Even Mercurial Elites have to step out sometimes to contribute to capitalism. He could just as soon conjure up whatever he needed himself within the safety of his apartment but for the purposes of getting him out of the apartment today: Samir is still working the bugs out of that particular program and earned himself a nosebleed earlier for his troubles.
So he's managed a trip to the grocery store off of Federal Boulevard. Ignore everything he had to do in order to leave the house and ride his bike half a mile and then lock up the thing and come inside the store. He's here now.
So far he's managed to grab a two-liter bottle of Moon Mist Faygo. Now he's trying to decide if he wants to eat something besides ramen noodles today. Which means he's aimlessly wandering the aisles waiting for something to jump out at him. Thus far nothing has.
SerafíneThe doors here are kinda automatic. Which means they open part-way if you walk at a normal pace, and hang, sighing, open long enough for you to shimmy past before they start to swing or maybe mosey-shut. There is a dusty aura and a low, humming buzz from all the overhead fluorescent bulbs and pretty enormous display of Mexican candies and an entire row of weird canned sea-creatures and another entire row of dented and expired canned goods at a deep discount and now the door is kinda opening and kinda sighing-shut to admit one chick in short denim cut-offs and thigh-high fishnets and a strapless black-lace crop top with 4" heels (which heels are made-of-metal and sculpted to look like skeletal ship's prows) and the security guard (yawning) thinks she's a prostitute and the clerk thinks she's a prostitute and the grandmother buying five cans of dented tinned octopus is sure of it.
The creature stops in the middle of the front aisle, paused, poised between the off-brand, off-date tins and the weird-seafood aisle. Not because she wants anything in any of those aisles, but because: how the fuck did she get here? Why the fuck is she here?
SamirAt some point Samir decides well he ventured this far he might as well grab something in the solid food category. So he settles on a bag of cassava chips. Whatever, Samir.
He comes around the corner of the aisle as conspicuous as any other young adult male in this neighborhood. Average height with long hair and a sort of punk-bohemian fashion sense. Same black leather jacket and blood-red Doc Martens he'd had on the night he met Sera. His hair is pulled back into a knot at the nape of his neck same as his hair is always pulled back.
But Samir has a way of fading into the background of other people's memories. If he puts forth an effort to escape notice then he may as well not exist. Attempts to find traces of him along paper avenues tend to end in dust. He wasn't putting forth an effort to escape her notice the last time their paths crossed and he isn't now.
Still: not expecting to see her tonight. Does a bit of a stutter-stop maneuver before pulling his shit together and continuing on towards the registers and her as if nothing happened.
SerafíneHMMMM? (-4 for stupid arcane?)
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 5, 7) ( success x 2 )
Serafínecrap. lemme do that again.
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (5, 5, 6) ( success x 3 )
Serafíne(He's not trying to avoid her notice but he still could, right? Another stranger slipping by, another anonymous pair of eyes, the shift and flicker, the stutterstep. Not like she doesn't see that all the time from actual strangers. It's not like she dresses like that because she wants to go unnoticed. Fuck no: stutterstep all you want. Take another look.
The sharp little shoulders, the articulations of her body, all bones and hollows. This strange, refined delicacy beneath all the fuck you and the horse you rode in on signifiers.
And it's not like her gaze slips around him but somehow lands on him in spite of herself, no. She just sort of wakes, startled and looks right at Samir in a way that people he has not greeted seldom do.
"Hey." Low, this. Conspiratorial, maybe, with a brief flashing glance toward the bored clerk behind the register. Can't mistake whom she addresses, Samir, not even if you Willed it. "Were we supposed to meet here? I don't - I don't fucking remember why I came in."
SamirAnd that moment where Sera recognizes him is not a moment to which he has become accustomed even with people who have known him for a considerable amount of time. People with whom he has lived even forgot about him sometimes. Sera recognizes him so fast that the moment may not even register with her.
But then again she forgot why the fuck she even came in here.
Another moment to which Samir has not become accustomed is running into someone with whom he had previously engaged physically. Even if the physical engagement was no more engaging than her tongue in his mouth and her hips pressed against his. She has no idea what that did to the inside of his head. Knocked everything off an already messy desk for lack of a better analogy.
Point being this is not a melding of moments for her as it is for him. But then she is a Time Mage. He has no idea what is going through her head right now either. If he could Will it Samir wouldn't want her to not talk to him right now.
As they come abreast of each other he returns the Hey and chews his lower lip as she asks her question.
"We..." His eyes lock onto hers for a second like to read her pupils. "No? I don't think so. Are you alright?"
SerafíneThe light in here is dingy, yeah, but it's still bright enough that her pupils shouldn't be that large, devouring more than half of her dak-blue irises. So he searches her eyes and she allows him to look, then closes her like I have a secret style and glances again. This is not a sort of shying-away, though, so much as a looking-for something.
"Course I am," she assures him, reassures him. Hums around the thought with a neat little and then kinda turns, not precisely staggering but there is a certain implicit sway to her spare form. It's just she remembers this place, which is bloody weird since she walked in about 97 seconds ago.
And she kinda reaches out and grabs a tin of something (turns out it is eel) because maybe she is supposed to buy something and then makes like she is going to fall into step beside him. Gives his purchases a once-over, this darting engagement of her dark, dark eyes. "What the fuck are you doing here anyway."
Samir[COMMERCIAL BREAK]
Samir
Samir holds up the plastic two-liter bottle of neon-green liquid he'd stepped out of his apartment to procure tonight. Like he can't just run a program that would give him the same keyboard-mangling energy that high fructose corn syrup and caffeine would. Something of a self-depreciating half-a-smile comes to his lips and since it looks like she's going to walk with him anyway he wanders over to the register.
The guy ahead of them is buying canned beans and tortilla chips and a slew of other things that the cashier is taking his time bagging up. Whatever they're chatting about is inconsequential. It gives Sam and Sera a moment to sort out what they're both doing here.
"Ran out of junk food," he says. "Besides, I hear going outside occasionally is supposed to be good for you."
Serafíne"It's very fucking good for you," she assures him, or perhaps reassures him once more. Turns and sets her tin of - eel? yes, eel, second-hand, dented and out-of-date lamprey eel - on the counter with Samir's casava chips and soda and leans back against the register belt. The heels of her palms on the cracked chrome edging, shoulders up and forward though her mouth is closed and her head is lolling pleasantly aslant.
There's a pleasant hum from the fixtures overhead that she is only now hearing. Bright and buzzing and beneath the third-rate Spanish-language radio station that seems to be playing murder ballads extolling the virtues of drug lords in the Mexican cartels.
"If you're out of junk food you should get some Skwinkles. I'm pretty sure they have some somewhere. You live around here?"
SamirYou live around here?
"Yeah." That doesn't exactly make for enthralling conversation and in the pause after that single syllable underneath the humming of the fluorescent lighting Sera can all but hear him debating whether or not he wants to elaborate. "In the neighborhood, anyway. What the hell is a Skwinkle?"
As Sera answers he sets down his containers but does not lean against or otherwise touch the counter. Busies himself fishing his billfold out of his back pocket.
Serafíne"Candy. Covered in chile. Fucking delicious."
Her dark eyes flick neatly over him: his hands, the unfolding, unfolded billfold. The precision that seems embedded in the pause as he debates whether and how much he wants to elaborate.
"You wanna get the fuck outta here with me?" The supple thread of her smile a strange nearly pointillist counterpoint to the darkness of her eyes.
--
No beating around the bush. When was she ever anything but forward?
SamirFurther commitment to his magick would require him to spend more time inside than he already does. A creature who can conjure up sustenance and convince the universe he's already paid his rent doesn't need to go outside very often. Means he doesn't have to touch paper currency or other people very often either. Madness proliferates quick as bacteria in a petri dish in the absence of outside influence.
Samir pulls out a ten-dollar bill assured of the fact that that will cover the cost of all three things and sets it down on top of the can of eel and then rubs his hand on the side of his thigh. Like he can scrub the germs off his fingertips with the friction between denim and skin. It's a small tic and the cashier doesn't notice.
Does he wanna get the fuck out of here with her. His eyes don't actually widen but the light slants a different way as he begins to suspect there's a correlation between one question and the next.
"... sure," he says.
And then the cashier is greeting him and he's answering back and it's a sparse exchange. There are only three items and they all fit in the bag. He gets four singles and a handful of coins back in change. The singles go into his billfold and he puts the coins into the take-a-penny tray and the plastic bag rustles as he takes hold of the handles. Again with the palm-rubbing.
"Buenas noches," he says to the cashier and then they're off.
SerafíneTime 2 / Entropy 1: Perfect timing. Coincidental. Difficulty: 5. Target: 3 successes to get a cab ASAP. -1 for specialty focus.
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (2, 4, 5) ( success x 2 )
SerafíneEven in a cheap, third-rate grocery store the air conditioning wheezes out crisp, cold, dry air. The air outside is damp and hot, the blast of it sticky as they slip past the automatic double-doors that only open part-way. Dark outside, right but only just. A rim of light wrapped 'round the western edge of the sky, illuminating the mountains where they are visible between the jagged teeth of storefronts, down intersections aglow with the this cacaphonous array of stoplights receding into forever-away.
They don't exactly match, but they walk out of the grocery store together and something in the air around her sharpens, and this is almost instinctual: her use of magick. The way the threads of time and chance slide neatly into place.
"I can't walk too far in these fucking shoes," which is not precisely true, though it is more-true in circumstances when, as-now, she has indulged herself in certain illicit substances. "I'm gonna get us a cab. You like fireworks?"
Samir[Corr/Mind 1: Landscape of the Mind because YOLO.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (3, 10) ( success x 1 )
SamirLast time their paths crossed Sera had not seen anything wrong with walking barefoot out of the park and down the street but Samir isn't going to be the one to suggest if she's that uncomfortable she can go ahead and just take the things off. To the contrary would be more like it. Samir barely likes walking on the sidewalk with thick-soled boots on.
He takes out his cellphone as Sera is looking around as if a cadre of cabs is waiting to pick up a couple of people who don't want to walk five miles to get to where they're going. This isn't New York City.
Does he like fireworks.
Samir glances overhead like he's expecting to see some go off at any second and then he grants Sera a sidelong smile that reveals a flash of teeth. The suggestion of a laugh that doesn't make noise. There's a knowing sort of quality to it though like her question isn't entirely random.
"They're alright," he says. "Why? You want to go shoot off some bottle rockets?"
SerafíneExtending! +1
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (4, 6, 7) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Serafíne"Mmmm." So she hums, sauntering on the sidewalk in her too-high heels through the parking lot of the strange little grocery, avoiding pockmarks and potholes, the old Gremlin parked in the single handicapped spot, perhaps indefinitely. The syringes and crack vials that crunch underfoot as they cross the weedy tarmac towards the low, rushing roar of the wide avenue crushed with cars, yeah, but not exactly taxi cabs.
Holds her hand out though - right? - as if it were New York City. Two fingers and this elegant certainty that defines a certain kind of expectation. "Something like that."
Holding a secret like a coin, behind her eyes, in her mouth. The metallic tang of it.
And lo and behold, a taxi shows up. Glides up to the curb like nothing. Like this happens all the time.
SamirOnce he's finished doing whatever he was doing with his phone Samir pockets the thing and transfers the plastic bag to that hand so he can keep one free in case - what. She takes a tumble maybe. He doesn't look like he'd be able to do a whole hell of a lot beanpole-thin as he is.
He looks bulky compared to the wispy Cultist beside him but physical size doesn't mean a whole hell of a lot among their kind. He's heard stories about four-foot-eleven women who could bring an assailant to his knees with a flick of her wrist. Samir doesn't place a lot of stock in physical size.
Still: he treads careful when he's next to her. The terrain is unkind and the land struggling beneath the urban invasion doesn't care for the ones who brought this on themselves.
And then here comes a taxi. Other than a scant lifting of his brows Samir betrays no surprise.
"Alright," he says. This to the matter of what she meant when she asked about fireworks. Trying to sound like he's up for anything even though he's clearly outside of his comfort zone right now. "Lead the way."
SerafínePer + Empathy: how uncomfortable are you, bra?
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (2, 2, 3, 6, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 4 ) [Doubling Tens]
Serafíne"Hmm." Another one of those subvocal sounds, this one accompanied by a supple flicker of her too-dark eyes. There is - there often is, perhaps there always is, if one looks for it - an awareness there that seems separate, shastrucrper, brighter than the tumble-down certainty of both her Self and her High - and also an almost lancing - well - call it compassion. This hook-and-filter catch as she sees something. Takes it in. Drops her eyes for this precise moment from Samir to the edge of the cab, gleaming beneath the streetlights, their own reflections distorted in its surface, and holds that view for two beats, perhaps three of her heart.
Then reaches out and opens the back door and climbs in the car, affording the world a very sweet view of her very sweet ass, thank you very much.
--
Inside, the cabbie asks where to? and she names a place, a park, perhaps one that he has not heard of or been to and he snaps an okay and flicks on the meter to start it running. Despite her spare frame, she fills up space in the back seat, perhaps deliberately, some part of her body always closer than is normal, though not quite touching, this virtual stranger in the back of the cab. Though: stoned and a little bit happy and wiggly, well, maybe her awareness of personal space slips even more.
Ten minutes, maybe fifteen later: the cab pulls up by the main parking area for a small city park. Sera leans forward, chin resting on the cabbie's seat and murmurs a few more directions. Which he follows: letting them out in a small parking lot at the trailhead to an old nature trail.
Samir The way Samir climbs into and sits in the cab one would think he were on his way to his own sentencing. He drops the plastic bag onto the floor between his feet and holds his hands between his knees and when Sera lolls closer to him he glances over and he affords her a tight smile. Maybe she senses the capacity for warmth in him somewhere.
The night he'd kissed her before she kissed him he had started to relax over the course of the hour or so they spent in each others' company but only barely. Enough that he didn't stammer every time he opened his mouth to talk.
Tonight she notices his discomfort and his resolution to carry on in spite of the discomfort. She doesn't say anything about it in the ten-fifteen minutes they spend in relative silence.
When the cab driver pulls into the parking lot Samir retrieves his cellphone again. For all anyone knows he could just be checking his bank account balance. Sera is more attuned to the space in the back of the cab than even the driver is. The driver may just feel uncomfortable carting these two deviant kids around as a default. By the time they arrive at the smaller lot a bit further away Samir has returned his phone to his pocket and shifted to remove his billfold.
Even if anyone were paying attention how would they know how much scratch he had in there before he put his phone away. No one would notice that a couple of bills materialize when he flips his thumb across the surface of what's already inside and produces a pair of five-dollar bills.
He doesn't wait for change. He does remember to grab the plastic bag from the floor before he gets out of the cab. Onward.
--
wallet @ 9:48AM
[matter/prime 2: forgot to stop at the ATM. base diff 5, spending WP bc fuck it. i believe he only needs one success for a "standard" unit.]
Roll: 2 d10 TN5 (3, 7) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Sera
Outside she steps out of those ridiculous heels. Steps out and down and suddenly she's four or five inches shorter and being anchored that much closer to the earth somehow makes her slightness easier to bear. There she is like a little buoy, golden hair with a trick for catching the light floating in the darkness ahead of him, her barefeet on the warm pavement yeah, fore and middle fingers hooked through the straps of her shoes. Too much loose gravel in the parking lot for her to go fast but she's nimble and knows where she's going. Finds the trailhead in the gloaming-darkness. The packed earth is easier on her feet than the rougher asphalt and once on it, despite the dark, she picks up the pace. Glances back, yeah, over her shoulder to make sure that Samir is keeping up.
There's nothing impressive here. Nothing technical. A rising slope flanked by scrub woods, cushioned enough by the absence of streetlights that the brightest stars are more visible from here than they outside the radius of the park. The sky is nothing like the sky would be further out, out beyond the front range of mountains beyond which the last, fading glow of the sun still burns but: oh hey. Venus. And other stuff, who the fuck can be bothered to remember all those fading, burning names?
So, he follows a stranger, an errant-satellite of a girl, equal parts White Rabbit and Betty Boop, high on god knows fucking-what. The trail starts to edge above the scrub, too and there's the city, gleaming-low. The park's lawns full of folks on picnic blankets and in folding chairs, parked on benches or sitting on the tailgates of pickups and SUVs, waiting for the evening's fireworks to start.
The last bit is more of a scramble, no longer packed dirt, a quick scrawl up a rocky outcropping that juts out over the city below. She manages it on two feet with occasional assistance from her hand for balance, but hey: she climbs. Even stoned her muscles has that sort of memory in them, how the body moves and maybe how it falls. If Samir needs help or encouragement she does turn around and offer him a hand, but whether or not he's athletic, he can probably make it. Half-crawling if need be but everything's dark now and who's watching.
Not Sera.
She takes a seat at the summit of the little outcropping, overlooking the mostly dark park. Feet flat on the still-warm stone, knees bent, heels tucked into the space beneath her legs. There's space beside her for him, if he wants to push himself, and join her.
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