Excita, et sol salutant

Arianna
It has been spoken between them that their homes are so close as to be a walkable distance, not so far apart than the distance would be cumbersome to traverse on foot and Penelope has made the journey at least once and with some burdensome offering, and so it is time for Ari to return the favor, to walk the concrete paths between their doors with something to share tucked under a gingham towel and a messenger bag hung off her shoulders.

It reminds her of Academy.  Many things have reminded her of Academy of late. Nick's questions after Hermetic school; the strawberry blonde at Silas's birthday; the questions he'd asked Ari when she was tucked into his embrace.  Half a lifetime ago, and still the thin red stitches of fate pulled these pages close together in the Springtime and she can almost imagine the way the wind rushed up the cliffs of the Isle and over her skin.

She isn't Primal, but something in her has always loved the seasons, and the rain, and even the snow when it is new and gets caught up in her lashes, but not so much when it is grey and salted and sodden and slumping at the margins of the street.  Not so much when it has overstepped its welcome.  All things are welcome when they are new.

Under the gingham is the sort of lemon cake which is cake with bright, thin, candied wheels of citrus draped and lavished atop it.  It is scented with thyme and fortified with ground almonds.  She keeps it covered so that the smell of it will not pied-piper-like have all the neighborhood trailing behind her on her way up the hill to Pen and Nick's doorstep.

Knock, knock.


See, Ari is a civilized person. She knocks before thinking of ringing the bell.  She does not return Pen's favor by ding-a-ling-ding-dong-ing until deafness sets in. Just two raps. And then a pause.  And then two more.

Penelope
The door opens. Mark this: the door opens, but there is no solid and physical Pen with her hand on the door's handle and her eyes bright with Arianna's presence. Mark this, too: this is a house of wizards, two, and a how of experimentation and of study, and today the study is a study of the little airs which can play servant the invisible host of energies which are perhaps easiest to manage when the air is as it is now, and it is invisible hands on the door, it is Force at the door, opening it for Arianna when she raps raps raps, and an empty foyer before her except it has changed since the last time Ari was over (whether that was two nights ago or two weeks ago or five weeks ago; but surely it would be sooner than that?), because there is now a lemon tree sitting in a pot and taking up a great deal of space. There is a shovel rather ominously positioned, as if someone plans to dig right through the floorboards, into the dirt beneath the foundation and put that lemon tree there. Positions can be misleading; if somebody did such a serious make-over of the house's interior, cutting a hole in it for a tree, right there where it looks like it would be most convenient -- it would also detract from the easy glide down the stair's railing, so probably the tree isn't meant to go right there. Probably it is going to go outside; it is rather an oversize lemon tree for corners. Its leaves clap gently when Arianna enters, shivering as the outside gets inside.




Pen's voice calling from the kitchen: "Arianna!" a bright rill: light gleaming on water; the shadow of it, the shift of it; "Do you remember what was the name of Maga Kerwyn's griffin and the invocation was she was supposed to have written on its skin?"

Arianna
The door opens and now begins a little game, a debate with things to old to be spoken over whether an open doorway constitutes an invitation, over whether she should extend a toe or poke a finger across the threshold just to see, because surely an open doorway alone is not enough to speak to welcome. Doors open by all manner of means and for all manner of reasons.  But what if the open door is also one through which she has been previously invited? Is this enough. Is it enough to hold a key to it, as she surely does to the House of Hyde and Mars, though she knocks out of courtesy and because she is not the kind of person who ring-a-lings the bell --

-- is that a lemon tree? Perhaps Pen will make Limoncello with her come the harvest.  Who can turn down lemons and sugar and spirits? Who? Who? --

And is a key, in and of itself a welcome? It is an invitation, this key, this unlocker of locks and unfastner of secrets?  Is a key an invitation, or does it matter how it is acquired?  Surely one can have a key and not have been invited. It could be an ill-gotten key, for stolen secrets.  That would not constitute a welcome.  Is a voice, calling from within the house, speaking her name, the name of this woman who also holds a key, for whom the door has opened, in this place where she has been welcomed before -- is this enough to constitute an invitation?

The boughs that steeple above their roofline sigh their consent. Yes! Today it is enough, tomorrow, who knows, but today it is enough and Arianna steps across the threshold and into the foyer, where stands the lemon tree and also the grave digging shovel (grave-digging, or grave in its digging?).  She touches the handle-hilt lightly, fingers just tracing the wood of the handle, as she passes.  Because Spades are like Swords, and of course Pen would have one in an entry whose answering is made of air and movement.  This thought reminds Arianna that she ought shut the door behind her.

"Pen!" she calls, in reply, just as the door clicks shut.  "It was named Hrestiael, and upon its skin she wrote:"  And this answer has brought her up into the kitchen, with her pack still slung across her body and the cake still hidden beneath its gingham drape, and her eyes all a-twinkle with merriment. "Excita, et sol salutant."  Rasp-thunk goes the heavy stoneware full of cake as she brings it to rest, still shrouded in checks of blue and white, upon the counter.  "Which is almost certainly just the binding Words of some greater Working."

A beat.


"I come bearing cake, apropos to your new foyer décor."

Penelope
Pen is on the floor of the kitchen, cross-legged in the middle of a circle -- a labyrinth -- scribed with chalk (silver chalk [true metal, pure metal, moon's metal]). The circle and the labyrinth are unfinished; there are Hebrew runes and some small glints of suggestions of Enochian phrases scattered through out but it is incomplete it is a work in progress it is likely going to be smudged before midnight. Her library is gone; she is not surrounded by books and scrolls as she might have been when studying. Arianna knows how Pen looks, studious and intent. Arianna may also know how complete her ability to concentrate, how indistractable she is when she is focused. Robin used to try to goad Ari into a contest: who could get Pen to falter, first. Of course he did: members of House Tytalus must always test their friends; it is because they care that they are such goading, insufferable creatures. Instead of books and scrolls she is surrounded by notes and drawings, all cypher and much of it unintelligible. This is writing for Pen, not for other people to read, necessarily, and so it is a mess.

The copper kettle on the stove-top looks flushed with steam; there is a curl wisping upward now, but it is not screaming and the stove is not on.
There is also a bunny in Pen's lap, a dowsing bunny belonging to an apprentice, a mellow-eyed soft creature, which Pen does not cuddle when Nicholas is around so as not to give him any ideas. Nicholas is not around now, so the bunny is in Pen's lap, its chest fluffed out and its ears soft and enticing.

Pen sounds a touch distracted. "Thank you. My mind is becoming a sieve; it is letting all the interesting things escape it. Is it cake to bury in the roots of a lemon tree? Is it mete that we feed cake to a tree; I can not remember." Beat. Pen looks up from her drawing (there is the chalk, see, scattered), sees Arianna, and now: now is the bright-gleam beam, a suddenly smile; it is like light breaking through rain-clouds, falling tarnished but lovely on a lake's surface (and now, now, when the light's all reverent and lucent this is when lake-swords are dredged up from the deep and offered this is when quests become a possibility one can taste on one's tongue this is when one resolves into shadow and shift), draws two long dimples out of her cheeks and she sometimes looks young.
"I'm sorry; did you say cake? Lemon cake? Did you make it with your own two hands or did you buy it with your own filthy lucre or did you cannily trick it out of someone?"

Arianna
Kestrel used to goad her into goading Pen? This sounds like the beginning of a cautionary tale. Gather 'round, ye children, ye apprentices, and hear tell of a very bad idea turned into a most sporting game and of the singe-ing of hairs and burning of soles it did cause in recompense.
Ari comes just to the edge of the labyrinth but does not step into its twists and turns.  It takes but a moment for her mind to recognize the tongues in use, and to switch from reading left-to-right to right-to-left to mark the Hebrew characters and tones.  The Enochian she cannot help but read inwardly in her most bell like and angelic tones -- this is how Enochian is shaped and shifted. It is, and then the sound follows.  Even in the mind it is the truth of a thing which precedes the Name or Word or Sigil.

"With my filthy lucre?"  Wounded.  Hand to heart.  "Or won through canny trickery?"  Aghast.  Ari tuts a little, a clicking thing done with the tongue, as she looks down to Pen.  "You wound me, Weaver dear. I made it with my own two hands, and the goodness of my heart, and so that it would not be too sweet for you, too saccharine from my love of thee, I have flavored it with lemon which is bright and bracing and biting.  But perhaps you do not want my sweetness, thinking it a stolen or a purchased thing.

"For shame, Penelope.  As if I would bring you lesser offerings!"

Arianna
And then, with her smile only partially restored and a sort of smirkness to it.  "Shall I make us tea? I see you have the kettle on, and it may take you a while to wind your way back out of your Minotaur's lair."

A beat.

"Did Nick get a bunny while you were studying? It is quite... fluffy."

Penelope
"This is Yorick. He is Margot's dowsing bunny, who we are taking care of while she sorts out her living situation," Pen says. She gently strokes the silk-soft  ears and looks down at the diamond shaped head and feels the little thing's skull with her thumb and Yorick's eye are bright and his nose twitches and he regards Arianna but does not seem inclined to move from the lap he is in. "A good drinking game I have discovered with bunnies: every time it shits on you, take a shot." Her voice is a croon: not a devoted croon, but a sing-song invocation. "Nicholas was allowing it to eat a book the other night."

Now then. Pen sets Yorick down and Yorick hops for one of the metallic chalks and Pen stands up, economical, graceful, and then sweeps the rabbit up again and puts the rabbit in a pen. Pen made the pen; it occupies a corner of the kitchen. She brushes herself off and then bounds over to Arianna and:
flings her arms around the other woman. The cake: is it settled; is it safe? Is it on the counter? If it is not, it shall take part in the hug, and Pen will take it from Arianna's hands just after. If it is settled, if it is safe, the better for the cake. Pen smiles after it when the hug is done, and says, "I shall make you tea; what suits your fancy today? Would you like a London Fog? Proper chai? Earl Grey, Russian Caravan?"

Around this time: Pen peeks under the gingham at the cake, and her eyes widen: "How lovely it is; did the goodness of your heart work very hard, laboring over this?"

Arianna
Yorick, who was previously somewhat cute and quite fluffy, moves down to rabbit non grata at the mention of his book devouring ways.  The look Ari sends his way is not particularly clement.  It seems fitting that Pen sentences him to time in what Ari's mind can only rightfully refer to as 'rabbit jail' for this offense.

"Dreadful."

The cake is settled, so Arianna is free to return Pen's exuberant hug with a tight one of her own.  And a smile that breaks through even the book-eating rabbit stories and whatever dreary Spring madness has kept them apart.

"Oooh. A Russian Caravan, I think.  But only if we take out your colored scarves and hang them about the living room and do our best impressions of the Baba Yaga to frighten your poor Yorick into better behavior."  There, then, a glint of her mischeif returns and she squeezes Pen just so, and it is gleeful.

Under the gingham is a tumble of thin slices of candied lemon, bunched and whorled and glistening atop a cake fortified with ground almonds.  The scent of it is sinful, sweet and bright and everything that Ari had promised.  It is not some yellow on yellow on yellow box cake or storefront thing.  It sings of the old world and flavours a little sterner and robust, of home.

"The goodness of my heart is so consumed by the effort that I think, perhaps, there is none of it left."  Woe.  Smirk. Ari settles in enough to slide the strap of her bag over her head. She finds a place to nestle or lean it, which is taller than a bunny might hop, so that Yorick the Destroyer cannot eat its contents on his next book devouring spree.

Penelope

"It is fairy food, Ari." Pen is solemn in the face of mischief -- the straight man's best defense (don't stop [come hither]). The cake did indeed share in part of the hug, and Pen is reluctant to let it go because with it near she can breathe it in and her lungs are better for their association with an Air of Lemon and Lavender. Mars is a martial name, and steadfast. An architectural name: a name of conquest, of victory. And she might sink her teeth into the middle, just to feel the cake break, undo the candied representation of Helios, just to feel what it is like to be so gluttonous for a moment. "I am tempted," and the sidelong cast of a glance is a lure, see, a shining beckon, a promise.

They are not going to stay in the kitchen where Pen's Working has been drawn out and Yorick the Destroyer of Books nibbles placidly on air. Pen puts the kettle on and then leads the way from the kitchen to her study, where she likes to entertain Arianna, and where she has a day bed which looks like a fainting couch of wood which has a silvering cast to it which might have soaked up the moon as the moon sets during dawn which is carved with a graceful ornate romanticism which is romantic which is very excellent to dramatically lounge upon. Pen often dramatically lounges; she invites Ari to partake of this passtime with her.

Down in the kitchen, the water boils.

The cake must be released.

Must it? Pen sets it a small table, on which moves around quite often: it usually holds tools for projects Pen is working on at the large craftsman's draftsman's table if she does not want to set the tools on the table if she wants the whole of the surface. It is clean now, although very scarred up and scratched, pitted and worried by many accidents: burned once. You can see it: the memory of smoke and fire, the way it eats and the way it stains. Lingering.

As they went, Pen said: "You see, I trust the goodness of your heart is only consumed as the phoenix is by its own glorious coda; that it rises again to luminous lord it over future cakes and bottles of wine, not made with granny's bone marrow or granny's blood."

There's a bounce to her step. See. Bounce! It is a good prelude for dramatic lounging, that bounce.

"I'm so envious of your heart I could eat it up!"

In the study, Pen waits for Arianna to arrange herself, and then:

Oh, then. Down in the kitchen, the water boils.

Arianna

It is a fitting thing, isn't it, that the heart of a Star-child, of a lune-ling, of a luminous one that reflects back the light or casts it into the darkness should be caught up in the resemblance of Helios, of Sol, of the bringer of Dawnings, and beginnings and breaker of days.  Ari's heart is baked into a cake and, were they not Hermetic -- were they not truly something far older than Magi and truer than Souls -- it might sound morbid but Pen names her Phoenix, who has more lives than even a Bast's cats, and whose tears might heal and whose undoing might raze, burn down to the bones and even the bones to ash even the ash might burn until some breath of life comes forward and, just as suddenly, just as abruptly, she is reborn.

Ari does not seem to have been reborn, but perhaps in some small truth there is an echo of this revitalizing burn and ache and sunder and cresting going on inside her own heart.  Not the heart which has been baked into the cake, not the goodness of her heart, but perhaps in the vulnerable and honest and untrusting places there is some sort of Phoenix-creasting cycle to behold.

The Phoenix does not belong to Helios; neither does she belong to the night.

"The goodness of my heart is like the moon, I think," she tells Penelope, with a different sort of cadence and thrum to her voice than the Weaver's, but resonant nonetheless.  "It waxes and wanes, predictable in its patterns, full faced and radiant one night; obscured and hidden on another.  But my heart is more fickle than the moon and less generous than the Phoenix and still, Penelope, still, it shall rise to oversee new offerings and libations as is its wont and Will."

There is a curl to her smile.

"The heart wants what it wants," she says, dramatically, perhaps also a good lure toward that bounce.  "I should think my heart is envious of yours and not the other way around; your heart has wings, Weaver dear, and hallowed host in which to roost."

She settles on the moonlit bench, because of course the moon sets where the moon has set before: across the room from the resting place of her Helious-heart, opposed and therefore made full again.  For the full moon sets opposite the sun, as any Apprentice might well know.  And so the Phoenix is reborn. And so Arianna is ready for the pouncing that must surely come when Pen bounces upon the balls of her feet.

"My heart has cake, and its love of thee, and also its love of wine..."  Hah, then, a smirk, for she cannot keep up this heart-wants-what-it-Wills nonesense for overlong.  It colors the grey of the green of her eyes; it shifts toward merriment.

Penelope

The heart wants what it wants is an excellent lure for a pounce from Penelope. Penelope whose eyes are gloaming, are a witch's eyes at twilight; are dark as bat song, are all quicksilver, are mercury in the shadow; Penelope whose eyes are ardent, even when they are cool; who has mastered the art of restraint just as a glass restrains what (holy) liquid is poured within or a wick restrains the flame: just as that. There are boundaries; they are given. Pen bounces on the balls of her feet; isn't she an elegant looking woman, and striking, striking sometimes with myth in her bones in the strength of her jaw the unusual features the fine sharp nose the pretty mouth the handsome forehead? Arianna settles:

Pen, she bounces on the balls of her feet; and then she settles too, flops out, resting her head in Arianna's lap.

Pen does not touch people regularly. She is not afraid of touch but she only seeks it out from a select band, king of which is (of course) the crow, but Arianna: she was in that court first. First friend. Dear friend.

Pen looks at Arianna from an upside down vantage and she wraps an arm around Arianna's waist and she says, "Arianna, you have just opened a door, you have unlocked a box with your fancy: I was going to seduce you with a poem I have written about you, but maybe I will annoy you instead."

"Tell me about Silas and yourself and your heart and all of that."  

Arianna

Arianna does not much like to be touched. In the confines of her Hermetic life, there are few who have such liberty to even so much as place a hand in the small of her back, fewer who might tuck a strand of hair back behind her ear.  She uses this leniency with touch as a sort of a lure, a trap, which she is forced to be familiar with those she would rather not.  Her heart is kept caged, so tightly that it might stop beating.  This is who Arianna is within the Order: brightly shining and not a thing to be caught or held.  She is the sort of thing that might burn itself out, or fizzle into nothingness, before she might light another's lamp against her will.

This changed when she met Pen.  Pen was, in many ways, Arianna's first female friend.  None of the girls with whom she had attended Academy kept close association after; Ari didn't Will it and certainly did not want it.  That chapter closed firmly, a book with its cover slammed and locked shut, and then she went about being nothing in the way that Consors are less than something until she finally Awoke.  And then, finally, found her way to the Lady of the Lake, to this beguiling water witch whose heart was so far flung from the madness of legacies and lineages that Arianna could not help but see the purity in it.  And so, for the Weaver and her Crow, and then for the Green Man, and also, slightly, for Kestrel, the cage was unlocked.

This is how they have come to be like sisters, with Ari's fingers tracing and smoothing along the bloody redness of Penelope's hair.  How they might be two faces of the Morrigan -- they aren't -- or two types of chanteuse -- they aren't -- or two guardians of ancient ways -- this, they may well be.  How they are affectionate, of warm hands and hearts, without endangering the hands or hearts of one another.

It is the truest sort of magic: love.

"You do not annoy me, Pen," she says, as the words are patient, they are dredged in the depths of Pen's lake-light and brought up gleaming with truth.

"And I will tell you.  I will answer what you ask for I fear my thoughts are in mad disarray about this subject and my heart," she pauses, scrying for some sort of clarity in the shape of the strands of Penelope's hair; they dance like firelight; truth is like ember-ash.  "My heart cleaves to a promise offered long ago.  Before my heart had you, and your Crow.  Before it had found the family-it-chooses.  Things are less clear to me now that when I did swear to him."

This is thoughtful. It does not mislead. It tangles, and trips over itself. Arianna has so little practice in matters of the heart that it may not surprise Pen. But also Pen is possessed of a poet's heart and there is here the making of such poetic things.

Penelope

Pen languid on her back with her head on Ari's lap and Ari's fingers in her hair. This Pen keeps her arm wrapped around Ari's waist and - briefly, see - she traces the line of the other woman's spine through the fabric of her top, and how pensive is her touch: what Muses, they, on the fainting couch of moonlight-seeped wood in the study which smells of linseed oil and old beeswax candles and something sharper. More (al)chemical.  This Pen, Pen who named herself for Mercury but also Hilde the Saint of Song, advisor of Kings, this Pen whose hair is spread out in curls which could be oracles which could be read by an oracle is Ari that oracle to read it by this Pen right now: she watches her friend.

Arianna saved Pen back when their friendship first braided itself into a rope: some shining thing, a thing with strength: for binding, pulling, hanging, drawing, bridging. Did Pen ever tell her?

Pen is a direct young woman, and honest; her reputation is for honesty. It is sometimes easiest to hide behind such a record, such a clear and lucent reputation. The Flambeau cleaves to true mystery; when she does, few know it.

Now: she only looks; she is quiet, her arm around Ari's waist and her head in her lap; she is quiet, and Ari's ring(s) if she wears any catch in Pen's hair, but it must be appealing to watch the shadows at play, and Pen's expression is an open heart. It does not bleed; it does what it is meant to do; you are only allowed to see it.

But she knows, Pen, that Ari is like Nick in some respects: she sometimes wants direction; some scaffolding to lean on, or hide behind, or -

And so Pen says, quiet, "Will you begin at the promise, then?"

She wants to hear it all.

Arianna

Arianna's spine is where Pen last found it, rightfully placed within her body, and the trailing of her friend's fingertips over it does not make her stiffen and neither does she become entirely languid, they do not puddle together like puppies might, but they do tangle.  Ari's fingers in Pen's hair, the thinnest band of silver around her left ring finger threatens to catch but Ari is careful, she is slow and steady and methodical and wise the wily ways of silvered-things.  She is made of moonlight too.

Elsewhere in the city is a thin gold band, similar in seeming but wider in circumfrence.  It encircles the same finger of another, presses against he margin of his palm.

Pen has known this ring to stand on Ari's middle left finger.  For all the time that Pen has known her, that is where this thin slip of silver has been.  So long has it stood there that there is the echo of it still, a paler slip of faintly olive skin, an echo too faint to even call a shadow. A place the sun did not dare to tred for years upon years.

Ari rolls a small sound in her throat as a means of acquiesence. 

"I will begin there," she says, but she pulls her fingers from Pen's hair to hold them above the lake-witch like so: fingers splayed and palms not quite together, with only the tips of her fingers touching. She shows them to Pen; she says this: "But it is not the beginning.  We come together like this: we touch for a moment, so closely that I feel as if his fingerprints might be my own, or pressed into my own, that I known him at my center and then--"

She moves her hands apart again.

"-- we part before we truly come together."  Her chins drops enough that she can look into the grey of Pen's eyes, but they are too true of mirrors and so she looks away again.  Breathes out before she speaks.

"When we are together in the same space and of the same time we are together.  No others.  The rules are very clear.  And when we are apart we lay no claim to one another."

It is plain-spoken and so simply stated.  It is the sort of Oath that young minds and hearts make to one another.  It extends, though, in dangerous ways.  It extends further than either might have meant it to.

Penelope

"Oh! I see. What came before that promise?" 

Pen is a responsive audience: the gloaming gray, the tarnished silver (oh, but untarnishing: always in the midst of being polished) of her gaze goes to Arianna's show and tell, the steepled hands. She regards the bottom of Arianna's palm; the shape of her from this angle. Her fingers twitch; she wants a sketch book; it is always interesting, to see the world (or somebody) from an unusual angle.

Arianna

And so Pen's hair becomes an augury, as Arianna's fingers trace through it again and this is why Ari has not truly studied Time: because of truths grasped in the tangles of Pen's hair, because the shape of some words already lean toward secrets, because her feet have walked the labyrinth so many times her heart remembers without bread crumbs and without strings.

"Immediately before?" and this, see, is how her mouth quirks. It is rue, and it is fondness, but it is mostly rue and something slightly bitter but long ago and therefore gentled -- LIES, it is the sort of thing that will never be gentled -- and this is why Ari's heart lives in a cage. Because it is jealous and unsharing and so very quick to judgement.

"He had halfway talked me out of my gown as we snuck off to his rooms, wherein we found very ambitious and very blonde Initiate already in his bed."

This, too, is said plainly and simply and without any way to soften the surprise for Pen.  Partly because some part of Ari is still ardent with irritation, all these years later, and partly because Pen's reactions are priceless. And honest. And truth against which Ari might calibrate her own.

"Hence the Oathing."

Penelope

Pen's eyebrows fly up. This is hyperbole. They do not fly up, literally, fly up off her face and attain cartoonish voices of their own and those voices with definite opinions on the behavior of Young Silas and Young Arianna and Young Ambitious Blonde Initiate. But up they go; her eyes gone wide, too, because Arianna is her friend, and any friend in such a situation: it is a thorn-prick; it is a splash of cold water.

What it is not is surprising, quite. There is something about it which Pen does find surprising, but not the Initiate in his bed. 

"What a terrible thing!" she says. "I would have slapped his eyes out of his head and made him find them using only his eyesight; of course, to no avail, for I'd have stepped on one of them." Brutally, she says this; with full honesty. She holds one hand in the air and (this is a beautiful gesture) brings all her fingers inward, as if she is crushing something.

But then, "And after that? And before that?"

Arianna

"Indeed."  Ari's hand strays from Pen's hair to find her clasped hand. To enfold it. That their fists together might speak to the sisterhood of their rage.

"Before that -- and after, briefly -- there came a time when I named him Scoundrel. And also Knave. And a host of other things, both deserving and unearned.  This finding of another came in the briefest of thaws between us, which is why it was so traitorous a thing.  My heart, Pen, it was almost too pained to hear him out."

Her fingers slid away from Pen's, and came to rest on the moon-gilt thing.  Her hand is pressed into the pattern of it; palm tasting of its measure, fingerprints leaving their own echoes. Steadied.

"When we were younger yet, he held the whole of my heart in his hand, Pen.  I loved him the way that young hearts love, with that abandon and earnestness.  It was not easy, but I thought it would endure.  Because, you know," she says, "Love conquers all things.  This is what they say; they lie, but it is still what they say."

This is the only way that Ari can speak of it: she loved him then.  She cannot say it now; she is too caged. She is too uncertain of where this is going.

Penelope

Arianna speaking of love, in relation to herself, is a seven days' wonder. Pen's eyebrows are already raised, and perhaps to her credit they would not raise any more. That is because Pen is a romantic. (A Romantic, capital R.) Because Pen believes in love: the kind of love that consumes and transforms; unalterable and earnest. Arianna knows Pen believes in it; Arianna knows even, perhaps, that Pen lives it: it is her marrow, and it is her blood, and it is her breath; it is even her resonance (ardent [daring - what is more so?]).

And right now, Pen is torn. She wants to argue in favor of it; of course she does. Yet: she is honest; and Silas - she does not know.

She says, "How did you meet him?"

Arianna

"His mother and my father are of your House," she says. She does not say that Elizabeth Robinson is a terrifying thing, so stepped in the essence of their House that hearths flare brighter at her nearness and candle light stretches further into the darkness and kitchen stoves bubbles over burn and crisp and smoke. 

"They knew each another, and Si' and I were close enough in age.  I don't remember how old we were, but I think it was me at eight and he at six, when we first met.  He handed me a flower and a book of fairy tales.  Later I gave him a treasure map and a book of stories," and Ari's stories were of course better, swashbuckling and pirates and swaying from mizzen masts and all sorts of adventure.

Idly, Ari brings her hands up together and touches the tips of her pinkies together.  She doesn't mean it to, but it echoes the gesture she'd made before.  Then she interlaces her fingers.  Then her hands come back to her sides.

"Once he'd learned about proper adventures," she says, with a little haughty note to it, of course, "We would wander off as friends while our parents were at Symposium or teaching.  The War split us up; Academy brought us back together."

She shrugs a little.

"Once he Awakened, we weren't as fast of friends.  Things got... complicated."

Penelope

"Arianna, what are his qualities?"

 

Arianna

[Oh no, difficult questions: Pause!]

Beltane Evening

[Arianna]

Summer is crowning, can you feel it? Do you feel it stirring in your bones? Is it warm and moving within you, like wanting, like lust, like an appreciation of full and fruited things to come?  Summer is crowning and this is May Day, it is the first of May, it is the day of maypole dances and braided hair and posies of flowers, and it is Beltane, the courtship of the Goddess and her mate, the night of bonfires and revelry, it is a fire festival in the tall-grass and the western zephyr-wind.  Can you feel it?

Not in Denver.  In Denver they are clawing their way back out of winter, again, and the snow has dashed all hopes of posie-flowers and sweet-grass and pyres laid heavy with herbs, and bare skin showing in the firelight, and all the other things that scream of Beltane just as surely as the date upon the calendar.  The weather has the good sense to be sunny, but the mercury rises no higher than the forties.  There are threats of freezing in the night.  The ground is muddy-slick with snowmelt, and beneath that hard and yet unfrozen.

Denver is a snowy wasteland that may never see the summer sun.  Happy Birthday, Silas, says the weather, and threatens if not snow then rain.  Much love. Enjoy. It is not at all a middle-finger for his thirtieth solar return, though it may feel as such.

And so the weather dashes all of her clever plans at flirty hemlines or pleated skirts that hit just at the knee and not above, echoes of course of their first Beltane tryst.  It dictates a rarity: Ari in pants.  Dark hued jeans at that, which are shapely and accentuate but do not offer him such ready access to her center.  And the compromise is this: a flirty bandana style shirt, fitted at her bust and loose and flowing at her middle, with ample space for hands to pass underneath and over skin, if ever the temperature is warm enough for her to shirk her coat.  It is just long enough to skim along the same latitudes as the seams at which her legs and torso join, so that it might be the world's least modest dress in other circumstances, so that it might echo faintly other aims.  It lessens the blow of jeans, and wide-heeled ankle boots, and a coat that envelopes and enshrouds her curves so completely that it might be Yule and not Beltane they are celebrating.

She knocks twice on his door frame, then returns her hands to her pockets.  Her hands seem empty, as they are in her pockets. There is no notable distention anywhere that would speak to his present, and surely there is a present, for this is also his birthday.  Her hair is loose, the better for catching up firelight and seeming like flame, and the kohl and color around her eyes only serve to accentuate the exquisite green and shifting mercury-grey of them.  Luminous.  As if something more than merely human were peering out, and through whatever Bro answers the door in Silas's stead.

This woman their roommate has found is Othered in so many ways.  Ethereal, perhaps.  Mercurial, most certainly.  Regal, she has been so named by an Apprentice of a more primal calling.  So perhaps she catches them likewise breathless when they open the door, with the curl of her smile and the sweep of her lashes, though it is well established, somehow, without so much as speaking, that her affection in that realm is for the Hunter and the Hunter alone. However close they dance to her firelight, they will get no more succor than fascination.  And then they might burn.

[Silas]

It is Tony who answers the door, Tony the utter and total bro, Tony of the fiancee, Tony of the physical training.  "Hey, Arianna!  Good to see you."  He offers his fist for bumping, and then as if suddenly remembering (as he's already stepping down the hall), "Come on in!  Silas and Kate are getting the fire pit ready, in the back.  Dante, Alice, and I are getting food ready, and Mark's bringing his man from the airport."  The house opens almost immediately into an open area on the right, with the kitchen and dining room a little further back on the left (or something similar to that, the exact details of which the player isn't going to go looking just now, dear reader), and further back there are sliding glass doors to the patio, and beyond that is a substantial field and garden.  Silas and Kate (and oh, how that pairing of names may grate in their similarity to things that happened when Si and Ari were considerably younger than they are now) have gathered a significant pile of firewood, and have prepared a depression in the ground (no yuppie smudge pots for Silas) with buckets nearby, just in case they become necessary.  They are placing tinder and kindling, and bantering good naturedly about the best way to build this sort of fire when Arianna steps out to join them.  Kate's mode of dress is similar to Arianna's, naturally, as dressing much differently would be foolish under these weather conditions.  Silas wears a kilt (not a utility kilt, but full tartan), boots, and a white shirt.

Arianna is Othered.

Silas is Othered.

The bros (and now Kate, at least) accept them as they are, no questions asked.

Without turning, Silas knows she's there; the other Beltane spent with him, the Hunt wasn't so strong in him as it is now.  Satisfied, for now, Silas steps back and gathers the bottle from which he'd been drinking and a second for her, though before it's offered he turns and wraps his arms around her tight, kissing her perhaps deeper than he'd intended, deeper than for which she'd been prepared in greeting.

"Hullo, Stella-my-love," he says, forehead still to hers for a moment after the kiss releases, pulling back enough to hand her a bottle

Hello, Lea-mine, says the Hunt for no one but Lea to hear

of honeyed cider to drink.  "This is Kate, Dante's girlfriend - "

"Friend," Kate interjects smoothly, with a smile as she turns to greet Arianna.

"Friend, fine - and outdoor maven.  She works with the national parks system."

[Arianna]

Fist bumping. Arianna is not entirely clear on this Sleeper practice, but she is socially fluent enough to play along.  Knuckles meet, and her smile broadens to greet the Bro of Physicality, the one who is tethered to another Sleeper's heart, who welcomes her in and so she can cross the threshold and into their home.  There is no over-long lingering outside the entrance; the Old Ways are sated with fist bumps and informal language.  Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles reduced to knuckles pressed against knuckles.  This is magic in the modern age.

Silas and Kate.

If she notices the coincidence, Ari says nothing about it. It doesn't register in her stride on across her features. She doesn't play with her ring, or glance out toward the fire pit to confirm that she has not heard a name from oh so many years ago, because if Katja Smythe were in attendance and Silas had failed to warn her in advance then The Bros would bear witness to a truly memorably bit of Hermetic tantrum throwing.  Both Ari and Si have it in their bones to be insufferable and cruel when needs be; both have tempers that are very well kept in check.  But all of that is a lifetime ago, and so she offers to help Dante, Alice and Tony in the kitchen, having proved her skills significantly on their first introduction to one another, and there is laughter and merriment and also a bit of mischief between before they even venture out to supervise the laying of the fire pit and building of the pyre.

Of course Silas is wearing something entirely inappropriate for the weather.  Even the tall white socks of formal highland dress could combat the chill, so his boots are fighting valiantly a losing battle. Lucky he is warm to the touch; lucky he is aflame with Life.  Arianna has no such defense against the cold, and also she is born of more temperate climes.  She is feeling a little grumbly about it, all this Winter, Winter bleeding right through Spring, Winter running right over Beltane, when he catches her up in a most thorough kissing and then the burr of irritation is for this overtly public demonstration, it is for the way she is left disoriented and a little breathless just before introductions are made.  She meets them with her mouth redden by his kiss, with her eyes a little softer from it.

"It's a pleasure to meet you," she tells Kate, and the formality is mussed a little by the way Silas has boldly claimed her, by also the easy way the neck of whatever bottle he has proffered fits so neatly into her hand, and by the easy camaraderie she evokes in gatherings of total strangers. These are not strangers.  None of them, not even The Hunt, who is offered Lea's profile and smirk-smile but not the full of her seeming, are strange to Ari beyond Kate.

"Tell us about work in the parks, Friend of Dante" she cajoles, open interest playing in her eyes as she confirms the assertion and line drawn by Kate.  "That sounds fantastic."

In the circle of their gathering, Arianna keeps nearer to Silas than to other points.  She holds side conversations in Italian with Dante and Tony.  She is solicitous of Silas's friends' attention but does not cross over into flirting.  The line is firmly if vaguely held.  Once the fire is lit and a few drinks have gone down, the revelry in her nature comes forward.  If the fire burns hot enough, she will divest herself of her coat, leaving it to drape across a nearby chair, leaving her shoulders bare to reflect the warm light, to leave her Luminous and fleeting like moon or star light.  With this many attendants, though, Silas does not get much farther than chaste touches or kisses before he is subtly rebuked.  She has learned a few things about the Rumor Mill since their first Beltane together.

[Silas]

Kate is, for the record, a little on the short side, and the buxom side, and the blonde-with-a-hint-of-strawberry side, much like a Katja of Arianna's and Silas' mutual acquaintance, but she that is where the similarities end; she doesn't stand to enhance her bosom, nor is there even a hint of social calculation about her.  From what either of them can see, she is genuine and kind.  When she speaks of her work outdoors, for which both Silas and the Hunt have a keen appreciation, she is aglow with the passion of it; she works in conservation of threatened and endangered species, particularly of plants that provide habitats for similarly threatened animals.  Apparently, she is how Silas met Dante, and Dante is how he met the other two bros; like Arianna, Silas is particularly good at mixing into crowds, even as Othered as he is.  Crowds of Sleepers, anyway - the same is not always true of gatherings of Awakened.

Through this conversation, Silas keeps contact with Arianna as much as he is allowed, and while that segues into something else that ebbs and flows, Alice and Tony bring out the food, with Mark and his boyfriend's (Ted, a shy, considerably older and portlier than the rest gentleman - by which the writer means that he is pushing his mid-to-late-40s hard and fast, rather than hovering somewhere in his 30s like the bros, and even Alice and Kate), but once the food is out and everyone is introduced, Silas has some things to say.

"Where I'm from," he announces but doesn't specify which point of origin he means, and there's an authority in his voice that doesn't often creep there, "more people still keep to the old ways than you might think.  Dancing they Maypole -" here, he indicates a caber erected in a back corner of the yard, "- is a tradition that's thought to be tied to male virility, but now is largely just fun and makes a pretty display.  Usually that's done earlier in the day, but we've a bit of light left; shall we?"

Assuming agreement, he shifts the music that's been playing quiet in the background to something more raucous and Celtic in bent, heavy with drums and pipes (less bag and more reed), and explains how the dance is done, how they weave the ribbons around the pole as they weave through each other.  He, Kate, Alice, and (perhaps oddly) Ted are quite natural at this sort of celebration, laughing and calling too each other and the others, reminding one to duck here, or to swing to the outside there.  It takes perhaps half an hour (and a long track, or several woven together without break) to complete the weaving, and when it's done Silas steps back to admire it; the antlers that always leave an impression are, perhaps, a bit clearer to those with the right sort of perception to see them, now.  The bros, if they have any Sight to them, are far from indicating it, while Ted and Kate keep eyeing him curiously.

"I'll admit, we're compressing what should be two days of celebration into one; traditionally, the celebration should have begun last night.  But I've other reasons to want to begin today."

Mark, amused, confirms, "It's his birthday!  I saw a card from someone."

"Hush, you," Silas admonishes, but it's playful and teasing.  Once upon a time, he'd kept his birthday from most; now, he doesn't seem to mind this gathering knowing.  "Anyway, Beltane was about celebrating virility, and fertility, and the marriage of the sun god, Lugh, to the earth mother.  Beltane eve, couples - not necessarily married or together, as the rules were bent for the Rite, went out into the fields and did as they would.  Sunrise on Beltane morning was thought to be a symbol of the birth of the god-child."

Through the explanation there are echoes and interference, and things are different; looking at any of those present for too long is a confusing, slightly dizzying thing.  Everything appears as one of those art works where one position shows one thing, while looking from an angle shows something different.  Silas' kilt becomes something different, something less Irish or Scottish in bent and more historically English.  The lights of the house, flicker more than they should, and the flames of the fire rise higher.  As he speaks, Silas' accent, English and Othered, deepens.  Things are afoot in the circle, it seems.

[Arianna]

It is different to take an academic study of old and bygone practices than it is to studiously re-enact them on your own back lawn.  This may be how Arianna and Silas's Praxes differ, even within keeping of the narrow focus of their shared House.  Though, to be fair, the Robinson boy was always more Primal than any House would rightfully allow and Arianna's choice was as much legacy as simple fit.  It surprises no one that there is a nearly colorless ribbon at the maypole, or that she catches it up.  It takes on the colors of the setting sun, cast in pale pinks or peaches or even dusky grey until the night falls and then it is most brilliant among them, standing out against the woven colors and patterns of the pole.  He can see here and there where she has skipped a stitch in her dancing, and perhaps it was intentional; perhaps everything his Star does is intentional in one way or another.

There is laughter in her eyes as she looks at the taller-than-wide erect member in the yard and then back to Silas in his retelling of the custom.  She says without saying that he is not the sort of man she imagined would require a totem to virility as a backyard fixture.  The insinuation in that side-slipped smile is knowing, but still good-natured teasing.

As is the way she winds the wide satin ribbon around her wrist and watches him on the other side of the may pole before the dance is clearly begun.  As is the way her fingertips barely skim his skin whenever they pass, or how she dodges fleeting kisses when she ducks under or swings wide.

More and more the Sleepers with Sight may feel that he is a thing to be wary of, to be cautioned of.  That Silas is a Hunter, and the horns he bears and the amber to his eyes may make a prey-thing feel uncomfortable. But even as he inspires caution, she undoes it.  She is a thing to be followed, the glimmer of moor light out in the shadows of the night, the siren call that dashes ships against the rocks; Arianna is the promise of fellowship, beyond that of intimacy, and the cant of her cheekbones and sharp of her chin are so accented by the firelight that she seems otherworldly.  Kate and Ted are drawn into it more than the others. While she may lavish the same sort of social attention on them as the others, Arianna's eyes are only for Silas.

In the firelight, her hair is rowan, she is again his salamander queen.  Whenever they are pitched at extremes of the circle, when he stands as summer and she in the space of Air and Darkness, then does The Hunt catches glimpses of her Other through the medium of the firelight, of that pyre burning high into the sky, high beyond reason or safety, and the crackle and split of the wood become whispers of far off times.  She cups her hand and whispers into Kate's ear something the fire has told her, whilst Arianna's eyes remain on Silas who is also seen through this medium of fire.  There is a devilish glint to her smile, and the green of her eyes is indiscernible through the light, only the way that they hold to him is seen. Only the intensity of them. Kate laughs, and Arianna laughs, and Dante asks What? and the women-folk laugh harder.  Hard enough that Arianna has to wipe a tear from her eye before drinking, again, from whatever spirits have been set within the circle.

Later, she may think twice on the wisdom of drinking within unfamiliar circles.  For now, though, her clever mouth shapes something he cannot quite hear and the sound of laughter rises, then, freely from all three of them: Kate, and Dante and Arianna.  It dapples the night.

[Silas]

The night is dappled with firelight and laughter, and the circle is growing; they are dressed in different clothes, now, but that doesn't seem strange at all.  It's a matter of course that they should be dressed appropriately for the weather (spring-like and a bit warm, smelling of green wheat and other growing things, but with a nip of night's chill in the air all the same) and the festivities.  Arianna's dress is of something homespun, as is the clothing of Dante and Kate . . . and Silas, there, too.

For a moment, as things shifted, Arianna and Silas were cognizant of both times, overlapping and weaving together when the veil was thin.  Now, though, there is only this.

There is a draw between them, between Silas and Arianna, and still those with the Sight may well see a stronger impression of antlers than others, may see a stronger blessing from the god he takes as patron than others.  Those same might see a brighter, colder glow about Arianna.  She is there, on the opposite side of the maypole, until they finish, and all the participants (more than eight, now, but there always were, weren't there?) tumble down into a pile of pleasure at each others' company, of pleasure at the shifting of seasons.  This group is, for the most part, quite free with each other; there's the squeeze of a breast here, a pinch of a bottom there, a kiss between those two.  Pairings (not couplings, yet, though everyone knows there will be that eventually - to bless the fields and the livestock, to celebrate the coming summer) are fluid, though Silas' eyes now ambered are for Arianna alone.

"Time nears for the hunt, star-born.  Will you be my willing prey?"

The question is heavy despite the surface amusement, despite the offered mead.  Everything is honey, here - honey and the remains of winter's apples, honeyed wine, a honey-sweetened preparation for the remnants of winters preserved meats.  And the Fae are near, so say the early-dancing fireflies and the electric charge in the air.

[Arianna]

She feels the shift, how the silk of her top becomes the rough textured homespun, how the crowd blurs and multiplies until the distinct clear voices of the few become a jumble of the many, and how the fire-warmth is filtered through the layers of dress, and the green-smell is sharper.  The Leananshidhe is not groped or squeezed or tweaked by just anyone; Arianna finds her way out of the tangle of bodies to where the mead is served and before even the Hunt can find her there is a chalice in her hand -- even the basest vessel is raised to chalice when she takes it up in revelry, and it is a symbol of her dark and sacred spaces, and it is an ark of emotion and of longing, and as she drinks of it she meets the amber in his eyes.

There is the taste of honey on her lips when he questions her, and in reply she hands that vessel over, that sacred, deep and darkened place; she puts in in his hand and with her eyes she dares him drink.  His mouth to the lips of it; its taste spread across his tongue, the shape of it within his hand.  This is the most of her answer, but there are words to seal it.

"Only if you can catch me, Horned One, and then only as a thing caught and never as woman kept." She is kept just far enough from her that he will have to step forward to touch her, and she might lilt away, but there is a pull between them that cannot be mistaken. In truth she pulls at them all, but only Herne is bold enough to make a mission of it.  

[Silas]

"Of course.  Anyone who thinks they could keep either of us would have to be a fool."  With this, and eyes met and held, Silas of the amber eyes drinks deeply from the offered chalice.  And if his tongue toys over the rim in the process?  Well, that's just teasing, isn't it?

There are plenty of places to hide, when the horn sounds to indicate the beginning of the game - a copse of trees there, a jutting, rocky outcrop there, the quickly growing fields there.  Both Silas and Arianna know these things, just as they know that bathing happens once a week or when one goes swimming in the nearby pool, or that leeches can draw the poison from blood, or that the cows will be taken to their summer pasture in the coming days.  This is to say, they are unburdened by things of other times, and are well versed in the things of this when.

Fingers brush when he hands back her chalice, and the smile he gives is wickedly crooked.  "Go, love.  And you will be well and truly hunted."

[Arianna]

"First, you must turn around and close your eyes," she says, with a sing-song lilt to her voice as if she were speaking some ancient rule well-known between them.  Before he does, though, she drinks deeply again of the chalice, draining it, and sets it aside.  Then when he has hidden his eyes from her escape, she reaches out to tweak his cheek, where it is hidden-not-hidden beneath his tunic and tights, and there is laughter as she takes her flight.

Something in Arianna's breast does not feel playful at all about this Hunt.  It is alarmed and a little frightened.  This thing takes her bonnet and lays it on a table at one edge of the circle, then hies off on quick footfalls in the opposite direction, heading for the stand of trees where she might throw her voice among the shadows of the upright trunks; where she may employ a measure of misdirection.  This thing is not under the impression that she will somehow escape, but it thinks that it might try.

And the Star-born one, also within the rattling cage of her ribs and chest, laughs at the girl who thinks she is clever.  Laughs as she leaves her scent at one margin, laughs as she thinks there is safety to find in the wood.  This one feels the rhythm of the drumbeats and anticipates the moment when the Hunt catches her up and claims her.  She will not make it easy for him, but she will relish the ravaging.  It has been too long since someone caught her at her own game.

Both are of a mind to dart between trees, and her skirts are held up so that she can go more quickly between them and her hair is uncovered, now, but still bound up in braids. It does not catch on low branches and leave strands of her like breadcrumbs to follow.  And of course this harried dashing through the woods is like their first (now future?) Beltane together, and the Echoes please the Star however wrinkle-rumpled Time may be.  But she cannot run forever, and so the task turns to hiding, within a stand of close-grown trunks, with her hand covering her mouth to damp the sound of her breathing.  She draws the sigils of her rote on the tree trunks around her, speaking the syllables in her mind, building it up until the last: when she can hear him moving in the woods she lets it fly, and her voice echoes from a place distal to her hiding, and it teases and cajoles (O where is mine love, mine Hunter?  why hast he left me so long alone in the woods...)

And she waits to hear if footfalls track toward her scent or the sweetness of her voice.  One she can send and the other she cannot.  But it is an effort; a chicanery both simple and intent.  Her heart pounds in her chest; her eyes are green with lust and longing.

May Day

Arianna Giametti

Many things have happened in April, many nameless and unknowable things like the melting of snow and then the crashing down of more, because Spring is not snowless in Denver. Spring is not truly Spring. It is the taunting suggestion that Winter might be breaking and that a threshold might be crossed and then running backwards in time just as fast as it crashes forward.  It was Equinox not that long ago, and presently it is Beltane and it does not seem like the sweetness of first summer day, when the pyres are built high, and straight-sided, and tall and also stacked with sweet herbs and wildflowers.  It is brisk again, and there is the threat of snow again looming in the week to come and this place is madness all over again.

Few of the lesser holidays call to Arianna like Beltane, though she is infinitely tight-lipped and noncomittal about why.  It is a day to be out of doors, however unsummery it is beyond the walls of her house and the streets of her neighborhood -- ownership which is still too new to seem onerous.  When Nicholas called and suggested an outing she had to bite her tongue and work so very hard at sounding ambivalent before ultimately jumping at the chance.  It is an adventure! On a thresholding holiday! In the out of doors! With friends!

And snacks.

And a picnic blanket, because the ground is still so muddy, Nick, after all that snow; it is still so muddy and I will not, cannot, shall not, please don't make me sit in all that mess.  Not even for a swig of wine, or, maybe... what type of wine is it?

So they have found a place, out past the usual winding ways of the park. Out past the people, mostly, where the connection to the endless sky as it runs into the mountains is more complete and the smell of growing grass is not entirely thwarted by the snow and coldness of this Denver-spring, which is not spring, and there is wine, and slices of apple -- there must be apple; it is Beltane -- to dip in honey, and a crumble of spices and cookies to dip them further, and other small delights.  And Arianna, who is possessed of this unreasonable inclination to wear white, or grey, or silver in the least practical of places, reflects the afternoon sun like the moon does her evening light, and she is Luminous without having Worked at all, and she is asking him, leaned in and oh-so-very curious like:

"Do you celebrate the cross-quarters?" Oh, so Hermetic.  A little frown.  "In your Praxis, I mean, do you mark the seasons?" Oh, look, a little better.  There is a flourish with a halfmoon of apple, draped in but not dripping honey. All of these things touched by superstition and yet oh so coincidental.  "Are they holy to you, or somehow more resonant..."

Nicholas Hyde

This place is madness: it is Beltane and the snow threatens.  Nicholas, who is now used to winter enough that he no longer wilts in it like a delicate desert flower, has nonetheless remained burrowed beneath blankets in his study for most of April, which by now should have been proper Spring.  Still, it is Beltane and so they are outside.

There is a bite in the wind today, icy fingers that tangle and twist themselves in Nick's hair and leave it tousled, coarse curls tumbling down over his forehead and ears like Bacchus.  He is on the blanket (which he did not argue with Ari over - he might not be averse to mud but he hates heavy laundering) and seated leaned back on his arms.  There is indeed a jug of wine, cleverly concealed because Nick is unsure of how Denver looks upon public drinking, in spite of its liberal stance toward a certain herb.

He takes one of the apple slices, without honey, and crunches it in the pocket of his cheek.  "I do," he says.  "I marked them before, as I was learning as a Disparate.  I more formally marked them once I was initiated."

This glance slides over to Ari now, and she has been tight-lipped and noncommittal but see her cabalmate, he tends to have these things that he intuits about other people.  And there's this little smile, this thing sharp as a crow's beak.  "Do you mark them too, or is this the first Beltane that you've had plans?"

Arianna Giametti

[Answering without answering.... Mantip + sub, spec: Cunning]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (5, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 6 ) Re-rolls: 1

Nicholas Hyde

[Hmmm.  You are clever, Ari, but am I Astute enough?]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 4, 5, 6, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 5 ) [Doubling Tens]

Margot Travers

Beltane.

It wasn't a holiday that Margot ever celebrated before now.  It was her first year observing the holiday in any way beyond the academic alone-- because of course she's read about it before, the brainy little bookworm she was (is, still, but now in a different way-- reading about spells and rituals and gods of dark and light instead of learning about ocean currents and how they've been changing over the past fifteen years due to global warming [hello thesis paper]).  She knew that she needed to get outside and see the sky, breathe the air so fresh and brisk and wet and clean, smelling of wet grass clippings and leaves and mud and pavement.  If she spent another day hiding out in the closet that Ned called an apartment or keeping on the move across campus so as to not be hovering in any one spot for long...

Well, people have gone mad in such circumstances before.

She shared a similar mind to Nicholas and Arianna, wanting to come where grass and trees and flowers were easily accessible in the park, but wanting to be where fewer people were lingering.  Away from basketball courts and playgrounds and attractions.  This shared sentiment and perhaps even a magnetic draw of mutual magickal cores brought the three converging upon the same part of the park.

Margot would appear walking along a path that cut within eyeshot of the pair and their picnic blanket, dressed in a heavy black hoodie and snug gray jeans, with a plum colored beanie on her head to help keep the chill away.  Her hands were in her pockets, her eyes on the path in front of her.  She didn't get the chance to notice Nick and Arianna, for just a couple yards into view she stopped and pulled her phone from her pocket, responding to some kind of text or other update push.  Even from a distance they could see the heavy scowl on her face as she read what the screen had to share.

Arianna Giametti

The halfmoon is savaged. First a bite is taken, removing any threat of dripping honey, and it is sweet and crunchy and the envy of all the Shining Ones in audience. Both honeyed sweet and five-flowered sacred.  And then, as he asks her about Beltanes past, she tucks the remaining piece into her cheek and glances at him across the bridge of her nose and the green in her eyes is something grey-slicked and shifting, and the corner of her mouth curls in amusement.

Crunch.
Swallow.

"This isn't my first," she says, and there is a note underscoring the words that lilt them in un-innocent ways, but before that can rise to any sort of entrendre, she continues. "Many of us mark the Quarters and Cross-Quarters in their studies.  I think," wry tone, half-smirk, "It may be only so that we do not become decoupled with the turning wheel from so long spent in our studies, backs bent over books, eyesight dimming through the years."

She licks a drip of honey off the edge of her thumb before adding, as a particularly serious caveat:

"Not that I have always been so much of an indoor Hermetic--"  This said, as if it were something that she might follow up on with even more words, words and Words, but something moving at the edge of her vision draws her attention away from him for a moment.  She can just make out who Margot is, and the general shape of that scowl. When she looks back to Nick, it is with eyebrows raised in inquiry and a tip of her head toward the Apprentice who often tasted of blood.

A fitting meeting for the date.

Nicholas Hyde

Nicholas and Ari have a back-and-forth that they embody, a game that they play wherein neither of them ever fully knows what's in the other's heart though they look.  The thing about luminosity is that it can conceal, that glow can blind or draw the eye so that it is blind to other things, and she is better at it than he is: and so it's a sort of dance.  He may have his guesses, and they may indeed be accurate, but all he can see is the smile that curls up at the end like a shard of wood in flame.

He takes a pull from the jug of wine and then extends it to her.  Then, wistful, "We should have talked Pen into a bonfire.  I suppose there's always next year."  Where they are from, there were celebrations sometimes, May Day festivals closely tied in with the diaspora: not so here.  People are farther removed from those roots, or they have other roots.

Easing back on his elbows, Nick tilts his head back so that he can more easily regard his friend, the mossy green of her eyes.  He's garbed in a thick green hoodie today, and chinos and boots: usual Nick attire, plain, things that do not readily draw the eye.  He is unlike his wife in this.  "I always wondered why we didn't see more members of the Order at celebrations.  I know some of you do keep the Old Ways."

His gaze is easily drawn toward Margot, whom he hasn't seen since...well, it has been a while.  He marks that scowl.  And before long he lifts a hand and calls, "Margot!"

A languid wave.  It isn't quite an invitation, but they both do look comfortable there on the blanket, don't they?  And they have food.

Margot Travers

Her name ringing from the semi-distance appeared to startle Margot a little more severely than it should a normal person;  her shoulders and spine hitched and stiffened and she fumbled with her phone, nearly dropped it but managed to save it at the last moment.  Wide half-wild eyes hopped up and darted about, and soon landed upon Nick and Arianna.

Relief washed over her tiny frame, posture visibly relaxing, then she tucked her head down and (though they ceartainly couldn't hear it) cursed quietly under her breath.

Be cool, Margot, stop acting like the boogeyman's out to get you.

A hand raised into the air over her head and waved back.  She didn't look like somebody who had much of an agenda, and felt it was rude to pass by somebody kind enough to petsit for you without saying hello at least.  So she altered course and approached.  When she was near enough to speak without shouting over the park's lawn:

"Hey, funny running into you two.  How's Yorick been behaving himself?"

[Charisma 2 + Subterfuge 2: I'm not bothered or super stressed or on edge or anything, look at how chill I am.]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )

Nicholas Hyde

[Psh.  I do not believe you.  Perception + Empathy.]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 5, 8, 8, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 6 ) [Doubling Tens]

Arianna Giametti

[OMG Empathy! I ... like. Care about other people. Too. Not as much as Nick, but I try.]

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

Arianna Giametti

Few things are more natural than accepting the jug of wine from Nick.  It is part of the back and forth they dance.  It is even more fitting now, on this day, with his head crowned in Pan-curls and her smile slipped slighted to the left. It is easy to mistake the sense of something sacred that puddles around him, and the slip of dark ringlets over his ears, and the fullness of the jug of wine for a different sort of worship than they hold in fellowship.  Just as it is easy to be misled by the wickedness of her smile, and she carries the jug with such a long-held association and familiarity, and the laze to her amusement.

Though there are manners to attend to. She waves to Margot before she drinks.  It is more an invitation than Nicholas's wave. 

And then there is wine.  Wine and honey and apples and whatever passes as Spring.  When Nick laments the presence of a bonfire, Ari's smirk turns a little wistful.  "Someday..."

It is left as the insinuation that someday she too would be able to conjure bonfires.  Or perhaps someday, they would all celebrate around one.  Thane likely was responsible for these things when they were all together before; and Ari was a surprisingly willing assistant. Fire and the out of doors and starlight were all among her favorite things.

"We have our own dreadfully boring parties and painstakingly calculated pyres," Ari is saying, with full sarcasm in her tone, when Margot approaches.  "'Lo, Margot," comes the greeting, and Ari is fond enough of the Apprentice to tuck her feet up under her and make room for the girl on the blanket.

"Join us," she says, aloud, as if the imperative would somehow seem a question.  Ari is adept at blending these margins into something pleasant, and the shift of her hold on the bottle implies the apprentice will be granted repast as well.  She misses the elevated state of distress; Margot is always a little on the prickly side, until she is welcomed into conversation, in Ari's experience at least.

And then. For tempting, she adds: "I have Madelines."  Because everyone likes cake as cookies.  And also because this is a surprise, she has not told Nick about them.  And also, because, cake.

Nicholas Hyde

"Yorick is a very good rabbit," Nick says, and there is this creeping fondness in his tone that perhaps belies any lingering concern Margot might have that the rabbit was not being cuddled adequately, or played with often enough.  Nick, see: he's been working on coaxing Pen into a dog or a cat.  Yorick has added fuel to the fire.

It isn't necessary, but he too scoots aside to make room for the apprentice on their blanket.  In that instant maybe Margot can take note of this quiet appraisal, the way in which Nick's sometimes-hazel-sometimes-amber eyes soak in her fear, her sadness.  Maybe she can take note of it because Nick so easily experiences echoes of these things in himself, when he sees them in others, because he reflects like the moon, or like a shallow pool in a deep forest glen, the sort of place people might once have gone to worship and seek truth.

He does not remark upon it immediately.  Margot is a private creature, and he tries to be discreet, see?  He tries to protect the things others hold deep within (sacred).

Instead there is this flash of a glance to Ari, and his hand shoots upward to clutch at his chest.  Betrayal!  "You didn't tell me about the Madelines," he says.  And then, "Come and sit, Margot.  We were just talking about Beltane, and how much more fun it is to celebrate when you aren't a Hermetic."

Margot Travers

The invitation to sit was considered and waffled upon.  Also-hazel eyes lingered on Nick a bit longer-- something in his eyebrows and the set of his mouth had her worried.  She knew his profession, she'd confided in him before.  She worried that he saw right through her (and he would see that worry too, because apparently he could just read people like open large-print books).

But Arianna didn't seem to be appraising her with concern or sympathy, and instead offered madeline cookies.  Something softened up in Margot's expression, friendly company and acceptance from other Mages, this Cabal in particular, brushed up against a soft spot in her soul.  So sit she did.

"Thank you," she said, for the invitation and the offer all alike.  When the cookies were revealed and offered up Margot took one from the package with delicate fingertips and held it for a moment.  She sat cross-legged with her knees out and close to the ground instead of up in the air.  Glanced anxiously to Nick real quick-like once more, then down to her cookie.  Broke a piece of it off as she spoke.

"This is my first Beltane, I suppose.  Thought I'd get out for a walk.  Not exactly a prayer at an alter or a fire dance in the sunrise, but I've had enough homework, Netflix and work for a bit."

Arianna Giametti

Nick is doing that thing, where he looks at other people and their deepest darkest secrets come spilling out. Sadly for Margot, his attempts at reading between Ari's lines have been frustrated so far this evening and so all that pent up Astuteness -- because this is totally how Astuteness works, right? -- lands on the Apprentice whilst Arianna is finding the Madelines in the pocket of her coat or possibly what passes as a picnic basket.

Nick clutches his heart; she affably rolls her eyes in mock-impatience. "Nick, lovely, we have been over this: then it would not have been a surprise!"

But she does pass a cookie first to Margot, which is the only nod given to the seriousness in Nick's eyes or the heaviness with which the apprentice settles into their small circle.  As a rule, she does not make a habit of extending concern or sympathy to people. It gets messy quickly. They form expectations.  Cookies are relatively discrete units of sympathy.  Take this: two madelines. Do not call me in the morning.

Then Nick gets cookies.  Then Ari, herself, keeps the bent and broken ones, which taste the same but are not as worthy of chiminage between friends.  "Fires are between at sundown, in my experience," she shares, indelicately, around a mouthful of lightly orange-scented cake, which is only barely made socially acceptable by the hand she raises to cover her mouth as she speaks.

She swallows, then adds: "But we have wine, too, so perhaps you'll forgive us the lack of dancing and revelry."  There's a flash then, of something far more mischievous in her eyes than in Nick's and it is clear that Beltane bonfires Arianna has attended are divergent from the Order-approved ones she has described.

Finally: "Who's Yorick?"

Arianna Giametti

((Edit: Fires are *better at sundown, in my experience....))

Nicholas Hyde

"Yorick is Margot's adorable rabbit," Nick says.  A beat.  "Dowsing bunny?  You called him a dowsing bunny, but I don't know what he's dowsing."  There is this brief tilt of concern there, seen in his eyebrows: dowsing, see, it's such a vague word, and he does like the rabbit.

He takes a few of the cookies without regard for whether they are bent or broken or whole, because a cookie is a cookie and Nick doesn't believe in broken things.  He's said this before.  As Ari mentions the wine, he takes his free hand (the hand not containing cookies) and sets the jug down in front of Margot.  He isn't sure whether she's technically of age, but, well: these things always work a little differently in Awakened circles, don't they?  Hasn't she bled and fought and faced otherworldy things the same as them?  No child, Margot.

He breaks a piece of cookie and pops it into his mouth, flicking a glance between the other two while he listens to them.  "You should go to a Beltane fire someday, if you have the chance.  I used to go to the festivals the Verbena held when I was still a Disparate.  It was how I met a lot of people up there, back before I was part of a chantry."

Whatever sympathy Margot first glimpsed in him has faded, subsided, taken on the cast of mischief that's evident in his cabalmate.  Any concerns she might have had that he would air her fears here, in the open, evidently are just anxieties.

It's for later.

Margot Travers

, .A piece of cookie had been popped into Margot's mouth.  The wine set in front of her was looked at for a moment, then she nodded her head and hiked one shoulder up and down in a small why not shrug.  She accepted the offer and sought a cup to pour some into.  If no cup was to be found, red solo or otherwise, then she'd follow their lead and take a careful drink from the jug as well.

"He dowses spirits, mostly.  I follow him and he leads the way.  Or I can peek between his ears to actually see them.  Tried that at a cemetary once to make sure it worked."  She shook her head.  Not something that she'd recommend.

"I'm sure I'll get my chance to celebrate Beltane as a proper Verbena.  Maybe even next year.  I was thinking about reaching out to Thane, but this week wound up being pretty... busy.  Didn't really get the chance, I kind of woke up this morning and realized what day it was only after I had my coffee, you know?"  She smiled because this was the place in the conversation where she was supposed to do so.  Popped more cookie into her mouth and glanced over one of her shoulders, making sure nobody was approaching them from her back.

Arianna Giametti

"Like a familiar?"  Arianna's interest piques a little further, and she looks between them to confirm.  Even if they don't confirm, no, Yorick is not a familiar, he is simple a spirit-sight gifted bunny and/or focus, then she will still be duely impressed.  When Margot passes back the wine, Ari steals another sip before handing it on to Nick.

Pre-drinking for another party? Maybe.  Catching up after a dry month of no outings with Andres? Possibly.  Most likely of all, though, is just that she enjoys the company of this particular pair of mages.  Enough to drink in their midst; enough to note the glance over Margot's shoulder as if she were concerned at being followed.

This, then, garners a subtle look between cabalmates and a shift in Arianna's posture that is difficult to read without long acquaintance.  Nick is certain that she has her wand at the ready, but concealed, and with the nuanced placement she adopts now Nick and Arianna together can see the whole of their periphery in their combined line of sights.  It is a thing disguised by how she hands off the wine to him, or how she resettles herself more comfortably seated on ground that is still hard and still cold.

"It is like that for me, sometimes, too, and I am not as bound to the Old Ways."  Lies. Lies and half-truths. Lies and half-truths and truths-of-a-sort. Arianna is bound beyond what she is letting on, but the specifics are murky, the tethers are unclear.  "I look up and a quarter year has passed and it is cresting into Summer and I am not certain what I have done with Spring."  She phrases this as sympathy, but it is an easy-going sort.  "I appreciate the attention that other Traditions give to the turn and passage of time.  I am doubly-glad that I am not responsible for it, or we would all be ever-late or sprung forward or in some such state of disarray."

She offers this with smile, to perhaps ease the burden of whatever anxiousness is about Margot, and it is words upon words but with a comfortable cadence and with a touch of camaraderie and inclusiveness.

"Thane was good at keeping us honest with the seasons," she says.  This is the closest they have come to Truth in her expression: she misses Thane; she misses the broader circle of their togetherness.  For Nick, then, and only Nick to notice: she misses Kestrel.  "Maybe you will be good at it, too, Margot.  You can keep me honest, then."

The smirk returns at the verbal gauntlet thrown.  Because keeping Ari honest is a great white whale of a undertaking.

Nicholas Hyde

"I didn't realize you were exploring spirit work," Nick says, and there is this second appraisal of Margot.  Different somehow, this time: it's a more professional interest, no sympathy there only curiosity and perhaps this tinge of excitement and interest, too.  Magi who work within the spirit world are rare, see, and Nick doesn't meet many people who understand what the fuck he is talking about.

Listening to him as he wonders, as he exalts, is not the same as sharing the experience.

"Marking with ceremony is important.  It's like being able to use the hands on a clock to reference," he says to Ari.  Mention of Thane causes this little point to appear between his brows, this furrow, and as they talk his gaze wanders off to somewhere nonspecific, across the fields that have not yet had their first greening because Denver is as far as he is concerned a winter wasteland.

"It's hard to be an apprentice and be in school at the same time," he says to Margot, and here the sympathy is back, though there's camaraderie in this, a co-misery, commiseration.  "I Awoke when I was in grad school.  Thane is helpful to talk to, though.  Have your lessons with him been going well so far?"

Margot Travers

"No, not a familiar."  Margot shook her head while passing the wine off to Ari.  "But Andraste used a rabbit to predict the future.  I figured I'd try, and worse comes to worst I'd just have a pet.  Turns out I can focus through him, so he's a useful pet."

The cabalmates were subtle in their repositioning, and though Margot was learning to pick up on such nuances she was a little distracted at the moment.  Not searching them or their motives.  She trusted them (enough).

More cookie was nibbled, and she grinned a small bit to the Italian woman that she shared picnic space with.  "Thane mentioned how cycles are important, and the passing of time is too.  I don't really see the importance of the seasons just yet, but I probably will.  I just thought observing the marked holidays and switching away from the Christian calendar would be a good start, if nothing more."

Then, to Nick:  "It is...  Difficult, that is.  Switching between academics and rituals for my studies is... tiring."  Cookie nibble.  "We haven't really been doing lessons, per say.  I met up with him once and we had a good conversation.  Planned to meet up another time but that chance didn't come.  He's gonna be putting me in touch with someone more local, though."

Arianna Giametti

There are so many subsets of conversation here that she cannot relate to: Primals and their marking of seasons, Sleeper schooling of any kind, Awakening as a first introduction to a magickal reality, Spirit Work of any kind, being Lost to one's Tradition and finding it by happenstance and braille.  If Ari were a different kind of Hermetic, she would study her nails and tune them out. Instead she leans in a little and listens intently.

For awhile.  She is missing a few too many reference points to grasp the nuances of the commiseration between Nick and Margot, and she is forever trying to layer assumptions and understandings atop one another to craft some semblence of understanding.  It is bothersome.  There are too many gaps for her to be compelling in her inclusion, so she falls quiet.  It is a rare passage of no-Words from the Hermetic in their midst.  Instead she lets her attention wander a bit and takes in the cant of the sun, and its distance from the horizon, and the rake of the wind.

Because she cannot relate to the Primals, see? And she does not mark her world in any of the same ways as they do, you know?

Nicholas Hyde

"I mark the seasons as part of my understanding of the Wheel," Nick says.  "It's not the same as receiving instruction from one of the Verbenae, but if you're interested in talking about it sometime let me know."  Perhaps Margot could wonder if this offer is made with some intent to trap; she's a wary thing, isn't she?  But his eyes meet hers and it appears genuine, sincere, and without guile.

He has taken the wine from Ari and a long swallow from the jug.  "You should talk to Kiara, too, if you have a chance."

And perhaps he has noticed that Ari's attention is wandering, because they've had this talk about river rocks and he remembers how she reacted.  The memory of that tension still lingers.  They may have sought to construct a bridge to understanding, but there's still that divide isn't there.

"Ari basically went to magickal school with a lot of other Hermetics," he offers then, with a glance to Margot and this little smile that is many things: affection for his friend, maybe wonder at her experiences, maybe a little conspiratorial too.  "Did they make you practice ritual at the same time as your studies, Ari?  Tell us about Hermetic school."

Margot Travers

Nick knew Margot well enough to anticipate the wariness.  It was there in how she glanced at his face, searched it and his eyes after he set up the offer to discuss the seasons with her.  Really?  The seasons?  And that's all you wanted to discuss, is it?

A more interesting tidbit of information caught the Apprentice's attention, and it swung over to Arianna instead.

"School?  Is it like college-- you go when you Awaken?  Or did you go as a child and Awoke later?"

Arianna Giametti

To be fair, Arianna has given an undue amount of thought to river rocks and their selected merits and their ritual purposes and the potential of them for servicable vessels of ... okay, that last was a far less successful line of inquiry, but the point here is that she has spent a wholly unreasonable amount of time thinking about rocks since the conversation in question.

And they were still rocks. Exquisitely well considered rocks. Rocks elevated to a meditative awareness. And yet. Still stone.  Still compressed mud.  Still hardened bits of Earth, and in being Earth akin to coins and pentacles and in this, perhaps returned to circles and also sometimes being imperfectly round in and of themselves but, at the core, at their heart-of-hearts, still stone.

Stone-hearted.
Rocks.

She has given it very much thought, indeed.  Maybe rocks are again what she is considering when she hears Nick say something she very much hopes she has imagined, about her attending Academy, about it being 'magickal school', and so her attention sweeps back over them to take in the color of his eyes, and the fascination in Margot's and how they are both looking to her and how there is an expectation of something marvelous to be said and shared and, damn, now she is on the spot to deliver.

"Oh, yes," she says, with a little shrug, as she reaches back to plant her hands behind her so she can lean back a little, nonchalantly, as if this were not great and exciting news at all.  To her it isn't, and her companions have the good graces not to ask her about Hogwarts itself, so, she supposes, this is normal discourse.  "It is like school, I suppose.  We had coursework and exams and recitations and practicum, though the subjects were not the same as in sleeper schools. We studied gematria beside geometry, and focused more on languages and various esoterica.  I grew up in Europe, mainly, where the linguistic expectations are higher -- "

Did you see how polite that was, Nick? She did not say anything derisive AT ALL about the monolinguistic pig-headedness of the English-speaking American esablishment.

"But in Academy it is not uncommon to study four or five tongues concurrently.  Even as a Consor. Awakened Apprentices study rote, but even Consors study ritual.  In my A-level year I lectured on symbology and ritual myself."

She glances between them to see if this will sate their curiosity.  Or merely whet it.

Margot Travers

To her credit, Margot listened raptly.  Rapt enough that her voice was still a bit hushed when she asked:

"What's a Consor?"

Arianna Giametti

This is a fair question, and Ari answers it plainly.

"Because Hermetics train their students even before Awakening, there is a population of un-Awakened but knowing members of the Order.  They cannot work magic, but neither do they believe so steadfastly in its improbability.  Some never Awaken, in fact.  We call these people Consors. Because I Awakened later than expected, I served as a Consor to my mother's practice for several years after Academy."

This last is not something she had explicitly told Nick before. What follows next is also improbably candid and unfamiliar to his ears.

"Because a Consor does not have an Awakened Will, they are not affored the same rank, authority or protections as an Apprentice or higher within the Order. Some Magi are unkind or even abusive to their Consors and those who are in the service of others."

Margot Travers

"Oh," was the answer that Margot gave in turn to the information offered up.  Then, again quiet, she added:  "That's terrible..."

But a lot in the world was terrible.  She would comment that much and then let it lie.  Not like she could change Hermetic culture and tradition anyways.

Nicholas Hyde

Imagining that Nick's curiosity could ever be sated is perhaps wishful thinking.  When Ari looks over at him she will find his eyes bright and sharp, amber in the shadow of the nearby tree and as the sun falls behind them now, sinking toward the horizon line.  He is cinder wrapped in ash and smoke, sometimes, like now.

Linguistic expectations are higher, she says, and he smiles.  They've perhaps had conversations about this before, how Nick is envious of the command of languages she and Penelope both have, how he knows little more than what he remembers of the street Spanish he learned growing up from his relatives and classmates.  "I feel like I've gained the benefits of your experience lecturing on symbology."

He listens, sharp-eyed sharp-eared, to their exchange regarding consors.  There is a noise he makes at Ari's candid admission.  It's a muddled thing, thoughtful (but there are traces of approval too: mark this.)  And he says to Margot, "All Traditions have their laypeople who are not Awakened but understand how to apply certain types of ritual or use certain tools.  They're often very helpful to us, and I think underappreciated even in Traditions that are structured differently from the Order of Hermes.  I know someone who works at a morgue in town who is affiliated with the Chakravanti.  You don't always know who they are, either, because they don't carry the same kind of resonance we do."

He tilts his head back again so he can regard Ari, and then he says, "What was it like, being a Consor?"

Arianna Giametti

[It. Was. Awesome! Let me distract you with cool stories. Manip + Subter, spec cunning (misdirecting!)]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 3, 7, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 4 ) Re-rolls: 1

Nicholas Hyde

[Ooo.  Are you lying, Ari?]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 6 ) [Doubling Tens]

Margot Travers

[Fat chance on picking up on this, Marge.]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 7, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

Arianna Giametti

[NO TIES! right button clicked this time]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 4, 7, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 7 ) [Doubling Tens]

Margot Travers

[Alright toots that's all you]

Arianna Giametti

Nicholas regards her and mark this, she is regal.  She is the daughter of a House whose prominence reaches back into time immemorial.  There is a litany of names that trails behind her and Arianna, even as a Consor, was never quite as low as those whose names did not precede and follow them.  And still, there is a shade of something distant and darkly remembered to the corner of her eyes which are shaped like laughter but are not touched with merriment.

"It was exciting at times," she says, and the cadence of the words are correct but their lilt is not. "To stand so closely to that sort of wonder and working.  I got to experience things that I would not yet be invited to, at my Rank, were it not for my specific skills and education. And it was also infinitely frustrating to feel it was always just beyond my fingertips, or on the tip of my tongue and yet unspeakable."

There is wine, readily at hand, and Arianna takes a sip of it, and the shape of the jug in her hand seems fitting and well-mated, and the cant of her shoulders is inclusive and she seems almost complete in her fellowship but there are broad strokes that she omits and the absence is noticeable to her cabalmate if not to Margot.

"But there was also this: we all began Academy together.  Even in the Order it is rare to Awaken as a child. And then someone Awakens and they are removed, split off to follow a higher path.  And then another.  And another.  Until more are Awake than remain sleeping, until the paths are no longer divergent but fully separate and there are assumptions then about what you will or will not amount to.  Being a Consor in my early teens was great exposure, but no matter how great a Consor is, they are still only a helpmate.  And exposure is not the same as experience."

Margot Travers

Further still, Margot sat quietly and listened.  While Arianna spoke of Hermetic school and how it was to be a Consor instead of Awakened through that experience, the Apprentice did nothing more than absorb and quietly finish her cookie.  Another sip of the communal wine was taken somewhere in the mix as well.

She didn't pick up on anything under the surface of the story.  Margot was perhaps too busy being distracted by the very idea of wizarding school, commiserating with the frustration of witnessing and feeling something but being just unable to grasp it all the same, and whatever it was that had her glancing over her shoulder earlier, that Nick had picked up on so easily but Arianna had missed the details of (much as was the situation now, but with the female roles reversed).

Her phone buzzed again in her pocket, and Margot's eyebrows hopped up on her face a little in reaction to it.  A hand clasped over the phone's shape through the fabric of her hoodie pocket, like that would still the buzzing.  She didn't check it, but instead looked somewhere in the near distance between the couple of Mages she sat with and took a slow, deep, quiet inhale of breath.  Easy.  Don't read it.

"That was my alarm," she lied, and started getting to her feet.  "I need to get going."

Arianna Giametti

They are talking about a time in Arianna's past that she does not readily mention, or when she does it is only in characature.  And were Nick another Hermetic, and not her cabalmate and friend who was once Disparate and therefore subject to separate expectations of conduct, his question would be unspeakably rude.  It is like asking: What was it like, being less than a person?

There was an explicit line between her and Kestrel, drawn around this topic, sectioning it out and rendering it off limits and even in his brutal pushing of her buttons this word, Consor, did not come up. This is how negatively Arianna feels about the time in her past, and there are certainly stories-- though not picnic stories -- to illuminate the exact shade of resentment behind the careful mask she presents to Margot.

He can guess at the shape of them from what she has said so far.

Nicholas Hyde

See here: Nicholas is an insightful man, but there are things he still doesn't know about other Traditions and their inner workings.  There are things he cannot possibly understand because he wasn't there.  But he is an insightful man, and we have said before that it is difficult to be insightful.

Ari's tells are subtle: her eyes shape like laughter but there's no laughter inside them.  Witness that.  He doesn't miss it.

His own are subtle too.  He shifts where he is sitting, leans forward and back, slides a hand across his stomach as though to soothe the flutter in the pit of it, to quell some secret shame and sympathy and anger that coils there.  Sometimes he asks too many questions.  Sometimes he forgets that he asks too many questions.  He blinks once, as he has his head tilted back, and then he rights it again.  "I think experiences like that are always worthwhile, in the end.  Most of the world still Sleeps, and it reminds us of how to use our power appropriately."

Then, Margot is standing up, she needs to get going, and he watches her for a second more.  "Thanks for sitting with us," he says.  "I'd like to talk with you again soon, when you have the time."  He lifts the container of cookies toward her.  "Here, for the road."