how drunk are we today?
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (10) ( success x 1 )
AriannaNono, that roll was clearly for the hobgoblin. Seriously now dice...
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (6) ( success x 1 )
AndrésThe last anyone saw him, Nicholas and Penelope were peeling Andrés Sepúlveda out of a car and hauling him up four flights of stairs to drop him off at Kiara's, where for nearly two weeks hallucinations and delusions assailed him. Then the realization that he was supposed to be in Chicago for a fucking forensic pathology conference hit him, and he packed up his shit quicker than anyone had packed up anything recently and dumped himself on an airplane and that was the last anyone saw of him.
Until last night.
Details don't avail themselves right away. Back in town, Andrés wanted to get blackout drunk and be left alone. Mission accomplished. When he wakes up in a bed he doesn't recognize and peels his tongue from the roof of his mouth, the thought occurs to him that he not only needs to backtrack, but:
Any idea what happened to the radioactive spider last night?
And:
Wake up, Giametti, if this thing starts laying eggs we're fucked.
That's one way to start a Sunday morning.
AriannaVerdammt Spinnen.
Damned spiders. This is the first reply. Not long after, comes: On my way. Where?
There is a distinct benefit to having so much recent practice with Ars Mentis. It is this: when Andres' text comes through, Ari has the power to be clear and utterly unfuzzed mentally if not physically, despite the round of drinking of the previous evening. Oh, and it doesn't make her any less cantankerous about the prospect of spiders yet again requiring her undivided attention. The Giametti woman struggles into jeans and a button down shirt, ties her hair back in an expediant and still cleverly attractice way, and packs her instruments into messenger bag.
There is cold brew coffee in her fridge -- bless the Gods of foresight and planning -- and she pours some into two Thermoses.
She isn't entirely sure that Andres is clear of quiet. It's possible that the threat resides in his own mind alone. But there is one thing being the daughter of a War Mage makes clear: treat all threats as if they are deadly until proven others. Goddamned spiders included.
Having Uber'd it or found some other way home the night before, she is at the mercy of a similar service this morning to ferry her to the doc's location. Her imperious Hermetic attitude keeps conversations with strangers to the minimum. It is a such a blessing in some circumstances. She's less than perfectly put together when she arrives at the dedicated location, but even disheveled by Italian standards is pretty on point for American ones. Before talking or casting can begin, a metal thermos is pressed into the Etherite's hand.
"Coffee," is all the explanation he gets.
Arianna[Not as think as you drunk I am: Mind 1, coincidental, dif 4, - instruments]
Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (2, 7) ( success x 1 )
AndrésWherever their paths diverged last night it seems as if the Etherite's ended well enough. He has all of his parts when Arianna meets him outside the hotel where one would think he'd stop going for having drawn so much attention to himself in the past. Of all the things he is, forgettable is not one.
Here she comes, bearing coffee like a talisman. Andrés is wearing the same suit he had on last night, minus the jacket and tie. Standing on the street in two-toned Oxfords and a waistcoat and glasses, his hair a rat's nest, he is very much the visual representation of his faction this morning.
"Pinche spider," he says as he takes the thermos. Soon as it's in his possession he's taking off in the direction of a vehicle. "I told you we should have killed it."
AriannaThere is not enough coffee in all of Italia to ready her for dealing with spiders before breakfast. Ari is halfway through her thermos of cold brew and the cage of Ars Mentis wrapped around her mind is becoming less and less necessary but the irritation of spiders -- thank goodness she is not phobic of the tiny weavers -- does not abate with her growing wakefulness.
"I thought we had. With extreme prejudice. Is this not what you said last night, Andres?" Or perhaps it was No no, mercy unto all god's creatures. She could not remember in the slightest, but it did not sound like Ari to allow an insect in violation of her personal space to continue breathing -- book lungs or not. Their resemblance to her preferred study medium is slight, after all, and not at all enough to spare them.
"Good morning," she tells him, belatedly, as she follows. It is wrapped in a snarky sort of sarcasm. "Where is the spider now?" she asks. Hoping beyond hope that it is roughly the size of a quarter and easily squashed by an appropriately coincidental long-distance application of Ars Essentiae.
No dice.
Andrés"If I knew where the little creep was, I wouldn't be asking you, you know?"
Of all of the Spheres the man is able to manipulate, he somehow never thought to incorporate distance as a variable. This is one of those times where relying on his wife in order to scan across space bites him in the ass. His wife is dead. She isn't coming back.
"It's entirely possible it's dead. You know how I feel about spiders."
Arianna"Tch."
The sound is paired with her hand on his forearm, just light enough to capture his attention but not arrest his movement. It is a thoughtful thing, this pause between steps.
"Can we scry for it? Do you know enough of its mind or resonance for me to find it? I have no skill with Ars..." A little hitch, then she continues with the vulgar name for the sphere, "with Life."
Jokes ahoy! Of course she has no skill with life, she's a chantry-bred Hermetic. Rimshot. What not. She's heard them all by now, and in at least a few permutations each.
"Do you have a ..." -- don't say Thingy -- "Device that might find it faster?" Check it out, she speaks Etherite. (Almost [Not at all].)
Andrés"Do I have a device."
She might as well have asked him if the sky was blue or if he still had alcohol in his system. Granted, asking a scientist if the sky is blue is not nearly so straightforward as asking if he has a device.
Though her hand does not aim to halt forward momentum, the Etherite does turn towards Arianna when a thought occurs to him.
"Here," he says and removes from his pocket a device that looks as if it were the lovechild of a handheld PDA and a radar gun. He starts to press buttons. "This bad boy can detect radioisotopes attached to arachnid bio-signatures in the immediate area, but if you can broaden the area, say, to the size of the neighborhood..."
Arianna["Improving" the device with Hermeticky goodness?]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 6, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 7 ) [Doubling Tens]
AriannaOh, fuck.
To be precise, the Hermetic woman had meant a device for the Etherite to use. Her own magics did not reside in beeping booping twinkling boxes of circuitry and whizbangs. But he hands it over with such purpose that she cannot help but take from it his meaning: that she ought use the whizbangs and beepboops to find a radioactive spider.
She has had nightmares like this in Academy. It is clearly some sort of test.
In order to make the device more palatable, and also to give her a familiar framework from which to work, Arianna takes a piece of chalk out of her bag and looks over at the Etherite questioningly before drawing a few resonant sigils -- arcane in provenance and unknowable to most mundane passersby -- onto the body of the bastardized PDA and radar gun. This would either allow them to work together or it would crash their paradigms so terribly into one another that nothing good would come of collaboration for ages to come.
It is not the sort of thing one should do lightly, in broad morning sunlight, with an elevated BAC. So these two hop into it feet first.
"I should be able to help find the radiation, but the bio-signature, as you say, I am not attuned to."
There is some special circle of Hermetic hell for Initiates who engage in this sort of cross-Traditional nonsense. Pretending it does not exist, Willing it to not apply to her -- these are not the best coping mechanisms. And yet, there is a radioactive spider loose in Denver, and she has seen the documentary film of the Spider Man. She knows this ends poorly for everyone.
"Shall we?"
AndrésShall we?
He takes the chalk from her, sniffs it, hands it back. Alarm in his eyes, but the scanner survives her misappropriation and the chalk itself passes the olfaction test. Then again, given what happened the last time, he may just be having flashbacks to his most recent Quiet episode.
"It's not a chalkboard," he says of the device. This is as close to acquiescence as she's going to get. He strokes the device like one would pet a spooked animal, even goes so far as to whisper "Shhh" to it before she does whatever fucked-up thing she's about to do.
Arianna"But it will do," she answers to his assertion that the device is not a chalkboard.
It is breathtakingly beautiful, even just chalk on the odd edges of the device, even impermanent and without having any knowledge of the resonance of the shapes. Crude as it is, Ari's markings are clearly Artwork, and they elevate the device toward some truer -- let's be honest, More Arcane -- purpose.
In compromise, though, they are not permanent. The chalk will spread to their hands as they work and the whole of the defiling masterpiece will be gone before he knows it. It call all be wiped clean with water, or those alcohol wipes for cleaning finicky things. Unmade as if it never was. Most of her ritual artwork is like this: transient. Fit to purpose and then lifeless beyond it.
Nick asked her once if it made her sad. She thought it a stupid question. Does breathing make one sad, knowing that assortment of stardust and wind will never be again in your chest so precisely? Magic is like breathing; life is built around its scaffolding; it is to be reveled in and not mourned.
When she shows him the device it's clearly unhappy with the adornments. She might as well have bedazzled it with tiny glistening Hermetic crystals. She might have written the Names of Mercury -- who rules electronic communication -- and Mars -- who will find foes for a fight -- and Delphi -- because Oracles make clear the hidden things -- across it in Lisa Frank worthy brightness.
"And now," so businesslike, very down-to-brass-tacks and bereft of any sense of the ridiculousness of their position. "To find your spider." His spider. Because it is most definitely not hers.
Arianna[Find the effing spider: Corr/Forces/Prime, coincidental, base + 3 = 5, +3 conflicting instrument, -3 coordinating ability, +1 opposing paradigms, -1 going slow = dif 5 +WP]
Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (1, 9) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Arianna((Active magicks alert! Active magicks! :) Perhaps this will help give you an entry for Sera! :) ))
AndrésThese two were busy last night.
If the carnage had occurred in his hotel room, he would have been able to view the events in reverse. Not rewind time itself but his perception of it, at least. This is a trick he's told Arianna about before. Joking, of course. He gets blackout drunk on a regular enough basis that asking the cosmos to remind him what the fuck happened last night is becoming old hat for him.
At some point they left the bar where Andrés was celebrating his return to Denver - or celebrating having left Chicago, depending on how you shuffle around the words. He hates Chicago for reasons he may or may not have divulged to Arianna last night.
Last night, they left the bar and stepped into the black. Did whatever the hell led to adopting the phrase 'radioactive spider' into their lexicon. And then went their separate ways.
The spider is dead in the Dumpster out back.
This information pops up onto the screen, brief, in symbols Andrés does not understand. His eyebrows loft once and then he turns it to get a better glimpse at it.
"Filthy pagan," he says with some fondness.
AriannaThe sigils make perfect sense to Arianna. That his device suddenly speaks to her in the language of the Seraphim seems strange, but within the range of reason applied to magical workings.
"Hah! Dead already, and in the rubbish bin around back," she tells him, translating through a series of languages to arrive at something akin to a common tongue between them. This early, though, it is laced through with her native accent more strongly. And also with unbridled Hermetic pride. Not only had they triumphed already over the spider, preventing the horrors of the documentary from unfolding here in a city with insufficient high buildings to swing from, but she had triumphed over the gadgetry and forced useful magics out of it.
Surely there is some sort of terrible backlash coming. All the more reason to be practically gleeful in her pronouncement.
He calls her a filthy pagan and her nose wrinkles in mock disdain; she is too pleased to let it rumpled her feathers just now. Pleased that there is no spider to fight. Pleased that the whizbang did not undo her magics. Pleased that now, perhaps, there will be proper breakfast and coffee to fete their triumphs.
Coffee. Yes. She recollects her thermos from wherever it has been set aside. "We reserve that term for the Primals," she tells him, in a stage whisper, with an expression that speaks very much to the knowledge of the offense they are both offering to parties present and also unaccounted for. Then an exaggerated and mischievous wink. And then, gods be praised, a sip of her remaining coffee.
AndrésName-calling is an arguably preferable method of reacting to unexpected success than, say, grabbing his partner in crime and kissing her right on the mouth. Adrenaline makes people do crazy shit sometimes. This is not one of those times.
Her nose wrinkles. His brow creases as the symbols persist. She takes back her coffee, he takes back the device.
And there they stand on the sidewalk outside the Crawford Hotel, drinking coffee out of thermoses and not having to deal with radioactive spiders.
Which leaves:
"... primals?"
Serafíne(Awareness or whatever.)
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 4 ) [Doubling Tens]
SerafíneLast night or morning and coffee or whatever. Something something somewhere somewhere is enough of a scrim against a certain someone's (generally unerring) sense of Magick Afoot. Or whatever comes close to constituting it. Distinct enough to bring her out of the vague, thoughtful drifting stupor in which she drowses against her consor's side while he talks about Things or whatever. Business. Maybe he's napping, god knows she's been distant lately. Hardly seems to notice.
She has other things on her mind.
--
Alley? Dumpster? Sidewalk faire? Hardly matters. Coffee shop? Vietnamese soup joint? Tattoo parlor, vintage clothing store, high-end urban gardening shop, White Castle, brew-pub, tea purveyor, self-serve yaourt (that is French for yogurt and therefore costs more) storefront, used bookstore, pawn shop, beard-groomer's. Denver has everything. Even dumpsters full of radioactive spider-parts, perhaps. Strange how insects dissolve to nothing in the dry air of the high plains.
--
Also: her. Somewhere close, but perhaps not-too. 'Round the corner. Black sunglasses rimmed with silver studs. Threadbare, miniscule denim cut-offs over torn fishnets. An old white Siouxsie Sioux t-shirt over a black lace bra, beneath a fraying, vintage macrame vest, because why the fuck not. Combat boots and a necklace of golden pearls threaded with a bicycle chain.
The sunglasses fix on Andres. Swing to Arianna, then back.
"I think that shit you did woke me up." Curl of her mouth, one corner, says she's teasing. Maybe? Only one of them has met her, and he doesn't know her well enough to read the ticks of expression on her face. Maybe he's not good with ticks of expression at all. "'Fucking PDAs, man." Smirks.
Though really if they are about to make out our Sera is going to Leave Them to It.
Arianna"It is particularly Hermetic way to refer to those who prefer twigs and sticks and river rocks and blood in their magics," she says, having lowered the thermos away from her mouth. There is a seriousness, now, in how she addresses the question. As if she does not wholly approve of it. "It is poor-form in mixed company."
Like calling her pagan. Which could be passingly true. Possibly. They had never discussed her views on Gods, the old or the new.
Her resonance is stilled pulled in all around her. There is the lingering Ars Mentis effect that keeps her clear-headed despite the night's debauchery and their dancing with spiders. She is starlight cast through shadows, fleeting and shifting and twinkling in the distance. Paired with his resonance, she becomes an omen, the evening star held high and remote and cold in its aloofness. They are oracular, then, an augury spread across the pavement, for Sera to scry when she appears.
For Sera: They are not about to make out.
Regarding Sera: Her approach is noted, because of course it is, even risen recently from her slumber Sera is strikingly beautiful. The line of Arianna's inquiry is not hidden behind sunglasses, which would have been a grand thing to remember in her haste to get out the door to battle radioactive spiders, but No! So Sera can mark the way the other woman's gaze roams from head to toe and back again, appraisingly, and how the pride and nigh on smug cant of her smile does not shift much, but the shift it makes is an inclusive sort of thing. The sort of smile that leans in, that welcomes or invites. In the right company, she is great at parties.
It is unlikely they travel the same circles, but they do both look as if they would enjoy parties.
Fucking PDAs, man -- says Sera. Ari makes some small sound of agreement, but it amused and caught back a little. Withheld before introductions are made, as surely they must be. She feels compelled to know Sera a little better, to stand a little more fully in the light she casts.
"How rude of us, to break up your sleeping," she says. It tucks the amusement into the corners of her mouth and keeps it there, barely, in echo of Sera's tease. "Surely we owe you at least a coffee to make amends. Isn't that so, Andres?" she asks. This should be impetus enough for the Etherite to introduce them. Surely. Right?
Andrés[int + empathy: IDK, is it?]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 7) ( success x 1 ) [Doubling Tens]
AndrésSeveral seconds crawl by as Andrés attempts to make sense of the question. The seconds drag his attention across the sidewalk to hang it on the Cultist, with whom he is about as likely to make out as he is the Hermetic. He blinks. That crease between his brow deepens.
He looks back at Arianna.
"Oh!" he says like the answer just hit him upside the head. Then he passes the thermos to Sera. Sharing is caring. "Serafíne, this is Arianna. House Bonisagus, yeah? Arianna, te presento a Serafíne. Cult of Ecstasy."
Smoooooth.
With that he wipes the screen of his device against the thigh of his slacks and tucks it away in a back pocket.
Serafíne"Everyone calls me Sera," so the creature appends to Andres' introduction. That's all. Otherwise: pretty damned impressive, actually. He even managed to not-apply the new-fangled tradition-name she does not care to remember and refuses to attempt to pronounce. Unhooks her left hand from the pockets of her denim shorts enough to wave a hallo! that flashes hints of tattoos: on black ink framing her fingers, both edging and covering her palm. The curling rather delicately over her inner wrist. Another, larger piece clear on her forearm.
This hint of inquiry or awareness as her blond brows lift above the frame of her sunglasses. "Think I'd prefer a Bloody Mary to coffee. Or maybe just orange juice," last night is still in her veins. Today has a hallucinatory quality that dovetails with the lingering remnants of magick and wrap of their combined resonance that lends this moment the surreal portent of certain of her dreams, and she is not entirely confident whether she is sleeping or waking. And sure, she could find that answer with a half-thought of a spell, but why?
Her dreams, though, are not usually so precise. Sera Understands - though vaguely - that House Bonisagus means Hermetic. Wonders if that means another tumble of names-and-titles is coming. Secretly kinda hopes so. But she wants to clarify. "So... Hermetic, right?"
AriannaAt some point she has shared her house name with Andres. They were probably drinking. He had her pegged for Heremtic from about thirty seconds after they had met. It's not really that she screams it from every pore and sinew, just that there are some turns of phrase and manners of bearing that speak it to it less than subtly.
"You have a beautiful name," she tells Sera, and the expected tumble of titles and names does not come. It is not even a thing held back, barely, behind her eyes. There are names and titles and a long enough litany of lineage to appease even the old testament god of begats and begats and begats, and all of that is entirely out of place for a bright-shining morning in Denver. All of it is blissfully elsewhere. It could be produced, with suitable flourish and without delay, if requested.
The cant of her words is slightly Othered. Touched by a romance language, and that is re-affirmed by the multi-lingual cant to Andres' introductions, and the Grazi she offers him in reply.
"And yes, guilty as charged. Ordo Hermes and bani Bonisagus," this offered with such familiarity with the titles that she could clearly be nothing else. "I haven't had the pleasure of meeting any of your Tradition before," she confesses to Sera, and it is with some curiosity and open interest, not with the derision or dismissal one might expect from the Order.
"The Tractor Room on..." her brow furrows and she points in the direction of this made-up-on-the-spot brunch location. "I cannot remember the street name, but it is that way, and it has impressive bloody marias." This is about as helpful as she is about locations in Denver. She probably only knows about it due to Andres. But it is offered as a potential solution.
Her grazie nets her a "Claro" in response. Mindless lapse into the mother tongue and it isn't as if Sera doesn't understand him when he does so. If anything the nearness to another whose English is not native draws out his own accent.
With the introductions over he swipes his bare left hand over the bed-mess of his hair. Lazy attempt at restoring order to it. He needs a shower and a change of clothes but that isn't either of their problem.
"'Impressive,' eh?" Musing tone. Though he has in his possession the coffee he has not been drinking it. If he wanted to be sober, he wouldn't have gotten drunk. "We'll see about that."
And off he goes.
Serafíne"Cheers," so says Sera, by way of a thank-you to the compliment on her name. Knows Hermetics, or perhaps more precisely A Hermetic Or Two, well enough to understand the importance of names to them. "A friend gave it to me, back when I was a babymage. So like, my folks get no fucking credit for it."
"If I'd known that you hadn't met one of us before, though, I'd've tried to conjure up Jim. I think he makes a better first impression. He's really into yoga and shit."
Nothing othered about her own language. Listen to the cheerful way the creature throws around profanity. Does understand Andres at least when he breaks out the Spanglish, but also: doesn't really let on. Keeps her hair bleached a glorious, golden blond, so there's no reason to guess at her roots. Except for: her roots. And hell, perhaps the way her skin takes to the sun in the summer, and this one only starting.
The only thing othered about her is her presence: bright, intense, physical, heady, untamed.
Swings into not-precisely-step as Andres leads them off in search of Sunday brunch, or at least: Sunday-brunch drinks. "You sure you know where you're going?"
AndrésOver the shoulder, cheerful: "Of course not!"
Arianna"I've made a game of following when he gets like this," Arianna tells Sera, as they all swing into motion, loosely following the Etherite who has put himself on point. "Sometimes it leads to fantastic drinking, and other times to Apprentices, or to radioactive spiders."
This is a node to the evening before, not that she rightfully remembers it. Also she would not unwind Time, even if it were within her grasp, to better know the fate of the eight legged offender.
"But it is never boring," and this, from the Hermetic, is a sort of high praise. Her complexion is a faint olive tone, and it echoes her heritage as strongly as the slight cant of her accent. The point of her chin and the loft of her cheekbones are likewise hallmarks of further coasts. But her hair is close to its native color, and the crows feet around her eyes are in keeping with her actual age. Ari is not a Life mage or one that may slow the progress of time against her person. And as the caffeine in her bloodstream takes hold, at long last, and they shift toward companionable things, she lets the Ars Mentis rite unravel and the thrum of her resonance finally dims.
Serafíne"Dude, I'd be more down for mad-scientist adventures if I'd been to sleep today."
So she says, putting to lie her earlier accusation that their magickal antics and/or damned not-precisely-making-out woke her the fuck up. The sunglasses have not left her eyes, but Ari and Sera and now in a kind of step behind Andres, close enough that if Ari catches the sly side-glance with which Sera favors her, she will have the impression of dark eyes, more pupil than anything else.
"Do you know Nick and Pen?"
Andrés"Boring?"
For being as short as he is, the Etherite's stride lends his pace a quickness that is almost inconsiderate. Almost, because it has to compete with his mouth, which is attached via bones and nerves to his brain, which does not give a shit whether it is considerate or not.
He talks with his hands. Lucky for his wingspan, the sidewalk is not churning with people today. Nobody wants to walk far when it's raining.
Sera would be more down for adventures if she'd been to sleep today.
"The average person spends a third of their life sleeping, Serafíne, do you have any idea what one can accomplish if they stop squandering their time like that?"
Asked the mad scientist of the seer.
Arianna"Quite well, actually," Ari answers Sera, and the spread of her grin is a margin wider. "They are why I came to Denver."
Perhaps Sera knows that Nick and Pen are caballed with another, a friend from their past who is recently relocated. If so, this is enough to cement the identity of that personage. If not, then it definitely hints at a breadth and depth of stories untapped in this stroll, which is growing ever brisker in pace. Ari adjusts her stride length to match the mad scientist's velocity.
"Never boring, I said." Emphasis on the never.
"I take it you are friends?" This, then, to Sera, but the circle of the question is left unclear. The query is either that she is friends with Andres, which seems likely, or with Nick and Pen, which seems equally likely. Both are of interest to the Bonisagus, who is failing to keep up with the stereotypes of bookishness know-it-all-ism today.
Serafíne"I've got like a mansion and shit that I visit when I sleep, and sometimes birds or talking eyeballs or French-braids or ladies with their heads on backwards," the seer is exagerrating. Prophetic dreams are nearly always elliptical, evasive, ellusive, even when they are also sometimes: powerful, gut-wrenching, seizure-inducing, "or what-have-you tell me the future and shit, so. IDK, maybe you oughtta do it more? It's pretty fucking awesome.
"Plus snuggling. Snuggling goes with sleep like - " This quizzical pause. The search for an appropriate metaphor is enough to stop Sera (fast enough to keep up with Andres, sure, but forever lagging because: morning, because the speed in the LSD has worn off, and left her with the lingering aftermath that is beautiful and achy and SLOW DOWN GODDAMNIT ANDRES) in her tracks. Finally, she hits upon, "French 75s and a really good night to come. Or spakly bits and Carneval."
And, Ari takes it that they are friends? Or inquires, rather. Sera is: looking up and perhaps catching up. Maybe they pause for her. They should. If not, she could perhaps staccato time. Seems pretty profligate, but no more so than some of her other uses of magick for her own pleasure.
Her answer to the question is a shrug, though. Thoughtful sure, but: she doesn't know them that well. Any of them. "I like Nick. Pen seems cool. This guy's a fucking weirdo."
Which isn't a criticism. Three or four times they've met and Sera knows: this guy's a fucking weirdo. Okay. Aren't we all.
AndrésAt the intersection he has to stop and wait for them because of traffic patterns and red lights and common sense. He's reckless at times but not reckless enough to walk across the street when cars are doing the same thing in the perpendicular direction.
He whistles an up-and-down arpeggio while bouncing on the balls of his feet, almost as if he isn't fucking listening. Removes the chalk-smeared device from his pocket. Squints at it. A spark of an idea. At that he looks like he might run into traffic. But he doesn't.
This guy's a fucking weirdo.
"Dale, cabrón," he says to himself. Digs a small notebook out of a back pocket pen pen where the fuck there it is. Pen. Scribbles down the thought he just had before it can get too far. Made his own sense out of the smeared nonsense on the device.
The light may well change before he pulls his head out of his ass, but he's onto something.
AriannaIt is Ari's turn to be the counter-ballast of the conversation, while the other two speaking of sleeping and dreams. She offers a little approving color -- Sparkly things and Carneval are a capital combination -- and otherwise focuses on keeping up with the hustle. Even with a typical European walking pace, Andres' hustle borders upon impolite.
When they are all collected at the street corner, watching the traffic swim past, she taps him on the shoulder and points a ways down the street.
"I think it is there," she says, helpfully, though the metal sign and farm-to-table rustic chic atmosphere would have proved a ready cue whether she pointed it out or not. There is polite conversation to make now, sussing out social connections, feigning interest in one another's interests, but Sera doesn't seem the sort for forced niceties.
Which is a relief. Ari is quite good at the game, but prefers not to play it.
"He's my favorite Denver weirdo so far," Ari says, ruffling her fingers through Andres' hair and smirking as she pulls back away from him. "Though one of his Apprentices is not bad either. Oh! This reminds me. Andres?"
A pause, to see if she has his attention. The cant of her expression has gone serious though her look cannot be as imperious and concerned as it would like, with her hand shielding her eyes from the overhead sun.
"Has Margot returned? Is she hale?"
SerafíneNeat lift of a sharp chin by way of inquiry. Here is something strange and almost occasionally incisive about Sera: a certain note, at a certain time, where she has or finds or forges an edge in the very air around her. Glance; Arianna to Andres. The ruffling-of-hair.
Funny how golden the affectionate little gesture makes the morning. How it focuses Sera's sunglass-hidden gaze quite suddenly on Andres.
Doesn't say anything. Considers inquiring about the device and but also considers that the answer could potentially bore the hell out of her. Capacitors and whatever. Oh fuck. That reminds her of the robot-talking-girl.
AndrésThe hair-ruffle is tolerated if he even notices it occurs. Serafíne is better able to read people than he is to pretend otherwise, and she can see below the surface of his beleaguered acceptance of the physical contact.
"How the hell should I know?"
His apprentice and her status are not on his radar, it should seem. Given what they were discussing the last time the three of them were in the same room, one would think the Etherite would have an answer that was not glib or shitty.
He adjusts his glasses and tries again: "Last I heard, they were still in one piece."
And the light changes.
AriannaAri is not particularly empathic, so she does not know the depths of Andres's soul or how he feels about her faux-affection, only that it is offered with the sort of annoying fondness that flirts around the edge of friendship's margins and never transgresses into something more. Mark: Ari has made no attempt to touch Sera. Not even to extend a hand for shaking in greeting. Aside from the hair ruffle -- nay, even including it -- the touches she offers are directed, and clear in their compass, and set to a particular purpose.
"One piece is favorable to many," Ari says, as if this no news is good news approach is acceptable to her. In truth, it is not, but she obscures that behind an inscrutable indifference. As if she had only asked after the younger woman to be polite. Though that is not entirely fair, as the furrow of her brow when she spake Margot's name was more intent than indifferent.
Ari has been accused of being fickle of heart. Perhaps it is true.
The light changes, and she steps off the curb without looking left or right first. Such blind assurance in the rules of traffic -- a surer proof of consensus among the masses than any other she has found in modern society -- and human compliance.
SerafíneThe Cultist is more drifting than speaking now. Lights change and Ari steps off the curb and Sera, too, although this is less a response to the lights, which she is ignoring entirely, than it is motion-to-motion. The others step off. Sera follows.
Oh, hey. Here is the place. Arianna suggested it but Sera knows it. Or at least: knows the place now that she's here. The waitress taking orders at the rough-hewn outdoor tables is on Dee's roller derby. Dark, close cropped hair and enough familiarity that she unlatches the little gate framing the tables off from the sidewalk to let them squeeze in without making them go around. Time enough for Arianna and Andres to array themselves at the table the waitress offers up while Sera and the other girl exchange hugs and Sera puts in for the first round of drinks and Sere tips up her sunglasses so the other young woman can check the state of her pupils.
Yep. Still huge.
Enough time for Arianna and Andres to talk about apprentices, if they want to. Or Andres' revelation on the street, earlier. Or whatever, before Sera comes back to the table to which they have been directed. Sera is still kinda thinking about how Andres reminds her of Patience. And other things.
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