The First Shape

Ari

A wild Ari indeed...

It is Winter yet, and so the gardens slumber alternately under a blanket of frost or snow or in the half-undone state of perpetual thawing. The ground is hard or slip-soft, depending on the cant of the sun and the length of the shadows, but it is easy to see how the brick beds will soon be ringed with shoots of opportunistic grass and other early colonists of the coming spring. It is easy to imagine this place resplendent and verdant and overflowing with the fruits of summer. Arianna has no skill with the sphere of Life, but she keeps a fondness for gardens, unexplained, perhaps without need of explanation.

It is warm enough this afternoon to stand out among the beds in a swaddling of long sleeves, jacket and scarf. She's wearing jeans, which look positively pedestrian on her, drag her ever more out of the mythic realm of castles and academies, dragons and sorcery, and place her into the present. The scarf, though, is a purple pashmina, doubled over and looped through to create a swell around her narrow neck. It is rich and too fine to be for yard work, but she wears it all the same -- and, who are we joking, Ari's form of yard work is bringing Nick whatever he needs and drawing idle inscriptions (magical things) into the dark soil of the empty flower beds with one tine of a rake, the world's most unweildy calligraphy brush elevated to greatness in even her inattentive moments.

"What will you plant, come spring?" she asks him, the progress of the rake paused for how, its length held across her middle and weight balanced in both hands. It fans out to one side like an oar, or maybe a rudder -- they'd be going in circles were she rightly steering a boat. Good thing it's only a conversation. "Something quick-growing and climbing? Or herbs and useful other things?"

Nick

It is clear that whoever held the House of Mars and Hyde before Mars and Hyde held it did not really make use of the garden. Fallow is too gentle a word for the ground as it currently is, hard and cracked and bereft of topsoil. There is a scattering of faded mulch in a pile at both ends of the back porch that indicate that maybe once there were plants here, and of course there are the trees.

Nick is wearing jeans and a heavy brown fisherman sweater that would not be out of place on a man thirty years his senior. It's warm, though, and the knit is heavy enough to spare him from being encumbered by a jacket while he is outside; he is doing quite a bit of lifting and moving around anyway, and seems perfectly content to let Ari bring him things that he needs and scratch symbols into the dirt. Her company was more the point today than her help.

Sweat has left his hair particularly fuzzy today, more like some sort of wispy dark cloud than its usual nest of curls. He looks up through it at Ari as he hops onto his shovel to drive into the ground, with the intent of turning it over. "Herbs, and another tree," he says, "and maybe some flowers. Bushes, for sure." A pause, a grunt as a clod of soil comes free and he falls back to earth, but despite the heavy impact his feet make no sound as they touch down once more. "Different things grow well here than up in Connecticut, so I'm going to need to do more reading."

Quite an ambitious list, Mr. Hyde.

Ari

"Herbs for cooking, or herbs for magick?" she asks, even though there is a fair bit of overlap between the two populations. She watches him turn the earth, and isn't the sort who is moved to immediately make offers of assistance. Nor is she the sort to after a long while, as evidenced by her clean hands untaxed appearance when compared against his frazzeled and slightly more worn own.

Nick works. Arianna observes. This is most likely a common pattern between them.

"I like to do both, so I'd want both, if I were to ever be trusted with the growing of things -- which I'm not, not yet at least..." the thought winds itself out without coming to any true conclusions. She breathes out, shaping the stream of air upward to push the sweep of liberated bangs away from the corner of her vision.

"I'll bet you can grow anything here," she says. Eyes flash and mouth curls. "If you really put your mind to it." Hah. Sorcery jokes. The rake lowers and, in deft but lazy swipes and slashes, scribes out something in the darkness. Either blessing or curse, it doesn't last long before she drags all of the tines across it, cross hatches it, and resets the field anew.

Some shapes are angular, familiarly nordic runes, while others twist in fits and starts of Enochian. Then there are symbols unbound to words or letters. It is unclear how they all tumble together, but over time -- and Nick has had time enough to bead sweat upon his brow, which is also time enough to notice the occasional repeat to her scribblings -- they may begin to coalesce into somthing more meaningful.

Nick

"Why not herbs for both?" There is indeed overlap. He doesn't seem to mind that Ari hasn't offered to help; Nick goes along busily, moving to the next patch of hard ground with the intent of liberating it and letting it breathe. Tonight he is going to be very sore.

There is a glance back at Ari over his shoulder when she quips, and a corner of Nick's mouth snicks upward just a little. Hop, hop, fall back to the ground. "I'm not well versed in Life magick enough to grow all the things that could be grown," he says, "but you're right. For right now though I'll just settle for some ground cover."

Which it looks as though the backyard desperately needs.

There is a brief silence from Nick as he moves along the line of the house first, this very procedural way in which he goes to turn the soil. It's not infrequent for him to lapse in conversation this way, though perhaps his reasons are still murky to Ari: whether he doesn't know what to say, or is simply comfortable with silence, or is gathering his thoughts.

Then, "What are the runes you're drawing?" A beat. "Runes? Is that the right word?"

Ari

The glance -- see, the snerk-smile, this! this is victory, triumphant. The crow's feet at the corners of her eyes crinkle and recede. She is pleased.

When he grows quiet, she alternates between filling the quiet up with things and stories and letting it lie fallow. The weight of it never hangs between them as heavy; it does not become burdensome. It is merely contrast to the brighter bits of conversation, rest from the weight of the words that do pass between them. Nick and Pen both ask shrewd questions; they are bright points in this three-fold constellation; they poke holes in things and catch the water that runs readily out of them. They are good friends, and good friendship is not meant to be always easy.

"Mmm, runes will do," she says, nodding once as she looks over to him. "Some are runes and some are sigils, others significators -- but really, they are all the same. Shapes that stand for something; shorthand; true names distilled to curls and whorls and, see -- "

The rake drags over again, single tine scribing out a set of straight-lines and angles.

"Eihwaz. Nordic. Elder Futhark. She is the yew tree. Strength and dependability; she is the source of motivation and yet also its surety. Good things come to those who work hard and diligently. I am considering it, though I don't often work with in Runic, for a task Penelope has set to me."

Beside it, another shape. This one more similar to the rake itself.

"And Algiz. The shield. Same Aett, but a little further down. So above and so below, but also the warding off of evil. A guardian. It is a little on the nose, I think, and must be modified to not stand too specifically..."

She steps away that Nick might inspect the simple shapes she's drawn. Few might have done better scribing directly in the dirt with their fingertip as a stylus. Her words come effortlessly, like breathing, as if she is reciting children's rhymes learned long ago.

Nick

She is the yew tree, Ari says, and there's this private little smile that lights on Nick's features as he hop-hops onto his shovel once more. At another time he might've just sat on it, kept it to himself, but Nick is getting better over time about sharing things about himself, even the little things that feel like they should be inconsequential to everybody else. "The staff I use is yew."

After he has come back to earth, he wanders over to look at the shapes that Ari has sketched out in the soil with her rake. Truth be told, he's glad to give his legs and his abs a bit of a break; much longer doing what he's doing and they'd be burning.

The Chakravanti tilts his head just a little as he looks at the shapes. "So what's the difference between a rune and a sigil? Are any of those Enochian?"

Ari

[How wise and erudite are we about magical things today? Int + Esoterica (Specialty: Clever)]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 7, 7, 7, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 6 ) [Doubling Tens]

Nick

[Roll for the Chantry's Library at 3 to apply to learning Corr 1. Spending WP.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN7 (3, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )

Ari

[Witnessed! Get your study on, Nick!]

Ari

"One of the oldest sacred trees," she says, and note in her tone the obvious approval. Ari shifts the rake, so that the shaft of it rests in the crook of one elbow and it is not in any way in danger of tripping up or crashing into Nick. In some things she is careful; in some things she is brilliant. These are things that she, like Nick, keeps often close to breast. He knows her better, though, than the community at large. "My favorite wand is yew, too."

The unnecessary rhymes grates against her sensibilities. She leaves it, rather than worrying it to pieces.

"Its language mostly, or even intended use. Sometimes the medium into which it has been cast or rendered," she watches him as he studies; the runes are well worn to her memory but this brighter, more open Nick is new. She catches the shapes that the shadows of his curls cast on his forehead. "I usually use Rune in the specific case of the various Futharks, and sigil for a thing that is an official designator or a mark I craft toward a higher meaning."

This, having been a bit of a mouthful, is given over to him to turn and ruminate upon. She doesn't overburden it with more. While he thinks, to give him some privacy in it, she tips her chin up to let the pale of sunlight spill over her cheeks and eyelids. It is a weak burnishing, but it is warmth nonetheless.

Nick

It may have been a bit of a mouthful, but there is still this glint in Nick's eyes as he listens, this sharp interest. Enochian, to him, seems to be a very good secret, and so do the runes and sigils that Ari uses, these symbols that carry their own weight and significance that isn't outwardly apparent to anyone who isn't already in the know. Even Nick wouldn't be able to express the magnetic appeal of this sort of thing to him; it just is the way it is.

He does indeed ruminate, and shuffles off to the side a little himself to stand more directly in the sunlight. There is sweat upon his brow and there's still some of winter's bite in the air, gnawing and teasing at his skin now that he has stopped working as hard as he was.

"So the circle that you sent to me - what do all of those symbols and words on it mean?" There was a time when he might have hesitated to ask this question too; Nicholas even a few years ago was self-conscious when speaking of magick around his Hermetic friends and lover, aware of how much more primal and drawn from folklore and experience his own style of magick is.

Before she answers him there is another smile in her direction. "Thank you for that, by the way. It's one of the best gifts I've ever been given."

Ari

He asks a question and follows with a compliment, and so she's caught in a moment of go-and-stop-again. Poised to carry on in the way of the Bonisagi before her, eloquent, pontificating, and then pleased, o'er brimming with it, cup filled to overflowing, generous. The smile echoes his.

"You honor me." It is a strange way to accept gratitude and praise, but there are echoes of older things wreathed around her at the oddest times. It seems fitting, from Ari, if out of place in the greater whole. She dips her head in the slightest of courtesies; not a slight, but a deferring, this, too, of older ilks. "And you are most welcome."

Here, then, with little regard for the knees of her jeans, she drops to kneeling beside the bed. The rake is set aside, a ramp for ants to ride on their ascent to the holy ground of Nick's newly turned beds, leaned against the brickwork, tines skyward and casting narrow shadows to confound the breeze. With her finger she draws the rake-work of a tree, not entirely like or unlike the one that sits at the center of his present.

"All of them will take some time to dissemble; let's start with the root of them -- the tree. Quick!, tell me what you know of trees." Her smile quickens, green gaze cast up to him through the thin shadows of her lashes. Echoes everywhere around her, some subtle and some sharper, symbols for him to pick out, name or notice. She throws this gauntlet, like a pop quiz, like the clever play of words and half-jest that she and Pen participate in effortlessly. To soothe the challenge, Ari adds: "I'll draw some others as you do."

Nick

Ari says he honors her, and this and her echoes makes his smile perhaps just a little brighter, makes it pull wider across his face and eases it out of the realm of quiet regard and into something more joyful. Perhaps there's even something in him that was touched by the gift she sent, that she created this small delicate thing and wreathed it in wonder and it was all specific to him, he who is so difficult for other people to pin down and define.

Sometimes there's a simple pleasure in being seen.

As Ari kneels in the dirt beside the bed, Nick drops into a crouch beside her, settling easily back onto his haunches as he watches her sketch in the soil. He is hushed as he watches this, almost distracted by the sight of her finger making its very intentional sweeps and draws; there is something in him that is in awe of her artistry and ability to create no matter where she is.

Tell me what you know of trees, she says, and as she casts her gaze up at him he meets it. Not for long: his eyes are already drifting away as he thinks and considers. "The - oh, those are World Trees that you're drawing right now," he says, "Yggdrasil is that one there. They're a symbol of strength and endurance and renewal and the root of all life. They witnessed the rise of civilization and will witness its fall and eventual rebirth. They are the world, in a lot of the lore I've read through."

He glances toward Ari then, because this was a pop quiz, and when he's around Hermetics he is never totally sure that he has answered correctly.

Ari

She draws while he thinks. There is Nick's tree, first, and then beside it the Celtic tree whose roots reach up from the underworld to become the sweep of its branches above. It screams, without voice or language, of the adage: as above, so below. It connects the outer with the inner. It is cast entirely of circles -- but that is a point for later. Now, beside it, is the tree which spans three realms of being. He names it (Yggdrasil) and her head nods in approval. Beside this, then, the Qabbalistic world tree; circles connected by a set pattern of lines. Within them she could draw the sigils of planets and constellations, but Ari leaves it as an echo, nothing to specific, no fine enough point to embellish it here.

"All trees are World Trees," she tells him. There is no sense that he is being corrected. His answer was taken, full face, and built upon. She rocks back, holding the hand of dirty fingers aloft and carefully away from the space between them. It is her right hand, her projective hand. The left rests between them, receptive.

"Your staff and my wand, they too are World Trees and witness to the rise and fall of kingdoms." There is a slightly far off look to her eyes, as if she were seeing things not quite and wholly as they were, but in a second sense of meaning. Slightly to the left, but not of the spirit-sight he might employ. These metaphors are real and resonant to Ari; truths.

"But you skip ahead to cycles and the repeating of all things." The blade of her hand sweeps away the other trees, leaving Nick's rakish one to stand alone. "To Circles, and upon circles we build the shape of all things. It is the first shape, the one with no angles. See? And in being drawn it separates. There is a within," she touches the space within the circle she draws, "And a without. An us and a them. A here and there -- this is why we use them in bindings, in meditation, in wardings. Inside your circle there stands a World Tree -- what might that mean?" she asks him, looking over again to watch the shapes his brow makes as he processes; to garner the gleamlight from his eyes and measure it; to know the secrets that stand between them which are too precious to speak.

Nick

These metaphors are real and resonant to Nick as well; his gaze too has grown distant while she speaks, as though perhaps he had to speak his own words about the rising and falling of kingdoms for him to understand that, there, this chord was plucked within him. Nicholas often understands himself through speaking with others; in listening to them articulate their own truths, he learns to find his own.

A within and without, she says, and his eyes follow her hand as she expounds upon the meaning of circles and their use in magick. There is this nonverbal noise that he makes, something deep in his throat that is at once curious and also sated.

Ari looks over at him, and she can tell that he struggles to answer. His brows pull together because there are many possible meanings and there is also this: Nick struggles to understand himself fully what he is. "Do you mean that I'm...apart and also self-contained, or," a beat, and he settles on something that is easier for him to grasp and closer to the truth. "That I am that cycle and all the things the tree represents."

There are these notes in his voice that perhaps she can suss out, one part certainty (this is a Truth, this must be) and one part shy and one part hushed, giving respect to the precious secrets between them. And something there, too, not quite disbelieving, but this touch-and-go of someone who is beginning to understand power and at the same time struggles to take it.

Ari

Nicholas has known his friend to be bright and boastful and extroverted in magic, as all the Hermetics of a particular region have seemed, on the surface, to be. And she had often measured up among the least of them and seemed untarnished and undetered by the appraisal. For as many times as he has seen her push back, taunt and roll her eyes at the other, she seems centered here. Wholly possessed of her place in the fabric of this magical discussion. No longer anachronistic and removed; centered.

He asks the first question and quietly the corner of her mouth tucks in, approvingly and encouragingly. The bright of her eyes is keen, focused intently on his steps and stammers. The second lifts her eyebrows in unspoken challenge, which then lower with her nod of approval and acceptance.

"I will tell you a thing about symbols. A secret," she offers in reply, which does not seem at all like answering. Ari brings her hands together, palm to palm, and tips them first so that he sees one of them, with a thin silver ring 'round her middlemost finger, and then so that he sees the other. "They are two-faced, twice true -- and this is what our Order likes the least about them. There are what they mean when I scribe them down and they are what they mean when you take them in again. Neither one more weighty than the other; both truths. In this the whole of a symbol is like a Circle; my truth and yours; inside and out; unless we find a way to stand within them together."

And this, this magic is what they are working together now. They are finding a way to stand within this work together; to understand one another; to craft a clever language of compromises between his beliefs and hers, his languages and hers. It is the work of a lifetime, an Odyssey.

Nick

Ari is centered here, and Nick observes this without comment, which is not the same as not noticing and lending it significance. He has known his friend to be ill at ease, at times, with the mantle of her Tradition (and perhaps like him, with the weight of her potential and what it means.)

Nick has a keen perception for the hidden insecurities of others; that does not mean he doesn't notice when he also sees their passion and where they are strongest.

Her reply is not at all like answering, but Nick accepts what she says for what it is. "So how do circles expand then? Symbolically or not," he adds, and this look he gives her is half-lashed, his smile simultaneously amused and rueful, this understanding for all the metaphor that is being thrown around at the moment.

Ari

He is clever, and his look is half-lashed and smiling. The look pushes as much as the question, and earns in return a smirk that says Hah! and is pleased as much as it is rueful. But a challenge to metaphor is still a challenge no less. For all that Ari's carriage and demeanor does not rise to meet it, neither does she let it pass, unmarked.

"Through Attention, mostly," and the noun here is clearly capitalized. It means something (is symbolic) and is a little more specific than it may otherwise seem. She means through an exertion of Will, mundane or otherwise; she means through expended energy, focus or, attention. But she does not expound on this. It is left, a divergent path for another afternoon.

Ari splits her hands and reaches down again to the garden bed. She sketches the echo of the tree inside the circle, off center as it is in Nick's present. It is bare of leaves and empty, save for the body of the large bird in its branches -- which here she draws by pressing varying lengths of her finger into dirt.

"I chose the Tree because you work more organically than I do; the tools you use, the shapes you see, they are different from my own but I can recognize them. And the bird requires the tree, or perhaps the other way. Though you will have to tell me whether it perches or it roosts; whether it is home or it is away. Pen calls you Crow, which is a bird of the going under of the year; of things realized and pulled down to their constituencies; so the tree is bare, because it is Winter, because Winter is the time of going under, and Winter is of the still dark hours of the night; of Air. But Crows are also of memory, and memory is as much emotion as it is thought -- perhaps also you must work with waterways or chalices or cups. And chalices are open circles -- again, we come back to the beginning. These are the things I thought when I was sketching this for you."

Nick

Ari leaves her reply to him behind and Nick does not revisit it: not yet. Conversations with Nick are rarely linear, and they loop around and back on themselves and he will often surprise people by choosing to comment on a throwaway comment that they made weeks and months before. He has an excellent memory, and he has a good sense for the things that are significant (sacred).

She is sketching a larger version of the working that was inside the small circle she gave him. He watches, attentive, as she lays this out before them, and here he notes for the first time that the tree is off center (the significance of this had not struck him when he had first looked at her gift), and he raises a hand to his mouth, rubbing it thoughtfully.

He is attentive: it has been said before. And yet something Ari says throws his gaze distant for a few seconds -

Nicholas you are the quiet hush of first Spring -

and that was a long time ago, and it is the first time in a while he has been likened to a season. "I work with water, and particularly rivers," he offers, to Ari, because it is important that they each know how the other Works. And then, "Thank you again for sketching this for me, Ari. I think it...I think you have the right of me." Again, that smile. And he says, "My Guide is a three-headed raven. I think it's actually more apt than you realized."

Ari

There is much more to what she is telling him, how she strings one symbol into another, chaining them like beads upon a string. They layer and inform each other, they shift in meaning and in shape. And in this she gives him a sense of how she works, how she layers things together until she sees the truth between them. They've only spoken of the things within the circle she has given him, but it has taken long enough for their fingers to grow chill in the afternoon sun. (It is Winter, and Winter is the time of going under.)

"You're welcome," she says, though the second word's syllables separate just slightly. The smile she offers is less boastful and pleased-to-be-right than it is pleased-to-be-here and Nick, student that he is of unspoken expression, can likely tell the difference. She does not seem surprised that the symbols are apt, but it does brighten her subtly.

"The things I work with all come back to this circle. Well, to circles and to symbols and to language, which all share a common Art. I can show you how they all fit together around this, but it will take much longer than an afternoon." She brushes the dirt from her fingertips and rubs her hands together.

"I have been thinking about drawing Us a circle. Layering the pieces of you and me an Pen around it. Where we intersect and where we diverge. How we cover the corners; what we place within and what we keep without. I thought it might be a good way to decide on what we are together. Your rivers and her chalices to the West and so onward and so forth," here she trails away a bit. Looks past him, past even the edge of the yard for an overlong moment before pressing her palms into her knees and standing.

"I'd like to hear more about your Guide and your Works, if you'd let me." There is respect, here, for their differences. It may seem strange coming from a Hermetic as deeply dyed in the wool as this scion of her family lines. "Before New England, this was everything to me," she gestures slightly, meaning the balance of their conversation, the sort of Art it intimates and implies. "I grew up breathing the word of the Order, and then, suddenly, there was you and Thane. I can't imagine what it's like, but I'd like to -- imagine, that is."

Nick

Ari presses her palms into her knees and stands, and Nicholas realizes in that moment that the chill has already begun to settle into his muscles, which, when they were warm and pliable, were still up to the task. Now they are beginning to stiffen, and it adds another twenty years to his body as he pushes himself upright and winces. He could warm them up again and get started back to work, but has managed to make substantial headway on turning over the earth that encircles the house.

So instead he brushes his hands off, ignoring the bright sticky blooms of pain near his thumbs that would've become blisters given enough time with the shovel, and tilts his head toward the house. "Do you want something to eat?"

And he starts inside while he contemplates Ari's words, letting the Hermetic fall into step beside him. "I would like for you to create a circle for us," he says, and this articulation of his wants is easy, or at least easier than it usually is for him. There is this thought, then, "Circles are also, or can be, doorways. I think it's a good way to think of us all choosing to move forward together."

Much like he bridges the gap between this world and others, or like sealing his marriage with a pair of rings; this makes sense to him.

Ari's other comment, about his Guide and his Works, draws his eyes sidelong. The smile he gives her is a quick thing and he says, "If you'll let me hear about yours," because Nick understands that real friendships have to be give-and-take and also: he doesn't give parts of himself away lightly. He walks up the stairs to the back door and the far end of the wraparound porch, his footfalls as silent here as they had been in the yard despite his heavy boots. "Are you trying to imagine another you, if you hadn't been Order?"

Ari

She does fall in step beside him, easily so, and Ari is still mindlessly brushing dirt from her fingers, dirt that is not there, has not been there since she brushed them clean beside the garden bed. This is a thoughtless thing, not some inkling of psychosis. It is a pattern that occupies part of her mind so that others might move more freely.

Are you trying to imagine another you, if you hadn't been Order?

"Hah!" This, then, does bring an abrupt and mirthful sound from her. As if the thought that she might be anything but Hermetic were unthinkable. And her words, moving forward, confirm this neatly. "No. I might as well imagine being not born at all, or born as someone else entirely. I was Hermetic from the very moment I was conceived, Nicholas," and here, his full name is meant to lend gravity to the statement and not push the two of them apart.

Though the thought of this amuses her, it doesn't fully lift some unspoken weight from the corners of her eyes. "I mean more imagining what it might have been like to have a choice, to stand outside of a circle and opt in for reasons of your own." She looks to him sidelong, across the bridge of her nose and through the sweep of the loose hair that frames her features. Ari stops to knock the soles of her shoes against the lowest step before following him up onto the porch. One of the uprights that holds up the eaves serves as a ready place for her to lean her shoulder. She watches him as he moves to the far end of the porch, but does not quite follow all the way in.

Nick

Ari laughs at his question, and the look he gives her is at once bemused and amused, because even though the words are quite different for how similar they sound they can still easily exist within the same circle. Hermetics. "I admire that kind of clarity of vision, and knowing where you fit," he says, and this is genuine.

There is still dirt on Nick's hands that did not fully brush free despite wiping them on his pants; his were more fully immersed in the soil though, and it had time to grind its way into the tiny divets and dips in the skin of his hands, into his pores. His hands are now one with the dirt, at least until he washes them in the kitchen sink up on coming inside. Which, after rolling up the sleeves of his sweater, he does.

It is then that he realizes that Ari is still standing just outside the back door that leads from the kitchen out to the porch, and there is this quizzical look before he says, "Come in," and beckons her forward.

He has dried his hands and now he is raking his fingers through his hair, trying to re-establish some order. The expression he has now is pensive, his gaze reserved for some distant point out the window. "I don't know what I would have chosen, if I hadn't entered Quiet," he says. There is this moment where his hand drops away from his head, and he weighs whether or not to say more or less, and ultimately, "I think even those of us who choose to opt in still have things that influence us strongly. One of the people I was in the life before this one was a Chakravanti, and for a long time I was never sure whether my reasons for joining were hers or my own."

Ari

Ari hadn't quite realized why she'd stopped at the threshold of the kitchen door this time. Doorway, threshold, circle -- all things that keep in and keep out. When Nick comes back for her, with that quizzical look and an open invitation, she doesn't hesitate to join him in the kitchen and takes up a similar lean against a stretch of cabinetry or the face of the fridge.

"That must be difficult; having to keep a space between now-You and past-You and not always knowing which moves your heart," Ari says, watching him and considering something carefully. That debate plays out just behind the open fields of her eyes; guarded. There is sympathy for him showing, distracted by this thought of if and should. Ultimately she comes down on one side of it or the other.

"I was trained to join the Order from as long ago as I remember. I am what we call a Legacy -- how uninspired, right? It means my parent, or parents, were Hermetic. Maybe even their parents. And so on. Sometimes Houses even run in families."

Nick may have heard Rob and Ari arguing about this, loudly, on one occasion or another. Bitterly and with some backlash of ill-advised behavior. Likely another thing chalked up to Hermetic nonsense.

"I've heard of Legacies that say they'll join a Tradition outside of the order when they 'wake, though I've never seen it happen." There is a specific one that comes to mind, but Ari doesn't offer up the reference. "Most go on to do Great Works within the fold." There is a touch of irony to this, the way she says it, as if she is repeating some propaganda or messaging she only half-believes herself.

Nick

"We are always drawing boundaries between our now-selves and past-selves. We're just told that the boundaries between our lives are firmer than they really are," Nick says, and this is a quiet thing as he turns away from the window, back to Ari. He had offered her food.

This is something he busies his hands with while Ari tells him about her training within the order. He stands in front of the open refrigerator for a moment, contemplative, sweeping his eyes over what they have. Nick, while he cooks often and well enough, is often not as elaborate as Pen in the spreads that he sets out for guests, and he himself tends to prefer simpler food unless there's a special occasion.

He catches that irony, and notes it privately. He has heard Rob and Ari arguing; then again, he has heard Robin Anton arguing with just about everybody, at some point or another.

"So you're the next iteration of this long Legacy, and you feel as though they've been hanging the hopes of millenia upon you," Nick says, and there's this other sidelong glance, something touched with warmth and perhaps a hint of empathy.

Ari

She will help, if Nick lets her. For all her privilege and growing up in Chantries, Ari quite likes the simple magics of bringing things together. She's good, too, at staying inobtrusively to the side when a sous chef is not required. It is unclear, yet, how large an undertaking Nick intends; should he need it she will scrub in to assist.

"Oh, hah, hum," the sounds descend in degrees of amusement and increase in their stains of irony. "The Arrow of Artemis will not trust the hopes of the millenia to me. Had he a daughter like Pen, though," this, almost wistful, for Penelope's sake and not her own. If Pen had the backing, the foothold, the firmament -- Ari knows better than the follow the thought to deeply down the rabbit hole, and so jest wins the evening, again. "He'd shout it from the roof tops."

"Mostly I fumble around, doing my own thing until they need or notice. One day I'm sure I'll have to toe the line and step up to take over my mother's study or something. She is more insistant about conclaves these days. But for now, I'm free to be where I Will, which is here, with you two, and all the wanh wanh waaaaaanh of Denver."

She steps in to wash her hands in the basin of the sink. He is shown her knavish side again as she sing-says Penelope's estimate of the city; the time for baring of secrets is closing. For this night, with this girl; not forever.

Nick

Nick takes a large wedge of brie from the refrigerator and hands this to Ari, and also pulls two apples and a bag of grapes and sets them down on the counter nearby. It's an older house and the kitchen is large, if somewhat dated and lacking in useful amenities such as a kitchen island. He has wandered to find the half of a baguette left from this morning, and upon retrieving it, brings it back to the counter near where Ari is. He pulls a blade from the knife block and sets to cutting the baguette into small slivers as he listens.

And he, too, goes wistful as she mentions a man such as her father having a daughter like Pen: because he knows all the thousand small hurts that Pen has known from the way she grew up, and he wonders if this is one. "He's a fool if he doesn't value you for who you are," Nick says, and this is casually said but there - you could miss the cold iron, because it's only just drawn from its sheathe.

As Ari finishes washing her hands, he hands her a paring knife to use on the apples or on the brie, as she likes. It's a quick task and unworthy of a skilled sous chef, but he's hungry.

"Would you do that only because they expect it of you, or do you want to take over your mother's study?" He pops one of the grapes into his mouth, balling it into his cheek before crushing it.

Ari

Small plates like this, bread and cheese and fruit, are some of Ari's favorite meals. She finds a plate, arranges the cheese on it and goes through the deft motions of slicing apples and washing grapes. She had seen, too, where Penelope had stashed the last tidbits of their farmer's market spread and so she checked for them to add, like glistening jewels, to the platter.

There is cold iron to Nick, and Ari misses it. Or she assumes it is drawn in protection of his beloved -- as well it may be. She does not expect anyone here to leap to her defenses, and so she glances up to Nick and holds that look a moment longer than by chance. His words are marked; she does not counter them; they are weighed and measured before she moves on.

"I'd like to, I think. If it weren't such a press and expectation, I'd aspire to it even. I wanted it before I knew I'd be late to enlightenment, then I talked myself out of it, and it's hard to twist again and cop to wanting something grand like that. The irony is, I'm rather good at what I do," this is said matter of factly, and from what Nick has seen of her Artistry, it is also true.

"But I am careful about setting expectations, and watching who wants the best of or for me. It's a short road from one heart into another when they are tied together; I will not be that opening." She slices off a piece of cheese to lay along a crescent of apple. Together these disappear; together they are tasted.

"Try these together," she tells him, making him a similarly shaped apple-and-cheese amalgam. "I think it is my favorite, for today."

Nick

Ari's gaze lingers on him, and he does not appear to notice, or if he does he is content to let his words and his rationale remain a mystery for now. It is entirely possible that someone like Nick does not have one sole reason for doing anything; he has cultivated his own complexity and raised it carefully, and in less relaxed situations, not with a close friend as now, it is his best offense and defense.

As she gives him one of the little apple and cheese amalgams, Nick samples it with evident pleasure, crunching into the apple and the buttery creaminess of the cheese. "You are good at what you do," he says. "And maybe..."

A breath, another weighing of his words before he speaks them. "I know from what Pen has said that the idea of excellence is important to the Order. I don't think we...I mean, I think the idea that it has to be your idea of perfection is intrinsic to that. It doesn't matter what anyone else wants for you," Nick says. "And you are very good at what you do, Ari. It seemed to balance you, talking about it out there."

He reaches for another slice of apple and cheese, and his gaze drifts off to elsewhere.

Ari

"Now that, dear and wise of heart, is a discussion that demands firelight and sweet wine." Ari says this, sweeping up the seriousness of what he's said with the same ease as tucking a grape between her molars -- squish, a little smile of delight, swallow.

"And Pen. She has such poetry about such things. I say we get her tipsy and let her rant about perfection," eyebrows raised in comraderie and mischeif. Nick has been so careful with his words, so well aimed, and they have struck true. Ari's come effortlessly, with a sort of cavalier and lightness to them. It is easy to assume she is making light of things; she isn't.

"And thank you. It is, hmm, it is well and truly pleasing to be praised by one who knows..." The specific of what he knows is left to insinuation, a clever game of fill in the blank, but the weight is true and deftly measured.

From there the conversation wanders, through troughs of quiet and possibly on to milder things. Most likely the beginnings of her search for her own place, and inquiries into how they found the House of Mars and Hyde, and what they might want as a second base of operations -- oh, for a moment, so much the Arrow's daughter; nay, false alarm, it was all hyperbole and jest. And so it goes.