Lavinia
Her legs were long.
She did a good job at Thanksgiving. Ate food and kept it down, played nice with the people she had to go see, which happened to include her sister's husband. Her sister's husband that rolls his eyes every time that their little girl Macy emphasized that Lavinia looked like the angel they put on top of the Christmas tree last year, but prettier. And proceeded to brush her hair for the next two hours and try to "braid" it, which consisted of making it even more tangled.
Addison asked if Lavinia had somewhere to crash. Lavinia lied and said that she was apartment hunting. Addison didn't believe it, but she didn't press. Vinnie had a transient lifestyle, and had for years. It's why she was more comfortable out on a park bench, watching the smoke curl up into the sky while someone illegally set a fire in a nearby trashcan. The cops would show up, because eventually someone would be pissed off about the fact that there was some massively tall blonde womb standing around with a bunch of degenerates setting fire to public property. Some people don't like staying in shelters, that much she knew. She knew they didn't like it because there was something that you traded for a bed sometimes.
Occasionally it was dignity. Occasionally it was giving in on a principle, or sometimes it was the fact that a lot of people have a problem lying to good-hearted people. Saying I'll get clean or I'll dry out or any number of lies just is too much. So there she was, presiding over the forgotten like Santa Muerte herself- the one who looks after the outcasts of society.
If she doesn't start eating more, she might damn well start looking like the Bony Lady herself. She exercised like it was going out of style. Did push ups, sit ups, ran miles and sparred with whomever happened to be willing to take a hit. There was a backpack on the bench with her, and her coat was clearly for a person who was decidedly taller and larger and heavier than she was. She had on a short skirt and combat boots. If someone didn't know better, if someone wasn't rendered painfully aware of what they were looking at (and everyone was aware, mortals and awakened alike, that she was not entirely of this world), one might have mistook her for a lady of the evening. RIght down to the eyeliner. Right down to the comfort with the outcasts.
Kiara
[Be quiet, we're hunting Choristers. Mage-dar.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 8) ( success x 1 )
Oliver
[WP]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 6, 7, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )
Oliver
[IS THERE A VERBENA IN THE HOUSE??: awareness]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 5, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )
Kiara
[Just for flavor tonight, how are those nightmares treating you?]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 4, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )
Lavinia
(other mages?)
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 4, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )
Oliver
Lavinia does have a place to crash. Several places probably, but Oliver doesn't ask. Just let her know when he found out where the house he'd been provided with was located, told her she was welcome to stay whenever she had a need. After so long spent together on the road, maybe she'd want her time away from him and his slow sluggish days, the days when he couldn't be dragged out of bed, the days that make the bad days of most look like sunshine and rainbows and happiness. And besides, Oliver isn't alone in that house.
He invited her to his own Thanksgiving, the one he shared not just with Iris but with the children of the foster home. But she had to spend the time with her blood relation, so she didn't get to see the sullen way Iris refused to look at him. She didn't see how the distance cut him more deeply than he could carve the donated turkey. No, Oliver and Lavinia had their own Thanksgiving another night, in a diner somewhere, a single plate shared between the both of them because neither of them has an easy time getting themselves to eat some days.
Today, for Oliver at least, is not one of those days. He is not with Lavinia when someone sets fire to the insides of a trash can. He is not with Lavinia because he is on his way to Lavinia and her cohorts of the evening. The lost, the forgotten, the dregs of society. Oliver strides with strength and purpose and dignity all his own, both hands curled around the folded over tops of brown paper bags sporting the logo of a nearby deli. The food inside is warm because the night, while not completely frigid, is cold enough and bound to get colder as it wears on.
The tall man in the dark, unbuttoned pea coat, is drawn to the light like a moth to flame, but not quite literally. He is drawn to the radiance, the endless presence somehow contained within a slightly taller, much thinner frame.
"Oi!" he calls, and wouldn't you know it he almost (almost) sounds chipper. He sounds lighter than he usually does, at least. "Give us a hand here, love." He holds one of the bags up in offering to Lavinia, his eyes moving around the shadowed figures without judgement. There is a moment of distraction, though, as his heavy brows tighten over his pale eyes and he frowns beneath his beard.
He gives Lavinia a familiar look. Do you sense that?
Kiara
There are so many reasons it's a terrible night to be making first impressions.
The first and most pressing is, naturally, that it's cold. Denver's descent into winter is felt now as they tumbled into December. It's in the grasp of nature's whim just how far into the depths of freezing they'll plunge at any given moment. For those without a roof over their head, it's a far more perilous and death defying time of the year than for any other. Insulation comes for some by bundling layers of old newspaper inside ragged clothing, by warming hands over bin fires and trying to stave off the icy fingertips of sickness.
For others -- there are more astute and comfortable means.
To retrace again, terrible night for first impressions in part because the brunette picking her way across the expanse of the park is who she is. Especially to ones like Lavinia and Oliver. That prickling awareness of degradation under the skin; the tingling surge of energy restored. It's subtle but like so many things rooted in magic [and superstition, too], no less apparent and present. There's no black cats to mark Kiara Woolfe's appearance down the ways; moving shadow to feeble street lit illumination and back again like a grim slender phantom in the night but she does present a picture.
Boots; jeans and -- ears. Muffled from the chill, there's a hood drawn low over her brow; a vest made of what seems like fur. What made her seem like, quite possibly, a snowy wolf. A bag strung across her midsection; gloves keeping her fingers frost free and a coat undone and bracketing her movements like a gently flitting cape.
She slows her footsteps, some distance from the gathering; the distant noise of people, gathered and gathering because of the sensation(s) emanating. Radiant, boundless ... unwavering. There's a frisson of wariness then - her steps pick back up; her hands remain tucked into pockets but as she nears, this red lipped creature with dark hair and eyes; glinting out from beneath her strange mockery of a creature whose name she shares - she's searching for the source of her hesitation.
Oliver. Lavinia. They slide into focus eventually and Kiara blinks at them; once. The wind ruffles her furry vest.
"Evening."
Lavinia
That is the contradiction of her. She is very clearly a finite creature. She very clearly has ends and boundaries but when one stands too close, when one looks at her, she is the edge of the universe. She is the boundless edges of the cosmos. Every expanding, ever growing into something that is truly unknown. Her being rings of the Infinite. Beyond that, it runs risk of being overwhelming, too much, too much for one person and yet- there she is.
She turned her head slightly to left, leaning in a little to the sound and drowning out the ambient noises of the trashcan and the wind and the stars- because the stars could be chatty things, couldn't they?
Her gaze does follow, flitter until she noticed the other woman. She was smaller, but then again it wasn't hard to be smaller than Lavinia. She was over six feet tall and completely unapologetic about it. Her dark eyes take in the other figure, and there is something… angelic seems to be the most appropriate word, but it conjured an image softer than what she was. Lavinia had eyes that shone like beacons and the voice of a herald- intent. compelling. She had a smile that was infectious.
"Hey there," she said, and the smile reaches those dark, dark eyes. She had the kind of voice that would bring tidings of great joy. Something that would ring glories to the highest, and yet…
"Fuckin' freezing, am I right?" she took the bag from Oliver, adjusting her position just enough so that she kept the people she was talking to on her left instead of her right.
Oliver
Oliver feels a bit like something great, himself. He seems like a champion, like a warrior, like a defender. Unwavering, immoveable, resolute. On his bad days that translates into a terrible stubbornness. On his good days, well. On his good days, he's still terribly stubborn, but sometimes when the light hits his eyes just right it seems half a jest. Like his stoic look might suddenly shatter with a smile, but no. Maybe once, but not anymore.
He looks from Lavinia and around as he opens up the bag he holds. The smell of cooked meat wafts upward in a puff of steam. When he locates the source of that cycle of rejuvenation continually devoured his expression eases, his brows lift and
Evening.
Fuckin' freezing, am I right?
There is a lightness in Oliver tonight. It is not really lightheartedness, not really happiness or pleasure, but the lack of a heavy weight crushing him. A weight he knows will come again another day, and so he does not get too terribly enthused when he finds it less than impossible to get out into the world. But that lightness allows true fondness to shine through for a moment as he looks at Lavinia, shakes his head, and says, "Alright, you lot. Who could use a sandwich?" His voice is a growling rumble that seems to claw its way free of his chest. It's a voice that bears an obvious accent, one Vinnie thinks makes him sound like John Constantine. Which is funny when you think about it.
He reaches into his bag, one matched for heaviness with the one Lavinia holds, but a heaviness neither finds remotely difficult to bear, and begins passing out foil-wrappted sandwhiches, each one warm to the touch.
Kiara
Herald. Goddess. To the pagan perhaps even some manifestation of the Queen of Winter; some deity come to feel the ground beneath her feet and celebrate the turning of the season. She certainly keeps Kiara's attention for a good moment or two before her mouth brooks into a smile. Before she pushes at the ruffed edge of her hood and lifts it back enough to free the shadows from around her features.
Waves of dark hair surface around a heart shaped face. Kiara's features are delicate, though her mouth offers no mistake when it turns in good humor or displeasure and she appears, initial reservations aside, quite at her leisure to make the acquaintance of two strangers amidst the needy in the Park at night.
The Queen of Winter and her Guardian, perhaps.
"You would be right," she offers with a glance at Oliver; a considering beat before her eyes tick back. "I'm Kiara." The Verbena's lip curls a little further. "Woolfe. And you both are ... new, to the city?" There's the taste of a question within a question to the way she says what she does.
A test, of sorts. The dance of the attuned around those who weren't.
Lavinia
"Lavinia," she said, offered her hand like it was a normal interaction. Lavinia transferred the bag from one hand to the other, giving herself a little time to take a moment and just enjoy the fact that they were having a conversation. Like normal people. Like normal people by a trashcan fire.
"And Oliver," Lavinia clarified, "we just moved here. We're becoming domesticated, isn't that awful?"
Like domestication was something distasteful, but something that she could mock, and would mock, and would enjoy mocking.
"Duty calls and we answer, though."
Oliver
"The worst," says Oliver, turning his head and checking Lavinia's location to ensure that she hears him, maybe even catches the glimmer of his eyes before he looks at Kiara and throws her a wink. It is the smallest reminder that he could be charming, once upon a time.
He empties his bag of sandwiches, passing them out all around. Some of those gathered wander off, get some space between them and all these others so that they can eat this boon in peace. Like animals. Oliver does not look after their retreating shadows with pity. He does not did not bring food to give away because he found them piteous, but because the night is cool and a warm, full belly can do a lot to lift one's spirits. It can do a lot to restore a little faith, in the Lord, in humanity, in strangers.
He tosses the empty paper bag onto the fire, which eats it up right quick, flaring only a little when it licks over a small grease stain. Then it is ash, and then it is forgotten.
Pushing his hands into the pockets of his coat, Oliver moves to stand opposite the can from Lavinia. They are both tall, and imposing in their own ways. Lavinia is spindly, all long thin limbs with a touch of the ethereal. Oliver is bigger, broader. His coat hangs from wide strong shoulders, the dark fabric of it and the plain t-shirt beneath it disguise the definition of him, but there is no hiding the bulk. Oliver is built like a wall.
"You're one've the townies, then, eh?"
Kiara
Lavinia offers her hand and one of Kiara's slips from a pocket to grip it. It's housed in a soft leather glove; the slide of it warming and supple against bare skin. Where both the Choristers are tall, imposing in their respective ways Kiara seems slighter for the comparison beside them. She loses some few inches on their height; but she's no less present for it; a curious composition in her white coat and faux fur vest. Her mouth coated in glossy red lipstick.
It draws the eye, but perhaps that's the intent of it. Her eye makeup dramatic in its own respect; bold, dark lashes, underscored by dark liner. It enhances already dark eyes; makes the brown seem more intent on its target, somehow.
"Absolutely awful." She agrees easily, the corner of her mouth quirking when Oliver winks; gaze settling and following the hopeful, trudging progression of the weary with their hot food. "I'm - not sure if I'd go so far as to say I'm a townie," Kiara's expression shifts; she hedges; a wrinkle of her nose. "But I've been here a couple of months now. Swung around on the ropes."
She lifts a hand to a cheek and tenders back wayward strands of hair. There's something edging on wry, there. Contained in her voice. "There are worse places to pick if you're looking to set down roots."
Her eyes rove over the pair of them; return to Lavinia's face as if drawn. "Is that what you're doing out here now, then." Kiara punctuates it with a twist of a hand within her pocket; it flares the vest out; jingles something loose beneath the layers she's wearing. "Duty?"
Oliver
The women shake hands and for a moment Oliver keeps back and keeps quiet, hands tucked into the pockets of his own coat. He is studying the woman, not intently, not lasciviously, but with a kind of detached curiosity. She is just so perfectly composed. The coat and the vest, the makeup, the, well all of it. All so well put together.
He's still studying her when she looks at him, eyes roving over him. He does not straighten, does not preen beneath her graze, but he does not study her any longer.
"Not looking, love," he says, looking quickily at Lavinia and then back to Kiara. Maybe he, too, is drawn to the Divinity in her bearing. "Found." His voice is a touch too gruff, his look a hair too sharp. It's obvious he at least has no intention of elaborating, at least not yet.
Kiara asks after their duty, or rather what they're doing out here tonight. One of Oliver's brows quirks and he shifts his weight, rocking forward onto the balls of his booted feet while keeping his shoulders back. "Feeding the hungry is hardly a duty, those who think it is are doing it, or looking at it, with the wrong eyes. No, miss. We answer to a higher calling than that."
Kiara
They answer to a higher calling.
There's a flicker there; surprise maybe; apprehension, who knew. Something that crosses the brunette's features; causes both her eyebrows to arch up and her eyes to tick back to Oliver with sudden, sharper clarity. Looking at him now as if she's making less polite considerations and more directly taking the measure of him. It can't be the first time such a reaction is gathered from words that belied the kind of meaning his do.
They aren't looking, they've found. It's not a duty.
"Right," of course you do, is the unspoken in her gaze; that steady, consolidating stare. It tracks away after a moment and whatever ghost of a thought; whatever was surfacing there on this unknown one's face is pressed back beneath a sliver of a smile; a ghosting tease housed somewhere in Kiara's voice.
All warm and sociable anew. "Well it's a nice gesture, whatever's calling you to it, I can't argue with that."
Lavinia
"We're kind of like the Blues Brothers, except I don't particularly like to wear pants and Oliver is shit on the harmonica," she said. it was true, they were a pair of sunglasses and a crappy car away from saying they were on a mission from God at one point. Or maybe that was just Lavinia. Whatever the case, the Chorister grinned, because she could be warm and she could be personable enough for the both of them and continue along in conversation.
"Anyway, the guys are pretty cool. Jake plays jimbe and I'm pretty sure if he will show up for rehearsal we can start a band or something," Lavinia half yelled at one of the men, who laughed and gave her the bird and yelled about something being just the one time but he was on her wrong side so Lavinia didn't actually hear him. She just laughed anyway because she knew she needed to.
"So, what's the city life like, daring wolf?"
Kalen Holliday
[How awake are we?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )
Kalen Holliday
[And how distracted by Resonance are we?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 6, 6, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 5 )
Oliver
Of course you do, says that look, a look that Oliver knows well. She doesn't him, doesn't know them. She only knows what she senses from them, she only has to feel that Lavinia is something holier than thou, but she hears a particular phrase and there goes Kiara, making her suppositions about the pair of them.
It's a nice gesture, she says, and Oliver looks like he would debate her on it. God look at him, hands in his pockets yet obviously there's a tension that courses through his shoulders. The lower half of his face is obscured by a thick dark beard, but even that can't hide the set of his jaw, the line of his mouth. There is a heaviness and a hardness to his gaze, not angry. Not hostile, not intentionally. He just looks like he wants to debate. When was the last time he had the chance to argue? When was the last time he talked to someone...when was the last time he wanted to talk to someone who wasn't Lavinia? When was the last time he felt okay enough to argue?
He looks like he would, but he doesn't get the chance. Lavinia speaks up first, cutting easily through that moment of tension. She brings up the Blues brothers and how they're kind of like them. It's true. There may have been a time (or two (or five)) where one of them set a hand upon the dash of the old car and said Our Lady of Blessed Acceleration, don't fail me now. Lavinia calls out to one of the retreating figures, who gives her the bird which causes Oliver's eyes to narrow.
Then he looks away. A hand frees itself from a pocket and rises to rub at the back of his neck. Lavinia wants to know what the city's like and Oliver wants to know what Iris is up to. So he lowers his hand, uses it to pull out an old flip-phone which he flips open and starts the laborious task of tapping out a text.
Kalen Holliday
Kalen is, very slowly, coming to something of a truce with the cold. He still dresses as though the weather is colder than it is, at least by Denver standards. Long heavy gray coat, pale purplish-gray scarf, boots, gloves; though, oddly enough, despite all of that the hood on the coat is down. He is not carrying coffee, and the shadows under his eyes have faded a bit. Still, you cannot undo the kind of long-running exhaustion Kalen is prone to with one good night of sleep.
He pauses for a second when he fist catches the sense of Lavinia, and then recognizes Kiara too. Oliver. He is curious enough that he does not walk all the way to the edge of the lake first, as he tends to, but instead toward the little gathering of Mages. The Message, after all, is not here. He knows that the same way he knows the others are.
He draws close at a steady, but not hurried pace. He wants time to study them. There are all kinds of creatures whose lineage is holy. Some of them are devils.
Kiara
How much of the Verbena's reaction; that momentarily pause and sweep of her gaze over Oliver is a presumption is unknown. It's easily assumed they both carry distinctive [as yet unvoiced] notions on what a higher power might be, on how it might be. What form, what matter, what sort of power or deity possessed them to do, speak, react the way they did. It's not a decided hostility on either side perhaps but a recognized fracturing of the ways.
Raised by believers; Awakened by the dogmatic tenders of the Tree. There's so many opinions weighing down the moment for one, though Kiara, for her part, bides her time. Cuts away her eyes and when they return - she attempts some deviation on her instincts. Tamps down the urge to press at the wound to see the blood well.
The dark eyed pagan instead sets her hood fully down and under the swoop of it come the gleam of piercings in her ears; studs by the looks. Tiny winking suggestions of pink and green. When she gathers her hair over a shoulder; the rattle of chains suggests more adornments exist under the layers between her and the chill of the Denver evening.
Daring wolf, the radiant one calls her and the flash of teeth make it quite the apt description for Kiara. "Surprising. Unrepentant." A curve of her mouth. Challenging. Coiled. "Fun, if you enjoy a little cosmopolitan insanity in your life. You'll rarely be bored. There's always - " A gathering storm; the stir of it across the pagan's senses. She makes some subvocal noise of assent. "Something on the horizon."
Lavinia
"I missed cities," she admitted, unashamed and unswayed, but there is a spark, something that reads like glee in the woman's dark-yet-bright eyes. Something that urns a little brighter. Shines a little more like torches seeking, searching, finding something to grasp and hold onto. Something that would press her forward. THe promise of something on the horizon and for a creature whose energy is boundless, whose very being insists hat is shall not be contained, it can not be contained. All light and brightness and radiance smoldering, promising, insisting for eternity- how could she be anything but enthralled by the concept of something always being on the horizon.
A city whose possibility was infinite. Whose truth was infinite.
"But only a little cosmopolitan insanity?" she made a face that contorted to a playful pout, "I don't quite know what to do with myself if that's the case. I'm accustomed to full on bats hit-or-dead. I might have to try this whole moderation thing."
Moderation got finger quotes.
Lavinia
(bat shit, not bats hit. Thank you autocorrect)
Oliver
Oliver is texting. There are young people today who would not understand the value of a good flip phone, of being able to feel each key as its depressed, of running one's thumb over the bump on the 5 and knowing precisely where to tap by feel alone. Smartphones with their glossy sleek faces and their large, very readable screens may be easier to use, but easier doesn't always mean better. At least it doesn't to Oliver, who does not mind fancy things but could (and does) do without them.
He is focused on his cell phone, not the conversation about the city. It matters very little to him what the city is like, and it certainly doesn't matter as much as the textual conversation he's having. Seems to be having. Lavinia knows but the others won't, that Oliver's cell phone would ring or vibrate if the person on the other end was sending messages back to him. To those not in the know, however, he seems to be having a rather heated session as he quickly taps out message after message.
He is not so absorbed in what he's doing that he doesn't hear Lavinia say she might have to try out moderation, which actually tugs a huff of a laugh from the man. And he is not so distracted that he doesn't feel the prickle of an oncoming storm, coming from a direction he happened to face when he turned away from the fiery bin. He glances up looks down looks up, brows lifting when he sees a shadowed figure outside the reach of the firelight headed their way. Oliver closes his phone, straightens, and puts the phone into his pocket.
Kalen Holliday
That he has time to take the measure of them does give them some time to take the measure of him. Such judgments from a distance are rarely terribly illuminating.Perhaps with more time. It is not without some wistfulness that he remembers a time when it was easier to hide. Of course, then he was a skinny child better at running than fighting. He's been better at fighting, really.
These days, he is beginning to suspect he understands what Marcellus wanted him for. It is more difficult than hitting something, and more than ever it makes him wish that the man was there. Or, at least, somewhere he could be reached.
There is, he supposes, always the option to explore contacting the dead. But that, in this case, terrifies him.
It does, however, seem a terrible shame to Kalen that every radiant, sacred creature he has encountered was after he could tell the old man. And it is impossible to ignore the tugging at his memories tonight because even more than Pan this other stranger has a presence like Marcellus. And it is, perhaps, that more than anything that lead his eyes to rest first on Oliver as he says simply, "Hello." He looks from Oliver to Kiara, who get a nod so slight it could be mistaken for a trick of the flickering light, and then finally to Lavinia.
Kiara
"I wouldn't recommend it." Moderation. Kiara's smiling, right there. It flirts with the impression of dimples in her cheeks; throws back her appearance to that of someone a far cry sweeter than may be the reality of it. It's jarring to see that sort of aimable flair saddled to a woman who feels a little like she's a corrosive agent; agitating your skin.
Oliver is focused on his phone; or providing a very convincing impersonation of it. Kiara's eyes cut to it; then away; over and onto Kalen. He nods at her, she inclines her head in some wordless reciprocation before her gloved hands reappear. Shape the space between them with lazy precision. "Kalen, meet Oliver and Lavinia."
A beat; Kiara curls her fingers around the fur lined pockets of her vest. Her dark-edged eyes scoping the edge of the newcomer's profile. "They're here to live lives of moderate fulfilment. Or at least, to begin with." That, to Lavinia, Kiara's quip thrown down with a curled mouth; inviting the retort.
A denial. Agreement. Any of the above. Kiara tugs her hood back up; the fur trimmed edges frame her face and throw her back into the guise of some winter wolf. Except for that red mouth of hers, that remains the slash of bright focus.
"Kalen's one of the townies, too. I guess you could say."
Lavinia
It's hard to keep people on your good side.
Literally, she has a literal good side. One that functions and hears and catches the fine details and perhaps, at one time she did not favor her left over her right but in all things, she goes for the left first. A habit, she is infinite. Not chaotic. (But isn't there chaos in infinity? Just touching the surface, just dipping herself in, testing the waters there). There is a glimpse of order that she courts from time to time. A grander order that creatures like her were a part of- hierarchies and thrones and dominions and cherubs alike.
"We're here because work brought us out here- you know what they say, come for the backbreaking labor and Herculean tasks, stay because the view is pretty."
And the view was pretty.
She could revel in sensations. In the rebirth and devouring, a cycle in itself. Something born of nature and the natural. Something that mixed with the presence of her unyielding, insistent companion. What is and what always will be, which hit against the tempest of one Kalen Holliday.
"I figure it should be nice. I haven't been settled somewhere for, what, Ollie, ten years? One with you, a few with- anyway," she said with a little wave, "you didn't sign up to be my personal biographer."
That's just an added bonus, of course!
Oliver
He clears his throat like maybe that's why he's gone silent, there's something caught in it and sound literally can't come out. Absently, he pats a pocket, then another. His pack of cigarettes is found in the last pocket because isn't it always? The last place one looks is the last place because there is no need to keep searching once a thing is found. He taps out a cigarette, finds his Zippo lighter and takes a moment to light up, suck in a cleansing breath of not so cleansing smoke before exhaling.
They are introduced and still Oliver says nothing. What is there to say? His name has already been given to the young newcomer, the young newcomer's has been given to him. And to Lavinia. By Kiara. He is not alone in this encounter. "'ello, mate," he greets in that baritone rumble.
And he looks at Kiara, and he opens his mouth to say something, but at just that precise moment a high pitched voice chimes out from the pocket where he put his phone, "Doom doom doomdoom doom!" Lavinia knows that text tone and who it belongs to. "Christ almighty," he grumbles, finding his phone and flipping it open. "It's about time." Whatever he reads, it causes his expression to darken before he forces it smooth again, snapping the phone shut and looking to Lavinia.
"What's that, love? Ah, yeh, this is already fourth longest we've spent in any one place. I need to get. You alright to get home?" he asks her, asks her about 'home' because unlike Lavinia he is protective of certain information, especially when it pertains to her or to Iris. But the point is obvious, Oliver is making good his escape. He gives a polite nod to Kalen, eyes lingering on him for perhaps a moment too long. Then a slightly more genial inclination to Kiara. "A pleasure," he says with a flat politeness that sounds perhaps less genuine than it truly is.
Then, with or withough Lavinia, Oliver makes his way away.
[and i am out alas, because i am falling asleep. thanks so much for the scene!]
Kalen Holliday
Is he one of the townies? He still feels like he just got here. But then, by comparison.
There were Mages here before. Eleanor had known them. The chantry had first been theirs. None of them have been here terribly long. At least not and also Awake.
"For about a year," he says quietly. "I was not, always, from here." There is the implication that he is from here now.
"Well," he says to Lavinia, still quiet. "Denver winters are usually cold, with a thirty percent chance of snow and or apocalypse. Be prepared." Is he joking? It is, as it almost always is, not exactly easy to determine.
Oliver's accent gets a little blink, a faint dip of his head in a returned nod.
Kiara
The brunette doesn't vocalize her farewell to the Chorister male but she does return his look; watchful perhaps. Curious to a degree. He means to say - there's something and then there's nothing. And then he's setting off and Kiara's eyes linger on the shape of his back for a moment as if she can't quite account for what she makes of him before they resettle on the luminous figure of Lavinia.
She's enjoying the view. Kiara's mouth moves in the suggestion of something; a subtle tug of humor; recognition for what it is to just be. Enjoy. Live in the moment. Under her hood, her skin is finding a touch of warmth, it surfaces in the barest hint of color across her cheekbones. "Or you could stay for the view, figure the rest out later."
A lift of thin shoulders; Kiara bending into the motion; rocking in her boots. "What's life without a little uncertainty." A moment, it draws out, unfurls itself in the wake of Oliver's departure and then Kalen speaks on the cold. As if in accordance there's a stirring of the trees; the ripple in the air; mother nature brooking no amusement or offering some.
Hard to deduce. The brunette turns her face into it; seems distracted by the wind picking up around them. "That's on the unofficial tourist brochure," a smile thrown Kalen's way. The gambit thrown. "Denver, come for the freezing winters and high probability of untimely death."
Kiara's eyes are drawn into the distance again. Her hands reclaim pockets; sheltering from the bite in the air.
"If either of you need a ride," the offer is made in such an offhand way, it seems unlikely Kiara will take offense at whatever the reply becomes. "I was on my way to my car."
Lavinia
"One of those two is going to make me have to reconsider this whole pants thing," she only half-heartedly grumbled. It was easy to see why she might not be too keen on pants, where the Hell would she buy them? There wasn't necessarily a store that catered towards women who were built like runway models- impossibly tall and surprisingly slender. If she were more front heavy she might seem like a Barbie doll. Except, of course, Barbie didn't feel like the all enfolding cosmos incarnate.
It's cold, though, she can tell that it's cold, and the fact that she was wearing a skirt certainly wasn't helping. Thoughts of enjoying camaraderie with the guys by a trash can fire were replaced by the memory that she actuallydoes have somewhere to stay tonight. She's had a place to stay for years, but you never quite get over the uncertainty, checking for places that would be adequate shelter of buddying up with the right people just enough so that they don't kick you on your ass in the morning. Charm is what keeps bodies warm and bellies full. Given her frame, one could argue that Lavinia wasn't that charming.
Denver, come for the freezing inters and high probability of untimely death."I've got a punch card for a frequent near-death-experience card. Two more stamps and I get a free shot glass," the gambit was made, and the thought of nearly dying in some horrible fashion doesn't ruffle her feathers. Doesn't draw her ire but, rather, made her brows raise and a slight look of… something flicker across her features. "I think Denver is exactly where I need to be."
Lavinia
"And I would love a ride, if you wouldn't mind? I took the bus out here."
Kalen Holliday
"You're only to the shot glass?" Kalen's eyes sweep over Lavinia, measuring. "By spring I'd bet you'll be on to the full decanter set, if you're right about belonging here."
He looks between the two of them, ready to leave for...home? Somewhere, at least. "Good night, then, both of you. Take care."
Kiara
It's hard to predict where the brunette is headed, other than to her car. There's the fleeting suggestion sometimes; in a winged look; a protracted glance that there's something else to Kiara Woolfe than what she'd prefer you to take notice of. Undress a person down and the baser layers are often the ones that yield the most telling artefacts.
Of course, delving that deep involves lingering in the afterburn of her presence. A task for some but - not all. Still, there's no rancor, no sense she's let down or impacted by Kalen's response. She does look at him, for the measure of a moment after she offers what she does as if she's testing some private experiment but her expression is too composed in the face of whatever it is to offer much in the way of insight.
He bids them goodnight; she moves a few steps; looks back. "Stay warm, Kalen."
--
Her car is bright red. Or was, at some point in its transgressions on this earth. Now its fading stickers on the bumper and dirt pasted to the windscreens. It smells like pinetrees and the radio is set to some soft rock soundtrack that highlights the strange juxtapositions of the woman behind it. Composed yet with an edge of something ungentle beneath the gloves and vest and coat.
A wild thing, acting at being some tamer creature. She's a safe driver, at the very least and Lavinia reaches wherever home is tonight without incident.
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