tension. [kalen, sasha, henry, howl ST]

Elliott
[How distracted by Resonance are we?]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 4, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )

Kiara[Is Kiara's Mage-dar working today?]

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

Henry CalliergiThe sky above the Chantry house is clear and lit with stars. It's cold, but not quite freezing. Most of the snow has melted, leaving the ground muddy and wet. Inside the house, the glow of golden light seeping out through the windows offers a promise of warmth and comfort. The property sits quiet tonight. Wherever Annie is, she isn't landscaping or working in the shed. The black SUV she usually drives is absent from the driveway, but another, unfamiliar vehicle sits in its place: an old forest-green Pinto that looks as though it's seen better days. There's an air of someone's resonance hanging about the car. Kiara and Kalen have both felt it before, though Kiara will likely recognize it more readily. It feels like Henry: ardent and imaginative. Whimsical fantasy and stirring emotion.

However they arrive, whenever they approach the house, they'll feel it more as they near the door. There's another in there too: elusive and whispering. Annie and Leah's resonance hangs about the property, but theirs feels more like an imprint than a heartbeat. They aren't home tonight.

The doors (both front and back) are unlocked.

ElliottKalen comes to the Chantry with his car loaded with gifts and offerings and to restock some of the things he likes to work with.  He has healing charms to make.  He has-

Forgotten to make stockings for Henry.  (And Orrin.  And Richard.  If Arionna gets a stocking, then also his new Hermetic not-friends who might be about to ruin everything get stockings.  It is not as though he does not recognise the reason Orrin wants to fight.)

Kalen heads up to the House with a bag of wine bottles in one hand.  The rest of the things in the car can wait a moment.  Or all night.  But he might want the wine.  He steps inside quietly.  Calmly.

Whatever Henry's reason for being here, Kalen doesn't associate him with an imminent threat.  Or stress.  He likes Henry.

KiaraKiara's on her way out here tonight for varying reasons.

One can only imagine that partly, it has to do with the fact there's a pair of Mercurial Elite in her apartment at the present moment, one attempting to convince the other to accept food for the first time in at least two days. A willingness to eat at the coaxing of friends was no task when hallucination and delirium suggested that every morsel was laced with some fast acting poison.

The brunette was familiar enough now with Samir's Quiet that leaving him in Grace's hands didn't cause her undue stress. If anything - there was a comfort to it. Recent times had only helped reinforce for Kiara Woolfe precisely who it was she could rely upon to pick up the slack when she couldn't, or circumstances rendered her incapable.

All this to say: she does pull up tonight; pulls in near Kalen's car and another, laced with a presence she remembers (would be hard pressed to forget, given the circumstances). She has a set of keys in one hand and her battered bag slung over a shoulder and pauses, the set jingling in her palm as she shuts her door and takes in the Pinto.

Her dark eyes roving over it, then ticking to the house.

The brunette thumbs the fall of dark hair from her eyes and lets out a quiet breath. "Doesn't have to mean anything, Woolfe." She murmurs, trekking toward the door and jogging lightly up the steps, adding, under her breath, "he might have come around for tea."

Don't hold your breath, Kiara.

Henry CalliergiThe truth is, Henry just as easily could have been there for tea. There was a time when he visited the Chantry often, and for no more reason than because he enjoys the company of the women who live there. He hasn't visited in a while, though. Not since his trek into the Umbra with Kiara, Elijah and Leah.

There are probably reasons for that.

But - he's here now. Kalen lets himself inside the house carrying a bag full of wine bottles. He isn't as concerned by the other Hermetic's presence as Kiara is, but then... he has less reason to be. When he opens the door, he's met with the immediate smell of incense. Nag champa, more specifically. There's a low murmur of voices coming from the living room, and the closer Kalen gets, the more clearly he can sense the threads of Sasha's Will lingering in the air. Whatever she was doing, it isn't something he can parse, but the whispering notes of her resonance reach out around him like spider webs.

Kiara, when she gets there, will have the same impression. And of course, their arrival does not go unnoticed. There's a brief lull in the murmur of conversation, then Henry's voice calls out: "Kiara! And... oh, is it Kalen?" The old Jerbiton appears at the top of the stairs and makes his way over to greet them in the foyer. "What a night for you to pay us a visit." He taps the side of his nose a bit conspiratorially. A moment later, Sasha ascends the steps behind him. She has a hand on the wall, leaning as though weakened. And when she sees the two she offers them a small, tired smile.

"Were you the ones who brought that tree in here?" There's nothing accusatory in her voice. More weary amusement, than anything. When she gets to the top of the stairs, she gives a little stumble - but catches herself before it becomes a disaster. Her hair tonight is pleated back in a long braid, and she's dressed all in black in loose yoga pants and a tank top. Her feet are bare.

ElliottHe pauses in the foyer.  Wine in hand.  Unfamiliar magic playing over his skin.  Clinging.  Sticky.

Filed away in his memory is the tensile strength of spider silk.  Silk webs.  Silk cocoons.  And then cocoons to butterflies.  Whole swarms of butterflies, on the wings of one of which is the memory of Marcellus talking about spiders.  Is the memory of blood on his tongue while he chased a vision with Henry and Elijah and-

"Hello, Kiara," he says as she comes in behind him.  Perhaps, under other circumstances he might have said more but he is breathing in incense smoke and magic and the scent of spruce and he does not know what the significance of this moment is exactly.  But he can taste fate like fucking stars exploding on his tongue.  Like-

He turns to Kiara and says, "Remind me I need to bring champagne."  As though this is something important that he had forgotten.

And then Henry is asking if it is Kalen and for a dizzying few seconds he isn't sure how to answer and then Henry appears in the foyer.  "Henry," Kalen says, and there is actual warmth there.  "Good to see you again."

And then Sasha ascends the stairs to join them, tired and amused and asking about the tree.  "Yes, I brought it."  Because Shoshannah brought trees, but Shoshannah was gone and now he brought trees.  And Trinity...?  Well, Sasha makes no accusation so he makes no apology.  He does watch her reaction though, a little warily.

There were reasons he mostly avoided the chantry after they came and reclaimed it and transformed it into something that wasn't his home anymore.

Some of them are the same as the reasons he turns and looks back to Kiara, at the wine, back to her face, and raises an eyebrow.  Are you the only one who just walked through the door and already need a drink? that expression says.

Elliott[Am I.  Am I the only one who just walked through the door and already needs a drink?  Ugh.  I can English.]

KiaraThe timing is near comical to a degree.

Kiara's dark head appearing mere minutes after Kalen's. She doesn't come bearing tidings tonight but she does smell faintly like cleaning products. Looks, once her coat is unbuttoned, as if that's precisely what she's been doing. Dressed in a man's pale blue dress shirt tied off at her waist with a white camisole beneath it and paired with jeans and sneakers, she looks precisely as if she's come from cleaning her apartment.

Though, those that knew the Verbena would have likely deduced that cleaning was unlikely to be the cause for why she smells like mint and lemon scented products.

-

Hello, Kiara.

"Kalen."

Remind me I need to bring champagne.

He gets this brief, quizzical little lift of an eyebrow mid removal of her outerwear.

-

She's hanging her coat by the door when Henry calls out her name and there's this moment, a hesitation where the Verbena's gaze skims back the way she's come before she breathes out, tucking her keys into a back pocket and turning to sight the older Mage as he approached.

Whatever her feelings on seeing Henry tonight, whatever memories it invoked, there is genuine affection in the way she smiles at him and in the little gleam that appears in her dark eyes when he taps the side of his nose. She seems on the brink of replying when she catches sight of Sasha.

A little furrow appears between her brows.

"Sasha, are you okay?" She's moving toward the Euthanatos almost without thought, her eyes tracing the stairs. "What's going on?" This time, when Kalen catches her eye, he receives this slight little smile, laced with tension. At another time, it may have sufficed for: this tends to happen.

Of late, it may well have translated to: this tends to happen when I'm around.

Henry CalliergiHenry's eyes catch sight of Sasha when she stumbles, and there's a moment where it looks as though he's about to reach out to her, but he stops when she looks at him and gestures with her hand: a tired wave that seems to suggest I'm okay. To Kiara, she offers another, warmer smile. Briefly, she sets her hand on the other woman's shoulder. There's some quiet affection in the gesture, and maybe a bit of reassurance - though it doesn't quite manage to alleviate the impression of exhaustion that the Chakravanti exudes.

"I'm alright. I've just been fasting. And we... well, I had a long ritual to perform."

"Indeed," Henry adds. "Sasha was quite marvelous, really. Much more stamina than I would have. Though... in my younger days." He winks.

Sasha rolls her eyes fondly. Her hands slides from Kiara's shoulder and she manages to make her way to the kitchen without falling. There's a shake in her steps, but her balance holds. "The living room looks lovely, Kalen. Hopefully we can have some of you over for a Yule gathering at some point."

Up until a few years ago, she would have just called it Christmas. But now she lives in a house with two Verbenae. When she reaches the kitchen, she opens the refrigerator and pulls out a bottle of electrolyte water, downing a good portion of it in one go.

Henry leaves her to her recuperation, indicating the living room with a wave of his hand. It seems he means for Kiara and Kalen to join him. "Come come, I think you two will want to see what we've found."

He starts to head back down the stairs. If the others follow, they'll catch sight of a large map lying unfolded in the center of the bare floor. Sitting on top of the map...

Is a crown. Or, more accurately, a circlet. Plain and silver with notched crevices where nine stones had once been embedded. The artifact looks much less dramatic than it feels, but none of them will be able to miss the low hum of powerful mythic resonance that seems to emanate from the object.

ElliottSasha and Henry banter a little.  Sasha and Kiara seem friendly.  He adds those things to the list of things he knows about Sasha.  Mostly the only other thing he knows about Sasha is that Alexander seems to think she is okay.

The living room looks lovely, she continues.  Kalen looked less surprised to find Henry in the chantry.  In a few seconds he will be less surprised about the circlet on the living room table.  Unexpected guests, mythic artifacts, monsters...those things are all things that Kalen takes in stride.

Tell him you approve of his Christmas tree and he will just stare at you for about ten seconds, gone so still he stops breathing, before saying, "Thanks.  Kiara helped."  Kiara tied one ribbon on one candle and helped stuff a few of the stockings, but that isn't evident in his tone.  She did help.  "And that sounds great.  I'll be there if I'm in town."

And then he follows Henry into the living room.  There is a map, and upon the map a mythic circlet.  Kalen's initial response expression is most readily translated to, 'thank God, finally something I can understand.'  He sets the wine down near the base of the stairs and moves toward the circlet and the map.

For a few seconds he studies the map then reaches out toward the circlet.  He stops about four inches from it.  He has no desire to pick it up, even incomplete.  Not even really to touch it.  But this circlet reminds him of Marcellus and how Marcellus wanted to remake Camelot in a manner of speaking.  Kalen has always wanted to try pulling a sword from a stone.

Less for the sword.  More because he has never been sure what he is.

For all he doesn't want the circlet, he can't not be fascinated by it.

KiaraShe studies Sasha for a lingering moment, Kiara, even as that hand settles in reassurance on her shoulder. It's as much clinical as concerned and it's almost visible how ready the Verbena seems to set her hands on either side of the other woman's face and carefully probe how deeply etched the traces of exhaustion are. The interest of a healer that lingers on for a beat until Sasha draws away and heads toward the kitchen.

Kiara meets Kalen's eyes again, briefly, before skirting around the gathering to follow in the Euthanatos' wake.

When Henry waves them into the living room, it's after Kiara casts one last, considering look at Sasha from beneath her lashes and then follows suit, her progress slowing when she catches sight of a familiar circlet. When she feels it, too. The low emanations stemming from it. 

"Did you - ?" Kiara's eyes jump to Henry's as she steps down into the living room; the tiny hairs on her arms feel as if they're on end. "Is this what I think it is?" She's moving toward the map, unfolded on the floor. Stops a few clear steps away and lowers herself to her haunches, the crystal around the pagan's neck sliding free of her shirt as she cranes forward.

The brunette's expression is difficult to read as her eyes tick to Henry. Kalen making his own study of the map and crown. "Did you find where the stones are hidden?" A beat, quieter: "Does Leah know?" Then, when Kalen reaches out toward the circlet: "You can touch it. At least, nothing happened last time." She doesn't sound entirely happy though, at the prospect.

Takes a minute, her fingers toying with the chain around her neck, before adding, one assumes, for Kalen's benefit: "Henry, Leah, Elijah and I found this in the Umbra. It was being protected by a dragon. A Guardian. It's powerful, but not without the stones. Which we discovered were missing."

Kiara's eyes journey back to Henry, though they take a moment to draw away from the circlet.

Henry CalliergiThere are pieces missing from the story Kiara gives Kalen, but then... it is rather a long story to tell. Kalen, who has seen this crown once before - though not in person - is less surprised than one might expect. His quiet fascination elicits a fond smile from Henry, who pulls one of the rocking chairs away from the hearth and drags it over to sit beside the map. When he lowers himself down, his joints give an audible creak and he sighs as though he were the one who'd just spent the day scrying for lost stones.

(In fact, all he'd really done was provide the crown and a bit of moral support. He also took a nap at one point.)

The fire in the hearth is banked low, soft flames and glowing coals. The scent of it mingles with that of the incense. Kiara joins Kalen to kneel down and inspect the map. When her eyes cast over the surface of the paper, she'll find her gaze drawn to a little blue mark hovering just outside the island of Molokai, in the Pacific ocean. There's a note scrawled there as well with latitude and longitude markers.

It's the only mark made on the map - so far.

The hum of energy in the crown seems to grow more potent when Kalen reaches for it. It's both unnerving and intoxicating. Not sinister by any means, but being so close to something this old and powerful tends to have an impact on people.

"Remember the map you helped me with?" Henry asks. "This is what it led us to. Now we're trying to find the rest of it. As you can see... it's slow going." He indicates the mark on the map with a nod of his head. "Sasha was able to locate one of the stones. Red insisted that I let someone else handle the retrieval this time. He contends that I'm in no shape for scuba diving." Henry gives a quiet little huff, at that. His dignity only slightly ruffled.

He looks at Kalen and leans forward. "There is a story behind this crown, but..." he puts his finger to his lips. "It must be guarded. We are operating below radar on this particular quest."

Henry CalliergiHe glances at Kiara then, his expression falling to something quieter, more subdued. "She does not know, yet. She and Annie are camping at the moment."

ElliottThe hum of power increases as Kalen's fingertips draw closer.  Almost, he wants to touch it.  Almost.

Kiara says that he can touch it and he shakes his head.  "No," he says softly.  "No.  It's not for me.  Power like this will be whole...no.  I'm still not entirely certain we should make it whole, but the truth is that nothing stays buried forever.  Perhaps it could be in better hands, but we cannot really risk it falling into worse.

"But however this plays itself out...I don't even know what I would do with power like this anymore."  He withdraws his hand from so close to the crown.  Looks at the markings by Molokai.

"I can, however, scuba dive."  He could, however, give himself gills.  He touches the marking on the map instead of the crown and then looks up at Henry.  Steady.  Serious.

One might expect him to ask to be knighted on the quest.  But what he asks, still quiet, is, "Did you know your son is in town?"  There is a weight to that.  Some hint of warning.  Though why, precisely, might not be clear to either Henry or Kiara yet.

KiaraThere's a look from the Verbena where she sits, her hands folded over her knees, that reads an answering degree of quiet contemplation. "Good," she offers, after a beat with this brief little flex at the corner of her mouth before her eyes drop away, back to the map and its glowing little blue mark.

The Pacific Ocean. Scuba Diving. The Verbena's lower lip is drawn between sharp little teeth as her gaze shifts from Kalen's face to Henry's. Ticks back with sudden, keen focus when Kalen mentions a son being in town. Her brows skating upward and vanishing beneath dark bangs.

Whatever the meaning was behind Kalen bringing up Henry's son feels ... personal, to the pagan. Enough so that she turns her face back to the map, frowning lightly. Studying it. Tracing her eyes over the lettering that spelled out the location. The first stone. "Did Red have anyone in mind for this rescue mission?" She's staring at the circlet as she asks, the brunette, though her attention does stray back to Henry's form, in the rocking chair.

Her eyes shifting over his face, studying his expression.

Kiara[Ergh. That 'good' was in reply to Henry. I can do the coherency thing.]

Henry CalliergiThere is very little that truly phases Henry. Kiara can likely already attest to that - given what they went through together. The old man has a quality of approaching the world as if he were a character in an elaborate fairy tale. One where, despite its dangers, everything ultimately works out in the end. But there's a change in his expression when Kalen mentions his son. His shoulders droop, and some of the light ebbs from his eyes.

"Richard, yes. He came to see me." There's a pause before he adds, in answer to Kalen's implied warning, "He cannot know about this. If you've met him, I think you will understand why. His House were the ones to banish this crown many years ago."

(And they did not retrieve it with permission.)

It's a troubling connection.

Sasha reappears at the stairs, carrying a bowl with a large slice of reheated lasagna. She makes her way down to them carefully and takes a seat on the L-shaped sectional by the windows. "Not all of us are in agreement on how to proceed. Annie is..." she sets the bowl in her lap and frowns down at it. "She has difficulty seeing the forest for the trees. She's always been like that. I understand why she feels the way she does. And I would spare Leah any further pain if I could. But this..." she glances at the crown. "This is something that will happen. Whether we wish it to or not. The wheel is turning."

Kiara wants to know if Henry and Red have anyone in mind to fetch the stone. To which Henry just smiles, a bit of life returning to his eyes. "Are you volunteering, my dear?"

Elliott"Do you know what his travelling companion is planning?  Because if that goes through...."  Kalen looks away, back to the map and the circlet.  Probably not before at least Henry can catch horror flooding his eyes.  Not much horrifies him.  But Denver as a war zone....

His eyes close for a second.  "Nothing and nowhere is ever safe.  But it may be less safe here in the immediate future.  I hope that isn't the case, but...I do tend toward the terribly optimistic.  I have only so much hope that there are any other paths that will lead away from here.

"The world doesn't like to change sometimes."  There is so little easily evident in his voice beyond a kind of grim resignation.

"Just be careful.  Whatever you do, wherever you take it, just be careful."

KiaraKiara, who has but recently heard the entirety of Leah's sad history from Serafine and heard portions of it from the woman herself not so long ago, straightens when Sasha reappears and settles by the window, her eyes venturing to her with a slight frown etched across her mouth.

Even dressed as casually as she was, when she starts to lightly move back and forth across the living room, sliding her hands into the back pockets of her jeans, there is a certain tension in her shoulders that reads she is listening and turning over both Sasha's words and the discussion between Kalen and Henry. Kiara's hands emerge from her pockets on the fifth or so circuit she makes and sweep up to push the fringe from her eyes in an agitated, uncertain little gesture.

"I definitely don't think Leah should be near it, especially if the stones are reunited with it." The Verbena's dark eyes shift to the circlet. "If for no other reason than I think it would be hard for her to be that close to it and remember - " There's a tiny glimmer of empathy that surfaces across Kiara's face, then. " - but I do think finding them before the wrong people do is important."

She rubs her palms together, Kiara. Glances at Kalen and holds his eyes for a long moment as if she were silently turning over his words in her head before her attention turns to Henry and she gives this tiny, near imperceptible little nod.

The tension in her shoulders doesn't recede, but surfaces in the smile she casts him instead: "If something goes wrong, having someone who can heal there wouldn't be the worst idea in the history of them. Besides, I could use a change of scenery." She rubs her palms against the sides of her jeans.

Henry CalliergiIf it's a change of scenery she's after, Kiara won't get much different than the Hawaiian islands. Moments ago, Kalen made a similar comment (that he could, in fact, make an attempt at scuba diving) but now his thoughts have turned to something rather more serious: to Orrin and the Hermetics and the brewing potential toward war. To his credit, Henry actually seems surprised to hear the news that Kalen offers him. There's a tip of his head - as though he's trying to parse out the meaning behind Kalen's insinuations - and a lift of his eyebrows. Finally he frowns.

"If Orrin or House Flambeau have business in Denver, I'm afraid they haven't elected to share that information with me. Though I'm not surprised. I haven't been much in the fold for quite a few years now."

Over on the sofa, Sasha looks up suddenly from her food. Her body and her attention go very still as she listens to them speak. Kiara paces the floor as she sets her thoughts into motion. In the end, she offers up a similar assessment to the one Sasha might have given herself. Sasha glances at her a nods her agreement, but Kalen's words seem to have her troubled.

"What is Orrin planning, Kalen?" Her words are soft, but there is a certain weight to them - a slow, measured quality to her cadence - that suggests a dangerous gravity.

Elliott"I hadn't been either until they came here, but apparently I got back on their radar."  He does not sound entirely thrilled about that.

Kiara paces but Kalen remains still.  There is something in him like a some great cat, readying to pounce.  Some betrayal of the same intensity Kiara and Henry got to glimpse the last time they were all together.

When he looks up, it is not at Henry, who had gotten the majority of his attention.  Nor to Kiara, who of everyone here he trusts the most.  He looks up enough that he can look directly into Sasha's eyes.  "He plans to turn the Technocracy loose on the vampires, and then wipe out whatever is left.  I don't know who that will leave standing in the end, but I don't think that's a fight anyone wins."  And a lot of people lose.

KiaraThere's a scoff.

It's soft but there can be no doubt the direction it stems from. It's Kiara, staring at the floor with an expression of distaste written in every line of her features. "Unbelievable," she murmurs under her breath as if she hadn't already had an account of this plan of Orrin's from Ian not so long ago. Now, like then, there's no hiding the irritation that flows off the Verbena.

The spark of agitation that's there in her dark eyes when she cants them first Kalen's, then Sasha's way.

"Never minding the ones who have to live and have people they love standing in the way, naturally. Let's just set the monsters on each other. I have nothing against wiping out every last Technocrat in the universe," she swipes a hand angrily across the room, turning and resuming her little circuit. "They deserve no mercy after what they've done, but that plan is so full of potential disasters and lack of insight that I can't even begin to - " She stops herself, seemingly from launching into a far darker tirade and shakes her head, instead.

Stalks toward the windows and stares out, arms crossed over her chest.

"It wouldn't even be a fight. It'd be a bloodbath and we'd get to pick up the pieces afterwards."

Henry CalliergiWhen Kalen speaks those words - tells them all that the Order is planning to wage some kind of guerrilla war against the Technocracy in Denver - Sasha doesn't immediately react. Instead, it's Kiara's words that resound, angrily, through the room. Henry, for his part, looks very troubled at the news. It's probably the most serious that any of them have ever seen him - the way the lines in his forehead wrinkle into seams of tension.

"They would not take that kind of action without cause. Nor, I think, without consideration of the dangers. But I fear they may be thinking of the bigger picture. Often, with the Order... they believe the ends justify the means."

What he is not saying, but perhaps means to imply, is that they may know perfectly well that innocent people will get killed. That they may consider those people expendable if it means gaining some ground in the war. It's a cruel thing to consider, but not outside the bounds of possibility.

"They are making a mistake," he offers, in a soft, sad voice.

Across the room, Sasha watches them with a dark, silent gaze. Her jaw locks when Henry speaks about the Order and something about her energy gets very cold. Finally she says, in a tight voice, "We cannot let this happen." And then, firmer. "We will not." She fixes her gaze on Henry. "Talk to Richard, Henry. Before this gets out of hand."

Henry sighs. "My dear, my son has not taken my advice since he was a child. I fear your hope in him is unfounded."

Sasha gets to her feet in a sudden motion. It almost sends her falling back into the cushions, the way it makes her head spin. But she stays on her feet and points at Henry with an expression that brooks absolutely no argument.

"I don't care how stubborn he is, or how fractured your relationship. People's lives are at stake. Talk to your son, Henry. If anyone can get the Order to listen to reason, it's him."

Henry gets very quiet, at that. For a moment, he almost resembles a scolded child. "You are right," he offers, with a guilty nod. "And I will speak to him."

Sasha lets out a tight breath and lowers herself carefully back to the couch. "Annie is going to be very angry."

"Yes," Henry agrees. "I suspect she will be."

Neither of them mention why. Kiara at least will have some sense into the other Verbena's mindset. After the two of them stood together amidst the ruins of the grove where other Verbenae had once gathered.

There's an awkward silence between them, until Henry looks at Kalen and offers him a sad smile. "Thank you for telling us." And moment later he glances down at the map. "While I'm off attempting to play diplomat, how would you feel about accompanying Kiara to Hawaii? I hear it's quite lovely down there."

ElliottKalen, crouched on the ground, stays still.

Listens.

He has been so many people who all see this so many ways.  And here he is, using parts of all of them to have this moment.  He will probably need all of them and then some to get to the next moment he wants.  But if he can avert this war, he has made a solid first step.  You can most easily befriend those you are not actively at war with.

Those things he lets lie for now.  He has the most he can expect out of this moment.  A fraction of the tension eases out of his shoulders and he turns to look at Henry.  "Being halfway around the world when Orrin finds out I told you this sounds like an excellent decision."  But he is not, not really, relaxed enough to mean the accompanying half-smile.

KiaraWords flow over Kiara's head, then. Mere fragments snagging in her consciousness; spare words here and there that seep in and linger as she stares off, frowning hard, out the window overlooking the Chantry property. She's lost for a good few minutes inside her own head, the brunette. Her back betraying no sense of further input into the discussion. Her shoulders are rigid with tension, jaw set with it.

It's not until Sasha mentions that Annie will be very angry that something surfaces and flickers through the pagan's dark eyes, that she stirs and her eyes shift to Sasha's features. There's a sense there without Kiara voicing it that she's aware of the extent of that anger.

That perhaps, in a way, she shares some of it. She'd seen what remained of that grove. The twisted void that the last battle had left, scarred into the earth. She'd spilled her own blood alongside Annie Pierce and sworn not to forget it - Kiara's arms unfold and drop to her sides, her thumb absently rubbing at the inside of one of her palms as if she still felt the sting of the blade where she'd drawn it across her flesh.

She turns and the immediacy of her rage feels banked, not gone but, stowed. Compartmentalized as it needed to be. "I have always wanted to visit. Maybe we'll even get a tan." Her tone is light, almost teasing as her eyes find first Henry, then Kalen but the trace of tension lingers.

She looks down, rubbing her palm again as if it itched. "How soon should we leave, Henry?"

Henry CalliergiConsidering everything they're facing, the banter between them now is surprisingly light. Henry seems to take it in stride, but Sasha glances at Kiara in a studying way, her dark eyes roving over the Verbena's features. Perhaps she notices something off, but if so, she doesn't draw attention to it.

"I would go with you, if I could. But I think, given everything... " She pauses, frowning down into her food. "I should be here with Annie and Leah."

Kalen thinks a trip out of town sounds like an excellent idea. Kiara asks when they should leave. Henry smiles and contemplates this for a moment. "Well, I suppose it's up to you. When would you like to go?"

ElliottKalen looks up at Kiara now.  "I have some things I would like to finish before we leave.  Some arrangements I should make.  And I would like, if possible, to be back in Santiago by Christmas Eve."  It isn't that he thinks God will be angry if he skips Christmas Mass.  It's that it's the one with all the candles.

"So...give me maybe until the end of next week to finish all of that?  I can make arrangements for flights and such too.  Have you ever been scuba diving before?"

KiaraIf Kiara feels Sasha's eyes on her as she lightly jokes about what may in fact be another life and death situation, she is careful to avoid drawing attention to it. Instead, she turns to regard Kalen and after a moment offers: "I should probably stay in town until I know Samir is okay to be on his own. Or at least, I can arrange for someone to be with him."

There's a beat, then. A brief look toward the others. "A Mercurial Elite friend. He and Elijah - " Kiara's eyes shift to Henry, there's this very slight smile that graces her lips. "Suffice to say trouble has a way of finding them when they're together. Samir got badly hurt and he's not exactly himself right now." Kiara's attention ticks back to Kalen.

"The end of next week should be fine. Scuba diving, no. But I'm a decent enough swimmer. And a quick learner. I'll be okay."

Henry Calliergi"Oh, is William alright?"

William, he says. Not Elijah. And were the topic of conversation a matter of less dire consequence, he might even bother to explain it. Instead, there's just this sudden expression of concern on Henry's features. "He didn't mention any trouble to me. Though I see him less often now that his training is over." There's a touch of wistfulness there too. Like maybe he misses having an apprentice around.

Once he learns that William is in fact safe (for now) his momentary edge of concern will ebb. And likely they'll move on to discussing travel plans. Or perhaps... trying some of Kalen's wine. (Sasha will politely decline on the grounds of not having eaten in two days.)

It's tentative, this return to normality. The shadow of dangers both past and future still lurks in the room. But Henry, if nothing else, is always good for a story, and his infectious charm has a way of lightening even the dourest of moods.