Awareness / Perception
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (2, 5, 6, 6, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 6 ) [Doubling Tens]
EmilyThere's a concert in the park tonight. One last summer event before the city settles in for autumn. Nothing big, but a temporary stage has been set up in the grass and a couple of local bands are set to play. Across the park, the sound of folksy art-rock rolls over the green hills. They can hear a dim echo of it in the zoo, and some of the animals decide to join in by uttering an occasional answering call into the air.
It's a relaxed affair, as concerts go. The mood is pleasant and friendly among the crowd, with a number of people passing around joints to share. Some of them lay sprawled out together on blankets, while others stand in groups, swaying and dancing in time to the music. Towards the back, a few people have broken out snacks and bottles of wine.
Some of the people come and go, as visitors wander through the park and stop to listen before continuing on their way. One such person happens to be a girl of about nineteen who's standing beneath the overhanging shade of a tree near the back of the audience. She's tall, this girl. Maybe 5'10-5'11. With wavy dirty-blond hair and a rounded face. Her eyes are shut as she listens to the music, and for a moment she puts her arms up against the tree and sways back and forth - letting herself become absorbed in the song. It's a pretty composition. A little sad and a little eerie (a woman haunted by the ghosts of her past.) The lead vocalist has a deep, rich voice with a powerful range, but here she uses it in an understated way.
This girl. The one under the tree. She isn't a face that Sera would recognize, but she feels so very familiar. Her resonance is fiery and powerful, cycling and regenerating. Like a phoenix. (Like Leah.) Here though, the sensation is stronger. And instead of the volatile blister of scorching heat there is instead a deep, lambent flame - burning like a bonfire.
Perhaps the similarity is an odd coincidence. Perhaps not.
SerafíneDusk still lingering against the edges of the sky and strangers sprawled all around the lawn. Someone dancing in gyrating circles down near the stage, more than one someone. Lazy circles to match both the music and the mood, like dervishes slowed to half or maybe even quarter-time, girls in long skirts with bare feet and hemp anklets strung with little bells, this guy with who bops up and down like a goat on acid, but only sometimes, you know. Dances like that no matter who's playing: it's more about the motion than the music.
--
"Hey." Not really interrupting, Sera kinda waits for the song in which the strange (?) is absorbed to work itself through, and end. Everything ends, right? Even music you can get lost in live in a park on a lazy summer night when the sky has gone half-golden with the banked and fading glow of a falling sun. The hey comes from a chick in a see-through white lace sundress layered over black lingerie. Yes, see: you are supposed to look at the way the attire frames, reveals, and conceals her body. Blond hair pulled back from sharp, striking features in a messy and haphazard twist.
Dark blue eyes reflecting the last shreds of the sun skim the stranger's profile. This little knot of consideration between her brows, neat and thoughtful and defined.
"Leah?"
Trusts her feelings more than her eyes or almost anything else, Sera.
How many fucking times has that gotten her into trouble.
EmilyIf it'd been anyone but Sera, maybe the girl wouldn't have turned. But it was Sera, and she did. There's an awareness to it. The way the girl's eyes settle on Sera's face and know her. She doesn't seem surprised. Maybe she felt Sera coming.
Up close, Sera can sense the working of the girl's Will. The finely crafted effort that went into reshaping her face and her hair. It's subtle - the hints of alteration. Nothing visible to the naked eye. Even to Sera's acute senses, it isn't easy to detect. Another mage probably would have missed it.
But Sera trusts her feelings more than her eyes. And in this case, those feelings turn out to be correct. The girl smiles. She doesn't seem high, but there is definitely something different about her (something besides her face and the burning strength of her resonance.) She looks... at home in her skin. There's a renewed sense of purpose and strength that tends to come after a successful Seeking.
She puts her finger to her lips. "It's Emily, here." She pauses, glances back at the stage. At the people gathered across the lawn. Suddenly, she smiles, reaching out to clasp Sera's hand - should she allow it. "Let's take a walk."
Emily[Edit: remove that first "The girl smiles." I meant to erase that.]
SerafíneStrange to clasp hands with someone mid-spell. This momentary dissonance that feels like being so fucking high the world around you has become entirely unmoored enough that you can be both chilling on a couch in a gross little bedsit in the west end and also soaring past the rings of Saturn or maybe some other fucking monstrous planet, who turns around and blows you a kiss. Why not?
Just this shard of it, but: of course she takes Leah/Emily's hand, watches her own fingers settle neatly between the other young woman's, and there is a dull flash of ache as she remembers: someone else whose hand she always holds. And then: another someone before him.
So: holding hands, music soaring behind them as they pick their way through picnickers with drowsing infants and kids to wrangle and other folks: getting high, getting to know each other, not giving a fuck about knowing each other but making out anyway, or maybe just watching the sky and waiting for the first stars to emerge.
Sera does not say much or really even anything until the outer perimeter of the audience is still visible sure but beyond earshot and the music has become background instead of foreground.
"You feel renewed, yeah? Settled into your skin," which is a weird thing to say when she isn't even wearing her own skin, not precisely, but, " - what's all this for, though. Practice - or," complex shadows cut right across her features. " - something else?"
EmilyLeah (Emily) glances back at the crowd, and for a moment there's something slightly wistful in her eyes. Fondness and nostalgia mixed with yearning. Like she knows that she will always be at least a little bit apart from them. But on evenings like these, it's easy to pretend that things are different. That all of them - Awakened, Asleep - still share the fundamental belonging of being human.
Sera wants to know why she changed her face. Why she calls herself Emily here.
"Annie thinks the Union is still looking for me. She doesn't like me going into the city, so I made Emily. It's easier, too. If I... run into anyone I used to know." She releases Sera's hand slowly, turning away from the crowd to look across the park as they walk. "We didn't plan to come back. Did she tell you that? Probably not. Our coven... they didn't give us a choice. Too dangerous, right? Keeping a potential Fallen in their midst."
Her voice cuts a little sharp and angry on that last line, and for a moment it looks as though a fire is being reflected in her eyes. Perhaps it's just a trick of the sunset.
"I guess I shouldn't blame them. Knowing who I used to be." She cants her eyes toward Sera with a searching gaze. "Do you ever regret helping me?"
Serafíne"Look at you."
This moment where her whole-heart is seized and wrenched and not-precisely-shattered but, oh, Sera knows plenty about how to destroy a muscle like that. How to stitch every whole closed, too: again and again and again. Her breath catches in her throat, and she squeezes Leah's hand so tight the girl might be forgiven for wondering whether she can bear the grip.
"How the fuck could I ever regret you? Get that idea out of your head. It doesn't belong there. Seriously, look at you."
EmilySera grabs Leah's hand again, and the force of her grip is powerful enough to leave a bruise, but Leah doesn't cringe - doesn't shake her off (and later there won't be a bruise, because she is stronger than she looks.) Instead she looks at Sera and inhales sharply. It could be sound of pain, but it isn't. It's gratitude, maybe. For seeing her. For having always seen her.
The truth is, it could have been a trick. One day Leah might become the thing that John Brogan wanted her to be. Perhaps she already was. If so, she could do a lot of damage. (If this is how powerful she is at almost-nineteen, how much stronger is she going to be at twenty five? Thirty?)
But Sera is powerful too. What kind of damage is she capable of? What are any of them capable of?
When Sera looks at Leah, she doesn't see the angel of death. She sees something beautiful. (Because she is. They both are.) The thought of it brings a bright glisten of tears to Leah's eyes. They don't quite manage to spill over, but the wetness is visible.
"Thank you," she whispers.
It's a long moment before to speaks again.
"I remember more, each time. About who I've been. All of these other lives. Some of them... I wish I didn't remember. This time I remembered how I Fell. I don't want to remember that, but I have to. I think it's important. I made a choice to become that. The Order of Reason took everything from me and I was so... angry. I still am. I mean, look at this place. They stole the whole world from us."
Now the tears do fall, as Leah stops still and looks out onto the city. Her voice drops when she says, "I'm so tired of hiding. But I can't be that person again. I won't."
EmilyEmily
Sera grabs Leah's hand again, and the force of her grip is powerful enough to leave a bruise, but Leah doesn't cringe - doesn't shake her off (and later there won't be a bruise, because she is stronger than she looks.) Instead she looks at Sera and inhales sharply. It could be sound of pain, but it isn't. It's gratitude, maybe. For seeing her. For having always seen her.
The truth is, it could have been a trick. One day Leah might become the thing that John Brogan wanted her to be. Perhaps she already was. If so, she could do a lot of damage. (If this is how powerful she is at almost-nineteen, how much stronger is she going to be at twenty five? Thirty?)
But Sera is powerful too. What kind of damage is she capable of? What are any of them capable of?
When Sera looks at Leah, she doesn't see the angel of death. She sees something beautiful. (Because she is. They both are.) The thought of it brings a bright glisten of tears to Leah's eyes. They don't quite manage to spill over, but the wetness is visible.
"Thank you," she whispers.
It's a long moment before to speaks again.
"I remember more, each time. About who I've been. All of these other lives. Some of them... I wish I didn't remember. This time I remembered how I Fell. I don't want to remember that, but I have to. I think it's important. I made a choice to become that. The Order of Reason took everything from me and I was so... angry. I still am. I mean, look at this place. They stole the whole world from us."
Now the tears do fall, as Leah stops still and looks out onto the city. Her voice drops when she says, "I'm so tired of hiding. But I can't be that person again. I won't."
[repost!]
SerafíneSomewhere down a path, in the gloaming. They say that Europeans did not know what to do with the hum of insects in the North American summer when they first arrived on the continent. The constant drone of love-mad grasshoppers, cicadas, crickets, katydids flush through the wide lawn, the close-tended trees. Strangers in the distance add a low note in the distance, no more than a quiet drone. The view of the city laid out before then, distance enough that it assumes a sort of surreal frame, as if it had been painted onto a backdrop and infused with light. How close you can be, and how infinitely far, from something right in front of you.
--
Quiet, right. Sera can do quiet. If Leah wants to walk that's what they do, but they stop again, the view of the city and tears in Leah's eyes and - oh, fuck.
Sera wraps the crying girl up in her arms. Doesn't tell her to stop crying or that it'll all be okay or any of the usual stuff that we are programmed to mutter to avoid the embarassment and vulnerability inherent in tears: especially, in another's tears. Just wraps her up and maybe makes some comforting noises, because somehow those noises seem to naturally occur in the human body. Leah - at the least, this version of Leah - has a good six inches of height on Sera. They fit together just fine, though.
At least, if Leah allows the contact.
--
They peel apart, maybe early, maybe eventually.
"They didn't steal the world from us." This Sera says, with quiet certainty bordering on conviction. "We're still here, you and me. Aren't we? And sure I get beaten half to death when I try to save the life of a dying friend, but I'm still here.
"And fuck. The world's bigger than them-and-us, you know? It's enormous, effortless, eternal, infinite. It's so easy to get lost in the idea that because we have a beginning and an ending - birth and death - that everything else does, too.
"That's not meant to be comforting, by the way. I don't think it is comforting. But their victories are meaningless if you stand back and look at them from the distance of the stars, you know? It's like the length of a heartbeat, or less, measured against the span of a human life.
"I'm sorry you have to hide, from them or anyone. But you have chances now, and choices, that most people don't get - the first time around, you know? Let alone: the second or the third."
EmilyShe doesn't make much noise when she cries. But for all that her face might be artificially crafted, the emotion displayed there is real. The impression - the way her brows tense and the way her chin shakes just slightly - is one of righteous anger as much as grief. She holds onto Sera with a tight grasp. It's the first time in a long time that she's held onto anyone with that kind of confidence, even with the way she has to bend into it to meet Sera's height.
Finally they break apart, and Leah wipes the wetness away from her cheeks with the back of a hand. "There's a part of us that's infinite too. But it doesn't make the things we do in this life less meaningful." It isn't said as a refute, really, so much as an observation (all things big and small.)
Still, she takes a breath, and it seems to calm her.
"It's what power does, I think. I used to watch the Order of Hermes and the Celestial Chorus wage wars in the name of their Reality. I wonder how different we'd be, if the Traditions had won instead of the Union. Would it be safe for ordinary people to gather like this in the park? Would they have that kind of freedom?" A beat and she looks at Sera. Smiles a little to show she's still present. "Don't worry, I'm not going to do anything stupid." She starts walking again, looking out over the horizon to watch the burnished sun paint patterns through the trees.
"There's a couple of Hermetics in town. Richard and Orrin. Have you met them?"
Serafíne"Mine wasn't really an argument for nihilism, you know? So much as it was, fundamentally, against the idea that war is a thing you can win. I mean, for territory, sure. To stop genocide, all goddamned day. To tell people how the world should be, that shit fails."
This quick, rather grim, strangely winsome little smile that crests the curve of her mouth, then dissipates as easily and quickly. "I'm all about the here and now.
"It's not just power, either. It's how willing you are to privilege your beliefs, your wants, your desires, your need for vengeance, or honor, or certitude, or glory, over those of the chick standing next to you, and the guy next to her, and so on and so on.
"Not really meaningful when someone is hunting you down because she wants to imprison you for who you are, how you were born into this stupid fucking world. A little more meaningful when you're standing in front of a caul, and walking - away, instead of - into.
"I know you won't do anything stupid." Another neat, rather quiet twist of her mouth. "I believe in you."
--
"And naw. I haven't met the Hermetics. They don't usually fraternize with my sort, you know?"
Emily"That's because they're assholes." It's a flippant comment, and for a moment it makes Leah seem more her age. More like the girl she probably would have been if she didn't have the weight of who-knows-how-much history woven into her soul. "Except for Henry. He gets a pass. And Elijah too, I guess."
But she'd mentioned Richard and Orrin for a reason.
"Richard's a Quaesitor. He's actually Henry's son, which... I still have a hard time believing. Orrin's a Flambeau. They're supposedly in Denver to investigate the deaths of some other Hermetics, but I think there's more going on than that. Annie isn't happy about them being here. Richard at least makes sense, but Orrin is a military commander. You don't send someone like that to investigate. You send them because you're expecting a fight. Or maybe you want to start one."
She glances at Sera, and for a moment she looks... worried. "You're right about war. No one ever wins. If you ever do see them, be careful. I don't think we should trust them."
Serafíne"I'm not particularly good at being careful, either."
This tone of wry-truth, a certain curl of her sharp little mouth. The first time in a long time during this conversation that she allows her dark gaze to cut away from the younger woman, track out to the city spread over the high plains.
"If they're really investigating those deaths, you'd think they'd wanna talk to me." The curl of her mouth - crisps, like a sheet of vellum caught-to-flame. A certain brittleness there, a certain crackle. "I helped destroy the woman who killed them. If they'd bothered to work with us, they might still be alive.
"Tell Annie I'll keep - her concerns in mind. Okay?"
Emily[Forces 2, coincidental, diff 5 -1 (practiced)]
Dice: 4 d10 TN4 (5, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
EmilyThere's a wry little smirk from Leah when Sera mentions that she's not good at being careful, but it fades at the mention of Sera's involvement in Victoria's death.
"Yeah. I don't know. I'll be glad when they leave."
She stops a moment, thoughtful, then shoots Sera a flashing look, her eyes glimmering with this slow-burning challenge. "Think you can beat me to that tree?" She cants her head toward a tall oak about 100 feet away. Before Sera can answer, Leah takes off running, her hair billowing behind her like golden flames. She isn't an athlete, but it doesn't really matter. She just wants to run. To feel the wind on her skin. So she does. And even though she has to be careful, she allows herself this small moment of freedom: kicking up the wind around her in a passionate swirl that grows stronger and stronger as she nears her destination. It whips over the grass in a spinning vortex, leaving behind a series of windswept spirals.
Maybe she gets there first, or maybe Sera does. Maybe Sera just laughs and lets her run. Either way, Leah spins around and falls back into the grass, laughing. In that moment, she is both childlike and ageless.
Probably, they go back to the concert after that. And there isn't any more mention of war or the Technocracy. Because there's music and pot and wine and people and there's only so much room in life for worrying about the unknown.
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