Call it art.

Lucy

Friday night. First Friday night. The sun has just dipped beyond the still snowy peaks of the mountains to the west, but the sky is still light, a dusky shadowed blue full of promise. The air is warm, the oncoming nightfall will be comfortable until the darkness finally leeches out the heat of the day. But now? Now. Now the night is comfortable. Pleasant, even.

And Santa Fe is packed because of it. It's the first night of the warm summer season of the art walk, and the masses have flooded from their homes in droves to pour down the street, into galleries, into the little half-hidden gardens between galleries. Somewhere there is music playing loudly, but all anyone can hear is the beat, thump-thump-thumping lightly in the veins of those who hear it at this distance.

Lucy feels alive. It's her time of day, that inbetween time when the sun gives way to the night. And there are so many people in this new city. It hadn't seemed this full before, but it feels almost like there are too many people. Too many bodies, too many lives crowded on this one-way street. She smiles, wide full lips painted a vibrant red just a shade off from the maroon-red of her hair. She's dressed in a black cardigan, unbuttoned to reveal the line of her milk-white cleavage and then the red of a tank top. Over her left breast, embroidered into the sweater are the words Be Still My Heart, along with the image of an ornate pair of silver scissors stabbing a heart. They look a little like Lucy's scissors, the ones she keeps in a dark and velvety bag inside her slouching canvas bag. Her pants are black, sit low on her hips, and are adorned with more zippers and straps than may be strictly necessary, along with a pair of black suspenders left hanging at her sides. There are boots beneath that, the same ones she always wears though their height is hidden by the legs of the pants. It's a warm outfit for a cold woman on a pleasant late spring/early summer evening.

They've been in the city for a little over a week now, and they've spent their time together of course, but this is the first time that Lucy and Delilah are out exploring together. Not running to the fast food place across the street from their motel, not running to the 7-11 down the block because fuck I ran out of deodorant should we get razors, too.

"Ooh," she says, pausing before the doorway to a gallery with stark white walls lined with large photographs. The people inside are milling about, shifting slowly from one picture to the next, some hmming, some pointing out some detail that caught their eye, but Lucy? Lucy spies a table spread with snacks. Brownies and carrots and cookies along with plastic champaigne flutes. "This place has food, Del."

Delilah

There are so many stories about sisters. These young women do not look like sisters but they look like sisters, don't they? Aren't they sisters in someody's heart, in some artist's eye? Lucy with her vibrant mouth and her vibrant hair and just now as the day weaves (threads, stitches, in and out, in and out, mingles) into night and night pulls the threads (mingles, out and in, out and in, stitches, threads) free so there's just this one tapestried space-between this gloaming-time twi-light time dusk settling soft as ash with its caressing light its promise of a pleasant spring night just a bit of a nip just now as all that Lucy in her element. Rose Red. Dusk Bright.

This time of day-night isn't Delilah's element. Delilah would mistrust it if she weren't so certain of herself and if she didn't feel comfortable in spite of her dislike of endings, in spite of a certain restlessness which works under her skin like a pebble or a pea yes a pea under how many mattresses or a lentils scattered in ashes.

Del: she's the other sister. Two young women and you want them to be sisters even if they don't look related. Delilah's hair is golden and in Santa Fe's uncertain and fading (tapestry) dusk-light it's a darker and more barbaric blond than it might otherwise seem. We say barbaric and we mean just that: it conjures up antiquities, wants to be sun-dappled, wants to be paler - would be in another light. Del: she has on a rush-woven black-and-white luma woven fedora with a broad black band. Around her throat, hanging negligently, is a scarf, which is as pink as a blush and almost as translucent (how translucent is that?), embroidered in white lacey designs. Her jacket is a light spring thing of a blazer, gray. Beneath it she's wearing a teeshirt with a design silkprinted across the chest. Her jeans ride low on her hips, are belted by a thick belt. Her shoes are ballet flats patterned like something out've the Arabian Nights, embroidered and dusty and so worn that the heels are unravelling.

She is looking around half-mistrustfully, but half again surprisedly and curiously and though she doesn't smile there is an open look to the smooth arches her eyebrows make and the heart of her mouth pursed in consideration and she is dreamily distracted or perhaps a bit discombobulated by all the clamor when

She turns so fast she almost gets whiplash; narrowly avoids hitting somebody with her hair.

"Food? An artful spread!" Her smile is sly or could be sly if she knew how to be sly, but she doesn't; her eyes are too telling. "We should look it over carefully. Wouldn't want the people who put it out to feel unappreciated."

Sail in. Abrupt pause; she reaches out to touch Lucy's hip or wrist or some part of her which is near. "What do you think about," a pause, as she stares at the photographs, "Do you think about, ah, here? I bet there are apartments. Be better than squatting in the motel."

Squatting, 'paying in theory,' it is the same thing: right?

Lucy

Sisters. They fit together like sisters, somehow, in some nameless way. They don't move in unison, but there's something about them that seems in synch, that seems like two halves, one whole. Two sides, one coin. Light and dark, oh but no, not quite. Lucy mentions food, Delilah whips, and Lucy seamlessly moves into a space, the chill frost of her presence pushing at the crowd moving around them. Not enough to force anyone off their path, but just enough to make someone cringe, someone twist, someone miss an eyeful of blonde hair. Like a dance, but not quite. There is no stage, after all, hasn't been for years.

Her smile is wide. It narrows her narrow slits of her bright green eyes. "No, we wouldn't," she replies. Slide in, then, into the gallery. Slip through the crowd. If Delilah is a bright, bold ship, Lucy is its shadow in the water. See how she stops quickly, alert to Delilah's sudden pause even though her eyes were on the spread. She steps to her sister's side like she belongs there, like there's no other place where it's right for her to be.

She turns, tilts her head, the fall of her hair shifting over her shoulders as she takes in the photographs. They are of people, some of them. Up so close that in some the depths of their pores, the grit in the creases of their face are clearly visible. Some are of places, things. The mountains frozen in a sunset in shades of grey.

"Here?" she echoes, turning back to look at Delilah, surprised and also hopeful (but trying not to be that last one). She's told Delilah about the people she's met here already. The coffee shops, the girl with the laptop, the place with the alert for other Awakened (other oracles, she put it, is how she always describes their kind). An impossibly tall man she ran into (literally) in a club the night her senses went haywire and then went quiet. He gave her an address that, given it's location at least, suggests it's the nearest Chantry. Maybe. Could be some other gathering place, of course. Of particular note was the boy she met when she and Auggie played a coffee shop somewhere. Tall and funny and a little weird. They seem cool, she said. He seems cool, she meant.

She shrugs. Unlike her sister, Lucy can lie. Lucy can shrug things off like she's actually shrugging them off. Sometimes. She's better at persuading, but if she needs to hide something (or push it down, stop it stop it, interest never ends well) she can.

"It'd be cheaper." In theory. "It'd be cool to have a place that's ours."

Delilah

And for a moment her smile is almost prim: a Valentine of a mouth it curls up with even more presentiment of sly (shy, but that's not right: careful, tremulous). Bold, yes, but at the whim of the waves beneath; get? All light-catching sails, all just-waking gold creeping across the ship's deck and - let's lay the metaphor to rest. For a moment her smile is almost prim at that Here? of an echo, though it's easy to read the sudden rearing of uncertainty in the dark flash of her eyes. Delilah doesn't straighten; her posture is excellent, often remarked upon by strangers - women of a certain age or young men who want to leer at a dancer's back. But she does lower her head like a bull about to spear the sky with its horns, her nostrils flare and she settles herself where she's standing - or would if there weren't fucking carrots and brownies right there. Lucy's hope. She doesn't want to dash it. She shouldn't dash it. She shouldn't have brought it up. But at the same time, shouldn't she have? Because -

"Mmn. Yeah. Though I guess," hint of a drawl, "that it might be more Auggie and December's if we really did find a place. A real place. A place to close the gate and hang the key - " - this shadow of confusion, she rubs her palm across her forehead. Her head is still bull-lowered, stubborn, "But who knew Denver had stuff to do huh?"

"This does seem cool. We should do a reading. Ask the needle and thread."

Lucy

Lucy knows that uncertainty. That uncertainty has kept them bits of dandelion fluff, barely settling in one place for longer than a breath before that breath sends them sailing on to some other place. It's not just Delilah's uncertainty. They share a good many things, these sisters, and one of those things is - for whatever reason, for good or for not so good - is more than a touch of uncertainty. It always seems to hit them strongest in the off-times. The morning will bring Lucy's turn, for instance.

Which is why the suggestion of a reading is met with a raising of Lucy's sweeping eyebrows and a widening of bright green eyes. Her eyes are not the jewel-bright green of emeralds. They're the green of fresh spring grass, of newly unfurled leaves and all those other green growing-type things that Lucy herself can never touch again.

"We could, yeah. Should, I mean." A place with a gate and key, wouldn't that be nice? Of course, Lucy's mind goes to overgrown gardens secreted away behind wrought-iron fence posts. The gate would take some kind of special sort of key, something old and rusted that - stop. Stop stop stop.

She looks around like she's casing the joint, when really she's just looking at the crowd of people. Too many to settle things in the here and now. But later, maybe, in the quite closeness of their current living situation. Picking up a brownie, she looks at the photographs all huge and too-real on the walls as someone bumps into her side.

"That guy," that guy. Lucy somehow manages to bring him up once (and only once) almost every single day. "He said he knows some musicians in the area. Somebody's an agent. I could play for..." she pauses, mouth hitching over to the side, nose scrunching. Because Lucy likes to sing and she likes to play guitar and she love love loves performing. But her body was trained to do other things. Her shoulders shrug, one after the other, like a wave through her body as she rolls them out. "I'd probably get paid more. Or at all."

Lena Reilly

Normally on Friday nights, Lena's working. DJ Halcyon has spent the last several months rebuilding her reputation after she had to no-show several gigs, and she's finally back to the point where she can set her own schedule a bit. She's secure enough in her position among Denver's deejay scene (high, for the record) that if she wants to take a night off she can without people figuring she's a flake and start thinking about booking her less.

And tonight, for whatever reason, she's decided it's a good night to take off. Maybe it was just a feeling she had, or maybe she was a little worn down. She does that sometimes; gets worn down. Not that she considers her job a monotony; far from it. But when you're a caffeine junkie there are nights that you get a little tired in the mind and soul, and some of her meds sometimes have energy-sapping side effects. She always makes sure to schedule some nights off so she can rest up a bit, go be around people (if not part of them) and get a life high off the energy.

And that's what brought her to this place. She loves Santa Fe; it's her favorite part of the city. It's free, creative, buzzing. It's her vibe. And that Withering Pules of her energy perhaps finds a bit more strength as she walks along, heading toward the same gallery that Lucy and Delilah are in. It's another twist of fate, perhaps, that they're heading to this place, and she slips inside wearing a little grey tank top and jeans, a couple tiny braids the only twists in her otherwise free-flowing hair.

Lucy

Lena walks into a gallery, following a small crowd, and even if she doesn't have her mind open to the presence of other Willworkers, she can feel something. Something different in the air. Something cold and softly creeping, threading, weaving. Whispering over bare skin and over the naked toes of the sandal-wearers.

A moment more and perhaps she sees its source. The tall woman with the brilliant (bottle) red hair stands out, as does the blonde beside her, and besides. They're standing near to a table covered in a black plastic tablecloth and boasting a spread of finger foods and little desserts.

"No," she says, correcting herself, turning to reaching behind Delilah to snag a bit of brownie, which she tears roughly in half. One piece is held out to Delilah, the other is brought up toward her mouth. "Manager, that's what he said. Somebody's a manager."

It's as she's turning back toward the conversation that she catches sight of the deejay making her way in with the crowd. Lucy's brows lift and then her chin, and with the motions she almost seems to grow. Like Delilah, Lucy's posture is excellent, straight and tall she is, and graceful is the arm (with fingers carefully holding onto that chocolate square) that rises up to signal to Lena that she's seen her.

"That's Lena," she says, and then louder, "Lena!"

Serafíne

'Course Sera's around. Of course she knows people. She knows people who know people who know people, and - in turn - she is known. The gallery with food is a hole in the wall sort of place. It is not precisely a side street but somehow it looks like it should be a sidestreet. It has that element, concrete and glass, all unfinished, that make it feel like it sprung up yesterday and will be gone tomorrow.

Some things are better that way.

There is food though and there is wine; cheap wine from a box but the better sort of cheap wine from a box and either way it'll get you drunk if you stick with it. Either way it'll get you drunk and the rest of it seems all haphazard. Canapés that have the exquisite delicacy of a well-worked miniature next to brownies next to a bowl of Lay's Garlic Bread Potato Chips and those chips taste like garlic bread, you want them to be bread, is how much like garlic bread they taste, and some clever bastard has left the bag nearby so that you know ahead of time that These Aren't Your Standard Chips.

Sera is around but not here yet.

Her friends are here, though.

They're normal. Dan, with a plastic glass of red wine leaning back against a support pillar beneath the largest piece in the room, a sweep of reds and grays that feels industrial without defining a single angle. He is talking to the artist and flirting with the artist with a certain degree of familiarity, and the flirting is intense but casual, like they might hook up tonight or some other night or maybe they've hooked up before, but it isn't and will never be a big thing.

But Dan, tall, surfing above the crowd. Dee with her black hair in a flouncy dress that is black with a cherries print and 1950s inspired with a liquid movement and a petticoat edged in eyelet lace beneath the skirt. Others, you know.

No one you'd notice.

Lena Reilly

She gets that little breath of cold tickling at her consciousness like the frayed ends of an icy cloth, and a little shiver runs down her spine at it. There's a furrowing of Lena's delicate brows, warm brown eyes seeking out the source of that cool sensensation and then...

She sees it. She remembers Lucy from that little place where they ran into each other along with Grace and Yun. And from the small but glowing smile that hits her expression, she came away with a good impression of the woman. She raises a hand to Lucy and begins walking forward in strapped sandals, making her way in that direction. Delilah is given a friendly smile, though a bit more reserved since of course they have not yet been introduced.

"Hey Lucy. Nice to see you again." She stops close enough to them to be with them, but not so close as to invade personal spaces. "You come down here often?" She means the Arts District.

Delilah

Delilah takes the brownie-half offered without thought; as if it's rote; as if it's some little swiss clock precision-timed habit right on the hour every hour or maybe right on the twenty minute mark every twenty minute mark although that doesn't seem very Swiss clock-ish or precise. Then she looks at the brownie and her expression turns from stubborn bull-lowered (she could hold the fading moons in her horns, couldn't she) something or other into something more guilt-touched. Considering. If she eats this brownie, then she can still eat later if she- Delilah nibbles on the edge and looks guilty as she does so guilty but with this frisson-edge of pleasure not at the rebellion oh no but at the taste at finding a certain balance or thinking she's found one. That guy, Lucy says.

That guy, that guy, that guy.

Does that guy have a name? Del smirks, but her smirks have no sharpness and dissolve before they're even half-formed because she'd rather smile even if the smile is rather demure and sly (coy?), because that's how she looks: syrup-sweet mouth and eyes that are dark but might as well be a shallow pool look right through them.

"This guy," she starts to say, but then that's Lena. LENA! There are good chips that taste like garlic bread. It's okay to have one, right?

Maybe two. Yes, two. Nibble on the brownie, fastidious, and there's a little smear of brownie on her front tooth when she smiles back at Lena, this flash of a quick smile that's a little nervous and a lot curious.

"Hi," she says, introducing herself, "I'm Del, Delilah, and we've never been here before ever. But it's kind of cool, yeah? Is it always this crowded?"

ooc: I am aghast that took so long; this post is typed in WIND!

Serafíne

Is it always this crowded? Delilah asks Lena and no it is not always this crowded. Sometimes it is more crowded than this. Sometimes the crowd dissolves into itself before it has entirely formed. There is something organic to it, some hidden movement that is defined by the cracks in the sidewalk and the brush-strokes on that collection of miniatures made to look like those stiff, cardboard-y 18th century portraits from rural and revolutionary American, with sugar-skulls substituted in the midst of those unnatural poses.

Those are on the other wall, so tiny you have to get up close to see them, so tiny that displayed on brick as they are, getting up close to see them is nearly the point.

Oh, hello. Here is Serafíne, inside the door see, and hugging several someones you-don't-know, and even though she has not yet managed to get anywhere close to the refreshments, she already has a glass of wine in hand, is how good she is at First Fridays and Gallery Openings and Drinking. She is holding that glass with a sort of careless care as she wraps her leather-clad arms around strangers and drws them in and exclaims and spins and is pulled in a half-dozen-directions because don't you want to pull her places, too.

She pulls herself toward those miniatures or perhaps she is so-steered by the artist, a middle-aged woman of moderate height with long, straight hair threaded with gray in a long tunic and a long skirt and some chunky jewelry, who is otherwise remarkable except: look at those things.

There are people in the place (most people in the place) who are unwilling to break that gallery barrier. Who stand back and sort of look because isn't a gallery like a museum and aren't you meant to stand like that in a museum and aren't the only people getting close occasionally art students talking about brush strokes who the fuck talks about brush strokes.

Sera is does not give a fuck about distance and holds her wine in both hands and slides right up to the miniatures and starts to peruse them, nearly nose-to-point.

There are others mounted too high for her to see.

She would hop but: wine.

Oh, clever girl, Sera pulls out her phone and starts texting.

Lucy

Delilah is health conscious. Truth is, Lucy is, too. That training, you know. That life before. Don't eat that, don't eat this, do this and you'll lose five pounds you don't need to lose five pounds but really if you want that part you need to lose five pounds. And there is the simple health of it. Carrots or a brownie, hm. Could have both. Could deny the short-term pleasure of the one for the long-term benefits of the other. Could could could. Which is part of why Lucy shares. A half for one and a half for the other, that's better, yeah?

This guy. That grabs her attention back from where she's watching Lena make her way through the crowd to get closer. This guy. Lucy gives Delilah this look from the corner of her eye, all yeah? Where is that going? To a tease? To a warning? To a reminder of what happens when Lucy gets her hopes up about boys?

But then Lena is there, and then it's the three of them making a little three-person island next to the snack table. There are others in the crowd, but even if they're noticeable Lucy doesn't notice them. She's standing next to her sister, the night is falling softly outside, and she is surrounded by people. Lifting so slightly toward the balls of her feet (hard to tell because those boots she wears are heeled), she practically vibrates with a quiet, intense but subdued excitement. The calm before a storm, or the last clear night before a snowstorm.

She does not take any chips that taste like garlic bread because fuck she's all out of gum and the nearest gas station is the Conoco down at 6th which is blocks and blocks from where they are.

"Hey," she says back. And did she ever mention to Lena in that brief encounter that she had a sister? If she did, well, here she is. Here they are. Two sisters like night and day, dawn and dusk. Light and dark.

Delilah tells the deejay that they've never been here before ever and Lucy gives a nod to that. "We're still pretty new around here."

Lena Reilly

Delilah says they haven't been here, and Lucy says they're new. Lena remembers that last bit from the last run-in they had; Lucy said that she hadn't been around here long. But there is still information here; THEY'RE pretty new around here, which means that the two of them are a unit of some sort. So she smiles to Delilah, the warmth behind that bit of reservation. There was a point that she was like this, long ago. It's been a long time since Sera's seen this side of her; in fact, maybe she never saw it. They didn't interact much before the Hydra thing (she can think the word now) and so she may have not seen the friendly woman that Lena was before. But wass there, and it is there now.

"Nice to meet you, Del." Delilah gave a nickname, and Lena uses it. Nicknames are how we want to be seen usually, at least when we offer it. "I'm Lena, like Lucy said. And hey, we were all knew around here once."

She gets a feel for that familiar Resonance of Serafine; it tickles on the back of her mind. And the friendliness falters, just briefly, before it comes back up. That's a conversation she hopes she doesn't have to have now, here in public. Because they're not going to be able to be around each other until they have a conversation. But she lets it go for now, because she's not going to get worked up about it before it's time.

"Sister?" It's a question to the two; Lucy had mentioned a sister before. "So did we maybe run into each other in New York too, or just you and I, Lucy?"

Delilah

There is a striking young woman with half of her head shaved and the other half's a gold wheat-sheath spill of oh just gold and more gold at least to Delilah's eye and, did Delilah know it, that striking woman is also named for an angel but in a way which is more glorious. Delilah's wide-set eyes (her eyes are wide-set, generous and large, the liquid measure of which are all too too open; there is an air of surprise even when she is not surprised, or there would be if that weren't a lie) wander that-a-way. She's so close to the wall. Delilah stares in spite of herself, abashed. A yokel, though she is not a yokel: still.

She stares, misses any faltering of friendliness (no nervousness kicking higher), and the nervousness in her greeting diminishes a little when she looks back at Lena. Delilah reaches one hand casually for another chip but they're a little out of her reach so she has to really stretch her arm and she doesn't want to lean because that would be rude or no leaning is okay but turning that is what she doesn't want to do so she is desperately not turning and reaching and the bowl why is it so far.

Another demure flash of a smile, lights a candle in her eyes though she looks briefly at Lucy before back at Lena. "I like being new," she says like a confession. "I would be new all the time if I could be old too. We maybe," and the nervousness is back. Because what if they did. What if she doesn't remember. What if Lena doesn't remember. What about that night at that one club and it was five seconds. Or maybe there was no night. Either way, she looks a bit stricken, like she's going to be thought rude.

Delilah stops just because the question was technically addressed to Lucy. Delilah's fingers wiggle just over the chips so close; she realizes she can innnnch. And knock the bowl off the table.

Great. Delilah drops to the floor, not like somebody just told her to do push-ups, but with a measured and rather weary (brief hitch, one moment leaning that-a-way) grace, to shame-facedly pick them up.

Lucy

The gallery space is a shared space, it seems. One half brick exposed, paintings tacked into the wall. The other white, so white, with large black and white photographs of people, things, places, animals. Some macro some not. They're big, too. There's a man's face right there, all shades of soft grey and white, and that face is near as tall as Lucy in her bare feet. Sera's side has one artist. Lena-Lucy-Del have a balding man with skin like fresh-turned earth, wearing a colorful linen shirt untucked from an old pair of jeans. One can imagine he and the woman on the other side don't get along well. One would be wrong.

The table is shared between the spaces, the one with the snacks and such that is. The two sides, they are usually divided by a partition (it's cheaper to rent together, see, cheaper to go in as a duo in a space so large instead of a solo in something smaller), but tonight that partition has been pushed along its track in the ceiling. The place is huge now. Spacious.

But not, because people. People sweep in and people disappear back out again. They crowd in close around Lucy and Lena and Delilah, such that when Delilah, reach-reach-reaching for the bowl of chips and instead upends it, someone nearly steps on her hands. Nearly.

Delilah is worried about being perceived as rude. Lucy? "I don't know, you know, I don't quite remember seeing you there. I mean, I do but I don't, you know? It was-" crash goes the bowl of chips and Lucy is sweeping downward, every bit as graceful as her sister, vibrant red hair lifting from her shoulders as she drifts down into a crouch. She grins upward at Lena. "It was a long time ago, after all."

Shoulder to shoulder, she starts gathering up the chips back into the bowl, angling so that no one else comes close to thoughtlessly trampling Del's fingers. And so, shoulder to shoulder, she leans in closer to Delilah.

Serafíne

Sera is texting Dan to come pick her ass up so she can see the miniatures she cannot see from way down here, and it is way down here tonight because Sera is wearing her battered old Doc Marten's rather than a pair of the ridiculous heels she always sports and Sera wants to see the miniatures that are higher than her head.

And Dan, poor bastard, gets the text and rolls his eyes and shoots her a look across the crowd but of course he's going to stop flirting with another of the evening's artist and cut through the crowd and go pick her up because that is what he does: whatever she wants. And he does't even fucking mind it.

So Dan's cutting through the crowd past Delilah and Lena and Lucy when Delilah knocks over the bowl of chips and then ducks down to start picking them up and god knows what it is, chivalry or resonance or just human fucking decency, but there's a tall, skinny, tattooed hipster crouching beside Delilah as she picks up the chips. He grabs the bowl from where it skidded beneath the table (he is tall and his arms are both: long and tattooed) and hands it to her and grins through his beard.

"Here," handing her the bowl. "Don't worry about 'em. Let people stomp on them, right? Call it art."

And he doesn't touch her but he's sort of urging her upright with his hands framed around her though if she insists on picking them up well he will let her and go. But: either way he straightens. Says, "Lena, good to see you," to the DJ, and there's no evidence of awkwardness on Dan's part, no awareness of it, just a quick and rather polite smile, the sort you pass out like Nerds on Halloween, and then he's off through the crowd.

Finds Sera. Comes up behind her and picks her up. She is probably going to insist on something absurd like sitting on his shoulders right? But whatever happens next is left for later and they don't linger long.