etienne [ix ST]

etienne

Some basic info/guidelines:

1. This scene has a very low chance for combat/injury/death.  Even should that occur, this scene, as with basically all my non-SL climax scenes, is nonlethal.

2. I will only prompt you for so many rolls.  However you can ask about them.  Also, if at any point you want to roll for things like Empathy/Awareness/Occult/whatever thing that is a sensory or knowledge based roll you can.  You can poke me in advance to get a difficulty, or, if you roll I can just figure out your successes by counting if there is a difficulty other than standard and it will be NBD.

3. Um.  Have fun?  HAVE FUN!

etienne

 The Ricketson Auditorium has a scattering of people in it when Kiara arrives, but plenty of empty seats are left.  People are seated in little clusters of twos and threes, a few larger clusters of eight or ten people.  The lights on on a medium setting, though not yet at a presentation level low.  Conversations are all quiet, more a low hum of voices than anything discernable immediately above the rest.

There is a gentleman at the podium, reviewing notes.

No one comes to greet Kiara, although a few heads turn briefly when she enters.  Those glances are mostly long enough to establish she isn't someone they're hoping to see, and they return to their conversations.

Kiara

The Denver Museum of Nature and Science was not exactly where one would anticipate finding Kiara Woolfe spending her time.

Which was not to say the brunette had any reason not to find the way cultures adhered to and respected the cycle of life and death and all it encompassed fascinating and worthy of her interest or respect - but rather that this particular lecture (the ancient Egyptian Ushabti and their evolution and use) was of such a specific bent that it seemed unlikely the pagan was enticed by the subject matter alone. She's not greeted when she sets foot into the auditorium but heads do turn.

Brief, surveying glances from strangers that the brunette returns with the slightest upturn of a red-lipped smile. The figure at the podium does draw her focus, the pause in her survey of the room and a beat where she ticks her eyes back toward the low hush of conversations.

Kiara's necklaces offer a softly musical rhythm to her movements as she slides into an empty seat toward the back of the theatre.

There's a folder in the Verbena's hands; she sets it aside as she settles and reaches instead for a small notepad and pen stowed away in her bag. There's a myriad of underlined words and question marks on it ranging from Book of the Dead to hieroglyphics to spiritual possession (accompanied with several bold exclamations). Down the bottom, the time and date of the talk had been added with a slash beneath it and: find out more about Book of Dead and uses tied to offerings.

She scans her eyes over her notes with a frown; there's no doubt what she's managed to unearth so far on her own about Alexander's discovery perturbs her; but there's room for uncertainty. Which, judging from the Verbena's presence here tonight, suggests she's found plenty.

[Oop, Awareness!]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 9) ( success x 1 )

etienne

[Awareness!!!]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 6 ) [Doubling Tens]

etienne

Just as the lights start to dim, one last participant slips into the auditorium.  In a manner similar to Kiara, he looks out of place, dreadlocks and the soft sound of jewelry accompanying his movements, though his jewelry is not the same ringing of metal on metal and crystal but a melody of wood and bone.

Perhaps of more interest to Kiara, there is a sense of magic about him.  Not an Awakened avatar, but Kiara catches the scent of sun-warmed grass as he enters the room.  The sensation of sunlight washing over her skin.

Like Kiara he also slips into a seat toward the back - specifically a seat in the very back row near the main doorways into the auditorium.  He isn't carrying paper or pens, at least not that he pulls out of the backpack that he sets at his feet.

Kiara

The figure who slips in after her has her pen, poised to tap out a slow, absent rhythm momentarily stilling against the page.

The Verbena's eyes shift as he passes by en route to a seat; the dimming lights make him slightly harder to distinguish clearly but Kiara makes a quiet study for a moment before she clears her throat and readjusts her weight in her seat; feigns the motion of re-adjusting her belongings in order to delve into her bag; to curl her fingers around a tiny bag inside it.

The talk is beginning; the lights dipping to focus on the figure on the stage and the brunette keeps them carefully stationed there, even as she reaches out with other senses; the edges of dried earth she cautiously curls inside her palm; the focus and careful breath she pulls into her lungs before expelling it - the stranger brings the sense and surety of magic.

[Just doin' some basic Life/Entropy sensory scanning. Nbd. -1 taking her time, -1 practiced]

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (3, 8, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

etienne

Kiara's magic reaches out and finds...someone human.  Entirely and unremarkably human to his life pattern, no unusual flares as regards Entropy.  Kiara can feel his pulse, the steady, slow pulse of long distance runners and endurance athletes, feel each breath move bruised ribs that have fractured and knit together more than once, feel those breaths tug at his right shoulder which was dislocated and inexpertly set, the distant ache of nearly-healed wounds on his left forearm.  Whatever happened to cause these wounds was relatively recent, probably a matter of weeks ago.

He seems unaware of her study, or possibly unconcerned.  As slides start to play and Daniel Smith begins speaking, the man Kiara studies seems more interested in the presentation than in her.

Kiara

She's not entirely certain what she's searching for when it comes right down to it. The man felt like - something not quite as mundane as she expected tonight. The scent of the summer grass; the warmth of the sun on her skin - maybe it was as much automatic as not these days for the Awakened of Denver. The unknown was not without suspicion - especially of recent days.

The brunette lets her senses expand outward; her resonance unfurling across that space; the wash of that rejuvenating energy an unseen event as Kiara's chin lifts just so when she finds the shape and size of the stranger's pattern; her awareness sliding over him; reading each weakness; recording the strength of his heart; that great muscle beating with steady defiance against the idea it could ever do anything but keep its vessel alive - her pen resumes a subtle motion against the pad perched on a knee.

Tap. Taptap. Daniel Smith is discussing the sacrificial burial of servants with their masters. Taptap. There's old fractures to his ribcage. Wounds on his left forearm. The injury here flares brighter. It's not yet faded as it begins to mend. The tapping pauses again. Kiara's eyes break away from the talk on stage as if she were about to make a notation.

She thumbs back a page; re-reads what she'd noted of Alexander's comments. Straightens where she sits. Daniel is getting into the rhythm of his discussion and the Verbena collects her belongings; skirts low along the aisle and re-situates herself in the back most row - two seats down from the stranger, as a matter of fact.

"Do you mind? I couldn't see over his head." She whispers in a low greeting; voice soft for the presentation on going.

etienne

He sees movement and turns, ready for -

Kiara isn't sure what, exactly.  But whatever he thought that might be, Kiara's murmured explanation and lack of immediate threat seems not to have been it.

He shrugs, with a slight wince that indicates that shoulder wasn't so fond f the movement.  When he settles back down to return his attention to the presentation he keeps Kiara in the edges of his vision.  Curious.  Wary.

But she's not what he's here for.

 etienne
[Oh, chat.  I love how you love to flirt with my NPCs.]

etienne[Reposts]



Kiara

She's not entirely certain what she's searching for when it comes right down to it. The man felt like - something not quite as mundane as she expected tonight. The scent of the summer grass; the warmth of the sun on her skin - maybe it was as much automatic as not these days for the Awakened of Denver. The unknown was not without suspicion - especially of recent days.

The brunette lets her senses expand outward; her resonance unfurling across that space; the wash of that rejuvenating energy an unseen event as Kiara's chin lifts just so when she finds the shape and size of the stranger's pattern; her awareness sliding over him; reading each weakness; recording the strength of his heart; that great muscle beating with steady defiance against the idea it could ever do anything but keep its vessel alive - her pen resumes a subtle motion against the pad perched on a knee.

Tap. Taptap. Daniel Smith is discussing the sacrificial burial of servants with their masters. Taptap. There's old fractures to his ribcage. Wounds on his left forearm. The injury here flares brighter. It's not yet faded as it begins to mend. The tapping pauses again. Kiara's eyes break away from the talk on stage as if she were about to make a notation.

She thumbs back a page; re-reads what she'd noted of Alexander's comments. Straightens where she sits. Daniel is getting into the rhythm of his discussion and the Verbena collects her belongings; skirts low along the aisle and re-situates herself in the back most row - two seats down from the stranger, as a matter of fact.

"Do you mind? I couldn't see over his head." She whispers in a low greeting; voice soft for the presentation on going.

etienne

He sees movement and turns, ready for -

Kiara isn't sure what, exactly.  But whatever he thought that might be, Kiara's murmured explanation and lack of immediate threat seems not to have been it.

He shrugs, with a slight wince that indicates that shoulder wasn't so fond of the movement.  When he settles back down to return his attention to the presentation he keeps Kiara in the edges of his vision.  Curious.  Wary.

But she's not what he's here for.

Kiara
There's a shrug which accounts as much for do what you like as anything and the pagan - does precisely that. With a brief, bright smile that flashes white teeth in the semi-dark. She settles into that seat and deposits her belongings with all the fuss and attempts at discretion that suggest she was entirely what she appeared to be, a slightly over enthusiastic meeting member.

The presence of her notepad again on her knee, the uncapped pen, these all weigh in Kiara's favor and perhaps they even settle some of the stranger's wariness. The cut of the brunette's profile down from him; the focus of her eyes on the stage where there's discussion of the eventual downturn in production and care of the Ushabti as time wore on.

The mention of the Book of the Dead stirs the Verbena slightly; she's aware of the man seated just down from her.

Can feel the coils of her magic still working, the lingering clarity of his pattern; the traces of weakness in it; the pulse and formation of his bone, muscle, blood. Her pen scratches as she makes a final note, the bold slash of it audible as slides change overhead; risks a sidelong glance at the stranger beside her as they do, the nub of her pen poised as if she were about to make another note.

She waits until her attention becomes noticeable and drops her eyes away - the slightest smile edging at the corner of her mouth. It's a game, of course. One she's no stranger to but there's a wholly different reasoning behind it, tonight - he'd winced with the movement of his shoulder - and much like the creature she shares a namesake with might prowl the scents in the air, Kiara keeps him in her sights.

etienne
Etienne does not turn toward Kiara, but he can watch her the same way she now watches him.  Sidelong glances.  A constant awareness.

Kiara smiles and drops her gaze and there is a quiet rumble of a laugh from Etienne.  "Well," he murmurs, too low to be heard by any of the people seated for the presentation even absent the sound of Daniel Smith's microphone-augmented voice.  "You're at least slightly less unsettling company than some I've met in Denver."  That low purr, much as Kiara might expect, does not sound at all like Denver.  Etienne sounds as though he is from somewhere further south, perhaps by way of a few places and possibly without English as a first language.

Kiara
"If I'm considered the least, I'm not sure I'd want to ask where you've been hanging your hat in town," this, offered back by way of a conversational whisper; the brunette's dark eyes shifting to encompass the stranger's hands as he speaks; to rove back to his face and the way the laughter shifts something in him. Offers the barest idea of something more - human. Normal.

She shifts her weight, then, Kiara. Uncrosses to recross her legs; angling her body toward Etienne.

"So, other than a fascination with the burial rituals of the Egyptians - " Here she pauses and purposely smiles; offers the hint of laughter that throws out the idea she finds the notion just a little silly. Magical workings. Books of the Undead, oh, how droll. Taps the edge of her pen against her notepad again, a tiny repetitive rhythm, the drumbeat of the impatient. "What brings you to Denver? You don't sound - " Her eyes tick over him, the suggestion of his attire in the dark.

" - like you're from around here. Which frankly, makes you instantly more interesting to me."

etienne
"I'm travelling to conduct research for my thesis," Etienne says.  "Which is on American folklore and not on Egyptology.  But I couldn't pass this up."  There is something that flickers through his eyes, there and gone again.  Memory?  Amusement?

He glances at where Daniel Smith is wrapping up his presentation.  Weighs the virtues of trying to catch the man to ask him questions or to stay and be questioned by Kiara.  Kiara wins and Etienne turns back toward her and raises an eyebrow.

"If I'm to be cross examined, it would seem only civilized to do it over coffee."

Kiara
It would seem only civilized to do it over coffee.

There's a particular sort of smile that invokes across Kiara's mouth. This brief little flex at the corner as if she's at once pleased and was entirely expectant of the suggestion being made. She pauses in the tapping of her pen against her notepad and with a look cut to the stage where Daniel is winding up his discussion - returns her eyes to Etienne and clicks her pen, flicking closed the notepad in her hand.

"Then let's go for coffee."

She tucks her belongings back into her bag; folds a jacket over an arm and, when the lights go up and a polite smattering of applause issues for Daniel Smith, rises to her feet rather expectantly. Turning briefly back to the stage to join in the show of appreciation before her attention returns to Etienne. There's a pause, that slow, curling smile returning to the Verbena's face.

She holds out her hand; a collection of bracelets slide against the wrist of it; silver and threaded stones.

"I'm Kiara."

etienneEtienne does smile in response to that little hint of a smile from Kiara.  Guarded, perhaps; but there is enough warmth there to hint that a real unreserved smile from Etienne might be something worth seeing.  He leans forward, lifts his bag with his left hand, and settles it over his shoulder.  He's wearing a coat that he never slipped out of, rust-colored suede with dark wooden buttons, and it slips far enough up his forearm that Kiara catches a glimpse of the edges of those wounds.

He reaches out to take her hand with his right hand, and this motion is a little slower, though still smooth.  If Kiara hadn't already sensed that injury to his shoulder, she may easily have overlooked it.  Wood and bone beads tumble into each other with soft sounds at his wrist, here and there muffled by thin strips of leather.

"Etienne."

His eyes scan the room and then settle back on Kiara.  "The only reliably quiet place I know of for coffee is my hotel room.  Perhaps, knowing Denver, you might have another suggestion?"  Is he playing?  There might be a hint that he is playing in his voice.  In the lingering half-smile.

Kiara
There are a dozen tiny tells that a person offers when being introduced for the first time.

The hesitation before taking another person's hand, the strength and surety of their grip; the governing hand used to shake and gesture. The tiniest glimpse of discomfort where movement twinges an injury. For most, these wouldn't strictly be things to focus on; wouldn't draw the eye as readily as that (still guarded) smile Etienne offers. For a woman with Kiara Woolfe's background in human physiology; the grid-work that made up all the working parts of the body; the ways to heal and detect.

To understand and rework the fundamental energies that knitted every detail together. She notices, perhaps she wouldn't have made as directly a record of it; the slight protracted movement of his right arm, but she does note it; somewhere banked in that smile and those dark, assessing eyes, she files it away.

Adjusts her bag over a shoulder and steps out into the aisle; there are people departing now; slipping out of the doors, some discussing the presentation in quiet, conversational tones. Kiara catches snippets here and there as they do, mention of the ushabti, the culture of the preservation and admiration for the next world, she turns and directs Etienne a little smile when he offers his hotel room as a destination.

"I know a few places nearby. There's a little café about a block away. Probably less expensive than whatever your minibar has to offer." This, with a brief, surveying tick of her eyes. She cocks her head to invite him to walk with her; pushes open and holds the door.

"Etienne, is that French?"

etienne
Etienne laughs, and for a second the only place to catch a hint of wariness is in his eyes.  "My hotel is not so classy as to have a minibar.  It does have a very tiny but serviceable coffee maker."  He follows Kiara, almost but not quite alongside her.

"Anthropology grad students are...not generally terribly well funded.  The only palaces I am ever likely to sleep in have been abandoned for centuries and most likely already looted.  Possibly without ceilings.  Though potentially still less creepy than the place I'm in now which at least arguably has a roof.  And a mystery creature in the walls I have named Claude.  Or possible Claudette."  The door-holding earns Kiara a brief smile.

"Etienne is indeed French, one of many incarnations of a name likely more familiar to you as Steven.  It means crown."  There is a slight pause.  "And anthropology grad students are only as interesting as Indiana Jones if you prefer esoteric facts shared over a lazy Sunday afternoon tea to even the concept of giant stone death orbs."  Etienne sighs.  "Granted, I've found people who have never actually encountered giant stone death orbs tend to find them somehow charming."

"This may be the quickest coffee and interrogation ever, when you figure out I am very, very boring."  Very, very boring.  Of course he is.

Kiara
The café Kiara had mentioned is, true to her word, about a block from the building they exit. A quaint little building shuffled in between two others that served what it deemed the best pie in the area late into the evening. There were a selection of them sitting along the counter under plastic covers and the door, when Kiara pushes it open; jingles; lace curtains offering the establishment a deceptively homey atmosphere for its location.

The enticing scents of coffee and pastries fill the air inside and retro-fitted booths are pressed along one wall; each housing a polished napkin dispenser and a pair of menus carefully lined up between it and the salt and pepper shakers. The image is one of small town charm somehow superimposed over a city; a waitress carrying a pad and bearing two trays smiles at them as she passes, nudging a swinging door into the kitchen open and vanishing inside.

Kiara almost seems jarringly out of sync as she slides them into an empty booth, depositing her coat and bag and swinging long legs under the table to cross. With her bright red lipstick and dark, expressively made up eyes, she looks as if she'd suit a nightclub far easier than sitting in an old fashioned diner poring over the options for pie.

"So," she prompts once they're settled; drumming the fingers of one hand over the lamented menu and directing Etienne as much curious study as the options for coffee. "You're just a poor Anthropology student in town to conduct research for your thesis." A beat, Kiara's eyes rove over his features. "Which is on American folklore," she repeats slowly, as if carefully unraveling him by sifting through his story, or at the least the pieces he's offered so far.

"And the talk tonight was just - " she gestures with a flick of her wrist, fingers curling against her palm. " - irresistible subject matter." She drops her eyes to the menu. "You should try the cherry pie."

etienne
Etienne settles carefully into the booth opposite Kiara.  He scans the room, taking in the just so menus and the way the decor does not seem to be exactly what one would expect in a place Kiara went for coffee.  His bag ends up resting on the bench beside him now, rather than at his feet.

"It is always so nice when someone pays attention," Etienne says with a smile.  He glances down at the menu for a few seconds, and he looks upward without really tilting his face back up, which leaves him regarding Kiara half through his eyelashes.
"You are...let me guess...an investigative reporter solving a millennia-old mystery that involves mummies?  Possibly a pharaoh.  Definitely a mysterious prophetess.

"Which leaves me to wonder why you're so interested in me.  I can only only surmise that I actually possess the blood of an ancient line of mystical kings.

"Wait.  That is not at all how investigative journalism works, now that I think about it.

"Perhaps there is a stolen mummy.  A boring, definitely not cursed, stolen mummy."

KiaraHer eyes flick up when he starts to scrutinize her, a slow, satisfied little shifting of her lips happening. The edge of a corner up, then the other. It offers the impression she's amused at his attempts to unravel her in turn. Kiara's fingers remain settled on top of the menu as she holds his gaze for a moment. "Nancy Drew, that's me. You got it," she murmurs and there's a gleam in those dark eyes that doesn't quite seem to match the tone in her voice.

The Verbena sits a little straighter when a waitress approaches to take their orders and, handing her menu off afterwards, redirects her attention to him. "I'll be honest, I'm actually not so interested in the mummies, per say - " there's a beat and Kiara's smile fades a little. "More about the idea of servitude beyond death. The talk tonight mentioned ushabti." She draws her fingers over a salt dispenser, Kiara, feels stray granules beneath the tips of her thumb and forefinger as she lets her attention settle on Etienne's face.

Flicking over it.

"There's a story I'm working on that involves some appropriation of Egyptian culture." Not entirely a lie, though Kiara's pulse jumps a little at the threads she's weaving together. "I suppose I thought it might be beneficial to get thoughts on the matter. You're studying folklore, right? What are yours on the idea of life beyond death? All that talk of spiritual power, life beyond physical death - it has to be something you come across a lot in different cultures."

Kiara's eyes tick over his figure. "Right?"

etienneEtienne orders coffee and, per Kiara's recommendation, cherry pie.  Hands off his menu as well.  His eyes linger on the waitress while she's there, close to him and cutting off his exit from the booth, but there is no evident increase in tension.  Only awareness.

"The appropriation of Egyptian culture?"  Etienne studies her.  "I'm far from an Egyptologist and I'd need to know more about your specific story to meaningfully comment.

"Broadly speaking - spiritual power and life after death are recurring themes within cultures.  The ways in which spiritual power is acquired and wielded is variable, as is the perception of spiritual power itself.  And the thoughts on the permanence of the soul and what becomes of it are, similarly, varied."

There is a slight pause.  "Are people stealing artifacts or something?"

Kiara"In a manner of speaking." There's a beat and Kiara's fingers draw back from the dispenser she'd been toying with. The edge of a smile returns. "Hieroglyphics, mostly. That is, they're being used in ways that suggest maybe someone thinks they can harness that."

Their coffees arrive and the brunette's attention dips to her coffee, it's black and the Verbena adds no sugar to it but merely stirs it, her brows contracting momentarily in thought. "I suppose I'm just wondering where the line is. Between fiction and reality." She taps the edge of the spoon against the cup and her eyes shift back to the stranger across from her, rove his face intently.

"If someone has enough belief that they can use that power, can it transcend from folklore into - " She lifts her cup up, cradles it and takes a sip. " - well, they say belief is a powerful tool. What do you think?" The Verbena's gaze slips, then. Returns to his right shoulder, where she knows now there's the scarring of a dislocation, down further to the arm she knows bear fresher wounds. There's a deliberation to the way she looks at his arm for a moment before she pulls her eyes away, up.

"Impossible, right?"

etienneEtienne adds cream to his coffee, lots of cream, but no sugar.  He stirs his coffee slowly.

"Well.  That may veer into psychology more than anthropology.  There are studies that suggest belief affects the body as regards things like cancer or pain management.  Placebo effects and so on.  Could someone harness the power of hieroglyphics that way?  I don't see why not."

"As to what you seem to be asking...as an anthropology grad student, I have to say that answer varies by culture.  By the standards of this one, no.  Nor is there any compelling scientific evidence for such a thing.

"Dive into philosophy though, and we can discuss the very nature of reality and our perceptions of it."  He smiles a little.  "Personally, I've always found that the word impossible was more of a dare than a limitation."

KiaraSomething about that, what he says, the idea of impossibility being nothing more than a dare, draws a noise from the woman across from him. The brunette with her dark looks and curling, quicksilver smiles. It's the sound of agreement and a wide smile, the flash of white teeth coupled with it.

Their waitress returns after a delay, sets a napkin and cutlery down with lazy precision in front of Etienne and leaves a slice of pie in her wake. Kiara hadn't ordered any but she does gesture at it when it arrives and leans back; fingers curled around her coffee up; palming it close and drawing a leg up, a knee half folded over her body. "I agree with you. I think anything is feasible but then - I have quite the imagination." Her eyes drop to his hands, watch the way they move, the way he uses (or neglects to use) them for articulation when he speaks.

"How long are you in town for? Maybe if I need a source of information, or - " She smiles, a brief, bright thing. There's something about the way she paints her mouth that deep red and wields smiles like blades that can make the appearance of them startling, a little unsettling. " - a fellow pie enthusiast, I can tempt you out again.

You should give me your phone number." A beat, Kiara sets her near empty coffee cup down; there's an imprint on the rim where her lips have touched it. A smear of red against the creamy white china. "Or at least a last name."

etienneEtienne murmurs a thank you to the waitress when she sets down the pie.  He waits until the waitress has retreated to continue speaking, eyes on Kiara as she curls up.

"Anything...there are some things that are likely not possible, at least for me.  But I think we lose more by refusing to try than by failing to succeed."  He smiles, less guarded, and starts to gesture with the fork he's just picked up.  There is a little tug of his brows and he instead takes a bite of the pie.  He has the scars and the wounds to prove that taking impossibility as a dare isn't the safest of mentalities.

"It's good.  Where I grew up pie mostly came in peach and pecan.  I am probably one of the only people in Denver who would think of cherry as exotic."

Kiara smiles, edged and gorgeous, and asks for his number.  Etienne laughs softly.  "Delacroix."  He sets his fork down, reaches into his bag, and pulls out a pad of paper and a fine-tipped pen.  He writes his name, only his first name, in a fine script out of century-old letters.  Adds a phone number.

"I am," he says as he tears that page off and slides it across the table to Kiara, "In town until I am not.  That's really all I know."

KiaraThere's a little flex there, at the edge of Kiara's mouth.

The muscles reflecting amusement at his apparent concession that the pie was actually rather good. She stays sitting back for a moment until he sets the fork down and reaches into his bag for a pad. She uncurls herself, then. A rattle of bracelets and charms and the dull clink of lengths of silver hitting more. The collection of them, the adornments the brunette wears are mostly decorative; chains and tiny, colored stones but here and there among them for the discerning eye there's heralds to something of the woman's beliefs.

Her inclinations, if nothing else. No crosses or pentagrams but - a feminine figure with arms raised high in supplication to the heavens; a white wolf carved out of some precious stone (perhaps crystal or moonstone) howling to the skies, an amethyst stone of a larger cut; older; somehow more elegant housed inside tiny claws; shaped for scrying, perhaps. She watches him write and accepts the page as he slides it across; her eyes tracing the shape of the letters on the page.

"Etienne Delacroix. You have beautiful writing." She holds the paper between her fingers for a minute, Kiara, as if she meant to imbibe some hidden meaning from it, then carefully folded it and set it into her bag; drawing out the tiny notepad she'd been scribbling notes on earlier. "This is my number." Kiara's handwriting was bold, lavish loops and large lettering spidering across the page in blue ink as she tears it off and holds it out between her fingers.

"I should probably get going. Things to do, mysteries to solve." She lets her eyes flit over him one final time, smilingly. "You know how it goes. But if you think of anything before I do, you can get in touch. Let me know."

etienneEtienne smiles.  "If there is an afterlife in which the dead can hear us, somewhere my grandmother is very pleased you noticed."  He doesn't sound sad, only amused and a little pleased.  He seems not at all uncomfortable speaking about the dead.

"I don't even know what you're investigating, but if I come across some rogue cult or a flyer for a pie eating contest, I will definitely call."  He smiles again.  "Good luck."

of storms and rejuvenation. [elijah]

Elijah

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

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

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

Elijah got up and went to get something to drink.

Wait, not drink.

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

"Ugh."

Kiara
[Awareness!]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A beat, she looks considering.

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

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

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

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

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

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

A beat.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

"Now see-"

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

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

Kiara
He figured it was a foregone conclusion.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The storm and the rejuvenation it can offer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Should he push? Will he push?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Almost soothing).

"But I get that, too."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Thanks, Kiara."

presumptuous. [elijah, arionna]

Arionna de la Babin
It is hot.

It's the blandest and simplest thing anyone could say about a day like today. But it was true. It was hot. Too hot for someone like Ari, who by now, dressed in all black to avoid the embarrassment of mixing colors that made her look like a clown. She didn't know they were black; she simply trusted that the person who bought them for her followed her specifications.

It is hot. And it's the sort of hot that doesn't even have much wind with it to ease the heat. It's at least not very humid, but god... if only a breeze could come by.

Which brings us to the park. It's a place people go to walk, play, sing, romance, and all sorts of human activities that, someone like Ari, tends to avoid. So why exactly then was she sitting with her legs curled to her side under her skirt, her sandals off to the side, and a blanket beneath her? Why was she sitting with her head tilted forward, those dark shades blocking out the sun from her sightless eyes, and her hair flowing in soft waves around her face? Why exactly was she wearing her three raven necklace? And a bracelet of some sort of stone at her wrist...

Why exactly was she sitting with a lap containing several different crystals of various colors? Why was Arionna sitting there, in the open, with her stick closed up beside her, and barely moving save for the lifting of one crystal; rubbing ti between her palms, her lips whispering to it.

It was a mystery for many people, and perhaps she was written off as insane or one of those new agers.

ElijahYou ever notice the various uses for a skill you don't have when someone has made it abundantly clear how desperately you needed to learn it? Since his meeting with possibly the most important (and intimidating, and shiny, but important) people he's ever had the fortune (or misfortune) of meeting, he had a time line. Someone hadn't been specific that he had to learn Ars Virium- Forces- within a week, but frankly Elijah wanted to make a good impression. Or, at the very least, just get it out of the way because he'd been dragging his feet about it and it was like someone told him if he didn't take the damned history class he wouldn't get a degree so he needed to learn the freaking material and ugh he never wanted more than anything for someone to actually think well of him.

Not a need to belong, but something in a similar vein. Not quite the right word, not the appropriate definition, but words were failing right now and it was hot and he was pretty sure if he would hasve just learned the freaking sphere earlier on he would have been able to at least urge a breeze along and he didn't speak the language of the spirits and there wasn't a single epiphling or thought of wind on the air.

He saw Arionna, he bridged the gap. He'd just gotten off work, and business casual did not breathe well.

There is a blond, nearly-six-foot-tall flop to the ground, crumples down knees-hips-elbow shoulder-head-back,down.

"..."

Exhale.

Hi, Elijah.

Arionna de la Babin[alertness! look at my shiny new alertness pt!]

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

Arionna de la Babin[awareness]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 6, 7, 7, 8) ( success x 4 )

Arionna de la BabinShe feels him before he even drops. And when he drops there is a faint, very light scent of his perspiration in the air. Of course the entire park smelled of it on some level, so it wasn't much information. But she knew he was there because something others couldn't feel was so strong (or perhaps her spider sense was exceptionally sharp) that she couldn't ignore it even if she had wanted to.

Ari lowered her hands into her lap slowly and canted her head just a little to the left, and indication that she had noticed he was there. "Elijah." She did not say it as if it were a question. Even if it was something she was unsure of, she didn't phrase it as such. No. It was with certainty. That was how a person showed confidence.

"Did you fall?" The sound of his dropping was not in question. The cause was. She had no idea his life was difficult right now, and that he felt pressured to appeal to someone's sensibilities. She only knows that he is on the ground for some reason that she is not aware.

Arionna reached for her stick and used it to poke where he was just a little. "I hope you haven't died. I'm not in a position to hide your body."

ElijahShe pokes, he rolls a little. She pokes again, and he moves but settles back into place where he was. Kind of like a much more charismatic dead body, or a much less charismatic one. Elijah didn't actually know how charismatic a dead body might be, he had never really questioned it. He smells like toner and incense and like notebook pages and there hs a hint of chalk- the barest hint of chalk, but that was neither here nor there.

It wasn't the heat, or the lack of humidity. He was accustomed to heat, he missed heat. he would have welcomed this a week ago if the air was something that he could have chewed on but the reality of having People (capital P) in town and Parents (capital P again) was something that left a completely awkward taste in his mouth. He exhaled and rolled over into a position that he could actually look at Arionna... or, more accurately, avoid being poked more.

"I'm having one of those months where everything decides to happen," why, yes, Elijah, things do happen it's the nature of things, "you seemed like a safe place to faceplant."

A beat.

"Attuning yourself to your stuff?"

Arionna de la Babin"Hm. I couldn't possibly understand your situation. Consider it fortunate that it happens within the span of a lunar cycle and not, shall we say, half of one, or less. So difficult to cram so much misfortune in so little time." Her lips curled at one corner and she let out a small chuckle. "I have never heard someone use the word 'safe' and my person within the same sentence. I suppose I'm flattered. It is safe for you here though. You are a rare person for it."

"Attuning?" Question, curiosity. "No. Attempting to discover other means of using my magic, and understand it. Some cultures use rocks, specific rocks, as a means of amplification. That and I have a difficult time obtaining....darker... sorts of ingredients, among other things."

She let out a breath of frustration. "But while I know the rocks have parts of the gods within them, I'm not certain how to use them. I've always been far better at things that breath than those that don't."

Ari put her stick back down beside her. "So what misfortune is following you this month?"

Elijah"I have not gained the ire and enmity of you, dear lady of shadows, and for that? I am grateful. Because I don't want to faceplant somewhere else. As with all things, this misfortune is entirely my own doing," he gestures at something. There's a hint of a breeze when he does, but dies down when he stops flailing.

Elijah sits up, and Arionna can hear the rustle of fabric. Decency be damned, he's ditching some of the things that are strictly unnecessary in terms of clothing. Dress shirts can go be somewhere else right now. "Wouldn't the intent be big there? I mean, quartz has always been something associated with the amplification of intent if I'm understanding correctly, amethyst was for healing and moonstone for dreaming and- eh..." he is trying to wrestle his way out of his shirt, still working, still working, "what would you work with ideally?"

He shrugs again, "I don't get things without pulses, though, so I don't think I could be much help there yet." Yet. There is a yet there.

"People from Kalen's tradition showed up and interviewed me, right? Felt things out, tried to figure out if I'm worthwhile apprentice enough to go from minorly a prospect to a legitimate prospect and I got past that part but there's stuff with the guts of the whole freaking tradition that I missed because- y'know, a forest for the trees thing. You ever study something and then realize you forgot the most incredibly basic part of the process?"

"And then, I was supposed to visit my parents, but they have this thing where they're like Oh, we'll come visit you if we don't hear from you like it's some big, looming threat of invasion-" like his parents were storming the beaches of Normandy "-and I thought I was going to have time to come down but I get a call yesterday and they're like Our plane lands in five days, we booked a hotel, come pick us up at- and all I want to do at this point is scream because I'm supposed to hear back from the big Tradition guys in a week and the thought of my magical life and my non magical life overlapping is going to make me vomit."

A beat.

"And Jenn is going out of town to go visit her family, and then going upstate to Fort Collins because of a job thing. So my interference is tapping out."

Arionna de la Babin"That is part of the equation yes. Intent matters as each thing has the predominant traits of one god or the other. But I can't push with intent if I don't understand the simple  act of doing it." Her brows lift a little behind her glasses. "Organic things. Living things. I prefer the remains of things long dead. Hair, bones, blood, organs... you know. It's easiest to connect life with life, no matter how distant, than it is to connect nonlife with life. We are not the same as the rocks. We do have similar energies, but we have what stones and crystal can never have, and that makes it far more difficult to channel, I feel, through them than through the paw of a coyote, or the hair of a horse. Blood is the easiest of all."

"But. You're simplifying stones, in the same manner as so many new agers do. They have multiple purposes, just as each god is not the god of one thing, but many. The Morrigan was not just a goddess of war, but of sovereignty, among others. People only forget the main part of what a god or thing symbolizes, never the others. Amethyst is not just suggested to be healing, but also of protection. It's powers were meant more of the mind, less of the physical. But again, simplicity."

"I suppose I may. Lavinia attempts to teach me the fundamentals that I never picked  up myself, so I suspect missing the basic principles is possible. I suppose you'll need to dive into the principles of your teachings. I will try to help you, where I can, limited as I am."

Arionna went quiet, listening to the trouble with his parents. The trouble with Jenn wandering off. The trouble with Elijah being on his own with his parents.

"I'll take her place."

She says it like it's decided already. "I can keep them occupied while you tend to your magical affairs when you need to. While I may be capable of navigating on my own, I'm not without the ability to play the invalid when necessary. And your father likes books does he not? I recall a mention of it. I can show him the hole in the wall places I've come across. If he's anything like you, he might see it as an adventure."



ElijahHe opens his mouth to say something, but then closes it because, for some reason, Elijah thinks himself better for it, or perhaps does not have the energy to discuss his quiet, but slightly noin-quiet displeasure at being generalized. Or a point not being left alone, or... something. Whatever the case, he doesn't pick at it.

"There's a thing, though, like, this entire art of working with things that are non-living and it's really freaking impressive. Again, totally something I don't know how to do, but maybe something I should pick up, there's stuff that I haven't ventured into and, realistically, if I'm going to try and understand the fundamental truth of the universe there isn't really a reason not to study something.

"But I get it, no need to overly simplify a definition in order to make it fit your purposes when, in reality, the concept you're working with is multifaceted so why only polish one? Jealousy and jealousy," he says the word, but it's clear that when he does say it  he is pushing on multiple meanings. Ones that may not always come to mind.

"I'd honestly just like someone to study with. Even if we're not studying the same thing, I need someone to keep me accountable, I don't know how Kalen stands it, I'm a fucking ping pong ball."

"And I'd like that, the company. And he does like books, and I'm definitely going to need someone who can find excuses to make my mother not hover around my apartment because she ahs a bad habit of exploring."

Arionna de la Babin[perf +cha difficulty +1 for not having performance]

Dice: 3 d10 TN7 (2, 6, 7) ( success x 1 )

Arionna de la Babin"When I say work hard..." She retracted her hand quickly, using her other to try to locate her bag. "I do mean it. We will need a place to study your ..whatever it is exactly...somewhere quiet and without distraction. I prefer the library, but our studies may be too sensitive for that. Regardless, I won't make it easy." If there was one virtue she had when it came to learning, it was studying. At least Lavinia had an apt student willing to put in the hours to understand.

"Knowing that, do you still wish to study with me?"

She placed the hair in her coin purse once she found it and snapped it shut tightly. She took in a breath and curled her hand sin her lap, tucking in her shoulders a bit shyly. "Well..with my momma in the asylum.. I mean, I've always wondered..you know..what it'd be like...to have a mother around. To go shopping with. And now, now that I can't see.." She tucked herself in just a little. "Who will help me shop for something a bit brighter?"

Arionna de la Babin"Someone is bound to be skilled in nonliving. I've never had a talent for it myself. They're all so... boring. There's no thought, no feeling...there is no behaving. They almost..lack duality. I suppose that's why I dislike them. There is nothing ugly or beautiful to them in the same way that there is with something that breathes, in a manner of speaking."

"If you study with me, you will work hard, Elijah. You won't be ping-ponging anywhere. You'll focus, and you do what must be done, no matter the length of time. And if you don't..." Arionna leaned in slowly, reaching her hand out to slide through the air until she found his face. There she moved her fingers into his hair, touching the golden strands until she found a strand or two, not too much, but just enough, and she plucked it. "I'll make life difficult for you. You know I will."

"When I say work hard..." She retracted her hand quickly, using her other to try to locate her bag. "I do mean it. We will need a place to study your ..whatever it is exactly...somewhere quiet and without distraction. I prefer the library, but our studies may be too sensitive for that. Regardless, I won't make it easy." If there was one virtue she had when it came to learning, it was studying. At least Lavinia had an apt student willing to put in the hours to understand.

"Knowing that, do you still wish to study with me?"

She placed the hair in her coin purse once she found it and snapped it shut tightly. She took in a breath and curled her hand sin her lap, tucking in her shoulders a bit shyly. "Well..with my momma in the asylum.. I mean, I've always wondered..you know..what it'd be like...to have a mother around. To go shopping with. And now, now that I can't see.." She tucked herself in just a little. "Who will help me find something

Elijah"Do you promise?" he purrs, should be intimidated but she can practically hear the grin on his face and remember what it looks like and there is. She pulls out a few strands of hair, but it's deliberate. He knows. He knows something will come of it later and perhaps he's more invested in the chase in finding out what will happen there.

"All my experience in things that are nonliving comes from things that are once living, and matter is... like... it hasn't been alive since whatever it once was degraded itself into carbon atoms. I knew sme people who used to understand it, but Patience is gone now, and Alicia-" he stops there, brushes it off, "-she had things to do."

He doesn't talk about Alicia. Not often. Brushes it off and pretends that this isn't a thing because you don't talk about previous lovers and people who wreck your world. It hadn't been long enough.

"I think, though," changes subjects quickly, "that my mother would probably be better with a girl. YOu're not likely to shoot up or need to be picked up somewhere weird so she might actually like you."

Arionna de la BabinShe leaned back just a little, pressing her palms in the ground as she did. "You sound excited by the prospect, but I promise I won't make it enjoyable. It'll be something you feel, right in the back of your head, behind your eyes. A dull ache, perhaps. Something..annoying but not too terrible. It will vanish sometimes, when I've forgotten, but when it returns it will bring something else with it. Maybe..maybe I'll make the light hurt, or the sounds deafen. Maybe I'll take your eyes momentarily. But I won't make it nice Elijah. If you wish to study, it won't be a game you'll want to play..because I'll win. "

She can hear the pause in his voice; the way he stops, refuses to continue on. She doesn't need to ask to know that something is there, something that hurts. They both have their pains, and Ari won't put salt in his just for her own curiosity, not now anyway. "Some 'matter' was never alive once. I mean certainly oil and coal were, but the rocks of the mountains and canyons? They were never alive. They were always part of the land, given parts of the gods, but not the part that mattered. The trees are closer to them than we will ever be and even then, it isn't very close at all."

Ari sighs softly. "I don't get on particularly well with people, especially mothers, but I can pretend long enough to give you leeway. " Ari leaned forward again, sliding her legs to the opposite side. "No, I don't engage in drugs, if that's what you're saying. And weird is a rather relativistic term, don't you think? Weird to me is not weird to you, perhaps. Either way, I wouldn't count on her liking me, so much as perhaps liking the me I can give her, and vomit over later."

Elijah"I fear, dear lady, that you under-estimate me.  You think I would take such pains, such miseries, such slights... as though, at the end, whatever horrors you hath wrought are not something that I did not willingly invite, and that should purpose find itself greater that one's will would be truly subjugated," he says it like he's flirting, because he is, but there's something there, a delight, a joy, something that wasn't quite any of these things like a challenge has been laid before him and he would meet it if only because he wanted it to be so. "So when I say... do you promise, I wouldn't dream of you being nice. But don't readily assume that I would so easily give a victory. What good is the taste of something that isn't earned?"

Oh, but he's delighted. Oh, but he speaks and he is almost obviously delighted. He rolled over on his side, looked at her from the new angle and he can't stop smiling. He might just sit up, might speak, might do a number of things but there is a joy in that little bit of antiquated something, and somewhere there was a joy. True joy, yes, at the threat of legitimate challenge. Even if it was something he genuinely wanted to happen, he couldn't leave himself alone. Sometimes fighting for the sake of the movement.

Always unrest, this one.

"And it's good that you don't expect my mom will like you, because generally? As a rule? She doesn't like anything. If the question is Will your mom like-, it doesn't matter what the rest of the question is. The answer is no."

Arionna de la BabinHer brows knit and her lips purse. "Fine. Then perhaps I'll just ignore you until you finish your studies appropriately. Or maybe I'll be sickeningly sweet and follow you around like a lost puppy. I'm capable you know, no matter how disgusting it is. No matter how I do it, I will win. There is no doubt in that. You will lose. Everyone has a weakness, a true weakness. If I must use yours..." Ari is serious because she never takes studying lightly. She prides herself on her intellect. Still, she enjoys the sound of his enjoyment, the pleasure that just glides from him.

"How is it then that you became as you are? You are the opposite of that. You like almost everything and everyone.Besides, she likes you, and that's good enough."

"And it was Stephen King that your father very much enjoyed yes? Are there any bits of information I'll need concerning them. Places to prod, topics to steer clear of, food allergies..."

Elijah"Ugh!" he laughs, covers his face and is back on his back again, "both of those things are simultaneously the worst things you could ever, ever do to me. If you could be attached at the hip and overly affectionate and completely ignoring me I think I would die. I think you would have literally found the thing that would break me."

He does laugh, though, takes a second to take it all in and just reset because the idea of Arionna coming over to his house and sitting on his table and playing with his hair while he's trying to study and whatcha doooooin'? was just disturbing enough that he couldn't wipe the thought from his mind. It wasn't welcome, either, because he after a point he really probably couldn't stand that much attention because he can't multitask that well. He can devote himself to fiftteen different things, but they are fifteen different things in quick succession.

"She does like me, and for that I am thankful because I'm pretty sure my mom could be really mob-enforcer if she wanted to be," he said, "and it was Stephen King. He's not allergic to anything, he eats Cajun food so really food allergies aren't a problem. Most topics are good ones, if he doesn't want to talk about something he'll tell you, he's got a pretty long fuse- he raised me so he kinda has to."

Arionna de la BabinAri grinned slowly. "Then that is what I'll do. I'll be exceptionally annoying, and then, when you decide to reciprocate, I'll ignore all your advances. I'll never leave your side Elijah. Ever. I'll be with you, always. Until you study harder. I wonder, did Kalen ever punish you in such a way? I'm sure if he had you'd be a much better student."

"Patience... is a trait one does need to handle you. I admit it. I still haven't decided if I find that to be a good trait, or a bad one. I think one needs to also be able to think differently...like a squirrel, or a chipmunk. A pet chipmunk." Ari put her hands in her lap and leaned forward just a little, adjusting her place on the ground simply for a change of pace. "You'll likely need to come get me you know. I suppose I could take a cab, but I have a feeling that I won't be given much advance notice of where to meet you. "

"Oh." The thought dawned on her. "What about the waffle place we were at some time ago? It wasn't particularly flashy, but the food was good."

Elijah"Oh no, Kalen gave me enough rope to hang myself with and then was like you understand why what you did was a bad idea, right? After I'd done something painfully awkward and then focused on, you know, good behaviors and rewards and stuff," he said, then nudged Arionna from his laying-down position, "and I will have you know I am as fantastic student when I want to be. And... y'know... he was pretty much, and is pretty much, a zero judgment teacher. He's kind of fucking awesome."

A sigh, a smile, there's fondness there. THere is definite fondness there, even though he gives the man trouble. Even though he has made him look bad for the last year. Even though he has made Kalen probably want to pull his hair out more than half a dozen times in a week.

"Are you insinuating that I stuff my face with whatever chipmunks eat?" he teased, "because it's true. And I can come get you, I might even rent a car because Jenn's gonna be gone and I kind of have to tell my parents that I spent the car money on a bed."

Arionna de la Babin"Why is it that I find that hard to believe? You? A good student?" She moved her head a little towards his nudge, having a clearer image or idea of where he was at that moment. "You've never struck me as studious. I suppose if I dangled a half naked individual at the end of a string, I could see you as studious."

She knows, hears in his voice how he feels. It's not unusual to hear something that Ari would consider to be unpleasant. It's her own jealousy. She'll use that some day to fuel her magic, but not today.

"Seeds. Nuts. Berries. You do stuff your face. With what... well I'm not certain it's food matter. Unfortunately you don't have their little tails. I find those to be adorable in their own right. I might...have more affection if you had a chipmunk tail. Maybe one day I'll give you one." Ari smiles softly to him. "You can drive mine. I can't drive it now, and it's been sitting at the house for some time. It's economical. It'll save you money in the end."

Elijah"I am a multilayered parfait of interpersonal traits, thank you very much. My definition may encompass being hedonistic and distractable and a multitude of other things but that does not rule out the fact that I am, in fact, actually good at learning things. I just don't study the way you and Jenn do," he said, shrugged a little and it made the grass under him rustle.

"And I'll drive the car if you promise to take a rain check on giving me a tail. I figured I was more golden retriever than chipmunk, anyway."

Arionna de la Babin"You're a type of dessert? I hope you at least had the decency to bring chocolate with you then, else I think you're a very sad parfait." She reached her hand along the grass to lightly find his face, then pressed a finger on his nose. "Being good at learning is not the same as being studious. Being studious requires a great deal of discipline and fortitude. It requires diligence and motivation. It's far more like a marathon that never truly ends."

"That does not mean that an individual can't be 'good' at 'learning.' The potential, the capacity can be present and never tapped. Like an artist. You might see someone who is good at drawing, but what good is it if they never truly apply themselves and improve? To be a better artist they need to have discipline and fortitude, to keep going in their work when others give in. That way their work grows and strengthens, and such potential becomes reality."

"I have no doubt you are 'good at learning.' Somehow I doubt you'd be where you are if you weren't. But if you can be better, Elijah. Why not? If you learn how to study in two ways, instead of one, then you are more versatile, strong, more capable than those who stop at one. "

She laughed a little. "Well I can't do it now. But someday I might, for my own enjoyment. I'm not overly fond of dogs. Wolves I like, but while they are canines, they are not that similar to the domestic dog. They're not as...obedient. "

Elijah[Manip+sub: 3-2-1, flippant!]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

Arionna de la Babin[perc +emp]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )

ElijahHe's normally good enough to actually look and gauge tone. He's usually good at looking for what people are saying and what they actually mean, saying what he actually wanted to say with the things he intended on using to reiterate his point. He can be very good with words when he needs to be, or when he wants to be... but like so many things about Elijah Poirot, it is inconsistent.

"Yeah, I can't really argue on definitions when it comes to the word studious, it kind of insists on a lot of deliberation and diligence," he tells her, then grins, covers pride and bruises in  amanner he's always done- and done well "-but I will have you know, parfait does not require chocolate. It more-often-than-not involves fruit, though. I like to think, personally, that my most defining trait as a human being is kiwi-flavored."

"I'll be honest, I don't know anything about wolves. I'm very, very city in that regard."

Deflection and redirection. And interest, still, more interested in hearing her talk than, well, having to defend his academic successes or failures.

Arionna de la BabinThere's almost a moment where she wonders if he's deliberately going off topic, but then... it slips away. There's nothing particularly telling about Eli. He's always a little weird when it comes to personal talk, so whatever she hears i likely something to do with that. Arionna scrunches her face slowly. "Kiwi?" It's a clear look of disgust. "That is nearly the worst fruit to eat, next to lychee." She has her favorites, and Kiwi is not on that list.

"Shouldn't every bit of ice cream have some kind of chocolate on it? What's the point if there's no chocolate?" She smiles at that because it's more of a joke, even if she means part of it.

"Well, maybe sometime I'll teach you about them. They're very remarkable creatures. Very...social."

Elijah"You don't like lychee? Seriously? Ugh, Ari, that's a deal breaker," he says, feigns seriousness too because of all the things that could be a deal breaker for Elijah- well, did he even have any? Really? He very rarely seems to have any hard lines, "is it the furry thing, or is it the seedy thing? Because I can see both being a turn off for kiwis, but seriously- how can you not like kiwis?"

But there is the opportunity to learn about wolves, and he pauses.

"... please tell me that teaching me about wolves isn't code for I may or may not leave you in Yosemite to fend for yourself and live on raw meat for a month."

Kiara[Do we sense people tonight?]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Arionna de la BabinThey sat on the lawn. Ari in black, with her sunglasses to protect her eyes from well..anything. The various crystals and rocks she had in her lap have been moved and jostled so that they aren't in one exact location. Her head is tilted just a little towards him as they talk, though never at him of course. "Well, aren't you overly picky. If it's such a breaker, perhaps you ought to have asked if I liked lychee to begin with. Now we've established a relationship, loose at it may be. All that effort, for nothing." She pressed her palms into the ground slightly.

"I've never liked the taste. I'm not fond of watermelon either. Kiwis are just..acidic. It's far too much in something so small. The fuzzy texture isn't exactly a trait I enjoy either. I feel the same about peaches really. I don't mind them in cans but I don't enjoy them with the skin. I've never understood why people find pleasure in that."

Ari lifted her hand to her face. "Oh no, you've discovered my devious plan. Though, if you do become lost, I highly encourage you to cook your meat, at least a little. It will help with your caloric intake and help eliminate some of the pathogens you're likely to encounter."

Elijah"Yep. It's official. We're friends, and you're trying to kill me, as all friends are want to do."

KiaraThere's mention of wolves.

One is coming toward them now; picking a path across the grass with easy, unconcerned deliberation. If the likeness between her namesake and the creatures were taken further it could be suggested Kiara was stalking toward the pair where they sat; her fingers curled around a water bottle; a pair of oversized sunglasses perched on top of her head and dark waves of hair spilling around her shoulders. Her mouth ever-presently (it seemed) pressed into the stirrings of some slight, suggestive smile.

The quicksilver grin of the earth witch.

"Hey, kids. How goes date night?"

There's a cock out of a hip as the brunette sets herself presently against a nearby tree with a swirl of vivacious energy and the subtle pulse that underpins her presence. She tilts her head at them; sweeping Elijah and Arionna in a brief, encapsulating survey. Arionna's sightless eyes masked behind her glasses; crystals and stones around her; the Hermatic settled beside her.

Arionna de la Babin"It's inevitable. Though you did make friends with someone not accustom to such things. It was bound not to end well for you." There is a smile to him, though she doesn't know if he sees it. It doesn't matter. The smile fades quickly and her chin tilts up as Kiara's approach is felt before it is heard; she's working on that.

"Kids generally refers to those under the age of 18. Or those much younger than oneself. I suspect that neither of those are true, in your case. " Though she says very little on the latter. "Despite that, don't you think that a little presumptuous?"

Elijah[Manip+sub: wince quietly Elijah, don't let Ari know you just winced at the Kiara thing]

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

ElijahThere was a person coming. he isn't taking in everything, doesn't seem to notice until Kiara is right there, Arionna had a smile and, as if by proximity, he can tell when she gets close because Arionna wears her displeasure bright and lovely, like some cloak of stars or a headdress. Arionna can't see it, but there is a desperate attempt to keep that ouch expression off his face.

He mouthes something, and it was either so sorry or No Joffrey, so either he was feeling bad about something or he was an avid Game of Thrones fan. He does look at her from that strange angle, and it takes a second before he puts two and two together and he realizes that he's laying down in the company of two lovely women who are prone to wearing skirts.

"We were just talking about personal definitions? And mine encompassing hedonism and distractability and a little bit of lechery because why the Hell not?" a grin on his face, but at this point he has a hand over his eyes and he's sitting up. His dress shirt and vest have been discarded. Undershirt and slacks only- today was a work day, it seems. "And I swear, if I'm only staring if invited, so ladies, please, if I'm invited to stare let me know so I can get comfortable again."

KiaraKiara's mouth curves upward. Her eyebrow notches a degree in tandem.

"I'm actually nearly eighty. A little glamor tweak here and there does wonders for a girl's vitality and summer glow."

Doesn't she think that's a little presumptuous, anyway. "Absolutely. But - I don't know. A nice, warm summer night, two young people sitting in Washington park alone, it does offer a pretty picture." She uncaps her water bottle and takes a sip; smiling around the rim at Elijah and winking at him before resuming in a slightly less playful tone. "I didn't mean to break up the party, though. I was just stopping by to see how you were."

A beat; there's a thread of concern in her voice, it does, to a degree, soften her considerably. Moderates the often teasing persona she carries with her; the chink in the armor. Arionna misses the way the Verbana's eyes scan over her in turn with Elijah. The fact she is, to Kiara, quite entirely included in her concern about what she'd been informed of took place.

"This one," she gently nudges the shifting Elijah with the edge of a sneaker, "called me after the crash. I'm glad you both made it out in one piece." Kiara's eyes tick back to Elijah, she lets her humor surface, again. "More or less. How're those scars looking?"

Arionna de la Babin"Would be a rather vain use of magic, don't you think? Besides, if you're going to alter your own appearance with it, you might as well engage in something more permanent and less...illusory." But ti doesn't matter overly much, as her cell, in her bag, begins to vibrate, spouting off 'Wesley' repeatedly until she bothers to turn it off.

"I'm alive, I consider that sufficient. Or are you inquiring as to some more permanent change? In which case, I am adjusting. " She began to gather up what stones she could, merely by feeling around near her to pick up each and drop them into her bag. "Elijah was the one worse off. I was quite alright." She wasn't. They had both been injured, Elijah had just taken the most severe of the both of them. Likely by luck. And he survived, perhaps, because Ari really did care about some people, and wasn't willing to leave them to bleed out, despite the difficulty in getting him help.

Ari leaned to the side, feeling for the stick she now carried everywhere, and clasped it together. "My uncle is picking me up." She said, dropping her chin towards Elijah as she rose to her feet, hoisting her bag across her chest. "Let me know when your parents arrive. And when I should expect you."

There was a slow breath on her end and her chin shifted, her attention closer to Kiara's 'direction' though not exactly perfectly matched. "Really. Your concern should be focused on Elijah, not me. I'm sure we can catch up some other time. "

Ari turned and slowly began to shift herself away from them, the tip of her cane weaving back and forth. She paused though, to turn just enough back towards them, "I'll expect you at the university library tomorrow at noon with the materials you'll need. Unless you work, of course. Then send me a time that's appropriate." He knew the punishment for failure too, and Ari wasn't very keep on giving it out.

[It's not you I promise! I have work [finally] in the morning..so I need sleeeeeep very soon]

Elijah"I don't have any!" he laments, but it's not lamenting because he sounds, at the very corners of his voice, relieved that he is still largely unmarred. Perhaps he could just-

No. No. Ars Essentiae. Virium. Period. You can learn other things later, Elijah.  Remember? (But-) Next week. You can learn literally anything else next week. Ugh, Maybe Arionna was right and he wasn't necessarily studious. But his attention was set on one thing, and one thing in particular. He is pulling through his memory to try and remember precisely what it was that he had been doing  when he called Kiara.

He has no idea he sang to her. Has no idea that he sang to her well at that, that he actually wasn't a terrible performer and, instead, let her voicemail get graced with something meaningful before he started lamenting that Kalen or Grace or someone hid the vodka or the tequila or whatever it was that he'd been wanting to drink at the time. He does, however, remember that he fell asleep on top of his phone.

"Ian saved me from my vain lamentings, I was pretty sure I was going to just, y'know, suck it up and live with it because it's kind of a cool story to say hey, I had a giant chunk of freaking plastic sticking out of my stomach- but, you know, Ari kinda kept me from doing anything stupid like trying to pull it out or anything... I kinda wish they'd let me keep it at the ER."

He muses, but Arionna's getting up and she's leaving and it is a moment before he processes precisely what's happening and, "tomorrow. Noon. Notes in hand, and then later somewhere that I can conceivably set something on fire. But I think that actually happens later."

He's being completely serious, too.

KiaraKiara's eyes follow Arionna for a long moment after she ensures she was fine. Elijah mentions he had a chunk of plastic sticking out of his stomach and the pagan's eyes shift between them; her expression momentarily sober. Not quite unhappy but - the way her dark eyes study them both in turn is intent; a probing assessment that without the woman's often accompanied humor feels invasive and stifling.

Nature was a capricious thing, after all. Entirely capable of shifting, mutinous moods.

"Really. I'm actually not surprised to hear that." That Arionna had kept him from doing anything stupid. She's leaving, Arionna and Kiara doesn't raise her voice to reach her deliberately, but she does offer: "Sounds like she had everything in control out there." Then: "See you later, Arionna." That, she does call out with deliberation and then, eyes ticking back to Elijah, sticks her hand out to offer him a hand to his feet.

"Walk you home?"

Elijah"That sounds lovely," he says, takes her hand and pulls himself to his feet. He's picking up his clothing. He's heading along the way and he does take the offer for someone to walk home with him. Enjoys the company, takes in conversation for what it was and could just bask in the enjoyment of another human being's presence.