The bright washing sun competes with scudding clouds for dominance in the April sky and you'd never guess from the raucous game of ultimate frisbee on one of the big grassy swaths of greening lawn that there's a winter storm watch currently looming over Denver and its environs, that spring ski enthusiasts will have another foot or so of fresh snowfall if they go high enough into the mountains.
Right now: shorts and t-shirts and a frisbee that looks like a pink-frosted donut with a bite taken out. Fringe and beads and bare feet and painted toes and gladiator sandals and the musky scent of marijuana in the air and it's too early (she just woke up an hour or so ago and she's still nursing a particularly intense acid hangover) for a certain Cultist to join her friends chasing around the donut-frisbee, but hey, she can watch. Or pretend to watch? Who fucking knows, her glasses are both ridiculously dark and remarkably large and she could very well be napping behind them.
There's a big bottle of orange juice parked in the cool grass beside her. It is early evening. The sun is only just starting to fall.
GraceAhh, Denver. It'll be warm today, sure. Then, the weekend brings a high temp in the 30s and more snow. This is Spring, for you. It can never make up its mind.
Grace has dressed herself in jeans, sneakers, a t-shirt, and her bite-proof grey jacket today, although the jacket is unzipped to let the air in -- so one can see the giraffe wearing ten neckties on her tee, with the text "Trust me, I'm super professional".
There is, perhaps, more of a spring to her step than there has been, of late. Winter's melting, for now. Water's flowing in rivers. Things are breaking free, and soon Summer will make that a little more permanent. It's a good day. One that has Grace walking the trails here where monsters tread, with her attentions place firmly into the trees and sky, and not, apparently at her surroundings. Monsters should be afraid of her, not the other way around.
[Awareness?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (5, 5, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
NicholasIt's become a habit, walking in the park after work while he tries to process and decompress from the day. Nick finds his home to be a pleasant place, somewhere he looks forward to going to at the end of the day, but settling into his office or having dinner isn't a substitute for taking a few moments of silence where he doesn't have to listen to anybody else or try to project this air of detached competence or quiet empathy.
There aren't any winter storm clouds looming on the horizon, just the soft wash of sunlight that speaks to approaching summer. That, and the smell of marijuana that usually lingers around places like this, in Denver. He still isn't fully accustomed to walking out in public and seeking people smoke; and it doesn't bother him - it just is, and does.
The sailing frisbee catches his eye as he makes his way down the path. No shorts and T-shirts for him, just light gray pants and a pale pink shirt, the color of a first blush or of a drop of blood in a puddle, slight intimations of color. His hair was cut recently, which is to say that it's no longer as wild and overgrown as it had threatened to become last month. As is the style at present, the back and sides are shorn more tightly than the top, which spills out in front of him.
He watches people throw the frisbee back and forth as he walks, and he would have nearly passed them by had a familiar face not caught his attention next. Sera is behind a pair of sunglasses, but he makes note of her nonetheless and his trajectory changes. He lifts a hand as he approaches.
SerafíneWell: see? Her eyes must be open behind the dark glasses, because the creature lounging on the plaid picnic blanket lifts a hand to return Nicholas' wave. There is a hint of a smirk in the curve of her mouth, or maybe that is simply a grimace. Some little protest against the movement required.
She is as she always is: or at least as she always seems. Long and lean and lovely. Or: the intimation if not the fact of length; the suggestion of hunger, of desire, of want in both the concave curve of her bare stomach; and - well. Not lovely. Arresting perhaps, in that way that Grace, and even some of the sleepers around them, must certainly feel. What else can Grace sense? That sun-drenched, soaring resonance that that eminates from old bronze ring that Sera always wears on her right index finger. Nicholas, of course. And no suggestion of monsters.
Other than that wave, Sera doesn't much move or acknowledge Nicholas' approach until he is within actual hailing distance. Then she turns her head - gingerly, gingerly. This is the day-after. Every part of her aches. Every part of her welcomes the ache. The spread of her neat little mouth beneath her glasses: a wide flat smirk and Nicholas mirrored in the convex surface of her dark glasses.
"You look like you're about to sell someone some goddamned insurance."
So says the creature resplendent in British-flag bikini top beneath a faded black hoodie over denim cut-offs and torn fishnets. She has, at some point, taken off her battered combat boots and her almost-bare feet rest in the grass.
GraceMmm. Sera. That gut-wrenching feeling has her attention now, drawing her sight, making her change course. The trees, no longer the source of her fascination, don't honestly care.
Sera might.
"Sera!" she says, strolling up, sitting down next to her on the grass. There is also a wave to Nick somewhere in there.
"Do insurance salesmen wear pink shirts?" she says, honestly curious.
"I've been meaning to talk to you," she adds, quieter.
NicholasNicholas has a talent for mirroring other peoples' expressions, for picking up on their moods and reflecting them back and sometimes twisting them just so. He makes use of it in his job: it's how children learn to identify what they're feeling, having an adult frown when they are saying something sad or smile back when they are happy. It's equally important for adults.
So: he sees Sera, and there is this quick cut of his mouth, this way in which the corner snicks upward as though hooked. "That's because I am. Have you heard about our new life insurance policy?" A thought, a beat. "...I might actually consider that if I were terrible. I'd make a fortune."
He has stopped in front of her, though always always with an eye on the frisbee as it cuts the air. Nick got a black eye from a frisbee once, years ago.
Grace catches his attention next when she comes up on the two of them, and almost without thinking he shifts his stance to allow her space into the conversation and also to face her, or at least pull her into his line of sight. His brow furrows at what she says. "To me?"
SerafíneOh, here's Grace. Asking a very honest question about a very wry quip tossed off by a very hungover Cultist and again that sensation of arrest, of cessation as she shifts the direction of her dark, reflective glasses from Nicholas to Grace. A: very slow lift of one of her flat blond brows, expressive enough that it rises above the curving frame of the glasses. And lingers, because she's not really quite sure how to take Grace's question about insurance salesmen. For example: is it the sort of question that requires an answer?
Something in her decides that it is not the sort of question that requires an answer. Or: that she is too something-something-something after last-night and this-morning and hell, the last few weeks, the last few months, the last few years to have to answer if it does.
Her attention cuts back to Nicholas. Something about the cant of her head suggests that she catches the hint of that smirk carved back to her. And he cannot see her eyes but he can still somehow almost feel that flick of her attention: minute and precise and animal: to his mouth, then back to his eyes. The gleam of the dying sun in her glasses, his shadow long over the blanket, the grass. Might make another quip in that moment, but no. Sera mirrors Nicholas' question, though she does so wordlessly. Inquiry stitched into the lift of her chin.
Grace"Well, not... I mean, sure I could talk to you, but I don't have anything specific in mind," she says, to Nick, as though that question caught her off guard. It can be rather hard to tell who Grace is talking to, considering she so rarely makes eye contact.
"Sera. I had a run-in with a sysadmin. I got traced, but I'm not sure how bad. I'm no good at looking back in time to figure out what happened, you know? But you..."
Are totally unaware of what a sysadmin is, or why one would trace her... Right. Grace frowns, tries to figure out a better way to say this. "I felt something. Subtle. A hint of resonance."
NicholasNick shifts his weight to his other foot as he glances between the two women. He, too, is rather unaware in any specific sense of what a sysadmin is, other than what conclusions he can draw from the words themselves, and so: he listens.
SerafíneAnd here is Sera who can very well unhinge time. Pull it apart. Reel it backwards. Create within it currents as slow as molasses or as rippling-fast as some ever-accelerating black and white montage of a movie-bender and who does not know what a sysadmin is and who, on some deep and really rather important level, does not even believe in them.
When her iPhone works, it works by magick.
Sometimes, some nights, it does not seem to want to work at all.
Her attention hangs on Grace. She has been leaning back on her elbows, but now - a ripple of her flexible frame - sits closer-to-upright. Ow. Her head hurts.
"Like - " here a furrowed V of thought appears between the enormous discs of her glasses. " - yesterday? Someone was spying on you?"
Grace"No. It was a while ago. Month or so. When I was trying to figure out what happened to Alex," she explains, hopefully that's enough. Not going to go into specifics here in the park, is she.
She seems strangely okay with this -- accepting of the fact. What's done is done, and all. But what was done?
"But yeah. Possibly spying on me. I fought it off, but..." she trails off, waves an arm in the air.
NicholasNick looks between the two of them again, his eyebrows cutting a delicate arch as he listens to the talk of spying and figuring out what happened to Alex. It occurs to him that he has not yet met the man.
"Should I give the two of you some time?"
Grace"Why?" she asks Nick. "I don't mind you knowing. You're as welcome here as cupcakes, man. Stay. If you want."
KiaraWashington Park was a sort of nexus for the athletically inclined in Denver, as it happened. There were no small number of them tonight as the sun began to dwindle and sink into the horizon, cutting pathways around the lake and appearing only to weave a steady track over inclines and down again; vanishing into the distance.
Joggers. There was something so mundane and expected to them.
Amidst a world of chaos and uncertainty, lying on the grass surrounded by Frisbees and dogs being walked and the occasional carrying cry of laughter or the smack of a ball hitting the backside of a distant basketball court - there was an easy comfort in the banality.
Breaking away from behind a young couple pushing a stroller down by the glinting lakeside is a familiar figure; tall and lean with long dark hair sailing out behind her. Another runner by any other name but also - a Witch. The pagan known to some here as anything but a nameless addition to the Sleepers. She's slowing to a clipped walk, the Verbena; breathing hard and holding her hands against her side; her pace directing her toward a bench to warm down her muscles.
She's a surge of the Springtime Kiara, as she sets her leg up and stretches it out; a sweatshirt laced around a narrow waist; navy workout gear encasing her form. If she notes the presence of the others up on a shallow rise of grass, she's yet to make it clear.
Though the presence of earbuds and a small MP3 taped to her arm would suggest she's unaware - yet. Here then, was one half of their rescue team that had extricated Alexander from the Union. Nicholas alone perhaps knew the current condition of the other half - for her part, physically at least, the brunette seemed to be coping with the aftermath reasonably well.
SerafíneThere is rhythm behind them. The slap of plastic against strangers' palms. Bare feet against that solid spring grass, the cold soil beneath, warming yeah but still somehow in the grip of winter. The whir of the discs through the air: the twin miracles of propulsion and flight. Aerodynamics or what the fuck ever.
By now Sera is sitting forward, legs crossed beneath her, the picnic blanket rucked up beneathtthem from the movement. Golden curls a messy tangle in the failing light. She takes off her sunglasses here and gives Nicholas a brief, apologetic flash of a glance. Neat little compression of her mouth. Her eyes are a little bit bloodshot and her pupils are still rather-too-large. This hint of bruising beneath them: dark circles, something. That ache more evident without the shield of the glasses, but what the fuck does one expect? She's hung-over.
Breathes out here, Sera. Tried to order her thoughts for Grace and then: a flicker of something else. "You asked to talk to me," Sera reminds Grace, though there is something gentle in her tone. The bravado of her greeting to Nick earlier is long-since drained away. " - remember? Not him. So, you haven't made him feel quite as welcome as cupcakes, Grace. You know? Nick may not want to be a spectator to our conversation. He might even need to get home to start dinner."
Brief curve of her mouth here: the lilt of her chin, this neat, apologetic little gesture toward Nicholas before her attention cuts back to and rests wholly on Grace.
"Have you felt the resonance since then?"
Kiara[Oh yeah, we should do this for our next post. Mage-dar.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 6, 7, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )
Grace"Oh," Grace says. It honestly hadn't occurred to her that she might be edging someone out. "I'm sorry. I'll just..."
She takes a breath. Sera asks her something. "No."
But, she's distracted, giving that no to Nick's face, as she radiates confusion with hers. This is one of those times, right? When the rules of social interaction seem to have been missed. It makes her uncomfortable. Makes her want to...
"I should go. You think about it, okay, Sera?" she stands up, gets the attention toward the trees again. Trees are easier to understand.
NicholasIt doesn't take an especially perceptive person to note the confusion, as boldly as it has been sketched across Grace's features. Nick reaches out toward her as she stands up, motions for her elbow and ends up not grabbing hold just letting his fingertips rest there on the back of her arm. It's meant to catch her attention; little more. "Don't leave, Grace. I just stopped to say hello to Sera. You two should talk."
KiaraIt's a slow progression up the hill when she does notice the others gathered.
The earphones curled around her neck; her face flushed with recent exertion. Kiara Woolfe approaches feeling like the whirl of energy she is, at her core. Thriving, pulsing with life and the promise of vitality and renewal. She smells like sunshine and sweat, the Verbena and somehow; the sheen of it; the essence of that - absolutely feels at home on her.
She makes a slight outward arc to avoid collision with the game at play nearby and approaches from behind a tree; her fingers chasing over the bark.
"Hey."
A breathless greeting that seems to encapsulate them all from the dark eyed female; her mouth bent into a small match for it. The corner curled upward. She settles back against the tree and resumes stretching.
SerafíneSera's quiet, as Nick stops Grace. Doesn't pull her dark eyes with the too-large pupils from Grace except briefly, to greet Kiara with a wordless touch of her gaze as the Verbena approaches. A flicker back, and the Cultist slides her dark glasses back over her eyes and rises.
"C'mon Grace, we'll go talk." Except for the fishnets, her feet are bare. Damp grass clings to her skin. Tomorrow, they say, it will snow. Tonight, the Cultist starts to walk, barefoot in the cool spring grass, ambling pass the ultimate frisbee game in the warm spring park. She leaves behind: everything. The orange juice and the plaid blanket and her favorite Doc Martens and her pack of unopened kreteks and her favorite lighter lost somewhere on the blanket, everything.
Maybe she plans to return.
Maybe she assumes: effortlessly, naturally, that someone will always be trailing behind her to clean that shit up.
Serafíne(I am really sorry but as usual it is my bed time and I have to go to bed. Sera will go off with Grace and talk. Noel: IM me sometime and we can continue the scene. Andrew and Jacqui: I want a real scene sometime soon!)
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