[aw, undisclosed location <3]
mercuryMercury is the trickster god of messages delivered (divination sought, divination received), of luck, of psychopompous travel, and of Poetic Eloquence. On the day only a short while after a certain gathering of minds has occurred Pen sets out to find Serafíne she settles a pair of sunglasses on the bridge of her nose and there is, on the interior of the side arm a meticulously graven symbol of the messenger with wingéd sandals. Penelope (patience, weaving and unweaving) makes a stop, before showing up at 719 Corona Street. The door's always open but at ten am in the morning Pen doesn't yet try it. She does show up unannounced, brashful instead of bashful: a striking red-haired creature, concerned and here to fulfill her name's ordinance before it is too too late. Money where her mouth is, always. Almost always; nobody is perfect. Certainly not the headstrong, sometimes heedless (oh, but one tries) Wizard.
She'd have come earlier in the day but that she wanted to bring something and still doesn't know Denver as well as she'd like; she has a brown paper bag under one arm. And she knocks, or rings a bell.
Serafíne
Ten a.m. is a perfectly ordinary hour at which to come calling but for some of the seraphim is it the middle of the goddamned night. Out on the front porch a collection of implements that belong to winter. Snowshovel and covered tin full of salt and an old flexible flyer and a single ski on one end and two mismatched ski poles on the other, three flyers for area pizzarias and one for a head shop and two for edibles!!!!!!111!! and a little circular with coupons for the strange sort of fast(ish) food places that accumulate at the edges of a neighborhood in flux, like this one. The porch swing stripped bare of its cushions and drifting in the breeze and the planters bare and dry or swirled with snow and Pen knocks or rings the ebell or both and there is a brief interregnum until - eventually, eventually - the front door opens and there is a tall gentleman in a pair of jeans and a band t-shirt, barefoot, the blast of furious warmth all around him, and something else, bread, baking or rising, sweet-tinged, cinnamon scent in the air.
He looks her over, Dan. Kind of smiles through the beard, but wry, you know. Brows lofted.
"I take it you're here to see Sera?"
mercuryThere is, usually, a faint intimation of the ardent about Pen; the archaic meaning of the word ardent, when the other meanings aren't applicable. But winter is still cold, and Denver winter is different from New England winter for reasons she hasn't quite put her finger on yet.
From the paper bag, there is the faint whiff of some savory smell, garlicky-onions, potatoes; something which curls beneath the cinnamon bread warmth. The crumple of tinfoil.
Pen smiles at Dan. Her eyes are visible through the lenses of her sunglasses, because the lenses are pale pink (rose-tinted, one might say), and so are the lines which spring out around them and her mouth in the smile.
"I am; is she in now? If not I'll quest after her - where ever."
This gesture in the air; an expression of vibrant energy.
SerafíneHe: gives a quick little smirk. The edges of the expression are softened by the frame of the beard and there is something alight and fond in his eyes. Dan glances down, her rose-tinted eyes to the paper-bag, and steps back, allowing her entry. Inside: warm warm warm, an impression of wood and antiques and a pile of shoes of the sort that well-loved and well-lived-in houses acquire in the wintertime. Salt on the hardwoods, tracked in from without. An old wardrobe and art art art on the walls and a long-hallwall leading back toward: a warm and bright kitchen, all white. A view through to the garden, the impression of a tree. The clackclackclack of a dog's nails on the wood as Sid comes loping up.
"She's here. Upstairs. Come on in. I'll show you."
And so saying: he disappears down the hall. Headed toward the stairs, and he seems to think that she: will follow.
mercury"I have brought the household breakfast tacos," Pen says by way of defining the moment, or at least the paper bag. "Some are steak, some are vegetarian, and some are vegan; a couple may be Greek fusion. I did not pay very dear attention, but I know mango salsa and eggs went into a couple of them, garlicky yucca and, hm, beans."
Inside warm warm warm and Pen unbuttons her snow-brushed coat, flakes already melting into darker splotches on the stiff nappy fabric. Wipes her boots against the hardwood by the door, pausing to allow Sid the dog to smell her hand and guarded against any dog-leaping-up shenanigans.
And she does follow Dan.
SerafíneSo: Sid doesn't leap but she does wag and she does head-bump and she does wind around between legs and beneath feet. Huffs a breath out on Pen's palm but spares more attention to the bag-of-breakfast tacos, circling, circling, wagging her tail, hoping and perhaps expecting that something exciting!! is going to happen soon. Then: Sid is always hoping that something exciting!! is going to happen soon, because it usually does. BIRD or BALL or SQUIRREL or FOOD or ALMOST FOOD or SOCK! and as they are leaving the foyer there is a mild tangle of oh your coat and I can hang that up and the discussion (with as few contractions, Dan does note, as possible) of breakfast tacos has him pausing part-way to the second-floor landing (a black and white photo of Amelia Earhart, a spider-plant with baby-plants cascading down in an old macrame holder.
"I dunno how much privacy you'll need. Kitchen's that way if you wanna wait, but we have roommates, you know? Or you can follow me up to Sera's room. We'll surprise her with breakfast tacos."
mercury"I'll follow you to Sera's room," Pen says, with a dawn-light on fog wreathing a fairy hill sort of smile, this glancing brightness. Pen is a swashbuckler; swashbuckler's like surprising people. She is looking at the pictures or furniture or what-have-you knickknacks on the walls.
"And I do want to speak to her privately; another time, I will drop by to be purely social. Are you baking bread or is it one of the other roommates?"
Serafíne"Dee made cinnamon rolls last night. I just had them in the oven warming up."
The quick, crisp suggestion of his eyes over his shoulder, and then they are turning, turning, turning, like the interior of a nautilus, before they are spilled out into the second floor hallway: all dark, flanked by wooden doors on all sides, the hardwood floors softened by a threadbare Persian rug. One of them he goes to: knocks, gently. Opens or rather: cracks open, a hand still braced against the door itself. Inside: well, a certain sense of compelling chaos. Windows again, the gray light of the prairie morning, great-big-room and a great-big-bed and a cool-ass vanity and a lump beneath the windows that could be a monster-made-of-animate clothing or could simply be a chair, covered in laundry.
Dan leaves Pen to find a place to sit or stand (the vanity might be attractive) while he circles to the bed. There is no evidence of Sera in the room other than her resonance until he somehow finds her, unearths her from among the pile of white sheets and white comforter in the center of the bed. Cups the back of her head, leaning over, murmuring something to wake her, gently, gently, while Sid barrels up the stairs and in behind.
mercuryAre there books? Because if there are books, Pen gravitates toward the books and stands near them, running her eyes over titles. Even if it is just some haphazzard stack. If there is any poetry book at all she gives a startled pleased impulsive involuntary cry of recognition because Pen likes poetry, and maybe she reaches to flip through it. Is there art? Because if there is art, Pen gravitates toward the art in the absence of books, and studies that. Eyes turned away from the bed is deliberate, perhaps because she herself would hate to be surprised like this in bed (or would she?) by a guest (or would she?), and Pen's decorum is falsified and learned dragged over her bones like a fashionable robe of embroidered satin but she has it.
Looking around at Serafíne's bedroom, the Cultist's resonance seeped into the hardwood floors, seeped into threadbare rug, woven into the walls itself, enthralling, visceral, incandescent, a heady brew a potent concoction, Pen holds her sunglasses up between thumb and forefinger, studies even the cracks on the ceiling before her glance cuts back to Sera and Dan. Quizzical.
The brown paper bag is held tucked under her elbow, beside her messenger back, some old leather thing that looks as if it should contain a traveling alchemist's traveling shop: and perhaps it does. Scarred old leather, oxblood and clasped by some meaningful metal, something which remembers being transformed once upon a time.
Serafíne
There are indeed books: one slender bookshelf-full of books wedged against the wall between an antique chest of drawers and a stack of canvases (there is: you understand, Art as well) and the somewhat overflowing closet. Every last volume is a collection of poetry. Our Sera gravitates toward the French symbolists, the chaotic absinthe drinkers, the florid madmen of two centuries past, but she cannot read French so has them in translation: usually side by side. There are others, though, innumerable others, everything from Blake and Shakespeare to chapbooks self-published three weeks ago and sold on the street by a guy starting a drumcircle with nothing but three plastic construction bottles and these rough segments of rebar. One of the shelves is somewhat more empty than the others, but hey. That one doesn't belong to her.
And Pen is carefully looking away because she would not want to be surprised like this. Perhaps would not want to seem so damned vulnerable: sleeping, right? Sera - well - she might not care. Vulnerability - deliberate, invited, welcomed - is part and parcel of her magick, isn't it?
Here and now she is sleeping like an animal. Waking like one, too: all warm and half-blind instinct, uncurling from the nest she has created in the center of the bed, inhaling, asking questions that don't quite get answered with the noises she makes. She has only been asleep for a very little while and the disorientation that trails a vivid dream follows her into the waking world.
Finally, though: she's awake. Sitting up, nearly swallowed by the comforter, reaching for a t-shirt because, you know: naked, pulling it up and over so that Sera and her tangled mane are briefly eclipsed and then reappear again.
Dan takes his leave then, promising tea. Sera gives Pen a quizzical, hung-over look.
"Uhm. Hi. It's so fucking early."
SerafíneThere are indeed books: one slender bookshelf-full of books wedged against the wall between an antique chest of drawers and a stack of canvases (there is: you understand, Art as well) and the somewhat overflowing closet. Every last volume is a collection of poetry. Our Sera gravitates toward the French symbolists, the chaotic absinthe drinkers, the florid madmen of two centuries past, but she cannot read French so has them in translation: usually side by side. There are others, though, innumerable others, everything from Blake and Shakespeare to chapbooks self-published three weeks ago and sold on the street by a guy starting a drumcircle with nothing but three plastic construction bottles and these rough segments of rebar. One of the shelves is somewhat more empty than the others, but hey. That one doesn't belong to her.
And Pen is carefully looking away because she would not want to be surprised like this. Perhaps would not want to seem so damned vulnerable: sleeping, right? Sera - well - she might not care. Vulnerability - deliberate, invited, welcomed - is part and parcel of her magick, isn't it?
Here and now she is sleeping like an animal. Waking like one, too: all warm and half-blind instinct, uncurling from the nest she has created in the center of the bed, inhaling, asking questions that don't quite get answered with the noises she makes. She has only been asleep for a very little while and the disorientation that trails a vivid dream follows her into the waking world.
Finally, though: she's awake. Sitting up, nearly swallowed by the comforter, reaching for a t-shirt because, you know: naked, pulling it up and over so that Sera and her tangled mane are briefly eclipsed and then reappear again.
Dan takes his leave then, promising tea. Sera gives Pen a quizzical, hung-over look.
"Uhm. Hi. It's so fucking early."
mercury"I had no guess for the best time. I would've at daybreak as the dawn was pinking the horizon, but I - "
Pen is apologetic behind her rose-tinted sunglasses with her red red bangs swept in swashbuckling rakishness off her shoulder and curling in at her cheekbone. They give her eyes a tawny darkness, those sunglasses. Perhaps Serafíne doesn't require the apology, but Pen is still apologetic. Not sorry, because there are different connotations for that word: sorry, bedraggled, pathetic, in the wrong. Apologetic is: regretful, wishful of otherways.
Deepbreath. Penelope strides 'cross the room to Serafíne's bed and holds out the brown paper bag, combining both assurance and uncertainty in the gesture. Paradox, well: don't Hermetics just attract paradox as a lightning rod attracts lightning?
" - brought some breakfast tacos. For the whole household, but first pick is yours. I hope you don't mind me dropping by so early. Next time I will try for the night. I love your book collection."
Pen, you see, is earnest; even when she is being a little solemn.
Serafíne"Mmmph," murmurs Sera, this rough sleep-bound noise that is not dismissive but rather: indulgent. Some old meaning of indulgence, too. The pardons peddled by the popes, perhaps. There is absolution of all fault wrapped right around her tongue. So, "mmph" and a neat little shrug, the spare frame beneath the tee, her shoulders, narrow, her body lost in the warm wallow of her bedclothes, and for all that she is oh, perfectly at ease. Reaches to take the bag as if it were perfectly natural for her to wake up of a morning in a room as if she were being attended to by a Mucha piece, some personification of flame come to life, who has brought her tacos. Or at least: first pick.
"Thanks," for the tacos. For the comment on her book collection. "I tell people the door's always open, but truth is if you wanna catch me sober, afternoon's the best. Later, though. I don't usually get up until - fuck. Later than this."
Then she's unwrapping the bag. Peering inside. "What the fuck's in a breakfast taco, anyway?"
mercury"Mn. Are you a vegetarian or vegan? If not, there are some Greek fusion tacos; eggs, feta, spiced steak. Then there are pulled pork, pineapple, melted cheese, eggs - really now that I think about it I think it is the eggs that make them 'breakfast' tacos. There's something with a cilantro sriracha sauce and fried avocados, my personal favourite, but they're all delightful. From this little taquéria down in Federal, across from a psychic reader's house. The warm butter yellow one."
There are more 'normal' breakfast tacos too. Pen brought quite a lot of them; the bag is rather heavy, the silver foil most of the tacos are wrapped in glinting like knight'shelms crumpled at the bottom of some dragon's chasm.
"I will remember that in the future. My hours are all over the place, too." For different reasons than the lifestyle that Serafíne lives, but still. Modern day wizards still do things by certain hours, sometimes.
"May I sit?" on the edge of Serafíne's bed. If given no indication one way or another, she sits; if Serafíne says yes, waves her down, she sits. Otherwise, the opposite: standing, the continuance! But in sitting, Pen is an intent acolyte; could've been the portrait for any waiting Pre-Raphaelite angel, damosel, Maenad-crowd: that hair, that face, a certain sweet intensity.
"I was telling Dan I'd like to drop by sometime just to be social, but this isn't exactly a social visit: at least, it is not a social visit for pleasure. My preference! This is a social visit for messages of news, probably unwelcome."
SerafíneSera's housemates would be perfectly happy talking about Greek fusion tacos and cilantro sriracha and hand-made maize tortillas and artisan this-and-that and housemade free-range activated whatever. Sprouted things, maybe, ground back into other things: the origins and the pleasure of food, as a fetish for something like an authentic experience of the world. Sera is far less picky. She favors Pen with an interested and perhaps indulgent sort of half-smile as the other woman lists out the many iterations of tacos in the heavy bag and likes the combinations: of sounds, the certainty, the intent, the meaning, but doesn't really listen much to the many possibilities of breakfast taco. Shakes her head NO when asked if she is vegetarian or vegan and kinda glances down at the tacos and kinda pokes through them. Hmm.
Cant of her head then, all animal. Doesn't usually eat much, doesn't usually eat this early, but she gets that a gift must be accepted and without reservation, that there is a kind of ritual there, so when Pen asks if she can sit Sera nods er, yeah? and continues to listen and eventually finds one (truth: doesn't matter which) that she claims for herself. Nudges the bag over to Pen to take one if she wants one, takes a napkin too and wraps it around the foil and doesn't open the breakfast taco. Crumbs in the sheets, you know?
Ghosting smile on her neat little mouth (still sleepy) as Pen says she wants to drop by sometime just to be social and Sera would remind Pen that she and Nicholas have an open invitation to a party! pretty much anytime but: somehow Sera listens, absorbs, everything drifting over her features like water, right up to the quick narrowing of her brows, the quizzical bird-cant of her golden head.
"Oh. What's the news?"
mercury
Pen takes a taco too. The silver foil glints takes on a vibrant hint of color where it reflects Pen's clothing or perhaps Serafíne's bedspread, and she uncrumples it enough to fish out a small feta-crumple with her thumb nail and put it on her tongue, just a ritual taste. Because it is about the gift. The willworkers who meet Pen [Wizard-Enchantress About Town] out of context never get her name until they've asked. In context is different. There're rules.
There're a lot of rules. Some of them bind her fast, and she couldn't break from them without deep consequence.
Pen tucks one leg beneath herself, but the casual pose in no way detracts from a certain steady poise; there is an attenuated alertness to her eyes, lake dark usually bright bright now behind the soft-rose lenses, and red her mouth and red her hair and snow her skin. Fairy messenger, except that she is solid. Bone and blood, weight at the foot of Serafíne's bed, near Serafíne's knees (perhaps; who can tell under the bedclothes?).
"It seems apparent that the Union is about to make a push in Denver, and elsewhere; it is elsewhere that the push has already been felt most strongly, I am told. But Denver in particular is about to become quite important for the Union, and for those who are going to fight against it: which includes my Tradition. Have you met Orrin?"
There is more, but of course Pen isn't just going to talk and talk and talk and talk and talk over Serafíne. Her reactions or nonreactions are important; Pen is earnest.
SerafíneSo. So.
Pen says that something is apparent about the Union and a push and Denver and elsewhere and Sera, you see, breathes in. Her mouth is closed, this is all through her nostrils, something about the breath, the way she samples the air, seems as deliberate as every-other-thing about morning. Her head - well - aches, but it is a dull ache, a bit distant, enough to remind her that her body can hurt as well as it can heal. She would like a cigarette but she doesn't smoke indoors.
This is news, and it is news, honestly, that something in Sera quite suddenly does not want to receive while she's still In Bed, wrapped up in her fluff and down with her favorite stuffed rabbit stuffed somewhat unceremoniously beneath a pillow somewhere in the middle of the night/morning. There's an ear flopping out, and Sera pulls the rather small stuffed animal out from beneath her pillow and curl-slides her legs from beneath the bedclothes. She's getting up. No worries, Pen, the t-shirt she pulled over her head (The Ramones) is long enough to cover her ass. Her legs are bare. Long and a bit pink from the sleepwarmth, muscle evident beneath the skin when she moves, but only because there is so little fat to her.
"I haven't met Orrin. Maybe I've heard of him? Wanted to start a war on his own or something, Leah told me last summer. Sharks versus Jets with vampires and technocrats.
"Far as I can tell they've known we were here for years, haven't bothered us yet. Why now?"
Asks Sera, who is headed toward the bathroom. It's morning: her teeth need brushing.
mercury"I don't know," simply, and without despair or heaviness. Not knowing does not fill Pen with a sense of helplessness, or vulnerability. Not knowing makes Pen want to act, to consider. To quest.
Pen will wait until the sound of running water is off before continuing.
"Perhaps they have been preparing quietly for a while, after the last time. Perhaps there is someone new in power, and this new person wishes to make a point or sees some advantage. Perhaps there is something else going on, something Other." Slender pause. "Who stands to gain? I mean, I believe both sides benefit more from ...at least a cold war instead of a hot one."
This is offered quietly, but steadily; musing, though it is nothing she hasn't thought before and since the meeting with her tradition mates.
"And yes, that was probably Orrin you heard about. He was considering using the vampires as a distraction for the Union, but it doesn't look tactically viable now." Brief pause. She smooths a hand over the bedsheets, and if it seems like she should wait for Serafíne to return from bathroom before saying any more, this is when she does it. "Leah; of the Trinity cabal? What is she like?"
SerafíneWater runs and then does not. That's the way of water. There's a pocket door between the rooms and a cut of light from one into the other and Sera is perfectly content to brush her teeth in front of a stranger. See: she reappears in the doorway, leaning one shoulder against the frame, the sleepy tangle of her hair and the froth of paste in her mouth, brushing brushing brushing, and though she does not neglect the task, there is something subversively lazy about the way she goes about it. As if she had all the time in the world.
She lets Pen talk; and she listens. No need to pause but oh see: through the scrum of her hangover a kind of narrowing focus as Pen says that she believes both sides benefit from a cold war, not a hot one. Strange little thread of -
oh.
Then she disappears, back into the bathroom, this time closing the door behind her, to spit and rinse and run the water and pee and all the usually morning things and when she reappears she has added a pair of boyshorts to the t-shirt that is her morning ensemble. Black beneath the white tee.
"Leah's never really had the chance to be a girl. And I don't think she ever will, but if she's strong enough to survive her awakening, she can handle that."
There is a frown again, bisecting her dark brows. A step back, to some earlier thought. "How do I know that they're doing the gearing up? And not, this Orrin. And you, maybe?"
mercuryThat's a good question. Pen accepts it, doesn't quicksilver flash back with a retort; just accepts the question, and clasps her hands, forearms on her knees, leaning forward. Gravitas.
"You don't." Up go her eyebrows, as if to punctuate the truth of it. "I am from a house known for its martial prowess: I believe that it is important to fight. Because you love something - " Here Pen's brows draw together, an ardent tenderness, see, a care. " - something in the world, its people. As they are and as they might be." This faint smile: not helpless, because no. But aching, maybe: bittersweet. "But I don't believe in poking sleeping leviathans, just because somebody wants to get their exercise in. That's no good.
"So - right. You don't; I don't either, really. Know who began the gearing up, or who began the ball's rolling. What I do know is back in New York City and Boston there have been incidents, and the Order has declared a state of war for those areas. They expect it to spill over in Denver because Denver's an important location to the Union. Their laboratories here make one-third of the medical supplies for the organic soldiers. They've recently had a huge influx of personnel."
Brief hesitation. "There is - urgh. I don't suppose it would mean anything to you if I referenced a 'Manifestation from a mindscape'? Which knows Grace and Kalen?"
SerafíneThere is a knock at the door right about -
oh, there. Firm, not unassuming. Sera with this rather undulant hitching motion picks herself up from the frame of the bathroom door and ambles her way past the haphazard, strangely elegant vanity (the framed photo of frida kahlo prominent) to open it. A hand on the wood, this small opening. Just to see, you understand.
Then, Dan. Who is carrying a little tray with a pot of tea and two teacups. The kind with wedgewood roses and gilt edging and saucers, of course saucers.
She lets him in, naturally. He goes to set the tray with tea-things on a bare place atop the armoire, not before sliding a cork-pad beneath it to insulate it from the heat.
A beat of attention, strangely sober, strangely steady, cuts back to Pen. The same note as when Pen admits that yes: Sera doesn't know. Can't know. But: she listens. That framed sobriety, a neat concern.
"I know of a spirit - " Sera returns. Dan is still in the room, though he is leaving. If their closeness was not an indication of his awareness-of-magick-in-the-world, then certainly her casual address of things-other in front of him is. " - a sending of a Singer whom Kalen, at least, knows. But somehow I don't think that's what you mean right now?"
mercury"I don't believe so." Pen's forehead wrinkles.
"This Manifestation came from a - Mindscape, or was created by a Mindscape and then came from it - and has some sort of Technocratic connections. It warned Boston about the 'crats next moves and it seems as though it came to warn Denver, too, through Kalen and Grace. I'm not too clear about that. But apparently it spoke of a faction within the Technocracy which is at odds with the faction pushing for a resumption of the old bad violent vulgar hostilities."
"I'd really like to talk to somebody on the inside," she sounds wishful, wistful even. "Kalen's planning on trying to get in contact with it - him? The Manifestation identifies as male - again about it."
SerafíneA - rather long - beat, as Pen explains the Manifestation from a Mindscape and something about the technocrats and some unclear warning. The thread of tension in Sera's mouth and body, cutting through the skean of her present awareness, her hung-over morning. While Pen talks, Sera pours tea. A cup for herself. Another for the Hermetic, if she makes a sign that she'd like some. Then Sera wanders back across her room to the vanity where she unearths a half-empty bottle of Stranahan's and douses her Darjeeling with Colorado whiskey.
Yum.
William had contact from a technicat summer before last, when he googled the Technocracy. Someone calling himself White Knight, said he wanted to talk. I don't think anybody god back in touch with him. Mostly we made William stop googling the technocracy.
"Still. It might be a different way - " Pause. Tongue in her cheek. "In. If that's what you really want."
mercury"That's interesting," Pen says, and it is, to her. Avid creature of story gathering, as anybody with the winged messenger god for a namesake should be. She forgets herself, sometimes, forgets the details; but desire for tea does rouse her; some sign is a neat nod, yes please, and she'll cup her fingers around the teacup. "I'll ask him about it. He triggered this White Knight guy just by googling?" skeptical, not of the story but of the framework behind the story: must be more beneath the surface. "Must've got very lucky or very unlucky."
"Do you know Richard?"
Serafíne"Henry's son?" Sera waits for some non-verbal sign of acknowledgment. She's sitting on the edge of the vanity, now, her ass in Frida Kahlo's face, bare feet on the seat of the vanity stool, sipping tea-and-whiskey from the cup. "Met him once. At a Christmas party, or Yule or whatever the fuck it is the Verbena celebrate. He was being all broody and anti-social and staring out the window, so I asked him to dance.
"Apparently, he doesn't fucking dance." Quick little shrug, this spare elegance to it. All at once, you understand: over and done.
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