[Nightmares]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 3, 6, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
SerafíneThere is in Capitol Hill a blond-brick three-or-so storey house, old-fashioned and four-square with a porch as wide as the building itself and gardens, front and back, well-loved, and a strange little bridge from the house proper to the second storey bonus room over the detached garage out back and an expansive and well-shaded garden that someone loved very well once, which someone is once-again trying to tend, though rather haphazardly. And in that house on Capitol Hill on that tree-lined residential street full of family homes and duplexes and family-homes and duplexes that have been turned into three or five or seven unit condos or apartment buildings, there is almost always some semblance of a party going on.
Sometimes it is quiet, see. After hours, a few stragglers on the porch with a bottle of whiskey at 3:00 a.m. and a couple of joints, after the bars have closed, music low in the air through the cracked windows, the sort of laughter that even drunk you try to keep low and hushed because something about that hour begs for quiet, pleads for it.
Sometimes it is low-key, a Sunday barbeque with the girls from the roller derby team and the co-workers from someone's something and the retired professors from three doors down.
Sometimes it is a fucking party, bodies packed into the rooms and every kind of drug you can imagine and the most ridiculously decadent everything, everywhere, and sometimes those just seem to last, see - for days and days and days, a constantly changing mix of people and personalities.
Tonight, well. Who knows what it's like tonight.
The front door's open but the front door is almost always open.
There's music from somewhere but there's almost always music.
There is, also, a unicycle on the front porch and a cabana bed in the back garden.
Of course there is.
Kalen HollidayKalen walks up the steps of the porch easily now. Grace like he had once will come later, but for now he walks on his own and that is...well...it is not enough really. There is this ceaseless war against evil. What could ever be enough. Still, it is progress. And Kalen, Kalen who is building libraries and herding new Mages and mentoring Virtual Adepts - he has never lost track of that.
But there is nothing for him to launch himself at right now. Nothing to fight.
So he's come here. Of his options, somewhere he might fall into a pile of people trumphs priests. It doesn't always, more than one priest could attest to that.
There is a cabana bed in the back garden and he almost laughs. Of course there is.
He doesn't head for it, not yet, instead he slides through the assembled people. Sera has mostly seen him when he's just not trying to be social. Or human. Sera met a Hermetic knight. But here, here is Kalen drifting and and between and through people and laughing. He lingers nowhere long enough to really have to tell anyone much of anything. And, perhaps most interesting to Sera, should she overhear, he introduces himself not as Kalen, but as Eli,
Serafíne1. Perception + Awareness?
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (2, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 6 ) Re-rolls: 3
Serafíne2. Overhear the name Eli? -1 difficulty for ridiculously supernatural awareness about where everyone is.
Dice: 4 d10 TN5 (2, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )
Richard[jeez serafine, you're clearly as imperceptive as a brick.]
Kalen Holliday[That! Awareness!]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 6, 6, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )
SerafíneSomehow Kalen is here. Maybe there was a mass-text, maybe he just decided to take Sera up on that invitation extended thoughtlessly the last time they saw each other. Maybe it was as simple as
haing a thing. u should come.
There's recycling in bins on the front porch and a half-full ashtray and that unicycle and a pair of tattooed girls making out, who barely notice him as he walks up the steps, without grace but walks, right, whole: no cane in sight, and inside the warm wood foyer and the maze of lower-level rooms, a front and back parlor and a powder room and a dining room and step leading up-up-up a with black and white portraits of Amelia Earhart and a spider-plant with spider-babies in a macramed holder in the holding and contemporary art on the walls alongside old lady collectibles and treasures and collections and photographs and left-behinds of all sorts, more than might be imaginable, and people people people, the sort of group that expands and contracts and invites-in and lets-go-free and
there is Kalen, who introduces himself as Eli, and somewhere, somewhere, somewhere - through the front or the back parlor, through the kitchen all in layered whites - white cabinets and marble and stone counters and windows overlooking the garden - packed with food and drink and the sort of people who linger near the food and drink - and he has a glimpse of the cabana bed out in the back garden (which also has: a rope hammock on a wooden frame, a mismatched assortment of patio furniture, three bongs and a hookah and a fire pit and Sera is such a fucking amazing hostess or just has such brilliant goddamned roommates that there are:
homemade marshmallows, artisan graham crackers, and fair-trade dark chocolate squares for the making-of-smores
as well as vodka-soaked marashino cherries to top the smores if you want to turn them into an alcoholic sundae instead,
and Sera is standing on the patio as Kalen ducks outside from the kitchen to the back garden, smoking a clove cigarette and drunk or fucked up or high or something and there is a strange air of reserve around her for all that she turns in to him as he walks out and embraces him, exclaiming,
"Eli!"
- smilingm a humming, drunken smile.
Kalen HollidayFor someone who decided to come to a place because contact, it takes him a second to return the embrace, because one of the few things he does as easily as he falls in love is spook. But it is Sera and there is probably no mortal danger lurking in any bushes waiting to ambush them, and so he wraps his arms around Sera and spends a few seconds breathing in the scent of her hair. He touches her often enough now, but this is the first time he has held her absent some kind of mystic crisis. It is the same though, in that he lets the rest of the world not matter until he lets her go.
"It's good to see you." And he means that, for all he is already releasing her, already back to scanning the crowd for threats or some sign of a crisis. His attention catches briefly on an argument, until he determines it probably isn't about to erupt into a shootout and his eyes continue to wander over the crowd.
"I love this place. How are you?"
SerafíneHer hair smells like smoke and sugar and spice and her skin smells like nightfall and her breath smells like whiskey and Sera is absolutely, entirely aware of everything, everything: those few strange, spare moments where she is hugging him and he is on the verge of spooking, alert, paranoid, aware and it feels like wrapping her arms around a statue and she thinks about statues and she thinks about David and then someone named David and then marble and then a drunken sunset spread across some glittering sea and then the rhythm of waves and then the rhythm of a beating heart and then,
oh!
Kalen-Eli is hugging her back, and Sera smiles and he can feel her smile, peripherally see? The edge-and-crinkle of it, drunk right? but aware and self-aware and lovely,
lovely.
"I love it too," agrees Sera, agreeably. "It was Dee's aunt's place? and like Dee inherited it and that's why we came to Denver." Though really, isn't it Sera's place, by now? Hasn't she transfigured it with her presence, the way they all do, with the places they live.
Some distant-but-insistent beat of music against the senses, through some window or some door. That argument getting heated over the Mekons' B-sides and also laughter and strange shadows and on and on.
"I'm drunk," Sera continues, declares to Kalen, smiling, smiling. She is absolutely drunk. She is also probably at least or two other things, judging by the way her eyes devour the light. "I'm - " a beat, a humming beat, and her eyes close and she's considering it because there is something sub-liminal, sub-lingual to-be-considered and she does consider it holds it inside her and comes back with, "good. I'm good.
"You though. You've changed. Right? What's fixed?"
Kalen HollidayKalen's hands cross the distance between them to rest lightly on her ribs, because he does like to be touching someone and he definitely likes to be touching Sera and because he is sometimes convinced that Sera does not stay upright by virtue of anything but some inherently mystical quality about her.
He smiles in response to her - her words, her smiling, just her. "I am not. But perhaps soon enough. I may be about to hunt down raspberry flavored something to go with the smores." He considers how to respond to that question because there are thousands of answers. For an instant they war on his tongue, and then, "Well. I got my hair cut, gained like five pounds, and I can walk again. among other things." There is some amusement there. "The details of which are a story for later."
RichardRichard was invited: perhaps by Serafine, more likely by word-of-mouth that has spread slow and far and wide and then touched, flame-to-gasoline, the edge of undergraduate life at DU. Then suddenly everyone knew, and at least one-tenth of everyone showed up.
So: there's Richard. Climbing out of a stuffed-full compact car, some Honda or Hyundai or Toyota or similar, laughing, pulling along two giggling girls and three equally-giggly guys and how many people are in that car and also how many hits have their already taken. "Hey!" he hails from the lawn, seeing Serafine. His friends echo and some bystanders think this is a great game and all of a sudden there's a whole chorus:
"HEYYYY!"
SerafíneHere's something, the way Sera's eyes track all enthused to his hair and perhaps then his stomach (gained five pounds!) and then drop to his leg and she is still smoking her cigarette, the kretek with the blue paper and the gold foil around the filter and the spicy-sweet scent and she takes a drag and exhales thoughtlessly out of one corner of her mouth, away from her body and his, smoke mingling with the smoke that drifts from the ceramic firepit in a long, slow-furling sort of flag.
And she ashes that cigarettes with a flick of her thumb against the filter's edge and she also does this away from her body and away from his body but she is, as well, reaching out to touch his leg, and then the hand in which he held his cane, and there is something reverent about this touch, from Sera, who is magic, who wears it on her skin and in her bones, some nights, and she then lets go of Kalen's hand and reaches up to pull him in for a kiss, tender, against his temple.
"You're fucking obsessed with raspberries, aren't you. I'm glad you can walk again."
And then there's a hey! and a chorus of HEYYYY! and Sera is rising onto her tiptoes and waving all enthusiastically back at Richard, informing Kalen that,
"It's the Giant!"
and,
"Have you met Richard?"
--
When Richard makes it into earshot, Sera will introduce them both.
Kalen HollidayFive pounds hasn't done much to cure Kalen of looking like a scarecrow, Sera can't see any real evidence of weight gain. His expression softens when she starts touching him, watching her quietly. He is different with the crowd. He is the same with her.
And then he is laughing. "I have met Richard. Briefly." He does not point out that she was there. He briefly considers that Richard might be Named Jolly. He hasn't seen those commercials in awhile though, and Names are so much more complicated than that. Still, he turns toward Richard, and this time he smiles. He moves his hands away from Sera's ribs, freeing her to greet Richard, because Sera believes in hugs and doesn't hesitate about them. Nothing reserved about Sera. Kalen will more likely not hug Richard, but god knows. There are definitely enough drugs here to make that happen
RichardEarshot, then handshake-shot. Richard, though he thinks Kalen looks somehow familiar, can perhaps be forgiven for not really remembering the exact location or circumstances of their first meeting. He was, after all, at the tail end of a very long journey. Also: dirty and unkempt and bearded, like some nomad wandered in from forty days in the desert.
The Richard that shows up tonight is quite different. This Richard is clean and kempt and beardless. He has fantastic golden hair that goes so well with his fantastic golden tan. He shakes hands with Kalen, and -- yes, he is rather giant-ish; even standing a step down on the porch they are eye to eye.
"Nice, Kalen," he says, which must be shorthand for nice-to-meet-you. He sweeps his friends forward, "This is Jennifer, Caileigh, Rob, Matt, and Andy.
"We heard about your party," he adds, Serafine-wise. "You do this a lot?"
Serafíne"Hey," Sera's smoking and she's holding her cigarette carefully away from her body, almost but not quite like a joint, and she's all engagement as she opens up to greet Richard's friends. "Drinks and food in the kitchen, edibles are fucking marked. You should try the sugared violets, yeah? We try to smoke outside, not in. This is Eli. I'm Serafíne. Call me Sera, yeah?"
And there's something about Sera, right, opening herself up, pulling people in. She believes in fucking hugs and she opens her arms to Jennifer and Caileigh, wraps herself around them, all careful of her cigarette and their hair, and she hugs them while she's explaining the set up and where to go and what to get and where to find it.
"Otherwise," and she's working her way down the line of Richard-and-friends though the gentlemen do not receive the same sort of immediate embrace, and then there's Richard, who is a Giant! " - make yourselves at fucking home."
- and reaches up (and up and up and UP) and hugs him too, wraps her arms around his neck and she smells like smoke and whiskey and patchouli just the way you expect her to smell and she inhales in the embrace and then she lets Richard go and takes one more drag and then drops her cigarette into a concrete urn of damp sand by sliding glass doors leading to the patio, smiles, see, as she takes in the warm vibe in the back garden. Edison lights in the trees and the fire pit and fucking SMORES and people getting high and people arguing and/or agreeing, geekily, about obscure punk bands or second-wave-Nu Metal-Dream-Pop or what the fuck ever and people making out and the stars visible wheeling through the night sky and does not, does not think at all about where she might have been, a year ago tonight, but that knowledge is also in her skin and makes the immediate brilliance the night that much more palpable,
and Richard wants to know if she does this often, and Sera, she smiles, see -
"Yeah. There's pretty much always someone here. We have a good time."
Waits until his friends have filtered away to get stoned or make out or get drunk, and introduces Kalen all over again, to Richard:
"You remember Kalen right?"
Kalen HollidayThe collection of people Richard introduces are offered a hand, and smiles. Richard can have his hand again, because he came here to touch people after all. Sera has to reach up and up and up and he wonders, briefly, if hugging Richard would count as stretching. If his skin tastes like the sea. At least he isn't fucking cold.
And then Richard and Sera are talking and he is letting them talk and his eyes are out on the crowd again. That argument is done, no one is screaming and gushing blood, nothing that is not supposed to be is on fire. Look. You just never know.
RichardRichard's new friends, who are actually just some people Richard ran into after Intro to Psychology or something, who he overheard talking about coming here and he wandered over and next thing you know there were all crammed into a car driving over, though looking at them you'd think he's known them all semester, all year --
Richard's new friends love the hugging. They love the way Serafine looks, feels, seems. She's so fucking hip, she's so fucking raw, she's exactly the sort of person they think of when they think of having The College Experience and they wonder if she will -- they hope she will -- introduce them to exactly the sort of Experiences they came to college to have tonight.
The setup's explained to them. They break to mingle, to sample the sugared violets, to fucking get higher than they already are. And meanwhile Sera is hugging Richard, who is very laidback and unawkward about the whole business of being hugged by hip, raw, stoned, interestingly-clad women. It doesn't even matter that he's like a foot taller. He hugs her back, easily, one arm squeezing around her back for a moment.
Sort of stays there, that arm -- moves up a little so it's slung easily, amicably, camaraderie-ly around Sera's shoulders as he turns his attention to Eli again. Only now it's not Eli, it's Kalen. Richard looks intrigued.
"Yeah, I think I met you the night I got back to Denver. Why the name switch?"
SerafíneLike a foot taller technically means more than a foot taller but Sera always squares the circle and evens the fucking odds with footware that shortens her stride and engages her calves and generally makes her considerably taller than she would otherwise be, though never (or: rarely) as tall as the people among whom she spends most of her time.
"Oh, fuck! Yeah, Kalen was there. And that girl, right? The new girl." Sera stopped time with her. She does that sometimes, because she can feel the seconds like molecules between her teeth. And she has absolutely no objections to a companionable arm slung over her shoulder, see, it makes her feel like a fucking bro which she finds rather delightful, as it makes her toes feel strange or maybe, just maybe, that is the MDMA.
It is something anyway.
"Get this, he was just like coming back from Shangri-La to fucking Denver that night and came in for coffee and there we all were." She is interestingly-clad. A tiiiiny leather skirt that seems made of straps and strops and rivets and buckles, and thigh-high fishnets, ripped natch held up by black garters, with heeled industrial-looking boots and dark make-up and a half-shaved head and flashes of black-ink on her arms and hands whenever she moves them. A flannel shirt mostly buttoned mostly in the middle right now and a house full of expectation and delights and debauch.
Richard's guests will assuredly have an Experience.
HawksleyAnd down the street comes a low, slinking car, the color of espresso powder dusted with gold. Real gold. No pyrite, not at this level, which is not the level of the party or the vast majority of the partgoers. This is the 24-karat life: the owner of the car is already a bit drunk and the window is down for his face to be, on occasion, flecked with the intermittent rainfall that has marked the day and night. This is the 24-karat life: the driver of the car may as well call the owner his liege lord, his prophet, his son, even though he never takes his eyes off of the duty of driving to look on that golden, rain-touched face.
The car slows and settles, like a bird beating wings against the sky to gentle its plummeting to the earth, and stills not at the curb -- which is packed, on a Friday night in one of the cool days of mid-spring -- but in the middle of the street. The passenger door opens and Hawskley rises from it, taps it closed, and stands there a moment, taking in the night which fell so, so quickly that he hardly even noticed until he realized he couldn't see with his sunglasses on.
He walks away, toward the house, and the car drives off, perhaps to some coffee shop, some all-night diner, to wait for summons. The liege lord, prophet, and son of the servant's heart,
strolls up towards the house on Corona, feeling the corona it has of magic, of mages, of stormy tesselating liminal visceral thalassic enthralling power. He smirks a bit, and pushes open the door, and they know him here, it's been a year, a year is forever in this sort of group. The ones who don't immediately notice and know him know that they're on the outside, they haven't gotten in yet, the others are knitted together in their knowledge of him and their knowledge of Sera and their knowledge of what transpires and what it feels like when he is here with Sera when he is here whispering in Dee's blushing ear or leading Dan somewhere.
Some of them call him Davie. Some of them call him Hawksley. He corrects neither, and he does not appear to care -- when asked -- which he is called. Not much. Not at Sera's house. He could have twenty names here, and they'd still know him.
Someone hands him a little glass pipe, freshened up recently, and he is cordial and grateful enough in passing as he walks past everyone, out, smoking the purplish-green as he passes through the kitchen. This is the life, isn't it? And it is golden.
Kalen Holliday"How do you live with just one?" Kalen asks, but it's reflexive and caught somewhere between distance and warm amusement. And then he pays attention to words that Sera said a second after she says them, like they ran through a filter or three to get his attention.
"Shangri-la?" And now he's curious enough that he stops searching for some new and exciting lurking terror and looks back at Richard with something resembling actual focus.
That focus lasts until the second he tastes peaches and sunlight and for a few seconds the ground falls away. Hawksley. He breathes in the feel of Hawksley's Resonance the way he breathed in the scent of Sera's hair.
No. Focus. Richard. "Really?"
Richard"Nooo," Richard is shaking his head, and Richard is laughing -- though not unkindly, and certainly not at Kalen's expense. "I spent a semester abroad. I think Sera just thought Shangri-La sounded more exotic than Kolkata."
They are on the porch; thus they can see the street. Plenty of people can see the street. Plenty of people are all a-gossip: he must be a celebrity, he must be famous, who is he?
Richard, twisting about on the porch, looking over his shoulder at the newcomer, tips his chin that-a-way. "Isn't that your friend Hawksley?"
Serafíne"Mmmm," Sera is humming in response to Richard, feeling Hawksley's resonance, sun-drenched and soaring, in almost precisely the same way that Kalen feels it, as if she could become lost in it, the warmth of the sun soaking into her bones, the endless promise of a golden summer, the absolute defiance of gravity. Such immediate pleasure does she take in his presence - blocks away, see, with her senses blown so fucking open - and then a block away, and then down the street, and emerging from the car and navigating all familiar through the house he knows, which knows him almost as intimately as it knows Sera, - that she tips her head aslant against Richard's bicep with the pleasure-of-it. "That is Hawksley."
Without having to look-and-see him.
"Shangri-La. Kolkutta. Kathmandu. You should've seen it, Kalen," perhaps not remembering that Kalen did see it. "He had," she is speaking to Kalena and Richard even as she turns and ducks a bit beneath his arm and is reaching for Hawksley as he emerges onto the patio, "a Grizzly Adams beard, man."
Which he did. Which she loves, right now.
Because she loves everything.
Because everything breaks her heart.
Then she's lifting her arms to wrap them around Hawksley's neck and hug him and wrap her arms around his neck and cup the back of his skull seeking to bring him down to her so she can tip her forehead against his and murmur something to him by way of greeting.
Serafíne"I knew you'd come. I got you a present.
"Unbutton my shirt."
Kalen HollidayHis eyes widen as Sera describes the beard, as though this is the first he's ever heard of such a thing. Because...why not play? And then she is reaching for Hawksley and the only thing thing that seems like it isn't tide-bound and liquid and mercurial is the sense of sunlight.
Perhaps he should have just brought a bottle of whiskey to the church.
He looks back to Richard, but the sense of connection that was there with Sera is absent. He smiles anyway. "Considering all the places I have and haven't been, I think Iowa farm towns might seem more remarkable to me."
Richard
There are hugs, and there are hugs, and there are hugs. The one Sera gives Hawksley is the latter, and Richard watches for only a single warm moment before turning his eyes politely away. To Kalen, of course:
"Not much of a world traveler?"
SerafíneSera's arms are still around Hawksley's neck, her forehead against his forehead, and he may or may not be unbuttoning her shirt while they all stand there on the patio of her house.
No, although his player is absent now because the internet is a cruel, cruel mistress, he is absolutely likely to be unbuttoning her shirt just as she directed him to do and nothing about the moment - for all its remarkable intimacy, says that have either the need or the desire for privacy.
It's just that sort of place, see.
It's just that sort of night.
Kalen Holliday"On the contrary. I've been all over, though for most places, at least recently, never long." He looks over the crowd again, then nods. "I should...." He waves at that other people, the place where there are smores to be made. "I was on a quest for raspberry liqueur." He smiles a little. "Perhaps later."
SerafíneStill the moment folds into itself, right, and breaks itself apart. There is an egg and it is cracked open and the yolk is sliding golden and the Hermetic Who Loves Framboise goes to search through the liquer cart for one of the crown-topped bottles and the other Hermetic with Many Names unbutton's the Cultist's stupid flannel shirt which she was only keeping buttoned for the pleasure of the reveal and she turns around and he slides it off her shoulders and she is then mostly-nude, right, this mirrored disco-ball mosaic affixed to the swell of her breasts, nothing else to even suggest anything like modesty, tattooes scrawling up her flank and her hands and her arms, the inky-coil of one visible just beneath her right breast, her torso lean as hell, primarily because she never remembers to eat, does she? Except for the mornings when grease and carbohydrates are necessary to fight the hangover. Because she lives the way she does, burns every candle at every end as if there were no end to the potential fuel.
And then there are strangers and not-strangers and the night opening, see - generous, emergent, emulsifying somehow, and Hawksley and Sera disappear for longer than you really quite understand but the night goes on and the party goes on and this get lovely and loud and weird and then they contract and get quiet and chill and delicious and some people move outside and others slide inside and others split and others hook-up and fish cab-fare not car-keys out of the bowl in the front foyer and someone, somewhere has replaced the 80s post-punk with an acoustic guitar that seems to come from everywhere and no where and maybe you are too high to know where and
oh,
hello giant.
Richard is sitting on a bench or in a camp-chair or in the grass or what the fuck ever part of a loose circle that expands and contracts around the firepit and may or may not have a marshmallow on a stick when Sera, loose and louche, appears behind him, and she's barefoot or rather: stocking-footed now, and one of her stockings has started to roll down and she's wearing a different skirt and more than a few of her mosaic-pieces have come off the masterpiece that was discoboobs but hey,
but hi!
She settles her hands on Richard's shoulder and uses him as leverage as she climbs over the bench and god only knows what hour it is.
The stars have wheeled.
Sera breathes: in and in and in, and tips her head backwards, and glances up at the sky.
"Do you miss being far-away?" she asks him, which is a strange thing to ask, but perhaps he understands what she means.
RichardRichard is not the hedonist Serafine is, or at least the hedonist he thinks Serafine must be. Cultist, isn't she? It's neoracism, mage edition. Regardless: it's not like she does anything to dissuade his assumptions. Just look at her disco boobs.
We digress.
Richard is not the hedonist he thinks Serafine must be. He does not go to these debauched wild parties very often, though it would be inaccurate to say he avoids them, or that he never goes to them at all. Still; the last party that resembled this that he can remember was --
-- okay, well. There are a few. But the last one that we wish to mention is the one that his Acarya, of all people, took him to. A party full of mages and magic. A party that started with the single weirdest trip he's ever had and ended with waking on the lawn half-undressed with a girl named ... god, what was her name. He knew it then, but ultimately one night stands are one night stands and all he remembers now is that she was Dutch, and they gave her a ride home, and they were easy and unembarrassed and happy on that too-bright morning.
We digress again.
Richard is near the fire, later in the night. He has not devolved to one night standery just yet, though perhaps the night is headed that way. He is hanging out. He has made new friends, as he does: his new friends are gathered around the fire with him and someone is rambling on about something and he is just watching the flames dance. He startles a little when a hand lands on his shoulder, but it's not a big startle. More like -- an awakening, as though a moment ago he was almost hypnotized. He looks up. Disco-boobs comes clambering over the bench to drop down, or not.
He tilts his head back too. Looks at the stars, then closes his eyes. The sky is wheeling overhead. He is suffused with chemicals and borrowed euphoria.
"Sometimes," he answers, honestly. "Even before I ... y'know. Involved myself with Awakened life, I traveled a lot. Sometimes for competitions. Sometimes just for pleasure. You can get used to that sort of thing. Always being somewhere new."
He opens his eyes. Looks at her.
"I like it fine here, though. I like being here too, not-traveling."
SerafíneSera favors Richard with a smile, strangely wistful. It is could be easily interpreted as a late-night-coming-down sort of smile, as a party's-over sort of smile, but she's not coming down and the party isn't every really over for her, is it. Just banked for a while.
There are always embers and they always flare up again.
So, slant-wise and strangely-wistful and easily under- or over-interpreted, that glance, wreathed in smoke from the slow-dying fire.
"If you pay enough attention to yourself, though, you can always be somewhere new. Even when you're in the same place."
She says it musingly, lazily. Reaches for one of the marshmallow sticks and uses it not for smores but to stir the embers and watch the flames spark and flair.
"I never traveled much. When did you stop swimming?"
Richard"I still swim," Richard says, which is of course not what she's asking. "I just don't compete anymore," he adds, confessional. "I quit that after London. It was time."
SerafíneThat phrase, it was time, makes her hum. A hum in the back of her throat and the back of her mind, in the connective tissue of her body. Time: doesn't she seem these days just a little bit unmoored from it. Free, somehow, from its dauntless imperative.
And she is wrapping her arms around her lower torso not out of any sense of anything like shame or modesty (she has neither and in any case she does not cover her mirrored breasts) and not because she is cold but because she wants to do so.
Which is why she does everything.
"Why was it time?"
Richard"It just was," he replies, which isn't Richard being mysterious or unforthcoming. It's an answer. It's not a very good or clear one, perhaps -- but it is an answer, and a truthful one.
A moment later he tries a little harder, "Your body's not like your mind, you know? It has limits. It reaches a peak and then that's it. I'd reached my peak. I could feel it in my bones. I knew I was as good as I'd ever be, accomplished all I ever could, and I was happy with that. I didn't want to be one of those athletes way past their prime, still clinging to some faded dream of glory until all they actually had accomplished became tawdry and tarnished.
"It was just time to stop. Move on, do something else. I'd ignored my mind all those years I was honing my body. So, now I hone my mind."
A pause. Then:
"What about you? What did you do before ... this?"
SerafíneHe says that the body's not like the mind and asks her if she knows? And the truth is, she doesn't: she does not know what it means to me an elite athlete, what it means to feel oneself in prime condition, honed and sure, fast as fast can be: a machine, an animal made-to-move except in the ways she still is an animal made-to-move from moment to moment and experience to experience, whatever they may be.
But her eyes, see, drunk or fucked up or stoned or whatever as she is, are quick on his profile, tracing the pale line he slaces out in the darkness, listening, listening.
That look slides away when he asks her what she did before this and see, Sera's looking at this. The remnants of the party in the back garden, the Edison lights slung through the trees, the dying fire, all of it.
"I don't remember all of it." Quietly, echoing his phrase unconsciously. "You know? But I've fucking always done this. We were in Raleigh-Durham before this. Dan and I went there to get away from NYC, met Dee and Rick there after our old drummer decided he wanted to go to med school in the fucking Carribbean. Well, before he did that, we knew 'em but never played together.
"So we started.
"They graduated and Dee inherited this house from her aunt so, here the fuck we are. You knew I was in band, right?"
Of course she is.
Isn't she a fucking rock star.
RichardRaleigh-Durham. Richard laughs a little at that, half-disbelieving. Hard to imagine a girl like her out there, amidst the Carolina pines and the desolation. And, sure, the world-class university, but -- god, it was just so Southern.
"I didn't know that," he says, re: the band. "Doesn't surprise me too much, though. You got any albums?"
And so -- like that -- that quiet little confession of her own, that disturbing little fact that she doesn't remember what happened to her before all this, goes rather unremarked. Maybe it's a form of kindness: the same way he didn't pry into Lucy's 'condition' that other night. Maybe some things he considers private, inviolate; something you just don't ask about the first or second or third time you meet someone. The first time you really have a conversation with them.
"You should send me some mp3s," he adds -- a hint of playfulness here, "if you guys were any good."
Serafíne"Naw." Sera shakes her golden head, the loose bottle-blonde curls, opens her mouth, laughing. The moment before is passed, and she doesn't linger on it and doesn't expect him to and tells him: truthfully but with as much of a soft-pedal as she can, that she does not remember everything before this. But who does, who would, for fuck's sake, look at the drugs she does on a regular basis. "Dan and I've written a few songs you might've heard, but they were all recorded by other people.
"The band's more - " Here she catches her lower lip between her teeth, and there's nothing bashful about that gesture, just some visceral pleasure, so briefly withheld. "The band's a fucking experience. We kick ass, but if you wanna experience it -
"you've got to come see us. On stage, you know? Live, not fucking Memorex. Hey, you want a fucking shot? I'm gonna get a fucking shot."
Richard"All right," says Richard, rising to the challenge such-as-it-were. "Let me know where your next gig is. I'll see if I can swing by and," a little smirk, air-quotes, "experience it."
And also:
"Nah." He leans back on that bench. "I'm gonna sit here and soak it all in a little more. Go on ahead. I'll catch up with you later."
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