Dawn

Elijah

He was prone to roving, this one. When he wasn't prone to studying or inputting data or being put to whatever task Kalen had put him to in their downtime trying desperately to prove something to someone somewhere that wasn't going to reply (because the voice was quiet, now, did not say what was happening even though it had things to say. Had things it wanted. Had not threatened in days save for its usual live, live you bastard fro tomorrow you die.

He knew he was going to die.

He'd known he was going to die for years, this child who flirted with death. Was intimately acquainted with its quiet nuance but never once asked it to dance with him. no, no death took what she wanted because she always got what she wanted. No one refused death, save for those lucky few who exerted their will and insisted We Will Not Die Today. October makes one introspective about death, and Elijah was no exception. There was an outdoor market of sorts today. Somewhere in some sweet little artistic venue there were people who had brought their wares out of the shops like an impromptu festival and he was looking for sugar skulls and marigolds because he had something to prepare for. Not a ritual, but a holiday.

Jenn had aways celebrated the Day of the Dead, and it was something that Elijah had picked upon turn. Even if they didn't live together anymore, there was always the erection of memorials and remembrance and the stuff that people did for the day was just plain freaking cool.

In the market, there ere things everywhere. Knick knacks and things and masks and what-have-yous that people were passing off as Halloween goods. Someone three booths down had craft pumpkin spice beer.

Because it's October.

If there's one thing that goes on in October, it is Pumpkin Spice everything.

Delilah

Here is Delilah, too. Delilah, a young woman who knows the poem of bone and muscle and sinew and flesh, and consequently holds herself with such good posture that it is remarked upon in this day and age of slouching; Delilah, here at an outdoor market because outdoor markets have inexpensive rag bags and Delilah could use more rags, because outdoor markets are redolent, redolent, redolent of apples and it is apples in October apples in autumn apples that the autumning afterlife must smell like, isn't it, all white blossom and loveliness, all promise forever of ripeness sweet on the air for those who are eternal or beyond ripening those who are shades or eat ashes or choose your myth but isn't it always apples, Delilah has a bag on her wrist of two apples, fairy tale apples, and inside that bag a smaller bag of apple and cardamom goat milk soap, and she is holding a third apple against her mouth as she browses over

what is it that she browses over? Why, she is at some cosy little cart where there are threads for sale, threads for sale! needles and patterns and willow hoops and needles, hand-made needles, needles for sale to lance a boil in the armbit of the moon or to sew a button fast on the tide and keep the foam laced to the shore and the sharks where they should be and

or they are just needles. Mostly it is thread, things stitched and embroidered, and Delilah is smiling a little behind her apple.

Delilah is golden, you see, but a certain brand of golden; oh isn't she just? Just certainly, she is - Delilah's like a little sliver of the light that breaks the dark, Delilah's dawn, Delilah's been called Dawn by mistake her whole life, Delilah's a crawling barbaric impression of gold and openings and thresholds and oh, no, she's a young woman, not a myth,

and she is out, shopping, at the outdoor market, and her path will bring her wandering O closer and nearer Elijah and then

we'll see.

[Because Awareness!]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )

Serafíne

(also - awareness)

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 3, 5, 6, 6, 7, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 7 ) Re-rolls: 2

Elijah

[I wanna roll awareness!]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 6, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

Serafíne

Serafíne is here with Dan, who has his arms wrapped 'round her shoulders and his chin resting on the crown of her head as they chat with an older woman with salt and pepper hair selling leathergoods three stalls down from wherever Elijah finds himself. Sera's wearing a pair of leather short-shorts over fishnets (garters today, buttoned because she is feeling old-fashioned) beneath a shearling lined leather jacket, which is open far enough to hint at the thought that she might be wearing nothing else whatsoever beneath the jacket just the sheepskin and leather to cover her breasts. Like if she yawned or stretched or spun herself about in a circle she might flash everyone in the crowd. That shearling jacket is luxe, though - the richest leather, the softest lambskin, thick and rich and warm.

She has the collar turned up. Of course she does.

She's a bit thinner these days, but you'd have to know her to know that, wouldn't you?

--

And she is swimming in sensation. Turns around and inhales and lifts herself up to the balls of her lovely feet her brow a pressure against Dan's jaw, enough that he looks down from his conversation and offers this grunt of inquiry as she smiles against his skin and takes her leave. Drops her mouth to his shoulder and smiles and mutters something that he cannot quite hear but also knows, intimately and with certainty, to be an I'm taking my leave.

Tumultuous dawn, somewhere close. The first blush of the sun against the sky.

All these things she feels.

And remembers.

And knows.

Elijah

There is a familiar pull at his attention. His hands reached tentatively for some paper flowers- because he couldn't get Jenn real flowers, or else she would think it was a commitment to keeping something alive, but fake ones? Fake flowers he could do- but he paused. There was a pull, something threading, something radiant and it washed over him like dawn, pulled his attentions to something golden and made his brows raise and a smile, yes a smile (something like bison- endangered but once plentiful) and he sees her, opens his mouth to say something and-

"Sera?"

not what he had intended to say, but there was another feeling. Something visceral, something that clung to the inside of his ribcage, something that bloomed and just as he had intended on saying something to Dawn Delilah, he felt his attentions pulled elsewhere. Felt his heart beat a little faster and his attentions pulled one of the myriad of directions it was normally pulled. His was a world rife with sensory input.

Delilah

The hint of tumultuousness does indeed snag her attention first and foremost for it is nearest, dearest, can't be dearest yet, may never be dearest but oh her attention it goes not sidelong for Delilah is not given to sidling or side longings, her longings are forthright, stamped on her broad features, worn like horns bull horns to spear the sun or shake free the moon and turn a key and lock the night from the day and this poesy means nothing, it means nothing, but it is meant to mean that there is something open about her longings and her attentions, a transparent scrim,

and Delilah smiles too, just a little, behind her apple, a demure smile for a cautionary tale, and she has not forgotten the threads she is looking at but she looks first at Elijah and then, a beat after he feels Serafíne, so too does Delilah, and it is oh so familiar a dream and she knows it's true and she turns her head with the unguarded air of something measured out to find that enthralling woman because isn't it that enthralling woman because

Delilah of course can feel that hook of enthrallment, visceral, internal; a suggestion behind her breastbone, and she puts her apple into the bag, sweeping her gold barbarian queen's hair, no, not a barbarian queen's hair, because some sun-shower light catches it and sends it into a fairness whispering its way into the autumn season into that golden moment before everything burns just give it a match and that golden moment is pale is pale is a ghost's sheet and

well she sweeps her hair back and it flares up in a dapple and as soon as she sees Serafíne she will look for Dan-who-is-Sera's-shadow and she will pick a bundle of thread (soft fawn silver) and buy it from the woman manning the needlecraft booth

and then, well, we'll see that too, because all things in their time and in their place

Serafíne

"Hi." Yes, Sera, not precisely behind Elijah but close, closer, and she scoops her left arm through a hook young Elijah does not understand he has created with his right perhaps because he willed it and tucks herself right up against him and says, gently - "Are you going to buy that?"

about the paper flower, and waits, if he does.

They are miss-matched, Serafíne and Elijah. Today she is wearing her Doc Martens, so her feet are flat, flat on the on the ground and she's looking up at him, fond and strange and spare, her own hair is merely golden, chemically so, you understand. With deliberately dark roots and a quick, raw immediacy to match everything else about her that is gut-hooking and eye-catching and heart-pounding.

Three beats, you see: while he buys, if he buys, as he buys, and then Sera is pulling him forward to a booth where there are needles and there are threads and there is a golden girl buying moonlit thread.

"Remember me? I remember you," this to Delilah. A glance then, up at Elijah, who is still on her arm. Smiles then, you see, lovely and - well, lovely and something else too, which neither of them are like to understand. "This is Elijah. We like the way you feel."

Elijah

Was he gonna buy that?

"Yeah," he replied, and thus paid for the items he was holding with a five. He got a dollar and a quarter back in change, which goes into his back pocket. Not enough to buy a beer, but enough to tip a bartender, and sometimes that was more important. He shouldn't technically have been investing in alcohol anyway, but there were a number of things he shouldn't have done but did anyway. It was nice, though, the feeling of someone warm and fond and familiar and he falls into familiarity so easily. He's tall. He's tall and sharply dressed because he was wearing a vest and there was something about wearing a vest that made most things seem a little more dressed up than they normally would. A vest and about hand full of necklaces that tucked into his short- because someone had tied one on and he still couldn't quite get the knot undone.

Then, to Delilah with them.

"I think she covered everything I was going to say," Elijah starts, "except I've not met you before. hi, I'm Elijah."

To confirm that, yes, this was actually his name.

Delilah

[I wish to be cool, and also to roll the amazing die-pool for the hiding of things. Manip + Subt, baby.]

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (1, 2) ( fail )

Delilah

Delilah now has another little bag, paper, paper bag stapled with a whisk of colorful hand-spindled yarn, inside it is the thread, the moon-gleam thread, the moon-spindling thread for half-sick of shadows she shall not be and here is Sera and here is Elijah and Delilah looks happy to see Serafíne and happy to be remembered and happy, see, in this way which means she is smiling, broad and open though her mouth is a neat little Valentine's heart though there is something fleetingly coy about the smile although Delilah herself is not coy and Delilah (who is usually remembered as Dawn, as a morning person, presumed to be awake so early people call her around that hour and it is true, true, she is often awake, but because of the calls, because by moonlight is the time for - no hush keep secrets), well. "I do remember you, and your friend. I am sorry that we haven't seen more of each other. You were cool, I guess still are, and Elijah I've wanted to meet you for a while! I don't," this start-stop thing, where she because in trying very hard to not show that she already has an opinion of the young man she has thought too hard about what she wants not to do so she is doing it which means she reaches up to give him a hug stops hard hardtop like a typewriter clattering then wait no gotta go through with it that will hide the initial okay she is going to hug him again but no maybe fix the hair that is fine nobody will know okay okay don't say anything, as she says, "But I hear you're a good kisser!"

Fuck no she meant to say you're a good guy or a nice guy and it does indeed take her an instant to realize she said aloud what she oh no no no and now she is pink because pink is a dawn color too and she flashes Serafíne a wide-eyed look and then laughs at herself but her shoulders are a touch hunched-up like shit I said a wrong thing.

"I'm Delilah."

Serafíne

"Serafíne." You know, one of the burning-ones. And Delilah is coming in to hug Elijah and Sera does manage to let go of one of his long arms so that he can reach for Delilah back if he wants to and Sera's name comes after: after the hug and the wide-eyed look (which receives, in turn, the most deliciously wry sort of smirk). "Call me Sera. My friend's Dan, by the way. He's buying new boots.

"And he is a good kisser. Who'd you hear that from?" This briefest pause, Sera's dark eyes bemused on the line of Elijah's jaw.

"I'm better though." Back to Delilah. Sparking. "I can prove it, too."

Elijah

There is a hug, because he has no problem hugging people that he's just met, and in some way she seems familiar. She seems familiar because there is a feeling bout her, threading, something that he knows and associates with someone they both know. he doesn't make the connection, at least not yet, that this is Delilah the Delilah. The one that Lucy speaks so highly of, the one that is his friend's literal other half. Delilah. That Delilah. that very same delilah that is dawn to Lucy's dusk, and they complete a cycle together, because he could understand a cycle.

She heard he's a good kisser, and once he makes this connection it will make sense on account of Lucy.

He takes the compliment with a laugh, reaches up to scratch the back of his head and find somewhere to look- oh, look! Thread! Yes, thread, thread is something to think about instead of his, "gah, I hope I wasn't drunk when I kissed whomever told you that. Because the rest of that statement is but he tastes kinda like tequila." He looks back.

"And it's true, Sera is quite literally an earth shattering, world-view-rewiring, truth-exposing kisser.":

Delilah

And he is a good kisser.

"Dan?" but no, no, Elijah, it is still Eijah whose good kissing least kept secret you have commented on, Delilah, and she is still pink and flushed and flushing, blushing, but she keeps her posture oh oh the good kisser is hugging her back it is this awkward tangle of he hugs her as she's going away from that hug okay hug instead this little quick wavelet bump! like a splash lapping against a shore, something brief, and now she is laughing

laughing at herself, laughing because she feels like laughing, a little abashed but more brash than anything, forward momentum, certainly putting her hand up to her hair dividing her glance between the two Magi tumultuous and visceral and surely they would be good kissers both

"No, no, word of mouth has only good things to say, nothing that I remember about tequila, I heard it from ..." Is this a confidance to break? "... Around. On the streets. I guess Lucy might have heard it. Sera," the laughter is golden, too; she cups it behind her fingers, shifs her weight from hip to hip instead of staying poised, "Now how could you prove that? Have you ever kissed yourself? Have you, Elijah?"

And here it comes, the creeping (radiant warmth) of mischief, of gentle teasing, and if the edge of her smile is sly it is still so far from what she is; Delilah is not sly, but surely it's difficult to judge oneself so there she wins, a subtle thaw-sort-of-warmth.

A bit of melody plays from her bag, and she does not startle but it draws her attention closed like a strawstring purse'll work on fabric and she glances down and looks disappointed, "Oh, I must go. I have a lesson."

Serafíne

Sera is just swimming, really, as she watches the hug - the reach and the reach-not-reach, the back and forth of it - with those dark, fine eyes. This raw, still-mildly-ironic curve to her mouth, and something else behind it, something banked or withheld or not withheld, precisely, so much as curved up in her body or carved into her skin, like a seed or a scar.

"Nothing wrong with tasting like tequila," our lady of the limes and of the salt murmurs her little encouragement to Elijah. Yes, still wry but also tender, as she is wont to be. "I do all the time.

"And of course I've kissed myself. I was 13 once, too. I know how to prove it," a touch of her gaze on Delilah's eyes and then Delilah's collar, the pink tincture to her skin.

" - after your lesson, maybe."

Sera has wrapped her left arm through the hook of Elijah's right again. This is how it goes.

Elijah

Delilah.

Lucy may have-

"Oh, shit! Right! I-hey, it's nice to finally meet you- and I don't think I've actually had af ill on make out session with myself on account of not being able to be in two places at once yet." yet. Like it was something he might want to be able to do at some point. Like being able to be in two places at once was going to be as simple and as easy as just waking up one day and getting the Sunday paper or hearing the voices of the restless dead. These were easy things, right?

He subconsciously made his arm available, content to be available and close to another person in the casual sort of intimacy that one could have with their friends. Easy with affections and gestures of closeness- well- just because. Because they felt right. Because they were easy. Because he liked the sensation of being around and with other people.

"And tequila is delicious, there are worse things to taste like."

Delilah

"It's nice to meet you too, really it is, and,"

Delilah is no longer laughing because laughter subsides, quite naturally, into the business of leaving, oh yes, even dawn leaves, you see, it ushers in it is a threshold it is a fleeting sort of moment, "Oh, but you should call me Sera. I still don't know many people here, I have a business card but not on me or do I?" look look look hunt hunt hunt business cards for all why sure and, "You both should."

"Ta!" She does this- wait, should she hug? Maybe- okay, another quick hug for Elijah, one for Sera too yes maybe or maybe it's just one hug for them both and then she leaves with a flick of gold

day's here, and all.

Delilah

[and I am out! thanks for the play!]

Serafíne

"Ta." Sera to Delilah, the farewell easily brushed against Dawn's skin, and Serafíne comes up afterward, just as easy, her eyes dark, as they always are, beneath rather straight and neatly formed dark brows.

They are side by side.

Sera's features are a bit sharper. There is this edge to her that always lives beneath her skin but now shines through a bit more. A certain sharpness to the bones of her face, which are fine too, and something about that sharpness, that hollowness, makes her seem somehow brighter. Luminous, consuming and consumed.

Her mouth is quite as neat as her brows and she has caught her lower lip between her teeth as she considers the apprentice with whom she is arm-in-arm. The curve of her breasts a visible shadow beneath the lapels of her shearling coat, this strange and thoughtless ease to her, for all that she seems attenuated.

"You have more stuff you wanna buy? Or can we walk?"

Through and away from the crowd, not because she dislikes crowds (she does not), but because they may have things to say to each other that strangers should not overhear.

Elijah

It's admirable. A lot about Sera was admirable, a lot other was something he could admire because there was no reason for her to be anything other than admirable, but not unattainable. not relegated tot eh realm of being some far flung idea of a woman. no, Sera was very much there. Very much sharp and real and in the moment and Elijah was enamored of it. Fond, because he was fond of her. Yes, that was a good word for it. Sera existed on all sides of whatever bullshit barriers were in the world.

Transcendent. That was a word for her. What was there not to be fond of?

"Nah, I'm good," he said as he lifted the tissue paper flowers, "October will be here awhile, let's move." They had things they may need to say to one another, and with that he started on his way through the crowd, with Sera in arm and at that moment there was just the moment. Just now. Just the warmth of another person and just the feeling of air on his skin and right now, things felt pretty damn good. Not terrible, not like pressing on some still healing bruise from where he'd run into a coffee table or stabbed himself in the chest over another unnamed mistake.

"Is it weird if I say I missed you?" because he had. missed her, that is.

Serafíne

"It's not weird to say if you missed me." She hears that in his voice, in the back of it and the front of it, and she smiles when she hears it and the smile has a shadow of dawn and a shadow of dusk and a helluva lot of stars worked into the substance of it. "Which you did."

Which she knows.

She hears it in his voice.

"I was working my way through some stuff. Ritual and shit, you know?" He doesn't know. No one knows, except perhaps Hawksley.

And maybe not even him. "It's better now." She's been working on it, after all.

Which is harder than you'd think.

"I'm usually around though. You know? If you need to talk, you can always find me. How've you been?"

Elijah

"Is that why you look sharper?" he asked, because… she did. And he had noticed. There was not so much a lack of edge to her, but she seemed more herself. More bright, even if there was, literally, a little less of her. She wasn't emaciated, but she was thinner. Sera, to Elijah, had already seemed thin. She didn't seem diminished though, as though nothing could diminish her.

All shadow and dusk and a hell of a lot of stars. Nothing could diminish the sky.

"What kind of ritual?"

And how was he, she asked? How was he and he continues on, smiles because he smiles easily, though not as easily as before. It's not practiced, though, nothing about Elijah was practiced save for lies. He found he preferred honesty.

"I'm better than I was… less mopey but… still sad, still… it's better," he said, "I'm still grieving of a friendship but at the same time I'm… I'm fuckin' floored by how amazing it is that something- anything- can make someone feel like this-" it's strange, he can talk about the experience with Alicia as one with wonder, with surprise and wonder because there was always wonder, always. And perhaps he had forgotten it once but it came back- always, always wonder. "And-"

He stops, he smiles, triumphant, "I've had the first good night of sleep I've had in years."

Serafíne

What ritual? Elijah asks, and Sera offers him a neat little shrug, which is enough movement to give the other folks threading their way through the narrow little walk between the tents and displays a passing glimpse of her right breast grazing the lapel of the shearling coat. Elijah, mind, tucked up against her, walking the same direction, is not so rewarded.

"Excising darkness." Sera doesn't give him more explanation than that. "Purging it, I suppose. I'm just kinda making it up. What feels right. What makes me feel clean."

Her voice is low. If he glances at her, he will have her profile. Her lashes lowered, shading her eyes, a certain vulnerability in that framing glance: the beat of her heart in her throat, and on and on.

She listens. Gives him a twinge of a smile, which feels like a wound, when he says that he is grieving, and that twings melts into something warmer though less triumphant when he tells her that he is sleeping now.

No more nightmares.

Sera stops. Reaches up and kisses him on the cheek. She doesn't care that she's half-nude, that she flashes strangers again as she reaches for him and pulls him down and gives him a chaste little kiss on his cheek.

"Good for you." On the nightmares. "And grieving's okay. You know? It's just as valid as wonder. Just as necessary as fear. Still sucks, though. Alicia?"

Elijah

"If it works, then it works," no judgment, no insistence on how a ritual was supposed to be because… well… he wasn't sure how rituals were supposed to be. If there was a formula to them and if things wouldn't work, but he did know magic was personal. Did know that Sera tore herself open and laid bare for the world and purged all those barriers and limitations to feel the heartbeat of the universe so whatever ritual it was, it hd to be something just as raw. Something just as intent.

He glances to the side and takes in her profile, smiles because it hadn't faded yet.

She tells him grieving is okay, no less valid than wonder or less necessary than fear.

Alicia?

"Yeah," he says, "she… uh… we met on the street and she kinda laid out how things were. I told her I was sorry but.. y'know… that doesn't fix thing… and I don't think she wants me to fix things. And I'm learning…" he starts and the smile falters, like he pushed on a bruise or found a sore muscle he wasn't expecting, "I'm learning to be okay with that. Stasis isn't an option."

Serafíne

"Statis is an option," Sera returns, insists really. She is smiling still, but that smile is a little bit private and a little bit strange and a little bit sad.

It is October.

Things die.

"Everything's an option. You can make that choice. I just don't think it's the best one."

Then:

"Still hurts, huh?" Quiet, this. Quiet-quiet-quiet, framed in care and also a quickling surety. He can deflect. He can open up. He can do anything.

That's the space she creates for him, right here on the sidewalk. Right here on the street.

Elijah

But he doesn't deflect. He thinks about it, as he is want to do when things hurt, when bearing what you feel aches and what you want is for something, anything, to feel different than what you feel at that juncture, but instead it's there. He's present. For someone who spends so much time somewhere Else, somewhere between, somewhere that isn't quite this world and isn't quite the next world and he's stuck straddling the places in between he is present.

Elijah is exactly where he is. Exactly where he said he would be

Still hurts, huh?

"Yeah, it does," he tells her. "I had a physics class I had to drop because I couldn't read the fucking textbook without thinking about her. Grace is helping her, now, though, and… and she's helping herself- if Ginger's any indication, which is better. And I'm happy about that… and I know, at some point, it'll stop hurting… and this is new. This-this is really… really new."

Serafíne

"That's kind of bullshit." Sera, humming, quiet, burning as she is given to burn, made to burn smiles for him and her smile is peripheral and aching and imprinted with a longing so deep and vast and boundless as to make one breathless. "The bit about how someday it won't hurt.

"The only way it'll stop hurting is if you stop feeling. Or if you turn out to be substantially less cool than I think you are. The way it hurts will change.

"Maybe soften. Maybe sharpen, on some nights. But I'd be willing to lay odds that it'll always hurt, a little bit. That's what happens when you miss someone."

--

"You know what I think you should do?"

Elijah

He lets that sit there, takes it in for what it is because he knows, now, that every moment is this one and every place is this one and that the world is boundless and limitless. She tells him that it won't stop, that it will change, and he can accept that- change. Because change has always been a constant.

It's quiet for awhile, and there's the question posed. A question with one answer only-

"What do you think I should do?"

Because they were being open, because walls and barriers were all bullshit anyway, got in the way of communication, of experiencing things, and leaving one's self open to the world was, for lack of better wording… well… bullshit.

Serafíne

"Write her a letter. Everything stupid and everything sad and everything strange. Keep it going for a week. Talk to her. Tell her you miss her. Tell her that you dropped physics because you couldn't read the textbook without thinking about her. Tell her that I think that's awesome because physics sounds like bullshit. I think you should take a class in love and a class in sorrow and a class in LSD instead, who the fuck cares about physics and there's goddamned magic.

"Slip in the bits you think she would like, and the bits for which you want to apologize. Tell her every raw, silly, strange, sad, fucked up little thing that you feel like telling her. Don't worry about what anyone who ever reads it might think. If you can't think of a word write down a thousand other words. Don't erase anything. Just write it all down, in love and grief and faith.

"Or at least, friendship.

"Then take it outside someplace, and build a little fire. You know? And burn burn burn that letter. Watches the ashes fly up to heaven. Maybe all the way to Israel, or Baffin Island.

"Tell her you're sorry there, too. Then it'll be everywhere. It'll be out there. You know?

"That's what I think you should do."

Elijah

She started by saying he should write Alicia a letter, and for a second she could tell that his stomach tensed and his muscles seized and the idea of talking to her again scared him, delighted him, but terrified him because he thought she wouldn't listen. He thought she wouldn't be there to read the letter and-and-

And he listens.

He listens to the fate of the letter and what would come of it. That there would be things he would get to say, things he needed to say, even if Alicia wouldn't hear them because the saying them wasn't even in actuality all for her. There were things Elijah needed to say, because he needed to say them. Because. He laughed a little at the reference about physics sounding a bit like bullshit. Because it was, and there was magic.

But he needed to take the letter, build a nice little fire somewhere and burn it.

He tensed again, having followed along so diligently and he could write that letter, burn that letter, and it'll be out there. Because it had to be out there, and even if the sky was all that knew the contents of the letter, that's what mattered. Someone… something had to know what he would say.

"I can do that," he says. He can do that, and he wants to, wants to because he wants.

Delilah

Serafíne

Scattered amongst the cultivars and water features and permanent installations, the sculptures, the hedgerows, the mazes, the follies, scattered amongst them on the public squares are lawns: small white tents where jewelers and coopers and watercolorists and sculptures and coutouriers and haberdashers and all manner of craftspeople and artisans are demonstrating their craft or playing their wares. By the reflecting pool, a classical guitarist picks out one of Bach's lute suites on his guitar, the ornamental surety of the baroque pieces a perfect counterpoint to the groomed order of the botanic gardens. There is a biergarden, rather makeshift, and an Apothecary selling all manner of edibles and pure, raw bud and a hare krishna in orange robes handing out literature and a hippie cultist rolling paper beads from strips of magazines and there is champagne to be had and strangers picnicking on the lawn and it is late in the afternoon, not yet twilight, a golden hour, heading toward sunset, full of that inevitable melancholy and a sort of pollen-drunk sweetness -

and there is amongst all these people and amidst all things things a certain pathway with a certain round gate, surrounded by a profusion of greenery. The gate feels like a secret, doesn't it, an anchored sort of secret, a place that does not speak, but simply is.

On the other side of the gate is a bench, shaded by an arbor. The wisteria is not yet in bloom.

Two people are curled on that bench. One's a tall guy, blond hair and a blond beard, tattooes covering his arms. He's sitting upright, long legs kicked out in front of him, crossed at the ankles, an arm wrapped loosely around the torso of the other person, who is a girl, with long blond hair, half-shaved, a solid dozen silver hoops through her left ear, a tangle of bracelets on her wrists, wearing a lovely - transparent white sundress over lacey black lingerie, a matched set, from bra to garters and everything in between.

They are sharing a joint.

There's a bottle of champagne nestled on the ground by his left foot.

Delilah

Here is the round gate. Just by the green. Here is the Ecstatic and the Ecstatic's devotée. Just by the round gate. Here is a pair of people whose conversation sounds like the chirruping of birds, twittering as they pass through the gate and sideglance toward that now-common (never uncommon) earthy smell and pause that sideglance because don't they make a nice picture those two curled on the bench. Behind the pair of people a solitary young woman.

Here is Delilah, rolling seven paper beads in the palm of her hand because she stood by the hippie cultist and watched her make them in a 'plash of sunlight tinted that late afternoon gold that breaks the heart because it's dark with sun's blood and she chose not to resist the urge to have them. Their neat little spirals. Their tight little colours, their secret origins: who knows what article that green and blue and black one belonged to. There is one bead which has a thread wrapped around it and Delilah, when she stops rolling the seven paper beads in the palm of her hand to pocket them instead, puts the one bead with thread between her lips because it is an urge she wants to indulge.

Here are things about Delilah. Delilah has hair that is longish and blond, but it is the kind've blond that soaked up dawn's pale sort of gold and now flings it back regardless of time like dawn's a stained glass halo all full of light and it's the kind've blond that where it is shadowed it darkens quite suddenly to a barbaric and brassy colour. Delilah has skin that has a gold cast too, a broad brow and broad cheekbones and a broad nose too but a mouth as neat as a valentine and pale without makeup. Delilah is not wearing makeup, and her eyelashes are that darker barbaric brass colour, and her eyes are water, and she has a paper parasol in case of rain but it is dangling from a string at her wrist.

Here are more things about Delilah: Delilah, who like a smoker who smokes so often and whose clothes will always stink of ash and nicotine carries with her this hint of shying radiance [the spangle-skid skimming of gold a-shining through dew a-spreading all new new bright first gold] threading into a brightness, has an expression that is both guilty and sorrowful on her face, even though she is sucking perhaps ill-advisedly on that bead, pausing at the round gate after the chirping couple has moved on on on like a round gate is a suspicious thing or like the shadow, or maybe like somebody who just likes hanging out in or by doorways, and then she ducks through and

Here is one more thing about Delilah. Maybe two more things. She has her ipod earbuds in her ears, so she does not hear the world around her; also, when she notices the two blond people smoking a joint on the bench her first thought is oh

it's that beautiful girl from the gallery

and oh!

it's that guy? the guy with the beautiful girl from the gallery

and the potato chips.

Recognition chases the guilt and sorrow away; makes her swallow the bead so it clicks against her molars and she thinks, why, you have just swallowed that paper bead, Delilah, and then she thinks

I can see that girl's underwear

well, maybe that's the point

And then she gives this half little wave; one couldn't call it uncertain. It's not uncertain; it's just a half little wave.

Serafíne

"Hey." This is Dan, that guy from the gallery, the guy from the gallery and the potato chips. He is distinctive, isn't here, all buttoned up in a short-sleeve check-flecked collared shirt with a real bowtie in a sharply contrasting color, blue and orange against pink and gray, his arms covered in tattoos so thorough and intricate they become, from a distance, a distinctive sort of brocade.

Delilah is waving so he gives her a flash of a smile; white teeth inside the rough, bristling edges of his curling blond beard.

There's no recognition in his eyes, no singular spark-of-it, just a general willingness to say hello to anyone who says hello to him. Call it: an openness to the world and all its wonders.

Then, see. Just as she swallows that bead, a different sort of spark, a broad note of spreading recognition, "Oh hey! The chip-girl.

"Tell me you stomped them like grapes."

And the girl, head cradled in the guy's lap, her own hair (which is golden but see: a borrowed gold, for it is natively dark and Delilah can see those roots beneath the gold, or in the fuzzy bristle of new growth from her right temple to the base of her right skull) spilling in long, looping whorls right down to the grassy sedge, is holding the joint with a marked delicacy, the way a great lady might hold her teacup, mouth open but just, as if she sipping at the smoke.

Instead she is exhaling, this delicate coil that spirals upward, dissipating slowly into the shadows of the low-hanging wisteria, which is not yet in bloom.

And turns, too, a moment later, as if she were a little bit unmoored from time, refusing, absolutely refusing, the tyranny of the now in favor of the yes and the when and the then.

Sera holds out the joint: invitation, offering.

That's how it works.

Delilah

"I have never known a grape to stomp," Delilah says, the cant of her chin sedate, demure, the slope of her shoulders a crisp line of elegance; at odds with the sudden daybreak crack of a grin which follows after like a surprise. "Though perhaps one day they will rise up to revenge themselves for the martyrs who are taken to the stomping vats and made into wine." A beat; then as if remembering that most people would find that statement odd, she adds absently, "More likely than chips rising up I think."

Beat. "Hey."

Delilah has paused, right? Has stopped by the round gate [welcome in] into and out of the green [it's both; that's the thing about gates; now farewell] and isn't she steady, isn't she solid, a white-throated sacrifice on an altar- dignified. Delilah has stopped and she grinned but her attention does seem to drift more often to the striking girl-around-her-own-age whose head is in Dan's lap; this has nothing to do with Dan, all to do with Serafíne.

The bead clicks against her teeth and she covers her mouth, the gesture dainty, lady-like, and spits the bead into her palm; she is not abashed- as if that was the politest thing to do.

And her pausing becomes less a moment's rest and more a hesitation when Serafíne offers her the joint. "I have never," she tells them both, a thread of apology twisting through her tone.

"You guys are artists. Right? You've got to be." Stubborn.

Serafíne

The girl with her head in Dan's lap makes a noise, a quiet noise, a noise beneath-her-skin, and that noise seems somehow both livid and lived-in. Delilah has never and Serafíne gives her a slant-eyed glance, takes that in, the apology and the revolution of grapes and withdraws the offer of the joint and holds it up to Dan instead,

who waves it away,

so she keeps it, all to herself, shifts her grip on the paper from that pinched hold to something rather more loose, holding it not like a joint, but rather like a cigarette, allowing that arm to trail down and away from her body.

The long, pale strip of her inner arm interrupted everywhere by small scrawls of dark ink. And Dan's about to answer her with something when Sera smiles, see -

this grin. A kind of visceral bemusement that she wears like a string of lights inside her body.

"Why do you say that?"

Delilah

"Because I," and she wavers, not out of uncertainty, but out of a desire -

and it is not even remotely difficult to see; Delilah is transparent; Delilah is a rim of water over some gold-gleaming treasure of a thing, but if you look you know the exact shape of the treasure; can mark its outline, call it a chalice or a key without difficulty; read the shape of the submerged door. Delilah is not a paper lantern because paper lanterns only show the shadows

- to be as truthful as possible. Because I - she says, and then - " - think it is true." Of course. The best reason to say anyting. This is not said helplessly, mind: just stubbornly, with the curl of a smile that wants to be coy the shape of it is coy but her eyes are so far removed from coy that there is nothing to it. The coy shape of her mouth becomes the possibility of mischief in her eyes; there is that.

"You're both inked. You're curled up together like a spotch of melody on paper. Uh, you shaved half your head."

"Even if you don't do something artistic with your time I bet you're - " a pause; not stricken, but quite suddenly conscious of perhaps saying too much. There is no point in talking talking talking just to hear yourself speak and she already said the true thing:

She said it because she thinks it's true. She doesn't need to really know why she thinks it's true. All the little signs.

Serafíne

Sera is beneath the arbor and while the sun remains in the sky, its light is slantwise, see, and she and Dan are in a pool of shadow, a puddle of it. Brightness all around, so Sera's eyes are dark and there is something reflective, which resembles a knife though - it should be noted - a knife with neither handle nor blade, just an edge, but she's smiling, taking another drug from her joint, though this one is easier, less intent, see.

There are secrets beneath her skin.

--

"I'm a producer and a songwriter," Dan tells Delilah, with another flash of a grin, his right hand settled in a thoughtless, protective caress the crown of Sera's head, smoothing her curls beneath his rough hands. "Sera, she's just magic."

Sera tips her head back, then. Looks up at Dan, and smiles.

Then back to Delilah.

"Would you like to sit with us?" Sera asks, a note of errantry hooked into the shape of her brow. Please do note: she has not yet made any move to uncurl herself or sit up to make room for Delilah, no.

Delilah

Delilah curls her hair behind her ear; uses her whole hand to do it and her hair whispers against her knuckles. The gesture is eloquent as it is the shape consideration takes, the shape readyness takes; a director's choice.

"Yes," she says, and if Sera is - we have noted - not yet making any move to uncurl herself or sit up or make room for Delilah, if - as some might suspect - that may fall to Dan if it falls to anyone - and some who suspect promptly begin to argue themselves out of their suspicions, citing past generousities - well. It need not be necessary; Delilah is not exactly shy.

She ducks around the arbor; comes at the bench from the green side, comes at it from a dappling - a glissando - of slanting light; of dusking gold, and out of this she drops to take a place. That dusk light: doesn't it pale where it strikes her, however briefly, and become more fine-spun and more tenuous. The leaves rustle, the vines too; and around the corner she pulls herself up with ease to sit, mother fucking gracefully, on the bench's back. Or if there is no back, there is a cement pot with climbing herbs and she seats herself on that.

"So your name is Sarah? I'm Delilah."

Delilah

ooc: grr, c&ping the last line should be

Her eyes go wide; thinkthinkthink.

Serafíne

Sera issues the invitation and makes no move to make-space, leastwise, not until Delilah curls her hair behind her ear and says,

Yes,

And then Sera lifts her long legs, the sweet layers of the sundress all trimmed in eyelet lace like a froth around her knees drift like clouds. See: Sera is not sitting up, precisely, so much as making room for Delilah to hold her legs the way Dan holds her head, cradled in his lap. Perhaps Delilah still circles the arbor, climbs over the back, sits, quite neatly, on the spine. If so, Sera turns so that she is laying down on her back, looking up through the dark-falling leaves of the wisteria, through the trellis, all shadowed, to the last points of brightness in an impossibly blue sky.

Smiling up into the blue,

"Serafíne. Everyone calls me Sera. This is Dan.

"Everyone calls him Dan. You've seriously never gotten high before?"

Delilah

Delilah: she does still circle; does still sit, so precisely; looks pleased with herself for finding that perch, indeed, and sets her ankles together and her feet too (in ballet flats, tapestried with browns and greens and pink-throated drab English countryside birds) so that they are just beneath or beside some part of Serafíne who everyone calls Sera. Her eyes still go wide; she still thinkthinkthinks and reaches into her pocket. A stutter of hesitation; read it in the jerk of her elbow, the drop of her head, hair uncurling from its place behind her ear to brush against her jaw.

"Nobody calls him," and here, her neat little valentine mouth curls coy again although she herself is not coy but does it matter when her mouth is such a coquettish thing? The expression in her eyes a mischief but not a tease?, "Daniel? Biblical names. And ummmmmm," because people make these sounds when they are thinking. "Yes. Seriously I have never gotten high before. Some guy - "

Her expression skips; her mouth twists, wry.

"Almost once. But it wasn't my idea so I didn't, you know? Do you guys want a ... would you like a... Do you like colorful things?"

Serafíne

Sera has one arm trailing off the bench, down to the mossy ground, and the other arm tucked neatly against the spine of the bench and then abducted across her body, forearm golden (she was made to soak up the sun) against the white sundress, a neat little query across her stomach, and she lays on her back and bends her legs at the knees and draws her feet up so that there is room for Delilah's feet beneath the a-frame of Sera's legs, and the hem of the dress tumbles down to puddle around her upper thighs and here are her stockings, Sera, her garters, her skin.

"His mom calls him Daniel, sometimes," Sera's gaze has tracked back to Dan, she is seeming him upside down and framed against shadow, by a background of light. She is seeing him, and she smiles. " - when she thinks it has been too long since he went home."

The way Sera needs him, one imagines he may never get home.

"You should try it sometime, then.

"When it's your idea. Course I like colorful things," Sera says, though she is wearing - see - black and she is wearing white, and so too are her tattooes, written into her skin in black and white, so is her make-up, dark around her eyes see, more black than anything else.

Delilah

So Delilah pulls the beads, excepting the one she did not swallow, out of the pocket of her jeans, and she leans forward. Expectancy defines the shape of her; expectancly informs the muscles under her skin. Expectancy and a will give it away; she holds her palm down low although with Sera leaning perhaps she'll need to sit up or pull Delilah's hand lower or -

The point is Delilah is the kind of person who is at her most expressive when she doesn't say anything, so the beads on her hand are a gift. Take one. One one one one one.

"Why should I?" Delilah asks, curiously. She rests her elbow on her knee and cups her chin in the palm of her hand. "Why do you?"

Serafíne

Sera does rise, see. Lifts her left arm from its protective curl over her belly and pushes herself just a bit more upright and holds herself there, all inverse curve, as she reaches out to take one, take one,

one one one one.

Listen, Sera takes two.

She always wants more.

Dan, though, takes none. Sera will keep his gift. Isn't that the way it is. Isn't that the way it always is. Isn't that the way it is always supposed to be.

Sera's gaze drifts up to Dan after she takes two beads. She holds them neatly folded in her palm, while still holding the joint negligently between her middle and index fingers, like a cigarette. Then she glances up, back at Dan, lifts her hand still holding the beads and hands off the joint. He takes it, pinches the ember off rather expertly, waits a moment, then tucks it away in a half-empty box of clove cigarettes he is carrying around for Sera.

"Sometimes it makes me feel like there's a stone beneath my ribs and the stone is neither heavy nor light, but it is stitched into the skin of hte ground beneath me, and sometimes it makes me feel like there is a slow current of light traveling up my spine, see, delicious.

"Sometimes it makes me feel like someone is unzipping something from the crown of my skull and opening me up and sometimes it makes me feel so damn languid I just want to lay in a hammock and have a long, lazy fuck. Sometimes it helps me slough off my skin and sometimes it helps me tear it open.

"That's why I do it. To get me closer.

"These things - " she means the beads. " - are so cool. What are they?"

Delilah

"Paper," Delilah says. Meticulously adds: "The lady from the farm, the one that might be a cult, she is rolling them further up the path. I just like them," that coy smile again, and her see-everything-in-them eyes full of emphasis. She does just like them because they are so cool. Delilah: if someone was mean to her, you'd see it. Punch. Bruise. Wound. Or maybe you'd just see the flinch and she'd weather it well, hardly bruise at all.

Quietly, "I don't think I'd like to have someone unzipping something like that. I like my skin."

Delilah does, too. She is comfortable in it; she is possessed by her own body, and her own body is her possession. She knows exactly how to move it, and if sometimes it betrays her what relationship is perfect? And if sometimes she bumps into chip bowls or doors, that has more to do with her imperfect awareness when it comes to the rest of the world, and doesn't happen too too often anyway.

"But have you ever jumped out of a plane or gone underwater base diving?" A pause, and: she can't even pretend like she did the second one; it creeps into her expression, this still-not-abashed yet-confessional quality, "I've never done the second," see? Honest. "I'd like to, but I haven't. But I do like anything that is high up and then you fall."

Serafíne

"So do I," Sera returns, lifting her arms above her head, and reaching, reaching, giving Dan the beads the same way she gave Dan the joint the same way she gives Dan everything she receives, so that he can hold on to it for her while she's flying high or coming down or in between. "I like to feel whatever it feels. However it feels. Sometimes when I'm high, I can feel every cell, just breathing, and if I close my eyes, they're all there too, a thousand million iterations of the self, in a slow-descending spiral, smaller and smaller and smalleruntil smaller loses meaning and they are, in any case, growing and growing and growing and I remember that I'm made of anything,

"and everything. And I like it all.

"I gone underwater base diving. I haven't jumped out of a plane. If I did, I'd want to fly, not fall."

Delilah

"Hmm. Flying might just be like walking," Delilah says, but with the air of somebody who thinks that maybe they have flown instead of fallen but they were the same thing, weren't they, the feathers of light and the radiance glancing out, they were the same, and it was walking, and it was walking until it was falling and rising and, Delilah.

"I don't think I'd like that," studious, this coming to a decision about feeling whatever it feels however it feels; it's less the words she uses, and more the cast of her expression- you could bronze it.

Shift.

"You're really beautiful," she says, wide eyed; "I mean, really really gorgeous. You're cool too," she tells Dan, so he doesn't feel left out. Pulls her knees up, her feet away from where they'd come to rest on the bench, and sets them on the ground.

"I need to go, but thanks for asking me to sit with you. I don't really," here's a sudden flare-up of that shying-away, a surprised moment of self-examination, "know anybody in this city except my sister, you see."

Serafíne

"Yeah? Well," this sunny, summering smile, she was made to be in the sun, "now you know me. Have a good night, Delilah."

Call it art.

Lucy

Friday night. First Friday night. The sun has just dipped beyond the still snowy peaks of the mountains to the west, but the sky is still light, a dusky shadowed blue full of promise. The air is warm, the oncoming nightfall will be comfortable until the darkness finally leeches out the heat of the day. But now? Now. Now the night is comfortable. Pleasant, even.

And Santa Fe is packed because of it. It's the first night of the warm summer season of the art walk, and the masses have flooded from their homes in droves to pour down the street, into galleries, into the little half-hidden gardens between galleries. Somewhere there is music playing loudly, but all anyone can hear is the beat, thump-thump-thumping lightly in the veins of those who hear it at this distance.

Lucy feels alive. It's her time of day, that inbetween time when the sun gives way to the night. And there are so many people in this new city. It hadn't seemed this full before, but it feels almost like there are too many people. Too many bodies, too many lives crowded on this one-way street. She smiles, wide full lips painted a vibrant red just a shade off from the maroon-red of her hair. She's dressed in a black cardigan, unbuttoned to reveal the line of her milk-white cleavage and then the red of a tank top. Over her left breast, embroidered into the sweater are the words Be Still My Heart, along with the image of an ornate pair of silver scissors stabbing a heart. They look a little like Lucy's scissors, the ones she keeps in a dark and velvety bag inside her slouching canvas bag. Her pants are black, sit low on her hips, and are adorned with more zippers and straps than may be strictly necessary, along with a pair of black suspenders left hanging at her sides. There are boots beneath that, the same ones she always wears though their height is hidden by the legs of the pants. It's a warm outfit for a cold woman on a pleasant late spring/early summer evening.

They've been in the city for a little over a week now, and they've spent their time together of course, but this is the first time that Lucy and Delilah are out exploring together. Not running to the fast food place across the street from their motel, not running to the 7-11 down the block because fuck I ran out of deodorant should we get razors, too.

"Ooh," she says, pausing before the doorway to a gallery with stark white walls lined with large photographs. The people inside are milling about, shifting slowly from one picture to the next, some hmming, some pointing out some detail that caught their eye, but Lucy? Lucy spies a table spread with snacks. Brownies and carrots and cookies along with plastic champaigne flutes. "This place has food, Del."

Delilah

There are so many stories about sisters. These young women do not look like sisters but they look like sisters, don't they? Aren't they sisters in someody's heart, in some artist's eye? Lucy with her vibrant mouth and her vibrant hair and just now as the day weaves (threads, stitches, in and out, in and out, mingles) into night and night pulls the threads (mingles, out and in, out and in, stitches, threads) free so there's just this one tapestried space-between this gloaming-time twi-light time dusk settling soft as ash with its caressing light its promise of a pleasant spring night just a bit of a nip just now as all that Lucy in her element. Rose Red. Dusk Bright.

This time of day-night isn't Delilah's element. Delilah would mistrust it if she weren't so certain of herself and if she didn't feel comfortable in spite of her dislike of endings, in spite of a certain restlessness which works under her skin like a pebble or a pea yes a pea under how many mattresses or a lentils scattered in ashes.

Del: she's the other sister. Two young women and you want them to be sisters even if they don't look related. Delilah's hair is golden and in Santa Fe's uncertain and fading (tapestry) dusk-light it's a darker and more barbaric blond than it might otherwise seem. We say barbaric and we mean just that: it conjures up antiquities, wants to be sun-dappled, wants to be paler - would be in another light. Del: she has on a rush-woven black-and-white luma woven fedora with a broad black band. Around her throat, hanging negligently, is a scarf, which is as pink as a blush and almost as translucent (how translucent is that?), embroidered in white lacey designs. Her jacket is a light spring thing of a blazer, gray. Beneath it she's wearing a teeshirt with a design silkprinted across the chest. Her jeans ride low on her hips, are belted by a thick belt. Her shoes are ballet flats patterned like something out've the Arabian Nights, embroidered and dusty and so worn that the heels are unravelling.

She is looking around half-mistrustfully, but half again surprisedly and curiously and though she doesn't smile there is an open look to the smooth arches her eyebrows make and the heart of her mouth pursed in consideration and she is dreamily distracted or perhaps a bit discombobulated by all the clamor when

She turns so fast she almost gets whiplash; narrowly avoids hitting somebody with her hair.

"Food? An artful spread!" Her smile is sly or could be sly if she knew how to be sly, but she doesn't; her eyes are too telling. "We should look it over carefully. Wouldn't want the people who put it out to feel unappreciated."

Sail in. Abrupt pause; she reaches out to touch Lucy's hip or wrist or some part of her which is near. "What do you think about," a pause, as she stares at the photographs, "Do you think about, ah, here? I bet there are apartments. Be better than squatting in the motel."

Squatting, 'paying in theory,' it is the same thing: right?

Lucy

Sisters. They fit together like sisters, somehow, in some nameless way. They don't move in unison, but there's something about them that seems in synch, that seems like two halves, one whole. Two sides, one coin. Light and dark, oh but no, not quite. Lucy mentions food, Delilah whips, and Lucy seamlessly moves into a space, the chill frost of her presence pushing at the crowd moving around them. Not enough to force anyone off their path, but just enough to make someone cringe, someone twist, someone miss an eyeful of blonde hair. Like a dance, but not quite. There is no stage, after all, hasn't been for years.

Her smile is wide. It narrows her narrow slits of her bright green eyes. "No, we wouldn't," she replies. Slide in, then, into the gallery. Slip through the crowd. If Delilah is a bright, bold ship, Lucy is its shadow in the water. See how she stops quickly, alert to Delilah's sudden pause even though her eyes were on the spread. She steps to her sister's side like she belongs there, like there's no other place where it's right for her to be.

She turns, tilts her head, the fall of her hair shifting over her shoulders as she takes in the photographs. They are of people, some of them. Up so close that in some the depths of their pores, the grit in the creases of their face are clearly visible. Some are of places, things. The mountains frozen in a sunset in shades of grey.

"Here?" she echoes, turning back to look at Delilah, surprised and also hopeful (but trying not to be that last one). She's told Delilah about the people she's met here already. The coffee shops, the girl with the laptop, the place with the alert for other Awakened (other oracles, she put it, is how she always describes their kind). An impossibly tall man she ran into (literally) in a club the night her senses went haywire and then went quiet. He gave her an address that, given it's location at least, suggests it's the nearest Chantry. Maybe. Could be some other gathering place, of course. Of particular note was the boy she met when she and Auggie played a coffee shop somewhere. Tall and funny and a little weird. They seem cool, she said. He seems cool, she meant.

She shrugs. Unlike her sister, Lucy can lie. Lucy can shrug things off like she's actually shrugging them off. Sometimes. She's better at persuading, but if she needs to hide something (or push it down, stop it stop it, interest never ends well) she can.

"It'd be cheaper." In theory. "It'd be cool to have a place that's ours."

Delilah

And for a moment her smile is almost prim: a Valentine of a mouth it curls up with even more presentiment of sly (shy, but that's not right: careful, tremulous). Bold, yes, but at the whim of the waves beneath; get? All light-catching sails, all just-waking gold creeping across the ship's deck and - let's lay the metaphor to rest. For a moment her smile is almost prim at that Here? of an echo, though it's easy to read the sudden rearing of uncertainty in the dark flash of her eyes. Delilah doesn't straighten; her posture is excellent, often remarked upon by strangers - women of a certain age or young men who want to leer at a dancer's back. But she does lower her head like a bull about to spear the sky with its horns, her nostrils flare and she settles herself where she's standing - or would if there weren't fucking carrots and brownies right there. Lucy's hope. She doesn't want to dash it. She shouldn't dash it. She shouldn't have brought it up. But at the same time, shouldn't she have? Because -

"Mmn. Yeah. Though I guess," hint of a drawl, "that it might be more Auggie and December's if we really did find a place. A real place. A place to close the gate and hang the key - " - this shadow of confusion, she rubs her palm across her forehead. Her head is still bull-lowered, stubborn, "But who knew Denver had stuff to do huh?"

"This does seem cool. We should do a reading. Ask the needle and thread."

Lucy

Lucy knows that uncertainty. That uncertainty has kept them bits of dandelion fluff, barely settling in one place for longer than a breath before that breath sends them sailing on to some other place. It's not just Delilah's uncertainty. They share a good many things, these sisters, and one of those things is - for whatever reason, for good or for not so good - is more than a touch of uncertainty. It always seems to hit them strongest in the off-times. The morning will bring Lucy's turn, for instance.

Which is why the suggestion of a reading is met with a raising of Lucy's sweeping eyebrows and a widening of bright green eyes. Her eyes are not the jewel-bright green of emeralds. They're the green of fresh spring grass, of newly unfurled leaves and all those other green growing-type things that Lucy herself can never touch again.

"We could, yeah. Should, I mean." A place with a gate and key, wouldn't that be nice? Of course, Lucy's mind goes to overgrown gardens secreted away behind wrought-iron fence posts. The gate would take some kind of special sort of key, something old and rusted that - stop. Stop stop stop.

She looks around like she's casing the joint, when really she's just looking at the crowd of people. Too many to settle things in the here and now. But later, maybe, in the quite closeness of their current living situation. Picking up a brownie, she looks at the photographs all huge and too-real on the walls as someone bumps into her side.

"That guy," that guy. Lucy somehow manages to bring him up once (and only once) almost every single day. "He said he knows some musicians in the area. Somebody's an agent. I could play for..." she pauses, mouth hitching over to the side, nose scrunching. Because Lucy likes to sing and she likes to play guitar and she love love loves performing. But her body was trained to do other things. Her shoulders shrug, one after the other, like a wave through her body as she rolls them out. "I'd probably get paid more. Or at all."

Lena Reilly

Normally on Friday nights, Lena's working. DJ Halcyon has spent the last several months rebuilding her reputation after she had to no-show several gigs, and she's finally back to the point where she can set her own schedule a bit. She's secure enough in her position among Denver's deejay scene (high, for the record) that if she wants to take a night off she can without people figuring she's a flake and start thinking about booking her less.

And tonight, for whatever reason, she's decided it's a good night to take off. Maybe it was just a feeling she had, or maybe she was a little worn down. She does that sometimes; gets worn down. Not that she considers her job a monotony; far from it. But when you're a caffeine junkie there are nights that you get a little tired in the mind and soul, and some of her meds sometimes have energy-sapping side effects. She always makes sure to schedule some nights off so she can rest up a bit, go be around people (if not part of them) and get a life high off the energy.

And that's what brought her to this place. She loves Santa Fe; it's her favorite part of the city. It's free, creative, buzzing. It's her vibe. And that Withering Pules of her energy perhaps finds a bit more strength as she walks along, heading toward the same gallery that Lucy and Delilah are in. It's another twist of fate, perhaps, that they're heading to this place, and she slips inside wearing a little grey tank top and jeans, a couple tiny braids the only twists in her otherwise free-flowing hair.

Lucy

Lena walks into a gallery, following a small crowd, and even if she doesn't have her mind open to the presence of other Willworkers, she can feel something. Something different in the air. Something cold and softly creeping, threading, weaving. Whispering over bare skin and over the naked toes of the sandal-wearers.

A moment more and perhaps she sees its source. The tall woman with the brilliant (bottle) red hair stands out, as does the blonde beside her, and besides. They're standing near to a table covered in a black plastic tablecloth and boasting a spread of finger foods and little desserts.

"No," she says, correcting herself, turning to reaching behind Delilah to snag a bit of brownie, which she tears roughly in half. One piece is held out to Delilah, the other is brought up toward her mouth. "Manager, that's what he said. Somebody's a manager."

It's as she's turning back toward the conversation that she catches sight of the deejay making her way in with the crowd. Lucy's brows lift and then her chin, and with the motions she almost seems to grow. Like Delilah, Lucy's posture is excellent, straight and tall she is, and graceful is the arm (with fingers carefully holding onto that chocolate square) that rises up to signal to Lena that she's seen her.

"That's Lena," she says, and then louder, "Lena!"

Serafíne

'Course Sera's around. Of course she knows people. She knows people who know people who know people, and - in turn - she is known. The gallery with food is a hole in the wall sort of place. It is not precisely a side street but somehow it looks like it should be a sidestreet. It has that element, concrete and glass, all unfinished, that make it feel like it sprung up yesterday and will be gone tomorrow.

Some things are better that way.

There is food though and there is wine; cheap wine from a box but the better sort of cheap wine from a box and either way it'll get you drunk if you stick with it. Either way it'll get you drunk and the rest of it seems all haphazard. Canapés that have the exquisite delicacy of a well-worked miniature next to brownies next to a bowl of Lay's Garlic Bread Potato Chips and those chips taste like garlic bread, you want them to be bread, is how much like garlic bread they taste, and some clever bastard has left the bag nearby so that you know ahead of time that These Aren't Your Standard Chips.

Sera is around but not here yet.

Her friends are here, though.

They're normal. Dan, with a plastic glass of red wine leaning back against a support pillar beneath the largest piece in the room, a sweep of reds and grays that feels industrial without defining a single angle. He is talking to the artist and flirting with the artist with a certain degree of familiarity, and the flirting is intense but casual, like they might hook up tonight or some other night or maybe they've hooked up before, but it isn't and will never be a big thing.

But Dan, tall, surfing above the crowd. Dee with her black hair in a flouncy dress that is black with a cherries print and 1950s inspired with a liquid movement and a petticoat edged in eyelet lace beneath the skirt. Others, you know.

No one you'd notice.

Lena Reilly

She gets that little breath of cold tickling at her consciousness like the frayed ends of an icy cloth, and a little shiver runs down her spine at it. There's a furrowing of Lena's delicate brows, warm brown eyes seeking out the source of that cool sensensation and then...

She sees it. She remembers Lucy from that little place where they ran into each other along with Grace and Yun. And from the small but glowing smile that hits her expression, she came away with a good impression of the woman. She raises a hand to Lucy and begins walking forward in strapped sandals, making her way in that direction. Delilah is given a friendly smile, though a bit more reserved since of course they have not yet been introduced.

"Hey Lucy. Nice to see you again." She stops close enough to them to be with them, but not so close as to invade personal spaces. "You come down here often?" She means the Arts District.

Delilah

Delilah takes the brownie-half offered without thought; as if it's rote; as if it's some little swiss clock precision-timed habit right on the hour every hour or maybe right on the twenty minute mark every twenty minute mark although that doesn't seem very Swiss clock-ish or precise. Then she looks at the brownie and her expression turns from stubborn bull-lowered (she could hold the fading moons in her horns, couldn't she) something or other into something more guilt-touched. Considering. If she eats this brownie, then she can still eat later if she- Delilah nibbles on the edge and looks guilty as she does so guilty but with this frisson-edge of pleasure not at the rebellion oh no but at the taste at finding a certain balance or thinking she's found one. That guy, Lucy says.

That guy, that guy, that guy.

Does that guy have a name? Del smirks, but her smirks have no sharpness and dissolve before they're even half-formed because she'd rather smile even if the smile is rather demure and sly (coy?), because that's how she looks: syrup-sweet mouth and eyes that are dark but might as well be a shallow pool look right through them.

"This guy," she starts to say, but then that's Lena. LENA! There are good chips that taste like garlic bread. It's okay to have one, right?

Maybe two. Yes, two. Nibble on the brownie, fastidious, and there's a little smear of brownie on her front tooth when she smiles back at Lena, this flash of a quick smile that's a little nervous and a lot curious.

"Hi," she says, introducing herself, "I'm Del, Delilah, and we've never been here before ever. But it's kind of cool, yeah? Is it always this crowded?"

ooc: I am aghast that took so long; this post is typed in WIND!

Serafíne

Is it always this crowded? Delilah asks Lena and no it is not always this crowded. Sometimes it is more crowded than this. Sometimes the crowd dissolves into itself before it has entirely formed. There is something organic to it, some hidden movement that is defined by the cracks in the sidewalk and the brush-strokes on that collection of miniatures made to look like those stiff, cardboard-y 18th century portraits from rural and revolutionary American, with sugar-skulls substituted in the midst of those unnatural poses.

Those are on the other wall, so tiny you have to get up close to see them, so tiny that displayed on brick as they are, getting up close to see them is nearly the point.

Oh, hello. Here is Serafíne, inside the door see, and hugging several someones you-don't-know, and even though she has not yet managed to get anywhere close to the refreshments, she already has a glass of wine in hand, is how good she is at First Fridays and Gallery Openings and Drinking. She is holding that glass with a sort of careless care as she wraps her leather-clad arms around strangers and drws them in and exclaims and spins and is pulled in a half-dozen-directions because don't you want to pull her places, too.

She pulls herself toward those miniatures or perhaps she is so-steered by the artist, a middle-aged woman of moderate height with long, straight hair threaded with gray in a long tunic and a long skirt and some chunky jewelry, who is otherwise remarkable except: look at those things.

There are people in the place (most people in the place) who are unwilling to break that gallery barrier. Who stand back and sort of look because isn't a gallery like a museum and aren't you meant to stand like that in a museum and aren't the only people getting close occasionally art students talking about brush strokes who the fuck talks about brush strokes.

Sera is does not give a fuck about distance and holds her wine in both hands and slides right up to the miniatures and starts to peruse them, nearly nose-to-point.

There are others mounted too high for her to see.

She would hop but: wine.

Oh, clever girl, Sera pulls out her phone and starts texting.

Lucy

Delilah is health conscious. Truth is, Lucy is, too. That training, you know. That life before. Don't eat that, don't eat this, do this and you'll lose five pounds you don't need to lose five pounds but really if you want that part you need to lose five pounds. And there is the simple health of it. Carrots or a brownie, hm. Could have both. Could deny the short-term pleasure of the one for the long-term benefits of the other. Could could could. Which is part of why Lucy shares. A half for one and a half for the other, that's better, yeah?

This guy. That grabs her attention back from where she's watching Lena make her way through the crowd to get closer. This guy. Lucy gives Delilah this look from the corner of her eye, all yeah? Where is that going? To a tease? To a warning? To a reminder of what happens when Lucy gets her hopes up about boys?

But then Lena is there, and then it's the three of them making a little three-person island next to the snack table. There are others in the crowd, but even if they're noticeable Lucy doesn't notice them. She's standing next to her sister, the night is falling softly outside, and she is surrounded by people. Lifting so slightly toward the balls of her feet (hard to tell because those boots she wears are heeled), she practically vibrates with a quiet, intense but subdued excitement. The calm before a storm, or the last clear night before a snowstorm.

She does not take any chips that taste like garlic bread because fuck she's all out of gum and the nearest gas station is the Conoco down at 6th which is blocks and blocks from where they are.

"Hey," she says back. And did she ever mention to Lena in that brief encounter that she had a sister? If she did, well, here she is. Here they are. Two sisters like night and day, dawn and dusk. Light and dark.

Delilah tells the deejay that they've never been here before ever and Lucy gives a nod to that. "We're still pretty new around here."

Lena Reilly

Delilah says they haven't been here, and Lucy says they're new. Lena remembers that last bit from the last run-in they had; Lucy said that she hadn't been around here long. But there is still information here; THEY'RE pretty new around here, which means that the two of them are a unit of some sort. So she smiles to Delilah, the warmth behind that bit of reservation. There was a point that she was like this, long ago. It's been a long time since Sera's seen this side of her; in fact, maybe she never saw it. They didn't interact much before the Hydra thing (she can think the word now) and so she may have not seen the friendly woman that Lena was before. But wass there, and it is there now.

"Nice to meet you, Del." Delilah gave a nickname, and Lena uses it. Nicknames are how we want to be seen usually, at least when we offer it. "I'm Lena, like Lucy said. And hey, we were all knew around here once."

She gets a feel for that familiar Resonance of Serafine; it tickles on the back of her mind. And the friendliness falters, just briefly, before it comes back up. That's a conversation she hopes she doesn't have to have now, here in public. Because they're not going to be able to be around each other until they have a conversation. But she lets it go for now, because she's not going to get worked up about it before it's time.

"Sister?" It's a question to the two; Lucy had mentioned a sister before. "So did we maybe run into each other in New York too, or just you and I, Lucy?"

Delilah

There is a striking young woman with half of her head shaved and the other half's a gold wheat-sheath spill of oh just gold and more gold at least to Delilah's eye and, did Delilah know it, that striking woman is also named for an angel but in a way which is more glorious. Delilah's wide-set eyes (her eyes are wide-set, generous and large, the liquid measure of which are all too too open; there is an air of surprise even when she is not surprised, or there would be if that weren't a lie) wander that-a-way. She's so close to the wall. Delilah stares in spite of herself, abashed. A yokel, though she is not a yokel: still.

She stares, misses any faltering of friendliness (no nervousness kicking higher), and the nervousness in her greeting diminishes a little when she looks back at Lena. Delilah reaches one hand casually for another chip but they're a little out of her reach so she has to really stretch her arm and she doesn't want to lean because that would be rude or no leaning is okay but turning that is what she doesn't want to do so she is desperately not turning and reaching and the bowl why is it so far.

Another demure flash of a smile, lights a candle in her eyes though she looks briefly at Lucy before back at Lena. "I like being new," she says like a confession. "I would be new all the time if I could be old too. We maybe," and the nervousness is back. Because what if they did. What if she doesn't remember. What if Lena doesn't remember. What about that night at that one club and it was five seconds. Or maybe there was no night. Either way, she looks a bit stricken, like she's going to be thought rude.

Delilah stops just because the question was technically addressed to Lucy. Delilah's fingers wiggle just over the chips so close; she realizes she can innnnch. And knock the bowl off the table.

Great. Delilah drops to the floor, not like somebody just told her to do push-ups, but with a measured and rather weary (brief hitch, one moment leaning that-a-way) grace, to shame-facedly pick them up.

Lucy

The gallery space is a shared space, it seems. One half brick exposed, paintings tacked into the wall. The other white, so white, with large black and white photographs of people, things, places, animals. Some macro some not. They're big, too. There's a man's face right there, all shades of soft grey and white, and that face is near as tall as Lucy in her bare feet. Sera's side has one artist. Lena-Lucy-Del have a balding man with skin like fresh-turned earth, wearing a colorful linen shirt untucked from an old pair of jeans. One can imagine he and the woman on the other side don't get along well. One would be wrong.

The table is shared between the spaces, the one with the snacks and such that is. The two sides, they are usually divided by a partition (it's cheaper to rent together, see, cheaper to go in as a duo in a space so large instead of a solo in something smaller), but tonight that partition has been pushed along its track in the ceiling. The place is huge now. Spacious.

But not, because people. People sweep in and people disappear back out again. They crowd in close around Lucy and Lena and Delilah, such that when Delilah, reach-reach-reaching for the bowl of chips and instead upends it, someone nearly steps on her hands. Nearly.

Delilah is worried about being perceived as rude. Lucy? "I don't know, you know, I don't quite remember seeing you there. I mean, I do but I don't, you know? It was-" crash goes the bowl of chips and Lucy is sweeping downward, every bit as graceful as her sister, vibrant red hair lifting from her shoulders as she drifts down into a crouch. She grins upward at Lena. "It was a long time ago, after all."

Shoulder to shoulder, she starts gathering up the chips back into the bowl, angling so that no one else comes close to thoughtlessly trampling Del's fingers. And so, shoulder to shoulder, she leans in closer to Delilah.

Serafíne

Sera is texting Dan to come pick her ass up so she can see the miniatures she cannot see from way down here, and it is way down here tonight because Sera is wearing her battered old Doc Marten's rather than a pair of the ridiculous heels she always sports and Sera wants to see the miniatures that are higher than her head.

And Dan, poor bastard, gets the text and rolls his eyes and shoots her a look across the crowd but of course he's going to stop flirting with another of the evening's artist and cut through the crowd and go pick her up because that is what he does: whatever she wants. And he does't even fucking mind it.

So Dan's cutting through the crowd past Delilah and Lena and Lucy when Delilah knocks over the bowl of chips and then ducks down to start picking them up and god knows what it is, chivalry or resonance or just human fucking decency, but there's a tall, skinny, tattooed hipster crouching beside Delilah as she picks up the chips. He grabs the bowl from where it skidded beneath the table (he is tall and his arms are both: long and tattooed) and hands it to her and grins through his beard.

"Here," handing her the bowl. "Don't worry about 'em. Let people stomp on them, right? Call it art."

And he doesn't touch her but he's sort of urging her upright with his hands framed around her though if she insists on picking them up well he will let her and go. But: either way he straightens. Says, "Lena, good to see you," to the DJ, and there's no evidence of awkwardness on Dan's part, no awareness of it, just a quick and rather polite smile, the sort you pass out like Nerds on Halloween, and then he's off through the crowd.

Finds Sera. Comes up behind her and picks her up. She is probably going to insist on something absurd like sitting on his shoulders right? But whatever happens next is left for later and they don't linger long.