Henry Calliergi
"Elijah, dear boy, you should come have tea with us."
This is how Henry greets Elijah on the phone when he calls that afternoon. There is no preamble, and very little follow-up. He relays an address to a house on the outskirts of Golden (roughly half an hour's drive West of downtown Denver) before hanging up.
And thus, Elijah begins his adventure in getting to know Mr. Henry Calliergi. The drive out to the foothills is serene and pretty, full of rolling hills and distant mountains dotted with pines. The town of Golden is nestled into a basin, and Elijah has to drive through most of it to reach the bit of land that Henry calls his own - past the town center and the neat suburban lawns into a more rural landscape. Henry's property is almost immediately identifiable. The house is of a moderate size, and looks as though it may have once been quite nice. These days it has the feel of something abandoned. The windows are dusty. The paint is chipped. The roof could probably do with some repairs. The grass looks as though it had not been mowed in... quite some time. A mass of green ivy has covered one of the walls.
In the driveway, an old green Pinto sits parked slightly askew.
Elijah
Tea. There was something charming about tea, something exciting about the prospect of meeting and getting to know Henry because, no matter what happened with the Order, this guy seemed interesting. Interesting and personable, and Elijah did not realize who often he attempted to collect people. He didn't really have enemies, at least not at first. Not that he realizes, even though he does occasionally have the accidental tendency to make a bad impression on the best possible ways (things with Moose turned out okay though, so it can't be all bad, right?)
It was a lovely drive. The day was nice enough, and the wind felt perfect. The air was alive and he was a little sad when he had to park the motorcycle in the driveway. Nestled nice and near somewhere. His attentions went to the front door, to the ivy on the walls, to the dust at the windows.
So, there he is at the front door, past the porch and waiting. Elijah took a second, straightening himself out. Vest half buttoned, helmet tucked under his arm. He had decided to wear jeans today, if only because they were getting ever-so-much closer to the dreaded laundry day- which usually consisted of Elijah wearing a suit like he was in a Blues Brothers movie and dragging everything that remotely constituted as laundry to the laundromat. It wasn't as bad as it used to be. He did a pretty good job of keeping up with the laundry he left at Kalen's, but keeping two separate wardrobes clean was a balancing act in and of itself. Elijah thought it was a little funny, all things said, that jeans were the last things he ran out of.
but there he was, comfortable but not comfortable on the porch and he knocked three times.
Then waited.
Henry Calliergi
It takes a bit longer than usual for Henry to answer the door. Long enough that Elijah might begin to wonder if he had the right address. But eventually the knob turns and the hinges on the heavy front door swing open. And there is Henry, standing in an old grey suit as he greets Elijah with a smile. "Ahah, you made it! Please come in." Henry steps aside to usher Elijah indoors, gesturing widely with his arm. "I was just putting the kettle on. Do you prefer Early Grey or Chamomile?"
The inside of the house is less run-down than the outside. There are places that look as though they are sorely in need of dusting, but the furniture and the window dressings are quite nice. There are a handful of old oil paintings hanging on the walls. Some of them look as though they might have historical value. Others are more abstract or fanciful. Henry leads Elijah down the hall to the living area, which opens into a wide space with dark green carpeting. The walls are lined with heavy bookshelves, and in the center of the room sits an antique sofa set with floral upholstery. The coffee table is already set with a silver tray bearing an assortment of cookies.
"Red is about somewhere. There is a very persistent field-mouse that he's been hunting all day."
Elijah
He waits. And his mind wanders, wanders and wonders if he is in the right place. If this is the right house, if maybe he'd gotten some numbers transposed and, instead, it was on a different plot of land somewhere. Clearly, someone had to live there, they had a car out front. The door opened up, though, and Elijah looked relieved. Tossed Henry a smile and stepped inside.
The first thing Elijah did was leave his helmet at the door, abandoning the only real bit of cartable luggage he had with him. There was just… an abundance of things to look at. His eyes darted from the window dressings over to the paintings, and lingers there for a second. A question there before his brows lifted and there was this look of right! There was a question!
"Oh! Earl Grey, if we do anything chamomile I'll end up crashing on your couch and I'm pretty sure that constitutes as me being bad company if I come in, drink your tea, and just crash," he says.
Red's about somewhere. "So… uh… how did you meet Red?"
Henry Calliergi
"Bah, nonsense." Henry gives a dismissive wave of his hand when Elijah suggests that falling asleep would make him bad company. "I fall asleep on other people's sofas all the time. I suppose I have the excuse of age, though."
Henry motions for Elijah to take a seat, bending down to steal one of the cookies as he does so. It's a little fruit-filled butter cookie, and he makes a happy sound when he bites into it. "Oh, the raspberry ones are delicious."
How did you meet Red?
"Ah, now that... is a story." Henry winks at Elijah as he takes a seat in one of the chairs. "As it happens, he saved me from a dragon. I was off exploring in the Umbra and managed to get into a bit of trouble. But thankfully it was a rather stupid dragon, and Red was able to distract it so that I could escape. We've been fast friends ever since."
"You left out the bit about how you got lost in its lair and I had to show you the way out." Red comes trotting around the corner and pauses, fixing Elijah with a curious expression. "I warned you this would happen. First tea and cookies. Next he'll have you organizing the library." But there's warmth and humor in his tone.
Elijah
"Isn't there a poem about little old women in red hats doing what they want because I don't need a reason to be fabulous?" he asks, spurred on by the reference to age being a good excuse to fall asleep on couches.
So, he headed on in, took a seat and surveyed cookies because there were cookies. He tried to find one that looked yellow, presumably lemon or maybe mango, but nothing ventured nothing gained, so in he dove with a little content sound. brows raised, and he covers his mouth the hide talking with his mouth full. "Did you bake these or acquire them?"
And then? A story about dragons. his brows rose, attention suddenly pinpoint accurate and there was a story about Umbral travel and the things that lived there and the only thing he can think is oh my god, mermaids might actually be real. He's settled onto the sofa and Red comes about, brings details which make Elijah laugh.
"If I have to organize a library there'll be no getting rid of me," with a grin, and the rest of the cookie gets popped in his mouth.
Henry Calliergi
"How's the great mouse hunt?" Henry smiles at Red, but there is an element of familial teasing to his tone. The fox flicks back his ears and looks away.
"It's a work in progress. She's in the attic somewhere. I thought I'd give her a rest."
"Ah, did you now."
Red gives a delicate sneeze, then hops up onto the sofa to sit beside Elijah. As it happens, there are a few lemon cookies in the batch, though they have the look of something that came from a tin (albeit a rather fancy one.) When Elijah asks if Henry baked them, Red gives a little snort. "They'd be burnt if he did."
"I'll have you know that I am an excellent cook." Henry finishes off the last of his cookie, sucking a bit of filling off his finger. "But baking was never my strong suit. All those precise measurements. What's the fun in following a recipe?"
The sound of a whistling kettle interrupts their conversation, and Henry hauls himself out of his chair. "Please excuse me. I believe that is the sound of tea time."
He disappears into the kitchen for a few minutes after that, leaving Elijah alone with Red and a plate of cookies.
Red looks at the plate for a moment, then steals one, crunching it neatly between his small jaws. A few crumbs fall onto the sofa cushion, but he licks them up.
Elijah
Henry goes off to grab the tea and Elijah is enthralled by the exchange between the man and the fox. The moments tick away and the young man- bright eyed and excitable, just took it all in for a moment until, of course, the fox sat next to him. He picked up another cookie- Oh, the raspberry ones were delicious indeed- and he shot the fox a sideward glance.
There is a moment where he waits, awkwardly, and then?
"Would it be a complete affront to your agency as a fox if I asked to pet you?" which sounds a lot like please please please, can I pet you? You look so soft.
It was what he had wanted to do the minute he met Red. Knew that he could be having any sort of conversation with the fox, which then makes him realize he could be having any number of conversations with Red and his cheeks flush, "yeah, uh, sorry, I could probably be talking bout any number of things like what it's like the hunt mice and holy crap you were in the umbra."
A beat.
"What's it like to be inside the umbra?"
Henry Calliergi
Elijah wants to pet the fox. It is, of course, an understandable urge. Red looks at Elijah with a tired but patient expression. "Well. At least you asked. Some people try to grab at me like I'm a stuffed animal."
Elijah had witnessed Red being handled by Annie (seen the happy way he reacted to her massing around his ears.) Perhaps, like people, he simply prefers to choose how and when he receives physical affection. There is a moment of consideration before Red pads across the cushions to lay himself across Elijah's lap. His body feels warm and slight of weight, and his fur has a lovely copper sheen in the evening light.
He makes a little sound in his throat when Elijah asks about the Umbra.
"It's different from here. The rules are much more fluid. I couldn't explain it easily. But anything you can dream, you'll find it there. It's where I was born."
And yet, here he was in the physical realm. Vibrant and solid and living.
Henry comes back carrying a tray with a porcelain tea set. He sets the tray down on the coffee table and pours tea into the cups with a careful but slightly shaky hand. "Do you take anything with your tea?"
Elijah
He puts his hands up, and is careful. Red was born in the umbra, and he knew what a concept felt like. he's been fascinated, sat on the banks of some creek and reached across and carefully, ever-so-carefully touched the idea of what light felt like. It's a place full of metaphor, a place where the rules are fluid and he beams at the prospect. But he's there, Red's vibrant and living and soft and Elijah is enthralled with the fact that he's met and is actively engaging someone that lived in a place he just looked at. Somewhere that seemed almost unattainable. For now.
"I get that," he said, "I mean, I don't get the stuffed animal thing, but uninvited handsy people are freaking crappy."
He makes a little sound of glee, quiet and understated but definitely there. At that moment, Henry came back and Elijah looked up, didn't stop with the careful lay of hands and the occasional scratch behind Red's ear. How does he take his tea?
"Oh, I tend to go plain? Well, I do now- I haven't kicked the sweet tea habit, but this kind of tea and sweet tea? Two completely different experiences," he says, "Red was just telling me about being in the umbra."
Henry Calliergi
"As you wish," Henry sets Elijah's teacup in a little saucer and hands it over to him. The tea is dark and fragrant with the scent of bergamot. As for his own drink, Henry adds a bit of milk and a cube of sugar. "I never could resist a bit of sweetness, myself." He smiles as he sits back down in his chair, getting comfortable with a sigh.
"We try to go as often as we can. The Storm made things rather difficult for a while. I had to stop for a few years when things were... especially bad." He takes a sip of his tea - musing, thoughtful. "It's getting easier now, but then, I'm also getting older. The best way to go is to find a Shallowing. We're waiting for one right now, in fact. Not too long, I think. Then we'll be off on a new adventure." The thought of it seems to brighten his mood. "You could come with us, if you like. We're hunting an artifact."
Elijah
This was Ian's fault. He could thoroughly blame Ian Lai for drinking tea the way it was brewed and taking it in for all its flavors and intricacies. He handles the teacup delicately. Takes in the warmth and he smiles, takes a drink, and exhales slowly. He's content there, but soon enough there was the moment where he keyed in.
He watches Henry, keyed in to the details of the story and the knowledge there. His imagination goes wild- you can go there. You can actually go there, pass through a shallow place where the barrier between worlds is thin enough. But this man has been. He goes and-
Elijah's breath gets caught in his throat. There is this moment where words are there but he doesn't quite know what it is. He exhales and he looks…
"I could come with you?" incredulous for a moment, but that is soon cast aside for something that could only be called utter excitement, "really?"
Henry Calliergi
"Life is an adventure. Don't get me wrong, I love books. I write books. But if you want a good story, first you have to live it." Henry's smile widens, and his eyes take on brighter hue as the sunlight slants in through the window, catching him at just the right angle. "It's the first thing I always teach my apprentices. The Tapestry is there to be explored. If you don't have that spark... that hunger for knowledge and experience. Then you'll never become truly great."
He says this as though he already thinks of Elijah as his student. Is that why he invited him here?
Red lifts his head from Elijah's lap and looks up at him, mindful of the teacup in Elijah's hand. "I should warn you, the last artifact we found summoned a couple of giant spiders and nearly got us both killed."
Elijah
"But you get to see things, and then you have stories and- like, actual stories- it's like…" he's lost English at this point. There is excitement there, yes, perhaps heedless of the dangers that come with giant spiders or perhaps just elated at the prospect of doing precisely what he'd told Kalen he wanted to do. At the idea that he was going to get to live and experience every blessed inch of creation like it was there for experiencing.
Beyond that? Then, you feet to write a book about it.
"it's going out and experiencing. It's like being freaking Indiana Jones and a lifestyle writer and-" literally everything he wanted to be.
Henry Calliergi
Henry laughs. The sound is a warm, tumbling chuckle, a little soft and raspy from age. "Well, there is always more to learn when it comes to the spirit realms. Your enthusiasm is a welcome sight. But... I would be remiss if I did not warn you that our Order demands a lot from its students. Even among my House. Don't think that I'll go easy on you, even if I am a doddering old fool." The warmth stays in his eyes; in the soft folds and creases weathered into his face. Whatever Henry's intent, it's difficult to find him intimidating.
"So what do you say. Would you like to join House Jerbiton? We are, I'm told, a charming bunch. I think you would fit in quite nicely."
Elijah
[WP: Don't hug Henry, you have a fox in your lap]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )
Elijah
[Another WP: don't say curse words]
Dice: 5 d10 TN8 (1, 3, 3, 6, 9) ( success x 1 )
Elijah
"Why would I want you to be easy on me? If we're going to go on legit adventures, you have to know that I can handle the pressure. It's totally worth it," which was about when he stopped for a minute and-
Waitaminute.
Henry was actually okay with this? Henry was actually talking to him like he was going to be his student. His actual student. His student that wasn't temporary, that wasn't waiting it out, that wanted to keep him- actually keep him? He'd been nervous, he'd been incredibly nervous. Explained and come to peace with the fact that he wasn't going to easily make peace with the idea that someone might not actually want him. If things didn't work out with the Order in Denver, they weren't going to work out and things were looking like they might actually work out.
More than that, it was somewhere that he would actually fit. And it had been a concern, a grave concern, the idea that he might not exactly mesh somewhere in the Order and here was someone legitimately telling him that he could fit somewhere nicely and they could-
"I would-" don't say fuck "-really like that. That sounds like… I really want to show you that I could cut it in House Jerbiton."
Henry Calliergi
"Well then." Henry takes another sip of his tea before setting the cup down. "In that case, I suppose I should show you the library." Henry gives an enthusiastic little swat to the arm of his chair as he stands, as though he means to give himself a boost of energy. He is not as young as he once was, but oh - he can pretend. Red seems to take this as his cue to leave, because he sits up, steals another cookie, and hops down onto the floor. When he speaks, his voice hisses out around the morsel through delicately closed teeth.
"Good luck, kid. You're going to need it."
No comments:
Post a Comment