Ari
Nicholas has been given a key to Arianna's home, to facilitate his access to her library and because she has not set up wards yet, and because she lives alone and it is good for a trusted friend to have a key, in case of emergency, in case of having locked herself out, but mostly so that he has ready access to the library as needed. Nick and Pen each have keys, and they were tied with different colored ribbons, black for the Crow and red for the Weaver, leaving Ari's one key to be adorned in white.
These are the colors of the Strega tradition, the way they weave together Life and Death and the Time between. Red for passion and for the blood and for Life, Black for the darkness of the places between, for Birth; and White for the bones, white for the teeth that rattle in skulls, white for the grave cloths and the handkerchiefs that dab at mourning eyes. White is for Death.
Ari is from Italy, but she does not practice its witchcraft Tradition. She knows of it, and she abides by some of its strange superstitions, but one does not look at the Silver Bough's Bonisagus and think Death.
Today, she has told him, is the day for putting all of their talk of Air and Darkness, of river rock and symbols and Words and states of being and Meditation to task. Today they will weave something more tangible out of their Working, tether it to these prayer knots and meditation aids and hopefully, if it all goes well, if it all goes to plan, finally craft the Talismans of Zachriel that Pen had asked for nearly two months ago.
To this effect she is out on the wide back patio, with painters drop cloths spread across the concrete floor and fabric stretched between two sawhorse-like structures. The patio table is awash in sketches of tangled symbols, references and annotations sketched around their margins. Her hair is pinned back in a loose chignon; her clothes are simple and darker than grey today. She is barefooted and there is ink smudged on her forearms and fingers, some on her cheek. The fabric is mostly adorned and partly dried already but there is a hollow, still, near the right hand side of it, where she is waiting to fill in Nicholas's final thoughts, before this masterpiece will be finalized for its intent.
It is breath-taking. Perhaps among her best work that he has seen to date. Nick does not know, yet, that they will be destroying it presently.
Nick
When he arrives at Arianna's home, it's with some unexpected nervousness: not quite trepidation, not quite apprehension. It will be the first time they have truly Worked together in some time, he and Ari, and never quite in this fashion, the two of them by themselves and without the other members of their cabal. See, they were close before, the six of them, and oddly that made it easier for each of them to keep within their comfort zones.
This will be different.
So he unlocks Ari's door and lets himself in, and out and onward to the back patio where he takes in Ari at her work, Ari barefoot and in the center of this nigh on masterful work. He'd taken his shoes off when he entered her house, and he eschews them now as he so frequently does. He is wearing a dark grey T-shirt and a pair of brown canvas pants, stained with the grass and dirt that has been ground into them through time and again hiking and gardening.
He halts at the threshold, because his breath is taken. He does not know that they will be destroying it presently, though that should not surprise him if he did know; that is the way of mandalas after all, an art form his Tradition takes part in.
She could not hear his approach, but she will hear him now, the rustle of his clothes as he takes a step forward onto the dropcloth. "Ari, this is amazing work."
Ari
It was easier, in many ways, when there had been so many of them to temper their differences and stretch connections across disparate Arts. Some of them were quicker on their mystical feet and othesr, like Ari, wrought wonders out of countless hours of concentration and preparation. Nearly every conversation they two have had since she arrived has, in some way, been about stitching the language of their lives together into one greater lexicon.
For the plain and simple reason that language, be it symbol or spoken word or impressions left in clay or trail signs between hunters or any of the myriad of tiny ways they spoke to each other through something more than presence alone, was the impetus of all other Arts. Language was the first technological step forward -- not fire, flashy thing, thing that warms the night and makes safe the food and so many other things. But how would they admire and adore fire, and find fellowship in their good fortune, without language?
When she hears him move out onto the patio, Ari draws back from her work. She is careful not to let the ink drip from her brush, or to touch the wet places on the fabric as she moves away. She smiles, unabashedly, when he compliments her work. Which is a different reaction that she gives those within her own House or Order. Nick compliments from a well-spring of good will; the House compliments with its hands out and open. This matters.
"I am quite pleased with it," she says, dropping the brush into a cup of water to rest. "If it had been canvas and not cloth it would serve well for a teaching scroll, but, alas, we've another purpose for it. Come, come, Nick," she is a little gleeful, pleased and happy to share what she sees as their creation. "Tell me if you can see your symbols in it. Tell me which you know and name and then, over here," she motions toward the empty space left on the canvas, "Help me find what I have missed, because I know you will have some insight. I left room for Crow-thoughts, in case something came to you just now, in the moment."
She is wiping her hands on a cloth which is marked and marbeled with layers of ink. It does nothing to dislodge the marks on her hands and arms. These are as much a part of the rite as any other thing, tattoos to her skin until she can rightly wash them away. And as he inspects it, he can indeed see the way her Words and shapes and symbols blend into his. There is even a river at the left margin, drawn in careful lines, its course broken by a stone which rests near the middle of its concourse and slightly to one side. The runes they discussed in the garden are there, too; the perfection of her handwriting is lost in this medium, but it's clarity and carefulness comes through.
Nick
For one of the Chakravanti, Nicholas has some practices that one would consider unusual; they aren't always so primal as he, the other members of his Tradition. Many of the ones he knew in New England had a far more structured approach to magick, grounded in meditation and philosophy and high ritual, candles and incense. They would not find the idea of using symbols and language and other such arts into their magick.
Nicholas it does not come as easily to. It's not that he doesn't see the benefit of language or that he isn't poetic in his own way (though he would not think so): it's that incorporating these things into his own magick is something he does not often think to do.
So when he steps over to examine the dark lines sketched across Ari's patio it's with a critical eye, inclined to study as much as to appreciate the beauty of what his friend has done. "I see a river down here," he says, nodding to that corner. "Is that for me? I see the tree too, and the crow, and your circles."
He eyes the tree's branches and roots, the way they reach out and twine with Ari's own shapes and symbols. He pauses with one of his bare feet resting just behind the other, toes pointed and resting against the ground. "You could include the moon, or a pomegranate I suppose. Is there anything you think you've missed?"
Ari
Creating Art like this allows Arianna to focus. It allows her to set her thoughts down in a way that brings the whole of them together, and that prepares her for her Work, and her Work flows through it and even now, without her resonance wreathed around her, she is preparing for the task before them. She is focused in a different way than he usually sees her, and the capriciousness of her smile is reigned in, and the mischeif in her eyes is temporarily turned to other things.
Is that for me?
"Yes," she says. "Though I have thought about it for a long time, now, and I can see how the river moves in meditation. I can think of it as also of the mind, and not a swift thing of the heart alone. I can imagine that it washes clean, makes plain boundaries where none were before. I do not think this is how you know it, but it makes sense to me after one fashion or another, and I can tie it to these other things, and I think, then, that I can Work through that."
She has, indeed, given an undue amount of thought to rivers and their rocks since Nicholas brought it up. Which may not be how he intended her to investigate the symbol, but it is a very Hermetic way to go about it.
"Mmmm, the moon, yes, yes I could add the moon -- but pomegranates you will have to explain to me, and also I do not trust myself to draw them well like this, but maybe we could find a redder ink and stain them so. Does red speak of the mind to you? It is strong, and it protects, perhaps, but it is not of the mind to me. But I could add the moon..."
She had been standing beside him, for just a moment, just while he started to move his mind through the shapes and symbols, and how they left in his mind the impression of serenity and strength and solace. Now she moves to take back up the brush and consider how she might draw in (draw down) the moon. How she would ring it in shadow that it might seem to shine and feather it with the hint of far-seen craters and impressions.
Is there anything you think you've missed?
She is thoughtful for a moment, and then shrugs her shoulders in a simple no.
Nick
I have thought about it for a long time.
See here, how he looks sidelong at her and there is a smile touches the corners of his eyes and mouth, for how they had disagreed when they initially spoke about this Working. Ari was raised very much within her Tradition and without the flexibility that Pen adopts when it comes to magick, and yet here they have found a middle ground: he had thought it would be so, and it's a hopeful thing.
"Add the moon. The pomegranate I think is less important for this specific Working. I think I misunderstood, at first, what you were planning to do with this," he says, with a wide open-handed gesture toward the symbols and sigils that sprawl across her patio. "When I think of the mind I think of strong oak and rock and rivers and I think of secrets. The moon and the raven and other things that are hidden."
He casts another look over what she has constructed, and he nods to himself. "So what are you planning to do with all of this?"
Ari
Ari would continue to disagree with Nick about the precise nature of their disagreement but she had abided by some of the strictures of it. He has found his river rock, and will be in charge of how he fastens it to or through the workings of the knots. She has meditated upon and researched and reasoned his symbols into some resonance with hers -- not their tangible forms as much as their echoes. Baby steps. The Giametti woman is a far cry from ready to scry from common stone or bless with basin water. Something within her center flutters in annoyance at the mere suggestion.
She is Hermetic, insufferably and amazingly so. Few others could create this interwoven tapestry of thoughts and heartstrings before them. She moves in beside him to shade in the sky around the moon, and dapples it with the freckles of its impression, and when he brush is all but devoid of ink she draws the whisper shape of a thing that she does not pause to explain for him, as she has for all the others.
If Nick asks, she will tell him plainly: it is a thing hidden, a secret.
And then she sets aside her brush, again, cleaning it more thoroughly this time as there is no space left to be occupied on the fabric. It is longer that it is wide, and one of the short edges has been snipped at roughly one inch intervals.
"When we talked about materials, you wanted something more natural. So this is flax made to linen, and linen elevated to Art and Instrument, and when it is dry we will pull it to strips to weave and knot and tie our magics together. As we move our hands to shape the cloth, I will pull the rote together and we will bind it to the knots, to the fabric, to these symbols, all the way back to the conversation we had in your living room -- and together they will become the Talisman of Zachriel."
In short, they were to destroy it, all her careful work and detailed artwork, all the hours of research and introspection. They would tear it down, to make something new.
Nick
Mark that he does not react with dismay, as many might as soon as they were told that she plans to destroy her work, plans to enlist his help to shred the cloth into strips to be bound around rocks and used as they will to protect themselves. It is not that he is pleased by the idea, or that something in him is not struck with a pang at the thought of tearing all of her delicate artwork to literal shreds: it is that the moment that he feels that pang, it has already subsided into acceptance.
And acceptance can be quiet, and subdued, and a little sad. This is the way of the world, the destruction and unmaking and rebirth.
"I'm surprised that you found flax," he says, though his pleasure is evident. He casts another glance over the inked symbols. "I am sorry that we have to destroy it though. Does it sadden you?"
Because perhaps it would. Nicholas is not an artist, not as such; he cannot imagine parting with such a work.
Ari
"Well, in truth, I found linen..."
Which is made of flax so it totally counts. Ari is making that sort of comme ci, comme ça gesture with her hand that conveys her ambivalence about this quite well. It has been a busy month. This compromise is not significant in the greater sense of things.
"No..." She says, no, but it is a thoughtful thing, breathed out and she lets her attention roam more over the collection of symbols than over the lines and angles of his face. Sometimes watching Nick's face is too clear a mirror; sometimes it is so subtle she misses the meaning in it. "There will be other pieces and this," she gestures with an ink-speckled hand, "Was not meant for permanence."
She frowns a little and rubs her thumb against the center of her forehead as she thinks. It is a small gesture, but one Nick might tie to her third-eye. Ari makes no such ties. It merely itched. "It is different, when I make a thing I think will last, when it will become permanent and fixed and we will come back to it time and time again. These things are different than work like this, which is for a singular purpose, which ties together you and me and through us Pen toward this aim. It is too specific for permanence. There is not enough left in the margins, implied but unsaid."
Ari exhales a little, and crosses her arms loosely over her middle.
"I am not making sense. I mean this, only: I am not sad. I will be frustrated if our Working fails, but not sad. Right now, I am pleased and hopeful."
Nick
Here's a difference between them: Nick is a far more sentimental creature than Ari. He can sense her ambivalence, he can tell as she exhales and considers his question that she is thinking about it. He watches her and she is not looking at him just now but if she were his expression would give little away. It is only contemplative and watchful and perhaps a little eliciting.
She speaks of permanence, of a potentially failed Working, and his smile is a soft thing, pensive. "I only wondered if it made you sad because it's beautifully done. I think even if I...well, even if I knew it wouldn't be permanent, if I didn't make it with permanence in mind, I would still want to hold onto it if it were me."
Said the Chakravanti.
This resolves quickly, though, and no sooner has he said these words than he nods. "But I'm glad that you're prepared to let it go and do our Working. What else will we need to do in order to create the talismans? What can I help you with?"
Ari
Perhaps some day Nick will have the opportunity to see Ari be sentimental and softer in her seeming. It is a theoretical possibility. It is now not entirely so alien a thought, with a particular other co-localized in Denver, but even that she regards with a sort of wary dismay. Maybe it is a Hermetic thing, or a discipline of sorts and one she has not seen fit to disobey at every available turn.
He would still want to hold on to it, Nick says, and she looks at the shape of her letters and the sweep of the river and the face of the moon and for a moment she can understand that want. For a moment, she can recognize the sadness. But it is not that sort of Art for Ari, and so the recognition does not become a thing lodged in her heart and wounding her. This loss will serve another; she is more transient in her moods than he. He accepts; she moves past.
"I thought we might work here. I thought you would like the light and the breeze and being out of doors." Ari's instruments are mixed in with the art supplies on the table. It seems a natural and fluid thing as one work flows so completely into another. "I have a page, here," she finds it in the collection of sketches on the table and brings it him, "Of how we might twist and braid the strands into the meditation cords. And I have blank flax to use for practice, if you'd like."
"Once we begin, we cannot set the ritual aside. We should be comfortable. I think," she says, and then pauses. "It would help me most if we could build the rote together and then I will shape its flow while you weave the fabric, so I can focus on making sure that it all binds together correctly. Would that work for you?
"Have you done much watching of the weaving?" she asks, because they were not often points that overlapped in the cabal of old. It takes awhile for them to sort out the practical details of how this might function.
Nick
Ari's last question, about Weaving, is a question that triggers a memory: indeed, the time that made him first resolve to learn to observe the Tellurian. That time seems long ago now, back during a time when he could not imagine that he would be here halfway across the country with his now-wife and someone who he did not imagine at the time would become a dear friend.
"I know how to do that," he says, "and I make use of it often enough." Sights are in fact something he rather enjoys using. It has gotten him into trouble in the past, and yet he persists.
The suggestion of staying outside seems to have pleased him, because he has shifted his stance a little and is now taking a more full look around at the area beyond her house, at its trees and the long grasses beyond, waving in the breeze. They are just at the edge of the city, he and Pen, and now so too is Ari.
"Your approach will work for me," he says easily, because Nick is flexible enough to accommodate others in their Working; it is a strength of his.
Ari
Ari is not nearly as flexible as Nick is. She has to tear a thing down and build it back up to incorporate the wide arc between their styles and observances. It is as much an act of Will for her to bend this far toward the middle as the ritual they are about to work will be. When they are settled on the fundamentals of it and while Nick has time to weave and unweave a few practice strands together, Arianna disappears into the house and returns with a shallow bowl of ice-clear rocks which are both Clarifying and Stony. She gives him time to study them, to turn them over in his hands. She does the same to re-acquaint herself with the resonance and how she will weave it.
When they are both ready, Arianna begins by studying the symbols they have collected one more time. Tracing some with her fingers. Reading some of the words aloud. And then it is time for the rending. The sound of tearing fabric is torturous, and they do not make clean and perfect cuts but rather rend it with their hands, and it demands of their arms and shoulders a particular energy, it requires of them more sacrifice than Will and focus alone.
With his mind's eye turned toward the Tellurian, Nick can see how Ari draws the Quintessence out of the Tass and up into the space between them. He can feel its resonance more clearly when it is free and unbound around them. Carefully, painstakingly, and with surprising deftness she begins to weave it into a loose vessel and into this vessel goes the shape of the shield that they want to effect, wound through and supported by the threads of the Tellurian, spun down and pulled thin enough until the metaphysical strands tangle with the working of his hands and there is the flow of Prime and Clarity and Resolution sliding beneath his fingertips, all held tightly in place by the Hermetic woman beside him. Where these echoed and half-seen threads touch upon the broken and fragmented symbols that call to it, the ink is made luminous and shifting for a span, and as it fades it because something hallowed and holy.
They work like this for hours, until Nicholas cannot feel even the soles of his feet against the dropcloth on her patio and until Ari's hands are shaking with the effort to keep the last of the etheric flow controlled.
Nick
They work like this for hours: Nicholas turns the rocks over in his hands, maps the feel and shape of them in his mind's eye and in this it allows him some intuitive sense for the spirit of the rock itself, for - essentially - its divinity, the texture and shape of the light it reflects both things that speak to the heart. See, a rock can be beautiful: anything can.
For hours, and they both shred the fabric and it's a meaningful sacrifice, isn't it, this work of Ari's and their sweat and the aching they will feel in their muscles afterwards? It's a sort of tithe, and for Nicholas there is meaning in this too.
There is warp and weft of the fabric beneath his fingers as he shapes the long strands into cords, wraps them around the rocks, and this is paralleled in the way that Ari shapes a vessel out of raw Prime, out of the energy of creation. He does not speak; he does not feel the need to speak and he would not want to distract her anyway. But no one could see what he is seeing, see the way they are binding themselves to the flow of the entire fucking universe at this moment, and deny that this place is for this moment hallowed.
By the time they are finished he has been standing so long that he cannot feel his feet and his fingers are alternately numb and sore, with the beginnings of blisters in places, and Ari has managed to contain the last of the Weaving within the vessel. They both likely have to summon their reserves to finish. But they do finish.
And at the end Nick almost collapses to the canvas, disregards the ink and wipes a smudged hand over his forehead. "Are you hungry? I'm hungry."
And so as they were depleted so will they be replenished, and the universe waxes and wanes.
the devil
Okie dokie! Fancy charm making time!
What's the effect she's trying to make the charms do?
Arianna
Rolls for mind-charm making with Nick as an assistant (contributing, but not co-rolling)! Simple mind shield charm, for the activator of the charm.
Things to know: Arianna is using Art she has created as a part of her focus (so I expect there will be an Art + something roll to support that first, or an Esoterica + Int roll, as her art is magical symbols and calligraphy, you choose!)
They are using Tass collected in a previous scene with Jess. (Suitable resonance)
the devil
Okie dokie! The value of the charm is 1 point, and you can create 4 at a time.
This is what the thingie says:
The mage makes extended Arete rolls once per hour during the crafting ritual. The number of successes required is equal to twice the point value of the charm. The mage must also spend the same number of points in Quintessence. For example, a set of charms with a point value of 3 would require 6 successes on an Arete roll, and 6 points of Quintessence.
SO! I would think that, in order to make a set of 4, Ari would need a successful crafting roll, and 2 successes on an arete roll and 3 quintessence/tass-ness
Arianna
Plan: Lower diff through coordinating ability & taking time & prior preparation; leverage Nick for a +1 suxx support; target 7 suxx for charm (2 to make them, 2 to duration, and the remainder to strength of shield)
Arianna
[Int + Esoterica: the search for the perfect symbols (Clever)]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (5, 6, 7, 7, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 7 ) [Doubling Tens]
Arianna
[Dex + Art (Calligraphy): illumination of the most perfect symbols, diff 3 per Heather]
Dice: 6 d10 TN3 (4, 7, 9, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 8 ) [Doubling Tens]
Arianna
Mind Charms, Roll 1: dif 3 (per Heather) + WP + Nick assist
Required Quint comes from the Tass
Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (3, 4) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Arianna
Mind Charms, Roll 1: dif 3 (per Heather) + 1 for extending + WP
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (8, 9) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Arianna
Err, that was roll 2, so this is:
Mind Charms, Roll 3: dif 3 (per Heather) + 1 for extending + WP
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (2, 8) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Arianna
Total suxx: 9
-2 to charm creation
-2 to duration (1 day)
= shield level 5
Arianna: -3 WP
Time to cast ritual: 3 hours
Creates: 4 charms, duration 1 day each, shield of 5, shelf-life 3 months (standard)
the devil
Woo! Sounds good!
Arianna
Thank you, thank you! *hugs*
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