jogging.

Elijah

[did you survive last night?]

Dice: 4 d10 TN7 (2, 3, 6, 9) ( success x 1 )

Elijah

[I AM NOT A PHYSICAL HUMAN BEING, dex+athletics]

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (1, 3) ( success x 1 ) [WP]

Elijah

If one was going to do things outdoors, Colorado was the state for doing it. The weather was not truly atrocious. The scenery was breathtaking, and even the city parks could have the potential to sam less than planned and, instead, a little like an inlet of nature in an otherwise urban setting.

He hadn't spent time with Richard since Hawksley's birthday party, and it had been a crazy enough party that Elijah wasn't entirely certain he remembered most of it but he did very distinctly remember feeling the grass and people casting circles and while the magic was not precisely the purpose of the meeting, the thought of magic was one of them. Elijah didn't so much have ulterior motives for asking Richard to come run with him, but rather, that he had multiple interests in hanging out with Richard that boiled down to one simple fact: Richard is awesome, and therefore good company to hang out with.

He wasn't sure he was going to ever admit this, but Elijah was not a physical creature. Not that it really mattered because, at that juncture, it was more than obvious that while he had asked Richard to come running with him, Elijah was not a runner. Elijah had never been a runner, and while he was hoping to she day experience a runner's high he was more hindered by the fact that holy fuck running with an Olympian is difficult. It was through will alone I set my mind in motion he set his body in motion and kept it in motion and not falling flat on the concrete path beneath their feet.

Jesus, they'd just started and he was already exhausted.

"C'est quoi ce bordel!" he panted.

Richard

Richard is pretty awesome. Richard is absurdly tall and ridiculously goodlooking and unfairly athletic and pretty fucking smart to boot. Richard is one of those people you'd just love to envy and hate just because he represents exactly how unfair the Powers That Be are when it comes to doling out blessings, except it's hard to envy and hate someone who's so damned nice, and easygoing, and laidback, and sunny, and kind-natured. Well. At least if you're a good person yourself.

However, none of that is the point right now. The point is: Elijah asked Richard to go for a run, and Richard gladly accepted. They met at some predetermined streetcorner -- Richard lacing up the strings on a slick pair of Pumas, his shanks a mile long, his calves bunching with lean muscle. When he sees Elijah he waves, that big white grin spreading across that perfectly tanned face. He gets up, fluid and lanky and loose-jointed, dancing his weight from foot to foot to warm up.

Now it's ten, twelve blocks later, and they're at altitude, and Richard's stride seems roughly the length of a cheetah's, and Elijah is panting and Richard is talking -- animatedly -- about some movie he saw the other night. Elijah breaks out the French; French obscenities to be exact. Richard bursts into laughter.

"C'est exercice!" he replies, and let's just add another line to the Why Life Is Unfair list: he's fucking French. On top of everything else, this modern-day David, this twenty-first century Adonis, is fucking French. "I didn't know you spoke French. Actually, wait; maybe I did know that. I may have forgotten. Let's go this way; it's downhill."

Call it a small mercy.

Elijah

This is what he had wanted, of course, to go running with someone who was much better at this than he was but Jesus it just wasn't fair. The gods were unkind when they made Richard, because truly the only thing that might be considered terrible about him was the fact that he was a very tall man and that might somehow be inconvenient to him when he has to go in places built for tiny people or getting into smart cars. So long as Richard avoided smart cars, he should be fine.

Though laughter was contagious, and laughter reminded him that he needed to breathe like a normal human being, and that was good enough for the time being. he didn't know Elijah spoke French, "I'm from Louisiana- french happens- but-it's… my grammar blows."

He laughed again, and he turned along to follow the path to wherever they were running because this was downhill and Elijah wasn't going to stop, but he was certainly going to take whatever small mercies he could afford.

"And I'm a French major."

Richard

Richard snaps his fingers. "You did tell me that. French major. I didn't realize you spoke it before that though. Cajun parents?"

They round the corner. True to his word, Richard takes them downhill now -- though of course that just means later on they'll have to climb back up. Unless of course they walk back. Which is an option. It's always an option.

"How'd you end up in Denver, again? I'm almost positive we talked about this at Sera's party, but somehow," wry, "I can never quite remember exactly what happens at Sera's parties."

Elijah

Cajun parents?

"My dad is, Mom's-from-" breathe-inhale "-from Quebec. What about you? You can't see it? Because I'm dying? But I'm jealous of your linguistic-" exhale "-prowess." He was, however, a dead man running. Literally, and trying to hit his stride with his breathing.

"Dude, who was that chick that was on the couch with you? I have no idea who she was, but she was cool," not that he remembered anything else about her, but he did remember talking to Richard for awhile about… uh… something. Halfway through the conversation he'd become enthralled with the feeling of leather and the taste of lavender lemon cookies so the conversation had steered towards… uh… fuck. Something happened, but Elijah did remember very much enjoying himself and talking to Richard and fucking fantastic cookies. And that Richard had a fantastic texture.

That was one more thing- Richard had a fantastic texture on top of being tall, French, golden, and gorgeously smart and nice.

"I came because … I… don't really know? I felt like I needed to be somewhere that wasn't Baton Rouge, so I came here. Denver feels right. Why'd you come here? College? How did you meet Eleanor?" he seems to have hit his stride, at least with the breathing. A slow, rhythmic inhalation through his nose and exhaling through his mouth and even though he wants to pant and fall over, Elijah knows better.

Richard

"There you go," Richard says, encouragingly, as he notes Elijah sounding less like an asthmatic elephant and more like a runner. "Sometimes you just gotta get over that hump five minutes in. Then you settle in for the long haul, see?"

Meanwhile, Richard continues talking. In complete sentences. In paragraphs.

"Yeah, I came here for college. My parents are French ex-pats. I grew up in Berkeley. Could've gone to school there, I guess, but after being all over the world it was weird to go back home like that. Denver seemed like a good option. Far enough from the West Coast in location, but still pretty liberal and healthy and environmentally-conscious and all.

"And, Eleanor was the professor for one of the courses I was auditing. And she has that feel to her, you know? So I knew she was Awakened right away. And then I just sort of sought her out after class one day. I'd been awake for like ten-plus years, but it was never really something I pursued until I met her. I guess the timing was right. Maybe it was fate."

They're at a red light. Richard jogs in place, waiting.

Elijah

"Holy fuck how did you not go crazy?" he asks, and there is no small amount of wonder in his voice. He looks at Richard like he must be a miracle, a genius, ten years without any incident of-Well, now, Elijah wasn't aware that his particular unpleasant relationship with his avatar probably wasn't normal, but then again they were able to bend reality to their wills. What about a mage is normal, is mundane? What about the nature of magic is anything short of miraculous?

They stop long enough at a red light that Elijah is content to stop near dead in his tracks, hands on his knees and he takes the time to recenter himself and get air into his lungs, or at least try to force it there in slow, deep breaths. Like it was meditation. Maybe this was what Jenn had been talking about, memories of being chastised by the tiny pole vaulter for his shoddy form and his forgetting to keep up.

Maybe it was fate, Richard says.

"I think… that… like some things are supposed to happen? like… that we are where we're needed and the universe kinda… I don't know, does what it needs to do to get you there so long as you're paying attention to it. But then there's the whole free will thing- can destiny and free will co-exist?" There were things Elijah thought about, and now that he wasn't running he had a second to try and put them into-

Oh shit, the light was going to turn green soon.

Exhale.

Richard

"I had a mentor at the start; we didn't really get along. So that was part of it. But honestly?" And Richard says something that sounds like pure absurdity: "I think I didn't go mad because I'm not that talented."

He's not an imbecile, though. He's not faux-humble either. He's not one of those people who are annoying unaware of their own blessings -- nor one of those who pretend to be unaware. He slants a wry glance at Elijah, quickly adding, "At magic, I mean. I know I have talents. A lot of them. I'm very lucky in many ways. But magic?" He squints into the light, across the street. Shakes his head. "I'm decent. Maybe even good. But I'm not ... incandescent, the way some people are.

"I've met people whose will is so powerful that I think they couldn't have ignored it if they tried. People whose ability to bend the world is so strong that I think if they tried not to use it, they really would lose their minds. I'm not one of them. I was able to Awaken, to see, and then ... to kind of just let it rest.

"And," the light turns. Without missing a beat Richard starts jogging again, "I was talking to someone the other night about destiny and free will. And chaos. And quantum mechanics. And yeah, I think they can coexist. They must. The very laws of the universe dictate it. That's where the chaos and quantum mechanics come in. Boiled down: you can't possibly predict everything. You just can't. Uncertainty is built into the system, and even the slight wiggle in the starting conditions causes a huge deviation in the outcome. That's what physics tells us. Which in turn says: you can't predestine everything. And what's not predestined -- well, that must be where the free will comes in."

Elijah

[Nothing to see here! Manip+sub]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )

Elijah

He can't quite wrap his head around the idea of Richard not being that talented at… well… anything. it's obvious, too, because of the way that Elijah just kind of looks at Richard and forgets to run for a minute before finally remembering right he has to do things and he runs to catch up with the taller man.

Well, runs faster, pushes a little harder because heavens he needs to push to keep up with what could very well be a leisurely stroll for the other man. "To me? Sera… sera seems that way… like… she is magic." No small amount of wonder there. Though, he does continue, "I tried to ignore it all for awhile… that… did not end well," he laughs it off, though, downplays the fact that this? All of this?

Had not gone well in the slightest, that he knows exactly what happens when you ignore your avatar for too long, and how too long can be insignificant to something eternal.

he listens along, nods and pays attention to the determination of free will and destiny and how even physics makes them coincide. "Huh," he says, but it's more an affirmative than confusion, "I did not know that. And that… that makes sense. I'd always kinda wondered? But… y'know… I'm a liberal arts major for a reason."

Richard

"Sera's magic is so raw and present," Richard replies. "Eleanor's magic is so potent and controlled. And that girl I was talking about, that friend I was discussing free will with? Her magic is just ... enormous, and wild, and joyous. She was definitely talented.

"I don't know about Sera and Eleanor, to be honest. They might be talented. They might also have just worked very hard to get where they are. Granted, I can see Eleanor doing that, and I can't really see Sera doing that. But my point is," and he grins at Elijah, "it's not all a lost cause for those of us who aren't talented at magic. That's the nice thing about being Awakened. You can make yourself better if you just work at it. Some of us just have to work a little harder than others.

"You're a liberal arts major," he adds, "which just means someday you'll find your own beautiful, poetic way to reconcile fate and free will. It won't be all theories and numbers like mine. But it'll make just as much sense." Richard claps a hand on Elijah's shoulder, reaching over as they jog along. "Anyway. Enough talking. Ready to run back up that hill?"

Elijah

[does he survive this hill?]

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (3, 7) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Elijah

"Fuck yeah, let's do this!"

And with that, there was less talking, and more running.

hawksley's birthday.

Elijah

[I swear to god, Elijah, if you botch this we are done professionally]

Dice: 4 d10 TN7 (4, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )

Kalen Holliday

[How awake are we?]

Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 9) ( success x 1 )

Serafíne

So see it is some night it is some weekend night but the week doesn't mean a goddamned thing to Sera, not the rhythm of it, and the week doesn't mean a goddamned thing to most of Sera's friends, not the way it does to Working Professionals, because they all got degrees in art or pottery or philosophy or film and are therefore now stringing together a living bartending or working in the food industry and waitressing on the side and putting together the odd event or three and Sera has perfect timing and Perfect Time and she does not know precisely when it is right not, because she has chosen to be ignorant of such minor details.

There is a bouncy castle in the backyard of the three-story blond-brick building on Corona Street and an extraordinary mass of people spilling out of every goddamned entrance and exit of the building, proper. Strings of lanterns and Edison lights everyplace and there's a stage wedged in somehow and sometimes there is a band.

Drinks of every sort (try the pitchers of Elderflower Collinses - gin and elderflower liqueuer and blueberries and rosemary and lime juice) and slightly more mind-altering substances always at hand. Sera is on the front porch, perched on one of the wide bannisters framing the steps coming up from the front garden and she has something colorful in a martini glass in one hand and an ice cream cone (a cake cone) in the other and she is in the middle of a very emphatic story about Vincent Van Gogh but she is sometimes getting it mixed up with a story about the time she forgot whether the mushrooms in her fridge were shitakes or psilocybins and didn't know whether to make tea or pizza with them.

Serafíne

(Perception + Awareness because everyone else is rolling stuff!)

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8) ( success x 3 )

Elijah

"Who's Sera?" Jenn asked as she parked the civic.

Someone had to be responsible tonight and it would seem that it would fall on the tiny tattoo artist to be the one who made sure that Elijah woke up in time to be dragged lovingly home by his diminutive room mate. She was excited, there was something palpable about it that mixed well with the unrest that Elijah brought with him.

"Sera is pretty much made of amazingness," Elijah replied as he got out. He'd acquired vodka and he'd acquired brownies, mostly because he'd acquired Jenn and she had procured brownies with enough pot in them to make sure a rhino was stoned. Jenn might not have drank terribly much, but when it came to thinks with herbs, the little woman who smelled faintly of dirt and rosemary was a connoisseur.

"Who's the party for?" she asked.

"I have no idea," Elijah informed her, "but whoever he is? He's probably going to be trashed by the time the night's over."

It was up the steps with them, Elijah dressed as he usually is (like the missing fifty third member of Mumfort and Sons) and Jenn wearing a pair of shorts that showed off the irises on her thigh and a shirt that hung off one shoulder. The top of a very familiar unicorn peeking down, though the red bull was nowhere to be found.

It was up the steps with them, and Sera got a wave hi, not wanting to interrupt her story.

Richard

There's a big leather sofa on the lawn. There's no real explanation for this: it simply is. Maybe someone brought it. Maybe someone dragged it from inside. Maybe it fell out of the sky. It's a pretty nice sofa, though, not rained-on yet, and right now it is occupied by a dreadlocked white girl who looks like she believes in granola and quinoa and free love and legalized MDMA, a college kid who's asleep, and a very tall ex-olympian who is smoking a toke meditatively, ruminatively, while the dreadlocked white girl lays her head in his and holds her hands up against the sky to see their shape.

Richard is listening to Serafine, even though she's a good ten or fifteen feet away. Most people are listening to Serafine, because most people know Serafine, and those who don't know of her, and those who don't know, at least, that she's the ringmaster of this nonstop party. Elijah passes by. Richard nods at him, nods in that sort of slowed-down stately way of people who have partaken. Granola girl waves. Sleeping boy sleeps.

Serafíne

The bass is thumping from somewhere inside. Early enough that they don't have to turn it down quite yet, and maybe they won't turn it down later, either. Maybe someone will breathe a spell and wrap the house in a bubble that dampens the soundwaves so that Sera can have the music as fucking loud as she fucking wants without getting arrested for public - for whatever the fuck she might get arrested for.

"And then - "

Sera is swaying. The world is spinning. The world always spins. The world spins on the strangest of axes and Sera feels like they are all pierced through her body, and Hello!

Elijah does not want to interrupt her story; Sera does not remember any longer what the story was about. She is Greeting People and flings open her loving arms and wraps them around Elijah (hands still full - drink in one, ice cream in the other) and inhales him and does the same for Jenn, whom she has never met, as if they were old, old friends. The oldest of friends. The sort of friends who might be more-than-friends.

Boundaries, Sera.

Other people have them.

Elijah has a gift in hand and Sera has a drink! she gives Elijah the drink and Jenn the ice cream cone and takes the brownies and turns around and hands them to Dan, who is of course close to her, to take inside.

Then she takes back the drink (it is her fucking drink) but not the ice cream cone and, her voice a slurry of intoxicants, tells Elijah and Jenn that there's drinks inside.

And everything else they could ask for.

They should come find her once they are well-provisioned.

--

The story does not resume. She's forgotten it, or perhaps that last bit before Elijah arrived was actually the end, or maybe she has just now noticed the leather couch in the front yard.

She has just now noticed the leather couch in the front yard.

And, still swaying, she totters over to investigate. The first thing she does when she gets there is to lean over the back of the couch and clasp hands with the stoned granola girl.

Kalen Holliday

Kalen looks like he should be sleeping. Of course, he looks that way a lot. He's dressed for a party, which means fitted jeans and a very, very soft moss green tee-shirt. Normally there would be weapons - there are not. Normally there would not be glitter or the lingering remains of a temporary tattoo of a butterfly on his face - there are. He's been other places today already. He hasn't bothered trying to get off the heart someone drew in red Sharpie on the underside of his left wrist.

He notes the couch, and then that Serafine and Richard are over there, and he wanders that way. He smiles for Sera, and that smile is a bit tired but brilliant, because Sera. He smiles for Richard who he recognizes but doesn't really know. He even smiles for the girl, because why the hell not?

"Hey," he says quietly.

Richard

"Heyyy," Richard says, sleepy-stately-pleased, as suddenly both Kalen and Serafine manifest in his immediacy. He reaches up as well, quirky-grinning, tweaking the ends of Sera's hair gently as she reaches over to clasp hands with his granola-girl friend. Which is not the same thing as a granola girlfriend, not at all.

"Which mushroom was supposed to be pizza?" he wants to know, then. Because he's honestly not too sure. Shiitake tea sounds pretty gross, but then: psilocybin pizza sounds pretty awesome.

Elijah

Richard got a wave and a grin, enough that it made Jenn's attention flicker to the random leather sofa outside, but it was off to be inside with them.

There were hugs to be had. Other people have boundaries. Elijah, it would seem, was not one of them, because he gave Sera a hug like he hadn't seen her in an eternity because it could have been, or he could have seen her yesterday. It could have very well been both, but comfortable. He smells clean, and a little like whatever fabric softener he used, because the man used fabric softener. Fuck wearing scratchy clothes.

Jenn doesn't seem to know what to do at first, but it lasts for all of a second, because Sera is freaking gorgeous and she smells nice, so she is more than content to hug the woman before sauntering on along inside with Elijah.

---

"Oh my god,was that Beth on the couch?" Jenn asked.

"Who's Beth?"

"Beth, you know. Beth." Jenn gave Elijah a knowing look. Elijah didn't place her. "The Beth I kicked you out of the house for last week?"

"Still not ringing any bells."

"Augh, Elijah."

"I don't keep track of your people-" he said while he poured himself a drink. Eldersomething Collins. He didn't know, but it was delicious. It was to chase down something with a dolphin on it. Jenn took a sip of his drink before getting a grown up vanilla Dr. Pepper.

"That sounds so racist," she replied with a laugh, "I can't believe you just you peopled me."

"I did not just you people you."

---

And it was back outside with them.

"Kalen!" Elijah called out, and it was off with the two of them to go be sociable animals.

Serafíne

"Kalen," Sera greets the Hermetic, please wrapped around the thread of her voice. She's standing behind the couch, leaning into it with a hip-centered sway, her torso cantilevered forward over the back of the couch to clasp the girl's hand with her left. The right holds the drink and even in her state of polypharmacological intoxication, she is not so far gone yet that she neglects to hold it upright.

it is a delicious drink.

"Do you know Richard? He's a fucking giant," and Sera means that literally. Though right now he's sleepy-stately-pleased on a leather couch in her front yard and she's leaning over it from behind which makes her taller! for the moment! and Sera is aware of that in the same way the granola girl friend in Richard's lap is aware of the sky and the hum of the party from the house and the drifting, secondary impressions of traffic from some thoroughfare a few blocks away, and that peripheral awareness gives her a kind of pleasure as she looks down at Richard and the granola girl, then up at Kalen and the remnants of his temporary tattoo and she wants to reach out and touch them because except she has two hands and both are occupied just at the moment.

Richard Kalen, Kalen Richard.

"Neither," Sera tells Richard, without skipping a beat. Her swimming attention drawn back to him when his hand skims her hair as it spirals and sways. Something about gravity or - fuck. Just another one of those laws meant to be broken. "There were black fucking truffles for the pizza."

Then, to Kalen, with a kind of surprised pleasure, as she if she had just noticed him (again) standing right there - "did you get your face painted?" And, more generally. "FUCK. We should've had face painting."

Kalen Holliday

Kalen laughs in response to Sera's question. "Temporary tattoo. I was in a tolerant mood. Also, I thought it would be less stubborn about coming off and she was very amused. I think she was disappointed I wasn't dressing up like I used to for parties, because then so much more glitter." There is something warm under the tone, but it vanishes quickly into a very good impression of being serious.

"There may have been the wanton destruction of glitter trees, back in my youth."

He lifts a hand to wave to Elijah and nods a little. "And I have met Richard, briefly. Next time I come to these parties I will try to remember facepaint. I'm certain it will end in stories, if nothing else."

Richard

"We have indeed met," Richard agrees, "and it was indeed brief. But I veto the facepaint." While he speaks, granola girl reaches up and borrows his joint. Richard doesn't mind. Emptyhanded now, he links his fingers behind his head, leaning back to look up at Serafine-looking-down. They are antiparallel to one another, upside-down in both their worlds.

"Do you like the couch?" he wants to know. "Clara bought it on craigslist. The guy selling it offered to deliver, so she had it delivered here. For now."

Clara -- granola-girl -- waves with her fingers. And blows out a smoke-ring.

"I think the guy's playing mariokart inside now," Richard adds.

Elijah

Jenn's eyes widen at the mention of Mario Kart-

"I. Love. MarioKart- Elijah? Elijah, I'm ditching you to play MarioKart with a guy who delivered a couch," which was about when she kissed him on the forehead and sauntered off inside.

Which, given that Elijah was in the middle of drinking something, he couldn't really protest that his room mate was running away to go play MarioKart with people and go enjoy herself, because, well, this was a party. parties were meant to be enjoyed. Elijah just grinned.

"This is a fucking amazing couch," Elijah said as he plopped down in the grass, "and Kalen? I'd intended on introducing you to Jenn, because Jenn's like oh my gawd, who is Kalen, but then Richard said MarioKart and now my room mate has left me to fend for myself."

Serafíne

"I think you would look," Sera to Richard. She's smiling. She's inhaling. She's looking down at Clara and sort-of-waving back at her, wiggling fingers, all finger wiggles and she wants to ask Clara if she can touch her again but she holds that question inside her with a million other mysteries. " - fucking amazing with facepaint. Hi Clara. The couch is brilliant. I think it looks just right, too.

"Like it's floating here. Like it's a boat you sailed up the street. Or like a fucking spaceship and you just appear and disappear like that dude on the BBC who rides around in a - what the fuck is it. Dee watches that show all the time. A fucking phone booth or some shit.

"Like in London." Breathed out, all together, before she breathes in again, not remembering that one follows the next, inexorable and certain. "Have you ever been to London? I don't think Kalen has, because there aren't any goddamned glitter trees there."

Richard

"That's exactly why I vetoed it," Richard deadpans, "I'd look so amazing it wouldn't be fair."

Serafíne

"Fair point. There'd be a run on magic fucking beans." Sera tosses back to Richard. Without explication. Who knows how her mind works?

Kalen Holliday

Kalen starts laughing and then sprawls over the grass too. "Yeah. Best idea ever coming here tonight.

"Anyway, there used to be glitter trees in London but then I went to visit and now they're gone...."

Elijah

"Awww, where is the Lorax when you need him? Someone needs to speak for the fuckin' glitter trees."

Richard

"Fee fi fo fum," Richard replies, grinning. And granola girl snort-laughs.

"I've never seen that movie. The Lorax. Or whatever he's from."

Serafíne

"I don't know why they're talking about glitter trees," Sera is saying to Clara, and she's straightening now, trying to remember how to stand, if only because she would ike to drink a drink of her drink because she has a drink and it is a party and this is the yard and the music has changed inside and the door has swung open and a window has been closed and there is a couple making out at the edge of the porch, where the porch light goes dark and the streetlight does not reach, and there are little violins in the ground or crickets or something and her heart is beating and beating and beating and -

" - that's so fucking absurd Kalen. And I know absurdity. I'm wearing mirrors like glued to my fucking boobs."

Not that anyone can see them. Because over the mirrors glued to her boobs: a black hoodie. Zipped.

Kalen Holliday

He doesn't bat an eyelash at the knowledge that there are mirrors glued to her boobs. "Look. I can try to be less odd, but that just gets depressing." He still sounds more amused than anything,

He says nothing about the Lorax. Whether because he's as clueless as Richard or because he just is unmoved by Dr. Seuss is anyone's guess.

Elijah

"Whaaaat, you've never read the Lorax? It's, like, the world's saddest book written for, well, maybe not the world's saddest book, but it 's really freaking awesome and you need to read it, the end."

This was about the juncture that Elijah found himself really, really interested in the grass under him. Pupils dilating, heart beating steady, and there was a moment of glee because grass. Thank god for blue dolphins

Hawksley Rothschild

Last year he was going to throw a party for himself at his house (it's a mansion, Hawksley, let's be real) but he had to go East instead. This year he forgets it is his birthday until he receives a text message from Sera, a mass text message inviting him to her house for a secret surprise party at Dee's house. With a bouncey castle and ironically drug-induced signage and when he read that text he was charmed, and also confused, because surely it's not his b--

"Well fuck me," he'd said, realizing that the 8th was in fact his birthday. Though he can't be faulted for forgetting, given recent events.

When he got Sera's text message, he'd been standing with his head 3 inches from the double-height ceiling of his library, his feet resting on air. He's had his mind elsewhere these days. The pursuit of knowledge never stops. The pursuit of power doesn't, either.

--

Hawksley is coming late, as you do when it's your own surprise party. The party is already going on. Bouncey castle, drugs, drinking, so much music. But they can feel him, Elijah and Kalen and Richard and Sera can, long before they see him. There is no sensation of beating wings fanning the air but a lightness to the world, a lifting, as though they can all levitate if they think enough happy thoughts. Something is soaring over them,

towards them,

coming down Corona Street in a dark car that gleams with flecks like gold, like it's being hit by sunlight even at night.

Serafíne

"I never read the Lorax," Sera is telling Clara-and-Richard-and-Kalen-and-Elijah, and by now she has taken the sip she wanted to take of her drink and then another and she has folded her arms on the back of the couch and is sort of leaning forward and she's short but: couches tend to be shorter and she is also wearing Serious Fucking Heels although they are starting to sink in the grass, " the way it started off was so fucking sad and lonely, that guy and his weird finger-tip full of bullshit and the payment. I liked the Cat in the Hat."

Of course you did, Sera.

"And you - " to Kalen, "should be as weird as you fucking wanna be - and OH FUCK."

Sera is so happy she actually almost spills the last two drops of her drink.

"Feel that? He's coming. It's time to hide. Okay. Okay? Can you," this to Clara and Richard, "hide or do I need to get Dan to bring you an afghan to hide under? I'm gonna hide behind the couch," all rather stream-of-consciousness, this, while she is trying to text Dan one-handed, which means typing with a single thumb because she is also sipping her drink. "And then when he comes up we all shout surprise. See. Okay."

Sera is briefly quiet, concentrating on texting and then texting is done and she gives in to the sensation of her own glee. "Elijah and Kalen you have to come hide behind the couch you can't be in front of it. Afghans would be fucking obvious on the grass."

Sera - wriggles a bit, with pleasure. She'd stamp her feet but the heel have sunk a half-inch into the ground. So she's stepping out of them, instead.

"Heeeeeeeee."

Richard

"The Cat in the Hat was the best -- wait. What?"

People are hiding. Sera is telling them to hide! Richard looks mystified: is she for real? This is a surprise party? How can it be a surprise when there are bouncy castles and couches and music rolling out every window, door, and crack in the wall of the house,

but he doesn't argue with Sera's logic, which is sort of what you should do: not argue, that is, because it is futile. "Um," and he kind of slithers down from the seat to hide behind the couch, "okay. Should we yell surprise?"

Elijah

Oh, fuck! Right! This was a surprise party! Elijah scrambled to his feet, which was not a graceful thing, and made his way over to behind the couch, which was suddenly starting to get crowded and ever so suddenly starting to feel like a wonderful conspiracy and oh my god Richard smelled fantastic- wait, maybe that was Clara that sounded fantastic. Maybe it was Sera who smelled fantastic. Either way, someone smelled really good and his mind was starting to wander and he's just standing like a dork behind the couch before-

Oh, fuck! Right! This was a surprise party!

Elijah crouched, "of course we yell surprise, he's not going to know the party is for him unless we yell surprise."

Kalen Holliday

Kalen's eyes sweep the incredibly obvious party going on, and then, as though it had not registered to him at all, he says, "Indeed. We will fool no one that way."

He crawls over to join Sera behind the couch, because fuck standing up to walk like five entire steps, perfectly content to pretend that somehow Hawksley will be surprised.

"Of course, yell surprise," Kalen says, waiting until Hawksley is a little closer. "On three. One. Two. Three."

Richard

"SURPRISE!!!"

yells Richard.

Serafíne

How can it be a surprise party when she texted the guest of honor and said COME TO A SURPRISE PARTY, but here she is telling them to hide and she is so very excited about hiding and pleased to be hiding and when Richard slides his stoned ass off the couch and hides with her behind the couch she kisses him on the crown of his head (it is the only time in their respective lives that she will be able to reach the crown of his head) -

"That Sera is telling Richard as Elijah scrambles behind the couch in her front garden is what makes it a surprise. The yelling-of-surprise. See? The naming it -"

By now Sera has kicked off her heels and she is ready to jump the fuck up and yell SURPRISE and Dan has even had enough time to corral some of the girls from Dee's roller derby team to come on the porch and take part in the surprise-shouting from behind the supports so their SURPRISE will be not just a handful of hoarse, stoned, drunk voices, but - you know - a chorus of them.

Elijah

Three?

"Surprise!"

Hawksley Rothschild

There are lights and people and so many cars. There is music and noise and drugs and a couch on the front yard and people scrambling around. Hawksley, still driving, sees it and smiles. He sees it and thinks of the same thing that Serafine thought earlier: someone should create a Circle. Someone, maybe someone with the power to do so, should create a boundary between those noises and the rest of the world.

Hawksley's Porsche slides to a stop across the road, parked at the curb as though it's normal, as though it fits in here, as though he is normal at all. And he waits a bit, watching for the people on the lawn to hide themselves under afghans and behind couches. And then he gets out. And the car's lights blink and the car itself beeps a yes sir when he tells it to be locked, to be secure.

He comes across the black asphalt to the grey concrete and crosses those dark lines into everything colorful and ecstatic, smiling as

SURPRISE!

There are people! Oh, his stars! He had no idea! He throws up his hands, affecting a look of total shock. He is not surprised by the party but in fact he is a little surprised to see the mages he sees, Kalen and Richard who he has briefly met and Elijah who he can sense but does not know, and they all look... well. Stoned and high and amused, and then Sera, who looks REALLY FUCKING HAPPY OMFG. With disco boobs. And Hawksley is not surprised but he is laughing, his face in a grin, his eyes crinkled at the corners, because he is truly pleased.

And it's hard not to laugh when he's laughing, and it feels like the sun has come up again and it's high noon here, shining down on them. He has been using magic tonight. It clings to him like a bright, golden aura that he brings with him across the grass, right to the couch, kneeling on it and reaching for Sera across the back, arms around her waist. He gives her a kiss between her mirror-covered breasts and smiles up at her,

beatific.

The world hangs for a moment on that look, and then he's up again, he's grinning. "Is that the giant? Kalen, how've you been? Who is this? DEE!" Waving to everyone, saying hi.

He is a man who knows how to be the guest of honor.

Kalen Holliday

Kalen is laughing too, from pretty much the second he cues a little surprise chorus from behind their totally not inconspicuous couch.

"Peachy," he says. And that cannot be a real answer, because that isn't something he would ever actually answer, but he seems actually happy enough. "Happy birthday."

Serafíne

SURPRISE everyone yells and Sera does that with them. She pops up right along with them, a fucking foot and change shorter than poor Richard who really had to scrunch to hide behind the couch, and yes she looks so goddamned happy, and her hair is loose and (freshly) blonde and the undercut is freshly shortn and she's a little bit tipsy and a little bit more stoned and a little bit more something else and she is all caught up in the countdown and the compliance and it feels kind of magic to her, like a spell she's never heard the name of, to feel the world open and spinning around her and so many people and the way her heart beats in time with everything happening all around her and the way everything paces itself in time with her heart beats, and she feels swept along, as if she were caught in a rolling tide,

as she pops up behind the couch in a half-zipped hoodie over cut-off denim shorts so short that she had to cut out the pockets because they looked fucking stupid just kind of waving down below the hem so now when she puts her hands in the pockets, she can feel her garter belt. But she does not have her hands in the cut-out pockets of her cut-offs, she is reaching up to yank down the zipper of her hoodie and reveal disco-boobs! like, as a present see, so that by the time Hawksley has made it to the totally not inconspicuous couch they are revealed and he can kiss her between her breasts.

Her arms are around his neck and her hands are in his hair and he is smiling up at her and she is smiling down at him and -

oh, it feels like the sun is rising.

Then he's up again, and Sera lets him go and watches his pleasure as he greets everyone with pleasure of her own and she's feeling breathless and chatty and doesn't remember why she took off her heels and is kind of kicking her feet up and it telling both Kalena and Hawksley that, "Dan said I oughtta have a pretense like "Come open my mayo," but I told him that sounded like the shittiest innuendo ever and anyway you'd say tell Dan to open your fucking mayo.

"I bet you weren't expecting us to shout surprise though. Happy birthday. You want some molly?"

Elijah

"I have no idea who you are, I'm Elijah," he offers, and he smiles chipper and his pupils are blown out and he's fascinated with the texture of the couch, "happy birthday!"

Hawksley Rothschild

Kalen's peachy makes Hawksley's eyebrows hop, since that doesn't seem like the sort of word Kalen would apply to himself. Kalen is, after all, a Hermetic.

"You live with a baker who has stronger forearms than I do," this is not true, as anyone who can see his goddamn arms can guess, "and two dudes. I actually would have told you to have Dee open your mayo. But I was absolutely expecting you to shout surprise."

He leans over, kissing her cheek. It is a thank you, that's written all over him, but he doesn't say the words.

"I'll wait," he tells her, and turns to Elijah, to Kalen, grinning. "Thanks, man," this is to Kalen, and "I'm Hawksley, the birthday boy. Thanks for coming," to Elijah. He glances over their heads, between them, spies some of the roller derby-ites and the normals, the plebs, the sleepers, so he adjusts his tone so only those Awakened, who are nearest him in both esteem and proximity can hear, "I'm going to take care of the noise level real quick. Kalen," who is the only one he assumes has the necessary powers to help him, "want to help a brother out?"

Richard

"It's the giant," Richard, who was smooched atop his head and is now clambering back to his feet dusting grass-blades from his knees, affirms. Belatedly. "Happy birthday. I had no idea, or I would've brought you something."

Which is the truth. But this also is the truth: he doesn't seem terribly crushed by his own inadvertent lack of manners. He drops back onto the couch, long limbs akimbo, reaching over to Clara-the-granola-girl to pluck his toke back.

Kalen Holliday

Kalen nods, lets his voice drop as well. "Sure." There isn't any hesitation, but there is a pause afterward because he doesn't know how Hawksley Works and almost nothing he does is exactly to a proper Hermetic paradigm. He slid into Sera's Working as if it were nothing, but he doesn't know Hawksley.

"How?" There are only so many clues to give here, only so many things that can work with company. But he waits, watching Hawksley with steady eyes that don't entirely match the smile.

Serafíne

Sera accepts the kiss-on-her-cheek, the thank you with a tilt of her small chin that feels at once both precise and precocious and loving. Because her eyes close as he bestows it. Because she savors it, all quietly, lets it wash over her.

Hawksley and Kalen are going to do magic! and Hawksley turns down molly (for now) and Sera closes her palm around the drug and tucks it back into the kangaroo pocket of her hoodie and sits her hot ass back on the spine of the couch and asks Richard, genuinely curious,

"What would you have brought him?"

Grace Evans

Because the word got out, because Grace remembers from last year what the occasion might be, and she knows he likes books, Grace decides to show up (even though it is a party with a massive number of people and it's going to be noisy and crowded and all).

A little Toyota rolls up, getting added to the pile of cars (one of which glitters with sunlight and looks like it costs a hundred Toyotas or more).

Wait a minute... Is that a bouncy castle? Of course, Grace's brain goes immediately to an encryption framework called BouncyCastle, because that's how she rolls, and then it goes to Sera. Of course there would be a bouncy castle.

She steps out of the car carrying an (unwrapped) book. Wrapping paper is wasteful, and it's not like he wouldn't know what it is anyway. Book shaped. Book weight. What else would it be? But there's something else that goes hidden, for now.

Richard

"I don't know," Richard says. "Something bright and flashy, maybe." He gives his smoke back to Clara. "I doubt there's anything I could get him that he needs, but he might like something like that."

Hawksley Rothschild

"I don't need anything," he says, which is true.

His watch cost seven thousand dollars.

There is an anniversary edition 911 across the street in a color that car was not offered in, because he wanted them to make it in that color.

Only Sera has been to his house, and seen how many of Dee's houses could fit inside of it.

No Hawksley: you don't need presents.

Kalen says he will, and this pleases Hawksley, who -- it's true -- does not adhere to most Hermetic paradigms and patterns, who has told at least one Hermetic that they're all -- self included -- assholes, and he drops a kiss on Sera's head this time, about to head off with the other member of the Order. That's what he's doing, walking towards the side of the house with Kalen, when Grace arrives. He's telling Kalen, though his voice is pitched not to carry,

"Just a Circle," as though Kalen should know automatically whatever Hawksley means by Circle, "as a boundary between the rest of the neighborhood and the house and grounds. But then another circle, just inside of it -- maybe a few inches, it's easier the farther the gap is but more noticable, which I'd like to avoid. Just making a field, see, of soundlessness. Everyone inside the inner circle can hear everything inside the inner circle, and everyone outside can't. Keeps the cops from getting called because of the noise level in here. Granted, we can't hear tornado sirens if they go off, but it's not like we won't get alerts on a million phones anyway."

He's blathering. "Anyway, to save time I was thinking you could draw the inner circle while I draw the outer circle. I think your resonance is more attuned to the chaos of the interior, anyway."

He glances back, and that's when they hear him again, brightly: "YO, GRACE!" He waves.

Kalen Holliday

It is easy enough to draw him off, and considering he needs to hear Hawksley there is nothing uneasy about the fact that they are close. Or course, he did fucking ruffle Hawksley's hair that one time. He might have been fine anyway.

Kalen nods to Hawksley, more a lowering of his eyes than any real movement of his head. He doesn't need there to be circles, but he can make circles. He takes a breath, closes his eyes, gets ready to draw a circle with nothing but power.

And then it occurs to him Hawksley might want an actual visual circle. "You don't need it to be chalk or myrr-infused wine or anything?" He asks softly. "Just present?"

Serafíne

"It's Grace," Sera, pleased, when Grace is a block or three away because of course Sera can feel Grace and she is happy that Grace is out there ad happy that Grace is here and very, very happy. She is supplying the name to Richard and to Elijah and to Hawksley and to Kalen, you know, just in case, and she does it as if it were a prophecy, even though it isn't. Sera is just in tune with the world in a way few people ever are.

And Richard is telling her that he doubts he could get Hawksley something he needs and Hawksley is saying that he doesn't need anything at almost the same time and Sera is smiling, and anything ironic about her smile fades to pure and unadulterated pleasure when Hawksley kisses the crown of her head. She echoes Hawksley to Richard, because he doesn't need anything, and tells Richard, "He likes books.

"And working out.

"And me."

By now she is thoroughly perched on the back of the couch, her legs drawn up, her arms wrapped around them.

"Richard were you a wasp growing up? Yacht clubs and all that shit? Or did you just swim. Did they just throw you in the fucking ocean."

Grace Evans

Hawksley is so exuberant, and he doesn't seem to worry about anything, least of which being the loudness of his voice. It easily carries across the street, and Grace gives him a wave back as she walks the distance up to the front yard with the leather couch and assemblage of mages.

She greets them all with a smile and a wave, and maybe Kalen gets some special warmth at seeing him all covered in face paint and glitter. Somebody's getting out of the office a lot lately. Somebody's trying to get over things. She knows.

Grace has been pretty much stuck to her own end of the office, working. Someone else has other ways of getting over things.

She perches herself upon an arm of the couch, because sitting on it would probably entail sitting on someone, and that's just not cool. To her anyway.

Richard

"Maybe I'll get him a bright, shiny book, then," Richard says, his grin lazy. Clara reaches up. That neverending toke smoking between her fingers: Richard parts his lips and she slips it between his teeth like it belongs there.

A moment later he has to take it out of his mouth because he laughs, bright and open and happy: "Oh, god, no. I wasn't a wasp. I was a hippie. My parents moved to Berkeley when I was three. They might've thrown me into the Bay, I don't know."

Hawksley Rothschild

"Well, it won't get in the way if you want chalk or wine or sacred smoke or seat salt or whatever. You could piss a circle out but that's a lot of ground to cover and you'd probably run out. But no: it doesn't need to be physical, concrete; sound is measurable but invisible to the naked -- and sleeping -- eye. So it makes sense for a circle of this nature to be the same. But like I said: you won't get in my way if you make a physical one."

Sera is telling truths about him, around the time that Hawksley is noticing Grace and waving. That he likes books. He likes working out, which is partly true -- he likes the effects of working out, he likes the effects of books. He seeks self-perfection. This is one thing he has in common with the Order of Hermes. But too many of them neglect the body in favor of the mind, and Hawksley refuses to believe the two are distinct.

And yes.

He also likes Sera. If the way he smiled at her when he embraced her, kissing her over her heart, was any indication, he is positively devoted. But Sera knows better.

Sera knows what it takes for him to leave her behind.

--

"Hold up," he says to Kalen, and jogs back across the lawn to Grace, throwing an arm around her and crushing her to his side. He is firm and warm and he is, simply, the feeling of the sun sinking into your skin on a long day doing nothing but lying on the beach. "Graaaace," he says. "Grace with the eyes," which has been his favorite part of her since the moment he met, when she was new and when Sera was fasting and they were all in Mutiny.

He looks at the book, and looks at her. "Do I have to make grabby hands at you?"

Kalen Holliday

Kalen leans into the side of the house. He does not go bounding back to the others, but he does lift one hand to wave to Grace.

And he waits.

Serafíne

"Hi Grace," Sera, all lazy affection and mirrored breasts and afterglow as Grace arrives at the couch and perches on the arm. "Do you know Richard?"

Then: Hawksley. Hawksley bounding back and Sera stretching her toes like she was bathing in - baking in - the sun, on some beach. When is is this close she cannot help but watch him, and - well - she does not pursue introductions while Hawksley is hauling in his birthday booty.

"Fuck. I wish I'd had hippie parents. I'm from the goddamned Hamptons. How hippie were your folks, anyway? Cloth diapers, crystal deodorants? Fucking yoga? Jim's into that, man."

Grace Evans

Grace is attacked by a Hawksley, and okay -- she manages it with just a little tension and tries not to look as shocked as she really is. Which, let's face it, she's not at all shocked that Hawksley hugged her.

"Grace with the eyes?" she asks, not really knowing that the man had rated her body parts and placed her eyes at the top.

"You are already making grabby hands at me, man," she says, and hands over the book, which announces itself as a copy of Ancillary Justice.

"It's a story. I brought you that because I thought you might like at least a physical book, and I've already digitized that one. It's about a person who is a former starship made up of many minds linked into one being."

She then reaches into a pocket of her jeans and obtains something else -- a black, nondescript flash drive.

"This contains some more stuff. I put some interesting pieces on this one. So it's encrypted. Password's 'Happy Birthday'."

Hawksley Rothschild

"Grace with the spectacular eyes," he clarifies for her. "I never told you this? I told Sera. I kept telling her your eyes look like nebulae. Like galaxies, universes, starry clouds of space... stuff." A handwave, here. And then he grabs the Ancillary Justice from her, grinning toothily, taking his arm from her to examine the book with both hands. Then she hands him a drive! And 'interesting' which means intriguing. And,

"That's a horrible password," Hawksley says, cheerfully. But he's distracted: "You mean you wrote this?" He waves the book in the air. "You're a writer? What the hell, why didn't you tell me!"

He rarely sees her.

He leans over, plants a big comic cartoonish kiss on her cheek. "You're too kind," but he's already looking at the book again, peering at it, and he's not really a big sci-fi reader but Grace writes books apparently and he is so intrigued he can't contain it. He looks at her, then across at Richard and Sera and smiles, because he sort of likes the mental image he gives himself of those two fucking, then back to Grace. "You want to help Kalen and I make a sound-dampening field between the house and the rest of the neighborhood? I don't know if that sort of thing is your jam, but my style is pretty open, you could probably jump in if you know the basic premise."

By which he means: if she studies Forces. If she can do things like repel certain kinds of energy.

Hawksley Rothschild

[DLP, rewriting]

Richard

"Protests on Sproul, marches on City Hall. Pretty sure we had disposable diapers, though."

Richard looks up at Grace. He keeps quiet on whether or not they've met before; frankly, he isn't sure. The side effect and downside of meeting a lot of people, making a lot of friends: sometimes you forget. Sometimes you also call out a name at a supermarket and everyone turns and stares but the person you were trying to call wasn't who you thought it was at all.

Anyway:

"Wait; so what you're saying is, you're actually a wasp."

Hawksley Rothschild

"Grace with the spectacular eyes," he clarifies for her. "I never told you this? I told Sera. I kept telling her your eyes look like nebulae. Like galaxies, universes, starry clouds of space... stuff." A handwave, here. And then he grabs the Ancillary Justice from her, grinning toothily, taking his arm from her to examine the book with both hands. Then she hands him a drive! And 'interesting' which means intriguing. And,

"That's a horrible password," Hawksley says, cheerfully. "You're too kind," but he's already looking at the book again, peering at it, and he's not really a big sci-fi reader but he is so intrigued he can't contain it. He looks at her, then across at Richard and Sera and smiles, because he sort of likes the mental image he gives himself of those two fucking, then back to Grace. "You want to help Kalen and I make a sound-dampening field between the house and the rest of the neighborhood? I don't know if that sort of thing is your jam, but my style is pretty open, you could probably jump in if you know the basic premise."

By which he means: if she studies Forces. If she can do things like repel certain kinds of energy.

Serafíne

"Shhhhhhhhhhhhh."

Sera shushes Richard, rather loudly. Shhhh. Shhhh. Shhhh.

"Only Hawsley fucking knows." And she looks at Hawksley because she just said his name and actually catches him looking at her and Richard and she smiles to him and waves a bit and has no idea that he is picturing her and Richard fucking for a split-second there, and her drink is gone. She wonders where it went. "And I'm only half a WASP. My mother was Miss Fucking Argentina, 1988. That's how she ended up in New York and met my father. What the fuck is a sproul. And you don't seem like a hippie. Maybe because you are so goddamned tall. Are you going to rebel and become an investment banker?"

Hawksley Rothschild

Hawksley waggles his brows at Richard. ONLY HE KNOWS. Also everyone else standing nearby.

Elijah

He'd been really, really fascinated by the texture of the couch at that juncture, by the sound of people's voices and by the world around him and the way the air felt and the way the moon seemed and oh my god clothing is the biggest pain in the ass in the world and-

Hawksley waggles his brows at Richard.

Elijah loses it and cracks up laughing.

Grace Evans

Grace with the spectacular eyes? She doesn't quite know how to react to that. Compliments on her physical self are rare things, and she regards it as one might regard a giant, rainbow-colored caterpillar. Not exactly unwelcome, but not normal either. She smiles, but it's a confused thing. Eyes like a universe. Does she really?

"I can try. Probably. It might work," she says, and shifts the laptop bag off her shoulder. The large (but lightweight) laptop slides out, and she boots it up like it's a thing that everyone does -- set up their laptop in approximately 10 whole seconds.

Kalen Holliday

Kalen does not come back across the distance that separates them, even though Hawksley is lingering. He stays by the house, watching them. Watching wandering party guests. Waiting.

He does not need to think of words while he is waiting. It is hardly the worst thing.

Richard

"Nah." Richard, at last, takes the last pull off that everlasting toke of his and bends down to crush it out against the side of his sole. "Maybe a mathematician. Maybe a theoretical physicist. Something nerdy so I can wear tweed jackets and do a post-doc at Berkeley someday. Maybe.

"And a sproul," he adds, "is the plaza where all the students protest everything ever. Did your mom watch the world cup?"

Hawksley Rothschild

"Cool," he says, of the laptop. "You come this way with Kalen and me. He and I need to actually make the circles because we're cavemen or something. I'll explain how we're doing this on the way over, but basically --"

and he is helping her carry the thing if she seems to need it, but otherwise it's time to move again, move with Hawksley back to Kalen, and on the way he's explaining how they mean to create the field, and his thinking behind it. He isn't asking how Kalen will do his part, or how Grace will contribute; he knows they will. That is all he needs to know.

--

Sera and Richard go on talking about hippies and WASPs, backgrounds, lives. Elijah is a bit lost right now, so stoned he can't remember he was going to give Hawksley brownies and vodka. Grace and Kalen and Hawksley are going to make sure that no one ever calls the cops on this party -- at least not due to noise.

This is how it is done: the drawing of circles, with whatever foci Kalen needs for the inner circle, with whatever parameters Grace helps them determine. His is the storm, his is the chaos and light inside. He is attuned to such things. Hers is the gap in between, the sharp boundary of soundlessness, the space between the noise of one sphere and the noise of another; truthfully, Hawksley trusts that solidifying that gap will not tax her. That's the thing: his expectation of their competence is entire, regardless of tradition, regardless of method.

The outer circle is his. This is the line where the sounds of the outside world must stop, halting before the gap, just as Kalen is creating a pocket where the sounds of the house and its grounds can live and run amok. Hawksley takes this one on. He has to work first: those outside the circle will notice the party suddenly going silent if Kalen performs his magic first, but the sleepers in Sera's house won't notice the lack of sound from the outside world right away. Still: you have to time these things closely.

Standing in the back yard, in shadows beneath some trees, beside a fence, he touches the sky on the other side of the house, the front of it. He knows the point where he wants it to begin, opposite the point where he stands. And his hands meet, thumb to thumb, index to index, a triangle of emptiness in the center. Spreads those hands, sweeping out and close to his face and together again, meeting seamlessly.

It's very simple, for Hawksley. It is sealed. He says nothing: no chanting, no Latin, no Enochian. He has no wand, no external foci at all. Later on, when it is time to remove the circle -- or even break through Kalen's magic -- he knows the gesture to break the seal and reopen the field.

For a moment, after Kalen is finished, he stands on the outside, watching a party that he cannot hear. Watching people laugh, unable to hear them. He smiles. Then he steps through, experiencing a half-second of profound silence in the gap between circles, and moves into the noise and laughter and music inside.

There are high-fives for both Grace and Kalen. Then there is booze, and maybe some molly, and he can go in the bouncy castle as much as he wants because it's his birthday.

There is a cake that Dee made.

There is a marijuana-fueled discussion between he and the swimmer about which one of them is taller. Hawksley keeps cracking up, insisting he's taller, he's taller, he's like, UP IN THE SKY, and Richard is telling him THAT'S JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE STONED and someone says the word 'high' and no one can stop laughing. Hawksley is fucking crying from laughing so hard. At one point, later, there is dancing in the living room, furniture pushed out of the way and lights off and so much bass.

There is perhaps a debate about the intrinsic nature of Forces between Kalen and Hawksley over some booze, until they realize they actually agree on a few things and then Hawksley wants to high-five some more.

Maybe they talk about Australia.

Maybe Hawksley tells them -- Grace, Kalen, Sera, Richard, whomever -- that they should just grab a jet and go, y'know, stop talking about it and just go and he's looking for his phone to tell Collins that he wants to go to Australia, but this is not the first time in the middle of the night that Collins has gotten a call like this and Hawksley forgets he's on the phone because someone named Emily -- a Denver Roller Doll who goes by 'Boo Boo Radley' -- is leading him away. He comes back later, missing his shirt and throwing himself back into the more social debauchery.

The party goes on all night, as you do. People fall asleep in the bouncy castle and on the floor and on the steps. Up in her room, Hawksley removes the mirrors on Sera's breasts piece by piece by piece, gently, gently. He isn't saying anything, but he is also saying thank you for something else about the party with each mirror. The book Grace gave him is nearby, sitting on a space of Sera's bookshelf that belongs to Hawksley, has belonged to him since his last birthday. There is a bottle of vodka there as well, but he can't remember who gave it to him.

Some people have gone home.

Hawksley goes home the next day, midafternoon. But only after he has gone to the front of the house, standing on the sidewalk, holding his hands in a triangle as before and then twisting, sharply, at the thumbs, one hand pointing up and the other down, breaking the seals that have kept the house silenced all night.

--

Roughly a week later, the four other magi who attended the party receive a small card, hand-delivered or mailed or left for them in the chantry, containing a thank-you note for their attendance and an invitation to, at their pleasure, visit with Hawksley at his house. For lunch, perhaps. Or tea. Or what-have-you.

Let no one be deceived: this is Collins's doing, though most of them don't know Collins exists.

Collins thinks Hawksley needs more friends.

ms. cotton

Richard

It's a hot day; there was thunder in the afternoon, perhaps a shower or two. Dry now, though, and bright: clear enough that people are walking around without umbrellas, are walking around in shorts and t-shirts and tank tops and sometimes without a shirt at all. It's nearing the end of the day, the late classes letting out. On the steps of Sturm Hall, some campus a cappella group enthuses its way through a doo-wop medley. A stone's throw away on the campus green, people are playing ultimate, or some version of ultimate with unclear teams and unclear rules and lots of shouting and laughing and frisbeeing.

One of the players come jogging off the field. He is golden and bright and very, very tall, and he sweeps sweat from his brow with his forearm and grabs up a bottle of water from the sidelines; ruffles his other hand through his hair to ventilate his scalp. His throat works; he gulps -- he breaks away to shout encouragement to a friend or an ally or a teammate, then screws the cap back on his bottle and turns away. Jogs a little farther from the game, plops down in the grass. Knees up, arms looped over -- relaxed, grinning.

He feels like the salt sea; its sun-shattered surface. He feels like motion and dynamism, fluidity and force. When he shakes his hair out of his eyes, you almost expect droplets of water to fly from the tips.

ms. cotton

Some distance from the frisbee or whatever game, there is a figure laying on the grass. They are between Ricketson and the bridge that crosses Evans, in the oval-shaped and well-manicured emptiness, but she is not part of the game. Her hair is very long, and unruly at the ends -- not unlike his acarya's in that way, but this girl's is dark. And her eyes are closed and her lips are slightly parted and she is small, smaller than his acarya and much, much smaller than Richard himself. Her knees are bent, feet flat. Her arms are out, palms up.

He's drinking water and he's jogging and as he's plopping,

the world is going out from under him, turning him over like an ocean wave, and the sky is not falling but tipping to the side, sliding off like a drop of water from the surface of an egg. The colors of the grass and her lips and his own skin and the sky seem hyper-saturated, and every sound around him seems that much more powerful. The water in his stomach seems to spiral. They are on a rollercoaster, a slow one, which is wild and terrifying and heady.

Her lips are moving, because she is mouthing the words to a song that no one else is hearing.

Richard

That sudden, ecstatic vertigo is so absolute that Richard reacts physically. Puts his hands over his face, presses the pads of his fingers to his eyes, opens his mouth like he's trying to pop his ears. It washes over him, it washes through him, and then it passes.

He lifts his head. He expects to see everyone knocked flat. He expects to see the sky in the colors of the rainbow. He expects to see the landscape altered, the world changed, the trees ballooned into neon cotton candy puffs, the buildings leveled.

Nothing's changed. The game goes on. Someone passes, someone dives, someone nabs that frisbee and everyone on the field yells and --

Richard gets up. That bottle of water dangles from his fingertips. He walks aimlessly, and then he has an aim. His shadow falls over the girl with the unruly hair. He is lit from behind, the setting sun giving his hair a false hint of red. He tilts his head because she is lying sideways to him.

"I haven't met you before," he says, which isn't really what you say to a stranger because it's just so obvious. Except:

he feels like the salt sea. She feels like spiraling chaos.

ms. cotton

It sort of passes.

She's still using magic, after all. That's the intensity of it. It's like they're all falling, falling, tumbling end over end through space, but it's not space. It's warm and colorful and noisy and somewhere in the back of your mind you might hear Entry of the Gladiators

but the grass is grass and the buildings have not ripped from their foundations and gone flying and the trees are not pink.

His shadow falls but her lips are moving, moving, and she doesn't sense it even though she smiles a little, appreciating the shade over her delicate eyelids. They are such thin protectors. There's a pair of heart-shaped sunglasses sitting on top of her chest, her chest which is covered by a baggy lace crop top and a teal-blue sports bra beneath that. She is wearing cutoffs and Keds. The Keds have been drawn on, by several people it seems.

Richard speaks and she hmmmms, as soft as though he's her lover, waking her, asking her if she wants breakfast and of course she does,

"Waffles?"

Her lips spread into a smile, even though there is no way he can understand why the fuck she just said waffles the way some people might say yes. But everything she says sounds like yes. A little. Of some kind or another. Her eyes flicker open.

"Don't you ever just lie back and feel the earth turning, and moving around the sun, and feel the time passing while you are moving and the earth is moving and think about how far you will be from your exact location in the universe in just a little while because the earth will have moved, and you're on the earth, and --"

she sighs, and grins. Her eyes look grey, but they are in shadow. They are grey. Hints of green. He'll notice later.

"You look like the future," she says. "Come," pats the grass. "Feel the earth."

Richard

Waffles.

Richard is baffled, and charmed. He grins down at her, this dizzy girl with her dizzy magic. He looks down at the grass, his shadow fuzzy because it is twilight, and perhaps also because he is near a fuzzy girl with fuzzy magic. He crouches down, and then he sits, crossing his lanky legs, his hands relaxed in his lap.

"What's any of that have to do with waffles?" he wants to know, but really he just wants to hear what she says to that. His fingertips comb through the grass. He resists that elemental urge to pull the blades up by their roots. Strange that man is imbued with such an instinct to destroy. Or perhaps not so strange: man's mind created war, created destruction. Created death, too, if you're fundamentalist in your beliefs and accept that all reality is the outcome of will.

"I'm not the future," he adds. "I'm Richard. I turn the Wheel."

ms. cotton

The girl closes her eyes again, and slides her legs downward, letting the grass tickle her beneath her knees. It makes her giggle, and it makes her shiver, and she wriggles a bit before she settles again. She has bracelets, so many bracelets, all clubs and festivals and half-falling-off and some of them are rubber and some of them are paper and a few are elastic and one of them is pretend gold, two birds flying towards each other over her wrist, their beaks never quite touching.

What he says makes her smile. "Like... rethink what you just said for a second." Then she laughs, because she already has.

Richard

"I know what I said," Richard replies, smiling. "I might help the future get here. But I'm still not the future.

"What's your name?"

ms. cotton

"I didn't say you were," she tells him. "I said you look like the future. That's different."

Eileen breathes in deeply. She holds her name in her mind first, first and foremost, because it belongs to her and only her. She cradles it in her breath, then parts her lips and tells him,

"Eileen," as she turns her head to look at him. Grinning. "Come on."

Richard

She's right. She didn't say he was the future; she said he looked like it. Richard thinks that over, and then he nods. "Fair point," he says, because it is. "I still don't know how I look like the future, though."

She introduces herself. He grins.

"You're not even old enough to know that song," Richard says, mock-accusatory. He puts his hand out: all broad palm, long fingers. "Nice to meet you, Eileen. What were you doing before I got over here?"

ms. cotton

Eileen doesn't answer him. Not the first part. He just said he didn't know. That's not the same as asking to know.

He offers his hand, and she reaches out, but not to shake. She puts her hand on his, or under it, alongside it, fingertips to fingertips, turning her hand til their hands are aligned, pushing his up through the tension between their hands til she can see it outlined against the sky. Palm to palm, fingers spread, she blinks slowly, looking at how much larger his hand is.

"I know Canon in D and Beethoven's Ninth," she mentions, "and Joy to the World -- the carol and the one by Three Dog Night. Age has less to do with what you know and more to do with how much of it you know."

Eileen rolls her fingers. It's a wave, pressing her pinky and then ring and then middle and index, over and over, moving his fingertips atop hers, lifting them to the sky. Beautiful, beautiful, like a trill on a piano. "I was feeling the earth turn and time move."

Without taking her hand from his, she uses her other one to lift herself up to sitting, her sunglasses falling from chest to lap, her hair falling around her shoulders, and yes her eyes are grey yes they are touched with green yes. "I'm also on Ecstasy, but that's not so much doing as done. And doing and will-do. Everything is Now."

Richard

His hand is taken. It is not shaken. It is met, it is opened, it is aligned, it is lifted to the sky. Richard watches, bemused, touched. He feels holy. He thinks of the things he reads about in his acarya's library, and in the books she sometimes brings for him. He thinks of ages and eons and turnings of the wheel.

"I should've guessed that," he says, smiling, when she tells him what she was doing. Not exactly what he asked, but somehow: exactly how he would have expected her to respond. "And to answer your earlier question," he adds, "I think I felt it too, just now. The earth turn, time move."

She's on ecstasy. Richard is pragmatic about this piece of news; he hands her his half-bottle of water. "It's hot out," he advises. "Don't get dehydrated."

ms. cotton

"That's because I touched you," she says, and it's not flirtation. She says it like the truth, without pride or apology or coyness. Just... the Truth. She touched his hand, their palms meeting intimately and sensually if not erotically, and he felt the earth moving, time shifting.

He hands her his water. She exhales a laugh. "I'm okay for now. Thanks, though." Smiling, she draws his hand over and puts it on her face. Palm to cheek, holding his big hand there, covering most of her face. She smiles, cradling herself into his palm, as blissful and content as a baby. Rocks a bit side to side, then turns her head, kisses his fingertips like another thank-you and like a blessing, then folds his hand gently back towards himself.

Peers at him, like she's just now seeing his face. Which makes some sense; she was entranced by his hand. Her brow furrows a little. "How do I know you?"

Richard

His friends out on the turf think she must be his girlfriend. No wonder he left the game, they think. No wonder he gave up running about and catching frisbees and getting in the way of the opposing team(s) and generally being so ridiculously athletic. His girlfriend's here, and she's nuzzling his big hand, and he looks charmed and

just a little awkward. It's not as though Richard hasn't tried a few choice substances himself in his day -- Olympic villages on the eve of closing ceremonies are basically big giant multinational parties -- but it's broad daylight and she's high and he doesn't even know her.

He allows it, though, this appropriation of his hand and the subsequent snuggling. It's sensual; it's oddly not sexual. That would be the line for him. She's altered-mental-state, after all. Presently his hand is returned to him; he quirks a grin.

"You don't," he reminds her, but he's being playful. He knows what she means. "I swim," he adds. "I also walk home this way a lot."

Well. Not really home. He walks this way when he's heading to his acarya's house, which recently has become more-often-than-not. But that would be complicated to explain right now, and anyway: 'home' is close enough to the truth.

ms. cotton

Girl no one around him knows is nuzzling his hand and smiling at him and looking like any second now she's going to lean over and the serious PDA will commence until he's getting up and taking her hand and they're trotting off to someone's dorm room. That's the narrative.

The truth is that Richard doesn't know her either. The truth is that she's high. The truth is that she seems to inherently, automatically trust him, which is disconcerting to say the least. She is touching him, unapologetically and easily, as though they're old friends. And there is a tenderness to her, in the way she touched his hand and the way she held his hand to her cheek. A softness that is terrifyingly open.

And somehow not at all vulnerable.

"Yooouuu swiiiimmm," she repeats, elongating the words to feel them a bit more, and closing her eyes, opening them slowly. Her lips part. "I've never been here before. I haven't seen you walking. I've seen you swim." Her eyes brighten. She lights up. Grins. Beams. "Tight little swimming trunks! American flag on your cap. Did they handicap you for being so long?"

Richard

Tight little swimming trunks. Possibly the origin and the punch line of many an unnecessarily-censored internet gif. Richard, unembarrassed, smirks a little.

"We were all pretty long," he says, remarkably straightfaced. "It's sort of a process of self-selection, like jockeys being short."

ms. cotton

Oh, she's totally thinking about sex. Naked skin, water rolling down naked skin, fingers roaming places, the most delicate and the pinkest places being stroked to excitement. It's really hard not to let your mind wander that direction when you're on E. But thinking about something doesn't mean doing anything about it. Thinking about something, feeling something, is magic in its own right.

Like feeling the world, sensing it, is magic. Even if you can't throw a fireball.

"How does an Olympian become a Wheel-Turner?" she asks, peering still, and sitting there, hands on the grass, letting her magic fade back into the world around her, coalesce again inside of her, making the world a little less chaotic around her. "I mean I don't want to stereotype anyone but that's a bit of a jump."

Richard

Richard doesn't have an easy answer to that. At least not at first. And then suddenly he smiles:

"Fate."

Oh, he thinks he's so clever. Except no, he doesn't. He actually kind of means it. He shrugs his shoulders, twists the cap off his water, takes another drink. "I came to college after I retired from swimming. I knew I was Awake, but I'd never done much about it. I took a class; it turned out the professor was Awake too. We talked, and we clicked, and ... I guess everything just fell into place.

"What about you? I'm going to do some stereotyping myself and ask if you're a time-weaver."

ms. cotton

That makes her laugh, leaning forward with it, her whole body into it, laughing with shoulders up and mouth open and hahahahahaha. She pats his shin with her hand unironically.

He drinks, and she's thirsty suddenly, so she makes grabby hands at his water bottle. "Pleaseplease," she says, til he gives it over and lets her take a long swig. "That's so awesome, though," she pants, handing it back to him. "And yeah, and I was never an Olympian, and it's okay, though I can't weave anything."

Eileen pauses, exhales. "What do people do around here at night? Where do they go? What do you do?" Then she starts singing Just Keep Swimming.

Richard

"There are clubs and bars downtown, if that's your thing," he says, and forgive him for assuming that would be her thing, seeing as how she is a time-weaver-who-can't-weave. "Lots of coffeehouses around campus. And bars, and restaurants, and cheapo eateries. Great concerts at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre. All the rock-climbing and hiking you could possibly want.

"I usually go hang out after class. I go to a coffeehouse and meet new people. Or I go to my acarya's place -- my teacher's place -- and we make dinner together and talk about whatever.

"You just move to the area or something?"

ms. cotton

"Acarrrya," she says, rolling the r thoughtfully. "I know that word," she says, smiling, "but I didn't know what it meant. At the cathedral in Chicago. I've heard it a lot up there. That's why I'm here," she says, firmly, "because Roman is doing something in the mountains. And he wanted me to come with him but not go into the mountains with him."

She sighs. "He's overprotective, you know? Because he's a Master and all. He's not even from here,"

and she doesn't mean Denver. Or Chicago. She means the Now. But shakes her head. "I'm a lot more capable than he thinks." Eileen stops, then smiles. "Let's get sushi!" Like it was already decided that they were hanging out, and she just figured out what they should eat.

Richard

Richard thinks a moment.

"Yeah, all right." He puts his palms on the ground, then, and sits up. Gets up. Dusts those palms off, suddenly ridiculously taller than Ms. Cotton, who is not terribly tall at all. "Remind me to get a spicy cucumber roll to go, for my acarya."

He does not roll the r.

ms. cotton

This makes Eileen happy. She reaches her hands up for him to help her off the ground, her butt firmly planted.

Richard

Richard takes her hands unhesitatingly. They have this in common: an openness, a friendliness, a compassion and warmth for strangers. He pulls her up and she is pulled up and then he tilts his head back, looks at the sky. Clouds overhead, wispy and high, gold-traced as sunset approaches.

"Do you like sushi bars? With the funny little wooden ships floating by? I like sushi bars."

ms. cotton

Eileen grasps his hands, letting herself be hauled to her feet. She smiles up at him, brushing off her butt and picking up her sunglasses, perching them atop her head. She has no purse, no bag, nothing but herself. Her and her sunglasses and her Keds. Maybe she has an ID or something in her pocket.

"Oh, totally," she says. "I mean it's not a prerequisite for sushi, but how can you resist food in tiny boats?"

She shrugs, and takes his hand, linking their fingers. "You know," she says, heading off in whatever direction she's facing, though she has no idea where they're going, "when I said you looked like the future, I meant like. You're so tall and lean. I think in the future we'll be taller. We keep getting taller, as a race. Eventually we'll be so elongated. I haven't asked Roman, he gets so touchy when you ask him about the future."

Richard

"I agree. It's like playing in your bathtub as a kid, plus food."

His hand is taken. Now his friends are convinced this is his girlfriend. He will have to disabuse them of the notion later, but right now that does not concern him, and it does not embarrass him. He holds her hand: it is comfortable and companionable.

"I don't think he could tell you about the future even if he wanted to," Richard says thoughtfully. "Well; certainly he can tell you, but what I mean is, there must be so many possible futures, every one of them varying by a hair, a breeze, an atom out of place. Maybe some of them are more likely than others, reinforced by fate. But maybe simply the act of trying to tell you would disturb all the threads and change all the probabilities.

"You might be right, though. Supposedly, we are getting taller as a species as time goes on. Not as much as people think, though. I think there's some statistic showing that the average height of human beings has only increased by an inch or two since the middle ages."

ms. cotton

Eileen LOVES THAT. She beams at him, grinning widely, her nose wrinkling a bit. "It's EXACTLY like that!" she exclaims.

They start walking. Maybe Richard is letting her lead. Oh, Richard.

"He could if he wanted, outcome be damned. I think it's hubris to think that you can lock it down. I know he's seen the future, at least one version of it, and a very far off one. I know he's seen many things like that. Even if I didn't, I'd know that he could. So my knowing all that could change things. Not telling me -- it's matters of degree, you know? And you can't know. I think it's foolish to want things to be certain."

A pause. "Not foolish to want it. Natural to want it. Foolish to expect it."

He tells her about science. She laughs. "Statistics." Laughs again. Squeezes his hand. "Think of how much technology advanced between the middle ages and twenty years ago and how much it advanced in the last twenty years. We won't know til we're there. And I didn't say how far in the future you look like. You don't feel like the future. You feel like the past."

Richard

"I look like the future, and I feel like the past," Richard ruminates. "Sounds like song lyrics. How do I feel like the past?"

ms. cotton

"The ocean," Eileen says. "Everyone's past."

Richard

Does one know the flavor of one's own magic? Perhaps Richard does. Perhaps Richard can hear the rush of the salt sea when he works his small but burgeoning talent. Perhaps he can feel the surge, the power, the fractured-and-recoherent interface. Perhaps he understands, immediately and intuitively, what Eileen means.

Or perhaps he doesn't. Either way, what she says makes him smile.

"Thanks," he says. "I think that's a compliment." He nods up ahead: some little sushi joint, some college-town place with crowded booths and young crowds and neon lights in the windows. "I like that place a lot. Wanna go there?"

ms. cotton

"No," she says easily, breezily, not unkindly. "It's just... what it is. And surrre. I'm easy."

Which she is. Easy in speech. Easy in her lace top and shorts and unruly hair and the way she holds his hand and makes a new friend automatically. She knows a lot about him already: he was at the Olympics and he's a Euthanatos and he's super tall and smart. That's quite a lot to know right away.

She swings their arms between their bodies as she walks, rubber soles smacking the pavement as they head up towards Evans and then east, to the row along University Boulevard of shops and bars and a Floyd's 99. They pass a Ben & Jerry's, and she peers in. There are two sushi joints right at that intersection: Ginza to the south, a more trendy place called Wok & Roll to the north, equidistant from the cross-streets. Because of course there is. They go to Ginza, which is newer but more authentic, built right next to a Qdoba on the ground floor of a hip -- and brand-new -- apartment building aimed at the wealthy students who attend this particular bastion of higher learning.

"What do I feel like?"

Richard

"Vertigo," Richard replies at once.

And a little later, perhaps thinking that that one word alone was potentially negative in its connotations: "Like the sort of vertigo you get when you're a little kid and you play outside on a sunny summer's day. You run all over the place and get breathless and hot, so then you stop and look straight up at the sky, and it's perfect blue and limitless and there's absolutely nothing for you to fix your gaze on, so you get dizzy. It's a good sort of dizzy, though. And then you lie down in the grass and make up stories about the things you see up there.

"That's what you feel like. All of that." He smiles down at his new friend. "And when you make magic, you make the whole world feel like it should be topsy-turvy and upside-down."

ms. cotton

She smiles. "I make some people nauseated," she says, without the smile breaking, as they cross the street, and then another, since it's on the opposite corner. "And sometimes it's like spinning and spinning and spinning, or going too high on a swing. I should tell you that I may vanish unexpectedly."

Richard

"Literally?"

ms. cotton

Eileen laughs. "Yeah. Sometimes Roman just sort of. You know." She makes a YOINK! gesture with her hand, grabbing nothing from midair and moving it elsewhere. "Pulls me out."

Richard

"Huh." Richard considers this. "How? He pulls you out of time, or space, or both?

"Who is this Roman, anyway? Your acarya, or whatever the corresponding title is for your tradition?"

ms. cotton

Time, space, or both?

She shrugs, one palm facing the sky. Who's to say? All of the above. "We don't really have titles for every little thing. At least not that I know of. But no, not really. He does teach me things sometimes. But we're more like... partners." They are walking up into Ginza. "Not like lover-partners." She shrugs again. "I mean, we've had sex, but it was more of a ritual thing to see if it could be helpful, and it wasn't congrex because my heart was broken at the time and I don't really trust Roman entirely,"

she says of the man she permits to yoink her out of time, space, and both,

"so not that kind of partner. But not really just a teacher, either. Where I'm from -- and it may be a good idea to mention that this may not actually be my reality, this one you're in with me right now? -- the Ascension War has started up again, so we're sort of secret agents. That's why he's in the mountains, there's something up there he needs that isn't in our reality anymore. Or isn't yet?"

She shrugs, and then she is just looking around the sushi joint appreciatively. She's still holding his hand.

"He also sort of oversees the Cult in Chicago. The council is so cool. We have one lady who is literally in three places at once: Chicago, Berlin and Toronto. Isn't that amazing? Do you think it's lame if I just want California rolls?"

Richard

RIchard wouldn't be surprised if Eileen was actually from a different reality. What she describes seems so complex he'd have a harder time believing it's part of his reality. That relationship; that situation; that war-started-up-again. Richard listens, though, and Richard doesn't dismiss.

"Well, I hope he finds what he's looking for. And I hope you get to finish dinner before you get pulled out."

He pushes the door open. They walk in. They look about to a chorus of Irasshaimase!s, and Richard shakes his head. "You can want whatever you want, and you should get whatever you want. It's only lame if you feel like you need to get something fancy just to fit in. Come on," he walks past the entryway, "let's sit at the bar."

ms. cotton

"Me too!" she says earnestly, insistently, squeezing his hand. "I like you. You're very tall and I find it reassuring. Also I'm hungry. And I'm not worried about fitting in, just wanted to know if you thought it was lame."

They stroll towards the bar and by god they do look like a DU couple, especially since they're both super cute. She hops onto a stool, which takes a bit of climbing on her part compared to the way Richard can just sit down. Her feet dangle; his touch the floor, flat-soled. They've let go of each other's hands.

"We should get plum wine," she suggests. "It's so sweet though. Maybe sake."

Richard

"I like you too," Richard replies, earnestly. "You're very happy and I find it happifying." Oh -- that earnestness has become a touch impish.

They sit down. Or rather, she climbs up and he sits down. There are little bamboo boats floating by them, each laden with yummies. Richard snags one carrying California rolls just before it gets out of reach and plunks it in front of Eileen.

"We can get both," he says. "Chilled plum wine and warm sake."

ms. cotton

They like each other, and this makes her happy. And she is happy and that makes him happy. And Eileen laughs. "I'm joyful," she says. "I'm not always happy but I'm always joyful. It's my passion."

She says passion like some people say calling.

Richard reaches out, with that long reach of his, and grabs her a boat of her favored rolls. She claps her hands together lightly as he sets it in front of her, gleeful. "Thank you, Richard," she says, and picks up the chopsticks that are folded into a napkin beside her seat. But when she plucks a roll up, she offers it to him first, holding it out to -- apparently -- feed him the first bite.

Elijah Poirot

[nightmares]

Dice: 4 d10 TN7 (3, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )

Richard

"You are," Richard agrees, while Eileen claps softly-happily to be presented with california rolls. Richard grins: that big wide grin, those even white teeth, the happy creases and crinkles thrown around his mouth and his eyes.

"You're very welcome, Eileen," he says, and then unhesitatingly eats the roll off her chopstick. He's polite about it: doesn't wrap his whole mouth around the utensil, doesn't slobber all over it, etcetera.

ms. cotton

She didn't put wasabi on it, or look for soy sauce. So he gets it plain, as-is, when she holds it neatly up to him like she's been using chopsticks since the day she was born. He eats tidily, and this pleases her, too. She grins, clapping again, though one hand still cradles the chopsticks. "What are you going to pluck from the water, Oh Ferryman?" she asks, lifting another roll for her own bite.

Richard

"IIII am going to pluck..."

-- and he plucks! --

"...a crunchy dragon roll. And," he plucks again, "some seaweed salad. Want to share?"

ms. cotton

Eileen, who has her mouth full of California roll, one cheek bulging out, raises her hand and gives the sign for 'yes'. She swallows. They wave someone down, get hot sake. And as soon as it arrives, Eileen uncaps the carafe and gently pours the hot, clear liquid into the little cup beside Richard's boat of crunchy dragons.

Richard

So Richard puts that little plate of savory seaweed between the two of them, while Eileen fills their little cups with warmed sake. "Mm," Richard opines about that first piece of California roll, picking up the little cup to tap against hers. "Cheers. To new friends and fresh fish."

ms. cotton

Correction: Eileen fills Richard's cup with sake. And she is delighted that he didn't catch her or stop her. He lifts his cup and she lifts hers, but hers is empty. And she grins. She taps, and she pretends to slurp a drink down, and she laughs. "Are you going to share the dragon roll too?" Belatedly, she blinks: "And yes, friends, fish, as fresh as you can get in a landlocked desert!"

Richard

"I will share the dragon roll if you dare," Richard replies. "Why is your cup empty?"

ms. cotton

"I travel through space, time, and dimension with a Cultist master whose name is his original ethnicity," Eileen retorts. "I'm pretty daring. And: you didn't fill my cup. That's why." She opens her mouth: it is his duty, now, to feed her some crunchy dragon roll.

Richard

Richard mouths a silent oh. And, chagrined, he picks the tiny flagon up and pours his new friend a cup.

"Now then." He raises his cup again. "You toast something."

ms. cotton

Eileen beams. She thought about teasing him, putting her hand over her cup, insisting oh no no, really making him play the sake game, but she doesn't. She lets him pour, and then refills his, and then they hold up their cups. "To pretty sushi in tiny boats floating along a miniature artificial river to hungry people, a metaphor for so many pleasures, which need only be plucked from the water to be tasted."

Tap. Drink.

Richard

"Spoken like a true -- "

what? Euthanatos? Hedonist? Pleasure-seeker, thrill-chaser, whatever it is people stereotype her Tradition as? Why, no.

" -- sage." Tap. Drink. "Oh, I love these." And he snags another plate from a tiny boat: this one cured mackerel.

Richard

[er. CULTIST. not euthanatos. wtf.]

ms. cotton

"Well, I was being partly ironic," she mentions, after setting down her sake cup and refilling -- Richard's. Of course.

"That's not how life is for most people. For most people, there's a river but there's no food coming. Or there's no river. Or you can't reach the river, or you take the food and it is taken from you. I'm still speaking in metaphor. It's easy to say that life is this pleasurable banquet where good things just come to you, easy, you don't have to work for it, you just have to reach out. It's easy, I mean, when you're sitting there and for you, well, there's this river. And pretty food floating your way. And all you have to do is reach. So it's easy to say: well this is how life is."

Eileen looks around. "Like this place. It's not very well-lit. It's shadowy because it's getting dark now and it's a good date place, and so on. And when you're sitting really close to the lights on the river, like we are, it's really easy to forget that it's not like that in the shadows. Or tell ourselves that if those people in the shadows wanted to, they could just come over to the light and the river and the food, right? But we don't know. We aren't in the shadow. We don't know what it's like."

She eats a California roll, shrugs, talks with her mouth half-full. "Still I toast to the pleasure that comes in little boats, waiting to be plucked."

Richard

"Well, if you really carry the metaphor out," Richard says, "it still stands. Sometimes, like you say, there's a river but no food. Or no river. Or you can't reach the river. And sometimes, there's a river, and there's food, and you can reach it, but you still have to pay in the end.

"That's kind of dismal, though. I think life is actually a little less mercenary than our sushi river here. I think sometimes -- once in a very long while -- you really do get something in life that's nice, and lovely, and totally free.

"Like, for example," he pours sake for the two of them again, smiling, "dinner with a new friend."

ms. cotton

"Spoken like a true..."

she holds the word, musing on it a bit, as he almost did earlier,

"-- Euthanatos," she finishes, unflinching, giving a funny lips-together smile with eyebrows up and eyes wide, a facial shrug to go with the real one. "But I'm teasing," she says. "You know better than anyone that what you do has nothing to do with payment. Or endings."

She thinks. "It's not the sushi river that's mercenary. It just is what it is. And people get nice, lovely things all the time -- like the sun coming up -- but I don't know whether they're free or not. Those sort of universal checks and balances are over my head and I'm actually not totally sure they exist, but I also don't think everything is just chaos and happenstance."

Eileen stuffs a dragon roll in her mouth.

Richard

"Well," Richard says, "chaos and happenstance aren't really the same thing, if you want to get technical about it.

"I actually study chaos. And we think of chaos as just... totally unpredictable and reasonless, but it's not that at all. Chaos is just a word we use for things, systems, outcomes, that are so incredibly complex, so incredibly fragile, and so incredibly sensitive to tiny changes at any point along the way that they seem totally unpredictable and reasonless. But they're actually not. If you could see every thread, trace every cause and effect, you'd see that everything was, in fact, perfectly explainable and consistent all along. Quite literally the opposite of happenstance.

"Which is really cool. In a way, I think the idea of chaos reconciles Fate, which my acarya believes in, with free will -- which seems to dictate that nothing can be fated because everything is being decided as we go along. But see, if you take chaos into account, then the threads are the universe and everyone and everything in it. Free will is the hand of fate nudging the threads. Because the universe is infinite, then every cause generates an endless effect that, because it's endless, can't ever be fully calculated and pinned down and predicted. But that doesn't mean the shifting and vibrating of all those threads aren't all perfect and orderly at every point you look at. That doesn't mean fate doesn't exert its effects over the entire system."

A small pause. Then Richard laughs softly, taking a sip of sake.

"Sorry. That was a sudden monologue."

ms. cotton

First of all: she interrupts him.

He says: if you want to get technical about it. And Eileen blinks at him, slowly, and says -- not as slowly: "I didn't say they were."

She puts another roll in her mouth. California or Crunchy Dragon. Neither are super-traditional. She chews, listening while he monologues. She frowns somewhere in there, slightly, a tug between her brows, and she sips her sake, and she eats and listens and drinks and listens.

"I forgive you," she says, when he is done, and he says he's sorry. She gives him a small smile. "Are you like, a math nerd?"

Richard

"Yes," Richard replies, smiling and unhesitant. "And a physics nerd. And a swimmer jock. Ex-swimmer jock."

ms. cotton

Eileen sets down her tiny sake cup, the porcelain empty and warm. She lays a hand on his forearm, looking into his eyes.

"Richard," she says, very seriously.

"Richard," she says again, doubling down. "Physics nerd is even worse than math nerd." Gives his arm a squeeze, pats it. "You stay strong, you brave little soldier!"

Richard

Richard blurts a laugh. " 'Brave little soldier'. Now there's a new one. It also sounds awfully like some form of hideous euphemism."

ms. cotton

Eileen's eyebrows hop up. "For what?"

Richard

"Things which are not acceptable to mention in polite company," Richard deadpans, "hence euphemism."

ms. cotton

She is not about to deny that she's polite. She just smiles benignly. "Oh, you mean penis," is all she tells him, her eyes drifting a bit with the glaze of a few cups of sake. She nods. "Yes, that's a pretty hideous euphemism. Connotatively, too." She laughs, and digs into her meal again, and though she did agree to something about sharing it, she's pretty much ignoring the seaweed salad.

"It's okay that you're a math and physics nerd and swimmer jock," she tells him, finally daubing some wasabi paste onto her rolls. "I was only teasing before." Which he probably knew, but she says it anyway.

They go on sharing -- the rolls at least, and the sake. They take another bowl, maybe two, floating by the river. Richard tells her about his world -- this world. There is no more Ascension War here. And Eileen tells him a little about hers, where it is up again. She tells him how she doesn't think a movement to try and help the whole world Awaken should be called a war, for crying out loud. They may argue a little, but Eileen doesn't seem to want to, and she skirts, and she smooths over, because in the long run no disagreement they have can stick.

They aren't even from the same reality. They may exist in each other's worlds, in some form or another, but she's not going to go looking for him.

Eileen is a little drunk, laughing and almost toppling off her barstool, and Richard semi-catches her. This makes her laugh again. Later on, he may think she has actually fallen off. In the aftermath of a peal of laughter, her cheeks pink and eyes sparkling, she slips from his vision, a blur of motion out of the corner of his eyes.

But she is not on her barstool anymore. Nor is she on the floor. There is an empty sushi plate beside him, and the cup still warm and still bearing the faint imprint of her lips in the clear gloss she was wearing, barely discernable as a shimmer across the rim. Eileen is just gone. Noe one else in Ginza seems to have noticed.