Alexander
Denver has a reputation, for those who look past the city’s marketing, for a somewhat changeable climate. It may boast a huge number of ‘days of sun’, but that doesn’t account for the other states of the weather that share those days. Wind, rain, hail, snow: none are exactly rare occurrences. So the residents of the city adapt, check the forecasts, and often leave the house prepared.
Somewhere downtown is a coffee shop which stays open late into the night and sometimes doesn’t even close. It’s independent, and serves decent coffee and a reasonable choice of food. It’s also well located for the pre-and post- club/theatre/pub/cinema crowds, so it tends to be pretty busy through most of the night. It’s not that late yet, though, but it’s no longer that early either. Somewhere between nine and ten – the sky is dark and clouded over, but the light generated by the city mask the sky out anyway.
Outside the coffee shop, sat at a table and indulging in the age-old pastime of people-watching is Alexander. There’s a partially-drunk and still-warm long black coffee on the table and a half-eaten croissant. He’s dressed like he has plans for the night which may well involve flashing lights, deep bass, and getting lost in a crowd. Black combats and boots are topped with what looks like a black t-shirt. It is, until it gets under a UV light and then the wings appear on the back. Under his chair is a small rucksack with a decent, warm, waterproof coat and a few other bits and pieces. Alexander left home prepared.
Alexander
[And Awareness, because you never know who's coming.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )
Lucy
[awareness yuss]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 6, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )
Kiara
(Can I crash the party? :D )
Lucy
[DO EET]
Alexander
[Sure, the more the merrier.]
Kiara
[Mage Spidy Senses Rollin'.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 4, 9) ( success x 1 )
Lucy
Most of the city has been bundled up for days. Heavy sweaters, heavier coats, gloves, scarves, hats, the works. The ordinary citizens of Denver need to layer up if they don't want the dry air to slice the warmth from their skin.
And then there are the extraordinary citizens. A few transplants from even colder climates who bear up well enough in minimal layers, maybe even mere hoodies.
And then there's Lucy. She was born in a place known for harsh and bitter winters, but that's not why she bears up under the chill better than most. She bears up because she is frost-touched, cold seeped, frozen from the inside out. Even on a warm summer day her skin feels like the cold bite of winter's frost. Her (as she would put it) blessing does not mean that she's immune to terribly low temperatures, but it does mean that she can wander the city for hours in considerably less clothing than the normals.
From a distance Alexander can feel her coming, just a cold tingle at the edge of his senses that brings to mind the threading creep of frost coming closer. Maybe it's just coincidence that has Lucy stepping through the door of the coffee shop, squeezing through a small crowd of others in their mid-twenties standing with coffee cups in hand as they discuss their options.
Lucy doesn't believe in coincidence. She enters the shop because as she roamed in search of something or on her way from somewhere else, she sensed someone familiar, someone else who is cold. The last time she saw Alexander things were not so awesome. Death lay all around them, and Lucy herself was so preoccupied with comforting Elijah she didn't speak to the others before she eventually left. This coffee shop is so far removed from a madwoman's slaughterhouse, all warm and cozy with the smell of coffee and sweet pastries filling up her nostrils.
She did not come in for a drink. Once she's through the little crowd she looks around, running the fingers of one hand through her long, maroon-pink hair. She does not look like she's dressed for the weather. No ordinary person would be dressed as she is when temperatures are in the single digits, and yet there she is. In a black hoodie with pink plaid accents at her hips, black denim cutoffs over a pair of fishnets and her knee-high black boots. When she finds Alexander at his seat she smiles broadly and lifts her hand in a wave before threading through the other patrons to get to him.
"Hi," she says when she's there. And then as an afterthought (because look at him, dressed all in black like he's got somewhere to be), "Are you waiting for someone?"
Kiara
A bundled up wave of post cinema-goers are trekking closer to the café as Lucy greets Alexander. He's people watching, perhaps paying attention enough to feel that (not so unfamiliar) stirring of a particular resonance as voices grow nearer, the crowds breaking apart before they quite reach the doors with their inviting aromas, the blend of coffee and baked goods.
On a night like tonight, it's no wonder the store is overflowing with patrons.
Spilling into view from the rear of the crowd is a brunette. Cloaked in white, from the knitted cap to the trenchcoat cinched tight around her waist, Kiara Woolfe is a resplendent sight. Dark waves of hair spill from beneath the cap she's wearing, the touch of the cold present in her pink cheeks, the haste in her footsteps. She's moving with the fluid momentum of the city-goer who wants to be out of the chill.
Are you waiting for someone, the Dreamspeaker wants to know, as the woman who feels like she'll tear you apart only to piece you back together slips through the steady flow of passersby en route for the doors to their café.
Alexander
Certain things are supposed to occur in a particular order. Heat is supposed to lead to things melting, for example. So it may seem strange to some nearby that the feeling of being frozen and caught in a sliver of ice or a shard of time precedes that approaching thread of winter. The drop in temperature should come before the freezing, like the calm before the storm. And the storm coming before the strangely, deathly quiet that follows.
After that night at the house, Alexander has been pretty scarce around the Awakened scene. A few messages had been swapped with Kalen, to reassure him that Alex was still alive and doing ok, but other than that he’s been quiet. If anyone had been interested to follow him, they’ll have found that he disappeared from the city limits and into the mountains for a couple of days with nothing more than the clothes he was wearing and a heft rucksack of camping gear. It was time away to gather his thoughts, to gather himself again, and to try to work stuff out. He’s back now, though. And between the time alone and the time spent with Kalen not so long ago, he’s not doing all that badly. The aura of coolness that waxes and wanes with his mood isn’t too noticeable. He’s doing ok.
The problem with going away, though, is working out how to get back in sync with others. Each of them that night had their own wounds to tend to, and Lucy had been helping Elijah with his.
Bumping into Ian had felt awkward, because how do you even begin to talk with someone when nearly half the occasions where they had met involved fighting and death. At least there had been more time shared between Alexander and Lucy. Enough to make re-breaking that ice easier.
Alexander picks up the mug and sips the coffee as Lucy approaches. He swallows as she greets him, and offers his own in return. “Hey. No, just me. I’m killing time before the clubs get going. How are you?” He nudges the chair opposite away from the table with his foot.
Somewhere in the crowd comes that feeling of consumption and rebirth. A hunger, but under control. Even though, tension creeps into Alexander’s shoulders before he realises that it’s the same feeling that he’d felt in the park not so long ago. He looks around for the source, somewhere in the people.
Lucy
Lucy does not believe in coincidences. It is therefore no coincidence that she happened along this particular street at this particular time and sensed Alexander. And it is no coincidence that the woman from the park is not far behind her. And if others come after that? It will of course be for some purpose, even if Lucy can't put her finger on what that purpose is until some later time.
It's not that later time, but the present, and they are here and they are coming here. The winter children and the living embodiment of the turning of the cycle of death and rebirth. Since that night at the house Lucy has been doing her own things in her own way, spending her spare time mostly with her sister, but sometimes contacting Elijah. The Dreamspeakers are not known for being cohesive with others, either in their Tradition or outside of it.
That doesn't mean she lets the ice between them stay solid for long. Her smile for Alexander is just about as friendly and as kind as ever. There is a darkness shadowing her spring green eyes, dampening the upward curl of her mouth, tempering it. Lucy is Dusk's child, an oracle of the guardian of the dead who may take up that mantle herself one day. Death is no stranger to her, nor is dying. But the horror of the things she's seen and the things she's Seen lingers on her still, making her seem older, or maybe just a little wiser.
"I'm okay," she says, settling into the seat, shifting her slouching canvas bag into her lap before unzipping her jacket. Beneath it she's wearing a fitted dark grey shirt with an embroidered skull of white flowers. "It's funny, whenever someone says they're killing time it reminds me of this cartoon I saw when I was a kid. There was a dog with a," she waves her hand at her torso like the gesture might help jog her flagging memory, "a clock in his chest, a watch dog!" she says, brightening all a hah I remembered! "He had this whole song about how you shouldn't talk about killing time, but I can't remember how it goes."
Alexander looks around, searching, but Lucy's eyes shift toward the entrance, looking through the windows to the outside. She is expectant.
Kiara
The first (and last) occasion Kiara had to see Lucy had been in Washington Park, retching after being subjected to the horrifying last moments of a young man's life. Since then, the pagan's encounters with the Awakened of the city had begun to increase. A group on the college quad here, casual encounters at an art gallery there. If she was prone to consideration of such things, she might just theorize she was being slowly drawn down into another city's chaos; an animal sucked deeper into quicksand the harder it fought the inevitable.
Day by day, night by night.
She doesn't know the history. Bare glimpses, sidelong looks or awkward pauses, it's all the epilogues to stories she has no beginnings for. The closer Kiara draws to the café, the stronger comes the impression of something frozen. Of chill that sets deeper into the bones than mere weather can afford; it's tinged with something other, that sense and she emerges into the relative comfort of the café with searching eyes. Uncurling the length of a scarf from her neck and slipping gloves from her fingers into a pocket.
For all that she's sheathed herself in the color of the encroaching season, there are hints, the slip of colored necklaces buried beneath the folds of her coat; the catch and refraction of silver around her wrists when she moves. Dark eyes painted with dramatic flair and lipstick that delivers her mouth a striking crimson red.
She doesn't place the two Awakened directly until she's returned from the counter with a cup of coffee steaming in her hand. Once she sights them, there's a hesitation for a moment. A slight inclination of thin brows upward, vanishing into the bangs beneath her cap before her path deviates to take her closer. "Hello again," this, with a curling smile and dark eyes resting on Alexander's face a beat. Placing him, no doubt.
Kiara's eyes shift to Lucy. "Times two."
Alexander
There are those who believe in fate – that certain things are just bound to happen, in some way or in some form. This meeting may be one of those things. But there are others who don’t believe in fate – believe that it takes away the freedom to choose and the responsibility for consequences, passes them onto some unknown, unseen entity who may not even be there. No, their movements through the fluid form of reality creates ripples which interact and pull each other together, like a strange form of gravity. It’s simple a matter of probability that brings them all here.
Alexander wraps both hands around his mug and relaxes back on the chair as Lucy talks about the cartoon from her childhood. He cocks his head as he tries to remember, rolling the idea around to see if it’s familiar in any way. “About the only dog I remember was Scooby, and I don’t remember him having a clock.” He shrugs. “Maybe I should say that I’m waiting for something to happen, then. Or watching the crowds? Or just drinking coffee.” He raises the mug in salute. “You not having anything?”
Kiara approaches, and spots her. Watches her approach, although the earlier tension – most of it, at least – has faded away. He didn’t get a particularly close look at Kiara as she battled Ian for the ball that evening, but the view he had along with that feeling announcing her presence confirmed that she was the woman from the park. “Evening. Who won?”
Lucy
"Huh." Lucy turns thoughtful. "I don't think he did, either."
The night in Wash Park was not a good one for Lucy. She was better when she was talking to Oliver in the alley, and she was better even when she was guiding a flock of dead to exact their revenge against the woman responsible for their murders. But that night in the park she had seen the very worst of humanity and so Kiara had managed to see the very worst state Lucy had been in since...since Lucy can't remember when.
She looks better tonight, though. Her skin is still bone white, but gone is the ashen cast. Her smile for the woman is genial. "Hi," she says, shifting a little in her seat so Kiara won't feel like she's on the outside of something.
"I'm sorry I didn't get your contact info last time. All that stuff's been," she glances at Alexander before looking back at the woman in white. "I guess you could say it's been handled."
Kiara
Who won?
"I did. With a little last minute distraction in the form of Grace's coat." There's a minute shrug, a spark of evident satisfaction in her voice, in the coy light in her dark eyes. He'd glimpsed her the other night in the height of competition, stripped down and casual, pushing back at Ian on the courts as they orchestrated a sort of dance all their own, the exultant manifestation of the students of Life, perhaps. Kiara's right hand is wrapped around her coffee, she hasn't tasted it yet but seems content enough in the moment as people gently extricate themselves around her to hold it.
To enjoy the warmth seeping into her skin.
"I figured it probably would be," there's a knowledgeable twist to her mouth. An easy slip into conversation as if they'd been acquaintances long before they'd glimpsed each other that night in the park. Kiara fishes her free hand from a pocket and extends it. Her eyes slipping between the pair of them, her palm very warm despite the chill. "I'm Kiara Woolfe, to make it official. Newcomer, interloper," decided lilt of Devil may care humor inflected there in the way she says it, the curve and precision of her smile.
All dark eyes and red lips. The rattle of stones gathering and clinking around the fine boned wrist she holds out. "Whatever you prefer." Her attention is captured by Lucy again. "I'm glad you're feeling better, though."
Alexander
“He was better without Scrappy, though. That guy was just annoying.” Alexander takes another sip and listens to Kiara announce the winner, and the slightly dirty trick used to do it. He starts to smile at the thought of Grace trying to distract Ian.
But then there’s a glance, with an explanation that things have been handled and it gets... well, it gets a reaction. Or maybe there’s a sudden draft at the coffee shop, but that aura of stasis gets just a little bit cooler. The black coffee suddenly seems to be so much more interesting than the two women, as his gaze falls along with the smile. It would be so easy to slide back into the funk that had lingered after things were handled, but he stops himself sliding. Reminds himself that they did the right thing. That things could have been so much worse. Given enough time, he might even believe it.
But instead he coughs, clearing his throat, and looks back up at Kiara as she finishes her greeting and offers her hand. She might see the edge of the weariness that’s surfaced in his eyes as he releases one of his hands from the mug and extends it in return. “Alexander Brandt. New last Thursday.”
Lucy
[because it's Lucy, awarepathy]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )
Lucy
Lucy mentions the park, meaning more the man missing his dog than anything else. Because Kiara was there, she saw Jeremy's heart torn out and his spirit consumed in the moments of his death. She should know that it's over now. It gets a reaction from Alexander, though, which she notices. Lucy looks to him a moment and there is regret there. He's a cop, he's been trained to deal with things Lucy's had to pick up along the way. And he's older than she is, she can tell. But he's new to all of this, and Lucy has been seeing and speaking with the dead since she was barely out of high school.
Her gaze drops. This isn't the place to talk about things like that in detail. And besides, Kiara offers her name and her hand. Lucy looks at the outstretched fingers and for a second she hesitates, lips parted like she might say something (beg it off, "No really, you don't-"). But then she smiles a little, gives a small shake of her head to dispell some inner thought. All these things she could hide if she wanted. Lucy here, she could sell ice to an Eskimo if she wanted, she can be a smooth talker when it's necessary. She hasn't made a habit of hiding things, though.
The moment of hesitation passes and Lucy reaches over and she gingerly takes Kiara's hand in hers. Where Kiara's is warm despite the chill, Lucy's is cold for another reason entirely. There is a sharpness to her touch as it begins to leech that warmth away, just as surely as the frigid air outside would. Lucy is cold beyond merely her resonance. She's frosted straight through to her core.
"Lucy," she says. "Lucy Simms." Provided Kiara doesn't recoil (in Lucy's experience most do, but the Awakened of Denver have by and large been an exception so far), she gives her hand a quick squeeze before releasing her. "And thanks."
Alexander grips Kiara's hand next, which may still be a touch cool from where Lucy's palm pressed. She looks at him, confusion coloring her expression. "New last Thursday?" A beat passes before she smiles. "I've never heard that before."
Kalen Holliday
[Good for one more?]
Kiara
[Fine by me! :) They're just inside a café chit-chatting.]
Kiara
It's funny the things people's body language can reveal. Tiny tells that more often than not, went unnoticed, uncommented on, filed away perhaps as unusual or uncomfortable but left unturned. Kiara Woolfe was a student of the body. She'd trained in ways to detect and manipulate the flesh, to uncover pain and soothe damaged muscle. She was also a student of energy, a worker in the ways of healing that went behind physical touch.
When you mapped and charted energy, you noticed. It became second nature, like Alexander watching people. You learned to read between the lines, because so very often, it was the darker aspects that bore the most fruitful recompense. She takes Lucy's hand and it's startling. The press of her hands and Lucy leeches the warmth right out of the Verbena's. Kiara's eyes flit to their pressed hands, her thumb curls and touches the edge of the other woman's skin for a minute and she looks curiously at Lucy.
"Hm," Kiara's throat catches on the vocalization, she seems to linger inside the touch of the other woman longer than might be strictly necessary. "My pleasure." Alexander's hand finds hers cooler for the brush of Lucy's. Kiara smiles down at him for a moment, tracing his face for a moment as if to stir loose whatever she's glimpsing there on the surface.
When the handshakes are exchanged, her focus drifts to her coffee, she lifts to her mouth and sips from it almost as an afterthought.
Alexander
A cop he may be, trained he may be. Trained to protect the innocent, trained to fire arms in defence of himself and others. Trained to do what needs to be done. But that training never included acting as judge, jury and executioner. That seems to be part of this new, wonderful, terrifying life. Or is the way that he’s been choosing to live it so far. But then is it really that easy to separate your mundane and Awakened lives when what you were when you were Asleep came to define so much about what you are?
He has doubts and fears and... For the moment they’re under wraps again. Secured again under that wall of ice that had cracked and fractured not so long ago, when he finally opened up to Kalen by the campfire. So that tiredness is all that shows on the surface, all that leaks through. And Alexander is, more or less, the man he was a month ago.
The smile even makes a reappearance when he explains the Last Thursday thing. “It’s how I was introduced to Grace when I first.. arrived.” Arrived on the Awakened scene, rather than arrived in the city. But that had only been a little longer. “It literally was that Thursday when it all went sideways. I think Grace was New Last Wednesday for a while, back when she was newer to everything. It’s more new a few months ago these days.” Which is probably as clear a statement that he hasn’t been Awake for more than a year than he’s going to make surrounded by Sleepers.
He nudges a third chair with his foot, hinting that Kiara might want to sit down. “So what brings you to the pit of terror that is Denver?” There is, thankfully, a smile to indicate that he’s joking.
Exaggerating, at least. But most likely joking. It hasn’t all been terrifying.
Not quite.
Kalen Holliday
[How awake are we?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
Kalen Holliday
[And how distracted by Resonance are we?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (4, 8, 9, 9, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 6 )
Kalen Holliday
Kalen must spend only perhaps an hour between cups of coffee. He's always making it, or carrying it, or buying it, or having it endlessly refilled in diners. He's dressed warmly, heavy long gray coat, scarf, gloves. Winter is not precisely his favorite season, but it's growing on him. Still, he's cold and the Resonance in the air is cold. It is new life. It is swallowing him whole.
He has to remind himself that these are not cold and devouring shadows. Hungry lakes.
Perhaps he wouldn't some other night. But Alexander is there, Alexander who cannot be entirely at ease with Kiara's Resonance. And so he walks over to join them.
Kalen does not head inside to get coffee first. It is cold and he wouldn't mind having something that smells like vanilla and warmth, but that isn't what brought him here. Instead, he moves to stand behind Alexander, rests one gloved hand on his shoulder.
“Hey, Snowdrop,” he says to Lucy. She gets a quick, tired smile. Kiara's greeting is a nod, an even briefer smile.
Lucy
The now-veterans of Denver could tell some stories about the horrors Denver has been witness to. Terrible things that have twisted and warped them, monsters that would have killed them if they had been a little less on the ball.
Lucy is not one of those people. To look at her, one wouldn't think her a veteran of anything terrible. She is cold to the touch but that isn't something that brings her sadness very often or for very long. She talks to the dead, guides them to the other side, but death is a part of life. There are shadows to her now, dark lights in her eyes that echo the things she saw when she Saw Jeremy Tran's capture and subsequent death. There is a somberness that has only just begun to settle into her shoulders, which are held straight. Though Lucy leans forward in her chair, elbows resting on the table now, her spine is straight, her figure poised.
Her head tilts, like a dog angling for a better listen to some far off sound. She senses the storm coming from a ways off. A coincidence maybe, but she doesn't think so.
Then he is there, moving behind Alexander and offering him a comforting hand. If his quick flash of a smile is out of the ordinary she either doesn't notice or doesn't realize. Her own smile is wide and friendly. "Hi Kalen." And then to Alexander she asks, "It's not really that bad, is it?"
Kiara
Alexander nudges the chair and the brunette concedes to the gesture and sits down. It, the offer, the take-a-seat gesture garners him a curling grin that's hard to ignore as anything less than appreciative. They both feel like the stagnation of the winter; Lucy and Alexander; the frost skirting the top of frozen lakes and it collides here with Kiara's destructive, devouring presence. The splinter that cracks the ice; delivers the thaw before the Spring. The jolt of rejuvenating life.
There are enough reasons plainly to be uneasy with a presence like the one the Verbena offers; with her bright, confident looks and easy, lingering smiles. "Hm, well the terror for one naturally," she hits back lightly, drawing a leg over the other. The boots she favors hit her below the knee. All zips and leather and spiked heels that sink into the snow outside. They're scuffed around the toe.
Kiara jiggles one foot idly as she settles as if she can't quite co-operate with a total lack of motion. "But - I - we, my sister and I -" there's a pause then, a deliberate stop and consider as Kalen appears and Kiara directs him a glance, a brief twitch of her mouth in return, before - "travel a lot. I have I guess you could call it the movement bug. Staying in one place too long ... it's a skill I'm trying to master." She punctuates that with a sip of her coffee, leaving the imprint of her lipstick behind like a forgotten kiss, gifted the rim of the cup.
Alexander
At least two of the Mages in town had discovered what happens if you surprise Alexander from behind. Kalen’s one of them. So it is perhaps a good thing that his approach – the sensation of the calm before the storm and the captured glimpse of the man through the milling people – is noted before that hand lands on Alexander’s shoulder. So rather than grabbing the hand and doing something that would very quickly be embarrassing and potentially painful, he just knocks his head gently against Kalen’s arm as his hand rests on Alexander’s shoulder. “Hey. Coffee here’s good, if you want some.” Silly question?
Lucy’s question gets a few moments of consideration, although the smile doesn’t really fade. “I guess I’m probably exaggerating some. It’s just hard to remember the wondrous sometimes, you know?” What with Awakening painfully, joining in with a fight against a corrupted spirit and its minions, facing up to a cannibalistic Adept and her own creations and converts... There is still the memory of The Message, the Archmage who created him. There is still the others in the city who stand against the terrifying.
“Afraid you’ll grow roots and won’t be able to move again? We’re not such a bad lot, honestly. There are worse places to plant yourself.”
Kalen Holliday
"Denver," Kalen says quietly to Kiara, "Seems to possess a certain kind of gravity. Some of us leave, yes, but a lot of us stay."
He squeezes Alexander's shoulder. "In a minute or three, perhaps." There are so many things he could say. About hope or light or triumph. He picks, perhaps, the most oblique. "I've been experimenting with cookie recipes. I have not, yet, set the kitchen on fire. Alyssa and Grace have an actually betting pool about it though.
"But you should come test the cookies, to figure out which recipe is the best. So far there are four candidates for gingerbread. But there are so many recipes for sugar cookies I don't even know how to pick which ones to use as test subjects." He sounds so very serious. Perhaps he is. It is only sometimes easy to be sure.
Lucy
[i promise you this is not important]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (1) ( fail )
Lucy
There are certain things that catch Lucy's attention, hooking it and drawing her focus from one person to the next. That it's hard sometimes for Alexander to remember the wondrous times. Lucy's bright green eyes lower thoughtfully before she nods. She does know. After that first night in the park she thought she'd never know peace again. Lucky for her she has Delilah, or maybe she wouldn't.
Next, there is my sister and travel a lot and Lucy's attention tilts to Kiara, chin lifting and head canting to a curious angle. The corner of her mouth lifts. "Sounds like me and my sister. Only I was...hoping for a place to settle into. When we landed here, Denver seemed as good a place as any to try and end our vagabond wandering. Which," she says suddenly, eyes widening as she sits up, pulls open the bag in her lap to begin pawing through it, looking for, "Ah," her phone. Thumbing it to life, the noise she makes next most closely resembles ack.
"Speaking of, if I'm going to meet her even remotely on time I have to go now." Kalen and Alexander perhaps know by now that Lucy is a slave to the public transportation system. Slipping her phone into the pocket of her jacket instead of back into her bag, she gathers up her things and rises, adjusting the fall of her bag so that she can zip up her jacket. Not that she needs it zipped like other people do, but pretending to at least try to conform to standard winter weather protection will lessen how often she's stopped by well meaning (or lascivious) strangers commenting about her attire. "It was nice to meet you officially, Kiara," she says, and she does not offer her hand to the woman. "Um, Alexander, have fun at the club," she says, squinting as she points to the Orphan and then the Hermetic, "and Kalen, let me know how the cookies work out."
She hurries off, but stops suddenly just at the door and begins looking through her bag again. She comes back to the table and puts a business card down in front of Kiara. At least it looks like a business card. It's not printed like one, though. One one side there is Lucy in a silver-inked, looping, handwritten script. Below her name is only a phone number. When Kiara sees the other side, she will find a kiss mark in bright red lipstick, only a little faded with time. "My number," she explains. "See you around," she says, offering a wave to include all three of them.
Then she's off again. This time, she slips out into the night unimpeded.
[because it is late and unfortunately i must sleep -_- good night, and thanks for the scene!]
Kiara
"Plant being the key word, there." Arch, that. The tone, the eyebrow. The blink-and-you'll-miss-it humor about her Tradition, perhaps. About how she views herself in relation to the world; the universe. As widely or narrowly as she means it Kiara doesn't linger on it long. She does, though, throw her attention to Kalen and his quiet assurances on the city.
"I don't doubt that," she offers up honestly, searching his face for a long minute as if she's hoping to pry out secrets much the way she had Alexander, moments ago. Under her winter's cap, with the collar of her coat drawn up, her hair is darker than ever; invoked curls falling around a heart shaped face; she's sharp edged, Kiara, but there's a natural vivacity curled into her presence that tempers it. At least when she applies herself.
"Most cities I've been, there's always reasons to stay." The unspoken in her voice being: but more to run.
Lucy is catching words, framing them into a context perhaps she is familiar with in her head from Kiara's reasoning and there's a returned smile there - quieter, perhaps more tempered, than her usual - before the other woman announces her impending departure and Kiara watches her flight. The return. There's a card.
Laid out in front of the white-clad brunette and she takes it up, studying it and catching Lucy's eye before she's gone, reclaimed by the gusting climate outside. "Thanks. I'll text you mine."
Alexander
More warmth and humour come back into Alexander’s expression as Kalen talks about his adventures in cookie making and the betting going on between the others. “What are the odds on you opening a gateway into hell in the oven? Or is that only a thing when you get put pasta in there?” It looks like someone might have finally done a little catching up with some of the old messages on a certain messaging service. Alex looks up at Kalen, still smiling, telling him gently, “I’m ok.” His voice goes back to normal when he continues, “And I’m all up for trying out cookies. I’ll swing by.”
Lucy’s making a move to head off before the public transport network starts to wind down for the night and she gets stranded or overly delayed. “Catch you again soon, Lucy. And tell Delilah I said hi?”
Kiara’s hint at her Tradition is a little too subtle for Alex to catch, especially given his lack of knowledge of some of the groups. But is it really all that important to know, right now? Maybe in some cities Traditions are more important and those who aren’t a part of them are pushed apart from them. But that doesn’t seem to be the case in Denver. Not at the moment, anyway. Who knows if and when things will change. Nothing is pre-determined after all.
“So apart from gingerbread cookies, what else would get you to stay?”
Kalen Holliday
Kalen smiles and nods to Lucy. He smiles a little at what Kiara doesn't quite say, because Kalen at the center of so many things now and learning to bake cookies and about to decorate three Christmas trees, with one hand still resting on his cabalmate's shoulder still knows more about running than staying.
Denver has him anyway.
Alexander's shoulder gets another squeeze, and then he is released and Kalen settles into one of the chairs. "I think that's only with the Sumerian mulled wine recipe," he says. His attention turns to Kiara when Alexander asks her what would make her stay.
Kiara
The Dreamspeaker's contact details are tucked away into her pocket; cushioned between the worn gloves. At some later time, perhaps that night, she'll empty them, turn the card over in her hands and run the tips of her fingers over the sharp edges in consideration of it. The faded lipstick, the implications inherent even in texting another Awakened. The tug at the edges of her world, coaxing it further into Denver's populous of Awakened souls.
It's not fear, per say, that holds her back.
What would keep her here, Alexander wants to know and Kiara's attention refocuses on him; her eyes; dark and framed by long lashes; coated in smokey layers of shadow; her smile. There's a decided tease in the way it hooks in the corner there. Suggestive of a whole array of things she might be holding back, might be deliberating.
"When I know the answer to that, I'll let you know."
There's the quiet hum of something electronic from her pocket that interrupts her before she says more. Her attention is captured by it briefly, she slips a phone out of a pocket; the screen flashes a riot of color against her coat, bathes her skin in the sheen of artificial light for a moment. "I should get going. Appointments to keep." She cradles the phone in one hand, the coffee cup in another and gently scrapes her chair back a little to rise.
The Verbana and her ghostly white ensemble; bracketed by dark hair and that certain sense of visceral inevitability. "It was nice to properly meet you Alexander, Kalen - " She slides gloves from a pocket, pauses as she slides one on. "Good luck with the cooking endeavors. Don't burn anything down."
With that and a pitstop to toss her empty cup into the trash, lip stick stains and all, Kiara's resonance ebbs away as she slips into the crowd heading for the door.
[Eep, I gotta go organize some dinner guys so I shall bow out here. Thank you for RP!]
Alexander
[Thank you! Glad we got that scene in the end :) ]
Kiara
[Likewise! Hopefully we can do some more with them. :) ]
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