A night out

Stella

They have known each other forever, and been entangled in each other's hearts for half a lifetime, and been off-and-on lovers for almost as long as that, stitched together by time and place here, and then there again, at the intersection of the winding paths their lives have taken, but of all the men with whom Ari has dallied or been set up with by her mother, or feigned interest in to avoid such setting ups, Silas has never taken her out on a proper date.  There have been flowers and long walks in the garden but the sort of adult and mundane practice of dinner, and dancing, and whatever comes next? No.  Not once.

This is part of the travesty of growing up in Chantries or meeting only ever at Conclaves and Symposia.  

And now that they have been within one another's orbit for nearly three months, she has decided that this pattern is long overdue for breaking.  So it's Friday evening, and a little before sundown, as the sun finally sunders at nearly eight o'clock this close to the solstice, and she is wearing a dress that clings in the right places and swirls in the right places and leaves him wondering where she might have concealed her wand -- except that he knows exactly where, as they have been at Symposia and Conclaves together many times before and all of her ready hiding places are known to him, and also it is known that she, a Flambeau's daughter, is nigh on never without her instruments -- when she knocks upon his door.

Once.

Then twice.

A little pause.

Then once, twice again.

"You are taking me out for dinner," she tells him, perhaps as she is helping him with the buttons of his shirt or admiring, openly, the way he cleaned up.  She does not need to tell him in words; Silas knows that he is a handsome man. He knows it even moreso than most handsome men know they are appreciated. So instead of words, she slides her fingers along one cheek and then into his hair and kisses him, just gently, without letting him deepen it, on his mouth.

"And then we are going dancing."  These words are spoken just against his mouth.

She waits until they are in the car, and he has told her or the GPS unit where they must go, to give him the last of the early evening's surprises.  It is a small, velvet bag, with two metal balls inside.  They are weighted, and as he moves them in his palm he can feel the way the small weight inside each shifts in echoes of his movement.  Silas, being far more experienced that his Star, will recognize them for the toys they are almost immediately.  There is a thin slip of paper in the bag as well, as he pulls it out to read it, she tells him:

"These were for your birthday..."  He can imagine why she might not have gotten around to giving him such a present then.  He was well and truly feted with even without them.  The thin slip of paper tells him that the set comes with two pairs...  the look she casts him as they are stopped at a red light leaves no question as to what has been done with the others.

So it is to be a waiting game, then. A drawn out and slow sort of foreplay.  Dinner, at a quiet corner table by the windows, with the toe of her shoe dragged along the outside of his calf as they speak in low tones to one another and indulge in delicately balanced flavors.  A shared dessert and laughter and the sort of obvious intimacy that engenders envy from other tables.  At least one waiter is certain that this dinner is to be a proposal.  Back of the house has a quiet bet on it, even.  No one would even dare to guess it is their first proper dinner date together.

When they do rise to leave, Ari wraps a pashmina the color of moonlight around her shoulders, and it is soft and warm beneath his hand, which alights in the small of her back to guide her through the maze of tables.  The night is warm enough that they might walk between dinner and dancing, with the click of her heels on the Denver pavement to herald them and the spill of their voices kept low and between them.

It has been left to Silas to choose an appropriate club for dancing and after-dinner drinks, and he has had ample time to change his selection based on her belated birthday present and this long, slow waiting game.  But also is he aware how each step and movement must shift the small weights within her, and how the anticipation that she has set to him to manage through their demure dinner is now revisited upon her in even the most subtle of movements.  Even the walk between dinner and dancing requires and hones her attention more than she may have expected.

And all of this is to say that we find them now, on the dance floor, perhaps wreathed in a thin sheen of shared magics -- if they are so brazen and so dare for her to share the emotion of the moment or he to feel the thrumming of her pulse and blood and moving sinews -- in the anonymity of a sea of Sleepers, in the half-dark.  Fully and unrepentantly in the moment.  They are nearing the point where she will need to step away, to get a drink or step outside or somehow let the rise within her settle before it breaks.  But Silas's stamina is far greater than hers and Ari will insist that he stay dancing if he wants -- I like to watch you, she will say, with her best bewitching smile, backed by the knowledge that none of his dancing partners will evolve into anything greater.  Not tonight, while they are within the same circle and space.

Silas

They have known each other forever and have been into and out of each other's orbits for most of their lives, but they've never gone through the mundanities of what most would call a normal date.  Still, Silas cleans up well and even goes so far as to wear a tie for the occasion.  It's warm, and so his sleeves are rolled up enough to display some of the ink on his arms.  His hair is recently trimmed and artfully (but not purposely) disheveled, and his skin is already darkened to a pink-y gold from working in the sun, the same sun which has created a smattering of freckles across his nose and cheeks.  This is what Arianna sees when she knocks on his door, and when he invites her in.

Perhaps there's a glass of wine or a cocktail before they leave, and there's definitely a kiss - while it may not linger, the embrace does.  When they are near, Silas ever craves the feeling of her against him.

But out they go, and in the car she presents him with his gift.  This, of course, gets a wide smile and him leaning over to kiss that space just below her ear, before her neck, lightly.  It's a tease, and it's clear that he greatly approves of this gift, even with the desire for simply heading back home it creates.  He has some control, however, and so they end up at their quiet, intimate dinner where the kitchen's pool may or may not be the only one on whether they end the meal engaged or not.  It's delicious, and then it's to the club - a jazz place that, some nights, has big band music and swing dancing.  This is not one of those nights, but a night for things that sound like Etta James and Louis Armstrong.

After awhile of dancing, Ari is thirsty or hot or ... something ... and before Silas allows her to step away he gives her that long, lingering kiss he'd wanted to before they left his house.  "Don't be too long," he says with a glint in his eye, but he knows as she does that no other will be anything more than a dancing partner.  Not when they're in the same circle and space.

Stella

There was a time in their lives when wearing a tie wasn't considered dressing up.  It was simply dressing appropriately within the Academy walls.  And if he had chosen his House by then, and been accepted, then his tie would have been similar to the colors she often wears.  Tonight, though, he is bound by not such strictures or formalities.  His tie is whatever color he wants it to be, and there is at least once that she fingers the margins of it and looks up at him through her lashes and is some manner of wicked in what she does not say but definitely implies.  It is always like this; there are Echoes between them, and they have the sort of history that folds up on itself almost by happenstance.

Her mouth still carries the taste of his when she makes her way to the bar, which is a Speakeasy sort of place with drink-slingers in braces and page boy hats and bowties.  The fancy of it calls forth the mercury-mischief in her eyes, and it is a slick of something forbidden and dangerous to her otherwise inviting smile.  She orders something fairly light on alcohol, but with muddled herbs and fruit to it, something with flavor that tastes their hand and they are ready to please.  She's leaning then, against the bar, with her drink in one hand and most of her attention for Silas on the dance floor when something catches the corner of her eye.  If he looks over now, her attention is not for him but for a couple a few bar stools down.  And then it is back to him as she sips at her drink, but it is divided and less bent toward mischief.

Even here, where the slide and sway of the music sets the cadence of his steps, a Hunter is aware of his surroundings.  This sort of half-light is not a safe place. There are horned things, and old gods, and big brass and rampant temptations to consider.  There are other Hunters here, those who have lesser or greater goals than he.  When Ari steps away, it does not take long for Silas to avail himself of a new dancing partner.  She is light on her feet and sensuous; the red of her dress and the swirl of her skirt complements the length and litheness of her limbs.  She is a much better dancer than his Star; she keeps him on his toes.

It is unlikely that his attention, even captured as it is by dancing, will stray from Arianna for long.  So when something pricks at the edge of her attention and pull her shoulders back a little tighter, and her stance a little prouder, and then prompts her to push off of her lean against the bar and abandon her drink, it isn't long before he notices her absence and can mark her movement through the crowd toward the narrow, dark corridor that leads toward the washrooms.  He is halfway across the room, so he also has the perspective to see the man falls in step just a few paces behind her.  One of his hands is in his pocket.  He looks around suspiciously before disappearing into the hallway behind the Hermetic woman.

Silas

To be fair, when they are in the same circles and space, some part of Silas' attention rarely strays far from Arianna; the thing between them, whatever it is, demands knowledge of her as intimate (which does not necessarily mean physical, but can) and accurate as can be.  Regardless, of whys and wherefores, Silas knows quite a bit about what's going on with his Star just now, and when that wire snaps through her spine, clearing away her languid watching and wanting, his eyes go to her immediately.  When he sees her heading for the restrooms and someone following her, it's automatic that he cuts the shortest distance between himself and her, making sure that she's not alone.

As has been established, a Hunter is also a Protector.

He is, of course, well aware (and Aware) of his surroundings; it's important to know how many there are, and the mood of the room (though this sort of music and dancing lend themselves well to indolence and excess in most people, as they had in the both of them to this point), and has all but forgotten the woman he was dancing with while Arianna was at the bar.

~.~ @ 4:48AM

Roll: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 7, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

~.~ @ 4:48AM

(For the record, that was Per+Aware)

Stella

Arianna is not a particularly altruistic soul.  She does not usually go out of her way to intervene in Sleeper matters, or even matters of other Houses and Traditions. The Disparates? Please. She barely acknowledges them as fellows.  This is the careful countenance she has cultured; this is what the rumors say. But there are things she cannot abide: cruelty toward children, victimization of women, wrongs committed within the specific sphere of her influence. So when the very charismatic man a few bar stools down places his hand on his companion's arm and whispers something into her ear, as he slips something into her drink, Arianna is displeased and somewhat watchful.  When that companion, a pretty young woman, rises and weaves her way toward the washroom, the Hermetic woman pushes away from the bar to follow her.  Her drink is left alone and unguarded. She will not be returning to it.

The hallway toward the washroom is dark and closed in.  There is a door for gentlemen and a door for ladies, and slatted door that leads into a store room, and, at the end of the hall, a door that leads out into the alleyway, which is propped open with a brick.  It is toward this last that the woman weaves and stumbles and Arianna is quick to catch up with her.  The charismatic man, displeased by a witness to his planned events, is the length of the hallway behind them.  He is out the door before Silas enters the hallway.

When Silas enters the confined corridor, the slatted door is locked shut.  There is no light coming from between the panels.  The men's room door is likewise shut, but not locked, and the women's room door swings open to allow a trio of no longer college aged women to emerge in a gaggle.  They impede his progress, but also inform it. There is not enough room or stalls glimpsed through the opening and closing door for Arianna to have gone through this portal and disappeared.  The gaggle pushes past him on their way to the dance floor, condensing down to single file and muttering a tangle of Excuse Me's and Why Hello There's.  He's given a couple approving and gratifying looks, despite the sense of predation in the darkness.

But Silas is not the only predator at the back of the house tonight.

Outside, Ari has helped the woman across the alley to a slightly less filthy place to rest.  Her body is interposed between the limp-limbed, glassy-eyed body and the door back into the bar's hallway.  Etta James's voice spills out of the cracked doorway, and then is suddenly louder as the door opens again behind her.  Instinctively, she draws her wand out of its hiding place as she stands.

The man is charismatic, but that only means that he communicates his ire more completely. And finding an added quarry, one intent on resisting, does not please him.  He has withdrawn his hand from his pocket, and it is wrapped around the hilt of a knife.  The blade gleams in the lowlight of the alley.  Arianna's wand is pointed imperiously at his sternum, held at the end of an extended arm -- beautiful form, this, truly -- and the conversation they exchange drips with coercion from both ends.

From the hallway, and even as the trio is passing him, Silas is aware of the fight-or-flight flurry of adrenaline rising within her.  He is also sure that he knows which option she has chosen.  This is only confirmed by the feel of her resonance gathering around her, reaching out to his senses from the opening crack of the door at the end of the hallway.  It cannot fully be a surprise to push out into the alley and see his Stella furious and imperious, wand at the ready and Will rising around her.  Behind her, there is a woman slumped against the wall of the opposing building, whose head lolls to one side and whose limbs are ragdoll-limp.  Between Silas and Arianna is a man, not quite of the same height as the Hunter, but who holds a blade with a significant familiarity and ease.  It is held to the side a bit, not immediately pointed toward her, but one lunging motion and a swing of his arm could bring it against her in less than a heartbeat.

"Seriously... is this some sort of Harry Potter bullshit?"

Arianna knows just enough of Sleeper pop culture to be amused by the allusion.  It is a cruel sort of amusement, though, and she doesn't drop the aggressive stance or lessen the force of her building rote.

"Just put the knife down and go back inside," she tells him.  "I don't want any trouble, and you don't want any trouble. We can still both walk away."  Which is anything but true, but she says it with such confidence and poise.  He is willful enough to resist the compulsion, but it distracts him from Silas's presence in the doorway.

"I don't think that's going to happen..."

Silas has the advantage, and enough experience with violence to recognize how this scene is going to unfold.  The knife will move toward Arianna; her Will will push out against his mind.  Etta James will continue to sing.  The slumped woman will moan something unintelligible and futile at the action, unable to stop her assailant from lashing out at a new target.

Stella @ 7:56AM

[Subterfuge]

Roll: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9) ( success x 2 ) [Doubling Tens]

Stella @ 7:59AM

[Do what I say: Mind 2 + vulgar w/ witness, dif 6, minus instruments & coordinating skill, + fast casting]

Roll: 2 d10 TN5 (1, 5) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Stella @ 8:06AM

[Resist]

Roll: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 7, 7) ( success x 2 )

Stella @ 8:07AM

Next Round Inits:
Man +5
Ari +5
Silas +7
Woman [No action]

Man rolling

Roll: 1 d10 TN6 (2) ( fail )

Stella @ 8:07AM

Ari

Roll: 1 d10 TN6 (2) ( fail )

Stella @ 8:08AM

Silas

Roll: 1 d10 TN6 (6) ( success x 1 )

Stella @ 8:08AM

No Ties
Man

Roll: 1 d10 TN6 (9) ( success x 1 )

Stella @ 8:08AM

No Ties
Ari

Roll: 1 d10 TN6 (2) ( fail )

Stella @ 8:09AM

Next Round Order:
Silas
Man
Ari

Declares:
Ari: Keep persuading to drop knife
Man: Stabbity stabbity at Ari
Silas:

Silas

Silas, too, is not particularly altruistic; the things he does are, for the most part, well serviced to serve him.  If they serve other people at that same time, that's all well and good!  But what he is is someone who doesn't take well to the abuse of the trust of others.  He is a Hunter (and, sometimes, a plain dealing villain) who wears what and who he is on his sleeve, and has little patience for those who do not.

Especially when they interrupt his evening out with his Star.

And so it is that Silas who, for the most part focuses on Hunting and (learning to) Healing, throws the first punch - a one-two, in fact - once he's closed the distance between them.  First goes to the face (preferably the nose, but really anywhere with the sort of force behind it that Silas applies will work well) and second goes to the gut, forcing out air rapidly, and leaving the attacker gasping for breath and quite possibly bleeding.

"If you have to drug your chosen prey, your pursuit is unwanted and unworthy.  Leave, now."

His voice is quiet but intense, and carries quite a bit of command behind it.

[Declare: reflexive close of distance, punch*2!]

Hunter @ 10:55AM

[Dex + Brawl, punch 1!]

Roll: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 6, 7, 7) ( success x 3 )

Hunter @ 10:56AM

[Damage - Str 3 +sux]

Roll: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )

Hunter @ 10:57AM

[And . . . never mind that second punch.  A broken nose is sufficient, dude doesn't need to die (I don't think).]

Stella

His nose is bloodied, and the taste pain and copper fills the man's mouth. It ruins his features, this smear of red spreading out of his nostrils.  There will be bruising.  It will be an inconvenience, but his constitution is stronger than Silas may have thought and the corner of his mouth shifts to something sinister and brutal before the knife, which had been aimed at Ari just a moment ago, is thrust into Silas's side.  They are at such close quarters just now that it connects, with a dull and sort of empty thud against his lower ribs.  Where pain should have exploded from the wound, there is little more than the feeling of having been jabbed with its hilt.  Poked.  Inconvenienced.  There are new tears in fabric of his shirt, but no blade biting into meat of him.

The man is still close up against him, having so committed to this stabbing movement and so missed that they are pressed to one another in a very awkward turn of events, when Arianna shapes the singular word of command over her Will and the arch of her magic is merciless and clear as it pushes into the alley assailant's mind.  The syllables do not matter much to the Sleeper man, but Silas recognizes them and the force of Will that comes screaming in behind them.  And it is livid, excoriating and luminous and strikingly present.  It conjures in this mortal's mind the sort of fear that is tasted -- like the blood and pain from his nose in his mouth -- more than named and known.  This woman with her Harry Potter bullshit and her Thug out of Nowhere friend are terrifying.  

Silas is unaffected by her Working, but is privy to its most immediate effects.  The man's fingers release the blade, reflexively, and it drops to the alley floor with a dull clatter.  He steps back from Silas, creating distance and breaking up the awkward closeness.  His hands are held up in front of him, empty so that the two mages can see he is no longer threatening, and then the weight of that fear and the command in Silas's voice and the gravity of the situation are overwhelmingly too much.  Leave, now -- it sounds like the best idea he's heard all night.  And so he turns on one heel and breaks for the open end of the alley, clipping the edge of a dumpster with his shoulder in his haste.

Only once he is beyond sight does the rigidity of Ari's projective arm loosen.  Her hand lowers, and the rush of active magics fades.  She exhales and the proud Hermetic cant of her shoulders rounds just a little.  After another moment of watching the end of the alley, her attention cuts over to him.  They are children of the Ascension War; but it is among the first time outside of any shared training that he has seen her so plainly and definitively act as if she were the Arrow of Artemis's daughter.  

"Are you well?"  It is her turn to ask, as she slides her wand back into its hiding space, with her voice as neutral and level as she can keep it.  There is no faulter to it, no shake to her hands, nothing but the elevation of her heartbeat and the adrenaline he might still sense in her system to give credence to any assertion that she has just been assailed by a strange man with a knife.  This lack of evidence, though, is a stiff Hermetic upper lip. It is willfulness. It addresses the momentary need and pushes repercussions off until the small hours of the morning. 

Are you well?

Because she totally had this handled (did not), and wasn't just about to get stabbed.  

He is not her White Knight, but he does have impeccable timing.

Something like this.

Syll @ 9:01PM

[Man: Soak]

Roll: 3 d10 TN8 (4, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )

Syll @ 9:03PM

[Man: Stab! F you!]

Roll: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )

Syll @ 9:05PM

[Damage Str +1 L]

Roll: 3 d10 TN6 (1,3, 3) ( botch x 1 )

Syll @ 9:06PM

[Ari: Extending, Mind 2 + vulgar w/ witness, dif 6, minus instruments & coordinating skill, + fast casting +1 diff]

Roll: 2 d10 TN6 (9, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

For later: 

Syll @ 9:36PM

[Ari: Dox]

Roll: 1 d10 TN6 (8) ( success x 1 )

Silas

His Star may or may not have had the situation handled - who is to know these things? - but he is well satisfied that he was here to assist when the situation arose.  The thought of Silas as white night would be nigh laughable to most, but there it is; a man who was bent on attacking has been settled and sent on his way, between the two of them.  It's a good feeling, this sort of partnership, and different than any they've had in the past.

Now, though, he runs his unbruised left hand over Arianna's cheek in a gentle, proud touch.  She is fierce, she is strong, and she is his.  "I am well, yes.  Are you?"  This is the answer to her query, of course, and while he has never seen her act so clearly as who she is, she has certainly seen him angry, commanding, and prone to fisticuffs.  This is a Silas with whom she's quite familiar, though of course the situation has never been quite the same as this.  It's not until he's assured that Arianna is well enough for the moment that he says, "You stay with her, and I'll go get someone.  It would hardly do for me to be the one with her when security arrives."

The knife, untouched, lays where the assailant dropped it; should the drugged young woman feel like pressing charges, it will serve as evidence.  There are prints on it, of course, and who knows what other clues for the mundane authorities to log.  It will tell no tales of Arianna or Silas, or what they did here.  So, as certain as can be that no one is coming back for either woman, Silas rounds the building to alert the authorities of the issue.

"There's a girl in the alley, drugged.  My date is with her, and there was a man with a knife . . ." he plays a shocked witness well enough, does Silas, and the act serves him well when he chooses to use it.

Hunter @ 7:38AM

You need to see to this situation RIGHT NOW. [Straight Manip (or Charisma, same dice either way) because nothing else seems to make sense.  Diff is prob low because common sense of taking care of drugged girl.]

Roll: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )

Stella

Bouncers tend to be fairly adept at reading people, and so this one can tell that Silas is not particularly shaken by finding an unconscious woman in an alley, or by leaving his date there to stand watch while he sought out assistance.  This earns Silas the sort of slant-eyed inspection that sunglasses at night are meant to obscure, and with a brief shuffling of the guard -- someone will phone Denver PD, someone else will stand by the door -- the large-framed and imposing man follows him back toward the alley.

Moments before:

It is totally incongruous to Arianna, in the moment, that Silas would be proud and affectionate.  She is thrumming with anger and adrenaline; her light is too bright even cast shadows and yet the surety in the look she throws him is not entirely certain.  There is the glimmer of something caught in the corner of her eye; sometime later she will realize that the man meant to stab her until Silas interceded.  Sometime later she would realize that it was luck or some Will other than her own that Silas was not bleeding on the alley floor.  For now, though, the anger carries her, and she is proud and haughty and concerned for others over herself.

"I'm fine, Silas," she tells him.  "Ten fingers, ten toes. We're fine," she insists, and wraps him into that statement.  Then he is gone to look for authorities and Ari takes advantage of the quiet to calm the mind of the assailed woman. She is unconscious now, but that does not mean that she is resting quietly.  The Giametti woman takes the Art she has turned toward defense and uses it toward kinder ends, and when that is done, she turns her attention to hiding the hallmarks of the work she has done so far.  When he returns to the alley, the familiar sense of inconstant moonlight has faded.  The threads of her Working seem to have dissipated more quickly than usual.  She is crouched beside the woman, whose head lolls to the side and who gives no signs of wakefulness.

When the bouncer shoos her aside, Ari doesn't have to feign the way her hands shake or the worry in her eyes when she looks at the other woman's ragdoll pose.  And, because Paradox is sometimes cruel and on point in its afflictions, the dark prick of fingerprint and deeper bruises have started to rise on Ari's left forearm.  They appear to be defensive marks to any concerned parties.  With DPD and EMS on the way, that may prove problematic.

The scene moves predictably from here.  After the requisite number of minutes, the flash of police lights is visible.  There are medicos and authority figures. If they are still on site, someone wants Arianna and Silas to give statements. They want to take down names and addresses, where the two might be found for future comment. Would they be willing to testify, if charges are brought and the assailant is found.  Essentially, will they give up the anonymity they have had thus far in Denver, for the sake of this mortal woman they saved in a fit on uncharacteristic good will toward men.  

Stella @ 9:16AM

[Enochian (Clever)]

Roll: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 5, 5, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens]

Stella @ 9:17AM

[Mask resonance: Prime/Mind 2 + witness, - Enochian, -Taking Time, +WP (I totally can't remember this roll, but I think this will work)

Roll: 2 d10 TN4 (2, 7) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Stella @ 9:18AM

[Add this to other Ari Dox roll]

Roll: 1 d10 TN6 (9) ( success x 1 )

Stella @ 9:21AM

[This would have come first: Mind2 + witness, -instruments)

Roll: 2 d10 TN5 (9, 10) ( success x 2 )

Stella @ 9:22AM

[Dox, ugh]

Roll: 1 d10 TN6 (8) ( success x 1 )

That's 3 bashing, and -3 WP for Ari for now.

Come to the Edge

evening-star

Come to the edge.
We might fall.
Come to the edge.
It's too high!
COME TO THE EDGE!
And they came,
And we pushed,
And they flew.
- Cristopher Logue

This is the closest their lives in Denver have come to the life that Ari was born to live.  The thin, twisting thread of active magic guiding their advance through the foothills surrounding Denver, the faded colors of twilight painted across a sky that reaches out to the East and onward forever until it is consumed by the deep navy of night. Soon there will be the pricking of starlight; soon Helios will be only a memory; but that thin silvered thread of resonance reaches out before them, like a fishing like trawling through water.  The Tellurian itself is unwound just enough to guide their passage through the warp and weft of the world.

There is only one road.  To take any other would be like swimming upstream.  She has no skill with Time or Entropy, so she does not know if it is fated to have fallen out this way.  Pen was close on the heels of their mystery and also the circle of bones has compelled them -- through either fear or simply the gnawing uneasiness of not knowing -- to adventure out at the first opportunity they have to go together and yet alone.

Here they pass the last gas station, with its overhead lights flickering from age and the weathered, time-pitted metal sign illuminated by one up-cast bulb, which itself is shrouded with dust-dirt and grime.  There are thin bars on the windows, but the proprietor explains that is more for the bears and less about the patrons. He speaks with the sort of slowness one expects from mountain folk; he wears a hat for a now-defunct regional sports team and old denim worn so long that is has gone soft and comfortable in places, nearly threadbare in others.  There is one pump stall.  The last of the daylight pushes through the treetops, sketching long shadows out in the sky and across the ground.

From here, there is only winding roads through the foothills.  The type that hairpin and double-back upon themselves as they slowly climb up the mountainside.  They are paved for awhile, then they are gravel a ways further, and then, the denim-wearing slow-talking man has said they go to dirt alone.

"No one goes up that way much anymore," he tells Nick.

Ari is outside, wrestling a pair of sandwiches out of their box of provisions. There is no use going into the unknown hungry.  Nick has also persuaded her to leave talking with the locals to someone who doesn't scream foreigner and aristocrat from every pore.  Whenever Nick returns, there's a sandwich and glass bottle of some lightly lime-flavored sparkling water for him.  (Because foreigner, and also because aristocrat [Hermetic].)

crow

There are places in the world where the boundaries of reality thin, where a person could question where they are and what year it is and whether this is in fact real or if they've stepped into a novel.  Near brushes with death do that: after an accident, after a gunshot or a head wound or being pulled out of a tangle of metal and wire people will question "Is this real?" and the answer is yes, and.  This place is an and.

Nicholas is proficient in the art of Spirit and growing moreso by the day.  He knows it's the thinning Gauntlet; Sleepers don't.  He knows it's thinning as they draw farther and farther out into the mountains, as they come up to the last gas station which probably looks the same as it has since the 1980s and winding roads that have been there for centuries, were maybe deer or game trails before that.

He'd thanked the man for the information before going back outside.  Nick is suited in some ways to being the face for their little group; he is adept at allowing others to project onto him what they like.  He looks maybe-Mexican-maybe-white-maybe-mixed and his dress is often masculine but nondescript in muted colors and he says little beyond asking questions.  He is an Okay Person To Talk To.

Nick accepts the sandwich and glass of sparkling water from Ari with gratitude.  "The guy in there said that there's not much up there anymore.  I didn't ask too directly about the ruin though.  I wonder what happened."

evening-star

The man is not much used to Thank Yous.  It earns Nick a "Well, you have yourself a good night, then," and a finger touched to the bill of his hat.  As Nick is pushing out of the door, the man is resettling himself on the wooden stool behind the counter and by the time the door closes it is almost as if Nick had never stepped inside.  The man has resumed the same posture he held when Nick pulled the door open; the lights still flicker; the shadows still pull long and thin and are still melting slowly into the broader, overall darkness.

"Most people have a decent sense of self-preservation," she opines, before taking a small sip from a green glass bottle of her own.  The tailgate of her hatchback is open. They can sit on the edge and supper in the growing shadows of the evening.  While Ari does not share Nick's sense of the spiritual realm, there is a prickling awareness to an adventure by any name.  She is excited, and also nervous, and slightly worried, but mostly invigorated by being outside the realm of everyday and routine.  "He's probably never been up there, himself."

Nick can imagine the sort of trouble she caused at Academy.  This need to be anywhere but where she ought to be is not a thing she picked up in her twenties.  It is innate to her, the pushing of boundaries, this standing well beyond the edge of reason and looking back, beckoning others to follow.  Someday, when he is relating this story, all he will have to say to their shared friends is that Ari had thought it would be a good idea to venture out, at nightfall, toward a ruin with an ominous flare for the dramatic and their shared friends will make a knowing face, or nod, or sigh.  They will assume that he had been cajoled.

Had he? Or was he complicit in this madness.

"Might you have a better sense of it, when we're closer?" she asks.  Sometimes proximity removes a layer of abstraction from a riddle. Sometimes it makes it overwhelming. She is not rightly sure what they are wandering into.

The air is thinner up here. It was thin already in the 'low'-lands of Denver proper.

crow

There is only one road, and it has been leading them upward past a place of ruin and death and into the unknown.  Nicholas did not need to be cajoled.  It's a road he has walked before, and before it was alone: it seems far less mad to him now that he has Ari along with him, though Nick has enough self-awareness that he has not fooled himself into thinking it reasonable.

He'd called her in a panic earlier that week: Pen was asking questions, and Nick's lie had been a little too clever.  He'd explained to her that he'd tried to explain away their absence via Rob, that they were making Rob a gift, that he'd hoped it would keep Pen from asking questions.  And it did, after a while.  He is too loyal a friend, too conscientious to not experience some guilt: and so he has resolved to be on the lookout for a gift for their Songrobin, though Rob will be none the wiser.

He's famished and so he is taking quick bites of the sandwich, thoughtful as he glances off along the thread they've both been following.  "I might," he says.  "It depends on what it is, when we come to it.  If there was some sort of tragedy there though, it would be unusual for it to not leave a mark on the site, even if there's no longer any sort of spirit presence.  I heard sirens in the vision I had when looking back after I touched the book, so it can't have been that long ago."

Maybe the man in the gas station remembers.  Maybe he was there when the walls came down.  It's hard to ask without being too obvious, isn't it.

Nick takes a swallow from the green bottle Ari handed him earlier.  "I'm wondering what sort of preparations we should make when we go up the mountain.  Whatever's up there could be dangerous."

evening-star

"Kestrel wants some Broncos 'swag'," she says, with an aire of utter confidence, in response to this matter of righting lies made to Pen. As if she has heard this from his mouth directly.  That is certainly where the slang came from, at least, as Songrobin's are adept at singing in the lingua franca, and little birds like Ari, well, they use terms like lingua franca even with middle-Americans.  "He told me so when I spoke to him at Solstice."

It is not the sort of present that one quests for, though, and Ari has had more productive suggestions on this front as well.  Kestrel once made a borrowed-gift to her of a pen that might write the names of the heavens, and in her hand it has often written the true nature of things so clearly that the speaking of Names and the working of Wills becomes far more trivial. One might argue that he gifted her an instrument; one might argue that Ari loves Kestrel at least as much as she loves Nicholas and Pen and then, truly, one might witness her temper at the insinuation that there might be friends closer to heart than Nicholas or, especially, Pen.  But if there were to be a second circle, Kestrel would clearly stand within that.

"A bell that sounds like twilight," she has said.  "A candle which evokes the sense of fernweh?" Perhaps this is to entice him to move from his roost, to visit far flung friends.  These are idle thoughts that get tossed into the middle of whatever chat they are having when the thought occurs to her.

They would not make for proper preparations.  They must be remarks on the Kestrel-gifting, and not the matter at hand.  Her attention has gone unfocused for a moment, the line of her sight catches up nothing in particular as she thinks.

"We have Zachriel with us," she says, and it is neither too specific for any overhearing sort nor too plain spoken to be mistaken.  "And, if we are truly in trouble I can add to a sword or also to a shield -- in a manner of emphasis," this is more poetical, and she hopes he takes her meaning.  "But these are arts best practiced ahead of time."

She glances up at the thinning light.

"And here we have witnesses."

She glances over to the time-touched building. Then back to Nick.

"If we can keep our minds and wits about us, these are our greatest assets, yes?" Ari quirks a brow, as she takes a bite of her sandwich and lets them both chew on the thought.  Her House is not known for its swashbuckling adventures. She swallows, then asks: "Do you think we'll encounter present danger, or only echoes of it?"

The metal signs creaks and sighs a little in the wind.

crow

Nick polishes off the remainder of his sandwich in a few quick bites, chewing rapidly as he does.  He's tense: it's a way for him to distract himself, to make attempts at soothing whatever worries he has about what they might find, or whatever worries he has that they will end up in over their heads and then Pen will (rightfully) be furious at them for attempting this without her.

She is the more magickally powerful of their cabal, after all, and certainly the most skilled when it comes to handling present dangers.

Ari's musing regarding bells and candles had drawn a sidelong glance, puzzled for all it seemed unrelated to his question.  Once he understood there was a nod, a thoughtful thing.  It's difficult to gift for a man who has enough wealth to buy himself whatever he needs, or for a person who has Robin's prickly nature, and so personal gifts are best.

"I'm not sure," he says, to her second question.  "It seemed like echoes, didn't it, when you looked?  But I think it's better to be prepared regardless."  He drains the rest of the green bottle.

evening-star

"It seemed like Echoes," she agrees.

There is a little hollow in their conversation, then, while she finishes her sandwich without embellishing the thought with more explanation.  Nick cannot know, but Ari is shaping the foundational Enochian words in her mind. The roots of all things; the basis for the off-the-cuff and collaborative magics that Hermetics weild.  They have spoken, at times, about her training and how it differs from his. This is part of it: readiness by rote practice; coming as easy as the conjugation of foreign verbs.

This is what it means to be a child of (the) War.

*** *** ***

"She always had that about her, that look of otherness, of eyes that see things much too far, and of thoughts that wander off the edge of the world."
― Joanne Harris

*** *** ***

"So the possibilities are -- "  she says, pausing just to take a swig of her water, " -- that it is an Echo, and strong enough to touch our minds.  For this we have Zachriel.  Or a rote, some bound compulsion -- again, Zachriel, and one another to keep us steady.  Some bound thing that does us harm: we can look into the Tellurian when we arrive, to see if there are traps laid plain.  A wraith or spectre: this you will know better than I.  Physical harm by magical effects? Countermagic is probably our best best.  Physical harm by plain laid trap: ... this I have little answer for."

She speaks with and easy confidence she cannot rightfully back up. There are many possibilities untouched upon here, but lacking ready answers for them it seems imprudent to welcome in doubt or fear.

"What have I missed?"  This, then, is also an echo of the training she has been through.  Hers less pointed and formalized than Pen's, but similar in structure nonetheless. Ari finishes her water and tucks the green glass bottle back into the bag of their provisions. It will be recycled later.

See how Silas and Denver is rubbing off on her? Eco-friendly Hermeticism.

crow

Ari's easy confidence, even if it can't be rightfully backed up, is reassuring to Nick.  It is a reminder that of all the things that could happen, she is here with him and he will not be alone.  His friend is thorough: she touches on the many things that could be waiting for them up on the mountain.

"If it is some kind of spirit," he says, "I'm less worried about physical harm.  It probably wouldn't attempt those, even if we are flesh and blood."  Even if Ari is flesh and blood, that is; Nicholas has never said so directly but spirits react to him as though he has been wraith-touched.  Perhaps he has, or perhaps an ancestor was, or perhaps an ancestor was something not wholly of this world.

"I can't...think of anything else that you've missed."  Nick leans back against the car, arms folded, his head tilted to the side in thought.  The possibilities are indeed endless, but it will serve them poorly to endlessly consider options.  Sooner or later one must act.

"I suppose there's only one way to find out, isn't there."

evening-star

[Ho-hum, leaving breadcrumbs just in case: Prime 1, coincidental, base + 3; Practiced.]

Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (3, 6) ( success x 2 )

evening-star

I cast my onto the shore of Eternity,
To be washed by the Ocean of Time,
It has shape, form and substance,
It is me.
One day I will be no more,
But my pebble will remain here,
On the shore of Eternity,
Mute witness of the aeons,
That today I came and stood
At the edge of the world.
- Brian Inder

Ari gathers up the papers that they'd wrapped their sandwiches in and crosses to the lone waste basket of the station, a wire cage surrounding a metal can with a thin, billowy plastic liner.  On her transit back, she pauses by the post supporting the swinging metal sign and its one loan lamp.  Placing her hand against the aged upright, she pauses just long enough to push some of her resonance into the signpost.

To Nicholas, who knows her well, it takes on the sense of shifting shadow in the moonlight. It is momentarily brighter at the edges of his senses, and then that blends into the early nightfall.  Above them, the first stars are pricking through the celestial tapestry.  If Pen does need to come looking for them, if they are swallowed up by the rift in the Tellurian that invites them onward, then this crossroads sign will lead her toward them.

Today they came and stood at the edge of the world.

Ari rubs her hands together as she moves back toward the car.  Nick is climbing into the passenger seat as she closes the tailgate and folds herself back into the driver's seat.

There is only one road.  It winds on and upward. 

The dash lights are brighter in the early night.  There is no radio reception up this high, so the quiet classical background sputters, and then fuzzes, and is cut off by the quick press of a button.  The road noise shifts when they meet the end of the pavement.  It shifts again when they lose the gravel.

crow

It has been a long time since Nick has been out this far, since he has walked or driven into a place where the city lights cannot reach and the firmament stretches eternal above.  He spoke of this not long ago to Pen, how his grandmother lived far out on the mesa and told her a story about he and his sisters and finding wonder.  Pen had titled that story "Anna Hyde's Adventure into the Great Dark," and now Nicholas is venturing out on his own without his sister as a guide.

Maybe he's thinking of this now as the radio fizzes out when they lose signal, as Ari cuts the sound short with the press of a button and as they pass onto a dirt road.

Before long it will be so dark out here that the car's lights will give them away as nightfires did in days of old: they could be seen for miles.

"Do you think we should try to find the ruin first?"

evening-star

"Definitely."

What type of person isn't afraid of the dark?  Being afraid of the dark is one of the oldest human fears; it is a sort of self-preservation instinct, a last-ditch safety net to keep the curious from wandering off of a cliff or into a den or away from their fellows in the deepest of nights.  What sort of person isn't afraid of the things they cannot known, or see, or sense coming?

Arianna Giametti is not afraid of the dark.  Not specifically of The Dark.  She is not afraid of striding forward into the unknown; it is her profound belief that the unknown was always out there, it was always coming anyway, and meeting it headlong is better than cowering in the background.  When the car stops and the lights are cut out and they are standing in the faint light of stars and whatever warm-light is cast by the rising moon, and the city is a constellation of bright points on the valley floor, nestled up against the immovable and absolute dark of the Rocky Mountains, she steps out onto the red dirt with her chin tipped upward and her expression watchful but untroubled.

She should be troubled.  It would make an awful lot of sense to be troubled.

The path ahead of them is too steep to navigate the car down with any confidence that even this four-wheel drive hatchback would wind its way back up.  It is not exactly narrow, but neither of them can see its width well enough to have confidence that they would be able to turn around if they traveled down it, and Ari's car does not have the sort of massive tire tread that gives them purchase in reverse to climb their way backwards up a mountain.

The road -- let's call it that for convenience -- has been worn unevenly and there are echoes of that sort of monstrous tread in the broad grooves that interlace and erode and turn this red dirt into a riverway more than a driveway.  The air is thin and carries the dust aloft. Every footstep they make pulls it up into the air around their shins, and then their knees, and finally it is stirred up enough for them to taste.  This dust-dirt is not worn down mountain; it is ash and dust and feathered bits of bone.  It tastes of memory.  The path downward is steep and requires steady footing.  It descends in the half light, and follows the curve of the mountain. They must be cautious to keep their footing with the uneven ground and the pitch of the pathway.

Deeper into the night, the crumbled walls and half-roofed structures of the ruins await them.  Ari's car had only one hand torch, and whoever is in front has the use of it.  She has magics that can cast its beam wider or brighter if needed.  Their progress is easily evidenced by the travel of this bright point in the darkness.

Were you there when the walls came down?

Nick can feel the ground shake and tremble beneath his feet, echoes of long-since exploded ordinance, but it does not cause him to stumble. The roar of it rings in his ears, but is not so loud as to stamp out the present.

evening-star

[To be continued...]

Wake up, Giametti

Andrés

how drunk are we today?

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (10) ( success x 1 )

Arianna

Nono, that roll was clearly for the hobgoblin. Seriously now dice...

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (6) ( success x 1 )

Andrés

The last anyone saw him, Nicholas and Penelope were peeling Andrés Sepúlveda out of a car and hauling him up four flights of stairs to drop him off at Kiara's, where for nearly two weeks hallucinations and delusions assailed him. Then the realization that he was supposed to be in Chicago for a fucking forensic pathology conference hit him, and he packed up his shit quicker than anyone had packed up anything recently and dumped himself on an airplane and that was the last anyone saw of him.

Until last night.

Details don't avail themselves right away. Back in town, Andrés wanted to get blackout drunk and be left alone. Mission accomplished. When he wakes up in a bed he doesn't recognize and peels his tongue from the roof of his mouth, the thought occurs to him that he not only needs to backtrack, but:

Any idea what happened to the radioactive spider last night?

And:

Wake up, Giametti, if this thing starts laying eggs we're fucked.

That's one way to start a Sunday morning.

Arianna

Verdammt Spinnen.

Damned spiders.  This is the first reply.  Not long after, comes: On my way. Where?

There is a distinct benefit to having so much recent practice with Ars Mentis. It is this: when Andres' text comes through, Ari has the power to be clear and utterly unfuzzed mentally if not physically, despite the round of drinking of the previous evening.  Oh, and it doesn't make her any less cantankerous about the prospect of spiders yet again requiring her undivided attention.  The Giametti woman struggles into jeans and a button down shirt, ties her hair back in an expediant and still cleverly attractice way, and packs her instruments into messenger bag.

There is cold brew coffee in her fridge -- bless the Gods of foresight and planning -- and she pours some into two Thermoses. 

She isn't entirely sure that Andres is clear of quiet. It's possible that the threat resides in his own mind alone. But there is one thing being the daughter of a War Mage makes clear: treat all threats as if they are deadly until proven others.  Goddamned spiders included.

Having Uber'd it or found some other way home the night before, she is at the mercy of a similar service this morning to ferry her to the doc's location.  Her imperious Hermetic attitude keeps conversations with strangers to the minimum. It is a such a blessing in some circumstances.  She's less than perfectly put together when she arrives at the dedicated location, but even disheveled by Italian standards is pretty on point for American ones.  Before talking or casting can begin, a metal thermos is pressed into the Etherite's hand.

"Coffee," is all the explanation he gets.

Arianna

[Not as think as you drunk I am: Mind 1, coincidental, dif 4, - instruments]

Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (2, 7) ( success x 1 )

Andrés

Wherever their paths diverged last night it seems as if the Etherite's ended well enough. He has all of his parts when Arianna meets him outside the hotel where one would think he'd stop going for having drawn so much attention to himself in the past. Of all the things he is, forgettable is not one.

Here she comes, bearing coffee like a talisman. Andrés is wearing the same suit he had on last night, minus the jacket and tie. Standing on the street in two-toned Oxfords and a waistcoat and glasses, his hair a rat's nest, he is very much the visual representation of his faction this morning.

"Pinche spider," he says as he takes the thermos. Soon as it's in his possession he's taking off in the direction of a vehicle. "I told you we should have killed it."

Arianna

There is not enough coffee in all of Italia to ready her for dealing with spiders before breakfast.  Ari is halfway through her thermos of cold brew and the cage of Ars Mentis wrapped around her mind is becoming less and less necessary but the irritation of spiders -- thank goodness she is not phobic of the tiny weavers -- does not abate with her growing wakefulness.

"I thought we had.  With extreme prejudice. Is this not what you said last night, Andres?"  Or perhaps it was No no, mercy unto all god's creatures.  She could not remember in the slightest, but it did not sound like Ari to allow an insect in violation of her personal space to continue breathing -- book lungs or not. Their resemblance to her preferred study medium is slight, after all, and not at all enough to spare them.

"Good morning," she tells him, belatedly, as she follows.  It is wrapped in a snarky sort of sarcasm.  "Where is the spider now?" she asks. Hoping beyond hope that it is roughly the size of a quarter and easily squashed by an appropriately coincidental long-distance application of Ars Essentiae.

No dice.

Andrés

"If I knew where the little creep was, I wouldn't be asking you, you know?"

Of all of the Spheres the man is able to manipulate, he somehow never thought to incorporate distance as a variable. This is one of those times where relying on his wife in order to scan across space bites him in the ass. His wife is dead. She isn't coming back.

"It's entirely possible it's dead. You know how I feel about spiders."

Arianna

"Tch."

The sound is paired with her hand on his forearm, just light enough to capture his attention but not arrest his movement.  It is a thoughtful thing, this pause between steps.

"Can we scry for it? Do you know enough of its mind or resonance for me to find it?  I have no skill with Ars..." A little hitch, then she continues with the vulgar name for the sphere, "with Life."

Jokes ahoy! Of course she has no skill with life, she's a chantry-bred Hermetic. Rimshot. What not.  She's heard them all by now, and in at least a few permutations each.

"Do you have a ..." -- don't say Thingy -- "Device that might find it faster?"  Check it out, she speaks Etherite. (Almost [Not at all].)

Andrés

"Do I have a device."

She might as well have asked him if the sky was blue or if he still had alcohol in his system. Granted, asking a scientist if the sky is blue is not nearly so straightforward as asking if he has a device.

Though her hand does not aim to halt forward momentum, the Etherite does turn towards Arianna when a thought occurs to him.

"Here," he says and removes from his pocket a device that looks as if it were the lovechild of a handheld PDA and a radar gun. He starts to press buttons. "This bad boy can detect radioisotopes attached to arachnid bio-signatures in the immediate area, but if you can broaden the area, say, to the size of the neighborhood..."

Arianna

["Improving" the device with Hermeticky goodness?]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 6, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 7 ) [Doubling Tens]

Arianna

Oh, fuck.

To be precise, the Hermetic woman had meant a device for the Etherite to use. Her own magics did not reside in beeping booping twinkling boxes of circuitry and whizbangs.   But he hands it over with such purpose that she cannot help but take from it his meaning: that she ought use the whizbangs and beepboops to find a radioactive spider.

She has had nightmares like this in Academy.  It is clearly some sort of test.

In order to make the device more palatable, and also to give her a familiar framework from which to work, Arianna takes a piece of chalk out of her bag and looks over at the Etherite questioningly before drawing a few resonant sigils -- arcane in provenance and unknowable to most mundane passersby -- onto the body of the bastardized PDA and radar gun.  This would either allow them to work together or it would crash their paradigms so terribly into one another that nothing good would come of collaboration for ages to come.

It is not the sort of thing one should do lightly, in broad morning sunlight, with an elevated BAC.  So these two hop into it feet first.

"I should be able to help find the radiation, but the bio-signature, as you say, I am not attuned to."

There is some special circle of Hermetic hell for Initiates who engage in this sort of cross-Traditional nonsense.  Pretending it does not exist, Willing it to not apply to her -- these are not the best coping mechanisms. And yet, there is a radioactive spider loose in Denver, and she has seen the documentary film of the Spider Man. She knows this ends poorly for everyone.

"Shall we?"

Andrés

Shall we?

He takes the chalk from her, sniffs it, hands it back. Alarm in his eyes, but the scanner survives her misappropriation and the chalk itself passes the olfaction test. Then again, given what happened the last time, he may just be having flashbacks to his most recent Quiet episode.

"It's not a chalkboard," he says of the device. This is as close to acquiescence as she's going to get. He strokes the device like one would pet a spooked animal, even goes so far as to whisper "Shhh" to it before she does whatever fucked-up thing she's about to do.

Arianna

"But it will do," she answers to his assertion that the device is not a chalkboard.

It is breathtakingly beautiful, even just chalk on the odd edges of the device, even impermanent and without having any knowledge of the resonance of the shapes. Crude as it is, Ari's markings are clearly Artwork, and they elevate the device toward some truer -- let's be honest, More Arcane -- purpose. 

In compromise, though, they are not permanent. The chalk will spread to their hands as they work and the whole of the defiling masterpiece will be gone before he knows it.  It call all be wiped clean with water, or those alcohol wipes for cleaning finicky things.  Unmade as if it never was.  Most of her ritual artwork is like this: transient.  Fit to purpose and then lifeless beyond it.

Nick asked her once if it made her sad.  She thought it a stupid question. Does breathing make one sad, knowing that assortment of stardust and wind will never be again in your chest so precisely?  Magic is like breathing; life is built around its scaffolding; it is to be reveled in and not mourned.

When she shows him the device it's clearly unhappy with the adornments.  She might as well have bedazzled it with tiny glistening Hermetic crystals. She might have written the Names of Mercury -- who rules electronic communication -- and Mars -- who will find foes for a fight -- and Delphi -- because Oracles make clear the hidden things -- across it in Lisa Frank worthy brightness.

"And now," so businesslike, very down-to-brass-tacks and bereft of any sense of the ridiculousness of their position.  "To find your spider."  His spider. Because it is most definitely not hers.

Arianna

[Find the effing spider: Corr/Forces/Prime, coincidental, base + 3 = 5, +3 conflicting instrument, -3 coordinating ability, +1 opposing paradigms, -1 going slow = dif 5 +WP]

Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (1, 9) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Arianna

((Active magicks alert! Active magicks! :) Perhaps this will help give you an entry for Sera! :) ))

Andrés

These two were busy last night.

If the carnage had occurred in his hotel room, he would have been able to view the events in reverse. Not rewind time itself but his perception of it, at least. This is a trick he's told Arianna about before. Joking, of course. He gets blackout drunk on a regular enough basis that asking the cosmos to remind him what the fuck happened last night is becoming old hat for him.

At some point they left the bar where Andrés was celebrating his return to Denver - or celebrating having left Chicago, depending on how you shuffle around the words. He hates Chicago for reasons he may or may not have divulged to Arianna last night.

Last night, they left the bar and stepped into the black. Did whatever the hell led to adopting the phrase 'radioactive spider' into their lexicon. And then went their separate ways.

The spider is dead in the Dumpster out back.

This information pops up onto the screen, brief, in symbols Andrés does not understand. His eyebrows loft once and then he turns it to get a better glimpse at it.

"Filthy pagan," he says with some fondness.

Arianna

The sigils make perfect sense to Arianna. That his device suddenly speaks to her in the language of the Seraphim seems strange, but within the range of reason applied to magical workings.

"Hah! Dead already, and in the rubbish bin around back," she tells him, translating through a series of languages to arrive at something akin to a common tongue between them.  This early, though, it is laced through with her native accent more strongly.  And also with unbridled Hermetic pride.  Not only had they triumphed already over the spider, preventing the horrors of the documentary from unfolding here in a city with insufficient high buildings to swing from, but she had triumphed over the gadgetry and forced useful magics out of it.

Surely there is some sort of terrible backlash coming. All the more reason to be practically gleeful in her pronouncement.

He calls her a filthy pagan and her nose wrinkles in mock disdain; she is too pleased to let it rumpled her feathers just now. Pleased that there is no spider to fight. Pleased that the whizbang did not undo her magics. Pleased that now, perhaps, there will be proper breakfast and coffee to fete their triumphs.

Coffee. Yes.  She recollects her thermos from wherever it has been set aside.  "We reserve that term for the Primals," she tells him, in a stage whisper, with an expression that speaks very much to the knowledge of the offense they are both offering to parties present and also unaccounted for.  Then an exaggerated and mischievous wink.  And then, gods be praised, a sip of her remaining coffee.

Andrés

Name-calling is an arguably preferable method of reacting to unexpected success than, say, grabbing his partner in crime and kissing her right on the mouth. Adrenaline makes people do crazy shit sometimes. This is not one of those times.

Her nose wrinkles. His brow creases as the symbols persist. She takes back her coffee, he takes back the device.

And there they stand on the sidewalk outside the Crawford Hotel, drinking coffee out of thermoses and not having to deal with radioactive spiders.

Which leaves:

"... primals?"

Serafíne

(Awareness or whatever.)

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 4 ) [Doubling Tens]

Serafíne

Last night or morning and coffee or whatever.  Something something somewhere somewhere is enough of a scrim against a certain someone's (generally unerring) sense of Magick Afoot.  Or whatever comes close to constituting it.  Distinct enough to bring her out of the vague, thoughtful drifting stupor in which she drowses against her consor's side while he talks about Things or whatever.  Business.  Maybe he's napping, god knows she's been distant lately.  Hardly seems to notice.

She has other things on her mind.

--

Alley? Dumpster?  Sidewalk faire?  Hardly matters.  Coffee shop?  Vietnamese soup joint? Tattoo parlor, vintage clothing store, high-end urban gardening shop, White Castle, brew-pub, tea purveyor, self-serve yaourt (that is French for yogurt and therefore costs more) storefront, used bookstore, pawn shop, beard-groomer's.   Denver has everything.  Even dumpsters full of radioactive spider-parts, perhaps.  Strange how insects dissolve to nothing in the dry air of the high plains. 

--

Also: her.    Somewhere close, but perhaps not-too.  'Round the corner.  Black sunglasses rimmed with silver studs.  Threadbare, miniscule denim cut-offs over torn fishnets.  An old white Siouxsie Sioux t-shirt over a black lace bra, beneath a fraying, vintage macrame vest, because why the fuck not.  Combat boots and a necklace of golden pearls threaded with a bicycle chain. 

The sunglasses fix on Andres.  Swing to Arianna, then back. 

"I think that shit you did woke me up."  Curl of her mouth, one corner, says she's teasing.  Maybe?  Only one of them has met her, and he doesn't know her well enough to read the ticks of expression on her face.  Maybe he's not good with ticks of expression at all.  "'Fucking PDAs, man."   Smirks. 

Though really if they are about to make out our Sera is going to Leave Them to It.

Arianna

"It is particularly Hermetic way to refer to those who prefer twigs and sticks and river rocks and blood in their magics," she says, having lowered the thermos away from her mouth.  There is a seriousness, now, in how she addresses the question. As if she does not wholly approve of it.  "It is poor-form in mixed company."

Like calling her pagan. Which could be passingly true. Possibly. They had never discussed her views on Gods, the old or the new.

Her resonance is stilled pulled in all around her. There is the lingering Ars Mentis effect that keeps her clear-headed despite the night's debauchery and their dancing with spiders.  She is starlight cast through shadows, fleeting and shifting and twinkling in the distance.  Paired with his resonance, she becomes an omen, the evening star held high and remote and cold in its aloofness.  They are oracular, then, an augury spread across the pavement, for Sera to scry when she appears.

For Sera: They are not about to make out. 

Regarding Sera: Her approach is noted, because of course it is, even risen recently from her slumber Sera is strikingly beautiful.  The line of Arianna's inquiry is not hidden behind sunglasses, which would have been a grand thing to remember in her haste to get out the door to battle radioactive spiders, but No! So Sera can mark the way the other woman's gaze roams from head to toe and back again, appraisingly, and how the pride and nigh on smug cant of her smile does not shift much, but the shift it makes is an inclusive sort of thing.  The sort of smile that leans in, that welcomes or invites.  In the right company, she is great at parties.

It is unlikely they travel the same circles, but they do both look as if they would enjoy parties.

Fucking PDAs, man -- says Sera.  Ari makes some small sound of agreement, but it amused and caught back a little. Withheld before introductions are made, as surely they must be. She feels compelled to know Sera a little better, to stand a little more fully in the light she casts.

"How rude of us, to break up your sleeping," she says. It tucks the amusement into the corners of her mouth and keeps it there, barely, in echo of Sera's tease.  "Surely we owe you at least a coffee to make amends. Isn't that so, Andres?" she asks. This should be impetus enough for the Etherite to introduce them. Surely. Right?

Andrés

[int + empathy: IDK, is it?]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 7) ( success x 1 ) [Doubling Tens]

Andrés

Several seconds crawl by as Andrés attempts to make sense of the question. The seconds drag his attention across the sidewalk to hang it on the Cultist, with whom he is about as likely to make out as he is the Hermetic. He blinks. That crease between his brow deepens.

He looks back at Arianna.

"Oh!" he says like the answer just hit him upside the head. Then he passes the thermos to Sera. Sharing is caring. "Serafíne, this is Arianna. House Bonisagus, yeah? Arianna, te presento a Serafíne. Cult of Ecstasy."

Smoooooth.

With that he wipes the screen of his device against the thigh of his slacks and tucks it away in a back pocket.

Serafíne

"Everyone calls me Sera," so the creature appends to Andres' introduction.  That's all.  Otherwise: pretty damned impressive, actually.  He even managed to not-apply the new-fangled tradition-name she does not care to remember and refuses to attempt to pronounce.  Unhooks her left hand from the pockets of her denim shorts enough to wave a hallo!  that flashes hints of tattoos: on black ink framing her fingers, both edging and covering her palm.  The curling rather delicately over her inner wrist.  Another, larger piece clear on her forearm. 

This hint of inquiry or awareness as her blond brows lift above the frame of her sunglasses.  "Think I'd prefer a Bloody Mary to coffee.  Or maybe just orange juice,"  last night is still in her veins.  Today has a hallucinatory quality that dovetails with the lingering remnants of magick and wrap of their combined resonance that lends this moment the surreal portent of certain of her dreams, and she is not entirely confident whether she is sleeping or waking.  And sure, she could find that answer with a half-thought of a spell, but why?

Her dreams, though, are not usually so precise.  Sera Understands - though vaguely - that House Bonisagus means Hermetic.  Wonders if that means another tumble of names-and-titles is coming.  Secretly kinda hopes so.   But she wants to clarify.  "So... Hermetic, right?"

Arianna

At some point she has shared her house name with Andres. They were probably drinking.  He had her pegged for Heremtic from about thirty seconds after they had met.  It's not really that she screams it from every pore and sinew, just that there are some turns of phrase and manners of bearing that speak it to it less than subtly.

"You have a beautiful name," she tells Sera, and the expected tumble of titles and names does not come.  It is not even a thing held back, barely, behind her eyes.  There are names and titles and a long enough litany of lineage to appease even the old testament god of begats and begats and begats, and all of that is entirely out of place for a bright-shining morning in Denver.  All of it is blissfully elsewhere.  It could be produced, with suitable flourish and without delay, if requested.

The cant of her words is slightly Othered.  Touched by a romance language, and that is re-affirmed by the multi-lingual cant to Andres' introductions, and the Grazi she offers him in reply.

"And yes, guilty as charged.  Ordo Hermes and bani Bonisagus," this offered with such familiarity with the titles that she could clearly be nothing else.  "I haven't had the pleasure of meeting any of your Tradition before," she confesses to Sera, and it is with some curiosity and open interest, not with the derision or dismissal one might expect from the Order.

"The Tractor Room on..." her brow furrows and she points in the direction of this made-up-on-the-spot brunch location. "I cannot remember the street name, but it is that way, and it has impressive bloody marias."  This is about as helpful as she is about locations in Denver. She probably only knows about it due to Andres.  But it is offered as a potential solution.

Andrés

Her grazie nets her a "Claro" in response. Mindless lapse into the mother tongue and it isn't as if Sera doesn't understand him when he does so. If anything the nearness to another whose English is not native draws out his own accent.

With the introductions over he swipes his bare left hand over the bed-mess of his hair. Lazy attempt at restoring order to it. He needs a shower and a change of clothes but that isn't either of their problem.

"'Impressive,' eh?" Musing tone. Though he has in his possession the coffee he has not been drinking it. If he wanted to be sober, he wouldn't have gotten drunk. "We'll see about that."

And off he goes.

Serafíne

"Cheers,"  so says Sera, by way of a thank-you to the compliment on her name.  Knows Hermetics, or perhaps more precisely A Hermetic Or Two, well enough to understand the importance of names to them.  "A friend gave it to me, back when I was a babymage.  So like, my folks get no fucking credit for it." 

"If I'd known that you hadn't met one of us before, though, I'd've tried to conjure up Jim.  I think he makes a better first impression.  He's really into yoga and shit."
Nothing othered about her own language.  Listen to the cheerful way the creature throws around profanity.  Does understand Andres at least when he breaks out the Spanglish, but also: doesn't really let on.  Keeps her hair bleached a glorious, golden blond, so there's no reason to guess at her roots.  Except for: her roots.  And hell, perhaps the way her skin takes to the sun in the summer, and this one only starting. 

The only thing othered about her is her presence: bright, intense, physical, heady, untamed. 

Swings into not-precisely-step as Andres leads them off in search of Sunday brunch, or at least: Sunday-brunch drinks.   "You sure you know where you're going?"

Andrés

Over the shoulder, cheerful: "Of course not!"

Arianna

"I've made a game of following when he gets like this," Arianna tells Sera, as they all swing into motion, loosely following the Etherite who has put himself on point.  "Sometimes it leads to fantastic drinking, and other times to Apprentices, or to radioactive spiders."

This is a node to the evening before, not that she rightfully remembers it. Also she would not unwind Time, even if it were within her grasp, to better know the fate of the eight legged offender.

"But it is never boring," and this, from the Hermetic, is a sort of high praise.  Her complexion is a faint olive tone, and it echoes her heritage as strongly as the slight cant of her accent.  The point of her chin and the loft of her cheekbones are likewise hallmarks of further coasts.  But her hair is close to its native color, and the crows feet around her eyes are in keeping with her actual age.  Ari is not a Life mage or one that may slow the progress of time against her person.  And as the caffeine in her bloodstream takes hold, at long last, and they shift toward companionable things, she lets the Ars Mentis rite unravel and the thrum of her resonance finally dims.

Serafíne

"Dude, I'd be more down for mad-scientist adventures if I'd been to sleep today." 

So she says, putting to lie her earlier accusation that their magickal antics and/or damned not-precisely-making-out woke her the fuck up.  The sunglasses have not left her eyes, but Ari and Sera and now in a kind of step behind Andres, close enough that if Ari catches the sly side-glance with which Sera favors her, she will have the impression of dark eyes, more pupil than anything else. 

"Do you know Nick and Pen?"

Andrés

"Boring?"

For being as short as he is, the Etherite's stride lends his pace a quickness that is almost inconsiderate. Almost, because it has to compete with his mouth, which is attached via bones and nerves to his brain, which does not give a shit whether it is considerate or not.

He talks with his hands. Lucky for his wingspan, the sidewalk is not churning with people today. Nobody wants to walk far when it's raining.

Sera would be more down for adventures if she'd been to sleep today.

"The average person spends a third of their life sleeping, Serafíne, do you have any idea what one can accomplish if they stop squandering their time like that?"

Asked the mad scientist of the seer.

Arianna

"Quite well, actually," Ari answers Sera, and the spread of her grin is a margin wider.  "They are why I came to Denver."

Perhaps Sera knows that Nick and Pen are caballed with another, a friend from their past who is recently relocated. If so, this is enough to cement the identity of that personage.  If not, then it definitely hints at a breadth and depth of stories untapped in this stroll, which is growing ever brisker in pace.  Ari adjusts her stride length to match the mad scientist's velocity.

"Never boring, I said."  Emphasis on the never.

"I take it you are friends?" This, then, to Sera, but the circle of the question is left unclear. The query is either that she is friends with Andres, which seems likely, or with Nick and Pen, which seems equally likely.  Both are of interest to the Bonisagus, who is failing to keep up with the stereotypes of bookishness know-it-all-ism today.

Serafíne

"I've got like a mansion and shit that I visit when I sleep, and sometimes birds or talking eyeballs or French-braids or ladies with their heads on backwards," the seer is exagerrating.  Prophetic dreams are nearly always elliptical, evasive, ellusive, even when they are also sometimes: powerful, gut-wrenching, seizure-inducing, "or what-have-you tell me the future and shit, so.  IDK, maybe you oughtta do it more?  It's pretty fucking awesome.

"Plus snuggling.  Snuggling goes with sleep like - "  This quizzical pause.  The search for an appropriate metaphor is enough to stop Sera (fast enough to keep up with Andres, sure, but forever lagging because: morning, because the speed in the LSD has worn off, and left her with the lingering aftermath that is beautiful and achy and SLOW DOWN GODDAMNIT ANDRES) in her tracks.  Finally, she hits upon, "French 75s and a really good night to come.  Or spakly bits and Carneval."

And, Ari takes it that they are friends?  Or inquires, rather.  Sera is: looking up and perhaps catching up.  Maybe they pause for her.  They should.  If not, she could perhaps staccato time.  Seems pretty profligate, but no more so than some of her other uses of magick for her own pleasure. 

Her answer to the question is a shrug, though.  Thoughtful sure, but: she doesn't know them that well.  Any of them.  "I like Nick.  Pen seems cool.  This guy's a fucking weirdo."  

Which isn't a criticism.  Three or four times they've met and Sera knows: this guy's a fucking weirdo.  Okay.  Aren't we all.

Andrés

At the intersection he has to stop and wait for them because of traffic patterns and red lights and common sense. He's reckless at times but not reckless enough to walk across the street when cars are doing the same thing in the perpendicular direction.

He whistles an up-and-down arpeggio while bouncing on the balls of his feet, almost as if he isn't fucking listening. Removes the chalk-smeared device from his pocket. Squints at it. A spark of an idea. At that he looks like he might run into traffic. But he doesn't.

This guy's a fucking weirdo.

"Dale, cabrón," he says to himself. Digs a small notebook out of a back pocket pen pen where the fuck there it is. Pen. Scribbles down the thought he just had before it can get too far. Made his own sense out of the smeared nonsense on the device.

The light may well change before he pulls his head out of his ass, but he's onto something.

Arianna

It is Ari's turn to be the counter-ballast of the conversation, while the other two speaking of sleeping and dreams.  She offers a little approving color -- Sparkly things and Carneval are a capital combination -- and otherwise focuses on keeping up with the hustle.  Even with a typical European walking pace, Andres' hustle borders upon impolite.

When they are all collected at the street corner, watching the traffic swim past, she taps him on the shoulder and points a ways down the street.

"I think it is there," she says, helpfully, though the metal sign and farm-to-table rustic chic atmosphere would have proved a ready cue whether she pointed it out or not.  There is polite conversation to make now, sussing out social connections, feigning interest in one another's interests, but Sera doesn't seem the sort for forced niceties.

Which is a relief. Ari is quite good at the game, but prefers not to play it.

"He's my favorite Denver weirdo so far," Ari says, ruffling her fingers through Andres' hair and smirking as she pulls back away from him.  "Though one of his Apprentices is not bad either.  Oh! This reminds me. Andres?"

A pause, to see if she has his attention.  The cant of her expression has gone serious though her look cannot be as imperious and concerned as it would like, with her hand shielding her eyes from the overhead sun.

"Has Margot returned? Is she hale?"

Serafíne

Neat lift of a sharp chin by way of inquiry.  Here is something strange and almost occasionally incisive about Sera: a certain note, at a certain time, where she has or finds or forges an edge in the very air around her.  Glance; Arianna to Andres.  The ruffling-of-hair. 

Funny how golden the affectionate little gesture makes the morning.  How it focuses Sera's sunglass-hidden gaze quite suddenly on Andres. 

Doesn't say anything.  Considers inquiring about the device and but also considers that the answer could potentially bore the hell out of her.  Capacitors and whatever.  Oh fuck.  That reminds her of the robot-talking-girl.

Andrés

The hair-ruffle is tolerated if he even notices it occurs. Serafíne is better able to read people than he is to pretend otherwise, and she can see below the surface of his beleaguered acceptance of the physical contact.

"How the hell should I know?"

His apprentice and her status are not on his radar, it should seem. Given what they were discussing the last time the three of them were in the same room, one would think the Etherite would have an answer that was not glib or shitty.

He adjusts his glasses and tries again: "Last I heard, they were still in one piece."

And the light changes.

Arianna

Ari is not particularly empathic, so she does not know the depths of Andres's soul or how he feels about her faux-affection, only that it is offered with the sort of annoying fondness that flirts around the edge of friendship's margins and never transgresses into something more.  Mark: Ari has made no attempt to touch Sera. Not even to extend a hand for shaking in greeting. Aside from the hair ruffle -- nay, even including it -- the touches she offers are directed, and clear in their compass, and set to a particular purpose.

"One piece is favorable to many," Ari says, as if this no news is good news approach is acceptable to her.  In truth, it is not, but she obscures that behind an inscrutable indifference.  As if she had only asked after the younger woman to be polite.  Though that is not entirely fair, as the furrow of her brow when she spake Margot's name was more intent than indifferent.

Ari has been accused of being fickle of heart. Perhaps it is true.

The light changes, and she steps off the curb without looking left or right first. Such blind assurance in the rules of traffic -- a surer proof of consensus among the masses than any other she has found in modern society -- and human compliance.

Serafíne

The Cultist is more drifting than speaking now.  Lights change and Ari steps off the curb and Sera, too, although this is less a response to the lights, which she is ignoring entirely, than it is motion-to-motion.  The others step off.  Sera follows. 

Oh, hey.  Here is the place.  Arianna suggested it but Sera knows it.  Or at least: knows the place now that she's here.  The waitress taking orders at the rough-hewn outdoor tables is on Dee's roller derby.  Dark, close cropped hair and enough familiarity that she unlatches the little gate framing the tables off from the sidewalk to let them squeeze in without making them go around.  Time enough for Arianna and Andres to array themselves at the table the waitress offers up while Sera and the other girl exchange hugs and Sera puts in for the first round of drinks and Sere tips up her sunglasses so the other young woman can check the state of her pupils. 

Yep.  Still huge. 

Enough time for Arianna and Andres to talk about apprentices, if they want to.  Or Andres' revelation on the street, earlier.  Or whatever, before Sera comes back to the table to which they have been directed.  Sera is still kinda thinking about how Andres reminds her of Patience.  And other things.

Into the Green Wood: The Warded Door

evening-star

"Do you remember solution to the riddle about the Basilisk from Maga Ionia's On Mythical and Magical Creatures?"  she asks Pen, glancing up from a pile of folded silks and fabrics unearthed from a dusty wicker basket in one corner of Philae's Finery and Antiques.  What light eeks in through the thick-paned windows is warped by the slide of the aged glass and comes in ever-broadening beams which set the dust in the air afire, illuminate their dance and whirl-whorling.  The dust is so thick in the shop that it almost has a taste to it, and the smell of old books and leather and things left too long to the touch of time is thick and clings to their hair and fingerprints.  Everything here is older than each of the Hermetic women, some of it is older than the two of them combined.  A great deal of it is junk; a few things are treasures.  Pen and Ari have the run of the place to themselves. Philae -- whose name is actually Karina -- has gone across the way to get a cup of coffee.

Something about the ardent woman and her luminous companion inspires trust, or at least requires considerably more caffeine than the shopkeep has in her bloodstream at present.

Ari pulls a scarf out of the middle of the pile. It is pale cream with yellow and purple irises.  The pattern is faded just enough that it looks like water color.  As she unfolds it and holds it up to the light, Pen can see the detail and variability in the print.

"It's hand-dyed," says the Bonisagus, shaking her head a little as she hands it over to the Flambeau.  "Amazing.  Six dollars for a silk scarf -- It's like the prices were set by casting lots.  Shall I see if there's another?"

lake-light

[Do I? Intelligence + Enigmas.]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

lake-light

"I do, and I remembered the variant too. What rock is lighter than the basilisk's stare and redder than the basilisk's heart? Version one. What rock is lighter than the basilisk's heart and what stone grows into a tree in flower? Version two. Answer: a cherry stone."

Pen is seated, cross-legged, on the dusty ground. In her lap is a box full of spoons, silver spoons and copper spoons, spoons of many shapes and spoons of many sizes, and in among the spoons are rings, a skein of rings, rings upon rings upon rings, some cheap and tawdry fluff, some richer, all of them lost. Pen is for once wearing little jewelry: her wedding band shines like lake-light, star-gloam, milk-light; a ring on her other hand shines just as bright, the sapphire it is set with is a shadow, is a clot of evening. There are stones in Pen's burnished hair, which is swept back at the nape of her neck, and bent so: isn't it fair, and isn't she? Bent so, seated so: there is the hilt of a knife, just falling out of her boot. 

Pen lofts her chin to peer fabric-wards, reaching out one hand (from the other, rings and thread and spoons fall, clattering as soft as Echo singing Narcissus' own praises) to take it between her fingers and see the shadow of them through the scarf. 

"Maybe they were set by casting lots," Pen says, with a pleased twist of her lips. "It is how I might do it, were I in charge of such a shop. Toss prices in a hat and see what sticks. Or ask people what they thought such and such thing was worth to them, and then what it was worth to me. It's beautiful; if there is another, I'll take it. I think this box has a secret bottom."

Pen: she lifts the box to regard it, and then, "This seems the sort of place one might find Tass, doesn't it? We should look."  

evening-star

"You should take this one," Ari says, letting go of her corner of the scarf.  It float-falls down into Pen's grasp, obscuring all of her beautiful rings, whispering against her skin the way that only silk can murmur-slide and insinuate.  Then Ari's quick and nimble fingers are to the task again.  It does not take long enough for her to find another, blue-greys and whites and hushed hints of lavender. Batik-dyed silk, for less than a song.

"If they were set by casting lots, then I'd say the Oracle was for once in our favor."  She holds this new silk up to the light and the overlapping patterns are caught up in the sunlight, made bluer-black and stark against the streaming through of gold and late afternoon.  Attuned as she is to the shape of letters and sigils, she can almost scry the first of a few runes in it. This is the danger with mysticism: it is everywhere. The mysteries refuse to remain hidden.  She closes her eyes against them for a moment, and breathes out deeply enough to disturb the whorling-whirling dust.

Pen is fully loaded with her instruments and accoutrements this lazy afternoon and Ari is, likewise, possessed of her wand and her sharp-edged mind, in which the legend to most earthly sigils and the shape of many man-made tongues resides.  There is chalk, and pen and paper in her bag is she is in need of something more than circles traced in the ambient dust, which renders all horizontal spaces into artboards and canvases for one engagement of the mind only.  Single-use.  Fleeting.

She folds the silk into halves, and halves again until it is neat-edged and small enough to carry.  Here, on the upward face of it, there is a strike of dye and answering shadow almost in the shape of Radhio, the crossroads, of travel and decisions and omens, and the like.  It is hidden in plain sight; readily grasped by the imagination or subconscious.

"We should," Ari agrees.  "I can sketch you the symbols, if you wish to Dowse for Baetylus again..."  This is said easily, and the Bonisagus is already shaping the heraldry of the rote in her mind.

lake-light

"Maybe." Ari is back to her task. Pen sets the box of metal oddments back down on the ground and catches the silk scarf before it float-falls to the ground, proper, and she holds it up, and watches her friend's silhouette through it. Here is Arianna, transfigured into an Art Nouveau dryad, Iris' painted on her skin. Here she is, whispered into a softer world. Pen folds the scarf into quarters, then sets it aside. Six dollars is inexpensive enough that she is tempted, and then she goes back to sifting through spoons and rings and thread. How the thread has gotten into the box she does not know, but it has tangled everything up. Daedalus could not find his way out with this string, could plan a new Labyrinth with this string as a model: it catches on Pen's wrist and on her thumb and she tries diligently and automatically to untangle it, though a glance up, an gaze snagged on the second scarf Ari has found, causes the redhead to smile faintly and privately.

"So be it! You should sketch the symbols in the dust." This is said without snark. "Use the environment." This last is said, perhaps, with a spot of mischief; challenge and curiosity both.

evening-star

[Dex + Art (Calligraphy): Drawing Sigils in the Dust...]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 7, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 5 ) [Doubling Tens]

evening-star

Six dollars is inexpensive enough that -- if Pen does not buy it for herself -- Ari might make an incidental gift of it. A thing bequeathed to her dearest of friends simply because the shape of Pen's smile from behind the curtain of silk pleased Ari in ways she does not quite have words for in this language or another.  Because Pen is the poet, and Ari is merely a linguist. They each have their Artistry.

Behold: There is a wide and ready expanse of dust on a nearby table, round and only big enough for a breakfast for two or corner occasional or some other side-of-the-room type station.  There is not space enough or opportunity to strike out and begin again.  Pen's challenge is to perfection, to performance art in an unprepared space and Ari? She rises to it. She becomes it.  There is a glimmer of pride and also confidence to the green of her eyes as she tucks one hand behind her back and extends the index finger of the other, as she is both the artist and the instrument, made stylus and the hand that holds it, until there is symbolism in the way she scribes, is made a scribe, has always been becoming one.

They have cast this rote before and only a quarter of a year before -- yes, a quarter year already, though it is hard to believe the year has turned so quickly; Focus! -- and so the shapes are ready in her mind. And also Ari has been toying around with the margins of what she might due with Ars Vis, what she might be on the edge of doing, so these things are at the ready, they are on the tip of her tongue -- which is caught between her teeth to keep her from speaking the Names she writes in Enochian in the slant of golden light, at the margins of Helios's grace, as if she were Venus (both the evening and the morning star) who might sing to the sun and the moon with equal intimacy.

After a few long minutes, Ari steps back, extended finger held aloft and tongue still caught and eyes tracing the lines and curves and bends of the shapes in the dust.  There are now berms and valleys, darker wood grain showing through the patina left behind of time.  It is quick work, and in a less refined medium, but it is resonant all the same.

"I give you, the finest dust-drawing that I might muster, my lady Weaver and dearest friend. Does it meet with your approval?" she asks, but her mouth is already set in smug self-satisfaction. She is already pleased, even as she extends a hand to Penelope to help her surface from the sea of spoons and back into the warmth of the late-light.

lake-light

[Let's Speak It.]

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

lake-light

[The Roll, as before.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (1, 3, 5) ( success x 2 )

evening-star

[The Roll, plucky side-kick version.]

Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (7, 8) ( success x 2 )

lake-light

Pen doesn't answer in words, but rather she gives Ari a long sidelong look, canting her jaw, her naked throat, and the mischief and challenge transmute (alchemical marriages) into good humor. Pen has risen to her feet without needing the hand offered the help but she will take it because it is good to take help because help offered gladly is gladly taken and once risen to her feet she is come to look at the table, its slanting bars of gold light, its crown of late afternoon and how the eddying dust falls just so, just so patterned.

Pen studies the invocation and licks the tip of her finger and draws it through each word and each rune and each Word and each symbol as she pronounces it. Witness this: how she pronounces these words, this chant, this chaunt, witness the straightness of her spine, the supple bend of her head, and doesn't she have a quicksilver air to her, for all she carries herself so still (a vessel [the Word])? Yes, (no: not a vessel; the Word is commanded, the Word is a fist-full of lightning: she will shape light out of the dark, and her voice is Mars simmering in a cup: blood and silver, light and water: isn't it a shining thing, spoken so well? Isn't this how the seraphim communicated when they were in their Ideal forms? Isn't she arresting [beguiling], couldn't she sing the Moon into her belly? Couldn't she speak a heart unbroken?) might.

Pen: speaks.

And before them, the Weaving of the Tapestry, the Tellurian, is colored bright and visible; the places where Tass has gathered a pulse in the throat, a drumming song in the head, this-a-way, that-a-way, but:

Isn't there more? There is more.

There is a door.

evening-star

Pen speaks and the shadows bend a knee to listen.  All things magical gather up their hearts into their throats and wait, poised on every perfect syllable, hoping to hear their Name among the gilded few that spill across the lake witch's lips.  Sunlight condenses until it is thick like honey, until it is thick like amber and this!  This is a point in time stitched so perfectly into the Tellurian that it might never be altered, of Pen with her stick-straight spine and the delicate bow of her head and the reverberation of her voice captured forever and for always with all the world around her breathless.

Ari is breathless. She, like all the other magical things, waits on bated breath for the speaking of her Name. Even a fragment will do. Even an echo that might hold the shape of one of her names.  Just to be closer than touching to the magnificence Pen works, she wants to be named and commanded by the language of the Seraphim.

This is a beauty and power few outside the Order could comprehend.  Every particle of dust in the air is on fire; each is a tiny planet and all orbit Pen; Pen is the sun, the giver of truth and and of light and when her voice falls silent the Tellurian echoes.  Its strings call back, resonate, reverberate.  It is commanded and in that clear, and perfect and immediate answer the bright-shining nodes of collected power and influence simmer and seethe their white-brightness.  It is collected here in the bowl of a chipped teacup (Elegance), there pressed into the pages of an outdated encyclopedia (Distilled), there again in the fire of light moving through the cut glass teardrops of a crystal chandelier (Fracturing).

It is there in the worn and heavy wooden door, off its hinges and resting against the wall, which has been used as back splash to a display of other things.  There are deep impressions in the wood and heavy iron fittings.  It is the sort of door that might hold back intruders, or bar Keeps, or swing open to reveal the warmth of firelight dancing over a worn slate floor.

There are vines and leaves burnt into it, and its top is rounded instead of squared.  There is a little window built into the top of it, at eye height, barred by an iron cage.  The little door is open and out of its portal streams a fey and greening light.  It is fainter than Helios and stranger than moonlight. It is not Pen's radiance or Ari's either, but a thing all its own.

Beckoning.

Ari's attention is pulled toward it before she recognizes the faint, enchanting glow.  She is still breathing out the wonder of standing in Pen's orbit; she is still half-hoping to hear an echo of her Name -- and maybe her Name is behind the door, or in the teacup, or pressed between the pages of that old book of mysteries.

"I will never tire of listening to you speak," she says, and it is honest and appreciative and bewitched all the same.  "I would not wonder if the Seraphim themselves do long for it, or hear their language of their home in your Enochian.  It's flawless."

evening-star

[Wits + Enigmas]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 6, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )

lake-light

[Also!]

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

lake-light

"My tongue feels like bees," Pen says. "I wonder if that's the pleasure of the seraphim?"

Winks, a swashbuckler's wink.

But see: Ari's pleasure in Pen's speaking touches her. She is, even so and even still, always conscious of being behind, of not being where she wants to be, of needing to be better, stronger, faster, of needing to be more than she is, because there will come a time when she needs that, and cannot rise to it, and a price will be paid. If it is only her who pays the price, that is one thing.

That is one thing.

The teacup (elegance) and the encyclopedia (distilled) and the chandelier (fracturing [and some would say there is a Destiny]) are one thing. The great heavy door with its green and ancient light is quite another. The ladies of the Silver Bough can come close and quick-witted, sharp-witted, wits as quick as foxes, wits as shrewd as cunning, witted and unriddling (wisely expounded), smart as they are and as able to draw conclusions from broken threads and threads unraveling and it does look like threads or feel like threads to their sixth sense to their second sight the Wards which are bound around that door. Which are lapsing, which Time has worn: and perhaps something else, some Thing else, which has gnawed on the Wards like mice will gnaw at the glue in the spines of books unhappy mice something some Thing some otherworldly intangible thing not body not flesh but spirit has undone what Wizards have polished up metal shield brightness dappled and this thing: this door. This door is a guard post a watch word. This door: the wards are dissipating, and it beckons. There is trouble behind the wards, what might be released (?) when the wards are gone completely: the Wards are clear as they can be in such a state. It is a monstrous rising, and it is sweet.

"We can't leave this alone," Pen says. "But, hmm. It seems to have been warded from the other side; I'd rather not use Magick to lift it. Do you think we together can move the beast? What do you think?"

About it.

evening-star

"Do you think we might shore up the Wards?" she asks.  It is the responsible and upstanding thing to do, but even as Ari asks she knows that she hasn't the skill yet to match this sort of handiwork.  One day: the hope hangs on a distant horizon; it is the gleam of larger works and legacies; it is a thing to aspire to.  But not today. 

"I had heard that there were places still where old and anchored magics like this bled through, from when warding and banishing and saining were all easier," she tells Pen, who has not had the sort of stories read at bedtime in her youth that Ari has. Of triumphant wizards what pushed back the darkness and warded the Night into only half the sky, and also kept the monsters confined to under beds and in wardrobes, and also made the monsters but those stories came at an older age. 

"I haven't seen many on this side of the Atlantic," she confesses, but there is an undercurrent to it: neither has she looked very hard for them.  In the past month, she'd been looking harder, finding the seams in the mundane world where the magic bleeds back through.

"I think together we might do anything we put our minds to," she tells Pen, planting her hands on her hips for a moment and tipping her chin up proudly.  There is still dust smudged on her hand and it leaves a sullied fingerprint on the skirt of her dress.  There is hubris to it, of course, but if they were crafty and without magic, they could manage it.  Like many things, it was all about leverage.

And lifting with one's knees.

But there is also the pull of the thing, and the closer they get the more it calls to them.  To look through the gleaming portal.  To put more than just one shoulder behind the door as they shift it.  To slip into the shadow between, and then through it, and then through to it...

evening-star

[Wits + Arete]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )

lake-light

[Wits + Arete! Wits specialty, totes applicable.]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 2, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens]

evening-star

[Ain't nobody here but us chickens: Masking resonance, Ari/Pen, coincidental, base + 3, +1 fast casting, -1 instruments, +WP (hoping for enough successes to mask them both)]

Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (4, 10) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

lake-light

[Prime 1! Imbue the Ring! Leave a breadcrumb! Diff 4 + 1 fast casting. WP.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (2, 5, 8) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

lake-light

[Also, here's a take-off and toss roll. Dex + Ath]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (6, 6, 7, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 6 )

evening-star

[Does she stick the landing?]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 8) ( success x 1 )

lake-light

They do this.

And the world turns upside down. They didn't quite touch the Door as they should have to avoid the Wards, perhaps. And so the Wards took them. Or perhaps they touched the Door just right and the Wards were too thin so the beckoning, it took them anyway.

They both feel how it takes them. They have time to do something, each to each. They have time to grab for one another, but the thought doesn't occur to them, does it? That they might be separated right now, as the world drops, as the door opens, as the light subsumes them, sublimates them, transfigures them:

Ari is falling, and falling, Ari is perhaps speaking protection, she is perhaps gesturing, scribing in the air, scrivener of magick brim-full luminous mercurial quick how could she not change easy one two three adapt she is seeking to mask them both to hide their signatures she doesn't know what's happening, only that she is falling, but there is a Door, and there is a Fall, and so it might behoove them to cover their faces so to speak,

and Pen. Pen is quick in this way: the ring that is not her wedding band, she takes it off: kisses it off with her mouth, muttering a word in a language some would call dead and others would call poetry, pushes her Will and essentiae into the metal, and it is daring, and ardent, it is resplendent when it arcs through the air when it falls, clink, into a box of many rings and string and spoons, nestling down so it is not near the top, but it can be felt,

and Ari hits the ground. The ground is loam, is wet earth.

and Pen hits the ground. The ground is wet earth, loam.

Ari wobbles (balance is just attained; books speak of it, but do not always teach it), Pen does not (already readied, the Flambeau: as if she'd meant to do it). The light is green: so, too, the forest -

it whispers to them.