How do you solve a problem like Elijah?

Serafíne

An exchange of texts led to the invitation to Eleanor's office. It is Sera's morning and everyone else's afternoon and Sera is curled up in a big green velveteen armchair and Sera does not really like to watch television but there is a Batman marathon on IFC and Dan has located it for her and Sera is wearing an overlarge sweatshirt and has her phone in one hand and a mug of her favorite tea on the table beside her and is watching the television show all fascinated (there are cheerleaders who want something refreshing to drink! there is a milk vending machine! it gives out silver dollars!) not quite believe that she isn't really high and there is a phone beneath a cake plate and and and and and their slide-poles and labeled with their names. DICK. BRUCE.

("Boys and girls! Go back to your studies! Believe me nothing in life is free!")

Oh, Batman. Sera is in love with you.

"This is the best thing ever." Sera asserts to Dan, and she is objectively correct. He has come to see if she wants to come to an afternoon sound check for a friend of theirs and she shakes her golden head no and tells him that she's going to college and she needs a ride.

---

The Sex Pistols in the car because Dan is in a super retro mood and Sera doesn't like them much except for their version of My Way which makes her smile, her temple against the glass as the city opens around her.

Universities are such strange and official places, especially in September, when the light is slanting and the students are all gung-ho and swarming even in late afternoons and Sera doesn't belong here, not in daylight, but here she is - sunglasses and sprawling light, looking like a rockstar, feeling like a rockstar and she checks in with Eleanor's secretary and takes a rather sprawling seat in one of the institutional waiting room chairs, still wearing sunglasses and playing with her phone, as people do.

Eleanor Yates

Eleanor @ 6:35PM[Despair]Roll: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 6, 6, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )

Eleanor Yates

With the term back in full swing, Eleanor is significantly busier than she was a few weeks ago. Her texts were brief and quick enough to come off as terse, and the truth is, by the time she gets a reminder on her phone about Serafine coming by, she has somewhat forgotten what they're supposed to be discussing.

The University of Denver is wealthy. It is full of bros. Not so long ago there were ROMNEY banners hung in some dorm windows, because a significant population of this school is Republican or Libertarian. It is a gorgeous campus, and an excellent educational institution, and is certainly old and revered in the city, state, and region. There is brick. There is copper that still gleams with newness and there is copper that has aged into the glorious green patina that it will all eventually take on. And the Sturm College of Law is not in the Sturm building (which is old and a bit dilapidated and boxy and boring and houses, naturally, the English department), but the Rickson building, which is new and gorgeous and many-windowed and stately.

There are frat houses nearby. Across the oval green there is one entrance to the bridge-building across Evans Avenue. As they pass under it Sera can see people walking to and fro through the glass of that bridge, students and grown-ups and visitors alike. Young men in suits and young men in backwards caps and cargo shorts, young women in sports uniforms and young women in Uggs drinking Pumpkin Spice Everything Oh My God. Occasionally someone who is not white, but only occasionally.

Eleanor's office is high but not so high that you know instantly that she's important. It is at the end of a hall. It's just an office, of a similar size to that of several other professors of her rank and experience.

Truth be told, Eleanor's experience as a professor isn't much at all. What prestige she has comes from her previous career.

--

Everyone stares at Sera when she gets out of the car. Even among hipsters she stands out. When she wears Chanel and sweeps her hair in such a way that the fringe is less obvious, she stands out. An aura of something strange and otherworldly follows her into the building, up the stairs, into an elevator and up. When she comes to the offices she speaks first to a secretary who serves the floor, or the wing, or what-have-you, but Eleanor isn't a big enough deal to have her own dedicated assistant.

At least not in the mundane world.

There is no waiting. Just a walk down a hall.

--

Her office is in a corner, but not a tower. It is in a row with several other offices. She is starting her third year of teaching here; no matter how many judges she's on good terms with, she does not have the prestige for something more grand. But the building is relatively new, despite the law school itself going back for a century. Her office is rather tidy and clean. The molding at the ceiling and floor is a crisp, arctic white. The walls are the blue of the deep sea or a darkening sky.

There is an L-shaped desk, arranged in such a way that when she works on her computer, her profile faces the door. When she does other things -- such as meeting with people who visit her -- she faces the door head-on. The desk is wood, and very dark. Not terribly heavy, obtrustive. There is a surprisingly light feel to everything in her office, despite the dark blue, the black desk. It's the contrast, perhaps: the stark whites, the pale greys, the hints of rubbed nickel. It has a tall window set between two bookcases, a window that faces the door and bleeds sunset light into the room at this hour.

The sun is beginning to set, and the light is searing, but the blinds are turned a bit to offset the sharpness of that light. There is a single Tiffany lamp on the corner of her desk giving a golden, unapologetically colorful light to the room. There are two chairs facing the desk, nice ones, made in the last few years but with hints of midcentury modern with contemporary design elements and comfort.

The hallway, as Sera walks down towards the half-open door, begins to feel submerged. Like stepping into a pool, slowly down, down, walking into the deep end, waiting for the air to leave completely and be replaced by water. It is not quite even fully autumn, but here it begins to feel even more like winter.

Eleanor is at her desk. Just before the door opens to allow Sera in, she lifts her eyes from what she's reading, meeting the other Disciple's eyes. She gives a faint smile. There is music playing: Iron and Wine. There is a light in her pale eyes. "Hello," she says, and despite everything else about her, there's genuine warmth in that. "Did Jeanine offer you coffee?"

Serafíne

Walking down the hallway with no coffee cup in hand, dark eyes flickering thoughtlessly over the numbers on glass and wood, variously frosted and embossed, and that sensation of being submerged, of winter. It makes her think perhaps not inexplicably of a pool in an autumn garden, turning toward winter. Leaves drifting down to the glassine surface. The water crawling up her thighs as she walks further in, a cold wind rising -

- so, a bit breathless, Serafíne, in a way that has her mouth open and her head canted and her shoulders forward. A bit startled to find herself here, knocking on the door, no secretary afterall. Just the departmental assistant who greeted her at the entrance to the wing of offices.

Sera does not expect warmth. By the time she gets to the end of the hall she is downright chilled. She expects to see her breathe when she breathes out and for the first time in ever kinda wishes that she had worn more clothes.

--

Did Jeanine offer her coffee?

Sera is kind of looking everywhere at once. The light gone brilliant against the blinds, the desk, the bookcases, the Tiffany lamp, the music.

"Heh. Yeah," a quick, darting sort of smile twists across her mouth and her shoulders curl and her heels click click click with every step she takes. Sera always conspires to make herself feel - taller, larger, something about her manner, something about the way she walks, which is not mincing as you'd expect given the heels she wears. And she has her hands in her pockets and she kind of wants a cigarette but buildings like this one have been non-smoking for years and even Sera understands that - "I'm not really a coffee girl, so I said no thanks."

- and she takes a seat in one of the reception chairs, kind of flinging herself down and taking up the insouciant sort of posture rarely seen in the School of Law, fingers laced across her bare midriff. "I'm Sera, but I guess you fucking know that. What with the fact that we had an appointment and all. You're Richard's - that a-word, right? It's good to meet you."

Eleanor Yates

For more than one mage in Denver, being with Eleanor is terrifying. They know she's on their side. They know she isn't going to hold them under a pool of water or leave them in a barren wilderness to freeze to death, but those fears rise, disconnected from her person but inextricable from her presence. She knows that she makes people uncomfortable sometimes. She knows that her magic, when she works spells of any kind, bring up primordial fears of death and dying and endings and, perhaps worst of all, the sensation of being irrevocably broken.

Perhaps that is part of why she practices compassion with as much discipline as she practices any of her other arts. Including law. Including yoga. Including killing.

Sera feels cold, because that is how Sera's mind and soul interpret the winter, and the drowning, and the sundering. It's a common reaction. That may even be why Eleanor's first question is about the secretary offering Sera something warm to drink. That may be why she has a plate of cookies sitting on the edge of her desk. They are suns and moons. They are large, puffy sugar cookies. They are thinly frosted with brightly colored glazes. They look store-bought. They aren't.

Again: discipline in all things.

"It's not very good coffee anyway," Eleanor says, with a touch of wryness. She doesn't mention the cookies, but their placement does suggest that it's a free-for-all. Have a crescent moon. Feel the flecks of pale blue frosting on your lips. Remember that once upon a time, we were all stardust. We are made of the moon; we eat the moon. We are made of the sun; one day it will obliterate the earth.

"Acarya," she fills in, the old Sanskrit rolling easily off her tongue. They have that in common, the Euthanatoi and the Ecstatics -- but truth be told, more death mages know touches of Sanskrit than cultists. Generally speaking. "Mentor is fine," she adds. And smiles. "Good to meet you too, Sera. I've heard words here and there about you, Richard going to your parties and so forth, but nothing in depth. I'm glad you wanted to meet in person, but I'm afraid --"

Her hand, slender but not as pale as one might expect with the way she feels, wafts over a few piles of folders and papers and various colors of pens. Her eyes track the motion of the hand, contemplating All That Work, What The Hell.

Eleanor's hand drops to the side. She moves gracefully. There's a level of control there, but perhaps that's just the calmness of it: she moves as though she is in water. Easy. Smooth. Her eyes, a pale blue that does not pierce, but sees the way the sky sees, come back to Sera. The wave of her hand, the fall of it, the return of her gaze: all in a matter of a second or so.

"-- I've been so busy that I've completely forgotten why you wanted to see me. I apologize; I'm not normally that disorganized."

Serafíne

Serafíne is not the sort of Ecstatic who knows Sanskrit or philosophy, not the sort of Ecstatic who practices denial, who understands the layers of theory between the many things she feels and the many things she does and the way the world finds itself expressed in her and of her and by her and through her. That is not precisely correct: she knows one word. The one that everyone who has ever taken a half-baked yoga class at the local Y knows, and she learned it from Jim.Namaste.

She has no idea what it means, or that it is derived from Sanskrit and she thinks it is like aloha - hello and goodbye - and she never, ever uses it, not even when she is 30 days sober and wasting to nothingness and Jim has decided to begin their daylong ritual with yoga at dawn with his friends in the park, because fuck if she knows shit about yoga, and it doesn't feel real or right to her.

She is the sort of Ecstatic - the sort of creature - who feels vividly the imprint of another resonance, swallows it, inhales it, feels it dissolving itself on the back of her tongue and wrapping itself around the most primitive part of her brain, its stem, and she is aware too of the disconnect between her experience of that resonance and the warmth of the environment - the Tiffany lamp, the sugar cookies - and the warmth of Eleanor's greeting.

And she is kinda listening in a way that makes one wonder if she's really paying any attention whatsoever and she is kinda still looking around more than she's looking at Eleanor and when she does Eleanor is making that gesture, you know. All that work.

It is not a claim that Sera can make and she makes a sympathetic noise but there is a mild little smirk or Sera's face because what the hell does she know about work. She woke up an hour and a half ago. Someone else made her breakfast and she's pretty sure she ate some of that breakfast. She took a bubble bath because she wanted too and now she smells like strawberries and patchouli and pot.

"You like them?" It might take Eleanor to catch on to the context of the question, but she is asking it essentially of the air and she means: them, Iron and Wine, the music playing in the background. "If you do this chick Dan's producing is playing at - what the fuck is it, that place with the patio stage. Goddamnit. Anyway, tonight. You know.

"If you're free."

A beat.

Sera looks down and away; looks again at the blinds and the way the light comes through them, weighs that sensation of warmth-from-without against the things she holds in her skin now. Gives one of this hook-shouldered shrugs that always seems to accompany the most ridiculous of her statements.

"Honestly, I don't fucking know," and this is - quiet and a bit folded and, oh reflective. Sera is aware of her breath and aware of her body and aware of these discrete sections of time in a way she does not precisely know to be meditative and sometimes she feels like there is a jewel in the center of her tongue, and sometimes she feels like that jewel is the world and she swallows it down like a seed -

That is evasive. Sera knows it is evasive. It's also true. She gives another one of those little one-shouldered shrugs and glances back up, meeting Eleanor's gaze when she says, "Elijah I guess. I mean, I feel like someone should do something, you know?

"But I don't know what the fuck to do. Dan said he thought you guys knew each other so - "

Eleanor Yates

It's funny how far removed and yet how close the traditions of the Cultists and Thanatoics are. It's as though they took a single philosophy and branched in opposite directions in terms of purpose. Neither permits stagnation, though. They all fight it. Eleanor, for all she has done and knowing they might not see it the same way, counts the Ecstatics as -- in general -- an allied force in the world.

Yes, it does take her a moment to know what Sera is talking about when she asks 'do you like them?' like that. A beat of a pause, and then a nod. She smiles. "There are many patio stages in Denver," she says, "but I'm afraid tonight I'm staying in."

Too busy. Right.

There is a pause, and Eleanor does not interrupt it. She is calm, she is so steady, she is watching Sera and waiting for Sera and she is not always so patient. Even with people in life-altering pain, Eleanor cannot always find it in herself to wait gently and smile softly while someone else Gets To The Fucking Point. Today is a good day, though. She has enough energy to get so much done. She might look up a place where some girl is playing on a patio stage and show up anyway, stay up late, enjoy the night before dreams and another damn day sap her of what she has left to give to the world. She might drink wine and dance in her living room. Go for a twilight run. She doesn't know yet. Today, after weeks of bad days, everything seems like a possibility, an option, a draw.

"I'm sure that's not true," she says, of Sera's don't-fucking-know. She says it mildly enough, but there is a vague shadow of reproach. Now, now. Don't say such things.

Elijah, she guesses. And Eleanor goes a bit still. She glances at the door, checking to confirm, again, that Sera closed it on her way in. Her eyes come back to the Ecstatic's. "When I last saw him, I informed him that it was time he had a proper teacher. He is to notify the one who has -- apparently -- been 'mentoring' him so far, and after that, he will be my responsibility. Hopefully there will be a marked improvement in his decision-making and impulse control."

She leaves that there for a few moments. It's so cut and dry. It's so... ironclad. She does not suggest that she will take over Elijah's apprenticeship if it's okay with Kalen. She doesn't mention Kalen by name. She doesn't imply that Elijah even had a choice in the matter, though that is an unintentional implication. This is the way things are now. They will get better.

Serafíne

There are a helluva lot of patio stages in Denver, but Sera can find out where. Text Dan, get an address, pass it on if Eleanor shows any interest, but Eleanor is staying in and there's a glance and these small tics and that look, see, makes Sera - briefly, keenly, entirely - aware of the near-superfluity of her ordinary life.

The creature gives this one-shouldered jerk of her shoulders that says kind: too bad and also you should come out anyway and oh hey I don't really wanna intrude you seem like a Pretty Important Person and I'm not really sure how I managed to find this office anyway kind of motion in response.

Too busy. Right.

--

Eleanor is sure that is not true and Sera is sure that it is and she is aware, you understand, of that shadow of reproach - mild as it is - aware enough that it brings her shoulders up, braced all around her spine.

A kind of wariness you understand, all liminal about her and her heart is beating and she doesn't precisely remember why.

"Oh." Sera says, and her voice is quiet. It is not timid - nothing about her could be timid, but she's watching Eleanor and listening to Eleanor and you know, Eleanor doesn't mention Kalen by name, and she doesn't imply that Elijah had a choice and Sera is on the cusp and she hears that solidity, the goddamned resolve and all she seems capable of doing with it in just that moment is to breathe out and say, "Okay."

And, "Uhm, cool," a moment later.

Eleanor Yates

Eleanor's eyebrows lift a bit. "Are you all right?" The concern, which is what it is, sounds genuine.

Serafíne

"I'm cool." Sera's half-smile is both quick and quicksilver; it appears and then: disappears quite as quickly as it came. And the way it fades.

"It's just - " And here Sera looks down, and you know she is Thinking because her rather straight brown brows have drawn themselves together over her dark eyes and her mouth is all seamed and she is tasting the words on her tongue and weighing and measuring them and she takes in a breath and offers Eleanor another one of those one-shouldered shrugs. " - you didn't say Kalen's name. You know?

"Elijah's cool with it. Right?"

Eleanor Yates

"I wasn't sure if you knew him, or that he had been Elijah's mentor," Eleanor explains, "and I didn't want to speak ill of him to a stranger if you didn't."

She gives a small shrug. "At first, Elijah insisted he'd just been a bad student. But when I openly said that I thought I should take over his apprenticeship, he said he would tell Kalen as soon as possible. That made me hesitate, so I asked him if it's what he wanted."

Eleanor gives a small shake of her head. "I don't think Elijah knows yet what he wants, or even who he is. He wants badly to please people: to be a good student, to regain my trust, to not hurt feelings, to help this friend, Alicia. And making life-altering decisions because you 're seeking approval and belonging is usually a way to make incredibly poor decisions. The sort that land him in the situations he keeps running into, where every mistake that puts other people's lives and sanity at risk is justified by his good intentions. At least when he's faced with the choice to begin with.

"Elijah and I discussed it. And I told him that from what I know of him, he would be better suited to the Ecstatic or Thanatoic path than the Hermetic, but that in the meantime, what he needs most is a firmer hand." She waves her hand, first palm down and then sideways and up, like a turning wave, rolling, rolling. "He expressed concerns, we talked about what it would be like, Richard explained his experience with me, and Elijah agreed that he would speak with Kalen about ending his apprenticeship. That was a week ago, so I've been planning on checking in with him again soon."

She watches Sera for a bit. "What are your thoughts on it? As far as someone doing something about Elijah?"

Serafíne

"Heh." Sera inserts, quietly you see, but with an evident humor that suggests that whatever was slowly winding up inside her has - eased, in the strangest of ways. The edge of her sudden smile, the surety of it, even though she's sitting in the reception seat in her fishnets and cutoffs worming her fingers through the marching diamonds of the pattern like a deliquent called in to the principal's office. Charming, that smile, and self-aware in a way that is hard to measure. "I know pretty much everybody."

The smile fades somewhat; it has gone so strangely tender, as Eleanor lays out the course of her conversation with Elijah. Sera is still working her thumb through the frame of her fishnets and fiddling with the weave and watching the fibers against her dark-red nailpolish, which is peeling a bit, which is probably as much a fashion statement as anything else. And Sera is thinking of Elijah, who wants to please and that awareness clicks home inside her like a key in a lock, and she is half-thinking about herself, and the mistakes that were bleak enough that she has never chosen to turn around and look back at them.

"He always seemed like an Ecstatic to me. That's why I told Dan to look in on him when I went to Paris. Told him to take Elijah out to see Jim, too, but I guess Jim's still - incommunicado or what the fuck ever. Which sucks because Jim would dig him, I think.

"He's good with shit like that. I mean, thinking and people and shit. Teaching. He's good at that too.

"I mean I didn't have any thoughts, except, you know. Why the fuck's he acting like this and, you know, how the hell do you instill a healthy amount of self and community preservation in him without paralyzing him with fear, cos I sure as fuck don't wanna do that either.

"It sounds like you've got it pretty well in hand, though. I guess that's what I think."

Eleanor Yates

"That doesn't surprise me," Eleanor says, with a touch of bemusement at the edges of her tone. She watches Sera's face, more than anything. Watches her eyes and not what her hands do, what she wears. She, in her linen and silk blends, doesn't seem to notice that Sera is dressed differently than herself at all, much less most people on campus.

She gives Sera a slow nod when Sera says he seems Ecstatic. It's no surprise that she agrees. She doesn't defend her thought that he has it in him to be a Euthanatos, or argue that he should be. It isn't about should. And she doesn't interrupt to tell Sera that she doesn't know who 'Jim' is. Eleanor, unlike Sera, doesn't know everybody. Isn't inclined to find them all. Accepts that this 'Jim' may have become a bit of a hermit, the way good teachers often do. Her eyes don't widen or flutter at the swearing.

Eleanor is not squeamish. About much of anything, really.

"Well, you don't do it with fear at all," she says thoughtfully. More: mindfully. "Self preservation is more difficult for Elijah, I think, because his focus is so external." Of course: pleasing people, saving people, helping people, without turning it back on himself. "But he is also intrinsically compassionate. That is a gift: he will not have to learn it, only defend against unlearning it. What he needs is greater self-knowledge and empowerment. When he understands -- deeply -- that he has the power to hurt as well as heal, that all the good intentions in the world do not guarantee that his actions will harm none, and if he can truly see that the capacity to injure does not negate the capacity to comfort, I think he will be able to shoulder his duty to the community, and to the world."

She is quiet for a moment. "With Elijah, the danger is less that he will be paralyzed by fear of external dangers. I think that facing his mistakes and their impact on others could cause him to tailspin into self-recrimination: 'I can't do anything right', 'I mess up everything I touch', and so on." Eleanor gives a small shake of her head. "That's actually one of the reasons I think he needs a 'firm hand' right now, so to speak. Someone to shoulder the responsibility of his mistakes with him, of course, but also someone who will call bullshit when necessary."

Serafíne

Sera isn't the sort of creature one would expect to be bashful. She's burning, isn't she? Somehow she is always on fire. Look at the way she's dressed to come here. "Up," or something, her version of formal which means that she has slung her very nice Chanel bag with a chain across her body and paired golden pearls with the bicycle chain she often wears as a necklace or bracelet and she is aware that she doesn't really belong in the daylight, in an office, with a degreed and credentialed stranger speaking with her so thoughtfully and mindfully and soberly, as if she might have something intelligent to say right back.

Oh, look. Here is a string, a fault in the pattern, a broken weft in the weave.

But listen. She does listen. Quixotic and shifting, consideration a tender sort of bruise on her face, meeting Eleanor's eyes only rarely, but in those moments so directly as to be breathtaking. Head canted aslant like that might help the words go in better and maybe it does.

The last bit - someone to shoulder the responsibility of his mistakes with him - brings tears, sudden and unbidden, to Sera's eyes. None spill over her lashes. There is just the damp brightness of her gaze, sudden and direct, the spike of something lancing beneath her breastbone. An echo she's never heard before.

The rasp of her breath in her throat.

"You really know what you're doing, don't you?" Quiet, this. With such a soft little smile.

Eleanor Yates

Eleanor -- so calm, so steady, so clear in her thoughts and speech -- is not the sort of person one would expect to be ruthless. To be violent. To be vengeful. To have gone utterly, soul-rendingly mad. But she has. And that is how she knows that no one is what you expect them to be. She has known another person more deeply than anyone can hope to know someone, and that is how she knows: you can always be surprised by someone. Anyone.

There are tears in Sera's eyes, and Eleanor does not react like so many. No oh shit face. No confusion. Not even a question. Not a quirk. She doesn't move tissues closer to Sera; Sera will reach for them if she wants, perhaps.

What she says, though, that makes Eleanor laugh softly. "I've had a lot of experiences. I've been Elijah. And much, much worse." She shakes her head slightly, gives a faint shrug. "That is all I know."

Serafíne

Sera doesn't reach for the tissues. She seems the sort to let her tears fall and wipe them away with the back of her wrist, with the tail of her flannel shirt, or something equally and elegantly gauche. She would if she wanted but she doesn't want them and anyway, today the sudden brightness of her tears remains unshed, nothing more than a gleaming film across the surface of her eyes.

She does sniff a bit. That's involuntary but it doesn't sound like a sniffle precisely.

The tender edge of her small smile curls, becomes somehow both more private and more public.

"Cool." Sera is: gathering herself up, but she means that cool. Whatever was unsettled about her moments ago has shifted beneath her skin and she means it, her voice all warm and perhaps a bit oddly reflective, or perhaps refractive. Her fingers are still tangled in the weave of her fishnets even as she stands, biting her lip. "It sounds like he's in really good hands."

And, a moment later -

"When I figure out where that show is tonight, I'll text you. That way you can drop by if you feel like it. Now that you're in my phone you'll probably get an invite every time we throw a party, you'd be welcome there, too.

"Richard knows where my place is."

Eleanor Yates

Eleanor just smiles. The truth is, she knows cool from the lips of a Cultist the way she knows their tears and their Code and the fact that they are not lazy runaways. She has been Elijah, and vaguely remembers it; that's true. It is also true that she has been Sera. She has been herself, always, in many forms, with many mistakes.

She does not confirm or wave away Sera's suggestion of what sort of hands Elijah might be in. She just gives that small, thoughtful smile. "Thank you, Sera," she says, regarding the text, the future invites, the show.

Eleanor nudges the plate of big, soft, fluffy sugar cookies towards the edge of her desk. They are iced: white stars, blue moons, yellow suns. "Have a cookie."

Serafíne

Have a cookie. Eleanor says.

Sera takes two.

Of course she does: one sun and one star, no moons. Naturally she gravitates toward the things that burn.

Holds them both up, you know, in salute.

"Cheers - "

And turns around and ambles out the door, biting one of the points off the edge of a star.

Delicious.

Mick

Eleanor Yates

[Despair]

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

Twilight

Sloan's Lake Park.

Evening; after sunset, before the sun has left the sky entirely. The marina that fronts the lake boasts a concrete bridge with three metal benches. Close in on the figure in the center, for he is the only figure visible in the scene. The jogging paths are damp from the rain earlier, and the air has that heavy feeling as if another storm might come.

Sooner or later, they always do.

But listen: the man, in a slightly rumpled suit, sits both low and wide. Slumped forward, his head in his hands.

There is a something on the bench beside him.

Eleanor Yates

Today was not a good day.

Today she rose, and she sat there, rubbing her face with her hands, closing her eyes and dwelling in the silence for a while. And then she went back to sleep. She did not work out. She did not make breakfast. Eleanor put her head down again, closed her eyes, and if she did not sleep again, she at least wished she did. She got up after a while; she washed and she dressed. She went to the campus and she taught, she spoke, and lectured, she set them in groups to discuss so she could stop talking.

Somehow after it all, after the cold rain that poured down, she knew that she did not want to go straight home. So she drove, and ended up here. Not to jog. She had no plan when she got out of the car, still in her clothes from work. She just walks, and when she nears the marina, sees benches, she wonders if it's worth the risk that a stranger might speak to her. Eleanor gives a small shake of her head, exhales, walks to one of the other benches, and sits herself down. She only glances over; she does not stare. She does not want him to look back.

Eleanor Yates

[perception (details) + alertness]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 3, 5, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )

Eleanor Yates

[and perception + awareness]

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

Twilight

There is nothing to fear. There is no one else in the park, and the stranger on the bench beside her own does not move. He remains there, slumped, you understand, in a posture not unlike surrender. He looks the way she felt when she woke up this morning.

There is a faint odor of alcohol in the air around him, and a slow trickle of sweat visible sliding from his hairline, past his ear, towards the unbuttoned collar of his white button-down. He has been in that suit for more than one day, though probably fewer than three.

That is not what she notices, though.

What she notices: the butt of a handgun partially concealed in the paperbag beside him. Something that looks like a half-folded summons weighted beneath the gun, so that it does not fly away.

--

And, beneath, around, under, over that (faint enough that she could easily think she had imagined it), a whiff of something, well, sulfurous like a mild malaise in the air around, not of, him.

--

He does not seem to have noticed her at all.

Eleanor Yates

[life 1 / mind 1 / prime 1 / spirit 1 / entropy 1.

coincidental = base diff 4. unique focus: -2 = minimum diff 3.

sensing his basic health, mental state (or presence of influencing mind patterns), possible magic effect, spiritual presence -- as well as the state of his own spirit/soul -- mingling with entropy to sense present/coming decay of any of these elements, body/mind/soul/fate.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (5, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )

Twilight

The sensations are subtle and complex. His pattern is strained, frayed, worn down. There are wounds on his body, that are healed or healing, as well as irritated. Scores down his back; scabbed over but still raw. The mind is in worse state than the body. She cannot sense his thoughts, but she can feel how frayed it is; read that too in the dark patina of the spirit and the even darker lines of his fate

There are no magickal effects; no spiritual parasites - though - she can see - what he radiates now is strong enough that it has drawn some of the darker spirits to drift and lick-their-chops and feed off the energy he leaks; no influencing minds. Just the lingering scent - irritatingly faint - of someone else's work. In some recent past.

Eleanor Yates

There are times when Eleanor has sensed that someone is going to kill themselves.

There are times when she has been the one who guided them to that point. The one who laid out the options for them, helped them choose their method. There are times when she was the one holding their hand as they jumped off a chair, letting the rope catch them, letting it snap their neck. There are times when she has stroked their hair as they went to sleep for the very last time in this life, then gently removed the bottle of pills from their clutching hand.

There are times she has stopped it.

There are times she has only tried.

--

Eleanor is not very old. She feels the weight of so many lifetimes, though. She remembers, dimly, the terror she felt when the bad man came into the house, when her daddy could not protect her, when for reasons that no one could ever discern, the bad man shot and killed a ten-year old he had never met. Eleanor remembers when they were brothers, twins, black-haired with shadowy eyes, and how everything about that life seemed covered over in shade, as though there was never any sunlight. She wears the necklace of a woman long, long dead,

a woman who walks now, quietly and wearily, to sit on a metal bench beside a marina, and all of this seems familiar. Everything, sometimes, feels familiar, and the weight of that is sometimes awe-inspiring. Other times it just exhausts her, reminds her of what might still be waiting for her.

What might come, worse than before, because of her defiance. Because she went on living.

Because Henrik saved her this time.

--

Not old: but she feels it. And she looks forward, breathing as she watches the water, feeling the weight of that labradorite pendant beneath her shirt, against her skin. It shares a temperature with her body. She does not look again at the man with his head in his hands, the gun in the bag, the paperwork beneath it. She breathes, and she reaches out, looking for the threads of his fate not in the air around his body but the world around him, the way it reacts to him, the way his presence there -- right now, like this -- ripples outward, through time, through other lives, through every Pattern.

He is a weak point, a stretched-out almost-hole in the tapestry. It ripples, it flutters, and she empathizes with that frayed feeling. She empathizes with the darkness in his future, or his present, or his past,

which are all his fate.

And gradually, though she is tired, and she feels very old indeed today, Eleanor slides her hands into the pockets of her jacket, which is thin and light. She rises to her feet with the elegance of someone with a well-trained body, no matter how weary she feels or tired her soul is. She is still not old; she is in fact rather young.

Eleanor walks over. She sits beside the man. The gun, and the bag, and the summons are between them. She does not pretend that she does not look at him. The breeze, cooling as night comes onward, moves her hair, which would be described as golden if she could be described -- by a stranger -- as warm.

He will not be a stranger for long. He will hear her voice, and he will know that winter is just an essence around her, a fixed point of time for some part of her soul, and not a revelation of who she is. What she is. She is not winter itself. She is not cold. She is not frozen.

See: she moves, and she breathes, and she cares about things. This is how she reminds herself.

--

"Every moment of our lives," she says quietly, clearly, evenly, "is a point of transition. It's an endless web: countless, infinite connections between countless, infinite possibilities. We notice the big ones. Can't miss 'em."

Eleanor is quiet a moment. Her eyes go lakeward. "Easy to see the sun. But we can't even comprehend how many stars that we don't see. They are there, though."

Her eyes fall closed. She breathes in; exhales. Opens them again as the breath is sighing outward. "This is a big one, though." Her eyes come back to him. Perhaps he is looking at her. "The summons," she clarifies, flicking her chin down at the paper bag. Then she smiles, and her brow is a tad furrowed, and the smile aches a little, because she aches for him. "For some reason I want to call you Mike. Isn't that strange?"

Twilight

He breathes out, sharply. He has about him the sorrow smell of someone at the tale end of a bender, for whom the intoxication was never about revelry, after the borrowed attempt at joy has started to leave him running on less-than-exhaust fumes.

There is a kind of humor in that breath, because, you see,

"I'm gonna to lose everything," this is nearly conversational. Dulled to insubstantiality. A choking sort-of-laugh. "My fucking wife. Is taking my fucking kid. And going to fucking Mexico. With my fucking partner. Who gets to fucking testify against me and get off fucking scott free.

"It's like I told my fucking shrink, it's like I've been standing on the tracks watching this fucking train get closer and closer and my feet are just locked in cement and I don't believe it anyway. It's all flash and fucking noise, and all of a sudden it's here and I've known it was coming all along and I'm about to get flattened - and I thought I could just drive it all outta me but - "

A short, arrested breath, and he actually looks up at her, breathes out again.

"It's Mick, actually."

Not Mike.

Close, though.

Eleanor Yates

He says it such a way that she knows he has said it a million times. Maybe only in his own mind. But he has said it so many times it almost means nothing, and she holds on to that: he is going to lose everything. And that has ceased to have any real meaning.

What what what what what what what what what what what what what what what.

See?

It's the same.

--

Eleanor keeps watching him. Keeps hurting.

"Is that why you've been hurting yourself, Mick?" she murmurs. It is almost a whisper. "To get it out?"

Twilight

He goes still; sharp and there is a flash, you see, of anger -

deep, vicious, bloodied, blooded anger

- like a snarl in his eyes.

"What the fuck do you think you are talking about."

Right hand snapping toward the gun.

"I don't know what you're fucking talking about."

Eleanor Yates

[mind 2: impressing upon Mick that he is dealing with a force beyond his reckoning, a being who has come to him only to help to his destiny for the good of his soul and the good of the universe, a being who wishes him no ill whatsoever but who, all the same, he should probably be scared of. this can mold to whatever his philosophy/belief about the world may be: if he is religious he may react to eleanor as though she were a prophet/angel/messenger, for example. shorthand: awe/submission/trust.

coincidental = 5. -1 (specialized focus: eye contact/staring) +1 (fast casting), -1 (quintessence) = 4. spending WP.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (3, 6, 8) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Eleanor Yates

No one who knows her would expect her to flinch. No one who has met her would expect her to flinch. She feels no fear of him, as she feels no fear of death. The lack of fear does not, should not, imply that she does not care if violence is brought to her, or death. She cares a great deal.

Again: that is how she does this. That is how she gets out of bed, and teaches her students and counsels other magi and this is how and why she presses cold knives here, the strangely warm barrel of a gun there. This is why she bakes, knowing she doesn't even like sugar cookies, but knows that she enjoys the act of baking and decorating. You have to know what you like. What you care about. Because if you don't, you go away.

And you don't get to like anything anymore.

--

Eleanor holds his eyes. Holds his anger between them, as though it is in some frozen stasis in the air they are both looking at, looking through. She just looks at him, stares at him,

into him.

He should not try to harm her. In fact, some part of his mind that feels covered in untouched snow, bathed by the faint blue of early January moonlight, does not think he can harm her. Or frighten her. Some part of him, slowly drawing downward into black depths where there is no light or air or worry or train coming to flatten him or anything, anything but silence,

knows that even there, she will be with him. She will not leave him, nor forsake him.

"Mick," she says quietly, so gently, and gives him the faintest shake of her head.

Twilight

Something in him is drawn up short; is arrested, is leashed in and lashed back. This is abrupt as anything else and his nostrils are flared and the urge to aggression within him is still vibrant, is still violent.

Mick still grabs the gun. His hand is shaking and he knows that she is there, but no longer believes that she is entirely real. The brown paper bag is caught around the barrel and he does not seem to notice and instead of pointing it at her, at himself, at anyone, Mick just holds it, gestures with it, two short sharp punches at the air with his right hand clenched as if he would like to crush something, to pulverize it in his hand.

--

And that is enough for the moment, that release valve.

Mick lifts his shaggy head, three days' shadowed growth visible on his jowls as he looks up for the first time, but not at her. He can no longer quite look at her but her is aware of her voice, beside him.

Of her presence,

somehow inside him.

Eleanor Yates

There is something fragile about her,

and something very strong.

Mick wraps his hand around the gun. He looks at her as though she is unreal, surreal, hyper-real. The paper crinkles but she can hear it, soft as it is, and does not flinch as he gesture with it. She feels the urge to reach out to him physically but does not want to, all the same. He is very angry, and he may fear her, he may be uncertain of threatening her now, but he is angry,

and a stranger,

and holding a gun.

--

She is quiet for a bit. Then, tipping her head to one side. "Tell me what happened, Mick." She keeps saying his name. Like an anchor sinking, link by link. Steadying.

Twilight

"What is this." He says: bitter, harsh. Staring down at the half-concealed weapon in his hand, fascinated by its heft, by its presence. By its promise. "Confession? I already fucking tried that. See where it got me."

He reaches down; takes the paper bag from the muzzle. His head is canted, neck compressed into jowly wrinkles that make him seem older than he is.

--

Then he does look at her.

"Jeremy, fucking bastard. What the fuck is it that you call it, state's evidence? Guarantee you that he's got all his shit squirreled away in fucking Beluchistan, the Caymans, goddamned Belize and do you think anyone's looking there for it?

"No, but me. They're gonna take everything, what my fucking bitch of a wife didn't take.

"You know she was real fucking happy to spend those folks' money. She didn't give a fuck about them, about any of it, until the well went goddamned dry.

"You know what. It's not my fuckin' fault those assholes didn't read the small fuckin' print."

Eleanor Yates

On her best day, Eleanor has little patience with this sort of thing. The scattered thoughts rambling out at all speeds and no concern for making sense. But the self-pity. The shifting of blame. And this is not one of her best days. Eleanor says nothing for a while, then moves to rise to her feet with a slight sigh.

Twilight

"What the hell - !"

Mick has a helluva lot more people to blame. He is just getting started, both furious and terrified and his heart is racing and his palms and sweating and the only thing, the only good thing is the chafing of the hairshirt against his skin.

"You're just gonna leave?! You're just gonna leave me!"

Eleanor Yates

Standing now, hands in her pockets, Eleanor looks down at Mick, her eyebrows slightly raised.

"I'm here to help you," Eleanor says, and she says this truthfully because she believes she would not have felt herself going to this lake, finding this man, if there were no reason. If she were not meant to be here. She means that she is here to help him because she believes it: what form that help will take, she does not know yet.

"If you intend to talk to yourself, rant at shadows, and perhaps kill yourself, then perhaps the best way I can help you is to leave you. All I might add is a note about shooting upwards through the roof of your mouth, and not aiming through your temple, as you could more easily miss, and only maim yourself." Eleanor is not so crude as to pantomime for him: here, like this, through the mouth.

"However, if you are open to other endings, then you need to allow me to help you in some other way. For instance: when I tell you to tell me what happened, you put the weapon down, look me in the eyes, begin at the beginning, and tell me what happened."

Her eyebrows lift slightly on those last four words. "And then I might be able to help you do something other than die in anger, loneliness, and despair."

Twilight

"Mmm."

He makes a noise, as if he had just swallowed a mouthful of wine too quickly, without savoring. And he is watching her now, slantwise.

"I have something waiting for me on the other side. A kingdom.

"I thought you were here to lead me through."

Eleanor Yates

Eleanor is about to lose her temper. If she had more energy, she might. She just stares at him. And exhales slowly.

Inhales for a count of four, exhales for a count of four. She feels the warmth building behind her throat, within her skull, radiating upward, outward, around her. She begins to feel the universe, and all its powers, all its threads, until her skin opens up,

a trillion little points of divine light.

[prime 1: sense magic. she wants to figure out what magic was done on him in the recent past. coincidental = 4. -1 for spec. focus.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (3, 3, 5) ( success x 3 )

Twilight

She breathes in; she counts; she breathes out. Her skin opens to the universe. He is not still. He turns the gun over in his hand. Considers it from both sides. Thumbs off the safety.

How is he standing?

He breathes in. He had not thought about where to place the gun. The mouth, she says. The mouth.

--

Meanwhile Eleanor is looking for the threads of recent magics - and she finds them, even tastes them, the faint, lingering odor of something sulfurous in the back of her throat. Traceries of work so faint and subtle she smight not be able to feel the lingering threads of their power were it not for something:

recent,small,precise,deep,powerful.

Mind: a removal.

--

The mouth, she says. The mouth.

He puts the gun in his mouth.

Eleanor Yates

[intelligence + enigmas]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 6) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Eleanor Yates

[dexterity (smooth) + firearms (handguns)]

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

Twilight

(Hey, leave my gun alone!) Dex + Firearms

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

Eleanor Yates

[dude, seriously.]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )

Twilight

I WANT MY GUN.

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 5, 5) ( fail )

Eleanor Yates

Mick puts the gun in his mouth.

Eleanor pulls it out, but he doesn't want her to and resists. Tension rises in her, but she keeps still. Eleanor's fingers are deft, her grip sure; she has callouses that match the hold around this gun. It is as natural to her as a lighter in the hands of a chainsmoker. It comes as easily as breathing.

He wants his gun.

Eleanor must want it more than he does, though. She simply moves his thumb, his fingers, wrests the firearm from him, and flicks the safety back on without thinking. She holds the gun at her side, staring down at Mick. "Someone has done something to you. I do not know if that means you are innocent in this," whatever this is, "but it does mean I am not willing to watch you commit suicide until I know what was done, and by whom, and -- hopefully -- why."

Standing there with the handgun resting at her side, she exhales again, some of her tension leaving her with the breath. "Now, for the last time, tell me what happened."

Twilight

There is a moment that feels both indrawn and somehow plosive in the aftermath. Fractured and fracturing where Mick is both waking up and erupting but he cannot attack her, he cannot hurt her, he will not attack her so all that anger and all that rage is just erupting through him and he bellows his frustration, his blame, his rage -

"What happened? I've been fucking charged with securities fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud, and racketeering, which is bullshit because my partner came up with the stock options offer and my fucking ex-wife - "

A sharp breath, indrawn.

Another, deeper.

"God, you're just like my goddamned shrink. She says, I'm the author of everything that has happened to me. Are you fucking kidding me? Did I make Lehman Brothers fail? Did I make my fucking wife decide that she needed to lease a new Lexus every three goddamned years? And I don't know why the fuck Jeremy got so goddamned sloppy - "

Mick Jones has been full of blame, rage - sometimes incoherent - and a gradiose sense of his own worth for a long, long time. He was a dentist, Eleanor will learn, until he lost his license for dealing in illegal drugs back in 2007. No matter, he always fancied himself a financier. someone in the interim he ditched his first wife for a prettier, shallower model, the "bitch" about whom him complaints incessantly today, and he managed to conceal most of his assets from said first wife, only to lose them in hte Lehman Brothers bankruptcy.

There followed a series of small investment frauds. Real estate schemes, foreclosure rescues. Then an old frat brother came back with this great new emerging markets investment scheme and the two men opened a kind of boiler room operation targeting senior citizens looking for a "safe place in Israel" to park their meager retirement savings.

It was a Ponzi scheme. Everything started to unravel a year and a half out, and our hero, Mick, was feeling more and more out of control. He had not resorted to torturing animals since he was an 11 year old being beaten by his farther, but as the scheme started to unravel, and they were unable to keep up the pace of new investors, well.

He needed something could control.

He didn't mean to kill that fucking chihuahua, but god it yapped. And his frat brother had just turned state's evidence -

That was the last one, though.

He realized, with the help of his shrink, that the only thing he could control was himself. That was when he began mortifying his own flesh.

It is everyone else's fault. If his partner hadn't lied, and then deserted him. If his wife hadn't been such a materialistic --- if if if ---

Now he has finally been indicted. Served with divorce papers. There's money for him too in the Caymans but not enough and anyone they interdicted his passport two years ago, and on and on and on.

His shrink says - god, he doesn't even give a fuck what she says.

Eleanor Yates

Eleanor listens as though she is a therapist.

Eleanor listens as though she is a priestess, a confessor.

Eleanor listens as though she is a lawyer.

Eleanor listens as though she is an angel.

Eleanor listens as though she is death itself, implacable.

--

Something was placed into his mind, but she does not know when. Whether it was when he was eleven or earlier, whether it was when things started to unravel. Something was removed from his mind, but she does not know when. This is what she is listening for: clues to the identity and purpose of whatever infernal smell she senses in the miasma of his aura. But she is also just listening, human being to human being. He is in so much pain. He has caused so much pain. And no one, not even gentle Richard, can claim they have never caused pain. No one is innocent; there are only those who are mindful.

Mick is not mindful. Mick is angry. Mick is hopeless. Mick is defensive. Mick's version of taking responsibility for his life is abusing himself. Mick will go on causing pain, unnecessary and wild pain, stagnating himself and hamstringing those around him, until he is stopped. The cycle will only continue, and with every rotation, it will crumble a little more. Until it is stopped. Until someone stops it.

Eleanor looks at the sky, holding his gun tight in her right hand.

Unless.

Exhaling, sighing, she looks back down at Mick. "I'm taking your gun. When we meet again, I will return it to you. But I want you to give me the name of your therapist and a way to contact you. Or we can meet here again, at a set time."

Twilight

"Wendy fucking Smith. Write that goddamned down because that bitch fired me. Have you ever heard such bullshit? And fuck, I'll give you my digits, but I'll probably be in jail if I don't jump in front of a moving goddamned train."

Eleanor Yates

She doesn't write it down. She does remember, though.

"Yes," she says, even though he's not really asking her. She'll pretend, for now, that he is. She is watching him carefully. He mentions jail, and jumping in front of a train.

"Well, Mick," Eleanor says, "either way, I will find you."

Twilight

What the fucking fuck is he supposed to do? He wants his goddamned gun so badly that he stands up and just kicks the metal railing framing the lakefront. The despair she witnessed earlier is so entirely eclipsed by a rage bodering on the self-righteous that it rather feels like the last egrees of a martyr as he - well - stomps off down the boardwalk surrounding Sloan's Lake towards jaoil, or a hearing, or the Cayman Islands, or headlight of a speeding train.

It does not matter.

Either way, she will find him.

Eleanor Yates

[Eleanor is going to scry; she's going to search for that sulfurous resonance now that she's gotten a whiff of it a couple of times. Should be -1 for taking time and -1 for specialized foci -- circles for correspondence, pranayama for prime. i think she'll use entropy as well for sensing lines of fate around it all.]

Eleanor Yates

[correspondence 2 (casting a circle in her basement) / entropy 1 (labradorite pendant - unique) / prime 1 (pranayama)

coincidental = 5 - 2 (unique focus) = 3

will probably be extending to get max successes]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (1, 2, 10) ( success x 1 )

Eleanor Yates

[again!]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (2, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )

Eleanor Yates

[*cracks neck*]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (3, 4, 5) ( success x 3 )

Eleanor Yates

[one more]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (2, 3, 10) ( success x 2 )

Eleanor Yates

[i lied]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (2, 5, 8) ( success x 2 )

Eleanor Yates

[separate effect to ward herself, PRIOR to scrying: correspondence (circles) / prime (pranayama).

coincidental: 5 - 1 (specialized foci) - 1 (taking time) = 3

extending.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (2, 6, 6) ( success x 2 )

Eleanor Yates

[again]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (3, 5, 9) ( success x 3 )

Eleanor Yates

[one more]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (4, 5, 6) ( success x 3 )

Eleanor Yates

[Warding = 8

Scrying = 10]

Mermaids

Elijah

[how did I sleep?]

Dice: 4 d10 TN7 (4, 4, 5, 9) ( success x 1 )

Elijah

[Is this going to freak me smooth the fuck out? Willpower]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (4, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )

Elijah

[Entropy 1: find the weak spot]

Dice: 1 d10 TN4 (9) ( success x 1 )

Elijah

OMG Max. There are mermaids at the aquarium.

It was what had spurred all of this. Elijah had a fascination with mermaids. Real, fake, it didn't matter, he knew they weren't real but he had a fascination with mermaids none the less because of the underwater grace and the skill of the performers to keep smiling while they were surrounded by a substance that was more than content to choke the life out of someone. Water was an intense thing, and this was bordering on good ol' fashioned exposure therapy.

It was a hard trade off, because Elijah had a fascination with mermaids but a genuine, seething, gripping something when it came to water. Every fiber of his being tensed up and wanted to be anywhere but inside of a place where he could literally tell each place on the glass that might potentially crack if someone pushed too hard or tried to tap one-two-three-four-forty seven times. Forty seven because that would cause a chain reaction that would piss off the-

"Oh fuck Chili!"

Which was about when Elijah remembered that he couldn't wait for Max inside of the aquarium because she had a dog and they had a problem- they couldn't leave chili inside, and the dog was too big to fit in a backpack… maybe. It was a hasty retreat to the parking lot.

"I'llbeback!"

Maxine

I'm so down. That was the text message that Elijah had received back. From there, a time and date was set-- possibly even later that very same day because whatever it was Maxine did it probably wasn't hold down a real job and make an effort at a typical life because by now Elijah had to have figured out that the girl slept out of her van. He'll have seen the back of it by now, seen the fact that there's a hammock strung up and a few of those plastic mini-dressers stuffed with essentials.

He knew that the little black dog ("A schipperke," Maxine had informed helpfully if Elijah had ever wondered aloud) was never far from her or that van. A faithful little transient animal with its transient mistress. So it occurred to Elijah soon after cash had exchanged hands, that Maxine may still be trying to figure out what to do with Chili, and he fled to go greet them in the parking lot.

The big orange VW van is impossible to miss, parked near the front of the lot but as far off to the side as possible, with nose to a chainlink fence that had weeds and bushes creating green overgrowth through the wire crosshatch. Maxine was standing outside with the passenger door open, cradling a lit cigarette to her face with one hand and holding the other hand on a slim hip. She dressed in a bleach-bright white tank-top that cut off just above the navel and hung loose on her slender frame, and a pair of cargo shorts that were slung low on hips, held in place by a belt that probably sold along with the shorts themselves. She wore pins in her hair to keep it from her forehead and face and had chalk dust dying patches gray-white where she'd touched with chalky fingers. Marks on her shorts suggested she'd tried to dust them off rather than waste water actually washing them.

When Elijah strode up, Maxine puffed her smoke toward the green-grown fence and cast the tall blonde lad a smile. "Well howdy, pard'ner. You came to join us."

Us, being Maxine and Chili both. The dog was standing in the passenger seat with her chin resting on the open window ledge. She perked ears and watched Elijah's approach, but was far too middle-aged and crotchety to get excited over his approach.

Elijah

Thus far, his friends seemed to live out of suitcases. Elijah was an anomaly because he had an apartment he slept at somewhat regularly, if only because he was prone to escapades that required him to have some place to lay down and sleep afterwards. Or, you know, because he had the looming parental threat and couldn't very well sleep inside of Jenn's civic indefinitely.

Not that he hadn't tried before. During the great oh fuck if we are moving into a place with bed bugs debacle, they'd spent a few nights in the civic before determining that they needed to live in a hotel instead. That was an experience he would have rather not relived.

"We should totally get Chili one of those little vests that says hi, I'm a service animal or something," Elijah said. he even reached out to pet the dog when he came over because… well… because Chili was awesome and gave precisely zero fucks about much of anything.

Maxine

Elijah's suggestion caused Maxine to blink big dark eyes at him through the miasma shroud that sprouted from the end of the cigarette she was keeping near her face. It looked like she was trying to smoke it quickly so she could snub it out and get inside with him to see some goddamn mermaids.

"That's actually a really good idea. Do you know where to get one?" Her head tipped to the side, and the question was presented earnestly.

Either way, she'd wave her hand and hold the cigarette in her lips, freeing her hands so she could nudge Chili back away from the window. The dog scrunched her nose but complied because she was left without much choice since her mistress's hand-heel was up against her snout. The dog backed up onto the seat and Maxine swung the door open. She stood then like a chauffeur, holding the door open for her boss, and swept a hand to gesture the little dog to exit. With a huff she trotted on the seat a couple of times in place, then hopped down. With a wheeze-groan, the stout little dog landed and walked away with a calm clackity-clack of claws to nestle into overgrown weeds and grass in the shade of the tree that Maxine had parked under (intentionally, hence the spot against the fence).

A final drag was pulled, and Maxine snubbed the butt out against her shoe and put it into a cup-holder ashtray that was sticky-glued onto the dashboard of the van. She cranked the window back up to about 3/4ths the way up, then closed the door and said with a stage smile: "Well, what are you keeping me waiting for? Let's go see some fucking mermaids."

Elijah

Where could they get one?

"We could probably Google it? I have no idea, but then we could get Chili into all sorts of places, and just tell people she has to come with you in case we need to make sure you don't have, like, a seizure or something. Chili looks like she could smell seizures."

Because, apparently, that was a thing.

Elijah offered Max a grin, big and bright and his constant companion while he went to go and storm the castle with his current companion. Of course, that castle was full of water and the incredible possibility of drowning and the world would end right there but there were mermaids, so why would there not be a little peril when you were dealing with something that could be potentially awesome. He offered Maxine an art, all faux gentleman.

"Let's rock this shit," he replied.

And into the fray with them.

Maxine

An untraditional yet obvious solution to not letting your dog bake inside of a hot car was to let her out of the car. Maxine trusted that Chili wouldn't go far because Chili was a faithful navigator and constant buddy. She was an untraditional thing as a whole, Maxine, and though she hadn't shared this information yet were Elijah to know that she was aligned with a Tradition and to find which it was, she'd strike a whole new resonance of Abnormal.

The offered arm was looked at for a moment before being accepted with a one-sided grin. Her small hand tucked into the crook of his elbow, and she kept pace alongside him, carried on a pair of (chalk)dusty Chuck Taylors.

"Hey, is Alicia meeting us too?"

Because, of course, she would ultimately have to ask.

Elijah

Was Alicia meeting them?

Elijah shook his head, no, and heaved a half-hearted sigh, "nah, she's been hard to get ahold of. We're square now, but we kind of had a falling out about her dad and me doing stupid shit."

Who knew why the sigh was half hearted, but the mention of Alicia kept the grin on his face. He was content to keep pace along with her, and even paid for them to get in (well, paid for Maxine because he already paid and it was rude to invite your friend who lived in her van out somewhere to do things when you weren't entirely certain she had the cash flow to live somewhere). Besides, Groupon is the shit and he did this with Jenn all the time.

We digress, "but, I texted a whole bunch of people so you might get to meet other people. So, it's kind of a plus."

but a minus, because no Alicia.

Maxine

"I didn't even know there was a falling out to begin with. What'd ya do?" She posed her questions in a way that were just so sincere and harmless that sometimes it was easy to forget that she was actually getting very out of line with her prying. She smiled brightly at the girl who took Elijah's money, and onward and into the aquarium they went.

But other people might be coming too, and to hear that the petite example of androgyny perked right back up -- she'd seemed only slightly sombered to have heard that Elijah'd said something about Alicia's dad that had pissed her off (or that's what Maxine took away from the explanation, anyways).

"By a 'whole bunch of people', do you mean ones that Know? I hope so."

It wasn't that Maxine was an elitist or anything, she just understood that nobody else really wanted them around anyways.

Grace

[Perception + Awareness!]

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

Grace

When Elijah sent Grace a text reading "OMG Grace, there are mermaids at the aquarium," the first thing she did was check the aquarium's website to see if the place was putting on a special mermaid show. He could have meant that actual mermaids had shown up at the aquarium, and that would be cause for a rescue mission of massive proportions.

Luckily for everyone involved, there was, indeed, a mermaid show in progress.

Mermaids eh? Sounds like an advertising stunt that has the puppy-like young Mage all worked up. Put some poorly-paid girls in revealing outfits, give them air hoses and fancy tails, and call it a windfall. It would be more interesting and less depressing if there were actual mermaids...

But she goes anyway, because Elijah is there and he thinks that this sort of thing is neat, and Elijah is a magical creature after all -- merman or no.

She gives the woman at the front her money and walks inside, and she can feel them. There's someone else here. Someone bright. She has to blink a couple times until she convinces herself it isn't actual brightness, but something else...

Maxine

[Perception + Awareness: Good idea]

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

Elijah

[are there people?]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 5, 8) ( success x 1 )

Elijah

The question of what he did made him laugh the kind of laugh that indicated that there was a whole rabbit hole worth of disaster to delve into. It wasn't so much mirth as… something. Everyone's laughed that laugh. We know how it feels in the pit of your stomach.

"Iiii didn't answer my phone for, like, two days. I passed out in a chick's truck and Jenn couldn't find me. Jenn called Alicia. Both of them kind of freaked. When I called Alicia back, we ended up talking and I said I needed to see her and she said she needed to see her dad but she couldn't and she wasn't dying but I called bullshit and, anyway, I was kind of an asshole and now I'm trying to get people to help rescue her dad from a super secret quasi governmental organization."

Ah, that was the laugh that one can place. The one that you have because it keeps you form feeling utterly helpless and lost at sea. Or maybe that was all the water talking. he wasn't having any panic attacks at that juncture. he wasn't trying to flee in utter terror. No, instead, he was more interested in looking at a blue tang that looked remarkably like Dori. he feels something, but he's just a little too busy being distracted by the blue tang and the abundance of anemones.

"I texted a bunch of people who Know. And Jenn, but Jenn is cool… but not cool like that, but I think Jenn has a date."

Maxine

"Did I hear you say that Alicia said she wasn't dying but you call bullshit on that?" Maxine looked up to Elijah with both eyebrows raised on her forehead. She looked skeptical more than concerned, like she wasn't certain that he'd spoken correctly. "Because if so, you just told me that you think she's dying."

She let go of his arm once they were past the counter where you pay for admission and instead folded her arms together at the small of her back. Whatever the first tank was, she'd wander over and peer inside. Maxine was the sort to take advantage of the establishment's air conditioner and take her time visiting each display if allowed. She wasn't sure what time the mermaid show started, and figured Elijah would keep her on track in that regard.

Some freshwater animal was peering back at her through the glass when she sensed (she couldn't say felt, it was sort of like smelling bright lights and colors to try and explain) some other force, something stronger and shifting and bold. Maxine straightened up and lifted her chin, turned her head to look in the direction that Grace would be coming around the corner from.

"A friend?" As though she was going to just shift gears and let her attention be diverted from the topic of Alicia and her life expectancy.

Dan

Mermaids at the aquarium and god knows whether Serafíne was one of the people whom Elijah might have texted but she's not here. Not in the country or perhaps not sufficiently back in the country to respond but:

Dan does.

With a mild smirk and an "Oh really?" via text and later something about We might drop by. later and Elijah doesn't know whom Dan means by we but: he means Dee and a couple of Dee's roller derby friends and Rick who is in the band and This Guy Named Eddie whom everyone somehow knows - people meeting at the Aquarium before drinks or after, one or the other.

Dan has a lanky arm flung comfortably around Dee's shoulder and he might be willing to let that group envelope Elijah and Maxine without much of a second thought but then he sees Grace and sort of detaches himself from Dee with a kiss on her shoulder, pulls away from his larger group of friends and heads on over toward Elijah and Maxine alone, holding out a hand to Elijah to shake, with a "Hey man - " and a "Grace, hey," when the Virtual Adept is within earshot,

and then a glance at Maxine, the brief crest of a smile breaking through his blond beard. "I don't think we've met."

Elijah

"Not, like, literally dying, more like she is figuratively- it's so complicated, basically I was a jackass and said she was realy messed up over her dad even if she said she wasn't, she totally was. Is. Still is, anyway, it's not like she's got cancer or something," that he knows of. Holy shit, what if she had cancer? That would be horrible. But, we digress, "anyway, she's not dying at a rate that is faster than the current rate we're all dying at. Blahblahblah gothkidrant."

was that a friend of his?

Elijah perked up, tearing his eyes away from the fish and turning just in time to see-

"Grace! Dan! Hey man," he said with a smile, bright and pleased, "Max, this is Dan, he's cool. Dan, this is Maxine, Maxine is also cool."

Because apparently being cool was slang for magical people.

Grace

Grace pops around that corner, and she's not really looking where she's going. She's looking at the walls of fish, not the people here to see the fish. But she knows that Elijah and Maxine are roughly in the direction she's headed, so eventually...

"Grace, hey," says Dan, and suddenly she's paying attention.

"Oh hey, Dan," she says, waves, and then notices he's here with Elijah and someone she hasn't a name for. She gets a wave too. And then Grace makes her way over.

She's wearing a red shirt with a screen-printed fish on it today. The fish is wearing a snorkel. It seemed appropriate.

"I see you have picked up the 'they're cool' thing from Sera, huh?" she remarks to Elijah, talking about the code word they seem to have for those in the Know.

"Also, hey Maxine. I haven't seen you around."

Dan

Grace greets Dan and he returns oh hey/i> with a mildly ironic smile. He has, after all, just rocked up on an extended goth kid-style rant involving Alicia and whether or not she is dying at a rate any faster than the rest of us, which interests him enough that his eyes linger on Elijah's expression a beat or two or perhaps even three longer than necessary, even as Elijah is introducing Dan (who is Tall) to Maxine (who is very much Not Tall), and then Dan holds out a hand and though he's wearing a long-sleeved button-down shirt tonight fastened to the wrists hints of his tattoos creep up over his hands and his knuckles, peek up over the collar (and the bow-tie, he is hipster enough to wear a bow-tie with or without irony. That's how he rolls.)

"Maxine," Dan repeats, because repeating the name of the person you just met helps you to remember it. Because Dan doesn't have magic to help him remember this shit. "Nice to meet you. Also a fan of mermaids or did you just stumble on each other in an ordinary fit of mild coincidence?"

Dan

stop!

Maxine

All at once, two new people round the corner. For a moment it was a hell of a lot more than that, and Maxine had made a 'Hmm' noise to see the posse that came around with Dan. He peeled away from them, though, and joined the display of bland local freshwater pond fish (you know they love to put the local stuff up front). Soon after came a woman with dark hair, not a hell of a lot taller than Maxine. Not like how Elijah and Dan both were.

She smiled first to Grace, the expression genuine but not bubbly-- it was a little bit too sharp, too knowing to carry the sort of innocent mirth that typically brought 'bubbly' into the equation. "Oh, well, I go where the wind goes. There's just been a tunnel caught this side of the mountains the last few months."

Her arms had unfolded from behind her back, gone to her sides when she'd turned away from the fish to face the others that had come to see mermaids as well. Dan had extended a hand that peeked hints of ink and design from under a shirt cuff, and it was accepted with an enthusiastic squeeze from a rather small hand.

"Mermaids are assholes. But Elijah's alright." She'd been summoned by a text, by someone else's idea. Her acquiescence was on account of the company promised.

Elijah

"It totally works, too, I can say they're cool and people who are cool? Totally get what you're talking about. It's just precise and not precise enough that it works fantastically," he replied. And he was content to beam, yes beam, at the mention of people. there was a little bit of pride in that, and somehow he had managed to deliver exactly what it was that he said he would deliver- people. He'd told Maxine he would introduce her to people and now, with the promise of mermaids, he had delivered people.

He kind of wished they were real mermaids. At the same time, he hoped there weren't real mermaids at an aquarium. Quietly, he wondered if there was such a thing. If he could see them and if they did exist. if that would be the last sight he saw before plunging deep, down, downward into all of the water and being moored off and stuck in the water never to be seen again. Perhaps he was confusing mermaids with sirens.

Either way, it seemed dangerous.

"I may or may not have mass texted every cool person I know about mermaids and aquariums."

Grace

"Everyone? Geez, Elijah, you just do not know how to think small, do you?" Grace says, but she's not exactly chiding, just giving him a hard time because it's fun. "If Patience comes by with a net and trident because she misunderstood, I am blaming you, for the record."

Grace is not all that impatient to see mermaids. The local pond fish are pretty enough, as far as she's concerned. No, seems she's more than content to stand here talking to the cool people who are the true lure to this visit.

"Mermaids aren't assholes, it's the guys who don't pay the mermaids enough to swim around and get stared at by assholes who are assholes," Grace says, with a sniff. "Mermaids are just doing their job, yanno."

Dan

There is a sort of cross-conversation here. Maxine goes where the wind blows and Dan - who is not just taller but who is also older than the rest - gives her the briefest of grins. The spark of it slicing through his beard. "Where the wind blows, eh?"

It is a subtle, and supple invitation to Maxine to elaborate, if she wants to elaborate. Or to let it go, if she wants to let it go. Easy as fuck.

--

Then, encompassing Grace and Maxine and Elijah all at once, Dan asks - quietly, "You ever seen a real one?" Mermaids, he means.

Elijah

"I want to," he said with no small amount of awe. No small amount of wonder at the prospect of mermaids being real and genuine and even if there was the potential that it could mean his untimely demise, he wanted ever so desperately to see something magnificent. Unicorns were out. From what Elijah understood, they weren't keen on people who weren't exactly pure and while Elijah Poirot was pure as driven snow, that was more like snow that has been driven on instead of its actual intention. "Water freaks me out, though."

He says in the middle of an aquarium surrounded by water and aquatic things.

Maxine

"I've read about real ones. Watched that shitty discovery channel 'exclusive', too-- which isn't the real ones, mind you, but it's not really that far off base." Maxine looked the youngest by miles, even if she and Elijah were the same age. He had the benefit of height and facial hair to help him out. Maxine was petite, with the big eyes and narrow chin that wasn't uncommon down her heritage line. She probably got carded every time she wanted to buy her cigarettes.

As for the wind: "'Wind' is a figurative. I'm no meteorologist, don't mistake me. A 'current' is the better word for it." She smiled up at the older man with the tattoos and black beard and jammed her hands into the pockets of her cargo shorts, where they remained up only by the grace of the belt having caught on her hip bones. Her shoulders bunched up modestly as she went on.

"Y'know, put the feelers out, catch a vibration and go check it out."

And, following that, she glanced down at her naked wrist to check time on what must be an invisible watch. She wondered aloud to anyone, but mostly to Elijah since he was the one that rallied them together: "When does this thing start?"

Grace

Grace grins at Dan, and lowers her voice. "Nope. Never a real one. But I have ridden a dragon."

Granted, that occasion wasn't the best of times. She shot down a fighter pilot while riding said dragon. But there are still some good memories there.

"Maybe you don't really want to see one, Elijah, if the water scares you."

And, my word, could this guy be any more like Kalen? Probably not.

Dan

"How badly does it freak you out?" Dan asks Elijah, rather thoughtfully. "Does it rise to the level of I can't deal with the world right now freak out? Or is it more cats and baths. It doesn't matter much, really. I doubt you'd see real ones anywhere these days. This world would be harder for them than you - right? Reality would snap its jaws closed on them so hard.

"Where they'd go or come from, I don't know. But think about it - every myth you've ever heard about is real - someway, somewhere, somewhen. Because, once upon a time, people believed in that shit."

--

A down at Maxine, white teeth in his blond beard. This quiet huff of laughter when she explains that she meant figuritively, and that laughter crinkles the corners of his eyes.

"I didn't think you were deploying a windsock. What sort of vibrations? I mean, I get drifting, don't get me wrong. I guess I'm asking whether you know what you're looking for, or if that question is part of the equation, too."

Then to Grace: "A dragon, huh? And you weren't stoned at the time?"

Elijah

When did this thing start, anyway? "I think it starts on the hour," he said as he flipped through his phone. He had things to go through, and despite the cracked screen Elijah was trying to give the expensive phone a try again. he was going to have to figure out some way to replace the glass before his parents came to visit, presuming they ever came to visit, to try and give the impression that he was doing whatever it was. He nodded again.

"And it's somewhere between cat and fuck my life I can't deal with this shit, I mean I'll shower and stuff it's just.. y'know... anyway, mermaids. I'm sure there's somewhere that people still believe n them, somewhere that they would still exist, maybe in the amazon or something. there are places that haven't seen the modern world so there's probably still places where people believe in mermaids."

Did he sound... wistful?

Why yes, ladies and gentlemen, yes he did.

Maxine

Dan gets a raised eyebrow at first, and then a wry, slow and crawling sort of a smirk. He asked what kind of vibrations and what she was looking for, and she answered by shaking her head (though she may as well be wagging her finger, given the tone of voice she answers in).

"Maybe it's not so much that I'm looking for something in particular, as much as it is that I want to just see everything."

But then, Elijah answered with the time and by flipping his phone out of his pocket, and Maxine leaned to the side to peek curiously at the screen to see the time. Sure, she could See Time, better and more purely than most people in the world would ever be able to, but that didn't mean she couldn't suffice for checking a lit phone screen on occasion as well.

"There's a shit ton of people who believe in mermaids that live here in this city, thanks to that documentary. A depressing amount of people believed it."

Though the rubber soles of her shoes stayed in place, spread apart from one another on the tile floor that ran throughout the place, Maxine twisted about at the waist and glanced over her shoulder at the fish through the glass behind her. Eyes flicked quick to Grace's face on the way there, though. That moment of interest was followed by a question:

"Where was the dragon? And where'd it go?"

Grace

Oh, Grace had started something. Something about dragons.

"They're all far away from here. Catch me another not so public time, and I'll tell you all about it. And no drugs, Dan. You know I just say no," she says, sly and full of snark. She does not actually say no.

"I don't know if it's such a bad thing that people are willing to believe in the impossible. Sounds kinda promising, that."

Dan

"Yeah?" to Maxine, quietly. The yeah is simple inquiry. There is not a shred of challenge in it, not a soupçon of doubt. "You looking high? Or low." The question has room in it. Space to breathe.

--

A glance at Elijah, then. "I think it's less Tinkerbell, you know? It all has more to do with the genuine elasticity of experience - whether or not there's room for it all," and back to Grace, encompassing Maxine. "But she's right, you know. The more folks are willing to believe in miracles that have nothing to do with this rigidly defined, experiential world, well. The more space there is within which people who are just a bit outside that rigidly defined, experiential world can work.

Maxine

Conversations to be saved for times when there were fewer ears about, and Maxine nodded her agreement to Grace's recommendation that they avoid the subject of her dragon mount for the time being. She didn't think that people were paying what they had to say to one another too much attention, after all.

But then, Maxine didn't have a whole hell of a lot of experience with ears being all around-- the ones that were specifically listening for them, and would come for them if they knew they were out here to knock things out of balance and screw around with what wasn't meant to be screwed about with. The slender-framed young woman turned back to face the man and woman standing ahead of her (she'd remained beside Elijah without being against his side-- she didn't need his protection or anything, she just knew him while the other two she'd just met).

"High," she answered, and flashed teeth bright for Dan when she did. "Always and forever, High and Above." Then, when it came to the subject of what people were willing to believe and if it was a good thing that they did, she wrinkled her nose just a little bit and shook her head. "It's depressing when they believe schlock. It's fucking elating when they believe The Truth."

Somewhere in the middle of her statement, Maxine's attention had shifted downward. Her left hand pulled a small, simple, outdated cellphone out of her shorts pocket and she glanced down to the screen-- it was buzzing noisily and persistently, she was receiving a call. How her mouth pursed when she registered the name on the screen was a peek into how (not) excited she was to take the call. Apparently she couldn't ignore it-- the pursed lips betrayed that too.

"I'll meet you all at the mermaid tanks-- gotta take this."

And she parted from the trio to do exactly that, phone coming to her ear as she rounded the corner to go back out to the front of the building.

Eleanor

Eleanor has not heard from Elijah in some time. He hasn't dropped by her office to chat about the nature of things both ephemereal and seemingly corporeal. He hasn't run into her in the hallways, or at another bar. Last time he saw her, she was making breakfast in her kitchen, and her enormously tall apprentice was helping her, and Elijah was most likely seeing them blearily as he woke up on her couch. There were no sausages or bacon with breakfast, but there were avocados and eggs and yogurt and bright vegetables and, for good measure, piles of greasy hashbrowns to help with the hangover.

Eleanor drinks tea, but Eleanor makes good coffee.

--

Then he texts her to tell her there are mermaids in the aquarium. And when Eleanor shows up, it is still raining outside, has been raining all day. She is wearing thin jeans the color of a charcoal-rubbed twilight, and they follow her legs which seem longer when she is not in the company of a seven-foot-tall swimmer. Over whatever shirt she has on she is wearing... well, it's sort of a jacket, and a bit of a cape, and it has a hood. It flows loosely, and it is hard to tell where her arms are. Her hair is in a braid, sweeping down her scalp and curving over her shoulder.

She has found him. And whomever he's with.

Her eyes skip from Dan, who she saw the other night, to Grace, who she knows or has at least met a few times. Then to Elijah.

"Mermaids?"

Grace

Schlock or not, it's the willingness that has Grace happy. Well, happy until the sudden sensation of drowning comes over her, and then...

Okay, so the walls are not crashing down and suffocating her. It's just Eleanor. She shakes her head as if to clear it, and then turns to see the expected woman.

"Mermaids. Because Elijah wanted to," Grace says, and shrugs. "Hi, Eleanor."

Elijah

[Awfuck!]

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

Eleanor

[that reminds me]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 5, 5, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )

Elijah

Mermaids?

"They're not real mermaids," he laments, yes laments, but he is old enough that someone must have told him by now that there were not going to be real mermaids at an aquarium, but there was the feeling of cold and ice and drowning and instead of being terrified (because it was so very, very scary to feel), he smiled and it was bright and pleased and, "hey Eleanor! Glad you could make it. You missed Maxine, but you might meet again at some point, because she's pretty freaking awesome."

Dan

Dan has a raw but oddly bemused little grin settled over his mouth as Maxine gives him that answer, that bright flash of her teeth. Always and forever, High and Above - and there is the passion skimming beneath it, as she announces that it is depressing when people believe schlock, elating when they believe The Truth.

"Somehow," he says, and he says this - really - to no one at all. "I don't think her truths are my truths." Then, a glance at Grace. "Tell me someone has introduced that girl to Pan. I don't know why she reminds me of fucking Joan of Arc."

Mermaids? Eleanor asks, and, "Swimmers in fishtails," Dan explains, though she must surely know that. Glances at Elijah, next, "Shows are every hour on the hour. There's a restaurant down in Florida that has had them since the 1950s. We had a gig nearby back when we were living in North Carolina. Sera couldn't get enough of them."

Of course she couldn't.

They were wriggling around in the water half-naked.

But someone somewhere in the crowd is signaling to him and Dan makes his goodbyes, telling them all that he has to go see what Dee wants, exhorting them to enjoy the mermaids. He'll see them around.

Grace

"Joan of Arc? Huh, maybe. She sure is bright like Pan is. Pan does not remind me of Joan of Arc, though," Grace says, and grins at a fish.

She waves to Dan when he leaves, but her eyes don't really leave the fish.

"I could believe that Sera would love watching mermaids, fake or real," she says, to no one in particular. "Shall we go gaze at the fish women then?"

Eleanor

In a place full of water, where there is much glass to break and rooms where there are sharks, there are turtles, there are even tigers, no one wants to feel anything sundering. No one wants to feel like they are drowning, slowly sinking, suffocating not because there is no oxygen, but because that air is rushing into your lungs with a couple of hydrogen hangers-on in every molecule.

Dan departs. Eleanor looks at Elijah as he explains they aren't real.

She sighs. She seems to understand the disappointment.

"You had me worried," is all she says, and slides her hands into the pockets of her cape-jacket, hidden as they are in the folds. She shakes her head, nods in some general direction. "Let's go watch the not-real mermaids. May as well get our money's worth."

The Corinthian

Elijah

[How did I sleep?]

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

Dan

The Corinthian is a small, lively little place that serves craft beers and craft cocktails and barsnacks. The sort of place that has singer-songwriters in on the weeknights to draw in a crowd, but no live music on the weekends since the bar is always crowded on a Saturday night.

A patio spills out onto the sidewalk, hemmed in by wrought-iron railings that are easily jumped, scattered with high-top tables at which you can stand, and ordinary tables around which are scattered small metal chairs. On fine evenings they open the big garage doors that join the interior and exterior spaces - all metal and glass - but when it's too cold or too fucking hot, well, smokers, you're on your own.

--

Here's the thing. Sera's impossible to miss. Even the amplitude of her resonance - visceral and enthralling and liminal - she is fucking gorgeous and goddamned magnetic and even if she weren't goddamned magic (and she is, darlings, goddamned magic) the world would just bend itself a little bit more around her.

Dan though, when she's not around. Isn't he just another face in the crowd? Tall guy, close-cropped blond hair, well groomed blond beard that is closer to scruffy than otherwise. Tattoos covering his arms in what seems, from a distance, like stained glass, all that color, see?

He's on the patio at the Corinthian. Checking his phone, smoking a cigarette - or, rather, sharing a cigarette - drinking whiskey and waiting for someone.

Elijah

He parks. The herald to Elijah's arrival was the sound of a motor cycle, and not something nice or not something crappy, merely a mediocre motor cycle that got the job done when push came to shove. More importantly, there wasn't a lot of pushing or shoving that was really involved. Elijah parked, and was off to the patio with a grin on his face because damned if he wasn't happy. Damned if he wasn't pleased and grinning like the world was worth grinning about.

He's never been to the Corinthian, but he does have a love of craft beers. Jenn opted not to come with, because for some reason she had something to do. If she'd known there would be a man with stained glass patchwork tattoos, she would have rethought her response.

The relationship between Dan and Sera was not the same as the relationship between Jenn and Elijah. He didn't even know what Dan was to Sera, but frankly Elijah didn't care.

Dan?

Dan was just fuckin' cool.

"Hey, man," he said with a smile that was at once bright and delighted. Because he was awake, because there was booze to be had. Because.

Dan

"Hey." There's a wry warmth to Dan's expression as he hands off the cigarette to the person with whom he'd been sharing it - a dark-haired, dark-eyed woman with a strong set of shoulders and a roller derby t-shirt - and they kind of wave each other off because Dan's turning back to Elijah and extending a calloused hand.

Not enthusiasm. Not exuberance. Just warm good feeling matched with a kind of steadiness that feels almost primordial.

He takes Elijah's hand and it is more of a smack than a shake see, there is intention to it, and movement and momentum.

"How've you been? Sera wanted me to look in on you."

Richard

[HELLO. MIND ANOTHER? :D]

Elijah

"Holy fuck, Dan," he sighed, more an exhaling of air that comes before a laugh that is at once tired and relieved, "my friends were in a coma, and now some of them aren't in a coma, I thought I almost drowned on dry land and-and-"

He laughs, he laughs while he shakes his hand, because sometimes all you can do is laugh. He shrugged, "it's been a trip this month, man. Good or bad, a real fuckin' trip."

It then hits him what Dan said. Sera said to check in on him.

"Oh yeah?"

Dan

(you can totally join damon!)

Elijah

(Dibs!)

Dan

"That sounds like a month." There is a flash of teeth behind his beard; this reflexive response to Elijah's instinct to laugh in the face of all of that. Drowning on dry land, the comatose. The truth is the consor knows something about all of that because unlike Serafíne, he actually checks Ginger.

Gray-blue eyes on Elijah's face, though, crinkled at the corners, because Dan is older than you might realize, as he continues in a rumbling, rumply baritone. "You seem to be holding up well, though. All things considered. That's a good sign."

A small snort. Lifts his whiskey to take a drink, mouth a bit wide as he does.

"And yeah. She wanted me to make arrangements for you to see another friend of ours, if the timing worked. Jim Thompson."

Elijah

Elijah… Elijah is young. He is young in many senses of the word, unashamed of his lack of experience but more than willing to make up for it by diving head first into heaven knows what else. One had once remarked hat Elijah was hurtling off towards his own demise, but he was heading towards that end no faster or slower than precisely the time he intended.

Mister Poirot arrived at things precisely when he intended, kind of like Gandalf.

Except, of course, he couldn't hope to be half as cool as Gandalf. That required a beard, and frankly Elijah Poirot was beardly challenged.

"Could still work," he said, "Sera's not back yet, we could still have some wiggle room. What's he like? Anything I should avoid talking about? I've had a month to process, so I mean, all things considered I'd say I'm okay."

Dan

"No she's not."

Dan agrees and he doesn't mention the gigs he had to cancel or the fact that she was supposed to be gone three fucking days and now it is three fucking weeks. Just says it like that, a little wry, because of course he goddamned misses her. The world seems just a little less vibrant when she's not close by; when she's not there, when she doesn't need him, which she always seems to. He's also way too fucking mellow to think about resenting her vagaries.

"As for Jim - " a brief, sharp exhale. Fond you see, but not familiar. Not precisely. "I don't know where to start. But he's never struck me as the sort of person around whom you need to avoid certain topics of conversation.

"I think he's probably almost entirely the other-way-round. You know? Nothing off limits. He's sort of a badass hippie guru surrealist peacenik.

"I mean, if I had to put a label on him."

Elijah

"Only sort of a badass hippie guru surrealist peacenik?"

Dan

The guitarist gives a brief shrug with his skinny shoulders. There's some movement of his mouth beneath his beard, all quirk.

"Sometimes he has a mustache."

Whatever the fuck that means.

Elijah

Sometimes, Jim Thomspon has a moustache.

Elijah looks at Dan, with the sort of careful eye of a perpetual student. He poked like he was trying to dissect meaning, find the importance and the significance of all the symbols and sensations and the meaning of the elements that make up this mystery man.

"Dan, I am too sober to understand the significance of a moustache," he said with the utmost sincerity, "let's go remedy this situation posthaste."

Eleanor

The Corinthian, you would think, is not the sort of place you would find Eleanor. She is in her early thirties, quite early in fact, but she carries weights that are older than that, seem to have gone back to time imemorial, over and over. She was a lawyer and now she is a professor; it hardly matters that she is also a slender woman with clear skin and even clearer blue eyes, with hair that is long and sometimes unruly at the ends and thick and blonde. It hardly matters that she is pleasant to the eyes, because: she is known to the young people around this area as a professor, and she is known to the community of magi -- some of them -- as a Disciple, when there aren't many of those to go around these days.

Yet here she is. And it is not because Richard has dragged her, or anything like that. Richard has his life; Eleanor has her own. They intersect quite a lot, that's true. But they aren't chained together. She's here because she wanted to go out, and she likes this place fine, and perhaps he texted her and said something about coming over and she told him she was going out and he asked where and so now, he's going to meet her here.

When she comes in, she is dressed well, and not the way she is at the campus. She is in very, very skinny jeans, the ends tucked into a pair of slight-heeled ankle boots. Her tank top is long and lean. The vest she wears over it is the sort that drapes, that flows around her hips, that hangs open, that has a crocheted upper back. The jeans are dark, the boots are gray, the tank is black, the vest is cream. She carries a small bag, and it is British racing green. Her hair is loose, and there is a stack of bracelets around her left wrist she was given as a gift, which she was wearing even before Richard texted her.

The room does not get colder when she walks in. Her resonance does not make people feel cold, though they often mistake it for such. It makes them feel like it is winter outside. It makes them feel other things, too. Most people do not find any of them pleasant, or peaceful, or serene, or sympathetic. She knows this. It does not bother her.

First she looks for Richard, though. If he is here, she will see him. Extraordinarily tall people do have that going for them. But while she's looking, she catches sight of Elijah, and she smiles. If she catches his eye, she waves.

Elijah

[I'm good!]

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

Dan

"I don't think the mustache has any significance," an easy grin slices through Dan's beard. The expression is slightly hooked, see, the wryness lingers as he picks up the remainder of his whiskey and tosses it back. The hint of teeth behind the gesture, and he drinks it not neat but on the rocks, so the ice cubes make their delicate little chiming sounds as the roll around in the glass.

Then the whiskey's gone, but just the ice left, so Dan sets the drink aside on one of the hightops where a server will swing by and pick it up.

"It just means that he didn't feel like shaving his upper lip."

Dan glances up at Eleanor. Catches perhapsthe edge of the smile or the note of recognition in her face, or the movement of the wave. "Friend of yours?"

Richard

"Elijah!"

It turns out Richard is already here, or at least: is arriving. Arrives from sort-of-behind Elijah, clapping him on the shoulder as he pulls out a chair.

"Okay if I sit?" He pauses just long enough for invitation, then looks across the table -- across the room -- waves at Eleanor, that easy relaxed grin of his making an appearance. Then back to Dan. "One of Sera's housemates, aren't you? Have we officially met? I'm Richard."

Elijah

Now, his reaction should be one more severe, but instead when he feels that cold, griping end it isn't a feeling of despair that comes over him. It isn't fear and memory and nostalgia, it is light and familiarity that comes to his eyes and that budding sense of upheaval met against something much more notable. Instead of being off settled?

Elijah smiles. Bright- friend of his?

"That's Eleanor, she's cool," and a clap on the shoulder, a call of his name and his first reaction was to jump, then laugh? Because laughter came easily.

"Richard! Hey, man- Richard, this is Dan."

Elijah

Eleanor waved; Elijah waved back, and waved over.

Eleanor

Eleanor gives a polite wave, and does not head over, because Elijah might be trying to flirt with that tattooed young man.

Richard doesn't give a shit. Elijah! So she is waving toward them and hearing, and seeing, her very tall apprentice who seems to know them both. Or at least be acquainted with both. She begins to head over, which is suitable, since Elijah is waving her over.

She walks over, and there's a fluidity to her stride, an ease in her body. She knows her body. She does not seek to transcend it. She does not worship it. But she knows it, and its limits, and she is comfortable in each step. It's the confidence, and the aura of power, that gets glances over shoulders, that gets people either watching her or edging out of her way.

She's cool.

"Hello, Elijah," she says. Gives a smile to Richard, a wordless greeting. She looks at Dan, though, echoing the introduction he was just given. "Dan?" she confirms, and offers her hand to shake his. "I'm Eleanor Yates."

Dan

"If we haven't met officially," Dan returns, to Richard, looking: up, and up, and up. See: quirk. "We've met unofficially. Yeah," affection, deep and abiding, warms something about him. His voice or his gaze. "You've got it. One of Sera's housemates. Good to see you again - "

Then Dan's standing, clapping a hand on Elijah's shoulder rather as Richard did. Something warm about the gesture. The way his hand lingers.

"Listen. I'm actually gonna head out. Have an early fucking meeting tomorrow. Elijah, gimme a shout if/when you wanna go meet Jim. Keep in touch in the meantime. Seriously, I promised her I'd look in on you."

That's what Dan says by way of farewell.

Then he releases Elijah's shoulder, and heads out.

Dan

"If we haven't met officially," Dan returns, to Richard, looking: up, and up, and up. See: quirk. "We've met unofficially. Yeah," affection, deep and abiding, warms something about him. His voice or his gaze. "You've got it. One of Sera's housemates. Good to see you again - "

Then Dan's standing, he's standing up as Eleanor approaches and joins them, and something in the coincidence of her approach and his exit gives the gesture a courtly patina, of which he is smart enough to be aware. Eleanor offers her hand and he takes it, and his own is warm and calloused and his grip is stronger than you'd imagine, just looking at him.

He is closer to Eleanor's age, we imagine, than Elijah's.

"Dan Goshen. Nice to meet you. I'd stay, but I have an early day tomorrow."

Then, clapping a hand on Elijah's shoulder rather as Richard did. Something warm about the gesture. The way his hand lingers.

"Listen. Gimme a shout if/when you wanna go meet Jim. Keep in touch in the meantime. You've got my number. Night all."

That's what Dan says by way of farewell.

Then he releases Elijah's shoulder, and heads out.

Richard

This is not an unusual thing, really: for Eleanor to meet Richard somewhere by design or accident and find him already in the company of friends old or new. Never, not once, has he ever seemed unwilling to be approached or embarrassed by her presence or unwelcoming or -- anything of the sort, really.

He waves. Elijah waves. She comes over, this acarya of Richard's, this professor of law at Sturm. She is not dressed like a professor of law tonight. While Richard isn't half so immature as to remark on it, or worse, to crack some joke about her cleaning up nice or looking like a normal human being or some such thing, he does get a certain slant to his grin, surprised-delighted.

"Later, Dan," he says as Dan departs. "Say hi to Sera for me."