glad you're back. [kalen]

Kalen
Kalen has largely ignored the Chantry for the better part of the year.  He's largely ignored a lot for much of the year.  Now, though, it is Christmas.  Kalen would probably buy his nemesis Christmas presents.  He can certainly come back to the Chantry for Christmas.

And he has.  There is a tree, as promised.  It is a much smaller affair than last year.  And alive.  It is blue spruce rather than some greener, longer needled pine, wreathed only in white lights and white ribbon.  There are stockings for everyone he has reason to believe might be in Denver, and, oddly enough, stockings for people who were in Denver for prior Christmases even if he knows they won't be here this year.  Near where he has hung the stockings there are two heavy canvas bags that smell like citrus and clove.

At the moment Kalen is distributing candles onto practically every available surface.  Candles on windowsills.  Candles on tables.  Candles on countertops.  So many candles.  Some are red, some green, some white, some gold, some silver.  They are being decorated with ribbons in similar colors.  There is an open bottle of wine and a half empty glass vying for space on the dining room table where he is tying three white candles together with a wide gold ribbon.

Kiara[Awareness!]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 4, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )

KiaraThe Verbena that pulls up to the Chantry house on the other hand is a semi-regular visitor to this place. Regular enough that her hatchback bears dust marks all along the doors and back windows from the uneven gravel it traverses over en route.

A door opens and slams, there's footsteps and then a polite one-two rap before the ranch door is nudged open and a figure slips inside in a whirl of crisp evening air that flutters no few amount of Kalen's candles. The flames flickering and dancing before they settle and a floorboard creaks under foot as Kiara Woolfe appears in the foyer, a basket of offerings under one of her arms.

She's halted as much by the scene of festivity as she is the sight of the man decking the Chantry with Christmas decorations.

"Kalen." His name is also the greeting she gives and when he turns to sight her, it's to witness the pagan leaning against the doorframe, her eyes traveling over his efforts. "This is ... something." There's a curl of the Verbena's mouth upwards, her arms loosely folded over her chest, basket set by her feet. Even dressed as casually as she was, the pagan's eyes were painted with dark, dramatic liner, her mouth a familiar bold slash of red lipstick.

Ever the embodiment of nature's whims, the female, it seemed.

"When did you get back into town?"

Kalen[How distracted by Resonance are we?]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 3, 5, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )

KalenKalen finishes tying up the candles into a bundle before he looks up at her.  "This is nothing compared to what Shoshannah used to do."  There is a flicker of a smile.  "Last year I made cookies and threw a tree decorating party."  He is reacquainting himself with speaking English.  With being in a place where he has any reason or desire to be guarded.  His cadence is different.  There is no sign he is looking for a trap or some reason to fight.

"And, as mentioned on Ginger, pinatas."  He settles the trio of candles on the hearth.  "Apparently not everyone loves pinatas like Grace.  Although I did convince Alyssa to come stake vampire pinatas in their gummy hearts.  But she's gone now."  He is focused on lighting the candles, or at least that is where his face is angled, when he says, "Sometimes you remind me of her."

"Anyway," he continues.  "This morning.  Should I get you a glass?"

KiaraIt's not the first time she's been told she reminds people of those who had come and gone - it's become enough of a regularity in fact, that when he expresses this, the response is a slight lift of her eyebrows and a little lingering smile as she scoops up her basket and carries it over to the table, setting it absently in one corner. The contents looked to be offerings of the season - of a fashion.

There were bundles of herbs tied together within it with various small bottles and what appeared to be a small golden statue of a blazing sun.

Winter solstice essentials perhaps, from the pagan to the Cabal in residence at the Chantry.

"Absolutely. I want to hear about your trip." She drags one of the chairs out and settles into it, drawing a knee up and curling around it, her fingers gently teasing at the edges of one of the candles he's already finished setting out. The flame draws her eyes for a long moment before they tick up to study his face.

"I'm guessing you've already caught up with Grace." Softer, that. This edge of something vaguely somber there. She's dressed in an oversized sweater, the brunette. Her dark hair left to spill in unconstrained waves over her thin shoulders, it casts her into a younger aspect somehow; spills the suggestion of vulnerability into the planes of her face. The draw down of her mouth, the fine shape of her dark eyes.

There's a pair of necklaces around her neck, the fine chains of both comprised of silver, a stone set at the end of each; one a darker, round gem and the other a longer cut of crystal suited for scrying. "There's been a lot going on while you were away."

KalenKalen vanishes into the kitchen long enough to pick a wine glass for Kiara.  He runs the first two fingers of one hand over the label.  Pours her a glass of wine and holds it out to her.  It's a malbec.  Chilean.  Dark fruit and smoke.  Kalen tastes other things in that wine, but those tings are more memories.  "I'm always away from somewhere.  And there is, always, so much going on.  I'm sorry I couldn't be here, though I don't know that it would have changed anything...at least...not for the better."

He picks up his wine and takes a sip of it.  "My trip was...have I ever told you about why I go to Santiago?"  He sets down his wine.  Starts wrapping a red pillar candle with slender white and red ribbons, working out a pattern as he circles the candle and twists the ribbons.  Kalen's eyes stay on what he is doing, but the act itself seems more like muscle memory than concentration.

KiaraHe doesn't think that his presence would have changed anything and there's this tight little flex at the edge of Kiara's mouth. Unspoken agreement, perhaps. She accepts the wine and holds it carefully as she adjusts her weight where she sits; dropping her knee in favor of leaning back a little, her tongue tracing over sharp little teeth.

"Maybe not, but - it doesn't mean you weren't missed." Kiara's expression dances on a knife's edge there, lingering tremors of whatever it is that's happened around her (to her) ghosting into her eyes, drawing a tiny line of consternation between her brows. "It was - a lot. Grace was amazing, though. Not that it would surprise you to hear it, but - I think you'd have been proud of the way she handled herself." It's noticeable perhaps, that the Verbena doesn't mention her own role in anything that had (or was) ongoing in the city.

Vague accounts and retellings on Ginger notwithstanding and Kalen could, no doubt, piece enough together even without her version of things.

She pauses to take a sip from the glass, then. Smooths her fingertips over the tabletop as he resumes wrapping up a candle, watching the easy dexterity to his motions. There's this consideration to it, the way Kiara observes this that suggests the routine of it reminds her of something.

Or someone. Her eyes shift, traveling over his form to his face, his eyes bent to the task. She watches him for a long moment, then. "No, you haven't. But I got the impression it was something you felt like you had to do."

Kalen"I'm always proud of her," Kalen says quietly.  "I can't imagine that changing."  He ties off the ribbons, sets this candle down on the mantle but does not light it.

"I may have been missed.  But, honestly, almost no one here agrees with the way I tend to want to handle things.  This may have been an exception, but my being in the middle of something here very rarely seems to make it go more smoothly."  There is a quick, grim smile.  "And I'll stir everything up again soon enough I'm sure."

He turns to face her, his eyes suddenly on hers.  "How are you?"

Kiara[Manip + Subterfuge, tiny pool for trying to act cool about traumatic events activate!]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (3, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )

Kalen[Perception + Empathy because I see this roll coming....]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 4, 5, 7, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )

dronehttp://www.sadtrombone.com

KiaraThe quick, grim smile is answered with a crooked variation from Kiara, one that struggles to hold structure there when he asks how she is. She holds his eyes long enough to respond: "I'm fine. It's - you know, whatever, right? Things are always going on in this town." She drops her eyes away as she scrapes the chair back against the floorboards and reclaims her basket, busying herself with unpacking some of the contents out onto the table.

The Verbena's dark hair falls over her shoulder, partially shielding her expression from the Hermetic as she works, her dark brows knitted together.

-

Fronting, of course. And it's no difficult task to see she is, the female. It's right there buried in those dark eyes and the way something like remorse and guilt and who knew what else sparked in them before she quite pulled them away. Distraction is the name of the game and there are so many tells, with trauma.

The tiny way it slivered into day to day life. The slightest tremble in the Verbena's hands every now and then when stress built. The way she stared off into the distance, counted dark corners in a room while out as if were necessary. In the here and now, it unpacks itself in the structure and deliberation of her actions.

In the fact she's baldly lying to him to avoid pressing her fingertips against that fresh, painful wound. He could leave it, if he wanted to. Allow the brunette to skirt around it, allow the conversation to steer on.

But it lays there, like a root exposed.

-

"I'm not sure any of us ever really know the right way to handle things." That she does offer, while she sets herself a task.

KalenIt is, for so many of the Flambeau, in their nature to press an attack.  If Kiara expects that, she would not be the first.  He had to know when he asked her what he was asking.  There was that sudden intensity and he did, at least for a second, press forward.

And now, Kalen lets Kiara pull away.  Refills his wine glass.  Gives her a moment to unpack the bag she brought with her, eyes tracing the motions of her hands.  Cataloguing her offerings.  He's fascinated by the ways in which they all do magic.  Their tools and their understandings and the way those come into harmony.

And those things are, in a way, why he's decorating this year without anything overtly Christian.  It is, for him, about Christmas.  And yet...absent that knowledge he could almost as easily have been decorated for Yule.  Trace back far enough and it is the same thing, traditions stolen or traditions hidden.

He takes a green candle and a length of red velvet ribbon and offers them out to Kiara.  "Last one," he says quietly.  And it is not the last candle but it is apparently the end of the decorating.  He's running out of places to put the candles anyway.

KiaraHe's not the first to press her to speak of it, in his way. He likely won't be the last to notice the way the Verbena's eyes adopt a vaguely far away, haunted tinge. It is, in part, a sad counterbalance to their lives. It is what weighed up their days and their loves and losses, the changing of the seasons marred with happenings and traumas that slowly tipped the scales.

That had no choice but to, you see. They defied reality and where did all that pressure have to go but to feed back into their lives, their psyches. Things bruised and scarred and scratch at the surface of her but a little and the Verbena standing across from him with downturned eyes and a supple, expressive mouth that was just now compressed into a line of stubborn distraction was not without her own set of blemishes.

A man divorced from reality in her apartment, his blood on her hands only a night ago. Another in the same apartment, in the same room, who'd been possessed by the spirit of something dark and twisted. She's no cowering damsel, Ms Woolfe, to fear death, not this creature of cycles and renewal, who paid homage to the Goddess and understood that there had to be a price - that balance mattered, in the cosmic, greater scheme - there would always have to be a price exacted.

Saplings sprouting in the decaying ruin of felled trees, ecosystems fed by the fox that perished in the wild.

Still - he doesn't force her hand and in some way, perhaps, she's grateful for it. There's this tiny hesitation that speaks of that: the tick up of her eyes as he holds out the candle and ribbon, the surprise that wars with gratitude in her expression. The way she ducks her face and tucks hair behind a lobe in a spontaneously, sweet little moment of unguarded pleasure.

"Thanks. I thought I'd do something for Annie and the girls. They've put up with all of us stomping around their place enough." She picks up her wine glass, then, Kiara and with a thoughtful little swallows, offers: "I saw the picture you got for Ian. The one in his apartment. It's beautiful."

Kalen"Mmmmmmmm...." Kalen says.  "I always assumed that he lived in the poshest of posh trees."  There is some amusement there and perhaps a little surprise.  He never saw Ian's apartment.  Does not even really know where Ian lives beyond that he can walk to that champagne bar.  There is a second where it seems that perhaps he will say something else, but then instead he pushes away from the table, picks up the box of matches open on the table and offers it to Kiara.

"Come."  It is, on the very surface, a command.  But the tone turns it into more of an offer than anything.

Kalen heads for where all the stockings are hanging by the living room fireplace or leaning against the edges of the hearth.  There are so many things he could say to her.  Perhaps they would be the things she wanted to hear.  If he was even luckier, they would be the things she needed to hear.

Except they don't work that way, words.  They have their own power.  Their own magick.  But only in the moments when they align with the moment in all the right ways.  He expects he could say the perfect words and leave Kiara unmoved.  For a second he tastes the memory of a dream of fire slowly being overwhelmed by sunlight and moss.

He smiles, warm and calm and not entirely for Kiara as he reads over the names traced in glitter on the stockings.

Kiara[Perception + Empathy: What were you thinking of saying, Kalen? Does Kiara notice?]

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

KalenIt is hard to tell what, precisely, he might have said.  Not because his expressions are closed off to her but because there were no words quite close enough to the surface to clearly catch the final shape of them.  There is empathy and memory and a kind of impulse to reach out that she hasn't often seen quite so readily visible with Kalen.  Probably it has something to do with something that happened to him, but Kiara isn't familiar enough with his history to easily guess what it might be.  But whatever it was, it probably was not about Ian.  That surprised him, but his attention didn't really catch there.

KiaraShe watches him for a moment, Kiara, much the way she'd looked at the painting hung in Ian's apartment the first time she'd seen it.

There's interest banked there and the same settling sort of awareness that her expression had possessed then, too. This quiet sort of focus that reads her study of every tiny nuance and cadence in his voice. As if she were absorbing the details the way she had the strokes of the brush on the canvas.

It had been the sort of picture she'd have chosen herself, for the Orphan. She'd said about as much to Ian at the time. There's a little curl of the Verbena's lip up when he adds he supposed that Ian had always lived in a treehouse. "Not quite but ... it is meticulous. In a very Ian sort of way." Kiara's fingers have strayed to toy with one of the necklaces around her neck, she curbs the habit after a beat, dropping her fingers away and curling them up against her thigh as if burned.

Come, he offers and Kiara watches the retreat of his back for a moment before she does. Collects her glass of wine and navigates around the length of the table to follow after him, her movements betraying an easy sort of grace that transfers itself into the manner she deposits herself into the arm of one of the scattered sofas; folds her legs up and cards fingers into that dark mane of hair to prop her head up, elbow on the rest.

She's watching the fire as much as the decorations. "You really do like all this, don't you?" She asks, with no small amount of humor. "I always used to hate this time of year growing up. My parents would throw these ridiculously large parties and the house would be full of strangers who came just to say they did." There's a flare of bitterness there, underplaying the humor.

"Even now, I don't really do much when the winter solstice comes. Old habits die hard, I suppose." She leans over to set the glass down carefully.

KalenKalen kneels beside the bags he brought, pulling out one small clove studded orange and a single gold coin.  He stays there for a second, very still.  "When I was young, Christmas was me and my sister Melody and my mother.  Melody...if she had lived I think that she would have been a lot like Grace.  But she died when she was nine and I was six.

"We both did, fell through the ice a frozen lake.  Only my heart started again."  There is a slight pause.  "I was alone after that.  My mother...she went into a kind of shock I guess, and then...then a lot of alcohol and a lot of drugs.  She doesn't even know who my father is.  We didn't have Christmas after that.  I didn't again until I joined the Order.

"My mentor and I did.  He was like a father to me, after I got over being sixteen and a total jerk.  It was great, really.  We'd do this whole thing with the Chantry and it was...ridiculously ostentatious but gorgeous."  His voice shakes a little, in ways it did not when he talked about his mother and his sister.

"It's gone now.  Destroyed.  As far as I know, only Jenna and I got out of there."

He sighs.  "Last year...it was the first year I ever baked Christmas cookies and picked out a tree and invited people out to decorate it.  I hid Easter eggs one year here and it was the first time.

"Of course I love this.  Denver may not understand me, and most of the people who first made it my home are gone.  And maybe it isn't anymore.  Maybe I don't belong here anymore, or with the Order anymore.  I don't know.

"But this.  I can still have this.  At least one more year.  That's enough.

"So yes.  I love this."

Kalen looks up and meets Kiara's eyes.  Holds up his hands with a coin on one palm and an orange on the other and drops them into the stocking with Kiara's name on it.  Then he nudges a bag of oranges a few inches toward her and picks up the bag of coins.  Pulls one out and waits, ready to drop it into another stocking to see if Kiara wants to come and join him instead of watching from the sofa.

KiaraKiara spent a large portion of her time in a professional capacity doing exactly this. Listening, to people's stories, deducing from what they reveal to her the ways she can attempt to heal what ailed them; to set her hands on their bodies and sink in deep with her energies - soothe jangled nerves and tender muscles. Glean a thousand tiny tells from the way they responded where the root of their issues were situated.

Healing was no exact science, she could no more explain the way she connected to another individual's lifeforce than she could the reasoning behind why some souls lingered on, after they'd left their physical bodies behind. Some things simply were. She's an attuned audience, when Kalen begins to recount his experiences with Christmas.

As he leaves imprints on her memory of his sister and his mother - of a frozen lake splintering apart, ice cracking like a whip beneath young children. Of his mentor and another Chantry - her eyes lift from the floor when his voice betrays him a little and there's a quiet sort of empathy shining out of them that warms her features; slips into the edges of her mouth. It gives over to it, a wistful little smile that rises and then settles in.

The fire cracking in the hearth; a log snapping as it was gradually reduced to nothing but ashes.

She gives Kalen's offerings this respectful little beat of silence; her form still huddled there, curled in around the arm of the sofa. Her fingers have returned to one of the necklaces she's wearing, she's idly stroking her fingers down over the length of it. "My mentor gave me this. She's buried in this little backyard outside of New York. I put it in a box full of her things for a long time. I could just never bear to look at it.

Then, a few months ago I was cleaning things out and I found it. Or, well - it found me. It fell out of the closet. I don't know what changed but from that point, I've rarely taken it off." There's a beat, where Kiara sits forward, clasps her hands together in her lap. "It was the only weapon I had when a Nephandus known as the Artist took control of someone I was trying to help in my apartment.

I used it to drive him off." She breathes out carefully, as if testing her capacity to stay calm in the face of it: remembering the moment. The blood on her floor. The sting of an open cut on her palm. "Cast a spirit back." She slides to her feet, then. Pads around to him and stands nearby, studying his face. "Part of wants to cling to the idea that was Aisling. Somehow."

She collects up an orange, shapes it in her hands. "Even if you don't belong with them anymore, the Order. You've got friends here." This little cant of Kiara's head, her eyes search his for a beat. "Maybe that's reason enough to stay."

She deposits the orange into a stocking.

Kiara[Ahem, 'part of me'. Darn typos.]

Kalen"We have a way of finding the things that we need," Kalen says quietly.  Releases the coin in his hand and moves to the next stocking in the row.

He takes a careful breath.  "They're hard to be around.  Nephandi.  The last time I was...it was in an Umbral realm the thing had warped into...I don't think they're ever easy to remember."  There is a slight pause.  "I'm sorry.  Whatever it did, whatever it was.  I'm sorry you had to see it."

"And yeah.  I know.  I don't plan to leave Denver.  At least not in a permanent fashion."

KiaraShe makes this sound, Kiara. This little noise that speaks of agreement and disbelief and anger, and - there's so much wrapped into it and so much of it feels snared and tangled together. The way her shoulders grow a little stiffer; the way she cuts him this brief, sudden little glance that feels like its all sharp edges and raw, unprocessed feelings on the subject, because -

"I'm sorry I did, too. But it's dead now. So I guess that means we won."

- she really doesn't sound so sure on the matter, though.

She drops another orange into a stocking and, with a spare touch to his arm, moves back to reclaim her glass of wine, tipping back the remains of it in a single, deep swallow. There's something vaguely unsettling to it. The easy way she imbibes the alcohol; the way she carefully slides her fingertips over her lips to check if she's spilled a drop (she hadn't).

"I'm going to stop by and say hello to Callisto. She gets a little disgruntled when she knows I'm nearby and don't come talk to her." There's a beat, Kiara standing by the sofa, empty glass in hand, her red lips a little smudged where her fingers have touched them. It somehow only adds to that element of the unbridled primitive in her, beneath the tousled hair and dark eyes.

"I'm glad you're not planning to leave." Another beat. Kiara's mouth bending in a subtle smile. "And I'm glad you're back in one piece. For whatever that's worth."

a cold unforgiving place. [samir, elijah]

William
There is something to be said about a forest in the budding darkness. They had set out and by the time the two young men were in the thick of the treeline it was dark.

As though that would have made a difference. The trees were still losing their leaves but the occasional presence of an evergreen blocked what little light they were going to be able to receive naturally. It was getting dark, already dark but not the full effect of the darkness was felt. It was a forest, not a cave, but as the temperature dropped- no matter how sheltered from it the two mages were- they could tell that the cold and the atmosphere transformed the place into something more like a fairy tale.

The kind with witches in gingerbread houses. The kind where errant children are punished for their transgressions lest others make the same mistakes.

Elijah had actually done one smart thing, or perhaps not something that was stupid in his own mind (even though he was, in fact, traveling with someone who could pinpoint them on a map in relation to the rest of the globe had Samir so desired). He only went one direction. North. Continued going north and rarely deviated from that path. They came across a smaller stream. A few felled trees. The air was quiet; the world around them was going to sleep. That is what the impending winter was- a time for the earth to rest.

Human beings are not wild creatures, not anymore. Not in the sense that a stag or a falcon is wild, no matter how much majesty they seemed to portray and symbolize. Human beings are predictable creatures, but not domesticated. That which would feed upon them, had done very little in the way of making the species a more accessible food source. We digress.

The forest around them was dark. The only sound was their chatter (or lack thereof) and breathing.

SamirThough the sun was starting to dip below the western horizon Sam had gotten used to functioning in spite of darkness. Make of that what you will. The change Will felt in the Virtual Adept went beyond that of an attitude adjustment.

He went along with Will's stupidity because he thinks that's all it is. That Will has gotten it into his head to tromp off into the woods for the sake of adventure and now they're chasing fucking squirrels or something.

Just before they started headed due north Will asked what gives with Sam's new sense of increased power. He had huffed out a breath and buried his hands deeper in his pockets and said, "I don't know what to tell you, man. Shit happens."

And now it's dark. The woods wraps its arms around them like a psychotic lover and Sam edges closer to Will despite the ever-present threat of catching the younger man's virulent bisexuality.

"Where the fuck are we going?" Sam asks after a time. "I'm pretty sure this is how the beginning of Deliverance happened."

Samir[alertness!]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )

Samir[awareness!]

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

William[Because I gotta roll this, too. Alertness?]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 5, 9, 10) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens]

William[and awareness]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 6, 7) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens]

WilliamThere is a feeling that starts at the place where your head meets your neck, a sort of tingling that comes when you know something isn't right. There is a feeling that comes, and it sits from that place at your neck and moves down into your throat and tastes like smog in your lungs even though you know you are breathing fresh air. Even though you know that there is nothing that should provoke this reaction. It's not like smoking your  first cigarette- it's more like the memory of drowning in tar.

that feeling moves into being, into Knowing. It moves from the primal to the part of one's brain that is governed by cognitive processes. It comes in folk wisdom, then transcends into true knowledge. It is the feeling that something is wrong, that something has pushed past the natural order and moved into the realm of fundamental unbalance. There is no approximation for it.

When Samir looks, and something does catch his eye, to the north east, perhaps thirty yards from where they are, a humanoid figure. Tall and thin and attractive in its own right. The shoulders are narrow and its waist is slender but not comically so. On its body, he sees a suit. Something that is a dark gray and pristine with a gash of blue against its chest- like the crest of some exotic bird when, really, it was just a tie set against a very expensive outfit.

The figure he sees is tall, and he hears no breathing. He hears nothing about its movements, as though it glides more than it walks- or perhaps it is merely so careful that when it does walk the snow does not slosh beneath its feet.

There is no mouth. No eyes. No nose. There is nothing distinguishing about it save for that blue flash of a necktie.

Samir[OH SHIT]

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 3, 7, 7, 7, 8) ( success x 4 )

William[Elijah: Fuck. This. Business]

Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (1, 5, 5, 6, 8) ( success x 1 )

SamirHis first thought is that there is a Technocrat out in the woods watching them.

Then instead of reacting Sam takes in what is happening.

Worth mentioning that Sam often engages in magical or superstitious thinking if he does not just act on muscle memory. This is a part of himself that he has only recently accepted and he hasn't accepted it as a part so much as he accepted that this is who he is. He believes things that have no basis in reality.

But then again the things that they do have no basis in reality. The harder they violate reality the harder reality hits them back. Both these young men know what it is to have reality deny them their right to function in it.

And yet it takes Sam a moment to realize that he is looking at something that should not exist. To process that it is without facial features and is dressed as a humanoid would dress and to accept that the dread he feels is due to his innate desire to stay alive and not because of any cognitive processes that he is aware of.

As he had the night they met in the park Sam grabs hold of Will's elbow to keep him from approaching it.

"Do you see that?" he asks in a hoarse whisper.

William[Int+Cosmology: ???]

Dice: 6 d10 TN9 (3, 4, 4, 5, 7, 7) ( fail )

WilliamIt's not polite to stare.

It's the only thing that he can think of when he looks at it, that it isn't polite to stare and he has lost some of the color in his expression and his brain is trying to process what it is that he is looking at and it keeps trying to make its form human even though it isn't human.

He knows that. On the level that Samir knows this, they are looking at something that has no right to exist on this plane.

"What the fuck is that?" he whispers back. He feels Samir's hand on his elbow and, just as they had in the park, William made a little move to see closer but stopped when he felt pressure. He looks back at Sam, and then at the figure. There is no recognition there; the Hermetic is out of his depth.

William[Inquisitor: do I notice you?]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 5, 5, 5, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )

William[and for Samir]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )

Samir"How the fuck should I know?!"

His grip on Will is becoming less to keep him from approaching and more to get him to retreat. Sam has a very strong sense of self-preservation. Staying alive is very very very stressful for him. He would not be such an anxious mess if he didn't think it was worth it.

WilliamIts attention turns, and there is a cold feeling that comes when that attention comes their way and settles, easily, on the two young men half-hidden in the trees. It would feel as though eyes were boring into them but it has no eyes. It has no mouth. It has no features, save for its inky skin and the only splash of color on its chest. That's how they know it is squared to them. That tie is in full view.

It tilts its head, slowly, and begins a slow approach.

"You must come out," in a voice that is neither male nor female, but calm. Measured. Placed and practiced but... in its own sense young. Youth is its only true defining factor, "you do not wish for this to end in pursuit."

SamirDoesn't matter that the fucking thing hasn't got any fucking eyes. Sam feels as he has felt nothing else recently that it is staring right the fuck at them and his palms are slicking sweat against the inside of his gloves and his heart is pounding so hard he's sure the vibrations could generate their own gravitational pull.

And then it starts to walk towards them.

Repeat: IT STARTS TO WALK THE FUCK TOWARDS THEM.

"Stay back!" he says. Not in a whisper. Still holding onto Will's stupid fucking arm and Will has never heard Sam raise his voice. No one has. He has the capacity to sound  "We don't want to hurt you!"

Doesn't say they don't mean to hurt it or that they won't. Just that there's a lack of desire. Come on Will tug tug tug let's go.

William[manip+sub: I am not scared shitless right now]

Dice: 7 d10 TN8 (1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )

WilliamInquisitor: Oh, cute.

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (5, 6, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 6 )

WilliamYou do not wish this to end in pursuit, it says.

There is something in Williams mind that flips, he regards Samir and wonders how fast he can run, wonders if he can make it to the trailer and whatever wards he has up might hold. Wonders about a lot of things but he stands there and stands straighter. Holds himself tall like he's supposed to be brave and like he's not scared of this thing.

"We need to leave," he tells Samir. He's never heard Samir yell, though. Not when he was in his right mind, doesn't seem like the type. William swallows, hard, tries to pull back.

---
Inquisitor
Samir tells it to stay back, not in a whisper. He insists that they don't want to hurt it, and it seems to consider this. The approach does not halt, though. Does not slow. It has twenty yards to make up but its voice is so incredibly close that the two men can feel it in their ears. Like a whisper meant only for an individual yet they can both hear it.

One of them plays brave, looks like he is planning an escape route. They are both tense, they are both anxious and uneasy and the being is far from the experiences of humanity. If it knows what distress looks like, it does not care.

There is a moment, and they should hear the crunch of snow but they do not. They should see the flurry of movement when it moves at them in a pace like a sprint. Bounds forward towards them, but it does not move like a normal human being. It moves its legs, yes, and glides, passes over the ground as though it has no true need for this arbitrary movement.

Before it is standing right in front of the two young men, puts a hand on each of their shoulders and it feels like that suffocation they felt at the nape of their necks when its presence was first spotted.

"I merely wish to ask you a few questions. You have information I require," its gaze is even. They do not feel a pulse, "will you give that information freely?"



SamirWe need to leave.

The comic books got it right. With greater power comes greater responsibility.

Sam Awakened when he was sixteen years old. War was on the horizon of the country in which he was living. It was not his country. It affected him anyway. He had a part to play in the way the revolution went and Sam does not regret anything about his life or the way it has gone but the fact remains that he has been Awake longer than Will has been. Right now he is capable of more than Will is.

The fact that he yanks Will hard as he can to get him behind him may well serve as fodder for a gay joke later. But right now he does it because he wants to put himself between the thing hurrying towards them and his friend.

This is how reality deviants operate. Their lives don't mean shit when their friends' are in danger.

"Wh--" Christ his throat feels like they're out in the desert pull your shit together Lakhani. "What information?"

WilliamHe gets yanked behind Sam, and neither of them are strong but he takes it anyway. Moves and stumbles because if he doesn't move the way Samir pulled him then he will fall and neither of them want to be flat on their asses. His brain is reeling.

All he can do is stare. Breathing shallow. Uneven.

---
Inquisitor
It looks at the young man with the darker hair- the one who stood in front of his younger companion and insisted that they didn't want to harm it. It is standing close. No concept of personal space and not towering over Samir but certainly filling up with a sort of presence. Aware. Solid.

"What... are you both?" measured, "you appear human, but... that seems... inaccurate."



SamirSam has a thing about personal space. One could capitalize it as a Thing but it falls under the umbrella of his mental illness. He worries about violating not only other people's personal spaces but using that violation to hurt them. He knows he would never do it. But the thoughts themselves are distressing enough without the knowledge that he and reality sometimes embark upon a trial separation and he cannot state with any certainty what he has or has not done.

This thing gets right up into his space. His space is now Will's. In silence Sam forgives it. It's not human. It doesn't have a fucking face. It doesn't know their customs maybe or even if it does it may just be in an academic sense and then there's the question and he's breathing fast and erratic because he's fucking terrified but he has a strong spine and it's growing stronger the older he gets.

"W--" Fuck. "We... we are... human. But we..." Free information. Fuck. "... we can..." Fuck. "... we can do things other..." Fuck. "... other humans... can't... who are you?"

WilliamInquisitor
There is a pause, and with a wave of its hand, it takes itself away from actually being in danger of touching either of them. It seems unnecessary for now since it would seem this one was willingly volunteering the information it wanted.

"Irrelevant," it says, to answer Samir's question of who this creature might be.

"How many other humans can do 'other things', as you say? How many in this city?"


SamirFuck.

Fuck fuck fuck.

Fuck.

"I'm not..." Yup. Fuck. Fuck with a side of Don't fuck with me. Will can see Sam stand up straighter. "I'm not going to tell you that."

WilliamInquisitor
He isn't going to tell it that. It seems content to look from Samir, who has been answering, to William, who seems pretty well having the worst time fathoming what the fuck he's looking at that he isn't going to be terribly talkative either.

Looks back at Samir.

"This is your last opportunity to answer before I pry the information I need from your exposed brain, human. It is easier this way."

Last chance.


Samir"No shit it's easier!"

Sam really does prefer that Will stay behind him and not talk. That he not expose more of himself to this creature than is unavoidable. Will is taller than Sam is but Sam has more mental problems than Will does. If he even senses that Will wants to move around him to try and talk Sam can move just as fast as Will can.

Thus far he hasn't sensed that want. He also isn't aware of anything other than the faceless nightmare in front of them.

"The wrong thing is always easier!" He shucks back his hood like being able to see his face without shadow is going to convince the thing that this isn't a fight it wants. "You want it so bad, you're gonna have to expose my fucking brain."

You fuck.

WilliamInquisitor
Oh, Lakhani. It seems to bear down and look at him. Tall and trim and ready. It moves with a sort of inhuman grace, an odd presence to it. And it makes a sound-

This is not a sound that a human throat can make. It is not a sound of this earth and it resonates in a different place than the ears, it reverberates against one's chest, under the rib cage. It is a sound that clicks, and the closest approximation is a repetitive click of a baseball card in the spokes of a bicycle.

And, then, it moves.


SamirIf it's going to move he's going to unzip his coat enough to pull out his deck and meet whatever it presents to him in kind. Part of him hopes it's moving to rethink its bad choices and retreat.

Most of him knows better than to hope.

[inits! +5]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (3) ( fail )

WilliamHe's trying to pull for recognition, because if he knows what he's dealing with then he can deal with this. He can process, he can stand up and not be terrified and in a moment he's impressed by Samir, stands up straighter and tries to push back the lack of calm to seem like he was some kind of backup.

It makes that sound and it makes William freeze, pull through memory after memory to try and place it. The closest approximations he can come up with are enough to make his blood feel cold, make his heart pound harder.

"Fuck."
[5+1d10]


Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (2) ( fail )

WilliamInquisitor: +8

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (7) ( success x 1 )

WilliamWilliam doesn't even take a second. He just spouts off... something. Something that is most assuredly not in English.

[Prime 2: Maybe killing it with prime is always a good idea?]

SamirSam does not go on the offensive. Not yet. First he executes a program that will convert any damage he takes as a result of this creature's actions into Quintessence. It's a risk. He may take no damage or the creature may dole out enough to kill him. He ought to ward both himself and Will against Mind attacks but Sam knows how much time and effort that will take and he doesn't know yet if that is the tack the creature will take.

So:

[prime 1: self-sacrifice. base diff 4, i can't be fucked w/ modifiers.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (2, 7, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

WilliamThe creature regards him, and Samir is right in front of him and takes a swipe- when he looks he may notice that something has come forth from its fingertips, something small, like needles on the end of each finger.

It's not so much swiping as it is a precise movement. An attempt to touch and penetrate the young man's skull.

[action: poke! Calling it a melee attack at 1/2 damage since person being alive is imperative for, you know, brain stuff]

William[Dex4+melee3=7, diff 8 (b/c targetting)]

Dice: 7 d10 TN8 (1, 1, 2, 7, 7, 10, 10) ( success x 2 )

William[you lucked out, bro. damage]

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

William[You know, rolling like normal makes more sense, we talked about it, it's totes cool. Can pull damage if need be. str 4+ succ 2 +2 (target), -1= 7]

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

William[[so, we kind of stunned Samir. Oops]

WilliamWilliam:
Prime 2- Because fuck you, that's why.
diff 3 +2 (sphere) +1 (vulgar as fuck)= 6 -1 (quint) = 5



Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (2, 10) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

WilliamIt's fast, it's almost the penacle of human achievement fast and no sooner does in descend upon the man who had so rudely refused to give it his information it has its fingers at the back of his neck, at that point where the head meets the spinal column and with surgical precision it inserts its needle-like extensions into his skull.

It's enough to make anyone want to collapse.

William is panicking, he's speaking quickly and his words are intent and all he wants is for this thing to go away and Samir is bleeding and it's dark but magick doesn't care if you are having a hard time seeing your target. Words will strike true, he just hopes he has time...

WilliamWilliam: action: extend and then release the effect!

WilliamInquisitor: doobeedoo- poking through your memories

WilliamWits+enigmas, diff 6

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 6, 6, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )

SamirIt knocks him down.

On another night he could understand where it was coming from. He does not at all agree with its methods. It stabbed him in the back of the neck and when his legs go out from under him it's less that he's stunned and more that it sort of divorced his spinal cord from his brain a little bit. He retains consciousness. But his consciousness is bleeding out from him fast.

Sam wants to live. But right now he's bleeding out in the snow and he can't feel his legs and he trusts that Elijah can handle this thing on his own because Elijah has --

Last time something like this happened he divorced from reality so hard he lost himself for almost two weeks. The same thing happens now. He is stunned from the pain and the impact of the injury and then he is stunned because the earth turns into ice beneath him and the ice starts to keen like it's giving birth and he can't even move to try and ease its pain.

So he groans sharp and angry and presses his forehead into the earth.

[i think his action has to be resisting the effects of quiet? that'll be a WP roll.]

Samir[WP!]

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 5, 7, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 5 ) [WP]

WilliamInquisitor: Oh, fuck, sanity check.

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )

WilliamPrime 2- because seriously. Fuck you. Extending.
diff 3 +2 (sphere) +1 (vulgar as shit) +1 (extension= diff7 -2 quint)= diff 5


Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (2, 5) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

William[aaaaand that means our inquisitor takes 6 agg. Sorry, buddy. Not your night)

Williamthe world comes in to pin point accuracy, blows apart for Samir because he wants to live. He's bleeding, he's bleeding and he could die tonight but he is stubbornly holding on to that he is going to live. The world is coming apart and the earth beneath him keens and the creature above him screeches.

It pulls its fingers from his skull and the sensation of it rifling through his memories as though they were for its own personal amusement abates.

The smell is atrocious, its flesh is burning and it drips like tar onto the ground. The only sound beyond its scream was that of the young Hermetic finishing whatever spell he had just finished. Whatever had burned this being so badly and it wasn't enough.

It does stop, though. Stops long enough to turn its attention elsewhere.

WilliamWilliam: try and convince it that you'll tell it everything it wants to know if it fixes Samir (aka: promise it the world through lying now that you have its attention)

SamirHaving that thing inside his brain doesn't hurt. It's something worse. It's a violation. It's a violation and he can't move away from it can't even lift up his hands to pull it out of his brain and he doesn't think to scream because it doesn't hurt. He can feel its talons in his head and he can smell the stink of it as it rifles around and he's screaming on the inside but on the inside he can't move because he's wrestling with his own insanity.

Then that's over. Then he can breathe again. Then the thing is still there reeling with what Will did to it.

[put up a force field between himself/will and the inquisitor.]

Samir[I ROLL THINGS]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (8, 10, 10) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

William[William: I am totally lying to you and telling you what you want to hear]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 5, 5, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) [Doubling Tens]

William[Inquisitor: I call bullshit? ]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 6, 8, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 6 )

William"You're going to kill him-" William was quick to say. There was panic in his voice, crept into his shoulders.
"I was quite clear with my terms," it said, though its voice sounded almost pained.
"Look, there's not a fucking point in this, this guy's been here for a fucking week, he doesn't know-" he rattles off quickly "-look, if you just-just fucking fix him- I know people, I'd be better at this anyway-"

It made that clicking sound again, turned its head at an angle that let both young men know that it was not amused by them.

"I do not work in concert with those who traffic in deception-" it hissed. reared back ready to strike, all the while unaware that Samir had done his work, and done it well. It would have a lot to fight through if it were going to make it past.



SamirIf Will is going to try and lie his way out of this paper bag then Sam can just lie there and not feel either his legs or his connection to reality in silence. He can at least hear what the kid is trying to do. It's stupid like most of his ideas are stupid but it's born of a good heart. Pushing back his insanity as he is even Sam can recognize that.

But the creature recognizes that Will is lying. And Sam begins to fear that they are both completely fucked.

William[William: Seriously, because Prime 2 is his weapon of choice. Sorry Inquisitor, not sorry]

Samir[action: extend that force field!]

William[INquisitor:

1: eviscerate the Hermetic (you suck, sir)

r1: and maybe pound his head into something a couple times]

William[dex+melee, diff 6 (yousuck)]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 5 )

William[aaaaand since it surpassed the shield it only gets to use 2 of those]

[str4+succ2 -1=5]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )

Samir[dex + lololol]

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (4, 6) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Samir[I FORGOT WOUND PENALTIES IGNORE THAT]

Samir[forces 2: i'm already in quiet fuck it frying your ass. modifiers are dumb handwave handwave.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 7) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

William[William: Prime 2: Because seriously, I hate you so hard]

diff 3+2 (sphere)+1 (vulgar)=6

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (8, 9) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

WilliamInquisitor: X_x

WilliamParadox!

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 4, 5, 7) ( success x 1 )

WilliamSoak

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

William[Prone to Quiet, because seriously?!]

Dice: 5 d10 TN8 (1, 3, 4, 10, 10) ( success x 2 )

WilliamThere is a moment when the Inquisitor lunges, breaks past the shield and Samir tries to push against reality, tries to protect the two of them but it isn't quite enough- not yet- and there is a moment where William is bloodied but otherwise in decent shape. Samir saved his life, Samir saved his life twice tonight, whether he realizes it or not. Drew attention to himself and blocked what would have otherwise been a lethal blow for the young man.

The forest erupted into light, and the creature fell, slumped over before it began to come apart into flakes, into tiny flecks of black and ash and dissipate, slip back into the shimmering nothingness or realm from which it came- no longer able to orient itself on their plane.

William is left with his friend, bleeding and losing a war with himself over what is real.

"Samir?!" his voice cracks, he crouches and there is blood all over the snow and he isn't moving. He-

He's not dead. He knows that he isn't dead but he's hurt worse than William can do anything about- like he could have done anything anyway- and he sits beside him, swallows and tries to think about the various things Jenn tried to teach him in first aid and it's all a blank and-

He pulls out his phone, not immediately to call someone, but to get his GPS coordinates.

"I... I'm so fucking sorry-" he's trying to hold it together. It isn't working, but he's trying his damnedest.

SamirIt's because the damage did not extend into his brain that Samir is still breathing.

He is facedown and fully cognizant. But after the fight is over and the creature stops attacking them he does not peel himself off the frozen ground and find his feet again. Just before the fight the Virtual Adept let down his hood. He wears his hair in a knot at the nape of his neck and in weather like this he pulls a ski cap over his skull. Neither of those things helped insulate him from the creature's claws. They went in through his cervical spine and found his mind. Dug around and pulled back out and the wound weeps blood steady enough to stain but not enough to drain him.

That doesn't mean he's fine. Samir is pretty fucking far from fine. He keeps on lying facedown long after he should have at least twitched a finger or asked a question. Still breathing but it's hard to tell he's breathing from looking at him.

If he could draw enough breath to tell Elijah to shut the fuck up he was fine Sam would do it. He can't. He's aware Elijah is freaking the fuck out and he can't do anything about it. Can't even move his pinky. Can't even think Dude shut the fuck up it's not your fault at him hard enough because Mind is one of his weakest Spheres.

So Samir cashes in the fucks he has to give and trusts Elijah will get them out of this and closes his fucking eyes.

WilliamHe gets his coordinates, patting himself down before finding in one of his pockets a sharpie marker- pulled off his gloves to write the coordinates from his phone on the back of his hand since he didn't know where the fuck they were beyond somewhere. Samir lived in the middle of nowhere for a reason- it was so he could be away from people. He was going to be away from people-

He calls Kiara. She's more likely to answer than Serafine.

KiaraHe's in luck.

The Verbena does, in fact, answer. After about four painstaking, agonizingly long rings out there's a little click and the unmistakable sounds of someone in transit. Maybe they'd lucked out and the pagan was already out somewhere.

"Elijah, what's up?"

William"Samir and I are in a fucking forest-and-and-" he swallows "-and there was this thing-"

Exhale, he's getting off topic.

"Samir is really hurt very, very badly and I can't move him and he isn't moving. Can you get here if I send you GPS coordinates?"

KiaraThere's a beat of silence. Faintly, he can the strains of city traffic, beneath that there's music playing that abruptly terminates. The Verbena has switched it off. "Hold on one second, okay?"

A horn blares. There's the soft rumble of an engine accelerating and then chiming. Wind bruises static against the line. Wherever she is, Kiara has pulled over and opened her door. "You're in a forest?" He can almost feel the woman calculating the distance to get where he may be.

"I can come right now. Send me the co-ordinates." Another pause. "Is Samir breathing?" Calm, that. Surprisingly so, considering everything Kiara's been through of late. "Is he losing any blood?"

WilliamShe asks if he is breathing and he nods, only to realize that she can't see him. "Yeah... yeah he's breathing... it's-it's not well, but- it hit him in the back of the head and maybe it hit his spine, I don't know?"

Exhales a shaking breath.

"He is losing blood but.. it's not as bad as it could be. I just know that he can't stay out here. I don't know-" he doesn't know anyhting about first aid beyond what his knowledge of Life affords him. Just knows there is blood and that he isn't moving, "I'm gonna hang up and text you the coordinates... it might take an hour to get here. He can make it until then."

Like he has utmost faith in Samir. LIke his saying it makes it willed into existence.

SamirNo shit you're in a fucking forest Elijah the forest is safer than the city if you don't go out in it like you're trying to reenact Troll Hunters there are things out in the fucking forest do you see Samir out in the fucking forest dancing around half-naked trying to summon things? No. No you do not. Because Samir likes it when all of his blood stays inside his body. All of it. Not most of it. All.

Fuck and now you're calling Kiara great because Kiara hasn't been through enough the last month who the fuck is she going to tell about this when Samir is the one she usually tells about awful shit happening. Maybe this doesn't count. Not unless the thing you just killed has a buddy that's hanging around intending to jump on you both the second she shows up.

Jesus fucking Christ Elijah he can't even tell you how much you suck right now. Maybe if he opens his eyes--

Nope. That's too much effort. You're on your own, kid.

Kiara"Elijah, it's going to be okay."

She can't know that, of course. Nobody ever can. But it spills off her tongue, without thought. She switches her phone to her other ear and slides back into her car.

"Just - stay with Samir. Keep him talking, if you can. I'm on my way. You can do this."



William"Things are going to be okay," he insists. Doesn't move. He sits down, and waits.

Hangs up with Kiara and texts the coordinates. He doesn't think they're out of the fire yet, but without a means to tell if anything else is coming, he just hopes it works.

William[int+academics: do I remember The Odyssey?]

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

Samir[do i remember enough to hate you later? -2 bc ow.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 10) ( success x 1 ) Re-rolls: 1

Kiara[Sorry guys, I'm doing dinner so I can't post just yet! Kiara is on her way though.]

Samir[No sorry!]

William(No worries!)

Kiara[Dex + Ath. Just seeing how she's travelin'.]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )

Kiara[And how many speed limits did you break, Kiara? Most of that driving was on flat road, so let's say diff 5.]

Dice: 4 d10 TN5 (2, 4, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )

KiaraThe cut of torchlight arcing through the trees is their first indication that the Verbena is nearing their location. The feeble light bounces across the treeline and there's distinct sound of feet scrambling over uneven ground, broken by the soft rush of breathing. They'll be able to feel the earth witch, soon enough, the surging of her resonance as she makes careful work of the wilderness around her.

Her phone is in one hand, following Elijah's co-ordinates and when she's close enough, there's the crack of a twig underfoot coupled with: "Elijah?" And then a curse as something heavy drops to the ground, torchlight skittering across it as the Verbena climbs back to her feet, brushing herself off.

There's a coat hanging open over Kiara's clothing. Clothing decidedly not suited to hiking, a hood half drawn forward over her face and she's peering into the distance, the female. Sweeping the area with careful little gleans of light.

"It's Kiara. I'm here."

[And just for flavor, awareness.]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 5, 5, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )

WilliamWhat she is greeted by is the sound of the Odyssey, recited by memory and drolling on- occasionally stopped and stilted while the young Hermetic clawed through what he could remember and pulled the rest from a laughing- I don't remember this part.

He laughs because he's nervous. The snap of the twig causes him to jump. He doesn't get up to see her and he's sitting down in the snow by a body laying face down.

There is blood pooled uncomfortably there.

"He hasn't said anything since... yeah."

SamirNothing else to do while he waits but to close his eyes and rest. Cold out here but for the effect Will fired off to keep the wind and the chill away from them. His bleeding a bit worse than it would be otherwise for the beer they had up in the treehouse before hiking out here. The torchlight finds his hair and his jacket dark but the blood oozed out of the wound and rusting across the back of his neck has dyed the ground beneath him too.

Not an exaggeration to say that Sam is very badly hurt. He fell as one falls when one's strings have been cut. Collapsed in a heap unable to break his own fall and stayed in that heap for not being able to move his arms or legs.

He's in pain. He can't move. He can't draw breath to tell Will to shut the fuck up with the Homer recitations already. So he did the only thing a body can do in that situation. He fell asleep.

May very well look as if Will is babysitting a corpse by the time Kiara gets there. Both young men's resonances jangle in the air Will's stronger than Sam's and then there's the lingering strangeness of the creature that attacked them.

Kiara[Okay, so. We're going to roll Medicine + Intelligence to (hopefully) help drop our diff down for healing. Each suxx drops our diff down by 1 to a max of -3. Diff for roll is the same as the healing/magick roll so we're looking at Diff 7.]

Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (1, 3, 4, 4, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens]

Kiara[And Life 3, healing. Vulgar af. Base Diff 7, -3 (Medicine roll), -1 focus, I'm gonna say -1 for appropriate resonance in this situation cuz we are rejuvenating you af, Samir.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (2, 8, 9) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Kiara[Extending!]

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (1, 3, 4) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Kiara[He's so healed. Posting!]

KiaraShe moves with purpose once she sights them.

The blood in the snow has the Verbena's features draining to a slightly paler shade, but her mouth compacts into a line and Kiara runs across to settle at Samir's side, tucking her phone into a pocket in her coat and snagging her gloves off in her teeth.

"Okay. It's okay." Kiara's dark eyes flash in the dark as she holds a torch out to Elijah. "I want you to hold this for me. Shine it on Samir so I can see what I'm doing." She's careful when she touches the Mercurial Elite, the snow seeping through the layers of the Verbena's clothing to chill her skin. The hood of her coat falls back to reveal gleaming hoops in Kiara's lobes; her eyes are painted up for whatever occasion she'd been headed to (or from) when Elijah called her.

She half turns Samir over, reaching down to tear back whatever layers existed between the bare skin of his chest and her palms. "You stay with me, Samir. You're not allowed to die." She leans over him, frames his face with one hand for a moment.

Her touch is startlingly warm. It only grows more so after a beat. The hand trapped beneath layers of his clothing feels as if its sinking deep, deep beneath his skin, curling and expanding like ivy, suspended and then propelled into sudden, violent motion. Kiara's eyes close and her brows draw together.

Her lips moving in silent conversation as tiny zaps of healing energy pour into the man crumpled in the snow. It's hard to imagine how it feels, if it feels like anything at all - one moment there's nothing but hazy awareness of agony, thrashing through your every nerve ending and then - just as abruptly - as if a hand reached in, curled around and thrust your system into regeneration in hyper-drive.

There are no blinding lights here. There is no holy revelation. There's just Kiara's motions in the dark, illuminated by a feeble little cut of torchlight as she sets her hands on the bloodied man's body and pushes it back together.

SamirWhatever took him down was not gentle with him.

No real violence in the injury. The tiny puncture wounds punched into the back of his neck were meant to extract. Like plugging a cable into an outlet. But the back of the young man's head is not an outlet and the needle-like talons were not cables and the resultant interface not only let out blood but lanced nerves and chipped bone.

When Kiara rolls him onto his back he flops. It isn't like rolling a dead body. Shallow breath moves in and out through his throat and his eyes don't do so much as flutter as the cold air hits his snow-stained face. Peaceful as most people appear peaceful in sleep but it's the oblivion that does it and not the act itself.

Ignore the sick way his head lolls about. The crunching sound come from his bones. Were they mundane healers they would have to put his neck in a brace and hold him stabile just to turn him over. They are not mundane healers and this does not do him further harm. The damage has been done. Kiara is here to undo it.

The witch has to unzip his barn coat and move a flannel button-down and a t-shirt out of the way. Finds his chest in the same condition it was the last time she had to press her hand to his flesh to heal him and in a moment she'll recognize another parallel between the two moments but in this one all she knows is that Samir was hurt and that he was not allowed to die.

She knows when the healing has taken root. Sam gasps hard and harsh his lungs starved for a good deep breath and his back arches like his spine has flooded with the dammed-up information it hadn't had before and he grabs onto the earth as if he fears it won't be solid in a moment. Eyes fly open with the termination of pain and paralysis and Kiara can feel the cold sweat sprung up onto his skin even after she takes her palm from his breastbone.

So he lies panting for several seconds grateful in his bones that he is still alive aware in some fashion that it is no doing of his own but when Sam pulls his eyes back down from the heavens Kiara recognizes that feverish cast to them. The hyper cant to his breath even as he's lying still.

Maybe she doesn't know it intimate but neither does she know the hacker intimate. She knows his Quiet though.

When he regains his capacity for speech Sam still panting runs his palm across the ground beside him. Does it again. As if he's petting a wild beast. Looks down at the snow-crusted earth as the petting takes up a certain soothing rhythm and then he frowns and says, "Shh... shhhh... it's alright..."

KiaraThere are some aspects to what's happened here that Kiara can't fix.

She can set her hands on Samir's body and repair the physical damage but there is more than that to what's broken inside the hacker right now. His mind, his capacity for reason and understanding has been rattled. He's withdrawn from reality and the instant that she draws her hands away and carefully leans in over him to gauge his expression and sees his eyes - she recognizes it.

The same wild light in them that had been there when he'd been pressed against a wall staring between her and Grace as if he were a startled animal, preparing to bolt from hunters.

She sits back on her heels, the Verbena and carefully draws her arm across her brow. "He's fine." Samir had begun to stroke the snowy earth as if it were a disgruntled feline. "Physically." She adds, with a tiny knitting of consternation, pushing herself to her feet and feeling, as if for the first time since she'd trekked across the dark landscape into the woods - the chill and relative isolation of the area they were in.

The was still blood in the snow by Samir; drying into a pinkish puddle.

It's hardly the worst thing she's had to face this month, but all the same, it requires a careful inhale in. And out. Her fingers lifting to rub along her hairline, there's a barely perceptible tremor to them. "We need to get you guys out of here. We can go back to Samir's trailer. Somewhere out of the cold." Kiara's eyes venture back to the man in question.

Her sneakers compact snow underfoot as she moves to settle down on her haunches beside the Mercurial Elite. "Samir, it's Kiara. I'm - " She breaks off, cutting a look at Elijah for a beat. "We're friends. I came out here to help make you feel better. We need to go for a walk now.

Will you walk with me?"

Samir[can you stop being crazy for a minute buddy?]

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

Samir[WOOHOO]

Kiara[ATTA BOY.]

Kiara[Dis is for Elijah. Same deal as before. Intel + Med to reduce our diff.]

Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (2, 2, 4, 6, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens]

Kiara[Rinse and Repeat, Life 3, etc.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (5, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )

Kiara[Okay I think that's Elijah healed and a pretty 3 Paradox for Kiara. That's gonna sting later but no need to roll Backlash rn.]

SamirHe's fine. Physically.

"... it's alright... stop crying..."

Several seconds pass between Kiara's administration and her rising. Her conversation with a panicked and bleeding William. William called her out of panic but there was an element of wisdom to it. He called the person he knew could do the most good in the least amount of time. Who cared about the man she was healing even if in that moment the man didn't recognize himself or his friends or his place in the universe.

The universe is a vast cold unforgiving place and he's listening to it shriek as he lies there reeling from Kiara's healing.

We need to get you guys out of here.

He rolls onto his side like he's rolling over in bed to calm a lover come thrashing out of a nightmare. Rust-wet snow beneath him and he doesn't recognize it as his blood. Doesn't recognize William or Kiara and they've both seen him like this before. A trauma had reality draping itself over him like to protect him but all that does is lock him in with his madness.

They both know how mad he is. He's come to terms with it. That doesn't make it easier to deal with when it rears its head.

"... stop, stop, shhhh, shhhh, I'm right here, I'm not gonna let them hurt you."

Then she says his name. That stills his hand. Stops his soothing. Sam plants his hand firm into the snowy earth. Kiara can see the cold blistering red on his brown skin. He doesn't.

"I'm not..."

It takes her presence and his will for Sam to recognize that what he is experiencing isn't real. That Kiara and William are here and they are real. That they give a shit about him. His eyes are still starry and faraway but Kiara says more than two words to him. Gives him an anchor to grab onto and it doesn't pull him down further. It gives him something to pull himself up towards. His breathing persists as an erratic panting but as he focuses and as he shuts out the hallucinations that distance recedes from his eyes.

When he regains his sentences Sam sobs. It does not devolve into a meltdown. Maybe he wants to have a meltdown but they both know him. He has strict boundaries. A single sob like the atmosphere stabilizing in an airway and then he realizes his hands are covered in dirt and water and blood.

"... Kiara?"

Yes. Yes he will walk with you.

you don't have to be okay. [samir, in progress]

 Samir
Not long after the impromptu bonfire in Wash Park a certain Verbena received a text message from a certain Virtual Adept. It was a gif of an owl doing whatever the fuck owls do with themselves all day. Eventually they got around to

So... do we need vodka to talk about what's up, or are you okay?

By the barest definition of 'okay' so are they all but that's not why he was asking. Strange moods all around the fire that night and hers was the one he couldn't crack. Sera's either but he and Sera do not have any sort of anything to do with each other anymore. Not unless other people call in aid and no one is going to call Sam to help with Sera. Grace and he are in constant communication with each other and River did not go home alone.

That is neither here nor there.

She wants to go to a taqueria. He has to travel into the city in order to accommodate her. He travels into the city to accommodate her. Winter be damned! Winter can't stop him! Winter ain't shit!

The place is just called Tacos Tequila Whiskey. That's where they converge. By the time he makes it from there to the train station Sam looks about half frozen but he thaws out quick enough.

They've sat. He's ordered a Loveland Mule and no food to go with it. Their server is a lovely woman who looks like she is a grandmother and she has just left the table to tend to their drinks when Sam frowns and takes in the weather on the other side of the table.

KiaraI'm fine. That had been the entirety of the text at first. What he receives back from the brunette in the textual version of shaking her arm free of a concerned hand laid to it. There was a distance to the response, a chill that no more suited Kiara Woolfe than her wariness had that night in the park.

A minute passes and then: I wouldn't say no to the vodka, though.

So: she does come. Has already settled at a table when he finds her, half frozen from the less than gentle caress of the city's current mood. She's wearing a long sleeved shirt, Kiara, it's two sizes too big for her and falls over one of her shoulders, baring whatever darker layers she's thrown on beneath. Accompanied with the piercings in her ears and the rings on the Verbena's fingers - the image she casts out is somewhere south of dramatic.

Her make up certainly adds to the allure of it; dark liner and bright red lipstick.

It may occur (had to others) that she puts it on like armor. The crimson shade, the bold eyeshadows. Project your idealized self long enough and the facade becomes more believable than anything that might have lain beneath it.

She orders whiskey in the end, not vodka.

Watches the tender far longer than she has a need to before her eyes tick back to find Samir regarding her beneath that wild abandonment of dark hair, the way it behaved, it was as reminiscent of a tangle of vines left to thrive as dark waves. It grew as thick and fast as such, too.

"So are you planning to wait for our drinks before you ask." She states, with a little wisp of a smile, a little glint in her eyes that is not all amusement (the vines had thorns). "Or cut straight to the interrogation."

Samir"What." Deadpan. "You said you were fine. Why would I ask again?"

If she detects a hint of sarcasm in the hacker's tone no one would accuse her of having an active imagination. Her makeup accomplishes the same thing that his long hair and fondness for dark clothes and cigarettes does. It projects an image. Most people don't try to fuck with brown-skinned dudes who dress like they're in a bad mood all the time.

KiaraHe gets a frown.

It finds companionship in the tiny line that appears between her eyebrows and she turns her face away from him with this abrupt motion that speaks of a fine tension - no, doesn't just speak of it. Broadcasts it. There's a way her chin lifts a little in reproach for it. The retort, whatever the hell she's finding so interesting that it requires fixed staring at out the window.

In truth she has no clear idea what Samir may or not already know about what's been going on of late.

Perhaps seeing him with River has convinced her of his awareness. Maybe there's a sense in her that River is the entire reason he's here tonight. She'd been as much a part of things (if not more, in every sense, in the worst sense) as the Verbena had. There hadn't been any hiding Kiara's interest in the other woman at the fireside, after all.

She'd stared at her several times with the clean focus of an individual trying to work out how far underneath the layers the scarring was.

Kiara's isn't so far down - she'd no better know how to hide her feelings for long than she would how to ignore a dying human on the side of the road. That being, it's inherent. There's a bubbling sort of anger for it, though. A volatility in the way she answers him while looking out into the wilderness of Denver tonight. "I don't know, isn't that what we do? Ask if people are fine and hope they remember their response. I'm fine, I'm good. Life is fucking peachy."

Her eyes shift back, then. Glimmering and dark. "I guess I am okay. If we're scoring by what constitutes it for most of us." Their drinks arrive and Kiara's eyes lower, her mouth remaining a tense little moue until she can curl her fingers around her glass. Some of the anger seems to seep out of her at the next: "How much has River told you about what happened to her."

SamirBelieve it or not Samir Lakhani does not have a ton of experience with women being mad at something he's said. Any gender to be quite frank. That would involve having at least a couple tons of experience interacting with folks when they're vulnerable and then calling them out and waiting while they communed with the window or the world outside the window.

They met at a goddamn art opening. He was selling drugs and she was there because that's where the night had taken her. He was nervous and prone to rambling and they got on the topic of the Umbra somehow. An exchange of information led to emails. That was so long ago.

Life is fucking peachy.

It's his turn to frown. No anger in it. He has thus far resisted the urge to start rotating things on the table but then their drinks arrive. The copper mug in which his drink arrived is way better for rotating than his silverware roll. If he starts rotating the damned thing it's going to become ritual. It's like trying to ignore an itch though. Like he can feel it in his palm.

His eyes are on her even though he's fucking with his just-arrived drink.

"I'm not sure. I mean, we've talked. All the shit that happened with the Fallen..." He pauses before saying something he can't unsay. Flicks his eyebrows. "... she's told me about that."

KiaraIt's reflexive, for most of them. The hesitation that comes before they say something unnatural. Something that didn't belong to this world of Thanksgiving decorations and half price sales reminders in windows that you passed by, they're sitting in this little place that sells tacos and there's a total of about five patrons and their waitress but it's so: uncomplicated.

It's another day for them. It's take out food and beer. It's a radio blaring low level banality from hosts counting down the top 40 whatever for tonight.

And then there's Samir and Kiara and she's looking furiously down at that glass in her hand as if something he's said has upset her. He looks perhaps, equally as unhappy. Their waitress is under the impression they're another young couple about to break up and spends an unnecessarily long time wiping down the bar closest to their table.

That's uncomplicated, too. And human. The desire to pay homage to the spillover of everyday, trivial life.

The waitress moves away when the brunette's eyes do from her whiskey and she's holding Samir's gaze for a long moment. Long enough that he can read quite a few things without even necessarily meaning to: one, Kiara was troubled by the word Fallen, two, there was no small amount of trauma somewhere in the woman and three, that complicated interplay of anger warring with regret was so present it may as well have pulled up its own chair and joined in their conversation.

"Yeah. That."

She lifts the glass to her lips and takes a generous sip of it. It burns, the way only whiskey can and Kiara makes this tiny sound in recognition; this little supple grimace. "I met him. He was in my apartment wrapped up in her former mentor's skin." She lets her eyes tick to Samir's face, reads his expression. "I helped him out, Michael, helped him deal with an issue," she doesn't like it, referring to Alice as an issue, but she doesn't elaborate in the moment.

"Long story short, the Artist as he was known, made a cameo appearance."

SamirMost of what he can claim to know about the situation has come either from Ginger or from Grace. The two are distinguishable to him because he knows Grace. How Grace disseminates information is different from how she talks. Then again Sam has a different way of talking when he's securing a transaction and making plans to drop off drugs to someone he met on the Silk Road. There's the professional and then there's the person.

He hasn't thought ahead to what he's going to do when he hits the number twenty-three. Depending on how long this conversation goes for he could do twenty-three sets of twenty-three. Just the thought makes him anxious.

What Kiara tells him now is new information. It startles him out of his own thoughts even if it doesn't stop him indulging his madness a bit. He's interested in what she has to say and he's concerned and she has as much of his attention as she could hope for knowing as she does how easy it is for him to fall into Quiet. How new his expanded power is. It has to be disorientating for him to be out in the world right now but he'd rather listen to Kiara talk than sit at home playing with himself so here they are.

"Shit, dude." This is the part where he would ask if this is another one of those stories she hasn't told anyone else but that isn't a question he needs to ask now. Thinking before you speak is an art form. It's obvious she survived the encounter. It's also obvious that Sam is surprised by this. "You were alone with it?"

KiaraShe hasn't asked him about it, yet. Had noticed it, the other night and he'd been aware that she'd felt it: the change in him. The stronger pulse to his presence. That piercing quality that sliced into her skin whenever Samir's eyes settled on her. It's not exactly comforting, the way he feels but neither could it be said part of the Verbena, not so long ago, had been either.

She'd brought with her the impression of degradation and decay, before her Seeking. Before it had shifted and enveloped her; translated itself into a stronger sense of the rebirth. The evolution of life after the fact, she felt like renewal, now. Administered it too, through her touch. She'd laid her palm against his skin not so many months ago and done exactly that.

Shit, dude.

Her mouth bends at some impression of mirth, it's a strained, sad little squiggle that turns up the edges. The Verbana's lovely features don't suit the tension behind it. It doesn't reach near her eyes, they remain dark and tinged with that same fierce gleam. "Not exactly. Michael's past life, the - I was speaking with Alice, who was tormented by the Artist in another life. Michael's other life." That's a lot to digest and the quiet, steady way she sets down each word reads an uncertainty for how the Mercurial Elite will process each.

If he was anything like Grace, it would take time - and a lot of convincing.

"She was there and I was trying to help her and I did something right because he took an interest." There's another sip of whiskey. "We'd been prepared for it, you know? Michael and I. We knew if we found a way to reach Alice and help her come to terms - he might weasel his way in.

I knew there was a risk and I was willing to take it but - " She lets out a shaky breath. "It was close. He had my knife in his hands. That isn't the worst part of it, though. The worst part is I'm so angry, Samir." She draws a hand to her face, aborts whatever the gesture had been like a nervous tic and drops it back to the table, her eyes moving to the window again. "That something like that could creep inside and do that sort of damage. That I felt it.

That I looked into its eyes and knew it planned to kill me. I just feel so - " She looks back, her cheeks faintly flushed. "Like I can't be okay after that because I know that feeling, now. The way that darkness feels. The way it looks.

I think that's the worst part. Not the blood or the death, but - the fact that I remember that."

Samir
See: Sam doesn't remember much about the week and change he spent in Quiet. He had to put forth a supreme amount of effort to just be present for an hour or so and he had made the effort that day he ran into Grace and she called in reinforcements. Part of his brain remembers the weight of Kiara's palm on his chest. Most of it does not. If prompted he could dredge it up.

He and Grace have a lot in common. In this instance Kiara does not have to grab hold of his arm and twist it behind his back to convince him that past lives are a thing. Blame it on his grandparents. They're Hindu. Reincarnation is a thing in Hinduism.

Of course he may want to get into it in greater detail at a later date. The cause of Kiara's most recent near-brush with death is only important in that it happened and not because it's a catalyst for the furthering of his enlightenment.

He's looking right at her as she confesses this to him. Even if he doesn't understand he can empathize. And Kiara can see the empathy in his gaze if she is able to look that far outside herself. She's talking to a man who looked a chimera forged out of two young women right in the face before she - they? not it. - tried to bite off his fucking head.

"You don't have to be okay right now," he says. "That's a shitty thing to have to remember."

KiaraSad little manifestation of their lives, that.

The fact that what the Verbena is re-telling is just the most recent in a string of near-death experiences she's had. Probably won't be the last. More than likely won't be the worst thing she ever has to look at, insanity and mayhem squatting inside a man's body like some malevolent possession. Kiara hadn't been there when the chimera attacked - but she'd seen the aftermath of it. Smelled it, the smoldering ruin on the ground.

The blood, the quiet panic in Elijah's voice.

She'd helped dismember what remained of two corpses and weighted half down in the lake and yet - somehow, it hadn't felt as troubling as this most recent encounter had. Didn't wake her up at night in a cold sweat with nausea rolling her stomach around. Didn't make her want to call a man she barely knew just to be sure he was still himself.

It was hard to tell, of course, what would scare the mind. Where someone's limits were. The line in the sand.

She's looking right at Samir and he can see her digesting what he says, see her eyes taking in the response he's having to her story. The Verbena picks up her whiskey and throws it back, not a sip but the entire contents left in it. It burns her throat and the brunette makes this half disgusted noise before she sets it down; turns the glass in her fingers. "I think I know that, but then I'm around everyone and we're singing campfire songs and talking about trivial things a few feet from where some really messed up shit went down and all I want to do is scream."

She sniffs and presses her fingers beneath her eyes. "So that's been my month." She casts this little wisp of a smile his way. "Beat that." Her sense of humor, subdued as it's seemed tonight, has not apparently, been lost. It's a good sign.

Samir"I'm not even going to try. My month's been pretty baller."

It tends to ease other people's anxieties over self-disclosing if the self-disclosure is reciprocal. Like revealing scars. You show me yours I'll show you mine. She has already seen him in the hour of one of his own and recent darknesses.

Goes without saying that the man whose body became a vessel for this madness had called just to let Kiara know he had slept the night after their session and he was able to account for all of his hours. That he called her after returning to Los Angeles not having known about her conversation with Grace to check on her. That he will check on her again. The death mage is not worried about himself.

Sam had no desire to have anything to do with the investigation or the resolution of a loose end they had no way of knowing existed. He was of no use anyway. He can't do what Kiara can do.

And yet he knows madness. He knows what it is to be in a group of people and want to scream.

He's still rotating his drink instead of actually drinking it. A deep breath like he has to steel himself: "But... ah... I do have... I mean, the Internet says I have, I haven't been to a doctor or anything, but the Internet says I have, ah, ob--" It doesn't sound as if he's ever said this out loud. He addresses the copper mug he's rotating instead of looking at Kiara. "... obsessive-compulsive. You know. Disorder. So. That's been my life. It'll..." He forces himself to look back across the table at her. "I mean, knowing something and actually being the thing are different. But you can be around people and sing the campfire songs without screaming, so... silver lining?"

KiaraIt's possible when she asked she hadn't counted on the actual bearing of his scars.

It's possible - but, the way the Verbena's dark eyes tick over his face and the way her mouth bends at the edge into this tiny, encouraging smile suggest she's not adverse or unhappy for the development. Rather - her expression reads her interest and, to no small degree, her understanding.

Of what it means. She tips her chin down after a moment, her hands sliding out to rest either side of her glass as if she had some inclination toward taking his hands in her own, toward asking for them but - she doesn't, at least - not now.

She also doesn't say several of the things she's aware she could: I'd noticed something, I'm sorry, that must be hard. For a long pause, Kiara just studies his face and then lowers her eyes to watch the way he rotates that mug around the table. "I guess that is a silver lining." Then: "If I ever set it off - make you feel -" she spreads her hands out in this supplicating gesture across the table. "You can tell me.

I have a tendency to get into people's space sometimes." A little tick of her eyes up to his, searchingly. "I don't always pay attention." She leans back, then. Rakes her fingers through that fall of dark hair.

"You feel different." A quiet addition, that. Kiara's expression intrigued, she's studying him the way she had that night over the campfire.

it changes you. [serafine, in progress]

Serafine

The bars in Denver are obligated by law to close at 2:00 a.m.  Last call, last call: almost universally signaled by the sudden blare of oh-god-the-lights.  Some late night partiers repair to Pete's Kitchen or the Waffle House to load up on carbohydrates in hopes of cushioning tomorrow's hangover.  Others, well.

For others, 2:00 a.m. is way too damned early.

After-party, Sera had said.  This moment of hangtime, of awareness, of sharpened, study.  The first time she'd really roused from her strange little cocoon at Dan's side was to say hello to Kiara.  Maybe she still needed most of her energy to heal whatever had gone-wrong inside her. 


Whatever time Kiara arrives, the door is open.  The truth is: the door's open all night.  The door is always open at 719 Corona Street, even when its most compelling resident is absent.  Some people still prefer climb up the steps and stand on the front porch with its unicycle and ashtray and string hammock and porch swing and collection of rainboots and umbrellas and junk mail and recycling and knock and wait for someone to answer and someone always answers but, the door is open. 

Music inside, not as loud as you'd think, not as loud as you'd <i>attribute</i> to someone like Sera, but it is after 2:00 a.m. and they are also - oddly - rather good neighbors.  So, music, somewhere.  The foyer with its polished hardwoods, its collection of antiques and contemporary pieces, its collection of coats mounded on the hatrack like a great shuffling monster-muppet.  The front parlor to the right is dimly light and from the noise inside whoever is in there has taken advantage of the isolated, dark space to make out.  The hallway from the foyer leads to the warm white kitchen, the living room.  That's where the people are.

Kiara 

Little after 2:30AM when she appears. And she does - sort of just - appear.

The way people with a standing invitation did, one moment someone passes in front of the kitchen door and there's space and one minute longer on the return trip and there's this young woman leaning there, half settled against the doorjamb with masses of dark hair that fall around lean shoulders in waves and bangs that have grown out enough to tease the edges of her eyelashes. She's still wearing that dark fur-lined coat and those knee high boots and there's the red lipstick, of course.

Faded a little, dulled from being worn too many hours without reapplication.

Same goes for her eyes, the edges smudging just barely, giving Kiara Woolfe the muddled, weary-at-the-edges-come-2AM attitude that just fits, really. It's the mood and the energy and she leans there, the Verbena, one hip cocked out, feet crossed and really she's just -

there.

For a while, for a beat she's just absorbing the atmosphere where the light spills over into that giving kitchen warmth. Skirting with the edges of it the way she's seemed to have been all night. Hand in a pocket, head half tilted back as if she were a little high (she could have been - but she's not, at least, not right now). Just watching the gathering - the interplay of people with this vague little smile teasing the edge of her mouth. She can feel Serafine here and beyond that - when she touches the edges of her fingers to the wall, slides them against the paintwork - the history, too. The phantom echo of other days, the ghosts that lived inside a home.

That hummed inside Corona Street. Felt it acutely of late, Kiara. The spiritual bleed-over, the essence of things around her. It's become far easier than it ever used to be to reach out and touch (reach through, too). Still, it's a brief thing, just the slip of fingers over that wall and away.

She lets herself into the kitchen (and into the peripheral awareness of others) with this little contained motion, a sweep of her hair over a shoulder, the tug down of the zip on her coat. She smells faintly of woodsmoke and the chill clinging outside.

Serafíne

The house is old.  Not as old as Denver, sure, but old.  Older than anyone currently inhabiting it.  Older than their parents, and perhaps older than their parents' parents, and it has been thoroughly lived in.  Perhaps more so in the past two-and-change years than at any point before but: easy to feel the bleed-over when you are half in another world.  The walls, the floorboards, the antiques and the more recent treasures all have more solidity in the other-world than most structures.  Nothing here awake that she can sense or feel but maybe not precisely sleeping, either.

Call it: sleep-walking.

--

Such a tangle of strangers here.  Strangers and those vague sort of acquaintances one acquires in cities, the extended networks, the friends-of-friends, the guy you don't realize was working out on the treadmill next to you at the Absolute Fitness, the chick who waits tables at the Greek diner you slip into when you need a really good gyro-and-fries or a cup of black coffee-sludge instead of an artisinal coffee-drink.  Strangers and more familiar faces.  Over by the stove a tall, curvy chick with milk-white skin and one of those retro hairstyles that should be too big to fail, but isn't.  Lipstick precisely as crimson as Kiara always sports, which has been more recently reapplied.  That's Dee, and she's leaning back against the counter by the stove in close conversation with a guy and a girl, animate, head back, laughing and she keys in on Kiara first.  This little burr of something that is slow-developing awareness.

Oh.

Dark eyes lifting over the shoulders of one of her friends to find that spot in the room that makes her breath catch.  It's different from the way Sera makes her breath catch.  Different from the way Davie made her breath catch.  Different from the way -

- but, oh.  And Dee is so fine, so straight-laced, so transparent that her Oh is visible on her mouth.  Perfect little crimson circle.

She's about to head over, play hostess, offer to take Kiara's coat and add it to the muppet pile over the coat-tree in the foyer or toss it on a bed somewhere, to be reclaimed later.  Sera appears first, close to that threshold, coming from the big living room with the wide windows that look onto the back garden. She has changed since their encounter in the park, when she was in fishnets and heels, leather jacket and a miniscule black dress.  The heels are gone, she's all stocking-footed.  An impression of a men's button-down, unbuttoned three or four steps past the point of modesty, white, but loose enough around her frame that one can still maintain the pretense.  And a tuxedo coat, assuredly too large for her.  Thigh-high fishnets with these little bowed garters.  And that's it.  Think of lingerie as she moves because hey, who needs pants in her own home.

Not a Cultist of Ecstasy.

--

Mouth a little bruised, hair a little wild.  The fringe is a bit grown out, enough to be molded into a few pincurls when she's of a mind and: soft and dark and fine as a short-haired rabbit.

"Kiara.  What'll you have?"  Better than she was earlier.  Easier and more natural, buoyed up by the wamrth and the life and - Kiara with a strangely, slidingly lucid.  Dark eyes skim over Kiara with a supple, bruising grace.  "Let me get your coat."

SerafíneAnd: Per + Empathy / Seeing Past The Mask.



(Specifically: is Kiara in the mood to talk to Sera?  Or does she need a place to be-and-not-think for a while?)

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 3, 6, 7, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 6 ) [Doubling Tens]

KiaraThe Verbena tonight is reminiscent of the low burning campfire. The glow and spark of the embers was present and with the right application, with stoking, with kindling applied, it would burn far more brightly again but right now - it's banked, more a promise and an idea of something stronger than what was gleaned on the surface.

(Doesn't mean Dee doesn't feel it, though. It's hard to ignore it, sometimes. The way they got under the skin. All of them, not just Kiara. Not just Serafine).

Is she in the mood to talk? She may have some willingness to, but not in the kitchen. Under the lights and buzzing with people. There's a way she lingers, stays near the edges of the room that speaks on a level her words don't. She's not here out of a desire to be loosely, easily social.

She's there by invitation but - it feels, the way those dark eyes settle on the Cultist and remain there as she passes off her coat - as if she's only there for Serafine. Because of Serafine and that's where her focus is going to stay.

-

"Wine, if you have something open."

She shrugs the coat off and passes it over, beneath there is more layering (Denver's moodiness rolling toward lashing snow and rain), a deep purple sweater in soft knitted cotton, beneath it some black undershirt; a camisole perhaps too. There's that gem around her neck now she's freed from the heavier coat; a simple crystal piece suspended on a fine silver chain. Her wrists rattle with bundled bracelets, her fingers and ears gleaming with adornments.

She looks the part of Kiara Woolfe, moves like her. Sets her fingers against the counter-top and casts Dee, casts the whole house, those brief, brilliant flashes of teeth and red, red lips. But the facade feels as brittle as it looks it costs her - playing a part was what it was.

It took a better actress than the brunette to maintain some semblance of believably with it. She wasn't built for it, you see - the dance around the bruises. Better to apply force, to feel the sting than pretend the wound wasn't festering.

"Otherwise, surprise me." She smiles, another brief cast off. More sincerity to this one, though. As she leans into the counter. Follows Serafine's trajectory around. "How was the gig tonight?"

SerafíneKiara sheds her coat and Sera takes it, right, only to hand it off to Dan who comes up behind her.  The interplay between them as natural and connected as any.  His is a long shadow down the front hallway but instead of adding to the monster-muppet-pile of coats he opens the antique wardrobe in the front hall, fishes out a hanger and hangs it the fuck up.

Then there's someone emerging from the front parlor, a couple of someones, all dissheveled and ready to take their leave but maybe not before lingering in the corridor for a while to talk with one of the hosts who brought them together.

--

Wine, Kiara requests, if they have something open.  And: even if this isn't exactly a wine household, they always have something open, especially on nights like this when everyone has to bring something bottles of wine and bottles of whiskey and bottles of tequila stack up on the kitchen counters like corded firewood.  They go through them just as quick, mind.

Sera sorts through those bottles with the gauzy precision of someone who is perfectly fucked-up: who has achieved that glowing point of equilibrium where they world is fuzzy at its edges and golden everywhere in between, where he head is buzzing sure but not yet spinning and comes up with one and then another and then a wine glass and then Dee glances at the bottle and gently replaces the chosen wineglass with the more bulbous sort intended for the enjoyment of a nice red wine and Sera pads back across the kitchen, holding two bottles in one hand and two glasses in the other.  One of those glasses has lime slices and a salt shaker so it is a fair guess what bottle she has choosen for herself.

Neat little hipcheck for Kiara is a sort of invitation to follow: out of the kitchen and up the stairs.

"Show was great.  Felt right, you know?  Haven't felt that right in a while."

Left turn at the top takes them to Sera's room.

--

Which is a window onto chaos all its own.

Sera heads straight for the window seat, picking her way over discarded clothes, boots, shoes, books, Things That Have No Identity but might assume one if one were to pull them out of the pile.  High heels and combat boots and canvases and photographs and showposters and a frog-thing carved by a guy with a chainsaw and a dream on a two-lane road somewhere in the North Carolina mountains.

There are other places to sit: an oversized velvet-covered armchair that not yet buried in clothing because she hasn't been home long enough to change that many times.  The bed, of course, with its mound of white sheets and duvet in the center.

"What about you?"

KiaraShe hasn't been in Serafine's bedroom since the first time. (Or was it the second?).

There's a little hesitation on the threshold as she remembers that, or them, or it. Any and all of the things memory washes up in the moments between climbing the stairs and setting her feet into the chaos of the Cultist's bedroom. She settles on the armchair after a little tick back and forth with dark eyes. The bed feels like an intimacy to her - maybe an invasion of space she isn't sure they have any right to any longer.

That she does, anyway.

Curls up there and then leans back, crossing her legs and sort of slouching, sliding down a little into the giving embrace of the cushions. She looks (sounds) tired, Kiara. Which was telling in its own way: she was a Life Mage, a healer. She had no cause (no need) to feel wrung out unless -

"Honestly? I don't know."

Her mouth framed down in a sharp frown. Her eyes tick over to the other woman. "I'm glad to see you back." Back. Fully dimensional. The absent tug of her mouth at the corner spells that translation out. "Things have been going on while you were gone, you know?" She sits up, sweeps her hair back with both hands. Nothing about the way she frames it makes them sound like happy things.

SerafíneWhatever else she is, Sera belongs here and doesn't seem to give quite the same sort of damn about what belongs to what or whom or when.  If Kiara sprawled over the bed with the bottle of wine for a solid gossip session and a snuggle and a good platonic cry, she wouldn't mind.  If Kiara sat neatly at the edge, quietly and consciously avoiding the sleepy intimacy of that nest of soft sheets and the warm duvet, she wouldn't mind.  She eschews definitions or at least, skews them, and she has slept in that bed and cried in that bed and had sex in that bed and dreamt in that bed: the random firings of neurons sure, but also: prophecy.  Takes selfies in there pretty goddamned regularly and also: quiet nearly died there, once.  The door locked up tight, lungs filling with her own blood -

- now though, Sera curls up in the windowseat.  The garden is dark, there are these stark little swirls of snow that lash out of the darkness toward the glass and the bare limbs of the big old oak shudder and swing with each new gust of wind and the glass is chilly but the room itself is warm warm warm and Kiara takes the armchair that is not as swallowed-by-clothing as it usually is and Sera hands off the bottle-of-wine (a Malbec) and glass, reaching out, leaning across the space between them with a fine and rather precarious sort of grace that seems to belong to her body, not her mind.

--

This stitch between her brows when Kiara says that she does not know.  But Sera does not challenge the other woman about not-knowing the way Hawksley might her.  Just: a stitch.  That resurfaces into a vague grimace close-to-pain as Kiara says that she is glad to see Sera back -

- because, yeah.  Seriously.  That shit sucked.

--

But it is passing, not lingering.  Something restrained, leashed back into a quietly bruising empathy.

"Tell me what happened?"

KiaraThe Verbena pours out a glass as she asks what happened.

The inky red liquid spilling into it and lapping at the edges as Kiara's indelicate maneuvering steers it dangerously close to dribbling over the side. She salvages it though and leans down to set the bottle somewhere in a clearing between clothes and furniture and the details of Serafine's world. This precise placement that allows it within arm's reach of the chair should the brunette seek it out again (she may well, for the story she leans into the arm of the chair she's adopted for the evening to tell).

A throwback of it, first. Kiara tips the glass to her lips and closes her eyes to swallow it; breathing out after she does as if she'd been holding her breath to drink all the faster. There's something captivating to that, the way she surrenders to the act of it - licking the edge of her lower lip, dangling the glass between her fingers.

She's all edges, tonight, the pagan.

Those dark, mascara smudged eyes travel to Sera and she frames her thoughts with this absent, near-transparent shrug. It's like that I don't know of earlier. A sort of helpless surrender to the impossibility of it all, the complicated tangles and snares that had been Kiara's life of recent days. And then: "There was a Nephandus in the city. Michael, the Euthanatos - " Kiara's brows draw in a little. She corrects herself after a beat, almost as an afterthought. " - Chakravanti. He was here, hunting it."

She shifts a little, her dark hair tumbles over her cheek, dips half her features into shadows. They draw along her cheekbone, the length of her nose. Veil one dark eye. "Turns out two of his former students, Farrah and River, made it before him. Grace brought Michael to see me. Apparently he'd been blacking out." There was a long stretch of silence, broken only by the music spilling from floors below them.

Kiara's eyes tick over Sera's shoulder, out the window, to the weather punishing the trees, shaking their limbs.

"Turns out there was a connection, between him and the Nephandus. The Artist, that's - what he was called. A past life of Michael's, Alice, she'd been tormented by him. When the Artist tried to use Michael, get into his head, Alice took control of Michael, instead. She didn't realize she was dead and was taking vengeance with Michael's body.

She killed those young men who went missing here." Kiara draws her lip between her teeth, rotates the glass in her fingers. "Michael and Grace needed me to find a way to stop Alice taking control when these mental attacks happened.

It took a while, but I finally did it. Reached Alice. She'd walled herself off into this Dreamscape. This reality where she refused to believe anything had happened that did. I had to - " The Verbena leans back, meets Serafine's eyes. " - make her remember dying. And when I finally convinced she was dead, the Artist took notice. Took control of Michael in my apartment. Took my knife and - "

She frowns, sharply. "I managed to banish Alice. Once I did that, his connection was broken but - he was going to kill me. The Nephandus. With Michael's hands." She finishes softly, turns her face. "It's hardly the first time I've been in a dangerous situation, you know, but feeling that. The anger. The hatred in the Artist. I feel like he's under my skin."

SerafíneSera is framed in the window, head, shoulders, spine against the wall, her profile pale against the darkness beyond.  Her hair is twisted behind her head, cushioning her skull, tangled around her shoulders, all those loose (dyed) blond curls.  Stocking-clad feet flat on the window seat, knees drawn up, arms loose around them.  The bottle of tequila tucked between her knees, one hand loosely wrapped around the neck.  She hasn't taken a shot yet, but when she does she won't bother with the shotglass she snagged.  Maybe she'll remember she wants a lime, and a lick of salt from her skin to chase down the burn with a cauterizing sharpness.

--

And she's (more than) a little fucked up but in this moment she is so present, stripped of artifice such that she seems - strangely - sober.  Quiet, as Kiara tells her story.

Right at the beginning, the stitch of recognition has her straight brows drawn close and pulls her dark eyes back - fixed - solid - over to Kiara.  This complex array of emotions swim through her eyes, underscored by the dark sludge of guilt.

Listening, right on through.

--

Quiet after, too.  This reverent sort of space given over to the story, which allows Kiara all the time she needs after to: think, and to: process, and to: be.

And then: a notice, a though, a question that - "Did he get into your mind?"  A direct look, with that, that sobriety, again.  That strange clarity.

KiaraThere's this brief noise, at that.

Kiara pushing the fall of her hair back over a shoulder so the other is bare, the line of her neck. She lowers her face, framing the glass in two hands. Lifting it to take another sip and then forgoing it to answer, this twinge of darker humor threaded through it: "I was worried, you know, before all of this. About what would happen if the Union got their hands on me. They don't particularly like loose ends and when I left New York - " She offers this little smile, this raise of her brows.

"I'm a big loose end for them. I asked Ian to show me how to protect my mind. Turns out, the Technocracy weren't my biggest concern on that front." She takes another sip, now. "He would have tried to. I could feel it. Instead he just stared at me and when I banished Alice - when I - " Kiara's eyes drop. "He used the knife on himself. Stabbed Michael as this last fucking - " Her smile, the little shake of her head, is agitated. A flicker of remembered anger and disbelief.

"He was just toying with me. But - he's dead now." She finishes, reaches for the bottle with a hand that barely shakes. The tremor settles in her voice, though. In the tense set to her jaw. "I just can't seem to forget it. The dreams I've been having. The way it looked through me. As if nothing I did would mean a damn thing.

I don't know how you forget that. Seeing it. Feeling it." She cants a look at Sera for this long minute: "I think it changes you. And that terrifies me."

SerafínePer + Empathy

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (3, 6, 6, 7, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 7 ) [Doubling Tens]

SerafíneThe worm of guilt lingers.  Maybe even starts burrowing but Sera leaves it be.  Considers it and even turns it over inside her and glances at Kiara and -

- breathes out.  Rounded mouth, curving shoulders, careful, collapsing grace, and leaves it be.

No one else needs to be burdened with it.

Certainly not Kiara.

Not now.

----

And she is so slight, Sera, so burned away, and so paradoxically given to excess that you would never credit her with the capacity for restraint.  But there it is, this band of it in the line of her mouth, the minute touchbacks of attention as precise as if she were etching Kiara into being.

"Of course it changes you."  Quiet.  Hasn't touched the tequila since Kiara started to speak.  Doesn't touch it now.  "Everything changes you, or you change it.  A lover leaves you, a parent gets sick.   You remember someone you'd forgotten, or forget someone you said you'd always remmeber.  Someone brings shrimp cocktail to a party and your best friend guilts you into trying it and you decide its not nearly as gross as you always thought it was.  You wake up one day and there's a certain slant of light in the sunrise so precise it hurts.  Physically."

And she breathes out, then, this long, slow sliding breath.

"You won't forget it.  You know how dark some of the darkest parts of the world are now. They were always that dark.  You just didn't know, before.  That doesn't mean it changes you the way you think it does.

"Or could.  How do you think you'll change?  Why does that scare you?"

Kiara

It takes the brunette a long time to answer.

Less out of resistance to it, the idea of spilling tiny kernels of truth, littering the Cultist's bedroom, her life, with them and far more simply because the words take threading together. The way the Verbena feels about those events, weeks ago, still feels raw and bruised, the memories are vivid and tender-fresh. The oil-slick essence of the Fallen as he'd seeped into Michael's consciousness; Alice's wracked, helpless sobbing, the sting of blood on her palm from gripping her fingers too tightly around a crystal, pressed against her skin until it lacerated.

She's looking down at the wineglass between her hands for a while, Kiara.

Her mouth pinched downward into a small frown. Brows drawn low. There's a pendant that the brunette has taken to wearing of late, a crystal suspended from a fine silver chain; it finds a way to unearth itself so often from her clothing; swings low and gleams there, in the light. "Alice, Michael's past life, she was just a girl. A street kid who was taken in by her mentor. She changed her whole life. Became ... her whole life. And then the Artist happened and Alice watched her die.

Saw - " She swallows, lets out a long, low breath. " - the Artist violated her mind. Made her relive the worst parts of her life. Broke her so badly she couldn't let go, even in death. All she had was her anger. At him. At her mentor." Kiara leans back, frames her arm along the chair, plays, idly with running her fingertips over it, her eyes ticking to Serafine's face, searching it. "I understood that. The anger. Losing your mentor before you were ready.

I think I reached her in part because I did. We must dance pretty close to the edge, all of us." She sits forward, her eyes bright little pinpricks and the music reverberates softly up the stairs. The weather outside offering up a volatility that seems matched only by the fervor of Kiara's tight little smile, her eyes where they shine out of her face; half masked by all that wild hair of hers.

"It scares me because I know where that line was for her." She makes a complicated, uncertain little face, half folds her fingers up, flexes them against her thigh. "It scares me that I was angry enough to kill Michael that day." She offers the last softly, reaches to throw back more wine with this aggressive, aggrieved little motion.

 "So damn close."

 Serafine

The other creature, for her part, is also quiet.  Still.  Listening, assuredly, and the strung-tension in her spine, her neck, her whole spare frame suggests that she is listening actively, with an attentiveness a stranger would guess her incapable of.  There is something about that active stillness that recalls the aspect of a priest - priestess, perhaps - at prayer.  The silent focus, the strange, remarkably still, abandon to the moment. 

--

There is so much to unpack. 

She takes her time to do so.  Lifts out that nuggest of guilt and <i>Feels</i> it sure and also turns it over and puts it: aside. 

It belongs to some-other-time, later perhaps, or long-ago, but not now.  Another thought she considers: turns over.  Dismisses.  Later, perhaps.  Or never. 

Never is also a possibility.

--

"I can help you with the dreams."  First, an offer.  Neat glance up with it, chin rising, tangled curls sliding over her narrow shoulders and her eyes: clear then and so direct.  There is power in her skin, in her bones, in her soul and an embrace-of-that-power implicit in that offer.  "If you want to sleep well, or dreamlessly.  If you need surcease.  For as long as you require.

"Or if you want to walk deeper into them."  A sharp little sigh.  "I can help with that too."

--

Straight brows crease, then.  Thought, poured into her lungs.  Sometimes it <i>hurts her</i> to think like this: clear and straight without the prism of fancy or the veil of excess that marks so much of her life.  She does it anyway. 

"Someone I - " pause, here.  This sudden, fleeting little smile, braced with an ache that just: rises, rises, rises.  " - someone whose judgment I trust told me once - when I was feeling so <i>filthy</i> I thought I might never surface from the muck - that I needed to find something that made me feel clean.  And do that, again and again, with intent, until I did.

"He said - well, that's what ritual is.  Form and intent shaped by will.  If the anger is overwhelming you, maybe you should find something that makes you feel peaceful, calm, alive: and do it.  Again and again, until that comes true." 

--

"May I tell you a story?"

Kiara

There is so much to unpack.

Layers of scar tissue that the Verbena turns over and lays bear there for consideration and study. She'll do the same in a day or so from tonight, sit across from a Mercurial Elite she saw in the depths of his own trauma, lost to Quiet for weeks and offer what bare scraps of awareness she can muster for the shape and size of her own psychological wounds. Tell him that she's angry and the anger felt as unclean as the lingering dreams - the faces and voices that cling to her, even in wakefulness.

There's a lot there and much of it isn't simple. There's a lot that Kiara can't quite voice. Not the way she'd like, not in the manner she intends.

I can help you with the dreams. She lifts her eyes at that, this neat little motion, notch of her chin up and she parts her lips to frame a reply and then breathes through it, instead. Takes a moment. Another. "Thank you." She says firstly, with a tight little smile. "I don't know if I'm - " She sets her lips together, they vanish into a little seam of uncertainty, her brows lifting, drawing together. " - maybe. There's a lot there." As much acknowledgement as confession, that.

About Sera helping her walk deeper into them. Wading into the inner landscape.

Then: May I tell you a story?

Kiara's studying the other woman and nodding, slightly, as she reaches down and plucks up the disguarded bottle. Pours out another glass that is just shy of too generous and steadies it there, at her knee. There's a sense in the way the brunette is still and focused, is cutting a look over the scope and shape of Sera's features that she's as much listening as reeling; absorbing the tiny nuances of the moment. The tap-tap-scrape of tree branches against the window; the muted strains of music and voices from somewhere; the soft lit intimacy of Sera's bedroom.

"Tell me." Kiara invites, with a little sip of wine.

Serafine

<i>Maybe</i>, Kiara says, <i>she doesn't know if - </i>

- and Sera gives her a spare but very direct look, framed by the supple curve of her fine little mouth. 

"You don't have to be ready, now or ever.  I could just give you a good night's sleep, or three, or a dozen.  As close to dreamless as you need." 

Time to rest and to process and to heal without reliving the worst moments again and again in the immediacy of her sleeping mind.

--

The story.   She looks away before she begins it.  Her profile this cheated three-quartered view angled toward the darkness beyond.  The cut of her cheekbone, the jaw fine as a bird's wing.  The strange admixture of delicacy and excess that defines her.  Outside: the city, still and quiet, the suggestion of a moon somewhere beyond the bare limbs of the old oak tree that dominates the back yard.  Music and strangers' voices mingling downstairs, muddled into a patterned rhythm punctuated by outbursts of laughter. 

"The first mage I ever met was a guy named Jonah.  I was eighteen and I had a different name then and I'd been awake for god-knows-how-long without really quite understanding what the fuck was going on with me.  No money to my name, not really, half the time I was sleeping around to have a place to stay the night.  He was an Orphan but he kinda took me under his wing and we had that whole, <i>you're not crazy, the world is</i> chat.

"The second mage I met gave me the name I have now and brought me in to the Ecstatics.  She was loaded, posh and gorgeous, <i>to the manor born</i>, you know?  Jonah couldn't stand her.

"The third mage I met called himself John Montague, though I'm sure that wasn't his name.  He liked me and he used Jonah to get close to me, keep tabs on me.  I thought he was exciting and I was always pushing Jonah to - "
An interruption.  She breathes out, all sharp.  Cuts herself off, leans her head back, eyes closed. 

"It was like walking on a bridge made of straight razors over a pit of sucking quicksand.   I mean, Jonah made a living as a dealer but somehow Montague always had the <i>best</i> shit.

"He was Fallen.  I didn't know that at the time."

Closes her eyes then, Sera.  And she's silent, for a long, long time.