I want you to see it with me. [serafine]

Kiara Woolfe
The drive out to where Annie Pierce had shared a dark moment in the Denver Awakened's history with her was a long one.

Long enough, at the very least that when Kiara Woolfe pulled in to collect Sera, a pair of sunglasses perched low on her nose and the passenger side window lowering with a quiet electronic whirring, it was with the offering of coffee and something sugar-dusted and coconut-covered in a takeaway bag.
A few somethings, to be exact. The Verbena was dressed for the summer; her dark hair pulled away from her face, arms bare to the shoulder and her skin kissed by the sun into a healthy gold.

"Hey - " Serafine's greeting, Kiara leaning across with a red-lipped smile to nudge the door open, her wrists gleaming with silver and stone. " - ready?"

-

The early-afternoon traffic slowed them down only as long as it took to weave out of the city limits; the air pleasant enough that Kiara kept her window half cracked; let it billow and play with their hair as she drove; a hand on the wheel; the other resting an elbow on the window. The roads cutting away into greener, rolling pastures; fenced in property and trickling, but steady outcroppings of trees; nature gradually reclaiming as the mountains loomed in the distance; the turn off into the park kicking up whirls of dust and loose stone as the brunette's hatchback bumped along it, pulling into an empty lot near the Visitor Center.

They weren't the only hikers here, summer bringing steady interest back to the red rock formations and the wonder of 4000 acres. Still, there was a lack of it; the static, steady noise of the city, the instant they stepped outside of the car; slamming doors; Kiara bent to extract a backpack from behind her seat; shrugging it over a shoulder.

"Annie and I hiked a little to get there." Her sunglasses reflected back the cloudless sky; the sun glinting off them as she adjusted the pack.  "This way."


SerafíneDaylight.  Really, who sees Sera in daylight.  And yet, she's sitting on the porch of 719 Corona Street, one of her long legs (not precisely long by objective measures, but something about the way her body is framed conspires to lend to her the illusion of long, long limbs) swinging from the bannister, spine against the brick pilaster, long blond sidecut pulled back into braided ponytail.  Dan's standing there beside her, one hand braced on the brick column, looking down as she's looking up.  Then Kiara pulls up and up she pops, grabbing a little pack and giving Dan an impulsive hug as she leaves.

--

No heels today, but the (fairly dusty) hiking boots Sera wears are essentially her only concession to the great outdoors.  She's still sporting slightly torn fishnets and denim cut-offs short enough that one of the pockets sticks out a bit beneath the straggly hem.  An old Pixies t-shirt (white) over a black bra and the usual bristle of spikes and studs through her elfin ears.  A handful of rings, most prominently the old bronze piece she always wears on her right forefinger.

The pack she lets coil beneath her knees on the floor of the car.  And she: watches, watches, watches the city as it recedes.

--

She seems sober, Sera, as she swings into step behind Kiara, allowing the other woman to both take the lead and set the pace.  Though somehow Sera seems more like a meanderer than an actual hiker, she's pretty sure-footed on uneven ground and actually likes the challenge, the push, the way - as the elevation rises - her heart starts beating, faster.

Not much inclined to conversation for the moment, but it's a sober task they are untaking beneath the bright summer sun.

"How deep are we going in the park?"

Kiara WoolfeShe shouldn't remember the way there as well as she does. Or, no, not should but want to. Remember the way the trail started on a subtle incline and the way the trees seemed to close ranks overhead, becoming a canopy of greens and reds and golds; sunlight speckling through and dappling the track as if to offer its own markers to their progress, Kiara leads them to a trail head, it winds down around the side of a hill; wild grass growing long and bending across the trail; tickling bare legs and striving to reclaim the well used pathway.

There's an abundance of plant-life here and in another time, for another purpose, the Verbena might have wanted to pause and point them out, might have taken a greater pleasure in the sight of a red fox, sighting them and darting over the crest of a distant rocky outcropping. She might have wanted to show Sera things; offer her hand and take her into the expanse of it; the trees; the verdant splendor.

Not today, though.

Not with the way Kiara's focus seems so set, the precision to her movement, the deliberate way she pauses and lifts her chin as if re-aligning herself momentarily with the landscape, the progress of the sun overhead. They head due West. Still - there are points, Sera asks how deep and Kiara stops as they start down into a clearing. There's little in it but scrub land; flowers daring life here and there and in the distance; the beginnings of denser forest; towering pines leaning close.

She stops, the brunette and seems to re-register Sera's presence with a stirring, subtle little smile. Lifts her sunglasses and squints against the sudden infiltration of sunlight into her vision. "The trail ends just past those trees and then we're off the grid. A little. It's - " Kiara looks back, across the field; toward the point where the growth seems older, the trees stretching outward and across the span of the horizon.

"This way. I remember the clearing and then - " She glances back, that smile faltering just a touch. "You can feel it, when we get close. It gets so quiet."

SerafíneFor most of the hike, Sera seems to be content to be quiet and to follow Kiara as Kiara follows the trail.  There's no real potential scramble on the well-worn and well-groomed state park trail, but once they head off the grid, as it were, the angle of ascent steepens.  Kiara removes her sunglasses.  Sera leaves her own on, but she comes to a stop beside the other woman, neat little chin tipped upward, mouth closed.

Takes out a water bottle and takes a swig, offers it to Kiara, after.

Then, takes out a flask and takes another swig.  Doesn't really seem appropriate this deep in the wilderness, but hey, we all have our rituals.

And Sera is starting hers.

--

Passing contact, a hand on Kiara's hip, the brush of Sera's spare frame both against and past her as Kiara's expression falters.  Briefly, the pressure of her closed mouth on Kiara's shoulder.  Yes, that close - then past, though now Sera's gait is even less focused than it was on when they started.  She's inhaling now, see, with a deliberation that feels like ritual, but is not.

Another slug from the flask.  She is eating so little that the first gives her a moment of discordance that would be lovely were it not for their purpose here.  No matter.

She strays ahead now, though so slowly that Kiara can easily take over the lead.  The first supple fibers of her magick threading through the air around them.

SerafíneTime 2 / Correspondence 2.  Starting the divination.  Difficulty: 5.  -2 (merit).  Sharing successes between Time (go to back far enough) and correspondence (to open the range) so going for max.

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (4, 6, 10) ( success x 3 )

Kiara WoolfeClose contact, Serafine's lips on her shoulder; Kiara's fingers find the point of an elbow just for a moment and she holds her; it; the contact; close just for that second. There's a way that she remembers things, Kiara and so much of it she can trace by the memory of touch. The way a body felt close to hers; warm breath against her skin. Lives and thrives inside it, in her own way. The physicality of things - her body, her limits. Those people around her.

Sera moves ahead now, starting to Work and the Verbena stirs to look at her; feels the way the air reacts to it; the way it feels as if it contracts and pulls against it before conceding. Takes a deeper breath in, the brunette and holds it for a moment. They move toward the treeline and into it; the tick of insects in the grass falling behind them; birdsong calling from the treetops and somewhere unseen the sudden kick and scatter of earth as an animal starts away from them.

The gallop of deer, perhaps. A sharp cry as a bird takes flight and shakes the branches overhead.

There's no direct path, here. The terrain becoming uneven and dense; fallen logs and dried leaves; undergrowth crunching beneath their feet as they pick their way through close growth. The trees larger and darker; some with roots that rise and plunge across the ground; gnarled and ancient. The pungent aroma of the earth and pine lingering; breathed in deep as they plot their course. Kiara stops, every so often; points out a snag point underfoot; holds a hand out to help the other woman scramble across a fallen log.

A tiny, trickling silver of fresh water. They pass deeper, deeper and at a point - the silence prevails.

The sounds of the forest begin to ebb as the Verbena predicted and Kiara's progress slows, the density starting to thin; green undergrowth drying; leaves turning into old; hollowed out debris that crumpled and turned to dust beneath their feet. The color seeming to drain from the forest around them as the first dead trunks begin to appear; once, twice.

Then more; distorted and long dead, as if a fire had torn through at some point and left the earth scorched. There's the thick, sickening heaviness to the air Kiara remembers from the last time as they perceive the clearing through the thinning trees eventually. Kiara stops and turns to look at Sera. There's a vaguely stricken quality to her face, the pinch of her mouth down. The lack of color in her cheeks as if the lack of life around them had drained it from the pagan, too.

"It's right here," she offers quietly.

-

Dead, flattened land. Maybe a Grove, once. Certainly a point where nature had once ruled and now - nothing but old, dry earth and tree stumps. The largest in the very center most point; massive; black and twisted as if it had died struggling; roots upheaved from the earth.

The Node Kiara had spoken of, perhaps.

SerafíneContinuing, difficulty +1 for extending and -1 for focus.

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

SerafíneAnd continuing.  (Want 10 successes.)

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (7, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )

SerafíneAnd continuing.

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (2, 8, 8) ( success x 2 )

SerafíneHard to hike and look back.  Harder to hike and Look Back and Back and Back, will bent on swimming against the forward-push of conventional thought and will through the eddies and currents, the strange little whorlpools, the once-was and the left-behind.  She needs that hand now, Sera.  Barks her stupid shins on something else, stumbling now in Kiara's wake, looking: back and back and back and back.

It is almost wholly internal.  The strongest, strangest sense of her resonance now is that between-definitions piece, the one that feels like doorways and thresholds, paths and passageways.  Like possibility.

And she doesn't really see the glade, much, or sense the wrongness or even - for the moment - see the sigils of stress and sorrow in Kiara's eyes.

In the middle of the deadened clearing, Sera stops.  Quiet now, her breathing steady and even, her spare frame still.

She is like this for a long, long time.

--

Coming back is like surfacing from a dive.  Sometimes the absence of pressure makes her feel like she's flying, though on some level she always feels like she's flying, these days.  At least: her right hand.  That ring she does not seem to remove.

But no, listen: she comes to and she shakes her head, clearing away the sensations fogging her perception and stretching back into this time and this place and this body.  "Whoever did this didn't want to be observed.  They cut whatever happened right out of the timeline.  A neat, survial snip.

"Are you sure it was the technocrats?"

They do have other, darker, enemies, after all.

Kiara WoolfeSera comes back in waves, shakes herself loose of the dredges of back then and time ago and it's to find Kiara with her hand pressed to that enormous, blackened wreck of a stump. Her shoulders draw back, hunched in with tension as she slides that palm down the length of what remained.

There's blood on it, somewhere (inside it, too, for those who had perished striving to protect it).

"According to Annie." The Verbena looks back, scopes out the sight of the other woman, turns away and then around; letting her hand fall away from the remains of that wild heart of the Grove; nothing more now than static; a graveyard that even the dead didn't keep on the other side. "They came with machines. And soldiers. They fought over the Node and killed everything in their path to get to it but when it came down to it - " She moves closer to Sera, studies her face and then tilts her eyes to the blighted ground.

Crouches as she had, then. Digs her palm into the earth and raises herself; weighing it; tipping it so it skirts down; carried by the wind as nothing more than specks of rock and dust. "They couldn't take it. It wouldn't bend to them so they killed it, instead. I tried to look across here. To see it from the other side and there's nothing there, either.

There's no trace of anything. The spiritual reflection of this place. Of nature, here." Kiara's expression offers a tiny spasm of grief; knits there; hardens and re-shapes her into something wild and full of unvoiced rage. "It's all gone. If it wasn't them - whatever it was - I hope it died trying."

SerafíneSera's expression is spare in this moment.  Perhaps there is a quiet, answering shadow, some echo of Kiara's evident grief, but no responsive anger, nothing to match the unvoiced rage that sparks and burns in her dark eyes.

The creature looks away, dark eyes ticking thoughtfully on the dry wood surrounding them, then rising, up and up again, to the sky.  Perhaps she is gauging the hour by the passing of the sun.  Maybe she just wants some temporary relief from earthly things.

"Sit."  Quiet, but with this odd little not of requirement.  She's swung her backpack around her body and is digging out the flask again, pulling it out to offer to Kiara.   "I'm going to tell you what it was like, before.  Because time's a fucking illusion, the same as everything else.  Everything that ever was, is now.

"I want you to see it with me."

--

Shares her flask, Sera, and as many stories as she has gathered.  Faces known and faces lost, the strangers who gathered here, who - she will say, without qualification - gather here now.  The threads of stories of strangers, all, until the day wraps itself around to dusk, and shadows gather in the woods all around them, and they rise then, to hike out, and drive home.