[Giametti]
When your stated occupation is Hermetic Mage, an ecletic combination of professional opportunities fall into your lap. Arianna has spent a significant part of April handling odd requests for Illumination or ritual design from her House in return for the eventual release of her library. And so she has been infinitely less accessible to the Hermetic community of Denver as an obvious corollary, but also because Arianna simply isn't that well ensconced in the machinations of the Order in her immediate surroundings. She maintains deeper ties, still, to her former Chantries and Collegia.
She is also blessed with the sort of presence that defies modern technology's embrace. So when Will wants to get in touch with her, he likely finds her cell phone in some sort of nonresponsive state, and also that she doesn't not frequent the Chantry, but that the clever and smooth negotation of social channels prevails. Penelope knows where Arianna's new abode is, and also how to reach her in a fairly reliable way, and a message is passed on and then, with a confluence of luck and opportunity, when Arianna's phone next works, William's inquiry is returned.
Clearly they will need to find a better way of getting in touch during emergencies or for the gatherings of social butterflies than telephone through Pen. Perhaps this will be on Will's subtle agenda of things to speak to when they are together on this outing. Arianna does not have an agenda of talking points; she is grateful for a reason to break with her intense study of one symbological set or the other. Or perhaps her ill-fated attempts to acquaint herself with Aramaic only through primary texts -- some things are so much harder to learn outside a Collegium community.
That conversation, from her side, goes a little like this:
"William! I was delighted to hear that you had asked after me. I apologize for the delay in returning your inquiry. Technology is so fickle, as you must know. This phone is less reliable than scrying though I have been cautioned against such things outside the walls of Academy and Collegium."
So many words.
"You are too kind--" Clearly responding to some compliment, as the Jerbiton is free with his poetic license.
"An estate sale?" A pause, in which the level of adventurousness of rummaging through old things is measured against looming deadlines and found desirable. "How positively intriguing! Is there anything in particular for which you are searching?"
Longer pause, hearing his undoubtably inspiring answer.
"Certainly. I have a hatchback, so that will likely fit." Pragmatism. Briefly. Without much embellishment.
"I'll pick you up at ten?" More pragmatism, so droll, address exchanged for their meeting, description of her car exchanged for the recognization of friendlies.
It is five minutes to ten when her car rolls up to the appointed meeting spot, and it is indeed some dark as night blue hatchback four-wheel drive Denver appropriate vehicle. Inside there are leather seats with seat warmers. Really, this is all that needs knowing. There are a variety of bells and whistles, all decided upon by a previous owner, most of which function on any given day. Luckily it is cold today, as the Air Conditioner is not among the functional capabilities today. Because: Hermetic. Things are just a little more glitchy around Arianna than other mages. He may discover this if he tries navigating by GPS on his phone -- eventually they stop long enough for her to haul an old, out-dated Thomas Brothers' map -- incidentally from a yard sale -- to replace the 'unreliable Technocracy wizardry' of Google maps.
There are a bevy of languages they can choose from for conversation. Arianna has been speaking a distressing amount of English lately, so perhaps they find another on which they overlap. She offers Italian, her primary, and then German, Greek and Hebrew. Latin is not primarily a spoken language, and Enochian is not for pedestrian things. Surely this well-pedigreed Jerbiton can offer more than American drawl, of which she is so very tired at the moment. And if they do not have an overlap then, hah! Then they have perhaps a common interest to track down -- she should learn one of his numerous tongues and he one of hers. It is a challenge, or a reason to meet more often. She is curious about Spanish, now, after her growing attachment to drinking with Andres. And French is always good. The Asiatic languages also draw: Mandarin perhaps?
Conversation is spritely in the car after salutations,and unbridled by the restraint of speaking to or like Commoners. Hermeticism abounds! It's a wonder the engine works at all with this much blustering going on inside the cabin.
[Holmes]
William does whatever it is that William does, and one can not be terribly concerned when they find out that part of that time is actually spent being a very bad Hermetic. Not about like Arianna can be- rebellious terrible creature- but rather in the fact that he isn't constantly striving for perfect.
Sometimes, William likes to take naps and play with his phone and have one night stands. It's simply what he does. He's in the market for a library soon enough, because all good hermetics are in want of an even better library. He's taking care of his mentor's things, making sure the house stays clean and the lawn stays maintained but he hasn't dared to use Henry's library because this isn't his to use. Even though he <i>does</i> happen to have some of the more rare and interesting things hiding in there.
But he does tire of being a bad herself and, instead, seeks company. That company comes in the form of a Bonisagus who has a phone that is on the fritz.
He lives a very public life, and while some may fault him for it, this serves a vital purpose- it leaves a trail as to where he has been and gives a diary as to what happens before he disappears somewhere. William lives a loud and public life because he needs people looking at him because if they aren't looking at him he may disappear, like some idea that has long lost its followers and forms.
"There's an estate sale about an hour out from town and I've got a good feeling about the lady's reading choices," he says with a grin, "I met Pen in an armoir, wanna see how we hit it off in furniture?"
they agree, and away it does go.
He delights in words and Words and talking, bandies about and enjoys his good stories. His French is flawless and he's working on his Greek- she'd learned during their trip that his apprenticeship hadn't been a traditional one so he's making up for the gaps and filling in as needed. His Enochian, however, is polished and cared for and treasured like it was Truth, because in his eyes it is more than just language.
Dear god, his French is beautiful though. She learns it's his first language, that his mother is from Quebec. That he's born in Louisiana- and?
That he is willing to spend a metric <i>shit ton</i> today on the right items, if they were the right items (Sold some paintings, this one. Would rather not part with Jenn's work but if it meant getting some pretty potent artifacts then she would probably understand)
"I'm actually here to pick up a journal," he admits, "I'm hoping she has other things, too, but the journal is apparently important to someone who has been talking my ear off the last week and a half."
Medium problems.
[Giametti]
Her education has gaps in other places, though it is impeccable on the Hermetic fronts. All of them. Shining example she was, until that trifling matter over Waking Up late, and then being always behind the eight ball and then fuck it, why bother. She does not say this so plainly because she can bring herself to reduce the trajectory of a life time down to a single run on sentence, but he no doubt gets the jist of it from her utter fluency in esoterica through her masterful Greek, and the wistful way she glances at him through her eyelashes when he transgresses into French.
"I have always wanted to learn Français," she tells him, with the proper reverence for his pronunciation in her tone. She is telling him this in Italian and then quickly in Greek, as it turns out they do not share a native tongue and she is equally eloquent in any of hers, a true polyglot which, like an adventurous Bonisagus, is something of rarity.
He in turn learns that her native language is Italian, and that she was born somewhere in Tuscany, but that her mother's House is Bonisagus and so they spoke the language also of the then-Primus, which would be German, and English was required of her in Academy. The others came naturally: Greek and Latin to study the classics, Enochian because they are both Hermetic, and the way she cradles words against her tongue in any language is absolutely stunning.
And she can tell him things about that journal, by the shape of the letters and the cant of their serifs. She can tell him about the tension in their hand as they wrote, about their mindset, whether the author was left or right handed. After the careful inspection of a few pages, and some practice, she could probably falsify a few lines of poetry in the hand of the absent curator of facts and fictions. She doesn't give him this boast, but the sense of it hangs about her like a aura bent to more than mischief.
"What makes this sheaf of such importance?" she asks him, with her hair tucked back behind one ear, and a glance thrown his way across the bridge of her nose. They are still looking through it, Arianna's finger trails down the margin of a page without touching to the paper truly. There is an easy, almost scandalously familiar way to how she regards the tome, though also all the appreciation of a stern librarian's secret attachment to a favorite book or passage.
"And who is it, dear William, that has so monopolized your attention for a week or better about it? Curious is to me. A close companion?" Twinkle goes the green in her eyes. "A maybe more than just a friend? You must forgive me my impertinence but I was forced back to Collegium for the better part of April and I am so bereft of stories to tell that I think my heart might wither at their absence. Lend me a story, William, and make it a good one. I beseech thee: was it maybe more than just a friend?" So hopeful, so blatantly playful.
And so she taunts them as they turn their attention to other things. Arianna has an unwavering sense of what is worth her time at this sale and what isn't. There is a clawfoot dresser with impressive attributes that she spends a while lusting after, but does not seem ready to commit to. Though the hardware is original and the scuffs are few and far between. The middle topmost drawer seems stuck, and there are too many witnesses for her to rightfully consider the proper words and sigils to unstick it, or even if she can without a command of Ars Materiae.
[Holmes]
She has the kind of Hermetic education that makes someone weak in the knees, makes William wonder what in his history he was missing. He has met so few people who went through a traditional apprenticeship, feels strange knowing that so many others share this same experience with their peers. He wonders, sometimes, if he would have preferred it. Wonders, sometimes, if Henry keeps the truth of his own unconventional initiation into the Order a secret that stays between Kalen, Orrin, Richard, William, and himself. Richard didn’t seem the collusion type when (then) Elijah had met him. Maybe it was compassion or a desire to make things easier on the kid.
Those traditional types can often think poorly upon those who circumvented the process, who are missing chunks of their own culture and piecing it together from texts like some self-initiated pagan creature. William does not think in those terms, but there are others that do. He is a diplomat, he need not make his job any harder than it already is.
William acknowledges that he woke up early (sixteen, he says) but does not talk much of it. Mentions that he didn’t meet other mages until he moved here, didn’t even know what that was until he moved here. Doesn’t say what it was like to be alone for so long. Carefully moves the subject elsewhere or back on to her because it seemed strange to tell people. Laughs it off as Prada luggage if she asks him, though he does acquiesce and tell her that in the event that there are drinks or starlight or pounding, heart-wrenching music then he will talk about it.
He loves Italian, though. Expresses the desire to learn, says he was born in New Orleans though he sounds more a southern gentleman than a Cajun boy. As much as he loves Italian, the way she says Enochian makes him smile. “Truth given form,” he says, half to himself and half awed.
When they get to the journal, Arianna notices several things about it: the paper is old, yes, maybe early in the 20th century- Depression era, or maybe before. The ink is faded. The author bore down too heavily on the paper and left indentations on the next page. The cover is worn. It shows the wear of being opened and closed many a time. Dropped and thrown and kicked and rubbed in mud and muck and blood and grime. Someone’s cleaned it up for sale. The hand that wrote these letters wrote like the pen was far too small for his hand, written in neat block letters at the beginning and descending into something that looked like absolute gibberish at the end.
“I have a problem,” he starts, says it like it is a problem but the grin on his face that hits the edges says otherwise. He doesn’t brag about this, but there is mischief, “and that problem is that my hearing is just a little too good. I’ve always had a vivid imagination, and am possibly somewhat detached from the fundamentals of what is and what isn’t. But! My hearing is too good, and I’ve always had a tendency to hear things other people don’t often listen to.”
He may be dragging this out, but he has a feeling that he is learning something from Arianna, that she loves a good story and by heavens he was going to tell one, “and that’s the thing with the dead, you see, the ones that stay- the ones that don’t move on again to some grand karmic purpose or return to the universe or wherever it is and whatever it is that we do when we cease to be… people that stay stay because they have a reason to be here. Human beings are creatures of passion and the dead are creatures that are only kept here by their own sense of purpose. Their own passions and memories and chains that bind them here.
“Some think it’s a blessing to stay, many of them have given up on the idea of transcendence entirely, but not all of them.”
“Not all realms that we can visit and travel between are the purview of the celestines- there are pockets and holes and rips and bridges. Places that are high above the skies with angels and the deepest, coldest parts of the void that house things that human minds can’t fathom- I was told once that the impermanent- mortal shells- are funny things. We presume that things which we can not truly comprehend would mean us ill, as though we mattered so much.
“Ghosts and wraiths lose the shell, but they retain their humanity and become distilled, become the core of what we are as human beings for both good and ill but it is not our natural state to linger after death.”
“A lead up to a simple answer: I am seeking this journal for a dead man, Ethan Madison, who has made it his personal mission to make certain that this journal be kept safe and his knowledge passed on before his death. There is something in that journal that should lead us to his Work-“ said capitalized “-and can see fit what to do with it from there.
“I hear too well, dear lady. I do not regret this.”
[Giametti]
When he expresses a desire to learn her native tongue, the reply comes quickly and unequivocally, "I will teach you, and you shall teach me French, and together we shall study tongues."
Now, doesn't that just sound a little more risque than language lessons, especially from an older woman with a smile like Arianna's. But she means it figuratively, surely she means it figuratively, and there is no sense of knowing wink or slanted smirk or secondary innuendo about it. Save that she is like a Siren, or a Lorelei, or a Leanan Sidhe, a wander's star and less than outright omen. And we all know what happens to the Oracles, dear readers. History is not kind to the watchers and seers.
He does have this much pegged: she loves a good story. When his voice shifts and the cadence of his words speaks to something less than ordinary, she leans close, such that her arm is pressed against his, and rests her elbows on the dresser by which they stand and her chin sits on her balled fists, so that she can alternately watch his expression and the journal, attention flicking between these two bright points, restless and receptive.
It is more than a good story, it is a ghost story. He speaks to her of Spirit things, a void in her experience if not her education, and she listens with the sort of rapt attention that leaves William feeling as if he were the only one in the room. In fact, the other patrons of the estate sale either give them wide berth or, so attracted by the intensity of the two Hermetics, transit near enough to overhear and perhaps linger a little overlong.
I hear too well, dear lady. I do not regret this.
"And neither should you," she tells him firmly. "For it is of your Art und Weise," the phrase tumbles out in the most fitting tongue. If he does not understand precisely, he probably takes her meaning. She is an expressive thing. "And your listening has brought you this: a story and a treasure hunt and the chance to sate the wishes of a man gone but not forgotten. Might you be in need of an adventuring fellow, good William?"
And then, there, yes, there is a twinkle in her eye. She is always up for a good adventure, damn the cost and also the consequence. While following the bidding of a dead man and his journal probably is ill advised under more than one Hermetic proviso, she is vehemently opposed to leaving side-quests unfinished. It is part of her dynamism.
"I know a thing or two about secrets and riddles," she confesses, pushing off her elbows and back to standing. There may be a little bit of nail-buffing-on-shoulder pride in how she says this, but only in tone. She would not be so outrightly boastful
[Holmes]
And she says, dearest lady, that she will teach him. That they shall study together and be the worst of influences and therefore the best of friends. There is delight in his eyes- bright and green and should-have-been-blue because he seems like the type of person who should be blond and blue. That he could do no wrong, but he can do wrong. He’s just far enough outside of the stereotype of golden boy that he can get away with getting into trouble. It’s unexpected still. He’s no stereotype. No trope.
William speaks of spirit things like he knows them, and he does- in the pit of his soul. His stomach. His very being, he knows the spirits. Knows ghosts and the lands of the dead and their wants because he feels so terribly stuck between worlds. He may well be part of the Order and the Order would never call on him for such things- he even disagrees rather vocally with how they see the spiritual world (considers it too simplistic, too restrictive, unable to see what is there in the wake of their former glories)- but he does these things all the same.
She loves a good story. William has been full of ghost stories since long before he got his name.
She says that she is good with puzzles. That they may be the best of bedfellows in this endeavor.
“Dear lady,” he starts, “I would like no other company than yours.”
His eyes go to something in the distance, like he’s looking at a crowd or like he’s trying to filter through information, “but… we may want to get this book and hit the road fairly quickly. I don’t believe we’re the only ones looking for this.”
[Giametti]
"May I?" she asks, extending her hand to accept the journal if he will offer it over for her inspection. Arianna is a well-trained Hermetic, but useless on the Spiritual front. Books, though, she understands and if this ghost has led William to the journal while it was in the demesne of the estate sale, then Arianna reasons that there may be other clues here hidden among the old lady's library or goods that would aid them in their quest to wrest this man's Workings from the anonymity of time.
She reads quickly. An agile mind and familiarity with too many tongues is also a blessing. Skimming the pages she attempts to cross-reference the information with anything she'd seen in the splay of other books and writings. It is a fast perusal, and not particularly deep, but there is still a moment when she gestures with a long, carefully manicured finger and then taps the page with her nail. Mutters something a lot like yes, this, this right here as she passes him the journal and wanders a few paces away to rummage through -- in the most respectful way -- a box of eclectic tomes with wildly colorful cover art (ah, the New Age revival of sacred geometry and astral planes) until a name or sigil echoes the page in the journal. Flip flip go the pages. Flip flip until something in her expression is triumphant and she passes the tome back toward him:
There is marking in the margin of a hand quite like the journal. It is gibberish to her now, but surely some study in a safer place without other ones to challenge their claim would prove purposeful.
"I think this may prove useful," she says, with a sharpness to her eyes to match the diffuse and filtering look in his. "And even if it doesn't, it is hilarious how they draw the penumbrae here. William?" A pause, her hand laid on his arm to call him back from wherever that look has taken him.
"Shall we?"
Ari does not frighten at the suggestions that others may be also in the game, but she does quicken to the urgency of their departure. Which is a shame, for she wanted to look for an appropriate frame for Pen's mirror project, and possibly some very old books indeed, so that she might study their inscriptions. But there was a mystery afoot, and adventure always trumps pragmatism.
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