A lover of books.

Spider

It is only in retrospect that he notices her, some examination of memory. Three Mondays ago at 2:00 p.m. outside the Bernie's Bagels, as he emerged with an Everything and a schmear: sitting on a bench advertising credit counseling services, unearthing something from an olive green backpack. The sort of person one overlooks. Drifting about the edges of the scene, you understand. Vagrant.

Something about that pack.

Perhaps the walking stick, the sense of transience: movement. --

Wednesday last: a different scene, a different hour. Well after nightfall and the moon somewhere in the scene, fickle but present. The weight of it in the sky. The way it moves.

There she was, in the alley behind his shop, shoulders back against the brick of the papergoods store around the corner, her pack unslung, the walking stick leaning against the brick. Chewing on something that made her mouth slick and red, browsing through a dumpster.

--

Sunday morning, crossing the street, half-a-mile from his home. The walking stick swinging and something about her stride that makes it seem ground-devouring. As if she were on the longest and most arduous of treks but would, and could, walk and walk and walk some more, across the ocean when she ran out of earth, across the sky when she ran out of water across this world and the next.

--

Monday, oh Monday, the little door to a little shop opens. The little bell mounted on the door: chimes, exited: A customer! A customer!

Here she is.

Gallows

Here she is.

Has she circled him? Does he now, Dominic of the Order of Hermes, the Hermetic whose names are the names of Christian martyrs and Christian philosophers, of scientists and of lords, look at her and think that it is odd?

He must. Perhaps, at the altar he keeps at home, at the beginning of a sanctum he has built, is building, is impressing his own view of the universe into and upon, because Will is everything, Will is fire, Will is animation, Will is the cold after the fire's come and gone, Will is the stillness that might still leap, perhaps at his home he has allowed himself to be influenced, to wander down yet another path of study.

He studies. He is always studying. The Order of Hermes is a tradition of readers and of scholars.

The little bell rings, heralds her appearance, and Adam is at his desk, reading a book about a hermit who it is said never died but only transmuted himself into a lick of salt on a promontory where there is still a lick of salt hermit-shaped that is unlucky for those who stand there but from which every hundred and seven years a book-tree grows and the books on the book-tree grow and might be plucked but then you must read them quickly before they rot and one of the books which will grow from this book-tree will hold the secret of the hermit and the book Adam is reading is a dry treatise on those who perished trying to find the hermit, so it is not as much about the hermit as it is about his death, about his life, about the unattainable

and here is a customer.

Or, no, perhaps not a customer. Adam finishes a page before looking up at the door; he feels as if he is in no hurry, because this is his shop, and while he is often overlooked by people who first come into his shop, they wander nearer him eventually or he calls out to ask them how he can help them when he decides he needs to direct them.

Perhaps he does that after he looks up from his book.

[Inaugural Awareness roll.]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 4, 5, 7, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

Spider

???? -4

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 4, 8, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) Re-rolls: 1

Spider

She feels like things. Like Things with a capital letter that has grown itself up from the smallest of scrawls, with a T that bridge the roof of one's mouth: these Things, which are not his sort of Things, but enough there that he may well take notice of her beyond the usual sort of notice one pays to a customer who is circling one. Who is coming and who is going, and who is crossing one's path with strange regularity even as she travels her own. It is difficult to name that feeling, but his is a tradition of namers so: the first thing that comes to his mind when he feels her Things is two words pushed strangely and thoroughly together: otherworlds.

And she smells like patchouli and marijuana and human ripeness and hearthsmoke.

Like ale, perhaps, and a hearty one, that has been spilled on one's shoes.

There is a hood today covering her variegated hair that seems deeper than it is, an olivine to match the pack that rests so easily on her back and within that hood a face so fine and cool and animate it seems to have been carved from marble, hewn from stone.

She looks up at the ceiling first, as if she were entering a cathedral, as if she were searching out the play of light on the domed roof from a clerestory, soaring-high, or entering a new place with a new sky, and laws of physics all its own.

Then down to the shelves and oh, the pitch of her head. Listening, listening.

Then to Adam, and with remarkable directness, this slow burn of a smile, as if she recognized him from forever-ago, or perhaps merely from just-now.

"Hullo." An Accent, as difficult to place as his own. "Perhaps you can help me. I'm looking for a book. I was told I could find it here."

Gallows

He narrows in on her, woman with Things feeling of otherworlds as she is and they do, but he doesn't quite know what it means yet. He curls his tongue against the roof of his mouth as he sometimes does to pronounce a word in the archaic and eternal language of the angels, in order to command, to undo or to reveal, but he has no word to scrape free. He is only curling his tongue thoughtfully, his considering a narrow thing. He considers how she looks around.

He considers her staff and her bag, and he sweeps his long-fingered fingers through his unschooled hair, a lick of messiness, a muss of unlicked scruff, then scratches the edge of his bearded jaw, meditative.

"I'm listening."

Spider

Now she is looking: around again, and there is something searching about way she looks, the way she takes her time to see everything that has laid itself out before and around her. The disorder of the shelves, oh familiar, the slow slide of dust to ruin. The display tables and the nooks and the crannies and the crannies and the nooks.

The ceiling, again, as if it were far, far higher than it has any right to be.

"Volume Seven of J. W. Roth's series. The Not-So-Open-Door. I'm told that you hosted her, on your - Michaelmas, was it? Or," a small pause, the supple thread of a smile. "Eostre, perhaps. Regardless. A signed work, if you have one.

"If not, an unsigned will do."

--

He hosted JW Roth, yes. Though not so recently as Michaelmas, and of course, this was the debut of Volume 2, 13 years after the unheralded appearance of Volume 1. The series contemplates 13 volumes in total, at least per its many sub and secondary titles,

Il Pentamerone, or the Tale of Tales, and Not the One by Battista, Either, Being a Concise and Illiteral Explication of the War on the Other Side of Veil of Sleep in Thirteen Volumes.

but there is to date certainly no Volume Seven.

Gallows

His fingers are curled under his throat, near his adam's apple, and his elbow is on his desk. He has not stood quite yet, and while he listens to the woman speak, his long fingers reach for a pen. He always has pens around, knight of wands, king of wands, page of wands, wizard that he is; pens of all different makes, pens heavy to the hand, pens of wood and pens of metal, pens hand-crafted and hand-made, and the pen his fingers close around is blue and silver. He twirls it.

"Hmm," a placeholder. His expression is bemused, and he adjusts his awkward frame all at once, hauling a receipt paper or a paper bag scrapling near him to write down JW Roth and then a circle around the name and then around the circle a symbol an Enochian sigil the beginning of one which will soon be crossed by another.

He takes his time when he decides to Look at something, doesn't he? He does, just.

"Would an earlier volume, signed, work instead? That is, erm, it is a gift, or for you? The signed versus the unsigned, I've never known a lover of books turn away a signature."

[Adam! wants to do a Prime/Time scan of Ms. Stranger, to see whether there are any anomalies, to see what the shape of that otherworldyness looks like in a magicky way and if it is out-of-sync. So! -1 for Taking Time, -1 for Focus.]

Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (2, 3) ( fail )

Gallows

[Totally gonna extend. Hermetics do not fail.]

Spider

"An earlier volume?" An alert gleam from her eyes, which are hooded in that moment. The spark behind them seems to mirror some sunken and half-remembered sky. She is looking directly at him in a manner that few people can manage with strangers, and fewer still can manage with him but there it is, the sloe-gleam spark of her eyes on his. The sudden impression of vastness behind them.

We belong to everything.

"Which one?" She pauses, and smiles, and the smiles belongs to herself, to herself, only. "Signed you say? How many do you have?"

He asks whether it is a gift, whether she would have it for herself.

This question she does not answer.

Gallows

A pause, and then he taps his pen against the sigil, setting it down in the next moment the better to lean on his forearms, folded against his desk.

He is not slovenly, but he is messy; he is a dusty bookshop clerk, unable it would seem to stand straight, weighed down by his hair, by his own considering eyes. A pause, and then he smiles a smile that carves a dimple into his cheeks, moves his eyebrows, draws tension-wrinkles out around his eyes.

"The first one?" His eyebrows lower. "Listen to this pitch: The number one is special. Ain Soph Aur. As many ones as we have or do not have, they always start at the same place. And I didn't say," not quite a laugh; no, not quite. "How many do you need?"

[The extendinging! WP HERMETICS DO NOT FAIL.]

Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (4, 6) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Spider

"Everything she touched."

--

The woman is inked. She is worked. She has gems in her cheeks and sigils stain her skin. There is a certain degree of imperiousness when she makes her desire known.

"Perhaps. I will see the first one, and know from thence if I require more."

The walking-stick has been laid aside by now, near the door, in precisely the sort of place one would look for such a thing, abandoned but only temporarily. The olive-green pack is on her back, and is smaller than it should be, than it would be, for someone who spends her life on the road.

And yet: beneath all that, below it or above it, she is also quite thoroughly ordinary. A vagrant. A drifter. A wanderer, alone.

--

And she is within-time and also out-of-time. Something in her or of her or about her is old, old, old. Older perhaps than anything in the room. Resonant with age that seems both remarkable and somehow veiled. The way an avatar, ancient but close to the surface. She is also: wrapped right 'round with a magic that is both present and otherworldly. Ritualized and strange.

Gallows

His gaze rakes over her; this gaze that is a fork for coals, for stirring up light, seeing what's buried. That's how his gaze rakes; but he is ordinary, too, is Dominic Adam Julian Gallowglass bani Bonisagus, ordinary and listening, accepting the flat knife of her unmatching arrogance and her strange requests just as he'd accepted the strange requests of JW Roth, too, calculations and measurements according to the stars and the planets, because after all: these things make sense, these things are ever-present even though most are too dim to use them.

"I will let you see it," he says, meaning 'and nothing more, for now.' Because that is how deals work, isn't it? A hint, a suggestion. An ordinary exchange of words, each dealer alone. Alone is how man sharpens his Will.

And he does go back, back, back, an eye on the mirror, to see what he's got in stock, to lay out a book closed so no signature is seen.

Spider

There is a rhythm to a negotiation, a certain ritual to the act of bartering for which Adam seems wholly prepared. He reads people - even strangers - so very well. He finds her: nigh to unreadable, which seems to be just as precise a skill as deciphering the grace notes hidden beneath the immediate and the obvious day to day.

He lays out the book. She does not betray her greed for it, not in those first moments, when she demurs that there is no value for her, in it, whatsoever. Doesn't he have others -

Perhaps there are -

--

Adam does not remember the night of JW Roth's reading. Not precisely, and this is the first time he has taken note of the fuzziness of his own recollection of it. Oh he remembers the correspondence before and the preparations and he remembers the strange darkness of the streets surrounding, after. All the streetlights had gone out, and all at once. He remembers, too, her face as being quick remarkably ordinary. Round, with apple cheeks and wisps of gray to distinguish her otherwise dull brown hair. A strange and small assortment of attendees. Too many for the haggard ring of chairs he had gathered, too few to fill up the space.

He has no records of the number of volumes sold that night, but JW Roth left behind 13 volumes of the new book, each signed. Perhaps he put them on display for a few days. Perhaps he tucked them away on the shelves.

There was: little call for them. She is an acquired taste, and the first volume was published 13 years ago, and no publicity other than her strange little reading at his odd little shop heralded the publication of the second.

And yet: when he lays them out for the stranger in his shop today, slowly, slowly slowly, haggling each to his, he brings them out for the strange and he finds that there are but ten left. Three are missing - gone. Sold or perhaps even stolen. The stranger leafs through the remaining, and he has these glimpses of a strange, cramped and scribbled script all crabbed in the margins. Opaque as she is, she has moments of breathlessness reviewing whatever the volumes contain. Treats each differently, almost reverently, and buys the ten remaining for a sum that will certainly pay a fair portion of Sara's 'round the world odyssey.

She wants the remaining three. Surely he can search his records and contact the buyers on her behalf so that she may attempt to complete her collection and she promises to return on the morrow to collect what information he can provide, or perhaps to persuade him to search further.

Adam wraps up the remaining ten volumes of JW Roth's work in crisp brown paper, ties them all in twine.

Whatever he does or does not do to follow-through on the stranger's request, though: she does not return. Not the next morning. Not for days thereafter.

The Hamburgler.

Serafíne

latelatelatelatelatelatelatelatelate, so late some people are starting to think it early, but An Arch Key keeps the strangest hours and strangers come to it and go from it and sell or purchase books sometimes according to the moon's phase or how the planets are aligned with regard to the serafim.

Here is: at this hour - a customer! That is what the trill of the little bell on the front door says: a customer! a customer!

It does not tell Adam that the customer! is dressed like a hamburger, really actually a cheeseburger, with a lovely little ruffle of lettuce encircling her midsection and arms,

but she is.

Adam

But where oh where is Adam? Could he have fallen asleep, somewhere? Could one of his employees be working tonight? No; his valiance, his relentlessness, it is pervasive and present. He is upstairs in the stacks and when he hears the ring a ling a ling he stretches and sighs all long and lanky and awkward and he heads down the stairs and Sera surely he feels her and then feels less of a rush. Sera has bought things before but she is not a customer. Anyway: here he comes, hair all tousled, teeshirt white, ducking his head to say, "Hallo!"

But wait, what? As he reaches the landing, there is a slow double-take, eyes gone away then back.

Serafíne

"Hi."

He feels less of a rush when he senses down there and she's wandering, you know, familiar with the space and the crannies and the nooks and the nooks and the crannies and sort of casually searching about to see whether or not the ferrets might be hiding uhm, in that potted plant or in the cookbooks (is there a cookbooks section? at least a collection of Anarchist Cookbooks, right?) or wherever strikes her strange fancy.

She looks so odd, really, in the boxy, quite-nearly-skin-colored knit that defines the bun and has her all swathed up, with a high neckline and her boobs actually covered up for once and so on.

Sera's burger sweater is fortunately quite short.

She has the loveliest legs that look far longer than they actually are.

"Whaddya think?" she asks, and then lifts her hands and does a slow twirl, showing off. "There were sesame seeds but they kept falling off."

Adam

He has stopped on the landing, just beneath that spill of stairs, books on either side, arches of them, book-world, books winging, paper leaves everywhere but no wind will stir them it would need be a tempest and in a tempest the sound of leaves stirring is nothing at all. He looks at her legs. Of course he looks at her legs. They're legs to look at, twirling in that whatever the hell it is as she is. He looks at her legs and then he looks at her sweater and he looks at her face and then he looks at the godamned sweater again because he doesn't know what to do with the sweater and he rakes his fingers through his hair, causing it to stand up divided into two devil horn twists lick of Dream-madness.

He says, "I think," carefully, "that maybe the sesame seeds were trying to escape. And that it's very short. Where did you get that thing?"

Serafíne

Sera closes her eyes and turns her head to the left and makes a noise that sounds itself in her throat. Like a hum: which could be speculation or consideration or pleasure or some combination of all of these lovely things and the way they wrap themselves around both: her, and her skin, and the darkness inside her skin.

She hears the care in his voice, must hear it and glances up then, sharper than you'd expect to see, that look she gives him, sidelong, sideslung.

Somehow her features - those sharp sharp lines - conspire with each other to make it seem sly. Then she reaches down and kinda pulls out the burger-shirt and frowns down at it that strange sort of look because it's not that far as she considers it.

"I thought it was too covered up. Can't see my boobs. I usually let people see my boobs."

"I'm practicing. For Halloween."

Adam

His gaze sweeps toward her chest for a moment, but only for a moment. He can control himself, and impulses exist but he isn't indulgent. Adam inhales deeply, exhales. His shoulders rise and fall and he leaves the landing in front of the stairs to lean instead on one of the shorter bookshelves near Serafíne.

"People won't expect you to be too covered up," and he is ironic, now; he is an ironic man, even sweeping his hand across the bristles on his jaw. Adam needs to shave; it is getting out of hand. "That makes it more like a costume, surely. I think you may want to try again. Giant Hamburger sweater," a pause, and a shrug. "You look fine, but it's..."

"You didn't make it, did you?"

Serafíne

"What if I did?" Sera tosses back and her voice is soft and her eyes are soft, they have that strange combination of soft shadow and implicit light one finds in tropical grottos. The suggestion of an intimate space while all around is blasted bright.

Something about her is vulnerable. Something about her is always vulnerable, but one must understand that as deliberate: as much a choice as anything else.

Perhaps even: as magic. Inherent, implicit, bound right up in her heart and skin.

Her voice is soft, even though they are rather far apart. "What would you say then? Would that change it?"

A little smile near the end. She's fiddling with the lettuce ruffle with her right hand.

Adam

He is looking at the lettuce ruffle and at her fingers on the lettuce ruffle and the way the lettuce ruffle shifts and he is wondering something, something to do with ruffles, something to do with hamburgers, something to do with -- who knows what. He isn't saying it aloud, exactly, and Adam is a reserved young man, someone who reserves most of his opinions for those he thinks should hear them, someone who is self-contained and not altogether nice. He doesn't feel like being cruel to Sera. He has no reason to. He likes Sera. But he smirks, faintly.

"Because I want to know, and because if you made it, I'd guess your next costume might be as terrible, but if you pickd it up your next costume doesn't have that excuse. Why don't you go as a fire?"

Serafíne

"The only shit I make," Sera returns, with this expression curving her mouth that could be a smirk of her own, but may well be something else, altogether. " - is music. I collect other people's things, though. The things they sink themselves into."

A small, hook-shouldered shrug that shows just a bit more leg than she is wont to do.

"Girl who made this also knitted a cozy for a bike to make it look like a thoroughbred. I like it.

"Did you say I should go as fire because of my name?"

See, she does know what it invokes.

Adam

"No. I said you should go as fire because, when you twirled, that's what I thought of," and the faint smirk is still present; see how narrow it is? But also pensive, and he touches his jaw again, the shadow of the beard, knotting it and looking at the door. "Seems like a good versatile costume. What should I go as? Where do you go for Halloween anyway? I think," a reflective pause, "we're doing some sort of poetry scary story event here."

Serafíne

"I don't know." Sera remarks, with this strange little shrug again, and a stranger little smile that feels both full of presence and full of absence. She has: curled her fingers into the hem of the burger-sweater and is watching the shadows they make against the knit, pulling, pulling, pulling. "Last year I was infected with a disease by some rogue technocrats who then kidnapped me to put me in isolation and watch me die.

"So I kinda missed Halloween.

"And that was my first one in Denver I don't like scary stories but I like poetry. Maybe I'll come."

Adam

His eyebrows crawl up. Dark they are, like his hair; he should have a shadow, shouldn't he? He can't be noir, can't be mystery, without a shadow. But his eyebrows crawl up, and he studies Serafine's features. They're striking, the shape of her nose, the shape of her jaw; they strike him.

He says, measured, "Last year, I was in the Swiss Alps, listening to someone butcher Poe and a thunderstorm. I haven't passed out candy for a while. I wonder if Sara," which sounds a lot like Sera, "passes out candy? Shit."

"You should come. I doubt the stories will be as scary as rogue mirror shade diseases. Do you celebrate the Day of the Dead?"

Serafíne

"You mean, All Soul's Day?" The creature in the absurd burger-sweater-worn-as-a-dress gives Adam a near, perfectly contained shrug. "Not really. I like Pan, though, enough that I would.

"If he did. Dee always makes funky cookies for it, though. And maybe I will come."

A beat. A pause.

"Who's Sara?"

Adam

"My aunt. This is her shop; she is a consor," matter of fact, that. And without discrimination. "She married and went off on a world tour, so asked me to keep an eye on things and to house and ferret sit. Who is Dee?"

Serafíne

"Dee's my housemate. Housemate-bassist," says the girl in the hamburger (CHEESEBURGER) sweater. She is sort of circling around now, looking for a place where she might perch her ass. She likes to perch her ass, which makes sense when you consider the levels of trauma to which she subjects her feet on a daily basis. Those shoes.

"So you're just the ferret sitter, Ruse isn't really yours? Where is he, anyway?"

Adam

"He's at home," Adam says, and see, he has a faint smirk; it is the ghost of a smirk; it is the shadow of one, wryness. "Getting to know his new friend and exploring a rather lot of tubes."

There are, of course, bookshelves where-upon one might perch one's ass, and a table with some books on display. Even a railing, up from the front entrance, by that stair. Even the stairs, which Adam is still standing near; must bypass Adam the guardian for that coveted perch, though.

Serafíne

"I wish he was here," and Sera has a faint - well, call it a smile, a faint smile, a faint curve to her mouth that would be very, very difficult to read as anything like a smirk, though there is something rather wry about it, there is also this nascent softness. The fog of warm breath against cool glass.

And she is, indeed, bypassing Adam the guardian for the coveted perch on the stairs. Sera is not shy about claiming the space she wants, requires in the world. See, she: slips past him, thumbs fiddling with the cuffs of her sweater. Fiddlefiddlefiddle.

"Not that I dislike you." Now the sliding wryness, lovely, as she tips her chin upward and finds him again, with a tracking-gaze that suggests, you know, some altered state of consciousness. "You weren't rock climbing in the Alps, were you?"

Adam

He is generally quite serious. He can laugh, but he doesn't very often. He can smile, and he is not a miser, but he doesn't smile as often as some do come to that, either. He is reserved, but his reserve is containment and pride, it is watchfulness; it has nothing to do with bashfulness or awkwardness. He laughs now, a guffaw-heh, and his eyes crinkle up at the corners.

The laugh was for 'not that I dislike you.' His response to it will have to be truncated, stop there, because: he wasn't rock climbing in the Alps, was he? Adam is serious again.

"Not last year, although I have gone rock climbing in the Alps before. Every path, once you're high enough, feels like rock climbing. Do you ever fast?"

Serafíne

"I did." Sera has located her perch and drawn her knees up, she has wrapped her arms around her knees and settled her chin on one of them. She likes the contact, the nobbly feel of her knee beneath her chin. All that bone, the way her body curves into the moment. She is: considered. Hears her voice and his, "with Jim. You never met him, did you? Last year. From everything, for a ritual.

"Hawksley said it didn't seem like me."

A brief pause, her mouth seamed. Thoughtful, humming so that the bones in her inner ear vibrate.

"I have been lately, too. Just sometimes.

"Not from everything, though. Why?"

Adam

"You're dressed like a hamburger. It leads to questions about vegeterianism," Adam says, and then: "What ritual does it help you with?"

Serafíne

Her eyes are damp when she glances up at him, the gleam softened by the dark sweep of her lashes. A moment's hesitation, then -

"I had an encounter with one of the Fallen. I touched his mind."

She glances down. Away, her breath bated, narrow shoulders curving beneath that absurd sweater in an expressive little shrug.

"So I'm trying to feel clean again."

Adam

"Ah," he says. His arms are folded casually across his chest, his head is down because Serafíne is for once much shorter than he is, sitting perched as she is. "And his mind touched yours. I'm glad to hear you're being," a pause, "proactive. How long do you plan to fast for?"

Planning, time limits: the questions he asks.

Serafíne

"He had," quiet, this, and at a bit of a remove. Which is strange of course, because she is not the sort of creature who ever keeps herself at a remove from, you know, anything. Still. This presence. This preciseness. This deliberate and perhaps even deliberative distance. " - and effect. The opposite of a shield. Not meant to keep me out, but to pull me in.

"He's dead though."

A shunted gaze, through the spindles of the bannister.

"I don't know how long. I don't plan shit. Hawksley said I should find something that makes me feel clean, even for just a minute. And do it. And then do it again.

"And do it again, until it becomes real.'"I'm better now, than I was." A short breath, still not looking at him.

" - have you ever - encountered? One?"

Adam

"Yes," he says, and he has long eyelashes. He is not a good-looking or handsome young man; he is average, even before Arcane comes to make his features less than memorable; average, with the good and the bad in equal measures, nothing special, a background piece, a pawn instead of a knight (or a knight who looks like a pawn). But he has long eyelashes like he's some kind of Romantic poet, and they bat down. He does not sound bland, but relentlessly - direct.

"I have. I don't know many awakened individuals who haven't run across their work, and I am sad to say that -- " He pauses, abruptly, drawing himself up short: "Ah. Well, yes. But I did not get sucked into its mind; I didn't feel how it looked at the world crawling all over the inside of me. I can imagine, only."

"They're ..." He pauses. "Did you get free on your own; or did he die and that's how the effect ended?"

Serafíne

"It's hard to say." Sera, quiet, rubbing her knuckles over her cheek. All of this is long-enough-ago by now that she doesn't shudder overtly when she thinks of it, long enough ago that the gleam of tears remains - merely - in her eyes. Doesn't spill.

She has this odd little smile, which is rather far away, and glances at him slantwise, sidelong.

"Everything happened really fast. He might've let me go, but I lashed back at him and knocked him out, and he fell from the boat he was on into the water, and drowned.

"Hawksley says I didn't kill him. I just removed his ability to stop the water from killing him. I dunno. I should probably go."

an ancient key

Adam

Night Owl Books keeps odd hours. Today it opened at five in the afternoon and will stay open until five am. Today one of Adam's employees (Sara's employees, really) was called away by a family emergency, and Adam, as a kind boss and a careless one, said that would be all right. Today a local Denver artist by the name of Anouar Taaffe has come out with an art book entitled Golems, Salt and Dybbuks, full of staged photographs around Denver's Union Station and metro-lines as well as the nearby State Parks. The art book has a theme and the theme is Jewish folk beliefs (or Kabbalistic folk beliefs) translated into an expression of a thriving but sorrow-stricken subculture.

There is a pyramid of these near the door because there will be an event at two-thirty am for the book and its author. The backdoor to the off-limits employees only area is open and there are tubs of earth visible on the floor, as well as some rearrangement of tables and certain shelves, those that aren't built-in maze-like to the building.

The front door is not locked, because this is a shop, but Adam is playing with Ruse on his desk as well as Ruse's new friend, a ghosty white ferret whose name is not Ghost.

Serafíne

Awareness

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) Re-rolls: 1

Serafíne

(and for Mssr Adam.)

Dice: 4 d10 TN5 (3, 4, 8, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 4 ) Re-rolls: 2

Alicia

Alicia has been in here for not-quite an hour. Just long enough to get the shit-shooting out of the way and disappear into the mythology section. She hasn't said anything about the tab she may or may not intend to have him take her name off of. They can deal with that when she pays for the book she's reading.

She does intend to pay for them. This isn't a library. The place won't stay open by sheer force of will.

Or maybe it will. Maybe Adam is the sort of wizard who can keep his electricity going and the bill collectors off his ass with a couple of rituals renewed every so often. She hasn't asked yet. She's been hiding in a corner somewhere for the last not-quite an hour.

Adam

[Sera's awareness cares not for Arcane.]

Serafíne

Her senses are open because her senses are always open and that is how she was made to be, and it is late enough that the streets are dark and early enough that they are not yet empty, and she does not know the day or hour, except that she knows her place quite precisely in both of them.

A certain street a certain door a certain-time-of-day when the sky is still skimmed with light and the earliest stars are coming out of hiding. Hard to see them in the city, but people who believe in them know they are there.

The unlocked front door opens because this is a shop and maybe there are bells because this is a shop and the shopworkers need to know when the door has swung: one way or the other, open for a customer, or closed behind her.

Sera.

It's not cold outside but it cools more quickly after sunset and there's a moment when she's standing just inside the closing door when she seems surprised or puzzled to find herself here. Tips her chin back, golden hair swinging down her spine, and glances up at the ceiling, like she's curious. Like oh, hey. ceiling. Like a bookstore is a strange place to find oneself, as strange a place as anywhere else.

Sera is wearing spike-heeled thigh-high leather boots laced up with criss-crossed chains and a tiny leather skirt and a Jesus and Mary Chain t-shirt (white) over a black bra beneath a black hoodie. Her hands are in the pockets.

She breathes in. Feels Adam just as surely and strongly as she feels Alicia. Still feels, most days, something else too.

That's okay. "Oh hey." And she smiles, a very simple sort of smile. "Ruse."

A very simple sort of pleasure she's already crossing the shop to enjoy. Seriously, who gives a fuck about books when there are ferrets around?

Adam

He is not generous: not with his time and not with his books. He is not generous at all, Adam. He is greedy. He stays sleepless so he can finish reading an interesting chapter or paragraph or page in spite of his body's demands because he wants to. He allows the Awakened individuals of his aquaintance back into the employees only room sometimes because they're special they're not dumb sleepers they're already forces to be reckoned with and he wants to.

He wants to.

But his lack of generousity doesn't (always) make him a jerk. He doesn't usually want to be a jerk to people. Some people he even finds acceptable, for non-Hermetics.

Alicia came in, they talked, she wanted to look through the books, he didn't want to be her shadow; he stayed with the ferrets after an, "Ask me if you need anything," and she might have heard him laugh once, a bark that is surprised with itself and husky and moves his whole godamned body into a hunched little C.

The white one (not completely white; there is a dapple of caramel on its back) is being bullied, running around a tall stack of books and startled every time Adam puts his hand down into rearing back then gingerly placing a paw on his knuckle and the signet ring (a sign of Saturn) he is wearing on his Jupiter finger, the stone Carnelian for Venus and rubbed with White Lead for properties that are conducive to a ritual he performed (chaunted).

Here comes Sera, and his expression shifts -- a subtle thing, that just-surfacing smirk. He is a smirker, it is sad to say, a truth. "Hullo, Serafíne. Ruse says 'hello,' but he might be distracted. He's got a new friend you see."

Alicia

Who gives a fuck about books when there are ferrets around? People who think ferrets are creepy.

As the front door jangles open and the voices at the front of the store kick up a conversation Alicia considers whether she wants to be rude or whether she can find it in her heart to mark her place in the book she's going to buy anyway. It's a heavy matter to consider.

In the interlude between consideration and action comes her voice from further inside the store.

"HI SERA."

Serafíne

Sera comes right up to Adam's desk, she doesn't much care for personal or private space and she sees Adam, you understand. Sometimes he retreats and is a shadow behind the goddamned ferrets but quite often she sees him as directly and wholly and entirely as she sees everything else.

Feels everything else.

And so she looks up at Adam as he says her full-name and catches the leading edge of that surfacing smirk and her eyes are tender as a bruise, rimmed with dark dark liner but clear behind it, this dark and clarified blue. Up, just once, then back down to the ferrets, that smile (unguarded) resurfacing as she watches them tussel, the sinuous muscularity of their little bodies, reaching out to stipple the desk-top with her own fingers, hoping to entice Ruse-and-Friend closer to her own hand.

"He looks like he's - " and there is something glassine about her tonight, which becomes evident for example when Alicia shouts her name. A momentary tension, a bracing-for or rallying-of before she lifts her right hand from the desk and waves back to Alicia.

"Alicia, hey." Back to Adam. "You guys know each other?"

Adam

[Perception (Specialty: People) + Awareness. Hmm. Sera. 'Sup? Are you traumatized?]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 6, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 5 ) Re-rolls: 1

Serafíne

Hey, god. She's glancing away at him, flashing that reached-for smile when Adam decides to look at her, really look at her, and she's not thinking about it and he sees it immediately because he's looking at her and he's looking for it; wondering about it. Sera doesn't have any skill at dissembling. Really: it's all there to be read if you want to read.

So yeah, traumatized: some kind of darkness that has nothing to do with a break-up but is still wrapped up in grief and darkness and a kind of loss. She's also healing, this is recent, but long-enough-ago that she can smile, at the antics of Adam's ferrets.

Adam

HI SERA. Alicia from the corner, like a boggart or a House-spirit. The just-surfacing smirk gets wider for an instant and draws out the crinkle-lines around his eyes; they're almost merry, they could be merry, they at least connote a sense of humor, because crinkly-eyes always do. Blame the paradigm of Santa Claus.

Adam folds his arms across his (thin [no athletic prize]) chest and straightens, leaving the ferrets to Serafíne. Who is always, utterly, beautiful; who he always has to look at for a moment, no matter what she is wearing, how far from his 'type' she might be -- because Serafíne: what an arresting woman. And there is something glassine about her, tonight; so Adam looks at her for a second longer than he might usually, before glancing over toward Alicia's dark and gloomy corner.

"Yes." He doesn't elaborate because he's not a social host. There's space for Alicia to elaborate, of course.

Meanwhile: Ruse and Friend. Ruse is actually quite pleased to see-smell Serafíne because Serafíne means attention. Ruse is at the edge of the desk on Ruse's hindlegs looking for a good dangle on Serafíne's clothing to snag and pull and climb. Friend is hiding behind the stack of books, humped a little like a slinky caught mid-fall. Friend is ready to flee.

Serafíne

Ruse will doubtless find a good dangle. The hem of the unzipped hoodie if nothing else, stretched out, less black and more worn-through black, victim of a dozen washes, that sort of coloration, and soon as Sera turns around and sees Ruse standing up like a person which is so fucking adorable she'll reach for him, hold out her left arm, the cotton cuffs of the hoodie overstretched, loose around a wrist stacked with leather-spiked and leather-wrapped bracelets. Sera has a spikey-ring across three fingers of her left hand, silver or maybe iron, and another ring, beaten-bronze, on the index finger of her left hand, both of which catch little bits of light and wink back at whomsoever glances their way.

Yes. Adam says, and perhaps Alicia says nothing or goes back to her book.

Serafíne glances up once, her dark eyes on Adam's, steady. "Cool." - before they drop away again, and if Ruse hasn't found a hook already well here comes that left arm, yes, her fingers curled together the way one curls one's fingers, reaching for a half-wild thing.

She knows about half-wild things.

"He's shy," Sera, eyeing Friend, humped and hiding and ready to flee. That half-smile carving lovely across her mouth again. "Doesn't know that you can see like all of his back above the books."

Adam

Cool. He glances back at Serafíne, and the glance slides like a bead on wire; each woman has an end of the wire, right now, even if one of them isn't technically visible. He could look in the big moon eye silver mirror above the door, deterrent for thiefs. Adam has only caught two would-be thieves since he came to Denver, took up residence in the bookshop. He did not react in a manner unfearsome in either case. He doesn't think Alicia's going to steal; it's all mirror anecdote. He glances at the mirror, then back down at Friend.

"It's all right." Whisper-ghost of accent and slang, on that all right. "She seems smart enough." See now? He can be nice (enough). His arms stay folded but he lists to the side and his arm rests against the wall/bookcase by his desk, because standing isn't restful.

Ruse pounces Serafíne's arm, hug-attacking it before attempting to clamber up. Ruse has grown since the last time Serafíne saw him, but just a little, and he won't get too much larger. He is certainly larger than the ghost-y cream and caramel gelato-coloured beast who has begun to inch-worm away from the stack of books as if he knows that they're talking disparagingly about his hiding place. Then it sees Ruse going up Serafíne's arm and decides suddenly to charge:

War! The last second will see a sudden veering away if Sera so much as makes a sound or moves a muscle.

"When's your band going to play somewhere again?" Adam asks.

Serafíne

Sera is alas moving a muscle she is moving several muscles, her muscles were made to be moved and her arm is being pounced by a ferret and oh, ferret! is so animal and so thoughtless and so adorable that it unlocks the gates of the smiles she did not quite understand she was guarding.

Turning her arm like a coil to cradle the animal that will not be cradled and bring it closer, to marvel over his weasel-y little whiskers and impertinent pink nose and sharp little eyes and laugh when he clambers up from the bough of her arms to perch on her shoulder and burrow through the curtain of her hair, which unlike the too-low stack of books is an excellent ferret-y hiding place, variegated, the dark roots and the blond, disordered curls and Sera sees that attack and she's kinda bracing for it and here it comes but oh!

peace breaks out, or at least a momentary strategic retreat.

When's her band going to play somewhere again?

A little shrug, the errant sort that feels younger than she really is.

"Dunno. It's my fault. I keep telling Dan I'm gonna go to London soon, he shouldn't book anything. Then I don't go. Why? If we get a gig are you gonna come?"

Adam

He watches the Friend scamper, although scamper isn't the exact right word. The Friend-ferret, the pale-ferret, wants only to find a place to curl up. There is tube on the floor -- there are a couple of tubes on the floor, and jangly ferret-toys, and ferrets are musky creatures, dense and aromatic (sure), as Sera can no doubt tell with Ruse perched as he is hiding in her hair. The pale ferret gets down from the desk carefully, pausing on this level of that drawer and this level of that stack out of fear, getting stuck once but it's all right Adam lifts the thing and puts it down. Promptly: into one of the tubes. The tube begins to spin. Ferret-shadow within. Ruse looks down, watching, peeking through the fall of Sera's hair.

Adam, with a faint smile. "Can you sing anything in Ancient Greek?" It's not a non-sequitor; he wants to know. "

Serafíne

Sera inhales ferret-musk. Feels the tiny little feet on her shoulder through layers of cotton. Is still smiling that neatly framed smile that seems so lovely and vulnerable and open.

Just, you know, happy.

Above or inside or around or beneath or within everything else. All the things that can be contained, without thought or limit.

And hey, Ruse, she herself smells musky. It's the marijuana smoke in her hair.

"Hmm." More inquisitive than thoughtful, the curl of her mouth. "Say something in Ancient Greek."

Adam

He considers for a moment, and then he does. If the Cultist knows Ancient Greek, she'll likely recognize the poetic fragment; if she does not, she'll hear the strange sussurating syllables, the tidal flow all waves lapping against the shore, all light lancing through honey and falling on a wine-dark sea, and it sounds like a beaten coin, whatever this thing is that Adam says.

Serafíne

(Charisma + performance. Mimicking the words / trying to sing, yo.)

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 4, 4, 7, 7, 8, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 6 ) Re-rolls: 3

Serafíne

The creature before him does not know Ancient Greek. That much is evident in the supple thread of her gaze, half-blurred. The way she cants her head, like an animal, to listen not for meaning but for sound. The ocean's rocking rhythm against some wooden hull. The scent of sun and salt-spray in some graveled cove. Cedars, rising against the sky. Then she opens her mouth.

Her voice is thready and she doesn't know the language so the syllables slew strangely together, uncouple from their beloved, and find themselves instead coupling with strangers on either side, going from neatly ordered poetry to beautifully phrased nonsense that resembles Greek the way an impressionist's painting seen up close resembles anything in it meant to invoke. Which is: only if you are looking.

And yet - lovely, lovely. Achingly lovely, the notes falling from her mouth like rose petals.

Adam

He stills as she sings.

He didn't expect it; his eyebrows lowering signify that, sure enough. He didn't expect it at all, but a small, fond smile touches the corners of his mouth while she is singing, and he looks at her. He sees her, too. He doesn't seem at all like the sort of man who would look at another person and see them, really, distinct and clear against the rest of the world, distinct and clear and burning within their own skins: a lamp.

But he does see her, usually. He sees her tonight. He can't look away from her when she sings and when the lovely thing is done, he remembers not to hold his breath, the small fond wistful little smile becomes something that makes the lines on his face ache, stays quiet because Adam is a quiet suggestion of things that are and are not more often than he is a presence.

He is a shadow. That is why he has none. See?

"Bravo!" His eyebrows quiver. "That was beautiful," and of course he means it. "You've got a good ear," he adds. "And," reaching over to take Ruse from her shoulder a moment before Ruse launches himself dangerously toward the tube on the floor, "your voice suits the language. If you get a gig, let me know."

He expects she'll send out the usual mass-text. That's fine.

Serafíne

Awareness-as-empathy, Adam. Something that makes the lines of his face ache.

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 5, 6, 6, 6, 8, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 8 ) Re-rolls: 2

Adam

Sera, being intuitive, being perceptive about people, being empathic -- Adam: he is such a center, relentlessly a center, and it can't surprise her to know that he is comfortable completely in his own skin and his own place, but he is. Sera can read, can absorb, that he is truly is impressed by her song, enough so that he was moved to make a gesture -- but decides against it. How'd see absorb that? Maybe in a certain movement of the expression gliding over his face, right?

And the small fond wistful little smile that becomes something that makes the lines on his face ache becomes that something because his mind is off with some gone-away thing, some absent wish-you-were-here, a longing for a thing.

But Sera, she can also see that he is trying to -- not draw her out, precisely, but give her a certain focus, because he can see

or saw

that haunted-by-darkness air she had.

Serafíne

Her voice is low, is rough, she's been smoking. She's been smoking sometimes too much, not mindfully but mindlessly. Lighting one from the end of another one. Feeling the rough burn of smoke in her lungs, against the back of her throat.

So: low and raw and immediate, intimate, as full of shadow as it is with light, and Adam is a shadow but she watches him, looks at him, sees him quite the way he looks at her, and sees her, single and entire, and burning, burning, the the windows and the walls and the many, many doors.

And she looks at him much the way he looked at her.

A moment: only. And yet,

what she sees makes her breath catch, snag in her lungs, makes her shining-eyes, makes her frown, a neat knot between her brows and glance-away as Adam is telling her that was beautiful and that if she gets a gig, she should let him know.

"Okay," Her little mouth curls: a hook. The sort that pierces skin. "I will."

Ruse has been removed from her shoulder and Sera's eyes drop to follow Ruse, Ruse, Ruse-in-Adam's-hands.

Then Sera kind of upends herself, gathers herself in a way that says that she is going. Leans forward to brush her mouth against Adam's temple. It is not a lascivious gesture, no. It feels like a prayer, or a blessing.

"I'm gonna go." She tells him, then. "Thank you."

He may not ever know what for.

Tea and tequila [Unfinished]

Serafíne

A fair Thursday night and twilight and the sky has that strange and streaky clarity that comes after-the-storm. The air bright enough that you could swim in it, that the late evening seems perfectly framed by every window, open or otherwise, even within the potentially dusty confines of an overstuffed bookstores.

The light in the failing east is purple and in the still-sunkissed west is a golden sort of blue and between them is where you live, and that is how things are when the front door to a certain bookshop swings open, and a certain set of bells (are there bells? there should be bells) rings and a certain rather exquisite creature wearing an exquisitely fitted dress of absolutely see-through freeform white eyelet style lace, beneath a beaten-up cropped leather jacket complete with epaulets, because why not epaulets, the world requires epaulets.

Sera: angular and fresh and lovely and a little bit something because she is always a little bit some, sleeves of the leather jacket pushed up to her elbows to show off her tattoos and her bracelets and her rings, and she gives the first few rows of shelves a bit of a look-see because it is a shop and one is supposed to shop in shops and she gets a bit caught up in the poetry section but tonight she hasn't picked up anything, not a thing, but the time she heads back toward the counter looking for -

well, looking. Always looking, isn't she?

Gallowglass

Serafíne enters and for once there's nobody at the desk. It's a desk, not a counter, and the typewriter which usually graces it is missing, too. There's a box of pens, closed fast but you can still see the pens. They're all heavy, little works of art, the nibs etched instruments of artifice. Wands. They're wands. Of course they're wands, just look at them. They're ink-wands for inscribing inky thoughts on matters occult and arcane and worthy of changing the world.

He's inside somewhere, of course - of course he is. Has she ever been here when he wasn't? Had she ever wandered into it before, when there was a Sara, dark-haired pale-skinned woman with sea eyes and a smile that etched lines around her mouth, that sort of pallor that's china-cup delicate, those same sort of lines too? Hadn't.

Valiant and relentless, Adam Gallowglass and his sidekick Ruse.

By the time Serafíne has come from the poetry section to the counter and perhaps looked over the pens or perhaps gotten into some other trouble, Adam comes out from the back. The door to the back is closed today, not even ajar a little bit, the lights out and dark. The lighting is dim in the bookshop too, a lightbulb out somewhere.

"Hello, Serafíne. Ruse isn't here. How are you? I was just about to close shop. Would you like some tea?"

Her leather jacket thankfully keeps him from being too scandalized.

Serafíne

Twirl? Dex + Athletics

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 8, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )

Serafíne

Oh, she has assuredly gotten into trouble. Pouring a bit over the desk right? Then peering around then leaning against it then oh, then the the pens, the wand-pens with their heavy nibs and their exquisite inkiness, with their heft and their sort of squat and stubby majesty and she has opened the box of pens and slipped one (just one! only one. the loveliest one) and is twirling it all dextrously between her fingers, smiling, just, with the quiet pleasure of it.

And seeing her before she knows she is seen means a mildly different perspective. The light behind her like a halo the quiet concentration of a martyr or a saint written in a neat, straight line between her straight brows. The sort of creature etched into stained glass and still somehow haunted, right? But aren't we all.

She looks up when he comes out though. Dark eyes quietly direct, mouth a quick, darting little curve that feels more private than you can imagine. Interior. This is where the light shines.

"Darjeeling?" she enquires, hopeful see? When offered tea, and it sounds so very much like a yes. Then, back to the pens, still twirling. "Are these for sale?"

Wonder who she might buy it for.

Oh, gee. I bet I know.

Gallowglass

He is snagged occasionally by how gorgeous Serafíne is. This is one of those occasions; where Adam notices it. Notices it, and shakes his head free from it, the curl of his arrogant mouth something just a touch more wry and alas not more forgiving but acknowledging. The beard which frames that mouth is well in hand today, almost tonight, trimmed close against his jaw, while the rest of his hair is its usual thatched mess, a Dream-slick of go on spend some money on hair product instead of fucking fancy pens. His eyes are sunken deep, their lids red-rimmed and shadows beneath making a nice oval with his girly eyelashes thrown into the mix.

"I have Darjeeling," he answers. "Honey, cream, milk. Some of that blasted agave stuff if it doesn't go bad." His accent slips in, thief-like, then disappears; that's how his accent works. It is a thieves accent, culled from various far-flung markets. Adam while he's saying this hasn't come to a stop at the desk; he's come around it, and now he's turning the lock on the door and flipping the little 'open' placard around to closed.

He wants to add Wards to it. He's got an idea, see, involving the turning, if you turn it clockwise when you're turning it and touch a certain mark to be scribed just so in ink that is this very specific ink, wouldn't that be an excellent symbol and neat and elegant to harness the energies of -

But that's for later. Sera. "And no," turning, returning. "They are not for sale." He reaches over to pluck the pen free from her fingers. "At least not here. I can give you their businesscard."

Serafíne

Oh, Darjeeling. Serafíne is pleased and the crest of her mouth shows it. This flash of her teeth between absolutely crimson (painted) lips today, all white and darting, yes. Mind Sera prefers her Darjeeling with whiskey, not cream, or perhaps whiskey-and-cream, which is a different sort of indulgence, but she herself is of a mind to supply the whiskey.

"Wait, you mean like tequila?" He did mention agave, correct? This time Sera's mouth has an ironic coil to it, a bit smouldering and she has hitched herself a seat on Adam's desk, see, and hasn't given up the twirling until -

oh, blast.

Someone steals her pen.

"I've never tried tequila in tea before. Wouldn't've guessed it of you, either. What other secret vices are you hiding in your back room?"

But, how many pens does he need?

Sera has slipped from the desk to her feet and -

"Are you sure you need them all?"

The pens. "I really liked that one." The one he stole. "Where's Ruse, anyway?"

Gallowglass

"Ruse is doing what Ruse does best: eviscerating stuffed animals," Adam says. He doesn't deadpan it but he delivers the line straight, if it even is a line. Maybe it's not. Maybe Ruse is out there somewhere, bandit-like, sidling up to teddy bears in the night and there's a quick flash of movement and then a shriek as some little girl walks in on -- horror. Stuffing everywhere.

"And I do need them all, but I'll give one for your birthday if you tell me when it is."

He puts the pen carefully back in its place. The box is lined with silk or satin, something vaguely honeyed, and he sets it carefully amidst the rills of shadow and light which flex oh flex along the fabric and then he shuts the box's lid over it and then he puts the box in a drawer although first he turns it over and peels a business card taped to the bottom of the box off. This he hands to Serafíne.

He's not angelic. He's matter of course. He's self-assured. He's an arrogant snob. He's -

He's poised between making a horrified face at the idea of tequila in tea and considering the merits (none) of that idea. "No. I mean like the nectar from the flower." He takes one step back, because of course he's come around his desk again, and the step back allows him to open the back door and to wave Serafíne through it.

"How are you?" He asks the question with a sharp flash of a glance. He doesn't expect her to start crying or to reveal her deepest and most inner turmoils, but something has struck him now: it makes him look at her more closely.

Serafíne

"I already had my birthday," Sera is already missing the pen, the feel of it in her hands. Sometimes she writes in a journal and sometimes she draws in a journal and sometimes she doodles in a journal and she thinks the pen would be a nice, solid pen with which to do such things. Also thinks, naturally, that Hawksley would like one, because it is a nice pen, and pens make words, and words make books, and he does like books, and thinking, and thinking about books.

This is how her mind works, see? Almost innocently associative.

So, she is missing the pen and she is smiling a rather private sort of smile, the sort of private smile one is sometimes embarassed to have seen on the face of a stranger, like catching a glimpse of some dark, strained corner of their chambered heart.

"So you'll have to wait to next year. And if you need them all, how can you give one away?"

LOGIC, Adam.

Regardless, Sera accepts the card and is belatedly disappointed about Ruse and might have decided to slip out had she not already accepted an invitation to tea, but she has accepted such an invitation and ducks through the back door as he opens it and he asks, see - How are you and she sees that sharp flash of a glance in her periphery, see.

Breathes it in the way she does.

On the cusp of an inhale as she is passing him and she turns and meets his eyes with a brief and rather breathtaking sort of directness. Considers him, so clear-eyed, for several spare seconds. Then, quietly, "It's been a year since the people who held the chantry before us were killed.

"I've been thinking about them alot lately. But I'm fine."

picnic

Serafíne

After a positively frigid weekend, Monday afternoon is gray enough and cold enough that Washington Park is - if not supernaturally deserted - certain rather empty compared to the flood of people one might find jogging its trails on a more temperate spring day.

When Sera decides that she wants a picnic, though, nothing will keep her from it. Not weather, not wind, not cold.

On the rather green lawn overlooking the lake, with a sweeping view of the columned boat house reflected in the glassine waters of the little lake, Sera has spread a white blanket, which is weighted down with an ashtray and a guitar case. She's drowsing, or appears to be drowsing, wrapped up in another blanket (this one fuzzy and perhaps woolen, some sort of red and green tartan plaid wrapped around her body as she rests on her stomach, knees bent, both booted feet in the air. Dan she sent for hot chocolate because it's fucking cold out here and her teeth are chattering and he suggested oh hey, go inside, warm up, and Sera was all: fuck that, I wanna have a picnic.

So, picnic.

It is entirely possible that Alexander and/or Grace and/or others received texts from Sera inviting them to a picnic. Or perhaps they just find her by coincidence. Sometimes that is how the world works.

Alexander

[Magedar, just kicks and entrances]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (6, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )

Grace

Grace got a text, because that is how her world works. And perhaps Sera doesn't understand (or perhaps remember) why she got a text back reading:

YES I will be right there

Without punctuation and with a lot of haste.

Even if Sera did decide on a picnic in the cold, it doesn't matter. That's what coats are for. And other people's oddities rarely even scratch the surface of Grace's recognition. She's pretty certain, though, that Sera will be mostly unclothed anyway, because that's Sera.

So, the Virtual Adept strolls up, wearing jeans and a red suede coat against the cold that's cut in sharp angles. It was meant to go with a fox costume for Carnivale, and Grace keeps on wearing it because it's warm.

But, there's something different about her. Something new.

Maybe it's the way she cuts through the air, knife-like. Those angles of her coat reminiscent of a blade's edge -- a fine sort of sharpness.

Alexander

Cold it may be, but it can always get a little cooler – as those who pass Alexander walking along the paths around the park find for a moment. Alexander is reasonably comfortable. He’s dressed for the cool air in a thick grey hoodie with a couple of layers of long sleeved t-shirts underneath. Some dark green combats, a pair of walking boots, and a decent pair of fleecy gloves keeps the rest of him covered and decent.

The text was received, and replied to, which brings Alexander out today. But he was here a little early. Just... to try something out. To look around a little, in more than one way. He’s crouched by the lake, near to where they met a certain scarecrow not so long ago. He watches the water, looking at his reflection in it. Tries to remember how it felt that first time he pushed with his Will at the Chantry, trying to sneak a peek at probability before the coin landed. Tries to push in the same way, just peering through the ripples of this particular looking glass to See what’s there.

[Arete, peeking at Spirit: Diff 4, -1 for taking time]

Dice: 1 d10 TN3 (3) ( success x 1 )

Serafíne

Perception + Awareness - Things Are Happening?

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )

Serafíne

Prime 1: Watch the Weaving. -1 dif, focus.

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (3, 4, 6) ( success x 3 )

Serafíne

Things Are Happening and the truth is even wrapped up like that, like a peculiar Scottish mummy sprawled on her belly on a white blanket in the chilly, damp grass, breath misting or is that smoke she exhales? one or the other, anyway. Sera is not napping. She is not asleep. She is sprawled yes one elbow braced on the blanket, chin and cheek cupped in the palm of her hand, head listing in a way that makes a golden tangle of her wind-whipped blond curls and she is watching: the lake and the man who crouches by the lake and watching him with a back of the throat consideration and she is alive to the world in ways the few people are alive to the world, everything scrawls itself beneath her skin before most stranges have begun to recognize the surface truths, and she can feel - yes - Grace and something New and wasn't it just last night that it was Grace and something Old and isn't there a strange and fascinating symmetry to that and oh shouldn't she tell Hawksley about the mummy, she should assuredly tell Hawksley about the mummy, and Sera thinks about texting him -

I have something to tell you about Egypt

- and she would likely misspell half the damn words but iPhone, it would auto correct, but her phone is so Very Far Away and it is cold out here where is Dan with her hot chocolate she is going to dose it with whiskey. It would be better with Bailey's but it's not like one carries around a flask full of Bailey's, does one?

Sera bites down sharply on her inner cheek, the pain is incisive, see. It is singular. It is a pierce and a twist and an opening, oh, the world changes, just a little bit.

"Look at that," Sera says quietly, to Grace as Grace strolls up. Her voice is goddamned lazy. "He's doing something. Magic, do you remember the first time you did it on purpose?"

Grace

[Magedar! Does she notice anything with all this magic flying about?]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 5, 5, 10) ( success x 1 )

Grace

Grace isn't so perceptive today, is she? But still, it doesn't hurt that the both of them are weaving reality around them at the moment, and Sera -- oh Sera is strong and gut-wrenching, isn't she?

Grace looks where Sera is telling her to -- over to Alex, who is leaning over the water's edge, looking for something.

She nods, and there's this slight bittersweet smile on her face. "It was soon after I woke up. I was in my apartment, and Gadfly popped in for a visit. He'd been watching me, which, okay a little creepy. But he guided me through the program I was already writing. Something to watch the watcher."

"My first time? I flunked," she smiles for real that time. "Got hit with 'dox."

"Sera?" she asks, then pauses a bit, sets down her laptop bag and flumps down on the blanket. "Something's happened to me. I don't think it's bad. But I feel different."

Alexander

A few ice crystals form along the edge of the shore by Alexander and, for a few moments, the world changes. Alexander sees the lake shore in a whole new light; a little faint, a little cloudy, a little more monochrome. And promptly falls backwards onto his ass as it actually works! He looks around quickly, before the effect fades. Looking for... someone who isn’t there. Who hasn’t been for a few weeks. Maybe he wasn’t really expecting The Message to still be hanging around here when he has an identity and the freedom to do as he likes. But it was worth a try. Normality reasserts itself and the vision fades.

Grinning to himself, Alexander stands and brushes himself off. He’d felt the arrival of Sera a short while before, while he was watching the water, so knows where she’s sat. The familiar Shifting feeling had arrived too, but with something different about it. Something new. Still smiling, Alexander grabs the rucksack he’d left on the grass next to him and wanders over. The smile’s still there when he arrives and greets them. “Hey! I brought soup.” He shrugs the shoulder with the rucksack as he says it, then settles on the blanket too. He looks at Grace and cocks his head. “You’ve changed.”

Adam

ooc: so where the heck are y'all! feel free to PM just me. :) :)

Adam

[Pre-Entry Awareness Roll -2 Dice for Grace's Arcane.]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )

Adam

[+2 for everybody else]

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

Adam

[+ 2 re-rolled 10s since I hear there are Magical Effects wot are being Effected? Maybe?]

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (4, 5) ( fail )

Serafíne

"Mmm." Sera hums beneath her breath. It is a hum of awareness and a hum of consideration and a hum of something that is not amusement. Perhaps bemusement. Perhaps consideration. There is something rich and lazy in her voice and even though it is cold cold cold something about Sera feels remarkably warm, in just this precise moment. "I don't remember my first time."

And Sera offers no context for that; just the statement. Maybe it is merely that one forgets the smallest pieces as the world changes and magic becomes not - well, not ordinary, but a matter of course. Hey, I can fucking change the goddamned world.

Grace though, Grace; a slant-wise look at Grace as she floomps her laptop down on the blanket. Here is Sera in profile: an impressive nose, all aquiline, her eyes remarkable light, with a sort of clarity in the side view on rarely sees when looking at her face-on. Some kind of magic there, right?

God she's striking. Arresting. The bones of her face; the sharp and fine-pointed planes of it. The delicacy of her jaw, the curve of her ear. The odd vulnerability she bears in repose.

Sera is still considering Grace when Alexander comes up to them, and he has brought soup. Sera flashes the cop a quick grin, rolls over on the blanket to make room. "What'd you see out there? When you were looking?"

And, a flashing glance, this line drawn from Grace to Alexander and back again. "And Grace, she went seeking. Why don't you tell us what happened?"

Grace

"Oh, I didn't go looking for anything," Grace says, completely missing the reference. She's never heard the term before. "What happened when?"

She looks up to Alex from her seat on the blanket. "Yeah, I know. You can feel that too?"

Then, it's over to Sera again, who has been the only other Mage she's known to do this: change how they are at a deep level. Enough that people can tell.

"It's like what happened to you, isn't it?"

Grace

"Oh, I didn't go looking for anything," Grace says, completely missing the reference. She's never heard the term before. "What happened when?"

She looks up to Alex from her seat on the blanket. "Yeah, I know. You can feel that too?"

Then, it's over to Sera again, who has been the only other Mage she's known to do this: change how they are at a deep level. Enough that people can tell.

"It's like what happened to you, isn't it?"

Adam

Look. (No, don't look. There is nothing remarkable to look at.) Dominic Adam Julian Gallowglass bani Bonisagus known to most of the Awakened populace of Denver as Adam who owns or clerks at or manages Night Owl [An Arch Key] Books. Look. (No, don't bother. He is not remarkable.)

Here he is in a dark coat, not black but rather a slate gray, wool to drive the cold winter away, but it is spring now. The coat is long and unbuttoned and if he had a scarf it is, why, there it is, trailing out've his pockets, because it's cold but the cold doesn't have a snap and if he weren't so susceptible to colds since he treats his body less like a temple and more like an inconvenience or a disappointment (come on now, body, don't be tired now! Almost to the end of this chapter! Almost at the top of the hill!), well. This is the kind of sentence that busybody family members begin and never finish properly because what it amounts to is a harangue. Here is Adam Gallowglass in a dark gray coat and, if one has not yet become familiar with Adam Gallowglass, he is particularly unworthy of note. A Mystery. Other. Don't bother.

Nonentity, practically: young man with wild hair. He has an apple in hand and he is biting into it while turning the page of a book which yes he is in fact reading as he walks down the trail, comes to a fork in a path, finds himself near [the woods of Arkady are dead, over is their antique joy; but the antiquarian's joy is -] a lake and a confluence of other Awakened individuals, one of them very familiar, the other half-familiar, the third not-at-all-familiar. What an irrestistible lure to a mind like Adam's.

So he takes the fork in the path that'll take him this-a-way, folding his book up so his thumb is a marker. He bites into his apple, crunch. No gloves. He's as pale as a vampire and should get more sun. Too bad it's such a skinflint day, such a graying still longing for winter day. This-a-way means he wanders out between the trees; he doesn't approach from the lake.

The most important thing is of course:

"Hello, Sera, Grace."

Adam is not a creature of hesitation; he approaches, he engages, his smile faint, a quizzical stitch between his eyebrows.

Alexander

“Nothing, really. I was just..” Alexander looks down into the rucksack, breaking the eye contact with Sera for a minute. A little embarrassed, maybe. “It was silly. I was trying to see if The Message was around.” A thermos and some disposable cardboard cups emerge from the bag, and he looks back up. “It’s only store bought, but it should still be warm.” Nice, smooth change of subject there. Chicken, should anyone be interested.

He loses track of the conversation a little when they start talking about seeking and looking for things – even less idea of what a Seeking is than Grace does. There is some concern in his voice, though, when he asks, “Something’s happened? Was it anything to do with that night in the library?” It’s the first time Alexander has bumped into Grace since he stormed out of the Chantry. “Are you ok?”

Before there’s an answer, someone new arrives. Although it’s only the voice that grabs Alexander’s attention – the other man would have drifted past without notice if he hadn’t spoken. He looks down to open the flask, then starts a little as he notices Adam’s presence again. And waits to see how the others react before saying anything. Assuming he doesn't forget again.

ix

[Do you guys want another people, or is that too many people? Five starts to be many.....]

Serafíne

Jump in!

Alexander

[I'm easy]

Serafíne

Serafíne @ 7:48PMPrivate Message to Adam, Alexander, ix

Jump in!

Adam

[I don't mind! Now that I've got my super long 'how is it that Adam is here' post out of the way it's all c'est la vie on my end.]

Serafíne

Oh, Alexander. He breaks eye contact and busies himself with soup-getting-out and soup-dispensing and Sera's now on her back and all rolled up still in her blanket (absurd! absurd) and she's like a turtle on her back her hair all a-tangle and the world is moving around her the way the world does move.

Oh! Here is Adam.

Sera tips her head back to espy him as he offers his hellos and it is strange to her the way he fades and then conjures himself up again but not so startling as it must be for Alexander, now, to forget and remember and remember and forget again.

So, Sera, create that she is turns her head in Alexander's direction and he can avoid her goddamned eyes all he wants with the busy-ness she'll just touch him, like a hand on his thigh. A certain slewing smile.

Maybe she's fucked up.

Probably she's fucked up.

"It's not silly. You need to see the world. Look for things. Take it apart and put it back together and feel the way it moves inside you, again and again and again, and if you're looking for something or someone or somewhy that has some fucking meaning to you, even better, but that's not any kind of shit to be embarassed about, you know? Rock on - "

She did say rock on without any goddamned embarassment.

"Seeking, Grace. You went seeking. Looking for another piece of the world; or a piece of your soul, or a new understanding of the world. Some epiphany, right? Something new that you can taste and feel. And Be and Know and all that shit.

"Yeah it's like what happened to me." Back to Alexander, then. "Nothing to do with what happened in the library, that night. Least I'm pretty sure it doesn't have anything to do with that."

Then back to Adam, smiling up at him, right? Practically angelic with that halo of golden hair.

"Hi."

Grace

"Hey Adam," she greets, though she didn't feel his knight-in-shining-ness approaching. It's Adam. She's cool with it.

Alex is the first to broach that subject, and as much as she appreciates the gesture, Grace has opted to try to forget that night ever happened. She only vaguely knows, second-hand that he was even there. Still, the comment has her first looking concerned right back, and then curious. "Maybe it did, though Sera. I mean..." she shrugs, "What happened in my seeking, it... very well could have something to do with that night."

"I slew a hydra," she says, and just lets it hang there. Says it like someone might say 'I mowed the lawn.'

Adam

He listens, intent and serious. Because direct as he is and unhesitating (unrelenting) as he is this doesn't mean he lacks social graces. The conversation swims around him: parts around him, stone-Adam, shadowless Magus. He listens, and he has opinions because he always has opinions. The quizzical stitch between his eyebrows smooths; those same eyebrows leap upward and the expression in his eyes stills, then shifts from one mood to the other. He regards Grace more fully now, but his attention is not complete.

"Why did you do that?" he asks Grace, of hydra-slaying. Then says to Sera, "Hi," because when a woman that beautiful says hi, if you're not distracted, you say hi back, and then he says to Alexander, "Who are you?"

He doesn't introduce himself, but Grace said hey Adam.

Adam who then says, "What happened in which library?"

Because of course that would interest him.

Kalen Holliday

[Nightmares]

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Kalen Holliday

[Awareness???]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 6, 7, 7, 8) ( success x 4 )

Alexander

The gloves come off and a hand – a little cool, regardless of its time in the glove – is placed on Sera’s for a minute. “Thank you,” he says quietly. He still feels a little silly, a little sentimental. But he appreciates her words. The hands return to opening up the flask and pouring out soup, offering it to Sera. Because the third has slipped notice again.

There’s still concern in Alexander’s face – he likes Grace, and hearing what was going on in there? Well, he worried. “A hydra? That’s like a dragon? What happened?” He offers a cup to Grace.

Alexander is pouring soup for himself, and very nearly spills it when Adam speaks again. The man looks familiar, but... There is something odd going on here. He shuffles round a little to keep Adam in sight. The others don’t seem to be overly worried about the (re?)appearance of the man, so Alexander isn’t overly worried. Maybe a little puzzled. “Hi. Alexander.” He holds out the cup to Adam. “Nice to meet you.” There’s a slight narrowing of his eyes, as he tries to remember if he’s met Adam somewhere before.

Kalen Holliday

Kalen is not fond of the cold. But he is out in a golden wool coat and a ridiculously soft cream-colored cashmere scarf, and he is valiantly trying to ignore the last echoes of winter. He hasn't come for them, or for The Message (although, if pressed, he might admit he might have unconsciously chosen this place and cream and gold because of the Message). Recognizing such motivations is helpful, but that kind of self-reflection is not Kalen today.

Winter becomes colder on his tongue and he can feel the ground trembling beneath hooves. Feel the world shifting and falling through a thousand thousand possible worlds. If he could focus on them as they blurred past, he could draw them out one day, in the manner of star charts and the layered realms of the spiritual cosmologies that he has seen drawn in inks of precious metal and crushed gemstones. The grandest of them was inlaid around the circular gallery in marble. That one is shattered and buried now, but that one's legacy is Grace's office. For which he did not use sapphires or diamonds, but just paint. Grace probably wouldn't have wanted diamonds glittering on her walls in constellations, he would say. (But, let us be truthful, there are not diamonds glittering from those walls only because Kalen had no idea how to get them there.)

He cannot stop thinking of maps and of time and of all the ways in which fate twists in and around itself in Denver. There are are possibilities and warnings and wonder all vying for his attention. Those all lose out to the people he senses assembled, and he heads slowly in their direction.

Serafíne

"I don't think it had so much to do with the Library, Grace, as with what you endured and how it has been haunting you. Somewhere that shadow of the divine or what the fuck ever inside you - " other people us Names and Terms and Words that mean things for things like Avatar. Sera tends to avoid them, for reasons that are not wholly clear, " - wanted you to confront that; to overcome it. To break free of the chains that experience has forged around your soul, see?

"I mean, that could be what your Avatar wanted. Or maybe it was all a fucking metaphor."

--

And Sera takes the soup and holds it in her hands and does that to keep them warm. The steam drifts and she's still on her back and looking up and then then she sits up, scoots her ass around because soup, shakes out her tangled hair as the cold wind skims the lake and whips across the park.

"Grace and I," Sera begins to explain to Alexander and by extension Adam, quietly and rather seriously for a Sera, with a sort of spare sense of strangeness about her because she does not speak Easily about such things and it is perhaps only the constant iteration of it from Grace that allows her to do so so easily. " - were infected by this sickness that some people created to try to target mages last fall. It made us very sick; and caused us to hallucinate gory waking dreams of our own deaths over and over again.

"Grace has had nightmares ever since, and," here Sera glances up at Adam. There is something circumspect, somehow, about that look. Something framingly delicate. Something attenuated. There are so many pieces of all of this that Sera keeps - in whole or in part - inside herself, stitched into her skin, and she can feel that needle now. Is away of its warp and weave. " - it was bad enough one night in the library that she started having waking dreams, hallucinations, that it was happening to her all over again.

"So. Have you been to sleep since your seeking, Grace?"

Grace

Adam is oblivious. Wasn't around for the Hydra incident. He wasn't witness to Grace screaming in agony. He's innocent, and even still... It's embarrassing. She lost it. And everybody in the Chantry must have heard exactly how.

"I..." she starts, but can't finish. How do you even begin?

"Uh... Well," she looks to Sera, because this is her story too in a way. And Sera says what she will say about it.

"They called it Hydra. Because you couldn't just destroy it, it would multiply if you tried to kill it -- like cutting off a hydra's head," she adds, so they understand why hydras had become this massive thing with her.

Then, Sera asks if she's been to sleep since. That brings an honest smile. "Yeah. I have."

She smells the sudden ozone, the smell of storm in the air, and turns to see Kalen, still smiling. "I think I killed it but good."

Adam

He accepts the cup of soup from Alexander, and his expression shifts again: all nuance, Adam, all subtleties. The shift is a courteous shift; an echo and -- not surprise. But recognition: "Alexander. Nice to meet you at last. So many things heard."

But the courteous shift is off-hand, and the bulk of Adam's attention shifts back to Grace who is now sharp as a knife (just what one wants shifting, huh? tremoring like a quake) and Serafíne.

To him, a Hydra is a mythological construct. A relic of bygone days; of glorious days, in a way. A Hydra is a metaphor, and a Hydra is a nightmare. A Hydra is an enemy, a Hydra is self-replicating. A Hydra is water, the North, is child-of-beauty, is a first-gate second-threshold sort-of creature.

Do him credit. He listens with an air of grave consideration; smells the soup, and if it doesn't appear to be some sort of italian wedding soup monstrousity sips on it.

"Hmm," he says when they are both done. "Compelling," he says, because isn't it? He follows Grace's eyes over to Kalen, offers the other Hermetic a nod if not a smile. He's thinking, and Adam thinking means serious things. "What shape did your seeking actually take? A video game that felt real? Did you start out asleep?"

"I'm curious." A smile. "Needn't indulge me."

Alexander

Alexander settles back onto the blanket to listen to Sera’s – and Grace’s – story. He can’t even begin to imagine how it must have felt, being affected by that illness. And he doesn’t even try to make empty platitudes to fill the gaps in the telling. He does look back to Grace, though, still concerned. Although it eases when Grace smiles, obviously much more relaxed than she was. He does feel a little more of a connection to Grace than he does to most of the others – maybe because she’s not so far ahead in her experience of Awakened life that it seems like he’ll never reach that stage himself. Maybe because it’s obvious that things are still freaking her out, rather than the others who just seem to take everything in their stride.

Regardless, Adam seems to have heard of him. “Good things, I hope.” He smiles, now that facing the man seems to have fixed him in memory for the moment. “I think your name has been mentioned, but there have been so many new ones... “ He shrugs as the sentence hangs, a little apologetic that he doesn’t have more to say. He turns to greet Kalen as he arrives, but otherwise settles back to listen to the conversation.

Kalen Holliday

"Mmmmmmm...." Kalen says, a bit absently. "My little dragon slayer." He missed too much of the conversation to quite pick it up cold, but he sounds amused and proud of Grace all the same. He doesn't need to know what she killed but good for that. Adam is thinking and Sera is...not exactly happy and Alexander...Alexander looks fine. That last bit provides him almost no real information.

His pale eyes sweep over them slowly. Curiously.

It's a second before the word Seeking and the new keen edge to Grace's Resonance register and he grins. "Ah. Congratulations, Kit." He settles carefully onto the ground to join them.

Serafíne

Grace slept last night, and she beams and Sera favors her with another oddly spare half-smile. Inhales the scent of the soup and sips it, grateful more for the warmth than anything fortifying. Sera always seems to be on the verge of something, breaking apart or falling together or or or - anything but ordinary.

"Hey Kalen."

But here, look. Ordinary. She sips the soup wrapped up in a blanket and listens while Grace tells her story and somewhere on her person her phone vibrates so, Sera sets down the soup and does so carefully and and from somewhere deep in the wrappings of that blanket Sera digs out an iPhone and reads a text and then stands up and starts to unwind her blanket and beneath it she is wearing a tiny leather skirt and her Docs and black lace thigh-high tights and a small bandeau-style bustier, the cups of which are covered in tiny red satin roses, beneath a thin black hoodie, unzipped. Sera pulls the hood up because COLD but does not bother to zip the hoddie because SEXY and abandons the party with a small wave of her phone.

"Gotta meet my dealer. I'll be back in a bit. If Dan comes back with my fucking hot chocolate tell him to hang tight too. I need a ride over to the Church. Wanna see that mummy-lady again - "

Serafíne

(And... poof! Sorry darlings, but I need to sleep!)

Study break.

Serafíne

It is evening, it is evening falling into night and there is a sort of living warmth that still lingers in the air, the grass retains some last slivers of that strange sun-scent even though the sun itself has sunk more-or-less into shadow to the west. So here is light, twilight, which is painted in a half-dozen hues of heather and mist, which gathers in pools of shadow and spreads itself wide over a slowly waking world.

The chantry is surrounded by field and farrow and hill and dale. One could keep horses here, with enough of the right sort of work and an eye for the land. There is a gentle slope leading down from the chantry proper to one of those fields, the sort framed by split-rail fencing carefully repaired last season by someone-who-is-not-Sera, and it is on this gentle slope that Sera spread a fringed cotton-quilt likely appropriated from one of the bedrooms in the house proper, trampling down the long, still-mostly-dormant stalks of some prairie grass or other, toeing off her boots so that her feet were bare, then - well - shimmying out of nearly everything else so that she could sunbathe topless and not worry much about whether the pattern of her fishnets might be somehow tanned into her skin.

The sun's gone down, though. It's gotten colder. So, Sera has put most of her clothes back on - her stockings and her denim cut-offs, her bustier and her flannel shirt - and she is lying sprawled in the grass with her feet planted flat, her knees bent, her blonde hair spread around her face like a halo, one hand wrapped loose around the neck of a bottle of mead, the other flat on her bare, golden stomach, a rather twee picnic basket - yes picnic basket - on the grass beside her blanket. Closed, for now.

She's watching the sky change.

Breathing.

Just breathing.

Gallowglass

[Awareness.]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 6, 6, 6, 9, 9) ( success x 5 )

Gallowglass

[Stamina]

Dice: 2 d10 TN8 (3, 5) ( fail )

Gallowglass

Breathing, then - just breathing is Dominic Adam Julian Gallowglass bani Bonisagus in the library of Bear House with his head pillowed in the crook of his elbow and his mouth slack and drool at the corner and his eyes gummed shut and he doesn't snore and he does look peaceful except for a crease along his forehead because he is asleep and his sleep is not nightmare-troubled but it isn't comfortable because he fell asleep at one of the library's desks. Breathing, then - just breathing is Dominic Adam Julian Gallowglass bani Bonisagus deep in the word-wood when a dull pang causes him to open his eyes and smack his tongue against his teeth and sit up, eyelids pink-rimmed, dream-choked, hair sticking up on one side and flattened on the other, and he looks around. Opens his eyes wide but his lids want to stay sloped, putting both hands on the desk's edge and pushing back.

He is Aware of somebody else near-by, not far-off, somebody who is enthralling, limimal, he can taste that liminality right now because he is still half-asleep, eyes drifting closed. He looks down at his journal, his pen and his papers, at the book he was using as a reference for notes and he closes the latter.

Clearly he needs a break if he's falling into a sleep that doesn't give him any genius insights.

Breathing, just breathing - he's just breathing when he leaves the house and comes strolling out across field and farrow and hill and dale at least across grass. The skin of his arms is goose-pimpling, cold. He looks sleepy still and just being Aware of a presence doesn't mean that one will find that Presence until one uses the Sphere of Correspondence but he has a hunch and he's following that hunch.

Sometimes his hunches are good as gold, no alchemy required. (But there's an alchemy to the mind, isn't there? Mind meeting fire, meeting - ) When he sees the little picnic, he says,

"Hey."

Serafíne

Who is that talking to me!

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 1, 2, 4, 4, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )

Serafíne

So, see.

It takes her a minute. She wasn't expecting him. But then:

"Hey."

Her hair smells like marijuana and oh look, there's a blue glass ashtray shaped like a leaf on the quilt beside her and the remnants of two or three cigarettes with blue paper and a scent like burnt cinnamon-clove-sugar-tobacco in the air; and also, the mustier, earthier, skunkier scent of tobacco and Sera does not stand up over even sit, she just tips the crown of her head backwards scrunching up: her golden hair and the patterned and now-grass-stained blanket and it makes her feel like an inchworm which she rather likes.

inch inch inchworm

And Sera smiles, this lazy and ridiculous and lovely smile, which is whole in the way that planets are whole, that galaxies are whole, that fucking universes are whole: everything seems contained within it.

"Have a seat." Lifting the mead-bottle in his... rather vague direction. "You want a drink?"

Gallowglass

His cheek is still creased by the attentions of his sleeve, the edge of his journal, the edge of a page from his journal; his beard is close-trimmed tonight, just a little more than a neat on his jaw and around his mouth (as if he were a musketeer). He rubs his eyes with the palm of his left hand, planting his feet into the still-fallow just-greening wisps of prairie grass, his weight hard on the heels of his old converse high-tops (navy blue), and her laziness reminds his body that it would like to be lazy, that it is exhausted, and he yawns to keep it from bothering him about that exhaustion any more.

Have a seat. He's thinking about it. He starts with a crouch, which makes him wince. Adam is not a lithe jungle cat ready for action nor is he an action hero, used to springing out've cars and scaling the sides of buildings. He's a punk ass book jockey, and they do not stretch enough.

"What is it?" he says, with a dip of his head toward the mead-bottle - tilting his brow like he'd have a rack of antlers and was using those with which to indicate. Then, curiously, "Have we ever spoken when you were not on drugs?"

Serafíne

What is it? Adam asks and,

"Redstone mead," Sera supplies, turning both her eyes and her golden head to watch him as the enormous tower of his body (from the prospective of a singularly prone position and rather Altered mind) compresses itself down into a crouch. Her eyes are half-closed but her smile lingers and it is nothing like a shadow; and there is in it no shadow of the shadows that have touched her days.

She runs a thoughtful finger down the foil broken to access the cork. Her nails are painted a deep and irridescent red-to-black color that may look like blood and may look like candied applies in the correct light, but probably seems merely dark in this fae twilight.

"And I don't fucking know," her head doesn't leave the ground. This is now deliberate; she likes the way it feels and the way the quilt bunches beneath her skull and the way "Maybe. Why do you ask?"

A moment later, tongue against the roof of her mouth, Sera, whose body feels like a warm and lazy species of sponge soaking in the whole goddamned world, looks back at Adam and inhales, as if breathing were some new and recently discovered form of sexual congress. "I like drugs. You know that Baudelaire poem, right?"

Gallowglass

[Does he? Int + Academics, I guess.]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )

Gallowglass

The first time Adam had mead he thought that he would like it. He didn't like it. He didn't like how sweet it was how cloying on his tongue. He considers the bottle now and Serafíne's offer and Serafíne and she is gorgeous, isn't she. So many gorgeous women in Denver. The tension of a frown or trouble on his brow and he demures with this line of bullshit - " - mead is something I've sworn to only drink with one of the sídhe but thanks for the offer."

He does sit hard on his tailbone. Half-rolling to the side, because for all his basic self-assurance he is graceless. He straightens himself, grass-slicked soles re-planted on the ground. He's on the border of the blanket she culled from one of the bedrooms. He doesn't really care about sitting in the dirt.

His hands come together again, elbows resting on his knees, one forearm clasped by his other's hand.

"I know that Baudelaire poem. The martyred slaves of time one? Do you feel like a martyred slave of time?" He's curious, and his curiousity's a relentless thing. He even says it now: "I just wondered if your thoughts," a pause. "Why do you like drugs?"

He doesn't sound as judgmental as he could; just a touch fascinated, a touch careful, constrained.

Gallowglass

[Hypothetical Roll. App (Specialty) + Emp. Diff 8. + WP because I hatechoo.]

Dice: 6 d10 TN8 (1, 1, 3, 3, 3, 9) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Serafíne

Does Sera feel like a martyred slave of time?

"Fuck no."

Now Sera turns her head in Adam's general direction but she's no longer looking at him because he is too close to really be seen from this perspective, so perhaps she is looking at his grass-slicked Converse soul, and she knows the stars on the underside, that familiar pattern, and finds them charmingly surprising, she would've thought that punk-ass book jockeys would be in wingtips - worn, well-worn, shabby old wingtips - but wingtips nonetheless, and that knights would wear something clanky and spurred.

"It's the rest of it I like. That goddamned admonition to love something and inhale it so thoroughly you're intoxicated by it. Let yourself be transported, right? Give yourself over to something that just - inhales you, and makes you inhale like every fucking breath you're taking is a brand new revelation."

A small shrug here. A quiet, humming grin. The flannel shirt open and framing the slice of her body, the cropped leather bustier covered with silver studs. The slightly concave curve of her abdomen, her spare torso boasts a subtle sort of musculature that is defined more by the absence of fat than by the presence of strength. There are hints of ink beneath her right breast and scrawled down her left flank; other bits more visible on her hands and wrists and palms.

"And I like drugs because I'm the grass and I'm the sky and I'm the ground beneath my head and I'm that airplane all the fucking way up there going somewhere and never coming back; and all the people inside it drowsing or dreaming or fucking or complaining about that crying baby in seat 9-a or doing some goddamned boring shit when they should be getting goddamned drunk, someway or somehow, on something that makes their heart burst and their blood quicken and their body want. All those people and everyone else I'll never see, now or in the future, Amen.

"That is why I like them in general. Why the fuck do you like books?"