Elijah
He had ducked out the back of a bar for a much needed moment to breathe.
Santa Fe looked very different when you weren't looking at the store fronts. The allies and the backs of buildings and the trash cans all made the places look the same. There was the occasional puddle, the loose gravel and hints of grass trying to stubbornly shove itself up through the pavement and say that it endured, because it is true and strong. Elijah wonders, briefly, if the Order felt strongly about weeds, how they persisited. How they were the epitome of something exerting their will upon their environment.
Weeds will grow because they want to. How dare anyone try and say otherwise.
But there he was, sneaking out the back of a bar with his top button unbuttoned and for the first time in a long time feeling like he was drowning in the open air. Feeling smothered by the actuality of the world around him and tonight, yes tonight, he was trying so goddamned hard to be present. COuld have gotten shitfaced but, instead, was outside of a bar in the back alleys sober, deciding instead that he needed to walk. Needed to pace. Needed to recenter himself before he rejoined the rest of the world and pretended that his best friend wasn't in mortal fucking danger. That there was nothing he could do about it.
That he could pretend that one of his other friends was dearly hurting, so disconnected and curled in on herself and splitting apart and he doesn't even know where the fuck to find her. Knows someone is taking care of her but, frankly, given who it is Elijah feels like his world is resting too much on the shoulders of a man who he has barely met. Trusts, yes. But perhaps...
Perhaps.
He makes his way through the back alleys, wonders if he should try and score something harder than whatever he could comfortably get from Samir.
Being present is fucking hard.
Serafíne
AWARENESS!
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 6 ) [Doubling Tens]
Serafíne
Weekend and still early enough that the bars and galleries are packed and there's foot traffic, not so much in the back alleys where Elijah has gone to pace but still: a cater-waiter taking out the trash, a prostitute with a short man in a dumpy suit negotiating at the back entrance to a dive bar. And so on.
Chilly but not precisely cold, with banks of clouds slipping across the sky, and between the clouds and the light pollution there's not even a hint of the stars tonight. Not from the downtown streets.
Elijah finds Sera on the empty patio of a small bistro (the last few patrons inside linger over after dinner drinks and desserts). Coincidence this, really. No reason, but sometimes the world functions like that. Things fall apart, other things are put together again. She's sitting on one of the wooden tables set back against a brick wall. In summer these are shaded by great big offset market umbrellas but the umbrellas have been taken down: either for the night or for the winter. The chairs are locked down and shunted forward against the table, but there she's sitting, leaning back against the brick, legs crossed at the ankles, wearing her curb-stompers and fishnets and a leather skirt that is half-metal rings, an old Siouxsie Sioux t-shirt, a flannel shirt, a leather jacket.
Leaning back against the brick, smoking a joint, one hand resting on Sid's big head. The dog, of course, curled up beside her.
Banked glimpse toward Elijah out of the corner of her eye as he emerges from the mouth of the alley next door. "I knew you were around." Closes her eyes again, takes another drag. "No one else feels like you."
Elijah
He exhales, hard and harsh like he took a hit of something that was too strong and it didn't feel good in his lungs. Like he was fifteen and lighting up for the first time because it seemed like something that could be fun or it got passed to him at a party and you fucking go for it, freshman. If you're gonna party with seniors, you don't wuss out.
"What do I feel like to you?" he asked, "I know how i see you, but it never really hit me to ask how I come across on a-" waves a hand, doesn't want to flat out say metaphysical level and words are failing him "-y'know. I get a lot of hurricane but I could never really swallow the irony."
comes her way, because she is there, a
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