Alexander also has Time's Blood on his hands still, his eyes are shining gleaming with black and white threads of possibilities this-or-that, but he's not at least doing Time Things Any Longer, that's just something she is Aware recently happened. He's just cursing himself, sure. He's just starting to gather those threads of Ill-Luck together, and perhaps Serafíne gets a sense of Curiousity, it's too soon to tell -- the Signature is Changing, Shifting, Won't be Steady Yet, oh but look, Alexander's eyes are burning when she watches how one does magick with something else, so he can see what Serafíne can't, look through the Gauntlet (but not through even in his accident-trip-mode he doesn't know enough or maybe it's not his eyes it's his ears yes his ears) his ears he's Spirit-slinging, Spirit-sensing, beginning to build up like a fire that's going to collapse again, a lesser explosion compared to Time Time Time, the little ebb-wave that comes after. He has no idea. It's sloppy, but not purposefully sloppy. It's cold, and winter, and witner, and Fated, and winter again.
ill-luck[Oh, the voice.]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 4, 6, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 4 )
Alexander Brandt[WP]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 4, 9) ( success x 1 )
ill-luckA rock very similar to the one that Alexander threw at the fissure, which did not fall to earth, hits Alexander in the forehead. Did it fall from the sky; did it get thrown from - ?
Either way, it didn't actually do any damage.
SerafíneOne of the oh-so-many things that Alexander feels is Sera though how can he know it is her; or even quite get that she's there cresting a rise and sliding down the slope and then scrambling her way back up to the berm. Just movement in his periphery that could perhaps be as surreal as everything else here: the fissure in the sky, the thrown-back rock. The whole of it on a lonely road in a strange place bounded by the teeth of the Rockies to the west.
That lick of sensation, see, that buffets against his senses is gut-wrenching, right? all instinct-not-thought, back-of-the-gritting-teeth, this visceral twist of - yeah, and fascinating; thralling, enthralling, this catch of the breath to go with the twist of the gut; and she is also, see: thresholds, porticos, doorways. She is the point of becoming where the old is lost and the new is not-yet-defined enough to have begun. She is the place-between, just on the verge of -
- like he is now. Here and now. On the verge of so fucking much, the universe a cresting wave all around him and here's a girl at the edge of his senses, sliding up and down and up again those little rises, see? like she's cresting some fucking wave, this plaid picnic-blanket sort of thing held around her shoulders and flying out behind her a bit like a cape because these are the plains, the high plains, and the wind is always, always,
always.
"Hey. Hey." Girl on the road now; maybe he remembers her from the night before, or the night before that. She's certainly distinctive. Striking; aquiline features and close-set eyes and the sort of face and style you cannot quite forget. Long blond curls all windwhipped except from her right temple all the way back to her neck, where everything from a sidepart down has been shaved back to a soft, downy fringe.
She's smiling. She's watching him. "Seattle Alexander. Did you open the fucking Gauntlet? Jesus Christ."
She has a bottle of something in her hand.
"You're gonna be okay, you know that?" God, she's lovely. "You just have to ride this through. I'm gonna give you a hand."
Alexander BrandtThat voice, so sweet that it’s so hard to resist. Calling. Familiar? No, that was the other voice, the one that seems to have fallen silent. But it would be so easy to take a step towards the fissure, then another. Keep walking towards it until whatever happens... happens. But there’s still that slight, nagging feeling of wrong – the feeling of hairs standing up on the back of his neck that keeps Alexander back. Not retreating, but not advancing either.
The sweet voice speaks again, though, answers that aren’t. Vague sentences that don’t actually explain much. It knows him, but he doesn’t recognise it at all. Has it been watching him? Wait, it? What the hell is it? Are we now thinking that what’s going on now is real?
“Ow, fuck!” The rock certainly felt real.
He steps back a little, looking around for the source of the rock. The fissure? The owl? “I don’t know you. I’ve never heard you before, and I have no idea how you know my name. And you still haven’t answered my question: Who. Are. You?” Each of those last three words getting louder, almost shouting as much as his hoarse voice allow.
Is that a little of the earlier anger coming back, at someone apparently playing games with him? This is really not the day to try it.
He starts at the new voice, almost reluctant to turn away that voice, so hard to resist. But the sensation, the resonance that preceded it was so familiar. Only a night of two ago he felt the same, bring life and atmosphere into an otherwise dying night. Only this time it’s so much stronger that it’s almost hard to imagine it ever being absent. He sees Sera standing, watching. Emotions play over his face as he looks at her. Somewhere between anger, panic, pain, and plain old desperation he says quietly, “I don’t understand.”
Serafíne"'Course you don't - " Sera's inhaling now. She's gained the berm and the scramble is gone; she's just on her feet now; all surreal and stoned and the brilliant sky and these deep rich shadows; tracers like everything is edged in firecrackers, like there's the possibility of combustion just born and folded into everywhere, everywhen, everything, infecting her vision, and this little shrug beneath the picnic blanket, rather narrow shoulders in a rather sundering, surrendering gesture.
And she's walking toward him carefully because she can see the threads of magic all coruscant around him; can see his scrabbling injuries too. Can see the keening owl with its broken wing and her path and Alexander and his pain and his panic and his desperation and she's careful of the owl and she's careful of him too, her voice soothing, her eyes steady even as she sinks to a crouch beside the wounded bird, a handful of feet from the man who has - who is - cursing himself. "No one every really does, and some of us never fucking figure it out."
And Sera, she makes this sort of nictating noise in the back of her throat; this crooning to touch the keening, this quiet lick of look-at-me though it isn't for Alexander, not right now, it's for that wounded, keening bird. A song-beneath-her-breath and a song-beneath-her-skin and Alexander can hear one and feel the other as she settles balanced on her haunches, the diamonds of her fishnets pulling taut over her thighs.
"That's okay, too. Why don't you tell me what they're saying?"
And still humming see, keening on her own beneath her breath, crooning to that bird, she clarifies,
"The people you're talking to right now? I can't fucking hear them. I know fuck-all about things on the other side."
[Mind 2: Soothe the owl. Coincidental. Difficulty 5. -1 for specialty focus; -1 for practiced.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (6, 6, 7) ( success x 3 )
ill-luckAs Serafíne crouches beside the owl, the owl - initially, at least - makes this sharp, hideous crack-cry, like perhaps that's the sound which lets the Devil out've the underworld, hobby thing, tries to puff up and look very large indeed, but then Sera's humming seems to be working, music soothes the savage beast, hm? and it calms down, lidding its eyes, and if a bird's inexpressive features could express - well perhaps it is tired. It stops trying to get where-ever it is trying to get.
Alexander BrandtAlexander watches, edging around to keep the fissure, the owl and Sera in view. Too much strangeness to really trust in someone he’s only briefly met. How can she know what’s going on, though? How... can she seem to calm down the owl with so little effort? Just good with animals? Or is there even more going on now that there was before?
He keeps the fissure between him and Sera. Not much of a barrier in case anything much happens, but it’s about all there is in the middle of nowhere. The roulette ball of emotions running over his face seems to land on “wary” for a few seconds before bounding on again.
“You... can’t hear them? “ He sighs, then turns away muttering to himself. “Oh god, that’s it, I’ve really lost it. I’m hearing voices.” He swings back round, voice almost toneless, almost at the point of giving up. “What does it matter what they say? None of this is real.” Alexander’s shoulders sag and he sinks to the ground, hugging his legs. Chin propped on his knees, he just stares at the road.
ill-luck[Voice.]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 6, 6, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 5 )
Alexander Brandt[WP]
Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (1, 5, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )
Serafíne"You're waking up," Sera says very simply. She is still settled on her haunches on the shoulder of the road, and the owl is no longer keening, no longer trying to scrabble away, and her eyes are sunset eyes, just now, the gleam of the sun across a failing blue horizon as she lifts her chin and glances sharply up at him. Edged see, and keen but and fucked up but really rather calm. Smiling.
On the verge -
"Everything's real if you Will it to be. You're fucking magic."
And see, Sera is not a lover-of-animals. There are no collections of living things fucked away in her home; not even a single ferret and her only occasional pet is a threadbare stuffed bunny that is only ever alive in her dreams but see her hands sort-of-hover over the wounded bird and she drops her eyes from Alexander long enough to focus on it; scattered, scattering; and oh god the way the light splits itself and splits itself and splits itself into infinity. Sera does not believe in molecules but she does believe in everything; the strangely knotted connections. She believes in light and she believes in touch and she believes in her body and also in her soul or whatever you fucking call it. The thing inside her skin, that was meant to burn.
"So'm I."
Here is her Will, that a broken wing be healed.
[Life 3: Heal. Vulgar Without Witnesses. Difficulty: 7. -1 for taking time.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (3, 7, 7) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
ill-luck[Owl wits what?]
Dice: 3 d10 TN8 (1, 5, 7) ( fail )
ill-luckThe owl is calm in Serafíne's presence; is calm, but is still, after all, an animal. A bird. And it is far, far from its den, and as Serafíne Wills (Wills!) the owl's wing healed, bones re-smoothed, fractures un-cracked, flesh un-bruised, whole again broken ages ago and not a problem, it blinks at her as if it doesn't quite know what's going on, chirrups questioningly, keeps its beak open and hophophops away, already holding its wings spread as if it is going to menace something, as if it hasn't realized yet that it can fly. Still: the wing does mend. The owl just hasn't realized it. Overbalances talons wiggle in the air and it clicks again then starts picking at its wing for mites. Startles. Leaps into the road.
Alexander Brandt[Per+Alert}
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 1, 2, 4, 6, 7) ( success x 1 )
Alexander BrandtAlexander stands, attention almost elsewhere. Still resigned, still feeling like he’s losing himself in whatever it is going on here. He takes a step towards the fissure that maybe only he sees, drawn by a voice that only he hears. Pleading, begging. Desperate too? His vision flashes again for a moment, yet more sparks of light and dark arcing between Sera, the owl, him. Images of the owl flying off, dying in Sera’s lap.. Images flashing through his mind as connections are made and lost. Scared, frustrated, angry, he screams out as he covers his hands to try to blank out what he’s seeing.
Maybe they fade, maybe they don’t. But Alexander hears the chirrups from the owl which, minutes ago, had been dead. He looks up and watches it hop along the ground, not knowing what to believe any more. Too much is happening, too quickly. Maybe with a little warning that this was coming, Alexander could cope with it a little better. Or at least with fewer injuries. But, as it stands, his life as he knows it is coming apart at the seams. If he believed in anything, other than the “real” world, perhaps the idea of magic, or miracles, would have come a little more easily.
So his voice is empty of emotion again when he replies to Sera. “I’m hearing voices that you can’t, and you tell me that’s magic? I watch a bird that was dead, come back to life and hop away. I see... things. Things I don’t understand, things that can’t be there. And you want to tell me that’s not madness?” He looks into the fissure again. If none of this is real, then none of this can hurt him.
He closes his eyes and steps forward to join Alice down the rabbit hole. All his has ever really known, cared about, a lifetime ago in Seattle. His sanity questionable. If it’s all a hallucination, nothing will happen. If it’s not... Does he really have anything else to lose?
Alexander Brandt[Per+Aware]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
SerafínePerception Plus Awareness.
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 1, 1, 2, 4, 7, 9) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
SerafíneIntelligence Plus Enigmas.
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 8) ( success x 1 )
ill-luckSerafíne can sense the ill-luck Working coming to a boil, intensifying, getting Denser (or maybe she can just sense it being Re-Worked, and she can still See it), the closer Alexander comes to -- something. She can't see it. She can just Feel it, something Off, a little Niggle of magick, a slit in the Gauntlet maybe, a passage from one place to another, a place where Mages do not return from.
Serafíne"No. No. Stop!" And Sera is urgent suddenly, this whip-crack of command in her voice; this need-to-be-heard and she was already rising as the bird with a no-longer-broken-wing talon-walked away but now she's all motion. Drops the picnic blanket she was using as a shawl or a coat and it drifts out behind her on the tarmac and she is running, flat-out-running toward him, the horizon all along, her head pounding, her blood pounding, her voice pounding, dusty boots pounding on the pavement -
- see, Stop, all arresting and then that launch of her body. Open-armed, running fast enough that she might as well be flying and she is aiming to throw her arms around Seattle Alexander's neck and her small and rather cold frame against his and to rise up brow to brow, close enough that he can smell the tequila and grape hummus, the tamales and mushroom tea, the humanity and decay on her breath and feel the bright flash of chill and then the deeper warmth on the exposed skin of her brow and stop,
and stop,
and remember.
"I'm here." Brow to brow, if he allows it. If he does not dodge or deflect. She's on her tip-toes and reaching and also pulling him down but also: eye to eye, her own dilated from the drugs she has ingested throughout the day, and also from this proximity; from the way she is cast in his shadow. "You're here, too. See? We're both here and we're real. Everything's fucking real, can't you taste it? Isn't it all brighter now? Doesn't it feel like the sky is scissoring open and you're remembering everything you thought you never new?"
Sera's voice is absolutely shot through with wonder; with awe. With brilliance. She's almost crooning to him.
"That thing. That thing that's calling you, that's real, too. It's on the other side or where the fuck ever and if you go there you'll go and you won't come back."
SerafíneMind 2. Coincidental! Difficulty: 5.
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (8, 8, 10) ( success x 4 ) [WP]
Alexander Brandt[Per+Aware, WTF?]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 4, 7) ( success x 1 )
Alexander BrandtThe voice (voices now?) call to him, pleading, coaxing. He’s so close, almost there... As he stumbles. Cursing, almost falling to the side, he stops for a moment. Sparing his left leg, taking all of his weight on his right. Are Fate and Chance toying with him? Dangling him over the abyss, just to snatch him back before the rope breaks? Eyes open, now, he looks at the fissure. Just above, close enough to reach out and touch... Close enough to look through..?
“Stop!” comes the call from nearby. The word alone registers, but would it be enough on its own to cause Alexander to pause? To take a breath and hear what follows? Academic, as Sera bends reality to her will and subdues Alexander’s for just a moment. Long enough to get closer... But not as close as she wants. There’s a feeling of... something having just happened. Something strange, yet more going on beyond his comprehension. Somethingsomethingsomething...
So as Sera approaches, he turns to her. Whether the something came from her, or the fracture, or somewhere else he doesn’t know. But he does know that, right now, she’s as close as he cares to let anyone get. So arms out, he catches her shoulders and keeps the distance between them. Still close enough for the sensations... alcohol, thresholds, wonder. He does look into her eyes as she speaks, though. From the heart.
And she’ll see tears coming right back at her. No sobs, no crying – everything is still too numb for that. But he’s breaking. Broken. She explains what happens if he does step through. And it almost appeals more than anything. Alexander takes a deep, ragged break and replies to her, “I don’t know who I am any more. I’m losing myself, and I’m scared.” Another deep breath as he looks back at the fissure. Would anyone really be bothered if he did disappear?
SerafíneSo: so, Sera does not throw her arms around Alexander's neck; he catches her by the shoulders instead, arrests all that forward momentum before she makes the contact she seeks and he can feel the kinetic energy, the potential inherent in her body. But for all that it's not hard for him to stop her. He's a cop; he has more than half-a-foot on her and she's actually rather small, sharp-shouldered and spare-bored.
And Sera sees the tears in his eyes and Sera cries at the drop of a goddamned pin and suddenly, immediately, there are answering tears in her own, but Sera's tears spring not from despair but from that aching wonder with which she desperately wishes to infuse him.
Jesus Christ this world.
So: there he is, reflected in her eyes, and he's scared and he doesn't know who he is anymore and here she is, his hands on her shoulders, her heart pounding, each breath short and bright and cold and sharp, and her body is shaking with excess adrenaline that has poured itself into her already-altered blood and that tremor is especially pronounced in her hands - an impression of a gold ring and a leather cuff - as she reaches over his arms to cup his face, her ring fingers skimming the line of his jaw, her thumbs settling with a remarkable gentleness over his cheekbones.
"That's okay," she assures him, and she's smiling now. Smiling and crying and expressive and on the verge of laughter that has a pronounced edge of giddiness to it because he's new. He's brand new. He's just waking up. He's just being born.
"That's okay," and she's all conviction. "No one fucking knows who they are. Every fucks that up, even the Sleepers, I don't fucking know and I have worlds inside me, I have oceans, I have goddamned storms but you -
- you, you're opening your eyes. You've been Sleeping for so long that it's hard and it's painful and it's wild and everything you thought was wrong and that's okay.
"There's nothing wrong with being scared. There's nothing wrong with any of it. Let yourself be scared.
"Let yourself be."
Smiling.
SerafíneMind 2 / Life 2. Hope's Birth Variant: find the wonder / anchor it in the body. Here's the beating of my heart / here's yours. Coincidental? (Difficulty: 5 -1 (resonance - enthralling, darling.)
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (2, 8, 8) ( success x 2 )
Alexander BrandtSince that night in Seattle, Alexander has shut himself off. Coped. Because that’s all he knew how to do. Day after day, dealing with the heartbreak, the embarrassment, fencing off the anger to avoid lashing out at people. All kept inside, hidden away. Frozen. Only these things weren’t as dormant as he he’d have liked to think. Things build up on these unstable foundations, until that one last straw...
And what a straw. Life has pulled the curtains back and opened the windows on his closed and sheltered life. Not out of cruelty or kindness – but just because it was time for the seed to sprout. For Alexander’s Avatar to rouse from its slumber.
So here he is, sharing tears with a woman he barely knows, on opposite sides of the mirror. One cold and frozen, the other hot and full of life. Winter and summer. Alexander pulls away for a moment as Sera reaches for his jaw, but then relaxes and allows her to touch him. It’s the first time he’s let anyone touch him in some time, the risk of letting anyone get close a little too high.
Sera speaks of people not knowing who they are and it rings so true. For years his life has lacked a direction, until he found the police. Others wait their whole lives to discover who they are, who they want to be. He listens in silence. There’s nothing really to say. Just knowing that he’s not alone right now, and that someone else understands, is enough.
Again, Sera bends reality a little and shares the feeling of wonder. Alexander’s eyes close as the feelings pass over him and through him. Enough to remember that the feeling exist. Enough to melt the ice a little. There is a sob this time, as he lets go a little. He stands there, leaning a little on Sera for support, for... an amount of time. That seems to get frozen, too, in the moment. Long enough for Alexander to... if not feel good, at least pull himself back together for a little while longer.
A haggard breath in, then, and he opens his eyes again. He rubs a hand across his eyes and asks, “If I’m not going mad, then what is that?” He nods towards the fracture. “And...” She tells of storms within her. Something about a dream, a voice. Lost in it a storm? “They were asking for help. The voices. One from that thing. The other one I dreamt about, but have heard her since. I don’t know who she is. I think I’ve lose her.”
Alexander Brandt[..lost her]
ill-luckThat hair-line crack which Alexander sees doesn't disappear; no, no, of course it doesn't - not completely. It's a break. But it gets harder for him to see, thins out as he indicates it, ghost-fade, ghost-fade, gone with a sound like a kiss, or a bubble popping.
Serafíne"Fuck if I know," Sera replies, turning to glance over her shoulder at the position he indicates, where the fissure appeared. She never saw it; just the coalescent energies all bright around it, but she's letting him go and glancing over her shoulder and just accepting it. Turning back to him, " - that's not my kind of magic. Maybe Leonhard knows -the guy from the other night? Liechetenstein? But the woman you dreamed about, you haven't lost her. You've woken up to her.
"She'll be back. You'll hear her again. It's hard to know, though, how soon it'll be. Or how long, but she's inside you.
"She always will be." This quick curve of her mouth. Bitter and sweet. "Even if you don't remember."
Then her gaze ticks down his body. Taking stock of his cuts and his bruises, his fracture finger, his wounds.
"You're hurt. I'll heal you.
"Give me your hand."
Hand out, palm up.
She's going to heal him, Sera.
SerafíneLife 3: Vulgar Without Witnesses. Difficulty: 7 -1 (taking time); -1 (Spending Quint)
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (1, 3, 7) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
SerafíneExtending! Difficulty +1, spending another quint though so final dif is 6.
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (7, 9, 9) ( success x 4 ) [WP]
SerafíneParadox!
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 10) ( success x 1 )
SerafíneParadox!
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 8) ( success x 1 )
SerafíneStamina!
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5) ( fail )
SerafíneStamina!
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 9) ( success x 1 )
Alexander BrandtAlexander watches as the fracture fades away into nothing. Oblivion more than a step away, but – for now, anyway – no longer a temptation. He doesn’t really understand what it was, where it came from, or who the voices were. And it seems to be outside Sera’s area of expertise. But, well, maybe he can find another way to figure out just what’s happened today. That small, female voice asking for help? That will stick with him. Maybe he’ll hear her again, maybe he won’t. But just maybe he’ll try to find her and help her in some way.
Sera heals him. Not without, still, some scepticism that anything will happen but hey – it’s not the weirdest of things to have happened today. His broken finger pulls itself back into position, whatever went pop in his ankle feel like it’s gone back to where it was supposed to be. He tests his weight gingerly, putting more and more weight on it until he’s happy it’s not going to give way again. He still feels battered and bruised under his leathers, but he’s certainly grateful for what she’s done.
Looking back at the bike, though... That’s going to be a long walk into town. “I don’t supposed to can fix tyres too, can you?” He walks over to the bike and pulls it upright, wincing at the damage to the bodywork. “Or have a phone for a tow truck? How did you end up here, anyway?”1
Alexander Brandt[Wits+Alert]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 5, 5, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
ill-luckA car! A car is coming!
ill-luckThe owl is still in the road, although on the side of the road. Perhaps this car is not going to hit it.
Serafíne"I came out with a friend of mine for a hike with a thermos of mushroom tea and a cooler full of tamales. Then we were gonna fool around and watch the stars come out.
"Her name's Natalee. I think her truck's this way. C'mon.
"I'm sure we can dig my phone out of her gear. Ooh, and we can call Hawksley. He's fucking smart, maybe he'll know what that shit in the road was."
Alexander Brandt"Watching the stars come out sounds like a pretty good plan." Hell, anything with company at the moment sounds like a pretty good plan. So he starts pushing the bike in the direction she points, walking along side her. Far enough apart to avoid bumping into each other.
Alexander spots another car approacheing, a cloud of dust being towed along the highway. The owl sits at the side of the road, seemingly stoned and oblivious to the approaching vehicle. Remembering the last time, he curses quietly. Kicking the stand for the bike and leaving it, hopefully safely, off the side of the road, he jogs over to the owl. If it stays calm, to try picking it up again. If not, to scare it into taking flight.
Alexander Brandt[Cha+Aware-as-Emp]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
ill-luckThat owl. That owl has had many things happen to it today and it is still very very confused about those things. There is a car coming, and it doesn't seem to notice or to comprehend, but Alexander has an investment in the owl. Serafíne can feel the moment when Reality's drawn its fists back to slug her, hit her, beat her down, how dare she go against Reality, how dare she stand against it and say what has happened will not stay Happened, that what is broken should mend, how dare she, and she feels it in her face, and her nose bleeds a little as Alexander approaches the owl, crooning, the calm wide-eyed owl which clicks its beak at him, and the car is there, there it is a Nissan, and the driver sees a young man scooping an owl up, and the owl moving a little restively in his grip, trying to get comfortable, and it always feels like a precious thing, holding a wild animal, a wild animal that lets you hold it, and
and that is how Alexander and Serafíne walk back to find Natalee, who is still sleeping in the back of her truck. And it is time to get away, certainly, because Alexander's Working might have attracted other attentions, mightn't it? Natalee is muggy-eyed and fuzzy-headed and she offers Alexander a swig of tequila and perhaps by then Alexander has set the owl down somewhere and if he did oh how the owl looked after him and Serafíne, as if perplexed, perplexed, what happened? Or perhaps he keeps it, and Natalee coos over the adorable widdle birdy, and
nothing whispers, not right now. That sense Alexander has of ill-luck, of doom, it grows less, diminishes although it does not disappear entirely, and he will continue to have minor bad luck for the rest of the day, bad luck that gets slighter and slighter, until it's night and time again to fall asleep.
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