Mick

Eleanor Yates

[Despair]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 7) ( success x 1 )

Twilight

Sloan's Lake Park.

Evening; after sunset, before the sun has left the sky entirely. The marina that fronts the lake boasts a concrete bridge with three metal benches. Close in on the figure in the center, for he is the only figure visible in the scene. The jogging paths are damp from the rain earlier, and the air has that heavy feeling as if another storm might come.

Sooner or later, they always do.

But listen: the man, in a slightly rumpled suit, sits both low and wide. Slumped forward, his head in his hands.

There is a something on the bench beside him.

Eleanor Yates

Today was not a good day.

Today she rose, and she sat there, rubbing her face with her hands, closing her eyes and dwelling in the silence for a while. And then she went back to sleep. She did not work out. She did not make breakfast. Eleanor put her head down again, closed her eyes, and if she did not sleep again, she at least wished she did. She got up after a while; she washed and she dressed. She went to the campus and she taught, she spoke, and lectured, she set them in groups to discuss so she could stop talking.

Somehow after it all, after the cold rain that poured down, she knew that she did not want to go straight home. So she drove, and ended up here. Not to jog. She had no plan when she got out of the car, still in her clothes from work. She just walks, and when she nears the marina, sees benches, she wonders if it's worth the risk that a stranger might speak to her. Eleanor gives a small shake of her head, exhales, walks to one of the other benches, and sits herself down. She only glances over; she does not stare. She does not want him to look back.

Eleanor Yates

[perception (details) + alertness]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 3, 5, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )

Eleanor Yates

[and perception + awareness]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 10) ( success x 1 ) Re-rolls: 1

Twilight

There is nothing to fear. There is no one else in the park, and the stranger on the bench beside her own does not move. He remains there, slumped, you understand, in a posture not unlike surrender. He looks the way she felt when she woke up this morning.

There is a faint odor of alcohol in the air around him, and a slow trickle of sweat visible sliding from his hairline, past his ear, towards the unbuttoned collar of his white button-down. He has been in that suit for more than one day, though probably fewer than three.

That is not what she notices, though.

What she notices: the butt of a handgun partially concealed in the paperbag beside him. Something that looks like a half-folded summons weighted beneath the gun, so that it does not fly away.

--

And, beneath, around, under, over that (faint enough that she could easily think she had imagined it), a whiff of something, well, sulfurous like a mild malaise in the air around, not of, him.

--

He does not seem to have noticed her at all.

Eleanor Yates

[life 1 / mind 1 / prime 1 / spirit 1 / entropy 1.

coincidental = base diff 4. unique focus: -2 = minimum diff 3.

sensing his basic health, mental state (or presence of influencing mind patterns), possible magic effect, spiritual presence -- as well as the state of his own spirit/soul -- mingling with entropy to sense present/coming decay of any of these elements, body/mind/soul/fate.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (5, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )

Twilight

The sensations are subtle and complex. His pattern is strained, frayed, worn down. There are wounds on his body, that are healed or healing, as well as irritated. Scores down his back; scabbed over but still raw. The mind is in worse state than the body. She cannot sense his thoughts, but she can feel how frayed it is; read that too in the dark patina of the spirit and the even darker lines of his fate

There are no magickal effects; no spiritual parasites - though - she can see - what he radiates now is strong enough that it has drawn some of the darker spirits to drift and lick-their-chops and feed off the energy he leaks; no influencing minds. Just the lingering scent - irritatingly faint - of someone else's work. In some recent past.

Eleanor Yates

There are times when Eleanor has sensed that someone is going to kill themselves.

There are times when she has been the one who guided them to that point. The one who laid out the options for them, helped them choose their method. There are times when she was the one holding their hand as they jumped off a chair, letting the rope catch them, letting it snap their neck. There are times when she has stroked their hair as they went to sleep for the very last time in this life, then gently removed the bottle of pills from their clutching hand.

There are times she has stopped it.

There are times she has only tried.

--

Eleanor is not very old. She feels the weight of so many lifetimes, though. She remembers, dimly, the terror she felt when the bad man came into the house, when her daddy could not protect her, when for reasons that no one could ever discern, the bad man shot and killed a ten-year old he had never met. Eleanor remembers when they were brothers, twins, black-haired with shadowy eyes, and how everything about that life seemed covered over in shade, as though there was never any sunlight. She wears the necklace of a woman long, long dead,

a woman who walks now, quietly and wearily, to sit on a metal bench beside a marina, and all of this seems familiar. Everything, sometimes, feels familiar, and the weight of that is sometimes awe-inspiring. Other times it just exhausts her, reminds her of what might still be waiting for her.

What might come, worse than before, because of her defiance. Because she went on living.

Because Henrik saved her this time.

--

Not old: but she feels it. And she looks forward, breathing as she watches the water, feeling the weight of that labradorite pendant beneath her shirt, against her skin. It shares a temperature with her body. She does not look again at the man with his head in his hands, the gun in the bag, the paperwork beneath it. She breathes, and she reaches out, looking for the threads of his fate not in the air around his body but the world around him, the way it reacts to him, the way his presence there -- right now, like this -- ripples outward, through time, through other lives, through every Pattern.

He is a weak point, a stretched-out almost-hole in the tapestry. It ripples, it flutters, and she empathizes with that frayed feeling. She empathizes with the darkness in his future, or his present, or his past,

which are all his fate.

And gradually, though she is tired, and she feels very old indeed today, Eleanor slides her hands into the pockets of her jacket, which is thin and light. She rises to her feet with the elegance of someone with a well-trained body, no matter how weary she feels or tired her soul is. She is still not old; she is in fact rather young.

Eleanor walks over. She sits beside the man. The gun, and the bag, and the summons are between them. She does not pretend that she does not look at him. The breeze, cooling as night comes onward, moves her hair, which would be described as golden if she could be described -- by a stranger -- as warm.

He will not be a stranger for long. He will hear her voice, and he will know that winter is just an essence around her, a fixed point of time for some part of her soul, and not a revelation of who she is. What she is. She is not winter itself. She is not cold. She is not frozen.

See: she moves, and she breathes, and she cares about things. This is how she reminds herself.

--

"Every moment of our lives," she says quietly, clearly, evenly, "is a point of transition. It's an endless web: countless, infinite connections between countless, infinite possibilities. We notice the big ones. Can't miss 'em."

Eleanor is quiet a moment. Her eyes go lakeward. "Easy to see the sun. But we can't even comprehend how many stars that we don't see. They are there, though."

Her eyes fall closed. She breathes in; exhales. Opens them again as the breath is sighing outward. "This is a big one, though." Her eyes come back to him. Perhaps he is looking at her. "The summons," she clarifies, flicking her chin down at the paper bag. Then she smiles, and her brow is a tad furrowed, and the smile aches a little, because she aches for him. "For some reason I want to call you Mike. Isn't that strange?"

Twilight

He breathes out, sharply. He has about him the sorrow smell of someone at the tale end of a bender, for whom the intoxication was never about revelry, after the borrowed attempt at joy has started to leave him running on less-than-exhaust fumes.

There is a kind of humor in that breath, because, you see,

"I'm gonna to lose everything," this is nearly conversational. Dulled to insubstantiality. A choking sort-of-laugh. "My fucking wife. Is taking my fucking kid. And going to fucking Mexico. With my fucking partner. Who gets to fucking testify against me and get off fucking scott free.

"It's like I told my fucking shrink, it's like I've been standing on the tracks watching this fucking train get closer and closer and my feet are just locked in cement and I don't believe it anyway. It's all flash and fucking noise, and all of a sudden it's here and I've known it was coming all along and I'm about to get flattened - and I thought I could just drive it all outta me but - "

A short, arrested breath, and he actually looks up at her, breathes out again.

"It's Mick, actually."

Not Mike.

Close, though.

Eleanor Yates

He says it such a way that she knows he has said it a million times. Maybe only in his own mind. But he has said it so many times it almost means nothing, and she holds on to that: he is going to lose everything. And that has ceased to have any real meaning.

What what what what what what what what what what what what what what what.

See?

It's the same.

--

Eleanor keeps watching him. Keeps hurting.

"Is that why you've been hurting yourself, Mick?" she murmurs. It is almost a whisper. "To get it out?"

Twilight

He goes still; sharp and there is a flash, you see, of anger -

deep, vicious, bloodied, blooded anger

- like a snarl in his eyes.

"What the fuck do you think you are talking about."

Right hand snapping toward the gun.

"I don't know what you're fucking talking about."

Eleanor Yates

[mind 2: impressing upon Mick that he is dealing with a force beyond his reckoning, a being who has come to him only to help to his destiny for the good of his soul and the good of the universe, a being who wishes him no ill whatsoever but who, all the same, he should probably be scared of. this can mold to whatever his philosophy/belief about the world may be: if he is religious he may react to eleanor as though she were a prophet/angel/messenger, for example. shorthand: awe/submission/trust.

coincidental = 5. -1 (specialized focus: eye contact/staring) +1 (fast casting), -1 (quintessence) = 4. spending WP.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (3, 6, 8) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Eleanor Yates

No one who knows her would expect her to flinch. No one who has met her would expect her to flinch. She feels no fear of him, as she feels no fear of death. The lack of fear does not, should not, imply that she does not care if violence is brought to her, or death. She cares a great deal.

Again: that is how she does this. That is how she gets out of bed, and teaches her students and counsels other magi and this is how and why she presses cold knives here, the strangely warm barrel of a gun there. This is why she bakes, knowing she doesn't even like sugar cookies, but knows that she enjoys the act of baking and decorating. You have to know what you like. What you care about. Because if you don't, you go away.

And you don't get to like anything anymore.

--

Eleanor holds his eyes. Holds his anger between them, as though it is in some frozen stasis in the air they are both looking at, looking through. She just looks at him, stares at him,

into him.

He should not try to harm her. In fact, some part of his mind that feels covered in untouched snow, bathed by the faint blue of early January moonlight, does not think he can harm her. Or frighten her. Some part of him, slowly drawing downward into black depths where there is no light or air or worry or train coming to flatten him or anything, anything but silence,

knows that even there, she will be with him. She will not leave him, nor forsake him.

"Mick," she says quietly, so gently, and gives him the faintest shake of her head.

Twilight

Something in him is drawn up short; is arrested, is leashed in and lashed back. This is abrupt as anything else and his nostrils are flared and the urge to aggression within him is still vibrant, is still violent.

Mick still grabs the gun. His hand is shaking and he knows that she is there, but no longer believes that she is entirely real. The brown paper bag is caught around the barrel and he does not seem to notice and instead of pointing it at her, at himself, at anyone, Mick just holds it, gestures with it, two short sharp punches at the air with his right hand clenched as if he would like to crush something, to pulverize it in his hand.

--

And that is enough for the moment, that release valve.

Mick lifts his shaggy head, three days' shadowed growth visible on his jowls as he looks up for the first time, but not at her. He can no longer quite look at her but her is aware of her voice, beside him.

Of her presence,

somehow inside him.

Eleanor Yates

There is something fragile about her,

and something very strong.

Mick wraps his hand around the gun. He looks at her as though she is unreal, surreal, hyper-real. The paper crinkles but she can hear it, soft as it is, and does not flinch as he gesture with it. She feels the urge to reach out to him physically but does not want to, all the same. He is very angry, and he may fear her, he may be uncertain of threatening her now, but he is angry,

and a stranger,

and holding a gun.

--

She is quiet for a bit. Then, tipping her head to one side. "Tell me what happened, Mick." She keeps saying his name. Like an anchor sinking, link by link. Steadying.

Twilight

"What is this." He says: bitter, harsh. Staring down at the half-concealed weapon in his hand, fascinated by its heft, by its presence. By its promise. "Confession? I already fucking tried that. See where it got me."

He reaches down; takes the paper bag from the muzzle. His head is canted, neck compressed into jowly wrinkles that make him seem older than he is.

--

Then he does look at her.

"Jeremy, fucking bastard. What the fuck is it that you call it, state's evidence? Guarantee you that he's got all his shit squirreled away in fucking Beluchistan, the Caymans, goddamned Belize and do you think anyone's looking there for it?

"No, but me. They're gonna take everything, what my fucking bitch of a wife didn't take.

"You know she was real fucking happy to spend those folks' money. She didn't give a fuck about them, about any of it, until the well went goddamned dry.

"You know what. It's not my fuckin' fault those assholes didn't read the small fuckin' print."

Eleanor Yates

On her best day, Eleanor has little patience with this sort of thing. The scattered thoughts rambling out at all speeds and no concern for making sense. But the self-pity. The shifting of blame. And this is not one of her best days. Eleanor says nothing for a while, then moves to rise to her feet with a slight sigh.

Twilight

"What the hell - !"

Mick has a helluva lot more people to blame. He is just getting started, both furious and terrified and his heart is racing and his palms and sweating and the only thing, the only good thing is the chafing of the hairshirt against his skin.

"You're just gonna leave?! You're just gonna leave me!"

Eleanor Yates

Standing now, hands in her pockets, Eleanor looks down at Mick, her eyebrows slightly raised.

"I'm here to help you," Eleanor says, and she says this truthfully because she believes she would not have felt herself going to this lake, finding this man, if there were no reason. If she were not meant to be here. She means that she is here to help him because she believes it: what form that help will take, she does not know yet.

"If you intend to talk to yourself, rant at shadows, and perhaps kill yourself, then perhaps the best way I can help you is to leave you. All I might add is a note about shooting upwards through the roof of your mouth, and not aiming through your temple, as you could more easily miss, and only maim yourself." Eleanor is not so crude as to pantomime for him: here, like this, through the mouth.

"However, if you are open to other endings, then you need to allow me to help you in some other way. For instance: when I tell you to tell me what happened, you put the weapon down, look me in the eyes, begin at the beginning, and tell me what happened."

Her eyebrows lift slightly on those last four words. "And then I might be able to help you do something other than die in anger, loneliness, and despair."

Twilight

"Mmm."

He makes a noise, as if he had just swallowed a mouthful of wine too quickly, without savoring. And he is watching her now, slantwise.

"I have something waiting for me on the other side. A kingdom.

"I thought you were here to lead me through."

Eleanor Yates

Eleanor is about to lose her temper. If she had more energy, she might. She just stares at him. And exhales slowly.

Inhales for a count of four, exhales for a count of four. She feels the warmth building behind her throat, within her skull, radiating upward, outward, around her. She begins to feel the universe, and all its powers, all its threads, until her skin opens up,

a trillion little points of divine light.

[prime 1: sense magic. she wants to figure out what magic was done on him in the recent past. coincidental = 4. -1 for spec. focus.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (3, 3, 5) ( success x 3 )

Twilight

She breathes in; she counts; she breathes out. Her skin opens to the universe. He is not still. He turns the gun over in his hand. Considers it from both sides. Thumbs off the safety.

How is he standing?

He breathes in. He had not thought about where to place the gun. The mouth, she says. The mouth.

--

Meanwhile Eleanor is looking for the threads of recent magics - and she finds them, even tastes them, the faint, lingering odor of something sulfurous in the back of her throat. Traceries of work so faint and subtle she smight not be able to feel the lingering threads of their power were it not for something:

recent,small,precise,deep,powerful.

Mind: a removal.

--

The mouth, she says. The mouth.

He puts the gun in his mouth.

Eleanor Yates

[intelligence + enigmas]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 6) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Eleanor Yates

[dexterity (smooth) + firearms (handguns)]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 ) Re-rolls: 1

Twilight

(Hey, leave my gun alone!) Dex + Firearms

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Eleanor Yates

[dude, seriously.]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )

Twilight

I WANT MY GUN.

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 5, 5) ( fail )

Eleanor Yates

Mick puts the gun in his mouth.

Eleanor pulls it out, but he doesn't want her to and resists. Tension rises in her, but she keeps still. Eleanor's fingers are deft, her grip sure; she has callouses that match the hold around this gun. It is as natural to her as a lighter in the hands of a chainsmoker. It comes as easily as breathing.

He wants his gun.

Eleanor must want it more than he does, though. She simply moves his thumb, his fingers, wrests the firearm from him, and flicks the safety back on without thinking. She holds the gun at her side, staring down at Mick. "Someone has done something to you. I do not know if that means you are innocent in this," whatever this is, "but it does mean I am not willing to watch you commit suicide until I know what was done, and by whom, and -- hopefully -- why."

Standing there with the handgun resting at her side, she exhales again, some of her tension leaving her with the breath. "Now, for the last time, tell me what happened."

Twilight

There is a moment that feels both indrawn and somehow plosive in the aftermath. Fractured and fracturing where Mick is both waking up and erupting but he cannot attack her, he cannot hurt her, he will not attack her so all that anger and all that rage is just erupting through him and he bellows his frustration, his blame, his rage -

"What happened? I've been fucking charged with securities fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud, and racketeering, which is bullshit because my partner came up with the stock options offer and my fucking ex-wife - "

A sharp breath, indrawn.

Another, deeper.

"God, you're just like my goddamned shrink. She says, I'm the author of everything that has happened to me. Are you fucking kidding me? Did I make Lehman Brothers fail? Did I make my fucking wife decide that she needed to lease a new Lexus every three goddamned years? And I don't know why the fuck Jeremy got so goddamned sloppy - "

Mick Jones has been full of blame, rage - sometimes incoherent - and a gradiose sense of his own worth for a long, long time. He was a dentist, Eleanor will learn, until he lost his license for dealing in illegal drugs back in 2007. No matter, he always fancied himself a financier. someone in the interim he ditched his first wife for a prettier, shallower model, the "bitch" about whom him complaints incessantly today, and he managed to conceal most of his assets from said first wife, only to lose them in hte Lehman Brothers bankruptcy.

There followed a series of small investment frauds. Real estate schemes, foreclosure rescues. Then an old frat brother came back with this great new emerging markets investment scheme and the two men opened a kind of boiler room operation targeting senior citizens looking for a "safe place in Israel" to park their meager retirement savings.

It was a Ponzi scheme. Everything started to unravel a year and a half out, and our hero, Mick, was feeling more and more out of control. He had not resorted to torturing animals since he was an 11 year old being beaten by his farther, but as the scheme started to unravel, and they were unable to keep up the pace of new investors, well.

He needed something could control.

He didn't mean to kill that fucking chihuahua, but god it yapped. And his frat brother had just turned state's evidence -

That was the last one, though.

He realized, with the help of his shrink, that the only thing he could control was himself. That was when he began mortifying his own flesh.

It is everyone else's fault. If his partner hadn't lied, and then deserted him. If his wife hadn't been such a materialistic --- if if if ---

Now he has finally been indicted. Served with divorce papers. There's money for him too in the Caymans but not enough and anyone they interdicted his passport two years ago, and on and on and on.

His shrink says - god, he doesn't even give a fuck what she says.

Eleanor Yates

Eleanor listens as though she is a therapist.

Eleanor listens as though she is a priestess, a confessor.

Eleanor listens as though she is a lawyer.

Eleanor listens as though she is an angel.

Eleanor listens as though she is death itself, implacable.

--

Something was placed into his mind, but she does not know when. Whether it was when he was eleven or earlier, whether it was when things started to unravel. Something was removed from his mind, but she does not know when. This is what she is listening for: clues to the identity and purpose of whatever infernal smell she senses in the miasma of his aura. But she is also just listening, human being to human being. He is in so much pain. He has caused so much pain. And no one, not even gentle Richard, can claim they have never caused pain. No one is innocent; there are only those who are mindful.

Mick is not mindful. Mick is angry. Mick is hopeless. Mick is defensive. Mick's version of taking responsibility for his life is abusing himself. Mick will go on causing pain, unnecessary and wild pain, stagnating himself and hamstringing those around him, until he is stopped. The cycle will only continue, and with every rotation, it will crumble a little more. Until it is stopped. Until someone stops it.

Eleanor looks at the sky, holding his gun tight in her right hand.

Unless.

Exhaling, sighing, she looks back down at Mick. "I'm taking your gun. When we meet again, I will return it to you. But I want you to give me the name of your therapist and a way to contact you. Or we can meet here again, at a set time."

Twilight

"Wendy fucking Smith. Write that goddamned down because that bitch fired me. Have you ever heard such bullshit? And fuck, I'll give you my digits, but I'll probably be in jail if I don't jump in front of a moving goddamned train."

Eleanor Yates

She doesn't write it down. She does remember, though.

"Yes," she says, even though he's not really asking her. She'll pretend, for now, that he is. She is watching him carefully. He mentions jail, and jumping in front of a train.

"Well, Mick," Eleanor says, "either way, I will find you."

Twilight

What the fucking fuck is he supposed to do? He wants his goddamned gun so badly that he stands up and just kicks the metal railing framing the lakefront. The despair she witnessed earlier is so entirely eclipsed by a rage bodering on the self-righteous that it rather feels like the last egrees of a martyr as he - well - stomps off down the boardwalk surrounding Sloan's Lake towards jaoil, or a hearing, or the Cayman Islands, or headlight of a speeding train.

It does not matter.

Either way, she will find him.

Eleanor Yates

[Eleanor is going to scry; she's going to search for that sulfurous resonance now that she's gotten a whiff of it a couple of times. Should be -1 for taking time and -1 for specialized foci -- circles for correspondence, pranayama for prime. i think she'll use entropy as well for sensing lines of fate around it all.]

Eleanor Yates

[correspondence 2 (casting a circle in her basement) / entropy 1 (labradorite pendant - unique) / prime 1 (pranayama)

coincidental = 5 - 2 (unique focus) = 3

will probably be extending to get max successes]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (1, 2, 10) ( success x 1 )

Eleanor Yates

[again!]

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

Eleanor Yates

[*cracks neck*]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (3, 4, 5) ( success x 3 )

Eleanor Yates

[one more]

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

Eleanor Yates

[i lied]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (2, 5, 8) ( success x 2 )

Eleanor Yates

[separate effect to ward herself, PRIOR to scrying: correspondence (circles) / prime (pranayama).

coincidental: 5 - 1 (specialized foci) - 1 (taking time) = 3

extending.]

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

Eleanor Yates

[again]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (3, 5, 9) ( success x 3 )

Eleanor Yates

[one more]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (4, 5, 6) ( success x 3 )

Eleanor Yates

[Warding = 8

Scrying = 10]

Alexander

Alexander Brandt

Thresholds: The day is slowly approaching one. The skies over the city have been pretty overcast, although the air itself has remained warm. Recent rains have pushed the humidity up, and it’s starting to feel like a storm approaching. The sun continues its journey through the sky, heading from late afternoon into early evening. There’s definite promise in the air of something to come.

There is a ranch-style house out in Morrison with a blue motorbike parked on the driveway. The rest of the drive is clear at the moment and there aren’t any cars parked nearby on the kerbside either. It would be a good guess that the current occupant is on his own, but one can never tell – one resident of the house uses a pushbike and at least one visitor uses public transport to get out here. But, right now, that guess would be a good one.

Out the back of the house, a couple of chairs have been turned round a little so that they face out from the house. There’s a mirror lying on the table and a leather jacket has been slung over the back of one of the chairs. A pair of bike boots sit just inside the door. It’s quiet until the whistle from a kettle pierces the air. Alexander will be in the kitchen, then. In the kitchen with a teapot, a cup, and a box of tea. It’s certainly no tea ceremony he’s working through, but he is trying out different strengths of tea. Trying to pick up the different tastes and sensations, just as Kalen talked through.

[Do we have a hope in hell of meditating? +1 diff, because no dots]

Dice: 2 d10 TN7 (6, 10) ( success x 1 )

Serafíne

Maybe he feels from some living distance, maybe Alexander is far too focused on his meditation on the different strengths of tea to feel the disturbance in the force she carries with her. If he feels her, though - oh, she is distinctive, as so many of them become as their power grows. A peculiar mélange of sensations that are not precisely felt or uttered or known: except, this is what I am, this is how I work, this is what I know.

A white conversion van that has seen somewhat better days in the parking lot beside the blue motorbike now. This time last year that van had North Carolina plates. Now it is registered and licensed in Colorado. Sera isn't driving, and that is nearly always for the best. She slides out the passenger's door and heads right for the door to the kitchen. She knows Alexander is there. The motorbike: she recognizes that doesn't she, from the first time they met, when he Woke Up.

The kitchen door swings open and there she is: her hair up this evening, pulled back into a braid, a cropped band t-shirt drifting over a black satin bra, denim cut-offs and fishnets and combat boots.

She is about to say something (a greeting!) when she notices details. His stillness, his focus. The creature's crawling mouth curls around an unvoiced thought, then and Sera circles the kitchen watching Alexander curiously, forgetting that she meant to hold the door open for Dan who will now have to manage for himself.

Sera waits until there is a break; until Alexander pulls his focus from the task he has laid himself to accomplish. Then, with the edge of a half-grin, " - long fucking time, no see. You gonna freak out if I hug you?"

Alexander Brandt

Time is one of those weird things in life. It gets neatly sliced into seconds, minutes, hours and so on. But being in the second, they’re not all the same length. They can be over in a flash or seem to last an eternity. But then this is truth that most people pay lip service to – time flies when you’re having fun. And Alex, here, is no holder of any greater truth than that.

Only it isn’t exactly fun that he finds himself experiencing. The slowly growing pile of used tea leaves in the bin suggests that, maybe, Alexander has been trying this for quite some time. Trying to clear his mind enough to meditate. Kalen said it works as a focus for some people, so here is his trying it out. But over and over again, there’s always something that pops into mind: something needs doing; something he’s forgotten; something that’s worrying him. Round and round his mind goes, sifting up thoughts when he’s trying to quieten it down.

Until? He gets it. He’s lost count of the number of cups he’s gotten through, but the liquid in the cup looks like tea more than water now. He closes his eyes, takes a sip and...

There’s someone in the room when he opens them again, and it catches him by surprise. The cup slips from his hand and hits the tabletop. It stays intact, but the liquid (Cool now? Odd.) spills. “Scheisse...”

But then he realises who’s there and he smiles. “Yeah, it has been a while. I disappeared for a bit, needed to work some stuff out. Nothing personal.” Then he grins. “I’ve not ripped reality to shreds so far today, so sure!” He turns to Sera and, this time, doesn’t grab her arms to stop her.

Serafíne

Sera is not natively a patient thing. Still, and listen: she watches Alexander as he meditates. She does not disturb him. She can see the pile of used tea leaves and hear the tick of the cooling water in the kettle and sense the depth of his concentration so she does in fact open the door to let Dan, carrying some supplies in. The consor gives her a lifted-brow sort of look and then takes the booze and some other necessities of a running household (toilet paper, soap, laundry detergent and the like) to be stowed around the upscale home that is theirs, collectively, as much as anyone's.

--

By the time Alexander comes to again, Sera has gotten herself a beer from the fridge though, uncapped it and taken a swig or seventeen, and his permission is both explicit and implicit so she hops down from the counter on which she has parked herself and crosses the room and wraps her arms around his neck, and hugs him. Simple. Genuine.

Her hair smells of the coming rain and burnt sugar and her breath smells like chocolate stout and her skin smells like sandalwood, and she hugs, squeezes once, then pulls back, letting him go yes, but only after giving him a good, solid, up-close look eye to eye and all that jazz.

He says he disappeared for a bit and Sera shrugs.

"Hawksley and I went to France for a big chunk of the summer, too. It's good to see you. What were you doing with the tea leaves?"

Alexander Brandt

Alexander returns the hug and his eyes close again, still riding on the sensations. Warm. Sugar. Rain. Sandalwood. How odd that he’d never really smelt them before. For his part, it’s mostly the odour of lemon shower gel and a faint smell of leather on his vest top. Simple.

He smiles again as they part and meet each other’s eyes. And maybe they’re not quite as carefree as they were those months ago in a newly opened Downtown nightclub.

He moves over to the counter to fetch something to mop up the spilled tea. “It’s good to see you too. Whereabouts in France did you go? And who is this Hawksley guy? I’ve heard his name a few times, but we don’t seem to have bumped into each other.” Which almost seems odd, given how often they pull others of their kind towards them.

“Oh, I asked Kalen about how he sees things, or maybe how he deals with what he sees. He said picked up a tea ceremony thing from Kharisma and he kinda told me how it works. So I thought I’d give it a try.” He shrugs before wiping the table down. “He did say I should probably find someone who can do it properly, though.” His voice pitches up a little towards the end, half-turning into a question. Alexander doesn’t really think it’s Sera’s thing, but you never know. Kharisma and Sera are the same tradition, and all that.

Serafíne

Sera hops back up on the kitchen counter, beside her beer, legs swinging and heels banging a bit against the lower cabinets. Her eyes are a dark color that can be difficult to read in certain lights, and with a window behind her and that light - perhaps gray, watery, storm-laced as it is - casting in a kind of shadow, the tone is uncertain. Still, the measure of her attention is not.

"Paris," Sera says with a neat little half-shrug. "Most of the time. The last few weeks we were at this fucking chateau out in the countryside somewhere. With a goddamned moat and an island in the moat and all'a that shit." Her smile is a sudden flash, all teeth. "It was fucking amazing.

"And Hawksley," here Sera's smile turns into something altogether different. Her mouth closes around the idea-of-Hawksley and she hums in the back of her throat. She regularly tells people that Hawksley is amazing and that they will adore him. Sometimes she is correct. As often: she is wrong, at least about the mutual adoration, you understand. "He's a Hermetic. Ravenclaw - you know? Lives in fucking Hogwarts and knows Egyptian and Latin and all'a that shit.

"French, too. He's cool. He's always reading, so maybe he knows about tea ceremonies, but I sure fucking don't.

"You wanna know how I deal with what I fucking see?"

Alexander Brandt

Alex’s attention is, for a short time, on the table as he sets the cup right and mops up the now-cold tea. He is listening, though. “It sounds nice. Not sure I’d really want to go there, though. Not Paris, anyway.” He shrugs. “Not that it’s likely on my pay cheque.” He looks up, part way through cleaning, to ask Sera, “Are you two a couple?” There’s nothing even remotely envious or jealous in his tone. He’s simply curious.

Ravenclaw. He glances up again at that, looking slightly confused. “Ravenclaw? Which one’s that?” The wet cloth gets dumped in the top of the cup and carried over to the sink. Alexander starts collecting the pot and other bits that he’s used, cleaning them away too. “I think it was more to do with the meditation than actually getting there. Working through the different sensations as a focus for getting there. At least I think that’s what he was talking about. It worked, either way.” Another shrug.

Again, with a smile, he continues. “I’d like to meet him some time. See how much Kalen really does buck the trend of Hermetics, if nothing else.” He thinks of the others he knows and... “Have you heard from Leonhard lately?”

He almost makes a joke about having a good idea how she copes until he turns and looks at her again. The booze and drugs seem to be tools more than crutches, after all. His voice is serious when he asks her, “How?”

Serafíne

Alexander is not sure he'd want to go to Paris, and Sera is breathing out, all-at-once, objecting to the idea that anyone would eschew that grand dame of cities, " - it is amazing. Seriously, it is everything everyone ever said about it, and then it is even better. It's a city that oughtta be immune to fucking paradox because I don't even see how you can be in a place like that during golden midsummer and not believe in magic. I mean she is grand, imposing, imperial, right? - "

A sharp breath out, then another needle-fine grin.

"And full of people - everywhere - enjoying the fuck out of everything she has to offer."

Then Alexander asks if they are a couple and Sera gives Alexander a glance that is both aware and something else. Deflective, perhaps. "We're friends." Sera supplies, with a degree of self-perception and a deep and abiding warmth, the intimacy of which suggests that they are also lovers. But Serafíne's moral sense is not remotely conventional and a couple, she breathes in around the idea, and breathes out around the idea, and does not like the phrase at all, even if -

"We're Hawksley and Sera."

--

No explanation for Ravenclaw yet. It'll keep, but really it is just Sera's little joke. Sera thinks of Hawksley's house these days as the small gods of the Hermetics because Dan was reading a Terry Pratchett book by the same name and wanted to write a song from the idea and that went nowhere, and Sera only reads poetry, no prose, so she didn't get it until she felt the hint of nostalgia in the back of her throat, until Dan reminded her about Etain in that old sandman comic. Until she thought about belief, and the failure of believe, and the world in which they live.

--

Well, Alexander's ideas are pretty good, yeah. Right? Sex and drugs and rock and roll. She gives him a little arch look when he almost makes that joke, all wry. But she moves past that, and smiles at him.

"I give myself time. I let myself feel. Grief. Disgust. Harrowing sorrow. Fucking exhaustion. Whatever. I let people in. The people who wanna come in. All that shit, man. And I remember all the awesome stuff I get to see, too. All the fucking amazing shit I get to feel, and do, and know, and live inside. Then there are the fucking everyday pleasures. I know a guy - Jim - he's all into yoga and this mindfulness meditation. Like where you remember to be in the moment, part of it, whole and also passing."

Alexander Brandt

Alexander turns on the tap over the sink, letting the cold water run over his hand until he feels is grow warmer. The cup and the pot get washed, rinsed, sat on the drainer to dry out. “I guess there are just other places that appeal more. Berlin, Zurich, Vienna.” Sera sees a shoulder rise in a shrug while he faces the sink. “Assuming I ever make it to Europe, anyway. I’ve not really, seriously thought about trying to make it there.”

We’re Hawksley and Sera. He’s turning back from the sink when she gives him that glance and her reply. He gives the edge of the sink a quick wipe and leans back against it, elbows bent, hands resting lightly on the surface. “Complicated, then.” It’s more statement than question, but seems to fit. Fit both Sera, and Sera and Hawksley.

Alexander goes quiet when Sera runs through her ways of dealing with stuff, walks over to the table and sits back in the chair he was using earlier. Leans against the backrest, snorts in what might pass for amusement. “People keep talking about the wonderous stuff we get to see and I know it’s there. You were there for that.” He does smile, thinking back to The Message again. Still curious where he went, what it’s been doing... The smile fades. “But I look at those of us who have been around for longest and I really can’t help thinking if there’s enough of it to make the price worth paying.” He waves a hand in front of him. “I get the whole we do it because we’re the only ones who can thing. At least until...” Until the body-less funeral that Kalen suggested was their typical end. But he shrugs again. “How do you feel those things when all you seem to have inside is ice?”

“Maybe I should take lessons from Jim, huh?”

Serafíne

"I don't know," the creature returns, quiet you understand, thoughtful now, with a supple threading of her narrow shoulders and a steady regard that feels quite the way she feels: instinctive, physical, immediate, intent, and somehow on-the-verge. All that contained inside her, and captured by the curve of a small smile that feels also: very very private. Some secret she holds to her skin because there is no other way to wear it. "It seems pretty simple to me."

Sera is still sitting on the counter, and she takes a sip of her beer, watching Alexander as he returns to his seat and cants her head, her gaze half-shadowed by her dark lashes. Sometimes she can read stranger's moods with little more than an indrawn breath, her senses are so close to the surface. She is: so aware, so immediate, so vibrant, right?

"Alexander, we can do amazing stuff every day. Hawksley can turn off gravity. I can talk to you telepathetically. Elijah and I found a kid who had been attacked by a complete weirdo and he was dying and I healed him, but fuck, you don't have to be me to do that shit.

"You can look and see the primal energy of the fucking universe! You can - maybe - find where everything is fracturing and fraying and starting to peel apart, or fucking listen to every heartbeat of every living thing close to you just by closing your eyes and exerting your goddamned will.

"I know the way you feel shapes the way you do magic, but you can do and feel so much - so much more than everyone and everything else. Have you played around with what's opened up for you? Do you know what you can do? Do you want me to show you what I do?"

Alexander Brandt

[Because I need to know if he fluffs it or not for what I'm writing - Sensing entropy - TN4, -1 for the node]

Dice: 1 d10 TN3 (2) ( fail )

Alexander Brandt

He crosses his hands on the table and rests his chin on top of them. “I don’t have a fucking clue about most of it. I can see Callisto out there.” There’s another brief, warm smile. “Although she doesn’t seem to have noticed me so much. Otherwise I don’t really know what to do with the other things I can feel. I can’t... turn off gravity, or heal, or shield. And, honestly, I still have no idea about how all this works. I just know that if I look at a mirror, or whatever, and want something to happen then – sometimes – it does.”

He sits back up against the back of the chair and fishes around in a pocket for a coin. If Sera’s paying attention, she might notice that it’s a two dollar coin with the head of Ulysses Grant on it – the same one as the last time he was sat here, trying to work stuff out. He sets it spinning on the table.

There’s the feeling of something happening, some Work being done. But it becomes unsteady, unstable, cracking and fracturing and dissipating into the ether as Alexander loses grap of what he’s trying to do, to see.

Alexander slaps a hand on the coin, stopping it from spinning, and rests his forehead back on the table with a dull thud. “Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I can get flashes of things that might happen, that things might break, but they are just flashes. I can’t see enough for them to be any use. Or I could probably get a job as a speaking clock somewhere?”

Serafíne

What does Sera feel?

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 1, 1, 1, 6, 8, 9, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 6 ) Re-rolls: 3

Serafíne

So she looks. (Prime 1. Dif 4 -1 for a specialty focus.)

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (1, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )

Serafíne

Sera's posture straightens, alert. Her palms are flat on the edge of the counter now, the beer bottle left at her side. Fingers curled beneath it. She is watching Alexander as he avers that he cannot do anything that she mentioned and he doesn't know what to do with the other pieces he has learned. And as she senses the supple thread of his Work rising around the spinning of the coin, she bites her inner cheek. No way for Alexander to see that, the brief contraction of her pupils from the sharpness of the pain that both pulls in her focus and allows her to free herself from the ordinary restrictions of reality.

To see.

Blood sluices with her saliva.

"Do it again," Sera tells him, and there is - oh, iron in her tone. She is slithering down from the counter, booted feet slapping against the linoleum and that intensity is matched by the light in her eyes. "Do it again, make it happen. It' s hard. You're barely awake, sometimes you have to reach out and grab reality and shape it. Bend it. Break it if you have to.

"Do it again. Use your will."

Alexander Brandt

[Sensing Entropy again. Same diff.

Dice: 1 d10 TN3 (1) ( success x 1 ) [WP]

Alexander Brandt

There’s a muffled, amused snort from the table. “Well, what’s the worst that can happen, eh? I doubt I’ll be ripping a hole in the umbra or stopping time again anyway.” He looks up, resting his chin on the table instead of his forehead and reaches over to the coin. Holds it between thumb and forefinger on each hand and takes a breath. Concentrates on what he was trying to make happen with that first spin.

No, this time it isn’t what he’s trying to make happen. It’s what he damned well will happen. So Alexander sits up in the chair again, staring at the coin as he sets it spinning again.

That feeling gathers again, the promise of something happening. Something subtle changing in the room. In Alex. Until it starts to fray again, cracks working through the effect as it begins to shatter, almost shatters, almost has reality ready to slap back at the arrogant young apprentice who dares to force himself on the universe. But, this time, Alex fights back. This is something he wants to happen, and the universe can damned well fuck off and allow it to happen. There’s a moment – a frozen moment with a coin wobbling on its edge – before the effect comes back together and Alexander grunts as it does.

And he Sees. Faint lightning radiates off whatever he looks at as he catches glimpses, flashes in the storm, of what might be.

Serafíne

Sera - smiling, lovely Sera - makes an noise in the back of her throat, pleased, indulged even, though she is never precisely satiated and there is an edge to her smile and an edge to the gleam of her dark eyes and a pleasure to be found in that edge. She is sort of sidling towards him, watching the strands of his effect come together and fray apart, like heat lightning against the horizon and her senses are heightened enough and her awareness of the essential energy of the universe is sharp enough that that she always feels the exact moment when Alexander brings his will to bear.

Somehow, she has crossed the space between them. While he was working, while he was willing, while he was concentrating.

"If you want it to be stronger, you can do it again. Hold the energy inside you, wrap it up like a ball of lightning, feel it behind your breastbone, release it when you know it'll be enough to see you through." A ragged breath out. He is so lucky that she is almost sober. "Ritual helps for some. A structure, like a skeleton, that gives you a vessel through which you sense things or shape things, see?"

And she's standing in front of him them, surreal as she is, slight as she is, compelling as she is, holding her hands out to Alexander, palms up. The tattoos she has are absurd. She doesn't remember getting them. That hardly matters.

"Take my hands."

Alexander Brandt

He looks from the ball of lightning surrounding the cup on the drainer (filled, empty, cracked, chipped, smashed, dust, repaired...) to the storm around the chair (broken, bent, burned, shattered, ash, filled with people he doesn’t recognise...) and looks up at the flickers of possibility skittering across the ceiling (white, black, smoke-streaked, wooden, broken, holed...) He closes his eyes to black it all out for a moment when Sera asks for his hands.

So he opens his eyes and looks at her. (As she is now, covered in blood, happy, shot, bruised, broken, well, stabbed, old, harrowed, dead...) “Oh, jesus!” He closes his eyes again, quickly, and pushes the effect away and lets it dissolve again into the world. “I think I know why Kalen has trouble sleeping if that’s what he sees at night.” He slowly opens his eyes again, expecting the visions to be lingering. His shoulders sink after they hunched up in reaction to seeing her... Seeing her.

He shakes his head and reaches out to take her hands.

Serafíne

Mind 3. Difficulty 8. -1 (close to the node) -1 (resonance) -1 (focus)

Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (3, 6, 7) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Serafíne

And extending. Spending quint to keep the difficulty at 5.

Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (6, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )

Serafíne

(That's enough, Sera you badass.)

Serafíne

He places his hands in her own, outstretched. She has slender hands, and rather long, fine fingers, but they are not soft, no: instead she has all her tattoos and also the hints of musician's callouses, different on each hand. Sera folds her fingers around Alexander's hands and then there is a pressure, a tug, a pull and even though she is now standing, well, rather close, it is also clear that she wants him -

to rise,

- and she is humming in the back of her throat, no, she is singing something, it is a tangible thread, it is both a sensation and a prayer for the same, and he cannot quite hear the words although perhaps him can feel them (I wish I had the voice of everything / To sing the animals to sing the earth / To sing the stars into the universe) the way you feel the sunlight against your skin.

She is pulling him upright. She is drawing him in.

And he can feel the power in her, building inside of her, wrapping itself through her skin, around her mind, holding itself in abeyance beneath her breastbone, beneath her skin. She is still singing - is he rising? - and her eyes are closed now, and her voice is low, husky, fine, and she is magic, you understand.

Made of it.

Made for it,

calling him to stand with her, to keep holding her hands.

Inviting him,

in.

Alexander Brandt

Her fingers slide over the hard, rough skin of Alexander’s hands as she changes her grip. These aren’t the soft, moisturised, manicured hands that several of the other Mages have. These are weathered and battered and scraped. A hard exterior for...

He feels the pull of her hands and of her will. He can’t tell what it is that she’s doing, only that it’s there and it’s powerful. Pulling. Calling. Drawing. He does rise, watching her, singing her song below the level of really hearing the words. Feeling them, rather. He stands, slowly.

He stands, but doesn’t close the distance between them. Whether that was her intention or not, he doesn’t know. He just remembers another voice. The voice that Sera couldn’t hear. So enticing, so appealing, so... hungry and desperate. Come closer. The voice that would have pushed him towards what probably would have been a very lonely end.

He doesn’t pull away, but he doesn’t push forwards towards Sera and her effect either. He stands frozen on the threshold between the two.

He looks at her closed eyes, like the newly-Awakened rabbit in her full-beam headlights, and whispers. “I’m scared.”

Serafíne

Of what. Sera's voice is in his mind. Her mouth is not moving, but she has opened her eyes and tipped her chin back so that she can look up at him. The edge of her mouth curved in a close-lipped, rather mournful little. Of this?

Don't be. Such conviction. So much light in her; and so much shadow all of it in equal gradiant measure. Come with me. I won't let anything happen to you.

Serafíne

(CHARISMA PLUS EXPRESSION: she means that.)

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 6 ) Re-rolls: 2

Alexander Brandt

Sera’s voice is in his mind, and it’s so close. So intimate. To hear her thoughts, feel the conviction in what she tells him. To be that close to someone?

It’s glorious.

And it’s terrifying.

Alexander pulls his hands from hers, steps back, pulls away. “I can’t, not like that.” Something catches in his throat and he turns away. “I just... please, just don’t.” He walks towards the window overlooking the land to the back of the building and watches the storm clouds starting to pass overhead without, really, seeing them.

Serafíne

Paradox.

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (3, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )

Serafíne

Stamina

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 7) ( success x 1 )

Serafíne

Alexander refuses the connection. The truth is he cannot resist it: he doesn't know how: how to protect himself from such instrusions, how to begin to sense their shape or shadow in the world, how to do anything except terrify himself with his own perceptions of decay on the edge of a spinning coin, and she could stay there as long as she wanted, she could fold herself into his consciousness, and skim through his drifting thoughts, she could tread, heavily or lightly, through every one of his dreams, she could wrap him in an illusory world, ecstatic or terrifying. She could hurt him.

All he do to refuse the connection is to say no,

but he can say no,

and no is something that Sera respects. It is both a withdrawal and a recoiling and there is the withdrawal of that open mind, that impossible connection, and within that withdrawl is a sense of snap-back, and that rejection, that refusal of the world and Sera is pulling in a single sharpened breath and her magic lives in her body, you understand, immediate and raw, physical, visceral and she feels Alexander's refusal as much as anything else. Pulls back into herself with a physical sob that she tries to hold back, to swallow, to absorb, squares her shoulders against the raw sensation of his refusal, and the impending back-blow of reality.

The song ends as abruptly as the Willwork unravels and - wait for it, wait for it - there it is, the brief burst of pain that spreads, dull and throbbing, from the bridge of her nose across the span of her sinuses. The thin trickle of blood from her left nostril.

She is shaking a little bit, Sera. She'd have to be.

All or nothing, that is how she Works.

"I'm sorry - " This, once she has caught a shaky breath. "I didn't - I'm gonna, I'm gonna go."

Alexander Brandt

He doesn’t know how to resist. Doesn’t know that she could pick and probe and dig out what made him try to pull back from what Sera was doing. He assumes that the hands are the bridge between them, that pulling away will break the connection and keep himself safe.

That first reaction, the fear of being so damned close to someone... That was instinct, as much as landing Sera on her ass in the middle of a crowded market was. It was a defence, only not against the physical. The wounds that that reaction is protecting are deeper and harder to see. She could so easily dig them out if she wanted to...

But then if she did, and Alexander ever found out, then he’d never trust her again. And, right now, he needs people he can trust to help him figure this stuff out. Help him see the wonder when all he can see is the darkness.

He winces when he feels reality backslap Sera for her Work, but he doesn’t turn back to look at her. Doesn’t turn at her sob. And it’s not because he doesn’t care. He just hurts.

I'm sorry - I didn't - I'm gonna, I'm gonna go. He did feel her conviction when she said I won't let anything happen to you. Knows that she didn’t want – even expect – his reaction. He really does want to feel the wonder she promised, but...

He takes a shuddering breath and half-turns his head to her. “Wait. Thank you. For trying.” His gaze returns to the window, watching the trails of raindrops that are starting to appear on the glass. And quieter, which she may or may not hear as she does or doesn’t move to leave, “Don’t give up on me. Please.”

Serafíne

Dan's been around, downstairs at the bar. Restocking the bathrooms, checking the date the filter was last changed in the furnace. All the goddamned ordinary things that have to happen in an ordinary house to make it run, and he knows Sera, knows Sera the way he knows his own heart, the knows the shape of a guitar in his hand, the way he knows Plato, the way he knows everything. He sure-as-hell knows the feel of her magic in the air. Staring out the window as he is, Alexander won't see Dan enter, but Dan is not a fucking ninja. He's a tall, lanky guy and he has a wallet chain, he makes noise, he makes noise as he enters the kitchen and he goes to Sera, of course he does, and he goes to Sera and he kisses her on the crown of her head and wraps a long, loose arm around her shoulders and murmurs,

"Head back," quietly into her ear when he sees the bit of blood trickling down her face, feels the reflected ache of both the powerful spell quickly drawn back and the connection, well, refused, that leaves her so raw, and she doesn't mind feeling raw, you have to feel raw, too, but that doesn't mean she can reassure Alexander, now. That doesn't mean she can trust her voice to work the way voices work.

And Dan has no idea what the fuck just happened, he just walked into the room and there's Alexander staring out the window and Sera looking a little bit wounded and a little bit bloodied and a little bit like she started bleeding light through her skin and then reversed course and was naturally singed in the process. "She won't give up on you," Dan has a baritone, it is rich, rumbly in his chest because he was up too early this morning or too late last night, "and I don't know what you're going through, and I sure as hell am not gonna judge, but you gotta do some of the work too. Cool?

"I'm gonna take her home. You gonna be okay?"

Alexander Brandt

Cool? Alexander doesn’t turn back to Dan, wouldn’t trust himself not to fall apart if he did and really saw the effect what just happened had on Sera. So he nods.

You gonna be ok? He takes a deep breath, less shuddering than the last, and nods again. “I’ll be... fine.”

And he won’t turn as Dan and Sera head home, not until he feels her resonance fade into the storm outside. But, eventually, he turns and leaves the house himself. Heads out and rides through the rain, too fast to be strictly safe. And he rides, and miles and of road pass under him.

And he’s alone again.

Which could be the most frightening part of all.

Serafíne

Dan watches Alexander, mouth still, a little bit pursed. He isn't as insightful as Serafíne herself but Sera is a little too raw to allow herself to feel the edge of Alexander's despair. Not just now.

So there is a moment like hang time and then Dan nods, you see, "Alright," his chin moves against the crown of Sera's head, beard getting tangled with her curls. "Text later, man. Let us know you're okay."

Lakashim.

Elijah

[Did I survive last night?]

Dice: 4 d10 TN7 (2, 5, 9, 9) ( success x 2 )

Serafíne

They're having a picnic. It doesn't matter that it is four a.m. Serafíne has a goddamned red-and-white checked blanket and a basket she bought in a thrift store with three matching and one mismatched napkin and inside the basket there are things, Sera does not know what things there might be, each time someone reaches in to the basket it is a mystery what might emerge. The soapstone box with her weed and her little carved pipe and her favorite goddamned Zippo? Lay's Cappuccino potato chips? Baby carrots? Remarkably expensive cognac? A bunch of peculiarly plump black seedless grapes? Two slices of Dee's remarkable red velvet cake? Some new little treat or treasure in some new little plastic box?

--

The only thing Sera has pulled thus far from the picnic basket though is the Veuve-Cliquot demi-sec, and she has peeled off the foil and unwrapped the metal cage from the cork and popped it, and poured the sparkling, fizzy, slightly-sweet champagne into red solo cups, like a champion.

The grass is sweet and a bit spongy beneath the blanket, when you lay back.

There are in a field in front of the building proper and the building proper is so far the fuck out from the city, that out here there are so many fucking stars.

Elijah wants Serafíne to teach him and Serafíne does not know where to start. She is on her back with one hand beneath her head and the other wrapped around her red solo cup full of champagne, which is in turn resting on her abdomen, and she turns to look at him in the starlit dark, and says, "Aren't you Kalen's apprentice? What I do is nothing like what the Hermetics do. You know?"

Elijah

He liked the stars. He liked the stars and he wondered, briefly, if there would be more of them maybe if he just looked somewhere else, if the sky here from the umbra (ha! a new word. It had a name, and it delighted him to no end. The umbra) was different from the sky by his apartment or if it still sparkled and shimmered pretty like at home. He could care less what time it was, because they were having a picnic and the sky was full of stars and that seemed to be the best thing in the world.

He laid back on the grass, solo cup held upright and his eyes travel from the sky to Sera. He'd wanted to learn something from her, he'd anted to lawn how to feel all those other living things around him, because Elijah wanted ever so desperately to feel alive. He hadn't said that, of course, in those awe tinged moments where he had seen her Work and bring a man back from the bring of death. He'd held onto that, how she'd said she used the physical to move the metaphysical and he'd wanted, more than anything, to understand.

Elijah tore his eyes off the sky, over to Sera and he drummed his fingers idly on the side of the cup. What she does is nothing like what hermetics do.

"That's cool," he said, "I don't… I'm Kalen's apprentice but Kalen's… he's really fluid, ya know? Flexible. I kind of get the impression that Kalen isn't like other Hermetics."

Serafíne

Sera breathes out. There's a kind of humor there, subsumed, contained as much in her skin as it is anywhere else. She's smiling. She's looking at him and she is doing so peripherally, her profile quite stark against the darkness. Just enough star-or-moonlight now that her skin is luminous, even though it is night.

"Is that what you wanna be? A Hermetic who isn't much like other Hermetics?"

It is not a rhetorical question. Sera's tongue is tipped against her lower lip. She is thinking about it, and she is watching Elijah against the darkness, and there is something aware and awake and so very quick in the bruise of her gaze.

"They don't - " a sharp inhale, " - most of them - respect what I do. The way I do it." Who knew that Sera knew that? Understood that? "They call it low. And the way you have to let go -

"I don't think it fits with their practice. You have to understand that before we start."

Elijah

hat was it that Elijah wanted?

That was the big question, wasn't it? What was it that Elijah wanted, what did he believe out of all of this and out of all of the things that he had learned from the places he'd picked up? What was he keeping? What was he discarding? What meant everything to him and what did he decide needed to be tossed out in favor of a different idea? For someone who seemed to work well so many places, there was a question of whether or not Elijah really fit anywhere.

She does on, explains that most of them don't respect her work, don't respect how she sees the world, thinks of it as low and Elijah… Elijah can't quite wrap his head around that one. Thus far, his work had fit in well with Kalen's, but as he'd said before Kalen wasn't typical. Would Elijah really be okay with not fitting in so very obviously?

"I don't think I'd quit fit in with other Hermetics… and I don't think I'm okay with that," he says, he pauses. He takes a moment to really think about it and while the thought doesn't seem to bother him, the thought doesn't necessarily come to him terribly easily, "I don't know if I'd fit in anywhere… but I'm getting to be more okay with that, too."

Serafíne

Sera's eyes are blue and that blue is dark and in the long shadows of the moonlit night that dark is enduring. Abiding. She has cheated her gaze towards him; enough to watch the thoughts as they run across his features like clear water, with those strangely opaque depths. Enough to see both thought and movement and decision and to hear a fucking answer that sounds like the sort of fucking answer that is not precisely Sera's fucking answer.

And she doesn't know how to tell him that she doesn't think he should be answering questions right now, finding them inside him, finding the things that fit, so much as asking himself other questions and breaking little pieces of his heart and not giving a fuck about where he fits as much as what suits him, and fuck, maybe she's misunderstanding him, she doesn't know what this shit is like, or she does, she does, she does, she knows with her body the way so many people now with their minds, and the memory of it all is contained inside her mouth, like a moth beatings its terribly fragile wings against her teeth, tickling her throat, spasming, dying -

and she inhales, perhaps to tell him that, perhaps simply because her lungs were hungry, but she inhales and holds all those things inside her, and how can Elijah know or see or understand what any of that shit is: just a moment of sharpness, a sudden breath, drawn-in, and then she is telling him,

"Kiss me."

He wanted to learn from her, after all.

Elijah

He doesn't hesitate, but he doesn't know what he's looking for. Isn't that the story of Elijah Poirot, though? Seeking something he wasn't sure was the right answer, or really his answer, but finding that he was rather enjoying the journey along the way.

He's kissed a number of people in his day- the first was nothing like Sera. People say you remember your first kiss, but it had been the first time Elijah had gotten drunk in a girl's basement while her mom was at work and he'd been fourteen and sloppy and she hadn't really minded that he wasn't terribly good at it, because she was a year older than him and he was cute so she was happy to show him the ropes. Serafíne was nothing like Miranda Carmichael, not in the traditional sense. He hadn't been terrified of screwing up with Sera like he had been with Miranda. This wasn't middle school.

Kissing Sera wasn't like kissing Alicia, or Jenn, or Ian, or any of the other people he'd kissed. He sat unto his side and leaned forward, pressed his lips to hers in a way that was exploratory without being tentative. He pressed forward, his heart beating harder, though still steady, his eyes closed and he wasn't thinking about what was going on at that moment, he kissed her and wanted to taste the hints of champagne on her lips and whatever else Sera tasted like. He wanted to press forward, to be in the moment.

Elijah wasn't thinking of the first time he'd kissed someone, or the last time he'd kissed someone, he wasn't really even thinking. He just knew Sera told him to kiss her, so he did.

Serafíne

There is power in her and this is how she draws on it. Sera opens her mouth and she tastes like clove cigarettes and that demi-sec champagne and fat black grapes. She tastes like four a.m. and she tastes like the ragged edges of the universe and she tastes like the dew gathering on the stalks of prairie grass. She tastes like magic and she sets her goddamned red solo cup aside, and you understand that she is nestling it in the grass, making a little hollow in which it can rest, without even really thinking about the intent or the motion, all the while kissing Elijah back, just so she can have that hand free to cup it behind Elijah's skull as he kisses her, and she is humming in the back of her throat and she is hungry and then she is air hungry and then their mouths part just long enough to inhale, that is how this goes, and Sera is laughing a bit, indulgent and he can feel the magic moving inside her, wrapping itself around and through her skin, and his skin and she is everything and she is everywhere and she is inside him, isn't she?

Serafíne

Combined effect: Mind 3/Life 1. She's drawing Elijah into her body / mind so that he can "cast" the effect with her. (-1 resonance) (-1 focus)

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (2, 3, 4) ( success x 1 )

Serafíne

Extending. Damnit.

Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (4, 5, 8) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Elijah

There's a power in Sera that Elijah can't fathom, can't possibly imagine having held or wielded before, and she opens her mouth and she tastes like so many things, things that go beyond taste and move into the realm of ideas. Something that moves beyond ideas and goes just into being. He kisses her and she's humming and he can pick out the elements of what are similar. They part ways for a second long enough for him to inhale with her, a subconscious motion but he inhales all the same and presses forward again and she is laughing and she is hungry and this was permission to explore.

And he did explore, and he moves along with her, feels how she would do this, feels it as though h'd done it himself and there is a second when his lips part and his tongue savors the taste of four a.m. and the edge of the universe and he can feel his heart beating and he can count the beats of her own and everything is bleeding beating beautiful alive.

There should be a disconnect, because when Elijah usually presses, when he touches, when he holds and when he moves forward, he finds that the world is falling apart, he knows the cracks and knows how things are dying, dying, dying and at that juncture he can tell when they are living, how they are living, and there is elation and he laughs, laughs because laughter comes easily against her mouth and all he latches on to is the taste of the universe at four in the morning and the way Sera's lips feel and the way his chest feels when it's pressed 'gainst hers and the texture of her hair and the hum of crickets and the grass and everything is living, living, living and dying, dying, dying and he takes in all of it.

Elijah isn't scared, though he should be, at the sheer magnitude and the wonder of living things, but he can sense their hearts beating and the feeling of the fireflies flitting about and cicadas chirping. He finds something, something that lets him know he's alive, lets him make that physical connection that can transcend to the metaphysical and move onward and at that juncture Elijah finds himself capable of understanding, if only for a brief moment, how this must feel.

Serafíne

This is how Sera does magic; and now, and here, and tonight, this is how Elijah rides the wave of that magic with her. There is only her will, which is both a knot meant to be shredded inside her chest and a spreading warmth that opens, opens, opens, and within the boundaries of her body, does it not feel like all her cell walls are starting to dissolve, like she's leaking light, and it is exquisite and painful and transporting to be so close to the edge of the self that one can put one's tongue on the goddamned terminals of the universe's battery and taste the fucking charge -

- and then, and then, and then:

everything. fucking everything.

It is ecstatic: not merely the result but the method, the arching need like a bridge between the actual and possible, the promissible, the potent give and take of sensory stimulation that gives her the push to transcend the boundaries of her skin and enter - you know - everything.

And Elijah does not simply feel the pattern of life all around them, but he can feel it inside her, the ink burrowed into her skin from all the goddamned tattoos, the pathways in her brain that are lit, brilliant, night-sky brilliant, drive-in brilliant, fireworks brilliant, and the pathways that are dormant and on and on and on, beyond her, this endless web of connection where there is no self and no other, there merely: is.

Sera pulls back, pulls away after - well, perhaps Elijah cannot measure time, but the sun is edging its way over the eastern horizon which means: it has been hours and where the dead of night was silent, now there is birdsong all around. The dew is heavier on the blades of grass - and even the blanket on which they are lying is damp now.

Elijah

There was a point where his mind was screaming at him, begging that there had to be some relief because it was too much, feeling all of it, trying to hold up that barrier of self and the rest of the universe was trying to push in and bleed through and there was a moment, one glorious moment, that second that he finally, finally let go. And those walls and those boundaries and that second of being one among millions was lost because there was nothing but being. A one ness in all of it, that moment where his heart was pounding and his heart didn't matter because it was never truly his. There was no difference between his body and her body or the grass beneath them or the light the fireflies made-

And how could this be low? How could this be anything other than transcendent?

When Sera pulls away, he barely remembered where he was, his breathing heavy his head swimming and he fell back onto the damp blanket and he could have stayed there for however long he needed to stay there. He could have measured time at that second, could have possibly told himself how many hours had passed but it didn't matter to him beyond knowing that the moment had moved and…

"Holy fucking shit, Sera…"

it's all he can get out, staring at the sky as it turned colors and started in with its dawn routines. His breathing was at once deep and shallow, his eyes unfocused and precise. Elijah couldn't get the smile off of his face.

"It's so bright," with no small amount of wonder, with awe because he was incredibly honest for such a practiced liar.

Serafíne

"Mmm." Sera murmurs, languid now, drowsing, lovely. She has: rolled over on to her side, and watches Elijah in the gather light of dawn through the scrim of her dark lashes. Her mascara is smeared. Last night's make-up. Last night's lipstick is long-fucking-gone. "Lakashim.

"You just need to figure out how to get there.

"And how to come home."

Breaking hearts and taking names.

Ian

There were a number of gallery spaces in Santa Fe. Some were fairly static fixtures with names and reputations. Others were rented out to whichever artist or organization happened to claim them that week. This particular gallery was of the latter variety and was currently hosting a show of student artwork in a variety of mediums. The quality of the work was, of course, variable, but some of the pieces were interesting enough. And there were wine and desserts available on a table near the door.

The turn-out wasn't bad for a student art show. A number of those present had just begun to filter in from the various restaurants nearby. Among those, Ian and a tallish, elegant-looking woman moved past the door (skipping the desserts) to stand in front of a large oil painting. The body language between the two was companionable, inasmuch as either of them could ever be called such. The woman leaned over to whisper something into Ian's ear, and Ian smiled and put a hand to his mouth (as though to keep himself from laughing.) The painting - it wasn't quite Ian's style. It was warm and sentimental: an old man walking with his grandson along the beach. Ian glanced over the room, searching until his eyes lit upon a display of photography. The subjects were condemned and abandoned buildings, half crumbled and overrun with wildlife and graffiti. They were eerie and beautiful all at once.

With a nod, he pulled away from his companion's side and walked toward the photographs. She cast a linger gaze toward the painting before following in his wake.

Ian

[Edit: lingering gaze]

Serafíne

The truth is Serafíne loves student art shows. The disparate elements, the clash of styles, the lack of any overarching goddamned theme. Here is someone, and someone else, and someone else, putting some piece of him or herself on the wall and hoping it sticks, hoping it means something, meaning it to mean something, without quite knowing what sort of meaning is worth striving for, because who the fuck knows that shit because as soon as you start thinking you know that shit, some important part of your brain: open to wisdom, open to wonder, is already starting to shut down.

Sera is saying that to someone who is not a stranger as they walk in. They were at another gallery down the street and then stopped for drinks and Sera had a couple and nothing really to eat so she's feeling them, bright and shining in her blood, those drinks, they make her feel both luminous and lifted, uplifted, like there are balloons in her blood, like she could rise and rise and rise and rise.

She's telling someone a story, several someones, several stories, about this guy in Macon, Georia and these acrylics he did of clowns and everyone who is hearing this story thinks she is going to say something about velvet and they all think that this story is meant fucking ironically, but Sera, she does not mean it ironically and she is not making fun of the eighty-six year old clown painter from Georgia.

She loved him.

She loves so many things.

--

The story ends and the little knot of new-come hipsters unclusters and Sera makes a beeline for the wine-and-dessert tables. One of the bakers is there tending to her treats and Sera is very EEEE! and half-circles and gives Dee and takes a mini-red-velvet cupcake because Dee insists and Sera usually eschews dessert tables too, not because she works for that remarkable body she shows off so regularly (tonight is no exception: a tiny ruched satin skirt, black. Fishnets. Remarkable heels, and a see-through black lace bra beneath a leather jacket. Sweat at her temples because it is warm outside, strangely humid and she is strangely human) but because she just doesn't remember to eat.

Sera takes her red velvet cupcake and heads over to the wine, flirting with a girl who turns out to be one of the artists over what sort of wine goes with cream cheese icing.

Serafíne

Perception + Awareness?

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 10) ( success x 3 )

Ian

[Not that one really needs Awareness to notice Sera...]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 9, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )

Ian

The woman with Ian tonight, she didn't resonate the way that he did, and she was not possessed of his particular talents (at least, not those which might be considered less than mundane.) But she noticed Sera around the same time that Ian did, because it was difficult to exist within the same space as Sera and not know that she was there. Even Sleepers felt the magnetic draw of her presence. Sera was beautiful and eye-catching. Of course Emma looked.

Emma was beautiful too. Less raw than Sera. Her beauty was a bit more like Ian's. And she wasn't dressed in fishnets or a leather jacket. Instead she wore skin-tight jeans, red silk stilettos and a flowing white peasant blouse. She tipped back her head to gaze around Ian, eyeing Sera with casual interest. Ian, however, kept his eyes on the photographs for a few moments longer, lost in a kind of contemplative focus.

He was wearing coated black jeans (skinny with a tapered leg,) black dress boots and a white t-shirt. A black leather bracelet with a metal infinity symbol braided into it was clasped around his left wrist.

After a long moment, he followed Emma's gaze and found Sera and Dee over by the dessert table.

"I think I'll grab us some wine. You like red, right?"

"Mm. I'll take a cupcake while you're at it."

Ian nodded and pulled away, making a line for the table where the wine was set out. When he reached it, he caught Sera's eye and smiled. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised to find you here."

Serafíne

"It's my fucking scene," returns Sera, and it would almost be without a glance except that he caught her eyes but there's something so immediate and present and assured and active about her. Reactive about her. The quick crawl of her mouth.

Ian picks up a couple glasses of red. Sera has talked the wine-table-guy into opening a bottle of prosecco and she has also discovered where in the space his works are displayed, "Doug here crocheted the Che Guevara Afghan on the south wall and also knitted the bicycle cozy around the fucking bike. Fucking amazing."

Then Sera is turning to Ian fully, lifting her drink and following a line-of-sight over his shoulder toward Emma, and she - well - she smirks, Sera. Just a little bit.

Er, maybe more than a little bit.

"What about you, still breaking hearts and taking names I see?"

A quirk of her left brow, that is more challenge than inquiry.

Serafíne

"It's my fucking scene," returns Sera, and it would almost be without a glance except that he caught her eyes but there's something so immediate and present and assured and active about her. Reactive about her. The quick crawl of her mouth.

Ian picks up a couple glasses of red. Sera has talked the wine-table-guy into opening a bottle of prosecco and she has also discovered where in the space his works are displayed, "Doug here crocheted the Che Guevara Afghan on the south wall and also knitted the bicycle cozy around the fucking bike. Fucking amazing."

Then Sera is turning to Ian fully, lifting her drink and following a line-of-sight over his shoulder toward Emma, and she - well - she smirks, Sera. Just a little bit.

Er, maybe more than a little bit.

"What about you, still breaking hearts and taking names I see?"

A quirk of her left brow, that is more challenge than inquiry.

Ian

Ian went for the pinot noir, picking up a couple of glasses and resting them deftly between the fingers of his left hand. The cupcake took a bit more consideration, despite the fact that he wasn't planning to eat any of it, and his eyes drifted away from Sera as he took a few steps to the dessert table, contemplating the myriad choices on display.

Sera took note of Emma, and Ian looked up from the cupcakes and laughed. Amusement lingered in his eyes as he followed Sera's gaze across the room.

"I'm not her type. Even if I was, I doubt I could break her heart."

Chocolate. Emma liked chocolate, and it went with the wine. Ian grabbed a plate with his free hand and set a cupcake on it. A bit of the frosting got on his thumb and he put it to his mouth and sucked on it lightly.

"Emma's a co-worker. She's in my dance company."

Ian lifted the plate and turned his gaze back to Sera fully, regarding her contemplatively. "You can join us if you like."

Serafíne

"What the hell does that mean, you're not her type?" She is - well, she is fairly close to his height tonight, because her shoes have both these remarkable platforms and these remarkable heels and she does not wear these things the way most women wear them, taking half-mincing steps because fuck they hurt, no. She wears them and walks in them with a remarkably powerful stride, as if she meant to claim and keep all the space she could for herself in the world.

"Let me guess: she likes people who are emotionally available, maybe even fucking vulnerable sometimes, and - oh, fuck - who don't hold themselves apart from everything with a kind of detached superiority as a way of striving to retain control in a chaotic and fundamentally uncontrollable world - "

A neat little shrug, then. Sera pops her red velvet cupcake (they are minis, but still) in her mouth in its entirety and beams up at Ian. Still, he has invited her to join them if she likes and she seems to be falling into step beside him, though Sera turns, lifts her chin and glances behind them, at that picture that they abandoned in favor of more artful arrangements of empty, abandoned spaces. Looks ahead - at Emma and the photographs she and Ian had been perusing.

"Or, wait," Sera's grin, raw and (more than a little bit) edgy, "maybe she just prefers some other kind of douchebag."

Then Sera points her cup back over her shoulder.

"You guys didn't like that one?" Inquiry, and then another, "Dance company?"

Ian

[Manip+Subterfuge]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 6 ) Re-rolls: 1

Serafíne

(Mmm. Perception + Awareness-as-empathy.)

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 3, 3, 4, 4, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )

Ian

Sera fell into step, but Ian, see... he stopped moving. Not out of shock, really. Sera was hardly the first person to call him a douchebag. But she had introduced a rather dramatic shift in their conversation, and it required a certain amount of reconfiguration. There were people around them. The boy pouring wine. The baker. Artists and gallery patrons milling about, talking, stealing wine and cupcakes. Dee was nearby. Emma was looking at them from across the room with veiled curiosity (she could be rather catlike herself, you see.) The room had an echo. Voices carried. It wasn't the sort of environment where one could reasonably expect any degree of privacy.

So Ian stopped and regarded Sera silently. Then he said, "I meant that she's gay."

When he glanced at the painting (the one with the old man and the child and that radiating warmth of family) he shrugged. "It doesn't interest me."

After a moment he added, "No one's forcing you to be around me, Sera. If you don't like it, go talk to someone else." The tone of his voice wasn't angry or condescending so much as flat. Distant, just as she'd accused him of being.

Serafíne

So there's no falling in step and in fact Sera is a handful of steps ahead when she kind of sort of notices that Ian is not beside her. She stops then: turns around while Ian reconfigured himself, readjusted to the new turn in the conversation.

Sera: her smile, quick and challenging, still that edge to it that is, yes, visceral - entirely and wholly of-the-gut, you understand.

"Do you really think I do anything I don't want to do?"

The answer is: yes and yes and yes. Sera does things that she doesn't want to do all the fucking time. She doesn't want to follow a cannibal-monster-thing into an alley behind a bar and doesn't want to see a poor bastard of a jock sprawled on the ground, choking on his own blood while a madman gnawed on his goddamned cheek but you know, the way Sera asks that question, you would never imagine that the answer is anything but no.

She waits for him. Glasses up and past him at that painting that doesn't interest him and at first the look is cursory and then the look (at the painting) deepens and then Sera glances back at Ian's face, kept so carefully blank that even she cannot penetrate his mask.

"I don't think you're a fucking douchebag," Sera, to Ian, rather more conversationally should he indeed fall into step beside her again. "I do think you're kind of a jerk. Kalen likes you but I think half of that's projection. You know the I feel nothing (and fuck, maybe it's true) shit backfires when other people start projecting their hopes and desires onto it. He does think you saved his life though, so. That's why you got "kind of" instead of full blown jerk.

Ian

The truth about that painting, and Ian's reaction to it, was rather a lot deeper and more complex than what he'd claimed. But he was a good liar. Even in the presence of someone like Sera. Maybe it frustrated her or maybe she found it distasteful or fucking obnoxious or any number of other things, but her open dislike of his cold detachment wasn't likely to have any positive effect on removing it.

She asked if he thought she ever did anything she didn't want to do, and Ian's lips turned up lightly at one side. "No, but I try not to make assumptions."

And yes, he did fall into step beside her again. Though whatever he thought of the rest of her claims, he kept that to himself. When they reached Emma's side, Ian handed over one of the wine glasses and the plate with the cupcake on it, to which Emma responded with a sly smile and a kiss on Ian's cheek. "You brought food and wine and beautiful company. You really do think of everything." Emma shuffled the plate to her left hand and offered the other in greeting to Sera. "Emma."

"Sera just got done telling me I'm kind of a jerk," Ian offered dryly. "Maybe the two of you will get along."

"Only kind of?" Emma's smile broadened, but there wasn't any real bite to the insult. If anything, her voice held a bit of fondness.

Serafíne

"Serafíne."

This to Emma, right hand to right hand. Sera has a bronze ring with impressions like stick figures or hieroglyphs stamped onto a slender shield on her right index finger, and a spiked something on both her ring finger and pinky. An assortment of bracelets - notable if only for their shear fucking variety is clustered against her wrist, half caught between the cuff of her leather jacket and the slender span of her hand.

She has so many tattoos. Visible now: the ink on both hands, a flash of sharkscissors on her inner left palm, indecipherable scrawls of letters on her fingers, inner wrist, and along the meat of her palm. The hint of something beneath her right breast, when she lifts her hand to shake like that.

"Like Ian said, most people call me Sera."

--

And honestly Sera rolls her eyes a little bit at Emma's quip about wine and food and beautiful company and that look: wry, skeptical, challenging, is a lit fuse from Emma to Ian and back again.

"So you're dancers, huh? Which one of you is black swan and which one is the good girl ingenue from Idaho who is going to be murdered or ruined in furtherance of the plot.

"Or, you know, what kind of dance?"

Ian

Emma raised an eyebrow lightly at Sera's quip, and there was a vague hint of something tired about it. Like maybe she'd heard that one a few times before. When she retrieved her hand from Sera's grasp, she began to peel back the wrapper on her tiny cupcake.

"I think you'd be hard-pressed to find an ingenue in our group."

She took a bite of the cupcake, neatly devouring about half of it. Ian's eyes drifted to her mouth for a moment, but they didn't linger long.

"We do contemporary ballet," Ian added, by way of an actual answer. "No Swan Lake, sorry." He took a drink from his wine glass and began to walk slowly toward the next exhibit, which happened to be a handful of smaller abstract paintings.

"I don't think I ever asked what you do?" (This to Sera.)

Serafíne

Something about Emma's non-verbal response has Sera's rather shit-eating grin spreading wider. She kind of presses her mouth together and gives Ian an arch look that is extended in a sweep to Emma. And Emma tells Sera that she would be hard-pressed to find an ingenue in their group, and Sera laughs as Emma takes that neat little bite of the cupcake and not unlike Ian's gaze, Sera's goes directly to the woman's mouth.

"Fucking of course. I bet you're all world weary sophisticates. So, does contemporary ballet mean a rigorous grounding in Martha Graham and maybe some throwbacks to Nijinsky and Diagalev, or does it mean a shitty mix of U2 and Beethoven, with a helluva lot of backflips as a stand in for actual passion?

"'Cos like, Dan and I went to one of the latter once in New York. It was fucking awful. I had to spend three days afterward drunk on grain alcohol listening to nothing but the Sex Pistols just to get it out of my system and I pretty much hate the Sex Pistols too.

"I mean I like the snarl but it all feels so manufactured, you know? I guess the good thing about Swan Lake is, you've had a hundred years to lose all the shit from the repertoire and whatever's fucking left can be pretty goddamned powerful if people let themselves feel it rather than just going through the motions."

--

Serafíne's Rant About Art™ concludes, and Ian says he's never really asked what she does and Sera breathes out this laugh, whole and genuine, her grin quick and engaging and mildly self-deprecating. "I don't do shit, man. I'm in a band." A little wrinkle of her nose, like a wink.

"Sometimes we play out. That's pretty much it."

Ian

Point in fact, both Ian and Emma had starred in productions of Swan Lake. Most ballet dancers had, at one point or another. It was like the Nutcracker that way - ubiquitous, overplayed, and difficult to avoid. Unlike the Nutcracker, Swan Lake at least had some redeeming value (as Sera had put it, in the hands of the right dancers, the right choreographers - it could be powerful.)

Sera painted Ian and Emma as world-weary sophisticates, to which Emma just smirked as she finished off her cupcake. Ian's eyes were on one of the paintings in front of him when he said, "Well shit, there goes my concept for the next show. I always wanted to do a mashup of Beethoven's Fifth with Beautiful Day."

Emma nearly spit out her wine. But of course, it was Emma, so she managed to make it look charming rather than silly, uttering this little huff of breath through her nose as she put the tips of her fingers to her mouth to press her lips closed.

When she had her amusement under control, she swallowed the wine and said, "That sounds awful." (Of the mashup.) "What sort of music do you play?"

Serafíne

"Rock and roll," Sera returns, with a razor-wire grin and an ironic / not-at-fucking-all-ironic set of devil horns. "What the fuck else is there? Shit, what do I fucking look like.

"Maybe," this, with a gesture of her glass of inexpensive Prosecco in the vague-general-direction of Emma's cupcake plate, with a sort of intimation of secrecy, everything all confidential, you understand. "I should change it up, you know. Subvert expectations and say I'm play easy listening on contemporary christian or slow jazz, one of those twee, tiny little fucking saxes, you know the ones I mean?

"Those things are awesome."