Elijah
[nightmares]
Elijah
Dice: 4 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 6, 8) ( success x 1 )
Eleanor Yates
[despair]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (6, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 7 )
Eleanor Yates
[...*saves that for a night when I'm not sad*]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )
Eleanor Yates
[that's more reasonable. thank you, dice.]
Elijah
He'd slept, and while it wasn't terrible he didn't find himself thinking the world was rotting around him when he cam dot Eleanor's doorstep.
He wasn't an uninvited guest. He wasn't a random guest, either. He had texted earlier about wanting to talk to her about Alicia, about their mutual associate Ginger, about a lot of things, actually, but Elijah had texted and an arrangement had been made and the young man found himself standing in front of the front door, telling himself that he needed to knock. He needed to knock and say something.
He had the added bonus of usually seeing Eleanor whilst sober. The same couldn't be said of some of his other friends. He liked Eleanor. He liked her when he was drunk. He liked her when he wasn't drunk. He liked the feeling he brought with her, like nostalgia, like terror, like transition, like wonder. She was a good person to talk to.
Well and so, it was time to talk to Eleanor Yates. And Elijah, dressed in jeans and a vest and a tee shirt, knocked on her door.
Eleanor Yates
Eleanor is home. It is evening, and her house stands still and white on its corner. The upper floor is dark; passing by you can see the lights in the kitchen at the back of the house. Her car is parked alongside the curb out front.
She knows Elijah is on his way, though he didn't have to text first. But she didn't tell him that. She just said okay, and they set a time, and the porch light is on and there is a small note on the door telling him to come in. That is because in the kitchen, cool and pale with dark contrasts and soft colors here and there, Eleanor is making sugar cookies. She wears an apron of faded blue and white vertical stripes, and her hair is in a french braid. Eleanor is not messy, in the kitchen or elsewhere, and she does not have endearing smears of flour here or there, there are not dishes piled high in the sink. She is calmly, steadily rolling out the refrigerated dough. She hasn't even turned the oven on yet.
She looks up when the door opens, giving him a smile. "Elijah," she calls him, names him. "Come pick out shapes."
What Eleanor means is: shapes to cut into the dough, from a large wicker basket of plastic cookie cutters. Flours, circles, squares, animals, little men, hearts, stars.
Elijah
He came in the front door, comfortable and casually making his way through the house he was growing to find was much like Eleanor. Insert a reference about warmth and poise here. She calls him, names him as though naming him makes him more substantial (it does) and he is beckoned to come pick out shapes.
When he comes into the kitchen, he smiles something bright and pleased in some deceptively innocent way- because he hasn't been innocent in a long, long time. But there were plastic cookie cutters, which he chooses instead by color instead of shapes. All cool colors- he picks a star here. A little man and a little woman. A heart. A house- a tiny traditional family unit in cookie form. Or a non traditional family unit depending on how one goes about arranging their cookies. Elijah inspects the star, then goes to find a different one in the basket.
"Jenn told me once that the plastic ones were better than the metal ones," he said casually. "What are the cookies for?"
Eating, Elijah. Duh.
Eleanor Yates
"I do not know who Jenn is," Eleanor tells him, "but she is correct. The metal ones bend, and warp, and over time will also rust."
Says the woman who could, if she liked, stop them from rusting. But she wouldn't.
She creates a small bowl of flour to dip the edges of the cutters in to make them slide more cleanly in and out of the dough. There are two baking sheets, already lined with silicone mats rather than parchment paper. "As for the purpose of the cookies," she says, "they're just cookies. I get in the mood sometimes to bake. It's soothing. It's methodical. And sugar cookies are whimsical. I have decorating icing for them, when they're done."
Eleanor gives a one-shouldered shrug. "I don't really like eating sugar cookies, especially decorated ones," she confesses, "but I like making them. And regardless, I can give them to Richard. He can share them. College students will eat anything."
Elijah
"Jenn's my room mate. She bakes stuff sometimes, but she mostly sticks to things that can go in casserole dishes. We moved out here together from Louisiana," he clarifies, as though clarifying who Jenn was happened to be important. To him, at least, it was. There is a fondness in his voice, not the same fondness of when he spoke of Alicia a week before, but a fondness none the less.
She doesn't like eating sugar cookies, especially decorated ones, but she does like making them. He nods, understanding, they're kind of like diabetes on a plate, but they're stinking delicious (proof that college students will, in fact, eat anything) He carefully arranges the leftover cookie cutters as best he can into a little rainbow. the colors all blending together as he methodically remembered what came after indigo and repeated the pattern again once he was able.
"I talked to Alicia, by the way," he said, "so some of the things I said on Ginger are.. uh… different now."
Eleanor Yates
Eleanor is making a star. She presses the cutter into the dough, a smooth pressure through the firm yet yielding dough. It gives her satisfaction. It reminds her of things that she does not, out loud, admit that she also finds some satisfaction in. Or did, once.
"Am I to understand that before you left that message on Ginger, you had not talked to Alicia about it?"
Elijah
"We did talk about it… I just… she wants to know what happened, but she doesn't want anyone to end up on any crazy watch lists or anything, she made me promise not to do anything stupid, and that's why I reached out for people. I don't know if find her dad constitutes as a stupid move but… but the more I talk to people the more this is a bad idea this sounds. She just wants to know what happened, and I don't know if that got lost somewhere between my brain and my message."
Eleanor Yates
Eleanor has put down her cookie cutter and fixed Elijah with a look.
The room is not warm, because the oven is not on, but it is not icy, because the windows are open. The sun has gone down and one benefit of living here in summer is that the temperature drops drastically -- twenty, thirty degrees -- when the sun goes behind the mountains. The night air is cool, and the sounds of Eleanor's neighborhood are quiet. She lives near the Cory-Merrill schools. She lives within walking distance of DU. It is a nice place to live, and no one suspects that on occasion, she takes the lives of people that they -- if not the universe -- would consider unworthy of being calmly murdered.
Elijah, looking at her, would not have trouble believing it. Her eyes are not pleased, as they were when he came in the door.
"Did Alicia specifically give you her permission to contact every Awakened in Denver who is on that messaging system and tell them about her background in order to seek support for finding her father?"
Elijah
There were an abundance of times that Elijah could have determined that he had screwed up.
There was the moment he talked to Patience, when she explained that there would be casualties and that people needed to know, specifically, what they were getting into. There was the part where Kalen told him absolutely not or when Dan told him about the Ascension War. Now, it is that moment when he realizes he did not get the all clear from Alicia to use Ginger, that she wasn't aware it existed, to tell people her life story and he looks down and his tail is tucked and there is that sinking feeling that he fucked up.
"I… uh… don't remember," he said. Which was the truth.
Eleanor Yates
Eleanor sighs.
Her eyes have left Elijah. It is so brutal, that sigh. It is as heartwrenching as this calming and lovely home that is so cleanly decorated and yet so inviting, so friendly, that she left a note on the door for him to just walk in, that her upstairs guest room serves as a crash pad for her apprentice, that Elijah himself has slept his way into a hangover on the couch in her study, where he could have a door to close and feel a little more secure than being left out in the open living room. It's heartwrenching because of what she is, what she feels like, what other Awakened know is a part of her existence and purpose,
and how solitary she seems, how much she feels like a fractured piece of something once-whole,
and how all the same, it's not at all strange to find her baking sugar cookie cutouts to decorate with a young friend, only to give them away to her apprentice and his buddies at school.
She just sighs. It's a soft sound, and not angry. Just disappointed.
--
Eleanor does not slam him then, telling him that if he doesn't remember, then he almost certainly did not receive explicit permission. She gathers the scraps of dough together to form a heavy ball between her palms, then sets it down to roll it out again. Several cookies of several different shapes are already on the baking sheets.
"Using Ginger was safer than simply sending a mass email, obviously," she tells him, after a few taut, awful, sinking moments of silence. "And it seems as though others have already clarified for you some of the potential consequences of your proposed actions, so I won't hammer that nail."
Her pale eyes lift, finding his again, and this time they are not fixed, hard, do not -- most likely -- make him feel pinned to a wall. When she looks at him again it's like she's patting his shoulder, it's a relief, it's merciful without realizing that mercy was even -- perhaps -- needed.
"I cannot speak for Alicia. I have not even met her. But I know that I value my privacy, and I share the things in my life that cause me pain or frighten me carefully. Many Awakened have suffered, and suffered greatly. Not all of them are eager for their friends to discuss their suffering with strangers." She leaves that there, and her brow furrows a tick, achingly. "Your motives were heartfelt, Elijah, I know that. Your method could just use a little work." A pause. "Pass me that sun-shaped one?" Bright yellow plastic: a circle with seven little triangles pointing outward.
Elijah
He could have dealt with a lot of things, except that. Except disappointment.
And that was what it was. Eleanor, who had become friend enough that she opened her home to him and calm enough that she helped him through not one, but two psychotic episodes- the first of which came upon first meeting her. He could have stomached her being angry, throwing things, yelling at him, he would have preferred any of that, because he knew how to deal with that. Disappointment was different. Disappointment was harder and further reaching because it fractured something different than any blow.
She sighs, soft but not angry. Elijah winces.
--
"I didn't-" oh, right, sun shaped cookie cutter. He hands the cookie cutter over, passes it with ease while he takes a second to organize his thoughts. It's a deliberate choice. Elijah didn't often take moments to organize precisely what it was he was going to think about or say, always half a step away from unloading some stream of consciousness on the hapless soul talking to him. Sometimes, it really is easy to believe he's crazy, though Elijah is most assuredly getting better..
"I just remember being frustrated, because when I talked to people in person, it was like… it was like they didn't care. I tried to explain that she needed help and nobody would do anything."
Eleanor Yates
Eleanor is doing most of the cookie cutting, really. Elijah is sitting on the barstool by the island she works on, talking. And that's okay. She takes the sun-shaped one, thanks him, cuts several suns out. "And that's an understandable frustration," she agrees. "It's upsetting when we feel strongly about something and the people around us don't share it."
Her eyes come up as she reaches for a moon to go with all the suns. It's a crescent-shape, of course. That's how you know, right away, that it's a moon, even if it's just one possible phase. "But how did you decide that she needed help? And how did you decide what form that help should take?"
She's not judging; she's genuinely asking.
Elijah Poirot
He listens.
It's a lot to take in, the duties Eleanor has and the laws this woman lives by. He listens, tries to piece through the words and what they might mean and what they are supposed to mean. It's not just guidelines, to Eleanor these may well be imperatives. He has no idea how deep seeded these beliefs are, where they've come from, but he follows along and listens because he needs the guidance.
And believe us when we say he needs the guidance.
The young man is aimless, or when he does have aims and goals he is ever so slightly off the mark and uncertain where to go. He commits to movement, even if those movements might not be the best of plans. Impulsive, perhaps, is a good word for him. He was paying attention and paying attention… and then it was too much for him and Elijah looked somewhere between overwhelmed with information and hungry.
Probably a bit of both.
"This might just be part of the natural journey of things, and maybe things will just run its course. Grief is kind of hardcore. I don't-" he falters "-I can't figure out how to relate to that. What it's like to lose someone so important, to not know if you really lost them or not."
Eleanor Yates
She knows this thing backwards and forwards, in English and Sanskrit. She recites it to herself on bad days, she recites it to herself when she can't sleep. She lives by it. There are Euthanatoi who heard it once, and accepted it, and do not. Eleanor is not one of them. She meditates on the spokes of the Wheel. She studies the codes of other traditions to compare and contrast, to deepen her own knowledge and wisdom.
Granted, she is also a lecturer. She teaches Law to students who already have one degree under their belt, some of whom have completed graduate degress as well. Some of her students are her age and older, which isn't saying much since she is not very old. She was no prodigy; she just worked very hard, sometimes brutally hard. It's remarkable what you can get done when you use your whole strength,
and even more amazing what you can do when your whole strength includes supernatural, reality-altering abilities.
--
If, perhaps, Elijah's eyes glaze over a bit here and there, Eleanor either doesn't notice or doesn't mind. He is listening, and attending, and then he drifts off course. Eleanor has skipped most of the Chodona, but she glances up at him as she speaks and notes that she's losing him. Switches course and talks about what she knows of the Seers, and their supposed take on the intensity of passions, and their supposed amorality.
He describes grief as hardcore. Eleanor cannot help but huff a small laugh, a barren sound. But he admits he can't relate to it. And she looks at him.
"It doesn't matter if you can relate to it or not. Being a friend to someone in sorrow doesn't require that you know the sorrow intimately yourself." She pauses for a moment. "Would you like a short lesson on how to show empathy and care to someone in pain, particularly pain you can't abate or understand?"
Elijah Poirot
Would you like a short lesson on how to show empathy and care to someone in pain, particularly pain you can't abate or understand?
"Please?" it was yes enough. The sound wasn't desperate, but it was wanting. Elijah was only recently inducted into the realm of being in his twenties instead of in his teens. Young men at twenty are not known for being bastions of empathy, but then again so few people were when they were that young.
Eleanor Yates
Eleanor holds up three fingers. Each goes down in turn. "First, practice saying 'that sucks'. There's a lot of ways to say it, but that's the gist. Hear what they're saying, acknowledge that it sucks, don't question it or argue with it or try to fix it. Just hear them. Just let them know that yes, that sucks.
"Second, ask simply: 'is there anything I can do?'. Then, if you can, do it. If they want you to leave them alone, leave them alone. If they need a hug, give them a hug. If there's nothing you can do, then don't do anything; just sit there with them. Remember that you don't have to do anything that is dangerous or inappropriate for you. It matters that you asked, and it also hands the reins back over to them; they get to decide what happens, and that can help anyone in pain feel a little less helpless. And if they don't know if there's anything you can do, then give it some time. Ask again later.
"Third, just shut up. Let them talk, or cry, or exist, without you filling up the empty space or distracting from the suffering because you're uncomfortable with it. If you care for someone who is grieving, sometimes the first, last, and best thing you can do for them is just be there with them."
Eleanor is quiet a moment. Her eyes are strangely bright. She gives him a tight smile. "Grief is incredibly isolating, Elijah. When you've lost someone, no one else's loss -- even loss of the same person -- quite compares to it. We don't just mourn the person. We mourn what we had with them, and in every case, in every relationship, it is utterly unique. And so it is a desperately lonely thing, to be grieving."
The timer on the oven gives a ding, then another, another, little taps of a bell through the kitchen. Eleanor turns, and gets silicone oven mitts, opening the oven and pulling out the loaded cookie sheets, sniffing while her back is turnd.
Elijah Poirot
[per+aware, waitaminute, is Eleanor talking from personal experience?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 5, 5, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
Elijah Poirot
"Is that why people seem insincere when they're like oh, no, I totally understand because blahblah because it's like they're… like they're trying to force a connection that isn't there? Grief sounds intensely personal."
Which is about when he really looks at Eleanor, catches the brightness in her expression, the tension in her smile. Grief is isolating, and he had his suspicions. The tension that he felt in his stomach, the discomfort. People aren't comfortable with the pain of others, with grief, but he could try. he would try, he would try because this was a lesson on what one does for their friends and Eleanor- who invited him into her home, who baked cookies with him, who talked him through a psychotic break more than once- was his friend.
"This sounds really personal for you… is there anything I can do?" she'd just told him what to do, and now he had to ask. Had to because there was concern on his features and it wasn't just practice, it was a genuine desire.
He could never understand what Eleanor has lost.
Eleanor Yates
"When people say that they understand, I wouldn't say they're insincere. They may be trying to force a connection that isn't there, as you say, but it's not with ill will. Usually it's just ignorance, or perhaps a measure of self-involvement, but most of the time they're just trying to reach out."
She has closed the oven, has set the cookie sheets down, is waving a potholder over the cookies to help cool them. Only so she can decorate them sooner, really.
He says this seems personal. Asks if there's anything he can do. And there's a pause in the way Eleanor looks up at him, eyes first, an alertness there that almost seems sharp. Her hand keeps moving though, waving air over the cookies. After she watches him a moment, she looks back down again.
"No," she says, quiet but even. Considered. "As I said before, I am a rather private person," she adds, which may be the edge of slight affront that someone like him would notice: she didn't bring up her grief. She didn't choose to show it, share it, have it seen. "And we are talking about you and Alicia right now."
Elijah Poirot
"Okay," he replies, as though that was that. He wasn't going to press, which was difficult for him. Elijah had a habit of pushing, and he would push- it wrote out less than beautifully before with a certain red-haired Verbena whom he now suspected he owed a very, very big apology. Provided he could find some way to reach her, that is.
We digress.
It was back on topic for him, eyes going to the cookies and a small sort of anticipation building in his system, even though they were on a fairly serious topic, there would soon enough be cookies to be had and that? That was something. "So, it's not that people are being jerks, it's just that they don't realize that's not the way to go about being around grieving people?"
Eleanor Yates
"Generally," Eleanor confirms. "That's how I see it, at least."
She hands him a small bowl filled with a thin but creamy concoction of icing. There are several of these bowls around the island, each white. She also hands him some gel food coloring droppers. "Make me some yellow and orange and a silver. These are for the suns and moons." She smiles at him.
Elijah Poirot
He did well when he had instructions. And the young man took a second to look over the bowls, not having to read the instructions because, surprisingly enough, he had made icing before. Grant you, it was with his room mate and he'd ended up painting Jenn with frosting by the time he was done, like she was a palate by which he could gauge the appropriate coloring of icing. Or, perhaps, he just did it because he liked hearing her tell him to quit wasting all the icing in some half-hearted lament.
He starts with the yellow, because yellow was easiest to make sunshiny and brought. Elijah looked over the color, was careful to not put in too much lest it not quite end up the right color or it turned out too watery. It went from butter colored to vibrant soon enough, and with that he headed on to making the orange. Orange… took some thinking.
"… I am seriously freaking excited about cookies, Eleanor, I don't have words."
Sure he did. the topic of grief came and went, replaced instead by the topic of sugar cookies, for the world could not be entirely too heavy. For the world could not help but move on, flow from topic to topic until, finally, there was a conclusion. Until, finally, there was colored icing, and Elijah could smile like he was proud of himself. He didn't even try to paint Eleanor with any of it to test it. They grow up so fast.
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