Fire on the Mountain

Ari

There are serious things afoot in the wizarding circles of Denver.  Quests to reclaim lost friends. Quests to secure valuable materials.  Quests to establish new strongholds. These are all endeavours worthy of renown and the direct expenditure of enlightened Will.  And then there are the lesser quests, the aims and goals that make them all sound so much more human.  The things that come about in the longer light of the evening, in response to the jarring shift to daylight savings time or simply the apathy around braving a weeknight grocery store run.  Mundane, but no less needful and immediate.

Ari had ghosted pass the door to Nicholas's study, utterly incapable of being as silent and spectral as he was.  And then, with the most of her occluded by the door frame and wall, she had, with her head tipped completely sideways, poked just enough of it into the hollowing that her nose rested on the jamb and her eyes -- bright and full of mischief -- were fully in view.  And she had waited, until the oddity of this drew Nick's attention to her.  Until he, perhaps curious or trepidatious of her whims by now, inquired with little more than the lift of eyebrows, to which she responded, succinctly, and without room for argument, more of her sideways face peeking past the jamb so that he might better hear her:

"We need wings."

And not the fanciful type for flight.  No no, this was made more clear by the next demand:

"And beer."

There is a half-breath, here, just room for him to think of interjecting, before she continues. "Do you remember, when we used to go for wings all together?  All sticky fingers and boastful this isn't even hot! and that? I miss that.

"We need wings, Nick."  Solemn, almost, but for the mischief in her eyes.  Serious, this need of wings.  This need of wings now, and they could always bring some home for Pen -- where is Pen? Oh, off doing resplendent things. Too bad, she can join us, do you have your coat, I CAN DRIVE!

Which is half of how they have arrived, at an establishment called Fire on the Mountain, which pleases her -- how very City on a Hill, she had said, as she pushed open the painted door and let the warm light of the pub spill across their feet in welcome.  For when it is a pub, or a storefront, or anything but a home she does not have to mind the Old Ways so carefully.  This is how they have come to the booth, wooden seats with wooden back rests, and the tumble of wings in a basket between them, and a plate with cast offs, sad little bone pile, macabre if one thinks of it too carefully. But there is a sauce called El Jefe, which seems right up Nick's alley, and a pint of something wheat-white and mild beside her right hand.  And it is almost, but not quite, like it used to be when they were all together.

Nick

It is almost - but not quite - like it used to be when they were all together.

Nicholas, earlier, had taken a long time to notice Ari's presence, or specifically to note that she was staring at him around the doorjamb - at least, what passes for a long time for Nick.  He was bent over his desk, over some book or other that, should she have glimpsed its pages, had sketched circles and notes and drawings and arcane arcane arcane.  He borrowed it from somewhere or someone.

So here they are, at Fire on the Mountain, where Nick has not been before but quite enthusiastically consented to come.  And it's true that this harkens back to earlier times, even if earlier times in this case was just a year or two ago.

There is a pint of something golden and opaque by his left elbow, and he has sequestered the wings that are hot enough to give chemical burns off to the side as well, the better to keep Ari from inadvertently rubbing an eye or her nose or whatever and forwearing his friendship for life.  "I do remember when we used to do this with everyone," he says, and he is thoughful, because Nick has been even more thoughtful than usual lately.

A beat.  "Pen is contacting Thane soon to bring him out here, I think.  Did she tell you?"

Ari

Denver is a clean slate to her. The whole of the city is places she has not been before. When Nichloas is a willing participant in exploration of eateries, it is all the better.  She is not as successful at finding places when she goes out on her own.  It may the feel of something foreign in her bones, or to the cut of her chin, or the line of her cheek.  It might be that she is unskilled at being simple, in a mundane world that is often anything but magical.

There is a pile of napkins near her, too, and Ari insists on wiping away the stickiness between wings, only then, to dirty her fingers again with picking up the next one.  Like this one, which is caught up in her right hand, and gives a little swish-and-flick gesture as she ponders his question -- not unlike the way one of her Order might gesture idly with a wand. A wand made of wings.

Oh, dear.

"Oh?" she asks. The sound invites elaboration, it begs for more but doesn't wheedle.  "It will be good to see him," she says, as if this calling in of favours were not likely tied to the more magnanimous and worthwhile quests their number have been called to of late.

"How hot are those?" she asks him, gesturing with the chicken wand at the sequestered El Jefe wings.  Perhaps he notices that the tiny gleam of silver she wears around her third finger has transgressed, progressed to her ring finger.  Like as not, it is presently besmirched with some form of buffalo sauce where her finger meets her palm. A spicier than usual thing for Ari, but by no means hot on Nick's scale.  Just enough to pink the apples of her cheeks -- or that, perhaps, is attributed to the beer.

"And how long is he staying?"  Thane, then, again. They are back to Thane.  She is sharply curious, but thinks she keeps it just below the surface.  The wand is demoted to dinner, again, and she nibbles at it as he answers.

Nick

Nick, for his part, glories in the messiness; this after all is what sinks and soap are for afterward, and he is comfortable with food that feels a little primal.  He is also sweating, which is perhaps all the answer that Ari needs as far as how hot the ones he's eating are.  He has others that they've been sharing, the bones picked clean: he'll put them in his mouth and scrape away skin and tendon and cartilage until that's all that is left.

Were they not out in public he might have cracked them and eaten the marrow.  Sparse living and childhood habits stay with people, sometimes: though we have already established this.

"Yeah.  I think Margot - have you met Margot? She's an apprentice - I think Margot wanted to learn from one of the Verbena or something like that.  Pen thought to call him in, in addition to nudging her toward Kiara, I think."

Ari is knew, and so there might be a lot of names dropped just now that she doesn't know.  There is a flick of a glance to her in this regard, something that meets her eyes and looks for understanding and if he doesn't see it there, well, he will illuminate.  Nick is frequently considerate of others in this way.

"I'm not sure how long he'll be here.  I doubt he'll stay permanently, though."  Even should they wish it.

Ari

On these names, Ari comes up blank.  An Apprentice named Margot what might learn from the Verbena.  Kiara -- perhaps a Verbena. She's quick at stringing things together, but the shrug of her shoulder and slight shake of her head conveys what he likely suspects: they are all new to her.  Blank slate, and all.

For all her life of privilege, she does not leave meat on the bones either. Ari scrapes them clean with her teeth, and even nibbles at the cartilage.  She relishes rather than requires, and she should not break avian bones apart to suck upon their marrow.  They splinter; they choke.  She will not hazard this, and this is how they are different -- she has not known need that drives one into danger.  Danger that drives one into need? That is a story for another time.

"I've met one of the others, but did not get as far as trading names.  Deep in his cups he was," she says, and there is something in how her eyes shift away that implies there is a second side to that story anyway.  "I'm pretty sure he isn't Union," said easily, as she inspects the fragile bones for any lingering things of interest.  She is not alarmed.

"And I ran into someone familiar, though I doubt he's made his affiliations known," this, too, is said easily enough between them, but her certainty and vaguery might read wrong to Nicholas.

Nick

Deep in his cups: pretty sure he isn't Union.  "Andrés?" he asks, offers, and the name comes easy from his lips both out of familiarity with the man and the manner in which his name ought to sound.  Nick, much to his grandparents' chagrin, has forgotten most of the Spanish he once knew other than a smattering or two of street language and vulgarity and command enough to tell people that he is a counselor and do they want a translator, but the music of a language is more difficult for the ear to forget.

"Andrés is with the Society of Ether.  It sounds like it might have been him you ran into," and here Nick hazards, because he suspects that Andrés also spends a lot of his time in bars.  Tolerance during an outing tells a lot.

Someone familiar, this draws his eyes again, and hazel though they are they are somehow always bright in dimmer light.  They reflect, they draw in.  "Who did you run into?"

Ari

Society of Ether? Now that piques her curiosity some and lofts her eyebrows.  She studies him for a moment, to make sure that Nick isn't bullshitting her.  But he sees earnest enough, and her reply sidesteps her other opinions.  The wing bones go to the graveyard; the pile grows.  Ari cleans her fingertips again, and then drinks from her beer.

"That explains the sense of something just a bit amiss."  Mad scientist meets poster-child for wizardry?  No wonder their sensibilities had seemed to clash. And the Society was known for its quirks; beloved for them by some. "He reminded me a little of that saying, the one about hell freezing over, all ominous and cold."

This is probably enough for Nick to confirm his suspicions.  It is enough for Ari, just now.  She takes a more significant sip from her beer before setting it down again on the coaster.  She is not quite persnickety enough to rest in in precisely the ring left behind by condensation. But it is a close thing.

"Another Bonisagus," she says, and the classification sounds so official outside of the living room of Chez Hyde & Mars.  It is mismatched to their enviroment.  "We have known one another since we were young but it has been years since I saw him."  There is a little gesture to accompany this, some shape of hands that indicates sincere surprise.  "I would not have expected to see him here in Denver."

She taps the ring on her finger against her pint glass.  It is an absent minded thing, and as soon as it sounds out she thinks the better of it and takes her cup up again to drink.

Ari

(Manip + Subter: Not being cunning.  Not even really being clever.  Yep, just a housemate. Old friend. Nothing to see here.)

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

Nick

[I think I see something.  It's called BULLSHIT.]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 5 ) [Doubling Tens]

Ari

Ari is distracted, and particularly artless in her deflection this evening.  There is something about this fellow of her House which is tied up in that ring she's worn for all of time on her middle finger, which is now encircling a more significant one.  And there is a measure of possessiveness to the way she shapes the inclusive pronouns: we, instead of he and I.  We have known each other since we were young -- it does not even begin to touch on the importance of that relationship to her.

In all the time that they three have known each other, Ari has never had a boyfriend. She has seemed remote and apart from dating as either sport or past-time.  Not unhappily so, but decidedly so.  She was over the moon happy for Nick and Pen when they married, and she believes whole-heartedly in their chance at ever after.  But Ari has never seemed the sort to bind herself to the life of another that completely.

But this begs the question.

She also doesn't seem to know the answer to whatever that question may be; not in full; not with any clarity.  So there is fondness (possessiveness) and wariness (uncertainty) to the reunion she alludes to.  It is murky water, but it most certainly more than a childhood friend come calling.

Nick

Nick, today, is not bullshitting.  It is not unreasonable for Ari to suspect such, given that he has launched into tall tales in the past (she may recall a certain story he spun, about growing up in a megachurch commune when she asked him once about where he grew up, and continued until she either saw through it or the tale got past him).  What Ari says about the man's resonance does confirm his suspicions, evidenced by this slow nod as he cleans another bone.

There is this sharp exhale that Ari could perhaps misinterpret, though this is less to do with anything she has said or done and more to do with the fact that the lower half of Nick's face feels as though it has been hooked up to a mini generator which was then cranked.  She had asked him, earlier, how hot they were and he nudges the basket toward her.

Trial by fire.

The Chakravanti looks up at her through slightly lowered brows, here, as she mentions another Bonisagus who she knew when she was young.  "So what do you think brought him to Denver, then?"  A beat.  "Were you excited to see him?"

Ari

She is, on occasion, foolhardy enough to ignore the obvious signs that something is ill advised for a person of her constitution.  Nick is glistening; Nick who hails from a region that worships the spicier strains of peppers almost as much as they do the sun, Nick is sweating and using all of his native son tricks to manage the burn.

Arianna has no such history or heritage of trickery to lean on here.  Spicy is not her forte and, despite all warning signs that she will soon be in well over her head, she reaches over and plucks one up when he nudges the basket toward her.  It will not be the most foolish thing she has done in the long history of their friendship, but it may be amusingly close.

Trial by fire, indeed, but post-poned enough for her to answer his questions. 

"His family always traveled more than mine did," she says. It's part of an answer, but incomplete.  "And we'd lost track of one another for quite a few years, but I'm glad to see him..." To Nick's trained ear, there's an obvious fondness to her tone.  Another might have missed it. There's a twist, too, as it is somehow more complicated than she is letting on.  Excited she does not admit to, but it is rather on the nose.  Perhaps not quite in the manner Nick means it.

She is not cautious when she bites into that El Jefe wing.  Like diving into a cold pool, Ari plunges into this with both feet.  No looking back, no hesitations. In a moment now, she will wish she had shown more restraint.  Any second.  A shock of pain and surprise ripples through her, seeming to start near the back of her head and move forward.  She gives little shake of her head, eyes pressed shut, very Oh, Gods, What have I done?  But there is no way but onward, and she swallows down the bite, and uses her free hand to fan air into her slightly agape mouth. There are tears pricking at the corners of her eyes already.

Nick

Here, Nicholas is hoisted by his own petard, as they say.  This line of questioning is something he would like to pursue, to tease out of Ari because there is so much more she's not saying, but she takes this huge and very ill-advised bite of the wing she took (Nick wasn't taking bites that big) and now she probably feels as though the sauce is eating a hole through her tongue and the roof of her mouth.

Nick: he somehow manages to be amused and sympathetic all at once.  "Just give it a minute," he says.  "Water will only make it worse."  He turns a studious eye toward her, then takes a long swallow of his beer.  "You know, capsaicin in high enough doses can actually be used as an anesthetic."

Truth or lie, Ari?  Her face right this minute probably says truth.

Nick goes on eating while Ari waits for feeling to come back into her face.  "So your friend, is he just traveling here and passing through, or is he here to stay?"  He waits.  He'll wait as long as he needs to wait.

Ari

This moment brings to mind something her father, the many-titled and highly regarded Flambeau, had told her in her youth: that pain can be clarifying so long as it can also be endured.  Ari, at some wildly inappropriate age to tackle these esoteric concepts, had been unimpressed, but as the feeling of intense and focused pain flared and receded with each breath, she finds the truth in it now.  Nick tells her some bit of chemistry, in a tone that is either soothing or mocking, depending on where she is in the sinusoidal pattern of pain and comparative relief.

But he is right.

And what was pain dies down to a tingling numbness with more the fire of a warm grill than a conflagration.  Perhaps this is how his taste-buds were tempered: exposure and then numbness.  There are still tears pricking at the corners of her eyes, and she has found that the massive bite she thought she'd taken was not so huge after all -- bites can only be so big, when taken out of chicken wings, and most of the wing remains yet.

She holds it, but not as if she would hold a wand. How she might hold a live and squirming salamander, mystical magical creature of fire, slither-slime of pain and agony.  She breaths out a little, but that causes a flare -- not quite a conflagration.

"He's -- thrice-wise Hermes, Nick, how can you eat these things and still..." Break for breathing, "Hold any semblance of a conversation?"  The syllables come quickly. She makes the most out of each exhalation.

"No. He's got a business here, and a place, with dogs and roommates." This is more than she would otherwise say. Mark this: Ari will not hold up well to torture if the torture is capsaicin based.

Nick

Was his tone either soothing or mocking?  Somehow Nicholas manages to make it both.  The expression he gives Ari, the amusement crinkling the corners of his eyes, as she holds the remainder of the wing is the same.  "You get used to it," he says.  "My mom always put chilis in everything, when I was growing up."

He tosses another bone, picked clean, into the pile.

Here, perhaps Ari has some satisfaction because the heat finally seems to be giving him pause.  He stretches his jaw and sucks in a deep breath and braces himself, and he is going to take a few minutes before he eats any more.

"So it sounds like he's sticking around then.  Do you think you're going to see a lot of him?"

Ari

She admires it in him, this ability to be both sympathetic and needling, in the same breath, even in the same heartbeat.  It is a kinship, a bright and shining thing, but she prefers it when it is turned elsewhere.  Best, though, when they may flank and needle someone else together.  Teamwork.  This does not taste like teamwork at all.

She has neither moved to discard the wing -- challenge failed? unacceptable! -- or to continue her enjoyment of it.  She is just taking a bit of a breather, though. Pride will have her finish it. Nick probably knows this; this is probably part of the needling. Knowing needling? Nick is a natural at it.

"Mmm.  Probably," she says, but there is less leeway to it than she implies.  "It will either amuse or end me when you and Pen meet him.  Either you will get along swimmingly, or I will have to ritually sacrifice myself on some sacred altar of friendship to remedy my mistake."  Lighter, this; needling back.  She has regained some sense of control over her tongue, and a bit of flash to her eyes that is not light glinting off tears.

And then, oh then, once more into the breach -- she hazards another bite.  Smaller this time, lessons learned and what not.  It is not as terrible as the first but her expression does not indicate that she enjoys it much at all.

Nick

Ari goes to take another tentative bite; fortunate enough, because if she had not, Nick might have questioned her as to whether she was going to finish it.  Knowing needling, and all that.

Of course, one day in the perhaps not so distant future there will be some sort of grand karmic payoff, because there always is.  That's how these things work, particularly when people like the two of them are involved.

The next thing that Ari says seems to puzzle him a little, evidenced by the way his brows pull together before he reaches for his beer and takes another long swallow.  Water just makes it worse; beer is marginally better.  "What makes you think that Pen and I wouldn't get along with him?"

A beat.  "Or are you just worried we won't like him?"  This is a question that is gently eliciting, it's true, but if Ari were so inclined to look - there's this note just buried beneath it all.  He might be teasing her, a little.

Ari

This bite goes down smoother, as does this particular position in their conversation.  If he is to ask her questions, then at least these serve a useful point. Other than trying to pink her cheeks or catch her out in the sort of vagueries she'd seen other girls imply.  Ari has not said that he's cute, or that she like likes him, or anything of the sort. Her feelings for this unnamed friend are troublingly deep.  They move like currents; they can unsettle many things.  Right now, though, she is debating wiping the tears from the corner of her eyes with the back of her hand -- but doesn't. She stops herself from spreading the burning to anything more delicate than her throat and tongue and lips.

"Hah," then, a little sound of amusement.  A darker twist to the corners of her mouth.  But whatever has provoked the mirth, however dark, is left unspoken.  "Because, as I told him this plainly, you and Pen are dear to me.  You are the family of my heart. 

"He and I, we cast our lots together at a very different time.  It's not a thing I feel I have outgrown, but also life has grown up all around me whilst we were parted.  This is how it feels, is it, when dear ones are to meet?"

This question is turned to him, and meant earnestly at least in part.  The words sound clever, are playful in the way she often seems, but there is sentiment enough to make them resonant.  Ari hazards another nibble; this one provokes no wince but still a careful exhalation to temper the heat.

Nick

Troublingly deep, or simply troubling, or simply deep; Nicholas does not know which of these it is, he only knows that there's something there.  And Nick, he very much likes it when people tell him about themselves.  He likes to know things about them.  (The rare few are the ones in whom he confides back.)

"I think that's also how it feels when it's been a long time since you saw someone last," he says, and there is this perfect sort of acceptance to what Ari said before, this immediate understanding of the thing she is saying.  Nick is a counselor, so it could be feigned or something he does out of habit; still, she has never known him to be deceptive where this sort of thing is concerned.

"Were you and he in a cabal together, before?"

Ari

"No," she says, and shakes her head a little.  "Nothing like that.  Technically we studied together, but that is not the root of it." 

And this gives Arianna pause enough for her to nibble at the last of that El Jefe wing.  She does not strip the tendons from the bone, or suck the cartilage of this one clean.  But she does pick off the meat of it; she is not wasteful.  When she sets it aside, she is cautious in how she clears her fingertips of it.  She does this while elaborating, though the spark and teasing has fled her eyes.  He is left with the sense that she is being uncommonly candid.

"He was the first boy to ever bring me flowers, though, at eight, I would have preferred less fragile things."  The curl to her mouth is kinder, gentler.  "I gave him a book of adventure stories; I think it made the better impression."

The burn has settled now to where she is daring enough to try a sip of her beer.  It goes less poorly than she has expected.  She is waiting, then, to gauge Nick's reactions.

Nick

Nick has started to eat his again, though the pile has dwindled and there are only a few left.  He nudges the basket toward Ari again, with a waggle of his eyebrows that is so ridiculously exaggerated that it could not possibly read as anything other than comical.  He knows she probably will not take it, and he also knows that her pride is going to rankle just a little because she probably will not take it.

Something in Nick likes to hammer on other peoples' pride like a xylophone, see.  It's a fun game.

He leaves off though, because Ari leaves him with the sense that she is about to divulge something, and he even lowers the wing and sets it nearly on the basket so he can listen.  Then: this quick little smile, multi faceted because Nick finds children cute, and he can tell this is something of a dear memory to Ari, something private and treasured from a long time ago.  People box away those sorts of memories the way they would elementary school assignments or childhood art projects or particularly prized toys, and it's rare that they draw them out at all, much less for someone else.

"So it's been a very long time since you've seen him, then."

Ari

This is indeed an old memory for her, something rarely touched upon.  They didn't speak much about her past when they were all together in New England; there was enough shorthand and subtext to the interactions she had with the Hermetics around them to imply some things, but less time to delve into secrets and truths.  She says something about when she was eight, which is practically two thirds of her lifetime ago.

"We were close, off and on, for quite a while after that.  He went to stay with family when..." she pauses, and something dark slants through the light of her eyes.  Ari shrugs it away and doesn't continue; this is not a conversation about when the War came.  This is not about being the children of generals; this is about something altogether different, however tied up in the darkness it may also be.  She uses the pause to reach over and pluck the proferred wing from the basket.

Pride goeth... and all that.

"I won't bore you with war stories." This is all the explanation he gets for the omission. "We were young and those things leave long shadows.  Any way, it's been six, seven -- gods, maybe eight years since we saw each other last.  I keep thinking we'll run into each other at some conclave or the next, but I guess even the circle of our House is too broad to invite much in the way of coincidence."

And there, by the end of this she's righted herself to some sort of middle ground between the darkness and the push-pull of her normal cadence.  Not only did she take it, but, valiantly, she takes a small bite -- oh, how it burns, though less completely than before.

Nick

Nick, perhaps, is pleased by Ari's rapid acclimation to the heat.  Pride goeth, and yet: it is perhaps even in small moments like this that he can appreciate that his friend and cabalmate is a rare person, someone he is glad he has chosen to invite into his house and Work with him and share in some of the most private things in his life.  It's funny what a person can take away simply from sharing a meal (even this lowbrow, not especially nourishing one) with someone else.

War stories, Ari says, and Nick's eyebrows crest and crash together, dark waters during a storm.  He does not remember the War; he was barely Awake then and, more or less, a rogue living at the fringes of Awakened society, spirit-talking and thieving from chantry nodes.

"It sounds like he's very important to you, even if you haven't seen him for a while," Nick says, and takes another swallow of his beer.  The glass is empty now, and there's this contemplative look he directs toward it.  More beer?  More beer.

"I'm glad that the coincidence, if it is that, seems to be a happy one in this case."  This quick little smile toward her: because he is glad.

Ari

Nick does not remember the war, but Ari does.  It's the sort of thing that is carved into her bones; not because she fought with her Will or her own two hands, she was too young for any of that and sleep-walking still at that, but because she was old enough to understand it and stand helpless in it.  It is a nuanced thing, and one that has passed and been laid to rest, but this talk of new flaring up, this taken Disparate -- she is not yet of Denver, but these things are meaningful to her in deep and personal ways.  And her people, Nick and Pen, the family of her heart, are touched more directly by it.

It is not the time for old war stories; new ones are cresting the horizon; there is a coming storm.

"It is happy so far." Said, between nibbles of the wing. Between the numbness that has set into her gums where they ring-wreath her teeth, into the tip of her tongue, into the skin pulled tight over the hard of her palate.  It is not her favorite sensation, but it is a new one. A thing to be marked and measured. It is novel.

She follows his look toward the empty pint glass, marks the little warble of debate, and agrees with his conclusion.  "I don't know about you, but I'm going to need another to wash down this fire."

Fulfilling her most earnest role: ready excuse.  Wing finished, she fans her mouth a little and then deposits the bones into the growing pile.  She is ready, perhaps, to point them in a different direction. A new topic, something less about her mysterious and still nameless friend. But she has learned that Nick speaks as much in his silences as he does through his questions.

She has learned, on occasion, rare occasion, to wait.

Nick

He does indeed.  Though sometimes a silence is just that, a silence.  Nick is comfortable with them; he is not the sort of person who feels the need to fill up his time with other people with empty chatter.  He has spent time with friends of his and gone hours where words were not exchanged; perhaps he has spent such times with Ari, out hiking or simply in the garden: they were there together, in that shared space, and enjoying each others' presence without expectation.

So for a little while while he waits for his next beer to arrive, he is quiet.  He eats, he finishes the wings and adds a couple more bones to the pile.  His gums hum pleasantly, and it wakens him.

"I would like to meet your friend," he says then, finally.  Who knows what he was ruminating on between now and then.

And then, "Ari, I think if we're all going to be in a cabal together we should...I don't know.  Do something to mark the occasion.  What do you think?"

Ari

She doesn't answer him in words, but Ari's smile echoes that want.  She'd like them to meet. She had known that, on some level, but talking with Nick about it had cemented that for her: she wanted to find a way to draw her past-friends and present-friends together.  It was a simple thing to want, and more complicated to acheive, but Will alone moves mountains in their circles.  Sooner or later, it would come to be.

"You have mentioned this before," she notes, when he talks about some thing to mark their kinship and promises to one another.  "I think now, as I thought then, that is a very good idea." This is punctuate by a salute, slight tip of her near empty pint glass as she raises it to drink.

"Do you have any thing particular in mind?  Or, perhaps, a type of thing in mind if it is not yet coalesced and shining in your mind?"

Nick

Her questions make him thoughtful, and perhaps he would have answered her right then, but another beer suddenly appears before him and he reaches out to take and sip from it.  Perhaps his tolerance of the heat, the seeming nonchalance with which he'd finished those last few scraps of food, was another of his lies.

It's hard to tell sometimes, with Nick.

As he sets the glass back down he says, "I'm not sure.  I would..."  Hesitation, here.  "I would want to do something that is in line with what you and Pen believe."  And because Nick is still learning to articulate the things he himself wants, he adds, "Maybe we can...I don't know.  Draw a circle together, or do some other sort of Working together.  Something that...that is symbolic of the partnership and the friendship at once."

Because Ari is better than he is with symbols and ritual and working with others, all, he looks toward her then.  "Is there something specific you can think of?"

Ari

She considers this for a moment, as this question requires more than the dregs of her last beer and the first sip of her next.  And, mark, we are approaching the place where the apples of her cheeks are pinked by more than fire-spice.  The thinness of the air invites a looser sort of relationship with sobriety.  Ari has driven them here but Nick may be the one to drive them home. Or they both may sit, in this wooden booth, and plot and scheme and opine and needle-wheedle-jest until the drunkard's path runs straight and smooth and plain again.

"There is a lot of beautiful ritual for binding," she says, and wistfully, just so, because beautiful is the word she well and truly means. Ari feels for ritual and liturgy the way others feel for poetry, as if it stirs and touches and evokes the heart of things when done correctly.  This is only partly because she is born and bred and dyed whole-cloth in Hermeticism, though if she had come to sleeping parents she might have found her way there on her own.  But for all that it pulls her heart forward and her spine taller and such, this is what she says next:

"But things like this, like you and me and Pen, the bond is in the living of it.  The talks we have about your river rocks," she has not forgotten, and here she elevates them to sacred things with the way her tongue cradles syllables, with the earnest appreciation in her eyes.  "In the tasks we set before each other, to keep us safe, to keep us honest, to build us up and push us onward.  For me, the rite of it began when you opened your doorway and brought me through it.  When we ate popcorn, and laughed, and woke up all under the same steeple of the trees that shade your porch.

"I am happy to Work some rite with you, to mark this commitment and sane it in old and sacred ways. But I carry you already in my heart.  Even if we nothing more than talk about this, it will be, for me, enough."

Nick

Penelope has had to pick Nicholas up drunk from the bar already once in Denver; she may have to do it again, if he and Ari carry on for too long.  Still, though there is a little pink in his cheeks he has not had that much yet, all told, and tonight he is not trying to keep up with Andrés either.  There is nothing here tonight that either of them are trying to drown.

These are things he did not expect Ari to say, and the smile he gives her now is gentle, tinged with appreciation: touched even.  "I also appreciate that bond," he says.  "For me, I like a way to mark the beginning of things.  It's less about marking commitment as it is...new birth, I suppose.  A new chapter.  It gives us the opportunity to cleanse the old when we begin the new."

A thought, then.  "And maybe the bond is all it has to be.  Maybe we sit down together and play a game, and talk about things that we always wanted to talk about then and never did.  The things we would like to do.  It could only be that."

Ari

She thinks on this for awhile, how to mark the birth of a new chapter in their lives and friendships. How to bind them ever more together.  Fast on the heels of talk of home and Silas and other dear and seldom touched upon things, she is sentimental in a way she rarely seems.

"I have read, you know," of course she has, "Of ritual outside the Order, and I think, perhaps, there are some things there to be marked and to be admired?  I think, perhaps, that they marking we should make is less about symbols," the words sound strange but feel somewhatright.

"And more about the things that we bring to one another." Ari taps that ring against her pint glass again, and the focus of her eyes is on something distant and off toward the right. 

"I should like to make you dinner.  Get up in the morning and go to the market.  Make bread -- it is a slow thing; it can take all day to rise -- and pasta, and knead these, while thinking about our fellowship.  I'd like to eat beside the fire, and tell stories or play games, and drink too much wine, or not enough wine, until we are foolish with each other.  Warm and laughing, but not unkind. And I would like, when we are warm and foolish, for Pen to read us poetry, and for you to watch her as if she were the only flame that burned in the vastness of a dark dark night.

"And I would like for us to promise, that it is the first of many nights.  That when things are dark and serious outside the circle of our friendship, that we will still draw close, close ranks, and seek warmth and laughter in each other.

"I want," she says, "A living rite.  A thing that breathes and bends and remakes itself anew as needed.  But I think these rites are more your speciality than mine."

Ari does not have Pen's presence, though she has a way about her that is entirely her own, and when her voice is pitched low and a little distant it is easy to forget (or easy to remember) that she might be the Lorelei, the voice that launches and beaches ships; that stars are omens and oracles and false-gods as much as they are guiding lights. She is only luminous and old beyond her seeming.

Nick

I have read, says Ari, and Nick knows that what is about to follow is going to be a lot of words.  But that's all right: there are many things about Hermeticism that he enjoys.  He must, or so many of them wouldn't have found their way into his life and inner circle.  He holds his glass up just in front of his mouth as though he'd drink from it at any moment, and above the uppermost rim his eyes glint.

Ari finishes, and here he laughs in this unreserved and clear and rich way he has when he's caught off guard.  He leans over and into her, his head on her shoulder and some of his curls probably flop over and into her face before he lifts his head again.  Nick is fond of touching, moreso than Pen; this too she might have gathered over the years.  He does it without reservation.

And it's easy to forget that he might be the Morrigu, terror and awe, a death herald and an oracle, the crone and mother and maiden.  He is only hallowed, drawn to the sacred, and this he is free to interpret as he will because in addition to these old Stories they bear they are also human.

"I would like that too.  Let's...Pen can read poetry, and we'll tell stories, and maybe you and I can play a game.  I think it's a fitting rite."