No Names

Sepúlveda

There is a bar on Champa Street called Bar. Bar Bar, to be more specific, and if you're there for the coffee you might call the place Carioca Cafe but from the outside it looks like the sort of cash-only pool-shark haven that turns into a mosh pit after dark.

During business hours the place is populated by alcoholics and unemployed and day drinkers. One of the best places to go if you're looking to slum it. Nobody in here is here to slum it but it's hard to tell from looking at some of them.

The guy at the end of the bar when Arianna walks in looks as if he just got here. He could look as if he's been here a while. He's wearing eyeglasses with black metal frames and a bomber jacket over most of a three-piece suit. His prematurely-graying hair is a mess and he hasn't shaved his face in several days.

His resonance is strong enough for Sleepers to notice it. She should have no trouble. 'Should' being the operative word.

Giametti

[Awareness, for formality's sake]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )

Giametti

For most of the city, it has been a long day.  There have been noses to the grindstone and pipers to pay; there have been looming deadlines or strained expectations about the coming of Spring. It has been a long day, in a string of long days, which has grown into a month of misgivings, or even a new year of regrets.  They are here to forget, or to comiserate, or, for a select few, even to connect.

Ari is not here for any of those things. When she sweeps into the dusklight of the Bar Bar, she seems immediately out of place.  Her clothes are too nice, subtle cues give away the quality, and when she pushes her sunglasses up to rest upon the top of her head, only the finest of crows lines edge her eyes. They are deeper when she smiles. She is not smiling. Perhaps the clearest cue that she does not belong her is the white-brightness of her coat.

There is a tug from the end of the bar, a sense of something Other and almost as misplaced as she is.  It draws the edge of her attention, but doesn't command it wholesale.

"Whiskey. No ice. Double," she orders in a collection of crisp and almost forgettable syllables.  She pulls up a seat two stools down from the man at the end of the bar, with his greying hair and his bomber jacket.  There is a stool between them still, but it will almost undoubtedly remain empty given the pooling of his resonance with hers.

Two mages walk into a Bar...

... hey, isn't there a joke that starts like that?

Sepúlveda

[bc rolling awareness is the polite thing to do]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 6, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )

Sepúlveda

Nothing makes for the maintenance of both distance and privacy like pooling together one's resonance with a complete stranger's.

As far as strangers go these two don't look as if they come from complete opposite sides of the tracks. One of them is polished and poised and looks as if she not only wandered in by mistake but decided to stay for the sake of asserting her right to exist in dingy places, chromosomes be damned. The other one, barring the suit, looks as if he could live in the neighborhood. The suit and the rumpled academic air about him.

He's yawning and removing his cellphone to respond to a message when the newcomer sits down near enough for him to notice but not enough for him to suspect ulterior motives.

For his part he feels as if he has recently used the Spheres of Matter and Prime. He currently has a Life effect going to counteract the effects of sleep deprivation.

When he puts his phone away he says, "You're not drinking a double of well whiskey are you."

Giametti

That is a little bit of how it happened.  But then, her type has a way of using stubbornness to over-ride any sense of wrong-doing or wrong-having.  It is a time honored tradition within the Tradition.

"I should hope not," she says, fixing the bartender with a pointed look to ward off that very happenstance now that the man has brought up its likelihood.  Once that is sorted, in a disturbingly firm and also oddly polite manner, she turns to him again.

"Thank you for sparing me the indignity."  The cadence of her words is formal, but there is a spark of mischief to her eyes.  Her posture is looser than her language would imply.  "Forgive me the turn of phrase, but you feel a little like proverbial Hell that Hath Frozen Over."

Sepúlveda

"Ah, shit."

For his part, the stranger is chasing tequila with cheap Mexican beer right out of the can. Tecate, it looks like. His last shot is sitting empty and filmy by the rubber spill-stop mat. That mat hasn't been cleaned in a few days and the smell of spilled cola and beer is not yet cloying but with the weather warming up it will be soon enough.

It's worth mentioning that he has a faint accent. Child of immigrants or else someone who has spent enough of his adult life in an environment where he hasn't had to give the fucks necessary to shake Mexico from his English. Some people never get rid of their accents.

His eyes are green. He doesn't shy away from meeting her gaze even if hers glint a bit.

"What are you, with the Order?"

Giametti

His eyes are green; her eyes are green.  His speech is accented; her accent is hidden.  She calls out his resonance; he calls out her Tradition.  This is better, then, than how she had supposed things would go.

"Better the Order than the Union," she says, there's a note that goes up at the end, testing him.  She does not out and ask him if his shades are mirrored; if he is a Company man, down with the crunchy rabble-rousing deviants, soldier of Englightenment. It is clear, though, in those few shared words, which side of the great divide she stands on.

Her drink comes, and she wraps long and graceful fingers around it.  She glances over and lifts her chin a little at the bartender in gratitude.

"Look, I came in for a drink and not looking for trouble. I'm rather good at trouble, though, if you take my meaning. But I just got here; and it would be rude; or some other reason; and besides... you need another drink," she lifts her glass a little in his direction.

Sepúlveda

They are both initiated members of traditions with storied histories. No way to tell from his resonance which one claims him. Maybe she'll be able to start hazarding a guess the longer they speak but right now he could very well be a Conventionalist and if he is then he's one of the ones who isn't out to convert every reality deviant he sees.

He does need another drink.

"'Not looking for trouble,' she says."

That exchange seems to signal the bartender. He wanders back over and indicates the empty shot glass. Yeah okay might as well. While the 'tender's back is turned the stranger says, "Hey, lady, you don't want trouble, that's... that's totally your right, it's in the Constitution and everything, trouble is an opt-out clause."

Giametti

Something he says brings a smirk-curlto the corner of her mouth.  She shifts a little on her barstool, draws her drink toward and takes a generous (but not impolite) mouthful to hold, savour, and then swallow.  There is no self-congratulatory breathing out at the sting of it.  She has long since become accustomed to the burn and progress.

"That's an unusual sentiment these days," she says, and the tone of her voice has shifted toward something more casual. He hasn't offered up his Tradition; she hasn't truly confirmed her own. There is a decided lack of formal introductions. He could be a Conventionalist; she could be ... something. But after the initial press its set aside.

"It occurs to me," she says, with a sort of rue-soaked smile.  "That this is not, perhaps, the place for whiskey.  When I move on to my next drink," because, no, he isn't getting back the peace and quiet of his end of the bar just yet, "What would you recommend?"

Sepúlveda

"What do I look like, a connoisseur?"

Some combination of his lack of height and the forced perspective she being two seats away from him and he being at the corner of the bar and all may have led her to believe he's been sitting down all this time. He has not been sitting down. He has been standing. He steps away from the bar for the sake of putting himself one seat closer to her but he does not sit. Hyperactivity and sitting are a poor combination. Leads to mind-wandering. At least if he's standing he can focus on standing and not falling down.

He has not smiled the entire time they have been talking. His eyes seem to have a spritely bit of energy to them but it isn't translating to laughter or actual movement of facial muscles.

"I'm drinking cheap beer and silver tequila, but, eh, I don't know the first thing about whiskey."

Giametti

[Empathy.  Because you're kind of twitchy.  Is there something going on, or, you know, do you just like to drink standing up?]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )

Sepúlveda

[He's a little hyper on a good day. Today is possibly a good day. He just likes to drink standing up. Drinking standing up is also the hallmark of a career alcoholic. You can't get dizzy when you stand up if you don't sit down to begin with.

BONUS 2-POINT READ: Other than the fact that she can pick up intelligence but no real dominant emotion from looking him in the eye, Ari can safely chalk his weirdness up to the fact that... uh... he's weird. Stay tuned for more details.]

Giametti

If Ari were more of a people person, perhaps she would have noticed that he was standing and not sitting before he moved. Perhaps, but probably not.  It's even less likely that she would have cared, see, she is excellent at The Game but she is not currently playing -- one does not come to this sort of place to play The Game.  One comes to decidedly not play.  And yet, here they are, dancing around the heart of something, spiraling into it like children walking the labyrinth.

Another drink, then, and the warmth of the whiskey is bracing. It is familiar and steady.  He has not smiled, but she has. 

"Cheap beer, and silver tequila," she repeats it. As if trying the words on for size. And then Ari, in that perfect white coat, in this seedy Bar Bar, with her whiskey dwindling, looks to him a little more carefully.

"Can't say I immediately see the allure..."

He looks like he might fall into her lap if he stopped paying attention and that would be regretable; we could not have that.  She pushes the barstool between them out a little with one toe. Not shoves, but nudges. Gently.  The better to keep this stranger, whom she should probably have left alone and not poked with that pale excuse for an introduction, at bay.

"But I'll try it," she says, very caution-to-the-wind and unaware of consquences, which seems to summon the 'tender.  And, utilizing the universal symbology of alcoholics everywhere, she manages to order one of what he's having.

 

"Are you..." she isn't very good at this; she doesn't really care; she finishes the sentence differently than she'd intended to, "Acquainted with the locals?"

Sepúlveda

All she said was she can't see the allure. She didn't ask him for his opinion. With one stool between them now he's perfectly happy to just lean on his forearms and continue alternating between staring straight ahead and sparing her his attention.

For the record: he is not drunk. Slightly anesthetized perhaps but he is still in control of his physical faculties and his mind is clear enough that he can function. Sober enough to drive or at least sensible enough to recognize when driving is beyond one's capabilities. The bar is pretty low when one can sober up instantly.

So she doesn't see the allure. He knocks back his tequila like that is in itself a response and then on they go. Here's the bartender. Another of what he's having. Might as well get another shot for himself since he's got the good fellow's attention.

"I am," he says. Now that they're close enough to each other and he's screwing around rearranging glassware Ari might be able to see he's wearing a wedding band dulled by time and exposure. He taps the offending band against his can onetwothreefourfive times because lord knows what sort of backlash will happen if he actually stands still for the entirety of a conversation. Goes on, "A few of them, anyway, you missed a bitching party a few weeks ago. What'd you do, just get off the boat?"

Giametti

Too drunk to drive was a different thing than drunk enough to warrant avoidance.  One of these days she might mark the difference in degreesof inebriation.  Tonight isn't the night.

The wedding ring is noticed. That's all. She's busy debating, inwardly, the proper order for drinking cheap beer and cheap tequila.  Probably the tequila first, to damp the taste of the beer that is so pale it might ought have been water.

"Yes, actually." To being new here.  To the rest:  "And I'm not really big on meetings," she says. Casual indifference. "They cast off responsibilities and action items in their wake.  It's unseemly."

This is punctuated with knocking back her shot of tequila, which does, this time, bring a crease to her brow and a wrinkle to her smile.

Sepúlveda

"Hah!"

That's the closest she's going to get to eliciting amusement from him it seems. Or else the word 'unseemly' resonated with him. His tradition is not exactly known for their powers of elocution so resonance is the closest some of them get to expressing themselves in a way other people can understand. Pointing to the word in question and endorsing it.

She still doesn't know his tradition. For all she knows she's having drinks with the enemy right now.

So she does feel as if she's drinking alone he picks up his own shot. Since they're drinking together he lifts it in silent toast before thunking its base on the bar and only after that whole ritual does he knock it back. Muscle memory. He doesn't often drink in group settings and when he does he does not often treat it as a communal experience. It does not make him frown as it does her. Time and experience.

"Tequila," he says as he picks up his can of beer. A toast? "From darkness, there is light."

If she will clink her can against his, so will he clink his against hers. He does not drink to cleanse his palate though. It's just there for hydration's sake.

"Eh. Maybe you're onto something. Meetings are a waste of time." He kills what was left of his beer and sets it down on the bar with a terminal clunk. "Okay, lady, I'm going to shuffle off. You're welcome to join me, but..."

He claps his palm against the bar. Bracketed punctuation. But he knows she isn't going to.

Giametti

Well, that's something. He's amused. There has been something a little more human pulled out between the two of them than the puddling of resonances and the tug of active magics.  She does, in fact, clink her beer can against his and it seems to please her in some small and ritualistic way -- or maybe because she did, against all thoughts and inward claims to the contrary -- come here for communion of one sort or another.

"And those who live in a dark land, The light will shine on them."

He kills his beer, and she glances over, but no, no she does not rise to leave with him. Neither does she offer him her name.

"Go well," she says, and it echoes older tidings.  "I have a feeling I will see you around..."

So he goes. And she finishes her beer in solitude, pays up, and wanders her way out of Bar Bar.  Perhaps to call Pen to pick her up with the Car Car.  Or to walk off the coming buzz-drunk until she feels right enough to find her way back to the house of Hyde and Mars on her own.

The First Shape

Ari

A wild Ari indeed...

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

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

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

Nick

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

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

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

Quite an ambitious list, Mr. Hyde.

Ari

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

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

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

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

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

Nick

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

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

Which it looks as though the backyard desperately needs.

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

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

Ari

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nick

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

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

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

Ari

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

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

Nick

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

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

Ari

[Witnessed! Get your study on, Nick!]

Ari

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

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

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

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

Nick

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

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

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

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

Ari

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

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

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

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

Nick

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

Sometimes there's a simple pleasure in being seen.

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

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

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

Ari

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

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

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

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

Nick

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

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

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

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

Ari

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

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

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

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

Nick

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

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

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

Ari

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

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

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

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

Nick

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

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

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

Nicholas you are the quiet hush of first Spring -

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

Ari

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

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

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

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

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

Nick

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

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

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

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

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

Ari

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

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

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

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

Nick

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

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

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

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

Ari

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

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

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

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

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

Nick

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

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

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

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

Ari

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

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

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

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

Nick

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

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

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

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

Ari

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

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

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

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

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

Nick

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

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

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

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

Ari

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

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

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

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

Light Glancing off a Spinnennetz

Pen

That golden hour of the afternoon when winter is just over, Spring is just coming, and the sunlight slants long, lazily languorous, and it is not the golden hour of last-Summer or first-Autumn, nor quite yet the gold-green of Spring in Her proper crown, but this gladsome secret gold which remembers the Mystery at the heart of winter -- that golden hour, so mellow in its amber-caught musings, that it is practically sleepy; practically the heart of a bee-hive, gold and many-chambered; that it is an hour for still things, and kept things, that golden hour is the hour which finds Penelope and Arianna alone in Penelope's study, which has gone through dooms of love in order to be organized enough for such a convocation. The broad craftsman's table is almost empty, the materials and objects of Penelope's trade pigeon-holed in their scribe's niches in the vast curio-cabinet. All of the books are books about craftsman's work, metal-working and wood-working, jewelry-making and books on the Doing of Art. (Her mystic library, impressive as it was and vast, was lost on a rash wager; neither her spirit or her shelves have recovered.)

Pen has installed shutters on the window, but they are thrown open to allow for that golden light to spill in. Nonetheless, she has brought out two silver candle-sticks, an apprentice's casting work, and on the bottom of these where the craftsman's signature should be is some joke that Ari and Pen had back when they were first becoming friends. There are candles lit, cushions to sit on unless Ari will insist on a chair, in which case she is perfectly allowed to take the chair or the workman's bench and Pen will stay alert on the floor, somehow managing an air of sorcerous elegance lounging as she will which is impressive and a trick of personality and the impression left by her paintable face and her la belle dame sans merci something.

Most importantly of all, there is a spread. White wine of pale and almost golden hue, which will taste faintly of blossom somehow, and mismatched wine glasses. A Spanish red wine, if that tickles Ari's fancy instead, and something local to try. A plate of fruit, cardamom-and-vanilla soaked pears, nectarines drizzled in balsamic, a pomegranate with its guts spilling out ruby-gifted. An assortment of cheeses to try, things which looked tasty at Trader Joe's, and sausages too, and then maybe an heirloom tomato bruschetta to be dolloped on crusty Italian bread, paired with little finger sandwiches.

Because Pen went out to the farmer's market and had already forced herself to splurge, there are also Ban Mih sandwiches from a food truck.

"I always feel as though you are absolutely changed when I see you after a long separation," Pen says, somber mischief glinting in her gray eyes, once the last bag has been sett down. Her attention is Arianna's, most completely. It wasn't that long, but Pen uses the word sincerely. "And I will be caught out, wondering how I never before noticed that you loved, say, Johnny Cash or had an affinity for the light glinting on spiderwebs. There should be a word in English for that light. It's so specific."

Pen

ooc: ahem, Banh Mi. 

Ari

They sit, as bookends, on the lofted library of the floor, Ari's knees tipped to the side, the swell of her skirt puddling around her like grey and shifting rain, welling up and kissed quite soundly by the gilded fingers of the afternoon.  She is fascinated by the artful clutter of Pen's study, eyes darting from one hidey-hole of treasures to another, to the workings that are underway or set just aside from that ample workbench, to the way that the long-light of the hour casts her friend's face in such elegant relief.  There is a feast before them, a veritable spread of riches, and also an embarassment of delicacies -- the riches are all Pen, you see, all Weaver and War-god, inummerable.

"I think there is one in German," Ari says, languidly capturing a single fruit of pomegranate and holding it up, burnishing it ruby-gold in the light as she attempts it: "Spinnenetzstreiflicht"  The syllables tumble easily; she's showing off a little (just a very little). Satisfied with her newly coined (unwieldy) term, she pops that little seed into her mouth and smiles. 

Ari plants her hands behind her and leans back a little. She has a precious habit of seeming quite at ease in almost any surrounding, be it sufficiently Hermetic.  Surrounded by these scrolls and hand-works, she it utterly resplendent; an anachronistic visitor, pulled forward in time just long enough to visit.

"I always feels as thought I am changed whenever we are apart," she answers.  A slash of thoughtfulness cuts cross her brow.  "And then we are reunited, and things are right again.  I am in the righting," she confesses.  "Still finding what will serve as center."

A beat, a slight tip of her head.

"You seem well here. Nick seems... brighter."  There is a clever way to say this, in some other language that they share. Some delicate and leaning way.  She looks to Pen for some confirmation; they are among the few for whom Ari cares enough to worry.  They are her people (they dwell in the quick of her heart).

Pen

"Ha!" Pen lofts her glass of wine when Arianna produces a German word that will suit, squinting one eye to peer at Arianna through the glass and gold liquid her hair haloed by gold and hazy with it. Then she sips, a messy sip not at all neat or precise. She licks a drop of wine from her mouth and does not settle the glass back down again. There might be something extremely pleasing about holding a wine glass -- at least there must be something pleasing about spinning the stem around in your fingers like that, recklessly, with a gravity that almost disguises the insouciance behind the gesture. "But you always remind me how versatile German is. I should learn it after Hebrew."

Nick seems brighter: this teases a quick smile from Pen, whose gaze is still level and steady and pensive, her ardence held in reserve (right here). The smile is quick but it still touches her expression with radiance and some of that lingers, filtering out to soften the curve of her mouth.

"I think he finds Denver challenging. I hope it brightens him. I want him to do what is in him to do. I think maybe the challenge refreshes him, and - " Now her gaze has grown distant: turns inward. A beat. Pen turns it outward again, coming to the present instead of oh how many nights ago. She grins. "Don't get me started on Nicholas; I will begin to talk in love poetry. You, Ari. Not that you're a much easier topic; I'll talk love poetry about you too!"

"Still finding what will serve? I want to help you," Pen declares, because a confession must be met by this: open-hearted, open-handed desire to aid. "Help you find a center, help you feel righted."

"Do you want a challenge, too? A windmill to tilt at? A monster, I should rather say, to slay. We can find one. Talk to me of your hopes, your dreams, your inventive chicanery."

Ari

There is something satisfying about holding a wine glass by its stem. It is altogether a different sort of satisfaction than holding a wine bottle by its neck, all caught up between long and graceful fingers, lilted just so in feigned endangerment and jest.  Ari well knows both forms of satisfaction; she is bosom buddies with the best of them; she is mischief and inventive chicanery incarnate on her best of days. Insouciance and annoyance distilled for lesser reckonings.  So here, now, she joins Pen in the delight of holding wine glasses -- which must always be goblets, or chalices, or symbolic fonts of unspoken wisdom in the midst of these two witch-women -- but her palm cradles the sweep of the bowl as it moves toward the stem, her fingers wrap around in a most definitive fashion.  She commands this cauldron, in miniature but figuratively broad and bold and wise nonetheless, and it brings forward hints of elderberry and apricot to meet her challenge.

"I like it for its structure, and how it is acceptable to cram all your thoughts into a single compound noun, and how that can run over as many lines in a manuscript as you see fit, redactors be damned.  It's like here, have rules, have all the rules and words that reach to England -- enjoy.  Yours truly. Deutsch."

The corner of her mouth curls, cleverly, wicked in some delightful way.  She watches the way the light glints in Penelope's eyes when she speaks of her lover -- her soulsmate, her husband, her once and truly one.  It is the sort of magnanimous warmth she wishes for everyone, but most of all for Pen, who has captured the sun and distilled it down into longing.  Ari smirks at the suggestion that Pen would begin (only now)to speak in love poems; as if she hadn't breathed litanies since long before they'd met.

"I'm always good for a challenge," she reminds, but there's a hollow to the claim.  There are reservations and withholdings -- not here, not between them, but with others, see, Ari isn't generous with everyone. Only her favorites, and becoming a favorite is a strange and opaque thing.  Pen is; Nick is; and certainly there are others.  (Rob is [was (might be) still?]) She is a capricious gate keeper; the path is not laid clear. "Or a windmill.  Or monsters."

Another sip then. Another glance at the Streiflicht, spilling pale gold through her fingers.

"I want to know who I am, when I'm not where I was."  This, as plain spoken as Ari's wants rarely are, is offered up for discussion.  "Where the things I often count are smaller, absent, and everything else is bigger -- save scotch glasses.  I want to stand on the edge of the earth, and see it still spin."

Pen

Pen listens, clear-eyed and alert. Steady, steadying; she places the glass (cup [goblet]) down. They are, together and right at this moment, minor arcana:

Two of Cups.

Harmony is restored; a romantic card, a card of reconciliations, of the magnetism given to strong connection and like ideas. Pen is romantic toward her dearest friends, and invites the same. It's in the fervent adoration she bestows. 

"We should go up into the mountains on an evening," Pen says, because she finds the cold air bracing; because she finds long hikes bracing, has always enjoyed the mystery of stone and ice, of the wild places tucked between New England towns and villages, where every turn might be a turn for another world, the Beyond the Fields We Know otherworld.

"High high high where the air is even thinner." Ari, fresh-arrived to Denver, may have already noticed how the change in air pressure packs a wallop: that scotch the first night might well have undone her, unbuttoned her with more speed than she is used to. "Where it is gossamer, where you can tear it apart with your hands and see what's on the other side." 

"Who are you when you are where you were?" Pen smiles faintly, because she enjoys the riddling sound of the question, but that's all the smile is; it evaporates dew-in-morning swift. "Who do you think you are then?"

Pen

[Access to the Chantry Library? Yippee! Corr 3, here we come?]

Dice: 3 d10 TN7 (2, 2, 10) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Ari

[Witnessed!]

Ari

"That sounds nice," she says, of a trip to the mountains.  It is an incomplete compliment. There is more, tucked into the laugh lines that crowsfeet from the corners of her eyes.  (Her thirties, le sigh, they'll be the death of her yet.)  And yes, the thinning air had caught her unawares.  Perhaps that is why she strayed to talks of growing up in Chantries and nevermindthedragons things.

She is about to ask Pen 'What do you think is on the other side?', half curiousity and half quizzically, but then Pen strides forward and asks about mysteries more her own.

For this, Ari must fortify herself with a helping of bruschetta.  The bright prick of garlic, a tumble sweep of tomatoes and herbs, the bubble of melted cheese -- it is consumed and, momentarily, all-consuming. A little rolling back of eyes in bliss, a thumb swept across her chin to catch any stray drippings. Licked clean so as not to waste them.  This, then, cast in sharp relief to the answer:

"I think I am a shade, an echo, two names but the face to go with neither.  I walk a thin line, as if a jester on a rope, threaded high above an audience -- for sport, but heart-in-throat for fear of falling.  I am a farce, or a beggar woman who sells the Emperor his newest robes, it's hard to tell."

A sip of wine.

"Or maybe I am a princess, cloistered in a tower tall, let out in meted measure to test suitable suitors, who draws each night her dreams into a sandbox and dashes them away each dawn."

A little shrug.

"When I am there, I know what I am.  And when I am not there, it is more uncertain.  This must be the way of things when one home is so unlike the other."

Pen

"Hmm." Pen reaches for a slice of balsamic-drizzled stone fruit, picking it up delicately between her thumb and forefinger. Bloody slice of sun, and the golden hour is already changing the warp and weft of its gold; or else a bird is flying across the sun, flicking a shadow over their conversation.

Her glance leaves Arianna's face, fixes on some insignificant point to the side near her knee, and she is not actually seeing that point. The knee, the brocade trousers, dark green and black. She is not seeing the floor, the shiver of pattern in the wood a knot a whorl. She is seeing nothing because she is a creature dwelling in her thoughts. Of course her eyes return to Arianna's when she pops the nectarine in her mouth, on the tongue, swallows too large a bite truth be told: an audible gulp, less enjoyment out of it than she wanted but that's what happens when you're hasty.

"I think ... you must lose sight of your true name, Ari, you must hold fast to remembering that you are what you want to be. I've always known you," and here, there's a tender shadow come to her brow, a stitch beween her eyebrows, promise of a smile around the eyes: Pen is emotive, Pen is glass. Pen is clear, clear, clear, always (almost) clear. " - steadfast. Even at your most capricious, steadfast beneath that - doesn't that give you an idea of who you might be?"

Ari

Finding a knife -- it is safe to assume that between Hermetics there is always a blade within ready reach -- she carves off a generous wedge of cardamon and vanilla soaked pear.  This is a lavish thing, to be savoured and appreciated.  Pen asks her heavy questions, aludes to higher things and Ari seems entirely captivated...

By her fruit.

Seems, though, and only seems so at the surface.  There is a gleam of watchful light beneath the shadows of her lashes, less capricious than she'd seem to most but certainly not steadfast, as Pen deigns to name her.  Low burning.  Less a beacon than the wisp of flame above an oil lamp, a puddle of fuel no bigger than the bowl carved by the sweep of a thumb print over clay, or perhaps the size of a half-shell.  A smudge of brightness.  A suspicious thing.

"You may have known me this way, but it would surprise so many others to hear you say it.  What is a star if you strip it from its constellation, remove its context? It burns all the same, but how do you mark its measure?"  Her thumb and forefinger are sticky now.  All there is to do is transfer their sweetness to a piece of cheese, to sweep that through the trailings of pear and spices, to muddle up the matter completely.

"Though I like that I am steadfast to someone, and more that that someone would be you." A warmer smile, before she pops this next treat into her mouth.  And then, around the eating of it (Manners! [please!]), she mocks: "Just -- don't let the word get out."  A finger held to her lips.  Eyebrows lofted in half-jest.  A rouse that lasts just shy of a heartbeat before falling away, subsiding.

Pen

Pen is not to be distracted by verbal maneuvers, by the steady tease. Ari is enigmatic, and Pen likes (is attracted by) mysteries and riddling, by high language and high art. Attracted by, but never distracted by: there is a path; one must stay on it, or risk enchantment and Lost-Foreverness.

"Well I've already posted a bulletin on it, Ari. I titled it 'Hey Everybody, Arianna the Hermetic is Loyal and True Blue.' Subtitle: Also, she is peachy keen and has discriminating taste, but once she's found you are to hers, she'll not likely waver. The subtitle needs work, but it was a rush bulletin put up on rash impulse, as is my way."

Lightly spoken, those last four words, even though Pen has been given to rash impulse, and almost always regrets it. 

"But I'll leave off this argument, I mean discussion," spark of a grin, " -- for now. Only because I have remembered something to ask of you, and because I think I might be better served coming back to it later, after you have seen something of Denver besides Nick and me."

"Will you make some charms for us? I'm thinking very specifically of those elegant Talismans of Zachriel you are just so good at."

Ari

"No no, it's fair. It has a certain je ne sais quoi."  Ari's French is not what her studied languages are.  She has picked up turns of phrase, changeling words that are borrowed into other tongues, but not the whole of it.  It's likely she cannot spell the words that she pronounces -- neither, she would argue, can French itself, but that is a debate for another time.

"There ought be a corollary about my dreadful possessiveness," she adds, grin answering Pen's spark, fuel to the fire which, nonetheless, gutters and runs out.  There are other flames to tend to.

Again, and again only for a moment, there is a crease of thoughtfulness to her forehead.  She adjusts the grasp her fingers have on the wine glass, and, even before she drinks she's nodding -- yes, I can do that -- nodding and thinking at the same time, oh, and drinking. That's a lot.  That's three things at once. 

"Of course," such confidence, bravado even given her unimpressive rank.  "Though it will take time to find the proper supplies, and the appropriate Essentia, and a vessel that works for both you and for Nick. This is good, though; great even.  We ought to work together before the Work comes; it always comes; it comes in overwhelming waves and then the quiets."

She pauses, and eyes Penelope in a shrewder way.

"This is a quiet, Pen. Is it not?  You're asking academically...?" And now it is their steadfast number's turn to pitch the most innocent of questions with clear and present focus on the finest points.

Pen

Arianna's pause, Arianna's shrewd eye. Before them both Pen tips her glass and lets her lashes go low, regards the level of wine still in her glass for a critical half-second and then puts her direct gaze back on Arianna. The wine glass - the cup of it, the lip of it - stays before her mouth, contour spun from light breaking and shadow too. The transparency hides nothing, and Pen's eyes are the colour of a sword. The same that was thrown in the lake, to wait there until kings are Good again, until brightness need a champion: Pen's eyes are gray, and watchful. Sometimes they are dark, sometimes they are pale. When she adjusts herself to be more comfortable, shifting her weight from one hip to the other, planting her right hand on the ground as a brace to her weight this brings her into the golden light from the un-shuttered window, where it streams just now, and suddenly the dark eyes turn pellucid, lightning glass. Resplendent is something that strikes at one when one feels Pen's Workings now that she is an Adept and this is a resplendent moment, visually speaking: the shifting, the dappling of light, the golden afternoon getting in her red red hair, the dark gray eyes turning pale as the light touches them and her pupils shrink, and then the neat little sip she takes of wine this time no mess this time just to brace herself or remember she has a tongue.

"I am not asking academically, and I do not know how quiet I'd name this moment for Denver's mystic social clubs. Ari, you know there have been rumblings back East and declarations of states of war, high vigilance, everything on high high alert. Here in Denver, there has been a lot of Union movement in the last few months. New personnel. Messages from mysterious entities that claim the hounds are about to be let slip. A lot of new personnel, as if they're going to begin here what they've begun elsewhere: to hunt again. One of Denver's mystics has been snatched."

"Zachriel's protection would be welcomed now; walls to keep our secrets safe, and more importantly - more importantly?" Pen pauses; repeats these two words, a taut question: she does want it to have an answer. " - our persons, should we be lazily scanned. All manner of shields we should be sure to have at hand, if we can get them."

There's a suggestion of laughter on those last five words: if we can get them. It isn't amused, exactly, but it is good humored:

if they cannot get them, that will be just fine.

Ari

[In my youth they taught us ne'er to give our thoughts away for free. (Manip + Subt, whilst she reacts to this)]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )

Ari

There is a lot hidden under what Penelope has to say, and Ari listens with the same aire of calm repose, though the glimmer of mischief is gone from her eyes. She captures another piece of cheese between her thumb and first finger, nibbles a smaller taste from its side.  All the while, though, her eyes are on the shifting grey of Penelope's.  All the while, hers are steadfast green and shrewd and certain.

Cheese gone, then, she takes another sip of wine -- this is larger and the sweetness of it is lost to the sharpness of how the conversation has turned.  This drains her chalice, leaves only the thin legs of memory to coat its bowl. The glass is set, abandoned, beside the splendor of their afternoon spread. Ari's hands move to twist her hair and bring it, as a bundle, over one of her shoulders.   And this is where the growing-up-in-Chantries saves her; when it is clear that she has endured the crucible. Pen's eyes are grey like swords, they are grey like lakes into which the most sacred of swords are thrown, they are grey like slate but not immoveable.  This sort of iron is not unknown to Ari; it is terrible as much as it is great.

"There have been rumblings elsewhere, too," she says, and while her tone is light it bears noting that now her hands are empty.  They are collected, carefully, in the bowl of her lap.  "Even our House feels the sting of it, though subtly."

There is a knowing underneath Ari's words, one that doesn't fully surface, won't come far enough in to break upon the shore.  "If the Union is stirring, then you're right -- there is no choice but watchfulness."

She breathes out a little, which only serves to prove she has been, in some small way, policing her breath.  "I would have come sooner if I had known, Pen.  Not that I can bar the gates or hold back the dragons.  But I will build for you the best armory I can; I will come if you call me."

This is not general, wide-spread generousity. It is specific. It is specific to Pen; it extends to Nick. At the moment, there is likely no other within the sweep of that circle.  She whets her lips slightly, considering, and then asks: "And what of the mystic?  Who claims them and how much do they know?"  Because these are the questions -- how compromised are we, how important is he, how invested are you -- one asks, when one is Hermetic and weighing the options.

Pen

"We will hopefully recover him soon," Pen says, evenly. "And when we are successful in it, we will hopefully find that we are not too compromised and that they don't know the location of the chantry. Which was a miraculous survivor of the last time the War raged hot in Denver, and is very close-guarded by its Trinity of wardens and the rest of the city. Alex, his name is Alex, seems to be cherished." 

Were there grapes on the smorgasbord of food? Pen reaches for one and pops it in her mouth. The grape is a rusty purple, a royal evening color, dusted with transparency instead of light; the flesh of it is pale and saturated. She sucks it and she swallows it and then reaches for another grape, her hand a shadow on a knife for cutting sausage. The golden light is waning; ducked out of it, it shines high above her head, catching some fly-away glints and weaving them into a halo. 

Ari

Note this, Pen says we and Ari's eyebrows don't even budge skyward. They don't. Masterful mistress of misdirection is she.  Nor does the corner of her mouth tuck in, nay, for she is schooled and she is calm and she is so very smooth within her half truths. Ari reaches for a piece of nectarine, something sweet and sticky and slippery, something that demands her whole attention oh so casually; something delicious that must be savoured and cannot possibly taste at all of RUE.

Because Penelope has said we.

Which means that Penelope, at least, is committed and, hear you me, Ladies of Lakes do not commit to tasks half-heartedly.  They are on point until the quick of things is laid bare; relentless.  And if Penelope, in her ardour and resplendence, is relentless then so surely is calm, surety of Nick likewise committed.  And RUE -- though, no, the nectarine does not taste of rue; she licks the juice of it from her fingers to confirm.

"Yes, Pen. But who claims him, or who does he claim -- the question is practically the same. Who claims him, and who will sane him when you've pulled him from the precipe of Reason; who will take him if his mind is no longer his own; who will grieve him; who misses him?  Who claims him; who calls for him -- I do not ask this to be cruel."

Because Penelope has not answered her with anything more than We, which is at both expansive and particular, and Ari will not be deterred.

Pen

"His friends claim him." That's Pen's answer. Her mouth twists once, and then she adds: "A Cultist and one of the Mercurial Elite miss him. Missed him, and found out much of what went on with the snatching -- that was Sera who did that. A Flambeau will grieve him, and take him elsewhere to help if his mind is no longer his own. But I'd rather not that;" and there is a thorn there, a hint of trouble, just beneath the skin: a lump, a red shape, nothing at all. Her voice has turned considering: "There are thankfully other resources. Our people, Richard who may be called back to Boston if war doesn't actually flare out -- well, even so; my understanding is the situation back there is needful. But Richard is the most obvious I think to take a look at him; we will see."

Natural rest. And then, "This Alex doesn't claim any tradition; he practices none."

Ari

Penelope is Lion-Hearted, all immanent and caught up in the fray, and from where Ari sits, removed in her heavens, this seems the worst sort of trouble-trap; it seems less like glancing light off a Spinnennetz and more like cobwebs hiding in the gloaming.  But there are times to press Pen with an advantage, and there are times to let the lake-witch Will what she wills.

"I see," says Ari. Which is neither warmer, nor colder, than it needs to be.  She takes up another seed of pomegranate and rolls it between her thumb and first finger.  Delicately, so that it doesn't rupture, but the light does not catch up in this one as it had the one before.  It is occluded.

"Of the heads whose hearts are troubled, Pen, yours is by far the dearest to me."  This is gentler than Pen might expect.  Ari sets the pomegranate seed into her wine glass rather than eating it.  If there is symbolism here, it is left to the beholder to divine.

"I want you to be great, Pen. And you will be.   I want you to be as Great as you want to be -- but promise me this?  Not too great, and not too tall.  For in times like these it is the Greatest which are called to War.  It is the Greatest who..." the word doesn't come in English, so she says it German: "Kampfen.  I want you always to have a choice.  Don't climb so high on the cliffs of Enlightenment that you mistake the fall for flying."

Ari shifts so that she may gather her knees up to her chest.  Her skirts shift and puddle around her, again like rain water, again like shift and shadow.

Pen

Pen uncorks the red wine and refills the same glass (monster! cries the ghost of Emily Poste). Spanish Red, the grape vibrant, rubied with a clot of shadow in its heart. Ari has said that she sees. Marques de Riscal Gran Reserva. Pen wistfully covets a taste the 1945 bottle (this is 2003, and affordable), but could and will never bring herself to spend such filthy lucre as would be required should a bottle of the 1945 ever surface. Pen is not a wine connoisseur. It would be wasted. And yet, she wants to try it. Enjoys red wine occasionally, especially when she can watch the end of an afternoon lilt across the surface. Nothing gold can stay, that's how the poem goes. What a liar, poets.

Just because Penelope is a poor liar, and eloquent of eye and inclined to act (bold), does not mean she is always easy to read. Arianna is gentler than Pen expects her to be and perhaps there is surprise to be read in the deliberate stillness of her eyebrows, the graceful contours of her cheekbones, the handsome and strong jaw, although also her mouth stays a relaxed line (she could speak at any time), and she eases back to rest her weight on the palm of one hand planted behind the curve of her hip, the just-filled glass of red left before her. Perhaps those other things are signs of some adrenaline spike, some salmon leap of emotion. The pomegranate seed and the wine are similar in color. The meat and the pomegranate seed are cousins in color. Pen's hair is similar in color, and Arianna's blood. Still: just what she is feeling, the minutiae, is not easy parsed from her expression.

Her expression is intent, her eyes are dark gray now that the shaft of light from the window strikes above her, only plucking a few fly-aways into the suggestion of a fiery halo, and their color is taken neatly out of that passing lake-light radiance and into earthly shadow and purpose. There is the moment of awakening, and then there is the business of being alive.

As Arianna finishes, cliffs, Enlightenment, falling, flying, Pen glances at her shoulder, at the bend of her own elbow, and then back at Arianna.

"Will you be great?" she asks. "Do you want to be great?"

Ari

And this is another sort of trap, Arianna thinks. Thinks but does not say, and does not say perhaps because she is being gentler today than Pen expected. Gentler on the surface at least, where water is placid and smooth and speaks nothing of the contours of its deep. She waits before answering, and the span of silence is what gives away the weight of what she says, the silence and her empty wine glass, and her empty hands, arms encircling upturned knees.

There is ruddiness to Ari's hair as well, but it is less vehement than the red in Penelope's, and the green fields of her eyes are not prone to the same types of fits of inscrutable mystery. They are clear, and smooth, and speak nothing of the contours of her deeps, but they speak nothing in a plainer way; in neater absences.

"At the heart of things, I never question it. Will I be great? -- it doesn't move me to the same ends. Greatness is... it is an instrument. I wish to be more than instrument, which, I think, may be its own form of greatness."

The circuity of the words displeases her, that she might start out to negate a thing only to support it in the end. Though this is the way of some mysteries and puzzles. They are getting aside of the warning she'd intended, as so Ari bends the labyrinth of their conversation away from center again.

"Of Zachriel, then, as you have need of its protection..." She waits to see if Pen will walk her words along with Arianna's own, or if they will circle back to greatness; to ambition; to what Ari wishes to be, and to what she might aspire.

Pen

"Then I wish you would not tell me you want me to be great," Pen says, ignoring the path back to their original (and there is no original when friends meet to converse; conversations are trees, with many branches of) topic. "I don't think of it. I haven't since," a fraught-pause, which could become upset, but does not. This is the cost of living with someone who is, in spite of being devoted to the Order of Hermes, cerebral wizardry, always feeling, feeling, feeling things. "Oh I don't know how to express what I mean. I only wish you would not tell me you want to be great and then," there is good humor here, crackling in her voice, flexing there, "just refuse it on metaphorical grounds for yourself. I want us all to be happy, and useful, and to change the world for the better; even the others who have been left behind. 'More than an instrument.' Ari. Would that be a hand? And could a hand not be a mere instrument, tool of the mind? Would you be a mind? Is a mind not an instrument by which the body is expressed, in all its physicality?"

Deep breath, and Pen reaches for the red wine and offers Ari her cup. Go ahead, take a sip.

"I would like to promise you whatever it is you ask of me, but I don't understand what you are really asking of me, because greatness has little to do with the matter of Alex and this city, and I'm afraid enlightenment is only tangential."

Ari

She is offered the chalice, but there is a moment before Arianna reaches out to accept it. And then another moment in which she holds it, thoughtfully, before her steepled knees. Until the flare of what Pen has said, and the sting of it, and the sweep of questions fall away to something softer. There is no merriment or mischief to the corners of her eyes now.

"Sometimes I see you, and how your heart runs on ahead, and how the greatness of you -- and I know the word is overloaded right now, and I know that you are loathe to hear it, but Pen, Weaver, it is true -- how you rush right in to meet it and my heart gets caught up in it. I am rapt in watching the grace of you, and I am also torn and sadness caught up in the wake."

She is still holding the wine glass before her, the globe of it against the grey of her skirt, no light playing in the ruby swill of it; just shadow.

"That is all I meant, Pen. That and that I hope yours is a long-burning and resplendent flame."

It is difficult to remember at times that Ari's father is one of the House's great instruments, the Arrow of Artemis, the hand of this or that, and that she has borne witness to the weathering of titles as well as their enrichment. At last, she sips from the wine glass, and it is with the air of fellowship and solemnity that she hands it back.

"Truly. I meant no offense. But it was selfish of me nonetheless."

Pen

"There is no offense taken!" Pen says, fervent and quick. Now it is her turn to pause before taking the (chalice [cup]) glass back. Pen is a rather pale-skinned young woman, with pallor befitting a Rhine-maiden or a Briton-sorceress, which makes the delicate wash of color more evident when it is present. The blood is quick.

There is a long pause, which is drowned in a slow sip of the Spanish wine. She whets her tongue and wets her throat and there is a shadow of consternation on her brow, after.

She sounds hesitant. "I... Don't wish to foreswear myself, but Ari, I want very much to live this life I have for as long as I can have it. I like it too much to give it up for the sake of reckless achievement. I promise you that is how I feel. I will promise it on anything you like. The first exchange of letters between us, my right eye, the look in your eyes before mischief, the black of Nicholas's hair."

Ari

"On the first exchange of letters between us, then," she says, but mark, Ari is not truly asking Penelope to be so sworn. The binding of Oaths is a true and sacred thing and even the churn and gravity of this does not rise to meet it. But the semblence is there, if Oathing had a lesser son, its shape and formulae and whisper-want is there. There is an echo of her mischief to her, hollowed out a bit and thin, but self-same in its curl of smile and slant of eye.

"Your Alex. I do hope he is saved, and returned to you in kind and sound of keeping." There is a hush, still, to her. "Tell me what I can do to help, so that promises like ours can be kept."

This is the tear of it, the wash and sadness. Once more they go, even if into the breach they have not gone together. Even if this is the first mad rescue, the first lost Orphan, the first echo of fearfulness (lies [truths]) between them.

Pen

"He's not really mine," Pen says, and then: "Oh. I am not the Flambeau who will grieve him. That distinction belongs to another! Whose name is Kalen, and, Ari, who I am not certain about at all. If you meet him, you will see what I mean. He is so wearied and so roundabout."

Slender pause, then earnest: "I mean, I will be sad about his loss if he cannot be recovered; it is rather a reckless achievement to snatch something that has been snatched; I don't know if it will be done well. I think it will be done as well as it can be done; I think it needs to be done."

"I think it would be attempted, no matter what the auguries."

"But all right. There's no sense dwelling; right?" The right is not quite rhetorical. She wants Arianna's opinion. She says after a little space, "I cannot imagine anything more immediately useful than Talismans of Zachriel in a city where the Union is possibly stirring."

Note: this is a moment wherein Pen comes very close to admitting she misses Robin Anton. There is a reason she never studied Ars Mentis and his name is the reason; he provided, she did not need to be concerned something might get in her head and use her against her friends.

"But Ari... you know, we should start building something for us. The Silver Bough."

Ari

There is a moment, brief flicker-flash, in which Ari feels perhaps the slightest bit betrayed by the sliding of that significator from Pen to Kalen, who is unknown, who is not at all certain, who is roundabout, who is wearied. Flicker-flash. Bright. Luminous. Then gone. Betrayed by her assumptions is not quite the same as betrayed in truth.

"I agreed. On all accounts," she says, and the lull and melancholy has been pushed aside. This is not qualified by any sense of hush or quiet. It simply is, and in that is clear and purposeful. "And I have ideas unto the same..."

From here, perhaps, the conversation winds back through the practicalities of Zachriel, on to aspirational discussion of wardings and such things, on again to thoughts like those she would share with Nicholas, soon (I want to draw Us a cabal circle), and even mundane and pragmatic things: I've been thinking where I might live; I think I'd like to get a dog; et cetera and so forth. Until the wine has been drunk and the plates licked clean and the drowning sunlight is echoed in the kiss and flickering of candlelight; until the house is filled with three again; until the stars prick through the fabric of the heavens and the light is silvered, and lunar, and low.