of storms and rejuvenation. [elijah]

Elijah

Let it be said that he'd made good on his word, that he studied with Arionna in the library though... she worked in a fashion that was antithetical to his nature. She just... sat. She sat and read... and read... and read... And the whole time that he'd tried his mind was reeling, he had taken to clicking his pen until he actually had to put the pen down and hold the book at a different angle, then lay his head on the table, then sit up, then lay his head back down, each movement met with what he presumed was her displeasure punctuated when she started to scoot achingly closer to make good on her promise to annoy and ignore him at the same time if he couldn't actually sit down and study.

It was three and a half hours of actual, legitimate torture.

So, he had gone to the chantry, motorcycle parked in the driveway, books and papers and notepads and writing implements strewn out over the kitchen table. There were things he could have been reading in the library, but he had spent enough time in the library today and had since concluded that  tghe entire experience of being somewhere that was away from other humans where there was no other sensory input and everything seemed small and ohg god oh god don't panic why are you panicking?!

Elijah got up and went to get something to drink.

Wait, not drink.

Well, water. Water was something you drank right? Right? Of course right.

"Ugh."

Kiara
[Awareness!]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 5, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )

Kiara
"The motto of students everywhere, I think."

The droll commentary comes from the archway between kitchen and dining room; a heel kicked up against the frame and Kiara Woolfe's lean figure an apparition against it, dark head tilted just so with registering amusement. There's an unopened bottle of Merlot in one of the Verbena's hands; her bag slung over her shoulder and her attire the casual reflection of the dying heat of the summer's day it's been outside.

Denim shorts and a soft white and grey tee that possesses the deliberately frayed short sleeves and hem to make it a fashion statement rather than a reflection of the wearer's budget; beneath the heavy adornment of necklaces around Kiara's neck, the shirt appears to be emblazoned with the name of an old rock band (The Runaways, to be precise). There's a belt buckled low on the pagan's hips and as she steps into the kitchen; a bag of groceries appear hanging from her other wrist.

"I was coming by for one of my weekly jaunts," she explains, setting her offerings down in one of the only clear spots remaining free of Elijah's study paraphernalia. "But I see my timing apparently needs work." There's a pause, the corner of Kiara's mouth, which was painted a sweeter shade of bubblegum pink than its usual darker color, edged upward.

"Unless it's not. Time for a study break?"

Elijah
"You're like a divine vinyard-inhabiting freaking goddess," he looked from merlot to Verbena, to lips, to face and he runs his hands through his hair. He hasn't bothered to get out of pajamas today, which meant athletic pants and a tee shirt and he had shoes... uh... somewhere. For some reason, Elijah had trouble being places and keeping all of his clothing on at any given time. Who would have ever guessed? (The author said, drolly, as she sipped her own merlot. Ah, yes, we are not ever surprised when it comes to Elijah and his propensity for being comfortable and possibly naked.)

He comes back to try and make more space, but his things have... a strange order. It doesn't really seem like he's making any process until one stops looking at it like a line and more like shattered fractals or spider webs.

"I have officially missed an entire freaking vital portion of my whole studying learning magical process thing because, y'know, I got distracted by spirit stuff. And the overwhelmingly beautiful nature of the passage of time. You know, stuff."

Kiara
There's quiet laughter from the brunette, at that.

She slips into the kitchen proper and nimbly navigates her way around Elijah's attempt at discovering order; opening a cabinet and fishing out a pair of wine glasses. Kiara's familiarity with the kitchen here suggests she's spent enough time in it of recent days to feel at ease. "Most people would just call it being a terrible influence," she notes, hopping up onto one of the benches before the windows and uncorking the bottle; carefully pouring out two generous glasses.

"So I appreciate the likeness to the goddess, instead. Here, drink up. You're a growing boy."

She offers the Initiate one of the glasses and settles back on the bench-top; crossing her legs and making a survey of the study tools spread out. "I can't say I strictly envy you all the paperwork. All this stuff - it's really necessary?" Kiara's expression reads no small amount of incredulity, but then, one imagines the ways of the Verbena were not strictly mainstream when it came to the manner their tradition were introduced into the Craft.

"Don't get me wrong, the fundamentals are important too, but - " Her attention re-focuses on Elijah, his wild, hand raked hair and pajama-clad figure. " - it seems so dry and sanitized. Books and notes and Post It's."

Spoken like the true creature of nature Kiara so often seemed. One had to wonder what her idea of learning would encompass.

Elijah
"Terrible is such a loaded word," he replies conversationally. He listens as the glass gets poured. Hears the wind move outside, slightly, in the trees but can't hear the sun but can't pick up the quiet vibrations of electricity running through the wiring in the house, can't quite tap into the sounds GRace had shown him almost a year prior when she'd told him that you really can listen to the walls and he'd been interested and curious and he'd tried talking to walls, but it was different.

"It's not nearly as banal as it looks," Elijah takes the glass in hand and ends up taking a long, hearty drink. He likes wine, it's hard to not like wine when you grow up in a place where your mother almost expects you to drink wine. Different views on alcohol in the Poirot household.

"It started with external views on what the elements are, and then-" he takes a couple papers and moves them to the side to go to a legal pad "-I figured out that I liked the way the wind sounded from behind the window, then there's a diagram- which turned into some poem I remembered from a couple months back in French lit."

Other things are pushed to the side, books opened, "if your writing and your documentation of the experience is dry, then you're totally doing it wrong."

"It's not like I start out going I need fifteen different books and three notepads, things just move it's... It's actually a lot more organic than it sounds, I swear."

Kiara
"Mm, before all of this - " there's a gesture; Kiara's wrist jangles solidly as she gesticulates around them, encompassing the Chantry as a whole; being Awakened and aware likely, too, " - I went to school. Studied the human body, how it worked, how to fix it. I nearly became a doctor, but - " she cuts Elijah a sharp little grin from around her wineglass. "It wasn't to be. I did walk away with an AAS in Massage Therapy, though."

A beat, she looks considering.

"I was always fascinated by people. How we worked. Why we did. After I met Aisling, it became so much more to me. It wasn't just about understanding the human body. When I embraced paganism and realized just how connected everything is to the world. To nature - a lot of things became clearer. Where you start, you know - " She looks over his books. " - it does pave the way. You find that one little seed and before you know it, growth is all around you."

She leans back against the window; a hand idly stroking bangs from her lashes. "Anyway, I thought you were meeting Arionna to study or something, weren't you?" Kiara's eyes gleam. "Don't tell me she dismissed you already?"

Elijah
"I still need to set up an appointment with you," he says, but he looks at her. Really looks and takes it in and listens because he's getting better at listening instead of just talking and waiting for other people to stop talking. It's a trait all young people have, they have moments where they can be incredibly egocentric. They have moments where the whole world lives and breathes and exists only within the things that they believe and want. He regards her, brows raised and there it is-

Joy, quiet, seeping, abundant and golden. Because he didn't seem the type to stay anything other than sunny for long, in the grand scheme of things his exuberance didn't dim for much. Too much time to the contrary. "That makes sense, I think... I mean, people aren't just bodies, if we were, dear god how fucking horrible." Said like it was a tragedy, a travesty. "Maybe the answer is in nature, in things without trappings."

He's musing now, again, like a pingpong ball- thoughts move. TRains move onward, he takes his glass and pulls a chair out so he can sit and observe. When given the opportunity, Elijah misuses chairs.

"We started at noon. She sits still and reads, and I totally get that this works for her but... it's so fucking static, I don't get how she does it."

A beat.

"I may or may not have been good for three hours and made a study date for another day. I kind of get the impression that I'm kind of arm candy to her."

Kiara
"I guess a lot of it depends on how you view life. We don't, not all of us, anyway, consider this life to be the last. The experience of it, though? It's vital. Taking time to feel the grass under your bare feet. To dive into the water without hesitation. To let yourself be cut and bleed and ride the jagged edge. It's messy. People are messy and that's part of what makes the human experience what it is. You can't find connection if you hold yourself back."

There's a beat, Kiara's expression shifts; she runs the edge of her tongue over her lower lip. Lets out a tiny breath. "Listen to me. I sound like a recruitment pamphlet." She ticks her eyes over the other boy when he mentions Arionna; the static quality of her study; the near impossibility it presented for someone as fundamentally in motion as Elijah.  "Like trying to ask the wind to stay in one place, I dare say," she murmurs with a tugging, affectionate smile.

I kind of get the impression that I'm kind of arm candy to her.

The smile on Kiara's face grows a little; she draws her legs up and crosses them beneath her; the shorts she's wearing leave much of her legs bare; she has the calves of a runner, the brunette. Adjusts her shoulders against the windowsill and balances the bottom of her glass on one knee; long fingers curled around the stem to hold it in place.

"I guess it depends if you mind being the arm candy. There are worse things to want from someone's company than sex." Her mouth curls a touch. "Assuming you guys are actually having sex."

A beat. "You don't have to answer that."



Elijah
"If you sounded like a recruitment pamphlet, you would come with clip art, and I don't know what the verbal equivalent of clip art is but I'll bet you could pull it off," he listens, though. let it be said that Elijah actually did do a good job of listening. Let it be said that Elijah did a pretty fantastic job of keeping his mouth shut and taking in what people were saying and processing and determining what was there and what wasn't being said. He didn't wait for someone to stop talking so he could add his little part.

He gestures, though. She gave him a wine glass. She gave him a wine glass and, arguably, they're the most expressive of glasses. Prone for sweeping gestures, shaped in a fashion that getting just a little exuberant will get a person to a point where they might just be aerating their drink. It's encouraged to be expressive with merlot, so long as you don't get too expressive. With all things moderation.

"Now see-"

Then it hits him what it was she actually said, and his first instinct was to keep talking but for some reason he was a little tripped up. He doesn't blush,  "I mean, we do have sex, I kinda figured that was just a foregone conclusion? Among the things one does with their friends it's hang out, watch movies, study, and have sex. Like, I dunno, you kinda have to be clear- are we just friends who bone friends, or are we friends who engage with each other and also have sex friends?"

"I mean, I don't mind either. But, y'know, warn me if I'm sexy accessory. That can be pretty fucking fun. I mean, Hell, the whole pseudo Pretty Woman experience is totally something on my bucket list."

Kiara
He figured it was a foregone conclusion.

It's hard to immediately gauge what the brunette makes of this statement, she's reclining there on the bench with her legs crossed under her like a miniature Shiva, a glass of wine poised over one knee, one she lifts to her mouth and takes a generous sip of as Elijah goes on to explain the difference between what sort of friends that have sex you could be.

"I don't know if that's true for everyone." A gentle countering, Kiara's expression housing some mixture of acknowledgement and consideration, thin brows constricting together as she turns over and unlaces Elijah's response. "I think it depends how you approach sex. For some of us, it's the simplest way to feel alive. You connect with a person and when it's on that level - " She stirs, just so. Lets out a sharp little breath that seems to relish the idea of the topic, that sets a certain gleam in dark eyes.

" - there's honesty in that. Sharing yourself with people is it's own kind of magic. But - " A shrug, a little twist of her mouth into something tender, rueful and aware and perhaps bittersweet, to a degree. Some twinging reminder of encounters from her life; mistrust and misunderstanding and injured feelings, who knew exactly what. " - I think for some, it's always going to mean something more."

She sets her wine down beside her body, draws a knee up; rests her elbows on it.

"But if you want definition, you should ask for it. Arionna strikes me as the kind of person who'll be brutally honest with you." Her expression shifts, she casts him a brief, speculative look from under her lashes. "No matter what." There's a pause, then: "She doesn't think too much of me. I admit, I've never done a lot to actively change her opinion or really cared enough to, but - " There's a hint of amusement in the brunette's voice; not self pity or a bid for it from him, but - awareness, of the polarity between herself and the Orphan.

"I think you could ask her, if it bothers you."

Elijah
"I think the honesty of it is the appeal. You can lie all you want to people, or yourself, until you believe it but physical actions have a sort of honesty in them I can't fake, and don't want to fake. It's being present... for me, at least? It's always just been something that inevitably happens, circumstances permit and situations allow and it's just, like, there," he says, watches her mouth and the way that she stirs and he takes a drink because it's there. Takes a drink because maybe he's thirsty or maybe he just wants something to be on his lips aside from words.

"I don't think that how I approach sex is a universal truth. I'm not even the center of my universe so, yeah, there's that," he shrugs, relayed like that was a smaller fact than it actually was. He has to think about that- what is the center of his world? What is the fundamental root of his practice, how world his everything if it wasn't the concept of the self? (He doesn't see a self, or an other- doesn't see the difference beyond a concept. A barrier that exists only when we want it to.)

He does keep listening, takes in dark lashes and her sharp breath and the elements of the person in front of him instead of the entirety. He explores, he explores and he thinks because he thinks because as much as he may be present here Elijah doesn't always exist int he plane he's sitting on. Maybe it's all definitions and concepts.

"I don't get why she doesn't like you," he said, finally, "I've heard the reasoning, but there's just... a shit ton of hate there that I don't get. Too much energy on something an ideological difference and there's a sort of inherent need for superiority that I don't get.

"I might ask her what she needs out of a friendship, though. Tried to have that conversation once and... y'know, asking people for definitions gets pretty damn messy. I'm trying to figure out if it's just a today thing or if it really does bother me. I don't think it's her reaction, it's my insecurity."

A beat. Then nothing, if he had something to say he left it somewhere else.

Kiara
There's a little devil-may-care shoulder twitch, at that. "I fuck people and I don't apologize for it, Elijah. I - broadcast that I like sex." Kiara slides off the bench in a lithe little wiggle of a motion. With her thick hair and dark, expressive eyes, it's no wonder that she can present an occasionally intimidating picture. She collects her wine glass and leans into the counter that spans across the midst of the kitchen; her eyes steady on the Initiate; her hip leaning into the edge of a cabinet.

Her mouth shapes itself into an expressive little smile, this edging, wry thing.

"Ideologically, sure. We don't agree on much. I don't and never have believed that you can only have belief by sticking to antiqued rituals. The reason my Tradition even survived the Burning Times is that we learned to adapt ourselves. To get a little flexible." She takes another sip of wine, it leaves the faintest trace of red staining her mouth.

"But underneath it all?" Kiara leans forward; rests her elbows on the counter; studies Elijah with her chin on her palm; eyebrow notched up. "There's probably a lot of reasons. There usually is with me." She plucks a grape from a bowl on the edge of the counter and sinks her teeth into it; there's something very visceral and barbaric to the way she licks juice from the edge of her thumb.

Devours the rest of the grape. "She doesn't have to like me, though." There's another lift of a thin shoulder; she reaches over to lightly nudge his arm. "Hey, don't be afraid of messy. That just means it's worth something."

Elijah
How much wine does he have left? How much more until the end of his nose feels a little cold and that grin becomes just a tad more lopsided than usual, until his posture and his movements and his being becomes languid- because Elijah had the potential to be languid. There are things one does not know, does not know that he wasn't afraid of walls anymore wasn't held tight and forced into a semblance of comfort. There are things about him that are clear, precise, and there are even more things that have a form and a function only because he decided he wanted it briefly.

There are things he has given form just because he needs to break that form again. And again. And again, until the ashes and the dust and the shards of it can be made into something new.

"What do I broadcast?" he asks offhand, curious enough, and he polishes off whatever is left of his wine, meanders to the kitchen to clean out the glass. He still drinks like a frat boy, enough to enjoy it, quick and like he intends to get the job done but when he exhales that's when he can tell the more important, the more nuanced bits of whatever it was that he'd been drinking.

He flicks his eyes back to watch her pluck a grape off the table, doesn't realize he's lingering and his imagination is wandering and there is something visceral about the way she carries herself and thereis something barbaric to the way she licked the juice from her thumb. There's ownership in her movement; Kiara Woolfe does as she damned well pleases. He lingers, realizes he's lingering, goes back to rinsing out the glass.

"I'm finding that kind of is the way it is with definition- by trying to give something a form you start to realize how incredibly vast that thing actually is."

Kiara
They must, to a certain extent these two, on a simpler, baser level that perhaps even they don't fully realize in the moment, compliment the other. Here is the hurricane; the ungovernable force at work and beside it; urging and pulsing with life and nourishment; nature herself in some form or other.

The storm and the rejuvenation it can offer.

"You?" She straightens as he asks and turns to watch his progress around the kitchen; the rinsing out of the glass. The deliberation of each small action, as if Elijah were questing for some purpose other than the simplicity of being there and experiencing the moment with her. Kiara is tracing her eyes over the shape of his shoulders; down the slope of his back; mapping some physical journey in tandem with her thoughts.

Her dark eyes flick back to his face and there's a suggestion of warmth there; harboring in the corners of her mouth; the light that plays across her features; gleams and settles in her gaze; Kiara's eyes always did have a certain potency to them. There's a confidence about the brunette that is at once engaging and - for no small number she meets - unsettling and disquieting. "Wonder. Fascination. You remind me a little of a kid who sees the stars for the first time and knows he's going to find out the name of every last constellation."

She reaches for the bottle and pours out another liberal glass; cants it out in offering to him with the stirrings of a smile.

"And a little of a friend of mine back in New York. Deacon. His name was." Her eyes drop away at the mention of the name, there's a touch of something fragile to it; the turn of her profile; the way she wraps both hands around the glass as if it were now also a talisman against whatever memory she's just dredged up. "He was an artist, or - he had ambitions to be. His life was - bad situation. But, he was always trying to break away. Find his inspiration.

His white whale, you know?" She turns back, eyes a little brighter. "You remind me a lot of that. It's why I like you. You're unapologetically hopeful, Elijah. Don't ever let anything steal that." Kiara takes a sip of wine, her supple mouth moving into a brief smile. "Or anyone, either."

Elijah
[Why do I suspect this story about your friend doesn't have a happy ending? Per+empathy]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )

Elijah
There are things he knows about storms, bout hurricanes and the vast potential they bring. It's easy to think in terms of disaster, to think that a natural disaster is naturally disastrous but what is a wildfire but a chance the begin again? What does a hurricane do but wash away the pretense and the hubris of man until it's all leveled, until it's just brought down to the things that matter? A building doesn't matter, it's what was forged inside of it. All things fall so you can rebuild.

He can't just be, except for when he can. Except for when he just is, and perhaps he should have just let things be, let the thoughts and sensations and memories and possibilities go as they would. He's gentle with the glass, and no sooner had he finished actually taking care of it to the point of pristine does he realize he could actually get a refill. Bottle canted outward, glass offered to the rather attractive woman. She smiles, he replies in kind. It comes easily; sometimes, Elijah seems a little more wide-eyed than he realizes. Not that it's a bad thing, no- far from it. Sometimes, Elijah is unabashedly twenty. And no matter how much better his life would be sometimes if he would just grow up, there's some part of that youthful idealism that doesn't quite go away.

Sometimes, Elijah is very much his age. It is not always for the best, but there are things that are a perk. He rides a fine line between naivety and idealism. (why can't it be both?)

But there's something that he seems to know, doesn't say but it's in his eyes, in his shoulders, at the edge of his tongue that he sees something and wants to know more, wants to push forward and ask what happened to her friend but he sees how fragile she is with it. How she holds the glass and even uses the past instead of present tense. The while whale reference- Ahab was killed by his passion, his desire, his all-encompassing goal of finding that one thing he so desperately wanted, more than anything. He wants the story to end well, that much is clear, but there is an unspoken knowing.

Should he push? Will he push?

He does reach forward, though, bridge the gap and his fingertips graze her forearm, up over to her wrist before lingering just a second. He does let go, though, grudgingly. Does part from contact because... why? He doesn't have a good reason, probably because he realizes that he can't very well kiss her on the forehead because of wine glasses- physical comfort becoming an issue of logistics.

"Guilt's a Hell of a thing," he acknowledges.

Kiara
Sometimes, they were very much what they were, as much as who. Elijah was still riding the precipice between adolescence and adulthood. Could still allow himself to be the kid Kiara fondly refers to him as. Kiara was a young woman in her late twenties; older by scant years than the boy she stands in the kitchen with and yet - there was, beneath her veiled smiles and subtle, gleaming little looks - a true sense and shape of grief imbedded in her somewhere.

The weariness that came with a proximity to death and the lasting scars it dealt to all in its orbit.

She's still smiling that sharp-edged smile when he looks at her and reaches for her and touches her arm; her wrist where he can feel the steady beat of her heart. He goes to withdraw his touch and offers acknowledgement instead and the Verbena; who was at her core a creature who thrived on touch; who lived and breathed the physicality of things; who was a healer and who spoke the language of touch - reacts to that with a little movement.

Uncurls herself and reaches for his wrist; slides her fingers around it and with a little shake of her head - no, stay, don't go - pulls him back in and curls it around her body; leans into him and settles there beneath the crook of his chin; her head finding an easy resting place against his chest; her hand on his ribcage.

"Yeah, it really is." She offers quietly after a while.

Elijah
He doesn't stumble here. He doesn't grope around looking desperate and lost for some guide to tell him what he was supposed to do and what was acceptable and what wasn't. He wasn't thinking about protocol or past or whatever wrongs he might have done. Elijah doesn't approach Kiara like something that's bitten him before and he's not quite sure if it's safe to reach out again. (No, that took more than a few times. No, that took months. There are things he doesn't acknowledge anymore with Kalen. There are things he doesn't think about because it's bridge under the water but the water's so damn deep and he's so damned afraid because the bridge is all he has left.)

With Kiara, it's different. It's different because showing her affections or reaching out or being present doesn't feel like a trap or something he's going to regret later. He doesn't regret things with Kiara. He doesn't regret a lot of things, in actuality- a recent trait, perhaps. Something he'd just learned when he found out that you really can change the past but not something he'd ever consider because Elijah puts his heart more in the agency of others and the path they've walked than wanting to take one step different. We digress.

There is weariness somewhere in her, some veiled smile and he does step in, puts an arm around hier waist and the other goes up, coils itself in her hair because he wanted to, because to a certain degree he considered this a pleasure offerened freely. Her hair was soft, he reveled in texture. He inhales and tries to place what it is specifically that Kiara smells like. They're there with little space between them save for the one afforded by breathing and thought.

She shakes her head, without saying insists that he not go, so he stays. One leaves the door open, invites, and he could stay now. He could stay here until the stars went cold.

"Why are you holding onto it?" he asks, and for all his tenderness, the curiosity must be akin to a knife in the ribs.

KiaraHe's not the first to try and name the way she smells. To put a label on what that heady combination was; something vaguely wild and sun drenched; the crisp quality of the air after the storm; the sweet aroma of sandalwood and the stronger cloy of sage. Under the more mundane qualities of shampoo and soap and perfume - she felt like putting your arms around some vital, thrumming portion of nature itself. A warm, responsive manifestation of it, perhaps.

Maybe it was why her presence both engaged and repulsed; it was hard to trust something as volatile and capricious as nature.

She smelled like the trees outside, like something unfettered and untamed. Perhaps it was merely her presence; that sense and shape of Kiara that gave the impression you were standing so near something vital and unknowable and wild. He puts his arm around her waist; the other in her hair and she smiles against him and breathes in - he can feel that, the movement of her ribcage as she does it; the physical reminder that she was right there.

That they were in the moment (that he was grounded, at least right now).

She does pull away when he asks why she's clinging to it, her friend, her feelings about it. Pulls away to rest against the bench and reclaim her glass of wine; her knees brushing his; the easy proximity between them lingering. She studies the window beyond Elijah for a long moment; her hair sliding over her cheek when she lowers her face with a contraction of her brows; some flicker of hesitation there, the lingering trace of that otherness to Kiara resurfacing in the line her mouth draws to.

"I was responsible for it. I didn't give him the drugs or tell him to take them but - the world he was in. The people he wound up with. I did that. He had a shitty relationship with his parents, who doesn't, right?" She lifts her face, meets Elijah's eyes with this brief, bitter little smile, then: "I told him to stop letting them run his life and he did. And he found something else to run it for him." She sets her glass back down, bracing her hands out behind her.

"I don't claim to have forced him to do any of it but - I didn't really stop to pay attention, either. It's not always the worst thing to remember." She finishes softly, with a brief little look, a little edging ghost of a smile.

Elijah[God damn it, Elijah, don't kiss Kiara you're having a conversation. WP]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )

ElijahYou can't hold on to creation for long. You can try. You can engage, and you can be in that moment for just a moment but creation unchecked was terrifying in its right. A constnat ever-changing beginning. Something refreshing, renewing could lend itself to being more moremoremorepleaseyesmore until the heartbeat of it lingers on your skin and you're still aching for the next thing. It's what Elijah got out of it, something that was constnatly striving for something just out of his grasp holding something that felt like the heartbeat of creation itself.

For now he keeps standing, puts the glass on the table but keeps standing because it feels good to stand. There's that wound rubber band feeling to him, always ready for something. (he could take a punch and he didn't flinch, but that was new, that was another story). His eyes meet hers, all green and brightness and that sort of naive innocence to him- how could he possibly understand what that must feel like? How could he possibly fathom what it felt like to live with that sort of guilt on her mind? To try and help when only you open the door to something new and awful to step in.

"His life didn't have all bad parts," he tells Kiara, "you had good moments, too. And I don't-" he stops there. Exhales, "I'm over-reaching... I don't know what happened between you, but it sounds like you both I tried for each other and that is worth something, and it's worth remembering among all the other things you'd probably rather forget."

He sits down, though, offers some insight of maybe... maybe he just starts talking because he needs to talk. Because... well, because.

"Sometimes, you just hold on to the first thing that you think might be good and sometimes it's great, and sometimes... sometimes it's not, but I get that. I get just wanting anything to be better than this, and sometimes you kinda dont want people to pay attention, I didn't want anyone to feel bad, or feel like they were responsible, but... that's just me."

Brows flick up, hands grab the edge of the bench and it is by will alone that he fucking keeps them there. Of all the worst applications of Hermetic will, this is it.

KiaraI'm overreaching. She meets his eyes and that smile lingers on, sweetens Kiara's expression for it. Her eyes are quite as dark as her hair and sometimes its easy to imagine her the way some must consider her tradition to always be - all bonfires and dancing naked under the moon; blood ritual and invocations to some unseen higher deity.

"His life wasn't all bad. He had people in it who mattered. But - after what happened to my coven in New York, after the Technocracy came - " There's a pause, there. Anger laced through Kiara's words, it's difficult, that much seems evident. To say the name - to give their Enemy theirs even in passing reference. The way her eyes flash and her expression shifts momentarily to something brutal and furious - it's clear that she's felt the aftermath of the Union's judgment.

" - It wasn't safe for us anymore. I had to leave them behind. We lose people a lot. We will lose them." She corrects with this holding look to him before she drags her eyes away, focuses instead on the half consumed Merlot by her hand; where her fingers are curled slightly against the benchtop. "You can't stop that, though. People getting hurt. Being angry with you. Things getting messed up. We're human. We're meant to be a mess from day one to the last hour. I don't regret knowing Deacon. It hurt when he died and I don't forgive myself for the part I played in that but - memories have power too.

I choose to keep his and him, with me. The same way I do Aisling. And the Verbena they cut down. It helps to know what you want to fight for. Against." A shrug, Kiara takes a longer sip of wine. Flicks her eyes back to Elijah's face, down to where his hands grip at the edge of the bench as if it were some life preserver keeping him grounded in the moment.

Back up, leans across and brushes her fingers against the side of his wrist; this fleeting; comforting sweep. "Sometimes people like to feel responsible, you know? They want to worry about people." Kiara traces her touch over the turn of his hand, there's a certain preciseness to this - the way she barely lets her fingers be felt, the way she keeps her eyes on his face.

(Almost soothing).

"But I get that, too."

Elijah"Dying's not the worst," he tells her, as if he knows this like it's some irrefutable truth. He says it like he knows this as sure as he knows words breathed in the universe and brought forth creation except this was no discovery, this was always a knowing. Always the truth- he'd never seen much separation between the worlds, only realized how painful that separation could be when someone had to make him acutely aware that the dead and the living inhabit words side-by-side. They may feel the same, look the same, behave the same and reflect the same, but they were distorted. Separate. "The act of getting there can be pretty horrible, but actually... being dead, that isn't so bad. If everything is as it should, it doesn't last very long and you're back on your way. Firefly, artist, soon-to-be-Senator, someone who loves their children- any number of new possibilities."

It's a strange comfort to offer, and one he seems completely fine with.

He does take it in, though, watches her like she is the only thing worth knowing and the only thing worth keeping there. She gives a little detail, though, about what may have happen, about how New York might have become less an iconic city and more a war zone. She lost people in ways that he only knew as metaphysical concepts. he knew the Ascension War happened. He knew that there were lives lost, understands the ideological backing but not the actuality of it.

This is the actuality, a woman with fire and fury in her eyes, someone who lets her fingertips brush fleeting against his pulse and he takes her back in, brudges the gap slightly. Just enough that, perhaps, personal space isn't something he's quite operating with.

"Sometimes, that's a control issue, you don't want to let go because if you do, you can't help them. Sometimes... Sometimes I have trouble letting go, or I don't hold on fast enough. One or the other, it comes from not wanting to imagine life without someone or something."

"You end up having to face it anyway," he shrugged, mouth quirked up to the side, "byproducts of being young and clueless."

KiaraIt's not a discussion they've had, yet. The ways in which they both saw and understood the other side to work. The world beyond their own, the place where spirits crossed to after they'd left their physical bodies behind. They both understood it, in their own ways, both possessed the capacity to see what lay beyond but - the intricacies - the nuance of why and how - it wasn't something they'd talked about.

Not even after Kiara had been there, that night, months ago when they'd seen a young man in Washington Park searching for his dog. Seen the horror and recognition as his spirit felt its physical death all over again - the agony and fear. Dying wasn't the worst - but the getting there - Kiara draws her hand back with a quiet noise; agreement; comprehension. Perhaps both. "It's not the worst," she echoes with mild certainty and carefully extricates herself to move around the kitchen; to etch out her own space again.

To tip back the dredges of her wine and set the glass in the sink, eyes on the stretch of lawn rolling down behind the ranch that led to the Node; to the lush, rejuvenating energy and its watchful spirit guardian. There's a gathering of silence, then. For a moment or two, Kiara's focus on the scene outside the kitchen. "I should probably let you get back to it," there's a deliberate lightness to her voice when she eventually turns back to face him; the thoughtful, somber quality lost beneath the return of her smile and the way her eyes seem to glint in the light.

The alcohol has given her cheeks color, his too, no doubt.

"Now I've totally derailed your education for the night. I don't want Kalen coming after me, after all." There's a little twitch of amusement as she moves past him; brushes his shoulder in passing. "You can keep the bottle, though. It might make things interesting."

Elijah[Manip+sub: totally playing this off, keep your dirty laundry in the closet, kid]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 4, 4, 4, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )

Kiara[Oh really? Can you tell, Kiara Woolfe? Empathy + Perception]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 7, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )

ElijahTruth be told, the only person who has actively engaged Elijah on the topic of death was a woman who no longer found herself in this particular city. Eleanor had concluded he would have been a better Chkravanti than Hermetic any day. At the time he'd agreed with her. Kalen promised things would change but it spurred on months of what felt somewhere between abandonment and resentment and how is this better but now he's got book upon book open and he's trying to seek that sort of approval from the other itself because they'd shown some glimpse that, perhaps, he was doing something right. That he had potential, that he was something they wanted.

The world could be a much different place if the wrong parties had shown the same kind of budding interest in Elijah. he was a very capable young man, but he was constantly seeking approval. His face was warm and his shoulders were relaxed and words came freely and perhaps he didn't realize the weight of some of the things he said, perhaps his body didn't believe quite what it was that he was saying but he polished off his wine a little too quickly. A little too deliberately.

"I somehow doubt Kalen will be too angry for the derailment. Me being a bad student is just kind of to be expected," with a playful smile, a bright-eyed edge to his grin, "though, when I'm done, I would love nothing more than to indulge in your company if you're around."

That much is true. That much he means, when he's done studying he would love to hang out. Love to breathe her in, love to do anything other than hold on to the edge of the table and scream at himself that he's supposed to be studying instead of doing the fifteen thousand things he would rather do. There are other things that are clear though, that when it comes to his peers or even his mentor- he doesn't view himself as highly regarded. Doesn't view himself as capable or much more than a disappointment.

Par for the course, really. Elijah seems accustomed to being a disappointment.

KiaraIt's not that Kiara Woolfe wasn't perceptive.

Quite the opposite was true. In the line of work she found herself, being capable of seeing people (in more ways than one) was such a fundamental part of it. In order to be able to heal, you had to equally possess the capacity to see the wounds borne inside a human and wounds could take so many varying and detailed shapes; physical and - less so.

How many Sleepers (and otherwise) had walked into her apartment since she'd come to the city and sought a way to shed the variations they carried around with them like intangible, but weighted burdens? Dozens? Hundreds? She doesn't often comment on the glimpses she sees outside of that - outside of moments where she wants to see and feel and map the shape of disease; weakness and decay - to banish it; to mend skin and muscle and spirit - but she often does perceive. The edge of a smile, the briefest cant of her head.

It's there now, as she passes Elijah, brushes his arm and hears - the underpinning resonance to his bright-eyed statement; his playful looks adorned like armor (and she should know those smiles, she wears her own version) to keep the phantoms of disappointment and uncertainty at bay. She stops and turns her face back toward him; turns around and moves back toward him; touches his arm and slides her fingers along to his elbow.

Leans in and presses a wine-flavored kiss to his cheek; just shy of his ear. "Bad is a relative term, Elijah. You'll figure this stuff out - " she nods toward the books; squeezes down on his arm just so with a hooked brow; the curl of her lips. " - when you're ready to. Don't worry about expectations, yeah? Fuck expectations." She says with a little nudge into his side; a flash of teeth.

"Do what feels right and if in doubt?" Kiara puts a hand over his chest; her expression determined; this little set to her jaw imposing no argument. "Listen here. Feel from here. Got it?"

ElijahThere was a reality were Elijah stopped what he was doing, leaned up and kissed her. There's was a future where the flavor of merlot lingered on their lips and perhpas the vaguest impressions of still-drying ink lingered on people's skin because damn it all, damn waiting, forget about keeping on, going forward, forget about that and just focus on what was here and now.

But every place is here, he remembered. But every time is now. So the time that he's studying, and the time that he's kissing her and the time that he's not kissing her and the time that someone is riding his ass for being a bad student or praising him for being a good student or he's high out of his mind and all he can process is the aching crawl of moments- all those moments exist within now. Every blessed, beautiful possibility, and he is choosing to focus on this one.

The one where Kiara kisses his cheek and tells him that bad is relative. That the only expectations that matter are his own and no one elses. She places her hand over his heart and speaks as though this is Truth. do what feels right, and if in doubt? Listen here. Feel from here. Got it

So he does kiss her, this time, so he does bridge the gap, press his lips to hers, eyes closed expression grateful air buzzing universe reaching expanding pushing railing against convention and towards revolution and there is unrest there. Even though his heart is beating steady. He looks back and looks at her like she's something profound, like she'd reminded him of something vital.

Searching for Truth can be found within. Do not discard this for some flimsy something outside of what you already know to be true. If the foundation's strong you could build kingdoms into eternity, destroy them all just to build again.

"Thanks, Kiara."