at my liberty dear [unfinished]

Serafíne

It is hard to know the hour because she has lost hold of time, as she often does. Let go of its raveling strand and ever-so-slightly unmoored herself from its imperatives. Dark because it must be dark, because it is night in a strange city in high summer well to the north and so,

night here does not last long. Still, night comes. The sun does not set until ten and the sky remains illuminated with that strange, sublime light that seems to define Paris for another forty minutes or more before anything like full dark approaches, and come 5:30 a.m. the sky is already getting pale in the east, and the world prepares itself for sunlight again.

So, darkness. Full dark, the seams of the sky all knitted closed, sunset a memory, the city proper on the verge of shut-down, which is a strange thing in a city this size, a city full of such people, but it is also a city full of such spaces as this one. The Tuileries, a garden founded by Catherine de fucking Medici, not that Serafíne has any idea whom she might have been, and refined and expanded and redefined by monarch after monarch until it was opened to the Parisians themselves as a public park, after they decided they were done with monarchs after all, and cut off their goddamned heads in the Place de la Concorde, where the once-royal gates opened onto the public avenue.

Here she is: somewhere in the dark, one of the long avenues shaded by linden trees, which are so strangely, sweetly fragrant this time of year. Seated on the spine of a park bench, her booted feet on the seat, smoking a cigarette, breathing in the steadiness, the strange quiet that is not absolute and feels both permissive and somehow - permeable.

Permeable the way her skin is permeable, the breathing membrane of it.

She's fucked up. Of course she, but the tips of her fingers feel lovely and there's this strange, bittersweet ache in her body that makes her toes curl in on themselves in her boots.

So she takes them off. The boots: pulls back the tongues and loosens the laces and pulls them off and sets them aside and her toes still ache or is that something else?

She hardly knows, Sera.

So she lights another cigarette, and takes another swig from her flask. Which is filled, of all things, with a pear liquer - poire william absurdly sweet but god so delicious.

rêvere

Here she is: somewhere in the dark, somewhere in the twilight has made love to (ravished [enchanted]) Paris and reimagined it in rose and recast it in greens and blues which melt together which pour like syrup into cool shadows and cooler niches and secret places and they're all boundaries and thresholds every planned avenue every pre-plotted arch every city resurrected every time-conquering corner the green and the blue and perhaps the purple leavened by amber-tinged-rose again darkend and darkened but here are the lamps lighting here are the halos kindling candled here she is somewhere in the dark and the dark is breathing, the dark is breathing, the dark is a gloss of oil on water, just reach past the oil, reach past the colors, plunge your fingers through them the world is a picture a painting it floats on the surface of something else go through it go through it and Serafíne she smells watermelon, tangy and sweet, sliding along the bitter taste of her cigarette, a richer tobacco, something strong and untouched by fire, something still leather-shop potent, then that sweet delicacy of pear fermented and the watermelon dissolves; in front of her she can see little fires light in a row of flowers that look almost wild in their little row and in the day they'd be so colorful but tonight in the dark

in the dark they're just guarded, guardianed, by the Nymph and her hound, all cold moonlight and

no she shuts her eyes. That statue; it flicks its eyelids up and looks directly, smoulderingly, at Serafíne who has taken her shoes out; it turns its head. No it doesn't. But there are little candles lit in the flowers; little fires, and nobody, nothing, except a sense of

other.

Serafíne

And Sera, see - she breathes in and she breathes out and she is lingering not-precisely-lost so much as deliberately misplaced and she rests her chin on one hand, that elbow on her bent-knee, the other hand now with the cigarette, now loosed from it as she leaves it hanging from the corner of her mouth and reaches out, undulant, to feel both tethered and free the slick swirl of shadows and light, the boundaries and the tethered places and the places where things become unmoored, and then the cigarette, ash drifting from its tip like snow, well goddamnit she is a smoker.

So she pulls her hand back and plucks the cigarette from the corner of her mouth and watches see, focuses in a manner that is not focus but is still - drawn in, lingering, intent and intense - on the lights, and the Nymph, all glowing-white, all smouldering in the moonlight, the cold solid planes of her body illumined even in this darkness, because the city has its own sort of light, and

moreover,

so does this place.

Sera stands up, on the seat of the elegant metal bench, and ignores the boots she tugged off and feels the cool metal beneath her fishnetted toes and stares at the nymph, mouth open, cigarette forgotten again, this time between her fingers, and tongues the bow in her mouth and jumps - elegant, see? - down from the park bench, body folding into itself to subsume the impact, and steps, so neatly, from the dusty path onto the forbidden glance.

That look.

That otherness.

How can she resist?

Serafíne

1. Dex + Athletics. How elegant the jump-down?

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 6) ( success x 1 )

Serafíne

2. Not elegant at all. Okay, perception + awareness?

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 3, 6, 7, 8, 8) ( success x 4 )

rêvere

The grass prickles (goat-teeth nibbled it down but it grows verdant in the summer verdant and fortunate and absinthe wishes to be so green or it wishes to be as green as absinthe) against her toes against her heels but does not reach for her ankles and it is dark and there is no one to come suddenly and irrevocably to say to her Serafíne no the grass is forbiden; the Nymph does not move (again?) though Serafíne is drawn near her and those little burning ghost lights among the flowers, static fireflies, still fireflies, what a lovely light they give! but ah, will not last the night (they're a gasp, see, quickening in the throat, they're a visual gasp a visual catch of sound - ) and the little dog with his mouth open that the Nymph watches (usually) so lovingly tenderly with such tender amusement (yes that's it) licks his chops and shivers closer to the nude's calf and looks at Serafíne

and is there a hush? Every city has its tone; every city has its quiet in the dark which is never as quiet as we mean the word to be. But it is hushed now; a moment between, no murmur of people, no river, no gutter, no distant vehicles, nothing that is not grass bending crushing beneath Serafíne's feet catching on her stockings

and the statue; other; threshold;

antique. The night is a veneer; the night has not yet dried; smear it.

Serafíne

Her breath catches in her throat or her throat catches her breath and she smokes the last of the cigarette and does not quite will it out but out it goes, smoke all crackle-hot, burnt-sugar in her lungs and the remnants tossed because, well, she is not always a good citizen, our Serafíne.

And she is freed then, by which we mean both hands free as she picks her way over the grass between the rows of half-illumined flowers in that moment

between

everything, and does she notice it? Oh she notices and that notices becomes part of the ache in the cage of her chest, the way it corkscrews through her half-drunk body, the way she wants to

smear it,

just this scrawl of her tattooed hands through the pigment, pulling the light in shoot-star arcs behind her.

What she does, though, is two-fold. A slewing, a skewing of her senses; a stutterstop of awareness as she bites the inside of her cheek and both: reaches in and lets go. Finds the now in the everywhen and the everywhen in the now. Everything is now. Everything always has been.

That is thing-one, the spell of seeking and sensing and seeing and knowing.

This is thing-two: glancing up at the Nymph, Sera reaches out to pet the dog.

Serafíne

She is trying: Prime 1 / Time 1 - Watch the Weaving / Time Sense - aka What Is Happening Here? Dif 4 -1 for focus

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (2, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )

Serafíne

Intelligence (2) + Occult (1) - Can Sera Know Things? Dif: 8

Dice: 3 d10 TN8 (2, 6, 9) ( success x 1 )

rêvere

Serafíne is a mage.

Serafíne is, yes, many things, many things which sound more elusive, which are more textured, many-textured, Serafíne is visceral, is enthralling, is liminal, Serafíne is a mage and as often as she untethers herself unmoors herself looses her mind re-examines corners and unseams them she is still a mage, she is still a thing whose Will does consciously control and force reality into a shape, and she believes things in an under-the-skin sort of way about that, but she is a mage, she knows in that under-the-skin sort of way what goes into the world what the instruments of it are what makes the sounds although perhaps she doesn't think of it in those terms (or did one summer and will again on a winter's day and then one other time in autumn and never somehow in spring), but this is true

that when she performs her spell of seeking and sensing and seeing and knowing she knows and sees that what is happening here is not the work of another Magi it is too slippery too slanted too old too timeless it does not want to be timed it will not be timed it looses those bonds it escapes them and is untouched it is other

other

understand, how other it is? it is wild - something in the statue; she knows a word for living stone; can taste it on her tongue and in her memory before it dissolves, for those fey things trapped in a carving or just seen in a carving by a sculptor and trapped by being given one shape this shape

Nymph

hound

and the hound feels wet to her touch; when Serafíne glances up at the Nymph she can see that tender-affectionate expression is not for the dog; the Nymph is looking, searching, seeking, looking at Serafíne, plinking her gaze downward like a fisher would plink a hook on a fishing line and fish

wait until something tugs. But: mute. They are both mute; Serafíne's fingers can pick up a tremor, a shiver under stone.

Serafíne

Mind 3. Mind-connecting-stuff? Is it vulgar? 3+4. -1 for focus. -1 for taking time. WP spent!

Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (3, 8, 8) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Serafíne

She breathes in and she breathes out and she breathes in and she breathes out and there is blood on her tongue, that is how hard she bites it, and the blood swims through her saliva, the metallic aftertaste lingering long after the sharpest edge of the pain that draws her focus and allows her to shape her Will has faded, quiescent.

The hound, the hound, the nymph and the hound and the hound so wet beneath her hand and her tongue against her teeth, the word she cannot remember dissolving there, all lozenge, a hint of chalk, something effervescent and constricting all at once. Something struggling-through,

mutemute mute

and that silence makes her throat close, makes her tongue ache, makes it so difficult for her to hum the nameless three notes that create a chord that bring her into accord that join their minds that bring them close, close, finely closer -

and she weaves those notes into the next and the next, pulls them into the moment, and time, she takes her time, she takes whatever goddamned time she requires.

--

What are you? Are you trapped.

This hint of a something near then end.

Are you trying to get-free.

rêvere

The Nymph's expression (yes, yes) shifts. The lovingly chiseled lashes cast a different shadow, the moon-smoulder pale of her skin her hand held up at her high breasts the fingers curved inward as if in delight and those fingers shift curl further curl deeper curl like toes freed from dancing slippers after a night of dancing dancing but slippers no not slippers there are no dancing slippers now sleep has taken the slipper over now there are dancing boots and shoes and moccasins and heels like toes curling freed from any of those that's how her fingers curl (but no; look again; there was no movement), and Serafíne has tried to connect with a mind, with a Mind caught inside the stone, has tried to speak to what has no working throat and it is good but it is hard it is first and liminal as her Workings are and visceral as her Workings are she feels the Thoughts of the Thing that is capt in stone all around her own plashing like water frothing over an ankle stepped deep rising bubbling burbling silver springing feels the Thoughts slow and cold and timeless there is no slow slow is a time-word and there are no time-words there is only the passage foreer the passage and Serafíne asked a question and the Nymph's voice comes to her in whatever language Serafíne likes but it is the color of the Nymph at dawn when gold light spills across the city like the start of an ache and it says no it does not say perhaps Serafíne thinks perhaps the thought will drown her I am not trapped I was trapped and then I was freed but freed at my liberty dear I am bound I would like to step down I would like to hunt I would like to bathe in the flowers I would like to be what I was before I was freed (after I was freed) at my liberty I want to find my fire that is why (awake [now, but now is a time-word and there are no time-words], that is why (here present presence like this us).

rêvere

ooc: ahem. passage forever the passage, even.

Serafíne

Oh, oh, oh. Her thoughts slow, go still see - arrested, marble, stone, cool as moonlight and far less mercurial - there is a question and that which surrounds the question and she is cool, she is cold, she remembers the night and it is always night, it is always now, it is always here. She would like to hunt, Sera, she would like to bathe in the flowers and kindle the flame and find her liberty and everything, everything else. She would like to step down - naked - from her marble plinth and feel the curl of her little dog's head in the curve of her palm and sink, and sink, and sink through the grass-green sea and shake herself free of the egg all shelled around her and slide off into the dark dark dark wood, which is not a wood but which she remembers as a wood, a strange wood threaded with light, but a wood, a wood nonetheless.

There is, see: a ???? insinuant and there is, also see, a !!! and there is, beneath and around ????!!!! a need, a desire, a want that carves through and focuses the wandering ache in her chest into something sharp and something piercing and oh! you see, she hardly knows that this is her heart.

Yes, she says, Sera, yes yes yes which means exactly what she means it to say. There is a new thread of magic in her, a new desire, a new movement, a new focus of her Will, coalescing around a point of awareness and a point of being and a certain note that gets caught - static - in the back of her throat. The pain of that stasis and the memory of what it means to feel time, see, passing.

She wants to hunt. She wants to free. She wants to unstitch the threads that keep the Nymph and her little dog in this moment forever and give them back to the now. To incise that mind from that marble, and Set It Free.

And so, she starts, to Work.

Climbs up onto the marble plinth and slides her cheek against the Nymph's cheek, her own breath warm on the cool cool stone, her lashes low, her awareness sinking-sharp, brow to brow, nose to nose, lashes to eyelashes, cheek to cheek, she Works.

--

[So: ritual, I am thinking a combination of Mind 3 / Prime 2 / Time 3 for what she intends to do, which is unstitch the Nymph / dog from the statue (Mind 3 / Prime 2 and then the Time 3 to give her back her sense of time - the idea being that the time will help pull her out of marble stasis right? anyway. That is what Sera will try. I will roll later but I figure it will take a while.]

Serafíne

Dan @ 8:20PMPrivate Message to Elijah

Witness a roll!

Sera: freeing the nymph. Mind 3 / Prime 2. Vulgar Without Witnesses: Dif 7. -1 for focus.

Roll: 3 d10 TN6 (8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) [WP]Dan @ 8:24PM

Private Message to Elijah

Extending! +1 difficulty, -1 for spending quint. So: 6 again.

Roll: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 8) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Elijah @ 8:29PMPrivate Message to Dan

Witnessed

Dan @ 8:29PMPrivate Message to Elijah

Now: Time 3. Dif: 7. +1 for time. -1 for focus. + WP.

Roll: 3 d10 TN7 (4, 8, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Dan @ 8:30PMPrivate Message to Elijah

And, extending! +1 to extend, -1 for quint spent. + WP.

Roll: 3 d10 TN7 (1, 1, 4) ( success x 1 ) [WP]

Dan @ 8:33PMPrivate Message to Elijah

One more time. One more quint (her last) and one more WP. Because.

Roll: 3 d10 TN7 (4, 8, 8) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

nymphe

and Serafíne begins her ritual

her impromptu unthreading, her unstitching, her unbinding, and the Nymph is not shaped so neat as to be easy for a diminutive woman like Serafíne to place her cheek against, her hand is in the way, her hound, her breast is nearer, all moon-scalded stone that she is now, that she is not, because she is something within the stone, isn't she, isn't that what Serafíne who can enthrall [but enthralling is the opposite of un-thralling] who is an enchantress who is

that Serafíne as she breathes and her breath polishes marble and warms it and when she breathes in she can smell the age smell that glassy smell peculiar to marble which has soaked in night after night wet-grass and ozone and something more mineral

visceral

yes whenever she breathes in she can smell that and a hint of summer and

it is difficult what she is doing: very difficult indeed, undoing a binding that is a pact that is a compact that is older than older than old than archaic (though the statue cannot be older than the Napoleonic Era, than Paris-reimagined and resurrected, the thing within it is)

time sloshes, time splashes, time unspools; Serafíne can feel that time unspools but she can also feel the brush of fur against her leg dappled cool as a river cool as the shiver of wind across grass and if she looks down the little hound is no longer there or is there but is, to her sight, transparent, a husk, and there is something in the grass

the nymph though, the nymph:

it is hard going; it is like, one-handed, trying to drag a water-logged body from a rapid, she is being tugged away, tugged away

and on the path of this garden someone yells (in French):

"Stop! What do you think you're doing!"

Serafíne

Perception 3 + Alertness.1

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 4, 7) ( success x 1 )

Serafíne

The ritual is a half-remembered song, a chord stuck in her throat, a call to now, to movement, to moonlight, to the hunt. The ritual is Artemis-in-moonlight, the swift and silent passage of her hunt through dark streets, strangers sleeping unaware, all around. The ritual is not cheek-to-cheek, perhaps, Serafíne without her heels and accessories is a slight creature and it is all she can do to balance on the plint, near-bare toes (torn fishnets - her boots left behind on the bench) splayed over the carved and weathered stone, but is, assuredly, skin-to-marble-as-skin.

And the ritual is drowning, is spooling, is un-spooling. Is making some new compact and unmaking something ancient, something far, far older than this neo-classical piece, something so neatly and finely stitched into the substance of the place and the stone and the form that Sera has the distinct impression that her fingers themselves are raw and bleeding from the work. Will have that distinct impression when she can think about anything but the stone and the work and the need to hunt and the implacable stasis of the sculpture - living? half-life? what does one name such an existance - conspire altogether to a -

she doesn't know, she doesn't know, she doesn't anything except now and was and want and ache and the song, the song, everything she weaves into the promise of it, sunk as she is in the nymph's strange and static mind when -

what? huh

The startled jerk of her head. Someone's close. Someone's voice. She doesn't know and she looks around for the source of the yell and finds it and entreats - entreats - all in English: "Help me. Help me get her down. She doesn't like this pedestal."

Serafíne

Perception Plus Awareness!

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 6 )

Serafíne

Rerolling 10s.

Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (1, 4) ( fail )

nymphe

Someone's close. Someone's voice. Someone's on the path looking hard at Serafíne, someone whose eyes are a deep brown the kind of brown that has orange glints in it like an ember or like that glow of polished wood in certain dusks. Someone's on the path looking hard at Serafíne, alarmed, and that someone's still using French, even after Serafíne speaks to her in English, a stream of French, a torrent of French, the clearest thing about it being that she wants Serafíne to get away, get away, get away from the statue right now, away from the nymph and the hound who Serafíne is aware of as ghosting about the plinth and slinking into the flowers where the candles are. The someone who is a girl looks at the candles -- they aren't real candles; little ghost lights -- burning above the flowers and her eyes widen and she says again something more vehement than before and looking both ways starts across the grass.

And Serafíne can feel that the girl is washed in resonance, much of it centered on something that is of her but also without her, something tucked away (the heart, the core) under her blouse and her open broad-collared jacket, and it feels like an antique candy dissolving on the tongue, like the taste of roses, all bolstered up by something implaccable intractable rigid and unyielding not relentless because this shares something with the idea of

stone and

forever.

Now, the nymph is still being unstitched, isn't she? If Serafíne looks, can she see the nymph's hand lower, just a bit, almost brush her shoulder, reaching for her hound? But no, there was no movement. (But yes, there was.)

Serafíne

Twisting around on the plinth? To watch person-lady? Dex + Ath

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 5) ( fail )

Serafíne

Grabbing the nymph's hand while falling?

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 2, 5, 6, 8) ( success x 1 )

Serafíne

Oh, something bright and old and molten-sweet. Something still and endless and unchanging and briefly, briefly, eternally Serafíne is captured by the sensation of the stranger's resonance, her own eyes dark in the moonlight, dark in the midnight, dark from her fucking pupils, which even in the darkness are far-too-dilated in one of those goddamned universal signs that she is On Something, because she is On Something and probably more than one-thing, and dark with a sort of arrested passion, which started as a sort of sinking-whim folded itself quite neatly into something that is

nothing like stone (gutwrenching)

and forever only because every moment is now, when she stands: in the doorway, on the threshold, at the verge of -

--

She's turning, Sera, edged, perched so precariously on the marble plinth, chary of holding-on to the nymph the way one holds on to solid things made-of-stone because the nymph is not made-of-stone, because beneath the stone she is -

One leg twisting and the other crossing behind it and sliding her hands down the marble curves and reaching for a marbled hand see, as if to say: come, come, come, stay with me, when her left heel slips and then her right foot and then everything is like an avalanche and she falls, and she falls hard all the way to the ground and cannot keep her hand on the nymph and cannot even find purchase on the ground: just falls.

Just impacts.

(Ouch.)

And the stranger is still talking in a torrent of French and Sera probably has tears in her eyes because she's not stopping and she's not helping and how would you like to be suspended, half-sensate, yearning -

"I don't understand," to the stranger, to the girl. Then: Spanish: "No comprendo - see? I don't understand you don't understand, they were supposed to move. They were made to be in motion. I don't understand."

nymphe

[Damage?]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )

Serafíne

satmina!

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (6, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )

nymphe

The marble fingers moon-drenched moon-blanched tighten on Serafíne's as she falls as she falls down to the grass to sharp corners those fingers they do try to tighten on Serafíne's fingers grasping for her own but they can't. Serafíne is left with an impression of stone, mobile, living, reaching -- and then she is separate; then she is separated. Then the impact is thrilling through her bones and flesh and muscles and shaking her beating on her as if she were a tambourine calling up ghosts calling up the people calling up the dancers calling up calling up and it all goes still but she is hardier than she looks, Sera, and when she stands, the girl has reached her, the girl whose resonance is the taste of rose, the sugar dissolution of rose spun-fine and saliva-unmade and yes eternity stolid staying, and the match-strike of alarm in the girl's eyes fades to anger, has quickened into fury, and she looks as if she is going to strike Serafíne at first.

Spanish. She can speak Spanish with an accent, some words want to stay French.

"You need to get away from here right now or you are in danger, you stupid. Come with me. Come with me right now," and she reaches to take Sera's arm and haul her from the grass, back onto the path, casting one baleful glance at the statue.

And one of the dancing (eerie, ghostly) lights above the flowers; it goes out. A breeze has combed across the gardens and it is cold, cold, cold, as cold as a knife-tip pressed against a living breast, intent, the moment before it is

thrust in. The moment before it has leeched warmth; has let warmth flee forever.

Serafíne

Sera is scrambling upright, scrambling to-her-feet, scrambling to gain: traction, altitude. You know, I mean: she just fell, on her ass from a height, all breath-knocked out and you cannot be a girl like Sera without falling, and falling regularly, and falling from heights like a goddamned pro - drunk or swooning or passing out or puking or just those goddamned shoes she wears so much, they were not made for human feet. You cannot be a girl like Sera without falling, so she takes falling in stride, manages, (almost) the art of both falling-and-reaching-out, which is a strange one but one she knows the way she knows her heartbeat, the way she knows her eyeteeth, the way she knows all of her wanton desires, the way they beat like a drum inside of her, like a heartbeat which is not, like most heartbeats, want/notwant; but which is merely, endlessly: want/want want/want want/want.

"No." says Sera, then - "No." jerking her arm away from the girl, a little bit angry, a little bit longing, and her fingertips still feel somehow abraded though she knows that is a sense-memory that is little more than the lingering resonance and perhaps the push-back of reality, the world's need to stay within the boundaries we have given it, but fuck-you world, fuck-you, fuck-you, isn't that what magic is: I don't like the way things are: so change, so -

Serafíne does jerk her arm away from the stranger as she pulls herself up to her knees and then maybe her feet, backing up protectively against the statue at which the stranger is flashing such baleful looks. Jerks her arm and glances back at the nymph and then at the girl and then the wind comes, and Sera catches her breath,

shivers.

"That's not right." Spanish, this. "That's not fair, you can't leave her in there. She should be bathing in the flowers, she should hunt hunt hunt. Nothing was made to be that still. No thinking-thing."

nymphe

"Who do you think she'll hunt?" the girl says, "Who? Come away from there; come away from there now. What gives you the right to come here and undo what others have done; others who have to live here? Come away from there now!" - anger, mounting, leavened by a note of beseeching at the end.

Where is the hound?

The marble is cold and hard against Serafíne's back; behind the girl who has come the garden is beginning to smear. Already dark, already darkest, now in Serafíne's eyes there is a certain slanting thumbprint waver to the darkness which has become a greenness which smells of linseed oil which is a vision which is not at all real which is in her head which is a vision of

The marble plinth is gone. It is just Serafíne and the girl and there are no lights in the garden and the garden is green. The garden is paint. The girl does not look angry; the girl is reaching for her collar, reaching for a zipper, but the zipper is in her skin and she says in whatever language Serafíne thinks in,

Will you unzip me?

and there is an unthinking and casual sensuality about the question; about the trusting gesture as the girl (it is the same girl, this girl in her vision which has taken her over, which has swarmed up out of the garden) takes a step forward to offer the zipper in her skin.

Serafíne

Perception + Awareness-as-Empathy: are you a horrible imprisoner-of-nymphs or would the nymph really hunt people-who-live-here?!

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 1, 2, 6, 7, 8, 8) ( success x 4 )

Serafíne

Consternation. Her breath comes hard and her heart is beating, beating, oh it pains her and Sera there with her back against the cold marble watching as the nightwarps, as her vision changes, as the girl turns around to offer the zupper-in-her-skin, Sera breathes out once and hard as if she had been kicked somewhere in the center of her body and stares openly at the girl, the stranger, the vision, the night turning to darkness-to-green-to-paint, the heavy impressionist imprint of the brushwork in the oils, the mark of the author's hand.

"I don't know - " is there something imploring about Sera's processed ignorance? There is a coiling passion all writ into the words. "I don't know, I don't know if I should trust you, I don't see how you can know about her and leave her there. And I think she'll hunt the moonlight on water and the sound of a rose when the first petals unfurl, I think she'll hunt the flavor of a bruised twilight and the last note of the last song of the last bird of evening and the first bird of dawn and -

" - what are you doing. What are you doing."

Sera bites her lip. The pain brings her in to focus. And she starts: to look.

[Prime 1: Watch the Weaving.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (2, 4, 6) ( success x 2 )

nymphe

In this vision, this moment out of time, this moment all linseed oil and age, all little fly-droppings along the edges which look like holes, dark clusters of tiny pinpricks and impossible to clean off without high-powered lazers, all green swirling away into ghastly ghostly yellows and the blacks are and she knows or she saw the painting the garden has turned into the haze that wraps around them both

and the girl in the vision who is the same girl

she is doing nothing; but something is waiting behind the zipper, under her skin, something is exhaling - something is ready to be unlocked

as soon as that zipper is drawn down

something that is not-of her.

The girl; oh, unquestionably: she knows about the nymph in the statue and the nymph's little hound and unquestionably, unquestionably, she is involved, intimate with the affair as it continues on, if not with its birthing; oh, unquestionably - look at how she approached, listen to the tone of her voice even when it was naught but liquid syllables in a language Serafíne does not know - unquestionably she knows; doesn't care at all for the nymph;

forever, forever; it's such a long time; stay imprisoned.

And, unquestionably, she believes that she is implying: that the nymph will hunt people like herself and Serafíne or others -- innocents; sleepers.

Both are true. Both seem true.

The vision-of-the-girl shrugs and begins to pull the zipper down, but it is hard going, it seems to be stuck.

And Serafíne can hear the girl saying something to her, but not what that something is; the vision-of-the-girl's mouth does not move.

Serafíne

Oh, there is a note of something thoughtful - not considerate precisely, and perhaps a bit querulous, by which we mean: full of confused (AND MILDLY DISGRUNTLED) query, and Sera is caught between her sense of the girl's certainty and her vision of the girl's unzippering, the thing inside that is not of her, the pieces that shift and change, and Sera is not moving, except - you see - to stand protectively between the statue and the stranger, her spine sharp, her skin all crawling-keen, her awareness etched and edged with varying degrees of watchfulness and wariness and awareness and compassion all of which cut through her sharp as swords -

"How do you know that. Is it just something someone put inside you? What if you're wrong and I'm right, and you you're keeping her here forever and ever because you cannot take it on yourself to ask and ask and ask yourself what would it be like to be trapped in forever."

nymphe

[paused for now!]

sorciere

The vision, perhaps outside the warp and weft of time, beyond its loom, a suspicion of pattern - the vision: it encompasses all of Serafíne's awareness as she speaks, confused and disgruntled, caught betwen (of course, liminal darling, you are caught between, held between, like a tongue set against teeth) the girl's certainty and this vision. This, the vision, which becomes total: which becomes the girl finally getting the zipper, shreds of flesh torn and ragged, the zipper-teeth crawling like sinuous bisected scorpion bellies split by lightning, and out of the hole in her chest comes a profusion of dark-winged things - they are shadows, perhaps, they are time, they are coal-smoke wings and gas-lamp poisons, they are time, they are iron and they are heavy, they are unbreathable skin-spoiling silent traps, they are airs made uneasy, they are dragging caught sparks of fire behind them; the winged things are around Serafíne; they sound like bats in a cave; they are humid, they are contagion, they breathe on her and whisper things in a myriad of languages - they sound unhappy; little hands. Through them the surreal impressionist strokes of green and black and gold become ever-gloomier, ever more tinted, as if she is looking at a painted world through the bottom of a bottle -

and then they are gone. The girl is gone. This is a vision; what is her body doing? How does one get back to one's body when one is having a vision?

The ground has begun to peel apart, like a wound not-quite-heeled picked at by childish fingers: they don't know better.

The ground begins to bleed, it moans as it does.

The park is a painting; Serafíne is in a painting-of-a-park; where is the girl and the nymph and the hound? They are not inside this vision any longer.

Serafíne

Serafíne spins in a sparkling arc of motion, reaching reaching reaching for the girl in the vision as she continues to peel back that zipper, when it shreds her flesh there is an answering hiss of responsive awareness, of empathic pain, oh Sera can feel the bite of those teeth into her own skin, all the strange, dark-winged things that live inside us all, that beat their wings against our rib cages, that haunt and haunt and haunt and make four a.m. a wasteland and morning an unwelcome haunt and inhabit the bile in our throat -

and here come the shadows, the assault of them and she doesn't know that the vision is total and the nymph and her little dog are gone, just that they are maybe behind her and she opens her arms like she might shield whatever is behind her from whatever is in front but it all comes anyway, the great dark sweep of them, sparking fire in moving arcs behind them, singeing, perhaps, her own skin, and she's saying "Stop!" or "Don't!" or what, she hardly knows, turning around to look for the nymph in the aftermath, when the night starts to sweep itself into heavy, gloomy brushstrokes of black and gold,

but the nymph is gone,

and the dog,

and the girl, too.

The ground has started to bleed. Sera crouches down by the wound, puts her hand over the center of it, as if she might staunch the bleeding, as if she might hold the ragged edges together with the pressure of her hand.

"Is anybody out there?"

She asks. It is not precisely a plaint but there is a note in there, a rising note that does not fall.

[Corr/Life/Mind Scan: is anyone out there?]

Serafíne

Magick!

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (1, 1, 10) ( success x 1 )

sorciere

The ground pulses under her palm like a fever will pulse with the hurried want|want want|want want|want of the heart and how is it that Serafíne experiences such a scan as she is trying? For there is a person, male, in poor health, bones that are splintering and bones that are not bones so she does not quite read, just under the ground, under the wound, frantic: it is his heartbeat that is want|want want|want want|wanting like a fever ascending toward death he just wants to be free (as the nymph wants to be free although this young man he is under the dirt; he is choking on it and clawing at it; he is no timeless thing, but a thing soon without time)

Serafíne

I want I want I want I do not want except Serafíne always wants, that is how she experiences the world. The pound of the heartbeat beneath her skin, the opening of her body, her pores, the loosening of boundaries, the elasticity of her consciousness, we are everywhere, she is everything, she is nothing, she is neverwhen, she is everywhen, she is right fucking now and she is holding the wound closed with her hands not frantic until she feels that from the stranger undergrown, chocking on the ground, bleeding and she's on her knees, when did that happen? On her knees and making a noise in the back of her throat, no longer struggling to hold the wound in the ground closed but to open it up, to unbury the young man, to heal his shattering bones.

This is how:by kissing the blood pouring from the ground.

[Life 3/Prime 1: heal. Difficulty: 7 -1 focus, -1 visceral resonance?]

Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 8) ( success x 1 )

sorciere

It is not enough; it is a good start. But it is not enough, and the back of her teeth feel like iron fillings catching electricity but instead of electricity it's a flake of fire and a suggestion of incense and watermelon, and then it is just the grass and the roots and the stones and the man trying to dig to her, as if he is a mole, as if he is a mole and can feel her moving in the dirt is drawn to the echo of her is some mythological creature, a hunter perhaps, who was in love with Echo and followed her once she'd faded to naught but a voice, chasing the echo down, chasing it down, to do what?

The blood is viscous on her lips, is slippery, vaguely metallic, is not at all thin but is not sick-thick either; it is just blood, real, raw, butcher-shop iron

and the ground seems to be full of fine filaments of gold

which Serafíne will notice, pulling apart that ground-wound, kissing it, when a strand of gold clings to her lip that oh it is hair, it is somebody's improbable, impossible hair, a net to keep whatever's beneath down forever

and it is a good start. Bones have not been healed yet; but it is a good start, indeed.

This is a vision; what does it mean? There are no wolves in the vision; only this, gold net of hair, as fine as decorations on a medieval painting, as the faint marks in palimpsest.