An old white Econoline van sits in the driveway of the chantry. North Carolina license plates, and a half-dozen or more bumper stickers from the strangest of roadside attractions to be found throughout the midwest adorn the rear. The windows are tinted and in any case it is or soon will be dark outside. Call it dusk, settling over the spine of the mountains to the west.
It is cool enough and the air is dry enough now that steam billows from the pool of the spring, drifting dense and warm until the wind catches and dissipates the clouds. Sera's in the hotspring, drunk enough that the heat makes her feel light headed and also high enough that the feeling of lightheadedness makes more than her head spin. It makes the world spin. She can feel herself connected to the spine of it, the axis points deep below, the running stitch neatly threaded through the joint of her thumb, and on, and on, and on.
Dan is with her. Of course he is. And while she's in the water he's stretched out on the stone, fully dressed in skinny jeans and a button-up short-sleeved plaid shirt, blond hair and his scruffy blond beard, bow-tie undone around his neck, sitting right behind where she lounges in the pool. Cradling her head when she leans back into him.
IanIan made note of the van in the driveway when he pulled in and parked his car, but he didn't yet have the association to attach a particular owner to it. Outside, the sky was a low, dusky blue, and the late-spring plant-life around the property was in full, lush bloom. Ian took a moment to regard the scenery when he stepped out of the car, then pocketed his keys and began to walk around the outside of the building, making his way toward the node.
Evidently, he wasn't the only one who'd had this particular inclination. When Ian drew close enough to make out the details of Sera and Dan, he slowed his pace. Contemplating, perhaps, the merits of coming back another time. (Later, when the stars were out and most people would be asleep.) But it was a long drive, and he was here, so he let his feet take him to the edge of the rocks around the pool, then crouched down on the balls of his feet and offered a nod to Dan and Sera.
"I guess we had the same idea."
Except that Ian wasn't really dressed for the water. He had on jeans and a t-shirt and a very expensive-looking pair of boots that probably would not tolerate getting wet.
"Mind a third?"
SerafíneLight reflecting off the surface of the swirling water - skylight, twilight, the half-shed gleam from the windows of the house proper - makes it impossible to tell what Sera is wearing, but her neck and shoulders are bare and though her hair is pulled up and back into a loose and sort of self-tying knot, the ends are damp and dark from it.
There is something loose jointed and liquid about the way she moves the back of her skull against Dan's thigh as Ian approaches and sinks down at the edge of the pool. Sera is all sharp-featured, the aquiline nose and deep-set eyes lined with thick black liner, the quick little mouth curling in a rather self-indulgent smile as she glances at Ian and says something in her mind that doesn't exactly make out out of her mouth, then tips her head back, see, back, to look up at her consor in what could easily be read as a mute appeal.
"We don't mind," the tattoo-covered guy says, quiet.
Then Sera pivots her head back to look up at Ian, and says, "This is Dan." She's remembered how her voice works. Breathes in and in and in and in and exhales.
Ian[Oh, I'll bite. Empathy: What was that look?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )
SerafíneFirst and second and third look: Ian can tell that Sera is high. Not stoned-high but something-else high. Something pupil-enlarging and sense altering and she is drifting, a bit lost in sensation, coming out of that haze only when something demands a sharper-focus, as now. Ian. Beneath that, Ian catches a sense of something tangled and sharp in her, which is mostly quiescent now, but which she cannot entirely swallow these nights. Also: there is a strange kind of challenge, there, or perhaps disbelief. Half the time she remembers him as a cat. And cats hate water.
Ian"I remember."
Ian's mouth lifted at the edges in a soft shadow of a smile. Maybe Dan remembered that day at the park, with Sera in those ridiculous (and impressive) heels. Certainly Ian did. Sera's own memory was a less certain thing. She looked at Ian with that languid, self-indulgent smile, and he tipped his head lightly to one side as though attempting to decipher some meaning from it. Whatever he saw, he offered no direct response.
"Ian," he introduced himself to the Consor. There was a roll of muscles in Ian's legs when he pushed back up to a standing position. He pulled his boots and socks free, one by one, and set them carefully out of reach of any easy splash-radius. If Sera expected him to shy away from the water, she would find herself surprised on that count - just as Kalen had been. If there was something feline in Ian, it wasn't of the water-hating variety.
He pulled off his shirt in a fluid motion and dropped it in the grass, then went for the belt on his jeans. Sera and Dan would have time to stop him, if the idea of watching him strip down made either one uncomfortable. But there was nothing overtly flirtatious or exhibitionist in the way he shed his clothes. This was something else. A ritual.
Grace[Awareness!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 4, 8, 8) ( success x 2 )
GraceIf the two Mages are paying attention, they might notice the sudden shift in the air -- the focused sharpness of Grace. If they're paying very good attention, they might just notice her before they hear the door to the backyard roll open. And they might expect her physical presence soon.
They'd be wrong on that last part, because of course Grace appears on the scene right when Ian starts to strip. And oh, watch as Grace experiences a human BSOD.
She just stands there for a few seconds, blinking, as if trying to figure out if this male model getting naked thing is really happening, and then blurts out: "Oh, Ian, I wanted to ask you about Sky. I'll... ah... later. You guys are... seem... uh. Busy."
Totally smooth.
Serafíne"We met before, Sera - " Dan is reminding her, bending down to smooth a few damp curls over her left temple. Touching her lightly and regularly to ensure that she remains somehow rooted, somehow grounded in her body on nights like this, when she is doing so many things to leave it behind. To melt into the knotted connections that dot the matrix of the universe. To throw herself into them, let herself go until there's nothing left. " - at the park, when you insisted on wearing those boots - "
Which livens her up, see. A supple arch of her spine and the curve of her left breast crests above the water and she's smiling see, widely now at Dan. "My boots!" Delighted by the thought of them, her body humming with that delight, squirming enough to make the water choppy as she kicks out her feet as if she might just see them on her feet.
Neither Dan nor Sera stop Ian as he strips. Dan watches as Ian pulls off his shirt, not-quite-covertly, but not precisely overtly either.
Sera is not watching as Ian strips down, but her attention is drawn slantwise by the line of Dan's energy, that not-quite-covert glance, and so Sera is looking up and about to say something to Ian when -
Grace,
oh Grace,
poor Grace.
IanAnd then there was Grace. Ian glanced over his shoulder toward her and released a quiet huff of laughter, his hands hovering over the top button of his jeans.
"It's fine, Grace. You aren't interrupting anything."
There were eyes on him now. Ian felt them, but mostly ignored it. If he was at all self-conscious, it didn't show in the way he stripped off the rest of his clothes. And to be fair, there wasn't much there to be self-conscious about. He had a dancer's body, all gracefully etched lines. He could have modeled for an art class, if he'd had the time and inclination. But he wasn't trying to model for anyone right now - he just wanted to get in the water. So that was what he did, stepping down into the hot spring until the water covered his waist and the steam curled against his skin. With a slow sigh, he sat back into the groove of the rock shelf and sunk lower, leaning his head to look up at the sky.
GraceGrace doesn't actually just stand there and stare at Ian any longer, oh no. When he goes for the jeans, she turns around. Good thing, too, or they might be able to see the glowing red face of hers even as far away as they are.
"I'm not?" she asks, apparently to the house.
"Hi Sera, hi Dan," she says, and then waves... at the house.
Serafíne"Hey Grace," this is Dan, quiet. Watching Ian with a certain withheld appreciation until the other man slips into the water, then bending down once more to plant a kiss on Sera's temple and ease the crown of her head off his thigh. He is so very gentle with her, acutely aware of the state she's in, cupping her head and murmuring something to her that makes her draw back her shoulders and shake her head, but whatever passes between them is low-voiced, a barely audible murmur.
Then Dan is standing, a long and fluid arc of motion. Not graceful the way Ian is graceful, but with a physical immediacy that means that Dan is at least present in his body, more than most. Barefoot on the flagstone, he says,
"You want anything to drink?" and seems to be addressing Ian and Grace, then, and he's already in motion, laying a warm, calloused hand on the back of Grace's shoulder as he passes her to head into the house, dropping his mouth to her ear to murmur.
"Safe to turn around now. He's in the water." - right in her ear.
--
"Do you know what you feel like?" This is Sera, to Ian, after he has slipped in to the hot spring. Now she's looking at him, through the stream, with those dilated pupils and that rather far-away expression. Her voice is low, a big rough - perhaps from the heat or the moisture, perhaps something else. It seems to be more than a rhetorical question though, from the lilt of her chin and the damp and slanting directness of her gaze.
Ian"No underwater orgies today," Ian responded to Grace with a light, dry tone. When Sera asked if he knew what he felt like, he looked at her with a veiled expression and did not immediately respond. Instead he lifted his arms out of the water and propped them on the rocks behind him.
A week and a half ago, he'd come to this place to heal. There'd been raking claw marks on his leg and his side - evidence left behind from a creature that had once been not all that dissimilar to himself. Except that Ian was not a cat, whatever the impression he gave. He was, and he was not. It was a tricky thing to describe - being one thing, while another lived in your bones.
He didn't say anything, but he nodded. Slowly, and with meaning. (Yes.)
Then to Grace he said: "What did you want to ask me about?"
GraceThank goodness for Dan, the only sane one present. Grace gives him a thankful smile and a nod, but no indication that she'd like something to drink. Maybe she hadn't even heard him.
So, she turns around and creeps up on the hot spring, and sits a little ways away from it, on the rock ledge surrounding a birdbath gone overgrown with Sid's Working.
"Haha, underwater orgies. Right," she says, trying to be a little more comfortable with the current situation, because she does want to talk to Ian about something.
"You sent me some vague texts, man. I'm glad to hear everyone made it, but how did it go? How is Sky?"
SerafíneWithout Dan to lounge against, Sera sinks deeper into the water, and tips her head back against the stone. This supple skim of humor crests her mouth as Ian avows that there are no underwater orgies, but she does not seem entirely connected to the place or the moment, does she, and it is not entirely clear that the humor arises from his comment or from something inborn and internal.
Something about the directness of Ian's attention when he answers her - wordlessly - draws her dark gaze back to him, and there it lingers.
Strangely wry as she closes her mouth around the assurance that yes, he knows what he feels like, and swallows whatever words were in her mouth.
Ian"He'll be better when we find Claire, but physically he's fine. He was able to heal himself once I got the roots out."
Sera, of course, had no frame of reference for any of this. Although presently she seemed as though very little could disturb her thoughts. Ian didn't make an effort to explain any of it beyond his simple response to Grace's question, and it felt a bit as though perhaps he did not want to talk about it. That his vagueness stemmed from more than just his catty disposition.
"There was a fight, but nothing we couldn't handle. Then Alyssa called a spirit to help cleanse the area."
Ian let his arms slip and ducked his head briefly underwater. When he came up, he slicked back his hair and wiped the wetness from his eyes. Warm droplets caught in his eyelashes and traced thin lines down his face.
He didn't say anything about the man whose body he'd cut in two.
"You look like you're on something really nice," he offered to Sera.
Grace"Good. I didn't tell you guys all the details afterwards, because I was exhausted, but... when the thing saw me, it tried to trap me in a hallucination. Sky was there, and he helped me through it," she says, and there's a bit of softness to her voice that neither of them have heard out of her since she appeared. Sky made a bit of an impression, it seems.
"I tried to tell him to hold on, but he didn't think he was going to make it. I'm really glad he did. He's a nice guy."
SerafíneIt's true. Sera has absolutely no frame of reference for the question and answer session between Grace and Ian. She's present, right, lounging in the water, her head aslant, her fingers somehow, strangely, still attached to her body. Her lungs working, her heat beating, the world all wrapped around her and written into her skin.
And she doesn't ask questions.
Doesn't ask anything.
She has to hear the softness in Grace's voice, doesn't she. She hears everything, Sera, throws herself out there and winds reels herself back into her body and she has to hear the softness in Grace's voice, and listen there is a flicker of awareness, there. A certain way she lifts her chin and then her body to glance upward, but there is only so much room for softness inside her now, and she has too many stories on the back of her tongue tonight to ask for another one to add to the repository.
When Ian notes that she looks like she's on something really nice, though, she does glance up at him. Makes this noise all in the back of her throat. Affirmative, warm. And tells him, "Mmm. Molly."
So yes. Something nice. Something very nice indeed.
Ian"Yeah, he is a nice guy."
Too nice to have been with Ian, really. As much as they'd ever really 'been with' each other. Ian didn't seem surprised when Grace confessed this part of her story - the part she'd withheld earlier. He did look up at her though, a soft slant to his eyes that bordered on regret. It was because of him that Grace had been put in that position to begin with.
"I'm sorry I dragged you into that."
Though if he had it to do over again, would he have done it any differently?
Sera's response to his observation got a knowing little smile out of him, and he slid along the wall of the node until his body came to rest about two feet away from where Sera half-sat, half-floated in the warm spring. He didn't make any attempt to touch her or otherwise invade her space, just settled there - closer to her pattern and her resonance.
Almost, he asked if she had any left. But he bit back the urge before the words could finish forming in his head.
"I'm almost jealous."
Grace"Oh, it was hardly the worst--" Grace starts to say, and then -- considering the company -- decides to change her wording.
"I mean, it wasn't that bad. We were able to fight back." As opposed to lying there helpless while you die over and over. That hallucination was pretty tame compared to the ones she's used to.
"Don't be sorry. I wanted to help. I knew what I could be getting into."
Sera is being ignored for the time being. She's being exceptionally quiet, as she has been most times Grace has seen her in recent days. She won't even say hello. And if she doesn't want to say anything, Grace will let her continue to say nothing until such time as words appear. It may not be the best way to handle the situation -- ignoring it. But this is Grace, and she lets people do what they want.
Grace is even almost a little bit sure that the silence directed at her doesn't have anything to do with her.
SerafíneTheir conversation washes over her the way the ocean washes over the shore. Oh, waves. The movement of the spheres. The strange pattern of the moon in the sky. The way the stars wheel and the wantonness of their burning. She is aware of the current of it, see. The softness in Grace's voice, The near-regret in Ian's. The underlying threads and the places where the weave frays, where the story is as yet unfinished, where the threads are starting to ravel because nothing is ever whole and nothing is ever simple and nothing is ever clean.
And the night comes to her in strange stuttersteps. Now she sees Grace blushing, Grace saying hello so precisely to the house proper and not to any potentially-naked men. Ian sliding around the pool to be close enough to feel her resonance in the air, so that he is here when she opens her eyes and her pupils contract brief but sharp, like the aperture of some antique camera, and -
"Jealous." She doesn't believe him. The whole word is threaded through with skepticism. "Why? I have more."
She always has more.
"If you want some."
Ian"I said almost." A delicate curl of his usual wry humor traced its way back into his tone. He paused before responding to Sera's offer, as though giving it consideration, but then he gave a slow shake of his head.
"Not tonight." There was a low gravity in his voice when he said it.
To Grace he said, "If you need anything, let me know. Right now I have something I need to do, but we can talk later."
It felt a bit like a dismissal, though the tone was too relaxed to come off as rude. Grace and Sera could continue their conversation around him if they chose, but he hadn't come here tonight to talk, or to go skinny-dipping. He was here, in this place, because it had something that he needed. So he let himself sink deeper into the water and put his head back against the stone and closed his eyes.
[Per+Meditation]
Dice: 4 d10 TN7 (2, 5, 9, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
SerafíneAWAREEMPATHY.
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 7) ( success x 1 )
GraceHuh. Okay. The Sky question having been answered, and Ian having retreated into the water, Grace stands. She waves to the assembled naked Mages (whether or not they have their eyes open, she's not really looking in order to tell).
"Okay. Goodnight, Ian. Goodnight, Sera. I'll be in the house."
She starts to walk back up the path. Maybe she'll find Dan and badger him for a while. That sounds like a great idea.
SerafíneHe said almost.
Sera makes this noise, which is mostly an exhaled breath, though beneath it, behind it, she also sounds somehow breathless, without air, anaerobic, perhaps. The heat. She has been soaking in the spring for god-knows-how long, alcohol and a few other substances giving her this delicious sense of transparency that also makes her -
- well, vulnerable, here and now. Incised, right?
Aren't they all.
--
"Night Grace."
--
When Sera opens her eyes again she is here and she is elsewhere and she is everywhere and she is waking sometimes these days, transfixed by a rootless sense - of both loss and transparency that she cannot hold inside her and cannot make whole.
Whatever Grace does Dan returns not long later with a bottle of beer in hand and flashes Grace a smile framed by his beard and heads back to the poor and sinks to his haunches beside Sera and touches the bottle against her temple to get her attention and she tilts her head abck and whatever he sees - in her eyes or over her hands - makes him murmur something quietly to her. Then he's reaching for her, helping her upright, and she turns and half-stands and wraps her arms around his neck and then he shifts his grip to take her hand instead and holds her firmly as she climbs out, steam rising from her body, water streaming down her long, long legs, tattoos everywhere,
everywhere.
She wraps her arms around him and he wraps and towel around her and just holds her,
for a long, long time.
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