chai, chantry, handguns.

Richard

Quite the first impression when Richard returned from his semester abroad. Knocking on Eleanor's door at half past six, when she was likely already up and sipping her morning coffee; unbathed and bearded and rumpled from forty-some-odd hours of travel, smelling of pot besides. Sheepishly grinning, apologizing, he got sidetracked.

By a Cultist. Of course.

He doesn't linger long, if she lets him in. He knows he smells, he knows he's unkempt; he excuses himself straightaway to go shower, go bathe. He's downstairs half an hour later, catching her as she's heading doorward to begin her day as Eleanor Yates, JD, Professor of Law. He hands her something, a tiny pinkish plastic bag, plain, flimsy, not a gift bag at all. The contents are a gift, though

(or perhaps a bribe to not be too angry with him, acarya, pls-and-thankyou):

a stack of golden bangles, the sort you might buy at those crowded street markets in Kolkata, or perhaps off a sidewalk merchant's rug somewhere along the steps up to some ancient temple. A handful of thicker ones ribbed in silver and carved; perhaps as many as a half-dozen thinner ones bearing tiny gold studs. Pretty, and not quite so colorful and brilliant that they would look garish with your average western outfit -- but still unmistakably reminiscent of their land of origin.

As she steps out the door, he hugs her. Her happy, funny, bright-souled apprentice.

--

The next time she sees him, he is back to himself: that horrid beard gone, his hair trimmed back. Not quite short, no -- still that free-falling length, flax-on-gold -- but at least not so out of control. Spring is hitting full stride, and he pads around campus in shorts and sandals, books in his bag, laptop under his arm. Sometimes in the evenings he comes over and they leave the windows open, the ceiling fan gently turning; he studies his advanced mathematics and upper-division astrophysics, she her law.

--

Then it's mid-May. There's that absurd Mother's Day snowstorm. She wakes to find a row of tiny, already-melting snowmen on the outer sill of her kitchen window. One of them is holding a sign, which is to say: there is a little paper note pinned on the end of a little twig that serves as an arm. It just reads:

OMG.

He's in the dining room, or the dining nook -- whichever it is she might have. He has his ankle folded over his knee, a textbook laid over his lap, that long supple spine of his bent into an utterly unergonomic shape as he leans over the pages. There's a bowl of cereal in his hand. He's crunching it down.

"Morning," he says, mouth full. Glances up. "You working today?"

[for posterity: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3CwnsBClTM4IvsLcCNeLMJRuDZcoduNZqbtFYsdQsAoYIcP8-vaW6E4F58jL4T-GGOFscQgT-6rSKoL-8CLUk8wcXyUNHVgRhBHq63kRtTeXFi8yzo4tjXRBUU57gf0CgU-WIS3W3og/s1600/gold-stacked-bangles.JPG]

Eleanor Yates

He has a key, or had one, before he went to another country. She held it for him. Half past six, when he came over to her house wearing a beard and smelling of weed, Eleanor just handed it back to him, told him there was some extra coffee in the press. She was ready for him; he'd told her when he got back in the state, told her he was going to a party. And Richard has never seen her angry, has never seen a whisper of the sort of rage that blacked out her soul, melted a human body into shattered bones and liquefied pulp, and he does not see a whisper of anger now.

Just welcome, the same as it's ever been since he started hanging around here, since he started calling her acarya. Since before. The guest room and guest bath are clean and Eleanor lives close enough to the university that she decides to wait for him to come back down, which he does, but with a gift.

She is a little amused, tumbling the bangles onto her hand, looking up at him with a little smile. Thanks him with moderation, as with so many things, and puts them back in their little pink bag, folding the top down, setting it on the counter for safekeeping when she heads out.

He has a key. Perhaps he stays there to shave, or goes ahead and lets the barber who cuts his hair do that, too. Perhaps he leaves, and they see each other later on.

--

Spring comes late but sudden and warm, even hot, and Eleanor wears looser clothing, puts her hair up more but it is always a bit messy when she does, sheds the coats and heavier shoes, there is more white wine than red when they stand around playing Wii Bowling on rare occasion. Rare, because they are not buddies, precisely. He has friends to hang out with, many of them; sometimes they just take breaks from studying, that's all. With beer and wine and Wii.

--

Winter comes back for a surprise guest appearance. It's absurd.

They are both early risers, for the most part. Richard was an Olympian; Eleanor just prefers to exercise at dawn instead of later in the day. So by the time she comes downstairs to see the snowmen, made of the fluffy, high-piled snow that came on during the night, she has already gotten in a short run and almost an hour of yoga. And a shower. And she's dressed. He asks, upon seeing her, if she'll be working today, and she gives a faint smirk-smile, the way her lips often move.

"Of course," she says, which she would, having spent her entire life in this state, with far worse weather than this. She drives an SUV and lives a hop and a skip away from her office; she really has no excuse. Nor, one should mention, do any of her students, as far as she's concerned. "Exams this week," she reminds him, knowing he doesn't know; the College of Law has a different calendar than the rest of DU. She glances at the window, then back to him.

"Did you miss the snow, when you were in India?"

Richard

"How do you know I didn't climb Everest?" Richard replies, mock-mysterious. He drops the charade a moment later; smiles that broad smile. "But no. I didn't miss it. I did actually pass through Tibet, though. It was hell getting a visa for that."

He sets his bowl of cereal aside; closes her book carefully with two fingers, the other two perhaps a little bit sticky from a drop of spilled milk. Swinging about to set the book on a convenient shelf or windowsill, Richard unfolds to his feet, taking down a mug to pour her a cup of still-hot water.

"Which tea?" -- this, with the tea cabinet open, his fingers hovering over the choices.

Eleanor Yates

"You would have told me," Eleanor says breezily to that, walking toward the fridge to get a cup of yogurt. Richard has risen, talking of Tibet, and she smiles. "That's what you get for doing it legally," she tells him, which does not sound like a joke at all.

He asks about tea. She thinks a moment. "Let's go with the chai," which means he should take down the honey pot, and which means that she gets out the cream from the fridge when she gets her cup of goat's milk yogurt.

Richard

With nimble fingers he plucks down the box of chai, and with it, the honey-pot. As she gets the cream, he pours himself a mug as well, then drops in teabags -- or perhaps loose-leaf in a tea ball.

"Well," he says, smiling, "I thought my Acarya wouldn't be too pleased to receive a call at 2am informing her that her wayward apprentice had been jailed for violating the borders of the People's Republic. Here," he passes her one of the mugs.

Eleanor Yates

"Better me than your parents, for something like that," she says pragmatically. He passes her the mug, bag of tea lowered into it already, and she sets it on the counter to steep while she takes the top off of her yogurt, getting out a spoon and looking over at him. Up at him.

"I'm serious. If something like that happens, I should be one of the first people you notify. Particularly if it's a legal matter, or a magical one."

Richard

Richard's smile turns wry. "You know, I'd actually somehow forgotten that international criminal law would be right up your alley."

Bright, dynamic creature that he is, he doesn't let his chai steep for very long. He actually doesn't even let it steep: he swirls the ball around a few times and then pulls it out, setting it on an empty saucer in case he wants a second mug.

"Don't worry," he adds, serious now -- serious, but still smiling, and somehow so very fond, "of course I'd call you first. Or maybe reach across time-space and rearrange particles of sand into an S.O.S. for you to read." He lifts mug to mouth; sips.

Eleanor Yates

At that, Eleanor gives a thin yet comical smile, eyebrows arched, spreading her hands with the palms up. See? You get it now.

"Call first," she says, laughing. "It's a lot easier. But in all seriousness, next time you want to go to Tibet, or need to get into Tibet, just let me know. I may be able to get in touch with someone over there who could help. Not that I'm encouraging you to be heedless or foolhardy, just --"

Eleanor pauses, then shrugs. "I wouldn't tell you to ask for help in this way if I thought you would ask without necessity."

Richard

Richard looks -- well, touched. And warmed. He smile breaks forth again, wide and warm in turn. "Sometimes," he says, "I'm reminded of just how much you honor me with your trust, Acarya."

Returning to the table, he resettles in his seat, picking up his cereal to gulp down the rest of it -- soggy flakes and all. "And you're right," he adds. "I would have told you if I'd climbed Everest. The thought did actually cross my mind, but with all the training and conditioning involved, I wouldn't have come back to Denver for at least another six months. Maybe next time.

"I was thinking," the conversation shifts, "of going up to the Chantry sometime soon. Do you want to come with?"

Eleanor Yates

He was sheepish when he showed up. He hoped she wasn't angry with him. He's touched that she doesn't think he would call her just to get him out of trouble, if he deserved the damn trouble. The more he gets to know her, the more he will realize that it wasn't a fluke that she took him on as her apprentice. It wasn't a kneejerk thing, a guess, a moment of wishfulness. She thought well of him more than a year ago; it was already there.

So she scoffs quietly and takes her teabag out of the water, setting it on the same saucer as his, stirring in honey til it melts, then cream, til her mug has a milky dark brown liquid inside of it, smelling sweet and spicy. She sips, glancing at the clock, but she's in no rush just yet; her first final to proxy today isn't til later. She has meetings, though.

"One of these summers," she says, "we should climb Everest. We already live in the Rockies; we can do some of the altitude training here. We're both in good shape." And, she doesn't say, we are both more aware than most of the immediacy, inevitability, and mercilessness of death. He asks about the chantry as she sips. She gives a little shrug. "I wouldn't be opposed. Why?"

Richard

"You know," Richard replies, brightening, "I was this close to asking if you wanted to come with when I climb Everest." Oh, now it's a when. "I just thought I ought to wait until I had a date in mind.

"And," Chantry-wise, "I suppose I thought I should. To establish formal contact, to continue my studies, all that. I've met a few more mages in the city," he adds, "but they were all casual meetings with little to no mention of the craft.

"Do you think it's a bad idea?"

Eleanor Yates

"Well, next summer," she says, not two years from now, not midwinter, no: they have about a year to train up, finish the 2014-2015 school year, and then go climb Everest.

If they both live that long.

"The library there is under lockdown," Eleanor says, "but it is extensive, and cross-traditional. It's useful. And no," she adds, starting in on her yogurt, "I don't think it's a bad idea. I've never spent much time at the Chantry. It's very different from the marabouts and other chantries I've been it. It's residential, but distant. It used to be held by a sole cabal, so there was always some tip-toeing to make sure you stayed on good terms with them."

She shrugs. "I don't find a sense of community there, and so other than the library and the node, it has little to offer. I know this may seem strange coming from me, but it's... cold."

Richard

Something about that,

I know it may seem strange coming from me,

makes Richard's eyebrows tug together. There's always been a subtle dichotomy to his face, perhaps most evident when he frowns like that. Under the golden hair, the golden tan, the cerulean-blue eyes, there is sometimes a hint of something else. The darkness of his eyebrows. The rather angular, harsh lines of his bones. The cheeks that could, if he didn't smile so often to crease and dimple them, seem hollow, lean, almost gaunt. The eyes that could be penetrating and stark.

It's not hardness or ferocity that makes him frown now. It never is, though sometimes it is an intense focus that could nearly be mistaken for such. Right now, it's not that either. It's -- something a little more like ache.

"Why would that be strange coming from you?" he says quietly. "Acarya, your heart is not cold. I know that."

Eleanor Yates

[I can't believe I forgot this.]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 4, 8, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )

Eleanor Yates

There's that smile again, a little dry. "I meant my resonance, Richard," she says wryly. She thinks of teasing him for his frown, his ache, his worry over her, thinks of telling him that it's good to know that's the first place his mind went, but:

she doesn't. He looks so serious in his worry. But the truth is, like his concern that she might be mad at him or might have an averse reaction to him showing up at dawn smelling of pot or calling him from half a world away because he's been arrested, his sudden clenching of the heart that Eleanor might refer to herself as cold-hearted seems so earnest. And she cherishes his earnestness, even when it is this misdirected, misplaced. She doesn't mock him for caring. She wouldn't.

Eleanor just eats her yogurt. "I think you should go. But be prepared for what it may be, and what it's less likely to be, and consider what you might want to make it become. As with most things."

Richard Levasseur

"Oh," says Richard -- corrected, chastened, a touch embarrassed. Not terribly, though, and not in any lasting sense. His grin is wry for a moment. "Obviously I misunderstood."

And then it passes. He considers what she says and said; he sips his chai, which he takes with plenty of cream but only a little honey.

"I think I will go," he agrees, "but I'll try not to expect too much. For what it's worth, I'll be happy if I can obtain access to the library. The community aspect -- well, it'd be nice, but hardly necessary. I'm not hurting for friends.

"I'm curious about the chantry's past, though. How did a single cabal manage to take control of an entire chantry and its node?"

Eleanor Yates

"A community of people who understand can be valuable, even if they aren't your friends," Eleanor mentions, because that is a difference: a community of magi, a horde of friends who can't ever grasp why you talk the way you talk or believe what you believe or why you have to go, right now, with that professor wearing all-black.

"Such a community is why we were able to have your ritual the way we did, or went to that party overseas." She gives a little shrug; she is not overly worried, but talks to him as though he can take what she has to say and think about it. It's all she really expects of him. "I never want you to be detached from sleepers. For many, that's the danger -- they can't even exist like other people anymore. But for you, I think it's more likely that you'll always be a little separate from other magi. Look at your life, Awakened, before you and I met."

He mentions the chantry's past, and maybe she is avoiding the topic, or maybe she is just focusing elsewhere for the moment, but she doesn't answer.

Richard Levasseur

"You're probably right," Richard replies -- still wry, though perhaps a little wistful now as well. "Though, I like to think maybe I'll have a community within the Awakened one day. That maybe I'm already -- partly through your contacts -- developing one.

"I think I'll always just be a little more selective with my Awakened friends than I am with my Sleeper friends. That seems prudent, though. Bad influences amongst Sleeper friends are dangerous enough."

Eleanor Yates

"You absolutely should be," Eleanor says, in firm agreement. "It's hard enough to establish trusting relationships with anyone; it can be harder still when you're dealing with literal mind-readers and the occasional narcissistic megalomaniac with an enchanted gun."

Richard Levasseur

Richard grins. It is sudden and bright. "Now," he says, "why do I feel like you're speaking from personal experience? Especially about the megalomaniacs with enchanted guns."

Eleanor Yates

She pshes to that, waving a hand. "You met plenty of both kinds at that party," she says, then thinks: "And perhaps a few at your Agama Te, too."

Sips her chai. Takes a spoonful of yogurt. "You just have to be careful with people who can affect real, immediate, and individual change on the universe. For the most part, we are self-governing anarchists no matter what ties we have to our traditions. And there's no entrance exam to being able to do magic. There is even, some might say, a predeliction towards mental illness that goes hand-in-hand with quite literally seeing a reality opposed to the reality shared by the majority of the world."

Eleanor gives him a small, thin smile.

"In our own tradition, you have to contend with learning how to deal with people who, at times, have the supernatural reek of death. It doesn't always mean they're a bad person; I've carried the taint of Jhor before." Eleanor's smile fades. "Sometimes it can mean they're a sociopath."

Richard Levasseur

"That party," Richard says, "was one of the most interesting experiences I've had."

Which is neither here nor there. But he says it, because it's true, and because she brought him, and because -- well; because he wants her to know, he supposes. He wants her to know he appreciated it.

"Well," he returns that small, thin smile of hers: his own large, warmer, not quite so thin, "at least I know that's not what it means for you."

When he first met her those smiles made him a little uncomfortable, perhaps. He, like so many before him, wondered if she was sick. Wondered if she simply didn't like wasting her time on pupils. Wondered if she was unfriendly or distant or cold. He knows better now. On some level, he likes those smiles now: small as they are, thin as they are, they are genuine.

"I don't think I've ever asked," he says a moment later, his longfingered hands wrapped around that mug of still-warm chai, "did you have an Acarya of your own? Or did you learn from -- from Henrik?"

Eleanor Yates

Precisely.

He needs a community of Awakened: he needs to be careful about what trust he gives to people in that community. And they will not always be the same as friends, but sometimes they will be. Sometimes they will be interesting and fleeting and sometimes they will give him a key to their house and moments after acknowledging that their souls have been twisted and dark at one point

and moments after smiling, with acceptance, the acknowledgement that their souls aren't anymore, and won't be,

they will say something like this:

"I learned a lot from Henrik, but I had my own mentor. We had a different sort of relationship, though. More formal, in some ways. And more distant."

Wait, no, that's not the Something Like This. It's what comes after, after she takes a sip of chai, looks at him, says:

"Richard, if you don't already, I think you should have at least one firearm. Fully legal, registered, the works. You should get a hunting license as well, if you plan on getting and keeping a rifle. But I want you to know, in case you ever need one, I can make sure you have something unregistered, too."

Richard Levasseur

Richard wasn't expecting that. He blinks. He stirs his chai. He looks at her again.

"I've only fired a gun once in my life," he says, frank and open, "and that was only because I made friends with one of the marksmen on the team. My parents were bohemian free-spirits who raised me amongst the latter-day hippies of Berkeley. Shooting was definitely not one of the things they wanted to teach me.

"Which isn't to say I have something against it. I don't. It's just -- not something I've thought much about. I'll learn, if you think it's wise, or necessary.

"Is it? Necessary, I mean. Even if I have little intention, right now, of being a Wheel-Turner who turns the wheel by killing? Is it so dangerous out there?"

Eleanor Yates

Eleanor just looks at him for a few moments, and then she nods. "I think it's necessary. And while personally I feel a measure of annoyance --" her tone suggests it may even border on disgust, "for the 'enthusiasts' you will meet at ranges and shops and the occasional show, I think that a lack of preparation on your part, or on the part of many mages, often does create an emergency on everyone's part."

She takes her yogurt cup to the sink to rinse it off, to place her spoon in the dishwasher.

"Last fall, I went to see a movie at the Mayan. As it turned out, the film drove several people insane as they watched it. A snakelike, chitinous creature emerged from the screen. There were a few other Awakened there, by fate, but none who could do much about it. One who ran at the thing trying to kick and punch it, which it ignored. I told them all to get down. I enchanted the bullets in my weapon. And then I killed it."

She speaks matter-of-factly, and without pride. She does not feel good about herself that Grace, Sid, Shoshannah and Mara would likely have been badly injured if not killed that night if she hadn't been present. She would not have felt bad about herself if she had not been there, or had not had a firearm handy, and if they had all been badly injured or killed. But she knows that in the long run, all of them surviving is probably better than the alternative, and more people were not severely injured or killed.

That story is longer, but she doesn't share the end of it, which was months after the fact, and more complicated, and which she does sometimes feel bad about. Maybe another time.

"I think you should always think through what your intention is when you pick up a weapon of any kind, even if it's not a gun. I think that your intention should have a path to fruition. I think that most mages I have met in this city don't know much what to do when faced with something dangerous other than to run, try and affect its intentions with mind magic, or make friends with it. I think that sometimes, many Awakened don't give much thought to how they'll protect themselves, whether because of hubris or denial or some other instinct... or because they know that the Euthanatoi are out there, and will kill the things that go bump in the night before they ever have to face them.

"I think," Eleanor finishes, "it would be good for you to know, and to be prepared. I think the safest place for a gun to be is in the hands of someone who is not really inclined to make use of it, but knows how, if they must."

Richard Levasseur

Two years ago, the sort of thing Eleanor talks about would be entirely beyond Richard's scope of comprehension. Movies that drive the audience insane. Things that emerge, chitinous and crawling. Even now, the thought of it bends his mind a bit.

Not as much as before. It's been an interesting two years. He's crossed into the land of the dead. He's seen horrors there. He's gone around the world, studied -- if only briefly -- at the feet of masters. He's learned to work magic of his own, to create his own luck, to sense the very fabric of space and time and matter and energy. He's found his acarya quite literally across the curtain of life and death. He can believe -- even if he can't quite imagine -- the things she speaks of.

There's a flicker of a smile, too, when she says: by fate. Because of course she does. Not luck, not chance, but fate.

--

"I suppose I just thought if I were ever attacked, I'd try to make a piano fall on my attacker's head." There's humor in it, but a thread of honesty too: that is what he would do. He would tug the strands of fate; he would nudge the spin of the electron. "But a gun does seem a little more practical.

"I could use your recommendations," he says. "I think I'll start with a handgun. Maybe we can go gun shopping together." Pause. "How do you enchant a bullet?"

Eleanor Yates

That makes her laugh. Oh, it must be a good day. She got up on time, she had her run, she practiced yoga, she came down fresh-faced and willing to eat, to share tea, to talk about all manner of things. It must be a good day for her, if she does all these things, and then she laughs at the image of Richard making a piano fall on an opponent's head.

"It's good to have," she says, which is her last word on the subject of Should You, at least. The how, she can help with more practically. The when and why, Richard will have to seek on his own... though of course, as with anything he seeks on his own, she's there if he wants to reach out. She'll always talk.

"We'll go to a shop sometime. There's a place in Lakewood I like, BluCore, operated by a couple of former SEALs. It's less... bonkers-fringe than most ranges. You'll be able to get a feel for different pieces there, do some training with them. I'll teach you what I can,"

and while he has never seen her use a handgun, that first time at a range will be eye-opening,

"including how to enchant the bullets. It takes a little more knowledge of Prime than I think you have currently. Enchanting a weapon -- whether a sword or knife or bullet -- allows it to cut through an entity's very Pattern, making its effect much more severe. That's particularly helpful when dealing with things that aren't human, which have natural armor or regenerative capabilities. Do not ever shoot a werewolf without enchanting the bullets first," she adds, very firmly.

Richard Levasseur

Richard almost laughs at the werewolf line. Well -- he does laugh: but then he realizes she's serious. Werewolves. Of course. He should have expected it; they meet ghosts all the time.

"Acarya, I think I'll try to avoid shooting werewolves altogether," Richard says, smiling. "Actually, I think I'm going to try to avoid shooting anything, period. But as you said: it'll be good to know and be prepared. To shoot if I must, and to shoot,"

he does take a breath here, and it is a breath that surely Eleanor and others of her ilk, so experienced, so steady, would not take,

"to kill."

He finishes the last of his chai, then. He discovers he does want a refill: a second, milder cup steeped from the same leaves. Maybe a little more honey this time. He gets up to prepare it, holding his hand out for her cup as he passes in case she wants a refill.

"I'm going to go study on campus today," he says. "I'll probably be back here tonight though. And maybe over the weekend we can go to BluCore, if you have time."

Eleanor Yates

She laughs a little at that, too -- the line about avoiding shooting werewolves, full stop. It's a light sound, youthful, because when you think of it she is still quite young. It doesn't last long, because he's being serious. And she doesn't feel the need to repeat what she said before, but here is where she would tell him that she believes that the safest place, the right place, for a gun to be is in the hand of someone who doesn't want to shoot it, who hesitates before they say kill,

but knows how to shoot it. Who knows how to kill.

If he must.

--

Eleanor does not want a refill; she is rinsing out her mug quickly, setting it in the dishwasher. "Let's plan on that," she says, closing the dishwasher again, which -- by now -- she almost assumes Richard will start after he's had his tea. When he stays here, overnight or for a weekend or just a few hours, he's never been a poor guest. It doesn't feel like he's a guest at all, just someone who occasionally lives here, even for just a short while at a time.

"I just have a couple of tests to proxy today, but the rest of my schedule is meetings," she says. "I shouldn't be much later than four or five, though. I was going to make coconut curry," which means cauliflower and broccoli and carrots and onions and potatoes and other vegetables cut chunky into a spicy, creamy sauce, "if you want to share."

Richard Levasseur

Richard does, and will, start that dishwasher before he leaves. There have been occasions when he didn't, but never out of negligence. Usually because it was too empty to justify the power and water expenditure; occasionally because they were out of detergent or out of rinse agent or something of the sort.

He's conscientious about how long he occupies the washer and dryer, too. And whether or not he leaves lights on when he departs. And whether the doors are locked, whether the windows are closed. All the things that one would do if one were trying to be a good guest, Richard does -- only he does it not because he is a good guest but because it feels like he lives here. Occasionally. A short while at a time.

He has a few changes of clothes in the dresser in the guest room, too. A toothbrush in the bathroom; that sort of thing. A pair of swim goggles hanging on the doorknob some days.

--

"Maybe I'll go to my discussion section then," he says, and the truth is: Richard is a fairly self-motivated learner. Since the more regimented schedule of his first year, he's gradually found his own learning style. These days -- a sophomore, soon to be a junior -- he only goes to lectures if the class is especially interactive. Otherwise, he watches lectures online; he reads on his own time. He does practice questions, lots and lots of them. Discussion sections are rare-attendance events, but he's a common sight at office hours.

He learns better this way, which is the way he learns with Eleanor: reading in quietude and solitude, meeting one-on-one with the professor to discuss particularly compelling theories, arguments or points.

"I'll probably still be back before you," he adds, settling back into his chair for a bit more reading while she readies herself to depart. "I'll make some naan and maybe start cutting the vegetables."

Which is his way of saying: yes, he would like to share.

serafine the rock star.

Kalen Holliday

[Nightmares]

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 3, 6, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

Serafíne

There is in Capitol Hill a blond-brick three-or-so storey house, old-fashioned and four-square with a porch as wide as the building itself and gardens, front and back, well-loved, and a strange little bridge from the house proper to the second storey bonus room over the detached garage out back and an expansive and well-shaded garden that someone loved very well once, which someone is once-again trying to tend, though rather haphazardly. And in that house on Capitol Hill on that tree-lined residential street full of family homes and duplexes and family-homes and duplexes that have been turned into three or five or seven unit condos or apartment buildings, there is almost always some semblance of a party going on.

Sometimes it is quiet, see. After hours, a few stragglers on the porch with a bottle of whiskey at 3:00 a.m. and a couple of joints, after the bars have closed, music low in the air through the cracked windows, the sort of laughter that even drunk you try to keep low and hushed because something about that hour begs for quiet, pleads for it.

Sometimes it is low-key, a Sunday barbeque with the girls from the roller derby team and the co-workers from someone's something and the retired professors from three doors down.

Sometimes it is a fucking party, bodies packed into the rooms and every kind of drug you can imagine and the most ridiculously decadent everything, everywhere, and sometimes those just seem to last, see - for days and days and days, a constantly changing mix of people and personalities.

Tonight, well. Who knows what it's like tonight.

The front door's open but the front door is almost always open.

There's music from somewhere but there's almost always music.

There is, also, a unicycle on the front porch and a cabana bed in the back garden.

Of course there is.

Kalen Holliday

Kalen walks up the steps of the porch easily now. Grace like he had once will come later, but for now he walks on his own and that is...well...it is not enough really. There is this ceaseless war against evil. What could ever be enough. Still, it is progress. And Kalen, Kalen who is building libraries and herding new Mages and mentoring Virtual Adepts - he has never lost track of that.

But there is nothing for him to launch himself at right now. Nothing to fight.

So he's come here. Of his options, somewhere he might fall into a pile of people trumphs priests. It doesn't always, more than one priest could attest to that.

There is a cabana bed in the back garden and he almost laughs. Of course there is.

He doesn't head for it, not yet, instead he slides through the assembled people. Sera has mostly seen him when he's just not trying to be social. Or human. Sera met a Hermetic knight. But here, here is Kalen drifting and and between and through people and laughing. He lingers nowhere long enough to really have to tell anyone much of anything. And, perhaps most interesting to Sera, should she overhear, he introduces himself not as Kalen, but as Eli,

Serafíne

1. Perception + Awareness?

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (2, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 6 ) Re-rolls: 3

Serafíne

2. Overhear the name Eli? -1 difficulty for ridiculously supernatural awareness about where everyone is.

Dice: 4 d10 TN5 (2, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )

Richard

[jeez serafine, you're clearly as imperceptive as a brick.]

Kalen Holliday

[That! Awareness!]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 6, 6, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )

Serafíne

Somehow Kalen is here. Maybe there was a mass-text, maybe he just decided to take Sera up on that invitation extended thoughtlessly the last time they saw each other. Maybe it was as simple as

haing a thing. u should come.

There's recycling in bins on the front porch and a half-full ashtray and that unicycle and a pair of tattooed girls making out, who barely notice him as he walks up the steps, without grace but walks, right, whole: no cane in sight, and inside the warm wood foyer and the maze of lower-level rooms, a front and back parlor and a powder room and a dining room and step leading up-up-up a with black and white portraits of Amelia Earhart and a spider-plant with spider-babies in a macramed holder in the holding and contemporary art on the walls alongside old lady collectibles and treasures and collections and photographs and left-behinds of all sorts, more than might be imaginable, and people people people, the sort of group that expands and contracts and invites-in and lets-go-free and

there is Kalen, who introduces himself as Eli, and somewhere, somewhere, somewhere - through the front or the back parlor, through the kitchen all in layered whites - white cabinets and marble and stone counters and windows overlooking the garden - packed with food and drink and the sort of people who linger near the food and drink - and he has a glimpse of the cabana bed out in the back garden (which also has: a rope hammock on a wooden frame, a mismatched assortment of patio furniture, three bongs and a hookah and a fire pit and Sera is such a fucking amazing hostess or just has such brilliant goddamned roommates that there are:

homemade marshmallows, artisan graham crackers, and fair-trade dark chocolate squares for the making-of-smores

as well as vodka-soaked marashino cherries to top the smores if you want to turn them into an alcoholic sundae instead,

and Sera is standing on the patio as Kalen ducks outside from the kitchen to the back garden, smoking a clove cigarette and drunk or fucked up or high or something and there is a strange air of reserve around her for all that she turns in to him as he walks out and embraces him, exclaiming,

"Eli!"

- smilingm a humming, drunken smile.

Kalen Holliday

For someone who decided to come to a place because contact, it takes him a second to return the embrace, because one of the few things he does as easily as he falls in love is spook. But it is Sera and there is probably no mortal danger lurking in any bushes waiting to ambush them, and so he wraps his arms around Sera and spends a few seconds breathing in the scent of her hair. He touches her often enough now, but this is the first time he has held her absent some kind of mystic crisis. It is the same though, in that he lets the rest of the world not matter until he lets her go.

"It's good to see you." And he means that, for all he is already releasing her, already back to scanning the crowd for threats or some sign of a crisis. His attention catches briefly on an argument, until he determines it probably isn't about to erupt into a shootout and his eyes continue to wander over the crowd.

"I love this place. How are you?"

Serafíne

Her hair smells like smoke and sugar and spice and her skin smells like nightfall and her breath smells like whiskey and Sera is absolutely, entirely aware of everything, everything: those few strange, spare moments where she is hugging him and he is on the verge of spooking, alert, paranoid, aware and it feels like wrapping her arms around a statue and she thinks about statues and she thinks about David and then someone named David and then marble and then a drunken sunset spread across some glittering sea and then the rhythm of waves and then the rhythm of a beating heart and then,

oh!

Kalen-Eli is hugging her back, and Sera smiles and he can feel her smile, peripherally see? The edge-and-crinkle of it, drunk right? but aware and self-aware and lovely,

lovely.

"I love it too," agrees Sera, agreeably. "It was Dee's aunt's place? and like Dee inherited it and that's why we came to Denver." Though really, isn't it Sera's place, by now? Hasn't she transfigured it with her presence, the way they all do, with the places they live.

Some distant-but-insistent beat of music against the senses, through some window or some door. That argument getting heated over the Mekons' B-sides and also laughter and strange shadows and on and on.

"I'm drunk," Sera continues, declares to Kalen, smiling, smiling. She is absolutely drunk. She is also probably at least or two other things, judging by the way her eyes devour the light. "I'm - " a beat, a humming beat, and her eyes close and she's considering it because there is something sub-liminal, sub-lingual to-be-considered and she does consider it holds it inside her and comes back with, "good. I'm good.

"You though. You've changed. Right? What's fixed?"

Kalen Holliday

Kalen's hands cross the distance between them to rest lightly on her ribs, because he does like to be touching someone and he definitely likes to be touching Sera and because he is sometimes convinced that Sera does not stay upright by virtue of anything but some inherently mystical quality about her.

He smiles in response to her - her words, her smiling, just her. "I am not. But perhaps soon enough. I may be about to hunt down raspberry flavored something to go with the smores." He considers how to respond to that question because there are thousands of answers. For an instant they war on his tongue, and then, "Well. I got my hair cut, gained like five pounds, and I can walk again. among other things." There is some amusement there. "The details of which are a story for later."

Richard

Richard was invited: perhaps by Serafine, more likely by word-of-mouth that has spread slow and far and wide and then touched, flame-to-gasoline, the edge of undergraduate life at DU. Then suddenly everyone knew, and at least one-tenth of everyone showed up.

So: there's Richard. Climbing out of a stuffed-full compact car, some Honda or Hyundai or Toyota or similar, laughing, pulling along two giggling girls and three equally-giggly guys and how many people are in that car and also how many hits have their already taken. "Hey!" he hails from the lawn, seeing Serafine. His friends echo and some bystanders think this is a great game and all of a sudden there's a whole chorus:

"HEYYYY!"

Serafíne

Here's something, the way Sera's eyes track all enthused to his hair and perhaps then his stomach (gained five pounds!) and then drop to his leg and she is still smoking her cigarette, the kretek with the blue paper and the gold foil around the filter and the spicy-sweet scent and she takes a drag and exhales thoughtlessly out of one corner of her mouth, away from her body and his, smoke mingling with the smoke that drifts from the ceramic firepit in a long, slow-furling sort of flag.

And she ashes that cigarettes with a flick of her thumb against the filter's edge and she also does this away from her body and away from his body but she is, as well, reaching out to touch his leg, and then the hand in which he held his cane, and there is something reverent about this touch, from Sera, who is magic, who wears it on her skin and in her bones, some nights, and she then lets go of Kalen's hand and reaches up to pull him in for a kiss, tender, against his temple.

"You're fucking obsessed with raspberries, aren't you. I'm glad you can walk again."

And then there's a hey! and a chorus of HEYYYY! and Sera is rising onto her tiptoes and waving all enthusiastically back at Richard, informing Kalen that,

"It's the Giant!"

and,

"Have you met Richard?"

--

When Richard makes it into earshot, Sera will introduce them both.

Kalen Holliday

Five pounds hasn't done much to cure Kalen of looking like a scarecrow, Sera can't see any real evidence of weight gain. His expression softens when she starts touching him, watching her quietly. He is different with the crowd. He is the same with her.

And then he is laughing. "I have met Richard. Briefly." He does not point out that she was there. He briefly considers that Richard might be Named Jolly. He hasn't seen those commercials in awhile though, and Names are so much more complicated than that. Still, he turns toward Richard, and this time he smiles. He moves his hands away from Sera's ribs, freeing her to greet Richard, because Sera believes in hugs and doesn't hesitate about them. Nothing reserved about Sera. Kalen will more likely not hug Richard, but god knows. There are definitely enough drugs here to make that happen

Richard

Earshot, then handshake-shot. Richard, though he thinks Kalen looks somehow familiar, can perhaps be forgiven for not really remembering the exact location or circumstances of their first meeting. He was, after all, at the tail end of a very long journey. Also: dirty and unkempt and bearded, like some nomad wandered in from forty days in the desert.

The Richard that shows up tonight is quite different. This Richard is clean and kempt and beardless. He has fantastic golden hair that goes so well with his fantastic golden tan. He shakes hands with Kalen, and -- yes, he is rather giant-ish; even standing a step down on the porch they are eye to eye.

"Nice, Kalen," he says, which must be shorthand for nice-to-meet-you. He sweeps his friends forward, "This is Jennifer, Caileigh, Rob, Matt, and Andy.

"We heard about your party," he adds, Serafine-wise. "You do this a lot?"

Serafíne

"Hey," Sera's smoking and she's holding her cigarette carefully away from her body, almost but not quite like a joint, and she's all engagement as she opens up to greet Richard's friends. "Drinks and food in the kitchen, edibles are fucking marked. You should try the sugared violets, yeah? We try to smoke outside, not in. This is Eli. I'm Serafíne. Call me Sera, yeah?"

And there's something about Sera, right, opening herself up, pulling people in. She believes in fucking hugs and she opens her arms to Jennifer and Caileigh, wraps herself around them, all careful of her cigarette and their hair, and she hugs them while she's explaining the set up and where to go and what to get and where to find it.

"Otherwise," and she's working her way down the line of Richard-and-friends though the gentlemen do not receive the same sort of immediate embrace, and then there's Richard, who is a Giant! " - make yourselves at fucking home."

- and reaches up (and up and up and UP) and hugs him too, wraps her arms around his neck and she smells like smoke and whiskey and patchouli just the way you expect her to smell and she inhales in the embrace and then she lets Richard go and takes one more drag and then drops her cigarette into a concrete urn of damp sand by sliding glass doors leading to the patio, smiles, see, as she takes in the warm vibe in the back garden. Edison lights in the trees and the fire pit and fucking SMORES and people getting high and people arguing and/or agreeing, geekily, about obscure punk bands or second-wave-Nu Metal-Dream-Pop or what the fuck ever and people making out and the stars visible wheeling through the night sky and does not, does not think at all about where she might have been, a year ago tonight, but that knowledge is also in her skin and makes the immediate brilliance the night that much more palpable,

and Richard wants to know if she does this often, and Sera, she smiles, see -

"Yeah. There's pretty much always someone here. We have a good time."

Waits until his friends have filtered away to get stoned or make out or get drunk, and introduces Kalen all over again, to Richard:

"You remember Kalen right?"

Kalen Holliday

The collection of people Richard introduces are offered a hand, and smiles. Richard can have his hand again, because he came here to touch people after all. Sera has to reach up and up and up and he wonders, briefly, if hugging Richard would count as stretching. If his skin tastes like the sea. At least he isn't fucking cold.

And then Richard and Sera are talking and he is letting them talk and his eyes are out on the crowd again. That argument is done, no one is screaming and gushing blood, nothing that is not supposed to be is on fire. Look. You just never know.

Richard

Richard's new friends, who are actually just some people Richard ran into after Intro to Psychology or something, who he overheard talking about coming here and he wandered over and next thing you know there were all crammed into a car driving over, though looking at them you'd think he's known them all semester, all year --

Richard's new friends love the hugging. They love the way Serafine looks, feels, seems. She's so fucking hip, she's so fucking raw, she's exactly the sort of person they think of when they think of having The College Experience and they wonder if she will -- they hope she will -- introduce them to exactly the sort of Experiences they came to college to have tonight.

The setup's explained to them. They break to mingle, to sample the sugared violets, to fucking get higher than they already are. And meanwhile Sera is hugging Richard, who is very laidback and unawkward about the whole business of being hugged by hip, raw, stoned, interestingly-clad women. It doesn't even matter that he's like a foot taller. He hugs her back, easily, one arm squeezing around her back for a moment.

Sort of stays there, that arm -- moves up a little so it's slung easily, amicably, camaraderie-ly around Sera's shoulders as he turns his attention to Eli again. Only now it's not Eli, it's Kalen. Richard looks intrigued.

"Yeah, I think I met you the night I got back to Denver. Why the name switch?"

Serafíne

Like a foot taller technically means more than a foot taller but Sera always squares the circle and evens the fucking odds with footware that shortens her stride and engages her calves and generally makes her considerably taller than she would otherwise be, though never (or: rarely) as tall as the people among whom she spends most of her time.

"Oh, fuck! Yeah, Kalen was there. And that girl, right? The new girl." Sera stopped time with her. She does that sometimes, because she can feel the seconds like molecules between her teeth. And she has absolutely no objections to a companionable arm slung over her shoulder, see, it makes her feel like a fucking bro which she finds rather delightful, as it makes her toes feel strange or maybe, just maybe, that is the MDMA.

It is something anyway.

"Get this, he was just like coming back from Shangri-La to fucking Denver that night and came in for coffee and there we all were." She is interestingly-clad. A tiiiiny leather skirt that seems made of straps and strops and rivets and buckles, and thigh-high fishnets, ripped natch held up by black garters, with heeled industrial-looking boots and dark make-up and a half-shaved head and flashes of black-ink on her arms and hands whenever she moves them. A flannel shirt mostly buttoned mostly in the middle right now and a house full of expectation and delights and debauch.

Richard's guests will assuredly have an Experience.

Hawksley

And down the street comes a low, slinking car, the color of espresso powder dusted with gold. Real gold. No pyrite, not at this level, which is not the level of the party or the vast majority of the partgoers. This is the 24-karat life: the owner of the car is already a bit drunk and the window is down for his face to be, on occasion, flecked with the intermittent rainfall that has marked the day and night. This is the 24-karat life: the driver of the car may as well call the owner his liege lord, his prophet, his son, even though he never takes his eyes off of the duty of driving to look on that golden, rain-touched face.

The car slows and settles, like a bird beating wings against the sky to gentle its plummeting to the earth, and stills not at the curb -- which is packed, on a Friday night in one of the cool days of mid-spring -- but in the middle of the street. The passenger door opens and Hawskley rises from it, taps it closed, and stands there a moment, taking in the night which fell so, so quickly that he hardly even noticed until he realized he couldn't see with his sunglasses on.

He walks away, toward the house, and the car drives off, perhaps to some coffee shop, some all-night diner, to wait for summons. The liege lord, prophet, and son of the servant's heart,

strolls up towards the house on Corona, feeling the corona it has of magic, of mages, of stormy tesselating liminal visceral thalassic enthralling power. He smirks a bit, and pushes open the door, and they know him here, it's been a year, a year is forever in this sort of group. The ones who don't immediately notice and know him know that they're on the outside, they haven't gotten in yet, the others are knitted together in their knowledge of him and their knowledge of Sera and their knowledge of what transpires and what it feels like when he is here with Sera when he is here whispering in Dee's blushing ear or leading Dan somewhere.

Some of them call him Davie. Some of them call him Hawksley. He corrects neither, and he does not appear to care -- when asked -- which he is called. Not much. Not at Sera's house. He could have twenty names here, and they'd still know him.

Someone hands him a little glass pipe, freshened up recently, and he is cordial and grateful enough in passing as he walks past everyone, out, smoking the purplish-green as he passes through the kitchen. This is the life, isn't it? And it is golden.

Kalen Holliday

"How do you live with just one?" Kalen asks, but it's reflexive and caught somewhere between distance and warm amusement. And then he pays attention to words that Sera said a second after she says them, like they ran through a filter or three to get his attention.

"Shangri-la?" And now he's curious enough that he stops searching for some new and exciting lurking terror and looks back at Richard with something resembling actual focus.

That focus lasts until the second he tastes peaches and sunlight and for a few seconds the ground falls away. Hawksley. He breathes in the feel of Hawksley's Resonance the way he breathed in the scent of Sera's hair.

No. Focus. Richard. "Really?"

Richard

"Nooo," Richard is shaking his head, and Richard is laughing -- though not unkindly, and certainly not at Kalen's expense. "I spent a semester abroad. I think Sera just thought Shangri-La sounded more exotic than Kolkata."

They are on the porch; thus they can see the street. Plenty of people can see the street. Plenty of people are all a-gossip: he must be a celebrity, he must be famous, who is he?

Richard, twisting about on the porch, looking over his shoulder at the newcomer, tips his chin that-a-way. "Isn't that your friend Hawksley?"

Serafíne

"Mmmm," Sera is humming in response to Richard, feeling Hawksley's resonance, sun-drenched and soaring, in almost precisely the same way that Kalen feels it, as if she could become lost in it, the warmth of the sun soaking into her bones, the endless promise of a golden summer, the absolute defiance of gravity. Such immediate pleasure does she take in his presence - blocks away, see, with her senses blown so fucking open - and then a block away, and then down the street, and emerging from the car and navigating all familiar through the house he knows, which knows him almost as intimately as it knows Sera, - that she tips her head aslant against Richard's bicep with the pleasure-of-it. "That is Hawksley."

Without having to look-and-see him.

"Shangri-La. Kolkutta. Kathmandu. You should've seen it, Kalen," perhaps not remembering that Kalen did see it. "He had," she is speaking to Kalena and Richard even as she turns and ducks a bit beneath his arm and is reaching for Hawksley as he emerges onto the patio, "a Grizzly Adams beard, man."

Which he did. Which she loves, right now.

Because she loves everything.

Because everything breaks her heart.

Then she's lifting her arms to wrap them around Hawksley's neck and hug him and wrap her arms around his neck and cup the back of his skull seeking to bring him down to her so she can tip her forehead against his and murmur something to him by way of greeting.

Kalen Holliday

His eyes widen as Sera describes the beard, as though this is the first he's ever heard of such a thing. Because...why not play? And then she is reaching for Hawksley and the only thing thing that seems like it isn't tide-bound and liquid and mercurial is the sense of sunlight.

Perhaps he should have just brought a bottle of whiskey to the church.

He looks back to Richard, but the sense of connection that was there with Sera is absent. He smiles anyway. "Considering all the places I have and haven't been, I think Iowa farm towns might seem more remarkable to me."

Richard

There are hugs, and there are hugs, and there are hugs. The one Sera gives Hawksley is the latter, and Richard watches for only a single warm moment before turning his eyes politely away. To Kalen, of course:

"Not much of a world traveler?"

Serafíne

Sera's arms are still around Hawksley's neck, her forehead against his forehead, and he may or may not be unbuttoning her shirt while they all stand there on the patio of her house.

No, although his player is absent now because the internet is a cruel, cruel mistress, he is absolutely likely to be unbuttoning her shirt just as she directed him to do and nothing about the moment - for all its remarkable intimacy, says that have either the need or the desire for privacy.

It's just that sort of place, see.

It's just that sort of night.

Kalen Holliday

"On the contrary. I've been all over, though for most places, at least recently, never long." He looks over the crowd again, then nods. "I should...." He waves at that other people, the place where there are smores to be made. "I was on a quest for raspberry liqueur." He smiles a little. "Perhaps later."

Serafíne

Still the moment folds into itself, right, and breaks itself apart. There is an egg and it is cracked open and the yolk is sliding golden and the Hermetic Who Loves Framboise goes to search through the liquer cart for one of the crown-topped bottles and the other Hermetic with Many Names unbutton's the Cultist's stupid flannel shirt which she was only keeping buttoned for the pleasure of the reveal and she turns around and he slides it off her shoulders and she is then mostly-nude, right, this mirrored disco-ball mosaic affixed to the swell of her breasts, nothing else to even suggest anything like modesty, tattooes scrawling up her flank and her hands and her arms, the inky-coil of one visible just beneath her right breast, her torso lean as hell, primarily because she never remembers to eat, does she? Except for the mornings when grease and carbohydrates are necessary to fight the hangover. Because she lives the way she does, burns every candle at every end as if there were no end to the potential fuel.

And then there are strangers and not-strangers and the night opening, see - generous, emergent, emulsifying somehow, and Hawksley and Sera disappear for longer than you really quite understand but the night goes on and the party goes on and this get lovely and loud and weird and then they contract and get quiet and chill and delicious and some people move outside and others slide inside and others split and others hook-up and fish cab-fare not car-keys out of the bowl in the front foyer and someone, somewhere has replaced the 80s post-punk with an acoustic guitar that seems to come from everywhere and no where and maybe you are too high to know where and

oh,

hello giant.

Richard is sitting on a bench or in a camp-chair or in the grass or what the fuck ever part of a loose circle that expands and contracts around the firepit and may or may not have a marshmallow on a stick when Sera, loose and louche, appears behind him, and she's barefoot or rather: stocking-footed now, and one of her stockings has started to roll down and she's wearing a different skirt and more than a few of her mosaic-pieces have come off the masterpiece that was discoboobs but hey,

but hi!

She settles her hands on Richard's shoulder and uses him as leverage as she climbs over the bench and god only knows what hour it is.

The stars have wheeled.

Sera breathes: in and in and in, and tips her head backwards, and glances up at the sky.

"Do you miss being far-away?" she asks him, which is a strange thing to ask, but perhaps he understands what she means.

Richard

Richard is not the hedonist Serafine is, or at least the hedonist he thinks Serafine must be. Cultist, isn't she? It's neoracism, mage edition. Regardless: it's not like she does anything to dissuade his assumptions. Just look at her disco boobs.

We digress.

Richard is not the hedonist he thinks Serafine must be. He does not go to these debauched wild parties very often, though it would be inaccurate to say he avoids them, or that he never goes to them at all. Still; the last party that resembled this that he can remember was --

-- okay, well. There are a few. But the last one that we wish to mention is the one that his Acarya, of all people, took him to. A party full of mages and magic. A party that started with the single weirdest trip he's ever had and ended with waking on the lawn half-undressed with a girl named ... god, what was her name. He knew it then, but ultimately one night stands are one night stands and all he remembers now is that she was Dutch, and they gave her a ride home, and they were easy and unembarrassed and happy on that too-bright morning.

We digress again.

Richard is near the fire, later in the night. He has not devolved to one night standery just yet, though perhaps the night is headed that way. He is hanging out. He has made new friends, as he does: his new friends are gathered around the fire with him and someone is rambling on about something and he is just watching the flames dance. He startles a little when a hand lands on his shoulder, but it's not a big startle. More like -- an awakening, as though a moment ago he was almost hypnotized. He looks up. Disco-boobs comes clambering over the bench to drop down, or not.

He tilts his head back too. Looks at the stars, then closes his eyes. The sky is wheeling overhead. He is suffused with chemicals and borrowed euphoria.

"Sometimes," he answers, honestly. "Even before I ... y'know. Involved myself with Awakened life, I traveled a lot. Sometimes for competitions. Sometimes just for pleasure. You can get used to that sort of thing. Always being somewhere new."

He opens his eyes. Looks at her.

"I like it fine here, though. I like being here too, not-traveling."

Serafíne

Sera favors Richard with a smile, strangely wistful. It is could be easily interpreted as a late-night-coming-down sort of smile, as a party's-over sort of smile, but she's not coming down and the party isn't every really over for her, is it. Just banked for a while.

There are always embers and they always flare up again.

So, slant-wise and strangely-wistful and easily under- or over-interpreted, that glance, wreathed in smoke from the slow-dying fire.

"If you pay enough attention to yourself, though, you can always be somewhere new. Even when you're in the same place."

She says it musingly, lazily. Reaches for one of the marshmallow sticks and uses it not for smores but to stir the embers and watch the flames spark and flair.

"I never traveled much. When did you stop swimming?"

Richard

"I still swim," Richard says, which is of course not what she's asking. "I just don't compete anymore," he adds, confessional. "I quit that after London. It was time."

Serafíne

That phrase, it was time, makes her hum. A hum in the back of her throat and the back of her mind, in the connective tissue of her body. Time: doesn't she seem these days just a little bit unmoored from it. Free, somehow, from its dauntless imperative.

And she is wrapping her arms around her lower torso not out of any sense of anything like shame or modesty (she has neither and in any case she does not cover her mirrored breasts) and not because she is cold but because she wants to do so.

Which is why she does everything.

"Why was it time?"

Richard

"It just was," he replies, which isn't Richard being mysterious or unforthcoming. It's an answer. It's not a very good or clear one, perhaps -- but it is an answer, and a truthful one.

A moment later he tries a little harder, "Your body's not like your mind, you know? It has limits. It reaches a peak and then that's it. I'd reached my peak. I could feel it in my bones. I knew I was as good as I'd ever be, accomplished all I ever could, and I was happy with that. I didn't want to be one of those athletes way past their prime, still clinging to some faded dream of glory until all they actually had accomplished became tawdry and tarnished.

"It was just time to stop. Move on, do something else. I'd ignored my mind all those years I was honing my body. So, now I hone my mind."

A pause. Then:

"What about you? What did you do before ... this?"

Serafíne

He says that the body's not like the mind and asks her if she knows? And the truth is, she doesn't: she does not know what it means to me an elite athlete, what it means to feel oneself in prime condition, honed and sure, fast as fast can be: a machine, an animal made-to-move except in the ways she still is an animal made-to-move from moment to moment and experience to experience, whatever they may be.

But her eyes, see, drunk or fucked up or stoned or whatever as she is, are quick on his profile, tracing the pale line he slaces out in the darkness, listening, listening.

That look slides away when he asks her what she did before this and see, Sera's looking at this. The remnants of the party in the back garden, the Edison lights slung through the trees, the dying fire, all of it.

"I don't remember all of it." Quietly, echoing his phrase unconsciously. "You know? But I've fucking always done this. We were in Raleigh-Durham before this. Dan and I went there to get away from NYC, met Dee and Rick there after our old drummer decided he wanted to go to med school in the fucking Carribbean. Well, before he did that, we knew 'em but never played together.

"So we started.

"They graduated and Dee inherited this house from her aunt so, here the fuck we are. You knew I was in band, right?"

Of course she is.

Isn't she a fucking rock star.

Richard

Raleigh-Durham. Richard laughs a little at that, half-disbelieving. Hard to imagine a girl like her out there, amidst the Carolina pines and the desolation. And, sure, the world-class university, but -- god, it was just so Southern.

"I didn't know that," he says, re: the band. "Doesn't surprise me too much, though. You got any albums?"

And so -- like that -- that quiet little confession of her own, that disturbing little fact that she doesn't remember what happened to her before all this, goes rather unremarked. Maybe it's a form of kindness: the same way he didn't pry into Lucy's 'condition' that other night. Maybe some things he considers private, inviolate; something you just don't ask about the first or second or third time you meet someone. The first time you really have a conversation with them.

"You should send me some mp3s," he adds -- a hint of playfulness here, "if you guys were any good."

Serafíne

"Naw." Sera shakes her golden head, the loose bottle-blonde curls, opens her mouth, laughing. The moment before is passed, and she doesn't linger on it and doesn't expect him too and tells him: truthfully but with as much of a soft-pedal as she can, that she does not remember everything before this. But who does, who would, for fuck's sake, look at the drugs she does on a regular basis. "Dan and I've written a few songs you might've heard, but they were all recorded by other people.

"The band's more - " Here she catches her lower lip between her teeth, and there's nothing bashful about that gesture, just some visceral pleasure, so briefly withheld. "The band's a fucking experience. We kick ass, but if you wanna experience it -

"you've got to come see us. On stage, you know? Live, not fucking Memorex. Hey, you want a fucking shot? I'm gonna get a fucking shot."

Richard

"All right," says Richard, rising to the challenge such-as-it-were. "Let me know where your next gig is. I'll see if I can swing by and," a little smirk, air-quotes, "experience it."

And also:

"Nah." He leans back on that bench. "I'm gonna sit here and soak it all in a little more. Go on ahead. I'll catch up with you later."