An exchange of texts led to the invitation to Eleanor's office. It is Sera's morning and everyone else's afternoon and Sera is curled up in a big green velveteen armchair and Sera does not really like to watch television but there is a Batman marathon on IFC and Dan has located it for her and Sera is wearing an overlarge sweatshirt and has her phone in one hand and a mug of her favorite tea on the table beside her and is watching the television show all fascinated (there are cheerleaders who want something refreshing to drink! there is a milk vending machine! it gives out silver dollars!) not quite believe that she isn't really high and there is a phone beneath a cake plate and and and and and their slide-poles and labeled with their names. DICK. BRUCE.
("Boys and girls! Go back to your studies! Believe me nothing in life is free!")
Oh, Batman. Sera is in love with you.
"This is the best thing ever." Sera asserts to Dan, and she is objectively correct. He has come to see if she wants to come to an afternoon sound check for a friend of theirs and she shakes her golden head no and tells him that she's going to college and she needs a ride.
---
The Sex Pistols in the car because Dan is in a super retro mood and Sera doesn't like them much except for their version of My Way which makes her smile, her temple against the glass as the city opens around her.
Universities are such strange and official places, especially in September, when the light is slanting and the students are all gung-ho and swarming even in late afternoons and Sera doesn't belong here, not in daylight, but here she is - sunglasses and sprawling light, looking like a rockstar, feeling like a rockstar and she checks in with Eleanor's secretary and takes a rather sprawling seat in one of the institutional waiting room chairs, still wearing sunglasses and playing with her phone, as people do.
Eleanor YatesEleanor @ 6:35PM[Despair]Roll: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 6, 6, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )
Eleanor YatesWith the term back in full swing, Eleanor is significantly busier than she was a few weeks ago. Her texts were brief and quick enough to come off as terse, and the truth is, by the time she gets a reminder on her phone about Serafine coming by, she has somewhat forgotten what they're supposed to be discussing.
The University of Denver is wealthy. It is full of bros. Not so long ago there were ROMNEY banners hung in some dorm windows, because a significant population of this school is Republican or Libertarian. It is a gorgeous campus, and an excellent educational institution, and is certainly old and revered in the city, state, and region. There is brick. There is copper that still gleams with newness and there is copper that has aged into the glorious green patina that it will all eventually take on. And the Sturm College of Law is not in the Sturm building (which is old and a bit dilapidated and boxy and boring and houses, naturally, the English department), but the Rickson building, which is new and gorgeous and many-windowed and stately.
There are frat houses nearby. Across the oval green there is one entrance to the bridge-building across Evans Avenue. As they pass under it Sera can see people walking to and fro through the glass of that bridge, students and grown-ups and visitors alike. Young men in suits and young men in backwards caps and cargo shorts, young women in sports uniforms and young women in Uggs drinking Pumpkin Spice Everything Oh My God. Occasionally someone who is not white, but only occasionally.
Eleanor's office is high but not so high that you know instantly that she's important. It is at the end of a hall. It's just an office, of a similar size to that of several other professors of her rank and experience.
Truth be told, Eleanor's experience as a professor isn't much at all. What prestige she has comes from her previous career.
--
Everyone stares at Sera when she gets out of the car. Even among hipsters she stands out. When she wears Chanel and sweeps her hair in such a way that the fringe is less obvious, she stands out. An aura of something strange and otherworldly follows her into the building, up the stairs, into an elevator and up. When she comes to the offices she speaks first to a secretary who serves the floor, or the wing, or what-have-you, but Eleanor isn't a big enough deal to have her own dedicated assistant.
At least not in the mundane world.
There is no waiting. Just a walk down a hall.
--
Her office is in a corner, but not a tower. It is in a row with several other offices. She is starting her third year of teaching here; no matter how many judges she's on good terms with, she does not have the prestige for something more grand. But the building is relatively new, despite the law school itself going back for a century. Her office is rather tidy and clean. The molding at the ceiling and floor is a crisp, arctic white. The walls are the blue of the deep sea or a darkening sky.
There is an L-shaped desk, arranged in such a way that when she works on her computer, her profile faces the door. When she does other things -- such as meeting with people who visit her -- she faces the door head-on. The desk is wood, and very dark. Not terribly heavy, obtrustive. There is a surprisingly light feel to everything in her office, despite the dark blue, the black desk. It's the contrast, perhaps: the stark whites, the pale greys, the hints of rubbed nickel. It has a tall window set between two bookcases, a window that faces the door and bleeds sunset light into the room at this hour.
The sun is beginning to set, and the light is searing, but the blinds are turned a bit to offset the sharpness of that light. There is a single Tiffany lamp on the corner of her desk giving a golden, unapologetically colorful light to the room. There are two chairs facing the desk, nice ones, made in the last few years but with hints of midcentury modern with contemporary design elements and comfort.
The hallway, as Sera walks down towards the half-open door, begins to feel submerged. Like stepping into a pool, slowly down, down, walking into the deep end, waiting for the air to leave completely and be replaced by water. It is not quite even fully autumn, but here it begins to feel even more like winter.
Eleanor is at her desk. Just before the door opens to allow Sera in, she lifts her eyes from what she's reading, meeting the other Disciple's eyes. She gives a faint smile. There is music playing: Iron and Wine. There is a light in her pale eyes. "Hello," she says, and despite everything else about her, there's genuine warmth in that. "Did Jeanine offer you coffee?"
SerafíneWalking down the hallway with no coffee cup in hand, dark eyes flickering thoughtlessly over the numbers on glass and wood, variously frosted and embossed, and that sensation of being submerged, of winter. It makes her think perhaps not inexplicably of a pool in an autumn garden, turning toward winter. Leaves drifting down to the glassine surface. The water crawling up her thighs as she walks further in, a cold wind rising -
- so, a bit breathless, Serafíne, in a way that has her mouth open and her head canted and her shoulders forward. A bit startled to find herself here, knocking on the door, no secretary afterall. Just the departmental assistant who greeted her at the entrance to the wing of offices.
Sera does not expect warmth. By the time she gets to the end of the hall she is downright chilled. She expects to see her breathe when she breathes out and for the first time in ever kinda wishes that she had worn more clothes.
--
Did Jeanine offer her coffee?
Sera is kind of looking everywhere at once. The light gone brilliant against the blinds, the desk, the bookcases, the Tiffany lamp, the music.
"Heh. Yeah," a quick, darting sort of smile twists across her mouth and her shoulders curl and her heels click click click with every step she takes. Sera always conspires to make herself feel - taller, larger, something about her manner, something about the way she walks, which is not mincing as you'd expect given the heels she wears. And she has her hands in her pockets and she kind of wants a cigarette but buildings like this one have been non-smoking for years and even Sera understands that - "I'm not really a coffee girl, so I said no thanks."
- and she takes a seat in one of the reception chairs, kind of flinging herself down and taking up the insouciant sort of posture rarely seen in the School of Law, fingers laced across her bare midriff. "I'm Sera, but I guess you fucking know that. What with the fact that we had an appointment and all. You're Richard's - that a-word, right? It's good to meet you."
Eleanor YatesFor more than one mage in Denver, being with Eleanor is terrifying. They know she's on their side. They know she isn't going to hold them under a pool of water or leave them in a barren wilderness to freeze to death, but those fears rise, disconnected from her person but inextricable from her presence. She knows that she makes people uncomfortable sometimes. She knows that her magic, when she works spells of any kind, bring up primordial fears of death and dying and endings and, perhaps worst of all, the sensation of being irrevocably broken.
Perhaps that is part of why she practices compassion with as much discipline as she practices any of her other arts. Including law. Including yoga. Including killing.
Sera feels cold, because that is how Sera's mind and soul interpret the winter, and the drowning, and the sundering. It's a common reaction. That may even be why Eleanor's first question is about the secretary offering Sera something warm to drink. That may be why she has a plate of cookies sitting on the edge of her desk. They are suns and moons. They are large, puffy sugar cookies. They are thinly frosted with brightly colored glazes. They look store-bought. They aren't.
Again: discipline in all things.
"It's not very good coffee anyway," Eleanor says, with a touch of wryness. She doesn't mention the cookies, but their placement does suggest that it's a free-for-all. Have a crescent moon. Feel the flecks of pale blue frosting on your lips. Remember that once upon a time, we were all stardust. We are made of the moon; we eat the moon. We are made of the sun; one day it will obliterate the earth.
"Acarya," she fills in, the old Sanskrit rolling easily off her tongue. They have that in common, the Euthanatoi and the Ecstatics -- but truth be told, more death mages know touches of Sanskrit than cultists. Generally speaking. "Mentor is fine," she adds. And smiles. "Good to meet you too, Sera. I've heard words here and there about you, Richard going to your parties and so forth, but nothing in depth. I'm glad you wanted to meet in person, but I'm afraid --"
Her hand, slender but not as pale as one might expect with the way she feels, wafts over a few piles of folders and papers and various colors of pens. Her eyes track the motion of the hand, contemplating All That Work, What The Hell.
Eleanor's hand drops to the side. She moves gracefully. There's a level of control there, but perhaps that's just the calmness of it: she moves as though she is in water. Easy. Smooth. Her eyes, a pale blue that does not pierce, but sees the way the sky sees, come back to Sera. The wave of her hand, the fall of it, the return of her gaze: all in a matter of a second or so.
"-- I've been so busy that I've completely forgotten why you wanted to see me. I apologize; I'm not normally that disorganized."
SerafíneSerafíne is not the sort of Ecstatic who knows Sanskrit or philosophy, not the sort of Ecstatic who practices denial, who understands the layers of theory between the many things she feels and the many things she does and the way the world finds itself expressed in her and of her and by her and through her. That is not precisely correct: she knows one word. The one that everyone who has ever taken a half-baked yoga class at the local Y knows, and she learned it from Jim.Namaste.
She has no idea what it means, or that it is derived from Sanskrit and she thinks it is like aloha - hello and goodbye - and she never, ever uses it, not even when she is 30 days sober and wasting to nothingness and Jim has decided to begin their daylong ritual with yoga at dawn with his friends in the park, because fuck if she knows shit about yoga, and it doesn't feel real or right to her.
She is the sort of Ecstatic - the sort of creature - who feels vividly the imprint of another resonance, swallows it, inhales it, feels it dissolving itself on the back of her tongue and wrapping itself around the most primitive part of her brain, its stem, and she is aware too of the disconnect between her experience of that resonance and the warmth of the environment - the Tiffany lamp, the sugar cookies - and the warmth of Eleanor's greeting.
And she is kinda listening in a way that makes one wonder if she's really paying any attention whatsoever and she is kinda still looking around more than she's looking at Eleanor and when she does Eleanor is making that gesture, you know. All that work.
It is not a claim that Sera can make and she makes a sympathetic noise but there is a mild little smirk or Sera's face because what the hell does she know about work. She woke up an hour and a half ago. Someone else made her breakfast and she's pretty sure she ate some of that breakfast. She took a bubble bath because she wanted too and now she smells like strawberries and patchouli and pot.
"You like them?" It might take Eleanor to catch on to the context of the question, but she is asking it essentially of the air and she means: them, Iron and Wine, the music playing in the background. "If you do this chick Dan's producing is playing at - what the fuck is it, that place with the patio stage. Goddamnit. Anyway, tonight. You know.
"If you're free."
A beat.
Sera looks down and away; looks again at the blinds and the way the light comes through them, weighs that sensation of warmth-from-without against the things she holds in her skin now. Gives one of this hook-shouldered shrugs that always seems to accompany the most ridiculous of her statements.
"Honestly, I don't fucking know," and this is - quiet and a bit folded and, oh reflective. Sera is aware of her breath and aware of her body and aware of these discrete sections of time in a way she does not precisely know to be meditative and sometimes she feels like there is a jewel in the center of her tongue, and sometimes she feels like that jewel is the world and she swallows it down like a seed -
That is evasive. Sera knows it is evasive. It's also true. She gives another one of those little one-shouldered shrugs and glances back up, meeting Eleanor's gaze when she says, "Elijah I guess. I mean, I feel like someone should do something, you know?
"But I don't know what the fuck to do. Dan said he thought you guys knew each other so - "
Eleanor YatesIt's funny how far removed and yet how close the traditions of the Cultists and Thanatoics are. It's as though they took a single philosophy and branched in opposite directions in terms of purpose. Neither permits stagnation, though. They all fight it. Eleanor, for all she has done and knowing they might not see it the same way, counts the Ecstatics as -- in general -- an allied force in the world.
Yes, it does take her a moment to know what Sera is talking about when she asks 'do you like them?' like that. A beat of a pause, and then a nod. She smiles. "There are many patio stages in Denver," she says, "but I'm afraid tonight I'm staying in."
Too busy. Right.
There is a pause, and Eleanor does not interrupt it. She is calm, she is so steady, she is watching Sera and waiting for Sera and she is not always so patient. Even with people in life-altering pain, Eleanor cannot always find it in herself to wait gently and smile softly while someone else Gets To The Fucking Point. Today is a good day, though. She has enough energy to get so much done. She might look up a place where some girl is playing on a patio stage and show up anyway, stay up late, enjoy the night before dreams and another damn day sap her of what she has left to give to the world. She might drink wine and dance in her living room. Go for a twilight run. She doesn't know yet. Today, after weeks of bad days, everything seems like a possibility, an option, a draw.
"I'm sure that's not true," she says, of Sera's don't-fucking-know. She says it mildly enough, but there is a vague shadow of reproach. Now, now. Don't say such things.
Elijah, she guesses. And Eleanor goes a bit still. She glances at the door, checking to confirm, again, that Sera closed it on her way in. Her eyes come back to the Ecstatic's. "When I last saw him, I informed him that it was time he had a proper teacher. He is to notify the one who has -- apparently -- been 'mentoring' him so far, and after that, he will be my responsibility. Hopefully there will be a marked improvement in his decision-making and impulse control."
She leaves that there for a few moments. It's so cut and dry. It's so... ironclad. She does not suggest that she will take over Elijah's apprenticeship if it's okay with Kalen. She doesn't mention Kalen by name. She doesn't imply that Elijah even had a choice in the matter, though that is an unintentional implication. This is the way things are now. They will get better.
SerafíneThere are a helluva lot of patio stages in Denver, but Sera can find out where. Text Dan, get an address, pass it on if Eleanor shows any interest, but Eleanor is staying in and there's a glance and these small tics and that look, see, makes Sera - briefly, keenly, entirely - aware of the near-superfluity of her ordinary life.
The creature gives this one-shouldered jerk of her shoulders that says kind: too bad and also you should come out anyway and oh hey I don't really wanna intrude you seem like a Pretty Important Person and I'm not really sure how I managed to find this office anyway kind of motion in response.
Too busy. Right.
--
Eleanor is sure that is not true and Sera is sure that it is and she is aware, you understand, of that shadow of reproach - mild as it is - aware enough that it brings her shoulders up, braced all around her spine.
A kind of wariness you understand, all liminal about her and her heart is beating and she doesn't precisely remember why.
"Oh." Sera says, and her voice is quiet. It is not timid - nothing about her could be timid, but she's watching Eleanor and listening to Eleanor and you know, Eleanor doesn't mention Kalen by name, and she doesn't imply that Elijah had a choice and Sera is on the cusp and she hears that solidity, the goddamned resolve and all she seems capable of doing with it in just that moment is to breathe out and say, "Okay."
And, "Uhm, cool," a moment later.
Eleanor YatesEleanor's eyebrows lift a bit. "Are you all right?" The concern, which is what it is, sounds genuine.
Serafíne"I'm cool." Sera's half-smile is both quick and quicksilver; it appears and then: disappears quite as quickly as it came. And the way it fades.
"It's just - " And here Sera looks down, and you know she is Thinking because her rather straight brown brows have drawn themselves together over her dark eyes and her mouth is all seamed and she is tasting the words on her tongue and weighing and measuring them and she takes in a breath and offers Eleanor another one of those one-shouldered shrugs. " - you didn't say Kalen's name. You know?
"Elijah's cool with it. Right?"
Eleanor Yates"I wasn't sure if you knew him, or that he had been Elijah's mentor," Eleanor explains, "and I didn't want to speak ill of him to a stranger if you didn't."
She gives a small shrug. "At first, Elijah insisted he'd just been a bad student. But when I openly said that I thought I should take over his apprenticeship, he said he would tell Kalen as soon as possible. That made me hesitate, so I asked him if it's what he wanted."
Eleanor gives a small shake of her head. "I don't think Elijah knows yet what he wants, or even who he is. He wants badly to please people: to be a good student, to regain my trust, to not hurt feelings, to help this friend, Alicia. And making life-altering decisions because you 're seeking approval and belonging is usually a way to make incredibly poor decisions. The sort that land him in the situations he keeps running into, where every mistake that puts other people's lives and sanity at risk is justified by his good intentions. At least when he's faced with the choice to begin with.
"Elijah and I discussed it. And I told him that from what I know of him, he would be better suited to the Ecstatic or Thanatoic path than the Hermetic, but that in the meantime, what he needs most is a firmer hand." She waves her hand, first palm down and then sideways and up, like a turning wave, rolling, rolling. "He expressed concerns, we talked about what it would be like, Richard explained his experience with me, and Elijah agreed that he would speak with Kalen about ending his apprenticeship. That was a week ago, so I've been planning on checking in with him again soon."
She watches Sera for a bit. "What are your thoughts on it? As far as someone doing something about Elijah?"
SerafÃne"Heh." Sera inserts, quietly you see, but with an evident humor that suggests that whatever was slowly winding up inside her has - eased, in the strangest of ways. The edge of her sudden smile, the surety of it, even though she's sitting in the reception seat in her fishnets and cutoffs worming her fingers through the marching diamonds of the pattern like a deliquent called in to the principal's office. Charming, that smile, and self-aware in a way that is hard to measure. "I know pretty much everybody."
The smile fades somewhat; it has gone so strangely tender, as Eleanor lays out the course of her conversation with Elijah. Sera is still working her thumb through the frame of her fishnets and fiddling with the weave and watching the fibers against her dark-red nailpolish, which is peeling a bit, which is probably as much a fashion statement as anything else. And Sera is thinking of Elijah, who wants to please and that awareness clicks home inside her like a key in a lock, and she is half-thinking about herself, and the mistakes that were bleak enough that she has never chosen to turn around and look back at them.
"He always seemed like an Ecstatic to me. That's why I told Dan to look in on him when I went to Paris. Told him to take Elijah out to see Jim, too, but I guess Jim's still - incommunicado or what the fuck ever. Which sucks because Jim would dig him, I think.
"He's good with shit like that. I mean, thinking and people and shit. Teaching. He's good at that too.
"I mean I didn't have any thoughts, except, you know. Why the fuck's he acting like this and, you know, how the hell do you instill a healthy amount of self and community preservation in him without paralyzing him with fear, cos I sure as fuck don't wanna do that either.
"It sounds like you've got it pretty well in hand, though. I guess that's what I think."
Eleanor Yates"That doesn't surprise me," Eleanor says, with a touch of bemusement at the edges of her tone. She watches Sera's face, more than anything. Watches her eyes and not what her hands do, what she wears. She, in her linen and silk blends, doesn't seem to notice that Sera is dressed differently than herself at all, much less most people on campus.
She gives Sera a slow nod when Sera says he seems Ecstatic. It's no surprise that she agrees. She doesn't defend her thought that he has it in him to be a Euthanatos, or argue that he should be. It isn't about should. And she doesn't interrupt to tell Sera that she doesn't know who 'Jim' is. Eleanor, unlike Sera, doesn't know everybody. Isn't inclined to find them all. Accepts that this 'Jim' may have become a bit of a hermit, the way good teachers often do. Her eyes don't widen or flutter at the swearing.
Eleanor is not squeamish. About much of anything, really.
"Well, you don't do it with fear at all," she says thoughtfully. More: mindfully. "Self preservation is more difficult for Elijah, I think, because his focus is so external." Of course: pleasing people, saving people, helping people, without turning it back on himself. "But he is also intrinsically compassionate. That is a gift: he will not have to learn it, only defend against unlearning it. What he needs is greater self-knowledge and empowerment. When he understands -- deeply -- that he has the power to hurt as well as heal, that all the good intentions in the world do not guarantee that his actions will harm none, and if he can truly see that the capacity to injure does not negate the capacity to comfort, I think he will be able to shoulder his duty to the community, and to the world."
She is quiet for a moment. "With Elijah, the danger is less that he will be paralyzed by fear of external dangers. I think that facing his mistakes and their impact on others could cause him to tailspin into self-recrimination: 'I can't do anything right', 'I mess up everything I touch', and so on." Eleanor gives a small shake of her head. "That's actually one of the reasons I think he needs a 'firm hand' right now, so to speak. Someone to shoulder the responsibility of his mistakes with him, of course, but also someone who will call bullshit when necessary."
SerafÃneSera isn't the sort of creature one would expect to be bashful. She's burning, isn't she? Somehow she is always on fire. Look at the way she's dressed to come here. "Up," or something, her version of formal which means that she has slung her very nice Chanel bag with a chain across her body and paired golden pearls with the bicycle chain she often wears as a necklace or bracelet and she is aware that she doesn't really belong in the daylight, in an office, with a degreed and credentialed stranger speaking with her so thoughtfully and mindfully and soberly, as if she might have something intelligent to say right back.
Oh, look. Here is a string, a fault in the pattern, a broken weft in the weave.
But listen. She does listen. Quixotic and shifting, consideration a tender sort of bruise on her face, meeting Eleanor's eyes only rarely, but in those moments so directly as to be breathtaking. Head canted aslant like that might help the words go in better and maybe it does.
The last bit - someone to shoulder the responsibility of his mistakes with him - brings tears, sudden and unbidden, to Sera's eyes. None spill over her lashes. There is just the damp brightness of her gaze, sudden and direct, the spike of something lancing beneath her breastbone. An echo she's never heard before.
The rasp of her breath in her throat.
"You really know what you're doing, don't you?" Quiet, this. With such a soft little smile.
Eleanor YatesEleanor -- so calm, so steady, so clear in her thoughts and speech -- is not the sort of person one would expect to be ruthless. To be violent. To be vengeful. To have gone utterly, soul-rendingly mad. But she has. And that is how she knows that no one is what you expect them to be. She has known another person more deeply than anyone can hope to know someone, and that is how she knows: you can always be surprised by someone. Anyone.
There are tears in Sera's eyes, and Eleanor does not react like so many. No oh shit face. No confusion. Not even a question. Not a quirk. She doesn't move tissues closer to Sera; Sera will reach for them if she wants, perhaps.
What she says, though, that makes Eleanor laugh softly. "I've had a lot of experiences. I've been Elijah. And much, much worse." She shakes her head slightly, gives a faint shrug. "That is all I know."
SerafÃneSera doesn't reach for the tissues. She seems the sort to let her tears fall and wipe them away with the back of her wrist, with the tail of her flannel shirt, or something equally and elegantly gauche. She would if she wanted but she doesn't want them and anyway, today the sudden brightness of her tears remains unshed, nothing more than a gleaming film across the surface of her eyes.
She does sniff a bit. That's involuntary but it doesn't sound like a sniffle precisely.
The tender edge of her small smile curls, becomes somehow both more private and more public.
"Cool." Sera is: gathering herself up, but she means that cool. Whatever was unsettled about her moments ago has shifted beneath her skin and she means it, her voice all warm and perhaps a bit oddly reflective, or perhaps refractive. Her fingers are still tangled in the weave of her fishnets even as she stands, biting her lip. "It sounds like he's in really good hands."
And, a moment later -
"When I figure out where that show is tonight, I'll text you. That way you can drop by if you feel like it. Now that you're in my phone you'll probably get an invite every time we throw a party, you'd be welcome there, too.
"Richard knows where my place is."
Eleanor YatesEleanor just smiles. The truth is, she knows cool from the lips of a Cultist the way she knows their tears and their Code and the fact that they are not lazy runaways. She has been Elijah, and vaguely remembers it; that's true. It is also true that she has been Sera. She has been herself, always, in many forms, with many mistakes.
She does not confirm or wave away Sera's suggestion of what sort of hands Elijah might be in. She just gives that small, thoughtful smile. "Thank you, Sera," she says, regarding the text, the future invites, the show.
Eleanor nudges the plate of big, soft, fluffy sugar cookies towards the edge of her desk. They are iced: white stars, blue moons, yellow suns. "Have a cookie."
SerafÃneHave a cookie. Eleanor says.
Sera takes two.
Of course she does: one sun and one star, no moons. Naturally she gravitates toward the things that burn.
Holds them both up, you know, in salute.
"Cheers - "
And turns around and ambles out the door, biting one of the points off the edge of a star.
Delicious.
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