some thoughts on mercy

William

He's got a few more days in Denver before he ahs to catch another flight out of here back to Louisiana to deal with his family for, what William presumes, is going to be another awkward Thanksgiving where his relatives are nice, ask how things are, generally avoid talking about the big awkward thing in the room where they're fairly certain he shouldn't be living on his own (espeically since Jenn's gone- up and moved to Los Angeles, is actually having a pretty damned fantastic time, and avoiding the fucking blizzard that Denver is currently experiencing) .

Exhale.

He got to Sera's place through a buzz route, a train, and very careful navigation that didn't involve having to use a motorcycle. He was going to have to get a car now. Wasn't going to have to worry about covering the rent because he was the one who paid for the apartment anyway- had Jenn's back when things were a bit much for her but we digress again because it is a time for digression.

He stands on the porch, knocks because he always knocks, but actually waits to be let in this time. Takes in his surroundings and how much he can't stand the fact that it's cold and he can feel it in his lungs and how he keeps checking to be sure the sun hasn't burned out.

It hasn't, by the way.

Serafíne

The blizzard warnings were bloody well overstated thank you very much NWS with your aggressive forecasting. No need to run out day-before-yesterday on a desperate quest for milk and bread and cigarettes and beer and Tito's Handmade Vodka and cheap red wine and cloves and local honey and cloves and cinnamon and firewood and carrots just in case there was enough snow to build snowpersons each of whom would require: noses but what the hell. There's enough snow that the residents of 719 Corona Street can pretend that they are snowbound and throw a party. Or kind of a party.

Out front there are these maybe foot-and-a-half high snowpersons with raisin eyeballs and these pouty-red twizzler mouths and hot-pink shot glasses and a semi-frozen can of Pabst Blue Ribbon. Have to walk past them to get to the porch.

There's alcohol enough for whoever shows up. Wine mulling with spices on the stove. A red velvet cake cooling on the rack waiting to be iced and a bit pot of chili and this lovely jalapeno-cheese cornbread to be crumbled into some waiting bowl and inhaled along with the spices. For whomever shows up.
--
Elijah shows up.

Knocks, as he does. Takes a little while because the residents here never expect their visitors to knock but bare feet on warm wooden floorboards and then Dee opens the front door.

"Elijah! God I hope you aren't frozen to death, though honestly I'm a little disappointed in our mediocre blizzard. We haven't had a proper one since I moved back, and here we locked in supplies for days. Your timing's great, though. Sera got in this morning? Probably the last flight that landed at DIA before they shut it down. I'm making a red velvet cake as a welcome home." Stepping back to let him in, closing the door after. Shivering that inside shiver: like fuck, she forgot it was winter outside. Keeps chattering as she walks back through: the foyer and down the long hallway, past the empty front parlor, toward the kitchen and living room that are, in winter anyway, the heart of the house. Is he hungry? Does he want a drink? Does he like hot wine? Warms you up but good. Rick made the chili and Dee the cornbread, there's this grist mill in Golden that does the cornmeal, stone ground, artisinal, can't be beat.

William

"What is wrong with the mountains?! Dee, why is there snow? Louisiana doesn't have snow."

Said like someone who is not from here, and he is very much not from here. He would never get used to snow, just like he would never get used to the fact that Denver is a place that doesn't have any air and he's still making peace with the fact that his lungs are going to have to readjust to the fact that this place has nothing remotely resembling air since they're a mile above sea level.

He already misses home and he hasn't made it back yet. He already wants to be back in Denver, though, even though the time to realize homesickness isn't a real thing has passed him.

But he comes in, hugs Dee if she'll let him like he's a lost toddler trying to make sense of a world that makes abso-fucking-lutely no sense to him. Laughs after a point when he steps in and he's cold but he's not cold, because very rarely has Elijah's demeanor been anything other than warm. He goes through the checklist- he would like chili, mulled wine sounds fantastic, you can't go wrong with cornbread, and he might have water and a nap after that but he'll probably take the nap somewhere else. He just wanted to come by and see human beings whose company he enjoys.

Which, in case she has not guessed, includes Dee.

Serafíne

The first non-awakened person to see her was a bus-boy in the only remaining Howard Johnson's Restaurant on the Pennsylvania Turnpike and he had been avoiding (for some reason) clearing off booth 13 where she was ensconsed, reading Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Gay, mouth moving with the words, picking at some stranger's leftover fried clams and slipping them underneath the table to Sid, crowded all gawky around the table legs, mostly out of the way, and truth: he didn't notice her, not right away. He saw the dog's tail sweeping out from beneath the booth and thought: maybe the shit is cousin got her two weeks ago really was LSD with some really delayed action; and then thought: fuck, a snake!; and then thought: what's a dog - ; and then realized the dog was actually there and was attached to a girl he couldn't take his eyes off, once he noticed her. Sunglasses and a weird, skinny book and a leather jacket and something about her that made his breath stop and his chest hum with something he couldn't really name. Not love or lust or anything, but something else entirely, something that made him want to: be, rise, change, wake.

Wake.

Wake.

--

"Shit I'm sorry. Let me clean that off for you."

He meant the table. She started crying. And he wanted to, but somehow he couldn't begin to ask her why.

That was less than twelve hours ago.

--

Elijah laments the presence of snow to a girl who was lamenting not 2.3 seconds ago the lack-of-it, so: perspective, you know. That's all that matters. She pats his poor tender head and suggests that he get a nice tobaggan. That's what she says: tobaggan. Dee has a friend who hand-knits them with slightly - well - racy takes on the traditional Fair Isle patterns and sells them on Etsy and maybe Elijah would like to buy one before the real snow comes? If it ever does?

He is loaded up with whatever he wants: mulled wine, chili, cornbread, a hot toddy, probably a goddamned napkin or three and hey! living room. There's a fire starting to crackle in the hearth and Sera and Dan on the couch and a dog kinda crowded-underneath the coffee table, part of her muzzle and part of her tail sticking out because PEOPLE ARE HERE AND SHE LIKES PEOPLE. Sera is curled up with Dan: hasn't left his side since she got home. He has arm flung around her body and her temple is resting on his shoulder and his head tilted towards hers, mouth close to her brow. She's too drunk to decide whether his beard is scratchy or ticklish but either way it makes her fucking happy. So happy she is still sometimes starts crying for no goddamned reason.

Dan lifts his free arm and gives Elijah a wave. Shifts and murmurs something into Our Sera's ear, enough to have her following suit. Waving: hi, hello, salut, what the fuck ever.

William

"Wait, what is a tobaggan?"

And thus there was the explanation, which made him laugh, and he was soon enough inside. Ditched the coat and the scarf and the gloves but doesn't take his vest off or anything else because Elijah was fucking prepared for the day that things were going to be cold and, truth be told, he was always dressed in too damn much clothing anyway because he liked the aesthetic. Could deal with being a little warm and now he could survive it.

So he sits down in the floor, where he can see Sera and Dan and seems... intent. Intent on looking at people and taking them in, perhaps odd because he'd want to be there in the middle. He'd wanted to pile in and be in her space and have moments of just talking and listening and conveying the world of things that he wanted to say but couldn't because-

Well, because. There were people, and she'd spent so long without them. Couldn't dare interrupt it to take that time for himself because, like Dee said, she just got home. He's eating, sneaks Sid a piece of cornbread.

"So, house is full again," he says, smiles, just takes it all in for what it is.

Serafíne

There are times when she looks harrowed. Walks herself to some invisible edge and just stays there for so goddamned long you'd think she would have no choice but to fall, and she has that look about her now, Sera. That bones-through-skin translucency. The too-sharp profile, the spare, fine-spun sense that she was created, not born, and from all the things that are disappearing from this world.

And yet: also a sort of fullness to her, that sense of repletion that opens beneath the breastbone at the first sight of a too-full moon. She's glossy and way-too-drunk and watches Elijah as he crosses the room juggling chili and cornbread and wine or whatever and sits where he sits and as he feeds Sid ('sneaks' hah) some cornbread and Sid is okay with cornbread but she would like chili much fucking better, thank you, and Elijah remarks that the house is full again and Dan's eyes stitch to him briefly then. Wry grin that touches his mouth but looks - well - weary when it gets to his eyes. "Yeah," is what he says in response, and it sounds so: solid that there's as much meaning in that one word as there is a whole damn tree, root to branch and back again.

He says something to Sera right into her ear, and whatever it is is enough to rouse her, to have her perking up like an adorable goddamned meerkat who could tear your body apart from the inside out, so incrementally you'd swear the world had started spinning backwards and then she's up, untangling from the throw she'd wrapped around her long, long legs, shaking it off one leg that is especially tangled, laughing as she stitch-hops and then, fuck it, sort of untwirling from it. She is wearing: a man's button-down shirt and black lace panties and her hair is still damp from the shower but only in the middle of the mass and Dan's trying to figure out what she's going for before she staggers into the fire but she's magick, she's not staggering into the fire.

So; lots of complications.

But she finds what she's looking for: a superbly battered fuzzy panda-bear backpack and pulls out something: a book!

Which she hands to Elijah as she bends weavingly down and kisses him on the temple.

Murmuring, "Proud of you, kid. Congrats."

William

He had once talked about wanting to know Serafine as a human being, wanted to know things like what her fond memories were and where she was from- never asked what her birth name was though it comes to him. Knows that perhaps he shouldn't ask that, especially now that names have such a significance. She is how she is, she is as she is. Not her complete definition but that bit of truth isn't his to actually touch. Wouldn't dream of knowing someone so intimately, but he certainly does have the fantasy of getting to know her. Past what she presents and, instead, the places that take her further from whatever box people use to define her.

He's earned his keep in this city, whatever weird and miraculous things he's witnessed have come in dreams or had the misfortune of crossing his doorstep. What he's capable of is often a question of debate, the general consensus being that he's still young, still inexperienced, still very much that deer on spindly legs and yet-

He just came back from an experience that said the opposite. Where his betters assessed and didn't find him wanting, where he was regarded as someone that people could see as a peer. Came back to Denver and things have changed, drastically so but not in a bad way. This is more of the same, but a welcome stability and who would have ever accused Serafine of being a source of stability in his life?

She swings by, has a book in hand which he then is holding, kisses him on the temple and he half whispers- words only for her- "It's William now," he tells her, "but you can call me whatever you want. Won't be salty."

Pulls back and looks back at her, smiles and looks at the book in his hands, "scout's honor."

Serafíne

The book in his hands is a small, slim book by a man named Ross Gay. It is the book she was reading this morning - slouched, slung low really, one the bench seat of Booth 13 of the last remaining Howard Johnson's restaurant on the Pennsylvania turnpike when: someone noticed.

--

The cover is a bright riot of color, like Claude Monet had sex with de Kooning and Frieda Kahla and made it: see? This. The name is: Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude.

--

"William. I'll call you whatever the fuck you want me to call you."

then she is: standing up. Something about the way she does it suggests that remaining upright is a goddamned pleasure and a near-insurmountable challenge but she's taking it on with goddamned gusto. Balancing with an outflung hand on the crown of his head while also wiggling her fingers at Dan all come get me please, which he loves, and also: refuses to do. On principle, at least right now.

William

She'll call him whatever he wants her to call him, and it makes... it provokes and evokes a reaction that is not one other than pleasure, of relief. Like he expected it to be harder, like he expected her not to, like he'd expected a lot of things and it's a sign to him that there's acceptance of the newer parts of his life, that he's not drowning and someone accepts that about him.

He looks at the cover, holds it and turns to the page indicated and he looks it over. Eyes trail over words and he's reading, translating- a little known fact. Sometimes, English hitches in the back of his mind. Only occasionally, but it means when it comes to poetry he is mindful of what he is reading. Takes it in slowly and then perks up.

Flashes a bright grin at Sera-

"I wanna read this," he announces.

And so he does. Starts off with "Friends, will you bear with me today,
for I have awakened
from a dream in which a robin
made with its shabby wings a kind of veil-"

There's a way that he reads, a way that he presents things and a way that he seems aware of what he's doing. He's a storyteller, this one. Can convey what is in front of him and words come by with delight. Reads aloud for others to enjoy, but eventually settles again in to observing people. Trades stories with people about how Boston was- Dan knows which hulking details he's leaving out. Listens to the little bits of people's days and is just content to take them all in. The huamnity of it, the warmth of it, the way that this house feels more like a home than any number of places he's been.

He'll fly out again in less than a week, may think of being on Corona street instead of Baton Rouge.

Ghost in the Machine

mercury

The front of this building brickwork is old and dirty and dirty with age. Nobody's coming to clean the age from its face and make it bright again and there it is almost gray, almost black, smutty sooty stained ingrained in a darkness that is as much a filter as any instagram nostalgia filter meant to lend a moment a glow except this is real life and this is the opposite. The building is an apartment building in the heart of Brooklyn where ever the heart happens to be tonight (it moves) and down one block there are liquor stores and meth labs and down the other block there are crooked cops and a bowling alley and a small Ethiopian restaurant and a dead orange cat and at this building, the brickwork building with its two 1910s stained glass windows gleaming with tired amber and red above like a benediction, the winter-starveling remnants of vines, there is a party going on inside. Two apartments are open on the second floor and the hall is a-wash with bodies and the woman whose apartment is principally responsible for the party has every sort of booze you might imagine (this woman might be a Verbena) and a lot of the furniture is grand and a mishmash of Art Nouveau and Eastlake and it is real wood and the bedroom smells like cardamom.

In the bedroom is a woman who is (Awake [Sorcery, Will]) lounging like a tiger across the Verbena's bed, a notebook balanced on one thigh and in her hand/balanced atop her other knee a tumbler of something that tastes like fire going down like the corrosion of copper the fusion of heat to tongue and there is a smoke wreathing her head but it is from a cigarette (she rarely smokes) held between her ring and middle finger the same ring and middle finger belonging to the hand holding the tumbler. There's a pen in her other hand, as well as the fine balance of notebook. Her feet are bare but there are a pair of golden sandals on the ground which look about her side, be-leafed things not quite ridiculous but not weather-appropriate. The woman is in a moment of half-languorous half-rousing-to-fierce meditation, a smile just beginning to tempt her mouth into wickedness or joy or something unexpected.

Serafíne

Orpheus sat gloomy in his garden shed
Wondering what to do
With a lump of wood, a piece of wire
And a little pot of glue
O Mamma O Mamma

Nick Cave comes thumping out of the bluetooth speakers somewhere. Maybe this is a take-over, maybe it was always in the mix but there it is, slithering out of the windows, seeping through the mortared walls, and it must be the music that pulls her in tonight, along with her goddamned dog, because it sure as hell isn't the party. No one attending it can see her. So the place smells of cardamom and pot smoke and there are drinks, with gin and blueberries and rosemary, refreshments scattered here and there. Those cocktail Samosas from Trader Joe's and an enormous bowl of heirloom popcorn and on and on and on and there must be cocktail weenies, somewhere, too. What's a hipster party in a brownstone without cocktail weenies? What's a party anywhere ever without cocktail weenies?

Ghost in the machine, spare creature made spare-er by want, by privation, by absence that is not now a choice but which she wears as if it were - not armor, no but perhaps, ceremonial robes.

White t-shirt over a black-bra and beneath a gray hoodie, beneath a leather jacket. Denim cut-offs and fishnets, which no longer smell like the back third of a greyhound bus, but instead are still warm with that hot, clean, linty-smell of the inside of a landromat. This dog hunting at her heels.

She snags a couple of cocktail weeknies and breaks one in half and feeds it to Sid, grease on her hands.

Slides through the strangers unseen. Finds a corner and lifts herself onto the spine-of-a-couch and allows the low hum of voices to wash over her, trolling through them like she's looking for the little thread she might pull to unravel the whole of it.

mercury

There are (at least) two people at this party who will see can see may see such strange-wisp ghosts as Serafíne. The apartment-owner who is in the kitchen, re-filling a bowl of snacks and watchful with a level lodestone inquiry because everybody's gotta have drinks or snacks or something and the Verbena is going to make it so and what the fuck is wrong with the bonfire in the backyard Steve and fuck okay fine and the bonfire in the backyard needs tending which is a lot of heavy boots pounding on stairs to get out again. The woman who is in the bedroom, yielding to the smile the smile gone to a scimitar sharp thing a delighted-with-herself surprised-by-herself ah hah thing the color of the smile as red as her hair. Neither is placed to easily espy a drifter with a dog, dogs welcome!, a striking young woman on the spine of the couch (leather [cowhide] burnt colors caramel tea colors) with an expression that might dissolve -

But let's say that pleased with herself and triumphal, the woman in the bedroom finishes her notation and rubs the callused heel of her left foot up and down her right calf, then stretches one leg and points her toes, cracks them, and they are painted a pale gunmetal blue which has a sheen on it like the sheen on a sword - and then the woman in the bedroom finishes off her scotch in one gulp, then her own eyes (also the blue of a sword, the gleam of metal) scrunch almost-closed to-glittering-slits as they water and her throat protests and in her chest there blooms something hot -

and the woman takes a drag of her cigarette, tucks the notebook under her arm, light shudders across the fabric of her dress (ruddy, like an autumn leaf dipped in blood and turned into some fey-made thing - handsome color) like the idea-of-a-snake trying-to-be-born, and there is a ring on every finger, a necklace on a chain hangs low below the cinch of her dress's waist, but the light shudders when she gets up to replace her temporarily empty glass with one all-the-way-full -

and that's when she notices the dog and beautiful woman; perhaps that's when there's a tickle, the first thread of awareness, or the woman (formerly of the bedroom and currently of the where is more scotch grailquest for fire fire-for-mankind persuasion) cocks an eyebrow at Serafíne for no reason other than that it happened that way; the flex of some subconscious sense of her surroundings, of somebody new.

Awareness and alertness are both things hard-won, so: become aware, check back. Past the Serafíne, into the kitchen, she knows where her drink is - decides to take the bottle and tuck it under her arm along with the notebook; gone a spare half-minute before she's on the verge of striding back through the main room with the couch and the is Serafíne still on her perch?

No, the woman's eyes are not the color of a sword. They're the color of a gray river-light day, fog rising from the water. A certain slant of pewter-blue.

Serafíne

Made as she was to see and made as she was to be seen she is sitting there on the spine of the couch in a stranger's apartment quite entirely alone (but for the dog) and it isn't simply because no one else can see her. The posture, the presence, these things are separate, apart, like a double-exposure with the creature superimposed upon the party, or perhaps the party superimposed upon the girl.

--

The lift of her eyes. The marking-of-a-passing, that stitch of awareness as the apartment owner cuts through the shifting crowd falls away as she disappears. Releases her as easily as a child does a balloon, as anyone does anything.

When the apartment-owner returns, the Serafíne remains on her perch. Peels apart another cocktail weenie and holds it up-up-up while the dog looks-looks-looks, then lets it go, tosses it high enough that the dog (an adolescent, still, youthful and brawny and affable for all her size and strength) leaps up to snap it out of the air.

"I hope I'm not - " A beat, an orientation. " - overstepping by popping in. I heard the music."

poetry for anyone who wants it

We don't have to worry
Life goes where it does
Faster than a bullet
From an empty gun

- Beck, Round the Bend

Somewhere north of Rosebud, South Dakota and the only reason she understands the place is because there are times when place is as tattooed to her fingertips as time is to the back of her eyes. A sense of spatial relationships, of the earth growing wings around her, the flat raw jagged plains which are so open and endless they make her lungs hurt, but duck into any building built by human hands to human scale for human habitation and here you are, confined again. Neon hums against the darkness and no one was expecting snow but here it is, not early but -

- hey, doesn't summer always lull us into believing that this time, this fucking time, she's going to last forever?

--

The accumulated slush is already melting off the enormous LOVE'S TRAVEL STOP sign, up there shuddering in the last gasp of the stormfront chasing through, and the few eighteen-wheelers that took refuge in the parking lot during the height of the storm have more or less moved on. Four-fifteen in the morning and Jaycee Millikin, night clerk/hostess/waitress and George Romero, the line cook/security/bus boy are hanging out by the counter shooting the shit. He's waxing eloquent about the zombie / torture flick (he takes his name that seriously) he is shooting with the old super-8 camera his older brother put in the mail to him forty-five minutes before he jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge, has a part for her, is saving a role for her, but she hardly notices. All she can do is daydream about making it to NYC, she keeps thinking about how one interstate connects to the next and all she has to do is say fuck everything hit the road. Be there in no time.

Though the truth is, she'll never go.

Never even leave the zip code.

--

And it is one of those nights where something is unsettled, something is not-quite-right. They keep forgetting or misplacing shit. The door to shower #3 was left open but maybe it is simply the latch that is sticking, there's something wrong? Something unintentional, something that rises from the time-of-year, from the closing-of-doors or maybe their opening. Some hungry-ghost hanging about the periphery-of-things.

Which is: not wrong. She's sitting cross-legged at the end of the counter, combing out her long damp hair, peeling apart the weird cheeseburger-hot-dog thing she lifted from the rolling grill and feeding it to Sid with greasy fingers, careful, careful, teaching the animal tricks without understanding that that is precisely what she's doing. When the bit of meat is front-and-center, Sid is both so excited her body shivers with it, and that's a fact not a fucking metaphor, and so bright and still and focused she only moves her snout to track the minute flick of the girl's fingers. Snaps it out of the air like a champion. Jaycee and George Romero notice - well - nothing, nothing at all.

For herself, she doesn't really eat. Is so so hungry-not-hungry, in a way that both transcends and absolutely returns to the physical that she shakes with it, too.

--

Jim would've been good at this. Hell, maybe that's what he left their lives to do, right? There are all sorts of bullshit stories about exiles and odysseys, strange gods and the open road. He'd start the day with yoga in a park he'd never met before, steam rising off the captive lake, the gathering of strangers who couldn't-quite-see and bask in their - fuck, whatever it is. The reverence that comes rising up in us with the miracle of a goddamned sunrise. The renewed wonder that you are still on this earth at all. That there's such a goddamned thing -

- and fuck, okay. She feels all of that, right? The certain slant of first-light, the crystalline stillness of pre-dawn, the strange and hungry wonder that comes from: something new, something new, something new. But she wasn't made for any of this and even calmly, clearly choosing this sort of exile over any other: each day hurts. God it hurts.

She opens herself to it. Strips herself down until that certainty, that bright pain is all she has, and all she is.

--

The back bench seat of a Trailways bus, the open bed of a pick-up truck, the rattling sardine-can interior of a boxcar - yep, that too - city buses, county buses, the funicular up to Fort Pitt. Amtrak: that's the best. The worn red velvet seats and the country moving alongside at sixty or seventy miles an hour. Empty sleeper berth when she gets tired of wandering. There is a guy with a typewriter in second class crafting poems along the way for any passenger who asks for one and she sits and watches him for hours as a cold autumn day wraps itself into a colder autumn night.

The Magic Flute

William

He was still in Boston, holed up in a room with a few recent-additions to the Tradition and William had gone through some effort to actually make friends and contacts that he can actually come back. He's got a legacy to uphold now, it's real. IT's really real, and he could have called any number of people and, perhaps with wishful thinking, he thought that maybe he could call Sera.

He should know better, knows that she's been unable to make calls. Knows that she's a spectre in the city, but he tries anyway, thinks that maybe he can leave her a voicemail. Leave her poetry and tidings and any number of things.

William misses Serafine. He's still having to get accustomed to which name he needs to sign when, but he calls her phone anyway.

Dan

Dinner has Dan sitting in a coffeehouse / cafe / bar called CASH ONLY with Rick and a few friends. There's a beer on the table in front of him that he's been nursing for an hour, and a half-decimated platter of "Irish Nachos" on the table between them. He sits back with enough of a view of the snow melting over the sidewalk, that strange, bright, burnt-orange blast of artificial light reflecting on snow that always feels like the first edge of a nuclear winter.

He's carrying two phones, these days, ignoring the constant little vibrations of texts sliding in in favor of sitting and having a conversation with friends he likes. The ringtone for a call is different, though. Is She Weird warbles Black Francis, which makes him shift his ass half-off the seat and pull out the phone, enough to glance at it and see who's calling. Then he stands up, waves an apology to friends and steps away, out into the chilly November night,

"Elijah." Male voice, baritone, too deep to be Sera. Affection wrapped up into the greeting, though. The suggestion of a beard brushing against the receiver. "What's up?"

William

The backdrop of Elijah's call seems pretty quiet, all things said. He hears the voice, the affection in it and while it isn't Serafine it is Dan, and Dan is a welcomed treat in and of itself. The smile is clear on his face, in his voice. There's the rustle of fabric, probably a blanket or a pillowcase or something to that effect.

"I'm in Boston! Got through all my sorting hat business and graduated from hogwarts or whatever freaking Harry Potter analogy you want to make," Dan can all but hear the young man wave something off.

"I'll be coming back pretty soon, do you want anything?"

Dan

"From Boston?" An inflected rise of the consor's voice, this quiet bemusement braided into his tone. It is only now that response to his question: what's up? has spilled into a breathless explanation that Dan can begin to decipher only because he has had years of deciphering Sera's fucked-up ramblings that he finds the tension in his spine starting to unknot.

And he tries, makes an effort, not to allow that tension to enter his voice. "Maybe snowboots. Not for me but for you. Winter's made an appearance."

A short breath out, which sounds like a smoker's exhale but Dan isn't smoking today. "So that means you're official? They give you a scarf and a coat-of-arms and everything? Anyone ask you to try out for the quidditch team?"

William

"Yeah, I've got the scarf and everything. I have been tagged, Named, and thrust upon the world. God have mercy on us all," he's excited. It's obvious he's excited because he's rambling and, frankly, unless someone was there with him it was a little difficult to catch what he was actually talking about.

"Turns out I'm shit on a broom, though," he laughs, "on a more realistic note I'm kind of sad winter has shown up, I thought it was just happening up north so I was vehemently trying to wish it away because it's fucking cold."

It dawns on him that Serafine isn't the one who answered the phone. There's a bit of silence there before-

"Hey, you holding up okay? If you're out with people I can call you back."

Dan

"I'm cool," Dan assures him, in that low-rumble, and these are things that one says. Over the phone, over wires or ether or whatever strange and agreed-upon magick allows us to be everywhere at once. He straightens up, takes in the street. Doesn't think the call will be long but he doesn't seem to be in a hurry to get back to the folks inside. Lets the music stay behind him, dulled to a low but present hum by the windowglass.

"Congratulations, though. You doing anything to celebrate? Have anyone to celebrate with?"

--

Doesn't ask the new Name.

Knows enough not to. Doesn't believe in that particular power but Elijah's belief in this matters more than Dan's.

William

"I've been trying to cram about as much partying in with my new housemates as possible- it's... We're not a giant house, but we're supposed to be diplomats, you know? So, like, actually interacting with each other and building a working relationship seems like a pretty good idea and thus far I've figured out I kinda like these people."

He asks if there's anyone he has celebrated with, and it makes William laugh a little at it, "so I did shots with a chick named Holly we've exchanged numbers and shit. I've actually been good, I'm trying to be a grown up and now... you know... promoting Hermetic good will by trying to get into my tradition mate's pants."

Even though, by the sound of it, he would really, really like to.

"It's pretty fucking hard. It's like I walked into a freaking American Apparel catalog or something."

Dan

This quiet noise, something close to gruff bemusement. The whole conversation would be better if the snow were still falling, but that storm has moved onward to ravage the east coast, to remind everyone in its path that winter means more than earlier, more spectacular sunsets. More than the Santa Claus house at the mall.

He focuses - his eyes anyway - on the closed headshop across the street. The patterned, maw-like reflections of hookahs lined up in the picture window. Gauges how much and how far he should-maybe caution a now-full-fledged member of the Order of Hermes, unAwakened friend of a low-penny mystic that he is.

Thinks about diplomacy, its meanings and its iterations. Thinks about the boundaries of nations ringing the world.

"Naw, man. You ever see the Magic Flute?"

Mozart. Dan means: the Mozart opera.

William

Has he seen the Magic Flute?

He actually has to think about this, though the reference isn't lost on him. Pulls through his memories and tries to think of the various times he's actually been to the opera and comes back with-

"Yeah," he replies, the lilt in his voice says that he's listening to Dan. That he's paying attention, that perhaps he isn't cut out to be a full fledged Hermetic because he's he hasn't ever given the indication that he thinks less of how Serafine and Dan view the world.

She'd said something about it once. He'd been shocked to say the least.

Dan

"It's like you've just walked out of the overture into the opera proper. The bells are starting to ring, everything's strange and it's up to you to figure out what all of this shit means. I mean, it's spectacular, right? But all that weird Masonic symbolism trips me out."

A short breath out, affection this crackle in his voice.

"So, celebrate. Seriously. Do. But remember that you're at the very beginning, and you have fuck-all of an idea of who's what and when and where. Caution, man. Especially now, when you're with your housemates, I think you need to have your wits about you at every step."

William

There has never been an instance where the young man has not listened to Dan. Dan knows what he's talking bout; the man has seen the world. He's seen what happens and seen more of the magical world and how people interact than Elijah has and now the young man is having to brave the world.

He pauses, nods and it's almost like Dan can hear the newly-minted Hermetic nodding.

"I've gotta make it through the whole opera, I'm feeling hoepful," purses his lips but smiles anyway.

"Thanks, man. I'll... you're pretty fuckin' smart, I kinda dig that about you."

Dan

"Cheers, kid." The low back of a laugh, still that scrawl of affection underlying it. Strain, too, sure, but only if you really listen for it.

"Be safe. Talk to you later."

Click.

--

He drops the phone from his ear, glances down at it in his hand. Rubs his thumb over the screen and watches as the icons shift and shiver. Glances at the unanswered texts, then thumbs them away. He thinks about lighting a cigarette, wouldn't mind the burn in his throat conjoined with the bright, belting cold.

But he doesn't have one, so he just breathes. In, out.

In, out. The only way to get into or out of this world.

I'm glad you came.

Hawksley

It's been weeks -- longer -- since he's heard from Sera. He's heard from Dan at least, those few terse texts exchanged where some of his WHAT. THE. FUCK. got answered. There's nothing he can do. That was made clear. And truth be told, right this moment, he is not thinking about Sera's state of being. He's sitting on his enormous sectional couch, feet propped up on the glass coffee table, watching Netflix emptily. He is wearing lounge pants.

Serafíne

What happens is: she walks. Up the goddamned steps because the elevator call button does not work and she cannot choose a floor even if she wants to. Even if she is standing close as you please to a stranger, some dowager maybe, rising-rising-rising. Sid-the-dog beside her, and there are breaks, because penthouse means: some height, some kind of view.

And she stands in the hallway for - some time, really.

The front door opens. And he is not thinking about Sera or about Sera's state of being but: there it is. Sera walks - in.

Hawksley

It's a tall building. And of course he lives in the fucking penthouse. Always loves a view, this one. It's late enough that no one bumps into her. Or the dog. She cannot hear the television through the door; thick walls.

But Hawksley hears the door open, alert, eyes sharp as the bird he is named for and calls to mind. Looks at the door and sees Sera and his brow furrows deeply. He doesn't note the dog. He doesn't turn off the television. He's moving, remote thrown down, crossing the room over to her immediately.

Serafíne

The dog at her heels, threading between her legs, calls to mind one of the old goddesses, Some virgin huntress. But he doesn't notice Sid, just Sera. That wildness to her that feels somehow more savage in this precise moment. She is: watching him, right? Sharp, but not the way he is sharp.

Wants to say something, but her throat -

- it's so fucking strange to be seen. She has no idea what she wants to say.

Hawksley

So she doesn't say anything, and he puts his hands on her jaw. Both hands, like he's about to start mauling her mouth with one of those savage kisses that they haven't shared in -- well. Not for a long time. Even the way they kissed at his birthday party wasn't like that.

But he is not kissing her. He just cups her face in his hands like that, frowning down at her, staring at her. Saying nothing. Just staring. His eyes flick: take in her features, glance down between them, like he's checking her over. He notices the dog; he doesn't mention it. He looks into her eyes.

For a while.

He is frowning deeply all that while.

And then he wraps his arms around her, bare because Hawksley is always fucking walking around without his shirt on, and tucks her head underneath his head. Says roughly, finally: "Dan told me what happened."

Serafíne

She goes stiff when he touches her, when he cups her jaw. Right through the shoulders and the spine and she is caught between the desire to - her need to be touched - and the part of her that has built up this strange and shocking carapace of singularity.

- well, stiff. Rigid muscles framing that spare frame. Looks the way she does when she is peeling away each and every one of her reserves, shedding all her skins to find some made, molten care. Thin and sharp and hungry.

Doesn't really sink into him even when he wraps his arms around her and tucks her head beneath his, but she does breath out - once. This diaphragm hitch as if she were on the verge of letting go.

Then she starts to pull herself away from him. "I'm sorry - I don't - " She's shaking, you know? "I don't think I want to be touched right now."

Hawksley

Doesn't want her to sink into him. Really doesn't. (Liar.)

But at least: he doesn't blame her for it. For going stiff. For not sinking. For pulling away. And when she does, he unfolds. Takes his jaw from off her head and releases her face from his hands and lets his arms fall to her sides. She starts to say she's sorry and he shakes his head, talking at the same time:

"Don't -- you don't have to --"

She's shaking. He is not. She says she doesn't want to be touched and he just nods, once. Steps to the side and makes sure the dog won't get its tail stuck, then closes his door. It has a soft click-thud to it. He still doesn't lock it. On the television is an old episode of Arrested Development. It's still playing, a weird backdrop. Hawksley glances at the dog and thinks only: it had better not shit on his carpet. He walks away from her, picks up the remote, turns off the television. The room goes silent and he looks at her again.

"Do you want a drink?"

Serafíne

Quick little flash of her dark eyes: up when he asks that question. Sidelong only because of their relative positions in the room and there is something alive and strange and aware and chasing-through about the look and she drops one hand to the crown of the dog's head, right between the ears.

Does she want a drink?

"Yeah."

Sera does that weird thing people do somethings: frowns and kinda nods after she answers, like hey, she's agreeing with herself. Or asking the question again in her head and answering. It's weird to talk, and have someone talk-back. It's really, really hard for her to hold herself together. But hey - she does.

Hawksley

Hawksley goes to the kitchen. Big, open penthouse this is. Few walls. Few barriers. Makes sense. He goes, and opens a couple of cupboards until he comes out with a stout bottle full of crystal-clear liquid. Sets that on the counter. Sets out a couple of shot glasses.

Then he gets a lime out of the basket and slices it into wedges, watching her.

"Don't take this the wrong way, but... what are you doing here?"

Serafíne

Sera, she follows him through. Trailing, and the dog trailing with her. Where the carpets are plush their footsteps are soundless, but then they give way to expensive hardwoods, or marbles, maybe, and Sid's nails click-clack-click on the foor.

The tequila makes her smile. This brief, chasing thing as she sidles up to the counter and pulls out a stool. He tells her not to take this the wrong way, but - and there's a flash; her eyes on his profile. The smallest flinch, just her shoulders, really, easy to overlook. It's hard not to take that question the wrong way.

She tries, though. Wants to tell him that she doesn't know but he is the only one who ever calls her on that shit so she doesn't try it (much) with him anymore.

"I was - close. Ish? And I was lonely. And I wanted to see you."

Hawksley

Make no mistake: Hawksley knows, and has known for a long time before he ever met Sera, that he is an asshole. And that he is selfish. And that he is self-centered, self-involved, and that his self-interest has the capacity to be ruthless. Being in the Order has only doubled down on that intrinsic trait. He is, among all these other things, self-aware.

So he knows that when she says she wanted to see him and it causes a momentary spreading warmth in his chest, it's sort of a douchebag thing to feel. She's not okay; he doesn't even ask if she's okay because he knows she isn't. Of course she's fucking lonely: she can't talk to people or dance with people or see her friends or be Sera. She's miserable, and here he is getting happy that she wanted to see him.

Hawksley doesn't think to offer the dog a treat, or a bowl of water. He just ignores it. He slides the cutting board of wedged limes across the bar counter to her, and a shot glass, and pours hers full: a double. Gives himself the same. Taps his glass to hers, taps it on the counter, and downs it, follows it with a harsh bite of lime.

Breathes out through pursed lips.

"I'm sorry," he says, not looking at her but at the counter.

Serafíne

This slash of a smile from her, unbidden. Something about the shot glass or the way he taps them. Whatever. Maybe it's the limes or the reflection of the lights in the viscous liquid. She takes her with a neat care, fingertips stippled over the glass, and breathes out sharp and does the shot. Then lime, yeah. Doesn't bother with salt, not even the salt from her skin.

And he tells her he's sorry and she gives him this sharp shake of her head. No.

"It's not your fault," all matter-of-fact or as close as she can come to it. Then a hitch, more shoulders than diaphragm but a little of both and her brows together and, yeah: miserable. Miserable. "I just - I just fuck everything up."

Hawksley

Neither of them bother with salt. Hell: in a pinch, neither of them bother with lime.

She shakes her head, she tells him it's not his fault, and he quirks a brow at her. She says she fucks everything up.

"Wasn't saying sorry about your... situation," he clarifies, nodding at her as though she really were invisible. Even to him. "I'm sorry that it took me nearly a month to even find out why I wasn't hearing from you."

A moment. He's silent. Takes a breath and refills their glasses. Hers; his own. Heat from the first double shot is already spreading through his body. It helps.

Sets the bottle down again. Picks up his shotglass; offers it to her to clink.

Serafíne

That's pretty much the only thing he could say in that moment to startle her from her brooding self-pity. She looks up at him, mouth open, brows narrowed. Eyes damp but you know. She's shaking, just a little bit, but she's not crying. More like this irregular shiver. Every now and then. Like her body hasn't adjusted to the temperature in the room.

"I don't - I don't know what to fucking say to that."

Hawksley

So he shrugs. She isn't tapping her glass to his. So he doesn't wait. He takes his second shot. Bites lime. Sucks the juices down and looks at her as he swallows, licks his lips.

"Whatever you want to say," he says, and perhaps it should come off as glib, or cheeky, meaningless. It doesn't. Looking at her steadily, despite the booze trickling into his bloodstream. Whatever she's got: say it. There is the sense that it will be okay. Or at least: he will accept it.

Serafíne

Oh, god. He says that and she: looks up and now she starts to cry. This expression on her face: open, raw and vulnerable and for several: whatever they are, seconds, minutes, neither, all, she cannot really say anything. She just cries and looks at him with this strange mixture of pain and wonder and whatever so plain on her features.

Sniffs, finally. Her throat is opening and she can speak again. "You're always in my head, you know?"

Hawksley

He is grateful for tequila. And he weathers the way she cries and the way she looks at him because he decided when he heard what was happening that whatever it was, he would take it. Had to.

Hawksley blinks. Slow. Really: he closes his eyes for a moment, and nods as he opens them. "I know."

It isn't arrogance. It's understanding. It's I get that.

And it's still an apology.

If they go too far down this path, though, who knows what else he'll say. He reaches over the counter and touches her hand with his. His fingertips cover the back of her hand; one fingertip rests over the ring he gave her, which answers to his touch with a flare of soaring, sundrenched warmth. He thinks he should ask her if she wants it disenchanted, if it hurts her. But he thinks she could do that herself, or get someone else to, if she wanted. He thinks that even if it hurts her, she chooses to let it. Really not his place to question that.

Beyond that: well. Other thoughts. Other reasons.

"I want you to stay," he says, and then, because he is a coward and an asshole: "tonight."

Serafíne

Some part of her cannot handle that apology. It makes it real. Right? What he's done. The way he's left her. The way he left her. The way everyone always leaves her. So she looks at him and she lets herself feel that pain, all of it, somehow brightest on her scapulae. You know: where her burning wings should be rooted. Feels the rest of it, too.

He says I know and she doesn't think it's arrogant. She: gets that he gets it and she is reaching for her shot then, throwing it back, grateful for it. The warmth, the rush. The sudden flush beneath her skin.

His hand on hers and she's still not sure she wants to be touched. Makes it harder to be not/touched for so long, after. But fuck she also wants to be touched and makes this raw noise in the back of her throat and turns her hand over beneath his. The crawl of her tattoos on her dusky skin. Over her pulse at her wrist, framing her palm and fingers, yeah, though not on her palm. Sharkscissors covers her left palm. She wears his ring on her right index finger.

And yes: she's still wearing it. Even now. Sometimes it hurts her. Sometimes it makes her ridiculously happy, silly girl.

--

He tells her he wants her to stay. Tonight. And she cannot respond to that, really: so she tells him she wants another shot. God that's quick: she's eaten nothing. It makes her giddy, it makes her blood sing. It makes the room spin, just the way she likes.

She does stay: one night. She's still sleeping when he leaves for his day,

and she is also: gone when he returns.

Hawksley

Christ. She touches his hand and he grips hers, firm but not sudden, not grasping. Still: it's immediate. He holds her and thinks that if he lets the tequila have its way he's going to --

So he squeezes her hand and he lets her go.

--

They do another shot. They are drunk. The room spins for her and she feeds the dog and maybe she takes a bath. He goes to bed; he doesn't tell her to take the spare room. He doesn't tell her to do anything. So when she comes to his bed and he is still sort of drunk and actually quite sleepy he just opens one eye and looks at her. Smiles a little. Goes to sleep. Her fucking dog sleeps on the floor, or on top of Sera's feet. Whatever.

When he wakes up, his hand is on her waist, his forearm crossing her stomach. He leaves her a note: eat whatever she wants. He'd tell her Collins is downstairs but Collins can't interact with her anyway. He tells her, on the note,

I'm glad you came.

It is signed - H.

--

She is gone when he comes back. He knew she might be. It is why he didn't tell her that he'd see her later. It is why he didn't leave in the note a question about getting dinner. He is relieved that she is gone, and he is aching because she is gone.

Empty,

because she is gone.

br />

Unopened.

Midnight and near-full-moon looming over a town that doesn't seem to have a name, just a center square and dark faces of one-and-two story buildings like something out a movie lot all dark now except for the neon open sign still blazing in the picture window of a clearly-closed thrift shop. And the bus station of course, which shares space with a 24-hour laundromat, the ugly wash of bare fluorescents smeared over the vaguely stained bisque of near-antique industrial washers. No passengers waiting and no reason to idle except for the corporation tracking. Gotta hit the marks and the marks say he has to wait until seven minutes past this godforsaken hour and he isn't going to bother opening the doors except the pregnant girl in the third row from the back lurches up the aisle, asks how long they're here, and insists he open the door because she has to pee and wants an egg salad sandwich from the vending machine.

No reason to slip off here, except she feels like it.

So they do.

That's how it works.

Spend the rest of the night laid out in the center of the grassy square, dog with its muzzle settled over its crossed paws, girl laid out all open like she's trying to make snow angels without any snow, golden hair strewn all over the damp grass, shivering until she tells herself not to be cold anymore, and she isn't, is she? senses blown open, staring at the stars.

It snows before morning. She wakes to the gentle dusting over the grass, snowflakes caught in her eyelashes, melting against her skin.

Leaving it all behind.

October 23, 2015

Serafíne is not yet used to being a ghost. She will be, before this ends. She will become familiar with silence, with the rhythm of her own breath, with the concourse of her own thoughts. With absence, both as a fullness and as a presence, physical, tangible, total. On a day not long from now she'll climb onto a Greyhound bus in downtown Denver and: leave.

No point in staying to haunt the edges of a life that used to be hers.

Or, rather: haunting is such a slushy, stagnant thing to do with whatever remains of one's consciousness.

She'd rather move.

She'd rather do.

She'd rather be.

No idea where the thing is going but hey, that's part of the point. The glass is cool against her cheek, and the dog curls up on the floor, beneath her feet. She has a bottle of Stranahan's and a lump on her back she will remember eventually is her backpack. The moon in the glass, fat and shining, the highway this running artery of light. The staccato pinpoints of headlights that flare and shine like animal eyes in the darkness.

Her breath makes a shadow no one can see.

She curls up, for the duration.