Holiday Bazaar and Vegan Turkey Fry

Serafíne

aLate November and the city and its stores already have Christmas decorations up, illuminated. Winter wonderland displays framed in windows after the dirty, melting, muddy admixture of slush-and-leaves that are the remnants of this week's 'blizzard' and last night's flurries, and Saturday afternoon in November there is a certain hour when the light goes slanting and anyone walking down the street is forced to remember that the earth is (always) turning her head away from the sun -

and the darkest days are yet to come.

The galleries and boutiques of Sante Fe are open, intermixed with bars and restaurants where you could buy a couple months' subscription to Pandora for the price of an artisinal cocktail. Wedged in between a high-end furniture shop and a highly-curated accessories shop that seems to specialize in Wedgewood china teacups dangling on satin ribbons from birch branches is an empty lot / green space turned into a pop-up public garden this summer. Whoever planted it put up chalkboards framing the space announcing what was in season, what people should search among the leaves for, pick.

The first hard freeze pretty-much ended the growing season. Killed the winding tomato vines and heady sprawls of squash and zucchini, the profligate (and pungent) bunches of herbs, the leggy sprawl of the pickling cucumbers.

--

Gardens are always a bit of an eyesore after the first frost.

--

Today though, that space has come to life again. Handmade signs promise a Holiday Bazaar and Vegan Turkey Fry, whatever that is. There's a firebreather performing out on the sidewalk. Couple of food trucks parked at the curb. Colorful tents in somewhat haphazard rows over the trampled, muddy ground. Maybe ten or fifteen vendors at the pop-up flea market / craft fair, but it's a small space and spills over into and encompasses the outdoor patio of a tea shop. And sure, it's cold, but there are heaters with dancing gas flames and faux-fur blankets tossed over every-other chair or so.

Somewhere around: resonance, resonance, resonance. Insistent, sometimes. Hard to ignore.

Pen

[Mm? Resonance?]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 4, 9) ( success x 1 )

Pen

Ms. Mercury is out for a stroll through Santa Fe. The city is new and unfamiliar. The buildings are unfamiliar and the streets. The hideyholes and the alleyways and the parking spaces and the dumpsters. The city is unfamiliar and new and a good Magician (Wizard [Mage]) makes a city into a familiar (Golem [Here's the alphabet]), knows just the way: the way is strolling, walking, learning, exploring. There is nothing aimless about Ms. Mercury-Mars but there is also nothing hurried now. She burns alone, and singular; she burns at a languid pace.

Here she is: a woman in her mid-to-late twenties late twenties-to-early thirties with a strong jaw, Morgan le Fay or Medea eyebrows, hair as red as an Ophelia painted by Millais, her coat of crushed black velvet sleek and buttoned twice with vintage buttons wrapped in vintage fabric sunburst dazzle of jagged patterns. Her boots are some dark ruddy brown color, she has a ring on every finger, and as she moves - there; whisk right by the fire breather. Sparks of that craft caught in her hair, limn it in some Hellish radiance - then give the thing back over to shadow and blood.

She wants tea; that's where she goes. And there is something, Some Thing, something that is part and parcel of this unfamiliar new city, some Resonant Thing Nearby, some will and other to consider. Where? Well. This is an exploring night. Lady Explorer's need tea.

Serafíne

Dan: Per + Awareness

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )

Serafíne

Sera: Per + Awareness

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 3, 5, 5, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 6 ) [Doubling Tens]

Serafíne

Ms. Mercury in her crushed-velvet-coat is not out of place in this muddy market and she strides past a pennanted-tent where a pot-bellied old guy with a Grizzly Adams Beard is selling LPs from milk-crates and playing an old Billie Holiday 45 on a turntable that seems to be brass, hand-cranked, magickal and next door a young man and a young woman are hand-knitting fanciful stocking-caps that spill down the spine with baubles and fuzzle-balls in a madcap, Seussian (as in, Dr.) array. There's someone selling crystals and a used-book tent and a hand-made, leather-bound book-tent and a blacksmith, an actual-factual blacksmith, and a guy who makes furniture out of duct tape.

And sometimes bustiers.

Next to the blacksmith, a habardasher. She makes custom top-hats as high as you like.

In short - here, temporarily - a space that is stranger than usual.

--

And past all that, including past the fried vegan-organic, locally-sourced "turkey" truck is the teashop.

Quiet little teashop, normally, and though it is brimming now, not that many people are drinking tea. Coffee yeah, and cider, the apple/cinnamon scent of it slicing through the air, and hot-wine and that they technically shouldn't be vending but since they don't have a license for it, but who gives a fuck, and hot chocolate in every particular array but: not that many teapots.

--

On the patio, there is a tall blond guy with a full beard and tattoos and no especially negative feelings about throwing a faux-fur blanket over his shoulders to ward off the cold, because he's farther from the heater than anyone else in his shifting circle of friends. He's chatting quietly with a girl who looks kinda like a rockabilly snow white, but check out the neighborhood, she's not the only one.

Chatting with that girl but he looks up - something, some tug, some awareness - when the lady explorer comes striding up the muddy little faux-avenue between the mismatched tents. Watches her, but then glances back inside where a Sera is emerging from the ladies' room and heading to the counter. There's a little line, not a big one, just enough to make one wait. To crowd two strangers together.

One of those strangers has eyes-on-the-other the moment the other opens the door. Keeps them there, curious, interested, aware, intensely so until: you know. Line. To buy things?

Then, quiet right? but musical, somehow.

"I don't think we've met. New in town?"

Pen

"We haven't and yes. Hello," the woman says.

The woman's resonance is all hints of subtle resonance woven together: something devoted to the verb of passion -- kiss as a verb; an ardent, devoted acolyte; ardent is intensity. Then there's that dash of daring, of élan, of readiness to gird the beast to foil the fell falcon to walk on the ledge to slide between the spikes the closing doors the falling rocks to do what has not been yet done to say the unpopular thing daring piratical and of course there's also resplendence. Resplendent; shining and glorious and radiant. Because that kind of daring, that kind of ardent devotion to daring; to something. Anything; the woman's resonance is all subtle hints, though, all diffuse - these differing impulses, flavors -

and Sera is striking. Pen feels the suggestive dance of the stranger's resonance (and another resonance which clings, which shivers in the shadow of) and meets it clear-eyed, keen-eyed, interested - her expression might as well be water; what lies seems unreserved.

"Do you come here often?"

Serafíne

Sera is striking, and she looks quite the way she feels. The sharp arrogance of her nose, the solid delicacy of her jaw-line, something entirely-forward about her, in this moment. The way she meets the eye. The way she: refuses not to stare. The way she holds her narrow shoulders back inside the shell of her leather jacket like her body is, or could be, a weapon. Or maybe like she could be hiding wings beneath the pinned-together shell.

Her ears bristle with spikes-and-studs and her hands with tattoos and there is a stack of bracelets, given, gleaned, found, made, stacked so high up her right wrist she has pushed the sleeves of her leather jacket right up to the elbow. Ink there, too, on the tender skin inside her forearm, the left one this time. A crow's skull, all black-and-shadow.

Does she come here often?

Strange little smirk that slides across her mouth, surfaces and subsides in two or three beats of her heart.

"Me? Naw. Here for the fair. We've got a table outside, my friends and me, if you wanna join, though."

These little denim shorts, despite the weather. Fishnets and combat boots to complete the ensemble. So, yeah: looks the way she feels.

--

It's her turn at the counter then, and she orders a pot of Darjeeling and she makes a face when they offer her green / white / oolong / black. So, clarification: a pot of black Darjeeling, thankyouverymuch.

Pen

Serafíne looks as if she might be hollow; as if she might be disparate, on her own, a loose thread unraveling - that strange little smirk is an underscore the something avian about the eye to eye. What kind of bird? Hmm. The stranger (flamboyant; flashy; all contained fire, wild hair and dramatic features which are attractive but not pretty) dresses like she feels, too, or like how she wants to feel: right now she says, "Thank you."

Then the Ecstatic is ordering a pot of Darjeeling and a pot of black Darjeeling. Penelope (patience, weaving and unweaving) steps up next and does not order a pot. She wants coffee. She wants coffee and it makes her momentarily curl her tongue against the roof of her mouth; she orders green tea - not a pot but a to-go cup.

When she has it, she looks for the strange fishnet tattoo enthralling resonant creature and her friends.

Serafíne

She finds them outside. The patio furnishings are mismatched not because the tea shop is a mismatch-y shop but because the fair has swelled the crowd and the capacity and the need-for-capacity and people brought their own shit, maybe, or the owner went scrounging so here, at a mismatched table with mismatched chairs Pen finds the mismatched people slung in an open, shifting sort of circle.

Pot of tea in the middle of course.

They aren't drinking from to-go cups or at least she isn't drinking from a to-go cup. There's a proper cup-and-saucer on the table in front of her. Two, in fact, for she has settled down not in her own space but in the tall blond bearded guy's lap. He leans forward and shifts the faux-fur around her right shoulder as she settles back against and this particular posture with this particular person is unusual for her, but -

Pen has no context for that but. Cannot even be aware of it.

- she needs this closeness. Physical, practical, immediate. Needs it the way aching lungs need air.

By the time Pen makes it to the table, Sera has a flask out. Whiskey and tea, tea and whiskey. "I'm Sera, this is Dan. That's Dee. That's Aimes - " and so on, until the end. When, "Want some?" Dark brows rising from their straight line to these querying arches. She means: want some whiskey for your tea? Wiggles the flask a little, all enticing.

Pen

Pen looks at each person as their name is spoken; they are seen. Her sight is keen; her eyes are lake-swords, still and untroubled but inquisitive. The green tea is held close to her mouth so she can inhale its vapors (Priestess [Highest]), let the scent of it dwell in the impulse of a smile before - social graciousness, plus inquisition! - "No thank you." The demurral is gracious. Whisky on its own or whisky in desserts but never whisky in tea, thank you very much. "Maybe a drop on its own later, once this is no longer green warmth and I want fire. So how is everyone? Sera, Dan, Dee, Aimes, etcetera." Graceful, long-fingered good-natured wave of her (Magician's [Sorceress's: let's turn them to pigs]) hand. New to a group, how to dive into a conversation.

Sera

Okay: later for the whiskey. The flask is returned to some inner pocket of her jacket before she takes up the teacup again.

All of this cross-talk as the stranger repeats the names and goes around the circle and asks how everyone is doing and so on. Some of those introduced are deep enough in their own conversations that they take not-much notice of her but even they glance over, right? Look. Take note, feel something warm and ardent and bright without understanding why or how her resonance affects them.

"I have to work tonight." The chick named Aimes declares, mouth twisting into a grumpy smirk. "Woo. Working Black Friday too, celebrate."

Sera's eyes are on the edge of the stranger's profile after that - greeting. Neat little mouth slightly parted, hovering by then over the edge of her tea-cup quite as primly as any finishing school miss.

"We were talking about Thanksgiving plans," Sera interjects quietly. Neat stitch of her gaze over Pen's profile. "Do you celebrate it?"

Pen

"I'm thankful for celebration," the red-haired woman replies, with enough gravity that she doesn't sound flippant, although she doesn't sound really grave either. Easy, perhaps. Her resonance is passionate, is glorious and daring; the color of her hair matches, though her skin is wintry pale and otherwise she is not warm in color scheme. But nobody's ever accused (the Flambeau) Pen of not being present. Presence. Or honest. Honest, too.

Well - perhaps someone has accused the Flambeau of dishonesty before. Greatly daring; dare even duels, affairs of honor, angels singing. There's a cross at her throat pressing in at the collar, hidden from view by her coat. She forgets it is there sometimes.

"And I really enjoy the food."

Sera

"Mmm." Sera murmurs, leaning back against Dan again, her (slightly cotton-y, hungover) head drifting against his narrow chest. Pen's comment about the food sparks a rolling conversation that moves through the other folks at the table about: well, the mysteries of cranberry sauce and the many-ways of preparing stuffing. Oyster, chestnut, cornbread and Stovetop all come up. A mention of the deep-fried local-organic vegan tofurkey on offer from one of the food trucks at the fair has several folks scoffing while others sing its praises and someone speculates over how far the tofurky people will go to defend their trademark.

Who the fuck came up with that name? Et cetera.

Sera lets it swirl until the group has shifted. This is a constantly moving group. Aimes leaves to get ready for her shift at the bar, Morgan has to meet his girlfriend and their kid on the corner. Frankie see her best friend lingering at the stocking-cap vendor and has to go consult on something.

"You know," and there is no privacy, particularly, when the creature ventures this remark but there is notably more privacy than there was earlier, "I think me and Sid might've crashed your going-away party. Brownstone in Brooklyn a couple of weeks ago.

"How's that for coincidence. What brings you to Denver?"

Elephant

River

It is twenty-nine degrees outside. There is a light snow. There's a gentle breeze and it's starting to look a lot like an actual winter and not the kind of winter that people from southern California are accustomed to.

If winter is going to happen, they're going to do this right.

River's actually an old pro at setting things on fire in the most mundane of senses. She was the one who was in charge of the camp fire as a kid and she spent good chunks of her formative years burning various and sundry things outside in what she later determined was just what one did when you got cold and were bored and you didn't have an actual stove to cook dinner on. It's just a thing.

There's a ring of stones and pinecone-and-"you're late on the rent" notice kindling and whatever the fuck else one needs to start a fire. Text messages were sent out (recreating the Salem witch trials with marshmallows, want to come hang out?) and bags were set aside.

River took a hit off her flask and put it back in her gigantic purse. Exhales. Watches her breath take to the air. Tosses a sacrificial marshmallow on the pire to appease the camp fire gods.

Grace

Grace found out via Samir. Hanging out in the outside when it's below freezing isn't at the top of her list of great things to do, really. It's a good thing she likes Sam.

So she shows up, dressed in two pairs of jeans, her grey zip-up turtleneck on under her coat. Maybe overkill for 29 degrees, but you never know.

"Oh, nice. Fire's already started," she says, and rushes over, pulling her hands out of her pocket and warms herself at the fire.

"How's things?"

Sam Lakhani

Sam has been here for a few minutes by the time Grace arrives. That tendency of his to hemorrhage out of other folks' awareness is a pain in the ass sometimes. If he's going to be hanging out in the park when there's snow and it's colder than Hell then yes. Yes he did bring a bong inside of a backpack onto public transit.

The things he does for River.

He hasn't busted it out of his bag yet but it's sitting on a picnic table bench and unless he has a fully assembled clarinet in that thing there aren't a lot of objects that could drape the canvas like that.

"I told her we should wait until you got here to get it going," he says. Just because he's taken another step towards ascension doesn't mean he's going to stop busting Grace's balls.

Serafíne

Yeah, sure, alright, okay, thanks winter you fucking asshole, it is twenty-nine degrees outside and snowflakes are falling or not so much falling as drifting and drifting is okay too but: cold right? November and we've still forgotten how-to-be-in-the-cold, the things it does to us, body and breath, skin and blood and bone.

She must've forgotten. Little black dress that pretty much covers her ass and not-much-more. Long (the suggestion of length, the illusion of height) legs bare except for ripped fishnets and black heels wrapped in sharp metal studs, leather jacket framed in studs, zips, a marching line of oversized silver safety pins down the center of the back holds the damn coat together and suggests the elegant symmetry of a bare spine. So: not made for warmth any more than anything else she's wearing.

She doesn't seem to notice the cold though, or maybe each minute without shivering is another big fuck you to the cold front shivering flurries down over Denver at the moment.

--

Didn't get a text about a fire. Has: about a bazillion texts she has received and not returned but for god's sake her phone is working again which means every time it buzzes she can slip it out of her pocket and glance down at the screen and feel: alive, connected, earthbound, and strangely free.

--

And she's walking on the arm of a tall guy with blond hair and a trimmed blond beard and she's wearing those heels and he still has several inches on her, but there they are, walking together like old, old friends, this animated discussion back-and-forth between them. Coming from the city, circling the lake like it's a shortcut they know rather than a place-to-stroll.

Serafíne

(Awareness)

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (2, 4, 6, 6, 6, 8, 8) ( success x 5 ) [Doubling Tens]

Serafíne

(Awareness -3)

Dice: 4 d10 TN5 (2, 5, 9, 9) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens]

Ihsan Ghali

Ihsan was sitting nearer to River than anywhere else, with a blanket spread out on the grass beneath them both. She was from Los Angeles-- Southern California. She had been experiencing heat waves and drought for most of the time that she'd been in this country, and she'd spent the majority of her life in Cairo before that.

Ihsan didn't like the flurries because they made her chilled. She'd traveled, she'd experienced cold before, of course. She would just probably never get used to it. So she was bundled up with wool socks under her calf-high black boots, in dark jeans and a black coat. She wore a hat on her head and her hair was out in curls (flat, curling ironed curls) beneath it. No scarf, at least. No gloves either. She was warming herself near the fire, waiting to be able to shed the hat and open the coat.

She was leaned forward, toward the flame, reading some document or another off the screen of her iPhone with an expression of content-but-mild-boredom on her face.

When Grace arrived, Ihsan looked up and smiled fleetingly for a greeting to her. "Hey there, Grace. How are you? Any more murders for me to investigate yet?"

Because who the hell was eavesdropping on them out here, after all?

Kiara

[Spidey senses roll.]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 4, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )

Grace

Grace squints at Ihsan. "No. I heard, finally, that your 'investigation' turned out well in the end, though. Good for you." There's a bit of exasperation in her tone, but she really means that last sentence. It turned out all right, at least.

"Oh, Sam, there you are," she says to him, gives a little wave. Truth be told, she didn't notice his presence until he spoke. Samir is like that, the fucking ghost... She moves over toward him, sitting on the opposite side of the obvious bong. At least there will come some good out of communing with nature or whatever the hell it is they're doing.

Grace can commune with some nature in the form of weed...

Kiara

So, here's the thing.

Kiara Woolfe, daughter of nature and walking manifestation of Spring (or so her presence feels like, so much pulsing, writhing life) actually rather enjoyed the coming of the cooler months. Less for the stagnancy of them, the way the world felt as if it slowed, preparing to enter a chrysalis before re-emerging on the other side of the dripping frost but for the progression of them. It meant change was (should always have been) coming. It meant that despite whatever happenings in the greater scheme - nature was not fooled, or halted.

She would (had to) find a way to survive.

Pattern and purpose to the cycle. An evening like this, after everything she's recently endured, felt cleansing. The air was crisp and flakes of snow are drifting in the air like a promise - landing only to melt in the Verbena's wild dark hair, the waves of which are loose and curling around her shoulders; over the (faux) fur lining of her coat. Hands folded into pockets, dark jeans and boots and that mouth, as ever, painted a brilliant, stark red.

She must have been sent an invitation - or perhaps River simply conjured her with the fire and mention of her ilk via text. Kiara Woolfe, a lean apparition leaning her weight against a tree with her eyes on the fire.

"If you're going to be faithful to the trials, that fire needs to be twice as large." Her voice curls out after a beat. "I could speak in tongues, though." A waspish tease. "To get things rolling."

River

[I totally notice people and resonances. Per+aware]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

River

River has planted herself near Ihsan and, on occasion, gets up to poke the fire and check to make sure said sacrificial marshmallow knows it is in a place of honor- you must burn so that others after you may be delicious. Thus far, she's been pretty happy to just be around people, hair shoved under a hat and her coat isn't pretty but god damn it, it looks like the kind of thing that you would wear if you're going to go out and wander aimlessly through the wilderness.

Laughs when Sam pokes at Grace. Tries to laugh a little less at the bits of exasperation in her tone when Ihsan mentions wanting another murder investigation to paw through.

Then? Kiara is there- someone River hasn't seen in awhile and she waves- fingers uncovered but the rest of her hands seem pretty well shielded from the weather in what can only be described as mittens having an identity crisis.

"I tried to come up with something witty to say to that, but I've drawn a blank," she offers, laughs anyway, "nothing makes marshmallows tastier than the gross misappropriation of justice?"

And, with that, she offers Kiara a coat hanger.

Sam Lakhani

It's too cold for him to even think about sitting down. He may or may not have thermals on underneath his street clothes. He has swapped out the leather jacket for a peacoat and has a ski cap tugged over his hair. His fingerless gloves have a mitten-type option in the form of flaps. It's difficult to strike a lighter when you can't feel your fingers but it's even harder with wool covering your thumb.

"You should," he says to Kiara regarding using glossolalia. "Speaking in tongues is metal."

Ihsan Ghali

"Thank you," Ihsan answered Grace's congratulations in working with River and Mike to bring down the Nephandus that had been melding people into two and triggering a murdering spree from someone entirely different, in a surprise twist ending. She smiled and seemed pretty genuinely pleased with herself, then skewered a marshmallow and put it outside the reach of the fire to toast slowly.

Where this bundle of Mages sat must have felt like a goddamn magnet to other magical forces out there. That many rifts in the hard laws of "reality" would make some waves for sure. It was astounding that they hadn't brought trouble down upon their heads already (knock on wood).

Ihsan pulled her hat from her head and smoothed her hair with her palms, then unzipped her coat some to show the top of a charcoal colored shirt. The fire was warming her and the boots and wool socks were starting to feel pleasantly toasty.

Like the marshmallow.

River

"I thought I was speaking in tongues once, but then it turns out I apparently knew Sanskrit at one point," she said with a shrug, as though this is a completely... no, she knows this is not a normal thing for people but she passes it off like oh, yeah, sometimes you just remember crap from a past life and have no idea why you know how to do something. Just roll with it, NBD. Sigh. Chakravanti problems.

Grace

"I thought yelling while you're simultaneously trying to clear your throat was metal. The things I learn..."

Yes, this many Mages might be a goddamn magnet. If so, let them come. There must be a few more royally stupid things out there who'd like to shove shadows down her throat or something. They could have an actual burning. Fun for the whole family.

Well, okay. Maybe not fun.

She laughs at River, thinking that's a joke she just made. Who doesn't know jack shit about past lives? This Elite.

"Hey, Kiara."

Kiara

The Verbena is still standing off a ways when River holds out that coat hanger, her lip curled up at the edge in a smile that verged on a few things but her eyes: they seemed wholly honed in on her. Watching River with a sudden, total, focus as if by staring long enough she'd be able to tease loose a beat on the other female's mental state.

This is the first time Kiara Woolfe has seen her since news came of Farrah's demise.

It's there, somewhere, in that look and the slow, stretching beat of silence - on the tip of her tongue, to say something of it. A heavy awareness lingers as the brunette eventually kicks off her leaning point and moves into the gathering proper. Ihsan receives a lingering tick of Kiara's eyes as she makes progress and comes close enough to receive the coat hanger.

"Thanks." She accepts it with, and studies River's face again, the firelight drawing gold patterns over the Verbena's neck. The warmth melting snowflakes in her hair. Then there's Samir - and there's Grace and the latter gets a quick, bright smile, but the former -

The regard lingers there.

"I'll keep it mind for a party trick later." She looks at Samir for another moment, then drops down to her haunches and her eyes return to Ihsan. "I don't believe we've had the pleasure yet."

Kiara

[Ahem. "keep it in mind," tyvm typo.]

Sam Lakhani

Just about any other person looking at him the way Kiara looks at him would normally have him wondering what the hell she was staring at. But Kiara is Verbena and he knows what she's staring at besides. His resonance is noticeable now. He is more of a presence than he was the last time they saw each other.

Granted the fact that she is Verbena means she could be staring at a pissed-off spirit hovering behind him or a blight on his aura or something and he wouldn't know until she said something but Sam has a pretty good idea what has her attention.

He throws up a set of rock horns with the hand not holding onto the backpack and drops into a crouch by the Chakravanti as Ihsan and Kiara get themselves acquainted. Time to light this sucker.

Ihsan Ghali

"No," said the North African woman to Kiara. She'd watched the woman as people answered to speaking in tongues-- how it was metal and could be confused for Sanskrit. Ihsan was busy regarding the new dark-haired woman with the bright red lips. Watching her like a lion-- relaxed and assured but watchful none the less.

"I am Ihsan." She smiled and lifted her hand to show her palm in greeting. Hey, that kind of a wave said. Her accent was dense and interesting, different to an ear that's grown accustomed to the Western United States especially. Still, she spoke clearly and had a strong grasp of the English language. She wasn't that difficult to understand.

The marshmallow was brought back and tested with a squeeze of her fingers. It was a little underdone, but apparently that was how she liked them, for she plucked it with her fingers and popped it whole into her mouth. She then pulled her hat back on and zipped her coat back up and rose to her feet.

"I'm going back to make a run to the store for hot dogs and buns. Anyone wanna come with me?"

And whoever did or did not want to come with, so it would be. Ihsan was set on getting hot dogs and returning later with brats instead ("yes, hot dogs, right?").

[Sorry, but I need to roll out early. Bedtime comes quick when your alarm is set for 4:30am]

Grace

Oh, nice, Sam. Abandon Grace over there. Whatever. She looks over at Sam and River and gives him a little smirk.

Well, she knows how it is.

She turns her hands back and forth to the side of the fire, trying to warm the cold side (which is, of course, the side not nearest the fire at that second).

"Hot dogs too? Awesome," she says to Ihsan, but doesn't move to get up. Not going with.

River

She has good days, and she has bad days. There isn't much of a baseline for Kiara to work off of but today? Today seems like a good day. She seems alert and engaged and content to be aware of people. She hasn't punched anyone at work (in fact, she still has a job. The other dancers at the Diamond Cabaret are convinced she must be sleeping with the hiring manager, but realistically River came up in a couple of very positive Yelp reviews. She's a classy lady; classy ladies change the atmosphere enough that you attract clientel who spend more.)

River concludes that Samir is close enough to lean on for a minute, and so she does- it's a momentary breach of space until she realizes oh fuck, Samir is lighting stuff and she stops attempting to assert her manifest destiny on his space.

There is, however, something that stuck on her senses. Brows knit for a second as she remembers that there's a presence that she can't actually place. Though, in the way, she does happen to place its source and finds-

"I'm gonna yell at people," she warns. And then, does raise her voice enough that it carries-

"Dan! Tenemos malvaviscos! Come say hi!"

Sam Lakhani

Living in a trailer by himself in the middle of goddamn nowhere must be doing him some good. A few months ago River would not have leaned on Sam. A slew of variables make today a different day than one plucked random from several months back. He doesn't seem like an individual who would react strong to unprovoked physical contact.

Ihsan takes off to go buy hot dogs and Sam doesn't offer to go with her but he does hand her a twenty out of his billfold before she leaves. Then River is leaning on him and he goes still a moment with the novelty of it. But then she pulls away again and he goes back to packing the bowl.

I'm gonna yell at people.

"Uh oh," he says before he plants the bong in the dirt and covers his ears with his gloves.

Kiara

I am Ihsan.

That ignites a flicker of recognition. Apparently, the name meant something to the brunette and she returns the greeting with little nod. An affirmative sort of gesture. Kiara's eyes follow the other woman when she rises to her feet and makes her declaration of a store run. The coat hanger is still being held between Kiara's fingertips, her nails are painted the same shade of red as her lips.

The firelight reflects in the varnish as she twists the wire hanger around in her grasp.

It's a habit, perhaps, watching other people. It's certainly one that the brunette seems to be making an attempt at, the way her dark eyes follow Ihsan and then return to Samir long enough to catch the gesture he makes, long enough to witness the way he positions himself by River.

The way she leans into his space.

The Verbena's gaze drops away, then. This brief constriction of her brows and she drives the edge of the hanger into the hardening earth below, wedging it there as she rises to her feet. Drawing the hood of her coat up so her features all but vanish beneath the furred lining. "I'm going to make a quick circuit for more kindling. There's bound to be some leaves around here.

I'll be right back."

Hard to tell what the pagan's expression is in the moment before she starts moving again, leaning over periodically to kick up leaves being buried by drifts of snow. Shaking loose the less saturated ones.

Sam Lakhani

[challenge accepted]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 4, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens]

Kiara

[I have a mighty 3 dice now. What? I'm inscrutable.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 7, 7) ( success x 2 )

Serafíne

Of course she's caught by the wild tangle of resonance surrounding the slow-growing (probably illegal but hey: world of darkness) campfire down by the lake and of course she stops, hooked (fish hook/open eye) right? and sometimes it makes her want to breathe: in and in and in and in like she could inhale the world, feel it bubbling in her lungs. Tonight, instead, she feels skewered like those marshmallows on that coathanger and that hook is an odd little interregnum in their coming-from-someplace and going-to-someplace, an arrest, if you will, an institial moment that feels quite as between-things (places, deeds, names, definitions) as she does.

It's a long-ass walk cutting through the park and the sun has set and the sky has that pillowed, shifting, dead-orange tinge from all the ugly lights reflecting off the close-cropped clouds, the fitful swirls of snow and in the midst of that walk is an exchange between them, all statement and query. Her statement; his query evidence in the way he pauses and glances down at her, face on to her profile, sharp against the darkness. Maybe it is that turn of his head that catches River's attention. The beard and hint of tattoos on his ungloved hands. Some lumpen shadow at his back that will resolve itself into a guitar case when he gets closer.

Which he will soon.

Because: River warns that she is gonna yell at people and then she yells at people and Dan lifts a hand by way of greeting (open palm, mildly ironic twist of his mouth) because what else can he do? Drops his mouth to her ear and bumps his forehead against her temple as he does so: so familiar, so close, so careful with her right now.

--

Takes them longer than you might think when they leave the path. Four inches of melting slush on muddy ground that has not yet been settled into a solid winter freeze and, you know, heels and bare legs do not mix very well but whatever. She's solid on those long legs. Knows how to walk on almost any surface in those heels, but here and there, he gives her a hand.

"Hey folks," Dan, when he gets there. Just a glance and a flash of his palm, as his attention returns to the girl-who-yelled, his mouth curves wider. "River." And his attention hangs there for a lingering beat. "I don't think you've met Sera, have you?"

Grace

"Hey, Dan," Grace says, through the fire's heat. He's a wavy-lined Dan to her. "Hey, Sera."

She smiles with her eyes at the newcomers to the circle of fire, but then returns her attention to the flames.

"You going to play for us?" she asks the fire. Obviously it's more for Dan than anyone, but who knows. Maybe she really does mean to ask the fire.

Sam Lakhani

Last time Sam saw Sera and Dan he was in Quiet. Which means the last time he actually remembers seeing them was at a house party. Which means he was stoned when he showed up and not in much better shape when he left around three o'clock in the morning.

Something in Kiara's gaze has him checking his own expression. He lowers his hands after River has yelled about marshmallows to the Cultist and her consor and lifts one to wave but it's an awkward sort of wave. A not-knowing-how-to-act-in-this-situation wave.

The bong is packed and ready to go. He is not the first one to light it. It sits like an offering beside the fire and then Sam stands from his crouch and takes a few steps back from the circle to light a cigarette.

River

"I have not," she carries things like she is used to carrying things because, well, this is just another social situation and River is a social creature. Sees a man with a guitar and his friend who is a spindly but striking creature.

She offers them a coat hanger, like this was a worthwhile offering.

"I told everybody that we were reenacting the Salem with trials with marshmallows, but I don't actually know how to hang a marshmallow so, uh, morbid joke completely lost."

Kiara

She does, in fact, return after a while with a handful of leaves cupped in her hands (trust the earth witch to deliver on such a promise) and carries them dutifully to the small fire; dropping them in a drift of crumbling pieces into the flames where they are greedily consumed and send up the vague, earthy aroma of foliage as it crackles and curls in on itself.

She's brushing her hands off when Dan and Sera make their approach and the Verbana's dark eyes, dramatized more-so by the liner she's applied to them turn to regard both, her hood pushed back far enough now that strands of dark hair are visible where they slither and curl at her neck, the thick waves of it half tamed by her coat.

"Good to see you, Dan. Sera." The latter's name offered with this quiet, delicate touch of meaning. The Verbena's supple mouth pulled into a little half-curl. She tosses the last handful of leaves toward the fire and and nudges at a stray, escaping one with a boot. Urging toward its demise.

A flicker of some darker, answering humor dawns in the Verbena's eyes as she watches the flames. "Burning them alive has always been a crowd favorite." There's this tiny shadow that falls over Kiara's face as she turns it into the treeline, as if searching for the source of a noise.

"Or so I've heard."

Serafíne

"Hey Grace," Dan-to-Grace, through the flames. This quirk, like a smile but checked a bit, framed by the beard. "We could, if you wanted. Couple songs, maybe. We've got a gig though, so we can't stay too long. Sort of a welcome-back thing for Sera, so it'd be pretty shitty if we didn't show. Any requests?"

--

Dan didn't see Sam when Sam was in Quiet. He was waiting in the van, engine off but still ticking in the heat of the day. Watched her leave and come back and knew something was hanging over her when she climbed back in the passenger door. Didn't know how bad it was until she collapsed. Took him forever to scrub the blood out of the upholstery, but he managed it.

Dan gives Sam the self-same quirk-of-a-smile-thing that Grace received and there's nothing awkward about it. Something: prompting, quiet, solicitous in the way he handles Sera in the moment though, cutting a lashed glance down at her profile.

"River this is Sera. Sera, River. So, now you've met."

Sera takes in this: bright, crisp inhale then. "Hey." And it is all very, strangely self-contained, though River has no real context for this, but maybe she's simply: stoned, already, somehow. When Kiara returns with her promised leaves, something a little more animate: warm, less constrained gets woven into her name, "Kiara."

"What about you, River. Any requests?"

That's Dan, he seems to think music is necessary right now and he's letting go of Sera long enough to lift the guitar case over his head and shoulders.

Sam Lakhani

As he traipses further from the fire he puts his back to it and the people around it. He meets Grace's gaze quick and continues his traipsing. They're all sitting around a fire that is giving off a good amount of heat and no small amount of smoke but he wants to keep his carcinogens to himself. What a guy.

He ends up over by Grace again anyway. She's the furthest away from the fire and she's sitting down and he's taller than her when she's standing up.

"You see that thing on Jitbit," he asks, "about the guy who would write cron-jobs for anything that took him more than ninety seconds?"

Grace

"Uhhh. No? Sorry. I'm terrible at music-y things," she says. "Something you like."

Her favorite 'song' at the moment is a guy screaming at people to install Gentoo over a throbbing beat, and there's no guitars in it. And if there were, you couldn't play it without a computer.

Samir saves her by talking nerdy at her. "Nope. Sounds fun though."

River

"Ukelele anthem!" because something with four chords was totally worth Dan's prowess as a musician. She has managed to piece together though that the bearded man is to music what she is to dancing.

River has made her way over to the communal bong, started on with the necessary prep work because she has no problems being the first person to take a hit for the evening.

"I have full intention of getting ripped and asking people to dance, so- does that inform your decision?"

Sam Lakhani

"You need to get a coffee maker with an SSHD. Then you could figure out how long it takes you to walk from the library to the kitchen and, like, have it start brewing and then wait before pouring it into a cup. The guy called it fuckingcoffee.sh or something equally poetic."

It's way colder over here than it is by the fire what the fuck Grace. He finds it difficult to bitch about the cold after the other night though so he digs his smartphone out of his jeans pocket and starts tapping buttons.

"Hang on, I'll send it to you."

Kiara

She moves a little closer to the Cultist, Kiara, her hands finding her coat pockets.

It's a dark navy form fitted thing that hugs in around her narrow waist with a zip and a hood that's lined with a mottled fur trim along the edges and sleeve-ends. The lining was synthetic but it cast the brunette with that twinge of something a little wilder none the less - something she seemed to be manifesting tonight. A certain aloofness in the way she held herself away from the others.

Standing rather than sitting as if her presence were as limited as the two en route to a gig.

She's watching the fire again, the pagan and there's something to that, the way the flames licking and curling into the air, the smoke and the tiny snaps and pops of burning debris, contain and hold her focus. They spoke enough of the Spirit Mages to allow for some assumptions to be made regarding the distraction of the Verbena. Perhaps she was meditating on the way the fire feels to her or senses some fluctuation in the Park itself.

It's the stillness, though. That makes it singular. Her eyes don't leave the fire to comment wryly: "As long as it's not Kumbaya."

Serafíne

Empathy + Perception - aloofness? Empathy Spec: Seeing Past the Mask.

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8) ( success x 6 ) [Doubling Tens]

Serafíne

"Couldn't even begin to compete with Amanda Palmer." Dan tosses back to River with another supple, subtle expression rising to the surface and sinking back beneath. "Plus I misplaced my goddamned ukelele somewhere between Raleigh and Denver - "

" - you left it in fucking Macon," Sera interrupts and Dan isn't expecting that and he cuts a sort of searching glance back down at her face and she's giving him a mildly pointed smirk that subsides as quickly as it arose in the first place, dark eyes cutting away from him. Lingering on Kiara as the Verbena circles the fire and starts watching the flames: that singular stillness.

"Apparently I left it in Macon, which isn't between Raleigh and Denver at all. Point is: never replaced. Closest I have is a mandolin and that's back at the house. How about a country song, since we've got a bonfire. Ever heard of Jason Isbell?"

Grace

Grace pulls out her own phone, and now -- true to stereotype -- the two Mercurial Elites of the party are staring into their phones in the great outdoors, communicating to each other with them while the rest get all sociable.

And it's about a shell script named fuckingcoffee.sh.

It is fucking hilarious though, and has Grace laughing at her phone. "Ohh, man. Kumar-asshole.sh. Lol," she says. And yes, she actually says the word lol as if it were one. In-jokes are a thing over here.

"He had a cron job for hangover excuses. I think I want to try that. Not that I need to call in at work, hah."

Sam Lakhani

By the time Grace receives the link Sam has moved onto other things. On his phone. They are living the dream over there.

"Yeah but still. You see the words 'vampire' or 'Washington Park' or 'police' on Ginger, you can just have that bad boy fire off and not have to deal with it."

He's joking. Hangovers aren't an excuse when you're BFF with a Verbena.

Kiara

There's clearly something on Kiara's mind. A certain ... it feels like the lingering aftermath of something. An emotional bruising she's nursing. Some unspoken trauma. There's almost an edge of something sharp and dismissive in the things she says tonight. The humor is there as always but it's flavored with a sort of punctuation.

She looks as if she's deliberating on whether or not to stay. And as if looking into the campfire is soothing to her, for whatever the reason. Unsettled, edgy. The impression that Sera is getting from Kiara Woolfe right now is that whatever is on her mind, distracting her, provoking a sharper tongue - it's not anything she wants to discuss.

At least, not here. Not with the gathered.

River

She's holding her breath while he's talking, nods. Pays attention because, no, one can't compete with Amanda Fucking Palmer. No, she has not heard of Jason Isbell and eventually she exhales. It's a long, slow breath like meditation because why the fuck shouldn't getting stoned be like meditation?

"We lived outside of Macon for two months during peach season," River clarifies, "you would think that I would have picked up something about country music in Georgia but it was all Willie Nelson."

Which is weirdly appropriate.

"So, you guys are in the same band?"

Grace

Grace snorts. "Yeah, that's what I need. A 'Handle Emergency' cron job. Just fire it off, and it will do everything that takes more than ninety seconds."

Which, you know, includes taking care of whatever the latest thing to happen in Washington Park is.

"I have never heard of Jason Isbell," she says, into her phone. If anyone were thinking she wasn't paying any attention...

Serafíne

"Willie Nelson is kind of a badass," Dan tosses back to River as she is getting high. "He did this cover of Pancho and Left that is one of the most perfect things on the planet. If that's what you took away from two months in Georgia outside of Macon, you could've done alot worse."

--

There's work to be done. Like, you know: tuning. The overtones of fingers-on-strings, that strange, patterned language, the internal tones as he listens to the acoustic he was carrying-through-the-park and it should've been an electric but: maybe magick? There's a fire and no outlets and Sera doesn't even really quite understand that she knows Forces magick and she has been capable of it for two fucking years.

"Afterparty at my place," this to Kiara. Supple, subtle thing, the invitation a coil of smoke from the strangely-reserved creature. (Maybe: to River she will always be like this: first.) " - when the bar closes. Two, two-thirty? You should stop by."

--

"Yeah, we're in the same band." Dan, to River. "Don't usually do country but he's a killer songwriter and we always have a few off-the-wall covers up our sleeves." Glances sidelong at Sera. "Elephant, then Super 8?"

"Fuck, Dan, that's like tearing someone's heart out, shredding it, then smoking a bowl of the remnants, getting so stoned you wander into traffic and figure out how to make the stars shut down."

He favors her with a quick, quiet smirk. Likes that spark of animation in her eyes and voice.

"Used to be with this band called the Drive-By Truckers," Dan-the-hipster tells Grace. "It's more alt-country than country. He doesn't sing about how sexy girls are when they hang out in trucks or how fun it is to hang out in trucks and get drunk in corn fields so he's probably not gonna get on commercial country radio."

Serafíne

(Hey I can has dice. Dan - guitarishness?)

Dice: 8 d10 TN5 (1, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens]

Serafíne

(This is for mah next post, and oh Dan. :( Sera: singing?)

Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 5 ) [Doubling Tens]

Sam Lakhani

"You do. You need this so hard."

Break from reality over. Sam shoves the phone back into his pocket and wanders back over to the fire. That's where he left the bong and his backpack anyway. When he comes to stand beside River it's almost as if by coincidence. It's easy to forget he exists when he isn't talking.

"Hit me," he says and holds his hand out for the bong.

Kiara

It's been lightly snowing tonight, as if the weather hadn't quite settled on what it desired but the drifts of it come down, every so often. Can't penetrate far where the fire is of course, melt before they're close to that emanating source of heat but they find placement in hair, on sleeves. Kiss the edge of cheeks and it's after one of these finds Kiara's that her fingers emerge from her pockets and she sweeps a hand up.

Suddenly alert to the surroundings, tipping her chin up to stare up at the dark skies, at the clusters of trees. Touching her face as if she'd forgotten, momentarily, where the source was of the sudden dampness on her face.

She brushes it aside and turns her face, just slightly, at Grace and Samir's conversation. Her attention captured by the mention of vampires, by Ginger and Washington Park and handling situations. The Verbena's eyes drop away and she bends down to find a leaf, lashed to the side of her boot, pasted there by the snow. Squats there and peels it off, carefully uncurling the edges.

"They're amazing. You should hear them play a gig sometime." This, almost absently to River at her question as the Verbena twists the leaf around, sets it open on her palm and curls her fingers around it. Finds the other woman's gaze through the flames. Holds there a beat.

Pulls up, opens her fingers and crumbles up the leaf, smears it over the flames. Glances at Serafine as she offers an after-party at Corona Street. "Yeah." Those red lips quirk, give over to one of her smiles, the pagan. Flash of teeth. Curl at the corner that makes it that side of crooked.

"I'd like that." She doesn't offer more, say they should talk. Just - studies Serafine's face for a moment as if committing it to memory and then returns her eyes to the campfire.

Grace

Grace follows Sam, her face still stuck in her phone though. Light from the phone paints her face with blue, battling it out with the fire.

Well, maybe she won't be their chaperone or anything. Grace just wants a hit.

"I don't even know a thing about commercial country radio. Girls hanging out in trucks?" she shrugs. Whatever, to that.

River

"I'm not a pretty crier," she tells Dan and his cultist-friend, "Sam and Grace can attest."

And it's true. though she isn't sure if Grace has seen her cry from underneath the mountain of blankets beyond the little giggling whimpter of a happy ending amidst the zombie apocalypse. River is pretty committed to her makeup staying on tonight, though, because it's cold and her face can feel it and somehow being freezing bakes on your foundation.

She's standing, has the bong in hand and hands it off to him like this is some sacred rite- like this was the passing of the Olympic torch instead of, you know, just hanging a guy a bong and calling it good.

"And hanging out of trucks and getting drunk in corn fields is fun if you can find a cornfield... does colorado have corn fields?"

Bonus points if it's not your corn field.

Serafíne

Sera isn't wrong about that pairing of songs and Dan needs space to move to play and she steps away from him, careful in her ridiculous goddamned heels but god she can move in them, even on the spongy, half-frozen ground.

The cold, the goddamned snow mean that Dan's bare fingers are stiff as they skim over the strings but he pulls the first evocative chords out of the instrument and there is something quite remarkably intimate about the way they balance each other; about the way they watch each other, rhythmic, familiar. This point where she takes in a breath like she's about to join him, but no, and he just repeats those opening bars, eyes on her face, the dance of reflected light in her eyes.

Elephant starts off all-quiet, reflective, nostalgic, but you get pretty early that the song's as close to a requiem as you can get for someone still alive. Unsentimental, ("If I'd fucked her before she got sick / I'd never heard the end of it") clear-eyed - goddamned sad. Sera sings it alternately watching Dan's hangs and staring into the fire and when her voice is supposed to soar, goddamned, it soars -

We'd burn these joints in effigy,
cry about what we used to be,
and try to ignore the elephant somehow.

I buried her a thousand times,
giving up my place in line,
but I don't give a damn about that now.

--

River is committed to keeping her make-up intact tonight but by the end of that there are tears in Sera's eyes and on her cheeks, and both her mascara and her eyeliner are waterproof but there's the eyeshadow too, which isn't. Maybe it just adds to her rock-star vibe and there's no time to dwell on the chord that strikes up in her or how deeply and feelingly she sings or whatever is happening in her or anyone else because: Super 8's a honky-tonk barn-burner and yes, River, you can dance to it. You could probably take off all your clothes to it, and there's not enough time to catch your breath between them:

Having such a sweet night
Audience is just right
Drinking like a pirate do
Don’t want to sleep yet
Buddy it’s a good bet
I’ll raise more hell than you -

And the song keeps going. There's paramedics, pedialyte, and maybe a defibrillator. Haven't we all had nights like that?

So, yeah. That's the impromptu concert. When it's wrapping up, Sera-and-Dan aren't hanging around for hits from the bong, they're packing up. Have somewhere to be: and soon.

Serafíne

(The songs:

Elephant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dg1oYRo9yVk

Super 8: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Fr2Gv3HyqA )

River

[I'm totally good. Manip+sub]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )

River

She's a good audience member, though halfway through the first song she determines that she's going to need a second hit. There's silence, because she knows it isn't polite to applaud but eventually she does because it was really fucking good and she can appreciate a good performance regardless of the responses that it provokes out of her.

"Go have fun!" is what she says out of haze, eyes back to the fire for a moment.

Kiara

[Per + Empathy on River: is she?]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 6) ( success x 1 )

Kiara

Music has that way about it, of course. Good music can lift you. Inspire you. Tear you to pieces with nothing more impressive than the slow build of a guitar, a note sculpted and held. The Verbena's been witness to Serafine and Dan performing before - she knows they're that good.

She'd said about as much to River, only moments before.

Music has that way and at some point during the first song the Verbena's dark eyes place River's face again and she watches it; watches the way the firelight plays over it. Watches her the way she had when she first turned up, leaning against that tree in the shadows as if she were an interloper rather than one of the invited.

Whatever Kiara Woolfe does or doesn't see it takes until the end of the song for her to look down, to tip her chin down and draw her hood back up and bury her hands deep into her pockets. She's not inscrutable, the healer. Not accustomed to trying to be, to concealing whatever thoughts or feelings skim across her face.

She's only beginning to understand the ways she can protect her own mind from infiltration.

So maybe there's that glimpse before she draws it up, after she drags her eyes from River's face, where that's clear. What the music does to her. How it presses down on that bruise she's wearing, however deep it runs, however she's attempting to disguise it. A twist across her mouth, a haunted quality to fine dark eyes.

She stands there, hood drawn while the second number happens. That stillness settling back in. She doesn't applaud at the end of it but she does draw her hands out of her pockets, does move to press a hand against the Cultist's shoulder as she makes some bid for departure might not even understand how to articulate.

"You sounded great." She affirms and there's this brief glance back at the gathered. "I've gotta go guys. I'll catch you later."

Serafíne

Per + Empathy, River.

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (2, 3, 3, 3, 5, 6, 10) ( success x 4 ) [Doubling Tens]

River

"See ya," she says. Smiles and gives a wave and she seems fine. She seems fine and of course she is fine, because River has never given any indication that she is not anything other than fine, even when she has to turn off large portions of her brain to keep up the ruse. She is committed, you see. She is committed to any number of things, but right now she is committed to the idea that she is not going to be emotionally wrought over the fact that there was a song that moved her in such a fashion that she's waxing close to nostalgic.

She wears it well, that denial. She wears it like it's a shield and she carries a sword and in some other life she was some brave gladiator. still is.

she'll process later.

"Graaaaace," she says, offers her a hand, "do you know how to tango?"

Grace

Grace gives River a squinty-eyed look, and then makes a grab at the bong. Tango? The fuck, River. Going to break the poor woman. She takes a hit, holds it, lets out a smokey, creaky "No."

But still, she adjusts herself, hands the bong over to Sam, and stands rather stiffly as she holds her arms out -- one of them positioned like it might hold on to somebody, the other in the air above her head like it might be holding another's hand.

She's never really cared about looking ridiculous, Grace.

"Show me?"

River

River looks at Grace and the look on her face can only be described as delight. She steps in, holds her up arms and preens like she's an instructor because, at her core, she can be an instructor of sorts. She's a good enough that she doesn't seem to have a problem.

She beams.

Moves her arms down a little.

"This is probably going to come up again with me. Just for reference."

Serafíne

"Stop by later, yeah?" Sera to Kiara, as Dan is packing up the guitar. A longer glance at River, then, sharper. This almost bruising awareness about her that gets honed in that moment until it gleams, and that's what she was made to be right there, bright, aching, in the moment. A hitch of awareness that hooks, catches, dissipates.
Lovely as the edge of an ever-elusive rainbow.

--

Had she been aware of recent history, she might not have chosen that song. She wasn't. Isn't. Couldn't've gotten on Ginger if she'd wanted to: her phone didn't fucking work. Dan checks it anyway and he couldn't see her, and he kept it up but mostly he was looking for anything from anyone about her. No dice.

All of that etches the air around them. Frames out both the intimacy of their interactions and that strange reserve that Sera breaks out of only in these odd flashes of awareness.

--

"You should drop by too."

And she could be saying that to anyone or everyone, but she's not. Mostly, she means River. Unspoken in there: no more sad songs tonight. "The Edgefield."

And off they go.

some thoughts on mercy

William

He's got a few more days in Denver before he ahs to catch another flight out of here back to Louisiana to deal with his family for, what William presumes, is going to be another awkward Thanksgiving where his relatives are nice, ask how things are, generally avoid talking about the big awkward thing in the room where they're fairly certain he shouldn't be living on his own (espeically since Jenn's gone- up and moved to Los Angeles, is actually having a pretty damned fantastic time, and avoiding the fucking blizzard that Denver is currently experiencing) .

Exhale.

He got to Sera's place through a buzz route, a train, and very careful navigation that didn't involve having to use a motorcycle. He was going to have to get a car now. Wasn't going to have to worry about covering the rent because he was the one who paid for the apartment anyway- had Jenn's back when things were a bit much for her but we digress again because it is a time for digression.

He stands on the porch, knocks because he always knocks, but actually waits to be let in this time. Takes in his surroundings and how much he can't stand the fact that it's cold and he can feel it in his lungs and how he keeps checking to be sure the sun hasn't burned out.

It hasn't, by the way.

Serafíne

The blizzard warnings were bloody well overstated thank you very much NWS with your aggressive forecasting. No need to run out day-before-yesterday on a desperate quest for milk and bread and cigarettes and beer and Tito's Handmade Vodka and cheap red wine and cloves and local honey and cloves and cinnamon and firewood and carrots just in case there was enough snow to build snowpersons each of whom would require: noses but what the hell. There's enough snow that the residents of 719 Corona Street can pretend that they are snowbound and throw a party. Or kind of a party.

Out front there are these maybe foot-and-a-half high snowpersons with raisin eyeballs and these pouty-red twizzler mouths and hot-pink shot glasses and a semi-frozen can of Pabst Blue Ribbon. Have to walk past them to get to the porch.

There's alcohol enough for whoever shows up. Wine mulling with spices on the stove. A red velvet cake cooling on the rack waiting to be iced and a bit pot of chili and this lovely jalapeno-cheese cornbread to be crumbled into some waiting bowl and inhaled along with the spices. For whomever shows up.
--
Elijah shows up.

Knocks, as he does. Takes a little while because the residents here never expect their visitors to knock but bare feet on warm wooden floorboards and then Dee opens the front door.

"Elijah! God I hope you aren't frozen to death, though honestly I'm a little disappointed in our mediocre blizzard. We haven't had a proper one since I moved back, and here we locked in supplies for days. Your timing's great, though. Sera got in this morning? Probably the last flight that landed at DIA before they shut it down. I'm making a red velvet cake as a welcome home." Stepping back to let him in, closing the door after. Shivering that inside shiver: like fuck, she forgot it was winter outside. Keeps chattering as she walks back through: the foyer and down the long hallway, past the empty front parlor, toward the kitchen and living room that are, in winter anyway, the heart of the house. Is he hungry? Does he want a drink? Does he like hot wine? Warms you up but good. Rick made the chili and Dee the cornbread, there's this grist mill in Golden that does the cornmeal, stone ground, artisinal, can't be beat.

William

"What is wrong with the mountains?! Dee, why is there snow? Louisiana doesn't have snow."

Said like someone who is not from here, and he is very much not from here. He would never get used to snow, just like he would never get used to the fact that Denver is a place that doesn't have any air and he's still making peace with the fact that his lungs are going to have to readjust to the fact that this place has nothing remotely resembling air since they're a mile above sea level.

He already misses home and he hasn't made it back yet. He already wants to be back in Denver, though, even though the time to realize homesickness isn't a real thing has passed him.

But he comes in, hugs Dee if she'll let him like he's a lost toddler trying to make sense of a world that makes abso-fucking-lutely no sense to him. Laughs after a point when he steps in and he's cold but he's not cold, because very rarely has Elijah's demeanor been anything other than warm. He goes through the checklist- he would like chili, mulled wine sounds fantastic, you can't go wrong with cornbread, and he might have water and a nap after that but he'll probably take the nap somewhere else. He just wanted to come by and see human beings whose company he enjoys.

Which, in case she has not guessed, includes Dee.

Serafíne

The first non-awakened person to see her was a bus-boy in the only remaining Howard Johnson's Restaurant on the Pennsylvania Turnpike and he had been avoiding (for some reason) clearing off booth 13 where she was ensconsed, reading Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Gay, mouth moving with the words, picking at some stranger's leftover fried clams and slipping them underneath the table to Sid, crowded all gawky around the table legs, mostly out of the way, and truth: he didn't notice her, not right away. He saw the dog's tail sweeping out from beneath the booth and thought: maybe the shit is cousin got her two weeks ago really was LSD with some really delayed action; and then thought: fuck, a snake!; and then thought: what's a dog - ; and then realized the dog was actually there and was attached to a girl he couldn't take his eyes off, once he noticed her. Sunglasses and a weird, skinny book and a leather jacket and something about her that made his breath stop and his chest hum with something he couldn't really name. Not love or lust or anything, but something else entirely, something that made him want to: be, rise, change, wake.

Wake.

Wake.

--

"Shit I'm sorry. Let me clean that off for you."

He meant the table. She started crying. And he wanted to, but somehow he couldn't begin to ask her why.

That was less than twelve hours ago.

--

Elijah laments the presence of snow to a girl who was lamenting not 2.3 seconds ago the lack-of-it, so: perspective, you know. That's all that matters. She pats his poor tender head and suggests that he get a nice tobaggan. That's what she says: tobaggan. Dee has a friend who hand-knits them with slightly - well - racy takes on the traditional Fair Isle patterns and sells them on Etsy and maybe Elijah would like to buy one before the real snow comes? If it ever does?

He is loaded up with whatever he wants: mulled wine, chili, cornbread, a hot toddy, probably a goddamned napkin or three and hey! living room. There's a fire starting to crackle in the hearth and Sera and Dan on the couch and a dog kinda crowded-underneath the coffee table, part of her muzzle and part of her tail sticking out because PEOPLE ARE HERE AND SHE LIKES PEOPLE. Sera is curled up with Dan: hasn't left his side since she got home. He has arm flung around her body and her temple is resting on his shoulder and his head tilted towards hers, mouth close to her brow. She's too drunk to decide whether his beard is scratchy or ticklish but either way it makes her fucking happy. So happy she is still sometimes starts crying for no goddamned reason.

Dan lifts his free arm and gives Elijah a wave. Shifts and murmurs something into Our Sera's ear, enough to have her following suit. Waving: hi, hello, salut, what the fuck ever.

William

"Wait, what is a tobaggan?"

And thus there was the explanation, which made him laugh, and he was soon enough inside. Ditched the coat and the scarf and the gloves but doesn't take his vest off or anything else because Elijah was fucking prepared for the day that things were going to be cold and, truth be told, he was always dressed in too damn much clothing anyway because he liked the aesthetic. Could deal with being a little warm and now he could survive it.

So he sits down in the floor, where he can see Sera and Dan and seems... intent. Intent on looking at people and taking them in, perhaps odd because he'd want to be there in the middle. He'd wanted to pile in and be in her space and have moments of just talking and listening and conveying the world of things that he wanted to say but couldn't because-

Well, because. There were people, and she'd spent so long without them. Couldn't dare interrupt it to take that time for himself because, like Dee said, she just got home. He's eating, sneaks Sid a piece of cornbread.

"So, house is full again," he says, smiles, just takes it all in for what it is.

Serafíne

There are times when she looks harrowed. Walks herself to some invisible edge and just stays there for so goddamned long you'd think she would have no choice but to fall, and she has that look about her now, Sera. That bones-through-skin translucency. The too-sharp profile, the spare, fine-spun sense that she was created, not born, and from all the things that are disappearing from this world.

And yet: also a sort of fullness to her, that sense of repletion that opens beneath the breastbone at the first sight of a too-full moon. She's glossy and way-too-drunk and watches Elijah as he crosses the room juggling chili and cornbread and wine or whatever and sits where he sits and as he feeds Sid ('sneaks' hah) some cornbread and Sid is okay with cornbread but she would like chili much fucking better, thank you, and Elijah remarks that the house is full again and Dan's eyes stitch to him briefly then. Wry grin that touches his mouth but looks - well - weary when it gets to his eyes. "Yeah," is what he says in response, and it sounds so: solid that there's as much meaning in that one word as there is a whole damn tree, root to branch and back again.

He says something to Sera right into her ear, and whatever it is is enough to rouse her, to have her perking up like an adorable goddamned meerkat who could tear your body apart from the inside out, so incrementally you'd swear the world had started spinning backwards and then she's up, untangling from the throw she'd wrapped around her long, long legs, shaking it off one leg that is especially tangled, laughing as she stitch-hops and then, fuck it, sort of untwirling from it. She is wearing: a man's button-down shirt and black lace panties and her hair is still damp from the shower but only in the middle of the mass and Dan's trying to figure out what she's going for before she staggers into the fire but she's magick, she's not staggering into the fire.

So; lots of complications.

But she finds what she's looking for: a superbly battered fuzzy panda-bear backpack and pulls out something: a book!

Which she hands to Elijah as she bends weavingly down and kisses him on the temple.

Murmuring, "Proud of you, kid. Congrats."

William

He had once talked about wanting to know Serafine as a human being, wanted to know things like what her fond memories were and where she was from- never asked what her birth name was though it comes to him. Knows that perhaps he shouldn't ask that, especially now that names have such a significance. She is how she is, she is as she is. Not her complete definition but that bit of truth isn't his to actually touch. Wouldn't dream of knowing someone so intimately, but he certainly does have the fantasy of getting to know her. Past what she presents and, instead, the places that take her further from whatever box people use to define her.

He's earned his keep in this city, whatever weird and miraculous things he's witnessed have come in dreams or had the misfortune of crossing his doorstep. What he's capable of is often a question of debate, the general consensus being that he's still young, still inexperienced, still very much that deer on spindly legs and yet-

He just came back from an experience that said the opposite. Where his betters assessed and didn't find him wanting, where he was regarded as someone that people could see as a peer. Came back to Denver and things have changed, drastically so but not in a bad way. This is more of the same, but a welcome stability and who would have ever accused Serafine of being a source of stability in his life?

She swings by, has a book in hand which he then is holding, kisses him on the temple and he half whispers- words only for her- "It's William now," he tells her, "but you can call me whatever you want. Won't be salty."

Pulls back and looks back at her, smiles and looks at the book in his hands, "scout's honor."

Serafíne

The book in his hands is a small, slim book by a man named Ross Gay. It is the book she was reading this morning - slouched, slung low really, one the bench seat of Booth 13 of the last remaining Howard Johnson's restaurant on the Pennsylvania turnpike when: someone noticed.

--

The cover is a bright riot of color, like Claude Monet had sex with de Kooning and Frieda Kahla and made it: see? This. The name is: Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude.

--

"William. I'll call you whatever the fuck you want me to call you."

then she is: standing up. Something about the way she does it suggests that remaining upright is a goddamned pleasure and a near-insurmountable challenge but she's taking it on with goddamned gusto. Balancing with an outflung hand on the crown of his head while also wiggling her fingers at Dan all come get me please, which he loves, and also: refuses to do. On principle, at least right now.

William

She'll call him whatever he wants her to call him, and it makes... it provokes and evokes a reaction that is not one other than pleasure, of relief. Like he expected it to be harder, like he expected her not to, like he'd expected a lot of things and it's a sign to him that there's acceptance of the newer parts of his life, that he's not drowning and someone accepts that about him.

He looks at the cover, holds it and turns to the page indicated and he looks it over. Eyes trail over words and he's reading, translating- a little known fact. Sometimes, English hitches in the back of his mind. Only occasionally, but it means when it comes to poetry he is mindful of what he is reading. Takes it in slowly and then perks up.

Flashes a bright grin at Sera-

"I wanna read this," he announces.

And so he does. Starts off with "Friends, will you bear with me today,
for I have awakened
from a dream in which a robin
made with its shabby wings a kind of veil-"

There's a way that he reads, a way that he presents things and a way that he seems aware of what he's doing. He's a storyteller, this one. Can convey what is in front of him and words come by with delight. Reads aloud for others to enjoy, but eventually settles again in to observing people. Trades stories with people about how Boston was- Dan knows which hulking details he's leaving out. Listens to the little bits of people's days and is just content to take them all in. The huamnity of it, the warmth of it, the way that this house feels more like a home than any number of places he's been.

He'll fly out again in less than a week, may think of being on Corona street instead of Baton Rouge.

Ghost in the Machine

mercury

The front of this building brickwork is old and dirty and dirty with age. Nobody's coming to clean the age from its face and make it bright again and there it is almost gray, almost black, smutty sooty stained ingrained in a darkness that is as much a filter as any instagram nostalgia filter meant to lend a moment a glow except this is real life and this is the opposite. The building is an apartment building in the heart of Brooklyn where ever the heart happens to be tonight (it moves) and down one block there are liquor stores and meth labs and down the other block there are crooked cops and a bowling alley and a small Ethiopian restaurant and a dead orange cat and at this building, the brickwork building with its two 1910s stained glass windows gleaming with tired amber and red above like a benediction, the winter-starveling remnants of vines, there is a party going on inside. Two apartments are open on the second floor and the hall is a-wash with bodies and the woman whose apartment is principally responsible for the party has every sort of booze you might imagine (this woman might be a Verbena) and a lot of the furniture is grand and a mishmash of Art Nouveau and Eastlake and it is real wood and the bedroom smells like cardamom.

In the bedroom is a woman who is (Awake [Sorcery, Will]) lounging like a tiger across the Verbena's bed, a notebook balanced on one thigh and in her hand/balanced atop her other knee a tumbler of something that tastes like fire going down like the corrosion of copper the fusion of heat to tongue and there is a smoke wreathing her head but it is from a cigarette (she rarely smokes) held between her ring and middle finger the same ring and middle finger belonging to the hand holding the tumbler. There's a pen in her other hand, as well as the fine balance of notebook. Her feet are bare but there are a pair of golden sandals on the ground which look about her side, be-leafed things not quite ridiculous but not weather-appropriate. The woman is in a moment of half-languorous half-rousing-to-fierce meditation, a smile just beginning to tempt her mouth into wickedness or joy or something unexpected.

Serafíne

Orpheus sat gloomy in his garden shed
Wondering what to do
With a lump of wood, a piece of wire
And a little pot of glue
O Mamma O Mamma

Nick Cave comes thumping out of the bluetooth speakers somewhere. Maybe this is a take-over, maybe it was always in the mix but there it is, slithering out of the windows, seeping through the mortared walls, and it must be the music that pulls her in tonight, along with her goddamned dog, because it sure as hell isn't the party. No one attending it can see her. So the place smells of cardamom and pot smoke and there are drinks, with gin and blueberries and rosemary, refreshments scattered here and there. Those cocktail Samosas from Trader Joe's and an enormous bowl of heirloom popcorn and on and on and on and there must be cocktail weenies, somewhere, too. What's a hipster party in a brownstone without cocktail weenies? What's a party anywhere ever without cocktail weenies?

Ghost in the machine, spare creature made spare-er by want, by privation, by absence that is not now a choice but which she wears as if it were - not armor, no but perhaps, ceremonial robes.

White t-shirt over a black-bra and beneath a gray hoodie, beneath a leather jacket. Denim cut-offs and fishnets, which no longer smell like the back third of a greyhound bus, but instead are still warm with that hot, clean, linty-smell of the inside of a landromat. This dog hunting at her heels.

She snags a couple of cocktail weeknies and breaks one in half and feeds it to Sid, grease on her hands.

Slides through the strangers unseen. Finds a corner and lifts herself onto the spine-of-a-couch and allows the low hum of voices to wash over her, trolling through them like she's looking for the little thread she might pull to unravel the whole of it.

mercury

There are (at least) two people at this party who will see can see may see such strange-wisp ghosts as Serafíne. The apartment-owner who is in the kitchen, re-filling a bowl of snacks and watchful with a level lodestone inquiry because everybody's gotta have drinks or snacks or something and the Verbena is going to make it so and what the fuck is wrong with the bonfire in the backyard Steve and fuck okay fine and the bonfire in the backyard needs tending which is a lot of heavy boots pounding on stairs to get out again. The woman who is in the bedroom, yielding to the smile the smile gone to a scimitar sharp thing a delighted-with-herself surprised-by-herself ah hah thing the color of the smile as red as her hair. Neither is placed to easily espy a drifter with a dog, dogs welcome!, a striking young woman on the spine of the couch (leather [cowhide] burnt colors caramel tea colors) with an expression that might dissolve -

But let's say that pleased with herself and triumphal, the woman in the bedroom finishes her notation and rubs the callused heel of her left foot up and down her right calf, then stretches one leg and points her toes, cracks them, and they are painted a pale gunmetal blue which has a sheen on it like the sheen on a sword - and then the woman in the bedroom finishes off her scotch in one gulp, then her own eyes (also the blue of a sword, the gleam of metal) scrunch almost-closed to-glittering-slits as they water and her throat protests and in her chest there blooms something hot -

and the woman takes a drag of her cigarette, tucks the notebook under her arm, light shudders across the fabric of her dress (ruddy, like an autumn leaf dipped in blood and turned into some fey-made thing - handsome color) like the idea-of-a-snake trying-to-be-born, and there is a ring on every finger, a necklace on a chain hangs low below the cinch of her dress's waist, but the light shudders when she gets up to replace her temporarily empty glass with one all-the-way-full -

and that's when she notices the dog and beautiful woman; perhaps that's when there's a tickle, the first thread of awareness, or the woman (formerly of the bedroom and currently of the where is more scotch grailquest for fire fire-for-mankind persuasion) cocks an eyebrow at Serafíne for no reason other than that it happened that way; the flex of some subconscious sense of her surroundings, of somebody new.

Awareness and alertness are both things hard-won, so: become aware, check back. Past the Serafíne, into the kitchen, she knows where her drink is - decides to take the bottle and tuck it under her arm along with the notebook; gone a spare half-minute before she's on the verge of striding back through the main room with the couch and the is Serafíne still on her perch?

No, the woman's eyes are not the color of a sword. They're the color of a gray river-light day, fog rising from the water. A certain slant of pewter-blue.

Serafíne

Made as she was to see and made as she was to be seen she is sitting there on the spine of the couch in a stranger's apartment quite entirely alone (but for the dog) and it isn't simply because no one else can see her. The posture, the presence, these things are separate, apart, like a double-exposure with the creature superimposed upon the party, or perhaps the party superimposed upon the girl.

--

The lift of her eyes. The marking-of-a-passing, that stitch of awareness as the apartment owner cuts through the shifting crowd falls away as she disappears. Releases her as easily as a child does a balloon, as anyone does anything.

When the apartment-owner returns, the Serafíne remains on her perch. Peels apart another cocktail weenie and holds it up-up-up while the dog looks-looks-looks, then lets it go, tosses it high enough that the dog (an adolescent, still, youthful and brawny and affable for all her size and strength) leaps up to snap it out of the air.

"I hope I'm not - " A beat, an orientation. " - overstepping by popping in. I heard the music."

poetry for anyone who wants it

We don't have to worry
Life goes where it does
Faster than a bullet
From an empty gun

- Beck, Round the Bend

Somewhere north of Rosebud, South Dakota and the only reason she understands the place is because there are times when place is as tattooed to her fingertips as time is to the back of her eyes. A sense of spatial relationships, of the earth growing wings around her, the flat raw jagged plains which are so open and endless they make her lungs hurt, but duck into any building built by human hands to human scale for human habitation and here you are, confined again. Neon hums against the darkness and no one was expecting snow but here it is, not early but -

- hey, doesn't summer always lull us into believing that this time, this fucking time, she's going to last forever?

--

The accumulated slush is already melting off the enormous LOVE'S TRAVEL STOP sign, up there shuddering in the last gasp of the stormfront chasing through, and the few eighteen-wheelers that took refuge in the parking lot during the height of the storm have more or less moved on. Four-fifteen in the morning and Jaycee Millikin, night clerk/hostess/waitress and George Romero, the line cook/security/bus boy are hanging out by the counter shooting the shit. He's waxing eloquent about the zombie / torture flick (he takes his name that seriously) he is shooting with the old super-8 camera his older brother put in the mail to him forty-five minutes before he jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge, has a part for her, is saving a role for her, but she hardly notices. All she can do is daydream about making it to NYC, she keeps thinking about how one interstate connects to the next and all she has to do is say fuck everything hit the road. Be there in no time.

Though the truth is, she'll never go.

Never even leave the zip code.

--

And it is one of those nights where something is unsettled, something is not-quite-right. They keep forgetting or misplacing shit. The door to shower #3 was left open but maybe it is simply the latch that is sticking, there's something wrong? Something unintentional, something that rises from the time-of-year, from the closing-of-doors or maybe their opening. Some hungry-ghost hanging about the periphery-of-things.

Which is: not wrong. She's sitting cross-legged at the end of the counter, combing out her long damp hair, peeling apart the weird cheeseburger-hot-dog thing she lifted from the rolling grill and feeding it to Sid with greasy fingers, careful, careful, teaching the animal tricks without understanding that that is precisely what she's doing. When the bit of meat is front-and-center, Sid is both so excited her body shivers with it, and that's a fact not a fucking metaphor, and so bright and still and focused she only moves her snout to track the minute flick of the girl's fingers. Snaps it out of the air like a champion. Jaycee and George Romero notice - well - nothing, nothing at all.

For herself, she doesn't really eat. Is so so hungry-not-hungry, in a way that both transcends and absolutely returns to the physical that she shakes with it, too.

--

Jim would've been good at this. Hell, maybe that's what he left their lives to do, right? There are all sorts of bullshit stories about exiles and odysseys, strange gods and the open road. He'd start the day with yoga in a park he'd never met before, steam rising off the captive lake, the gathering of strangers who couldn't-quite-see and bask in their - fuck, whatever it is. The reverence that comes rising up in us with the miracle of a goddamned sunrise. The renewed wonder that you are still on this earth at all. That there's such a goddamned thing -

- and fuck, okay. She feels all of that, right? The certain slant of first-light, the crystalline stillness of pre-dawn, the strange and hungry wonder that comes from: something new, something new, something new. But she wasn't made for any of this and even calmly, clearly choosing this sort of exile over any other: each day hurts. God it hurts.

She opens herself to it. Strips herself down until that certainty, that bright pain is all she has, and all she is.

--

The back bench seat of a Trailways bus, the open bed of a pick-up truck, the rattling sardine-can interior of a boxcar - yep, that too - city buses, county buses, the funicular up to Fort Pitt. Amtrak: that's the best. The worn red velvet seats and the country moving alongside at sixty or seventy miles an hour. Empty sleeper berth when she gets tired of wandering. There is a guy with a typewriter in second class crafting poems along the way for any passenger who asks for one and she sits and watches him for hours as a cold autumn day wraps itself into a colder autumn night.

The Magic Flute

William

He was still in Boston, holed up in a room with a few recent-additions to the Tradition and William had gone through some effort to actually make friends and contacts that he can actually come back. He's got a legacy to uphold now, it's real. IT's really real, and he could have called any number of people and, perhaps with wishful thinking, he thought that maybe he could call Sera.

He should know better, knows that she's been unable to make calls. Knows that she's a spectre in the city, but he tries anyway, thinks that maybe he can leave her a voicemail. Leave her poetry and tidings and any number of things.

William misses Serafine. He's still having to get accustomed to which name he needs to sign when, but he calls her phone anyway.

Dan

Dinner has Dan sitting in a coffeehouse / cafe / bar called CASH ONLY with Rick and a few friends. There's a beer on the table in front of him that he's been nursing for an hour, and a half-decimated platter of "Irish Nachos" on the table between them. He sits back with enough of a view of the snow melting over the sidewalk, that strange, bright, burnt-orange blast of artificial light reflecting on snow that always feels like the first edge of a nuclear winter.

He's carrying two phones, these days, ignoring the constant little vibrations of texts sliding in in favor of sitting and having a conversation with friends he likes. The ringtone for a call is different, though. Is She Weird warbles Black Francis, which makes him shift his ass half-off the seat and pull out the phone, enough to glance at it and see who's calling. Then he stands up, waves an apology to friends and steps away, out into the chilly November night,

"Elijah." Male voice, baritone, too deep to be Sera. Affection wrapped up into the greeting, though. The suggestion of a beard brushing against the receiver. "What's up?"

William

The backdrop of Elijah's call seems pretty quiet, all things said. He hears the voice, the affection in it and while it isn't Serafine it is Dan, and Dan is a welcomed treat in and of itself. The smile is clear on his face, in his voice. There's the rustle of fabric, probably a blanket or a pillowcase or something to that effect.

"I'm in Boston! Got through all my sorting hat business and graduated from hogwarts or whatever freaking Harry Potter analogy you want to make," Dan can all but hear the young man wave something off.

"I'll be coming back pretty soon, do you want anything?"

Dan

"From Boston?" An inflected rise of the consor's voice, this quiet bemusement braided into his tone. It is only now that response to his question: what's up? has spilled into a breathless explanation that Dan can begin to decipher only because he has had years of deciphering Sera's fucked-up ramblings that he finds the tension in his spine starting to unknot.

And he tries, makes an effort, not to allow that tension to enter his voice. "Maybe snowboots. Not for me but for you. Winter's made an appearance."

A short breath out, which sounds like a smoker's exhale but Dan isn't smoking today. "So that means you're official? They give you a scarf and a coat-of-arms and everything? Anyone ask you to try out for the quidditch team?"

William

"Yeah, I've got the scarf and everything. I have been tagged, Named, and thrust upon the world. God have mercy on us all," he's excited. It's obvious he's excited because he's rambling and, frankly, unless someone was there with him it was a little difficult to catch what he was actually talking about.

"Turns out I'm shit on a broom, though," he laughs, "on a more realistic note I'm kind of sad winter has shown up, I thought it was just happening up north so I was vehemently trying to wish it away because it's fucking cold."

It dawns on him that Serafine isn't the one who answered the phone. There's a bit of silence there before-

"Hey, you holding up okay? If you're out with people I can call you back."

Dan

"I'm cool," Dan assures him, in that low-rumble, and these are things that one says. Over the phone, over wires or ether or whatever strange and agreed-upon magick allows us to be everywhere at once. He straightens up, takes in the street. Doesn't think the call will be long but he doesn't seem to be in a hurry to get back to the folks inside. Lets the music stay behind him, dulled to a low but present hum by the windowglass.

"Congratulations, though. You doing anything to celebrate? Have anyone to celebrate with?"

--

Doesn't ask the new Name.

Knows enough not to. Doesn't believe in that particular power but Elijah's belief in this matters more than Dan's.

William

"I've been trying to cram about as much partying in with my new housemates as possible- it's... We're not a giant house, but we're supposed to be diplomats, you know? So, like, actually interacting with each other and building a working relationship seems like a pretty good idea and thus far I've figured out I kinda like these people."

He asks if there's anyone he has celebrated with, and it makes William laugh a little at it, "so I did shots with a chick named Holly we've exchanged numbers and shit. I've actually been good, I'm trying to be a grown up and now... you know... promoting Hermetic good will by trying to get into my tradition mate's pants."

Even though, by the sound of it, he would really, really like to.

"It's pretty fucking hard. It's like I walked into a freaking American Apparel catalog or something."

Dan

This quiet noise, something close to gruff bemusement. The whole conversation would be better if the snow were still falling, but that storm has moved onward to ravage the east coast, to remind everyone in its path that winter means more than earlier, more spectacular sunsets. More than the Santa Claus house at the mall.

He focuses - his eyes anyway - on the closed headshop across the street. The patterned, maw-like reflections of hookahs lined up in the picture window. Gauges how much and how far he should-maybe caution a now-full-fledged member of the Order of Hermes, unAwakened friend of a low-penny mystic that he is.

Thinks about diplomacy, its meanings and its iterations. Thinks about the boundaries of nations ringing the world.

"Naw, man. You ever see the Magic Flute?"

Mozart. Dan means: the Mozart opera.

William

Has he seen the Magic Flute?

He actually has to think about this, though the reference isn't lost on him. Pulls through his memories and tries to think of the various times he's actually been to the opera and comes back with-

"Yeah," he replies, the lilt in his voice says that he's listening to Dan. That he's paying attention, that perhaps he isn't cut out to be a full fledged Hermetic because he's he hasn't ever given the indication that he thinks less of how Serafine and Dan view the world.

She'd said something about it once. He'd been shocked to say the least.

Dan

"It's like you've just walked out of the overture into the opera proper. The bells are starting to ring, everything's strange and it's up to you to figure out what all of this shit means. I mean, it's spectacular, right? But all that weird Masonic symbolism trips me out."

A short breath out, affection this crackle in his voice.

"So, celebrate. Seriously. Do. But remember that you're at the very beginning, and you have fuck-all of an idea of who's what and when and where. Caution, man. Especially now, when you're with your housemates, I think you need to have your wits about you at every step."

William

There has never been an instance where the young man has not listened to Dan. Dan knows what he's talking bout; the man has seen the world. He's seen what happens and seen more of the magical world and how people interact than Elijah has and now the young man is having to brave the world.

He pauses, nods and it's almost like Dan can hear the newly-minted Hermetic nodding.

"I've gotta make it through the whole opera, I'm feeling hoepful," purses his lips but smiles anyway.

"Thanks, man. I'll... you're pretty fuckin' smart, I kinda dig that about you."

Dan

"Cheers, kid." The low back of a laugh, still that scrawl of affection underlying it. Strain, too, sure, but only if you really listen for it.

"Be safe. Talk to you later."

Click.

--

He drops the phone from his ear, glances down at it in his hand. Rubs his thumb over the screen and watches as the icons shift and shiver. Glances at the unanswered texts, then thumbs them away. He thinks about lighting a cigarette, wouldn't mind the burn in his throat conjoined with the bright, belting cold.

But he doesn't have one, so he just breathes. In, out.

In, out. The only way to get into or out of this world.