Lakashim

Elijah

[Did I survive last night?]

Dice: 4 d10 TN7 (2, 5, 9, 9) ( success x 2 )

Serafí­ne

They're having a picnic. It doesn't matter that it is four a.m. Serafíne has a goddamned red-and-white checked blanket and a basket she bought in a thrift store with three matching and one mismatched napkin and inside the basket there are things, Sera does not know what things there might be, each time someone reaches in to the basket it is a mystery what might emerge. The soapstone box with her weed and her little carved pipe and her favorite goddamned Zippo? Lay's Cappuccino potato chips? Baby carrots? Remarkably expensive cognac? A bunch of peculiarly plump black seedless grapes? Two slices of Dee's remarkable red velvet cake? Some new little treat or treasure in some new little plastic box?

--

The only thing Sera has pulled thus far from the picnic basket though is the Veuve-Cliquot demi-sec, and she has peeled off the foil and unwrapped the metal cage from the cork and popped it, and poured the sparkling, fizzy, slightly-sweet champagne into red solo cups, like a champion.

The grass is sweet and a bit spongy beneath the blanket, when you lay back.

There are in a field in front of the building proper and the building proper is so far the fuck out from the city, that out here there are so many fucking stars.

Elijah wants Serafíne to teach him and Serafíne does not know where to start. She is on her back with one hand beneath her head and the other wrapped around her red solo cup full of champagne, which is in turn resting on her abdomen, and she turns to look at him in the starlit dark, and says, "Aren't you Kalen's apprentice? What I do is nothing like what the Hermetics do. You know?"

Elijah

He liked the stars. He liked the stars and he wondered, briefly, if there would be more of them maybe if he just looked somewhere else, if the sky here from the umbra (ha! a new word. It had a name, and it delighted him to no end. The umbra) was different from the sky by his apartment or if it still sparkled and shimmered pretty like at home. He could care less what time it was, because they were having a picnic and the sky was full of stars and that seemed to be the best thing in the world.

He laid back on the grass, solo cup held upright and his eyes travel from the sky to Sera. He'd wanted to learn something from her, he'd anted to lawn how to feel all those other living things around him, because Elijah wanted ever so desperately to feel alive. He hadn't said that, of course, in those awe tinged moments where he had seen her Work and bring a man back from the bring of death. He'd held onto that, how she'd said she used the physical to move the metaphysical and he'd wanted, more than anything, to understand.

Elijah tore his eyes off the sky, over to Sera and he drummed his fingers idly on the side of the cup. What she does is nothing like what hermetics do.

"That's cool," he said, "I don't… I'm Kalen's apprentice but Kalen's… he's really fluid, ya know? Flexible. I kind of get the impression that Kalen isn't like other Hermetics."

Serafíne

Sera breathes out. There's a kind of humor there, subsumed, contained as much in her skin as it is anywhere else. She's smiling. She's looking at him and she is doing so peripherally, her profile quite stark against the darkness. Just enough star-or-moonlight now that her skin is luminous, even though it is night.

"Is that what you wanna be? A Hermetic who isn't much like other Hermetics?"

It is not a rhetorical question. Sera's tongue is tipped against her lower lip. She is thinking about it, and she is watching Elijah against the darkness, and there is something aware and awake and so very quick in the bruise of her gaze.

"They don't - " a sharp inhale, " - most of them - respect what I do. The way I do it." Who knew that Sera knew that? Understood that? "They call it low. And the way you have to let go -

"I don't think it fits with their practice. You have to understand that before we start."

Elijah

hat was it that Elijah wanted?

That was the big question, wasn't it? What was it that Elijah wanted, what did he believe out of all of this and out of all of the things that he had learned from the places he'd picked up? What was he keeping? What was he discarding? What meant everything to him and what did he decide needed to be tossed out in favor of a different idea? For someone who seemed to work well so many places, there was a question of whether or not Elijah really fit anywhere.

She does on, explains that most of them don't respect her work, don't respect how she sees the world, thinks of it as low and Elijah… Elijah can't quite wrap his head around that one. Thus far, his work had fit in well with Kalen's, but as he'd said before Kalen wasn't typical. Would Elijah really be okay with not fitting in so very obviously?

"I don't think I'd quit fit in with other Hermetics… and I don't think I'm okay with that," he says, he pauses. He takes a moment to really think about it and while the thought doesn't seem to bother him, the thought doesn't necessarily come to him terribly easily, "I don't know if I'd fit in anywhere… but I'm getting to be more okay with that, too."

Serafí­ne

Sera's eyes are blue and that blue is dark and in the long shadows of the moonlit night that dark is enduring. Abiding. She has cheated her gaze towards him; enough to watch the thoughts as they run across his features like clear water, with those strangely opaque depths. Enough to see both thought and movement and decision and to hear a fucking answer that sounds like the sort of fucking answer that is not precisely Sera's fucking answer.

And she doesn't know how to tell him that she doesn't think he should be answering questions right now, finding them inside him, finding the things that fit, so much as asking himself other questions and breaking little pieces of his heart and not giving a fuck about where he fits as much as what suits him, and fuck, maybe she's misunderstanding him, she doesn't know what this shit is like, or she does, she does, she does, she knows with her body the way so many people now with their minds, and the memory of it all is contained inside her mouth, like a moth beatings its terribly fragile wings against her teeth, tickling her throat, spasming, dying -

and she inhales, perhaps to tell him that, perhaps simply because her lungs were hungry, but she inhales and holds all those things inside her, and how can Elijah know or see or understand what any of that shit is: just a moment of sharpness, a sudden breath, drawn-in, and then she is telling him,

"Kiss me."

He wanted to learn from her, after all.

Elijah

He doesn't hesitate, but he doesn't know what he's looking for. Isn't that the story of Elijah Poirot, though? Seeking something he wasn't sure was the right answer, or really his answer, but finding that he was rather enjoying the journey along the way.

He's kissed a number of people in his day- the first was nothing like Sera. People say you remember your first kiss, but it had been the first time Elijah had gotten drunk in a girl's basement while her mom was at work and he'd been fourteen and sloppy and she hadn't really minded that he wasn't terribly good at it, because she was a year older than him and he was cute so she was happy to show him the ropes. Serafíne was nothing like Miranda Carmichael, not in the traditional sense. He hadn't been terrified of screwing up with Sera like he had been with Miranda. This wasn't middle school.

Kissing Sera wasn't like kissing Alicia, or Jenn, or Ian, or any of the other people he'd kissed. He sat unto his side and leaned forward, pressed his lips to hers in a way that was exploratory without being tentative. He pressed forward, his heart beating harder, though still steady, his eyes closed and he wasn't thinking about what was going on at that moment, he kissed her and wanted to taste the hints of champagne on her lips and whatever else Sera tasted like. He wanted to press forward, to be in the moment.

Elijah wasn't thinking of the first time he'd kissed someone, or the last time he'd kissed someone, he wasn't really even thinking. He just knew Sera told him to kiss her, so he did.

Elijah

Dice: 4 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 4, 10) ( success x 1 )

Serafí­ne

There is power in her and this is how she draws on it. Sera opens her mouth and she tastes like clove cigarettes and that demi-sec champagne and fat black grapes. She tastes like four a.m. and she tastes like the ragged edges of the universe and she tastes like the dew gathering on the stalks of prairie grass. She tastes like magic and she sets her goddamned red solo cup aside, and you understand that she is nestling it in the grass, making a little hollow in which it can rest, without even really thinking about the intent or the motion, all the while kissing Elijah back, just so she can have that hand free to cup it behind Elijah's skull as he kisses her, and she is humming in the back of her throat and she is hungry and then she is air hungry and then their mouths part just long enough to inhale, that is how this goes, and Sera is laughing a bit, indulgent and he can feel the magic moving inside her, wrapping itself around and through her skin, and his skin and she is everything and she is everywhere and she is inside him, isn't she?

Serafí­ne

Combined effect: Mind 3/Life 1. She's drawing Elijah into her body / mind so that he can "cast" the effect with her. (-1 resonance) (-1 focus)

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (2, 3, 4) ( success x 1 )

Serafí­ne

Extending. Damnit.

Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (4, 5, 8) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Elijah

There's a power in Sera that Elijah can't fathom, can't possibly imagine having held or wielded before, and she opens her mouth and she tastes like so many things, things that go beyond taste and move into the realm of ideas. Something that moves beyond ideas and goes just into being. He kisses her and she's humming and he can pick out the elements of what are similar. They part ways for a second long enough for him to inhale with her, a subconscious motion but he inhales all the same and presses forward again and she is laughing and she is hungry and this was permission to explore.

And he did explore, and he moves along with her, feels how she would do this, feels it as though h'd done it himself and there is a second when his lips part and his tongue savors the taste of four a.m. and the edge of the universe and he can feel his heart beating and he can count the beats of her own and everything is bleeding beating beautiful alive.

There should be a disconnect, because when Elijah usually presses, when he touches, when he holds and when he moves forward, he finds that the world is falling apart, he knows the cracks and knows how things are dying, dying, dying and at that juncture he can tell when they are living, how they are living, and there is elation and he laughs, laughs because laughter comes easily against her mouth and all he latches on to is the taste of the universe at four in the morning and the way Sera's lips feel and the way his chest feels when it's pressed 'gainst hers and the texture of her hair and the hum of crickets and the grass and everything is living, living, living and dying, dying, dying and he takes in all of it.

Elijah isn't scared, though he should be, at the sheer magnitude and the wonder of living things, but he can sense their hearts beating and the feeling of the fireflies flitting about and cicadas chirping. He finds something, something that lets him know he's alive, lets him make that physical connection that can transcend to the metaphysical and move onward and at that juncture Elijah finds himself capable of understanding, if only for a brief moment, how this must feel.

Serafíne

This is how Sera does magic; and now, and here, and tonight, this is how Elijah rides the wave of that magic with her. There is only her will, which is both a knot meant to be shredded inside her chest and a spreading warmth that opens, opens, opens, and within the boundaries of her body, does it not feel like all her cell walls are starting to dissolve, like she's leaking light, and it is exquisite and painful and transporting to be so close to the edge of the self that one can put one's tongue on the goddamned terminals of the universe's battery and taste the fucking charge -

- and then, and then, and then:

everything. fucking everything.

It is ecstatic: not merely the result but the method, the arching need like a bridge between the actual and possible, the permissible, the potent give and take of sensory stimulation that gives her the push to transcend the boundaries of her skin and enter - you know - everything.

And Elijah does not simply feel the pattern of life all around them, but he can feel it inside her, the ink burrowed into her skin from all the goddamned tattoos, the pathways in her brain that are lit, brilliant, night-sky brilliant, drive-in brilliant, fireworks brilliant, and the pathways that are dormant and on and on and on, beyond her, this endless web of connection where there is no self and no other, there merely: is.

Sera pulls back, pulls away after - well, perhaps Elijah cannot measure time, but the sun is edging its way over the eastern horizon which means: it has been hours and where the dead of night was silent, now there is birdsong all around. The dew is heavier on the blades of grass - and even the blanket on which they are lying is damp now.

Elijah

There was a point where his mind was screaming at him, begging that there had to be some relief because it was too much, feeling all of it, trying to hold up that barrier of self and the rest of the universe was trying to push in and bleed through and there was a moment, one glorious moment, that second that he finally, finally let go. And those walls and those boundaries and that second of being one among millions was lost because there was nothing but being. A one ness in all of it, that moment where his heart was pounding and his heart didn't matter because it was never truly his. There was no difference between his body and her body or the grass beneath them or the light the fireflies made-

And how could this be low? How could this be anything other than transcendent?

When Sera pulls away, he barely remembered where he was, his breathing heavy his head swimming and he fell back onto the damp blanket and he could have stayed there for however long he needed to stay there. He could have measured time at that second, could have possibly told himself how many hours had passed but it didn't matter to him beyond knowing that the moment had moved and…

"Holy fucking shit, Sera…"

it's all he can get out, staring at the sky as it turned colors and started in with its dawn routines. His breathing was at once deep and shallow, his eyes unfocused and precise. Elijah couldn't get the smile off of his face.

"It's so bright," with no small amount of wonder, with awe because he was incredibly honest for such a practiced liar.

Serafí­ne

"Mmm." Sera murmurs, languid now, drowsing, lovely. She has: rolled over on to her side, and watches Elijah in the gather light of dawn through the scrim of her dark lashes. Her mascara is smeared. Last night's make-up. Last night's lipstick is long-fucking-gone. "Lakashim.

"You just need to figure out how to get there.

"And how to come home."