Margot says goodbye

Margot

Open hours at the bar from whenever to whenever, so Margot showed up in the early evening while the sun was still bright and hot outside.  She was dressed in a pair of denim shorts and a light gray long-sleeved tee with the sleeves pushed up to her elbows (walking from wherever she'd parked to here was warm).  She was rolling her sleeves down against the burst of air-conditioned cold when she entered the lobby, and had the self-conscious impression of being underdressed for a place with such high ceilings and white decorum.

There, at the bar-- Sepúlveda.  With her head down and her steps small and hurried, she made her way across the lobby to stand at the stool beside him.  Not climbing up immediately, but placing a hand upon its seat as though to reserve it for herself, or maybe request invitation.

"Hey, Doc," she greeted with the apology bleeding into her greeting already.

Her cheeks were pink from the sun, and hair twisted and pinned back from her face and off her neck.  She was wearing sneakers and socks on her feet instead of flip-flops, contrary to the rest of her attire.  Knowing her and her counterpart, it probably had something to do with wanting to be able to sprint at a moment's notice if need be.  Paranoid assholes.

"I'm not killing your game if I join you, am I?"  The humor fell flat but hey, she tried.

Sepúlveda

For all Margot knows, based on the sparseness of his responses and the lack of emojis, she is still on Dr. Sepúlveda's shit list. Today is the day she's chosen to reach out to him, and from a distance, nothing seems any different than usual. He's wearing a cardigan overtop a button-down shirt and glasses, and is downing beer like he's just crawled in out of the desert and not like he's waiting for someone to come join him.

She approaches him, contrition in her tone, and he knocks back the tequila shot the bartender was in the midst of pouring when she arrived.

Then comes the question.

"You two," he says, scratching his beard with his left hand, "killed my entire season. What'd you want?"

Margot

That sounded enough like an invitation to sit as any, so Margot climbed up onto the stool.  Asked the bartender for a glass of water and nothing more, and when it arrived she drank it as thirstily as Doc had been chugging his beer before.

"To tell you I'm sorry," she said simply, and looked at her glass of water and her hands (no nail polish, no rings, nothing but the sharp edges of recently clipped nails, like she was getting ready for some kind of labor).

"And to say bye, for now."

Giametti

It's a warm day, which means that Arianna is wearing a spring-appropriate dress, still in greys and silvers and whites, and hemmed precisely at her knee.  It fits her so well that Margot may wonder if the Hermetic woman has a haberdashery staff on retainer, at her beck and call to suitably bend her attire to her will.  Money is a simpler instrument, here, than Magic to employ, and it is unlikely that Arianna does such work herself.  Her hair is pinned up in a loose chignon at the base of her neck.  Her heels loft her a little higher; she dwarfs the scientist by five or more inches when she comes back to join him.

And she does come back to join him, despite seeing his Apprentice tucked in beside him on a barstool.  Arianna is graceful as she takes up a collegial lean against the bar on his other side -- he is stuck between them now, the Apprentice and the Order mage -- and smiles across to Margot in greeting.

"Are you leaving already?" she asks, filing the thought in just after Margot's attempt at a goodbye.  "You've only just gotten here.  And it is good to see you again, Margot."

Which implies that she has already exchanged greetings with Andres. Earlier. Before a trip to the restroom drew her away from the bar momentarily.

Giametti

((Aha. Math fail. She is about 4" taller than Andres, not 5". ... I'm off to a great start!))

Sepúlveda

If Arianna had not come back within a reasonable amount of time, he might have started firing off text messages, not out of concern for some strange fate having befallen her in the ladies' room but because he himself is now beset by a tenacious former student who wants to talk about her feelings.

When the Hermetic returns unharmed from the restroom, Sepúlveda turns his head in recognition of her resonance.

"Margot here," he says as if in aside, though his eyes remain on the Disparate, "is going on a field trip to--I don't know, actually. Edward didn't say. At any rate, I'm not invited because she thinks I'll kill her brother."

Giametti

"Is her brother deserving of death, then?" Arianna asks, seemingly unperturbed by Andres's bluntness on the matter.  Her eyes flick from the Scientist to his former student and back in quick succession. She is bright, if not always that perceptive.  "Or is this some sort of misunderstanding?"

A beat.  Then, almost reluctantly. "Are you in some sort of trouble, Margot?"  Damn. The words are out before she remembers that showing concern is quite like volunteering to help.  The bartender gets a sort of universally understood signal -- she now requires a drink.

Sepúlveda

Or is this some sort of misunderstanding?

He lifts his shoulders in a shrug, eyes still on Margot. Though not exactly the best with words, he has an expressive enough face and his body language always gives him away. If Margot would care to elaborate as to why she's sorry, she's more than welcome to, but he has a Corona to drink while she answers Arianna's question(s).

As if they're impeding his progress, Sepúlveda yanks off his eyeglasses and clips one arm to the breast pocket of his shirt. Why yes, Bartender, they would like another round.

Everyone is getting tequila this time.

Margot

A click-click of heels drew Margot's attention first, for how they resonated with ceilings like this.  She looked at first like she wasn't sure of how she felt about having somebody else around, given what conversation she was trying to have, but Arianna smiled and greeted Margot and the little witch couldn't help but return the gesture.

"Hey Arianna, how--"

There went Doc.  Margot turned her head to look at him with naturally large eyes widened even further, jaw only slightly slack but not entirely agape just yet.  It was a somewhat familiar expression, Doc may or may not remember it from when he induced her and Ned's Seeking, how she'd turned her head to gawp at her fellow (at the time) Apprentice when he blurted out something about Luke.  Now it wasn't clouded with the haze of a Magickally-imbued sleep(?).  It looked pretty disbelieving.

Then, instead, it looked like a more annoyed version of pissed off than what genuine (read: justified) offense would appear as.  A knit in her brow and a pout-purse to her mouth as lips pressed together to hold back scoldings and tempers.

"Thank you, Doc," she ground out through clenched teeth, then, finally, settled her eyes squarely upon Arianna to address the woman's curiosity-- concern, also, but let's face it, curiosity was strong there too.

"I'm leaving to make sure that I'm not going to be in some kind of trouble.  I'll be back in a couple of days.  I just....," she paused, scowling even harder, and looked at the side of Doc's face.  Reached out and wrapped a petite hand around the tequila shot that was placed in front of her.  "I left on a bad finger-pointing note with Doc and wanted to make up for it before...  well...."

She concluded on a sigh and tipped her head back to take the shot.

Sepúlveda

[let's play the empathy game!]

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

Giametti

[Empathy... because I do care. I'm just not particularly good at it.]

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

Sepúlveda

Glug.

"She thinks she hurt my feelings," he says, still in Aside Mode, his breath gone to fire, this time taking his eyes off Margot. "Which is--" Cough. "--laughable, being as the only feeling she and Edward ever induce in me is pain, in my ass."

Margot

For Arianna, this may be a moment of some kind of clarity or awakening to the human soul and heart.  She might really feel for Margot and the plight that's clearly sitting upon her.  She might not have noticed before, but now that she really looked the petite girl's shoulders seemed to sag under the weight of what rested upon them.

She was worried about not coming back from this trip.  She wanted to say sorry to Doc but she wanted to say goodbye too because she cared about Doc, and that showed plainly too.  She was angry at him, presently, for bringing up the subject and that was clear in the magenta patches of blush on her cheeks but even if she was mad at him she was worried about saying something to crack their alliance entirely.

Giametti

There is this: a small stich in Arianna's brow as she looks toward Andres.  The slightest rumple of disapproval, well schooled and disciplined and all that, but displeased nonetheless.  She ponders this as she takes her shot, and lets the fire play out down her throat.  She is less practiced in this, but her acquaintance with the Scientist has gifted her amply opportunity to make a quick study of it.  Tequila is now in Ari's drinking repertoire, world be warned.

"That's mature of you," she says, when the burn has faded.  "Wanting to make ammends before departing. I was not as disciplined at your age."  Faint praise, perhaps, except it is too gentled to be exultation.  The Hermetic woman taps her finger against the rim of her shotglass a few times, then stills.

"Would you allow me to make a gift to you before you go?" she asks Margot.  It is a mused sort of half-thought, not quite as well thought out as it out to be. Ideally she should discuss this with Nick and Pen, but no. She is impulsive, and the Silver Bough would likely back her either way.  "Something to help you find your way back here, or perhaps to help us find you if your path takes you astray?"

William

At 7:33 last Tuesday, William Holmes decided that he wanted a piano. Not an upright, and not a keyboard. No, he wanted a baby grand piano. He determined that there were two ways in which he could actually go about this- transporting an existing baby grand piano into his living room or simply creating one with little more than intention and poetry. He decided, of course, to go with the latter and the last few working days were spent learning how precisely to make this a reality.

And, well, learning to read efficiently backwards.

After that stopped being a problem, he had to reacclimate himself to reading in English forwards. Concludes he prefers reading backwards because it makes him pay attention to what is in front of him, but he doesn't seem too bent out of shape either way.

William is out tonight to get a break from trying to learn to write objects into existence, and to celebrate... uh... something. Who knew, who really cared. He could find something to celebrate, could be celebrating something already, but he figures it's been awhile since he's had a few shots and drops by the nearest bar he's pretty sure he won't get shot at.

So, there he is, there's the motivation- all tall and blond and walking through the door and looking a cross between a member of Mumford and Sons and a sexy Mennonite- what with the button down shirt and the vest and (arguably) suspenders and pants. No beard, though, so very clearly he is neither a Mennonite nor a member of Mumford and Sons.

Margot

Margot was Doc's apprentice for several months, which really isn't much time at all, but rest assured it was plenty of time to learn how and when to ignore quips about how inconvenient she and Ned's roles in his life were for him.  Instead she shook her head and closed her eyes  to the burn of the drink, then settled for looking slightly bleary over toward Arianna.

The offer of a gift, a guiding gift, was met with a curious and surprised lift of eyebrows.

"Uhh.."  A glance briefly to Doc, then back to Arianna.  "Yeah.  Um, yeah, thank you.  I appreciate it."

Somewhere over and behind Arianna's shoulder Will was approaching the bar, and some combination of blond hair and resonance distracted her eye away, caught her attention and had an expression of conflict arising on her face.  On one hand, she liked Will and Arianna and Doc all but on the other hand she had only really been planning on speaking with one of them.

If he spied her like she spied him, she'd wave in greeting and acknowledgement, but be sure to hide her mouth behind a drink of water all the same.

Sepúlveda

"Margot..."

The man has enough trouble in one-on-one situations. It's worse when he has an audience. Everyone knows he's full of shit when he says he doesn't have feelings. Of course he has feelings. He has hot blood, he has lacrimal glands, he has a brain that is for all intents and purposes still human.

It's the too many feelings that presents itself as a problem. That unimaginable loss that not only left his imagination but wrecked the life he had built with the person he lost. Margot's former mentor is not a complicated man. He's an asshole, sure, but it doesn't take too much work to figure out why he says the things he says or does the things he does.

"You're doing the right thing, confronting your past before it can catch up with you. And you don't owe me an apology." She knows how he feels about apologies. "Don't make me hug you in front of all these people."

Giametti

There's this: Arianna is only altruistic to a point.  She likes Margot, and her gift to Margot is mostly for the girl's sake but also significantly to ease Arianna's own effort expended if something goes sideways.  If something bad befalls Margot, she reasons that the local Traditionalists will band together to rescue yet another Disparate.

But one that Arianna likes, and who seems interested in choosing. So. There's a difference.  And Nick likes the girl, too, so that's practically a majority vote within their cabal.

"Are you leaving soon, then?"  the Hermetic woman asks, gauging how crafty-on-the-spot she will have to be with this semi-charmed gift.  There is still seriousness weighting down the usual levity in her eyes, though responsibility does chafe.  It is unfamiliar in her to her current companions.  William's advance is not noted, as he is coming up behind her, but will be met with a smile -- a little less expansive than usual -- when he arrives.

William

There is a wave that he does catch, oddly enough because he isn't paying attention. So long as he isn't paying attention, he can notice any number of things. So, he notices Margot without intending to notice, concludes that talking to people before drinking is slightly better than drinking alone (and decidedly less suspicious) and he heads on over.

"Hey Margot-" and he rounds the table, notices- "and Arianna-" and some other guy "-and-" fuck I don't think I know his name "-hi, I'm Will."

Kiara

Hard to say, really, whether or not the brunette that appears there not long after William does was invited or not.

Kiara Woolfe was contrary in this sense - when you least suspected there was any calling for the pagan to surface - it tended to be precisely when she did. With little fanfare and with a mass of dark hair pinned up and negotiated into some notion of order, the Verbena looked every inch the cosmopolitan child she actually was, at heart.

Spring was come (spring was here) and Kiara's outfit for the evening reflected a certain recognition in the long skirt and glittering top she wore; the lights dancing in a myriad of red and black sequins. Yet - boots persisted beneath it all; a jacket was draped over one arm - Spring was proving a tease and the weather still danced along the precipice of a chill factor.

She enters, Ms Woolfe and makes a beeline for the bar. If she's here to meet anyone, she's not in a particular frenzy about it.

Margot

Her name spoken by the most familiar voice present drew Margot's attention back once more, and she looked at Andrés with a small aggravated crease still hovering between her brows at first.  But when he continued on that smoothed away and a dab of relief replaced it instead.  She smiled, just a little, and held the glass of water in both hands.

"It wasn't my idea," she said softly in the tone of someone who couldn't accept another person's credit.  "But it was a good one, so I'm sticking with it."  To Arianna next, she glanced and nodded.  "Yeah, I was originally planning to leave this morning but things came up so we pushed back to leaving tomorrow instead."

By this point William had reached them, and she smiled back to him.  "Hey Will."

Attention caught by blacks and whites and another strong presence.  A familiar face, one she immediately (like a lesson drilled into her mind) placed as Verbena.  Eyes hovered on Kiara only long enough for the recognition to settle in before she was looking back to Will again.  Making no gesture to invite him to sit on the stool beside her (Doc was on her left, nobody to her right yet), but no indication that she was saving the space either.

"You look nice."  A glance around.  "Meeting people?"  She certainly hoped not.

Kiara

[Pagan-dar, activate?]

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

Kiara

[Oh I see how it is, Denver.]

Giametti

"Oh! William. What a pleasant surprise," she says, and it is clear that she had not entirely been expecting him. But also that he is welcome to stand beside her, if he so chooses.  And she stands beside Sepulveda, still leaning against the bar or table where they stand. Still looking across the Scientist to Margot, whilst paying the sort of intense attention to the Disparate that William has only seen her apply to less animate studies.

"Do you know Andres?" she asks, polite introductions apparently on auto pilot tonight. She gestures between them and makes the appropriate smiles, but her mind is chewing over something else.

"We have become fast friends," she assures the other Hermetic, and there is a glimmer of amusement to her eyes for just a moment.

Then for Margot: "If you must away so soon, then, I apologize, I will have to give you a beggared gift.  Do you have at least a few minutes more?" she asks, whilst pulling her small clutch purse toward her so that she can root around for an appropriate implement -- a small chunk of polished hematite, which is in her purse because: Hermetic Mage -- and fastens in her mind a possible ward against attenuation, and the general shape of appropriate sympathetic magics for sendings and findings and what not.  Magic on the Spot is not really her forte, but years of practice and wizarding education give her enough grounding to make do.

Sepúlveda

Do you know Andrés?

The Scientist scratches the corner of his eye but doesn't extend his hand to shake. All William gets for a proper introduction is "Hello." He's considering the fact that Margot has said her piece, or appears to have said her piece, and that Will is one of Arianna's people, and he's typing both-thumbs on his phone for a second. Sighing as he leaves the thing on the bar top.

"Come here," he says to Margot.

Like that day at the coffeehouse, the hug is awkward. He's a bony, strange little man, but he rare moments of paternal giving-of-shits. Margot is not delicate, but she is young. He doesn't know how to be warm or gentle or any of the things she might need from him.

She doesn't have to accept the hug, but he's got an arm out in offer, like he's about to leave her here with these two. Three. However many it is now Christ they're coming out of the walls.

William

[Do I actually notice people? Per+aware?}

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 7, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 6 ) [Doubling Tens]

Kiara

The creature at the bar (placed by Margot as a Verbena and yes, she did feel as if that suited, somehow, did look the part with those dark eyes of hers and that generous mouth painted red) leans in to order a drink and engages the bartender in conversation while he sets a glass down, tips ice into it and unearths a sprig of mint from somewhere.

A bottle of vodka appears and generously coats the ice and herb.

The brunette's glittering top was some overtly intricate thing with lacing up the side and a triangular shaped cut; it rose slightly up on either side and gifted the world with a slither of skin beneath. When the pagan leaned into the bar to intercept her drink - the shirt slid up past the hem of her skirt and the dark ink of her tattoo flirted with the universe at large.

There's a brief catch of fine dark brows - they draw together and the female reaches, one handed, to extricate a phone from the jacket draped over her arm; balancing her drink in one hand; hip against the bar her thumb flicks across the screen.

Eyes tick upward - across the crowd.

Kiara's mouth curls, she sets her coat down. Hops onto a stool and crosses her legs; sipping at the concoction in her hand. Taps out a reply and hits send and, rather demurely, turns her face and watches the crowds: a booted heel rapping against the leg of the barstool.

William

[manip+sub: totally fine here]

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

Sepúlveda

[perception: bullshit?]

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

William

Margot says that he looks nice, and he smiles because goddamnit William likes compliments because what self- respecting Leo doesn't like compliments?

"Thanks," he replies, "and nah, I just decided to come out. I've been on my ass for a week reading so I was like hey, time to join the rest of humanity."

Pleasantries have been traded between the doctor and the not-doctor, Will nods with Arianna gives her introduction, gives the references for how they know each other and uses the term friends, she and the Etherite are friends and it is good enough for him. Gives a thumbs up.

Opens his mouth to say something to Margot and Arianna, and it really does look like he was going to say something, but his thought process seems to immediately derail and he closes his mouth. Stops for a second, looks in Kiara's direction and then past Kiara at something that most assured isn't there. Exhales. Waves hi to Kiara,  looks back to the ladies he is currently with and contineus on the train of thoguht he was originally on.

Supposedly.

Probably.

"You two down for one more drink, or am I doomed to do shots by my lonesome?"

Margot

[Perception + Empathy: Sup Will?]

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

Margot

The open armed offer for a hug was accepted without much in the way of hesitation.  One arm hooped around his back and she tucked into his side, flank to flank, to squeeze a side hug in return.  She didn't slip down off her bar stool for it, though-- even though Sepúlveda was not a large man, Margot was much smaller still.  The stool helped, if anything at all.

She was kind enough to end the hug quickly-- Doc had a reputation to keep, sort of, and there were a lot of people around to witness the tender moment.  Hands back at her water glass, she glanced from her teacher and cabalmate (she was pretty sure of both parts being true, at least) who appeared to readying himself to leave to Will instead, speaking of how he'd only intended to come out and blow the smell of being stuck indoors off his shoulders. 

Spied something that raised a look of suspicion and question on her face, glanced toward and beyond Kiara as well, but then found herself distracted from what she'd spied for the time being, because Arianna was pulling something that looked special and full of potential and importance out of her purse.

This answer could be for Arianna and Will both:  "I don't have to leave right now..."  Truthfully, she'd packed and repacked her small travel bag three times already, and lost track of the number of times she organized and secured the messenger bag that she'd placed her Supplies with a capital S in.  If she went back to her apartment now she may well end up scrubbing baseboards with her need to spend anxious energy.

Plus she was rather curious to see what Arianna had pulled from her possibly actual magic bag of tricks.

Giametti

She has stepped back enough that Margot and her former mentor can hug it out -- if mutually desired -- and it gives her opportunity to follow Will's glance over to Kiara, who is familiar, but just barely, from a walk in the park one evening.  Arianna smiles, and lifts her chin slightly in greeting.  The Hermetic woman does not wave or bound over to say hi. It is more like this: Hey, I remember you; you seemed cool.

"I couldn't possibly condemn you drink alone, " Arianna says, with faux dismay at the very concept but the warmth of her smile is dimmed a little.  She glances from him back to the Disparate and again back to her Tradition mate.

"Say, William," she says.  It sounds somewhat coaxing. Just a little cajoling.  And then she lapses into Hermetic speak.  "Might you assist me in a trifling matter? I would so like to make Margot a sending stone -- not in truth, for I have neither the time nor the materials to trap the rote for her completely before she goes away -- but a seeming of one. I thought I might imbue this with my own Essentiae..."  The little hematite is tucked into her Tradition-mate's hand. It is heavy.  It would hold the pattern of her resonance well.

"Lodestones are good for finding one's way home, aren't they?"  They are also good for finding ones who have lost their way.  Their aside is clear-spoken enough for Margot, ever-curious, ever-quick on her feet, to overhear.

Sepúlveda

The side hug is less awkward than a front-to-front one might have been, Margot seated and Andrés standing. His fingers are icy even through her blouse, but the cardigan gives his trunk some measure of warmth, and she can feel the sigh as it leaves his chest. Theirs were fraught paths what brought them together.

He doesn't say it. He doesn't have to. Yeah okay sure she's a pain in the ass but if he didn't care, he had ways of making her and Ned leave him the fuck alone.

As all things do, the hug ends, and when it does the Scientist picks up his cellphone, its notification light throbbing green.

He doesn't excuse himself. He just wanders around the bar to take up a position beside Kiara, then returns his cellphone to the ass pocket of his slacks.

"Put her drinks on my tab," he tells the bartender. "Please."

"More tequila?" the young bartender asks.

"Por todos." A swirling motion with his hand to include the miscreants he left on the other side of the bar and the immediate vicinity at once. "Yes. Please. You're a good man."

William

There's a little bit of explanation being flung around, He settles into a seat next to Margot- she hasn't forbidden it but hasn't expressly said that he could sit there, either. His attention is on the piece of hematite, the way it feels in his palm and the weight that it as against everything around them. It seems good enough, seems solid. Seems to have-

"Certainly a better choice than quartz," he says, more to himself than anything. gives it a good squeeze, nods, and hands it back to Arianna.

"I wouldn't be averse to being of assistance, but what's our timeline? And, more appropriately," he looks at her, grins bright and playful, "do you really want to trust me casting while drunk? Could make it more fun-"

"Are you going on vacation, Margot? Or are you going on some giant epic quest that shan't ever be spoken of? It determines whether or not I get shitfaced before helping Arianna with your going away present."

Giametti

She accepts the stone back from him, pausing just long enough to rub her thumb over it thoughtfully before offering it to Margot for inspection.  It is a rock. A shiny rock. A heavy-for-its-size and shiny rock.  If you cut it, though, the iron in it makes the dust red like blood sluicing from a wound.  It has a bit of Arianna to it, and, by happenstance, a bit of Margot as well.

"Our timeline is 'now' as she might leave presently, and with no present, and that simply will not do." 

"So I was thinking that you might second me, as far as watching perhaps who else was watching, whilst I casted while tipsy."  She says this plainly.  As if she might have some strong accquaintance with drunken magic.  They have established she went to Hermetic Academy, so, perhaps it is possible.  "Which is fun -- but contraindicated by official sources."

A wink for Margot, here. Rules bending is one of Ari's favourite past times.

Margot

It ought to be noted by the Mages in the immediate vicinity, by the way-- Arianna and William in particular, as they were familiar with Margot and to a degree (William more than Arianna here) her resonance as well.  Her magickal presense was stronger now, heavier, more pronounced and easier to pick up on altogether.  Still carnage soaked, but now with a particular assurance to it as well, like a steady beat of a war drum carrying the pace of a victory march.

An Apprentice no more, it seemed.  And just in time, for Margot was going on a journey, one epic enough that Arianna wanted to bestow a hastily-crafted lodestone upon her before she left.  William was up to the task, curious of where she was headed.  She smiled a little, but it was a sad little thing because of what truth lay behind the answer to come.

"I'm going to confront some ghost from the past over the weekend, to make it stop haunting me."

The shiny bit of rock was offered and accepted in an upturned palm.  She bounced it gently to get a feel for its weight and flecked at a little of the iron dust upon it with a blunt thumbnail.  Looking all the more intrigued by the rite to come she handed it back, but paused and looked nervously around the bar as something occurred to her.  True to Margot form, obvious worry crept into her voice once again as she said quietly:  "Wait, where people can see, here?  Isn't that going to lash back on you?"

Kiara

Andrés wanders over and the Verbena turns toward him as he puts her drink on his tab. Arianna and William both signal their greetings in Kiara's general direction and both receive the female's undivided attention for a beat: a crooked slide of her mouth; the nod of her chin.

"I was intending to come over eventually and play at good manners, you realize."

This, Kiara's brand of greeting for the older man as her eyes settle on his face as he tucks his phone away. She takes another sip of her drink, the ice clinking together. Shifts her weight slightly so that her body is facing toward him, rather than idly tipped toward the bar at large. "Is everything okay? I assume I'm not timely for another pending city disaster, am I?" A droll little inflection, there.

"If so, I'm going home to change."

William

"Only if we fuck up spectacularly," he tells Margot, "if you keep things low key enough that it looks normal? Reality doesn't care.

"We're just two weirdos with a rock."

Giametti

"Or fantastically eclectic foreigners," she offers, her grin widening a bit.  It is the first time since she's sensed the tension in Margot that Arianna has seemed more like herself tonight. "I worry more about attracting the wrong sort of attention than I do about backlash."

These words may well snap back to bite her in the ass. It would not be the first time.

"Tell me, Margot: Do you know how to scry? Or has the doctor introduced you to the concept of sympathetic magic at least?"  This is not apprentice-level conversation outside of the Order. Perhaps she is unwittingly testing the new note in Margot's resonance.

Sepúlveda

With a deep breath he takes in what the filthy pagan has on right now, eying her not with lewdness but with practical consideration, then flicks his eyebrows and settles in for a few more minutes of keeping her company.

"Nah, don't do that," he says. "If a kraken bursts out of the sewers, you'll be alright in what you've got on."

He's heard stories, see. The reiki healer has a reputation.

Margot

"Sympathetic magic, yes, I think...  Scrying...?"  She made a face and shook her head.  There was still the nervous glance about that somebody might be leaning in eavesdropping, but a second solid sweep about the bar settled whatever nerves she might have.  She hadn't seen anything a second time and Doc and Kiara were watching on the other side of the bar.  Still speaking quietly, though, she stopped looking so damn suspicious and settled back into the discussion.

"I don't know.  I haven't really had time to test my mettle yet, so to speak.  It's been a very.... busy week."

Giametti

Arianna could fashion them a forces ward, to keep their conversation well and truly private, but that sort of extravagance over terms that might be over-heard in your friendly neighborhood occult bookstore is more trouble than it is worth. That might well and truly incur paradox and backlash and the utter and complete absence of a thing is often more conspicuous than quiet dissonance.  So she leaves it; sometimes it is best to leave things.

"Scrying is simple.  You exploit the connections between things to draw them closer together than they really are.  Like this," she says, slipping the thin silver band she wears around her left ring finger off and holding it in her palm.  "If I so needed to contact the person who gave me this band, I could use it as a focus to find him.  With more practice I might throw my voice, or compell an emotion, or whichever of my Arts is most applicable.  But the simplest use of scrying is in finding things."

Arianna slips the band back over her finger, and it settles into near anonymity at the base of her finger. Just a glimmer of moonlight and nothing more.  She leaves a little pause, in case William wishes to embellish here.

"I will make you a sending stone--not a true one, but an echo of it--an anchor point between you and me. If you have need of me, and the proper arts, you can use it as a focus to find me.  If I have need of you, I can use it as an anchor to find you.  Other things can find me through it, though, so you must guard it carefully." This is a grave warning.  But the next thing she says may be the more serious implication. 

"People familiar with my resonance can also use it to find you in my stead."

Kiara

In truth: if he had eyed her with lewdness, the Verbena likely wouldn't have provided much more in way of response than to raise a dark eyebrow and allow her mouth to portray her amusement. Across the room, there is a gathering of potent magickal signatures; some, arguably, more than others but none the less, it would be hard for those like Kiara not to feel the tug in their direction.

Her eyes drift there, every so often as she speaks with the good Doctor.

One can only speculate what a witch and a Scientist could have to discuss at length but then again: the pair of them had somehow managed to function successfully enough as a unit to rescue another of their midst so perhaps there was something to that, after all. "Mm," she does offer eventually, Kiara, with a sip of vodka and soda. "Well, I am partial to seafood, at the very least."

The Reiki Healer has a reputation. Kiara would be the very least surprised to learn that. One might even suggest she encouraged aspects of it.

"Come on, Doc," the female slides off her stool in a glitter of black and red, her fingers idly brushing his shoulder as she passes. "Let's work on our people skills."

Sepúlveda

Folks can speculate all they want. The Scientist tends to operate under the assumption that no one is paying attention to what he's doing or saying, and has devices to ensure that this remains the case. He is very much in charge of his own circumstances.

And the woman with whom he would have been content to shoot shit all night wants to go work on their manners. Which involves talking to two kids and another gal he has been content in the past to shoot shit with. He and Arianna get to talking in the language Spantalian more often than not. People skills, they do not have.

"Groan," he says as he places his hand at the small of Kiara's back, brief, in a gesture of acquiescence. "Whine." The bartender is pouring all of the tequila shots in front of the trio at the other end of the bar. "Complain."

Margot

The weight of the offer was considered.  A useful tool to call for help, but it created a tie to the woman that could potentially prove problematic later.  There was the responsibility of guarding it, too, and Margot glanced briefly to Will, who perhaps somehow indicated that he was waiting on her answer, she had the floor here.  Then back to the stone in question, meant to be turned, meant to be binding.

"....You know, Arianna, it's a really nice thing to offer.  I'm... kind of honored, I guess, that you'd want to help me on that level, and that you'd trust me to guard something like that.  It'd be a big responsibility, and frankly I don't know what kind of enemies or old classmates you might have that'd come looking for you and crash in on my life to find you."

It was around this time that three tequila shots appeared before them-- Doc's order just arrived.  Margot glanced up the bar to him and Kiara.  Maybe found eye contact with either or both?  Maybe not, one way or the other she looked back to Arianna with surprisingly mellow resolve in her demeanor and voice.

"While it's appreciated, I'm going to decline as graciously as someone can turn down a gesture like that.  Not just because of who might come knocking, nor because it can track me down, but... Well, I'm supposed to be stepping out of the nest and stretching my wings, metaphorically speaking, right?  I'm going to do this without my Mentor--" she still said this with a capital M, utlized the present tense even as she was explaining that the Apprentice/Mentor relationship was withering away as one season passed and changing to something different as the next season came into play. "Then I don't want to go creating another magickal umbilical cord of accountability, so to speak."

She smiled a less-than-confident and somewhat apologetic smile and picked up her shot glass.  "Hope that doesn't make me a dick."  And moved the shot over to Will instead.  She'd already had one and that was plenty enough for a pixie-sized girl with no intentions of getting drunk.  Besides, he had catching up to Ari to do.

Giametti

The idea that old enemies or classmates would come looking for Arianna and find Margot in her stead, through the wee bit of resonance trapped in a scrap of hematite, raises her brows a bit.  But just that.  She listens to Margot's refusal without any outward offense taken or perturbation.  At the end of it, the Hermetic woman merely extended her hand, palm up, to have the stone returned to her.

"As you wish."

It is a poignantly formal and ancient-feeling thing, and Margot may have the fleeting sense that there was more exchanged in this moment than words and a shiny rock, but that is surely only because Arianna ocassionally gives the impression of far Older Ways and seemings than her present one.  The stone, once retrieved, is returned to her small bag without much ado.

When Margot hands her shot over to William, Arianna does not move to pick up her own.  There is something shifting to the green-grey of her eyes, hidden, mercurial.

"It doesn't make you a dick," she confirms.  It is not warm enough or resonant enough to be the whole of what she is thinking.  "Go well, Margot. And come back if you Will."

William

Raises the shot when he gets it, and doesn't press. Takes what she says at face value, that she needs to do this thing on her own and looks over whatever is there. Doesn't care what he's drinking, truth be told, but he does think for a second.

"Be careful," he says, "ghosts are fueled by passion and memory- it's the only thing they've got left and sometimes it's easier to hold on to something damaging than to pass into something else that may or may not exist."

He knows she's not talking abouty actual ghosts. The statement stands.

Margot

There was a small but distinguished shift in demeanor between when working up toward a ritual to help Margot and when she accepted the stone back with no imbuements bestowed.  Apology was a habit that Doc had tried to break in her and if he was chipping away at it in any effacacious manner it sure wasn't showing yet.  Apology still showed in Margot's eyes when she handed the stone back, but that was where it stayed.

Kiara and Doc were on the move, approaching, and the witch watched them for a moment before looking to Will, who now spoke his words of warning.  The words held accuracy, clearly, because she considered him seriously for a moment.

"That's why I'm not expecting him to 'pass on' gently."

Giametti

[Manip + Expression for The Look.  Which I will write into the next post.  Dear Will, there are things afoot. Margot is about to do something actually dangerous and also ill advised.]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 7, 7, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 5 ) [Doubling Tens]

Kiara

"It'll be good for you."

The brunette chides absently, leading the way across toward the others. Margot and Arianna and William - three she knows, one far better than the others. The Verbena doesn't come to any precise halt when they draw upon the gathering but rather she slips in a wash of perfume and spices into William's personal space with one hand sliding around his waist.

"Hey, handsome. Got room at the inn for a lady?"

Easy, idle flirtation in lieu of any other greeting. Kiara's dark eyes slipping to Margot and Arianna. "I hope I'm not interrupting anything important." She sounds rather hopeful, just a touch, that she might have been. Though that could have simply been the way the pagan was.

Subtle provocation seemed to come as easily to the witch as breathing. 

Giametti

There is this: a small touch, Arianna's hand to the Will's shoulder, or the small of his back, or his arm. Something just long enough to garner his attention.  A thing in passing that gives them an opportunity to meet eyes for the first true time that evening.  And she smiles, which is a little thinner and less infectious than he is used to in her. 

"I'm going to get some water," she tells him.  "Would you like some?" she asks.

Because he was going to get shitfaced. And hangovers are a bitch.  Not because Kiara has just insinuated herself into his personal space.  Kiara gets the same slightly-less than radiant smile, but they do not know each other well and Arianna is warm enough for one of Andres's friends.

"Just a gathering of like minds.  It is good to see you again," she tells the Verbena, with perhaps a little quirk of amusement (approval) of her unorthodox style of greeting.  Then Ari's attention is turned to securing that aforementioned glass of water. And then, belatedly, to the tequila shot, which she raises in Andres's direction before downing it.

William

There is a look traded betwixt the Hermetics, a sort of familiar touch and a look and words unspoken between people who have such use for Words. He is accustomed to finding meaning in small things, searches her expression for a second before he nods, "yeah, water seems like it would be smart."

Just because you can destroy a hangover doesn't mean you should. Kiara's in his space and he shoots a look her way, raises a brow and grins at her, like he is delighted to see her- seems almost like he was derailed in his thought process (notices things, still feels some tingle of past castings lest in the air. Hears an argument that hasn't happened yet, chitterings and rattlings and colors bright and light and dark and shining- auras that don't come from drinking and, instead, come inherent in a creature's existence. Things he notices by not noticing. Things that are still lingering from earlier in the day)

"Always room for you," he says, "I was about to tell a story about the last couple of weeks and my abysmal failure-at-reading the signs."

"Shouldn't take more than a minute, if you're down and have a couple, Margot, should be a pretty quick one." Looks at the smaller young woman, looks like she'd be doing him a favor if she listened.

William

(faaaaak, I read that wrong, I need to readjust the post)

Margot

The appearance of Kiara, or more specifically the manner of her entrance, corelated to the smaller younger witch rearing back only the smallest bit (for she'd been leaned in conversationally with the Hermetics).  Apparently she felt herself suddenly much too close to much too much waist-touching-and-flirting.

Arianna had arisen to go fetch water after closed smiles all around, and Margot watched her go only a little remorsefully.  Will had a story to tell and was wondering if Margot could hear him out-- she'd looked like she was about to get ready to stand as well, after the rear-back, started to slip down off her stool, but paused with his request.

"It does sound like a story with a good moral," she conceded with a small grin.  She still finished the slide down from the stool and stood by the bar instead of sitting any longer.  Leaned on the counter and offered Kiara a small wave.

"Hey."  Socially adept as ever.

Giametti

A glass of water is passed toward William as well, and Ari resumes her lean at the bar near her small purse.  The closedness of her smile is not so grim and permanent as Margot may feel just now.  It is a thoughtful thing, and one that strives not to overstep the way that Hermetics often do whilst also very much wishing to over step, step step step, tell tell tell, lecture, point, cajole.

It is difficult to silence one's inward nature, when one's inward nature is to draw things out of and push others toward.  It is hard to not cast so harsh a light when one is made of starstuff and bereft of shadows.  So she sips her water, and she is quietly concerned, and against her better Hermetic teachings, she allows the Apprentice-not-Apprentice this folly and adventure. She is flipping magnanimous in her lack of lecturing.

Behold.

Such restraint.

Even in the face of tequila.

Kiara

"Likewise." Dark eyes ghost over the Hermetic and the pagan's smile lingers in its state of playfulness even as Margot rears back a little - the Verbena does not seem offended by it, if she takes any particular note of it at all, which, with the brunette - was anyone's guess.

Hey, the other potential Verbena offers. "Hey, yourself. I heard from a little bird," a shift of Kiara's weight, her eyes don't touch on Andrés but the implication seems clear enough: "We might share a common interest or two. If you ever want to hang out and discuss," Kiara's shoulder lifts in an easy, unfettered shrug, "anything. I'm around.

I can't make any grand designs on being a proficient teacher but if you need someone to talk to about things. The offer's there." There's sincerity enough in that, the pagan's attention briefly re-captured by the young man she's draped herself against. Her chin finding a prop on William's shoulder. The closeness there and easy camaraderie almost feels familial.

"Do tell, I'll award you bonus points if it involves a thrilling car chase or feats of seduction."

Giametti

((Please assume Ari listens totally rapt to William's story, and make a round of polite and totally convincingly warm goodbyes.... because I have turned into a pumpkin *hugs* Thanks for the RP guys!))

Terroristas and Apprentices

Andrés

[I'M FUCKING DRUNK DENVER HOW YOU DOIN]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (1) ( botch x 1 )

Arianna

It has been a very long time since Arianna Giametti has been asked to leave an establishment for being anything other than too Hermetic, which indicates exactly how unlikely it is for her to be removed from the premises of any Denverite establishment at all.  But on her arm, and distressingly sober, is the town's preeminent Etherite, and neither of them have a BAC which precludes them from driving.  They are stone cold sober.

This is a problem.

Though it doesn't keep them from speaking in some outlandish mishmash of Italian and Spanish, though her Spanish is almost intelligible these days. It helps that they have not been drinking.  And the apples of her cheeks are a ferocious shade of red and she is gesturing with the arm that is not trapped by his as they walk, and saying something that sounds an awful lot like "Terrorista?!" in a most exasperated tongue.

As always, the Hermetic woman is impeccably dressed, in shades of silvers, greys and whites.  The heels of her boots clip angrily on the pavement.  Somewhere on her body is a wand, and that can be viewed as a weapon capable of bodily harm in more ways than one.  Perhaps it is not entirely impossible to imagine her as a foreign threat.

Andrés

What follows is a slew of Mexican-accented Italian. Which is to say, Spanish following the rules of grammar and syntax but not vocabulary.

"Terroristas, han detto! ¿En che paese somos terroristas? ... Ay, no no no, I remember, ora ricordo, El Trump cree que li messicani son tan malos de gli islamisti."

They're not even drunk. That doesn't mean they're without. As they wander along arm-in-arm as they do, Sepúlveda reaches into the pocket of his suit jacket and produces a flask. He unscrews it, gulps from it, and offers it to her.

"I should have punched that guy in the nose."

Arianna

"Eh... what is 'The Trump'?" she asks, somehow mercifully unaware of American politics. Though, once reminded of the orange-toned Republican candidate, she will agree: "Yes, you should have."

The flask is accepted, though she sniffs first and then drinks more gingerly from it.  Andres is a more accomplished inebriate than Ari.  She is merely an understudy, and Apprentice if you will.  Their path takes them through the park, where they are less likely to be accosted by a patron of the self-same bar which threw them out moments ago.  Ari's temper is still high; she draws the echoes of her father's House around her fittingly.

"It is not like this nella mia patria," she says, handing the flask back to him. "Well, it is and it isn't.  Or maybe it is the same. I just... do I look like a Terrorista to you, Andres?"  His name, at least, is pronounced correctly. It is shaped as if she were far more fluent in his native tongue.  "You do not look like one to me.  We would not be friends if you were so -- we are friends, yes?  I think we are."

Andrés

"Bah," he says, "claro que siamo amici."

They get to talking about the F-word too long he's liable to say something stupid. He hasn't worn his wedding band since the day he and a wild woman went to rescue a certain nameless Disparate from their friends over at Amaranth Laboratories. Easy enough to overlook the presence or absence of jewelry unless one happens to be looking for it.

"Terrorists are violent, Arianna, and they use violence to effect change in politics, and it has worked in other countries in the past and it has not worked in plenty of countries in recent history--" Big glug. "--and I prefer to change what I can change when I can change it without resorting to violence, but I am not opposed to using it. Sometimes force is necessary." A beat. A curious tone: "We would not be friends if I were a violent man, this is so?"

Arianna

"I have been friends with violent men," she says, but the way she says it is shadowed and many-layered.  It is too even.  It is too careful.  And this is the problem with sobriety; things are cast in too plain a light, and then shaded over cleverly.  She does not truly mean 'friends' or perhaps even 'violent' in the physical sense.  The elevation of individual Will and wants is not benign or pacifistic in any way.

"But, no, you are correct.  And I, too, prefer change on a local scope.  Limited.  Perhaps even narrower than your own."

Andrés

She can look him straight in the eye and see the green of them placid if alien in their intelligence. The man is handsome but the man is also deranged. Folks have called him plenty of things over the years. Called his wife plenty more things. Will call his daughter plenty of things, distant as she wishes she could be form him. There's too much of his genes in her.

Right now they are talking of an incident that had a bartender invite them to leave. They are taking a shortcut to --

"Where the hell are we going, anyway?" he asks. Non sequitur. Three times now they have drunk together. Twice he has invited her, in a way, back to his place. Speaking of narrow scope. He doesn't give her time to answer: "The Society of Ether's scope goes beyond mortal comprehension, Arianna Giametti--" He rolls the R's even though Italian does not have many rolled R's, throws some flare into the vowels where Spanish does not throw such flare, like flinging pizza dough into the air and spinning it. "--and it does not cause me sorpressa to hear this."

Arianna

"I do not know, Andres," she says, and the burr in her voice is most evident in how she will not make a contraction in the sentence. "I walk when I am angry. Or I talk. Or I say improper things in Enochian, which is quite fun, but utterly inappropriate in mixed company."

There, then, enough of the flame has burnt out of her to cast him a little wink of wry amusement.

"Ah, it is not that I view the Order's scope of limited, as much as it is I do not wish to invite responsibilities of such scope onto my self."  She says this plainly.  Initiative she may have in spades, but Ari is always on the look out for consequences.  "Speaking of... how are you students? Margot and, what was it, Nedward?"

Arianna

((Holy typos batman: It is not that I view the Order's scope *as limited...  ... how are *your students?))

Andrés

Andrés speaks English fluently. It's the presence of another Romance language and his growing up speaking Spanish at home that has him lapsing so easily when he's around the Italian woman.

It also means Nedward strikes him as heinously funny. He fails to suppress a laugh. Bares teeth in an attempt to suppress a laugh. Nice smile, he has, bright and honest. He himself is a bright mind, not one to mince words. He takes another long swallow off the flask and passes it back to her.

"He does not like when I call him Edward," he says. "Edward died in a car crash, he says. They're so dramatic..."

Arianna

"You should call him Nedward then, and when he is dramatic you say, like our mothers might, BUT I AM MAKING AN EH-FFORT!"  She says this sagely.  Arianna also has impeccable English.  She has impeccable German and Greek and Hebrew and Latin, as well, but there is something comfortable about another romance language speaker and not minding every last syllable and it tastes a little more like home.

"Pronounce both Effs.  This is what truly sells it."

She takes another sip from the flask and passes it back, eyes bright with mischief but gentled enough to be only teasing.  Mostly teasing.  Probably. Teasing?

Andrés

"Next time he is with the dramatics, I will do what my mother did, and threaten to beat him with a sandal. That is their problem, both of them. I can tell neither of them has ever been beaten with a sandal."

He sloshes the flask around to test its fullness. They will have to either part ways here or take their chances someplace else.

"Fuck terror, eh? The hotel where I'm staying has a bar on the ground floor. Come with me, I'll regale you with tales of Nedward's curiosity and why he might not make such a bad Bonisagus after all."

Arianna

"I will not come with you if you try to foist your Apprentice off on me.  This is violence, Andres.  We cannot remain friends."

This is said deadpan, though she feels the aversion to Apprentices perhaps more strongly than she feels an aversion to violence.  She supposes, like children of her own name and lineage, students are inevitable, but Ari is soundly putting this off for as long as possible. Instructing from afar? Sure.  Assisting with some difficult concept? Fine.  Being in loco parentis for some fumbling and untrained newly unSleeping member of society?

No thanks. This is what Academy is for.

The deadpan breaks, though, and her features soften.  "Though I must confess my curiosity.  Which, I hope, is not at all the same as your Nedward's.  And I do like the one of your understudies, well enough as company, so perhaps the other is not so bad..."

They continue on this way.  And at some point in the evening there will be drinking, and stories.  And perhaps Ned would make a decent Bonisagus after all.  Ari is not so completely and utterly opposed to the idea of scouting for the Order as she purports herself to be.  Though Pen is a far better reference, being an Adept and all.  It will be mentioned.

Andrés

[COMMERCIAL BREAK]

The Journal of Ethan Madison

[Giametti]

When your stated occupation is Hermetic Mage, an ecletic combination of professional opportunities fall into your lap. Arianna has spent a significant part of April handling odd requests for Illumination or ritual design from her House in return for the eventual release of her library.  And so she has been infinitely less accessible to the Hermetic community of Denver as an obvious corollary, but also because Arianna simply isn't that well ensconced in the machinations of the Order in her immediate surroundings.  She maintains deeper ties, still, to her former Chantries and Collegia.

She is also blessed with the sort of presence that defies modern technology's embrace.  So when Will wants to get in touch with her, he likely finds her cell phone in some sort of nonresponsive state, and also that she doesn't not frequent the Chantry, but that the clever and smooth negotation of social channels prevails.  Penelope knows where Arianna's new abode is, and also how to reach her in a fairly reliable way, and a message is passed on and then, with a confluence of luck and opportunity, when Arianna's phone next works, William's inquiry is returned.

Clearly they will need to find a better way of getting in touch during emergencies or for the gatherings of social butterflies than telephone through Pen. Perhaps this will be on Will's subtle agenda of things to speak to when they are together on this outing.  Arianna does not have an agenda of talking points; she is grateful for a reason to break with her intense study of one symbological set or the other.  Or perhaps her ill-fated attempts to acquaint herself with Aramaic only through primary texts -- some things are so much harder to learn outside a Collegium community.

That conversation, from her side, goes a little like this:

"William!  I was delighted to hear that you had asked after me.  I apologize for the delay in returning your inquiry. Technology is so fickle, as you must know.  This phone is less reliable than scrying though I have been cautioned against such things outside the walls of Academy and Collegium."

So many words.

"You are too kind--" Clearly responding to some compliment, as the Jerbiton is free with his poetic license.

"An estate sale?" A pause, in which the level of adventurousness of rummaging through old things is measured against looming deadlines and found desirable.  "How positively intriguing! Is there anything in particular for which you are searching?"

Longer pause, hearing his undoubtably inspiring answer.

"Certainly.  I have a hatchback, so that will likely fit."  Pragmatism. Briefly. Without much embellishment.

"I'll pick you up at ten?"  More pragmatism, so droll, address exchanged for their meeting, description of her car exchanged for the recognization of friendlies. 

It is five minutes to ten when her car rolls up to the appointed meeting spot, and it is indeed some dark as night blue hatchback four-wheel drive Denver appropriate vehicle.  Inside there are leather seats with seat warmers. Really, this is all that needs knowing.  There are a variety of bells and whistles, all decided upon by a previous owner, most of which function on any given day.  Luckily it is cold today, as the Air Conditioner is not among the functional capabilities today. Because: Hermetic.  Things are just a little more glitchy around Arianna than other mages.  He may discover this if he tries navigating by GPS on his phone -- eventually they stop long enough for her to haul an old, out-dated Thomas Brothers' map -- incidentally from a yard sale -- to replace the 'unreliable Technocracy wizardry' of Google maps.

There are a bevy of languages they can choose from for conversation.  Arianna has been speaking a distressing amount of English lately, so perhaps they find another on which they overlap.  She offers Italian, her primary, and then German, Greek and Hebrew. Latin is not primarily a spoken language, and Enochian is not for pedestrian things. Surely this well-pedigreed Jerbiton can offer more than American drawl, of which she is so very tired at the moment.  And if they do not have an overlap then, hah! Then they have perhaps a common interest to track down -- she should learn one of his numerous tongues and he one of hers. It is a challenge, or a reason to meet more often.  She is curious about Spanish, now, after her growing attachment to drinking with Andres.  And French is always good. The Asiatic languages also draw: Mandarin perhaps?

Conversation is spritely in the car after salutations,and unbridled by the restraint of speaking to or like Commoners. Hermeticism abounds!  It's a wonder the engine works at all with this much blustering going on inside the cabin.

[Holmes]

William does whatever it is that William does, and one can not be terribly concerned when they find out that part of that time is actually spent being a very bad Hermetic. Not about like Arianna can be- rebellious terrible creature- but rather in the fact that he isn't constantly striving for perfect. 

Sometimes, William likes to take naps and play with his phone and have one night stands. It's simply what he does. He's in the market for a library soon enough, because all good hermetics are in want of an even better library. He's taking care of his mentor's things, making sure the house stays clean and the lawn stays maintained but he hasn't dared to use Henry's library because this isn't his to use. Even though he <i>does</i> happen to have some of the more rare and interesting things hiding in there. 

But he does tire of being a bad herself and, instead, seeks company. That company comes in the form of a Bonisagus who has a phone that is on the fritz. 

He lives a very public life, and while some may fault him for it, this serves a vital purpose- it leaves a trail as to where he has been and gives a diary as to what happens before he disappears somewhere. William lives a loud and public life because he needs people looking at him because if they aren't looking at him he may disappear, like some idea that has long lost its followers and forms. 

"There's an estate sale about an hour out from town and I've got a good feeling about the lady's reading choices," he says with a grin, "I met Pen in an armoir, wanna see how we hit it off in furniture?"

they agree, and away it does go. 

He delights in words and Words and talking, bandies about and enjoys his good stories. His French is flawless and he's working on his Greek- she'd learned during their trip that his apprenticeship hadn't been a traditional one so he's making up for the gaps and filling in as needed. His Enochian, however, is polished and cared for and treasured like it was Truth, because in his eyes it is more than just language. 

Dear god, his French is beautiful though. She learns it's his first language, that his mother is from Quebec. That he's born in Louisiana- and?

That he is willing to spend a metric <i>shit ton</i> today on the right items, if they were the right items (Sold some paintings, this one. Would rather not part with Jenn's work but if it meant getting some pretty potent artifacts then she would probably understand)

"I'm actually here to pick up a journal," he admits, "I'm hoping she has other things, too, but the journal is apparently important to someone who has been talking my ear off the last week and a half."

Medium problems. 

[Giametti]

Her education has gaps in other places, though it is impeccable on the Hermetic fronts. All of them. Shining example she was, until that trifling matter over Waking Up late, and then being always behind the eight ball and then fuck it, why bother.  She does not say this so plainly because she can bring herself to reduce the trajectory of a life time down to a single run on sentence, but he no doubt gets the jist of it from her utter fluency in esoterica through her masterful Greek, and the wistful way she glances at him through her eyelashes when he transgresses into French.

"I have always wanted to learn Français," she tells him, with the proper reverence for his pronunciation in her tone.  She is telling him this in Italian and then quickly in Greek, as it turns out they do not share a native tongue and she is equally eloquent in any of hers, a true polyglot which, like an adventurous Bonisagus, is something of rarity.  

He in turn learns that her native language is Italian, and that she was born somewhere in Tuscany, but that her mother's House is Bonisagus and so they spoke the language also of the then-Primus, which would be German, and English was required of her in Academy.  The others came naturally: Greek and Latin to study the classics, Enochian because they are both Hermetic, and the way she cradles words against her tongue in any language is absolutely stunning.

And she can tell him things about that journal, by the shape of the letters and the cant of their serifs. She can tell him about the tension in their hand as they wrote, about their mindset, whether the author was left or right handed.  After the careful inspection of a few pages, and some practice, she could probably falsify a few lines of poetry in the hand of the absent curator of facts and fictions. She doesn't give him this boast, but the sense of it hangs about her like a aura bent to more than mischief.

"What makes this sheaf of such importance?" she asks him, with her hair tucked back behind one ear, and a glance thrown his way across the bridge of her nose.  They are still looking through it, Arianna's finger trails down the margin of a page without touching to the paper truly.  There is an easy, almost scandalously familiar way to how she regards the tome, though also all the appreciation of a stern librarian's secret attachment to a favorite book or passage.

"And who is it, dear William, that has so monopolized your attention for a week or better about it?  Curious is to me. A close companion?" Twinkle goes the green in her eyes.  "A maybe more than just a friend?  You must forgive me my impertinence but I was forced back to Collegium for the better part of April and I am so bereft of stories to tell that I think my heart might wither at their absence.  Lend me a story, William, and make it a good one. I beseech thee: was it maybe more than just a friend?"  So hopeful, so blatantly playful.

And so she taunts them as they turn their attention to other things. Arianna has an unwavering sense of what is worth her time at this sale and what isn't.  There is a clawfoot dresser with impressive attributes that she spends a while lusting after, but does not seem ready to commit to.  Though the hardware is original and the scuffs are few and far between.  The middle topmost drawer seems stuck, and there are too many witnesses for her to rightfully consider the proper words and sigils to unstick it, or even if she can without a command of Ars Materiae.

[Holmes]

She has the kind of Hermetic education that makes someone weak in the knees, makes William wonder what in his history he was missing. He has met so few people who went through a traditional apprenticeship, feels strange knowing that so many others share this same experience with their peers. He wonders, sometimes, if he would have preferred it. Wonders, sometimes, if Henry keeps the truth of his own unconventional initiation into the Order a secret that stays between Kalen, Orrin, Richard, William, and himself. Richard didn’t seem the collusion type when (then) Elijah had met him. Maybe it was compassion or a desire to make things easier on the kid.

Those traditional types can often think poorly upon those who circumvented the process, who are missing chunks of their own culture and piecing it together from texts like some self-initiated pagan creature. William does not think in those terms, but there are others that do. He is a diplomat, he need not make his job any harder than it already is.

William acknowledges that he woke up early (sixteen, he says) but does not talk much of it. Mentions that he didn’t meet other mages until he moved here, didn’t even know what that was until he moved here. Doesn’t say what it was like to be alone for so long. Carefully moves the subject elsewhere or back on to her because it seemed strange to tell people. Laughs it off as Prada luggage if she asks him, though he does acquiesce and tell her that in the event that there are drinks or starlight or pounding, heart-wrenching music then he will talk about it.

He loves Italian, though. Expresses the desire to learn, says he was born in New Orleans though he sounds more a southern gentleman than a Cajun boy. As much as he loves Italian, the way she says Enochian makes him smile. “Truth given form,” he says, half to himself and half awed.

When they get to the journal, Arianna notices several things about it: the paper is old, yes, maybe early in the 20^th century- Depression era, or maybe before. The ink is faded. The author bore down too heavily on the paper and left indentations on the next page. The cover is worn.  It shows the wear of being opened and closed many a time. Dropped and thrown and kicked and rubbed in mud and muck and blood and grime. Someone’s cleaned it up for sale. The hand that wrote these letters wrote like the pen was far too small for his hand, written in neat block letters at the beginning and descending into something that looked like absolute gibberish at the end.

“I have a problem,” he starts, says it like it is a problem but the grin on his face that hits the edges says otherwise. He doesn’t brag about this, but there is mischief, “and that problem is that my hearing is just a little too good. I’ve always had a vivid imagination, and am possibly somewhat detached from the fundamentals of what is and what isn’t. But! My hearing is too good, and I’ve always had a tendency to hear things other people don’t often listen to.”

He may be dragging this out, but he has a feeling that he is learning something from Arianna, that she loves a good story and by heavens he was going to tell one, “and that’s the thing with the dead, you see, the ones that stay- the ones that don’t move on again to some grand karmic purpose or return to the universe or wherever it is and whatever it is that we do when we cease to be… people that stay stay because they have a reason to be here. Human beings are creatures of passion and the dead are creatures that are only kept here by their own sense of purpose. Their own passions and memories and chains that bind them here.

“Some think it’s a blessing to stay, many of them have given up on the idea of transcendence entirely, but not all of them.”

“Not all realms that we can visit and travel between are the purview of the celestines- there are pockets and holes and rips and bridges. Places that are high above the skies with angels and the deepest, coldest parts of the void that house things that human minds can’t fathom- I was told once that the impermanent- mortal shells- are funny things. We presume that things which we can not truly comprehend would mean us ill, as though we mattered so much.

“Ghosts and wraiths lose the shell, but they retain their humanity and become distilled, become the core of what we are as human beings for both good and ill but it is not our natural state to linger after death.”

“A lead up to a simple answer: I am seeking this journal for a dead man, Ethan Madison, who has made it his personal mission to make certain that this journal be kept safe and his knowledge passed on before his death. There is something in that journal that should lead us to his Work-“ said capitalized­ “-and can see fit what to do with it from there.

“I hear too well, dear lady. I do not regret this.”

[Giametti]

When he expresses a desire to learn her native tongue, the reply comes quickly and unequivocally, "I will teach you, and you shall teach me French, and together we shall study tongues."

Now, doesn't that just sound a little more risque than language lessons, especially from an older woman with a smile like Arianna's. But she means it figuratively, surely she means it figuratively, and there is no sense of knowing wink or slanted smirk or secondary innuendo about it.  Save that she is like a Siren, or a Lorelei, or a Leanan Sidhe, a wander's star and less than outright omen.  And we all know what happens to the Oracles, dear readers.  History is not kind to the watchers and seers.

He does have this much pegged: she loves a good story.  When his voice shifts and the cadence of his words speaks to something less than ordinary, she leans close, such that her arm is pressed against his, and rests her elbows on the dresser by which they stand and her chin sits on her balled fists, so that she can alternately watch his expression and the journal, attention flicking between these two bright points, restless and receptive.  

It is more than a good story, it is a ghost story.  He speaks to her of Spirit things, a void in her experience if not her education, and she listens with the sort of rapt attention that leaves William feeling as if he were the only one in the room.  In fact, the other patrons of the estate sale either give them wide berth or, so attracted by the intensity of the two Hermetics, transit near enough to overhear and perhaps linger a little overlong.

I hear too well, dear lady. I do not regret this.

"And neither should you," she tells him firmly. "For it is of your Art und Weise," the phrase tumbles out in the most fitting tongue. If he does not understand precisely, he probably takes her meaning. She is an expressive thing. "And your listening has brought you this: a story and a treasure hunt and the chance to sate the wishes of a man gone but not forgotten.  Might you be in need of an adventuring fellow, good William?"

And then, there, yes, there is a twinkle in her eye. She is always up for a good adventure, damn the cost and also the consequence. While following the bidding of a dead man and his journal probably is ill advised under more than one Hermetic proviso, she is vehemently opposed to leaving side-quests unfinished.  It is part of her dynamism. 

"I know a thing or two about secrets and riddles," she confesses, pushing off her elbows and back to standing.  There may be a little bit of nail-buffing-on-shoulder pride in how she says this, but only in tone.  She would not be so outrightly boastful

[Holmes]

And she says, dearest lady, that she will teach him. That they shall study together and be the worst of influences and therefore the best of friends. There is delight in his eyes- bright and green and should-have-been-blue because he seems like the type of person who should be blond and blue. That he could do no wrong, but he can do wrong. He’s just far enough outside of the stereotype of golden boy that he can get away with getting into trouble. It’s unexpected still. He’s no stereotype. No trope.

William speaks of spirit things like he knows them, and he does- in the pit of his soul. His stomach. His very being, he knows the spirits. Knows ghosts and the lands of the dead and their wants because he feels so terribly stuck between worlds. He may well be part of the Order and the Order would never call on him for such things- he even disagrees rather vocally with how they see the spiritual world (considers it too simplistic, too restrictive, unable to see what is there in the wake of their former glories)- but he does these things all the same.

She loves a good story. William has been full of ghost stories since long before he got his name.

She says that she is good with puzzles. That they may be the best of bedfellows in this endeavor.

“Dear lady,” he starts, “I would like no other company than yours.”

His eyes go to something in the distance, like he’s looking at a crowd or like he’s trying to filter through information, “but… we may want to get this book and hit the road fairly quickly. I don’t believe we’re the only ones looking for this.”

[Giametti]

"May I?" she asks, extending her hand to accept the journal if he will offer it over for her inspection.  Arianna is a well-trained Hermetic, but useless on the Spiritual front.  Books, though, she understands and if this ghost has led William to the journal while it was in the demesne of the estate sale, then Arianna reasons that there may be other clues here hidden among the old lady's library or goods that would aid them in their quest to wrest this man's Workings from the anonymity of time.

She reads quickly. An agile mind and familiarity with too many tongues is also a blessing.  Skimming the pages she attempts to cross-reference the information with anything she'd seen in the splay of other books and writings.   It is a fast perusal, and not particularly deep, but there is still a moment when she gestures with a long, carefully manicured finger and then taps the page with her nail.  Mutters something a lot like yes, this, this right here as she passes him the journal and wanders a few paces away to rummage through -- in the most respectful way -- a box of eclectic tomes with wildly colorful cover art (ah, the New Age revival of sacred geometry and astral planes) until a name or sigil echoes the page in the journal.  Flip flip go the pages. Flip flip until something in her expression is triumphant and she passes the tome back toward him:

There is marking in the margin of a hand quite like the journal.  It is gibberish to her now, but surely some study in a safer place without other ones to challenge their claim would prove purposeful.

"I think this may prove useful," she says, with a sharpness to her eyes to match the diffuse and filtering look in his.  "And even if it doesn't, it is hilarious how they draw the penumbrae here.  William?" A pause, her hand laid on his arm to call him back from wherever that look has taken him.

"Shall we?"

Ari does not frighten at the suggestions that others may be also in the game, but she does quicken to the urgency of their departure.  Which is a shame, for she wanted to look for an appropriate frame for Pen's mirror project, and possibly some very old books indeed, so that she might study their inscriptions.  But there was a mystery afoot, and adventure always trumps pragmatism.

Adventure is a tryst of sorts

[Arianna]

It is a Friday night, past sundown and past the pricking of the first stars through the tapestry of the night and late enough to be after dinner but still well before bed when Silas's phone buzzes.  A familiar name has sent him a text message, which is an oddity between them -- both that her phone has allowed such things and also, perhaps, odd to Silas that she even knows how -- but verifiably from Arianna's number:

I have (wine emoji) and I am thinking about you.

It's the mix of emoji's and correct grammar and words spelled out in their entirety that really confirms it.  He cannot tell how long it has taken her to type this out with her thumbs, perhaps requiring her to set down her wine glass.  Oh, gods, if she has set down her wine glass then...

Buzz.

Today I was glorious and luminous and out-shining and crafty. I made things. (Star emoji). Talismen.

Buzz. Buzz.

Talismans? Men? 

Mans? Männer?  

Fuck.

Buzz.

The many form of Talisman. Whatever the fuck that is.  I made them.  Of Zachriel.  And I was glorious. 

Buzz.

And now I have (wine emoji), but no fire. (sad face emoji). Because no wood.

Buzz.

Not like that. I an anatomically disinclined to have that kind of wood. I mean the for-burning kind. I have no for-burning wood, therefore no (fire emoji). Some day I will make woodless fire, but today I made Talismänner and they are good. But fire would be better.

Buzz.

You would be better.

Buzz.

Do you want to come over?

Buzz.

I have (wine emoji).  If you bring (wood emoji), we could have (fire emoji). I am pretty sure the front door is unlocked.  

And then, at last, silence.  At least until she thinks of another torrent of words and pictograms to send him.  Or passes out on her living room floor.  If does drop by he will find the front door unlocked, and the chandelier above the foyer lit, and Arianna sitting on the floor of the great room with a bottle of wine beside her.  

If he knocks, she will answer the door wearing a pair of soft grey pants and a boat neck tee.  Her hands and arms and feet are stained with a frecklings and stripes of ink.  There is an undeniable weariness about her, wreathed in the taste and temptation of her resonance.  And she wears the most pleased smile, self-satisfied and also gentled, her will eroded down to mundane levels which leaves her incapable of hiding her affection or delight from her eyes as they land on his.  

[Silas]

He is in the tail end of a work meeting when the torrent of texts begins and so the answer isn't immediate; it doesn't come until after the last, when it is simple and to the point.

Ding.

On my way.

The message is succinct and it takes time to stop for wood and for crudites, the latter just to make sure that Arianna has something to eat with her drinking; so some time has passed between his answer and his knocking on the door before letting himself in (because rarely does a Hunter wait for invitation, regardless how old the rules he follows).  He's clad professionally in slacks, a button down shirt, and a tie, a proverbial wolf in sheep's clothing, with his sleeves rolled up, a bundle of firewood in one arm, and a smallish platter of snack of the meat, cheese, and bread variety in the other.

"Hullo, Stella.  Have you eaten?"  The platter finds a home on a table, and then he crouches before her fireplace with this bundle of wood he's brought (and, for the record, those dress slacks fit him quite nicely indeed) to lay in the fire.  There's quiet for a moment as he builds the fire she requested, then stands to face her - amused, a bit.  "Someone gave you a phone.  And taught you to text."

He is, of course, pleased that it's he she called.  And, as always, he enjoys his place in her shine.

"And you are, indeed, quite radiant."

[Arianna]

At some point it will occur to her, or to them both, that the reformed rake is the responsible party between them two of them.  Not that Arianna makes claims on reliability or adult behavior, just that Silas was so much further from it in their youth.  Now it is he who worries after whether she has something to eat with her drinking, and likely steers her gently toward grounding things, as he would have been taught in time with his Primal Aunt, and it is Arianna who enjoys the floaty untethered high of work well done and dwindling willpower.  It is rare that she can claim such exaltation; she revels in it.

Through the sliding door to the patio, he can see the aftermath of her physical working. There are drop cloths spread across the flooring, rumpled in places by the passage of feet, stained and dirty in others.  The table is still decked with the accouterments of her working, though the brushes and nibs and styluses and inks have been quietly cleaned and put inside.  There is a sheaf of paper on the low coffee table, it's edges mostly but not perfectly squared and then tucked between the covers of a leather-bound portfolio.  It rests beside the plates of meats and cheeses and other adornments.  It is not tied shut and the margins which extend beyond the edge of dark leather offer up the shapes of words and sigils from many lands, and also, of course, of the purest and most perfect tongue: Enochian.

She is not so tired nor so rude that she does not rise at the sound of knocking at her door.  But she is slower to rise than he is to enter, and so she moves behind him like a shadow.  To close and bar the door, now that he is here.  To stand beside him as he builds the fire. And what is standing near him good for if she is not also touching him, so there is a faint caress of fingertips at the ends of his hair, and then the touch of her hands on his shoulders, which knead a little at the muscles there in echoes of ways he has done for her.  But as they are echoes, it is more affectionate than therapeutic, and he can feel the uneven strength to her hands, reversed from his usual expectations, her dominant gentled by the weariness of wield her pen and brush for so many hours on end.

"Nick and I got dinner after," she tells him, as her hands give up the idle work of working at his shoulders and slide, flat palms against his chest, around to hug him in an awkward embrace.  As she leans her cheek against the top of his head, and keeps him entirely from his work of stoking the fire -- but perhaps it is a happy hindrance -- the other resonance standing on her patio is made clear by this Naming.  It is more like moonlight, this puddle of after-magic on her out-of-doors floor.  There is the shift and shine of her own, made holy by his.  Hushed.  Like a well of brightness cast by the full faced goddess-moon and not simply some far-flung star.

Her hands slide back up over his shoulders.  A little squeeze.  And then she withdraws to let him finish his task.  There is no transference of ink from her skin to his clothing.  It is dried and as immobile as are his many tattoos.  At least for now.  In time it will fade, as will this soul-deep weariness, and she will be returned to herself.  He calls her radiant and she tells him he is quite dashing.  That she likes the cut of him; this said with open appreciation in her eyes.

"You always have cleaned up well," there, something a little more playful.  She shifts a bit on her feet, unwanting to stand on one sore and weary place to long. It partners with that shifting sense to her resonance, makes the moment between them seem more fleeting and impermanent than it truly is.

[Silas]

It may be the case that Silas is only reformed in Arianna's presence; even now, there are rumors about him though perhaps they are somewhat muted by time and as good a distance as possible kept from much of the Hermetic community other than on the occasion of the occasional unavoidable Symposium or Collegium.  But for whatever reason they are fewer and further between now, and from what she's witnessed of him here, in Denver, he is quite comfortable with the earth under his feet and between his fingers.  But whatever the truth of the matter, he is, now, as he is now.

Those arms around him, and the cheek on his head, gain a smile and it's a happy interruption indeed; the wood is set, and his hands find their way to her arms, to bring Arianna's knuckles to his lips for a quick kiss.  Then she massages as he returns to the fire, and it's not terribly long before that's set and he's gently steering her towards those grounding things, though with no urgency to it; he understands lavishing in the heady feeling of being nearly spent, and the importance of exploring one's limits the better to surpass them with time, and practice.

"I ran into Pen, not long ago.  We had tea."

Once Arianna is settled, he sits next to her with an arm over the couch behind her; there's warmth between them, and fondness, and companionship with little of the heat that's been there since they remet those months ago.  Perhaps the Hunt is well restrained, or perhaps every now and then it realizes that the man must be in control.

"Shall I find something to read to you, or simply be here companionably, love?"

[Arianna]

"Did she read you poetry?" This is asked with a knowing sort of smile.  "When Pen reads, it is like hearing everything for the first time. It's always like the first times. She reads like I wish to someday draw, or write," said wistfully as they settle in on the couch and she leans in close beside him, slouched enough that her shoulders rest under the sweep of his arm across the couch and she can rest her head against his shoulder and just languish.  She pulls her loose hair over the shoulder further from him, so that it will not interfere with the transference of his warmth to her.  She has not perfected languishing like Pen has; she is not draped across his lap and peering up at him though half her lashes.  Nevertheless, it is an impressive and uninhibited lean.  

There is always heat between them, always some sort of magnetic pull seeking center in both of their breasts, but at times it is good to let that be a lower murmur under something... companionable?  "Do you think we can be companionable?" she asks, as if it were a more serious inquiry than he might imply.  "Never do I think I remember being idle and still with you.  Always as companions we have been up to some sort of mischief or adventure.  I do not know if I ken how simply companionable would be between us."

She is serious, of a sort, and also musing. The words lilt a little with her amusement. Rise and fall and twist just so.  Ari may be exultant but she is also introspective just now, giving up the press of being so out-shining and luminous, radiant he had called her, giving this up instead for something of a softer glow.  There is a fire now to take on the responsibility of casting light and shadow; she can ease into the last vestiges of Hallowed ground and sacred moonlight and ask him these things in a tone that is not at all serious, and it can be a musing and also a delicately laid trap.

"After all, you are my childhood friend."  The phrase that had so much irked and amused him in the meeting with the other Primals in the park.  A perfect mischaracterization of what they were to one another.  As she says this, she curls further into him, and slides the palm of one hand across his stomach, feeling the shape of buttons and more formal fabrics beneath her skin.  Her hand seems vulgar against the crisp white of his shirt, bespeckled with ink that has dyed her skin and set so completely that it will wear down instead of wash off.  It amuses her to see her skin with more color and contrast than his.  

"But if not this, what shall I Name thee, Silas?"

[Silas]

"We talked," he says with a shrug, and of course Arianna knows Pen better than he does; she knows that every sentence the Flambeau speaks drips with poetry, with rhythm and rhyme.  And that's enough of that, for now; he knows, perhaps, that Pen doesn't precisely approve of him, and if he knows that it's fairly certain that he has a good idea why.  But that's not a thing to discuss now in the quiet waning of his Star's Working.  There are things both lighter and heavier at once at hand, it seems.

Do you think we can be companionable? This question both puzzles and amuses him, and he rumbles out a low, contented chuckle where he sits with his arm around her.  "We were companions long before we were anything else.  Partners in adventure and study when we were together.  And even after we found each other in more . . . physically intimate ways, we were more than our trysts.  Were we not?"  This is his truth of it, after all, and their truths are not necessarily the same.  "But I think we have ever been more than the word 'friend' can accurately portray.  From the very beginning, we were more.  Or perhaps we were friends, distilled to something more potent than what the word means now."

The question of what she should name him, though, gives him more pause than the latter; boyfriend seems to immature and common, partner too cool and distant (he doesn't even like that term for same gender couples) and too committed at the same time.  It seems, to him, a simple thing.  "I am your Hunter.  And you are my Star.  But that only matters to the two of us, doesn't it?  Beyond that, you are dear to me.  And what I am to you is for you to define."  Though, of course, he rather hopes that his sentiment is reciprocated; it would not be the first time it wasn't, naturally, but for this thing between them to be solely on his side?  That's a thing he can scarcely comprehend.

[Arianna]

"Is not adventure a tryst of sorts? Were our hearts not caught up in our chests together?" she asks him.  His Star can be difficult, she can be obstinate and unshifting.  But this is thoughtful as much as it needles, as much as it seeks and ferrets out some thing, un-shining as of yet, and drags it into her light.  She is warm and still beside him, arm still crossed over him, snuggled in close.  Her words curl into his shoulder, besmirching the white of his shirt with their mischief.  "If I came to you in the moonlight and bade you away on some adventure would it not catch at your heartstrings and lead you away?  Surely this is a tryst as much as any batting of eyelashes or come hither smile."

She says this, as she bats her eyelashes a little.  As she is curled into the curve of his arm. As her will is burned low, and she is like an ember-ash, a thing eternal and slumbering but always ready to re-spark.  And Ari has a known bias toward adventure; surely if she came to him in the moonlight and bade him away it would catch up at his heartstring; it would echo in the cage of his heart.  It may not be this way with his other conquests; Arianna doesn't know and, like as not, she does not care.  When they are together there are no others, and this extends to conversations by firelight, to confidence, to wistful things.

"And you evade, dear Hunter.  Nimble and quick in your words, fleet-tongued as well as fleet-footed, I see.  And yes, Hunter dear, you are dear to me," she says, turning just so, such that her teeth nip at his jaw and then her nose nuzzles the place she has so offended.  He is marked and claimed, but still she watches him.  "But you are the one who has talked of children, and it makes me wonder if we could ever be the sort of companionable which greets one another with a how was your day, or tucks children into their beds at night and watches them from the hallway, or stays so long within one another's orbits that the days ceased to be numbered and counted, and then months, and then years... Might we be companionable? Or is ever alles between us to be spark and flash and breathless and cresting?"  She does not have Pen's way with words, but there is meaning and resonance to them.

"Will you grow tired of me?" she asks, her mouth twisting in amusement. Eyes closed again, and chin dropped so that she can rest her head against his shoulder again.  "Will you long for quiet days, where your heart is not all caught up in your chest? Will you want someone who does not tug so at your heartstrings? Silas -- I wonder these things, I wonder at my wondering of them.  I wonder that I wonder ... which is a little like I am that I am... and I am rambling."

She says.

She does not tell him: Stop my mouth.  Instead her fingers trace against his side and her voice trails away and they are left with her idle uncertainties.  None of them are pressing; none of them demand answering just now.  They are curiosities called forward in the wake of her magnificent working. This conversation is not even why she had called him to her. There has not been enough wine; there has been far too many words.  She has left her heart unguarded and for a moment, for the briefest of moments, she does not care at all to ward it against whatever he might say.

[Silas]

"I suppose it is, at that."  As stated, he is content with her against him and curled into his side at least for now, though ever there is the impression of waiting and being alert for prey.  Nibbling and nuzzling get a kiss - deep, but not particularly heated or intense beyond the features of them being who they are.  Despite the feeling of energies reigned in, Silas seems to have no trouble with companionship just now.  But then, "I speak of children because I have always seen them, I suppose, around the edges; children and hounds and a home and hearth.  And land, too, if I'm honest; to work, and to bring to fruition.  Not unlike my Aunt's farm, I suppose - the city is well enough, but that's part of why I came here.  You can be near to the city and outside of it at the same time, without quite the same awful traffic as so many similar places."

This is pragmatism at its finest, and perhaps more of such than Arianna has witnessed from Silas before now, but then there's a question that calls for fancy and conjecture and contemplation all at once.

"Some part of us has known the other since before we met, I think.  We were not brought together just by the hands of our parents, were we?  And I think thus that some part of our hearts will always be caught up in our chests in the presence of each other.  But I like this, sitting here in comfort with wine before a fire, as much as I like adventuring or coupling.  Do you?  Or will you grow tired of me in such situations?"

Because this is a mutual concern, after all.  He knows as well as she of their heat and how much her presence burns within him when they are together.

"Or will we play games with my roommates or Cherie at The Common Cup, or walk Damon and Pythias through the park, or other quiet pastimes without being consumed?"

[Arianna]

"As if," she says, with an aire of amusement underlying each lilting syllable, "My heart could ever tire of you. As if it might one day betray itself and hie off toward some other home.  I have been called fickle-hearted, you know, but I think it isn't so.  How does one heart lose its love of another?  Year pass and still it is the same: I see you, and my heart leaps forward even before my feet.  It does not wait on counsel from my mind; it will not heed reason or restraint.  It wants what it wants and is relentless in this wanting."

This said, she exhales, as if it were a heavy thing to say. A thing weighed down by its ill-reasoned nature. A thing too dangerous to leave burning in her breast and thus expelled to air out its consequence.  Surely it is a thing he already knows, she thinks.  Because she is like a fool for him, she who has called him Scoundrel and also Knave and possibly a host of other unmentionable things.  She who spread her knees for him that first time with so very little thought.  She could spend lifetimes recounting the folly of her heart when they were younger, or even now.  Has she not made the same glorious mistakes, in slightly more adult trappings?  There is doubt, then, and perhaps it is the heaviness she expels.

Her train of thought had gotten serious. It had stated as a playful thing and now it was a path limned with thorns and briar-berries.  She shakes her head a little to clear and finds she cannot so easily as she might wish to.  Thankfully there is the flicker of firelight to soothe and calm.  There is the warmth of him -- or is it folly to indulge in the warmth of him? Rue.

"Sometimes it scares me," she confesses.  This seems the surest way forward through the woods.  

[Silas]

There's a deep breath in through his nose, and let out slowly through his mouth - this is followed by a sip of the wine that surely they poured before getting into this position.  His hand runs gently over her back, pausing at places that hold tension to apply just a little more pressure to relieve some of it.  This has been a thing he does well for quite some time, and his skills have certainly not lessened.  He is quiet for a long moment, holding the taste of wine in his mouth before he swallows.

Before he answers.

"There have been times that I found it terrifying."  There's a pause, and it's easy enough to remember some times that might have achieved such heights, though difficult to imagine Silas afraid of anything, ever.  "But it has always been a part of us, this thing - whatever it is.  And I won't run from it, when I believe that though it's frightened me more than anything else, it's also made me happier than anything else.  So if we are truly both going to be here, in the same place, I would like to explore this further and see where it takes us."

It seems like a graceful pause, but it's not as certain in its hesitancy as all that.  Silas puts on a good show, as one who has learned over years not to expose his weaknesses if it can be helped.

"If, of course, you would like to do the same.  If not - it was an oath made when we were young.  People grow and change, as do their ideas for what they want."

[Arianna]

She had not bothered with pouring him his own glass.  Like as not, he had rescued hers from the table as they settled onto the couch.  The wine bottle had found its way up onto that surface as well, safely away from the tangle of their feet.  She feels the breath as he draws it in, feels the shift of his ribcage and marks it for the cautiousness in such preparation.  She marks, too, the way it is slowly released, carefully, cautiously, as if she would not be able to feel the shape of his thoughts from this far away.  There is a long moment between her confession and his.  In this pause, the fireplace crackles, her hand is still and warm against his side: it does not cajole through touches; it is reserved.

With his fingers splayed so closely to her spine, he can feel the way she mirrors this hesitancy, and Arianna is not someone he has known to look before she leaps.  It is not so much that she is fearless as that she refuses to let fear stand between her and some great adventure.  Still her breath is held in her chest for overlong, keeping her unnaturally still beneath his palm.

"I have not spent as much time thinking on it as you have," she confesses, and the weight of it is heavy in her chest.  Still she muses, and the words are oddly canted, considered as she speaks them and not composed before.   "On children, or land, or whether we work it. I have not looked forward with such specificity, because what is looking forward so sharply for unless you know with whom you will be journeying onward?  Why would I imagine a life with children, if I did not have you beside me?  Why would I imagine our home, if you were not with me and we were therefore apart?"

She is bent low tonight, a low moon slung against the horizon, til it is the color of maize, til it is flattened by the atmosphere and made huge by refraction.  Her light gentled and made warm and invited.  Not so remote and argent; not so untouchably bright.  She is almost merely human, stripped of her glamours and radiance to nest lazy and warm against his side.

"I want the warmth we have together.  I want the way my heart leaps when I see you, whether it has been a minute, or a day, or years since we were last together.  I want the surety of how I fall asleep beside you, and the ready adventuring we have always known.  But I, too, want nights spent around the table with Nick and Pen and all of us laughing.  I want a home to return to, but never the fear of setting out for points unknown.  I want to suck the marrow from bones, and read the poetry of the stars, and touch the crests of mountains and to feel like I am soaring.

"I want to share that with you.  I want that with you."

Her fingers curl into the fabric of his shirt at his side.  Her voice is lower now, and he might strain a bit to hear it clearly.  "I have never considered myself the mothering type. And when you asked if I was with your child, it frightened me.  Do you remember?  And yet,  the more I've listened to you talk of them, the more I find myself at peace with the thought of bearing your children.  Happy, even, at the idea that we might have a family together some day.  Not to-day, but some day.  If you would still love me..."

Her breath catches on something and she does not finish the thought.  Even after she exhales past that hitch, she doesn't finish the thought.  It hangs, there, testament to how unpracticed and uncertain she is in matters of her heart.  Ari does not look up to him.  Instead she keeps her gaze trained on the fireplace, or closes her eyes.

"And then, I think, we must have things all out of order.  Shouldn't I know the shape of your lashes when you are asleep, or how you take your tea in the mornings, or what it means when you furrow your brow just so whilst looking over some bed in your garden?  Shouldn't I better know the shape of your dreams, and the taste of your mouth, before I ache to grow your life within me? I guess, I guess what I am saying, Si' is that I would, too, like to see where this might go, but that my heart is over-sure that it already knows the ending.  It is the middle that confounds me, how we get from here to there."

Holy Gods, the old and the new, does she ever ramble.  And she is not in a position where he might easily stop her mouth in their more traditional way.  He would have to set his (her) glass aside, and turn to face her, take her face up in his hands and kiss her, soundly, to stop this rush of words and worries and untempered thoughts.  Beneath it all is the current of surety of how strongly she does feel for him, that she knows her heart is his beyond reason.  Above it is the frenzy of reason seeking to impose itself into matters of the heart.  She cannot bring them together, just yet.  Her head tells her to be cautious, to be untrusting.  Her heart tells her that there is no time left to waste.  

[Silas]

Now, he leans forward and refills the glass - offers her some, that they might share the glass - then resettles in his spot.  There's a slight furrow to his brow as he considers his answer; in truth, it's not something he's put much conscious thought into, however it may seem.

"These are not things I think on, Stella, but things I know.  I know that I will have a wife and children and hounds and land as much as I know that my eyes are blue and my hair is brown.  But I had never considered that they might be with anyone but you, even in the times we were apart."  There's a pause, then, time for a large draught from the glass, before he continues.  "I know the shape of you against me, and how we fit together; that hasn't changed much, has it?  I asked about a child in a heated moment without thought for what had happened or . . . well, anything else, really.  I am not in the rush that I appear to be."

She was afraid - is afraid, perhaps - in a way that Silas has never been, has never had to be.  There are things that just are, to him, and this is one of them . . . or has been, for much of his life.  Her uncertainty, though, casts it in a new light.

"I have loved you since I was six, perhaps longer; I can't remember a time that I didn't love you, can only barely remember a time that I didn't know you.  But even then, I think I knew your face, or your light.  Why is that?  And how?  I spoke of this with Aunt Kae and Uncle Will once, when you and I were angry and apart, but they had little in the way of answers.  Sometimes I hate that this came from Mother's meddling, and sometimes - when things are well between us - I could kiss her for it."

He settles into quiet then, and is a squirmy sort of uncomfortable; so rarely is he anything other than supremely confident in visage that this is a novelty.  It holds brooding around the edges, but is not discontent in it.

[Arianna]

"I do not think this is of your Mother's meddling."  She accepts the glass from him as she resettles, a little apart from him.  She brings one knee up onto the couch between them so that she is turned to face him, but also so that some part of her is still pressed against some part of him.  It is her shin against his hip and thigh, and then her foot resting near his on the floor.  She holds the chalice in both hands, as if it is an offering, as if she consecrates it with her words and touch.  "She is not Adept with Ars Temporis or so delicate in Ars Mentis, is she?  How could she have taught you the shape of my face before we met? Sent you to me with a flower, yes, but made me so insensibly in love with you or you with me? This is beyond her scope. And even as she wills or wants it, she would not trust the bending of your Will to a Spirit or Seraphim.  No.  This may be to her delight, but I do not think the Lady Robinson the architect of our affections."

A pause.  The corner of her mouth curls slightly and she looks to him with wanton mischief in her eyes.

"For... see? The fire does not flare at her Naming, nor has my house been reduced to cinder-ash and smoke in doubting her."

His Star is wicked, even in this most serious of moments.  And so, now, having pronounced the limited scope of Maga Robinson Adept Major bani Flambeau's reach, having proscribed her influence to a smaller sphere, Arianna drinks deeply of the wine, holding the glass still as a chalice, between both hands, as if it were a thing consecrated in the moonlight, made holy by their fellowship.  As if it might steady her.  When she lowers the glass, she rolls the bowl of it slowly between her palms and watches the shift of the liquid inside.

"Perhaps I am not so certain because I have feared at least once before that I had lost you.  My heart sundered and broke to pieces when I heard, so long ago now, that the Smythe girl was carrying your child."  She says this, looking down into the wine, and the words are like ash in her mouth, dull tasting, dry and difficult to pass.  "Some part of you would always be hers, I knew it, and I could not bring myself to share you with her, and so all parts of you would be lost and it broke me, Silas.  It broke that part of me that knew these things."

She drinks again. Less deeply.  And uses her thumb to catch the dribble of wine that escapes the corner of her mouth.  This is return to her mouth, licked clear.  Her hands and arms are still tattooed with ink from her project.  There is a smudge of it on her face as well.  She is speckled and marked in ways that bend toward her physical Arts.

"I lay no claims to you when we are apart, but still... what happens then still touches me.  And I, for my part, have not loved another.  Lain with once, or maybe twice, in times when the press of the world must be forgotten, when the night was too black and too deep to go to sleep alone." He does not know about the Chorister who Fell; he does not know about the wreck she left in her wake, how it cast his Star into darkness and made strangers of the family of her heart for some time.  But he can imagine that there may such things in their world which may dim Arianna's brightness for awhile.

She offers him back the wine and, though it is an awkward place, she leaves off speaking.  What else is there to be said: she has not loved another; she loved him so completely that his good fortune with another broke her; and yet she is beside him now.  Yet she offers him this cup in fellowship.

[Silas]

"My mother is not so strong as all that in Ars Temporis or Ars Mentis, it's true.  Her greatest strengths are Essentiae and Vis."  And that's enough about Maga Robinson, all told; while Silas is certainly not one to let fear guide him, he has a healthy wariness of much to do with his mother.  His Star is wicked, indeed, and it brings a levity that had been missing for a moment - he tickles her, lightly, and kisses her forehead before she shifts positions.

Then, though, the conversation shifts back to seriousness, and he settles back to watch her as she thinks and speaks.  She'd feared she lost him and he'd been almost certain he had that first time, although not all of the whys and wherefores therein.  This confession brings his hand to her knee to rest, warm and comforting.  "When I saw you then, I was so certain it would be the last time.  I don't know if you heard, but the child wasn't mine."  This is not an excuse or justification, but information.  "We never did find out whose it was.  And Mother was furious at the deceit."  That fury hadn't only been directed at Katja, but this isn't a thing that Silas specifies.  And had the child been his, that would not necessarily have been his good fortune, all things considered.  "The last I heard, she was somewhere in Canada, and married.  Congratulations to all of them, I suppose."

His hand is still on her knee, only his thumb moving, lightly tracing the weave of her trousers - and so the wine glass is accepted with one hand, and sipped before he replies to the rest.

"You have always laid claim to me, whether you knew it or not.  I have laid with others, been fond of others, but loved?  No, not a one.  Only you."  He doesn't know if he could, only that he hasn't tried, that none calls his heart the way she does, that none have been the flame to which he flies.  And now, again, we have a silence that is filled by the drinking of wine, and a man who is uncertain of how to break it.  There is so much between them said and unsaid, known and unknown.

[Arianna]

"I hadn't heard," she says.  Her voice is quiet and it is unclear for a moment whether she is referring to Katja's happy nuptials or the provenance of her child or perhaps to both, but when some unmarked tension begins to bled out of her she is grateful that she is no longer holding the wine glass.  It would tremble in her hands; she cannot still the wash of relief and heartache that bleeds out from her.  It leaves little question of how strongly this revelation has moved her.  Bereft of things to hold, her hands close to loose fists, held emptily and impotent in her lap.  

All of these years she has held this question open between them.  It was open and unanswered still when she made her Oath to him. To have it closed it a relief; it gladdens her; it is a bittersweet gladness.  She heard the rest of what he had said, but could not process it.  The child wasn't mine. He said, and it echoes in her heart and head, over and over, until the words are like nothing, until they are dust, until they are like mortar to shore up the cracked and wounded places in her heart, until they are seamed in and around this wound as a salve that might make as if it never were un-seamed.

Belatedly, she says, "Mmm, and also joy be to their house." Yes, congratulations and joy, this is what is due a happily married couple and she should muster at least a tribute made of words, though they are hollow toned and half-heartedly spoken.  There is no love lost between Arianna and Katja, who had engineered such suffering for the Giametti girl.

His hand is on her knee, so he probably feels her shift before he registers any visual cue that she is moving.  She pushes up and away from the couch, standing.  It draws away attention from the way her hands come to her face, to brush away a dampness at her eyes.  But the dampness will not be quelled by a simple brushing away.  It is persistent and resurfaces.  It is damnable and so clear that he has caught the better of her.  She wanders far enough to stand near the fire, to feel its warmth press into her skin.  Again, she reaches up to wipe a tear away from her eye -- this repetition makes it far more likely that he will catch her out at it.

"Damnit, Silas," she says, softly, and mostly for the fire's hearing.  It snaps and shifts and dances for her, but that does not quiet her thoughts.  Ari no longer bothers with dropping her hands to her sides after brushing tears away.  Instead she rounds her shoulders so that she can keep her hands close to her traitorous eyes, fingers steepled together, thumbs tucked under her chin and index fingertips on her nose. She breathes out into the little cave made by her hands.  It is tremulous.

"Why is this so hard?" she asks him, aloud, and her voice ripples with the overwhelming emotion that she feels.  And of course, it is difficult, because they are airing half a lifetime of secrets between them in the space of one night.  And it is difficult because she has burned her own wick so low and so completely.  "And how wicked am I?" she asks, letting her hands drop away again as she turns to look at him.  "That I find relief and gladness in your news.  That you want children and yet, here am I, overtaken with relief that it is not yet so. Tread softly, you had said, for I tread upon your dreams and yet..."

There is no hiding now that a few stray tears have become the outrun of some deeper melting frozen floe.  

"Come here..." she says, and the words are almost to faint to hear, but they are echoed by the hand she extends toward him.  "If you will still come here.  Then come here and hold me and stop this weeping madness in me.  It is vulgar and unseemly.  Were you not here, I would spell it from myself. But you are here, aren't you?  I am not dreaming?"

[Silas]

As much as he knows he will have children one day, maybe even wants them, Silas is not particularly displeased that Katja's child is not his - and so there is more wondering at Arianna's reaction than there is upset with her being happy to find he is, thus far, childless.  And so he watches her when she rises, taking time to appreciate and understand her bearing and mood before he rises as well, the better to set aside the wine glass, and even pace a few steps.

There has been a lot aired in one evening, when Arianna's wick is burned low.

"It is so hard because we have been irate and separate for so long.  We have grown firm in our independence of each other, I think."  They are strong willed (and strong Willed) people, these two, so stubborn when each is sure of the correctness of his or her stance.  And he . . . well, Silas is confused.  Arianna doesn't slip into mundane profanities often, and she cries even less.  This is a reaction he doesn't understand, to the release of a tension he hadn't known she was holding, and so Silas is uncertain what to do, until . . .

Come here ...

And of course he does (perhaps despite a voice in his head that she can't hear), the better to wrap his arms around her and hold her close, to do what he can.  "I will still come to you.  And I am here, I assure you, and crying is sometimes a necessity.  Though . . . are you well?"

This is not the first time he's asked her this, but this time what he's really asking is what's wrong, and if there's something he can do to fix it.

[Arianna]

His arms wrap around her shoulders and hers duck lower, to scoop in under his at his waist.  Then her palms slide up, over his dress shirt, across the planes of his back, until she has pulled him soundly against her and tipped her head forward so her brow rests at his collarbone and her breath moves into the thin space between them.  So that her tears are caught by his shirt, and the white of it goes translucent with them.

"I have been so angry with you for so very long about this child that I am nearly sick with finding that it wasn't so..." 

Of course, she had never known for certain that it was so, but the uncertainty of it, the shadow it cast between them had been palpable and deep.  She had been so acutely wounded when they parted, and scathingly angry to overshadow that ache.  As children of Flambeau elders, neither were careful to keep their tongues or tempers.  Now, though, there is no anger to bastion her heart against the sway of this revelation.  There is only his embrace, and the warmth of firelight, and some terrifying fluttering thing.  Some small hope.

It is enough to make her stomach queasy.  Hope is a miserably flighty thing.  

If she says any more, surely, then she will let it escape from her breast. Hope will sneak out between her teeth; it will ease out with her breath; it will be gone and she is not sure that she would be better for its leaving.  So she remains, curled into him and holding to him, eyes shut and still streaming tears, without so much explanation for it beyond half a lifetime of sorrows and anger and fears escaping in an instant.  If he could touch her mind he'd find it in a marvelous state of disarray.  Ironically after she had spent the better part of a day making Talismans to ward the mind against this sort of coming undone.

The thought strikes her as funny, and she huffs out a single, unexplained chuckle.  But in her state it sounds quite more likely like a sob. Which is utterly undignified, and the sound of it draws her still, draws her rigid in his arms for a moment before she yields and again begins to relax, to shift so that her face is turned and her ear is over his heart and the sound of it beating is louder than the sniffling of her nose and she is kept close.  Her arms slide down to encircle his waist instead and after all this time, she is kept close and without the anger and the distance between them, however artfully kept it had been.  

After some interminable time, if he has not broken this half-silence between them, she will start to sway gently. From foot to foot.  Not rocking as if she has come completely undone; with a better rhythm to it; as if she were dancing to some unheard tune.  With her arms around his waist, and her ear pressed over his heart, and the swell of moonlight streaming in through the windows of the great room, in the arch of firelight cast outward from the hearth.  Neither here, nor there.  Neither dancing, nor standing.  It gives some movement to the weight of all they have between them.  It gives them a new place to start in their courtship of each other.

[Silas]

The half-silence has not been broken, and still Silas holds his Star close; he is the earth and sun and she is the moon and stars and in moments like this it is clear to anyone observing (except perhaps the two of them) how much they compliment each other.  It's not until they begin swaying together to music that only they can hear that he murmurs, "I am your Knave, your Scoundrel.  Yours alone."  Because when they are together, Silas and Arianna, they are together - to the exclusion of all others.  Thus it has been for nearly half their lives, regardless of what other things they've done in their time apart, or with whom they've laid.

So it is that they exist in each other's arms for minutes, hours, days, however long is unclear before Silas moves one hand to take Arianna's chin to draw her eyes up to his so that they are looking at each other when he says again, "I have always loved you."  Then, there's leaning in to kiss her gently, sweetly.  There is heat and intensity inherent to them, but it is a quiet thing kept to the back in favor of sanctifying this thing returned to them.  And when their lips break from each other?  It's dancing to faerie music as long as Arianna likes, just to hold her that much longer.  He is strong and firm, there, as he has always been.

[Arianna]

She cannot remember the last time he has held her like this.  Surely he has; surely when they were young and Katja had engineered such a terrible offensive.  Or surely when the ice first thawed -- no, not then. Not then or any day after.  Ari's heart had always been held a little apart, and he had only seen her when she was sure and confident and collected.  She would not be this raw and vulnerable before him after they way they split when they were young.  Perhaps it has been half a lifetime since he held her this way; perhaps it is the first time.

In short time, the dripping of her eyes relents.  Not before it has caused some treacherous shift in the state of her sinuses, or ringed her eyes with an unfamiliar redness, but before it has emptied her of whatever low reserve she had left.  She is still a moon drawn down so far that he might hold her, still broad and mellow maize on the horizon, still warmer than argent, still more accessible than she should be.  When he tips her chin upward, there is no slick of mercury to her eyes, nothing gating back the swarm of feelings in her heart and keeping him from seeing them.  She is too low to be removed and resplendent; he holds the whole of her in that one hand, in the way it touches the point of her chin.

"Stay..." she bids him.  On another night it would have been some off the cuff question, said with some sense of elegance and indifference -- You should stay, Silas -- and obvious innuendo.  Tonight, though, it is at least as much request as it is demand.  Paired as it is with the sense that she may finally believe him (I have always loved you), and the way her words have echoed the sentiment back to him without stating it so plainly, how could he refuse her?

There is dancing to faerie music, and drinking of shared wine, and lying companionably and intertwined on her sofa until the fire is burnt low and reduced to ember-ash and glow.  And when she is curled into bed beside him, with her head on his shoulder and her hand on his heart, tucked in close and near to sleeping, she repeats the request.  (Stay.)  As if he would leave her side now? 

No.

Stay.  Perhaps for this night. It is comfortable and safe to think she means something so immediate and simple.  But that would not be the whole of it; that would leave his understanding of her request incomplete.  Just as he had murmured to her of children when he was on the crest of waking, so she breathes out a sense of ever and always as she slips away to sleeping.  The moonlight coming in through the windows catches the gleam of silver around her finger. It burnishes the slip of gold around his, just visible as his arm around her shoulders pulls her closer to him for just a moment.  Their echoes do not move only one way in time.  What his heart will call foreshadowing, then, is an echo coming back to meet him now: he will hold her like this, with his heart as full and truly tested, with the gleam of metal around their fingers; he will name her not only his Star, but also ...

Sleep captures them, and pulls them under Morpheus's influence.  Whatever other foresight he might have can be cast in morning light as nothing more than oneiromancy. Little more than dreaming.