The weather out in Morrison was cool and slightly cloudy. At the Chantry, Annie was out on a riding lawnmower, cutting the grass in the front lawn. She glanced up when Ian's car wound up the country road and pulled into the driveway, watching him with half of her attention while she navigated the mower past the front steps. The sound of the the engine was a loud, echoing buzz through the otherwise still landscape.
When Ian got out of the car, he lifted a hand in greeting. She acknowledged him with a nod, strawberry-blond hair flickering around her in the breeze. She looked as if she'd been landscaping most of the day. Her skin was tanned, her forehead beaded with sweat despite the cool breeze. As Ian approached, she killed the engine and leaned forward onto the steering wheel.
"There's some beer in the fridge, if you want it. Dogfish Head I think."
"I might. Thanks. You should join me."
"Mm, maybe when I'm done."
She started the engine up again, and Ian hopped up the steps to let himself inside.
ElijahHe had come with the explicit intent to read. Elijah had a thing about libraries. A thing about burying himself in studying and feeling the quiet, bookish rush when he found something he didn't know, transcribed it somewhere personal for later. Quietly and neatly tucked away for his private use. Elijah didn't know there would be people here. He hadn't anticipated it, but then again he never really anticipates seeing people. It just happens. Kind of like showing up at parties and dancing and making bad choices with regards to women happens. Elijah just kind of accepted that some things happened.
When he pulls up, he notices a lady on a motor cycle. With strawberry blonde hair, and he's getting off his motor cycle and putting his helmet away and he gives a little wave.
"I haven't met you-" he says, but realizes that he isn't being loud enough over the mower. He's wearing jeans. Jeans and a shirt with three quarter sleeves that buttoned part of the way. He has a vest on, but it's buttoned tight. Pocketwatch nestled close against his ribcage.
"Hi, I'm Elijah!" he waved, "I've been using your crap-er-stuff! Do you need anything?"
SerafíneCoincidence, something like it. Five minutes, maybe ten after Ian pulls up outside the chantry another vehicle rattles up the driveway. This one is larger and sketchier looking: an old conversion van with Colorado plates and a handful of peeling bumper stickets affixed to the back doors. The engine ticks quietly beneath the hood after the driver turns it off and it sits there still for a long moment before both the driver's and passenger's doors open. Dan hops out of the driver's side. Sera sliiiiides down from the passenger's side, careful in her heels.
The tall consor loops around to the back and opens one of the back doors to grab a brown paper back from the back. Handles that bag with both confidence (he asked them to double bag it) and care (that's top-shelf liquor in there) and lifts a hand to wave to Annie as he circles 'round to take Sera's arm. She doesn't really move until he's by her side, seems absolutely enthralled by the way her toes wiggles.
Then she takes this deepdeep breath and lifts face to the cool, cloud-scattered sky. Is: absolutely still for one long moment, marveling at its vastness and the way it makes her feel equally: immense and immeasureably small, grateful to have blood running through her veins, and - inexplicably, or perhaps not-so-inexplicably, briefly, spine-curvingly sad. All of that, all at once, all liquid through her.
Then she takes Dan's arm and cuddles close and then head in too. Why the hell not: their might be waffles inside, or lilies of the valley, or Ian, or whatever.
(Repost: to fix typos AND paragraph breaks.)
Coincidence, something like it. Five minutes, maybe ten after Ian pulls up outside the chantry another vehicle rattles up the driveway. This one is larger and sketchier looking: an old conversion van with Colorado plates and a handful of peeling bumper stickers affixed to the back doors. The engine ticks quietly beneath the hood after the driver turns it off and it sits there still for a long moment before both the driver's and passenger's doors open. Dan hops out of the driver's side. Sera sliiiiides down from the passenger's side, careful in her heels.
The tall consor loops around to the back and opens one of the back doors to grab a brown paper back from the back. Handles that bag with both confidence (he asked them to double bag it) and care (that's top-shelf liquor in there) and lifts a hand to wave to Annie as he circles 'round to take Sera's arm. She doesn't really move until he's by her side, seems absolutely enthralled by the way her toes wiggle.
Then she takes this deepdeep breath and lifts face to the cool, cloud-scattered sky. Is: absolutely still for one long moment, marveling at its vastness and the way it makes her feel equally: immense and immeasurably small, grateful to have blood running through her veins, and - inexplicably, or perhaps not-so-inexplicably, briefly, spine-curvingly sad. All of that, all at once, all liquid through her.
Then she takes Dan's arm and cuddles close and then head in too. Why the hell not: there might be waffles inside, or lilies of the valley, or Ian, or whatever.
Kalen also drives up to the chantry. He hasn't really spoken to...really anyone who isn't living with him lately. And, even then, he's been gone a lot. Tango lessons and photography lessons and actual tango dancing and taking pictures, although never actually pictures of tango dancing. Mostly pictures of nature, but sometimes streetscapes. Abandoned places. Lost things.
He has a growing collection of pictures of sunrise. Some of the prints are tucked into the pages of books of poems in yet another place he can't bring himself to call home. A place with vegetarian cookbooks and notes on brewing kombucha. He brings echoes of that place with him though, echoes of something quieter and calmer and traces of the smoke from clove cigarettes and sage.
Annie gets a nod, but little other greeting. Elijah gets a smile. And then Kalen heads into the house itself.
IanSera and Dan got a wave from Annie, a little more relaxed (more familiar) than she'd been with Ian. "You all decide to have a gathering I didn't know about?" The pitch of her voice rose above the buzz of the engine as the two made their way up to the house. The question didn't really seem to require an answer, as evidenced by the fact that she redirected her attention to Elijah a moment later.
He was trying to talk to her, so she cut the engine again (reluctantly) and got down off the riding mower. A pair of work gloves donned her hands, and she pulled them off one by one as she sauntered over to offer Elijah a proper greeting. "Elijah, you said? I'm Annie." She stuck out her hand for him to shake. "Feel free to head inside. I've got some work to finish up."
---
When Dan and Sera entered the house, they found Ian standing with Leah in the hallway. She had her back against the wall, lounging slightly as she spoke to him. She smiled a little. Tucked a section of her hair behind her ear. When she looked at Sera, her smile brightened momentarily. "Hey Sera." Ian glanced over his shoulder and nodded at them. He looked as though he was about to head into the dining room, but just then Kalen walked in the door, and he stopped.
He met Kalen's eyes for a long moment. Then he strode off toward the patio door.
SerafíneWHAT WAS THAT IAN. (Per + Empathy)
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )
Elijah(waaaaiiiit, WTF? +2, because he really wasn't paying attention. Per+empathy)
Dice: 7 d10 TN8 (1, 2, 5, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )
Ian[I'm sure I have no idea what you're talking about.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )
Kalen Holliday[So many dice everywhere. Perception+Empathy]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 4, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )
Elijah"Awesome, thanks! It's great to meet you Annie-" he takes her hand and gives it a shake. His smile is bright, his eyes are too, "-I figure when you finish up we could play three man or something."
He grins, something playful, but frankly anyone who knows the game knows that you really, really don't want to play three man. Not if you loved your liver. Not if you wanted to remember how the evening ended- frankly the only thing that gets you drunker faster is an illustrious game known only as fuck the bus. He wasn't sure why it was called fuck the bus, but Elijah didn't seem to really care. It got you drunk fast and involved playing cards.
In he went, and he did as he usually did, paused in the hallway, acknowledged anyone who came by. Ian got a wave, Kalen got a smile (and a note shoved under his door, hastily written trying to memorize library, bbl because Elijah would try to memorize a library if given the opportunity.)
"Hey, Sera. Hey, Dan," voice warm smile brighter, whole being reaching for more than what he was. Restlessness given a direction. Chaos reaching the bounds of what he is and trying for more. Insistent we are more than this
Elijah(Elijah wasn't in the house for that look, sweeeeeep that under the rug)
IanWhatever that look was about between Ian and Kalen, it was likely more complicated than what little could be intuited on the surface. What Sera can tell is that Ian is not completely happy with Kalen at the moment, and was not expecting to see him. And that whatever is going on, he's perhaps less than keen on talking about it in this setting, with other people around.
Serafíne"Leah." That's Dan. Half-greeting, half-reminder murmured into the soft fringe of Sera's sidecut as they walk in and he disentangles himself from the tugging insistence of her arm, looped through his. It does seem to remind her. She pulls herself upright then, through the shoulders at the spine, and smiles warmly back at the girl.
Lifts up her hand - palm flat and open - and waves, this deliberate and segmented movement of her fingers that makes the tendons in her wrist move like the hammers in a piano as glissades down a scale. The dark ink on her skin: on her forearm, framing her hand, inside her wrist, following the delicate branches of her pale blue veins. The warm bronze of the little ring she always seems to wear on her right index finger.
She is wearing tiny little denim cut-offs, an expensive black bra beneath an unzipped black hoodie and strappy black sandals, sky-high heels, laces wrapped up her calves to her thighs, decorated with a scattering of butterflies. Why the fuck not?
Catches the look from Kalen to Ian, back again. Glances at Elijah and smiles at him when he greets her, then turns back to Dan as the latter unpacks the liquor they've brought onto the kitchen counter. Murmurs something against his shoulder.
Kalen HollidayAnd everything was so perfect until he actually got here, wasn't it?
Everything is always perfect, until he actually touches it. And then...well...and then it changes. Transforms. Liquid and shimmering into something else. Everything is always doing that, though. Whether he touches it or not.
It doesn't always end badly, does it? Depending on at what point you consider a thing ended. What is an ending really, in a world where science advocates transformation over destruction and magic...well...magic indicates a world of infinite possibility? Just a pause? The space between heart beats?
He takes a breath and slips past Serafine and Dan, there is a light brush of his fingertips on Serafine's shoulder, and (if he doesn't move away or give some negative indication) Dan's. Welcome to being a person Kalen accepts into his world Dan. He mostly indicates this by touching you. Leah, whom he doesn't recognise, gets a little nod.
And then he is beyond them, and he too heads for the patio.
IanElijah suggested they play a game of three man, to which Annie just snorted with dry laughter. "Yeah, no thanks kid." They parted ways, with Elijah heading into the house and Annie hopping back on the riding mower. Those inside would make out the muted growl of the engine as it came back to life. She'd likely be out there for a while yet. Even just the manicured part of the property was big enough to make grass cutting a sizable chore.
"I like your shoes," Leah offered to Sera (because Sera's shoes were amazing.) For a moment her attention turned to Kalen, glancing between him and Ian's departing figure. She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again. Fidgeted slightly with the hem of her t-shirt. After a pause, she began to follow Ian and Kalen outside, but seemed to think better of it when she reached the sliding door. She balanced on the balls of her bare feet, looking out through the glass, then she changed course and made for the kitchen.
Outside, Ian paused at the side of the node to pull off his shoes and socks. Usually when he did this, he stripped naked and actually climbed into the hotspring, but today he just pulled up the cuffs of his jeans and sat down on the rocks, letting his feet slide into the warm water. For a moment he closed his eyes, feeling the way the wind brushed against his skin. Taking in the scent of the spring and the nearby flowers.
ElijahLet it be said that Elijah Poirot was clueless in many things.
He stood there, gave Leah a little wave, "hey, I'm Elijah. Annie said I could come in and chill." He clarifies, as if he needs to introduce himself to the people he doesn't know, because he does. Tries to be polite, tries to use the polite people skills he is ever-so-desperately trying to cram into a two week period. In truth, he was at the chantry because he needed a break. Jenn had him learning about salad forks and dinner forks and he didn't think this was the kind of etiquette that he was supposed to be learning, but she was really intent on making sure he could handle himself in some kind of social situation because once upon a time she was working with some elderly woman who was Order of the Eastern Star who ever-so-politely overlooked the fact that Jenn was something that old, rich, southern women called terrible names meaning them in the most polite of manners.
Jenn had a lot of tolerance for bullshit. It kind of makes sense how she can put up with Elijah.
So, he watches as Kalen heads out the patio, watches as things move around him and he just… blanks. Doesn't quite put things together and doesn't seem terribly concerned by not figuring things together. It was off to the kitchen and the unpacking of liquor.
"I have not seen you guys in for-fucking-ever, and that is definitely a fault on my part."
Serafíne"I'll let you borrow them sometime." Sera to Leah: steadier now. Steadier because she is - well - concentrating. Eyes half-closed, her chin on Dan's shoulder, her spare frame a lean cipher against Dan's taller and only slight more solid frame. So: no. He does not look like he is going to be carried away by the wind, but he is whip-lean and dresses to emphasize it, in his signature hipster uniform of skinny jeans and some obscure band t-shirt. "Tell me when. They'll look good on you."
Quiet, then: "Leah, if you wanna go out there you should. There's no reason for you to hang back, you know? If they need privacy they'll find it."
Meanwhile: Elijah appears and announces that he has not seen them in for-fucking-ever and Dan grins at him over Sera's elfin left ear, which naturally bristles with hardware.
"Hey man," says Dan, grinning. "Been awhile. Good to see you." The bottles are out. He doesn't put them away because it isn't precisely a collective kitchen anymore: not as it was. Just folds up the brown paper bag for recycling and glances down at Sera as she says something quiet to him again.
"I think we're heading out, but we'll catch up soon."
Suddenly and quite as surely as she knows so many other things: Sera doesn't want to be here. So: they will go.
Kalen HollidayKalen steps out onto the patio, closes the door gently behind him. He doesn't so much approach Ian as the spring, and he leaves the pool between them, settling on the opposite side of the water. He does not put his feet in the water, but he does come reasonably close to the edge. Close enough he can reach out to skim the surface of the water with his fingertips, though he does not. Not yet. Maybe not at all.
Instead, he lets his eyes settle on its surface. He can see reflections in the water. Shimmery. Shifting.
He is so rarely sure he isn't dreaming.
"Hey," he says quietly.
Ian"Oh, wow, thank you." Leah's appreciation of Sera's offer was both surprised and genuine. She paused in the kitchen to regard her with an uncertain smile, which fell a moment later when Sera mentioned Ian and Kalen. A soft blush of color appeared on her cheeks. "No, I just... wanted a drink." She glanced over at Elijah then, who was attempting to offer her an introduction.
"Yeah. I figured. I mean, people just kind of come and go sometimes." She was less warm in her greeting of Elijah than she had been with Sera, but that may have been because Elijah was new. (And her age. And a boy.) After a pause she added, "I'm Leah." Then she promptly turned around and grabbed a bottle of orange Izze from the fridge.
----
Outside, Ian both felt and heard Kalen's approach, but he didn't acknowledge it until Kalen spoke. Then he opened his eyes, gazing across the pool. The water was clear aquamarine, with just the slightest sensation of steam rising up off the surface. It smelled of alkaline and minerals. "Hi," he offered quietly. He felt different (stronger, more primal.) Maybe Kalen had already noticed.
"Haven't heard from you in a while."
(Ditto, Ian.)
Elijah"That's cool," he tells Dan, "I'm taking piano and harp for non-majors, so pretty soon you will get the opportunity to see me shred on six and a half octaves worth of… well… harp." He didn't have a good word for it. Didn't have a lot of things there, because all he could think of was yep, it's a harp. But, you see, harkening back to a conversation he'd had with Dan in the grass once upon a time, he did remember telling the man about his awkward stringed-instrument skills.
Secretly, he was trying to convince Jenn to get a baby grand, not because he was terribly serious about playing, but because it would be cool. Then again, if you have a piano you'll actually play the piano and, since the first quarter, Elijah has found himself rather missing the instrument. It was meditative. A moment when he could think and be in the moment and think about the click of the metronome. Powering forward, driving to something, finding life in something written.
He liked sheet music, but he didn't talk about that. Most recently, he spent his time trying to figure out how to get a piano through the door of his apartment.
Elijah turned his attention to Leah and grinned, "wanna see an awkward harp recital in two weeks?"
Kalen Holliday[WP]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 4, 4, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )
Serafíne"Awesome." Dan to Elijah, with a quick grin that verges on the engaging, but does not precisely get there because he has sort of already checked out of the conversation.
Sera flashes Leah a shark-scissors tattoo peace sign real-quick because: yeah, she means it, and yeah, they are awesome shoes, and yeah, what the hell, she's rich, not that most strangers or even friends or for that matter lovers have ever really noticed that about her but: see, it is an easy offer to make. But she has also kind of checked out, or perhaps: checked back in to whatever was wrapped up around her spine when the van pulled up outside and as they turn to go she grabs one of the bottles on the counter they just unpacked. Picks it up by its neck and carries it with her as she goes.
Doors slam open. Doors slam closed.
Dan in the driver's seat. Sera with her temple against the cool glass, the world smearing past her. Her heart beating in her body, her breath strange in her lungs.
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