Is the sun out? The sun is out and it is 60 degrees and there's this strange crispness to the air: warmth slanting radiant down to the earth but still the cold seep of winter stored in the concrete and asphalt. Everything strange and dingy and brown and slushed and soggy and also: bright bright brighter. Promise, see: in every soggy step one takes.
Mind the interior of Bad Betty's is dark as fuck and no one has bothered yet to scrub down the few iron-worked chairs and tables on the patios and it is the Hour of Brunch and Bad Betty's has Brunch but is more known for its late-night food and drink. Whatever: a buzz but a slow one. This spare, scintillating creature pushes open the door and clunks in: heavy doc marten's, second-skin black denim slung low on her hips, secured with a two inch wide belt made black-leather, spikes and rivets, and a loose crop-top that does not-much to hide the curve of her breasts, and nothing to conceal the hourglass shape of her bare midriff. The hint of ink: there, beneath her right breast and along her left flank, on her hands, everywhere.
Oversized sunglasses cover her eyes and it's dark in here but she doesn't bother removing them. A waitress skimming by with an oversized plate of strangely egg-covered nachos eyes the hunting dog skimming at her calves with enough query that Sera favors her with a quick, neat little smirk/grin and says, "Service animal."
What the hell.
At the bar she orders a Bloody Mary with an extra shot of vodka. Requests Tito's Handmade instead of that well shit or any of the overpriced celebrity endorsed brands that line the walls of the nightclubs she never frequents.
Andrés[perc + aware: just for shits +/- giggles]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )
AndrésShe isn't the only reality deviant in here right now and the rest of the bar has been doing a fine enough job ignoring the guy standing at the bar as they can considering he feels like the chill of an omen working its way up one's spine.
Omens can go either way. Doesn't make their presence any more pleasant.
At any rate: when Sera ambles in she does not take off her sunglasses. The Etherite has removed his eyeglasses though they're lain folded-up on the bar beside his left hand. Also at his left hand is what appears to be a Bloody Mary with a beer back. It is not a Bloody Mary. His has tequila in it.
They met in cursory fashion during less than favorable conditions. Grace introduced him to the collective but he would not be surprised if Serafíne did not remember him. He's wearing jeans and a striped button-down shirt underneath a bomber jacket. Standing at the bar instead of sitting down.
For a moment it seems as if he's going to stay where he is but that's just because he's halfway through eating his celery stick when Sera settles down. He's known she was there since she walked in and though it presents a difficulty he does not stare at her as she finds her way to the bar. Celery sticks are a commitment.
SerafínePer + Awareness
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 1, 1, 2, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 4 ) [Doubling Tens]
SerafíneSid's pretty well-behaved. Tucks herself up against the legs of Sera's stool, curls her tail around her body because she's been around hipsters and barstools long enough now that she understands instinctively that she must: make herself smaller when pulled into these places. Sera: well, hard to tell what the fuck she sees or hears. Something about her that seems both tuned in and tuned out, this strange confluence of aware and oblivious. Still, okay. This moment where she allows her senses to open up and then -
a very present, very immediate shiver. Because: cold.
And then she looks around and the sunglasses fix on Andres at the end of the bar. Linger there. By now her Bloody Mary + shot have arrived and she picks the shot up, neat between her tattooed fingers. Lifts it towards him in a silent toast.
Then tosses it back, all at once. Yeah, that seems right. She's an all-or-nothing kind of girl.
AndrésDown the hatch. She picks up her shot and knocks it back. He picks up his beer to answer the toast and swallows down what's left of it. Which isn't much. And then he pushes away from the bar.
Open in front of him on the bar is a grid notebook covered in pencil scribblings. He doesn't appear too concerned with the notebook walking away before he does but it isn't as if he's going down the street and expecting his shit to stay where he left it. It's a dive bar on a Sunday. No one is going to steal a mad scientist's notebook.
Besides: the thing feels enchanted. That augural sense clinging to it like cigar smoke or heavy perfume.
Though he approaches Sera it is with a touch of wariness. The dog seems well-behaved but it never behooves a man to assume. Both hands are in his pockets as he comes to stand beside the neighboring school.
"You got a light?" he asks.
Serafíne"Sure," the creature tosses back, quick-flash of her teeth behind her smile. At her feet, Sid's tail is thump-thump-thumping a greeting. HELLO! HELLO! HELLO! it says. " - but I don't think you can smoke in here. Patio?"
AndrésAnimals are a little easier to deal with than people. This animal, he gives the back of his left hand to let her sniff. Plenty of smells underneath the lingering smack of hand sanitizer and the only jewelry he wears is a wedding band.
"What?" We can't smoke in here? He processes this information with a flick of his brows and a, "Yeah, okay, sure. Patio."
If they're going to go outside he's going to loop back to his space at the bar and grab his drink. Everything else stays behind.
Once they're out in the sunlight and the fresh air he wrangles a soft-pack of Lucky Strike out of his jacket pocket and offers one to her. It's only fair. She's supplying the fire.
SerafíneOur Sera takes her drink(s because as they are leaving she waves around her little shot glass and says how about a refill? and affixes that request with another quick, expectant smile. She wants, and therefore she asks and therefore she gets, isn't that the way it works? Spoiled creature.) and her hoodie and her everything else and her everything else is contained in a slim bag that is more evening than midday slung across her lean torso on a gunmetal chain because there's not an inch of room in those jeans for anything more than the lean curves of her hips and thighs. Doesn't need to snap her fingers to summon Sid because where Sera goes, the dog follows if she can.
Outside she takes up a perch on one of the ironworked tables, legs left to swing. Cool ,enough that she does shrug back into the hoodie and once they are outside and she has tested the limits of the sun's radiance which are still limited. It is, after all, still February and even if they are a mile closer to the sun than anyone at sea level.
Anyway, she digs the lighter out of the left pocket of her hoodie, shakes her head no to Lucky Strikes, doesn't seem inclined yet to light up on her own. Maybe she will soon.
"You came with Grace, the other morning, didn't you?" Casual-like. As if there were anything casual about it. "I don't remember your name."
AndrésA refill never hurt anyone. Two of whatever she's having. They are willful creatures and if asking doesn't get them what they're after they can always just warp quintessence to do what they want it to do. Asking the bartender is easier.
He accepts the lighter and introduces the flame to the end of his cigarette. Is blowing out the inaugural plume of smoke when she asks her question. Handing her her lighter back as she confesses to not remembering his name.
"Andrés," he says. "I did."
SerafíneQuick flash of her tattooed hand as she takes the lighter back, tucks it into the right pocket of her worn black hoodie. Sitting up like this on the table means that she's taller than he is. Hell, even in her low-heeled Doc Marten's Sera is taller than this virtual stranger. She seems to like that. Look at the lilt of her chin, the way the sun gleams off the surface of her glasses. Like a wink.
Fucking cheeky.
Still, tension in her posture, the hint of it. A forward-looking awareness.
"Weird, you know? That we never met before. New in town?"
AndrésEven if she were barefoot Sera would not find too great a difference in their physical heights. He seems like a slight man underneath the layers of his clothing. The silver shot through his black hair and beard provides the world with a barometer for his age. Not an accurate one but it's something.
"Mm hmm." He's mid-drag as she asks and it seems as if he has to formulate his response and how he wants to frame it. "I was working for the Miami-Dade coroner's office, but, eh, I heard what was happening. With the old Chantry and the grove and all of that. My wife was Verbena, she would've wanted to be here now, but she died in April. I accepted a transfer, and now here I am, as of January. Not so weird, is it?"
Serafíne"The grove was a long-ass time ago." Quiet, really. Almost matter-of-fact though there is a liminal stillness about the creature that charges the air around her. Gives her a quality that seems more fae than anything else. Not-of-this-world, or any other than one might meet.
"I'm sorry about your wife, though." A flick at his hand. Yes, she noticed the wedding ring, or perhaps yes, she does now notice the wedding ring. She does not wear anything like that, but there is a ring on her right index finger with a distinct resonance of its own: sundrenched, soaring. Old bronze, the sort that looks warm and burnished, like it had been baked in the sun and scoured by centuries of sand.
"You didn't come here to start a war or anything like that, did you? I mean, it's pretty ballsy to offer to walk into a place full of assholes who want to kill you to rescue some apprentice you've never met. Don't get me wrong, but - "
An arrest, the lift of her chin. She tosses back another shot, glorious in the not-quite-morning-anymore light, cascade of her curls all shot-through with sunlight, like a corona, like a halo.
AndrésThe grove was a long-ass time ago.
He waves his hand as if clearing away the smoke. If she's a Cultist then she must have an affinity for the Time Sphere and if she has an affinity for Time then she understands as well as any physicist does that time is relative and he barely even knows what year it is let alone how many years have passed since the Technocrats threw up the middle finger to his wife's tradition.
A flick at his hand. An apology. A question.
"Maybe I've got big balls," he says. Dry. Could be a joke and he seems friendly enough but that doesn't mean he has a healthy sense of humor. He flicks the growing trail of gray from the end of his cigarette and blows out another drenched breath. "But I don't have a vendetta. Fifteen years, the war's been done, and they're starting it up again. This is a place of importance, for whatever reason, and I'm here. I may as well make myself useful, yeah?"
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