a good start.

Elijah

[Nightmares]

Dice: 4 d10 TN7 (6, 7, 7, 7) ( success x 3 )

Elijah

"Soooo, Lydia, whatcha doing Saturday?""Oh, like, y'know, same thing as always," the little old woman laughed.

Elijah had papers to drop off, but he couldn't help himself. Lydia Carter was older than dirt, and had probably worked at the university since the beginning of Colorado's statehood. She blushed the color of the peonies on her desk and smelled like White Shoulders and baby powder. She worked because she was bored.

"When are you going to come party with me and Jenn?""Oh, when you and your girlfriend decide to wake up before noon on a Saturday. When are you going to come to brunch with me?""Next Saturday," he replied and handed the little old woman her stack of papers. She was someone's secretary for something, and it gave him some time to kill before his shift ended."Don't break my heart, Elijah Poirot," the little old woman laughed."Do you know where Professor Yates' office is again?"

The little old woman gestures off to a direction and, with that, Elijah gave her a tiny wave and was off on his way to go talk to a professor. See a man about a horse, that sort of thing. he couldn't say exactly what he was going to see or say, but what he'd remembered was that she felt like nostalgia and experiences and so incredibly familiar that it ached in his chest and tried to pull the life out of him. It reminded him precisely of how precious the world around him was; Eleanor Yates felt like a powerful reminder with a surprisingly serene demeanor.

Besides, maybe this time he wouldn't be stuck in a tiny metal death box with her.

Elijah

(ack, I forgot about formatting)

Elijah

"Soooo, Lydia, whatcha doing Saturday?"

"Oh, like, y'know, same thing as always," the little old woman laughed.

Elijah had papers to drop off, but he couldn't help himself. Lydia Carter was older than dirt, and had probably worked at the university since the beginning of Colorado's statehood. She blushed the color of the peonies on her desk and smelled like White Shoulders and baby powder. She worked because she was bored.

"When are you going to come party with me and Jenn?"

"Oh, when you and your girlfriend decide to wake up before noon on a Saturday. When are you going to come to brunch with me?"

"Next Saturday," he replied and handed the little old woman her stack of papers. She was someone's secretary for something, and it gave him some time to kill before his shift ended.

"Don't break my heart, Elijah Poirot," the little old woman laughed.

"Do you know where Professor Yates' office is again?"

The little old woman gestures off to a direction and, with that, Elijah gave her a tiny wave and was off on his way to go talk to a professor. See a man about a horse, that sort of thing. he couldn't say exactly what he was going to see or say, but what he'd remembered was that she felt like nostalgia and experiences and so incredibly familiar that it ached in his chest and tried to pull the life out of him. It reminded him precisely of how precious the world around him was; Eleanor Yates felt like a powerful reminder with a surprisingly serene demeanor.

Besides, maybe this time he wouldn't be stuck in a tiny metal death box with her.

Richard

It turns out someone else is waiting to see Professor Yates. Which is odd, because Wednesday evenings aren't actually her office hours. And odder still, because this fellow -- who is very tall, very golden, and very athletic -- has in his hands a text on quantum mechanics. Not a pop science text, either, or a beginner's manual. A compact, dense, intimidatingly equation-strewn text.

He looks up as he hears Elijah coming. Gives his head a quick, practiced snap to get his hair out of his eyes hands-free. "Hey," he greets the other. "I don't think Professor Yates is in right now, but she usually comes by her office at the end of the day."

And odd, odder, oddest of all: this man, this ridiculously genetically-blessed apollo of the sunstrewn locks and the towering stature, subtly but unmistakably tingles with that je ne sais quoi of the Awakened.

Eleanor Yates

[wp]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )

Elijah

Let's be hones, here. Elijah isn't a short guy. He is a little scrawny, a little on the thin side, and certainly erring towards the side of pretty versus handsome (like the young man in the vest and the jeans and the not-exactly-short hair really cared about being pretty versus handsome) but that guy? That guy?

Jesus, he was like a freaking statue. He had half a foot on Elijah easily and all he could really do was stare for a second and be overwhelmed by the sheer sensory awesomeness that was Richard.

And then? A look at his book. Green eyes widened for a minute- the guy looked like that and he was reading that? God was not a fair and just being. That's just not right.

But? The thought of oooooh didn't last for long and the little ball of unrest smiled and took a seat in a nearby chair. "Cool," he replied, "she said I could come by her office? But that there might be a guy there with her and to not freak out, so… uh… you're that guy, I guess?"

He offered a hand, "I'm Elijah."

Richard

"She said that?"

Now Elijah deserves a closer look. He gets a closer look. It is not a malignant look, no, but it is penetrating, and astute, and curious. And warm, too. There is that. Richard's eyes are as blue as his hair is golden. Of course.

"Richard," he adds, taking the offered hand and shaking it. He does not pronounce it the interesting, Gallic way: merely Richard, like someone you might occasionally call Rich or Richie or even, god forbid, Dick.

Well, maybe not that.

[ALSO AWARENESS]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 4, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )

Elijah

[I feel ways about things, awareness!]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 4, 4, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )

Eleanor Yates

Professor Yates has her office not in a corner, not in a tower, not in some prestigious location of the university, but in a row with several other offices. She just finished her second year of teaching here; she does not get a corner office, no matter how many judges she's on good terms with. But the building is relatively new, despite the law school itself going back for a century. Her office is, as Richard knows, clean. The molding at the ceiling and floor is a crisp, arctic white. The walls are the blue of the deep sea or a darkening sky. There is an L-shaped desk, arranged in such a way that when she works on her computer, her profile faces the door. When she does other things -- such as meeting with people who visit her -- she faces the door head-on. The desk is wood, and very dark. Not terribly heavy, obtrustive. There is a surprisingly light feel to everything in her office, despite the dark blue, the black desk. It's the contrast, perhaps: the stark whites, the pale greys, the hints of rubbed nickel. It has a tall window set between two bookcases, a window that faces the door and bleeds sunset light into the room at this hour.

Only: at this hour, the sunset is obscured by dark clouds. It is windy enough to fly kites. Earlier today there was hailing, downtown. There is no storm here yet. But the sky is grey, and the light inside of Eleanor's office is clouded and diffuse. The clouds themselves hang like a fallen wall above the earth, and in the distance one can see those clouds wisping downward, bleeding, shedding rain.

The lights inside of Eleanor's office are off, except for a single Tiffany lamp -- a spot of bright, unapologetic color at the corner of her desk -- that gives a golden glow inside. There are two chairs facing the desk, nice ones, made in the last few years but with hints of midcentury modern with contemporary design elements and comfort. Eleanor is not in her office.

Eleanor is standing at the end of the hall, making the hall feel slowly submerged, slowly forgetting to breathe, slowly accepting a cold and deep death. Because she is drowned, but there is no trace of panic in that drowning. Death is not the end. Death is barely even an end. Death is a beginning.

Eleanor is standing with a cup of tea in her hand and a stack of folders under her arm, looking at two tall, young, golden men. She feels momentarily transported to something far older than even the lives she knows of, the girl in terror, the twin with his brother, the woman telling fortunes. The pendant around her neck, always beneath her collar and against her skin, weighs heavily and feels warm. She remembers, vaguely, being a wife. Being a mother. And all her sons, fighting and fighting. Her and her husband, fighting and fighting. They are feelings, little more, and she loses them as soon as she turns to grasp them.

Eleanor is taking a breath, walking towards them as her tea steeps in the mug, the little tag flapping around the outside of the cup as she walks. "So you've met," she says, and steps between them to her office door, using her elbow to push down the handle and swing it open. Like she does a dozen times a day, or any time her hands are full.

Elijah

[I'm not going to die, that's just Eleanor!]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (4, 6, 6, 8) ( success x 3 )

Elijah

What does Elijah Poirot feel like? There is that feeling of unrest, that torrent beneath the surface. Something that wasn't quite chaos but a close enough cousin none the less. Something turbulent, something passionate, a feeling that was found in both the revolutions of man and the ministrations of nature. Not the eye of the hurricane, not the calm that is there, but the storm itself. What did he feel like?

And there was the moment of observing, the carefulness, the ping on his senses that stung in his mind and Elijah had a firm enough hand shake but focusing was not his strongest suit. When distraction turned to attention turned to wonder?

He smiled. Bright. "Yeah, we met in an elevator." It got stuck and I thought I was going to die. This is about the time that Eleanor comes. He decides to stand soon enough once that feeling of needing to rise came and there was the feeling of familiarity. Elijah nodded when the woman came by, "yeah, we just met."

Richard

If Elijah is the storm, then Richard is the sea. And it is a sea, not an ocean: not Eleanor's benthic depths, not those lightless, airless reaches where life itself is snuffed out.

He is different. He is brighter, bluer, sun fracturing across the waves. The churn of the tide. The roar of the surf. The strength, the restlessness, the agility, the joy of a young and clear-watered ocean. He shakes Elijah's hand, and for a moment -- just a moment -- it seems warm again in that hall. Sunlit and sun-blessed.

Then he lets go. And Eleanor's presence sweeps over them both, like pressure, like gravity. Crushing; and yet there is a comfort in it, is there not? A peace, if only you would accept it.

"Just now," Richard sort-of-echoes, turning without surprise as Eleanor approaches. She elbows her door open; or she would, but then Richard reaches over with one of those large hands on one of those long arms, and he holds the door open for his acarya. Also for Elijah: a casual, supple wave of his hand indicating the other should enter first.

"I just came by to return a book," and so speaking, he swings a battered backpack off his shoulder and starts riffling around in it. "I think Elijah wanted to talk to you though?"

Eleanor Yates

Of course it is when Elijah says I thought I was going to die that Eleanor comes on the scene. It's fitting that she stands at the end of the hall, turning a corner, when these words leave his mouth. Once, for a while, she carried a taint of death so strong that her already fair skin was paled to translucence and her eyes darkened to a shade more black than blue. She had permanent dark circles beneath her eyes, her hair was limp, there was the faintest smell of decay, sweet and nauseating, hanging around her.

Instead of the smell of black tea and lotus flowers. Instead of a stillness, pristine and cool and profound.

Breaking. Into pieces. So many shattered, missing pieces.

--

The smoothness of the way Richard reaches, opening the door for her, is uncanny in its mundanity. Like he might do this all the time for her, like he's just short of asking to carry her folders, her tea, if -- perhaps -- he would have brought her the tea if he was here when she wanted it, or at least gone with her, made it with her. And not solely because she is his acarya. Because he's the type, to thoughtlessly and easily offer to carry, hold, open, lift. You see: Richard has many friends. It is not because he's a big jackass with no concern for others and not a speck of manners to be seen.

"Come in, both of you," she says, because she realizes they might not -- Elijah might not -- without being directly invited. She is setting her folders down on the table, pulling over a cork coaster to set her tea upon, circling her desk to be behind it. "I asked Elijah to stop by, if he wanted to talk more," she tells Richard, looking up with a small smile, one of her little gestures. The door is closing behind one of them. "He's rather newly Awakened. Elijah, Richard --" and now she is sitting, moving with familiarity into her desk chair, "is my apprentice. Richard, Elijah and I were stuck in an elevator and got to talking about the nature of things."

Elijah

There is a subtle difference between a student and an apprentice, because an apprentice seems the sort to learn a craft, to learn a trade that is passed along and handed to others through tradition and through doing and through knowing. Apprentices are students, but not all students are apprentices. In his mind, he makes a distinction, which oddly enough brought the smaller blond man back to why he was there. The nature of things- and all questions that came with it.

"Thanks again," he replied, and the fact that his smile was bright and he was distinctly less terrified of the feeling of everything (but no less full of wonder, it seemed to be a constant fixture)

"It was pretty cool, looking back," he informed Richard as he headed in, gave a nod and a thank you too once he did before settling into a nearby chair. Whichever chair was closest to being in the middle of the room. Never too fond of walls, this one. "I just figured that I still have questions, and the invite was nice and I was already over here-" because he had made it a point to actually be in the area at the end of his day but that was neither here nor there "-I woulda done it sooner but I'm kind of crap with remembering directions. Sorry if I was kind of out of it."

The apology seems embarrassed, but sincere.

Richard

As Richard was the one to open the door, he is the one to close it. It is neither slammed nor whispered shut, but instead pushed firmly and thoughtlessly until the tongue clicks into the groove.

Then he comes to sit in front of Eleanor's desk, pulling up a chair as thoughtlessly and easily as if he'd done this a hundred times before. Which he probably has. For all his remarkable height, for all the length of his limbs, he folds himself smoothly and economically into that plain seat. His backpack is on his lap now; he is still digging through it.

Raises his head to offer Elijah a grin, though. "That," he says, "is pretty much exactly how it started for me. About a year and a half ago, actually. I wasn't newly Awakened, but I might as well have been."

Eleanor Yates

"You were staving off a panic attack," Eleanor says, regarding Elijah's out-of-it-ness, without intending to embarrass him further. He was stuck in an elevator. He could sense resonance. Hers made him feel like he couldn't breathe. He was trapped in a metal box and he was drowning. She wouldn't find any reason for any person to feel shame for staving off a panic attack in that situation.

Besides: she is not one to shame anyone, to look down her nose at them, for feeling fear, for feeling pain, for feeling hope siphoning out of their systems.

She is dipping her tea bag in and out of the water, then discarding it in a nearby wastebasket. She and Richard have a comfortable ease in this room, as she prepares her tea and Richard flops into a seat and digs through his backpack. She smiles at Richard's description of himself, looking at him with a sort of wry fondness. She lifts her mug between her palms, as hail and rain mix outside. The storm has come. It is fitting. Her pale eyes turn toward Elijah. "I hadn't had a chance to mention you to Richard, but now that you're here, perhaps you'd like to tell him a bit more about yourself."

Richard

They do. They have that comfortable ease around each other, which belies the mere year-and-a-half they've known each other. It's in how he flops down in that chair and digs unself-consciously through his bag. It's in that wryly fond look she gives him. It's in how he opened that door for her. It's in the very air around them; the way his presence softens the edges of hers. Lightens its weight.

"I'd like it if you did," he puts in, and on that note: finds whatever it is he was looking for. Turns out it's a book. A text. Not on quantum mechanics, no, but: well, the cover is unlabeled. Also, leatherbound. He hands it over the desk to Eleanor; there's a sort of casual reverence in the way he handles that book, if such a thing could be said to exist.

Elijah

What about him?

Inelegantly,t he young man responds-

"Uh… sure," and laughs, because this is the hardest thing about being a freshman. he could talk about himself ad nauseam if the need arose but at that moment his brain was only pulling up trivialities. Unconsciously, his eyes flickered to a place on the wall, briefly expectant and receiving no reply. He was on his own for this one.

"Okay, so, hi. I'm Elijah Poirot, I'm a French major, and…. I am not crazy, that… that is incredibly important to say because for the last couple of years I really, really did think I was crazy. I mean- certified and everything," he wasn't exactly joking, but making light of it had helped. "I had a real Haley Joel Osment in the Sixth Sense kind of childhood that never, uh… really quit, so, uh. Yeah. I kind of started hearing a pretty grumpy voice after awhile and just kind of pretended it wasn't there and it turns out that voice wasn't a dead person so, uh, yeah."

A beat.

"I have a room mate? I've met a few people, generally stay firmly in trouble. I like dancing, I've been sky diving, and Eleanor asked if I was a Cultist, and I'm not a Cultist, I'm just an Elijah, which doesn't translate out to any traditional thing, so… hi."

Eleanor Yates

Eleanor takes the book back without fanfare. It is not a one-of-a-kind volume. It is not priceless. It does matter to her. It was a gift, years ago. She never collected anything, once upon a time, knowing the transience of all things. That has been slowly changing. This book is the cornerstone of a growing collection of them. Richard gives it back with that casual reverence, and Eleanor takes it back, setting it aside but not putting it under lock and key or climate-controlled retina-scanning security.

One of the first things out of Elijah's mouth is that he's not crazy, thank you very much. He's not. He thought he was but he's NOT. He saw dead people. He... still sees dead people. He hears voices, or at least one, and that one isn't very pleasant. And it's not a dead person, either.

Eleanor is watching him. Not with staring, not with wariness. Just watching. Listening. Drinking her tea.

Other things matter: dancing, sky diving, not a Cultist, just an Elijah. Not a tradition. Hi.

She pauses a moment, then says: "It's not an easy thing, to listen to the dead. To see them." This is not a question. Nor is it a guess. She is looking straight at Elijah, and she means what she says.

Richard

A French major. That puts sort of this delighted-amused look on Richard's face. Elijah goes on, though, and it does seem rude to interrupt his self-introduction to turn it around and make it all about Richard and Frenchmen and what a Frenchman Richard is.

What Elijah says next makes Richard's quirky grin slip a notch. He looks at the young man, who is perhaps the better part of a decade younger than Richard is, with something like sympathy. And also, something like understanding. Even if --

"My avatar never speaks to me," he offers. "For the most part I'm glad of it. I can't imagine how ... distracting that would be, even if you knew what was going on. And if you didn't, it must've been terrifying.

"What does it say to you?"

Elijah

"It's somethin' else," he says, and a hint of the south slips into his voice for that second before finding its way back to something less regional and more intentional, "they… I feel bad for them, because I get how important it is to have something to hold onto, but they've got so much to hold on to and… it must be awful, being stuck like that. It's always the impression I got."

There is sincerity in that, a sense of empathy because he'd already demonstrated before how important those feelings were, and my does this boy feel loudly. Not in voice, but in mannerism, there is little about him that does not commit.

"And… it was. I mean, Richard, you hit the nail on the head- I heard a voice that I genuinely thought wanted to kill me. It's been… it's been a lot quieter now that I'm in Denver, but in Louisiana it was… it was too much. I mean… it just finally hit me that when it was saying live, live because you die tomorrow that there's a whole world of things that could mean.

"I mean, I like living. So I try to do it. But in Louisiana, it said all kinds of things. It goaded, it poked, it prodded. I'd end up in house parties or getting mugged or cemeteries. It offered some advice, told me when to keep my mouth shut."

Eleanor Yates

Elijah speaks of having so much to hold onto that you can't let go. That you're stuck. Eleanor's eyes shift, momentarily, to Richard. There is an exchange there, or the intimation of one: a knowingness. Her eyes return to Elijah as he goes on, speaking of the grumpy voice he hears, and how he thought it wanted to kill him, wanted him to die, die tomorrow die tomorrow die tomorrow. She's never asked Richard about his 'avatar' -- in fact, it is one of the few things they just never talk about. She doesn't delve into that now, either. They are students, both of them, though only one of them is her student, and right now they are not in a lesson. She is the one listening. Listening to learn.

"Interesting," she says, because it is, and because other than stating the obvious, it is difficult to tell what she thinks of this. Perhaps because she hasn't decided yet. "Did it goad you into coming to Denver?" she asks, which is a logical question to ask: especially if the voice is quieter now.

Especially if you believe in fate.

Richard

There it is again; that sense of something intangible and deep connecting acarya to apprentice. That glance they share, which is not so much some secretive sly meaningful glance as it is simply --

a moment of connection. A moment of weight, and understanding. It comes, and then it goes.

"And now that you're here," Richard adds, a corollary to Eleanor's question, "what do you think you're supposed to do?"

Note the language: supposed to.

Fated.

Elijah

"Yeah, actually," he said with no small amount of surprise, like he hadn't thought about it, though it had been mentioned, "it didn't like Baton Rouge, sure as Hell didn't like New Orleans. Jenn and I just kinda picked up and dropped ourselves here."

And what was he supposed to do? That one, that was an easy question.

"I'm supposed to live," like that was as much as there was to it, but the answer was so much more than just how simple the verb seemed. He was supposed to live. Really live. Experience, be and do and have and feel.

Eleanor Yates

Jenn, she guess, is the roommate. She doesn't ask, though.

He's supposed to live. And that is a good answer, good enough, and the bare minimum asked of most creatures who find themselves existing on this planet. And because it is the bare minimum, it makes Eleanor's head tip to the side. She regards Elijah thoughtfully, and this is when he may remember that she is a professor of law, and that she was once a prosecutor, and that she was also a judicial clerk. These things he could learn about her with a Google search. He does not know all the other things she has been, and has done, that would not make her response now seem all that out of place:

"'To live' is the bare minimum asked of any creature, Elijah. And I do know you mean more than simply surviving, simply existing. If there is such a thing as sin, then perhaps the first and most common and easiest to commit would be to waste the existence and survival that you have." She gives a mild shrug: if is a key word there. "But you are not at the bare minimum. You can live -- really live -- in places like Baton Rouge and New Orleans as well, in fact in some ways better, than you can really live in places like Denver. If that was what this voice -- your 'avatar' -- wanted of you, or for you, then there would be no logical reason to push you from one place to another.

"I suggest to you a theory: you were supposed to come from Louisiana to Colorado. You are supposed to do far more than 'live'." There is a soft pause. "If, of course, there is such a thing as an avatar, and if there is such a thing as magic, and if you are not merely a schizophrenic with poor impulse control and bad judgement." Her eyes are such a cool color, to contrast with a voice that has such warmth in it, to contrast with words that are so level, so even, drawing such striking lines not between This and That but through all of it: not to cut apart, not to divide, but to build a web that is far more intricate than simple If, Then and Either, Or.

Eleanor sips her tea and sets the mug quietly down on the cork coaster. She has not taken those pale, winter-colored eyes off of Elijah.

"I don't believe that mages awaken merely to live life a little more fully. For one thing, I think such a perspective devalues the lives and perspectives of sleepers and increases personal risk of unadulterated hubris. But I do believe that there is purpose in awakening. Many purposes. Maybe even one grand, unified purpose. But not just to live. So I ask you, as Richard asked you, knowing that the answer may simply be 'I don't know':

"What do you think you're supposed to do?"

Richard

Richard has an interesting perspective here. He is not the focal point of either Eleanor nor Elijah's attention. He is offset, just a step back. If they were a triangle, he thinks, they would define the hypotenuse. He would be the right angle.

The base, perhaps. The stability here-and-now. But not the line of tension -- mild and benign though it may be.

It affords him the luxury of watching. Of looking from one face to the other -- and not always at the speaker. While Eleanor speaks, in fact, he watches Elijah. And when Eleanor finishes speaking, he watches Eleanor. Some part of him wonders, if places were exchanged, which he would take. Is he closer to Elijah, the student, the neophyte, the untried? Or in the space of the last year, or perhaps the last twenty-eight years, has he somehow moved just a little closer to Eleanor, the teacher, the experienced, the tested?

He zips his backpack up. Then he sets it aside and, interestedly, listens for Elijah's answer.

Elijah

His response wasn't to get defensive, he had come to learn something, and at that juncture the learning happened to be about himself. It makes sense, if he were supposed to just be experiencing the world to the fullest, then he probably would have gone to New Orleans. He nods along and has little problems following her logic, because when presented with it the chaotic young man could easily find the trail to its appropriate conclusion. Fascinated, in fact, because he could follow her logic and he could bask in how warm her tone was.

"That's a big question," he starts, and mulls it over with a look that is at once intent and thoughtful. He can feel his thoughts fling towards possibilities, drag through half a dozen and none of them feel right. Like being in kindergarten and someone asking you what you wanted to be when you grew up. But… bigger. Much bigger.

"I don't know for sure. I'm supposed to help people, I know that much, I wouldn't still be here if I wasn't… but I could help people anywhere, so why Denver."

It seems to hit him at that juncture that the world is large. The universe is complicated. Elijah Poirot, with his tiny grasp on reality, is small and wondered by how immense it is.

"I have no concrete idea, but I want to find out."

Eleanor Yates

Disarming. That's what she is. In this room with a color palette right off of Pinterest. With all that long blonde hair that tangles a bit at the very ends, unruly and unwary. With her looks, which are more youthful than she fairly is. With her warm tone despite the words she says. When she's petite, at least -- especially -- compared with Richard's height. She's disarming.

She asks him what he wants to be when he grows up. She tells him, though in a great many more words: think bigger. Do more than 'live'. Even the greatest, wildest, no-stone-unturned sort of life. Bigger. More. You can reshape reality with your will alone, say her eyes, her intent gaze. Think. Bigger.

And it's okay if the answer is 'I don't know'. It's okay that at first, the answer is 'I don't know'. Not for sure. But he starts in that ignorance and then takes steps outside of it, in many directions: to help people, which is a vast and complicated path all its own, encompassing much. But it does not and cannot encompass the entire world, which -- as soon as he steps from 'I don't know' into something else, becomes enormous indeed.

In the grand scheme of things, Denver isn't all that far from Louisiana.

Elijah comes to his conclusion. He does not know. Not firmly. But he wants to know. He wants to discover. And Eleanor, her gaze still fixed, gives a little nod and takes a sip of her tea. "I think that's a good start."