The Pec

Kiara

[Repost!]

Kiara

There's something to be said for immersion.

El Chapultepec or The Pec as the locals call it dated back to the prohibition era in Denver, standing on its corner for 55 years and it has, with rightful fervor, defended its title as a cornerstone for Jazz and Mexican food in the city. Music was frequent after 8:30 most nights and while the leather on the booth seats was old and creaked when you moved and it smelled questionable at the best of times there was an authenticity to the way it operated, to everything from the broken public phone just inside the door to the neat row of black and white pictures hung along its walls denoting legends that had graced its tiny stage. It was one of the Verbena's more favored locations for what she liked to consider submersion in the depths of the city.

What made it whole. What made it part of the pattern of the universe. There were only so many places humans pulled together the threads anymore. A Jazz bar that served burritos and music wasn't exactly top of the list for it, but sometimes it was exactly what the occasion called for. Kiara Woolfe has a booth near the tiny stage all to herself just at the moment, there's a plate of something that smells invitingly spicy in front of her and a glass of beer beside it she's yet to touch. Behind her the stage stands empty, a piano and drum-set have been squashed onto it behind a microphone stand and a mirror behind it throws back the length of the bar in what is clearly meant to offer the impression of space there isn't. It almost works, though. It gets points awarded for a valiant effort. It's sinking into evening outside and the real rush has yet to surface but there's a few stragglers at the bar, seated on stools with pints of beer and newspapers spread out before them.

The brunette is the sole occupant of a booth, with a knee drawn up and her back braced against the wall while she eats, a collection of books open on the table in front of her and what resembles a newborn fern daringly protruding a few fronds from a bag of groceries she's pushed into partial invisibility across from her. A woman, her plant and a plate of Mexican food. It could be the beginning of a rather tragic party joke.

Serafíne

Not long after Kiara's meal arrives the narrow interior of The Pec starts to fill up again - these groups of people arriving in twos and threes and fours, folks who caught a ride together. Young, mostly women though perhaps a quarter to a third of them are men, many tattooed, with plugs and piercings and all of the attendant signals that someone is part of the counterculture. They fill up the booths closer to the door than the stage, staking out new territory as someone new arrives. Something about the way conversations rise and crest and shift and ebb and flow between the tables and the bar suggests that they all know each other, and a quick visual check confirms that more than a few of the young women are wearing the same or similar t-shirts, sporting scrapes and bruises. A roller derby team out for drinks and dinner after either a heavy practice or maybe even a match.

So, early though it is The Pec now has something like a rush, vibrant and shifting, the sort of buzzing hum that often fills a space after the first round or three, when the lights are starting to glide together and everything is bathed in a golden glow.

--

That's when Sera walks in.

She belongs with the folks she comes here with. Has an arm around a taller, rather pneumatic brunette with creamy-pale skin and red lipstick and is being followed by a much taller, skinny hipster guy, arms covered in tattoos, skinny jeans and a short-sleeved plaid button-up, tossing his keys then sliding them into one of those tight pockets of his jeans. They're laughing about something and there's no reason for Kiara to pay attention to any of them more than anyother except: this group walks in and the atmosphere changes, at least, for those keen enough to feel it.

That sensation (visceral, enthralling - and liminal, see. between states, somehow, outside of definitions, thresholds and doorways, a moment of becoming) is like a haze or a halo in the background for a few minutes before a certain creature kind of swims out of the crowd. She's carrying a beer.

Actually, she's carrying a beer and two shot glasses and this impression of the tattoos inked on her slender hands, blackwork, script mostly, and no color, and then she's setting all three down on Kiara's table, kind of breathless and clearly ready to slide right in across from her.

"Hi." Dark blue eyes framed in black liner and heavy mascara. This half-shaved head haloed with a cascade of bleached blonde curls, dark roots beneath though. Sharp, striking profile and a mobile little mouth curling into something half-way between a smirk and a grin. "I bought you a shot. Mind if I join you?"

Kiara

She looks like she's been on a visit to her local library, Kiara. She could be the type but -- no. She's got that edge about her, not merely the twin sensation of decay and renewal (for one has to be devoured to be rejuvenated, death must always follow inevitably from birth, it's the cycle, it's what nature predicts and requires of all things, she is the ouroboros, this witch, she's the descended daughter of who knew what, but hers is the presence of infinity, the last gasp of the dying and the first drawn breath of the newborn) but a certain appearance that suggested deviation, shall we say, from the norm.

Her hair is tied back tonight but its cut into bangs that frame her face regardless, her ears glittering with piercings apiece (two studs, from casual appearance) and the hand that is braced on top of a drawn up knee is impressive with bracelets, silver and stone and who knew what. There's a ring on her finger too, an opaque bluey green crystal.

She's perhaps toeing the line dangerously close between hipster chic and haphazard alternative groupie. Especially with the dramatic smokiness she's given her eye makeup. The crimson red she's painted her lips tonight. She might almost have belonged to Sera's crowd as they trip into the bar, laughing and bright and glorious. A riot of visceral sensation.

If you understood what you were seeing, that is. What you were feeling. Most of the people in the bar don't, not quite the way Kiara registers it, senses it enough to lift her eyes from the page open in front of her, fingers toying with the last vestiges of her meal. She looks, the corner of her mouth hooks into some sedate expression registering the moment before her attention is restored.

Momentarily.

Sera manifests, bearing shot glasses. Kiara lifts her eyes, brown meeting blue and her mouth curves into a generous expression. There are dimples, it's a little ridiculous that a woman who feels as if she's responsible for stripping the flesh from your bones only to mend them has the sweet mouth of some age ago schoolgirl. Not the voice, though.

That's warm. Inviting and at its ease. "Alcohol definitely buys you my company, be my guest, please."

She nods at the empty spot across from her, slips the book she's been reading shut and rests her fingertips on top of it idly, watching Sera instead. The volume is slim, the spine printed with bold white lettering spidering along it predicting its contents are some vital clues to Working with Universal Life Force Energies. A collection of two others are buried beneath the napkin holder, apparently Tadao Yamaguchi and Mikao Usui are after meal endeavors. "I was wondering when we'd bump into each other again."

A subtle assumption, but there, none the less. "This city is a little intimate that way."

Serafíne

The invitation's a good thing. Yeah, Sera was probably going to slide in across from Kiara without it because she is the sort of creature who was made for sliding into places without invitation but: Kiara welcomes the alcohol, with that warm voice and that girlish mouth, the dimples, and Sera grins. Sets down her beer and two shot glasses, and sliides right in, crowding Kiara's fern.

There's this disconnect between how tall the creature seems standing by the table and how much space she seems to take up and how much space she actually does require. Which isn't much. Sera isn't tall and she isn't broad and she's eating again now, but she was fasting for quite some time this fall. Purging herself of a darkness that felt animate and liquid, corruptive, corrupting, for much of the fall so her bones are so very close to the surface - this framed and almost delicate physicality at odds with everything else about her.

Like the compelling eyes and the quick mouth and the glimpse of the tiny leather skirt stitched together from belts, covered in buckles, matched with a bustier and an unzipped gray heathered hoodie and a wristful of bracelets to match Kiara's.

Well, not to match Kiara's but they seem to have similar sensibilities when it comes to piling on, though Sera's wrist is full of leather and spikes broken up here and there by the odd paste-and-mirror Moroccan sort of bangle. She has a half-dozen earrings in either ear, from little diamond studs to great big spikes, a three-fingered knuckled ring on her left hand, and a small bronze shield ring on her right.

"We met before? Well goddamn. I'm sorry I don't always remember everything. You'd think I'd remember you." This quick, engaging grin. "I'm Serafíne. Everyone calls me Sera."

The shuffle of the drinks and then the left hand offered across the table. She has a tattoo on the palm, which the curve of her fingers mostly conceals.

Kiara

The fern was an impulse buy, some sad neglected bargain bin creature that had inspired her sympathy. When you lived too high from the earth, you had to make allowances for the ways you stayed connected. A half dead pot-plant didn't account for much to many but she'd make it work. Gift it with sunshine and a corner spot in her highrise apartment to find its slice of redemption.

Kiara's certainly no petite woman, her body has the build of a runner, lean and competitive, yet it stays within the bounds of feminine, quite absolutely and with deliberation. She's well composed and, by suggestion of the steady way she watches Sera and doesn't shy from roving her figure to visually digest the leather, the buckles ... the bustier, certainly no blushing beauty.

She feels ... inviting. Curious and quick of mind, if maintaining a sort of permanent awareness of herself in relation to what she says, every smile, every flick of her eyes. The way she reclines in her portion of that booth as if she's so aware its hers.

Every laugh. Which she offers now, sliding that shotglass between her fingers with an idle caress. "Well, you were there. In the moment but I think you were busy. I noticed, though." It's there again, that slow tugging smile, the shape and surety of it curling cherry red lips for a moment before she slides a hand out to grasp the proffered hand. The Verbena's are warm, the jangle of her bracelets a simpatico to the easiness by which Kiara offers her greeting. "Kiara. It's nice to officially meet you, Sera. Thank you for the - " she retrieves her hand in favor of grasping the shot and raising it.

Downing it and twisting the tiny glass to set it down in reverse fashion.

Grace

[Awareness! How good is the Magedar today?]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )

Serafíne

Kiara downs that shot without asking what it is, which makes Sera smile. Picks up her own and tosses it back with a curl of her shoulders beneath the hoodie. Her eyes are bright, attentive. There's a bit of a gasp with the burn but that is mostly pleasure. The shot itself is little more than cachaça with a twist of lime and a hint of sugar around the rim, which Sera licks with some after she has down the alcohol.

"That happens sometimes," Sera allows, when Kiara notes that Sera might have been busy. "I could've been fucking stoned, though. That happens sometimes, too."

That smile slides wry again. The movement of Kiara's fingers around the base of the overturned shotglass draws Sera's gaze. There it lingers.

"Believe it or not." A quick, darting glance back up - first to Kiara's mouth, and that is a choice, and then to Kiara's eyes. Not coy but - there is a kind of awareness there. Of watching, and of being watched.

"What are you reading?"

Grace

After talking with Alicia about the fucked-up-ness of Technocrats, Grace had to get out of the office. It's a strange thing, when one's mind is ripped forcibly out of the Zone and into the crap of reality. Makes you realize how hungry you are. Makes you realize how little you've gotten out recently. And the ever-impending doom hanging overhead makes you realize how little you've been living.

Never let it be said that Grace does not like music. She might not get much out of it, but she enjoys it. El Chapultepec was not where she was headed, really. But for the lure of Sera's enthralling nature, she wouldn't be stepping in the door right now. It's not her kind of place.

She bears no outward mark of a counterculture. In fact, she's so plain and normal in her jean-and-tee-shirt uniform she goes without attention half the time. All such marks reside elsewhere anyway. A nose-ring doesn't pierce deep enough. Grace herself, however, feels as though she slices but good.

Her eyes scan the crowd, looking for the one who cannot possibly be missed, and walks a wavering path over to Sera.

Kiara

The bar is beginning to fill up, now. The regulars returning, others making way for the evening crowds, lured no doubt by the notion of live music served with food and a side of electric atmosphere, the vibrancy amplifies as voices turn raucous. There's something to that which has always struck Kiara as almost premeditated on nature's side, draw together the right elements and watch the ricochet as they meld. Voices, bodies ... there's something there.

It's half way why she likes the occasional venture into the heart of Denver's social scene. That and, as present company was proving -- it can be a good place to meet like minds. The shot burns, twisting down her throat but she likes the sensation. It's sharp, a potent reminder of the moment. Sera mentions she might have been fucking stoned, Kiara's mouth edges a smile, a shoulder lifts as if to say what's that in the scheme of things, being stoned.

"Mm, if the ride is memorable, no judgment here." She keeps toying with the rim of the shotglass, then surrenders it in favor of the book pressed under her wrist. She eyes find it, thin brows drawing up as if surprised its still there and not vanished when her attention shifted from it. "Homework, in a manner of speaking. Or - well," she looks back across at Sera, her eyes full of some humor.

"A continuing exploration of things I know reinterpreted by men with impressive titles after their names." She pushes it across the table so the other woman can glimpse it. Makes some quiet noise of amusement as she studies the book from a distance, leaning back a little to rub a thumb over her mouth. "I like to hear other theories." The title on the table is a theoretical exploration of the energies inherent in the universe, or so it pronounces. How to work it, how to find and anchor it. It says a lot, perhaps, about Kiara's leanings. Or maybe, it says very little it all but the way she watches Sera's reaction suggests she has some appreciation for what talk of life and energy might mean to the other woman.

Her eyes flit over Sera's shoulder, recognition is there in the slight cant of Kiara's head. The way she shifts a little. "I think someone is looking for you."

Kiara

[*Her eyes find it, typo be gone.]

Serafíne

Grace will see a few other people she knows from Sera's life in The Pec tonight. People she's met at Sera's parties or Sera's gigs, or at least, people she's seen there. Sera's housemate, Dee, is sporting a blooming bruise on her cheek and around her left eye and is being toasted by Emily Honey-Bunches-of-Chokes for her first real roller derby black eye and Dan's standing there now that the place is filling up, bottle of beer in one hand, the other splayed across the back of the booth. He lifts the beer bottle in greeting as Grace comes wavering in and shoots a glance over his shoulder, just in case Grace was unable to follow the unmistakeable feel of Sera into the bar.

Meanwhile in that booth, Sera is wishing she had brought over more than two shots and taking a pull of her PumKing and her body is shifting upward as she brings her right leg up and tucks in beneath her ass to give herself a bit of a lift. Enough to look over the surface of the table at the title Kiara shifts toward her. Enough to catch the two books beneath the title, which together have Sera's dark eyes skimming back toward Kiara's.

"You read alot?" This quick curving mouth, "I'm not much of a scholar. You know? I mean, I kind of don't give a fuck what people with a million letters behind their names think, which doesn't mean I don't give a fuck about the universe or the energy in it - just I'm not so fucking sure we have to define it a million times over, yeah?

"I like to - "

But then Kiara's eyes are lifting over her shoulder and Sera is turning, catching the glimpse of Grace as she feels her resonance slicing through, and Sera smiles, geunine see, the way her smiles always are, and lifts a hand.

"That's Grace," she is telling Kiara in an aside. "Have you guys met?"

Grace

Grace lifts her head to Dan, gives him a little smile, a little wave, and looks to where his gesture leads. Sera, yes.

Sera who's not fucking sure if we have to define the universe a million times over.

Well, no. Of course not. That would be highly inefficient.

"You only need to define a universe once," she says, behind Sera's shoulder. "I've done it before. And then the millions of minds within all go defining it again so that they can witness it. I don't think you can get away with not defining a universe."

She smiles at Kiara. Ahh yes. The lady of the lawn.

"We met once. She horribly butted in to a secret, private gathering where she totally wasn't welcome at all. Because we are all a bunch of elitist snobs," she says, lacing every word with sarcasm.

Kiara

Sera doesn't give a fuck about what people with a lot of titles after their name think and it makes Kiara's mouth quirk, then she ducks her head a little, tendering aside a fall of dark hair with an impatient flick of her fingers and laughs. It's a bright, vivacious sound, it suits her. "Oh, the more titles they have the more I genuinely disdain their existence," Kiara offers honestly.

"But - " She slides her beer between her palms, rolls it back and forth and studies the depths. "- sometimes amongst all the bullshit, there are moments where I'm forced to think. I suppose I'm less a scholar and more an avid fan of intellectual stimulation." She looks up then, this brief, measuring look. A bright red mouth curving in a smile to match.

"Or really, any kind. I work with energy though so all this - " the hand wave, it encompasses the books with a casual dismissal. "It's a sort of hobby. Some people collect stamps ... " she doesn't quite finish that thought as Grace is upon them and Kiara's attention shifts gears. Especially with what Grace has to offer about the universe.

Defining it. "I think people just like to be able to stick a neat description on things," she takes a sip of her beer, it leaves faint imprints on the glass. "Nothing terrifies more than the unknown." She smiles a little wider when Grace recalls their first meeting. "What can I say, I defy definitions and college lawn hierarchy."

Serafíne

"I can get away with whatever the fuck I want Grace." This is suffused in a smile, wrapped around it, braided into it - but, beneath that, there is a kind of (yes) genuine resistance to Grace's declaration that no one can get away without defining a universe. Sera does not particularly like definitions - the words they inhabit, yes, and the way those words make her feel, absolutely. But look at her even now, mute, raw, defiant. Not really even stoned yet tonight, just a bit of an early buzz livening her mind and bringing a hint of color to her sharp cheeks. "Have a seat."

"I'm afriad I'm not going to be able to offer much intellection stimulation. I don't read much. Mostly poetry. "You should meet Hawksley, though. He's got the most enormous library. You guys could probably talk for hours. Day. What do you do with energy?"

Kiara

"Poetry counts." She's looking intently at Sera over the rim of her glass of beer, smiling, dark eyes making some map of her features. "Where the human race thinks it would be without their poets to offset the existentialists, I have no idea. But Hawksley, sure. We'd probably get along well. Unless he folds the corners of the pages and then it's all over."

A gleam and then she sets her glass down, unfolds her palm on top of the table. Her eyes shifting from Sera to Grace. "Everything has energy, right? We're all made up of it, we each have it inside us, we expend it, we take it in. Talking. Walking. Sex." The corner of Kiara's mouth turns up. "Every vital part of us is energy, however you wanna define that. I work with that basic principle." She runs her fingers over her palm, tracing her own life line, a fingernail skimming the heartline.

"That's what I do. I rebalance. Heal." She sits up a little straighter. "It goes by different names, it always has but it's probably easiest to consider it healing. Reiki." Kiara's fingers slide over her hand one last time. She picks her beer back up.

Grace

"I'm sure you get away with everything, Sera," Grace says, and slides into a chair. There's no resistance there to Sera's proclamation. She sees it as a joke, right?

"Well, I wouldn't call it 'neat' exactly. That suggests conciseness. When you really look at it, it's so far beyond 'neat'. Infinite, intricate, beautiful, cruel. Everything. But even looking is a kind of defining process, even though our eyes lie. You form an image in your brain, a definition of a thing. To avoid defining something, you'd have to close your senses to it and never experience it.

"Which I suppose you could do, if you wanted," Grace says, and shrugs. "Maybe I should try that sometime. It might be kind of destructive though, if I un-defined something. Cut it off from the rest of the universe? Oh that would be..."

Grace starts staring off into space at that point.

"I think I could do that. Something small."

ix-is-peeking

[Want more company? If not is also fine. :) I just thought I'd poke in and see.]

Grace

[That would be fine with me!]

Serafíne

"See, I don't have to follow your rules, Grace. I just think things are. I don't think looking at something means I'm defining it. Maybe experiencing it or sharing it or some fucking thing, but - I don't know. I only care about words that make me feel something."

This slantward look in Grace's direction before her attention lifts and slides back to Kiara, or rather to Kiara's hand, palm up, open, as Kiara's explanation of her work -

- and Sera has laced her own hands together and is watch watch watching the way she sometimes does, resting her sharp chin in the sling created by her joined hands and she's considering Kiara, considering reaching for Kiara's hand when Kiara instead reaches for her own beer and Sera is remembering a line, a handful of lines when,

"Reiki? Did I see some flyers for that? I think Dee kept talking about going to do it."

ix-is-peeking

[How awake are we?]

Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 3, 5, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )

Kalen Holliday

[Not awake enough to remember we signed in with OOC tags!

How distracted by Resonance are we?]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 6 )

Kiara

"You did. I've been plastering Denver with my wares." Kiara says it after another mouthful of beer, after swallowing and discreetly wiping at the edge of her mouth, rubbing her fingers together somewhat consideringly as she brings them away with a touch of bright red smeared to them. Her tone is playful, theatrical even with the way she crooks one thin eyebrow.

Like she knows what some people think of that sort of thing. Hocus pocus. Witchcraft. New Agey ridiculousness. No doubt in her line of work she's heard everything at least once, maybe more. "Dee should call me in that case, I'm a master." She flashes teeth with that, because it sounds so -- "Which means I can teach what I know." -- and she knows it. Kiara's eyes shift to Grace after a moment though, she back tracks with a brief -- "I don't know about unmaking, but you're right, neat isn't the word I'd use to describe it. I just think there's a preoccupation with the label sometimes."

Kiara muses on that, runs her tongue over her teeth, wets her lips. "The universe likes her mysteries, why deny her them, right?"

Kalen Holliday

Kalen is outside. It is cold and there are stars and there are streetlights and maybe streetlights dream of being constellations. He should ask one. Probably, not many streetlights are awake. Maybe more of the ones that had to be lit were. Had Denver had those?

He does not know but he thinks that it totally should have. All those lights. And lighthouses, some of those must be awake. And that seems incredible to him even if lighthouses are all regrettably close to the sea. They're very symbolic. So is the ocean. He should stop hating water one day.

Are constellations awake? Do they know they're constellations. Names have power. Did Naming-

He takes a deep breath as he senses Serafine and Grace and Kiara. It takes him a second to place Kiara. It takes him a second to get over the feeling of being swallowed whole and devoured and then alive again. Is this what it felt like? When he was caught between life and death and his heart had stopped but his soul had not fled. Sometimes he wishes he had been awake for that.

Perhaps Serafine knows. About the streetlights? Constellations? Being caught between worlds?

And so he walks into the place and wanders up to the bar for tequila, because tequila tastes like memory and magic and Serafine drinks tequila. Kalen never really did, before her. Whiskey, yes. Rum, yes. Tequila, not really.

When he starts over toward them, he has four tequila shots. Because of course he does.

Grace

Kalen arrives, and she sniffs the air for the familiar scent of storm -- clean, bright air, washed with rain and tinged with ozone. Smells like home.

"I look at a mystery, and I consider it a shame not to play with it," Grace says, eyes wandering the crowd again. "They're like puppies bringing me a ball, looking so cute..."

There's a bit of wistfulness to her, in remembering puppies gone by.

"You do Reiki? I know nothing about that," Grace says, and the eagerness with which she seems to chase after mysteries shines through. Reiki is a mystery to her.

Then Kalen appears with tequila shots, and ahh yes. Tequila reminds her of something. Or someone, actually.

"Hey, look, he brings teeny gifts."

Serafíne

"I'll tell her," Sera is promising Kiara, and something about it is a promise. The set of her mouth, maybe. She says the words liek a pledge and her eyes have dropped to Kiara's fingertips then risen again to her mouth and beneath it Sera is offering a sort of curve shrug that would be elegant were she wearing something that made her seem close to elegant. Her collarbones are so sharp beneath her skin. "I don't know that she'd come? If she did, I don't know that she'd believe, you know?

"Even if she's on the verge of believing in magick, that's mostly only when we're stoned and she can't help but believe, you know?

"But she'd be interested. Maybe she'll come.

"Is that what you do for a living?"

Once again Sera half-turns and glances over her shoulder. She can feel Kalen entering the bar and then: sees him stopping to pick up more shots. If she catches his eye before he leaves the bar, she's going to try to mouth to him that he should bring the bottle.

Then a double-take, as Grace talks about puppies and balls -

"Wait, Grace. You like puppies?"

Kiara

Kiara had planted her fern across from her when she'd first arrived, it's housed in a plastic bag and the fronts have been keeping Sera's shoulder company for a while now. As Grace appeared and now Kalen. Kiara reaches over, draws it out of the way a little more. There's a gentleness to the way she treats the plant that might be surprising. She tenders the fronds out of the path of destruction and then her eyes drift -- lock to Sera.

Shift a little and she might be considering the outline of her mouth. It's an intent look, whatever it is, tracing her face and then her own lips curl. There's that hook, like she's suggesting something that can only be read in half smiles and lingering stares. "Interest is a start, you'd be surprised what an interest can unlock."

Is that what she did for a living. "Yes and no. Not where I started but -- it's where I want to be. The human body interests me, what can I say." Kalen is approaching and he has shot glasses. Kiara inclines her face in his direct, scoots inward a little to make room. "Welcome to the party," she engages with a flick of her wrist. Lazy, at its ease.

"Shots buy you a seat."

Serafíne

"Believe it or not I really wouldn't," Sera tosses back to Kiara, right across the table. Tucked up against the clearance-priced potted palm the other woman bought for a song and brought with her to a jazz bar for an evening of beer-drinking and learning the mysteries of the universe, or at least: some small slice of them. "Be surprised, I mean."

And as Kiara is shifting the fern out of the way and Kalen arrives with both shots and a bottle of tequila solely because Sera told him he should, Sera is digging something out of an inner pocket of her hoodie.

It is her iPhone.

She is not so drunk, in just this moment, that she has forgotten how to work it as she sometimes does.

"What's your number?"

Kalen Holliday

He slides into the booth to join them, not seeming at all concerned about having known Kiara for five entire minutes of his life. "Some of the best parties work that way," he says as he starts to pour out a round of shots.

"Do you think constellations know they're constellations?" He asks Serafine as he slides one of the shot glasses toward her. "Or do they just know they are stars? Maybe they have their own alliances and we've got it all wrong because we want to see a dolphin. Maybe those stars are at war, or something."

You're not making sense, Holliday. "I was thinking about streetlights-" No. Not better. "Lighthouses?" He smiles, and it is not really at all self conscious for all there are traces of apology in it. "You know, I think that made more sense before I tried saying it out loud...."

"Oh look, tequila. Quick, someone come up with a toast."

Grace

"I like puppies. It's hard not to like puppies, they're adorable," Grace says, matter-of-factly.

She giggles at Kalen, at the way his thoughts come spilling out disconnected, as though his brain and his mouth had a direct connection going on.

It's one thing she likes about him, to be honest.

"To puppies!" Grace says, and lifts a shotglass.

Serafíne

Sera takes one of the shots as naturally as an infant takes its mother's milk, and smiles at Kalen, smiles just for Kalen, the brief and lovely flash of her teeth reflected against the smooth shotglass distorted by the heavier sheen of the tequila inside. Smiles and tosses it back and is ready for another before the toast (to puppies! Grace declares) has been made. She wants another.

The shot hits her. Warms her up and makes her shiver, makes her blood feel like mercury and her limbs feel like god knows what. Something delicious.

"I don't think much about constellations, Kalen." Sera says. She is still: quite nearly sober tonight. "But I figure, like people stars know that they have an audience, you know? They just have no idea how they seem to everyone else. So they probably don't know that they're in constellations. At least, not the ones you see from all the way down here."

And Sera, she waits long enough to get that number from Kiara, long enough for Kalen to fill her shot glass and let her do another shot. Then she's making Grace scoot, and scooting her own ass out of the booth. Excusing herself to go to the ladies' room, where she is probably going to either use the facilities or take advantage of the facilities to do a line or something.

Swaying as she goes.

Kiara

Kiara takes Sera's phone when offered in both hands and apparently knows how to navigate it because in a minute or two it's passed back with a new contact -- Kiara Woolfe. There's something to a name, one supposes and there is something to the brunette as she offers the phone back, the way her eyes shine, the way she smiles in a manner that's at once suggestive and secretive -- her name fits her. It slides easily, off the tongue, into the memory.

"I'm easy to find, I'm usually the last on most phones."

Sera now knows a Woolfe (or maybe it's both and she knows a wolf, too). Kalen is lamenting about streetlights, or lighthouses or -- Kiara takes her shot, lets her shoulders tremble a little with silent laughter when Grace makes the toast to puppies and downs it. Turns to glance at Kalen and asks with easy curiosity -- "When did your party start tonight, exactly?" -- then follows it with -- "Lighthouses are great for acoustics, though." A beat, Kiara is watching Sera slip out.

"Ghosts, too."