Sid's green gift has departed this place, so the grass Grace is lying in crunches uncomfortably underneath. But it's no matter really. The sky still glows with sunset. It's peaceful (for now). There are no vampires, no Technocrats, just earth and sky and the hot spring Node into which her feet skim. Her shoes and socks have been dropped off by the edge, and she's got her jeans rolled up so they don't get wet.
Oh yes, earth and sky and cell phone held up to block the view of all that so that Grace can get on Hacker News and browse the awesome stuff the outside world is up to.
Somebody out there just posited that black holes don't exist. Singularities are impossible, says the math. Another scientist replies, "Yes, Virginia, black holes exist," with even more math.
Truth is in the eye of the beholder, you see.
SerafíneIf Grace's senses are open she will feel Serafíne long before she sees her. They bend the world, afterall. Distant, (gutwrenching) and framed by the sunset world (enthralling), all these between-places (liminal) and hurtling ever-closer at the speed of, you know, a conversion van driven by someone Grace cannot sense at any distance, because he is himself ordinary, except vis-a-vis his capacity for imagination perhaps, or his love of the world.
--
So some time after the first inkling of that sensation and then some time after its arrival and then some time that remains as-yet undetermined, the glass sliders zip open and Sera emerges, boots solid on the flagstone patio. It's not the ordinary click of her heels; she's wearing her Doc Marten's tonight, and a gray hoodie repaired with patchwork that is longer than the buckle-covered leather skirt she has paired with it, over a plaid bustier. Hood pulled up to cover her hair, a bottle of beer in her right hand as she exits and exists and circles the patio, wreathed in mist rising from the hotspring, eyeing Grace's perch as she does.
"Just your feet?" Wry, her eyes dark and shadowed by the edge of the hood, the twist of her mouth at the edge of a smirk. Sera has lost a bit of weight recently. She is not yet gaunt as she was when she fasted, but there is a returned sharpness to her, somehow. "Why not go all-in?"
GraceGrace lost a bit of weight recently too, although in her case, the thinness is on the mend. It's just hard to eat when you're in a coma after all.
She only snaps out of it when Sera speaks, her head swiveling in order to get an upside-down view of Sera's approach.
"Well, yes. Just the feet. If I went all-in, my clothes would get all wet."
That's really not what Sera was going for, and Grace knows it -- gives her a smirk back.
Serafíne"Clothes come off," Sera, low-voiced. Left foot perched on a convenient little outcropping of rock. Her free hand is in the kangaroo pocket of her rather expensive hoodie, while the other - occupied with her already half-consumed beer - swings a lovely arc alongside her shapely right thigh.
"Or they dry, you give them time. How are you, Grace? Been awhile."
GraceGrace just rolls her eyes at the mention of skinny dipping in the hot spring. Mind you, she was there that time Ian and Sera went and did just that.
It's just not Grace's thing.
Still, her phone falls in an arc down toward the grass again.
"How I am is a rather complicated state. I mean, between Alicia, Elijah, vampires, Technocrats, and Three Mile Island Bugfuck Elly, I don't know -- it's pretty interesting lately. Not all of that's good. But I did drink some wine that had had its atoms exploded and reassembled, so I suppose I can't complain.
"How're you?"
Serafíne"How everyone is is a complicated state, Grace. All the pieces of yourself and all the pieces of everyone else like a whirlwind inside you," Sera has, by now, found a perch on a convenient stretch of boulder. The edge of her lovely ass, feet planted firmly on the slightly damp stones framing the spring. And her dark eyes are on Grace and they are framed by the outline of her hood and she has her usual raw confidence as well as a kind of reserve tonight, which sometimes comes over her, as if some indivisible part of her were at a safe and strangely contained remove.
There's a fond edge to the curve of her mouth, though.
Affection in its leading edge.
"I have no idea what the hell most of that litany means, or even what it means to you. Why don't you tell me.
"Pick one and start somewhere."
Grace's own question to Sera goes unanswered, for the moment.
GraceGrace considers. Most of them are connected (like everything, but we know that). It all comes back to...
"Alicia. Her dad is, well, I don't have any proof, but I think he's some kind of super top-secret project to whatever brand of Technocrat has him. I mean, you know what's been said, right?"
Grace doesn't know how Sera mostly visits Ginger for the sexy-robot-voice, when she visits.
"So I went and poked around a little. Made a couple of pals. Asked a few questions. And now there's a guy from the Society of Ether in town who has a plan to find this family friend of Alicia's dad. He's going to track the Paradox that stuck to her. He's Elly, the guy with the exploded wine. Really. Amazing."
Serafíne"You've talked to Alicia about all of this, right?"
That quickling look. Sera with her head canted. This angle, you understand, that allows her to watch the world unhinge itself. To see the seams.
GraceGrace takes a deep breath, and the relative happiness in her voice at remembering Elly and his machines fades.
"That was the first thing I said to Elijah. Eventually, he let me talk to her. Originally, he just wanted me to read her diary and leave her out of the entire picture. I said no.
"Alicia did not want me to mount a rescue mission for her father, she just wanted information. And she wanted me to find Alethea, her family friend, so that's what I'm helping with. I took her with me to meet Elly. She seemed almost happy, you know?"
SerafíneSera takes a deep breath, drops her dark gaze to the edge light that cuts across the wake of the glass bottle like a blade. She is - remembering something, which is inside of her, half-eaten, half-consumed.
Darker than she often knows.
Ragged in her chest, as she takes in another breath.
Then another, glancing back up at Grace, eyes glittering in all that reflective half-light, the sunset or whatever a constantly changing pattern in the choppy surface of the water.
Another deep breath. "I know Elijah fucked up. Everybody knows that, you know? And I'm glad that you did the right thing, and made sure that Alicia had a choice in what happened next.
"But you can't hold that against him forever. Alicia can, maybe, if she fucking wants. But you've gotta give him space so that he can grow past his mistakes, you know? And part of that is - " A supple, liquid shrug. That wry curve to her mouth again. " - well, you can figure it out, what that means to you.
"The family friend. She's the one in hiding, right? What's the point of finding her?"
Serafíne(pause!)
SerafíneGrace and Sera are sitting out on the patio by the hotspring. Grace has her shoes and socks off, feet in the water. Sera suggested that Grace go skinny dipping. Sera is perched on a convenient rock, with a beer in hand. Dan's somewhere in the kitchen.
Here is the last post:
Sera takes a deep breath, drops her dark gaze to the edge light that cuts across the wake of the glass bottle like a blade. She is - remembering something, which is inside of her, half-eaten, half-consumed.
Darker than she often knows.
Ragged in her chest, as she takes in another breath.
Then another, glancing back up at Grace, eyes glittering in all that reflective half-light, the sunset or whatever a constantly changing pattern in the choppy surface of the water.
Another deep breath. "I know Elijah fucked up. Everybody knows that, you know? And I'm glad that you did the right thing, and made sure that Alicia had a choice in what happened next.
"But you can't hold that against him forever. Alicia can, maybe, if she fucking wants. But you've gotta give him space so that he can grow past his mistakes, you know? And part of that is - " A supple, liquid shrug. That wry curve to her mouth again. " - well, you can figure it out, what that means to you.
"The family friend. She's the one in hiding, right? What's the point of finding her?"
GraceGrace (for the newly arrived) is currently lying down next to the hot spring Node, with her feet dangling inside, trying to soak up some quintessence and obtain pruny toes at the same time. Shoes, socks, and her phone have been discarded nearby.
"Yeah. I'm not mad at him really. I just wonder if he knows why what he did was wrong? That the root of all this was his willingness to reduce someone else's agency down to 'damsel in distress'? But yeah. He's torn up about it bigtime. It's hard to be mad at someone who is that miserable. Like he's doing enough chiding himself."
She raises a foot out of the water, lets the drops fall back to the water in order to make a pleasant sound. Toes wiggle.
"The point of finding Alethea is that Alicia wants to. Alethea is an Etherite. She's being hunted by Techs. From what I understand, Alicia was pretty close to her. So yeah, I put her in touch with someone who both has the capacity to help and wants to. Besides, Elly is awesome. Like I said."
Serafíne"I don't know that it matters," quiet this, Sera. Strangely reflective and open yeah and spare in a way that perhaps matches the season.
Less than two weeks ago she killed someone.
With magic.
She still doesn't know precisely how to contain that knowledge.
So she doesn't contain it. She just is.
Eyes dark enough to be a bruise, her mouth wry, affectionate, tender as a wound, sliding now and then into an edgy little smirk, and right back out again.
It is a hard goddamned thing to be human.
"If he knows. Just that he asks himself the question. But I said that to you mostly because the way you just told me that story was as much about his fuck-up as anything else, yeah? And maybe you should be careful how you phrase that, or even think about it.
"Think about him the way he should've thought about Alicia. It;s just a thought."
A brief pause. Another swig from her beer bottle.
"This Alethea. How hard are the Techs hunting her?"
GraceGrace's foot goes slipping back into the water again.
She thinks over Sera's words. Think about him the way he should have thought about Alicia. Like she's not thinking of Elijah like he's a fully-formed person who can handle his own damn shit? Like she's trying to protect him? Keep him in the dark, where it's safe? Not really.
The one thing that bothers her the most is how she had to censor him and tell him no, like she was some kind of 'crat herself. He can make his own choices, no matter what they might be, but when it comes to other people's continued existence, well...
She could stand to be a little less prickly about that. And that's... unfortunate.
"What it looks like? They want her bad, but can't find her," Grace says, at last, dodging the topic of Elijah. "At least I hope that's still the case, you know?"
ElijahWhat does Elijah do these days?
He does all sorts of things, but he had something to do. Something big and important to do that started with an F and ended with a wrench Homework. He had things to do, and it felt a little odd to show up to the chantry with the expressed purpose of studying for a subject he already knew and not studying some of the vast depths and breadth of knowledge that he didn't already know but his grammar in French was pretty atrocious and the young man needed somewhere to study that wasn't going to promote falling asleep.
He'd been sleeping recently. He'd been sleeping a lot recently, and ever since he moved it became abundantly clear that the young man slept like a dead rock. Or a log. Or something else that was difficult to wake up because it wasn't something that woke up… well… ever. Elijah was content to be awake for now and coming to a place that he could actually get something done.
The door opened, and it was off to the inside of the chantry with him.
"Bonjour! C'est moi- Elijah. Je suis ici pour faire ses devoirs!" hé pauses, "goddamn I am never going to pass this stuff."
IanThey arrived on foot, Ian and Jae-shin. There was no sound of wheels on pavement or the rolling purr of an engine to announce their passage. Instead Grace and Sera would pick up the tell-tale drum of feet on the earth, and the papery crackle of fall leaves tossed up in the wind. When the runners reached the edge of the treeline, they slowed their pace to a loping jog, moving like a couple of graceful animals over the grass. When they neared the Node, Ian dropped back to a walking pace, resting his hands on his hips. His ribs moved in a steady rhythm of deep breaths. He had on running shoes and a pair of track pants. Sweat dripped from his forehead.
He nodded first to Grace, then Sera, but did not immediately attempt to join their conversation. The man with him (Grace had met him before, but Sera had not) was Korean. He looked even more athletic than Ian, and resonated like something of the ocean. (Fluid and Abyssal.) Jae-shin smiled softly at Grace, then fixed Sera with a reserved but curious expression.
"Evening," he said.
Ian tapped him on the shoulder. "I'm going to get some water."
SerafíneGrace misunderstands Sera's purpose there. Which was mostly: hey. Deep breath, pull back. No need to tell everyone everything that Elijah did wrong. Consider the story and consider the purpose and consider the words. Sometimes those things can fucking hurt, even when you don't mean them too.
But Grace dodges the topic and Sera kind of assumes that Grace gets it and anyway; she's strangely circumspect about it. Perhaps a bit distant, bottleneck cool where it is wrapped between her fingers. The night strange all around.
--
And Sera doesn't speak French and Elijah's call-out is muffled as he enters the chantry by the closed doors butt there is enough noise from his called-out greeting to pull her chin up. She breathes out -
- looks back at Grace. That half-smile again.
"If they are that hot for her you might consider whether you guys finding her could increase their chances of finding her. Right now, no one knows where she is. She might not even exist.
"But when you know. And Alicia knows. And everyone else here knows, that near impossibility turns into a possibility, right?
"Maybe it wouldn't, but I think you and Alicia should think about why she wants to find this woman, and whether your plan places her in more danger, and whether the goal is worth the danger in which you place her, and yourselves, by contacting her.
"When she's hunted. You know?"
Another sort of agency.
--
A flick of her dark (bruised/ing) gaze up as Ian approaches with a stranger. The brief skim of Sera's smirk, a bit more flat and closed than you'd imagine it, but Jae-Shin doesn't just feel like the ocean (fluid), he also feels (abyssal) like other things still a crawling kind of knowledge in and beneath her skin.
"Hello," that smirk. And it's not unwelcoming, what she says next. It's just her way. "Who the fuck are you?"
Grace"I'll talk with Elly about it. He's been around the block a few times, it seems. But you're right. Trying to find her could be dangerous for her," Grace says, with a sigh.
"That," Grace says, rolling her head around to stare at Jae Shin's feet. "Is Soccer Guy. Ian's friend. I forgot his name."
She waves at them, and gives an upside-down smile.
ElijahHe follows the sound of people, because it sounds like there are people. Because he thrives on people, because he thrived on the idea of getting to do something other than pour over a textbook he didn't really want to pay attention to. He deposited the messenger bag... uh... somewhere. He looked at his pocket watch and headed off towards the sound of people.
Ian[Awareness]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 6, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 4 )
IanJae-shin's smile cooled, but he didn't seem especially offended by the question.
"Jeong Jae-shin, of the Akashic Brotherhood." He paused to take in a couple of breaths, wiping the back of his hand across his forehead. "And you?" His accent marked him as a non-native speaker, but he seemed comfortable enough with the language.
Ian glanced back a moment as he walked toward the house, then pulled open the patio door and stepped inside, heading for the kitchen. When he saw Dan, he nodded, and the faint edge of a grin touched the side of his mouth. "Hey."
(The last time that Ian and Dan had seen each other, Ian had been naked in the hot-spring.)
Elijah was there too. Ian felt his approach before he came into view, and there was a slow, measured glance back in Elijah's direction. Something quiet and thoughtful that hovered over him for a few silent beats. Then Ian grabbed a couple of glasses from the cabinet and filled them with water, taking a long drink from his own.
SerafíneSera's gaze slides quick easily back to Grace. There's a gleam of compassion that, there slithers to the surfaces and turns and catches the light and sinks back down beneath the surface too. Grace sighs. Sera's gaze lingers there, for several long, passing beats.
"Cool." Murmured, with a tip of her beer bottle as if in a toast. "Just think about it."
--
Then back to "soccer-guy" to whom the creature's attention returns with a dark, wry sweep. She sees the cooling smile, how could she miss it? Somehow that always brings out the edge in her,
as it does now. This smirk, more surface than deep. She has a half-dozen mysteries floating beneath her skin and she's a terrible liar and here she is, standing see, as Jae-Shinn introduces himself.
"Serafíne," she says, "Most people call me Sera. Nice to meet you."
--
And Dan, inside, is drying his hands on a kitchen towel and catches the edge of Ian's grin and you understand, grinning himself, through the rough blond beard. "Hey." to Ian. "Hey, man," to Elijah, before he kind of excuses himself and heads out to the patio to stick his head out for Sera.
"You ready or what?" Dan asks Sera.
And, "Ready." Sera responds.
"See you 'round," she says, by way of farewell to Jae-Shin. And, "Later, Grace. Be careful, okay?" then disappears back inside. They'll head down the stairs, to the walk-out basement. Start down through the fields. They're going hiking, at twilight.
Maybe they'll be back later. Maybe not.
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