lost sheep.

The Shepherd

Rules!

1: Tell me if you've got any merits/flaws of note

2: Tell me have any triggers/things you can't handle seeing

3: No post order, and feel free to roll things/propose things. I'm kind of playing fast and loose

Eleanor Yates

[Despair]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )

The Shepherd

What are the odds?

That's a question one does not want to ask those will workers who made fate their business. What are the odds? What were the odds that someone would win the lottery, that two strangers would meet in some strange happenstance. What were the odds, indeed? A common question that people asked time and time again but no one really wants to know the answer to. So, with this in mind, what were the odds that some mage who was well versed in the odds would find themselves at a diner in Denver having some kind of food.

They boasted a good vegetarian menu, things that weren't just salads. It was the type of place that had just opened, had pitched itself as an All-American fusion diner. Comfort food with a modern twist. It was a restaurant that couldn't quite figure out what it wanted to be just yet, but they did say that if you tattooed the shop's logo on you somewhere, you had free wine for life. Provided it stayed open, it would be a good bargain because they had a fantastic wine selection.

The wait staff for black and seemed a tad too chic for a place that offered comfort foods,, but heavens if it didn't all smell delicious.

Eleanor Yates

Eleanor is buying Richard dinner. For once she's not cooking, because she is full of verve tonight, has been all day. She's too wound up to go home and cook a quiet meal of dal and jasmine rice or something; when Richard comes in the door for some reason she's saying they should go get dinner,

and then they're in her car,

and then they're off of Santa Fe in a restaurant that is way too hip-chic to fit in with this palce and trying anyway. She is drinking some effervescent thing flavored with hibiscus, because she's driving, and looking over the menu. You can get regular eggs or free range organic or fake vegan eggs here. She huffs a little laugh at that.

Richard

"I think I want the pot roast," Richard muses, sitting across from Eleanor in a collared shirt the color of Caribbean seas, "but I can't decide if the vegetarian falafel version is an amazing idea or a potential disaster."

He looks at her over the top of his menu. His eyes, too, are the color of Caribbean seas. "What do you think? Want to split it with me, in case it's a disaster?"

Eleanor Yates

"It will taste better if you don't expect it to taste like pot roast," she muses aloud, but this is an echo of things she's said many times: do not expect a black-bean-sweet-potato 'burger' to taste like a burger. It's not. That word is only describing the shape it's put in, really.

"But I think it sounds interesting," she adds, "and if it's not, then it comes with enough herbed potatoes to make up the difference."

Richard

Something about Eleanor's musing makes Richard grin. He leafs through the menu.

"Maybe I'll get it with chicken tenders as an appetizer in case it's a disaster," he says. "And I'll share the falafel roast with you, in case it's amazing."

Eleanor Yates

"Well, then I'm getting the mushroom risotto...wait, that's." She peers at the menu. "Musroom Risotto-Mac? What on earth -- well I have to get that," she finishes, shaking her head, "just to see. And then the falafel roast to split and the chicken tenders -- those are coconut-almond chicken tenders, just in case that's a dealbreaker. Oh, modern American cuisine."

Eleanor Yates

[Perception (Details) + Alertness]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 5, 7, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )

Richard

[percep + alert]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 4, 9) ( success x 1 )

Richard

Richard laughs aloud: what on earth?

"I can deal with coconut-almond chicken tenders in the name of new-American cuisine. One of these days we should make cassoulet, though. Eat it with freshbaked bread and two bottles of red."

Eleanor Yates

"With white beans?" Eleanor thinks about this, considering. "That sounds very good, actually. Out on the porch. Invite some friends, up the number of bottles."

Richard

"Yeah," Richard replies, smiling. "White beans and traditionally a lot of meat, but we can make two pots. One for the vegetarians and one for the carnivores. We should just get a box of wine on tap. There are some very respectable labels out there now, you know."

The Shepherd

he catches movement out of the corner of his eye, something subtle and something that doesn't quite seem right. Everyone knows the motion that people make when they are trying to cover something. People catch his attention for a little bit, but then it is gone. Heh, odd.

Eleanor Yates

"But then who will take a photo of all the empty bottles to put on Instagram at the end of the night?" Eleanor retorts, dry as a bone, with a twist of wryness. She is reminding him, and anyone else: she's only 33. She knows what Instagram is. And tendencies among those who use it.

#invinoveritas #somuchwine #somuchtruth #greatnight

She is looking for a waiter, or so it seems, so they can order risotto-mac, falafel pot roast, coconut-almond chicken tenders. And when she looks back to Richard, she slides her hand across the table and taps the back of his left hand with one finger. Flicks her eyes that direction, only to indicate direction but not to look, and then turns her head the other way to flag down a passing waitress.

She wants Richard to look to his left. At the table that way, and the people

talking in tense, hushed voices. The people vibrating with anticipation. The people whose makeup is caked on, whose hairlines seem out of step, as though their hair is not their hair.

Richard

"Fine," Richard relents, his grin crooked, "we'll get bottles and bottles and kill lots of ... trees, or whatever it takes to make bottles."

There is stirring in the corner of his eye. He turns to look; there's nothing there. He turns back and Eleanor is sliding her hand across the table and her eyes are saying: look again

and so he does. He looks a second time, a little longer -- the sort of slow, casual pan a diner might give a dining establishment when he is looking for service. Or the bathrooms. Or perhaps just to see how many other people were here tonight.

Richard

[again!]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )

The Shepherd

Richard does notice now that someone has pointed it out that there was something to notice, it does catch his attention. There is a table full of people, something isn't terribly right about one of them, though he can't quite put a finger on what precisely is wrong other than the people being suspicious.

Richard

A moment later, his eyes are back on Eleanor.

"I see it," he says quietly.

Eleanor Yates

[Perception + Awareness]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )

The Shepherd

The restaurant isn't necessarily packed, but the restaurant isn't exactly empty, either. Of the people in the diner, there were maybe four other tables with people.

There's a four top of sorority girls who seem to be content to dig in to their appetizers and chatter loudly about how they're sooooo glad that someone remembered to take pictures before they dug in. Instagram photos to be had. There's a couple on a date in the corner who seem to be oblivious to those around them, but are very much into each other. Some blond girl and a ginger-haired boy who looks like he probably has a trust fund somewhere. The other two tables, not including the suspicious party, comprised of investment bankers and hipsters in equal measure.

Eleanor Yates

Eleanor does not snort and tease Richard about how bottles are not made from trees. She is distracted now. Richard says he sees. She has the waitress and smiles, puts in their order, orders wine to go with it, then turns back to him with that smile still in place.

"Could be a flash mob," she says mildly, because it would make sense: performers, dancers, all geared up and made up and wigged-out and eager to go. But they don't look just anticipatory. They look tense. Eleanor does not seem tense. Eleanor is sipping her sparkling hibiscus water. "I don't think so, though."

She sets her water down and breathes in deeply, her lips sealed, her nostrils flaring. She breathes in for six. Holds for half a beat. Parts her lips and exhales, for a count of six, slowly and steadily and quietly. It is a subtle thing, this breathing, but it is the same control of breath that she uses when she is doing yoga. And as her breathing evens, rhythmic and holy, her own resonace -- her own power -- begins to move in time with that breath.

Eleanor Yates

[prime 1: sensing magic / coincidental = diff 4. -1 for specialized focus.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (1, 4, 6) ( success x 2 )

Richard

Richard looks down at his menu; at the sweating glass of water he was served when he first sat down.

"I don't think so either," he says quietly, while

all around him Eleanor's magic begins to gather force. Inexorable as a hurricane, cold and deep and airless as outer space.

"I'm armed," he adds -- just a piece of information; just something she should know.

Eleanor Yates

Undistracted, Eleanor gives a small nod: yes, yes he is. Yes she is. As they often are. She exhales, refocusing her energy entirely on the task at hand. Wine comes; she doesn't even smile or speak to the waiter this time.

Richard

[percep + aware]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 6, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )

Eleanor Yates

"The one in the wig," she murmurs, still breathing, her eyes looking at something not there. She hears magic in the cracking of branches under the tension and weight of ice. She feels it trickling over her skin. "She's pushing the others at the table. Manas."

Mind, she means. But he knows that.

Eleanor breathes in again, holding it for a few seconds more. Her eyes find Richard's. "Desperate people do desperate things. I don't know what they're desperate for, but she's making them so."

The Shepherd

It had a certain feeling about it, something people were unaware of that feeling but there was a tingle in the air. A presence, and while there was a tension and a feeling like something that was going to happen, there was a also the feeling of energy in the air. The feeling of precision, of a timed and planned and thought out execution. There was the feeling of not wrongness, but something creeping and dangerous and desperate.No, maybe not desperate.

[game mechanics: the air feels like Shit Is Going Down, but he also picks up some resonance: static (precise), dynamic (desperate)]

Richard

Richard wants to ask: what should we do? Richard wants to confirm: what's the plan?

Richard wants, also, to not waste time. To not waste breath. To not draw undue attention -- though perhaps the very fact that they are here, the very fact that she feels like the arctic in winter and he feels like the sun glancing off the sea makes that impossible.

There is a fine tension in him, like a bow drawn ever so softly across a string. He flexes the fingers of one hand.

"I'll follow your lead," he says quietly. Which also means: I'm right beside you.

Eleanor Yates

"I'm going to first try to undo what she's doing," Eleanor says slowly, watching Richard. "Please hold eye contact with me," she adds,

because that is what she needs, for this. Easier than just staring into space, at least. Harder for anyone to question.

Eleanor Yates

[countermagic. -1 for specialized foci. -1 for a point of quint. spending wp.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (3, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

The Shepherd

[awareness?]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 10) ( success x 1 )

The Shepherd

There is a feeling of precision, of desperation, and then? Then there was nothing, there was the feeling that was cast out and undone and carefully, carefully unwoven because Eleanor is precise in a way that the woman in the wig can not possibly understand, not yet at least. THe people at the table straighten up, look at the woman strangely and pick up their menus. They continue with their hushed words but it as though the voice of reason has settled down upon them.

The woman stands in a huff and grabs her purse. She gives the restaurant a quick survey before heading off to what is presumably the ladies' room. Paranoia tinges her posture and she hurries off that way.

She felt something, though she can't place where it came from.

Richard

There isn't even a vocal affirmation. Just Richard looking right at Eleanor,

Eleanor working her will, bending the strands of fate.

--

A weight lifts. Richard had barely noticed it when he walked in here, but he feels its absence now that it's gone. His back straightens. His shoulders roll back. Thread by thread, strand by strand, something unravels from the air, and then -- the woman in the wig hustles off to the ladies' room.

Richard breaks eye contact, just long enough to skate a glance after her. Then he's looking at his acarya again, gaze steady.

"Should we go after her?" Truth be told, he's already pushing his chair back to stand.

Eleanor Yates

Eleanor does not smile. Doesn't smirk; none of those things are her response to success when she is not sure of the variables. She isn't sure this is success. This is only a staving-off of something that might have happened, something she is mostly sure would have been unpleasant, but something she doesn't know how to quantify. She blinks, and Richard knows it's done, and she gives him a small nod, and Richard knows that whatever she did, it worked.

Their entire table feels like January. Their entire table feels like suffocation under a frozen lake. Their table feels like the ice that just shattered under your feet, plunging you down.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the woman take her purse and head towards the back. She glances at the others at the table, thoughtful, gauging their mood now, then she gives Richard a thin smile. "Indeed," she says, and rises from the table. They aren't dining and dashing, of course -- their food hasn't even arrived. She takes her purse with her, walking towards the back. She thinks of telling Richard to hang back a bit, maybe thirty seconds, maybe twenty, but she doesn't think he needs to be told that they'd look odd, both of them rushing to the bathrooms at the same time.

When she gets to the hall outside the bathroom though, she is waiting for Richard before she goes in.

The Shepherd

[Dex+athletics, climbing!]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 6, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )

The Shepherd

There is a window in the ladies room. It is high and it is narrow and it is the standard bathroom window in places like this, the kind of window that leads to an alleyway and discourages people from climbing out of it and noto the streets so that they don't have to pay for their food. This, however, does not stop the person in the wig, or the person who was in a wig, since the blonde thing was sticking out of the trash can and the back end of a person in heels could be seen crawling out the back as though she were born to do this, as though she were a high class athlete.

Or just a person who was desperate to get out of a place.

Richard

When she gathers herself to rise, he relaxes back into his seat. He smiles at her as she excuses herself, as though they were friends or colleagues and she was saying she'd be right back. A handful of seconds after she departs, he tosses his napkin on the table -- as though he'd just decided to take advantage of the intermission as well -- and stands.

He meets her in the bathroom. That subtly-lit, angled hallway containing two doors marked Gents and Ladies in some attempt to shed a little elegance on the whole business of evacuating your nethers. He is tucking his shirt into his pants as he comes, which of course makes him just look that much more european because what american college kid tucks his shirt in, really.

It's not a fashion statement, though. It's to reveal the holster at his back, easily accessible now without excess fabric in the way. There'd be some explaining to do if another guest wandered this way, of course, but then again: he does have the permit for it. Having a lawyer for your acarya does have its benefits.

--

They enter the bathroom together. Eleanor a half-step ahead of Richard; Richard's long arm reaching past her to hold the door, his other hand behind his back. High heels are disappearing out a window. Richard doesn't hesitate. He springs forward, he reaches up -- all that height is good for something, after all -- he grabs the absconding ankles and hangs on tight.

Eleanor Yates

The door swings open into the restroom, and they both see the window open, the blonde wig in the trash, her legs slipping out. Eleanor is about to open her mouth, but Richard gets there -- Richard acts -- first. He takes long strides across the tile, reaches up those long arms, and just grabs hold.

Eleanor follows, jumps, and knocks the woman's heels off her feet so she can't stick one of those heels through her apprentice's eyeball.

"You would be best served by permitting yourself to be pulled back in," she says levelly.

The Shepherd

"Let go-" the voice from the other side snapped, and there was a yank on the other hend, something that made her lurch forward but not necessarily go anywhere because Richard had a hand around her ankles and now that she's not a risk for gouging his eyes out, things are much different.

"Let go or I'll start screaming-" the voice threatens again, though there is enough uncertainty there that this seems as though it would be an unlikely option.

Richard

"You can scream all you want," Richard replies matter-of-factly. "I'll just tell the restaurant staff you were dining and dashing when they come barging in here. Which technically is the truth.

"So, like the professor says. You might as well let yourself be pulled back in."

Eleanor Yates

Eleanor laughs. Low enough that it doesn't ring off the walls. Richard actually answers her, but Eleanor just laughs. It's borderline derisive: that won't help. you know that won't help. don't be absurd.

"Get back inside or I can give you a reason to scream," she says evenly, after that laughter. She reaches up.

She presses her thumbnail into the center of the woman's sole. Not hard enough to break skin. But she's not tickling her. She is providing a delicate reminder of the woman's vulnerability, here.

Richard

I can give you a reason to scream.

That turns Richard's head. Not that the woman can see. Not that he says anything for her to hear. But he turns, he looks at Eleanor, and his brow is furrowed.

He's never heard his acarya speak like that before. He's seen her judge, he's seen her kill, he's seen her usher the dead to the wheel. But he's never heard her threaten pain and torture, and

it makes him uneasy.

The Shepherd

"You said this would be easy money, let-oww- let go-" she says to someone outside of the window. And with a good finally relaxation and acquiescence. She wasn't in a position right now to really argue with the people on the other side of the window, and she shoved back to slide uncomfortably out of the window.

She's not very tall. She's not very remarkable, either. Her hair is short and dark and cropped like she'd cut it herself and only done a decent job. Her attire doesn't match the rest of her appearance. She looked like she could have blended in easily with a crowd.

"Fine... I'm kind of in deep shit, aren't I?" says a woman who sounds like she just got thrown under the bus.

Eleanor Yates

Eleanor waits til the woman has been pulled down -- she doesn't have to tell Richard hold her.

"No," she tells her, mildly. "I don't know what sort of shit you've gotten yourself into. Who were you talking to?"

Richard

Richard, being the instinctively chivalrous sort, gives the unremarkable woman a hand down from her inglorious perch. He does hold her: not with her arms twisted behind her back or anything of the sort, but simply with a large, firm hand on her shoulder.

His other hand is behind his back again. Just in case.

Eleanor Yates

[manipulation + intimidation]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 5) ( fail )

The Shepherd

"His name's Ridley," she told Eleanor, "said he had a way to make some quick money. My boyfriend met him in county- said weirdos like us could make a quick turn easy and I figured why not?"

Her tone is conversational, but not callous. She didn't foresee anyone getting hurt, just like she didn't see any problem manipulating some poor, unsuspecting sleepers into becoming desperate enough to rob a restaurant for her.

Richard

"Weirdos like you," Richard echoes; there's a faint hint of pity in his tone. "You mean people who can make things happen just by thinking about it? Will-workers?"

Eleanor Yates

Her arms are crossed loosely over her chest, across her ribs. She listens. "Ridley doesn't sound like a particularly good influence," she mentions. "After all, he didn't suggest to you that there might be consequences both immediate and long-term, intimate and diffuse, to altering the psychological patterns of strangers?"

Eleanor shakes her head, as though irritated. "There are a lot of reasons why not. You've been used, and you've been had, by this 'Ridley' person."

The Shepherd

"But... why would there be... No, he didn't say anything about that," she said. The lady reached up and scratched the back of her head. She hadn't thought about that, about whether or not doing what she did had consequences beyond a massive headache later.

"Waitasecond, who are you guys? Why do you care? Nothing happened, I won't do it again, and we're square, right?" a little defensive, that.

Richard

Richard exchanges a glance with Eleanor.

"I think," he says, "maybe you'd better come with us. We might have a lot to talk about."

Eleanor Yates

"The first person who knows anything is not necessarily the person who knows everything," Eleanor tells the girl, whose name she has not asked yet. She gives him a faint smile, thin. "But I agree with my apprentice. I think we should talk. There's more about being a weirdo that you should know, before someone else tries to throw you into a lion's den."

The Shepherd

They had a lot of things to talk about.

There were a lot of things to talk about indeed and, while she wasn't particularly bright, she did seem receptive to what it was that the people around her were telling her. There were a number of truths that they had to get to the bottom of, the most important being that magic- and let's not mince words, what she was doing was magic- had consequences. Like in Constantine, she said, quick to latch on to the comic book reference. But this wasn't like X Men and this wasn't like whatever they had in DC. No, this was real.

This was really, genuinely real.

In turn, she offered some information, how she met this Ridley guy, though she had a hard time coming up with important things. she had a hard time describing him, like the words were on the tip of her tongue and her timeline didn't quite match up. When she thinks about it, the fact that there are things she can't quite place about him bothers her because she hadn't been high or drinking or anything. When it's all said and done, once she's slept off the night, she goes home. gives them her phone number, and a name.

Miranda. Her name's Miranda.