Serafíne
Saturday night just after sunset, this
warm-ish day failing into a chilly night. There's no longer any snow on
the ground around the chantry house, though snow lingers on the peaks
visible here and there from the chantry grounds, and maybe in some quiet
hollows on the south side of the scrubby trees bordering the pasture.
Everything is mudlucious, though. Damp, thawing, full of the promise of
spring.
No extra vehicles in the driveway: not just now, but
still Sera's resonance is a distinct undercurrent against those of
Trinity and also of the Node. Perhaps Annie is in her woodshop,
working, and the others out. The house is otherwise empty, except for
Sera. She's downstairs in the living room, has slide down from the
couch to sit cross-legged, bare-legged on the floor. Has a chenille
blanket wrapped around her shoulders and a fire going in the fireplace
and a few candles lit and a pot of tea on a wrough-iron trivet on the
coffee table, covered in a knitted tea-cozy with the word IRONY worked
into the design, tone-on-tone.
A cup of tea with no more than
a soupcon of whiskey to warm it on the table, and a leatherbound
notebook open in her lap, pen idle in her right hand. Mostly - mostly
- she's staring mute out the double-glass-doors over the dark, dark
field that fronts the property. Watching night gather herself close.
Kiara
Night
is lacerated eventually by the twin points of headlights; they wash
over the windows; the decisive sound of a car engine rumbling closer as
it bounces ungently over the ground; freshly bare of snow yet somehow
all the more perilous for it. The car is familiar, at least, a small red
hatchback; still as desperately in need of washing as it had been the
last time Serafine had reason to glimpse it.
Had seen its
owner; who emerges in a slamming of doors; the jingling of keys set
against a palm and of course, that wash of what has become Kiara.
That folding and unfolding of life; that cyclic presence of hers that
was at once soothing and unsettling. She's been absent for only a short
while but in their world this may as well be eons. So much could happen
in their lives in a short week; two. Kiara's boots on the doorstep;
she's wiping the muck off them; unwinding a scarf; jacket even as the
door opens for her.
As she steps inside; tapping the evidence
of the earth's renewal from the grooves of her footwear; her dark hair a
wild bramble of waves falling around thin shoulders.
"Anyone home?"
The
greeting is an unnecessary nicety and she's aware of it, but she
performs it regardless; slinking into the depths of the ranch with this
jingle of adornments; with a wash of spice and something vaguely
sweeter.
Kalen Holliday
[How awake are we?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (1, 4, 4, 9, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )
Kalen Holliday
Kalen
comes to the House. Sometimes he comes to the House because he wants
to be near the Node, or to be near where he knows the spirit-bear is
even if he doesn't know where she is, or because he wants to see other
Mages if they're there, or because he is decorating for holidays.
Tonight he comes bearing gifts, but they are just groceries and more
alcohol. It is very important to have enough alcohol in stock for the
apocalypse. As he well remembers. Even if that was not, precisely, a
real apocalypse.
He does not call out and he does not head for
the living room. Instead, he carries things into the kitchen. Tucks
them quietly enough into cabinets, but the sounds of movement are still
audible.
Serafíne
Awareness!
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 8) ( success x 2 )
Serafíne
Dex + Crafts: sketching.
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 8, 8) ( success x 2 )
Serafíne
Dex + Expression: for the sketches?
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 9) ( success x 3 )
Serafíne
Anyone home? Kiara calls out and Sera is already shaken out of her reverie by the unsettling and familiar pull
of the other woman's resonance: at her skin, at her bones. The natural
cycles that truthfully Sera gives precisely no fucks about except when
they turn themselves back around into poetry or sensation: as now. The
scrambling sense of being both consumed and reborn.
She:
inhales. Pulls her shoulders back, stretches a bit and arches her
lovely spine and feels the joints pulling and popping and she is, lovely
thing, really rather sober, wrapped around with warmth, waiting for Dan
to return with Chinese take-away for her dinner and watching day swim
into night and thinking-without-thinking, which is a way that she has of
letting everything settle into her skin and waiting to see how she
feels.
But here: anyone home?
"Downstairs!" Sera
calls out, quite as if she owned the place, which she does not, voice
ringing and voice rising from where she sits curled on the floor. Waits
until she sees the whites of Kiara's before she: smiles, the curve of
her mouth as fine as the moon, her hair messy and loose, the shaved
fringe grown-out a bit, though no more than half-inch. Sharp little ear
pierced through with a platinum safety pin and a stainless steel bar.
"Hey," then, still smiling that lazy-I-just-woke-up smile, which is her default omg I'm sober smile, "want some tea?"
--
The
book in her lap is open. A handful of vignettes, there. She has been
trying to capture faces. The technique is - rather modest.
Sera
picks up the book and puts it on the coffee table, glances back up the
stairs. Can hear Kalen putting away groceries and listens for a moment,
feeling the new undercurrent of his storm.
Kiara
[Oh yes, I forgot to do this earlier.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN5 (2, 3, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )
Kiara
Hey.
"Hey,
yourself." This, with a knocked out hip; the jut of it against a
doorframe; a wall; standing with her arms across her chest and this
expression that's at once fond and a little - perhaps, as her eyes scope
out the book; Serafine's state of sobriety - uncertain before it levels
into that easy; known smile.
The Verbena looks pale; a little
worn at the edges; her mouth still that same bold slash of red but her
demeanor bares a sort of fragility to it that it didn't before. She
seems strained; though it's born with the sort of awareness of one who
tolerates it more-so than has any intent to conceal it. Still wholly
lovely Kiara, in that unrepentant bohemian manner of hers; dressed in
layers of earthy brown and gold; in faded jeans and high black boots;
yet a vaguely wilted version.
It doesn't hold her tongue,
though. Doesn't keep her smiles from radiating that sort of inviting
intimacy and slant of private amusement at some facet of the bigger
picture. "Coffee?" Kiara punctuates it with the raise of a brow; sliding
off her resting perch and stepping fully into the room.
"Coffee I would sin for." Kalen's making noise in the kitchen; Kiara's focus (and her focus)
pulls that way for an instant; she tousles fingers through her hair,
breathes out; cants dark eyes toward the book on the coffee table;
intrigue bleeds into her expression briefly.
"I didn't know you drew."
Kalen Holliday
The
advantages of being only about an entire room away from Kalen,
particularly when he is already in a kitchen, is that he will pretty
much make coffee constantly. Particularly if he's avoiding things like
conversation. So he puts a kettle on, because Kalen insists that the
only machine that should ever be involved with coffee makes espresso.
Kalen
does not leave the kitchen, does not even really come to the doorway
where he might catch a glimpse of Kiara depending on which edge of the
door frame she was occupying. He only calls quietly. "Should I get out
the ridiculous rock candy stirrers I have stashed around here for
Grace, or do you prefer your coffee with less whimsical flair?"
Serafíne
"I don't believe in coffee," Sera murmurs, tipping her head back so that she can just - well - watch
- Kiara. The layers of confidence and awareness, the subtle ticks of
fondness and uncertainty, knitting themselves together into a wind of
the larger whole. " - or in sin, for that fucking matter. I wonder
what you'd call one.
"A sin, I mean. There's just Darjeeling
unless Kalen obliges you," and Kalen, Sera would imagine, is likely to
oblige Kiara. Doesn't he see coffee as a sacrament? "or until Dan gets
his ass back here with my breakfast."
This supple hook of her right shoulder as her attention is redirected back to the leatherbound book, open to those sketches.
"I
don't really draw. I'm shite at it." And though there's no real trace
of her years in Europe in her voice: there is some London in that
single word: shite. "But I did some scrying and wanted to capture some
of those I saw on paper."
This tick of her attention briefly
behind Kiara, beyond the door when Kalen does, in fact, offer her
coffee. The edge of her half-formed little smile before her gaze is
snagged and drawn back to Kiara. Her focus sharpens, and this is
visible, the way her pupils contract and sweep over Kiara's visage.
"You okay?"
Kiara
She doesn't believe in coffee.
Kiara's mouth makes this suggestive little squiggle;
tipping into a smile as she regards the Cultist. "That right there - "
This quiet, throaty admonishment; Kiara's eyes brighter with it. " - is a
sin all on it's own." Then Kalen calls from the kitchen something about
candy stirrers and Kiara turns to face the direction his voice flows
from and retorts, with aplomb: "If it's hot and black Kalen, I'll drink
it. No whimsy required for this girl."
Back to the book; the sketches.
Kiara
moves to settle on the arm of a sofa; her necklaces knock together
hollowly as she does; the quiet clatter of stone and leather and what
may or may not have been some sort of silver. Stars and crystals and the
supplication to one of the pagan's revered sources of inspiration
gleaming and peeking from the layers of her clothing. She pushes her
sleeves up; settles with a knee propped; her body curved in a casual
slump of easy consideration.
"Ah yes, our wayward guests," a
murmur; there's the briefest consternation that knits into the Verbena's
brow; pulls at the corners of her smile; tips it downward. Her eyes
catch Sera's cursory sweep; the notice of her paler skin; the tautness
plied into the way her back straightens under it just so.
The
Verbena offers a smile; it doesn't quite reach her eyes; but it gets
points enough for effort: "Peachy keen. I just had a long week. Traveled
back to New York." She settles back against the spine of the sofa; her
eyes sliding away from meeting the Cultist's; briefly.
"You know how it goes."
Kalen Holliday
Kalen
leaves the kettle on the stove, drifts across the dining room, and
takes up residence in the doorway Kiara just vacated. He looks like
he's slept. And despite the way he and Serafine parted ways last they
spoke, despite anything that may have happened after that, he is still
calm enough. Of course, he's spent much of the past week curled up with
Neruda and bottles of wine.
"Hey," he says quietly. It's a
general greeting. His eyes take them in, Serafine with her sketches and
Kiara with her...whatever is going on with her. He does not ask, does
not really express concern unless you're one of those people who is into
reading micro-expressions.
"Coffee shouldn't be long."
It's spoken softly, in a tone that almost hits what most people would
consider concerned. Coffee is love, right. ....right...?
Serafíne
All
these bits to notice, all these things to see and hear. The music of
her necklaces and the magic of them, the way they hide and show
themselves again and Sera like a magpie - or, just now, down below and
essentially nesting like a baby bird - watching, watching. And
even though Kiara's gaze slides from Sera's when she says it: score one
for honesty. The admission brings something brief and passing and
tender to Sera's dark eyes. She reaches out to touch Kiara's ankle
where her leather boot lolls against the arm of the couch.
Just that.
Then Kalen, he gets "Kalen," and an easy smile and a lift of her chin in invitation. If there was a way they parted
there's no real suggestion of it in Sera's eyes except for the minute
stitch of her attention - sharpened - closer over him, not unlike that
are-you-okay look to Kiara.
"Come and see."
--
Back
to Kiara then, and in the interregnum, a certain unwinding that drops
the blanket from the spare architecture of a narrow shoulder. Whatever
Sera is wearing beneath the blanket, it leaves her right shoulder bare,
all bones and hollows, right up to her throat.
"That's the
one from the park. The rest were at the nightclub. That woman," an
indication, a certain portrait of a dark-eyed, dark-haired singer. " -
and those men. The one from the park: her name is Kat."
Spare, sober really. She's learned an awful lot about these things in a few days. Felt
Kat's pain and fear and panic, the overwhelming certainty of
death-to-come. Live through and within that and a few other things
that are keeping her a bit more sober right now.
Kiara
"Kalen."
Kiara echoes Serafine with a tilt of her head back against the sofa
with a smile and see; for the moment; her hand settled warmly over
Sera's. She'd squeezed it just so when it set down over her ankle; all
that worn leather; scuffed from long wear.
Briefest of things
but the Verbena strokes the edge of her thumb over Serafine's hand
before she lets it go in favor of sitting up; in favor of shifting the
heavy weight of her hair over a shoulder and scooting a little closer so
she can view the sketches.
Picks up the book, perhaps;
examines the picture of Kat; cuts a lingering look at Serafine; sets it
down gently and gathers the folds of her sweater around her midsection;
sets her hands on her lap and leans back; mouth edging down into a
frown. Some schism of concern. "And they aren't gathering to take
control, right?" Kiara's attention is pulled between both, she cranes to
catch Kalen's expression, returns her eyes to Sera.
"There
was a few that used to frequent clubs in Manhattan, I remember being
told about them." Kiara's throat moves as she swallows; her lower lip
drawn between her teeth; there's an absent gesture toward Serafine's
sketches. The men. The dark haired singer. "I never got close, though.
They never paid us that much attention but - "
Hesitation. Kiara's eyes settle on Sera. "It knows you? What you are?"
Kalen Holliday
Kalen
comes down the half-flight of stairs easily enough at the invitation.
He joins them, though a bit less in a triangle than to the opposite
side of Serafine from Kiara. He too reaches out to take the book for a
moment, flips though the sketches. Most he studies. One he lingers on
for a second. Rests a fingertip over his face.
"This one," he
says quietly, "Is Greyson Addario. He came into Ivory and Gold and
about got run out after he started expressing interest in Arionna. But
he wasn't welcome there to begin with. He was called in by Lilean
Holdings to get the business at the Orchid cleaned up. Because of us or
other complications, I don't know. I get the definite impression there
is conflict between the vampires here, and it may have been a reference
to that. Coded messages are...coded.
"I'm hoping that some
of the vampires he is in conflict with can help us to understand them.
Possibly help us to stop them. The enemy of our enemy and all." He
looks up at Serafine. "For all that he is charming and I love being
told I have nice eyes. I...there may be a world where that could happen
because I like the way his voice sounds when he recites Neruda in
Spanish, but it isn't this one. I know what he is." And he sounds,
perhaps, a little wistful. But also serious. Wesley is charming and
almost exactly what he would want, but only if he were also alive.
"If
it makes you feel any better about it, Ian came to see if possibly I
had lost my mind, and we talked, and he will be there. Which may
complicate things, but apparently here in Denver we care more about our
friends not dying than stopping evil monsters. I can try to roll with
that. But it's a little new for me." Except that it isn't. Not now.
Not if he admits that the version of him that came to Denver would have
risked Derrick killing Alicia in that alley. Would have pressed the
attack even with that gun to her head. But this version stopped.
"I
think at least some of them can sense us. Which makes sense, since we
sense at least some of them. And have ways to see the others."
Serafíne
Our Sera is strangely pensive. Or perhaps not strangely: understandably.
She
reaches out and picks up her mug of tea and tags a sip, then another
while Kiara and Kalen take their time with the sketches. Her own
expression is spare and her features were strangely made-for-it. Odd
how stillness settles over her, finds the sharp bits and odd shadows,
the arc of her brow and the curve of her neat little mouth, the quick
lines framing the corner when Kiara's hand finds her own, when that
thumb curves over her knuckles. This glance then: passing but -
intimate in its own way.
"Fuck if I know why they're
gathering." Another quiet little shrug and Sera starts to unwind the
blanket from around her torso. She is wearing: a white spaghetti
strapped cami, cotton so thin the shadow of her breasts is evident
beneath, and a pair of black silk boxers. Very little jewelry except
for her piercings. Ears, primarily, though she is still adorned - with
tattoos, all blackwork, on her arms, her shoulderblades, her hands -
everywhere. "They're gathered. At this nightclub called the Black
Orchid. That seems to be their primary hunting ground. She just took a
walk and got a little intoxicated - with want or power - and a bit
greedy.
"I hurt her pretty badly. She went back to the
club. This man," Sera indicates the portrait of Grayson Addario, "came
downstairs to meet her. Took care of her, stayed with her for a while.
Later, he called someone and told them to talk to Elias and make sure
everyone was on guard in case we tried to track her. This man and Kat -
they spoke without speaking. But on the phone he said: "She went after
a witch in Washington Park and it nearly killed her."
--
This
brief, flicker of a glance upward at Kalen. It is half-lashed. She
takes in the information he offers her and absorbs it, including the
gracenote about Ian. Well then.
"I don't - " an open mouth, a
pause, an arrest, "I don't think we should go getting ourselves
involved in their wars. Dan has some fucking history analogy about it.
He says allying with Stalin against Hitler is fine to end Auschwitz.
Not so fucking great when it blinds you to the purges and the famine and
50 years of the gulag, you know?"
Kiara
Kiara
looks at Kalen when he mentions Ian's name; that he'll be there. The
expression on her face is not open, not the way it had been briefly
earlier when she spoke-but-didn't about New York; there's still the
signs of exhaustion etched in there; smudged under her eyes; staining
the edge of her mouth far more easily downward into a frown tonight than
seems typical for her.
She's scrutinizing something about the
arrangements at hand; the slightest incline of neat, dark eyebrows
upward; the hint of concern; consternation. The lines that connected
them all; this raggedy little makeshift family of theirs was so
intricately woven it was hard, at times, to recall who was known to who;
how well; when - why. Kiara's eyes flit to Kalen; bank there with even,
private contemplation and then return to the drawings.
She
draws inward, the Verbena. Studying and listening. Privy to undertows
and veiled glances and the pauses between - sits forward at a point and
seems to make as if to speak once - Serafine begins and she doesn't
quite - and then again, does: "What I know about them, " Kiara's
fingertips tap at the edge of Sera's drawing of Kat, "I know through
coven dealings. Some of my - other Verbena keep company with them,
believe their blood has some kind of immaculate properties for casting.
None that I personally know but - it can get dangerous, fast." This a
flick of expression toward Kalen.
"Knowing more about them
isn't a bad thing, I agree in theory, but - " Kiara's supple mouth
twists a little. "Sera - Dan - has a point. We're never going to
understand the whole scope of what they're fighting about."
A beat.
"This
Wesley - he's still one of them. Vampires can be - " Kiara draws in a
breath; cuts a discerning look at Kalen. "Be careful around him. Don't
trust him. The enemy of our enemy is still our enemy at the end of the
day, yeah?"
Kalen Holliday
"I'm
not terribly concerned with their war. I am concerned with a human
trafficking ring and vampires who have threatened people I care about.
I am concerned with the souls trapped at the Orchid, unable to do
anything but linger in the place they were killed.
"That they
are at war is only of interest to me because it indicates that some of
them may be against those things, and that in destroying the specific
things I mentioned, some may be of help to us. I don't care to join
their war at all. Regardless of whether I may or may not accept the
assistance of some of them with, I mean to destroy the vampires that
frequent the Orchid."
He looks up at them. Takes his hand
away from the sketch. "I know. I do. Trust me. I will be careful and
I will shield my mind from his tricks and I will avoid letting him do
inconvenient things like kill me.
"I Awakened during a fight
with a vampire. I...." He glances away. "I have always found them
unsettling." And judging by the softness of the tone and those lowered
lashes by unsettling he means fucking terrifying.
"Wesley is
charming. But...I know that can be a lie. I'm familiar with how one
does that and some of the reasons why. I will not forget what he is."
Serafíne
Sera
flashes Kiara a grateful gleam of a look that shifts by subtle,
precipitate degrees as she notes how briefly closed the other woman's
expression is. Then, something pulled back - banked, beneath her eyes,
beneath her tongue, under her skin.
The creature's chin rises
and she sets down her mug of tea and reaches out to run the meat of her
thumb over the spine of that leatherbound book. When Kalen paged
through the remainder of the sketches he might've caught a glimpse of
the rest of its contents - doodles and scrawls of words, the beginning
of songs, chord notations, anything that appeals to her and should be
recorded.
"There's no one at the Black Orchid being held against their will. I don't know anything about ghosts, but - there aren't any people imprisoned there."
A
quick hook of her shoulder. "Not the nights I watched the place, and I
watched it the night we were attacked and then again, earlier this
week, all night long.
"And if they're at war, it could be that
removing one of the factions will mean that the pendulum will swing too
far the other direction. A different sort of swarm." A brief glance
at Kiara, then back to Kalen.
"Kalen," no admonishment here,
but a kind something in her voice that is private, personal, that is
temporal. "Do you know what it is like when they feed?"
Kiara
Kalen
awakened during a fight with a vampire. His revelation; the almost
casual way he mentions it startles Kiara. Takes her by surprise; she looks at him suddenly; wholly and totally focused on his face; the way he glances away; keeps looking even after he does and continues to speak.
Her
face is not without feeling on the news; her dark eyes are at times
sometimes a little too pervasive - the way they set and stay; steady and
intent. There's a gleam of something tender for a moment to them;
sympathetic and warm. She feels that; the trauma of what he went
through.
"It was fire for me." A quiet offering; like earth
scattered in the wake of a funeral; nothing but that. A scant, brief
gesture that is thrown into the conversation before Kiara's eyes shift
away to listen as the Cultist asks if he knows what it's like when they
feed. The Verbena's shoulders hunch a little as her head drops forward;
Kiara makes some private; brief study of the floor.
It's a
conversation that isn't hers; not this part; though she does lift it to
add, to Serafine: "If we go back, to watch again, I can make it a little
safer. Keep certain things at a distance. It might not keep everything out
but if they're aware - if they're looking - " Kiara sits back. "It couldn't hurt to have some precautions in place."
Kalen Holliday
He
feels Kiara's attention, and he does not flinch away from her eyes when
he looks back up. The trauma of his Awakening isn't fresh at all.
He's spoken of it often enough, for all that some Mages avoid the
subject. He seems more bothered by admitting that vampires are
unsettling than by the memory itself.
Kiara's admission earns
her a quick flash of a grateful half-smile. He may not have needed that
moment, but he knows that it means something.
"I have never
allowed-" He stops, for a second at the sound of the kettle. "I have
never allowed on to bite me," he says as he rises. "Sorry. Right
back."
And he is back, barely any time later, with a French
press of coffee just starting to turn golden and two mugs. No sugar.
No cream.
Serafíne
Kiara and Kalen both share
their moment of awakening: some trauma, some flash of insight. Sera
does not add anything, no particular trauma of her own. The truth is
she hardly knows when she woke up. It happened: gradually, this
accretion of awareness and understanding and somehow it seemed to her
that perhaps her eyes had always been open, that perhaps that was why
she was shut away for so long.
Here she is though. Dark gaze
flicking up to follow Kalen as he leaves the room to return with the
French press. Kiara offers her assistance if they go back, and Sera
breathes in and nods. There's a half-smile ghosting across her mouth
that flags then rises again. "Yeah, cool," she accepts, easily enough.
"I'd like that."
Kalen tells them that he has never allowed
one to bite him. Sera's gaze is banked, flashes from Kalen to Kiara was
he disappears, comes back with the coffee and mugs.
"I
didn't really believe in them," her half-smile, "until like a week and a
half ago so," this narrow shrug. "But when I scryed back to that night
I was listening to her thoughts too, and those of the man she was
with. I did that when I scryed the Black Orchid as well."
This
neat little expression, though for the first time all night Sera avoids
both pairs of eyes. In scrying: she lived this. All of it.
Sublimates, now, whatever that felt like to her. "It's intensely
pleasureable, consumingly pleasureable - like sex without the mess and
the laughter and the intimacy and the foreplay and the buildup, and
without the give and take.
"There is only take, but it is an
ecstatic plunge into the moment of climax so intense you don't really
have any way of processing that you are utterly at a monster's mercy,
that you might be about to die."
--
Her phone buzzes
on the table, just as Kalen sits down Sera stands up, blanket
unwinding. "Dan's here with my food, I'm gonna go get to door for him.
Be right back - "
Kiara
She doesn't share all of
it of course. The tradition behind it; the trickery and the
manipulation; the testing of the old ways against the newcomers but
there's a reason, of course, that Kiara has the feelings she does on
much of her tradition. A reason why she mistrusts far easier than
anything; why she balks at the notion of certain kinds of intimacy;
trust was a many layered thing and when your awareness is born on the
heels of it being stripped; maligned and inverted - it couldn't but
leave marks. Scars on the psyche, scars on some deeper level that at the
present, was neither here or there but -
Scars. She had her own; nuance is avoided on the subject; from both her and Kalen.
Still,
Kiara's eyes follow him for a long moment before they return to Sera.
Before her expression shifts; becomes perceptibly less a thing of
sentiment and more honed interest. She accepts a cup of coffee from him
wordlessly; wraps both hands around it and keeps it close as Serafine
talks of the way Vampires feed. The rapture of it; the physical pleasure
and release; the Verbena's features don't transmit any disgust or fear
as Sera talks but rather a very keen alertness.
There's the
slightest impression of a smile hinted at somewhere. The carnality of
the act; the sharing of something as sacred as blood; as bodily fluid;
it's not a surprise that one of Kiara's ilk would find some semblance of
attraction to it; understanding and comprehension of why.
Why
it was hard to resist; why it was next to impossible to escape that
sort of total surrender to the primal. Serafine doesn't look at either
of them as she says all this and maybe that's for the best - what
Kiara's expression brooks isn't clear judgment; repulsion; though she
schools it well enough to keep it polite. Corrected for the company.
The
mood. When Sera rises; Kiara is sipping her coffee; glancing at the
door. She nods, briefly, takes up another thread with Kalen easily as
the Cultist passes through. "I have various connections with access to
more unusual literary inclinations. I could ask about books. History. I
don't know how useful any of it would be but maybe - " She shrugs a
shoulder. "I have a friend back in Brooklyn who ran an occult store.
Mixed in with the hocus pocus - " Here a briefly little private smile; a
recognition of sorts, of what the greater world made of her like; their
like.
"There could be something useful."
Kalen Holliday
"That...."
Kalen pauses. And there is a part of him, the part that loved staying
up all night with strangers and dancing on street corners and trying
practically anything and everything once, that is more curious than
alarmed. What would that be like? "That sounds like not the best
position to be in." His eyes follow Sera as she stands and he nods.
Brief goodbye as she goes to get Dan? Letting her know he hears her
warning? Both?
His attention slides back to Kiara. "I would
be interested in seeing. Grace and I have a library. Well, we each
have out own, but we're working on a way to scan them and share them,
similar to Ginger. Anyway, we're pretty much open to anyone who wants
to come check it out. Grace and I pretty much live there, and Elijah.
So...there's generally someone to let you in."
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