Connie MihailovichIn a lot of ways Lodo reminded her of DC; some of the wide spread architectural designs were familiar, in as much as they were early century American knock offs of European practices but brick and stone had always fascinated her. As she walked in the early afternoon Connie noted that even now the district had its fair share of early shoppers, the majority of which were presumably younger university students or working stiffs, like herself.
Long chestnut brown hair was clasped at the nape of her neck by a long silver hairclip with an emerald glass-like stained acrylic finishing that kind of looked like marble when it caught the light. She pauses in the window of a boutique next to a café, subconsciously reacting to the aroma of baked goods and coffee intermingling with the street and other stores about her, and blows a long wispy tendril away from her face. Blue eyes are dark in her reflection, cheekbones high, her chin stubborn but the façade she registers is largely composed.
Beneath the eyes she carries the weight of her dreams, like rucksacks filled with stones, being drug behind her upon rusted and thick, heavy metal chains. She churns a look of disdain out of that vacant stare into the glassy reflection that is her and moves away from the sight lest she find some way to start communicating with herself here and now..
And not in the actual, way, the crazy way. We’re not talking self-actualization here people, just some nutter talking to her reflection, She thinks heatedly.
This shift ended far too long after it should have ended and she reckons that, even in a pair of no-wrinkle blue slacks that are comfortable, a black knit sweater and a pair of black business shoes, that she might be exuding crazy just by thinking it. Full lips purse, her wide mouth narrows, and blue eyes dart towards the left as she reaches for the door to the café in search of a pick me up. Friday afternoon, twenty to five was too early for a lot of things..
Patience Mason[Per+Aware: Do my senses detect another?]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )
Patience MasonLong cold nights were giving way to warmer longer days, and thought it was only spring in the city of Denver Colorado, it didn't stop the ladies of the city from embracing the warmth. Dresses and tube tops were making their seasonal debuts, the newest fashions being ripped from the racks of the department stores and boutiques before being pulled over the bodies of women young and old.
At least in most cases, not everyone prescribed to such activity and Patience could be seen as an extreme in this manner. She wore no skirt, no dress, infact the woman looked like she might well be a biker of some form with the amount of leather she has spread across her body. From the gently heeled thigh high boots, to the riding pants, all the way up to the a curious bomber jacket she was encased in leather. But this was not enough to say this woman was odd, no it went further then that. It was like she had stepped out of an old photograph, like some daring trailblazer out of the early 1900's following in the path of the likes of Amelia Earhart, it was all to authentic, all to natural, all to uncanny.
Connie is about to reach for that door as the uncanny woman out of time stepped out of the shop next to the cafe, her hands settling onto a satchel that hung at her side as she adjusted the victory rolls that defined her high blonde hair. Sky blue eyes tracked left, and then right as if in search of something specific....
It is of course then that she lays eyes upon Connie, and she strides towards the other woman, with her gentle heel Patience towered at 6'2 and sadly, had to look down ever so slightly to find the woman's gaze.
"Salutations." She says haltingly, as if she wanted to say more, but wanted to wait and see waht this other, this newness might say in response. Or even if she wished to respond at all.
Connie Mihailovich[perc; spec - intuitive + awareness; spec - motives]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 3, 3, 5, 5, 5, 8) ( success x 1 )
Connie Mihailovich“..what like, he said that?”A girl with pink hair spat the words out at her friend who sported an orange hawk, the pair stood in front of Connie, debating the finer points of the idiocy woman kind are forced to deal with; men. Or in their case, boys, and in hers too by and large, both by preoccupation and previous experience, sadly it makes her laugh aloud. It’s an unfortunate punctuation in the middle of the orange-haired-er-girl’s comment, whatever that might have been. She didn’t exactly have time to think on it because blue eyes are shifting now away from the uncomfortable interaction and she’s found another, lighter set to look up into.
It was a little bit like slow-mo’ meets Momento and she briefly wonders, no counts the hours, when was it she’d slept last? Yesterday? Peripheral vision recounts in memory as wonder identifies itself and blue eyes blink, they shut again for a minute, and then she cocks her head to the side curiously at the other woman.
This very bright, blond version of Dita Von Teese offering her ‘salutations’ like she’s wearing the same damn thong and they got it at the same place, on sale. Constance clears her throat in that unsure way, typically reserved for dubious and often tongue tied males, and she shakes her head gently as though she were clearing the cobwebs away with the motion. Attire has been noted, if she might call it that, the woman looks like she might be some kinda dominatrix biker tattoo artist barista.. “H-hey.”
What?
Did they do that now? No, fuckin’, way.
It’s the pull akin to magnetism that draws her in though, Patience holds that film-star quality, it’s jarring in the way that the rest of reality seems to be some sort of low budget B movie and all of their special affects went to layering over the images of the woman who stood before her. She is both a part of the picture but apart from it at the same time; like she’s walking around with a halo-stitched-shadow shining and outlining every line of her body.
Constance was staring. Probably not the first time this had happened to Patience.
Connie Mihailovich*every inch of her body
Patience MasonPatience shines, and this woman, this tired looking youth in need of a long nights sleep blistered, it made Patience recall some of the less pleasant moments in her life and she admittedly shifts for a moment as she becomes accustomed to the woman's presence. Though in truth Connie might imagine that she shifts due to her staring. But those sky blue eyes never leave Connies light blue gaze and the look on her features seem to note not at all that the woman was staring.
Perhaps she really was just that used to it. Or simply did not notice.
That film star quality might make you assume one thing or another about this woman out of time, the next thing out of her mouth might be expected to be glib and smooth, entirely in tune with the appearance she provides. But as those fine lips spread and additional words poured from that smiling visage, one might just find their assumptions shattered like spun glass.
"Appropriate sociological and temporally attuned extended salutations to your direct physical and noospherical personage." She said before gesturing to herself. "My parentalogically assigned identifier is Patience Mason, it is a direct and cataloged frame reference of note that I acknowledge and actualize your primary existence within the concurrent plane of relativistic existence." Said like she was meeting someone for the first time, and felt really good about it.
"Your physical and noospherical integral levels all reside within nominal attributes I posit?" She inquires, seemingly moving to wait in line beside the other woman.
Connie MihailovichShe walks, as most youth do, with thin skin and subjective awareness, bruises are easy to come by when ego elongates into shadows and follows you around so readily. Constance has stopped paying attention to the surroundings, or rather, anything that isn’t Patience and when the woman speaks cloudless eyes widen to allow one part of the sky to speak to another.
Blink.
Audry Hepburn meets Bender with an IQ, yes?
Connie wasn’t at all certain if she should reply straight away or beeps. Was this a joke? Absently she disengaged her attentions from the woman – which was a bit like trying to refocus a camera manually – to her surroundings to notice that the line had moved on without them. Distractedly she looked down over her own appearance and then up, from foot to crown, to retake Patience’s presence with a bit more here and now and less LSD.
Despite the softness of her smile, she does burn a little, and pull at people in unpleasant ways regardless of meaning to. The dichotomy of her existence isn’t always known to her in all situations, she’s learned to garner from body language, tonality and turn of phrase what people typically mean but that was a lengthily and arduous way of asking what her name was or making an introduction.
Zero, one, one, zero, one, one.
“Oh, hey. I’m, uh, I’m Connie.” It wasn’t a question, really, but she spoke as if it should be out of confusion and the untold answer to the equation this encounter was posing without balance. Blue eyes narrowed, wide almond shaped and biting, curiosity burns away the top layer as she pushes forward and admits she’s lost to the last part.
“My what?” Shining glory has a syntax all of her own, “..are, are you asking me if I have ..an infection?” Rose asks while bleeding from her own thorns, “I’m sorry, who are you?”
Connie Mihailovich*beep
SerafÃne(Knock-knock, who's there? Perception + Awareness)
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 4, 5, 5, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 5 )
Kalen Holliday[Nightmares]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 4, 4, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )
Kalen Holliday[Awareness]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8) ( success x 1 )
Patience MasonPatience watches with that pleasant luminosity as Connie attempts to work her way through Patience's syntax and programming language. She really was a world apart, like you were looking through a portal to a world where people dressed like they were in the movies and spoke a completely different language.
And they weren't even in hollywood.
She certainly doesn't appear to be put off by Connie's tone, or her questions and she actually laughs lightly and gestures to herself. "My Heritalogically assigned identifier is Patience Mason." She repeated, ensure that she was known to the other woman before going on.
"It is with a positively aligned noospheric influx of concurrent sensory data that this personage hopes and projects that your bio-physical personage is not infected by a self replicating and parasitic infectious entity." That smile is still present upon her lips as she went on, her tone reassuring as if to try and say 'don't freak out'.
"Have you recently movated to this geo-political urbanized central locality?" She inquires with the tilt of her head. "Your individualized personage has not been actualized prior to this existent temporal frame in neither direct physical actualization nor aural actualization."
Kalen HollidayKalen opens the door for Serafine. It would not be particularly remarkable if it did not require her cooperation. She has to let him inch where once he would have swept ahead of her to pull open the door with the hand not wrapped around his cane. He is without a hand to make any bold, dramatic gestures that she should proceed through the door.
In all honesty, he looks like he's probably too tired for that anyway. Even Patience, who can usually get him to grin gets only a pleased flashing of his eyes. He cannot wave to her until he has released the door and stepped through it, That done, he does lift one hand, open it, and then let it fall back to his side.
Connie MihailovichPalliative care teaches you how to decode and decipher people’s languages, she may not get the complete message, but for the most part she gets the gist.
“Right, Patience, I meant that in the kind of way.. when a person seeks definition or understanding of an even or person, or situation, you know like this one?”
Oh man, it’s starting. “You know, like, you’re standing there and I’m standing here and..” The door swings open and more patrons come into the coffee shop, and meanwhile, Constance isn’t sure how she’s stood this close to coffee for so long without having it. Being too young or asleep doesn’t count.
“You hope I don’t have an infection? Well that’s great, I hope you don’t either.” Welcome to Denver? Was she new?
“Yup,” Connie confirms, nodding. Her attention rarely strays from the woman before her and thankfully – her hand to the Gods themselves – the pre-impregnated embryonic mageling balks at the idea of even mentioning that Patience kind of reminds her of that cyborg chick on that Star Trek show from late night. She doesn’t even know how to compute the thought of meeting this one’s aura, er, whatever.
Beer goes in the beer hole. That’s what college taught her.
SerafÃneSunlight, bustling streets, all that shit. There's a two-for-one happy hour special on something next door and next door is a gallery-bar and Sera knows the 'tender and Sera knows half-a-dozen of everyone and she feels strange to be aware and outside when it is not even half-past-three (what, wait? it is half-past three? well then, like she cares).
Gentle readers likely care not a whit, either. Here is something: Sera and Kalen were next door, and there was alcohol, and Sera likes alcohol, particularly on a sunlit Friday when everyone around her is all humming with the end of the workweek and the promise of spring (not that our heroine works) but the yawn of awareness in the back of her throat. The ball of light all bright beneath her sternum.
And something else.
Something new.
--
The front door opens, the sweep of dark-to-light. That's Kalen opening the door and Sera - well, she lets him shuffle ahead of her, yeah and gives him a clear and rather distinctive half-smile as she ducks past and waits for him just inside, giving herself a half-moment for her eyes to adjust. Or something. Really, there's not much to adjust to. Sera is wearing dark sunglasses and she does not bother to take them off.
She is a little bit stoned.
Which is fine, just fine, because she can never understand what the fuck Patience is saying.
"I bet I can't get a shot in here." Sera is saying to Kalen as he shuffles up beside her. She's not looking at the menu on the board; she's looking clearly and quiet directly at Patience and Connie, and Patience and Connie alone.
As if they were the only other people in the universe.
Connie Mihailovich[*event even]
Patience MasonPatience listens intently as Connie explains herself, nodding a few times here and there to say she was following the discourse. Of course that explanation of seeking definition brings a more appreciable nod and an apologetic look but no words to supplement them.
"Welcome to the geo-political urbanized central locality identified concurrently as Denver, Colorado, United States of America." Patience offers warmly before she turns to regard the opening and closing door. It seems that she knows the two approaching individuals and she raises her hand and waves a few times before saying.
"Serafine, Kalen, please actualize and aurally propagate the necessary salutations to Connie." She said gesturing from the pair to Connie herself before she locked onto Kalen's tired look and tilted her head.
"Your caloric or rapid eye movement allotment's seem to be entering a negative state Kalen, appropriate advisory obtain necessary subconscious state of actuality to replenish, Doctor's prerogative." She laughs gently, like she might have been joking before nodding to Serafine.
"Serafine, you are looking nominal as is appropriate upon your standardized bell curve of actuality. Visual indicators indicate perhaps your bio-physical personage is infact concurrently above the standard rate of accumulation." She grinned. "I should inquire about appropriate testing and thesis acquisition at a further progressive time frame."
Kalen Holliday"We could always get our coffees to go and add shots later. Or drink them, then go do shots, then more coffee, then tacos. Or waffles. Chicen waffles." He grins. "Have you had chicken waffles, because if not you totally need to....."
His attention shifts to Patience and Connie as they approach. Partly. You can't not pay attention to Sera.
If nothing else, you can say that the Denver Magi have tamed Kalen. At least enough that he does not regard Connie with the obvious wariness of a feral cat. His eyes, so pale a green it is impossible to be sure of their color from any real distance, sweep over Connie once. She is not brandishing any weapons. She is not frothing at the mouth. She is not on fire.
Good enough.
He offers a hand to Connie. "Kalen Holliday," he says quietly. Politely enough, if not precisely warm.
Once he's offered Connie a greeting though, his attention returns to Patience and he smiles. "Firefly," he says, and there is an undercurrent of something warm and amused threading through his tone now, rich and washed in gold as the sunlight outside. "I'm relatively certain caffeine and sleep are interchangeable enough, I have years of experience."
SerafÃneSera is dressed in a short leather skirt cut on the diagonal and finished with metal rings that make it seem longer and more modest than it really is, with a pink and black bra - yes, a bra, not even the pretense of an outer garment there - beneath an unbuttoned flannel, this pink-and-purple plaid. Half a dozen necklaces around her neck, three-dozen bracelets, or so it seems, on her arms, spikes and loops and rings through the delicate cartilage of her ears. Her hair is loose and long and blonde. She is wearing spike heeled boots that are high enough to make her at least level with Connie, though she still has to look up (and up and up) to the confoundingly strange and occasionally delightful Patience.
Sera receives Patience's discourse the way a dog receives its masters: blahblahblah blah blah blah blah DOG'S NAME blah blah blah blah blah blah NAME blah blah TREAT NAME blah.
She still pays attention, though, just as she would pay attention to a talking payphone or a life-size groundhog in a tophat who offered her the time of day: because this is a fucked up world, number one, and number two, Sera has a helluva lot of experience with hallucinogens.
"I'm guessing your name's Connie." This brief slash of a grin. None of Kalen's wariness and an immediate intrigue and warmth. "Serafíne. Call me Sera. Listen, what are you guys drinking? I'll grab us a goddamned round if you get a table."
And she's already half-in-motion toward the register, though she throws Kalen a glance back; a direct one, wry. "I've never had chicken and waffles. That sounds fucking bizarre."
Connie MihailovichInaudibly she seconds that comment Sera so poignantly coined and sadly, no, they didn’t sell liquor here. She was starting to think they should. It was nice to know that Patience spoke like this to everyone even if Connie couldn’t rightly come up with any reason, aside with pranking, why she’d single her out of the entire crowd.
I just wanted coffee… scroll, scroll, scroll.. I just wanted coffee… scroll, scroll, scroll..
It flashes in blue eyes like an amber alert above the motorway, and she’s pushing forward like a maniac, trying to follow the conversation as more people get added to it.Patience introduces them all and she’s practically leaning into Sera, the Cultist is breeding her own center of gravity it seems, it takes her another moment to find Kalen. Oh, but she does like the way he thinks.
Magestically she adds to the conversation, “Mm, waffles.”
The pair receives a suitable smile from the otherwise undaunted but obviously struggling receptionist as she gauges them, too. That is to say, she flashes one, with barely a hint of teeth and tries to affect something that reads approachable but in truth she’s about as successful in that as a flat tire is in motion.
Reaching up to unclip her hair, she pockets the emerald and silver piece, and surveys the three standing between her and the barista. That line, its moving, that’s not the problem the issue is that she’s not in it.
I just wanted coffee… scroll, scroll, scroll.. I just wanted coffee… scroll, scroll, scroll.. and booze.
Inaudibly she seconds that comment Sera so poignantly coined and sadly, no, they didn’t sell liquor here. She was starting to think they should. It was nice to know that Patience spoke like this to everyone even if Connie couldn’t rightly come up with any reason, aside with pranking, why she’d single her out of the entire crowd.
“Connie, new in town, caffeine deprived. Party in the corner, what’s up?”
Connie Mihailovich[haha, edit fail!]
Patience MasonKalen speaks of his years of experience, and Patience...well Patience can only smile quietly before saying.
"I have done extensive data accumulation and indicative testing and analysis of the correlation between the noospheric stimulant caffeine and the rapid eye movement state of actuality, there is infact a point in the bell curve of transition that the ration of supplementation drops off." She seems to look up as if re-collecting the particulars of that study. "forty three point thirty four temporal units elapse before the molecular structure of the stimulant requires five times the saturation point to remain effective, concurrent elapsed temporal units increase this requirement by two fold for every five additional temporal units." Patience always seems to talk like she is being utterly casual in these conversations, despite the dire and heavy words she uses.
There is a recommendation that they move towards a corner, and that Serafine will gather up a round of coffee. To this Patience only smiles and nods before gesturing to an available table. "Shall we movate our bio-physical structures?" She recommends to the others before starting over, unbuttoning her bomber jacket to reveal crisp white shirt beneath and a slim grey vest.
"Caffeine diffusion, moderate intensity, no additional modifiers Sera." Patience calls back as she moves to take a seat.
Kalen Holliday"Of all the things, that is the one thing you tell me is bizarre?" He laughs then. "Surprise me. You always do." And he loves her for that.
Of course, Patience is like a puzzle, and he loves her for that, so he lets Sera go and he returns his attention mostly to Patience. Sera he tracks from the corners of his eyes because he can't bear to entirely look away. Connie...well Connie he tracks because she is new and unknown and potentially dangerous.
"Which is why I spend approximately zero entire temporal units without supplementation," he says, playfully half-adopting Patience's phrasing.
His eyes flick to Connie. "Welcome to Denver. I'm glad someone is with me about the waffles."
SerafÃne"Cheers," says Sera, rather agreeably, to Patience. There may even be something absurd like a thumbs up, for all the eyeglazing seriousness of her strange discourse. Sera's smile still simmers like the edge of the sun lingering at the horizon, and her eyes are appropriately lovely and lazy as a summer's afternoon. There are how many lines of scrawling blank-inked text to catch a glimpse of on her body. Both hands, the palm and wrist of one, the outer edge of the other, perhaps a glimpse of a black-inked triangle tucked against the boney ridge of her skull behind the curve of her right ear. The hint of something beneath her right breast, mostly hidden by her bra, and another something-hinted on her left flank.
That Cheers encompasses Connie too, and the scene may be rather too chaotic for Connie to notice, but Sera's attention rests on her more than any of the others. The direct line of lenses dark enough to hide, completely, Sera's eyes. Connie's reflection all fishbowl superimposed (TIMES TWO) over a sliding and liquid vision of the counter and snaking line behind her.
"For fuck's sake," Sera counters, low, "it's breakfast and dinner, Kalen. Bizarre."
Not that Sera seems to care much about meals, mind.
She waits long enough to get their orders and then she's away and up at the counter there's a line and it is moving but somehow Sera manages to get to the head of the line without much of a thought. People just give way to her and the cashier is one of Dee's derby friends so they have a chat while the other Awakened find a corner in which to settle themselves.
Or not: maybe not. Maybe Connie effects an escape but caffeine's coming, my dear.
And soon.
(And booze, too. Probably booze, judging by the deliciously slurring slant of Sera's mouth, all lazy smile around her half-sorted toast. Hard to imagine where she'd keep a flask given the minimal clothing she wears but where there's a Will there's a way.
And she has a Will.
Doesn't she just.)
Connie MihailovichShe’s creeping along like ivy up a brick wall, sure enough, and if the group leads she follows because the intrinsic one says there will be.
“I dunno what you’re telling me,” She says to Patience, “Half the time I’m pretty sure the coffee is working and half the time I think I’m dreaming. Nobody really tells me which is which.” Shit happens in either world so who was she to debate which was the originator and which was the by product. By now she’s managed to turn around the discourteous and confused buss, seeing as there’s a chair beneath her behind, and a puzzled yet curious blond encyclopedic accompanying her.
Kalen, for his love of waffles, and his cock-eyed wandering attentions for Sera, receives another smile but this time it’s a tad bit more genuine. Although it’s not nearly as enthusiastic as it was for Sera, the beloved Mother of Mercy with her holy grail of gifts, and that warmth, the richness, the precursory need for mainliningcaffinatedsomething..
“Mocha?”
How’d she know?
“Are you guys in the circus?” It’s the only explanation. That or Denver was more odd than New York, which was saying something, and really when it came right down to it she didn’t have much room left on the judgement scale. Thing was scraping pavement as it was and she’d used a forklift to move it the last time she’d gone out anywhere, with anybody.
“Chicken, waffles, bacon, coffee. Who cares. I’ll take it. Hello, everybody.” I’m Nurse Connie.
Patience Mason"Sociological acknowledgement." Patience says in return to Sera's cheers. In the exact same way one might expect another to return the call...just....different. She turns her gaze back to Kalen quickly though, his statement drawing a look of horror and disbelief upon her features as she looked the man over, perhaps wondering if he was entirely truthful, or if he were about to sprout a series of heads from various parts of his body.
"Such continued acceleration of cellular saturation would increase the percentile of bio-physical collapse at the sub cellular level within sixty five temporal units by fifteen point six three." She says almost about to reach out to Kalen before she retracted her hand and looked at him for a moment, squniting before she laughed. "Ahhhh interpersonal noospheric witicism, quite Kalen, quite." She turned her gaze back to Connie then and inclined her head curiously.
"Circus?" She inquires, looking back to the others for confirmation before she shook her head. "We are not coherent amalgams employed as primary actualizes at a collaborative endeavour of movating improvisational entertainers." She chuckles before tapping her chin. "In addendum, if such was a concurrent relativistic truth I would certainly actualize as the behavioural trainer of Panthera Leo."
Kalen HollidayHe may have been exaggerating about his caffeine consumption. A little. And he appears to be at least several hours away from biophysical collapse. So clearly he's fine.
"The best thing is that you can have all of those things," he says to Connie. "Drowning them in maple syrup is entirely optional, but I know people who swear by it."
He watches them discuss the circus. Lion tamers. Acrobats. Clowns. What else? Mirror houses? He has never been to a circus.
SerafÃneConnie wins a mocha.
For the rest of the table, Sera orders a couple of French presses full of something-or-other. Ethiopian harrar and something from Costa Rica that may or may not have been processed by being consumed and then shat out by rare birds. Sera gives the barista grinding the beans the same glazed-eye look with which she might favor Patience when Patience talks about... well, anything, as the dude starts to explain to her the nuances of cultivation, shade plants, animal shit. See? It's interesting, he's fucking passionate about it, and she has no idea what the hell he's talking about and can't be bothered or maybe doesn't bother pretending she's any smarter than she is.
Sera orders enough savouries and pastries to choke a horse or at least a miniature horse too, because why the fuck not, and pays with an Amex and scrawls a signature and leaves, preemptively in that scrawl, a rather astounding tip given that 68% of her wardrobe came from a thrift store (though 32% was likely from that boutique down the way where the pieces are displayed like Rodin sculptures) and comes wandering back their direction (eventually) with a French press and a fistful of mugs, followed by a tattooed derby-doll with a tray full of snacks and desserts and Connie's mocha, too. Rich and frothy and fragrant.
These things are distributed like the proverbial loaves and fishes and then our heroine takes a seat and turns it around and realizes that her skirt is too tight to sit like that so she turns it back around and: if there is a seat available next to Connie and across from Kalen, that is where Sera sits.
She gives Kalen such a direct and swimming look, across the table, the sharp curve of her crawling mouth all.. delicious. Yes, delicious. Glances at Patience,
"You should try the harrar. Tastes like fucking blueberries."
then back at Connie. Reaches up and lifts her sunglasses off her face.
"We're not in the circus. You really don't know how or why we found you?"
Connie MihailovichThere were no lions, tigers and bears in suburbia. Sure, they visited, they waved to the crowds but in the mid-eighties, notably before she was born, they’d faded out much like spandex and neon wrapped around a Whitney Houston tape.
Just a lot of windex, feather dusting, and yelling in Serbian.
“I’d be in the audience,” She says, nodding. “Always in the audience,” Connie adds subtly into the frothy sweetness of her espresso laden chocolate syrup with a dash of milk. Gods love that blabber mouth at the counter, whatever his name was, she offers a quirk of a brow to Patience followed by a slight lifting of the left corner of her mouth and she shrugs.
“Eventually, regardless of how much coffee or caffeine anyone has, we all crash at some point.” For a few hours, or a day, or two days, maybe if you’re Constance that is.
Meanwhile, it appeared to her that Sera was in some kind of blissful retreat into her coffee, that is until she bashed reality in the head with a bitchin’ question. Constance snorted into her mug, the contents protesting in a spray of warm, chocolate stained foam, and regarded Sera with more than curiosity now. Scalding awareness melded over her like a second skin and it took hold of her, the longer she looked at the woman.
“What is this, like, pranks and pastries?” Haha, haha, haha. Awkwardly she sets the cup down, belatedly worrying that maybe she shouldn’t have had a sip, and cautiously blue eyes move from Sera, to Kalen, and finally to Patience.
“You guys are.. you know, I’m just..” Wagging her finger at them like she just can’t quite make workable sense of English Constance is officially, everybody note, officially weirded out. Sera could have admitted to loving Alien Faeries from Unicornia and she might have seemed a lot less edgy and out to get her soul sounding as she had just then.
“Look, realllly funny, um.. I’m gonna go now, okay? Alllright.”
Had she brought anything else? She’s standing before she relinquishes her hold on the cup she’s so recently been offered and it clinks down hard in protest against the table, sloshing a little bit of that precious liquid over the rim.
SerafÃneReflexive awareness-as-empathy on Connie.
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (4, 6, 6, 6, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 6 )
Patience MasonPatience picks up the offered drink sniffing at it curiously though she certainly doesn't seem off put by the idea of something other then what she ordered. In truth it almost makes her seem reminiscent as she wraps her hands around the cup feeling that warmth, drawing in the aroma before taking a sip, considering it, and then taking a further drink despite the heat.
It would seem such things do not bother Patience Mason.
"Appreciative Sera." She says with a nod and a raise of her cup. "This particular distillation is of considerable and beneficial note, reminiscent of distillations previously ingested thirty six point seven three one solar cycles prior to this specific temporal framework. I recognize this particular amalgam to be concurrent with a particular localized and cultivated tea extract from the eastern geo-political provinces of the peoples republic of China."
She says this, and then she turns towards Connie as Sera inquires as to why Connie thinks they had all come to her in such a manner, drawn to her like friendly magnets and listened as the woman responded in kind.
"Your direct personage bares many attributes Connie, direct concurrent visual and paradgmic blindness is not counted amongst those currently active. You are acutely aware...." She looks at the others for confirmation.
"It is plain as a two dimensional plane of colour reflective material."
SerafÃneDo-di-do can this work a bit pls pls? (Explanation later, will use to guide my post.)
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (1, 6, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Ian Lai[Awareness, word]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
Kalen HollidayKalen looks between the three of them and his eyes widen, just fractionally. "Seriously?" That question doesn't seem to be directed at any one of them in particular. It is likely directed at the universe. The universe has a thing for dropping unaware Magi practically in his lap when he's sleep deprived.
It is horribly inconvenient. At least the last one could hardly be described of as difficult.
It is probably best he not joke about kidnapping this one. "Hey. Stay," he says quietly. "That was kind of weird yeah, but...you know...we're like circus people. Beside which point, I'm going to take a wild stab in the dark that your life got a little weird before we showed up anyway. Please sit back down. It would be a shame to waste such excellent coffee."
SerafÃne"Oh my fucking god."
Sera looks like she's just discovered a new goddamned drug and the new goddamned drug is delicious. Connie's freaking out and Sera's blissing out for just one goddamned second, closing her mouth an inhaling as she looks, once more, quite directly across the table at Kalen. Sera does not quite understand that he's freaking out over all the newly awakened wandering around the city, a city and a world without stair-gates and baby-proofed locks over the doors hiding the darkest things their world has to offer. She's just pleased. She's just looking to share that pleasure with someone or something and right then, just right then, it is Kalen.
Then,
see.
A stutterstep.
This tangled sort of pounding of her heart. The hard slam-and-slosh of the mocha against the table top and the leading edge of Sera's gaze rising to follow Connie right on the cusp of an inhale that has Sera breathing in all of that some thing.
And Kalen speaks Sera's holding her breath. Sera's holding her breath and she's holding something else right now, too. Holding it against her breastbone, holding it beneath her chest. Holding it between her teeth.
Her eyes are on Connie all awareness, fascination. A blistering, gut-wrenching sort of love for all the many things that belong in places like this one: between sleep and waking, see. Her tongue is against the roof of her mouth. Just the tip of it, see?
SerafÃne(And: extension?)
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (3, 6, 8) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Connie Mihailovich[perc; intuitive + awareness; motives]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )
Ian LaiHere's the thing: Ian didn't drink coffee. Not regularly, anyway. He didn't really eat baked goods either. But there were other reasons for venturing into coffee shops, and today that reason happened to involve the fascinating swirl of resonance (some familiar, some not) that led from the shop door like some kind of neon sign that said: Awakened inside.
It was a difficult thing to ignore.
So he paused outside the shop, his head tilted and his eyes sharp, like he'd just picked up some fucking fascinating sound or scent. Like maybe he was trying to decide if he wanted to follow it to its source or walk by and let things be.
He reached out an arm and opened the door.
Just in time to feel that pulse of visceral energy as Sera worked her effect. Just in time to see Kalen try to convince some girl that Ian didn't know to stay (she felt young, the girl, so new that she had to have been feeling a little overwhelmed.) And for a moment after he stepped inside the shop, Ian regarded their table like he was watching some kind of play unfold.
He didn't wave or say hello.
Then he walked to the counter and ordered some black tea.
Connie MihailovichAn overabundance of feeling is just as bad as the rush of adrenaline that follows in its wake and even though Patience seems kind enough, and unwilling to torture her as near as she can tell, in the immediate it isn’t quite enough. Had it, maybe, just been her who asked she might have been less skittish.
Kalen, he’s got that pretty-kinda-white-boy-face that says ‘easy now’ like she’s supposed to take him at his word when the girl on his arm, or rather at his side, appears to have discovered pure unrefined heroin in her coffee.
Almond shaped eyes widen just a little and she’s frozen, in a moment, where deviation sets before her one path of her own choosing and another created by another. As if, perhaps, she’d been snagged on a hook that had always been there, waiting for her, or had it appeared when she’d chosen to leave? Constance certainly wasn’t the person to ask, or even comprehend, because in all truth she had no idea what the hell was going on right now but Kalen says stay and she shakes her head ‘no’.
Still it’s as though her feet won’t move. She repeats the command, inwardly, and light eyes find their way to Sera and she isn’t at all sure what to say.
On one hand the whole damn shop seemed to be busily bustling about them and she stood, gaping at the others, having chosen to go but not at all comfortable with it. Her feet move, she relinquishes her hold on the chair she’d so readily vacated, and without further adeu the slender woman bolts for the front door like a foal that’s just discovered a hole in the fence. It wasn’t like she thought they’d murder her right then and there.
What could they have done?
Patience Mason"I...." Patience was about to say something, about to speak further on this particular revelation when she see's the excitement on the others features, she understands what they see, the newness, the utter potential and possibility contained within this newly discovered magi. She knew the feeling well, felt it quite keenly.
But her features draw up a mournful look, akin to loss or regret and she drinks down half of her cup before she moves to stand. Her gaze falling on Connie as she runs for the door, the woman calling after her. "Interpret and accumulate sufficient data in this temporal frame Connie, The number of relative high priority personage schismatic decisions will increase by a factor of five, do not precipitate an over extension or exertion of your personal relativity prior to proper thesis stress testing." She tries to get it out quickly, before the woman is gone...but it likely fails.
She then turns to the others as she steps out around the table, that look of mourning still present on her features. "Please actualize a coarseness of relative non-existence, such individualized personages should be permitted total control of their algorithmic direction and directive, given that each of your personages are more likely to actualize upon Connie's bio-structure before my own." She started to move then, following the other woman out, but not with the intention of chasing her. No she heads in the other direction...her features perplexing and uncommon, at least for those who know her.
Kalen HollidayKalen watches her leave.
What could they have done? Perhaps he should just keep Grace or Ryne on hand when he goes out into the world. Like puppies. 'Look. Can I really be so bad? See how cute they are? How harmless? See how they trust me?'
He watches Patience follow. Turns to Sera. "That went well. Which is oddly reassuring. The last time I found someone he followed me home. I didn't get to keep him. This one...at least I won't worry about her and strangers with candy."
SerafÃneKalen, see. He's all easy now and Sera thinks that that might work. And Sera's in two places or three. She's a little bit drunk and a little bit high and a little bit translucent. She's feeling the world beneath her and around her and inside her and here here here is her heartbeat.
Connie stands.
Then the world just stops.
It just fucking stops.
Connie's heart is beating and she is standing in place and there's her hand on the back of the wooden chair and there is the table and there is the slowly-melting foam in her now abandoned mocha and there is the line in which Ian Lai is now ordering a black tea and the world is stopped. Everyone, everyone, everyone seems frozen,
except for Sera, and Connie. Connie and Sera.
There's this echo beneath their breath; it is a deeply strange sensation to stand in a moment carved out of time. There's no noise around them; all of that is literally turned the fuck off.
"Do you ever feel like you've woken up, just a little bit earlier than everyone else, right? They're all sleeping; and you're in the house and it's the house you've always fucking known, and it's quiet. Oh, everything's quiet so you slip out from beneath the blankets and you pad down the stairs and outside, everything's quiet too. The sun's rising, but you see it differenly. Like you know how it works, and that knowledge is somewhere inside you, wrapped around your bones.
"You feel it like a song, or maybe a pulse or a beat or a something.
"Anything. It's different for everyone. But, see - you know, you just fucking know, that you're seeing and tasting and feeling the world that's brank spanking new, and it's real and surreal and more real than anything you've ever known, but somehow almost everyone else you know can't hear it, or feel it, or drink it, because they're still back in the house, in their beds, curled up,
sleeping."
Somehow Sera is standing up. She is standing up, and the world is all frozen, frozen around them. And Sera's smiling, and god she's striking, passionate, full of conviction.
"Kalen once told me that sailors used to go out to sea, in these fucking boats, right. Ships or whatever, just hurtling into the ocean, all this endless fastness, with nothing to guide them from port to port but their trust in the stars. That's a kind of magic, you know? Finding your way from here to there just by the changing light in the sky. Easier to manage when you have someone else to talk to who's trying to do that, too.
"I'm around. When you're ready, you'll know.
"Come find me."
--
And time, see: Time: Ian and Patience and Kalen and everyone else in the whole fucking place starts again. All around them it just clicks back into place, like a key, in a fucking lock.
Sera lets it, and Connie, go.
And she sits down heavily, just waiting waiting for reality's backblow.
SerafÃneCharisma + Expression: do I talk good?
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )
SerafÃne(So... okay, but not spectacularly.)
Now: Paradox.
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (4, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
SerafÃneSoak.
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 6) ( success x 1 )
Ian LaiThe jeans he had on today were tapered skinny and dark blue with a faint sheen in the finish that made them look almost satiny. They trailed down to a pair of dress boots (ankle length, black leather) and up to a fitted black t-shirt. His left wrist had the same leather and steel bracelet that Sera had seen him in on their last encounter, and on his head sat a black and white baseball cap that, as a completion to the ensemble, just made him look so unbearably fashionable that you almost wanted to hate him for it.
(To be fair: he looked like kind of an asshole.)
And there Sera was, having this beautiful fucking epiphany in the little bubble she carved for herself and for Connie - out of time and in a place where no one (including Ian) could see.
He felt it though. Felt the unfamiliar ripple of... something. And even though for him no time had passed at all, the tic made him pause. Made him blink and frown slightly as he paid for his drink. Then he walked over to the table where Sera and Kalen still sat with their coffee and food.
And he regarded them.
"I take it you two know each other."
Kalen Holliday"Oh, hey, kitty-cat," Kalen says absently. "You'd be correct. Would you like a pastry?" He nudges the pastries perhaps an inch closer to Ian. "I hear the chocolate croissants are incredible here."
He looks back over at Sera. Curious. Perhaps a little concerned. Perhaps.
SerafÃneHere it comes; a ringing backhanded blow that makes her reel and sets her ears ringing. This snap-crack-boom she feels in the back of her teeth, in the fine, delicate bones all labyrinthine in her inner ear. Everything slamming home at once, like the rush back into ordinary time from hyperspace and she knows she knows she knows she shouldn't do things like this, doesn't she?
Something wet on her right ear. Sera can feel it all niggling, then she reaches up with her right hand and her fingers come away a bit dark and damp. It isn't much and it isn't bad but that blow is still ringing in her head and Sera takes the tail of her flannel and uses it to daub away the blood. She glances at Ian, up-and-down, but does not quite register him fully.
Not yet. Not entirely.
Her attention swings back to Kalen. Sera swallows and her throat feels strange and dry and then she smiles. See? Smiles, all golden.
"Did you just call him kitty cat?"
Oh that is delightful.
Ian LaiKalen called him kitty cat, and Ian didn't respond, either because he didn't care or because he was used getting that kind of shit from people or because he was just... above it all (hah.) And Sera thought it was just... delightful.
Ian pulled out a chair and sat down, ignoring the entire exchange. He glanced at the pastries that Kalen pushed his way and shook his head. "No thanks."
He had his tea though, and he pushed the pastries out of the way so as to make a clean spot to set the mug down. It was still scalding (these places always kept the water too hot,) so he let it rest. He eyes the bit of blood that seeped out of Sera's ear with a vaguely curious expression.
"Having fun over there?"
Kalen HollidayKalen reaches out to touch the inside of Sera's wrist lightly. Briefly.
Then he settles back in his chair and leaves them to talk for the moment, attention drifting mostly elsewhere. Distracted enough that Sera bleeding from her ear and Ian showing up after six months barely seems to register to him as things that merit even some of his attention.
SerafÃneIan asks if she's having fun over there and lo, head still ringing, Sera swings her attention back to him and there is something about her gaze in that moment - raw and strangely vulnerable, just open, see - that could be so absurdly arresting. Everything around her feels like it's floating, just untethered, except for the way the strictures of reality jerk her back here, anchored in her body, stitched into time.
Sera does not know how to answer Ian.
And Kalen reaches out to touch the inside of Sera's wrist, the left one maybe, where there's a shark either eating or being turned into the handle of a pair of scissors and some portion of a rather ridiculous array of bracelets near by, pushed up on her forearm and she glances up at Kalen.
Her heart beats. Her heart always beats.
Then back to Ian.
Sera smiles at him. She doesn't know why, and it is a small and strange and lovely smile.
"I don't remember being that new. Do you?"
Hawksley Rothschild[Awareness]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )
Hawksley RothschildHawksley isn't watching where he's going. Hawskley walks like the sort of person who expects others to part like the waters for his passage, and most do, and the ones that don't -- the ones who shoulder-check him or what-have-you and mutter asshole under their breath at his back -- hardly garner his notice. He is checking his messages again because stupid Grace hasn't returned his stupid text about getting stupid drinks tonight which is stupid because ...well.
Because he decides it is.
No drinks with Grace, then. He puts his phone away. He goes into a bar anyway. It is next door. Into several drinks he lifts his head, sudden and then going oh my god that was too fast and keeping very, very still for a moment. It's as though he's listening for something, but it's not listening. A warmth that is not tequila or vodka spreads from his belly up through his chest and down into his groin, through his arms and his legs. He breathes it in and slides off his barstool. He's already scrawled on a receipt for them. He makes for the door, and then to the cafe next door, pushing open the door to the cafe-next-door, dragging his pale eyes around until they fix on Sera.
Ian LaiDid he remember being new?
Ian couldn't have been older than 23, 24. Right now, with that hat, he looked closer to 21. Some people might have said that he couldn't have known anything but the feeling of newness. Of youth and beauty and clothes that still smelled like he'd just pulled them off the hanger in some department store. Of neon lights that seemed to go on forever.
But the young always imagined themselves to be old, didn't they?
(He remembered.)
"Not sure if I ever was," he offered quietly.
The door opened. Someone else entered. Ian felt it more than heard it (that was a lie, he heard everything,) but he didn't turn around to look. Instead he leaned back in his chair, lounging into a relaxed pose.
"Kalen looks like he could use a nap."
Pan EcheverrÃa[I LOVE AWARENESS]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 6) ( success x 1 )
SerafÃne"Everyone is," returns Sera. Is not was and she doesn't imagine herself old or anything; some nights every single molecule in her body feels new. Every organ and every cell and every stray electrical impulse: constructed again from something like scratch, by a deliciously active imagination. Her dark eyes lift over Ian's shoulder, but her attention is still somehow with them, "I think I freaked her the fuck out. You know? I just assumed - " An expansive sort of breath, all in, all-in.
"Kalen can always use a nap." There is quiet affection in that and quiet concern for whatever it is beneath his skin that drives Kalen from sleep-to-waking night after night and quiet awareness and quiet quiet quiet,
"You two know each other?"
This look drawn from each to each, but the question isn't the question that it seems. It's a different one.
It sounds like you two know each other EYEBROWS RAISED. Like: Kalen are you already cheating on Adam?
And Sera's attention is still on whoever-is-behind-Ian's shoulder, and that is Hawksley and it is kinda fixed right now, his sudden appearance feels all surreal and lovely and if he's real she's going to make him come over and kiss her or something with the power of her mind, yo.
Kalen Holliday"I always look like that," Kalen says absently. He doesn't even bother to follow up with, 'it's exhausting to be this awesome,' or some other little verbal spar for Ian. His heart wouldn't have been in it even if Hawksley hadn't just walked in.
His pale eyes track toward the door and suddenly the air tastes like summer and sunlight and flight. His eyes close for a breath. Two. Three.
He reaches out for Sera again. Squeezes her hand. "Hey, are you-" And he's getting ready to leave before he lets himself get lost in Hawksley's Resonance. Because he's back to the mood in which he implored Galowglass to come out to drinks because he needed certainty and failing his, Gallowglass' would do.
Fuck, he still hasn't broken it to Sera that there is nothing going on there, however cute she thought they were. Does she even remember? Oh...there is that look. Perhaps she does remember.
"We met once. Months ago."
Hawksley RothschildHe looks like he's smirking. Then he's smiling, and it's something else, and then it's gone again. Hawksley has a glassy brightness to his eyes that is either predatory, aquiline or drunk.
Mostly drunk. A little drunk! He would insist. But drunk. And then he saunters, because that is how men like him walk,
of course he would say there are no men like him, and he would be correct. Just like he's correct when he says he is already a god, and correct when he says that yes, he is a king. So: sauntering, even swaggering, he comes in, and yes he may see Kalen reaching for Sera like two or three or a dozen times in like ten seconds dude take it down a notch but maybe he doesn't notice that at all! He is, after all, drunk. He is smiling, and that doesn't stop. And then he comes up to their table.
Grabs the back of a chair from another table. Drags it back, swivels it around, drops into it. "I,"
he begins, sagely, interrupting-ly,
"am buzzed as fuck." He swivels his head around, from Sera to guy-he's-seen-once to guy-he's-never-seen, blinking slowly on the last. "Sera," he whispers audibly, without looking at her. "Don't make any sudden movements. But I think... we're not alone."
Ian Lai"We met at a white party."
As though that wasn't going to give Sera exactly the wrong idea (or the right one?) It didn't matter to Ian. There could be no wrong impression with him. Impression itself was the point, not the accuracy of it.
Hawksley invited himself to their table (not at all unlike how Ian himself had done, though perhaps a bit louder and a bit less graceful.) And now Ian did turn his gaze to regard the other man, dark eyes trailing over Hawksley's form with a kind of lazy interest, like maybe he wanted to fuck him or eat him but not right this very moment.
He didn't bother with a greeting. It was that kind of gathering. People came and went.
A few seconds later, he picked up his mug and took a drink of his tea.
Richard[i wanna roll awareness too!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 7, 8, 8, 8) ( success x 4 )
SerafÃneSera squeezes Kalen's hand back and is he asking her if she's okay? Maybe that's what he's asking her. Maybe he's asking her something else. What she says to him is,
"She's gonna be okay."
Conviction, all of this fucking conviction is all wrapped up in her body and written into her bones. Connie will be okay or she won't. Those are the options and they're open to us all.
Then, Hawksley who has not kissed her, drops himself into a chair all backward like she wanted to do way-back-when until she remembered that her skirt was too tight for that shit and she had to turn the chair around and sit in it normally instead.
"You're adorable when you're buzzed as fuck. That's Ian. That's Kalen." Indicating one and then the other with a tip of Sera's golden head.
"They met at a white party," a cut of her gaze back to Ian, and she wants to know, "did it involve foam?" Sera is just assuming that it did. Lots and lots of foam.
Then, all confidentially to Hawksley. "You missed Patience. She was talking like a robot still. But she knows my name, so I understand her when she says that."
RichardWith spring finally on the advent, all manner of people wander the streets of downtown Denver on a Friday evening. Richard is not the only tall fellow on the streets. He is not the only one shouldering one of those enormous hiking backpacks. He is not the only one wandering around in sturdy trail-sandals, and he's far from the only one stopping off at a cafe for a drink. He's not even the only one wearing that three-week-old, my-electric-razor-broke-for-good-in-Calcutta-and-i-couldn't-be-bothered-to-buy-a-bic beard, or those i-pulled-an-all-nighter circles under his eyes, or thrice-worn clothes that could probably do with a good washing. Or five.
He is, however, perhaps the only man within a twenty-block vicinity to combine all of the above traits. So: a group of young magi are gathered and making friends or enemies or frenemies, and another young man who looks like he's in the middle of a backpack-around-the-world trip stops in for --
-- well. He was going for a drink. Maybe a plain small coffee; does anyone order that anymore? But he pauses, a few feet into the cafe. Months on end traveling amongst enclaves and cadres of the Awakened, weeks on end spent in the seat of the Tradition, and Richard has honed his sense for such things. Vibrations in the spiderweb. Needles in the stack. That sense of
visceralliminal
luminosity in the air; like time itself has recently been fractured and repaired. Richard stops in his tracks. He looks about, furrowed brow and scruffy-thick beard and shoulders stooped under the burden of that enormous backpack giving him a vaguely cavemanesque quality. Then, quite without further ado, he comes over to that table of young magi. Stands there at their margin for a moment, swinging the backpack off his shoulders and just -- pulling up a seat.
"Hello. Mind if I join you all? Tables are crowded tonight."
Hawksley RothschildNo, he has not kissed her. It's been days! Many of them, perhaps. He blinks slowly at her, like he's having to slow down his visual processing of what's going on around him. He isn't backward, though. He is sprawling. The chair turned from one table to another, and thank god he has the back of it holding him up because he's slouched, he's lazy, he's thankfully propped up. He is called adorable. He smiles, beamish and endearing, saying:
"I'm always adorable. Hi, Ian. Hi, Kalen." He even lifts his hand, giving a tiny side-to-side wave. He is informed that he missed Patience, he says -- quipping, without feeling even remotely bad about this in part because he has no idea who Patience is at first, until Sera says 'talking like a robot' which he, unlike Adam and others, doesn't find fascinating. "I don't believe I missed that." It's droll and unapologetic.
He can feel a lot of things in the air right then, and one of the things he feels when the door opens again is the ocean. It's not anathema, even to someone to whom gravity is... um. Anathema. He likes the ocean. He likes the sky more but let's not be bigots about this sort of thing. Hawksley swivels his head around and his eyes pop.
"It's a giant," he loud-whispers to Sera (and presumably Ian and Kalen), before Richard shows up, beardy and dirty and backpack-ed, zeroing in on them. Hawksley thinks he's frozen up like an animal but outwardly, he just looks like a big lazy animal in his fashionably distressed jeans and fashionably old-fashioned leather shoes and tailored t-shirt (which is dark green and soft as powder and thin as tissue paper and makes it quite clear that dude, he totally lifts). He only thinks he's frozen.
He whispers again, turning his head to Sera and the others, but mostly Sera, the Disciple, who will fix this. "Sera, it's a giant," he repeats, more insistently. Perhaps a bit gleefully, mingled with the mockery of terror.
Kalen HollidayHe'd been about to ask if she was okay there. Before he left her there with Ian and Hawksley.
But Hawksley is there like some damned drunken embodiment of summer and Sera is talking and really she and Patience are about equally understandable to him and so instead of leaving he laughs. "There was no foam. It was tragic." And his voice sounds amused and relaxed enough, but it doesn't have that little hint of a purr. Really, of everyone here, only Sera has ever seen that to know it is missing. Heard that. Kalen honestly calm enough and amused enough for that tone is rare.
But then Richard is one too many strangers again, specifically one too many Awakened strangers to be at all comfortable with his prior tra and the immediacy that had come creeping back dissolves back into the ether. Hawksley's insistence about giants gets a faint smile as he rises.
"Goodnight." It is not a terribly specific goodnight.
Ian Lai"It did if you want it to." He winked at Sera, like they were sharing some kind of secret. But of course then Kalen had to go and spoil it by giving an honest answer.
By the time Richard came in to join their group, Ian had only finished about a quarter of his tea, but it was enough to know that he didn't particularly want any more of it. He stood up, stretching up to his full (not giant) height, and made a motion (elegant and so very cat-like) to bow - mock-formal and playful, but slightly impressive in its accuracy - in Sera's direction.
"Until next time."
Then, without another word, he followed Kalen out the door, leaving his tea at the counter for the barrista to throw away.
SerafÃneAWARENESS ARE YOU A MAGE RICHARD YES!
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 2, 3, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )
SerafÃne"Come on down," Sera to Richard, echoing though not imitating Bob Barker, and she is seated so neither Richard nor Hawksley can see her amazing leather-and-metal ringed skirt so just: a girl with blonde hair and the side of her head shaved and half-a-dozen necklaces and three dozen bracelets and flashes of ink on her hairs and wrists, unbuttoned purple and pink plaid flannel unbuttoned and open over torso, which is -
- well, she's wearing a bra. A black and pink bra.
"Nobody else has eaten any of the fucking pasties I ordered, so you should, fucking totally."
Kalen, then. Sera tells him that she's okay, as much with a glance as with anything else. That little fracture-fault in Time is rapidly self-healing and Sera still has a headache but she's fine, just fine. "'Night Kalen."
A different sort of structure in her farewell to Ian. This flick of her gaze; she doesn't know quite what to make of that bow, so, "Later." Quiet see? Attenuated. Liminal.
Which simply leaves Hawksley-drunk-off-his-ass and sprawled-not-hunkered and the giant.
Sera leans over to kiss him quietly on the temple. Perhaps, so briefly, she sets her teeth to the Hermetic's pulse.
"If you wore some of my heels you'd be taller than he is." Sera assures (?) Hawksley. Then back to Richard, likely unnecessarily because Richard probably has ears. "You're really fucking tall. You guys wanna get outta here? My place isn't far."
Hawksley RothschildWhat Kalen doesn't know, and can't know -- this being the second time he and Hawksley have passed each other like ships in the night -- is that Sera is always okay with Hawksley. So far, at least. But to be fair, Hawksley probably doesn't know that, either. Sera might. Sera just knows things, sometimes.
Kalen and Ian both leave, and Hawksley is buzzed enough to have barely taken note of them to begin with, but he gives another little wave as they excuse themselves, then looks directly at the giant. Okay: it takes him a couple of tries to get his gaze to be direct. But it does get there, and it is piercing and slightly inhuman in nature.
"I don't know if they're leaving because you smell. They might be. Because you sort of look like you smell. Do you smell?" He raises his eyebrows up, like this is just genuine curiosity and not blatant rudeness. He even asks a bit like a kid, like he is just not sure but by god he really needs to know and be sure, okay? "Maybe I just think everyone with a beard looks smelly." Frowns, then. "Can someone look smelly? Shit, I'm mixing senses. HI."
Shoves his hand that way in greeting. He chooses not to answer the bit about wearing heels.
Kalen HollidayHe nods to Sera in return, but he doesn't reach out for her again. Doesn't add anything. What would you add for Sera with words? Sera is all feelings and passion bleeding all over the damned place. There isn't really anything to remain unsaid because what use are arbitrary symbols in the face of what she is? Language was never made to wrap around her and encompass her. More than any of them, liminal and enthralling and visceral...she was never meant to be bound with words.
There isn't anything to add, so he continues with the leaving. Richard gets a quick nod. He might not even bother pretending Richard's arrival didn't precipitate him leaving, but maybe he'll take the nod for something. At least he tries.
Hawksley's line of questioning gets a little, started huff of a laugh from Kalen. "Damn. Really?" He reaches out and musses Hawksley's hair as he slips by him on his way to the door. "Never be sober again again, okay? That was just fucking beautiful."
RichardThe giant,
such as he is,
drops easily, loosely into one of the chairs. He looks only mildly dismayed as two of their party immediately up and leave. "Goodnight," he calls after them, polite, and only after he narrowly stops himself from returning Ian's bow with a palms-together little bow of his own.
That which is divine in me...
...old habits a la Calcutta, after all. He doesn't, though. He is not in Calcutta; he is not amongst wheel-turners. He is in downtown Denver in hiking sandals, his heels calloused and dry, his beard thick and untrimmed. He is told he is really fucking tall. Somewhere in that tangled thicket -- darker than his luscious golden locks, which are actually sort of split-ended slightly-greasy locks right now -- his mouth tilts, a smile.
"It's because the basketball player I hired to be my foil is home sick today."
And then he is told he looks like he smells. Upon which he laughs, laughs outright. Also he picks up his arm and sniffs theatrically under it.
"I probably do smell," he says, leaning forward to grip that offered hand, shake it, release it. "I just finished ... " he thinks, "about forty-two hours of international bus, train and air travel. No showers."
Hawksley RothschildIf Hawksley has noticed the stars in Kalen's eyes when his brain is writing poetry about Sera any more than he's noticed the hand-touching and hand-squeezing and are-you-okays, it...
let's not put an 'if' there. He is fixated on the bearded giant and simultaneously terrified and delighted. He does notice when Kalen ruffles his hair, and he's startled and bewildered by this, because he thought Kalen was gone. He looks up though, accepting the dictum to never be sober again, processes it, then grins. "'Kay," he says, and doesn't mean it.
RICHARD, then. Or the person who will possibly become Richard in his mind. He looks back at him. He hears the joke. His eyes brighten. "Oh my god," he says, and laughs. It's not even that great of a joke, let's be honest, but oh how it delights him. He is enthralled. Sera has already invited the guy home. They shake, and Hawksley's is strong but there's no heart in it, like he's forgotten he offered his hand at all
psst: he did forget.
"You're riding on the wrong buses and trains and air...travel...things," Hawksley informs him.
SerafÃne"Where the fuck did you come from, anyway?" Sera is briefly distracted by Kalen's passage behind Hawksley. The hair ruffling, the prohibition against sobriety. Well, she could probably agree to the latter but right now Hawksley is more drunk than she is and she doesn't have a flask and that's probably why. But: Kalen, hair ruffling, Hawksley. Sera thinks - not inexplicably - of Grace, and this makes her think - not inexplicably - of Connie, and then makes her look - not inexplicably - to Richard.
Not a series of coincidences; just a bunch of things that happened.
And Sera is still talking. All this happens in the space-between words, forty-two hours is a long-ass time. Sera comes up with the most exotic and mouth-filling and strange and delightful word she can think of that might be a town forty-two hours away. "Katmandu?"
He looks it, doesn't he, Richard? Giant, beard, hippie. Trail sandals.
"You didn't come looking for Connie, did you? All that way. Because I think I ran her off."
Richard"Uh." Richard looks amused. He has the most remarkable eyes. Even sunbeaten and greasy-haired and very very bearded, he has remarkable eyes: cerulean blue, like a shallow sea. "I go to D.U."
So much for Kathmandu.
"I grew up in Berkeley, though," he volunteers -- and ah, yes, that fits. Fits the beard and the sandals and the grease in the hair, though maybe not the hair itself. But then: "And I was born in Le Havre.
"And most recently," he finishes, "I was in Kolkata. A bit to the north, actually. Hence the bus ride and the train ride before the airport. Who's Connie?"
Hawksley RothschildKatmandu! DU! Berkeley! Le Havre! Kolkata!
Hawksley's eyes are swimming. He has not lost his sense of delight, his musing wonder, but his eyes are focusing a little. He leans forward, suddenly, regretting it a second later but only because of the dizziness. He peers at Richard. "You know," he says,
"you never answered her about getting out of here. I've never seen anyone do that with her. I don't know who Connie is, though." He looks at Sera. "Who the fuck is Connie?"
SerafÃne"This girl who was here." So yeah, that makes sense. But Sera smiles around the words and they fill her mouth like a pastry; see. They're all layered inside her. The hook of her smile, "so new she probably thinks that it's just that the sky has be sliced open by a stranger and something new is leaking around the edges and she's not sure what it is or why it is or what's happened beneath her skin and Can Anyone Else See it.
"So I figured, forty-two hours of international travel, Kathmandu," a sly-cracking grin, see, "to Denver to here and fifteen minutes of from Connie? Something going on there and I'm not sure what. Maybe you weren't supposed to see her. Maybe you were supposed to miss her, but honestly I care fuck-all about what is supposed to happen.
"The invite was serious though. We can get high in the garden. You can grab a shower, crash on the couch or in the music room if you want.
"Probably there'll be a party later. Who the fuck knows, a priest might even come."
Richard"I wasn't entirely sure I was being included in that invite," Richard explains easily, and without a trace of cringing insecurity. "But since I am -- sure. You two don't seem like you'll axe-murder me.
"I don't know if I'll stay for the party though," he adds, "even if a priest comes. I should say hi to my friend soon. I told her I'd be back in town today. And," he pushes back from the table, rises up -- lean and tall and all the taller-seeming for being so lean, "I still have no idea who Connie is.
"But I'm Richard." He hefts up that enormous, overstuffed backpack and straps it over his shoulders.
Hawksley RothschildThe girl that was here. Well, of course. There was a girl here, not Patience, and now she's not. And Richard is. Richard, who came from Calcutta. Yeah: Kolkata? Hawksley knows what that is. He's been there. He's been to Le Havre, briefly, very briefly, he doesn't remember why. He's definitely been to Berkeley and is pretty sure he stole something there from a professor who had no idea what he had on his hands. He doesn't mention all of that. Why brag about his worldly travels?
He hasn't figured out yet if he wants to recite poetry in Arabic to Richard yet, speaking of bragging.
"Of course you were included," he says, as though Richard's doubt wounds him personally (hint: it does not). He blinks slowly again, looking at Sera. "Oh, another new one," he says, like he knows. He always Just Misses them, except for Grace. Grace is the last new one he met. All the others he only hears of. He is reasonably sure they don't actually exist, Sera's just making them up so she can be endeared by them. He wouldn't put it past her, she's usually thrice as drunk or stoned or whatever as he is now.
He looks at Richard again. "Her place is pretty awesome. One of the housemates, Dee? She's into derby, right? But also baking. And she basically looks like a pin-up and she blushes like that," a snap of his fingers. "It's so fucking cute. Dan's cool, too. Like Dan's cool, you know? Like you can fucking warp reality around that guy and he'll be like 'aight, I'll get the tequila' and shit. I mean, Sera bleeds on him every time she falls down and cracks her skull and he's still pretty chill about it,"
don't TMI don't TMI don't TMI YOU HAVE ALREADY KIND OF TMI'D ALREADY HAWKSLEY SO DON'T TALK ABOUT DAN'S PENIS RIGHT NOW kthx
he takes a breath. Lets it out, shoulders rounding. "There's another one but I keep forgetting his name because he's sort of boring. Around me, at least. The priest shines like a light in the darkness, and you're pretty sure he's gonna smite you with fire if you swear but I haven't seen it yet. He plays guitar."
Now he's just rambling. A lot. Richard rises up. Hawksley smiles up at him. "You fit all the pieces together just perfectly, don't you? I bet you're a whiz at jigsaw puzzles. Help me up," he adds, lifting his arm up.
SerafÃne"Invite your friend to the party," EASY SOLUTION RICHARD and Sera offers it in this equally easy and offhand way. The party is a thing not a time and place and it happens-over-time, evolves, if you will, as the hours and days pass. "But sure. C'mon. It's not far to walk. Corona Street, in Cap Hill."
The Richard's standing and standing and standing and holy fuck he is a giant. Sera has some very, very high heels and none of them, not a one of them, would allow her to come close to channeling Richard's remarkable height. So she looks up and up and up and then stands and she does seem kinda tall for a chick anyway but she is wearing Absurd shoes (and, incidentally, a skirt that is perhaps 1/3 leather and 2/3 metal rings and torn fishnets and she has already paid for all that food no one has scarfed and
oh
because dizzy, a bit, when she stands, for reasons that do not mirror Hawksley's reasons. And she doesn't mention it and she doesn't need help up
"Serafíne. Call me Sera. Help him up, will you?"
A wholly affectionate glance at Hawksley.
"He's too heavy for me. I'll be right back. Forgot to leave the tip."
--
And so she did. Sera slips away, back to the counter to talk the cashier into giving her back the credit slip she signed to leave another.
RichardRichard still doesn't know the name of Serafine's drunk, rambling, lazily confident friend. He knows now, however, that there have been multiple New Ones, that Sera's place is pretty awesome, that Dee is a pin-up girl who blushes like that, that Dan is cool, that Sera apparently bleeds on people frequently, that there's a boring one, that the priest will smite you with fire and plays guitar. He listens to the rambling, smiling quietly and sort of privately behind that unkempt beard of his.
"Actually, I'm terrible at jigsaw puzzles," he says. "Not enough patience. Sorry to disappoint." But he takes the arm that is held out, and he gives it a hefty tug, and as Hawksley lurches to his feet he braces his other hand behind the elbow to keep the man from toppling the other way. Or sideways. Or any-which-way.
"I'm all right at Jenga, though. How did you get so drunk at a cafe, anyway?"
--
And Serafine leaves the tip. And Hawksley and Richard make it to the sidewalk, possibly one leaning on the other. Richard wasn't lying, and Hawksley wasn't wrong: he does sort of smell right now. He smells like sweat and many unwashed bodies and long hot train rides and a lot of curry over a lot of weeks. He smells, too,
a little like saltwater and the color blue; a little like the refracting fractals that shift and change in the heart of a kaleidoscope. But maybe that's just Hawksley confusing his senses again.
They meet on the sidewalk, the three of them. Serafine leads the way. Richard goes up to her place, and meets her roommates, and borrows her shower and a great deal of her soap and shampoo to wash the grime off. He wants to borrow a razor, but the only one she has is for her unmentionables or else she doesn't have one at all, so he decides he'll borrow one from his acarya in the morning instead.
Besides; the beard seems to suit the occasion. And the occasion is puffs off a joint in her garden or maybe she has a goddamn water bong, no who are we kidding of course she has a water bong. He gets pleasantly, mellowly high, sprawled all long-limbed and melt-jointed on a bench, telling them about Calcutta or Kolkata and the people, the press of the crowds, the poverty, the teeming masses, the vibrant colors, the pungent spices in the open markets and the stink of raw sewage. About the river Ganges in the north, where he was the morning before he left, knee-deep in sacred and muddy waters. About the other places he's been, not all those glamourous and beautiful northwest-european countries where he's traveled in the course of his youth and his competitive career
(which is another topic in and of itself, somewhat later)
but crowded, hot, impoverished places full of food crises, water crises, health crises, souls in crisis. India and Bangladesh and Pakistan, northwestern China; north Africa and the Middle East and the Aegean peninsula, where the temples of some of the greatest forefathers of his tradition lay in ruins. He tells them, sleepily and dreamily, of the life you find there, dug into the cracks and the fissures; vibrant amidst the muck and the pollution. He tells them,
very seriously in the way of the very drunk or very stoned,
that life is short, guys. Life is really, really short and you can't hold on to it, no, or it won't be living at all. You have to let it play out. You have to let every moment go, from your first to your last, let it pass through you like water. Hey, water. Are you guys thirsty? I'm parched.
--
He's asleep in the garden by three, four a.m. He's awake again by dawn, wet with dew, cold, jetlagged. The priest isn't there. The roommates are asleep. Sera and Hawksley are asleep. He leaves them a note, a one-line thank-you and a phone number.
He shows up on Eleanor Yates' doorstep an hour or so later, toughened feet in battered trail sandals, backpack full of godknowswhat on his back. Bearded, still semi-stoned, smiling. Her apprentice, returned from his season in the wilderness.
