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. cottonSome 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.
RichardThat 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. cottonIt 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."
RichardWaffles.
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. cottonThe 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."
RichardShe'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. cottonEileen 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."
RichardHis 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?"
RichardHis 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. cottonGirl 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?"
RichardTight 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. cottonOh, 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."
RichardRichard 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. cottonThat 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.
RichardRichard 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. cottonThis makes Eileen happy. She reaches her hands up for him to help her off the ground, her butt firmly planted.
RichardRichard 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. cottonEileen 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. cottonEileen 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."
RichardDoes 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. cottonShe 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. cottonEileen 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. cottonTime, 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?"
RichardRIchard 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. cottonThey 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. cottonShe 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. cottonEileen, 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.
RichardSo 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. cottonCorrection: 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.
RichardRichard 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. cottonEileen 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. cottonFirst 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. cottonEileen 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!"
RichardRichard blurts a laugh. " 'Brave little soldier'. Now there's a new one. It also sounds awfully like some form of hideous euphemism."
ms. cottonEileen's eyebrows hop up. "For what?"
Richard"Things which are not acceptable to mention in polite company," Richard deadpans, "hence euphemism."
ms. cottonShe 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.
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