Light Glancing off a Spinnennetz

Pen

That golden hour of the afternoon when winter is just over, Spring is just coming, and the sunlight slants long, lazily languorous, and it is not the golden hour of last-Summer or first-Autumn, nor quite yet the gold-green of Spring in Her proper crown, but this gladsome secret gold which remembers the Mystery at the heart of winter -- that golden hour, so mellow in its amber-caught musings, that it is practically sleepy; practically the heart of a bee-hive, gold and many-chambered; that it is an hour for still things, and kept things, that golden hour is the hour which finds Penelope and Arianna alone in Penelope's study, which has gone through dooms of love in order to be organized enough for such a convocation. The broad craftsman's table is almost empty, the materials and objects of Penelope's trade pigeon-holed in their scribe's niches in the vast curio-cabinet. All of the books are books about craftsman's work, metal-working and wood-working, jewelry-making and books on the Doing of Art. (Her mystic library, impressive as it was and vast, was lost on a rash wager; neither her spirit or her shelves have recovered.)

Pen has installed shutters on the window, but they are thrown open to allow for that golden light to spill in. Nonetheless, she has brought out two silver candle-sticks, an apprentice's casting work, and on the bottom of these where the craftsman's signature should be is some joke that Ari and Pen had back when they were first becoming friends. There are candles lit, cushions to sit on unless Ari will insist on a chair, in which case she is perfectly allowed to take the chair or the workman's bench and Pen will stay alert on the floor, somehow managing an air of sorcerous elegance lounging as she will which is impressive and a trick of personality and the impression left by her paintable face and her la belle dame sans merci something.

Most importantly of all, there is a spread. White wine of pale and almost golden hue, which will taste faintly of blossom somehow, and mismatched wine glasses. A Spanish red wine, if that tickles Ari's fancy instead, and something local to try. A plate of fruit, cardamom-and-vanilla soaked pears, nectarines drizzled in balsamic, a pomegranate with its guts spilling out ruby-gifted. An assortment of cheeses to try, things which looked tasty at Trader Joe's, and sausages too, and then maybe an heirloom tomato bruschetta to be dolloped on crusty Italian bread, paired with little finger sandwiches.

Because Pen went out to the farmer's market and had already forced herself to splurge, there are also Ban Mih sandwiches from a food truck.

"I always feel as though you are absolutely changed when I see you after a long separation," Pen says, somber mischief glinting in her gray eyes, once the last bag has been sett down. Her attention is Arianna's, most completely. It wasn't that long, but Pen uses the word sincerely. "And I will be caught out, wondering how I never before noticed that you loved, say, Johnny Cash or had an affinity for the light glinting on spiderwebs. There should be a word in English for that light. It's so specific."

Pen

ooc: ahem, Banh Mi. 

Ari

They sit, as bookends, on the lofted library of the floor, Ari's knees tipped to the side, the swell of her skirt puddling around her like grey and shifting rain, welling up and kissed quite soundly by the gilded fingers of the afternoon.  She is fascinated by the artful clutter of Pen's study, eyes darting from one hidey-hole of treasures to another, to the workings that are underway or set just aside from that ample workbench, to the way that the long-light of the hour casts her friend's face in such elegant relief.  There is a feast before them, a veritable spread of riches, and also an embarassment of delicacies -- the riches are all Pen, you see, all Weaver and War-god, inummerable.

"I think there is one in German," Ari says, languidly capturing a single fruit of pomegranate and holding it up, burnishing it ruby-gold in the light as she attempts it: "Spinnenetzstreiflicht"  The syllables tumble easily; she's showing off a little (just a very little). Satisfied with her newly coined (unwieldy) term, she pops that little seed into her mouth and smiles. 

Ari plants her hands behind her and leans back a little. She has a precious habit of seeming quite at ease in almost any surrounding, be it sufficiently Hermetic.  Surrounded by these scrolls and hand-works, she it utterly resplendent; an anachronistic visitor, pulled forward in time just long enough to visit.

"I always feels as thought I am changed whenever we are apart," she answers.  A slash of thoughtfulness cuts cross her brow.  "And then we are reunited, and things are right again.  I am in the righting," she confesses.  "Still finding what will serve as center."

A beat, a slight tip of her head.

"You seem well here. Nick seems... brighter."  There is a clever way to say this, in some other language that they share. Some delicate and leaning way.  She looks to Pen for some confirmation; they are among the few for whom Ari cares enough to worry.  They are her people (they dwell in the quick of her heart).

Pen

"Ha!" Pen lofts her glass of wine when Arianna produces a German word that will suit, squinting one eye to peer at Arianna through the glass and gold liquid her hair haloed by gold and hazy with it. Then she sips, a messy sip not at all neat or precise. She licks a drop of wine from her mouth and does not settle the glass back down again. There might be something extremely pleasing about holding a wine glass -- at least there must be something pleasing about spinning the stem around in your fingers like that, recklessly, with a gravity that almost disguises the insouciance behind the gesture. "But you always remind me how versatile German is. I should learn it after Hebrew."

Nick seems brighter: this teases a quick smile from Pen, whose gaze is still level and steady and pensive, her ardence held in reserve (right here). The smile is quick but it still touches her expression with radiance and some of that lingers, filtering out to soften the curve of her mouth.

"I think he finds Denver challenging. I hope it brightens him. I want him to do what is in him to do. I think maybe the challenge refreshes him, and - " Now her gaze has grown distant: turns inward. A beat. Pen turns it outward again, coming to the present instead of oh how many nights ago. She grins. "Don't get me started on Nicholas; I will begin to talk in love poetry. You, Ari. Not that you're a much easier topic; I'll talk love poetry about you too!"

"Still finding what will serve? I want to help you," Pen declares, because a confession must be met by this: open-hearted, open-handed desire to aid. "Help you find a center, help you feel righted."

"Do you want a challenge, too? A windmill to tilt at? A monster, I should rather say, to slay. We can find one. Talk to me of your hopes, your dreams, your inventive chicanery."

Ari

There is something satisfying about holding a wine glass by its stem. It is altogether a different sort of satisfaction than holding a wine bottle by its neck, all caught up between long and graceful fingers, lilted just so in feigned endangerment and jest.  Ari well knows both forms of satisfaction; she is bosom buddies with the best of them; she is mischief and inventive chicanery incarnate on her best of days. Insouciance and annoyance distilled for lesser reckonings.  So here, now, she joins Pen in the delight of holding wine glasses -- which must always be goblets, or chalices, or symbolic fonts of unspoken wisdom in the midst of these two witch-women -- but her palm cradles the sweep of the bowl as it moves toward the stem, her fingers wrap around in a most definitive fashion.  She commands this cauldron, in miniature but figuratively broad and bold and wise nonetheless, and it brings forward hints of elderberry and apricot to meet her challenge.

"I like it for its structure, and how it is acceptable to cram all your thoughts into a single compound noun, and how that can run over as many lines in a manuscript as you see fit, redactors be damned.  It's like here, have rules, have all the rules and words that reach to England -- enjoy.  Yours truly. Deutsch."

The corner of her mouth curls, cleverly, wicked in some delightful way.  She watches the way the light glints in Penelope's eyes when she speaks of her lover -- her soulsmate, her husband, her once and truly one.  It is the sort of magnanimous warmth she wishes for everyone, but most of all for Pen, who has captured the sun and distilled it down into longing.  Ari smirks at the suggestion that Pen would begin (only now)to speak in love poems; as if she hadn't breathed litanies since long before they'd met.

"I'm always good for a challenge," she reminds, but there's a hollow to the claim.  There are reservations and withholdings -- not here, not between them, but with others, see, Ari isn't generous with everyone. Only her favorites, and becoming a favorite is a strange and opaque thing.  Pen is; Nick is; and certainly there are others.  (Rob is [was (might be) still?]) She is a capricious gate keeper; the path is not laid clear. "Or a windmill.  Or monsters."

Another sip then. Another glance at the Streiflicht, spilling pale gold through her fingers.

"I want to know who I am, when I'm not where I was."  This, as plain spoken as Ari's wants rarely are, is offered up for discussion.  "Where the things I often count are smaller, absent, and everything else is bigger -- save scotch glasses.  I want to stand on the edge of the earth, and see it still spin."

Pen

Pen listens, clear-eyed and alert. Steady, steadying; she places the glass (cup [goblet]) down. They are, together and right at this moment, minor arcana:

Two of Cups.

Harmony is restored; a romantic card, a card of reconciliations, of the magnetism given to strong connection and like ideas. Pen is romantic toward her dearest friends, and invites the same. It's in the fervent adoration she bestows. 

"We should go up into the mountains on an evening," Pen says, because she finds the cold air bracing; because she finds long hikes bracing, has always enjoyed the mystery of stone and ice, of the wild places tucked between New England towns and villages, where every turn might be a turn for another world, the Beyond the Fields We Know otherworld.

"High high high where the air is even thinner." Ari, fresh-arrived to Denver, may have already noticed how the change in air pressure packs a wallop: that scotch the first night might well have undone her, unbuttoned her with more speed than she is used to. "Where it is gossamer, where you can tear it apart with your hands and see what's on the other side." 

"Who are you when you are where you were?" Pen smiles faintly, because she enjoys the riddling sound of the question, but that's all the smile is; it evaporates dew-in-morning swift. "Who do you think you are then?"

Pen

[Access to the Chantry Library? Yippee! Corr 3, here we come?]

Dice: 3 d10 TN7 (2, 2, 10) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Ari

[Witnessed!]

Ari

"That sounds nice," she says, of a trip to the mountains.  It is an incomplete compliment. There is more, tucked into the laugh lines that crowsfeet from the corners of her eyes.  (Her thirties, le sigh, they'll be the death of her yet.)  And yes, the thinning air had caught her unawares.  Perhaps that is why she strayed to talks of growing up in Chantries and nevermindthedragons things.

She is about to ask Pen 'What do you think is on the other side?', half curiousity and half quizzically, but then Pen strides forward and asks about mysteries more her own.

For this, Ari must fortify herself with a helping of bruschetta.  The bright prick of garlic, a tumble sweep of tomatoes and herbs, the bubble of melted cheese -- it is consumed and, momentarily, all-consuming. A little rolling back of eyes in bliss, a thumb swept across her chin to catch any stray drippings. Licked clean so as not to waste them.  This, then, cast in sharp relief to the answer:

"I think I am a shade, an echo, two names but the face to go with neither.  I walk a thin line, as if a jester on a rope, threaded high above an audience -- for sport, but heart-in-throat for fear of falling.  I am a farce, or a beggar woman who sells the Emperor his newest robes, it's hard to tell."

A sip of wine.

"Or maybe I am a princess, cloistered in a tower tall, let out in meted measure to test suitable suitors, who draws each night her dreams into a sandbox and dashes them away each dawn."

A little shrug.

"When I am there, I know what I am.  And when I am not there, it is more uncertain.  This must be the way of things when one home is so unlike the other."

Pen

"Hmm." Pen reaches for a slice of balsamic-drizzled stone fruit, picking it up delicately between her thumb and forefinger. Bloody slice of sun, and the golden hour is already changing the warp and weft of its gold; or else a bird is flying across the sun, flicking a shadow over their conversation.

Her glance leaves Arianna's face, fixes on some insignificant point to the side near her knee, and she is not actually seeing that point. The knee, the brocade trousers, dark green and black. She is not seeing the floor, the shiver of pattern in the wood a knot a whorl. She is seeing nothing because she is a creature dwelling in her thoughts. Of course her eyes return to Arianna's when she pops the nectarine in her mouth, on the tongue, swallows too large a bite truth be told: an audible gulp, less enjoyment out of it than she wanted but that's what happens when you're hasty.

"I think ... you must lose sight of your true name, Ari, you must hold fast to remembering that you are what you want to be. I've always known you," and here, there's a tender shadow come to her brow, a stitch beween her eyebrows, promise of a smile around the eyes: Pen is emotive, Pen is glass. Pen is clear, clear, clear, always (almost) clear. " - steadfast. Even at your most capricious, steadfast beneath that - doesn't that give you an idea of who you might be?"

Ari

Finding a knife -- it is safe to assume that between Hermetics there is always a blade within ready reach -- she carves off a generous wedge of cardamon and vanilla soaked pear.  This is a lavish thing, to be savoured and appreciated.  Pen asks her heavy questions, aludes to higher things and Ari seems entirely captivated...

By her fruit.

Seems, though, and only seems so at the surface.  There is a gleam of watchful light beneath the shadows of her lashes, less capricious than she'd seem to most but certainly not steadfast, as Pen deigns to name her.  Low burning.  Less a beacon than the wisp of flame above an oil lamp, a puddle of fuel no bigger than the bowl carved by the sweep of a thumb print over clay, or perhaps the size of a half-shell.  A smudge of brightness.  A suspicious thing.

"You may have known me this way, but it would surprise so many others to hear you say it.  What is a star if you strip it from its constellation, remove its context? It burns all the same, but how do you mark its measure?"  Her thumb and forefinger are sticky now.  All there is to do is transfer their sweetness to a piece of cheese, to sweep that through the trailings of pear and spices, to muddle up the matter completely.

"Though I like that I am steadfast to someone, and more that that someone would be you." A warmer smile, before she pops this next treat into her mouth.  And then, around the eating of it (Manners! [please!]), she mocks: "Just -- don't let the word get out."  A finger held to her lips.  Eyebrows lofted in half-jest.  A rouse that lasts just shy of a heartbeat before falling away, subsiding.

Pen

Pen is not to be distracted by verbal maneuvers, by the steady tease. Ari is enigmatic, and Pen likes (is attracted by) mysteries and riddling, by high language and high art. Attracted by, but never distracted by: there is a path; one must stay on it, or risk enchantment and Lost-Foreverness.

"Well I've already posted a bulletin on it, Ari. I titled it 'Hey Everybody, Arianna the Hermetic is Loyal and True Blue.' Subtitle: Also, she is peachy keen and has discriminating taste, but once she's found you are to hers, she'll not likely waver. The subtitle needs work, but it was a rush bulletin put up on rash impulse, as is my way."

Lightly spoken, those last four words, even though Pen has been given to rash impulse, and almost always regrets it. 

"But I'll leave off this argument, I mean discussion," spark of a grin, " -- for now. Only because I have remembered something to ask of you, and because I think I might be better served coming back to it later, after you have seen something of Denver besides Nick and me."

"Will you make some charms for us? I'm thinking very specifically of those elegant Talismans of Zachriel you are just so good at."

Ari

"No no, it's fair. It has a certain je ne sais quoi."  Ari's French is not what her studied languages are.  She has picked up turns of phrase, changeling words that are borrowed into other tongues, but not the whole of it.  It's likely she cannot spell the words that she pronounces -- neither, she would argue, can French itself, but that is a debate for another time.

"There ought be a corollary about my dreadful possessiveness," she adds, grin answering Pen's spark, fuel to the fire which, nonetheless, gutters and runs out.  There are other flames to tend to.

Again, and again only for a moment, there is a crease of thoughtfulness to her forehead.  She adjusts the grasp her fingers have on the wine glass, and, even before she drinks she's nodding -- yes, I can do that -- nodding and thinking at the same time, oh, and drinking. That's a lot.  That's three things at once. 

"Of course," such confidence, bravado even given her unimpressive rank.  "Though it will take time to find the proper supplies, and the appropriate Essentia, and a vessel that works for both you and for Nick. This is good, though; great even.  We ought to work together before the Work comes; it always comes; it comes in overwhelming waves and then the quiets."

She pauses, and eyes Penelope in a shrewder way.

"This is a quiet, Pen. Is it not?  You're asking academically...?" And now it is their steadfast number's turn to pitch the most innocent of questions with clear and present focus on the finest points.

Pen

Arianna's pause, Arianna's shrewd eye. Before them both Pen tips her glass and lets her lashes go low, regards the level of wine still in her glass for a critical half-second and then puts her direct gaze back on Arianna. The wine glass - the cup of it, the lip of it - stays before her mouth, contour spun from light breaking and shadow too. The transparency hides nothing, and Pen's eyes are the colour of a sword. The same that was thrown in the lake, to wait there until kings are Good again, until brightness need a champion: Pen's eyes are gray, and watchful. Sometimes they are dark, sometimes they are pale. When she adjusts herself to be more comfortable, shifting her weight from one hip to the other, planting her right hand on the ground as a brace to her weight this brings her into the golden light from the un-shuttered window, where it streams just now, and suddenly the dark eyes turn pellucid, lightning glass. Resplendent is something that strikes at one when one feels Pen's Workings now that she is an Adept and this is a resplendent moment, visually speaking: the shifting, the dappling of light, the golden afternoon getting in her red red hair, the dark gray eyes turning pale as the light touches them and her pupils shrink, and then the neat little sip she takes of wine this time no mess this time just to brace herself or remember she has a tongue.

"I am not asking academically, and I do not know how quiet I'd name this moment for Denver's mystic social clubs. Ari, you know there have been rumblings back East and declarations of states of war, high vigilance, everything on high high alert. Here in Denver, there has been a lot of Union movement in the last few months. New personnel. Messages from mysterious entities that claim the hounds are about to be let slip. A lot of new personnel, as if they're going to begin here what they've begun elsewhere: to hunt again. One of Denver's mystics has been snatched."

"Zachriel's protection would be welcomed now; walls to keep our secrets safe, and more importantly - more importantly?" Pen pauses; repeats these two words, a taut question: she does want it to have an answer. " - our persons, should we be lazily scanned. All manner of shields we should be sure to have at hand, if we can get them."

There's a suggestion of laughter on those last five words: if we can get them. It isn't amused, exactly, but it is good humored:

if they cannot get them, that will be just fine.

Ari

[In my youth they taught us ne'er to give our thoughts away for free. (Manip + Subt, whilst she reacts to this)]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )

Ari

There is a lot hidden under what Penelope has to say, and Ari listens with the same aire of calm repose, though the glimmer of mischief is gone from her eyes. She captures another piece of cheese between her thumb and first finger, nibbles a smaller taste from its side.  All the while, though, her eyes are on the shifting grey of Penelope's.  All the while, hers are steadfast green and shrewd and certain.

Cheese gone, then, she takes another sip of wine -- this is larger and the sweetness of it is lost to the sharpness of how the conversation has turned.  This drains her chalice, leaves only the thin legs of memory to coat its bowl. The glass is set, abandoned, beside the splendor of their afternoon spread. Ari's hands move to twist her hair and bring it, as a bundle, over one of her shoulders.   And this is where the growing-up-in-Chantries saves her; when it is clear that she has endured the crucible. Pen's eyes are grey like swords, they are grey like lakes into which the most sacred of swords are thrown, they are grey like slate but not immoveable.  This sort of iron is not unknown to Ari; it is terrible as much as it is great.

"There have been rumblings elsewhere, too," she says, and while her tone is light it bears noting that now her hands are empty.  They are collected, carefully, in the bowl of her lap.  "Even our House feels the sting of it, though subtly."

There is a knowing underneath Ari's words, one that doesn't fully surface, won't come far enough in to break upon the shore.  "If the Union is stirring, then you're right -- there is no choice but watchfulness."

She breathes out a little, which only serves to prove she has been, in some small way, policing her breath.  "I would have come sooner if I had known, Pen.  Not that I can bar the gates or hold back the dragons.  But I will build for you the best armory I can; I will come if you call me."

This is not general, wide-spread generousity. It is specific. It is specific to Pen; it extends to Nick. At the moment, there is likely no other within the sweep of that circle.  She whets her lips slightly, considering, and then asks: "And what of the mystic?  Who claims them and how much do they know?"  Because these are the questions -- how compromised are we, how important is he, how invested are you -- one asks, when one is Hermetic and weighing the options.

Pen

"We will hopefully recover him soon," Pen says, evenly. "And when we are successful in it, we will hopefully find that we are not too compromised and that they don't know the location of the chantry. Which was a miraculous survivor of the last time the War raged hot in Denver, and is very close-guarded by its Trinity of wardens and the rest of the city. Alex, his name is Alex, seems to be cherished." 

Were there grapes on the smorgasbord of food? Pen reaches for one and pops it in her mouth. The grape is a rusty purple, a royal evening color, dusted with transparency instead of light; the flesh of it is pale and saturated. She sucks it and she swallows it and then reaches for another grape, her hand a shadow on a knife for cutting sausage. The golden light is waning; ducked out of it, it shines high above her head, catching some fly-away glints and weaving them into a halo. 

Ari

Note this, Pen says we and Ari's eyebrows don't even budge skyward. They don't. Masterful mistress of misdirection is she.  Nor does the corner of her mouth tuck in, nay, for she is schooled and she is calm and she is so very smooth within her half truths. Ari reaches for a piece of nectarine, something sweet and sticky and slippery, something that demands her whole attention oh so casually; something delicious that must be savoured and cannot possibly taste at all of RUE.

Because Penelope has said we.

Which means that Penelope, at least, is committed and, hear you me, Ladies of Lakes do not commit to tasks half-heartedly.  They are on point until the quick of things is laid bare; relentless.  And if Penelope, in her ardour and resplendence, is relentless then so surely is calm, surety of Nick likewise committed.  And RUE -- though, no, the nectarine does not taste of rue; she licks the juice of it from her fingers to confirm.

"Yes, Pen. But who claims him, or who does he claim -- the question is practically the same. Who claims him, and who will sane him when you've pulled him from the precipe of Reason; who will take him if his mind is no longer his own; who will grieve him; who misses him?  Who claims him; who calls for him -- I do not ask this to be cruel."

Because Penelope has not answered her with anything more than We, which is at both expansive and particular, and Ari will not be deterred.

Pen

"His friends claim him." That's Pen's answer. Her mouth twists once, and then she adds: "A Cultist and one of the Mercurial Elite miss him. Missed him, and found out much of what went on with the snatching -- that was Sera who did that. A Flambeau will grieve him, and take him elsewhere to help if his mind is no longer his own. But I'd rather not that;" and there is a thorn there, a hint of trouble, just beneath the skin: a lump, a red shape, nothing at all. Her voice has turned considering: "There are thankfully other resources. Our people, Richard who may be called back to Boston if war doesn't actually flare out -- well, even so; my understanding is the situation back there is needful. But Richard is the most obvious I think to take a look at him; we will see."

Natural rest. And then, "This Alex doesn't claim any tradition; he practices none."

Ari

Penelope is Lion-Hearted, all immanent and caught up in the fray, and from where Ari sits, removed in her heavens, this seems the worst sort of trouble-trap; it seems less like glancing light off a Spinnennetz and more like cobwebs hiding in the gloaming.  But there are times to press Pen with an advantage, and there are times to let the lake-witch Will what she wills.

"I see," says Ari. Which is neither warmer, nor colder, than it needs to be.  She takes up another seed of pomegranate and rolls it between her thumb and first finger.  Delicately, so that it doesn't rupture, but the light does not catch up in this one as it had the one before.  It is occluded.

"Of the heads whose hearts are troubled, Pen, yours is by far the dearest to me."  This is gentler than Pen might expect.  Ari sets the pomegranate seed into her wine glass rather than eating it.  If there is symbolism here, it is left to the beholder to divine.

"I want you to be great, Pen. And you will be.   I want you to be as Great as you want to be -- but promise me this?  Not too great, and not too tall.  For in times like these it is the Greatest which are called to War.  It is the Greatest who..." the word doesn't come in English, so she says it German: "Kampfen.  I want you always to have a choice.  Don't climb so high on the cliffs of Enlightenment that you mistake the fall for flying."

Ari shifts so that she may gather her knees up to her chest.  Her skirts shift and puddle around her, again like rain water, again like shift and shadow.

Pen

Pen uncorks the red wine and refills the same glass (monster! cries the ghost of Emily Poste). Spanish Red, the grape vibrant, rubied with a clot of shadow in its heart. Ari has said that she sees. Marques de Riscal Gran Reserva. Pen wistfully covets a taste the 1945 bottle (this is 2003, and affordable), but could and will never bring herself to spend such filthy lucre as would be required should a bottle of the 1945 ever surface. Pen is not a wine connoisseur. It would be wasted. And yet, she wants to try it. Enjoys red wine occasionally, especially when she can watch the end of an afternoon lilt across the surface. Nothing gold can stay, that's how the poem goes. What a liar, poets.

Just because Penelope is a poor liar, and eloquent of eye and inclined to act (bold), does not mean she is always easy to read. Arianna is gentler than Pen expects her to be and perhaps there is surprise to be read in the deliberate stillness of her eyebrows, the graceful contours of her cheekbones, the handsome and strong jaw, although also her mouth stays a relaxed line (she could speak at any time), and she eases back to rest her weight on the palm of one hand planted behind the curve of her hip, the just-filled glass of red left before her. Perhaps those other things are signs of some adrenaline spike, some salmon leap of emotion. The pomegranate seed and the wine are similar in color. The meat and the pomegranate seed are cousins in color. Pen's hair is similar in color, and Arianna's blood. Still: just what she is feeling, the minutiae, is not easy parsed from her expression.

Her expression is intent, her eyes are dark gray now that the shaft of light from the window strikes above her, only plucking a few fly-aways into the suggestion of a fiery halo, and their color is taken neatly out of that passing lake-light radiance and into earthly shadow and purpose. There is the moment of awakening, and then there is the business of being alive.

As Arianna finishes, cliffs, Enlightenment, falling, flying, Pen glances at her shoulder, at the bend of her own elbow, and then back at Arianna.

"Will you be great?" she asks. "Do you want to be great?"

Ari

And this is another sort of trap, Arianna thinks. Thinks but does not say, and does not say perhaps because she is being gentler today than Pen expected. Gentler on the surface at least, where water is placid and smooth and speaks nothing of the contours of its deep. She waits before answering, and the span of silence is what gives away the weight of what she says, the silence and her empty wine glass, and her empty hands, arms encircling upturned knees.

There is ruddiness to Ari's hair as well, but it is less vehement than the red in Penelope's, and the green fields of her eyes are not prone to the same types of fits of inscrutable mystery. They are clear, and smooth, and speak nothing of the contours of her deeps, but they speak nothing in a plainer way; in neater absences.

"At the heart of things, I never question it. Will I be great? -- it doesn't move me to the same ends. Greatness is... it is an instrument. I wish to be more than instrument, which, I think, may be its own form of greatness."

The circuity of the words displeases her, that she might start out to negate a thing only to support it in the end. Though this is the way of some mysteries and puzzles. They are getting aside of the warning she'd intended, as so Ari bends the labyrinth of their conversation away from center again.

"Of Zachriel, then, as you have need of its protection..." She waits to see if Pen will walk her words along with Arianna's own, or if they will circle back to greatness; to ambition; to what Ari wishes to be, and to what she might aspire.

Pen

"Then I wish you would not tell me you want me to be great," Pen says, ignoring the path back to their original (and there is no original when friends meet to converse; conversations are trees, with many branches of) topic. "I don't think of it. I haven't since," a fraught-pause, which could become upset, but does not. This is the cost of living with someone who is, in spite of being devoted to the Order of Hermes, cerebral wizardry, always feeling, feeling, feeling things. "Oh I don't know how to express what I mean. I only wish you would not tell me you want to be great and then," there is good humor here, crackling in her voice, flexing there, "just refuse it on metaphorical grounds for yourself. I want us all to be happy, and useful, and to change the world for the better; even the others who have been left behind. 'More than an instrument.' Ari. Would that be a hand? And could a hand not be a mere instrument, tool of the mind? Would you be a mind? Is a mind not an instrument by which the body is expressed, in all its physicality?"

Deep breath, and Pen reaches for the red wine and offers Ari her cup. Go ahead, take a sip.

"I would like to promise you whatever it is you ask of me, but I don't understand what you are really asking of me, because greatness has little to do with the matter of Alex and this city, and I'm afraid enlightenment is only tangential."

Ari

She is offered the chalice, but there is a moment before Arianna reaches out to accept it. And then another moment in which she holds it, thoughtfully, before her steepled knees. Until the flare of what Pen has said, and the sting of it, and the sweep of questions fall away to something softer. There is no merriment or mischief to the corners of her eyes now.

"Sometimes I see you, and how your heart runs on ahead, and how the greatness of you -- and I know the word is overloaded right now, and I know that you are loathe to hear it, but Pen, Weaver, it is true -- how you rush right in to meet it and my heart gets caught up in it. I am rapt in watching the grace of you, and I am also torn and sadness caught up in the wake."

She is still holding the wine glass before her, the globe of it against the grey of her skirt, no light playing in the ruby swill of it; just shadow.

"That is all I meant, Pen. That and that I hope yours is a long-burning and resplendent flame."

It is difficult to remember at times that Ari's father is one of the House's great instruments, the Arrow of Artemis, the hand of this or that, and that she has borne witness to the weathering of titles as well as their enrichment. At last, she sips from the wine glass, and it is with the air of fellowship and solemnity that she hands it back.

"Truly. I meant no offense. But it was selfish of me nonetheless."

Pen

"There is no offense taken!" Pen says, fervent and quick. Now it is her turn to pause before taking the (chalice [cup]) glass back. Pen is a rather pale-skinned young woman, with pallor befitting a Rhine-maiden or a Briton-sorceress, which makes the delicate wash of color more evident when it is present. The blood is quick.

There is a long pause, which is drowned in a slow sip of the Spanish wine. She whets her tongue and wets her throat and there is a shadow of consternation on her brow, after.

She sounds hesitant. "I... Don't wish to foreswear myself, but Ari, I want very much to live this life I have for as long as I can have it. I like it too much to give it up for the sake of reckless achievement. I promise you that is how I feel. I will promise it on anything you like. The first exchange of letters between us, my right eye, the look in your eyes before mischief, the black of Nicholas's hair."

Ari

"On the first exchange of letters between us, then," she says, but mark, Ari is not truly asking Penelope to be so sworn. The binding of Oaths is a true and sacred thing and even the churn and gravity of this does not rise to meet it. But the semblence is there, if Oathing had a lesser son, its shape and formulae and whisper-want is there. There is an echo of her mischief to her, hollowed out a bit and thin, but self-same in its curl of smile and slant of eye.

"Your Alex. I do hope he is saved, and returned to you in kind and sound of keeping." There is a hush, still, to her. "Tell me what I can do to help, so that promises like ours can be kept."

This is the tear of it, the wash and sadness. Once more they go, even if into the breach they have not gone together. Even if this is the first mad rescue, the first lost Orphan, the first echo of fearfulness (lies [truths]) between them.

Pen

"He's not really mine," Pen says, and then: "Oh. I am not the Flambeau who will grieve him. That distinction belongs to another! Whose name is Kalen, and, Ari, who I am not certain about at all. If you meet him, you will see what I mean. He is so wearied and so roundabout."

Slender pause, then earnest: "I mean, I will be sad about his loss if he cannot be recovered; it is rather a reckless achievement to snatch something that has been snatched; I don't know if it will be done well. I think it will be done as well as it can be done; I think it needs to be done."

"I think it would be attempted, no matter what the auguries."

"But all right. There's no sense dwelling; right?" The right is not quite rhetorical. She wants Arianna's opinion. She says after a little space, "I cannot imagine anything more immediately useful than Talismans of Zachriel in a city where the Union is possibly stirring."

Note: this is a moment wherein Pen comes very close to admitting she misses Robin Anton. There is a reason she never studied Ars Mentis and his name is the reason; he provided, she did not need to be concerned something might get in her head and use her against her friends.

"But Ari... you know, we should start building something for us. The Silver Bough."

Ari

There is a moment, brief flicker-flash, in which Ari feels perhaps the slightest bit betrayed by the sliding of that significator from Pen to Kalen, who is unknown, who is not at all certain, who is roundabout, who is wearied. Flicker-flash. Bright. Luminous. Then gone. Betrayed by her assumptions is not quite the same as betrayed in truth.

"I agreed. On all accounts," she says, and the lull and melancholy has been pushed aside. This is not qualified by any sense of hush or quiet. It simply is, and in that is clear and purposeful. "And I have ideas unto the same..."

From here, perhaps, the conversation winds back through the practicalities of Zachriel, on to aspirational discussion of wardings and such things, on again to thoughts like those she would share with Nicholas, soon (I want to draw Us a cabal circle), and even mundane and pragmatic things: I've been thinking where I might live; I think I'd like to get a dog; et cetera and so forth. Until the wine has been drunk and the plates licked clean and the drowning sunlight is echoed in the kiss and flickering of candlelight; until the house is filled with three again; until the stars prick through the fabric of the heavens and the light is silvered, and lunar, and low.