Wake up, sleepyhead.

Alexander Brandt

[Dex+Ath]

Dice: 6 d10 TN8 (2, 6, 6, 6, 6, 8) ( success x 1 )

Serafíne

Sera: Perception plus ze awareness

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

Serafíne

Sera: Staminas

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

ill-luck

[Mystery roll.]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )

ill-luck

Perhaps Alexander's day is about to take a turn for the better. Perhaps Alexander's day is going to live-up to the promise of that frigid blue gorgeous sky up above and its scattering, smattering of pale clouds. Perhaps Alexander's day cannot get any worse, but then, he has not actually been hit by a truck, and the way he's lingering in this place of ill-luck, of mal-fortune, investigating strange things that might be better left un-investigated, let's just say getting hit by a truck is not yet off the table.

This is: a sparse stretch of road -- empty, emptying, not flat because the Rockies are right there, solemn sentinels all dressed in white all cold and cold and cold.

Perhaps Alexander's day is about to take a turn for the better. There is a hair-thin crack in the air, suspended there, un-moving, like a filament of hair except hair would be blown away, hair wouldn't gleam occasionally quite like that, wouldn't feel like a break. And he throws a rock at it.

He almost misses the fissure in the air over the street. Maybe because the finger of one hand is broken and even if he's using his other hand that kind of thing distracts one. Maybe because he just survived something very strange, because he went rolling off've his motorcycle. Alexander just isn't tip-top. Almost misses it.

But he doesn't miss it. The rock hits the crack and never hits the ground again. What rock? The owl hobbles on, making a keening noise.

Meanwhile, somewhere nearby, Serafíne…

ill-luck

It's a lovely day, a thaw-day between snow and ice and snow and ice and snow and ice, and Serafíne has perhaps had another dream. A dream about an alcove on a cave's face, on a cliff face, an alcove where there is an altar, an altar with a lid that could be pushed ajar, where an iguana's teeth are vicious-blooded, full of love; a dream about a storm, lightning. And Serafíne, perhaps Serafíne met a woman this day named Natalee, a woman named Natalee who is a musician and who has very dark hair, and Natalee and Serafíne went on an adventure, and the adventure took them out and out and out again, on one of the easier hikes around Denver, because when you're outside of the city, when you're outside of the city Natalee said, you can forget about language right and the trees will begin to melt the hills lose their shape because you've gone past their names, and it's just fucking beautiful, fucking beautiful, beautiful

and that happened. And there is a truck, somewhere, parked oh a ways away from where Alexander is currently standing, dumbfounded, testing his own luck in a most dangerous way, and Natalee is sleeping it off in that truck, a bottle of tequila (perhaps Sera's bottle of tequila?) tucked under the crook of her arm, a cooler full of tamales and grape hummus and Himalayan food and one lonely slice of pizza in the back of the truck, and . . .

Serafíne was in the truck or just outside the truck when she felt the surge of somebody Working, in a Big, Big, Big, Big way, somebody freezing (Frozen?) the world, somebody sending out a coruscating wave of -- oh, it is her Sphere, Time, Time being un-tocked, un-ticked, and there's something even yet behind this Big, Big, Big, Big thing, this uncontrolled somebody-is-there and somebody-has-worked near-by and there is no taste to the resonance yet (perhaps it is beginning, though: that taste, this First Working), and it is wild. Wild Magick. Isn't stopping.

Serafíne

This lonely road this azure sky this strange stretch of land no one should ever really remember to remember, which Alexander is likely never to forget and there is a fork there is always a fork this is what happens with roads: they cross. There are boundaries. There are choices to be made and the choices open up up up and branch out endlessly fractal, fractally endless, and every river leads eventually to the sea.

The pick-up truck where Natalee sleeps is parked over a rise and down a gully; it is not visible from here and the road on which it is parked is gravel and dirt; rutted, half-forgotten except remembered by those who know it to be a choice they can make: just here.

So Sera's walking and out here she's wearing her Doc Martens, beaten and wellworn, not her usual ridiculous heels, so she is not even five and a half-feet tall, a slight figure cresting a slight rise and just a tiny bit surreal; nothing quite like the surreality of Alexandar down below now - awakening, see? - and perhaps hardly noticeable to him but oh, she can taste that wildness on her tongue, against the back of her throat, the ozone promise of it, and she doesn't quite believe her senses, except she always sort of does, even if right now tequila and the remnants of that mushroom tea she-and-Natalee drank hours ago to welcome the dawn or what the fuck ever that star was, rising in the east are unspooling through her body like whoa.

So, what Sera sees among other things is Seattle Alexander, who works security in the city, and a wrecked motorcycle and a wounded owl and - and - and -

Sera licks her dry lips. She's wearing denim shorts over fishnets, a black cotton halter top as if it weren't fucking winter, which is printed with a skull and a school and an alligator, because why the fuck not, and a flannel tied around her waist, and a blanket slung over her shoulders like a refugee from Woodstock, Original Recipe.

She sees all'a that shit unfolding beneath her, and she bites her tongue.

Hard. The sharp burst of pain incisive as a knife through her skull. A burst of brilliance.

[Prime 1. Watch Ze Weaving. Difficulty: 4; -1 specialty focus.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (1, 8, 8) ( success x 2 )

Alexander Brandt

As bad days go, today is certainly ranking up there. Maybe not quite number one yet: that honour goes... well, thankfully everything else that’s going on distracts Alexander from that. Perhaps he should be thankful for that small mercy, even if he is going to be black and blue for the next week recovering.

The rock he throws sails through the air and... disappears. No clatter and skitter as it lands back on the road and bounces away to the side. No explosion, no cloud of dust. Just... Nothing. That doesn’t happen. But is any of this meant to happen to a nice boy from Seattle? Did he just happen to be walking past as Chance stuck a pin in a map somewhere and decided who was going to wake up? Or is this part of some big plan of the universe.

Such philosophical questions have never really struck Alexander much in the past. Life and the universe simple are, and the only purpose in life is to survive and, if you’re lucky, make it a better place when you leave it.

Which doesn’t really help explain just what the hell is going on here. The crack floats in the air, calling to him. That too-sweet call of his name sounding just wrong enough to damped down Alexander’s usual sense of curiosity. He just has a feeling that this is... well, wrong. He back away, looking towards the owl. The keening could be from the poor thing’s injuries, or it could be picking up on the fissure. Or there could be some new calamity just waiting to prove that things can, indeed, get worse. He does, however, ask again warily: “Who are you?” To the fissure. To the other voice. To whoever will answer.

ill-luck

[Wise guys.]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 4, 5, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )

ill-luck

[Dmg]

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

Alexander Brandt

[Per+Aware. Huh, what was that?]

Alexander Brandt

[With dice..]

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

Serafíne

Wits: Sera!

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

ill-luck

Alexander appears to be in an ongoing relationship with Cursing Himself with Ill-Luck, Mis-Fortune, Missed Fortune, Malefaction, Malediction, and he is chained-up and bound-by and dragging-behind a knot of Bad Luck (Entropy: All Things Break, All Things Fall Apart, All Things Are Sundered, All Things, All Things, All Things), but Alexander also has Time's Blood on his hands still, his eyes are shining gleaming with black and white threads of possibilities this-or-that, but he's not at least doing Time Things Any Longer, that's just something she is Aware recently happened. He's just cursing himself, sure. He's just starting to gather those threads of Ill-Luck together, and perhaps Serafíne gets a sense of Curiousity, it's too soon to tell -- the Signature is Changing, Shifting, Won't be Steady Yet, oh but look, Alexander's eyes are burning when she watches how one does magick with something else, so he can see what Serafíne can't, look through the Gauntlet (but not through even in his accident-trip-mode he doesn't know enough or maybe it's not his eyes it's his ears yes his ears) his ears he's Spirit-slinging, Spirit-sensing, beginning to build up like a fire that's going to collapse again, a lesser explosion compared to Time Time Time, the little ebb-wave that comes after. He has no idea. It's sloppy, but not purposefully sloppy. It's cold, and winter, and witner, and Fated, and winter again.

ill-luck

[Oh, the voice.]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 4, 6, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 4 )

Alexander Brandt

[WP]

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

ill-luck

A rock very similar to the one that Alexander threw at the fissure, which did not fall to earth, hits Alexander in the forehead. Did it fall from the sky; did it get thrown from - ?

Either way, it didn't actually do any damage.

Serafíne

One of the oh-so-many things that Alexander feels is Sera though how can he know it is her; or even quite get that she's there cresting a rise and sliding down the slope and then scrambling her way back up to the berm. Just movement in his periphery that could perhaps be as surreal as everything else here: the fissure in the sky, the thrown-back rock. The whole of it on a lonely road in a strange place bounded by the teeth of the Rockies to the west.

That lick of sensation, see, that buffets against his senses is gut-wrenching, right? all instinct-not-thought, back-of-the-gritting-teeth, this visceral twist of - yeah, and fascinating; thralling, enthralling, this catch of the breath to go with the twist of the gut; and she is also, see: thresholds, porticos, doorways. She is the point of becoming where the old is lost and the new is not-yet-defined enough to have begun. She is the place-between, just on the verge of -

- like he is now. Here and now. On the verge of so fucking much, the universe a cresting wave all around him and here's a girl at the edge of his senses, sliding up and down and up again those little rises, see? like she's cresting some fucking wave, this plaid picnic-blanket sort of thing held around her shoulders and flying out behind her a bit like a cape because these are the plains, the high plains, and the wind is always, always,

always.

"Hey. Hey." Girl on the road now; maybe he remembers her from the night before, or the night before that. She's certainly distinctive. Striking; aquiline features and close-set eyes and the sort of face and style you cannot quite forget. Long blond curls all windwhipped except from her right temple all the way back to her neck, where everything from a sidepart down has been shaved back to a soft, downy fringe.

She's smiling. She's watching him. "Seattle Alexander. Did you open the fucking Gauntlet? Jesus Christ."

She has a bottle of something in her hand.

"You're gonna be okay, you know that?" God, she's lovely. "You just have to ride this through. I'm gonna give you a hand."

Alexander Brandt

That voice, so sweet that it’s so hard to resist. Calling. Familiar? No, that was the other voice, the one that seems to have fallen silent. But it would be so easy to take a step towards the fissure, then another. Keep walking towards it until whatever happens... happens. But there’s still that slight, nagging feeling of wrong – the feeling of hairs standing up on the back of his neck that keeps Alexander back. Not retreating, but not advancing either.

The sweet voice speaks again, though, answers that aren’t. Vague sentences that don’t actually explain much. It knows him, but he doesn’t recognise it at all. Has it been watching him? Wait, it? What the hell is it? Are we now thinking that what’s going on now is real?

“Ow, fuck!” The rock certainly felt real.

He steps back a little, looking around for the source of the rock. The fissure? The owl? “I don’t know you. I’ve never heard you before, and I have no idea how you know my name. And you still haven’t answered my question: Who. Are. You?” Each of those last three words getting louder, almost shouting as much as his hoarse voice allow.

Is that a little of the earlier anger coming back, at someone apparently playing games with him? This is really not the day to try it.

He starts at the new voice, almost reluctant to turn away that voice, so hard to resist. But the sensation, the resonance that preceded it was so familiar. Only a night of two ago he felt the same, bring life and atmosphere into an otherwise dying night. Only this time it’s so much stronger that it’s almost hard to imagine it ever being absent. He sees Sera standing, watching. Emotions play over his face as he looks at her. Somewhere between anger, panic, pain, and plain old desperation he says quietly, “I don’t understand.”

Serafíne

"'Course you don't - " Sera's inhaling now. She's gained the berm and the scramble is gone; she's just on her feet now; all surreal and stoned and the brilliant sky and these deep rich shadows; tracers like everything is edged in firecrackers, like there's the possibility of combustion just born and folded into everywhere, everywhen, everything, infecting her vision, and this little shrug beneath the picnic blanket, rather narrow shoulders in a rather sundering, surrendering gesture.

And she's walking toward him carefully because she can see the threads of magic all coruscant around him; can see his scrabbling injuries too. Can see the keening owl with its broken wing and her path and Alexander and his pain and his panic and his desperation and she's careful of the owl and she's careful of him too, her voice soothing, her eyes steady even as she sinks to a crouch beside the wounded bird, a handful of feet from the man who has - who is - cursing himself. "No one every really does, and some of us never fucking figure it out."

And Sera, she makes this sort of nictating noise in the back of her throat; this crooning to touch the keening, this quiet lick of look-at-me though it isn't for Alexander, not right now, it's for that wounded, keening bird. A song-beneath-her-breath and a song-beneath-her-skin and Alexander can hear one and feel the other as she settles balanced on her haunches, the diamonds of her fishnets pulling taut over her thighs.

"That's okay, too. Why don't you tell me what they're saying?"

And still humming see, keening on her own beneath her breath, crooning to that bird, she clarifies,

"The people you're talking to right now? I can't fucking hear them. I know fuck-all about things on the other side."

[Mind 2: Soothe the owl. Coincidental. Difficulty 5. -1 for specialty focus; -1 for practiced.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (6, 6, 7) ( success x 3 )

ill-luck

As Serafíne crouches beside the owl, the owl - initially, at least - makes this sharp, hideous crack-cry, like perhaps that's the sound which lets the Devil out've the underworld, hobby thing, tries to puff up and look very large indeed, but then Sera's humming seems to be working, music soothes the savage beast, hm? and it calms down, lidding its eyes, and if a bird's inexpressive features could express - well perhaps it is tired. It stops trying to get where-ever it is trying to get.

Alexander Brandt

Alexander watches, edging around to keep the fissure, the owl and Sera in view. Too much strangeness to really trust in someone he’s only briefly met. How can she know what’s going on, though? How... can she seem to calm down the owl with so little effort? Just good with animals? Or is there even more going on now that there was before?

He keeps the fissure between him and Sera. Not much of a barrier in case anything much happens, but it’s about all there is in the middle of nowhere. The roulette ball of emotions running over his face seems to land on “wary” for a few seconds before bounding on again.

“You... can’t hear them? “ He sighs, then turns away muttering to himself. “Oh god, that’s it, I’ve really lost it. I’m hearing voices.” He swings back round, voice almost toneless, almost at the point of giving up. “What does it matter what they say? None of this is real.” Alexander’s shoulders sag and he sinks to the ground, hugging his legs. Chin propped on his knees, he just stares at the road.

ill-luck

[Voice.]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 6, 6, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 5 )

Alexander Brandt

[WP]

Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (1, 5, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )

Serafíne

"You're waking up," Sera says very simply. She is still settled on her haunches on the shoulder of the road, and the owl is no longer keening, no longer trying to scrabble away, and her eyes are sunset eyes, just now, the gleam of the sun across a failing blue horizon as she lifts her chin and glances sharply up at him. Edged see, and keen but and fucked up but really rather calm. Smiling.

On the verge -

"Everything's real if you Will it to be. You're fucking magic."

And see, Sera is not a lover-of-animals. There are no collections of living things fucked away in her home; not even a single ferret and her only occasional pet is a threadbare stuffed bunny that is only ever alive in her dreams but see her hands sort-of-hover over the wounded bird and she drops her eyes from Alexander long enough to focus on it; scattered, scattering; and oh god the way the light splits itself and splits itself and splits itself into infinity. Sera does not believe in molecules but she does believe in everything; the strangely knotted connections. She believes in light and she believes in touch and she believes in her body and also in her soul or whatever you fucking call it. The thing inside her skin, that was meant to burn.

"So'm I."

Here is her Will, that a broken wing be healed.

[Life 3: Heal. Vulgar Without Witnesses. Difficulty: 7. -1 for taking time.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (3, 7, 7) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

ill-luck

[Owl wits what?]

Dice: 3 d10 TN8 (1, 5, 7) ( fail )

ill-luck

The owl is calm in Serafíne's presence; is calm, but is still, after all, an animal. A bird. And it is far, far from its den, and as Serafíne Wills (Wills!) the owl's wing healed, bones re-smoothed, fractures un-cracked, flesh un-bruised, whole again broken ages ago and not a problem, it blinks at her as if it doesn't quite know what's going on, chirrups questioningly, keeps its beak open and hophophops away, already holding its wings spread as if it is going to menace something, as if it hasn't realized yet that it can fly. Still: the wing does mend. The owl just hasn't realized it. Overbalances talons wiggle in the air and it clicks again then starts picking at its wing for mites. Startles. Leaps into the road.

Alexander Brandt

[Per+Alert}

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 1, 2, 4, 6, 7) ( success x 1 )

Alexander Brandt

Alexander stands, attention almost elsewhere. Still resigned, still feeling like he’s losing himself in whatever it is going on here. He takes a step towards the fissure that maybe only he sees, drawn by a voice that only he hears. Pleading, begging. Desperate too? His vision flashes again for a moment, yet more sparks of light and dark arcing between Sera, the owl, him. Images of the owl flying off, dying in Sera’s lap.. Images flashing through his mind as connections are made and lost. Scared, frustrated, angry, he screams out as he covers his hands to try to blank out what he’s seeing.

Maybe they fade, maybe they don’t. But Alexander hears the chirrups from the owl which, minutes ago, had been dead. He looks up and watches it hop along the ground, not knowing what to believe any more. Too much is happening, too quickly. Maybe with a little warning that this was coming, Alexander could cope with it a little better. Or at least with fewer injuries. But, as it stands, his life as he knows it is coming apart at the seams. If he believed in anything, other than the “real” world, perhaps the idea of magic, or miracles, would have come a little more easily.

So his voice is empty of emotion again when he replies to Sera. “I’m hearing voices that you can’t, and you tell me that’s magic? I watch a bird that was dead, come back to life and hop away. I see... things. Things I don’t understand, things that can’t be there. And you want to tell me that’s not madness?” He looks into the fissure again. If none of this is real, then none of this can hurt him.

He closes his eyes and steps forward to join Alice down the rabbit hole. All his has ever really known, cared about, a lifetime ago in Seattle. His sanity questionable. If it’s all a hallucination, nothing will happen. If it’s not... Does he really have anything else to lose?

Alexander Brandt

[Per+Aware]

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

Serafíne

Perception Plus Awareness.

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 1, 1, 2, 4, 7, 9) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Serafíne

Intelligence Plus Enigmas.

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

ill-luck

Serafíne can sense the ill-luck Working coming to a boil, intensifying, getting Denser (or maybe she can just sense it being Re-Worked, and she can still See it), the closer Alexander comes to -- something. She can't see it. She can just Feel it, something Off, a little Niggle of magick, a slit in the Gauntlet maybe, a passage from one place to another, a place where Mages do not return from.

Serafíne

"No. No. Stop!" And Sera is urgent suddenly, this whip-crack of command in her voice; this need-to-be-heard and she was already rising as the bird with a no-longer-broken-wing talon-walked away but now she's all motion. Drops the picnic blanket she was using as a shawl or a coat and it drifts out behind her on the tarmac and she is running, flat-out-running toward him, the horizon all along, her head pounding, her blood pounding, her voice pounding, dusty boots pounding on the pavement -

- see, Stop, all arresting and then that launch of her body. Open-armed, running fast enough that she might as well be flying and she is aiming to throw her arms around Seattle Alexander's neck and her small and rather cold frame against his and to rise up brow to brow, close enough that he can smell the tequila and grape hummus, the tamales and mushroom tea, the humanity and decay on her breath and feel the bright flash of chill and then the deeper warmth on the exposed skin of her brow and stop,

and stop,

and remember.

"I'm here." Brow to brow, if he allows it. If he does not dodge or deflect. She's on her tip-toes and reaching and also pulling him down but also: eye to eye, her own dilated from the drugs she has ingested throughout the day, and also from this proximity; from the way she is cast in his shadow. "You're here, too. See? We're both here and we're real. Everything's fucking real, can't you taste it? Isn't it all brighter now? Doesn't it feel like the sky is scissoring open and you're remembering everything you thought you never new?"

Sera's voice is absolutely shot through with wonder; with awe. With brilliance. She's almost crooning to him.

"That thing. That thing that's calling you, that's real, too. It's on the other side or where the fuck ever and if you go there you'll go and you won't come back."

Serafíne

Mind 2. Coincidental! Difficulty: 5.

Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (8, 8, 10) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

Alexander Brandt

[Per+Aware, WTF?]

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

Alexander Brandt

The voice (voices now?) call to him, pleading, coaxing. He’s so close, almost there... As he stumbles. Cursing, almost falling to the side, he stops for a moment. Sparing his left leg, taking all of his weight on his right. Are Fate and Chance toying with him? Dangling him over the abyss, just to snatch him back before the rope breaks? Eyes open, now, he looks at the fissure. Just above, close enough to reach out and touch... Close enough to look through..?

“Stop!” comes the call from nearby. The word alone registers, but would it be enough on its own to cause Alexander to pause? To take a breath and hear what follows? Academic, as Sera bends reality to her will and subdues Alexander’s for just a moment. Long enough to get closer... But not as close as she wants. There’s a feeling of... something having just happened. Something strange, yet more going on beyond his comprehension. Somethingsomethingsomething...

So as Sera approaches, he turns to her. Whether the something came from her, or the fracture, or somewhere else he doesn’t know. But he does know that, right now, she’s as close as he cares to let anyone get. So arms out, he catches her shoulders and keeps the distance between them. Still close enough for the sensations... alcohol, thresholds, wonder. He does look into her eyes as she speaks, though. From the heart.

And she’ll see tears coming right back at her. No sobs, no crying – everything is still too numb for that. But he’s breaking. Broken. She explains what happens if he does step through. And it almost appeals more than anything. Alexander takes a deep, ragged break and replies to her, “I don’t know who I am any more. I’m losing myself, and I’m scared.” Another deep breath as he looks back at the fissure. Would anyone really be bothered if he did disappear?

Serafíne

So: so, Sera does not throw her arms around Alexander's neck; he catches her by the shoulders instead, arrests all that forward momentum before she makes the contact she seeks and he can feel the kinetic energy, the potential inherent in her body. But for all that it's not hard for him to stop her. He's a cop; he has more than half-a-foot on her and she's actually rather small, sharp-shouldered and spare-bored.

And Sera sees the tears in his eyes and Sera cries at the drop of a goddamned pin and suddenly, immediately, there are answering tears in her own, but Sera's tears spring not from despair but from that aching wonder with which she desperately wishes to infuse him.

Jesus Christ this world.

So: there he is, reflected in her eyes, and he's scared and he doesn't know who he is anymore and here she is, his hands on her shoulders, her heart pounding, each breath short and bright and cold and sharp, and her body is shaking with excess adrenaline that has poured itself into her already-altered blood and that tremor is especially pronounced in her hands - an impression of a gold ring and a leather cuff - as she reaches over his arms to cup his face, her ring fingers skimming the line of his jaw, her thumbs settling with a remarkable gentleness over his cheekbones.

"That's okay," she assures him, and she's smiling now. Smiling and crying and expressive and on the verge of laughter that has a pronounced edge of giddiness to it because he's new. He's brand new. He's just waking up. He's just being born.

"That's okay," and she's all conviction. "No one fucking knows who they are. Every fucks that up, even the Sleepers, I don't fucking know and I have worlds inside me, I have oceans, I have goddamned storms but you -

- you, you're opening your eyes. You've been Sleeping for so long that it's hard and it's painful and it's wild and everything you thought was wrong and that's okay.

"There's nothing wrong with being scared. There's nothing wrong with any of it. Let yourself be scared.

"Let yourself be."

Smiling.

Serafíne

Mind 2 / Life 2. Hope's Birth Variant: find the wonder / anchor it in the body. Here's the beating of my heart / here's yours. Coincidental? (Difficulty: 5 -1 (resonance - enthralling, darling.)

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (2, 8, 8) ( success x 2 )

Alexander Brandt

Since that night in Seattle, Alexander has shut himself off. Coped. Because that’s all he knew how to do. Day after day, dealing with the heartbreak, the embarrassment, fencing off the anger to avoid lashing out at people. All kept inside, hidden away. Frozen. Only these things weren’t as dormant as he he’d have liked to think. Things build up on these unstable foundations, until that one last straw...

And what a straw. Life has pulled the curtains back and opened the windows on his closed and sheltered life. Not out of cruelty or kindness – but just because it was time for the seed to sprout. For Alexander’s Avatar to rouse from its slumber.

So here he is, sharing tears with a woman he barely knows, on opposite sides of the mirror. One cold and frozen, the other hot and full of life. Winter and summer. Alexander pulls away for a moment as Sera reaches for his jaw, but then relaxes and allows her to touch him. It’s the first time he’s let anyone touch him in some time, the risk of letting anyone get close a little too high.

Sera speaks of people not knowing who they are and it rings so true. For years his life has lacked a direction, until he found the police. Others wait their whole lives to discover who they are, who they want to be. He listens in silence. There’s nothing really to say. Just knowing that he’s not alone right now, and that someone else understands, is enough.

Again, Sera bends reality a little and shares the feeling of wonder. Alexander’s eyes close as the feelings pass over him and through him. Enough to remember that the feeling exist. Enough to melt the ice a little. There is a sob this time, as he lets go a little. He stands there, leaning a little on Sera for support, for... an amount of time. That seems to get frozen, too, in the moment. Long enough for Alexander to... if not feel good, at least pull himself back together for a little while longer.

A haggard breath in, then, and he opens his eyes again. He rubs a hand across his eyes and asks, “If I’m not going mad, then what is that?” He nods towards the fracture. “And...” She tells of storms within her. Something about a dream, a voice. Lost in it a storm? “They were asking for help. The voices. One from that thing. The other one I dreamt about, but have heard her since. I don’t know who she is. I think I’ve lose her.”

Alexander Brandt

[..lost her]

ill-luck

That hair-line crack which Alexander sees doesn't disappear; no, no, of course it doesn't - not completely. It's a break. But it gets harder for him to see, thins out as he indicates it, ghost-fade, ghost-fade, gone with a sound like a kiss, or a bubble popping.

Serafíne

"Fuck if I know," Sera replies, turning to glance over her shoulder at the position he indicates, where the fissure appeared. She never saw it; just the coalescent energies all bright around it, but she's letting him go and glancing over her shoulder and just accepting it. Turning back to him, " - that's not my kind of magic. Maybe Leonhard knows -the guy from the other night? Liechetenstein? But the woman you dreamed about, you haven't lost her. You've woken up to her.

"She'll be back. You'll hear her again. It's hard to know, though, how soon it'll be. Or how long, but she's inside you.

"She always will be." This quick curve of her mouth. Bitter and sweet. "Even if you don't remember."

Then her gaze ticks down his body. Taking stock of his cuts and his bruises, his fracture finger, his wounds.

"You're hurt. I'll heal you.

"Give me your hand."

Hand out, palm up.

She's going to heal him, Sera.

Serafíne

Life 3: Vulgar Without Witnesses. Difficulty: 7 -1 (taking time); -1 (Spending Quint)

Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (1, 3, 7) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Serafíne

Extending! Difficulty +1, spending another quint though so final dif is 6.

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (7, 9, 9) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

Serafíne

Paradox!

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

Serafíne

Paradox!

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

Serafíne

Stamina!

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5) ( fail )

Serafíne

Stamina!

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 9) ( success x 1 )

Alexander Brandt

Alexander watches as the fracture fades away into nothing. Oblivion more than a step away, but – for now, anyway – no longer a temptation. He doesn’t really understand what it was, where it came from, or who the voices were. And it seems to be outside Sera’s area of expertise. But, well, maybe he can find another way to figure out just what’s happened today. That small, female voice asking for help? That will stick with him. Maybe he’ll hear her again, maybe he won’t. But just maybe he’ll try to find her and help her in some way.

Sera heals him. Not without, still, some scepticism that anything will happen but hey – it’s not the weirdest of things to have happened today. His broken finger pulls itself back into position, whatever went pop in his ankle feel like it’s gone back to where it was supposed to be. He tests his weight gingerly, putting more and more weight on it until he’s happy it’s not going to give way again. He still feels battered and bruised under his leathers, but he’s certainly grateful for what she’s done.

Looking back at the bike, though... That’s going to be a long walk into town. “I don’t supposed to can fix tyres too, can you?” He walks over to the bike and pulls it upright, wincing at the damage to the bodywork. “Or have a phone for a tow truck? How did you end up here, anyway?”1

Alexander Brandt

[Wits+Alert]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 5, 5, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )

ill-luck

A car! A car is coming!

ill-luck

The owl is still in the road, although on the side of the road. Perhaps this car is not going to hit it.

Serafíne

"I came out with a friend of mine for a hike with a thermos of mushroom tea and a cooler full of tamales. Then we were gonna fool around and watch the stars come out.

"Her name's Natalee. I think her truck's this way. C'mon.

"I'm sure we can dig my phone out of her gear. Ooh, and we can call Hawksley. He's fucking smart, maybe he'll know what that shit in the road was."

Alexander Brandt

"Watching the stars come out sounds like a pretty good plan." Hell, anything with company at the moment sounds like a pretty good plan. So he starts pushing the bike in the direction she points, walking along side her. Far enough apart to avoid bumping into each other.

Alexander spots another car approacheing, a cloud of dust being towed along the highway. The owl sits at the side of the road, seemingly stoned and oblivious to the approaching vehicle. Remembering the last time, he curses quietly. Kicking the stand for the bike and leaving it, hopefully safely, off the side of the road, he jogs over to the owl. If it stays calm, to try picking it up again. If not, to scare it into taking flight.

Alexander Brandt

[Cha+Aware-as-Emp]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

ill-luck

That owl. That owl has had many things happen to it today and it is still very very confused about those things. There is a car coming, and it doesn't seem to notice or to comprehend, but Alexander has an investment in the owl. Serafíne can feel the moment when Reality's drawn its fists back to slug her, hit her, beat her down, how dare she go against Reality, how dare she stand against it and say what has happened will not stay Happened, that what is broken should mend, how dare she, and she feels it in her face, and her nose bleeds a little as Alexander approaches the owl, crooning, the calm wide-eyed owl which clicks its beak at him, and the car is there, there it is a Nissan, and the driver sees a young man scooping an owl up, and the owl moving a little restively in his grip, trying to get comfortable, and it always feels like a precious thing, holding a wild animal, a wild animal that lets you hold it, and

and that is how Alexander and Serafíne walk back to find Natalee, who is still sleeping in the back of her truck. And it is time to get away, certainly, because Alexander's Working might have attracted other attentions, mightn't it? Natalee is muggy-eyed and fuzzy-headed and she offers Alexander a swig of tequila and perhaps by then Alexander has set the owl down somewhere and if he did oh how the owl looked after him and Serafíne, as if perplexed, perplexed, what happened? Or perhaps he keeps it, and Natalee coos over the adorable widdle birdy, and

nothing whispers, not right now. That sense Alexander has of ill-luck, of doom, it grows less, diminishes although it does not disappear entirely, and he will continue to have minor bad luck for the rest of the day, bad luck that gets slighter and slighter, until it's night and time again to fall asleep.

dejavu [In Progress]

Serafíne

There's a marquee advertising Lawrence of Arabia but the marquee is wrong and has been for weeks, months.  Anyone who comes in hoping for parched desert heat, matches against the sunrise finds a very different film cycling through the mostly-ignored projector on the balcony level of the two-story theater sandwiched between a warehouse full of barely-legal Chinese knockoff merchandise (Hello KiTTTy dolls and Sharpee markers and the like) and a desultory strip club where third-rate dancers and second-rate prostitutes and sad-sack johns meet in the dim pink light of a smoke-filled bar. 

Excellent sound insulation keeps the low beat of 80s night next door (some pockmarked nineteen year old junkie gyrating to the dulcet tones of Robert Palmer) entirely out of the theater.  Tonight they're showing Fritz Lang's Metropolis, with a reconstructed score synced up to the silent action. 

Metropolis, however, is preceeded by thirty minutes of black and white footage of dancing girls from the 1910s, prancing around painted backdrops, folding screens, Queen Anne chairs and the like in that rolling stutterstep that belongs to the earliest recorded video.  There's no rhyme or reason; that's just what's on offer. 

Sera in the top row and she's alone tonight and we won't describe what she's wearing yet because it is fucking dark in here but she feels the way she feels and the universe sort of skews all around her sometimes and she has her legs, which seem long even if they are not, crossed and slung loosely over the threadbare-velvet covered theater-seat in front of her and she has a rather large tub of popcorn and a Mister Pibb soda she has laced with rum and this is what she feels like, see: the central point and the revolving arms of an endless galaxy, spinning out away from her, churning against the unrelenting dark. 

She dropped the acid three and a half hours ago. Tracers started, oh, maybe two hours and forty-five minutes ago.  Now firmly in the grip of hallucinations, she is sure that she could peel off the ceiling like the lid of a sardine can, if only she had the key, and drink-down-the-sky.

Serafíne

Time 3 Weirdness.  (-1 for focus, -1 for taking time.  -1 for resonance.)

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (1, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )

Gaheris

[I am aware. + Specialty: Effects.]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 5, 6, 6, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 5 )

Gaheris

He knows an awful lot of things. He: the man in the dark coat. His hair is dark, too. And he is nothing, he is not worth notice. Not by the mundanes, and not always by the Awakened. He paid for his ticket - probably. Maybe he just walked in and if somebody noticed that he didn't pay and actually went out of their way to track him down or to get a manager they were unable to describe him satisfactorily.

The man had wanted Lawrence of Arabia not Fritz Lang's Metropolis. All he'd really wanted was a space that was unfamiliar, some cheap movie theatre popcorn, smothered in butter; a place to think. All of his places are places to think, aren't they? He can't get away from thoughts; the flickering of a film-reel, though - or at least the possibility of a flickering, that's all right. 

He has been watching the dancing girls from the 1910s with a furrowed brow and something of a frown. He'd become aware of Serafíne -- oh, a while ago, perhaps. Her resonance might be a bruise: liminal, testing thresholds, limitless -- but so enthralling, can't he just taste it? The viscera of it? He certainly can once she begins Working, and Adam's shoulders stiffen. He is sitting in the front row and he rocks his head back to look in her direction. The direction that feeling is coming from. Time: he can taste it.

Better than dancing girls.

Serafíne

Sera did not come to The Westmark expecting Lawrence of Arabia or Metropolis.  She came expecting dancing girls from the 1910s, and there they were, real as life, moving and smiling and bold and shy and strange and faded and fading by turns.  Dark eyes wet against the celluloid and their old-fashioned smiles and the many hopes and the many dreams and the many ages that have come and gone: there again.  Living, breathing, laughing voicelessly, playing these noiseless castenets, and on and on.  What the fuck ever. 

The lick of Time magic did not really start until the dancing girls went away. 

And now, something is going on on the screen and she hardly knows what.  She is Aware of the scratchiness of the velvet like old horsehair against her bare legs and of the depth of the ceiling and of the fact that the ceiling is only a suggestion and of the stuttering song of the film through the projector, an old fashioned noise. 

There is popcorn and Sera stirs the popcorn and she thinks about how it feels like grain against her hands, and she wonders if she is perhaps in a forest.  A moving forest of black and white where the sky whispers its changes down to the ground; or, no -

galaxies. 

They taste like salt and salt tastes like tears and tears taste like regret and Ser aregrets the loss of the dancing girls except hello she has not lost them; if you move forward you can move backwards, easily, see? 

It's just a matter of turning around.

Nothing, nothing is ever gone.  Not even the past you think you've forgotten. 

Everything lives and everything dies and everything is, and now is just another fiction.

Gaheris

[Counter!]

Dice: 2 d10 TN8 (4, 8) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Gaheris

[Well, I guess Watch the Weaving should've been first, maybe. Let the practically freeforming liiive.]

Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (2, 4) ( success x 1 )

Gaheris

They stop and they stutter and they skip-a-beat and they beat-a-skip and and. They flirt so coy they flirt and dance and kick and smile and they're somehow more real sometimes in all their jerky jittery grace quick one-step two-step kick-kick kcik-kcik pets-owt pets-eno kciuq ecarg yrettij ykrej rieht lla ni semitemos laer erom wohemos er'yeht dna elims dna kcik dna ecnad dna trilf yeht yoc os trilf yeht. They flirt so coy they flirt and dance and kick and smile and they're somehow more real sometimes in all their jerky jittery grace quick one-step two-step kick-kick kcik-kcik kcik pets-ow --Enough. He has a devil in him, Adam Gallowglass. And it is dangerous, isn't it? These shenanigans. He shuts his eyes briefly and scrapes a word (a seraphim's word) out from behind his teeth, from the roof of his mouth, a murmured thing - turns to look now more fully, to see Serafíne, her eyes reflecting the film, her face radiantly limned in silverscreen effulgence, and then he

He uncasts, alarmed. He pronounces another quiet word. He wills the Effect to have no Effect un-weaves.

And that is all. He has unwoven.

Serafíne

Paradox!

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

Serafíne

Soak!

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

Serafíne

WTF!

See - Sera surfaces and it is a kind of surfacing, the way she goes all upright.  There were Things and Things were hers and she could feel the way they were spinning out from her, delicious, these tendril arms pulling the moment in which she wants to live back into immediacy once it has past.  One it has passed.  There is a river and the only reason the river goes one way is that it has forgotten that it can go the other direction. 

So she licks the salt from her lips and feels the stricture, the constriction, from the strychnine in the LSD rigid in her muscles, feels her consciousness and the way it is less-than-conscious and

WTF!

Sera does not know the names of any of the Seraphim.  She does not know a Name or a Word of power; she has never used a wand.  Her body is the magic and her mind and all its progeny, her blood and her heartbeat and her lungs like wings, see, bellows expanding and

that thing is severed and sits up quite nearly straight and now it is Metropolis and the film is farther along than anyone might imagine as the minutes whip back around all in a breathless rush that leaves her panting and bright and raw and she can feel the backlash, the snapback, the blow of it even as her body absorbs it.

She makes this noise. 

Those woods seem infinitely more darksome now, don't they?  She liked it better when things were bright, so

- let there be light.

[Time 3: DANCING GIRLS HELLO I MISS YOU.]

Serafíne

Time 3.  (Vulgar w/out witnesses because the other patrons are passed out.  -1 (resonance)   -1 (liminal). )

Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (3, 8, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Gaheris

[No, stop!]

Dice: 2 d10 TN8 (2, 10) ( success x 1 )

Gaheris

He sets his popcorn down. He wills, wills, again that she should stop, but this time the Effect just loses some of its edge. Perhaps some of its edge. The dark-haired Hermetic sets his popcorn down. (Did he not already do that? Is he now effected, too - he himself? No; but he can taste it in the back of his throat, and) He turns around in his chair, bracing himself against the stained knappy faux-velvet red of the chair, and he says, "Sera!"

There are other patrons, but Adam does not care about them. They are sleepers, after all - and oh, this isn't quite true. Doesn't Adam care about sleepers? He cares very much about them; but he is staring upwards at Serafíne, who is Working, and after a flat moment with the music tinny around around

He stands up, the seat flips up, hits the back of the chair as he (leaving behind butter-stains) walks up the rows to visit her more closely and acquaint her with

Stop!

Gaheris

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (4) ( fail )

Serafíne

There are Sleepers and they are sleeping.  Not just Sleeping but well and truly sleeping, down there in the first few rows, bathed in the colloidal silver light of the images flashing across the screen and Adam shouts her name or maybe just says it or maybe he says it again; no, no, he is not caught in the loop of her work but perhaps their dreams are, the strangers down below.  The same sign and the same sigil and the same crossroads; the same branch and the same tree and the same wings of the same bird flashing dark against the sky and -

Sera hears her name; and she hears her name; and maybe she hears her name; or does she hear her name? 

She feels the way the blades move, over the meat of her heart.

And Sera laughs, aloud, because it is the most joyful part of the dance where the girl with the tight black curls and the bruised dark eyes pirouettes and plies in nothing but her bloomers and looks precisely at the camera as if it were an eye and smiles winsome and lovely and she's out there too; a speck of dust, a diamond compressed to nothing and then scattered all to sea, somewhere and it makes her feel quick, it quickens inside her and

what is that noise?  Has she remembered it from tomorrow? 

It's the retort, see, of the seat against its spine.   Sera stands up; not steadily, because you should see the drugs she consumed tonight.  Because you should see her shoes.

Dice: 1 d10 TN5 (9) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Gaheris

Sera laughs, aloud, because this is the most joyful part. Adam shakes his head as he climbs the stairs, the soles of his shoes sticking, gummy, gunky to the less-than-clean carpeting, and the dim hazard lights which scape up the stairs to help people move in the gleam must be his guide. He shakes his head without raking his fingers through his hair, and she is laughing: of course she is. Standing, too, and he reads unsteadiness in her, the way she wavers where she stands, the way there's a lick of straightness to her spine now. And isn't she beautiful?

The top row. He is at the top row now, and he looks back at the wide screen which is replaying a moment again (it is always replaying that moment [isn't it?]). He stands there for a moment, just stands there at the top of the stairs, looking downward and out. Beneath, the Sleepers are asleep: somebody coughs, somebody else shifts. There is such a quality of silence hushed around the film and the music playing for the dancing girls and Serafíne laughing and Adam going Sera.

There at the top of the theatre room he is a tall, gangling gawk of a man, hunched just a little as if he is often bent over a book or a desk, which he is. But there is a certain absorbant quality to his eyes; isn't there? As he watches, his envious lashes cutting against the theatre's gloom. The gloom makes everybody inside the theatre into nothing but suggestion. The moment passes, and he takes a deep breath, turning again to the Cultist.

Sidling, awkwardly, without grace, down the row towards her. "Serafíne; snap snap, come on, stop it. I don't wish to have dejavu."

Seattle Alexander

Alexander Brandt

Vibe is a newly opened club, the reincarnated form of an independent cinema that lost its battle with the major chains. The main stage is where the screen used to be, surrounded by a wide dance floor. Wide tiers, where the seats used to be, give open areas for groups to socialise, flirt, and basically do what people do when there's alcohol, loud music, and poor lighting. A single barman works the long bar, serving the relatively small crowd, here to try somewhere new. An unknown local band is on the stage, doing their best to keep the attention of the audience. At least nobody is throwing anything at them. Yet.

An upper balcony has an area with tables, out of direct line of the speakers so it's a little quieter. A smaller bar saves the patrons having to head down to refill their drinks. It's on the balcony that we find Alexander tonight, leaning on the railing.. A woman is just leaving his side, with a shrug – apparently heading off to find another fish in this very small sea. Alexander has a bottle of beer in his hand, which he takes an occasional drink from. Tonight he's in black boots, black combats, with a leather jacket worn open over a red t-shirt.

Alexander Brandt

[[Build a location and they will come! ]]

Serafíne

(Precisely! :) I hope I'm not interrupting. I haven't long tonight but you know. )

Leonhard Frick

The music fails to impress at least one set of ears, though it comes as no surprise to anybody else. One look at the greying sneer that has taken the form of a man - and in an aggressively crisp suit no less - and nobody should expect him to enjoy much of anything. At least, since he looks to be in his sixties, not since Reagan was president. In fact, he looks like he might have voted for the man... but for the fact he also looks like he could also have been one to have put a bullet in him...Beside him, pinching his nose in restrained patience

Swiss accent. Ugly tone. "Fucking pitiful. This is why we come here?"

"No, Gustav," the younger man insists successfully, gesturing broadly towards a Staff Only sign behind which presumeably lies Only Staff. His is a less-discernible accent and the softer of the two voices. "That was why I came here. You just invited yourself, and not to much in the way of help in there."

"Oh, yes, you're moving into music management and you think you know how to deal wit--"

"I am not moving into management, you Swiss tit. I'm trying to.. oh, you know what? Just fuck off, will you?"

The elder, Swiss man glowers at the younger man, all denim and moleskin and... finally... the younger, softer man's are the winning set of eyes in the brief match of Wills. The elder man leaves without further comment but for a sucking of his teeth and the younger... sighing... takes to the railing of the balcony to watch him leave. There is some guy also at the railing, to whom he throws a wince of apology after his departing associate's presence.

Down he goes, the intimidating Gustav, through the people down below, and off he goes, out he goes... Thank Providence, he's left the building, and Leonhard considers getting a drink.

Alexander Brandt

[[I'm game. It may lead to additional Drama when she scrapes him up when he's Awakening's finished. ;) He's still all nicely clueless about the whole Mage thing here. ]]

Leonhard Frick

[[Oh, I think a bit of Serafine should fit in very nicely...]]

Leonhard Frick

[[Sorry. Should have had: Beside him, pinching his nose in restrained patience, Leonhard, glancing about the place as if seeing something less unpleasant might make the other man... somehow... vanish.]]

Serafíne

(Sera will pop in shortly. Don't wait for me to post though, vesta! I know exactly how she's coming in and it probably won't change y'alls interaction for a wee bit..)

Alexander Brandt

The band? They're already, he guesses. Nothing really to write home about, but probably about all they could get to fill the slot. Hopefully they're just the warm-up act and not the main attraction. Alexander glances back at the argument – maybe to see if it's someone he knows, maybe to see if it's likely to turn violent. The answer to both apparently being “no”, he goes back to watching the half-filled dance floor.

He feels Leonhard park himself at the balcony next to him, tension radiating away into the warm air of the club. He looks up and catches the wince, then looks down again to watch the larger man stalk away below them.

“Sounded like that went well.”

Leonhard Frick

Caught by the comment, Leonhard pauses in his thoughts of a drink. Stalls, in fact, in that thought, though it is only a second before a smile arranges itself healthily upon his face. He looks to Alexander, his eyebrows bobbing briefly, "He's a very sweet man is Gustav. As you must have heard for yourself. Brings out the best in me, too. Sorry."

He glances to the band that the argument had done little to mar or improve. Unimpressed but... interested... he quips to Alexander. "Don't think he made you miss much, though. Give them six months they might get enough to confidence to ditch the drummer. Could only help, I think."

He may very well be right. The drummer. The drummer. The drummer is not only keeping time, but keeping time away from the bass player's regular frustrations. It's not so much a missed beat, because there is not one, but the Drummer's Sin - not loving the bass player enough.

Serafíne

(Perception and Awareness)

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 4 )

Serafíne

That unknown local band gets a kick in the ovaries and that kick comes from the hallway leading down past the stage, toward the dimly lit restrooms, the antique payphone, the long-out-of-service cigarette vending machine salvaged from some former incarnation of Vibe, and to the back door leading into the alley that backs up against the building.

See? Laughter and a small and slightly raucous group and perhaps Leonhard can feel the rather distinctive way Sera bends the universe - liminal, enthralling, visceral - and there she is, at the center of a small knot of fellow hipsters as if she were at the center of some goddamned universe, and maybe she is. That's the way the group sliding in the back opens up. Like they're unfolding around her.

Sera is rather skinny and not particularly tall. Her actual body does not take up much space, but she makes up for that with everything else. Heavy black boots with platforms and heels sufficient to take her from 5'5" to 5'9", wrapped in buckles and straps and strops. Thigh-high fishnets, slightly rent, held up by lacy black garters visible beneath the rather short hemline of a rather sweet pink dress. The print: bumblebees.

Inside Sera is stripping off her leather jacket and pushing it a bit drunkenly into one of her companion's arms. That guy - whom Leonhard may recognized as Dan-he's-cool from the dinner party at the chantry - is a near about 6'2", tall and lanky, dressed in skinny jeans and a tucked-in-button-down flannel. His arms are covered in tattoos and he's wearing a bowtie at the neck that he actually tied himself and he is only half-heartedly trying to hold Sera back as she insists on climbing onstage and taking over from the slightly forgettable singer of the slightly forgettable local band on an otherwise slightly forgettable night at Vibe.

She mutters something in the bass player's ear while cajoling the guitar out've the hands of the guitarist, and within about thirty seconds they've launched into a rather chaotic version of the Violent Femmes' Kiss Off.

It's a simple song. Sera mostly remembers the chords and the first thirty seconds or so are just her voice and a handful of rough chords. Then the bass comes in.

Unlike that drummer, Sera loves the fucking bassist.

--

Just one song, then she's done. Oh and Leonhard, she can feel you there at the bar. For at least twenty-five percent of the song, she's looking right at you.

The song ends. The girl jumps down from the little stage like she's not wearing 4+" heels and circles to her consor to steal the drink he has already procured, then starts toward the bar.

So yeah. That happens.

Alexander Brandt

Alexander smiles wryly at the comment about Gustav's personality. “I can see that in him. All sweet talk and charm by the sounds of things.” There's another swig of the beer . “As you say, it's not like I missed the highlight of their performance. Or maybe I did, it's hard to tell.”

Leonhard passes comment on the drummer. Maybe it's accurate, and a replacement will turn the act around. It's not really his area of expertise, though, music management. “I'll have to take your work for that. Maybe if this place is still running in six months we'll see how they're getting on.” Ever the optimist.

The accent of the other man catches his attention for a moment, just as Sera and her entourage arrive below. Alexander looks down and watches the unplanned act change, half a smile on his face as the displaced singer says something inaudible to the rest of the band before flouncing back the way the new arrivals had come from. “Which may not be that likely.”

But, then, the music gets going. And, this time, the people actually pay attention. The performance may not be flawless, but at least there's some presence this time. Maybe it's her way of enthralling people without them realising. It's certainly worked on Alexander, although he does check a few times to see if it's him or Leonhard that she's watching.

When the song finishes, the atmosphere in the club is a lot livelier. As the woman miraculously avoids breaking her ankles getting off the stage, Alexander asks, “Someone you know?”

Leonhard Frick

"You're probably right, yes. If. Hope so, since they do at least have a fair turn of... oh. Oh?"

He mutters what might be a name under his very pleased breath as the commotion begins. Serafine. Come to carve a notch in the night, come to share it with the Common World. Perhaps the word 'bravery' is in his mind as he salutes her. Yes, salutes, pressing himself for a moment quite dangerously against gravity, his upper body out over those below. It is an overblown salute. One of grand gesture atop his smile of white teeth. And one repeated to Dan. (Now, that's a consor... even if perhaps not much of a grog. But he lets Gustav prowl out of his thoughts far more quickly than out of the club...)

"Oh, you're in for it now," he had said aloud. Quite aloud. Quite freely. For Alexander's ears but loud enough that it joined in and complimented the bustled reaction to the Ecstatic's invasion.

Perhaps he's in his thirties. No, he's clearly in his thirties. And he's clearly dress more for the louche and semi-suave of the art gallery, the theatre, even the book signing... but that smile's right at home, catching the moment with aplomb. In catching the moment, he realises something about Time. Time. Time at the bar, gentlemen, please...

"Not well enough, my friend. Not well enough. She's Sera." He could have said Serafine, he could have answered Alexander with that. But, no. Something about simply heralding her as Sera, as if she were every bit the open beacon in the wider world that the stage had just enjoyed for a moment... Something about it just demands: Simply Sera. You've seen her, what more can I say? (There is more respect than familiarity, however, in how he says his reply to Alexander's query.)

Bravery. And while it was Kiss Off and not the far more coaxing strains of, perhaps, some operetta or (looking at him) a folk-rock open-mic night... it is a moment that glimpses back at him and whispers: Pymander. (Well, at least a corner of that Ideal City, that Perfect State...) And if she is so brave as to do that, to share that, should he not follow suit, Pymander? Quite out of nowhere, he states to Alexander: "Owe you a refill, I think. Least I can do."Yes, time and timing. He's off to the bar to be there before Dan need order. Only fair. He has spied the bottle that Alexander had been drinking, and mentioned the name as he moves. If Alexander would prefer not to follow him - and who would blame him, Leonhard having become a little... familiar? No, relaxed - then it's clearly not Leonhard that would point any finger of blame as he moves to the bar before the gaggle of invaders can beat him (and perhaps the man in the combats and red) there.

Serafíne

Up. She was looking up at Leonhard. We forgot about the balcony and quite possibly Sera did too. Height is only a suggestion, after all. Space is an illusion. Time is not a river that flows both ways but a warm and swimming ocean. Everywhere is everything, or what the fuck ever. Sera is not so much into the philosophy of all this shit.

She just likes the palindromes.

And the rest of everything.

All of it. Every last piece.

Leonhard's at the bar with that overworked bartender before Dan makes it. The rest of that entourage - which includes her housemates, approximately one-eighth of her friend Dee's roller derby team, this guy named Frank Dan met at a gallery opening three weeks and two days ago, and so on - has sort of spread out into the space, creating knots of their own. They don't really belong to her, so much as they were briefly appended to her. Carried here from elsewhere.

"Hello," Sera is sidling up to Leonhard at the bar and almost-but-not-quite slipping her arm into his, this strange echo of a remarkably courtly gesture. She's all vivid and beaming at him, like she just decided to create him out of whole cloth right them minute and lo! here he is and she smells like cigarettes and spice and there's a bit of the skunky odor of marijuana in her hair and she's looking at Leonhard and then past him, see. "Liechtenstein!" Like that's his name, because most human beings, Sera just likes saying the word.

"Who's your friend. You gonna introduce me?

"Is he from Liechtenstein! too?"

Oh god she likes saying that word.

Or maybe she's just a bit stoned.

Leonhard Frick

[[I'm guessing Art Gallery Frank is somebody you've made up for the scene. If not, please let me know so I can definitely avoid stepping on any of your toes since I'm going to have it that he/Leonhard recognise each other from Leonhard's artsy Contacts background if okay with you.]]

Serafíne

oh no, that is totally cool. i think that leonhard and sera should have some acquaintances like that in common, too. (grins) sera has arts influence 2, I think. specialty: hipsters. :)

Alexander Brandt

Between the change in mood and the enthusiasm that has illuminated Leonhard, Alexander's mood is lightening too. He'd only come out here because he'd seen the flyer for the place somewhere, and assumed it was an established club. Appearances can be deceiving, apparently. But with Sera off the stage, the band (sans singer) starts up again. Maybe the manager of the club has gone to try to stroke the man's ego and get him back out on stage. Maybe it turns into an open-mike night, if he fails to return. The night is young, and full of possibilities.

Alexander has a name for the woman: Sera. With the size of the city, it's not likely he'll ever run into her again. Or the man-without-a-name, for that matter. But, as they say, the night is young. Had he remained alone, he may well have finished his drink and headed off elsewhere. Maybe for food. Maybe for home. Maybe for the pleasure of rising through the city at night. But the prospect of getting to know somebody local, to actually start building up a social life away from the people he works with, does actually appeal. You can only sit staring into your coffee, feeling lonely, for so long.

And so he follows Leonhard to the bar, and gratefully accepts the fresh bottle. The various odours emanating from Sera get a raise eyebrow, but Alexander isn't squeaky new at what he does. Black and white have blended into various shades of gray. Plus, you know... night off. Remembering that they haven't even exchanged names with each other, he offers his own introduction.

“Hi, I'm Seattle. Or Alexander, whichever you prefer.” He shrugs, half-smiling, then holds out a hand, to both if they want to take it. “So I know that you're Sera now,” he says to her, “but I'm assuming you're not actually called Lichtenstein..?” to Leonhard. “Sie kommen aus Lichtenstein?” The accent is more American than German, but the language flows smoothly.

Alexander Brandt

[God, I feel so slow!]

Serafíne

[:) Take your time. We all do. (grins)]

Leonhard Frick

"That, that, that... Yeah, make it the bottles from the look of the round that's coming up. Those bottles, glasses, oh, hell, make it eight of..." He looks from the bartender to Alexander, and points to Alexander's beer. "Make it eight like those, only with much more liquid in them that his. (Leonhard, by the way.) Oh, and mine's a... you know what? I guess I'll just be helping myself."

"We can't allow patrons to pour their own drinks, dude."

"....oh-kay... What I just said, poured into glasses. That'll now be more glasses than you've probably got washed and dried and ready and thereby more work for you and nobody's going to call the police, are they? Really?" He turns to Alexander, quite jovially. "Oddly enough, I'm not ATF. You?"

"Beautiful," Leonhard enthuses without flirtation as Serafine sidles into his proximity, leaving the bartended to juggle his options and either juggle and wash a lot or pour a lot. An almost boyish thumbs-up greets Dan, but the bartender continues to seem to be juggling the merits of breaking the rules and saving himself a shit-load of trouble. A slice of a moment sees recognition also for Franklin Hyatt, though he probably prefers to be called Frank when away from that wife of his. No, can't see her, no, not complaining. Cultured but charmless that wife of yours, Frank. "Frank. Heard you sold a piece to Mears. Glad that worked out for you."But... frankly... screw Frank's dabbling in collecting... Serafine gets a notably slow nod of acknowledgement just as pronounced (among the throng now growing about the bar) as his earlier salute. Liechtenstein salutes you! (Never hurts to hear home's name...)"Oh, I... You know, I don't know your name, oh, Alexander?" He apologises to Alexander. The bustle had chimed about him as Mr Brandt had introduced himself, taking the Hermetic a moment to allow the name to sink in. (So long as nobody hits on calling me Lenny Liechtenstein, he could shudder.) "Sera. Dan. Frank. Other people. Other People! Tell this good man to save himself some work."Oh, that causes a rustle. The drinks begin to arrive. Vodka, bottle. Scotch, bottle. Rum, bottle. Glasses (mostly washed.) Eight beers like Alexander was enjoying. Card to the barman through the throng as German is heard... "Ja." Oh, such a smile. Such a time since he'd heard German. The wind of the Alps in his ears in German. "Und sie? Auf Deutschland? Austrich?" (It's been a while, the poor man - and the bar's throng hardly conducive to plucking at Alexander's accent - but at least he's smiling as he asks.)

Serafíne

For her part, Sera takes Alexander's hand, right to right. She's wearing a leather cuff bracelet bristling with spikes and a small ring, beaten gold, with a plaque etched by what seem like hieroglyphs. Has a tattoo, too - mostly script - framing the edge of her right palm, and another tattoo of a laughing skull with a full rack of bare ribs on her upper arm. The yoke of her dress is sliding down her left shoulder to reveal a black bra strap, and she reaches up to nudge it back into place with her left hand. Oh, the suggestion of another tattoo, this once scrawled over her index and middle fingers, left palm, and inner left wrist, but glimpsed so briefly that it is hard to take its measure.

Really she sort of ducks in and around Leonhard or something while Leonhard's giving that thumbs up to Dan or greeting Frank (without that wife of his) and all the rest, and she would be ordering her own drink(s) except Leonhard's buying and no one really knows it but she's loaded but she still does not turn down free drinks. So, she moves like a planet and has gravity like one of those damned gas giants and rings like one too, the party she brought with her, and she's telling Leonhard sort of mid-all-of-those-greetings that he needs to meet Dee but Dee seems to have disappeared. Dan slides briefly in behind Sera, hands on her shoulders, flashing Alexander a wry grin over Sera's head as he reaches out her for a glass of Scotch, which he lifts in tribute to Leonhard, then confirms that she was headed off, the derby girls wanted to hit Sweet Nothings, the ice cream store, before it closed.

Dan lets Sera go and backs away. Sera claims the bottle of rum. For herself.

She doesn't need a fucking glass.

"So you just met?" to Alex and Leonhard, somehow both. Turning the bottle 'round to read the brand on hte label, then lifting the whole fucking thing to her mouth for a swig. "And you both speak fucking German? That's so random. And cool.

"I know what Liechtenstein does. What about you, Seattle? What the fuck do you do?"

Alexander Brandt

[[Gah, sorry - Jove froze up]]

Alexander Brandt

[[taptaptap]]

Alexander Brandt

Alexander just can't figure out where all the energy in Leonhard has come from. One moment he's happily commiserating the quality of the night's entertainment, the next he's almost bouncing off the walls with enthusiasm. Either than man has taken a little something earlier in the evening which is just starting to kick in, or it's all down to Sera.

The chaos with the drinks drowns out his protests of “not that many, I need to get home..”, and he resigns himself to either nursing one or two more and trying to dodge the attention, hoping someone else takes some, or getting a taxi home. At least the bike will be safe, still parked at the station nearby. “Nope, not ATF!” he replies, in the moments that Leonhard's attention passes over him.

The names of the others are lost – too many in quick succession, too little to anchor them to in memory. The faces will look familiar though. Oh, yes – we met at that club! Sorry, can't for the life of me remember your name... There's various dodges as bottles and glasses get passed around the various people clustered around Sera and Leonhard – he's assuming the drinks are all going to be people they're supposed to.

Grabbing some of the beer bottles, as they move away from the bar, he replied to Leonhard's question in German. [[”No, Seattle. My mother is German, though. She didn't want to give up the language, so she taught me. I've never set foot outside the US.”]]

“Yeah, we met just before you made you ran that singer out of the place.” He smiles, a little, shrugs, a little. “It's just a small world sometimes, I guess. Strange little coincidences cropping up all over the place.” Sera asks what he does. There's a pause for a moment, before he answers. “I work around the city. In security.”

Alexander Brandt

[[Sorry, slight technical difficulties. We now return you to your regular programming]]

Leonhard Frick

[[Really, no apology needed my end. Glad Jove's stopped playing silly buggers with you!]]

Serafíne

(Agree, no apology needed here, though I actually have to crawl off to bed since I have to be up quite early for work. :) )

Serafíne

So Sera will be bowing out next post!

Leonhard Frick

[[Sorry! Having a touch of trouble with Jove myself. With a C&P. Going to double-post, I think. Won't be a tick, appreciate you need sleep!]]

Leonhard Frick

"Just got a new client up at mine, in for two weeks. Playwright from out of state. Makes for some nice pocket money." Idle if friendly, a smatter of chatter with Hyatt the Hoarder, and the word Security seems not to have wafted so far as Leonhard's ears. Security/combats/strong jaw, no none of that went in. Ex of uniform? Police, not ATF, perhaps. Seattle. Changed cities. Changes. Resurfaced only recently himself... but, noooo, he heard nothing....Certainly, talk of Mears' hunt for fresh pieces to invest in goes well... until... talk of the wife. The wife. She's recommended Pasaran. Oh, right. To some dentist or other. Oh, right. With a series of children's books to write. No publishing deal, you say? (No surprise there: you have the eye, Frank, not your wife. But this is unsaid.)That Dan. Not dull or dulled. Thankyou, Dan. Dan asks something of Frank. Frank's conversation is perked and lured away. (Gustav would handle that differently, letting the magus detach from Frank. Gustav whose eyes would let Frank know he could strangle The Wife and Him just for a moment's peace from artsy-fartsy shop-talk!)

Leonhard, saved, is not saved from the bill. He presses at buttons, eager to get himself a... oh, she's got the rum. Finishing pressing the buttons, taking the card back, ensuring Alexander has a beer in the easiest of reaching distance, he passes the bartender a note. One of those notes written in president's faces and numbers. Pay with card, tip with cash. Owner vs Worker, the great divide bridged off the books.A glass finds itself empty near the bottle of rum. A magus of the Order of Hermes, after a drink out of a bottle already drunk from?! Germs? Progenitor horse-doings more like. Well, that and it would seem to mirror how he'd already sipped from the Marcusio '76... "A large one if you please, milady." Faux-mannered, more amused by Sera's lack of glass than the initial emptiness of his own.

Leonhard Frick

"He just met Gustav, did Alexander," Leonhard says of who has and hasn't met whom, then for a moment effects a rather capable facial impersonation of the old Swiss bastard, continuing it, expanding on it, he even does the voice: "I guess you will, too, though fuck alone knows if you'll remember it with your party-girl hangover. And those shoes. Ridiculous."It might well actually BE Gustav for a moment, giving some presage of the inevitable appearance of the man himself in a most unwelcome inevitable orbit about Sera's life. But it's an impersonation as quickly dropped into the gutter of the conversation, quick fun and light jest as it was. Besides, Alexander's seen the man in action himself. Best avoided, would seem to be the point, Leonhard knowing that Ecstatics have that ...way... of senses despite whatever fog appears to the Unenlightened to hover about them.

The eight bottles of beer, and fewer homes to go to than initially expected. No doubt they'll find homes soon enough, even if they wind up with strangers. Well, complete strangers, to be more accurate of those outside the conversation/s around Alexander's presence.

Leonhard Frick

Pymander's little glimpse-and-glimpsed seems to have blinked and gone. Leonhard nooks his head to the side for a moment. His eyes, very much there, but elsewhere, too. It is not a chemical absence, no, nothing ine pupils to say so, nothing in the skin-tone. A wistfulness. A glimpse of a shadow-corner of a Perfection not yet revealed enough, German, a drink, a Cool consor, performance, easy company, all in a second or less reflected and reflected upon in those eyes. His head reverts. Ah, yes, still an energy, an enthusiasm.

Leonhard Frick

Even the stage seems to be filled, as if charged by its brief hosting of Sera's lightning. A new band steps up, Leonhard flitting an eye over them, then back to the others. Alexander. Sera. Himself. (And to think, there are those who would scoff at enjoying the Praxes of non-Hermetics, and those who would rather shear their own skin off than really find anything of merit in talking with a Commoner... And then there are the Jerbiton...)

Leonhard Frick

"[[Haven't set foot out of it myself for ten years, so thankyou. Your mother... Well, she did me a favour.]] Sorry, Sera. Just saying how good it is to hear German away from the VCR for a change. Quite the flash-set, Sera, by the way. You'll have to teach me some of your secrets, some of that magic of yours," he converses, warmly, hopefully

Leonhard Frick

[[YEESH! I apologise for the multi-post. Had some very odd trouble with Jove there.]]

Alexander Brandt

[[Not a problem! Just happy that Jove's not picking on me in particular]]

Serafíne

"That always happens," Sera says of the strange little coicindences, with this quiet, spreading smile that is close-mouthed and full-of-secrets. There's a tattoo scrawled down her flank and ribs, see, hidden beneath that rather sweet little pink dress. It says: Serendipity.

"Security, huh?" Sera says, and she doesn't suspect that he's hedging around there, she just looks vaguely interested the way one does talking to a stranger about his or her job. And no one asked her but Sera answers the follow-up question anyway, "I don't have a fucking job," with a grin and a rather prodigious swig from her bottle-of-rum. "my housemate works in a bakery though, in Cap Hill They make ninjabread, sometimes. Bet that would be a hit at your next - "

A grin; this goading little flash of a smile.

" - whatever the fuck you guys do together. Security guys."

Then she's lifting the bottle in a happy little toast and lifting hte bottle to fill Leonhard's glass and watching the liquid just gleam in the shifting lighting of the bar. It's not crowded but there's a warmth, a coronal glow, a liveliness all around which makes her feel so bright and warm.

They exchange a bit more in German; Sera knows the sound of the language, just not the language proper. She does not seem at all put off by the exchange, and waves away Leonhard's apology with a thoughtlessly drunken little waggle of her golden head.

Then he tells her that she'll have to teach him some of her magic; and see? She favors him with another glance, all sidelong and profile-view, and for all that she appears to have less shame than anyone else in the contiguous US there is still something almost charmingly abashed about the look she gives Leonhard.

The no longer abashed. Just warm. Without a second thought Sera lifts herself to her tiptoes, even in those shoes, and gives Leonhard a remarkably chaste kiss on the apex of his cheek.

"I'm happy to share," she tells him; but oh then: the tall guy with the tattooes is behind her, hands on her shoulders, squeezing lightly and she's tipping her head back to him and they exchange a handful of words. Sera is full of apologies, but she has to go. They're celebrating Honey Bunches of Chokes' birthday and the entirety of Sera's housemate's rugby team has already moved on to whiskey brickle ice cream.

Sera peaces out with a quick flash of a peace sign with her left hand. the briefest impression of the odd tattoo on that palm, disappearing a moment later as Dan helps her on with her leather jacket. Sera hands the bottle of rum over to Leonhard to hold for her while she dresses, then just seems to forget it as she takes her leave, and wanders out the door - the front door this time - with th erest of her little tribe.

Serafíne

No problem at all. I wonder if there was a chrome update that you guys got that messed up Jove for you. anyway! that is my last post. III am heading to bed. nini! thank you for the scene!

ash wednesday

Fr. Echeverría

Today is as good a day for the Cultist to come by the Church of the Good Shepherd. The congregation is in mourning and they've burned last year's palm and their Father did press the ashes of it onto the foreheads of all of the flock at services today.

Theirs is a religion not so oppressive as the Roman Catholicism from which they descended and yet they have not cast off their rituals.

Time between the afternoon Mass and the evening. The daycare has not yet dismissed its students for the day and the children are running around with ashes on their forehead because the March afternoon is warm.

Claudia and Father Francisco stand by the fence. She wears slacks and a modest sweater and he wears all black his shirt-sleeves short and his collar on. The aides are watching the children and Rosa is inside finishing up her work for the day so she can attend the evening Mass. Both adults are smoking cigarettes and looking weary but content in their weariness.

Serafíne

He knows she's close; he can feel her in the air. Taste the skim of her resonance; the oh-so-familiar threads of it, and then the newer, stranger note that he will nevertheless know and remember, too. This time it's a fucking yellow cab, of all things, pulling up to the curb in front of the spare church, where forty days of mourning and preparation, forty days of deprivation, forty days of fasting and prayer and privation will prepare them for spring; for what comes: birth and rebirth.

Maybe there was a Mardi Gras dinner at the church. Pancakes and sweetbreads and beads and everyone with their top on. Games for the children; some laughing celebration that honored Fat Tuesday before the Lenten season started. Everyone at the Church of the Good Shepherd probably kept their clothes on.

So now, Ash Wednesday, afternoon sliding into evening; warm bright sun and weather advisories, the constantly changing life of the high plains. A yellow cab by the sidewalk, one tanned Cultist of Ecstasy slipping out of the back door, her laughter breaking through the bright afternoon like a wave, loose and lovely and a bit surreal. She bends over to talk to the cabbie, loops an arm over the frame of the taxi, probably to pay and even from a distance the priest can tell that she's drunk. Still drunk or drunk-and-hungover or something and something.

Then she ducks in the back and slips back out with an armful of something dark and rather heavy. Cradles it against her body as she struggles to close the back door of the cab with a movement of her hip, while simultaneously trying to wave to Pan all happily even with both arms engaged.

It is a sight.

She is not wearing her Carnival outfit. Not the one with the feathers.

Still, that push-up bra she wears sometimes covered in tight little pink silk rosebuds, beneath a sherpa-lined black leather jacket, a leather skirt fringed with chainmail that does not really cover her ass, the remainder of last night's/this morning's body glitter, the odd stray rhinestone and a golden fucking tan.

Fr. Echeverría

"Me disculparán, ¿cierto?"

This from Pan to Claudia upon the taxi's arrival and the occupant's exit. He feels no shame before her or for her but she knows as well as does anyone else that the women of this church do not approve of her presence nor do they approve of her dress. It's likely he had to explain what she was doing at the hospital in the days after his ascent from coma and none of his explanations were sufficient.

He cannot claim she is nothing to him and yet he cannot explain to them in what ways she is dear to him without them thinking their shepherd has strayed. If he is not a pillar of virtuousness for them to build up their faith then they do not know what to make of him.

Rosa knows. But for having the knowledge she does Rosa does not approve either.

He excuses himself and Claudia nods and puts out her cigarette. Pockets the butt and goes back down the path to see to the children. The priest comes out from behind the fence and holds out an arm.

"Ay, eso debe de pesado," he says. "Dámela."

They're going into the rectory. It's quieter there.

Serafíne

Sera has instincts and her instinct is to flash Claudia a little grin, which she does, which may not be returned, and give up the rather large Moqueca pot to Pan when he comes up beside her, which she does, and to lean into the warmth and immediacy of his presence, which she does, and to lift her chin and kiss him on the cheek. That she foregoes, the kiss on the cheek, in favor of a glance past the priest, down the line of the fence, where the boldest of the playing children have stopped perhaps to stare at her. Maybe they can feel her; the inherent potential of her magic and her avatar, her resonance, just as they feel Pan's. Children are after all closer to God or god, closer to wonder, aren't they? So Sera wiggles fingers rather happily, winking at the kids before they are hurried away, as Pan takes the pot and the pair of them cross the street to the rectory.

She's swaying a bit as she walks, the world slews around her, the combination of sleep deprivation and debauchery and a long night's flight half-way across the world. That sense of dislocation that comes from air travel, all of it.

"You ever had moqueca?" Sera is asking him, somewhere along the way. She doesn't remember where but once they get inside; once he has the chance to put the heavy pot down on the kitchen table or some fucking place she is going to slip in and give him a sliding hug. Hold on to him for a minute or more if he allows it, just breathing him in.

So now she remembers and now she is disentangling herself and it is the kitchen, she remembers the kitchen. She lets him go and leans back against the counter while he probably starts to make them some tea.

"There's a recipe inside. It's in Portugese but I figure you can probably puzzle it out. I mean, when I got fucked up enough they could almost understand me."

It's Sid, isn't it?

Serafíne

Days and weeks and months; even close to a pair of seasons, all have passed since the last time Sera showed up in the weedy parking lot of a certain nameless motel somewhere on the ringed outskirts of Denver. Beyond the first blush of the city's growth, near some crossroads that has become - not obsolete, but different - since the structure was first built. Sometime in the 1950s, maybe. Back when a cross-county trip meant 55 MPH on two lane roads dotted with diners and truck-stops and two-story motels with concrete pools sunk into the tarmac, surrounded by chainlink fences. The remnants of the chainlink fence are still there but the pool has been infilled and now the place is filled not with tourists and truckers, but mostly with families of low-wage workers either too transient or too poor to invest in an actual goddamned lease.

Those folks and Jim.

The sun's out and in March the weather swings wildly and today there is a certain biting chill in the air, but still the neighbor's kids are out in the parking lot, kicking a soccer ball back and forth as a certain tattooed man turns a certain non-descript Econoline van into a certain parking spot near the door to a certain room. Which still tastes like Jim: his stoic and addled and psychedelic resonance is soaked into the bones of the place. The drywall and the lathe, the metal girders and concrete footers, the threadbare carpet and the grout and tile. Sera slides out of the passenger's door of the van and for a long moment, she just stands there. Looking around the parking lot, watching the slant of light across the blacktop, the way the children's lengthening shadows tangle as they play.

--

If he is awake and his senses are open, he has to know who's there. There's no mistaking her resonance, that tangle of base instinct and fascination. There is also a new note: some sense of doors; of passageways; of thresholds: between, see? Liminal.

She's here.

It's been a while.

She's here and she can feel him right? And she can taste the remnants of whatever dream she had this night last in the back of her throat. Tangled up with sleep and her own memories and a certain subdural something she refuses to consider or name.

She lights a cigarette, Sera. The paper is deep blue, the tobacco spiked with cloves. The smoke sweet and crackling and a little bit noxious. She doesn't inhale as deeply as she would a joint. Holds the smoke in her mouth more than her lungs and mostly lets it go, though sometimes she breathes it all the way in, then exhales through her nostrils. Like a dragon.

She's out there for five minutes or so. Eight maybe. Just standing in the parking lot smoking and watching the smoke curl and drift in the afternoon light.

Not long after she arrives, though, there's a knock at his door.

Jim

It would be hard to call Jim a dreamer or pin him down as a pessimist or optimist. An idealist? Surely. But he's the type to be mindful and contemplative when awake. The last time she had seen him it had been in the depths of stupor. That hasn't set in an he's not so sure it will.

But laid out on that bed in the silence of his hermitage, unsure if he's awake or asleep, his mind wanders. It remembers things. People. Places. It journeys your time and when he senses the aura that accompanies Serafine's presence it takes a few minutes to realize it's not imagined. Not one of many memories he's drifting through and considering in a how-did-I-get-here sort of haze.

The needles didn't break off in his arm. That's a good sign. As he staggers toward the present it's the pain of the rubber tube still tying off his arm that serves as lighthouse toward temporal shores. By the time he's sat up and pulled it free he hears the knocking. Pulls down the long sleeves of that chunky bird's eye sweater and squints to see if the door is even locked.

Of course it is.

Stand.

He wills it and though his body protests as much as his will does to fuel it he finds his footing and makes his way. Hand on the door handle and he pulls it open.

Jim doesn't look like he wants to stay inside. He looks like he's going to come through that door and maybe take up space on the lawn furniture pulled up in front of his room. But he doesn't. He doesn't look up at Serafine to greet her, but he does look sideways at the children through the man-sized crack he'd created in the doorway.

Jim decides not to subject them to his appearance. Infectious human waste is how he looks and he looks at the van next where Dan is waiting.

“He knows he can come inside, right?”

Jim's eyes look raw from saline and the bags under them are hobo sized. Otherwise his face looks despondent.

"Long time no see, sweet cheeks," turning around before she can answer his question.

"Fuck. Deja vu. Was all that a dream?" A dry chuckle and an honest-to-God smile.

Serafíne

"'Course he does," Sera assures him. Half visible through the slice of light between the door and the frame, or not precisely visible at all, as he glances past her to find the tracer trails of the kids bouncing hte soccer ball back and forth. Her voice is low; there's a sort of living affection stitched into the words themselves and she throws a glance back over her shoulder at the van and the consor who has nursed her through a helluva lot. Catches sight of him as she catches the edge of the door to the motel room and pulls it open wide enough to slip inside behind him. "He's just circumspect. Plus he probably wants to play some fucking football."

Sera pulls the door closed and there goes that slice of daylight. Jim's already turned around and looks like hell but she's behind him, and she doesn't seem to care how he looks or what he smells like or any of it, because she wraps her arms around him from behind and presses her face against his shoulder blade and inhales it all. The sour ache and the stale salt and everything in and around and beneath it.

Smiles and he can feel that when she hears the honest-to-God smile in his voice.

"Fuck if I know," she returns, smoke in her hair and in her voice. The bridge of her nose braced against the collar of his sweater. "All I know is the fucking finale scared me and you look like hell and I have missed the fuck out of you. All what?"

Then she lets him go at last; lifts her eyes from some nebulous, out of focus view of his cheated profile to take in the state of the room.

Jim

The room looks clean. The sheets are a rumple with a slight swirl of a fit where he fell upon them, but he hadn't crawled under the comforter and the pillows are sitting in neat little stacks where two people can rest their heads. There's no ash tray. There aren't any empty bottles. There are two stacks of books, and judging by the spines they're Read and Unread. The ones in the latter are weathered with stains and rumples from rain but otherwise well taken care of.

Then there's the tube on the floor at the foot of the bed. There're the syringes and the works open and that's where he's aiming to walk as soon as he notices them. Zipping the little mouth of a bag closed with the retrieved needles.

Or at least that's what he was aiming to do before she hugs him. He takes it like he's an inanimate object at first and then eases back like at least he's a tree in the wind and then lets go and truly melts into it like a pet might at getting scratched or pet.

And then she lets go and he moves on, answering as he sets about his task.

"Everything working. It's like I closed my eyes after the last time I saw you, and a wonderful dream happened, and then I woke up and the world was worse for none of it being real," chewing his lip at the end of it, like he's thinking, like he's really trying to figure out if he can make it all that.

But dreams are more easily forgotten.

"Don't worry about it. What did you see?" Suddenly curious. Looking half-over his shoulder at her, but then focusing on his hands, putting them to work finding the bottle of water he's mixed the heroin with and this time using it to refresh himself rather than help as a medium for narcotics.

Serafíne

Really, when Jim melts into the hug Sera holds him and holds him and holds him as long as she can or as long as he requires. The moment hangs; gets caught against itself, hooked in place, not precisely repeated but held and held and held and doesn't it feel like the magic of holding your breath, that suspension, except time does not fucking matter, and so no one turns blue.

The the moment changes. Jim continues his path through the room. Sera sort of half-flings herself on the edge of one of the beds, tucking a her left leg beneath her body, shrugging off her jacket. She's wearing something ridiculous beneath it, a cropped white t-shirt (THE RAINCOATS) over a crimson bra, cut-offs nevermind the weather, seamed, thigh-high fishnets (naturally a bit torn here and there) held up with garters. Heels that make her sway a bit when she walks, which she kicks off as she settles on the edge of the bed.

Taking in the needles and the tubing with a look that is remarkably thoughtful for a Sera before her gaze is back on him. Lifting to trace the motion of his shoulder joint as he reaches for the water bottle before settling on his face again.

She listens to him, Sera. Tastes his words in the back of her throat. Everything working, he says and there's a shadow or something across her eyes. The dream between the last time she saw him, and this one. There's blood in it for her, in the back of her throat. Something soft, for him, in her eyes.

Perhaps it is sorrow; maybe it is love. Maybe it is everything, all tangled up together. Isn't that the way it always is?

"I don't know - " The t-shirt is a bit oversized, the collar all stretched out, the V-neck torn. "A different ending to this visit maybe. Or a half-dozen different slices of possibilities. You, in a room with a half-dozen doors, not all of which led back here.

"The choice you had to make; in a place where it was hard to make one."

Her eyes, dark in the shadows of the motel room, drop from his countenance to the paraphanalia he is gathering up. Linger there, as she tongues the roof of her mouth.

Thinks of the tracks on a certain priest's arms.

"I didn't know you were into narcotics." Quietly. "I'm glad you came back to us."

Jim

[ Perception + Awareness ]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 5, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )

Jim

“Everyone is into narcotics. Anyone who isn't just hasn't tried them yet,” continuing down a more humorous line of dialogue because it's preferable to anything contemplative and topical and contemporaneous.

The little case gets tucked away in a slid open then shut drawer. He hooks his forefingers into the belt loops of his jeans, not so crisp as they usually are (very much lived in), and then he tugs them up around his waist as if he's tidying himself up. Tussled what there is of his hair and then...

“You're different.” Yes. Make it about her. That's easy. And he doesn't have to be ingenuous to do so. He opens himself up to feel it. To soak it up. For a moment she seems both in focus and sharp. A blur of movement and both existent here and elsewhere. His eyes open a bit wider and it's only then he actually turns around to look where she has perched herself on tufted bed corner. Finds a seat in one of the easy chairs and keeps looking at her.

For an explanation.

Serafíne

Her eyes are on him; always in that quick way that she has - the place where the skin comes alive; the place where the nails start to bleed - and there's light behind. Last afternoon sun cutting in between the curtains, illuminating these drifting motes of dust in the air, and the three-quarters halo she has of dyed blond curls in a way that only emphasizes the dark roots, the shaved fringe over her right ear.

He makes it about her. That's easy and she's watching him, see and she turns her face a bit so that her features are not entirely in shadow. The light catches the apex of her cheekbone and cuts aslant down to the delicate line of her jaw. She has a large spike and a whole colony of studs, chains, pins and the like skewered through the lobe and cartilage of her right ear. The tattoo of a small black triangle tucked just behind.

She's watching him and there's something in her expression that is a kind of assent. He can change the subject. She'll allow it, if that's what he needs. But she hasn't forgotten about him, and she never will.

"A few weeks ago, yeah. I went seeking. Apparently I also had a fucking seizure and cracked open my head which fucked up his night," a wry gesture of her head outside. Indicating, of course, Dan. " - but he survived."

"So did I. She kinda tricked me into it." This quick and supple curve of her shoulder. "My avatar, you know? I guess she thought it was time."

Jim

"If you found something on the other side she must have been right," and Jim says this with a bit of reverence. He's not talking about Serafine. He's talking about that piece of the Eternal Moment inside her. The well that nourished the bud that sat opening in front of him.

Jim's stubble and mustache look like they'd grown into a beard long ago. The colors are patchwork. Lighter and darker blonds and browns though they're symmetric to the sides of his face and it gives him the look of a young billy goat. A satyr if he were a bit more enlivened in this moment. There's not much exuberance. None at all. None of the yearning for life.

Though he'd wanted it enough to stay here. To come back to them, as she'd said, and put his suffering somewhere he could contend with it instead of running from it.

"I'm sure it did more than fuck up his night. You know how much he cares," nodding like he knows she knows, it wasn't worth saying, but he'd seen it in every interaction he'd had with Dan. When she'd been gone especially.

"I thought I was almost there," his own toss of his head, as if he's going back to her mention of a walkabout that had taken her to another echelon of understanding. A better point of view. Epiphany and enlightenment continued. "But sometimes you slip. Sometimes you get to the peak and there's just a hundred more waiting in your way," a very un-Jim way to think about it.

"Stuck."

Serafíne

Sera should have a drink or something in hand. Bottles fit naturally into the lacing of her fingers. A drink or a cigarette or a joint. But nothing, so she sits with her hands folded sort of in her lap, laced together, and gives him another strange, one-shouldered shrug, that is oddly abashed. Breathes out a laugh a moment later, murmurs a quiet, "He takes care of me," as Jim mentions Dan, without really interrupting his pattern of thought.

She's rather sober, all things considered.

It feels quietly strange, in its own sometimes lovely way.

There feels like something beneath her tongue, something stange, a stone or a secret, the sort that could lodge like a lump in the back of her throat, or be swallowed down and metamorphasize into something else. A seed. An egg. A bolder. A sun.

Her mouth is closed around that idea; her lips pressed together and she is breathing quietly through her nose but then she sort of holds her breath, still see. Drawn in on the cusp of an inhale and -

oh. Oh.

Stuck is the strangest word to hear on Jim's lips. From Jim's mouth.

"I don't think about it. You know? Or much of anything, sometimes. Maybe that's my fucking problem. I don't think of it as a climb. Or work at all.

"I just am, I guess. For better or worse, and maybe sometimes a whole lot worse." Her eyes have drifted from his, to the edge of the mirror affixed to the wall above the sink, at the far end of the room. The window and the curtains reflected there; a slice of light surrounded by vaguely moving darkness.

"Worse is okay, too, you know?" And there's a kind of tightness in her chest, then. For herself, see. For him, too. For so many nameless others. Her breath feels clipped and her throat a bit raw and the sting of tears in the back of her eyes, but they don't spill. They just linger there. "When I got out," a pause, then a rather comme-ci, comme-ca correction of the phrase, "when they got me out, I was worse for a long fucking time. Should've come to see you, maybe. I didn't. I just think, worse is okay, too."

The sparest of smiles.

"It's Sid, isn't it?"

He knows, somehow, from her voice or her manner, that he doesn't have to say anything he doesn't want to say. That he doesn't have to say a goddamned word.

Jim

"It's always Sid. It's always been Sid. But it won't be anymore and it won't be ever again," a finality to what he's said. Not a book end. A book slammed shut out of frustration and sadness. It wells up inside him without any precursor that it's coming other than Serafine's utterance of a name. The only thing that's not there is anger.

Alright, it's barely there, but no more so than one would expect. It's not overwhelming. It doesn't twist into anything ugly. No, his lips only twist in sadness and his head only hangs because there's no life in it. A cut flower drooping. A tired dog's head lolling. All that was there is drained out of him.

Jim has given a lot. Jim hasn't taken anything. And it has left him in this state. Undone. A doll without any stuffing. He melts into the upholstery of that cheap recliner the same way he'd eventually melted back into her moment earlier, but it's easier because it's inanimate. Just him and it and Serafine to look at over there. Over there on the other side of the space between them.

“It wasn't ever going to work. I wish I'd known that going in. But,” a beat, “but,” repeated, “whatever. It's whatever,” and it's another one of those words that doesn't sound right coming out of Jim's mouth. Not from those lips that cared so much, even if it was about a dozen things at once. Even his stoicism came with a purpose. It gave his addled mind purpose. Made sense out of the menagerie of ideas and strange directions it could race in from one moment to the next.

“I use to feel like I had balance. Now I just feel like I'm getting pulled in every direction. My head feels so cluttered with thoughts I can't finish,” looking to her for an answer to a question he hasn't asked.

Serafíne

There is a very strange clarity to Sera in these moments; a distilled compassion, a compressed understanding. She is still and her eyes are on him and there's no warning except one word, a name and there's Jim and god, and by the gods, some part of her is briefly, incandescently ferocious when she sees him drooping like that; melting into the goddamned armchair, emptied out.

She's on her feet a moment later. Stockinged feet on the threadbare carpet and he knows without needing to read the branching paths of the near-future that she is going to come over to him. That she is going to put her arms around him. That she is going to give him whatever she can give him even if she does not know what that is; or what he requires; or how to make him - or herself - or fucking anyone whole.

They've done this before, haven't they? No wonder, she thinks - and this is absurd, the way the thought floats to the surface of her mind, an echo loosed or a promise kept as she pauses to yank open the minifridge in search of something to drink. Maybe a bottle of whiskey; maybe a bottle of cans of beer. - no wonder, she thinks, he said, Dejavu.

Barefoot, Sera has even more of a swagger about her, without the heels to get in the way, to foreshorten her stride. It is masculine, really, that gait: she means to take up space the world itself did not see fit to give her. Her gleanings, whatever they may be, she sets down on the sidetable beside Jim's armchair, circles around to plant a kiss on the crown of Jim's head, then finishes her circuit to settle her own ass on the other arm of the chair. Loops her own arm up and around his shoulders, hand open to brace herself against the cushion as she bends down to press her mouth against his temple,

and that kiss lingers. Thoughtful, warm. Infusing.

Aching, too. Aching, probably, but steady within the frame of that ache, and fierce, in her way.

"It's not whatever, Jim. Maybe it's what was, but it's not whatever."

If she could tear all that sorrow and misdirection out of his body with her teeth, just bloody rend it, she would.

She would.

But she can't.

So she kisses him. Hums against his skin in a way that feels like magic, though it isn't. Not now, not yet, but soon, perhaps.

"I don't know what to say. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry. Sorry it didn't work. Sorry it wasn't ever going to work. Sorry you didn't fucking know. I'm sorry that you're hurting. Sorry that your head's cluttered and your balance is gone. All that shit.

"I don't fucking know. Maybe you shouldn't even be in your goddamned head right now. Maybe you should just be in your heart.

"It's okay to hurt.

"I'll be here as long as you need."

Jim

Jim is quiet as she speaks. As she consoles him. She doens't only try to, but succeeds, at least in demonstrating that she cares and giving him something to focus on other than himself and his own feelings in this moment. Like most traumas, talking about it can only help, especially when it's to an open and receptive ear. It doesn't mend anything, but a few moments' respite is better than nothing.

What Serafine had found was a bottle of wine with a seal on it and a bottle of whiskey with the cork in it and she most likely goes for the latter.

Serafine most definitely goes for the latter.

And then Serafine's lips are bunched together and still manage to breath fire onto his temple. It washes over him and feels almost too familiar. He doesn't squirm, though, because the contact is as hard to resist as any addiction.

She says she'll be there and, “Thank you,” is what he can offer back. That and another smile, one that isn't at his own expense, and that's something she's actually given him.

Jim is the one that reaches for the bottle from the chair and opens it. The cork makes a thin thud of a noise and then sloshes as he tips it back without a glass.