what I want. [ian, kiara]

Arionna de la Babin
[Do I feels you?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 5, 6) ( success x 1 )

Danny
(Awareness)
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 4, 10, 10) ( success x 2 )

Arionna de la Babin
It might be the end of the weekend, but that doesn't keep people from celebrating. There are gallery shows, cafes, restaurants, and general parties happening because...some people don't see Monday as the beginning of work, or at least see no reason to cry over Sunday coming to a close.
Arionna had slipped to the bookstore earlier, happily (inwardly, not outwardly) walking away with a new book to read in her off time. But now she wanders, pausing at the opening of some art gallery, filled with people who wear black...not because they're part of the goth crowd, but because 'they were doing it before it was cool.' Probably sipping wine too. Losers.

She has a short skirt on, with black stockings and a pair of boots. A black long sleeve keeps her from the cold, and a black jacket to go with it. She wears a black cinch at her waist and a studded collar at her neck, with a black crystal hanging from it. Despite her clothing, she doesn't fit. There are no square glasses on her face, or the indication of art snobbery. Her darklips and eyes denote that she is, indeed, sporting black for the most appropriate reason, and not to make a statement; she likes the color.

Ian
[Awareness ftw]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 4, 5, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )

Danny
*He had gotten dressed, he had. Being dressed was good, it was black cargo trousers tucked in around the ankles into those shabby combat boots he liked so much. Well lets face it, we all have our favorite things, his was his boots. A hoodie, black with a white motif on the front. It looked like a white triangle cut in half.

His leather biker jacket completed the look done up slightly along with the collar to keep the crappy weather at bay.*

Elijah
Jenn was making him interface with the rest of humanity.

Not that he didn't want to interface with the rest of humanity, it was just that it was incredibly early to be interfacing with people, and she had looked at Elijah with a quiet bit of desperation that came with please please please be my wingman because there was nothing that got him out and about more than the need to be a wingman at an art gallery. It was going well. Jenn was with a girl with dreadlocks and a septum piercing. A girl who smiled too brightly who could probably count as an amazon of some sort, but Jenn seemed to really like her so, maybe he wasn't so much there as a wingman as he was an escape route. Who knew, really. Jenn had just been specific that she had wanted Elijah to come out with her.

Maybe she just wanted his company and needed an excuse.

Whatever the case, there was an abundance of Halloween-themed and death-centric and rebirth-focused artwork at this particular event, and more things that tasted like pumpkin spice than you could shake a stick at. And an abundance of vegetarian tiny food thingies. There was a word for them. A word that was incredibly difficult to spell, so the author of this particular post just avoided using said word instead of noting that the food thingies actually existed.
Also: there was always time for vegetarian sambousa. it wasn't even an Ethiopian-flavored event, but goddamnit the young man with his trousers and his button up shirt and his vest (because pocket watch) was going to eat whatever was available so long as it wasn't meat-flavored. He could tell what the texture was. He'd had someone else clean off his phone.

Arionna de la Babin
She felt cold, as she always did. As winter approaches, it might even be harder to notice her presence, but not yet. The fingers of winter caressed clothing, sunk its nails into the flesh and burrowed far beneath it until bones were exposed to the reminder that winter was approaching, and despite the snow and glamorous glittering sun, it was not kind.

Night was hers. She never felt particularly strong or capable when the sun was up, but once it sunk beneath the horizon, Arionna felt the strength of her own blood. The darkness was her own, and with it, her magic flourished. But that was neither here nor there, as she stood outside of the gallery, contemplating crashing it, or at least showing the 'artists' what real black was meant for.
She adjusted the bag at her side, inhaled slowly, and made her way slowly past the threshold. Like a cold wind she stepped in, dark boots clunking on the floor. Pumpkin spice was the calling of every white girl in the great USA, and even Ari felt a calling for it. Maybe later.

Danny
*He made his way into the gallery just for the shits and giggles of it. Perhaps if he saw something interesting, he might buy. Maybe. He thrust his hands into his pockets as he slowed his pace. Walking past the desk, one hand moved to pick up a pamphlet on top of it. Then began to make his way around it slowly.*

Serafíne
Awareness.
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 9) ( success x 3 )

Ian
Ian was already inside the art gallery, though for the moment it didn't appear that he was with anyone. Less than a week and a half ago he'd been covered in a dead woman's blood, and now he was walking through a fucking art gallery in downtown Denver in one of his better suits like everything was life-as-usual.

That was a lie, of course. But not everyone wore their emotional state on their sleeves.
The suit was a black burberry creation. Tailored and very slim-cut. Beneath the jacket he had on a deep teal shirt and a black silk tie.  He probably looked a little overdressed for this type of gallery exhibit, but then, art shows tended to draw a pretty eclectic crowd.

There was a painting of a man trapped in some kind of nightmare. He was sitting in what looked like a pool of blood. The piece was crudely effective, if not precisely nuanced. Ian hovered in front of it for a long time, the glass of wine in his hand momentarily forgotten.

Danny
(Scrub me from this. I'm knackered, sorry. Got to be up early tomorrow)

Kiara Woolfe
[Spidy Senses Roll, yo.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )

Serafíne
This is a kind of close encounter and this is her neighborhood and these are her people and she's not tonight at the particular gallery where so many of her sort are converging, no.  She's down the street, in a little bar so narrow that even the skinniest chicks are all "scuse me, scuse me" and sidewinding past the strangers tucked into the bartstools.  The place specializes in non-traditional whiskeys, whatever the hell that means.  Sera doesn't know but at least three of the people in the extended group she is with tonight think they know.

They are probably wrong, but you've probably never heard of these things, either.
Halloween was several days ago but today is All Soul's and anyway Sera is a celebrant, she is still celebrating, she is dressed up in a black bustier beneath her black leather jacket, wearing these boots that look like hooves and an antlered crown, and she feels them and she is unwinding herself from girl beside her considering following the pull of resonance both strange and known, but the girl does not wish to be unwound-from and someone buys her another shot of what was that? and it is golden sliding amber, warming her all the way down, and she wants another.

So.  So - ships, passing.  Another shot.  This heady laughter tattooed against her skin as the golden moment splits itself into fractal edges, each with its own shade of flame.  Strangers come and new-friends go and her phone keeps buzzing with texts and soon enough that pulse, that beat, that awareness-of-others has settled into the background hum of her Sunday. 
They'll leave that hole in the wall soon.
They'll turn: left, rather than right.

Serafíne
[heh. quite literally a drive-by from me since it is my bedtime.  later, y'all!]

Elijah
He might be a little over-dressed, but damned if he didn't look amazing in a suit. There was something to be said about precise lines and clean figures. He hadn't made his way through the gallery completely, but he did catch a look at the back of Ian. Generally speaking, he rather enjoyed looking at the back half of Ian Lai, but the painting he was standing at… something made Elijah's stomach turn and he carefully found a place to put food away. Carefully in a napkin, and the napkin in the trash, because suddenly everything tasted like salt and copper.
He wasn't close enough to the bar to get something, so completely sober Elijah inhaled sharply and headed on over.

"Michael Vieja's got a few more pieces in the gallery. He and Jenn have a couple next to each other," because god damn it was easy to talk about art.

Kiara Woolfe
Kiara liked galleries. In particular when they were full of people attempting interpretation of the artist and pieces in question. One could mill around a picture and garner several fractured ideas about the implication of color distribution and the artist's use of clouds in the sky. The Verbena is mostly here for the atmosphere. A sleek Woolfe slipping amongst the sheep in her little black dress cut up to here with a slice of thigh flashing there, hair pinned somewhat elegantly atop her head so strands fell, loose around her nape, framing a heart shaped face that was, as ever betraying a high degree of bemusement with the scene around it.

There are others present, felt like the passing whispers of strangers, the tickle of cool air as a body pressed close in passing.

She lingers, though, Kiara, bites down into a hors d'oeuvre and lifts the stem of her wine glass to her lips idly, musing at the entwined figures in the picture before her. There was something slightly dark to the image, to bodies ghosting and merging together in bold streaks of black and red. A violence of color, perhaps. An invitation to some dance between life and death.

It's not a wonder the Life Mage is drawn into it.

Arionna de la Babin
She reaches for one of the finger foods, her dark nails sliding around it as she plucks it up and right into her mouth. With a slightly hung head, dark hair spilling over her shoulders and around her face, she moves among the people. Only the japanese could come up with a darker figure (we're looking at YOU Samara).

No touching. Even if it means dancing around the crowd, some crazy monkey dance that only Arionna can portray, then so be it. People were too much of a plague, and she'd rather not contract it and have to quarantine herself.

She finds no draw to anything with an uplifting perspective. Certainly many like her would find 'rebirth' to be enjoyable, and yet she finds it repulsive. Leave it to humans to take something wonderful like death, and try to dress it up as the precursor to life. Predators are not reborn from the prey they consume. They merely continue to live. She can only wonder if prey often feel the same as humans. On he's not really being consumed by Mr. Wolf. He's just going to a better place.
Gross.

She can feel them among the crowd, though her mind has been distracted from tiredness all the day, and thus has left her senses somehow dulled. She would have hoped that the coming of the night would wake her up. Not so.

But oh did she move, bringing the cold with her as she slipped around, looking for something to amuse her, to entice her, and to allow her to creep on her fellows.

Ian
Ian glanced away from the painting to take in Elijah's presence. His expression looked distant at first, but within a few moments he'd refocused. "I didn't know Jenn was in this show."  It'd been happenstance, really. The gallery hadn't been part of Ian's plans for the evening. But he had time to kill, so he was here. And evidently so were Jenn and Elijah. Someone walked in carrying a brush of winter's breath, and Ian glanced back at Arionna half-expecting to find Alexander, but instead... there was a girl in black. Someone he'd never seen before.

There'd been a lot of those lately.

While Ian was scoping the crowd, his eyes landed on Kiara, hovering there for a moment longer than was strictly necessary.

"I'd like to see Jenn's work," he said to Elijah.

Elijah
[do I notice other mages?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )

Kiara Woolfe
Arionna's presence is ... difficult to ignore. There is nothing delicate about the press of icy cold sliding along your body. Kiara recognizes it enough now that she makes some quiet, subvocal noise and tilts her head. Lifts her wine glass to her lips and takes a lingering sip.
Relishes the flavor of the wine on her tongue and turns her attention from the picture before her for a beat, eyes sliding over the gathered crowd. If she's seeking, perhaps she doesn't find what she hopes to, for she moves from her perch and slips among the Sleepers, cutting a taller figure than some thanks to the heels strapped to her feet.

Clearly, it's a discussion of the fundamentality of existence, Ben.
No, Walter, you have to look deeper, beyond the surface space.

She sidles up beside a panorama landscape and addresses her smile to the floor. It's a subtle, secretive thing, that expression and when she lifts her eyes and glances idly across the gallery and finds Ian's face, it lingers a moment before retreating to the wall before her.

Elijah
Kiara had a dress that was cut up to there and it was hard not to look, to toss her a sideward glance while she hovered by a painting. Oddly enough, somewhere that they needed to go in order to see what it was that Jenn had at this particular exhibit.

He was on his way to show Ian where this particular piece was. It was set on paper, matted in something gray and all done up in reds and burgundy purples like wine- like pomegranates- like the traditional fruit of the underworld. There was a tree and a landscape with the flowers withering and the leaves falling vibrant and and bright tot he ground while a young woman descends- something reminiscent of Persephone. Something reminiscent of a mother's mourning, the descent into the underworld. Next to it was a rather surreal portrait of the young woman's apartment, held up by tenuous strands and with a sky full of stars so bright it was nearly blinding. The floor seemed to be falling apart.

"That one's actually pretty accurate," Elijah said as he gestured to the painting of the apartment. Acrylics on canvas, whereas the other was pomegranate juice on parchment.
He stops for a moment, his attention wanders and he finds the source of the cold, torn away front he paintings for a moment to, instead, observe people. He looks like he's miles away, taking the whole world in. Maybe because he was.

Arionna de la Babin
She knows the feel of Kiara as much as the woman knows her own. One might consider them two sides of the same coin; Ari would certainly call it that. Kiara with her, in Ari's perspective, more modern view of witchcraft, and Ari with the not so new age view. Whether that was true or not...well...it was hardly important. They were connected enough that Ari felt it, knew it, and sought it out...visually at least.

But there were others she had been quietly stalking among the art snobs and their wine. She circled, paused to look at a few pieces, and found herself sliding up behind Ian and Elijah, with an acceptable distance between them. She rather enjoyed the story of the Dark God and his taken wife, a strong woman who eventually found her own place in a world that was forced upon her. The pomegranates were hard to miss.

Simplistic. She might have said. It missed the point. It's only half the story. But who knew the true purpose behind the painting the two men lingered at. Elijah with his golden colored hair, Ian with his nice suit. The nuances of Kore's role are lost of many, forever left to be the symbol of abduction or loss in the face of temptation.

Ian
Ian didn't ask Elijah if he was okay. Not here in this place where everything was lines and colors and voices and shifting bodies. Elijah didn't ask him either. Maybe the answer was assumed. So they walked over to look at Jenn's paintings, and Ian took them in for a long moment before nodding in agreement.

"I think that's about how I remember it."

He'd only been to Elijah's apartment twice. Both times had involved stars and the sensation of things falling apart (metaphorically speaking, anyway.) Behind them, Arionna lurked with her wintery resonance. Ian stole another quick glance her way, but didn't attempt to engage her. Instead he drifted away from Elijah's side to approach Kiara. "What do you think of that one?" He indicated the panorama with a light tilt of his head.

Kiara Woolfe
There's a congregation of awakened gathered by a painting.

Kiara Woolfe knows them by sense, as well as sight now. She doesn't approach them, though. There's a measure of method to that. A fox didn't earn its reputation for cunning by hovering by the rabbit. Rather it waited and bided its time until the moment seemed ripe to strike. Perhaps she simply enjoys the chase more than the kill, hypothetically speaking, of course.

She's cupping the glass close to her neck, observing the lines of the canvas before her with a slightly tilted head when Ian appears beside her. There's no instinctive change to her posture but she does smile a little when he speaks, as if she had been half expecting the question since she arrived. "I rather like it," she doesn't glance at Ian, but extends a hand to trace the lines of wild grass across the stretch of the canvas. "It's not trying to be what it's not." Now she glances at him, a brief, measuring thing.

"Sometimes a field of grass is just grass." One imagines she's taking a subtle jab at the deep existentialism surrounding them.

Elijah
Art snobs and their wine. The young man with the golden hair did finally manage to find someone with wine that was steal able, which he did steal with the intent on drinking. A white, not a red. reds felt strange on his tongue, too thick and too vital and too earthy. He needed something ethereal, and as far as drinks went if you had to drink something may as well drink the stars. He'd spent the last few weeks painfully sober. Maybe he should fix that.

He afforded Ari a second glance, even a smile because- why not? He could be in the moment for now. One of the creatures there who was dressed down. He gave a quid glance around for the tiny woman he'd come with. Nobody asked if they were old enough to actually drink. Either nobody cared or Elijah's fake ID was good enough to fool damn near anyone.

Arionna de la Babin
"You don't belong." She was never known for her amazing ability to make friends, or be even remotely welcoming. Ari had her own reasons for it. Blunt, to the point, and completely unaware of the whole mages-should-be-quiet-lest-someone-in-black-shades-takes-you-away, or whatever it was that kept people like her from broadcasting themselves. Certainly she wasn't sending out radio waves to every device nearby, but she wasn't shy about it either. When you don't exactly fit...you just don't fit. No one can hide that.

Arionna stepped up closer to the painting, canting her head a little to examine it before letting her gaze slide towards Elijah, watching him form behind the strands of hair. "You're not boring enough."
When a bit of food floated by, she snatched a finger food and slipped it between her lips, lightly sucking on her fingers to get the taste off. Not bad, for lacking meat.

Ian
Ian's own reaction to the landscape didn't seem particularly strong, one way or the other. (If in fact he even had one.) Kiara's answer held his interest though, if only because it indicated something about the way she approached the world. Nearby, Elijah found himself a glass of white wine. Ian, of course, had red. He drank some of it as he contemplated the blades of grass rendered on the canvas in front of him. When he looked at Kiara again, he let his eyes hover on her. There was a directness about it. Measuring.

"Feel like going somewhere?"

Elijah
"I could be an actuary, those lurk everywhere, you know," like they were vampires or monsters that lived in closets. Things that were more boring than accountants, but he couldn't have been an actuary because his hair was too long and his smile was too easy and he seemed just a little too comfortable with his body and his space and himself to be anything other than… well… the kind of hipster that showed up at these types of things. but she was true, he didn't fit, didn't quite mesh with that hint of the south in his voice and the lilt in the way he said things.
"Besides, you haven't met everyone yet, how can people possibly be boring?" with a grin, not a smile. His constant companion, something that came too easily.

Kiara Woolfe
There were a few things that stood out about Kiara Woolfe. One, the most stark, she didn't seem to put a great deal of emphasis on tradition. If there was a line to be drawn about what was acceptable or assumed, the brunette could be surely found slightly off the mark. There was a sort of deliberate callousness to the way she assumed her place, wherever it happened to be, no matter general opinion or thought on the matter was correct. Or ought to be allowed, due to her existence there in the first place.

Two, she seemed to greatly enjoy confounding people. There was innate satisfaction to walking a line of your own creating. And third -- third ... was that she turned bodily to face Ian Lai and it was nearly impossible to scrutinize what she thought of his proposition. She looked at him, beyond, at Elijah, Arionna and then returned dark eyes to his face.

"Sure." A waiter passed by balancing a tray of drinks and Kiara set her glass upon it, the corner of her mouth turned up in an expression of playful consideration. "I guess I have about expended my limits of artistic appreciation for the night."

She offered him her arm.

Arionna de la Babin
"No. You couldn't be. Too young. Too pretty." She adjusted the bag strap, shifting a shoulder to take the weight and move it to some other small space there, hopefully not on the joint.  She looked to him again, to the side, askance so she was never making direct eye contact.
"Don't need to  sample every cat to know what cats are. Don't need to sample every ant to know their nature. Humans are no different. I've examined a large sample. People are boring. It's only the outliers who aren't as boring, aren't as annoying. Though there is still the essence of it."

Elijah
"I think that might be the problem, looking at people as a whole instead of a person as an individual," he said, he replied, caught Kiara's eyes for a moment before looking back at Ari. He could be miles away and still be present. He could be inches from a person and be leagues into the future. There was something to be said about that, about how he can't quite exist in the present at that juncture, how he seems distracted because the world was distracting (because it was loud and it was noisy and it was always noisy and there was always something that he could hear, always at the back of his mind, some chittering, some whispering, some rattling of something- you'd think he would like the season but he couldn't wait for the day of the dead to pass. For All Soul's Day to be over.)
"What made you decide I wasn't boring, though?"

A beat.
"And thank you, by the way. For the compliment."

Arionna de la Babin
"People are the same, mostly. They dress themselves up in different clothes and voices, but in the end, underneath it all, they're all the same. Like stories. Each story has different characters, takes place in different locations, but it follows the same formula, the same idea. Only once in a great many years does something new come around. Some author breaks the mold. Mary Shelley, for instance. Then everyone tries to be like them, and the formula continues. Difference becomes sameness, just wrapped in different bows to make it appealing."
When he asked why she had decided he wasn't entirely like them, she tightened her hands on the strap of her bag, letting her eyes cast down to the floor momentarily. "No reason." Another quick glance to the side, and yet this one didn't exactly stick. Her skin starts to warm, even if just a little, and the corner of her lips curls up. "You're welcome."

Ian
He could have stayed. Probably, he should have. Talked more with Elijah, maybe tried to be cordial to the newcomer. But like the painting before them, Ian was what he was. And right at the moment, he wasn't trying to be anything else.

Kiara kept her feelings close. She, like him, was a composed creature. But she offered him her arm and said sure, so Ian finished off his wine and set the glass down on the nearest tray. When he looked at her again, he smiled. He had a pretty mouth, soft and full and etched in sensual lines, but sometimes the warmth of his smiles did not quite reach his eyes.

He took Kiara's arm in his own, as though they knew each other much better than they actually did. And as he led them toward the door, he leaned in to whisper, "Bar, club, or your place?"

Elijah
"You know, being the same doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing," he said, took a drink of his wine. The little brunette he'd come with was still talking to the Amazon she had courted with the dreadlocks and the septum piecing. He, for his part, could listen to Arionna with a grin on his face and tasting faintly of white wine because it went down smooth and crisp. Someone ordered a decent riesling. He didn't realize he was developing a taste, a palate if one will, for things like this.
"So you arbitrarily decided I was interesting?" he half-teased, "and perhaps has nothing to do with the tiniest bit of winter that you brought with you?"

Yes, he said, I noticed He said without saying.

Kiara Woolfe
They're attractive people. They draw the eye, if only for the fact they both possess the sort of dispassionate awareness of their physicality in proximity to others. It's not entirely physical though, not with the female of the pair at least. Kiara Woolfe had the sort of charisma that tended to generate among her kind. That very base, instinctual Otherness that clung to her skin, gathered in the dark humor residing in her eyes, the tilt of her mouth in a smile that wasn't totally without some private mirth.

As if she knew the composition of the joke before it was told.

In generations gone past, she'd have been burned at the stake. Perhaps once, she was. The male moving alongside her whispers in her ear and she smiles without glancing at him, a habit of hers apparently. "I have wine at my apartment."

Ian is what he is and so is Kiara. She doesn't hide what she likes. Or, apparently, what she wants. "Unless you'd rather keep your options open for the evening, in which case I know a great place down the street." She pauses by the door, a thin eyebrow arches.

"Pick your poison."

Arionna de la Babin
"I've never met one of the mob who wasn't hollow on the inside." Because honestly, her experiences with those she might consider to be like everyone else, have never been...pleasant. It's only been the oddities or the people who don't seem to fit in that she manages to deal with...and even then...
She and Kalen have only recently called a truce their conflict, short as it may have been.
"I didn't bring it with me. It's always been there, in some way. I came with it. " She shifted again, just a little, and maybe people like Danny would find her mannerisms amusing. "Everyone simply forgets it."

"We're not the same. But you're not like the rest of them. That makes you more interesting than the rest of those here." Arionna lifted her gaze to look at him a bit more fully, though it quickly shifted to the drink in his hand. "What are you drinking? Wine or champagne?"

Elijah
I''ve never met one of the mob who wasn't hollow on the inside.
"I've found we've all got a lot in common with those chocolate easter rabbits you can get at drug stores," he replies.

Funny one should mention Kalen, of all people he was the furthest thing from Elijah's mind at that juncture. Odd, because he was the man's student. Odd, because they sort of lived together. Sort of. They inhabited similar spaces, and Elijah woke up at some unreasonably late hour most mornings to the feeling of a brewing storm in the air. There was the question of what he was drinking and he looked at it again, "it's a riesling? So it's just a standard wine. Nothing fantastic but it's free, want one?"
Benefit of coming with an artist here. He knew which drinks he didn't have to pay for.

Arionna de la Babin
Elijah had a funny way of... did he just make an analogy to chocolate rabbits?
The corners of her lips curl up again in a small smile. Danny, and those who had come to know her, might have made the sign of the cross at that very moment; Ari was not known for her ability to smile, much like her ability to make friends. "The ones with the yellow candy eyes or the ones without? Come on dude, there are many kinds of hollow bunnies at drug stores.
"I've never had one." She doesn't generally drink or really need to, given that such parties are generally reserved for the people who know the people who are throwing them. She's also technically too young to be found in a liquor store without being dropped in the county jail shortly after. "Are they good?"

Ian
Who knew what sorts of lives they'd led in previous incarnations. Some people possessed that kind of memory, but Ian was not one of them. Perhaps he didn't really care. This was the life he was living now, and in it there was room for both bloodshed and flirtatious conversations with beautiful women.
Life was made up of many experiences. Some less pleasant than others. Someone like Kiara probably understood that better than most, given her Tradition and her resonance.

They walked to the door, and when Ian asked Kiara where she wished to go, she said she had wine at her apartment. Unless he'd rather keep his options open. Ian paused for a moment with his hand on the door, but there was no hesitation in his response - because he didn't need to think about it.
"I already found the one I want." This time, his smile did reach his eyes, and it was all secrets and hunger. If Kiara needed to retrieve a coat, he'd wait for her to do so, then he opened the door and stepped out into the street.

Elijah
"Yellow candy-eyed bunnies. That's really the defining factor for chocolate bunnies," he replied. Arionna smiled, and he kept the grin on his face, polished off his wine because it was there and he didn't have much care to remain sober, even if he wasn't old enough to be drinking in the first place. She's never had one before, "and I like them? They're sweeter dessert kind of wines. It's drinkable, good to start out with if you like things that are sweet."

Arionna de la Babin
"Hm. I don't really like the yellow eyes. They taste like chalk." Her lips tighten, thin a little. "Yes. I know what chalk tastes like."  Not because she willingly ate it either. People can be cruel, especially children.

Did she like sweet things? Certainly. Chocolate, lattes with extra syrup, cakes and cookies...no one should leave the girl alone with a whole coconut cream pie and an available fork. Pumpkin pie was best with a whole can of whipped cream on top, but not necessary; one should never waste a good pumpkin pie over the lack of whipped cream. Though she had an overwhelming preference for meaty foods.

"Drinkable isn't acceptable. Tainted water is drinkable in a survivor setting, but I'd never recommend it to begin with, for the first timer." As if anyone had a 'first time' when drinking something that was required. Her cheeks reddened a little, hands tightening again along the strap of the bag.
"I usually prefer coffee...to other drinks."

Kiara Woolfe
Life was made up of many experiences. Good and bad. There was no rhyme or reason to the order, to how they appeared or how each individual coped with them. Perhaps there's some degree of poetry to the fact the Life Mages drift toward one another despite a crowd of souls.
Perhaps there's divination or divine provenance to it. Or, perhaps, it's simpler than that still. Kiara fetches her coat, Ian holds the door and after a beat, they vanish into the Denver night together.
[And with that, Kiara is out too, ya'll!]