It has been spoken between them that their homes are so close as to be a walkable distance, not so far apart than the distance would be cumbersome to traverse on foot and Penelope has made the journey at least once and with some burdensome offering, and so it is time for Ari to return the favor, to walk the concrete paths between their doors with something to share tucked under a gingham towel and a messenger bag hung off her shoulders.
It reminds her of Academy. Many things have reminded her of Academy of late. Nick's questions after Hermetic school; the strawberry blonde at Silas's birthday; the questions he'd asked Ari when she was tucked into his embrace. Half a lifetime ago, and still the thin red stitches of fate pulled these pages close together in the Springtime and she can almost imagine the way the wind rushed up the cliffs of the Isle and over her skin.
She isn't Primal, but something in her has always loved the seasons, and the rain, and even the snow when it is new and gets caught up in her lashes, but not so much when it is grey and salted and sodden and slumping at the margins of the street. Not so much when it has overstepped its welcome. All things are welcome when they are new.
Under the gingham is the sort of lemon cake which is cake with bright, thin, candied wheels of citrus draped and lavished atop it. It is scented with thyme and fortified with ground almonds. She keeps it covered so that the smell of it will not pied-piper-like have all the neighborhood trailing behind her on her way up the hill to Pen and Nick's doorstep.
Knock, knock.
See, Ari is a civilized person. She knocks before thinking of ringing the bell. She does not return Pen's favor by ding-a-ling-ding-dong-ing until deafness sets in. Just two raps. And then a pause. And then two more.
Penelope
The door opens. Mark this: the door opens, but there is no solid and physical Pen with her hand on the door's handle and her eyes bright with Arianna's presence. Mark this, too: this is a house of wizards, two, and a how of experimentation and of study, and today the study is a study of the little airs which can play servant the invisible host of energies which are perhaps easiest to manage when the air is as it is now, and it is invisible hands on the door, it is Force at the door, opening it for Arianna when she raps raps raps, and an empty foyer before her except it has changed since the last time Ari was over (whether that was two nights ago or two weeks ago or five weeks ago; but surely it would be sooner than that?), because there is now a lemon tree sitting in a pot and taking up a great deal of space. There is a shovel rather ominously positioned, as if someone plans to dig right through the floorboards, into the dirt beneath the foundation and put that lemon tree there. Positions can be misleading; if somebody did such a serious make-over of the house's interior, cutting a hole in it for a tree, right there where it looks like it would be most convenient -- it would also detract from the easy glide down the stair's railing, so probably the tree isn't meant to go right there. Probably it is going to go outside; it is rather an oversize lemon tree for corners. Its leaves clap gently when Arianna enters, shivering as the outside gets inside.
Pen's voice calling from the kitchen: "Arianna!" a bright rill: light gleaming on water; the shadow of it, the shift of it; "Do you remember what was the name of Maga Kerwyn's griffin and the invocation was she was supposed to have written on its skin?"
Arianna
The door opens and now begins a little game, a debate with things to old to be spoken over whether an open doorway constitutes an invitation, over whether she should extend a toe or poke a finger across the threshold just to see, because surely an open doorway alone is not enough to speak to welcome. Doors open by all manner of means and for all manner of reasons. But what if the open door is also one through which she has been previously invited? Is this enough. Is it enough to hold a key to it, as she surely does to the House of Hyde and Mars, though she knocks out of courtesy and because she is not the kind of person who ring-a-lings the bell --
-- is that a lemon tree? Perhaps Pen will make Limoncello with her come the harvest. Who can turn down lemons and sugar and spirits? Who? Who? --
And is a key, in and of itself a welcome? It is an invitation, this key, this unlocker of locks and unfastner of secrets? Is a key an invitation, or does it matter how it is acquired? Surely one can have a key and not have been invited. It could be an ill-gotten key, for stolen secrets. That would not constitute a welcome. Is a voice, calling from within the house, speaking her name, the name of this woman who also holds a key, for whom the door has opened, in this place where she has been welcomed before -- is this enough to constitute an invitation?
The boughs that steeple above their roofline sigh their consent. Yes! Today it is enough, tomorrow, who knows, but today it is enough and Arianna steps across the threshold and into the foyer, where stands the lemon tree and also the grave digging shovel (grave-digging, or grave in its digging?). She touches the handle-hilt lightly, fingers just tracing the wood of the handle, as she passes. Because Spades are like Swords, and of course Pen would have one in an entry whose answering is made of air and movement. This thought reminds Arianna that she ought shut the door behind her.
"Pen!" she calls, in reply, just as the door clicks shut. "It was named Hrestiael, and upon its skin she wrote:" And this answer has brought her up into the kitchen, with her pack still slung across her body and the cake still hidden beneath its gingham drape, and her eyes all a-twinkle with merriment. "Excita, et sol salutant." Rasp-thunk goes the heavy stoneware full of cake as she brings it to rest, still shrouded in checks of blue and white, upon the counter. "Which is almost certainly just the binding Words of some greater Working."
A beat.
"I come bearing cake, apropos to your new foyer décor."
Penelope
Pen is on the floor of the kitchen, cross-legged in the middle of a circle -- a labyrinth -- scribed with chalk (silver chalk [true metal, pure metal, moon's metal]). The circle and the labyrinth are unfinished; there are Hebrew runes and some small glints of suggestions of Enochian phrases scattered through out but it is incomplete it is a work in progress it is likely going to be smudged before midnight. Her library is gone; she is not surrounded by books and scrolls as she might have been when studying. Arianna knows how Pen looks, studious and intent. Arianna may also know how complete her ability to concentrate, how indistractable she is when she is focused. Robin used to try to goad Ari into a contest: who could get Pen to falter, first. Of course he did: members of House Tytalus must always test their friends; it is because they care that they are such goading, insufferable creatures. Instead of books and scrolls she is surrounded by notes and drawings, all cypher and much of it unintelligible. This is writing for Pen, not for other people to read, necessarily, and so it is a mess.
The copper kettle on the stove-top looks flushed with steam; there is a curl wisping upward now, but it is not screaming and the stove is not on.
There is also a bunny in Pen's lap, a dowsing bunny belonging to an apprentice, a mellow-eyed soft creature, which Pen does not cuddle when Nicholas is around so as not to give him any ideas. Nicholas is not around now, so the bunny is in Pen's lap, its chest fluffed out and its ears soft and enticing.
Pen sounds a touch distracted. "Thank you. My mind is becoming a sieve; it is letting all the interesting things escape it. Is it cake to bury in the roots of a lemon tree? Is it mete that we feed cake to a tree; I can not remember." Beat. Pen looks up from her drawing (there is the chalk, see, scattered), sees Arianna, and now: now is the bright-gleam beam, a suddenly smile; it is like light breaking through rain-clouds, falling tarnished but lovely on a lake's surface (and now, now, when the light's all reverent and lucent this is when lake-swords are dredged up from the deep and offered this is when quests become a possibility one can taste on one's tongue this is when one resolves into shadow and shift), draws two long dimples out of her cheeks and she sometimes looks young.
"I'm sorry; did you say cake? Lemon cake? Did you make it with your own two hands or did you buy it with your own filthy lucre or did you cannily trick it out of someone?"
Arianna
Kestrel used to goad her into goading Pen? This sounds like the beginning of a cautionary tale. Gather 'round, ye children, ye apprentices, and hear tell of a very bad idea turned into a most sporting game and of the singe-ing of hairs and burning of soles it did cause in recompense.
Ari comes just to the edge of the labyrinth but does not step into its twists and turns. It takes but a moment for her mind to recognize the tongues in use, and to switch from reading left-to-right to right-to-left to mark the Hebrew characters and tones. The Enochian she cannot help but read inwardly in her most bell like and angelic tones -- this is how Enochian is shaped and shifted. It is, and then the sound follows. Even in the mind it is the truth of a thing which precedes the Name or Word or Sigil.
"With my filthy lucre?" Wounded. Hand to heart. "Or won through canny trickery?" Aghast. Ari tuts a little, a clicking thing done with the tongue, as she looks down to Pen. "You wound me, Weaver dear. I made it with my own two hands, and the goodness of my heart, and so that it would not be too sweet for you, too saccharine from my love of thee, I have flavored it with lemon which is bright and bracing and biting. But perhaps you do not want my sweetness, thinking it a stolen or a purchased thing.
"For shame, Penelope. As if I would bring you lesser offerings!"
Arianna
And then, with her smile only partially restored and a sort of smirkness to it. "Shall I make us tea? I see you have the kettle on, and it may take you a while to wind your way back out of your Minotaur's lair."
A beat.
"Did Nick get a bunny while you were studying? It is quite... fluffy."
Penelope
"This is Yorick. He is Margot's dowsing bunny, who we are taking care of while she sorts out her living situation," Pen says. She gently strokes the silk-soft ears and looks down at the diamond shaped head and feels the little thing's skull with her thumb and Yorick's eye are bright and his nose twitches and he regards Arianna but does not seem inclined to move from the lap he is in. "A good drinking game I have discovered with bunnies: every time it shits on you, take a shot." Her voice is a croon: not a devoted croon, but a sing-song invocation. "Nicholas was allowing it to eat a book the other night."
Now then. Pen sets Yorick down and Yorick hops for one of the metallic chalks and Pen stands up, economical, graceful, and then sweeps the rabbit up again and puts the rabbit in a pen. Pen made the pen; it occupies a corner of the kitchen. She brushes herself off and then bounds over to Arianna and:
flings her arms around the other woman. The cake: is it settled; is it safe? Is it on the counter? If it is not, it shall take part in the hug, and Pen will take it from Arianna's hands just after. If it is settled, if it is safe, the better for the cake. Pen smiles after it when the hug is done, and says, "I shall make you tea; what suits your fancy today? Would you like a London Fog? Proper chai? Earl Grey, Russian Caravan?"
Around this time: Pen peeks under the gingham at the cake, and her eyes widen: "How lovely it is; did the goodness of your heart work very hard, laboring over this?"
Arianna
Yorick, who was previously somewhat cute and quite fluffy, moves down to rabbit non grata at the mention of his book devouring ways. The look Ari sends his way is not particularly clement. It seems fitting that Pen sentences him to time in what Ari's mind can only rightfully refer to as 'rabbit jail' for this offense.
"Dreadful."
The cake is settled, so Arianna is free to return Pen's exuberant hug with a tight one of her own. And a smile that breaks through even the book-eating rabbit stories and whatever dreary Spring madness has kept them apart.
"Oooh. A Russian Caravan, I think. But only if we take out your colored scarves and hang them about the living room and do our best impressions of the Baba Yaga to frighten your poor Yorick into better behavior." There, then, a glint of her mischeif returns and she squeezes Pen just so, and it is gleeful.
Under the gingham is a tumble of thin slices of candied lemon, bunched and whorled and glistening atop a cake fortified with ground almonds. The scent of it is sinful, sweet and bright and everything that Ari had promised. It is not some yellow on yellow on yellow box cake or storefront thing. It sings of the old world and flavours a little sterner and robust, of home.
"The goodness of my heart is so consumed by the effort that I think, perhaps, there is none of it left." Woe. Smirk. Ari settles in enough to slide the strap of her bag over her head. She finds a place to nestle or lean it, which is taller than a bunny might hop, so that Yorick the Destroyer cannot eat its contents on his next book devouring spree.
Penelope
"It is fairy food, Ari." Pen is solemn in the face of mischief -- the straight man's best defense (don't stop [come hither]). The cake did indeed share in part of the hug, and Pen is reluctant to let it go because with it near she can breathe it in and her lungs are better for their association with an Air of Lemon and Lavender. Mars is a martial name, and steadfast. An architectural name: a name of conquest, of victory. And she might sink her teeth into the middle, just to feel the cake break, undo the candied representation of Helios, just to feel what it is like to be so gluttonous for a moment. "I am tempted," and the sidelong cast of a glance is a lure, see, a shining beckon, a promise.
They are not going to stay in the kitchen where Pen's Working has been drawn out and Yorick the Destroyer of Books nibbles placidly on air. Pen puts the kettle on and then leads the way from the kitchen to her study, where she likes to entertain Arianna, and where she has a day bed which looks like a fainting couch of wood which has a silvering cast to it which might have soaked up the moon as the moon sets during dawn which is carved with a graceful ornate romanticism which is romantic which is very excellent to dramatically lounge upon. Pen often dramatically lounges; she invites Ari to partake of this passtime with her.
Down in the kitchen, the water boils.
The cake must be released.
Must it? Pen sets it a small table, on which moves around quite often: it usually holds tools for projects Pen is working on at the large craftsman's draftsman's table if she does not want to set the tools on the table if she wants the whole of the surface. It is clean now, although very scarred up and scratched, pitted and worried by many accidents: burned once. You can see it: the memory of smoke and fire, the way it eats and the way it stains. Lingering.
As they went, Pen said: "You see, I trust the goodness of your heart is only consumed as the phoenix is by its own glorious coda; that it rises again to luminous lord it over future cakes and bottles of wine, not made with granny's bone marrow or granny's blood."
There's a bounce to her step. See. Bounce! It is a good prelude for dramatic lounging, that bounce.
"I'm so envious of your heart I could eat it up!"
In the study, Pen waits for Arianna to arrange herself, and then:
Oh, then. Down in the kitchen, the water boils.
AriannaIt is a fitting thing, isn't it, that the heart of a Star-child, of a lune-ling, of a luminous one that reflects back the light or casts it into the darkness should be caught up in the resemblance of Helios, of Sol, of the bringer of Dawnings, and beginnings and breaker of days. Ari's heart is baked into a cake and, were they not Hermetic -- were they not truly something far older than Magi and truer than Souls -- it might sound morbid but Pen names her Phoenix, who has more lives than even a Bast's cats, and whose tears might heal and whose undoing might raze, burn down to the bones and even the bones to ash even the ash might burn until some breath of life comes forward and, just as suddenly, just as abruptly, she is reborn.
Ari does not seem to have been reborn, but perhaps in some small truth there is an echo of this revitalizing burn and ache and sunder and cresting going on inside her own heart. Not the heart which has been baked into the cake, not the goodness of her heart, but perhaps in the vulnerable and honest and untrusting places there is some sort of Phoenix-creasting cycle to behold.
The Phoenix does not belong to Helios; neither does she belong to the night.
"The goodness of my heart is like the moon, I think," she tells Penelope, with a different sort of cadence and thrum to her voice than the Weaver's, but resonant nonetheless. "It waxes and wanes, predictable in its patterns, full faced and radiant one night; obscured and hidden on another. But my heart is more fickle than the moon and less generous than the Phoenix and still, Penelope, still, it shall rise to oversee new offerings and libations as is its wont and Will."
There is a curl to her smile.
"The heart wants what it wants," she says, dramatically, perhaps also a good lure toward that bounce. "I should think my heart is envious of yours and not the other way around; your heart has wings, Weaver dear, and hallowed host in which to roost."
She settles on the moonlit bench, because of course the moon sets where the moon has set before: across the room from the resting place of her Helious-heart, opposed and therefore made full again. For the full moon sets opposite the sun, as any Apprentice might well know. And so the Phoenix is reborn. And so Arianna is ready for the pouncing that must surely come when Pen bounces upon the balls of her feet.
"My heart has cake, and its love of thee, and also its love of wine..." Hah, then, a smirk, for she cannot keep up this heart-wants-what-it-Wills nonesense for overlong. It colors the grey of the green of her eyes; it shifts toward merriment.
PenelopeThe heart wants what it wants is an excellent lure for a pounce from Penelope. Penelope whose eyes are gloaming, are a witch's eyes at twilight; are dark as bat song, are all quicksilver, are mercury in the shadow; Penelope whose eyes are ardent, even when they are cool; who has mastered the art of restraint just as a glass restrains what (holy) liquid is poured within or a wick restrains the flame: just as that. There are boundaries; they are given. Pen bounces on the balls of her feet; isn't she an elegant looking woman, and striking, striking sometimes with myth in her bones in the strength of her jaw the unusual features the fine sharp nose the pretty mouth the handsome forehead? Arianna settles:
Pen, she bounces on the balls of her feet; and then she settles too, flops out, resting her head in Arianna's lap.
Pen does not touch people regularly. She is not afraid of touch but she only seeks it out from a select band, king of which is (of course) the crow, but Arianna: she was in that court first. First friend. Dear friend.
Pen looks at Arianna from an upside down vantage and she wraps an arm around Arianna's waist and she says, "Arianna, you have just opened a door, you have unlocked a box with your fancy: I was going to seduce you with a poem I have written about you, but maybe I will annoy you instead."
"Tell me about Silas and yourself and your heart and all of that."
AriannaArianna does not much like to be touched. In the confines of her Hermetic life, there are few who have such liberty to even so much as place a hand in the small of her back, fewer who might tuck a strand of hair back behind her ear. She uses this leniency with touch as a sort of a lure, a trap, which she is forced to be familiar with those she would rather not. Her heart is kept caged, so tightly that it might stop beating. This is who Arianna is within the Order: brightly shining and not a thing to be caught or held. She is the sort of thing that might burn itself out, or fizzle into nothingness, before she might light another's lamp against her will.
This changed when she met Pen. Pen was, in many ways, Arianna's first female friend. None of the girls with whom she had attended Academy kept close association after; Ari didn't Will it and certainly did not want it. That chapter closed firmly, a book with its cover slammed and locked shut, and then she went about being nothing in the way that Consors are less than something until she finally Awoke. And then, finally, found her way to the Lady of the Lake, to this beguiling water witch whose heart was so far flung from the madness of legacies and lineages that Arianna could not help but see the purity in it. And so, for the Weaver and her Crow, and then for the Green Man, and also, slightly, for Kestrel, the cage was unlocked.
This is how they have come to be like sisters, with Ari's fingers tracing and smoothing along the bloody redness of Penelope's hair. How they might be two faces of the Morrigan -- they aren't -- or two types of chanteuse -- they aren't -- or two guardians of ancient ways -- this, they may well be. How they are affectionate, of warm hands and hearts, without endangering the hands or hearts of one another.
It is the truest sort of magic: love.
"You do not annoy me, Pen," she says, as the words are patient, they are dredged in the depths of Pen's lake-light and brought up gleaming with truth.
"And I will tell you. I will answer what you ask for I fear my thoughts are in mad disarray about this subject and my heart," she pauses, scrying for some sort of clarity in the shape of the strands of Penelope's hair; they dance like firelight; truth is like ember-ash. "My heart cleaves to a promise offered long ago. Before my heart had you, and your Crow. Before it had found the family-it-chooses. Things are less clear to me now that when I did swear to him."
This is thoughtful. It does not mislead. It tangles, and trips over itself. Arianna has so little practice in matters of the heart that it may not surprise Pen. But also Pen is possessed of a poet's heart and there is here the making of such poetic things.
PenelopePen languid on her back with her head on Ari's lap and Ari's fingers in her hair. This Pen keeps her arm wrapped around Ari's waist and - briefly, see - she traces the line of the other woman's spine through the fabric of her top, and how pensive is her touch: what Muses, they, on the fainting couch of moonlight-seeped wood in the study which smells of linseed oil and old beeswax candles and something sharper. More (al)chemical. This Pen, Pen who named herself for Mercury but also Hilde the Saint of Song, advisor of Kings, this Pen whose hair is spread out in curls which could be oracles which could be read by an oracle is Ari that oracle to read it by this Pen right now: she watches her friend.
Arianna saved Pen back when their friendship first braided itself into a rope: some shining thing, a thing with strength: for binding, pulling, hanging, drawing, bridging. Did Pen ever tell her?
Pen is a direct young woman, and honest; her reputation is for honesty. It is sometimes easiest to hide behind such a record, such a clear and lucent reputation. The Flambeau cleaves to true mystery; when she does, few know it.
Now: she only looks; she is quiet, her arm around Ari's waist and her head in her lap; she is quiet, and Ari's ring(s) if she wears any catch in Pen's hair, but it must be appealing to watch the shadows at play, and Pen's expression is an open heart. It does not bleed; it does what it is meant to do; you are only allowed to see it.
But she knows, Pen, that Ari is like Nick in some respects: she sometimes wants direction; some scaffolding to lean on, or hide behind, or -
And so Pen says, quiet, "Will you begin at the promise, then?"
She wants to hear it all.
AriannaArianna's spine is where Pen last found it, rightfully placed within her body, and the trailing of her friend's fingertips over it does not make her stiffen and neither does she become entirely languid, they do not puddle together like puppies might, but they do tangle. Ari's fingers in Pen's hair, the thinnest band of silver around her left ring finger threatens to catch but Ari is careful, she is slow and steady and methodical and wise the wily ways of silvered-things. She is made of moonlight too.
Elsewhere in the city is a thin gold band, similar in seeming but wider in circumfrence. It encircles the same finger of another, presses against he margin of his palm.
Pen has known this ring to stand on Ari's middle left finger. For all the time that Pen has known her, that is where this thin slip of silver has been. So long has it stood there that there is the echo of it still, a paler slip of faintly olive skin, an echo too faint to even call a shadow. A place the sun did not dare to tred for years upon years.
Ari rolls a small sound in her throat as a means of acquiesence.
"I will begin there," she says, but she pulls her fingers from Pen's hair to hold them above the lake-witch like so: fingers splayed and palms not quite together, with only the tips of her fingers touching. She shows them to Pen; she says this: "But it is not the beginning. We come together like this: we touch for a moment, so closely that I feel as if his fingerprints might be my own, or pressed into my own, that I known him at my center and then--"
She moves her hands apart again.
"-- we part before we truly come together." Her chins drops enough that she can look into the grey of Pen's eyes, but they are too true of mirrors and so she looks away again. Breathes out before she speaks.
"When we are together in the same space and of the same time we are together. No others. The rules are very clear. And when we are apart we lay no claim to one another."
It is plain-spoken and so simply stated. It is the sort of Oath that young minds and hearts make to one another. It extends, though, in dangerous ways. It extends further than either might have meant it to.
Penelope"Oh! I see. What came before that promise?"
Pen is a responsive audience: the gloaming gray, the tarnished silver (oh, but untarnishing: always in the midst of being polished) of her gaze goes to Arianna's show and tell, the steepled hands. She regards the bottom of Arianna's palm; the shape of her from this angle. Her fingers twitch; she wants a sketch book; it is always interesting, to see the world (or somebody) from an unusual angle.
AriannaAnd so Pen's hair becomes an augury, as Arianna's fingers trace through it again and this is why Ari has not truly studied Time: because of truths grasped in the tangles of Pen's hair, because the shape of some words already lean toward secrets, because her feet have walked the labyrinth so many times her heart remembers without bread crumbs and without strings.
"Immediately before?" and this, see, is how her mouth quirks. It is rue, and it is fondness, but it is mostly rue and something slightly bitter but long ago and therefore gentled -- LIES, it is the sort of thing that will never be gentled -- and this is why Ari's heart lives in a cage. Because it is jealous and unsharing and so very quick to judgement.
"He had halfway talked me out of my gown as we snuck off to his rooms, wherein we found very ambitious and very blonde Initiate already in his bed."
This, too, is said plainly and simply and without any way to soften the surprise for Pen. Partly because some part of Ari is still ardent with irritation, all these years later, and partly because Pen's reactions are priceless. And honest. And truth against which Ari might calibrate her own.
"Hence the Oathing."
PenelopePen's eyebrows fly up. This is hyperbole. They do not fly up, literally, fly up off her face and attain cartoonish voices of their own and those voices with definite opinions on the behavior of Young Silas and Young Arianna and Young Ambitious Blonde Initiate. But up they go; her eyes gone wide, too, because Arianna is her friend, and any friend in such a situation: it is a thorn-prick; it is a splash of cold water.
What it is not is surprising, quite. There is something about it which Pen does find surprising, but not the Initiate in his bed.
"What a terrible thing!" she says. "I would have slapped his eyes out of his head and made him find them using only his eyesight; of course, to no avail, for I'd have stepped on one of them." Brutally, she says this; with full honesty. She holds one hand in the air and (this is a beautiful gesture) brings all her fingers inward, as if she is crushing something.
But then, "And after that? And before that?"
Arianna"Indeed." Ari's hand strays from Pen's hair to find her clasped hand. To enfold it. That their fists together might speak to the sisterhood of their rage.
"Before that -- and after, briefly -- there came a time when I named him Scoundrel. And also Knave. And a host of other things, both deserving and unearned. This finding of another came in the briefest of thaws between us, which is why it was so traitorous a thing. My heart, Pen, it was almost too pained to hear him out."
Her fingers slid away from Pen's, and came to rest on the moon-gilt thing. Her hand is pressed into the pattern of it; palm tasting of its measure, fingerprints leaving their own echoes. Steadied.
"When we were younger yet, he held the whole of my heart in his hand, Pen. I loved him the way that young hearts love, with that abandon and earnestness. It was not easy, but I thought it would endure. Because, you know," she says, "Love conquers all things. This is what they say; they lie, but it is still what they say."
This is the only way that Ari can speak of it: she loved him then. She cannot say it now; she is too caged. She is too uncertain of where this is going.
PenelopeArianna speaking of love, in relation to herself, is a seven days' wonder. Pen's eyebrows are already raised, and perhaps to her credit they would not raise any more. That is because Pen is a romantic. (A Romantic, capital R.) Because Pen believes in love: the kind of love that consumes and transforms; unalterable and earnest. Arianna knows Pen believes in it; Arianna knows even, perhaps, that Pen lives it: it is her marrow, and it is her blood, and it is her breath; it is even her resonance (ardent [daring - what is more so?]).
And right now, Pen is torn. She wants to argue in favor of it; of course she does. Yet: she is honest; and Silas - she does not know.
She says, "How did you meet him?"
Arianna"His mother and my father are of your House," she says. She does not say that Elizabeth Robinson is a terrifying thing, so stepped in the essence of their House that hearths flare brighter at her nearness and candle light stretches further into the darkness and kitchen stoves bubbles over burn and crisp and smoke.
"They knew each another, and Si' and I were close enough in age. I don't remember how old we were, but I think it was me at eight and he at six, when we first met. He handed me a flower and a book of fairy tales. Later I gave him a treasure map and a book of stories," and Ari's stories were of course better, swashbuckling and pirates and swaying from mizzen masts and all sorts of adventure.
Idly, Ari brings her hands up together and touches the tips of her pinkies together. She doesn't mean it to, but it echoes the gesture she'd made before. Then she interlaces her fingers. Then her hands come back to her sides.
"Once he'd learned about proper adventures," she says, with a little haughty note to it, of course, "We would wander off as friends while our parents were at Symposium or teaching. The War split us up; Academy brought us back together."
She shrugs a little.
"Once he Awakened, we weren't as fast of friends. Things got... complicated."
Penelope"Arianna, what are his qualities?"
Arianna
[Oh no, difficult questions: Pause!]
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