Easter Brunch

Andrés

[how drunk are they when we join them?]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (4) ( fail )

Andrés

Their morning began the same way so many other mornings have started for so many other of their brethren in Denver: with a text message that the sender may or may not have written under the influence.

I'm at [location] celebrating the Christian subjugation of a pagan holiday. You're welcome to join me.

Followed by like fifteen martini-glass emojis.

---

They've been sitting here a while. He is not drinking as if he's looking to get obliterated but, this being the second or third time she's drunk with him, Arianna knows well enough he isn't opposed to it if it ends up happening as a matter of course.

He's drinking Bloody Marias with a beer back. When Arianna got there he ordered tequila shots, claiming them to have stimulant properties.

Whatever they have been talking about has been of little consequence. Shit-shooting, mostly.

Then out of nowhere he says, "So I hear you met Grace."

His accent mangles the shit out of her name, short as it is. Comes out sounding like Gry-ees. There's a reason he calls her 'Gracia' instead.

Arianna Giametti

It is Easter Sunday. A God Child is risen, and the hope of nations is reborn.  Good sheep and their shepards have gathered under steeples to praise the good news, to become, if only for a moment, shining cities on the hill.  Arianna Giametti has grown up in shining cities, she knows the chafe of their yoke, she knows the allure of good news and rising in celebration.  So when Andres returns whatever wayward text she had sent when she was still pricking with anger the Mercurial Elite, and that return is an invitation to celebrate rising things?

She's in.  It spares her the oddity of attending services out of the compulsion of habit and culture alone.  Easter Brunch, too, is a special rite of Spring. And going out early enough for it puts them in the company of the sunrise services crowd, which will almost certainly avoid the tangle of accents and auras that wreath the Etherite and his Hermetic friend -- because they are, quite impossibly, becoming just that.  Not magickal colleagues; not mystical fellows; but people who enjoy the spectacle or brightness of each other's company.

Not every Easter Brunch invitation comes with fifteen martini-glass emojis.  One cannot let these things pass them by.

She is wearing something effortlessly beautiful and appropriate to the holiday. This will be the only part of the scene that is appropriate to the holiday.  She is drinking with him, bloody marias but without the beer back.  She is not a beer for breakfast sort; she doesn't judge him for it.  They have been discussing the quaint and beautiful (but also misguided) Easter traditions throughout their borrowed and owned cultures, and probably also some annoyingly niggly bit of liturgy or dogma that either of them finds particularly grating, or perhaps the weather, or perhaps it doesn't matter.

She is holding her knife and fork, cleaving some bite of something off the of the whole, when he mentions Grace. And look! Such self restraint, the knife does not become an athame; the knife does not become a wand.  Instead, Arianna bobs her head a little in confirmation.  She finishes her bite, chews, swallows, and sets down her utensils before answering.

"She is clever."  It does not sound like a compliment.  It sounds more like 'she thinks that she is clever'.  It sounds decidedly like a warning.  "And, perhaps, unacquainted with the concept of boundaries."

Andrés

Sepúlveda grew up in a Roman Catholic household. Had an intelligent hard-working mother who was nevertheless very religious and a father who was driven and stern but was rarely around thanks to his job. This holiday is not an anomaly for him, and he knows enough about the Easter rite to trash the shit out of it from a scientific perspective.

At any rate:

Arianna is actually eating food. Andrés does not bother with it.

"Well," he says to Grace's poor concept of boundaries. "Virtual Adept."

That goes without saying, to him. Their lot has an affinity for both the Correspondence Sphere and for hacking the shit out of other people's lives.

Arianna Giametti

Arianna is eating real food, because she does not quite have Andres's constitution, and also because it is breakfast time and she prefers some solids in her diet.  More than the solids that deck out the bloody mary, that is.

"Yes," Ari says. It's a leading sort of tone.  As if there is some sort of but coming after, some qualifier, and then no.  No qualifier. Just the acceptance that there is an entire Tradition of (impolite words go here)s out there, and they are all stuck dealing with them.  Her mouth purses into a displeased shape; as if something tastes bitter; and then that, too passes.

"I suppose she is thing to be dealt with.  Are there others here, or is she orphaned here."  This is not the nicest thing to say, with the overtones that word has for magi of a certain age.  It is an entirely unveiled dig at the absent Disciple.

Andrés

"Damn," he says with a touch of laughter behind it. "You don't wanna go asking her if she's orphaned, man, she doesn't strike me of the sort that would think that was too funny."

If he picks up on the fact that Arianna is taking a dig at Grace, he does not comment on it.

"I haven't met any others of her persuasion, but then, eh, I didn't think they ever went outside, so..."

Arianna Giametti

There is a touch of laughter behind Andres's answer. It matches the sharp yet warm mirth in her own.  He may not have noticed the dig, but he did entirely catch her meaning.  She waits until he has lifted his drink; waits to time this bit until she can catch his reaction by the loft of his eyebrows or the shape of his eyes alone.  They are more telling, some times, than words.

"She offered to turn my wand into a why-fie hot spot."  He can tell the words are more foreign to Arianna than they are to most.  "And then did... in a sympathetic sort of way."

This said, she takes another sip of her bloody mary.  It is a sizeable sip.  Hermetics tend to take grave personal offense to the intimation that someone might alter their personal instruments.  Certamen circles have been drawn for less.  Though Arianna seems to have found some sort of (dark [dangerous]) amusement in the circumstance of this re-telling.

Andrés

At the point they're at now, one or the both of them are going to be drunk off their asses in another hour.

It won't be the first time it's happened. They were both holding each other up when they left the bar the last time. If he hadn't dumped his device and taken off running they might not have wound up going their separate ways.

"If she fucked with your wand, she would've deserved whatever happened."

Glug. Oh shit. He tucks one empty glass near the bar well, then slams down the rest of his beer and adds that empty to the collection. It's slow. The bartender can take a hint.

Arianna Giametti

"Nothing happened," Ari says easily, but not with an aire of nonchalance.  She cares about this slight, however seemingly in jest it was.  And she explains to him why with the simplest of phrases.  "I will not comport myself poorly before your Apprentice."

A beat.

"Margot is quick-witted and sharp-eyed. I would hate for her to adopt bad behaviors so early in her Awakened career."  Her glass is not yet empty.  She is taking things a little more slowly this morning than he is.

Andrés

"That makes two of us."

One would get the impression that Arianna takes most things more slowly than does Andrés. She belongs to a tradition whose apprenticeship lasts for the better part of a decade. They pride themselves on their academic accomplishments and their mastery of a single Sphere. Sepúlveda belongs to a similarly academic tradition, but they have a reputation for doing whatever the fuck they want. At least once they have reached a certain point in their scholarship.

He has reached a substantial point in his scholarship. He would never have taken Ned or Margot as his apprentices if he had had much of a say in it. He could have told them to hit the road. They are not anyone to whom he would have given Kitab al-Alacir. And yet here they are.

"She troubles me, sometimes."

Oh hey here's the bartender yes he would like another Bloody Maria with a beer back oh also might as well do another round of tequila shots sorry Arianna.

Arianna Giametti

In truth, many Hermetics do whatever the fuck they want after reaching a certain point in their scholarship as well. They are just more, well, formal about it.  And it comes with a certain sort of consequence.  Arianna has been doing whatever she wants for quite some time now and the consequence seems to be that she still only holds the rank of Initiate Exemptus in her early thirties.

She also does not have any Apprentices.  Point one to the Italian?

"I can see that.  She has a certain feel about her, and a strong will."  This is different from the capitalized form of the word.  "How did you come to be her Master?"  Arianna wonders if this word will get the same sort of surprise and shock from him as it did from Margot; Margot who then passed it off as easily as 'oh, Hermetic.'

Andrés

"She and Edward, her friend, I think this was his bright idea--thank you."

This to the bartender who has come bearing alcohol. She says she'll be back with the beer. He assents. Though he puts the tequila shot in front of her he does not insist that she take it. All Andrés does is lift his own and mumble something about how He has risen in Spanish before tipping it down his throat.

Anyway:

"Edward asked around the hospital, where he had seen me, to see if anyone knew who I was, and someone did! They sent him to the morgue! And he brought with him Margot! And they told me, in their own ways, they were new to this, and they had no idea what they were doing, and after the ulcer began to burn itself into my stomach, I told them I would keep an eye on them until they found their own persuasions, or decided to declare themselves free of such."

Come here, Bloody Maria.

Arianna Giametti

Yes, verily, he has risen: the answer comes in Italian.

The tequila, then; a shot taken in camaraderie.  "It is good of you to look after them; noble even.  Quite a heavy thing to bear.  Let me know if I can help you help them find their way to their Traditions."

Because this is what friends do: drink, and offer to help you with your problems. Apprentices, man, they are straight up problems.  "Do you think either of them suited to the Order?"  This, then, asked in shrewd self-defense.  For if Edward had a leaning, Ari knows of better recruitment officers than herself.

Andrés

Drunkenness more than self-control keeps him from rolling his eyes when Arianna accuses him of nobility in sheltering a couple of otherwise-Orphans when he was not prepared to do so. He who lost his wife and contact with his only surviving child in the last year. One would think he would have clung to them like lifelines after something like that but his insanity belies a sort of self-awareness. He knows he isn't good for Ned and Margot. Not in the way they're looking for him to be good.

Does he think either of them suited to the Order.

He snorts so hard that if he had had any liquid in his throat at the time it would have come out his nose. It still causes him to snort and then cough and then belch. Attractive.

"We should probably talk about this somewhere else," he says. "¿En mi casa o en la tuya?"

Arianna Giametti

Aha.  Well, two birds then, one stone.  Relief that neither temporary-Disparate has leanings toward her ilk, and amusement that Andres almost snorted bloody mary in his surprise. 

"Lo siento.  La mia casa non ha mobili."  Mixed languages, man, these two are going to be a hit at the inevitable future Mage Meet-ups.  Sitting in the corner, sharing a flask, bitching about everyone in a mashed up language all their own.

"And I have some other things to attend to today, which require more sobriety than I currently have on hand."  The smile, it is knowing.  And she does not have the requisite Ars to simply wish away a headache or a hangover.  The social graces and subterfuge skills to pretend it isn't there? Yes. But to banish it in fact and truly? No.  Not yet, and perhaps not ever.

"But yes, we should talk more.  Soon?  And if you like I would speak to your neophytes.  You should not need to be alone in minding them; I'm sure Nicholas or Penelope will feel compelled to help at the very least."  Aha.  This then. Her cabalmates, the do-gooders.  Ari is sure they will help; which means Ari will help; Ari will not help directly.

There is a table to settle; she manages this readily.  There is the matter of navigating out into public; again, handled, with a certain sort of grace. And the parting of ways, three kisses upon cheeks and all the appropriate greetings for the morning: He is Risen, go forth and spread God's Good News; verily he is Risen, Good News also unto you.  All of this, with the panache of people from cultures that are more vibrant, less restrained, and very likely to impinge on others' personal space with their gesture-words.