latelatelatelatelatelatelatelatelate, so late some people are starting to think it early, but An Arch Key keeps the strangest hours and strangers come to it and go from it and sell or purchase books sometimes according to the moon's phase or how the planets are aligned with regard to the serafim.
Here is: at this hour - a customer! That is what the trill of the little bell on the front door says: a customer! a customer!
It does not tell Adam that the customer! is dressed like a hamburger, really actually a cheeseburger, with a lovely little ruffle of lettuce encircling her midsection and arms,
but she is.
AdamBut where oh where is Adam? Could he have fallen asleep, somewhere? Could one of his employees be working tonight? No; his valiance, his relentlessness, it is pervasive and present. He is upstairs in the stacks and when he hears the ring a ling a ling he stretches and sighs all long and lanky and awkward and he heads down the stairs and Sera surely he feels her and then feels less of a rush. Sera has bought things before but she is not a customer. Anyway: here he comes, hair all tousled, teeshirt white, ducking his head to say, "Hallo!"
But wait, what? As he reaches the landing, there is a slow double-take, eyes gone away then back.
Serafíne"Hi."
He feels less of a rush when he senses down there and she's wandering, you know, familiar with the space and the crannies and the nooks and the nooks and the crannies and sort of casually searching about to see whether or not the ferrets might be hiding uhm, in that potted plant or in the cookbooks (is there a cookbooks section? at least a collection of Anarchist Cookbooks, right?) or wherever strikes her strange fancy.
She looks so odd, really, in the boxy, quite-nearly-skin-colored knit that defines the bun and has her all swathed up, with a high neckline and her boobs actually covered up for once and so on.
Sera's burger sweater is fortunately quite short.
She has the loveliest legs that look far longer than they actually are.
"Whaddya think?" she asks, and then lifts her hands and does a slow twirl, showing off. "There were sesame seeds but they kept falling off."
AdamHe has stopped on the landing, just beneath that spill of stairs, books on either side, arches of them, book-world, books winging, paper leaves everywhere but no wind will stir them it would need be a tempest and in a tempest the sound of leaves stirring is nothing at all. He looks at her legs. Of course he looks at her legs. They're legs to look at, twirling in that whatever the hell it is as she is. He looks at her legs and then he looks at her sweater and he looks at her face and then he looks at the godamned sweater again because he doesn't know what to do with the sweater and he rakes his fingers through his hair, causing it to stand up divided into two devil horn twists lick of Dream-madness.
He says, "I think," carefully, "that maybe the sesame seeds were trying to escape. And that it's very short. Where did you get that thing?"
SerafíneSera closes her eyes and turns her head to the left and makes a noise that sounds itself in her throat. Like a hum: which could be speculation or consideration or pleasure or some combination of all of these lovely things and the way they wrap themselves around both: her, and her skin, and the darkness inside her skin.
She hears the care in his voice, must hear it and glances up then, sharper than you'd expect to see, that look she gives him, sidelong, sideslung.
Somehow her features - those sharp sharp lines - conspire with each other to make it seem sly. Then she reaches down and kinda pulls out the burger-shirt and frowns down at it that strange sort of look because it's not that far as she considers it.
"I thought it was too covered up. Can't see my boobs. I usually let people see my boobs."
"I'm practicing. For Halloween."
AdamHis gaze sweeps toward her chest for a moment, but only for a moment. He can control himself, and impulses exist but he isn't indulgent. Adam inhales deeply, exhales. His shoulders rise and fall and he leaves the landing in front of the stairs to lean instead on one of the shorter bookshelves near Serafíne.
"People won't expect you to be too covered up," and he is ironic, now; he is an ironic man, even sweeping his hand across the bristles on his jaw. Adam needs to shave; it is getting out of hand. "That makes it more like a costume, surely. I think you may want to try again. Giant Hamburger sweater," a pause, and a shrug. "You look fine, but it's..."
"You didn't make it, did you?"
Serafíne"What if I did?" Sera tosses back and her voice is soft and her eyes are soft, they have that strange combination of soft shadow and implicit light one finds in tropical grottos. The suggestion of an intimate space while all around is blasted bright.
Something about her is vulnerable. Something about her is always vulnerable, but one must understand that as deliberate: as much a choice as anything else.
Perhaps even: as magic. Inherent, implicit, bound right up in her heart and skin.
Her voice is soft, even though they are rather far apart. "What would you say then? Would that change it?"
A little smile near the end. She's fiddling with the lettuce ruffle with her right hand.
AdamHe is looking at the lettuce ruffle and at her fingers on the lettuce ruffle and the way the lettuce ruffle shifts and he is wondering something, something to do with ruffles, something to do with hamburgers, something to do with -- who knows what. He isn't saying it aloud, exactly, and Adam is a reserved young man, someone who reserves most of his opinions for those he thinks should hear them, someone who is self-contained and not altogether nice. He doesn't feel like being cruel to Sera. He has no reason to. He likes Sera. But he smirks, faintly.
"Because I want to know, and because if you made it, I'd guess your next costume might be as terrible, but if you pickd it up your next costume doesn't have that excuse. Why don't you go as a fire?"
Serafíne"The only shit I make," Sera returns, with this expression curving her mouth that could be a smirk of her own, but may well be something else, altogether. " - is music. I collect other people's things, though. The things they sink themselves into."
A small, hook-shouldered shrug that shows just a bit more leg than she is wont to do.
"Girl who made this also knitted a cozy for a bike to make it look like a thoroughbred. I like it.
"Did you say I should go as fire because of my name?"
See, she does know what it invokes.
Adam"No. I said you should go as fire because, when you twirled, that's what I thought of," and the faint smirk is still present; see how narrow it is? But also pensive, and he touches his jaw again, the shadow of the beard, knotting it and looking at the door. "Seems like a good versatile costume. What should I go as? Where do you go for Halloween anyway? I think," a reflective pause, "we're doing some sort of poetry scary story event here."
Serafíne"I don't know." Sera remarks, with this strange little shrug again, and a stranger little smile that feels both full of presence and full of absence. She has: curled her fingers into the hem of the burger-sweater and is watching the shadows they make against the knit, pulling, pulling, pulling. "Last year I was infected with a disease by some rogue technocrats who then kidnapped me to put me in isolation and watch me die.
"So I kinda missed Halloween.
"And that was my first one in Denver I don't like scary stories but I like poetry. Maybe I'll come."
AdamHis eyebrows crawl up. Dark they are, like his hair; he should have a shadow, shouldn't he? He can't be noir, can't be mystery, without a shadow. But his eyebrows crawl up, and he studies Serafine's features. They're striking, the shape of her nose, the shape of her jaw; they strike him.
He says, measured, "Last year, I was in the Swiss Alps, listening to someone butcher Poe and a thunderstorm. I haven't passed out candy for a while. I wonder if Sara," which sounds a lot like Sera, "passes out candy? Shit."
"You should come. I doubt the stories will be as scary as rogue mirror shade diseases. Do you celebrate the Day of the Dead?"
Serafíne"You mean, All Soul's Day?" The creature in the absurd burger-sweater-worn-as-a-dress gives Adam a near, perfectly contained shrug. "Not really. I like Pan, though, enough that I would.
"If he did. Dee always makes funky cookies for it, though. And maybe I will come."
A beat. A pause.
"Who's Sara?"
Adam"My aunt. This is her shop; she is a consor," matter of fact, that. And without discrimination. "She married and went off on a world tour, so asked me to keep an eye on things and to house and ferret sit. Who is Dee?"
Serafíne"Dee's my housemate. Housemate-bassist," says the girl in the hamburger (CHEESEBURGER) sweater. She is sort of circling around now, looking for a place where she might perch her ass. She likes to perch her ass, which makes sense when you consider the levels of trauma to which she subjects her feet on a daily basis. Those shoes.
"So you're just the ferret sitter, Ruse isn't really yours? Where is he, anyway?"
Adam"He's at home," Adam says, and see, he has a faint smirk; it is the ghost of a smirk; it is the shadow of one, wryness. "Getting to know his new friend and exploring a rather lot of tubes."
There are, of course, bookshelves where-upon one might perch one's ass, and a table with some books on display. Even a railing, up from the front entrance, by that stair. Even the stairs, which Adam is still standing near; must bypass Adam the guardian for that coveted perch, though.
Serafíne"I wish he was here," and Sera has a faint - well, call it a smile, a faint smile, a faint curve to her mouth that would be very, very difficult to read as anything like a smirk, though there is something rather wry about it, there is also this nascent softness. The fog of warm breath against cool glass.
And she is, indeed, bypassing Adam the guardian for the coveted perch on the stairs. Sera is not shy about claiming the space she wants, requires in the world. See, she: slips past him, thumbs fiddling with the cuffs of her sweater. Fiddlefiddlefiddle.
"Not that I dislike you." Now the sliding wryness, lovely, as she tips her chin upward and finds him again, with a tracking-gaze that suggests, you know, some altered state of consciousness. "You weren't rock climbing in the Alps, were you?"
AdamHe is generally quite serious. He can laugh, but he doesn't very often. He can smile, and he is not a miser, but he doesn't smile as often as some do come to that, either. He is reserved, but his reserve is containment and pride, it is watchfulness; it has nothing to do with bashfulness or awkwardness. He laughs now, a guffaw-heh, and his eyes crinkle up at the corners.
The laugh was for 'not that I dislike you.' His response to it will have to be truncated, stop there, because: he wasn't rock climbing in the Alps, was he? Adam is serious again.
"Not last year, although I have gone rock climbing in the Alps before. Every path, once you're high enough, feels like rock climbing. Do you ever fast?"
Serafíne"I did." Sera has located her perch and drawn her knees up, she has wrapped her arms around her knees and settled her chin on one of them. She likes the contact, the nobbly feel of her knee beneath her chin. All that bone, the way her body curves into the moment. She is: considered. Hears her voice and his, "with Jim. You never met him, did you? Last year. From everything, for a ritual.
"Hawksley said it didn't seem like me."
A brief pause, her mouth seamed. Thoughtful, humming so that the bones in her inner ear vibrate.
"I have been lately, too. Just sometimes.
"Not from everything, though. Why?"
Adam"You're dressed like a hamburger. It leads to questions about vegeterianism," Adam says, and then: "What ritual does it help you with?"
SerafíneHer eyes are damp when she glances up at him, the gleam softened by the dark sweep of her lashes. A moment's hesitation, then -
"I had an encounter with one of the Fallen. I touched his mind."
She glances down. Away, her breath bated, narrow shoulders curving beneath that absurd sweater in an expressive little shrug.
"So I'm trying to feel clean again."
Adam"Ah," he says. His arms are folded casually across his chest, his head is down because Serafíne is for once much shorter than he is, sitting perched as she is. "And his mind touched yours. I'm glad to hear you're being," a pause, "proactive. How long do you plan to fast for?"
Planning, time limits: the questions he asks.
Serafíne"He had," quiet, this, and at a bit of a remove. Which is strange of course, because she is not the sort of creature who ever keeps herself at a remove from, you know, anything. Still. This presence. This preciseness. This deliberate and perhaps even deliberative distance. " - and effect. The opposite of a shield. Not meant to keep me out, but to pull me in.
"He's dead though."
A shunted gaze, through the spindles of the bannister.
"I don't know how long. I don't plan shit. Hawksley said I should find something that makes me feel clean, even for just a minute. And do it. And then do it again.
"And do it again, until it becomes real.'"I'm better now, than I was." A short breath, still not looking at him.
" - have you ever - encountered? One?"
Adam"Yes," he says, and he has long eyelashes. He is not a good-looking or handsome young man; he is average, even before Arcane comes to make his features less than memorable; average, with the good and the bad in equal measures, nothing special, a background piece, a pawn instead of a knight (or a knight who looks like a pawn). But he has long eyelashes like he's some kind of Romantic poet, and they bat down. He does not sound bland, but relentlessly - direct.
"I have. I don't know many awakened individuals who haven't run across their work, and I am sad to say that -- " He pauses, abruptly, drawing himself up short: "Ah. Well, yes. But I did not get sucked into its mind; I didn't feel how it looked at the world crawling all over the inside of me. I can imagine, only."
"They're ..." He pauses. "Did you get free on your own; or did he die and that's how the effect ended?"
Serafíne"It's hard to say." Sera, quiet, rubbing her knuckles over her cheek. All of this is long-enough-ago by now that she doesn't shudder overtly when she thinks of it, long enough ago that the gleam of tears remains - merely - in her eyes. Doesn't spill.
She has this odd little smile, which is rather far away, and glances at him slantwise, sidelong.
"Everything happened really fast. He might've let me go, but I lashed back at him and knocked him out, and he fell from the boat he was on into the water, and drowned.
"Hawksley says I didn't kill him. I just removed his ability to stop the water from killing him. I dunno. I should probably go."
No comments:
Post a Comment