Pho

Elijah

[Charisma+Expression, how was the rabblerousing today?]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (4, 7, 9) ( success x 2 ) [Doubling Tens]

Elijah

(ack, that was not the box I meant to check. I meant to check the WP box)

Serafíne

NOT RABBLEROUSING BUT WHO IS AROUND HELLOOOO?

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8) ( success x 5 )

Elijah

[aaaand how well-informed was I about what I was angry about?]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 5, 7) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Ian

[Awareness ftw]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 4, 5, 7) ( success x 1 )

Elijah

He was never going to win any awards for speech making.

Nope, he really wasn't, but the latest little snippet of Occupy Denver had a certain blond being very emphatic about the rate at which we incarcerate non-white citizens. The turn out had been decent enough, and after awhile everyone was dispersed after what had been a largely successful bit of protesting and now? Now he wanted pho.

Pho 95 weas a decent enough place, but more importantly they were open all night, and possibly only kept open by a certain blond who seemed content to eat his weight in Vietnamese noodle soup. Text messagees went out. Lots of them Checking in on 4Square happened. If he was reasonably certain someone was in Denver at that particular juncture, they were invited to pho.

And thus we open the scene. A little place with glass tables and menus written primarily in English with Vietnamese underneath. Elijah could pronounce the name of the place he was eating, it wasn't terribly authentic but the owners were very accepting of the lanky French major.

Ian

Ian was already inside when Elijah got there. He was tucked away at a table in the back corner, head down with one hand absently massaging the back of his neck. There was a bowl of Pho next to him, partially consumed with chopsticks balanced neatly on the rim of the dish. Ian's focus was on his smartphone - or, more to the point, on whoever he was texting - so he didn't immediately look up when Elijah came inside. Instead he paused with his hand hovered over the screen and gave this quiet little huff of laughter.

I'm already here.

He sent a brief text to Elijah, then finally glanced up and scanned the room until his eyes landed on their mark.

His phone buzzed quietly in his hand. Another text (this one from someone else.) Ian waved Elijah over to his table before glancing down to shoot off a quick reply.

Serafíne

Serafíne has not been rousing the rabble, just running with them. Not Elijah's Occupy Denver sort of rabble, just her own - who seem to be both a little bit higher and a little bit lower minded than the people the French major set out to exhort today. God we are on a long street - that sort of low-density development sprawling around downtown cores - the sort where the infrastructure has aged into a fine melange with layers and layers of weirdly crowded shopping centers and fast food restaurants and pho places built into the old fast food buildings abandoned by the franchise owners when they've reached their age limit.

Whatever.

It's fucking January and sure there's a blizzard on the east coast but today in Denver it was 71 degrees. Temperature's falling now but it is nowhere close to freezing.

Here's a chick in a net cocktail dress that seems to be more torn than not-torn but which is also absolutely couture. The line of rhinestones on the asymmetrical bottom hem might well be diamonds and over it she is wearing a battered leather bomber jacket, purchased from a thrift store for seven dollars and ninety-nine cents.

The heels? They cost thousands. That's what the crimson sole suggests, anyhoo.

Is there a line? There is a line. Elijah is waiting in line. Maybe to order, maybe to get a table, maybe to figure out where Ian is sitting. If there is a line: Sera walks in behind Elijah and wraps her arms around him from behind.

She's pretty stoned. MDMA, darlings. Her senses are sticky with it.

Elijah

"It would appear that I have competition for my mayorship of this pho place," he said, a grin on his face- bright and pleased when he saw Ian. Elijah didn't so much walk as he did... well, he walked. It wasn't quite strutting because he was tired. Tired and a little cold, but that was because he would forever be cold in Denver. It was never going to be a glorious, warm oasis.

There are around around his waist, though, and he stops. There's a texture on his belt, something smooth with a few notches where he'd fiddled with it to try and get it tighter, only to give up the fight. There's a feeling that the back of his vest makes against skin because it's not silk, it's satin and it has a different weave and the little buckle in the back is oh so cold in comparison and-and-and-

He inhales and he smells leather.

"Helloh," he replies, and the grin hasn't left his face.

Arionna de la Babin

It's absurdly warm for this time of year. It's nearing 60, and Arionna is feeling a little displeased by the whole affair. Where is the snow? The blizzards? The storms? Where is her season of chill, of death, of lengthened darkness? This whole affair, or lack thereof, has put her in a not so pleased mood; though one might wonder if she had anything else to offer the world.

She could be in a library or in her room where silence was likely to prevail, but like any true predator, she enjoys watching others, or in her case, listening to them. Unlike a true predator of the forest, Ari has a way of standing out. One might say it's the dark coat that she wears, though that hardly seems reasonable. So many people wear dark coats these days; it's professional, dontcha know. It might be the skirt that glides down smoothing from underneath it. Black lace over black fabric, and the hint of pointed boots underneath. But no, many people wear skirts in the winter. It was probably the combination of her usual gloom appearance, the cold attitude she gave to others, and the book she had spread open as she moved in line behind the others.

Maybe she had received a text, and maybe she hadn't. Maybe that's why she was really here, though she'd never admit it openly, just as she'd never admit that the moment Elijah's name popped up, she was quite pleased to drop her initial plans to hole herself away and brave the crowds. Yes, it might have been a text.

Arionna de la Babin

[I'm wishing, for the one I... uhh...am aware of]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )

Serafíne

"Helloh to you too." Murmurs Sera. Not mocking, though there is a degree of mimicry in her tone that feels somehow animal. Like a parrot or a mynah bird, absorbing and reflecting the sounds that echo around it. The leather-arms of her leather-jacket and the top of her golden head just visible behind Elijah's left should. She rests her cheek against his scapula for a moment. It seems impossible to let go.

And then she does.

Inhales.

Shivers, and hard to say whether she shivers deliciously or otherwise, it is just a coursing physicality, her whip-lean frame, the expert way she perches in those tottering heels, which give her a solid five and a half extra inches so you know, she's towering.

Smiles at Ian like she always knew he was there and circles around and takes, you know, a seat. Feels the world sprawling all around them and somehow knows that Arionna is here for Elijah. Just senses it.

Ian

It was unseasonably warm. It had been unseasonably warm all fucking winter. So Ian was not dressed in his heavier (proper winter) attire. He was, in fact, dressed rather casually. Pale grey jeans that had been worn enough to render the denim soft, with a frayed hole torn over one knee. The rest of the ensemble was completed with a black v-necked t-shirt and black leather harness boots. A couple of leather bracelets donned his left wrist, and an expensive jacket was slung over the back of his chair.

He pocketed his phone as Elijah and Sera approached his table.

"I should've known you'd be here." (This to Elijah, because it was, in fact, precisely the kind of place that Elijah would eat at.) To Sera, he offered a nod and a brief, casual gesture toward the chair that she was already pulling out for herself.

Elijah

"Hey, have you met Arionna?" he asked, because he woudl ask, looks back and smiles because he's happy to see her.

Because he could be happy to see her. Because he could be happy, period. Nothing gravels or growls. Nothing threatens, the room is loud and bustling, but it would be even if he wre standing alone on an empty plane. There is always something talking, always something humming, and he knew that. He knew better. He knew better than to seek silence because then he would get it and he knew, knew in the it of his stomach, that silence was ot for him.

"Thus far this is the best pho I've come across in town, but I've only tried four places, and I'm pretty sure at this point Missus Nguyen would be disappointed if I went somewhere else," said with the gravity that insists that her disappointment would be as terrible as... well... any other grandmotherly figure's displeasure.

Serafíne

Sera kinda hums (hmmmm) in response to Ian. Likes the way her throat vibrates and the way hhhhh and mmmm go together. Wonders, briefly, what they do when they are apart, then loses the thread of the thought as she sprawls in that chair. Lets her head loll to her right shoulder and smiles at Ian. There is something unbidden and remarkably tender about that look, though somehow it also seems as if it isn't precisely for him.

"We have a gig." Sera tells Ian. "Day after day after tomorrow. Or the day after that one. I keep - " and here she breathes in. Breathes in. "forgetting which. You'll come?"

Then she cuts this glance sliding aslant toward Arionna. Hasn't moved her head but the whole of her attention, there. Sera is sharp and striking and in a way that arrests and seizes both the heart and the gut. Bottle-blonde and crawling-mouthed - that smile. Impossible to tell tonight what color her eyes might be because: her pupils are so huge.

Kiara

[Doo de doo.]

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

Arionna de la Babin

Of course he would ask. Elijah was the opposite. If she were the moon, as she so romantically liked to refer to herself as in the quiet, then Elijah was more like the sun. This, she would tell herself, is precisely why she enjoys his company so much. Perhaps she's placed her head too far into books.

Her eyes lift from the pages as she speaks, and she takes notice of it. There is a moment of surprise; she'd nearly forgotten the entire aspect of him that made him inclusive and charming. Already her cheeks flush and she shoves her face back into the book. It's absurd. It's all really absurd.

Yet she slides into the group, setting her book momentarily on the table to set her purse down and begin to neatly set her coat on the back of the chair. She's never one for hello's and greetings, preferring to quietly take her place and remain the shadow in the corner as much as possible; though she always seems to be less of the shadow in the corner, and more of the vocal sort...anyhow..

Despite the chill the presses outward from her, she manages a 'Evening' before picking her book right up again. She never did make those cupcakes for Elijah that she wanted to, and briefly she's grateful she hadn't. It would make this entire scenario quite awkward....or more awkward than it was.

Ian

"Not really. I think I saw her at that art gallery a while back." (But of course, he hadn't exactly stuck around for introductions.) His gaze followed Elijah's, tracing a cutting path across the restaurant to the table where Arionna sat with her book. His focus hovered there a moment before sliding away.

Sera's smile was open and tender when Ian caught her gaze. He didn't question it, mostly because it didn't feel as though it was really meant for him. But it made the light hit her face in this soft, almost romantic way. Whatever she was on (he could guess, and if he had he would be right) brought a flush of color to her skin that only really added to the effect.

She remembered that he'd asked about her next gig, though she could not precisely remember when said gig was actually happening. The invitation elicited a partial smile. "Probably. If I don't get stuck in rehearsal. Text me the details when you know them."

Arionna approached the table and sat down, quietly and relatively unobtrusive. Ian paid her more attention the second time around, if perhaps only because she'd chosen to occupy space at their table. His eyes were dark and focused as he watched her.

"Evening."

After a moment he asked, "What are you reading?"

Kiara

It's highly probable that Kiara had been included in Elijah's text invitation. That she'd responded with something (or not) very vague but charmed. A smiley face, punctuated with a kiss, perhaps. Nothing more or less but she does turn up, eventually. Though whether or not it's entirely by chance she's in the area, well - Kiara could be a elusive creature when she wished it. This brunette that materializes toward the back of the line to order, dressed in heeled boots that laced up in some intrinsic, overly complex way and red jeans that curved along and hugged her figure.

She's got a coat draped over an arm; pristine white on red (and more white). There's something particularly vital to it; the way she uses color to strike a match against her presence. Invoking reaction, probably. Painting bold evidence that she exists into a moment. Kiara Woolfe, with her dark eyes; hair a wild punctuation around her face; sunglasses scooping much of it back from her face.

There's deliberation to the way she takes her place in line, the hook and slow curve of her mouth as she feels familiar presence; cant of the head; eyes scoping out the corner and there. It amounts to a greeting, for the Verbena; the slow lock and draw of her gaze. Heavy and potent where it lingers and then refocuses as the line shifts along.

That cyclic presence of hers like intangible nails gouging the flesh only to soothe the wound.

Elijah

[People? awareness?]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (4, 6, 6, 7, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 6 )

Elijah

It was the first time he recalled meeting her, too, all things considered. or, perhaps, the most notable time. Mostly because of Jenn. Mostly because of apologies, mostly because of her calling him interesting or something to that effect but he muses with nostalgia and that smile turns into a grin and he settles in.

But settling in came with a breath, long and deep and the world felt bigger and smaller and singular and infinite and there was a brief fluctuation. Devouring, renewing, a cycle in and of itself.

Her name isn't Susan, he thinks, written clear across his face and he has to go through his thoughts but there is the feeling of everything there. The person who was here two days ago, checking to see if the broth was gluten free. The chef whose knife was a little sharper than his knife should be. The primal, almost bestial nature of some of his companions. The majesty and terror of the natural world. Opposites and synonyms.

He blinks slow, and that grin hasn't left his face, but he does stop breathing for a minute, pushes through, but doesn't want to let go.

"Your name is not Susan, it's Kiara," because he isn't thinking. Eyes widen for a second because what was on his mind just came out, "welcome to pho ninety five."

Serafíne

"Fuck." Sera breathes out, you know. "Fuck." For no specific reason except that - perhaps - the universe just sent her a kind of text message tattooed against her skin. And she tosses her head back and she's somehow sitting in a tall chair with a threadbare, napped red velvet upholstery and she rubs the back curve of her skull against it and watches Ian from beneath lower lashes and whatever was in that text message -

- suddenly there are tears in her eyes. They aren't shed, just shining, maybe it's the light in here, maybe it's an allergic reaction, maybe it's the drug she is on, maybe it's the cocktail, maybe it is the remarkable way the light shreds her skin.

Maybe she's just fucking sad sometimes, unbidden, as we all can be, even on a sunny January day turning into a warm January night in a place where the air is so thin lowlanders get breathless just stepping off the plane.

Such heights.

Ian tells her she should send him a text. Sera agrees via finger-guns. Ironic finger-guns and then she has to Be Somewhere. Gives Ian a little wave. Maybe tells him that he should come out later? Or is that only in her head?

She does tell Kiara that on her way out. With a murmur and a little kiss behind her ear.

Then she ambles out as easily as she ambles in. The door swings closed behind her. Walks three blocks before whatever brought those tears to her eyes hits her like a wave - but by then she is out of sight, and out of mind.