William
"I swear to fucking god, Sam, if there are yetis in Colorado I am moving."
There was a little trek from the trailer to the tree house, if only because William was fascinated with the tree house that Samir had and, frankly, was pretty sure getting drunk or high or both and staring at the umbra (or, you know, watching stupid youtube videos) was a better idea than anything else he had planned this week.
The flight to Baton Rouge had been cancelled, or at the very least that is what Elijah had told his parents. He was pretty sure it was cancelled at least, if only because it was cold and there was a light snow and he couldn't be fucked to try and get on a plane when it was cold and his father acquiesced and said he couldn't dodge Christmas as a result.
His mother told him that he needed to suck it up about the cold. Madeline was from Quebec; she gave no fucks about nineteen degree temperatures and whatever snowy Hell was unleashed upon Denver.
He came prepared, you see, prepared for a long haul which included wearing a backpack and the clothing he had worn for cold weather camping.
Samir
"Are there not?"
Living out in the middle of nowhere has changed Samir. Or maybe Samir recognized in himself the need for change and took the appropriate steps to facilitate that change and the result shows in his bearing and presence. He is more powerful than he was before Elijah went off and came back as William.
He may never get the hang of calling Elijah William. Names are just names and people are just people. Both can change.
Nineteen degrees with eighty-five percent humidity and seven mile-per-hour wind that gusts at times will change a person too. He's acquired waterproof boots and a Carhartt jacket with a hood. With the facial hair and his rangy build he almost looks like someone who is as one with the earth.
Elijah has seen the inside of his trailer. He's too big of a nerd to ever really be at ease out here but he's sure as fuck trying.
"See, I was going to go back to Canada when I left L.A., but then I was like 'But I heard there were yetis in Colorado, fuck going back to Canada.' If there aren't yetis I'm going to be fucking pissed."
William
"We could go check. I mean, yetis fuckin'... aren't they like snowy Sasquatch?"
a beat.
"We could just say fuck it and go to the nearest forested-ie part and, like, look. If we get drunk and have shitty camera skills that makes us perfect yeti-hunting expedition...ers..."
There are things he's noticed. The fact that Samir feels different is one of them, the fact that he does seem different, and it's a good different. Living out in the middle of nowhere appears to have changed something for him in a better way.
Who is to say yet if going to Boston made an impact on William-or-Elijah. He knows the change is hard, hasn't had a chance to tell Grace that he's a real boy now, and hasn't had a chance to call Kalen. Probably should, but he suspects that the time passed would just be marks against him in Kalen's book. He's decided against it.
Samir
Christ it's cold out here.
Sam is dragging a growler full of pumpkin porter and a couple of juice glasses along with them. That they will probably plow through it in the time they're up in the treehouse occurred to him. The juice glasses have cartoon robots on them. They don't make the wind sting any harder when it hits their bare skin but they'll soon be at the treehouse and then he can execute a space-heater program and then.
But Elijah wants to go yeti hunting.
"That sounds like how Troll Hunter started. 'Hey let's get shitty and use our iPhones to go hunt some mythological creatures.'"
Their journey is not a long one. The treehouse is on the borderlands between river and forest. It's just up ahead.
William
"What I'm not hearing is a No, Will, this is a terrible plan," he announces.
By that point, though, they are at the tree house and he offers to help carry things since, well, he had a free hand and was wearing a backpack and all of that jazz. It's freezing outside and the wind makes his lungs hurt but, goddamnit, that means the beer is going to stay cold so he's pretty content to just deal for now.
It is up the way and up the ladder with him.
Samir
He takes hold of Elijah - Will - by the backpack just before he reaches the ladder and steels himself to unzip the thing and deposit the growler in it. Lord knows who else has touched this thing or what all is in there. So he doesn't look inside before he gives it the gallon of nectar and zips it back up.
"Of course it's a terrible plan," Sam says. "We're men. We roll out of bed and piss terrible plans."
Up the ladder with him. Sam waits until he's all the way inside the treehouse before clambering up after him.
William
The kinds of things Hermetics deign to carry around in backpacks are questionable at times. Given who it is, though, the worst one could find was probably an abundance of sharpies and water from a well that has never seen the eyes of man. Or who knows, Samir didn't look and he does find himself listening to the brief sound of glass-on-glass (which made William wince because it's an awful sound to say the least.)
It was soon enough up the way with him, where he waited about as patiently as the young man could before walking close to the edge and looking out at the treeline. He's got a dumb grin on his face, which isn't much different from an expression he always wears.
"Why piss away all our terrible plans when we can live them, and then exaggerate about them later?"
Samir
The question has Sam stopping on the ladder just before he reaches the point where he has to haul himself over the edge. So he ends up standing with gravity pulling at his coat and his elbows on the floor of the treehouse and staring at Will with an expression both deliberate and disgusted.
"Because we have futures," he says as he wrangles a small brick-shaped hunk of plastic and silicon out of his pocket and flips it over. It's not a proper working device. It just pretends to be one when Sam is executing programs. "And like, hopes and dreams and shit. And also, some of us don't like spending half our lives in Quiet."
Next are the two juice glasses. He rolls them towards Will.
"More beer, less logic."
[forces 2: IT'S TOTALLY NOT BELOW FREEZING OUT HERE. -1 practiced rote, -1 using a 'device' as an instrument.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (4, 6, 9) ( success x 4 ) [WP]
William
"Dude, if we start talking about our hopes and dreams, seriously, we're just gonna have to fuckin' move in together and pick out curtains and shit," he tells Samir, hauling the backpack off his shoulders and setting it down like it has precious cargo inside of it.
And it does have precious cargo. It has their beer. And beer, you see, is integral to being able to survive in the wilderness because it has calories and calories are important if you want to... uh... hibernate or something. Out comes the growler and, like a good host, he pours both glasses pretty damn evenly.
Waits for Samir to finish what he's doing to take his dang beer.
Samir
The effect is not immediate. If it were immediate the two of them would need to contact their friendly neighborhood healer. The gradualness makes it difficult to tell that Sam has even done anything but if he put in a little more effort he could make the space heater a permanent fixture of the treehouse.
Maybe he'll start calling this the portable barrel fire program.
Once the program has taken off he slides the hunk of metal into the middle of the treehouse and hauls himself up. Cold and wind have reddened his cheeks. He doesn't even want to sit on the floor knowing how fucking cold it's going to be but there's beer to be had. He takes it from Will after hauling himself up.
"Is that how it works?" he asks. "Fuck..."
William
"Yeah, no. We either have to move in together or we have to have some horrible schism that then makes us tragic and bitter enemies down the road," he nods, "I don't know if that's a literary thing, but were totally friends and then this happened makes for a really good hero/villain combo."
He handed off the glass, raises it high as if he is toasting the idea of being friends who live together or bitter rivals or superheroes or whatever because who the fuck knows what he is toasting to sometimes.
He can feel that something happened, can't quite put a finger on what, precisely, it was but he knew that something happened. Wouldn't be surprised if he pieced it together. Might kick himself for taking so long to learn the rudimentary functions of his own tradition.
Samir
Plenty of friends have turned into antagonists in comic books and serial fiction. It means that Sam can take hold of the glass and lift it in a toast without taking the words too hard to heart.
This sort of program is at odds with Sam's resonance. He has a tendency to work magick that punches through other people's defenses or forces incompatible entities to function together. Bringing things into balance or making them more comfortable is not his jam.
Neither was living out in the middle of nowhere but here they are.
"I call dibs on villain," Sam says after his inaugural glug. "You'd suck at it."
William
He was too busy drinking to get to the point where he could call dibs on being a supervillain. He finishes his drink with a sigh and a look of satisfaction-
"No way, dude, you could totally Peter Parker that up- the guy was a genius. The radioactive spider thing was just a little awkward," he tells Samir.
Elijah has always felt like a disaster. Always. A disaster that tries, yes, but it didn't matter whether or not he was Elijah or William or any number of Names and names you could layer over him. There was still that touch that something was going to fall apart, break up, be thrown into unrest and that's how he functions. Lives in a world where he notices everything except what's in front of him and drowns the rest out.
Wants to be exemplary. Wants to be known for more than his vices. took names to reflect as such.
Samir
"Just a little bit. Way more awkward than the nerdy white guy thing."
Truth be told all of them are disasters striving for ascension. To rise above the human need for order and sense and master their own destinies. The closer to mastery they get the less human they become. Sam is already beginning to think of things in a more alien way than he would have if he had never awakened. Mindscapes and Seekings will do that to a person.
They all have their vices. Sam's Internet search history has probably already landed him on every government watch list that exists.
"Besides, if I was Spiderman, that'd make you Doctor Octopus, and you're not a big enough of nerd to be Doc Ock."
William
"... oh fuck, dude, I want to be John Fucking Constantine."
Samir
"You're not enough of a shithead to be Constantine. You're like, Constantine's origin story."
William
"This is why we need to make bad decisions now so our origin stories don't suck," he tells Samir after taking another drink, "also- thank you for thinking I'm not a shithead, that was actually pretty nice."
Samir
By now the temperature in the treehouse has become quite comfortable. Sam doesn't start undoing his bindings but the wind isn't threatening to julienne them anymore. When he scowls he scowls because of what just came out of Will's mouth.
"That doesn't mean we're getting married or anything. I just don't think you're a shithead."
His robot glass is empty. Sam slides it back towards Will for a refill.
William
"You wouldn't tie my tie, by Hermetic standards we can't get married now. I told you, it's a thing."
He's filling up the robot glass while he's talking. Pretty handy as a bartender, this one, that is until he has something that he has to ddo or has been asked to pour anything other than beer. Glass gets handed back over and Will is busy shucking his coat for now. Or at least unzipping the damn thing.
He pours himself another, just to catch up.
A change of pace.
"So, I leave for Boston, come back, and you're a fuckin' badass- what gives?" says fuckin' badass like he means it.
Samir
I told you, it's a thing.
Exaggerated shrug. Shit happens sometimes. As if he's come to terms with the fact that he would not tie Elijah's goddamn tie for him and is prepared to live with the consequences.
Quick slug of beer. He's starting to fill up. Alcohol has never been his vice. Their lot has plenty of vices but Sam prefers to smoke his. It has fewer calories and doesn't leave empty containers everywhere. He has issues with empty containers.
As for the change of pace:
"Shit, you come back with a new name and me being a fuckin' badass is news?"
William
It didn't matter if he went by Elijah or William, he still got a fair number of calories from drinking. There are consequences to one's actions, yes, but he wasn't old enough to be reaping those consequences just yet. He's not full yet, but William's definition of breakfast still consists of things like pop tarts and whatever leftovers are in the fridge. If he hasn't overdosed yet, it's a wonder the food poisoning hasn't gotten to him.
"The name thing is, like, an integral part of the whole TRadition's experience. It's a layers within layers kinda shit. The fact that I got a new name means, like, that I'm no longer at the bottom of the totem pole. I'm now at the top of the bottom of the totem pole. Rank works different, and being an apprentice blew."
Samir
"The fact that you guys even have rank blows. That's medieval as fuck."
It's 2015 Order of Hermes don't act like you guys don't have diviners and mentalists who are keyed into the zeitgeist and know what's going on in the world. Sam belongs to a tradition that realized the error of its ways and left the fucking Technocracy. He can judge in silence.
William
"The structure keeps a lot of people from going batshit?" he shrugs, like eh! Like he could think less about it, like he wasn't worried and, really, why should he worry?
"A lot of people key into the idea that there are fundamental rules and laws and blahblah about the universe so having this whole hyper organized system to train people and keep connected is pretty fuckin' sweet for people who are, like, incapable of using the internet or can't be trusted with it."
Like Elijah. He does not mention his habits on google. Sam would probably make him go home.
Samir
Sam had nothing better to do the night Grace granted him Ginger access so he read through two years' worth of backlogged entries. He is already well aware of Elijah's extracurricular Google activities. Not to say he doesn't trust him but the more he gets to know this kid the less he's surprised by the fact that he would Google the Technocracy as a fledgling reality deviant.
Rank is one thing. Not having a mentor though. You have to be a little bit paranoid to survive out there without one.
"Folks are about as responsible with the Internet as they are with fire or electricity."
William
"And yet I have the internet and fire and electricity. If I could harness the capabilities of all of these things at once, I would be a god," he tried to let forth his own version of maniacal laughter, but he just ends up laughing anyway because the mental image of controlling the primal forces of the universe (fire, electricity, and internet).
He's up on his feet, though. Big and bright and pleased because wh"And yet I have the internet and fire and electricity. If I could harness the capabilities of all of these things at once, I would be a god," he tried to let forth his own version of maniacal laughter, but he just ends up laughing anyway because the mental image of controlling the primal forces of the universe (fire, electricity, and internet).
He's up on his feet, though. Big and bright and pleased because why shouldn't he be? William is cavalier in the worst ways. Takes risks he has no business taking. And now?
"Yetis?"y shouldn't he be? William is cavalier in the worst ways. Takes risks he has no business taking. And now?
"Yetis?"
William
"And yet I have the internet and fire and electricity. If I could harness the capabilities of all of these things at once, I would be a god," he tried to let forth his own version of maniacal laughter, but he just ends up laughing anyway because the mental image of controlling the primal forces of the universe (fire, electricity, and internet).
He's up on his feet, though. Big and bright and pleased because why shouldn't he be? William is cavalier in the worst ways. Takes risks he has no business taking. And now?
"Yetis?"
(aha! Now with 33% less glitch!)
Samir
That makes Sam frown. He could harness the capabilities of all those things at once. This appears to be where his prediction that he would be the villain and Will would be the hero falls short: he does not look comfortable with the thought of referring to himself or anyone else as a god.
Will's attempt at laughing like a despot knocks a crooked smile out of the Virtual Adept anyway. And then he distracts him by mentioning yetis. Sam does not get up to join him yet.
"You can't be drunk already."
Says the guy who has the alcohol tolerance of a freshman college girl.
William
"If we're waiting for me to get drunk, we're going to be here all night," he admits, shrugs it off and dusts off his butt.
this is like watching a golden retriever get excited about a tennis ball.
Pour himself another glass and takes a drink anyway.
Samir
"Just so we're clear..."
Sam is not in a huge hurry to pound down his beer. First of all it's delicious. Second of all it's dense. Third of all it's loaded with alcohol. This is an excellent point but at this point he's arguing for the sake of arguing.
He does slug down his second juice glass of beer as if he's taking a large shot. Points at Will using the hand holding the cup.
"You're proposing going out into the woods to hunt a mythological creature with only your smartphone and my sense of self-preservation to guide us, and you wanna be sober while you do this?" He grabs hold of the growler and refills his own cup. One for the road. "If we almost get eaten again, I'm blaming you, dick."
Onward.
William
"I will totally actively attempt to make sure you don't get eaten. I could even make you bulletproof," he tells Samir. He's pretty serious about that, all things considered. Surely, William could do any number of things if he put his mind to it and, right now, his mind was on finding some mythological creature.
"I try not to do anything too stupid unless the other person is down."
See? he has learned something. Onward!
Samir
If they're going to leave his impromptu space heater in the space they're no longer occupying then Sam is going to kill the program and free some of his RAM.
It's cold as shit compared to the treehouse or even the trailer which he keeps warm using the same program but only as warm as is necessary to ensure he doesn't freeze to death in his sleep. Nineteen degrees is cold regardless of how one would care to define 'cold.'
A long-suffering sigh blown out of his lungs as steam and then Sam is following Will down the ladder. Off into the woods they go. Like a couple of fairytale fuckheads who hadn't learned anything at all.
William
And it is down the ladder with him and he waits, patient with his backpack on his shoulders while he zips up his coat and looks at the tree line. His hands go to his back pocket, and out comes his cell phone. He flicks a few buttons, takes a second to pan on the distance ahead of them.
"So, here we are, hunting for yetis and... I don't know... making peace with their people or some shit. Onward, to diplomacy!"
He looked up at the treehouse again, shrugs and tromps along. Looks back at Samir for a minute.
"Hey, lemme know if you get cold?"
Samir
Back down on the ground Sam puts up his hood and turns his fingerless gloves into mittens. It's still fucking cold. Maybe not cold enough to instantly freeze the insides of his nostrils but it feels like it. He doesn't want to breathe through his nose to find out.
If the phone is still aimed at Sam he doesn't appear to exhibit any anxiety over having his image committed to data.
"Motherfucker, I'm freezing."
He glugs down his third juice glass of beer before pocketing it. It's too cold for liquids.
William
[Forces 2- it's freaking cold. diff 3+2=5]
Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (5, 6) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
William
[And a little more]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (3, 6) ( success x 1 )
William
He turns the camera around, has done a good job of keeping Samir's visage off the camera because... well... the guy doesn't even use an icon of himself on Skype. Of course he isn't going to end up on camera. He does not, however, turn the camera off in time to not catch the statement that Samir is freezing.
Back in the pocket.
"If you are a dreamer, come in," he announces,
"if you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,
a hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer...
If you're a pretender, come sit by my fire
for we have some flax-golden tales to spin."
Consecrated words, brief. Words, none the less. Pats him on the arm and continues along the way. As though the words made the cold stop, as though the recitation and the fact that they are going off on an adventure was enough to tell the weather to politely fuck off.
They have flaw-golden tales to spin.
Samir
Watching his friends Work is strange when they don't share his paradigm. It's a combination of their magick not having any logical basis and seeming to come from within the caster themselves and not coming about because of the execution of an instrument. Even the space heater he slapped together had to take commands from his deck.
At least Will has the sense to turn off his recorder before reciting a spell and making the world around him a little less unbearable.
"So what now? Should we start yelling 'Here Yeti Yeti Yeti'?"
William
"We scan for localized life forms and their general location and hope that yetis are friendly?" he smiles big and bright.
His work is strange, and the preparations don't seem to make sense. Why saying a few words and waving his hand or speaking like he is a herald of some forgotten celestine has little basis for most people. But it comes down to a simple fact- it came about because He Said So. Because his word can become law if he asserted the truth well and hard enough.
"Aaaaand I can make sure our most probable future doesn't end with us getting eaten by wolves."
Samir
This is all Will's show. He's chosen a skeptic as his traveling companion for this venture. As far as Will can tell Sam is just doing this to indulge something stupid that he'd said earlier and he's banking on the fact that Will is going to realize with a quickness how unfruitful this venture is and they can go back inside the trailer and play Fallout 4 or something the rest of the night.
This is gearing up to be the longest he's been outside since he bought the Airstream. Figures it's nearing winter and he's with someone who may be more insane than he is.
"I don't know shit about localized life forms. This is all you, champ."
William
"You're going to be Sancho to my Quixote?"
Oh no. It's a challenge now. Now they have to find something because there is his weird pride as an awkward adventurer and he's still relatively sober so he doesn't have anything to really blame this on. this is William's natural state- ready to do something incredibly stupid at a moment's notice.
Exhales and bites his tongue. Waits for blood and the connections that come with it.
[Life 1- scanning for life forms? Let's just keep this up and trek out into the wilderness]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (3, 10) ( success x 1 )
William
[for reals, though]
Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (9, 10) ( success x 2 )
Samir
"Why do I have to be an illiterate squire?"
Because Sancho Panza was the precursor to the sidekick and he was the everyman of that particular story if you ignore the fact that at the end of the story he tries to convince Quijote that the two of them should become pastoral shepherds when Quijote is on his deathbed. Duh Samir. That's the joke.
Sounds like a rhetorical question. Will is doing his filthy pagan nonsense over there and Sam is debating whether he wants to brave lighting a cigarette.
William
He eventually proclaims triumph, throws his hands into the air and continues on along into the wilderness with little more than his desire to go wander into the unknown and hasn't quite gotten the urge to pull out his camera yet.
"So, seriously, I come back with a new name and you are all shiny and cool and shit, what gives?" whilst continuing along for the tree line and chasing what are the first signs of actual life he can detect.
Thursday, November 26, 2015
Thursday, November 19, 2015
Hi, Pen
William
William was weirdly invested in gallery openings in the district, even more weird now that Jenn was actually in LA and he had several thousand dollars worth of her work on the walls of his apartment and it was feeling a little weird for it to all be there. Like, until Jenn moved her things, it was like this weird shrine to his best friend's success. He didn't feel right with them not being there, either. The walls ha dturned into a place for either of them to actually do what it was that they did.
He works in chalk dust and no matter how hard one scrubs the vestiges of truth and revelation stays there. His apartment feels like the base for a rebellion, like the kind of place where revolutions are born. Kalen might be proud of him, if Kalen knew to look and if there wasn't such a strange rift still bleeding there that William had no idea how to span. He hasn't told him yet how initiation went, knows he's still in a foreign country so he doesn't press the problem.
He gets on at the second floor and has a box of light fixtures with him. He was invested in gallery oipenings, but that didn't mean he was a spectator who just came to them. No, he was here because someone actually needed help opening the gallery. That meant labor. The young man was in town for a few more days, didn't mind labor.
He's wearing jeans and he's got paint on his shirt. Looks like he's there to work.
mercury
The elevator never goes anywhere, doors open and doors close, people get off and people get on, an elevator is a tower; when the tower opens to admit William, there is already someone inside - a someone whose spine is just curved to touch the elevator walls, whose arms are not crossed, hands braced on the elevator's rail, whose reflection is a suggestive shiver in the elevator's gold-plated glass, whose toe is precisely pressed against a flaw in the elevator's tiling where the simple but graceful art deco (this is an art deco elevator this is a nice elevator this is a reflective elevator) tiling is beginning to peel up and away.
The someone is a woman in her mid-to-late twenties or late-to-early thirties that long golden afternoon age and she has a strong jaw and she looks like a painting, her hair the shade of fire caught in Czech garnet and falling over her shoulder in ripples, thick hair thick bangs, a layered oil painting, all self-possessed and witchery see all self-possessed and wishful all self possession and possession is a fever and fever is poetry or love ardency contained boom.
The woman is Ms. P. Mercury-Mars and Ms. P. Mercury Mars is wearing a dark green knappy orchestra-band jacket with embroidery at the large cuffs the better to hide a dagger or a wand something to wreck your shit m'dear and beneath that jacket some almost-flowy thing which adds another royal color to the mix and then a pair of snakeskin pants and boots the laces of which have been tied very dashingly. Daringly, even.
When the second floor elevator door opens and William gets in P. Mercury Mars looks at him directly, and any blink which follows (languorous) after is physiology, and if William is the kind of young man who meets gazes directly. William is a young man who is the recipient of a burning embers on a cold night sort of smile.
mercury
ooc: grr! or latetwenties-to-early thirties it should say, obvs.
William
He has never been accused of being coy, and meets her gaze head on. Little ball of chaos in a nearly six foot tall package. William is a handsome young man, but it is to say this- he is a young man. He's tall and lanky and smiles like he is a host of bad decisions waiting to be opened up to the world. He's holding a box full of light fixtures and this building with this elevator- this rather lovely elevator- holds a woman who is striking and who knows precisely what she is doing.
Embers set close to stacks of paper, ready to go up like kindling, this one. Green eyes flick to the indicator panel, to see if they're going to the same place. Back to her.
"Your coat is fantastic," he announces. Isn't wearing a coat himself. He's been going between the basement and the seventh floor all day. He's probably an intern. William always gave the impression of an intern, someone you don't pay for the amount of trouble they cause but they cause it so beautifully that you scarcely mind the kind of trouble that comes with them. The young bring life with them.
mercury
They appear to be going to the same level, round mellow yellow with age button illuminated trace of red in the illumination like a stain of cola in otherwise pure water. William announces, and Ms. Mercury responds, shrugging both shoulders with muted vibrance, listing an inch to one side and side of her neck swan-long exposed all to execute the perfect asymmetrical shrug, pleased lines around the corner of her mouth the burning ember flicked fanned brighter and more smouldery for a moment with an aw shucks tucked like a thorn in the middle of all that composure.
"Consignment shops are filled with the fabulous," she says, meaning precisely that. "They consign their riches to rags and when I am very fortunate I pounce. There are too many fantastic coats in the world for one woman. I'd return the favor and pay you a compliment, but that seems to be a very average box."
William
"I am a man cursed with average boxes," he says, sounds almost sad as though it were an actual curse, "forever burdened to hold the attentions and imaginings of remarkable women with little more than my wits and LED light fixtures from IKEA. I'm a little like a modern Atlas that way, but instead of the overwhelming burden of the earth I'm just stuck with the mild burden of a box."
A beat.
"Baby steps."
mercury
"IKEA?" Ms. Mercury says, coming out of the sway-shrug elegance made over into kinetic energy different from grace she's a touch too raw for real grace for practiced grace for the sort of grace that looks unpracticed, and laughter is contained too: a warmth instead of a hint though her eyes are sparkling. They're the pale blue of swords, reflecting some bright thing.
"Then you're a brave man. IKEA has actual minotaurs. They eat people and happiness. You're a good friend to risk it. I'm assuming;" the acknowledgment of assumption is as close as Ms. Mercury-Mars actually gets to an apology, but it's a social move followed by a beat.
It clearly does not occur to her to, in this context, give a fuck about how weird this conversation might be to someone other than a young artist or whatever it is William is. But let's find out.
"Are you somebody's friend or are you presently at your work?"
William
Ms. Mercury-Mars is proof that poetry exists in the fabric of humanity. The way her eyes look, the way that her laughter sounds that isn't quite laughter but, again, like embers. So many things about her like energy, something raw with the veneer of being less raw.
"I'm a working friend," he said, "I'm not getting paid to carry boxes, if that's what you mean. Friend of a friend and nobody knows how to build flats and false rooms and partitions so! Here I am. There's a gallery opening on the seventh floor in a week."
The elevator, this elevator, is slow to move. Shudders when it does and gives a quick shake as though it has intentions of giving up. There's a flicker of the lights; William doesn't seem to really notice.
"Sometimes, I like to build things."
mercury
The woman listens with the attention due the information, and her face should have been painted on a harpy or a siren; but then, take the spirit out of the face, and what is it? Shapes, dimensions.
"Ah. I see. Do you know Ben?" Beat.
"Are you Ben?" Warmth in the tone, again, the after-thaw - that first kiss of firelight when it's just a dream of skin.
Ben is on the seventh floor, Ben is one of the showrunners, Ms. Mercury-Mars' interest in Ben is strictly voracious: he advertised an antique wardrobe on craigslist and someone wants it.
William
"I'm not currently Ben, but this-" he picks up the box again and shakes it a little "-happens to be his box of light fixtures. He's a decent guy, I just don't trust him with power tools."
mercury
"It's something to know one's new furniture is coming from a good home," Ms. P. Mercury-Mars says and somebody could say that flippantly and somebody else could say that with too much gravity but she has the right balance between, like she means it. The elevator stops and sputters and is really very slow, but the seventh floor will be reached in time; the light shivers on the arching Art Deco sundial, finally lights up a minor glow all the sunrays filled and the door dings open. Seventh floor.
"Do you trust him with heavy lifting? I intend on convincing him to deliver."
William
"The guy owns one of those vans that would be considered creepy in any other instance except for the fact that he's an artist who likes to work in gigantic installation pieces? I'll bet you could get him to deliver if you offered him a beer on the way back- something in the IPA variety usually gets him to do any number of things."
Ah, a sage of people, one who knows this Ben fellow well enough to know his beer of choice, what vices to ply when one needs to get something done.
"Probably not delivering tonight, though. Would probably take more than one beer to get same day delivery."
mercury
The elevator door is open but William and P. Mercury Mars are still in the elevator. The woman stands straight; her shoulders are back; her posture is good without work Venus in a half-shell quicksilver in a glass an element a card. She is not taller than William and her heels are not so high.
"Thank you for the tip," and holds the elevator door open with her elbow and her back, because William is holding a box and he has just been kind so she is frank: "I rather believe I would have recruited you to do some of my heavy lifting otherwise. But I'll need to check for curses before delivery anyway. Care to point out my quarry?"
William
"You know, you could recruit my help anyway- keeps Ben from having to get out in this mess and I get the joy of your company," he said, casual as can be and he's nodded off in the direction that they needed to go. To Ben, of course, because like the Wizard it would seem the Tin Man has business with him as well as Dorothy. They're just headed to the same place.
"And making sure what you're bringing home isn't cursed? Incredibly important."
Oh, damn, almost sounds like he means it, too.
mercury
He knows what Ben looks like. He's one up on P. Mercury Mars. Penelope. Pen. Pen who follows William's lead with a certain (elegant swagger) self-possessed assurance, not outstriding him now that her quarry's in her sights because William is pleasant and he has a body and the body can also do heavy lifting.
Her eyebrows flick. He might've been flippant he might be almost serious but Pen is absolutely serious, without anything but a hint of gravity touching her eyes and the corner of her mouth but social ease is honey sweet melted heat here and she says,
"Isn't it the truth? I could tell you stories." Is she teasing him? There's a glint in her eye; inconclusive. "And," laughter. "Offered bravely, and like a man who doesn't know how many stairs lead to my apartment. I'll accept your offer if you're not frightened of stairs."
Ben is Benjamin and Benjamin is bold a nappy haired tall drink of water with thick square glasses and a rangy sort of musculature. Ben says, "'Sup, Eli." Or maybe he calls him William, maybe Elijah's changed his names all over. "Jah. Did you bring them all?" Greedy hands for the box and a flicker of a glance for Pen then a nod-up smile and a "Hey."
William
"I've stared down dragons and a starless sky, stairs got nothin' on me," he shoots her a grin. She may be teasing but he takes it in stride, beams and has the light that only comes with being young and indestructible. gthere are things he's worked on, things that he's held close, the idea that the world won't unmake him unless someone deigns to literally unmake him.
But there are things to tend to, and that thing happens to involve the mission full of light fixtures.
Ben calls him Eli. Eli-Jah. He seems to respond to it, shoots him a bright and pleased smile. The box of light fixtures are thrust outward, prone to exaggeration and he laughs in the way one can only laugh when they are getting rid of the terrible burden of IKEA fixtures. "Everything you kept in the basement- though I think I'm getting stolen for armoir moving duty for a bit. You have, dear sir, someone inquiring about your stuff."
mercury
"Oh god. That thing," Ben says.
"With the clawed feet," Pen says.
"It's a monster."
"I think the going rate for monsters is ten dollars," Pen says. "Some wiggle room after the piece has been inspected, of course." Pen is beguiling; she isn't smiling but one doesn't need to smile (there's a spark, a careful recognition).
"Hey now wait, monsters go for more than ten in cer-tain neigh-bor-hoods. I was hoping for..."
"Extra for delivery? Naturally. A dollar for every stair."
"How many stairs?"
"The best adventure is a mystery."
"I'm no adventurer. Elijah..." because Ben is charmed, rapid patter does that sometimes "...Has my keys."
"But you've got its history, yes?"
"Yeah. I mean, kind of. It was my grandmother's. She got it from her father. Beyond that, I dunno. It might fetch a pretty price at an antique market but," Ben grins at Elijah, "ain't no artist like me got time for that bullshit. Maybe he can show you the - ?"
"What do you think?" Pen says to Elijah, measured.
William
"Show her the furniture, deliver the piece- I'm basically the keeper of all furniture-related mystery," he tells Ben, grins happily to be released from his box-related servitude and it is away with him.
The armoire, of course, isn't terribly hard to find. William has headed off on his way and eventually (because walking can be done so easily) they are there.
"It's a Louis the fifteenth style cabinet-" he starts "-it needs to be refinished because someone in, like, the sixties decided they were going to paint the damned thing turquoise and, fuck I'll be honest it really dinged up a perfectly fantastic piece."
He stops, and they are there. And he beams.
"It's deep enough that you can put a false back in, though, if you're a carpenter and like having hiding places."
mercury
They walk. They talk. They arrive at Ben's not-too-far-away place, just around the corner. The woman who looks like or holds herself like or conjures up the image of a painting of some red-haired enchantress eyes the van parked in the front, just far enough away from the fire hydrant to be legal. The armoire is met with a rather fierce look and Pen puts her thumb under her chin curls her forefinger over the corner of her mouth and cants her head while she inspects it.
"Narnia?" Pen reaches out to open the armoire up, and says over her shoulder, "It would be rash to step inside without checking first, don't you think?"
But she has lent herself to concentration: little armoire do you feel like a curse like a disaster like resonance sleeping a brief paying attention to her hunch her magickal intuition.
[Perc Awareness because yeah?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 6, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )
William
And it feels, oh how it feels, not cursed or broken or anything of the sort but it has memories. If she touched it, if she looked too long it knew what it was, knew where it had been, had seen cities and unruly grand children. It was a piece who had the feeling of fondness and, perhaps, a touch of where the magical world had brushed against it.
No, the most prevalent feeling of magic that came there was not from the furniture but, instead, from her companion. Ardent ball of chaos that he is.
"I don't think I'm being adequately compensated to accidentally end up in Narnia."
mercury
The woman's hand on the edge of the armoire is a strong statement, a shout of ballad-pale milk-pale skin and jewelry (stones and metalwork) against the turquoise painted scarred and scratched wood. The woman's hand is a pause; a punctuation. Her attention swerves (swoops! kingfishers flash flame--!) from the deep armoire claws as promised to her companion.
"But what about purposefully?" she says, after a slender pause. Her eyebrows flick again. C'mere. C'mon. She sounds as if she'd casually saunter into Narnia, pulling a sword from who knows where; she sounds as if she'd know what she was doing.
William
"I'd do it for free if it were on purpose."
mercury
"What's your compensation, then? Where's the satisfaction? A will to act?" Gallant, she opens the wardrobe wide: does not quite lean against it but tests the door with both hands. Her muscles bunch and then she swings herself up into the wardrobe. This isn't graceful: this doesn't lack for grace. Pen is a woman, flesh and blood (as ardent as a first kiss, a last kiss, a kiss good night a kiss good bye a kiss good as blood pressure spiking ardent as a purpose is as clasping hands together hope a spark the heart of wood turning to ash), and her coat goes sweep! swept, swoosh.
William
"I get a story out of it, and a good story too- for the price of getting a little sweaty and a little dirty I get an opportunity-"
and the wardrobe is flung wide and she is stepping in. He doesn't know her, hasn't even exchanged names but he steps in anyway and finds himself surprised at the fact that the armoir is spacious enough that it can in fact, hold two full grown adults.
"And sometimes that opportunity is the chance to be immortal without having the burden of being immortal. It's a win for me."
mercury
"You want to leave a mark?"
The wardrobe smells of old wood, melancholy brilliance; of many years, of the warmth nestled in every tree, of trees, the old wood smells of acrylic paint and pear and it smells of green beneath the rest.
"Be a line of poetry: something rich and strange, something full of sound and fury, ubiquitous and glittering?"
This isn't how she'd talk to everybody but it's how she chooses to talk to William once they're settled in the wardrobe. It might be the kind that once closed from the inside would trap a little kid, but
(daring)
wouldn't that be a funny story. She swings the door shut.
William
"Who doesn't want to leave a mark? It would be sad to wake up and think I want to live a life that is forgotten by all, and when I am gone there will be nothing but dust in my wake. Maybe a line of poetry," he says, and this isn't how he talks all the time, but it's just so much fun. She has such a give and a take and she's like a living verse.
And now he's in a wardrobe with her.
"It's better than just being a metaphor."
mercury
"Ah, but a metaphor is useful. For instance, a mark - " and even in the dark wardrobe (because of course it's dark now; that's what happens when you fucking shut yourself into a wardrobe. This is an old piece of furniture. There are no chinks. No light let in, straying sneaking across the floor. Pen's shoulders touch against the side; she rests the flat of her boot against the wall opposite the one she's leaning against. More self-possessed than ever, sans aloofness. " - what kind of mark? Would you be satisfied with any scratch as long as it stayed or would you rather have it be a letter? A word? Messages?"
William
"A metaphor is useful but a metaphor is singular, why be one when you can be a collection of them?" he says, turns and takes in what is around him. It's quiet in there. It's dark enough that the presence of another person is more felt than seen, and he lives in a world where things are felt instead of seen.
"There's a hierarchy of marks I would rather leave. If I had my way I'd be... huh, you know, I never boiled myself down to a form? Are you more of a sonnet or free verse?"
William was weirdly invested in gallery openings in the district, even more weird now that Jenn was actually in LA and he had several thousand dollars worth of her work on the walls of his apartment and it was feeling a little weird for it to all be there. Like, until Jenn moved her things, it was like this weird shrine to his best friend's success. He didn't feel right with them not being there, either. The walls ha dturned into a place for either of them to actually do what it was that they did.
He works in chalk dust and no matter how hard one scrubs the vestiges of truth and revelation stays there. His apartment feels like the base for a rebellion, like the kind of place where revolutions are born. Kalen might be proud of him, if Kalen knew to look and if there wasn't such a strange rift still bleeding there that William had no idea how to span. He hasn't told him yet how initiation went, knows he's still in a foreign country so he doesn't press the problem.
He gets on at the second floor and has a box of light fixtures with him. He was invested in gallery oipenings, but that didn't mean he was a spectator who just came to them. No, he was here because someone actually needed help opening the gallery. That meant labor. The young man was in town for a few more days, didn't mind labor.
He's wearing jeans and he's got paint on his shirt. Looks like he's there to work.
mercury
The elevator never goes anywhere, doors open and doors close, people get off and people get on, an elevator is a tower; when the tower opens to admit William, there is already someone inside - a someone whose spine is just curved to touch the elevator walls, whose arms are not crossed, hands braced on the elevator's rail, whose reflection is a suggestive shiver in the elevator's gold-plated glass, whose toe is precisely pressed against a flaw in the elevator's tiling where the simple but graceful art deco (this is an art deco elevator this is a nice elevator this is a reflective elevator) tiling is beginning to peel up and away.
The someone is a woman in her mid-to-late twenties or late-to-early thirties that long golden afternoon age and she has a strong jaw and she looks like a painting, her hair the shade of fire caught in Czech garnet and falling over her shoulder in ripples, thick hair thick bangs, a layered oil painting, all self-possessed and witchery see all self-possessed and wishful all self possession and possession is a fever and fever is poetry or love ardency contained boom.
The woman is Ms. P. Mercury-Mars and Ms. P. Mercury Mars is wearing a dark green knappy orchestra-band jacket with embroidery at the large cuffs the better to hide a dagger or a wand something to wreck your shit m'dear and beneath that jacket some almost-flowy thing which adds another royal color to the mix and then a pair of snakeskin pants and boots the laces of which have been tied very dashingly. Daringly, even.
When the second floor elevator door opens and William gets in P. Mercury Mars looks at him directly, and any blink which follows (languorous) after is physiology, and if William is the kind of young man who meets gazes directly. William is a young man who is the recipient of a burning embers on a cold night sort of smile.
mercury
ooc: grr! or latetwenties-to-early thirties it should say, obvs.
William
He has never been accused of being coy, and meets her gaze head on. Little ball of chaos in a nearly six foot tall package. William is a handsome young man, but it is to say this- he is a young man. He's tall and lanky and smiles like he is a host of bad decisions waiting to be opened up to the world. He's holding a box full of light fixtures and this building with this elevator- this rather lovely elevator- holds a woman who is striking and who knows precisely what she is doing.
Embers set close to stacks of paper, ready to go up like kindling, this one. Green eyes flick to the indicator panel, to see if they're going to the same place. Back to her.
"Your coat is fantastic," he announces. Isn't wearing a coat himself. He's been going between the basement and the seventh floor all day. He's probably an intern. William always gave the impression of an intern, someone you don't pay for the amount of trouble they cause but they cause it so beautifully that you scarcely mind the kind of trouble that comes with them. The young bring life with them.
mercury
They appear to be going to the same level, round mellow yellow with age button illuminated trace of red in the illumination like a stain of cola in otherwise pure water. William announces, and Ms. Mercury responds, shrugging both shoulders with muted vibrance, listing an inch to one side and side of her neck swan-long exposed all to execute the perfect asymmetrical shrug, pleased lines around the corner of her mouth the burning ember flicked fanned brighter and more smouldery for a moment with an aw shucks tucked like a thorn in the middle of all that composure.
"Consignment shops are filled with the fabulous," she says, meaning precisely that. "They consign their riches to rags and when I am very fortunate I pounce. There are too many fantastic coats in the world for one woman. I'd return the favor and pay you a compliment, but that seems to be a very average box."
William
"I am a man cursed with average boxes," he says, sounds almost sad as though it were an actual curse, "forever burdened to hold the attentions and imaginings of remarkable women with little more than my wits and LED light fixtures from IKEA. I'm a little like a modern Atlas that way, but instead of the overwhelming burden of the earth I'm just stuck with the mild burden of a box."
A beat.
"Baby steps."
mercury
"IKEA?" Ms. Mercury says, coming out of the sway-shrug elegance made over into kinetic energy different from grace she's a touch too raw for real grace for practiced grace for the sort of grace that looks unpracticed, and laughter is contained too: a warmth instead of a hint though her eyes are sparkling. They're the pale blue of swords, reflecting some bright thing.
"Then you're a brave man. IKEA has actual minotaurs. They eat people and happiness. You're a good friend to risk it. I'm assuming;" the acknowledgment of assumption is as close as Ms. Mercury-Mars actually gets to an apology, but it's a social move followed by a beat.
It clearly does not occur to her to, in this context, give a fuck about how weird this conversation might be to someone other than a young artist or whatever it is William is. But let's find out.
"Are you somebody's friend or are you presently at your work?"
William
Ms. Mercury-Mars is proof that poetry exists in the fabric of humanity. The way her eyes look, the way that her laughter sounds that isn't quite laughter but, again, like embers. So many things about her like energy, something raw with the veneer of being less raw.
"I'm a working friend," he said, "I'm not getting paid to carry boxes, if that's what you mean. Friend of a friend and nobody knows how to build flats and false rooms and partitions so! Here I am. There's a gallery opening on the seventh floor in a week."
The elevator, this elevator, is slow to move. Shudders when it does and gives a quick shake as though it has intentions of giving up. There's a flicker of the lights; William doesn't seem to really notice.
"Sometimes, I like to build things."
mercury
The woman listens with the attention due the information, and her face should have been painted on a harpy or a siren; but then, take the spirit out of the face, and what is it? Shapes, dimensions.
"Ah. I see. Do you know Ben?" Beat.
"Are you Ben?" Warmth in the tone, again, the after-thaw - that first kiss of firelight when it's just a dream of skin.
Ben is on the seventh floor, Ben is one of the showrunners, Ms. Mercury-Mars' interest in Ben is strictly voracious: he advertised an antique wardrobe on craigslist and someone wants it.
William
"I'm not currently Ben, but this-" he picks up the box again and shakes it a little "-happens to be his box of light fixtures. He's a decent guy, I just don't trust him with power tools."
mercury
"It's something to know one's new furniture is coming from a good home," Ms. P. Mercury-Mars says and somebody could say that flippantly and somebody else could say that with too much gravity but she has the right balance between, like she means it. The elevator stops and sputters and is really very slow, but the seventh floor will be reached in time; the light shivers on the arching Art Deco sundial, finally lights up a minor glow all the sunrays filled and the door dings open. Seventh floor.
"Do you trust him with heavy lifting? I intend on convincing him to deliver."
William
"The guy owns one of those vans that would be considered creepy in any other instance except for the fact that he's an artist who likes to work in gigantic installation pieces? I'll bet you could get him to deliver if you offered him a beer on the way back- something in the IPA variety usually gets him to do any number of things."
Ah, a sage of people, one who knows this Ben fellow well enough to know his beer of choice, what vices to ply when one needs to get something done.
"Probably not delivering tonight, though. Would probably take more than one beer to get same day delivery."
mercury
The elevator door is open but William and P. Mercury Mars are still in the elevator. The woman stands straight; her shoulders are back; her posture is good without work Venus in a half-shell quicksilver in a glass an element a card. She is not taller than William and her heels are not so high.
"Thank you for the tip," and holds the elevator door open with her elbow and her back, because William is holding a box and he has just been kind so she is frank: "I rather believe I would have recruited you to do some of my heavy lifting otherwise. But I'll need to check for curses before delivery anyway. Care to point out my quarry?"
William
"You know, you could recruit my help anyway- keeps Ben from having to get out in this mess and I get the joy of your company," he said, casual as can be and he's nodded off in the direction that they needed to go. To Ben, of course, because like the Wizard it would seem the Tin Man has business with him as well as Dorothy. They're just headed to the same place.
"And making sure what you're bringing home isn't cursed? Incredibly important."
Oh, damn, almost sounds like he means it, too.
mercury
He knows what Ben looks like. He's one up on P. Mercury Mars. Penelope. Pen. Pen who follows William's lead with a certain (elegant swagger) self-possessed assurance, not outstriding him now that her quarry's in her sights because William is pleasant and he has a body and the body can also do heavy lifting.
Her eyebrows flick. He might've been flippant he might be almost serious but Pen is absolutely serious, without anything but a hint of gravity touching her eyes and the corner of her mouth but social ease is honey sweet melted heat here and she says,
"Isn't it the truth? I could tell you stories." Is she teasing him? There's a glint in her eye; inconclusive. "And," laughter. "Offered bravely, and like a man who doesn't know how many stairs lead to my apartment. I'll accept your offer if you're not frightened of stairs."
Ben is Benjamin and Benjamin is bold a nappy haired tall drink of water with thick square glasses and a rangy sort of musculature. Ben says, "'Sup, Eli." Or maybe he calls him William, maybe Elijah's changed his names all over. "Jah. Did you bring them all?" Greedy hands for the box and a flicker of a glance for Pen then a nod-up smile and a "Hey."
William
"I've stared down dragons and a starless sky, stairs got nothin' on me," he shoots her a grin. She may be teasing but he takes it in stride, beams and has the light that only comes with being young and indestructible. gthere are things he's worked on, things that he's held close, the idea that the world won't unmake him unless someone deigns to literally unmake him.
But there are things to tend to, and that thing happens to involve the mission full of light fixtures.
Ben calls him Eli. Eli-Jah. He seems to respond to it, shoots him a bright and pleased smile. The box of light fixtures are thrust outward, prone to exaggeration and he laughs in the way one can only laugh when they are getting rid of the terrible burden of IKEA fixtures. "Everything you kept in the basement- though I think I'm getting stolen for armoir moving duty for a bit. You have, dear sir, someone inquiring about your stuff."
mercury
"Oh god. That thing," Ben says.
"With the clawed feet," Pen says.
"It's a monster."
"I think the going rate for monsters is ten dollars," Pen says. "Some wiggle room after the piece has been inspected, of course." Pen is beguiling; she isn't smiling but one doesn't need to smile (there's a spark, a careful recognition).
"Hey now wait, monsters go for more than ten in cer-tain neigh-bor-hoods. I was hoping for..."
"Extra for delivery? Naturally. A dollar for every stair."
"How many stairs?"
"The best adventure is a mystery."
"I'm no adventurer. Elijah..." because Ben is charmed, rapid patter does that sometimes "...Has my keys."
"But you've got its history, yes?"
"Yeah. I mean, kind of. It was my grandmother's. She got it from her father. Beyond that, I dunno. It might fetch a pretty price at an antique market but," Ben grins at Elijah, "ain't no artist like me got time for that bullshit. Maybe he can show you the - ?"
"What do you think?" Pen says to Elijah, measured.
William
"Show her the furniture, deliver the piece- I'm basically the keeper of all furniture-related mystery," he tells Ben, grins happily to be released from his box-related servitude and it is away with him.
The armoire, of course, isn't terribly hard to find. William has headed off on his way and eventually (because walking can be done so easily) they are there.
"It's a Louis the fifteenth style cabinet-" he starts "-it needs to be refinished because someone in, like, the sixties decided they were going to paint the damned thing turquoise and, fuck I'll be honest it really dinged up a perfectly fantastic piece."
He stops, and they are there. And he beams.
"It's deep enough that you can put a false back in, though, if you're a carpenter and like having hiding places."
mercury
They walk. They talk. They arrive at Ben's not-too-far-away place, just around the corner. The woman who looks like or holds herself like or conjures up the image of a painting of some red-haired enchantress eyes the van parked in the front, just far enough away from the fire hydrant to be legal. The armoire is met with a rather fierce look and Pen puts her thumb under her chin curls her forefinger over the corner of her mouth and cants her head while she inspects it.
"Narnia?" Pen reaches out to open the armoire up, and says over her shoulder, "It would be rash to step inside without checking first, don't you think?"
But she has lent herself to concentration: little armoire do you feel like a curse like a disaster like resonance sleeping a brief paying attention to her hunch her magickal intuition.
[Perc Awareness because yeah?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 6, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )
William
And it feels, oh how it feels, not cursed or broken or anything of the sort but it has memories. If she touched it, if she looked too long it knew what it was, knew where it had been, had seen cities and unruly grand children. It was a piece who had the feeling of fondness and, perhaps, a touch of where the magical world had brushed against it.
No, the most prevalent feeling of magic that came there was not from the furniture but, instead, from her companion. Ardent ball of chaos that he is.
"I don't think I'm being adequately compensated to accidentally end up in Narnia."
mercury
The woman's hand on the edge of the armoire is a strong statement, a shout of ballad-pale milk-pale skin and jewelry (stones and metalwork) against the turquoise painted scarred and scratched wood. The woman's hand is a pause; a punctuation. Her attention swerves (swoops! kingfishers flash flame--!) from the deep armoire claws as promised to her companion.
"But what about purposefully?" she says, after a slender pause. Her eyebrows flick again. C'mere. C'mon. She sounds as if she'd casually saunter into Narnia, pulling a sword from who knows where; she sounds as if she'd know what she was doing.
William
"I'd do it for free if it were on purpose."
mercury
"What's your compensation, then? Where's the satisfaction? A will to act?" Gallant, she opens the wardrobe wide: does not quite lean against it but tests the door with both hands. Her muscles bunch and then she swings herself up into the wardrobe. This isn't graceful: this doesn't lack for grace. Pen is a woman, flesh and blood (as ardent as a first kiss, a last kiss, a kiss good night a kiss good bye a kiss good as blood pressure spiking ardent as a purpose is as clasping hands together hope a spark the heart of wood turning to ash), and her coat goes sweep! swept, swoosh.
William
"I get a story out of it, and a good story too- for the price of getting a little sweaty and a little dirty I get an opportunity-"
and the wardrobe is flung wide and she is stepping in. He doesn't know her, hasn't even exchanged names but he steps in anyway and finds himself surprised at the fact that the armoir is spacious enough that it can in fact, hold two full grown adults.
"And sometimes that opportunity is the chance to be immortal without having the burden of being immortal. It's a win for me."
mercury
"You want to leave a mark?"
The wardrobe smells of old wood, melancholy brilliance; of many years, of the warmth nestled in every tree, of trees, the old wood smells of acrylic paint and pear and it smells of green beneath the rest.
"Be a line of poetry: something rich and strange, something full of sound and fury, ubiquitous and glittering?"
This isn't how she'd talk to everybody but it's how she chooses to talk to William once they're settled in the wardrobe. It might be the kind that once closed from the inside would trap a little kid, but
(daring)
wouldn't that be a funny story. She swings the door shut.
William
"Who doesn't want to leave a mark? It would be sad to wake up and think I want to live a life that is forgotten by all, and when I am gone there will be nothing but dust in my wake. Maybe a line of poetry," he says, and this isn't how he talks all the time, but it's just so much fun. She has such a give and a take and she's like a living verse.
And now he's in a wardrobe with her.
"It's better than just being a metaphor."
mercury
"Ah, but a metaphor is useful. For instance, a mark - " and even in the dark wardrobe (because of course it's dark now; that's what happens when you fucking shut yourself into a wardrobe. This is an old piece of furniture. There are no chinks. No light let in, straying sneaking across the floor. Pen's shoulders touch against the side; she rests the flat of her boot against the wall opposite the one she's leaning against. More self-possessed than ever, sans aloofness. " - what kind of mark? Would you be satisfied with any scratch as long as it stayed or would you rather have it be a letter? A word? Messages?"
William
"A metaphor is useful but a metaphor is singular, why be one when you can be a collection of them?" he says, turns and takes in what is around him. It's quiet in there. It's dark enough that the presence of another person is more felt than seen, and he lives in a world where things are felt instead of seen.
"There's a hierarchy of marks I would rather leave. If I had my way I'd be... huh, you know, I never boiled myself down to a form? Are you more of a sonnet or free verse?"
Tuesday, November 17, 2015
Visiting Serafine
William
He's got a few more days in Denver before he ahs to catch another flight out of here back to Louisiana to deal with his family for, what William presumes, is going to be another awkward Thanksgiving where his relatives are nice, ask how things are, generally avoid talking about the big awkward thing in the room where they're fairly certain he shouldn't be living on his own (espeically since Jenn's gone- up and moved to Los Angeles, is actually having a pretty damned fantastic time, and avoiding the fucking blizzard that Denver is currently experiencing) .
Exhale.
He got to Sera's place through a buzz route, a train, and very careful navigation that didn't involve having to use a motorcycle. He was going to have to get a car now. Wasn't going to have to worry about covering the rent because he was the one who paid for the apartment anyway- had Jenn's back when things were a bit much for her but we digress again because it is a time for digression.
He stands on the porch, knocks because he always knocks, but actually waits to be let in this time. Takes in his surroundings and how much he can't stand the fact that it's cold and he can feel it in his lungs and how he keeps checking to be sure the sun hasn't burned out.
It hasn't, by the way.
SerafÃne
The blizzard warnings were bloody well overstated thank you very much NWS with your aggressive forecasting. No need to run out day-before-yesterday on a desperate quest for milk and bread and cigarettes and beer and Tito's Handmade Vodka and cheap red wine and cloves and local honey and cloves and cinnamon and firewood and carrots just in case there was enough snow to build snowpersons each of whom would require: noses but what the hell. There's enough snow that the residents of 719 Corona Street can pretend that they are snowbound and throw a party. Or kind of a party.
Out front there are these maybe foot-and-a-half high snowpersons with raisin eyeballs and these pouty-red twizzler mouths and hot-pink shot glasses and a semi-frozen can of Pabst Blue Ribbon. Have to walk past them to get to the porch.
There's alcohol enough for whoever shows up. Wine mulling with spices on the stove. A red velvet cake cooling on the rack waiting to be iced and a bit pot of chili and this lovely jalapeno-cheese cornbread to be crumbled into some waiting bowl and inhaled along with the spices. For whomever shows up.
--
Elijah shows up.
Knocks, as he does. Takes a little while because the residents here never expect their visitors to knock but bare feet on warm wooden floorboards and then Dee opens the front door.
"Elijah! God I hope you aren't frozen to death, though honestly I'm a little disappointed in our mediocre blizzard. We haven't had a proper one since I moved back, and here we locked in supplies for days. Your timing's great, though. Sera got in this morning? Probably the last flight that landed at DIA before they shut it down. I'm making a red velvet cake as a welcome home." Stepping back to let him in, closing the door after. Shivering that inside shiver: like fuck, she forgot it was winter outside. Keeps chattering as she walks back through: the foyer and down the long hallway, past the empty front parlor, toward the kitchen and living room that are, in winter anyway, the heart of the house. Is he hungry? Does he want a drink? Does he like hot wine? Warms you up but good. Rick made the chili and Dee the cornbread, there's this grist mill in Golden that does the cornmeal, stone ground, artisinal, can't be beat.
William
"What is wrong with the mountains?! Dee, why is there snow? Louisiana doesn't have snow."
Said like someone who is not from here, and he is very much not from here. He would never get used to snow, just like he would never get used to the fact that Denver is a place that doesn't have any air and he's still making peace with the fact that his lungs are going to have to readjust to the fact that this place has nothing remotely resembling air since they're a mile above sea level.
He already misses home and he hasn't made it back yet. He already wants to be back in Denver, though, even though the time to realize homesickness isn't a real thing has passed him.
But he comes in, hugs Dee if she'll let him like he's a lost toddler trying to make sense of a world that makes abso-fucking-lutely no sense to him. Laughs after a point when he steps in and he's cold but he's not cold, because very rarely has Elijah's demeanor been anything other than warm. He goes through the checklist- he would like chili, mulled wine sounds fantastic, you can't go wrong with cornbread, and he might have water and a nap after that but he'll probably take the nap somewhere else. He just wanted to come by and see human beings whose company he enjoys.
Which, in case she has not guessed, includes Dee.
SerafÃne
The first non-awakened person to see her was a bus-boy in the only remaining Howard Johnson's Restaurant on the Pennsylvania Turnpike and he had been avoiding (for some reason) clearing off booth 13 where she was ensconsed, reading Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Gay, mouth moving with the words, picking at some stranger's leftover fried clams and slipping them underneath the table to Sid, crowded all gawky around the table legs, mostly out of the way, and truth: he didn't notice her, not right away. He saw the dog's tail sweeping out from beneath the booth and thought: maybe the shit is cousin got her two weeks ago really was LSD with some really delayed action; and then thought: fuck, a snake!; and then thought: what's a dog - ; and then realized the dog was actually there and was attached to a girl he couldn't take his eyes off, once he noticed her. Sunglasses and a weird, skinny book and a leather jacket and something about her that made his breath stop and his chest hum with something he couldn't really name. Not love or lust or anything, but something else entirely, something that made him want to: be, rise, change, wake.
Wake.
Wake.
--
"Shit I'm sorry. Let me clean that off for you."
He meant the table. She started crying. And he wanted to, but somehow he couldn't begin to ask her why.
That was less than twelve hours ago.
--
Elijah laments the presence of snow to a girl who was lamenting not 2.3 seconds ago the lack-of-it, so: perspective, you know. That's all that matters. She pats his poor tender head and suggests that he get a nice tobaggan. That's what she says: tobaggan. Dee has a friend who hand-knits them with slightly - well - racy takes on the traditional Fair Isle patterns and sells them on Etsy and maybe Elijah would like to buy one before the real snow comes? If it ever does?
He is loaded up with whatever he wants: mulled wine, chili, cornbread, a hot toddy, probably a goddamned napkin or three and hey! living room. There's a fire starting to crackle in the hearth and Sera and Dan on the couch and a dog kinda crowded-underneath the coffee table, part of her muzzle and part of her tail sticking out because PEOPLE ARE HERE AND SHE LIKES PEOPLE. Sera is curled up with Dan: hasn't left his side since she got home. He has arm flung around her body and her temple is resting on his shoulder and his head tilted towards hers, mouth close to her brow. She's too drunk to decide whether his beard is scratchy or ticklish but either way it makes her fucking happy. So happy she is still sometimes starts crying for no goddamned reason.
Dan lifts his free arm and gives Elijah a wave. Shifts and murmurs something into Our Sera's ear, enough to have her following suit. Waving: hi, hello, salut, what the fuck ever.
William
"Wait, what is a tobaggan?"
And thus there was the explanation, which made him laugh, and he was soon enough inside. Ditched the coat and the scarf and the gloves but doesn't take his vest off or anything else because Elijah was fucking prepared for the day that things were going to be cold and, truth be told, he was always dressed in too damn much clothing anyway because he liked the aesthetic. Could deal with being a little warm and now he could survive it.
So he sits down in the floor, where he can see Sera and Dan and seems... intent. Intent on looking at people and taking them in, perhaps odd because he'd want to be there in the middle. He'd wanted to pile in and be in her space and have moments of just talking and listening and conveying the world of things that he wanted to say but couldn't because-
Well, because. There were people, and she'd spent so long without them. Couldn't dare interrupt it to take that time for himself because, like Dee said, she just got home. He's eating, sneaks Sid a piece of cornbread.
"So, house is full again," he says, smiles, just takes it all in for what it is.
SerafÃne
There are times when she looks harrowed. Walks herself to some invisible edge and just stays there for so goddamned long you'd think she would have no choice but to fall, and she has that look about her now, Sera. That bones-through-skin translucency. The too-sharp profile, the spare, fine-spun sense that she was created, not born, and from all the things that are disappearing from this world.
And yet: also a sort of fullness to her, that sense of repletion that opens beneath the breastbone at the first sight of a too-full moon. She's glossy and way-too-drunk and watches Elijah as he crosses the room juggling chili and cornbread and wine or whatever and sits where he sits and as he feeds Sid ('sneaks' hah) some cornbread and Sid is okay with cornbread but she would like chili much fucking better, thank you, and Elijah remarks that the house is full again and Dan's eyes stitch to him briefly then. Wry grin that touches his mouth but looks - well - weary when it gets to his eyes. "Yeah," is what he says in response, and it sounds so: solid that there's as much meaning in that one word as there is a whole damn tree, root to branch and back again.
He says something to Sera right into her ear, and whatever it is is enough to rouse her, to have her perking up like an adorable goddamned meerkat who could tear your body apart from the inside out, so incrementally you'd swear the world had started spinning backwards and then she's up, untangling from the throw she'd wrapped around her long, long legs, shaking it off one leg that is especially tangled, laughing as she stitch-hops and then, fuck it, sort of untwirling from it. She is wearing: a man's button-down shirt and black lace panties and her hair is still damp from the shower but only in the middle of the mass and Dan's trying to figure out what she's going for before she staggers into the fire but she's magick, she's not staggering into the fire.
So; lots of complications.
But she finds what she's looking for: a superbly battered fuzzy panda-bear backpack and pulls out something: a book!
Which she hands to Elijah as she bends weavingly down and kisses him on the temple.
Murmuring, "Proud of you, kid. Congrats."
William
He had once talked about wanting to know Serafine as a human being, wanted to know things like what her fond memories were and where she was from- never asked what her birth name was though it comes to him. Knows that perhaps he shouldn't ask that, especially now that names have such a significance. She is how she is, she is as she is. Not her complete definition but that bit of truth isn't his to actually touch. Wouldn't dream of knowing someone so intimately, but he certainly does have the fantasy of getting to know her. Past what she presents and, instead, the places that take her further from whatever box people use to define her.
He's earned his keep in this city, whatever weird and miraculous things he's witnessed have come in dreams or had the misfortune of crossing his doorstep. What he's capable of is often a question of debate, the general consensus being that he's still young, still inexperienced, still very much that deer on spindly legs and yet-
He just came back from an experience that said the opposite. Where his betters assessed and didn't find him wanting, where he was regarded as someone that people could see as a peer. Came back to Denver and things have changed, drastically so but not in a bad way. This is more of the same, but a welcome stability and who would have ever accused Serafine of being a source of stability in his life?
She swings by, has a book in hand which he then is holding, kisses him on the temple and he half whispers- words only for her- "It's William now," he tells her, "but you can call me whatever you want. Won't be salty."
Pulls back and looks back at her, smiles and looks at the book in his hands, "scout's honor."
SerafÃne
The book in his hands is a small, slim book by a man named Ross Gay. It is the book she was reading this morning - slouched, slung low really, one the bench seat of Booth 13 of the last remaining Howard Johnson's restaurant on the Pennsylvania turnpike when: someone noticed.
--
The cover is a bright riot of color, like Claude Monet had sex with de Kooning and Frieda Kahla and made it: see? This. The name is: Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude.
--
"William. I'll call you whatever the fuck you want me to call you."
then she is: standing up. Something about the way she does it suggests that remaining upright is a goddamned pleasure and a near-insurmountable challenge but she's taking it on with goddamned gusto. Balancing with an outflung hand on the crown of his head while also wiggling her fingers at Dan all come get me please, which he loves, and also: refuses to do. On principle, at least right now.
William
She'll call him whatever he wants her to call him, and it makes... it provokes and evokes a reaction that is not one other than pleasure, of relief. Like he expected it to be harder, like he expected her not to, like he'd expected a lot of things and it's a sign to him that there's acceptance of the newer parts of his life, that he's not drowning and someone accepts that about him.
He looks at the cover, holds it and turns to the page indicated and he looks it over. Eyes trail over words and he's reading, translating- a little known fact. Sometimes, English hitches in the back of his mind. Only occasionally, but it means when it comes to poetry he is mindful of what he is reading. Takes it in slowly and then perks up.
Flashes a bright grin at Sera-
"I wanna read this," he announces.
And so he does. Starts off with "Friends, will you bear with me today,
for I have awakened
from a dream in which a robin
made with its shabby wings a kind of veil-"
There's a way that he reads, a way that he presents things and a way that he seems aware of what he's doing. He's a storyteller, this one. Can convey what is in front of him and words come by with delight. Reads aloud for others to enjoy, but eventually settles again in to observing people. Trades stories with people about how Boston was- Dan knows which hulking details he's leaving out. Listens to the little bits of people's days and is just content to take them all in. The huamnity of it, the warmth of it, the way that this house feels more like a home than any number of places he's been.
He'll fly out again in less than a week, may think of being on Corona street instead of Baton Rouge
He's got a few more days in Denver before he ahs to catch another flight out of here back to Louisiana to deal with his family for, what William presumes, is going to be another awkward Thanksgiving where his relatives are nice, ask how things are, generally avoid talking about the big awkward thing in the room where they're fairly certain he shouldn't be living on his own (espeically since Jenn's gone- up and moved to Los Angeles, is actually having a pretty damned fantastic time, and avoiding the fucking blizzard that Denver is currently experiencing) .
Exhale.
He got to Sera's place through a buzz route, a train, and very careful navigation that didn't involve having to use a motorcycle. He was going to have to get a car now. Wasn't going to have to worry about covering the rent because he was the one who paid for the apartment anyway- had Jenn's back when things were a bit much for her but we digress again because it is a time for digression.
He stands on the porch, knocks because he always knocks, but actually waits to be let in this time. Takes in his surroundings and how much he can't stand the fact that it's cold and he can feel it in his lungs and how he keeps checking to be sure the sun hasn't burned out.
It hasn't, by the way.
SerafÃne
The blizzard warnings were bloody well overstated thank you very much NWS with your aggressive forecasting. No need to run out day-before-yesterday on a desperate quest for milk and bread and cigarettes and beer and Tito's Handmade Vodka and cheap red wine and cloves and local honey and cloves and cinnamon and firewood and carrots just in case there was enough snow to build snowpersons each of whom would require: noses but what the hell. There's enough snow that the residents of 719 Corona Street can pretend that they are snowbound and throw a party. Or kind of a party.
Out front there are these maybe foot-and-a-half high snowpersons with raisin eyeballs and these pouty-red twizzler mouths and hot-pink shot glasses and a semi-frozen can of Pabst Blue Ribbon. Have to walk past them to get to the porch.
There's alcohol enough for whoever shows up. Wine mulling with spices on the stove. A red velvet cake cooling on the rack waiting to be iced and a bit pot of chili and this lovely jalapeno-cheese cornbread to be crumbled into some waiting bowl and inhaled along with the spices. For whomever shows up.
--
Elijah shows up.
Knocks, as he does. Takes a little while because the residents here never expect their visitors to knock but bare feet on warm wooden floorboards and then Dee opens the front door.
"Elijah! God I hope you aren't frozen to death, though honestly I'm a little disappointed in our mediocre blizzard. We haven't had a proper one since I moved back, and here we locked in supplies for days. Your timing's great, though. Sera got in this morning? Probably the last flight that landed at DIA before they shut it down. I'm making a red velvet cake as a welcome home." Stepping back to let him in, closing the door after. Shivering that inside shiver: like fuck, she forgot it was winter outside. Keeps chattering as she walks back through: the foyer and down the long hallway, past the empty front parlor, toward the kitchen and living room that are, in winter anyway, the heart of the house. Is he hungry? Does he want a drink? Does he like hot wine? Warms you up but good. Rick made the chili and Dee the cornbread, there's this grist mill in Golden that does the cornmeal, stone ground, artisinal, can't be beat.
William
"What is wrong with the mountains?! Dee, why is there snow? Louisiana doesn't have snow."
Said like someone who is not from here, and he is very much not from here. He would never get used to snow, just like he would never get used to the fact that Denver is a place that doesn't have any air and he's still making peace with the fact that his lungs are going to have to readjust to the fact that this place has nothing remotely resembling air since they're a mile above sea level.
He already misses home and he hasn't made it back yet. He already wants to be back in Denver, though, even though the time to realize homesickness isn't a real thing has passed him.
But he comes in, hugs Dee if she'll let him like he's a lost toddler trying to make sense of a world that makes abso-fucking-lutely no sense to him. Laughs after a point when he steps in and he's cold but he's not cold, because very rarely has Elijah's demeanor been anything other than warm. He goes through the checklist- he would like chili, mulled wine sounds fantastic, you can't go wrong with cornbread, and he might have water and a nap after that but he'll probably take the nap somewhere else. He just wanted to come by and see human beings whose company he enjoys.
Which, in case she has not guessed, includes Dee.
SerafÃne
The first non-awakened person to see her was a bus-boy in the only remaining Howard Johnson's Restaurant on the Pennsylvania Turnpike and he had been avoiding (for some reason) clearing off booth 13 where she was ensconsed, reading Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Gay, mouth moving with the words, picking at some stranger's leftover fried clams and slipping them underneath the table to Sid, crowded all gawky around the table legs, mostly out of the way, and truth: he didn't notice her, not right away. He saw the dog's tail sweeping out from beneath the booth and thought: maybe the shit is cousin got her two weeks ago really was LSD with some really delayed action; and then thought: fuck, a snake!; and then thought: what's a dog - ; and then realized the dog was actually there and was attached to a girl he couldn't take his eyes off, once he noticed her. Sunglasses and a weird, skinny book and a leather jacket and something about her that made his breath stop and his chest hum with something he couldn't really name. Not love or lust or anything, but something else entirely, something that made him want to: be, rise, change, wake.
Wake.
Wake.
--
"Shit I'm sorry. Let me clean that off for you."
He meant the table. She started crying. And he wanted to, but somehow he couldn't begin to ask her why.
That was less than twelve hours ago.
--
Elijah laments the presence of snow to a girl who was lamenting not 2.3 seconds ago the lack-of-it, so: perspective, you know. That's all that matters. She pats his poor tender head and suggests that he get a nice tobaggan. That's what she says: tobaggan. Dee has a friend who hand-knits them with slightly - well - racy takes on the traditional Fair Isle patterns and sells them on Etsy and maybe Elijah would like to buy one before the real snow comes? If it ever does?
He is loaded up with whatever he wants: mulled wine, chili, cornbread, a hot toddy, probably a goddamned napkin or three and hey! living room. There's a fire starting to crackle in the hearth and Sera and Dan on the couch and a dog kinda crowded-underneath the coffee table, part of her muzzle and part of her tail sticking out because PEOPLE ARE HERE AND SHE LIKES PEOPLE. Sera is curled up with Dan: hasn't left his side since she got home. He has arm flung around her body and her temple is resting on his shoulder and his head tilted towards hers, mouth close to her brow. She's too drunk to decide whether his beard is scratchy or ticklish but either way it makes her fucking happy. So happy she is still sometimes starts crying for no goddamned reason.
Dan lifts his free arm and gives Elijah a wave. Shifts and murmurs something into Our Sera's ear, enough to have her following suit. Waving: hi, hello, salut, what the fuck ever.
William
"Wait, what is a tobaggan?"
And thus there was the explanation, which made him laugh, and he was soon enough inside. Ditched the coat and the scarf and the gloves but doesn't take his vest off or anything else because Elijah was fucking prepared for the day that things were going to be cold and, truth be told, he was always dressed in too damn much clothing anyway because he liked the aesthetic. Could deal with being a little warm and now he could survive it.
So he sits down in the floor, where he can see Sera and Dan and seems... intent. Intent on looking at people and taking them in, perhaps odd because he'd want to be there in the middle. He'd wanted to pile in and be in her space and have moments of just talking and listening and conveying the world of things that he wanted to say but couldn't because-
Well, because. There were people, and she'd spent so long without them. Couldn't dare interrupt it to take that time for himself because, like Dee said, she just got home. He's eating, sneaks Sid a piece of cornbread.
"So, house is full again," he says, smiles, just takes it all in for what it is.
SerafÃne
There are times when she looks harrowed. Walks herself to some invisible edge and just stays there for so goddamned long you'd think she would have no choice but to fall, and she has that look about her now, Sera. That bones-through-skin translucency. The too-sharp profile, the spare, fine-spun sense that she was created, not born, and from all the things that are disappearing from this world.
And yet: also a sort of fullness to her, that sense of repletion that opens beneath the breastbone at the first sight of a too-full moon. She's glossy and way-too-drunk and watches Elijah as he crosses the room juggling chili and cornbread and wine or whatever and sits where he sits and as he feeds Sid ('sneaks' hah) some cornbread and Sid is okay with cornbread but she would like chili much fucking better, thank you, and Elijah remarks that the house is full again and Dan's eyes stitch to him briefly then. Wry grin that touches his mouth but looks - well - weary when it gets to his eyes. "Yeah," is what he says in response, and it sounds so: solid that there's as much meaning in that one word as there is a whole damn tree, root to branch and back again.
He says something to Sera right into her ear, and whatever it is is enough to rouse her, to have her perking up like an adorable goddamned meerkat who could tear your body apart from the inside out, so incrementally you'd swear the world had started spinning backwards and then she's up, untangling from the throw she'd wrapped around her long, long legs, shaking it off one leg that is especially tangled, laughing as she stitch-hops and then, fuck it, sort of untwirling from it. She is wearing: a man's button-down shirt and black lace panties and her hair is still damp from the shower but only in the middle of the mass and Dan's trying to figure out what she's going for before she staggers into the fire but she's magick, she's not staggering into the fire.
So; lots of complications.
But she finds what she's looking for: a superbly battered fuzzy panda-bear backpack and pulls out something: a book!
Which she hands to Elijah as she bends weavingly down and kisses him on the temple.
Murmuring, "Proud of you, kid. Congrats."
William
He had once talked about wanting to know Serafine as a human being, wanted to know things like what her fond memories were and where she was from- never asked what her birth name was though it comes to him. Knows that perhaps he shouldn't ask that, especially now that names have such a significance. She is how she is, she is as she is. Not her complete definition but that bit of truth isn't his to actually touch. Wouldn't dream of knowing someone so intimately, but he certainly does have the fantasy of getting to know her. Past what she presents and, instead, the places that take her further from whatever box people use to define her.
He's earned his keep in this city, whatever weird and miraculous things he's witnessed have come in dreams or had the misfortune of crossing his doorstep. What he's capable of is often a question of debate, the general consensus being that he's still young, still inexperienced, still very much that deer on spindly legs and yet-
He just came back from an experience that said the opposite. Where his betters assessed and didn't find him wanting, where he was regarded as someone that people could see as a peer. Came back to Denver and things have changed, drastically so but not in a bad way. This is more of the same, but a welcome stability and who would have ever accused Serafine of being a source of stability in his life?
She swings by, has a book in hand which he then is holding, kisses him on the temple and he half whispers- words only for her- "It's William now," he tells her, "but you can call me whatever you want. Won't be salty."
Pulls back and looks back at her, smiles and looks at the book in his hands, "scout's honor."
SerafÃne
The book in his hands is a small, slim book by a man named Ross Gay. It is the book she was reading this morning - slouched, slung low really, one the bench seat of Booth 13 of the last remaining Howard Johnson's restaurant on the Pennsylvania turnpike when: someone noticed.
--
The cover is a bright riot of color, like Claude Monet had sex with de Kooning and Frieda Kahla and made it: see? This. The name is: Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude.
--
"William. I'll call you whatever the fuck you want me to call you."
then she is: standing up. Something about the way she does it suggests that remaining upright is a goddamned pleasure and a near-insurmountable challenge but she's taking it on with goddamned gusto. Balancing with an outflung hand on the crown of his head while also wiggling her fingers at Dan all come get me please, which he loves, and also: refuses to do. On principle, at least right now.
William
She'll call him whatever he wants her to call him, and it makes... it provokes and evokes a reaction that is not one other than pleasure, of relief. Like he expected it to be harder, like he expected her not to, like he'd expected a lot of things and it's a sign to him that there's acceptance of the newer parts of his life, that he's not drowning and someone accepts that about him.
He looks at the cover, holds it and turns to the page indicated and he looks it over. Eyes trail over words and he's reading, translating- a little known fact. Sometimes, English hitches in the back of his mind. Only occasionally, but it means when it comes to poetry he is mindful of what he is reading. Takes it in slowly and then perks up.
Flashes a bright grin at Sera-
"I wanna read this," he announces.
And so he does. Starts off with "Friends, will you bear with me today,
for I have awakened
from a dream in which a robin
made with its shabby wings a kind of veil-"
There's a way that he reads, a way that he presents things and a way that he seems aware of what he's doing. He's a storyteller, this one. Can convey what is in front of him and words come by with delight. Reads aloud for others to enjoy, but eventually settles again in to observing people. Trades stories with people about how Boston was- Dan knows which hulking details he's leaving out. Listens to the little bits of people's days and is just content to take them all in. The huamnity of it, the warmth of it, the way that this house feels more like a home than any number of places he's been.
He'll fly out again in less than a week, may think of being on Corona street instead of Baton Rouge
Thursday, November 12, 2015
Phone calls to Dan
William
He was still in Boston, holed up in a room with a few recent-additions to the Tradition and William had gone through some effort to actually make friends and contacts that he can actually come back. He's got a legacy to uphold now, it's real. IT's really real, and he could have called any number of people and, perhaps with wishful thinking, he thought that maybe he could call Sera.
He should know better, knows that she's been unable to make calls. Knows that she's a spectre in the city, but he tries anyway, thinks that maybe he can leave her a voicemail. Leave her poetry and tidings and any number of things.
William misses Serafine. He's still having to get accustomed to which name he needs to sign when, but he calls her phone anyway.
Dan
Dinner has Dan sitting in a coffeehouse / cafe / bar called CASH ONLY with Rick and a few friends. There's a beer on the table in front of him that he's been nursing for an hour, and a half-decimated platter of "Irish Nachos" on the table between them. He sits back with enough of a view of the snow melting over the sidewalk, that strange, bright, burnt-orange blast of artificial light reflecting on snow that always feels like the first edge of a nuclear winter.
He's carrying two phones, these days, ignoring the constant little vibrations of texts sliding in in favor of sitting and having a conversation with friends he likes. The ringtone for a call is different, though. Is She Weird warbles Black Francis, which makes him shift his ass half-off the seat and pull out the phone, enough to glance at it and see who's calling. Then he stands up, waves an apology to friends and steps away, out into the chilly November night,
"Elijah." Male voice, baritone, too deep to be Sera. Affection wrapped up into the greeting, though. The suggestion of a beard brushing against the receiver. "What's up?"
William
The backdrop of Elijah's call seems pretty quiet, all things said. He hears the voice, the affection in it and while it isn't Serafine it is Dan, and Dan is a welcomed treat in and of itself. The smile is clear on his face, in his voice. There's the rustle of fabric, probably a blanket or a pillowcase or something to that effect.
"I'm in Boston! Got through all my sorting hat business and graduated from hogwarts or whatever freaking Harry Potter analogy you want to make," Dan can all but hear the young man wave something off.
"I'll be coming back pretty soon, do you want anything?"
Dan
"From Boston?" An inflected rise of the consor's voice, this quiet bemusement braided into his tone. It is only now that response to his question: what's up? has spilled into a breathless explanation that Dan can begin to decipher only because he has had years of deciphering Sera's fucked-up ramblings that he finds the tension in his spine starting to unknot.
And he tries, makes an effort, not to allow that tension to enter his voice. "Maybe snowboots. Not for me but for you. Winter's made an appearance."
A short breath out, which sounds like a smoker's exhale but Dan isn't smoking today. "So that means you're official? They give you a scarf and a coat-of-arms and everything? Anyone ask you to try out for the quidditch team?"
William
"Yeah, I've got the scarf and everything. I have been tagged, Named, and thrust upon the world. God have mercy on us all," he's excited. It's obvious he's excited because he's rambling and, frankly, unless someone was there with him it was a little difficult to catch what he was actually talking about.
"Turns out I'm shit on a broom, though," he laughs, "on a more realistic note I'm kind of sad winter has shown up, I thought it was just happening up north so I was vehemently trying to wish it away because it's fucking cold."
It dawns on him that Serafine isn't the one who answered the phone. There's a bit of silence there before-
"Hey, you holding up okay? If you're out with people I can call you back."
Dan
"I'm cool," Dan assures him, in that low-rumble, and these are things that one says. Over the phone, over wires or ether or whatever strange and agreed-upon magick allows us to be everywhere at once. He straightens up, takes in the street. Doesn't think the call will be long but he doesn't seem to be in a hurry to get back to the folks inside. Lets the music stay behind him, dulled to a low but present hum by the windowglass.
"Congratulations, though. You doing anything to celebrate? Have anyone to celebrate with?"
--
Doesn't ask the new Name.
Knows enough not to. Doesn't believe in that particular power but Elijah's belief in this matters more than Dan's.
William
"I've been trying to cram about as much partying in with my new housemates as possible- it's... We're not a giant house, but we're supposed to be diplomats, you know? So, like, actually interacting with each other and building a working relationship seems like a pretty good idea and thus far I've figured out I kinda like these people."
He asks if there's anyone he has celebrated with, and it makes William laugh a little at it, "so I did shots with a chick named Holly we've exchanged numbers and shit. I've actually been good, I'm trying to be a grown up and now... you know... promoting Hermetic good will by trying to get into my tradition mate's pants."
Even though, by the sound of it, he would really, really like to.
"It's pretty fucking hard. It's like I walked into a freaking American Apparel catalog or something."
Dan
This quiet noise, something close to gruff bemusement. The whole conversation would be better if the snow were still falling, but that storm has moved onward to ravage the east coast, to remind everyone in its path that winter means more than earlier, more spectacular sunsets. More than the Santa Claus house at the mall.
He focuses - his eyes anyway - on the closed headshop across the street. The patterned, maw-like reflections of hookahs lined up in the picture window. Gauges how much and how far he should-maybe caution a now-full-fledged member of the Order of Hermes, unAwakened friend of a low-penny mystic that he is.
Thinks about diplomacy, its meanings and its iterations. Thinks about the boundaries of nations ringing the world.
"Naw, man. You ever see the Magic Flute?"
Mozart. Dan means: the Mozart opera.
William
Has he seen the Magic Flute?
He actually has to think about this, though the reference isn't lost on him. Pulls through his memories and tries to think of the various times he's actually been to the opera and comes back with-
"Yeah," he replies, the lilt in his voice says that he's listening to Dan. That he's paying attention, that perhaps he isn't cut out to be a full fledged Hermetic because he's he hasn't ever given the indication that he thinks less of how Serafine and Dan view the world.
She'd said something about it once. He'd been shocked to say the least.
Dan
"It's like you've just walked out of the overture into the opera proper. The bells are starting to ring, everything's strange and it's up to you to figure out what all of this shit means. I mean, it's spectacular, right? But all that weird Masonic symbolism trips me out."
A short breath out, affection this crackle in his voice.
"So, celebrate. Seriously. Do. But remember that you're at the very beginning, and you have fuck-all of an idea of who's what and when and where. Caution, man. Especially now, when you're with your housemates, I think you need to have your wits about you at every step."
William
There has never been an instance where the young man has not listened to Dan. Dan knows what he's talking bout; the man has seen the world. He's seen what happens and seen more of the magical world and how people interact than Elijah has and now the young man is having to brave the world.
He pauses, nods and it's almost like Dan can hear the newly-minted Hermetic nodding.
"I've gotta make it through the whole opera, I'm feeling hoepful," purses his lips but smiles anyway.
"Thanks, man. I'll... you're pretty fuckin' smart, I kinda dig that about you."
Dan
"Cheers, kid." The low back of a laugh, still that scrawl of affection underlying it. Strain, too, sure, but only if you really listen for it.
"Be safe. Talk to you later."
Click.
--
He drops the phone from his ear, glances down at it in his hand. Rubs his thumb over the screen and watches as the icons shift and shiver. Glances at the unanswered texts, then thumbs them away. He thinks about lighting a cigarette, wouldn't mind the burn in his throat conjoined with the bright, belting cold.
But he doesn't have one, so he just breathes. In, out.
In, out. The only way to get into or out of this world.
He was still in Boston, holed up in a room with a few recent-additions to the Tradition and William had gone through some effort to actually make friends and contacts that he can actually come back. He's got a legacy to uphold now, it's real. IT's really real, and he could have called any number of people and, perhaps with wishful thinking, he thought that maybe he could call Sera.
He should know better, knows that she's been unable to make calls. Knows that she's a spectre in the city, but he tries anyway, thinks that maybe he can leave her a voicemail. Leave her poetry and tidings and any number of things.
William misses Serafine. He's still having to get accustomed to which name he needs to sign when, but he calls her phone anyway.
Dan
Dinner has Dan sitting in a coffeehouse / cafe / bar called CASH ONLY with Rick and a few friends. There's a beer on the table in front of him that he's been nursing for an hour, and a half-decimated platter of "Irish Nachos" on the table between them. He sits back with enough of a view of the snow melting over the sidewalk, that strange, bright, burnt-orange blast of artificial light reflecting on snow that always feels like the first edge of a nuclear winter.
He's carrying two phones, these days, ignoring the constant little vibrations of texts sliding in in favor of sitting and having a conversation with friends he likes. The ringtone for a call is different, though. Is She Weird warbles Black Francis, which makes him shift his ass half-off the seat and pull out the phone, enough to glance at it and see who's calling. Then he stands up, waves an apology to friends and steps away, out into the chilly November night,
"Elijah." Male voice, baritone, too deep to be Sera. Affection wrapped up into the greeting, though. The suggestion of a beard brushing against the receiver. "What's up?"
William
The backdrop of Elijah's call seems pretty quiet, all things said. He hears the voice, the affection in it and while it isn't Serafine it is Dan, and Dan is a welcomed treat in and of itself. The smile is clear on his face, in his voice. There's the rustle of fabric, probably a blanket or a pillowcase or something to that effect.
"I'm in Boston! Got through all my sorting hat business and graduated from hogwarts or whatever freaking Harry Potter analogy you want to make," Dan can all but hear the young man wave something off.
"I'll be coming back pretty soon, do you want anything?"
Dan
"From Boston?" An inflected rise of the consor's voice, this quiet bemusement braided into his tone. It is only now that response to his question: what's up? has spilled into a breathless explanation that Dan can begin to decipher only because he has had years of deciphering Sera's fucked-up ramblings that he finds the tension in his spine starting to unknot.
And he tries, makes an effort, not to allow that tension to enter his voice. "Maybe snowboots. Not for me but for you. Winter's made an appearance."
A short breath out, which sounds like a smoker's exhale but Dan isn't smoking today. "So that means you're official? They give you a scarf and a coat-of-arms and everything? Anyone ask you to try out for the quidditch team?"
William
"Yeah, I've got the scarf and everything. I have been tagged, Named, and thrust upon the world. God have mercy on us all," he's excited. It's obvious he's excited because he's rambling and, frankly, unless someone was there with him it was a little difficult to catch what he was actually talking about.
"Turns out I'm shit on a broom, though," he laughs, "on a more realistic note I'm kind of sad winter has shown up, I thought it was just happening up north so I was vehemently trying to wish it away because it's fucking cold."
It dawns on him that Serafine isn't the one who answered the phone. There's a bit of silence there before-
"Hey, you holding up okay? If you're out with people I can call you back."
Dan
"I'm cool," Dan assures him, in that low-rumble, and these are things that one says. Over the phone, over wires or ether or whatever strange and agreed-upon magick allows us to be everywhere at once. He straightens up, takes in the street. Doesn't think the call will be long but he doesn't seem to be in a hurry to get back to the folks inside. Lets the music stay behind him, dulled to a low but present hum by the windowglass.
"Congratulations, though. You doing anything to celebrate? Have anyone to celebrate with?"
--
Doesn't ask the new Name.
Knows enough not to. Doesn't believe in that particular power but Elijah's belief in this matters more than Dan's.
William
"I've been trying to cram about as much partying in with my new housemates as possible- it's... We're not a giant house, but we're supposed to be diplomats, you know? So, like, actually interacting with each other and building a working relationship seems like a pretty good idea and thus far I've figured out I kinda like these people."
He asks if there's anyone he has celebrated with, and it makes William laugh a little at it, "so I did shots with a chick named Holly we've exchanged numbers and shit. I've actually been good, I'm trying to be a grown up and now... you know... promoting Hermetic good will by trying to get into my tradition mate's pants."
Even though, by the sound of it, he would really, really like to.
"It's pretty fucking hard. It's like I walked into a freaking American Apparel catalog or something."
Dan
This quiet noise, something close to gruff bemusement. The whole conversation would be better if the snow were still falling, but that storm has moved onward to ravage the east coast, to remind everyone in its path that winter means more than earlier, more spectacular sunsets. More than the Santa Claus house at the mall.
He focuses - his eyes anyway - on the closed headshop across the street. The patterned, maw-like reflections of hookahs lined up in the picture window. Gauges how much and how far he should-maybe caution a now-full-fledged member of the Order of Hermes, unAwakened friend of a low-penny mystic that he is.
Thinks about diplomacy, its meanings and its iterations. Thinks about the boundaries of nations ringing the world.
"Naw, man. You ever see the Magic Flute?"
Mozart. Dan means: the Mozart opera.
William
Has he seen the Magic Flute?
He actually has to think about this, though the reference isn't lost on him. Pulls through his memories and tries to think of the various times he's actually been to the opera and comes back with-
"Yeah," he replies, the lilt in his voice says that he's listening to Dan. That he's paying attention, that perhaps he isn't cut out to be a full fledged Hermetic because he's he hasn't ever given the indication that he thinks less of how Serafine and Dan view the world.
She'd said something about it once. He'd been shocked to say the least.
Dan
"It's like you've just walked out of the overture into the opera proper. The bells are starting to ring, everything's strange and it's up to you to figure out what all of this shit means. I mean, it's spectacular, right? But all that weird Masonic symbolism trips me out."
A short breath out, affection this crackle in his voice.
"So, celebrate. Seriously. Do. But remember that you're at the very beginning, and you have fuck-all of an idea of who's what and when and where. Caution, man. Especially now, when you're with your housemates, I think you need to have your wits about you at every step."
William
There has never been an instance where the young man has not listened to Dan. Dan knows what he's talking bout; the man has seen the world. He's seen what happens and seen more of the magical world and how people interact than Elijah has and now the young man is having to brave the world.
He pauses, nods and it's almost like Dan can hear the newly-minted Hermetic nodding.
"I've gotta make it through the whole opera, I'm feeling hoepful," purses his lips but smiles anyway.
"Thanks, man. I'll... you're pretty fuckin' smart, I kinda dig that about you."
Dan
"Cheers, kid." The low back of a laugh, still that scrawl of affection underlying it. Strain, too, sure, but only if you really listen for it.
"Be safe. Talk to you later."
Click.
--
He drops the phone from his ear, glances down at it in his hand. Rubs his thumb over the screen and watches as the icons shift and shiver. Glances at the unanswered texts, then thumbs them away. He thinks about lighting a cigarette, wouldn't mind the burn in his throat conjoined with the bright, belting cold.
But he doesn't have one, so he just breathes. In, out.
In, out. The only way to get into or out of this world.
Monday, October 26, 2015
Friendship is Magic
Elijah
There was no getting rid of him now. Samir had revealed that he had a treehouse and Elijah, having always wanted for a tree house, was living his dream vicariously through Samir Lakhani (Lakhani? Lah-kah-nee? Fuck.) It was a tree house, as in a platform amidst the trees and he could see things without having to actually get into them.
He'd brought a case of beer, some pot lemon squares (because brownies are so last year), and a kaleidoscope.
Elijah wasn't sure what Samir would do with a kaleidoscope, but he'd given it to him anyway, wrapped (I swear to God I did not give you a dildo) and presented as a housewarming gift because he hadn't actually done so before. So, there he was, laying on his back and staring at the sky and-
"I have no fucking clue how to tie a tie," he admits, despite the fact that he is actually wearing a tie today.
Samir
He probably should have known this would be the end result if he told Elijah that he had a tree house. The kid about lost his shit over the fact that he could conjure a love seat out of thin air. At the rate they're going he might as well just move that love seat out of his apartment and into the platform up in the tree.
Beer and pot lemon squares and a kaleidoscope are acceptable housewarming gifts. He washes the ever-loving hell out of his hands after he unwraps the thing but at least he handles it without too much in the way of tooth-pulling.
This revelation about the tie makes Sam frown.
"So... is that a clip-on, or..."
Elijah
"Nah, I talked Jenn into doing it for some bullshit reason. I can usually con someone else into tying it," he tells Samir, "basically, I'm not-so-secretly hoping you know how to do this and can impart your wisdom before I have to break down and tell my dad that, despite having told me that one time, I still have no fucking clue how to do this. I'm kind of afraid he'll think he failed as a parent if his son plays the harp and can't tie a tie."
Ah, there is a reason now. He takes another bite of lemon square, sits up long enough to dust the crumbs off of himself and let them fall away onto the ground far, far below, and thinks briefly of the second Creepshow movie. Imagines a man eating oil slick beneath them and-
Ugh. He reminds himself that he is glad they are on land.
Samir
"... do you want me to find a Youtube video?"
If anyone looks as if he has less experience tying ties than Elijah does it's Samir. He wears t-shirts and leather jackets and calls it a day. The most tying he does is to lace up his Doc Martens and make sure the twist on baggies of weed are secure. That's a long shot compared to tying a tie.
Even if he did know how to tie a tie he wouldn't be able to show Elijah how to do it. That would involve. You know. Touching him.
"Hang on. They have videos for everything on Youtube."
They don't have a tie readily available either but that could change in a few moments.
Elijah
"Can you find out what the fuck a half windsor is? Like, is there a whole tie etiquette thing I'm missing?"
He leans over without having to actually me touching Sam, just presumes that he has his phone and that the tree house has wifi because what else would one do in a tree house but watch Youtube videos while you're kinda getting a little stoned?
A beat passes, then?
"Do they seriously have videos for everything on youtube?"
He is suddenly reminded that you can't google technocrats.
Samir
"Dude, do I look like I know shit about tying ties?"
For the time being Sam tolerates Elijah's sliding closer. They've already had the most awkward moment of their fledgling bromance. At this point the more Elijah invades his personal space and reminds him of the time he offered to give him a handjob the better he's going to get at tolerating it when complete strangers do it.
In theory. He hasn't ever seen behavioral therapy in action. There's probably a Youtube video for it though.
"They have videos for pretty much everything. Anything that violates copyright law or basic human decency tends to get taken down pretty fast. You have to go on Liveleak or other sites to find the nastier ones."
He's seen some shit on the Dark Web.
"Okay. Half Windsor." Full screen. Rotate. "Go."
Elijah
"The fuck is Liveleak? Is that where the Mister Hands shit originated?"
Oh Elijah, you have no idea what horrors lurk on the internet.
Samir
"I think 4chan is responsible for that one, actually. Liveleak wasn't around in 2005."
If Elijah doesn't know what 4chan is then Sam isn't going to be the one to tell him. He'd like to assume that Elijah knows what 4chan is because Elijah knows what the Dark Web is and also Elijah asked Google what the Technocracy is. But you know what happens when you assume.
Elijah
"Man, fucking 4chan," is all he has to say for that one.
In the mean time, he has carefully extricated himself from his tie, loosened it to the point that it came free and he looks a little warily at the screen, as though he is fairly certain that he has made a right and terrible decision and he could have gotten out of having to tie this until he came back from Boston.
"So, like, what kind of shit is on Liveleak?"
Samir
Sam has found a way to prop the phone up against the side of the railing so that Elijah can look at a somewhat steady screen instead of the shakiness of Sam's hands on top of the shakiness of the cameraman.
It also means he gets to light a cigarette and judge Elijah as he waits until the week before he goes on this Very Important Apprenticeship Trip to learn how to tie a fucking tie.
"Executions, mostly. A lot of political and war footage. Beheadings, a lot, lately. Sometimes people post videos of car versus pedestrian aftermath or, you know. Dead babies and shit. Nothing illegal."
Elijah
And he's going through the motions, and he's not... adept at this. He fumbles through, yes, but he does stop the video, looks down and undoes the knot and scoots the video back, just enough to start over again. This is a skill that he is going to have to practice... a lot. He's getting there, of course, because he can write the world into his whims so of course Elijah is going to fucking learn how to tie a tie.
"So... it's like the Faces of Death stuff they had on Rotten dot com awhile back?" he shakes his head, "I mean, when Rotten dot com was a thing. I'm kinda glad that... y'know... I have no idea how to find half this shit. I kinda want to know more? But, like, I really... really don't."
Samir
"You really really really don't."
Spoken like someone who lives on the Internet. He was the one who stayed up all night the night before the raid on the Artist's minions' home. He saw some shit that night that might have made him vomit if he hadn't seen awful things done to children on the Internet.
Granted the shit he saw that night was enough to make him never want to see another person naked ever again in his life but the only person who saw a fraction of what he saw was Grace. They could just leave what they saw between the two of them.
It did not cause him an undo amount of mental anguish to set that building on fire. That the person who had made them zombies or vampires or whatever the hell they were in the first place wasn't in the building didn't matter much. They were monsters in their own right. Too far gone for redemption even if they had been innocent before the Nephandus did whatever she did.
Sam shakes his head hard and blinks as if his mind had wandered. It had. It does that sometimes.
Elijah
He looks at Sam for a second, between trying to figure out this half Windsor thing (which he actually did manage to do, and he looks down as if he isn't entirely sure that he did this right, but we digress) and his attention turns to Sam. He doesn't know what is out there on the internet, or the dark web. Elijah grew up in an age where he'd never not had technology.
Then again, he'd been offline for most of his formative years. The seedy people he'd found he'd managed to find in person. Has no idea the number of close calls he has had in his life time, doesn't think of the countless other things that could have gone wrong. Elijah does a lot of things, but in his core there are just realities that he doesn't think about because he doesn't think to think about them. Thought that To Catch a Predator was just a thing that happened on Dateline and that it could get so much worse.
But, Sam blinks and shakes his head.
"Dude, did you just have a 'nam flashback?"
Samir
"Had a 'your mom' flashback."
It's worth mentioning that Sam did eat one of the pot lemon squares that Elijah made. He wants to believe that Elijah isn't the sort of person to change a dirty diaper or jerk off a subway-dwelling heroin addict and then prepare food without washing his hands first. Until he can work organic data arrays into his paradigm he just has to trust people.
Woe and agony.
Back in the present he frowns at the lack of progress Elijah is making with that tie.
"Jesus Christ, I thought white people had to know how tie a tie before their first confirmation. Let me see that."
He drags the phone closer to him so he can refresh it and see what Elijah is supposed to be doing.
Elijah
"I can't be Catholic if I can't tie a tie?!"
Nope. That's noose. Like a tiny, formal way of killing himself. He's got to be getting a little closer. He lets out a little sound, a sad whine, because he has had more than one lemon square.
"Aw, my grandma's gonna be so mad now..."
Samir
[mind 1: learn the shit out of this.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (2, 7) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Samir
All the Mercurial Elite appears to do is sit and watch a two-minute video in rapt silence. Takes him shushing Elijah at one point to really appear as if he is watching it. Even without sound he could watch what is happening and sort out what he's supposed to do.
"Alright," he says after about the halfway point.
Then he narrows his eyes in a sidelong glance at the Hermetic apprentice. Thinks about what he's doing before he does it.
"Just because I show you how to tie a tie doesn't mean we're getting married or anything, alright? I just... I can't watch you keep sucking at this, it's making my skin itch."
Elijah
[Dead serious! Manip+sub, +2 diff because I'm high as balls)
Dice: 7 d10 TN8 (1, 3, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )
Samir
[perc + empathy: shit, dude!]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) [Doubling Tens] [WP]
Samir
[I didn't mean to spend WP. He only got three successes. YOU WIN THIS ONE, POIROT.]
Elijah
"No way, dude. If we tie a tie together, that's a thing. It's stupidly significant in the Order, it's like a tiny hand fasting. We've made a fucking pact."
Dead. Fucking. Serious.
Samir
At that he springs to his feet and holds up both his hands. Nope. Nope nope nope. More important than leaving his phone in the possession of a fellow crazy person is not tying a pact with said crazy person.
"You're on your own, man," he says as he backs towards the ladder.
Fucking pot lemon squares.
Elijah
It's too much. It's all too much, Sam springs up and Elijah falls over. Croons, crows, laughs hard enough that his ribs hurt and his face hurts and he forgets, for a second, that one of his friends is in mortal peril and is at home painting... uh... something. He didn't know what Jenn was painting, and at that moment he was too busy laughing his ass off.
"No, wait-" he can't stop. Can. Not. Stop. Laughing.
"Come baaaaaaaack I'm sharing my worldview with you, we need to be a- fuckin- cabal or something! You understaaaaaand meeeeee."
He had not stopped laughing, though, and probably about halfway down the ladder he responded with.
"Owww, get your phone."
Samir
I'm sharing my worldview with you--
Sam makes a noise like Elijah just flicked a booger at him and starts down the ladder. It is not a sincere sound. The fact that Elijah is laughing is kind of a giveaway that he just got got. He still screams like a little girl and continues along the escape sequence.
"Fuck my phone!" he calls up from the grass. "I'm gonna go take a shower and rethink my life!"
Elijah
"I'm totally not looking at porn while you're gone!"
He's totally going to look at porn while Sam is gone.
Samir
"Don't make me drop a couch on you!"
Friendship truly is magic.
There was no getting rid of him now. Samir had revealed that he had a treehouse and Elijah, having always wanted for a tree house, was living his dream vicariously through Samir Lakhani (Lakhani? Lah-kah-nee? Fuck.) It was a tree house, as in a platform amidst the trees and he could see things without having to actually get into them.
He'd brought a case of beer, some pot lemon squares (because brownies are so last year), and a kaleidoscope.
Elijah wasn't sure what Samir would do with a kaleidoscope, but he'd given it to him anyway, wrapped (I swear to God I did not give you a dildo) and presented as a housewarming gift because he hadn't actually done so before. So, there he was, laying on his back and staring at the sky and-
"I have no fucking clue how to tie a tie," he admits, despite the fact that he is actually wearing a tie today.
Samir
He probably should have known this would be the end result if he told Elijah that he had a tree house. The kid about lost his shit over the fact that he could conjure a love seat out of thin air. At the rate they're going he might as well just move that love seat out of his apartment and into the platform up in the tree.
Beer and pot lemon squares and a kaleidoscope are acceptable housewarming gifts. He washes the ever-loving hell out of his hands after he unwraps the thing but at least he handles it without too much in the way of tooth-pulling.
This revelation about the tie makes Sam frown.
"So... is that a clip-on, or..."
Elijah
"Nah, I talked Jenn into doing it for some bullshit reason. I can usually con someone else into tying it," he tells Samir, "basically, I'm not-so-secretly hoping you know how to do this and can impart your wisdom before I have to break down and tell my dad that, despite having told me that one time, I still have no fucking clue how to do this. I'm kind of afraid he'll think he failed as a parent if his son plays the harp and can't tie a tie."
Ah, there is a reason now. He takes another bite of lemon square, sits up long enough to dust the crumbs off of himself and let them fall away onto the ground far, far below, and thinks briefly of the second Creepshow movie. Imagines a man eating oil slick beneath them and-
Ugh. He reminds himself that he is glad they are on land.
Samir
"... do you want me to find a Youtube video?"
If anyone looks as if he has less experience tying ties than Elijah does it's Samir. He wears t-shirts and leather jackets and calls it a day. The most tying he does is to lace up his Doc Martens and make sure the twist on baggies of weed are secure. That's a long shot compared to tying a tie.
Even if he did know how to tie a tie he wouldn't be able to show Elijah how to do it. That would involve. You know. Touching him.
"Hang on. They have videos for everything on Youtube."
They don't have a tie readily available either but that could change in a few moments.
Elijah
"Can you find out what the fuck a half windsor is? Like, is there a whole tie etiquette thing I'm missing?"
He leans over without having to actually me touching Sam, just presumes that he has his phone and that the tree house has wifi because what else would one do in a tree house but watch Youtube videos while you're kinda getting a little stoned?
A beat passes, then?
"Do they seriously have videos for everything on youtube?"
He is suddenly reminded that you can't google technocrats.
Samir
"Dude, do I look like I know shit about tying ties?"
For the time being Sam tolerates Elijah's sliding closer. They've already had the most awkward moment of their fledgling bromance. At this point the more Elijah invades his personal space and reminds him of the time he offered to give him a handjob the better he's going to get at tolerating it when complete strangers do it.
In theory. He hasn't ever seen behavioral therapy in action. There's probably a Youtube video for it though.
"They have videos for pretty much everything. Anything that violates copyright law or basic human decency tends to get taken down pretty fast. You have to go on Liveleak or other sites to find the nastier ones."
He's seen some shit on the Dark Web.
"Okay. Half Windsor." Full screen. Rotate. "Go."
Elijah
"The fuck is Liveleak? Is that where the Mister Hands shit originated?"
Oh Elijah, you have no idea what horrors lurk on the internet.
Samir
"I think 4chan is responsible for that one, actually. Liveleak wasn't around in 2005."
If Elijah doesn't know what 4chan is then Sam isn't going to be the one to tell him. He'd like to assume that Elijah knows what 4chan is because Elijah knows what the Dark Web is and also Elijah asked Google what the Technocracy is. But you know what happens when you assume.
Elijah
"Man, fucking 4chan," is all he has to say for that one.
In the mean time, he has carefully extricated himself from his tie, loosened it to the point that it came free and he looks a little warily at the screen, as though he is fairly certain that he has made a right and terrible decision and he could have gotten out of having to tie this until he came back from Boston.
"So, like, what kind of shit is on Liveleak?"
Samir
Sam has found a way to prop the phone up against the side of the railing so that Elijah can look at a somewhat steady screen instead of the shakiness of Sam's hands on top of the shakiness of the cameraman.
It also means he gets to light a cigarette and judge Elijah as he waits until the week before he goes on this Very Important Apprenticeship Trip to learn how to tie a fucking tie.
"Executions, mostly. A lot of political and war footage. Beheadings, a lot, lately. Sometimes people post videos of car versus pedestrian aftermath or, you know. Dead babies and shit. Nothing illegal."
Elijah
And he's going through the motions, and he's not... adept at this. He fumbles through, yes, but he does stop the video, looks down and undoes the knot and scoots the video back, just enough to start over again. This is a skill that he is going to have to practice... a lot. He's getting there, of course, because he can write the world into his whims so of course Elijah is going to fucking learn how to tie a tie.
"So... it's like the Faces of Death stuff they had on Rotten dot com awhile back?" he shakes his head, "I mean, when Rotten dot com was a thing. I'm kinda glad that... y'know... I have no idea how to find half this shit. I kinda want to know more? But, like, I really... really don't."
Samir
"You really really really don't."
Spoken like someone who lives on the Internet. He was the one who stayed up all night the night before the raid on the Artist's minions' home. He saw some shit that night that might have made him vomit if he hadn't seen awful things done to children on the Internet.
Granted the shit he saw that night was enough to make him never want to see another person naked ever again in his life but the only person who saw a fraction of what he saw was Grace. They could just leave what they saw between the two of them.
It did not cause him an undo amount of mental anguish to set that building on fire. That the person who had made them zombies or vampires or whatever the hell they were in the first place wasn't in the building didn't matter much. They were monsters in their own right. Too far gone for redemption even if they had been innocent before the Nephandus did whatever she did.
Sam shakes his head hard and blinks as if his mind had wandered. It had. It does that sometimes.
Elijah
He looks at Sam for a second, between trying to figure out this half Windsor thing (which he actually did manage to do, and he looks down as if he isn't entirely sure that he did this right, but we digress) and his attention turns to Sam. He doesn't know what is out there on the internet, or the dark web. Elijah grew up in an age where he'd never not had technology.
Then again, he'd been offline for most of his formative years. The seedy people he'd found he'd managed to find in person. Has no idea the number of close calls he has had in his life time, doesn't think of the countless other things that could have gone wrong. Elijah does a lot of things, but in his core there are just realities that he doesn't think about because he doesn't think to think about them. Thought that To Catch a Predator was just a thing that happened on Dateline and that it could get so much worse.
But, Sam blinks and shakes his head.
"Dude, did you just have a 'nam flashback?"
Samir
"Had a 'your mom' flashback."
It's worth mentioning that Sam did eat one of the pot lemon squares that Elijah made. He wants to believe that Elijah isn't the sort of person to change a dirty diaper or jerk off a subway-dwelling heroin addict and then prepare food without washing his hands first. Until he can work organic data arrays into his paradigm he just has to trust people.
Woe and agony.
Back in the present he frowns at the lack of progress Elijah is making with that tie.
"Jesus Christ, I thought white people had to know how tie a tie before their first confirmation. Let me see that."
He drags the phone closer to him so he can refresh it and see what Elijah is supposed to be doing.
Elijah
"I can't be Catholic if I can't tie a tie?!"
Nope. That's noose. Like a tiny, formal way of killing himself. He's got to be getting a little closer. He lets out a little sound, a sad whine, because he has had more than one lemon square.
"Aw, my grandma's gonna be so mad now..."
Samir
[mind 1: learn the shit out of this.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (2, 7) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Samir
All the Mercurial Elite appears to do is sit and watch a two-minute video in rapt silence. Takes him shushing Elijah at one point to really appear as if he is watching it. Even without sound he could watch what is happening and sort out what he's supposed to do.
"Alright," he says after about the halfway point.
Then he narrows his eyes in a sidelong glance at the Hermetic apprentice. Thinks about what he's doing before he does it.
"Just because I show you how to tie a tie doesn't mean we're getting married or anything, alright? I just... I can't watch you keep sucking at this, it's making my skin itch."
Elijah
[Dead serious! Manip+sub, +2 diff because I'm high as balls)
Dice: 7 d10 TN8 (1, 3, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )
Samir
[perc + empathy: shit, dude!]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) [Doubling Tens] [WP]
Samir
[I didn't mean to spend WP. He only got three successes. YOU WIN THIS ONE, POIROT.]
Elijah
"No way, dude. If we tie a tie together, that's a thing. It's stupidly significant in the Order, it's like a tiny hand fasting. We've made a fucking pact."
Dead. Fucking. Serious.
Samir
At that he springs to his feet and holds up both his hands. Nope. Nope nope nope. More important than leaving his phone in the possession of a fellow crazy person is not tying a pact with said crazy person.
"You're on your own, man," he says as he backs towards the ladder.
Fucking pot lemon squares.
Elijah
It's too much. It's all too much, Sam springs up and Elijah falls over. Croons, crows, laughs hard enough that his ribs hurt and his face hurts and he forgets, for a second, that one of his friends is in mortal peril and is at home painting... uh... something. He didn't know what Jenn was painting, and at that moment he was too busy laughing his ass off.
"No, wait-" he can't stop. Can. Not. Stop. Laughing.
"Come baaaaaaaack I'm sharing my worldview with you, we need to be a- fuckin- cabal or something! You understaaaaaand meeeeee."
He had not stopped laughing, though, and probably about halfway down the ladder he responded with.
"Owww, get your phone."
Samir
I'm sharing my worldview with you--
Sam makes a noise like Elijah just flicked a booger at him and starts down the ladder. It is not a sincere sound. The fact that Elijah is laughing is kind of a giveaway that he just got got. He still screams like a little girl and continues along the escape sequence.
"Fuck my phone!" he calls up from the grass. "I'm gonna go take a shower and rethink my life!"
Elijah
"I'm totally not looking at porn while you're gone!"
He's totally going to look at porn while Sam is gone.
Samir
"Don't make me drop a couch on you!"
Friendship truly is magic.
Saturday, October 17, 2015
Fuck yeah, Treehouse!
Samir
A few weeks have passed since Sam teleported the couch he so lovingly made for Elijah into the apartment over Floral and Hardy. Its piercing presence has really tied the living room together. The Mercurial Elite does not have strong resonance and it has started to fade but the fact that it still stabs people when they sit on it for the first time has been a source of boundless amusement for the Hermetic apprentice.
Or Sam can assume. He gets text messages sometimes. He hasn't told Elijah where his ass moved to yet. Elijah wants to hang out today though and Sam doesn't want to fuck around with public transportation on a Saturday so Elijah has the distinction of being the first person to see the Mercurial Elite's new digs.
He had the previous distinction of being the first person to see the Mercurial Elite's studio apartment. It was fucking depressing.
So: Sam is squatting out by Russellville Gulch. It's thirty-three miles outside of Denver and another forty-six miles to Colorado Springs. His Airstream sits next to Cherry Creek which is dry as fuck this time of year and a path of trees stands sentinel in the distance. The state park is about a mile or so south of his location. In order to get to it Elijah has to engage in some minor trespassing and then some minor hiking.
The Airstream does not have a deck. There are a couple of lawn chairs and a table with an umbrella where he can set his laptop. That piercing quality is everywhere. If Elijah weren't actively looking for him and invited on top of that it's likely he never would have found the fucking place.
Sam looks a bit grubby but not unwashed. More like he's been camping for three weeks straight. He hasn't shaved his face in a while and his already brown skin has grown darker from being outside so much. Of course he's wearing sunglasses. It's sunny and gorgeous outside today. A slight haze from the west but that's to be expected.
As Elijah approaches the plot the other man abandons whatever the fuck he was doing to tramp away from the creek and greet him.
"Sup," he says.
Elijah
And it is. It really, really is because it looks so comfortable, and it is comfortable, once you get over the fact that you are going to sit on the couch, get stabbed, and then settle into a false sense of security not knowing if it'll happen again. It's like sitting on a sedative that makes Elijah's living room actually look pretty nice. Samir has a good taste in sofas when he's randomly making things for Elijah to sit on.
He concludes that he likes where Samir lives, even before he's seen the place, namely because of the lengths it takes to actually get there. It involves hiking (which he enjoys) and tresspassing (which is an endless source of amusement for him). He hasn't illegally been on private property since he broke into Elitch Gardens. Jumped the fence and said it was all in the name of transcendence or whatever was going on with that ghost girl who fell over the railing a few years back.
He was actively looking for Samir and he still got lost, ended up standing in a field for awhile while he yelled "I give up, Saaaaaaaaam, come get meeeeeeeeee."
Eventually he did find it though.
A little dirty but he doesn't seem to care.
"You have a fucking creek!"
Samir
"I mean..."
Looks a bit strange standing there in his wine-colored shit-kicker boots and black jeans with all that nature behind him. At least he's not wearing a jacket for the first time that Elijah can recall. In a t-shirt that shows off his nerd physique he looks like a kid who's been dragged out here for rehabilitation on a court order and not someone who chose this for whatever fucked-up enlightenment purposes he's concocted.
Sam turns to look at the creek. In the springtime it may burble. Right now it's still.
"It's not really mine, I just kind of look at it." He turns back to Elijah and then hikes a thumb at the trailer like to portend his impending disappearance. "You want a drink?"
Elijah
Does he want a drink?
"Yeah, whatcha got? I'll go for anything carbonated or anything above forty proof," he tells Sam.
It's pretty weird, though. He looks at Sam again, then at the creek- which Elijah is actually pretty content to let it stay over there. He eyes it cautiously, like he's still trying to figure out how deep it is. Concludes that he probably won't drown in it unless Samir beats him over the head with something or if he gets really drunk and just passes out face down in still water.
All things considered, Elijah concludes that would be a shitty way for his story to end. Yep, the creek stays right over there.
He meanders to the trailer.
"You don't have a deck," he announces, like this is a travesty.
Samir
"Am I supposed to?"
The inside of the trailer appears to have been decorated by a housewife with too much time and money. It's bright and clean but the curtains are tacky and all of the appliances are older than both the young men put together. A queen-sized bed takes up the entirety of the space to the far end of the trailer but it's a step up from an air mattress. Books and electronic equipment occupies every inch of storage space the trailer offers and then spills into the area under the bed frame.
Though the trailer has a space for a shower that would involve having access to running water. Which he doesn't. Yet.
Sam rifles around in the mini fridge for a few moments and then pulls out a can of off-brand citrus-flavored caffeine explosion. No alcohol. That's going to require some reality hacking. He offers a can to Elijah and cracks open one of his own before herding him back outside.
Elijah
"Dude. It's a trailer. You live in the middle of nature. Having a deck is required," he says, "plus it makes you way less likely to step out and fall flat on your face. It's a thing."
He looks around, doesn't touch anything until he has the off-brand soda in his hand and something about that makes him grin with absolute delight. Takes a long drink and bites back the aftertaste of Not Mountain Dew.
Samir
Their seating options are limited to the two lawn chairs underneath the patio umbrella and the ground. Sam is pushing it even living out here in the first place. He does not choose to sit on the ground. He sits his ass down in the lawn chair and watches Elijah's reaction to the drink.
"There's no high-fructose corn syrup in this shit," he says offhand. "Hope you like Mexican sugar."
Back to the matter of the deck:
"Dude, I don't know shit about building shit. I could probably just write a deck into the trailer's code but I feel like that defeats the purpose of living in the middle of nature."
Elijah
Raises his can again- concludes that Samir does not fuck around when it comes to soda and, despite what the corn industry says, you can taste a difference between high fructose corn syrup and real sugar. He might have had a little too much too fast, and he covers his mouth for a second to mask what is a decidedly weak burp. Somewhere, someone taught him manners.
"My dad runs a construction company," Elijah starts, "and for awhile he'd figured working with him was cheaper than rehab. I actually have mad deck building skills... I can also put a roof on your house if you decide to build something that needs a freaking roof."
Because, you know, he could have had an office job and played it cool and probably slept with the girl who did all the accounting paperwork. Instead, Elijah spent a couple summers busting tail and getting high or drunk or whatever after work. So, it was like Elijah actually worked construction.
Samir
"Ugh. A house? I had enough trouble keeping that shithole apartment clean. This is a lot easier."
He says like he didn't spend half his time cleaning the place anyway. This may be the first time he's joked open about his illness in front of Elijah but then again there's a decent-sized difference between someone who cleans often because they are a type A personality and someone who cleans often out of compulsion.
Besides: Elijah has spent time on psych wards. He knows what nonfunctioning obsessives look like. Sam does not look like a nonfunctioning obsessive. He does however smell and sound a little bit like he's been doing bong rips all afternoon.
"Let me think about it."
Like if he acquiesces to Elijah helping him build a deck they might as well start picking out silverware sets.
Elijah
"You live in, like, a magical fucking woodland wonderland, Sam. Like a fucking boss."
Doesn't say a damned thing about the fact that the outdoors is freaking filthy because, yeah, they both definitely know that it's dirty. The fact that Sam, despite smelling like Elijah's early high school years, is living in the middle of a germ-filled mess of nature is pretty fucking impressive.
"Also, you can totally trade in my slave labor for other shit. You made me a couch, and it's been a fucking source of hours of entertainment."
Samir
Not only is it filthy but it's crawling with lifeforms that Sam has only ever encountered in wildlife documentaries and Wikipedia articles. It isn't anything that's ever interested him before now. Seeing the world that exists on the other side of the Gauntlet had an affect on his brain that he has been grappling with for a while.
Either that or going into Quiet really fucked him up. He did get attacked by the amalgam of two teenaged girls. He has been withdrawn since then but it's hard to tell whether he's more withdrawn than usual or if that's his typical state of being. For keeping each other alive as they had the two don't know each other very well. You need time for that.
"Really?" This about the couch. Something about that statement makes him laugh. "Well, shit. Glad I could be of service. Here's to the couch."
Toasting with green fizzie-drink cans. They are living the dream over here.
Elijah
Clinks the cans together and down the hatch it goes. Doesn't shotgun the thing because this is a soda that was made with actual sugar. You don't just guzzle this shit. Besides, Samir lives int he middle of the wilderness. Elijah didn't know what it was that Sam did in order to keep his trash consumption in check, but he's in Colorado. They have to keep this whole nature thing pristine or else he'll get deported.
Then it's back to swamplands and avoiding his parents. Thank you, no thank you.
"I've acquired this temporary-but-it's-looking-like-not-temporary room mate named Aidan? The apartment is full of fucking Katrina refugees, but anyway. Aidan. Dreamspeaker, or whatever the fuck they call themselves now-" Hermetic problems. Can't be fucked to figure out the tradition's new name "-spends a fucking hour investigating this thing because it doesn't behave like a normal couch. He sees things like a super animistic view of themselves, and apparently my loveseat broke his brain for, like, a day."
Samir
Okay. That's fucking funny. Sam doesn't exactly fall out of his chair laughing but it's clear that this guy doesn't encounter much that strikes him as novel anymore. He lives on the Internet. The fact that he hasn't checked Reddit in ten minutes is a bit of a stretch for him. But he does laugh at the mental image.
"Seriously?" Yes seriously. "That's awesome. Next time I come over I'll turn it into a sectional. He won't know what hit him."
Elijah
"Dude, we could finally retire the IKEA couch! Because, seriously, the next time some fucking Quaesitor comes and sits in my living room I want a mildly pokey couch as a fucking even playing field."
Samir
"The fuck did you have a Quaesitor in your living room for?"
Elijah
"My apprenticeship was fucked before I started studying with Henry. He and this other guy wanted to talk with me and see if I was actually worth the effort of fixing the whole fucked-up-ed-ness over."
Throws his hands out wide.
"I haven't failed out yet! But seriously, it was like having a job interview with someone who is judging your soul."
Samir
"Ah, Houston, that's a big fat nope."
He puts the drained can as far away from him as he can get without throwing it on the ground. Removes the compulsion to fuck with it. It's bad enough he's been tapping the inside of his right middle finger against the lawn chair's arm and counting how many times he tapped and berating himself for counting and then starting over because if he was gonna tap on the damned chair he was going to do it in multiples of 23. Just to be civilized.
"So... why the Order?"
Elijah
There are two lawn chairs. He could, conceivably, sit in a lawn chair like a normal fucking person but he doesn't. Puts a hand down and settles on the dirt like he doesn't mind because, well, he doesn't. Actually kinda likes it, could go on about the feeling one has about being grounded and aware of your surroundings when you have a connection to land. Or, it could just be that he liked sitting on the ground. Did it in his apartment when there weren't people he was talking to that might take it oddly that he's camped out on the carpet like a four-year-old waiting for circle time.
"Because of words," he says, "like... the Order has this view on language- that there's this whole power and beauty and strength and definition and a bunch of other shit in language. I thought that the idea was beautiful, that the idea of naming something gave it strength and made it real and giving it a name informed the definition and..."
He trails off, realizing that he's rambling.
"They have this whole view that there's a language that spoke the world into existence, that there was Truth in that and I fucking loved it. Still love it. I thought it was interesting that the universe might be this gigantic, complicated piece of poetry and we're picking through extended metaphors."
Samir
Sam considers this. Gets through three sets of finger-tapping in the amount of time Elijah talks about his paradigm and the paradigm of the Order of Hermes and that's all well and good but he doesn't want to just sit on three sets. Four is a better number. A better ward against death than any other number he's tried and he hasn't discovered the extent of the things that could kill him out here. He hears coyotes and gunshots sometimes. Not the same kind of gunshots the city provides. This is a more reasonable use of firearms but it still wakes him up at night.
"That is quite possibly the gayest thing I've ever heard in my life," he says.
Elijah
"Dude, I have literally asked to blow you before and that was the gayest thing you've heard in your life?"
Samir
He nods a vigorous nod and stops tapping the fucking lawn chair.
"Yup." That's enough male posturing for one day. He asks, "So... what language is it?"
Elijah
"Enochian, language of the angels and shit," he said, "I know, sounds really Supernatural-esque but I swear it's an actual fucking language and Sam and Dean can eat me. It's weird, but it's absolutely fucking gorgeous and there is not an analogous human language for it. It's kind of the language of high umbral beings."
Samir
Sam considers this. Doesn't appear to judge it right away even though it's about as far away from what he believes as is the Verbenae paradigm. High umbral beings. Alright.
"Right on," he says. "So... that's why you joined the Order and had a Quaesitor sitting in your living room."
Makes total sense.
Elijah
There is something that Elijah doesn't say, that he has a theory. That if the language that spoke creation into being is spoken by high umbral beings, is there an analogue for the forces that live in the deep umbra? Is it all just a derivative of the same language or does it actually divide? He'd been thinking about Descent, about how that even fucking works. Doesn't want to know except he really... really does. All thought exercises before he passes the fuck out and doesn't dream.
Small courtesies.
Anyway. Quaesitor. Living room.
"Yep. Dude, it was weird- I think that, after a point, people that have been doing this magic shit for too long forget how to interface with actual normal fucking people. The Order has a whole don't meddle in the affairs of sleepers thing, which I think is there to keep people from, like, mindfucking their way into the presidency? But some people take it to the point that they're like ladida I live in a fucking tower and the magical world is the only thing that exists like it's not part of the same fucking world-" a second, "-and it's not just Hermetics that do that. Like, am I tripping? Do you see people do that, too? Am I overgeneralizing?"
Samir
"I mean..."
He's talking to someone who may as well live in a fucking tower but reality hacking is a different breed of beast. Perhaps. Humans can convince themselves of just about anything and the Awakened human is no different.
"I don't get out much. So."
Elijah
"Eh," he shrugs.
A beat.
"Hey, what's your last name?"
Samir
Elijah just discovered the fastest way to make a hacker paranoid.
"... why?"
For fuck's sake Sam.
"It's Lakhani. L-A-K-H-A-N-I."
Elijah
"It just bugged me that I don't know your last name? Like, I met you. And you know I've been in a shit car accident and a whole bunch of other things, and I had to find out you had a first name from Grace. I was just like, Elijah, you seriously can not keep being friends with someone you call 'that one dude'... and Lakhani is a fucking cool name."
Samir
Now is not the time for Sam to tell Elijah that he Googled the shit out of him before he went to go sell him drugs and that he probably knows more about him than is appropriate.
The night of the fire they did talk about their parents a bit. How Elijah's middle name was a girl's and how Sam didn't have a middle name because his mother didn't disclose who his father was if she even knew.
"Yeah, it's alright."
A beat.
"So... are you staying the night?"
Elijah
"Can I stay the night?"
Samir
"If you keep your hands to yourself."
Elijah
"Totally respecting your virtue, Samir."
Samir
He considers this for a moment. Stone-faced and even more so because of the sunglasses concealing his eyes. Then he stands from the lawn chair and tugs down the hem of his t-shirt and gives a jerk of his head towards the tree line.
"C'mon," he says. "I wanna show you this fucking treehouse I found."
Elijah
[I am not fucking excited about this. Manip+sub]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Elijah
"... you have a treehouse?"
Dubious, like he wasn't sure he wanted to believe Samir. Like this might be some truth that he isn't completely ready to face and soon enough he was meandering along in the grass anyway because there was a treehouse he could go see and Elijah guessed that maybe he could go see it.
Dusts the dirt off his butt and follows
Samir
[you are too fucking excited about this don't be a fag]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 5 ) [Doubling Tens]
A few weeks have passed since Sam teleported the couch he so lovingly made for Elijah into the apartment over Floral and Hardy. Its piercing presence has really tied the living room together. The Mercurial Elite does not have strong resonance and it has started to fade but the fact that it still stabs people when they sit on it for the first time has been a source of boundless amusement for the Hermetic apprentice.
Or Sam can assume. He gets text messages sometimes. He hasn't told Elijah where his ass moved to yet. Elijah wants to hang out today though and Sam doesn't want to fuck around with public transportation on a Saturday so Elijah has the distinction of being the first person to see the Mercurial Elite's new digs.
He had the previous distinction of being the first person to see the Mercurial Elite's studio apartment. It was fucking depressing.
So: Sam is squatting out by Russellville Gulch. It's thirty-three miles outside of Denver and another forty-six miles to Colorado Springs. His Airstream sits next to Cherry Creek which is dry as fuck this time of year and a path of trees stands sentinel in the distance. The state park is about a mile or so south of his location. In order to get to it Elijah has to engage in some minor trespassing and then some minor hiking.
The Airstream does not have a deck. There are a couple of lawn chairs and a table with an umbrella where he can set his laptop. That piercing quality is everywhere. If Elijah weren't actively looking for him and invited on top of that it's likely he never would have found the fucking place.
Sam looks a bit grubby but not unwashed. More like he's been camping for three weeks straight. He hasn't shaved his face in a while and his already brown skin has grown darker from being outside so much. Of course he's wearing sunglasses. It's sunny and gorgeous outside today. A slight haze from the west but that's to be expected.
As Elijah approaches the plot the other man abandons whatever the fuck he was doing to tramp away from the creek and greet him.
"Sup," he says.
Elijah
And it is. It really, really is because it looks so comfortable, and it is comfortable, once you get over the fact that you are going to sit on the couch, get stabbed, and then settle into a false sense of security not knowing if it'll happen again. It's like sitting on a sedative that makes Elijah's living room actually look pretty nice. Samir has a good taste in sofas when he's randomly making things for Elijah to sit on.
He concludes that he likes where Samir lives, even before he's seen the place, namely because of the lengths it takes to actually get there. It involves hiking (which he enjoys) and tresspassing (which is an endless source of amusement for him). He hasn't illegally been on private property since he broke into Elitch Gardens. Jumped the fence and said it was all in the name of transcendence or whatever was going on with that ghost girl who fell over the railing a few years back.
He was actively looking for Samir and he still got lost, ended up standing in a field for awhile while he yelled "I give up, Saaaaaaaaam, come get meeeeeeeeee."
Eventually he did find it though.
A little dirty but he doesn't seem to care.
"You have a fucking creek!"
Samir
"I mean..."
Looks a bit strange standing there in his wine-colored shit-kicker boots and black jeans with all that nature behind him. At least he's not wearing a jacket for the first time that Elijah can recall. In a t-shirt that shows off his nerd physique he looks like a kid who's been dragged out here for rehabilitation on a court order and not someone who chose this for whatever fucked-up enlightenment purposes he's concocted.
Sam turns to look at the creek. In the springtime it may burble. Right now it's still.
"It's not really mine, I just kind of look at it." He turns back to Elijah and then hikes a thumb at the trailer like to portend his impending disappearance. "You want a drink?"
Elijah
Does he want a drink?
"Yeah, whatcha got? I'll go for anything carbonated or anything above forty proof," he tells Sam.
It's pretty weird, though. He looks at Sam again, then at the creek- which Elijah is actually pretty content to let it stay over there. He eyes it cautiously, like he's still trying to figure out how deep it is. Concludes that he probably won't drown in it unless Samir beats him over the head with something or if he gets really drunk and just passes out face down in still water.
All things considered, Elijah concludes that would be a shitty way for his story to end. Yep, the creek stays right over there.
He meanders to the trailer.
"You don't have a deck," he announces, like this is a travesty.
Samir
"Am I supposed to?"
The inside of the trailer appears to have been decorated by a housewife with too much time and money. It's bright and clean but the curtains are tacky and all of the appliances are older than both the young men put together. A queen-sized bed takes up the entirety of the space to the far end of the trailer but it's a step up from an air mattress. Books and electronic equipment occupies every inch of storage space the trailer offers and then spills into the area under the bed frame.
Though the trailer has a space for a shower that would involve having access to running water. Which he doesn't. Yet.
Sam rifles around in the mini fridge for a few moments and then pulls out a can of off-brand citrus-flavored caffeine explosion. No alcohol. That's going to require some reality hacking. He offers a can to Elijah and cracks open one of his own before herding him back outside.
Elijah
"Dude. It's a trailer. You live in the middle of nature. Having a deck is required," he says, "plus it makes you way less likely to step out and fall flat on your face. It's a thing."
He looks around, doesn't touch anything until he has the off-brand soda in his hand and something about that makes him grin with absolute delight. Takes a long drink and bites back the aftertaste of Not Mountain Dew.
Samir
Their seating options are limited to the two lawn chairs underneath the patio umbrella and the ground. Sam is pushing it even living out here in the first place. He does not choose to sit on the ground. He sits his ass down in the lawn chair and watches Elijah's reaction to the drink.
"There's no high-fructose corn syrup in this shit," he says offhand. "Hope you like Mexican sugar."
Back to the matter of the deck:
"Dude, I don't know shit about building shit. I could probably just write a deck into the trailer's code but I feel like that defeats the purpose of living in the middle of nature."
Elijah
Raises his can again- concludes that Samir does not fuck around when it comes to soda and, despite what the corn industry says, you can taste a difference between high fructose corn syrup and real sugar. He might have had a little too much too fast, and he covers his mouth for a second to mask what is a decidedly weak burp. Somewhere, someone taught him manners.
"My dad runs a construction company," Elijah starts, "and for awhile he'd figured working with him was cheaper than rehab. I actually have mad deck building skills... I can also put a roof on your house if you decide to build something that needs a freaking roof."
Because, you know, he could have had an office job and played it cool and probably slept with the girl who did all the accounting paperwork. Instead, Elijah spent a couple summers busting tail and getting high or drunk or whatever after work. So, it was like Elijah actually worked construction.
Samir
"Ugh. A house? I had enough trouble keeping that shithole apartment clean. This is a lot easier."
He says like he didn't spend half his time cleaning the place anyway. This may be the first time he's joked open about his illness in front of Elijah but then again there's a decent-sized difference between someone who cleans often because they are a type A personality and someone who cleans often out of compulsion.
Besides: Elijah has spent time on psych wards. He knows what nonfunctioning obsessives look like. Sam does not look like a nonfunctioning obsessive. He does however smell and sound a little bit like he's been doing bong rips all afternoon.
"Let me think about it."
Like if he acquiesces to Elijah helping him build a deck they might as well start picking out silverware sets.
Elijah
"You live in, like, a magical fucking woodland wonderland, Sam. Like a fucking boss."
Doesn't say a damned thing about the fact that the outdoors is freaking filthy because, yeah, they both definitely know that it's dirty. The fact that Sam, despite smelling like Elijah's early high school years, is living in the middle of a germ-filled mess of nature is pretty fucking impressive.
"Also, you can totally trade in my slave labor for other shit. You made me a couch, and it's been a fucking source of hours of entertainment."
Samir
Not only is it filthy but it's crawling with lifeforms that Sam has only ever encountered in wildlife documentaries and Wikipedia articles. It isn't anything that's ever interested him before now. Seeing the world that exists on the other side of the Gauntlet had an affect on his brain that he has been grappling with for a while.
Either that or going into Quiet really fucked him up. He did get attacked by the amalgam of two teenaged girls. He has been withdrawn since then but it's hard to tell whether he's more withdrawn than usual or if that's his typical state of being. For keeping each other alive as they had the two don't know each other very well. You need time for that.
"Really?" This about the couch. Something about that statement makes him laugh. "Well, shit. Glad I could be of service. Here's to the couch."
Toasting with green fizzie-drink cans. They are living the dream over here.
Elijah
Clinks the cans together and down the hatch it goes. Doesn't shotgun the thing because this is a soda that was made with actual sugar. You don't just guzzle this shit. Besides, Samir lives int he middle of the wilderness. Elijah didn't know what it was that Sam did in order to keep his trash consumption in check, but he's in Colorado. They have to keep this whole nature thing pristine or else he'll get deported.
Then it's back to swamplands and avoiding his parents. Thank you, no thank you.
"I've acquired this temporary-but-it's-looking-like-not-temporary room mate named Aidan? The apartment is full of fucking Katrina refugees, but anyway. Aidan. Dreamspeaker, or whatever the fuck they call themselves now-" Hermetic problems. Can't be fucked to figure out the tradition's new name "-spends a fucking hour investigating this thing because it doesn't behave like a normal couch. He sees things like a super animistic view of themselves, and apparently my loveseat broke his brain for, like, a day."
Samir
Okay. That's fucking funny. Sam doesn't exactly fall out of his chair laughing but it's clear that this guy doesn't encounter much that strikes him as novel anymore. He lives on the Internet. The fact that he hasn't checked Reddit in ten minutes is a bit of a stretch for him. But he does laugh at the mental image.
"Seriously?" Yes seriously. "That's awesome. Next time I come over I'll turn it into a sectional. He won't know what hit him."
Elijah
"Dude, we could finally retire the IKEA couch! Because, seriously, the next time some fucking Quaesitor comes and sits in my living room I want a mildly pokey couch as a fucking even playing field."
Samir
"The fuck did you have a Quaesitor in your living room for?"
Elijah
"My apprenticeship was fucked before I started studying with Henry. He and this other guy wanted to talk with me and see if I was actually worth the effort of fixing the whole fucked-up-ed-ness over."
Throws his hands out wide.
"I haven't failed out yet! But seriously, it was like having a job interview with someone who is judging your soul."
Samir
"Ah, Houston, that's a big fat nope."
He puts the drained can as far away from him as he can get without throwing it on the ground. Removes the compulsion to fuck with it. It's bad enough he's been tapping the inside of his right middle finger against the lawn chair's arm and counting how many times he tapped and berating himself for counting and then starting over because if he was gonna tap on the damned chair he was going to do it in multiples of 23. Just to be civilized.
"So... why the Order?"
Elijah
There are two lawn chairs. He could, conceivably, sit in a lawn chair like a normal fucking person but he doesn't. Puts a hand down and settles on the dirt like he doesn't mind because, well, he doesn't. Actually kinda likes it, could go on about the feeling one has about being grounded and aware of your surroundings when you have a connection to land. Or, it could just be that he liked sitting on the ground. Did it in his apartment when there weren't people he was talking to that might take it oddly that he's camped out on the carpet like a four-year-old waiting for circle time.
"Because of words," he says, "like... the Order has this view on language- that there's this whole power and beauty and strength and definition and a bunch of other shit in language. I thought that the idea was beautiful, that the idea of naming something gave it strength and made it real and giving it a name informed the definition and..."
He trails off, realizing that he's rambling.
"They have this whole view that there's a language that spoke the world into existence, that there was Truth in that and I fucking loved it. Still love it. I thought it was interesting that the universe might be this gigantic, complicated piece of poetry and we're picking through extended metaphors."
Samir
Sam considers this. Gets through three sets of finger-tapping in the amount of time Elijah talks about his paradigm and the paradigm of the Order of Hermes and that's all well and good but he doesn't want to just sit on three sets. Four is a better number. A better ward against death than any other number he's tried and he hasn't discovered the extent of the things that could kill him out here. He hears coyotes and gunshots sometimes. Not the same kind of gunshots the city provides. This is a more reasonable use of firearms but it still wakes him up at night.
"That is quite possibly the gayest thing I've ever heard in my life," he says.
Elijah
"Dude, I have literally asked to blow you before and that was the gayest thing you've heard in your life?"
Samir
He nods a vigorous nod and stops tapping the fucking lawn chair.
"Yup." That's enough male posturing for one day. He asks, "So... what language is it?"
Elijah
"Enochian, language of the angels and shit," he said, "I know, sounds really Supernatural-esque but I swear it's an actual fucking language and Sam and Dean can eat me. It's weird, but it's absolutely fucking gorgeous and there is not an analogous human language for it. It's kind of the language of high umbral beings."
Samir
Sam considers this. Doesn't appear to judge it right away even though it's about as far away from what he believes as is the Verbenae paradigm. High umbral beings. Alright.
"Right on," he says. "So... that's why you joined the Order and had a Quaesitor sitting in your living room."
Makes total sense.
Elijah
There is something that Elijah doesn't say, that he has a theory. That if the language that spoke creation into being is spoken by high umbral beings, is there an analogue for the forces that live in the deep umbra? Is it all just a derivative of the same language or does it actually divide? He'd been thinking about Descent, about how that even fucking works. Doesn't want to know except he really... really does. All thought exercises before he passes the fuck out and doesn't dream.
Small courtesies.
Anyway. Quaesitor. Living room.
"Yep. Dude, it was weird- I think that, after a point, people that have been doing this magic shit for too long forget how to interface with actual normal fucking people. The Order has a whole don't meddle in the affairs of sleepers thing, which I think is there to keep people from, like, mindfucking their way into the presidency? But some people take it to the point that they're like ladida I live in a fucking tower and the magical world is the only thing that exists like it's not part of the same fucking world-" a second, "-and it's not just Hermetics that do that. Like, am I tripping? Do you see people do that, too? Am I overgeneralizing?"
Samir
"I mean..."
He's talking to someone who may as well live in a fucking tower but reality hacking is a different breed of beast. Perhaps. Humans can convince themselves of just about anything and the Awakened human is no different.
"I don't get out much. So."
Elijah
"Eh," he shrugs.
A beat.
"Hey, what's your last name?"
Samir
Elijah just discovered the fastest way to make a hacker paranoid.
"... why?"
For fuck's sake Sam.
"It's Lakhani. L-A-K-H-A-N-I."
Elijah
"It just bugged me that I don't know your last name? Like, I met you. And you know I've been in a shit car accident and a whole bunch of other things, and I had to find out you had a first name from Grace. I was just like, Elijah, you seriously can not keep being friends with someone you call 'that one dude'... and Lakhani is a fucking cool name."
Samir
Now is not the time for Sam to tell Elijah that he Googled the shit out of him before he went to go sell him drugs and that he probably knows more about him than is appropriate.
The night of the fire they did talk about their parents a bit. How Elijah's middle name was a girl's and how Sam didn't have a middle name because his mother didn't disclose who his father was if she even knew.
"Yeah, it's alright."
A beat.
"So... are you staying the night?"
Elijah
"Can I stay the night?"
Samir
"If you keep your hands to yourself."
Elijah
"Totally respecting your virtue, Samir."
Samir
He considers this for a moment. Stone-faced and even more so because of the sunglasses concealing his eyes. Then he stands from the lawn chair and tugs down the hem of his t-shirt and gives a jerk of his head towards the tree line.
"C'mon," he says. "I wanna show you this fucking treehouse I found."
Elijah
[I am not fucking excited about this. Manip+sub]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Elijah
"... you have a treehouse?"
Dubious, like he wasn't sure he wanted to believe Samir. Like this might be some truth that he isn't completely ready to face and soon enough he was meandering along in the grass anyway because there was a treehouse he could go see and Elijah guessed that maybe he could go see it.
Dusts the dirt off his butt and follows
Samir
[you are too fucking excited about this don't be a fag]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 5 ) [Doubling Tens]
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