Friday night lights.

Kalen Holliday

[Nightmares]

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 3, 6, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

Serafíne

There is in Capitol Hill a blond-brick three-or-so storey house, old-fashioned and four-square with a porch as wide as the building itself and gardens, front and back, well-loved, and a strange little bridge from the house proper to the second storey bonus room over the detached garage out back and an expansive and well-shaded garden that someone loved very well once, which someone is once-again trying to tend, though rather haphazardly. And in that house on Capitol Hill on that tree-lined residential street full of family homes and duplexes and family-homes and duplexes that have been turned into three or five or seven unit condos or apartment buildings, there is almost always some semblance of a party going on.

Sometimes it is quiet, see. After hours, a few stragglers on the porch with a bottle of whiskey at 3:00 a.m. and a couple of joints, after the bars have closed, music low in the air through the cracked windows, the sort of laughter that even drunk you try to keep low and hushed because something about that hour begs for quiet, pleads for it.

Sometimes it is low-key, a Sunday barbeque with the girls from the roller derby team and the co-workers from someone's something and the retired professors from three doors down.

Sometimes it is a fucking party, bodies packed into the rooms and every kind of drug you can imagine and the most ridiculously decadent everything, everywhere, and sometimes those just seem to last, see - for days and days and days, a constantly changing mix of people and personalities.

Tonight, well. Who knows what it's like tonight.

The front door's open but the front door is almost always open.

There's music from somewhere but there's almost always music.

There is, also, a unicycle on the front porch and a cabana bed in the back garden.

Of course there is.

Kalen Holliday

Kalen walks up the steps of the porch easily now. Grace like he had once will come later, but for now he walks on his own and that is...well...it is not enough really. There is this ceaseless war against evil. What could ever be enough. Still, it is progress. And Kalen, Kalen who is building libraries and herding new Mages and mentoring Virtual Adepts - he has never lost track of that.

But there is nothing for him to launch himself at right now. Nothing to fight.

So he's come here. Of his options, somewhere he might fall into a pile of people trumphs priests. It doesn't always, more than one priest could attest to that.

There is a cabana bed in the back garden and he almost laughs. Of course there is.

He doesn't head for it, not yet, instead he slides through the assembled people. Sera has mostly seen him when he's just not trying to be social. Or human. Sera met a Hermetic knight. But here, here is Kalen drifting and and between and through people and laughing. He lingers nowhere long enough to really have to tell anyone much of anything. And, perhaps most interesting to Sera, should she overhear, he introduces himself not as Kalen, but as Eli,

Serafíne

1. Perception + Awareness?

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (2, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 6 ) Re-rolls: 3

Serafíne

2. Overhear the name Eli? -1 difficulty for ridiculously supernatural awareness about where everyone is.

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

Richard

[jeez serafine, you're clearly as imperceptive as a brick.]

Kalen Holliday

[That! Awareness!]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 6, 6, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )

Serafíne

Somehow Kalen is here. Maybe there was a mass-text, maybe he just decided to take Sera up on that invitation extended thoughtlessly the last time they saw each other. Maybe it was as simple as

haing a thing. u should come.

There's recycling in bins on the front porch and a half-full ashtray and that unicycle and a pair of tattooed girls making out, who barely notice him as he walks up the steps, without grace but walks, right, whole: no cane in sight, and inside the warm wood foyer and the maze of lower-level rooms, a front and back parlor and a powder room and a dining room and step leading up-up-up a with black and white portraits of Amelia Earhart and a spider-plant with spider-babies in a macramed holder in the holding and contemporary art on the walls alongside old lady collectibles and treasures and collections and photographs and left-behinds of all sorts, more than might be imaginable, and people people people, the sort of group that expands and contracts and invites-in and lets-go-free and

there is Kalen, who introduces himself as Eli, and somewhere, somewhere, somewhere - through the front or the back parlor, through the kitchen all in layered whites - white cabinets and marble and stone counters and windows overlooking the garden - packed with food and drink and the sort of people who linger near the food and drink - and he has a glimpse of the cabana bed out in the back garden (which also has: a rope hammock on a wooden frame, a mismatched assortment of patio furniture, three bongs and a hookah and a fire pit and Sera is such a fucking amazing hostess or just has such brilliant goddamned roommates that there are:

homemade marshmallows, artisan graham crackers, and fair-trade dark chocolate squares for the making-of-smores

as well as vodka-soaked marashino cherries to top the smores if you want to turn them into an alcoholic sundae instead,

and Sera is standing on the patio as Kalen ducks outside from the kitchen to the back garden, smoking a clove cigarette and drunk or fucked up or high or something and there is a strange air of reserve around her for all that she turns in to him as he walks out and embraces him, exclaiming,

"Eli!"

- smilingm a humming, drunken smile.

Kalen Holliday

For someone who decided to come to a place because contact, it takes him a second to return the embrace, because one of the few things he does as easily as he falls in love is spook. But it is Sera and there is probably no mortal danger lurking in any bushes waiting to ambush them, and so he wraps his arms around Sera and spends a few seconds breathing in the scent of her hair. He touches her often enough now, but this is the first time he has held her absent some kind of mystic crisis. It is the same though, in that he lets the rest of the world not matter until he lets her go.

"It's good to see you." And he means that, for all he is already releasing her, already back to scanning the crowd for threats or some sign of a crisis. His attention catches briefly on an argument, until he determines it probably isn't about to erupt into a shootout and his eyes continue to wander over the crowd.

"I love this place. How are you?"

Serafíne

Her hair smells like smoke and sugar and spice and her skin smells like nightfall and her breath smells like whiskey and Sera is absolutely, entirely aware of everything, everything: those few strange, spare moments where she is hugging him and he is on the verge of spooking, alert, paranoid, aware and it feels like wrapping her arms around a statue and she thinks about statues and she thinks about David and then someone named David and then marble and then a drunken sunset spread across some glittering sea and then the rhythm of waves and then the rhythm of a beating heart and then,

oh!

Kalen-Eli is hugging her back, and Sera smiles and he can feel her smile, peripherally see? The edge-and-crinkle of it, drunk right? but aware and self-aware and lovely,

lovely.

"I love it too," agrees Sera, agreeably. "It was Dee's aunt's place? and like Dee inherited it and that's why we came to Denver." Though really, isn't it Sera's place, by now? Hasn't she transfigured it with her presence, the way they all do, with the places they live.

Some distant-but-insistent beat of music against the senses, through some window or some door. That argument getting heated over the Mekons' B-sides and also laughter and strange shadows and on and on.

"I'm drunk," Sera continues, declares to Kalen, smiling, smiling. She is absolutely drunk. She is also probably at least or two other things, judging by the way her eyes devour the light. "I'm - " a beat, a humming beat, and her eyes close and she's considering it because there is something sub-liminal, sub-lingual to-be-considered and she does consider it holds it inside her and comes back with, "good. I'm good.

"You though. You've changed. Right? What's fixed?"

Kalen Holliday

Kalen's hands cross the distance between them to rest lightly on her ribs, because he does like to be touching someone and he definitely likes to be touching Sera and because he is sometimes convinced that Sera does not stay upright by virtue of anything but some inherently mystical quality about her.

He smiles in response to her - her words, her smiling, just her. "I am not. But perhaps soon enough. I may be about to hunt down raspberry flavored something to go with the smores." He considers how to respond to that question because there are thousands of answers. For an instant they war on his tongue, and then, "Well. I got my hair cut, gained like five pounds, and I can walk again. among other things." There is some amusement there. "The details of which are a story for later."

Richard

Richard was invited: perhaps by Serafine, more likely by word-of-mouth that has spread slow and far and wide and then touched, flame-to-gasoline, the edge of undergraduate life at DU. Then suddenly everyone knew, and at least one-tenth of everyone showed up.

So: there's Richard. Climbing out of a stuffed-full compact car, some Honda or Hyundai or Toyota or similar, laughing, pulling along two giggling girls and three equally-giggly guys and how many people are in that car and also how many hits have their already taken. "Hey!" he hails from the lawn, seeing Serafine. His friends echo and some bystanders think this is a great game and all of a sudden there's a whole chorus:

"HEYYYY!"

Serafíne

Here's something, the way Sera's eyes track all enthused to his hair and perhaps then his stomach (gained five pounds!) and then drop to his leg and she is still smoking her cigarette, the kretek with the blue paper and the gold foil around the filter and the spicy-sweet scent and she takes a drag and exhales thoughtlessly out of one corner of her mouth, away from her body and his, smoke mingling with the smoke that drifts from the ceramic firepit in a long, slow-furling sort of flag.

And she ashes that cigarettes with a flick of her thumb against the filter's edge and she also does this away from her body and away from his body but she is, as well, reaching out to touch his leg, and then the hand in which he held his cane, and there is something reverent about this touch, from Sera, who is magic, who wears it on her skin and in her bones, some nights, and she then lets go of Kalen's hand and reaches up to pull him in for a kiss, tender, against his temple.

"You're fucking obsessed with raspberries, aren't you. I'm glad you can walk again."

And then there's a hey! and a chorus of HEYYYY! and Sera is rising onto her tiptoes and waving all enthusiastically back at Richard, informing Kalen that,

"It's the Giant!"

and,

"Have you met Richard?"

--

When Richard makes it into earshot, Sera will introduce them both.

Kalen Holliday

Five pounds hasn't done much to cure Kalen of looking like a scarecrow, Sera can't see any real evidence of weight gain. His expression softens when she starts touching him, watching her quietly. He is different with the crowd. He is the same with her.

And then he is laughing. "I have met Richard. Briefly." He does not point out that she was there. He briefly considers that Richard might be Named Jolly. He hasn't seen those commercials in awhile though, and Names are so much more complicated than that. Still, he turns toward Richard, and this time he smiles. He moves his hands away from Sera's ribs, freeing her to greet Richard, because Sera believes in hugs and doesn't hesitate about them. Nothing reserved about Sera. Kalen will more likely not hug Richard, but god knows. There are definitely enough drugs here to make that happen

Richard

Earshot, then handshake-shot. Richard, though he thinks Kalen looks somehow familiar, can perhaps be forgiven for not really remembering the exact location or circumstances of their first meeting. He was, after all, at the tail end of a very long journey. Also: dirty and unkempt and bearded, like some nomad wandered in from forty days in the desert.

The Richard that shows up tonight is quite different. This Richard is clean and kempt and beardless. He has fantastic golden hair that goes so well with his fantastic golden tan. He shakes hands with Kalen, and -- yes, he is rather giant-ish; even standing a step down on the porch they are eye to eye.

"Nice, Kalen," he says, which must be shorthand for nice-to-meet-you. He sweeps his friends forward, "This is Jennifer, Caileigh, Rob, Matt, and Andy.

"We heard about your party," he adds, Serafine-wise. "You do this a lot?"

Serafíne

"Hey," Sera's smoking and she's holding her cigarette carefully away from her body, almost but not quite like a joint, and she's all engagement as she opens up to greet Richard's friends. "Drinks and food in the kitchen, edibles are fucking marked. You should try the sugared violets, yeah? We try to smoke outside, not in. This is Eli. I'm Serafíne. Call me Sera, yeah?"

And there's something about Sera, right, opening herself up, pulling people in. She believes in fucking hugs and she opens her arms to Jennifer and Caileigh, wraps herself around them, all careful of her cigarette and their hair, and she hugs them while she's explaining the set up and where to go and what to get and where to find it.

"Otherwise," and she's working her way down the line of Richard-and-friends though the gentlemen do not receive the same sort of immediate embrace, and then there's Richard, who is a Giant! " - make yourselves at fucking home."

- and reaches up (and up and up and UP) and hugs him too, wraps her arms around his neck and she smells like smoke and whiskey and patchouli just the way you expect her to smell and she inhales in the embrace and then she lets Richard go and takes one more drag and then drops her cigarette into a concrete urn of damp sand by sliding glass doors leading to the patio, smiles, see, as she takes in the warm vibe in the back garden. Edison lights in the trees and the fire pit and fucking SMORES and people getting high and people arguing and/or agreeing, geekily, about obscure punk bands or second-wave-Nu Metal-Dream-Pop or what the fuck ever and people making out and the stars visible wheeling through the night sky and does not, does not think at all about where she might have been, a year ago tonight, but that knowledge is also in her skin and makes the immediate brilliance the night that much more palpable,

and Richard wants to know if she does this often, and Sera, she smiles, see -

"Yeah. There's pretty much always someone here. We have a good time."

Waits until his friends have filtered away to get stoned or make out or get drunk, and introduces Kalen all over again, to Richard:

"You remember Kalen right?"

Kalen Holliday

The collection of people Richard introduces are offered a hand, and smiles. Richard can have his hand again, because he came here to touch people after all. Sera has to reach up and up and up and he wonders, briefly, if hugging Richard would count as stretching. If his skin tastes like the sea. At least he isn't fucking cold.

And then Richard and Sera are talking and he is letting them talk and his eyes are out on the crowd again. That argument is done, no one is screaming and gushing blood, nothing that is not supposed to be is on fire. Look. You just never know.

Richard

Richard's new friends, who are actually just some people Richard ran into after Intro to Psychology or something, who he overheard talking about coming here and he wandered over and next thing you know there were all crammed into a car driving over, though looking at them you'd think he's known them all semester, all year --

Richard's new friends love the hugging. They love the way Serafine looks, feels, seems. She's so fucking hip, she's so fucking raw, she's exactly the sort of person they think of when they think of having The College Experience and they wonder if she will -- they hope she will -- introduce them to exactly the sort of Experiences they came to college to have tonight.

The setup's explained to them. They break to mingle, to sample the sugared violets, to fucking get higher than they already are. And meanwhile Sera is hugging Richard, who is very laidback and unawkward about the whole business of being hugged by hip, raw, stoned, interestingly-clad women. It doesn't even matter that he's like a foot taller. He hugs her back, easily, one arm squeezing around her back for a moment.

Sort of stays there, that arm -- moves up a little so it's slung easily, amicably, camaraderie-ly around Sera's shoulders as he turns his attention to Eli again. Only now it's not Eli, it's Kalen. Richard looks intrigued.

"Yeah, I think I met you the night I got back to Denver. Why the name switch?"

Serafíne

Like a foot taller technically means more than a foot taller but Sera always squares the circle and evens the fucking odds with footware that shortens her stride and engages her calves and generally makes her considerably taller than she would otherwise be, though never (or: rarely) as tall as the people among whom she spends most of her time.

"Oh, fuck! Yeah, Kalen was there. And that girl, right? The new girl." Sera stopped time with her. She does that sometimes, because she can feel the seconds like molecules between her teeth. And she has absolutely no objections to a companionable arm slung over her shoulder, see, it makes her feel like a fucking bro which she finds rather delightful, as it makes her toes feel strange or maybe, just maybe, that is the MDMA.

It is something anyway.

"Get this, he was just like coming back from Shangri-La to fucking Denver that night and came in for coffee and there we all were." She is interestingly-clad. A tiiiiny leather skirt that seems made of straps and strops and rivets and buckles, and thigh-high fishnets, ripped natch held up by black garters, with heeled industrial-looking boots and dark make-up and a half-shaved head and flashes of black-ink on her arms and hands whenever she moves them. A flannel shirt mostly buttoned mostly in the middle right now and a house full of expectation and delights and debauch.

Richard's guests will assuredly have an Experience.

Hawksley

And down the street comes a low, slinking car, the color of espresso powder dusted with gold. Real gold. No pyrite, not at this level, which is not the level of the party or the vast majority of the partgoers. This is the 24-karat life: the owner of the car is already a bit drunk and the window is down for his face to be, on occasion, flecked with the intermittent rainfall that has marked the day and night. This is the 24-karat life: the driver of the car may as well call the owner his liege lord, his prophet, his son, even though he never takes his eyes off of the duty of driving to look on that golden, rain-touched face.

The car slows and settles, like a bird beating wings against the sky to gentle its plummeting to the earth, and stills not at the curb -- which is packed, on a Friday night in one of the cool days of mid-spring -- but in the middle of the street. The passenger door opens and Hawskley rises from it, taps it closed, and stands there a moment, taking in the night which fell so, so quickly that he hardly even noticed until he realized he couldn't see with his sunglasses on.

He walks away, toward the house, and the car drives off, perhaps to some coffee shop, some all-night diner, to wait for summons. The liege lord, prophet, and son of the servant's heart,

strolls up towards the house on Corona, feeling the corona it has of magic, of mages, of stormy tesselating liminal visceral thalassic enthralling power. He smirks a bit, and pushes open the door, and they know him here, it's been a year, a year is forever in this sort of group. The ones who don't immediately notice and know him know that they're on the outside, they haven't gotten in yet, the others are knitted together in their knowledge of him and their knowledge of Sera and their knowledge of what transpires and what it feels like when he is here with Sera when he is here whispering in Dee's blushing ear or leading Dan somewhere.

Some of them call him Davie. Some of them call him Hawksley. He corrects neither, and he does not appear to care -- when asked -- which he is called. Not much. Not at Sera's house. He could have twenty names here, and they'd still know him.

Someone hands him a little glass pipe, freshened up recently, and he is cordial and grateful enough in passing as he walks past everyone, out, smoking the purplish-green as he passes through the kitchen. This is the life, isn't it? And it is golden.

Kalen Holliday

"How do you live with just one?" Kalen asks, but it's reflexive and caught somewhere between distance and warm amusement. And then he pays attention to words that Sera said a second after she says them, like they ran through a filter or three to get his attention.

"Shangri-la?" And now he's curious enough that he stops searching for some new and exciting lurking terror and looks back at Richard with something resembling actual focus.

That focus lasts until the second he tastes peaches and sunlight and for a few seconds the ground falls away. Hawksley. He breathes in the feel of Hawksley's Resonance the way he breathed in the scent of Sera's hair.

No. Focus. Richard. "Really?"

Richard

"Nooo," Richard is shaking his head, and Richard is laughing -- though not unkindly, and certainly not at Kalen's expense. "I spent a semester abroad. I think Sera just thought Shangri-La sounded more exotic than Kolkata."

They are on the porch; thus they can see the street. Plenty of people can see the street. Plenty of people are all a-gossip: he must be a celebrity, he must be famous, who is he?

Richard, twisting about on the porch, looking over his shoulder at the newcomer, tips his chin that-a-way. "Isn't that your friend Hawksley?"

Serafíne

"Mmmm," Sera is humming in response to Richard, feeling Hawksley's resonance, sun-drenched and soaring, in almost precisely the same way that Kalen feels it, as if she could become lost in it, the warmth of the sun soaking into her bones, the endless promise of a golden summer, the absolute defiance of gravity. Such immediate pleasure does she take in his presence - blocks away, see, with her senses blown so fucking open - and then a block away, and then down the street, and emerging from the car and navigating all familiar through the house he knows, which knows him almost as intimately as it knows Sera, - that she tips her head aslant against Richard's bicep with the pleasure-of-it. "That is Hawksley."

Without having to look-and-see him.

"Shangri-La. Kolkutta. Kathmandu. You should've seen it, Kalen," perhaps not remembering that Kalen did see it. "He had," she is speaking to Kalena and Richard even as she turns and ducks a bit beneath his arm and is reaching for Hawksley as he emerges onto the patio, "a Grizzly Adams beard, man."

Which he did. Which she loves, right now.

Because she loves everything.

Because everything breaks her heart.

Then she's lifting her arms to wrap them around Hawksley's neck and hug him and wrap her arms around his neck and cup the back of his skull seeking to bring him down to her so she can tip her forehead against his and murmur something to him by way of greeting.

Serafíne

"I knew you'd come. I got you a present.

"Unbutton my shirt."

Kalen Holliday

His eyes widen as Sera describes the beard, as though this is the first he's ever heard of such a thing. Because...why not play? And then she is reaching for Hawksley and the only thing thing that seems like it isn't tide-bound and liquid and mercurial is the sense of sunlight.

Perhaps he should have just brought a bottle of whiskey to the church.

He looks back to Richard, but the sense of connection that was there with Sera is absent. He smiles anyway. "Considering all the places I have and haven't been, I think Iowa farm towns might seem more remarkable to me."

Richard

There are hugs, and there are hugs, and there are hugs. The one Sera gives Hawksley is the latter, and Richard watches for only a single warm moment before turning his eyes politely away. To Kalen, of course:

"Not much of a world traveler?"

Serafíne

Sera's arms are still around Hawksley's neck, her forehead against his forehead, and he may or may not be unbuttoning her shirt while they all stand there on the patio of her house.

No, although his player is absent now because the internet is a cruel, cruel mistress, he is absolutely likely to be unbuttoning her shirt just as she directed him to do and nothing about the moment - for all its remarkable intimacy, says that have either the need or the desire for privacy.

It's just that sort of place, see.

It's just that sort of night.

Kalen Holliday

"On the contrary. I've been all over, though for most places, at least recently, never long." He looks over the crowd again, then nods. "I should...." He waves at that other people, the place where there are smores to be made. "I was on a quest for raspberry liqueur." He smiles a little. "Perhaps later."

Serafíne

Still the moment folds into itself, right, and breaks itself apart. There is an egg and it is cracked open and the yolk is sliding golden and the Hermetic Who Loves Framboise goes to search through the liquer cart for one of the crown-topped bottles and the other Hermetic with Many Names unbutton's the Cultist's stupid flannel shirt which she was only keeping buttoned for the pleasure of the reveal and she turns around and he slides it off her shoulders and she is then mostly-nude, right, this mirrored disco-ball mosaic affixed to the swell of her breasts, nothing else to even suggest anything like modesty, tattooes scrawling up her flank and her hands and her arms, the inky-coil of one visible just beneath her right breast, her torso lean as hell, primarily because she never remembers to eat, does she? Except for the mornings when grease and carbohydrates are necessary to fight the hangover. Because she lives the way she does, burns every candle at every end as if there were no end to the potential fuel.

And then there are strangers and not-strangers and the night opening, see - generous, emergent, emulsifying somehow, and Hawksley and Sera disappear for longer than you really quite understand but the night goes on and the party goes on and this get lovely and loud and weird and then they contract and get quiet and chill and delicious and some people move outside and others slide inside and others split and others hook-up and fish cab-fare not car-keys out of the bowl in the front foyer and someone, somewhere has replaced the 80s post-punk with an acoustic guitar that seems to come from everywhere and no where and maybe you are too high to know where and

oh,

hello giant.

Richard is sitting on a bench or in a camp-chair or in the grass or what the fuck ever part of a loose circle that expands and contracts around the firepit and may or may not have a marshmallow on a stick when Sera, loose and louche, appears behind him, and she's barefoot or rather: stocking-footed now, and one of her stockings has started to roll down and she's wearing a different skirt and more than a few of her mosaic-pieces have come off the masterpiece that was discoboobs but hey,

but hi!

She settles her hands on Richard's shoulder and uses him as leverage as she climbs over the bench and god only knows what hour it is.

The stars have wheeled.

Sera breathes: in and in and in, and tips her head backwards, and glances up at the sky.

"Do you miss being far-away?" she asks him, which is a strange thing to ask, but perhaps he understands what she means.

Richard

Richard is not the hedonist Serafine is, or at least the hedonist he thinks Serafine must be. Cultist, isn't she? It's neoracism, mage edition. Regardless: it's not like she does anything to dissuade his assumptions. Just look at her disco boobs.

We digress.

Richard is not the hedonist he thinks Serafine must be. He does not go to these debauched wild parties very often, though it would be inaccurate to say he avoids them, or that he never goes to them at all. Still; the last party that resembled this that he can remember was --

-- okay, well. There are a few. But the last one that we wish to mention is the one that his Acarya, of all people, took him to. A party full of mages and magic. A party that started with the single weirdest trip he's ever had and ended with waking on the lawn half-undressed with a girl named ... god, what was her name. He knew it then, but ultimately one night stands are one night stands and all he remembers now is that she was Dutch, and they gave her a ride home, and they were easy and unembarrassed and happy on that too-bright morning.

We digress again.

Richard is near the fire, later in the night. He has not devolved to one night standery just yet, though perhaps the night is headed that way. He is hanging out. He has made new friends, as he does: his new friends are gathered around the fire with him and someone is rambling on about something and he is just watching the flames dance. He startles a little when a hand lands on his shoulder, but it's not a big startle. More like -- an awakening, as though a moment ago he was almost hypnotized. He looks up. Disco-boobs comes clambering over the bench to drop down, or not.

He tilts his head back too. Looks at the stars, then closes his eyes. The sky is wheeling overhead. He is suffused with chemicals and borrowed euphoria.

"Sometimes," he answers, honestly. "Even before I ... y'know. Involved myself with Awakened life, I traveled a lot. Sometimes for competitions. Sometimes just for pleasure. You can get used to that sort of thing. Always being somewhere new."

He opens his eyes. Looks at her.

"I like it fine here, though. I like being here too, not-traveling."

Serafíne

Sera favors Richard with a smile, strangely wistful. It is could be easily interpreted as a late-night-coming-down sort of smile, as a party's-over sort of smile, but she's not coming down and the party isn't every really over for her, is it. Just banked for a while.

There are always embers and they always flare up again.

So, slant-wise and strangely-wistful and easily under- or over-interpreted, that glance, wreathed in smoke from the slow-dying fire.

"If you pay enough attention to yourself, though, you can always be somewhere new. Even when you're in the same place."

She says it musingly, lazily. Reaches for one of the marshmallow sticks and uses it not for smores but to stir the embers and watch the flames spark and flair.

"I never traveled much. When did you stop swimming?"

Richard

"I still swim," Richard says, which is of course not what she's asking. "I just don't compete anymore," he adds, confessional. "I quit that after London. It was time."

Serafíne

That phrase, it was time, makes her hum. A hum in the back of her throat and the back of her mind, in the connective tissue of her body. Time: doesn't she seem these days just a little bit unmoored from it. Free, somehow, from its dauntless imperative.

And she is wrapping her arms around her lower torso not out of any sense of anything like shame or modesty (she has neither and in any case she does not cover her mirrored breasts) and not because she is cold but because she wants to do so.

Which is why she does everything.

"Why was it time?"

Richard

"It just was," he replies, which isn't Richard being mysterious or unforthcoming. It's an answer. It's not a very good or clear one, perhaps -- but it is an answer, and a truthful one.

A moment later he tries a little harder, "Your body's not like your mind, you know? It has limits. It reaches a peak and then that's it. I'd reached my peak. I could feel it in my bones. I knew I was as good as I'd ever be, accomplished all I ever could, and I was happy with that. I didn't want to be one of those athletes way past their prime, still clinging to some faded dream of glory until all they actually had accomplished became tawdry and tarnished.

"It was just time to stop. Move on, do something else. I'd ignored my mind all those years I was honing my body. So, now I hone my mind."

A pause. Then:

"What about you? What did you do before ... this?"

Serafíne

He says that the body's not like the mind and asks her if she knows? And the truth is, she doesn't: she does not know what it means to me an elite athlete, what it means to feel oneself in prime condition, honed and sure, fast as fast can be: a machine, an animal made-to-move except in the ways she still is an animal made-to-move from moment to moment and experience to experience, whatever they may be.

But her eyes, see, drunk or fucked up or stoned or whatever as she is, are quick on his profile, tracing the pale line he slaces out in the darkness, listening, listening.

That look slides away when he asks her what she did before this and see, Sera's looking at this. The remnants of the party in the back garden, the Edison lights slung through the trees, the dying fire, all of it.

"I don't remember all of it." Quietly, echoing his phrase unconsciously. "You know? But I've fucking always done this. We were in Raleigh-Durham before this. Dan and I went there to get away from NYC, met Dee and Rick there after our old drummer decided he wanted to go to med school in the fucking Carribbean. Well, before he did that, we knew 'em but never played together.

"So we started.

"They graduated and Dee inherited this house from her aunt so, here the fuck we are. You knew I was in band, right?"

Of course she is.

Isn't she a fucking rock star.

Richard

Raleigh-Durham. Richard laughs a little at that, half-disbelieving. Hard to imagine a girl like her out there, amidst the Carolina pines and the desolation. And, sure, the world-class university, but -- god, it was just so Southern.

"I didn't know that," he says, re: the band. "Doesn't surprise me too much, though. You got any albums?"

And so -- like that -- that quiet little confession of her own, that disturbing little fact that she doesn't remember what happened to her before all this, goes rather unremarked. Maybe it's a form of kindness: the same way he didn't pry into Lucy's 'condition' that other night. Maybe some things he considers private, inviolate; something you just don't ask about the first or second or third time you meet someone. The first time you really have a conversation with them.

"You should send me some mp3s," he adds -- a hint of playfulness here, "if you guys were any good."

Serafíne

"Naw." Sera shakes her golden head, the loose bottle-blonde curls, opens her mouth, laughing. The moment before is passed, and she doesn't linger on it and doesn't expect him to and tells him: truthfully but with as much of a soft-pedal as she can, that she does not remember everything before this. But who does, who would, for fuck's sake, look at the drugs she does on a regular basis. "Dan and I've written a few songs you might've heard, but they were all recorded by other people.

"The band's more - " Here she catches her lower lip between her teeth, and there's nothing bashful about that gesture, just some visceral pleasure, so briefly withheld. "The band's a fucking experience. We kick ass, but if you wanna experience it -

"you've got to come see us. On stage, you know? Live, not fucking Memorex. Hey, you want a fucking shot? I'm gonna get a fucking shot."

Richard

"All right," says Richard, rising to the challenge such-as-it-were. "Let me know where your next gig is. I'll see if I can swing by and," a little smirk, air-quotes, "experience it."

And also:

"Nah." He leans back on that bench. "I'm gonna sit here and soak it all in a little more. Go on ahead. I'll catch up with you later."

Constellations

Alexander Brandt

The day in Denver had been warm and clear. The seemingly random bad weather that springs off the mountains to the west staying away, turning it into one of those days that promises that summer is not too far behind. But the day has passed through evening and into night. The sun has set, the sky is clear, and the city is cooling down.

It is the clear sky that brings Alexander outside tonight. He’s found a blanket inside, large and thick enough to spread out in the pasture to the side of the House. This is where he can be found – lying on his back, staring up at the stars. Morrison is not so far away from the city for the light pollution to be completely absent, but far enough that more of the universe is visible to those who would want to watch it.

So here he is. Grey long-sleeved hoodie on over a white t-shirt, dark green combats, walking boots. There’s an open bottle of beer sat on the grass, with the rest of the four-pack still unopened in its packaging. A leather jacket lies folded next to it, and an open pack of tortilla chips lies forgotten nearby too.

It’s cold outside. But not Frozen.

Serafíne

(Who is out there? Perception plus awareness)

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (2, 4, 7, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 6 ) Re-rolls: 1

Alexander Brandt

[Am I about to get company?]

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

Serafíne

Tires on the driveway. That's his primary warning that he is about to get company. The wash of headlights over the dark sweep of rolling, open land that surrounds the chantry proper. Someone's coming or going but isn't someone always coming or going out here. A communal house that houses only one or two inhabitants or an ordinary day, but there is always someone dropping by,

and Sera felt the chill in the air from miles and miles away, or so it seems to Dan, who is driving her here, to whom she announced Alexander's presence way back at the turnoff from the mainroad. She was leaning into the passenger's window of the old white conversion van, her forehead pressed to the glass, her breath warm enough to fog up the glass a bit, feeling everything, feeling the road beneath the tires, feeling the sky full of light, feel the point of contact between magic and the earth, the fount of the node. Feeling frozen, feeling feeling feeling,

and so whilst Dan does whatever it is that he is going to do, whatever it is that Sera brought him here to do, Sera wanders through the house and grabs a bottle of something and lets herself out of the glass slides and steps out of her spike heels there and grabs them by straps with her first two fingers and - barefoot in a short - shredded - red cocktail dress picks her way through the pasture.

It is not late enough that the grass is damp, and the chill in the air is bright and strangely unexpected against her skin, so Sera's shivering a bit by the time she makes it to Alexander's side. Nudges him with the bottle she has in hand to say hello.

Hello! says that nudge,

and the Sera, "Hey. Whatchat lookin' at. Mind company?"

Alexander Brandt

That’s one of the things he likes about the house – its location means that it doesn’t really get a lot of noise. So when there’s the sound of something – an SUV, van, or something else of that size – pulls up, it’s certainly warning that somebody is arriving. Not that it necessarily means that company is arriving. Alexander’s been out here before when the resonance of someone has arrived or left, without any physical contact between them. He’d actually been hoping to catch the owner of that defensive anger some time, but chance hadn’t brought them to the house at the same time just yet.

It’s only when Sera steps out from the house and heads towards the pasture that he feels her. He doesn’t get up or look round as she walks over, already confident that it is who he thinks. So he’s still lying on the blanket when she stops, nudges him with the bottle. Hello! says the nudge. Hello! back says the hand patting an empty bit of blanket.

He turns to look at Sera when she speaks, and when he replies. “Not at all,” he says to the company. “Grab my jacket if you’re cold. I don’t seem to mind it so much these days.” He looks back up into the sky again. “Nothing. Everything. Just looking, really. Trying to remember the constellations.” A few moments go by and Alexander looks back at Sera. “How’re you doing? And how’s the ass?” He smiles as he asks that last part, trying to make a joke of their previous meeting in the market.

Serafíne

"Brilliant." Sera breathes out, with a flash at Alexander's profile as she takes a seat on the blanket, feels the grass spongy beneath the blanket bend and even break a bit more as she sits. There is a bit of a shiver from her she's setting her teeth against the cold and of course she's wearing almost nothing, this slip of a dress that has been slashed through without much consideration for what is concealed and what is revealed about her body and, hey, without heels she is rather short but even barefoot she walks with a swagger as if she were seven feet tall. "My ass is always brilliant."

The truth is, Sera doesn't get the joke but she doesn't mind it either and perhaps she does not remember that piece of their encounter at the market the way he does. Her senses swim, oh, lovely, and she swims within them and she is cold she realizes then so she does take his jacket. Shakes it out and drapes it over her shoulders and brings her own bottle - larger than his, wine or whiskey, perhaps - between her legs.

Bare feet flat on the blanket, on the grassy field.

"I don't know the names of any fucking constellations. What ones do you remember?"

Head tipped back as she considers the stars.

Alexander Brandt

Alexander watches Sera as she sits, looking at her striking profile. Not from lust or any thoughts of romance. More to get a better look at the woman who always seems so sure of herself, who he doesn’t actually know all that much about. He pushes himself up a little, resting on his elbows, then holds out the beer bottle. “Cheers.” He takes a swig and then puts the bottle back on the grass.

“A few. That one up there, the three stars close together in a line?“ Alexander points up at the sky. “That’s Orion’s Belt. There are others that make up the rest of him and his bow, but I can’t remember which.” He moves his arm, pointing elsewhere in the sky. “That’s the Big Dipper, the group of seven. Looks like a cooking pot with a bent handle. And that bright one up there,” he points elsewhere again,” is the North Star. Favoured by sailors and people who have broken their compass.”

He lies back on the blanket again. “I was told once that it’s almost like looking back in time. We’re seeing those stars as they were hundreds of years ago. They might not even be there anymore.”

Serafíne

Sera takes a long-swig of whatever-it-is she brought out with her and leans back to look up as Alexander points out the most recognizable pieces of the constellations he remembers. Orion's belt receives a hmmm from her, recognition stitched into the timbre of her voice. Of the name or the stars or the line they define so sharply in the night sky. Once she sees the belt she recognizes the rest of Orion - who is so recognizeable - and it takes her a moment or two to pull herself away and then re-orient on the Big Dipper, and the North Star.

Favored by sailors Alexander informs her and that makes Sera remember another conversation she had once not far from here: a different night, a different season, the world still as it always is, framed by light. Now and then and never and will be all wrapped together at once.

"Time's just another fiction," Sera tells him, giving him a slanting glance as he remarks on how old the light of the stars actually is. "Everything is. Everything's just - "

And she breathes in, takes another swig, then flops back on the blanket as well, one arm crooked beneath the back of her head, the other on her bottle.

"You're figuring out how it works, right?" she asks him then, still looking at the stars. "For you? It's different for everyone."

Magic, she means. Of course she does.

Alexander Brandt

Sera might feel the move of the blanket as Alexander shrugs. A few moments pass as he thinks. Or, perhaps, doesn’t think but waits for inspiration. Those moments pass. “Yes. No. Both.” He looks back at Orion’s Belt, trying to make out the rest of the figure. “In general, yes. Right now, I don’t know. Maybe. I just used to do this as a kid. The looking at the stars? I always loved being outdoors. Still do.”

It’s not really much of an answer to her question, but it’s all he really has at the moment. It’s not like he’s been here for hours meditating on life’s great mysteries. Not that that’s how he’d have thought about it even if he had. He’s just been... here. Not really thinking about much of anything, which is as close to meditating as he gets.

He goes quiet again for a little while before asking, “How long have you been Awake for? Did you know what was going on when it happened?”

Serafíne

Yes. No. I don't know. Maybe.

Somehow altogether these add up to just the right answer and the shadow of it makes Sera grin, quietly in the darkness. She hums, too, beneath her breath or beneath her skin and cannot really drink from that bottle while she's laying back and looking at the stars so she tips her chin up for a quick swig, but mostly ignores the damned thing.

Quiet's okay. Quiet's fine.

Alexander's quiet and not really thinking about anything and really does Sera ever just think about anything? She must be just feeling: the brilliance of the sky, the cushion of the crushed grass beneath them. The chill in the air and the fading memory of warmth in the ground. The points of departure: where night becomes day and spring becomes summer, these places between all around them.

He asks what he asks her and she does think about it then. Holds that too against her tongue, in her throat, the idea-of-it, the knowledge beneath, and considers what she will say and how she will say it. Whether she will say it at all. But -

"I don't really remember waking up." Sera tells Alex, or perhaps confesses. Listen, she is quiet. This is an old fear and an old wound. "I'm pretty sure it was gradual, though, not all-at-once like it was for you. Wrapped up with a whole bunch of other shit, so I'm not sure I knew it was happening."

A beat.

"I'm twenty-four now, so. Six years? Seven, maybe."

Alexander Brandt

I don’t know. He’s no stranger to not knowing, but Alexander seems to be saying that an awful lot more these days. And not just about this new, brighter view of life that he’s woken up to. How are you? What happened? What are you going to do? The answers are slowly coming, but the questions seem to come so much faster. Sera feels. Alexander does. Not always the smartest thing, but usually something.

What he does now is listen. He’s good at that. Partly because it’s a good way to find stuff out from, and about, people. But the bigger part because he generally cares about people too. Alexander turns his head to look at Sera again while she speaks, quieter than usual. Asks, “did you have someone helping you figure it all out?”

A beat of his own. “You seem so much older sometimes. I don’t mean you look old or anything. Just... your mind or your spirit, I guess. It seems older than your body.” He looks up at the stars again, wondering if that actually made much sense.

Serafíne

"We're all older than our bodies."

Oh how she's fooled him, Sera. He hasn't seen her breaking down, broken down. He hasn't seen her crying, or shaking, or on her knees in his bathroom at 4 a.m. puking her guts out. He hasn't seen her as anything but someone who knows what the fuck is going on, which is also Sera, and also true.

"Our avatars. Our souls. Whatever the fuck it is that helps us connect with the universe and open our fucking eyes. We've been here before. We'll come back again, maybe.

"Different, but - "

Oh, she feels in that moment connected to everything. Neat little stitches drawn with a neat little hand through the stuff of her skin. Finely wrought, beautifully made. Her shoulderblades against the blanket over the grass, her hair arrayed around her head like a halo. Knees bent, bare feet flat, heels empty beside her left hip.

"I had someone. Yeah. I don't really remember her either. I know her name, though.

"Claire."

--

"You are gonna figure this all out, you know."

Ian Lai

[Awareness?]

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

Ian Lai

It was a quiet night at the chantry. Alexander and Serafine were out in the pasture, looking at the stars, and perhaps the presence of a third party might not be a welcome interruption (particularly given the nature of Alexander and Ian's previous encounter.) But as they spoke, the headlights of Ian's Audi cast a white glow over the ground as he pulled into the driveway behind Sera's Jeep. His engine idled for a moment before going quiet.

When Ian left the car, he stopped to look out over the darkened landscape, and a subtle wisp of combined resonance drew his eyes toward to pasture, and the two shadowed figured seated there. Ian watched them for a moment, giving his keys a little spin around his finger before pocketing them. Then he began to make his way across the lawn, ducking between the wooden slats in the open fence as he crossed into the pasture.

"No boots tonight?" he asked of Sera, offering a light smile if she happened to look in his direction.

Alexander Brandt

She was the one to find Alexander when he was convinced he was mad, ready to fling himself into oblivion. She was so sure when they were pulled into the Umbra by a sending. So he is... fooled? Does that imply deception? Mistaken then? Or maybe she is only as human as everyone else, and Alexander is yet to see her on a bad day. When that day comes? Well, she was there for him. So where else is he going to be?

“I didn’t know that. That the Avatars crossed lifetimes, I mean. How does that work, then? What happens to it when somebody dies?” Or to the spirit, for that matter. Now that he knows there is a spirit, that there is some kind of afterlife... What happens after?

Another look Sera’s direction as he says, “Claire. Could you find her? If you wanted to, I mean.” He knows there’s history he doesn’t know – and maybe she doesn’t know either – so would that even be something she wants to do?

The sound of the car goes relatively un-noticed. But the approaching resonance, familiar from the park not so long ago? Alexander rolls his eyes and sighs, not in the mood for games. He sits back up to rest on his elbows and looks towards the new arrival.

Serafíne

Sera shrugs quietly, still sprawled back, her hand splayed open beneath her skull, and there is a kind of surrender in the shrug, though she is as assured in her not-knowing as she is in her knowing.

"Fuck if I know - " and he can hear the half-smile soldered into the words, which in turn threads itself into this supple crescent of a grin as she turns her head and casts a lashed glance at his profile. Dark against the darkness, but distinct, see? A different sort of breathing shadow.

She means, it too. To all of that. Fuck if she knows how Avatars work, fuck if she knows what happens when we die, fuck if she knows what comes next or what came before or where we go when we dream, just that those things happen and each of us is our own sort of universe, this endlessly recursive series of worlds, and she is who and what she is, and she loves that,

loves that,

loves that.

"Might be some books in the library if you want to research it, though. Or you could ask one of the Hermetics. They usually like to read."

This brief, supple grin engages her quick mouth, hidden in the darkness.

"Some of them like to talk, too. And Claire?"

A shake of her head.

"Naw. I'm pretty sure she's dead."

--

Sera's senses are blown wide open tonight. She could feel Ian a half-mile away. A mile. Miles and miles, maybe, peripheral, like a satellite slowly spiraling back to earth at the edges of her awareness, then closer and closer to the center, and then he's here and he comments on her lack-of-boots and she lifts one long, bare leg to show him no, no, no boots tonight.

"Barefoot."

Barelegged too though her heels are on the blanket beside her and she is wearing a remarkably tiny red dress that covers just enough to avoid an indecency charge.

"Do you guys know each other?"

Ian Lai

Neither the sigh nor the roll of Alexander's eyes went unnoticed by Ian, but he didn't offer any particular reaction. Instead he regarded the pair thoughtfully, as though he wasn't entirely sure yet whether he intended to stay or to merely offer a quick greeting. When Sera lifted her leg to show off her bare feet, Ian let his eyes trail from the tip of her pointed toes to the hem of her dress, admiring the way the moon and starlight highlighted the shape of her leg.

"It's a good look on you."

Did he and Alexander know each other? Ian crouched down in the grass, leaving the blanket for its two original occupants, and perched there on the balls of his feet, dipping a hand down to splay his fingers in the grass. The ground beneath it was cold to the touch.

"Not really. We ran into each other once."

He didn't elaborate any further.

Alexander Brandt

Alexander was about to say that he’d ask the Hermetics that he knew, even though what little he knew of the Dreamspeakers and Euthanatos made them more likely to be able to answer his questions. But Ian is there, and the conversation changes onto a different track.

Alexander looks at the other man for a few moments. “Yeah, we’ve met.” His tone isn’t particularly warm. But he seems to make a choice and shuffles round on the blanket a little, bending his legs to make some space for the newcomer – if he wants it. “There’s beer if you want some,” he says, nodding towards the three remaining bottles. Alexadner isn’t going anywhere, at least not yet. And that meeting certainly wasn’t the worst first encounter with Mage-kind. He’s open to seeing what happens.

Serafíne

See? Alexander already knows more about how to figure shit out than Sera does or perhaps ever will. Hermetics have books and read them like whoa; therefore, ask them any factual question you might have and proceed to more or less ignore their answers because who the fuck cares is perhaps her philosophy of research.

And Ian's admiring the shape of her leg in the starlight and Sera's enjoying stretching the muscles, the balance of leverage, the pointed curl of her toes, and Alexander makes room on the blanket but Sera herself does not really think of that. She just makes a noise in the back of her throat and drops her leg after a time and plants both feet on the ground, flat, knees bent, the cocktail stress just covering her hips, still holding her bottle with one hand and cradling her blond head with the other.

"Every looks a good look on me," Sera informs Ian with a quick flash of her teeth in the darkness. "Even better off." The last delivered with a laugh that becomes open mouthed.

"We were just talking about the stars," Sera informs Ian. "How many constellations can you pick out?"

Ian Lai

Alexander shifted on the blanket, and Ian glanced at him for a long, silent moment. It wasn't entirely clear what he was thinking (Ian could be difficult to read even in the daylight,) but eventually he seemed to decide to stick around for a while, because he stood up and walked over to the open patch of blanket. After lowering himself onto it, he stretched his legs out into the grass, crossing them at the ankle, and lay back with his head on Sera's legs. If she seemed to mind his presence there, he'd move. Otherwise, he'd raise an arm and fold it underneath his head, letting his fingers graze the skin on Sera's calf.

Ian had on a white t-shirt underneath a light leather jacket. When he stretched out, the hem of the t-shirt rode up a little on his stomach, but he didn't seem to mind when the chilled breeze touched his skin.

"Maybe later," he answered when Alex offered him a beer.

Sera asked him how many constellations he could pick out.

"I don't really know astronomy. The dippers, I guess." (Everyone knew those.) "Someone showed me Scorpio once, but I don't think I remember it."

Alexander Brandt

Ignore what they say or, depending on the Hermetic, have trouble taking it all in and remembering it later. Some woman having visions on a mountain got together with a few other mages to create what would turn into the Traditions? Wasn’t that the basic gist of how the cool kids got together for survival?

Alexander shuffles again, booted feet flat on the ground with his knees up. He takes a last swig from the beer bottle, draining it dry, before lying back on the blanket again. “We could make our own up. Like looking for the shapes in clouds, just with the stars instead. There’s...” he turns his head round, squints a little, points to a random patch of sky. He smiles when he finishes the sentence, “Hera’s handbag.” The smile fades a little as he lifts his head to look towards the other man. “I’m Alexander, by the way.”

Serafíne

Here is a noise for Alexander, all back of the throat and bemused, the sort that lingers there and thrums beneath her skin and reminds her of the way hearts and mouths work, and god knows what-all-else. But listen: Alexander names Hera's purse and Sera breathes out through her nostrils this silent sort-of-laugh and Ian's stretched out now with his head resting on her legs and Sera is surprised by this but she is also: look and languid and she requires contact the way most people require oxygen and therefore, she does not shake him off. Just lifts her chin a bit to glance down the line of her body at him, starlight flashing across the surface of her dark eyes.

That look lasts just for a moment then her head is tipped back again.

"That one looks like a ballerina balancing on a rhino's horn," Sera proposes to Alexander, pointing at something in the sky that could be a star or maybe a satellite and certainly bears no resemblance to a ballerina balancing on a rhino's horn so either she's hallucinating or she's making a joke.

Then Alexander is introducing himself and Sera finds herself saying, to Ian,

"Alexander's awesome." Which is: true, although she doesn't know why she's saying it.

Ian Lai

Ian actually laughed a little at Alexander's suggestion, giving a light exhale. "Ian."

There. Now they'd met (officially.) And they'd actually managed to exchange a few words without lacing them with barbs or hidden meaning. Whatever was the world coming to? Perhaps it was Sera's presence that changed the dynamic, or maybe Alex was just a decent guy willing to give a relative stranger a second chance.

Sera imagined that she saw a ballerina, and perhaps she meant something by it (Ian didn't know how much of their encounter in the park she actually remembered,) or perhaps she said it without really making the connection. Either way, Ian didn't seem to care. He lifted his free arm and pointed at a spot in the sky.

"That's clearly a bunch of centaurs having an orgy."

Sera thought that Alexander was awesome. And Ian? Just smiled, all wry and one-sided, and abstained from comment.

Alexander Brandt

Alexander nods to Ian in greeting as they exchange names and relaxes a little. Perhaps Alexander is a decent guy, and maybe he reacts better when he doesn’t feel like he’s being played with by a complete stranger. Either way, he’s comfortable and had no urge to run off and leave the others behind. Again.

The suggestions from the others get him laughing, strangely without feeling like he has to hold anything back. There’s no imminent disaster, no bruised feelings, no floundering out of his depth or awkwardness at being the clueless new guy who barely knows enough to keep himself out of trouble. Who cares about baggage from the past, or the great unknowns of the future? For now, at least. Come the next disaster, mystery, other weirdness, or maybe even the next morning? They may well come back. But for now he’s feeling the happiest he has in a while.

The smile comes across in Alexander’s tone as he speaks. “That is not centaurs having an orgy. That is definitely a group of nuns riding a carousel.” He reaches for the tortilla chips and nudges the other two Mages with the bag, offering them.

Serafíne

Sera makes a noise when Ian suggests centaurs having an orgy. Bless Sister Mary Peter, who was her Antiquities instructor before Sera was kicked out of boarding school for being, essentially, a Sera, because Sera does know myths. Or myth. Some myths anyway: those hoary old Greeks, all the betrayal and infighting, all the incest and secrecy.

"Don't you mean satyrs?" she asks Ian when he proposes centaurs, nudging him a bit with her knee or her thigh, lifting her head to take a swig from whatever the fuck is in that bottle, then dropping it back again.

"Anyway, why don't we split the difference and call it a group of nuns having an orgy on a carousel?"

Ian Lai

Alexander was happier than he'd been in a long time, but Ian didn't have any frame of reference to understand what the moment meant to him. Neither was he fully aware of the degree to which Alexander had interpreted their last encounter as manipulative. Ian himself likely wouldn't have described it that way, but since his intentions remained difficult to parse, the only interpretation Alex had to work with was his own. It was a fair guess that the two of them might never be the best of friends, but for the moment at least, that night seemed a distant thing.

Sera found a way to combine the two constellations, and Ian grinned, his teeth gleaming like ivory in the darkness. "I like the way you play this game."

And he tilted his head to look up at her, offering some sort of silent exchange. (Like he was asking for permission to do... something.) Beneath his head, he let his fingers brush slow strokes along her skin.

Evidently the fact that Alex was sitting right beside them was not much of a deterrent from flirting.

Serafíne

Per + Awareness as empathy: look?

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 1, 7, 9, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )

Alexander Brandt

“Yeah, that works,” Alexander adds, still smiling. His presence may not be any deterrent against flirting but, then, it’s been subtle enough so far that it hasn’t made him feel awkwardly in the way and find a reason to leave. “Might need a less obvious name, though. Sister Mary’s Pleasure, or something like that?” Because aren’t all good nuns called Mary?

While he has no urge to run away, a certain urge to run to something has been building for a little while. Between the beer and the cold, it’s starting to become rather insistent. “I’ll be right back,” he says to the others as he rolls round onto his knees and stands. “Call of nature. And not the clawed furry kind. You guys want anything from inside?” He waits for the answers from the two still on the blanket before heading in to find the bathroom.

[And OOCly, it’s nealy 6am and I’m flagging – thank you for the scene!]

Ian Lai

Perhaps in his attempt to communicate, Ian reveals more than he'd intended. He is tired. Not physically, but emotionally. Tired and worn around the edges, and something in the wanting of his gaze suggests a deep desire in him to just... let these things go. To forget. To be something else for a while. Something he knows. Something he is good at.

He thinks Sera is beautiful. He hasn't exactly hidden that fact. For all that she is a very different sort of creature than him. For all that he's seen her in some of her less flattering moments. She has something primal and honest that he wants to surround himself with. Something bright and vibrant enough to chase everything else away.

See, he doesn't care that Alex is there. He might very well start hitting on Alex, too, were it not for the fact that Alex was leaving.

In the most basic terms: He wants a distraction. He wants to get laid. But right now he's just asking if he can touch her. Kiss her maybe. More than what he's doing now.

Serafíne

Sera breathes out sharply as Alexander takes his leave. Maybe there was a laugh beneath her breath for the joke-within-a-joke. Maybe there was something else in the way she watches him, as he pushes himself to his feet and rises to head (briefly) inside. Leaves the blanket and the other mages behind though. The four remaining beers from the six pack and Sera with her wine-or-whiskey and the night sky and the renamed constellations and the cool night air, and Sera -

- rises to her elbows and shakes out her (dyed) blond curls and looks down the line of her body at Ian. Her gaze is both slanted and shadowed but she is such an open creature, there is no deception in her. Nothing close to it, although sometimes the wick and the moonlight conspire to create something like it, some illusion of a veil.

That is how she remains for a rather long moment: quiet, see, her mouth not precisely pursed, watching Ian as he touches her, as he strokes her skin in a way that is really rather intimate for all that they are virtual strangers. This slidingly astute look, this quiet hum of awareness that skims and - here and there - dives below the superficial mystery of a stranger.

"I didn't know we were playing a game. I sure as hell don't know the fucking rules. If I did, I'd probably break them."

She picks up her bottle: another swig, the whiskey (see: it is whiskey, not wine) burns and brings tears to her eyes. Sera doesn't mind. Alexander is retreating toward the house, they can still hear his footsteps on the grass.

It is the exhaustion that touches her, above all else. Her voice is quiet when she tells him, softly, "You can kiss me if you want."

Ian Lai

[Empathy, because permission and reciprocation are two very different things]

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

Serafíne

There is always Want in Sera. Sera is a creature of Want and now is no different. Touch her the way he is touching her leg, the soft slow strokes, and she is so exquisitely responsive to that touch. The overriding beat in her right now, though, is empathy, a kind of shunted ache for Ian mixed with sort of sublingual surprise that he is not all slick surface. She would like to kiss him; she wants to inhale that emotional exhaustion straight from his body, see? but there is also an ambivalence about her that is a bit hard to parse because he knows so little about her, and in many ways, she knows so little about her self.

And around or beneath that ambivalence, he can sense that even if they do make out, he is probably not going to get laid tonight. At least not out here, on the blanket in the shadow of the chantry beneath the stars.

Ian Lai

"No thanks," Ian replied lightly to Alex's request, glancing over at him as he stood up to leave. He probably wouldn't be gone long, but as he walked away the air grew still, and it became easy to forget that there were yet other people nearby.

(No, not easy to forget. They were there. You could feel them. But it seemed less important, somehow. To Ian, at least. Or maybe he'd never really cared to begin with.)

He'd meant the constellations, when he'd used the word 'game.' Now though? See that look in his eyes? Even in the dark, it was clear. More honest and direct than he almost ever was.

This was not a game to him.

And in the depths of it somewhere, perhaps Sera would see the flickers of something a little dark and feral that lived under the sleek surface of his skin. It was the same thing that had made him recoil from Kalen's attempts to provide comfort. The same thing that had led him down all manner of self-destructive paths in his younger days. See, not every part of him was clean. Not by a long shot.

In that moment, they didn't want the same thing. But they could have something, at least. So Ian turned his head and pressed his mouth to the place where his hand had been, closing his eyes as he kissed her leg. Then he unfolded his arm and sat up. But there was no rush. His energy was still and quiet.

"I'm not what you think I am."

He was, and he wasn't. It was a complicated answer.

"When I came out here, I was going to ask if you could let me into the library."

Maybe it was the stars. They did funny things to people.

He leaned forward and pressed another kiss to her temple, pausing there to let a gust of warm breath wash over her skin.

But he did not kiss her mouth.

"Maybe we should do that."

And he retreated then, pushing himself to his feet and holding a hand out to help her up, if she needed it.

Serafíne

Sera watches Ian quietly as he turns to press his mouth to her bare calf, or perhaps her thigh. Her skin is cool and the night is cold and faint little pinprick goosebumps scatter where his warm mouth touches her skin. She does not move, though, and there is a sort of grandeur in her stillness, the settled surety one expects from a priestess or a goddess. Then he rises, shift his weight, turns his body to lean up and press another kiss to her temple and here Sera closes her eyes. Her breath catches, and she cuts a brief glance all shunting-away, then back, lifting her chin to follow the track of his moon-and-starshadows across her lean frame.

He tells her, then, that he isn't what she thinks he is.

She makes a noise in the back of her throat, which sounds like assent, or at least like that's fair.

"I wonder what you think I am."

Sera murmurs as she reaches out to take his hand, allowing herself to be pulled upright.

"But sure. Alright, c'mon. Follow me, I'll let you in."

Call it art.

Lucy

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

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

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

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

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

Delilah

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lucy

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

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

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

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

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

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

Delilah

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

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

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

Lucy

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

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

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

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

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

Lena Reilly

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

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

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

Lucy

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

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

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

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

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

Serafíne

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

Some things are better that way.

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

Sera is around but not here yet.

Her friends are here, though.

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

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

No one you'd notice.

Lena Reilly

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

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

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

Delilah

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

That guy, that guy, that guy.

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

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

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

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

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

Serafíne

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

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

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

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

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

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

There are others mounted too high for her to see.

She would hop but: wine.

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

Lucy

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lena Reilly

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

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

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

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

Delilah

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

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

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

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

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

Lucy

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

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

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

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

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

Serafíne

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

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

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

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

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

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