After a positively frigid weekend, Monday afternoon is gray enough and cold enough that Washington Park is - if not supernaturally deserted - certain rather empty compared to the flood of people one might find jogging its trails on a more temperate spring day.
When Sera decides that she wants a picnic, though, nothing will keep her from it. Not weather, not wind, not cold.
On the rather green lawn overlooking the lake, with a sweeping view of the columned boat house reflected in the glassine waters of the little lake, Sera has spread a white blanket, which is weighted down with an ashtray and a guitar case. She's drowsing, or appears to be drowsing, wrapped up in another blanket (this one fuzzy and perhaps woolen, some sort of red and green tartan plaid wrapped around her body as she rests on her stomach, knees bent, both booted feet in the air. Dan she sent for hot chocolate because it's fucking cold out here and her teeth are chattering and he suggested oh hey, go inside, warm up, and Sera was all: fuck that, I wanna have a picnic.
So, picnic.
It is entirely possible that Alexander and/or Grace and/or others received texts from Sera inviting them to a picnic. Or perhaps they just find her by coincidence. Sometimes that is how the world works.
Alexander[Magedar, just kicks and entrances]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (6, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )
GraceGrace got a text, because that is how her world works. And perhaps Sera doesn't understand (or perhaps remember) why she got a text back reading:
YES I will be right there
Without punctuation and with a lot of haste.
Even if Sera did decide on a picnic in the cold, it doesn't matter. That's what coats are for. And other people's oddities rarely even scratch the surface of Grace's recognition. She's pretty certain, though, that Sera will be mostly unclothed anyway, because that's Sera.
So, the Virtual Adept strolls up, wearing jeans and a red suede coat against the cold that's cut in sharp angles. It was meant to go with a fox costume for Carnivale, and Grace keeps on wearing it because it's warm.
But, there's something different about her. Something new.
Maybe it's the way she cuts through the air, knife-like. Those angles of her coat reminiscent of a blade's edge -- a fine sort of sharpness.
AlexanderCold it may be, but it can always get a little cooler – as those who pass Alexander walking along the paths around the park find for a moment. Alexander is reasonably comfortable. He’s dressed for the cool air in a thick grey hoodie with a couple of layers of long sleeved t-shirts underneath. Some dark green combats, a pair of walking boots, and a decent pair of fleecy gloves keeps the rest of him covered and decent.
The text was received, and replied to, which brings Alexander out today. But he was here a little early. Just... to try something out. To look around a little, in more than one way. He’s crouched by the lake, near to where they met a certain scarecrow not so long ago. He watches the water, looking at his reflection in it. Tries to remember how it felt that first time he pushed with his Will at the Chantry, trying to sneak a peek at probability before the coin landed. Tries to push in the same way, just peering through the ripples of this particular looking glass to See what’s there.
[Arete, peeking at Spirit: Diff 4, -1 for taking time]
Dice: 1 d10 TN3 (3) ( success x 1 )
SerafínePerception + Awareness - Things Are Happening?
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )
SerafínePrime 1: Watch the Weaving. -1 dif, focus.
Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (3, 4, 6) ( success x 3 )
SerafíneThings Are Happening and the truth is even wrapped up like that, like a peculiar Scottish mummy sprawled on her belly on a white blanket in the chilly, damp grass, breath misting or is that smoke she exhales? one or the other, anyway. Sera is not napping. She is not asleep. She is sprawled yes one elbow braced on the blanket, chin and cheek cupped in the palm of her hand, head listing in a way that makes a golden tangle of her wind-whipped blond curls and she is watching: the lake and the man who crouches by the lake and watching him with a back of the throat consideration and she is alive to the world in ways the few people are alive to the world, everything scrawls itself beneath her skin before most stranges have begun to recognize the surface truths, and she can feel - yes - Grace and something New and wasn't it just last night that it was Grace and something Old and isn't there a strange and fascinating symmetry to that and oh shouldn't she tell Hawksley about the mummy, she should assuredly tell Hawksley about the mummy, and Sera thinks about texting him -
I have something to tell you about Egypt
- and she would likely misspell half the damn words but iPhone, it would auto correct, but her phone is so Very Far Away and it is cold out here where is Dan with her hot chocolate she is going to dose it with whiskey. It would be better with Bailey's but it's not like one carries around a flask full of Bailey's, does one?
Sera bites down sharply on her inner cheek, the pain is incisive, see. It is singular. It is a pierce and a twist and an opening, oh, the world changes, just a little bit.
"Look at that," Sera says quietly, to Grace as Grace strolls up. Her voice is goddamned lazy. "He's doing something. Magic, do you remember the first time you did it on purpose?"
Grace[Magedar! Does she notice anything with all this magic flying about?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 5, 5, 10) ( success x 1 )
GraceGrace isn't so perceptive today, is she? But still, it doesn't hurt that the both of them are weaving reality around them at the moment, and Sera -- oh Sera is strong and gut-wrenching, isn't she?
Grace looks where Sera is telling her to -- over to Alex, who is leaning over the water's edge, looking for something.
She nods, and there's this slight bittersweet smile on her face. "It was soon after I woke up. I was in my apartment, and Gadfly popped in for a visit. He'd been watching me, which, okay a little creepy. But he guided me through the program I was already writing. Something to watch the watcher."
"My first time? I flunked," she smiles for real that time. "Got hit with 'dox."
"Sera?" she asks, then pauses a bit, sets down her laptop bag and flumps down on the blanket. "Something's happened to me. I don't think it's bad. But I feel different."
AlexanderA few ice crystals form along the edge of the shore by Alexander and, for a few moments, the world changes. Alexander sees the lake shore in a whole new light; a little faint, a little cloudy, a little more monochrome. And promptly falls backwards onto his ass as it actually works! He looks around quickly, before the effect fades. Looking for... someone who isn’t there. Who hasn’t been for a few weeks. Maybe he wasn’t really expecting The Message to still be hanging around here when he has an identity and the freedom to do as he likes. But it was worth a try. Normality reasserts itself and the vision fades.
Grinning to himself, Alexander stands and brushes himself off. He’d felt the arrival of Sera a short while before, while he was watching the water, so knows where she’s sat. The familiar Shifting feeling had arrived too, but with something different about it. Something new. Still smiling, Alexander grabs the rucksack he’d left on the grass next to him and wanders over. The smile’s still there when he arrives and greets them. “Hey! I brought soup.” He shrugs the shoulder with the rucksack as he says it, then settles on the blanket too. He looks at Grace and cocks his head. “You’ve changed.”
Adamooc: so where the heck are y'all! feel free to PM just me. :) :)
Adam[Pre-Entry Awareness Roll -2 Dice for Grace's Arcane.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )
Adam[+2 for everybody else]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (1, 9) ( success x 1 )
Adam[+ 2 re-rolled 10s since I hear there are Magical Effects wot are being Effected? Maybe?]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (4, 5) ( fail )
Serafíne"Mmm." Sera hums beneath her breath. It is a hum of awareness and a hum of consideration and a hum of something that is not amusement. Perhaps bemusement. Perhaps consideration. There is something rich and lazy in her voice and even though it is cold cold cold something about Sera feels remarkably warm, in just this precise moment. "I don't remember my first time."
And Sera offers no context for that; just the statement. Maybe it is merely that one forgets the smallest pieces as the world changes and magic becomes not - well, not ordinary, but a matter of course. Hey, I can fucking change the goddamned world.
Grace though, Grace; a slant-wise look at Grace as she floomps her laptop down on the blanket. Here is Sera in profile: an impressive nose, all aquiline, her eyes remarkable light, with a sort of clarity in the side view on rarely sees when looking at her face-on. Some kind of magic there, right?
God she's striking. Arresting. The bones of her face; the sharp and fine-pointed planes of it. The delicacy of her jaw, the curve of her ear. The odd vulnerability she bears in repose.
Sera is still considering Grace when Alexander comes up to them, and he has brought soup. Sera flashes the cop a quick grin, rolls over on the blanket to make room. "What'd you see out there? When you were looking?"
And, a flashing glance, this line drawn from Grace to Alexander and back again. "And Grace, she went seeking. Why don't you tell us what happened?"
Grace"Oh, I didn't go looking for anything," Grace says, completely missing the reference. She's never heard the term before. "What happened when?"
She looks up to Alex from her seat on the blanket. "Yeah, I know. You can feel that too?"
Then, it's over to Sera again, who has been the only other Mage she's known to do this: change how they are at a deep level. Enough that people can tell.
"It's like what happened to you, isn't it?"
Grace"Oh, I didn't go looking for anything," Grace says, completely missing the reference. She's never heard the term before. "What happened when?"
She looks up to Alex from her seat on the blanket. "Yeah, I know. You can feel that too?"
Then, it's over to Sera again, who has been the only other Mage she's known to do this: change how they are at a deep level. Enough that people can tell.
"It's like what happened to you, isn't it?"
AdamLook. (No, don't look. There is nothing remarkable to look at.) Dominic Adam Julian Gallowglass bani Bonisagus known to most of the Awakened populace of Denver as Adam who owns or clerks at or manages Night Owl [An Arch Key] Books. Look. (No, don't bother. He is not remarkable.)
Here he is in a dark coat, not black but rather a slate gray, wool to drive the cold winter away, but it is spring now. The coat is long and unbuttoned and if he had a scarf it is, why, there it is, trailing out've his pockets, because it's cold but the cold doesn't have a snap and if he weren't so susceptible to colds since he treats his body less like a temple and more like an inconvenience or a disappointment (come on now, body, don't be tired now! Almost to the end of this chapter! Almost at the top of the hill!), well. This is the kind of sentence that busybody family members begin and never finish properly because what it amounts to is a harangue. Here is Adam Gallowglass in a dark gray coat and, if one has not yet become familiar with Adam Gallowglass, he is particularly unworthy of note. A Mystery. Other. Don't bother.
Nonentity, practically: young man with wild hair. He has an apple in hand and he is biting into it while turning the page of a book which yes he is in fact reading as he walks down the trail, comes to a fork in a path, finds himself near [the woods of Arkady are dead, over is their antique joy; but the antiquarian's joy is -] a lake and a confluence of other Awakened individuals, one of them very familiar, the other half-familiar, the third not-at-all-familiar. What an irrestistible lure to a mind like Adam's.
So he takes the fork in the path that'll take him this-a-way, folding his book up so his thumb is a marker. He bites into his apple, crunch. No gloves. He's as pale as a vampire and should get more sun. Too bad it's such a skinflint day, such a graying still longing for winter day. This-a-way means he wanders out between the trees; he doesn't approach from the lake.
The most important thing is of course:
"Hello, Sera, Grace."
Adam is not a creature of hesitation; he approaches, he engages, his smile faint, a quizzical stitch between his eyebrows.
Alexander“Nothing, really. I was just..” Alexander looks down into the rucksack, breaking the eye contact with Sera for a minute. A little embarrassed, maybe. “It was silly. I was trying to see if The Message was around.” A thermos and some disposable cardboard cups emerge from the bag, and he looks back up. “It’s only store bought, but it should still be warm.” Nice, smooth change of subject there. Chicken, should anyone be interested.
He loses track of the conversation a little when they start talking about seeking and looking for things – even less idea of what a Seeking is than Grace does. There is some concern in his voice, though, when he asks, “Something’s happened? Was it anything to do with that night in the library?” It’s the first time Alexander has bumped into Grace since he stormed out of the Chantry. “Are you ok?”
Before there’s an answer, someone new arrives. Although it’s only the voice that grabs Alexander’s attention – the other man would have drifted past without notice if he hadn’t spoken. He looks down to open the flask, then starts a little as he notices Adam’s presence again. And waits to see how the others react before saying anything. Assuming he doesn't forget again.
ix[Do you guys want another people, or is that too many people? Five starts to be many.....]
SerafíneJump in!
Alexander[I'm easy]
SerafíneSerafíne @ 7:48PMPrivate Message to Adam, Alexander, ix
Jump in!
Adam[I don't mind! Now that I've got my super long 'how is it that Adam is here' post out of the way it's all c'est la vie on my end.]
SerafíneOh, Alexander. He breaks eye contact and busies himself with soup-getting-out and soup-dispensing and Sera's now on her back and all rolled up still in her blanket (absurd! absurd) and she's like a turtle on her back her hair all a-tangle and the world is moving around her the way the world does move.
Oh! Here is Adam.
Sera tips her head back to espy him as he offers his hellos and it is strange to her the way he fades and then conjures himself up again but not so startling as it must be for Alexander, now, to forget and remember and remember and forget again.
So, Sera, create that she is turns her head in Alexander's direction and he can avoid her goddamned eyes all he wants with the busy-ness she'll just touch him, like a hand on his thigh. A certain slewing smile.
Maybe she's fucked up.
Probably she's fucked up.
"It's not silly. You need to see the world. Look for things. Take it apart and put it back together and feel the way it moves inside you, again and again and again, and if you're looking for something or someone or somewhy that has some fucking meaning to you, even better, but that's not any kind of shit to be embarassed about, you know? Rock on - "
She did say rock on without any goddamned embarassment.
"Seeking, Grace. You went seeking. Looking for another piece of the world; or a piece of your soul, or a new understanding of the world. Some epiphany, right? Something new that you can taste and feel. And Be and Know and all that shit.
"Yeah it's like what happened to me." Back to Alexander, then. "Nothing to do with what happened in the library, that night. Least I'm pretty sure it doesn't have anything to do with that."
Then back to Adam, smiling up at him, right? Practically angelic with that halo of golden hair.
"Hi."
Grace"Hey Adam," she greets, though she didn't feel his knight-in-shining-ness approaching. It's Adam. She's cool with it.
Alex is the first to broach that subject, and as much as she appreciates the gesture, Grace has opted to try to forget that night ever happened. She only vaguely knows, second-hand that he was even there. Still, the comment has her first looking concerned right back, and then curious. "Maybe it did, though Sera. I mean..." she shrugs, "What happened in my seeking, it... very well could have something to do with that night."
"I slew a hydra," she says, and just lets it hang there. Says it like someone might say 'I mowed the lawn.'
AdamHe listens, intent and serious. Because direct as he is and unhesitating (unrelenting) as he is this doesn't mean he lacks social graces. The conversation swims around him: parts around him, stone-Adam, shadowless Magus. He listens, and he has opinions because he always has opinions. The quizzical stitch between his eyebrows smooths; those same eyebrows leap upward and the expression in his eyes stills, then shifts from one mood to the other. He regards Grace more fully now, but his attention is not complete.
"Why did you do that?" he asks Grace, of hydra-slaying. Then says to Sera, "Hi," because when a woman that beautiful says hi, if you're not distracted, you say hi back, and then he says to Alexander, "Who are you?"
He doesn't introduce himself, but Grace said hey Adam.
Adam who then says, "What happened in which library?"
Because of course that would interest him.
Kalen Holliday[Nightmares]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Kalen Holliday[Awareness???]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 6, 7, 7, 8) ( success x 4 )
AlexanderThe gloves come off and a hand – a little cool, regardless of its time in the glove – is placed on Sera’s for a minute. “Thank you,” he says quietly. He still feels a little silly, a little sentimental. But he appreciates her words. The hands return to opening up the flask and pouring out soup, offering it to Sera. Because the third has slipped notice again.
There’s still concern in Alexander’s face – he likes Grace, and hearing what was going on in there? Well, he worried. “A hydra? That’s like a dragon? What happened?” He offers a cup to Grace.
Alexander is pouring soup for himself, and very nearly spills it when Adam speaks again. The man looks familiar, but... There is something odd going on here. He shuffles round a little to keep Adam in sight. The others don’t seem to be overly worried about the (re?)appearance of the man, so Alexander isn’t overly worried. Maybe a little puzzled. “Hi. Alexander.” He holds out the cup to Adam. “Nice to meet you.” There’s a slight narrowing of his eyes, as he tries to remember if he’s met Adam somewhere before.
Kalen HollidayKalen is not fond of the cold. But he is out in a golden wool coat and a ridiculously soft cream-colored cashmere scarf, and he is valiantly trying to ignore the last echoes of winter. He hasn't come for them, or for The Message (although, if pressed, he might admit he might have unconsciously chosen this place and cream and gold because of the Message). Recognizing such motivations is helpful, but that kind of self-reflection is not Kalen today.
Winter becomes colder on his tongue and he can feel the ground trembling beneath hooves. Feel the world shifting and falling through a thousand thousand possible worlds. If he could focus on them as they blurred past, he could draw them out one day, in the manner of star charts and the layered realms of the spiritual cosmologies that he has seen drawn in inks of precious metal and crushed gemstones. The grandest of them was inlaid around the circular gallery in marble. That one is shattered and buried now, but that one's legacy is Grace's office. For which he did not use sapphires or diamonds, but just paint. Grace probably wouldn't have wanted diamonds glittering on her walls in constellations, he would say. (But, let us be truthful, there are not diamonds glittering from those walls only because Kalen had no idea how to get them there.)
He cannot stop thinking of maps and of time and of all the ways in which fate twists in and around itself in Denver. There are are possibilities and warnings and wonder all vying for his attention. Those all lose out to the people he senses assembled, and he heads slowly in their direction.
Serafíne"I don't think it had so much to do with the Library, Grace, as with what you endured and how it has been haunting you. Somewhere that shadow of the divine or what the fuck ever inside you - " other people us Names and Terms and Words that mean things for things like Avatar. Sera tends to avoid them, for reasons that are not wholly clear, " - wanted you to confront that; to overcome it. To break free of the chains that experience has forged around your soul, see?
"I mean, that could be what your Avatar wanted. Or maybe it was all a fucking metaphor."
--
And Sera takes the soup and holds it in her hands and does that to keep them warm. The steam drifts and she's still on her back and looking up and then then she sits up, scoots her ass around because soup, shakes out her tangled hair as the cold wind skims the lake and whips across the park.
"Grace and I," Sera begins to explain to Alexander and by extension Adam, quietly and rather seriously for a Sera, with a sort of spare sense of strangeness about her because she does not speak Easily about such things and it is perhaps only the constant iteration of it from Grace that allows her to do so so easily. " - were infected by this sickness that some people created to try to target mages last fall. It made us very sick; and caused us to hallucinate gory waking dreams of our own deaths over and over again.
"Grace has had nightmares ever since, and," here Sera glances up at Adam. There is something circumspect, somehow, about that look. Something framingly delicate. Something attenuated. There are so many pieces of all of this that Sera keeps - in whole or in part - inside herself, stitched into her skin, and she can feel that needle now. Is away of its warp and weave. " - it was bad enough one night in the library that she started having waking dreams, hallucinations, that it was happening to her all over again.
"So. Have you been to sleep since your seeking, Grace?"
GraceAdam is oblivious. Wasn't around for the Hydra incident. He wasn't witness to Grace screaming in agony. He's innocent, and even still... It's embarrassing. She lost it. And everybody in the Chantry must have heard exactly how.
"I..." she starts, but can't finish. How do you even begin?
"Uh... Well," she looks to Sera, because this is her story too in a way. And Sera says what she will say about it.
"They called it Hydra. Because you couldn't just destroy it, it would multiply if you tried to kill it -- like cutting off a hydra's head," she adds, so they understand why hydras had become this massive thing with her.
Then, Sera asks if she's been to sleep since. That brings an honest smile. "Yeah. I have."
She smells the sudden ozone, the smell of storm in the air, and turns to see Kalen, still smiling. "I think I killed it but good."
AdamHe accepts the cup of soup from Alexander, and his expression shifts again: all nuance, Adam, all subtleties. The shift is a courteous shift; an echo and -- not surprise. But recognition: "Alexander. Nice to meet you at last. So many things heard."
But the courteous shift is off-hand, and the bulk of Adam's attention shifts back to Grace who is now sharp as a knife (just what one wants shifting, huh? tremoring like a quake) and Serafíne.
To him, a Hydra is a mythological construct. A relic of bygone days; of glorious days, in a way. A Hydra is a metaphor, and a Hydra is a nightmare. A Hydra is an enemy, a Hydra is self-replicating. A Hydra is water, the North, is child-of-beauty, is a first-gate second-threshold sort-of creature.
Do him credit. He listens with an air of grave consideration; smells the soup, and if it doesn't appear to be some sort of italian wedding soup monstrousity sips on it.
"Hmm," he says when they are both done. "Compelling," he says, because isn't it? He follows Grace's eyes over to Kalen, offers the other Hermetic a nod if not a smile. He's thinking, and Adam thinking means serious things. "What shape did your seeking actually take? A video game that felt real? Did you start out asleep?"
"I'm curious." A smile. "Needn't indulge me."
AlexanderAlexander settles back onto the blanket to listen to Sera’s – and Grace’s – story. He can’t even begin to imagine how it must have felt, being affected by that illness. And he doesn’t even try to make empty platitudes to fill the gaps in the telling. He does look back to Grace, though, still concerned. Although it eases when Grace smiles, obviously much more relaxed than she was. He does feel a little more of a connection to Grace than he does to most of the others – maybe because she’s not so far ahead in her experience of Awakened life that it seems like he’ll never reach that stage himself. Maybe because it’s obvious that things are still freaking her out, rather than the others who just seem to take everything in their stride.
Regardless, Adam seems to have heard of him. “Good things, I hope.” He smiles, now that facing the man seems to have fixed him in memory for the moment. “I think your name has been mentioned, but there have been so many new ones... “ He shrugs as the sentence hangs, a little apologetic that he doesn’t have more to say. He turns to greet Kalen as he arrives, but otherwise settles back to listen to the conversation.
Kalen Holliday"Mmmmmmm...." Kalen says, a bit absently. "My little dragon slayer." He missed too much of the conversation to quite pick it up cold, but he sounds amused and proud of Grace all the same. He doesn't need to know what she killed but good for that. Adam is thinking and Sera is...not exactly happy and Alexander...Alexander looks fine. That last bit provides him almost no real information.
His pale eyes sweep over them slowly. Curiously.
It's a second before the word Seeking and the new keen edge to Grace's Resonance register and he grins. "Ah. Congratulations, Kit." He settles carefully onto the ground to join them.
SerafíneGrace slept last night, and she beams and Sera favors her with another oddly spare half-smile. Inhales the scent of the soup and sips it, grateful more for the warmth than anything fortifying. Sera always seems to be on the verge of something, breaking apart or falling together or or or - anything but ordinary.
"Hey Kalen."
But here, look. Ordinary. She sips the soup wrapped up in a blanket and listens while Grace tells her story and somewhere on her person her phone vibrates so, Sera sets down the soup and does so carefully and and from somewhere deep in the wrappings of that blanket Sera digs out an iPhone and reads a text and then stands up and starts to unwind her blanket and beneath it she is wearing a tiny leather skirt and her Docs and black lace thigh-high tights and a small bandeau-style bustier, the cups of which are covered in tiny red satin roses, beneath a thin black hoodie, unzipped. Sera pulls the hood up because COLD but does not bother to zip the hoddie because SEXY and abandons the party with a small wave of her phone.
"Gotta meet my dealer. I'll be back in a bit. If Dan comes back with my fucking hot chocolate tell him to hang tight too. I need a ride over to the Church. Wanna see that mummy-lady again - "
Serafíne(And... poof! Sorry darlings, but I need to sleep!)
No comments:
Post a Comment