[Did I survive tonight?]
ElijahDice: 4 d10 TN7 (4, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )
ElijahElijah had called before he came, being aware enough that you can't just show up at people's places at random.
He owed Sera an apology.
Fuck, he owed Dan an apology more than anything. Dan, who had taken time to explain what was going on. Dan, who spent his time trying to piece out to the apprentice how everything was interconnected and how his actions impacted others and how the web moved and water rippled. Dan, who had told him that he couldn't do this, and he did it anyway.
Elijah needed to apologize to Sera, yes, for all the things that she had done for him and all the wrongs he may have committed, but he needed to apologize to Dan too, because Dan? Dan was right. He didn't realize how right Dan was until he found himself faced with the prospect of dealing with his own actions and all these thoughts made for terrible driving. Elijah was lucky he didn't get a ticket. he was lucky for a lot of reasons.
So we were here, with a young man in a vest on a porch, ready to knock on the front door to herald his arrival, but not knowing what to do, wanting the courage to do something. To say something. He lacked that conviction, and waited until that conviction came to him.
Knock knock. Knock knock knock.
SerafíneElijah imagines that you can't just show up at people's places at random, but that isn't really true when it comes to 719 or 743 or whatever the hell the house number is for Dee's blond-brick four-square home on a certain treelined street (CORONA) in Cap Hill. There's an oak tree in the front shading the garden that someone loved, once, and a unicycle on the porch, and an old beanbag bottomed ashtray on one of tha capstones and three metal porch chairs, each painted a different color (one polka-dotted) and a porch swing and the remnants of a pizza box and the recycle bins and a windowbox full of herbs and this afternoon's mail and the mailbox decorated with a ridiculous number of stickers, and on and on and on.
And Elijah also does not understand this: that the house on Corona Street is one where people just walk the fuck in.
Hardly anybody knocks.
Well, mostly mages.
Maybe they're too timid, maybe they're too polite.
---
Rick answers the front door. He's the fourth housemate, mousey compared to the rest, the drummer, who has had a half-dozen jobs since the group relocated from North Carolina to Denver, and who, like the rest of them (all but Sera: she did not go to college) has a completely useless liberal arts degree from an excellent university that does him precisely no good but what the hell, he's having fun.
They exchange pleasantries. Elijah asks after Serafíne and learns that she is in the back garden. He's directed through the house - Rick actually leads him to the white kitchen and offers him a beer or something before pointing out the glass sliders leading to the garden.
And there, sitting crossed legged on her cabana bed on the flagstone patio in the middle of the garden is one Sera, smoking a clove cigarette, doodling in a leatherbound volume open between her knees.
She glances up as the doors open. See Elijah. Smiles. Waves.
ElijahShe sees him. She smiles. And waves.
And he's confused, because for some reason he expected her to be furious with him. For some reason, he expected a lot of people to be furious with him and his approach isn't skid dish but he'd had the confidence to knock on a door nobody in their right mind knocks on, so what harm could it be to just waltz over to that bed, right? Right?
Of course right. She smiled. And waved. And therefore had not determined Elijah to be persona non grata in her house.
"Seriously," he started, "your house is freaking awesome."
he's got a beer now, probably the first beer he's had in awhile, what with staying at who-the-fuck-knows where he's staying these days.
Serafíne"I know," says Sera, exhaling a stream of spiced smoke from the left corner of her rather crawling mouth. Her house is amazing. It takes like her, it feels like her, it belongs to someone else but is entirely wrapped up in around and by and for Serafíne in a way few people can understand. There are pleasures upon pleasures to be found within: works of passion and art and strange things and found treasures layered over the gentle accumulation of another lifetime: old family heirlooms (not her own) and worn and threadbare Persian silk rugs, black and white photographs and secondhand leather jackets and figurines with apple-y handpainted cheeks and mardi-gras beads and weed and fresh-baked bread and every hallucinogen you can wrap your head around and a few you can't.
Sera's house is amazing.
And Sera knows it.
--
And Elijah certainly doesn't know Sera if he thinks he is going to be persona non grata at her house. If he thinks that there is anyone in the world aside from actual murderers and active jerks who would not be welcomed there.
He eyes are on him the whole time he crosses the garden to her, though. Alert in a way they sometimes are not, following his progress with a gentle sort of precision until he's close.
She is still smiling. Up at him, golden head tipped back, tattoed hands folded neatly in her lap, a pen in one. She was writing, or perhaps scribbling, something in that book, but it is closed now.
"Grab a seat. What's up?"
ElijahNow, Elijah is not, nor has he ever been, a legitimate ax murderer nor has he been an active jerk at this juncture. Not even a passive jerk, just… well… a little bit all over the place over the past month. His hands are in his pockets and his posture is relaxed now. Relaxed because when he inhales there is air and when he exhales there is not and he could do it again and again and take in a different smell every time.
He takes a seat on the ground, because when given the opportunity he was always on the ground. Knees up, elbows rested comfortably there and his hands clasped in front of him. What was up?
"I wanted to apologize for all the shit I've done recently… like… not listening to you or Pan or Dan or Kalen, or potentially putting you guys in danger, because even though I didn't want that, it's a possibility and I don't know if saying sorry counts for anything, but i'm sorry."
He sounds genuine enough, looks at her face and her eyes and her smile and her posture and takes in those details, too. Elijah is present today, he was present yesterday. he will be present tomorrow.
SerafíneElijah how are you feeling? Per + Awareness-as-empathy
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 6, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 6 ) Re-rolls: 1
ElijahThis. Has been. A HORRIBLE week. An incredibly grounding week, but it has been horrible none the less. He's had to give people bad news, he's been chewed out, and he's half expecting people to cut their losses with him and just sort of forego having anything to do with him for their own safety's sake. There's a BIT of damaged confidence there, and a lot of his eager puppy-ness has been successfully knocked out of him for the time beingif there's anything else, you can totally ask.Because with six successes, she knows Elijah better than Elijah knows Elijah
SerafíneSerafíne, you see, she exhales. It sounds like a sigh, though it is not. She is really quite a compact creature, and she is dressed down tonight, spare shoulders framed in a cotton t-shirt, her hair atangled at the ends and still a bit damp around her shoulders. Her mouth is not painted red tonight, but you better believe she is still wearing eye liner and masacara, dark around her dark eyes.
The closed book is set aside. The pen - it has a nib - atop it.
And Sera gets to be taller than Elijah because he is sitting on the ground at the edge of her cabana bed, rather than one of the chairs a bit farther off. The flagstones are damp and still warm from the sun, but the sun itself is setting earlier and earlier these days.
And Sera studies Elijah with her dark dark eyes and her illuminating, half-illuminated little smile, listening to him, feeling him, you understand. His frustration and his fear and his deflation and all of it.
"I don't think that any of the people you mentioned would cut ties with you because maybe you had a brush with the techs. I'm pretty sure they already know who I am from last year, though maybe they 'lost' the file.
"Elijah, Pan and me, and Jim too, for that matter - we put everything on the line to save a sixteen year old girl from the techs and the Nephandi. Do you really think we'd give up on you because you had a brush with them?
"I just - " and then Sera sighs. She doesn't know what to say. She's wrapped up in Elijah's turmoil the way she gets, looking mildly distressed and also Being an Adult is Hard. " - I know you mean it, yeah? But you sound more like the kid who got caught than someone - I mean, I'm figuring you probably aren't going to exchange emails with a tech operative again.
"But maybe it's something else next time. Maybe it's scarier. Maybe things go really wrong, you know?"
SerafíneSerafíne, you see, she exhales. It sounds like a sigh, though it is not. She is really quite a compact creature, and she is dressed down tonight, spare shoulders framed in a cotton t-shirt, her hair atangled at the ends and still a bit damp around her shoulders. Her mouth is not painted red tonight, but you better believe she is still wearing eye liner and masacara, dark around her dark eyes.
The closed book is set aside. The pen - it has a nib - atop it.
And Sera gets to be taller than Elijah because he is sitting on the ground at the edge of her cabana bed, rather than one of the chairs a bit farther off. The flagstones are damp and still warm from the sun, but the sun itself is setting earlier and earlier these days.
And Sera studies Elijah with her dark dark eyes and her illuminating, half-illuminated little smile, listening to him, feeling him, you understand. His frustration and his fear and his deflation and all of it.
"I don't think that any of the people you mentioned would cut ties with you because maybe you had a brush with the techs. I'm pretty sure they already know who I am from last year, though maybe they 'lost' the file.
"Elijah, Pan and me, and Jim too, for that matter - we put everything on the line to save a sixteen year old girl from the techs and the Nephandi. Do you really think we'd give up on you because you had a brush with them?
"I just - " and then Sera sighs. She doesn't know what to say. She's wrapped up in Elijah's turmoil the way she gets, looking mildly distressed and also Being an Adult is Hard. " - I know you mean it, yeah? But you sound more like the kid who got caught than someone - I mean, I'm figuring you probably aren't going to exchange emails with a tech operative again.
"But maybe it's something else next time. Maybe it's scarier. Maybe things go really wrong, you know?"
Elijah"I seem more like a kid who got aught then someone who has actually learned the over aching lesson of what all of this was supposed to be teaching?" he asks for clarification. Like he need clarification. he asked, because he needed to know if he followed correctly, if he had the right message, if he was getting what he needed to get out of this.
It's a lesson he's needed to learn. She'd told him not to be foolish once, when he'd been concerned for that young man who nearly died all bloody and scared in Sera's arms, that man she'd saved from the brink of death while someone literally tried to eat the poor guy alive. That could have gone horribly. That could have been a disaster, and had he learned then to slow himself? To not get over eager?
"i want to say I'll know better next time something happens, but I honestly can't promise that. I… I don't slow down, and I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing."
Serafíne"I don't give a fuck about over arching lessons, man." Elijah is asking for clarification about What He Should Take From All That and Sera isn't the sort for aphorisms or lessons. "And I don't need you to apologize to me, and I don't want you to pledge that you're always going to make the right decision, because most of the time that doesn't happen, or there are a half-dozen right decisions.
"I guess I just want you to, fuck it, find a way to insert another level of questioning into your decision making, you know? Not just, you know, I am trying to help someone and therefore my good intentions justify everything, but like - how will this impact me, and everyone.
"I don't even know if I'm making sense. I don't know how to tell you what I'm trying to say but listen, you're kinda like a kid right now, learning how to walk. Sometimes we all are. Before you faceplant, you've gotta reach out and grab a hand.
"Far as I'm concerned, the only person you really need to apologize to is Alicia. But if it still matters to you, you're fucking forgiven.
"I talked to Eleanor, you know."
Elijah"What did you talk to Eleanor about?" he asked, though, "because Eleanor and I had a conversation about my education and I kinda need to know if that's what we're gonna talk about. That was… that was really fucking intense."
Serafíne"We talked about you." Sera, quiet. Her voice musical, as it is, inflected and lovely and - oh, circumflex, in a sense. She rests her cheek on the palm of her hand, fingers splayed over the shaved fringe of her hair, looking down at Elijah rather like a reclining and all-too-human goddess. This small, perhaps sad, smile etched into her mouth.
"I didn't know what to do about you.
"I think she does."
Elijah"She's really solid," he said, "I… I don't know what to tell Kalen, though. I mean, we talked about it. I went through it in my head, and … it never comes out right."
It comes down to Kalen. He does not yet know that he is going to have this conversation with Kalen, that he will cave on his resolve and his intention to study with Eleanor and go back to him. He does not yet know that he'll go weak at the words I trust you because, at that juncture, he didn't trust himself. Didn't know if he should. At that moment, he was tired. His elbows rested on his knees and he couldn't have been comfortable there, but he was more comfortable rooted on the ground than anywhere else.
"I really respect Eleanor... I want her to trust me."
Serafínew"That's not really what you need, you know. Eleanor's trust. Anyone's trust. You shouldn't be trusted - not with magic, or life and death. I trust your desire and your compassion and I trust your joy, all of that shit, but I sure as hell don't trust your understanding of chance or your ability to pull yourself back from the brink of death or your judgment when faced with a situation that you mostly cannot fathom. Right?"
There's a curl to her half-smile, like paper caught to flame, and an edge of something in her eyes.
"What you need - more than Eleanor's trust - is her willingness to question you. That's what you need from everyone, and from yourself. Someone who's gonna ask you why and wherefore and question you and make you question yourself, maybe even when they're not standing right beside you. Someone that you can query, someone who'll call you out and stand beside you even while they're doing that.
"You get that, right? You've seen what I can do, haven't you? The power that you are going to someday, maybe, wield, is greater than you can know right now.
"And that's why you need someone to question you, until you learn how to question yourself. You know?"
Elijahthere are things that can be said about power. Power and responsibility. And what he has and has not absorbed. He has not learned to question himself yet. He needs someone who will question him, who will teach him to have better judgment or to use the sense he was born with until he can remember that he needs to do it on his own.
He gets that, right? He nods, he nods because he does get it. Because he is listening, because he wants things to make sense and he actually cares about whatever it is Sera has to say, because wielding the kind of power she has seems like such a distant possibility that he can't imagine ever being anything other than he is now, he can't imagine transcending those types of barriers. he doesn't realize that this is another obstacle to overcome, that he could well be his own worst enemy in this regard.
"And you think she'll question me? Would she be better for me than Kalen? I don't know… I just… I think he's trying."
Serafíne"You've gotta figure that out for yourself. But thus far, it doesn't seem like the little Kalen has kept out of the goddamned weeds. You know?
"I like Kalen, and I don't know what you guys have done or what you haven't done. But we've got a helluva lot of apprentices running around learning shit and fucking up, and you're the only one I'm this concerned.
"So think about it. In the meantime, let's order pizza and get stoned."
No comments:
Post a Comment