Pho

Grace

[Magedar! Perception 3 + Awareness 2 = Sensing some resonance?]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 7, 8, 8) ( success x 3 )

Constance

[perc + awareness]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 4, 6, 6, 6, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 6 ) Re-rolls: 1

Grace

So, Grace sits at one of the small wooden tables that line the far wall of this place -- Pho-nomenal (silly play on words, but whatever. The fare's decent). It's not much to look at, but holes in the wall with good food usually aren't. The air is almost steeped in the smell of spice and broth, and when you walk in, it makes you want to take deep breaths. That kind of place.

One probably doesn't notice the woman in the back who's busy eating with her cell phone in hand, apparently ignoring her meal for the sake of Facebook or whatever it is she's doing. She wears jeans, sneakers, and a gray jacket -- totally inconsequentially normal.

Until the air fills with more than just pho. Suddenly, to those with minds open more than usual would get the distinct impression of a skittering sharpness. Like someone's slicing a keen blade through the heavy spices.

[Life1 : Detect Poison. Diff: 4 - 1 for taking her time]

Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (3, 5) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Constance

Connie, free and clear from her last contract, it having ended the day before, has not only picked up her meagre paycheck but has also deposited it. Seeing as it’s an award winning day she figures a bite of her favorite vermicelli might be in order.

Brown hair is pulled up into a braid, she wears little to no makeup, and comfortable clothing; a navy blue scoop neck sweater, a pair of faded jeans, and worn runners make her no less remarkable than any of the others in the crowd. It isn’t always clothing that marks one as unusual, though, and at first glance – as she’s moving towards the counter to order – blue eyes pass right over Grace.

..it’s only a millisecond, one tiny fragment of time, but everything changes and suddenly the restaurant, it’s food, and it’s patrons, are forgotten. The long legged woman freezes, like a foal, her nose twitches as though she could smell it but all the while there’s this unstable but intense pull from the woman her eyes had just passed over.

Stranded, seemingly, in a line of other people she does a double take, harkening back to the incident in the coffee shop, and happens to be staring. The lady behind her gives her a little shove, Connie balks, and steps out of the line ready to bolt because that one, she’s like them.

Grace

The sensation of heat, like someone suddenly opened an oven floods over her, and Grace looks up Connie's glance, meeting her eyes.

Never met this one before, huh. And Grace, she notes the freezing, notes the staring, the readiness to get the fuck out. Why?

Her eyebrows make with a kind of dance that says confusion and worry at once. It's rarely a good thing for a Mage to look that frightened. So Grace freezes, looks behind herself (as if to look for whatever it is that has Connie so upset).

Serafíne

Per + Awareness

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (3, 4, 5, 5, 7, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 6 ) Re-rolls: 1

Serafíne

(Any objections to Sera doing a flyby? :) )

Constance

None here!

Constance

Shall I wait to post then? :D

Serafíne

naw, go ahead and post. (grins) sera will probably not interrupt quite yet!

Constance

Memo to self; next time you want to look like a deranged meth head remember this moment and recall every episode of 24 your cousin has ever watched. The might arrest vegans for cannibalism but the show seemed to have a pretty decent handle on how morons escape.

The moron, being her, of course. She blinks, at Grace, presumably, and then is ousted from her spot in line as the lady behind her has obviously had enough of indecision in her ninety five years of craggy, old, wrinkled skin-living.

The short haired brunette looks at her, and then behind where she’s seated, and then back at Constance as if to think ‘who, me?’ with a spicing of ‘what the eff’ for flavouring, she’s supposing.

Her wide mouth widens as politeness demands some sort of smile, she shakes her head and shrugs, “I-I, sorry, I thought you were somebody else.” It’s an entirely plausible excuse, really, but it doesn’t tell Grace much about why she’s still standing there. Truth be told, Connie isn’t sure either.

“Uh, sorry..” Yeah, about that.

Serafíne

Outside there's a feeling and there's a van and the van is a white conversion van and still with North Carolina license plates someone better take care of that and oh, hey, Dan picked Sera up at the Church of the Good Shepherd and Sera murmured directions to him all aslant and well,

what the hell. That's how and why he is dropping Sera off at the corner she's alighting from the passenger's side, swinging the door shut behind her, hands in the pockets of her leather jacket, elbows all sharp, heels hellishly high though she walks in them with a long stride and a kind of masculine swagger, as if they were nothing. Nothing at all.

Glimpsed through the picture windows, unearthing a hand from one of her pockets to reach for the front door.

Grace

"Oh, yeah, I've had that happen before," Grace says, giving Constance a similar smile. "Are you new around? I haven't seen you... in the area..."

She sets down her phone, screen to the table, and suddenly there's the urge to look at the door (the threshhold, the place in between inside and outside). And Grace doesn't freeze or start with worry, but breaks into an honest smile.

Sera.

Constance

Undulating awareness sparks an otherworldly feeling and she’s swimming in this, watching the face of this foreign woman with a long nose and sincere eyes in silence. It happens, she says, Constance nods faintly and feels the influx of something new seeding itself in the present. It’s like a capsule opening to release tendrils of reaching potential, they say being, they say start, they say turn your head, girl.

So she does.

And the coffee shop comes slamming back to her once again; a tall blonde speaks in riddles, the face of Anyboy and his calmness in the eye of her skittish behavior, and who can forget this one reflecting from behind the door like she isn’t really there.

Heat finds her face, colour swathes across it like a swaggering pirate, and she knows that the jig is up because blue eyes have returned to Grace’s face to find that smile of familiarity. It’s happening again? For the love of ..whoever. Whatever.

“Well then..”

Serafíne

So the door opens and then she's not swimming in the glass but all immediate, all present. Cropped leather jacket over a short, tight, absolutely crimson cocktail dress that ends approximately two tenths of an inch below the point at which it would be utterly indecent, making it therefore merely indecent. Diamond-patterned net tights, thigh-high, held up by black lace garters. Shoes bordering on the impossible, the swath of blond curls and a half-shaved head. The most ridiculous jewelry, but Connie remembers her for more than that style that makes her impossible to ignore and hard to forget.

"Grace."

See, Sera comes up to them, skirts Connie's personal space. Reads that heat beneath her skin, something of that awareness, that sense of being at sea and yeah.

Take your time and live in it.

Take your space, too.

Here's Sera, murmuring a greeting to the crown of Grace's head, bending down to run her finger's through the other woman's short dark hair. The gesture is familiar.

A glance up at Constance, then. This edge of a smile; the grace of slightly-stoned dark blue eyes.

"You guys've met? Or are you just meeting?"

Grace

"Oh us? I've never seen her before in my life," Grace says, trying to ignore the hair ruffling. It's a Sera thing. The sun will rise in the East, and Sera will ruffle her hair. Possibly kiss her head.

"Are you okay?" she asks Connie, because wow -- those reactions. What the Hell?

"Sera, have you met her before? She looks mad."

Constance

She is mad, yes.Connie knows she’s mad, she must be mad, that’s the only explanation. After all, Sera had confirmed that they weren’t in the circus but she felt like the entire thing had disbanded and all of its former employees had relocated to Denver.

Yeah, she must be mad.

“Oh, only just,” She says to Sera after a time, having watched her approach and the way she’d interacted with Grace. Constance relaxes visibly, but she doesn’t go to sit down with them, rather she steps towards the table as if to afford some sort of clue to the whole puzzle.

“I’m, I-er,” Constance was still replaying her last pause-tap meeting with Sera in her head, that shifting of reality still gave her goose bumps and she was very much unaware of how her presence affected others.

“I’m Connie, and okay, and a little mad. Yes.”

To Sera, she offered a small smile, she wanted to say something friendly to somehow bridge the gap but Constance wasn’t exactly sure of what to say in this instance.

Serafíne

"She's New, Grace," and Sera says it quietly, just like that, with the capital letters and what-all clear and evident in the rich intonation. With the hint of a smile that is wry and this subtle, sweeping glance at Connie that deepens the edges of the smile she's wearing, crinkles the corners of her eyes, but only just.

"So she doesn't quite know why she keeps feeling us and she's not precisely sure what's going on. At least, that's my guess."

A quick slanting glance back at Connie. Sera has by now hooked a hand on the spine of Grace's seat, but has not grabbed a chair of her own to sit down.

"Grace was new too," to Connie, " - not that long ago, really. Remember how that felt?"

Grace

"Heh, I meant angry, but hey, a little madness never hurt anybody," she says, trying to put Connie at ease with a smile and a bit of humor.

Then, Sera says she's New, and suddenly everything makes some sense. The dawning of realization crosses her face. "Oh!"

"Ohh," she repeats, tinged with a bit more gravity.

"Fucking amazing. And scary. Hi, Connie. You're not mad."

Constance

They speak their own language of understanding with familiar words, they just have a different meaning, and it’s like she’s able to pick up pieces of the conversation that is being had without being spoken. New, yes. Mad, not angry, in the crazy sense. Well that’s true, she thinks, blue eyes moving from Sera’s face back to Grace’s once again.

If she didn’t have proof of their ..otherness, and her own, she might have had a bit of a difficult time remaining a part of this conversation, it all could have gone down a lot differently. Yet she remembers other instances, too and finds that her hand has come to rest upon the top of the back of a chair across the table from the other women.

Sera’s smile deepens and Constance can’t help but smile in return, fueled by the feeling that the Cultist exudes, and perhaps the familiarity she brings with her. It isn’t so much that she’s met her before, or that she even took the time to make note of what this difference might be, but that warmth she holds is much different than the way Connie’s.

The way it hits home for Grace signifies the importance of Sera’s actions to Constance and it wins the woman some points in her favor.

“Is this the wrong place or time to ask either of you what the hell is going on? Because, well, reasons.”

Constance

[*the way Connie's is.]

Serafíne

"We can't talk as freely here as we could someplace a little more private. Because it is weird as hell and something most other people around us wouldn't understand. It's something that good get us in trouble, too, if the wrong people overheard us, but asking what the hell is going on is a pretty good first step - "

Then, Sera's phone buzzes, somewhere in the depths of one of the pockets of her leather jacket. The creature pulls it out, glances at the display and makes a noise in the back of her throat.

"I'm sorry. I've gotta run. But Grace can help you because honestly, I can't remember when I wasn't like this, you know? Grace, you can give Connie my number. Even my address."

Back to Connie then, " - we're still celebrating 4-20. Probably the party'll go on all week. You'd be welcome to stop by."

Serafíne

(Okay: time for me to turn into a pumpkin. Thank you for letting me flyby. So glad to see you again ino! hope we get to play soon!)

Serafíne

And then, Sera taps something on her phone, tucks it away again, drops a kiss on the crown of Grace's head, and heads back out the door, just the way she came in.